Thursday 30 October 2008

Thoughts on "Energy Independence"

Both US presidential candidates are proposing a so-called energy independence plan. I'm not a foreign policy expert but this just plain sounds like a bad idea. The reasoning behind it is that the US has to import oil from countries that apparently hate the US.

This sounds like a good idea when you spin it up with all the rhetoric and the new fake patriotism brand. But if you really look at what happens, it's not as smart as it appears on the surface. Besides this being an isolationist policy, for which Ron Paul was slammed when he's not even an isolationist and was the last chance to save the integrity of the US government and avert a total superpower meltdown, it really doesn't make any sense when you take these points into consideration.

1. US oil imports do not come from countries who are branded as anti-American for the most part. Only 20% of total US oil imports are imported from the Persian Gulf and 60% of those imports from the Persian Gulf are from a US ally - Saudi Arabia. In comparison, a full 20% of oil imports are from Canada alone. Another 11% is imported from Mexico. The argument about America's enemies being in control of exporting oil to America just does not fly.

2. The majority of so-called American enemies can not shut off the tap without ending up in a full scale economic and political breakdown in their own country. Most of these countries rely very heavily on revenues generated by exporting oil. Unless they are able to switch all of their exports to China overnight, they are going to be facing food shortages at home, and when that happens, governments fall. Take Russia for example - threatening to shut off the tap to the UK. It's a total bluff and Putin wouldn't dare compromise his or his party's position of power in Russia to do this. If Russia can't shut the tap off, no one can. The global economy is far too inter-connected for any country to halt their main export.

3. Making America energy independent would require using up American oil, ldo. This is very important. What happens 30 or 40 years from now when that oil is starting to become harder and harder to find and becoming more and more expensive? Go back to importing? Hope and pray that technology finds a new solution by then? Are the American oil companies going to shut down that new solution again for the umpteenth time? That's quite a gamble when you apparently have enemies of America currently controlling America's oil supply already today. Are they even going to turn the tap back on in the future?

Right now the US can use it's own oil reserves as backup - insurance if you will - in case an "enemy" would be stupid enough to cut them off. So what happens when you decide that you are going to use up that insurance instead of saving it for - here's a thought - insurance?

Americans will be sitting ducks. You can't wage any wars when your enemies won't give you any oil because they've found new buyers and you've used up all of your own. The logical conclusion would be a new era of desperate resource wars, which would be a sad, sad state for the world to end up in.

This is just an average joe's opinion on the fallacy that is energy independence. I sincerely hope that Obama/McCain and Co. have actually looked at this viewpoint instead of hyping up the rhetoric to sound good and get elected. Rhetoric is for people that can't think for themselves and need someone to motivate them into thinking something... anything... regardless of its merits.* It sounds good with a little spin and would probably benefit Americans for the short run. But the long run would be disastrous.

*People that spew rhetoric go to the bottom of my list of reliable, trustworthy and honest people. They either think the average person is too stupid to understand wtf is going on because they have an ego problem or they have an agenda that is contrary to the good of their audience or both (in most cases both). If you can't tell me flat out what the deal is without spinning it and telling 1/2 truths in politico-speak, I have absolutely no use for you.

50NL - [?] Success

I took another shot at 50NL today. I am much more comfortable playing there now with my new style. I think I might call today's session a success. When you take everything into account, I think I did ok and held my own over 4k hands at -1 buyin:

- Ran into the bad end of set over set 2x
- Flush over flush 1x
- Luckboxing morans calling with second pair or worse and hitting after I get 2/3 of their stack in x6
- Getting outflopped a lot by 60/5 types and valuetowning myself

I was -3 buyins at one point and managed to fight my way back to +1 buyin. Then I ran into the above mentioned luckboxes and finished the session at -1 buyin. I also never hit draws or sets at 50NL:

J9ss < ATo on As4s9c after I shove over his min-c/r of my flop PSB, lol. Multiple examples of this.
I had 231 pocket pairs with a VPIP/PFR of 86/69 for those and managed to flop a whopping 11 sets.

