Go Time

Gianna and I went down to the hotel lounge around 1:00pm to gather wits and alleviate the nerves that have been building since she won the trip in December. It was a crazy scene... imagine...

Around us a few dozen european players. Another couple dozen Americans all sporting Pokerstars t-shirts and walking around with a jet-lagged look. Marcel Luske and Devilfish Ulliot are there next to the casino entrance chatting to media in front of a rolling camera. We keep chilling there in the lounge and meet a few new people. Brad Augsburger (sorry Brad ;) from Illinois, who plays as augie99 on stars, chilled out a bit with us. We also saw Noah, who is my pick for the coolest poker player. He's always in a good mood... they call him "mini-Marcel" because he's pretty much always seen with Luske, who as the story goes has helped him a lot with his game. Noah is already getting qutie a name for himself, and he can play... plus he's pumped up from last year after buying a 4% stake in David Williams... $400 into $140k. Must be nice. ;) I'll be talking more about Noah in the next week and a half because we're going to be chilling with him some down in Amsterdam when this crazy tourney is over.

Upstairs, the tournament directors are getting the tournament ready. We saw Warren Karp yesterday... he's here running the show. Warren was the tournament director for that Grand Slam event I wrote about... I remember meeting him there. I have to say, Warren is hands-down my favorite tournament official. He's very soft-spoken... talks about his family a lot (married with one daughter). He's also a great player. And I don't think I've ever met anyone who could listen as sympathetically as he does to a bad beat story. After running so many of these main events, he's well practiced at that art.

Also upstairs is a meet-n-greet lunch that Pokerstars is throwing. We decide to go up there. Greg Raymer is chilling out with a coke. Also up there is Isabelle Mercier. She's been getting a lot of press lately... she's not hurting in the looks department, evidently has some decent game, and it appears that Pokerstars is set to make her into the next Clonie Gowan. The analogy to Clonie, actually, is pretty good since it was Isabelle's win in the second WPT Ladies Night which stands as her major tourney accomplishment. I think she's sponsored by stars and will probably be playing a lot of the events, so we'll see what she can do.

So Gianna and I chill out there for awhile... meet the Pokerstars rep (I think his name is Conrad, but not 100% sure on that one... cool guy though). Get signed up and before we know it the tourney is about to start. We've got 10 minutes left, so we go upstairs to the hotel room and have a little prayer.

Now I've never prayed before a poker tournament. It was all Gianna's idea. I pretty much thing God has already made up his mind about who's going to win and lose well before the cards are dealt. So I was thinking it's probably a little late to ask him to turn the tide a little bit for the girl.

But... it seems to have helped a little I think. After the first break, Gianna ended with around $12,500 in chips. I was on the rail for most of the first hour and a half literally sweating her. It's so much more nerve-racking watching her play than playing myself. I keep wanting to give her pointers, and tell her about other players at the table... I want to shout "RAISE HIM" when I see a little weakness, "RUN BABY!" when she's involved and I think the guy is strong. But instead, I just sit there watching. I've got to let her play her own game.

About twenty minutes before the break, I see John Gale walking around the rail with a wounded look. He had the honor of being the first player knocked out, doubling up Martin de Knijff (the WPT Championship winner last year). I talked with John a bit, and he gave me the skinny on how he got knocked out.

Here's the hand : Blinds are 25-50. Everyone still has about 10,000 in chips. He had pocket QQs. Raised to 200. Martin reraised to 500. A player in the middle of them quickly flat called. So, he says, he figures the quick-caller probably has AK or AQ... maybe AJ. Chances are Martin doesn't have the aces, and if he doesn't have exactly that one hand he's not going to call for the rest of his chips. So John makes the move. Martin had the aces. Asking him about it, John said he'd make the same move with 72o. He felt that he could win the pot right there, and he went for it. Sounds like he's kind of a believer in "The Perfect Path". You gotta respect that kind of attitude.

I took lots of pictures after getting a media pass. Conrad, the Pokerstars guy, was ultra-friendly. I wish he was the one making the decisions about whether I can play on that damn site or not, instead of whoever the guy is who IS making that call. Maybe if Gianna ends up winning this tournament she'll have a little pull over there and can sweet-talk them into letting me back in.

So now I'm back upstairs updating the blog. There's a Pokerstars rep out here in Copenhagen doing a great job covering the event in the official blog. You can check that out for some more details about the event. Worth seeing... some of the bigger players who are in : Marcel, Devilfish, Gus Hansen, Vaswani and Boatman from the Hendon Mob (Barney is at my girl's table), Raymer. Hopefully you'll see Gianna's name on the list of heavies pretty soon.

Next door I hear a resounding "YES!" while typing here. I stop for a second to check it out, since I'm pretty sure it's a poker player who must have just hit a good pot. Sure enough, it is... a guy named Peter who plays under the screenname The Flute or something like that. He's got three 5-10 NL games going. I chill out for a minute and then back to work.

