So on PokerVT there was a post yelling at me to make more blog posts so I’ll make an effort.  It’s not like I’ve forgotten about the blog, but rather that anything I want to write has another platform for it.  Strategy stuff I pretty much limit to the PokerVT forums.  In fact, I’ve made over 900 posts there in under 4 months.  I really make an effort to answer everyone’s questions.  Now that I finally have a Facebook account there’s a spot for a little bit of BBV there.  I just really don’t like to talk about myself much, especially to the world.  As far as what I read, I don’t check any regularly, per se, although anything that JCarver, Unamuno, MTC, or StefanProdan write are pretty good mostly because of a good amount of humor.  I absolutely detest blogs that are updated daily with results.  I can understand how it can be useful to keep a journal, but keep that stuff to yourself.  What really bothers me is that some people actually attract a following through self promotion, and despite being busto stakes/breakeven/bad players, use it as a platform to essentially scam people into wanting to get coaching.  Not naming names, but there are many people out there like this.

Anyway, evang spent a few days out here and I went with him one day to play poker at Treasure Island.  Their poker room is small and only had one table of 2/4 going.  A few of the players were there playing to try to accumulate 200 hours so they could play in some freeroll.  The rake as well as the players were atrocious and after about 3 hours I was ready to cut my wrists.  We hit up the Rio, my first time back since WSOP, and played some Texas Hold’em Bonus.  Going to casinos, aside from going to say hello to JCarver for WPT Festa al Lago at the Bellagio, kinda got me interested in killing some time there occasionally.

So, I got the awesome idea that I would go grind video poker and get up to a higher tier level of rewards at the Boyd group of casinos (The Orleans, Sam’s Town, Gold Coast, etc.).  I also took some sports picks from someone I know that has a pretty good record in this stuff, and was on my way.  Well I basically made over $1000 playing video poker while occasionally checking lines, placing some smallish bets, etc.  Then after maybe 10 or so hours of playing video poker across 5 or 6 days I realized it is the most boring thing ever.  I don’t even understand how people get addicted to gambling in that way.  Yeah, punting off your paycheck over 10 hands at the blackjack table is one thing, but I would see people grinding 25 cent video poker (be it +EV on full pay machines or -EV) for the entire day, several days in a row.  I actually even caught some woman surreptitiously pulling out a cheat sheat from her purse every 2 minutes or so to check on a hand.  Really, if you have to check that often, you’re not doing it right.

Anyway, about 1/3 of the way towards the next tier level I decided that was enough for me and quit video poker.  I’m definitely going to go check out some other sportsbooks though.  The NBA lines at the Boyd casinos were OK, but the vig on the MMA lines was pretty bad.  I don’t know if that’s standard or what, but I guess I’ll find out as I visit other books.  I’ve actually wanted to get more into sports betting for some time now, even buying some of the better known advice books, but I’ll just stick to going off other peoples picks that I trust until I get my feet wet.  Drop a comment if you have any tips on sportsbooks in Vegas.

OK here are some pics of the kitchen/living room area and my view from my place at Panorama Towers.  Not pictured: bedrooms or bathrooms. Forgive my hand being in the shot on the first two, oops.

2nd time I’ve won it, holla!

I’ve been pretty busy since getting back from WSOP, but it hasn’t been from playing poker. I’ve been trying to finalize plans to move to Vegas at the end of August. Things are finally starting to get going on that front though. However, I have even bigger news…

I recently got signed as a PokerVT pro and will be making videos for them. I just finished up the first few hours of my content that’s going up on PokerVT.com. I’m going to be primarily doing videos on sit-and-gos, with a lot of content that will be relevant for players of all levels and all games including the basics of SNGs like expected ROI and bankroll requirements, hand recommendations and basic lines for various stages of SNGs, a thorough SNGWiz tutorial and survey of other software, and coverage of both basic and advanced ICM concepts.

I’m pretty excited to be working with the PokerVT team and am looking forward to making videos and interacting with people on the forums there.

If you’re interested in checking out my instructional videos or videos from others including JCarver, Adam Junglen, Annette Obrestad, and Daniel Negreanu, head on over there and sign up using promo code NotAProblem for 20% off and 90 days free!

