Thursday, August 27, 2009 - Matt Graham
Hey guys. I am writing from New Orleans on my trip visiting my family. It is really great to be home. I should really visit more but it is just really hard to find time. I have been doing so much traveling for poker this year that when I have down time the last thing I want to do is get on an airplane.
My brother and I went to see the midnight premier of District 9 last night. Going into the movie I had seen the previews but really couldnt tell what to expect the movie to be like. Well, first of all, it was just awesome. It had great action that didnt overdo it, but also a great story and look into human nature. Basically the message is that humans are intolerant and cruel. Some of the scenes were quite disturbing, and when you walk out of that theatre you will definitely have a lot on your mind. I dont want to ruin the movie so I wont go into any detail, but I suggest everyone take the time to go see it. Be warned though, it is pretty gory so if you cant handle that you may not enjoy the movie.
Tonight, me, my brother, and my best friend from childhood are headed out downtown. May even take a stroll up and down Bourbon Street for ald times sake. Most locals almost never go to Bourbon, but hey, I am a tourist this time around!
I am on a pretty good run in the cash games on UB. I havent been a cash player in a very long time so I had to make some adjustments. I dont think being in blue and trying to bluff is a very good idea. Nobody ever seems to want to fold and they play back at me a ton. Some of the regs have even commented on how tight I have been playing, but hey, I am winning at a pretty solid rate so I am not going to change that until the players in the game adjust and start folding to me.
Alright I am going to watch Lion King with my Mom’s foster children now. Pretty much my favorite movie of all time….
Tags: family, Matt Graham, New Orleans, Poker Poker Poker, ub
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Thursday, August 27, 2009 - UB Marketing
The countdown has begun for the 8th Annual Aruba Poker Classic. With just five weeks away we’ve added even more luxury to the UB 10th Anniversary event by having a special poker tournament with an ML350 Mercedes as the grand prize. There will only be 10 players in the final run for the prize, so make sure you qualify through satellites starting September 1st.
Separate from the Mercedes event, if you’re still itching to get to the Aruba Poker Classic, the final big seat giveaway is going to be our 50-Seat GTD on Sept 13th. We have plenty of ways to qualify for this event, so check the tourney schedule for specific dates and times.
We’ve had a bunch of exciting changes with our pros since the WSOP, adding Brandon Cantu, Liv Boeree, Billy Kopp, and Bryan Devonshire. The marketing team is working to embrace our pros even more by highlighting them on the Web site with a special section dedicated specifically for them. Be on the lookout next week for the new pros section of the site.
Tags: Aruba Poker Classic, Marketing, mercedes aruba, mercedes qualifier, Team UB
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Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - HollywoodDave
That’s right, rockstars — after months in the Vegas desert, I’m back in the land of milk and honey… Hollywood, baby. Unfortunately this trip is just a quick 4-5 days, after which its back to Sin City for another few weeks. So naturally I’ve been packing in as much LA action as I can handle!
Started off with a long-delayed trip to the beach, Santa Monica pier style. Hung out with my dad for his birthday, my 2 bros, and of course my hottie gf MB (hey, any excuse to get her in a bikini…yum). After spending the day there we had dinner on the pier and then back to Hollywood for late nite drinks at my fave hangout, Birds, with some other friends. Good times.
Then yesterday I had lunch with my manager Glen and caught up on all the bizness in my life, and all the exciting things coming up soon. Top of the list is the fact that as of yesterday, I finally received the 100% completed copy of the pilot I’ve been working on all summer: Grifting w/ Hollywood Dave Stann! I watched it like 3x and man is it awesome, exactly how I pictured it all those years ago when I started to dream up the idea in my head. For those of you tuning in late, ‘Grifting’ is my new tv show, in which every week I set out to a new destination around the globe to track down the heart of a particular game, spend time learning it from the masters, then go out into the field to see if I can beat it. Plenty of gameplay, but what I really love about this show is the cultural component — seeing all the ways in which people who are obsessed about the strangest games around the globe eat, sleep, and party!
At this point our production company has done a real bang-up job creating this amazing pilot, and from here we start walking in to networks both domestic and foreign, in order to find a home for the show. I would LOVE to put a link up to the pilot here for you guys to check out, but until we finish the meeting process with it, I have to keep it under wraps. But believe me when I say this show totally rocks!
