Today was another great day. Woke up around 10:00 to the horn of a cruise ship. Ordered some room service breakfast (eggs benedict) which was good. Met up with friends for slides/pools. Already starting to notice a tan which is nice. For dinner we went to Bobby Flynn's restaurant, Mesa Grill, and it was one of the best meals I've ever had. We had a smoked chicken and black bean quesadilla for an appetizer, I had a filet with some mushroom sauce type thing that was a bit spicy and awesome, cilantro pesto mashed potatoes, and for dessert, white chocolate macadamia nut ice cream sandwich which was incredible. Topped off with a nice bottle of wine and the ambiance of the restaurant and The Cove and it was perfect. Afterwards we walked by the marina and drooled at the bajillion dollar yachts (one even had a detachable submarine) and enjoyed a nice Cuban. Pretty standard Atlantis day.

Tomorrow it gets much more serious as I begin to play the $10,000 event. I know a few people started today (Day 1A) but haven't heard much yet as they should just be finishing. Greg is Day 1B with me tomorrow as well. I'm really excited to play and will be giving it my 100%. A few nice breaks from the deck would be great as well!

Craig

All I can say is wowwwwww. Landed around 12:00pm, got a limo with a few guys who ended up knowing me from Leggo which was cool. Came down with my friend Randy.

*Pro tip* When checking in, slip the guy registering you a $20 bill and ask if there are any rooms available with a nice view. Instead of being on like the 3rd floor facing a wall, I'm on the TOP floor with multiple beach/ocean views and being able to overlook all the pools/slides. It's seriously one of the best rooms at the resort and I got it for a week for a mere $20. Last year's room sucked and this one is awesome.

Further evidence of the room being awesome... on the way up the elevator, we were with Joe Hachem and a few other guys like us who were obviously there for the poker tourney. They were all on floors in the 7-12 range, and we were on the top floor and so we had pressed the 20 button. The other young guys assumed Hachem was on the 20th in some sick suite given he has millions and said to him, "let me guess, you're the one on floor 20." "Nope, floor 7." They then look at us and I can't help but grin as they exit the elevator. The rooms next to us are all huge suites that probably cost $10,000/night.

I'll just cut to the chase and post the views from our balcony!







The picture quality is decent but not great, I took them from my Blackberry. I'll be sure to post better ones (and others from the trip) when I get back to school and upload pictures from my camera.

It's a bit cloudy but still 80 degrees and nice. We hit the slides and pools when we got here. We have reservations at Nobu (one of the best sushi places... period) in an hour, then the PokerStars welcome party. Looks to be an amazing week.

Craig

New Year's eve was fun. Went downtown with a group of about 10 people and went to a pretty fun bar down by the Landing. Ended up being a pretty late night, but woke up at a reasonable time so that I could play in the homegame that was scheduled for that afternoon with the same group of guys that I have previously blogged about.

This trip went even better than the last one. I played for 12 hours straight with them and won ~$16,000. I wish I could have stayed longer (I left at 4:00am and the game was still going strong) but I was so tired from playing so long, especially because of it being New Year's Eve the night before. I was really happy with my play and can't think of any hands I would've played differently in retrospect. I ran moderately well and picked off a few big bluffs. I did however lose a couple of flips and miss a couple of big draws in spots where I would've gotten paid a lot. Certainly can't complain though, it was a great session. I don't really think any of the hands were super interesting so I won't bore you with details.

The last few hours I was there we played a prop game similar to the 2-7 game they played on High Stakes Poker where if you win a pot and show 2-7 everyone owed you extra money. Only we played it with 1 particular card which we would change every so often. For example, if you had the Q of spades in your hole cards and won the pot and showed the card everyone owed you $100. It was really fun and with this group there was tons of huge bluffing going on. Unlike the 2-7 game, someone would have the card roughly every other hand. I managed to win with the card I believe 2 times and most others had 1 time, so I came out ahead in the prop bet without managing to bluff off a few thousand like some of those guys. If you ever get the opportunity to incorporate this type of bet into a game, I highly recommend it as it's great for inducing action/spew.

I'm leaving tomorrow for the PCA/Bahamas and then am heading back to school. I will really miss being able to play in the homegame regularly because the action is so good and the characters in that game are very entertaining/fun.

I can't wait to get to the Bahamas, last year was amazing and it's absolutely beautiful at the Atlantis. Plus, I can't wait to win the tourney for ~$2.5 million. GL me!

Craig

Looking to sell (or swap) 30-50% of myself for the PCA tournament. Aejones already offered me 1.2:1 for 10% which I think is fair and so that's what I'll be selling it at. I have slightly under a 100% ROI over about 1,000 online MTTs, which you can check on www.officialpokerrankings.com (craigthedeac on PS, ELMO_MASK on FTP). I've played ~10 major live tournaments before and also a good amount of high stakes cash live so I'm pretty comfortable with the live dynamics of poker. Coming from a SNG/MTT upbringing, I'm good with the shortstack math and ICM, etc. This structure is really good though so I can also use my cash skills against many people who aren't really used to playing deep. It's tough to estimate, but I would guess my expectation in this tournament is about 75-100% ROI, even though it's one of the tougher live tournaments out there.

