Ah March, my favorite month of the year.
When I was in middle school, I watched almost every single game of march madness. I would spend my lunch breaks, study halls, and even a bit after school watching these games in the control room of the school.
Now, for those of you who like the N.B.A, you might want to skip this part. Basically my view of the N.B.A is a bunch of overpaid pre-madonna’s. Of course, not all of them are. In the beginning and middle stages of the season, we hardly see these players playing defense, or giving it 100% effort. When the Playoffs come, this all changes, and you will see these athletes giving it their all. But when all is said and done, these players are going to get paid if they win or lose.
College athletes are not. These athletes do not receive 10 million dollar signing bonuses, flashy cars, or women- they are playing to win a national championship. There is nothing better then seeing these players dive for every loose ball, push their bodies to the limit, and play hard from the tip-off until the end of the game.
I look forward to sitting my butt down and watching almost every game that I can, everything else will have to wait. I am going to be pulling for Syracuse this year, I think they have a great team and I am a New York boy.
Who are you rooting for?
-Matt Vengrin
Congrats Trishelle, Hooters, Poker Show
Its been 2 weeks since my last blog, I apologize to those who I made cry when you could not read my blog last week, but I will make it up to you in this one.
First off, Congrats to my teammate and fellow poker pro Trishelle, who came in 3rd in the WPT celeb invitational. Ok people first off… This was no cake walk like you may assume it to be. Over 600 players entered this tournament and she finished third. I know she wanted the win, but this is a great first step for her in her early poker career. I am SO glad I will always be better then her at poker, but I think she has a ton of potential! Seriously though, Congrats to her for her great finish.
So last week we had a great event at Hooters. I was sick as a dog but managed to still teach people how to play, eat some wings, and mingle with the people there. Here are a few pictures from the event:
Me with our lovely dealers:
Me with Trishelle
Team AP and Team Hooters
Me with my good buddy and MMA star Jaime Fletcher
I had a hectic day today also, I had my first meeting with a production company about representing my TV show (Still cant say much details, but its hot). The meeting went really well, and an offer was made. I am still entertaining some more meetings before I decide how I want to proceed. Before the meeting, I dropped my car off at the Lexus dealership and who was in front of me but Robert Knepper. For those of you who do not know that name, he starred in Prison Break, and now has a leading role in Heroes. He’s a real cool dude, we had a chat for a few minutes about cars and then we went on our merry ways. Only in Hollywood!
Alright that’s all for now, be good everyone.
-Matt “The Grin” Vengrin a
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Hooters
When I was on the basketball team at Plattsburgh State, we took a trip to the Bahamas, by way of Florida. While in Florida, we ate at a hooters and I remember the food being good, and the atmosphere being even better.
5 years later I will return to hooters, but not just to eat.
This has been in the works for a few months now, but I will be in attendance at a poker/beer/wings event, sponsored by Absolute Poker. It will be held in Hollywood, CA and will be a blast. I urge anyone who’s reading this and is in the area to come on down.
Basically what it will be is free beer and wings and poker. We will have some poker tables set up, as well as some laptops to play online poker at. And here’s the best part, its all free!
If you don’t play poker, don’t worry. I will be there to help out and teach some things, as well as have an exhibition where I will be playing 6-10 tables at once on the big screen. Also my partners in crime Lacey Jones, and Trishelle will be stopping by to drop some knowledge too.
I am very thrilled to be working with Hooters, I have to give a shout out to Terrance, my publicist for that one. It’s a week away, and already I am starting to get excited. Hope to see you all there.
-Matt
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When I almost quit poker
It was the summer before my junior year of college. I had almost gone broke playing poker, I had an apartment I was renting that I could not afford, and it was almost my 21st birthday. I had a job waiting tables, but it was at a new restaurant and I was getting very few hours. I was very close to quitting poker for good.
So what’s a guy to do? Well I decided I was going to pack it up, head east down to the Jersey Shore, and basically tell my parents they were right (they were extremely against poker) and act like they were the government and ask for a bailout. I had never relied on my parents before, so this was very demoralizing.
On the way down to the shore, I had $70 to my name, and I saw a sign for Atlantic City. I decided that $70 was not going to make a difference at this point, and I may as well enjoy some of my first live legal poker before I had to face the wrath of my parents. So I sat down at a 1/2 game with ALL of it.
Perfect bankroll move, I know. I was very nervous at first, but then I realized that the game was pretty easy. After the first hour I was up to 200, after the second hour I had 400 and so on. After 8 hours I had 1100 in front of me. I had got as high as 1400, but lost a big pot calling off with AQ on a Q89 board, and he had 99. I decided to leave, happy to turn 70 into 1100 in one sitting.
