Posts Tagged ‘Trip Report’

This is the conclusion of a trip report, the first part of which can be found here, from a high school debate tournament at which I recently volunteered. I founded the Boston Debate League in 2005 to bring competitive extracurricular debate to students at some of the city’s more troubled public high schools and continued to serve as the part-time, volunteer executive director for several years. In 2008 we hired a full-time executive director who has grown the organization into something much larger and more influential. He was out of town this weekend receiving an award from his alma mater for this excellent work and asked me to fill in for him at the tournament, which I was more than glad to to.

Round 3

Saturday morning proves far more hectic than anticipated. There’s a surprising amount of turnover, meaning students who competed last night but who if they plan on coming at all today have not arrived as of 8AM. Frustratingly, I’m not getting good information from coaches about which of their students have not showed up.

I am used to leading by moral authority. When I ran the BDL, the coaches and students all saw how hard I worked, and most of them knew that I wasn’t paid. I more or less shamed them into making my job easier and doing what I told them to do.  Read the complete post...

The wait is over! I’m flattered by everyone who’s been asking about this. Part 1 of my PCA Trip Report is now appearing in 2+2 Magazine. Part 2 will be in next month’s magazine. Here’s a snippet from one of the more interesting hands I played:

Saskatchewan limped UTG again, Belgium limped behind, and I raised to 1,000 with A4o in the CO. This raise really blurs the line between “value” and “making a move”, since I do expect to win often with a continuation bet but I also think A4 is ahead of both of their ranges. Essentially I’ve got position and the best hand, so even though it might be tricky to play post-flop, I don’t see how raising can be bad. Saskatchewan joked about how “you internet guys don’t allow limping” and called, and Belgium called as well. They both checked a K83 rainbow, I bet 1,600, Saskatchewan folded, and Belgium quickly raised to 5,100. I was sure he was making a move, so I considered my options.

This trip report focuses almost exclusively on the poker. If you want to read about the rest of the trip, check out Hello, Goodbye, Team Online.

As always, please let me know what you think!

Sorry for the recent silence – I was in Boston over the weekend running a debate tournament for the Boston Debate League. I don’t have a WYP for this week, so instead please enjoy this Trip Report which hopefully will provide a behind-the-scenes insight into the world of high school debate, or our own little corner of it anyway:

There are 174 high school students registered for the debate tournament I am running this weekend. Roughly 135 will actually show up to compete, but not all of those 135 will be among those who registered in advance. These students will compete Friday evening and all day Saturday. Most of them will, anyway – a few show up, without warning, on only one day or the other. Just as many will be competing simultaneously at another of our schools, most of which are not large enough to host so many debates at once. That other school is not my responsibility at all.

About half as many middle schoolers will debate in their own separate competition at my school on Saturday only. They are kind of but not really my responsibility.

When I stepped down, three and a half years ago, as executive director of the Boston Debate League (BDL), we were lucky to get 40 kids at a tournament. Obviously there was no need to spread them out across two sites. There were no middle school debaters.  Read the complete post...

I had a bit of a rude surprise when checking out of my room this morning. Apparently my hotel package did not actually include the $1000 non-refundable folio that I thought it did, and on which basis I purchased a $300 massage. At first I thought this was an error on Atlantis’ part, but I just reread my confirmation and sure enough it says, “If your package includes hotel plus a $1,000 USD food credit”, which mine apparently did not. It also says, “Any funds that you have not used will be refunded to you upon check-out.” So yeah, I just can’t read. I probably wouldn’t have spent $200 at Nobu last night either…. Then again maybe I would have lost at credit cart roulette (I bought out so I could use the folio credit I thought I had) and eaten the $1500 bill, so I’m going to pretend that that was what was going to happen.

While I’m amending recent blog posts, I also have to admit to backsliding on my “don’t judge assholes” philosophy. I split a cab with fellow PokerStars Team Online member Andre Coimbra, whose flight was half an hour before mine, so I got to the airport plenty early. That was good, because the customs line was massive and there were only two agents working it. People all around me were just losing their minds with frustration.  Read the complete post...

Today is Sunday, but I won’t be playing the Sunday Million, because I’m currently in the United States.

For as long as I’ve had this blog, I’ve started every year with a series of posts about my poker-related goals and resolutions, and I’ve ended every year by assessing the progress I made towards them. I set goals for 2011- my most ambitious ever, actually- but now it seems pointless to even look at them, as Black Fridayrendered them more or less irrelevant.  The best laid plans of mice and men, eh?

A dark omen in Montreal.

I’m not really in a place to start setting poker goals for this year, either, since I have no idea what the year will look like for me, poker-wise or otherwise. Not since my final semester of college have I felt this level of anxiety and uncertainty about my future. Those Big Questions are back: Where will I live? What will I do? Who will the people around me be?

I’ve spent the last week and and a half fending off questions, some idle and some concerned, at various gatherings of friends and family. My recent life as a nomadic poker professional was strange enough to them that they’ve learned to accept without alarm the fact that I don’t know where I’m going to be two weeks from now.  Read the complete post...

If you’ve been enjoying my BCPC trip reports, be sure to check out my write-up from the WSOP Europe, now appearing in 2+2 Magazine:

Loose-aggressive play has become so common among the best players that many of them tend to assume that anyone who doesn’t open 50% of hands from the CO can’t be all that good. No American in the tournament is going to be bad, since we all had to travel quite a ways to play, but I think that playing the way I did gave the impression that I was merely competent and perhaps uncomfortable in deep-stacked spots. That’s a fine image to have as long as you know how to exploit it by stealing in spots they don’t expect.

As always, please let me know what you think!

I once final tabled a small-field, small buy-in PLO8 tournament at the PCA, but otherwise the final two tables was the closest I’d ever made it to a live final table. It was exciting to keep seeing (some of) the same people day after day, and to feel the envy of those who did not make it through.

Norm was the first to go. I heard him walking behind my seat on the way to the payout station, muttering about “Ace-Queen against Ace-King”, and that was the last I saw of him. We actually lost three more players in the first half hour, one of whom I eliminated with A4s > KQo.

There were more players than I realized still in the tournament with whom I had no experience. To my left was “Scott”, a hometown hero from Chilliwack with an Irish accent and an inexplicably large cheering section, all of whom were wearing matching “It Could Happen” jackets and shouting loudly whenever he won a pot. Scott eliminated one of the other early departures and was pretty obnoxious about it, getting nervous and calling for cards even as an overwhelming favorite and then celebrating vigorously when his hand held up.  Read the complete post...

A nice fall day in Kits

Such a great day! Where to begin? My day actually started around 9:30. Emily was sick and needed some things from the grocery store, so I biked over to the Whole Foods (I told you we’re in the yuppy district!) before leaving for the casino. It was a beautiful morning. The sun is slow to rise this time of year in Vancouver, so the day still had an early morning freshness to it. The sky was clear but the ground wet from the previous day’s rain, so everything sparkled. Our place is on top of a hill, so I could see down past the red and gold trees to downtown and to the mountains beyond.

The lovely ride and crisp air put me in a good mood, and after dropping off the groceries, I walked off smiling to the bus stop. It’s so nice being able to play a live poker tournament but still sleep in your own home and just take public transportation to and from work like any other commuter. I could see the bus approaching from a block away and so sprinted for it, very nearly falling on my face in the process. I really thought it was a sure thing that I was going down face-first, don’t know how I managed to keep my feet. I made it, though, and as I boarded the bus I thought, “Hope that’s the only time I run bad all day.”  Read the complete post...