I hate Sundays so much

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1047982

I lost more shortstacking and stuff too this week. As much as I knew a big downswing was coming it doesn't make it suck that much less. Oh well. I've moved out of Waterloo basically permanently. I'm in St. John's for a month and then Vegas for the World Series. Steve, Aaron, and I have a place booked from May 31 until the end of the Main Event. I'm planning to play a lot of events. After that I don't know where I'm going to live. Maybe Toronto or something, I'll see what options are available.

Mike

Nice Downswing

I'm not sure of the exact number because I don't know how timex finished the week, but I think I lost like a billion dollars or something this week. Actually, timex may have carried the team enough that I only lost like 50K. It's funny because my account is down a lot more than that due to shots at a juicy 500/1000 NL cap game where I owned only a small % of my own action. Basically, David Benyamine put a series of brutal suckouts on me Monday night and took like 60K off me, but only like 20K of that was my action. At the end of the night timex had to ship me 84K because a lot of the money I lost has his and he had a big winning night at 2/4.

Then Friday night I put up a nice -70K at 2/4. So timex will prboably owe me another big transfer next time we settle up unless I start running good again soon. Anyways, the regulars in those games seem to be adjusting better to us now so we'll probably have to be a little more particular about when we decide to play, we'd gotten a bit slack and just started playing all the time because we were running so good. I didn't play a lot of donkaments yesterday because I was in terrible shape after Saturday night.

We went to Fallsview in Niagara for mine/my buddy's birthday. The theme of the night was the Entourage episode where they go to Vegas. If you don't watch the show you prboably should. Anyways, the night was an overwhleming success and we partied like movie stars for a night. I obviously volunteered to take care of the high stakes blackjack scene, and luckboxed $1300. It was fun to be the drunk fish who doesn't really know what he's doing but simply can not lose for a night. So I bought a bottle of Dom P for the entourage at the club. While it definitely wasn't part of the plan, the night ended with us being involved in an altercation at the club and getting the boot, just like in the Enourage episode. Since no one was hurt or anything we were actually quite pleased with that result.

Here's a funny graph. Since half the downswing comes from 500/1000 where I had only a small % of the action I'm actually still up quite a bit over this period.




Mike

I Actually Meant it at the Time

Really, I wasn't planning to play 200/400 again any time soon. I'm usually a big bankroll nit. On the other hand we were up a couple buy-ins and the game seemed beatable. Worst case we lose back what we had won and gain a story to tell about that time we took a shot at the biggest game online. Oh, how we were foolish when we were young. So one night when the game looked relatively soft Mike and I agreed to the same 50/50 deal and took another shot. A funny thing happened though. We won again. This was already a huge amount of money we'd made, but instead of just being happy with that and quitting while we were ahead, we did what any good poker player would do. We got greedy.

It was clear we had an edge against most of the usual lineups, so we started taking shots whenever we saw the game running with a favourable lineup, and kept running hot. We went on a sick run Saturday afternoon grinding the game for several hours. The swings are huge, but I am likely the biggest luckbox in the history of shortstacking so we always ended up ahead. By the time I quit to go out for the evening we had made a completely ridiculous amount of money.

Sunday was another good day. We played the usual tournaments and sat 200/400 when the game was running and looked good. I continued to run insanely hot and just killed the game today. Mike ran really cold and lost a huge number. I don't think there's really much difference in the way we play so it really is mostly just random luck that I did so much better than him. Without giving exact numbers on how much we won or lost, we just settled up for the week and I sent him $60K to make us even, and he was in the black for the week before that. timex may be the luckiest person in the history of staking deals/trading action.

I also had a very good day at my normal games. I won several buy-ins playing 10/20 and a buy-in taking a shot at fullstacking 25/50 on Party. Even my tournaments went well as I won the $530 tournament on Party for $14K. Overall the week was just been completely insane. I don't even think it has really sunk in yet. Either that or poker has desensitized me to the value of money even more than I thought. Here's the biggest pot of the week. I forgot to sit out on my next blind after doubling up and then this happened:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1003105

How lucky.

