Tournament SuccessI played three tournaments on Stars last night and cashed in all three, albeit small returns only winning $291 on $173 of buy-ins.
The exciting part is my participation in the
Full Tilt Poker Big Double. It is two $60+15 tournaments played at the same time where $9 of each buy-in goes into a jackpot. To get a piece of the jackpot, you need to cash in both tournaments or have the best combined finish. You get the big money if you can final table both or even better, win them both.
The two I played in had 252 and 245 players respectively. With about 50-60 left, I noticed that I was in the middle of the pack in both tournaments. I snuck into the money in both and was happy to share 3% of the $40K jackpot with two others ($400). Of course, I started paying attention to the other two so I could win an additional 2% ($800) for the best overall finish. When it got down to about 15 left in each, I began to get short-stacked in both.
I started thinking final tables when I reread the FTP page and saw that a double final table is worth 20% ($8K). At about the same time I dropped from two Stars tournaments, I doubled up in both FTP tournaments and moved up into good position in both including first place in one of them.
Once I made the final table of the first tournament, it got interesting/different. There was twelve players left in the second tournament and I had more monetary motivation to survive to the final table ($8K) than I had to win the first tournament ($3800ish). In first place, I was confident, but there were no real short stacks and we still had to eliminate three players. I began by folding everything (AT) and waiting, but it became clear that this was going to be a long final table bubble. Added to that was all the short stacks doubling up each time they risked their stacks. I'll shorten the drama so say that I loosened up and got some more chips to feel more comfortable.
I made the final table and finished 6th and 5th respectively. I wasn't happy about not winning both ($30K from the big double jackpot) but was excited about the $8K for double final tables.
Overall, I bought in for $150 and won $1860 from the prize pools, $402 for double cashing, $805 for best overall finish and $8048 for double final tables...about $11K.
"Trip Report"I actually had a great time. I didn't play anything higher than 1/2 NLHE although I signed up for and even sat once for 2/5 but the game couldn't get going. I'd rather play with my friends anyway. We had four of us at the same table for awhile and that was more fun than playing with people hell bent on telling me bad beats and how I played the hand incorrectly.
Speaking of which, I played a second chance tournament at the Borgata Winter Open. As soon as I sat down, I heard two bad beats and stood back up to walk around. Thank God I remembered to bring my headphones as the table conversation was some of the worst ever. The play was atrocious but I experienced one of the worst cold decks of my life and finished about half way through the tournament. How did I last that long with horrible cards you ask? Because I had to fold so much. I was at a table with a raise and 2-3 callers for every hand and lots of people calling off their stacks with top pair and sometimes worse. There's no outplaying people like that...just need some cards. So into the muck went my record number of "flat tire" hands (jack-four).
I won a little in the cash games and won some more playing the Texas Hold'em table game that I hear Skaaaaalansky made up. Thanks bro...I owe you some of my winnings.
We had a guy walk up to our little 1/2 game and ask some drunken questions, sit down with his Starbucks and we all looked at each other like we were in the Rounders scene at the Taj. I could see the looks on my friends faces say don't get in my way when I take all his money. Alas he was the tightest player at the table - more so because he fell asleep for about a half an hour before the floor woke him up. At one point he woke up startled and threw two dollars out onto the felt. We chuckled and told him that he didn't even have cards so he quickly took his money back and put his head down for another nap.
My buddy got a text message from a friend asking him to put $20 down on number 5 (roulette). We walked up to a couple roulette tables in the Trop but they were both pretty crowded. I knew there was more in the back so we went for the walk. They were just opening a table but they were taking forever counting the chips and getting ready so we went back to the crowded tables. He found a crease and got some reds for the $20. He could've put the money down right away but decided to wait one spin (which turned out to land on number 30). The next spin, he put all $20 on 5 and got plenty of funny looks. One guy said, "Wow! I sure do hope it lands on 5". As the wheel spun, we found the number 5 and watched it go around - would've been funny to watch us I imagine. Anyway when the ball came down and hit, it was about 5 slots north of 5 when we lost sight of the ball due to our viewing angle. When it came out the other side, lo and behold, it was in 5. We screamed, high five'd and celebrated loud enough to get a little audience. Good times - $700.
