Thursday, September 17, 2009 - Bryan Devonshire
I cannot believe how much it has rained in the south. They tell me that it’s not normal, but ever since I arrived in Charlotte back on day 25 it’s rained waaaaaay more than it hasn’t.
Florida was one big long series of thundershowers, which I can understand: tropical climate, this time of year, etc. But damnit, Saturday morning at 2am I was passed out in my tent, comfortably naked in my sleeping bag, and it started raining. I was prepared enough to have the fly ready to go since it was still Florida and likely to rain at any time, but I still had to run around naked waterproofing my stuff. I really hope somebody was watching because it had to be hilarious. Semi-out of shape white dude with really tan arms, legs, and face scrambling around a tent naked in the rain trying to set up a fly and stash gear underneath it in record time. I did pretty well though, and actually enjoyed camping in the rain, until the next morning when it was time to wake up (because I couldn’t sleep anymore) and my boots got left out. I packed in the rain, a party came in as I was leaving at 9am, and they said there was no rain the whole way down (from Georgia) until they hit Panama City.
Fine, I’m about 4 hours from New Orleans, hopefully as I head that way the rain will lapse. It didn’t. In fact, after Pensacola, it just got worse. So bad that by the time I was on the east side of Mobile Bay I couldn’t take it anymore and had to quit. I parked in downtown Mobile, found me a Holiday Inn, checked in, and took apart everything I had because it was soaked. The poor maid must have been like, wtf, how is there sand and pine needles in the bathroom?
I played the HORSEament online, took 50th/1000 or so, annoying after a 48th in the 8-game, same field earlier in the week, both in which I had huge stacks and ran terribad at the end. I went out in downtown Mobile, had a great time, and experienced my second encounter with “membership” bars in my life. The first came in Utah one summer when I broke down on my way to guide a river trip in Cali; apparently to drink at a bar you have to be a member. Odd. In Mobile it’s that way for many of them after 2am, all I had to do was fill out some card and I was in the club. Dumb legislation.
Was gonna leave Sunday morning, get to New Orleans, then play online. Nope. Up too late the night before. The group of peeps that I met the night before invited me to go sailing, I’m like it’s supposed to rain, they didn’t care, I was insanely tempted to go since I miss sailing a ton (I dabbled with the USC sailing team in college, declining a spot on the roster to work with Jr. High kids at a church instead). But since it’s the middle of the WCOOPs I decided I needed to work, and it looked like a good decision when I ran the entire day with a top 100 stack in the WCOOP $1k. I made it to day 2 slightly below average after losing QQ to 99 on a Q9x flop for a huge stack. I swear I’m cursed at poker; I’ve run significantly below expectation in key deep spots lifetime, and I believe that our lives are too short to truly ever reach the long term. I mean, how often will I get it in set over set deep in the money in a $3m guarantee tourney? I can think of one time this year. I lost.
Whatever, I can’t complain, I did finish 2nd in my first ever WSOP event, this game is just brutal sometimes. However I may be cursed at poker I more than make up for in life. So Monday morning I had the same plan, get to New Orleans, and I woke up to sideways rain on the window. Nope, staying in Mobile another night. I ran errands after the rain broke, got all fired up to play online, and lasted 4 hands. Four. I open AQ, an 18 bb stack shoves, I call, lose to 99. 3 hands later in my SB it folds to me, I have 15bb’s, jam 44, lose to QQ in the big. So frustrating.
I chilled out that night, hanging at the local pizza and beer place I found Saturday night, talking with a gay dude named Dick about fly fishing in the Gulf. There’s a neat vibe in Mobile that I thoroughly enjoyed, and it marked the third city that I spent more than 2 nights in.
Tuesday I woke up eager to get going, and it was still pouring rain. My gear had dried out enough that I said, eff it, I’m going, wrapped trash bags around everything, and after about an hour of packing and prep, literally 3 minutes before I left as I was bungee cording my bags to the bike, the clouds broke and it was clear skies all the way to New Orleans. I still wore my rain pants cause there was enough water on the ground, and did drive through one thunderstorm but it was short enough that I didn’t even bother stopping to put on my jacket. Sigh.
