Tomorrow my sweet little princess will be 1 month old. As a result of her rapid aging, my day to day routine is starting to take shape again. It only seems fitting that as a professional poker player I start playing poker again. Before I share a few hands that show my ninja ways, like any proud parent, I must first share some new pics. These were some professional pictures we had taken a couple weeks ago.
As you can clearly see, there is literally no cuter child that has ever existed.
Full Tilt Poker $5/$10 No Limit Hold'em - 2 players - View hand 1130052
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter
Hero (BTN/SB): $1005.00
BB: $1094.50
Pre Flop: ($15.00) Hero is BTN/SB with A
7
Hero raises to $30, BB raises to $100, Hero raises to $240, BB calls $140
Flop: ($480.00) 4 5
7
(2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $220, BB calls $220
Turn: ($920.00) K(2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $545 all in, BB folds
Final Pot: $920.00
Hero wins $919.50
(Rake: $0.50)
This was early on in a match against some aggro clown. Wasn't sure if he'd be calling 4bets but when he snapped pf and folded turn pretty quickly it seemed obv that he was willing to peel very light.
Full Tilt Poker $5/$10 No Limit Hold'em - 2 players - View hand 1130056
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter
Hero (BB): $1369.50
BTN/SB: $1017.10
Pre Flop: ($15.00) Hero is BB with 9 J
BTN/SB raises to $30, Hero calls $20
Flop: ($60.00) 9 2 8(2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB bets $40, Hero raises to $110, BTN/SB calls $70
Turn: ($280.00) 5(2 players)
Hero bets $210, BTN/SB calls $210
River: ($700.00) A(2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB checks
Final Pot: $700.00
Hero shows 9 J (a pair of Nines)
BTN/SB mucks 2 K
Hero wins $699.50
(Rake: $0.50)
Against the same guy a bit later. Given the many combos of straight draws that might have picked up a flush draw on the turn, I think c/c would have been pretty good on the river.
Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players - View hand 1130057
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter
BTN: $846.60
SB: $274.00
BB: $411.40
Hero (UTG): $498.30
CO: $582.50
Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is UTG with T A
Hero raises to $12, CO calls $12, 3 folds
Flop: ($30.00) 8 T K(2 players)
Hero bets $20, CO calls $20
Turn: ($70.00) 6(2 players)
Hero checks, CO requests TIME, CO bets $52, Hero calls $52
River: ($174.00) 4(2 players)
Hero checks, CO requests TIME, CO bets $142, Hero requests TIME, Hero calls $142
Final Pot: $458.00
Hero mucks T A
CO shows Q K (a pair of Kings)
CO wins $455.00
(Rake: $3.00)
I got bet sizing owned pretty hard here. Hoping to see AJ/AQ/QJ enough.
Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players - View hand 1130058
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter
Hero (BTN): $668.40
SB: $359.60
BB: $400.00
UTG: $400.00
CO: $450.80
Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is BTN with 9 8
1 fold, CO raises to $12, Hero calls $12, 2 folds
Flop: ($30.00) 3 8 A(2 players)
CO bets $20, Hero calls $20
Turn: ($70.00) T(2 players)
CO bets $44, Hero calls $44
River: ($158.00) J(2 players)
CO checks, Hero bets $120, CO folds
Final Pot: $158.00
Hero wins $155.00
(Rake: $3.00)
This is a nice counter example to the classic argument that most would make as they fold the turn stating that either they are behind or their opponent has too much equity.
In other news, the crawfish came to KC to visit Aaron, Doc, and I to see all our babies. The crawfish was then nice enough to post a few disturbing pictures of the doc and I that may indicate we are more than just friends. You be the judge.
sharing a beer on a las vegas vacation
a nice dinner out in chicago
a bundle of joy in kansas city
Pretty damning evidence of one of the greatest bromances ever or two of the most semi-closeted gayest married guys alive. Tough to say. I will definitely keep everyone posted as my feeling develop further for everyone's favorite psychologist and free poker coaching consumer.
for realz
SOLD OUT in about 24 hours. Thanks to everyone who signed up. I'll be sure to blog about how the class went after it's over.
