I got off to a really strong start on Day 1.  I never dipped below my initial starting stack of 20K chips.  I had some great hands. I had KK 4 times and won every time.  Three times an A even fell on the flop and I still managed to win the pot (that is when you really know things are going your way). The 4th time I had them I flopped top set. I flopped a set of jacks in a huge pot against AA and top 2.  Obviously I won a bunch there. I had Aces in the big blind once with a raise and a call in front of me and took that pot down.  Things just really went my way.  When I bluffed it either worked or I got there. When I had hands they tended to hold up.

I ended Day 1 with 74K in chips, 12th of 50 for that starting day. My brother played Day 2 and ended the day around the same as me, winning a humongous and strange hand with Aces to pick up most of the stack he ended with. At the 75/150 level a guy limped in early position and picked up 3 callers to Howard’s big blind.  Bub looked down at AA and made it 800 to go. The original limper calls and the second limper now makes it 7K (leaving himself only 8K behind that). The next two guys fold to Bub who now moves in for 26K. Now the first guy calls his 22K stack! The second guy, the one who made it 7K, now folds for his last 8K into a 45K pot with QQ! Before I tell you the flop, this is just the craziest action ever. I mean the first guy flat calls 150, then flat calls 800, then flat calls 22K. He never put in a raise. The second guy just made it 7K from 800 when 3 or 4K would do the same thing there. He leaves himself only 8K behind getting well over 5 to 1 from the pot and folds the last 8K.  That is bizzare to say the least.

Anyway, Howard shows his AA and the guy who called has KK. The flop comes QJ4! Howard is thinking thank god that guy folded his QQ. But then the turn comes a T and the river a K and Howard makes an Ace High straight! Pretty amazing.

So Bub and I take a cab over to Bay 101 together from our hotel this morning and we both just kind of have the same day. I am hovering around 60 to 70K all day.  I am only picking up pots on bluffs for the most part cause I can’t seem to get a real hand. I did have one big miss where I had T8h on a 963 two hearts board and couldn’t outrun T3d.  That sucked.  The board paired sixes on the turn and I did bet the hand when checked to. The T3 was sticky though but, interestingly, I was a favorite with one to come anyone so it turned out to be a value bet. I blanked the river though so blah.

I did see a pretty amazing hand though. The guy who was chipleader at the end of Day 1 called an early position raise from the small blind preflop. The board came JT4 two spades. Chipleader checks. early position guy bets 4500, chipleader calls. Turn pairs the 4. Chipleader checks, early position guy bets 10K, chipleader now raises to 30K. Early position guy moves in for 45K more. Chipleader guy calls and turns over 98d vs the early position guy’s JJ for jacks full. Um…drawing dead. Chipleader guy loses about 80K on the hand. Some crazy shit there.

Howard was over at Joe Sebok’s table and reported an even crazier hand. Apparently, this dude opens for 3K, the button calls the 3K and the big blind moves in for 20K. First guy folds and second guy calls the 20K with 96o! That was the craziest thing of all. Of course, the BB had 33 and had no shot against the 96. Howard tells me this story just as tables are breaking and I am moved over to his table. Joe Sebok is in the 5 seat, Bub in the 6 and I am in the 7 seat. The first thing I ask, of course, is who is the 96 dude. I should have guessed it was the guy with the mirrored plastic sunglasses and the crazy neon colored hat and sweatshirt.  But asking is safer than assuming.

So Howard gets knocked out by Joe Sebok pretty fast with TT vs Joe’s JJ. Right after that, I get all in before the flop with AKc vs a guy’s QQ. I only have the guy covered by 4K. The flop comes Q high and I am totally crippled. I managed one triple up then rammed my 66 into T9 for the kill. Done. Bub and I are on the rail and going to dinner tonight in San Jose.

Boo Hiss. We suck at poker.

So, I want to talk about the boys’ team first because they were much, much more interesting this week than the girls.

Holy crap!  There…that is my whole blog about the men’s team on this challenge.  Seriously. Holy crap!

