TheHeavyPets.com

I just returned from the midwest, I traveled with the band The Heavy Pets for 4 nights. These guys are a great up and coming rock and roll band, and luckily are all good friends of mine too. Here are my reports from the run that I posted on TheHeavyPets.com forum


REPORT 1

Out in Minnesota, following The Heavy Pets. Show tonight at 9:30 sharp. Everyone is super excited and in good spirits.

There is one slight negative piece of news from today that I will pass along. If u didnt know, Jeff and Mike each bought a new (sick) guitar amp Thursday in Warrenvillve, Illinois' "Guitar Center". Unfortunately while setting up for a mid-afternoon hotel jam session today, it turned out that Mike's doesn't work.

Luckily Jeff's new amp still works, and they still have Jeff's old amp in the trailer. The band will be fine tonight, but a big FU goes out to Guitar Center and Fender for selling the band a lemon amp. Mike plans on picking up a new one tomorrow in the Twin Cites Area Guitar Center.

The long drive from Chicago to Fargo, North Dakota was epic. Jim did the whole drive (12+hours), and Mike sat shot gun (shout out to both for a job extremely well done). I got to sit next to Ryan which was obviously a hell of a good time. He was as hilarious as ever, talking about "fucking cheddar eating gutter sluts" (in Wisconsin), and the Bob Weir smear campaign we are considering launching to get fans from his show during setbreak to come watch THP.

Yesterday at the festival was pretty heady, promoting the band and meeting some cool people. Many seemed very interested in checking out the band, people out here and in the scene in general are definitely looking for new bands to listen to. The girls at this festival are much less attractive than I was anticpating unfortunately...if u were wondering. Food also is not as good as Langerado or other festies, altho their are some hidden gems. Moe was pretty good, SCI was somewhat lame (imo). This festival is ready for some band to come in and blow some heads away, that should happen tonight.


REPORT 2

What's up guys.

The best thing about the show Saturday night was that a good number of people became instant fans of The Heavy Pets. The worst thing is that Bob Weir with Kimock was probably the worst act to be up against.

The more I think about it, the time slot really hurt the band here. If Trey was around then it would have been better in some ways because some people resent Trey or are sick of him, he isnt a must see really. Most feel differently about Ratdog, they may not love the band but everyone loved the Grateful Dead and their songs and Ratdog does justice to a lot of it. They have a very professional clean feel to them, and were my favorite act besides THP at 10Klf (I didnt see Derek Trucks)

The attendance at the show started off pretty good, and then right after a solid John Galt that kept everyone dancing throughout, a lot of people realized that Ratdog's 2nd set started and some people left. This definitely sucked some energy out of the room. The band has to be highly commended for keeping it going tho, and once Pleasure Tank started I don't think a person left the venue and many started trickling back in.

From Rise to Pass It Down the place was rocking. It was amazing to see all the people blown away by this murders row of THP classics. I talked to a bunch of heads after the show and they will definitely be remembering the band and telling friends.

I wish for the band that somehow we could have gotten such an energetic crowd for the whole show, these festivals are tough when u are 2000 miles away from home and noone has heard of u yet. Also, we all have been to festivals and it is like watching TV...wow this band is real good, but "I wonder what else is on". Its so hard to cement a festival audience, but they finally did it for the last 30 or so minutes.

It was a tough assignment, but the band got the job done. A good indicator of that is the solid job of merchandise sales Alex, Rachel and to a lesser extent I managed to pull off. Selling over $200 of merchandise to random people who have never heard of u 30 minutes earlier is pretty impressive and a testament to the buzz THP can create.

By the way, I had the absolute best time ever with these guys the past few days. It is really an amazing crew as we all know, and they all have the same goal in mind which is very encouraging. It is not easy what these guys are trying to accomplish, nor should it be, but we should all feel very lucky that we can be along for the ride.

See everyone in Philly

East Coast

I am back, it was a great summer. As all poker tournaments usually end there was a bit of dissapointment to close everything out. Shane made a great run, but ended up coming in 4th. One key "coinflip" and he probably wins the thing. Razor made an incredible run through the 6000+ WSOP Main Event field and ended in 12th.

WOW

Shane is at the final table of Bellagio Cup 3 WPT event tomorrow. First prize is 1.36 million, 6th is around 225K (I think). He goes in the final table in 2nd place. Behind Kevil Saul, an online crusher, and ahead of Mike Matasow, Danny Wong and 2 other guys I dont know. Its a tough table, but Shane is hungry and knows what to do in this spot. I will be rooting him on tomorrow starting at 4 PST.


