Adam "Roothlus" Levy
Tuesday, April 14, 2009 - Roothlus
Hey guys. It’s been a minute since my last blog and I just got back from the time of my life, Mayercraft 2009. It was a cruise on Carnival’s best ship, the Splendor which already sounds like a grand ole time. To make matters better (btw no one ever says this phrase but everyone says to make matters worse. Why?? I don’t know) they decided to get a bunch of bands to play on this cruise including John Mayer, O.A.R., Guster, and about 10 other really awesome bands. So when you have rock bands on a cruise how can it end up being anything less than the time of your life?
Friday was pretty cool. Katie, her friend Lo, my bro, and got on the cruise around 1ish and promptly started the drinking and didn’t really stop until Tuesday. I mean, what else is there to do on a cruise besides drink, eat, and [expletive deleted] ;). John Mayer came out within two hours and serenaded everyone with an hour long opening set. Later that night we went to go see Guster at the theatre inside the cruise ships. Yes, the cruise ship was ginormous. Guster was unbelievable even though we happened to miss the first 30 minutes of the show. Instead of a standard guitarist, bassist, singer, and drummer they are a bit more versatile. At one point the lead singer pulled out a ukulele and splayed an entire song with it. The drummer however, takes drumming to a whole new level. He uses bongos along with a regular drumming kit set and is so good at hitting the beat. In fact, me describing how good he was isn’t doing him any justice. If you ever get a chance to see Guster live, keep your eyes peeled on the drummer. He was just so intense. That night we all proceeded to get drunk and the girls and my bro and I split up. The girls headed off to bed and my brother and I continued partying.
We ended up meeting these two girls named Sara and… Sara. They were BFFs and apparently they have another two friends back home both named Sara. We went to watch some karaoke hosted by one of the singers on the trip, Ryan Shaw. He was actually pretty lively and seemed down-to-earth. Karaoke on a cruise full of drunken people is fairly entertaining. Either, they are awesome at singing or they are glass shattering bad. There is no in between, it’s just both ends of the spectrum and in different ways they are both great to watch. After the karaoke we were all hammered at that point and we split up with our girls. My bro, Justin, got the hotter Sara. Curses! Whatever, they were both decent looking so it was cool.
Well, I think that’s all for now. Tune in to my next blog for the rest of the Mayercraft story. I know, I said that other story was a two-parter but this time I’ll actually come through and make it a two-parter so don’t fret. Oh, and after I finish the 2nd part of that, the week after I’ll actually talk about poker a little bit. I’ll have plenty to talk about actually with Bellagio World Champs coming up on the 18th and the last week of SCOOP. Bye bye for now and good luck to everyone at the tables.
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Sunday, March 15, 2009 - Roothlus
…needless to say I survived it. I don’t think I’ve had a full weekend of drinking in a long long time. I’m even talking about Sunday night as well. When was the last time you went drinking on a freakin’ Sunday night? I’m usually too bummed out after losing a bunch of money to do anything on Sunday. But not this Sunday. I had time to lose $3k in all the tourneys and then go out.
The weekend started on Friday when my friend Katie and her friend Brooke came into town from L.A. The night started a bit late when we went to Caesars to sweat Chris Ferguson in the NBC Heads Up. He lost to Gabe Kaplan unfortunately but whatevs. I think he’s had a fairly good run the past few years hehe. After he busted we went to Treasure Island for some sushi at this place called Social House. It says it stays open 4PM-LATE but at 11:15PM it was closed. Really??? That’s not late. Maybe somewhere in Idaho, but definitely not in Vegas. So after a little bit of coaxing we were able to get a table…for eleven. Jeff Madsen, Brandon Cantu, and co. came along as well. This was a totally different crew from the online whiz kids I normally hang around and it was a good change of pace. Social House was pretty good and it was very enjoyable but nothing I would rave about. They did have some great sake, raspberry-infused sake. Mmmmm, so good. But more importantly how good is the word infused. I just want whatever is infused. I think the quote at the dinner table was “I love the word infused. It just sounds cool. I swear if they infused tomatoes, I’d want it!” After bunch of sake, sushi, and chats we decided to CCR(credit card roulette) for the bill of $1600 where I fortunately didn’t win and we were out. Phew.
