The Poker Journal

Full Circle

2011-11-09T21:16:00.000-08:00

When I moved to Vegas in 2005, my hope was to make a living playing live cash games. Online poker seemed more like a novelty than a way of making money, and all I knew about live tournaments came from ESPN broadcasts. Being a professional poker player seemed so simple back then - head to the casino, put in your hours at the tables, and go home. No decisions about what form of poker to focus on, no worries about outside forces telling me where I'm allowed to play, and nothing that could come close to the extreme highs and lows that I've experienced over the past six years. Live cash was a great way to ease myself into being a poker pro, but the ability to play online and dabble in big live tournaments has contributed majorly to the fact that I'm still playing poker today. Grinding live ring games was a way to pay the bills, but I never looked back after realizing that I had different and better options to play poker for a living. Following Black Friday, those options no longer exist for me, and the aftermath has been surprising.

The WSOP came and went with little to write about, and after a two week period to collect my thoughts and cope with the uncertainty of my future, I got myself together and began my new/old career as a live cash pro. With 35 good hours of 5/10 at the Bellagio under my belt from the week leading up to the WSOP, I figured I'd head back to those games and see what kind of results I could put up over a larger sample size. The limitations of live poker, specifically the whole 35-40 hands per hour thing lowered my expectations significantly, but I figured that something like $75/hour might be attainable for a good player. In August, I felt like I ran well and ended up with a $148 hourly rate. That number fell to $115 in September, but jumped all the way to $170 in October. This month has been more of the same. While four months of live poker is the equivalent of a few busy days of online cash, I'm feeling a renewed sense of optimism for my second go-around as a live cash pro.

Initially, I planned on bouncing around the handful of casinos that ran 5/10 games, but haven't played anywhere other than the Bellagio yet. I have a nice feeling of comfort in the games I play, and running good keeps me wanting to stay on the routine I'm in. Unlike back in '05, I'm making it a point to maximize my hours during the peak times when the games are juiciest. Typically, I'll play a few 4-5 hour sessions during the week, and then put in 8-12 hour sessions on Friday and Saturday. Sunday, of course, is reserved for football, and I can't say that I miss the online Sunday grind at all now that I'm free to lay on the couch all day and be disappointed by the Eagles. Somehow, my poker career has found a nice balance following what was a worst case scenario back in April, and things look to be stable and boring, which is actually kind of nice after all the uncertainty that surrounded the poker world this summer.

Unless online poker is brought back to the U.S., things look to be pretty uneventful for me going forward. For once, I'll actually have a reason to abandon this blog for months at a time, instead of just being grumpy about poker and not wanting to write about it. Everything from my grinding schedule to my knowledge of the Bellagio 5/10 regs feels comfortable and easy to manage, and that will probably keep me playing in the same games at the same times for the indefinite future. I don't even care how repetitive and uninteresting that seems, because monotony is far better than uncertainty, especially when that monotony involves making $143/hour. Granted, I'm 99% sure that I'm running well above expectation and can't maintain that winrate, but I don't think it's unrealistic to assume a $100 hourly is attainable in the long run by grinding hard on weekends and avoiding the common forms of live tilt (playing too many hands out of boredom especially).

Black Friday was a disaster, and there isn't a single part of my brain that looks back and sees it as a good thing. Hell, I still have $24k stuck on Full Tilt. However, I can't say that the forced changes to my career were all bad. The beginning of 2011 was going well, but that came on the heels of a two year breakeven stretch, which included a $200k downswing. Poker had become very stressful at times, and I had lost my passion for the game entirely. Playing cards went from being fun to feeling a job, and often times seeming like a mind-numbing grind. Live cash isn't exactly fun, but it comes without the stresses of big downswings and confidence issues. The games I play in are easy, and there's something to be said about making decent money without much stress. Poker is simple again, although that's only the case when I keep myself from thinking about what once was and what could be in the future. Playing tournaments and online poker don't quite seem like a thing of the past yet, but I can't say that I miss them either. I'm content right now, and after everything that transpired over the last three years, that's more than good enough.

Twitter, WSOP Schedule

2011-05-30T12:11:00.000-07:00

If anyone cares to follow, I'll be tweeting my chip counts (@fineman83) at every break this summer to keep my backer updated. Here's my full schedule of events, split almost evenly between the WSOP and Venetian Deepstack Extravaganza (all NLHE):

5/31: Venetian $1k
6/2: Venetian $1.5k
6/4: WSOP $1k
6/6: WSOP $1.5k 6-max
6/7: WSOP $1.5k Triple Chance
6/8: WSOP $1.5k Shootout
6/9: Venetian $1.5k
6/10: Venetian $2.5k
6/11: WSOP $1.5k
6/12: WSOP $1k
6/13: Venetian $1.5k
6/14: Venetian $1k
6/15: WSOP $2.5k 6-max
6/17: Venetian $2k
6/18: WSOP $1.5k
6/19: WSOP $1k
6/20: Venetian $1.5k
6/21: WSOP $2.5k
6/22: WSOP $1.5k
6/23: Venetian $1k
6/24: Venetian $1.5k
6/25: WSOP $1.5k
6/26: WSOP $1k
6/27: Venetian $2.5k
6/28: WSOP $1.5k
6/29: Venetian $1.5k
7/2: Venetian $1k
7/3: WSOP $1k
7/4: Venetian $1k
7/5: WSOP $1.5k
7/7: Venetian $1.5k
7/?: WSOP $10k (main event)

I played a $350 at the Venetian on my own dime a few days ago to get some recent live MTT experience and ended up second in chips after the first day out of 1,200 runners. Unfortunately, I couldn't get anything going on the second day and fizzled out in 26th for $2k. Not the result I was hoping for after crushing early, but it was still nice to get deep in the first live tourney I had played since last year's WSOP main event.

Six Years in Vegas

2011-05-26T20:12:00.000-07:00

June 4th will mark the six year anniversary of when I first played poker as a professional. I didn't really have a clue what I was doing back then, but was lucky enough to figure things out along the way. Even though the poker climate seems pretty bleak right now given the circumstances, it's hard not to be incredibly happy with how things have gone to this point.

For no apparent reason, I decided to make use of my overly detailed poker spreadsheet and throw together some charts. This is what happens when I take a few days off before the WSOP to recharge my batteries.

Here's my total profit by month:

Yay, $1.2 million profit! Boo, ongoing thirty month breakeven stretch. Poker got a lot harder in December, 2008, in my opinion.

A breakdown of where my profits came from:

Tournaments are fun. I'm going to miss being able to play them more than two months out of the year.

Here's a very similar graph to the one above. This is the breakdown of how I spent my 7,558 hours at the tables:

Damn you, ever-growing light blue triangle! I can only hope that online poker makes a comeback before it becomes a light blue half-circle.

Back Up Plan

2011-05-22T13:28:00.000-07:00

I have no recollection of this movie existing, so let's go with this instead:

Much better. The back up plan to my back up plan is pretty much where I'm at right now as a poker player. Leaving the country to play online isn't an option for me, and I have no interest in breaking any rules to regain access to Stars/Tilt/European sites. I'm also wary of opening accounts on the smaller sites still open to U.S. players, because I'd have to deposit a good chunk of money to play worthwhile stakes, and I'm not interested taking the risk of having those funds freeze or disappear in the near future. That leaves live poker as my only realistic option for full time pokering going forward.

After Black Friday, the uncertainty of what would happen with my online funds left me short on liquid cash and needing to make money. My only option was to return to live cash after a five year layoff, and I wouldn't be able to play above 2/5 until Stars and/or Tilt released my money. Even if I wanted to try and find a backing deal for live tournaments, the variance and expenses associated with playing live MTTs full time would have clashed with my current situation. So before I could fully digest what had happened to the status quo I had taken for granted, I was back in the casinos looking to get my feet wet at the tables.

My first two sessions were at Red Rock, a locals casino a mile down the street from my house. I played a few hours at 1/2 just to get a feel for things, and was quickly reminded that some of the worst poker players on the planet can be found at low stakes live cash. The competition at 2/5 wasn't much tougher, although there appeared to be far more grumpy old regulars limp/folding their way through retirement. Playing at Red Rock is not particularly enjoyable. Feeling more than ready to take on the 2/5 games on the strip, I headed to the Wynn to return to the tables I played at every day five years ago. Beating the games was never a concern of mine - I had a $30 hourly rate over 700 hours back in '05, and figured that number would probably be closer to $40-$50 these days. My biggest concern was whether or not I could tolerate live poker and the types of people that I was so happy to avoid interacting with over the past few years. After taking my first seat in a cash game on the strip in five years, I noticed the guy to my right had one visible tattoo. It was on the inside of his right arm (facing me), and read "Eat shit and die." Damn you, Department of Justice.

Things went fine over the next few weeks, and despite a general lack of motivation to play, I put in around 70 hours at 2/5. I made $25/hour, which is a pretty irrelevant number given that 70 hours of live cash equates to something like 2,500 hands. Regardless, it was obvious to me that I was far too good to play in those games, since I could probably count the number of players that posed a legitimate challenge on one hand. I even made a point to play at a number of different casinos to get a feel for all the games, and the outcome was pretty much the same all across the strip. There's no such thing as a good 2/5 regular unless they're confined to those stakes because of bankroll issues. After PokerStars released players' funds (yay!), I figured I'd jump into the 5/10 games once the money was safely in my account.

Despite being a live cash pro when I first moved to Vegas, I had only played 57 breakeven hours of live 5/10 before moving on to bigger and better things. I didn't have a great idea of what kind of hourly rate to expect, but figured the competition would be noticeably tougher than 2/5. While there are still plenty of fish and bad regulars, the biggest difference is the presence of actual solid regs at almost every table. Unlike 2/5, 5/10 games don't run consistently in any casino other than the Bellagio. Since I tend to play a good amount of mid-week, daytime sessions, I've found myself in a number of games with plenty of regs at the tables. Even on weekends, I notice a lot of the same faces at the tables, something that never happened at 2/5... and somehow, I've actually enjoyed the tougher competition considerably more.

Playing live 2/5 is mind-numbing. There is no creativity, no thinking beyond the first level, and a general lack of interesting spots. Solid fundamentals are all you need to win, and anything beyond that can be a hindrance. After all, what's the point of taking a line to represent a particular hand if your opponent doesn't pay attention to anything but the two cards in front of him? While there's certainly some of those type players at 5/10, there are also players that provide a challenge and tough decisions on every street. It makes the daily grind far more interesting, and even if live cash will never be as appealing as online poker, it's a lot more tolerable when I have to use my brain for more than reminding myself to smile politely at the guy across the table rambling on about his bad beat stories. Oh yeah, 5/10 has also been more enjoyable because I've made $160/hr over my first six sessions (35 hours).

Just as I've settled into a nice groove at 5/10, I'm ready to stop playing cash for the next month and a half. It's WSOP time again, and although things will be very different for me this year, I'm looking forward to another hectic summer of tournaments. Before Stars returned my money, I was concerned that my bankroll would keep me from playing any WSOP events. Not knowing what the future held, I figured I'd go about finding a backing deal for the series. Even with my Stars money safely in my bank account, there's still no way of knowing what my earning potential will be going forward. There's also the matter of Full Tilt still not releasing anyone's money (including my $24k), so I'm not exactly confident in my financial future going forward. Still wanting to play the WSOP but not willing to risk a large percentage of my liquid cash, I decided to sell 80% of myself in a ton of events at a 1.25:1 markup. Basically, I'm freerolling my summer schedule (every WSOP and Venetian NL event between $1k-$2.5k, as well as the main event), but only get to keep 20% of what I cash for. It's far from ideal, but given my situation at the time I locked in the deal, I'm pretty happy to be risking nothing this summer, even if my ability to bink a huge score is severely limited.

Given the nature of my deal, it's in my best interest to play as much as I can, even if I wake up with no desire to play (this tends to happen towards the end of the series every year). As such, my schedule consists of 32 events totaling $57k in buyins, including a stretch of 23 tourneys in 24 days. It will be both mentally and physically exhausting, but I'm actually looking forward to the summer grind more than I have in the last few years. Who knows, maybe I'll even get back to a WSOP final table and make my backer a rich(er) man.

My summer MTT schedule begins on the 31st with a $1k at the Venetian, and starts to get crazy the following weekend. I'm going to be taking it easy between now and then, enjoying the feelings of hope and optimism that always creep into my mind during the last few days of May. Given the uncertainty surrounding my career and finances after the WSOP, a little hope might be all I need to keep me motivated throughout the entire series.

Black Friday

2011-04-19T18:36:00.000-07:00

The lives of many American poker players became very complicated on Friday, when the two of the biggest online poker sites were forced to shut their doors to U.S. players indefinitely. There are plenty of better writers with a firmer grasp on what happened, so rather than rehash the events of this weekend, I’ll just link you to a PokerNews article and NoahSD’s blog on the subject. For those of you who want an even quicker summary of the situation, here are the main points:

The Department of Justice has indicted people with ownership ties to Stars, Tilt and Cereus, as well as payment processors for the sites on charges including bribery and bank fraud. American players are no longer able to play on Stars or Tilt, and the money in their accounts has been frozen. Nobody can make transfers or cash out, and there are no answers as to if/when money will be returned to the players.

The long term implications of these events are unknown. Online poker has effectively been shut down in America (aside from a few smaller sites, whose immediate fate is uncertain), and there is no guarantee it will ever return. While the players themselves are unlikely to face any legal trouble, the legal process for those indicted could take a long time, likely tying up the players’ money for months, if not years. The short term implications of everything are clearer: online poker is gone and lots of people are in financial trouble while they wait and hope for their money to be returned to them.

Unsurprisingly, these developments will lead to some serious changes in my life. Had something like this happened two years ago, I would have had enough of a financial cushion to wait things out for a little while, play more live poker, and get a better sense of the long term changes without worrying about my finances. After breaking even over the last two years (I’m up $57k in 2011 though! Too bad it’s basically monopoly money now), my bankroll doesn’t allow that luxury anymore. Even worse, my Stars and Tilt accounts are frozen with a total of $60k in them. All I have access to is $17k, which will last for slightly over two months before my liquid cash is completely drained. The obvious conclusion to all this is that I need to start making money as fast as possible.

The real shame in how the government has handled online poker over the years is the uncertainty that it leaves so many people with after leaving players’ accounts indefinitely frozen. I’m sure there are countless heartbreaking stories of people who are no longer able to support their families, follow through on financial commitments, or simply cash out money that allows them to live a good life. My situation isn’t particularly dire, but I can’t help but be sad at how the sudden change to the status quo will affect Mark and I.

When we moved to Vegas six years ago, Mark had a good job, and was essentially my short term backup plan if poker failed. As I began to have major success in my poker career, we were able to buy a house and live a very comfortable life. Eventually, the money I was making allowed us to look at Mark’s career in a different perspective. He no longer had to work to help pay the bills, and we decided that it was an awesome opportunity for him to return to school. Mark worked full time right out of high school, and despite having a love for politics, was never able to work in the field he was truly passionate about. Our financial freedom gave him the chance to pursue a degree in political science, and we had poker to thank for that opportunity. Not only has he put up remarkable grades in the two years since, the things he’s accomplished outside of class recently landed him on a top ten list of the most important conservatives in the entire state of Nevada. How’s that for poker making a positive impact in people’s lives?

The sudden lack of available money has left us scrambling for ways to cover our monthly expenses. Mark is in the process of sending his resume out, and the time he spends working will naturally delay his graduation from UNLV and cut into his involvement in various organizations. I know that needing to find a job is hardly a harrowing tale of misfortune, and Mark would be the last to complain about our situation, but it bothers me that we’re in this position because of how things transpired this weekend (and to a greater extent, the general approach the government has had to online poker over the years). Personally, I have $17k to work with, and nowhere to turn but low stakes live cash to try and grind out some extra money to help cover our bills. Getting a job is certainly an option, but I have a seven year gap in my resume, the job market is terrible, and anything I could get hired for would pay me less than the small hourly rate I can earn playing live cash.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not complaining about our situation as a whole. Even with everything that transpired this weekend, Mark and I still consider ourselves very fortunate to be in our current position… and while I’d like to rant against the government for putting so many people in such uncertain times, the truth is that I really don’t know enough about the fine details of this whole mess. However, I do know that the consequences of freezing players’ accounts and leaving thousands of us without a source of income with no warning was extremely foreseeable, and it bothers me that things still played out in what seems to be such an irresponsible manner.

I guess what I really want to say is that all this really sucks, and it sucks for everyone involved. I refuse to believe that things couldn’t have been handled better, both this weekend and the countless times in the past the government has tried to get involved with online poker. Seeing people’s reactions online and hearing stories of how this negatively affects so many leaves me with such strong feelings of sadness, and on a personal level, the uncertainty and impending changes in my own life has brought up a collection of unpleasant emotions. More than anything else, I feel deflated.

Today was my first day back to the live cash grind in five years. I can only afford to play 2/5, and might have to drop down soon if my earnings don’t cover our monthly expenses. Grinding low stakes live cash is still better than any job I could find right now, but not by much, both in terms of profitability and enjoyment. Not good times.

Signs Of Life

2010-11-20T14:43:00.000-08:00

As the world's worst blogger over the past year, allow me to apologize for disappearing for the last five months. It's not that I haven't had anything to write about, I just couldn't bring myself to spend any extra time on poker related activities in a long time. My last update was right before the WSOP, a time in which I was optimistic but also concerned about what would happen if the summer didn't go well. That concern turned into a reality after recording one mincash (in the smallest buy-in of the series, no less), and ending the series with my bankroll having been cut in half. It was the low point of my poker career in many ways. In retrospect, that kind of stuff would have been great to write about, although not from a personal standpoint. People are always happy to share stories about their successes, but nobody wants to spill their guts about failing at their job and having to start over from square one.

After busting out of the main event on day two (I got my last twenty BBs in with JJ vs. KK and AA), I wanted nothing to do with poker for the foreseeable future. Even during the last few weeks of the WSOP, I would show up at the Rio with a very negative mindset. While I'm confident that my negativity didn't affect my play, it undoubtedly made me miserable at the tables. If I got my stack in before the river, I was apathetic towards winning the pot or busting out and getting to go home. Everything about playing poker irritated me, something that is exponentially heightened by the types of players that surround you during the WSOP. So when I mercifully lost the remainder of my chips in the final event, I headed home for a long break from poker.

For the rest of July, I did little more than wallow in my misery and watch baseball. It was pretty pathetic. My time as a tournament pro had taken me beyond my wildest expectations and just as quickly reduced me to a cautionary tale of complacency and poor bankroll management. Even though I had no desire to get back to any other form of poker, I knew that I couldn't go back to tourneys any time soon. I hated them. I hated what they had done to my mindset, or more specifically, what I had allowed them to do to me. Unfortunately, I couldn't take more than a month off from playing. The money I had left wasn't going to last more than six months and I needed some kind of cushion to allow me to play stakes that would yield enough of a profit to take care of my monthly expenses, or at least delay going broke long enough for me to relearn how to win at poker. If there was a job on the market that I was interested in doing, qualified for, and paid enough to sustain my current quality of life, I would have quit poker this summer.

In August, I decided to swallow my pride and restart my poker career from square one. My plan was to play 50nl (that's $0.25/$0.50), and make sure I was good enough to beat busto stakes before moving up. Since there isn't a ton of money to be won at 50nl for even the best players, it was more precautionary than anything else. After all, if it took me time to relearn how to beat 6-max games, I'd rather lose $50 per buy-in than two, four or eight times that much. Things went fairly well, I felt confident enough that I could beat those stakes consistently, and moved up to 100nl after 22k hands with a 5.4 bb/100. My time at 50nl was important in a couple other ways as well, because I was able to familiarize myself with the current batch of programs that all cash grinders use.

100nl seemed easy as well, and although I only spent 10k hands at that level, my 19.6 bb/100 would suggest that it didn't pose much of a problem. More accurately, only playing 10k hands at any given level suggests nothing, but I didn't feel outmatched at all. I quickly jumped to 200nl, where I've spent the bulk of my cash game sessions ever since. Over 56k hands, my EV adjusted bb/100 is 4.2, which seems to be a very solid winrate. However, despite getting used to programs like TableNinja, I'm still not comfortable playing more than nine tables and rely heavily on game selection. While making $3,700 ($4,700 EV adjusted) over 56k hands is good at 1/2, it took me over a month to reach those numbers. Part of that is because I've spent a fair amount of time watching videos and studying, but the main reason is because I simply don't enjoy playing cash games. I never have. Even back when I was making great money three years ago, I never managed to put in over 100 hours of play in a single month. Imagine what that does for my motivation when my hourly rate is cut by 80%. Here's my graph from the 90k hands of 50nl-400nl I've played over the past few months:

In contrast, here's my graph from back when I played cash exclusively three years ago:

The games are much, much tougher these days. I recognized a number of people grinding 100nl and 200nl that I used to see at 1knl back in the day. In fact, I can confidently say that 200nl is currently tougher than 1knl was in early 2008. The landscape of online poker has changed dramatically, and I wish I knew what was coming so I could have worked my ass off to make up for the lack of opportunities in the future. Another thing worth checking out from those graphs are the non-showdown winnings, which are represented by the red line. While a given player's non-showdown winnings has a lot to do with his playing style, a good rule of thumb is that you want it to be in the black or at least close to breakeven. A sloping downward line suggests that you're being outplayed postflop, which certainly seems to be the case in my previous graph. The initial downward slope in my latest graph is because I didn't pay attention to non-showdown winnings, and once I took some time to work on that part of my game, the graph as a whole started trending upwards much quicker. I miss the days of making $0.33/hand despite not being particularly good at poker.

In late September, I decided to mix in a few tournament sessions to my schedule. Enough time had passed that I actually wanted to play MTTs again, and anything I could consider productive that would allow me to not have to play cash was more than welcome. Initially, I only played one or two tourney sessions a week. I had a couple final tables, although nothing big enough to keep me from doing much more than breaking even. I was still forcing myself to play cash, even temporarily moving up to 400nl for a few sessions before realizing how much harder game selection was compared to 200nl. In mid-October, I finished second in a small Stars $100r for $13k, which was arguably one of the most meaningful tourney cashes of my career despite being far smaller than the rest of my 'big' scores. As I probably could have predicted, it didn't take long for me to focus more on MTTs than cash. From August to September, I played 130 hours of cash and six hours of tournaments. Last month, those numbers were roughly 50/50. In November, I've played 77 hours of MTTs and seven hours of cash, the last of which were twelve days ago.

As much as I recognize that cash games are important for stability and keeping my 100bb game fresh, I can't stand playing them. On the other hand, there are plenty of times when I actually look forward to a full day of tournaments. My 90k hand tuneup at small stakes cash has definitely helped my game though, and I wonder if the same result can be achieved by simply watching cash videos to stay on top of current trends. Regardless, I am what I am - a tournament player who doesn't have the desire (and perhaps the skill) to switch back to cash full time or even part time.

My bankroll is currently in the neighborhood of $50k. Since my second place finish in the $100r last month, I've come to the realization that I need to be smarter with bankroll management. I've made the decision to cut most $100rs and freezeouts over $300 out of my schedule. There are enough midstakes tourneys to keep my monitor full these days, and I'm content grinding those instead of higher risk/higher reward options. Since getting back into MTTs, my average buy-in has been $116, far less than it used to be. However, the circumstances surrounding my decision making have changed dramatically, and I need to make lowering my risk of ruin my second priority. It should be my first priority, but considering that grinding small stakes cash accomplishes it best, I've put making sure that I don't hate playing poker at the top of the list. So far, so good, and given the quality of competition outside of the high stakes MTTs, I'm feeling pretty optimistic about grinding out a modest living in the near future.

WSOP '10 - Run Good or Bust

2010-05-26T14:51:00.000-07:00

The temperature gauge in my car has been approaching triple digits, which means that the most anticipated two months of every poker player's year is on the horizon. If you've had a good start to the year, there's no better time to feel confident and ready to crush against some of the softest fields around. If you've been downswinging recently, the WSOP represents a chance to reverse fortunes with one deep run. Even in extreme cases like my own where a player has lost confidence and has no desire to play poker, fields of amateurs dropping thousands of dollars a piece can do wonders for someone's mindset. I could brick the first few events but still feel reenergized competing against terrible players for seven figure prize pools.

That feeling of encouragement tends to last for a few weeks, but quickly fades as the day one exits pile up. A big cash early is enough to make the rest of the WSOP feel like a freeroll, but the frustration of running badly at the worst possible times can affect a player's mentality before the series is even half over. I've experienced both ends of the spectrum, hitting rock bottom last year when I failed to cash in a single event. By late June, I was expecting the worst every time I was all in, counting down the chances I had left to turn my WSOP around, and finding myself heading home before sundown on a daily basis. Busting out of the main event was obviously disappointing, but it almost felt like a relief to be done with such a brutal series.

In contrast, my '07 WSOP was one of the highlights of my poker career. I final tabled one of the first events I played, and regardless of how I did during the rest of the series, felt on top of the world until I busted from the main event. In fact, my results that summer started me on a tournament kick, one that has lasted until the early parts of this year. Ironically, my results in the upcoming WSOP will likely dictate whether I continue playing tournaments or shift my focus to something completely different. My desire to grind tourneys disappeared earlier this year and has yet to return, undoubtedly correlated with my unsatisfactory results. I suppose it's only fitting that the fate my MTT career, one that has experienced the extreme ups and downs of variance, will be decided by the results of no more than two dozen tournaments, fewer than an average Sunday online.

For now, I'm looking forward another summer spent grinding at the Rio. I don't expect that feeling to last long if things don't go well in the first few weeks. My future as a poker player is very uncertain, and spending the end of the series worrying about my future plans sounds like a surefire way to make life miserable. Right now, my bankroll is slightly over $100k, the lowest it's been since my eight month heater in 2008 began. My plan is to play around 20 WSOP events along with a few at the Bellagio and Venetian, enough to cut my bankroll in half if I brick them all. The odds of that happening for a second straight year are pretty slim, but I'm still going to sell action in some of the bigger events, something which makes me cringe but is 100% necessary. If there was ever a time to run good, focus and play as well as I can, this is it. I'm tired of breaking even, playing without confidence, and perhaps most of all, not enjoying what I do for a living. As absurd as it sounds, a few good days could make everything all better.

This will be my fourth WSOP since moving to Vegas in 2005. Here are some stats from my first three series:

2007 - Eight events, two cashes, +$82,282.
2008 - 23 events, three cashes, -$38,252.
2009 - 21 events, zero cashes, -$52,500.

Totals - 52 events, five cashes, -$8,470, -6.3% ROI.

tl;dr

2010-04-30T20:40:00.000-07:00

After five years of playing poker professionally, I think I have the clearest view yet of my overall ability and place in the poker world. When I moved to Vegas in 2005, it was with the intention of grinding low stakes live cash simply because I didn’t know that better options existed. I knew I was decent enough to make a living, but respected the fact that I wasn’t anywhere near ready to play higher than 5/10, both in terms of my skill level and bankroll. Within a year, I discovered online poker, but unfortunately settled on sit & gos as my primary focus. When PartyPoker pulled out of the U.S. market in late 2006, I started playing mostly on Stars and switched back to cash games. For the next few months, I made good money grinding 2/4 through 5/10. Although it took me over a year as a pro to figure out that online cash was where the most money was in poker, I was pulling in $200/hr and feeling good about the future.

My time as an online cash pro ended quickly when I final tabled a WSOP event in 2007 for $100k. I was hooked on tournaments, and spent the next year and a half crushing everything in sight. For the first time, I picked a form of poker and played it exclusively for more than six months. Whether it was from growing bored or finding greener pastures, I had made a habit of jumping from one thing to the next early in my career. Success and confidence kept me focused on tournaments, and in retrospect, it’s obvious that my opinions of my own ability were as inaccurate as they have ever been. When I was doing well, I felt no need to study the game and work to improve. During the few small downswings in between major scores and shortly after my upswing came to an end, I assumed my short term poor results were due to bad luck instead of leaks in my game. During this entire stretch of time, and even dating back to my first days grinding live cash, I made little to no effort to get better as a player outside of playing and gaining experience.

Unlike the vast majority of online players, I spent the early parts of my career figuring things out entirely on my own. Most people come up in the poker world with a group of friends, and that serves as a way to learn faster and develop as a player quicker. By choice, I’ve been mostly on my own since moving to Vegas, which certainly explains why I wasted so much time playing low stakes live cash and SNGs on Party. Not having a group of people to talk poker with has also stunted my growth as a player, something that makes perfect sense now but didn’t seem like a big deal back when my yearly profits were growing exponentially. Who wants to spend talking strategy and watching videos of people whose results aren’t as good as their own? As it turns out, the answer to that question is a lot of people – the same people who have surpassed me in ability and now bring my ROI down.

At this point in my career, I’ve come to a few conclusions about my own ability. Compared to other pros, I’m probably closer to average than anything else as an overall poker player. As a tournament player, I’m well above average, but that’s more to my experience and understanding of how to play 20-40 BB stacks from thousands of hours playing online tourneys. Incidentally, I still felt like I had an edge in the Bellagio $25k earlier this month, but that’s more due to the number of bad live pros in the field than anything else. Unfortunately, I’m not anywhere near rolled to play big events on a regular basis, and I have no plans to ever be a backed tournament pro. Since my bankroll and ability is best suited to play online tournaments, I’m in somewhat of a precarious spot these days. I’m one of many decent tournament pros. I haven’t done much to improve over the years, while the majority of my peers have been going over hands with friends and watching videos on a regular basis to get better. Even though I might be a better player now than I was in 2008 (which isn’t necessarily true), I haven’t improved much if at all. At the same time, the fish have gotten less fishier, the average casual player has gotten decent, and the decent reg has become a tough opponent. Edges are smaller, which decreases most players’ bottom lines while increasing everyone’s variance.

I remember reading a post on 2+2 a while back talking about the difference between top tier pros and the far larger group of second tier players. One of the points made focused on the top tier players’ ability to withstand downswings and get out of them quicker because of all the little things they did adding up to make a big difference. Those are the things I feel like I’m missing, and my independent nature has kept me from plugging those tiny leaks through studying and going over hands with people. I’ve been making an effort to reverse those trends lately, and I’m not sure what to make of the results. Every time I go over a HH with someone whose game I respect, I end up feeling like I’m doing just about everything right. When I watch videos, I rarely see something that stands out as completely foreign to me. That doesn’t mean that I haven’t learned anything, but the bits of useful information are rare to find and often seemingly inconsequential. Perhaps the most important thing about constantly working to improve your game is that you stay on top of the current trends, especially in online MTTs. The game is constantly evolving, and some of the best players are unsurprisingly also some of the biggest trendsetters.

I suppose the bottom line to all this is that my raw ability hasn’t been good enough to keep me winning at a good clip for a long time now. I’ve been too proud to admit it, but I need to treat poker like a job and make it a point to work harder for longer than a few weeks at a time. In the past, I’d combat a downswing by blaming bad luck and occasionally watching some videos or going over HHs with friends. As soon as my next decent score or heater rolled around, I’d forget about trying to improve and be content with my short term results. Obviously that’s a terrible long term approach, but it’s a lot easier to just assume that I was running poorly than to admit that I can’t be a great player without putting in the necessary work. The irony about all of this is that I can say with 95% certainty that if I final tabled the $25k or have a great WSOP, I’ll go back to my old ways and be content with my ability because of one or two good runs in a tournament.

