October '09 Recap

Total Buy-ins: $30,619
Total Prizes: $23,754
Total Profit: -$6,865
ROI: -22.42%
Hours Played: 48
Profit/Hour: -$143.03

Daily Profit Graph:


Three Biggest Cashes:

1) $10,115 (Oct. 13th, 1st, Tilt $117)
2) $7,174 (Oct. 18th, 8th, Tilt $163r)
3) $2,647 (Oct. 27th, 22nd, Stars $1k)

I spent most of October visiting family, watching the Phillies and generally avoiding playing poker. That will probably be the case until the end of the World Series. I'm cautiously optimistic about the Phillies chances at this point, although we don't stand a chance if Cole Hamels can't get his act together before tonight's game.

Sorry to those of you who have been expecting anything in the form of poker content over the last month. I only played six days in October, there was very little worth writing about, and as some of you have probably noticed by now, the quantity of my posting tends to be highly correlated to how I've been running. Writing about losing isn't particularly fun. 2009 is almost over and I'm up... wait for it... $39k for the year. Last year, I played fewer hours and made roughly eighteen times that amount. Variance or regression in my ability? I'm still working on figuring that out.

Go Phils!


Cliff Lee Who Cares Catch - More free videos are here

Owned

Full Tilt Poker Game #15433266251: $200,000 Guarantee (Rebuy) (108515420), Table 5 - 5000/10000 Ante 1000 - No Limit Hold'em - 23:08:10 ET - 2009/10/18
Seat 2: Jack4339 (155,762)
Seat 3: Hesperides (414,718)
Seat 5: DDBeast (279,732)
Seat 7: laura645 (504,938)
Seat 8: bmf823 (432,808)
Jack4339 antes 1,000
Hesperides antes 1,000
DDBeast antes 1,000
laura645 antes 1,000
bmf823 antes 1,000
DDBeast posts the small blind of 5,000
laura645 posts the big blind of 10,000
The button is in seat #3
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bmf823 [3s Ks]
bmf823 raises to 21,212
Jack4339 has 15 seconds left to act
Jack4339 folds
Hesperides folds
DDBeast folds
laura645 calls 11,212
*** FLOP *** [3d Jd 6h]
laura645 checks
bmf823 bets 30,000
laura645 calls 30,000
*** TURN *** [3d Jd 6h] [Qs]
laura645 checks
bmf823 has 15 seconds left to act
bmf823 bets 65,000
laura645 has 15 seconds left to act
laura645 has requested TIME
laura645 calls 65,000
*** RIVER *** [3d Jd 6h Qs] [Ad]
laura645 checks
bmf823 bets 140,000
laura645 has 15 seconds left to act
laura645 has requested TIME
laura645 calls 140,000
*** SHOW DOWN ***
bmf823 shows [3s Ks] a pair of Threes
laura645 shows [7c 7h] a pair of Sevens
laura645 wins the pot (522,424) with a pair of Sevens
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 522,424 | Rake 0
Board: [3d Jd 6h Qs Ad]
Seat 2: Jack4339 folded before the Flop
Seat 3: Hesperides (button) folded before the Flop
Seat 5: DDBeast (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 7: laura645 (big blind) showed [7c 7h] and won (522,424) with a pair of Sevens
Seat 8: bmf823 showed [3s Ks] and lost with a pair of Threes

That was with ten left in the Tilt $150r today. I was 3/10 at the time and ended up finishing eighth, enough to put me up $69.42 for the day.


I've only played four days this month and probably won't play more than two or three more sessions before November. There hasn't been much to write about lately, although I did win a small tourney last week to keep me close to even for the month. Just another couple of weeks in the life of a break even MTT pro.

September '09 Recap

Total Buy-ins: $127,943
Total Prizes: $114,501
Total Profit: -$13,442
ROI: -10.51%
Hours Played: 224.5
Profit/Hour: -$59.88

Daily Profit Graph:


Three Biggest Cashes:

1) $22,468 (Sep. 1st, 1st, Stars $109r)
2) $10,175 (Sep. 16th, 3rd/chop, Stars $109)
3) $7,177 (Sep. 7th, 6th, Stars $109r)

September kicked my ass. By the end of the month, I felt tired, frustrated, discouraged and without confidence. I'm mostly over it now, but the effects of such a draining month are still lingering. My drive to play is almost non-existent. I no longer consider myself an elite MTT player, even considering how much I've accomplished in the last few years. If I had to play a full schedule for a week, I'd probably be miserable and five figures poorer when my last session concluded. Tournament poker is often formulaic enough where a lack of confidence isn't enough to cause me to get out of my comfort zone and play poorly. However, that lack of confidence makes playing far less enjoyable, something which lends itself to losing focus and an overall feeling of apathy. When I find myself with that kind of attitude towards poker, the solution is obvious. For the near future, I'm going to play very infrequently. Maybe I'll play Sundays or the occasional weeknight, but I'm looking forward to not grinding for a few weeks.