Once we vamoosed from Social House Katie, Brooke, Joe Sebok who showed up at the end of the meal, and I decided to go to Forty-Deuce, a burlesque club at Mandalay Bay. It’s a great place to go if you really don’t want to go to a standard bar or club on a Friday night in Vegas. We spent about an hour there, did a bunch of shots, took a bunch of pictures, did a lot of dancing and then we realized it was somehow 3AM already. We decided it was it was time to go home…and keep drinking. I mean, we had to show Brooke a good time. It was only her 2nd time in Vegas. What a n0ob. I’m not sure what propelled it, but we somehow found ourselves sitting on a futon playing Truth or Dare. Yes, Truth or freakin’ Dare. Four twenty-somethings sitting on a couch playing T or D. Reeeeal mature. Somehow no one did a dare and all we did was four truths and then we all passed out. So basically we played it exactly how we used to play it back in the day where no one ever really got a dare to work.
Saturday was more of the same. We woke up at 12PM, early for me, went for some good hangover food at an omelet place called Egg And I. Nothing off the charts ridiculous but good nonetheless. Does anyone else notice that I just love talking about food? Las Vegas has so many different places to eat and a lot of them are open late as well which I absolutely adore. Anyways, we went shopping. I somehow got convinced to buy 3 pairs of dress shoes when all I wanted was one pair. I always get carried away when I go shopping. After that we went to Naked Fish for dinner which is my favorite sushi place to eat at in Las Vegas. Nobu is obviously super sick but I don’t really classify Nobu as a sushi place. The girls had to experience a good sushi restaurant especially when they think LA has the best sushi. Puhleaseee. I brought Justin “Zeejustin” Bonomo with us to the sushi restaurant and he is a super sicko orderer. When we got there I picked out 2 sushi rolls I wanted and he ordered the rest. I was in a good mood and picked up the tab.
After that we went home to get changed for the night and picked up JC Alvarado a.k.a. the Mexican Superstar and Steve O’Dwyer a.k.a. Mr. TimCaum. And no I have no idea why he calls himself TimCaum when he is clearly a Steve. We all met up with Amak, TheChronic420, and a bunch of online guys at the club X S at the new Encore casino attached to the Wynn. You know a club is cool when it’s only two letters. I might add the club has a similar layout to X S’s sister club over at the Wynn, Tryst . There were small subtle differences that made me enjoy X S much more but this blog’s already getting rather long. We don’t need to go off on ANOTHER tangent. The energy in the air was great. Everyone we were with were all low maintenance and down to just have fun. We got 6 bottles for our table full of like 12 people and I even tried to get the waitress to make us a shot I created called the Slutty Wizard. It’s got Blue Curacao, Malibu Rum, and Bacardi 151 in it and when you can, you should light it on fire. I’ve had it made for me twice successfully but am yet to have it after it was lit on fire. Oh, and the way I like to describe the taste is, for a shot with 151 in it, it tastes pretty good. So they didn’t have Blue Curacao or 151 so I had to create a new shot on the spot called the Green Goblin which is Midori, Malibu, and regular Bacardi Rum. It actually ended up being pretty damn good and it’s always cool to take a shot you created yourself hah. The night ended at 4am when Katie, JC, Brooke, and I all decided to take a cab to Café Bellagio. They have the best Banana’s Fosters waffle. It’s sooooo good and especially great drunken food. If you like Banana’s Fosters it is a must to try. I guess this turned more into a food blog this time. Like I said, Las Vegas is the best for food.
I think I’m going to cut the blog now and post again next week. This is getting pretty long and to be honest, Sunday was the craziest most random night of them all and I would much rather dedicate most of my next blog to that night. Also, maybe I’ll have something to say after I win the Bay 101. Yea, sure, why not. I’m calling my shot. Peace for now.
