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Well Happy New Year! It\’s been a long time but I have been bogged down with the last few classes before I graduate with my Bachelors degree. It\’s finally official I passed the classes and am ready to focus on poker. The next part of my life is a little hazy. I\’m contemplating on joining officers training for the Air Force, or becoming a poker dealer. I believe given the current economic situation that chances of getting a dealer job are slim to none, but one can always hope.

During my last trimester I have taken some time off from poker so my bankroll has barely changed. I have been playing more 7 card stud cash games which seems to be a really easy way to make some extra money. Of course I lose it all when I try to sit down for an MTT, oh well. I\’m on vacation now in North Carolina and I\’m loving the weather. All I\’ve been hearing is that Rhode Island has been pounded with snow, thank god I\’m not there! Time to go get my drink on and play a little Wii golf $1 per hole, woo we\’re big spenders. I leave this wonderful state on Sunday only to come back to 12 inches of snow so I\’m going to suck up all the warmth I can. Ciao peoples.

So yesterday at work I had plenty of free time since I now refuse to do data entry anymore. My initial goal for Sept is to play 100 $5 sng\’s and try to make it back to $400. I played roughly 9 sng\’s and was down around $223. Today I sat down and played oh 9 maybe 10 sng\’s and was down to $208, this got to be too much of a pain for me so I sat down at a $50NL cash game.

Normally I stick to my rules about playing poker the most important being play only with 5% of your total BR at any time. I guess I was tilting a little… ok alot. First hand I have QhJh UTG and raise it $1.75 it folds around to the BB who calls. Flop Ks Kc 7d the BB bet $3 and I raise to $6 he thinks and calls. Turn was a 9h he checks and I bet $15 he thinks and calls. River was a 2s he checks and I of course go all in. He called with JJ. After this clear example of my lack of common sense I should have just cut my losses along with myself for being a grade A dipshit and play again tomorrow. Nope not for me, I proceed to play 2 $50 NL cash games. Where I lose again only this time it was AK (me) vs KQ (villian) on a AQ2K board where the villian pushes all in and I snap call, the river was a Q.

I then get up from both tables take my BR and sit down at a $200NL cash game with my lousy BR of $115. I\’m a glutten for punishment. After I steal some blinds I have around $135 my last hand I was UTG with AQc I raise it to $6 it folds to the dealer he calls the SB calls and the BB then re raises to $26. By this point all my brain cells where pretty much fried so I call. Dealer folds as does the SB. The flop came 6s 8s Qs the BB checks to me and I bet the pot of $65ish he pushes all in and I snap call. He had pocket 10\’s and never improved. WOOHOO!!! I don\’t care how foolish I was for doing what I did I can say I won\’t be doing this again any time soon. From now on I\’m going to finish just the $5 sng goal and hopefully report back with great results.

I noticed on some other blogs that people have their hand history data. I realized that all this time playing on FT I never saved any of my hand histories. Yeah I fixed that so hopefully next time I can have some to show you.

This Friday I play a pub poker tourney then Saturday if its nice will get to play 9 holes. Pray for sunny weather!

My apologies for not blogging in a while but it has been the month from hell. I unfortunately never made it to Foxwoods and instead kept playing online determined to get out of my current funk. I managed to grind my way back to $250 from $160 which helped my ego a bit through many $5 sng\’s.

During my shift on Sunday the 10th I was doing my usual routine at work when all of a sudden the server screen displayed the BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death). I assumed it to be nothing and simply re-booted the computer. To keep this short we called for tech support and over the course of three weeks realized our data was now corrupt and we had no idea of determining who was arriving in they days to come. It\’s amazing how confused this place got when all computers were down. Nobody could comprehend the fact that all our info had to be retrieved from paper back up. So finally we installed a new reservation system and for the past few days we have been doing a shit ton of data entry. Finally it looks like there are brighter days to come.

Next week I start my final trimester of college. I\’m very nervous to actually become a full adult and get a real job. I have come accustomed to playing poker at work and at times catch up on several different tv shows. I highly doubt the corporate world will allow me these pleasures. Bastards!

