The Life and Times of Shannon Shorr

ShannonShorr.com

2006-06-04T18:45:00.000-05:00

I am no longer posting at this site. Please visit ShannonShorr.com

Nice Tuesday + last post at blogspot

2006-05-31T02:07:00.000-05:00

This is the last post I'll be making at this address. Starting tomorrow I'm going to be blogging at www.shannonshorr.com. This is my official website, and it's officially launched as of right now. It was a little bit cooler of an idea when I was final tabling every main event in sight, but I still like the idea of it.

Today was nice. I woke up around noon and started getting some stuff together for school registration. I had to go and officially get re-admitted. There is a 24 hour waiting process before I can register, so I should be able to sign up for classes tomorrow. I'm either going to take 13 or 16 hours. 13 hours would allow for me to have a lot more free time, obviously, but if I take 13 hours I'm NEVER going to finish school. So, I'll sleep on that and then make a decision. After that I came home and went for a run and then played some poker. Poker went well. I played 350 hands at +$1757. It was really hot outside when I ran though, and I think I almost died. Finally, Anthony, Matt and I smoked a Romeo y Julietta cigar and went bowling.
We got 9 games in the "all-you-can-bowl session," and I averaged about 130 over those 9 games. I came home and got 650 more hands of poker in and lost 81 bucks.

Poker totals:
1000 hands...+$1676

Thanks to everyone for your support while I posted here at Blogspot. Also, a special thanks to Grant Summerlin of Hixson, TN for doing my webpage at shannonshorr.com. He did a great job, and if anyone needs help with a page let me know, and I'll put you through to him.

Memorial day weekend wrap up

2006-05-30T02:25:00.000-05:00

First...Here's a cool interview I did with a University of Alabama student named Tricia Masucci. The interview was for Alabama Public Radio. The opening lines is a recording of my thoughts as I played a set of SnGs while she was present...
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wual/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=898166

The weekend was nice. It was very relaxing to spend some time on the lake and great to spend some time with my mom. I feel asleep on a float on the lake though and got pretty sunburned :( I finally made it back to Tuscaloosa around 10 pm. It's so nice to be back at the apartment. I haven't been here in about 3 weeks. I played 1000 hands at 3/6 tonight for a relatively even -$765. Over 20 hours at 3/6 NL I'm making about $200/hour. I guess that is pretty decent for a beginner at that level. The month of May has gone pretty well for me. The only real dark spot was blanking the Paradise $5k event. I'm just shy of +5 figures on the month, and I will definitely get there by the end of the month. It's 2 am right now, and I'm trying to decide if I want to play 500 more hands or not.

Some congratulations:

a) Congratulations to Isaac Moyales de Vega. Moyales upended me in the round of 16 at the WHUPC and went on to win the whole thing for 125000Euros ($170,000 USD). I knew he was going to be very tough to beat. The 25 year old was an outstanding H/U player.

b) Congratulations to Ramzi "Karolina23" Jelassi. My good friend went on to win the 1000E freezeout the night that I bubbled. Officially, the winner of that event would make 56200E, but they most likely made a deal at the final table. Hopefully he pocketed $52000+ USD. I'll update after I talk to him.

c) Finally, Congratulations to 22 year old U of Alabama grad student Tracy Bumpus. Tracy finished second in the $500 Ladies Event at the WSOP circuit event in New Orleans last week. For her efforts, she banked about $8,000.

I'm going to try to get 8-10,000 hands in at 3/6 this week. I'm continuing to learn things every session I play. The main focus for me this week isn't going to be poker though. I'm going on a huge diet/fitness binge. 5 months of drinking 70% of the nights, eating huge meals, and playing lots of poker can take a toll on the body :(

EDIT: I played 500 more hands at +$623.

Hangin' out

2006-05-28T10:34:00.000-05:00

So, it's Sunday morning. I had a little change of plans for the weekend. I decided to come down to our lake house with my mom in Clanton, AL. My mom and her brothers and sisters just bought some new property, so I'm going to help them with some preparatory things. It's a bit of a 180 degree change to go from big city life in Barcelona, Spain to the calm, relaxing Clanton, Alabama.

I'm staying here until Monday (Memorial Day), so I won't be playing any poker until then. The internet connection here is dial-up, and it probably would be best not to play on it. I lost about $1800 Saturday night after I got home :(

Sidenote:
I've made a huge decision that has been one of the toughest I've faced in my life. I've decided to re-enroll in school for the Fall of 2006 at The University of Alabama as a civil engineering student. There is only one condition that will prevent that: If I win $500,000+ at Lake Tahoe or Vegas I won't return. I plan on registering for classes as early as Tuesday or Wednesday when I get back to Tuscaloosa. It is undoubtedly a bad short term financial decision for me to re-enroll in school, as I have no intention of using my degree. It's not about that though. I actually miss school and I feel like you get a lot more respect in life if you have a degree. Also, it will give me a chance to get back into some of my other interests, and it will return some normalcy to my life. I'm just going to chip away at my final four semesters. I definitely will not be in school in the Spring or Summer of '07 because there are tons of great events those semesters. I'm still going to consider myself a poker player by trade. I'm looking forward to it though. I'll post my 2006 Fall schedule upon receiving it.

I'd be interested in hearing some of your opinions, good or bad, about my decision to re-enroll. Please comment or email me shorr002@bama.ua.edu. I'm not sure I'm going to be easily swayed, however.

BHM

2006-05-26T21:55:00.000-05:00

Well it's Friday night, and I made it safely home to Birmingham. I may or may not play some poker tonight. I'm pretty tired and am probably just going to go to bed.

The flight back from BAR to ATL was ok. I was seated next to a lovely 20 year old girl from Monterrey, Mexico. We talked the majority of the marathon flight. She was in BAR studying abroad for the entire semester. When we got to ATL it took like an hour to get through the 57 security checkpoints. Finally, I learned my flight to BHM was going to be delayed 30 minutes, so I got 200 hands of 3/6 in for +$200. One hand was pretty funny. I got all-in with AA after a flop of Ah Th 5s for like a $1200 pot and the other guy had QJhh. He blanked out, but called me something to the extent of "a lucky F*@#." I was unaware getting in with the nuts after the flop and then holding makes you lucky :)

I'm looking forward to relaxing and making a feeble attempt to do some physical activity this weekend and next week.

Thanks for everyone for offering his or her support via my blog while I was competing in Barcelona.

SS

Bubbled the $1000 event

2006-05-25T22:08:00.000-05:00

It's hard for me to put in words the pain I'm feeling after I just finished 22nd in the 144 person 1000 Euro event. The top 18 got paid and would play tomorrow, giving me an extra day in Barcelona. There were lots of interesting hands, but I'm in no mood to talk about them. As always, I'm playing to win the tournament. I could give a damn about squeaking into 18th place and making 700 Euros. I'm playing to win the 50000 Euros. I had right at average stack as we came back from the break after level 12. I had 32,000 and blinds were 1/2000 (200). I was playing on one of the two 7-handed tables. I made it 5200 to go UTG with KcQh. The button looked at his cards and called fairly quickly, and the blinds folded. The flop was golden, Qc9c7c. I move in instantly for 26,500 into the 15k pot. He calls me even faster with T8cc. I'm absolutely in shock. Talk about getting cold-decked. So, I had 7 outs at first glance. I noticed that he had 2 of my outs blocked though because the Jc or 6c would give him a straight flush. Thus, I had 5 outs. The Ac,2c,3c,4c, or 5c. The turn gave me more outs. The Queen of diamonds. I missed the 15 outter though and just like that I'm out after the 5d rolls off the river. Marcel Luske and my Swedish friends Karolina23 and LittleM0lly both were in the final 21.

So, instead of being happy and changing my flight to Saturday I'm headed back tomorrow night. I'll be in Birmingham around 8 p.m. central.

This place is great, and I really enjoyed hanging out with Adam and Dave. Also, we met tons of cool Swedish kids and got to do a lot of cool stuff.

Final numbers on the trip:
May 17: +$3218 online
May 18: +$1676 online, +$140 live
May 19: +$2900 live (Satellite into main event)
May 20: -$1400 live
May 21: +$ 480 live, -$1200 online
May 22: -$726 online, -3333 live, also playing WHUPC
May 23: EVEN (playing WHUPC)
May 24: +$3200 live (WHUPC)
May 25: -$1400 live

Total: +$3557 (+2970 online, +587 live)
Hours of work: 45.5
Hourly rate: $78/hour

After the $1200 plane tickets and $1200 or so in hotel rooms the trip amounted to a fun time with a tiny bit of profit.

Not great, but I'll take it.

I fly out in just a few hours at 1:05 pm. I'll probably sleep the entire weekend in Birmingham and then go back to Tuscaloosa to work next week. My 21st Birthday is the following Wednesday, and we plan on heading out to lake Tahoe for the WSOP circuit event on that Thursday.

Goodbye Barcelona,
SS

Out of the WHUPC in round of 16

2006-05-24T14:30:00.000-05:00

I'm out of The Worlds Heads-Up Championship in the round of 16. I got paid 5000€ for my efforts. That amounts to about $6750 USD. In my first round match I disposed of Juris Bonders in 100 minutes exactly. He jumped out to an early 25k-15k lead after I bluffed off some chips. I flopped a set of 3s on a 36J board though and took a 24/16 lead. On the last hand of level 2 I picked up another nice pot with KT on a final board T6834. Juris called on the end and showed me a ten, so it turns out I could've gotten more chips, not that it mattered...
I took a 33/7 lead into the 10 minute break and finished him off 40 minutes later all-in preflop with 22 vs his A8o. I flopped him almost dead with 266 and that was that.

This clinched atleast 5000€. The next match would be against Isaac Mayolas de Vega. Isaac put his opponent away in the round of 32 on the first hand of the match. I'd seen him play a little bit previously and knew he was a very good H/U player. We got underway and he quickly grinded me down to about 13,000. He was very aggressive and rarely folded to my preflop raises. My hat is off to him. He is outstanding, and I'm willing to admit he outplayed me H/U. At blinds 150/300 I limped from the button with J2dd. The flop came AdKcJs. Isaac led for 400 and I called. The turn was a 5d. Isaac checked to me, and I quickly bet 1000. He called. The river was great, the Td. Isaac checked and I finally decided to bet 3700. He pondered and finally called and showed me the Qs after I showed. Later, I picked up AKo on the button and made it 1100 at blinds 2/400. Isaac called and the flop came A56 rainbow. He checked to me and I bet 1600. He checkraised it to 3600 and after an acting-job I finally made it 7200. He folded fairly quickly. I stole some more pots and had as much as a 30/10 chip lead at one point. Here is where things start to go wrong though...
In the last couple minutes at 200/400 I raised to 1300 with K2hh. He called. The flop came QhQs2s. Isaac checked to me and I bet 1900. He fairly quickly moved all-in for 8200. I pondered for almost 5 minutes and finally decided to call. He showed me TT :( I was about 90% certain he didn't have a pair. He had been reraising me a lot preflop, so I assumed he would reraise me with any pair. I thought he most likely had a hand like T2 or an Ace-x flush draw. I also knew he was very capable of moving it all-in with just something like A8 on that board. It became very evident that he was planning on trapping preflop though after the hands were flipped over. I was certain of one thing, he didn't have a Q. I blank out and he doubles through to 20k. 5 minutes into the 3/600 blinds I called a raise with T7dd and the flop comes AdTs6d. I check called the flop and check called the turn when the 8c came off. The river was an offsuit 2 and after much deliberation by both of us, it finally went check-check and he showed me A4 :( I was down to about 10k. On the final hand I found 2 red tens on the button. I limped in and he made it 1700. I made it 5800 and he set me in for my last 4200 which I obviously called off. I get colddecked and he has JJ :( I blank out and am out of the tournament. Mayolas de Vega is going to be very, very tough to beat in this tournament. It's frustrating to make it so deep in the tournament and just come away with 5000, but it was a great tournament and an even greater experience. I'm pretty sure if I get through the Spaniard I would have a good shot at making it to the finals to play, possibly, Carlos Mortensen. After the $150 tip I left for the staff, I ended up profiting 4430€ after my investment in the satellite. Tomorrow night at 18:00 there is a $1000 freezeout tournament which we plan on playing. We're going to get some sleep and probably go to the beach tomorrow. Unless I make the final table of the 1000€ event (2 day event), I leave here on Friday afternoon. This is a very neat city, and I'm happy to atleast take some momentum of cashing in another main event into the WSOP.

Shannon

Moving on...Juris Bonders next

2006-05-23T22:34:00.000-05:00

Well, wow. What a day. We didn't wake up until 5:30 pm for my 7 pm match against Jan-Peter Jachtmann. It took 140 minutes, but what a match it was...

Jan, a German suit wearing gent, came into the match with what was probably some momentum after knocking off Luske. I can recall abt 5 important pots in the match, but I prob could recall more if I didn't drink until daylight :) .....