The pics are pretty big and I'm going to have to edit them down. But I've been away from the tourney for too long, so it's going to have to wait for a few minutes. Gotta go check how she's doing... ;)

Checking Out the Casino

I'm going downstairs after my Paradise final table and am going to check out the casino. It's not open until 2:00pm, but I figure I'll poke around and see what I need to do to get a media pass. Brought the Intervault biz cards. If all goes well I might be able to take some pretty decent pics of some of the players and give a good report.

Gianna's taking a little nap, trying to get ready for the long day ahead. It's her first major tournament, and it looks like a few big names are coming out after all. Greg Raymer, Marcel Luske, Justin Bonomo (ZeeJustin on stars), John Gale (the guy who took down the WPT @ Atlantis), and maybe the best of them all... Noah Boeken.

And then there's Gianna... the sexiest poker player in the tournament. We woke up today and she was pretty on edge. Got really upset when the hair dryer in the room wouldn't work and she thought she'd have to go win the tournament and be on tv with frizzy hair. I actually didn't think it looked bad at all, but then she kindly reminded me that I didn't know a thing about hair and have no fashion sense at all. Since it's pretty unusual for me to do anything to my own hair except maybe run my fingers through it when I roll out of bed, I had to concede the point.

I've been hiding it because I don't want her to go into that tourney stressed out, but I'm really nervous for Gianna. The girl can play, no doubt. But it doesn't matter how good you are... the chances of cashing in an event are never that great. Even Daniel N doesn't cash in the majority of the tourneys he plays... though he definitely seems to win more than his fair share.

Here we are in the middle of freezing cold Copenhagen... just travelled halfway across the world for this thing. If Gianna gets knocked out before making the money, I know she's going to take it pretty hard. Especially if she feels like she was muscled out. I'm really praying that she'll be so on top of her game and beat down all the guys who try to make plays at her because they don't think a tiny sex-vixen can play cards.

I remember how intimidated I was the first time I sat down at a major. It was the first Grand Slam of Poker at the Hustler tournament. It was a crazy series, because the winner could choose between super bowl tickets or actually having a spread in the magazine. The fine print read that the magazine could choose not to put you in a spread if you were fat and butt ugly. Didn't matter anyway, since the winner chose the super bowl over being naked in a magazine. I'm not sure what I would have chosen if I had won, but I will say that I'm not really a big football fan.

I had Mike Caro, Yosh and Adam Schoenfeld at my table... and Men Nguyen with his lucky molehair directly on my right. Men ended up busting me with quad sixes against my ATo when the flop came 66T. I was crushed... hung my head down low and returned to San Jose with about 10% of the confidence I had when I went down to LA.

So if you're reading this... say a silent prayer for my girl G. She deserves to win every tournament she plays.

True Grinder

Getting ready to watch Gianna in the Copenhagen tournament. We woke up pretty early. Everything in Europe seems to open up pretty late in the morning. Went down to the lobby around 7:30am and it was completely dead. The casino doesn't even open until 2pm.

So I went back up to the room and played some $1/$2 5-card draw on Paradise and signed up for the $50. Just now made the money, and some guy named trugrinder decides to let me know that I'm not the real Dutch Boyd. "You saw him on tv and that's why you made your name the same as his," he said. He said he knew the REAL Dutch...

I tried to figure out a way to make some sort of bet or something... instead I think I'm going to just try and bust him. ;)

===== UPDATE ====

Ended up coming in 8th in the tournament... trugrinder was still playing when I left, and had come back to about 8k in chips after almost being small-blinded out. I got a little over-aggressive with my preflop all-ins. Did one in the SB against the chip leader and then the next hand tried it again on the button with KJo. Had about 3/4th of his stack at that point and was in 3rd chip position. Figured he'd need a pretty nice hand to call, and he woke up with AJo. No help for my naked king.

The thing I love about busting out on Paradise is first, you go out in a little poof of smoke. Second, when you get knocked out they popup a little congratulations note. "Congratulations! You just came in 8th. We know you had your eye on the big prize, and are a little disappointed right now. But don't be! You're always a winner to Team Paradise, even though you haven't won a tourney outright for over a month. Now you can play three more tournaments with the money you won. And just think... you could have come in 9th if that 89s hadn't sucked out against the AKo."

Still... a C-note don't come for free.

Chinese Poker vs. Copenhagen

Instead of getting ready for the Copenhagen/Amsterdam trip that I'm leaving for on Wednesday, I've been spending a lot of time these past two days playing Chinese Poker. Gianna got me turned on to it. I can't help myself, now... it's my new obsession. I've been playing it for play money on PokerRoom.com. The game is just too cool for school.

Actually, I think it's a game worth learning... every time I hit one of the big tournaments, I see a few big names playing it for huge stacks of cash somewhere in the corner. Seems to be pretty simple to pick up, but I'm sure there is some depth to it. If anyone knows of a good strategy site, comments would be appreciated.