Other than that, one of the best things about coming back to LA is being able to take some continuing poker lessons with Annie Duke, which is where I’m headed tonite. Years ago I traded blackjack and poker lessons with her, and she gave me the tools I needed to do so well in no limit holdem events… but over the past year or so I’ve been specializing more and more in the HORSE games, and so always look forward to anything more she can teach me in that regard as well. I keep pretty detailed records of my play, both live and online, and feel that although certain areas of my game are pretty solid, I’ve got a few leaks that need special help to correct! And no I won’t tell you guys where the leaks are — until the’re fixed, that is!! lol
In the meantime, I will be putting up some new vidz on my youtube page very soon so chekkit out: www.youtube.com/HollyDeezy
Oh yeah and ps, I booked an audition for the tv show ‘House’ tomorrow so lookout! Also, just over a month til Aruba and I am set!!! See you guys there!
-hd.
Tags: Annie Duke, Aruba, Hollywood, Hollywood Dave, Poker Poker Poker, Vegas
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Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - smokin_aces
Your shot at $450 with zero buy-in is in mere HOURS! The password is ubblog0809
Register now and join a small field for your shot at first prize (cash and a 200K GTD buy in) with other cash prizes for top finalists.
As well, to get your shot at the $50 bonus offer, take a guess at how many people will play in this freeroll. To make your guess, put your UB username and your guess in the comment section of THIS BLOG POST
GOOD LUCK!
Aces
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Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - P0ker H0
It’s great to be home after a long 5-day weekend getaway with the “boys”. It started last Thursday when John Orr, Jon Green, Wisco, and I flew from Madison, WI, out to Portland, OR, to meet up with Phil Hellmuth and a couple of other buddies, for a golf extravaganza. We got to golf at some of the nicest courses in the United States…..Pumpkin Ridge and Riverside. Two beautiful courses in Portland and some of the most unbelievable scenery there is! Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens, and the Columbia River were some of the sites we saw. There were many excellent restaurants, too. The food was unforgettable! Now I understand why Debo has been trying to get me out there for all these past years. Lots to see and do.
After arriving Thursday evening and a 4-hour poker session, we called it a night so we’d be in good shape for golfing in the morning. We headed out for Pumpkin Ridge on Friday, and wow, what a place! They treated us like kings (Not sure if that was because we were with Phil or not! ). I teamed up with Wisco and John Orr against Phil, Jon Green, and Jon’s brother-in-law Steve (an obvious ringer!). We sure took a thumping! Between Steve’s 300 yard drives, Jon’s irons, and Phil’s one-handed putting, we lost too much $$$$ to say in a blog. My wife might read this! That night I tried to get even by playing poker. I lost too much $$$$ to say in a blog. My wife might read this!
Saturday, same teams at Riverside this time. The course was a lot tougher and Phil wasn’t making his one-handed putts, so we broke about even for the day! So, I really felt more like a winner! We went to one of the nicest restaurants in Portland, El Gauchos, for dinner. After running up a bill of about $2400 between seven of us, Phil rented their cigar and wine room for a night of poker. The game was really wild. We played five-handed in a 5-10 game. Near the end of the night, I got into a big hand with Phil. Phil opened the pot for 25 and everybody called, as did I in the big blind with 5-8. The flop came 4-6-7 with two diamonds. The fact that I had the nuts made me feel good until Phil led out for 200. I reraised him 500 more, and he called. Phil was playing really loose all night, so I put him on either a diamond draw, a set, or who the heck knows with him! The next card off was the ten of diamonds. Now I’m in a tough spot. I have about $2700 in front of me, as does Phil. There is about $1500 in the pot. I don’t want to check raise here because knowing Phil he could have just about anything or just a diamond which I don’t want to let him see for free, or a free card for his set, two pair, or whatever. So I shove the $2700, like an idiot! Phil snap calls with the nuts and rakes about a 7K pot. GG me!
Sunday, Steve and Wisco were done playing golf. So, the new teams were John Orr paired up with Phil, and Jon Green with me. Jon and I golfed out of our minds and had Phil crying like a little baby, especially at the end when I won almost every dime back that I had lost the previous two days! (I called my wife. We took the house off the market! 
Weekends like this I’ll remember the rest of my life. But the one week I guarantee you’ll always remember is coming up in October….Aruba, Baby! See you on the beach! H0
Tags: Aruba, Debo34, Golf, John Orr, Jon Green, P0ker H0, Phil Hellmuth, Poker Poker Poker, Wisco
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Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - Vincent
As you may all know we have this exciting promotion going on at our site, which is called the Sport Legends Challenge, this one has been running for some time now and it is about to make all the players that had the fantastic opportunity of earning a seat to go the Bahamas!
Can you guys image how exciting it would be to visit that place?! The blue water reaching your body on each one of the waves, the white sand touching your feet (of course, with beach sandals, otherwise it will burn your feet.. hehe).. Feeling the warmth breeze of the beach on your face, drinking a really nice cold drink and most important of all, taking part of the best poker games next to the best sports legends and poker pros in the world.