Abt the 10th hand in I had A9hh and made it 1400 after he limped for 400 at 2/400. He called. The flop came down 8h5h4s. I led for 1300 and he quickly made it 2600. I pondered and finally made it 5600. He reluctantly called. The turn was the 8s. It's hard to interpret this card. Obv he probably doesn't have an 8. I checked and he immediately rapped the table behind me. The river brought the 6s and it eventually went check-check and he showed me A5 for a very good call on the flop. I'll give Jan credit, he kept me second-guessing every decision I made. A few minutes later I opened one up on the button with 8d5c. Jan called and the flop came down 9h8h2d. Jan checked and I bet 1100. Jan checked raised it to 2200, and I called with the intention of seing what the turn brought. The turn brought a scary Qd. Jan led for 1k and I pondered and made it 3300 with the intention of representing JT. He called :( The river was the Td for a final board of 9h8h2dQdJd. Jan checked and I bet 3000. He made me sweat for 3 minutes and made a fantastic (or donkish) call with 9d7h. I was down to 6k (5.3:1 disadvantage). We went to a 10 minute break and Icame back and doubled after I limp-reshoved with AQo against JTss for a sweaty FB of xxxSxSx. Soon after I called a raise with A8o. This was a turning point in the tournament. The flop came down Q8x. I led and Jan called. When I flat called the flop I intended to checkraise any AK8765432 for all of my chips. The turn came an Ace and I checked. Jan bet 1k and I instantly sent my 3400. Jan beat me in with Q8. It turned out I got very lucky :) I sweated a outter (it usually gets there), but I held. Finally after a dinner + cerveza break we got it in with my K6ss on a board of AsJsTh against his JT. He held the coinflip to double to 15k. Next, I called a raise to 2200 with blinds 4/800. I had 97hh. The flop was exciting, 7s6h4h. I checked and Jan instantly sent 3x the pot. I called almost before he said all-in. Jan showed QsJd and I had him in a WORLD of hurt. The turn beamed the 2h nutting me against his 4 outter, and it was all over. Like I said, I'll give Jan-Peter credit, but like most Europeans I think he lacked respect for Americans. Either that or he was determined to out play me every pot. He showed constant limp-limp 9 high bluffs (Usually the best hand).

Nonetheless, it feels really good to overcome an 11:2 chip disadvantage to win. I play at 15:00 and if I win I play at 17:00 or 21:00 tomorrow. I railed the Latvian-born (that's really a country?) Bonders for a while in his marathon match and he appeared weak tight. I was actually able to see some of his hole cards from the rail. A win tomorrow clinches 5K E.

::Waits for grammatical criticism::

SS

Moving on...Jan-Peter Jachtmann next

2006-05-22T12:58:00.000-05:00

In what must've been the shortest match of the tournament, I moved on to the second round by beating Juan Durin in just 18 minutes and 10 hands. Juan was a true gentleman and a Barcelona local. We traded some very small pots for the first 6 hands with the button winning almost all of them. I picked up JTdd and made it 550 on the button with blinds 1/200. Juan called. The flop came down Kc 9d 4d. Juan checked and I bet 650. He called. The turn brought the 6s and he checked again. I felt he was weak and maybe had just a 9, so I bet 1200. He quickly called. The turn was nice, the Kd, giving me a flush. I still was rather sure he had just a 9 though. He checked and I pondered and eventually bet 1625. He didn't take long to call and I showed my flush. He mucked, so I'm not sure what he had. Two hands later I ended the match. I limped on the button with 2 red tens and the intention of reraising. Juan made it 800 and I quickly made it 2350. Juan called. The flop beamed Ks Tc 4s, just beautiful. Juan checked and I bet 2050. He grabbed a mountain of red 1000 chips and made it 9000? I quickly said all-in and he called off his last 7000 or so with KQcc. I knew I had him about 10:1, but I wasn't out of the woods yet. Of course the turn card is a sweat, the 6c. The river comes off black, but it's the 6s, and I move on.

I went to rail to watch the Jan-Peter Jachtmann and Marcel Luske match after that. I would be playing the winner. Somewhat suprisingly Jan-Peter disposed of Marcel in 1 hour. They got it all-in for a rather big pot with Jan's 44 vs Marcel's AJ and the window card was a 4. I'd met Jan the night before, and he knew that I would potentially be his next round match. I stood with other spectators right behind the rail. If nothing else I wanted to get it in his head that I had observed his style of play. The German was constantly looking over his shoulders because I think he thought I could see his cards. I couldn't and wasn't trying to, but it was pretty funny to see how nervous he was. Also before my match Dave, Adam and I railed Charles "THE___END" Kassin against H/U circuit standout, Woody Deck. Kassin, a 19 year old 5'3"ish former $100/200 NL player,talked as much trash live as he does online :) Deck called off a TON of chips at one point with ATcc and was all-in against Kassin's 99. A final board of KQxAx though doubled Deck and he eventually moved on. I'm heading back to the casino now though to eat dinner and maybe play some side games or online. Tomorrow's match is at 19:00 local time (Noon CDT).

Sunday

2006-05-21T23:24:00.000-05:00

Today was nice. Dave and I woke up around 2 and walked around the city for a little while. We got into the city where all Spain's illegal immigrants sell items similar to what you'd find in a U.S. thrift store. They all have their items laid out on sheets that they can quickly roll up if the cops come. The cops came by and all of them scattered. It was pretty hysterical. We watched one guy run away from a motorcycle cop through the streets of Barcelona. After that we ate at a neat little place called "Sandwich and Friends." Finally, we headed to the casino. We were pleasantly surprised to see Dave still left in the tournament with double the average stack and 40 players remaining. He cashed in 11th and banked about 1000€. I never got anything going in the 540€ event. It was kind of depressing. There was a super hyper-aggressive Swede immediately to my right who was opening every pot. If this was a deep stack tournament I'd obviously be reraising him a bunch. Unfortunately if I made a play at a pot though I'd have to commit my whole stack. I raised some pots from MP with hands like KTcc and T7hh and then got raised when I continuation bet :( I was down to 1500 chips out of the 3000 starting bank when our table broke. About 5 levels in and at my new table my bust hand occured. There had been a ton of limping at this table and I had an extremely tight image at this one as well. The UTG+1 player limped and so did UTG+3 for 200 each. I found 56cc in the cutoff, and it looked like a great opportunity to pick up 700 chips. I sent my 1500 and get called in both spots?! Both players had AJo. Oooook. To tease me, the dealer ran off a final board of 2c 4c x x x, so I was sent to the rail. I came back to the hotel and played 10 $520s H/U on stars and went 4-6 :( I did run very badly though, getting 5 outted after the flop 3 times. Adam Geyer arrived and we went to the casino. I played some 5/10€ NL and beat it for 900€. We met up with THE___DRY (really cool guy) and had a drink at a bar then headed home. It's 6:15 am now, so I should probably get some sleep before my 5 pm local time (10 am US central time) match against Juan Sastre Durin.

PS H/U results...Opponent :(My result, Level match ended):

Jukeboxlo: (W, 1)
Moledaddy: (L, 2)
TheCamel: (L, 3)
Iftarii: (W, 1)
Iftarii: (W,2)
Iftarii: (L, 2)
Iftarii: (L, 4)
Thomas "Buzzer1404" Bihl: (W, 1)
Thomas "Buzzer1404" Bihl: (L, 3)
Iftarii: (L, 3)

Heads up info/1000+50€

2006-05-21T09:05:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I woke up around 2 and eventually headed to the casino for the start of the 4 pm 1000+50€ freezeout. Dave slept through it because he logged a session online from 5-10 am the night before. When the event started it turned out it was super structured. There were 139 players and 5000 starting chips with blinds starting at 20/40. I busted in about 100th in the third hour though after I got a bunch of chips in the middle with AQo and lost 80% of my stack. A good Swedish player in the cutoff opened for 400 and I quickly made it 1400 with AQo on the button. He pondered, sized up the chip stacks, and eventually moved in for 4400 total. I actually didn't take much time and called off 3000 more of my 4500 stack. It just felt really weird to me. I thought he had a hand like AJ, AT or maybe even A9 and was putting me on a play. I had been very active at the table to that point. He flips up KK though, wow. I blank out and am down to 1500 before I eventually shove AJo into KK again with blinds 1/200.

We ate a great buffet dinner that they put on for the players and then it was time for the H/U drawings. I am in bracket 4, so I don't play my H/U match until Monday at 5 pm. I drew a Spanishman named Juan Sastre Durin in the first round. I did some research and it turns out he finished 16th out of maybe 64 players in the 2004 H/U event. Here is the interesting thing though. If I win my first round match I play the winner of Jan Peter Alfred Jachtgmann and a guy you may have heard of, Marcel Luske :) Playing Marcel H/U would be really, really sweet. I'll have more updates later. We're off to the casino for a 500€ freezeout.

Yep, rolling

2006-05-19T22:54:00.000-05:00

Things continue to go well. I woke up around 2:30 pm and took the metro train into the city to a jewelry shop to try to get some links taken out of a duty-free watch I bought on the plane to Barcelona. I made a feeble attempt to speak some Spanish and eventually found my way to a jewelry shop that didn't open until 5 pm. How weird is that? I couldn't wait around because of the live satellite into the main event. I came back to the hotel and Dave and I headed to the casino. Unfortunately, the World H/U poker championship main event was already sold out. I was planning on direct buying into the event and then playing the 100€ R+A satellite for cash. This meant I HAD to win a seat in the satellite to play the H/U event. There were 87 entrants and nothing really interesting happened involving me until the third hour. I got in f0r 80% of my chips against an extremely reckless Spanish female player with AKo vs her 33? The window card was an Ace and it rolled off A45 for sweat. I held and ranked amongst the chip leaders with 50 players left. After the rebuy period they announced that 12 players would get a seat (or the cash equivalent, 2600€). I lost some pots and was down to avg. with about 25 players left in what was now a freezeout. With 20 plyrs left I had abt an average chip stack and opened for 4k on the button with A8o and blinds 8/1600 (200). The SB shipped 6500 in, and of course I called. He showed 99. I lucksacked my way into a final board of 88xJx though. This was sufficient chips enough to coast into the final 13. Wait though...with 13 plyrs left the tournament director shocks us all by announcing that they only alloted for 8 seats to be given out via the satellite. If some players were willing to take the cash then their chips would be taken off the table and we would play it out with the remaining players to see who actually got the seat instead of the 2600€. 3 of the 12 players elected to take the cash. That meant the 9 of us had to play a final table. After one elimination, we would all get seats. It only took abt 15 minutes after a short stack shoved 66 from the SB into another shorty's instacall with AQcc in the BB. The ultimate short stack bricked out on a final board of xc xc x 6 x board, so I got a seat. After that Dave (who busted the 20/40 game for 25BB) and I went across the street to the Barcelona club/bar scene. It is really sick. We had a blast, and I'm sure we're going to have a lot of fun there in the nights to come. Tomorrow entails a 1000€ freezeout at 16:00 and then the drawing for the H/U matches at 21:00. We have to check out at this hotel in the morning at 12:00 pm and it's 6 am and daylight right now. It's going to suck. Also, I saw some of my Swedish friends Karolina24, littlem0lly and Morbo. Also, SnG sensation "THE____DRY" and the loud, obnoxious, yet cool "THE____END" are in town. I've yet to meet them though. If possible, I'm going to try to get in some $200 and $500 H/U SnGs on PokerStars in preparation for the event. It's such a great time here. I think it may pass Australia for "best time" award if things keep going well. Of course, I'm partial to Oz :)

World Heads-Up Poker Championship Payout Structure
(128 players):

1st: 128.000€
2nd: 60.000€
3-4: 25.000€
5-8: 11.250€
9-16: 5.000€

Sidenote: I've had a few drinks and probably made some mistakes, so if my jealous blog grammar critic could correct all my grammatical typos it would be very much appreciated. I know that grammatical correctness is the most imperative thing my readers look for in my poker blog. Also, NSXT2 is not "a kid."

Keep sending it,
SS

Running good and having fun

2006-05-18T22:14:00.000-05:00

Dave and I didn't wake up until about 7 pm tonight. We showered and headed out to an authentic Spanish restaurant nearby. Spanish food is much different than Mexican food. The meal was rather good and unbelievably low priced. We got a full meal for 12 €. After that we walked to the casino. It's about a 13-15 minute walk from our hotel. We got inside and found out that you HAVE to wear long pants and closed shoes, so Dave had to walk back to the hotel to change. I played some roulette while we waited for our seat at the 20/40 fixed limit game in the poker room. I broke even over about 30 spins. Strangely, there were only 2 cash game tables running. Hopefully more will run as players start to arrive for the tournaments. Over the 3 hour session I beat the 20/40 game for just under 3 bets, 105€. Finally, I came back to the room and busted up 3/6 NL over 500 hands for $1660. I'm really starting to love that game. It's 5:05 a.m. local now and time to go to sleep.