Mike

March Graph

Someone asked so I'll post it, I still feel a bit uncomfortable about posting these though. On the one hand I know part of what makes this an interesting read is that I try not to hide anything and give an honest portrayal of the ups and downs of my poker career, and it wouldn't really work without going into actual numbers. On the other hand, well, exactly how much money I make is none of your damn business :-). I think I can still get the point accross without always being so specific. So I may have to be a little more vague about the exact numbers in the future (even if a lot of the data is available publicly elsewhere). Also, despite what it may seem like when I write posts like the one from Saturday, it's not generally something I like to brag about (except when talking to other poker playing friends it's become fairly standard to brag back and forth a bit). Anyways, enough rambling here's the graph already. March was another excellent month.


In other exciting news I finished 6th in the $1k tournament on Full Tilt tonight for $11K. I made a mistake on the final table bubble I'm kind of upset with myself about though. I'm just not closing these tournaments lately. Obviously there's a lot of luck involved, but that's why you need to make sure you're not making any mistakes near the end of these things, since even if you're playing perfectly the cards aren't going to fall your way a lot of the time.

Mike

Wow

timex's friend "IBluffUOut4" final tabled the two biggest tournaments on the internet yesterday. He finished 3/1962 for $30K in the Full Tilt 400K Guaranteed, and 5/6637 in the Stars Million for $42.6K. That has to be one of the sickest Sunday performances ever.

We Fly High

It was a Saturday like any other Saturday. I was just planning to play the usual Saturday 320s in the afternoon then watch Masters,Habs/Leafs, and UFC. Seemed like a nice relaxing day. So I start talking to Mike aka timex aka hit21hit on MSN, and next thing I know I'm playing 200/400 NL with Phil Ivey. As you can tell, he didn't really have to twist my arm much. (my comments in brackets)

Watts says:who nenad playing 200/400 with aba and ivey (Nenad Medic, used to go to UW also, now wins WPTs etc...)
Watts says:*whoa
timex says:o wow
timex says:btw, I bought a watch (Mike had a BBV thread about buying a balla watch recently)
Watts says:what one?
Watts says:the tag?
timex says:ya
Watts says:nice
timex says:pretty decent
timex says:they are having a sale at fairview mall, so I got 20% off
Watts says:sweet yo
Watts says:so just uner 2k?
timex says:so it was 1730 after tax
Watts says:not bad
Watts says:TAG doesn't have the same ring as timex or rolex tho
Watts says:thogh it could still have nice double meaning as a poker name (I'm not funny)
timex says:lol (pity laugh)
Watts says:lol doubling up first hand of 10/20 for the day (brag)
Watts says:soooo...
Watts says:do Ishortack 200/400 or not?
timex says:YES obv (as if I didn't know he'd immediately say yes)
Watts says:you want half my action?
timex says:I'll take 1/2 ur action if you tell me ur hands etc.
timex says:and only until say 240 or something, I need sleep after that
Watts says:k
Watts says:letus gogogogogo (BBV-ism)

The games weren't exactly what most people would call soft: Phil Ivey, sbrugby (probably the best HSNL player online, played in this season of High Stakes Poker), Nenad (serb) and Gus Hansen. Some other random shortstack guys that were terrible showed up too fortunately, I defintiely had an edge in this game, especially as I'm unknown to everyone except maybe Nenad. Mike talked me into playing both tables.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?975976- Things were going well when I played my first all-in pot as a *slight* favourite. Sorry forgot to clean up the railtards chat. That sucked.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?975985 - Phil Ivey owns me obviously.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?976046 - I got the best of Nenad in the hands we played today.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?976062 - I finished +13K, timex got half of course.

Timex then sat but I decided I'd had enough high stakes action for one day (for a long time prboably) and I didn't take any of his action. He obviously won a coinflip against Phil Ivey, proving his luckbox knows no bound.

Also, I won two more WSOP seats. First I luckboxed a $160 double shootout on Stars last night, and then I won the $650 satellite today (6 spots paid). Full TIlt just gave me cash for their seat when I told them I had to take the Stars seat, and I got 10K W$ and $1K cash for the second seat on Stars. Balllllin!

Mike

PS. no donkaments tomorrow for real this time because I'm spending Easter with family.

