Matt "ADZ124" Marafioti's Blog

ADZ124 VLog: $350K Downswing Last Week

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 20:43:49 -0800

ADZ124 VLog: Las Vegas and Vanessa Selbst

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 02:28:24 -0700

ADZ124 Epic Life Story Part 3

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 20:56:09 -0700

One night I was trying to chat up a girl from Argentina who didn’t really speak English, while playing 200/400 PLO for one orbit (not knowing a thing about the game).

In that first orbit I got a dry AA and made it $1,400, perkyshmerky raised to $4,400 and I made it $14,400, we ended up playing a $98k pot on 10-9-2 flop with 26k in the pot. He had K-J-T with a flush draw so I was in bad shape and lost.

That week cost me another $150 k total, the downswing now totaled $700,000 and was by far my biggest downswing yet at just 19 years old. I would say a good $250k was wasted on PLO alone.

From February to June I spoke to no one. I sat in my parents basement and grinded my ass off. $4k here $4k there, slow and steady. I built my rolls up to about $500k online but by the end of the year I felt my life was passing me by and wanted a girlfriend again.

I lent a friend $30k on stars and he lent me his $280,000 mercedes, seemed like a fair trade. He had Ferraris and every car you could imagine. Anyways, one day he left the country. He left the cars and everything else behind and stiffed me for my $30k totally out of the blue and got arrested at the border.

It turned out he was the guy who created the software that read your pin over the ATM machines. If you see him at the Commerce in LA or in Vegas let me know and I will reward you. His name is Patrick Khalifan.

I had to give the Mercedes back to the leasing company but I had this new girl I was trying to impress so I went out and bought an Aston Martin the next week.

I was paying less attention to poker and good 200/400 games were actually running at the time on Stars with Steve_Harris from Toronto playing a lot. I missed most of these games, then decided one night after a steak dinner it would be a good idea to two-table durrr at 100/200 Hold’em on Stars.

I lost $160,000 to him in an hour and a half in front of this guy I barely know. It was so pathetic.

I then decided to try and be all Hollywood and do this reality show with two other friends of mine who were willing to make a long term investment in it. They thought it was a good, unique idea. So did I.

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ADZ124: Epic Life Story Part 2

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 20:27:44 -0700

I came home from school before my finals had even begun, and was already playing in underground games in Toronto at the time. I was being hustled and angle-shot and it made me a better player in the long run.

At one point two guys from the underground game offered me a ride to Turningstone Casino, the one real casino I was old enough to play in at the time. At the last minute I decided to go and I actually ended up winning the tournament outright, with both other players I went with also coming in the top nine.

It was an incredible feeling and it gave me confidence. In the months that followed, I went on to run my $350,000 bankroll into over $1.7 million dollars (none of which I had to pay taxes on in Canada).

It was a dream, I could not believe it. I went from being a student to picking up 40 grand in cash from underground games, sending the money to gangsters online and playing them for it with Brian Hastings on Full Tilt and beating them.

It was a win-win situation. I went to the Bahamas that year and had never had $800k online before. I decided to lend $40k to a guy we’d been playing a lot with since he was great action for the games. That $40k then became $80k, and $80k somehow became $155,000!

He promised me the money back in 3 months but it never happened. It’s been 3 years and I only have $90,000 CAD back and remember, we’re talking US here when the exchange rate was .71, so he owes me another 90 and has not given me a penny for over a year.

I ran so bad at the PCA that year. I called a guy on a string raise and ended up losing my main event when I squeezed in that pot with a nut flush draw versus kings and aces. I lost two pots totaling well over $120,000 with top two pair all-in before the river on both occasions, one to bottom pair flush draw and one to bottom two-pair verse my top two-pair and flush draw.

I played the $3k side event and I was already down over $200k on the trip. With 20 people left I raised AQ in the cut off and got shoved on by Danny Wong in the small blind. I tanked with my AQ and called him. He had AJ and it ran out K98710. I was on life tilt.

I went home from the PCA and before unpacking my bags I played Lars Luzak my friend Sami, heads-up 200/400 on full tilt and lost $98,000 in the first 30 minutes of being home.

I got it in super bad the first hand, with 6♠ 8♠ on a Q-10-9ss flop against AJss. The next pot we got it in again on the flop for $88,000 in a 3bet pot. I had 22 on J-9-2 rainbow and he had K♣ J♣ and hit running clubs.

It sucked, but not as much as the one outer I took the next day from justthenuts on full tilt for $98,000. We got all-in on A-J-6-4 with two spades and I had A♠ Q♠ and he held K♣ K♥. Yes he rivered the Kd. It sucked

We went on a family trip to Aruba where I was 40-tabling on life tilt, timing out Jacks on 8-4-3 boards at 25/50 when someone led the flop because I was playing 200/400 and 25/50 PLO not knowing how to play (calling bets for 4k on the river with the As in my hand thinking I had a flush).

