Friday, September 4, 2009 - Michaelbinger
Hi all!
I’m writing this from 30000 feet! Flying Virgin America from Vegas to NY. Great airline… I decided to splurge for first class since they have wireless onboard and I figured I could pay for the upgrade through online poker winnings. 4 hours into the flight and I’ve shown a nice profit. Success! I played some of the no limit tables on Ultimate Bet with the bonus for winning with 2-7. Quite fun, except when you find yourself bluffing hundreds of dollars chasing that bonus 
.
Oh yes, and I finally can play UB on my MacBook! They have Apple compatible download now.
Anyhow, I am starting off a 5 week trip away from home. Headed to the Hamptons tonight. A friend rented a posh house there for the labor day weekend and invited me. Thanks D!
After that I’m going to Raleigh to see Mom and family and then NY to see friends. Then to Philly for a good friend’s wedding… I’m a groomsman. Then to Atlantic City for Borgata tourney, followed by London for the WSOP Europe. And finally… phew, let me catch my breath… to Aruba the first week of October for the UB Aruba Poker Classic. That is always great fun.
Oh by the way this week I went to Spago in Caesars Palace Forum shops for the first time… one of the best meals I’ve ever had. I was shocked how good it was.
Also, this week I’ve gotten back to working on some poker math projects. Doing some cool stuff with 2-7 triple draw now.
Best of Luck,
Michael Binger
Tags: Aruba, Aruba Poker Classic, Caesars Palace, Poker Poker Poker, ub, UB Mac, Ultimate Bet, Vegas, WSOPE
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Sunday, August 16, 2009 - P0ker H0
I don’t like to dwell on the negative, so I’m putting the last few months behind me and looking forward to the next couple of months. First there was a disappointing month at the WSOP and just before my Main Event day, my older brother, Alan (”BigAls”), passed away. That took a lot out of me. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of him. It’s been hard getting back to a normal life and my daily grind, but I know my brother would be kicking me in the…. So now I want to focus on what’s coming up and the positive things.
These last few weeks I’ve been doing really well online. Winning the Wednesday Night 80K was a nice start to get the ball rolling! Plus going deep in the UB 200 last Sunday didn’t hurt either. Now this Saturday I’m getting excited, or nervous (not sure which) about going skydiving! Yes, I said skydiving! It’s something I’ve always wanted to do for a long time, and now that I have the opportunity, I can’t pass it up. Wish me luck and watch for upcoming pictures and blog about my experience.
The following weekend, I have a trip planned to Portland, Oregon. Well, not just me. I’m flying out there with some good buddies, the great Wiscomurray, Mr. Jon Green, and Jon Orr, who owns all the McDonald’s in South Central Wisconsin and the private jet we’re flying in! 
:):):):) The cherry on this Portland sundae is that it’s not a poker trip! It’s all golf, Baby! We’re meeting up with my good friends Gary “Debo34″ DeBernardi and 11-time bracelet winner and hometown boy, Phil Hellmuth, for a fun-packed weekend of golfing on three world-class golf courses. I really enjoy golfing with Phil. Betting with Phil on the golf course is a lot more profitable than betting with him on the poker tables. There’s always a lot of action, but little golf skills! Wish me luck and watch for upcoming pictures and blog about my experience.
Then after that, I’m off to Vegas, Baby! I’m teaching at the WSOP Academy again at Caesar’s Palace. I look forward to this because I get to teach alongside some amazing players and get so much out of it myself. If you get an opportunity to attend one of these academies, do yourself a favor. It is the best investment a poker player can make for his career. A few weeks after Vegas, it’s the cherry on my poker year sundae! ARUBA, Baby!!! This is a must attend! Anyone reading this has got to get yourself to Aruba. It’s not as hard as you think. UB has a ton of tournaments and promotions. There’s no excuse not to be there! For those of you who don’t come to Aruba….wish me luck and watch for upcoming pictures and blogs about my experience! :):):):)
Good luck at the tables. See you on the beach………H0
Tags: Aruba, Caesars Palace, Gary DeBernardi, Golf, Phil Hellmuth, Poker Poker Poker, poker tournaments, ub, Vegas, WSOP
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Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - Miss C
Hey Guys,
I cannot believe that I will be in Vegas in less that 2 weeks. I am so looking forward to catching up with everyone again. As I will be there for 8 weeks I am going to get into the Vegas spirit. The Vegas spirit to me (aside from all the cocktails) would be to see some shows.
MGM Grand has Fleetwood Mac, David Copperfield, KA Cirque du Soleil, Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood.
Mandalay Bay has The Lion King, UFC, Il Divo, Keith Urban and Pat Benatar.
Caesars Palace has Elton John and Bette Middler
Bellagio has “O” Cirque du Soleil
Venetian has Phantom, Wayne Brady
Mirage has Jay Leno, Love Cirque du Soleil, Ray Romano & Brad Garrett
Palms has Cheech & Chong, The Offspring, Duran Duran, New Kids on the Block
There quite a few options and I am sure there will be a few more hidden gems that I haven’t discovered. On one of my last trips to Vegas I got taken to see Air Supply (I would have had to be taken!), Hootie and the Blowfish (they were great) and Brooks & Dunn (not a country girl, but had an awesome time and was pleasantly surprised). Make the time to see a show, it is a great Vegas experience.