–Adam “Roothlus” Levy
Tags: Brandon Cantu, Chris Ferguson, Forty-Deuce, gabe kaplan, Jeff Madsen, Joe Sebok, nbc heads-up, Social House, Treasure Island
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Monday, February 9, 2009 - Roothlus
Hey peeps. It’s me, your resident pro Roothlus. It’s my last weekend in Orlando since I’m in the process of moving out to Las Vegas until the end of the World Series. I have wanted to move to the West Coast for years and I’m finally doing it. The West Coast is for me and I’m comin’! With the LAPC, the Bay 101, the Wynn Classic, WPT Champs and the WSOP on the west coast all within the next six months, it makes sense for me to move there. I don’t mind traveling but I really just need to have a home base on the West Coast. After the WSOP I’m planning on moving out to LA which will hopefully be my permanent residence. Alright so enough about that.
The FTOPS started on Wednesday so the tournament fields have gotten bigger which has helped the fields on other sites, Ultimate Bet included. The $1k on Wednesdays at 8:30PM EST got up to 216 players this week because of the FTOPS and so did the 9:00PM $200 sniper. It had 560 players in it this week. This is good for UltimateBet. Now, I just wish there was a tournament series every week! I think in the 2 FTOPS I’ve played so far I’ve lasted a total of, wait for it, 30 hands lol. I got owned by this donk in the $200 NL in back to back hands to bust before late registration was even done. Now, that’s impressive! I somehow outdid myself on Thursday when I played the $200 PLO8 tournament. I woke up in the middle of late registration 20 minutes into the tourney which I then didn’t realize for another 10 minutes that it wasn’t PLO and that it was PLO8. That’s what happens when you roll out of bed and start playing all groggy. Woops.
I took Friday and Saturday off and just enjoyed the downtime. Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it downtime. I went with some friends and my bro Justin a.k.a Roothlus Jr. to Tampa for this parade called Gasparilla. It’s like a toned down Mardi Gras but still a blast. It was exactly what I needed considering I’ve been grinding at home for the past two weeks so having social interaction was very refreshing. That’s definitely a downside of being an online poker player. You have to really try hard to create your own social circles because you aren’t around people besides your roommates on a day-to-day basis. That’s another reason why I’m moving to Vegas. I know soooo many people out there.
Sunday I was happy to be back at home and ready for a good grind session. Once again with the FTOPS there were massive fields all around including the $200k and $100k on UB. They both surpassed their guarantees as well. I ended up having a pretty good but heartbreaking day for a Sunday. I stone bubbled the FTOPS $240 6max which was $170k and this was the 2nd week in a row I bubbled a huge tournament. But, this is what I signed up for when I started playing tournament poker. I live for these ups and downs. In some screwed up way I’m kind of addicted to them. I could totally go off on a tangent about poker and my thoughts on it but let’s leave that for another blog hehe. Well, that’s all for now. See you guys at the tables.
Tags: Adam "Roothlus" Levy, FTOPS, Online Poker, PLO, world series of poker, WPT, Wynn Classic
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Monday, January 26, 2009 - Roothlus
Hey guys. It’s been a while since I last wrote a blog. Well, no worries. I’m back! Recently I’ve been taking it easy at home in Orlando, Florida. I went to the Poker Stars Caribbean Adventure and the Bellagio Five Diamond Classic WPT. I didn’t do well in either tourney but I at least had a lot of fun while I was out there.
So far this year I’ve been doing moderately well online although what I am realizing is it’s tough to come out far ahead in online tournaments nowadays. Basically what I’m saying is, you need to run well in the right tourneys. Like today for instance, I sucked out at least 4 times to acquire a pretty big stack in the $50 125k guaranteed on Poker Stars. I mean yea, it pays something like $27k for first but why can’t I be sucking out in the bigger more important tourneys like the Stars Million or the UB $200k. I hope to do well in the upcoming FTOPS on Full Tilt to really get my year off to a great start. I came really close yesterday to a very nice score. I got 19th in the UB $200k. Unfortunately the way I went out was super dirty. Aces vs A10ss on 10ss board after he coldcalled my 3bet out of the small blind and rivered the spade on me for a $300k pot at $3k/$6k. My tournament was a crazy one. I grinded for a bit early on then won a pretty crucial flip at 150 300 25 ante for 15k. I then got up to 25k at around 400/800 after holding 1010 vs 88. With about 120 left (99 pay) I got 3outed for a 40k pot at 600 1200 and found myself in danger of bubbling. I then got 2 outed with AA vs 88 on the river against a shorter stack to put me at around 4k. I then got it all in with K9o vs JJ and the board ran out with me turning my 9high flush with his Jack of diamonds and holding. Woops. Then AA vs JJ to get to 24k on the bubble. I grind for a little bit, we make the money and I ship the button with QQ and get called by KQo to get to 40k at 800/1600. After that there were a bunch of ups and downs which ultimately ended with that AA vs A10ss hand. It was to say the least a rollercoaster of a tourney.