I’m back from the WSOP so I figured I’d write up a trip report.  No pictures though because my digital camera, which is now 4 years old, has some problems and my phone’s camera kinda sucks too.  Time to upgrade.

I got in on the evening of June 8th and promptly got lost getting to my hotel a couple of blocks east of the strip.  There’s a ton of roadwork going on all hours of the day which is probably the most annoying thing about Las Vegas.  Flamingo from the Strip to Paradise is completely tore up and closed down to one lane at night, the interstate to Henderson has some lane closures, and even some side road next to the Rio that I was on once to avoid rush hour traffic was being worked on. 

The first event I played in was the $1500 shootout.  The WSOP this year started with triple chips but the structures on some events were modified.  Overall, though, events were a tad slower than in previous years.  If you know me you know I love fast structures with short stacks, but even with the structure changes the $1500 seemed to go by too fast for me.   Nobody notable was at my table and everyone was pretty bad.  I caught every person open limping at least twice, but could never get anything going and lost my first flip, 99 < AK to bust during the third level. 

A couple of days later though, I sweated JCarver when he made the final table of the event.  Got to meet gobboboy, mlagoo, Adam Junglen, ActionJeff, Unamuno, EC10, and Psyduck, amongst others.  I think the 50k HORSE event was on the final two tables, so both the feature and secondary featured table (they are adjacent to each other) were being used for that, which relegated the shootout final table to a nearby table that didn’t have much room on the rail.  After a level or two the HORSE event went down to one table and the shootout got moved over.  JCarver got 2nd and didn’t really have much of a chance once it got heads up as his opponent had pretty much steamrolled everyone and had a massive chip lead, something around to 10:1.  Big congrats to Jason for shipping about $200k in that though.

I’ve been thinking of moving to Vegas for a while now, and so the next week I checked out Panorama Towers, where a ton of poker players live.  It’s a very nice place.  Gated access, valet, movie theaters in each tower, exercise rooms, pool, great views, etc.  You have to rent through real estate agents, so MTC got me in contact with his current agent and we toured the place.  No 1-bedroom condos were available to look at, so I just got to see a couple of 2-bedroom places and tour the grounds.  I went back a few weeks later when I could see a 1-bedroom place and saw a small one that I didn’t want, and a larger one that was just perfect.  Too bad it wasn’t available, sigh.

Unamuno and MTC both made it deep in the $10k heads up event, so I sweated them starting with the round of eight.  Actually MTC busted by the time I got there, and Johnny Chan was playing vs someone for the last spot in the final four, but Leo had won so I stuck around for that.  He eventually won his final four match, versus the guy who beat Johnny Chan.  The plan was to play through the best-of-three final match that night but delayed it until the next day because it was midnight.  A ton of people showed up for it, with very little rail space, and the match took forever.  Leo’s opponent was John Duthie, who created the EPT and is a well known figure in poker in Europe.  Some of the Hendon Mob as well as Andy Black were there sweating Ross Boatman who had made a final table nearby, and when he got knocked out of that they started sweating Duthie.  However all the internet kids were there sweating Leo.  Even lilholdem showed up to sweat a while.   He’s much more well spoken in real life than he is online.  The first match lasted 100 hands and Duthie won, the second match took fewer than 10 hands before Leo won, and the third match went 200 hands, and Leo won a bracelet.  So sick.  After the second match they agreed to chop $450k and play for 100k and the bracelet, so he shipped $550k.  He also got a lot of press because of his law background and the fact that he’s here in Vegas doing work for the ACLU and could only really play events on the weekends.

The next event I played in was the $5000 shootout.  The structure was a bit deeper and slower than the $1500, which I definitely preferred.  Unfortunately, there were actually notables at my table this time:  Nick Binger, Isaac Haxton, and Scott Seiver.  I know Ike and Scott are good friends, and were backing a lot of people in events.  MTC even talked to them about backing me in some stuff, but they ran out of backing money.  So, they obviously are very familiar with each other.  This led to some interesting spots where we would all be involved in a pot and I’d end up tossing the best hand when one would bet and the other would call and somehow my weak 2nd or 3rd pair would have been good.  Hasan Habib was also at my table but he showed up very late and lost QQ < AQ to Seiver and was gone.