Okay…so obviously we don’t get to see what is happening over on the KOTU side during the actual taping of the show so imagine our surprise when we got in the boardroom and found out Dennis Rodman hadn’t even shown up for the day of the selling and that Tom Green, as project manager, had gone out drinking the night before with Rodman and was late to his own challenge.  Watching it on TV, I felt really bad for Herschel Walker having to wander from bar to bar with Rodman when Herschel doesn’t even drink.  That looked nightmarish and I think there is going to more footage of that in the 2 hour version on Saturday.  I am definitely going to watch that longer episode with rapt interest.

So, Rodman doesn’t even show up the day of, claiming a dog allergy or a cat allergy or something (he kept changing the story) but I am pretty sure it was just a hangover or an allergy to vodka cranberry lol.  I am not even sure if Rodman raised any dough for the men.  It seemed like a logical firing to me (obviously since I bet Brande) but I was wrong because I didn’t know till right at the end that Tom had not even raised any money as PM.  I think it was a big mistake to be PM on a money raising challenge and not raise money yourself.  From last season I had seen that was an almost sure way to get fired.  I was so surprised Tom raised no money because he had raised a ton of money on the first challenge.  But he may have blown all his resources right away.  Tom said, as a defense in the boardroom, that he was taking a non-traditional approach to being project manager.  I guess by non-traditional he meant letting Rodman wander around the NYC bar scene, then joining him late into the night the day of his challenge and not raising any money on a money raising challenge.  Yes, non-traditional, but not the perfect recipe for sticking around in the game.

I think Trump had a tough choice between Rodman and Tom.  Do you fire the guy who doesn’t even show up?  Who should have been put in a wedding dress to promote the event and bring in business since that is what he is already famous for?  The guy who refuses to answer the door when his PM is trying to get him up in the morning?  Or do you fire the project manager who defends that guy?  Who enables the behavior by going out and drinking late into the night?  Who shows up late himself, hungover?  And who raises no money?  I think that whichever way Trump had gone on this one he would not have been wrong.  I mean who else on the men’s team would you fire?  Clint who brought in $35K? Herschel who not only raised a ton of money but was forced into the baby sitting role for Rodman?  Brian and Jesse who did nothing wrong and worked hard the whole challenge?  I mean, just the fact that they showed up should save them from being fired.  So Tom or Dennis.  Flip a coin.  Trump chose Tom.  Right choice.  But I would say the same thing about Rodman too.

So, Team Athena.

Okay.  So I am hardly in this show…yay!  After the last two shows I was really happy to be in the background.  That was actually part of my strategy.  I wanted to come out on the early challenges and get noticed by Trump which I felt was very important since I am definitely one of the least well-known people on the show.  Because of that I wanted to make a little noise, backed up with hard work and fundraising of course, right away.  But I also planned ahead of time to change gears after accomplishing that goal and lay back for a while.  I mean work hard, raise money but put my head down.  In poker changing gears is a very important concept.  If you establish a loose, crazy image you can leverage that to your advantage by changing gears for a bit and playing tighter. Or vice-versa.  Players at the table will still give you credit for being wild and will misplay you because of it since it takes them a while to see the gear change.  In most games changing gears is a very important strategic play and this was my first chance to execute that. I was planning to do that on the Zappos challenge but the chaos in the room really forced me to make the choice between risking losing the task or sticking my neck out to get Khloe to step up and divide up the room.  I chose the latter, pissed people off in the process (particularly Joan) but Athena won the challenge so I feel like I made the right choice there.  But now I had a chance to do what I meant to do in task 2 and lay back.

First, I was really happy Brande was project manager on this one because she and I had really bonded by this point and were good friends.  I might have even nudged her a little in the direction of PM (wink wink) but in doing so I promised her a would raise a ton of money for her.  Having Brande as PM was really going to help with with my no conflict strategy for the episode.  Plus, I just really wanted Brande to get the W because I was very much rooting for her by that point.

Natalie Gulbis (another player I was totally rooting for) and I spent most of this challenge together.  I had lunch with Natalie this weekend and she told me that Brande had asked her to go off with me to do the task of getting the fliers designed, printed up and handed out around NYC because, as Brande put it, Natalie was the only one who didn’t hate me!  Ha ha!  Very smart move, Brande, because that was true at that point.  I think Natalie and Brande WERE the only ones who thought I had some redeeming qualities! That I was just too direct and too tough and too head strong for my own good but that I also worked hard and really cared about keeping my team out of the boardroom and had no ill intentions or mean spiritedness to what I was doing.  I love those chicks and I love that Brande saw what was happening and sent me off with someone who I had a good relationship with.

