That was short lived

Well I hit my goal of +$1500 in poker before May. However, I've been thinking with the priorities in life given my current financial situation and my upcoming expenditures that I probably shouldn't piss 2k out the window.  Could I afford it, yes. Do I want to be potentially strapped for a few months, not really. To be perfectly blunt, I need a car which is something I've wanted since The Fast and The Furious came out, the 1st one with Paul Walker sporting the '96 Eclipse. Along with that I want to move out of the fraternity and have a legit apartment where I don't need to worry about drunk people stealing stuff, but mostly so I can cook in a clean kitchen. That being said, I'm looking at ~$20k in expenses between car and first/last/security for an apartment. I just got my taxes back and with the poker money, I have enough to cover a down payment for a car to take out a minimal loan and enough to cover the apartment upfront fees.

If somebody still wants to toss me $500 for the WSOP event in June, I'm very persuadable. But onto the poker updates which have been driving this blog for the time being.

I went to Mohegan on Saturday the 24th knowing I was going to play 1/2 and grind out for 12+ hours. I sold action to a buddy in FL for a straight 20%/20% split. Throughout the session I got rivered twice by 3 and 4 outters in $200+ pots and still walked away a $400 winner on the day. $400 does not equal $1500 +, I know. I had a clause with FL friend that said if I hit high hand i'd give him an additional 200 bucks. I cut ties and called it a night around midnight. I transferred him back his $40 plus $80 in profits I made for him. I also had a clause with my friend Marek who came to Mohegan with me that we'd split high hand jackpot so the winner would give the other 10% up to $200. Well let's be honest, I got drunk in celebration after midnight waiting for them to finish up, wandered around then got bored. I decided to take $100 and go play 1/1 to sober up before driving home. I sure did sober up after waiting til 5am to leave.

The 1/1 game was soft and the lady to my right hated me off the start cuz I was talking with the players (3 of which I had played with before, including one UMass kid). I got AA twice within 15 minutes of sitting down. Those weren't the big winners. Somebody raised 3 bucks early position and about 7 of us called. I was in the cut off with 9c8c. Flop came out, in order of the cards being unstacked as the dealer flipped them over, 7c 8c Jc. Yatzee. First thought I had "shit, is the pot big enough?" I looked, the dealers had set aside the $1 for the high hand and taken out $2 for rake. bingo, I'm qualified, lets just extract money. Checks around. turn is a 7h. Beauty, I hope somebody hit a boat or trips or something. Checks to me, i bet 11 and get 2 callers. river is a 5c. Even better since the Ac likely would call that turn bet and now think they're good. Checks to me again, I fire $22 and get 2 folds. I flip my cards over and call the floor before the dealer can even get a chance to. I hit that at 2:20 and immediately went and told my friends. (i'm a bit of a showboat). 2 hours an 40minutes later I got paid out a nice $2400 high hand jackpot.

In the next couple weeks I probably won't be able to hit up Mohegan due to Alum events for the fraternity and golf but I'll sit on it for a while and make some moves to get a car/apartment lined up.

I ended up busting out of the $109 main event on sports book with QQ all in pre vs AK. he turned K. then i titlted away the rest of my money on .25/.50. I honestly don't see myself playing online any more. I'd rather spend my time blogging/programming/golfing. Plus live is so much more profitable. Maybe when PS or FTP ever come back, count me in.

Last night I did drop $110 at the weekly .25/.50 game. I played well but the cards said no. I had two straights get smoked by flushes (all river). I had 2nd set vs top pair vs lone flush draw and the kid hit a river flush after 3 way all in on flop. I had two times where I had top pair and floated an aggro kid to river and he rivered two pair. I had top trips top kicker get boated on the turn. And to cap the night I had KK all in pre when I was short stacked vs AA. The way I see it is I lost $16 on each of those hands which I'm not mad about. Plus the high light of my night was straddling $10 blind after busting. Got two callers. board was 2-10-8-K-K. First caller showed AK. 2nd caller mucked. I flipped over one card at a time. K was the first card. Table got interested now. 9 cards to win, 3 to split. I curled up the corner slowly, bink, 10. #winning #donk.