The depressing part is that I had more fun playing with friends and playing the table game than I did outplaying schmucks at $1/2 NLHE. The good news is that I really had fun.
ImpactI'm in rare form, so let me write this now. For those bloggers I respect and call friends, this is a post for you to read.
I admit it. I used to look around and see what others were saying about me in the blogosphere. I'd get a kick out of those who thought I was God and I'd worry about those that saw through my blog to the real me. Who gives a shi*.
A certain handful of bloggers still think I'm some super poker player but they'd be wrong. To be honest I'm just a regular shmuck like you but I really enjoyed playing poker for 3-4 years. I picked up the game thinking that this was my chance to get a leg up on my competitors and I love competing. I've always been able to outwork my peers in pretty much everything. Ask my wife. She knows how many sleep hours I've missed out on. In everything I do, I'm proud that I'll outwork you. Humbly speaking, I've skyrocketed past my peers in my real life career. Enough to be proud when I explain this to my kids later. I'll stop there because like I've said a few times in this media, too many of my friends and family know about this site.
Back to poker...I guarantee I was in the top 1% of the poker community when it came to study, thought and practice. I wrote simulations. I thought about poker during my commute. I (shamed to admit) thought about it at work during my more boring meetings. What it came down to was a pseudo-addiction to the game. I read over twenty books, read internet forums, blogs, and advice sites daily, wrote software simulations and played until I went to sleep at 2-4:00am. I'd wake up around 8:00am and head to work (thinking about poker the whole way). I'd go a couple weeks on about four hours of sleep each night before I'd finally crash and sleep for 14 straight hours.
It was kind of out of my control so I can't take all that much credit. I just loved the game and as you've heard before, I can fully attest to the saying that you'll never be great at something until you love doing it. I've recently grown frustrated with the game and it has shown. Writing the book is what I blame to this day. I have to thank
Chris Hanel for the recommendation to O'Reilly publishing and I have to thank
Wil Wheaton for the advice to steer clear of the editor in question. I should've listened to Wil but my ego got in the way and I thought it would be awesome to walk into Borders or Barnes and Noble and see my name on the shelves. (BTW, I'm decent at reading people on a first impression and the little I've spoken to and hung out with Wil, he's great people)
So I wrote the book and it took me a hell of a lot of time that I could've been playing and at my hourly rate during that time, I took a huge pay cut. At the time, I thought that I'd just take 2-3 months off from playing to write the book and then I'd be back at better than ever. How that didn't work out!
Ever since then, my playing time has declined as poker became a job. I already had a job and I loved my family too much to take on a second job and miss time with them. I've often thought about how I could make poker more fun but the bad beats have always sucked and when I win the 80% hands, I'm not happy because "I'm supposed to win those". As a matter of fact, I'd even get angry when I won. I'd say, "Damn right! About damn time!" or internally mock my opponent. When I lost, I'd just get frustrated. I'd keep it inside for the first couple hours but as they piled up, I'd start to externalize my anger. My way of externalizing that frustration was telling my opponent "well played" when they got their money in with the worst of it. Towards the end of the night, I'd hit the table, yell or (on multiple occasions) put a dent in the wall. As you can see, it was no fun at all. I was no longer addicted to it thank God because I've read about a few people who consistently lost but always came back - some of you are still blogging - one day I'll mention names.
Back to me...:)...I tried my SNG challenge, I tried playing non holdem games, tried playing more tournaments (bad idea) and I even tried playing different sites, resting from the game, etc. None of this has brought me back to the game yet. I'm headed to AC this weekend to play some live poker. I'll try to have fun. After that I'm going to try my hand at low stakes NLHE until it either becomes fun again (because I'm playing for peanuts) or gets boring for the last time. My new years resolution this year was to find my next thing. I seem to go in four year spurts with everything I do except family. I'm wondering if poker will remain as a few other things have in my life or if I'll pick up a new hobby full bore. I've brewed three batches of beer in the last few months and I'm looking forward to trying my own batches of Irish Cream and Coffee liquor...not to mention that sex marathon I wanted to try with the wife..kidding for those family members reading this.