After a while I kept hovering between push/fold and slightly above push/fold stack size.  When it was down to 4 players it was me, Isaac, Scott, and a local guy.  I doubled through Scott twice, with KQs > ATo, and AA > TT, then Isaac busted to the local.  I then busted Scott, AA > A6, and was heads up versus the local with about a 4:1 chip disadvantage.  I was still in that push/fold mode for most of the time heads up because I had 10-15bb or so.  In probably 100 hand I must have pushed on this guy like 40 times but he would never call.  He also open folded his sb only twice, and limped it the other 90% of the time.  Eventually he does call, and fortunately for me I have AKs, but he has AA and I’m gone.

I spent most of the next 10 days in bed with pretty bad allergy problems, but it finally cleared up a couple of days before the main event. I registered on the Friday that the main event started and then hit up the Pokerpalooza displays they have near the poker rooms.   JCarver works for PokerVT, and I’m a member there even though I haven’t ever really used my account, oops.  But that was where ultimatemike and a couple other goons were hanging out so I went there for a few hours before crashing.

When I first decided to play some events it was just going to be the two shootouts and that was it.  JCarver told me to play the main event because it’s the softest tournament of the year, but I wasn’t sure if anyone would back me for it.  Thanks to StefanProdan, EC10, and Unamuno buying the majority of my action, though, I was able to play it.  Unfortunately for them and me I got an incredibly tough table draw.

There were several PokerStars Supernova Elites at my table, including on my immediate left and immediate right.  Urindanger (Di Dang) was also at my table, and he struck up a chat with one of the other players and they reminisced about playing 25/50 on Party five years ago.  Nobody was over 30, everyone was pretty good.  Most people were tight but not afraid to play back.

Jeff Lisandro was at an adjacent table, so he got some camera time, especially since he won 3 bracelets this year.  2008 final tablist Dennis Phillips was nearby as well, complete with trucker fan contingent and trucker horn sounding off during level 1.  The call of “shuffle up and deal” was given by Barney Frank, and during the day I saw Norman Chad and Lon McEachern walking around.  In Lon’s case it was on crutches due to knee surgery.  I also got to see Phil Hellmuth’s entrance, which was pretty retarded.

During the first few levels of the main event I was really card dead except for a ton of pocket pairs, none of which ever flopped anything.  We started with 30k at 50/100 and I was down to 23k pretty quickly, then back up to 30k by the end of the second level.   Right before the end of the third level, and dinner break, I lost about half my remaining stack.  After coming back one of the SNEs, Richard “Tzen” Veenman, a limit grinder from the Netherlands, busted.  I figured the table would get easier at this point, but his replacement is Adam Junglen.  During the 4th level I 3bet urindanger’s CO open with AKs.  I have slightly more than a PSB after he calls, so I jam on a Q52r flop and he calls with AQo and that’s the end of me.

Despite not doing shit in WSOP events, I enjoyed the trip.  Bad Beats Crew members have about $1m in cashes this WSOP, and ultimatemike is still in the main event and in the money so good luck to him. I didn’t get to grind at all, but now that I’m back in Austin I am going to tear it up. If things go right I’ll be moving to Vegas at the end of August.  It would be very nice not to have to put my life on hold for 1-2 months for the WSOP every year and being so close to a bunch of other poker players I know, including BBC members, should be fun as well.

This is JCarver if you don’t know.

Vegas tomorrow, twitter updates here: http://twitter.com/PokerDerk

May was one hell of a month for me.  Full Tilt Poker kept doing triple point happy hours and I wanted to win the rake race on my affiliate, which is based on FTP points earned.  I had previously gotten 2nd twice, so for the first 25 days of the month I did nothing but play the happy hours.  On the 26th I saw that I was pretty close to the top of the high stakes SNG leaderboard, so I started grinding a bit more.  I think everyone else saw that they were pretty close too and started grinding a ton as well.  There was one point where the top 5 were separated by something like 750 points (about 4-5 hours of play).  So I went from playing 2-3 hours a day to playing 8-10 on the 26th.  From the 26th to the 29th I played 34 hours and went from being 2k points behind the leader, to being 2k points in front, which I think was enough to dissuade my competition from trying to catch me as I ended up not even having to play the 30th or 31st, and nobody else really did either.  All in all I wound up winning SNG high, the rake race, a ton of iron man medals and over half a million FTP points due to triple points happy hours. 