On a much more positive note, I’m planning on moving to Las Vegas in the middle of February until after the WSOP. What I figured out was I’m going to be spending so much time on the west coast over the next 6 months or so I should really just get my lazy ass over there. After that I plan on moving to LA but nothing is set in stone just yet. I always say this as a tournament player: “Yeah, I’ll most likely be doing this or that, but you never know because a huge win could be right around the corner”. Who knows, maybe I’ll win this year’s main event and have to fly around the world for the next year promoting myself. As much as you can try to plan your life as a tournament player, there’s always a possibility of a wrench being thrown in the middle of it all. Of course, I would totally welcome this ‘wrench’ anytime (poker gods please be listening)
Once I move out to Las Vegas I will be on the move non-stop. As of now, I’m playing the LAPC main, the WPT Celebrity Invitational, the Bay 101, the Wynn Classic, the WPT Championship. Did I miss anything? Oh yeah, I’m flying over to Europe for the EPT Final in Monte Carlo. After that I come home, chill for a matter of weeks, and then the WSOP starts up. Oh and in between these events I have to find time to play online for the different online poker series that run from time to time. Well, I guess that’s all for now. I just wanted to check in and say what’s up. Wish me luck at the tables!
Tags: Bellagio Five Diamond, EPT Monte Carlo, Full Tilt, Poker Stars, world series of poker, WPT, WPT Celebrity Invitational, WSOP
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Monday, December 15, 2008 - Roothlus
I’ve been in Las Vegas for the past week playing the Five Diamond Classic preliminary events before the big show starts tomorrow, the $15k WPT. I was able to cash my first tournament (the $3k) but have since bricked out the three $5ks. The fields are way better than in October when Festa Lago was going on. I think with the combination of it being in October, it being right after the economy went into serious recession, and it going on during other events, the fields were so bad. The three $5ks this time got 141, 170, and 240 respectively which is a stark contrast from the bleak fields of Festa. I think all 3 $5ks combined barely had more than the last Five Diamond $5k. This is healthy for poker. I’m thinking the main event will get upwards of 450.
The $3k event was my best shot to make some real cheese but I found myself extremely carddead very late in the tournament. This is where you ask how card dead was I. I was so card dead that I needed a defibrillator to revive the deck. Heyyyooo. I know I know, bad joke. But who cares, it’s my blog. Anyways, I got in all in with AQo on the bb with 28k at 2k 4k against Amit Makitja’s Kjo. He hit a K, then a Jack, then a K and I was out. That’s a full house for all you poker n00bs out there. Still not bad to cash my first tournament.
The first $5k wasn’t too much fun. I maybe should not have played the $5k because it was right after the $3k and I had stayed up until 4AM the night before grinding that tourney into 17th place. I was playing fine but I soon found out that I was easily tiltable that day. David Pham was on my left, not a problem. Right off the bat he tried to 3-bet me when I raised to assert his dominance as the best tournament player on the planet. Well, he’s pretty close to, if not the best so I guess he has a right to try to show the person on his right who’s boss. But I wasn’t having it so I 4-bet him with A9o. He deliberated and called. Flop came KK4r. I bet 1800, he folded claiming he had Jacks. At the table I was acknowledging his statement but in my head I was like “yea right bud, I’d give you Q10s at best”. I doubled up early on when I hit trips on a 774dd board against J8dd and held. I was chilling at 30k at 50/100. Played some pots here and there while David Pham busted to Elky and they moved in Chad “Lilholdem954” Batista to my table. Bust one sicko, bring in another. Needless to say it was not an easy table. Anyways, after David busted they moved in this guy who was playing every pot and reraising a ton. He was really frustrating because I had no idea who he was and couldn’t tell if he was really good or really bad or a bad player doing good things. Eventually I 4-bet him with 77 to his 3-bet and he called with Jacks. Even sicker, I turned my 7 and he rivered the Jack. So that stung a bit. Shorty thereafter, I was raising 56dd with 14k at 100/200 UTG to 600 and he reraised me in UTG+1 to 2k. I called because I was a tiltbox that day and the flop came 847. LOLOL Really??? The flop went check check and the turn came a King where we got it in and he had AK. Fast forward 2 hours later I found myself with 35k at 300 600 and I flat a tight guy’s raise with AQo. This guy to my left squeezes and I call. He has AK and I double him up. The very next hand I get AQo again and he 3 bets me and I shove. He calls with 55. I brick out and I just went from 35k to out in 2 hands. Well, that was fun.