Until tomorrow,
Shannon

In Barcelona, finally

2006-05-18T05:16:00.000-05:00

Trip12s and I just got to our room at The H10 Marina de Barcelona hotel. It's 12:10 pm local time here. Barcelona is 7 hours ahead of US Central Time. Right before the flight Dave and I both got really good sessions online in. I busted up 3/6 NL for a sweeeeeeeet +$3800 over just 675 hands. I think I'm really learn how to manipulate players into giving me their whole stack when I have the best hand. I think that is going to be the key to my success in those games. Dave beat 30/60 H/U and ring games for +$1k. When we got to Barcelona we hopped a cab to the casino to get advice on where to stay. We roamed around the streets of Spain for half an hour before finally finding this hotel. They could only book us for tonight and tomorrow night, unfortunately. They said something may come available for the remaining nights if we check in later though. We're about to catch a nap and then see what this city has to offer. Our hotel is very neat with a view of the city from the 4th floor. We're excited about it...

In Atlanta

2006-05-17T16:02:00.000-05:00

I just touched down at the Atlanta International Airport in preparation to leave for Barcelona tonight. Dave Anderson should be meeting me here at the gate any minute. We're both really excited about this trip. It should be pretty sweet.

Since getting home from Bahamas I haven't played much. I did a media interview and photo shoot with Birmingham Magazine yesterday that took most of the day. I've played 1800 more hands at 3/6 and lost 2000 bucks, but I'm still up about $2k over my first 3800 hands of 3/6. I've heard from some people that the most you can make per hand at 3/6 NL over the long term is somewhere around 80 cents. I'm going to get 20,000 hands in and see how it looks after that. As I sit here in the airport, I'm going to get about 1200 hands in hopefully before we board the flight. I'm making a few mistakes that are pretty natural I'm sure for a beginner at NL cash. I'm going to start giving people credit for having hands when I get checkraised a little bit more often. I've tried to resteal a couple of times and lost my whole stack on a bluff. Updates to come from Barcelona...

Wrapping things up

2006-05-15T02:28:00.000-05:00

It's 3 am Monday morning. John and I head back to the states at 11 a.m. tomorrow.

The trip has been fantastic. We had a blast enjoying the great weather and just relaxing. Today I went jet skiing and that was goot time. I had a sick time hanging out with Apathy, durrr and OkemosGod. I'm sure we'll be seeing lots of them in the near future. This place has got to be the most expensive resort in the world. We spent an unfathomable amount of money but enjoyed every minute of it :)

There is going to be a major transformation in my daily poker habits. I've decided to, atleast for a month or so, switch to no limit cash games. I have very little experience playing them, however. I've been talking to lots of other young pros here and it seems that NL cash is definitely where the money is. SnG will eventually dry up, so I need to learn NL cash for a number of reasons. It's a lot more convenient for travel and playing on shaky connections because I can get my hours in and get out. I don't have to wait around until primetime hours to get the $530s in. I think I could have a great future in NL cash. The fact that there is so much postflop play caters to what I feel is my strength in the game. I played my first ever legitimate session of NL cash tonight and 4 tabled shorthanded 3/6 from 10 pm- 3 am and absolutely crushed it. I beat it for $4100 over 2000 hands. I must say it's a lot more interesting than SnG. It's absolutely mentally and emotionally stimulating. I'm not sure at what point I'm going to move up to 5/10. I'm really not in a big hurry. I want to learn the ends and outs of shorthanded NL cash before I jeopardize any substantial portion of my bankroll in one session.

Back in the States tomorrow evening long enough to do some laundry and get a haircut before leaving for Barcelona for the World Heads-Up Poker Championship on Wednesday.

Ouch

2006-05-13T03:05:00.000-05:00

Play a 6 hour evening session of $530s at 3/3/7/34 for -$5910. I'm pretty sure I just ran bad. I can't remember winning many hands :(

Fuck!
SS

Out of $540

2006-05-12T13:50:00.000-05:00

Really weird tournament today. I'm out in 68th of 100 players. I got to my table and found that it was stacked.

Seat 2: Me
Seat 4: WSOP bracelet winner, Sean Rice
Seat 5: Online MTT great, leggggggy
Seat 9: Paradise Poker's NSXT2

NSXT2 is so nuts. I played with him in Australia and he didn't stop talking for an hour, and he did the same thing here. It's honestly impressive that he is able to talk for such a long period of time without shutting up. He looked at one card for almost the entire tournament and made his decisions without looking at the other until he was really forced to. I didn't play one hand the entire tournament other than completing from the SB and checking the BB. The hand I busted out on there was an UTG limper for 150, UTG+1 limped and I watched NSXT2 look at one card and splash a stack of chips in that amounted to 1650. I found 99 in the cutoff and sent my 1850 total. We started with 2500 in chips. NSXT2 calls the 200 more of course and turns over the card he'd looked at, a Queen. Amazingly he dramatically flips up the other card and unbelievably it is another Queen. The whole table can't believe it. I blank out and lose with 99 again :(

Other than that, things have been cool. I lost $2270 by going 0/1/1/7 last night at $530s. We then went to Carmines again for dinner. Finally, we went out to a club called Fluid and then ate some late night breakfast. We didn't make it back to Atlantis until around 5 am.

Also, Jon squeaked into the money in the main event and cashed in 45th place for his second straight main event cash. 45 places paid. He got it all-in on a blind vs blind hand with A5 vs AJ on a A96 flop that was impossible to get away from given his chip stack and the way the hand played out. Jon cashed $5k so we each got $250 of that.

Time to head to the beach.

Sweeeeeeeet online session

2006-05-11T01:51:00.000-05:00

Tonight was cool. I slept from like 4-7 and then we went out to eat at this really nice restaurant in Atlantis. We ended up dropping about $700 on dinner + wine. We're thinking our final bill for our room, dinner and drinks is going to be somewhere around $20,000 at the end of the week :( That is split 5 ways though, luckily. We went and played a live SnG which I busted out of for -$330. After that though I came over here to the lounge and bruised $530 for 3/1/1/5 and +$5230 which makes me feel really good. That makes up for the $5200 I lost by busting out of the main event. The last 4 or 5 times I've done really well at $530 I've been kind of drunk. As sick as it sounds, I think it may be advantageous to have had some alcohol before playing $530 to loosen up on shoves late in the game. +$810 on the trip so far. There is a $500 tournament here that I'm going to play on Friday, so maybe I'll do well in that.

No worries,
SS

Out

2006-05-10T14:37:00.000-05:00

I'm out. Such a frustrating day... Right after the break I got trapped in a blind vs. blind hand and gave away about 2k bluffing with 94ss. I sat around for a while and played 96ss like a maniac until I was down to 2600 in chips. Finally the cutoff opened for 600 at the 100/200 (25) level and I instashipped my 9h9s. He called even faster with KhKd. I blanked out on a final board of xh xh xh xh 9c to add insult to injury. Not sure what the plan is for the rest of the trip. Hopefully Jon will win the thing.

jkfls;gdlkfjlkfsdj'glk

2006-05-10T13:16:00.000-05:00

Down to 4875 at the end of level 2. Each level is 1 hour and we take a 15 minute break every other level. I played 3 interesting hands in the first 2 hours. I got crippled 30 minutes into level 2...

The UTG raiser made it 200 (min raise) and got called in 2 spots. I flipped the extra $100 chip in from the BB with AsQh.
The flop came down QQ7 with 2 diamonds. I led a weak lead into the 3 other players (225). The UTG raiser made it 500 quickly so I put him on KK or AA. The first caller in MP ponders and finally cold calls the 2 bets. The other caller folded and I fairly quickly made it 1800 total. The UTG raiser groaned and folded and then the caller moved in fairly quickly for 4400 more. I actually considered folding here. The guy has 1 of 3, maybe 4, hands. Ace-face suited in diamonds, AQ, 77, or KQ. I pondered for a bit and then called and of course he has 77 for a made full house. I brick out and was down to 3900. A few hands later I played 88 really weird but won a $2200 pot on a final board of KxxAx when I bet the river and he folded. Finally, I avoided going broke against Matthias who was also short. I opened with from MP for 325 and he made it 900. I pondered and finally flat called. The flop came Kxx with 2 spades. I had the JsJh. The turn came a blank spade and we checked both streets to that point. The river came the Kh and I checked and he finally checked behind me. I was a little surprised he checked the river. I'm not certain I would've called though. He turns over QQ for the winner. I'm ok. I hope to be at 12-13k at the end of level 4.

Day 1a over

2006-05-09T22:41:00.000-05:00

Day 1a is finally over and Jon is the lone player in our crew still alive. He finished the day at 49,500. I think 48 of the 162 players who started day 1a survived, so Jon is about 15k over the average which is sweet.

I spent the evening playing 8 $530s online at 1/1/2/4 for +$1760 and one $550 live SnG which I busted in for a total of +$1210 on the day. It's 12:00, so I'm probably gonna go chill in the room and watch the end of the Dallas/San Antonio game then go to sleep and get ready for tomorrow.

This just in...

2006-05-09T17:25:00.000-05:00

Jon must have gone on a tear over the last couple hours because he is now one of the overall chipleaders at $55,000 in chips. Peter is close to average from what I could tell.

Day 1a...part 1

2006-05-09T17:17:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately Tom "Durrr" Dwan and Andrew "OkemosGod" Robl were eliminated in the early going, so only 2 others besides myself remain from our crew. I may try to buy some of my action back from the guys who've been eliminated if we can work out some sort of deal. Jon and Apathy are actually seated at the same table right now as they round out level 5. We're going to get some dinner at Carmines Italian and hopefully they'll both have a strong finish. I spent most of the day out by the beach and pool and railed everyone for a little bit. The field looks relatively younger than most of the live events that I've played, for some reason. Maybe players at Paradise, as a whole, are younger...which is kind of a bad thing. I'm not sure Jon and Peter's chip counts, but I will update them later tonight. I'm feeling very confident about how I'm going to do tomorrow. A touch of bad news though...A Swedish friend of mine, 18 year old online phenom, Mattias "Matkov" Lannermark is going to be at my table tomorrow. He is in the 8 seat and I'm in the 6 seat. He probably won't put up with me opening TONS of pots. I will have to mix it up a little more.

Some other notable day 1 exits:
Ozzy87
Jeff Sealey
PP $530 player, Enigma4u4me

Not playing 'til Wednesday

2006-05-09T03:41:00.000-05:00

I drew Day 1b, so I actually won't be playing until Wednesday. I haven't really thought about the advantages/disadvantages of playing after half the field has already played. We'll see how it goes. Of the 5 in our crew, I'm actually the only one who is playing on Wednesday. It's like 4 am, so I probably will sleep through the start of the other guys' playing tomorrow. The event starts at noon. Poker is EXTREMELY boring to watch if you can't see the hole cards, so I'll probably catch some rays during the day with some of my other friends that I've seen down here. It turns out 5th place finisher at Aussie, Jeff Sealey is down here. It was cool to see him and have a couple'a drinks and reminesce about the final table at the party we had tonight. We're having a blast here. We went out to Senor Frog's in the mainland tonight.

I grinded out some poker from 12-4. Did it at 2/2/2/16 for -$1660. 3 bubbles was kinda frustrating :(

In Nassau

2006-05-08T17:37:00.000-05:00

Well...things didn't go entirely smoothly on the way to Atlantis last night. For some reason my luggage didn't arrive last night at NAS airport, and I'm actually still without it here at 5:30 pm on Monday. I talked to some people on the phone though, and it is on the way, so I should get it soon. Jon and I each made a couple grand in the Orlando airport, I went 2/0/1/5, so poker got off to a good start. Apathy, durrr, and OkemosGod are all really cool guys. We all woke up around 2 today and spent a few hours out in the sun. We made some proposition bets and Apathy actually ran through a shark tank for $500 from the 4 of us, so I'm -$125 on prop bets :( We've all bought in and find out tonight at a party whether we play Tuesday or Wednesday. I will update accordingly. Good to be back in Nassau :)

Sidenote: In an attempt to reduce the variance of a $5k direct buy-in, the 4 other guys and I have agreed that any cash will pay the other 4 guys 5%. Thus, I have 80% of myself.

SS

Just touched down in Orlando

2006-05-07T17:30:00.000-05:00

Well I just got settled at the Orlando airport. Jon should be showing up any minute now and we'll probably log a session of poker before we fly out at 8:45 EDT. Orlando is one of the few airports I've been to that has free wireless internet. I had a screaming baby next to me on the flight from BHM to MCO, so I am still trying to calm down from that. Tonight we won't get to Atlantis til late so we'll all probably go to a bar in Atlantis or something and maybe rail Paradise's $1k Masters final table. They ran a unique MTT online where the final 10 got flown down to Atlantis to play out a live final table. My friend and CPC 4th place finisher, Troy Otto, narrowly missed making that final table online. Day 1 of the event is divided into day 1a and day 1b. I probably won't play until day1b because I'm going to try to satellite in while day 1 is going on. Day1a is Tuesday and Day1b is Wednesday. Until then I'm just gonna have a blast hangin' out at Atlantis with my friends.

