Well, over the past two weeks or so I have gone from close to even again, back down to -8 buyins, and now I’m up a buyin overall.  So I made a nice turnaround.  I cut down the tables I was playing and tried to focus a little better on each decision, and it’s helped I think.  Plus no super suckouts over that span.  Just sucks because I’m not getting very many hands in.  It goes so slow playing 6max and only one or two tables.  Played a couple hours today and I think it was like 350 hands maybe.  But glad to be back in the black and hopefully going in the right direction here on out.  (Hopefully there aren’t too many posts that say that, lol.)

Most of the people who read this I assume are from FCP, but if there are a few who are not.  It’s FullContactPoker.com and has a poker forum with lots of good people.

Every week we run 2 tournaments on Stars, also known as the Negreanu Open, which also has a points leaderboard with prizes on top of the normal prize pool.  Tuesdays are mixed games, and Wednesdays are NL.  It is a quarterly leaderboard.

Well last quarter, in week one or two, I took down an NL tourney, and have been super unlucky every week since then, I don’t think I cashed once after that.

Well, the quarter ended 2 weeks ago, so we started fresh, and in week 1, the same old stuff.

But last Wednesday, in week 2 again, I managed to take down another one!!!

Which was good, because the buyin for that tourney was the last $11 I had left on Stars, so now I should be good for most of this quarter yet again, and hopefully can have a better showing overall, and get the damn chipset that the top 3 players get.  I’ve been coming up short for too damn long.

Just thought I’d throw in that brag post though, because tourney wins just don’t come all that often, especially when this is more or less, the only tourney I play lately.   A repeat tonight would be pretty sweet.

Oh yeah, and drinking during the tournament is highly encouraged.

Was waiting to make this post until I got back into the black on the account.  I had a rough session or two, with a decent one in the middle there, but at one point I was down probably 7 buyins.  No clue how really, but I tightened up considerably in the 6max games I was playing, had a decent session with one super donk at the table and won probably 4-5 of those back last friday night.

Started today down about 2 1/2 buyins overall, and decided since there are no HU games going, I would just sit and wait.  Because yesterday I played 700 hands of 6 max and wound up losing 20 bucks.  It was draining, time consuming and just wasn’t getting the results I would like.

So I sit down today, wait maybe 10 minutes when victim one sits down.  We play 5 hands and I bust him when he rivers top pair with the Kc, which also gave me the flush, and he shoved on me.  Why thank you sir.

Shortly after another guy sits down, he takes a little longer, but I ended up taking a buyin plus a small reload from him.  Last person sits down and buys in short, and I slowly grind them down and bust them with KK when they shove with a gutshot on the flop.  Thank you as well

So yesterday I played 700 hands and lost $20.  Today I played 100 and won $63.  Plus the 100 hands seem to go much faster, it’s just a shame I can’t really multitable HU games, nor is the option even there.  But maybe I’ll just have to be patient and wait for the games to come to me.  I guess if I sit, they will come eventually.

So now the account is slightly back in the positive, so lets see if I can keep the slope going upwards from here on out.

Well, Day 2 was more exciting, but ended up not being good exciting.

Started the day out and about, doing all kinds of running around, shopping for my mom’s bday and an upcoming camping trip and things like that.  Didn’t play at all until after I picked the gf up from work.

Got home and started playing a little 6 max, nothing super exciting, but dropped about $35 playing 2-3 tables of 25NL.  Took a break for dinner and then came back and decided to go back to HU.

Played 2 new players, one of which is on all the time, the other was a new name to me.  He took a buyin off me on hand one.  But after awhile I got him figured out and took it all back plus his buyin.  So about +20 from him.   Next guy was one I hadn’t played cause I saw him playing HU all the time.  Turns out he was just super aggressive, similar to the last guy, which is more what I’m used to, so when I do hit hands, I can at least get paid off.  He managed to win a big hand early on as well, but same as the last guy, I eventually wore him down, and got close to where the account was at the start of the day.   So that was good.

Then those games dried up a bit, so I went back to 6max.  Now it gets ugly.  Was 2 tabling most of the time, maybe 3 briefly, but one table died out.  Just couldn’t hit much of anything all night long.  Then on one of the tables, there was a really over aggressive guy who out flopped me every time we got into a hand.  It didn’t help that he was basically the only person playing hands with me.  He seemed to hit something big every time, and would overbet the pot on nearly every street.  I kept hitting something and trying to look him up, and he always seemed to have it.  I know for a fact he couldn’t have it every time, because he did it every time he was in a hand, but seems like whenever I had something, he had more.

After giving him like almost 3 buyins, give or take, some got spread around obviously.  I doubled up off him finally, and then he overbet me constantly and picked up enough pots to get some of that back.  Was just an ugly night overall, I wasn’t ever hitting much more than a pair, which never ends well.  Ended up down about $100 overall, which is pretty sickening to me.

What makes it more gross is how hard it’s been thus far to get any value when I do run semi well.  I mean, in 2 days, I’ve hit quads I think 3 or 4 times… never made any money from them though… I don’t even know if I’ve ever gotten to show them down.  I really hope these games turn around a little bit.

Maybe I should just nut peddle, but the way these people play, it seems like I’m giving up value, because so many of them are so tight.  It’s going to be a fine line I think.  I’ll get it figured out though.

Well, I took a long time off from this blog.  I was posting a little bit more over at http://suitedup.blogspot.com but even that is pretty sparce on the updates.

But good news.  Gonna be playing more consistently now.  Took a stake from a friend and will be mainly grinding some 25NL HU games and will probably have to sprinkle in some 6-max or FR because so far the HU games are a little sparce on the site I’m on.

So far I’ve played a little over 900 hands so far and I’m up all of $10.   Everyone has just been playing so nitty so far.  It feels like every person I played the match lasted a good hour or so.  That’s just unheard of for me playing HU.  I hope that changes soon, because I’m getting absolutely destroyed by the rake.

When you’re playing HU at a lower limit, it’s pretty important to be able to bust people as quickly as possible to make up for the occasional rake sucking match.  Except so far, they’ve all been rake sucking matches.

None of the players have been very good so far, but they’re not very bad either, and they’re not overly aggressive, which is more of what I’m used to.  I can probably count on one hand how many times I hit a big hand and got paid off on the river.  It might only have been like twice, and even then, it wasn’t a big payoff.

I plan on updating this more though.  Especially since I can’t use PT w/ the site I’m playing on, so this should help me keep a little better track of what I’ve done as time goes on.

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.