Grind on the Mind

My best chess game, yet

2012-02-05T13:04:00.003-05:00

I recently drove up to Asheville to play in a regional chess tournament called Land of the Sky XXV. It was the biggest chess tournament I've ever played in, and I really enjoyed how it was run and had a lot of respect for the level of chess competition in attendance. I also really enjoyed working out at CrossFit Asheville on Saturday morning before the second round, and had a great experience training with their amazing community.

I really enjoyed the trip especially because I had such great results in the tournament, which consisted of the slowest time control games I'd ever played in. A couple of my games lasted almost 5 hours each! I made my first 3rd category norm, with an approximate tournament performance rating of 1518, which raised my USCF rating from 1305 to 1438, my highest rating yet.

Here is a record of my round 3 game, which I feel is probably my best played chess game to this point. At the time, it was the highest rated opponent I'd beaten in rated competition (I beat a slightly higher rated opponent the very next round!). I chose this as my best game based on the relatively little I gave him to work with according to later engine analysis. The following are annotations from my perspective before I put this game in any engine for further analysis. As such, it serves its purpose of briefly highlighting what I was thinking at certain key parts of the game. Some of the analysis is slightly off, such as the fact that my willingness to abandon the a-pawn for king penetration in the endgame was not completely sound. Although, it did force him to play sharply, and I managed to create a situation where he would make a losing mistake.

Taylor,James (1305) - Fischer,C. (1476) [D36]
Land of the Sky XXV Asheville (3), 28.01.2012
Time control: 40/2, SD/30
[Taylor,James]

1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 the Slav, which I can't recall facing before in a tournament

3.Nc3 I didn't really know how to respond, so I just went forward with a natural move

3...Nf6 4.Bg5 getting out my dark bishop, since h6 is not threatening due to Bxf6 and doubling pawns

4...e6 5.e3 Be7 6.cxd5 exd5 7.Bd3 Nbd7 8.Nge2 I decide to go with the pressure on e4, which I doubt he'll be able to meet

8...Nh5? 9.Bxe7 his Nh5 just doesn't seem right, and I go ahead and exchange his good bishop

9...Qxe7 10.Qc2 really wanted to play g4-g5, but couldn't pull the trigger on it

10...Nhf6 11.0-0 0-0 12.Rfe1 Re8 13.Ng3 planning e4

13...Ne4? 14.Ncxe4 his Ne4 walks into my controlled square and loses a pawn outright

14...dxe4 15.Nxe4 g6 perhaps to prevent my pressure on h7

16.Rab1 I decide to go forward with ideas of a minority attack as well

16...Nf6 17.Nxf6+ clearing some space and simply exchanging down

17...Qxf6 18.b4 Qg5 19.f4 I think this is the best way to meet his potential threat of Bh3, although it creates the backwards central pawn

19...Qf6 20.b5 Bd7 21.bxc6 Bxc6 22.Qf2 it seems the minority attack was a little less effective due to his ability to retake with the bishop, so I decide to just shore up my position and defence of e3. This move also allows me to try to get in e4 and e5, which is my goal for the position

22...Rad8 23.Rb4 still trying to get in e4

23...Qe7 24.Rb2 this move was made a little hastily, and I didn't see the combination that follows coming

24...Rxd4 25.exd4 Qxe1+ 26.Qxe1 Rxe1+ 27.Kf2 Re7 28.g3 I still feel good about my chances here with the passed pawn, so I go ahead and take my time getting my pawns on dark squares before trying to get my king active

28...Bd5 29.a3 b6 30.Rb5 getting my rook active with tempo

30...Bc6 31.Re5 I would welcome an exchange here, and would probably retake with the f-pawn to keep the passed pawn and make it connected

31...Kf8 32.Ke3 Rd7 I think this is a mistake. Now I am blocking his king on the e-file

33.Be4 Ba4 34.f5 going around to the queenside is going to be futile, so I try to take advantage of my control of the kingside and get my f-pawn out of the way for my king to advance

34...Rc7 35.fxg6 Rc3+ and Rxa3 allowing gxh7 would be ruinous for him, I think

35...hxg6 36.Kf4 leaving the defense of e4, but it is unthreatened at the moment.

36...Rc3 37.Kg5 I'm willing to give up the a3 pawn for the tempos gained in getting decisive king penetration, similar to a game by Capablanca I recently reviewed

37...Kg7 38.Re7 he's threatening f6+, winning the rook, but my pieces are too well placed and my king too active now, while he's been focused on winning the a3 pawn. I'm threatening to win the g6 pawn due to the pin, after which the f7 and a7 pawns will likely fall

38...Bc2 39.Bd5 declining the exchange to create another threat!

39...Kf8 40.Rxf7+ I really wanted to play Kf6 here, threatening something like Bxf7 and Re8#, but I saw Kf6 Rxa3 Bxf7 Rf3+ and Rxf7 as the likely continuation. f3 is an important square for my bishop to control. I ended up just going for the simple Rxf7+ and Rxa7, which actually saves the a3 pawn as well as keeps his king on the 1st rank and my bishop centralized

40...Ke8 41.Rxa7 Rd3 42.Bf7+! an excellent tactic which saves the d-pawn, wins his g-pawn, and exchanges bishops

42...Kd8 43.Bxg6 Rd2 44.Bxc2 Rxc2 45.h4 Rd2 46.Rb7 Rxd4 47.Rxb6 and a winning endgame

47...Ke8 48.Rf6 cutting off the king

48...Ra4 49.Rf3 he said after the game that he thought it would be a draw if I didn't have the a-pawn, probably since rook endgames tend to be drawish. However, I can win this situation against the strongest engines, without the a-pawn, AND without his king blocked from defending against promotion.