Natalie and I went off as a team and took care of the fliers and the printing and what not (of course fundraising all the while by making phone calls).  When we first went off to go to the printer Natalie and I had a great chat where I was talking about how most of my team hated me.  I said at the time that my main goal right then was to figure out how to not piss everyone off (particularly because I actually liked the people on my team at that point in the game).  I wanted to be a TEAM.  It was hard (even if it was part of my strategy) to feel such animosity and I really worked this whole episode on just trying to repair relationships.  It was a good lesson for me to learn how to soften up my communication and learn to come at people a little more sideways rather than right directly in their faces and I think I really grew a lot in that way. Changing gears really worked out well for me here. Not only was it personally important to me but also strategically key.

Natalie and I also had some amazing personal conversations about being women sports figures.  I mean, obviously, she plays an actual sport and I play a “sport” but we have a lot in common in that way in terms of that and it was really nice to talk with someone who lived a similar life.  Natalie is a really sweet girl but she is also really together on her career and how she manages that and her business life.  She is so sharp about that.  Impressive, really. I also got to learn about how she started playing golf. Her family didn’t have money and her dad used to work nights.  He was an avid golfer so the only way that Natalie really got to spend quality time with him was to go out and play golf with him whenever she could.  It became clear pretty early that she was super talented and her family started focusing on nurturing her golf.  She played her first pro event as a teenager!  So crazy.

Anyway.

Phew! Because this week was just about fundraising, I knew I could lay back more this episode because I had no opinion about how to sell wedding dresses and I knew this episode was just about making phone calls to raise money.  That I knew I could do…quietly and with my head down.  So I immediately called my friend, Perry Friedman.  He is in a really serious relationship with his girlfriend, Robyn, and I thought now there is a guy who needs a wedding dress!  Perry lives on the west coast so I called him and he booked the red eye to get there in time to by a $10K dress for Robyn (who looked beautiful!).  Perry also tried a dress on because he was acting as proxy for my friends Rafe Furst and his fiancee, Laura (who just got married in March.  Congratulations!) so he needed to buy them a dress too.  Rafe was traveling around Europe but he agreed to buy a $5K wedding dress and Perry was nice enough to front him the dough (they are good friends).  Perry looked ravishing, by the way. I brought in another $20K on top of that for a total of $35K…Mission accomplished!  No arguments.  Raised lots of money.  Done.

Brande Raised a ton of money herself and did a great job as project manager.  Unlike the chaos of the beginning of the previous Zappos task, Brande assigned jobs right away (I was her secretary to start!) and that made the task so calm.  Joan missed the first day but she and Melissa got Preston Bailey to come and fix up our space to great effect.  The space was really pretty (particularly compared to the boys’ space which looked like a warehouse).  Everything was just super calm leading up to the actual sales day.

On the sales day, Melissa and Tionne were total superstars, working with all the girls who came in to try on the dresses.  They were in the dressing rooms, kneeling on the floor, as these brides to be tried on like 10 or 20 dresses each.  They were both exhausted from doing that all day and they were both superstars with that. Natalie got Judith Ripka (the jewelry company) to come donate a jewelry display so the brides could try on jewelry with their dresses.  She also got them to make a pretty nice donation as well.  Khloe brought in really good money, too, by getting her sister Kourtney to come down with a donation.  She obviously was also really good at wrangling the people to come in our store.

Joan and Melissa brought in a $25K check from QVC but I always had a bone of contention with that check.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, totally awesome that Athena got that huge donation.  Amazing for Brande’s charity and I am very grateful to QVC for the check. It was incredibly generous. My problem was that both Joan and Melissa took credit for it.  So Joan said she raised $25K AND Melissa said the same thing.  But that adds up to $50K.  They can’t both take credit for the whole thing, right?  Either Joan raised $25K or Melissa raised $25K or they both raised $12.5K a piece.  I never did figure out which it was because both kept taking credit for it.

