I like starting out everyone of my recent blog posts with the same line: It's been a while since my last blog post. But this time I can't really attribute that to laziness. Been hard on the live poker grind ever since Black Friday! Games are good! Still trying to figure out ways to play online thou. Most of my online poker grind time at home has been replaced by Starcraft 2 / Heroes of Newerth. Like many other poker players I know, I've also been looking elsewhere for new sources of income. I guess they call it "diversifying your portfolio". Started staking some good friends in some of the live games, which is nice because when I come home from a soft game it still feels like I'm grinding the game. Also, putting a lot of time and effort into a website that will be launching later this year. More on that at a later time
In the meantime, check out how good I'm getting at golf...
Golfing at Night!
Golfing during the Day!
Here is 4th of July from our deck in San Diego:
On a side note, I sold out and signed-up for Twitter so follow me @pokercosmo
I'm going to write up something a little longer and more in-depth about this at a later time, but for now I just want to quote something from a book that has helped me a lot over the past year.
The Poker Mindset by Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger
Seven attitudes that every poker player should try to master regardless of their game, limits, or technical skills. They are realities you need to be aware of and attitudes you need to adopt in order to succeed in poker over the long run:
1. Understand and Accept the Realities of Poker
2. Play for the Long Term
3. Emphasize Correct Decisions over Making Money
4. Desensitize Yourself to Money (although I personally think a lot of people do this all too well) 5. Leave Your Ego at the Door
6. Remove All Emotion from Decisions
7. Dedicate Yourself to a Continuous Cycle of Analysis and Improvement
With that said, I would like to link you all to NoahSD's blog so you can become familiar with poker by the numbers: http://www.nsdpoker.com/
Been getting killed in poker since moving into this new place. I swear our internet is cursed. Haven't been playing very well thou so need to fix that. That wasn't the point of this blog thou, I wanted to update and tell everyone that I just beat ElkY in SC2 3 times in a row. I has replays to prove it too!
Ok Ok, and now for epic hands that was played at Palomar a few weeks ago. The game is 20/40 mixed with 5/10 big bet and the rotation of games was Badugi, Triple Draw Deuce to Seven, PLO, and NL Hold'em. Villan in this hand we will refer to from now on as "Pizza Tom". He owns a local pizza shop in San Diego, and has recently picked up poker as a hobby. Note: He has played less than a week of poker before coming in on this particular day.
Hand #1: ($20/$40 Badugi)
First orbit of Badugi and Pizza Tom has never played the game in his life, so we tell him the rules are pretty simple: "You draw 3 times, You want low cards, you want 1 card of every suit, ace is low, and bam you have a badugi!" Pot is 5 way to the first draw, and everyone is drawing atleast 1 card to some that are drawing 3. Oh Badugi is so fun! With one draw left there is about 16 big bets ($640 ish) in the pot with 3 players still left, one being Pizza Tom. Two players draw and Pizza Tom stands pat. First player leads river for $40. Pizza Tom raises to $80, both players fold. Pizza Tom rolls over the and is like "Badugi!" as he scoops massive pot. LOL
Hand #2: ($5/$10 Pot Limit Omaha)
Gordo16 (whos played an extensive amount of PLO / Mixed games, prolly one of the best mixed players in SD) has been the most active on the PLO rounds since he got himself a little stuck. Finally he gets in a heads-up pot with Pizza Tom who once again is still learning the ins and outs of PLO. They get into this one hand on the river the board reads Q-J-7-4-2 with no possible flushes. Pizza Tom has 77XX hand, and Gordo16 has QQXX. Pizza Tom checks river and Gordo pots for $3k. Pizza Tom makes the most ridiculous soul read of a fold after like 10 seconds of thinking!?! Gordo shows him the top set to let him know he was right. This hand sets up the final most epic hand....
Hand #OMG EPIC LOL: ($5/$10 Pot Limit Omaha)
I'll write this hand from Ryan's point of view (Palomar regular who was sitting next to Pizza Tom, and was helping him with the rules to each game. Pizza Tom was showing Ryan is hand each time) Pizza Tom raises UTG to $40, Gordo16 3bets to $150 to try and isolate him. Someone flat calls, and action gets back around to Pizza Tom who repots to like $560. Gordo is sitting deep with him and is already thinking "Oh baby, time to crack aces" as he flats the 4bet. Cold caller folds. When the flop came down , Pizza Tom now leans over and shows Ryan his hand: and asks "Wait so I can only use two cards?" Ryan is like "Yes you can use only 2 of those cards". Pizza Tom proceeds to be like "Oh shit" (as he realizes now that he doesn't have three of a kind 8's) then checks to Gordo. Gordo fires $700 and Pizza Tom doesn't waste too much time before calling. Turn comes so board reads , Pizza Tom checks and Gordo pots it all-in for $2500. Pizza Tom looks back at his hand and again doesn't waste much time before saying "I call, I have a straight" Gordo says "Ug, you must have the AA4X" Pizza Tom then rolls over his 8884 thinking that his lone 4 was making him a straight. Gordo just stares in horror as he rolls over the to see that Pizza Tom had just a pair of 8's which were good at that point (not to mention the 3 blockers to Gordo's straight draw, and 84 to take away the 7 as a 2pair out lol). River bricks and Pizza Tom ships massive PLO pot with pair of 8's. "That would happen to me" say Gordo after the hand as he proceeds to play every hand in the badugi orbit before tilt leaving.
Moral of the story, don't bluff people who don't know the rules to the game
LP Store | Login | Register
and is like "Badugi!" as he scoops massive pot. LOL
, Pizza Tom now leans over and shows Ryan his hand: 
and asks "Wait so I can only use two cards?" Ryan is like "Yes you can use only 2 of those cards". Pizza Tom proceeds to be like "Oh shit" (as he realizes now that he doesn't have three of a kind 8's) then checks to Gordo. Gordo fires $700 and Pizza Tom doesn't waste too much time before calling. Turn comes 
so board reads 
to see that Pizza Tom had just a pair of 8's which were good at that point (not to mention the 3 blockers to Gordo's straight draw, and 84 to take away the 7 as a 2pair out lol). River bricks and Pizza Tom ships massive PLO pot with pair of 8's. "That would happen to me" say Gordo after the hand as he proceeds to play every hand in the badugi orbit before tilt leaving.