That is all. I will be spending more time between now and June programming the Pollis since we fired our incompetent developers. Next blog posts may be about golf gambling

Grinding It Out

So I found a small hint of listerine for poker, only after dropping $150 last week in the weekly home game I played in. It was a nuts game where the preflop raise was a min of 12x and getting 4 calls at minimum. Plain and simple you need to hit cards to win, or have the deepest stack in order to bully people out. Needless to say I had neither and it became my side focus to see how many times I would have won at showdown. Close only counts for horseshoes and hand grenades and it sure felt like I was getting bombarded with grenades. I counted 0, zero, nadda hands I would have won in showdown for 3 hours straight.

Enough complaining since the moral is, I stuck to my guns, paid back my debts and played the following week (last night) and I walked away up $155. I did get some much wanted help from the deck, along with a couple of good extraction plays. I flopped a few sets that hit boats and usually got the person's stack. One hand in particular tho I limped CO with 7s5s and flopped the nuts (468) rainbow. SB and Button were in the hand. Usually the Button calls me with 2nd pair and sadly is right, time for some payback. SB leads out for $2.25 in a pot that was worth $2.50. I raised to $6.50 and got the button and SB to call. turn was a 2 of clubs putting two clubs on the board. SB leads for $5.50, I raise to $17 and the button calls. SB finally gets the message and folds. River is a Qd and gives me the stone cold nuts. I lead out $25 and get called by 7c8c. Chuckles in my head since he was convinced he was good, again, with 2nd pair. I'm not criticizing as he's usually right, sadly.

Just had some guy shove the button with J7o from the button in a tourney. I had AA in the BB. rofl.


Going to Mohegan Sunday, no longer offering stake as I'm ahead on bills and cashed nicely last night. But I am still taking investments for the $109ME on Sunday for Merge. 50/50 split on that one.

Listerine for Poker?

Is there listerine for poker? Like seriously? Anything of the sorts?
548 hands -3.7 buy ins, -68BB/100 32% VPIP, 18 PFR, 28% win showdown
Coolers:
Flopped 2nd set, of queens. board paired 4s on turn. all in on river. dude had pocket 4s (1.5 buyins)
Raised 3x from Button with A3, got called by BB. flopped 2nd nut straight. Now if you're super familiar with Pokerstars/FullTilt you could set option for slider to go up by BB increments when you clicked. MERGE DOESN'T DO THIS. Amidst mid tabling I was raising another table it somehow lined up to just shove the flop. (I wasn't too mad but he snapped me off with the nuts.) No, I wouldn't have gotten it in most likely. So, fuck you merge, I want a couple bucks back. There goes another buy in. (-2.5 so far)
Another 3/4 of a buy in went to a rivered trips vs a rivered boat where I doubled a guy up. The dude was tilting and had just lost a stack with AK to a flopped set.
 Another 3/4 of a buy in went to me making a move where I thought a guy was making a fish play like he had in a prior hand. The turn brought a 3rd club (J) on a J835 board. I jammed the turn and made him make a choice. He called AI with 10s10h for 2nd pair no flush draw. River whiff.
I stopped after the queens full loss to the quads. First time it's happened in my life. yippie
fuck merge

Start of a climb

So the night started off with local bar free poker. Don't jump to "he go bust already?" and the answer is: no. I'm moving to Sunderland MA at the end of the summer and felt like stopping in to meet locals and play poker to win a free $20 and have a brew.
Played super tight since usual local bar free buys are flopping with fish racing into the pot with a face card. First hand I played was my 2nd deal, AQo. 4 limps, a raise to 3.5x to my right, i flat, a couple more flats then a guy ships for 9x BB on top of the raise (12.5 net) guy to my right flats, I ship. I get it in against the guy to my right who I profited from. ended up making 50% of a starting stack with a dry board which the 12.5x guy hit. The guy to my right had A4 and whiffed.