As much rambling as I’ve already done in this post, I’m only halfway done explaining where I’m at as a poker player these days. When I’m running well and confident, I’m always eager to play the next Sunday, the next big event, or whatever tournament series is around the corner. When I’m losing and lacking confidence, my motivation to do anything poker related sinks like a stone. I’m apathetic towards playing, completely disinterested in studying/watching videos, and as you’ve probably figured out over the last four months, I don’t even want to write about poker. Mentally, that’s where I am right now. There’s an FTOPS going on and I don’t think I’ve played more than 20% of the events. I expect to lose, and while I pride myself on not letting my attitude affect my play, it isn’t the least bit enjoyable to grind online when your confidence is low and you look forward to the end of the session. As ridiculous as this sounds, I miss being able to not work particularly hard, make a ton of money and feel great about my ability as a poker player… but why wouldn’t I? Making the transition from effortlessly crushing everything to working hard to be one of many decent pros is something I’ve been reluctant to embark on, mostly because I’ve spent the last year and a half hoping that my struggles have been due to bad luck and nothing else.

Hopefully this post doesn’t come across as me looking for sympathy. I’ve done enough feeling sorry for myself over the last few months as it is, and someone on the outside looking in would probably think that I’m pretty pathetic for ending up in this spot. I can’t count the number of days this year that I’ve set my alarm at night with the intention to grind a full session the next day, only to change my mind in the morning, sleep until noon and do nothing all day. Now that baseball season has started, I can’t even convince myself to play FTOPS events instead of sitting on my couch and watch the Phillies play. Maybe all this is a sign that I’m finally ready to move on from tournaments, but every time I’ve shifted my focus in the past it was due to finding something that I liked more or thought was more profitable. Since I can’t get paid to lounge around all day feeding my dogs watermelon and watching baseball, I’m not quite sure what I’ll be doing in a few months. There’s no doubt that I could refocus, treat poker like a job and work really hard to claim my share of equity in the tournament world, but not only am I uncertain that I’d want to do that, it would be tougher than usual due to some changes in my personal life.

Conveniently, my time as a tournament pro has coincided with Mark spending a lot more time around the house than usual. After quitting his job in early 2008, he spent some time playing poker before going back to school and becoming a full time student taking online classes. That allowed me to travel at will, play very long hours online, and be comfortable knowing that our dogs and things around the house would be taken care of. The hours required to play tournaments are much more rigid than other forms of poker, and there’s no doubt that my life has been a lot easier because of Mark’s contributions (and cooking). However, his schedule has recently become far busier, and he’ll be juggling a lot of time consuming activities in the near future. Although his change in schedule won’t make a huge difference in my ability to construct any kind of schedule I want, it will limit my ability to play full day sessions online from time to time. I’m not the least bit concerned by this, mostly because I’m thrilled by Mark’s recent success but also because the kind of compulsive grinding that so many top online tourney pros seem to excel at is something that tends to end poorly when I give it a shot.

The WSOP begins at the end of May, and despite what this post might suggest, I’m looking forward to the circus beginning and hopefully still feel that enthusiasm when the main event kicks off. In the meantime, my daily schedule seems to be influenced equally by what FTOPS/SCOOP events are running and my attitude towards poker on any given day. I’m definitely going to play a bunch of SCOOP events, which will keep me playing at least somewhat regularly until mid-May. Hopefully I’ll convince myself to spend some downtime watching videos as well. After the WSOP ends, I have absolutely no clue how I’ll feel about playing tournaments, poker in general, or what my bankroll will look like. All three will probably be directly correlated with my results, and if things end up as I expect (poorly), my future as a poker player will be very cloudy beginning in mid-July. I don’t want to quit playing tournaments entirely, but I think the last year and a half have proven that I’m not mentally equipped to be a full time tourney pro unless I can make major improvements to my game or find a way to never run bad for extended periods of time. However, there’s nothing else that I’m eager to learn, so I feel like I’m kind of at a crossroads in my poker career. Perhaps I’ll try to learn a bunch of new games and see if anything piques my interest. Regardless, none of this will matter until after the WSOP, and I could always get lucky and win enough to pretend like my thoughts in this post never existed.

Perhaps the most valuable thing I’ve learned from going through such an extended rough patch is that other than making money, nothing is more important than enjoying what I’m doing. I managed to become an adult without having to ever get a real job, I have the freedom to do whatever I want on any given day, and yet I’ve spent the majority of the last year letting poker drag me down. A lot of that is my own fault for all of the reasons stated in this post, but whether the solution is work to improve (and thus enjoy poker again), or take some time off to remind myself how lucky I am, there’s no doubt that my previous approach of mindlessly grinding and hoping for the best was a bad idea. After the WSOP, I’m going to do my best to not fall into that pattern again. Maybe I’ll watch a certain amount of videos each week and mix in some cash games to help keep my game fresh, or maybe I’ll switch things up entirely, discover how fun razz is (this almost certainly won’t happen), and only play tournaments a few Sundays each month. Who knows. What I do know is that the last seventeen months have been disheartening to say the least, but it might turn out to be a good thing if I use it as motivation and a reason to work hard and learn to enjoy playing poker again.

A few of you guys have requested updates and a recap of the $25k, but I’m sure the overall tone of this post has done enough to suggest that things haven’t been going well lately. The $25k wasn’t much different than any other WPT event, with the exception of a really good structure and a tougher than usual field. The most notable thing that happened during the tournament was when on a break, a number of players standing on the balcony outside the Fontana Lounge got hit by something resembling a tidal wave thanks to the unpleasant combination of a Bellagio fountain show and forty MPH winds. I stayed dry but busted out a few hours later on day three with around fifty players left. As far as online goes, I haven’t been playing much lately, which could be a good thing considering my results over the last two months. My overall profits are down to $21k, almost $50k lower than my peak after a nice start to the year. As pathetic as it sounds, I think I’ll be happy to still be up money for the year after the WSOP ends. I know that I’m massively +EV in most of the SCOOP and WSOP events I’ll be playing, but saying that is a lot easier than translating it into results.

WPT Championship '10

2010-04-15T17:22:00.000-07:00

This Sunday, the Bellagio will host the WPT Championship, an event that I've never given serious consideration to playing in the past due to the $25k buy-in. However, I have the luxury of being required to play as a result of my win last July in a Bellagio Cup prelim. The thought of dropping what amounts to half of the average U.S. household income on a single tournament seems ridiculous, but I don't have the option to unregister. This event will certainly be a unique experience for me, both in terms of the level of competition and obviously the amount of money at stake. It should be a very interesting week, or at least a day or two if things don't go well.

In an attempt to exercise proper bankroll management, I've sold slightly more than half of myself to a combined nineteen people despite winning the seat. Hopefully I'll have a bunch of five and six figure checks to write next week. Because there are so many people invested in my progress, I'll be dusting off my Twitter account to post updates for anyone interested. That's why I'm updating this blog for the first time in what seems like forever - to give that heads up to the few of you who care enough to follow along.

Since I stopped writing, I've had a few people (some of who aren't even family members!) request that I return to blogging. After a couple uneventful months, my schedule will be quite busy until mid-July. Following the WPT Championship, there will be a three week stretch during which Stars and Full Tilt will both run big tournament series. Two weeks after that, the WSOP kicks into full gear, which will hopefully provide better content for the blog than last year. Although I haven't missed blogging during my brief hiatus, I'm actually looking forward to writing about something other than the monotony of grinding the same schedule of online tournaments every day. With a little bit of luck, that might even include a deep run in the $25k.

Crickets

2010-02-03T13:52:00.000-08:00

After four and a half years of writing about my poker career, I finally lost the motivation to continue blogging. I had no interest in writing about the PCA (although there wasn't much to update), and the two weeks following my trip yielded poor results. It would certainly make sense that my indifference towards updating the blog was a result of continued failures, but I've been on a nice little heater recently and still didn't care to write about my $60k week. However, since there's at least one person who requested an update, I figure I owe it to the handful of you who read this blog and have been wondering how I've been doing.

I've been experimenting with increasing my aggressiveness preflop while making my standard open a minraise once the antes kick in. There's some pretty sound logic behind the minraise, and it seems to be working well lately. Basically, if your opponents mostly fold or 3-bet to your opens (which is the case in HSMTTs), you save chips by risking less when you end up folding to further action. I've found that I get called slightly more preflop when minraising, but people seem to give up easier postflop when they only committed an extra blind in the hand. I have no numbers to back any of this up, but there are many very good players who use the minraise to their advantage, and so far it seems to be a very good approach.

After a slow first couple of weeks, my 2010 has gotten off to a pretty good start. I'm up around $39k, thanks mostly to this nice win last week:

I'm not sure how frequently I'll be updating the blog in the near future. Whether I'm winning or losing, there hasn't been much making me want to write. With that said, I'm 99.9% sure I won't stop blogging all together. Consider this a sabbatical, and hopefully I'll return with some more good news down the road.

2010

2009-12-31T16:30:00.001-08:00

I wanted to write about my plans for the upcoming year, but realized that I don't have much to say. Other than the PCA next week, Bellagio $25k (lol) and the WSOP in June, I'll be spending most of my time grinding online MTTs. At the moment, my bankroll is $150k. That isn't enough to fade another big downswing without needing to find ways to lower my variance or get backed, the latter being something I never want to do. Starting this year off well will be very important to my future as a MTT pro, and a slow first couple months will force me to reevaluate things perhaps as soon as prior to the WSOP.

For the moment, I feel very motivated to play a lot and do my best to make a bunch of money right away. Believe it or not, I've only had a winning first quarter once in my 4.5 years as a poker pro. I can think of nothing better than to reverse that trend in 2010. Between the PCA, a week in the northeast, and a quick trip to Vancouver for some Winter Olympics action, I'm going to be fairly busy in the early part of the new year. However, I'm determined to stay grinding when I'm not traveling, keep working on my game and not need to win the WPT Championship to get back to even for the year.

Happy New Year everyone!

2009 in Review

2009-12-24T13:35:00.000-08:00

At this time last year, I was brimming with confidence and eager to try and duplicate my success of the previous twelve months. My bankroll, not far removed from flirting with half a million dollars, seemed big enough to handle a schedule that included a number of big buy-in events. Even though I had closed out 2008 with my worst month to date, it seemed reasonable to make bold prop bet challenges and set lofty goals. Reaching a million in buy-ins was just a matter of volume, but doing so with a 50% ROI would prove far more difficult than I ever could have expected after clearing 100% in '08. Within four months, I had a pretty good idea that the goals I set would end up out of reach.

From January to April, my inflated confidence and bankroll took me to more stops on the tournament circuit than I had been before. I played overseas in the Bahamas and Monte Carlo, at familiar places in Vegas, LA and Atlantic City, and even in Biloxi, a part of the country I never thought I'd visit. The life of a live tournament pro, something I could never be for an extended period of time, is exhausting but also chock full of awesome experiences. Unfortunately, you have to be backed or win money to continue playing in big events. Even mixing in a busy schedule of online MTTs wasn't enough to keep me in the black, and I finished April down six figures on the year. Since going pro in 2005, three of my worst five months came in succession from February to April. With the World Series around the corner, I was in desperate need of a big score to replenish my bankroll.

In the second WSOP event I played, I took a bad beat in a huge pot early on day two to finish just shy of the money. That was the last time I had the luxury of making it through the first day of an event. All told, I played 23 tournaments without a single cash. Bricking everything during the most important month of a tournament player's year is hard to swallow, but having that come on the tail end of a half-year slump is enough to test just about anyone. In fact, my frustration and insufficient bankroll limited me to a grand total of six live tournaments through the end of the year. I hardly missed playing them.

While the WSOP mercifully reached its end, I hit a much needed upswing from late June to August. My online downswing, having peaked at $109k, quickly disappeared thanks to a number of big wins on Stars. More importantly, I won a Bellagio Cup prelim for $123k, enough to put me in the black for good in 2009 and help erase my total downswing, once as high as $187k. When I first started playing poker, I could have never imagined dealing in figures this high. After two years of focusing on tournaments, six figure wins and downswings seem almost commonplace. In contrast, the last four months of 2009 turned out to be very nondescript.

Like the first third of the year, I didn't have many big cashes to keep my bankroll trending upwards. Unlike those earlier months, I barely played live at all and only played one $5k+ event. My results were unspectacular and I closed out the year down $30k from September through December. Overall, my yearly profit finished at $29,472, nearly $700k less than I made in 2008. One year ago today, I would have honestly said that making anything under than $250k would be a disappointment. Having spent the past year regressing to the mean, I've learned more than I ever cared to about variance in tournament poker. Ironically enough, I've also learned a ton about tournament strategy in the same time period. I know more about MTTs than I ever have, and yet I feel like duplicating my past successes is almost impossible. For better or worse, that's the nature of playing tournaments for a living. I'm a very good player, although 2009 has humbled me into realizing that I'm not nearly as good as I once thought. Results can be misleading, and it's almost funny to think that I was considering playing the $40k WSOP event when it was first announced. In retrospect, that event alone would have been enough to put me in the red for the year. Of course, it also could have been the tournament to help me reach my $500k goal.

* * *

Total Buy-ins: $790,673
Total Prizes: $821,486
Total Profit: $30,813
ROI: 3.90%
Hours Played: 1,402.5
Profit/Hour: $21.97

The amount of buy-ins doesn't include the handful of times I sold pieces of myself in big events. The $31k profit is strictly from tournaments, a slightly higher figure than my total profit due to some miscellaneous losses. The majority of my buy-ins ended up coming from online, a factor of my ever shrinking bankroll and lack of desire to play live for the last half of the year. Perhaps fittingly, the exact amount of my online buy-ins came out to $666,000. Despite spending far more online, my profits were almost even in both venues.

Monthly Profit Graph:

Between that $666k figure and this graph appearing to be giving me the finger, I think 2008 was destined to be miserable from the start.

Five Biggest Cashes:

1) $122,995 (July 3rd, 1st, Bellagio Cup $2,100)
2) $52,759 (Jan. 25, 2nd, Stars $109r)
3) $47,724 (June 21st, 1st, Stars $215 Second Chance)
4) $33,880 (May 24th, 1st, Stars $109r)
5) $22,468 (Sep. 1st, 1st, Stars $109r)

* * *

As 2009 comes to an end, I'm in surprisingly good spirits despite a year that I can best describe as frustrating, mentally challenging, and even more frustrating. Perhaps taking the last two weeks off has helped me to see the bigger picture. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but unfortunately it does nothing to help rebuild a bankroll. In the past two months, I've spent more time studying, watching videos and going over hand histories than ever before, and my confidence is in decent shape heading into 2010. I'm going to keep studying, play a bunch and do my best to start the new year off well. I'm hoping for the best, but as the past two years have taught me, nothing is more important to short term results than variance... and no matter how much you've played, the short term is always longer than you think.

December '09 Recap

2009-12-20T22:10:00.000-08:00

Total Buy-ins: $13,619
Total Prizes: $27,538
Total Profit: $13,919
ROI: 102.20%
Hours Played: 39
Profit/Hour: $356.89

Daily Profit Graph:

Three Biggest Cashes:

1) $19,258 (Dec. 6th, 3rd, UB $215)
2) $2,530 (Dec. 2nd, 9th, Bellagio $1k)
3) $1,984 (Dec. 6th, 8th, Tilt $55 cubed)

What's got two thumbs and is content to close out the year with a $14k month and three weeks off? This guy.

Winter Break

2009-12-09T14:08:00.001-08:00

I have a memory of one particular afternoon during my freshman year of college that is equally vivid and random. I had just finished my last final of the semester, took the T back to my dorm and blasted this song as soon as I walked into my room:

My long term memory isn't very good, but I was in such a great mood that afternoon that I still remember what I put on the stereo. That's how I feel right now. The Bellagio $1,590 prelim was today, and I busted out after a half hour making a completely indefensible play. On my way home, I decided that I was going to shut it down for the rest of 2009 and it felt awesome. Since my last post, I've made enough to probably cover my tax write-offs, so I have an extra incentive to call it a year. Also, my desktop started acting up again last night, so I'll be taking it into the shop in search of a permanent solution. With my live poker schedule finished and not being able to use my dual monitor setup for the near future, there aren't too many reasons to look forward to playing poker until next year. Throw in some Sundays watching football on the couch and extra time to watch videos and I think the next three weeks will be a good break before I start grinding again in January.

I've actually had a decent amount to write about through the first week of December but haven't had the motivation to blog. A couple of those things are somewhat embarrassing, at least from my perspective. If you've been following my posts, you know I'm struggling with confidence as a result of my year long breakeven stretch. Given how much I've accomplished in poker, confidence really shouldn't be an issue. Still, it's hard to think that I'm doing things right when I keep losing. In an attempt to keep a positive frame of mind, I printed out the handful of articles about me from various sites and taped them to the wall in front of my computer. Perhaps even more narcissistic, I put my WSOP Circuit ring on my desk, right next to a trophy and the two watches I've received from winning tournaments at the Bellagio and Caesar's. In essence, I created a shrine to myself that I can't help but notice when I'm playing online. If I heard about somebody else doing this, I'd think it was incredibly pathetic and lame. It seems like a good idea though, as long as I'm doing it to boost confidence and not to brag about what I've won in the past.

Based on the obviously insufficient sample size of three sessions this month, I can confirm that the strategy to boost my confidence was a success. I've played two Tuesday nights with little success, but my first and only Sunday session of the month went well. I played 28 tourneys, cashed in eight, had two final tables and finished the day up $18k. I'm sure it was a coincidence, but I made a point to skip the $500 on UB, $163r on Tilt, and the $700 PCA sat and $215r on Stars. I wanted to lower my variance to slow my descent to being breakeven on the year, and also figured it couldn't hurt to spend a Sunday playing fewer tables with easier competition. My third place finish in the UB $200k brought my yearly profits to $32k, enough to ensure that I wouldn't have a losing year. That was a nice feeling.

I've played a few Five Diamond prelims at the Bellagio this month as well. Even though I final tabled the first one, I bricked the other two and lost money overall. When I don't play live for extended periods of time, it has a negative effect on my game. It's hard to explain why, but there are aspects of live poker that are so different from online that you almost forget about unless you avoid taking months off from live MTTs at a time. At the final table of the $1k, I jammed 21 blinds from the button with A2o and busted ninth when the small blind woke up with QQ. I could write a ton about that hand, but the bottom line is that while my shove can be proven to be +EV, it isn't +$EV and is certainly suboptimal. Raise/folding is far superior, something that I'm obviously aware of but for some reason chose to ignore in the heat of the moment. Those mistakes rarely happen when I've been playing in the casinos more than once or twice over a five month span.

Speaking of playing live, and going back to embarrassing myself, I decided to start wearing sunglasses at the poker table. In the past, I've sort of hid my eyes underneath my hat when involved in a big pot. I always felt more comfortable not letting my opponents look at my eyes, but it also meant that I couldn't observe other people during key moments. Thinking it might help me feel more comfortable at the table as well, I brought my sunglasses to the Venetian $2,500 last month. I couldn't see a damn thing. Wearing dark glass in a poorly lit room is a bad idea when you're playing hands for thousands of dollars in equity. After realizing I couldn't tell the $100 and $500 chips apart, I decided to step up the lameness and invest in - you guessed it - poker sunglasses. Sigh. It pains me to have become that guy, but I've been wearing them at the Bellagio and am very happy with my decision. I like being able to pick up subtle things about my opponents without having them know I'm watching them (yes, I realize that sounds creepy). When the $25k rolls around in April and I find myself at a table with someone like Phil Ivey, I'll be glad to know that it'll be at least somewhat harder for him to see into my soul.

November '09 Recap

2009-11-30T12:13:00.000-08:00

Total Buy-ins: $73,339
Total Prizes: $48,567
Total Profit: -$24,772
ROI: -33.78%
Hours Played: 118
Profit/Hour: -$209.94

Daily Profit Graph:

Three Biggest Cashes:

1) $15,130 (Nov. 9th, 1st, Stars $33r PCA Satellite)
2) $14,833 (Nov. 14th, 2nd, Stars $55r)
3) $2,938 (Nov. 7th, 9th, Tilt $322)

"I can't wait for it to end," Hamels said of his tumultuous season. "It's been mentally draining. ... You can't wait for a fresh start." I can sympathize.

I woke up yesterday (Sunday) and didn't feel like playing. There was a $1k Bellagio Five Diamond prelim today and the same thing happened. It seems like I'll end up playing somewhat sparingly for the rest of the year and look to start over in Jaunary. Having played close to 1,400 hours already this year, I don't feel bad about lacking the drive to grind out the rest of 2009. Not playing might be a better idea than you would realize, because my yearly profits are somewhere around $14k at the moment. Ignoring the hilarity that is my $10/hour wage, there's another issue with being close to down for the year. When I win, the IRS takes a cut. When I lose, I don't get a sympathy rebate from the government. If I have another bad month and lose something like $40k, I'm on the hook for the entire $26k I lost in 2009. The closer I get to breaking even, the less I should be playing. However, I have a lot of expenses and other things I can write off this year, which means I need to clear a certain amount of profits to maximize what I can keep come tax time.

This stuff was a lot less complicated last year.

Studying, Playing, Losing

2009-11-28T17:22:00.000-08:00

In the week following my last post, I buckled down and spent a lot of time studying to improve my tournament game for the first time. I joined a training site and watched about a dozen videos from three players who have good results but noticeably different styles. One was on the aggro side, one was tight to the point where he missed some pretty easy +EV spots, and the third seemed to incorporate a nice balance between the two extremes. That style is how I feel most comfortable playing online, and I was hoping to pick up on a few things that I was flat out missing or going about the wrong way. As it turned out, it basically felt like I was watching a video of my own play.

The aggro player (achen) made a few plays that I can't disagree with, but certainly choose to avoid when I'm playing. Things like jamming J5 suited with eighteen blinds over a late position raise and call, flatting raises in early position with AJ and KQ type hands, and calling a button shove with Q4 suited with effective stacks of ten blinds. Are those plays correct and I'm missing out on equity by not making them? I don't really think you can definitively say so one way or the other. Those are the kinds of things that the more aggro players do that allow them to get more action when they have hands. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of pushing edges that might not even be there.

The tight player (SirWatts) made a few videos that surprised me. His game seemed like it was more suited for a few years ago before people knew about late position and blind vs. blind shoving ranges. He open folded some hands that were definitely correct to shove and generally played a much more conservative game than the vast majority of MTT pros. I can't say his style doesn't work, because he's made a ton of money using it and was actually the one person to have a better combined POY+OPOY ranking for '08 than myself. Still, it was weird seeing him fold hand after hand that I would consider to be pretty typical opens or shoves.

Charder30 was the person whose videos I was most looking forward to watch. He's been very successful both live and online, has consistent results, and plays a style similar to mine. He doesn't make a habit of spewing or making absurd plays like some of the other high profile winning MTT players, and I'd be surprised if he misses many correct shoves or resteal spots in any given session. In watching his videos, I was surprised to see how similar our approach was to almost every hand. His opening ranges in the various stages of a tournament were close to mine, and I can't recall a single hand that I would have played completely different. In short, there wasn't much I saw to suggest that his impressive results are the result of him doing things significantly different than myself.

Having spent a good amount of time watching videos last week, I'm pretty sure there isn't all that much for me to learn from them going forward. I still want to join a few other sites and get as much out of them as I can, but as far as tournament strategy goes, I can't identify any glaring things I've been doing wrong. I even spent a few hours going over my $55r hand history with someone who has a very good grasp of tournament poker and there were only a select few hands we disagreed on. None of those were of particular importance to overall MTT strategy.

With renewed confidence and actually looking forward to a Sunday for the first time in a while, I got ready to grind last weekend and hoped for good results. Things couldn't have gone worse. A few hands into the first two tourneys of the day, my internet connection went out. It took me a half hour of fiddling around to realize it wasn't going to fix itself, and I was stuck playing on my laptop for the entire day. Not getting to use my desktop isn't the end of the world, but it limits my ability to multitable and definitely causes me to enjoy playing a full schedule less. When the day had ended, I had two small cashes and an $8k loss in the books. I did manage a deep run in the $75k on Tilt, but made what turned out to be a terrible call based on a timing tell that I was almost certain meant my opponent had AK (he had KK).

Monday was the Venetian Deepstack $2,500 main event. I finished day one sixth in chips out of 82 remaining players. I was very happy with how I played on the first day. On day two, I returned with almost 170 blinds and a great table draw. That was the last good news of the day. 27 got paid and I finished 32nd. Apart from one pretty awesome bluff I pulled, the rest of the day consisted of me getting my money in ahead and losing. It was painful. Perhaps the most telling hand of the day was when a four was exposed before my action in the cutoff. I opened with A4o and the big blind defended. He check/called two streets on a 2353 board with A7 (no flush draws), and binked one of the two remaining fours on the river to chop the pot. On my final hand, the button open jammed over thirty blinds from the button with K8 to beat my AQ.

I haven't played since then but it seems Mark was able to fix my computer which means I'll be back on the grind Sunday. If I make it through the day without a bunch of soul crushing beats or my computer inexplicably losing internet multiple times I'll consider it a success.

After the Venetian tournament, I was in a pretty miserable mood. The structure for the tournament was great, which means I played about twenty hours just to bubble on multiple bad beats. Still, Thanksgiving was around the corner, and I didn't want to let poker ruin the holiday. Looking for some way to explain the past year given that I still can't identify what I'm doing wrong, I conducted a quick research experiment. I took the pocketfives.com rankings from just over a year ago and looked at all the players' ROIs for 2009 on both Stars and Tilt. Overall, I found numbers on 93 people (including myself), and was pretty surprised at the results.

Only eight players on the list had ROIs of 50% or better on both sites. Ten players had negative ROIs on both. Ten! Currently, I'm at 23% on Stars and -17% on Tilt for 2009. I assumed that would be near the bottom of the list, but there are a number of very good players with similar stats. I never thought it was possible for a good player with decent volume to break even for a full year let alone lose money, but it appears that online MTT variance is just that insane. If I told you my stats this year resembled those of eisenhower1, dipthrong, tomgus456, mendieta19, johnnybax, purplepils99, bkice, and anbessa9, you'd probably assume I was having a good year without checking anyone's stats. As it turns out, some of those guys aren't even breaking even. That seems crazy to me. Maybe it really is extreme variance that's causing me to be a few bad Sundays away from having a losing 2009.

I'm not willing to attribute all my struggles to running bad, but I've never been more confident that variance really is crazy enough to cause a good player to put up poor results for such a long period of time. As I said earlier, I still plan on watching videos and working to improve my game while I'm not playing. I'm also well aware that I play worse when I'm frustrated and lacking confidence, two things that can be tempered by reminding myself that I'm a better player now than I was when I was booking huge months regularly last year.

Tournament poker is not for the faint of heart. I'm lucky to have avoided this side of variance until after experiencing what it feels like to run better than just about everyone else for an extended period of time. I didn't realize how lucky I was last year, but I certainly won't take it for granted if I can catch another one of those year-long rushes again. Until then, it seems like all I can do is let variance kick me around and make sure that I'm plugging any leaks by reviewing hands and watching videos from time to time. Hopefully it ends up being that simple.

A New Approach

2009-11-16T16:01:00.000-08:00

Sometime in the middle of this year, when my downswing was approaching six months and $200k, I seriously entertained the thought of joining a few training sites for the first time. It wasn't something I had really considered before for a handful of reasons, the most obvious being that I had been killing MTTs for the majority of my career as a tournament pro. If it ain't broke, why fix it? Even though I don't have a close circle of poker playing friends to discuss things with, it seemed unnecessary to watch videos and study other people's play when I was doing better than most of them at the time. Nothing about that thought process seemed out of the ordinary.

When I started to really struggle and my confidence suffered, I was still hesitant to do much more than work through my issues. Playing through a downswing is often times the best thing a poker player can do, but that approach loses its effectiveness when the downswing is the result of one's own ability rather than only variance. As I've learned, the most likely outcome of trying to play through a rough patch while making suboptimal decisions is more of the same. I'm not winning and I don't know why, but I'm almost positive there is a reason other than bad luck. Not studying, crunching numbers and actively trying to plug leaks and improve is reasonable when things are going well. After a year of breaking even, I'm no longer too proud to admit that I need to make a serious effort to improve my tournament game. It used to seem ridiculous to even consider watching videos of people that I thought I was better than. Now that my opinion of my own game has changed, I'm willing to see what I can learn from my peers.

Ideally, I'll spend the next few months playing live more, online less, and using a good chunk of my free time to thoroughly evaluate and better my game. There aren't any big events online until February, and I like the idea of studying instead of grinding the same handful of small tournaments during the week for what has become a barely positive expectation. I haven't decided on which training sites to join, although I'm willing to take my time to explore all of them to find as much useful information as I can.

In between all of this stuff online, I have a relatively busy schedule of live poker coming up. There's a $2,500 at the Venetian next week followed by another Bellagio series. Lower buy-ins for the prelims should help to increase the field sizes, which is something the Bellagio has needed to do for a while. I also want to keep my live game sharp for the PCA in January, which I'll be attending for the third straight year after winning a package last week. If I haven't played live for a while, I tend to feel somewhat uncomfortable at the table for a little while. I don't want that to happen in a $10k, and I certainly want to avoid that situation for the $25k WPT Championship in April that I'll be playing. Throw in the '10 WSOP a few months later, and I have plenty of reasons to work on my tournament game and keep it sharp through next summer. However, if my results haven't changed and my efforts to get better end up being in vain, I doubt I'll continue playing tournaments regularly going forward. Hopefully it doesn't come to that, because being humbled by a bad year is bad enough without going broke in the months following.

Two days ago, I took second in the Stars $55r for $15k. I was going to upload the full hand history to Google docs in case anyone wanted to check it out, but more because I liked the idea of documenting my play in a tournament right before I set out to overhaul my game. Google docs was giving me problems, so I'll just paste the it at the end of this blog. Who knows, maybe a few months down the road I'll look back at that HH and identify a number of things that were wrong with my execution. Actually, I'm really hoping that I'm making some obvious errors. If it is that simple, it shouldn't be too hard to tweak my play and get back to where I want to be.

Before I clutter this page with a thousand hands, here are a few graphs I made earlier today. They don't really fit in anywhere on the blog, but they certainly help show how my results in 2009 are almost definitely the result of more than bad luck.

Live MTTs (2008):

Live MTTs (2009):

Online MTTs (2008):

Online MTTs (2009):

Apparently this site won't let me upload a full hand history without breaking down. Oh well. If anyone is interested in the HH or wants to go over some hands, let me know.

October '09 Recap

2009-10-31T11:22:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-18T20:50:00.001-07:00

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

2009-10-02T16:53:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-23T19:06:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-18T10:13:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-15T14:58:00.001-07:00

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

2009-09-12T13:46:00.000-07:00

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.

Close, But...

2009-09-10T10:40:00.000-07:00

I'm a few flips away from having a great month. Instead, I'm up pennies through my first $56k in buyins. I've been getting deep with surprising consistency, but can't manage to turn that into worthwhile results. Yesterday was a good example of why tournament poker is all about winning and not just recording a number of marginal cashes, such as...

18th in the Tilt 50 cubed.
7th in the Stars $55r.
16th in the Tllt $216 turbo.
15th in the Stars $109r.
14th in the Stars $320.

You might think that those small cashes would add up to a decent day, but I finished my session up just $1,800. It would have been better to brick all but one of those and book a win. Monday was fairly similar. I had a 6th, 7th and 11th en route to a slightly profitable day. It isn't like I'm playing passively in an attempt to survive. I just run good right up until that last flip, cooler or beat that causes me to miss a substantial cash. In thinking about it last night, I realized that those key hands have been the main difference between my difficult '09 and fantastic '08. That's poker, I suppose.