The 2nd 5k I got 40th in. I got up to 40k and was straight crusing when I got into a 50k flip at 200 400 and lost it on the river. Booooo. Grinded back by battling hard but the blinds started escalating and I found myself at 24k at 800/1600. Button raised to 5k and I shipped with Qjss and he had AKo. Flop even came 367ss and I bricked out. Booooo once again.
Thursday was the 3rd 5k and I played pretty well in this one as well although I was playing kind of bad early on but calmed myself down and after the first break I was fine. I built up to about 20k then won a flip against a AQo with JJ and found myself at 40k. Then I called with top pair against a bare flush draw and held to get up to a very nice stack of 60k at 300 600. That was my highest point and it was pretty much all downhill from there. I gave Elky 10k on a flip, then raise/folded a few times and found myself at 36k going into 600/1200. At 600/1200 I shoved KJdd into AKo after being carddead and having to raise/fold a few more times. It gets frustrating when you have to raise/fold knowing this specific person either has the hand or is not capable of shoving or reraising me light. Oh well, that’s how things go. Needless to say, I’m happy with my performance. Obviously I could’ve used a little more luck late in these tourneys but that’s the way it goes.
Tags: Adam "Roothlus" Levy, WPT
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Tuesday, December 2, 2008 - Roothlus
I had a brief but relaxing Thanksgiving break back home in Fort Lauderdale with my family. It was a lot of fun even though I can’t stand south Florida anymore. After 15 years living in the state of Florida, it’s time to get the heck out! So I’m moving to LA after the World Series this year. Now that I’m back in Orlando I’m going to grind for a few days and then make my way out to Las Vegas for the Bellagio Five-Diamond WPT.
Sunday did not go so well for me. I started at 4:00PM because my step-dad was having a surprise brunch for his 60th birthday. So at least I was well-fed . When I was explaining how big Sundays are to everyone at the brunch, I came up with a good analogy for it. In the past, I’ve been lost with a way to compare it to anything but not today my friend. I said picture April 15th for an accountant and having that every Sunday. It’s that much more important than any other day. If you are a tournament poker player and play less than 80% of Sundays a year, what’s the point in playing tournaments?
