Happy new year year everyone! So I didn't hit the PCA which was probably a mistake but I had some stuff going on around home but I did get to play in the Niagra Fallsview Casino Classic on Tuesday the 12th but unfortunately things didn't go my way due to an absolutely hilarious hand. The main event was a 5k buyin and we started with 20k stacks, 50/100 blinds. W/e fine enough structure, I consider tournaments more so fun and a change of pace from playing cash games everyday. Second level blinds at 1/200 is where the most hilarious hand of my now lengthy career takes place. I open with KsKc utg to 525, standard raise for myself so far. Table has been very in line, straight forward. Table is full of local southern Ontario pros including Gavin Smith and Toronto Toro. Anyways, utg+1 3 bets to 1500 and Gavin Smith cold calls in the hijack. I decide that were going to 4 town, I don't think there's any other option so I make it 4600. UTG+1 immediately calls, which I don't know exactly what that means but I assumed he was very very strong and honestly didn't love my hand the moment I was 3 bet after opening UTG. I guess that statement shows how relative position is such a cool weapon. Gavin Smith folds and we go to the flop. Flop is good but not great for my hand I suppose, Qs10s3s, I have the k of spades but I'm going to go with the hand as this point. I bet 5200 on the flop, villain raises to 15k which does not thrill me at all and I expect to be beat or flipping against a hand like Askx. Anyways, this is where hilarity ensues. Villain tanks and starts to swear. Saying things like "OMG I can't believe this is how I throw my tournament away". Keep in mind he made it 15k and he only has about 3k to call my allin bet. After a few minutes he decides he is pot stuck and calls. He shows pocket fives which is absolutely bat shit insane. I mean when he tanked I guess I assumed he was messing around but I assumed he had some king of equity. I mean who bluffs in this spot especially given my line, raise UTG, 4 bet, bet this type of board. I am never bluffing btw!!! He eventually calls and he shows pocket fives. Yes 55. I am shocked and amused obviously. I mean I had played pretty damn nitty due to not having playable hands so I assumed when we were getting the money in that I wasn't even in good shape but wow, 55, amazing! Anyways, the turn is the 5 of clubs, LOL ya. I blank the river even when I have a ton of outs. Bam thats the end of my day. Crazy hand right. Ya that shit still happens and I had to call a couple buddies to replay the hand and they both couldn't believe it. I had a room booked for the night, expecting to go deep. Good thing my gf could get a day off and come up otherwise it would've been a boring and lonely night. Take care kids and GL!

I came home last night from the gym feeling great and decided to put in a session, ended up being a bad idea. I 8 tabled hu against DerekJC and Number1mom, both very good players and ended up losing 10 buyins, so 20K. Bad game selection? Maybe but I know Derek's game very well and think I have an edge when playing well although last night I did not play very well. DerekJC is maybe the toughest 10/20 reg online, maybe not the best from a winrate standpoint but he is nasty to play against at times. I quit after an hour, had a couple stiff drinks and watched 3 episodes of Mad Men. Sounds like degenerate behaviour and I guess it is somewhat. lol. Anyways, I needed to get beat down last night. Why? Things had been going a little too well for me poker-wise in the last 6 weeks and sometimes it takes a bad session to get my head back on track, refocus etc. It's funny, and I've heard this from other poker players, but I will go out today and buy some stuff, maybe a stupid expensive bottle of scotch or some clothes to ease the pain of the loss. I get over losses very quickly but it's more so just having been outplayed badly. But you would think that I would feel like spending money after a big win, never actually. Only after big losses. My losses are never too big but 20k is big enough. Anyways, somewhat of a ramble but necessary. lol.

I went out last week for dinner with ADZ and Thaaj, two high stakes players from Toronto. Both good guys. ADZ is pretty well known and may take a big of negative heat but he is a good guy and a lot of fun to hang around with. The kid is a flat out balla though and I don't think he tries to be, that's just his nature. For anyone around Toronto, the restaurant we went to is called Jacob's steakhouse and it is amazing. Better than anywhere I've been in Vegas, and I've been almost everywhere. I've been there a couple times in the past few weeks and the food is unbelievable.

