I should update more huh?

Sorry for the delay, but the big plan of crushing faces has been slow starting because I haven’t really had money to play with lately. Too many bills and too little money coming from the real job that I’ve had to cashout all the rakeback funds I get for the most part.

I did take 200 yesterday and decide to have a run at some .50/1 NL and see what I could do. It’s a day later now and it’s gone, but not for a lack of trying. Every time I got on a little run I would take a suckout or a cooler and get pushed way back. Then I started working from almost nothing, built it back up to the original 200, and then did it AGAIN, then ran QQ into KK preflop for a nice chunk before finally missing a flush draw while I was relatively shortstacked to finally put me out of my misery.

The most frustrating thing is that I avoided the monkey tilt that has been my downfall in the past, I actually took a rough beat, came back from like 40 bucks to like 195 last night. Then started today, won a little, maybe up to 220 or so, then took another beat and was back down at 100. Then got that back to 195 again, and considered stopping, but figured I’ll try to hit 200, then I’ll possibly cashout or reevaluate. Well I never made it because of a fun little trips over turned boat hand. Then battled back a little bit yet again only to get ground down a bit and finally put it on a flush draw that missed.

As I was saying, it’s frustrating to battle like that and not be able to ever get a run going. Every time I started to get a little run, I would take a beat. I guess I feel good about my play though, especially last night having gone from being up almost 100, to down to 40 total and then back to even. It felt good to know that I was playing well mentally, which has always been my downfall.

I guess this just shows that playing out of your bankroll is extremely difficult unless you’re super lucky, but you would think one of these days I might hit that string of luck.

I do struggle with whether I should stick to tourneys or cash games or mix it up the way I usually do. Because my tourney game has been pretty solid lately. In cash games I find myself making a few more mistakes, but not enough that I should be losing. So maybe the problem really is the BR situation. It’s the only real problem I can see. I’ve played bad enough times to recognize when i’m playing bad now, so I feel like i’m at a point where I can be pretty honest with myself about my play.

The thought of getting staked has gone through my mind recently, but I think I’ll save that for another blog, since this one is pretty long as is. I hope to get that one up soon.

New Year, and time to get my shit together! I’ve been playing this game too long to still be broke at it. Granted, I’m probably up lifetime, but I have no bankroll. Doesn’t make much sense does it? I may be up, but I should be up to the point where working doesn’t come into the equation and my bank account doesn’t constantly need stupid little cashouts to pay bills.

You know why it should be that way? Because I’m actually good enough for it to be. I know how to play the game damn good. The problem is in my head. It’s tilt, bankroll management, tilt, game selection, tilt, boredom and tilt.

When I go into the strat forums at FCP and watch these guys break these hands down, I know for a fact that either I don’t play perfect, or I just play different, half the time it makes me realize that sometimes I make flat out retarded plays. You know why though? Probably because i’m on a minor tilt that slowly bleeds me to death without me even noticing it.

So for this new year, I need to get it together. Bankroll management might be a little problem for awhile, as I don’t have much to start with as usual, but I have to fix the rest and the BR will take care of itself hopefully.

Less Gen Pop at the forum, and more Strat. That needs to be the start. Next I need to play my best or not play at all. I don’t know how to do it exactly, but I need to stop letting one or two hands bother me, and the same with one or two tournaments. Maybe it’s because I don’t play as much as everyone else, so I take that one tournament or one session to heart much more. I need to stop that and just bring my A game, because I know my A game is damn good.

So there’s my resolution this year. I’m not setting a specific goal, no special amount, or playing in the wsop or anything like that, though all these things would be great, but why bother trying for that when I can’t steadily build to get there? Sure I can play good and build some money, and run good when I’m on tilt, but that’s just not likely, and it’s not going to keep this going in the long term. So it’s time to get control of my game and start being the player I see from time to time….. and being that player all the time!

Well, yesterday was a pretty nice little afternoon (and night). Didn’t have time to get to Home Depot or Bed Bath and Beyond, but I did manage to take 38th in the Pokerstars Sunday Million.

38th - Good for just over $3,400

Which constitutes my biggest cash to date. At least money cash, otherwise I would have to count the $25k Bellagio entry. Anyway…that fact seems kinda sad for as long as I’ve been playing, except I just don’t play a ton, and have not played many big tournies. In fact this was my first Sunday Mil ever.

There were a little under 7000 entries this week. First place was 190k, but being card dead for 7 hours doesn’t help you get there. I pretty much played one of the best tournies I’ve played. I stayed more patient than I even knew I could. Avoided all kinds of marginal situations and waited until I knew I had the best of it. Which was especially hard since I was just not getting very many hands to play. When it was all said and done, I had only seen 6% of the total flops.

Stats looked like this:

During current Hold’em session you were dealt 473 hands and saw flop:
- 7 out of 54 times while in big blind (12%)
- 4 out of 55 times while in small blind (7%)
- 21 out of 364 times in other positions (5%)
- a total of 32 out of 473 (6%)

Pretty sick stuff. Granted, once you get even into the 2nd or 3rd hour, you just don’t see a ton of flops. A lot of raising, reraising and races. But trust me, I wasn’t even finding any good spots to steal.

It seemed that every time I had a mid ace, or a couple high cards that I wanted to steal with, I was either UTG or UTG+1, or someone had already raised in front of me. I had to let go of a lot of hands because of that. My first double came with AA, and then the next was what seemed like 2 hours later with KK vs KK where I hit a miracle 4 flush. Didn’t even feel bad about it either, ha!