The WCOOP has been very forgettable so far. I'm busting out in all kinds of fun ways. There's the inexplicable FPS type:

PokerStars Game #32605536862: Tournament #200909014, $300+$20 USD Mixed Hold'em (Hold'em No Limit) - Level VI (10/25) - 2009/09/08 15:28:50 ET
Table '200909014 24' 6-max Seat #5 is the button
Seat 1: bfineman (5105 in chips)
Seat 2: mattidm (4972 in chips)
Seat 3: Fropsy (6890 in chips)
Seat 4: juanmaceiras (5258 in chips)
Seat 5: brad1906 (4880 in chips)
Seat 6: vakAAttack (4055 in chips)
vakAAttack: posts small blind 10
bfineman: posts big blind 25
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bfineman [Kc Js]
mattidm: folds
Fropsy: folds
juanmaceiras: raises 50 to 75
brad1906: folds
vakAAttack: folds
bfineman: calls 50
*** FLOP *** [3h 8d 6c]
bfineman: checks
juanmaceiras: bets 100
bfineman: raises 225 to 325
juanmaceiras: raises 400 to 725
bfineman: raises 1100 to 1825
juanmaceiras: calls 1100
*** TURN *** [3h 8d 6c] [Jc]
bfineman: checks
juanmaceiras: bets 1025
bfineman: raises 2180 to 3205 and is all-in
juanmaceiras: calls 2180
*** RIVER *** [3h 8d 6c Jc] [3d]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
bfineman: shows [Kc Js] (two pair, Jacks and Threes)
juanmaceiras: shows [8s 8c] (a full house, Eights full of Threes)
juanmaceiras collected 10220 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 10220 | Rake 0
Board [3h 8d 6c Jc 3d]
Seat 1: bfineman (big blind) showed [Kc Js] and lost with two pair, Jacks and Threes
Seat 2: mattidm folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: Fropsy folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: juanmaceiras showed [8s 8c] and won (10220) with a full house, Eights full of Threes
Seat 5: brad1906 (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: vakAAttack (small blind) folded before Flop

...and the OMG FML mash the keyboard in frustration type:

PokerStars Game #32618666335: Tournament #200909016, $1000+$50 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level IV (50/100) - 2009/09/08 21:15:18 ET
Table '200909016 108' 9-max Seat #5 is the button
Seat 1: roeik (12440 in chips)
Seat 2: Pokerl)eviL (7070 in chips)
Seat 3: JEFFREG (12050 in chips)
Seat 4: DiPollo (11227 in chips)
Seat 5: davdav23 (10240 in chips)
Seat 6: philbort (8490 in chips)
Seat 7: bfineman (6560 in chips)
Seat 8: IveGotToejam (12483 in chips)
Seat 9: dapalma150 (9440 in chips)
roeik: posts the ante 10
Pokerl)eviL: posts the ante 10
JEFFREG: posts the ante 10
DiPollo: posts the ante 10
davdav23: posts the ante 10
philbort: posts the ante 10
bfineman: posts the ante 10
IveGotToejam: posts the ante 10
dapalma150: posts the ante 10
philbort: posts small blind 50
bfineman: posts big blind 100
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bfineman [7h 7c]
IveGotToejam: folds
dapalma150: folds
roeik: raises 200 to 300
Pokerl)eviL: calls 300
JEFFREG: folds
DiPollo: folds
davdav23: folds
philbort: folds
bfineman: calls 200
*** FLOP *** [7d Td Jc]
bfineman: checks
roeik: bets 400
Pokerl)eviL: calls 400
bfineman: raises 1400 to 1800
roeik: raises 5300 to 7100
Pokerl)eviL: folds
bfineman: calls 4450 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (850) returned to roeik
*** TURN *** [7d Td Jc] [Qh]
*** RIVER *** [7d Td Jc Qh] [Ks]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
bfineman: shows [7h 7c] (three of a kind, Sevens)
roeik: shows [Qc Qd] (three of a kind, Queens)
roeik collected 13940 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 13940 | Rake 0
Board [7d Td Jc Qh Ks]
Seat 1: roeik showed [Qc Qd] and won (13940) with three of a kind, Queens
Seat 2: Pokerl)eviL folded on the Flop
Seat 3: JEFFREG folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: DiPollo folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: davdav23 (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: philbort (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 7: bfineman (big blind) showed [7h 7c] and lost with three of a kind, Sevens
Seat 8: IveGotToejam folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: dapalma150 folded before Flop (didn't bet)

Ten more days before WCOOP season ends. Football season begins in eight long hours, and I'm excited as usual. Today should really be a national holiday. I'm in a few fantasy leagues for decent amounts of money with other poker players this year. Hopefully they'll go better than last year, when I was deep in the Bike $10k and had a friend of mine draft a team that included Matt Hasselbeck, Laurence Maroney, Braylon Edwards, Joeseph Addai, and a number of other guys who wouldn't have cracked Temple's starting lineup by the end of the season.

I was at a $30r table the other day when someone I didn't recognize began chatting up a guy named PureCash25. I don't know a lot about PureCash other than that he plays HSMTTs a fair amount and absolutely crushes the highest stakes HU SNGs. The other guy kept complementing him, praising his results and telling PureCash how much respect he had for his results. When the rebuy period ended, this conversation took place:

Melza34: no add on no money
PureCash25: ill send u 30 for it
Melza34: sponsor?
PureCash25: no
PureCash25: gift

I thought that was a really cool and generous thing to do. $30 means pretty much nothing to people playing thousands of dollars in buyins each day, but it really made the other guy's day (ignoring the fact that he didn't get the transfer in time and still couldn't add on). There's a big difference between railbird beggars soliciting donations and just being friendly at the tables. The other guy obviously didn't think he was going to get money out of complementing someone he looked up to, which made the whole thing nice to watch. In contrast, there's a guy who goes from table to table asking the players to help support a broke rapper. When someone tells him they'll give $5 for him to rap, he just pastes a prewritten (and very unimpressive) couple lines in the chatbox. I hate that guy.

One Weak

2009-09-08T10:13:00.000-07:00

Here are some quick stats for the first week of this crazy month:

89.5 hours played
215 MTTs
40 cashes
6 final tables
$42,278 in buyins
$7,342 profit

The past week has been pretty rough with the exception of my $109r win. Sunday was particularly gruesome. I spent $9,200 in 35 tournaments, had one small cash and finished the day with a -96% ROI. Not particularly good timing given how huge all the fields were. For the rest of the week, I cashed about 22% of the time, which is abnormally high over a 180 tournament span. It would have been nice to keep that going on Sunday. I'm also finding myself busting out of tons of tourneys with two tables left. There have already been eight times when I've finished either 11th or 17th. This was one of them (note the stack sizes of the shover and blinds):

PokerStars Game #32572509535: Tournament #193236354, $100+$9 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level XIX (2500/5000) - 2009/09/07 18:12:06 ET
Table '193236354 11' 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: mussiealmelo (164669 in chips)
Seat 2: bfineman (141005 in chips)
Seat 3: Kuconi (221178 in chips)
Seat 5: Hackeran (138062 in chips)
Seat 6: CMBurns04 (318911 in chips)
Seat 7: daskalos20 (184376 in chips)
mussiealmelo: posts the ante 500
bfineman: posts the ante 500
Kuconi: posts the ante 500
Hackeran: posts the ante 500
CMBurns04: posts the ante 500
daskalos20: posts the ante 500
bfineman: posts small blind 2500
Kuconi: posts big blind 5000
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bfineman [Kc Kd]
Hackeran: folds
CMBurns04: folds
daskalos20: folds
mussiealmelo: raises 159169 to 164169 and is all-in
bfineman: calls 138005 and is all-in
Kuconi: folds
Uncalled bet (23664) returned to mussiealmelo
*** FLOP *** [7d 5c 8s]
*** TURN *** [7d 5c 8s] [6h]
*** RIVER *** [7d 5c 8s 6h] [8c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
bfineman: shows [Kc Kd] (two pair, Kings and Eights)
mussiealmelo: shows [5h 5d] (a full house, Fives full of Eights)
mussiealmelo collected 289010 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 289010 | Rake 0
Board [7d 5c 8s 6h 8c]
Seat 1: mussiealmelo (button) showed [5h 5d] and won (289010) with a full house, Fives full of Eights
Seat 2: bfineman (small blind) showed [Kc Kd] and lost with two pair, Kings and Eights
Seat 3: Kuconi (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 5: Hackeran folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: CMBurns04 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 7: daskalos20 folded before Flop (didn't bet)

Physically, I feel like I'm holding up alright considering that I've been staring at a computer screen for more than half the past week with very few breaks in between. I am finding it increasingly harder to get out of bed in the morning. There's a good chance that I'll be quite worn down by the end of the month, but I'm committed to finishing what I started. I might not want to play online ever again, but at least I'll have done something pretty epic along the way.

Here's my favorite hand from the past few days, courtesy of WSOP legend Dennis Phillips:

PokerStars Game #32584271673: Tournament #193236843, $150+$12 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level XIII (600/1200) - 2009/09/08 0:29:32 ET
Table '193236843 66' 9-max Seat #8 is the button
Seat 1: D. Phillips (9921 in chips)
Seat 2: PageUpV (26414 in chips)
Seat 3: AreTheseUtz (32916 in chips)
Seat 4: bfineman (31686 in chips)
Seat 5: ZEliminatorZ (4832 in chips)
Seat 6: hechtemichl7 (38664 in chips)
Seat 7: #1kykyfan (37304 in chips)
Seat 8: pstarfish (38064 in chips)
Seat 9: tdw9750 (69600 in chips)
D. Phillips: posts the ante 125
PageUpV: posts the ante 125
AreTheseUtz: posts the ante 125
bfineman: posts the ante 125
ZEliminatorZ: posts the ante 125
hechtemichl7: posts the ante 125
#1kykyfan: posts the ante 125
pstarfish: posts the ante 125
tdw9750: posts the ante 125
tdw9750: posts small blind 600
D. Phillips: posts big blind 1200
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bfineman [Ac Tc]
PageUpV: folds
AreTheseUtz: folds
D. Phillips said, "same job"
bfineman: raises 1672 to 2872
ZEliminatorZ: folds
hechtemichl7: folds
#1kykyfan: folds
pstarfish: folds
tdw9750: folds
D. Phillips: calls 1672
*** FLOP *** [3h 5h 2h]
D. Phillips: bets 6924 and is all-in
bfineman: calls 6924
*** TURN *** [3h 5h 2h] [7c]
*** RIVER *** [3h 5h 2h 7c] [Qd]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
D. Phillips: shows [4d Jd] (high card Queen)
bfineman: shows [Ac Tc] (high card Ace)
bfineman collected 21317 from pot
#1kykyfan said, "gg"
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 21317 | Rake 0
Board [3h 5h 2h 7c Qd]
Seat 1: D. Phillips (big blind) showed [4d Jd] and lost with high card Queen
Seat 2: PageUpV folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: AreTheseUtz folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: bfineman showed [Ac Tc] and won (21317) with high card Ace
Seat 5: ZEliminatorZ folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: hechtemichl7 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 7: #1kykyfan folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 8: pstarfish (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: tdw9750 (small blind) folded before Flop

Sunday, Sunday! SUNDAY!!

2009-09-05T22:06:00.000-07:00

Alright, so I put that phrase into google image search and found this:

A skeleton in a soapbox wearing a sombrero and drinking booze. Why not?

Starting with tomorrow, the next three Sundays will be among the biggest of the year. There are three WCOOP events on the schedule this Sunday, including the $10k. I've made a surprisingly easy decision not to play it or even attempt to sell action. If it wasn't on a Sunday, I'd really have to think about it. Obviously, I'm not rolled to play it on my own and I'm no longer committed to playing all the biggest MTTs under the sun. While I'm certain I could sell as much action as I wanted to make it more manageable with my bankroll, I don't want to sacrifice the ability to mass multitable on a day where every tournament will be much larger than usual. If I played the $10k, I'd want to keep myself to six tables or fewer, meaning that it would be difficult to tack on more than another few thousand in buy-ins. If I skip the $10k, I can still get to $8k or $9k very easily while retaining all of my action. Don't get me wrong, I definitely want to play in what amounts to one of the top five biggest online tourneys of the year. It just doesn't make sense to do so on a big Sunday.

Today was somewhat of a mess. I tried to manage a somewhat normal tournament schedule while participating in my annual fantasy football keeper league draft, which required far more attention than most other drafts. It didn't go particularly well. I missed the add-on in the early Stars $109r, which is something I never do. After losing most of my stack calling a bluff with a worse hand (lol), I battled back to build a big stack and make the money. Shortly after, I made a shove that most people would consider standard and busted. The problem was that it should have been a call, and I have enough experience to recognize the unique situation that presented itself. I don't have the hand history, but the short version is that a short stack pushed for a few 2.5 BBs in early position and a reg with a ~20 BB stack flatted in the cutoff. That's always a huge hand. Always. And not AQ+ huge, because those hands would want to prevent the blinds for seeing the flop for cheap. If he had good enough to call the short stack's shove, he'd be jamming his whole range from his position. The only reason he'd call is to induce more action. So I shoved, he had aces, and I realized that playing for tens of thousands of dollars while focusing more on Cedric Benson's chances for a rebound year was pretty dumb. Just like having Cedric Benson on my team.

Since winning the $100r to start the month, I haven't had anything even close to a decent score. Not counting the one tournament I'm still left in tonight, I'm stuck $12k over the last four days. That kind of thing can happen when you spend an average of $5.5k in buyins during the week I suppose. Another thing I'm realizing is that playing a full schedule almost always leaves me one tabling a small tournament I have little interest in at the end of the day. Staring at ten tables for twelve hours only to be stuck in a tournament that won't get me back to even unless I finish fourth is not particularly fun, especially after a frustrating day where nothing went right and I blew my only chance at a decent cash by shoving Q4o over the small blind's aces limp with two tables left in the Tilt $75k and then I start writing ridiculous run on sentences and maybe playing fifty hours a day for the entire month wasn't such a good idea, you know?

OK, back to sanity. Small tournaments + end of the day + less than four tables = spew time! I 3-bet Doc Sands so much in the Tilt 50/50 that I felt confident 3-bet/calling with KQ. I was right.

Seat 1: goofyking818 (9,900)
Seat 2: MrSJL (8,655)
Seat 3: Van Peltman (2,210)
Seat 4: ColdWarKid (8,065)
Seat 5: Doc Sands (9,164)
Seat 6: bmf823 (15,114)
Seat 7: hawkur (22,195)
Seat 8: To_Be_The_Man (17,727)
Seat 9: llogora (9,525)
goofyking818 antes 25
MrSJL antes 25
Van Peltman antes 25
ColdWarKid antes 25
Doc Sands antes 25
bmf823 antes 25
hawkur antes 25
To_Be_The_Man antes 25
llogora antes 25
hawkur posts the small blind of 150
To_Be_The_Man posts the big blind of 300
The button is in seat #6
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bmf823 [Qd Kd]
llogora folds
goofyking818 folds
MrSJL folds
Van Peltman folds
ColdWarKid folds
Doc Sands has 15 seconds left to act
Doc Sands raises to 720
bmf823 has 15 seconds left to act
bmf823 raises to 1,987
hawkur has 15 seconds left to act
hawkur folds
To_Be_The_Man folds
Doc Sands has 15 seconds left to act
Doc Sands raises to 5,750
bmf823 raises to 15,089, and is all in
Doc Sands calls 3,389, and is all in
bmf823 shows [Qd Kd]
Doc Sands shows [Ks 8h]
Uncalled bet of 5,950 returned to bmf823
*** FLOP *** [Th 5h 6h]
*** TURN *** [Th 5h 6h] [2c]
*** RIVER *** [Th 5h 6h 2c] [Td]
bmf823 shows a pair of Tens
Doc Sands shows a pair of Tens
bmf823 wins the pot (18,953) with a pair of Tens
Doc Sands stands up
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 18,953 | Rake 0
Board: [Th 5h 6h 2c Td]
Seat 1: goofyking818 folded before the Flop
Seat 2: MrSJL folded before the Flop
Seat 3: Van Peltman folded before the Flop
Seat 4: ColdWarKid folded before the Flop
Seat 5: Doc Sands showed [Ks 8h] and lost with a pair of Tens
Seat 6: bmf823 (button) showed [Qd Kd] and won (18,953) with a pair of Tens
Seat 7: hawkur (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 8: To_Be_The_Man (big blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 9: llogora folded before the Flop

I'm one tabling that tournament at the moment. 5/52 right now. Fifth place or better and I'm up for the day!

WCOOP Madness

2009-09-03T21:53:00.000-07:00

Today marked the start of Stars' annual World Championship of Online Poker. The series features amazingly good structures and huge fields, but the best part of the WCOOP might not have anything to do with the special tournaments themselves. The early $109r on Stars usually has a ~$20k first prize on a random weekday. Today, first paid out $54k. The WCOOP causes every other tournament to blow up, and MTTs that aren't always worth playing end up with much larger prize pools.

The first event was a $215 6-max with over 8,500 runners. I got fairly deep but ended up spewing off most of my stack and finished somewhere in the 300s. Losing to coolers, bad beats and suckouts is never fun, but it bothers me like nothing else when I do something stupid to bust. Being deep in a huge tourney doesn't help that feeling either. Here's the hand I'm talking about:

PokerStars Game #32415181256: Tournament #200909001, $200+$15 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level XX (700/1400) - 2009/09/03 22:19:52 ET
Table '200909001 938' 6-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: AceSpades11 (46992 in chips)
Seat 2: gettn deep (101640 in chips)
Seat 3: bfineman (60774 in chips)
Seat 4: nickkaka (30171 in chips)
Seat 5: Levon90 (59826 in chips)
Seat 6: cfslugfest (126905 in chips)
AceSpades11: posts the ante 175
gettn deep: posts the ante 175
bfineman: posts the ante 175
nickkaka: posts the ante 175
Levon90: posts the ante 175
cfslugfest: posts the ante 175
gettn deep: posts small blind 700
bfineman: posts big blind 1400
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bfineman [4h Ac]
nickkaka: folds
Levon90: folds
cfslugfest: folds
AceSpades11: raises 1511 to 2911
gettn deep: folds
bfineman: raises 4589 to 7500
AceSpades11: calls 4589
*** FLOP *** [6h Td 4s]
bfineman: checks
AceSpades11: bets 5687
bfineman: raises 47412 to 53099 and is all-in
AceSpades11: calls 33630 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (13782) returned to bfineman
bfineman said, "nhnh"
*** TURN *** [6h Td 4s] [2d]
*** RIVER *** [6h Td 4s 2d] [Qh]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
bfineman: shows [4h Ac] (a pair of Fours)
AceSpades11: shows [As Ad] (a pair of Aces)
AceSpades11 said, "ty"
AceSpades11 collected 95384 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 95384 | Rake 0
Board [6h Td 4s 2d Qh]
Seat 1: AceSpades11 (button) showed [As Ad] and won (95384) with a pair of Aces
Seat 2: gettn deep (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 3: bfineman (big blind) showed [4h Ac] and lost with a pair of Fours
Seat 4: nickkaka folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: Levon90 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: cfslugfest folded before Flop (didn't bet)

It probably isn't as terrible as it looks, but I'm not in the mood to write about my thought process during the hand. I was playing really well up to that point, although there's a very fine line between playing well and spewing off your stack. That line is usually defined by which end of your opponents range you run in to. Here's two more interesting hands from that table, both of which could warrant a long blog post if I ever get around to it.

PokerStars Game #32413920822: Tournament #200909001, $200+$15 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level XVIII (500/1000) - 2009/09/03 21:38:40 ET
Table '200909001 938' 6-max Seat #4 is the button
Seat 1: AceSpades11 (66540 in chips)
Seat 2: gettn deep (88024 in chips)
Seat 3: bfineman (69344 in chips)
Seat 4: nickkaka (62812 in chips)
Seat 5: Levon90 (27574 in chips)
Seat 6: cfslugfest (112014 in chips)
AceSpades11: posts the ante 125
gettn deep: posts the ante 125
bfineman: posts the ante 125
nickkaka: posts the ante 125
Levon90: posts the ante 125
cfslugfest: posts the ante 125
Levon90: posts small blind 500
cfslugfest: posts big blind 1000
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bfineman [6c 6h]
AceSpades11: folds
gettn deep: folds
bfineman: raises 1727 to 2727
nickkaka: folds
Levon90: folds
cfslugfest: calls 1727
*** FLOP *** [Js 4c 7h]
cfslugfest: checks
bfineman: bets 4000
cfslugfest: calls 4000
*** TURN *** [Js 4c 7h] [6s]
cfslugfest: checks
bfineman: bets 9500
cfslugfest: calls 9500
*** RIVER *** [Js 4c 7h 6s] [5s]
cfslugfest: bets 20000
bfineman: folds
Uncalled bet (20000) returned to cfslugfest
cfslugfest collected 33704 from pot
cfslugfest: doesn't show hand
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 33704 | Rake 0
Board [Js 4c 7h 6s 5s]
Seat 1: AceSpades11 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: gettn deep folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: bfineman folded on the River
Seat 4: nickkaka (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: Levon90 (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 6: cfslugfest (big blind) collected (33704)

PokerStars Game #32414081725: Tournament #200909001, $200+$15 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level XIX (600/1200) - 2009/09/03 21:43:59 ET
Table '200909001 938' 6-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: AceSpades11 (64154 in chips)
Seat 2: gettn deep (85649 in chips)
Seat 3: bfineman (50942 in chips)
Seat 4: nickkaka (64748 in chips)
Seat 5: Levon90 (29199 in chips)
Seat 6: cfslugfest (131616 in chips)
AceSpades11: posts the ante 150
gettn deep: posts the ante 150
bfineman: posts the ante 150
nickkaka: posts the ante 150
Levon90: posts the ante 150
cfslugfest: posts the ante 150
bfineman: posts small blind 600
nickkaka: posts big blind 1200
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bfineman [Qc Kh]
Levon90: folds
cfslugfest: folds
AceSpades11: raises 1511 to 2711
gettn deep: folds
bfineman: calls 2111
nickkaka: folds
*** FLOP *** [7s Tc 4d]
bfineman: checks
AceSpades11: checks
*** TURN *** [7s Tc 4d] [Qs]
bfineman: bets 3750
AceSpades11: calls 3750
*** RIVER *** [7s Tc 4d Qs] [Ad]
bfineman: checks
AceSpades11: bets 8256
bfineman: raises 36075 to 44331 and is all-in
AceSpades11: folds
Uncalled bet (36075) returned to bfineman
bfineman collected 31534 from pot
bfineman: doesn't show hand
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 31534 | Rake 0
Board [7s Tc 4d Qs Ad]
Seat 1: AceSpades11 folded on the River
Seat 2: gettn deep (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: bfineman (small blind) collected (31534)
Seat 4: nickkaka (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 5: Levon90 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: cfslugfest folded before Flop (didn't bet)

The WCOOP also has second chance events, and I immediately regretted playing the $109 6-max. 6-max tourneys always mess with my ability to multitable, and I'm doing my best to keep 10+ tables running all day. Since the second chance also had a great structure, I decided to get hyper aggressive in order to build up a big stack or bust out and be able to play more tables.

PokerStars Game #32409887012: Tournament #192210567, $100+$9 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level VIII (60/120) - 2009/09/03 19:38:46 ET
Table '192210567 88' 6-max Seat #4 is the button
Seat 1: Ericb09 (7471 in chips)
Seat 2: crackhAAd (15631 in chips) is sitting out
Seat 3: weeminer (18540 in chips)
Seat 4: toetagU (18204 in chips)
Seat 5: lucky_aces08 (17880 in chips)
Seat 6: bfineman (17871 in chips)
Ericb09: posts the ante 15
crackhAAd: posts the ante 15
weeminer: posts the ante 15
toetagU: posts the ante 15
lucky_aces08: posts the ante 15
bfineman: posts the ante 15
lucky_aces08: posts small blind 60
bfineman: posts big blind 120
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bfineman [Ks Tc]
Ericb09: folds
crackhAAd: folds
weeminer: folds
toetagU: raises 240 to 360
lucky_aces08: folds
bfineman: raises 795 to 1155
toetagU: raises 1445 to 2600
bfineman: raises 2955 to 5555
toetagU: folds
Uncalled bet (2955) returned to bfineman
bfineman collected 5350 from pot
bfineman: doesn't show hand
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 5350 | Rake 0
Seat 1: Ericb09 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: crackhAAd folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: weeminer folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: toetagU (button) folded before Flop
Seat 5: lucky_aces08 (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 6: bfineman (big blind) collected (5350)

I dunno if I've ever bluff 5-bet before. That was fun.

Through three days, I've spent $17.5k and am up $15.6k. Even though I can't complain about September at this point, today really sucked. Not because I lost a lot (down $2k), but because I punted my stack deep in a big event. That never sits well with me. To make matters worse, this is how my day came to an end:

PokerStars Game #32419026405: Tournament #191370581, $100+$9 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level XX (750/1500) - 2009/09/04 0:49:09 ET
Table '191370581 12' 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: DrDavid (44919 in chips)
Seat 2: bfineman (31449 in chips)
Seat 3: inhidonks (33739 in chips)
Seat 4: PokerToronto (50011 in chips)
Seat 5: C.K. (39423 in chips)
Seat 6: XsAnd7s (32100 in chips)
Seat 7: granger11 (35331 in chips)
Seat 9: Nunavut Nerd (26637 in chips)
DrDavid: posts the ante 175
bfineman: posts the ante 175
inhidonks: posts the ante 175
PokerToronto: posts the ante 175
C.K.: posts the ante 175
XsAnd7s: posts the ante 175
granger11: posts the ante 175
Nunavut Nerd: posts the ante 175
bfineman: posts small blind 750
inhidonks: posts big blind 1500
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bfineman [Ac Ad]
PokerToronto: folds
C.K.: folds
XsAnd7s: raises 2055 to 3555
granger11: folds
Nunavut Nerd: folds
DrDavid: folds
bfineman: raises 27719 to 31274 and is all-in
inhidonks: folds
XsAnd7s: calls 27719
*** FLOP *** [5d Kc Ks]
*** TURN *** [5d Kc Ks] [Jd]
*** RIVER *** [5d Kc Ks Jd] [Td]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
bfineman: shows [Ac Ad] (two pair, Aces and Kings)
XsAnd7s: shows [As Qd] (a straight, Ten to Ace)
XsAnd7s collected 65448 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 65448 | Rake 0
Board [5d Kc Ks Jd Td]
Seat 1: DrDavid (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: bfineman (small blind) showed [Ac Ad] and lost with two pair, Aces and Kings
Seat 3: inhidonks (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 4: PokerToronto folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: C.K. folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: XsAnd7s showed [As Qd] and won (65448) with a straight, Ten to Ace
Seat 7: granger11 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: Nunavut Nerd folded before Flop (didn't bet)

#1

2009-09-03T10:22:00.000-07:00

This post is brought to you by Nelly.

Ah, memories of high school and driving around in my minivan.

One of my goals for September is to win the pocketfives.com monthly PLB leaderboard. If the SoCal wildfires take over the planet before the day ends, I'll have accomplished that goal.

Two Down, Twenty-Eight To Go

2009-09-03T00:08:00.000-07:00

I've played tournaments for 26 of the last 37 hours. This is going to be an interesting month. Today wasn't particularly pleasant, as I dropped $4k despite making my third final table of the past two days. No big deal though. It's nice having a big cushion to start the month.

Playing more of the smaller tournaments means that the competition is much weaker than I'm used to. For example:

Full Tilt Poker Game #14435302260: $30,000 KO Guarantee (105156898), Table 7 - 10/20 - No Limit Hold'em - 17:12:55 ET - 2009/09/02
Seat 1: gkap13 (3,370)
Seat 2: bgitty (3,060)
Seat 3: looshle (2,940)
Seat 4: squeezeboxx (2,970)
Seat 5: Mario_Basler (2,960)
Seat 6: YouGotBeat (2,940)
Seat 7: Jcbar82 (2,800)
Seat 8: bmf823 (2,750)
Seat 9: swd805 (2,940)
gkap13 posts the small blind of 10
bgitty posts the big blind of 20
The button is in seat #9
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bmf823 [8c 9c]
looshle folds
squeezeboxx folds
Mario_Basler has been disconnected
Mario_Basler has reconnected
Mario_Basler folds
YouGotBeat folds
Jcbar82 calls 20
bmf823 raises to 80
swd805 folds
gkap13 folds
bgitty folds
Jcbar82 has 15 seconds left to act
Jcbar82 calls 60
*** FLOP *** [7h 8h 7c]
Jcbar82 checks
bmf823 bets 120
Jcbar82 calls 120
*** TURN *** [7h 8h 7c] [8s]
Jcbar82 checks
bmf823 checks
*** RIVER *** [7h 8h 7c 8s] [6d]
Jcbar82 bets 2,600, and is all in
bmf823 calls 2,550, and is all in
Uncalled bet of 50 returned to Jcbar82
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Jcbar82 shows [Kd Jc] two pair, Eights and Sevens
bmf823 shows [8c 9c] a full house, Eights full of Sevens
bmf823 wins the pot (5,530) with a full house, Eights full of Sevens
looshle stands up
The blinds are now 15/30
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 5,530 | Rake 0
Board: [7h 8h 7c 8s 6d]
Seat 1: gkap13 (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 2: bgitty (big blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 3: looshle didn't bet (folded)
Seat 4: squeezeboxx didn't bet (folded)
Seat 5: Mario_Basler didn't bet (folded)
Seat 6: YouGotBeat didn't bet (folded)
Seat 7: Jcbar82 showed [Kd Jc] and lost with two pair, Eights and Sevens
Seat 8: bmf823 showed [8c 9c] and won (5,530) with a full house, Eights full of Sevens
Seat 9: swd805 (button) didn't bet (folded)

Well played. As great as that was, there's no doubt as to which hand was my favorite today.

Full Tilt Poker Game #14440487529: $75,000 Guarantee (105264696), Table 8 - 60/120 - No Limit Hold'em - 21:37:09 ET - 2009/09/02
Seat 1: jse81 (20,168)
Seat 2: AKat11 (2,430)
Seat 3: chicagocards1 (4,466)
Seat 4: mylesfdo (2,581)
Seat 5: IdThinkAgain (11,592)
Seat 6: DaveDiscount (13,880)
Seat 7: Jon Turner (2,650)
Seat 8: bmf823 (3,625)
Seat 9: theanh8888 (2,390), is sitting out
Jon Turner posts the small blind of 60
bmf823 posts the big blind of 120
The button is in seat #6
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bmf823 [2s 7c]
theanh8888 folds
jse81 folds
AKat11 folds
chicagocards1 folds
mylesfdo folds
IdThinkAgain folds
DaveDiscount folds
Jon Turner calls 60
bmf823 checks
*** FLOP *** [Tc 3c 9d]
Jon Turner checks
bmf823 checks
*** TURN *** [Tc 3c 9d] [As]
Jon Turner checks
bmf823 checks
*** RIVER *** [Tc 3c 9d As] [Kc]
Jon Turner bets 120
bmf823 calls 120
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Jon Turner shows [5h 6h] Ace King high
bmf823 shows [2s 7c] Ace King high
bmf823 wins the pot (480) with Ace King high
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 480 | Rake 0
Board: [Tc 3c 9d As Kc]
Seat 1: jse81 didn't bet (folded)
Seat 2: AKat11 didn't bet (folded)
Seat 3: chicagocards1 didn't bet (folded)
Seat 4: mylesfdo didn't bet (folded)
Seat 5: IdThinkAgain didn't bet (folded)
Seat 6: DaveDiscount (button) didn't bet (folded)
Seat 7: Jon Turner (small blind) showed [5h 6h] and lost with Ace King high
Seat 8: bmf823 (big blind) showed [2s 7c] and won (480) with Ace King high
Seat 9: theanh8888 didn't bet (folded)

Part of me really wants to leave out the explanation behind my call, because it looks so cool to win the hand in that fashion. However, I was playing eleven tables at the time, thought there were four clubs on the board, and snap called with what I assumed was a mediocre flush. My seven high was good.

Decent Start

2009-09-01T22:57:00.000-07:00

<3 September so far.