SS

lol

2006-05-06T03:30:00.000-05:00

Thought process of immature kids who are apparently jealous of me and like posting fag comments on my blog:

"I'm not quite sure why it is, but I HATE Shannon Shorr. Maybe it is because he final tables every live event in site or that he beats up $530 really bad. I think I should post comments on his blog everytime he makes a -.0001% EV decision in SnG. Also, I should attack his personal life and call him names since he's not playing $5-1 SnG's with me and railing the games that I wish I could play. Eventually though, I will mature and, while not only treating him with respect, I will go to dictionary.com and spell the words that I attempt to insult him with correctly."

Cheers :)
SS

Still Pawning.

2006-05-05T16:42:00.000-05:00

Continued to play well at $530 today. 6 games at 2/0/0/4 for +1820.

No poker for the rest of the weekend though. I'm going to The Miller Lite Crawfish Boil in Birmingham. It is a huge music festival that's a lot of fun.

I'm off to a great start online in May. I'll be playing very sparingly online for the rest of the month, but I hope I can carry some momentum into the live tournaments I'm about to play.

Official Schedule:
May 7-15: Paradise $5k event at Nassau, Bahamas
May 17-26: World H/U Poker Championship in Barcelona
June 8-14: WSOP Circuit Event in Lake Tahoe, NV
June 26-August 10: WSOP in Las Vegas, NV

Crazy, Crazy, Crazy Rollercoaster Session

2006-05-04T05:15:00.000-05:00

I have to say today was one of the craziest days of my poker career. I did nothing other than play poker today. I grinded a 15 hour session. For the first 11 hours I was stuck. I got as bad as -$8000 at one time. I had a sick set to get to -$2000 and then proceeded to lose 9 $530s in a row to get back down to -$6500 at 3 am. Amazingly though I had another sick set and finally I finished (5 am) at +$1540. I am playing very well when I get inside the money as of late. I was in the money 19 times tonight and came in first 13 of them! I'm extremely proud of myself for not tilting when I was -$8k. I'll rest very easy tonight :)

Final numbers:
$530s (70): 13/3/3/51 = +$2900
PokerStars Heads Up Matches: -$1360
Total: +$1540

+ $3500

2006-05-02T20:05:00.000-05:00

Another solid day at $530. 3/2/1/10 for +3020. Also I won a $500 heads up match on Stars. I'm going to start mixing some of those heads up matches into my daily play because winning heads up is extremely important, obviously. Iplayed some last night, and I'm now 4-1 including a win over the legendary SamENole last night.

I didn't wake up until 12 today and spent some time out at the pool with Philip and then went for a run. I'm about to go bowling with some friends and will most likely play some more when I get home tonight.

Helluva Start... +$6520

2006-05-02T02:14:00.000-05:00

Just got done with 16 $530s and I played them at a very satisfying 5/1/1/9. I played very focused poker and the cards ran pretty goot. This is just what I needed to propel me into having a great month of May. It was nice to actually win the games when I got inside the money, too :)

Poker wasn't the only nice part of the day. Our trip to Talladega was just fantastic. Tyler's dad's jet was pretty sweet, and the race was very interesting. Jimmie Johnson won despite leading only a few laps the entire race. I've never been a NASCAR fan, but now I know what drives the fans. I can really see how people get into it. I must say I may spend a couple Sundays watching races now. I'm going to spend a couple hours playing NES now and then head to bed...

Sidenote: Jon and I have decided to go down to Nassau, Bahamas to stay at Atlantis and play the Paradise $5,000 event next week. We're going to be staying with online cash game phenoms "Apathy" and "durrr" and SnG standout, OkemosGod.

Jon wins 90,000 bones!!!

2006-05-01T02:43:00.000-05:00

My very goot friend, Jon "Jcardshark" Little just finished 2nd out 2323 players in the PokerStars $530 Sunday Multitable tournament! For his efforts he banked $90,700. It was absolutely fascinating to watch. With 4 players left the players started talking deal and the chip counts called for Jon to be paid $80,000. He talked his way up to $90,000 and they all finally agreed after about 30 minutes of negotiating. He was the shortstack of the 4 players remaining but battled to get heads up. The players had to leave $30,000 on the table, so he had a shot to bank $30,000 more. He came with a 4:1 chip disadvantage and rallied to get to a 4:1 lead. Unfortunately his opponent, "Sooners", doubled through on a HUGE coinflip and ended up taking the $30,000.

My poker day wasn't nearly as good :( I got a TON of $530s in. I played 32 games at a frustrating 2/4/3/23 for -$2960. I battled uphill all day and had a couple of chances to get into the black. As the trend has been lately though, I failed to capitalize and pick up the wins. I also had probably 5 bubble finishes :( April is over now and I am going to be unbelievably even after rakeback. I'm pretty sad about that, but hopefully I can get back on track with these $530s and put together a solid month of May.

My day was fun other than poker though. We had a crawfish boil over at my friend Balzli's house. Here is something I'm really excited about...

The race at Talladega was cancelled today because of rain. It is rescheduled for tomorrow. My friend Tyler's dad has a 10 seater private jet. Tomorrow he is flying down from Memphis and picking up Tyler, Balzli and myself and we are going to fly in the jet to Talladega and then go to the race. I'm pretty amped. I have to wake up at like 7 am (4.5 hours from now) though, so that will be interesting.

A goot weekend so far

2006-04-30T03:22:00.000-05:00

Well, the weekend has been nice. Last night was a lotta fun. We watched Bama beat Auburn 6-5 after my goot friend Emeel Salem hit a walkoff homerun in the bottom of the 10th inning to finish off Auburn. Being the degen. gambler that I am, I had been proposition betting with my friend Ben all night, and extremely ironically, right before Salem hit the homerun, I had given Ben 90:1 on the last dollar in his wallet on Salem hitting a walk-off homerun. He turned it down. Needless to say, he was kinda sick when Emeel blasted one to right-center to end things.

From there we went to a friend's house for a 21st birthday party and it was busted quickly by the cops, as always :( Today I watched the NFL draft for 10 hours straight with some friends while eating pizza and drinking brew. We went to the Pi Kap house, and hung out with people, and now I'm finally back home. The draft was quite interesting. Some notable picks with Alabama ties:

33rd: Houston Texans...Demeco Ryans: Alabama linebacker
36th: New England Patriots...Chad Jackson (Hoover HS):
Florida WR
43rd: New Orleans Saints...Roman Harper: Alabama safety
and FINALLY,
85th: KC Chiefs scoop Brodie Croyle: Alabama QB. Brodie slipped quite a bit beyond what the experts expected, but it's nice to see him picked up on day 1. Maybe Trent Green will go down with an injury in training camp and Brodie will compete for starting job :) Meanwhile, he can show us where KC's best BBQ restaurants are.

Sidenote:
Tomorrow is the final day of April. I'm going to try to squeeze in some poker between watching the race at Talladega and the NBA playoffs. If I can put together some numbers at $530 it is possible that I can come out of the month of April with a + five figures month (after rakeback). I pride myself on not really working during the weekends, but tomorrow is an exception :)

Ship $1520

2006-04-28T18:47:00.000-05:00

Today was very nice. Philip came over and woke me up early (noon) and a bunch of us went to lunch at Barnhill's. From there we spent most of the day at Lake Nicol catching some rays and jumping off the cliffs. It was my first time to go. Now I know what all the fuss is about. We had a blast and are probably going back soon. I'm about to head out to the Auburn @ Alabama baseball game.

Poker:
Mixed emotions about today. Play 16 $530s over a 2 hour span and beat them for $1520 at 1/3/3/9. It's really frustrating to finish in the money 7 out of 16 times and only make $1520 though. Things didn't go right in the final 3 at all. I'll take it though.

Really weird day, +$1296

2006-04-27T19:08:00.000-05:00

Well, today is a testament to how weird the game of poker is. At about 3 pm today I started running $215s continuously and was 0/0/0/12 through the first 12 games. It was the worst I'd ever been defied by the numbers, as far as I can remember. I lost 7 3 outters, AA vs KK and KK vs T9o all preflop in the first 12 games. After 16 games I'd gotten back to -$1440. I decided I was going to play some $530s to take the place of my 24 remaining $215s that I was supposed to play today. It was a good idea :) I ended up dividing my final few games into some smaller games, so I could get as close to an $8600 investment as possible (40 x $215 = $8600). Here are the final results on the day:

$530s: 1/2/1/3 = +$2790
$215s: 2/1/2/17= -$1330
$109s: 0/0/0/1 = -$109
$55s: 0/0/0/1 = -$55
___________________
Total = $1296

Time to go hang out with some friends.

SS

-$1000

2006-04-26T23:08:00.000-05:00

Another frustrating day at $215. I got 40 in at a disheartening 2/6/5/27 for -$1000 exactly. I had enough bubbles to make myself sick to my stomach, and I just didn't get it done when I did get in the money. There just isn't any excuse for winning just 2 out of 40 games. I didn't do much today other than poker because it was rainy. I'm going to make some adjustments and hopefully put some numbers together tomorrow.

-$400

2006-04-26T02:41:00.000-05:00

6/1/4/29 at $215s, so I lost $400 of my $8600 investment. Very even. I went on TILT for 5 minutes in a 6 table set earlier today, so basically that was the difference between it being a winning day and losing day. Also, I went to The Comedy Club in Birmingham to see Rodney Carrington with my friend Philip tonight, so that was a good time. More good news. Jon and I have decided to tack on one more event to our pre-Vegas travel schedule. We are almost positive we're going to Barcelona, Spain for the World Heads Up Poker Championship from May 19-26, so again if anyone is interested let me know. Link below.

http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/festival.php?a=r&n=2813

It's 3 am. I'm going to bed.

Blah day

2006-04-24T19:35:00.000-05:00

Spent a few hours of the day yesterday playing the St. Pete, Russia satellite. Myself and 3 others agreed to do a 4 way chop of the travel expenses and hotel accomodation if one of us won, but unfortunately we all finished out of the money. Only 1 out of every 36 got a seat, so it was going to be a long shot, still. Dave "Trip12s" Anderson almost turned the trick. He finished 18th and the top 7 got seats. Other than that I airballed the 2 big Sunday tournaments and lost some freeroll equity. The chance of me getting another WSOP seat without putting more money in now is looking bleak. Other than that I basically just recovered from the incessant amount of alcohol I drank over the weekend.

Today was rather blah. I woke up at 1, went out to the pool with Philip, and then played 27 $215s at an extremely pedestrian 4/2/2/19 for a whopping +$195. I guess I can't complain though. It is Philip's 21st birthday tonight, so we're going to have dinner and drink's at Logan's Roadhouse.

Sidenote: I'm probably going to go to Lake Tahoe, NV for the WSOP circuit events from June 8-14. The main event is the 16-18, but so is City Stages in Alabama. I'll have to skip out on the main event :( I turn 21 on the 7th and think it would be a lot of fun. Unfortunately it doesn't look like anything is worth traveling to Internationally before that time. If anyone is interested in going to Tahoe for those events, let me know. I've already had a couple interested people, so room would be cheap split 4-5 ways. I've included a link to the Tahoe schedule...

http://www.worldseriesofpoker.com/laketahoe2006.asp

Fun Saturday + ship some equity

2006-04-23T02:00:00.000-05:00

I didn't really get moving around until about 4:30 pm today. I got 2 hours of poker in playing 2 WSOP step 4s. The first one I lost a big pot with JJ vs AT after we got the money in on the flop of xxT, but I rallied to clinch a retry. In the second one I played what I felt was really solid poker and ended up finishing in top 2 with my good friend, Danish internet phenom, "bajawa". Tomorrow night I will play for another seat. I've started to play extremely aggressive in WSOP steps. I think that is really the ticket. You have 36 year old accountants playing that game, and they really don't wanna go bust. I can accumulate a ton of chips from level 3-5 while they sit back, play passively, and try to lucksack their respective ways into the seat.

Outside of poker I had a really good time today, too. I hung out at Pike with my boys Ben Presley, Wes Spencer, Trey Booth, the Kilcoynes and crew. They had their annual "Outrigger" party and everyone had a sick time. It was really good to see some old faces. Hopefully tomorrow I can make it 7 straight days of + equity, which isn't easy by any means.

