Day 18: Phil Ivey Made Me Money

Damn I just wrote out the longest blog and that shit was erased when I clicked on the wrong link, tried to go back and the whole blog was gone. This flaw definitely needs to be fixed by Blogger, but now I know why they have the "Save As Draft" option.

Saturday night I was supposed to go to dinner with my boys but I went to HP when I thought Matt was asleep for the night. I was hungry and thought it'd be good to eat some shrimp and steak and win a few bucks at Hollywood Park. Honestly when I went to Hustler on Friday night I missed the gambling action of HP. I got to HP and the list was a mile long, so I stood around waiting for a while. Matt called and we determined we wouldn't go to dinner but would trying to go out with the homies. I finally sat down and first hand got KQ, limped, bet a flop of K-9-7 two spades. Turn was an 8d, I bet, got one caller and I put him all-in when the river was another King. He called the additional $50 and I won about $120 or so first hand.

Not too long after I got AA in middle position. The guy to my immediate right called the big blind but looked like he wanted to raise and decided to just call. I raised to $20, got one caller (who was the loosest player at the table) and then the guy on my right went into the tank for a couple minutes before raising to $60. Because of what I originally noticed when he limped, I thought he was pretty strong. We were about even in money and the other caller had about $100. I only wanted head's up so I went all-in. The other caller surprisingly called the all-in, as did the raiser (reluctantly). First caller had Qd10d and raiser had 99. I won the pot and left not too long after up $510.

The reason I left was because Matt's co-worker/buddy Miles (Rookie #2) was at Hustler and told Matt that Phil Ivey was there with Greenstein, Flynt and Forrest. Out of all the poker players I know about, I hold Phil Ivey in probably the highest regards. Mostly because I can relate to him a lot more than I can the other pros and we actually have a few mutual friends that are from Jersey. I've never seen him play live though so I wanted to go check it out.

I got to Hustler and the waiting list was kind of long, Matt was still waiting for his $50 NL game and Miles was playing on the table directly behind Larry Flynt's table. Ivey and the table were playing what looked like Omaha with $500 chips, probably $2k bets (hard to tell because of security guards). I witnessed a nice hand on Miles' table where some guy went all-in, Miles called him with AK and the guy hit trips with J-6 suited. Ugly.

I sat down at my table and immediately determined that it was super tight. I stole about $40 worth of blinds by raising to only $30/$35 a few times. Then I caught AA and raised to $30. Got one caller who called me all the way on a somewhat scary board of three spades and a straight but I won the hand and about $100. I then caught KK and hit a set on the flop, taking down about another $200.

At midnight Matt and I decided we'd go meet some of our friends at a bar. I was happily up $650 and Matt wasn't feeling his table. It was cool to see the pros playing but it really wasn't possible to observe the play. So we left and I was up $650. So thanks to Phil Ivey being at Hustler, I won $650 in a couple of hours.

It was a really good weekend overall with a big downer that SC lost.

The weekend was good though for the following reasons:

1. I hit my goal of 1k for the weekend.
2. Three days into December and I'm well over my goal of $200/day.
3. Matt hit the jackpot.
4. Seahawks won.
5. Got my dirty ass apartment cleaned.

The weekend sucked because:
1. USC lost
2. USC lost
3. I missed my basketball game and we lost.
4. USC lost
5. I missed my baseball banquet

But again I'm really content with starting December on a heater, especially after the way I got in the hole on Friday, really made a somewhat impossible comeback.

Summary: 3.5 hours (8:00p - 10:00p; 10:30p - 12:00a), +1160 (first table [HP] +510, second table [Hustler] +650)

Saturday Night:
200NL: +1160
Overall: +1160
Hourly: 331.43/Hr.

To date:
4/8 Limit: +201
6/12 Limit: +170
40 NL: -79
100 NL: -114
200 NL: +9021
December: +1828
Overall: +9199