I have never been there in my life and I really want to go to the Bahamas someday, so hearing that each one of our valuable players has the opportunity of going to this exhilarating location by playing on the games that we offer on our site for this exclusive promotion is really awesome. In addition to all these exciting events, places, parties and everything that our Marketing and Promotions Department has settled for this thrilling promotion is that you will play at one of the most beautiful and breath-taking hotels in the world, which is the Atlantis Paradise Resort!
I wish everyone of you the best of luck at our tables and I know that you can make it to the Bahamas, in fact is so easy since we have several Tourneys running almost every time at our lobby, so qualifying for it is only a few games away depending on where you start from; therefore, start packing as soon as possible since this promotion is hot and I know the parties there are going to be remarkable!”
Tags: bahamas, blue water, breeze, hotel, Parties, Rai$e VIP Team, Sports Legend Challenge, white sand
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Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - Scott Ian
I can’t believe summer is over. Granted, I live in LA so it’s never really over, it’s more the idea of summer being over. You know that horrible “back to school” feeling? Not that I’m going back to school and if anything I worked harder this summer than I have in years so, don’t listen to me. I think the insanity of my summer may have done permanent damage!
Going into the WSOP main event I knew what I was in for and I committed to it. Last year I didn’t get to play the main event and this year it literally took an act by the scheduling Gods and the planets aligning just right for me to play. I had this insane window where I would be arriving in Vegas from Anthrax’s European tour hours before the start of day 1D, flying to Tulsa OK to play a show the day after day 2B and flying right back the morning of day 3. If I were to make it to the final nine, I would be on a plane as soon as it ended back to Sweden to play a show the next day. How this all worked out is beyond me and I wasn’t sure if I could mentally and physically do it. Of course I could bust on day 1 and everything would be so much easier but the whole thing had this “meant to be” vibe about it so I committed to getting through the week and playing my game no matter what.
Amazingly, everything went according to plan. After finishing day 2B at 1:30AM I was at the airport by 4:30AM for my flight (through Dallas) to Tulsa. That all worked and I played the show, kicked some OK ass and was back at the airport at 4:30AM for my flight (through Denver) to Vegas. Not only were my flights on time, they were early and I got back to Vegas hours before the noon start of day 3. My nightmare of sitting in Denver airport as my stack blinded off didn’t come true.
Now I was about to play day 3 of the main event having not slept in almost 48 hours. The mind is an amazing thing because I stayed focused and locked in all day and at the end of the marathon I had 152K going into day 4. I had no trouble sleeping that night.
Bubble day was a mix of anxiety and excitement for me. Of course I was excited to make the money but I had this feeling gnawing at me that I didn’t have much left. When it got to hand for hand it killed me. The slow pace for over an hour knocked me on my ass and my focus was gone. I could feel the last three weeks catching up to me like a locomotive and I was going down. I think making the money in a way was bad for my game because I lost the tension I needed to remain locked in.
I busted out shortly after when I ran my J7 into AA. I was in the BB (6K). The SB limped and I checked. Flop comes 10 7 2 rainbow. He bets 6500 and I think he’s lying so I re-raise to 17,500 with 59K behind. He shoves. I should’ve folded but like I said, I’d lost my focus and I called. He turns over AA! A 9 came on the turn increasing my outs but the 4 on the river sunk me and that was that. 637th out of 6484. I was stoked. A sense of relief washed over me as I left the Rio and a huge feeling of accomplishment. I cashed in my first main event. I set my mind to making it through the week and I did. Would I have liked to have gone deeper? Of course. Next year it’s on. Thanks to everyone at UB for making my life easier all week as well. Your support was invaluable!!
Last week UB hosted my second “Home Game” and it was a blast!! Vinnie Paul was first out for the second time in a row I believe. And that’s no knock on Vinnie’s game. Just bad luck. Guy rivered a flush against him. Kirk Hammett was tearing it up most of the game, taking down pot after pot and was the chipleader for a while. He lost a big pot, KK vs AA if I remember correctly and then got whittled away. I thought he was a lock for top 3. I had a crazy hand against Phil. I’ll let the picture do the talking!!! Greg Tribbett and I made the final table and finished 4th and 5th . Adam “Roothlus” Levy finished third, getting knocked out by the same guy that busted me and both of us against a set of 5’s!! BeantownBoy77 finished 2nd and won $1000 TD’s. Congrats to SMGKAG for taking it down and winning the Aruba package.
We’re planning Home Game #3 for the end of October. There will be some new faces there this time as well. Hope to see you there!!!
