+17K shortstacking 25/50 NL and +6K at 5/10NL (full buy-in). If only anything close to this was sustainable. I even managed to not lose too much of this back playing tournaments.
Mike
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Monday, January 29, 2007
Sunday report
Tournaments: -(sum of all buy-ins/rebuys) (this is a lot)
Shortstacking 25/50 NL: +5500
5/10 NL 6-max: +500
I think I see a pattern.
Shortstacking 25/50 NL: +5500
5/10 NL 6-max: +500
I think I see a pattern.
Monday, January 22, 2007
Quick Sunday Report
Hey all, not much luck in the tournaments tonight. I final tabled the UB 100r again but finished either 7th or 8th, I forget. I also had one small cash. On the plus side cash games ahve been going really well lately. I've moved back up to 5/10 with good results so far, and I took another shot at shortstacking 25/50 NL on Stars this weekend. This time I actually ran good and made a quick $7500 in 200 hands. I don't plan to make a habit of this because the swings are ridiculous, but it's definitely profitable for me. I'm better off playing 5/10 though with a full stack and getting better at that. I'm basically planning to only play poker on weekends for a while because I have to get my thesis done this term and I'm behind where I need to be. I'm sure I will make exceptions for the occasional cash session when I need a break, or possibly playing tournaments one weeknight some weeks if things are going well with school. Finally, HUGE props to my buddy "gobboboy" for finishing 2nd in the Aussie Millions tournament in Melbourne for 1 million Australian dollars ($800K US). Also, congratulations to certain friends of mine who bought a nice piece of his action. OK I'm off, I'll probably keep doing the Sunday updates thing throughout the term, at least when something interesting happens.
Mike
Mike
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Good night on UB
Other plans for the evening fell through, so I played some tournaments tonight. I ran well and won the 100r on UB for $7500, and finished 2nd in the 30r on UB for $3200. In the $30r I got heads up even in chips with my friend Adam Junglen, so we decided to just go all in blind and flip the coin for $2200 or so. He won the all-in on the river card and took down the tournament. I can't play as many tournaments as usual tomorrow because I have a basketball game at 4:30, but I'll play everything from 6:00 on, starting with the $535 tournament on Full Tilt.
Mike
Mike
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
PCA Trip Report: Part 2
One thing I forgot from yesterday. A guy that lives in residence with Mike won the Stars Million for $200K. So jealous. He's not even that experienced a player, though he played pretty well at the final table. There was another kid in the hotel lobby playing at that final table on his laptop, with like 75 people around him cheering him on. I was up in our hotel room with Aaron and Mike forming the 3 person ch0ppy fan club. He basically single-handedly took out the kid playing in the lobby, it was actually pretty funny how badly he outplayed him. It's kind of scary to think how good Mike and a few of his friends could get, because they're all super smart young kids.
Day 5
Today I got up and headed down to the poker room to play the $1000 tournament. The structure was pretty awful and I never really got many chips. However, Aaron was owning it from the very start and I was running around the room trying to watch how Steve and gobbo were doing, and also keeping an eye on Aaron. Steve and gobbo's day are pretty well covered elsewhere. They came up short finishing in the low 20s for like 30K or something.
For dinner we went to the buffet with aaronbeen, actionjeff, and some others. I'm pretty sure aaronbeen lost credit card roulette, though I don't remember mocking him so I might have days mixed up. The dinner buffet was good, and I basically tried almost everything. Also, Mike is a huge luckbox. He had already won like $2000 on the trip gambling on coinflips, and at dinner he added to that. He flipped jonlewis for $100 twice, splitting those flips. He then won 2 consecutive flips for $200, the next for $400, and another double or nothing for $800. Jon quit at this point down only $1600.
***
I ended up going to play the big nightly tournaments online, and went on a sick run in every tournament I was playing. Unfortunately I bubbled the $1000 tournament on Full Tilt and donked out of the $129 tournament on UB in 3rd place in spectacular fashion:
We're 3 handed. I've been playing pretty aggressively. The guy on my right has 320K and I have around 280K, and GB2005 has 150K on my left.
Hand 1: I'm in the SB and the button folds. Blinds are 4K/8k and I limp in with 86o. GB checks his BB. The flop comes K55 and I autobet 12K. GB quickly calls. Something about the timing of his call and the fact that I'd been very aggressive made me really think he was floating me with nothing here planning to try to take the pot away later, since I figured to have nothing either.
The turn was a Q, completing the rainbow. Going with my read I decided not to give up on the pot and bet 24K. Unfortunately, this might not have been the best way to fight for the pot, a checkraise all-in was probably a better plan. GB2005 went ahead and raised to 65K. My first instinct was that I still didn't really believe him, and I thought he was leaving himself room to fold if I pushed. My second thought was that pushing allin with 8-hi, no draw, here was completely suicidal, what the hell was I thinking. But I talked myself into going with my read and pushed him in for his last 65K. He instamucked and berated me in chat for "never being able to fold". I told him I had a big hand for some reason.
Hand 2: After the last hand I decided that I was, in fact, invincible. I raise to 24K with AQo and the other guy calls in his BB. The flop comes TTx. He checks and I continuation bet 30K. He min-checkraises to 60K. Unlike in the last hand where I had actual reasons to think he was bluffing, I randomly decided to call and take this pot away too. I finish the hand with like 50-60K in chips.
Hand 3: Folded to me in the SB and I autoshove 73o. GB beats me into the pot with 99. GG.
After donking out of my other tournaments I headed down to watch Aaron. There are 5 players left and he has the chiplead. The funny thing about Steve and Aaron, is that they play nothing like their personalities. Both are fairly quiet, unassuming guys. They're not the least bit cocky and they're both pretty nitty with the money they've made, and you might expect them to be similar at the table, playing a careful, tight style. But in reality, they are two of the LAGiest LAGtards ever when they play live. Aaron had to be raising at least 75% of the hands it was folded to him in any position. The players on his left simply did not know how to adjust and he was dominating the table. Unfortunately I brought my bad luck down to him and he finished 3rd for $20K, after taking a tough river beat, and losing a flip.
***
Day 6
This was by far the best day of the trip. Mike left this morning. Lol, that's only a small part of why though. The plan for today was to lie out in the sun all afternoon and get our burn on. But first, waterslides!! I'd never done the water slide thing before, so I had no idea what I was in for. So I get on the first one, and you actually get moving pretty fast! OK so that was fun! Now we go do the big one. Aaron warns me that I'll actually lose contact with the slide for a split second on this one. Hmm, ok that sounds fine. I was thinking maybe you'd go for a little bit and then there'd be this drop, because I couldn't actually see much without my glasses on. Well, no. As soon as you get moving there's a huge drop. And it's not a split second, I'd say I was off the slide for closer to a full second, and you get moving fast in a hurry. It definitely got the blood pumping, but was really fun, so we did that again and also the tube one before going to lie down in the sun all day. Unfortunately, by this time our beautiful sunny day had clouded over and it was spitting rain. On the plus side it was still early enough to go play the $1500 tournament, so we did that instead.