K,
SS

Five in a row...+$1155

2006-04-21T19:19:00.000-05:00

Today was interesting. I started off my first 35 $215s at -$925, but rallied to murder the last 8 games for $2080 to finish the day at 4/8/4/27 and +$1155. Sadly though, I played 2 WSOP step 4s and finished 4th in both of them to get a retry each time. In the second one I had AA go down to Q5o all-in preflop, so that was a little disappointing. I really want to get up to step 5 with a couple of these freerolls, so I can bank another $11,000 if I win. If the weather is gloomy tomorrow like it was today, I'll probably play more poker tomorrow. Tonight I'm gonna hang out with some friends and maybe make it out to Pike's "Outrigger" party if it stops raining.

I'm back. Ship the cash :)

2006-04-21T01:30:00.000-05:00

Things are turning around. I beat up the $215 tables for a stratospheric 56% ROI today. I did it at 4/4/0/11 for +$2315. I woke up at 10:30 am today (strange) and ran the games continuously until about 1:30. This is the first time I ran games continuously, rather than in sets, in a while. I really enjoyed it. I kept 4 tables up at all times. I think 4 tables is where I can have maximum concentration. After my 19 games I became rather lazy and lounged around most of the afternoon until about 6:00 when Chris Balzli, a sober driver and I left for the Birmingham Barons game. We had a blast and took major advantage of the $1 beer and 20 cent wing promotion that was going on. When we got back we went up to The Mellow Mushroom to see Wetherly play a live show, so that was cool as well. Tomorrow I'll probably run 20-40 $215's continuously. I also moved another WSOP step 3 up to step 4 today, so I'm happy about that. I am more determined than ever to bring home a bracelet from Vegas. It is not easy at all to win a poker tournament, but I feel like my postflop skills are getting close to immaculate.

Sidenote: I am, somewhat unfortunately, single now. Katherine and I were very good friends for a long time and took a stab at a relationship, but it just didn't work out. As many of you know long-distance relationships aren't the easiest thing in the world. I'm not bitter at all though, and I have the utmost respect for Katherine. We'll continue our relationship as very good friends, and things will be okay.

+850

2006-04-20T00:40:00.000-05:00

Well, I was occupied most of the night, so I only got 10 $215s in today and played them at 1/2/2/5 for a nice +$850. My mom came down to Tuscaloosa tonight, so we all had a nice dinner at Olive Garden. I'm very bummed though because I just got fucked pretty hardcore to finish 3rd in a WSOP step 4 when top 2 advance to play for another seat. I won't tell the bad beat story, but it was pretty painful. I have a retry at the step 4 though, so I will just move it up to step 5 tomorrow. The last 3 days I've played 74 $215s at 11/5/11/47 for +$2490. I'm going to try to get about 40 more in tomorrow.

$440 more

2006-04-18T18:04:00.000-05:00

It's 6 p.m. and I'm done playing for the day. I'm about to go have some drinks with my friends for Amy's 21st Birthday. I chalked up another decent day and added $440 to the bankroll after playing 24 games at 4/0/4/16. Anthony and I also went to the pool for a couple hours. I also got my cell phone which I'm excited about, so I will be in touch with all of you to get your cell phone numbers since I don't have them anymore :( Tonight is going to be a lot of fun though. Also, I guarantee that all 5 days of poker this week are going to be winning days. I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've ever "guaranteed" anything in my poker career...if that's any indication of my confidence :)

Tuesday,
Shannon

A goot start

2006-04-17T22:20:00.000-05:00

Today was nice. I woke up around 12:30 and grinded 27 $215s before Anthony and I worked out and ran. I was actually -$605 through the first 27 games, but when I got back from our workout I played 13 more games at +$1805 for a final total of +$1200. I think I'm going to play strictly $215 this week.

The only bad part of the day is that the idiots at DHL somehow forgot to deliver my phone to me. Hopefully I will get it tomorrow. Tomorrow should be a lot of fun. My friend Amy turns 21, so a bunch of us are going to a Mexican restaurant during the day for food and margaritas.

Nice weekend

2006-04-16T21:19:00.001-05:00

I hope everyone had a fantastic Easter. I did. On Friday in Birmingham we celebrated my friend Trevor's 21st birthday at another friend's house. Unfortunately the cops shut it down at about 11:00 pm and we were relegated to the bar. Nonetheless, it was a really good time and I'm very jealous that people are turning 21 and I'm still 20. Saturday was pretty uneventful. I sat around most of the day with my family and my mom and I watched "The Game" on Saturday night. I highly recommend this movie to anyone who hasn't seen it. Finally, today was very enjoyable. My mom, little sister and I went over to my late-grandmother's house and played some croquet (yea, you read that right) for most of the day and ate some really good food. I'm back in Tuscaloosa now. I'm going to work for a few hours to try to make some money. I lost about 65% of my freeroll equity for another WSOP seat on Thursday, but I'm going to continue to try to earn another seat with the freerolls that I have. I'll also mix in some $215 and $530. I'm not sure what the plan for this week is going to be. Last week I spent a lot of time playing golf and going to the pool during the day. I think I'm going to do some more of that. Playing poker 3 hours per day is a lot more exciting than 6-7 hours/day. I'm also working on continuing to not to get upset about losses. Poker is what it is and I can only be upset if I play poorly. If I get 3 outted 8 times in a row, I get 3 outted 8 times in a row.

Yea,
Shannon

dakljfad;slkf

2006-04-14T18:09:00.000-05:00

Ok someone stole my phone at the Chinese restaurant today, so I won't be able to take any calls this weekend. I get my new phone on Monday. Email me if it's important, I guess.

Rigged,
SS

Ship the Main Event seat.

2006-04-12T22:48:00.000-05:00

After a couple frustrating weeks trying to satellite into the 2006 World Series of Poker Main event, I finally did it tonight. Ironically, I got extremely lucky 3 handed and hit a 3 outter after the flop to survive and eventually rally back to win it. The heads up battle was extremely frustrating and lasted over 25 minutes. I was heads-up with a player from Houston named "wyzcrack". He minraised the entire tournament and even bet the minimum into most pots after the flop. It made it very tricky to put him on hands, so I give him credit for that. I must say that I'm not sure I would've been able to forgive myself if I didn't beat that particular player heads up with the deep stacks that we had. I've posted the hand history for the final hand.

Total number of players : 2
Seat 7: wyzcrack ( $9240 )
Seat 10: BLUFFforRENT ( $10760 )
Trny:22039885
Level:6Blinds(200/400)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to BLUFFforRENT [ Js Qd ]
BLUFFforRENT raises [800].
wyzcrack calls [600].
** Dealing Flop ** [ 4s, Qh, 9d ]
wyzcrack checks.
BLUFFforRENT bets [1575].
wyzcrack is all-In [8240]
BLUFFforRENT calls [6665].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 6h ]
** Dealing River ** [ 5d ]
BLUFFforRENT shows [ Js, Qd ] a pair of queens.
wyzcrack shows [ Qs, 8s ] a pair of queens.
BLUFFforRENT wins 18480 chips from the main pot with a pair of queens with jack kicker.
wyzcrack finished in second and wins Entry to WSOP Step 5
BLUFFforRENT finished in first and wins WSOP package.

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

This was the only poker tournament I played all day. I woke up around 1 and went out to the pool with Anthony. We then went to the gym and went for a run again. Finally, I ate dinner at Mellow Mushroom and won the seat on a full stomach :)

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

I still have a lot of freerolls to play at WSOP. Hopefully I can win another 2-3 seats without investing anymore money. I still will buy into the WSOP step 4s that I think are soft, however. Unfortunately, PartyPoker capped the number of seats you can win at 5. "Gamboholic_" single-handedly is responsible for that after she won 29 seats to the PPM V :)
Here is a list of my remaining freerolls:

WSOP Quick Step 1 (1) $60 equity
WSOP Step 1 (2) $20 equity
WSOP Step 2 (4) $220 equity
WSOP Step 3 (5) $1075 equity
WSOP Step 4 (1) $640 equity
WSOP Step 5 (1) $1665 equity

Total: $3680 equity

I must not deserve it.

2006-04-11T21:46:00.000-05:00

It just doesn't make sense to me. I absolutely just can't win a pot when it matters on the WSOP steps. We're 4 handed at WSOP step 5. 4 players left and I have 3000 chips with blinds 100/200. Tuber27 makes it 1200 from the SB and I instantly ship my 3k in from the BB with TT. He calls with 44 and the board obviously comes xxx4x. It just doesn't make sense to me. I've now been booted from 2 WSOP step 5s by 2 outters and one by a 6 outter after the flop. I also lost every 4:1 I played in $530 today to go 0/1/2/11 for -$3920. It's 9:45 pm, but I'm done for the night. I am overcome with depression, so I'm about to watch some TV and start drinking.

Up a little.

2006-04-10T23:59:00.000-05:00

I had a good time today. I woke up around 11 am and went to get my car washed. It was incredibly muddy from the rodeo this weekend in Auburn. From there Anthony and I went to the pool for a little bit, went to the gym, and went for a run. I got about 6 hours of poker in afterwards for a slight win, +$620.

$530s: 3/2/2/13 for +$1900
WSOP step 4: Bust for -$640
WSOP step 5 via step 4: bust for $-640
Total: +$620

Tomorrow I'm going to Birmingham to play golf with my dad, so that should be a good time. I'll continue to try to lock up the elusive WSOP main event seat tomorrow night. I still have 3 freerolls at step 5.

Blah day

2006-04-09T23:41:00.000-05:00

Well I had a really good time in Auburn this weekend. We went to a rodeo and it proved to be quite an experience. I made it back to Tuscaloosa and got about 5 hours of poker in, mostly playing WSOP steps. I played 7 $530s, 2 WSOP step 5s and 4 WSOP step 4s for a total equity loss of about $575. The main focus this week is going to be turning my 4 WSOP step 5 freerolls into seats. In the 2 I played tonight I got knocked out in a massive pot with QQ vs JT after a 89x flop. Of course the guy hits his 6 outter though and I was out in 5th. In the other I got very short early and rallied back to get a retry at step 5 by finishing 3rd. Time to relax and watch some TV.

Still running goot

2006-04-07T13:51:00.000-05:00

This morning I did an extensive numbers study for a couple hours and analysed my results. It turns out, I think, that I was making some very -EV decisions at times in the final 5 or 6. I ran trials and have made some adjustments over my last 30 $530s or so and have murdered it for almost $10k. I made $1500 this morning and advanced yet another WSOP step 4 to step 5, giving me 4 freerolls at a seat now. I'm headed to Auburn now. We're going to a rodeo tomorrow that should be a lot of fun.

There is hope.

2006-04-07T01:47:00.000-05:00

Ok. So my last post said I wouldn't post for a while. Disregard that for now. I grinded a sick 13 hour session today for +$6860. I also turned 2 WSOP step 4s into WSOP step 5s, so now I have 3 freerolls for a main event seat. Hopefully I can turn atleast 2 of those into seats. I'm going to Auburn tomorrow and won't have time to play much until Sunday. I'm excited about the weekend and the opportunity to get away from poker for a bit.

Last post for a while

2006-04-06T18:31:00.000-05:00

I've decided to discontinue posting blog entries until I'm happy with where my poker career is. I am going to continue to grind $530 until July even if it means losing my entire online bankroll. I am going into a true grinding stage. I'm probably going to play somewhere between 30-50 $530s a day on Monday-Thursday and then $215s late at night after the $530s stop running. Also, I'm turning all player chat off because I don't think it is +EV to chat at the table, so if you're a fellow $530 player and I don't answer on the table then you can reach me on here or on AIM.

I hate you, poker.

2006-04-06T00:18:00.000-05:00

I don't remember the last time I won a set of $530s and I am absolutely incapable of holding off 2 and 3 outters. I got heads up tonight for a seat to the WSOP main event and of course blew a 3:2 chip advantage so now I have to retry it. The low that I'm at is extremely painful. I have no idea what to do. I am pretty sure that I don't wanna do this the rest of my life. The feelings that I'm experiencing right now are, without question, worse than any I would feel after getting up and going to a real job for 10 hours a day. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to play at all tomorrow. Instead, I'm going to drink alcohol most of the day to see if I feel any better about it.

First Quarter Analysis

2006-04-03T06:29:00.000-05:00

Ok so I just finished my first Quarter of a Year as a professional poker player, and I must say I'm very happy with the results so far. March was pretty rough, but some things went wrong that contributed to that and I'm not too worried about it. I don't know if I've been a professional poker player long enough for it to be worthwhile, but I hope to subtly point out the positives and negatives of this lifestyle in this post. It's been said many times before and I'll try to reiterate it: This lifestyle isn't for everyone.

