Long Time No See

It’s been far too long since I updated this blog, and a lot of stuff has happened. I’m writing this from my laptop on the way back to Vegas from Chicago, so here goes.

On the skydiving front, I’ve completed two of my four required solo skydives (and will hopefully get a shot at #3 tomorrow). It’s going great and is a lot of fun. Skydiving is something that I highly recommend everybody try at least once in their lifetime.

Job/Life-wise, I’m getting pumped about moving to Chicago next month. I met Brandon, my future roommate, in Chicago yesterday to go apartment hunting, and he seems like a really great guy. He told me the third person we were planning on living with was flaking out on him, and we decided to just get a 2-bedroom place together instead. Most of the places we spent the day looking at either sucked or were nice but had a few flaws that turned out to be deal-breakers for us.

Day turned into evening, and I stumbled across a craigslist listing that looked amazing and had only been posted for slightly more than 12 hours. I called the realtor, and we were lucky she could squeeze us into her schedule for a 5pm walkthrough. Honestly, the pictures in the ad on craigslist sold me on the place on their own, and the apartment was just as great in person as it appeared online, so we took it. Our apartment is in a great neighborhood right in the heart of Wrigleyville (literally 3 blocks from the stadium), and I really couldn’t be more excited about moving in. The realtor was also able to let us move in a week early (since our start date in Chicago is July 30), so having everything work out so perfectly really lifts a burden off my shoulders. Chicago is gonna be awesome!

Poker-wise, I’ve been on a bit of a downswing lately. After a really great start to the weekend last Thurs-Fri-Sat, I had a terrible session this past Sunday which lasted from late Saturday night through the next day’s early afternoon. Although my luck was certainly extraordinarily bad, the downswing I’m currently on is relatively standard as far as variance goes.

Some of you who are not familiar with the swings associated with poker may not know this, but downswings are a necessary and unavoidable part of the game since there is an element of luck in poker. This is the same reason why unskilled players can be winners themselves from time to time, but in the long run everyone’s luck evens out and the highest skilled players end up with all the money. Variance is a necessary evil in this game which all winning players must accept in order to tolerate the swings. Anyway, I’m still up about 10k since coming to Vegas, and I hope to at least triple that by the time I leave.

Speaking of last Sunday, when I walked into the house from the casinos to end my losing day, Leo and a few of my other roommates were all on their laptops. Leo told me to come sweat him at the final table of a $100+Rebuy tourney on PokerStars, which is a pretty freaking difficult tournament. After dodging a few bullets and winning some key hands, he emerged victorious for a first place win of over $31k. We were all pretty happy for him, and before going to take a nap I checked to see how some friends were doing in the quarterly $1000 buy-in Sunday Million tournament. A few people I knew were still in, including our former roommate Matt who was one of the chipleaders a few hours into the tourney. I railed him for about an hour and then went to bed.

I woke up about 6hrs later and walked downstairs to see everyone still on their laptops: Matt and another friend of ours (Thay3r) both still had healthy stacks with only 25 players left in the tournament! They both made the final table, and Thay3r finished 5^th for a nice $88k score. Not to be outdone by Leo earlier today, Matt (mlagoo) went on to win the tournament outright for $315k. We all went nuts, and it was time to party!

Matt played the tournament at another house with a bunch of other friends of ours who were also playing in it, so all of us headed over there to celebrate. The crew I’ve been hanging out with the most is comprised of myself, Leo, Nath, Meyvis, Ben, Matt, Kush, Serge (adanthar), Bond (who is a total baller btw), gobboboy, ActionJeff, RandALLin, EC10, Aaron Been, Vivick, Clayton, and a few others I’m probably forgetting now. At around 6am, someone suggested we hit up the Rhino (and how could you not?!), so a group of us headed over there until about noon. We were all completely exhausted and ended our crazy day soon thereafter.

Congrats again to Matt – this couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy or to a more deserving player. I still think it’s awesome that he’s never had a 5-figure score. Hopefully it’s my turn next!

Busted Barry G, shot at 10/20, and.....possible eviction?

I find that the time I'm spending in our house is becoming increasingly more rare, and the number of updates to this blog is a direct result. Here's the condensed version of today's drama:

- Barry Greenstein gets moved to my table about an hour into the $2k NLHE WSOP event, and I get my JJ against his 77 allin preflop to bust him in the second hour. Barry is a great guy and a total class act; he gave me a signed copy of his book (which deals with lifestyle and bankroll management for poker players) and even wrote down the details of the hand I busted him on inside the front cover. Today Barry became the standard by which I now judge every "famous" poker pro. The guy is awesome all around.

- I built up a nice stack in the first four hours, then lost most of it in a marginal spot taking a stand against a very LAG player who happened to flop a big hand. This hand somewhat crippled me (more mentally than actually), and I busted soon thereafter.

- Took my first shot at the 10/20NL game at the Bellagio today, which has an uncapped buyin. Most of my table was either solid/TAG or solid/slightly-LAG, but two players clearly stood out from the rest. The first was an extremely passive calling station fish with a $15k stack, and the other was a maniacally aggressive asian guy in his late 40s who was playing about 60/55 in our 9-handed ring game. This guy was crazy and would raise almost every hand while never folding to any size 3-bet preflop -- the only hand he entered preflop and folded without seeing the flop was to a $10k limp/raise/reshove over his $1800 4-bet; he folded QQ face up after almost 3 minutes of thought. Did I mention he was sitting with >$35k? I took a stand against him a few times and ended up about $1600 by the end of the session.