I went with Old Balls(my dad's sweet nickname) to Golftec today so he could cash in on part of his xmas present from me. Golftec is a video analysis golf instruction company. Old Balls is terrible at golf. After 15 years, he can't hardly break 110. I think he enjoyed his evaluation but was mostly overwhelmed by all the stuff wrong with his swing. At one point he asked the instructor if he should switch to left handed.
Earlier in the car ride to golftec, Old Balls showed off his knowledge of the NFL by referring to the Indianapolis Ravens, the Los Angeles Rams(partial credit obv) and when asked about the seahawks record this year, he guessed 4-12 knowing they were in the playoffs.
After an amazing lunch at Oklahoma Joes, Old Balls, suggested to my friend Bootsy Johnson that his wife was 'fugal,' while referring to her good spending habits.
It's been a pretty good day. Then I came home to this...
So my kid was born 5 days ago on the 20th at 11:56am after my wife's water broke 9 hours earlier. We just finished our first christmas together as a family. My wife and dog are asleep in our bed and my sweet little princess Brooke is asleep in her crib. I've got a baby monitor with me in the office and my wife has one in the bedroom. It's been an overwhelming few days to say the least . I think it's genuinely hard to describe how it all has felt so far.
I feel a strange combination of I don't think it has hit me yet and I've been a parent all along. When I see her after being away from her for a bit it's kind of shocking. It's like, oh yea, you're here. This is her from today in her xmas dress.
And a picture from the day she was born here. http://twitpic.com/3i3az9.
After everything had settled down and family members were sitting around the hospital room passing her around and talking about how awesome she is Megan's grandma interjects with....."and she's the perfect size." What does that even mean? She was born 2 and 1/2 weeks early and came out weighing 7lbs 6oz. I made some smart ass comment about how we ordered her that size. But doesn't it imply that she could have been "wrong" size. Now you might be thinking that I'm being overly critical or that she was just trying to be nice but let me tell you something about this woman.
She is the kind of person that will fill any 3 second pause in conversation with the next random thought in her mind and in general lies about almost everything in one way or another. We arrived at the hospital around 1:30 am and she showed up at 3 am. She was the first person there, was 100% uninvited, and would have been told not to come that early if she would have bothered to let either of us know she was coming to the hospital. She came into the room and stood around talking about god knows what while Megan kept saying that we needed to take a nap. She then sat down and spewed off about more random crap before she finally got up after the longest awkward pause in history where she must have been deciding to say, "well, I really think you guys should take a nap."
On a related note, I would encourage anyone talking to new or future parents about their children to not say anything about how the parents will lose sleep when the child arrives. Those people that say it either don't have kids, don't like kids, don't like their own kids, or view sleep in a way I can't understand. It is genuinely rude and this opinion is coming from a guy who fucking loves sleep. I've been a professional poker player for 3.5 years and set an alarm about once a month. This is not to suggest that newborns don't heavily affect sleep schedules, just to say that bringing it up is socially retarded. It's like asking someone at a funeral who just lost a loved one if they are going to miss them.
POKER CONTENT: http://www.deucescracked.com/forums/4-General-Discussion/306461-Some-thoughts?page=10&per_page=15 I made a post in here earlier today that is kind of about poker.
It pains me a little to make a blog post mostly about poker, but a coaching session I had yesterday reminded me of a concept I think is pretty interesting. Also, nothing that funny has happened to me lately.
A new student was asking me about a hand where he turns top pair with A2 in a 4bet pot on JT7ccA after villain flats a 4bet and flop gets checked through. My student got check raised all in on the turn. He told me that some of his poker friends said they don't fold top pair in 4bet pots and that folding there is exploitable. These types of generalizations are almost always bad poker thinking.
You should always be asking yourself, "what is my opponents range?" In the above example I can't help but think how hilarious the idea of being "exploited" is. The word exploitable is an extension of game theory. The idea of playing unexploitable tends to imply that our opponents are playing optimal and near perfectly balanced in certain spots. For the most part, this is never true.