I was young, reckless, and I had no idea how hard some people work to make that kind of money.

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ADZ124: Epic Life Story Part 1

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

just wanted to add that, after busting my tournament at Borgata I had to go back to drop off my friend’s iPhone before deciding to hop on a plane to London with Tom and Reynolds (I was not planning on going until about two hours before their flight).

Irv Gotti was low stacked and sitting in my old seat in the donkament, and the guy who two-outered me with 77 verse my AA now had all the chips.

Irv plays pretty small at Bellagio (usually 10 20) but one time before dinner I was bored and sat in the game and bluffed off like 3k into him. I then asked David the floor guy there to go get me a hundred k so I could muscle the game but had to go to dinner.

I reminded him of this and he remembered me, I couldn't help but warn him about the guy sitting two seats over. I was a little tilted so I called him Joe Cada #2. I like Joe Cada, nothing against him at all. He’s a cool guy, it’s just that I’d like to play him all day for all that cash he won anytime and stuff.

He is a good tourney regular I guess, but the main event final table just sickened me to watch. Darvin Moon ran like Jesus on water while Ivey gets three-outered for his tournament with AK vs AQ.

I am kind of an old school new generation player, my idols are the Johnny Chans, the Daniel Negreneaus and the Mike Matusows. I used to watch Mike the mouth on TV and think he was hilarious. Now I have his number on my phone and his AIM.

We've played cash a bunch together and some tournaments. It’s funny how things change. Even Hallingol, one of the best regulars on Stars in 2005-2006 stayed at my house last week in Toronto with his girlfriend. The guy is up $500,000 on me heads up but that doesn't stop me from buying him dinner.

It’s funny because he multi-accounted me too. I used to watch him play when I played 25/50 cent all the time. It’s funny how fast things can happen.

My story with poker was no one in my life believed in it, not my parents, not my friends. I used to get made fun of in high school for playing online. I squeaked my way past my last year of high school with honours but began to get heavily into poker.

My parents firewalled all the computers in the house so you couldn’t even type the word poker in. My dad was so upset when he saw 15 declined attempts to buy in for 50$ on Poker Stars. And even if I did win, which I rarely did, I would never cash out.

By the time I was 19 I was off to school with the love of my life and some great old friends of mine. Within a few weeks of being there and going out to the underage bars (as an 18 year old) one night I got into what Daniel would call "Hot-head mode".

After a bunch of shots, and because my girl was flirting with other guys, I started to pick a fight with a guy outside the bar. The next thing I knew I was pushed into the wall and six people surrounded me, including two bouncers (who were friends with the guy ). By the time they were finished I had been beaten so badly I shat myself (gross), my nose was on the side of my face and my girlfriend at the time screamed "oh my god matt your nose!".

The cops in this crooked little town took me to the hospital, but before they did they wrote me a drinking ticket, as I stood there only 18 years old, totally covered in blood with what looked like red jeans on.

I went to the hospital and they snapped my nose back into place as I screamed the F word at the top of my lungs and the two police came into the room and threatened to arrest me for swearing because there were little kids there.

They are lucky that my dad, a big businessman in Toronto, did not press charges. I had so much resentment for the rest of the year because of this. If I wanted I could have all of their legs broken in 24 hours right now, but I moved past it and was the bigger person in this situation.

After the hospital we went back to my dorm room, where usually she would complain about the brightness of my monitors and the fact I would stay up all night playing and not go to class. But tonight was an exception, my face was destroyed, my head was bruised and I couldn’t sleep.

I called my best friend and asked him to send me the 18$ he had on poker stars as I had no money to my name at the time. I started at 10 and 25 cent limits and within 1 week on my 12 inch monitor and 56k internet I had ran it up to $48,000 with only one tournament cash for $6,500. I was so proud as this was my first real run.

I felt like this justified the beating in some ways and something positive came out of it. The next week I went to 25/50 and lost it all. Back to busto, and boy did it hurt that time. I promised myself the next time I went on a run I would do something differently.

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ADZ124: Chilling in Toronto and the Trip to London

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

As Daniel said in his blog he thinks I would make for "great TV". It means something coming from him since Daniel definitely has some great jokes himself.

After fighting with him in Monte Carlo face to face and having a serious yelling argument in front of the Pokerstars owner, Eugene Katchalov and UGotaBanana we decided to reconcile our differences and try and understand each other.

Understanding me can be hard sometimes. I can be a hot head, he is absolutely right, and I think it has to do with some incidents I have been in growing up and I am working on my best to change this in the future.