I played a pretty thick schedule full of about $7000 worth of buyins after I went crazy in a few rebuy periods along the way. Somehow I managed to spend more with a 4:00PM start time than I would normally with a 12:45PM start time. Woops. My Sunday was filled with misery, coolers, bad beats, and tons of despair. Pretty much a normal Sunday. But all tournament players play for ‘that Sunday’ where you win some huge tourney, final table 2 other tourneys and cash 4 others. It only happens 3 or 4 times a year but boy, is it magical. My last Sunday like that was a little disappointing for me. I managed to get 40thh in the Sunday Warmup and 52nd in the Million. In any other tourneys you would be like, “Big woop wanna fight about it?!” (quote bonus points for whoever knows this). But when the tourneys have 3,500 and 7,500 people in it each week, respectively, it’s a decent feat. Unfortunately I think I might’ve blown the Million after grinding out a really short stack for a long long time. I think it was about 2 hours which is super long for an online tournament. I skyrocketed to 3rd with 2.5million chips with 75 left and was very hopeful. I had a spot where I pretty much knew I was beat but convinced myself he could be bluffing when really he is ALMOST NEVER bluffing in this spot. Just by the way the hand played and because he knows me and I know him, he generally has to assume I have an Ace in the spot. You be the judge:
So I raise A10o to in the cutoff to 155k at 30k 60k with 2.1million behind. The RookieQQ9 (a very good player) calls in the small blind with about 3million behind. I’m curious as to what he has here. I felt he would repop AQ,AK and most other big hands. Maybe slowplay Aces or Kings. I wasn’t sure if he would repop AJo here but I was leaning towards yes. The unknown big blind with about 1.5million calls as well. The flop comes A67 rainbow. It checks to me and I deliberate for a little before checking behind. I don’t like the spot either way. If I bet the flop and get raised I almost always have to fold and not many hands are calling me that I’m beating because it’s such a dry board except for maybe 78 or if the bb defended with a weak Ace. So I opt for the check so maybe I can catch a bluff or get some value from worse hands. The turn is the 8 of diamonds bringing a flush draw now. The Rookie IMMEDIATELY bets 280k into the pot of about 500k and the big blind folds. Honestly at this point I don’t even feel comfortable calling the turn bet but I know I have to. River is a brick 2. So the board is A6782. Now he thinks for about 10 seconds before betting about 550k. This spot sucks. If I had just bet the flop the whole hand plays out differently but we can’t be results oriented can we? So I think for a little bit, and convince myself that maybe he’s bluffing because of the flush draw missing. What I’ve noticed over the years is generally when I start convincing myself of something in a hand that means I’m beat. Sometimes I fold, sometimes I don’t. Today was one of those days where I didn’t. He had AJo and I shipped him about 1million in that one pot. It was very frustrating to get into a spot like this deep in the tourney but it is what it is. I should’ve, as usual, gone with my gut. It’s always right. So sick. This didn’t end my tourney but I was kind of frustrated from that hand and made a hasty decision to reshove on a minraise by a big stack with A2cc into his Queens. Oh well. There’s no going back now and ultimately the A10o hand was still kind of a cooler.
Getting back to Sunday the day isn’t really worth rehashing my lack of luck during the entire day. But I did manage to cash the 100 rebuy and 200 rebuy on Poker Stars to make up for about $4k of my losses on the day. I did cash the UB $200k, which might I add met it’s guarantee by 75 players (woohoo!), for like the 4th week in a row or something. Apparently I’m really good at mincashing that tournament. Overall, I was satisfied with my play and that’s really all that matters. Hopefully, my stellar play will turn into stellar dividends in the near future. That’s all for now. Peace.
Tags: Adam "Roothlus" Levy
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Monday, November 24, 2008 - Roothlus
Oh hey blog readers. I have not done any blogging since halfway through the WSOP. A lot has changed since then. I now have a deal with Ultimate Bet as well as a deep run in the WSOP Main Event in which I set Phil Hellmuth off on one of his best tirades ever. Apparently, the producers said to Phil that it was definitively his best until he one-upped himself with his tirade against Cristian Dragomir the very next day. That got me on ESPN for a few episodes which was totally awesome. Just the other week I managed to final table the $15k WPT Festa Al Lago event where I placed 5th for my biggest cash ever, $261k. Needless to say, luck has been on my side as of late.
Alright now that I’m done tooting my own horn, I was going to talk about my week after the Festa Al Lago and what I’ve been up to. After I busted out of the WPT I took my friends railing the final table along with my brother and mom to Nobu and quite frankly if you haven’t heard of Nobu, google that shit a.s.a.p. Everything at Nobu was as close to perfection as you can find. They have this dish with rock shrimp tempura in this lemon spicy mayo sauce that is, and forgive me for quoting all Jewish women from New York, “tah die faw.”
