International Wongzoning in AZ

I'm in a deep state of depression right now having just got back from another amazing Arizona trip. Having been out to AZ in January for the last 2 years, this holiday had a lot to live up to, as expected it didn't disappoint. As with last year, we'd decided to rent a house given that we were 15+ heads deep. It was a little further out of town but with a private swimming pool, hot tube and mini putting green it was an upgrade on last years house.

Arizona isn't the most interesting or cultural city but from a rollerblading perspective there aren't many better places in the world, there's a huge number of decent skateparks, the street spots are amazing and then there are the storm drains (huge concrete banks) many of which are skateable. All of this plus guaranteed good weather makes AZ the perfect place to go to get away from the English winter not to mention it's awesome catching up with some great friends. It was a pretty productive trip for me, I managed to skate every day even though we all partied pretty hard, considering how washed up my rollerblading is these days I managed to get a few tricks on film which I was happy with. I won't bore you trying to describe these, I'll bore you instead with some or the other random stuff we did on the trip aided by photos!

After one of the more heavy nights, most of us were done skating after an hour, so we decided that when we got back we'd scale a hill right by our house. As with any expedition we took supplies IE. beers.

It didn't take long to get to the top where the views were awesome. 

 So much funny stuff happened on the trip, one of the nights we ended up getting a limo back to the house. We were in the process of leaving/getting kicked out of a bar which was closing when a limo pulled up with Justin in it. Somehow he's blagged it for $75 with a free bottle of vodka, next thing the driver knows is that the limo is now full with 10+ drunk people. My last memories from the journey home are swigging from the bottle of vodka and almost throwing up. For the final night of the trip we went out to a sushi joint which we go to every year, and after consuming numerous sake (Japanese rice wine) bombs and eating a shit load or raw fish we headed out to downtown Phoenix. After struggling to find anywhere where we weren't going to get shot/stabbed/beaten up we found an Irish bar were we chilled for a bit before heading to some hipster bar we'd been told about. The place was pretty cool, the back of the bar was a mini cinema, with a live band playing to random videos projected on the wall behind them. We ended up staying here to till the end of the night. The final day of the trip was spent sorting out the house, saying good byes and drinking in a Mexican bar while a wake and beer games went on. Surreal.

It's getting on a bit now so I'll leave you with a few more photos, I may add to this tomorrow if I can be bothered.

AZ sunsets are amazing - no filter used in this photo.

Drunken sushi group shot

Me by a huge cactus

GL at the tables all.

Dublin WPT

Having just busted out of the PKR 500 with a horrible 3 bet shove, I don't really feel like grinding tonight so I'll try and get an update.

Today wasn't the first time I've gone semi-deep in a tournament only to have a moment of brain fade leading to a premature exit. My classic mistake is not really paying attention to stack sizes, which usually results in me open shoving/3 bet shoving too light in spots where it'd be fine if I had 5bbs less or whatever. You'd think this would be easy to sort out but I still find myself making these mistakes, it probably doesn't help that I play almost all my tournaments in front of the TV + I'm very bad at maintaining a decent level of concentration. I don't really see me changing my tournament playing habits so I guess I'll just have to make sure I pay more attention in the future. 

On a more positive note, I had a deep run in Irish Poker Championship (IPC)  narrowly missing the final table by placing 11th. As some of you will know this was a side event at the Dublin WPT, I also entered the main event but never really got going in it. With starting stacks of 30k I never made it above 35k, despite winning a lot of small pots during the first couple of levels. I ended up making a debatable hero call when the villain was repping the nuts or air (I had the 3rd nuts), he had it. This left me with around 15bbs, I eventually shoved the CO for 14bbs with QT and got snapped by JJ, that was my tournament over. Thankfully it was near the end of day one when I busted so I didn't have too much time to kill (at the bar) before I was joined by BrotherM, Rhym and Todd (ToddSwain) Swain. With all of them still in the tournament I decided I'd hit the 1/2euro cash games the following day. 

The cash games as expected were pretty soft, I played for a few hours and ran very well initially running up a nice stack, I spent the final hour loosing everything I'd won though not hitting a single hand and playing a few hands sub-optimally. The last big pot I played was where some random young looking Scandi guy who had just sat down straddled, I raised 2.5x with KQo some other young guy flats the BTN, Scandi flats everyone else folds. Flop comes Q74tt, Scandi checks, I Cbet, other guy calls, Scandi check raises a little under 3x. I figured I was too deep to get in on the flop Vs the Scandi so I planned to call and get in on safe turns. Anyway the other guy then ships all in and thankfully the Scandi guy folded, I called to be shown AJs for the nut flush draw. The turn was a spade given the guy the nuts and leaving me drawing dead, he shipped a nice 500euro pot.

Bored and a little tilted of cash I decided to enter the IPC as I figured I could kill more time doing this, loose less (I'd sold 50% of my action) than I would at cash and stand to make potentially more. This turned out to be a good decision as managed to redeem myself by playing the best live tournament poker I've ever played (this isn't necessarily anything special, just good by my standards). I was particularly happy with how well I paid attention to the flow of the game, I picked some good spots to 4 bet bluff, there was a flop where I bet 3 bet the flop with air. I eventually exited the tournament when my huge combo draw bricked off after Cbetting a flop and shoving over a check raise. I had K6dd the flop came 754dd, the winner of the hand had flopped a straight with 86cc. I ended up cashing for 1.8k euros, this wasn't great as first place was 40k and the buy in was 750, the payout structure was really heavily weighted towards the top 3 places, 27th was 1.4k only 400 less than what I got for 11th. I guess having a large first place adds more prestige to the tournament especially as no one remembers who came 2nd, 3rd etc.

The Dublin WPT was the first live tournament I've play abroad (not the most exotic location, but still not in the UK) I had an awesome time. Staying where the event was being held was a real bonus as there was never the hassle of travelling back and forth between the venue and with probably 95% of the people playing in the tournament staying at the hotel it meant the bar was always lively.

Another highlight of the weekend was watching Ken Doherty play James Akenhead (who I understand to be very good at 9 ball) at American 9 ball for a 500euro prob bet. It was first to win 6 games (I think) and with Jesse May commentating it was very entertaining, so entertaining that I don't actually know who won.