WCOOP Recovery

I'm stealing my friend Shane Schleger's most recent blog title, mostly because I can't think of anything better but also because I liked what he wrote. The first few days post-WCOOP have been pretty typical in the aftermath of a big tournament series. A lack of motivation, sleeping late, trying not to think about missed opportunities, etc. Here's how Shane put it:

"It's a strange and elusive relationship between results, confidence and performance, which are often not directly related to each other but never completely separated, either.

In any event, after almost three weeks of playing an average of 11 super-focused hours of poker a day, I feel deflated again, very similar to how I felt immediately after the WSOP."

That sounds pretty close to my thoughts at the moment. I'm not burnt out on online poker, but a month of hard work with negative results is enough to throw a wrench in my plans. I'm not playing much following the WCOOP, and a lot of that is because my goals of banking a huge month to help offset the rest of 2009 are largely unattainable. I'm in for over $120k this month and can't even claim to have made a dollar in profit. That makes it difficult to sit at my computer and grind a bunch of relatively small tournaments when anything but the top few spots will be irrelevant in my monthly totals. I'm aware that such a mindset is detrimental to a tournament player in the long run, but I don't fault myself for having these thoughts after bad stretches during the WSOP, WCOOP and the occasional FTOPS.

Speaking of which, it's been over a year since I had any kind of decent run in any of those series. After my big FTOPS in August last year, I've been all but shutout since. My best finish in this year's WCOOP was somewhere in the 70s, a tourney which ended abruptly when I shoved KQo into the table donator's aces. I'm not even sure I've cracked the top 100 in any FTOPS tournament this year. People who play MTTs for a living rely on a couple big scores each year, and I haven't found myself in many situations where I'm on the verge of a huge cash. Last year, my five biggest cashes totaled $750k. That same figure for 2009 is still under $300k.

It feels like I haven't played live poker in forever, and I'm going to change that later in the week. There's a series at the Commerce that I had no plans of playing, but the $2,500 main event is timed perfectly to get me out of the house, hang out with my brother in LA for a few days, and force me to get away from the computer for a little while. Unless I make the final day, I'll be able to get back home in time for the Sunday schedule as well. In stark contrast to how I felt after the WSOP, I think a few days of live poker will be a nice change of pace and help me refocus once I get back online.

234

Yesterday was a good day. I skipped the $530r WCOOP event in favor of sleeping until 2:30, did nothing for a few hours, and then went bowling with a college friend who was in town for a wedding. To my surprise, I bowled a personal best 234.


You probably don't care about any of this, but I was pretty excited. Mark and I used to bowl a ton when we lived in Boston, once playing fourteen games in one trip. My previous best was something like 206. I hadn't bowled much in the last two years, but figured it would be a fun thing to do last night. After chucking up a less than stellar 135 in the first game, the bowling alley randomly threw on the music and lights you normally see on a Saturday night... and somehow I couldn't miss.

Continuing with the theme of good news, I chopped a WCOOP second chance tourney Wednesday night. It was only for $10k, but I'm back to even for the month going into the last few days of the WCOOP. I haven't chopped anything online in years, but the three of us left had been playing all day, the stacks were deep, and I don't think any of us wanted to play further into the night for the difference of a few thousand dollars. It was nice to make a deal and call it a day.

I stumbled across this article on CardPlayer.com this morning. This year might be a disappointment (ranked 979 and 153 at the moment), but it's always cool to see those numbers from the past two years. I didn't even realize I was on the list for '07 until Mark pointed it out. It's pretty funny that I'm referred to as a "young pro," given that I'm older than most of the people on those lists. At 26, I think I might be able to get pension from the poker sites.