I don't feel like converting HHs but the gist of my session and a summation of my experience at 50NL so far is:
Me QJs - raise a limper. Flop QJ8r. Get donked into, reraise him to 1/2 his remaining stack. Aggressive call by villain. Turn 8. He has A8. gg.

I am not going to let this affect my currently high level of confidence. On review, I played awesome except for 2 spewy reg war spots and I managed to run like ass for nearly the entire session. I am absolutely going to crush this level once variance regresses to the mean.

Wednesday 29 October 2008

Traditional end of month heater

I tend to like to finish out every month with a heater. This month is no exception. Except I think this heater is actually not a heater but rather a show of skill. I made some very fundamental changes to my game in the past couple of days and they are paying huge dividends. My heater is not due to stacking people with the nuts or catching miracle cards and draws like they usually are.

I am actually out-playing people. I am LAGing instead of nitting. Poker feels easy. Like it all started to click. To the tune of 15 ptBB/100 over 5k hands. Something is very different when my non-SD line goes from a slowly descending red to a decent ascending red making up 1/5 of my profit consistenltly - so far, I think it can become an even bigger factor. I did not think this was possible in uFR, but it is.

This is still 25NL so I will still have to see if I can manage to translate this into 50NL success. I think that my next shot will be a success. That is my goal.

Friday 24 October 2008

Incredibly Frustrated...

... with 50NL. I just can't get it. I'm a fish. 1 more shot down the drain. That makes 8.

LOL at everyone who keeps saying it's the same as 25NL.

Sunday 19 October 2008

Thoughts on Post-Secondary Education

Warning: VERY tl;dr, cliff notes at the bottom

I graduated from university in 2004, but since a lot of you are back in full school mode I thought I might blog a bit about my time there and what I thought of it. It's probably going to come across as a little negative, I had a good time while I was there but I'm disappointed with the results. So take what you can from it and don't make the same mistakes as I did.

Year 1
I decided to go to university right after high school. My thinking was that if I took a year off and worked and got my own place, I'd love it so much that I'd never go back to school. So I got myself a government student loan and did my first year on my 3 year B. of Arts at a satellite campus about a 1/2 hour drive from home. We then teamed up with other smaller towns that had satellite campuses and had joint classes via teleconference and internet based whiteboard. The actual university is about 1.5 hours away so I thought this would save me money since I wouldn't have to pay rent, could keep my current part-time job, and hang out at home instead of some stinky little dorm room. Gas was also cheap(er) compared to today.

This turned out to be a mistake. The class size was nice with about 40 people per class, but for some reason the university hired non-professors that happened to know something about the curriculum for us. For example, my statistics "prof" was actually a statistician that worked for the provincial government and was doing this class on the side. You'd think this would be a good thing - having someone from the real world as a prof - but the downside is that what they taught was so far behind what they were actually teaching at the real campus which led to me being way behind at the start of year 2.

They also had some random site admin running the place that was clueless so I had to make sense out of the university bible - aka the registration guide(s) - by myself. If this is your first year, think very carefully about what you want to do when you graduate. You can very easily waste a year if you don't have this figured out. There were so many people in first year, and even second year, that didn't have a clue what they were going to school for. With all of the pre-requisites for year 2 and 3 courses, you need to pick very carefully. You are better off taking a year off to think about it than waste a year's worth of tuition and rent.

I wanted to get a degree in computer science. I tried out the other math that was required for this - Vector Geometry and Linear Algebra - with one of the other non-profs. The linear algebra was lol easy and everyone in the class of 20 had at least a "B." Then the second term started with the vector geometry stuff and it was wicked hard. The final ended up being 80% geometry and needless to say, 15/20 people failed the class, myself included - I answered 4/25 questions on the final. The final was scheduled to take 1.5 hours and the room was empty before 30 minutes were up. So due to that experience I said screw computer science. If I had gone straight to the real campus I don't think this would have been the case.