Another Vegas experience that you have to do is go to a Vegas club, words do not describe it. My birthday falls during the WSOP and I am thinking I will start off having beverages at Fix at Bellagio, they do the best passionfruit mojitos and then move to Pure and get a cabana outside
I love having choices and this is definitely the town to offer plenty.
See you there and the countdown has begun.
Cheers,
Miss C
Tags: Bellagio, Caesars Palace, Cirque du Soleil, Fix, Mandalay Bay, MGM, MGM Grand, Mirage, Palms, Vegas, Venetian, WSOP
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Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - HollywoodDave
Thaaaaaat’s right! A few days ago yours truly took down my very first WSOP Circuit event, baybee! Along with the official WSOP ring comes a bundle of cash and yet another first place notch on my growing list of poker creds… after years in the blackjack trenches, its nice to continue the conquests on the poker felt.
For some reason, I’ve always done well at Caesar’s. Don’t know why — have yet to cash in a Venetian deepstack event, but seem to do well in most every tourney I play at Caesar’s. Last year i went deep in 2 events there, so to finally win one feels awesome! Its been awhile since I’ve won a live tourney (too much time cleaning up online!) but I def have been playing more live lately to get ready for this year’s WSOP (which starts in only like 4 weeks!)
Sooooo….here are all the gritty details from my win! After buying in at Hellmuth Time (read: last possible second before they closed registration 2 hours in lol), I proceeded to ship away 60% of my chipstack in the first 2 hands, going from 6k to 2400! Both times I ended up with open-ended straight draws in multi-way pots that I had odds to stay in, but none of the draws hit and I ended up just blowing chips unnecessarily. We’ve all been there — just cheap enough to stay in the pot over, but not something you feel good about!
From there I just locked it down and waited. And waited. And waited some more. Til I found the double up with pocket Jacks that got me close to being healthy again. And so on — all the way to the dinner break, playing super tight and waiting for those few key hands to keep me floating right around chip average. At dinner I knew with the blinds going up as quickly as they were, even having chip av was not going to cut it soon, so I was gonna have to make some higher variance plays after the break to take a shot at pulling in some chips. The good news here was that my super tight image was starting to pay off, as I could now steal with impunity
Well, I didn’t have to wait long. First hand back from dinner, my QQ cracked 99 and I was off and running. The next hand my JJ took down some blinds. And a few hands later my KK took care of more bizness! But the big coup came when my QQ cracked KK in a monster pot not too long later, sending me near the top of the chipleader pile, where I stayed for pretty much the rest of the tourney.
Patience was a huge watchword for me this tourney — first, without many chips it helped me wait for those key double up hands. And 2nd, when I DID have chips, the patience to keep from doubling anybody ELSE up! What surprised me was how often i was actually FOLDING my marginal hands in late position (as opposed to constantly attacking the blinds) — playing in so many aggro online tourneys has def made me much more aggressive in this arena, but folding as often as I did in that position meant that when I DID raise to steal, my marginal hands were given tons more respect.
Eventually I worked my way to 3 players left, once of them Paul ‘Eskimo’ Clark. I was pretty much tied for the lead with the other player (Jack Andelman), but with Eskimo not too far behind and the blinds pretty much out of control, we decided to save 15k apiece and play for the ring and the remaining 8k. 5 minutes later, I was kinda regretting the decision as I had over half the chips in play!!! But then in standard poker fashion, Eskimo ran a badly timed bluff into Jack’s KK and suddenly my 1.2 million chips were being challenged by Jack’s 1 million chipstack. Normally I love to fight all the way to the end, but with the blinds so high (20k/60k with a 5k ante) we both had less than 20 BB and that took most of the play outta the game. So I locked in the win, the ring, and we chopped up the rest of the money right then and there. Not bad for 2 day’s work!!
Of course there’s been plenty of celebrating the past few days, but now its all about gearing up for the real thing: the WSOP! What a nice way to warm-up, but I am more than ready for the real thing….
rock on –
-hd.
Tags: blackjack, Caesars Palace, Hellmuth, Venetian, WSOP
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Monday, April 6, 2009 - Tiffany M
Everyone has been buzzing about the Dream Team Poker tournament that took place last weekend at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Poker players obviously play a whole lot of poker, jumping from tournament to tournament which can get a little mundane but because this event had a team format was out of the norm and really fun. At the welcoming cocktail party it was hilarious to see each team’s jersey hanging on the wall and read all the creative team names. People had a lot of fun putting together their teams and being thematic and/or wacky with their team name. I think my favorite team name was Kristy Gazes & Jerry Yang’s team comprised of one female and two men thus the team name “Four Nuts, Six Hands and a Rack”. As you can probably tell the atmosphere wasn’t too serious. People ditched their poker faces in order to have a few laughs, poker fun at this game and it’s players.