Again, I'm selling pieces at a 1.2:1 premium, meaning if you wanted 10% of my action (in a 10k event), you would pay $1,200. It's very high variance but a good investment. Contact me on AIM or PM if interested. Would prefer to sell in $500+ chunks to make it easier on me.

Edit: I'm sold-out but would still entertain small swaps.

Got invited to a gooooooooood game last night. It was mostly 6-7 handed. I had position on the guy who got me in the game who is probably the only decent one of the bunch. There were 2-3 people I would call big fish, the other couple are a bit too tight to be fish but certainly not good. I got in the game because I played a bit "crazy" at Lumiere before, they only invite people that give a lot of action.

It was 5-10 uncapped (most were 3-10k deep) but played much bigger as there were multiple straddles and standard opens would be 6-7x the BB. Just about every hand saw a multiway flop for a raise. Tons of limp/calling with garbage and little concern for position. Lots of dark betting.

The atmosphere was fun as everyone was joking around a lot. There were a lot of cool stories as these guys are pretty influential businessmen and/or celebrities in the area. I made a couple of good contacts that could potentially lead to a job which is nice, but I won't get into personal details in order to respect their privacy.

I won a little under $4,000 but don't think I played particularly well. I paid off a guy twice in spots where he had sets both times and I had TPTK and should've found a fold, so I could've just as easily won about $10,000. I have a tendency to overestimate the aggression in live games of people that are otherwise passive fish. They are simply always polarized when betting and at least one of those hands I should've known it wasn't a bluff spot. The money in that type of game comes from valuetowning people with your strong hands and small bluffs in the right spots. Running big bluffs against people overly willing to call or making hero calls against people that rarely run big bluffs is obviously not the correct strategy. I did pretty well at this with only those two exceptions, while at the same time playing a lot of pots in order to get invited back.

It's P4A (Project for Awesome) day on YouTube which I just learned about and I think it's a really great thing that's going on over there. Basically a bunch of video bloggers have made short videos promoting certain charities and they're getting all the buzz by everyone rating the videos highly. Even if you're unable to donate, I urge you to check out YouTube and vote for some P4A videos. Sort the recent videos by "Most Discussed" or search "Project for Awesome." I found several worthwhile organizations and a few that really touched home.

I'm very fortunate for the situation that I'm in and do my best not to take it for granted. I'm healthy, have a great family and great friends, live in a safe, free, and resourceful environment; and have the abilities that enable me to produce more wealth than I need. If you're reading this, chances are that you're in a similar situation. Just think about how much luck is involved with where you are today. You could just as easily have been born into an impoverished family/nation and for a variety of reasons been unable to live the life you currently have. This holiday season is a great time to take some extra money and put it towards a good cause.



While I don't have the equipment to do a video blog, my project is dedicated to the Save Darfur organization (www.savedarfur.org). The genocidal conflict has been going on in Sudan for years and is supported by the Sudanese government. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed. Millions have been displaced or affected in other ways. It's the most horrific human rights issue of our time, and relative to its magnitude, gets very little attention from the media or assistance from governments across the world. Donations to Save Darfur will help bring light to the crisis and give critical aid to those affected.

Craig

Played in a little $40 live tourney with a friend today and immediately reminded myself why live poker is so miserable. Obviously I was seated with old nitty idiots who can't help but complain about the most ridiculous things. Whether it be a "bad" beat, someone making a "bad" play, or that the dealer hasn't given them pocket aces this orbit, they're so unlucky blah blah blah.

So the tourney obviously has a horrific structure, 1500 chips starting at like 10/20 with increases every 15 minutes and about 70 entrants. I decided to take a lot of flops in the first two levels since those were basically the only opportunities I had to outplay anyone and could do so relatively cheaply (lots of limped pots!). So I call a raise in position with K6s in the first orbit and flop T62 or something and call a couple barrels from someone who I had a reliable tell on and won the hand. He shows A8o in disgust as he mucks. Then calls me out and says "do you realize you only win that pot 15% of the time?" Despite that being ridiculous, I politely say, "uh, I got lucky I guess."

A couple minutes later, still fuming over what was a relatively small loss to his stack, he says to me, "I can't believe you think it's good to chase flushdraws before the flop." Agitated now, I say, "I wasn't looking for a flush." He's like, "well you're an idiot for calling with K6s." I look him square in the eye and ask if he's finished complaining. He mutters something and shuts up for the rest of the time. I was pretty close to pulling out a brick and offering him HU, but I knew it wouldn't happen, he was probably broke, and his life must be miserable enough already to get embarrassed by some young kid. Fortunately the table broke shortly afterwords. At this point I have like 10bb because of the structure and jam A7o in MP and get four callers and the board runs out 884Q4 and despite there being 3-way action on the turn into a dry sidepot, I somehow chop it with one other person so I have like 20bb.