49...Ra5+ 50.Kg4 Ke7 51.h5 Ra8 52.Kh4 Ra4+ 53.g4 I was making these moves like clockwork and I think he realized he could resign by now

53...Ke6 54.h6 Ra8 55.g5 1-0

Finished Olympic cycle, Hitting Weaknesses

2011-10-13T16:53:00.002-04:00

On my third week of the Olympic lifting cycle, I wasn't able to get any milk, so I still ate Paleo, but lost a few pounds that week. The next week, I was only able to get 5 gallons for the week instead of 7. So over the last part of the cycle, I wasn't able to follow my milk plan exactly. However, I have been eating Paleo for 38 days now, the longest stretch I have ever completed. I will most likely have a few drinks this weekend, ending my Paleo stretch. I'm at about 163 pounds right now, and hope to continue gaining as I'm drinking about 6 gallons of milk a week right now.

By the end of my 4 week Olympic lifting cycle, I was able to set a Front Squat PR of 280#, tie my Back Squat PR at 325#, tie my Back Squat 3RM PR at 300#, and tie my Clean & Jerk PR at 225#. Even though I only tied my Clean & Jerk PR, I felt much more comfortable with heavy weights, lifting 225# a few times during the cycle. I did not set a Snatch PR, as I managed to lift 165# a few times towards the end of the cycle. I think I had the power to lift this easily plus more, but my technique needs a lot of improvement. There was not a lot of reps at lower weights in this cycle, just a whole lot of heavy single days, which probably didn't help in getting rid of technique faults. My biggest problem was shifting my weight towards my toes as the bar rose over my knees, instead of shifting the weight back to my heels, leading me to miss a lot of snatches in front when the weight got heavy, and even included a couple misses on heavy cleans in this manner. On the final max day, the program called for a deadlift max after the Olympic lifting, even though there was no deadlifts during the 4 week program. I pulled 335#, which was 10# off my PR, which I set when I weighed 10# more, so that is easily my best pull at this bodyweight.

Right now I am going forward with a cycle in which I have taken ideas from many sources to create a 10 week lifting cycle to improve my weaknesses, specifically my deadlift, presses, and other gymnastics movements. My deadlifting is by far my weakest lift and biggest weakness. According to OPT's numbers, both my front squat and my power clean are almost exactly in line with my back squat, but if you dot the lines going by these three lifts, my deadlift should be about 20% higher than it is (405# vs 335#)! This is a huge margin, and I'm tired of not being able to do 315# deadlifts for reps like a number of athletes at a similar level. The hallmark of my 10 week program is that it includes a full cycle of the Coan deadlift program. This program promises to add significant weight to one's deadlift. I am excited about that, because I'm hypothesizing that my weak deadlift is only hurting my ability in other movements as well. The program calls for one brutal session of deadlifting and related assistance exercises once per week for 10 weeks. That day includes working up to a specific heavy double, triple, or single, and then usually 5-8 sets of 3 of a lower weight to build capacity for volume. Included in the program on the deadlift day is circuits of all of the most important assistance work for the deadlift, which I hope will expose and fix any weak link for me, specifically straight legged deadlifts, bent over rows, strict pullups, and good mornings. The strict pullups are my functional substitution for lat pull-downs and is the only way I'm modifying the program.

I haven't worked out the exact details of the rest of the 10 week cycle, but I have worked out which days will be working on a given skill. The day after deadlifting is a day of pressing, with sets of max effort handstand pushups and handstand work. Then there is a day off. That is followed by a day for front squats or back squats and light Olympic lifting technique work. A day for bench press, pushup intervals, and other gymnastics work is next. Lastly, there is a moderate Olympic lifting day before another day off and the next week of the cycle.

Under the Heavy Bar

2011-09-16T11:46:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was the last session of the first week of the 4-week Olympic cycle. The session called for heavy singles of snatch, clean & jerk, and front squat with some down sets after the singles. I hadn't been under the bar for a heavy snatch or clean & jerk in several months so I didn't really know how it would go. I first missed at 155# on the snatch, but got it on my second attempt, and it didn't feel too bad. I tried 165# 4-5 times, getting progressively closer to a made attempt, first missing in front of me, then catching but not stabilizing for 2-3 misses, and finally missing it behind me. At that point I really thought there was still potential to make the lift on the session, but I want to stress quality lifts on the heavy single days, so I just went on to the clean & jerk. I got up 205# easy, and got 215# on the first attempt as well. However, I missed the clean on 225# on two attempts, so I just went on to the front squat feeling fatigued at this point but knowing I'll make it soon. After all the lifting, I still managed to match my front squat PR of 265# on the single.

Overall I felt it was a good session for my first heavy Olympic lifting in several months. I'm feeling good about my chances to set some PR's on this cycle. I have 6 days of heavy singles of snatch and clean & jerk coming up over the next two weeks of the cycle, not including a max day at the end of the cycle.