August '09 Recap

2009-08-30T21:01:00.000-07:00

Total Buy-ins: $68,496
Total Prizes: $89,781
Total Profit: $21,285
ROI: 31.07%
Hours Played: 117
Profit/Hour: $181.93

Daily Profit Graph:

Three Biggest Cashes:

1) $6,283 (Aug. 25th, 1st, Stars $55r)
2) $5,859 (Aug. 19th, 4th, UB $215)
3) $5,627 (Aug. 8th, 3th, Tilt $75)

What a strange month. The combination of playing 275 MTTs, having an average buy-in of $250, not having a single $7k+ cash and winning $21k is nothing short of bizarre. If you looked at the stats for hundreds of MTT regs, I doubt you'd find too many instances where something similar happened. There isn't much to read into the situation, however. Sometimes you have a couple huge scores and nothing else and other times you run good right up until it matters the most. If this kind of thing started to become a trend over the rest of the year I'd be puzzled, but I can guarantee that won't happen.

August was just the second month I didn't play any live poker since September, 2007. I didn't miss it at all, and won't be playing live next month either. August was also my fourth consecutive winning month, a nice difference from the previous five months where I finished in the red all but once. It probably goes without saying that winning consistently does wonders for my confidence and overall attitude towards the game.

September is going to be crazy. I've already written about my plans to play as much as possible and nothing has changed since then. In an attempt to further encourage myself to grind while maybe making a few extra dollars in the process, I posted on 2+2 offering a bet to anyone based on our monthly PLB scores on pocketfives.com. Nobody took me up on my offer. I can't tell if that's a good thing or not, but the last time I tried to get similar action was on a proposed POY/OPOY bet for 2009. In retrospect, I'm pretty lucky that nobody was interested in that bet. I also failed at generating some kind of charity drive on the message boards. My post got five replies and died shortly after, which I somewhat expected. I'm still going to be donating 5% of my monthly profits to charity though.

Downswing Over!

2009-08-26T20:59:00.001-07:00

Well that was a long 266 days. The peak of my downswing came on June 20th, when I busted out of a WSOP $1,500 event and found myself stuck $186k since December 2nd. Thanks in large part to a $123k score at Bellagio, I've made a full recovery slightly more than two months after things looked their worst.

As was the trend for the first two weeks of August, I haven't had any huge scores but am putting together a respectable month on the backs of countless final tables. Two Sundays ago, I shipped a $5k WCOOP seat and took fourth in the Stars $55 $70k guarantee for another $5.3k. Three days later, I took fourth in the exact same tournament, which is pretty remarkable given that the average field size was over 1,500 players. I made my first final table on Ultimate Bet on Wednesday as well, taking fourth in the $215 sniper for $6k. Last night, I outflipped the competition to win the Stars turbo $55r for an additional $6k, which put me just about $1k short of officially erasing my downswing. As the night was wearing down, I found myself nursing a short stack on the bubble of the Stars $1k. I wasn't about to play unnecessarily conservative to guarantee a four figure cash, but you can imagine how nice it was to sneak into the money and be done with the nine months from hell.

My 26th birthday was two days before winning the $55r, and it's very strange to think that I'm on the older side when it comes to online MTT pros. It seems as if more players are under 21 than over 25. That can probably be attributed to the fact that most people eventually lose interest in grinding smaller tournaments routinely for one reason or another. Even though I'm as motivated as ever these days, I doubt I'll want to be stuck one tabling a $55 tourney when I'm on the other side of 30. With that said, I'm still planning on going all out in September. Wake up, grind all day, sleep, repeat. Every single day. I'm talking 300+ hours, $150k+ in buyins, and hopefully a spot at the top of the pocketfives.com monthly PLB leaderboard. That last one will be difficult though, since only the top twenty scores count and the WCOOP will be giving a few lucky people some tough results to match.

I can't finish this blog without living up to a promise I made to someone during a tournament last week. With a few hundred people left in the Stars $55 last Wednesday night, a guy at my table that I didn't previously know told me that he liked my blog and suggested I write more poker content. I can't really blame him for those suggestions given that I've updated this thing twice in the last five weeks. Even my mom called me out for not writing much lately. Anyway, I thanked him for his comments (after making sure he wasn't being sarcastic), and our table broke soon after. Coincidentally enough, we both ended up making the final table (he finished fifth), and I promised to mention him on the blog... so cemay2000, this shout out from myself and a few selected members of the Wu-Tang Clan is for you.

Death, Taxes, and Modest Profits

2009-08-13T15:22:00.000-07:00

This might sound strange, but I'm in an unusually good mood right now after settling some tax issues. The CPA I've been using since moving to Vegas never really impressed me, and after getting charged an exorbitant amount for last year's tax return, I decided to find a new tax guy going forward. Last week, it was brought to my attention that there was a document I was supposed to file for '08 that neither myself or my previous CPA was aware of. Since I'm also finally in the black for '09, I wanted to get a few questions answered regarding my quarterly payments as well as file this mystery document that few people I know had completed. Everything went well and I'm very confident in my tax guy going forward. That's a good feeling to have as a professional poker player.

I'm also in a good mood because I've been grinding with consistent success since my brief time off earlier in the month. Between Saturday and Tuesday, I had an unreal run of modest cashes and final tables. In those four days, I made seven final tables while booking fifteen four-figure cashes. Excluding satellites, here's where those cashes came from:

6/140, Stars $109 2r/1a
3/725, Tilt $75
9/196, Tilt $109 1r/1a
13/678, Tilt $163r
9/664, Stars $109r
121/1679, Tilt $1k
4/659, Tilt $117
6/2047, Stars $55
7/154, Stars 2r/1a
47/443, Stars $1k

None of those finishes are particularly impressive on their own, but I think it's a pretty remarkable run for a four day span. I spent $26k in buyins, didn't have a cash over $5,700, and still came out on top $16k. I'm 100% sure I've never had a stretch quite like that one. Granted, I'd trade all those final tables to have won a key hand or two with two tables left in the $163r, but that's how it goes. I also should have gone much deeper in the $100r after sitting 1/13, but I spewed off most of my stack and finished ninth. I'm still waiting to officially end my downswing, currently at $10k, but I'm confident that I'll get that done soon.

The WCOOP is coming up in September, and I'm having some crazy ideas about turning that month into a nonstop grind. I figure I'll be playing most days anyway, so why not take it a step further and try to accomplish something impressive. There are a few goals I'm thinking about setting for the month, all of which would require insane hours and a lot of coffee. Among them are winning the P5s monthly PLB, playing 300+ hours, and spending $150k in online MTT buyins. If I stay motivated and actually do this, it will essentially require doing nothing else other than waking up, playing tournaments all day, and going to sleep for all of September. It sounds stupid on so many levels... but I just might go for it. I even bought a TV for my poker room so I can watch football on Sundays without sacrificing the use of my dual monitor setup. Something might be wrong with me.

I've also thought about trying to organize some kind of charity drive for September. Just about every online MTT pro will be putting in long hours due to the WCOOP, and it would be cool if some of them would commit to donating a small percentage of their monthly profits to charity. Imagine if I could get fifty people to donate 1-5% of their winnings in September. If the average person drops $75k in buyins with a 33% ROI, 1% of those profits would be $12.5k. 5% would be $62.5k. I'm skeptical that I have the pull to get something like this off the ground (I don't have many close friends in the poker community), but it's probably worth trying. Karma FTW!

July '09 Recap

2009-07-29T13:47:00.000-07:00

Total Buy-ins: $57,851
Total Prizes: $173,992
Total Profit: $116,141
ROI: 200.76%
Hours Played: 112.5
Profit/Hour: $1,032.36

Daily Profit Graph:

Three Biggest Cashes:

1) $122,995 (July 3rd, 1st, Bellagio Cup $2,100)
2) $16,882 (July 19th, 3rd, Tilt $163)
3) $13,158 (July 12th, 4th, Tilt $109r)

Finally! It took over half the year, but I had a month that I'm very happy with. For the first time since mid-February, I'm in the black for 2009. Even though being up $40k doesn't seem like much after the last two years, it makes all the difference in the world after struggling through the first half of the year. My yearly ROI has climbed up to 8.2%, which is still a long way from the 50% I was shooting for. I'm almost definitely not going to reach that mark, and I certainly won't get to a million in buy-ins seeing how I'm not even at $500k yet. However, I don't particularly care about those goals these days. They're mostly unattainable now, and I'm happy enough to not be staring a losing year in the face anymore.

At the moment, I'm focused on my largely irrelevant goal of erasing what's left of my $187k downswing. I think there's roughly $25k more to go at this point. With an FTOPS in August followed by Stars' annual WCOOP in September, there will be plenty of opportunities for big scores in the upcoming months. I won't be playing online for the next ten days or so, but after that I'll be back on the grind in a major way.

Run Good, Save Dogs

2009-07-18T19:03:00.000-07:00

I've been playing the normal schedule of online MTTs for the past week and am pretty content with that decision. Things have been fairly uninteresting and perhaps even somewhat encouraging. Last Sunday could have been big, but a deep run in the Stars $500 fell short in 22nd place. I reached a couple final tables since my last update, the biggest being a fourth place finish in the weekly $100r turbo on Tilt. Don't read too much into that, though, since that tourney is as close to a crapshoot as you'll find for that kind of buy-in. My finish netted me $13k, which helped me have a solid week overall.

This morning, I received an email from the local pug rescue organization informing me that their biggest annual fundraiser was in danger of being cancelled due to a lack of funds following a particularly tough year. That reminded me that I don't give to charity as much as I probably should, and that this would be a good cause to support. Rather than just decide on an arbitrary amount, I'm going to have some fun with the process. In the event that I continue my Sunday hot streak and book another positive day, I'm going to donate 5% of my profits to charity. The pug rescue listed $1,900 in expenses that they needed help with, so that's what I'll cap their donation at. If I make over $38k, I'll distribute the remaining 5% among other charities.

They know what's up.

Update: Success! Nothing major, but I managed to take third in the nightly $75k on Tilt for slightly under $17k. The rest of my day was very forgettable, but I have no complaints about making $11k today. The pug rescue will be receiving $553.77, thanks in no small part to the generous Full Tilt RNG.

With 23 people left in the tourney, I ran AQ into AK and was left with 2,500 going into a break. The blinds were 2k/4k. Not exactly a good spot to be in. One orbit later I was up to 50k, and soon enough found myself above average with two tables left. I was a short stack for most of the final table and didn't have much of a chance heading into three handed play with less than 10% of the chips in play. Even though I busted out with AT < T5, I was more than happy with my finish. I'm not sure I've ever gone from less than one blind to a final table before.

Today was my fourth winning Sunday out of my last five tries. I've had five five-figure cashes from those sessions. My downswing, once pushing $200k, is getting slimmer by the day. At $13.5k, it almost feels like I'm done with it entirely. Things have gone pretty well over the last three weeks.

And Now...

2009-07-11T16:17:00.000-07:00

I have no idea. The WSOP is over, I'm finished with the Bellagio Cup, and I probably won't play another live tournament until October. The safe decision would be to return to grinding online MTTs. It's an easy choice to make given that I'm used to the routine and can likely get back into it right away. Between the upcoming FTOPS and WCOOP, five of the next ten weeks will contain tournament series that I'd be playing anyway. With that said, I think the most compelling argument for going back to the tourney grind is that I'm in the right frame of mind to do so.

Before winning the $2k Bellagio Cup event, I wasn't enjoying tournament poker much at all. Even though I also won the second chance on Stars two weeks prior, the WSOP had taken most of the fun out of playing. Facing the prospect of being stuck six figures in mid-July, I can honestly say I was considering taking a long break from tournaments. It seems strange that one good run at the Bellagio could cause me to do a complete 180 in my attitude towards MTTs, but that appears to be the case. Now, I'm motivated to continue my heater and feel better about my game, the latter of which is quite illogical since my win (like all tournament wins) was far more the result of good luck rather than an immediate spike in ability.

Toward the end of the WSOP, I caught myself making a few truly terrible plays. While good players make mistakes all the time, I couldn't shake the thought that my downswing had finally begun to affect my play. Granted, most players have a skewed view of their own play based on their results (both in particular hands and in the short and long term), and it was easier to think that I butchered a spot because I lost the hand while continuing my seven month slide. Whatever the reason for my thought process, there was no doubt that I wasn't playing my best game. I'm still not sure what the reason is for my poor play, but I have a few hunches.

It's possible that I'm getting worse at deep stack poker. The majority of tournaments are played with stacks of less than effectively fifty blinds. Back when I was a 6-max cash player putting up good winrates through 5/10 NL, I had far more experience dealing with the intricacies of turn and river play. Those situations arise far less in tournaments, and it could be why I catch myself doing blatantly stupid things every now and then. Another explanation is the one I've mentioned numerous times before, that my lengthy run of bad results has gotten into my head and made me second guess myself in obvious spots. It could also be a combination of those two things, or maybe even something that I'm completely overlooking.

I was searching online for things regarding my Bellagio win a few days ago and stumbled across and old blog post by Mike Watson that mentioned a hand we played at last year's WSOP. In it, he wrote the following: "Every time I play this game I realize I'm worse at it than I previously thought even though I do a lot of things right." That struck a chord with me. I know that I'm a very good tournament player. There are very few fields in which I'd be -EV. However, I keep realizing that I have a long way to go before becoming the elite player I thought I was at the end of 2008. By the way, a month after writing that blog, Watson won the Bellagio Cup main event for some exorbitant amount of money.

Even though I'm surprisingly motivated to get back to playing online tournaments, the WSOP has created the opposite effect in regard to live tourneys. I skipped the Bellagio Cup $3k simply because I didn't feel like playing, and didn't think twice about not playing the three $5ks and the $15k. Those buy-ins are out of my bankroll now, and while I like the idea of playing a few here and there to keep things interesting, I certainly don't want to play them on a monthly basis and risk having my roll tumble back to the low $100k range. That means I'll almost definitely be skipping the Bike in August and whatever the WPT and EPT has in store for September.

The obvious conclusion to my post-WSOP thoughts is that I should start mixing in some cash to help sharpen my game while spending most of my time playing online MTTs, which has clearly become my comfort zone. That has probably been the case for a while now, but I have yet to find any motivation to return to cash games. I tried playing them full time for half a year a while back and quickly became bored with the daily routine. I'm not sure that anything has changed, except that the games have gotten tougher and I'm certainly not as good as I was when I switched to tournaments. There hasn't been a single day in the last two years where I've thought that it would be enjoyable to fire up some NLHE ring games and play for a little while. In contrast, I often look forward to playing tournaments, especially in situations like the present where I've already locked up a huge month and feel like I'm on somewhat of a freeroll. Perhaps I'll implement another lazy tax... or perhaps I'll just fall back into the tournament routine and hope to keep running good.

Since this blog entry has been long and rambling, I imagine a handful of people have stopped reading by now. Those of you left are probably the best people to answer the following question: Is there any reason for me to keep using Twitter? "Hell no" would be my answer, but maybe there are a few of you out there who think otherwise. I don't have much to write, especially considering that I won't be in any big live events for a while, but I'd appreciate some feedback from anyone who actually cares about whatever it is that I'd tweet about. Most likely, I'll just remove the updates from the corner of the blog and dust off my Twitter account for next year's WSOP.

Bellagio Redemption

2009-07-06T22:23:00.000-07:00

On Saturday morning, I woke up eager to get to the Bellagio and play the final table of the first Bellagio Cup $2k event. 24 hours prior, I couldn't even decide if I wanted to get out of bed. Five weeks of losing at the Rio wasn't exactly the motivation I needed to play a much smaller tournament elsewhere, and the thought of going back to sleep seemed nice. The day before, I had opted to skip the $1,590 event and hardly regretted my decision. While I eventually made it out of bed on Saturday, I still couldn't bring myself to get in the shower, drive to the Bellagio, and most likely not cash only to return home wishing I had just stayed in bed. After a few minutes standing in my living room looking aimlessly around the room through half asleep eyes, Mark finally had enough and told me I should play the tournament. It was a good suggestion.

In contrast to the large fields I had gotten used to at the Rio, only 171 people played at the Bellagio that day. It was a surprisingly soft field that I assume contained many amateurs in town for the main event looking to get a tourney or two under their belt. I picked up some chips early on and had a sizable stack until right before the bubble. Eighteen players would be paid, and I didn't expect to be one of them after losing a big pot with TT vs. 44 after watching the board run out A2x35. That was with 22 left, and I was down to fifteen blinds and rather unhappy at how the day had gone to that point. As luck would have it, I chipped up a bit and survived long enough to make the money as one of the short stacks.

Two hours later, we broke for the night and I had almost three times as much as anyone else. I won a flip with AQ vs. TT to double up to average, and shortly after survived another huge flip against Jason Strasser holding TT vs. AK for a 120 BB pot. That hand gave me the chip lead with 13 left, and my 340k was nearly twice that of what would be the final table average. I continued to chip up before the remaining players merged into one ten handed table that would play until either 3:00 or one more person was eliminated. The player on my right was second in chips with roughly 320k, and I figured I could take advantage of the situation and put pressure on him until he showed a willingness to play back. After running an unsuccessful bluff in a big pot blind vs. blind, he opened from the button on the very next hand. I looked down at aces, tried not to grin, and made a standard raise. He thought for a while before 4-bet shoving for 80 blinds. I never imagined he'd ship anything in his range given that he had more than enough for a normal 4-bet, but that hardly mattered. I snapped, he had queens, and just like that I had stopped play for the night. Going into the final table, here were the chip counts:

709,500
250,500
165,000
163,500
126,500
93,500
83,500
63,000
55,000

There were 1.71m chips in play and I had over 41% of them with nine players remaining. I doubt I've ever had a chip lead like that with that many people left, and I'm not even sure I've ever seen anyone have such a commanding position going into a final table. It was great. I started off the final table by losing 120k right away, and still had more than twice as much as anyone else.

The competition wasn't all that difficult, although it would have been hard to finish outside of the top two or three no matter who my opponents were. I was playing a very aggressive game, which is almost required with that kind of stack. Even better, nobody played back at me unless they had a hand. I can't recall more than one or two times I was 3-bet, and being able to hammer on everyone's blind at will was important given how top heavy the pay structure was. My stack didn't have any substantial increases until we were five handed, when I opened with AJ and bet every street on a JJxxA board. My opponent, who started the hand second in chips, called me down on what turned out to be a massive cooler given that he had KJ. With 1.3 million of the 1.7 chips in play, it seemed like the rest of the final table would be a walk in the park.

The fourth and third place finishers busted quickly after, and I began heads up play against a fairly non-threatening guy named Fintan Gavin. I later discovered that he had recently finished second in an EPT event for just over $1 million, but I was confident that I'd finish him off rather quickly. After all, I did have a 4:1 chip lead going into heads up play. He chipped up to 600k playing a fairly predictable small ball style of poker, but I managed to work him back down to 250k before he shoved 23 blinds with J8 and lost to my AT. Thirty hours earlier, I was considering going back to sleep and not playing the tournament. Instead, I ended up booking the fourth six figure cash of my career and finally bringing my yearly totals back to the positive side.

First place was officially $123,495, but the check I received was worth significantly less. The Bellagio, as they often do, withheld $25,500 of the first place money and automatically registered me for the WPT Championship next April. I'm somewhat indifferent towards receiving the seat instead of the cash, especially because they've done this for years. I wasn't planning on playing the $25k, but who knows what could have happened in the next nine months. Regardless, I'm looking forward to the event. Along with the cash and seat, the Bellagio gave me a watch as an additional prize. While I've never heard of Maurice Lacroix, the manufacturer, the $3,150 price tag that was left on the watch suggests that it's a very nice item. Since I already have a $3k watch from winning a tournament that I never wear, I gave this one to Mark. Now we have matching timepieces that will likely sit in our dressers for the foreseeable future.

Prior to the main event, my Bellagio win brought my yearly profit all the way up to $44k. Considering that I was down $123k just two weeks prior, it was a great feeling to wake up the next day knowing I wasn't a losing player in 2009. The win also brought my downswing, once at $187k, all the way down to $20k. Fully recovering from that slide will be something worth celebrating, although that number has already climbed to $29k in the past two days.

I'll be playing another $2k on Tuesday, but I'm undecided about the rest of the series. There's one $3k followed by three $5ks before the $15k main event next week. Before my big win, I was going to skip all those events because my confidence and bankroll were too low to justify playing them. Things have certainly changed, but it might be in my best interests to stick to my plan of grinding online for a while. I really have no idea what I'm going to do now that the series is over. Perhaps I'll just keep crawling out of bed and making my decisions the morning of each tournament. It seems to be working lately.

WSOP '09: Days 38-40

2009-07-05T22:00:00.000-07:00

Well, it looks like the 2009 WSOP will conclude with my name nowhere to be found on any of the payout lists. I busted out of day 1C of the main event on the last hand before the dinner break in a massive pot that I can best describe as a cooler nobody wants to be on the losing end of in any tournament, let alone the biggest one of the year. However, I did manage to win the first $2k Bellagio Cup event the day before for $123k, so my -$50k, 0/21 WSOP performance doesn't hurt quite as much at the moment. I'll write more about my Bellagio win soon, but for now I'll stick to the main event.

I only played one hand worth writing about, and that was my last of the series. The main event structure was fantastic, and combined with 30k chips and two hour levels, there promised to be a ton of play deep into the event. The third level was 150/300 (no ante), and I was sitting with 43k. My table image was fairly nondescript. I hadn't been playing more than my fair share of hands, hadn't got caught in a bluff, and mostly showed down good cards. With three minutes left before the break, a player who had just been moved to the table thirty minutes ago opened to 900 second to act. I called with 88, and three other people called as well. The only two noteworthy players both had me covered.

The flop was a beautiful 862, the eight and deuce both being clubs. There was 4,650 on the pot, and the original raiser bet 2,400 after the big blind checked. I opted to just call, which I'm quite confident is the correct play. Raising has value, most notably in protecting a big hand on a drawy board, but it also exposes the strength of my cards. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone in the Rio who would raise in that exact spot as a complete bluff. Raising essentially says that I have a big hand, at worst an overpair (not that I'd necessarily play it that way), and more likely a set or big draw. I was hoping for someone behind me to raise, but wasn't too unhappy to have one other guy come along to see the turn.

The other caller ended up busting me, so my reads on him are extremely relevant to the rest of the hand. Ironically, they all suggest I should have done the opposite of my final decision, but that's neither here or there. The player in question hadn't done many notable things during the first three levels. I can remember three hands he played that stood out. First, he raised with QQ and ended up check/calling the turn and river on a very benign board with top set obviously being scared of a straight. It was a very passive/bad play. Later, he limp/3-bet from UTG, a move that was almost definitely a monster hand after he showed down aces in a different hand that he limped under the gun. Those three hands suggested that he might be playing a bit passively and scared, but wasn't afraid to slowplay big hands.

Back to my bustout hand. At this point, there was 12k in the pot with me holding top set on a board reading 862cc. The turn was an offsuit five. The original raiser continued betting, this time tossing out 6k. Once again, I chose to call his half-pot bet. I think you could make a very strong case for raising, although with 39k in my stack before acting and 18k in the pot, shoving would probably be better and look more like I didn't want action. Had we been heads up, I probably would have just shoved. However, I liked the idea of slowplaying my set for one more street in hopes of having the other player hang around or even raise/shove a big hand. Much like raising on the flop, raising or shoving the turn conveys enormous strength, and it wouldn't be out of the question for the other guy to fold bottom set to that kind of action.

As soon as I called, I heard "all in" from the other side of the table. No thought, no tanking, just a shove that was timed to suggest he had made up his mind before my 6k hit the felt. The preflop raiser was audibly unhappy with the turn of events, and even counted out his chips before eventually folding. I was also unhappy with his shove, because all the information I had available to me suggested he had the nuts. However...

Folding in this spot is crazy. Not like "folding is probably bad" crazy, but more like "WTF quit poker immediately if you fold" crazy. After I called the 6k, there was 24k in the pot. Given that my opponent had me covered, him shoving put 63k in the pot with me left with 33k. 1.9:1 odds. I needed 34.5% equity in the hand to call. Given that this is the main event, and you could maybe argue that I could pass up a few percentage points of equity to preserve a good stack, let's round that figure up and say that 35% is the magic number. With the help of my good friend PokerStove, I'm going to show why I had to call even though I absolutely hated the situation.

If his range is only 97 suited (97o is not in his preflop calling range), I'm only at 22%:

Hand 0: 22.159% 22.16% 00.00% 39 0.00 { 8d8s }
Hand 1: 77.841% 77.84% 00.00% 137 0.00 { 97s }

That would be an obvious fold. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't call preflop with 43 suited, but why not throw it into the mix just in case. Since he wouldn't get to the turn with any suit other than clubs, I'll put that in there along with 97.

Hand 0: 22.273% 22.27% 00.00% 49 0.00 { 8d8s }
Hand 1: 77.727% 77.73% 00.00% 171 0.00 { 97s, 4c3c }

Obviously if he can only have a straight I can't call. Let's see what happens when you add middle set to his range.

Hand 0: 50.568% 50.57% 00.00% 178 0.00 { 8d8s }
Hand 1: 49.432% 49.43% 00.00% 174 0.00 { 6d6h, 6d6s, 6h6s, 97s, 4c3c }

Hello there. If there are three possibilities, and two of them are the only possible ones that are beating me, I'm over 50% to win the hand. That crushes the 35% to the point where it's a Hellmuth style "push all your chips into the middle really fast so you obviously have the nuts" call. But if he's shoving middle set, he's probably shoving 22 as well.

Hand 0: 55.808% 55.81% 00.00% 221 0.00 { 8d8s }
Hand 1: 44.192% 44.19% 00.00% 175 0.00 { 6d6h, 6d6s, 6h6s, 2d2h, 2d2s, 2h2s, 97s, 4c3c }

56% equity! The reason that adding sets to his range blows up my equity should be somewhat obvious. When he's ahead, I still have nine outs to catch up. When I'm ahead, he's drawing virtually dead. Even if it's far more likely that he has a straight, the mere possibility of him having a set makes this a call. The only way folding could ever be correct is if I had some kind of sick read that guaranteed he could only have a straight to shove the turn... and even though my reads suggested it was far more likely based on his tendencies to that point, that wasn't nearly enough to cause me to fold.

Knowing my audience, I doubt many of you are wondering what happens when I add flush draws turned huge combo draws to the mix. I'm still going to touch on that quickly. Other than the actual worst case scenario where he has a straight, the next worst thing is that he can never have a set (maybe he always raises on the flop) and is only shoving straights and big draws. If he's only jamming one combination of a draw, I should fold.

Hand 0: 30.303% 30.30% 00.00% 80 0.00 { 8d8s }
Hand 1: 69.697% 69.70% 00.00% 184 0.00 { Ac7c, 97s, 4c3c }

However, it's completely illogical for him to only shove one big draw and not the others in his range. In fact, all you need to do is add one more to his range and my equity jumps over the magic 35%.

Hand 0: 36.039% 36.04% 00.00% 111 0.00 { 8d8s }
Hand 1: 63.961% 63.96% 00.00% 197 0.00 { Ac7c, Ac4c, 97s, 4c3c }

So what does all this PokerStove gibberish mean? Well, the bottom line is that even though I was pretty sure I was up against 97, folding would have been a disaster. That doesn't mean that plenty of poker players wouldn't fold and live to see another day though. People who fold in that spot fall into three categories: people who are scared to bust out of the main event, people who suck and don't understand ranges and odds, and people who are insanely good hand readers. In my opinion 99% of poker players who wouldn't call with top set fall into the first two categories.

By the way, I tanked for a solid three minutes before calling. I think that means that I fall into all three categories to some extent.

WSOP '09: Days 35-37

2009-07-02T21:03:00.000-07:00

I've only played one event since my last update, and it might take me longer to write this post than I spent in the tournament. There's a good chance I was the first person out of the $5k 6-max, as I managed to bluff off all but one $25 chip within fifteen minutes. I don't regret the hand at all, but it certainly felt ridiculous starting with 150 blinds and leaving the Rio while other people were still taking their seats.

The only WSOP event left is the big one. The $10k main event begins on Friday, but I won't be starting until day 1C (Sunday). Even with an amazing new structure and soft competition, my expectations are pretty low after going 0/20 in the prelims. Maybe I'll surprise myself and make a deep run, but for now I'm pretty much over the WSOP. I'm getting ready to skip all the big live events in the near future and grind online for a while until I get my confidence and hopefully my bankroll back to where it was earlier in the year. I doubt my current state of mind will affect my play in the main event, but I'd by lying if I said that I didn't catch myself making a few downswing-inspired plays towards the end of the series. No matter what happens, at least I had a good month online to keep my bankroll in a manageable state heading into the post-WSOP grind. 0/21 sounds bad, but having my roll around where it was at the week before the series started is something I can be happy about considering how badly I did at the Rio.

Thanks to everyone who followed my WSOP updates both here and on Twitter. I'm sure it was pretty depressing to read, although there are probably a few of you who get some kind of satisfaction out of seeing other players struggle. I know hearing about other people on downswings helps me deal with mine at times. Hopefully I can give you guys at least one decent sweat before the whole series ends.

June '09 Recap

2009-06-30T19:53:00.000-07:00

Total Buy-ins: $51,641
Total Prizes: $69,901
Total Profit: $18,260
ROI: 35.36%
Hours Played: 139.5
Profit/Hour: $130.90

Daily Profit Graph:

Three Biggest Cashes:

1) $47,724 (June 21st, 1st, Stars $215 Second Chance)
2) $12,000 (June 21st, T-1st, Tilt $535 WSOP Satellite)
3) $7,035 (June 22nd, 4th, Stars $109r)

At the start of the year, I set two goals for 2009. First, reach $1,000,000 in MTT buy-ins for the whole year. Second, and most important, finish with an ROI of at least 50%. Reaching either of those goals would be a minor miracle at this point. Between my traveling in May and lack of motivation in June, I've fallen well off the million dollar pace. After six months, I'm in for $419k, which means I'll have to average almost $100k in buy-ins per month until the end of the year. That's not going to happen, especially since I'm most likely going to take a little time away from $10k+ events. Reaching the 50% ROI mark is even more improbable since I'm still stuck $77k on the year. I wouldn't have been happy with an ROI of 18%, so you can imagine how I feel about being at -18% right now. On the plus side, I just completed consecutive winning months for the first time since October-November of last year. At this point, I'm content with baby steps forward instead of giant steps backwards.

WSOP '09: Days 27-34

2009-06-29T17:15:00.000-07:00

Four more events have come and gone, and I still haven't cashed in anything this series. The positive reinforcement from winning the second chance last week has faded, and I'm back to finding it hard to enjoy myself at the tables. Having missed my opportunity to register for today's $1,500, I'm down to two remaining events before likely putting an 0/21 on the board this year. Tomorrow is the $5k 6-max NL tourney, which I shouldn't be playing given the current state of my bankroll (cashing in something this summer has taken priority over good bankroll management). After that, the main event starts up this weekend, although I still haven't decided what starting day I'll be playing. I might also play a few of the early Bellagio Cup prelims before the main event begins, but that will depend largely on my mood and the timing of a bank wire I'm expecting soon.

Yesterday's $3k triple chance tourney was the fiftieth WSOP event I've played in my life. I haven't seen the payout area in the last twenty. As I've mentioned before, having a poor series is frustrating for many reasons, perhaps none more than the fact that the average level of competition is so low. Players in the cheaper events are improbably terrible. In the most recent $1,500, I grinded a short stack for the first seven levels. On my second to last hand, I picked up AQ in the big blind at 300/600-75. I started the hand with roughly fourteen blinds, but the small blind had closer to nine. It folded around to him, and with 5,475 in his stack, he opened to 2,800. I made a trivial shove and expected to get called instantly. After all, this guy had just raised half his stack and was getting greater than 3:1 to call. Instead, he tanked. And tanked some more. A solid two minutes later, he sighed and put the rest of his chips in the pot. He had 59o, which really isn't relevant to the story. It doesn't matter what his cards were there. Just the fact that he made such a large raise obviously committing him to the hand followed by minutes of thought was insane given that he put up $1,500 to play in the event. That kind of stuff shouldn't be seen anywhere above the $5 tourneys online.