Realized how much I've been slacking on my email. Just replied to about four days worth. I'm going to be gone from Wednesday until the 10th of February. Probably will schedule some more auctions while I'm away, as I'm trying to sell around 50% of myself and so far the 25% auction hasn't gotten any bites. Going to be closing around the same time I'm on a plane to Amsterdam. I'd have thought that offering the logo wear for an ESPN televised event might have induced some action, but no bids yet. Who knows, though... those eBay auctions only start to get crazy the day it closes. I'm crossing my fingers. I've been in touch with most of the winners of the ten or so 1% auctions that have closed. If you haven't heard from me, just try to be patient because I'm juggling a lot in the next couple of days. We'll get everything sorted out well before the WSOP Circuit event.

Also crossing my fingers for Gianna while she plays the EPT event in Copenhagen. It's going to be crazy out there. She'll be the one with punkrock LA style, sexy-as-all-hell, check-raising the living daylights out of all those european players. Going to be a good time regardless of how she places, but man... could you imagine if the girl wins it? And it's a possibility, because the woman's got game. I'll try to post some pictures of her in the tourney.

After the tournament is over, we're going to be spending about a week in Amsterdam. I've never been to Europe before, so I'm really looking forward to the trip. Marcel Luske and Noah "Exclusive" Boken are both out there in Amsterdam, and Noah promised to show us some cool things while we're out there.

If you don't hear from me for about two weeks, don't fret. I'm off adventuring...

Auctions

So far I've sold 6% of myself in the San Diego $10k circuit event. Thanks to everybody who's bid on a stake. Check out these auctions if you want in on the deal (including the 25% auction that includes logo wear):

ebay Auctions

Vintage Post #2

Another old post from rgp...

===================

Newsgroup: Rec.Gambling.Poker
Date: 23 June 2002
Subject: My Battle of the Bay Championship Event Story

So I'm sitting in front of my computer with a bit of a bittersweet feeling about today's tourney. First off, let me give everyone who was involved in the tournament a thumbs up. It was run well. The competition was a lot more solid than the nooner tourneys that I've been playing lately, though there weren't any big names that I recognized with the exception of Phil Hellmuth. After basically sitting on the same 3000 in tournament chips for the first three hours of the tourney, I began to make some moves and was able to get to the final two tables. Eight and a half hours into it, I had a little under 30,000 chips... I wasn't a big stack, but with only 15 players left, I liked my chances. The blinds were 1500 and 3000 with a 500 ante. Gotta mantain... gotta concentrate. My goal was to make four moves every three orbits... and hopefully double up soon so that I could relax a bit.

In middle position I looked down to see AQ of clubs. One player made it 6000 to go... he had previously made similar bets and backed down to a bigger raise. I remembered that anytime he held a monster hand (AA, KK, or QQ), he moved all-in. I thought for a moment about what he might have and made up my mind that he had a medium pair, and he would be in a real tough spot to call an all-in raise. I went over the top, confident that I wouldn't be getting a call. Everyone folded to him. After what seemed like an eternity of staring me down trying to get some sort of read, counting his chips, and staring me down some more... he finally put in 23,000 to cover my raise. He turned over AK and that was that.

I honestly couldn't tell you what came on the flop. When I saw AK, my eyes blurred and I felt like I'd been kicked hard. I can't remember being so wrong in a read... after taking so long to call, I was sure that he didn't have me dominated. It was pretty surreal. The whole thing reminded me of that Scotty Nguyen quote in one of the Discovery Channel specials... "You gotta make the right move... you don't make the right move, I see you next year!"

So after 8 1/2 hours of hard playing, concentrating on every little move that each player made... how they stacked their chips, how their neck muscles moved, where they looked, whether they fidgeted or not with a big hand, etc... I walked away with a profit of $250 and a nice fuzzy feeling knowing that I ALMOST made it to the $31k first prize. I'm pretty tired for what is supposed to be an easy way to make a living... but it's nothing a few beers wont' fix.

However, it is good to place in the money out of 180 entrants, especially while seeing many players that I respect on the rail. And it was nice getting further than Phil. ;) So I guess this go around I'm 15th in the bay, rather than first... I'll have to wait until the San Pablo tourneys to claim what is mine. ;)

Dutch

===================

So that was my first major tournament... I actually ended up doing ok in San Pablo, and after that took the bankroll to the Grand Slam of Poker in LA's Hustler Club... and blew most of it. I found all my old trip reports and will post them as more vintage posts in the next few days and weeks. Pretty crazy looking back and seeing how hungry I was.

Auctions Close - New Nightly Auction

The first five 1% auctions just sold for an average price of $151.42. Thank you so much to everybody who bid and spread the word.


Now I'm going to try to list one three-day auction a night for awhile in a few different categories and see how it goes. I'd like to raise at least $5k, and preferrably more like $7.5k to cover most of the cost of the $10k buy-in.

Click Here for the new 1% auction starting... bidding starts at exactly 1% of the buyin price : $102. We'll call this one Auction 6... it closes 7 pm PST on Saturday.

Also, I'm going to try to setup a little chat program in the next couple of weeks so that I can have chat sessions with everybody who visits every once in awhile. If anyone knows of a solid webchat program, I'd love to hear about it.