Food Supply

2011-09-14T22:11:00.002-04:00

I'm now finishing up my 10th day of Paleo, 8th day of GOMAD, and 5th day of a 4 week Catalyst Athletics Olympic lifting cycle. So far I have been eating a very clean Paleo. My biggest problem is that I basically haven't been eating enough and often enough. I've been somewhat lazy on cooking and let my day's gallon of milk comprise too high a percentage of my calories. I've often only been eating twice a day with few snacks. The good news is that I have been eating big breakfasts, usually 5 eggs, some chicken, okra from the garden, and however much milk. I've also been getting a lot of sleep. I'm going to try to eat more frequently and take in more vegetables including sweet potatoes going forward. Today when I went to pick up my order of 7 gallons of milk, I learned that the milk supply was short, so I was only able to get 5 gallons for the week. I'm going to use this as an excuse to cook a lot more food.

I just finished building my Olympic lifting platform in the basement today. The hardest part of building it was cutting the rubber stall mats. The key to cutting them is pulling them apart as you cut. We ended up clamping the mat to some supported wooden beams close to the cut so that the weight of the mat would help pull apart the cut as it progressed. This really helped the reciprocating saw that we used tear through the rubber. The platform is made of $130 worth of plywood and stall mats. Not a bad price for a neat 8'x8' space to lift.

Tomorrow the plan calls for heavy singles of snatch, clean and jerk, and front squat. I haven't snatched more than 135# or clean and jerked over 200# in a while. However, I would not be surprised if I was able to match my PR's with the 6 or so pounds I've put on and considering all the squatting I've been doing over the past few weeks.

Diet Experimentation

2011-09-06T17:21:00.004-04:00

As of today, I'm going through an experimental phase of nutrition specifically focused on weight gain, hopefully that of mostly lean muscle. My plan is to eat entirely Paleo, with the large exception of drinking a gallon of milk every day. I have both drank a gallon of milk a day for 30 days before and eaten Paleo for 33 days before. However, I have never attempted both of these tasks at the same time, and I believe I can improve on the implementation of each.

In my previous attempt at a gallon of milk a day for 30 days in June of 2010, I squatted for a progressively increasing single heavy set of 20 reps three times a week, with no metabolic conditioning workouts, while drinking gallons of USDA Organic pasteurized milk. I went from 161 lbs at 9.4% body fat on May 26 to 174 lbs at 12.5% body fat on September 15, roughly gaining 6.5 lbs of lean mass and 6.5 lbs of fat over that timeframe. In October of 2010 I did a period of Paleo eating for 33 days. I had my body fat tested again on November 3 and was 160 lbs at 7.3% body fat. The combination of both experiments, plus some traveling in between, netted me 2.5 lbs of lean muscle and 3.5 lbs less fat, going from 9.4% body fat to 7.3% body fat.

It will be interesting to see what the results are like from undertaking both experiments at once. I will be able to improve upon the health and efficiency of drinking a gallon of milk a day by this time drinking natural milk instead of USDA Organic. In the previous period of Paleo eating, I took a protein powder, usually post-workout, that I'm sure included some sugars and artificial ingredients. During this period, I will be focusing my efforts of following the Paleo diet on the quality of fats, especially those used in cooking, watching product labels to not accept the intake of minor synthesized ingredients, limiting fruits with high glycemic indices, minimize liquid consumed with meals, and never feeling hungry. I will still be taking a post-workout protein powder – Stronger Faster Healthier Fortify, as well as supplementing with creatine, fish oil, magnesium, and potentially some digestive enzymes in the case of drinking a lot of milk with a meal. Obtaining all macronutrients with meals and never feeling hungry should not be a problem with the gallon of milk a day, but drinking a lot of liquid with meals may be a problem, and I'm hypothesizing that milk is a very basic solution and would further hinder digestion.

I don't necessarily expect to gain lean muscle and lose fat at the same time during this experiment, but I'm hoping that an abrupt reduction in milk intake after the period could see the fat gained disappear rather quickly. I haven't decided whether I will try to eliminate milk consumption after the period or just drastically reduce it.

In conjunction with this period, I'm going to start a Catalyst Athletics Olympic lifting cycle. I'm building a platform for lifting in the basement and will build jerk platforms to double as a squat rack. I'm going to limit metabolic conditioning workouts to hopefully a maximum of 6 over the period. My current PR's relating to Olympic lifting are 170# Snatch, 225# Clean & Jerk, 325# Back Squat, 265# Front Squat, 185# Overhead Squat, and 345# Deadlift. I hope to improve upon all of these over the period.

Ideas and Hand Review

2010-01-08T13:17:00.002-05:00

I recently got a copy of Dusty Schmidt's new book “Treat Your Poker Like a Business”. Dusty is one of the most successful online poker players ever, and I really enjoy reading his blog. From the three years I have followed his blog, I would say that Dusty is so successful mainly because he is such a determined and focused individual. Dusty is willing to help his fellow man and is wise and opinionated. While I don't always agree with his opinions, his blog is very inspiring and has largely influenced my ideas of a great model for a professional poker player's life.