I drove down to see my parents, electing not to tell them about my hard times YET. After a few days there I was about to leave and go back up north. I stopped by a hotel I had put in an application to work at just to see if they had an opening. It turned out they did, oh and did I mention FREE housing if I worked there? I mean, I don’t see how I could pass this up.
I ended up staying there, where I would basically baby-sit kids while their parents would eat dinner at the restaurant in the hotel. Luckily the work was only about 4 hours a night, which left me a lot of room to do what I wanted when I was not working.
A normal day would consist of waking up at 2pm (yes, 2pm), going to the beach, taking a shower and eating lunch, going to work from like 6-10, and then driving 45 minutes south to Atlantic City to grind some more. I ended up having a pretty decent summer playing strictly live. I swore off online because that’s where I had lost my bankroll.
Towards the end of the summer I had a friend transfer $15 into my account, which I ran up to about $200 before I lost it all back, well not all of it. There was actually 34 cents left in my account. I had told myself I would not reload online, because school was just about to start and I needed the money I had saved over the summer to pay for books/food/etc.
So I decided to just mess around with the 34 cents and try to build it into something. I played 2/4 cent heads up limit holdem until I grew that number to $1. I then took that to 1/2c no limit. I built it up to $3 and then moved up to 2c/5c. I then had exactly $6.50 after a short while, and decided to put it ALL in one sit and go. I ended up winning this sit and go, then playing another and winning that. Now I had $45 in my account. I almost stopped, but then decided to push my luck by playing a $5 rebuy tournament. 11.5 hrs later, I ended up chopping it for $4,500.
Needless to say I was ecstatic, now I had some extra money for school and I had a workable bankroll online again.
I still remember that story like it was yesterday, I took that as a sign that poker was for me because I literally was not going to reload online, and had I not made that run, I doubt I would be where I am today. I have not looked back since.
-Matt Vengrin
Ask a Pro – Matt Vengrin
How do I deal with down swings?
Twice I have managed to make 300$ to 10000$ just to lose it all in a few days, because I was playing too high. Now it is very difficult to start over again and take the lower levels seriously.
Find Matt Vengrin’s answer right here.
On the way back to Vegas
I am currently in the car, about 100 miles outside Las Vegas. I just finished up a great skiing trip with my friends Jake, Kandis, and Heather. The drive is not spectacular, but the story of the trip is a little more interesting to read about.
It all started at 8pm Thursday night when my friend Heather asked me if I wanted to join her and 2 friends and go skiing in Utah for 3 days/2 nights. I ended up declining at first, because I did not feel like making an 8 hr drive to go skiing for 3 days. A few days later I had just had a pretty bad Sunday, losing a lot of money. I cashed in the UBOC main event, though, and had a few other deep runs in majors but no big final tables. I was feeling kind of bummed and feeling like I needed to get away from Malibu and go relax (crazy I know, Malibu is awesome to relax) So I texted Heather and asked her if she had found a 4th person yet, which she said no. I decided to go.
I packed up and left Malibu at midnight, got into Vegas at 430am, and got a little bit of sleep as we were slated to leave at 9am. If you guys don’t know this about me I have a horrible time functioning when I get less than 8 hours of sleep, so I was already dreading this day. Luckily for me, Heathers friend Kandis had drank copious amounts of alcohol the night before and did not get up until noon. So I ended up getting around 6-7 hrs sleep, enough to tide me over for the day.
We arrived at the cabin at like 7pm, it was a nice small 2 BR cabin I feel like was built for dwarves, but it would do for a couple nights. We all settled in, drank, played some games, and relaxed the first night there and then I went upstairs and fell asleep, needing to get enough sleep for the next day.
The slopes were about average at Brian Head, but there were VERY few people on the mountain which I love. There were no wait for the lines, nobody to worry about when doing jumps or turning, except for Kandis, she’s a liability with her Ipod in. Here’s a little video blog I did which I think might be the first blog done this way.
The flip camera I had ran out of battery 3 minutes in, I did a 1440 jump off a huge jump.. its a shame the camera ran out of juice.
After skiing, we were all pretty tired, I took the night off from drinking and watched a bit of TV and then fell asleep around midnight. In the morning, they decided to just hang out and relax and I decided to go out for a few more runs before we left Utah. I got in 4 runs, and liked the ski’s I rented so much I decided to buy them, so they are sitting in the back of the truck right now. The trip took a toll on the girls too:
I’m going to take most of the week off from poker, as I feel like I need a little break after playing for a few months without many breaks. I will be ready and geared up to go next week.
