Chris Halverson’s Blog

Being a Professional Poker Player (TM) like myself is a tough job at times. There’s a lot to remember. I have to remember to value bet my nuts. I have to remember that if it weren’t for bad beats that I’d always win. I have to remember that my final course for my MS is a project course that I cannot petition out of.

Uh…

So, yeah, my plans have changed a bit thanks to a timely call from my advisor. She noted that I was nearing graduation and wanted to touch base. I calmly told her that if I got these last two petitions done in time I’d be done at the end of summer. She then calmly asked if I was taking the capstone class in summer. Capstone class? Oh crap…

Needless to say I now have one petition to finish and two classes to take. You’d think that, as a graduate student and Professional Poker Player (TM) who has heard about such complex topics as “pot odds” and “EV”, I would have remembered that.

Anywho…What this means is that I played poker Thursday night.

I was in the mood for something different, and I remembered that other Professional Poker Players (TM) like myself like to play at Stars, so I headed over there. I have some, like $500 worth, bonus to work off anyway and there’s double points time, so I figured, “What the hell.”

I went on a good run early at the 1/2 NL tables, then proceeded to give it all back plus more. It was not my best night ever, I’m pretty sure it was due to bad beats though.

It was good to get back to playing though. Now I just have to remember how to win a hand. The competition didn’t seem any tougher and Stars was reporting 50K people on the site which is quite amazing. I’m just glad to play again for the first time in almost 2 weeks.

New Poker Show

Foxs Sports will showing a new poker tournamet, the Ultimatebet.net World Poker Challenge, on Saturday night at 11PM (remember, Fox Sports times are all local, so it’s 11PM your time). It’s been filmed at the swanky Hollywood Park Casino in scenic LA.

This is the same casino where Henry said to me, “Most of the time you don’t have to worry about walking the parking lot, but we’ll valet anyway.” Evidently you can still qualify for upcoming tournaments/shows.

See information about it at UltimateBet.net.

WSOP Updates

* Tao of Poker, for real-time tournament reporting and various nonsense including what promises to be a month-long drama involving the coked-up stripper-neighbors

* LasVegasVegas, the Poker Prof and FlipChip providing all sorts of in-depth coverage and lots of pictures

* PokerPlayer Newspaper, whole lotta stuff from the above-mentioned folks

As sad it is, I have not played any poker since playing at the Plaza ten days ago. As a Professional Poker Player, this is tough. Even more so because I think I was playing at the top of my game, taking the Plaza 2/4 game for 10BB that night. Much like other poker professionals such as Phil Hellmuth and fellow poker blogger Daniel Negreanu, I feel I was hitting my stride at the right time, right in time for those killer Plaza ring games (or for some tournament that those guys are going to play in, it’s at the Rio or something). Much like Hellmuth though (as heard on the Phil Gordon podcast), I have had to take some time off.

I had the opportunity to finish up my class for this quarter early. If I got my final project done by last Sunday I would get 10 extra points and more importantly be done 2 weeks early. The 10 extra points would save me approximately two hours of extra work needed to fix up some things I missed during the quarter that were supposed to be in the paper. Basically, I’m looking at an “A” anyway and time/reward tradeoff wasn’t there to do the extra work (this is part of my “work smarter, not harder” mantra), but by just getting the work done that I needed to get done made up for it.

Mission accomplished.

The next two weeks may also see a reduction in my poker play. Ironically, I have time off, but will not be playing.

Basically I’m going to concentrate on pounding out two more petitions to get credit for experience. The classes are well within my experience, but the petitions are comprehensive. I’ve done two and each one is approximately 20 pages long and very detailed. I know the material, but I have to present it in a fashion that shows that I can apply it. Once again, not difficult, but I get one chance to get it right and have to pay $300 for the privelege of submitting it. If I can get them done and approved I will have my Master’s degree in September, otherwise it will be January. I just want to get it done, so this takes priority.

For real poker news, go read Pauly. He is providing some killer WSOP coverage. Great stuff.

I went to Vegas with $1200 in the gambling bankroll. I figured that would hold Mrs H and I over for the weekend. This was gambling only, I had a separate stash for incidentals and such.

I came back with close to $1500, so that worked out well.

By Monday morning, it was all gone.

Those of you sitting at my table during the tournament may remember me taking a phone call and then mentioninng that I just bought a car.

You see, my 16 year son got a job this summer. It’s at a golf course 20 minutes away and he has to be there at 6AM 4 days a week. This effectively removes the possibility of borrowing one of our cars. Plus he’s 16 and is itching to go out with his friends and such.

He’s been bugging me for a couple of months about getting a car. I originally thought that I’d give him my 2nd car, the one my wife drives, a 1994 Pontiac Grand Prix. I’d then get a decent used car for myself and give the mini-van to my wife (she loves it). Well, that kind of fell through last week when my son found his dream car.

