11 July 2008

Heads Up Freezeout vs Brandon Adams

In a few minutes I will be playing my friend Brandon Adams in a $100,000 No Limit Heads Up match with blinds of $300-600. We agreed to cancel our big tennis match on Monday, and instead, play this poker match tonight.

Brandon is a very good no limit player and it should be a great match. I am happy that I have been playing some No Limit lately against some very good players on Full Tilt, so my game is sharp.

We will be playing on Full Tilt naturally and the official start time is 11:30 pm Las Vegas time.

I will write about the match tomorrow, wish me luck!!

08 July 2008

WSOP Main Event

I will start with a little recap of my first day at the 2008 WSOP Main Event. I made it through day one for the second straight year which is good. It was a long day and everything was going great until the last hand of the night. I was close to the chiplead most of the day and was getting ready to bag my chips up and go home, but the last hand got me good. I had J6 on a J J 5 flop and got it all in on the flop, my opponent was leading with AJ and had me drawing dead on the turn when an Ace fell. It was the last hand of the night and instead of going home with around 110,000 I am going to start day 2 with 64,125. 64k is still a good stack and I will enjoy a few days off before day 2. Maya played Day 1a and she has around 70k in chips. We will both be playing tomorrow in Day 2a and hopefully we both survive to day 3.

I have taken a few days off tennis because I hurt my neck last week. It was so bad that I could only chip and putt at the golf course. Yesterday I finally could start hitting some woods and long irons and played some golf with Jani and Nick. Jani has hired a new caddie James, and unfortunately for us, he is helping Jani so much. Most people would call it a day after spending an afternoon golfing at TPC, well Jani and I needed a little more excitement. We bought the nicest seats available at the Forest Griffin vs Rampage Jackson UFC fight. Jani and I had a small bet on the fight and I had Griffin and he pulled off the upset. It was getting late, but whats a day without some poker. I headed over to the Bellagio and sat down in a nice little $4000-$8000 game with David, Eli, Rafi, and Mynh. While we were playing I was thinking to myself, I am living the dream, I golfed, went to a UFC fight, played in Bobby's Room, and the Wimbledon final will be on TV in a few minutes. 2 TV's in Bobbys Room started showing the Roger Federer vs Rafael Nadal Wimbledon final. I kept playing in the poker game, but was really watching the tennis. It turned out to be one of the greatest matches in Wimbledon history and was a pleasure to watch two of the greatest players battling to the end. I decided my day was complete and time to go home. I had booked a nice win and was halfway home when my phone rang. My agent, called and said I could meet Forest Griffin and Chuck Liddell over at the RIO if I wanted to. I am a huge MMA fan, and rushed over to the RIO to congragulate Forest and chat with the two before they played in the Main Event. It was a long day, but I could not have dreamed up a better day. I love Las Vegas, there is no other city in the world that can match it.

Brandon Adams and I had agreed to play our match at the Wynn Golf Course. I was allowed to pick three courses, and he would select the final one. I chose TPC Summerlin, Bears Best, and the Wynn. TPC is my home course, but it is also very tough. Bears Best is my least favorite, because it has very tough rough and I have a lot of difficulty chipping out of it. The Wynn is my favorite, and last time we played there, Brandon stormed off the course after 9 holes with me up around $70,000.

Well we had to make a change today, due to some unusual circumstances. We had a practice round today at the Wynn. Brandon, Jani, Nick, my agent Chris, and myself. We paid a small fortune to play, greens fees were over $2000 when it was all said and done. The troubles started before we teed off the first tee, the assistant golf pro Greg said we could not have our own caddies. We all have personal caddies we pay to come wherever we golf to help us and caddie.

The Wynn provides their own caddies, which is fine, we just told him to stay out of the way and let us do our thing. We were all playing for big money and everyone brought their own caddie. The assistant pro drove around the course spying on us seeing if our personal caddies were staying in the cart like they were told. Well I pay Jimmy and felt that he should be able to help me read greens, clean my clubs, and do normal caddie duties. On about the 5th hole they threw our caddies off the course. I could not believe what I was seeing. The Wynn staff treated us so poorly no one could believe it. You can bet every penny you have that the next time I lose 1 million dollars at the craps table, it will not be at the Wynn.

So Brandon and I decided to play our match at TPC, my home course. Because I have a little edge there, if Brandon wins, he gets $110,000 and if I win, I get $100,000. Brandon is starting to play better so I am the underdog.

We will be playing our tennis match the day after the golf, around the 14th of July. It should be a fun two days and hopefully I can win both of them and make a nice little profit.

I should have a new video blog coming out soon as well, so check www.rawvegas.com for that as well.