I'm not going to share my exact numbers because, quite frankly, it is my business :) I will say that I am on pace to make just short of $1 Million this year. Obviously I banked $180,000 bones at Aussie, but it's all relative. There is no reason that I can't have a huge score every quarter of the year. Hell, I could have 2 scores like that every quarter. I could win a bracelet for $1M in July. There is no telling what could happen. I am still as confident about my game now as I was 6 weeks ago after making back to back main event final tables. I'm just 20 and still learning a lot about gambling (and life for that matter). I'm just going to continue to try to make the most +EV decisions in every game I play. I'm in the negative over my first 400 games at $530. I have more than 100 times the buy-in for that game in my poker bankroll, so I'm not done with it. There are players beating that game over 400 games that don't have near the SnG knowledge that I do, so I'm positive it is beatable over the long term. I'm not ready to give up on the game because I only need to beat it at 40% of the ROI that I would beat $215 to make the same amount of money. Not to mention I could play less games per day which would give me more time to do the other things I enjoy. I'm also going to spend a significant amount of time in April at the WSOP steps. The structure of the steps on PartyPoker is very nice and allows for a lot of post-flop play, something I pride myself on. I'm going to spend a lot of time buying into the $640 WSOP step 4s and trying to turn them into $11,500 (WSOP package equivalent) at step 5. The WSOP steps, $215 SnGs and $530 SnGs will keep me pretty occupied in April.

As for the time I've dedicated to gambling in the first quarter, it's been 418 hours. I've averaged over $500/hour over that period of time. That amounts to about 32 hours per week. I'm happy with spending that amount of time per week playing. I'd even be content with playing a little bit less in April. When you look at only 32 hours/week dedicated to a job I think you have to be pretty content. I don't have to commute to and from my job like I would as a Civil Engineer. I figure I would be working 65-75 hours per week as an engineer if you include travel time.

A couple of other things: Like I said before, March was extremely rough. I unfairly let the anger that I had toward poker last month spill over into my personal life and probably wasn't very much fun to be around. For that, I sincerely apologize. I am very thankful for the position I'm in. I really have no room to complain. I have a wonderful family, girlfriend and lifestyle and things could be much, much worse. Finally, I haven't ruled out going back to school in the Fall of 2006. I'm actually thinking about it very strongly. I may not take an extremely tough load of classes though. As strange as it may sound I actually miss the grind of going to class and doing calculus and physics homework :) Obviously, there will still be a lot of poker in my life even if I'm a student.

It's 6:22 am Monday morning now. My dad, Tim and I are leaving to go to Augusta to see The Masters practice round in about 11 hours, so I think I'm going to get some sleep.

Ship it! +$15

2006-03-31T02:10:00.000-06:00

Such a silly day. I played 39 $215s at 6/2/3/28 for +$15. That's 15 dollars. Not 1500 or 15,000. Pretty remarkable to invest $8300 and make $15 :) Spent the evening over at Chris Balzli's playing pool and somehow I managed to lose my car keys. I hopefully locked them in my car, because if not then they are gone. We tore Balzli's house apart looking for them. I figure the 15 bones I made today will come close to covering the charge for the locksmith tomorrow, so it was a very even day :) My uncle is having a retirement party in Birmingham tomorrow, so I'm gonna go check that out during the day. Katherine just got back in Alabama from Key West, FL and is coming to hang out this weekend, so I'm excited about that. Bama football has it's A-day scrimmage game on Saturday, so that should be a good time. Probably no more poker until Sunday night.

Sidenote: I am deathly sore from working out 4 days in a row. Anthony and I somehow managed to go 4 straight days, which is incredibly remarkable feat given our work ethics :)

Winning day, Vegas house booked

2006-03-29T23:29:00.000-06:00

I played 40 more $215s today at 4/5/5/26 for +$400 exactly. That is very even relative to the amount of money I invested, but it is a win nonetheless, and I'm happy. I feel like I could make a strong run at these $215s in the next couple weeks.

On a more exciting note though, my poker friends and I officially booked a house in Vegas for June 26 through August 10th today for the WSOP. Here is a link if you guys wanna check it out:

http://www.cyberrentals.com/USA/Nevada/vacation-house-Las-Vegas/p132262.htm

There are 10 of us staying in the house. It is a very, very, very solid group of young online pros. The group includes some great high limit cash game players, Pot Limit Omaha players, and online and live MTT stars. We all are gonna learn a lot from each other and have a blast at the same time. Here is a list of the 10 players:

1) Jonathan "XxTabiasxX" Little (21...Pensacola, FL)
2) Michael "Worldsgrtest" Banducci (20...Traverse City, MI)
3) Mike "NUTZREALBIG" McStott (21...Minneapolis, MN)
4) David "Trip12s" Anderson (23...Amherst, NE)
5) Mats "KISFM" Iremark (23...Gothenburg, Sweden)
6) Adam "VinceIsGod" Geyer (21...Austin, TX)
7) Dave "Gary_Player" Winters (New Jersey)
8) Donny "Deez_Nuts3" Carlton (22...Iowa)
9) Nate "supg81" Hayes (21...Kearney, NE)
10) Shannon "BLUFFforRENT" Shorr (20...Tuscaloosa, AL)

Woah..I CAN win

2006-03-29T00:18:00.001-06:00

I am overcome with excitement after I just crushed 39 $215s at 8/4/3/24 for +$3215. I wasn't happy about being relegated to $215s, but now I'm exhilirated. Part of being a good gambler is knowing which games to play. It makes no sense to play $530s at negative ROI when I can, I think, beat up $215s for a much better ROI over time. In the end doing this for a living boils down to making money. It's not about who you play with or what kind of stakes you get involved in. It's about making money. I'm going to play 40 more tomorrow and hopefully tack a couple grand more onto the bankroll. I've also been working out the last few days, so I feel like I've been very productive today :)

Bradley Johnson...Gone but not forgotten.

Wake Me When March Ends...

2006-03-28T03:45:00.000-06:00

I just wanna cry. I got off to a great start in $530s tonight and then proceeded to fucking go 0/0/0/8 in my last games to end the day at 1/2/3/12 and -$2690. $1600 of those losses can be attributed to me getting fucked in the WSOP step 5 by JT vs TT after we got the money in on a flop of 679. Poker has never been this bad, and I really have no idea where I wanna go from here. I'm pretty sure that I am going to drop down to $215 SnGs starting tomorrow. Even the thought of sitting at another $530 makes me wanna puke. It's taking every ounce of energy in me to stay sane and not get incredibly depressed.

:(

2006-03-27T01:26:00.000-06:00

Minus $8300 today. Enough said.

Good night at tables, but some sad news...

2006-03-26T03:25:00.002-06:00

I played 37 $530s tonight from 7 pm until 230 a.m. and busted them up for $3800, which I'm very happy about. I was down $3k or so through the first 20 games, but really came on strong in the rest of them to finish the day at 6/5/1/25. I'm probably going to continue to relax from the traveling by playing lots more $530s and watching basketball tomorrow.

Now for the bad news:I heard some devastating news from my friend Tim tonight. Bradley Johnson, a 17 year old high school student from Birmingham, died tonight in a car crash. Tim and I had played golf with Bradley on a number of occasions. The guy was one of the most highly tauted amateur golfers in the nation and had numerous offers from colleges all over the nation. He even reached the regional finals of the US Open qualifiers this year as a 17 year old. He was one of the nicest kids you'd ever meet and had a tremendous future ahead of him, so as you can imagine I, along with rest of the community, am heartbroken. Looking at something like this makes me realize that my poker problems are extremely, extremely small in the grand scheme of things. I will try to get the address of the family and I'll post it in case any of you are interested in sending Bradley's family a card.

RIP Bradley Johnson 11/16/88 - 3/25/2006
You will be missed.

Finally back in Tuscaloosa

2006-03-25T18:11:00.000-06:00

It's Saturday night and I just made it back to my apartment for the first time in almost a month. I had a really good time with my friends in Destin. We didn't get to spend a ton of time on the beach because it was still pretty chilly a couple of the days.

As far as poker goes, it's been awful. The whole month of March has been miserable on the rare occasions that I've played. Like I have in the past, I've given away thousands of dollars playing big cash games that I really shouldn't be playing without much cash game knowledge. Part of that was trying to prepare for the limit tournament on the cruise. I've also lost about $6000 due to connection problems and power outtages in March, which doesn't help. This is going to be my first losing month since May 2005 barring me winning a big tournament in the next couple of days. I'm pretty depressed and frustrated, but it's not the end of the world. I'm going to spend Sunday-Thursday grinding probably 35-40 $530 a day and playing some MTT's as well. It's really nice to be back in Tuscaloosa after all the traveling, too.

In Destin

2006-03-22T12:44:00.000-06:00

I'm in Destin and my phone is broken, so I can't see if you call. Leave a message and I will check it from someone else's phone and get back with you.

Yep,
SS

Out of $1000, Aussie Millions info

2006-03-18T17:16:00.000-06:00

I died a slow death and finished 112th out of 157 in the $1000 today. Sent 1300 from the BB with TT after 2 limpers for 100 and obv first limper has QQ. It's nice to lose a pot where I was an underdog though. I got 3 outted in a $215 a couple hours later though, so it reassured me I'm the most unlucky player on the ship. Last night on the ship tonight. We arrive in Ft. Lauderdale at 8 am eastern tomorrow, fly to B'ham at 215 and arrive in B'ham at 315. I then have to drive to Tuscaloosa to return a tux and then I'm off to Destin, FL for 3-4 days to hang out with my friends from Bama. I'm done playing poker/gambling for the trip. For the first time in one of my international trips I lost money. I ended up -$2500 or so on the trip. I take comfort in knowing I ran completely awful for a whole week and only lost that.

Also:
The Aussie Millions was supposed to broadcast tonight, but apparently it is being pushed back a couple weeks while they air the Monte Carlo Millions. It should air early April.

3 outted, of course

2006-03-18T08:55:00.000-06:00

I played the $1000 freezeout yesterday and finished 87th out of 228 because my AK was obv no match for AJ. I sent 2500 all-in UTG with blinds 100/200 (25) and was taken down by AJdd on a final board of Kd Tc 9d 8h Qh. I would have been double the average in chips :( I'm playing the $1000 that starts in about 5 minutes, so hopefully I will win today. We arrive in Ft. Lauderdale at 8 a.m. eastern tomorrow. The trip has been amazing. I hate that it's coming to an end.

No worries,
SS

Thursday

2006-03-17T00:06:00.000-06:00

The last 2 days have been really enjoyable, except for gambling. We did the aforementioned activities in Jamaica and had a lot of fun. The Jamaican locals are really funny though. We went shopping for souvenirs and the Jamaicans absolutely will not leave you alone. They will pressure you to no end to try to get you to buy their items, so that was pretty funny. Today was great too. We arrived at Grand Cayman Islands this morning and went on a semi-submarine where we were able to view the underwater life from the boat. Then we got to get in the water and snorkel. Good times. Gambling hasn't been as good. I lost $1400 playing poker last night and $500 tonight playing caribbean stud in the pit. The live SnG's though are kinda frustrating. It basically comes down to whether you win a coinflip or not to determine whether you're +$2,000 or -$2,000. With those losses I'm still +$2,000 overall on the trip. I'm playing a $1000 NL tournament tomorrow morning and another $1000 NL tournament on Saturday morning, so there is potential for a $40,000 score in each of those. I also don't think I've mentioned that there is a film crew here doing a story on me. They've been following me around the ship and even on one of the excursions, so it's kind of mini reality-TV. It's going to air on Travel Channel or something like that.

Sidenote: Both Randali and XxTabiasxX cashed in the main event in 75th and 96th place, respectively. They each took home a cool $16,000 for their efforts, so congrats to them. Also, I just found out that Bama knocked off Marquette in the opening round of the NCAA tournament! I read that it was a thriller though, so I hate I missed it. I am really pumped though. They play UCLA in the second round on Saturday. That will be a very tough game, but a win will send them to the sweet 16 in Oakland. Roll Tide.

Tuesday...Having a blast

2006-03-15T01:59:00.000-06:00

It's Tuesday night (Wed morning) at 3 am. My mom and I are having an absolute blast on the trip. We've been eating some really nice (free) dinners, soaking up some sun on the deck, and listening to karaoke both nights so far. The karaoke has been the best part. There are actually some very, very good performers. My mom actually sung an outstanding rendition of Shania Twain's "Any Man of Mine" tonight, so that was fun. Neil_Trahey and I are considering singing "Mambo #5" tomorrow night. I lost $1500 last night in sidegames and won $270 tonight, so I'm still +$4000 in poker on the trip. We dock in Ocho Rios, Jamaica in about 5 hours and have a fun day planned. We're going on an excursion to touch dolphins and go to Jamaica's number 1 tourist attraction, a waterfall that you can actually walk up 600 feet on. It should be exciting.

Sidenote: Two of my best poker friends Jon "XxTabiasxX" Little and Randall "Randali" McCowan are left in the main event of around 200 players. 99 get paid. I'm rooting for them hardcore. Jon is one of the hardest working poker players I know and Randall is such a good person that he deserves good things to happen. First place is a shot at $1M for both of them, so me being the professional prop. odds-maker that I am, will probably try to buy a piece of them at some point :)

I'm happy,
Shannon

Out of PPM V, +$5380in side games

2006-03-13T18:03:00.000-06:00

Well...