Ebay Auctions

The five 1% stake auctions for the WSOP Circuit event in San Diego have about 18 more hours to go. All five of them have bids (thank you to all those that have bid so far), with the highest bid being $112.50. Figuring it out, if I were to raise the entire buy-in for the event with 1% auctions going at $112.50 I'd end up playing for just shy of 10% of myself, with backers taking 90%. Pretty sweat deal for a backer should I actually walk away from the tournament with something.

I honestly don't think that $204 per 1% share is bad for a backer. When I was staked for the Razz tournament where I took 2nd (and the WSOP main this year where I busted in the second day), the backing arrangement was for 50% of the net. I'd be surprised to see any of the auctions break $200, but you never can tell... Also really interested to see how the 25% auction + logo will turn out... that one still has a week left, and although it has a lot of people watching it, it hasn't yet received a bid. Crossing my fingers on that one...

I'm really trying to get a feel for whether eBay is not a bad way to front the cost of a pretty expensive WSOP. I figured out the buy-ins of all the WSOP tourneys I wanted to play in this year and it's over $100k. Not exactly an amount to shake a stick at, especially with the light bankroll I'm working on these days with the new business.

Thank you to everyone who's bid so far! I wish you all the best of everything in 2005 (unless you're at my table ;).

Vintage Post No. 1

Found a few old posts from RGP that I wrote back in the day before I was known. Pretty interesting stuff to me, because the same issues I had back then are still the ones I wrestle with now. I'll post a few of them over the next few weeks... but here's the first one.

==============================
Newsgroups: rec.gambling.poker
Date: 15 June 2002
Subject: New Kid in the Bay

I've been reading R.G.P. for a bit now, and figured it's about time I introduced myself. I've been playing poker for a few years, and have always taken the game seriously... but it wasn't until recently that I decided to really dedicate myself to the game.

Last month I came out to Vegas to win the WSOP... instead I went home nearly broke and very humbled. The more I learn about the game, the more I realize how many different levels there are. It's scary... I used to be one of those players who thought I was the best just because I read a few Sklansky books. No longer. (If I get some time, I'll post a trip report...)

The good thing about Vegas was that I met a lot of cool and interesting people, including a few who post here. Two guys I met, one a New York player named Phil and another San Jose spread-limit player named Antonio, invited me to come down to San Jose and take over a room in a townhouse while I build up my bankroll. I was pretty near broke, so they said I could pay for it after I got my feet on solid ground... so I decided to come out here to the valley and take a shot at going pro.

I started playing the 6-12 and 20-40 Holdem games over at Garden City and have been doing pretty well so far. I feel like I already have a pretty good feel for the game, and my live game is definitely improving. I'll be getting a job propping at Garden City next week (providing I pass the piss test I took the other day... DOH!). I'm the young caucasian kid who usually wears the orange fisherman's hat with the Giants logo on it. If you see me at one of the cardrooms, definitely say hello.

Anyway, I figured I'd share an odd little thing that happened to me today. I was chilling at my place with a poker buddy (a guy I haven't known for too long) and I suggested we go play in the $110 spread-limit tourney over at Bay 101. He had been up for about 30 hours, so he just crashed at my place while I played. It turned out
to be a pretty weak line up... I figure most of the regular players were up in Colma this weekend for Lucky Chance's Battle of the Bay tourney. So I won it. Well, actually we made a deal when it got headsup, but I won the lion's share of the money.

When I got back home, I put my new tournament jacket on the table and chilled for a bit. When my buddy woke up, he came down and looked at the jacket.

Friend : "Whoah... you won? Are you ready for something heavy?"
Dutch : "Hell yeah, man"
Friend : "Just a minute... I mean this is really heavy."
Dutch : "Ok."
Friend (pauses for dramatic effect) : "When you left today, I said a prayer and asked God to let you win the tournament so you'd know he was there. And you won because of it."
Dutch (pauses again for dramatic effect) : "Well, actually Pablo... I'm pretty sure I won because the players weren't defending their blinds at the end. But thanks for the help."

Anyway, strange world. ;)

Dutch

==================

So just a little post script here... the two players I mentioned in the post were none other than Antonio Esfandiari and Phil Laak. Before they were stars. Fun times.

Interesting Old Post

Saw this and thought it was pretty interesting... especially with some of the negative things I've heard about the eBay auction.


Poker-Images.com

Newsgroups: rec.gambling.poker
From: "Gregory Raymer"
Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 02:12:34 GMT
Local: Tues, Oct 31 2000 6:12 pm
Subject: Now accepting backers

If anyone wants to back me again (or for the first time), send me an email and let me know.

As you may have read, I won a super-satellite for the $5100 NL HE tourney at Foxwoods on Nov. 18-19. So that I can also afford to play in more of the $1080 events leading up to it, I wish to sell 40-50% of my action in the main event. Current rumors among the players suggest anywhere from 130-200 players are expected to enter the main event, so the prize pool may exceed 1 Million dollars, with about 35% of that going to the winner. The numbers don't surprise me, because we're having super-satellites every day, a total of about 25 of them, and they've been awarding about 3 seats apiece. Later on, during the higher limit events, it is expected that even more out-of-towners will be in, and the attendance in the supers will likely go up, maybe awarding 5-8 seats apiece. Some of these will be duplications, of course, but it is still quite likely that we will put at least 70 players inthe main event just by supers.