Cheers,
Scott
Tags: Adam "Roothlus" Levy, Aruba, Aruba Package, Aruba Poker Classic, Greg Tribbett, Kirk Hammett, Phil Hellmuth, Rio, summer, ub, Vegas, Vinnie Paul, WSOP
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Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - Billy Kopp
As the newest Ultimate Bet team pro, I’m excited to share my first blog with all of you. For those of you who don’t know, my name is Billy Kopp and I reside in Erlanger, Kentucky. I am twenty three years old and have been playing online poker for the past five years. I got my start into poker by playing small home games with friends. While going to college at the University of Kentucky, I began to play primarily online. I had success and was able to meet other successful players online who helped me to advance my game.
This summer I made a transition into playing more live events. I had a second place finish in the 5k New Orleans WSOP Circuit event for a nice six figure score. After that I proceeded to play in several WSOP events. I was fortunate enough to get 8th in the 5k no limit event and then 11th in the 10k pot limit event. Finally, I finished in the summer out with a 12th place finish in the main event for a little under $900,000. I can proudly say that Ultimate Bet was by far the best site for me to represent. Due to the help of my agency, Suited Connections, I was able to land a long-term deal with the site. I have played on UB for years and have had success in the biggest multi table tournaments they have to offer including a win in their Sunday major. To date, I have never given substantial time to playing cash games. Now, I will be playing cash games along with multi-table tournaments on Ultimate Bet under the name “billy_kopp”.
Lots of people have been asking me what my next live event will be. I am currently in the process of moving to Las Vegas, so the next event for me will probably be the $5,000 main event in Biloxi, Mississippi at the Beau Rivage in September, followed by the Ultimate Bet Aruba Poker Classic in October. Once everything is settled in Vegas I will be playing more live events. On a side note, I want to wish my friend and fellow colleague Adam “Roothlus” Levy good luck in the Legends of Poker tournament going on at the Bicycle Casino right now. Hopefully he can bring home another win for the UB team.
I can’t wait to meet the other team pros in Aruba. I have never played in the Aruba Classic and wish everyone who plays the best of luck. For all of you reading this, I hope to get to play with all of you on the site at some point soon!
Until next time,
Billy Kopp
Tags: Adam "Roothlus" Levy, Aruba, aruba classic, Billy Kopp, las vegas, Legends of Poker, Online Poker, ub, UB Team, Ultimate Bet, WSOP
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Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - smokin_aces
The Password is ubblog0809
Copy and paste that so there is no mistake!
Tomorrow night is your chance to go after $450 in prizes with ZERO buy in. First place takes cash and a seat at the 200K GTD. There are cash payouts for top finalists and a nice twist.
Before you even play you can win $50! Simply take a guess at how many players will play in the tournament! If you guess closest without going over, we’ll give you $50. Here are the rules.
To qualify for the $50 bonus offer, you need to do the following.
1. Comment in THIS BLOG POST (NO COMMENTS IN OTHER BLOG POSTS WILL BE COUNTED) with your Ultimate Bet username and your guess at how many players will register for this tournament.
2. *Your username and your guess need to be included in the body of your comment.
3. *Just like the Price Is Right, the closest guess wins WITHOUT going over.
4. *In the event of a tie, the comment posted first wins.
5. *Only one guess per person – If you guess more than once, only your first guess will be counted.
6. *If you don’t put your Ultimate Bet username EXACTLY correct, your guess will not be counted. We will not contact anyone if they mess up their username.
See you in the next Blog Freeroll!
Aces
Tags: blog, blog freeroll, Bloggers Tournament, freeroll
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Monday, August 24, 2009 - Annie Duke
I headed off on Wednesday of last week to go to Adventures of the Mind, an amazing mentoring summit. The program brings together 150 of the smartest high school students in the country with mentors who have gotten to the top of their respective fields. The summit was held at The Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. I found myself in a room with 9 Nobel prize winners, the founder of Twitter, the head of Mozilla and John Nash (just to name a few of the mentors). I was honored to be in the same room with such great minds including 9 Nobel Prize Winners. Even cooler for me was that IAS was the place where John von Neumann was a professor. I speak of von Neumann several times a year in my poker seminars as he was the father of Game Theory. Any poker player should revere von Neumann and I got to walk the very paths that von Neumann walked. Oh, and Einstein walked those same paths too. He was appointed to the IAS in 1933 at a salary of $15,000 a year which was a buttload of money back then. Freaking amazing experience for me.