***
Unfortunately, I busted in the first level with KK vs AA but decided I wanted to play live more. I was trying to get a seat in the 5/10 NL game but it was full so I had to wait. As I was waiting they started a 10/20 NL game, so I figured why not, and got in on that one. Just as the game was about to start a seat opened at the 5/10 table, but the 10/20 game actually looked way softer so I decided to stay there. And what a game it was. 3-4 to every flop for a raise, and while most people seemed to know how to play fairly well postflop, there were a few that were complete maniacs. I ended up making $3K by winning a few small to medium sized pots along with this big one:
Hand 1: I'm UTG and and place a live straddle to 40 before looking at my cards. There is a raise to 125 and 2 callers before it gets back to me. I now look down and find KK, and make it 600 to go. The raiser folds but the first caller pushes me all-in for around $2000. I quickly call and say I hope it isn't happening for the 2nd time today, but he has 99 and my hand holds.
***
I find some other 2+2ers in the card room and learn that they've got a table for 12 booked at Nobu, the expensive Japanese/sushi place in the casino. Fortunately there were a couple extra seats, so Aaron and I could join them. To make things simple we all decided to get the chefs specialty 7 course meal at $150 a head. Throw in some sake and wine and we paid almost $200 each. The food was pretty good, and the service was actually fine (everyone else I've talked to complained the service was awful). Each of the 7 rounds was really small, but it added up to a satisfying meal. It definitely wasn't a $200-good meal though, I've had much fresher sushi in Toronto for example, but after running so good at credit card roulette we needed a big meal to knock some money off my room card anyways so that it wouldn't go to waste.
After the meal we got some more drinking in before heading to Senor Frogs, a bar in Nassau. We bumped into a few of the Ship it Holla Ballas on our way to find cabs, and instead we shared a limo with them. They're actually nice guys, people get the wrong idea from the awful name and their website, but they're just trying to have some fun and get some publicity. The night got even better when we arrived, as apparently several cruise ships were docked at Nassau that night, and the bar was packed. Not just of nerdy poker guys, but also some attractive ladies who weren't dating said poker players for a change. Lots of drinks, good reggae and hip hop playing, a (female) booty shaking contest up on the stage, and a bit of dancing. Not a bad night at all. After Senor Frogs closed we went to some other late night place and partied until around 5am. Great night.
Day 7
When I come to it's after 12:30 and we need to get cleaned up and head down to sign up for the $2500 tournament. I know it's going to be a rough day after last night, but I'm getting backed in the tournament, and I don't want to miss out on my last chance to make some money down here.
***
The tournament went a lot better today, but again I fell short of cashing. This is long as hell already so I'll go with the short version: AK vs TT aipf bingo A on river. AQ vs AA aipf turns broadway obv. I basically lost every other pot I played though and I wonder why I ever bother cont. betting the flop because I swear they raise me every time. Anyways I get moved to a new table and belowabove is on my right so I'm just waiting for a chance to reraise him. He opens on the button and I jam A3o from the SB. Unfortunately I don't have enough chips to get him to fold QTs and he decides to call and pwn me.
***
After this I went to the Stars closing cocktail party, but I didn't have it in me to drink anymore so I left early and went to a comedy show Steve + family, Aaron, and davidross + wife. I really enjoyed two of the three comedians, and even the guy in the middle wasn't bad. We say goodbye to some people and get our stuff ready to leave in the morning.
Day 8
Get up in time to go kill the last $50 on the room card at breakfast and get checked out by 11. Aaron leaves for his earlier flight and I'm on a flight with Steve and family at 3. The trip back is uneventful, Steve drops me home, and it was pretty awesome to see a bunch of people I hadn't seen in a while over at the house for one of Dave's dinner parties. Maybe Waterloo isn't so bad.
Mike
Day 5
Today I got up and headed down to the poker room to play the $1000 tournament. The structure was pretty awful and I never really got many chips. However, Aaron was owning it from the very start and I was running around the room trying to watch how Steve and gobbo were doing, and also keeping an eye on Aaron. Steve and gobbo's day are pretty well covered elsewhere. They came up short finishing in the low 20s for like 30K or something.
For dinner we went to the buffet with aaronbeen, actionjeff, and some others. I'm pretty sure aaronbeen lost credit card roulette, though I don't remember mocking him so I might have days mixed up. The dinner buffet was good, and I basically tried almost everything. Also, Mike is a huge luckbox. He had already won like $2000 on the trip gambling on coinflips, and at dinner he added to that. He flipped jonlewis for $100 twice, splitting those flips. He then won 2 consecutive flips for $200, the next for $400, and another double or nothing for $800. Jon quit at this point down only $1600.
***
I ended up going to play the big nightly tournaments online, and went on a sick run in every tournament I was playing. Unfortunately I bubbled the $1000 tournament on Full Tilt and donked out of the $129 tournament on UB in 3rd place in spectacular fashion:
We're 3 handed. I've been playing pretty aggressively. The guy on my right has 320K and I have around 280K, and GB2005 has 150K on my left.
Hand 1: I'm in the SB and the button folds. Blinds are 4K/8k and I limp in with 86o. GB checks his BB. The flop comes K55 and I autobet 12K. GB quickly calls. Something about the timing of his call and the fact that I'd been very aggressive made me really think he was floating me with nothing here planning to try to take the pot away later, since I figured to have nothing either.
The turn was a Q, completing the rainbow. Going with my read I decided not to give up on the pot and bet 24K. Unfortunately, this might not have been the best way to fight for the pot, a checkraise all-in was probably a better plan. GB2005 went ahead and raised to 65K. My first instinct was that I still didn't really believe him, and I thought he was leaving himself room to fold if I pushed. My second thought was that pushing allin with 8-hi, no draw, here was completely suicidal, what the hell was I thinking. But I talked myself into going with my read and pushed him in for his last 65K. He instamucked and berated me in chat for "never being able to fold". I told him I had a big hand for some reason.
Hand 2: After the last hand I decided that I was, in fact, invincible. I raise to 24K with AQo and the other guy calls in his BB. The flop comes TTx. He checks and I continuation bet 30K. He min-checkraises to 60K. Unlike in the last hand where I had actual reasons to think he was bluffing, I randomly decided to call and take this pot away too. I finish the hand with like 50-60K in chips.
Hand 3: Folded to me in the SB and I autoshove 73o. GB beats me into the pot with 99. GG.
After donking out of my other tournaments I headed down to watch Aaron. There are 5 players left and he has the chiplead. The funny thing about Steve and Aaron, is that they play nothing like their personalities. Both are fairly quiet, unassuming guys. They're not the least bit cocky and they're both pretty nitty with the money they've made, and you might expect them to be similar at the table, playing a careful, tight style. But in reality, they are two of the LAGiest LAGtards ever when they play live. Aaron had to be raising at least 75% of the hands it was folded to him in any position. The players on his left simply did not know how to adjust and he was dominating the table. Unfortunately I brought my bad luck down to him and he finished 3rd for $20K, after taking a tough river beat, and losing a flip.
***
Day 6
This was by far the best day of the trip. Mike left this morning. Lol, that's only a small part of why though. The plan for today was to lie out in the sun all afternoon and get our burn on. But first, waterslides!! I'd never done the water slide thing before, so I had no idea what I was in for. So I get on the first one, and you actually get moving pretty fast! OK so that was fun! Now we go do the big one. Aaron warns me that I'll actually lose contact with the slide for a split second on this one. Hmm, ok that sounds fine. I was thinking maybe you'd go for a little bit and then there'd be this drop, because I couldn't actually see much without my glasses on. Well, no. As soon as you get moving there's a huge drop. And it's not a split second, I'd say I was off the slide for closer to a full second, and you get moving fast in a hurry. It definitely got the blood pumping, but was really fun, so we did that again and also the tube one before going to lie down in the sun all day. Unfortunately, by this time our beautiful sunny day had clouded over and it was spitting rain. On the plus side it was still early enough to go play the $1500 tournament, so we did that instead.
