I like jokes about tetrahedrons

This week on Poker After Dark (pretend that's Ali Nejad talkin') it's Brilliant Minds week. Brandon Adams, Chris Ferguson, Andy Bloch, Bill Chen, Jimmy Warren and David Skalansky. If you don't like math jokes, this wasn't your week.

Actually this is an amazing collection of quite brilliant minds period. If I'm not mistaken, David Skalansky is the only one not holding an advanced degree. Andy Bloch and Brandon Adams have yet to reach their PhDs, but each holds more the one masters. That's a lot of SAT points...Damn!

I grew up kind of a strange kid. My heros were, Rod Carew, Albert Einstein and Ben Franklin. I know, I'm a geek. If it makes you feel any better, I also though Hanibal Smith was pretty awesome too.

I watched the episodes this week and was fascinated about how certain players played. Most of them appeared to be pretty solid players, you'd expect that, but Ferguson and Bloch each had a lot of gamble in them. Ferguson on more then one occasion was calling very large bets on what appeared to be coin flip situations. Even in a 6 max sng, I'm not sure I call almost my entire stack with 99.

Bill Chen was the victim of about the coldest deck you can imagine. The man with a great run in 2006 WSOP first ran AQo into Ferguson's 99 (?). I really had no idea how Ferguson calls for his entire stack there. If someone can explain that math to me, let me know. The very next hand, while having a really short stack, Chen flops aces up. A3. Of course Jimmy Warren played his AA perfectly. (Unlike me from last Sunday)

Poker has been a long way from my schedule lately. I'm currently on the tail end of my first large project at work. The pressure is on to get it out the door. This has left me burned out at the end of the day. Just like going deep in a live tournament, my brain resembles Jell-o at the end of the day.

One welcome deviation this week came on Wednesday night. My good friend MumblingSages and I were lucky enough to enjoy the absolutely best seats at the Excel Energy Center for the Wild victory over the Colorado Avalanche. Check it out...it was a damn fun night.

This has been the sum of poker for me this week. I did play a few sngs on Tuesday night, but nothing too impressive or noteworthy. I even missed poker league (oh, the horror). The biggest poker highlight has been the Donkament. I didn't play particularly well. I over played AJ during the rebuy period when I had plenty of chips and doubled up Numbette. I knew she had AK but seriously figured she would lay it down. D'oh!

The best part of the night had to be watching OhCountess not only cash, but finish second to the unstoppable NumbBono. He's now 7 of his last 7. I won it two weeks ago, but of course he wasn't there. Can anyone stop this man?

My project will be done soon. I hope to finish up more of my Vegas recap very soon and detail my plans to attend Eh Vegas! The passport application has been submitted...let's cross our fingers. Anyone want to play some live poker? I'm ready!

Studying the masters

If it wasn't for my family, I'd probably live, breath, sleep and eat poker. My DVR has been told it should record anything with the letters p, o, k, e and r in the subject.

It is true, I watch every episode of Poker After Dark on NBC. Most weeks, I watch as major tournament and cash game players totally demonstrate how NOT to play a 6 handed SNG. Its really funny, in my opinion, watch as cash game players stink up the joint. Jamie Gold...I'd love to meet him in a SNG. He'd hate the constant folding followed by the shove. The folding would be more than he could handle.

This week however, the SNG strategy wasn't that well demonstrated, but International Week gave us some of the absolutely best reads you can ever witness.

The week had Johnny Chan, Roland de Wolfe, Patrik Antonious, Daniel Negraneu, Gus Hanson and John Juanda. This was probably the toughest week of poker I've ever seen on TV. The only player you felt sorry for was Roland de Wolfe. He definitely looked like a rabbit loose in the wolf pack.

If you've never seen PAD before, the final show of the week is called "The Director's Cut." It is basically the best hands of the week played back with the commentary of the players. This show just capped off the information you are missing from the mental gymnastics the players used to play their hands.

***Spoiler Alert***

The first amazing hand pits Daniel and Johnny in a hand. Johnny with A5 and Daniel with 44. The hand plays out as you would expect. Each player making an interest move not really doing anything totally crazy. On the turn, Daniel hits the straight, but the river brings Johnny the full house. Johnny bet $7000 on the river. Daniel goes into "play back the hand" mode as only Daniel can do. He verbally explains how he puts Johnny on hand. He gets it done puts Johnny on the only hand he can, a full house and he mucks! He mucks the straight. I really doubt there are many of us that could lay down the made straight.

Later, in the match, you watch as Johnny Chan returns the favor and dodges a made flush of Daniel and lays down his pocket jacks. Watching these guys play, make you realize, just how far your game needs to go before you can play with the big dogs.

Patrik Antonious is said to be one of the worlds best poker players. He sits like a statue and appears to think through every move, every card and every bet. In a hand with John Juanda, he shows off this skill but its not enough to keep John in the hand. He mucks to the nuts. Watching the directors cut, John explains his moves. You see, he had flopped a set of Jacks. Nothing to sneeze at, but by the river, Patrik has hit Broadway.

The only let down of the show is the last hand. A night of fantastic reads ends heads up with Johnny Chan calling the BB with AA only to find Patrik raising and dying with pocket kings. Now that's cold.

Watching these master talk themselves through these hands was inspiring to watch. Listening to their logical patterns can only help make us better players. The lesson to learn is to that rebuilding the hand from the beginning is essential to being a better player. Knowing when a straight is no good and learning to muck is what separates many of us from the pros we watch...oh...and the bankroll. I'm sure they have a bigger bankroll.