I gotta tellya, I really like this Hollywood place. Moved here almost 10 years ago from Cleveland with a BFA theater degree to pursue the acting dream, before getting sidelined into blackjack & then inevitably poker, & I love it now just as much as I did when I got here all those years ago.
After the years of traveling when I was on my blackjack team & playing international tournaments more frequently, I spent the last year primarily in Vegas with my new gf MB at her beautiful trip-view condo. But thru it all, I kept my place here in LA, and now the winds of change look like I will be back here again full time, this time with gf & puppy in tow :)
Lately I've been doing a lot of walking around Hollywood, and its cool to see the city from a different perspective. I've driven thru it 1000 times, but you start to notice all the hidden little gems when on foot. Cool new restaurants, shops, and buildings I've never noticed before. Even a new theater or 2 I didn't know existed.
Now that LAPC is in the bag, it doesn't look like there are many big events on the tourney calendar til April, so I'm taking some time to wander LA & get reacquainted. I've also supercharged my food regimen, so I'm doing a lot more vegan food & cut out caffeine, alcohol, and processed foods altogether. I still eat meat on occasion (& obv will still have a drink or 2 on certain occasions) but for the majority of my days, I am really trying to blast out all the impurities & stay as healthy as possible.
I think that in order to be as successful as possible in any endeavor, whether that be poker or any other pursuit in life, we must be completely driven & devoted to succeed. But along with that, must balance that drive with activities that allow ourselves to truly relax & retain a positive & energetic view on life. And I think that sometimes my biggest downfall is that I don't give myself permission to experience this balance, preferring to just push myself until I collapse. Sometimes, going on a walk or doing yoga almost feels like cheating, like I haven't 'earned' the relaxation until I meet bigger career goals (winning a tournament, for instance).
I try each and every day to find that balance, because I know that in order to be as productive as possible, I must make many other healthy choices in life, especially when it comes to food, exercise, and relaxation. So I challenge each and every one of you to get out there and RELAX a little bit more! Try to sneak in a few more moments of calm & enjoyment each day, and see how it impacts the other aspects of your life.
How's it goin, peeps? I'm back in LA for a few weeks ramping up for the LA Poker Classic at Commerce Casino by playing some prelim events & tons of live cash games. It rocks being back in the city that I love!
Its also been awesome taking a bit of a break from my usually heavy online cash game schedule to play live. Even though I don't get the same volume of hands per hour as online, it sure is sweet to be able to sit across from someone in the flesh and be able to read them so clearly. I've definitely made a lot more river folds for one bet & sick value bets then I usually get off online, just from something as simple as looking into someone's eyes and seeing so much more information there. There comes a point online where you just assume that most players are bluffing most of the time (at least in the aggro mixed games I play) & you commit to just calling down marginal hands because they rate to be good most of the time... but live, its a whole different ballgame.
I've also played in a few prelim events @ LAPC -- close, but no cash cigar yet! Last nite I took 35th outta 147 in the $545 Omaha 8 or better event (18 paid) after being double chip average when we were at 50 players or so. I got moved to a table full of pros -- Tom Schneider, Toto Leonidas, 2 internet champs, and Jerry Buss from the Lakers (not that Jerry is a pro, but he's no slouch at O8 either!). I lost half my stack in a spectacular set-over-set-over-rivered-set hand that reeeeeeally sucked, then blinded off from there.
Last week I also played the $545 HORSE (30th outta about 170 runners, 18 paid), the $545 stud8/O8 & a few NLH events. Deep in all, but not close enough. TD Matt Savage has really put together a great schedule & structure this year, but I'm not sure there's such a thing as a perfect mixed game structure. For instance -- in a no limit holdem event, having a good structure means that players' chip average at any given point should provide for a lot of play at any given blind level. But in the mixed game events, often chip average ends up being just 10 big blinds or so -- short stack city. I think part of this is nittier players holding on to chips more judiciously, as well as the fact that in split pot games, the net gain by players on any given hand is much smaller since pots are being chopped most of the time.
In addition to the prelim events & juicy cash games at Commerce (yum yum 30 60 stud where players go to the river with any small pair), there's been a lot of great action at the Bike (20 40 stud8) and one of my favorite live games in LA -- the 20 40 stud8/O8 at Hollywood Park with a half kill to 30 60. Tons of spewy players there that apparently love to help me my pay my rent
Speaking of spewy play, I think I hit something of a record recently -- winning a $1900 pot in 30 60 a live stud cash game @ the Commerce. Not that the total dollar amount itself was so spectacular -- its just hard to win 35 big bets in a single hand of limit poker! You can imagine the action it would take in a 4-way pot to generate that many bets -- I started with (55)T & immediately hit a 5 for a hidden set & was up against someone who was rolled up (22)2, a player nursing a straight and flush draw the whole way, and another guy who just couldn't imagine his 2 big pairs could be anything but the nuts. Practically every street was raised or outright capped, and certainly it wouldn't have gotten that big if the big pair guy (who kept driving the action by reraising when obviously behind) and the straight/flush guy hadn't stayed in the pot thru to the river. Yum yum...