***
Unfortunately, I busted in the first level with KK vs AA but decided I wanted to play live more. I was trying to get a seat in the 5/10 NL game but it was full so I had to wait. As I was waiting they started a 10/20 NL game, so I figured why not, and got in on that one. Just as the game was about to start a seat opened at the 5/10 table, but the 10/20 game actually looked way softer so I decided to stay there. And what a game it was. 3-4 to every flop for a raise, and while most people seemed to know how to play fairly well postflop, there were a few that were complete maniacs. I ended up making $3K by winning a few small to medium sized pots along with this big one:
Hand 1: I'm UTG and and place a live straddle to 40 before looking at my cards. There is a raise to 125 and 2 callers before it gets back to me. I now look down and find KK, and make it 600 to go. The raiser folds but the first caller pushes me all-in for around $2000. I quickly call and say I hope it isn't happening for the 2nd time today, but he has 99 and my hand holds.
***
I find some other 2+2ers in the card room and learn that they've got a table for 12 booked at Nobu, the expensive Japanese/sushi place in the casino. Fortunately there were a couple extra seats, so Aaron and I could join them. To make things simple we all decided to get the chefs specialty 7 course meal at $150 a head. Throw in some sake and wine and we paid almost $200 each. The food was pretty good, and the service was actually fine (everyone else I've talked to complained the service was awful). Each of the 7 rounds was really small, but it added up to a satisfying meal. It definitely wasn't a $200-good meal though, I've had much fresher sushi in Toronto for example, but after running so good at credit card roulette we needed a big meal to knock some money off my room card anyways so that it wouldn't go to waste.
After the meal we got some more drinking in before heading to Senor Frogs, a bar in Nassau. We bumped into a few of the Ship it Holla Ballas on our way to find cabs, and instead we shared a limo with them. They're actually nice guys, people get the wrong idea from the awful name and their website, but they're just trying to have some fun and get some publicity. The night got even better when we arrived, as apparently several cruise ships were docked at Nassau that night, and the bar was packed. Not just of nerdy poker guys, but also some attractive ladies who weren't dating said poker players for a change. Lots of drinks, good reggae and hip hop playing, a (female) booty shaking contest up on the stage, and a bit of dancing. Not a bad night at all. After Senor Frogs closed we went to some other late night place and partied until around 5am. Great night.
Day 7
When I come to it's after 12:30 and we need to get cleaned up and head down to sign up for the $2500 tournament. I know it's going to be a rough day after last night, but I'm getting backed in the tournament, and I don't want to miss out on my last chance to make some money down here.
***
The tournament went a lot better today, but again I fell short of cashing. This is long as hell already so I'll go with the short version: AK vs TT aipf bingo A on river. AQ vs AA aipf turns broadway obv. I basically lost every other pot I played though and I wonder why I ever bother cont. betting the flop because I swear they raise me every time. Anyways I get moved to a new table and belowabove is on my right so I'm just waiting for a chance to reraise him. He opens on the button and I jam A3o from the SB. Unfortunately I don't have enough chips to get him to fold QTs and he decides to call and pwn me.
***
After this I went to the Stars closing cocktail party, but I didn't have it in me to drink anymore so I left early and went to a comedy show Steve + family, Aaron, and davidross + wife. I really enjoyed two of the three comedians, and even the guy in the middle wasn't bad. We say goodbye to some people and get our stuff ready to leave in the morning.
Day 8
Get up in time to go kill the last $50 on the room card at breakfast and get checked out by 11. Aaron leaves for his earlier flight and I'm on a flight with Steve and family at 3. The trip back is uneventful, Steve drops me home, and it was pretty awesome to see a bunch of people I hadn't seen in a while over at the house for one of Dave's dinner parties. Maybe Waterloo isn't so bad.
Mike
Friday, January 12, 2007
PCA Trip Report: Part 1
I've tried to make this post more readable for non-poker players. There's a few terms explained at the bottom with a * next to them. Super poker-nerd content is separated by ***. The 2nd part will come shortly, I do a lot more fun non-poker stuff in that part.
Day 1
My flight in is uneventful, though I met a couple other poker players. I meet timex (Mike) and PacMann (Aaron) at the airport and cab it back to the hotel, those 2 guys are crashing in my room. In one of the e-mails from Stars they say a cab to Atlantis from the airport should cost around $25. But they don't have meters or anything in the cabs so it's basically negotiable. Being intelligent, we talk in the back about the usual high roller poker stuff the whole way. "That's $40 mon." Let the overpaying for everything begin. We get checked in and the room is fairly nice, basically exactly what I expected and very comparable to the room I had in Vegas. We check on 2+2* to find people and go downstairs and meet up with Junglen, exitonly, Jurollo, coxquinn, etc... to go grab food and drinks before the cocktail party. We check out the bar and grill in the casino. I try the local beer Kalik but it kinda sucks. For the bill we play credit card roulette (or in this case room card roulette since PokerStars credited $1150 to our room cards as part of the package), a pretty standard tradition when people who like to gamble too much grab a meal together. The game is very simple and avoids the hassle of splitting up the bill. It's best when everyone's meals are reasonably close in price so no one has a big edge. Everyone puts their roomcard in the middle, the cards are shuffled together, and you get the waitress to pick one card at random. The card picked pays for the entire meal. aaronbeen loses and I improve to 2-0 lifetime, with Aaron losing both those games (what a fish*).
Stars cocktail party is pretty awesome. I meet up with all the same 2+2ers and a ton more (way too many to try to name like I was going to). The bartender is mixing me 80:20 rum and cokes... Hang out with Steve and his family/gf for a bit with the rest of the Waterloo guys. Some people actually recognize Steve here. lol. (this is the tournament he won last year)
More 80:20 rum and cokes but they stop serving at 9 so I go find people to continue partying with (other day 1B guys). Meet up with aaronbeen, ActionJeff, and the rest of the GIFAFI guys. They've managed to score a ton of booze from one of the bartenders so we drink that. Once we finish that up we head back to the hotel bar and continue the partying.... Suffice it to say I don't remember the night that well and didn't feel great in the morning.
Day 2
The plan for today was to rest up and recover from the previous night's events, so I'd be ready to play Day 1B the next day. I just went out and laid in the sun all afternoon and drank some fruity energy drinks, then came in and played the supersatellite* to the main event to try to win $8000 (people who already had a seat in the tournament got $8000 instead of the seat) and get used to live play again. It was a $200 rebuy tournament so I ended up in for $600. I can't remember any specific hands, but it was fairly uneventful and I never got a hold of many chips and busted fairly early. I met up Jurollo and some othere 2+2ers after they finished their day and went to the Bar & Grill again for a late dinner. Credit card roulette is hilarious when Jurollo states from the very beginning of the meal that he'll almost certainly lose. We're all cheering for his card to be picked and sure enough, the waitress says "Justin!" and there's high fives all around. 3-0 lifetime I'm so good at this game. I ducked out after the meal when they went partying to get some sleep. Steve had an excellent first day in the main event finishing with around 75K, and another friend, Jimmy "gobboboy" Fricke, finished with 122K, among the chipleaders.