My goal for this month is to not get hammered by mother varience and get back to my original amount of $350. This is it for today as I have to of course do data entry. Work sucks.

Well it\’s been a week from hell. Always a case of second best, it was getting brutal. Maybe if I sacrificed something, the poker gods would give me a little help. After looking through some of my hands I realize that my problem seemed to be pot control. I should have kept it small but I guess 3 redbulls deep made me jump the gun alot without thinking things through. So after another loosing session I have decided to play more live games. There is usually some good pub poker around so I thought I might give that a go on Friday. I have also decided to goto Foxwoods Saturday 9am sharp and play in a $60 MTT. My thought there is 9am will either have people who have been playing for hours and can\’t see straight  or just really old people waiting for bingo. Who knows I may be wrong…. wouldn\’t be the first time. I keep you update as things progress. Oh and if anyone who reads this lives near Foxwoods and wants to come along let me know.

-Showtime

Well the weekend started of shitty but ended well. When I woke up at around 5pm on Friday I logged onto FT and played 4 tables of $25nl. I\’d say after an hour is when the shit storm occured. On two tables at the same time I\’m dealt pocket aces I ended up allin preflop against 84??? Didn\’t understand that one but he made two pair on the turn. The second table I was all in on the flop I had trip Aces and my opponent had trip fours. He wound up with quads on the river. After that I slowly tilted off another $100 or so to end the night right around $300.

Saturday I went to my cousins house to help her fiance Tony tile her bathroom walls. Now I have never done anything like this before but all I can say is thank you youtube!!! Their how to videos certainly helped two chuckleheads like us do a pretty damn good job. From there it was abundantly clear we had to get our drink on. By the time we polished off a 12 pack of Sam Adams Tony and I stopped by our degen friends house to play a game of poker. I grabbed my Phil Hellmuth gear just to piss them off. I wound up winning the first game for about $100 and lost the second game my two pair vs. straight/flush/straightflush draw which hit at the end. We drank till about 2:30 – 3am where I ended up going home and waking up with m&m\’s stuck to my chest. Ooops. I guess the moral of that story is try to avoid late night snacking while drunk. Wish I took a picture of it.

Finally when I get to work last night, all seemed quiet till about 2am. I\’m watching vids from poker savvy plus when this guy comes off the elevator with nothing on except a pair of briefs. Comes up to the desk and says \” I got a soda out of the vending machine and forgot my key to my room\”. I can\’t tell you how many times a year this same situation occurs. Instead of asking all the questions that go through my mind at this time I gave him a key and he went back to his room. Now why the hell would anyone leave their hotel room in their underwear with $1.50 to get a drink and not think hey maybe pants would be a good idea.? To me this is mind boggling. Maybe I should have googled his name to see if he was a sex offender or something. Well I guess it\’s good to know for next time. Thats all I have for today.

-Showtime

So it\’s been 7 months and 23 days since the show and I\’m still a schmuck. Right now I sit on $412.45 in my FT account which makes me feel unsatisfied. Granted by the end of the month I should be getting an inheritance check for 1k which is going straight to online poker. I guess my goal for the end of the year is to have 5k in my account.

That being said, I just finished High Stakes Living with Matt Stout on cardplayer.com. I enjoy watching how other people spend their money. Man what I would give to just be assistant to some of these people. What a life.

Now normally when I read articles online I try to take most with a grain of salt, I try to give everyone the benefit of a doubt. But this one has me lost for words.

What the hell goes through someones mind to think that this would be a good idea? This guy acts all nonchalant, my guess is someone burned way too many braincells to think getting a cannibus card from the internet gave him permission to act like jackass.

Finally I have been thinking lately about learning Omaha hi/lo. It seems to me that this is where the money is to be made. I have been watching alot of Mike \”The Mouth\” videos on Pokersavvyplus.com which help me with more fundamentals about the game and hands to play. By the end of next week I hope to get Poker tracker 3 and my new found mini inheritance into Full Tilt. The only problem I have with this is the fact that I signed up for FT without getting rakeback which sucks. I have been thinking of alternatives but I too signed up to most of them without going through rakeback. Hopefully I can find something.