- I registered for the $1500 NLHE WSOP event starting Saturday @ noon (which is in 7,5hrs btw). I don't really like tournaments, but my anti-tournament front folded to the peer pressure from Meyvis, Serge, and others. GL me!

- Our landlord basically says he wants to evict us for bullshit reasons that are entirely his problem; there is/was literally nothing we could do about it and there were no terms in the lease agreement we signed which describe the reasons he's giving to try to kick us out. Our house is in a nice neighborhood (but not a gated community) which apparently doesn't allow its property owners to lease any houses in the area. Our landlord told us to lie to anyone who asked, saying we were personal friends of his staying there for a short period of time, but somehow one of our neighbors found out about us and complained. Again, none of this was in the lease agreement we signed, and NV state law apparently allows us to sue for custody of the house for the duration of the agreed upon leasing period if he tries to do anything rash like evict us. Two of my housemates are law students, and this may prove beneficial in the near future. All of this drama is only about 5hrs old anyway, so we'll see what happens. GL us?

My first WSOP event

So I'm playing in my first WSOP event today (Event #25: $2k NLHE) , which starts in about an hour. I'm not a big tourney player, so wish me luck because I'll probably need it. The player pool is just so bad and the potential ROI is too good for me to pass up. Run good one time please!

And yes, I know I owe this blog a lengthy report on both my 10-buyin day and on my crappy day at the tables yesterday. Maybe when I get back from the tourney tonight.

Best live session ever

Just got back from the Bellagio where I booked my biggest winning ring session ever. I'm pretty tired from the 12 hours I spent at the tables, but the short of it is that I bought in for the standard $1k at 5/10NL and left about an hour ago with just over $10.6k. Almost everybody I played with the entire night was incredibly bad at poker, and they all totally misunderstand the fundamental, rudimentary concepts of the game.

A word to the wise: don't come to Vegas to play poker unless you actually know what you're doing. And even if you don't, chances are that you're still probably better off than half of the donating population that sits at the low- to mid-stakes games in casinos. More details in the next post when I'm not tired as hell.

Private Coaching + Wakeboarding = Awesomeness

I'm driving back to Vegas with Jason and his wife right now; I had a great time helping them both with .5/1NL and 1/2NL on FTP and talking about other general poker stuff. Between sessions, they took me out on their boat for some crazy wakeboarding action. I'm pretty out of shape and got tired much too quickly after a few nice jumps and almost landing a backflip, but Jason and his son both did well on the board as well.

During a random conversation, I found out that they had an old kneeboard with them on the boat, so I had them find a really smooth patch of water for me to try a barefoot run. They both enjoyed watching me sit on the kneeboard and stand up off of it onto the water barefoot, and it felt pretty good to get a quick barefoot run in since I'm reasonably sure I hadn't had a successful one yet this year. We headed back to the house, played some more poker, then jumped in the car back to Vegas.

Jason and his wife were both very kind, and I'd like to thank them for treating me to a fun day on the lake. Tomorrow morning I get to do my first solo skydive, so I think I'm gonna hit the sack to be ready for that.

Saturday/Sunday stuff

Been awhile since my last update, and I've been pretty busy. Saturday night started out a little crazy: Ben wanted to see Ocean's 13 at the Palms, so I tagged along to check out the poker room there. Their room was pretty small and didn't spread anything over 2/5, so I walked over to the Rio and found a nice 5/10 table to sit at. I came in a few hands before the BB, so I waited to post my blind. As soon as I posted my BB, the 40-yr-old drunk lady in seat 1 started puking all over the table. Crap, time for a new table.

I moved my chips off the table quickly and found a new, soft table full of deepstacked loose-passive players. Highlight of this table was Marcel Luske coming over to serenade a friend of his in seat 9 with a song. Marcel is such a badass, if I could go out for drinks with any poker pro it would definitely be him. The table started to break after about 2hrs of play, at which point I was up about $300 as we moved to 5-handed play. Unfortunately none of the other guys wanted to play shorthanded, so we all got reassigned new tables.

My new table had some good action. I sat in the 7 seat since I noticed that the young guy in seat 5 had a massive stack of ~$8k and seemed like a solid player. There was a crazy asian dude in seat 1 with a decent stack, and the rest of the table seemed pretty standard/weak. I didn't get very many hands to play with during my time at the table, and the hands I did get weren't met with much action, so the only hand that really stood out on the session was this:
Stacks: Asian guy had about $800, I cover
Preflop: Asian guy straddles UTG, 2 calls to me, I call with 86c, Asian guy puts in $60 more and only one other limper and I call.
Flop: 9h9d7d. Checks to me, and I bet $100; only the Asian guy calls.
Turn: 7s. Asian guy checks, I should have bet again here but I checked behind.
River: 6s. Asian guy checks, I accidentally misread this river to be a 5 (giving me the straight) and bet $300 for value. He thinks for a sec before making an obvious crying call with ace high, but as he called he held his hand over the muck to throw it away as soon as I showed a winner. So I felted my hand (which was effectively 8 high) and he discarded his into the muck, saying "Oh fuck!" as soon as he realized that I showed down 8 high. Fortunately for me, his hand was dead once he released his hand into the muck, and I took down a nice pot with 8 high. May this be a lesson to you all: felt your hand at any showdown in which you are unsure who holds the best hand and let the dealer sort it all out.

The table broke down to 4-handed play not much long thereafter, and all the big stacks left so I decided to call it a night and head home.