Day 3
I got up and went to the MarketPlace buffet with Aaron for breakfast before heading down to the poker room. I hadn't slept particularly well the night before but I was excited enough to get playing that it didn't really matter. I posted a report of Day 1 earlier so I won't rehash it here. In summary, I won a big pot early to get to 30K (we started with 20K chips) and then got whittled down to 16K by the end of the day. I went back to the room and grabbed some room service, then crashed for Day 2 of the tournament. Aaron went out fairly early today and him and Mike woke me up at 4am when they came back from the poker room. I hate them.
Day 4
Once again I woke up early and met Steve and his family (it's easier to just write this even though Natalie isn't family... yet) at MarketPlace for the buffet. I got down to the poker room early to find out where I was sitting. My table draw looked a lot better today, there were no names I recognized and no one had too many chips. There were a few guys who may have been big name online players but I didn't know their real names. My plan coming into the day was to move all-in over a middle position or late position raise the first chance I got regardless of my hole cards since my stack size was perfect so that I wasn't risking too much, but big enough that it would be really difficult for them to call me without a big hand.
***
Hand 1: 500/1000 a100. I'm on the button and it's folded to the guy on my right (I think he plays as CrazyMarco online) who makes it 3500. I decide this is a suspiciously large raise and I don't have enough fold equity to move in without a hand. However I find KK and move in, but he quickly folds.
Hand 2: Same level, I now have 20K. A guy raises in middle position to 3K. It's the first hand he's raised but he could easily have been card dead for the first couple orbits. I move in with AQ and he folds.
Hands 3/4: I get dealy KK and QQ and open raise but get no action :-(.
Hand 5: I get dealt 55 2 before the button and raise to 3K. Obviously I get a caller this time on the button. The flop comes K87 with 2 clubs and I contintuation bet 5K. He moves in and I fold. Sigh, back down to 17K where I started.
Hands >5: I move all-in a few times with not much to steal the blinds once an orbit until I do it with A6o and get called by AA. GG.
At some point in here the eventual winner, Ryan Daut, was moved to my table (I'm pretty sure it was him anyways). I saw him talking to some people I knew on break and introduced myself.
***
Being a poker addict I obviously go to grab my laptop but it's no longer in the room. I go find Mike and Aaron in the lobby already playing the big Sunday tournaments online, and of course Mike has mine. Despite being richer than all of us he still hasn't gotten around to buying a laptop that turns on in <5 minutes and has a working wireless card. The Coral Tower rooms most people were staying in don't have wireless internet, just one ethernet cable, though if you're smart you might bring a wireless router to hook that into. For this reason the lobby is generally crowded full of poker nerds on their laptops playing all sorts of games. I'm sitting at a table with Serge (adanthar), Aaron and Mike. It was cool to talk poker with adanthar for a bit because I really like his posts on 2+2 and I think we play a very similar style (though he probably plays it better). He was playing a $4K buy-in tournament on Cake Poker (I had never heard of it either), where there were only 11 players and first paid $22K and 1% of Cake Poker! The other 10 players all got in through promotions on the site and Serge was the only person to buy-in directly. So of course the other players were terrible and he absolutely destroyed the table (it was actually not that hard since 3 places got paid and the money obviously meant a lot to his opponents, so they played very weakly near the end to try to guarantee themselves some money and Serge just raised almost every hand and ran them over). So he now owns 1% of a poker site. Pretty cool stuff. As for my tournaments, I went really deep in the UB 200K but ran into overpairs a few too many times at the end and finished 21st for only $1100. At the end of the day Steve and Gobbo are still owning the main event. Steve is 2nd in chips with 400K, behind only ZeeJustin, and gobbo has a very healthy stack as well with ~290K I think.
Mike
supersatellite: A multi-table poker tournament where instead of the normal payout structure the prizes are seats in a bigger tournaments. In this case for $8000 in the prize pool one seat to the main event was awarded. So the top 14 players got seats and the tournament ends when only 14 players are left. This changes correct strategy drastically, especially near the end of the tournament.
2+2: The biggest/best poker book publishing company. They have an online poker strategy forum (linked on the right) where I post a fair bit. When I say 2+2er/2p2er I mean someone that posts on those forums, and I use screennames from there instead of real names a lot.
fish/donkey: A weak player. Donkey or "donk" can also be used as a verb or adjective to describe a poor play.
Day 1
My flight in is uneventful, though I met a couple other poker players. I meet timex (Mike) and PacMann (Aaron) at the airport and cab it back to the hotel, those 2 guys are crashing in my room. In one of the e-mails from Stars they say a cab to Atlantis from the airport should cost around $25. But they don't have meters or anything in the cabs so it's basically negotiable. Being intelligent, we talk in the back about the usual high roller poker stuff the whole way. "That's $40 mon." Let the overpaying for everything begin. We get checked in and the room is fairly nice, basically exactly what I expected and very comparable to the room I had in Vegas. We check on 2+2* to find people and go downstairs and meet up with Junglen, exitonly, Jurollo, coxquinn, etc... to go grab food and drinks before the cocktail party. We check out the bar and grill in the casino. I try the local beer Kalik but it kinda sucks. For the bill we play credit card roulette (or in this case room card roulette since PokerStars credited $1150 to our room cards as part of the package), a pretty standard tradition when people who like to gamble too much grab a meal together. The game is very simple and avoids the hassle of splitting up the bill. It's best when everyone's meals are reasonably close in price so no one has a big edge. Everyone puts their roomcard in the middle, the cards are shuffled together, and you get the waitress to pick one card at random. The card picked pays for the entire meal. aaronbeen loses and I improve to 2-0 lifetime, with Aaron losing both those games (what a fish*).
Stars cocktail party is pretty awesome. I meet up with all the same 2+2ers and a ton more (way too many to try to name like I was going to). The bartender is mixing me 80:20 rum and cokes... Hang out with Steve and his family/gf for a bit with the rest of the Waterloo guys. Some people actually recognize Steve here. lol. (this is the tournament he won last year)
More 80:20 rum and cokes but they stop serving at 9 so I go find people to continue partying with (other day 1B guys). Meet up with aaronbeen, ActionJeff, and the rest of the GIFAFI guys. They've managed to score a ton of booze from one of the bartenders so we drink that. Once we finish that up we head back to the hotel bar and continue the partying.... Suffice it to say I don't remember the night that well and didn't feel great in the morning.
Day 2
The plan for today was to rest up and recover from the previous night's events, so I'd be ready to play Day 1B the next day. I just went out and laid in the sun all afternoon and drank some fruity energy drinks, then came in and played the supersatellite* to the main event to try to win $8000 (people who already had a seat in the tournament got $8000 instead of the seat) and get used to live play again. It was a $200 rebuy tournament so I ended up in for $600. I can't remember any specific hands, but it was fairly uneventful and I never got a hold of many chips and busted fairly early. I met up Jurollo and some othere 2+2ers after they finished their day and went to the Bar & Grill again for a late dinner. Credit card roulette is hilarious when Jurollo states from the very beginning of the meal that he'll almost certainly lose. We're all cheering for his card to be picked and sure enough, the waitress says "Justin!" and there's high fives all around. 3-0 lifetime I'm so good at this game. I ducked out after the meal when they went partying to get some sleep. Steve had an excellent first day in the main event finishing with around 75K, and another friend, Jimmy "gobboboy" Fricke, finished with 122K, among the chipleaders.