So, if you'd like to buy a piece of me, first send me an email to the address attached to this post. Tell me how much. Then, put a check in the mail (I'll reply to your email and give you the full address). For each $51 unit you buy, you get 1% of whatever I win on Nov. 19th. As before, I will need to get your social security number when it's time to pay you your share, as everything will be reported to the IRS as required by law. So, if this is a problem for you, you should probably not buy a piece.

If you wish to discuss some other deal, let me know. I'm always willing to listen. ;-)

Thanks, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

Gank and ZeroRake

A former crewmember, Brett Jungblut (aka gank), posted recently on rec.gambling.poker that I was involved with a site called ZeroRake.com. A lot of people have been asking about it, so I thought I'd address it.

The statement is simply untrue. ZeroRake.com was run by an outfit in Vancouver called Las Vegas From Home. They are the same people behind Action Poker. I'm somewhat familiar with them because I met the president, Jake, a few years ago at a gaming industry conference in Toronto. They tried to launch a cardroom without a rake a few months ago, and it failed miserably. I downloaded the software once or twice, but never played there because there were never any games going. Beyond that I didn't have any further involvement in the site.

I don't know where Brett got his information from, but the way he talks it makes me think he's wearing an aluminum-foil hat right now. You're out of the crew, bro... it's natural to be chewing on some sour grapes. But get over it, man, and focus on your own bad self instead of spending time on my shit.

New eBay Auctions...

Ok, just listed 6 new eBay auctions for a stake in the San Diego WSOP Circuit main event on February 27th. This time I didn't link to my website from the listing, or put in non-related keywords in the title, which is why eBay took my last listings down. The Copenhagen tournament is sold out, so I'm going to see how a state-side, ESPN-televised tournament will make out on eBay.

I listed five 1% stakes which each are all three day auctions and one 25% stake which is a ten day auction. All of the auctions include some time in helping you with your game, and the 25% stake auction includes the logo sponsorship. Check them out, bid, and help a player out! :)

Auction 1 - 1% stake
Auction 2 - 1% stake
Auction 3 - 1% stake
Auction 4 - 1% stake
Auction 5 - 1% stake
Auction 6 - 25% stake + sponsorship

Back in Fresno

After a pretty long week in Ft. Lauderdale, I'm now back home in Fresno. It's pretty nice to sleep in my own bed. Thursday I spent the whole day on a set taping some footage for a poker gameshow that I'm helping with. Might be in Vegas in a week and a half for NATPE, which is a big tv industry show.

Being on the set was pretty cool, and I'll try and make a post about it in the next few days. Going to try and get some footage and put it here on the blog.

eBay auction taken down...

Grrrr... so after a few days of getting bids, I got an email from eBay on Friday saying they were taking the auction down because (1) I had a link to the site and (2) I had some search terms in the title that didn't relate to the auction (WPT?). I think it's for the best... got an email from a guy who said that the Copenhagen tournament was already sold out, so I'd probably have been in a bad spot if the listing DID sell.

I think what I'm going to do is pick another tournament and try another listing. Probably one of the WSOP $10k circuit events. Look for the auction later on today. Will be putting it up after a few tournaments.

Ebay Auction : Day 3

The listing now has its first bid... and 77 people watching the auction. Looks like the eBay auction is getting some attention on the major forums... the rec.gambling.poker newsgroup and the2+2 forum.

Thanks to the bidder who took the first stab at it... it's a private auction, as I didn't think a lot of bidders would want a flood of emails from other players. I set it as a ten day auction... now the week starts. Going to be interesting to see if anything cool happens.

Advice to New Poker Players

I got this email the other day... I get several like it a month and thought some people would get some use out of the response. Thanks, Bruce, for agreeing to let me post it here. Good luck in your poker endeavors!

=====

Hey Dutch. My name is Bruce Jobe. I'm 18 years old and to young to play in
most live games. I started playing last year just for play money though. I
started to get better, and I won 5 dollars in a free roll tourney and turned
that into 150 bucks in 1 day. I wanna know if you have any advice for a
young player like me. I honestly think I can become one of the greats. I
have been tracking my finishes in single tables tourneys ranging from 5
dollar buy ins to 20 dollar buy ins and I end up in the top three 79.5% of
the time. I know they are small buy ins but its a start. So lemme know what
you think, and if you ever wanna hook up online sometime and play me, it
would be an honor. Thanks dude

=====

Hey Bruce,

Thanks for the email. It sounds like you're on your way to poker stardom.
Here are ten tips that I came up with for you:

(1) Don't be in a rush. Poker is going to be around for a long time, and
you shouldn't feel the need to push your bankroll. As a player, there is
definitely a danger of falling into the "it's-never-enough" trap. If your
bankroll is $5k, then you won't be satisfied until it's at $20k. If it's
20k, no satisfaction until it gets up to 100k. At 100k, it's a million and
so on. Take it slow and protect your roll. Don't risk a significant
portion of your bankroll in any one sitting. I hope you take this to heart,
dude, because it's so important. There are so many ex-champs who are broke
because they sit down in the wrong games with way too much of their worth.