Sunday brought some excitement as Nath, Serge (adanthar), and I all lined up side by side to play the Sunday Million together. Nath is a maniac LAG-tard, and I wanted to witness his crazy style first-hand. We all had some good laughs at how utterly atrocious most of the field in the Mil is at poker, and all of us survived with healthy stacks into the 3rd hour.

I built a nice stack for myself at ~82k coming into the third hour (blinds were like 400/800), but my soft table broke about 15min into the hour and I was reseated at a new table full of people who didn't let me win a single damn hand. I eventually busted on a cooler hand, flopping the K-high straight vs the flopped A-high straight, but it was with a hand I shouldn't have even played in the first place. I busto'd about 500 places out of the money and was pretty mad about it. I watched some of the Spurs game (how awesome are we?) before going to bed early -- a CR member named Jason was driving me to his house in Lake Havanu for a private sweat session and some wakeboarding tomorrow morning. Should be fun!

Session summary (Palms, Rio, Venetian)

Just got back from the strip where I posted a great session at the tables with a net of about $2500. Ben went to see Ocean's 13 at the Palms and dropped me at the poker room there; unfortunately they only had like 6 NL tables total with nothing over 2/5NL, so I headed over to the Rio in search of 5/10 goodness.

After wading through the jumbled mess of disorganization that Harrah's casinos are known for, I finally got a seat at a great 5/10 game. There was a crazy asian guy in seat 2 that was sitting with about 3500 and was spicing the game up a ton -- he especially loved to overbet bluff the river when he thought you didn't have anything. The player to his left also had a big stack and was playing too many hands as well. I sat with 2k and eventually this hand came up:

Preflop: 3 limps to me, i make it $35 to go with 85d in the hijack seat (a total sweetener bet designed to inflate the pot instead of force people out), button calls, asian guy calls from the BB, and the limpers all call.
Flop: Jh7d4c. Checks to me, I put in $85 with my gutshot, folds to the asian guy and the other loose player who both call. Everyone else folds.
Turn: 9d. Great card -- gives me a double gutshot straight draw plus a diamond draw now, both of which are perfectly hidden if they hit. Checks to me again, and I bet $300. The asian guy asks me how much I'm playing, and I announce that I have about $1600 behind. He calls, and seat 3 folds. C'mon T,6,5, or diamond!
River: Th. Bingo. I was honestly very surprised that he checked to me instead of taking a stab at the pot himself, and my mind was working furiously to figure out how much he would either call or a good bet size to induce him to re-raise me allin. I decided to bet $500 for value here, and unfortunately he folded after thinking for a very long time. In hindsight, I'm interested to see what either a $200 river bet (to induce an allin reraise) or a flat shove might have accomplished.

I later busted the other loose player for his last ~$1k on a pretty standard hand (pair + open ended vs his TPTK) when the table was breaking down. Ben picked me up after this, and we headed to the Venetian poker room to meet Nate and his Yale friend Jason.

Meyvis greeted us at the poker room entrance saying, "I'm sitting at a really good game, you should give it a shot." So I sat at the empty seat at his table right when the next hand was being dealt, and was there just in time to get a hand. I sent the chip runner off to bring me $1k (which was the max buyin for Venetian 2/5 games), and looked down to see 97c in LP. I overlimped and couldn't believe my eyes when the flop came down.
Flop: 5h6c8c. I flop the nuts with the straight flush redraw on my first hand...pretty standard really. Checks to me, and I bet about $20 into the $25 pot. Guy to my left quickly reraises me to $65 (he was sitting with just under $1k), and it folds back around to me. I borrow $200 in chips from the player to my right (chip runner wasn't back yet) and decide to smooth call since a raise would kill my action from all one pair hands and most two pair hands.
Turn: Kd. I check, he bets $100, and I think for a second before announcing I was moving allin. Now this is quite a massive overbet raise, and I didn't even have chips to push into the pot, but I felt that there was a decent chance I'd be called by a set, flush draw, or possibly a combo draw type of hand. Also, about half of the deck would kill my action on the river, so I wanted to get the money in now. The guy goes into the tank (aka he thinks about his decision) for a long time, during which my chips finally arrive. I tell the chip runner not to run off just yet since, "I might have to buy more chips from you if I bust on my first hand here." My opponent turns his hand over, showing K8o, in an attempt to get some sort of read on my reaction to seeing his hand. I didn't flinch, and he finally decided to make a terrible call.
River: Tc. Straight flushes are pretty good, but they're a lot better when the poker room you hit one at has a "high hand" bonus to go along with the pot you win. Oh well, I'll take a quick double up on my first hand. Nothing else too interesting happened for the rest of the session; the play was about as poor as other 2/5 games elsewhere, and I cashed out of the Venetian for about $2300 before heading back to the house with Nate and Jason.

I hope to go out on the town tomorrow night and have some fun away from the tables. That's it for now, time for sleep.

Ready to jump solo

I got back from my skydiving training class a few hours ago, and I can't wait to try my first solo jump on Tuesday. There was a lot of information to absorb and emergency procedures to practice, but I'm feeling confident in my ability to respond to any of the situations we practiced for today. Kevin explains things well and is a fairly straightforward guy -- exactly what you'd want from a skydiving instructor. Tuesday can't arrive fast enough!