Day 3
I got up and went to the MarketPlace buffet with Aaron for breakfast before heading down to the poker room. I hadn't slept particularly well the night before but I was excited enough to get playing that it didn't really matter. I posted a report of Day 1 earlier so I won't rehash it here. In summary, I won a big pot early to get to 30K (we started with 20K chips) and then got whittled down to 16K by the end of the day. I went back to the room and grabbed some room service, then crashed for Day 2 of the tournament. Aaron went out fairly early today and him and Mike woke me up at 4am when they came back from the poker room. I hate them.
Day 4
Once again I woke up early and met Steve and his family (it's easier to just write this even though Natalie isn't family... yet) at MarketPlace for the buffet. I got down to the poker room early to find out where I was sitting. My table draw looked a lot better today, there were no names I recognized and no one had too many chips. There were a few guys who may have been big name online players but I didn't know their real names. My plan coming into the day was to move all-in over a middle position or late position raise the first chance I got regardless of my hole cards since my stack size was perfect so that I wasn't risking too much, but big enough that it would be really difficult for them to call me without a big hand.
***
Hand 1: 500/1000 a100. I'm on the button and it's folded to the guy on my right (I think he plays as CrazyMarco online) who makes it 3500. I decide this is a suspiciously large raise and I don't have enough fold equity to move in without a hand. However I find KK and move in, but he quickly folds.
Hand 2: Same level, I now have 20K. A guy raises in middle position to 3K. It's the first hand he's raised but he could easily have been card dead for the first couple orbits. I move in with AQ and he folds.
Hands 3/4: I get dealy KK and QQ and open raise but get no action :-(.
Hand 5: I get dealt 55 2 before the button and raise to 3K. Obviously I get a caller this time on the button. The flop comes K87 with 2 clubs and I contintuation bet 5K. He moves in and I fold. Sigh, back down to 17K where I started.
Hands >5: I move all-in a few times with not much to steal the blinds once an orbit until I do it with A6o and get called by AA. GG.
At some point in here the eventual winner, Ryan Daut, was moved to my table (I'm pretty sure it was him anyways). I saw him talking to some people I knew on break and introduced myself.
***
Being a poker addict I obviously go to grab my laptop but it's no longer in the room. I go find Mike and Aaron in the lobby already playing the big Sunday tournaments online, and of course Mike has mine. Despite being richer than all of us he still hasn't gotten around to buying a laptop that turns on in <5 minutes and has a working wireless card. The Coral Tower rooms most people were staying in don't have wireless internet, just one ethernet cable, though if you're smart you might bring a wireless router to hook that into. For this reason the lobby is generally crowded full of poker nerds on their laptops playing all sorts of games. I'm sitting at a table with Serge (adanthar), Aaron and Mike. It was cool to talk poker with adanthar for a bit because I really like his posts on 2+2 and I think we play a very similar style (though he probably plays it better). He was playing a $4K buy-in tournament on Cake Poker (I had never heard of it either), where there were only 11 players and first paid $22K and 1% of Cake Poker! The other 10 players all got in through promotions on the site and Serge was the only person to buy-in directly. So of course the other players were terrible and he absolutely destroyed the table (it was actually not that hard since 3 places got paid and the money obviously meant a lot to his opponents, so they played very weakly near the end to try to guarantee themselves some money and Serge just raised almost every hand and ran them over). So he now owns 1% of a poker site. Pretty cool stuff. As for my tournaments, I went really deep in the UB 200K but ran into overpairs a few too many times at the end and finished 21st for only $1100. At the end of the day Steve and Gobbo are still owning the main event. Steve is 2nd in chips with 400K, behind only ZeeJustin, and gobbo has a very healthy stack as well with ~290K I think.
Mike
supersatellite: A multi-table poker tournament where instead of the normal payout structure the prizes are seats in a bigger tournaments. In this case for $8000 in the prize pool one seat to the main event was awarded. So the top 14 players got seats and the tournament ends when only 14 players are left. This changes correct strategy drastically, especially near the end of the tournament.
2+2: The biggest/best poker book publishing company. They have an online poker strategy forum (linked on the right) where I post a fair bit. When I say 2+2er/2p2er I mean someone that posts on those forums, and I use screennames from there instead of real names a lot.
fish/donkey: A weak player. Donkey or "donk" can also be used as a verb or adjective to describe a poor play.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Newspaper Article
While I was home I did an interview for the local newspaper. The article appeared a few days ago. Here's the link:
http://www.thetelegram.com/index.cfm?sid=914&sc=2
I haven't had much time to write anything but I'll do a big trip report when I get back to Waterloo. I played the $1000, $1500, and $2500 tournaments here but no cashes. However I made $3K playing 10/20 NL live to get my money back. I played online a couple nights too and had a few very deep finishes including a 3rd in the new UB $129 bounty tournament. Other than that there has been lots of partying and meeting people. It's going to be weird going back to the real world.
Mike
http://www.thetelegram.com/index.cfm?sid=914&sc=2
I haven't had much time to write anything but I'll do a big trip report when I get back to Waterloo. I played the $1000, $1500, and $2500 tournaments here but no cashes. However I made $3K playing 10/20 NL live to get my money back. I played online a couple nights too and had a few very deep finishes including a 3rd in the new UB $129 bounty tournament. Other than that there has been lots of partying and meeting people. It's going to be weird going back to the real world.
Mike
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Busto
I got as high as 26K after pushing over a couple raises but lost a pot to drop bacl to 17K. I pushbotted a bit to stay between 17K and 20K. On my bustout hand I was down to 17K at 600/1200 a200 (the 2nd level of the day) and shoved A6o from MP. I guess it's a marginal shove but I wanted to keep enough chips to push over a raise from the aggressive player on my right (and the antes are huge). So the guy on my left obviously wakes up with the aces and I somehow fail to suckout despite having 7% equity in the hand or something. Forunately I went out in time to play the Sunday tournaments online with the rest of the degenerates in the hotel lobby. WPT is so rigged.
Mike
Mike
PCA Day 1 Report
This report is probably going to suck because I didn't play any interesting hands today at all. i sit down and look at the list of names and recognize a lot more than I'd like. I'm in the 5 seat. The 1 seat is John Phan. The 2 seat is tnetter, who won the Stars yearly tournament leader board for 2006. 3 seat is some other young online player who is pretty good, and the 4 seat is Joe Pelton. 6 seat is Jason Sagle, who recently finished 2nd at WPT Niagara. The 7 seat was another younger guy who played pretty well, the 8 seat was a more aggressive player who was a bit of a call station at times but didn't play badly (and picked up a ton of hands to cover it up). The 9 seat was an aggressive young asian kid who got a little bit too far out of line a few times and was punished, but didn't really play badly. 10 seat was some weak-tight old guy. Not exactly my dream table.