Also, Trishelle beat me in a football bet so now I’m forced to take her out to dinner. Ugh…
She will also be joining me at an event I am doing in the end of Feb, I will be blogging about it soon I am sure. I will give you a little preview of it now, it involves free beer, wings, poker, and a bunch of beautiful women. I like to be a pioneer what can I say 
That’s all for now,
-Matt Vengrin
UBOC $1M Online Championship – Finale Recap
After eleven intense days and nights, we kicked off our UBOC $1M Online Championship in true UBOC style on Sunday afternoon. For those of you who haven’t been glued to all eighteen events over the last ten days, yesterday’s finale was another barn burner brimming with cash. 1,307 players turned out to fight for $1,307,000. It didn’t matter that the game started at 4 pm ET, the final table was still going strong when the clock struck 4 again, twelve hours later.
Host Phil Hellmuth finished 314th overall and JEFFBEESDAT picked up a $500 bounty for sidelining him. Matt Vengrin was in the money with a 135th place finish worth $1307, while the face of Absolute Poker, Lacey Jones, banked $4,835.90 for 43rd.
Here’s a look at the final table:
While at the back of the pack, GSKI6986 was the first to falter. It was all downhill after he shoved pre-flop with 2c-Ad. WAWA711, his only opponent, was able to turn his A-4 pockets into a pair of fours on the flop and ended up winning with two pair over GSKI6986’s pair of sevens off the board. GSKI6986 took home $21,565.50 for ninth.
It took another forty-odd hands for the next player to fall from the fray. With walking sticks, EBSCR00GE followed DOUBLEDAVE22’s pre-flop raise by going all-in. Although EBSCR00GE grabbed another pair off the board, DOUBLEDAVE22 showed him the door after finding a partner for his pocket ace on the flop. EBSCR00GE has a lot of pennies to pinch after a $30,714.50 eighth place finish.
DOUBLEDAVE22 continued his rampage, eliminating his next victim twenty-five minutes later. Holding Qd-Ks, DAHJINERAT raised all-in to the tune of 1,057,515. DOUBLEDAVE22 called and paired his ace on the flop, as well as his eight on the turn. DAHJINERAT’s ace high didn’t stand a chance at the showdown, but he earned $43, 131 for seventh.
On the very next hand, MUCKANDLOSE shoved his final 394,407 chips holding 9d-Ks hole cards. BS0228 called with As-Qd and would have lost to MUCKANDLOSE’s king-high, except he paired his queen on the river. MUCKANDLOSE may have lost, but his respectable sixth place finish paid $56,854.50.
CEREUS Pro MICHAELBINGER followed SUPERMODL’s pre-flop raise to 2,440,000 by going all-in with pocket queens. After a 7d 7s 4c flop and 2c turn, already holding As-Kh, SUPERMODL lucked out with Ah on a river. SUPERMODL’s aces and sevens edge out MICHAELBINGER and his queens and sevens, sending him to the rail with $69,924.50 for 5th.
Down to the final four, DOUBLEDAVE22 countered WAWA711’s opening 200K raise with a 5.5M chip shove, which prompt WAWA711 to go all-in with just under 2M chips. At the showdown, WAWA711’s Ad-Js didn’t stand a chance against DOUBLEDAVE22’s pocket jacks.
WAWA711 conveniently picked up $83,648.00 for fourth.
Eight hands later, BS0228’s Kc-Qd pockets proved pointless when he threw his last 1.8M chips into the pot. SUPERMODL’s Gretzky eliminated BS0228, who broke six figures. BS0228’s third place finish was worth $ 115,016.
As far as the heads-up battle went, SUPERMODL was never able to get closer than a 7,243,528 to 5,826,472-chip gap. Even though SUPERMODL seemed more than alive on the 30th heads-up hand, luck wasn’t on his/her side. After following DOUBLEDAVE22 all-in, while holding pocket nines to DOUBLEDAVE22’s pocket fives, a five showed up on the flop.
In the absence of another nine, DOUBLEDAVE22 captured the final UBOC title, commemorative watch, and $279,044.50 in cash. Runner-up SUPERMODL won $163,244.30.
Don’t forget that we welcome all your UBOC Online Championship thoughts and comments. Share your stories right here.
Goals:
In life, I believe goals are paramount. I’ve said it before, and ill say it again, every person should take a few minutes out of their lives and set some attainable goals. I will give you guys and gals an example of a goal I had back when I started playing poker in college.