Now time to relax a bit and get ready for WSOP.  I’ll be in Vegas for a month starting June 8 and will be playing the two shootout events, a $1500 buyin and $5000 buyin, and hopefully the main event as well, if I can sell a bunch more of my action in it.

One of the mailing lists I’m on had a message the other day about those late night TV ads talking about companies that will give you a computer with no credit and monthly plans.  The conversation then turned to computer security and I started giving out some advice on security.  I realized I’ve basically regurgitated the same information to dozens of people over the past few years, updating as necessary.  So I figured I’d write it all down here.  Don’t worry, before I clicked buttons for a living I did get a couple of degrees in computer engineering.

When thinking about what’s necessary to make ones own system secure, it’s important to know what the system is used for and what sort of information is contained on it.  There’s a pretty big difference in the security needs of someone who just checks their email, versus someone who is active with chat programs and social networking sites, versus someone who uses their computer for their job.  Additionally with the case of poker players, they may be specifically targeted because people know that on their computer system is a way to get money easily.  All the poker clients transmit your login data securely, so even if you’re on an unsecured connection like public wireless you should be “safe”.  The greater threats come from within an unsecured system.

So, here are some things I recommend.  Even if you don’t play poker, these can be very useful things to know about/install/use.

• Use a router and make sure you understand most of the options and settings.  A properly configured router is good for stopping people from randomly checking out your ports, looking for things to attack, and useful for keeping an eye about what’s going on on your network.  Out of the box, a router is more effective for stopping external attacks than a software firewall is.  A lot of routers, like the Linksys WRT54GL can be flashed to use other firmware which will have more options, such as DD-WRT or Tomato.  If it’s wireless, be sure to actually set a key that’s not easy to guess, and use 802.11g (usually supports WPA or WPA2) only which is far more secure than 802.11b (usually supports WEP only).  Most routers that do b/g will let you disable b and WEP.  Of course, a wired connection will always be more secure than a wireless one, so even if you have a wireless router, try to use the wired ports on it if possible.
• Antivirus, of course.  I prefer AVG to things like Norton or McAfee, which have been attacked themselves and have issues with crashes, memory leaks, and network connectivity problems.  Daily/weekly scans are fine, but most will now auto-scan downloads from Firefox/IE, and will scan executable files as they are run/accessed by other programs, which is far more useful than scheduled scans.
• Occasional AdAware/Malwarebytes scans.  No need to buy anything to have a constant scan, just run it every now and then and of course if whenever you think something is wrong.
• Some sort of software firewall.  The Windows built in firewall is fairly decent now, and should be sufficient for most people.  I like ZoneAlarm’s extra controls and features, and it’s definitely useful if you have multiple computers on one router, especially if they are being used by other people.  Yes, just the free ZoneAlarm is fine.  Another option is Codomo.
• SnoopFree.  This will tell you any time a program attempts to take a screenshot or hook your keyboard.  With respect to poker players, some clients like PartyPoker used to take screenshots of your screen and send them in.  I presume this was to catch cheaters, but it still feels like a massive invasion of privacy.  I don’t think FTP, PokerStars, or Cake do this, but still it doesn’t hurt.  The keyboard hook should catch any software-based keyloggers.  There are a lot of false positives with this program (e.g. Cake Poker will hook your keyboard if you click on a dropdown box in their store) but you can whitelist them so you don’t get bothered in the future by known good programs.  This doesn’t work on Vista.
• TrueCrypt.  A couple of years ago they added full drive encryption.  Very user friendly, and I definitely don’t want something happening if my computer actually gets physically stolen.  This way if my computer does get stolen, I don’t ever have to worry about changing any email/bank/poker passwords.  In fact, if I decide to just give the hard drive to a friend, I wouldn’t even have to format it.  After the drive is encrypted it just asks you for a password on bootup.  (This is different from a BIOS password… if you just set a password in BIOS, your HDD can be removed and its contents won’t be encrypted).