Anyways, now I am off to London with Tom Marchese who is ranked #1 for POY right now, I wanted to steal his title by winning this and then flying to London and some WPT's with him and winning more there but after this beat it seems pretty unattainable with the few remaining tournaments for the year.

The film festival was going on in Toronto the last couple weeks, a lot of celebrities came out for that, 4am last call in Toronto is rare but for this 2 weeks every night was a party. The night before I left for Borgata a girl was sitting at my table at a club called Amber, I went to shake her hand and introduce myself and her response was "what are you like 12?" Hahah. Fiesty I like it.

So I kept talking, pursued my challenge and by the end of the night I ended up going home with her to her place as her dog's watched us do things they shouldn't have (so awkward). By 8am I left her place because I was too drunk to drive then headed to my new house (which is super nice but I am never home!) to get ready for my flight to Philly later that day with two Toronto buddies Shyam, S_dot111 and Dave, muckducks on full tilt (two successfull MTT players).

We had a good time, did not party at all on this trip. The airport in Toronto was hell, I was tired from being up all night with the babysitter and those checkp-in machines tilt me so hard, I was yelling and this women told me she was going to call the police (Yawn hotheaded stupidity).

Obviously in customs I got frisked down (they take me in the back every time because they don’t like me rocking my friend Phil Laak's "Unabomber.net" sticker on my backpack or the $80k that is usually inside of it.

I am in Newark airport now with Reynolds and Tom heading to London to play a 20k pound high roller, the WSOPE main, the 10k turbo and the EPT main. Should be a ton of fun!

To check out all of Matt's posts click through to his blog page.

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ADZ124 Borgata and High-Stakes Online Cash Part 2

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

I grinded it up to 24,000 and finished half the average for the end of day 1. I went back day 2 and played solid poker to finish the day with 115 700 chips.

We started day 3 at 2k 4k blinds and I had chipped up to 125,000 chips before getting two aces in the hi-jack and making it 10,400, the button then re-shoved for 88,000 total with 77. The flop fell 7-4-3-T-T, giving him a boat and crippling my stack.

I then got AJ under the gun and shoved my last 4-5 blinds and got called by two 8's which held up.

I was pretty disappointed because in the last two weeks online I lost about $220,000 on Poker stars and I am pretty confident I would have made the TV table had I not been two outer'd for my stack and recovered at least 1/2 the money I was down, if not finishing in the green.

One of my main opponents online was KidAcid, a solid heads-up regular on Pokerstars and Full Tilt. He cracked kings three times during our sitting, once with 10-7, once with 6-7, and the last time he had it with Aces.

We played a $60,000 pot where he raised to $300 on the button I made it 1,100 (already down $30k at this point) he made it 3,000 and I then 5bet raised him to 6,100. He flat-called my 5bet and the flop fell A-5-2. Not a good flop for Kings in a 5 bet pot.

I checked and he checked back. The turn fell a king, I loved it, I bet $7,200 and he called. The river came a four which shouldn't make much difference in this pot so I shoved all in for about 20,000, and he called and had the one hand he could beat me with in this situation, AAA.

I finished the session down $70,000 and then lost another pot later in the day to stars regular Sauce1234 with KK to AA for $21,000. I played very little cash in Borgata, but saw Joe Cada sitting in 50/100 games on stars when I busted my 1k and could not resist playing, if there is a seat open and a weak player, I must sit.

Anyways, I played for a bit, I ended up losing a $21,000 pot to him, but he had to two-outer me to win obviously. Seems like that was the trend for this Borgata tournament.

I raised to $300 with QQ he made it $1,100 with 99. I made it $2,825 and he shoved $12,000. The board ran out A-6-3-3-9. Was happy until the river, but apparently not!

Anyways, that trip is over, still working on selling this reality show that a lot of people are so interested in, everyone asks me about it, everyone watched the pilot on 2+2 and everyone would watch the show.

I know some of you are better at poker or more balling , by some I mean few, but that's not the point. I am a character, I am outgoing and like to talk and have a good time and can relate to people in all sorts of situations so I feel I would be a great host for the show.

Check back tomorrow for the next installment when ADZ124 talks about his reality show concept, a few more adventures he had in Atlantic City and his plans for London.

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ADZ124 in Vegas and Atlantic City Part 1

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Well, wrapping up late in Vegas after the world series was fun.

I just noticed Daniel Negreneau's last blog on card player where he talks about the top 5 young guns of poker, I got an honorable mention. Daniel has a great sense of humour and the things he said about me made me and the online guys laugh it up.

Vegas was a lot of fun. The last few weeks I was there I decided to go all out on the fun and play zero poker. I was dating about 7 different girls, including a 32 year old yoga instructor from Williamsburg Brooklyn that I met at the gym, an encore beach club waitress, a girl from Victoria BC who had a drug problem and started to annoy me really fast and two freaky British girls who liked to have a lot of fun.

