21stcenturygonzo.com

so i totally understand the whole “letter verification”  sites use to prevent spam.

its a great idea.

whats not such a great idea is making the freaking letters completely unreadable….like wtf is this supposed to be???

and its like this EVERYTIME.

and the rest of the daily show gang.
watching them take fox news to task is so awesome.

so i don’t normally post much poker content but i thought this hand was memorable.

i’m stranded on an island and playing one hand heads-up  for bragging rights/machismo/some stolen medicine.

don’t really remember the action up till the river but on the river the board is like K95xx no flushes or str8s.

i have J9.

i bet 10 mangos, villian raises me Amoxicillin, i shove all in.

he says “thats the bet of a man that wants me to lay it down”

so i level him by saying “you’re not going to lay it down, cuz people are watching and you don’t want them to see you lose”.

so he goes “ok i call” at which point i realize i don’t know if i was bluffing or value shoving.

then he tables 54 for 3rd pair and i slowroll the J9.

he gets all belligerent “YOU PUSHED ALL IN WITH A PAIR OF NINES????!!!!”

and i’m like “sometimes its enough” all suavely as i get up and walk away.

dude totally thought my 4bet range on the river was polarized so he
tried to hero call me, and i was like BING BANG BLAOW…RANGE MERGE
MOTHERFUCKER.

LOST

i went back to annies and did another set.
i had all new material and my delivery was 100x better.
there were about 30 people for my set and i got really good solid laughs throughout the whole set.
i felt super comfortable, and it was an awesome feeling having the whole room laughing throughout my entire set.
i even had a few people come up after the show and tell me they loved my act (and nobody knew it was only my 2nd time).

the only lame thing is my recorder messed up so i couldn’t upload the video, but i will go back and get it on tape either next week or week after.

the important thing is that i made huge strides in just my 2nd time on stage, and i really felt confident in my new material so if it hadn’t gone well i would’ve been very discouraged.

i have no ambitions to become a famous comedian and perform on comedy central or anything, i just really enjoy being up on stage and making people laugh, and when you go to a comedy show there are always like 5 or 6 comedians up there that you have never heard of but are hilarioius, that is the level that i would like to achieve.

obv i don’t need to ever make a living doing comedy, as i am fortunate enough to be able to play poker for a living, so this is purely something i am doing for fun.

i have to go down to LA for the legends of poker WPT event which starts on the 22nd so i’m not sure if i’ll be able to get back onstage before i head down to LA, but as soon as i get back up i’ll make sure my flip recorder is working properly so i can upload a video.

so early monday morning i made a 5min audio clip on my computer of me just ranting and emailed to annies social club in san fransciso which is a comedy club in the downtown area that hosts an open mic night every tuesday.

they emailed me back on tuesday:

“Hey Jonas,

You’re on the list for tonight. You’ll get five minutes with a light at four minutes.

See you tonight.”

oooook.

so luckily for me i had a bunch of friends in town jay (krantz) chelsea (jay’s gf) emil (whitelime) brian (flawless_victory) cassandra (brian’s gf), dean, nate (neon, who lives in SF) and my good friend from college chris (who also lives in bay area), so even tho i only had about 7hrs to prepare i did have a huge fan base there for support (well really there in the hopes of getting to heckle me).
unluckily for me my GF couldn’t be there, but that was thru no fault of her own, and she was a big support.

there were 33 people set to go on altho there were a few no shows, and the talent level really varied tremendously from super funny/seasoned to pretty awful…..with a wide range in between.

i was actually pretty nervous leading up to the show but once i got onstage i just felt super comfortable, wasn’t nervous at all anymore and just had a ton of fun.

i was a little unlucky in my timing as the two comics that went on before me bombed REALLY REALLY hard and kinda killed the vibe a lil (the comic right before me spent his entire 5mins talking about his 13″ cock……………..

i also scrapped a good deal of my original act and just kinda flowed onstage, adn i think some of my best moments came from interactions with the crowd.

it was super weird though cuz the whole time i was up there i couldn’t hear anyone laughing and it just sounded like the whole room was silent, but then as soon as i got off stage everyone was congratulating me on how good a job i did.
i even had some rando dude come find me after the last 2 comics went up and the show was over to tell me how much he liked my act, so that was cool.

i mean obv there is a ton of shit i need to work on, not talking so fast being a huge number 1, and also better ennunciation, but overall i was very happy with how i did, considering it was with almost no preparation.

so today i find out that someone created a facebook account posing as me.
they took a photo from the hendon mob poker database (which tracks poker players tournament results) and made up a fake bio and have been trying to add a bunch of friends.

i ended up finishing 26th in the 10K plo championship.
was pretty dissapointing as i played really well all tournament and busted out with 10mins to go in day 2 in a 700K pot which would have put me 2nd in chips.

i was a favorite to win the hand but such is PLO.
i really only played 3 huge pots all tournament, in all three i had a big draw and was a fav and i lost all 3.

the first one was the very first hand of day 2.
i had 170K in the BB and barry greenstein had about 150K in the SB.

he opened the pot from the SB and i defended 67ss89dd (i should prolly repot this hand as its a monster and i have position but i elected to just call)

the flop was gin for me 4s5s9h giving me a monster 10 card wrap plus flush draw.