Also, unless it's like 1 textbook for a class or something - DO NOT BUY THE "REQUIRED" BOOKS BEFORE YOU NEED THEM. I bought about $400 worth of useless books that ended up not being used for my first year courses because they were on the list. You'll get English profs who get you to buy an $80, 600 page anthology for 2 stupid poems that take up 1/2 a page each. Find as much material as you can online first, next check the library, - school and public - next check out used book stores, and lastly head to the university book store. Check out the libraries immediately after the book lists come out, because their are smart people out there that will have those books snatched up by the end of the week. And when you go to sell the store's books back to the them at the end of the year, they'll only take 1/4 of them back and on those you'll be lucky if you get 20% of what you paid for them.

Year 2
Year 2 I moved to the city and got a sweet deal on an apartment that was 3 blocks from campus. I was lazy obviously because I drove my car and paid for parking in the parkade while my street was full of cars from people parking there and walking.

Living in the city was fun although I didn't do much besides hang out with friends. Just the idea of being able to go out anytime for entertainment was good though, coming from a small town of 10k people.

I finally decided I wanted to be a high school teacher and picked a history major and geography minor as my teachables. Luckily most of the courses I picked for 1st year were transferable to this program. History was really fun. I had one prof for several courses that was a German Jewish guy that had lived through the start of Hitler's campaign and he told an eye opening story about how he had been in Prague as a 7 year old and his uncle had sent him to the store for bread and cigarettes and as he walked out the store, the tanks were rolling through the streets with no notice. He'd always go through the text for 10 minutes at the start of class, then say "... but here's what actually happened..." (he has travelled around the world helping with research projects in countless historical archives) and have these captivating stories for the other 1.5 hours. Best prof evar.

Geography was alright but I was expecting a little more out of it. Most of the profs in the department seemed to have left-wing social engineering agendas and really liked to put the spin on whatever topics they were covering. Out of 8 geography courses I really only liked the Tourism class which was actually more of a marketing class than a geography class.

I did a couple of other interesting courses as electives - basic psychology, sociology, and computer basics (this was pretty lol, I only showed up for the final as it was a course on how to use the MS Office Suite). I pretty much coasted through year 2. This is starting to ramble so on to the next year...

Year 3
I sublet my apartment for the summer and went back to my concrete construction job back home that I had for each summer break. For those of you out there getting student loans -
GET A GOOD SUMMER JOB! None of this part-time, work 15 hours a week at some useless job cause I want to sleep in every day and be a teenager shit. Summer might suck, but believe me, living on a restricted budget for 10 years after graduation would suck more. I have been out of school for 4 years now. I paid off my student loans in 8 months after graduation because I worked frickin hard on summer break. The government student loan rep actually tried to talk me out of paying them off, while at the same time they complained in every major newspaper about students not paying back their loans. I know people that are still $20k+ in debt that I graduated with. That is just silly imo. FWIW school is fairly cheap where I live. Tuition = $3500, rent = $10k.

I had a
panic moment in year 3. Here I am planning to be a teacher and sitting in Urban Geography class. The prof asks, "Just curious, how many of you are going into education post-grad?" 75/100 people raised their hands. I thought oh, shit.

So I coast the rest of the year and finish with a 3.2 GPA and apply into the education program. They tell me they have 300 spots available. I do some "research" around campus and the word is that there are 1500 applicants so I'm getting somewhat decent 5:1 odds.

I managed to get an interview. This did not go well. There were 5 applicants sitting in the interview and 3 interviewers - 1 was a city school
superintendent, 1 was an education prof, and 1 was the dean of the education faculty. My whole reason for wanting to be a teacher is basically why I am not a teacher.

*** My opinion of the state of the public education system ***
This probably deserves its own post. Kids are being dumbed down in the public education system (
PES). Sure the curriculum is being ramped up year after year and they are 'learning' stuff at an alarmingly fast rate. The problem with this is that they are not actually learning. The PES has become a school of memorization rather than a school of understanding. This is directly related to kids' interest in school and the drop out rate.