It was two action-packed weeks of non-stop fun, which ended with me and my friend from Istanbul riding to In and Out burger in the Wynn phantom before heading to the airport. It was great fun.

I just want to say how impressed I am by Phil Ivey, the king of poker. Not only did he win the 25k heads up on stars this week, while leading the 1k which he gave away on purpose after finishing his last heads up match, but this legend registered day 3 of the Bellagio cup 10k that I registered day 2 for.

The blinds were 1k/2k and he started with 30k and went up against stack sizes of over 200k, but with his 15 big blinds he made it all the way to the final table and ended up finishing third. Only Phil Ivey is capable of this, no other man.

If I could be half the player he is one day I will feel super accomplished. No Home Jerome they called him, haha as I found out this week at his home casino in Atlantic city. What a boss.

I played two tournaments at Borgata this week. Nice place, lots of cute girls, the cocktail waitresses have nice outfits, and the water club is very well priced with nice rooms for only $100 a night!

The first tournament I played was a 1k tournament, 81,000 to first with 300 players, I made it down to 22 players before running my 28 big blind stack Queens into Aces.

Here’s my bust out hand: Blinds 3k/6k, the big stack raises to 17,000 and the button who has about 30 blinds flats (which is obviously a small warning sign) I then squeezed in the small blind to 47,000, the initial raiser folded and the button shoved all in and tabled two Aces.

That was it for me, I made 2,500 total for the cash. The main event, which is what I went for, had about 800 players, only 200 and some odd players on day 1 and day 2 got over 500 which I found weird considering we all wanted to play the WCOOPs from 1-1 on Sunday and did so before heading to day 2.

I lost half my stack early day 1 in the main event, in a weird spot I made it 1k in the small blind at 100 200 with 2 limpers under the gun, the first limper folded and the second limper flatted, he was a 70 year old man who had lost the pot before.

The flop fell 4-5-6 rainbow, a bad flop for me, I checked he bet 5,000, double the pot. My jaw dropped and I called and said I guess you know what I have now. The turn fell a king and after I checked he bet 5000 again.

I flatted and the river was a King, I kind of liked this card but it didn't stop me from check-tank-calling the 10,800 river bet, decreasing my stack from 32k which was the average to 13k.

- ADZ124

Check back tomorrow for part 2.

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ADZ124's First Blog for PL.com: Vegas and LA Report

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 02:59:00 -0800

The first question is why the **** did I spend $1,500 on a limo when I had a $200 flight booked from Nevada to Long Beach. I guess I really hate flying.

I smoked a joint with Bryn Kenney right before leaving the Tower Suites at Encore, where we have the entire floor of the hotel, and at this point I had still planned to get on the plane.

All of a sudden, I guess some of the paranoia began to kick in (Al Qaeda, runway crash, etc). OK, maybe I have a small fear of flying, which sucks as a poker player with all the travelling.

Lack of sleep was definitely one of the key factors that contributed to my bad playing yesterday. I've cashed in five of my last six tourneys now, after donking off the somewhat prestigious LAPC main event.

I played like total shit yesterday. At the 25/50 level I lost a 20k starting stack. Most on a squeeze play with T♣ 2♣ when I flopped a flush draw out of position in a multi-way pot. I lead for 3/4 pot and called Robert Mizrachi's all in on a K-6-7 two-club board.

When I did not improve, he doubled with 6♥ 7♥ and left me with the 5,000 chips I ended up losing with kings to aces.

It annoys me when I play a tournament so poorly that I felt like I had great potential to do well in. This was one of those tourneys. And to make matters worse, I immediately went downstairs, still going on almost zero sleep, and began playing cash games.

I played from about 1 p.m. yesterday until about 4 a.m. on my birthday, taking a net loss of $18,000, so stuck $28,000 on the day.

My roommate Will Molson just got up to go and play the tournament, wearing a green shirt saying "That's Dope" across the chest, hahah.

The thing I like about having a roommate who is also sick at poker on these trips is that I tend to compete with them and try to outdo whatever money they make on the trip. It allows for some healthy competition.

I will blog more later. For now I am going to enjoy my birthday, go to my house in L.A. tonight, and a beautiful dinner at either of my favorites - STK Steakhouse or Katsuya.

As tilted as I am for losing 28k yesterday in a very wasteful manner, I guess on this day, I also realize how lucky I am to have a great family, so many good friends and a success-filled poker career that allows me to experience things at a young age some people may never get to experience in their whole lives.

Anyways guys, this is my first post, but definitely not my last and they will get better.

- Matt Marafioti

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