What a stupid Sunday

I lied in my last post, my basketball game was earlier than I thought so I got over to Steve's in time to play the evening tournaments. Things were going very well in several tournaments but then I lost two hands worth a combined 25-30K in equity I'd estimate. The first was against Ogre from 2+2 on the final table bubble of the Stars 100r. I was 2/10 and looking to improve on my 13K cash from last week.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?959055 - He thought I was picking on the BB who had been playing really tight (I actually had some old hands on him from somewhere that said he was fairly aggressive so Ogre's read was way off). I knew he was capable of shoving a fairly wide range there so I had to call even though getting into a big confrontation with another biggish stack there kind of sucks. 42o is just a terrible hand though I think he needs at least some showdown value for his push to be reasonable, oh well lol donkaments etc... I went on to bubble.

No worries I'll just win my WSOP seat in the 650 satellite I figured and it won't be such a bad day. I was deep in that with a bubble type stack, but I had finally picked up enough pots that I was in very good shape when some donkey went off his mind and tried not to make the WSOP. There are 24 left and 22 get seats. I'm like 17/24 when this ridonkulousness happened:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?959066 - I just shove in because it's the thing to do (folding might be ok but I don't have enough chips to fold in yet so pushing is better since the BB had shown no suicidal tendencies) and some guy decides to go on a kamakaze mission to ruin my life. If he had AA you might be able to have some discussion as to whether calling or folding is correct (he should still fold), but with AQ his call is just suicidal.

So at this point I was pretty pissed but I had a ton of chips in a $200 WSOP sat on Full Tilt that paid 3 seats so I decided not to endlife and go for vindication there. As luck would have it I was able to win a couple crucial big pots for a change and I got my WSOP seat after all! So all-in-all it turned out to be a pretty OK day I guess, though it could have been so much better. Tournaments really are stupid.

Mike

Poker Tournaments are Stupid

With that in mind, here are some NL cash hands. They're cool because they don't read I had 7xBB and shoved 74o and got called by AA. Actually tournaments are pretty OK too, but I suck at them or something. Also I'm not playing a lot of them again tomorrow because I have basketball (intramurals prboably just saved me 5K) so I figured I'd go for this instead of a Sunday report. First an interesting hand where I should have folded a set.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?955755 - It was Full Tilt so I couldn't timebank the river and I had a set, which I'm not exactly in the habit of folding when the only reasonable hand I lose to is a bigger set. In retrospect I think the river is a clear fold as my line is usually a monster or air, and he's a strong enough player to basically never raise a worse hand for value (even KQ just calls my big river bet probably). There's also basically no way he can ever have a bluff here (especially since marginal hands can just call not raise because they beat the nothing part of my range and he almost always has some part of the board by the river). That leaves a lot of sets in his range even when you discount KK/QQ some.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?955760 - Another turned set stacks me. I played this one correctly of course but I've been running hot enough that this hasn't happened to me too much.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?955772 - I go for the bet/3-bet line with my big draw (I do the same with sets a lot too for balance) but can't get him off his overpair and brick my 12 outer. Pretty standard aggressive play.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?955786 - Impossibly strong vs impossibly strong as Phil Laak says. He gets there on the river though. Fortunately this next hand happened shortly after against the same guy:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?955791 - I guess maybe he thought I was steaming because that's a pretty sick calldown.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?955798 - Kinda boring, sometimes I'm on the right side of the coolers. Folding to my 4-bet is not unreasonable, but I definitely might do this as a bluff sometimes so it's probably not a big mistake to just get it in.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?955805 - I think this guy was tilting or something because he played another hand really badly in a big pot earlier in the session. Surprisingly he seemed to play pretty well in another session today so I'm not sure if he's good or not. Against some players I would fold the turn, but the way he was playing that session along with my general annoying aggressive image I knew I'd have an easy call if he pushed over my turn bet.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?955810 - The preflop call is probably a small mistake in general, but I'm getting pretty good implied odds and felt he was very strong here, and also didn't seem like the type to ever get away from an overpair if I hit.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?955812 - Another big pair vs big pair hand. I checked the turn going for the checkraise since I figured most draws usually bluff there and other worse hands will have a hard time calling a big bet. I'm not sure I like his turn bet, but I definitely can't fold since there's enough draws and various other things I beat that play it the same.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?955818 - Yay.

Anyways I always seem to post hands where someone gets stacked because they're the most fun, though often not the most educational. It's probably the only time I've ever picked fun over education.

Mike