Meanwhile, Rocking Ray Henson is 3rd in chips with 36 left in the Main Event! He had a sick day today, ending with 8.5 million chips (he started with 1.1). Its ridiculous how composed this guy is. He called a turn check-raise and river bet from Scotty Ngyuen with middle pair and it was GOLD BABY!

I gotta go to sleep, but hopefully tomorrow is another succesful day for 2 of the people in poker I root for the hardest.

Man Alive!

Justin just busted from the Main Event, finishing 83rd out of 6500 runners. It was a simply amazing run by him. He played great and got it in super good at the end. AKs vs Q9o. The action went small blind limps, Justin makes a sizeable raise in the BB and the SB goes in to the tank and finally takes the bait and shoves it in. Justin snap-calls and he is a 68 percent favorite in a huge pot. Justin took home 82,000 dollars for his troubles, not bad when u look back on it.

The good news is Rocking Ray Henson is still cruising along. He is 4th in chips with 70 left. Him winning would be out of this world. I am headed down to sweat him now for the end of the day. First prize is 8 million

Shane Schleger is quietly expertly dominating the Bellagio Cup 3 in the meantime. Shane and I have discussed how an expert always seems to have his coming out party at this tournament and with 18 left, Shane has a real shot. He is second in chips and feeling good. First prize is 1.3 million

Gl to both

Update

Very short update for now, maybe will write more in the morning. After watching them both for about 11 hours, Justin and Ray are still in the Main Event of the WSOP. 113 remain and average stack is 1.1 million. Ray and Justin both have right about 1.1 million left. They both played great today and I expect the same tomorrow.

JV - Razor (Who we are rooting for)

I first met Justin Sadauskas in the winter of 2002. We were playing 15-30 or 20-40 limit hold em at foxwoods on some weekend night. Justin was to my left, and we probably played for 12 hours. He was on the end of a trip to Foxwoods with his Chicago crew. Our game was off the hook, and Justin and I shared some friendly chatter along with the rest of the people in the game.

A year or more went by before the next time I chatted with Justin, I sent him a message on a poker forum about the new big thing, online poker. Justin had become a pioneer and I asked him if it was really possible to win, among other newbish questions. He claims to have saved this Message for blackmail situations.

Justin has became over the years a great friend of mine, even though he often is way behind in any argument about life or sports, it is rare that I question his poker knowledge or instinct. I have even admitted that he is "kind of heady", not as heady as his girlfriend who is "super-heady", but I'm pretty sure he was honored by the mention. It's pretty cool how far we have come from those days of grinding 15-30.

Anyways, Justin is still in the Main Event of the World Series. He enters Day 4 with 600K chips. Around 360 remain and the average stack is about 375K. Justin is a great player, and he is completely focused on the task at hand. He needs the relentless support of the east coast crew so he can win one for the good guys.

Justin also is a Heavy Pets fan, and plans to attend the Chicago show.

Ray Henson is also still in with 330K, another friend and amazingly nice person, among other qualities that makes him hard not to like and root for. Him winning the main event would be great for the poker world, just cause there wouldn't be one person who wasn't super pumped for him.

Also Rep Porter has over 1 million chips...

If I forgot anyone, I will mention them later, I need to go to sleep so I can get a full day of sweating in tomorrow

Fantasy Pools

Here are the stats for the Fantasy WSOP pool we did in the beginning of the WSOP. 1st line is Money won, second is cashes, third is bracelets.



Greg
$1,965,472
25
2
Jesse
$1,498,420
30
1
Ebo
$862,207
21
0
Kyle
$782,889
30
0
Baker
$522,976
18
0

Here are the teams

Ed Moncada - J.C. Tran, Patrick Antonius, Barry Greenstein, Ted Forrest, Kirk Morrison, Joe Tehan, Steve Sung, Joe Cassidy, Danny Wong, Jason Strassa

Jesse Martin - Allen Cunningham, Gavin Smith, Greg Mueller, Nick Shulman, Jeff Madsen, Chad Brown, Scotty Ngyuen, Jordan Morgan, Jarred Hamby, Robert Williamson

David Baker - Eric Lindgren, Johnny Chan, James Van Alstyne, David Singer, Chris Fergueson, Scott Fischman, Jen Harman, David Grey, Paul Wasicka, Lee Markholt

Kyle Wilson - Mike Mizrachi, Nam Le, John Juanda, David Williams, Greg Raymer, Efro, Men The Master, David Pham, Kenna James, Mr Smokey

Greg Mueller - Phill Helmuth, Daniel Negreneau, Roland De Wolfe, Andy Bloch, Phil Ivey, Doyle Brunson, Erik Seidel, Gus Hansen, Alex Jacob, David Benyamine



It all comes down to the main event, althought Greg has locked up atleast a tie in bracelets, and Kyle and I are battling for cashes.