Christmas party tonight which should be good. My plan is to play a bunch more on Stars for the next week until I clear my 600K milestone bonus and then call it a year, relax, hang out with friends/family and probably party a bunch. It's been a weird year poker wise, not as good as I expected but no compaints I guess. 2010 could be a lot different poker wise for me I think, might cut down my playing time on Stars, play a lot more PLO, not sure though.

So it's been a while since I wrote a blog entry but this past week some hilarious nonsense happened that inspired me to bang out an entry. So I have a car, an Infiniti G37, I love it. Great car although I cant drive it in the winter here in Southern Ontario, Canada. It's just too powerful, too light and it's rear wheel drive so it would just be dangerous on slick and snowy roads. Anyways so I needed to get a car for the winter, somewhat of a hassle but w/e. So last week I found a lease take over opportunity for 5 months, perfect to last me the winter. Quick and easy, 5 months and I'm done with the car at $900 a month. The car is a 2006 Lexus IS 350, solid car. Great fit for what I need it for. Seems simple. Anyways, so I arrange things with the dealership and the current lease holder and we are good to go, that is until they realize that I play poker for a living. This is where things get hilarious. They need to do a credit check, standard protocol which should not be a problem. So I get a respone after they do that credit check, which I am fairly certain they didn't even do because my credit rating is immaculate. The conversation between me and the fat fuckwit sales person goes like this,

"Well we can't go ahead and give you the lease, you are a poker player and we can't trust you to make these huge $900/month payments remaining on the car. You could easily lose your shirt tomorrow, chuckle chuckle, laugh, laugh"
My respone: "Well sir I can assure you that the finances aren't a problem, I'm sure if I can show you a statement of my assets and net worth, you will realize this is an extremely safe deal for your side. I have an investment portfolio and assets totaling almost 1M, and I was recently pre-approved for a mortage. I can't see this being a problem."

"Well you see it's more of a security issue, what is stopping you from driving off with the car at the end of the 5 months"

My response: WOA, wtf. You are essentially calling me a criminal. What is stopping anyone who is leasing a car from your dealership to drive off with the car after the lease ends"

Respone from the fat fucking waste of life salesman: " Well it's just a fact of life. You are a gambler. What is stopping you from throwing the car keys in the middle of the table in a poker game?

"Woa, wtf. Are you serious. This is absolutely hilarious. I don't have a gambling problem, I play poker for a living.

Anyways, I kept things civil and ended up just buying the car. Decent price and it's fairly easy and hassle free. I didn't feel great about giving these guys my business but the car was a great fit and I just didn't want to have to keep looking. I will most likely sell it in the spring for what I just paid for it so it will probably work out better this way anyways. But the way I was treated was just ridiculous. I'm certainly not a sensitive person, the stuff that was said doesn't really bother me but I just find it so ridiculous that I cannot obtain 5 months of a car lease while I can be approved for a 300K mortgage. When I scoop the car this weekend I likely won't be able to hold back and will probably have some words to say to some people at the dealership, but that will be fun. Honestly, it's a little hard to hold back some comments when a 350 LB car salesman who is making 60K a year at MOST is chirping you.

BTW all of the comments are bang on word for word, I'm not trying to throw in an extra drama.

I'm sure people have similar stories of being treated differently due to being a poker player, figured I'd share this one.

Cheers

I figure since it`s been a couple months since my last post, I should get things going again and try to blog once a week or so. I`m off to Barcelona for the EPT event tomorrow which I`m pretty excited about. I love live events, specifically EPTs and I`ve heard great things about Barcelona in terms of culture, nightlife etc. I will be playing the main event and maybe a couple of the side events and hopefully some cash games which I`ve heard will be running. If the cash games are half as good as they were in Italy and Monte Carlo during those epts it could be a great trip.

I spent the last half of the summer back in Toronto, grinding online and doing random fun things. I`ve played a bunch of golf, caught a bunch of Jays games and hit a couple great concerts, Coldplay and Pearl Jam which was just a week ago. Pearl Jam is by far my favourite band, since I was about 11 years old. The Pearl Jam stickman is also my pokerstars avatar which people are probably unaware of where that random picture comes from.