We started with 20K chips and 50/100 blinds. As far as WPT events go I'm pretty sure the structure for this one was really bad. We played 50/100, 100/200, 100/200 a25, 200/400 a50, 300/600 a75 and 400/800 a100. My first and only interesting hand of the day occured early in level 1 when it was folded to Joe Pelton in the SB and he completed. I had A7o in the BB and made it 400 because that's how I roll. He called and we say a flop of 775 rainbow. He checked and I bet 600. He called and the turn came a 3. Again he checked and I bet 1250. This time he checkraised me to 3500 and I called. The turn came a 2 and he bet 6000. I just called and beat his T9o. Cool.
The next 5 and a half levels consisted of me never getting dealt any hands and occasionally stealing/restealing but getting reraised too often. Between John Phan and tnetter not many hands were getting folded to me so I started reraising them with air from time to time. At 300/600 I lost a decent % of my chips when it was folded to the online player in the 3 seat on the button and he made it 1800. He had been playing really tight but it was still a button raise and seemed like a good time to use his solid image to pick up a pot. I looked down to find AJo and made it 5600. After some deliberation he shoved 12K more and i had to fold despite getting 2:1. Oops. Shortly after this we reached 400/800 a100 and I had a bit under 15K which is a sweet stack size for restealing. So I randomly shoved over a tnetter raise with J9o, but didn't have any other good chances to try to lose all my chips and made it to the end of the level and day with 16,100.
John Phan finished the day with more chips than me despite being down to 450 chips really early (when the young asian kid didn't realize he was so short and just called Phan's river checkraise with a fullhouse instead of putting the last few chips in), and then again down to 2000 chips at 400/800 and being forced allin with J2o vs QQ in his BB. Anyways I'm going to have to double up early tomorrow or it will be a really short day for me. This seems to be a tougher field than most WPT events (day 1B in particular, 1A I heard about more soft tables). Hopefully tomorrow will go better, I'm still not really that far out of it.
Mike
We started with 20K chips and 50/100 blinds. As far as WPT events go I'm pretty sure the structure for this one was really bad. We played 50/100, 100/200, 100/200 a25, 200/400 a50, 300/600 a75 and 400/800 a100. My first and only interesting hand of the day occured early in level 1 when it was folded to Joe Pelton in the SB and he completed. I had A7o in the BB and made it 400 because that's how I roll. He called and we say a flop of 775 rainbow. He checked and I bet 600. He called and the turn came a 3. Again he checked and I bet 1250. This time he checkraised me to 3500 and I called. The turn came a 2 and he bet 6000. I just called and beat his T9o. Cool.
The next 5 and a half levels consisted of me never getting dealt any hands and occasionally stealing/restealing but getting reraised too often. Between John Phan and tnetter not many hands were getting folded to me so I started reraising them with air from time to time. At 300/600 I lost a decent % of my chips when it was folded to the online player in the 3 seat on the button and he made it 1800. He had been playing really tight but it was still a button raise and seemed like a good time to use his solid image to pick up a pot. I looked down to find AJo and made it 5600. After some deliberation he shoved 12K more and i had to fold despite getting 2:1. Oops. Shortly after this we reached 400/800 a100 and I had a bit under 15K which is a sweet stack size for restealing. So I randomly shoved over a tnetter raise with J9o, but didn't have any other good chances to try to lose all my chips and made it to the end of the level and day with 16,100.
John Phan finished the day with more chips than me despite being down to 450 chips really early (when the young asian kid didn't realize he was so short and just called Phan's river checkraise with a fullhouse instead of putting the last few chips in), and then again down to 2000 chips at 400/800 and being forced allin with J2o vs QQ in his BB. Anyways I'm going to have to double up early tomorrow or it will be a really short day for me. This seems to be a tougher field than most WPT events (day 1B in particular, 1A I heard about more soft tables). Hopefully tomorrow will go better, I'm still not really that far out of it.
Mike
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Frustrating day but still alive
Joe Pelton bluffed off half his stack to me in a blind battle in level 1 when I flopped trips with top kicker and he tried to bluff me. So I quickly had over 30K but then everything went wrong and I slowly bled chips down finishing the day at 16.1K. The good news is at least I'm still in, but it was an incredibly frustrating day overall. My table was quite tough with no really bad fish and several strong players. I'll probably try to write a full report later tonight.
Mike
Mike
Thursday, January 04, 2007
OMG LEAVING FOR BAHAMAS IN 3 HOURS!!11!!1!!
I'm sitting at home drinking a beer about to fire up a NL cash session to kill time. I have to be at the airport around 4am so there's no point trying to sleep. I fly from here to Toronto then down to Nassau after a 2 hour wait in TO. Get in around 1:15, about the same time as the two yahoos I've picked up as roommates (Aaron and Mike). From there it's a cab ride to the resort and the week in Paradise begins. PokerStars is throwing a cocktail party for the players at 7pm. Since I dont play until Day 1B (Saturday, Jan 6) I'm free to indulge in a few too many of said cocktails. Can't wait!!
Mike
Mike
Friday, December 29, 2006
2006: Year in Review
This is x-posted from the year end thread in MTT Community on 2+2.
I started the year with approximately an 8-9K bankroll, after losing 4K over Christmas when I moved up to $100+ tournaments for the first time and did poorly. I was not happy with my game and the "huge" downswing had hurt my confidence some. So I moved down to a lot of $22-$55 tournaments with occasional shots at the $100s. Unfortunately the year started very badly with a 3 month break even streak. I was playing a lot better again though and I knew it was just a matter of time until I broke out. My results in NL tournaments were terrible, with no top 3 finishes over the entire period (maybe one 2nd in a 20/180 or something small). However, I was killing limit holdem tournaments and the $22-$55 stud hi/low tournaments on Stars to stay even. These were small tournaments and I basically won one every week.
Finally, in April things started to turn around. I won a few small tournaments like 20/180s and got moving in the right direction. May was my breakout month. I finally started running good in NL tournaments and put up several 2K-5K scores. I also won my WSOP seat, my first ever big live event. At this point it was still kind of depressing that the WSOP package was worth twice as much as my largest cash, and an enormous % of my bankroll. However my roll was over $20K and I was playing all the big $150-$200 tournaments and even $100 rebuys on Dise and Stars when they had the bigger fields. At some point in here I had -10K week but then won $10K over a weekend. My introduction to real MTT variance. In July a few weeks before the WSOP I won the Stars $162 for $20K. Finally that huge breakthrough cash. I'd also started playing some NL cash with immediate success and that helped me really understand the game a lot better. I went to Vegas as confident as ever in my game.
Vegas got off to a slow start. I wasn't doing great in the cash games and I busted Day 1 of the WSOP after 12 hours of my chip count yoyoing when I made a fairly bad mistake. When in Vegas bankroll management goes out the window so I started playing a lot of the daily $1000 Bellagio Cup events. These things were incredibly soft so it seemed somewhat justifiable. On my 5th try I chopped one 6-handed with the chiplead for $44K (I wouldn't normally want to chop so early but for several reasons this was indredibly good for me).
I continued to do well when I got home playing a lot of 5/10 NL and big tournaments. But I couldn't stay on the good side of variance forever. I lost about 15 buy-ins at 5/10, several more trying out shortstacking the 25/50 games, and a whole lot more when I failed to cash a single tournament in the WCOOP and FTOPS, despite playing most events. In total it was a $40K downswing. Forunately, over the last 2 months I've made the money back and more. I moved down and killed 3/6 NL for about 6ptBB/100 over ~25K hands. My tournament results finally turned around this month with a couple wins on UB, and most recently I won a $100 rebuy on Stars for $23K to erase what was left of my downswing. I also won my PCA seat so I'm actually ahead since August now. Finally, on the last week of the year I cracked the Pocket Fives rankings.
Cliffs Notes:
-8K roll to start
- 4 month break even streak
- Make 5 figures plus WSOP seat in May
- Win stuper for 20K in July.
- Donk out of WSOP but chop $1K Bellagio Cup event for $44K.
- $40K downswing.
- Pwn 3/6 NL.
- Win PCA seat.
- Win $100 rebuy on Stars for $23K to get out of downswing.
- SirWatts ranked.
I started the year with approximately an 8-9K bankroll, after losing 4K over Christmas when I moved up to $100+ tournaments for the first time and did poorly. I was not happy with my game and the "huge" downswing had hurt my confidence some. So I moved down to a lot of $22-$55 tournaments with occasional shots at the $100s. Unfortunately the year started very badly with a 3 month break even streak. I was playing a lot better again though and I knew it was just a matter of time until I broke out. My results in NL tournaments were terrible, with no top 3 finishes over the entire period (maybe one 2nd in a 20/180 or something small). However, I was killing limit holdem tournaments and the $22-$55 stud hi/low tournaments on Stars to stay even. These were small tournaments and I basically won one every week.
Finally, in April things started to turn around. I won a few small tournaments like 20/180s and got moving in the right direction. May was my breakout month. I finally started running good in NL tournaments and put up several 2K-5K scores. I also won my WSOP seat, my first ever big live event. At this point it was still kind of depressing that the WSOP package was worth twice as much as my largest cash, and an enormous % of my bankroll. However my roll was over $20K and I was playing all the big $150-$200 tournaments and even $100 rebuys on Dise and Stars when they had the bigger fields. At some point in here I had -10K week but then won $10K over a weekend. My introduction to real MTT variance. In July a few weeks before the WSOP I won the Stars $162 for $20K. Finally that huge breakthrough cash. I'd also started playing some NL cash with immediate success and that helped me really understand the game a lot better. I went to Vegas as confident as ever in my game.
Vegas got off to a slow start. I wasn't doing great in the cash games and I busted Day 1 of the WSOP after 12 hours of my chip count yoyoing when I made a fairly bad mistake. When in Vegas bankroll management goes out the window so I started playing a lot of the daily $1000 Bellagio Cup events. These things were incredibly soft so it seemed somewhat justifiable. On my 5th try I chopped one 6-handed with the chiplead for $44K (I wouldn't normally want to chop so early but for several reasons this was indredibly good for me).
I continued to do well when I got home playing a lot of 5/10 NL and big tournaments. But I couldn't stay on the good side of variance forever. I lost about 15 buy-ins at 5/10, several more trying out shortstacking the 25/50 games, and a whole lot more when I failed to cash a single tournament in the WCOOP and FTOPS, despite playing most events. In total it was a $40K downswing. Forunately, over the last 2 months I've made the money back and more. I moved down and killed 3/6 NL for about 6ptBB/100 over ~25K hands. My tournament results finally turned around this month with a couple wins on UB, and most recently I won a $100 rebuy on Stars for $23K to erase what was left of my downswing. I also won my PCA seat so I'm actually ahead since August now. Finally, on the last week of the year I cracked the Pocket Fives rankings.
Cliffs Notes:
-8K roll to start
- 4 month break even streak
- Make 5 figures plus WSOP seat in May
- Win stuper for 20K in July.
- Donk out of WSOP but chop $1K Bellagio Cup event for $44K.
- $40K downswing.
- Pwn 3/6 NL.
- Win PCA seat.
- Win $100 rebuy on Stars for $23K to get out of downswing.
- SirWatts ranked.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
My biggest online score!
I got myself an early Christmas present tonight winning the $100 rebuy on Stars. I played pretty well (there were some tough spots I'm still not sure about), and got very lucky when I had to. It's a really good feeling when things go right near the end of a big tournament for once. First paid $23K. For anyone trying to keep track I am now out of my downswing and officially a winning player since I got home from Vegas in August. That's always a relief, though I could easily go on another huge losing streak now so I'll try not to get too happy about it. Here is probably my biggest key hand from the tournament. I walk into a huge cooler but draw out huge to vault into contention at the final table.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?682026
equity (%)
Hand 1: 42.1556 % { AhKh }
Hand 2: 05.4930 % { AdQs }
Hand 3: 52.3514 % { QcQh }
Anyways I'm not sure what else to say about this right now. I should easily be ranked in the top 100 online players on PocketFives now this week. It doesn't really mean much, but I can't lie a little recognition is nice sometimes considering the amount of effort I put into this silly game. I'm heading home for Christmas break this Friday and I'll be busy until then so you won't see me at the tables for a few days at least. I'd better get some sleep, I have to proctor then mark a final exam all day tomorrow. Back to the real world :-).
Mike
http://www.pokerhand.org/?682026
equity (%)
Hand 1: 42.1556 % { AhKh }
Hand 2: 05.4930 % { AdQs }
Hand 3: 52.3514 % { QcQh }
Anyways I'm not sure what else to say about this right now. I should easily be ranked in the top 100 online players on PocketFives now this week. It doesn't really mean much, but I can't lie a little recognition is nice sometimes considering the amount of effort I put into this silly game. I'm heading home for Christmas break this Friday and I'll be busy until then so you won't see me at the tables for a few days at least. I'd better get some sleep, I have to proctor then mark a final exam all day tomorrow. Back to the real world :-).
Mike
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Selling some % of my PCA action
A few people asked me about this recently, here's what I've decided. The buy-in for the event is $8000, so I will sell 1% of my action for $100 (US), minimum purchase 1% up to whatever. I probably only want to sell 15-20% at most though, so first come first served, except I'll save a few % for people I've already talked to that expressed interest. E-mail me at miwatson17@hotmail.com if you're interested, or PM me on 2+2 (TheNewf) or CPF. I can probably arrange to meet people that I know in town, otherwise I can take transfers on most online sites (Stars in particular is easy).
Mike
Mike
Monday, December 11, 2006
Up and Down Week
I had some good scores this week, but I played a lot of tournaments so I didn't really do very well overall. Thursday night I won the 30r on UB for 6K, and on Saturday things were looking very promising as I was deep in the $320s on Stars and Party. I made the final table on Stars and was on the final table bubble on Party when things started going wrong. I took a tough beat on Party for a decent number of chips (but also made a small mistake that was probably quite costly), but battled back from my short stack to a respectable level, and then lost it all again on a hand I probably misplayed where I had A8 on an AKJ flop. I feel like I probably didn't have to get broke here, but my stack was short enough that it was awkward to find a fold, so I shoved it in and bubbled. On Stars, from two tables left and on, I basically lost every coinflip or better that would give me a lot of chips, but then won every hand I got all-in preflop once I became a shortstack, despite usually having the worst of it. I finally built up to 2nd/5 but then played a hand poorly against the chipleader and bluffed off 1/3 of my chips. Then I decided to lose more coinflips and bust 5th. $4300 is good and all, but first was 21K and even 2nd was easily 5 figures. Oh well.
