So for those of you who do not know, I am very good friends with one of the co-owners of this site. I will below add the post that was ready April 24th 2009. I then will give a recent update in the weeks to come.

What is Chad Luck?
So by now I am sure most of you have seen the post Chad luck and the poker failure by Jason Moungey. In this post I will do my best to explain Chad luck as well as give you some good laughs. Not to overstate the obvious but I have not been blessed with the best of luck in my life. However in high school I did win the WI state baseball championship as the starting 2nd basemen on a team with many players better than I was. In college I lead the Midwest conference in RBI's for freshmen at the School Harrison Ford flunked out of (Ripon College)! Yes the professor that told him he would be nothing also gave me an "F". How did that happen? Well my academic advisor, and head baseball coach told me to make up the Fri classes when we were out of town as all of our games were double headers, so we missed some Fri classes. When I talked with this old ....professor he said that was "NOT" an option, if I miss,I fail! Meanwhile the Baseball coach wanted his starting 2nd basemen at the games. I know who cares about baseball, I failed! I also got a "C" in a business class that I was Acing when I told the professor he was wrong about the tax laws because I owned a business back in Madison (he was not so happy with me after that!). To make it worse in college I loved football way better despite baseball being the sport I was best at. As the "Kings" receiver, yes KK LOL, I saw about 25 to 35 of the 60 offensive plays. I was the 3rd receiver on a team that like the Kings set, aka, 3 receiver set. My QB was one of my best friends and we often went to casinos together. I wound up with no catches that year and when he tried to force me one late in the season, it was intercepted and returned for a TD! There is a little background on me.

Near the end of last year after much deliberation with my girlfriend and great friend Jason Moungey we decided to pack up my uhaul and head to the Bay area! I own a uhaul for my business (Toy and game sales). No unfortunately not the good ones like dildo's and dolphin men LOL! I knew Jason from my store as he and his friend played in Magic: The Gathering tournaments. Then when he went to college at the University of Wisconsin he also managed my stores and helped me become better at Magic. We would later form a team and Jason had a great amount of success playing at the highest levels. I was fortunate enough to qualify twice for the Pro Tour and one time my sister, Jason and I went to Rome for a tournament! Jason played in tons of Pro Tours over his Magic career! As we pulled out of my driveway back home I turned to Brooke and said "I hope we don't blow the tranny". I do not want to go deep in this adventure but we made it from Madison, WI to Arlington Wyoming before this happened. For those of you that care, it is a small town about an hour outside of Laramie in the middle of NO where! After a gruesome week we bought a new uhaul and headed for the Bay area! On a Sunday last fall we pulled in to the Raiders game with an hour before kick off! I am a huge NFL fan so we hit the game. After the game our truck was dead and we would get a jump (took 3 hours and 3 diff. AAA drivers) and head for the San Mateo bridge. Yay we are almost to Jason's when the alternator goes and we have no lights in traffic on the bridge! Jason's leaves his friends at dinner and helps us limp to his house! That was easy maybe we should give poker a shot!!!!

So with a ton of help from Jason, his group in the Bay area, and some of his poker buddies that play full time helping me understand this game better, I decided to try my luck on Carbon poker playing small buy in tournaments. After about a week my $60 bankroll had turned into $117. The next week I would play in 9 tournaments and I ended 5 of them losing to Quads! My girlfriend thinks it is funny that people call me a cooler, not sure why? Ok so that happens sometimes I can live with that. Then I will not get into details but if you have read Jason's post "Chad luck and the poker failure" you know what happens next. After a few big hits, I get my roll up to $270 and I am feeling pretty good! The I am knocked out wit 88 vs 88, yes he flushed me out. Then I get knocked out wit AA as another guy has AA, so there is a limp and a raise 3x,I push, the guy that limped calls and the AA calls. We were drawing dead post flop as the guy hit his set with 99, no flush or straight draw, just DEAD LOL! Most of these are a few from the money as well. Then once again near the money I pick up KJ, flop Kx7 and get a guy to call for almost his whole stack with Q7, he rivers the 7 as you could have guessed! I go on to get 5% sucked out on the river two more times that same day! The next day starts great as I am 3 away from the money in a good prize pool and I flop the A high straight! The money goes in and he rivers the J for quads! If that is not bad enough, I later flop the nut flush with a straight flush draw. The draw hits and when I get min re raised I know I am beat by the higher straight flush and somehow do not lose all my chips (see pic!)!