barry led for the pot i obv repotted it to about 26K, barry raised 50K more leaving himself about 80K behind.

i shipped it and he started muttering about how he knew he was beat but had too much money in the pot to fold so he made a crying call with AK44 for bottom set no redraws.

this is where people who only play no-limit hold em and are unfamiliar with pot-limit omaha may be shocked.
because even though barry had a set and i only had a draw i was 70% to win the pot.

unfortunetly i somehow managed to miss and i was down to 20K in chips going into the second hand of the day.

normally when ppl lose a massive pot and have like 10 big blinds left they just auto throw their remaining chips in the next hand in a sign of defeat, i choose to wait till the hand after

luckily for me i had picked up AAK7 and was called by naked KKxx (the xx refers to the other two cards which for the hand are irrelevant) and i held.

i doubled up again with top two pair vs a flush draw and then again with the nut straight when my opponenet was drawing dead.

so i climbed back up from 20K to about 150K without really having to sweat anything, which is very unusual in PLO.

i felt i played really well the entire tournament, i didn’t play that many big pots, most of my chips came from inducing bluffs in marginal spots and basically outplaying people in medium sized pots.

i did win one crucial pot against applisgirl (a VERY good internet player and friend of mine) where i had a straight + flush draw vs his top set.

he played really great the entire time at my table but he got extremely unlucky in every big pot he played eventually busting out to someone else who hit a 2 outer to eliminate him.

i chipped up pretty nicely all night and then lost another big pot where i once again found myself with a massive wrap + flush draw on a AdJh9h flop holding KdQhTh5d but again i failed to hit.

i won the chips back a few hands later from an extremely aggressive young internet player who had been raising about 75% of his hands preflop and running over the table.
he had built up his stack to about 400K then bluffed off about 150K back and he pretty much had one speed GOGOGOGO.

he opened as usual from middle position and i defended AKxx with one suit.
the flop came AKQ with two hearts.
i checked and suprisingly he checked behind.
the turn was an offsuit 6 and i checked again, as if i bet no worse hands call and no better hands fold, and i wanted to give him a chance to bluff me.
he obliged and bet 25K which i called after some pretend consideration.
the river was a total brick and i checked again and he bet 65K which i called instantly.
he said “i have nothing” which is pretty much what i figured and so i won a nice pot.

i was pretty card dead for the next two hours, won a few small pots with no showdown, and then with 10mins left in the night and 26 players remaining the critical pot went down.

i had a decently tight image and so i knew people were not going to be three betting me light when i opened, and i found a pretty strong starting hand in 689T suited in spades (in PLO connecting suited cards have a ton of value) and i opened to 30K with 350K left behind.

it was folded around to the small blind who repotted to 100K str8 and he had 203K left behind.

i was 100% sure he had AAxx as at this stage in the tournament with these stacks and this player, that is just the only hand he would repot and my hand plays great postlop vs AAxx and he had enough money left behind that if i flopped a hand i could win a huge pot.

if you run the equity calculations on propokertools.com you will see that in fact my hand has 43% equity preflop vs random aces so clearly folding my hand would be a huge mistake.

i also have the advantage that his hand is going to be face up on the flop and so i can play perfectly vs him everytime as i will always know how my hand expects to do once the flop comes so i can make the correct decision.

he also only will have one pot size bet left so i know that anytime i flop a hand that can beat aces or is favored to beat aces i will win all 300K that he has so in essence i am calling 70K to win 300K which i can expect to do roughgly 43% of the time, clearly a great price.

i got a decent but not amazing flop for my hand Kd4s5s giving me a gutshot straight draw a flush draw and tons of backdoor draws (backdoor means the last two cards come to complete a draw so for instance two more diamonds would make a backdoor flush).

he bet all in as i knew he would do on 100% of flops and i know that as long as he doesnt have the nut flush draw with his aces i am about 55% to win the pot.

i called and he had no spades in his hand so i was the favorite as he had only AAxx.
any spade or any 7 on the turn would leave him drawing totally dead.
i didnt bink a 7 or spade on the turn but i did improve my hand hitting a T which meant that on the river any 6789T or spade would win the pot with me.
with only one card to come left in the deck i was still the favorite to win the pot.

unfortunetly big draws were not working out for me all tournament and i bricked off and i was left with a trivial amount of chips which were all in next hand and i was eliminated in 26th place which was worth 25K and change.

i was pretty dissapointed as i felt i was playing incredibly well and had a really good shot of going deep.
had i won that pot i would have been 2nd in chips going into the final day, but oh wellz guess i’ll have to save my run good for the main event.

made the final table of the 10K world championship pot limit omaha event in 2007.

i’m top 10 in chips going into day 2.

had 18K in chips with 2hrs left in day one and finished with 170K.

played an 80K pot with KJ89hh vs J5xx on a J52hh board.

i was 65% to win the hand and my opponent played pretty bad to put all his chips in the pot with his hand.

run good two more days pls!!!

you can follow the action on pokernews.com altho be warned they are infamous for reporting the hands completely wrong.
but they are pretty good at chip counting at least.

down to the final 18 in the 2500 plo/plh wsop event.

453 players started.

if you want to sweat me you can follow along on pokernews.com

its event #10.

holla.