Dusty's book has relatively little in it about playing poker hands. You can judge this book very well by its title, as it is very specific, detailed, and insightful about how to be successful playing poker by examining everything about your poker with a business mindset. In fact, I would argue that it's very valuable simply as a book about good business principles. I would definitely recommend it for anyone reading my blog who has an interest in business, poker, or would just like to get a very interesting viewpoint on the life of a disciplined professional poker player.

One thing that I found very interesting recently was how several people I know who'd read my blog seemed to be taken aback, even slightly disapproving of me losing 20k in Vegas and I not thinking it is a big deal. I think it stems from some misunderstanding. Make no mistake that I do consider 20k to be a decent amount of money. However, it would be suicidal to any poker player to play the stakes I was if their mindset would be that 20k is a big loss. That is maybe one of my most obvious edges over the common opponent. Money is inventory for the poker player, you simply need it to make more, and that is something Dusty talks about in his book. The moment you start to think of a buy-in as rent, you are done. While it is true that I do not regularly play 50/100, the main reason is that sized game is much tougher online and therefore I have a large percentage of my bankroll in investment accounts and real estate. I took a calculated risk with a perceived real edge with quantifiable downside. Some of the questions or expressions I received after coming back from a trip in which I lost money seemed to make a mockery of my judgment. If you're wondering how much money my brother and I lost playing the slots, you just missed the point of this paragraph.

At different times in the past I have truly treated poker like a business and in other times I have not. We all struggle with doing this to perfection, but starting with this new year, I'm going to focus on treating my poker playing with a business mindset as best I can. This morning I woke up early and made myself scrambled eggs for breakfast. Getting up earlier is something on which I've been working to improve. I think it will improve my productivity as a poker player and as a student. Additionally, getting up early will ensure I always have time to eat a solid breakfast in the morning, which will set the stage for keeping up a good diet throughout the day and in turn good exercise.

I have been working out and eating very well recently. I'm always getting closer and closer to following the Paleo diet, which would be ideal, and I'm becoming much more proficient at CrossFit. Pull ups are one of my weakest exercises, and I have set myself on the right track to doing them way better. At the time that I started CrossFit I could probably only do 2 or 3 pull ups. Basically, I have been scaling every workout with pull ups in it because I need resistance to be able to complete the workouts. Doing this is a good way to increase my strength for dead-hang pull ups, but I still didn't know how to do the “kipping” form to do better pull ups until recently. My current kipping form leaves a lot to be desired, but on Saturday I was able to do 25 pull ups during the workout and on Tuesday 18. I feel the main difference in amount of pull ups between the two days is from the other exercises involved in the workout. Relative to other exercises that could have been included in the workout, I would say Saturday's (pushups and squats) had little effect and Tuesday's (deadlifts) much more effect on my pull up capacity, so the way I figure it, my current range is about 18-25 pull ups for the workouts, depending on how they are interspersed.

Some people seem to think that the kipping form of a pull up is cheating or some ridiculous nonsense. While no doubt dead hang pull ups are harder, to understand why the logic is faulty, one must simply look to the functional CrossFit methodology and interpret the movement as having gymnastic roots. All kipping does is create horizontal momentum which is skillfully translated into vertical momentum to assist with the pull up. From a free hang, the same amount of work in a physical sense is achieved as that of a dead hang pull up, just with a different overall muscle group composition. From a gymnastic viewpoint, the movement is very functional. If the immediate goal is getting one's chin over the bar, kipping pull ups are the most efficient method.

I don't think I'm the only one that does this, but I really enjoy reading my facebook “live news feed”, especially since it is now mostly filled with people's status updates. It's such a great way to figure out what people are thinking. Poker is all about getting inside people's minds and figuring out what they are thinking and then very perceptively determining what they are likely to do. Although people are obviously aware of what and where they are writing, I find that they tend to think about the status update as much different than the rest of the internet. Based on my experiences, I feel the average user may not fully grasp the scope of their updates or either chooses to ignore it. More interestingly, I believe most people subconsciously realize that people who read their status update will have seen it in a setting among others'. This assumption leads to easy insights about people's motives in that they are trying to stand out in a way that's related to the content of the update. The journalistic integrity of facebook news feeds is obviously nonexistant and so you have to take what you read with a grain of salt. Often inaccuracies in what people write can lead to insights about their thinking. For some people it may be their only direct contribution to the internet and therefore people are usually writing about topics for which they have great conviction. I think these are explanations for how a medium has been created in which small blurbs of nearly pure thought or transparent motive can be reflected upon to create a whole lot of experience in examining human thought in a short amount of time.

This bowl season I learned a lot about how people think while watching football. Even the most rational people usually throw out logic while watching sports events for which they have a bias, whether it be team or sport related. Some sharp sports bettors whose opinions I was reading were betting heavy on us not to cover in the Orange Bowl. When we were quickly down 14-0 I simply accepted the reality that our team had been overrated for this matchup and would probably go on to lose the game. That's not to say I was completely fine with the result or that I didn't stick around for hope of a comeback, I was just simply at peace with what was occurring. I think most people's emotional problems come from an inability to accept reality or some irrational illusion of it. In sports betting, people become obsessed with the idea of “beating” Vegas, and assume that must be impossible. While that's generally a solid viewpoint, its premise is incorrect in that one doesn't need to be better at setting lines than Vegas. All that's required is a certain amount of logic, intuition, and math to figure out where their lines don't reflect true prices. Exploiting, not beating. Sports betting is essentially options trading where the outcome of the sporting event is the traded underlying security.