My life is busy with work and family so poker has taken a back seat - hell, it isn't even in the car anymore. I need to decide if I should withdraw all my money and move on or keep playing for fun. I no longer have aspirations of getting rich off the game, but it would be nice to have a nice run and gets what's mine. That is a whole other post. I feel as though I'm owed. I've taken some horrific beats at horrific times in my poker career. Going into the end of day 1 when I finished as the chip leader of a WSOP event, I took 4 straight bad beats and instead of having 3 times as many chips, I had to walk out of the Rio in a bad mood because I didn't have more. I also had a terrible run of cards on day 2. My biggest ever cash game pot, I got it all in with aces versus kings preflop and lost. I remember numerous other huge circumstances where I got the worst luck...the PCA tournaments, the Canadian poker tournament in the Bahamas...the list is long. I feel as though I'm owed. I've lost count of how many beats I've taken when nearing the big money in online tournaments. It is the nature of the game of course and it all evens out. I either have terrible luck or I have a psychological trait in which I can only remember the worst luck I receive. That pisses me off even more when I see bad players going on tremendous runs winning many hands in a row when they're behind. They talk big because they're feeling on top of the world and I just shake my head and wonder when my time will come. I'll explore that personality trait later.
Back to me. To set the record straight, I'm not smarter than you and I'm not a world-class player. I wrote strategy posts as I learned the concepts for the most part. I'd be humbled by all the compliments I received throughout the blogosphere but to be honest, they weren't really deserved. There are some highly underrated players that blog and I'd back them in a cash game any day. Those players with perception and courage...Matty, Otis, GRob and Speaker (in no particular order) are ones that stick out in my memory from times I played with them. Perhaps they were inebriated for the courage, but they outplayed me on multiple pots.
Back to me. I recently found a blog post at
Ryverrat Poker where he gave my strategy post partial credit for him turning a profit. That was when I got motivated to write this post. I feel as though I wrote some gems back in the day (do your own surfing for the Pressure points posts). I had an epiphany and I hadn't read it anywhere else so I blogged it. I'm still to this day proud of that line of thinking. Anyway, posts I wrote were simply discoveries I made through lots of thought and study and only that. I'm humbled by the blogosphere's respect for this here blog, but it isn't deserved to be honest. I'm a regular guy like you.
The reason I write this post is too pull back the curtain on me and this blog to show you that I'm just like you and not some genius that plays poker 23 hours a day. You have the same if not more ability to work your way through the poker world, to build your bankroll, to out-work your opponents and to get a little lucky at the right time to make a name for yourself or more importantly, have enough success in poker that you can do what I did - turn this little hobby into vacations for the family, big screen TVs, PDA phones, and anything else you'd feel guilty spending your 'real' money on.
Good luck to you and most importantly - have fun with it. If you don't, you won't be successful.
Heading to Atlantic CityI'm going up to Atlantic City to get some live poker action. We'll be staying at the Tropicana who's owner just lost his license and has been forced to sell...anybody got some money? we could all go in and buy it - probably a low price. It'll be worth using our bankrolls as we'll get plenty of comps.
I bottled my stout yesterday - should be ready in 2-3 weeks. I still haven't decided what my next batch will be. I might go back to an IPA as my last batch was awesome and I handed out half of it to friends and family. This time I'm considering some caramel flavoring.
Merry ChristmasWell, I've begun playing again and I was red hot for awhile before giving some back. Poker is fun when you're winning and still miserable when taking beats.