Continued to keep myself above water, pick up a pot here and there until I caught something big. The problem was that most times when I did pick up AK or something to play, I only won the blinds. Which helped, but you kinda like to use your big hands to win more than the blinds with. But who knows, maybe the lack of races helped me get where I did.

I did lose a big race relatively late, I forget the hand actually, but what I do remember is what happened after that. With blinds at 10k/20k, I had 50k left and I was UTG. I picked up Kd6d and knew that King high was probably as good as I was gonna get, and I needed to double while i still had 50k so it made a little difference.

So I went ahead and pushed with my K6 and got a call from late position. He shows KJ and I’m getting ready to say GG. The flop actually gave me a gutshot straight draw, so the entire rail was rooting for an 8 or a 6…. turn comes and it’s no help, but the beautiful river 6 gave me the win and boosted me back to 150k. Still insanely shorstacked, but at least I can wait for some semblance of a hand.

After that, I kept doing what I had been doing, avoiding bad spots and going with the few hands I got. I almost wish I took a shot to steal a little bit more when it got late, but the hands were just beyond bad. 92, 83 and the like. Things that just had no hope if I got a call. I wound up getting the stack up to over 800k at one point, though never was able to hit the 1m mark. Then I get moved onto GrinderMJ’s left, and he abuses me 2 orbits in a row in a blind vs blind confrontation where he just shoved on me both times. The blinds/antes were huge at this point, and I believe there was almost 150k in the middle every hand. So a walk or two would have been nice, but he had about 10x my stack, so I probably would have done the same thing. Unfortunately I never got better than 9 high when he did that.

After that point my chips were just bleeding away, I had about 450k left when I finally picked up an Ace. It was only A2, but it’s the best I had seen in probably 4 or 5 orbits. So I went with it. Got an instacall from the button with AT and couldn’t suckout this time.

Wound up finishing 38th. Which on one hand feels good, considering that it’s my biggest money cash, and at the time, I really needed it. But on the other hand, you don’t get that close every day, some people never get that close, so it’s pretty disappointing to come up short. I was really hoping to take it down, call work, tell them I quit, and TP/MM ya know? Instead I didn’t sleep too well, and called in sick today because I just didn’t feel like going in.

At least I have a BR now, even after cashing a bit out. Maybe I can start to grind that up and get there anyway. If anything, the confidence boost from something like this is huge, and I know I have it in me to take it deep in a monster tournament. Not bad for a first try.

Yeah, I suck at updating, but I have a good reason. I just haven’t played much poker lately, and unless you wanna hear about how much I hate work, then I don’t have much to write about.

By the way, I really hate work. Not that it’s a bad job or anything, but something about going there every day just pisses me off.

We did just finish the 3rd Quarter of the Negreanu Open over at FCP/Pokerstars. I haven’t seen the final numbers, but I managed to place in the top 9 in the Tuesday night HORSE tourneys, and just a little out of it in the Wednesday night NLHE ones. Maybe 15th or so, but I dunno exactly yet.

Top 9 get prizes each quarter, so I can expect a handy dandy trackball mouse thingy that Daniel (Negreanu) uses, although I hate rollball mouses and I probably won’t use it. But they sell them for like $90 on the FCP flopgear site, which is pretty nuts I think.

My girlfriend Brigette also started playing in them for the 2nd half or so of the quarter, and she’s actually done really well, especially in HORSE, and I’d say since she started playing, her finish average might be higher than mine. Though maybe not quite, since I final tabled 50% of the time, but she’s done pretty damn well too. Just didn’t play enough to get into the top 9. Maybe in the 4th quarter though. So watch out. **I Teach Goot!!*

Those tournies are pretty much the only poker i’ve played recently except for maybe a random tourney here and there, but very few of those. I guess I’ve just had a lot going on during the weekends when I’m not working, bday parties, painting the condo, shit like that. This next weekend I think I’m supposed to go to Great America, and next week is Camping as well as my mom and brothers’ bdays on the 15th.

Hopefully I can play more though sometime soon, because I’m hating work, and I kinda wanna win a huge tourney or something so I can just quit and roll the dice at playing full time again. Or as full time as is needed at least. That would be nice, but we’ll see. All I know is that waiting tables is a suckfest.

Hopefully I’ll update again sooner than later. See ya.

Well, I guess it depends who you ask. Really famous? No, not really. Internet famous? Well, you’re getting warmer, but even then, not so much. FCP famous? There you go!!

I guess that’s what happens when you spend most of your internet time posting on one poker forum and none of the other ones. I have 12,000+ posts on FCP (fullcontactpoker.com), and along with that brings a bit of notoriety. If anyone happens to brose that specific forum, they probably know who I am, maybe not for my wisdom, but maybe for my wit, but that’s not saying I don’t have both.

I’m actually a better player than I may lead on. I don’t exactly have the bankroll to prove it. But that’s mostly because of lack of discipine and lack of time to play. I work as well, so most of my playing time involves taking shots at limits that usually involve my whole current BR on one table at one time. (Not something I recommend)

So basically you’ll have to take my word for it.

I’m pretty sure when I started this blog, I had a point I was getting to, but I’m quite sure I forgot about it by now. All I know is, that people know me, and love me…. (and hate me)… and that’s pretty fun. So hopefully I’ll be able to keep this blog updated as much as possible and I hope you enjoy it.