(2) Don't chase losses. Important for the same reason. You'll see a lot
of good players, great ones even, who can't take losing. They'll lose some
money, tilt, lose some more, tilt more... pretty soon they are spiraling
down into a pretty bad place that's hard to rebound from. The main goal for
you right now should be to nurse your bankroll while you fill out your game.
You can't improve past a certain point unless you're playing, and you can't
play if you're broke.

(3) Don't quit school. If you want to be a high-profile pro, it's going to
take a lot of money to keep yourself on the tournament trail. It's a lot
easier to put yourself on that trail if you have money coming in from other
ways besides poker. If poker is your only source of income, you will almost
certainly be broke at one point or another... probably more than one. If
you don't have something to fall back on, you can end up in some pretty bad
spots.

(4) Stay off drugs. Nothing is more destructive to poker players than
drugs. I think an occasional toke is fine, but coke will screw up your
life. Alcohol can screw you up pretty good too. Daniel Negreanu tells a
story about one night losing at a NL table drunk off his ass. The next
morning he woke up and checked his player box and it was 80k lighter... he
couldn't even remember playing. This is when 80k was a significant chunk of
his worth. If it can happen to Daniel N. it can happen to you.

(5) Stay away from table games. Don't be a loser and gamble away all your
hard-earned money at the craps table. A lot of great players do.

(6) Read. Read EVERYTHING about poker that you can get your hands on.
Every book that I've ever read has added something to my game. Some authors
to help you on your way : anything by Sklansky, Caro, Brunson, McEvoy &
Cloutier. In particular, Holdem for Advanced Players, Super System, and the
Book of Tells.

(7) Observe the other players. Don't just sit there at the table playing
your hands, and then waiting for the next one. The best time to learn
something new about poker is when you're out of a hand.

(8) Study the WPT and ESPN episodes. Really study them... try and get into
the players' heads and figure out why they did the things they did. Then
rewind the episode and watch it again. Write down every hand and take
notes. After you read everything out there, there aren't too many ways for
you to cheaply improve your game. This is one of those ways.

(9) Think about the tournaments you play. Don't just think about the one
hand that you went out on. If you went out on that hand, then some other
player had you covered... and there were plenty of things you could have
done so that you would have had more chips to survive. Think about the
opportunities you missed to maximize your profits and minimize your losses
on specific hands, and think about ways you could have played hands
differently. There are very few clear cut actions that come up in poker, so
consider every alternative that you could have taken.

(10) Never underestimate your opponents. It is so easy to read a few
books, place in a few tournaments, and then suddenly think you're the best
poker player alive. Every player you sit down with should be treated with
respect. Everybody is capable of making world-class moves at one point or
another. The "fish" at the other end of the table has probably read all the
same books, placed in a lot more tournaments, and has a lot more experience
than you do. If he's playing like he doesn't care about the money, it's
probably because he has a real job somewhere that pays a lot better than
poker. It doesn't mean he's stupid. Don't underestimate anybody.

Hope that helps you on your way. Also, if you don't mind, I'd like to post
your email and my response to it on my blog.

Cheers,
Dutch

Ebay Auction : Day 1

No bids yet. To everyone who emailed me about the auction, I'm sorry I haven't gotten back to you yet. It's been a busy weekend, and it's probably not going to get much better until I'm back home in Fresno next week... but I'm going to do what I can.

Here are some answers to some of the questions I received :

(1) Does the winning bid get advertising only or do they get a percentage of your winnings?

- The winning bid is for 50% of my gross earning in the described tournament AND a logo on my chest or head (again, provided it's reasonable i.e. not offensive or otherwise inappropriate).

(2) Have you drafted a contract?

- No, but that's a good idea and I intend to put my three years in law school to some good use and draft up a service agreement.

(3) If you're such a good poker player, why are you too broke to buy-in?

- I'm not. If the auction isn't picked up, I probably will just front the entire buy-in. But one of the secrets to surviving as a professional poker player is to not expose yourself to too much risk, and right now with the start of my new business I would rather not expose myself to the $3600 risk. It's all about money management, people!

(4) Why don't you ask one of the Crewmates to back you?

- Because, in the words of my grandfather-god-rest-his-soul, "Don't shit where you eat".

(5) Why don't you just go online and win a few grand? If you can't do that, why would I want to back you?

- I'll probably play a few tournaments on Party today. If I win a few grand, I'd still rather not expose myself to the full $3600 possible loss.

Public Letter to Neal Ross

Saw a pretty lousy post on rec.gambling.poker from an old disgruntled pokerspot player. There are a lot of them out there, but this one gets under my skin.