As you would expect given the nature of this post, he ended up winning the pot and I busted out on the following hand. Had he simply jammed, I wouldn't have been nearly as frustrated walking through the halls of the Rio. Shoving there is fine. I would do it 100% of the time. This guy clearly had no idea what he was doing, and had to put deep thought into calling off his remaining 2,675 with 9,200 in the pot. While I'm happy that the WSOP is full of people who lack a basic understanding of elementary tournament concepts, it can be very irritating when those are the players who send me home on a regular basis. These tournaments are so valuable because experienced players can exploit the tendencies of amateurs over and over again on the way to deep runs and final tables. With only two events left, it's looking like I'll have to wait until next year to get my cut of WSOP equity that I was counting on one month ago.

WSOP '09: Days 18-26

2009-06-22T13:40:00.000-07:00

Quick PSA:

The man inside the Portland Beavers mascot costume is my brother, Alex. He will be on Jeopardy Wednesday night. All my life, he's been one of the smartest people I've known. If you're so inclined to watch the show, you'll see what I mean. I don't want to give anything away, but his performance was very impressive when the show was taped.

Speaking of impressive performances, I'm doing so badly at the WSOP that some might consider it to be impressive in some fashion. I haven't cashed in fifteen events and only have a handful left to try and save myself from bricking the entire series. Saturday night was almost a boiling point of sorts when someone tried a transparent angle after playing a hand terribly and ultimately busting me after hitting a flush on the river. He minraised UTG, one person called, and I 3-bet from the button with AQ (I started the hand with 30 BBs). Both players called, and the flop came QT9 with two diamonds. It checked around to me, and I took a while to decide how much to bet. While I was thinking, UTG asked whose action it was. It was strange to say the least considering that he had already checked, and the dealer told him it was on me. Out of nowhere, he shoved his whole stack in the pot, which would put myself and the other guy all-in. The problem was that it wasn't his turn to act, something he obviously knew given that he had checked already and was informed of that by the dealer. I took this to mean that he was trying to scare me into checking (suggesting he had a draw), and shoved the rest of my chips in the pot. He called, the other guy folded, and he tabled 78dd. After winning the hand, he clapped his hands, lept out of his chair and let out a scream. Good work, buddy.

For whatever reason, that bustout really screwed with my head. Maybe it was my failures for the entire series adding up, but most likely my mindset was the product of getting knocked out by somebody who clearly deserved a worse fate. Anyone who starts a WSOP 0/15 can tell you that patience wears thin by mid-June, and I couldn't help but struggle to fall asleep that night thinking about poker, finances, and why the Phillies can't win a game at home.

After being unable to motivate myself to grind online for the past two Sundays, I finally defeated the snooze button on my alarm clock and got to work. Things started out pretty poorly, but I found myself deep in a few tourneys as the day winded down. I ended up shipping a $12k WSOP main event package on Tilt, and by the time that satellite ended, I was 2/9 in the second chance on Stars. After losing a big flip and shoving K6 into aces, my stack was down to ten blinds and I was 7/7. Having already locked up a winning day, I was in good spirits and willing to accept the fact that I might not do much more damage in the second chance. However, I went on a crazy rush, got up to 2/4, and busted the only tough player left when he 4-bet A3cc into my AQ and I faded a two club flop for a massive chip lead going into three handed play.

There were just under four million chips in play, and they were flying with three players left. I managed to get my money in good just about always, but ran into some tough luck early on. My aces went down to tens, I couldn't get there with KQ vs. AQ, and lost a painful hand for 60% of the chips in play when I called a cold 4-bet with KQ and lost to J9 (I was getting 2:1 to call, so why my opponent picked that time to spaz out is beyond me). That hand left me with something like 200k, and it seemed like a foregone conclusion that I would finish third. A triple up and a few double ups later, I was back in the chip lead. Three handed play was so swingy that at one point or another all three of us had more than half the chips in play. Finally, I picked up JJ against a button shove and busted the third place finisher.

My opponent was not interested in playing HU for long. He open shoved most of his buttons (ranging from 25-35 BBs), and shoved over a good amount of my button opens. My only option was to call with decent hands and hope to hold. I doubled up with KT vs. Q7 and eventually busted him when my A6 held against his A4. The win was good for $47k, and my $52k day was enough to boost my bankroll by 50%. I needed this in a major way. Needless to say, I slept pretty well last night.

Earlier in the day, I called my dad to wish him a happy father's day. When we were wrapping up our conversation, he requested that I win something that day as a father's day present. I laughed, told him not to expect much, and then forgot about his request as I got back to playing. Later that night, I realized what he had asked for and couldn't help but smile.

WSOP '09: Days 13-17

2009-06-12T21:33:00.000-07:00

0/10 so far this year. 0/34 online (-$10k) and 0/10 live (-$20k) since winning the $109r on Stars a couple Sundays ago. Bricking today's $1,500 limit event put me at a new low point in my downswing, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of $177k. The WSOP is about halfway over and I've done nothing but dig myself a deeper hole.

One of the most enticing things about the series is that one deep run can be enough to turn a bad year around. There aren't many times you can sit at a table knowing that you could walk away with half a million a couple days later. Being stuck close to $200k makes that dream even more desirable, but those chances are quickly disappearing. After the WSOP ends, I won't have many chances to erase my downswing in one fell swoop. I wish I could pinpoint something I was doing wrong, but I have no answers other than to blame the past seven months on extreme variance. There are roughly a dozen more events I plan on playing, and all the early bustouts are starting to take their toll on me. If there was ever a time for me to have a big cash, it's right now. Unfortunately, there's only so much I can do. Within four weeks, I could very well be stuck over $200k since December and wondering why I ever got roped into playing MTTs in the first place.

On the plus side...

...at least I'm not a Mets fan.

WSOP '09: Days 9-12

2009-06-07T16:54:00.000-07:00

The WSOP schedule was filled with good structured NLHE for the past few days. My time in the $2k event ended near the end of the first day when I ran into an unenviable spot holding AK against KK. With the blinds at 400/800, a good player raised second to act with 25 blinds. I looked at AK and opted to make a small 3-bet next to act, and another decent player shoved for 22k in middle position. The original raiser tanked for a short while before folding, which likely meant that he had AK, QQ or possibly JJ. I needed to call 17k into a 31k pot, which gave me almost exact odds to call against a cold 4-bet shove range of AK, QQ+. It was a very marginal spot either way, especially considering that the guy who folded most likely had AK or QQ. Him folding either of those hands hurt my odds and made it more likely that I was in trouble, but I couldn't find a fold. Had I hit my ace, I would have had close to 60k going into the last level of the day. Instead, I was crippled and soon busted after shoving J2 into TJ Cloutier's QQ.

The next day was the $2,500 event, and I made a quick exit on the first hand of the third level. I was put in a real tough spot during the second level, but played a hand terribly to cost me the majority of my stack. It would have been tough not to double up my opponent, but I didn't do myself any favors along the way. At 50/100, I opened second to act with AK. Owen Crowe called in late position along with one other person, and the flop came AQ8dd. I bet 2/3 pot, Crowe called, and the other guy folded. The turn was a king (no diamond), and I check/called his half pot bet. The river was a brick, and I checked once again. He shoved for slightly more than the pot, and I was forced to call based on how passively I had played the turn and river to that point. He had JT, which was going to cause trouble no matter how I played the hand. However, if I led the turn like I should have, I could have gotten away from a turn shove. If he just flatted the turn, the end result would have probably have been the same. Either way, I wasn't happy with myself for making a mistake that very good players should be able to avoid.

Yesterday was the first $5k tourney, which meant that we'd be starting with 300 blinds. After chipping up to 25k in the first couple levels, I couldn't hit a single flop for the rest of the event. My 3-bets got played back at, my draws missed, and everything seemed to go wrong until I finally shoved thirteen blinds with 44 and ran into aces to bust out. Through the first two weeks of the WSOP, I'm 0/5 and down $12k.

When I went to bed last night, my plan was to wake up and grind Sunday tournaments online. After the alarm went off at 9:15, I changed my mind. I ended up sleeping until 2:00, and decided to skip the Sunday grind entirely. I can't even remember the last time I didn't play on Sunday without having other plans. It certainly hasn't happened in 2009 yet, and I'm not sure I've opted to take a Sunday off in over a year. Regardless, the WSOP has been wearing me down already, so a full day of rest might be just what I need. Everybody needs a lazy sunday every once in a while.

Tomorrow is the $2,500 6-max NL event. It can be very mentally difficult to start a new tournament every day after investing upwards of fifteen hours in the previous one without making any real progress. Hopefully I can get deep in one of these soon to help offset the physical and mental grind that is setting in far too early this year.

WSOP '09: Days 1-8

2009-06-03T19:08:00.000-07:00

After busting out of my first event following a roller coaster couple of levels, I was excited to make it through to the second day of this year's first $1,500 tourney. Following a very slow start where I barely saw any playable hands, I spent the rest of the day playing a handful of big pots that left me with just under $50k at the end of the day. With the average stack at $37k and only forty players needing to be eliminated before making the money, I was looking forward to hammering the bubble and getting my first cash of the series out of the way.

My new table seemed pretty good. I only recognized one person, and the first bunch of hands didn't do much to suggest that my opponents were much of a threat. Having said that, the tournament chip leader was four to my right and had already run a successful bluff, confidently showing his hand. After the first orbit, more than a dozen people had already busted. I was hoping to find some good spots to abuse the bubble, but quickly lost that opportunity. With 40 BBs, I looked at A6dd and opened in middle position. The chip leader defended his big blind, and I caught a dream 662 flop (two hearts). He checked, I bet just over half the pot, and he thought for a few seconds before grabbing one of many stacks of yellow 1k chips and declaring a raise. Officially, he made it $16k more, but it was effectively putting me all in without leaving him any fold equity. I shoved, and he snap called with J4hh. The turn was safe, but the river was a heart costing me the 100k pot. Going into the day, 100k would have been good enough for a top ten stack. I could have done some damage with those chips on the bubble.

Had I lost to a hand like AThh, KQhh, etc., I wouldn't feel so bummed about busting out on the bubble. There's just something gross about having a guy defend his blind with such a useless hand and still getting there after I caught my dream flop. To top it off, we resumed play at 2:00, which meant that my early elimination was still too late to get into the $1,500 6-max that had started earlier. On the plus side, I finally got to spend some quality time with Nibbler, who is full of energy and appears to be a great dog.

Pug Upswing

2009-06-01T22:45:00.000-07:00

Meet Nibbler, our third pug rescue in the last fifteen months:

He's only been here for two hours, but is already flying around the house like he owns the place. He seems like a lot of fun. The timing is somewhat unfortunate since I don't have a scheduled day off until the 17th, but I'll have something to look forward to whenever I bust out of an event.

Pugs are so damn cute.

May '09 Recap

2009-05-31T20:43:00.000-07:00

Total Buy-ins: $26,289
Total Prizes: $38,810
Total Profit: $12,521
ROI: 47.63%
Hours Played: 42
Profit/Hour: $188.62

Daily Profit Graph:

Three Biggest Cashes:

1) $33,880 (May 24th, 1st, Stars $109r)
2) $2,100 (May 10th, 2nd, Tilt $216 WSOP DS)
3) $800 (May 24th, 136th, Stars $530)

May was the first time in seventeen months I played fewer than 100 hours of poker, and I have to say it was a nice change of pace. I only played on four days, the last of which was so bad it was somewhat amusing. Today was the final Sunday of the month, and I cashed in none of the thirty tourneys I entered for an ugly -$8,800 day. I've never bricked so many tourneys in one day, and I doubt I've lost more than that on a regular Sunday. Not exactly the confidence boost I got last week. Still, it's definitely nice to have my first winning month since January. My yearly ROI is all the way up to... -25%. Sigh...

WSOP Eve

2009-05-29T17:26:00.000-07:00

My first event of the 2009 WSOP is tomorrow, and I'm really looking forward to playing. Other than Monte Carlo and two Sundays since then, I haven't played any poker in roughly six weeks. I'm rested, my confidence is in good shape after my win on Sunday, and I'm more than ready to get back to the tables to try and win my first bracelet. I'll be posting less and twittering more this year, so if you care to follow along with my progress in each event, check for updates here.

One time!

Just What I Need

2009-05-24T23:55:00.000-07:00

Now I can buy in to the WSOP $40k event and only be down $6k on the week!

(Just kidding... hopefully)

Home Sweet Home

2009-05-21T17:42:00.001-07:00

Whew. The past four weeks have been a lot of fun… and very exhausting. After Monte Carlo, Mark and I spent time in Rome, L’Aquila, Philly, DC and New York before returning home three days ago. With the WSOP starting in less than a week, I’m very happy to have time to relax and take care of some things before shifting my focus to the live tournament grind for six weeks. Traveling is great, but I don’t think I’ll ever become one of those people who tours the circuit annually and spends more than a month or two on the road. Instead of posting a bunch of pictures and writing about the rest of our trip, I’ll just keep it simple with this shot of my brother and I hanging out with a ten foot Abraham Lincoln throwing up gang signs.

While I was away from home, an interesting thread developed on 2+2 dealing with downswings and variance, among other similar topics. In that thread was a post from Eric “Sheets” Haber, who is well known within in the poker world as part of the biggest MTT backing organization. I’ve dealt with him a few times, and could very well end up playing under him at some point in my career. Anyway, here’s what he wrote:

“The first thing to remember is that, again, it takes a large sample size of tourneys before realistic conclusions can be drawn about a players profitability. The problem is that all of these players know this, so the first downswing is simply attributed to variance. These players know they are good (they really are not, but they do not know better, so they are actually being truthful with themselves), so they just keep plugging away.

The next downswing is usually attributed to bad luck, bad calls by other players, rigged sites, whatever. They accept some downswing due to variance, but this extended downswing has got to be a joke of some kind! They used to win, and they have not gotten worse, and it will all turn around!!

Unfortunately, the endgame is not pretty. In a perfectly rational universe, these players would realize that the game has simply gotten harder, that they have not kept up or cannot keep up with the learning curve of the regulars, and either move down in limits to where they can compete favorably, or quit the game professionally and return to school/work etc.”

When I first read this, I couldn’t help but wonder if I fit this description in any way. Am I nowhere near as good as I think? Even with my confidence in a fragile state, I still think of myself as having a tremendous understanding of tournament poker. There’s no doubt that I have a better understanding of many concepts now than I did a year ago, but back then I was seemingly crushing everything I played. Is it even possible for my $175k downswing to be the result of pure bad luck when I’m theoretically much better than I was during a year that I won over $700k? These kinds of thoughts kick around my head fairly often, and I really don’t know the answer to them.

In mid-November, I had unknowingly come to the end of my heater, and my bankroll was roughly $410k. Six months later, I have less than a third of that money left. The good news is that I can profit $115k over the rest of 2009 without paying taxes on that money (break even one time!), but it’s somewhat tough to think about how much better shape I was in financially as recently as Thanksgiving. If I have a bad WSOP, I won’t even be properly rolled to play the weekly $1ks online. Given that I’ll likely spend between $60k-$90k in WSOP buy-ins (probably closer to $60k though), here are a few realistic scenarios come mid-July:

1) I continue to donate and find myself with a bankroll in the $60k-$80k range. Given my current six figure online downswing, I’d have to consider getting backed ASAP to avoid any immediate risk of ruin. Another option would be to quit playing the bigger online tourneys for a little while, or to bite the bullet and play some cash games.

2) A few decent cashes help me to break even during the WSOP and my roll ends up about where it is right now. In that scenario, I’d be content to skip playing big live events for a while and focus on grinding online tourneys until the end of the year.

3) My downswing mercifully concludes and I’m back where I was at the start of the year. Life is good, and I continue to play big events while looking to sell pieces of myself to avoid another nine month breakeven stretch (which I’m currently enduring).

Unless I hit a big score early, here’s my tentative schedule for the WSOP:

4a May 30, 2009 Saturday 12 PM - No-Limit Hold’em (4 day event) - $1,000
7 June 2, 2009 Tuesday 12 PM - No-Limit Hold’em (3 day event) - $1,500
9 June 3, 2009 Wednesday 12 PM - No-Limit Hold’em / Six Handed (3 day event) - $1,500
11 June 4, 2009 Thursday 12 PM - No-Limit Hold’em (3 day event) - $2,000
13 June 5, 2009 Friday 12 PM - No-Limit Hold’em (3 day event) - $2,500
14 June 5, 2009 Friday 5 PM - Limit Hold'em / Six Handed (3 day event) - $2,500
15 June 6, 2009 Saturday 12 PM - No-Limit Hold’em (3 day event) - $5,000
19 June 8, 2009 Monday 12 PM - No-Limit Hold'em / Six Handed (3 day event) - $2,500
20 June 9, 2009 Tuesday 12 PM - Pot-Limit Hold'em (3 day event) $1,500
22 June 10, 2009 Wednesday 12 PM - No-Limit Hold'em Shootout (1,000 player max) (3 day event) - $1,500
24 June 11, 2009 Thursday 12 PM - No-Limit Hold’em (3 day event) $1,500
26 June 12, 2009 Friday 12 PM - Limit Hold’em (3 day event) - $1,500
28 June 13, 2009 Saturday 12 PM - No-Limit Hold’em (3 day event) - $1,500
32 June 15, 2009 Monday 12 PM - No-Limit Hold’em (3 day event) - $2,000
34 June 16, 2009 Tuesday 12 PM - No-Limit Hold’em (3 day event) - $1,500
36 June 18, 2009 Thursday 12 PM - No-Limit Hold’em (3 day event) - $2,000
38 June 19, 2009 Friday 12 PM - Limit Hold’em (3 day event) - $2,000
39 June 20, 2009 Saturday 12 PM - No-Limit Hold’em (3 day event) - $1,500
41 June 21, 2009 Sunday 12 PM - No-Limit Hold'em Shootout (1,000 player max) (3 day event) - $5,000
47 June 24, 2009 Wednesday 12 PM - Mixed Hold'em (Limit/No-Limit) (3 Day event) - $2,500
50 June 26, 2009 Friday 5 PM - Limit Hold’em Shootout (1,000 player max) (3 day event) - $1,500
51 June 27, 2009 Saturday 12 PM - No-Limit Hold’em (3 day event) - $1,500
52June 28, 2009 Sunday 12 PM - Triple Chance No-Limit Hold’em (3 day event) - $3,000
54 June 29, 2009 Monday 12 PM - No-Limit Hold’em (3 day event) - $1,500
56 June 30, 2009 Tuesday 12 PM - No-Limit Hold'em / Six Handed (3 day event) - $5,000
57 World Championship No-Limit Texas Hold'em Event - $10,000

There are a few events that I really want to play (the $40k is no longer one of them, as being broke before the main event does not sound fun), but won’t be able to unless I hit something big before then. While I should probably include $5ks in this list, there’s just no way I’m skipping a $5k WSOP NLHE event unless I am dead broke. Here are the $10ks I hope to play but probably won’t:

12 June 04, 2009 Thursday 5 PM - World Championship Mixed Event (3 day event) - $10,000
33 June 15, 2009 Monday 5 PM - World Championship Limit Hold'em (3 day event) - $10,000
45 June 23, 2009 Tuesday 12 PM - World Championship Pot-Limit Hold'em (3 day event) - $10,000

Now that Twitter has taken over the country, I’ll go back to tweeting from the WSOP (http://twitter.com/fineman83). I actually started using Twitter back in ’07, but decided that nobody really cared about my live updates. That still might be the case, but when Ashton Kutcher has two million people following him, I figure there’s gotta be a few dozen people curious enough to read about my WSOP failures. Speaking of pointless ideas, I buzzed my head for the summer today and have decided that I won’t be cutting my hair again until I’m fully recovered from this downswing. Why? I don’t know. It makes no sense. Here’s me now:

Hopefully this won’t end up like when David Carr was quarterbacking the Texans and swore not to cut his hair until the team won two games in a row. If I recall correctly, both him and his dad ended up looking homeless by the end of the following season.

Lastly, you might recall my failed attempts to turn Mark into a poker pro after he quit his job last year. Since then, he’s decided to go back to school and study political science. He finished his first semester online while we were in Rome, and recently got his grades back for all four classes. To nobody’s surprise, he’s currently sitting on a 4.0 GPA. His dedication and commitment to hard work is very impressive. In fact, I think he did more work in four months than I did in any full year at BU. Congrats to Mark… hopefully he’ll get a nice, cushy job by the time I go broke from poker so I don’t have to worry about grinding my way back up from the microstakes.

Eels Up Inside Ya

2009-05-07T13:30:00.000-07:00

This clip is from the BBC show The Mighty Boosh, which I saw for the first time while in Monte Carlo. I've had this song in my head for the last week, and finally decided to post it here so you can all suffer the same fate. Enjoy!

Monte Carlo: Days 5-7

2009-05-05T10:52:00.000-07:00

Having been knocked out of the tournament on Thursday, Mark and I had three full days left in Monte Carlo before heading to Rome. Had I been traveling alone, I would have likely stayed at the resort and played a few of the side events. However, I was more than happy to forget about poker for the rest of our trip and continue exploring Europe. I’ve learned that exploring new places is much more enjoyable when you’re not by yourself, so it goes without saying that I’m glad Mark chose to come with me to Monte Carlo instead of somewhere like Biloxi. I’m sure he’s happy about that decision as well.

We woke up on Thursday and picked up our rental car for the day outside the hotel. Since we would be driving almost 900 kilometers, we decided to splurge and get a nice BMW with only 75 kilometers on it. It was a stunning ride going along the coastline, complete with views I’ve never seen anywhere in the United States. Our final destination was Milan, but we took some time and stopped at a few places along the way. We had a light breakfast in San Remo, one of the many locations the EPT stops at every year. Our plan was to have lunch in Genoa, but traffic and parking issues changed those plans. We actually drove by our restaurant of choice twice in a failed attempt to find parking, but it was almost 1:00 and the attendants at the nearby parking garage were about to go on their two hour lunch break. Already behind schedule, we continued on to Milan.

Mark had done some research ahead of time and suggested that we park outside of the city and take public transportation to our destinations. We found an interesting looking museum to park near, but were quickly reminded that neither one of us tends to find museums very interesting. Figuring that we were only a mile from the heart of Milan, we decided to walk in the general direction of Il Duomo and take in the sights along the way. As it turned out, our inability to navigate the side streets of Milan and a well timed parade made things somewhat difficult.

As we tried our best to head in the right direction, there appeared to be some kind of event taking place ahead of where we were walking. The crowds got bigger, the music got louder, and we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of the May Day parade. Having never heard of such a holiday, I had no idea what was going on, but my initial take on the parade was that May Day was an excuse for everyone under forty to crowd the streets, celebrate nothing in particular, drink, and have a good time. It was pretty cool to accidentally stumble into something so extravagant. The parade seemed to consist of an endless number of floats and trucks blasting music with Italian teenagers trailing along, bouncing to techno music. Eventually, Mark and I emerged from the parade unscathed and in the middle of Piazza del Duomo. Il Duomo was billed as the number one place to see in Milan, and the second oldest church in Italy did not disappoint. It was quite an amazing sight.

When it was time for dinner, we set off to find Ristorante Lautrec, an authentic Milanese restaurant that came highly recommended. While we were unable to avoid getting lost in the back streets of Milan yet again, we found some friendly people who had us follow them to our destination. Our dining experience was unique to say the least. Due to the holiday, we were the only customers for the majority of our meal. The chef, who was also the owner, was very friendly and understanding of my vegan dietary needs. He even popped his head out from the kitchen a few times to make sure what he was cooking was to my liking. The food and service were great, even though we had to communicate in Spanish because neither the chef nor waitress spoke English and Mark’s attempts to learn Italian before our trip fell somewhat short. While we were finishing our wine, Mark and the chef had a conversation I couldn’t understand but ended with a guitar being brought to the table for Mark to play. Eventually, the chef took the guitar back and he and Mark sang a song together in Italian. I used to think these things only happened in movies and to my dad when he visits Italy, but apparently all it takes is the right combination of wine, Italian holidays, and empty Milanese restaurants.

Our last two days in Monte Carlo were fairly uneventful, which was a nice change of pace and probably necessary with a week in Rome still left on our schedule. We spent a lot of time in the pool, although that wasn’t as relaxing as it sounds since Mark and I ended up jousting and beating the crap out of each other with those long, spongy pool toys usually meant for kids. Other than that, we revisited the Casino Monte Carlo area, had some more wine, and even went to a soccer game. AS Monaco FC hosted AJ Auxerre Saturday night, and despite Mark and I not being interested in futbol whatsoever, we figured it was an experience worth having since we were in Europe, after all. Monaco lost 1-0, the only goal being scored while I left my seat to grab some peanuts. I miss American sports.

Unfortunately, I can’t post pictures at the moment because of computer troubles. I should be able to have those up when I get to Philly over the weekend.

April '09 Recap

2009-05-03T03:40:00.000-07:00

Total Buy-ins: $90,700
Total Prizes: $55,579
Total Profit: -$35,121
ROI: -38.72%
Hours Played: 117
Profit/Hour: -$300.18

Daily Profit Graph:

Three Biggest Cashes:

1) $12,320 (Apr. 10th, 18th, Stars SCOOP $2.1k 1r/a)
2) $10,318 (Apr. 2nd, 16th, Stars SCOOP $530r)
3) $10,300 (Apr. 11th, T-1st, Stars $425 1r/a SCOOP $10k Satellite)

Through the first four months of 2009, I've spent $341k on MTT buy-ins with a -31% ROI. That's about all I feel like writing about poker right now.

Monte Carlo: Day 4

2009-04-30T13:42:00.000-07:00

Busto early in day two on a pretty weird hand. I opened TT in early position with 33 BBs and was called by two players. One of my opponents had been very active since moving to the table, including opening with 56o second to act. The flop came 274cc and I checked, which is a very questionable play but sometimes very useful if you can count on your opponents to bet their whole range. The first caller bet half the pot, and the button put in a small raise. Normally, I'd expect to be dominated by at least one of them, but the button had shown that he was more than capable of raising with air in that spot knowing I most likely had overcards and the other guy's half pot bet didn't seem particularly dangerous. The only problem was that I'd rarely get called by worse if I shoved, but the odds of both of them having marginal holdings was too strong to simply fold my tens. It was certainly a reasonable option, but I decided to jam and found myself up against the button's middle set.

After taking the walk of shame back to our hotel room, I quickly got over the tournament and walked along the beach for some lunch. Mark and I spent some time in the indoor/outdoor heated pool before hitting up a nearby sushi place for dinner. Tomorrow, we'll be renting a car and driving to Milan for the day. As of now, we have no idea what we'll be doing there, but I can think of worse ways to spend a day than driving along the Italian Riviera and figuring out our plans as we go.

Monte Carlo: Days 1-3

2009-04-29T13:06:00.000-07:00

WTF?

Tout d'abord, une rapide mise à jour de poker: J'ai 39.500 après le premier jour. La moyenne sera probablement autour de 53k entrer dans deux jours avec les stores à partir de 500-1k/100. Je suis assez chanceux d'être encore en vie après avoir été dans ma pile de noir rois contre Mike "Timex" McDonald's black aces et en tournant une série (en plus, Luca Pagano m'a dit qu'il avait plié l'affaire roi).

Mark et moi sommes arrivés à Monte Carlo, à 10h30 heure locale et a trouvé le chemin vers le Monte Carlo Bay Hôtel and Resort assez rapidement. Après avoir déjeuner, nous avons décidé de nous détendre un peu et faire une sieste avant le dîner. Douze heures plus tard, il est 4h00 AM et je suis bien reposé et prêt pour le premier jour du tournoi. Tout dans cette station est tout aussi extravagant et coûteux, et le buffet de 34 euro ne fait pas exception. À ma grande surprise, ils ont le lait de soja, ce qui a été une agréable surprise compte tenu de la difficulté de ce voyage, je m'attendais à être maintenant que je suis la suite d'un régime végétalien. J'étais à courir en Daniel Negreanu hier (qui est un végétarien aussi), et lui a demandé s'il avait des recommandations vegan à Monte-Carlo. Il a ri et m'a dit que j'étais mort de dessin.

Une fois que Mark et moi avons fait avec le petit déjeuner, nous avons erré dans les motifs de la station et a pris quelques belles images. Vers midi, je me suis rendu sur le tournoi et se préparer à jouer à ce qui s'est avéré être une très dure table. Avant que les cartes aient été distribuées, la chambre est ouverte comme le toit rétractable séparées afin de permettre le soleil brille sur chaque table. Il semble comme un grand jour pour jouer au poker en dehors, mais le toit est fermé dès que l'ouverture. Je ne sais pas si ils ont estimé, comme pour montrer leur parisiennes toit, mais je ne les blâme pas, si tel est le cas. C'est Monte Carlo, après tout, où toutes les autres voitures sur la route est une Bentley ou Lamborghini.

Après avoir été fait de jouer, nous avons pris une fin de dîner à la même place, on a déjeuné à la veille. Le service était grand, qui est une différence notable de notre première expérience. Il semble que les habitants se répartissent en deux catégories quand il s'agit de service à la clientèle avec les Américains. Certains sont indifférents à donner un mauvais service que vous simplement en raison de votre nationalité, alors que d'autres sont heureux de sortir de leur façon de tenir compte de leurs clients. Je serais plus disposé à tenir son jugement jusqu'à la fin du voyage si ce n'était pas prévu en fonction de ce que nous pouvons lire en ligne, mais il semble que le fait d'être un Américain peut se traduire par moins de service optimal. Ne croyez pas que je suis se plaindre ... mais pour la plupart, ici, tout a été super.

Aujourd'hui, nous aventuré dans la ville pour la première fois. Notre premier arrêt a été un haut-end de shopping au coeur de Monte Carlo. Comme je n'étais pas d'humeur à acheter tout ou cinq cristaux chiffre montres, nous avons continué sur le célèbre Café de Paris pour le déjeuner. Malgré de faire de notre mieux pour répondre à la commande de vin avec le repas, notre serveur a pris quelque chose d'intéressant que Mark's ire. Pour le déjeuner, j'ai eu le spaghetti et Mark commandé un croque-monsieur (sandwich au jambon et au fromage). Je suis assez sûr, il n'ya pas de personne sur la planète qui pense que de mettre du ketchup sur chaque plat, mais notre serveur n'a pas manqué de nous apporter quelques Heinz avant notre repas est arrivé. Je ne pense pas que quoi que ce soit, mais il regarda autour de Mark, et a remarqué quelque chose de curieux - nous étions la seule table en vue du ketchup qui avait sur lui. Il n'a pas pris la peine ou l'autre de nous, autant que cela pourrait donner à penser, mais je pensais que c'était une jolie anecdote amusante. La nourriture était grande, d'ailleurs.