At this table were 2 very old people that were husband/wife. At one point she folded KK face up to him preflop after he jammed and nobody seemed concerned about collusion and I didn't care enough to do anything and just laughed. Shortly afterwards he loses with 88 to someone's AJ and it apparently was the beat of the century. As he is getting up, he goes to his wife (who is next to me) and whispers to her, "give em hell, kid" and I thought it was hilarious because they were at least 80 and the thought of this sweet old lady giving hell to anyone with her 4bbs was awesome.

At this stage everyone has like 10bb but people still like limping or minraising and there are usually still like four people involved per hand. So, I can't really be open shoving or restealing too light when I'm bound to get called by even like Q high and won't have FE over the limpers. Waited a couple orbits (and blinds went up again) and jammed 10bb in MP after one limper with A2s for value. Unfortunately he had 99 and flopped a set. The turn put a potential wheel gutshot out there for me and he says something like "I'm going to pee my pants if this hits," and I laugh and leave the casino as it bricks.

I'll get 'em next time!
Craig

So this morning around 10:00am 2 police cars came to my house and asked where Bridget was (a runaway 16 year old girl). My mom was the one that answered the door and was obviously like we don't know a Bridget, there isn't one here. Apparently some girl named Lauren had told police that Bridget was at our address. Weird.

This evening when my dad came home from work he told us about how when he was getting ready for work this morning (around 7:00am) he saw 2 young girls walking out from behind our house. 1 of them had a blanket around them and apparently they looked cold. My dad told them that Parkway South (the nearby high school) had canceled classes because of the weather. They said they didn't go to South and asked for a ride to a different high school. My dad told them he couldn't because he was just warming up the car and needed to still finish getting ready for work. He said he saw them continue up the street.

Obviously we made the connection and were like woah. So we call the local police and tell them this story. They note the information or whatever but we don't really know what their status was.

Then my brother and I are obviously on the same level and we "suit up" and go outside to investigate. I suspected they may have huddled under our deck because last night it was very windy/rainy/cold or perhaps in a ditch back by the creek. I have to admit it was a bit scary when we looked under our deck because it was pitch black out at the time. We immediately saw blankets huddled in the corner under our deck where they were protected at least partially by concrete walls on 2 sides of them with a deck above. I said "hello?" a few times and got no response. We got close enough to where we could see it looked like one of the blankets was wrapped around one of the girls. I was really worried that we would find a dead body because it looked like that shape and she could have easily died in such conditions for such a long period of time. I honestly thought there was about a 50% chance it was a dead body. Fortunately they weren't there. I took a picture of their hideout but don't have my USB cable so I'll have to upload it some other time.

We called the police again to tell them what we had found. They forwarded us to another department (these girls had traveled quite some distance) and we were happy to hear that they had been found.

Anyways, really creepy situation.

The last two times I've had to go to or from Charlotte airport, I've been stuck in the most ridiculous traffic ever. The trip from school should take a little over an hour. Last time it took me three, today it took me like 2.5 and it caused me to BARELY miss my flight.

I was sitting on the highway and tilting really bad and decided to gamble and take a detour using my navigation system. I think it was a +EV move because it didn't look like I would be moving anytime soon and based on my previous traffic disaster I knew I needed to make a move to have a chance to make my flight. So I took some random country roads and while it helped it wasn't quite enough and I arrived 30 minutes prior to my flight. I thought this would be good enough, but apparently they boot you if you're not 45 minutes prior. That must be a relatively new rule because I know I've gotten on with ~30 minutes to go before.

The worst part was that the next flight was four hours later! So now I'm sitting in a bar, which is actually kinda cool because it's a local brewery. I've planned out a few things to do during this time to make the best of it. Try a couple of the local brews, shop at a few nice clothing places they have, get dinner, possibly get another massage, check out the local winery shop. I'm not in the mood to do anything constructive so hopefully this plan works out.

So I finally finished my exams this morning. I think they went well and I was lucky that most of my grades were established enough that I didn't have to sweat any of the exams too hard. Now a month of relaxation! I've been thinking about the PCA like everyday for a while now, should be amazing like last year.

Hopefully I will grind a lot over break because I've barely put in hands over the last couple of months. I played a fair amount earlier today and yesterday with mixed results. At times I think I was playing really well. I played mostly HU against various regs and there were some hands where I really owned them and some hands where I really owned myself. I was being relentlessly aggro and getting sick value with relatively weak hands but there were multiple occasions where I basically jammed and simply didn't have enough (or any) folding equity when I needed some. I blame it on a bit of rust and me just being way too into the matches and trying to win every pot. I need to chill and take a day or two off, which works well as I need to pack and travel home to St. Louis tomorrow.

Craig

Edit: I forgot to mention that after my test I got a massage... so awesome.