Vegas finished up pretty well for me actually. I stuck around an extra week to play the 5k Venitan event which was the finale of their summer tournament series. I ran pretty well and played quite well and final tabled the event, finishing 5th for 75K which made it a good trip to Vegas. Hopefully I can run good this week and take things deep and if not I`ll have fun being a tourist.

Been a while since I've blogged. I really want to get an entry or two in every week but I'm kinda lazy when it comes to some things. After getting back from Monte Carlo I barely played online for a couple weeks, which is rare for me. Weather was really nice in Toronto and I was just doing random shit, Blue Jays games, lot of 5PM patios with the after work crowd, tennis and golf etc. The last couple weeks I've back into playing and things have been going decently well. UB/AP introduced ante games which I think attract fish and create a bunch more action in general. The games are really good on there at times and even
though there is usually one 10/20 game and 3 or 5/10 games it's still great because I think my winrate is about 4 times as high when compared to Stars.

Last year I lived in Vegas for about 5 weeks or so in a house with a bunch of poker players from Vancouver and had a great time but I don't really wanna do things as big this year WSOP wise. I'm going to head to Vegas for a week, June 4th-11th and then head back for the 5k 6max and the Main Event late june. Staying at Encore so should be a solid week. I love Vegas but just not for a month at a time, even though living in a house off of the strip is a great way to do the WSOP. I'd much rather travel to EPTs and other random events in cool places than spend the whole summer in Vegas. Also there aren't that many events that appeal to me anyways. I really don't want to spend days grinding $1500 live events and i only play NL and PLO, so there are only 12 events or so that appeal to me. Plan is to play 2 or 3 events, enjoy some nice dinners and hit a club or two.

Ran pretty hot at the end of today in a few ways I suppose. After taking a pretty tough beat and being down to 140K or so, my table broke and I got moved. Zigmund on my left which could be tough and annoying at times but I picked up some hands and got him to monkey off some chips although he definitely plays well just bad timing. First two hands at the table I pick up AK, Ziggy 3bets I shove my 130K or so. Next hand AA win another nice pot. Sik table change. Went from 140K to 360K in the last hour.

Somewhat interesting hand, Dennis Phillips LOL, limps with 40K or so at 2k4k and I make it 15K with AJs intending to call a shove from Dennis. Ziggy makes it 40K from the BB, second time he has 3 bet me which makes me think that he has a hand here although it`s Zigmund and I felt that he would expect me to give his second 3bet a fair bit of respect. I shove 200K or so and Ziggy covered so it was a pretty big move. I felt that I had the best hand but certainly didn`t want a call. Zigmund made me sweat and he folded what he claimed to be AQ, which I believe. Discussed the hand a bit with Zigmund after the day, somewhat fun. Nice guy as well. Be interested to hear what good tourney players think of that situation and the shove. I felt it was decent. Picked up some decent hands to bust a couple medium stacks and ended the day in great shape after an otherwise very uneventful grindy type day which certainly tests the patience. Things can change so quick in these events despite the good structure. See how day 3 goes.

Cheers

Here in San Remo for the week playing the EPT event then heading to Monte Carlo for the EPT Final. Super nice area of the world is the Cote D'Azure and I'm loving is so far. Today was not my day though, busted just before dinner, nothing went well etc but I did get to play the craziest and possibly best hand of my life.