Comme il est de notre plan, nous avons continué sur le passé de Monte-Carlo et a essayé de trouver notre chemin du Jardin Exotique, un endroit hautement recommandé de l'autre côté du pays. Nous avons obtenu ce que nous avons pris le bus a le droit, mais a rapidement découvert que nous avons été dirigés ailleurs. Heureusement, nous étions assez près que nous avons notre manière de naviguer le jardin après avoir gravi quelques centaines de marches, la prise de certains banalisés ascenseurs, marcher dans les ruelles, et de recevoir de l'aide de quelques habitants très sympathiques. Le jardin, situé sur le flanc d'une montagne, est à couper le souffle. Je ne suis pas gros sur le tourisme et les jardins, en particulier, mais c'était différent de tout ce que j'ai jamais vu. Les photos ne le font pas justice, mais je vais poster un petit nombre d'entre eux de toute façon. Sur notre chemin de retour à l'hôtel, nous nous sommes arrêtés dans un supermarché pour que je puisse faire le végétalien collations pour le reste de notre séjour ($ 10 mentos probablement pas le couper). Comme nous l'avons payé pour notre épicerie, Mark a remarqué quelque chose d'intéressant: tout le monde était d'ensachage de leurs propres articles avec leurs propres sacs. Étant donné que nous n'avions pas assez de poches pour s'adapter à 50 euros la valeur de l'épicerie, j'ai sauté sur la ligne et a saisi un sac. Il est très intéressant de voir le genre de choses qui sont complètement normal ici, mais aussi étrangers à des gens comme moi qui n'ont jamais été en Europe.

Pour le dîner, ce soir, nous sommes allés à un faible clés bar à vin / restaurant qui était d'environ un mile de la station. Tout était merveilleux. Comme je l'ai mentionné, j'ai eu peu de chance de vegan options à Monte Carlo, mais notre serveur a été plus que prêt à faire quelques aménagements et de jeter ensemble un bon repas. Alors que je me fatigue de pâtes avec sauce tomate au moment de mon retour aux États-Unis, j'ai été très heureux de nos restaurants à ce jour. Idéalement, il ne sera pas beaucoup plus parce que je vais jouer au poker pour le reste du voyage, mais il semble comme une situation gagnant-gagnant, quel que soit.

Oh hell. It appears that playing around with translators has drastic results. Here's the original post:

First, a quick poker update: I have 39,500 after day one. The average will likely be around 53k going into day two with the blinds starting at 500-1k/100. I’m pretty lucky to still be alive after getting my stack in with black kings against Mike “Timex” McDonald’s black aces and turning a set (additionally, Luca Pagano told me he folded the case king).

Mark and I arrived in Monte Carlo at 10:30 local time and found our way to the Monte Carlo Bay Hotel and Resort rather quickly. After having lunch, we decided to relax for a while and take a nap until dinner. Twelve hours later, it was 4:00 AM and I was well rested and ready for day one of the tournament. Everything in this resort is equally extravagant and expensive, and the 34 euro buffet was no exception. To my surprise, they had soy milk available, which was a pleasant surprise given how difficult I expected this trip to be now that I’m following a vegan diet. I happened to run into Daniel Negreanu yesterday (who is a vegan as well), and asked him if he had any vegan recommendations in Monte Carlo. He laughed and told me I was drawing dead.

Once Mark and I were done with breakfast, we wandered around the grounds of the resort and took some beautiful pictures. Around noon, I headed over to the tournament area and got ready to play at what turned out to be a very tough table. Before the cards were dealt, the room opened up as the retractable roof separated to allow the sun to shine on every table. It seemed like a great day to play poker outside, but the roof was closed just as soon as it opened. I don’t know if they just felt like showing off their baller roof, but I wouldn’t blame them if that was the case. This is Monte Carlo after all, where every other car on the road is a Bentley or Lamborghini.

After I was done playing, we grabbed a late dinner at the same place we had lunch at the day before. The service was great, which was a notable difference from our first experience. It seems as if the locals fall into two categories when it comes to customer service with Americans. Some are indifferent towards giving you bad service simply because of your nationality, while others are happy to go out of their way to accommodate their customers. I’d be more willing to hold judgment until the end of the trip if this wasn’t expected based on what we read online, but it seems to be that being an American can result in less than optimal service. Don’t think I’m complaining though… for the most part, everything here has been great.

Today, we ventured out into the city for the first time. Our first stop was a high-end shopping area in the heart of Monte Carlo. Since I wasn’t in the mood to purchase any crystal or five figure watches, we continued on to the famous Café de Paris for lunch. Despite doing our best to fit in by ordering wine with our meal, our waiter did something interesting that caught Mark’s ire. For lunch, I had spaghetti and Mark ordered a croque monsieur (ham and cheese sandwich). I’m fairly sure there isn’t a person on the planet who would think to put ketchup on either dish, but our waiter made sure to bring us some Heinz before our meals came. I didn’t think anything of it, but Mark looked around and noticed something peculiar – we were the only table in sight that had ketchup on it. It didn’t bother either of us as much as this might suggest, but I thought it was a pretty amusing anecdote. The food was great, by the way.

As was our plan, we continued on past Monte Carlo and tried to find our way to the Jardin Exotique, a highly recommended spot on the other side of the country. We got on what we assumed was the right bus, but quickly found out that we were headed elsewhere. Fortunately, we were close enough that we successfully navigated our way to the garden after climbing a few hundred stairs, taking some unmarked elevators, walking through alleys, and receiving help from some very friendly locals. The garden, located on the side of a mountain, was breathtaking. I’m not big on sightseeing and gardens in particular, but this was unlike anything I have ever seen. The pictures don’t do it justice, but I’ll post a few of them anyway. On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at a supermarket so I could stock up on vegan snacks for the remainder of our stay ($10 mentos probably won’t cut it). As we paid for our groceries, Mark noticed something interesting: everyone else was bagging their own items with their own bags. Since we didn’t have enough pockets to fit 50 euro worth of groceries, I hopped out of line and grabbed a shopping bag. It’s very interesting to see the kinds of things that are completely normal here but equally foreign to people like myself who have never been to Europe.

For dinner tonight, we went to a low key wine bar/restaurant that was roughly a mile from the resort. Everything was wonderful. As I mentioned, I had low expectations for vegan options in Monte Carlo, but our server was more than willing to make a few accommodations and throw together a nice meal. While I might get tired of pasta with tomato sauce by the time I return to the US, I’ve been very pleased with our dining experiences so far. Ideally, there won’t be many more because I’ll be playing poker for the rest of the trip, but it seems like a win-win situation no matter what.

Eurotrip!

2009-04-21T19:49:00.000-07:00

Even though I'm typically content to stay in my comfort zone and avoid traveling long distances for poker, it's hard not to look forward to spending two weeks in Monte Carlo and Italy. Neither Mark or I have ever been to Europe, and I can't think of many better places to visit for the first time. The tournament I'll be playing is the EPT Grand Final on April 29th, and even though last year's first prize was around $3 million, I'm not really thinking much about playing poker on this trip. Doing well would be great, but a week in Monte Carlo is a nice consolation prize for busting out early.

I didn't end up winning a seat in the $25k WPT Championship this weekend, and common sense kept me from buying in directly. It would have been fun to play in that event, but I'm at a point where I have to be very careful about playing in expensive tourneys. I'll make a few exceptions for the WSOP, but if things continue the way they are, I'll have to change some things up for the rest of the year to avoid finishing 2009 in the red. I'm stuck about $97k on the year so far, which is something I considered to be close to impossible five months ago.

While I can't help but dwell on my downswing from time to time, I refuse to worry about that for one second while we're on vacation. I'll play my best, but I'm not going to care about how I finish in Monte Carlo. Who knows, maybe losing for five months is a good thing when going on a long trip. Everyone says that Monte Carlo is one of the most expensive places on the planet, but who cares about spending $10 on a beer when you've just lost $175k? My goal for this trip is to enjoy it as much as I can, regardless of the cost or any bad beats I take at the tables. I'll worry about reality once I get back to Vegas in four weeks.

Time to start packing... but first, a video of my dog Jack at dinner time:

I'm gonna miss those guys.

Motivation Issues

2009-04-16T16:58:00.000-07:00

Today was the final $5k event of the Bellagio Five Star series. Even though field sizes have been down, it was a safe assumption that this tourney would clear 100 players with ease. It ended up getting 134 entrants (still just half of last year), and I wasn't one of them. My plan was to play, but when the alarm went off this morning I changed my mind rather quickly. Maybe it was the wine I drank last night, or maybe I'm slowly losing that drive to fight through a sleepy morning to make my way to the casino. I've found myself struggling through my last few sessions online as well, and can't help but think that it's long overdue that this downswing has taken a toll on my overall attitude towards poker. Even though I'll be playing in Monte Carlo, the better part of that four week trip will be spent relaxing and doing anything but grinding online. That might be just what I need to recharge my batteries heading into the WSOP next month.

The last big event prior to Monte Carlo is the Five Star $25k on Saturday. When the year started, I was looking forward to playing that tourney for the first time. After struggling for a few months, I figured I still had some time to hit a big score and convince myself to ignore proper bankroll management for one event. Now, after only playing one of the Five Star prelims and an uneventful SCOOP, I'm probably going to have to miss the $25k entirely. I'll take a few shots at the super satellites tonight and tomorrow, but the most likely scenario is that I'll end up swallowing my pride and skipping the event. As much as I hate to say it, that might not be a bad thing. I don't know if I'm in a great state of mind to play a week long tournament against some of the best players in the world. Also, not playing will give me plenty of time to rest up and get everything in order for our trip. Still, missing this event would be the first time this year I've had to skip something because of my bankroll troubles. It might be the smart decision, but it isn't one that I enjoy making.

Edit: Guess who was the first one out of tonight's satellite? I should have known better than to get my money in with aces preflop.

Terriers!

2009-04-11T23:32:00.001-07:00

Congrats to Boston University for winning the NCAA Hockey Championship tonight! I haven't followed the team much since graduating four years ago, but tonight's game was unbelievable. I'm sure no more than five percent of you actually saw that comeback, but it was definitely one of the best hockey games I've ever seen.

Continuing with the theme of comebacks, I salvaged an otherwise terrible day by shipping a $10k SCOOP main event seat after cashing in none of the first fifteen tourneys I played. In fact, if it wasn't for the hockey game, I would have called it a day early on and taken a $5k loss. Hell, even the Phillies pulled off a nice little comeback after Brett Myers started the game looking like... well, Brett Myers. Who knows, maybe all this is a sign of things turning around. Or maybe I'm just having a hard time wrapping up this blog and don't know what else to write.

Nice.

Here We Go Again

2009-04-10T23:31:00.000-07:00

With eighteen left in the SCOOP $2k cubed:

PokerStars Game #26961201874: Tournament #200904173, $2000+$100 Hold'em No Limit - Level XXI (800/1600) - 2009/04/11 2:28:41 ET
Table '200904173 19' 9-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: t soprano (135177 in chips)
Seat 2: bfineman (36321 in chips)
Seat 3: xthesteinx (17864 in chips)
Seat 4: ZEMBALOUIE (84876 in chips)
Seat 5: Allanon85 (224869 in chips)
Seat 6: gator93 (160725 in chips)
Seat 7: jakoon1985 (48521 in chips)
Seat 8: YRWTHMELTHR (39834 in chips)
Seat 9: mendieta19 (139894 in chips)
t soprano: posts the ante 200
bfineman: posts the ante 200
xthesteinx: posts the ante 200
ZEMBALOUIE: posts the ante 200
Allanon85: posts the ante 200
gator93: posts the ante 200
jakoon1985: posts the ante 200
YRWTHMELTHR: posts the ante 200
mendieta19: posts the ante 200
ZEMBALOUIE: posts small blind 800
Allanon85: posts big blind 1600
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bfineman [Ah Ad]
gator93: raises 2500 to 4100
jakoon1985: raises 7850 to 11950
YRWTHMELTHR: folds
mendieta19: folds
t soprano: folds
bfineman: raises 24171 to 36121 and is all-in
xthesteinx: folds
ZEMBALOUIE: folds
Allanon85: folds
gator93: folds
jakoon1985: calls 24171
*** FLOP *** [Tc 5d 6c]
*** TURN *** [Tc 5d 6c] [4c]
*** RIVER *** [Tc 5d 6c 4c] [9h]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
jakoon1985: shows [Td Ts] (three of a kind, Tens)
bfineman: shows [Ah Ad] (a pair of Aces)
jakoon1985 collected 80542 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 80542 | Rake 0
Board [Tc 5d 6c 4c 9h]
Seat 1: t soprano folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: bfineman showed [Ah Ad] and lost with a pair of Aces
Seat 3: xthesteinx (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: ZEMBALOUIE (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 5: Allanon85 (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 6: gator93 folded before Flop
Seat 7: jakoon1985 showed [Td Ts] and won (80542) with three of a kind, Tens
Seat 8: YRWTHMELTHR folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: mendieta19 folded before Flop (didn't bet)

No big deal, first was only $300k. I also got deep in the SCOOP $200 cubed at the same time, but got hit with a few coolers and finished 35th. Tonight looked so promising at one point... I think I was top ten in both tourneys with less than five tables left in each.

This poker thing can be pretty brutal at times.

Scoopage

2009-04-08T20:55:00.000-07:00

I know my blog has been pretty uneventful lately, and I apologize for that. However, I doubt most of you want to read about more bad beats, and that happens to be the only poker related content at my disposal these days. My time in today's $5k SCOOP event ended near the bubble when I got my money in with QQ against JJ and lost the pot worth about $20k in equity. Yesterday was actually worse to the point that it was comical. Among the few dozen tourneys I played were two satellites to the SCOOP $10k on Sunday. Both of them had over 100 runners, and both awarded seats to the top two finishers. I took third and fourth. In the first one, I lost with 88 against K4, and lost with K4 against 88 the next time around.

My plans for the rest of the month are somewhat up in the air. While there are two more big SCOOP events I'm playing no matter what, I might end up skipping the Bellagio tourneys after that. There are a few $5ks, which might not even be worth playing based on the depressingly low turnouts at the Five Star series so far. The $25k is on the 18th, and my participation in that depends on how much of my action I can sell. I really want to play that event for the first time, but my downswing (now approaching $150k) has torn my bankroll to shreds. We'll see what happens in the next ten days.

After everything at the Bellagio is done (and if you ask most people they'll tell you that's already the case), Mark and I leave for what promises to be an amazing vacation. We'll be driving to LA, flying to Boston for two days, and then heading to Monte Carlo for a week. After I win the EPT Grand Finale, we'll be detouring to Rome for four days before spending a week in Philly visiting family. Then we fly back to LA, retrieve our dogs, and head back to Vegas for a few days of rest before the WSOP begins. It should be a great few weeks. Best of all, I'll only have a few days of poker to deal with... so win or lose, it should be my most profitable month of the year to date.

Lazy Saturday

2009-04-04T19:26:00.001-07:00

For just the third time this year, I decided to take a day off when I had previously planned to play online. After a long session Thursday and a restless night yesterday, laying on the couch and relaxing seemed like a nice change of pace today. The reason I didn't sleep well last night was because of a loud, stubborn house guest that will be staying here this weekend. Meet Buzz, our neighbors' bulldog:

Buzz is awesome. He snores like a mountain lion, but it's still been lots of fun having him around the house.

My long session on Thursday was thanks to a deep run in the SCOOP $500r event. Stars always has ridiculously slow structures for their special tournament series, and the $500r was no exception. I busted out in sixteenth after fourteen hours, but the entire tournament came four hours short of lasting an entire day. Sixteenth paid out just over $10k, which fell way short of the $211k first prize I had my eye on. Second would have also got me out of my downswing, and anywhere in the top four would have gotten me unstuck for 2009. I have no regrets though. I played very well against a very tough field, ran well, and didn't even take any frustrating beats to complain about. My most important hand of the tournament came with about twenty players left, when I got my money in with QJss against A9ss on a ten high, two spades flop. It would have been sweet to bink my six-outer, but I had already used up my miracle luck earlier when I 3-bet shoved KK into AA on a jack high flop and survived.

I was thinking of making a strategy post about one of the hands I played in the $500r, but decided it wasn't interesting enough to write more than a paragraph or two about it... however, since I ran a successful triple barrel bluff against one of the best players online, I'm going to post it anyway:

PokerStars Game #26661174166: Tournament #200904013, $500+$30 Hold'em No Limit - Level XIII (200/400) - 2009/04/02 21:37:45 ET
Table '200904013 19' 6-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 1: mig.com (17936 in chips)
Seat 2: BadcardsAA (67493 in chips)
Seat 3: cdbr3799 (13351 in chips)
Seat 4: Magisterium (29255 in chips)
Seat 5: supadphat (15830 in chips)
Seat 6: bfineman (34242 in chips)
mig.com: posts the ante 50
BadcardsAA: posts the ante 50
cdbr3799: posts the ante 50
Magisterium: posts the ante 50
supadphat: posts the ante 50
bfineman: posts the ante 50
mig.com: posts small blind 200
BadcardsAA: posts big blind 400
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bfineman [Ad 3c]
cdbr3799: folds
Magisterium: folds
supadphat: folds
bfineman: raises 800 to 1200
mig.com: calls 1000
BadcardsAA: folds
*** FLOP *** [Td Jc Qd]
mig.com: checks
bfineman: bets 2000
mig.com: calls 2000
*** TURN *** [Td Jc Qd] [6c]
mig.com: checks
bfineman: bets 4500
mig.com: calls 4500
*** RIVER *** [Td Jc Qd 6c] [3s]
mig.com: checks
bfineman: bets 26492 and is all-in
mig.com: folds
Uncalled bet (26492) returned to bfineman
bfineman collected 16100 from pot
bfineman: doesn't show hand
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 16100 | Rake 0
Board [Td Jc Qd 6c 3s]
Seat 1: mig.com (small blind) folded on the River
Seat 2: BadcardsAA (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 3: cdbr3799 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: Magisterium folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: supadphat folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: bfineman (button) collected (16100)

The most important thing about this hand is understanding that mig can almost never have anything strong enough to call a river shove against the range I'm representing. I don't particularly like risking the majority of my stack trying to bluff extremely good players, but c-betting this flop only to give up on a perfect turn and river would be criminal. Checking behind this flop is fine against opponents who are passive enough to allow you to make a delayed c-bet, but against mig it most likely meant that I'd be surrendering the hand (which can be correct at times). When he just called, it made it unlikely that he had a low straight, set or a high two pair (although he's tricky enough that it was possible). I'm 99% sure that he would 3-bet AK preflop against a button raise with 65 BBs, so his flop call seemed most like a hand that wanted to see the turn but didn't want to risk being 4-bet and forced to fold.

Since that flop was coordinated enough that a good player would typically try and play for stacks right away with a strong hand, the combination of his flop call and turn card made firing another barrel almost mandatory. After all, my range certainly included monster hands, and this wasn't exactly the kind of board that people tend to run deep bluffs on. I bet small enough to ensure that a potential river bet would be large enough in comparison to the pot that he wouldn't be forced to call. My turn bet was also made knowing that if he called, I would have to shove blank rivers. Firing on that turn only to check behind a good river would be massively -EV, because mig could easily peel the river with a hand like AQ, KQ or KJ with the intention of hoping to improve his hand or having me check behind the river. He took a few seconds before folding to my river bet, a moment in which I half expected him own me and make a sick call with something unexpected like 99 or AT. Come to think of it, I think this was the first pot I've ever won against mig in years of playing against him.

March '09 Recap

2009-03-31T20:01:00.000-07:00

Total Buy-ins: $77,894
Total Prizes: $46,587
Total Profit: -$31,307
ROI: -40.19%
Hours Played: 134
Profit/Hour: -$243.64

Daily Profit Graph:

Three Biggest Cashes:

1) $18,800 (Mar. 7th, T-1st, Stars $800 Monte Carlo Satellite)
2) $7,066 (Mar. 4th, 2nd, Tilt $33r)
3) $4,956 (Mar. 2nd, 12th, Tilt $1k)

Well, it seems that losing tens of thousands of dollars in a few weeks has become a regular occurrence. The past four months have produced three of my four worst monthly results, leaving me with a $137k downswing. That’s a lot of money. It’s depressing to fire up my computer on a Sunday and realize that there are only one or two prizes out there that could get me unstuck. In the long run, downswings are nothing more than arbitrary numbers that mean very little. However, if those arbitrary numbers lead to a losing year, there are very tangible problems that arise. In 2008, I was fortunate enough to make over $700k, a large part of which is about to be paid in taxes. As my ’09 yearly totals continue to drop (-$73k at the moment), I face the very real scenario of finishing the year in the red. If that happens, the government obviously won’t be sending me a third of my losses. In other words, winning $1 puts roughly $0.66 in my pocket. When I lose a dollar, I get $0.33 back. In a losing year, however, I get no such refund.

For now, I’m not too concerned about that possibility. The next three months are going to be filled with big buy-in tourneys, and I’ll get a much better picture of my year end forecast once the WSOP concludes. Until then, I have some other issues on my mind as a result of this downswing. My bankroll has been cut in half over the last four months, thanks in equal parts to poker and life expenses (perhaps I shouldn’t have spent $57k on a car). As a result, tourneys over $3k fall outside of the 100 buy-in rule, which is terrible timing going into the next three months. While events like Bellagio $5k tourneys are manageable within my bankroll, the $25k main event certainly isn’t. Neither are the SCOOP $10k, Monte Carlo $15k, or the handful of $10k WSOP events. I want to play all of these tourneys, and hate the idea of not cashing in on my equity in some of them. The option of selling pieces is still available, but how much of myself will I be left with if I try to follow good bankroll management in a $25k tourney? The bottom line is that this downswing has left me in a very vulnerable place as far as my bankroll is concerned. If I play those big events and don’t hit a sizable score, I could find myself needing to stop playing them all together until I build my roll back up. The worst possible option, but one that might become a reality at some point, would be to seek full backing so I can continue to play big events. I really, really want to avoid that possibility.

April has the potential to be a huge month, either in a good or bad way. I could return from Monte Carlo needing to reevaluate my options as a poker player, or I could hit something big in the next few weeks and look back on the last four months as nothing more than a bump in the road (albeit a very large one).

Seems About Right

2009-03-23T21:13:00.000-07:00

Heads up for a $12k WSOP main event package in the double shootout on Tilt...

Full Tilt Poker Game #11301943141: Main Event Shootout (83997829), Table 1 - 1200/2400 - No Limit Hold'em - 0:03:56 ET - 2009/03/24
Seat 6: MrCerberus (84,898)
Seat 8: bmf823 (77,102)
MrCerberus posts the small blind of 1,200
bmf823 posts the big blind of 2,400
The button is in seat #6
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bmf823 [Ad As]
MrCerberus raises to 7,200
bmf823 calls 4,800
*** FLOP *** [2h 6s 8h]
bmf823 checks
MrCerberus bets 77,698, and is all in
bmf823 calls 69,902, and is all in
MrCerberus shows [Td 8c]
bmf823 shows [Ad As]
Uncalled bet of 7,796 returned to MrCerberus
*** TURN *** [2h 6s 8h] [4s]
*** RIVER *** [2h 6s 8h 4s] [Tc]
MrCerberus shows two pair, Tens and Eights
bmf823 shows a pair of Aces
MrCerberus wins the pot (154,204) with two pair, Tens and Eights
bmf823 stands up
MrCerberus stands up
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 154,204 | Rake 0
Board: [2h 6s 8h 4s Tc]
Seat 6: MrCerberus (small blind) showed [Td 8c] and won (154,204) with two pair, Tens and Eights
Seat 8: bmf823 (big blind) showed [Ad As] and lost with a pair of Aces

I think he was about 95% to win after the flop. Yesterday was like that hand except for ten straight hours. My ROI in four Sundays this month is -90%. I've lost $28,400 in those four days with my biggest cash being $659. It's a shame nobody keeps track of these things, because I have to think I'm closing in on some sort of record. On the plus side, at least MrCerberus will be playing at the WSOP, which probably gives me an extra few cents of equity in the main event.

Outliers

2009-03-21T16:23:00.000-07:00

I recently finished Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, Outliers. This might come as a surprise to anyone who knows me well, considering that my reading frequencies tend to be directly correlated to the amount of time I spend on airplanes and in bathrooms. Fortunately, I had some time to kill while flying to Philly earlier in the month, and decided to give Outliers a shot after seeing an interview with Gladwell on TV a few months ago. As you might imagine given the unusual nature of this post, I found the book to be absolutely fascinating.

Gladwell's third book takes an in depth look at various forms of success, and discusses how it takes far more than individual talent to rise to the top of any given field. While people like Bill Gates, Mozart and The Beatles had tremendous ability, all of them required a number of specific circumstances to align to allow them to develop their skills and become pioneers of their craft. One of the most interesting parts of the book talks about Canadian junior hockey leagues, and how all of the best teams field rosters with an abnormally high amount of players born in the first few months of the calendar year. Gladwell explains how this seemingly inexplicable coincidence has a very practical explanation.

Canadian youths start playing hockey around age ten, and are sorted into leagues based on their age. Naturally, the ten year olds born in January will be better on average than those born later in the year, since they will have a greater degree of physical maturity. While this might not seem like a huge advantage right away, the kids with a few extra months of development end up getting placed in better leagues because of their skill difference. As they grow older, these kids end up playing against better competition, receiving better coaching, and practicing more - all because they were born a few months earlier than their peers. By the time they reach their late teens, the kids born at the end of the calendar year have almost no chance of being as good at hockey as their older counterparts. This isn't because they don't have as much raw ability, but because they never had the benefit of honing their skills with the best coaching, teammates, and training facilities available.

By now, you might be wondering why I'm writing a book report on my poker blog. I've actually been thinking about Gladwell's points a lot lately, and have come to the conclusion that who I am as a poker player is far more due to circumstance than any kind of inborn or learned ability. In fact, I'm pretty confident that I could make that argument for the vast majority of professional poker players, and especially tournament specialists. Downswings and hot streaks are inevitable no matter what kind of poker you play. If I didn't run well when I first went to Foxwoods back in '04, I might have concluded that I simply wasn't good at poker and decided not to go back. Or maybe I would have become discouraged and not wanted to keep playing, even if I thought that I was better than the competition in my regular games.

In tournament poker, many players make the majority of their annual income from one or two big scores. I'm living proof of the fact that people can go months on end without making money, and then turn a sub-par year into a great one with one big cash. If you looked at the best tournament pros in the world, I'd be willing to bet that many of them had a substantial cash early in their career. Rather than grind their way up through the different levels of buy-ins, it seems far more plausible that many of those players happened to win something big in relation to their bankroll at the time, propelling them to bigger and better things. If it didn't sound so painstakingly boring, I'd look through the results of the current top 100 on pocketfives.com to test my theory. Call me crazy, but I doubt more than ten of them grinded their way up from micro stakes to high stakes without missing any steps along the way.

If you play micro stakes tournaments in an attempt to make a living from poker, it won't take you long to realize that you won't be successful. People who try this likely get discouraged and move on to something else, or seek backing to play in bigger events. Those people who jump right in to the bigger events might not have the bankroll to withstand the extreme variance of tournament poker, and go broke or just get fed up with the nature of MTTs. My first sizable tournament cash was my fifth place finish in the '07 WSOP $3k event. At the time, I was a mid-stakes cash player and was only playing tourneys occasionally. Even though I only kept half of my $100k payout, I was encouraged to keep playing tournaments. That led to a couple more decent wins, and that boost in my confidence and bankroll eventually convinced me to focus exclusively on tournaments. Would I have become an MTT grinder and banked a $700k+ year in '08 if it wasn't for that one deep run at the WSOP the year before? Almost definitely not. For every person like me who caught that one big break early on, there must be a handful of poker players who decided to give up, focus on something else, or seek backing. I wasn't necessarily better than those players back in '07, but I probably am now because I built up my bankroll and got invaluable experience in the two years since.

The ~$120k downswing I'm in right now has been brutal. It might seem unnecessary to say, but I've lost about $120k as a result of this slide. However, think about what that downswing would have cost me a few years ago. Granted, I wasn't playing the stakes I am now, so the monetary number might be smaller. But if I went four months without making a cent from tournaments at the end of '07, I'd have probably chalked my WSOP cash up to variance and gone back to cash games. I almost certainly wouldn't have had as big of a year as I did last year, because I'd have stopped playing tournaments more than every once in a while. My total earnings from poker would be far less, and losing $120k wouldn't be a downswing... it would be the end of my bankroll.

Results aside, I know for a fact that I'm a very good tournament player. I've worked hard to improve, and almost two years after luckboxing my way to a WSOP final table, feel confident that I'm +EV in just about any NLHE tournament on the planet. Some might say that players like me are among the best at what we do, and I wouldn't disagree with that statement. However, almost all of us MTT pros didn't get to this point because of just skill and hard work. Most of us got very lucky early in our careers, and have been able to develop and improve as a result of that initial success. There are probably far more people that nobody's heard of that had just as much skill as the top ranked players a few years ago, but never caught that big break to capitalize on their ability.

Caesar's Atlantic City WSOP Circuit '09

2009-03-13T14:33:00.000-07:00

Sigh. I had a few chances to be in great shape at key times in the Caesar's $5k event, but lost two huge flips to eventually bust a few spots short of the money. Near the end of day one, I got my AK in against Mike Katz' QQ in a pot that would have put me second in chips with seventy players left. I missed, but still managed to finish the day with 65k, slightly less than average with half the remaining field needing to bust before making the money. As we approached the bubble, I shoved 24 BBs with KQ over Alex Bolotin's raise in middle position. He tank-called with 77, which probably meant that we got it in with close to the absolute bottom of both of our ranges in that spot. Still, a flip is a flip, and once again I failed to improve and lost a pot that would have put me in the top ten on the bubble.

The silver lining from this event was that I felt great about how I was playing. Short term luck trumps everything, but I'm feeling confident about my decisions lately. Granted, that can make losing even more frustrating when you play well and can't win key flips... but whatever, I'm over it. April is just around the corner, which means good weather, baseball, and a boatload of huge tournaments to get my hopes up and make me fantasize about becoming a millionaire in one day.

After my last post, someone asked why I don't go back to playing cash games occasionally to help deal with the huge swings that come with playing tournaments exclusively. The dream of hitting one huge score is definitely a small part of why I focus so heavily on MTTs, because I find that it's important to play often to allow yourself to improve and keep your game sharp and adjusted to the current trends. However, I think the biggest reason why I don't go back to cash games is that I simply enjoy tournaments more. It was always difficult to motivate myself to grind cash, but I rarely wake up and feel like taking a night off from the weekly tournament schedule. As I write this, I'm 3,000 miles away from home, and it never crossed my mind that flying across the country and back in three days for one tournament was a bad idea. The last four months have been a nightmare, everything seems to be going wrong, and yet I still look forward to every Sunday. For better or worse, I think I'm just meant to be a tournament grinder for now. Man, am I screwed.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot about a fun prop bet I made with Allen Bari yesterday. During the second break, he gave me 12:1 on $100 that I wouldn't finish with over 100k at the end of the day. I had 24k at the time, but we were playing another seven levels before stopping. It was an atrocious bet for him, seeing how the average stack ended up being 80k going into day two. With an hour left in the day, I chipped up to 115k and was feeling good about shipping the extra $1,200. That was right before I doubled up Mike Katz, and I never got back over the century mark for the rest of the tournament.

-$100,000 in 100 Days

2009-03-11T20:40:00.000-07:00

Two years ago, after taking a month off from poker, I set a goal of winning $100k in 100 days. I was a mid-stakes cash grinder back then, although I hit six figures rather quickly after final tabling a WSOP event. While my earning potential is higher now than it was in '07, the short term swings are much higher as well. As proof, I've hit $100k in 100 days again, but this time in the wrong direction. To be exact, I'm stuck $100,433 from MTTs since December 2nd. I did manage to ship an $18,800 EPT Monte Carlo package on Saturday, but lost all but $5k of that in the next three days.

I've taken my downswing back on the road, as I'm hanging out in Philly right now before the $5k WSOP circuit event at Caesar's in Atlantic City tomorrow. After that, the Wynn Classic and Bay 101 events are both next week, with the same starting date for some inexplicable reason. I was having a hard time deciding which tourney to play, but ended up not having to make that decision due to other plans popping up that week... something I really want to write about, but can't for a little while. Let's just say that Ken Jennings might have something to worry about in three months.