Upon walking through the door on my return to the house, I was greeted by shouts of excitement from the dining room table where a game of Chinese poker was being played. Ben, Nate, and another friend of his from Yale who's staying with us for a few days were all playing a lively game that I simply had to join (even though I didn't know anything about Chinese poker). Here are the rules in a nutshell:
- each player gets 13 cards
- you arrange your cards to make three different hands: one regular 5-card poker hand, one deuce-to-seven lowball hand (a 5-card game where the best possible hand is 23457), and one 3-card poker hand (best possible hand is AAA)
- the 3-card poker hand you choose to play must be lower in value than the 5-card hand you arranged
- cards cannot be used in more than one hand
- the game is scored with 'points' similar to gin rummy; each player scores how many points he is up against every other player. money is involved by setting the stakes wagered per point.
- there is almost zero skill involved in Chinese poker -- it's a total gambler's game

We played $5/point for about an hour, and I killed everybody. I was +11 points at the end of the session, and everybody else was down. Victory is mine!

After that, I went upstairs to record my 12th video for CardRunners. This one covered how to make the transition from playing a TAG game to a LAG game. I think I introduced some great concepts, and hopefully the membership will get a lot out of the video.

If any of you don't read Brian Townsend's blog, you should really start reading it. The guy is so sickeningly good at poker; when you talk to him you can instantly tell that he's an extremely bright individual who approaches everything he does with a very deliberate, focused mindset. My game has improved a ton from watching his videos, and I'm lucky enough to have him help me with tricky hands that I encounter from time to time. Unfortunately, I never got to meet him in person (he was too busy cleaning out the pros at the Bellagio), and he's heading back to Santa Barbara tomorrow morning. Brian told me he'd be back in town towards the end of next week though, so hopefully we'll be able to meet up then.

Anyway, I feel like playing some cards so I'm gonna try to find a ride to the strip. More updates later.

Covering loose ends + full analysis of a hand

The way last night ended annoyed me too much to really talk about the good things that happened earlier in the day. I met with Andrew and Taylor at their house to discuss a bunch of stuff for CardRunners. We discussed re-focusing the SSNL video series I made as well as how to enhance its efficacy for new players. They showed me a few of the design drafts for the new website to get my feedback, and I think I had some great ideas for the site. The CR product as a whole will improve tremendously when the new site is launched in August.

I woke up this afternoon ready for my skydiving ground training class only to hear that it was delayed (again) until tomorrow at 2pm. Sigh, I really want to knock this thing out so I can start my solo jumps. Let's hope it actually happens tomorrow.

After hearing this news, I drove to the Bellagio to eat at my favorite restaurant (Noodles) and play some cards. Lunch was delicious, but my high was killed when I saw the massive waiting list for both 2/5 and 5/10. The list to get seated at a table was easily 2hrs long -- possibly longer -- so I went to the sports book to see the over/under for the Spurs/Cavs game was 180.5 . I felt that over was a pretty solid bet so I put down $50 and lost (hey, at least we won the game). This reminded me why I never bet on sports.

So I drove over to the Wynn and played the 5/10 game there. And even though I found myself seated to the left of two friends of mine who are both solid internet players, it was actually a pretty soft table. Clayton, Taylor, and I messed around with each other a little, but other than that nobody else really put up a fight when one of us tried to take down a pot. Taylor was opening a ton of hands from every position, and I wasn't picking up or making very many hands, so I had some fun 3-betting him light from time to time. The most interesting hand of the session went thusly:

Stacks: Taylor has ~$5k (there is no maximum buyin for any of the NL games at the Wynn), Clayton ~$2k, I just lost a pot and was down to ~$600.
Preflop: One limp in EP, Taylor opens for $40 from MP, Clayton calls, one fold, I make it $170 on the button with QJo, folds to Taylor who thinks and then folds, but Clayton thinks for awhile and (to my great surprise) calls!
Flop: A64r. Clayton checks, and I decided to bet $200 on this flop, leaving myself with only $225 behind. Clayton sat and thought for a very long time before reluctantly folding his hand. I told him I'd let him see one of my two cards, and he picked the Q. This sparked a really interesting discussion between us three about the hand and about how poker theory relates to situations like these in general.

Here's my analysis of the hand; I've tried to explain my thoughts as simply as possible for the novice poker player reading this blog:

I decided to make a move in this hand before the flop because I knew that Taylor was opening lots of hands, most of which couldn't call a preflop re-raise (aka "3-bet") from me. When Clayton just calls Taylor's bet instead of raising it, he's saying that he has an OK hand but not a great hand. I took advantage of this by raising with a non-premium hand in position, expecting to take the pot down preflop a large % of the time. It is very abnormal for a solid player to be the only caller of my 3-bet preflop when he was not the initial preflop raiser, so Clayton's call raised a few flags in my mind. However, the most likely holding when a player makes a non-standard call like this is a mid-strength pocket pair (77/88/99/TT) hoping to flop a set or possibly an overpair. Given this knowledge, I was rooting for at least one big card on the flop to either pair me or for me to bluff at.

When the flop came, I obviously I didn't have anything, but as I explained above it's extremely unlikely that this flop hit Clayton in any way whatsoever. The key to this hand is that he cold called Taylor's raise preflop before calling my 3-bet, and since he's a solid player, this basically rules out the possibility of his having a hand with an ace in it. This flop is also awesome because a large part of the range of hands I 3-bet with preflop is something like AK/AQ/AJ. So, even though I don't have anything right now, I know that:
-- he almost certainly doesn't have an ace
-- he knows I'm a solid player
-- he knows that a large portion of the hands I play this way will flop top pair on this board
-- he has no way of knowing that I don't have anything, and he has to be worried that I have an ace if I bet here.