The next time you justify a bad call because you didn't want to be exploited, ask yourself if your opponent's range is well balanced in that spot and if you even need to worry about being exploited. cliff notes: trying to play unexploitable against an unbalanced exploitable range is BAD
My wife is 37 weeks pregnant today. It's kind of a big deal because it means the baby is officially full term and is much less likely to have any problems if she were born before her due date. Her due date is Jan 6th and my wife has been in preterm labor for a couple weeks. Anyone who would like to participate in a $5 pool to guess when she will be born please post your date in the comments and send $5 to jk3a on stars or ftp. 80% to the winner and 20% to the 2nd closest . The winners will be determined by whoever comes closest without going over. Two people can't pick the same day. Ties are lame.
I've never really had facial hair. Most of my friends do but it always eluded me. I think mostly because my wife doesn't care for it and I could never get over the hump. You know the part where you look much more homeless than you look like an slightly less attractive version of Brad Pitt. And one other small reason I guess. My moustache has a mind of it's own, it's own rate of growth if you will.
I figured November was my chance to give it a shot. It's getting colder in Missouri and if my wife can grow what appears to be a giant baby holding beer belly, why can't I have the man face I've never really dreamed about. I let it grow for about a month. Most people thought I looked ridiculous. I think one of my friends thought it was cool, but I have my doubts. While shaving it off I decided to take some pics. Enjoy.
As you could see, a beard requires a certain level of seriousness that is unmatched.
Maybe not unmatched. Did anyone ever see American History X?
You're probably thinking, wow, spitting image.
However, I found it hard to be serious when it was time for my borat impersonation or the porn tryouts.
POKER CONTENT: Wiltontilt and I just finished our HU Buffalo series. We hope that everyone enjoyed it. We really do feel that we've produced range analysis and hand reading content that hadn't been done yet in poker training. Not sure what my next series will be, but I'm sure if will be better than every other training video ever made. gg internet!
p.s. here is a lame picture of me without facial hair and with clothes on.
Congratulations to my good friend the Doc and his wife Amy on the birth of their first child. Lil Doc joined us early Monday morning this week. It makes me even more excited for our little girl.
LIL DOC
Â
The Doc and his wife decided not to share his name before birth. This drove my wife crazy and obv had me very intrigued. I was convinced it had to be something very unique or they would have been much more likely to share. They did not disappoint.Â
Let me introduce at 8lbs 7.5oz, Adler Jace Neufeld. I was a little surprised at 3am when I got the text, but not much more surprised than I would have been if they had named him Ashley. It turns out the name comes from a German word for the most baller eagle in the village or something. Despite not getting to talk to doc outside of texting yet, I felt much better when I learned the potential origin as I know Doc has some sort of German background. So the name really started to grow on me.Â
Shortly after, I felt much much better when someone showed me this...http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=adler I soon emailed me this to Doc and the following email exchange was pretty funny.
DOC: Site is rigged. Name clearly had only one meaning - Eagle. No sexual 2nd meaning like all of Aaron's screen names.
DOC: Adler = Eagle...as in "that Adler just dove down into that brook." (for those that don't know, we plan on naming our daughter brooke)
JK3A: This wont end well for you. The adler just bought a new adler to decorate his nut sack for his boyfriend to view while the adler plays catcher. Â Gg
POKER CONTENT: Played some live 2/5 Wed. night whie Aaron was ballin it up at the 10/20 game. I raised AcQs for 25 and got 3 callers. After cbetting KdJhTd the guy on my right tank calls and jumps out of his seat and donks big on the Jd turn. I grew sad and asked if he would show if I showed. He said of course and after I folded he showed the same hand, no diamond either :( I did however win $36 so the night wasn't a total fail.
There's a building about a mile from my house that appears to have been under construction/remodel for the better part of 2 years. My wife is strangely obsessed with new construction and would always keep us up to date on the small progresses. A few months ago they really started to make some headway and it became clear that they were opening a new restaurant. Last week, "Michelangelos" finally opened.