I busted earlier today out of the main event. I was actually the second player out of the 270 playing today to bust. I busted just behind poker pro Paul Darden and just before poker pro, Barry Shulman, so I guess I'm in good company. It's hard to describe what went on. Fixed limit hold 'em is a very strange game and a lot of it has to do with the cards you're getting and the position that you get them. I just couldn't pick up any hands for the entire 2.5 hours that I played. I folded, folded, folded, and played extremely tight. When I did pick up hands I lost all 5 or 6 I was involved in for massive pots. **BY THE WAY THESE ARE NOT BAD BEAT STORIES, SIMPLY DOCUMENTING** I had AdKh and 3 bet a raise on the button preflop. The flop came down AsKs5s. The guy leads and I raise of course. The turn is the 6s putting 4 spades out. It goes check/check. The river is the Qs and he leads. I have to call for my equity in the split pot. I actually could've laid the hand down if the river was something like the 8s instead. For him to have a spade in his hand though it would have to be with a non-face card except the Js that he would have opened with in middle position for a raise. That was unlikely, so I called and he showed Ts6c?! Just after break number 2 I proceeded to lose a gross pot with K8hh. The UTG player raised and got callers from the cutoff, the button and the small blind, so I have to flip in the extra 200 chips because I'm getting 9:1. The flop comes AhQh9c giving me the nut flush draw. It's checked to the cutoff who bets. The small blind and I both call. The turn is the Qs. It goes check, check, bet, call, call. There is 3800 in the pot now. Here is where things get interesting. The river was the Th. The small blind checked and I was debating whether to check to induce a bet or just lead. The cutoff, an online qualifier who had been playing poorly all day, quickly bet. I had not yet acted to I just checked. The small blind called. The small blind definitely has a dry Q or a small flush. I checkraised with the nut flush and the cutoff just called and small blind pondered and folded. The cutoff has 99, what?! He flat calls me with the full house and I'm down to 1600 chips after I lose almost 2000 in that pot. The next hand was fitting. I was all-in drawing dead on the river with KTdd on a board of Ac4d3d9h against her Ad7d. I lost a couple of pots before that with hands like A7 vs 22 on a AK345 and QQ vs KJ on a Kxxxx board. I just have to continue to bet those boards for value all the way down. The 22 hand I get checkraised on the end. It was just sickening. I'm confident in the limit hold 'em that I played though and I look forward to playing $6000-$9000 in limit events at The World Series.

Good news though:
Last night I played some side tournaments. I played a 20 man $540 for another seat in the Main Event and busted in 14th, but then played a $1080 single table tournament where the winner gets a seat. I ran over the table and had 68%/32% of the chips when I got heads up with an excellent poker player from Yale University named Alex. We agreed to chop and I took $7,000 and he took $3500. My mom and I are really enjoying the cruise though. The food is amazing, and after I busted we just hung out on the deck for like 4 hours enjoying the sun. Tonight we're going to check out a comedy act and maybe go watch (not sing) some Karaoke. I hope to continue to bust up the sidegames late at night.

Fucking rigged

2006-03-11T14:39:00.000-06:00

It's been a while since I've posted. I haven't been playing much poker, and when I have everything goes wrong. I've lost like $6000 in equity because of connection problems and the power going out the other night during the storm. It's hard enough to make substantial money playing poker, so to have to combat another "rake" of sorts is pretty painful. I've basically lost all of my freerolls to WSOP now because of the connection problems and the fact that I can't win a coinflip or 60/40. WSOP step 5...K5 vs J6 no chance. AK vs TT, nope. A9 vs 77, nope. I have no real desire to play any online poker for like a week. I leave for the cruise tomorrow which is going to be nice. Tonight is formal with Katherine in Columbus, GA though so it is going to be very fun. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to post on the ship because I hear that the internet connection is shaky. Cardplayer.com is covering the event, so updates should be available there. The tournament starts on Monday.

adf;jkhsdjfkhasdjkfhasdjkf,
Shannon

Back in the States

2006-03-07T16:40:00.000-06:00

First of all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!

I finally made it back to Birmingham last night around 9 pm. It's really nice to be back. I woke up around 11 am today and went to eat lunch with my mom at Red Lobster. It was delicious :) I've spent the last few hours today playing WSOP steps and I'm doing very well. I bought into step 4 and won it to move on to the final WSOP step and I bought into step 3 and won it to move up to step 4. I will update accordingly. I probably won't play any $530s this week. I'm trying to get some limit cash games in in preparation for the cruise next week. My mom and some of my aunts and uncles and I are going to eat dinner tonight, so that should be fun. The rest of the week is going to be pretty laid back until I leave for Auburn on Friday to go to formal with Katherine. I can't wait! I leave Sunday morning from ATL to Ft. Lauderdale for the cruise.

Out in 11th

2006-03-05T18:42:00.000-06:00

Just missed cashing in the $1000 freezeout :( The cutoff opened for 4,000 and I sent my 19,000 from the button with A9o. Of course the cutoff has KK though and I'm out. I'm happy to make it deep in yet another tournament though. I am continuing to learn something new in all the live multi-tables that I play. We fly out in about 8 hours. I should make it back into Birmingham by 8:30 central time on Monday night. Time for bed. Goodbye Vienna.

Final 17

2006-03-05T17:00:00.000-06:00

First chance to update. I'm actually in the final 17 of this $1000 freezeout. 82 players started. I am extremely low with 10,500 and blinds about to be 800/1600 (100). Average is about 26,000. You never know what can happen if I double though. Only the top 9 get paid.

Sunday

2006-03-05T12:46:00.000-06:00

John and I spent the afternoon checking out a neat art museum and had a lot of fun. We made it in time for the $1000 freezeout tournament, and we are currently on break from it. I had a great first 90 minutes and am up to 8700 from my original 5000. I will update accordingly.

Final table deal

2006-03-04T22:33:00.000-06:00

Unbelievable final table. Some of the strangest stuff happened. On about the 5th hand of the final table the second short stack moved all-in from middle position. I found AKcc and called instantly. He had ATo. The board stayed clean and I doubled through to about 70,000. The guy was halfway out the door and it turns out he has me covered by 500 chips. The blinds were 3000/6000. So the next hand he is in 2nd position and goes ahead and puts his 500 in. The BB raises over the top and I fold in the small blind and the big blind folds. The guy with 500 chips has 84o and the button has K4cc. Amazingly the guy spikes the 8 on the river to multiply his stack by 5 including the antes. The next hand he sends his 2500 all-in UTG. He is called in 4 spots including the BB. He has AA and multiplies his stack by 5 again and is now up to 12,500. He then proceeds to double in the BB and is up to over 27,000. A few hands later a guy opens for 16000 UTG and I found TT in middle position. I make it 48000 and he ponders and finally folds. It stayed 9 handed forever and the blinds increased all the way to 6000/1200 before any eliminations. Some sick chopped pots and suckouts to survive kept it 9 handed. Finally we lose like 3 players in 15 minutes and agree to a 6 way deal with 7 minutes left on the clock of the 6000/1200 blinds. They brought the tournament staff over and calculated what the payouts would be according to chip stacks and I finally, somewhat reluctantly, agreed to a deal. I was the last one to agree. I had 59,400 in chips and was going to be UTG and hit the blinds very soon. I was 5th out of the 6 remaining in chips. I lost over 30,000 in blinds and antes alone because I was so card dead over the course of an hour. I would have shoved almost any picture card to try to steal blinds, but I just didn't get the opportunity. I think I made the correct decision though. I was guaranteed 3700 euros for 6th place, but agreed to the deal which gave me 8660 euruos. I would have had to finish 2nd or better to make more. First and Second paid 36k euros and 18k euros respectively, so that is what made me kinda want to play. It was such a crapshoot and I figured if I picked up a good hand UTG, BB or SB then I could make a run at the 38k euros. It's almost a no-brainer though, you have to accept a deal when 5% of all the tournament chips in play are in the middle of the pot before every hand starts. I'm happy though. 8660 euros amounts to over $10,000 USD, so I made about $8800 USD on the tournament. That covers my $5000 I lost online yesterday and $1800 entry into the Main Event. That leaves me with $2,000 profit, another final table appearance, and the amazing time that we've had here. No poker tomorrow. A group of us are going to check out some museums and stuff in the city which I really look forward to. We depart about 9 am local time on Monday, so we're just gonna enjoy ourselves until then. I keep having big scores Internationally after I get screwed in side games or online. It's almost an Omen.

Cheers,
Shannon

Final table

2006-03-04T19:10:00.000-06:00

Just limped into the final table of 9 with 37,000 chips exactly. I got crippled when I was priced into a call with KJ vs QQ, but I just lucksacked QJ vs JJ all in preflop. The board came AT8K4 to give me the nuts. Payouts don't increase very significantly, so I am going to try to gamble my way to first place.

In the money

2006-03-04T17:34:00.000-06:00

Unbelievable roller coaster hour. I took a devastating beat and was down to 14,000 at one point. I have worked my way back up to 54,100 with 18 players left. Average is about 35,000. Hopefully things will go well.

Overall chip leader

2006-03-04T16:05:00.000-06:00

I am overall chipleader with 34 players left. I have exactly 60,000, more than triple the average. First place amounts to $43,000 USD. I am playing textbook big stack poker and expect a top 3 finish. It will probably run until about 7 pm Alabama time.

Great 2nd hour

2006-03-04T14:12:00.000-06:00

Worked my way up to $26,200 in chips. I made probably the best call of my life with (JT) on a final board of K9742 and the guy rapped the table and showed 6c8c for a missed straight flush draw. I'm probably amongst the tournament leaders with like 70 players left.

First break

2006-03-04T12:21:00.000-06:00

Had a solid first 90 minutes. Worked 3000 starting chips up to 4675. I added on at the end of the first hour for a total of 7675 chips.

Saturday

2006-03-04T10:00:00.000-06:00

It's 5 pm here and we're about to play a 500 euro + Rebuy tournament. It's snowing here and I'm pretty sick with a cold, so we decided against going outside. I had a badddddd day yesterday online and didn't get in bed until 5 am. Hopefully today will be better. There are about 110 entrants and first should pay about $40,000. I will update on breaks.

Out in 82nd place :(

2006-03-03T09:09:00.000-06:00

Just 30 minutes into day 2 I gave away 90% of my chips. I did the one thing I didn't wanna do...get involved in a big pot with guys that I can outplay. I opened from 3 off the button with K7o for 1325 with blinds 200/400 (50). The guy directly to my left flatcalled me. We took a flop of 762 rainbow. I felt pretty good about it. I led out for 2100 and the guy quickly makes it 6500. I didn't know what to make of this. I was 100% convinced he didn't have a set. He just acted too quickly. I thought he could have one of a number of hands, most of which I was ahead of. I thought AK, AQ, 33, 44, 55, 88 or a very, very slim chance 99-AA. As I was pondering I realized I had to act fairly quickly if I was going to get him off of a hand like 88-TT. I decided to move it all-in for his 19,000 total. It takes him less than 10 seconds to call me with TT. I blanked out and was down to 3,800 in chips. When I got around to the small blind it was folded to me and I moved my 3400 or so all-in with A2o. The BB, same guy that busted me calls with AJ. Amazingly I hit the 2 and double through. The next time I was in the BB I called 700 more from a MP raiser with 89hh. The flop came 933. I checked and he bet 1000. I moved in 7000 quickly and he folded. The next hand I was in the SB. UTG made it 1200 and I found AKdd in the small and moved all 11,000 in. He pondered for a minute and called me with TT. The board came x x x x all spades and neither of us had a spade. I had 9 outs to chop the pot and 4 additional outs to win it outright. Unfortunately the 2c came on the river and I'm eliminated. I'm not sure what we're going to do the rest of the trip. It sucks, but obviously I'm not going to cash in every tournament. Just to cash in 3 straight tournaments you're like 999:1 if you assume average talent level. So I'll take making the final table 2 out of my first 3 and clear my head and try to do it again on the cruise in a couple weeks.