A few hands later in the SB i look down at AA and raise to 6.5x after 3 or 4 limps. Girl to my left flat calls for 1/5 of her stack. One other person calls the rest fold. Flop K47 rainbow. I shove and this girl snap calls. She wakes up with KK....wtf. For a free poker tournament I'm not mad at how I played the hands. She was limp folding and only calling raises with face cards/an A so she was on the range of KQ/QQ/KJ/AK/JJ which i'm crushing 80% of. I still had chips to play with. Waited until I woke up with KJ in the BB after a couple limps and shoved for 8x the BB. Guy took forever to call with A6 suited and only risking 30% of his chips. Dude, just frigging call. I flopped my King and he also hit the A. Turn paired the low card and had me done.

Played well, one cooler that I feel I never get away from due to my position.

Went home and ground out 341 hands in 2 hours. In that time I played at 19.74 BB/100 with a VPIP of 25% and a PFR at 14.7. I think I 3 bet once with QQ and 4 bet shove once with AA. My win rate at showdown was 45.5%. I'd like to get that win rate at showdown higher, which means I'm making better reads on the flop/turn. I foolishly doubled up a short stack with A9 suited and another mid stack with top two pair vs his turned gutter straight.

All in all, playing solid and confident. Picking my spots in position and had to make 0 hard decisions today which I feel will pay off in the long run.

At the stakes I'm grinding out i'm averaging 12.04BB/100 through 1071 hands. Like I said, I'm not counting those online sites since A.) they've been known to miss sessions and B.) I'm counting my play since I reflected on what the hell I was doing wrong and started being back in serious poker mode.
The 3% / $25 offer still stands for Event 21 of the WSOP.

Poker Update

So since I last posted its been a steady drop. Great line for investors right? Well I made the mistake of playing online and dropping $50 playing .1/.25. Then I played live at the regular home game I've been crushing and dropped $100. This all progressed while I was battling the average cold. More focus was spent on my burning nose and sinus pressure. Then today I'm sitting I the rails of a $75 charity tournament where at best we were playing 20 hands per hour. Volunteer dealers for a local scholarship back home so Im not omplaining horribly. I played well and gave my self a shot early to have a monster stack. In past week or so I'm down $225 of an attempted $1500/$2000 gain.(I'm not counting the $500 cash out from sportsbook towards it since who knows if I'll ever see it) The way I see it I need to just keep playing how I was playing (tight aggro with position) and grind it out. My play isn't donnish and I feel strong about my chances of making the $1500 mark. Next Mohegan trip is scheduled for two weeks from now. Im also ahead on bills so the chances of me having the money as a whole is climbing with time ($2000 tax return). The next poker game is a $25 second chance sit and go which should be cake to sit and wait for final 5 and bully the shit out of people. I will advise and post here. Until then it's grinding out the micros online putting in 1000s of hands. PS for those who check poker ratings online under merge network I consider my start playing date as the post about "be the change you want to see". If you are serious about investing for the 1k tourney I will gladly show you hold em manager stats. Every $25 gets you 3% of profits. For now on to the second chance tournament.

Quest for Event #21

So I'm taking a run at a WSOP event. The $1000 NLHE that runs for 3 days starting June 10th. I figure why not take a shot and have my first flight ever be to Vegas. Seems fitting for my personality.
http://www.wsop.com/2012/structuresheets/12121-structure.pdf

In order to help offset some of the costs, I'm running up a $50 bankroll on Sportsbook via tournaments and cash games. I just placed 7th in a $5 rebuy event and cashed $620. The deal I'm offering is a 40/60 split to the investors favor. That means every $25 you stake me, you get 3% of profits in return. I feel that's fair given I have 0 WSOP events under my belt. I do however feel like I'd be in the top 10% of players in the field. Winner took down over $450k last year.

So what I'm doing is making my sessions public so that potential investors can see how I play and if I'm a fish or not. That being said, I'm already down $3.50 of my initial $50 playing 25NL. I got it in with AK vs KQ and split to running straight cards after an AQ8 flop.

There is a $5 1R/1A event starting up at 6 which I hope to run deep in. (2nd event I did of the Poker Maximus I came in 320th, 307 got paid)

Down 8 dollars, guy runnered another straight. Hopefully this won't be a two post quest of the cash out curse.