Coming up later today is the $545 stud8 event, then next week is the 1k HORSE and the 1k HORSE satellite into the 10k HORSE event. Strangely enough, as much as I love mixed games, I think if I win a 10k seat in that 1k HORSE satty, I will use the credit to play the 10k LAPC main event (rather than the 10k HORSE) because I think my equity (and the prizepool) will be greater in the main event than the grinder-heavy 10k HORSE -- but I like my chances winning the 10k seat in the HORSE satty. Mixin and matchin at the Commerce, baybee!
Ok my peeps, that's what’s kickin in my world of late -- stay cool & rock on!
Alright, so its finally over. 2009 is outta here. And despite having some really critical successes this year both personally & professionally, at the end of the decade I just gotta say I am looking forward to 2010 - and beyond - to only get bigger, badder & better yet! In many ways, I spent 2009 in a cocoon of sorts, healing and growing. Here's a few of the highs and lows, and some hopes for the future:
Personally, 2009 is the year I put aside years of turbulent relationships to settle down a bit with a really cool girl. Which means splitting lots of time between her place in Vegas and my own Hollywood digs! We'll see where the future leads but its def nice to be with someone who treats me so well & who I admire on so many levels in return. And not to mention hot hot hot! Love you, MB...
Call it getting older or whatever, but 2009 is also the year that I learned to appreciate my family on a whole new level. We've always had a good bond, but maybe being in Vegas so much has given me a bit of homesickness for those guys! I swear, when I haven't seen them for a few weeks, I really miss them more than ever. After my mom passed away a few years ago, I've been much more protective of my dad and brothers. We're all we've got left, in a sense, so any chance I have to spend with them is highly treasured.
I've also been fighting a bit of an identity crisis between who I am & people's perceptions of me in the gambling world. For years I really enjoyed creating tons of memorable blackjack television, in which I crafted a truly smack-talking, "bad boy" persona. I'm certainly no saint & can rant and rave with the best of 'em - but lets face it, watching blackjack on television is about as boring as watching paint dry! So I had my fair share of fun trying to liven up an otherwise boring medium, create some good TV conflict & drama, and make some good $$$ along the way. Mission accomplished. But now, years later, I've moved into poker almost completely, and find that as much as its nice to be recognized or remembered from those shows, its strange how everyone seems to think I'm like that in real life. And while my friends may say I'm edgier than most, I can only assure you I'm only half as much of a douchebag as the character I played on TV...
Speaking of poker, what a crazy ride 2009 has been. After my breakout year in 2007, where I cashed for about 250k & finally realized I didn't need to rely on blackjack any longer to pay the bills (thank god too, I was running out of places that would still allow me to play!), I've spent the past several years trying to have that truly banner win or 2 to make my transition complete. But alas, I'm still waiting for it. I got close a few times - winning a WSOP Circuit ring this year along with a couple other deep cashes - but no bracelet or WPT final table was in the cards once again.
The sick thing is, I feel as if my poker game is the best it has EVER been right now - not only no limit holdem tournaments, but all of the individual HORSE mixed games as well. I'll thank Annie Duke one more time for truly giving me the training of a lifetime, and after countless hours online & live the past few years playing as many tourneys & cash games as I could get my hands on, I've really come to eat, sleep, and breathe poker game theory on a whole new level. In fact, I came into 2009 thinking I had to do a little work on my mixed games, and ended up spending practically the entire year tearing apart every little thing I thought I knew about poker & retooling it from scratch. Like Tiger Woods going away and reinventing his swing, there has definitely been a readjustment period & the results have certainly reflected that.
For the first time in my life as a professional gambler - going back about 7-8 years now I guess - I did not show a profit in a calendar year. Sure, I was still ahead of the game when it comes to rakeback deals & the other opportunities I have in the gambling world, but just examining my hard wins/losses alone, I was negative. Looking back on it, I can see its almost entirely due to the retooling I did on my game for most of the year, but even still, the wins I've been experiencing again lately haven't been enough to compensate. With the game I'm playing now, it shouldn't be too much longer before I've won back the '09 losses, but what an incredibly stressful & confidence-shattering year this was at many points.