No worries,
Shannon

Day 1 recap...Day 2 about to begin

2006-03-03T07:47:00.000-06:00

I didn't get into much of a recap from yesterday because we didn't stop playing until 2 am local, and I was exhausted. My table was fairly solid for the entire day. About 4 of us played together all day and players were moved in as tables broke. Two seats to my right was WSOP bracelet holder Jan Sorensen. He won an Omaha bracelet in 2002 and a Stud bracelet in 2005. He was very tricky and mixed it up, so having position on him helped. To my left was a solid, young Hungarian player who is hanging on with 11,000 in chips. I only had a few interesting hands all day. I hit a set of 2s and took down a nice pot early on and also picked up Aces and got paid off nicely. I played what I felt was nearly immaculate poker. I only made one mistake all day and it was with KJ. I'm really not sure it was even a mistake. I raised from middle position with KdJs to 925 with blinds 150/300. The big blind flat called. The flop came Jd 9d 4s and he checked to me. I bet out 1400. I had about 29,000 in my stack at the time. The guy ponders for about 5 seconds and announces that he's all-in for like 10,500. I really had to go into the tank. It was such a huge overbet that I felt he could easily be making the play with a hand like JT or even something like A5dd which I'd prefer him not to have, but I still have to call. I call and much to my chagrin the guy turns over AdAc. The turn gives me some more help, a ten. I'm dead to any picture card to take the hand. The river is a 4 though :( I truly grinded my way back from 18,000 to 27,500 but then dumped 2500 on the last hand of the night with 55 when I had to fold to a river bet. There are somewhere between 82-90 players left. 27 get paid.

My friend Cody "Thugmoneymkr" Slaubaugh is 11th overall with 45,050. I am 40th overall. I'm going to continue to play how I'm playing. I made one mistake in 9 hours and can't hang my head over that. I'm going to continue to just try to make the best decision every hand I'm involved in. That's all you can do.

Sidenote: My friend Brad from Auburn pointed out to me that there is a website that is following the tournament. They have a forum, atleast. You can find it at http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=7635.375

I'm at table 26 seat 2 today. If you want an update tell them Shannon is the one in the loud brown PartyPoker jacket.

Cheers.

Day 1 over, finally

2006-03-02T19:24:00.000-06:00

Today was a grueling 11 hour affair, but we're finally finished. I finished the day with 25,500 in chips. There are 90 players left of the original 234, so the average is exactly 26,000. I'm going to get some food and go to sleep because I'm exhausted. Play resumes at 3 pm Vienna time (8 am Alabama) tomorrow.

1 more level to go

2006-03-02T17:19:00.000-06:00

Just finished level 5. We have one more level (90 minutes) before we get outta here. I slipped down to 21,100 :( I lost a 28,000 pot with KJ vs AA on board of J x x. The guy trapped me and I couldn't get away. I'm almost exactly average with 110 players to go.

Going well

2006-03-02T15:37:00.000-06:00

28,925 in chips after 6 hours of play. We have 3 more hours. 135 players remain of the 235 original entrants. I will post again around 730 pm in Alabama.

About to leave for day 1

2006-03-02T05:13:00.000-06:00

We are about to take the shuttle over to The Concord for day 1 of the event. I probably won't be able to update until the day is over. The event starts at 3:00 local time.

Last night was lots of fun. Jon, David, Cody and I partied it up hardcore. Hopefully we'll still be able to do well today :)

Vienna

2006-03-01T12:48:00.000-06:00

We made it to Vienna at like 1:30 local time and got checked in around 2. We took a much needed nap from 3-7 pm because we hadn't slept the whole time. We are about to go to a private party in the city that should be fun. The tournament starts at 3:00 pm tomorrow (8 am in Alabama). I probably won't be able to update status until after the end of day 1.

Cheers,
SS

Just touched down in Stuttgart

2006-03-01T03:42:00.000-06:00

Jon and I just safely touched down in Stuttgart, Germany. Let me tell you this is sooooooo crazy hearing everyone speak German. There were very few things in the airport translated into English, so needless to say we had some difficulties finding our gate. It's 10:40 am here but only 3:40 am back in Alabama. We board our short flight to Vienna in 40 minutes. We're going to a PartyPoker party tonight in Vienna, so that should be a blast. I'll try to update later.

Monday +$660

2006-02-27T22:21:00.001-06:00

Enjoyed the day. I woke up at about 8:45 in order to get to my interview with WZZK in Birmingham. It went really well. I interviewed with Don Dailey, and he's a really smart guy so it made for a good interview. That's supposed to air on his show the weekend of March 11. I came back and did an interview at my apartment with a girl named Tricia for Alabama Public Radio. That also went very well. My Crimson White article made the paper today, so that was pretty cool. I leave for Vienna at 2:30 p.m. tomorrow. I meet up with Jonathan in ATL and we fly Delta to Stuttgart, Germany. That is about a 10 hour flight. From there we have an 80 minute flight and should arrive just before 1 p.m. local time in Vienna. Vienna is 7 hours ahead of Central time, so update your clocks accordingly :) I am feeling really good about how I'm playing right now. Let's hope I can go back to back to back final tables :)

Poker:
24 $530s at 3/0/4/17 for -$1220

I also played 8 $215s because I accidentally clicked on the wrong buy-in. I beat those for +$1880 though.

212 $530s played now at 30/22/18/142.
ROI = 14% overall

Monday +$660

2006-02-27T22:21:00.000-06:00

Enjoyed the day. I woke up at about 8:45 in order to get to my interview with WZZK in Birmingham. It went really well. I interviewed with Don Dailey, and he's a really smart guy so it made for a good interview. That's supposed to air on his show the weekend of March 11. I came back and did an interview at my apartment with a girl named Tricia for Alabama Public Radio. That also went very well. My Crimson White article made the paper today, so that was pretty cool. I fly out of Birmingham at 2:30 Central tomorrow. I meet up with Jonathan in Atlanta and we fly Delta to Stuttgart, Germany. That's about a 10 hour flight :( From there we have an 80 minute flight to Vienna and should arrive there at about 1 pm local time Wednesday. Vienna is 7 hours ahead of Central time, so update your house clocks accordingly :) I'm feeling very good about my game right now. Let's hope I can make it back to back to back final tables.

Poker:
24 $530s at 3/0/4/17 for -$1220

I also played 8 $215s because I accidentally clicked on the wrong buy-in. I beat those for +$1880 though.

212 $530s played now at 30/22/18/142.
ROI = 14% overall

Fun Weekend + Ship the cash

2006-02-27T00:45:00.000-06:00

This weekend was lots of fun. A ton of us went out to The Filling Station again last night and had a blast. Today Katherine and I went and watched Bama beat Florida in basketball so that was fun :)

After the game I grinded 24 speed $530s at 5/2/3/14 for another sick day. +$5280. I am really liking the speed SnGs right now. They are basically the same thing as the regular $530s but the blind levels are only 5 minutes instead of 10. Overall I've played 188 of these now for +$16,893 over the course of 55 hours in 10 days. Good for 17% ROI.

Editor's note:
I've had some requests from some people to elaborate on the numbers that I post in the blog. First, I'll explain about the format that I express my SnG results in. It is important to note that all of the SnG tournaments have 10 players and the top 3 get paid. 1st place receives $2500, 2nd $1500 and 3rd $1000. When I give a list of numbers like a/b/c/d .....

a) Represents the number of first place finishes
b) Represents the number of second place finishes
c) Represents the number of third place finishes
d) Represents the number of finishes outside of the $

I guess the only other confusing lingo was ROI. ROI stands for return on investment. Poker players (and businessmen in general) like to track ROI numbers to see what kind of numbers they can produce compared to what kind of return they could get on their money from the bank, stock market, etc.

Here is how I derived the 17% ROI from the $530s...

I've played 188 $530s for a total investment of just short of $99,640. I have returned a profit of $16,893. $16893 is 17% of $99,640.

That is my math lesson for the day :) I just remembered I have a media interview with WZZK tomorrow morning in Birmingham at 10 am :( It's 1 am now, and I'm in Tuscaloosa. I'm going to have to get in bed soon. I have to come back to Tuscaloosa to do an interview with a girl from Alabama Public Radio at 2 pm. I fly out to Vienna Tuesday afternoon.

Friday

2006-02-25T18:29:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was nice. I got in 2 $530s and finished 1st and 2nd for +$2960 more :) Katherine arrived at about 4 pm and we just hungout, went to eat Chinese food with Anthony and Heather, and then went to Matt and Chad's keg party. It was a blast seeing a lot of faces I hadn't seen in a while.

Running Gooooooot

2006-02-24T04:37:00.000-06:00

Ok, I only got 16 tournaments in today, but that's ok I because I don't have a boss and can't get scolded. 2/3/1/10 over 16 for another $2020. Overall, I've beat these games for $9365 for 11% ROI over 160 games, which is yummy. Show that to your accountant. A group of us went over to Em Douglas's and Amy Bice's house and had lots of fun. We also went to The Filling Station. I'm basically done gambooooling until Sunday evening. I'm pretty excited about these $530s. I hope they don't dry up. Also found a radio interview I did with a station out of Santa Barbara, California. You can listen to it here. http://2005.ktyd.com/pages/timewasters.html. It is about halfway down the page and entitled "Drop out of school to play poker"

Some odds and ends:
I made some adjustments on this website. You don't have to be a member to post comments, so if you were too lazy to create an account now one would be a good time to comment on my blog. I'm always excited about seeing posts :) I also posted some of my friends' blogs on the "links" list to the right, so please check those out bc they are fascinating. One more thing, Troy Otto if you read this post your email address. I got your comment, but would like to stay in touch and don't have contact info.

It's like 5 AM. I'm going to beddddddddddd.

Ship the dough, $8280

2006-02-23T03:34:00.000-06:00

Wowowowow! What a day! I didn't wake up until 2 p.m. because I got in bed late the night before. Did an interview with The Crimson White over the phone and then began working. I played 3 rounds and then went to eat some Chinese food with Ant. After we ate we went by Circuit City because he had to pick up something. While I was there I picked up my first digital camera. It is a black Panasonic and should be sweeeeet. We also went by the pet store, and I got a bunch of stuff that I needed for my aquarium. We came back, I played another round, and then Ant and I spent about 90 minutes setting up the aquarium. It was actually ALOT of work. We had to mix like 50 gallons of water with salt and make sure its salinity was correct. I went over to Chris Balzli's and had a few drinks and played pool. That was fun stuff.

Now on to what was one of my best statistical online poker days ever...

I played my 24 $530s at a delicious 7/1/2/14 for $8280. Mannnn did I need that after yesterday's disaster. 144 $530s played now at +$7202 overall. Not a bad week :) Good for 9% ROI. I'm happy. It's 3:30 am. Goodnight.

Tuesday

2006-02-22T02:57:00.000-06:00

Shitty day. Played the $530s at 2/1/2/19 for -$4220. Ooook so now I am down in this experiment over 120 games which is kind of cause for concern. -$1318 over $63,600 investment for -2% ROI. Oh well.

Outside of poker was fun today though. Did some media stuff with Bham News and Tuscaloosa News. Also went to Dreamland with my Dad. Tomorrow I'm doing an interview with The University of Alabama's newspaper, The Crimson White. It will be in the CW on Thursday. Katherine is coming in town Friday, so I'm very excited!!

Sad note...Bama lost heartbreaker to Arkansas tonight :(

Monday

2006-02-21T01:16:00.000-06:00

Very good day again today. 24 $530s at +$2480 (19% ROI). I'm about one-third of the way done with my $530 experiment of 300 games. Overall +$2642 over 96 games. That's good for 5% ROI, which I can handle.

Not much new outside of poker. Finally got my flight to Fort Lauderdale booked tonight. That took about 2 hours of frustration. I leave for Vienna in one week and can't wait!

Weekend

2006-02-20T01:17:00.000-06:00

New Orleans was amazzzzzzzzzing. We had a lot of fun and brought back a lot of really random stories.

Grinded out 20 more $530s today. I've played 72 now at 8/8/5/51 for a net loss of $660. After rakeback though I am +$31. Insane. Over 4 days I gamble with almost $40,000 and I'm up $31. Hopefully these games will run with the frequency that they have been, and I can get 140-150 of them in this week for + $8 grand or so. Other than that, not much on the schedule this week. I'll try to go to the gym each day and get my 6 hours of work in each day. That's all. Goodnight.

SS

Solid Friday

2006-02-17T20:36:00.000-06:00

Spent the last 6 hours playing $535s in sets of 4. Played 23 of them at 4/2/1/16 and agreed to make a deal in one other with THE__D__RY when we were heads up for another $1520. Grand total of +$3315 on the day. I've played 48 of these now for a net loss of $424 which means I am extremely even. I've crunched some numbers, and I can pretty easily make $26-$28k a month if I play 150 of these a week. This won't be hard at all. I'm starting to like these things a lot.

:(

2006-02-17T12:54:00.000-06:00

Ok I made a run at the new $530 SnG's on party last night from 10 pm to 4 am. Things didn't go well. I only played 24 of them and obviously that is an extremely small sample. The structure has been changed, so it's going to take some getting used to. I played it at 1/2/3/18 :( I'm going to get 300-500 of these games in before I determine whether it is +EV or not. I think it goes without saying that it will be over the long term.

As for the rest of the day, I have to go get a license plate for the Tahoe. Other than that I'll probably just relax before we leave for New Orleans tomorrow morning.