Kids are no longer engaged in what they are learning. They just know it, they don't understand it. They can rattle off all sorts of stats and dates and names, but they don't have a clue what they are talking about. Unless your kid's goal in life is to be a Jeopardy champion, the
PES has become utterly useless. What % of the tests that kids are writing these days are multiple choice compared to essay form questions?

I did awesome in school because of little
mnemonic tricks I used to remember and memorize everything. For example, you could ask a kid what year the Italian Revolution was or some other topic they might be studying in school. They might know it was 1848 and that the names of the time were Mazzini and Emmanuel II - these are easily memorizeable, multiple choice answers. I'd think of something like ME2/1848 and bam, instantly recall it. But try asking them what the driving forces were behind the 1848 revolutions and what else was going on in Europe at the time that was related to this and you will get deer-in-the-headlights response.

*** End Rant - Back to Year 3 ***

So I walk into this interview and get blindsided by my own stupidity as to what is acceptable. The other 4 applicants basically answered "I love kids! They're fun and great! By the way, did I mention I'd love to work with kids!" to every question.

My answer to why I wanted to be a teacher: "I want to teach children how to learn and how teach themselves. If they are only required to memorize facts with no understanding of them, what they are learning has no use to them and their education stops the second they walk out of the school - if they have even learned anything at all. If you can teach a child how to teach themselves, they will know how to find their own answers, adapt to changing life situations after school, and thus become a successful contributing member of society regardless of what kind of 'facts' they know."

Needless to say, all 3 interviewers gave me a very frightened look and I knew I was done. It was as if I had announced this revolutionary plan that they wanted no part of.

The next year, I didn't bother applying. 300 seats once again, but this time 5000 applicants. My school was the only one accepting out of province students into the program. I phoned a bunch of schools in other provinces to try there and the response was "Are you from X province? No? Sorry we're only accepting people from X province." Smart imo. Why is my school so stupid?

*** "Diversity" at my school ***
My school also followed a "diversity" policy in which visible minorities were given priority to get in regardless of ability or merit - almost identical to the affirmative action policies in the US. I'm not racist or anything. But I am a white guy. It kind of feels like there's this payback policy now, which is actually reverse racism - which is still racism. We had a bad form of racist social engineering until the 1970s, so what makes the current racist social engineering any better? It's just targeted at a different group. The oppressors have become the oppressed, and if you're not ok with this, then
you are the racist. From my perspective, the whole notion is basically a big flashing neon sign that says "All white guys to the back of the bus."

Afterthoughts
I think if I could do it over again, I would figure out what I wanted to do and go to a trade school for it as these programs are generally more to the point and shorter. Employers, especially older ones, are looking for experience, not necessarily a degree. Everyone and their dog has a B. of Arts/Science. My general reaction to my results is that I paid for a 3 year extention of high school that didn't get me where I wanted to go anyways. There is also a few websites out there that rate professors. Check them out. Do not end up in a snoozefest.

Don't get me wrong. Post-secondary education is a good thing. But think it through very carefully. Plan your entire program from the start and watch out for flip-flopping administration policies that can mess up your entire path to your degree. And make sure that degree is going to be worth something once you get it.

Cliff Notes
If you made it through this entire post, good job! This is definately my longest post ever. It took me several sittings to write it. I hope you've gleaned something you can use or think about in your post-secondary education.

1) Do not attend Mickey Mouse satellite institutions - they set you up for epic failure.
2) Spend rediculous amounts of $ on unused books, yay!
3) City life is fun!
4) Go from Computer Science degree to Bachelor of Arts - History and Geography.
5) Plan on teaching high school.
6) Actual university courses can be fun. Others, not so fun. It depends.
7) Get a summer job! Do it!
8) Panic over being able to teach.
9) State of Public Education System (PES) -> (POS) FMP.
10) Teaching how to learn = bad, revolutionary.
11) LOL diversity. Racism = not racist, not racist = racist.
12) Figure out wtf you are doing before you do it.

