I played a whole lot of poker this week

With the WCOOP going on I played a lot of hours every day this week except Thursday when I decided I should leave the house. Unfortunately the results for the week were pretty craptastic. I lost a bit playing cash, and had little tournament success so I definitely lost some more on those, but nothing too bad. With the Canadian dollar soaring though it kind of sucks to be losing on top of all the money that is just magically disappearing each day. Nonetheless I feel like my tournament play has been pretty good all week despite playing a lot of hours. My cash play has been sloppy though, when I pick off a few bluffs I start thinking top pair is the nuts again and take a beating.

So let's see, I cashed 2 more WCOOP events, the $215 limit holdem and $530 limit O8, for very small amounts because the 15% payout structure gives you nothing until the final table. Yesterday I finally made a decent final table, but finished 6th in the Stars $320 for $3200 or something to breakeven on the day basically. Today I went deep in a couple satellites for big live events but didn't win, and took a bad beat deep in the Stars 2nd chance tournament to finish 43rd, which once again paid under $1000. I'm going to pass on the WCOOP event tomorrow because Stud hi is the worst game ever, but I'm pretty pumped for my "specialty", the $320 PLO8 on Tuesday.

In other news I ordered a new desktop computer from Dell which should be pretty sweet and a second 20" Dell lcd screen, so I'll finally have a proper setup. I ordered a few poker books from Amazon that I've been reading, though nothing too heavy on strategy. "The professor, the banker, and the suicide king" tells the story of the huge heads-up limit holdem games between banker Andy Beal and a group of Vegas pros, and was a very interesting read. I'm currently reading "Ace on the River" by Barry Greenstein, which has some hand discussion, but so far is focused more on everything you need to do to be a successful poker pro other than how to play the hands. I tend to think I do these other things very well.

With my personality a lot of it came pretty naturally to me, and while I definitely have become very skilled at playing the game, I think I manage myself better than lot of my peers. Things like not tilting, good game selection, quitting when I realize I'm off my game (I'm still far from perfect here but better than most probably), and not wasting too much money on all sorts of bad habits. There are a lot of young players who learn how to play pretty well, but are still unable to succeed at poker. They tilt and therefore can't play to the best of their ability, or let their ego take control and play in tough games to try to prove they're the best instead of just making money, and play in big games they're not bankrolled for. Some do make money consistently but then lose it playing blackjack or whatever and can't move up to the bigger games, or move up anyways underrolled and go broke.

One thing that has occurred to me recently is I should really be making an effort to get a sponsorship deal, most likely with an online poker site. The free buy-ins/travel for big live events as well as some of the other perks that are typical with these contracts are such a huge boost. All that guaranteed money would be pretty nice in a job where nothing else is a certainty. So basically, I really want to get some good live results under my belt. Hopefully if my timing is good, that combined with my online resume can get me on the gravy train. It seems like more and more of my peers are talking to the online sites and getting signed all the time, and I wouldn't mind getting a piece of that action.

Alright so this entry seems to be a bit all over the place, I guess that's what happens you try to write immediately after a 13 hour session. I'm gonna get some sleep and hopefully own some WCOOP events this week.

Mike