Unfortunately, he found it the day before we left for Vegas. I didn’t have time to do the requisite checking and such. He was convinced it was going to be sold soon. He text messaged me repeatedly while I was in Vegas.

The phone call on Saturday was from my dad. My son had convinced my dad to go check out the car with him. My dad told me everything looked good and they were going to put a deposit on the car.

He tells me this while I’m 1500 miles away, sitting in a poker tournament. In Las Vegas for heaven’s sake.

I just said, “ya, fine, whatever”. Next thing I know, I owe $1600 to pay off the rest of the car. Fine.

The wife and I return from Vegas and on Monday morning my son and I drive across town to pick up the car. It’s a 1991 Volkswagon Jetta. It also happens to have been lowered 3 inches, has an exhaust kit, and has rims on its 13 inch wheels.

It starts right up and he drives it around to show off to his friends for a while. He then heads to my parent’s house to show my mom and it won’t start again. This brings out the retired gearhead neighbors. There’s various theories being thrown around, mostly revolving around the starter or alternator, and potentially the battery. They hook a charger up and let it sit for a few hours.

No dice.

I call AAA and have them come out to tow it to the shop. Some young guy comes out with the flatbed and throws a fit because the car is lowered. I tell him I paid for AAA and just tow it. It takes an hour to get it up on the back of the truck. He even tried the regular tow things to no avail. He eventually got it up using some wooden ramps to not drag the exhaust on the ground.

The shop proceeds to replace the starter and tie rod. To finish it off, they have to align the wheels but since it’s lowered the machine won’t fit so they charge me labor so they could reconfigure it.

I’m now $750 lighter.

The next day, he drives it around for a while and then it wouldn’t start again. I’m furious at this point. We go and get a new battery and put that in (we did it ourselves, for the Halverson clan that’s pretty damn good) to no avail.

The next morning I call AAA again and they send out a crusty old tow driver. I was a little worried, but he had zero trouble with it and we were on the road in 5 minutes. That other guy was a complete moron.

Anyway, the starter was bad again and they replaced it for free. I did, however, end up paying $750 for repairs on a 1 day old car. Gotta like that.

Oh, to make it worse, my wife brought her car into the shop the same day. So as of last Monday I had 3 cars, but two of them were in the shop. My wife’s took 4 days to fix and cost another $750.

I hate cars.

(Don’t lecture me on the wisdom of getting a 16 year old a car, there’s rules and such, let’s just concentrate on what’s important: cars suck.)

Let’s pull up Pauly’s Google ranking!

Well, that and he deserves it. He’s working his ass off covering the WSOP 16 hours a day. He provides a great personal touch to the coverage that he and Flipchip are providing. Yes, it’s professional, but it’s professional with the Pauly touch.

Live blogging of the WSOP? How freaking cool is that?

Plus you’ll get to hear tales of his redneck neighbors for free. Well worth it for that alone.

Pauly kicks ass, go read him.

* Tao of Poker, for real-time tournament reporting and various nonsense including what promises to be a month-long drama involving the coked-up stripper-neighbors

* LasVegasVegas, the Poker Prof and FlipChip providing all sorts of in-depth coverage and lots of pictures

* PokerPlayer Newspaper, whole lotta stuff from the above-mentioned folks

(Thanks MeanGene for saving me the trouble of making up witty descriptions.)

I was a little nervous about this trip. I’m pretty introverted and I don’t open up too well. Once I get to know people I’m fine, but it’s getting to that point that is tricky for me. That being said, I’ve IM’ed many people and have had email “conversations” with others for almost two years now. Through people’s writings you start to come to know people. Of course, writing is one thing and actually dealing with people in real life is another thing entirely. I have to say that I expected there to be at least a couple assholes, but honestly I don’t think there were any. Everybody was great and I was able to relax and be more myself. The free drinks didn’t hurt either, but…

It was truly a pleasure to meet some of the people that I had really wanted to meet. Yes, I had a short list of people that were “must meets”. What’s great is that I cleared that list and expanded my horizons a lot. I met a ton of other people and each one was great. In the past week I’ve had a lot of IM and email contacts with new people and it’s been a great experience (keep in mind, I work during the day, so I may not contact you, but feel free to IM me, I’ll let you know if I don’t have time, and don’t take offense if I don’t, I do have a job since I suck at poker).

The conversations I had were great. The people even better. I didn’t play as much poker as I thought I would, instead I broke out of my shell (thank you SoCo!) and spent a lot of time talking to people. I can play cards anytime, I wanted to meet you guys.

Mission Accomplished.

Thanks again to Pauly and CJ who spearheaded all of this (as far as I know anyway).

Thanks to everybody who went and especially to those I met. You gave me a truly memorable trip.

My pictures are here.