I don't take his threats seriously. What really bothers me, though, is that shit escalates... especially when you get a mob of hungry flamers that is RGP. Neal Ross probably more than anyone has always been very public with our talks in what I assume is an effort to light a fire under my ass. I'm sometimes flaky and oftentimes slow... personal flaws that I will readily admit and am constantly working on, with the help of my cool-as-all-hell girlfriend. She didn't do anything to him... has absolutely NOTHING to do with my history with neal. Yet somehow she ends up in the post. I don't like that shit.

So here's the email I sent to Mr. Ross, which I too will make public :

=====

Neal,

Saw the post on RGP. You're right that I've been slow in following up on this, and I'm sorry about that. But come on, man... it's been four years. This shit is coming out of my bankroll, which is pretty low anyway... not to mention the fact that I'm trying to juggle (1) getting a new company off the ground and not screwing it up like I did the first one, and (2) trying to keep myself afloat by playing poker in my spare time. Throw in way too much travelling and you got the reason it's taken me a little longer than I thought to get this shit in order.

About the post on RGP... say all you want about me. The next time you threaten physical harm onmy girlfriend, family, or friends then you're going on my block list (and right at the bottom of my priority list). And also you'd probably do good to remember that if something ever DID happen to me, well you've made it pretty public that you've taken steps to make it happen.

From my records you had $2173 in your pokerspot account when the site closed. That took me awhile to figure out. It's going to take me even longer to go through the old checks and credit card records to see how much of the $4284 that you cashed out in your pokerspot history actually made it into your hands, which if any were bounced, and what if anything was charged back to your credit cards. Then finally I have to figure out how much of my bankroll I can afford to give you without risking going broke and having to play my way back at the .50/1 tables. This isn't exactly a simple process. It's not exactly like pokerspot was a good model for organization.

For your information I HAVE paid players back. And I've also started paying at least a little bit to players that are owed more than I can afford to settle up... the reason you haven't heard about it is because I haven't required them to do anything except take the money. If you think it's a lie, go ask MS Sunshine if she's gotten anything out of me. And MS didn't even have to physically threaten me to get it.

The post was uncalled for. I'd never ask you to take anything back... but at least take a chill pill. Life's too short to fill it with negativity.

Happy New Year,
Dutch

Copenhagen EPT Event

I posted before that I'm going to Copenhagen later this month to root for my girlfriend Gianna, who won a seat in the EPT event by playing FPPs on Pokerstars. I'm banned from Pokerstars for life, so I didn't get too many chances to qualify for the event. But since I'm going to be there anyway, I'll probably be buying into it directly.

I put up an auction on eBay for 50% of my action in the tournament. The buy-in is 20,000 DKK which is about $3650 USD. If you're interested in buying 50% of me in the event, check out the auction here. Hell... even if you're not interested check it out!

The Toilet...

Many have emailed me asking what happened to the plumbing project. I'm happy to announce the toilet was fixed before I left to Florida.

I'm thinking of starting a new website called PokerPlumber.com where I'll do housecalls, giving poker lessons while fixing your plumbing problems. I think it could really revolutionize poker... and plumbing.

Anyway, don't laugh... it's better than a lot of my ideas.

-- UPDATE --
It seems that some guy named Michael Roper in Seattle has already registered PokerPlumber.com. He must have already had the exact same idea. DAMN YOU MR. ROPER!

Maybe when he gets the project off the ground he can give me a job.

Ft.. Lauderdale

Flew back down to Ft. Lauderdale with Gianna early this morning. I didn't get a wink of sleep until we were on the plane. Sooooo.... tired....

We're staying at a pretty nice hotel overlooking the beach with a balcony. Jeff and his group treat us nice down here. The weather is so much warmer than in Fresno (where it was rainy and cold when we left).


The only drawback to the place is we can't get internet in the room... we have to come down to the lobby where we can see the network. How am I supposed to check on my boys in Atlantis if I don't have internet. I told Sdouble I'd fly out to see him if he made it to the final table with the chiplead. It's a promise I hope to keep. Good luck little brother!

Plumbing 101

I live in the country right outside of Fresno with my girlfriend Gianna and my little brother Rob. It's an old house, and we've had our share of plumbing problems.

A few weeks right after we moved in, there was a problem with how the toilet flushed, so Gianna's cousin Josh (who works with us at Intervault decided to take a look. He opened up the cover and WHAM! dropped it right into the bowl. The porcelain cracked and water got all over the place. A huge mess. He said he could try to epoxy it... not a chance.

Enter Gianna's other cousin, Joey. He gets a new toilet, spends a few hours cursing at the nuts and finally gets the thing installed. Thanks Joey. No more problems, right? WRONG!!!

Today Gianna comes out of the bathroom and complains that it's leaking. I go in there and there's a little bit of water around the base of the toilet. There was a little leak coming out of the adjustable pipe connecting the angle valve and the ballcock. I messed with it a bit and the leak got REALLY bad.

So that's when I found this site : Toiletology.com. After following the directions, I think I've got a handle on how to fix this bad boy. So now it's off to the hardware store to get a new angle valve and adjustable pipe, and a long-ass monkey wrench so I can bust this nut from the valve. By ten o'clock, we'll either have a working toilet or a flooded bathroom.

