I'm on my way to Calder casino in a minute to play the $225 Mike "The Grinder" Mizrachi tournament. We had a camp there yesterday and today is the tournament. Should be a good time. I have to wait a couple days before I make that announcement I talked about in the last blog pot, but it will definitely be happening this week. I have a couple awesome things to talk about...

Have a good weekend everyone!

First, let me say that I have been really busy doing a bunch of miscellaneous things. I went up to Orlando, back to South Florida... I've been all over. I played poker tonight for the first time in a week and got 9th in the 100r and was also deep in the $163 on FTP. With about 20 players left FTP/Stars disconnected me (along with a lot of other players apparently) and when it came back up 25 minutes later, I had 2.5bbs and lost. Hopefully they compensate me and the other players. Some players were still playing, so I'm sure they were just eating up the blinds and antes until we came back. We will see.

Last blog post I posted a hand that took place in the 100r vs ISpewChips.

PokerStars Game #50850218637: Tournament #334010506, $100+$9 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level X (300/600) - 2010/10/09 16:34:01 ET
Table '334010506 10' 9-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: danskemann (7802 in chips)
Seat 2: Cre8ive (28600 in chips)
Seat 3: babyshark33 (18322 in chips)
Seat 4: TMoney0209 (25597 in chips)
Seat 5: I Spew Chips (32594 in chips)
Seat 6: flpro157 (10181 in chips)
Seat 7: ocrowe (55207 in chips)
Seat 8: Schildy1984 (15432 in chips)
danskemann: posts the ante 50
Cre8ive: posts the ante 50
babyshark33: posts the ante 50
TMoney0209: posts the ante 50
I Spew Chips: posts the ante 50
flpro157: posts the ante 50
ocrowe: posts the ante 50
Schildy1984: posts the ante 50
TMoney0209: posts small blind 300
I Spew Chips: posts big blind 600
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Cre8ive [Qd Kd]
flpro157: folds
ocrowe: folds
Schildy1984: folds
danskemann: folds
Cre8ive: raises 600 to 1200
babyshark33: folds
TMoney0209: folds
I Spew Chips: raises 2085 to 3285
Cre8ive: calls 2085
*** FLOP *** [2h 6d Kc]
I Spew Chips: bets 3795
Cre8ive: raises 4070 to 7865
I Spew Chips: raises 21394 to 29259 and is all-in
Cre8ive: calls 17400 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (3994) returned to I Spew Chips
*** TURN *** [2h 6d Kc] [9h]
*** RIVER *** [2h 6d Kc 9h] [6c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
I Spew Chips: shows [3c 8d] (a pair of Sixes)
Cre8ive: shows [Qd Kd] (two pair, Kings and Sixes)
Cre8ive collected 57800 from pot

I posted this hand because I wanted people to actually think about the hand. I wanted to give a legitimate response in the blog, like it was an awful play. It looks ridiculous, but sometimes you are going to have to look stupid in poker. I know ISpewChips is a good player. So what do I do? I look at a hand like this and try to understand why he did what he did.

We both have around 50bb stacks. Those are big stacks at this point in the 100r. I'm sure he thinks my min-raise opening range there is pretty wide on the cutoff, so he decided to 3bet. Now he gets flatted. So my range is changing in his eyes because my flatting range is different than my 4betting range (assumption for the sake of discussion.) Now the flop comes K62 rainbow. He continuation bets, and I raise. What can I have here?

From ISpew's perspective... AK would likely be in Cre8ive's 4betting range preflop, so for this to be a value raise to get it in for 50bbs Cre8ive's range is pretty small. Consisting of 22, 66, AA, maybe some other hands??? Would Cre8 set mine preflop with 22 or 66 here? Would he raise KK on the flop? Is his raise/get it in range AA/sets/bluffs?

Since ISpew felt like my range for raising the flop for value was really small, he decided to move all in on the flop thinking that I could only call him with a small range of hands. He is right in that line of logic. In a 3bet pot, my range is consolidated and hands can be eliminated. This train of thought is the same reason why I raised the flop with KQ. I'm representing a small range of hands that I want to get value with. Would I really raise the flop with 99/TT (assuming I didn't 4bet those hands) and want to get all the chips in the middle? On the flip side, should I be raising a board of that texture with a hand like 99/TT to get someone to shove worse? This is the evolution of poker.

Although the hand looks really ugly, it is poker at it's finest. Two minds battling it out. Who can solve the puzzle first? There isn't always a right and wrong answer in poker. Sometimes you will look stupid, but if you have a reason as to why you looked stupid, it makes it acceptable lol. I have looked stupid plenty of times in my poker career, but I had logic behind my stupidity. In poker... stupidity with no logic is still stupidity; otherwise it is enlightenment.

I could talk more about the hand, but I will leave it at that. I wanted to show everyone that although something might look horrible, it really isn't. Don't look at it for what it is, look deeper, learn something.

This Friday I will be doing a DeepStacks Live camp in Miami with November Niner Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi and Matt Graham. It's at the Calder casino at 1pm on October 22nd. If anyone is interested, they can contact me through my e-mail or sign up through DeepStacks.com by clicking DeepStacks Live in the top left corner. I'll have another blog post up on Thursday night with an announcement I've been waiting to make. Goodnight.

I got back to Florida on Wednesday. In the last blog I talked about how I was going to Niagara Falls, NY for a Deepstacks camp. Let me say that this camp was overall one of the best I have been involved in. I had a lot of fun. I arrived at the Seneca Casino on Friday and played a cash game at night with Mike Matusow. After that, all of the DeepStacks crew went out to a great dinner with the staff that runs the poker room. Later that night I went to Canada to visit my friends I stayed with during the WSOP over the summer (Tim0thee, Smerks, Stainley 88.) It was nice having the Canadian border literally two minutes away from the hotel/casino. We had a couple drinks at Fallsview casino and caught up for a couple hours. I couldn't stay out too late because I had to be up early for the camp in the morning.