In fact, sports betting is similar to poker in the way that poker is similar to options trading. The traded underlying security of a poker hand is its hand ranking, which can be changed after any betting round by a number of ways only limited by the deck being finite. The poker hand's worth, being a derivative security of hand ranking, must be judged by the player intuitively by doing path-dependent backwards analysis in real time. The actual worth of a poker hand is based on the pot size at the point of occurrence of either everyone folding or the hand winning at showdown. The actual worth is never known at any decision point (without regard to an unbeatable hand on the river), but the Real Options Analysis worth is intuitively judged from looking at the current pot size and previous betting actions to evaluate the likelihood of different paths that will result in various pot sizes at showdown and probabilities of either having the best hand or everyone folding along the way.

One thing that some of my family was asking me around Christmas was whether I thought my classes have helped me in my poker playing. I answered yes to some degree, but poker requires a lot of independent study. This is true, but I think I've actually underestimated the effect that my classes have in fact helped my poker playing. Some of my family and friends enjoy playing the lottery. I could go into a huge discourse on an estimation of EV for playing the lottery, but I think it unnecessary and suffice it to say that the lottery is ridiculously -EV. That I never play the lottery is an obvious way in which my poker study and to some extent my classes have affected my thinking. Not even mentioning the fact that the lottery has ridiculous variance which is not attractive and that it works against the universal premise of the marginal utility of money, just look at the EV and variance. EV is not affected by variance, but variance is affected by EV. Therefore we can posture of an equivalent game with equal EV but different variance that will have the same long-term value. Here I ask anyone if they would play a game which required them to pay 35 cents with nothing else to it. This is the zero variance version of the lottery.

I'm not knocking the lottery. I think it is a great system, essentially being a tax on the imperceptive that creates potential for the future through education. However, I look at poker no differently. My goal is to make the world a better place than I left it. I view myself as an entrepreneurial Robin Hood, exploiting the Dunning-Kruger effect, thereby discovering the self-confidence I've lacked, and much like the efficient allocation of capital to public corporations, in the long term money will flow through me from those with excess, as defined by their inability to keep from losing it to me at the poker table, towards those in need. Today I have helped support a farming group in Uganda by funding part of a micro-finance loan for buying farming supplies. If you don't know what Kiva is, you should check it out. Kiva's mission is “to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty” by “empowering individuals to lend to unique entrepreneurs around the globe”.

I really enjoy exploring the art of intuitive and deductive thought processes. Success in poker requires improving your thought processes so poker is a very natural fit for what I enjoy doing. It's no secret that all successful poker players discuss hands a lot and bounce ideas back and forth. It's the best way we know to learn poker along with playing.

During the session I played this morning, I was just 3 tabling $100PLO and making a note of every single hand I found the least bit interesting. I want the commentary on most hands that follow to be short, specifically only things that I was thinking about during the hand as it went down, in order to look like a stream of thought. The others will have a lot of post-hand analysis. I have already looked over some of the hands I've talked about on this blog in the past and can find slight ways in which my thought process was off or contained some incorrect reasoning. Even the stuff you don't find interesting is in some way interesting. Here is my version of the session I played this morning. Hopefully it will be very interesting to look back upon later for further reflection.

Hand 1: 100bb deep, cutoff opens for pot, I call next with QJT7ds and both blinds call. Could 3-bet this hand here but at this table there is a lot of value in keeping the blinds in and I have a lot of nut straight potential. I flop 843 with two backdoor flush draws. Original preflop raiser bets 2/3 pot and I flat him because there are a lot of great turn cards for my hand with position. Both of the blinds call again and the turn is an offsuit 9. The original raiser bet half pot and I potted here with a 16 nut wrap without too much consideration. The 82/0 SB called with TT52 and I was somewhat surprised to see him take down the pot on a brick river and that he had 65% equity on the turn.

Hand 2: Aggressive guy in middle position opens for pot with a 40bb stack. Folds to me on the button with AAK8ss and I time out. This was the last straw. Timing out is happening a little too often with my transition to the Stars software and is definitely hurting my win rate. I need to focus on playing less tables until I'm adjusted to the software like a business cutting losses.

Hand 3: Against a very loose and aggressive cutoff open 130bb deep, I 3-bet T987ss. He calls and the flop is K22 with a different flush draw. He checks and I bet 2/3 pot, he calls. The turn is another 2. The key is to use what your perceived range is, namely that he probably thinks I have aces, against him here to fold his either-way counterfeited hand. I bet 35% of the pot on the turn and he snap-folded.

Hand 4: Limped pot and I check in the BB w/QT64r. Flop is QT7r and SB leads, I call, one other player calls. Turn is 4 bringing flush draw, SB leads, I pot and get it in vs him 85bb deep on the hand. He shows J877 and I start to wonder how often I'm really getting it in good enough there.

Hand 5: I open JJ62r from the button and get called by solid BB. Checks to showdown on Ad6x4d3d5x board. He shows AAK3 with the nut blocker and I scoop with my six-high straight. I guess he was going to checkraise every street, maybe not the river, but instead I showed down a hand with 2% equity on the flop. Interesting hand, wonder if I should always be c-betting this flop because my hand has very little showdown value or even usually ability to get to showdown.

Hand 6: Two limpers and I pot (A7)A5 from the SB 100bb deep and get called by the BB and button. Flop is 977 with a club draw and checks around to see a 4c turn. I check and call a half-pot bet from the 60/30 button. Turn is an offsuit 8 and goes check/check and I'm good vs QJ96ds. Not sure if there's any other line I could have taken, because I don't think I can play it so aggressively as to stack worse 7's when they all have good equity vs me and I'm nearly dead when behind. I could be convinced that not c-betting the flop is bad, but if called is my plan to just check call down given the board?

Hand 7: Good player in the cutoff opens for pot and I call 110bb deep in the BB with AAJ2sss. I don't think this is a hand I can 3-bet here but I could be persuaded otherwise. Flop is JJ5 and I have a backdoor flush draw. In retrospect a bet/3-bet looks pretty sweet, but the flop gets checked thru and the turn is a 9 giving me a flush draw. I lead turn and he calls. The river is a 4 giving me a flush. Very interesting river card because it does very little for my relative hand strength. I should have value bet the river though. As played he checks behind QQJ2 and pretty much owned me on this hand.

Hand 8: This is a hand with post-hand commentary. I'm pretty sure this is a prime example of a hand that should certainly be led most of the time. A 75/10/2.5 with 50bb opens the cutoff for a minraise and I call in the BB with (AT6)T. As I was writing this I was just about to leave out the fact that I think you could argue for a fold preflop, since I didn't think of that while playing, but I'm wondering if that in itself could be a leak in my preflop play. With a 75/10 it just depends on whether you feel that he opens 10 percent of hands whenever the hell he feels like it or if he methodically opens the best 10% of hands. There may be enough value with the nut flush potential and top or medium set to play here even if the latter is true about his game. The flop is AdTd8c. I check, he bets half pot, and I pot. He calls and we go to the turn with 1.5pot left behind and it's a 5d completing the flush. I simply pot out here planning to give my opponent 38% odds on his shove that I will have to call getting 7:1 even though he will know he doesn't have any fold equity. Although that's really not as much of a consideration in this spot because when he calls he either has me at 22.5% with a flush or nearly dead with top set of aces. Given that I checkraised the flop, I have to make this play. The play hinges on the ability to ever fold out top set of aces which we have no equity against or if called by the nut flush, there is a 22.5% chance of rivering a full house. He's going to have a lot of flushes here but because he is so loose and also so aggressive on the flop, he will have a lot of J9xx hands that I would love to have fold the turn and A8xx hands that I don't get any further action from anyhow.

Hand 9: Unconventional but strong player in the cutoff open limps and I 3x on the button with 120bb's and KQ97ds. The SB and BB call and limper calls. The flop is JT4 without my flushdraw but I have backdoor flush possibilities and a 17-wrap with all nut straight outs. However, it's on a board with a flush draw, reducing the hand's equity vs opponents' ranges. BB leads and cutoff pots, and I cold-call. I'm wondering if I should just be folding here considering the action might get reopened by the BB and one opponent could have top set and the other the nut flush draw. If that's the case I have about 30.3% equity, so after cold-calling it would be impossible to fold (I ran my hand vs Ac7d6d5c and JsJh3c2c, which balances redraws OK I think). In any case, the BB folded on the flop and then the turn was the 5c and he potted.

Hand 10: The 75/10 from earlier limps the button and I check with T(T42). Flop comes A96r and goes check/check. Turn is an offsuit 7 and I pot it. He calls and the river is a K. I think this is a good spot to pick up the pot by potting it again, making it unlikely he will call twice with two pair on this board, especially when you might be value betting AKxx, as he is unlikely to have it. I will of course get called by 85xx but the TT's are nice blockers to the nut straight, reducing the hands that will call combinatorically.

Hand 11: Loose aggressive cutoff opens and I 3-bet with QQ33ss on the button 110bb deep. Flop is QJ4 with 2 hearts but I have a backdoor flush draw. Check-pot-pot-pot on the flop. Turn T of hearts. Obviously, I am now behind. River T of clubs. Wow.. was that me hitting a redraw? That was euphoric.

Hand 12: Solid reg opens on the button 100bb deep. I call JT(T8) in the SB. Is this too loose? The hand went to showdown and he had K(64)2, so probably not.

Hand 13: Solid reg opens in middle position and I flat with (KJ)(T6), button calls. The flop is KJJr. Flop goes pot-pot-pot and I am good vs AJ82sss. I would think this should certainly be the bottom of his getting in range here. Too loose? Nah.

Hand 14: I open KK(J9) UTG and am called by solid reg in the BB. Flop is JT6 with 2 diamonds. He checks, I check behind. Damn, I should be c-betting with this hand here. Turn is a 7d. I don't really think you can turn the second nut blocker into a bluffraising hand since he's going to be super polarized here.

Hand 15: 55/30/2 opens in middle position, I call in the BB with KQT6ds, but we are slightly over 200bb deep. Flop is Q87 giving me two backdoor flush draws. I lead and get called. Turn is a 6 putting a flush draw but not either of mine. I lead out again and he folds. I like the way I played this hand. On the turn I can easily fold if raised, but if he calls me, I have outs/chop outs vs some of his hands and am actually getting value from others while definitely folding some hands with good equity vs me.

Hand 16: Solid reg opens on my BB and I 3-bet 175bb deep with QJ76ds. Flop is KhJdTd and I have second nut backdoor hearts to go with my open ended straight draw and second pair. He checks, I bet 2/3 pot. I don't think I like my c-bet here. I do have decent equity vs most of his range, but not vs most of his range that continues, and we are deep. It would seem a good candidate for a semi-bluff, but the key to look at here is that I'm repping broadway. This is a locked down board as Phil Galfond would say, and AQxx is only so much of my range here, so I'd rather save my semi-bluffs for hands like nut flush draws, sets, and two pair/wrap type hands I will have, maybe even Q9xx with diamonds type hands. Anyway, he calls, and the turn is the 3h. This is a pretty good card for my hand so when he checks, I bet again. He calls. River is the 8d completing the flush draw from the flop and I just checked behind. He turns over AK96ds (with nut heart draw) and scoops the pot with top pair. He obviously would have folded to a river bluff but I was surprised to see how thinly he peeled the flop. It's gotta be literally the bottom of his range. Oh well, I guess that's why you 3-bet deep and in position. Hand would have played much better without c-betting the flop though. As it were he had very good equity vs my hand.

Hand 17: Cutoff opens and I 3-bet AA85ss on the button 100bb deep, the 55/30/2 BB cold calls and the cutoff calls. I flop the nut flush on Q76 all spades. Checks to me, I bet close to pot and am called by the BB. The turn is the 8s and goes check/check. I messed up this hand. I should have put him in here on the turn. I have the nut flush and figured he would just get in the 2nd nut flush on the flop or bomb it on a non-pairing turn card. Since I have the 5s, there are almost no flushes below that. This leaves JTssxx, J9ssxx, and T9ssxx, one of which is a straight flush and the others have no equity vs me. All 3 of those hands and I will be getting it in on the river for sure if the turn goes check/check and the river is non-board pairing. I messed up my analysis of the hand, because I would never cold call a 3-bet with 77xx or 66xx hands and few QQxx hands. I just wasn't considering him having a set because I wouldn't often, and that's how I've been doing most of my range analysis while trying to learn PLO. The other problem with my logic is the fact that we're getting it in on the river vs the 2 flushes and 1 straight flush is not relevant, because they will all call the turn anyhow, and furthermore, if the river is board-pairing, the 2 flushes will fold and the straight flush will obviously not. If I bomb the turn I can make him fold his set's 23% equity in the 70bb pot or call with the worst of it. At least I realized my mistake, because when the river was a board-pairing 7, I checked behind the nut flush and he showed sixes full.

Hand 18: Cutoff open limps and solid reg I'm 140bb deep with completes and I check the BB with KQ86ds. Flop is A88 with a flush draw. SB pots and I call, cutoff folds. Turn is a 6, the SB pots again, and I repot. I don't think I should be raising here this light unless I'm going to have a ton of bluffs here. But I don't think I should be floating very light. I'm putting myself in a spot where I hate being reraised and have no equity when beat.

Hand 19: Poster cutoff checks, I 3x on the button with AA42ss and get called by both blinds and the poster. Flop is J72 with my heart draw. Checks to the poster who minbets, and I just pretend like he didn't, so raise him to a 2/3 pot bet. The 50/20/5 I started the hand 135bb deep with check/3-bets less than pot. Folds to me and I call. Turn is an offsuit T and he bets under 2/3 pot. I call. The river is a 2 of hearts giving me the nut flush but pairing the board and he leads all-in giving me 3:1 on a call.

Hand 20: I open TT99r in middle position and am called by the 55/30/2 button who I'm 195bb deep with. The flop is Qd8c4s. I pot and he calls. Turn 3d. I barrel and he calls. The river is the 7d bringing the backdoor flush. I check and he bets 4/5 pot. Given we have some serious blockers to wrap type hands and 65xx would probably be checking behind on the river, does it make his hand range from the flop so comprised of made hands that a checkraise bluff would be profitable on the river? Probably not because a lot of his range for calling two barrels, even made hands that won't raise, will have backdoor flush draws that will continue upon turning the flush draw. I think this play would be profitable if there was also a flush draw on the flop that missed.

Hand 21: UTG limps, button pots, I repot in the BB with AAJJr even though I'm 145bb deep with the button. UTG limper cold calls, button repots, and I repot. UTG shows KK63sss and button shows AAT5r. Button rivers tens and fives on me. I lost 145bb's on the hand while never more than 35% to win the main pot and yet won over 10 big blinds worth of EV on the hand. Such is PLO.

December Vegas Trip

2009-12-20T17:14:00.004-05:00

I’ve never blogged extensively about any of my trips to Vegas so maybe this will be interesting to read and look back on. Early in the morning the day after my last final, my brother, Mike, Clark, and I all headed to the airport to fly out to Vegas. In a way, we are all much different types of poker players. I am the college student who just so happens to be very good at poker and is considering making a career of it. However, each of my traveling partners has planned to come out to Vegas with me via different paths and they have different goals.