Given all of these factors, I think that I played the hand almost perfectly. Clayton told me later that he actually had KK this hand, which came as a total surprise to me. If I had a hand like KK or QQ myself instead of having air (aka nothing) on that flop, I would have checked behind since the only hands that would call me on the flop would have me beat. However, since I did have air, I wanted him to fold and decided to bet the flop. I would bet it with all of my ace-x hands though, and this is why he had to fold his hand.

During our discussion after he revealed to me he had kings, we talked about how he approached the hand. He knew Taylor was raising a wide range of hands and wanted to trap him. He also knew that I was picking up on this as well and that I was capable of making a move on both of them without a strong hand if given the right opportunity. So, he essentially tried to trap both of us by cold calling with KK preflop. He also knew that by just calling again preflop, I would put him on a hand like 88 or TT, which was not the case! So basically, he could check/raise me allin on any flop and take me for everything (or at least most of what) I had.

My problem with how he played it is that his hand was significantly underrepresented and he knew that there was a reasonable chance I might not have an ace. But, if I did have the ace, he was in big trouble. Obviously he smooth called twice preflop to trap me, but if he does this, I think he has to commit to taking the hand all the way regardless of what comes on the flop. By underrepresenting his hand and then check/folding, he let me get away with a bluff I shouldn't have gotten away with, making all situations like these extremely profitable for me. It's not easy to check/call or check/raise with KK on an ace-high flop, but given the way he played the hand preflop, I think he has to commit himself to the hand on the flop even with the ace showing. I hope some of you who don't have much experience with the game enjoyed this lengthy overview of the thought processes that went into this hand.

Whew, that was long. The only other thing that happened today was that I finally found somebody to trade me $7k in cash for $7k on PokerStars. Feels good to finally have a cash bankroll to back up my play. Time for sleep!

Poker terms defined

I had a couple of people mention to me that they are reading my blog but don't understand many of the poker terms I use. If this applies to you, here are two great resources to help you figure out what I'm talking about: Wikipedia on Hold'em and Lingo & Abbreviations Defined.

And just to clarify, I am playing no-limit hold'em (NLHE) cash games almost exclusively while the World Series of Poker (a series of over 50 tournaments covering all poker variants) is running at the Rio in Vegas. Hopefully this post will provide those of you unfamiliar with the game with a basic idea of how it works. Without this basic understanding, it will be difficult to comprehend most of this blog. :)

Bad night

I had a really bad night at the tables tonight. Strassa was chipleader with 3 tables left in the $1k+rebuys event at the Rio (and I *hate* the Rio), so we headed over there to sweat + grind instead of the Bellagio. What a huge mistake this was.

I don't really feel like going into the details right now because I'm absolutely furious, but basically I ran a $1300 bluff at 2/5 which did not succeed. Maybe if people at 2/5 understood things like table image and relative hand strength it would have worked, but alas...

I was totally card dead all night -- almost none of my hands paired, very few draws ever came up for me, and I missed every single draw that I did pick up (seriously). In my ~8hr session at this one 2/5 table, I had at least two streaks of 90min or longer during which I didn't win a single pot. Nothing was going my way until I coolered another guy to double up, but after that it was back to putting money into pots and never getting any back. Also, the Rio and Harrah's need to die a painful death.

And to top it off, I wasn't playing well. I felt like I was a tremendously better player than everyone at the table, and this led to my becoming complacent with my play; I felt like I could play my C- game and still come out on top, which is probably what makes me the most angry right now.

So, I've decided that I will not be playing 2/5 again on this trip. The play is just too bad, and that in turn causes me to play poorly. I will only be playing 5/10 or 10/20 from here on out, assuming I can actually get someone to fucking trade me cash for online money. If I had a cash bankroll on hand, I'm confident that I could play my A game every day and thusly be tremendously successful. But without the confidence that having a bankroll gives me, I feel like I'm doomed to repeat this cycle of mediocrity for a long time.
Have I mentioned that I hate Harrah's and the Rio?

Bellagio session

Just got back from a session at the Bellagio. Nath got into town earlier in the evening, so he, Matt and I went to the Bellagio to meet yellowsub and a few of his friends to talk about stakes for WSOP events. We had dinner at Noodles, which is one of my favorite places to eat, and split up from there.

2/5 at the Bellagio was soft as usual, but I was very card-dead and ran into a few unfortunate situations. This caused me to start playing poorly, and I instantly recognized that the main reason for this was because everyone else was so bad. I was essentially letting my guard down, so I remedied this by moving to 5/10.

5/10 was also soft (as usual), but I could actually get a few basic plays to work, and this kept me alert and focused. Interesting hands: UTG straddles for $20, I call UTG+1 with JTs, another caller, tight player makes it $100 to go, angry dude next to him calls, folds around to me and I call, guy between us calls too. 4 to the flop for $100 each (I started the hand with ~$2100).
Flop: Qs3s2x
Checks to the tight player who puts in $450 (leaving himself with ~$385), angry guy INSTAcalls (he has me covered), I decided to fold (since I might not be drawing to the winning flush, I'm out of position and will have to call the guy's $385 on the turn hit or miss, and calling basically turns my hand face-up), guy between us folds too. As soon as that guy folds, the tight player announces he is allin blind; the dealer counts out his $385 in chips before dealing the turn card, and the angry guy gives his usual scowling face for awhile before FOLDING HIS HAND WITHOUT EVEN SEEING THE TURN CARD. WTF??!@! Needless to say, I couldn't believe what I just saw; what the hell was this guy thinking?!