Anyways, after that we geared up for a night out at Body English by going to the Hard Rock poker room, which might I add is pretty fresh. We were able to get our own table going with half PLO, half NL. Oh, and the people I keep referring to as we are: JC Alvarado, my brother Justin a.k.a. Roothlus 2, Steve “Mr. Tim Caum” O’Dwyer, Mike “Sir Watts” Watson, Katie Lindsay ala Suited Connections a.k.a. my agent, Bryan “Devo” Devonshire, Darrell “DFish” Fish (‘bout as clever as Roothlus 2), and two of my friends from Florida who flew in for the final table, Brent and Mike. So that’s my crew for the night. Oh yea, and Katie’s friend Heather. We only spent about an hour playing poker but we tried our hardest to lose as much money as possible. A few of the highlights were someone who will remain nameless folding an Ace in a 5 way pot on a A664K board where it checked all the way down to the river and DFish bet $20 into like $80 for a clear value bet of the king. She showed it to me as she was folding and I nearly pooped my pants. But not to be outdone, I did something even stupider. I called DFish’s reraise in PLO with Q7910 with 2 spades. The flop came 1024rainbow no spade and DFish potted it which was basically his stack and I inexplicably folded the 10 with plenty of 2 pair outs when I could’ve been good to begin with. I even looked at my cards before I folded and it didn’t register in my head that I had top pair lol. Needless to say after all was said and done I ended up 600 up somehow.
Once we got to Body English as usual the outside host fucked us saying we were going to get 2 for 1 bottles or some shit and get a table on the dance floor. When we got inside we saw a corner booth that could allegedly fit 10 people and we weren’t on the dance floor. Obviously I was pissed but it wasn’t like we were going to leave so whatever. It ended up being a great night though. I almost got the waitress’ number but she claimed to be ‘loyal to her boyfriend’. Yeah okay whatever. In all fairness we were hitting it off really well so I’d like to think that she was feeding me bs. She was talking about how she’s a dork at heart and being a poker player, Magic player, and Fifa enthusiast we had a lot to talk about. We left after our two botttles were done and DFish and Brent tried real hard to get me to go to Spearmint Rhino with them. I refused like 10 times because I was just too tired. Thank God I didn’t go. That could’ve gotten wayyy out of hand. It ended up being a fairly cheap night for a “I just made a TV final table” party and it was a very satisfying day.
The next day JC and Katie convinced me to go to the lake with Devo and Matt “MattG1983” Graham. Hangover and all we made the trek down to Lake Mead, a beautiful lake around 30 minutes outside of Las Vegas. Bryan had some Jet Skis with him and he urged me to get on one once I got there. These are not your normal Jet Skis. These are the real deal. Not the ones where you climb on to them and go. These are the ones where you have to hold on to the handle bars and pick yourself up using your arms once you get going. It’s a three-step process and was really tough. I never was fully able to stand up and go but I made a little bit of progress and the least I could do was give everyone else not using the Jet Skis a laugh by wiping out over and over. The pinnacle of the day was when MattG got pulled over, YES PULLED OVER, for going to fast on his Jet Ski. The boat came from out of nowhere and had sirens and everything. The boat pulled him over and Matt was no longer allowed to use it so Matt and the Jet Ski had to transported back to land. At this point Devo goes out to see what’s up and Devo gets ‘pulled over’ as well because he thought his registration tags were good but they weren’t. L O Mutha FKN L. Never thought I’d see that happen. After a rough day in the water, we went home cooked some dinner and prepared for the $10k Caesars event the next day.
The Caesar’s event was such a weird structure. You started with $100k in chips at 100/200 but the levels jumped a lot like 400/800 to 600/1200 and then 4k/8k to 6k/12k. It was an untested structure that should’ve been tested numerous times, but why would they do that? I ended up busting one level after the dinner break. I wasn’t really on point with it all. While I don’t think I should’ve taken the tourney off, I definitely wasn’t playing my best. This was evident when I decided to lose 40k with J-10cc on a 6-6-4ssQ-K board. Don’t ask please, it was just me being retarded. I like to call it “I just won money so I’m going to play super sick when I really should just stick to what works” syndrome. I know it’s a really long name for a syndrome, so I guess we’ll just call it New Money Syndrome, or NMS for short. Hevad Khan went on to win it in an extremely top heavy payout structure but he deserved it anyways. If anyone knows how to capitalize on a fast structure it’s Hevad with all of his sit ‘n go experience. I heard he just murdered the bubble.