I've also been tracking specific kinds of results this year - breaking up wins & losses into categories like live tourneys, online cash games, etc etc - and what really amazed me was how consistent I have been in tournaments and live cash tables, and how dismal my results were specifically in online cash games. In fact, even though I've come to be a much better player now than I was a year ago - and I think, at this point, a profitable one in that arena - mastering online cash games has been the single most difficult aspect of becoming a professional poker player. There were so many times that I wanted to just quit, or to think everyone was just sucking out on me constantly, but after battling thru it all I've come out so much stronger than I could have ever been if it'd just been easy. God forbid!
On the acting front I also had one of the biggest successes of my career in 2009. I finally shot the pilot for the show I created, 'Grifting,' in which I travel the world taking on every game I can find. Every week, I track down a master of a new game, take the crash course & proceed to try and beat it. Street Chess in NYC... dominoes in the bayou... mahjongg in China... backgammon in Monaco... draughts in England... you name it. After mastering the worlds of blackjack & poker I pick up on game theory much faster than the average player & even though I won't win every episode, I give it my best shot! And thank god I don't actually have to beat the masters themselves - just learn from them & then take on the field. An amazing process hooking up with an awesome production company, and now we're in the middle of taking network meetings trying to find a home for this bad boy. A lot of promising developments so far, and in the next couple weeks I hope to have a big announcement to make!
Working on the show kept me sane when the poker was at its most torturous... and reworking my poker game totally kept my mind off all the intangibles I couldn't control about the Hollywood TV pitching machine. But at the end of the year, having that project so perfectly completed makes me think if I did nothing else in '09, that alone would have been worth it all!
I'm sure there are more highs and lows I could ramble on about for the year, but those are the major points. I love working with UB, not only on the great poker product, but also another project that came about in the past few months: working behind the scenes to relaunch their online blackjack tournament room - all i can say is, it is gonna be sweet! More announcements on that coming very early in 2010!
As for resolutions for 2010, well, here are a couple -
#1 is the simplest - to take care of myself! That means even though I already eat pretty healthy, I want to keep up the exercise, yoga, and daily scheduling of eating & sleeping that so quickly goes out the window for me. I really started to feel my body run down at points in 2009 and I wanna do everything in my power to keep myself energized, healthy, & refreshed in '10.
#2 will be the hardest - to keep the stress levels down & the confidence levels up in poker & in life in 2010. After the beating I took in '09, & the work I did making my game stronger than its ever been, I gotta get rid of those acquired demons that came along for the ride this past year & remember that its a new beginning & I am working at full capacity once again. Following my #1 resolution will def make the #2 one much easier!
#3 is gonna be the most fun - to re-engage with the world around me and take things a whole new level! I titled this blog 'DOA - Death of Auto-Pilot' (after the Jay-Z song 'DOA - Death of Auto-Tune') because in so many respects, I feel like I spent this entire year cocooned away, on auto-pilot, reinventing myself, my game, my tv show, etc - working behind the scenes to prepare everything in my personal & professional life for the avalanche of amazing activity & success that's about to come my way. Sometimes in life we have to pull back & do the work under the surface before we can relaunch ourselves even farther than we've gone before. And I feel that if its one thing I've done with my 2009, its been to prepare for what I think will be one of the best years of my life so far.
Call it the Scorpio in me but when I do something, I don't do it halfway... i am a tortured artist who will tear myself apart in order to grow to the next level of beauty & enlightenment. So thank you, 2009, for giving me the healing space to work behind the scenes & prepare for what's to come next. Watch the fuck out, 2010 - I'm coming for ya!!
OK, first of all, sorrrrrry for the lack of blog updates here for quite some time. Truth be told, I HAVE been blogging, but most of it has been over at my other home in cyberspace at UB. Here's the link for my blog over there, which is chock full of my adventures over the past few months: blog.ultimatebet.com/category/team-ub/hollywood-dave. In the meantime, here's a slew of vidblogs from my recent trip to Aruba! Click 'Read More' below this post to see the rest, or go to YouTube.com/HollyDeezy for all the hijinks. And as usual, follow my daily exploits direct on Twitter by following me at www.Twitter.com/Hollywood_Dave!
I gotta tellya, I really like this Hollywood place. Moved here almost 10 years ago from Cleveland with a BFA theater degree to pursue the acting dream, before getting sidelined into blackjack & then inevitably poker, & I love it now just as much as I did when I got here all those years ago.
Alright, so its finally over. 2009 is outta here. And despite having some really critical successes this year both personally & professionally, at the end of the decade I just gotta say I am looking forward to 2010 - and beyond - to only get bigger, badder & better yet! In many ways, I spent 2009 in a cocoon of sorts, healing and growing. Here's a few of the highs and lows, and some hopes for the future: