Two blogs in a week?! Crazy, I know. Really it's just because I was tired and got carried away making fun of my friends and forgot to write about some stuff, but I'm going to say it counts. Between rolling around in my purple euros and grinding online I also went to Vancouver for a week after my Eurotrip to visit friends and play the BC Poker Classic. I busted the main very quickly but final tabled the $5k high roller event. I ended up placing 7th when I got AQ in vs KK, but given I won 99 vs KK all-in on the exact bubble I can't complain.
Tonight I leave for Prague where I'll be playing the WPT as well as the EPT and side events. Unfortunately I connect in Heathrow tomorrow morning where apparently there is a 24 hour border control strike. Heathrow is brutal at the best of times and with amateurs working the passport control it's likely to be a shit show. I only have an hour-forty to make my connection to Prague and I'm pretty concerned this going to turn into one of those travel horror stories. If you awake to find a ranting series of rage tweets from me you'll know why. I'm very excited for the trip though as I've heard so many amazing things about Prague and of course the tournaments should be great value.
After Prague I fly straight to Vegas for the 3rd Epic main event as well as the charity event. Not a lot to say here other than if timex can win one I like my chances. After that I'm home to Newfoundland for Xmas, and while I haven't quite finalized my plans for the new year yet I'm probably going to go straight to Australia for a month skipping PCA then come back for the events at Fallsview which are now in February. This is subject to change if I do well in Epic and qualify for the freeroll which is at the same time. The first 10 days or so in Australia a bunch of us are renting a house down the Mornington Peninsula and spending our days golfing the various courses in the area and then hitting the Portsea pub for a couple jugs of beer and some fresh seafood. It is unlikely to suck.
Mike
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Monday, November 28, 2011
An Upswing!
I've been even lazier than usual about blogging lately despite the fact that there's actually been quite a bit to write about. It seems my attention span has continued to shrink to the point I have a hard time explaining what's on my mind using more than 140 characters at a time. Nonetheless I shall do my best to crank out a blog entry that isn't entirely the regurgitation of my last 100 tweets and actually goes into some small amount of meaningful detail on at least two occasions or something. I'm losing focus already so let's get onto it.
Last time I left you just as I was heading to Vegas for the 2nd Epic event. Things were going well for me and with three tables left I won AA vs KK all-in preflop for 10 times starting stack and I must have been top 3 in chips. Unfortunately, after that things stopped going so smoothly and then timex got moved to my left and I punted him a bunch of chips with top pair against an overpair when I played it kinda bad. He subsequently busted me in a standard spot. Here is a picture of me all-in with my 96s against his AK after I wished him terrible luck in the hand. Hopefully that made the TV broadcast.
Don't you still just hate him?
Anyways we'd swapped 10% and he ended up winning so I still got pretty paid and crashed his party and drank all his kegs and told all his friends how awful a human being he is, so I'd say I got the last laugh.
[Ed Note: a certain 4-letter noun has been removed from the last two paragraphs in 4 different locations and the adjective formed with the suffix "y" an additional six. I'm told I'm too vulgar]
Next up was a super awesome Eurotrip that began in Munich for Oktoberfest. Yes, it was incredibly amazing, and yes I am a better person than you because I was there and you weren't. The four us surprisingly survived the three days with merely minor battle scars. No one fell off a table and broke their head or anything. Outside of winning stuffed animals at the carnival games and bringing them to the beer hall with us where we force fed them alcohol no crimes were committed. Our stuffed turtle developed a serious drinking problem he may never recover from. Some drunk bitch grabbed our stuffed tiger and tossed him across the hall. I have never seen Scott angrier I thought he might pimp slap a ho. An extensive search was eventually called off. It is presumed he was trampled to death. We poured one out for our dead homie and soldiered on.
After that we flew to London for the EPT there. I did not sleep well and played kinda bad in the main event. I did however cash the 2k side event for my first live cash in 9 months or so! Then I played a hand even worse. The short version is after a series of comical mistakes I arrived at the river holding T7o in the small blind on a board of 97675. I checked the BB bet 17k, button called and with the game theory optimal hand to bluff with in this situation I went all-in for 50k total. This would be kinda cool if I had like 100k but obviously it did not work here.
Then I went to France and won all the money in Cannes. The final table of the 3200 shoot-out was incredibly tough but I made it heads-up with the chip lead after getting really lucky against Elky a couple times. Not a lot went right in the heads-up though and I bubbled my first ever bracelet at my first WSOP final table. Still I won like 112k euros for 2nd place. I had a decent run in the main event but lost my first all-in despite having the best hand. This worked out ok though, as the next day I beat 58 people to take down the 5k Euro turbo side event for another 105k. I was told at the bar later that I was allowed to be happy I won a tournament! I, however, stake Tony Dunst in poker tournaments so I knew the winnings would be short-lived.
Next up was EPT San Remo and I fought my way into the top 128 players who made the money yet again! I then busted the next hand to finish exactly 128th. I had a lot of chips in the 2k side event at one point but I kinda got velocitized and spewed them off. Velocitized is some term Driver's Ed people made up for the feeling of when you get off the highway where you were driving real fast onto city streets where the speed limit is lower but you still want to drive fast because you're now accustomed to it and it doesn't feel fast.
I am now coining the term in poker to mean when you've just played a bunch of hands against some euro tards and gotten the money in semi-light and been right a few times in a row because they're idiots and never have anything but still try to win every pot, but then you get in a pot against a solid player and you forget that you can't just 3b/call it off against his early position raise with TT for 40bb. So that happened and I lost a flip and I bubbled. Then I left and went back to Canada because San Remo sucks, especially when you've already been eating pasta and/or pizza for half your meals for the previous two weeks.
Since then I've spent most of my time rolling around in purple euros and playing online a bit. PLO cash has still been going really well overall though I haven't played as many hands as I should have, and I even had a decent Sunday score one week. Tony has a lot more work to do if he's still going to try to bankrupt me.
Mike
Last time I left you just as I was heading to Vegas for the 2nd Epic event. Things were going well for me and with three tables left I won AA vs KK all-in preflop for 10 times starting stack and I must have been top 3 in chips. Unfortunately, after that things stopped going so smoothly and then timex got moved to my left and I punted him a bunch of chips with top pair against an overpair when I played it kinda bad. He subsequently busted me in a standard spot. Here is a picture of me all-in with my 96s against his AK after I wished him terrible luck in the hand. Hopefully that made the TV broadcast.
Don't you still just hate him?
Anyways we'd swapped 10% and he ended up winning so I still got pretty paid and crashed his party and drank all his kegs and told all his friends how awful a human being he is, so I'd say I got the last laugh.
[Ed Note: a certain 4-letter noun has been removed from the last two paragraphs in 4 different locations and the adjective formed with the suffix "y" an additional six. I'm told I'm too vulgar]
Next up was a super awesome Eurotrip that began in Munich for Oktoberfest. Yes, it was incredibly amazing, and yes I am a better person than you because I was there and you weren't. The four us surprisingly survived the three days with merely minor battle scars. No one fell off a table and broke their head or anything. Outside of winning stuffed animals at the carnival games and bringing them to the beer hall with us where we force fed them alcohol no crimes were committed. Our stuffed turtle developed a serious drinking problem he may never recover from. Some drunk bitch grabbed our stuffed tiger and tossed him across the hall. I have never seen Scott angrier I thought he might pimp slap a ho. An extensive search was eventually called off. It is presumed he was trampled to death. We poured one out for our dead homie and soldiered on.
After that we flew to London for the EPT there. I did not sleep well and played kinda bad in the main event. I did however cash the 2k side event for my first live cash in 9 months or so! Then I played a hand even worse. The short version is after a series of comical mistakes I arrived at the river holding T7o in the small blind on a board of 97675. I checked the BB bet 17k, button called and with the game theory optimal hand to bluff with in this situation I went all-in for 50k total. This would be kinda cool if I had like 100k but obviously it did not work here.
Then I went to France and won all the money in Cannes. The final table of the 3200 shoot-out was incredibly tough but I made it heads-up with the chip lead after getting really lucky against Elky a couple times. Not a lot went right in the heads-up though and I bubbled my first ever bracelet at my first WSOP final table. Still I won like 112k euros for 2nd place. I had a decent run in the main event but lost my first all-in despite having the best hand. This worked out ok though, as the next day I beat 58 people to take down the 5k Euro turbo side event for another 105k. I was told at the bar later that I was allowed to be happy I won a tournament! I, however, stake Tony Dunst in poker tournaments so I knew the winnings would be short-lived.
Next up was EPT San Remo and I fought my way into the top 128 players who made the money yet again! I then busted the next hand to finish exactly 128th. I had a lot of chips in the 2k side event at one point but I kinda got velocitized and spewed them off. Velocitized is some term Driver's Ed people made up for the feeling of when you get off the highway where you were driving real fast onto city streets where the speed limit is lower but you still want to drive fast because you're now accustomed to it and it doesn't feel fast.
I am now coining the term in poker to mean when you've just played a bunch of hands against some euro tards and gotten the money in semi-light and been right a few times in a row because they're idiots and never have anything but still try to win every pot, but then you get in a pot against a solid player and you forget that you can't just 3b/call it off against his early position raise with TT for 40bb. So that happened and I lost a flip and I bubbled. Then I left and went back to Canada because San Remo sucks, especially when you've already been eating pasta and/or pizza for half your meals for the previous two weeks.
Since then I've spent most of my time rolling around in purple euros and playing online a bit. PLO cash has still been going really well overall though I haven't played as many hands as I should have, and I even had a decent Sunday score one week. Tony has a lot more work to do if he's still going to try to bankrupt me.
Mike
Monday, September 05, 2011
PLO, WCOOP, Epic
It's been a really crazy summer since I got back to Toronto. In the recent weeks a lot of my friends from Vegas have moved here to keep playing online poker which has made the city even more fun. While my bankroll may have taken a hit from Black Friday my social life at least has improved.
I've gotten back to grinding a good amount of PLO cash, by my standards anyways, and have run really hot. Unfortunately this has all been at 5/10 and not 25/50+, but nonetheless it's been a good run. I've never been good at grinding a huge amount of cash hands as my game tends to slip after a couple hours and I need to take a break, but my success has definitely made me want to play more. I'm pretty good at 6-tabling and I'm trying to work up to 8-tabling more when I feel relatively focused. This is all 6-handed games.
WCOOP started yesterday and I'm definitely planning to grind as much as possible. I'm going to miss a lot of days for things like Epic (which starts tomorrow), family visiting, etc... but that's really not a big deal. My plan will likely be just to play WCOOP and maybe a couple other bigger tournaments while continuing to grind PLO cash on the side since it's a lot more profitable. Between the waking early(ish) to play some of the events on the new schedule and long days it will be good to have days off anyways to avoid getting burnt out. WCOOP tends to be very frustrating in that the events have really long structures but huge fields. Often you end up playing for a very long time just to bubble an event or get 12th or something that is kinda close but doesn't actually pay much.
Epic Poker League main event #2 begins tomorrow as I mentioned earlier so I'm flying to Vegas tonight. Hopefully I'll still be there on Friday. Other than Sundays I basically haven't been playing any online tournaments. I won an EPT London package which was nice, but other than that just have a 10th and 12th in medium-sized events to show for myself. I've run really hot at building stacks and in the money percentage, but very poorly deep. Oh well, hopefully just saving my luck for all the huge live events in the coming months!
Mike
I've gotten back to grinding a good amount of PLO cash, by my standards anyways, and have run really hot. Unfortunately this has all been at 5/10 and not 25/50+, but nonetheless it's been a good run. I've never been good at grinding a huge amount of cash hands as my game tends to slip after a couple hours and I need to take a break, but my success has definitely made me want to play more. I'm pretty good at 6-tabling and I'm trying to work up to 8-tabling more when I feel relatively focused. This is all 6-handed games.
WCOOP started yesterday and I'm definitely planning to grind as much as possible. I'm going to miss a lot of days for things like Epic (which starts tomorrow), family visiting, etc... but that's really not a big deal. My plan will likely be just to play WCOOP and maybe a couple other bigger tournaments while continuing to grind PLO cash on the side since it's a lot more profitable. Between the waking early(ish) to play some of the events on the new schedule and long days it will be good to have days off anyways to avoid getting burnt out. WCOOP tends to be very frustrating in that the events have really long structures but huge fields. Often you end up playing for a very long time just to bubble an event or get 12th or something that is kinda close but doesn't actually pay much.
Epic Poker League main event #2 begins tomorrow as I mentioned earlier so I'm flying to Vegas tonight. Hopefully I'll still be there on Friday. Other than Sundays I basically haven't been playing any online tournaments. I won an EPT London package which was nice, but other than that just have a 10th and 12th in medium-sized events to show for myself. I've run really hot at building stacks and in the money percentage, but very poorly deep. Oh well, hopefully just saving my luck for all the huge live events in the coming months!
Mike
Monday, August 08, 2011
Epic Trips
Hey guys it's been a while since I wrote! There hasn't been a whole lot positive to write about with regards to poker lately and my tweets seemed to be getting negative enough. I didn't feel any desire to write what surely would have degenerated into some negative rambling piece of prose, or maybe one of those annoying entries where I write all kinds of positive stuff I obviously don't actually feel to try prove to everyone/myself I'm so above the variance and I'm going to keep fighting my best every day. I was pretty frustrated, I'm not proud of it I'm supposed to be better at dealing with it. It turns out after all these years grinding I'm still a real person who can't completely control his emotions 100% of the time. Maybe that's not such a bad thing.
Anyways, final numbers: I went 0-for-29 and Tony went 0-for-26. Bricking 55 events is pretty remarkable even for fish like the two us. You don't need to know the $$ figure but it wasn't small! Between that and me being dumb and not moving all my money off FTP when I had the chance it has been a pretty awful stretch financially (I'm still somewhat optimistic FTP will come back however). That's in the past now though and it's time to look forward. Tonight I'm flying back to Vegas for the inaugural Epic Poker League main event. $20k buy-in, invitation only event with no rake and $400k added to the prize pool. For more details check out their really cool website that is now full live: Epic Poker League.
It will be really interesting to see how things go with this new league! The idea of invitation-only tournaments is slightly against the spirit of the game but the idea of treating the players well and putting sponsorship/TV money back into the prize pool is definitely the right way to go about things. They seem to be doing everything right so far (except the name) but they have obviously put a lot of money into this and successfully selling poker television these days isn't easy. Regardless, I'm excited to be involved and it'd be a great tournament to go deep in.
After that I'm just back in Toronto for a while before doing Oktoberfest--->EPT London----> WSOPE Cannes ----> EPT San Remo for a month at the end of September. That's a pretty incredible stretch of tournaments (and drinking)! I haven't been able to schedule a Eurotrip in a few years now and I'm excited to get back over there. For now though, win my last tourney of the summer one more time?
Mike
Anyways, final numbers: I went 0-for-29 and Tony went 0-for-26. Bricking 55 events is pretty remarkable even for fish like the two us. You don't need to know the $$ figure but it wasn't small! Between that and me being dumb and not moving all my money off FTP when I had the chance it has been a pretty awful stretch financially (I'm still somewhat optimistic FTP will come back however). That's in the past now though and it's time to look forward. Tonight I'm flying back to Vegas for the inaugural Epic Poker League main event. $20k buy-in, invitation only event with no rake and $400k added to the prize pool. For more details check out their really cool website that is now full live: Epic Poker League.
It will be really interesting to see how things go with this new league! The idea of invitation-only tournaments is slightly against the spirit of the game but the idea of treating the players well and putting sponsorship/TV money back into the prize pool is definitely the right way to go about things. They seem to be doing everything right so far (except the name) but they have obviously put a lot of money into this and successfully selling poker television these days isn't easy. Regardless, I'm excited to be involved and it'd be a great tournament to go deep in.
After that I'm just back in Toronto for a while before doing Oktoberfest--->EPT London----> WSOPE Cannes ----> EPT San Remo for a month at the end of September. That's a pretty incredible stretch of tournaments (and drinking)! I haven't been able to schedule a Eurotrip in a few years now and I'm excited to get back over there. For now though, win my last tourney of the summer one more time?
Mike
Thursday, June 09, 2011
I lied, WSOP is clearly worse
I'm off to my usual 0-for-whatever start at the WSOP again this year. According to this pile of receipts it's eight events which isn't really anything but since 2007 I've cashed only two events a year and the earliest event I cashed was #20. I don't have the actual number but I should be over 100 WSOP events now without a final table. Basically, spending those 6 weeks golfing and doing lines of coke off strippers every day would be a better investment of my money, and probably slightly more enjoyable.