The next day, Wednesday, I decided to go back with Katie to Los Angeles for Halloween. I’m thinking about moving out there and wanted to see if I liked Huntington Beach, where she resides. It was relaxing to chill and wind down after such a fast paced week before in Vegas. Katie, her boyfriend Danny, and I decided to brainstorm for costume ideas. We did this for about a day off and on until Thursday when we decided to be poker players. Danny would be Scotty Nguyen and I would ironically enough be Phil Hellmuth. We spent the day shopping for costumes and piece by piece it all came together. I got a haircut, shaved my beard off, bought a leather jacket, black pants, black shoes, black everything and even found a fake wart to put on the side of my nose.
For Danny we found a nice rocker wig that Katie cut into a mullet as well as a bunch of tacky gold chains, an even tackier gold watch, a wife beater, white shoes, and white pants. They both came together really well. Here are some pics of us:
That night we went to this suave hotel called Sofetil. Katie’s friend Trishelle organized it and it was a pretty happening club. The notable costumes I saw was a Miss Alaska Sara Palin which I thought was pretty clever and one step ahead of all the other unoriginal Sarah Palin costumes. One pretty hilarious and easy to wear costume I saw was these two girls with signs that said “Nudists on Strike”. Bravo, bravo. The best costume all night was what Trishelle’s friend Frank was wearing. He was Ryu from Street Fighter 2. HADUYKEN! Awesome. Just awesome. I was surprised that most people didn’t know who I was but the few that did absolutely LOVED it. Frank and Trishelle both immediately knew who I was and thought it was great. In retrospect, maybe I should’ve gone to a party that was more in touch with poker but whatever. It was still a fun night anyway you cut it.
After that we went to Katie’s friend, Ryan’s house party. His house was sick and there were tons of people there. There were tons of girls there and 90% of the girls were all extremely hot. I had never seen such a good hot girl to guy ratio, let alone a girl to guy ratio. I’d say it was at least 70:30 girls to guys. This Ryan guy knows how to throw a fucking party. Things were going great until some douchebag decided to smash a bottle of wine through Ryan’s plasma TV. NOT COOL DUDE. So the party died down after that. By far the best part of the night was when I was walking around with Danny and this guy in a gray pimp suit and top hat says to me in passing about my costume: “I fucking love it.” I didn’t realize who it was until he was gone but it was Rob Dyrdek from Rob and Big . So that made my night right there. Danny and I were getting annoyed with our costumes so we decided to switch it up a little bit. I took Danny’s mullet and he took my hat. Here’s a picture of just that. Once we left the party it was too hard to find a cab so we just walked home. It was only a mile and a half of drunken walking but somehow it wasn’t that bad.
The next day we had to be up for Shannon Elizabeth’s scavenger hunt. I can’t remember the last time I did a scavenger hunt but it was one serious scavenger hunt. Apparently Shannon runs it and wins just about every year because she does all the extra credit points on it. Our team consisted of Katie Danny, this guy Hesh, Katie’s friend Jonathan, and me. We were all really hungover and kind of half-assed it from the start because we knew we weren’t going to win. Regardless, it was a blast to do and was a great way to get to know the other people.
We got done with the scavenger hunt at around 7PM and went back to the hotel we were staying at for the weekend and chilled out until we went back to Shannon’s place for the 2nd leg of her birthday extravaganza, the party. The party had good music but all three of us were kind of run down from the past two days. We saw Jeff Madsen, Maria Ho, and Liz Lieu. The funniest exchange of the night was when some random guy came up to Liz and was like “OH MY GOD! You’re that girl from online poker!” He just went on and on about poker and you could tell the last thing Liz wanted to do was talk to this weird guy at a party. I had to walk away when I heard the guy say “My name is the dominator online”. Funny how you can just be at a random celebrity’s party and some guy totally obsess about the poker player there.
We called it a night around 1:30AM. I know super early for me but I’ve been trying to get to bed earlier lately. That was my week. Pretty eventful to say the least as well as some other stories that we do not need to divulge on the Internets. What’s next for me? I’m going to take a few weeks off from traveling and grind the FTOPS online and then I’ll be back on the live poker grind come Five-Diamond Poker Classic after Thanksgiving. On that note, peace.
Tags: Adam "Roothlus" Levy, Phil Hellmuth
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