Well this is my third blog and it seems to be getting harder. Not sure if I\’m hitting the right topics to peek peoples interest but I\’m trying. It\’s all a work in progress.

-Showtime

Weeks before the taping of the BDPS my friend (who I give all the credit for the video) and I taped myself between 2am and 5am at the hotel. It was insane. Guests were checking out while I have a huge green screen taped behind me with a video camera in front. All in all we finished up 2 weeks later just about 6 days before the show.

I still remember when I recieved the call. I was just about to fall asleep on the couch almost in REM, when I heard the phone ring. The answering machine picks up and I hear \”Hello this is for Mark Laporte, this is Steve with the Best Damn Poker Show. We wanted to let you know that you have been accepted to goto San Diego on December 7th (which was 4 days away) please call me back at ####### so we can set up a flight schedule.\” I quickly got my father and played the message back where he proceed to say \”Get the f%$# out\” which were my words exactly. At this point I didn\’t care about sleep. I called everyone I knew and told them the news, everyone was freaking out. Called work let them know I wasn\’t going to be in next week. Work was cool because right when I saw the ad for the show and had a feeling I was going to get I let my manager know I was taking the week of December 7th off. Even if I didn\’t get on the show it still would have been nice to get a week off. Screw em if they can\’t take a joke.

So four days later yada yada yada I\’m at TF Green airport in Providence, RI at 6:15am, ouch. For this part I\’ll keep it short. Basically the plane I was gonna take….well it was broke. So I said I\’ll take anything as long as I get to San Diego. A nice attendant informed me that there was another plane going to New York which had a connector to San Diego. Bam it was done. I hop on the plane and get to New York where the other plane left about 15 minutes ago. SOB. After alot of griping and moaning I got a flight to San Diego at 4:30pm. So I hung around the airport for 8 hours. I tried to get to San Diego for the welcome dinner with everyone which was at 10pm. After I get on the plane I ended up at Pechanga Resort and Casino at about 11:30pm. It was a beautiful place but by that point I was exausted and went to sleep. Oh yeah and my bags were lost!! Wonderful!

It was about 9:30am. I get up shower shave and call the airlines. Still nothing, they said maybe it will be here by 7 or 8pm tonight. Hey guys thanks for nothing! So I found out through all my emails with Steve that everyone was meeting up in the Showroom at noon. I get there and all I see are people on the show getting interviewed and this table with all kinds of drinks and snacks. Man did I feel like a rockstar. Oh speaking of which I bumped into Sully Erna from Godsmack who was an amazing person. So after getting set up we all walk into a theater with a stage that had long red velvet drapes and two big portraits of Phil Helmuth and Annie Duke. It was all too insane.

So this is how it went. There are 6 tables of 6. One table at a time is the feature table while all the other table around pretty much play for shits and giggles. But the second round they brough out the booze. Sitting at my table was Sully Erna, this guy Blaine who works for the Venetian, this other person Mike who looked remarkably like Tom Arnold, and two others Tracy who was an impressive player and umm can\’t remember the last guys name. I was drinking Sam Adams and by the 4th round was pretty buzzed. Oh yeah the featur table plays for 1 hour where at the end Phil and Annie eliminate one person. I\’ll tell ya when I saw them, it was awesome. Phil had his 11th bracelet on and Annie I think is a gorgeous woman. She brough her boyfriend Dave who was also on the show. At one point before we were at the feature table I ended up all in agains Sully, I had trip 5\’s on a 556 board and Sully had an 89 for a gutshot. The next cards were two blanks and I won which kicked ass but unfortunately it wasn\’t at the feature table.