Two Weeks

Fun graph. I'm up to 164 hours this month despite taking a full day off. That's more than I've ever played in an entire month. Perhaps it isn't a coincidence that my graph is trending downwards at a rapid pace.

My results since the last update have been consistent with the rest of September. Lots of deep runs, no big cashes, and a few flips/coolers away from banking good money. I went to sleep last night with the intention of grinding away today, but woke up equally tired and unmotivated. I ended up sleeping until 2:00 and will be playing a half day for the first time this month. My subpar results combined with an overall loss of interest in playing small tournaments will probably end up derailing my plans for September. I'm just not interested in spending the next two weeks repeating the frustration of the previous two.

Off Day

I'm exhausted. Eleven days of doing nothing but playing online has taken enough of a toll on me that I've decided to skip a day and admit defeat in my attempt to play every day this month. While there's no doubt that I'm physically ready for a day off, I think the mental aspect of being down a few thousand after 130+ hours (especially after starting off up $22k) is more relevant. I haven't been playing well over the past few days, and every time I take a stupid beat or finish just shy of a good score it frustrates me more than it should. Tournament poker is all about evening out variance in the long run, and it becomes very difficult to keep a good attitude when you lose sight of that fact.

As this post suggests, the past two days have been more of the same. I final tabled the nightly Tilt $75k, but finished seventh when I got it in with A8 vs. KT only to watch the board run out 88KxK. Yesterday was a big WCOOP day, featuring the $200r and $320 with fast levels. I had a deep run in the early Stars $109 FO, but finished 12th. The $215r started off well, and I was feeling good about having a deep stack on a very soft table. Then this happened:

PokerStars Game #32731041139: Tournament #200909021, $200+$15 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level XIII (350/700) - 2009/09/11 19:22:52 ET
Table '200909021 88' 9-max Seat #8 is the button
Seat 1: deamon10 (45249 in chips)
Seat 2: FrinkX (39157 in chips)
Seat 3: danloulou (22171 in chips)
Seat 4: hitmeratkid (23834 in chips)
Seat 5: tbac1 (15512 in chips)
Seat 6: danoo123 (14011 in chips)
Seat 7: saviravi (28924 in chips)
Seat 8: bfineman (21438 in chips)
Seat 9: elitelive (61169 in chips)
deamon10: posts the ante 85
FrinkX: posts the ante 85
danloulou: posts the ante 85
hitmeratkid: posts the ante 85
tbac1: posts the ante 85
danoo123: posts the ante 85
saviravi: posts the ante 85
bfineman: posts the ante 85
elitelive: posts the ante 85
elitelive: posts small blind 350
deamon10: posts big blind 700
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bfineman [As Jh]
FrinkX: folds
danloulou: folds
hitmeratkid: folds
tbac1: folds
danoo123: folds
saviravi: folds
bfineman: raises 855 to 1555
elitelive: folds
deamon10: calls 855
*** FLOP *** [4c Ah 2h]
deamon10: checks
bfineman: bets 2752
deamon10: calls 2752
*** TURN *** [4c Ah 2h] [Jd]
deamon10: checks
bfineman: bets 5775
deamon10: calls 5775
*** RIVER *** [4c Ah 2h Jd] [Qh]
deamon10: checks
bfineman: bets 11271 and is all-in
deamon10: calls 11271
*** SHOW DOWN ***
bfineman: shows [As Jh] (two pair, Aces and Jacks)
deamon10: shows [Ks Td] (a straight, Ten to Ace)
deamon10 collected 43821 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 43821 | Rake 0
Board [4c Ah 2h Jd Qh]
Seat 1: deamon10 (big blind) showed [Ks Td] and won (43821) with a straight, Ten to Ace
Seat 2: FrinkX folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: danloulou folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: hitmeratkid folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: tbac1 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: danoo123 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 7: saviravi folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 8: bfineman (button) showed [As Jh] and lost with two pair, Aces and Jacks
Seat 9: elitelive (small blind) folded before Flop

That was the hand that convinced me to take today off. I can't even explain what happened there. Perhaps a series of misclicks led him to seeing the river where he spiked his runner-runner gutshot out of position. Let's go with that.

My goal for today is to not think about poker for one second after I finish writing this blog. I'm leaving my complex for the second time in two weeks, getting some food from outside of my kitchen, and seeing a movie. Maybe I'll even do some laundry. As long as I keep poker off my brain, today will be one of the best days of the month so far.