One of my goals when I started playing poker was to buy a car. I always had hand me down cars, it started with a mini van in high school, and then an old saab during college. I was lucky enough to have transportation, but these cars were not exactly the most reliable cars out there. When I started playing poker, the goal was simple.. buy a nice car. Nice is a relative word, but for me nice meant a 3-5k used car like a Nissan Altima, or a Honda Civic. When I formed this goal it made me work harder, and get better at poker in a shorter amount of time.
About 6 months later I hit my largest tournament score to date, winning a 300R event for a little over 200k, and I used a chunk of that to buy myself a new car. I purchased a 2006 Lexus IS350, a step up from a used Altima or Civic.
The reason I am writing this is because sometimes when people have success, they take it for granted. They are happy with the success they have had, and do not strive to get better. I have found myself in this rut for the past few weeks and therefore I find myself needing to set new goals.
So my goal tonight as I’m writing this is to set some new goals this week. I encourage all of you out there to do the same. The goal can be large or small, it does not matter. What matters is that it is an attainable goal. Its ok to start small too, I started small once and it paid off big, and will continue to pay off.
So if you want to try this I highly suggest it. Take a few minutes and ask yourself: What do I want? Once you figure that out, then you can map out the goals and the fastest route to reaching them.
Cheers,
-Matt Vengrin
Crowning A College Champion – APCC Highlights
There might have been torrential rain pouring out of the unusually murky LA sky, but the sun was shining on our all-star cast of college poker talent indoors at Bluff Studios on Thursday. If you didn’t tune in live to watch five college students fight for their tuition, you missed some exhilarating action.
(from left to right: Greg, Bryan, Mike, Frank, Vincent)
Here’s how the chip count looked at our live final table when play got underway Thursday morning:
FUHRANKLAN (Frank Alberts) 23,100
MSBHVNTWIN (Mike Hofer) 17,500
CRISSTOOPHER (Greg Shevach) 14,100
MOONLIGHT220 (Vincent Lay) 10,200
KAZIBETTA (Bryan Wooley) 4,200
BROCK_1923 (Brock Solveson) couldn’t make the trip from Wisconsin and settled for 6th place and $2000.
It was all smooth sailing at the APCC Final Table at least until 2:00 p.m. PT. That’s when the pace finally started to pick up and the otherwise conservative play went out the window.
Frank, the original chip leader, was the 1st to fall. Frank’s Q5 pocket cards (left below) were no match for Vincent’s pair of kings and fours at the showdown.
18-year-old Frank won $2250 for 5th place, which isn’t too shabby considering that this future English teacher already has his tuition paid for.
AP Pro Matt Vengrin and Joe Sebok (pictured with the final 4 above) provided live commentary
Vincent also delivered the 2nd blow of the afternoon, knocking Bryan out with Aces and 6s.
Bryan will be taking $3,000 back to sunny Florida for finishing 4th.
After a quick meal break, the tables finally turned on Vincent. He went all-in holding 76 and lost to Mike’s AQ with KA5A on the table.
Vincent will be returning to the Big Apple with $3500.
And suddenly there were two…
After dominating all afternoon, Mike had the upper hand at the start of the heads-up battle with 59,000 chips vs. Greg’s 10,200.
It only took a few seconds for Greg to be forced all-in.
With 4c Ac to Mike’s Ad 9h, Greg needed a 4 on the river. When the 7 of clubs hit the felt, a winner was crowned.
Congratulations go out to 28-year-old Phoenix native Mike Hofer who earned $10,000, an APCC ring, and a profile in Bluff Magazine. Greg Shevach takes home $5,000 for second place.
See you all next semester!
Don’t miss the APCC Final Table live from LA
The wait is officially over. They battled hard all semester long and now they’re off to Los Angeles for the final exam of their lives. Yes, the Absolute Poker College Challenge Final Table happens tomorrow and you can catch it all online in real time.
Tune in on Thursday starting at 1 p.m. ET and watch five college students fight for their tuition. We’re not only streaming it all live on the net, but AP’s own Matt Vengrin will be doing the play-by-play.
Remember, our Player of the Year will win their tuition, a custom-made APCC championship ring, and an exclusive showcase in Bluff Magazine. Some of this year’s contestants are making the trip from three time zones away, but you can be there with a single click. Just follow our live feed right here. Don’t forget to read our blogs and track us on twitter during and after the event.
If my college experiences are to be believed, pulling an all-nighter probably won’t work here either. Good luck to all the players anyway.
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