I did miss a few days of poker as my girlfriend had to go to the ER in the middle of the night. She tripped and got cut up very bad on her arm and side by ceramic plates. She had 27 stitches and we were up for like 30 hours straight. Man does luck have to be bad in life as well as poker? She is doing better and did not even miss a day of work. She is a server and carries the trays with the arm she hurt of course. I would post pics but it was SICK. We do have them on facebook for those of you we are friends with. Ok I need to stop this now as I am getting sick thinking about that ER visit.

After a small money today my account sits at $120.65. The big hit came when I get AK suited in the hijack and try to raise but my raise button is gone and the all in does not work! I hit time and all I can do is call, great I just let the blinds play free! I flop a K but there is a draw which I do not have and again nothing is working, after a few seconds it lets me shove, the comp freezes, then a few seconds later I see two people felted. Guess it was lucky they thought I limped weak LOL! I then restarted my computer and finished with a $22 profit!

I guess the biggest thing I have learned is this game is crazy, no matter how good you are or how high you percent of winning, if they have outs, you can loose! I hope this helps others that are frustrated with this game as well as provided you POKERSOUP.com lovers some good reading! I do hope to see all of you on pokersoup more! Special thanks to Jason, Adrian, Jeff, Steven, and Graham for all your help and support over the past months, and years!

I want to end wishing you all the best of luck, but I will not jinx you as there is NO doubt in my mind I AM the ultimate COOLER LOL! So do I believe in luck? I did not much in the past but I am starting to think we all may need some (MINE STILL SUX updated 10.30.09)! Until next time, see you on pokersoup and the tables!!!!

BUTTER4 aka the Ultimate COOLER

My friend JAKE's BIG DAY!

My friend Jake got 2nd in a $150 + $13 buy in on full tilt that netted him over $11,500 (CONGRATS Jake on your amazing day and play!). I helped a bit very late in the tournament with the heads up play. Jake played amazing and gave me some credit for explaining "M" the night before. I told him push when short stacked on pots unopened, and not when someone else shows interest. Not only did he tell me he used this a bunch mid-way through the tournament, but he said if it weren't for that, he would not have been near the final table.

I am so happy that the information regarding the "M theory" that I got from Jason, Adrian, Jeff, Stephen, and of course Dan Harrington helped someone out. I worked on this concept for a year with Jason, hammering it into my brain. I used it in the $1500 WSOP event 54 a bunch near the end of day 1 by pushing all in 9 times while I was short stacked. Doing that helped me get into day 2. I missed one or two possible pushes day 2, to some disappointment of Jason, but was fortunate enough to get my money in with AQ of spades, only to have it in BAD vs. AK. I flopped the Q but she turned the straight and I was out (proud yet upset).

Now lets look at Jakes play a bit more. He played very solid poker a field of 447 people, used the concept of "M" and got into the big money. We talked few times on the phone earlier, then again with 5 people remaining in the tournament. When he got down to 3, the stacks were 1.1 million, 130,000, and Jake at 90,000. He played very well despite being a player with much more experience at full tables. He got the chip lead at 650,000 and then took out the mid stack. We knew the big stack was the weaker of the two but he proved to be a very good heads up player. I just told Jake be aggressive but do not be afraid to fold some. He said that he did not have much experience heads up. He raised with 69 off and I reminded him that it was ok to fold a few when the guy re raised and took his 40,000. Jake then taking that in played very well for the next 10 minutes taking down lots of pots and got to within 100,000 of the guy. He was then dealt J9, the flop was J97 rainbow, he raised, was re-raised, and we decided that this was too good to let go and shoved. The guy had T8 leaving Jake with 4 outs, which he missed but made $11,600 for his 7 hours of GREAT play.

We talked for about half an hour after the tournament. He was frustrated not to win but very pleased. I told him that there was not much he could have done in my opinion with that hand differently. We could have put him on a set, probably not T8, but top two pair heads up was just too good to get away. Jake is going to read some books on, and work on his heads up play. I personally am going to work on my bankroll that was crushed in WSOP event 54, LOL, as well as learning EV plays much better. If anyone knows how to best to study Expected Values of calling, re-raising etc., PLEASE let me know.

I want to congratulate Jake on his AMAZING day as well as give him credit for listening to the Harrington "M" strategy we talked about the night before!!!!

Until next time, may all your pots that you win be BIG and the ones you lose be small :)

BUTTER #4

P.S. In the next few post I will give some history about myself, as well as how I started playing poker.