Life Shouldn't Be A Fuckin' Grind

I will never be a poker pro, but my lifetime poker ledger is positive and I think that's something to be proud of.

Friday, September 29, 2006

Bad Beats in Life are Worse than those in Poker

I took a pretty tough real life bad beat today. My car had been making scraping and grinding noises at low speeds so I took it in to get the brakes checked. Turns out I need new brakes all around and some work on some ball bearing. Total cost is gonna come to $580. That's way worse than any bad beat I've taken in poker so far. So yeah, that kinda sucks.

In good news, I've put together a pretty solid month profit-wise for the first time in a while. I've had a coupled decent tourney cashes and I've been playing SnGs and doing well at them again. Add in the money I made at the boat last time I went and I think I've made about $400 so far this month. If it wasn't for a tilt session at 5/10 SHLHE early in the month that number would be like $150 higher. I've pretty much quit playing shorthanded limit online for the time being. I'll probably go back to it someday, but for now I really don't want to. I haven't been running well and I'm sure I'm making mistakes, so I'm sticking to SnGs and tourneys for a while and I've really been enjoying poker again. I've mostly been playing Turbo SnGs because they fit my style well with a lot of pre-flop action in the late stages and more donkeys than regular SnGs.

I think I'll probably go to the boat this weekend and take my shot at the Argosy 10/20 game. I'll definitely have an update on that no matter the results. I've also done pretty well picking NFL games this year, so I opened an account at Mansion poker, which also has a sportsbook, and I plan to be making some bets in the coming weeks. I'm looking at a parlay of the 49ers moneyline at +265 vs. the Chiefs and SD and Cleveland both -2.5 against the Ravens and Raiders respectively. I can win $300 betting only $25 or something ridiculous like on that this parlay and I feel pretty good about all of those games, so I'm probably going to do it, it's just a matter of deciding how much I want to bet. Hopefully that will go well.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Live Poker and a Final Table

Yesterday I went to the boat to play poker and watch football. I started out at a 3/6 table for a few minutes before they finally opened 6/12 (my normal game). I ended up playing 6/12 for 6 hours and ending up +$180 on the day. I see-sawed a bit, stuck some after the first hour or 2, then came roaring back when I hit a couple decent hands and at one point I was up more than $400. Unfortunately I came back down to earth a little bit and when JJ and QQ lost consecutive pots I felt myself starting to steam just a little bit. So, I played one more round, didn't see a playable hand and stood up and cashed out $200 profit, $20 from the 3/6 game and $180 from the 6/12. I'd say I ran about average on the day, I didn't pick up a lot of great hands and I made a few 2nd best hands that I had to pay off. I did flop one set, and made a couple of flushes and KK held up in a pretty large pot, but other than that I can't really remember where the money came from. Like I said, I think I ran pretty average.

It really amazes me how easy it is for a good player to make money in these live games and how many bad players there are. Yesterday, I started telling myself I was the best LHE player in Cincinnati and I really think it may be true. I've never played with anybody in a live LHE game that I think is better than me. There's only one guy who I think could be better and I've never actually played with him so I'm not sure. This guy is actually a law student at UC (where I went before dropping out) and everytime I see him at the 10/20 game at Argosy he has a mountain of chips in front of him. He's also always wearing a PartyPoker or FullTilt hat, so I'd say he probably knows what he's doing, but like I said I've never played with him so I don't know if he's better than me or not. I tell myself that I'm the best in Cincinnati, not to be an egomaniac, but for a couple of legitimate reasons. One, self-confidence is incredibly important in poker and I'm the kind of person that tends to need positive reinforcement, so I think it's good to give myself that reinforcemnt and two, I do it to keep myself in check. If I start thinking about making a foolish play or playing like a donkey I can remind myself that that's beneath me, I'm the best LHE player in Cinci and I need to act like it.