Got to New Orleans, checked in at the Frenchman Hotel, waked down Bourbon street, wasn’t really impressed, actually walked back to play the $1k online, busted and lost playing cash games, walked back to Bourbon street, started drinking, still wasn’t impressed, walked back to the locals neighborhood where I was at, enjoyed this bar called Molly’s cause there were people there that I could talk to, and then went to sleep.
The most consistently enjoyable part of this trip for me has been meeting people along the way. I’ve encountered so many interesting people and enjoyed so many awesome person’s company that I’ve had a wonderful time traveling over 8500 miles of this continent in the past 56 days. Thank you everybody for being good people.
Woke up to blue skies with one thunderhead to the east, no prob, packed up, left, and began hauling ass. I wanted to get as close to Dallas as possible and knew that I had a legit shot at getting all the way there. I hit rain south of Shreveport, stopped to put on the rain gear, and after the thunderstorm when I stopped for gas I was expecting to take it off. It looked like there may be another cell ahead, so I kept the gear on. Sadly I wouldn’t take the gear off for the rest of the way, over 250 miles of constant rain, and once again all of my gear is soaked. I kept thinking that the rain would break and I could de-gear, I never needed to stop to put trash bags over my luggage… and I was wrong. Damn you one thousand miles of gulf coast and your lack of hurricane raininess. Y’all say this is abnormal, I want to know where the hurricane is so at least I could say I rode through that. Nope. I just rode through the rainy south.
Peace and good luck,
Devo
Tags: Poker Poker Poker, USC, WCOOP, WSOP
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Thursday, September 3, 2009 - Bryan Devonshire
So turns out Newton or Galileo or whoever way smarter than I said, “Objects at rest stay at rest, objects in motion stay in motion,” was on to something. Today is day 43 that I’ve been away from home on this Great Ride of a motorcycle trip, and for the last seventeen of them the I’ve remained in Cornelius, NC. A bit lazy I admit. But I’ve finally rustled up the motivation to get going again, I’m headed down to Myrtle Beach, SC today, then around the Florida peninsula to Key West, back along the Gulf Coast all the way to Dallas, north to Colorado, and back to Vegas.
I’ve played a lot of poker in the last couple of weeks. I was super disappointed in my result in LA, yet looking back I really don’t see anything I should have done differently. The rest of the last week has been much the same, I feel like I’m playing really well yet running quite poorly. Last night six of us shot a video for PokerVT. Daniel Negreanu, Jon Ettinger, Jon Turner, Josh Norris, and Jason Summerville and I played a 1-2 NLHE 6max game for 2 hours while all independently filming live while talking our way through the hands. I think that it’s going to end up coming out really well. I lost about $200, only playing one big pot where I got all the money in pre with AA v. Daniel’s QQ and he played the flop way better than I flopping a queen.
Also last night I was playing 10-20 Stud8 on Ultimate Bet for a while and busted this guy with a short stack. He had $38 to start the hand, we were five handed, a 6 brought it in, he was showing an ace and completed to $10, and I was next with (K2)K. Normally a very crappy situation in stud8, cause they either have split aces, three to a low, or are on a steal due to the weak board between him and the bring-in. Anyways, since he only had $38 it wasn’t much of a decision, get it in. I do, he actually has split aces, but I play fifth street good and made kings and deuces, he never improved. That launched the most amazing rant ever against me. I had no respect, ruined the game, ruined online poker, etc, because it was obvious that he had aces. He wanted me to apologize, still not sure what for, and the “sad part” was that I “STILL THINK [I] WON”. He said it like a zillion times. I actually gave him a logical response first, saying that it wasn’t much of a decision since he only had two big bets, then I somewhat sarcastically talked about my two pair beat his one pair, but much like a crazy emotional woman logic was lost this dude, so all I could do was encourage him. Tell me more? Yeah? How so? It was amazing, honestly the best berating I have ever been given. He never did reload sadly.