Also, JV, Matt, Jimmy and I did a Main Event fantasy draft...here are our teams, better late than never.


Me - Allen Cunningham, Barry Greenstein, Nam Le, Scotty Ngyuen, Alan Goehring, Juanda, Wasicka, Kenny Tran, Antonio Esfandari, Mr. Smokey, Brian Townsend, Eric Lynch, Cliff Josephy, Gabe Thaler, Takeover, Tex Barch, David Singer, Joe Tehan, Steve Sung

JV - Antonius, Erick Seidel, Grinder, Fergueson, Lindgren, Hellmuth, Doyle, Thomas Wahlroos, Shannon Shorr, Scott Clemetns, Jared Hamby, Chris Bell, Freddy Deeb, Sorrel Mizzi, Hoyte Corkins, David Plastick, Ian J, David Willaimds , David Benyamine, Devilfish

Matt - Negreneau, Matasow, William Thorson, Raymer, Shawn Buchanan, Brandon Adams, Thor Hansem, Joe Hachem, David Pham, John Pham, Robert Mizrachi, CMack, Gavin Smith, Joe Sebok, Neverwin, Johnny Lodden, Tad Jurgensen, Michael Woo, Peter Feldman, Darrel Dicken

Jimmy - Ivey, ???Jacob???, JC Tran, FBT, Jen Harmon, Michael Binger, C Brown, Jordan Morgan, Eric Fridberg, Tommy Hang, Shawn and Thomas Keller LOL!, Chip Reese, EFro, Shaniac, Noah Boaken, Theo Tran, Joe Pelton, Dave Baker, Matt Smith

JV FTW

Well for most of us today wasnt a great day, but luckily Justin Sadauskas is carrying the torch of the crew.

Woodrow and Smaz both had close to 200K but ran in to some bad spots and are both now out.

Justin, has 235K and seems poised to make a run. I think for now I am gonna stick around and see how he does on day 3, but I am definitely ready to get home.

I played the Bellagio Cup 3, nothing really happened and I am out...it was an awful run of cards and there isnt much to say. Shaniac has 45K if u are looking for someone to root for. Also online player BeLoWAbove (Kevin Saul) is an absurd chip leader with like 130K more than second place.

Anyways, thats it for now...besides Justin good luck to Ray Henson, David Wells and John Spahn in the main event, among others

Poker Is Fun For Everyone

I woke up at 11:00 AM this morning, unsure of what side of the country I would fall asleep on. I could either go back home and catch up with friends and rest up before Heavy Pets tour, or I could stay out here, see who makes a run in the main event and maybe play Bellagios WPT event. After talking to Ryan and Sonny, it didnt seem like there was much waiting for me in NY. Sonny seemed to have it right when he said, "if u can't make it back for Bobby in Central Park, there is no point in coming back during the week".

I jumped online, checked some email, jetblue flights, and NYC's 10-day weather forecast (didn't look too promising). I quickly won 6000 on pokerstars playing 100-200 limit and the idea of playing the WPT Bellagio event that started in the next few days started to make more sense.

I had a bunch of errands to do, including heading over to the Rio to take care of some things. While at the Rio, my buddy Matt Woodward happened to be at the feature table during his day 1 of the main event. The funny thing was that they were at the table because Phil Helmuth was at there table, but Phil didnt show up for over 2 hours. Anyways, Matt should get a lot of TV time and he ended the day with 95,000 chips! GO WOODROW

Back to my day, I arrived back to the Bellagio and decided to check out the tournament room. A 1000 single table was filling up and I decided to play. It turned out to be the absolute WORST single table satelittle I have ever been a part of. We got to the 500-1000 level, without busting one person, this is very possibly a satellite record. Someone commented we all deserved some sort of trophy/ribbon for being in the nittiest sit and go ever, I agreed. Anyways I busted from that after 2 and a half hours, and I was pretty unhappy with my decision to play a 1 table satellite when I could have been grinding cash games.

It was 6:00 when I got back to my room and there was a 10:00 super satellite on the horizon, I was about to lay down for a nap but I decided to jump on the computer first. I lost 4300 before I could blink and now I was up only $600 dollars on the day, I hated poker again, after loving life 3 hours earlier. I decided to take a nap and see how I felt when I woke up.
I woke up at 9 feeling great, as I normally do after naps (I really should nap more), and I headed down to play the Super Satellite. 125 people started, 18 people get a 10K seat. By the bubble I was the far ahead chipleader, I was moving in dark every hand and poker was fun again. I won my seat and will be playing the 10K Bellagio Cup 3, starting Wednesday.

The best part of the day was right after the satellite when I started calling all my friends who had just got done with day 1d of the WSOP Main Event. I had a bunch of good friends all playing today and the updates were almost all spectacular. I am very pumped for them all, and I hope they make me stay out here for another week.