It was hard to tell from the street if it was a fazolis type restaurant, a drive thru, or a place to sit down. Tonight I decided to go check it out and pick up some food for my modified bed ridden bride and myself. I walk in and sit at the counter while the other patrons and I have a staring contest to decide who's more embarrassed to be in there. I think I won. There is a small counter that sits in front of the kitchen and next to the register. Behind that was a small dining area with maybe tables. Up a small ramp was a slightly bigger dining area with maybe 8 tables. In total, there were 4 tables and probably 12-15 people eating.Â
I peruse the stapled together menu and it actually looks pretty promising. Lots of decent sounding italian dishes, steak, and a slew of sandwiches. After several minutes a teenage waitress approaches me and asks if my order is to go. I say yes but I need to call my wife and see what she wants. While discussing the menu with her I overhear a phone conversation my waitress is having with another potential customer. She says something like, 'don't worry, even if the open sign is off, we'll have your order.' Keep in mind it's like 7pm.
As I'm placing my order, I ask what time they close and say that I'd overheard her conversation. She explains that they been dead all night and this huge rush recently with a 5 top(LOL) had caused them to run out of a bunch of stuff and literally turn off the open sign/close down for a while. Uh, ok. So she takes my order and as she's about to take it to the kitchen another waitress approaches her worried that they are going to lose a table because they're out of half of what the table ordered. An older/owner looking gentlemen walks up and hugs my waitress(hopefully his granddaughter). Right after this, the kitchen must have overheard her taking down my phone number because I was going to come back and get the order and one of them yells "no more orders." Â
She looks confused/distressed and then someone from kitchen yells, "no more orders after this one." I'm like wtf, ok. However, it turns out the 'after this one' order was the people already seated. She starts apologizing profusely begging me to come back another time all while the potential owner just lets me walk out.
I guess I should have figured that the service might be bad given the long 'construction,' but this was just completely fucked up. I swear this stuff only happens to me. Obv we'll never go eat there, and it seems super likely that they won't be open much longer anyway.
POKER CONTENT: Shipped a seat in a $70 satellite to the sunday million yesterday. Feel on top of my game right now. Didn't play though because Chiefs were on.
I have a friend who lives about 30 miles from me. He once asked if he could borrow something and I said sure, come by anytime. He then asked me if I would mail it to him. I don't really spend much time with this friend mostly because he doesn't live anywhere near the rest of my friends and thinks that driving to hang out with the group is too far.Â
This unlimited texting plan aids this friend in contacting me about once every 6 weeks. I'll be sitting in my office on a random Wednesday wishing I was on the golf course or doing coke off of the 2001 version of Britney Spears and a text will arrive that says "How u been?" My first thought is to not respond because I was always under the impression that unless it was your Dad and it was Sunday, dudes didn't chat with each other for no reason. Either there's an invite or a story to tell. Chicks chat it up, not dudes imo. Eventually I'll respond and they'll be a 6-8 text meaningless exchange, but it bothers me every time.Â
To my 7 loyal readers, I have a question. Today is Thanksgiving and I received 4 mass text messages from friends wishing me a Happy Turkey Day. A couple of them came while I was at my Wife's Mom's house listening to her relatives say "your life is about to change" in the most negative tones you can imagine in reference to the upcoming birth of my daughter. Why the fuck don't these people just say, "man having a kid sucks" like they're implying or be normal humans and just say "congratulations" or "we're happy for you." On a related note, one of these guys has the most annoying 12 year old child I've ever met. I'm pretty sure I saw this kid sucking her thumb today. I have already planned to tell these clowns on Easter how little my life has changed and how great it is to have a child regardless of how I feel. Oh yea, I had a question.
So what's the social convention on mass texts? Are we suppose to respond? Do people like receiving them?Â
POKER CONTENT:Â sb vs btn, I like 5bet jamming AK vs unknown tags.