Saturday 18 October 2008

Full Tilt?

I feel like blogging today, so you'll probably see a few posts from me today. I'm not sure what I feel like blogging about, but I'll come up with something.

I've been considering switching to Full Tilt for the rest of the year for rakeback since I am probably not going to achieve Supernova. If the last 2 days are any indication though, I am not going to like it and I think I am going to go back to Stars anyways.

The software is slow and tilts me.
The lobby is fast and tilts me.
The lobby is unorganized and tilts me.

And so far in the first 4k hands, I have not stacked anyone. There are apparently spewtards all over the place but I haven't found them yet, and the player pool seems incredibly small compared to the last time I played there and especially small compared to Stars.

25NL felt like 100NL at Stars. The aggression levels are unheard of at Stars 25NL. I'm not quite sure what to think of a table full of 25/18/3s that only go to showdown 15% of the time at this level, I've probably haven't encountered more than 20-30 of these types of players in the past 6 months on Stars. Normally they're bad and going to showdown 30%+ of the time.

It might just be variance and I should actually be valuebetting harder cause people just don't fold the flop or turn and float a lot. Maybe I was just running cold for 4k hands, but it reminds me of exactly what was happening over there when I decided to leave last time and it's tough to valuebet when you are missing more flops than usual and thus they think you have AK all the time.

Probably just head back because I just can't stand the software and it's really affecting my winrate. It's not worth the rakeback to cut my winrate in 1/2.

Wednesday 15 October 2008

October = Variance

I've had a rediculously high variance month and have not managed to get more than +/- 8 buyins from breakeven until today. I've mixed in some 100NL and some 50NL as well as my regular 25NL.

100NL - I am down quite a bit due to set over set situations. These took a huge hit on my BR over the weekend. I still think I played the hands alright, so that's what matters.

50NL - I am not spewing anymore and I am surviving as a very slight winner, something like 0.5 ptBB/100 or something.

25NL - Very swongy in full ring with people catching draws all over the place against me. On the other hand, I'm absolutely crushing 6 max.

Today was probably the best day of poker I've had in a very long time. I took a break from my swongy full ring play and 6 tabled 25NL 6 max. I worked on a bunch of stuff with SplitSuit who did a coaching session with me and my goal today was to apply it to my 6 max game since I could get into a lot more positional pots and play less tables without going crazy and really really think through hands. I was quite pleased with the results.

I ran hotter than the sun, but 25NL 6max is stocked full of fish, the ratio is probably double compared to full ring. I've also switched up my HUD to get rid of all the useless stats that were just confusing me and making me make bad decisions and cluttering up the screen. I reviewed my session and only found 1 mistake that cost me more than 50BB - there were 5 pots where I lost more than 50BB. I was also winning a ton of 10-30BB hands.

Today:
VPIP/PFR/AF: 23/18/4
W$WSF: 45%
ptBB/100: 30 - YES, THREE-ZERO
Hands: just under 1700
profit: +11 buyins


I think I'm going to run with this for a bit. You can valuebet so sick at 25NL 6 max compared to full ring. I am kind of interested in the difference between 50NL full ring and 6max, perhaps I would have an easier transition doing that since 6max seems so much easier than the full ring version of the same level every time I try it out. I'm not quite prepared to jump on the 6max bandwagon yet, but I think I should leave it open as an option as I do really enjoy it compared to the full ring grind. I don't like playing a bunch of different games on a day to day basis, so I'll have to consider this quite carefully.

Sunday 5 October 2008

Finally a heater session

I've been on a 8 buyin downswing at 25NL to start the month off nicely including -4 buyins this morning. This evening was finally a different story than me making second best hands and getting set>set every session.

A little more than +6 buyins for this evening's session. I really need to figure out how to stop myself from forcing hands and spewing when I run card dead for 5k hands. It really is cheaper just to fold because what I've already put in the pot is gone. My game has become high variance lately due to the card dead-ness going on.