I haven't really had any time to do much other than grind so far. I got one round of golf in and had one night out but other than that it's just been poker poker poker and then lazing around recovering. Today is the $10k 2-7 NL event which is probably the smallest field I'll play so my best chance at a final table. Despite being a relatively simple game a lot of people just don't play it well. Hopefully I make a run it'd be a fun one to go deep in. I guess that's about it for now, hopefully more stories about winning all the money and partying my face off next time.
Mike
I haven't really had any time to do much other than grind so far. I got one round of golf in and had one night out but other than that it's just been poker poker poker and then lazing around recovering. Today is the $10k 2-7 NL event which is probably the smallest field I'll play so my best chance at a final table. Despite being a relatively simple game a lot of people just don't play it well. Hopefully I make a run it'd be a fun one to go deep in. I guess that's about it for now, hopefully more stories about winning all the money and partying my face off next time.
Mike
Monday, May 23, 2011
SCOOP is the worst
I'm really not sure why I get so excited about this every year, I mean I'm basically guaranteed a mid 5-figure score at some point but it's only going to be enough to get me even. I did have some close calls this year including 4 exact bubbles, and an 8th, 9th, and 2nd in H events. In the end that wasn't enough to get me anywhere close to even given the volume of big buy-ins I played. The 2nd was for $38k in the $3k 8-game and got me basically even as of the last Thursday of the series. Then I proceeded to brick the hell out of the final weekend and lose a nice chunk. Sunday was looking very promising as I ran hot the first few hours of the day including an early 2.5x up in the $10k. Then I lost AA vs Duhamel's KK to get back to starting stack and went on a stretch where I lost basically every major pot for two hours in every tournament and got massacred.
Anyways, I leave for Vegas Saturday night and according to my favourite fallacy I am due to absolutely crush the WSOP this year. Possibly even more due than when I binked my WPT. The good news is I do feel I played well the last week or so of SCOOP for the most part and I feel good about my game. I can only hope I get off to a hot start for once and ride it from there.
Mike
Anyways, I leave for Vegas Saturday night and according to my favourite fallacy I am due to absolutely crush the WSOP this year. Possibly even more due than when I binked my WPT. The good news is I do feel I played well the last week or so of SCOOP for the most part and I feel good about my game. I can only hope I get off to a hot start for once and ride it from there.
Mike
Friday, May 13, 2011
Early SCOOP and such
Yo, so SCOOP has started and I am getting crushed so far. I think I have one cash in an M event, 2 exact bubbles in M events, and no cashes in H events (or the few L events I've played) which hurts. Luckily I binked a 5th in the Party million for $46k before I went to Florida so still doing fine on the month overall. I'm pretty jealous of all my friends partying and hitting big scores in Europe though. Not that spending a week in Florida golfing was so bad!
This Black Friday thing has gotten a little annoying. I was counting on being able to withdraw online funds to wire to the Rio, but most of my online roll is on FTP and they don't seem to be processing withdrawals for the moment. I'm still not worried about FTP being unable to pay out but I'm not sure what the timeline will look like. As I understand it the account they would use to pay out is frozen because of this whole situation, and while they are still printing like a bazillion dollars a week it's going to take a while to build up enough to cover the demand. On the plus side I can apparently withdraw $500 a week now from AP! I can do like 4 of those pre-WSOP and then I guess I just pray that the company is still in business when I get back. Not thrilled. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that Tony had a lot of his liquidity frozen as well and needs a lot more money for the summer. I'm planning to just win a SCOOP or two and take care of it, but as I said in my opening rant that is proving difficult.
In other Black Friday fallout it appears our attempts at getting a reality TV show about our summer in Vegas are dead. I'm not sure if that was really the main factor or what but we were supposed to have meetings with some other networks around the time all that was happening and then they went away. It might be for the best anyways (my parents are relieved) as I'm generally a more private person when it comes to my personal life, but it sounded like such a ridiculous fun opportunity I was willing to go for it. Too bad, as everything seemed to be going really well for a while there and it really seemed like it was going to happen. It would have been awesome TV and a lot of fun for us.
In other recent news I have apparently been granted a 3 year pass to the Federated Poker League, a new pros only league being planned where a lot of the advertising and sponsorship money would be added to the prize pool in some way instead of just put into the pockets of the casino. I'm not terribly optimistic the league will do well/be viable but I guess it's a cool accomplishment and would be great for me obviously to play tournaments with a bunch of free overlay even if the fields are super tough. I guess only time will tell but I'll likely be making an effort to play these events if they end up being as advertised.
Anyways, ten more days of SCOOP and then a week off before WSOP. I really want a big score or two to get out of this run of mediocrity I've been on lately, but I've got to stay patient and keep my head together. Already I can tell the long hours of SCOOP every day are tough on me. Gotta find and keep my head in that tough grinder mentality.
Mike
This Black Friday thing has gotten a little annoying. I was counting on being able to withdraw online funds to wire to the Rio, but most of my online roll is on FTP and they don't seem to be processing withdrawals for the moment. I'm still not worried about FTP being unable to pay out but I'm not sure what the timeline will look like. As I understand it the account they would use to pay out is frozen because of this whole situation, and while they are still printing like a bazillion dollars a week it's going to take a while to build up enough to cover the demand. On the plus side I can apparently withdraw $500 a week now from AP! I can do like 4 of those pre-WSOP and then I guess I just pray that the company is still in business when I get back. Not thrilled. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that Tony had a lot of his liquidity frozen as well and needs a lot more money for the summer. I'm planning to just win a SCOOP or two and take care of it, but as I said in my opening rant that is proving difficult.
In other Black Friday fallout it appears our attempts at getting a reality TV show about our summer in Vegas are dead. I'm not sure if that was really the main factor or what but we were supposed to have meetings with some other networks around the time all that was happening and then they went away. It might be for the best anyways (my parents are relieved) as I'm generally a more private person when it comes to my personal life, but it sounded like such a ridiculous fun opportunity I was willing to go for it. Too bad, as everything seemed to be going really well for a while there and it really seemed like it was going to happen. It would have been awesome TV and a lot of fun for us.
In other recent news I have apparently been granted a 3 year pass to the Federated Poker League, a new pros only league being planned where a lot of the advertising and sponsorship money would be added to the prize pool in some way instead of just put into the pockets of the casino. I'm not terribly optimistic the league will do well/be viable but I guess it's a cool accomplishment and would be great for me obviously to play tournaments with a bunch of free overlay even if the fields are super tough. I guess only time will tell but I'll likely be making an effort to play these events if they end up being as advertised.
Anyways, ten more days of SCOOP and then a week off before WSOP. I really want a big score or two to get out of this run of mediocrity I've been on lately, but I've got to stay patient and keep my head together. Already I can tell the long hours of SCOOP every day are tough on me. Gotta find and keep my head in that tough grinder mentality.
Mike
Monday, April 18, 2011
The Best Laid Plans....
So as most of whatever readers I still have likely know by now, the FBI effectively put an end to online poker in the US for the time being this Friday. Obviously this is really bad for everyone, not just American players, but admittedly being Canadian is even awesomer than usual right now. I don't want to downplay the significance of this event or ignore the potential long term negative effects it could have on the poker industry as a whole, but I am an optimistic albeit realistic person so that's probably the angle I'll take in most of whatever I end up writing here. At least after I vent some frustrations about deciding to grind FTOPS and SCOOP instead of going to play awesome tourneys in Europe. Oops.
I am not going to speculate about US finally regulating online gaming because I have no special knowledge about that. What I do know is that Stars and Full Tilt are still the two biggest online poker sites in the world (though the Party/Bwin merger may push them into 2nd whenever that is finalized). They are going to continue on strong and find new ways to grow in the market that is still available to them. We should be especially thankful for all the work the online sites, but especially PokerStars, have done promoting the game around the world. If not for that this situation would be an awful lot worse for everyone, not just people like me who still have good games to grind online. Poker has gotten big enough that this hit should merely slow it down a little, and not be anything close to a crushing blow to the industry as a whole. Even my American friends who want to continue playing for a living have some options.
In the short term I'll have a better idea of how this effects me in a few weeks, but I don't expect it to be too drastic. I can still make a good amount of money playing online tournaments. The huge prize pools are gone, but some tournaments may actually get softer without all the American pros. FTOPS and SCOOP are a lot less exciting and I'll probably be skipping a lot more days than I was planning to, but they should still be quality series. I don't know what this really does to the high buy-in SCOOP events, especially in the less popular games, but the M-level buy-in events should all still have good enough fields and be a lot of fun. The less popular game events in FTOPS may be a bit of a joke unfortunately but the NL events will be solid enough.
The other potential benefit of this is it will force me to grind a lot more. There won't even be big mixed games for me to lose money at, or many big buy-in tournaments where my edge is questionable. If I want to play a weekday I'll have to grind in the afternoon and play a lot of smaller field events where my variance is reduced but I should still have a decent ROI. Sundays appear to still be really strong in the afternoon, though later events did not draw much of a field today. Anyways the point I was trying to make is this may actually force my game selection to be better by default.
Overall, I still really like my situation playing poker for a living. The net effect of this week's events is of course very negative, but I'm lucky not to have been hit as hard as many. Even for my friends south of the border there are reasons to be optimistic. It's going to be a rough ride, but in the end I'm hopeful everyone will come out OK.
Mike
PS. Oops forgot to include rant about UB/AP. I had a decent amount of money on there as it's the only place I win, and I am not at all confident I'll get it off. I can't really see how the Cereus Network survives without the American market. They are crippled at best and they must know this. I do not trust them to not just run off with my money given that we already know they are run by crooks. I snap cashed out Friday afternoon, will post in the comments here if/when the transaction goes through. I am concerned.
I am not going to speculate about US finally regulating online gaming because I have no special knowledge about that. What I do know is that Stars and Full Tilt are still the two biggest online poker sites in the world (though the Party/Bwin merger may push them into 2nd whenever that is finalized). They are going to continue on strong and find new ways to grow in the market that is still available to them. We should be especially thankful for all the work the online sites, but especially PokerStars, have done promoting the game around the world. If not for that this situation would be an awful lot worse for everyone, not just people like me who still have good games to grind online. Poker has gotten big enough that this hit should merely slow it down a little, and not be anything close to a crushing blow to the industry as a whole. Even my American friends who want to continue playing for a living have some options.
In the short term I'll have a better idea of how this effects me in a few weeks, but I don't expect it to be too drastic. I can still make a good amount of money playing online tournaments. The huge prize pools are gone, but some tournaments may actually get softer without all the American pros. FTOPS and SCOOP are a lot less exciting and I'll probably be skipping a lot more days than I was planning to, but they should still be quality series. I don't know what this really does to the high buy-in SCOOP events, especially in the less popular games, but the M-level buy-in events should all still have good enough fields and be a lot of fun. The less popular game events in FTOPS may be a bit of a joke unfortunately but the NL events will be solid enough.
The other potential benefit of this is it will force me to grind a lot more. There won't even be big mixed games for me to lose money at, or many big buy-in tournaments where my edge is questionable. If I want to play a weekday I'll have to grind in the afternoon and play a lot of smaller field events where my variance is reduced but I should still have a decent ROI. Sundays appear to still be really strong in the afternoon, though later events did not draw much of a field today. Anyways the point I was trying to make is this may actually force my game selection to be better by default.
Overall, I still really like my situation playing poker for a living. The net effect of this week's events is of course very negative, but I'm lucky not to have been hit as hard as many. Even for my friends south of the border there are reasons to be optimistic. It's going to be a rough ride, but in the end I'm hopeful everyone will come out OK.
Mike
PS. Oops forgot to include rant about UB/AP. I had a decent amount of money on there as it's the only place I win, and I am not at all confident I'll get it off. I can't really see how the Cereus Network survives without the American market. They are crippled at best and they must know this. I do not trust them to not just run off with my money given that we already know they are run by crooks. I snap cashed out Friday afternoon, will post in the comments here if/when the transaction goes through. I am concerned.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
MDMDHAMD
Yo, so not much to update poker-wise. I've been putting in a lot of mixed game hands and that's been going alright. I still seem to kinda blow at a bunch of the games but I'm learning and my results have been fine. I went on a quick $150k heater than lost most of it back, but I had a good session the other night to get a bit of that back. Hopefully if I get in enough hands I can eventually have some semi-meaningful information about my play in all the different games and use that to try to plug leaks. I've played a few small tourney sessions as well but those are stupid so I usually lose.
So SCOOP isn't until May 7th for some reason which overlaps nicely with the EPT Grand Final. Good work PokerStars. I heard some other bad stuff about the venue so whatever, Eurotrip is off the schedule yet again. I'm planning to grind SCOOP like crazy though. In the mean time there's not a lot in the way of super legit tourneys. Some GSOP and miniFTOPS stuff this weekend is pretty cool so I'll likely play Sunday in front of the TV while grinding March Madness obviously. Other than that I guess I'll try not to go broke grinding mixed games. Just kidding, backing Tony will be what breaks me.
Mike
So SCOOP isn't until May 7th for some reason which overlaps nicely with the EPT Grand Final. Good work PokerStars. I heard some other bad stuff about the venue so whatever, Eurotrip is off the schedule yet again. I'm planning to grind SCOOP like crazy though. In the mean time there's not a lot in the way of super legit tourneys. Some GSOP and miniFTOPS stuff this weekend is pretty cool so I'll likely play Sunday in front of the TV while grinding March Madness obviously. Other than that I guess I'll try not to go broke grinding mixed games. Just kidding, backing Tony will be what breaks me.
Mike
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Online Grind
After LA we headed back to Vegas to grind FTOPS and such at Casa de Chewy. With one exception it's been all work here as the team has been putting in some serious hours on the tournament and cash grind. I hit a couple good scores in FTOPS, winning the $200 Stud Hi/Lo event for $27k and getting 5th in the 9-game multi-entry for $24.5k. Cash has gone up and down with some pretty big swings but overall it's been a successful couple weeks. I feel like my game has improved a lot in both tournament NL Holdem and mixed games over the last year despite not having a whole lot in the way of results to show for it. It definitely helps the learning process when your roommates are the best Rush player in the world (Dan likes to claim he's top 5 in the world at almost everything but in this case he's not exaggerating), and a couple guys who battle almost anyone at high stakes heads-up NL. Even Tony doesn't bring the team down that much.
Tomorrow is Dan's birthday so we're going to celebrate in Vegas before heading to LA on Thursday for the LAPC WPT event. After that I'm finally heading home! Between March Madness and SCOOP coming up I should be able to keep myself busy (depending if sitting on a couch watching basketball for 12 hours counts as a legitimate activity to you). Then I'm likely going to do the Irish Open, San Remo, Madrid tour of Euro-tourneys at the end of April.
Still no update on the results of our meetings in LA for those I've talked to about that, but we remain cautiously optimistic.
Mike
Tomorrow is Dan's birthday so we're going to celebrate in Vegas before heading to LA on Thursday for the LAPC WPT event. After that I'm finally heading home! Between March Madness and SCOOP coming up I should be able to keep myself busy (depending if sitting on a couch watching basketball for 12 hours counts as a legitimate activity to you). Then I'm likely going to do the Irish Open, San Remo, Madrid tour of Euro-tourneys at the end of April.
Still no update on the results of our meetings in LA for those I've talked to about that, but we remain cautiously optimistic.
Mike
Friday, February 04, 2011
Australia 2011!
Another Aussie Millions has come and gone. As always I've had a great time in Melbourne, though poker was significantly less successful than last year. I did cash 4 of the 11 events I played, but they were all min cashes. The only biggish one was 5th in the $10k 8-game for $20k. I also lost a bunch online playing cash, so good times on the poker front.
Outside of that I had a lot of fun here catching up with friends, meeting new people, partying, golfing etc.... Unfortunately(?) plans have changed and I'm leaving Australia two weeks early and going to LA tomorrow with Tony and Dan. Not really sure what the plan is between that and the good events in LAPC, but these things have a way of working themselves out somehow. Hopefully missing out on two weeks in Australia ends up being worth it! I'll update further details when I have a better idea what's going on.
Mike
Outside of that I had a lot of fun here catching up with friends, meeting new people, partying, golfing etc.... Unfortunately(?) plans have changed and I'm leaving Australia two weeks early and going to LA tomorrow with Tony and Dan. Not really sure what the plan is between that and the good events in LAPC, but these things have a way of working themselves out somehow. Hopefully missing out on two weeks in Australia ends up being worth it! I'll update further details when I have a better idea what's going on.
Mike
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Fallsview Recap
I played the $2.5k and $5k events at Fallsview this weekend and it proved to be a wise decision not to go to PCA. Both events were as soft as I expected, but the $2500 being scheduled for a Saturday and Sunday really drew a huge field and was even juicier than I could have guessed. 444 players showed up and the prize pool exceeded wan mirrion dorrars.
I got off to a good start flush over flushing a guy to double early but then hung around 25k for quite a while before reversing back to the 10k starting stack. Things were looking grim as the blinds were big and my first shove with Q6s was snapped of by 77. I flopped 2 pair though and then I won JJ>AQ vs the same guy a few hands later. Shortly after that I busted another guy somehow, I think another flip, and I had chipped up to 80k before I knew it. The rest of the day didn't go as well and I had to rebound at the end to finish with 56k. there were around 68 left with 40 getting paid.
On day 2 I just crushed from the very beginning. First I busted a short stack calling his shove with ATo and holding vs 76s. I then raised over an UTG limp with 88 and the guy next to me, who had just taken like 3 minutes to call a 20bb reshove with AK, moved in for an amount that gave me almost 2:1 on a call. I sighed and threw in the chips hoping to see AK, but instead he had 55(!). Then I stole some blinds on the bubble to have 210k when we reached the money.
They did a redraw for seats at 40 and Timex got moved to my table with 280k. Now guaranteed money people were willing to gamble again, so it was a rather opportune time for me to pick up QQ, AA, and AA within the first couple orbits. I busted a player each time, the last being timex himself when he jammed pocket 2s over my pocket 1s (he had already lost some of his stack by then). Then I opened AQ UTG, got flatted by some guy who likes to call, and the BB shipped 15bb. I called and held vs the 93o. Actually. Then I won another big pot when I opened 66 UTG+1 to 23k and got repopped to 50k by a guy who had flat called me with AK in the same spot the orbit before. I was therefore very confident he had a big pair so I did some math and decided to call getting a bit over 9:1 implied odds, which is probably a small mistake. Even though I'm only 7.5:1 against flopping a set I don't automatically win when that happens, but fuck him for minraising me and maybe I score some image points as being the bully chipleader who doesn't fold to such nonsense. Obviously I flopped a set and held vs AA. After that I won another smaller pot and had over a million when 2nd place was barely 500k. I made the final table with just under a million and was still chip leader.
The first hand I played at the FT was huge. 2nd in chips who had almost caught up to me opened in EP to 41k at 6k/12k/1k and the guy on my right called. I called with 77 and the three of us saw a flop of T73 rainbow (easy game). They checked to me and I bet 72k. It seemed likely neither was very strong but I have to bet anyways and I was thrilled to see the original raiser bomb it to 246k! He had around 450-500k behind and from playing with him I knew he was capable of spewing, but I really doubted he would be bluffing in this situation. In the end I still decided to just call afraid he might somehow hero fold if I shove as it's live poker but he'd probably autoshove the turn with an overpair anyways. Plus if he does happen to have AK somehow he might accidentally make a pair. The turn was a king and he shoved as expected, I snapped and beat JJ. After this pot I had 1.85M of the 4.4M in play with 9 left. 2nd in chips would have had maybe 600k.
Unfortunately from there I did not run so hot. I lost two flips against short stacks and later AJ vs AK to drop below a million. Another player from Waterloo, David Quang, had stolen my God-mode and run up the big stack. We eventually ended up heads-up with me behind 3:1 in chips. The heads up was incredibly one-sided. He probably made the best hand at least 75% of the pots that saw a flop and there just wasn't anything I could do about it. I was down to 500k when I got all-in A6 vs A9, but flopped three sixes to get back where I'd started. I then coolered him AQ vs AJs in a pot that would have put me roughly even in chips, but he rivered a J-hi straight to take it down. Second paid $141k obviously a great score, but payouts were pretty top heavy and first was twice that. Nonetheless I was still thrilled to get the year started in such a positive way.
I played the $5k on Monday and was able to double my stack without playing any particularly interesting pots, but then I went card dead and eventually lost JJ vs AQ. I'm off to Australia tomorrow for Aussie Millions where I'm planning to play basically everything except the 100k. If I can be even half as successful as I was there last year 2011 will be off a to a great start indeed.
Mike
I got off to a good start flush over flushing a guy to double early but then hung around 25k for quite a while before reversing back to the 10k starting stack. Things were looking grim as the blinds were big and my first shove with Q6s was snapped of by 77. I flopped 2 pair though and then I won JJ>AQ vs the same guy a few hands later. Shortly after that I busted another guy somehow, I think another flip, and I had chipped up to 80k before I knew it. The rest of the day didn't go as well and I had to rebound at the end to finish with 56k. there were around 68 left with 40 getting paid.
On day 2 I just crushed from the very beginning. First I busted a short stack calling his shove with ATo and holding vs 76s. I then raised over an UTG limp with 88 and the guy next to me, who had just taken like 3 minutes to call a 20bb reshove with AK, moved in for an amount that gave me almost 2:1 on a call. I sighed and threw in the chips hoping to see AK, but instead he had 55(!). Then I stole some blinds on the bubble to have 210k when we reached the money.
They did a redraw for seats at 40 and Timex got moved to my table with 280k. Now guaranteed money people were willing to gamble again, so it was a rather opportune time for me to pick up QQ, AA, and AA within the first couple orbits. I busted a player each time, the last being timex himself when he jammed pocket 2s over my pocket 1s (he had already lost some of his stack by then). Then I opened AQ UTG, got flatted by some guy who likes to call, and the BB shipped 15bb. I called and held vs the 93o. Actually. Then I won another big pot when I opened 66 UTG+1 to 23k and got repopped to 50k by a guy who had flat called me with AK in the same spot the orbit before. I was therefore very confident he had a big pair so I did some math and decided to call getting a bit over 9:1 implied odds, which is probably a small mistake. Even though I'm only 7.5:1 against flopping a set I don't automatically win when that happens, but fuck him for minraising me and maybe I score some image points as being the bully chipleader who doesn't fold to such nonsense. Obviously I flopped a set and held vs AA. After that I won another smaller pot and had over a million when 2nd place was barely 500k. I made the final table with just under a million and was still chip leader.
