Since arriving in California, there has not been much excitement. Played a couple of sessions of live poker, and the 1k limit holdem tourney.

Steve G, made a run at the $500 NL event, making it to day 2, down to the final 11 but when his QQ was called my A10, he was unable to avoid the Ace, and missed the opportunity to have a massive chip stack with 11 left. After this it was pretty clear the best thing to do was fire up some mid-limit poker while we were fully loaded on a supply of beers !! No real interesting hands come to mind, the entire event was a little foggy!?!?!

The limit tourney was uneventful, I was unable to get anything started. My final hand was a pretty sick beat. I was down to 1325 in chips with 100-200 blinds, utg raises to 400, next guy makes it 600, I cap with the 2 black aces, both call.

UTG only had 125 left, and the other player had me covered, but based on the size of the pot, it was very unlikely he was folding before I was able to get my last 525 in the pot. The flop came down 9 high with 2 diamonds and a heart, we get it all in on the flop, and everyone turns over there hands. UTG has AQ diamonds, other guy has AQ hearts. The turn is a heart, now I need to peel a black card off the deck to almost triple up to just under 4k and in decent shape for this level. The red card peels off the deck and I am out. Preflop I was 79% to win the pot vs those 2 hands. You cant ask for much better of an opportunity.

Oh well...I hate hearing bad beat story's as much as the next guy, so I if I ever tell about one, I will promise to share some hand where I was an incredable luckbox and managed to give someone else a bad beat story to tell. So here goes Matt's luckbox hand of the day.

I was in a cash game, 200-400 Holdem/ Omaha. In the omaha half, A Commerce high stakes regular opens 2 off the button, I three bet from the cuttoff, with A223, he calls. Flop comes down A22, he checkraises, I call, he turn is a 4, he bets I raise he 3 bets, I 4 bet he calls, river is an 8, he check calls. And shows me AA45. For his aces full to lose to my quads!!! Man Life is Good !!! In this hand, preflop he has a 47% chance to scoop the pot vs my 24% to scoop and we have a 29% to split the pot. Not only was I able to suckout on the flop, I managed to have him drawing dead and get maxium action from his aces full !!!

Not sure what the plan is from here, I am on the fence about the stud8 tourney tomorrow and omaha8 monday. Maybe play some golf tomorrow and see how I feel, my head is spinning from two full days of poker.

California

To accompany my newest addiction of reading numerous poker blogs on a daily basis, I have decided I am going to attempt to follow suit and write a blog of my own on a “somewhat” regular basis. Not exactly sure what that means yet. I plan on posting some interesting hands, tournament or cash games, along with whatever may be on my mind at the time from where ever I may be....

So here goes … another poker blog, with a fair amount of nonsense mixed in.

The last event I played was Bahamas WPT event at the beginning of January, and since then it has been a strict diet of Party Poker. Although these past two weeks I have been running well, online poker is a great source of income but as far as getting the competitive blood flowing there is nothing as good as a little live, high stakes poker.

Tomorrow begins my favorite poker trip of the year, the LA Poker Classic at Commerce Casino, with the possibility of extending the trip to include an ESPN event in San Diego and a WPT event in San Francisco. Commerce is the biggest, nicest, best run poker room in the country by far. The food menu for the players is endless. On the east coast when you ask a waitress for a menu, your options are hot dog, hot dog or hot dog, while in LA you will have endless choices including baked chicken dinners, steak, salmon, and just about any Chinese, Tai or Japanese dish you can think of.

In the past I have gone to LA with the intent of playing mostly cash games with a few tournaments mixed in, this year I am planning on playing close to a full schedule of tournaments. The first event on the schedule is Fridays 1k limit hold’em, followed by an onslaught of NL events, including a tag team event where you and a partner alternate playing in 30 minute intervals. Looking forward to leaving the cold and landing in sunny California….