I always am trying to tweak my game to squeeze out a little more in the winrate department, but I usually end up going to far, saying screw it, go back to my somewhat nitty TAGish game and profit. I need to stay in that mode to beat 25NL, however that mode does not seem to do very well when I try to move up so I am still going to try to figure some stuff out, but not go overboard with it.

I don't know if I've posted this already, but my goal is going to be to be able to play 50NL as my regular game by the end of November with a decent, positive winrate. I just have to keep working at it. Some days I feel like giving up and staying at 25NL forever, but then I think back to how I thought the same thing about moving up to 25NL.

This current moving up process has been a lot tougher on me than the last, both financially and psychologically. I don't think my psychological bankroll is nearly as large as my actual bankroll. I'm not sure what the key BR number will be for me to not play scared at 50NL, but I haven't found it yet.

A couple interesting hands from this evening's session. I won't post anything from the rest of the month because it would just be me whining ;)

Hand #1 is against an 88/25/3 with a 3bet of 20% who likes to try to shove people around any time he catches a whiff of weakness. PF plan was to stack off post flop on a non-A/K high flop. I found this hand interesting because I think the flop minraise was really my only option here to get all the money in against weaker hands. A larger raise would usually fold out most of his non-KK+ range (he was not your regular 88/25 donk, he seemed to be thinking at least a little bit and actually had a W$SD of 49%) but the minraise gives him just enough room to bluff-shove with worse.

Poker Stars $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em - 8 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

MP1: $37.00
MP2: $21.60
CO: $25.40
BTN: $34.15
SB: $5.65
BB: $27.40
UTG: $4.25
Hero (UTG+1): $24.00

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is UTG+1 with J J
1 fold, Hero raises to $1, MP1 raises to $3, 5 folds, Hero calls $2

Flop: ($6.35) 4 Q 6 (2 players)
Hero checks, MP1 bets $4, Hero raises to $8, MP1 raises to $21, Hero calls $13 all in

Turn: ($48.35) 5 (2 players - 1 is all in)

River: ($48.35) 8 (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $48.35
MP1 mucks A K
Hero shows J J (a pair of Jacks)
Hero wins $45.95
(Rake: $2.40)

Hand #2 was a gift. 2 hands prior to this I sucked out on a guy with trash when he gave me more than enough pot odds on the turn for my OESD+FD and I shoved the nuts when I caught the river vs his flopped 2 pair. The hand prior to this I got caught bluffing by the BB in the hand posted below and I'm running fairly LAGgy on this table. Reasoning behind the call of BB's reraise on the flop was that I was positive he had top pair or better now and BTN definately has a top pair hand - he was running 10/8/2.5 so I never put him on the flush draw since the Ad is out unless he has exactly KdQd and he doesn't have AA, plus he could hit and still lose if he happens to have the FD.

Poker Stars $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

SB: $26.00
BB: $10.15
UTG: $47.25
UTG+1: $25.95
UTG+2: $32.15
Hero (MP1): $35.95
MP2: $47.35
CO: $25.05
BTN: $10.30

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is MP1 with 7 7
3 folds, Hero raises to $1, 2 folds, BTN calls $1, 1 fold, BB calls $0.75

Flop: ($3.10) A 3 7 (3 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $2, BTN calls $2, BB raises to $5, Hero calls $3, BTN calls $3

Turn: ($18.10) 6 (3 players)
BB bets $4.15 all in, Hero raises to $8.55, BTN calls $4.30 all in

River: ($30.85) K (3 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $30.85
BB mucks 3 3
Hero shows 7 7 (three of a kind, Sevens)
BTN mucks Q A
Hero wins $0.25
Hero wins $29.10
(Rake: $1.50)

uFR HU4LOLZ Tourney: Round 1

Well I got a pretty tough draw for the uFR HU4LOLZ tourney. I ended up playing Berge for the first round, and if I would have managed to get past him, then possibly another 2-3 players that play 2-3 levels above me. We're all full ring players and not used to heads-up, but I think they still have the mental edge. It was a great learning experience. I can't imagine trying to make it through 5 2p2ers though.