An orbit or two later, the angry guy won a few big pots in a row without going to a single showdown and had me covered again. I started this hand with ~$2k. Angry guy limps UTG, MP limps, I make it $60 on the button with KK, only the angry guy calls.
Flop: Qd2d2x
He checks to me, I put in $90, and he quickly calls.
Turn: Jo
He quickly checks to me again, I think for a sec before putting in $200, he instacalls.
River: 6d
He practically checked to me before even seeing the river, then showed his cards to the player sitting next to him. At this point, I'm positive he doesn't have a flush and am trying to figure out how much he's willing to call on the river. In retrospect, I should have bet about $500-$600 for value, but instead I only put in $250. He called quickly and flipped over two red aces to win the pot.

Honestly, I think I lose that pot maybe once in a hundred times, and I'm pretty upset that I didn't bet more on every street -- especially the river. Fortunately, this guy had no idea how to play poker because he could have taken at least another $1k from me, if not my whole stack. It always sucks ending your session on hands like these, but at least I netted a few hundo on the session.

Forgot to mention that I played some 5/10 online before we headed to town. That didn't go so well -- every play I tried to make failed, every bluff was called, every legitimate hand was outdrawn or ran into a bigger one. Sucks to drop ~3k in under 500 hands, including this gem. Totally fucking ridiculous...I hate sessions like these. Hope to run better tomorrow.

Still haven't made it to the strip today...

It's 6:30pm and I still haven't made it to the strip yet today. I'm really in the mood to play some cards and build my tiny cash bankroll up from minutia to baller status.

I woke up a little before 7am to call Kevin about the skydiving class today, and he said he wasn't gonna be able to do it today so we rescheduled for Thurs. This was awesome because I had under 2hrs of sleep in me at the time and wasn't looking forward to sitting through a 6hr class over a topic as important as skydiving safety. Things probably worked out for the better in this department.

Woke up again around 1:30 to see that my HTPC, Xbox 360 (w/Guitar Hero!), and 24" monitor had arrived from FedEx. Matt and I went to Whole Foods to get some food for the house + lunch first, then I started setting everything up. I became distracted when I did a brief test to make sure Guitar Hero was working -- have I mentioned that GH is the greatest game of all time? Matt, Ben, and I jammed for awhile, then we split up to do other miscellaneous errands.

I just read about Brian Townsend's HU "grudge match" with Sammy Farha in Bobby's Room at the Bellagio, and I can't wait to either watch for myself or at least ask Brian about it. They're playing $500/1k mix of PLO and NLHE, which must be absolutely sick to watch. I know that Sammy doesn't care for Brian much, and I know Brian is a significantly better player at both games, so hopefully he comes out on top a good amount.

Matt is calling for a challenger at pool, so I'm gonna go put him in his place (read: lose) right now.

My first FT sweat

What a surprise, Alex made another final table. The guy is just sick at tournament poker. He came into the FT of Event #3 with a sizeable chiplead and held it until they got down to about 5-handed play. He ran into some unfortunate situations, then lost a few hands, and found himself with about 2.6m chips when 3-handed play started. The hand he busted on was pretty sick; check CardPlayer for the details here ("Alex Jacob Eliminated in 3rd Place") if you don't already know them. Still, $282k is a nice payday for 3rd in a $1500 buyin event.

After that, Nate, Ben, Strasser, his friend Mike and I went to Fix at the Bellagio for dinner. Alex and his girlfriend met us there; he and Jason insisted on whoring the appetizers, which resulted in 7 total appetizer orders. Between those and the main course, everyone stuffed themselves. Al thanked us for sweating his FT by picking up the tab -- what a great guy.

Jason headed to the Bellagio poker room to play some 50/100NL, but since the list for 2/5 was over an hour's wait long, Nate, Ben and I headed to Caesar's. As previously mentioned, I'm pretty cash-broke right now, so I sat at 2/5 (uncapped buyin at CP) with my last ~$1100. There was another typical loud, super friendly drunk guy playing every hand with a nice stack, and I couldn't win against this guy. For example, 3 limps to me on the button, I overlimp QJo, BB makes it $30, maniac and one other guy call, and I call. Flop 9sTsKh (awesome). Checks to me, which I felt was very odd, so I put in $85; only the drunk guy calls. Turn 6d, checks to me, I'm positive he's on a spade draw and bet $225, he quickly calls. River is the 4s (sigh), he checks, and I check behind to lose to his AJs. Whatever.

So, after running bad some more, I found myself sitting with under $400. Very frustrating. However, I hit a few hands and made some nice plays against the two plain-vanilla LAG asians sitting to my right to build my stack over $1400 by the end of the session. I felt I was by far the best player at the table, and it really really sucks playing 2/5 because it's such a boring game. Even 5/10 live is just "meh" since you can't make any cool/interesting plays (because your opponents wouldn't understand them and react accordingly). Oh well...suffice it to say that I badly need an online --> cash transfer soon. I'm losing so much money in opportunity costs by not playing at least 5/10 live, and hopefully this problem will be resolved very soon.

Ground training for skydiving is tomorrow, but I forgot to call Kevin to find out what time to be there. Looks like I'm gonna have to wake up at 6:30am (aka 2 hours from now) to call and see if it's a morning or afternoon class. Ugh, time for sleep.

Sunday Slouch

Yesterday was a pretty disappointing day. Nate played the $1500 PLHE WSOP event, and I wanted to play the two big Main Event satellites on Stars + the Sunday Million before heading to the strip.