Finally we\’re up, last table of the night. The first hand my whole cards were 89 suited and I was the button. The blinds were 100/200 UTG limps next two fold, I raise to 800, SB folds BB folds UTG calls. Flop comps 3s Qd 9s. UTG bets 1200 and I raise to 2500 to see where I\’m at and he calls. Turn came 9c UTG checks and I bet 5000 cause I figured if he had a draw I would bet pot so I couldn\’t give him odds. He folded. I found out when the show was on tv he had 7s8s. About 3 hands later and one more beer I was feeling good. I then got Ah4h and was the cutoff UTG folds and the next one folds, I raise to 600. Dealer folds SB folds and BB calls. The flop came Qh 6h 8h I have the nut flush. BB checks and I check. The turn was a 3s, BB bets 1200 and I think about it and call. The river came a 5c, BB bets 2500 and then I pushed. He folded. Finally my last good hand was AdJh and a shortstacked moved all in for like 1200, since I was the chipleader I called and he had KhQs. I ended up winning with aces. After the hour Phil and Annie came out and had the one who went all in leave. I was excited to be there but knew the next morning they were going to eliminate 12 more people before the next game which I thought was wierd but oh well.

From there it was about midnight and I was beat so again I went to bed only to wake up for eliminations at 9am. We get on stage and boom 12 people get picked who thought they were going on Team Helmuth or Team Duke instead found out they got elimated. I for some reason was one of those poor souls. Lots of people were pissed as we got into the casino but I was thankful for the ride. Many of us went to lunch and hung by the pool which was nice. At around 6pm we had a tournament for a chance to goto Aruba for the Aruba poker classic. The 12 of us were there that got eliminated this morning. The only problem was 2 minute blinds which made it seem like a crap shoot than a poker tourney. Phil and Annie came out and the poker room went nuts. Phil bought us 4 bottles of Dom Perignon and I was in the moment. Playing cards drinking champagne, phil sat next to me and gave me an autograph which I had asked for. He also gave us each $500 to our UB accounts and a whole bunch of swag. BTW after I got eliminated I booked my flight home at 6:15 the next morning (big mistake). After the tourny (a lovely girl named Chi won) Phil bought out a club for a few hours and it had open bar. The whole cast from the show was there drinking up a storm and having a good time. I got pretty shitfaced but not enough to turn down an offer to goto another club on the top floor. Bam more drinking lots of fun and many great memories. At this point it was 1:30am and I had to pack to get on my flight in 5 hours. After a prayer to the porcelan gods I packed up my things and checked out. Most of the flight home I was passed out about 8 1/2 hours later I was in freezing RI and on cloud nine.

I apologize if this was too long. Trust me it could have been much longer but for your sake I tried to edit down. I hope you liked it, it\’s about 1am at work right now and I have a yearning to play poker. As promised here is my video which if it doesn\’t work on my blog you can always goto www.ultimatebet.com and check out the ad for the best damn poker show my video should be at the bottom.

Greetings!!

This is my start of hopefully many more blogs to come. I have always been around cards since I can remember. I was brought up playing 5 card draw, 7 card stud and pitch but it wasn\’t untill, like most others when Rounders came out I found myself compelled to learn Texas Hold Em. I currently play on Full Tilt with my pathetic BR of $375 but hope to add an extra $1000 so I can actually attempt to play higher stakes.

I\’m 25 years old and still live with my parents which is probably one reason I still am single, but oh well poker is more important. I work 3rd shift in a hotel which is where I play most online poker. So I guess I can say I get payed to play poker (wow I never thought of it that way). I am 2 classes away from my Bachelors in Financial Service Management from Johnson and Wales University and have no clue what I want to use that piece of paper for. I know I want to be a professional like everyone else but need to get a real job so I can move out and let mom and dad age in peace (sorry mom and dad).

Last year was when I realized I want in on the poker lifestyle. I\’m a firm believer that certain things are shown to people for a reason. My sign came in the form of an advertisement on Ultimate Bet for Season 1 of the Best Damn Poker Show. Right then and there I knew this was my chance. So I started talking to my family and friends who encouraged me to go for it but never believed it would happen. So I call my buddy who helped create a video submission for the show. About two days after I posted it up on Youtube I get a call saying I get to goto LA. It was such a perfect moment in my life. I hope to post a seperate blog of my experience with my video.

Anywho since that show I have been acquiring knowledge on poker and actually all things gambling. I feel like I\’m a degenerate gambler in training. It\’s about 1:30am and figure I should actually do some of the work I get paid to do in the hotel, but I may just play some poker and leave it for the crew tomorrow. I hope you enjoy my blog and I hope to post regularly. Till next time.

-Showtime