The Sunday tournaments went badly again, and I lost tons of money as usual. On the plus side I'm happy with my play lately. I've been a lot smarter about picking my spots. I've got some extra tricks now I can use, but I'm not overdoing it like I was for a while. Talking to Steve today he basically said something that was exactly what I've been thinking lately about the higher buy-in tournaments, so I think I've definitely got the right idea with these adjustments. I'm confident I'll be on top of my game for the Bahamas, so if I can get lucky at the right times I just might make a run.
Mike
The Sunday tournaments went badly again, and I lost tons of money as usual. On the plus side I'm happy with my play lately. I've been a lot smarter about picking my spots. I've got some extra tricks now I can use, but I'm not overdoing it like I was for a while. Talking to Steve today he basically said something that was exactly what I've been thinking lately about the higher buy-in tournaments, so I think I've definitely got the right idea with these adjustments. I'm confident I'll be on top of my game for the Bahamas, so if I can get lucky at the right times I just might make a run.
Mike
Monday, December 04, 2006
I win a poker tournament!
Finally! It took two outers on the river, winning all-in preflop with several dominated hands, and not tilting when my super passive opponents kept picking up monsters at all the wrong times for me, but I managed to luckbox my way to victory in the 3pm $18 rebuy (20K guaranteed) on Doyle's Room, for $8K. It was a relief to finally win something fairly big. I've had a lot of close calls lately (including a 4th in the 20 rebuy on Stars Friday night) so finally getting over the hump feels good. Not much luck in my other tournaments on the day though. I managed one small cash in the $163 tournament on Full Tilt, but got shutout everywhere else. Anways, it's definitely nice to make money on a Sunday for a change, I'm going to try to make a habit of it. I'm too tired to go into any details or talk about much strategy today, other than that I actually cut back on the resteals slightly today in marginal spots and I think that helps a bit, though it's obviously something that can't be analyzed just by looking at the reults of a few hands. Good night!
Mike
Mike
Monday, November 27, 2006
Awful Day
I played a million tournaments today and made the money in zero. The only one that was looking particularly proimising was the Stars million, but I blew off 80K chips in 2 hands 20 players from the bubble. Both hands involved resteals as usual, though the 2nd was perfectly standard and I just lost a flip. The first was at least slightly crazy but probably not bad overall, however I ran into a big hand. I have to be a little more selective still I think. It seems to me that ideally I should be making my moves earlier before they're expecting them. Once I'm short enough that I'm kinda desperate they're going to call more because they're getting better odds against my shorter stack and they know I have to make a move. It's obviously a very high variance play so I'm going to bust out on them a lot even when picking good situations, but I think I'm doing it a little too much. In particular, I need to stop shoving hands with marginal showdown value like Ax or KJ when it's otherwise a bad situation to resteal because having a few extra % against his range when called doesn't come anywhere close to making up for getting called every time, compared to having a weak hand but in a situation where he's going to fold a large % of the time. Once I get this all balanced I will be a tougher player then ever.
Edit: After consulting my databse and adding numbers in my head: 19 tournaments played, 0 cashes, $4220 in buy-ins. Thinly veiled brag post?
Mike
Edit: After consulting my databse and adding numbers in my head: 19 tournaments played, 0 cashes, $4220 in buy-ins. Thinly veiled brag post?
Mike
Monday, November 20, 2006
Every Sunday I lose thousands of dollars
OK every now and then I have a little luck on my side and make a decent score, but in these big field tournaments you're going to lose a lot more often than you win (but your wins occasionally be huge to make up for it). The only tournament I was really doing well in was the $150 8:00 tournament on Full Tilt where I was top 3 for quite a while, but I cooled off to drop back to the pack and then got rivered in a big pot where I was able to get a guy to put all his chips in with 5 outs on the flop. This was my only cash of the day.
Pocket Fives has their new tournament leaderboard up on their site now. It's based on the results of the biggest tournaments from all the main online sites. I've always liked these leaderboards, so getting a dececnt ranking on there will be added to my list of goals, though I definitely don't have the time to play enough to have any chance of competing with the best players. Oh, I finished 4th for $3k Saturday night in a $100 tournament on Full Tilt when I blew a huge chiplead 7 handed on the final table bubble (it was a 6-max tournament). I think I say this every week but I'm really going to have to look at reverting to a more conservative style. More players seem to have figured out how to adjust to the loose aggressive players properly, at least at the higher stakes. At the very least I need to pick my spots more carefully and recognize when to switch gears. There are too many times when I know someone is very likely going to reraise me if I steal or call if I reraise them but I go ahead and make my default play instead of adjusting to the specific situation. When I'm playing well I tend to have a good feel for the flow of the game and I know when people are likely to make certain plays before they do, but I don't use or trust this information enough a lot of the time.
Mike
Pocket Fives has their new tournament leaderboard up on their site now. It's based on the results of the biggest tournaments from all the main online sites. I've always liked these leaderboards, so getting a dececnt ranking on there will be added to my list of goals, though I definitely don't have the time to play enough to have any chance of competing with the best players. Oh, I finished 4th for $3k Saturday night in a $100 tournament on Full Tilt when I blew a huge chiplead 7 handed on the final table bubble (it was a 6-max tournament). I think I say this every week but I'm really going to have to look at reverting to a more conservative style. More players seem to have figured out how to adjust to the loose aggressive players properly, at least at the higher stakes. At the very least I need to pick my spots more carefully and recognize when to switch gears. There are too many times when I know someone is very likely going to reraise me if I steal or call if I reraise them but I go ahead and make my default play instead of adjusting to the specific situation. When I'm playing well I tend to have a good feel for the flow of the game and I know when people are likely to make certain plays before they do, but I don't use or trust this information enough a lot of the time.
Mike
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
A couple decent scores
I finished 3rd in the 30r on UB for $2300 and 3rd in the 22r on Stars for $5K last night. I should probably try winning some of these 4-figure in EV coinflips 3 handed next time. Still a pretty good night!
Mike
Mike
Monday, November 13, 2006
Attention Grabbing Blog Entry Title
Wow what a roller coaster weekend. This picture should explain what I mean:
How not to play AA (my flop call is pretty marginal but I know what he has and I'm pretty sure I can bust him if I get lucky, so the price is about right)
Of course I also played a lot of tournaments and despite building several promising stacks I only managed a few small cashes, so I lost a bit back from those. Still, what a sick rush it was. Also, since as a math guy I love these graphs, here's an extra BBV-style commented graph of all holdem hands from all limits in my database, before this weekend.
The hands on Friday and Saturday went pretty terribly, but as the picture shows, Sunday went more than a little well. At one point I had over $5800 on one table (the most you can buy-in for is $600 but profit stays on the table). I made $6300 on the day for 10.5 buy-ins. Awesome hands include the following:
How not to play AA (my flop call is pretty marginal but I know what he has and I'm pretty sure I can bust him if I get lucky, so the price is about right)
Of course I also played a lot of tournaments and despite building several promising stacks I only managed a few small cashes, so I lost a bit back from those. Still, what a sick rush it was. Also, since as a math guy I love these graphs, here's an extra BBV-style commented graph of all holdem hands from all limits in my database, before this weekend.
Mike
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