I drove Meyvis to the Rio around 10am, then ran some errands to get back just in time for the 500fpp sat (which awarded 5 ME seats) at 11:30. I pulled up the window for the 10kfpp sat, which awarded 9 ME seats and started an hour later, but somehow distracted myself and forgot to register for it. I was PISSED.

Matt was up too, so we both played the Million and a $50+5 freezeout together. He's a much more serious tournament player than I am, and I got some great advice from him throughout my run in both tourneys in exchange for letting him watch me play 5/10. I pulled up two tables of 3/6 and 3 or 4 tables of 5/10 to play concurrently with the Mil.

Strangely enough, PokerStars' server crapped out or something about 10min into the Mil, which caused mass disconnections from almost everyone at all of my tables -- ring games included. This lasted at least 20 minutes, and when the tournament resumed we had already essentially skipped the entire 50/100 level. I was very disappointed that PS didn't either restart the tourney or at least pause the tournament clock during this time. It is a rare occasion for Stars' support or their software to piss me off; server crashes happen, but the way in which events unfolded yesterday (and their lack of an appropriate response to the issue at hand) was utterly unacceptable.

I ended up busting about 2hrs into the 500fpp sat, but I picked up some cards and made a few nice plays in both the $50 MTT and the Mil. Unfortunately, I made an amateur-ish shove from MP with an ~8.5BB stack in the $50 and busted to AQ on the bubble, but I cleared the Million bubble with a slightly below-avg stack. My table position and relative stack size (players to my right had push/fold stacks so I couldn't resteal) in this tourney were pretty bad for the table I was at, so I couldn't really do anything besides wait for a good hand for quite awhile. I eventually lost a coinflip with AK to JJ to finish about 650th for ~$450. UTG used almost his entire clock before calling with JJ -- Matt thinks it should have been an easy call for him and couldn't believe how long the guy took before making the call. 4.5hrs down the drain, bleh.

Some of the 5/10 games were unbelievably soft during this time -- one of my tables featured two passive donkeys playing about 50/11 for a couple of hours, and another had a 44/6 fish and another awesome donator who played an incredible 78/2 game for >200 hands before busting! I played ok for the session, could have (and should have) been focusing more to play better, and my results reflected this by finishing up less than a buyin at each game. Granted, I did lose a ~$2.3k pot as a 60/40 favorite allin on the flop, but that's some pretty standard variance which comes with the territory.

After that, I went upstairs to take a much-needed nap (I was still up from the day before) until 10 or 11pm before going to meet Nate and Ben at the Wynn. I woke up after about 5 hours but was still very tired, so I decided to just sleep through the night instead of driving to the strip to play tired poker (which is often losing poker).

All in all, I was up on the day (which is nice), but I felt like I missed an opportunity to have a really big winning day by not going to sleep the night before. This would have allowed me to make it to the strip to enjoy a few juicy games at the Wynn. Hopefully today will work out better for me.

Welcome to Bustoville

...population me! After 2 more jumps with Kevin in the morning (AFP-3 & -4), we went to lunch before I met Nate at the Bellagio so I could borrow his car to drive myself home for a badly needed nap. We have to skydive in the morning since the air thins out when it gets hotter in the afternoons (which makes landing more difficult), so I had to wake up at 6:30am again for the second day in a row.

I woke up from my nap just in time to see the Cavs eliminate the Pistons. I'm happy LeBron won so he can get this whole 'winning' thing out of his system; the Cavs won't be doing much of that in the Finals (GO SPURS!)

Ben was just moving in as I finished watching the game, so we hung out for a bit before I drove back to the Rio to check on Meyvis and Strassa. The Rio poker room was packed, just like yesterday. Nate was playing 2/5NL, but I didn't see Jason at any of the tables; oh well, on to 5/10.

The table I sat down at was pretty loose-passive at first, but I quickly realized it was due to a loud, friendly French guy sitting with >3k who was clearly at least a few beers into his night. He was your stereotypical whale: friendly, personable, funny, disliked players and dealers who wouldn't converse with him, very loose-passive, and he was sitting with a big stack. Even though the Rio 5/10 game is uncapped, I chose to buyin for only $1k because I'm short on cash. Aside from him, the table was still very juicy. First interesting hand: (I have ~1100, villain (SB) covers)

1 limp to me in MP, i raise to $50 w/red aces, SB calls, BB French guy calls, limper folds.
Flop: QdJx9d
Blinds both check to me. I've been playing pretty TAG; SB (villain) seems like a somewhat solid player who is capable of c/r perceived position bets on "scary" boards, so I decided to check behind.
Turn: 5c
Great card. Both players check to me again, so I put in $110. SB calls, BB folds.
River: 5s
Another great card for my hand. SB leads for $200, and I take awhile to think about calling or raising. Since I have him pegged as a somewhat solid player, I ruled out a flopped straight or set since he wouldn't have checked these hands TWICE with such a loose-passive player behind him in the BB. I think he would have probably bet to protect his 2pr hands as well, but I can see him checking them at times too. He certainly does not slowplay a straight or flopped set, though. So, given all of that, I decided to put in a small value raise to $500. Villain called pretty quickly and flipped up Kh5h to scoop the pot. I like my play in this hand overall, including the raise on the river. I think I get some nice value from smaller 2pr hands here much of the time when called.