Poker is usually such a solo game where ‘friendships’ don’t exist at the table so this tournament was a chance to root each other on as well as gang up on other teams. Lacey Jones and Maria Ho were on my team, team “Yo Mama” which was only one of two All-Girl teams competing (see picture below). We did a lot of friendly smack talking at the pre-party and came in the next morning ready to rumble! (You can see the pic below that I snapped with last year’s Dream Team Winner Matt Parvis from team “Bluff” and his championship ring). The huge baseball-like sports jerseys weren’t exactly the most fashionable outfit for Lacey, Maria and I… yes this is something you think about as girl poker player, ha ha. But we didn’t want to be divas and stick up our nose towards our team jersey so we each found our own way to make it work and I have to admit we made those oversized man shirts look pretty hot!
I had a ton of friends and fellow pros playing in the event so it was inevitable that when I got seated there were three familiar faces at my table; Yancey Arias, Nick Gonzales and Casey Thompson. Minutes before the tournament started Casey and I agreed to a last longer bet and then a minute or two later we discovered that we were at the same table which made it convenient for me to keep tabs on him. I ended up knocking him out a few hours into the tournament… $100 bucks for Tiffany, CHA-CHING! Sitting directly to my left was Nick Gonzales who I’ve known for several years through the Hollywood poker scene. He’s a talented actor and a great poker player (he recently took 2nd place in the WPT Celebrity Invitational). Be sure to look for him in the new Fox show ‘Mental’ coming out May 29th! As much as you hate to be seated next to a friend on the battlefield of a poker table we had so much fun catching up, bantering and entertaining the entire table. (There’s a pic below of me being silly with Nick).
Team “Yo Mama” played very well but slowly towards the end of the day we each faded out of the tournament. I’m not a huge fan of dishing all the hand details of a tournament because we’ve all been there and know how it goes but I think it’s significant to mention that I was eliminated with Aces. We got it all-in on a 558 rainbow flop which looked pretty safe for my aces however my opponent flopped QUAD 5’s…. eww. I believe in poker miracles but this time I started walking away from the table before even seeing a turn or river. I had a good feeling the runner-runner aces were NOT coming, not on this day. I was actually okay with that… just as long as my miracle cards show up when I really need them, oh… say in events like the WSOP Main Event!!
Even though we didn’t clench the coveted title (congrats to Jamie Gold’s team for accomplishing that) we had a ton of fun and look forward to our next chance to play some friendly, team poker. Well, that’s your wrap up from the Dream Team Poker Tourney 2009. LJ, MHo and I can’t wait for team “Yo Mama” to riiiiiide again… and believe me, we will!
Tags: Caesars Palace, Dream Team Poker, Jamie Gold, Jerry Yang, Kristy Gazes, Lacey Jones, las vegas, Maria Ho, Matt Parvis, WPT Invitational
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Friday, March 27, 2009 - P0ker J0
Hello UBers!
Well I just have to bring myself to talk Celebrity Apprentice first! Wow Annie makes it through another week AND survived the chopping block as the girls lost for the first time. I won’t repeat everything Annie writes in her weekly Celebrity Apprentice BLOG – but you now have two places to read about her thoughts. One is her own BLOG and a newly created section on the UB BLOG where Annie talks about how her strategy on the show is a lot like her poker strategy. I hope you enjoy as much as I have been.
So in between all the Celebrity Apprentice press, Annie has been a twittering freak. She has more followers each week. I think there might even be a secret race for followers between her and Phil. Mr. Hellmuth continues to embrace this new technology. He has been talking a lot lately about how much money he as been losing playing chinese poker! Follow Annie on twitter and follow Phil on twitter.
Phil and Annie’s websites have both recently been revamped. Check them out at www.annieduke.com and www.philhellmuth.com. You will see a vast improvement in not only look and feel but also functionality. Bookmark them today!
So a big weekend in Vegas this coming weekend. I have so many of my pros headed to Caesars Palace to participate in the Dream Team Poker event. It is a new and unique spin on poker where teams of three compete creating even more financial incentives than standard poker. We have Phil Hellmuth teaming up with Mike “the mouth” Matusow and Jerry Buss; Hollywood Dave will be teaming up with Ericka Shoenberg and her father; Tiffany Michell will be teaming up with Lacey Jones and Maria Ho and Michael Binger is joining forces with his brother Nick and Liv Boeree (Absolute Poker’s gal!). It will be interesting to see how this takes off. The event is compeletely sold out! I’m sure there will be twittering and video blogs to follow! Go Team UB!!
Well I that is all she wrote for today folks! Have a fantastic weekend!
P0ker J0 xoxoxoxoxo
Tags: Annie Duke, Caesars Palace, Celebrity Apprentice, Dream Team Poker, Ericka Shoenberg, Hollywood Dave, Jerry Buss, Liv Boeree, Michael Binger, Mike Matisow, Phil Hellmuth, Tiffany "Tiffany M" Michelle, Twitter
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