It was best 2/3 and I made a huge mistake in our first match to knock myself out of that one:

Poker Stars $5.50+$0.25 No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t5/t10 Blinds - 2 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: t2135
Hero (BTN/SB): t1865

Pre Flop: (t15) Hero is BTN/SB with A Q
BB says "bet sizes feel so weird", Hero raises to t30, BB calls t20

Flop: (t60) 4 7 Q (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets t40, BB raises to t160, Hero raises to t400, BB calls t240

Turn: (t860) T (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

River: (t860) 5 (2 players)
BB bets t550, Hero raises to t1435 all in, BB calls t885

Final Pot: t3730
BB shows 7 7 (three of a kind, Sevens)
Hero shows A Q (a pair of Queens)
BB wins t3730

Should have just called. Berge said he obviously isn't calling my reraise with weaker. The turn kind of confused me, but I suppose he was expecting me to fire again after 3betting the flop. I was thinking he had a weaker Qx, but in retrospect I think he would have folded less than AQ to the flop 3bet. Match 1 was over in a matter of 20 minutes or so I believe.

Match 2 lasted MUCH longer. I think we were at about 2 or 2.5 hours for that one, we also fired up a 3rd table just in case we needed it. I hovered around the 1200-1500 chip mark in match 2 for nearly the whole 2 hours, and I managed to take a good lead in match 3 and sat at 3000 vs his 1000 for a good deal of that match until he snapped off a bluff that I didn't think he could call.

This is the only real hand that I managed to squeeze a good amount of chips out of him, but even this was a coinflip:

Poker Stars $5.50+$0.25 No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t5/t10 Blinds - 2 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: t3135
Hero (BTN/SB): t865

Pre Flop: (t15) Hero is BTN/SB with K K
Hero raises to t30, BB says "you better win. i've got you going deep", BB raises to t110, Hero calls t80

Flop: (t220) T Q 4 (2 players)
BB says "until Trebek takes you out", BB bets t170, Hero raises to t755 all in, Hero says "gg?", BB says "gl", BB calls t585

Turn: (t1730) 4 (2 players - 1 is all in)

River: (t1730) 8 (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: t1730
BB shows Q 2 (two pair, Queens and Fours)
Hero shows K K (two pair, Kings and Fours)
Hero wins t1730

And the hand to end the extra match 3:

Poker Stars $5.50+$0.25 No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t5/t10 Blinds - 2 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BTN/SB: t2300
Hero (BB): t1700

Pre Flop: (t15) Hero is BB with A A
BTN/SB raises to t30, Hero raises to t90, BTN/SB calls t60

Flop: (t180) J 8 T (2 players)
Hero bets t130, BTN/SB raises to t420, Hero raises to t1610 all in, BTN/SB calls t1190, Hero says "noooo"

Turn: (t3400) 6 (2 players - 1 is all in)

River:
(t3400) 7 (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: t3400
BTN/SB shows J T (two pair, Jacks and Tens)
Hero shows A A (a pair of Aces)
BTN/SB wins t3400

Match 2 ended after match 3. The hand to end it all:

Poker Stars $5.50+$0.25 No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t5/t10 Blinds - 2 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: t3285
Hero (BTN/SB): t715

Pre Flop: (t15) Hero is BTN/SB with K 5
Hero raises to t40, BB calls t30

Flop: (t80) J 7 K (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets t60, BB raises to t220, Hero raises to t675 all in, BB calls t455, Hero says "gambooool", (BB flips KJ) Hero says "or not"

Turn: (t1430) J (2 players - 1 is all in)

River: (t1430) Q (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: t1430
BB shows J K (a full house, Jacks full of Kings)
Hero shows K 5 (two pair, Kings and Jacks)
BB wins t1430

I made a lot of stupid calls in this match. Funny thing is in the AA hand I put him on exactly JJ, TT or JT and was hoping he had a flush or combo draw yet I raise all in anyways, lol. Very fun and educational. gg Berge.