In online news, I played 3 tourneys tonight. The Midnight Madness on Tilt, in which I never got anything going and finally busted late in the first hour when I got my 1k in chips in the middle and lost a hand I can even remember; the 1:20 am $22 on Party in which I lost 1200 chips on like the 2nd hand when I got KK in the SB, re-raised and EP raiser who called, then CBet the flop of AQx and had to fold to his all-in. From there I couldn't really get anything going and busted when I pushed 44 from the BB against a button raise and the button ended up with 77. I also played a Stars 180-man $22 that went much better. I flopped a couple sets and made a couple good hands early and was cruising in the middle of the 2nd hour when I made a couple of ill-timed bluffs and ended up back at about 3k, then on semi-tilt I pushed all-in against an EP raise with 44 on the button...EP insta-called with JJ and I spiked a 4 and never looked back. In hindsight, it was a really stupid play and I deserved to lose, but sometimes in poker you do stupid shit and get rewarded, just like sometimes you do the right thing and get fucked. Anyway, from there I played well and ran pretty well all the way to the final table which I went into 3rd in chips. Unfortunately, I went very card dead at the Final Table. I lost about 1/3 of my stack on the first hand when my AKs lost to QQ and from there I just never got any real cards and ended up busting 7th when my 99 ran into TT. I made 100 bucks for my efforts, so it wasn't a waste or anything, but it sure did suck to be that card dead at the Final Table and not be able to do anything.

All in all though, I'm pretty happy with poker at the moment. I'm playing sparingly and and when I feel like it and my results are pretty decent.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Party Poker Hates Me

Just played 3 SnGs on Party. Pretty card dead the whole time. Saw one pair of Tens and a couple pairs of 6's. Those were about the best starting hands I had. I had AK a few times and managed to win a showdown with it a grand total of once. I busted out of the first when I raised with AK, the CL called me raised then lead out into a flop of T32 for the minimum...I decided to donk off my stack and pushed in. Of course he called with his A2s for a flopped pair of deuces which held up. Ghey.

Second SnG I get shortstacked, guy in EP minraises to 200, super-shorty moves in for like 540 total and I shove for about 1040 with AKs, EP of course insta-calls with his A9o, flops a pair of 9's and it's GG me and the shorty who had 88. To add insult to injury, EP says "sorry, dude" after the hand is over. WTF?! He made 3 big mistakes in that hand. The first was playing a garbage hand like A9o in EP, the 2nd was min-raising with it, and the 3rd was calling a raise and a re-raise with it. Yeah, he should be sorry that he sucks so much at life.

Third Sng; I decide to chase my losses in the 2 $11's I've just played and play a $22. I build my chips up a bit, but the table's too tight for a Turbo and the blinds start getting huge, 300/600 with 6 or 7 people left. I open shove for like 3300 with AKo, of course I get called by 99 which holds up. Wonderful, awesome... I can't win a race OR a hand where I'm the favorite. Only AK I won with was earlier in the same SnG when my AKs held up against a shorties KTs in a pretty small pot.

Whole session was sick. I feel like that site has it in for me. Blah, just venting.

Monday, September 11, 2006

The Poker-Free Zone

I don't know how long it's been since my last post, but I think it's at least a couple weeks. I really haven't played much poker in a while. My downswing in 6-max LHE pretty much zapped my desire to play that game and I really haven't felt like sitting down to the poker tables all that much lately.

The last 3 mornings though I've come home and cashed in a Turbo SnG on FullTilt. On the 9th and 10th I played $6.50's and placed 1st and 2nd respectively, this morning I played a $12 and took first for $49.50. That ran my FT account back up over $300 for the first time in a while . Unfortunately my Party account has dipped below $200 for the first time in ages. First from a session about a week ago where I decided to take the $300 I had left and try to run it up playing 5/10. After I got coolered a few times, the table broke and I had like $129 left, I went to 3/6 table and managed to get back up to $2o0 before I quit for that session. Unfortunately, I played a table of .5/1 6-max yesterday while I was playing my SnG on FT and I lost 13 BB in that game. It really is sick how bad I'm running right now in LHE.

I think I'm going to try to stick to the SnGs for a bit and maybe try some on Party to try to rebuild my roll on there a little bit. I've still got like $175 on Stars and $275 collecting dust on FCP, plus the almost $600 that I really need to get off of Neteller and into my savings account, but I just don't want to dig into that money to reload my Party account. I think I'm just going to play .5/1 and $10 SnGs on there until I manage to get it back up to a respectable amount. Surely my downswing can't last another 200 BB at .5/1 can it?

I've been playing the Turbo's on FullTilt as opposed to regular SnG's for a couple of reasons. First of all, I think the players in them are probably worse than in regular SnGs. Second, I personally, have most of my edge in NL from playing better starting hands than other people do and finding good times to steal blinds. I get plenty of opportunity to push that edge in Turbo's. I realize that the fact that the blinds go up so fast does make it more of a card catching contest than a regular SnG might be, which probably increases variance, but for now I'm alright with that b/c I don't want to spend long amounts of time playing cards.

I guess that's about all I have for today. I'm off work on Wed, so maybe I'll get a couple tourneys in then.
 

mesothelioma