Here are some chip counts :

Justin Sadauskas 98,000
Matt Syzmaszek 97,000
Matt Woodward 95,000

These 3 are some of my best friends in poker, Matt Smaz and I have pretty much mirrored eachothers poker careers since the days of grinding out $15-30 limit hold em, and him making a run would be so sweet (especially cause I have a little sweat piece taboot!)

Even tho I am out of the Main Event, I am still super enegerzined about it cause I have small pieces of TEN left in the field. Most of these guys have above average chips, and all of them have above average talent.

For you guys who check the updates, this is what my dream final table would look like.

Matt Syzmaszek
Matt Woodward
Justin Sadauskas
David Wells (has 39,000)
Steve Giufre (has 48,000, another of my very best friends in poker, played Day 1C)
Kyle Wilson (has 97,000)
Jon Spahn (has 65,000)
Courtney Harrington (has over 100 I think)
Rocking Ray Henson (120,000)
James Gorham (67,000)

Also I have a few friends who i do not have pieces of that I am also rooting for like Evelyn Ng, Carl Olson (top 10 in chips!) and Gavin Griffin to name a few...


Anyways thats enough rambling for 7 AM...moral of the story, there is still life after busting out of the main event.

P.S. has anyone seen or heard from Al "SugarBear" Barbieri? Did he play the Main Event? The answer to this question is pretty important to me, so if u have any info, let me know.

16 Outs Once

16 outs once, thats what Kido Pham had when he decided to gamble all in on a T962 board with 2 spades for 11,000 more chips. I was holding KcKs, for the lead in the 33,000 pot but the 9 of clubs on the river officially ended my WSOP 2007 and most likely my trip to Las vegas.

Not sure what to write, I am bummed about busting out, but I thought I played fine. Today was not my day I guess. I played very tight in levels 2 and 3 after a level 1 that saw my chip stack yo yo around a bit. My tight image allowed me to make a few steals in the 400-800 round with a 50 ante and I was feeling extremely comfortable when the KK hand came up.

On the bright side Kido seemed like a nice guy, and I wish him luck in the event. He also mentioned earlier than anyone he busts at our first table will be rewarded their money back if he goes on to win the event! (lol)

Also on the bright side is I have a pieces of a bunch of friends still left in the event and I am basically guarenteed to atleast have a sweat of someone who makes it semi deep.

Right now I feel like I am a little numb, I am not super depressed like I am after busting from some events, but I certainly wasnt prepared for this. For whatever reason I thought I would make it thru day 1 one way or another.

See ya next year

I play day 1B of the World Series Of Poker Main Event starting tomorrow. I will be sure to report at nights end how I stand. I am very excited to get in there and play. I have always felt strong on Day 1 of the WSOP Main Event, making day 2 both times I've played it (and day 3).

Today I spent at the gym, spa, pool with JV and then the rest of it in my room. I have been reading some poker books, hanging with friends who stopped by and even managed to win more than a WSOP Main Event buy-in screwing around playing some online poker.

I should have no excuses this year, and look to play some expert tournament NL hold-em tomorrow. It is a privilege to be able to enter this event each year, and I plan to give it maximum effort. Yet again, and for the forseable future this tournament is the most anticipated, most enjoyable, most hyped and best value of any tournament on poker tour.

At the beginning of my minor tournament successes a couple years ago, my good friend Eric suggested the nickname "Main Event Martin". It certainly hasn't stuck, nor did I hope it to, as it was quite pre-mature. However, if I can make a super deep run in this poker tournament, I might have to admit that Eric has a point when he says "it has a nice ring to it."

wish me luck

23rd

I just wrote a long post about how I cashed in the 1500 NL for $25,000 and finished 23rd out of 3148, but it all erased and I need to go to bed for the 1000 rebuy. I am pretty dissapointed, but it was a nice run I guess. Greg Mueller, an exceptional player and good friend is at the final table and will probably win. I will write more when I have more time

Day 2 What It Do

I made day 2 of the 1500 NL. We are already in the money and resume tomorrow with something like 250 players of the initial 3150. My stack is slightly below average but I still have some wiggle room with 23,000. I was extremely pleased with my play today.

My focus was there and I followed my gameplan out all day, I lost 2 coinflips early and was starting to feel sorry for myself, but then I won a nice one and built some chips from there. I also concentrated on learning my opponents today more than I ever have before (besides maybe a few 10K+ events), and although I am still far from expert at it, I think I did a very good job reading my opponents today.

I have my work cut out for me tomorrow, but I definitely have a shot in a relatively soft field, not to mention a nice boost of confidence heading in to the home stretch. I'm gonna try to get some rest.

I