Justin (BoostedJ) Smith Blog

Hey guys, back again for another weekly update on what’s been going down lately. Well to say the least I have had a very interesting past week. First of all, I taught at the DeepStacks Live poker mini-camp at the Commerce Casino in Los Angeles this past weekend and had a great time. We had a great group of students who were very excited to train with me, Matusow, Tristan “Cre8ive” Wade, Matt Graham and Tom McEvoy. It was cool just hanging at the Commerce to do something other than play high stakes poker, not saying it’s not what I enjoy doing, but its also good to help others get better and give them some things they can use at the table. Go to DeepStacks.com for future camps I will be attending.

Ok, now onto to some other things. So Friday night my wife and I went to the Jay-Z/Trey Songz concert at the Staples Center and it was sick!!!!!! Jay-Z must have played every song from his albums all the way back to Reasonable Doubt. He must have done like 40 songs and then to add to the madness, Young Jeezy, Ice Cube, and Memphis Bleek came out to do a few songs, it was insane. Then, Saturday night after the mini-camp, Cre8ive and I (with our ladies), Diane Nguyen, Mark Newhouse, and Todd Bui went out to My House in LA, which is one of the three top clubs here in Hollywood. Needless to say it was a great time hanging with everybody with the best table on the dance floor, thanks to my man Brandon for hooking it up as always. By the way, the DJ was insane too, playing all my favorite songs right now, this night was definitely an absolute blast and I got quite drunk which isn’t too usual for me, they tried to get me to go to Korea Town for some food afterwards but that just wasn’t happening or it’d get ugly!

But my week didn’t end there. Then, on Monday I went to my friend David Kang’s movie set of Fear Not. A new horror movie he is producing that should be out later this year. Anyway, my wife took some crazy pictures of the set of my scene in the movie. I actually have a small part but the scene I’m in was completely insane crazy. I can’t really talk about the scene but let’s put it this way, the pictures my wife took can’t be shown on my Facebook page, lol. It was cool though being in a movie, even if it was for a little while. After we got done shooting the scene like 35 times, we all went out again on Monday to a new club called Industry near the Beverly Center…I didn’t like it as much as MyHouse but it was still cool. Hope this is just the start of an awesome 2010…

Ok, well that was my week, check back for my next post, or check me out on Full Tilt playing under the screen name Justin Smith, later

1 Comment

Hey guys, its been an interesting week for me…I’ve had one of my best friends Tony come into L.A. and stay with me in my new house. We just hung out, relaxed, worked out and played online where I did pretty well and ran real good. I won about $500k in a few days playing mostly 500/1k to 1500/3k mixed games with some 200/400 PLO. That’s great for me and all, but Tony had his own highlight of his trip out here. My friend David Kang who is a Movie/Music Video Producer/Casting Director was producing a movie locally and invited us to come to the set and check out what he does. Tony has always wanted to be a stand up comedian or actor almost his entire life, and I mentioned that to David. Within two seconds David was pulling Tony by the ear over to his director for the movie and told him he has a speaking role in a scene along with ex-NBA All Star Gary Payton and Gavin Maloof, the owner of the Palms Casino and The Sacramento Kings. It was pretty funny how when you’re at the top and you run the show, you can basically do whatever you want by adding or deleting whatever! Pretty cool. He was really excited and his family was happy for him which was great. That night, we decided to do a little bit of celebrating of the successful overall week so tony, anita, and myself met up with another friend at a strip club. Tony left a few days ago, but I think he is coming back to hang out in Vegas during WSOP as a lot of my friends are always coming in and out throughout the summer to visit and do all the cool things in Vegas.

I have been taking working out very seriously the past two weeks since I got into my new place where I can finally rest and feel like I finally have a true home to come home to. The results have been great which is on par with what I expected by how hard I’ve been working. I am much much stronger now and it feels really good. I usually work out 5 days a week and I have a steam room in my new house which I use when I workout which just adds to the greatness of exercising. There have been handymen guys, delivery guys, and electricians coming in and out of my house since we moved here, but now everything is pretty much here so I’m happy to just relax, although Anita has been dealing with that stuff for the most part,  which she has done a great job of, while I’ve been busy playing online.

Ok, so enough about that….I have a big DeepStacks Live camp this weekend at the Commerce Casino. Go to DeepStacks.com and click on the DeepStacks Live tab for more information. I’ll be happy to see Chris, the founder of Deepstacks Live, Mike, and all the other coaches and guys that help run the show. Commerce should be a really big one for us and I look forward to it. I am probably at my peak of all-time happiness that I’ve experienced so far in my life right now, which obviously feels amazing, but I expect it’s even going to get better!

3 Comments

What’s up everyone! Well I’m back with my weekly blog and what a week it was. Between playing, teaching and traveling I am exhausted. But it’s nice to finally be back in my new house in L.A. for a solid month. Thankfully Anita is doing all the hard work buying new furniture and everything else we need for it. I’m pretty sure this is the house that I am settling down on for a long time, it’s really perfect for what we need, and it makes me really really happy.