One thing that was really interesting for me was to see how much the girls on my team loved this challenge.  I was actually kind of bored to tell you the truth.  Bored because I didn’t see this task as intellectually challenging at all.  I mean it really didn’t matter if we were selling wedding dresses or engine blocks or cupcakes or unicycles.  It was not about promoting the product.  It was about fundraising.  Calling people and getting them to come and donate to charity (which, luckily, my friends are all very eager to do because they are so committed to giving).  But it was irrelevant what the rest of the task was or what specifically we were selling.  That was just window dressing. Or wedding dressing I guess.  So when I was asked about whether or not I liked this challenge in my private interview I said no.  That I had not found it intellectually stimulating at all and was a bit bored (except for the great time I had Natalie).

Now…when we got in the boardroom Trump asked the women what they thought of the challenge and they all declared it was their very favorite one. I thought, “Shit I am in trouble.  I am so weird.” I mean I realized right then and there that I am not your normal kind of chick…but it takes a pretty weird lady to play poker for a living so no surprises there anyway.  I just thought it was so funny that I had spent my whole interview complaining about the challenge and it turned out everyone on my team loved loved loved it (I liked the Zappos challenge much better despite the chaos because it was so intellectually satisfying).

Anyway…made it through another week and repaired some relationships in the process!  I am looking forward to watching the longer version of this episode on Saturday to see more of the Rodman/Green show.  I’ll be back Sunday to give my two cents on the longer version.

As a closing note…yay Perry, Robyn, Rafe and Laura.  I love you guys! xoxo

Before heading up to Bay 101 I am going to Caesars Palace to teach a WSOP Academy.  I am doing a two day camp on Saturday and Sunday.  This one is going to be a general camp for beginning to intermediate players who want to learn overall poker strategy.  At the beginning of next month I will be an instructor at an advanced academy where players can really learn to step up their game.  I love doing the camps because I used to be a teacher before becoming a poker player.  I left teaching because poker was really what I was passionate about but teaching is still in my blood and, through the camps, I get to combine them both.  I am also really excited because an old friend of mine from college, Jamie Berger, is coming.  He has been playing a bunch of poker lately and he emailed me a while ago asking what I would recommend he do to step up his game.  I was like, ‘Come to one of my camps!”  So he is coming!  I don’t think I have seen him in 4 years so that is going to be cool.  Just about a month ago I got to go to dinner with my old college roomate, Kevin Drury.  So this winter is turning out to be a getting together with college friends weekend.  Yay!

So I leave for Vegas on Friday night.  Joe leaves for Ojai on Friday night too.  Then we reconvene in San Jose Sunday night.  Bay 101 has a plane going up there from Vegas so I am going to get to go straight from the camp and fly up there with a bunch of people I know, which will be nice.  I hope I just have a better tournament than the LAPC though, cause that sucked.

Oh, last night I played in Scott Ian’s home game on UB. He did a game with a bunch of his rocker friends.  Obviously, Scott is from Anthrax but he also invited people like Slash, Jerry Cantrell and a bunch of other rocker dudes.  Players on UB got to qualify to play in the game and it had a $10K prize pool.  Phil Hellmuth and I also got invited to play the three table tournament.  Phil showed up late so got kicked off his table before he could even play!  That totally tilted him!  But I won the thing. Ha ha!  I actually had somewhere I needed to be (a charity fulfillment where I had auctioned off a night of poker with me).  But since I am a rep of the site I could walk away.  While playing the event I also had to bring my computer up to the kitchen because I made 4 individual pizzas for the kids (complete with homemade dough!) while I was playing the thing and sat down a the dinner table with them and my computer so we could have family dinner too. Needless to say, I wasn’t exactly expecting to be playing in the thing very long.  I thought I would get knocked out pretty quickly. How’s that for multitasking?  Played a tournament while making homemade pizza and still managed to win?  It was pretty funny because as it got down to just a few players my kids starting sweating me hehe.  They really don’t ever see me play poker so it was actually pretty fun for me.

I called the people I was late for and it turned out they were running late too so it all worked out in a kismetty kind of way.  I was only 25 minutes late to the poker night and they were late too so no harm no foul.  I had a really good time with the folks I was playing with last night and Joe met me over there because the person he was supposed to have dinner with canceled.  Around 10:30 we headed home to watch Lost but, doh!, Lost wasn’t on this week.  So we watched the eliminations on Idol instead.  No surprises there…I predicted the bottom 4.

As a closing note: How bout that Adam Lambert?