The camp was a huge success. All of the students were great and it went by really fast. After the camp all of the DeepStacks pros played in their $550 tournament. It got 140 runners. I played very patiently but could never get momentum to build a nice stack. I managed to survive and do my best, losing a flip 55 vs AQ in around 30th place. I went back up to my room and met up with Mike. He convinced me to go out with him and some of other friends. We went to Fallsview again to one of their clubs. It was a pretty quiet night again because we had to wake up in the early morning to go to the Bills vs Jets game in Buffalo.

We were supposed to get to the Stadium around 11-12 so we could tailgate but there was a lot of traffic and a couple of us were hungover lol. I was amazed at the stadium and the crowd. The whole atmosphere was just unbelievable to me. The NFL games in Florida aren't like that. It was raining and cold and the place was packed. It felt like I was in a Madden NFL game. The Bills fans are diehard fans! It was neat that they also played their in state rivals, the Jets. There was just something about being among tens of thousands of people in the cold and rain that made the experience that much better. The Jets ended blowing the Bills out, unfortunately. The energy in the stadium was great and I wish it would have been a close game.

Wow, I'm playing online right now and this hand just happened... in the 100r.

PokerStars Game #50850218637: Tournament #334010506, $100+$9 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level X (300/600) - 2010/10/09 16:34:01 ET
Table '334010506 10' 9-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: danskemann (7802 in chips)
Seat 2: Cre8ive (28600 in chips)
Seat 3: babyshark33 (18322 in chips)
Seat 4: TMoney0209 (25597 in chips)
Seat 5: I Spew Chips (32594 in chips)
Seat 6: flpro157 (10181 in chips)
Seat 7: ocrowe (55207 in chips)
Seat 8: Schildy1984 (15432 in chips)
danskemann: posts the ante 50
Cre8ive: posts the ante 50
babyshark33: posts the ante 50
TMoney0209: posts the ante 50
I Spew Chips: posts the ante 50
flpro157: posts the ante 50
ocrowe: posts the ante 50
Schildy1984: posts the ante 50
TMoney0209: posts small blind 300
I Spew Chips: posts big blind 600
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Cre8ive [Qd Kd]
flpro157: folds
ocrowe: folds
Schildy1984: folds
danskemann: folds
Cre8ive: raises 600 to 1200
babyshark33: folds
TMoney0209: folds
I Spew Chips: raises 2085 to 3285
Cre8ive: calls 2085
*** FLOP *** [2h 6d Kc]
I Spew Chips: bets 3795
Cre8ive: raises 4070 to 7865
I Spew Chips: raises 21394 to 29259 and is all-in
Cre8ive: calls 17400 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (3994) returned to I Spew Chips
*** TURN *** [2h 6d Kc] [9h]
*** RIVER *** [2h 6d Kc 9h] [6c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
I Spew Chips: shows [3c 8d] (a pair of Sixes)
Cre8ive: shows [Qd Kd] (two pair, Kings and Sixes)
Cre8ive collected 57800 from pot

Pretty sick lol... I guess he was living up to his name. Just thought I would throw some poker in here since that hand just happened.

After the Bills game we went to the Big Tree Inn in Orchard Park, NY. It's right near the Bills stadium. Since we were with THE MOUTH we got hooked up of course and got to watch football and eat/drink upstairs above the bar. It's incredible how popular Mike is. Everyone loves him. Whether it be for his entertainment value or his poker skill, he has a lot of fans. So many people came up to him throughout the weekend. He handles his popularity really well.

The day after that, we were supposed to leave Buffalo but my flight was canceled. Me and Chris (DeepStacks CEO/Owner) were supposed to fly to Milwaukee for a meeting. While I was loading my luggage in the trunk, I gave myself a black eye lol. The rental car we used had a really low hanging trunk. I bent my head down as I lifted my luggage up and smacked myself right in the eye. It's still healing. So we left the airport once we found our flight was canceled and realized we had to stay in Buffalo another day! Great! Haha. There isn't much to do there as far as we could tell and the weather wasn't that good. We watched the Dolphins play the Pats in a local bar which was just about empty. The next day we made it to Milwaukee.

I must say Milwaukee is a beautiful city. I was really impressed. It was a big city, clean, and not that busy. I only got to explore a little bit but I enjoyed the colder weather and walking around. I'll talk more about the meeting and what I did in Milwaukee in couple days. Everything went well and it was a successful trip. We were there for only one day and now I'm back in Florida.

I did an interview over the phone a couple weeks ago for a website called PokerGob. If you want to listen to it check it out here.. PokerGob Interview. It's an up and coming poker site. I haven't explored the site too much but check it out and let me know what you guys think.

As far as the WSOP coverage goes, I haven't seen all the episodes but I heard I made a couple more appearances. I don't actually think I was involved in hands like the Day 1B coverage. I was probably just at the table or near the action. I didn't make any featured tables on my way to 113th place, so that hurts my chances to have more coverage. No big deal to me though, I don't mind, but a couple people hit me up saying they FINALLY saw me on TV lol. If I see the clips and it's anything exciting I will post the videos on the blog.

Hmmm.. what else did I have to say? I also got to see a little of the Niagara falls and the Horseshoe falls. It was really neat. I'm still playing poker online. I'm currently deep in a PLO tournament (4/16), the 100r (14/46), and a couple others. If I remember anything else I'll let you guys know. Hopefully I can win these tournaments. This blog is probably already long enough. Thanks for reading.



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