The only other hand of interest was 2-3 hands later, just after I had reloaded my stack to $1k:

I raise QhQd UTG to $40, folds to our French buddy who 3-bets me to $145, folds back around to me. He starts talking it up again about how I should call with my 55/66/77 but the dealer better not flop me a set. I haven't seen this guy 3-bet once preflop before, so some serious warning bells went off. I elected to call and CRAI on any flop that wasn't Ace-high.
Flop: 5h6h7h
The whole table erupts with laughter as I check. French guy bets $300, I shove, he calls and flips up AhKd.
Turn: 8h :(
River: 3c

That left me with about $120 in cash, so I borrowed 1k from Nate to get back in the game. I was pretty much stuck in idle the entire rest of the night, even though the French guy was practically begging me to double through him. When the tournaments broke for the night, so did most of the ring games (including ours), so I repaid Nate and we drove home.

I was still dying to play when we got home, so I decided to play a little online while setting up this blog. Pulled up FTP and found only two active 5/10NL tables (both full ring), which seemed very odd to me, so I decided to grind the 2/4 & 3/6 games there and on PS. In the meantime, Meyvis was kind enough to swap me 1k in cash for 1k online, so I'll get to try my hand at 2/5 tomorrow until I can find someone to trade me more cash for online$.

Interesting hands from tonight:
Hero call vs a big donkey, too bad I'm wrong. If you happened to have read that 2+2 post about player types, this chick was totally an L-P SOOT (54/9/0.65-ish).
Q3c owns me tonight
Finally stacked the donk
Stacked her again!
Protecting my squeeze vs. an obvious re-steal attempt
Another nice pot

Made just over $1850 at 3/6 and $856 at 2/4 in under 900 total hands, so it was a pretty good session. Despite the results, I don't think I ran any hotter or colder than normal; I just felt I was playing really well and that the tables were very soft (which they absolutely were). Always nice to do well in at least one session per day.

That pretty much does it for today (er, technically yesterday). So tired....

First real day in Vegas

So I'm starting a blog. I've never kept a journal or anything similar before, so who knows if I'll be responsible enough to keep it up to date. Let's do yesterday's entry before we get to today's stuff:

I'm living in Vegas for the summer, sharing a house with ~4 other guys. Right now we have 3 people living here other than myself: Nate (Meyvis), Ben (2+2 guy), and Matt (another 2+2 guy sub-letting for 1wk from future roommate Nath). Meyvis, Ben, and I moved in yesterday I realized recently that I know too many people named Nate/Nathan/Nathaniel, all of whom share the same hobby of poker with me.

Before we get to poker, I started along the path to becoming a certified skydiver on June 1st. I successfully completed two tandem jumps (AFP-1 & -2) with my instructor Kevin that day, and I completed my AFP-3 & -4 jumps this morning. For AFP-4, I did two controlled 360s in the sky -- one right and one left -- then guided/controlled the canopy to the landing zone with almost zero assistance from Kevin. Next step is completing a ground school course on Tuesday, after which I have 4 solo jumps (supervised, but solo!) to pass before I get my certification. I'm really excited for my first solo jump next week, especially because I felt surprisingly zero adrenaline during all 4 of my tandem jumps.

As for poker, I came to Vegas pretty short on cash unfortunately. I have a very comfortable bankroll online, but my bank account balances certainly do not reflect this. My game of choice in Vegas is 5/10NL, especially at the Bellagio, so Nate and I headed over for an early afternoon session yesterday. Nate didn't find much success at 2/5NL, and I dropped a buyin at 5/10 within 5 orbits after stacking off with AK to 66 on KhJh6x flop. This crippled my live roll (I *badly* need to trade PS$/FTP$ for cash) to ~$700, but I had good reads on everyone at the table + position on a very loose-passive fish. The fish finally stacked off to me (I barely had him covered) with 78o to my QQ on a 67Jr flop -- turn 8 (asdfgrstfgsrdfcdcsf), river 6 (ship it!). Finished the session -400 or so.

Nate and I went home to drop our bags off, then headed to the Rio to meet up with Strasser, who was getting deep in Event #1 ($5k Limit/NLHE mix). I railed him for a bit and noticed quite a few big names still in the tourney trying their best to concentrate while the barrage of fans madly snapped photos of their favorite celeb from as close as the ropes would allow. Jason had direct position on Juanda, and the table got a lot more interesting when Max Pescatori was moved to his left.

After a 2-3 rounds on the rail, I left Meyvis to find a 5/10 game. The game I joined was comprised of a mix between some stereotypical live loose-passive players and a couple of young, aggressive, oh-so-obviously-from-the-internet players. These aggro donkeys were far too LAG for their own good though, as many small- to mid-stakes internet players are, and I exploited this in the following hand:

[i had ~$1100 to start the hand, and button (villain) covers]

UTG straddles ($20), 2 calls, i call w/J8c in the CO, button (a LAG internet player) makes it $70 to go, 1 calls and i call.

Flop: Tc8s4c

checks to me, i plan to check/raise, and the button puts in $140. limper folds, i raise to $400, villain looks kinda shocked that i would c/r him but announces a re-raise to $400 nonetheless. i shove my last ~$200 in the pot, which makes the guy immediately start cursing as he counts out the chips to make the call.

Turn: 7o
River: Qc , which completes my flush, and villain resumes cursing as i show my cards to beat his... A8o??!! Are you serious?! "I *knew* you were on a draw, at least I made the right call." Explosive laughter ensues in my head because these people are SO BAD!

That's about it for my first day in Vegas; I think I'll start a new entry for today's events.