If all goes well, maybe I'll give up poker and start life anew as a plumber. From all the movies I've seen featuring plumbers, the job would seem to have some pretty good fringe benefits.

Tournaments

Trying out a few tournaments on Paradise and Party Poker. The Super Tuesday on Party. The $35k guarantee on Paradise. Just lost my first buy-in and addon on Paradise when I got pocket Kings cracked. One guy had half of my chips with Jacks and hit the jack on the flop. The other guy had me covered with QTo and rivered his T. Didn't need that to happen.

About two hands later on the Party Super Tuesday I got kings and doubled up, so I guess it evens out.

Couple things I don't like about Party Poker... first, they only start you off with 1000 in chips. Second, they don't have antes. You play the whole tournament pretty much like a PL tournament. I like Paradise... only problem with that site is the blinds go up too quick... 12 minutes as opposed to the standard 15. Not that big of a difference, but what's the hurry?

Paradise Username : -Dutch-
Party Username : Kid_Dutch

Wish me luck... first in the Super Tuesday is over $20k.

Real Deal

There are a couple of interviews up at Flix0505's website, Real Deal. There's one from me, one from Scott Fischman, and one from Josh Arieh. Check them out here.

I gotta say... I wasn't that big of a fan of Arieh (pretty sure that's pronounced by saying the letters R-E-A) after seeing him on ESPN, but after reading a few of his interviews I've come around and am now a fan. Good luck this year, Josh. But of course, better luck to you emptyseat.

Paul Phillips

Was checking out PokerLizard.com today and finally got around to reading Paul Phillips' interview on there. It's a worthwhile read, as is pretty much anything Paul has to say.

Paul and I aren't really on the best of terms. He doesn't like me much and doesn't really make a secret out of it. But that's ok because I like him just fine. He's pretty funny at the table, and always comes off well on tv. I have a feeling that's because he's made some remarks that have back-fired in the past (did you know he was banned from the WSOP?), and is now a little more thoughtful about how he comes off. I actually think if Paul got to know me a little, we'd gel.

Here are ten things that Paul Phillips and I have in common :

(1) We both play a lot of poker;
(2) We both think we're funnier and better looking than we actually are;
(3) We both like scrabble;
(4) We both share some of the same favorite books, like Godel Escher Bach, The Stand, and Watership Down;
(5) We both dabbled in a dot-com startup;
(6) We both read RGP to see what new shit they're posting about us;
(7) We both like Sublime;
(8) We both get a little teary at the end of "A Leagure of Their Own";
(9) We both dislike Rick DaVoice; and finally
(10) We both like to blog!

Anyway, enough about Paul... let's talk about the interview. My favorite line follows:

-------------

PokerLizard: What advice would you give to any aspiring pros? Any pitfalls to avoid?

Paul: My advice to aspiring pros is to change aspirations. Poker seems much more glamorous than it actually is, and for every player who is living the dream, there are dozens who aren't. If you're smart enough to succeed at this game, you're smart enough to succeed in the real world, with much greater satisfaction. If you don't want to work for “the man”, then start your own company and put your efforts into that.

I think poker is a great hobby but a very poor choice of profession. I'm concerned that the current poker craze is going to leave us with legions who eventually discover that poker isn't all it's cracked up to be, but who have also rendered themselves largely unemployable.

-------------

Not bad advice, Paul. Thanks!

(btw - you can read Paul's blog here).

Happy New Year!

So it's a new year, and I'm back in my office. I'm kind of glad Christmas is over... it's always a lot of stress, and this year was no different. Spent a lot of time with Gianna's family, which is kind of akward. But at least her dad is finally coming around... he took great pleasure in showing me all of his guns and his knife room. I think that's a good sign that he's either warming up or planning to kill me. Seriously, though, he gave me a pretty nice coat for christmas, and it's probably one of my favorite presents besides what I got from Gianna.

This month I have a few things planned. First, I'm going back to Ft. Lauderdale to try and work something out with the Check Raise Productions people about the show they're working on. They are going to be doing some shooting, so I'm flying back down there on Friday for a week with Gianna. Maybe we'll hook up with the Miami crew... wouldn't be bad to hang out a bit with Chino and Ewe.

After we get back from Ft. Lauderdale, Gianna and I are headed out to Las Vegas for a tradeshow. After that, we're off to EUROPE! Gianna won a seat into the EPT tournament in Denmark on Pokerstars in one of the FPP tournaments. She's been working on her game a lot lately, and it finally paid off. I've never been to Europe before, and now I get to go and coach her through this tournament. We'll see how it works out. I'd absolutely love it if Gianna took down that tournament.

Goals for this year :

(1) Work harder on Intervault and put up some cool sites... get the company healthy.

(2) Play more poker and build a bankroll in time for the WSOP.

(3) Stay off the cigs.

(4) Play and win the main event this year at the World Series of Poker.

(5) Qualify for the WPT Pro Poker Tour.

(6) Start running and shed some of this baby fat.