• Backups are good, even if it’s just critical documents.  But you can use something like Norton Ghost to image an entire drive, or use a bootable linux CD/flash drive to do a byte-by-byte copy (which is just one line at the shell prompt).  This will help you avoid downtime if a disk goes bad or if your computer gets really screwed up by some virus/trojan that is not easily fixed.  If you’ve encrypted your hard drive with TrueCrypt and you do a backup with linux, the backup is already encrypted. If you just want to backup critical documents to a flash drive, you can encrypt the flash drive with TrueCrypt as well.
• If something does go wrong, use HijackThis to get relevant information about your computer and look at it or post it on a number of message boards to get advice.  It can even be useful to run it and save the files even if everything is OK so you have a control to compare against later if something does go wrong.
• Install and use free alternatives to commonly attacked programs, such as OpenOffice.org instead of Microsoft Office, and any number of alternatives to Adobe Acrobat PDF reader.
• Use different passwords, change them, make them hard to guess.  If necessary, there are programs which can help you securely keep track of passwords, such as KeePass.  You can also use multiple email addresses, which can also be easily managed by KeePass.
• Use a program like NetMeter to keep track of how much bandwidth you’re using.  Not only is it just generally interesting to look at, but you should get to know how much bandwidth you’re using and see if anything is out of the ordinary.  Strange internet usage should tip you off that something is up.
• If something is causing your computer to act weird, check out the task manager (accessible by hitting ctrl-alt-del on most Windows installs), or use Process Explorer to check things out.
• For unknown or untrusted programs, you should always use a sandbox environment if you do intend to run the program.  Like, something downloaded from 2+2 for example.  Sandboxes restrict access to other programs, memory, and the disk, so potentially harmful things can’t do any damage.  You can use a program like Sandboxie, or if you have your Windows install discs sitting around, you can install on a virtual machine using a program like VirtualBox.
• Do obvious common sense stuff like updating your computer frequently (Windows auto updater should work fine), updating software like IE/Firefox, and not downloading/running random things you find on the internet.
• Don’t let anyone use your computer but you if possible, even if it’s a restricted (non-administrator) account.  It makes it far far more difficult to know your computer is secure if someone else uses it.  This goes both ways, so you shouldn’t do anything involving any username or password on a computer belonging to someone else.  This includes email, poker, or instant messaging.

Of course, just using these things blindly isn’t going to help much.  Over time you get to know the quirks of your specific computer, and you just “know” when something isn’t right.  You should use these programs to prevent and analyze your computer both when things are fine and when they aren’t.

Let me know if I’m obviously leaving something out, or if you have something to add.  If it’s good info I’ll include it here.

Obligatory title for future rungood purposes, obviously.

I bought some computer stuff and a Nintendo DS this month, so poker playing is on the back burner for a while. So, I’m mostly just putting in points to keep iron man on FTP (I don’t want to spend medals on buying a month). After the win and two other 4-figure cashes last month, I’ve not cashed any of the last 30 tournaments I’ve played in. The little bit of coaching I got from JCarver was interesting, but I didn’t really end up getting anywhere in the SCOOP ME. I still think tournaments can be used as a catalyst to want to grind SNGs, so I may try to play the $50s next month or something.

On the video game front, I’ve already worked my way through Retro Game Challenge. Although I love and have fond memories of lots of old games, I generally dislike the collections that have come out in the past few years. This, however, is totally different. The plot involves being sent back in time and forced to play video games and complete certain challenges in each game. The games are all clones/parodies of existing games like Dragon Quest, Galaga, and Star Soldier, even down to the engrish in the games. You read game magazines and such to pick up tips and find out about the next games you’ll be playing as well. Plenty of humor and definitely worth playing. Namco Bandai can do no wrong, especially with the game-within-a-game genre. WarioWare: Touched! is fun, if short, but now I’m on to Dragon Quest V.

April 19 update: 2nd for $5500 in a tourney yay.