Random Strategy (5)

2009-03-06T16:20:00.000-08:00

This probably won't be a particularly useful strategy post, but I have a few reasons for posting this hand:

1) To brag about almost winning something.
2) To complain about not winning.
3) To complain about playing well and running bad.
4) To discuss strategy.

After having a grand total of two winning days in February, I matched that total in the first four days of March. Unfortunately, neither of those winning days were big, and I'm still down $3,500 this month. On Wednesday, I bricked out of all the big tournaments but found myself deep in the $30r on Tilt. I don't usually play that event because it's small and runs late, but I had some extra monitor space so I figured it couldn't hurt. After navigating my way to the chip lead with five players left, I busted three of them in two hands and found myself heads up.

Our HU match lasted somewhere around ten hands. Although I began with a 2:1 chip lead, I quickly lost a flip and an 80/20 to finish second for $7k. My opponent hadn't done anything noteworthy during our time playing together, and I didn't recognize his name. He seemed to be decent, but I didn't have any particular reads on his playing style. This was the last hand of the tournament:

Full Tilt Poker Game #10973443885: $25,000 Guarantee (Rebuy) (82411146), Table 31 - 10000/20000 Ante 2500 - No Limit Hold'em - 3:05:52 ET - 2009/03/05
Seat 6: DisCobraBites (1,488,776)
Seat 7: bmf823 (861,224)
DisCobraBites antes 2,500
bmf823 antes 2,500
DisCobraBites posts the small blind of 10,000
bmf823 posts the big blind of 20,000
The button is in seat #6
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bmf823 [Ac 8h]
DisCobraBites raises to 48,550

Even though we hadn't played heads up for long, I had already 3-bet him twice, once folding to a shove and once having him fold. He had 3-bet me once if I remember correctly, and ended up calling my 4-bet shove with 99 (I had AJ suited). With effective stacks of 43 big blinds to start this hand, I hated the option of 3-betting A8o. Since we had played back at each other a bit, there was a chance he would 4-bet somewhat light. I wasn't comfortable 3-betting with the plan of calling a shove, which meant that I'd be losing a ton of value by turning my hand into what would essentially be a bluff. Still, A8o is fairly strong in a normal HU match, so I elected to call with a hand that was close to the top of my range in this spot.

Full Tilt Poker Game #10973443885: $25,000 Guarantee (Rebuy) (82411146), Table 31 - 10000/20000 Ante 2500 - No Limit Hold'em - 3:05:52 ET - 2009/03/05
Seat 6: DisCobraBites (1,488,776)
Seat 7: bmf823 (861,224)
DisCobraBites antes 2,500
bmf823 antes 2,500
DisCobraBites posts the small blind of 10,000
bmf823 posts the big blind of 20,000
The button is in seat #6
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bmf823 [Ac 8h]
DisCobraBites raises to 48,550
bmf823 calls 28,550
*** FLOP *** [Kd 6s Ad]
bmf823 checks
DisCobraBites bets 60,050
bmf823 has 15 seconds left to act

Obviously I'm not folding here. Most of the time my hand is well ahead of his, and when it isn't, I'm likely going broke and chalking it up to a cooler. That leaves me with two options: call or raise. If I call and check the turn, most competent opponents will check behind worse hands that still have good showdown value (worse aces, Kx, QQ-TT, etc). A lot of people would also check back that range on the flop, knowing that they'll get called by all better hands and don't have to worry much about protecting their hand on a AK6 board. Regardless, I'll probably check/call at least two streets if I'm against a better hand, at which point most of my stack will be in the pot and it'll be difficult to fold at all. Knowing that I'm likely to stack off against better hands, pot control is out of the question. The most important thing in this spot is to get maximum value from worse hands. Since I expect him to shut down with worse hands that have showdown value, it'll be hard to double up against weak aces and paired kings if I just call and play passively. Since my opponent would expect me to 3-bet big aces preflop, there isn't too much that he can expect me to be raising for value on this board. Hoping to outlevel him, I raised in the hopes that he'd perceive it as a bluff and call down or even shove a worse hand.

Full Tilt Poker Game #10973443885: $25,000 Guarantee (Rebuy) (82411146), Table 31 - 10000/20000 Ante 2500 - No Limit Hold'em - 3:05:52 ET - 2009/03/05
Seat 6: DisCobraBites (1,488,776)
Seat 7: bmf823 (861,224)
DisCobraBites antes 2,500
bmf823 antes 2,500
DisCobraBites posts the small blind of 10,000
bmf823 posts the big blind of 20,000
The button is in seat #6
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bmf823 [Ac 8h]
DisCobraBites raises to 48,550
bmf823 calls 28,550
*** FLOP *** [Kd 6s Ad]
bmf823 checks
DisCobraBites bets 60,050
bmf823 has 15 seconds left to act
bmf823 raises to 144,555
DisCobraBites has 15 seconds left to act
DisCobraBites has requested TIME
DisCobraBites raises to 1,437,726, and is all in

I'm never raising to fold to a shove here. If he has me beat, I was going to go broke anyway with top pair and 43 big blinds heads up.

Full Tilt Poker Game #10973443885: $25,000 Guarantee (Rebuy) (82411146), Table 31 - 10000/20000 Ante 2500 - No Limit Hold'em - 3:05:52 ET - 2009/03/05
Seat 6: DisCobraBites (1,488,776)
Seat 7: bmf823 (861,224)
DisCobraBites antes 2,500
bmf823 antes 2,500
DisCobraBites posts the small blind of 10,000
bmf823 posts the big blind of 20,000
The button is in seat #6
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bmf823 [Ac 8h]
DisCobraBites raises to 48,550
bmf823 calls 28,550
*** FLOP *** [Kd 6s Ad]
bmf823 checks
DisCobraBites bets 60,050
bmf823 has 15 seconds left to act
bmf823 raises to 144,555
DisCobraBites has 15 seconds left to act
DisCobraBites has requested TIME
DisCobraBites raises to 1,437,726, and is all in
bmf823 calls 665,619, and is all in
DisCobraBites shows [Kh 4h]
bmf823 shows [Ac 8h]
Uncalled bet of 627,552 returned to DisCobraBites
*** TURN *** [Kd 6s Ad] [4d]
*** RIVER *** [Kd 6s Ad 4d] [3s]
DisCobraBites shows two pair, Kings and Fours
bmf823 shows a pair of Aces
DisCobraBites wins the pot (1,722,448) with two pair, Kings and Fours
bmf823 stands up
DisCobraBites stands up
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 1,722,448 | Rake 0
Board: [Kd 6s Ad 4d 3s]
Seat 6: DisCobraBites (small blind) showed [Kh 4h] and won (1,722,448) with two pair, Kings and Fours
Seat 7: bmf823 (big blind) showed [Ac 8h] and lost with a pair of Aces

My plan worked to perfection until he binked his five outer and I lost the hand. In retrospect, I absolutely hate his shove. I'm never calling with worse hands (excluding big draws), and he could simply call my raise and reevaluate on the turn. If he thinks my raise is a bluff, shoving takes value away from his hand. He could call me down and bust me if that's his read. Shoving in a spot like this only makes sense if he needs to protect his hand. For example, if the flop was 762 and he has A6, by all means ship it in to prevent me from hitting an overcard in a big pot. However, on a flop like AK6, there isn't any need to protect his hand. Either I'm calling with better hands or draws (in which case I'm not folding), or I'm folding air which would likely give up on the turn anyway.

February '09 Recap

2009-02-28T14:17:00.000-08:00

Total Buy-ins: $87,349
Total Prizes: $32,070
Total Profit: -$55,279
ROI: -63.29%
Hours Played: 148
Profit/Hour: -$373.50

Daily Profit Graph:

Three Biggest Cashes:

1) $3,510 (Feb. 25, 7th, Full Tilt $163)
2) $2,786 (Feb. 1, 13th, Stars $215r)
3) $1,782 (Feb. 8, 14th, UB $530)

I'm honestly embarrassed to put these numbers up on my blog. Having my biggest cash be $3,500 despite putting in serious volume is almost unthinkable. Only making one final table is pretty ridiculous as well. While I did get deep in a number of big tourneys and had a good amount of final two or three table finishes, those all ended poorly, and the one final table I reached came to an end when I got my money in preflop with AA against 45 for a top two stack and couldn't hold. Losing $55k in a month is my new personal record, narrowly edging out my -$53k December last year.

For the year, I've spent $172,286 in buy-ins and lost -$39,808. In other words, 2009 is only sixty days old and I'm already $126k off the pace to reach the 50% ROI goal I set for myself. At least March can't get any worse than this... right?

PokerStars Game #25449966073: Tournament #142279100, $300+$20 Hold'em No Limit - Level I (10/20) - 2009/02/28 13:15:46 ET
Table '142279100 47' 9-max Seat #4 is the button
Seat 1: bfineman (2660 in chips)
Seat 3: mrblonde2020 (3460 in chips)
Seat 4: TheCronic420 (2910 in chips) is sitting out
Seat 5: ladyluck00 (2920 in chips)
Seat 6: RaSZi (2770 in chips)
Seat 7: Creatiff111 (3120 in chips)
Seat 8: myke11 (2970 in chips)
Seat 9: LOJ79er (3190 in chips)
ladyluck00: posts small blind 10
RaSZi: posts big blind 20
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bfineman [5d 5c]
Creatiff111: calls 20
myke11: folds
TheCronic420 has returned
LOJ79er: calls 20
bfineman: calls 20
mrblonde2020: raises 120 to 140
TheCronic420: folds
ladyluck00: folds
RaSZi: folds
Creatiff111: calls 120
LOJ79er: folds
bfineman: calls 120
*** FLOP *** [3c Qc 5h]
Creatiff111: checks
bfineman: checks
mrblonde2020: bets 400
Creatiff111: raises 560 to 960
bfineman: raises 1560 to 2520 and is all-in
TAHK_007 is connected
mrblonde2020: folds
Creatiff111: calls 1560
*** TURN *** [3c Qc 5h] [6s]
*** RIVER *** [3c Qc 5h 6s] [3d]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Creatiff111: shows [3h 3s] (four of a kind, Threes)
bfineman: shows [5d 5c] (a full house, Fives full of Threes)
Creatiff111 collected 5910 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 5910 | Rake 0
Board [3c Qc 5h 6s 3d]
Seat 1: bfineman showed [5d 5c] and lost with a full house, Fives full of Threes
Seat 3: mrblonde2020 folded on the Flop
Seat 4: TheCronic420 (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: ladyluck00 (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 6: RaSZi (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 7: Creatiff111 showed [3h 3s] and won (5910) with four of a kind, Threes
Seat 8: myke11 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: LOJ79er folded before Flop

The $100k Downswing (Win a Free Snuggie!)

2009-02-24T20:23:00.000-08:00

84 days.

-$49,529.24 from online tournaments.

-$51,284 from live tournaments.

I've lost a total of $100,813.24 from poker since December 2nd. Things aren't going very well lately. Online, I've had two $50k+ downswings in less than three months, separated only by a life-saving $53k cash last month. My total live downswing is up to $96k since May of last year, which means that I'll have few opportunities to avoid going a full year as a losing player from live tournaments.

The good news is that I finally received my Snuggie (aka the WTF blanket) in the mail.

While it didn't help me run good tonight, it kept me nice and cozy as I lost all my flips. When I ordered the Snuggie (I also got some ShamWows), I received wonderful news: by ordering one Snuggie, I would get a second one free! They even threw in two book lights as well. Eager to make my purchase, I didn't pay close attention to what I was doing and accidentally placed another order of Snuggies. Those tricky bastards didn't even give me a chance to confirm my order. Before I knew it, four Snuggies and four book lights were on their way.

This is where you, the Snuggie-less reading population of my blog come in to play. Mark and I both have our glorious Snuggies, but there are two more (with book lights, obviously) sitting in the box waiting to be opened. One of them can be yours, if you accurately predict the unpredictable:

When will I finally get out of this f$@%ing downswing?

As I mentioned earlier, I'm stuck $101,813 at the moment. Whoever guesses closest to the date that deficit (plus any additional losses) is erased wins the Snuggie. The Price is Right rules apply, meaning that if you guess March 15th and I luckbox something huge on the 14th, you can't win. All you have to do to enter is post your name and guess in the comments section, and I'll revisit this post to find the winner if I ever start making money again.

Good luck! Well, except to those of you who pick a date far away. You suck.

Also, here's a link to the article about me in CardPlayer, which is about half way down the page. Hopefully they won't publish a retraction next issue if they find out how much I've lost since that article was written.

LAPC '09

2009-02-22T00:29:00.000-08:00

Day Two:

Busto. Kevin Saul absolutely owned me before I dropped down to fifteen blinds and shoved JJ into KK.

Day One:

Started with 20k, ended with 24k. A slow structure and not connecting on many flops caused me to avoid playing many big pots, and the end result was a pretty uneventful day. Even though I only have about two-thirds of the average stack going into tomorrow, the structure is so good that I'll be starting with sixty big blinds. I'll be missing my first Sunday online in '09 for day two of this tourney, so hopefully I can make it worth my while and have a solid five levels.

Perhaps the highlight of my day came when one of the CardPlayer reporters tracked me down and handed me a copy of the last issue. He had done a quick audio interview with me at the PCA, but I didn't know what it was for and hadn't seen anything online since then. During the $5k event a few days ago, I asked him what was up with that interview, and he suggested that I check for it in the next issue. As it turns out, it had already been published and I didn't notice it because I hadn't played a live tourney in over a month. Anyway, it's a short article that begins at the bottom of one page and ends at the top of the next (it even has a picture of me from the PCA). I'm not too proud to admit that I get a huge kick out of being featured in an article in CardPlayer magazine. In fact, I'll even take a picture of it and post it here when I get back to Vegas. Maybe someday I'll have enough success where things like this will seem normal, but until then, you guys will have to put up with these brag posts whenever my name or picture pops up somewhere.

One Hand to Describe the Last Three Months

2009-02-15T22:24:00.000-08:00

Make sure you read the chat during the hand...

PokerStars Game #24980467161: Tournament #139359856, $50+$5 Hold'em No Limit - Level VII (125/250) - 2009/02/15 16:59:07 ET
Table '139359856 12' 9-max Seat #5 is the button
Seat 1: KGtheACE (10561 in chips)
Seat 2: gciv (12345 in chips)
Seat 3: favoritpoker (7810 in chips)
Seat 4: smerks (20170 in chips)
Seat 5: 19FMS86 (7694 in chips)
Seat 6: bfineman (11860 in chips)
Seat 7: CutiePi314 (21385 in chips)
Seat 8: 2POKER2 (8850 in chips)
Seat 9: Donk Crusher (7725 in chips)
KGtheACE: posts the ante 25
gciv: posts the ante 25
favoritpoker: posts the ante 25
smerks: posts the ante 25
19FMS86: posts the ante 25
bfineman: posts the ante 25
CutiePi314: posts the ante 25
2POKER2: posts the ante 25
Donk Crusher: posts the ante 25
bfineman: posts small blind 125
CutiePi314: posts big blind 250
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bfineman [As Ad]
2POKER2: folds
Donk Crusher: folds
KGtheACE: folds
gciv: folds
favoritpoker: folds
smerks: raises 537 to 787
19FMS86: raises 537 to 1324
bfineman: raises 1675 to 2999
CutiePi314: folds
smerks: folds
19FMS86 said, "sorry in advance bfine"
19FMS86: calls 1675
*** FLOP *** [7d 6h 8h]
bfineman: bets 8836 and is all-in
19FMS86: calls 4670 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (4166) returned to bfineman
*** TURN *** [7d 6h 8h] [2c]
*** RIVER *** [7d 6h 8h 2c] [4s]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
bfineman: shows [As Ad] (a pair of Aces)
19FMS86: shows [6s 8s] (two pair, Eights and Sixes)
19FMS86 collected 16600 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 16600 | Rake 0
Board [7d 6h 8h 2c 4s]
Seat 1: KGtheACE folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: gciv folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: favoritpoker folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: smerks folded before Flop
Seat 5: 19FMS86 (button) showed [6s 8s] and won (16600) with two pair, Eights and Sixes
Seat 6: bfineman (small blind) showed [As Ad] and lost with a pair of Aces
Seat 7: CutiePi314 (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 8: 2POKER2 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: Donk Crusher folded before Flop (didn't bet)

I have to admit, in light of how bad I've been running, this hand (with the chat) is absolutely hilarious. The guy who beat me is actually a decent player, but was obviously on tilt and decided to mess around. I was probably drawing dead preflop.

Today had a lot of potential. Not only were there a number of special big events, but I put together a few deep runs in a couple regular tourneys. All told, I cashed in seven MTTs today, which might be my personal high for one day. Unfortunately, just cashing basically means nothing, and I fell short of any decent money in everything. I'm still looking for my first winning day of the month.

While I'm on the subject of losing lots of money, Stars announced the schedule for their new SCOOP series in April. It's insane. Included in the $40k+ in buy-ins I expect to spend are a $10k, $5k and $3k event with a rebuy and addon. The schedule is so awesome that it'll pretty much keep me from playing any Five Star events at the Bellagio until the SCOOP is over. Then I'll have a few live $5k tourneys before the $25k main event, and the month will conclude with the $15k event in Monte Carlo. Just typing that makes my head spin. At the rate I'm going, I'll be broke before the WSOP begins. Seriously though, I could easily reach $150k in buyins in April alone. How insane is that?

I'll be heading to LA on Tuesday for the LAPC $5k and $10k events later in the week. Seeing how I'm roughly $100k off the pace to have a 50% ROI for the year, it sure would be nice to snap this downswing and run good when it counts. If not, I'll likely come back to Vegas in my first six figure downswing.

Caution: Bad Beats Below

2009-02-14T15:55:00.000-08:00

The FTOPS $5k event was today. It didn't go well:

Full Tilt Poker Game #10629978526: FTOPS Event #22 (73898353), Table 37 - 40/80 - No Limit Hold'em - 16:46:07 ET - 2009/02/14
Seat 1: G de Ipanema (2,222)
Seat 2: Egarim (6,645)
Seat 3: pocketrockets11 (9,880)
Seat 4: bmf823 (12,443)
Seat 5: hero worship (5,185)
Seat 6: darkillermax (6,257)
Seat 7: VerySexual (6,671)
Seat 8: GBecks (2,484)
Seat 9: Shakunimama8 (6,403)
GBecks posts the small blind of 40
Shakunimama8 posts the big blind of 80
The button is in seat #7
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bmf823 [Ah Ac]
G de Ipanema folds
Egarim raises to 240
pocketrockets11 folds
bmf823 calls 240
hero worship calls 240
darkillermax folds
VerySexual folds
GBecks folds
Shakunimama8 calls 160
*** FLOP *** [Qh 6d 9d]
Shakunimama8 checks
Egarim has 15 seconds left to act
Egarim bets 700
bmf823 has 15 seconds left to act
bmf823 calls 700
hero worship has 15 seconds left to act
hero worship raises to 1,840
Shakunimama8 folds
GBecks: deal
Egarim has 15 seconds left to act
Egarim calls 1,140
bmf823 has 15 seconds left to act
bmf823 has requested TIME
bmf823 raises to 12,203, and is all in
hero worship has 15 seconds left to act
hero worship folds
Egarim has 15 seconds left to act
Egarim has requested TIME
Egarim calls 4,565, and is all in
bmf823 shows [Ah Ac]
Egarim shows [5d 4d]
Uncalled bet of 5,798 returned to bmf823
*** TURN *** [Qh 6d 9d] [2d]
*** RIVER *** [Qh 6d 9d 2d] [3c]
bmf823 shows a pair of Aces
Egarim shows a flush, Nine high
Egarim wins the pot (15,650) with a flush, Nine high
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 15,650 | Rake 0
Board: [Qh 6d 9d 2d 3c]
Seat 1: G de Ipanema didn't bet (folded)
Seat 2: Egarim showed [5d 4d] and won (15,650) with a flush, Nine high
Seat 3: pocketrockets11 didn't bet (folded)
Seat 4: bmf823 showed [Ah Ac] and lost with a pair of Aces
Seat 5: hero worship folded on the Flop
Seat 6: darkillermax didn't bet (folded)
Seat 7: VerySexual (button) didn't bet (folded)
Seat 8: GBecks (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 9: Shakunimama8 (big blind) folded on the Flop

Full Tilt Poker Game #10631147061: FTOPS Event #22 (73898353), Table 37 - 50/100 - No Limit Hold'em - 17:50:26 ET - 2009/02/14
Seat 1: TigerTee (7,651)
Seat 2: Egarim (32,960)
Seat 3: Martin Klaeser (7,331)
Seat 4: bmf823 (3,633)
Seat 5: miAmihAns (7,971)
Seat 6: darkillermax (1,677)
Seat 7: VerySexual (14,871)
Seat 8: GBecks (2,784)
Seat 9: gcnmoo (17,054)
GBecks posts the small blind of 50
gcnmoo posts the big blind of 100
The button is in seat #7
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bmf823 [Tc Th]
TigerTee folds
Egarim folds
Martin Klaeser raises to 275
bmf823 calls 275
miAmihAns folds
darkillermax raises to 1,677, and is all in
VerySexual folds
GBecks folds
gcnmoo folds
Martin Klaeser folds
bmf823 calls 1,402
darkillermax shows [9h 9s]
bmf823 shows [Tc Th]
*** FLOP *** [9c 2s Qs]
*** TURN *** [9c 2s Qs] [6c]
*** RIVER *** [9c 2s Qs 6c] [7d]
darkillermax shows three of a kind, Nines
bmf823 shows a pair of Tens
darkillermax wins the pot (3,779) with three of a kind, Nines
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 3,779 | Rake 0
Board: [9c 2s Qs 6c 7d]
Seat 1: TigerTee didn't bet (folded)
Seat 2: Egarim didn't bet (folded)
Seat 3: Martin Klaeser folded before the Flop
Seat 4: bmf823 showed [Tc Th] and lost with a pair of Tens
Seat 5: miAmihAns didn't bet (folded)
Seat 6: darkillermax showed [9h 9s] and won (3,779) with three of a kind, Nines
Seat 7: VerySexual (button) didn't bet (folded)
Seat 8: GBecks (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 9: gcnmoo (big blind) folded before the Flop

Also, I learned that Full Tilt doesn't game select when it comes to bad beats. I played the $100 PLO rebuy event today just for fun despite never having really played the game before. It was going pretty well through the rebuy period, and then this happened:

Full Tilt Poker Game #10630407252: FTOPS Event #23 (73898974), Table 56 - 50/100 - Pot Limit Omaha Hi - 17:09:36 ET - 2009/02/14
Seat 1: demonseed14 (4,920)
Seat 2: pool_shark_10 (4,080)
Seat 3: bmf823 (9,814)
Seat 4: Gettin Daize (7,380)
Seat 5: MrSmokey1 (23,322)
Seat 6: Eldos (1,775)
Seat 7: fumegentlypls (11,765)
Seat 8: PFLion (2,259)
Seat 9: ChipLieder (11,251)
ChipLieder posts the small blind of 50
demonseed14 posts the big blind of 100
The button is in seat #8
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bmf823 [As 2s Kc Qd]
pool_shark_10 folds
bmf823 raises to 300
Gettin Daize raises to 1,050
MrSmokey1 calls 1,050
Eldos folds
fumegentlypls folds
PFLion folds
ChipLieder folds
demonseed14 folds
bmf823 calls 750
*** FLOP *** [6s Ts 5s]
bmf823 checks
Gettin Daize bets 2,400
MrSmokey1 raises to 10,500
bmf823 calls 8,764, and is all in
Gettin Daize folds
MrSmokey1 shows [Td Th Qh 9h]
bmf823 shows [As 2s Kc Qd]
Uncalled bet of 1,736 returned to MrSmokey1
*** TURN *** [6s Ts 5s] [6d]
*** RIVER *** [6s Ts 5s 6d] [3d]
MrSmokey1 shows a full house, Tens full of Sixes
bmf823 shows a flush, Ace high
MrSmokey1 wins the pot (23,228) with a full house, Tens full of Sixes
Gettin Daize: wosers
bmf823 stands up
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 23,228 | Rake 0
Board: [6s Ts 5s 6d 3d]
Seat 1: demonseed14 (big blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 2: pool_shark_10 didn't bet (folded)
Seat 3: bmf823 showed [As 2s Kc Qd] and lost with a flush, Ace high
Seat 4: Gettin Daize folded on the Flop
Seat 5: MrSmokey1 showed [Td Th Qh 9h] and won (23,228) with a full house, Tens full of Sixes
Seat 6: Eldos didn't bet (folded)
Seat 7: fumegentlypls didn't bet (folded)
Seat 8: PFLion (button) didn't bet (folded)
Seat 9: ChipLieder (small blind) folded before the Flop

I don't really know much about PLO though, so I'll pretend I lost a flip and move on. Today put my total downswing around $85k, which means I have a chance at breaking my previous high on Sunday. Not cashing in the $5k also made me a losing player on Full Tilt over my 800 lifetime tourneys there (excluding my FTOPS win obviously). That doesn't make me feel very good.

Just to offset all the bad beat hand histories, here's a spewtastic soul read from the $5k that made me wish I didn't have the 'Auto-Muck Winning Hand' option checked so I could show my hand:

Full Tilt Poker Game #10630724848: FTOPS Event #22 (73898353), Table 37 - 50/100 - No Limit Hold'em - 17:27:03 ET - 2009/02/14
Seat 1: G de Ipanema (1,630)
Seat 2: Egarim (27,007)
Seat 3: Martin Klaeser (6,381)
Seat 4: bmf823 (4,683)
Seat 5: the aviator1 (7,964)
Seat 6: darkillermax (3,752)
Seat 7: VerySexual (12,556)
Seat 8: GBecks (3,334)
Seat 9: Shakunimama8 (5,098)
the aviator1 posts the small blind of 50
darkillermax posts the big blind of 100
The button is in seat #4
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bmf823 [Kd 8d]
VerySexual folds
GBecks folds
Shakunimama8 folds
G de Ipanema folds
Egarim folds
Martin Klaeser folds
bmf823 raises to 300
the aviator1 folds
darkillermax calls 200
*** FLOP *** [Qd 2h As]
darkillermax checks
bmf823 bets 350
darkillermax has 15 seconds left to act
darkillermax has requested TIME
darkillermax raises to 1,000
bmf823 has 15 seconds left to act
bmf823 raises to 4,383, and is all in
darkillermax has 15 seconds left to act
darkillermax folds
Uncalled bet of 3,383 returned to bmf823
bmf823 mucks
bmf823 wins the pot (2,650)
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2,650 | Rake 0
Board: [Qd 2h As]
Seat 1: G de Ipanema didn't bet (folded)
Seat 2: Egarim didn't bet (folded)
Seat 3: Martin Klaeser didn't bet (folded)
Seat 4: bmf823 (button) collected (2,650), mucked
Seat 5: the aviator1 (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 6: darkillermax (big blind) folded on the Flop
Seat 7: VerySexual didn't bet (folded)
Seat 8: GBecks didn't bet (folded)
Seat 9: Shakunimama8 didn't bet (folded)

Online Poker: Behind the Scenes

2009-02-13T15:37:00.000-08:00

This is an old picture from 2p2, but it feels particularly appropriate these days. I'm surprised I never posted it here before.

No News is Bad News

2009-02-12T20:27:00.000-08:00

The past week has been as rough as the rest of my downswing. I've taken so many stupid beats that they actually stopped bothering me. For a little while, I started to let poker affect my mood after I was done playing, but eventually realized that being miserable after a few tough months despite making over $700k last year was ridiculous. I also came to the conclusion that letting poker put me in a bad mood wasn't fair to my boyfriend Mark, who doesn't deserve to spend the end of his nights with someone on his last nerve. Surprisingly, staying in a positive frame of mind despite running laughably bad has been fairly easy, and I have no idea why. Maybe feeling like things can't get any worse is enough to make me not sweat the daily frustration... or maybe having my pugs jump all over me when I go back downstairs is all I need to feel better.

Speaking of Mark, we just had our sixth anniversary yesterday. I don't know what I'd do without him, and that's especially true when it comes to being a tournament pro. Being stuck at your computer for anywhere from five to twelve hours every session can make simple things pretty complicated, but having someone around willing to help out makes all the difference in the world. I have no idea what it's like to live alone and be an online MTT pro, but I'd imagine it involves a lot of quick meals and reused plastic bottles. Fortunately, Mark is willing to cook, bring me food, timebank on my tables while I run to the bathroom, listen to my bad beat stories, take care of the dogs, and all of the other things that I'd be failing to get done while grinding all day. But enough sentimental rambling... I have losses to complain about.

Here's a graph of my results since takings second in the $109r a few weeks ago:

That doesn't include tonight, which puts my total losses over $38k since thinking I had rediscovered my luckbox. I'm actually down over $10k for the year now, which is very reminiscent of last year when I was breaking even well into April. I have a good feeling about this weekend though, with the FTOPS $5k on Saturday and the main event on Sunday.

Just kidding... I have no chance in those events. Thirteen losing sessions and counting!

Graphs, Swings, Etc.

2009-02-05T20:44:00.000-08:00

I don't want to turn this blog into a place for me to complain endlessly, so I'll get a few things off my chest quickly and move on...

If you take away my $53k cash two Sundays ago, I'm down $110k in the last two months. I've lost the ability to cash in tournaments with any kind of regularity, evidenced by the fact that I've made the money in 15 of my last 215 MTTs. Go back an additional 100 tourneys and I'm 23/315. That's less than half what I've averaged over the rest of my career. What's going on, you might ask? I have the same question, although the answer is probably some combination of variance, spew, and frustration-related plays that end up failing miserably. I still don't think I have the right to complain after last year, but it's hard not to feel like punching a wall after being down money over my last 450+ online MTTs. Here's my graph from the last 2.5 months online:

...and as part of the bigger picture, you can see how the graph of my lifetime online tourney profits has leveled off recently:

For comparison, here's my live tourney graph:

I don't really know what conclusions I'm trying to draw from all of this. Probably something to do with the variance of tournament poker, but for the most part this is serving as a way for me to vent my frustrations after promising not to complain to a few people for the rest of the month. In the long run, these downswings and breakeven stretches are fairly insignificant, but they can be very difficult to handle when every day feels like more of the same.

There weren't any FTOPS events I wanted to play today, so I took what will likely be one of only two days off from poker until I drive to LA later in the month for some LAPC events (and hopefully seeing my brother on Jeopardy). Until then, I'll be grinding pretty hard, including the next five days where I plan on playing four full days and one half day, which should amount to over 50 hours of poker. I have a feeling that one of two things will happen by Tuesday night... either I'll win something big and feel good again, or those graphs will continue to trend downward and I'll be back here writing the same repetitive things about not being able to get out of my downswing. In the event that I keep losing and you get sick of my complaining, click here instead of reading my next few posts for a more enjoyable experience.

January '09 Recap

2009-01-31T15:35:00.000-08:00

Total Buy-ins: $84,937
Total Prizes: $100,407
Total Profit: $15,470
ROI: 18.21%
Hours Played: 163
Profit/Hour: $94.91

Daily Profit Graph:

Three Biggest Cashes:

1) $52,759 (Jan. 25, 2nd, Stars $109r)
2) $13,186 (Jan. 14-16, 20th, WPT Biloxi)
3) $12,700 (Jan. 4, 1st, Full Tilt $55 cubed)

Overall, I’m not too happy with my 18% ROI in January. However, considering that I was stuck almost $30k for the month less than a week ago, I can’t be that bummed about finishing up $15.5k. Results aside, I’m thrilled that I was able to accumulate nearly $85k in buy-ins. One of my goals for the year is to clear $1,000,000 in that category, and I finished January right on pace. Considering that it took more hours than I’ve ever played in a month before, it looks like I’m in for a busy year.

