Tony Guerrera

It's nice to be back! I missed posting last week because I got miserably sick. Sunday 1/7/2007 was spent throwing up all day. I was so tired and weak that I actually spent time lying down on my bathroom floor because I didn't have the energy to crawl back to my bed. If I'm taking my bathroom floor over the comfort of my Temperpedic mattress, you know something's wrong with me!

All my awesome friends made Sunday, and the few days that followed, much easier! Sure, I would have recovered even if my friend Susy didn't come over on Sunday and take care of me, or if my roommate, John, didn't go to the store to get me apple juice. But all my friends in the 626 deserve a big shout out here!

In life, we need to have people around us that support us and help us out, and that's just as true in poker as it is in anything else. To get better at poker, we need to have a group of people that we can talk poker with. We need people who will watch us occasionally when we play online. We need people who are supportive, but also people who are honest enough to say "why the hell did you donk off half of your stack?" If you don't have such people in your life, you will still get good at poker. However, having such people in your corner can make the process easier and more expedient...and most importantly, they make things more fun!

Not much has been going on in my world with regards to playing poker. I need to finish my third book, Tournament Killer Poker by the Numbers, by the end of this month, so I haven't had much time. I did manage to play in a dealer's choice home game two weeks ago, the same game that I describe in a recent article I wrote for Wise Hand Poker, Keep Fresh by Introducing Variety into your Poker Life…Learn to Play Super-Duper Twist!. In four hours of play, I took down a profit of $159...I'll take $40/hr anytime in a limit game with $2 and $3 bets and raises! After the dealer's choice games, we play a $50 NLHE tournament with rebuys in the first 15 minutes (you can rebuy only if you hit the felt). The tournament had 7 players, and there was only one rebuy (not by me). Unfortunately, I managed to battle my way to only a 4th place finish (no $$$). The tournament ended for me in typical STT fashion...the blinds were getting big, I had 7BB and pushed all-in with a bad hand (go fold equity!), was called by someone who stumbled upon a big hand, and I lost. I've done it thousands of times in online STTs, and I'll do it thousands more (I have many more STTs in my future once I finish writing Tournament Killer Poker by the Numbers). While returning to multitabling STTs for a 45ish% ITM and a 20ish% ROI will be nice, what I really need to do is find a higher stakes dealer's choice game (or start my own).

This Sunday, I'm playing in the Poker Author Challenge at Binion's. It's a $125 buy-in tournament that's open to the public, so if you are in Vegas this weekend, you should check it out.

May your EV always be positive!

-Tony G