I went to San Jose for the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Stars and after making it through to Day 2 with roughly 44k in chips, I busted Day 2 on an All-Star featured table of Phil Hellmuth, Phil Laak, Faraz Jaka, J.C. Tran, Eugene Katchalov. For the most part, I am overall pretty satisified with my play but it just didn’t work out this time forme. After busting out, I packed up and headed to Pala Casino (California) for a DeepStacks 1 day power poker course with me and Matusow. First, let me say that if you haven’t been to Pala Casino… you need to right away! The casino is literally in the middle of nowhere but it boasts one of the best poker room staff in the country, lead by ex-AC Tropicana poker room manager George Arsenis. George, Dave, Cruz and Yoshi (yes like the Mario Bros. character) have put together one of the best run rooms in California and helped put together our DeepStacks training for over 30 of their players. Great job guys and thanks again, we will see you in April 30th for the tournament primer and your $550 Deep Stack III event the following day!

Ok, enough about that lol…..After literally being on my feet all day teaching and being extremely exhausted, I headed back to LA and stopped by Commerce. See, I was just going up there to cash some chips but then I saw this reeeeeeeealllllly good 100/100 PLO game starting up, and I ended up winning about $160,000 in 7 hours. Since then, I’ve been playing nonstop online 200/400 PLO, 500/1k, 1k/2k, and 1500/3k 7-game and OE Mix games on Full Tilt. I’ve won quite a lot of money in the past week and I’m pretty happy about that. I’m playing great for the most part and focused in the right state of mind which are the most important things obviously.

One of my best friends, Tony, came out to stay with me a few days ago. He will probably be here for another week. So far, we’ve just been relaxing, working out, enjoying the view, and he’s been sweating me play online a lot. When the games die up a little bit, he wants to hit up an open mic night at a stand up comedy club to do his thing which will be awesome to see, since I’ve never seen him do that before.

A few nights ago, Anita and I went out with a good group of friends of mine including the incredible Music Video/Commercial director Joseph Kahn and Casting Director David Kang, among their girlfriends and another friend of ours Adam. We hit up Fogo De Chão which is a good Brazilian steakhouse on restaurant row in Beverly Hills. Afterwards, we went back to Joseph’s house which is about 5 minutes from mine and were introduced to a new awesome game called Scategories. It has a fun and unique dynamic of being able to vote on whether or not the person’s answer is legit or not and the arguments can become pretty outlandish!

Randomly, I caught Prahlad “Spirit Rock” Friendman freestyling for HOURS on U-Stream the other night, it was pretty hysterical and he did a good job overall, especially rapping in Thai, haha. On a side note, I have multiple very big and promising projects going on right now that I will probably be talking more about soon! Obviously have to throw a teaser out there!

Comment

I’m glad I have finally had a little bit of free time to write my first blog for Bluff! Along with being a new monthly columnist for Bluff Magazine, I am also starting to write a weekly blog for Bluff as well. I have already written two monthly columns and have enjoyed it quite a bit; however I will try to keep my blog a little bit more “casual” as in free flowing whatever is on my mind.

This year has been off to a very hectic start…i started at the PCA for a few weeks then to Florida for a few days then back to L.A. and finally over to Biloxi for the WPT Southern Championship where I finished in 13th place. But I didn’t stop there, I went back to Florida for the premiere of my new company DeepStacks Live and our first 2 day poker camp and then over to Vegas where i cashed in the first ever NAPT Main Event at the Venetian, However, I went back to L.A. where I completely bombed the WPT Main Event and
$25,000 High Roller Event. It’s all good though!

I have done alright in the live cash games at the Commerce during the L.A.P.C., which included a gigantic win from last night which I will detail a little later on. All in all, it has been a very busy year so far, and I’m not in the least tired yet…which is exactly what I expected. I came into 2010 trying to make it “My Year”. So far, I have cashed in two out of six major tournaments and I’ve been doing some new things psychologically to enhance my drive, determination and my ability to relax so that I can really crush 2010.

So far, I believe my new approach has been working out very well. Speaking of working out, I am probably the strongest I have ever been right now in my life. I am working out three to four days a week. which has allowed me to get in great shape both mentally and physically. This has helped me stay very calm and focused at both the live and online tables, However, I was a bit distracted during the two major L.A.P.C. tournaments, but I know why, and fortunately I was able to fix it. I am confident that what distracted me before will not happen again and I am looking forward to steady gear the whole way this year.

The cash games are dying down a bit here in L.A. at the Commerce-post L.A.P.C. I am sad to see them go but there are still a few great games left to play. Yesterday, I drove to the Commerce to find fellow DeepStacks Pro Mike Matusow, “Viffer”, Brett RIchey, and numerous other players still awake from a looooong session of 600/1200-Badugi, O8, Stud 8, 2-7 Triple Draw, Badeucey, and NL 2-7 Single Draw.

At the Commerce, and many other casinos, every half hour we play what is called a “time pot”. Instead of everybody individually paying for their time, whoever ends up winning the pot which is classified as a “time pot” (indicated by a button with those words inscribed on it being put in the pot with the chips) a player will end up paying the entire table’s “time”. However, when I showed up at 4 pm that day, I found a group of players playing “Cristal Pots!” They custom modified a new button with the inscription “Cristal Pot” which was sporadically thrown into pots, and whoever ended up winning the pot, would buy the next bottle of Cristal champagne! It is probably one of the most genius things I have ever heard of, LOL! I was only in attendance for the last two “Cristal Pots”, and I had a few glasses of course. Supposedly, there had been four or five other pots throughout the night before I arrived! All in all, twelve hours
later, I quit the game $180,000 winner – I really like this Cristal Pot idea!

Comment