Anyway, getting to Adventures of the Mind was pretty harrowing (as was getting home). I planned to take an 11:30 pm flight on Continental out of LAX. I got there and the flight was delayed an hour which turned into 2 hours because flights before mine were already stacked up late. When we finally got on the plane it was already 1:30 in the morning and I was exhausted so as we starting taxiing to the runway I fell asleep. Pretty quickly I was woken up by an announcement that we were taxiing to the gate. At first I thought that I had gone out hard and clearly slept through the whole flight. To my dismay, though, I realized we hadn’t even taken off yet when the rest of the announcement said we had to go back to remove a woman from the plane. That would be a DRUNK woman from the plane who had gotten up and walked to the bathroom during takeoff to throw up! I am not kidding here.
So I was up front in business class so I got to eavesdrop on everything that was going on. We got back to the gate and the maintenance people had already gone home so we had to sit there for a over 15 minutes while they found a maintenance person to open the door of the plane. The whole time this drunk lady and her friend were complaining about how they didn’t understand why they had to be removed from the plane. Didn’t the flight attendant think they had already been embarrassed enough? The answer to that was, “No!” No one told them that they could get up and walk around the plane during taxi and takeoff! Okay…aside from the fact that the flight attendants made their normal safety announcements as we were leaving the gate and I would have to ask, “What the hell planet do you women live on? Everyone knows you can’t get out of your seat during taxi and take off.” Oh, and the final complaint of these women was, “Don’t you know you are ruining our weekend?” The answer to that was, “It’s Wednesday.” I thought that was pretty funny. My own personal answer was that they were doing a pretty good job of ruining my day.
So they finally remove these women from the plane. As a side note the one who threw up claimed to have only had two glasses of wine. I’ll take the over on that one. Anyway, they find the maintenance people who now have to clean the bathroom this woman has thrown up in. Apparently, she didn’t throw up in the toilet but in the sick. Now I am sure everyone has seen a plane’s bathroom sink and it is tiny so the whole thing was clogged with some nasty, chunky throw up. I felt pretty bad for the maintenance worker with that one. It took her about 15 minutes to clean that gross puke up. Ew!
Okay, so finally around 2 am we head toward the runway again and I arrive in Princeton almost three hours late. Thanks drunk lady! You made my day!
So I spent the next two days at The Institute for Advanced Study. I listened to some amazing spoken word artists, heard the story of how Captchas, those distorted words you have to type on the internet to prove you are a human, are now being used to digitize books. Check out http://www.recaptcha.net to find out about that. And Luis von Ahn who is the brains behind that operation (and an amazing speaker I might add). I got to hear from the president of Rhode Island School of Design, here the founder of Pixar speak and also hear from the inventor of the Ultima series of games. And that was just a sampling of the great minds I had access too. It was incredible to see these high school students enrapt by the speakers. Knowing that I was a part of an experience that will stay with these high school students their whole lives and have such a deep impact on them (it definitely had a deep impact on me).
My talk to the students was about how I found my way into poker which was really just a message about understanding that just because you are really good at something does not mean that it is what you are meant to be doing because no matter how good you are if it doesn’t light you up inside it is not the path you are meant to take, no matter how many mentors have invested time in that path or the obligations you feel towards them. In my case, I was very good at the academic path I had chosen as a young woman. I had gone to an Ivy League college, and Ivy League grad school. I had secured a very prestigious National Science Foundation Fellowship to go to grad school. My mentors and advisors had put a tremendous amount of time and effort into me and my education. And, frankly, I was a very good scientist.
But when it came down to it the only thing that was keeping down that path was a fear of failing my mentors and my parents. Had I not had the guts to leave I would never have gone down the poker path, a path that I have true passion for. A path that lights me up inside. And had I not had the guts to leave, I might never have founded Ante Up for Africa, or found my way to the board of Decision Education Foundation. I might never had the platform to accomplish the humanitarian efforts that have already been so important to me. So it all came together in the right way for me because I realized that, in the end, the only way you fail your mentors is by failing to fulfill your potential by finding the thing that makes you happiest.
So that was my message to the students. I mean it wasn’t like I could talk about my Nobel Prize winning research like some of the other speakers! I left on Friday, thinking I was going to play The Bike tournament. And my flight was delayed 4 hours. I have been having horrible luck with travel lately. By the time I finally got home to LA I didn’t get to sleep until almost 6 am so I was too exhausted to even play The Bike. I wish I had known because I certainly would have stayed an extra day at the summit. All around, the return flight being delayed really screwed my. But hey, at least there wasn’t a drunk lady on that flight. Way to go Continental!
Tags: Adventures of the Mind, Ante Up For Africa, Einstein, Game Theory, Institute of Advanced Study, John von Neumann, Mozilla, Nobel Prize, Pixar, Princeton, Twitter
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