Ok, blinds are 75/150 in level 3 and I have 15k in chips after just doubling up a couple hands earlier. UTG opens to 400, UTG+1(online tournament reg and strong player) flats, I flat 1010, fish calls behind me on button and Annette calls in the BB. Flop comes, Qc8C8s and the PFR checks, UTG+1 checks, I check hoping to peel a nice safe turn and look to bet and take it down with a bet if checked to again, fish checks and so does Annette. Turn is the 10 of spades, I now have a BOAT and the board is two tone, tons of draws. Things now get crazy. I have Tens Full and have dreams of Vegas and the ****in Mirage. Annette leads 1500 into the pot, UTG/PFR calls, UTG calls as well. Sweet Jesus things are looking great to win a huge pot. I make it 5150 after a couple minutes of tomfoolery and posturing, that's what like to do live, always take my time even if I have total air sometimes. Fish behind me goes into the tank for 5 minutes, really in a tough spot with what I assumed was an eight even though I'd expect everyone even fish to bet trips when checked to on that board. He eventually shoves 10k or so, Annette folds her hand, PFR folds, but then the very solid and good thinking online tournament pro shoves 18k. Snap shoves BTW. What I thought was the nuts, now looks like I am somehow beat. There is just no way solid tournament pro shoves a worse hand. Possibly 108? No because he isn't flatting UTG's open with 108s. So he either has Queens full, or quad eights. I tank for 5 minutes. A crowd gathers to take in the hand. I show my hand to the onlookers behind. A bunch of Italian dudes start snickering and whispering about how I can't fold among themselves. I come to the conclusion that solid tourney pro has me beat via the quads or the Queens full and I fold my hand face up. The crowd of 50 or so that has gathered is in shock. I feel good about my fold but even better when the solid tourney pro shows 88 for quads and the fish shows up with j9o for a turned straight. It isn't that crazy of a fold when I think about it and I felt good about the fold at the time. It is just tough to fold a hand of that absolute strength, with less than 100bbs and getting an insane price on the turn call. Oh and it's a tournament. Again, not that crazy of a fold given the action and the players involved but I am very pleased that I was able to realize that I was beat and let my hand go. I wasn't tilted by my fold or rattled in the slighest, more so pleased with myself but I couldn't recover. I lost a bunch of tough pots when strong hands couldn't hold up and that was it. W/e.

Met Erik Frieberg of 2007? WSOP Main Event fame at dinner and I now have an in to play in some private high stakes games this week, although I'm not exactly super flush with Euros over here.

If any Leggo Members are here in San Remo or are going to be in MC, give me a shout.

Cheers.

Trying to think of what I've been up to lately. March I played a fair bit of poker with pretty lousy results. I think I logged about 70k hands of NL and came close to breaking even or maybe up about 10k. Somewhat embarassing but I will credit running bad to be honest and a little bad play as well. In fact I made more money at PLO than NLH even though I probably played 5k hands of PLO as I continue to try and learn the game. Playing well lately and I think April should be a good month.

I've got my trip planned out to EPT San Remo and EPT Monte Carlo, should be good. Heading by myself but I think there should be tons of MSNL and HSNL regs to meet up with over there. Never been to that part of Europe so I'm excited. Also super convenient that San Remo and MC are about an hour apart. Cash games should be unreal as well.

Weather in Toronto is getting nicer which allowed me to get my summer car back on the road and out of storage a couple days ago. It's a 08 Infiniti G37S that I've had for about a year. I'll post some pics of it. It's not a Lambo or a Mas but I love it and would almost rather have it than many more expensive whips. Nice to get back in a nice ride and out of my winter car which is an older Toyota Corolla. My buddies call the Corolla the "diaper" because it carries a pungent odour from always having my hockey equipment in it from years past and since I always leave a ton of garbage lying inside.

Tomorrow at 2pm Est BllyBearKu and I are finally going to play out MSNL HU tournament second round match. Tune in, should be a good match.

I was informed tonight that my first video is being released tomorrow. It's a 5/10 6 max vid on party poker which I think is pretty solid. A bunch of interesting spots against a lot of different types of players. I have played as much 5/10 and higher 6max in the past 2 years as anyone and have a great feel for 6max in general. I think the video is pretty solid and I hope the members can take a few things from it. Everytime I do a blog entry I think, "this is easy and fun", but then don't do one for a couple weeks. I will try and do a couple each week.

Great Hendrick's Gin and tonic I'm sipping as I write this. Cheers.

