Monday, December 15, 2008

Aaaaaand busto

It was a short day, I was super card dead and when I finally got a hand I folded the winner on the flop. Got the last of my chips in against Mark Teltscher with 88 vs 66 and lost that too. Here's the one interesting hand:

400/800 a100 I open in early-middlish position to 2200 with JhJ and 20K more behind. Joe Cassidy calls 2 to my left (though I forgot it was him at the time) and and a middle aged asian guy calls right after him. The flop comes 853hh and I bet 5K. Cassidy makes it 11K, and the asian guy INSTA-shoves for 40-50K or something that covers both of us. I only have 15K left and really don't want to fold again but it's hard for me to beat both of them here. I feel like the speed of the all-in move weights the asian guy's range towards a draw a lot. He has a set or a draw and most people Hollywood with their sets a little at least. But I still have to worry about Joe and I have no idea what he has. I ended up folding and Joe called with A8cc and held vs A3hh. So that really sucked. I think maybe the live reads were strong enough that I should have called but I'm not sure how results oriented I'm being.

Anyways now that that's over it's back to Newfoundland this Friday for Christmas which I'm definitely much more excited about than any poker tournament. In other news I've done 2 videos now for PokerSavvy and it looks like I will be doing a lot more. They've got a lot of other very good players making videos there as well so if you're thinking about joining a training site you should go over there and check it out. I think they still have a 24-hour free trial offer on. Also, for people that haven't seen it yet I got "felt'd" by Kristy Arnett from CardPlayer. It's basically the poker version of Punk'd. Here's a link:

Felt'd =/

I don't really know what to say about it but hopefully you get a good laugh out of it on my behalf. Either that or you'll feel super awkward the entire time watching it like I did. Alright I'm out, possibly no blogs for a while over Christmas depending what I'm up to.

Mike

Bellagio Five Diamond Update!

Hey hey it's time for a little update about what I've been up to here in Vegas. I got in Tuesday night and played the $5k tournament on Thursday. I got off to a good start in that one but lost a biggish pot to Mark Teltscher that I played weird and then got KK vs Shannon Shorr's AA so that was that. I played Day 1A of the $15K main event on Saturday but unfortunately it was a really frustrating day where not a whole lot went right. I finished the day with 32K of my 45K starting stack though and with blinds starting at 400/800 tomorrow I still have some room to play. Here are some key hands:

Hand 1: 100/200 A player limps in MP, I make it 1k in the SB with A8dd and he calls. Flop 666 I bet 1250, he calls. Turn 4 I bet 2500 he calls. River 2 I bet 5500 he calls with TT and wins. Yay obvious 3-barrels.

Hand 2: Amnon Fillipi limps the HJ, Matt Hyman limps the CO, I make 1050 on the button with AJo and both call. Flop AK2cc, Amnon checks and Matt bets 1750 which I call as does Amnon. Turn Js putting a 2nd flush draw on board. They check to me and I fire 6K, Amnon thinks briefly and shoves for 19K more. Matt thinks a bit and folds and I tank for a long time before finally folding. From what I've seen of Amnon he is very spewy in a call stationy way preflop and on the flop but when he puts his chips in he usually has it. He's quite capable of making the elaborate slowplay with a set of 2s here as well as peeling the flop with QTo, and while there are a decent number of hands he could semi-bluff with on the turn I don't think he is particularly likely to make a big move like that.

Hands 3-7ish: I raise and #1pen 3-bets me and I have to fold. wtf he's supposed to be a nit like me.

Hand 8: 200/400 a50 Solidish player opens the HJ to 1200, Amnon quickly calls, I make it 4800 in the SB with 98o and Peter (#1pen) cold 4-bets to 10.5K in the BB. Can't imagine he didn't have a monster here but when someone picks you off time and again like he was it's pretty tilting even if it seems like he's probably just running good picking up hands on you most of the time because you just don't know for sure.

Hand 9: 300/600 a75 Young short stacked guy open to 1600 in MP with like 10K behind and I shove in the BB with AK and hold vs his AQs.

Hopefully day 2 goes better and I can put chips in the pot a few times without getting raised out of my seat. Or ya know just get raised when I actually have it.

Today I played Sunday tourneys online and got owned. Just a couple small cashes to show for it. Anyways I better get some rest for tomorrow. Cheers,

Mike

Monday, December 08, 2008

Biggest Online Tournament Score; Losing Week

So I stuck to the plan and took a week off of poker while I was down in NYC partying with some friends. New York was awesome, really an amazing city, but more importantly hanging out with some good friends I don't see often enough and partying like we were still in university was just a great time. I also got to visit my aunt and uncle in Brooklyn and check out their neighbourhood, and even though I'm lazy and don't do it often enough it's always good to see family. I really love that poker gives me the freedom and means to pick up and take trips like this one and I should really make a point to try to do it more often (trips purely for fun with no poker).

So I got back in town a little bit worse for wear but well-rested mentally and was ready to get back to work and crush the tables. I quickly proceeded to lose around $125K in ~800 hands of 200/400 PLO. Omaha sure is a fun game. There were a few hands I played pretty questionably and ended up getting it in really terrible for a decent amount of money. Two in particular were basically courtesy of Gus bluffing, and me getting stuck in the middle of him and a 3rd player who ended up having the nuts holding something fairly strong but kind of marginal myself. If not for Gus making a move I probably get away from at least one of those hands without too much damage, but so it goes. Oh yeah I guess I should post them:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3556785 - Trips is a pretty tricky hand to play sometimes, especially here when I have a weak kicker and a pair in my hand leaving me with very few outs when I'm behind. Maybe I still could have found a fold but I think Gus is bluffing so often and Cole certainly doesn't have to have a monster either, and once I call the first time I'm pretty priced in.


http://www.pokerhand.org/?3556807
- Getting 25K in drawing dead is just not as much fun as it looks, trust me. This may well be spewy but other options didn't seem like too much fun either.

I didn't play much 200/400 for the rest of the week, or even all that much poker really, but I did put in a few sessions at smaller stakes to work on my game a bit. I played some hands at 5/10 and ran extremely well so that made me feel more confident in my game again. The Sunday tournament lineup was pretty strong this week with a bunch of big stuff on Ongame and iPoker. I woke up early as I have been all week and played a super long session starting at 11:30am and not ending until around 2am. I ended up finishing 13th in two tournaments that I had a ton of chips in at one point, which would normally be super frustrating, except I finally won a (online) tournament! Ongame had a tournament series which I had missed all the events of but at the end there was a special $5K buy-in tournament with no rake that they bought all the winners of the tournament series and leader board into. It only got 78 runners but it had a sick structure and the field was not especially tough. I ended up getting lucky in several key pots after a series of hands on the bubble where I really hated my play and blew a lot of chips. I got heads-up behind in chips against a really weak player and then ran insanely hot to take it down for 117K. To celebrate I lost 16K at 200/400.

Tomorrow I'm off to Vegas again for the last couple events of the Five Diamond series at Bellagio. Everyone was screaming that the sky was falling after the turnouts in the first few events but it seems like the fields in the last few $5K events have actually been relatively large and I expect the last $5K preliminary and the $15K main event that I'm going to play to be more of the same.

Mike