I've made a batch of India Pale Ale for the holidays. It is my first batch so I basically followed the directions as best I could. It tastes good, but I learned a few lessons and will make the next batch stronger. I just finished the first step of my next batch - an Irish Stout. I made this one a little strong and I'm looking forward to seeing how I did. My third batch will be a flavored ale instead of something out of the box...caramel flavored IPA, coffee/vanilla-oak/chocolate flavored stouts, blackberry lager and experiment with ... you ready
Al? ... a SoCo flavored ale. I know. Nothing beats the original, but it would be fun to try.
Anyway, hope all is well with you during the holidays and I'll leave you with
something you should use at the tables.
A bit of good news for non-USA players. Pacific Poker is one of the oldest and loosest online poker sites around, but they've always been plagued by bad software and not so attractive promotions. They're improving though, especially in the promotions area. Along with a bigger deposit bonus and more reload offers, they're allowing a select number of poker portals do a beta test of sorts, for a rakeback deal they call their "loyalty bonus program." Make no mistake, this is truly a
pacific poker rakeback deal. Players earn 25% of their rakeback, and even 25% of any casino losses back. The program is ran by Pacific Poker themselves, as in they pay you directly to your account once per month. If you want
rakeback at Pacific one of the rakeback affiliates who have permission to promote it, such as
Poker-Strategy.Org . They've been working on their software too. Here is an updated
Pacific Poker review.
Poker Isn't FairWell, I spent a LOT of time playing for the PCA this weekend and have nothing to show for it. I played a lot of STEPS tournaments but the biggest chances I had were the $650 satellite, the 10K FPP satellite and a step 6. I feel as though I got extremely unlucky all weekend. I won more than the average in the steps but when it counted, I just couldn't when my 80% hands, much less a coin flip.
I logically know that we all have the same odds and you can run good/bad, but I witnessed supposedly good players making poor plays by getting it in with the worst of it and winning consistently. That only added to my frustration. For some reason, I'd be able to handle it better if it were poor players getting lucky. I think there are some jealous feelings there. They're well respected players and I think they suck. I'm not brash or bold enough to post a ridiculing challenge on 2+2 forums, so I keep it to myself and watch as they usually have the worst of it. They lose most of the time but that big win they once had still gets them the respect that I didn't think I wanted. I've never been motivated in poker by respect from other people, but I will admit that its nice to get credit for the study and work in addition to the endless hours I put into this game. Then to see some schmuck hit a big win in a tournament and garner respect is weird.
I am tempted to write my weekend bad beats out as therapy, but I'll be a responsible blogger and leave them to my internal strife. I'm extremely bummed that I won't be taking the family to the Bahamas this January as they've sort of come to expect it (thrice in two years for poker tournaments). I could pay for it but that isn't the same and there are a lot more cheaper alternatives for vacation - not to mention the fun of playing a big tournament. I think I'm done with UB so the Aruba tournament will be a no-go for me this year as well. I guess I'll have to wait until next year's PCA to try again.
Anyway, I'm done with poker for a week or so while I work out my issues with why life is so unfair for me. The logical part of my brain fully understands of course, but my emotional side of the brain almost wrote an emotional, embarrassing blog post last night after it was done. I literally had to get up, take the trash out, get a drink and do something to take my mind off poker. I haven't been this emotionally tied to poker results for 12 months or so and it wasn't fun. The best way to get over poker misfortunes is to realize how blessed I am in other parts of my life and be happy. It works for the most part, but time will be needed on the poker front.
May the beats be with you.
Last day to win full package to PCAThe deadline snuck up on me. I don't think I'll be trying after today as the trip package is a major reason I'm going. I have a $650 seat and a number of Steps tickets including a level 4 and level 5 so I'll be pushing today to see how it goes. Playing as much as I've played in the last couple days is a frustrating practice. The more you play, the more beats you take and when you're trying to work through Steps, it is more frustrating than just losing money on a bad beat. Those 80/20 losses get to me after awhile. I've spent $300-$400 and have about $1500 in tickets so I can make myself feel better that way, but those tickets aren't actual cash (and you can't cash them out) - its the trip I want after all.
See you online and hopefully at the PCA.
Free poker Online Poker games.