Well my name has been changed on Leggo from Hovadogg84 to Dogg11. The hova name was my long time UB name and also my 2p2 name, great name imo. Since I play mostly nowadays on stars and never on UB I guess I should go by my stars name, Dogg11. The Hovadogg name came from the guys who got me into online poker probably about 5 years ago. Bunch of guys who I'm still good buddis with introduced me to online poker and we would play after school with Jay-Z always blaring on the stereo. We called our poker crew the Hovaposse, there was Hovahouse, Hovabluff, HovaMoney, HovaHookey and myself the Hovadogg cuz my nickname was dog. Most of the guys still play and are all good players, pretty sure I've just ran the best.

Pokerwise things have been going alright eventhough I'm swinging all over the place in the Stars 10/20 game due to running bad and getting coolered. I've had multiple 20 buy-in downswings followed by huge upswings and then I've repeated the downswing. Pretty tough game and all the regs are very good so a lot of days it depends on who coolers who, etc. I've been playing on Absolute a bit and been dusting some cats there so things are financially on pace for a good month. I've also been playing a bunch of PLO and have been doing pretty well at 5/10 and 10/20. I've always played PLO here and there and I think I'm pretty decent. Hopefully I can make a PLO vid in a couple months when my game and thought process is a bit more refined. But the PLO games can be amazing, like actually huge fish at 10/20, it's sik. For instance the other night, I'm relaxing, getting into a fine bottle of red and playing a couple tables of PLO. This is how I've learned PLO, just relaxing kinda messing around eventhough I'm still trying hard and focusing a fair bit. In this game though, there was a total whale with a 44k stack at 10/20. In the 2 hours I played in the game he lost it all. WTF just hilarious. I think I got about 10-12K of it. Pretty good finish to a work day of grinding 6max NL.

I'd like to add that I also won my first round match of the MSNL HU tournament. I played TakeitBack who played well but I was fortunate enough to cooler him once with AA vs his KK in a 4 bet pot and win another match as well. I'll say thanks to AEJones who gave me a somewhat of a compliment in his latest blog post by saying that I was annoying to play against, much appreciated AE. I think I've played against the Man/Myth since my Party Poker 1/2 NL days like 4 years ago. I can remember me asking Aaron if it was the same AEJones who posted on 2p2, obv it was by whatever. Aaron spazzed out in the chat and told me to STFU so I didn't hurt his image with the fishies I think. Anyways, somewhat entertaining story I suppose.

Cheers

Figured I'd write up an entry sice It's been a while. I noticed Matt/Probability posted in his blog today about me joining the Leggo coaching team so I'll talk about that briefly. I'm pretty excited to join Leggo and start making some vidoes, do some coaching and get involved more in the forums and the general Leggo community. I've wanted to get involved with an intstructional web site for a while now and I'm real happy that it's going to be Leggo. The thing about playing poker for a living which I have done for about 3 years now and plan to do for 2 or three more, is that poker isn't all that rewarding a lot of the time. I love the money I can make, setting my own hours and the lifestyle but there are times when I don't feel great about what I am doing, referring to taking money from bad poker players and degenerate gamblers. However I think coaching and making the instructional videos is will be very rewarding and also a lot of fun.

The week I spent in Copenhagen for the EPT was fun. Tournament didn't go great. I busted near the end of the first day in a pretty standard spot when I had 25bbs or so. Copenhagen was a nice city, weather was **** although warmer than Canada. Hung out a bunch with Clockwyze, first name is Andrew, guy who demolishes the cap games on FT. Nice guy from around Toronto. Played some live cash as well, 100/200 Danish kroner so roughly 25/50. Booked a nice win in a hilariously soft game and knocked back some drinks with some friendly local pros. Got to meet Altrum Altus as well, guy who I've battled with a ton online and who is fun to play against cuz he is always talking smack in capital letters, lol. I had plans to make the trip to Dortmund for the event there but a bunch of hassles have caused me to cancel those plans. Will head to San Remo and Monte Carlo in April for the last two EPTs tho.

I scooped a fantastic expresso maker a couple weeks ago and it is revolutionary. You don't pack the expresso yourself, you simply toss in these pre packed expresso capsules from Nexpresso and hit a button. So simple and easy it's rediculous. You order the capsules online and they are shipped to your door in a couple days, essentially an entire expresso system. And it's endorsed by George Clooney himself, a huge badass for sure. Le Cube it's called.