The first hand I played at the FT was huge. 2nd in chips who had almost caught up to me opened in EP to 41k at 6k/12k/1k and the guy on my right called. I called with 77 and the three of us saw a flop of T73 rainbow (easy game). They checked to me and I bet 72k. It seemed likely neither was very strong but I have to bet anyways and I was thrilled to see the original raiser bomb it to 246k! He had around 450-500k behind and from playing with him I knew he was capable of spewing, but I really doubted he would be bluffing in this situation. In the end I still decided to just call afraid he might somehow hero fold if I shove as it's live poker but he'd probably autoshove the turn with an overpair anyways. Plus if he does happen to have AK somehow he might accidentally make a pair. The turn was a king and he shoved as expected, I snapped and beat JJ. After this pot I had 1.85M of the 4.4M in play with 9 left. 2nd in chips would have had maybe 600k.
Unfortunately from there I did not run so hot. I lost two flips against short stacks and later AJ vs AK to drop below a million. Another player from Waterloo, David Quang, had stolen my God-mode and run up the big stack. We eventually ended up heads-up with me behind 3:1 in chips. The heads up was incredibly one-sided. He probably made the best hand at least 75% of the pots that saw a flop and there just wasn't anything I could do about it. I was down to 500k when I got all-in A6 vs A9, but flopped three sixes to get back where I'd started. I then coolered him AQ vs AJs in a pot that would have put me roughly even in chips, but he rivered a J-hi straight to take it down. Second paid $141k obviously a great score, but payouts were pretty top heavy and first was twice that. Nonetheless I was still thrilled to get the year started in such a positive way.
I played the $5k on Monday and was able to double my stack without playing any particularly interesting pots, but then I went card dead and eventually lost JJ vs AQ. I'm off to Australia tomorrow for Aussie Millions where I'm planning to play basically everything except the 100k. If I can be even half as successful as I was there last year 2011 will be off a to a great start indeed.
Mike
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
On to the Next
2010 was a good and bad year for me. The good was that I succeeded in having a lot fun and enjoying life, which was my main goal. The bad was that with respect to poker I was in the red on the year. This was mainly because I stopped running hot at nosebleed PLO and I didn't do anything spectacular live, despite starting off the year cashing the PCA and having a great run at Aussie Millions. My lack of success at poker isn't really surprising. When you play as little volume as I did in 2010 at the stakes I played your results are going to vary wildly. Focusing more on other things and less on poker is unlikely to help. That being said, poker was not my main goal, and losing never really affected my mood. I still had a great year overall.
Losing in 2010 didn't really change my situation financially, though you probably won't see me playing much nosebleed for a while. That being said it's not something I intend to repeat in 2011. Since I got back from Asia I've been rededicated to grinding somewhat. I've spent a lot of time playing 25/50 full stack PLO and mixed games in the 40/80-250/500 range. Some of my limit games still need some work but I'm really enjoying the new 10 game mix as Badugi and NL 2-7 SD are both fun games and games I feel I'm relatively strong at compared to the field at this point. I think if I keep putting in hands as much as possible while being smart about game selection I'll have success. Making some more steady income from cash is important as my tournament results are always going to be erratic, that's just the nature of it.
As for 2011 I am doing a lot of the same traveling I always seem to do with a few changes. First, I'm skipping PCA this year. Instead I will be playing the 2.5k and 5k
events at Fallsview. These events will have a lot of value and are much easier to travel to. PCA is overrated once you've done it a few times anyways, and while the main event is one of the best tourneys of the year most of the $2k+ buy-in side events are nothing special. Immediately after Fallsview I'm off to Australia again for Aussie Millions. The schedule looks great this year and Melbourne is infinitely better than Atlantis in terms of a vacation spot in January-February. After the tournaments are over I'll be kicking it with my mates down under for the first 3 weeks of February. Finally, I'm heading to LAPC again on Feb 20 for the final week of events there. That's as far as I've got things planned at this point, hopefully I get off to a great start to a great year on and off the felt! Happy New Year and best of luck to everyone in 2011.
Mike
Losing in 2010 didn't really change my situation financially, though you probably won't see me playing much nosebleed for a while. That being said it's not something I intend to repeat in 2011. Since I got back from Asia I've been rededicated to grinding somewhat. I've spent a lot of time playing 25/50 full stack PLO and mixed games in the 40/80-250/500 range. Some of my limit games still need some work but I'm really enjoying the new 10 game mix as Badugi and NL 2-7 SD are both fun games and games I feel I'm relatively strong at compared to the field at this point. I think if I keep putting in hands as much as possible while being smart about game selection I'll have success. Making some more steady income from cash is important as my tournament results are always going to be erratic, that's just the nature of it.
As for 2011 I am doing a lot of the same traveling I always seem to do with a few changes. First, I'm skipping PCA this year. Instead I will be playing the 2.5k and 5k
events at Fallsview. These events will have a lot of value and are much easier to travel to. PCA is overrated once you've done it a few times anyways, and while the main event is one of the best tourneys of the year most of the $2k+ buy-in side events are nothing special. Immediately after Fallsview I'm off to Australia again for Aussie Millions. The schedule looks great this year and Melbourne is infinitely better than Atlantis in terms of a vacation spot in January-February. After the tournaments are over I'll be kicking it with my mates down under for the first 3 weeks of February. Finally, I'm heading to LAPC again on Feb 20 for the final week of events there. That's as far as I've got things planned at this point, hopefully I get off to a great start to a great year on and off the felt! Happy New Year and best of luck to everyone in 2011.
Mike