Because of so much poker this week I haven’t done anything too exciting. Got home on Thursday, lazy on Friday, Lake on Saturday, poker on Sunday, played a couple hours in a worse than expected home game Monday afternoon then played online Monday night, and then Tuesday I played tennis with Court, got beat twenty-four games in a row, but had fun lol. I was about as good as possible with that record, and even made it to advantage me once. Came home, played online, slept, laundry now, and ready to go. People wonder why I don’t like playing online. It sucks the life out of you that’s why. So I’m ready to get back on the road, but since it is the WCOOP coming up and I do still do this for a living I’ll probably be stopping a bit early along the way and playing donkaments.
Less poker, more life imo. I’m off to do just that.
Peace and good luck,
Devo
Tags: Daniel Negreanu, Jason Summerville, Jon Ettinger, Jon Turner, Josh Norris, Online Poker, Play Poker, Poker Poker Poker, Poker VT, Ultimate Bet, WCOOP
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Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - Roothlus
So it’s official I’ve lived in Los Angeles for exactly one month as of today. And so far, I’ve loved it. I’ve been to a bunch of cool spots and it’s very refreshing to be around more lady friends and have the opportunity to do an array of things on a given day. The lifestyle seems way more upbeat and on the go but not in a NYC kinda way where people are on the go but aren’t particularly friendly. Everyone seems way happier and just a tad crazy too which I love. It’s definitely a healthy change from Las Vegas. Don’t get me wrong I love me some Vegas but in weekend doses. As a whole I felt sucked into the whole city. I was extremely lazy and ate horribly. Granted, the food I ate was super top quality but by no means does that make it healthy. Since moving to LA I joined 24-hr Fitness and have been on the workout grind almost day-in day-out. I haven’t lost much weight yet but I feel so much healthier than I did a mere month ago.
My goal is to look good for the best stop on the live poker circuit, the Aruba Poker Classic. And while yes, I am a member of Team Ultimate Bet and you’re thinking, well isn’t this a blatant plug?? Well, you’re only half right ‘cause I legitimately love it. Last year, I was a little bit nervous at first. I had just joined UB and was meeting a whole bunch of new people and was a little bit overwhelmed. By the 3rd day or so I found myself just having a total blast. It’s honestly a great week of partying with a little bit of poker on the side. Oh, and the Phil Hellmuth penthouse party is nothing short of awesome! On top of all this, it’s Ultimate Bet’s 10th anniversary this year and they’ll be celebrating it at the Aruba Poker Classic. So if anyone is undecided about going this year, I hope I swayed you into going because it’s going to be EPIC!
As far as what’s on tap for me the rest of the year, I’ll be taking it easy. The WCOOP starts on Thursday and I’ll be pretty focused on that until the end of September at which point I’ll be making my way to said Aruba Poker Classic. After that, I’ll see my parents for a few days in Florida, jaunt back to LA for a week, then spend a week or so in Vegas for Festa Lago. But after that crazy little patch of traveling, my only tourney I’ll be traveling to is the Five-Diamond Classic in December. It’s kind of nice to not be traveling to every tournament under the sun for a change. And when I am traveling it’s only to Vegas, a mere 4-hour drive.
Well, I guess this is actually short for my blogs but before I go I recently had the opportunity to play in Scott Ian’s home game on Ultimate Bet last week. Hate to make a pun, but it was rockin’. I got to play with Vinnie Paul, Kirk Hammett, Layne Stayley, and a bunch of other rockers including Scott Ian himself. I ended up getting 4th as things unraveled. First was an Aruba package but better someone else win it when I’m going regardless. I’d definitely recommend playing in the satellites to this very special tourney.
Ok, now seriously, lastly, check me out on ESPN’s Inside Deal this week. They did a phone interview today so that was pretty cool. Until my next blog peeeeeeace.
Tags: Aruba Poker Classic, espn, Five-Diamond Classic, Inside Deal, Kirk Hammett, Layne Stayley, Los Angeles, Phil Hellmuth, Scott Ian, ub, UB 10th Anniversary, Ultimate Bet, Vegas, Vinnie Paul, WCOOP
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