My sub-par month is mostly due to variance, but I’ll admit that I didn’t play my best poker as often as I’d like. As proof of that, look no further than the fact that I cashed in only 16 of the 191 tournaments I played. I ended December on a $64k downswing, and started January down an additional $26k. My head was pretty screwed up at that point, and as much as I pride myself on not tilting or letting results affect my play, it was difficult to stay focused when it seemed like everything was going wrong. Fortunately, I hit a nice score last week to clear my head and undo some of the damage of the previous eight weeks. Hopefully I can use that confidence boost to get back on track, play my A-game, and have a good FTOPS to start February off right.

A Hand That Deserves Its Own Post

2009-01-28T20:53:00.000-08:00

From the UB $215 tonight...

Stage #1435418173 Tourney ID 4051979 Holdem Multi Normal Tournament No Limit $100 - 2009-01-28 22:36:06 (ET)
Table: 6 (Real Money) Seat #8 is the dealer
Seat 1 - HIDDEDERKS ($3133 in chips)
Seat 2 - MANSTHEMAN ($2906 in chips)
Seat 3 - BLIZAIR ($2680 in chips)
Seat 4 - PETERHAMMER ($2977 in chips)
Seat 5 - CHERRYWAVES ($6790 in chips)
Seat 6 - LEEROES ($3754.50 in chips)
Seat 7 - DR SNUS ($6652.50 in chips)
Seat 8 - HIGHSTEAKS13 ($3283 in chips)
Seat 9 - EZPICKENS ($626.50 in chips)
EZPICKENS - Posts small blind $50
HIDDEDERKS - Posts big blind $100
*** POCKET CARDS ***
Dealt to CHERRYWAVES [Jd Js]
MANSTHEMAN - Folds
BLIZAIR - Folds
PETERHAMMER - Raises $300 to $300
CHERRYWAVES - Calls $300
LEEROES - Folds
DR SNUS - Folds
HIGHSTEAKS13 - Folds
EZPICKENS - Folds
HIDDEDERKS - Folds
*** FLOP *** [7c 10h 10s]
PETERHAMMER - Bets $400
CHERRYWAVES - Raises $800 to $800
PETERHAMMER - All-In(Raise) $2277 to $2677
CHERRYWAVES - Calls $1877
*** TURN *** [7c 10h 10s] [7s]
*** RIVER *** [7c 10h 10s 7s] [2s]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
PETERHAMMER - Shows [4s 5s] (Flush, ten high)
CHERRYWAVES - Shows [Jd Js] (Two Pair, jacks and tens)
PETERHAMMER Collects $6104 from main pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total Pot($6104)
Board [7c 10h 10s 7s 2s]
Seat 1: HIDDEDERKS (big blind) Folded on the POCKET CARDS
Seat 2: MANSTHEMAN Folded on the POCKET CARDS
Seat 3: BLIZAIR Folded on the POCKET CARDS
Seat 4: PETERHAMMER won Total ($6104) All-In HI:($6104) with Flush, ten high [4s 5s - B:10s,B:7s,P:5s,P:4s,B:2s]
Seat 5: CHERRYWAVES HI:lost with Two Pair, jacks and tens [Jd Js - P:Js,P:Jd,B:10s,B:10h,B:7c]
Seat 6: LEEROES Folded on the POCKET CARDS
Seat 7: DR SNUS Folded on the POCKET CARDS
Seat 8: HIGHSTEAKS13 (dealer) Folded on the POCKET CARDS
Seat 9: EZPICKENS (small blind) Folded on the POCKET CARDS

2009 WSOP Schedule Announced

2009-01-28T15:48:00.000-08:00

The full schedule can be found here, but I've already combed through it and compiled a list of events that I plan on playing. Before I get to the full list, there's the small matter of the first open event on the schedule... a $40k NLHE tourney to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the WSOP. I really, really want to play this event. However, there's one minor issue: I'm a few million short of having the few million needed to play a $40k tourney without exercising horrible bankroll management. If that tourney was tomorrow, it would cost me somewhere around 10% of my entire roll, depending on how you look at it. That's beyond more than anyone should spend on one tournament. I'll probably wait a few months before figuring out if I should sell pieces of myself at face value or at a small markup (if that's even possible), but the field will be so tough that I'm not sure anyone would even want my action. No matter what, I'm degen enough to want to play, and it'll take the combination of a tough next four months and being unable to sell pieces to keep me out of that event.

After burning through piles of money to kick off the WSOP, things will return to normal with a heavy schedule of small NLHE tourneys with a handful of bigger events in between. I want to learn some other games by June, but if I don't, I have a total of 29 NL, LHE and PL events on my calendar. Since some of those are on the same day, I'll probably end up playing around 25 WSOP events and spending $100k-$120k in buy-ins. Obviously, the $40k tourney causes that total to skyrocket, and selling pieces of myself or having the common sense not to play it would bring my total expenses down to a much more reasonable number. We'll see how that goes.

Here's a quick list of the events I plan on playing:

NLHE (21): $40k, $10k, $5k, $5k 6-max, $5k shootout, $3k triple chance, $2,500, $2,500 6-max, $2k (3), $1,500 (7), $1,500 6-max, $1,500 shootout, $1k.

LHE (5): $10k, $2,500 6-max, $2k, $1,500 shootout, $1,500.

PLHE (2): $10k, $1,500.

Mixed HE (1): $2,500.

I'll definitely have to brush up on my limit skills because I'm not sure I'd be +EV in the $10k event if it was tomorrow. Then again, I'd still play it because it's the WSOP, and as long as I know the rules of the game and have the money to play, I'm gonna be at the Rio trying to win a bracelet.

The Lucky Butters Avatar

2009-01-25T20:16:00.000-08:00

You might remember this post, where I talked about changing avatars on Stars and instantly running well. Brad Lidge's good luck apparently wore off in early December, and I decided it was time for a change. I'm not all that superstitious, but I figured it couldn't hurt to choose a new avatar. As it turned out, Stars only lets you change your avatar once, but I talked them into letting me make another switch. A few days ago, I thanked Lidge for his services and replaced him with Butters from South Park.

Specifically, I chose the lower left-hand Butters. An 0/10 on Saturday left me wanting to write an emo blog post complaining about my ongoing downswing, but Butters worked his magic today. The afternoon $100r drew a huge 1,101 person field, and I navigated my way to second place for just under $53k. I actually was forced to spend most of the final table nitting it up and folding often, but the big stack made quick work of everyone else until we were heads up with him holding a 7:1 chip lead. I doubled up once and continued to chip up before getting coolered with AK vs. KK for a pot that would have given me the chip lead.

This $53k score could not have come at a better time. I was in another big slump, having cashed in just five of my last 99 online tourneys before today. My total downswing was over $90k, and I was having some serious confidence issues. I needed this cash more for my head than my bankroll, although it sure is nice to knock off half my downswing in one day. It also puts me up $21k for the month, which means that I'm guaranteed to finish January in the black after such a miserable start to '09. Good stuff all around.

Free Stuff

2009-01-23T18:46:00.000-08:00

Over the past few years, I've managed to accumulate a good bit of free poker merchandise that does little more than collect dust in my closet. Most of that stuff is from the PCA, since Stars is nice enough to give out duffel bags full of loot each year. I don't really want this stuff, but figured that some of you might be interested in an item or two. Here's a list of the things I'm looking to get rid of:

PokerStars hat (4, all different)
FullTilt hat (4, all the same with FTOPS logo on side)
Stars water bottle
Stars soccer ball
Stars beach ball
Stars playing cards
Stars beach towel
Stars frisbee
Stars duffel bag
Stars bag (small, with mesh thingy on top)
Stars t-shirt
Stars button down shirt (2, short sleeve and long sleeve, I think)
Stars light zip-up jacket
Tilt "I busted a pro" shirt (endless supply of these)

All clothes are size L.

Most of these items are pictured below. Everything is new/unused, with the exception of the Stars jacket which I've worn no more than twice. I'm not looking to sell this stuff for a profit, and I'm even fine with paying the shipping costs. All I ask in return is that you donate whatever you feel is appropriate to the Southern Nevada Pug Rescue. I don't even need to know the amount, and I certainly don't expect it to be more than a few bucks. I just like the idea of giving these items to people who want it while helping a good cause at the same time.

If you want any of these things, e-mail me at thepokerjournal@gmail.com, include your shipping address, and I'll sent them out to whoever contacts me first.

Random Strategy (4)

2009-01-17T18:24:00.000-08:00

One of the few perks of being on a huge downswing is that small expenses feel fairly irrelevant compared to the amount of money being lost at the tables. At least that’s what I tell myself when I decide to do something as frivolous as fly first class back to Vegas. I’m actually writing this from above the clouds, which is nice because I rarely have the room to use my ginormous laptop on a plane. Coincidentally enough, my opponent in one of these hands happens to be sitting right across from me, which is what prompted me to write this post.

The two hands I’m writing about are examples of turning low pocket pairs into bluffs when the opportunity presents itself (not surprisingly, they’re both very spewy and backfired miserably). In cash games, playing low pairs out of position in multiway pots is typically for the purpose of set mining, since being 100+ BBs deep makes drawing to thin odds on the flop profitable because of the huge implied odds. In tournaments, many people make the common mistake of sticking with the theory that low pairs are good for little other than set mining in pots after calling a raise preflop. Because the stacks are generally shallower than 100 BBs, the implied odds of a low pair are much less relevant. If someone puts in a raise and you call out of the blinds with a hand like 55 despite only having 30-40 BBs, you’re going to lose money in the long run if you only continue with the hand when flopping a set or a big draw. Sometimes, you have to try and take the pot on favorable boards by leading out or making a small raise. Strictly relying on set mining in spots where the implied odds aren’t there can cause a player to bleed chips while missing out on opportunities to pick up small pots.

In the PCA $5k event, players started with 10k in chips with the blinds at 25/50. This hand isn’t a specific example of what I just wrote about in the previous paragraph, but the principle is similar. I forget the exact details preflop, but one or two people limped, and the villain made it 250 from early/middle position. We ended up taking the flop six-handed, and I had 77 in the small blind. The flop came something along the lines of T53 rainbow, and it checked around. The turn was an ace (still no flush draws on the board), and it checked to the preflop raiser who bet 800 into the 1,500 pot. To the best of my recollection, there were three players acting before him (including me), and two left to act. It was possible he didn’t have a piece of the board, but biggest part of his range was TT, AK, AQ and AJ. All those hands would justify his flop check and turn bet, and it I wasn’t too concerned about lower sets because most players tend to overlimp with low pairs in early position in the first few levels of tournaments. Still, those sets weren’t completely out of his range, and neither were hands like KQ or KJ. The action folded back to me, and I decided to make a play at the pot.

Even though it was early and I had no history with my opponent, he seemed like a solid player, which was necessary if I wanted to push him off of AK in this spot. With 2,300 in the pot, I made a fairly small raise to 2,200 trying my best to represent a set or two pair. After all, if that’s what I had, I’d probably play it the exact same. If my opponent had a set himself, I knew my bluff would crash and burn. However, the majority of his range consisted of big aces (and not AT, since he checked the flop), and good players are typically capable of folding those hands if that’s what the action dictates. Assuming the other two players in the hand folded, which was very likely at this point, I was primarily hoping for my opponent to fold on the turn to what looked like a monster hand. Even if he called, I had the option of firing on most rivers, because it wouldn’t be unlikely for him to peel the river with AK to reevaluate. When it folded back to him, he thought briefly before making the call. I wasn’t thrilled, but also wasn’t ready to give up the bluff.

I forget what the river was, but it wasn’t relevant to the hand. It was low, which means it probably missed his range of kickers if he did have a big ace. Now there was 5,900 in the pot, and I bet a hopefully convincing 4,000, leaving myself with an additional 4,000 behind if my move failed… which it did, and I quickly folded my hand after being faced with a raise. I ended up running into my opponent in Biloxi, and he confirmed that he had TT. I don’t really regret my play, although risky and unnecessary bluffs aren’t usually great ideas in the early stages of tournaments. However, sometimes opportunities present themselves to pick up decent pots, and it’s very useful to be able to take advantage of those situations. Unfortunately, I happened to run into the top of someone’s range, which seems to be happening a lot lately. Still, I have to give that guy credit for playing his hand perfectly and extracting maximum value out of his set. It’s probably also worth mentioning that these type plays are better when you have more than two outs if you happen to guess wrong. If I had a straight draw or picked up a flush draw on the turn, I’d give myself a much better chance of winning the hand if I got to see the river. Granted, having those draws on the board increases the likelihood of someone bluffing in this spot, so it’s important to consider what your line looks like before firing multiple barrels.

I found myself in similar situation in the Biloxi $10k, holding a useless pocket pair but looking to represent something big to win a pot. The villain in this hand was Matt Brady, a friend of mine who plays somewhat nittier than the average tourney pro. He also knows that I like 3-betting and doing other spewy things at times, which probably makes this hand even worse than it seems. In retrospect, I don’t really like my play much, but I think it makes for interesting discussion if nothing else. With effective stacks of 60k and the blinds at 300/600-75, Brady raised the button to 1,300. I was in the small blind, and the big blind was an older guy who had been surrendering his blinds fairly easily. I called with 44, and the big blind came along as well. The flop was 568 with two spades, and everyone checked. The turn was another six, and I bet slightly more than half the pot. Only Brady called, and the river was a five, without the flush draw getting there (56865 board). Since my hand was counterfeited, I had no chance of winning the pot without betting. Hoping that Matt had missed a draw, I bet 4,500 into the ~10k pot. To my surprise, he raised 11k more and left me wondering what the hell he had. Most people would bet that flop with any piece, but it wasn’t impossible for him to be going for pot control and hoping to see a cheap turn with something like 69, 57, etc. When he just called the turn, it made it less likely that he had a six. While many people would call instead of raising with a boat, that would have required him to check the flop with a set or two pair, which would be real bad on a very drawy board with deep stacks. It was possible that he had a five and was raising for value with the intention of folding to a 3-bet, but it was really, really difficult to give him credit for sixes or eights full based on how passively he played the hand to that point.

Taking all these things into consideration, as well as the fact that my line looked like either complete air or a monster, I went for the home run and hoped that he was raising with a missed draw of his own thinking that a large portion of my range was a bluff. After he raised 11k on top of my 4,500, I counted down my chips and announced that I was raising. As far as I was concerned, he had the nuts or air, and it wasn’t going to be necessary to bet big. Unless he viewed a small raise as weakness and had it in him to 4-bet shove with air, minraising was essentially the same as shoving. Since I didn’t think Brady would be capable of going off like that, I elected to raise another 11k, figuring that I could save my last 35k if my read was wrong. Like the previous hand, it was, and once again I quickly folded to a shove. Later, Matt told me he had J6hh. Oops.

On a non-strategy note, when I’m in a downswing and these type of plays backfire, I can’t help but second guess myself and wonder if I’m spewing too much. However, when I’m running well and my confidence is high, I’ll win pots with sick bluffs and feel unstoppable. Not unstoppable like this:

…but the good kind of unstoppable, where you don’t collapse at the end of the season after your star receiver shoots himself in the leg.

(Sorry, that was uncalled for.)

SPC: Day Two

2009-01-16T02:27:00.001-08:00

Wow, that was a long day. It took sixteen hours to get to 27 players, and I was lucky enough to be one of them. I say that because I didn't play particularly well again, but ran good and survived a few tough spots. The average stack tomorrow will start at roughly $315k, and I'm sitting with $198k. The structure is absurdly fast, and within twenty minutes the blinds will jump to 6k-12k/2k. It could be a quick day for me, but it's nice to have a shot at making the final table after putting in so many hours over the past two days. It's also nice to cash, because I developed a horrendous cold today, and playing that long in miserable conditions only to bubble would have been pretty brutal.

If anyone cares, the best place for updates will probably be worldpokertour.com or pokerpages.com. Play resumes at 2:00 on Friday, and will continue until there are six players left. First prize is an even $1,000,000.

Edit: Busto in 20th. Shoved 17 BBs with A6ss over a button raise. He tanked for a while before calling with A9o, and I couldn't catch up. So it goes.

Southern Poker Championship '09

2009-01-14T20:56:00.000-08:00

There’s something depressing about going from the Bahamas to Biloxi. Not that it matters much, since I’m spending most of my time playing poker, but I miss having the lazy river outside my window. Actually, I have a pretty good view of what I think is the Mississippi Sound, but I’d be afraid to float in that water for fear of disintegrating or catching something.

The Beau Rivage (where the tourney is being held) has a surprising resemblance to the Bellagio from the outside, although most of the similarities end there. The room is nice enough, but the casino offers very little in terms of entertainment or ways to kill time other than gambling. I have no complaints though, since I’m not planning on doing much more than playing poker, sleeping, and looking forward to leaving.

Anyway, day one of the tourney was today, and the competition was surprisingly soft. The field was a predictably small 283 players, and only 100 or so were eliminated today. For those who make the money, tomorrow is going to be an insanely long day. I’m in decent shape with a slightly above average stack, thanks more to catching cards than playing well. In fact, I’d say I played my B- game at best, which I attribute to my downswing getting into my head in a big way. If I don’t cash in this event, I’ll be a few thousand short of being stuck $100k in the last 6.5 weeks, something that has been weighing on my mind a bit lately. It’s messing with my confidence and causing me to make some questionable plays, although there’s a good chance I’m just second guessing myself because of my recent results. It’s hard to feel like you’re playing well when you keep running into the top of everyone else’s range.

LOL Bahamaments

2009-01-11T20:53:00.000-08:00

Get me off this island. I'm starting to think that if I stayed here, I'd never cash in another tournament again. Here's a quick recap of my stay (poker-wise):

Tuesday: Day one of the PCA $10k.
Wednesday: Bust out of the $10k, $2k, and go 0/6 online that night.
Thursday: Fail to reach the first break of the $5k.
Friday: Bust out right after the first break of the $1k.
Sunday: 0/21 online.

In total, I played 31 tourneys while I was here and cashed in none of them. I think today was the first time I ever played a full Sunday schedule without cashing in anything, and it was pretty painful. Somehow, I've lost $83k over the past six weeks, although it feels more like months at this point. Maybe I'll get lucky in Biloxi, but I'm expecting the worst and looking forward to going back home soon.

Oh, one more thing...

Ah, the Eli Manning face... never fails to cheer me up.

Lemme Lemme Upgrade You

2009-01-07T16:31:00.000-08:00

I have the feeling I'll never get that song out of my head. Ever. I also feel like I titled one of my older blog posts something similar, but I'm too lazy to check. Anyway, I'm thinking about upgrades because this was my view when I first checked in:

...and this is my view now:

Assuming I'm in my room at the right time, I'll be able to watch the show at the Dolphin Cay from fifteen stories above. Not bad for a trip that I can write off on my taxes.

Oh yeah, I should probably update how I did in the $10k. Forgive me for not getting to that right away, as I'd much rather forget that today ever happened. Fortunately, CardPlayer caught my bustout hand and saved me the trouble of having to write about being slowrolled. I ended up finishing around 290th, well short of the 199 that got paid.

That hand took place shortly after 2:00, which meant that I could probably play the $2k if I wanted. The field was surprisingly large, and I'm just pathetic enough to ignore the beautiful weather to play more poker. I got in line behind five other people to register, and was soon told that they were capping the event... after letting four more people in. Nothing like being half-slowrolled to bust out of a $10k only to find out that you're a few minutes short of making the next tourney. As I contemplated my next move (heading to the lazy river, obviously), a floor guy came over and told us that they might be able to let a few more people register. Lucky me, right? Nope, since they somehow figured that a total of five people could play, and I was sixth in line.

At that point, someone ahead of me offered to sell his spot in line for $100. I took the deal, because it was clearly +EV and I was actually looking forward to playing the event. After we settled up, he took off and I was left with just three people ahead of me. Naturally, the floor changed their minds a few minutes later and let all eight people in line play. As far as the tournament itself, I was as card dead as ever and folded just about every hand before finally shoving A8 into TT and KK. I think I'd rather have kept that $100.

PCA '09

2009-01-06T22:50:00.000-08:00

Greetings from the Bahamas. It's beautiful and sunny here, although I've spent all of my time sleeping and playing poker since arriving Monday night. Today was my starting day of the $10k main event, and I'm fairly frustrated with how it ended up.

We played eight levels today, and I had a 64k stack after level seven. That was a little more than the average, and I was very happy with how I had been playing. My table was fairly soft, and I was chipping up nicely as I looked to end the day in good shape. During the last break, I decided to unregister myself from Wednesday's $2k event. Looking to get rid of some W$, I preregistered for all the side tourneys online before leaving Vegas. Since the Stars office was closing during the final level of the day, I figured I'd take care of unregistering then and not have to worry about it in the morning. I couldn't help but think that I was jinxing myself by assuming I would still be in the $10k the next day, and even mentioned that to the woman that was helping me out. Guess what happened next...

On the very first hand after the break, I picked up KK for the first time all day and called a raise out of the big blind. The flop came KQ3 rainbow, and we both checked. The turn was another four, putting two clubs on the board. I bet, was called, and the river was the six of clubs. I bet again, and my opponent shoved, making it 20k more into a 50k pot. There was no way I could fold given the odds I was getting, but his line really felt like it had to be AQ, QJ, QT or Q9 of clubs. He was a decent player, and it just seemed very unlikely for him to have much else. Still, he could definitely be playing a few other hands that way, and the random spew factor certainly could have been effect. More for show than anything else, I took a moment to call, gave an audible sigh, and put my chips in the pot. He had QTcc as expected, and I was down to 24k after losing a hand that I was 93% to win after the flop.

That hand was very deflating, if for no other reason than I felt like I had been playing well enough to be sitting on a big pile of chips. Instead, I'd have to grind a short stack for the last level and hope to double up to make it to day two with hopes of doing more than push/folding right away. After losing a flip to someone with less chips than me, I had 7,500 with ten minutes left in the day. The thought of starting tomorrow with four big blinds wasn't pleasant, but I managed to double up with 46 against A9 thanks to a miracle river. That was it for the day, and I finished with 17,800, somewhere around a quarter of the average stack. Blinds start at 800/1,600-200 tomorrow, which means that I will probably be out shortly after sitting down. The good news is that the $2k event starts two hours after play resumes for the $10k, so I should be able to play that if things don't go well early on... and if I can't play that either, at least the lazy river is waiting for me.

But anyway, I can't really complain. I'm in the Bahamas, I haven't busted out of the main event (yet), and by slipping someone at the front desk $20, I managed to upgrade to a bigger room with a much better view.

2008 in Review

2009-01-02T18:14:00.000-08:00

When I started playing poker for a living, I never imagined that I could have a year as successful as 2008. Looking back on the past twelve months, I can't help but laugh at how ridiculous this year ended up being. I broke even for the first 100 days and lost $64k over the last four weeks - almost my biggest downswing ever. However, the eight months in between were better than I could have ever hoped for. Thanks in large part to two huge tournament scores, I finished 2008 having profited $726,400, nearly twice as much as I had earned in the rest of my poker career combined. Without question, the biggest story of my '08 ended up being my good fortune to run well at the right times and turn that luck into some monster cashes.

* * *

Starting Off Slow

When 2008 started, I didn't have much of an identity as a poker player. My bankroll wasn't big enough to play in many big tournaments, so I played a healthy balance of online cash, online tournaments, and mid-stakes live tourneys. Despite having a few decent live cashes in '07, my tournament game was still developing and I failed to record any big scores through March. My online cash play was a mix between mid-stakes 6-max and learning heads-up, both of which produced modest results. My steady yet unspectacular profit offset my tournament losses, but my ongoing breakeven stretch was starting to take its toll. I was mentally fatigued, but more importantly, it looked like I wouldn't have the bankroll to play in more than a handful of WSOP events. Reading a few of my posts from back then, it was pretty obvious that I wasn't enjoying playing poker for a living.

Saved by Caesar's

Despite enjoying tournaments far more than cash games, it looked like I'd have to grind a ton of online cash in May to get ready for the WSOP. However, a lot of good fortune at the Caesar's WSOP circuit stop turned things around in a major way. The first event of the series I played was a $1k tourney, which I won for $72k. That was my second biggest cash at the time, and more than doubled my bankroll. Not only did it do wonders for my confidence (I was down $95k from live tourneys in the previous six months), but it more than doubled my bankroll. Just over a week later, I finished second to Allen Cunningham in the $5k main event for $255k. Winning that kind of money in one day was almost impossible for me to comprehend, as it almost equaled my previous year's total profit. It also allowed me to go forward in my poker career without having to worry about short term variance, which was a very nice feeling. As an unexpected bonus, I did interviews for CardPlayer and pocketfives.com, which was a fun little ego trip.

Coming Back to Earth at the WSOP

After my big two weeks at Caesar's, I basically gave up cash games for good. I didn't need them to stabilize my bankroll anymore, and quite honestly, I didn't really enjoy playing cash at all. I'm sure that won't be a permanent change, but having the financial freedom to play high variance tournaments allowed me to focus on what I enjoyed most. After a forgettable May playing mostly online tourneys, the WSOP began and I was beside myself with excitement. My confidence was soaring, my bankroll was ready for anything, and I had the memory of last year's WSOP final table fresh on my mind. Unfortunately, soft fields can't offset the variance that comes with a few dozen tourneys, and I failed to record a single five-figure cash. All told, I cashed in three of my twenty-three events, and left the WSOP disappointed in my results. After busting out of my breakeven stretch in a huge way two months before, I quickly found myself in a $55k downswing.

The Rise of bfineman/bmf823

While I played a handful of live events throughout the rest of the year, the next four months were all about online tourneys. After making $70k from the first ~700 online MTTs of my career, I caught fire and began racking up a ton of big scores. Admittedly, I wasn't that good of an online tourney player at the start of the year. I hadn't quite mastered the differences between live and online, and it took a while before things really clicked for me. That isn't to say that my sudden heater was due to rapid improvement, but rather the combination of months of steady growth and a ton of good luck all at once. In late July, I booked my first online win for $9k. August started off well, but things really took off when I won the FTOPS $1k 6-max event for $300k. Given that my previous biggest cash online was $41k, and ignoring the fact that my thought process was completely results oriented, I suddenly felt like a legitimate top online tourney player. Oh yeah, I also doubled my already comfortable bankroll in one lucky night.

My FTOPS win helped me to get ranked on pocketfives as well as climb into the top forty in the OPOY race. I was already motivated to grind MTTs, but seeing myself near the top of those leaderboards really made me want to keep working hard. In October, I finished second in the Sunday Warmup for $75k. A number of five figure scores in November left me just short of my third six figure month of the year, and I went into December in the top twenty of the OPOY. As the year came to a close, I was closing in on $800k profit and feeling better than ever about my game.

The Inevitable Year-End Downswing

All good things must come to end and, and my eight month heater came to a screeching halt in December. After a small win on the first of the month, I spent the rest of the year losing money hand over fist. The Bellagio Five Diamond series went miserably, but my biggest losses came in small, steady chunks. Somehow, I closed out the year in a $39k downswing from online tourneys alone. It was a painful month, but looking back on all of 2008, it's nothing more than a small blemish on an otherwise amazing year. Even though I seemingly crammed all of my bad luck into a four week span, I can't complain about anything after running so well for most of the year.

* * *

When I look back on '08 years from now, I think I'll remember a few things above everything else. Obviously, the first thing that will come to mind are my two big cashes. Had I not won some key flips at the right times, my yearly profit would have been cut by 75%. It's funny how tournament poker works that way. Luckily for me, I survived a few downswings (and hopefully one more), and finished the year with a bankroll big enough to take on almost anything in 2009. I also developed a work ethic that I hadn't seen in a long time. In 2008, I played more than 100 hours of poker in every single month. Prior to that streak, I had played 100 hours in three of the previous sixteen months.

While it might be a little vain, I can't help but admit that I like how I've become somewhat of a known player this year. It's cool to be recognized at live events, and while being anonymous has some huge benefits at the tables, I enjoy little things like seeing my name next to the big name pros on the WSOP leaderboards. Even though my success warrants that recognition to some extent, I still get a huge kick out of being known and seeing myself on the various tournament leaderboards. Speaking of which, I finished the year 89th in the POY race, 30th in the OPOY race, and 40th on pocketfives.

Another thing that I'll remember about the past year is how dramatically my tournament game improved. Reading some of my older posts, it's remarkable how incomplete my knowledge of tournament poker was. That doesn't mean that I've learned everything there is to know, but I'm amazed at how much I understand now compared to twelve months ago. That improvement combined with some key experience at final tables and big live events will put me in a very good position going forward as I look to accomplish more big things in the tournament world next year.

A few weeks ago, I posted my live tourney results for '08. Here are my online results for the year:

MTTs Played: 1,347
Total Buy-ins: $436,715
Profit: $504,613
ROI: 115%

* * *

Thanks to everyone for reading my blog over the past year. I don't say it enough, but I really appreciate everyone's support and comments when things are going both good and bad. I probably wouldn't even be playing for a living if it wasn't for a lot of you guys. So once again, thanks to all my family and friends... especially those of you that I used to play poker with in high school and college. If you guys weren't so bad, I wouldn't have had the confidence to play at Foxwoods and ultimately move to Vegas! Just kidding... (not really, but those were some good times).

A December to Forget

2008-12-29T20:38:00.000-08:00

Tonight was my twelfth straight losing session online, and I think that's enough to make me stop playing for the rest of the year. I'll write a bunch later about 2008 as a whole, but here's a day-by-day graph of my December in the meantime:

Two winning days in the entire month! What a sick way to close out the year. December ended up being my worst month ever, as I turned in a loss of $53,462.50. I'm also ending the year on a $64k downswing - all in the last four weeks. However, there is some good news...

Go Birds!

Plans for 2009

2008-12-27T17:26:00.000-08:00

A funny thing happened in 2008. For the first time since turning pro, I found a form of poker I excelled at and actually enjoyed playing for more than a few months. Even with my ongoing soul-crushing downswing, I'm eagerly awaiting the start of the new year so I can attempt to build an impressive resume of results over a full twelve months. I don't think I've ever began a year with a specific goal in mind, let alone an idea of what I'd be doing at the end of the year, but I'm confident that I'll follow through with my plans for '09. With that said, here's my list of goals for the upcoming year:

1) Spend $1,000,000 in MTT buy-ins.
2) Finish with a 50% ROI or better.

That's it. While I'd love to finish high up on the POY/OPOY rankings again, the only thing that really matters is my bottom line. Making $500k might seem difficult, but only because volume and variance have the potential to be very large obstacles. Despite the confidence I have in my motivation to grind MTTs all year long, reaching the million dollar buy-in mark will be a difficult task. Based on my volume this year and what I expect to play in '09, I crunched some numbers to figure out how much I can reasonably expect to spend if I don't deviate from my plan all year long. That number ended up being $1,020,500, which leaves little room for missing big events or Sundays online.

In '08, my total buy-ins will be roughly $440k online and $195k live. I'll probably end up with a similar ratio next year, but being a full time tournament pro all year will hopefully allow me to increase my volume by 50%. It also helps that I now have the experience, ability and bankroll (to some extent) to play a large number of big events. As of now, I'm planning on playing around a dozen $10ks, three $15ks and the Bellagio $25k. Those events will likely play a huge role in how I finish the year, especially because I no longer have a backing deal in place.

Even though I cost my backers $10k over the four tourneys I sold percentages of myself in, I came to the conclusion that my equity was too valuable to sell at face value. With a bankroll hopefully large enough to sustain the normal swings on the tournament circuit, I decided that I could play on my own if necessary. While I did try to make a deal to sell pieces at a slight markup, it predictably failed and I was happy to go into '09 with 100% of my action in every event. Even though I'm setting myself up for some giant swings, I think I'll be able to withstand the variance by grinding a ton online and playing a lot of smaller live events. If not, at least I'll have a fun story to tell about losing ~$300k in a year!