My brother Ben works for a small, private engineering consulting firm and boasts very flexible hours and plays tons of online poker. He got into poker after my success with a decent amount of guidance from me. He has played significantly more hands online this year than I have ever played in my life, and he spends a great deal of time studying and learning about the game. He is a marginal winner in small stakes online games over hundreds of thousands of hands. He is a very conservative person by nature, and it remains to be seen how he will adjust to playing live poker, as he’s never been to Vegas before. I am pretty confident that he could beat 5/10 live in Vegas and would probably stake him for it, but he wants to play 2/5 on his own dime on this trip, which I think is a fine starting point.

Like Ben, Mike has probably played more hands of poker than me this year, and he is also a marginal winner online, although in smaller games than my brother. However, Mike has never built up a big bankroll because he’s always been paying bills out of his winnings. One big thing working against Mike for this trip is that he specializes in games with a cap on the amount bet per hand and has little experience playing deeper stacked games that require important decisions on the turn and river. This combined with the fact that Mike does not spend nearly as much time working to improve his poker game as my brother has me a little worried about his transition to the types of games he will be playing in on this trip. That’s not to say he doesn’t want the end result of being a better poker player, he just simply either does not have the time to or does not want to put in the type of work and effort required to make some big jumps in poker skill. Having said all of that, I was going to stake Mike for 1/2 while we are out there. I am not too worried that this is larger stakes than he plays for online or that he has little experience playing live. Mike knows a lot about the poker world and has some experience with the type of mentality and technical poker skills it takes to be a winner. In addition, there are enough tourists and players with absolutely no clue playing 1/2 in Vegas who are practically lighting money on fire such that I expect Mike to do just fine. I’m interested to see what kinds of big hands Mike gets in and how he plays them.

Clark recently landed a very nice job and views poker as a hobby that could potentially be very profitable. While Ben and Mike are similar in several ways, Clark is a much different player. He doesn’t play too much online poker and prefers to play live where the competition is easier. Also unlike Ben and Mike, Clark got into poker even before I did but did not take the same approach to the game as me. Nowadays he calls me up often to talk about hands he’s played and I believe has learned a ton of poker concepts and ways of thinking about poker hands from us talking through decision points. Clark picks up concepts quickly and is a people person by nature. I’m confident in his ability to play deeper stacked live poker, and I agreed to stake him for 2/5 on this trip. This will be the third time I’ve staked Clark for some live games in public cardrooms.

I give these synopses of my traveling partners not only because they are obviously relevant to the trip, but because they are also the main people with whom I discuss poker. While they have all no doubt learned a lot about poker from me, they have all taught me something about my own game and have influenced the way I view myself as a poker player.

We all managed to get on the same flight out there that would hopefully land about 11am Pacific Time. I originally got this flight because I was thinking about playing in a $5k buy-in tournament that started at noon at the Bellagio. However, after sitting on the plane for about an hour, they finally announced that all passengers were to exit the plane as technical difficulties were going to delay the flight indefinitely. Not a good sign for the beginning of our trip. As we got off the plane, we saw there was a flight directly across from our gate that was going to Vegas and we all managed to get on it as standby passengers. This was fine except we had to come back to the Vegas airport later that evening to get our checked bags. Luckily it is only a 10 minute cab ride from the Bellagio.

Since we didn’t get into Vegas when I had hoped, I didn’t enter the $5k tournament. This ended up being fine because it didn’t draw that many players and the field looked decently tough. I played some 10/20 in the afternoon after checking in and won about 600 bucks. At 5pm in the Fontana room there was a $1600 buy-in super satellite that roughly paid an entry into the $15k main event starting Monday for every 10 players entered. The Fontana room is usually a type of lounge or bar that has an incredible view of the strip and the Bellagio Fountains, but for this week it’s where the poker tournaments were running, which was cool because I got to sit right by the windows in one of the satellites I played and it almost seemed like playing poker outside. I decided I wasn’t going to buy in to the $15k Bellagio 5-Diamond Doyle Brunson Classic, which is its official name, unless I was able to satellite in. However, I thought I’d give myself a reasonable shot at it since there were a number of opportunities to do so.

I played pretty well in the 5pm satellite. I lasted about 3 hours then busted on a pretty interesting hand. I had slightly above average chips, about 14k at 200/400 with a 25 ante. A guy that just got moved to the table opens for 1k and I flat with AhJd one off the button. The flop is J84 with 2 hearts and he checks to me. I bet 2200 and he min-checkraises me to 4400. I ship it and he tank calls with AKo. Turn is a king, gg. I didn’t play anything else that night but watched Eric Baldwin ship yet another tourney, the 1k rebuy, that was finishing up right after my tournament for about 265k. Eric won the event that I final tabled at this year’s WSOP and is an excellent live tournament player and great guy. This nearly clinched Player of the Year for him, which he did end up winning, and I’m glad to see him win that prestigious honor.

The next day was pretty uneventful. I woke up really early Vegas time and played in a shorthanded 10/20 game with a 40 straddle. On one of the first few hands, I 5-bet shipped JJ vs Nenad Medic out of the small blind with about a 70bb stack and won on a low flop against what almost certainly was AK. After he beat me out of a pretty large pot about an hour later I quit the game down about 600. The game wasn’t that good, and I’ve become an expert at game selection and when to quit. These are two vastly underrated skills for the professional poker player that I’ve developed very well. The game wasn’t good, didn’t look like it was going to get better soon, none of my opponents were tilting, and I had just lost a large pot – pretty much a perfect quitting time. Anyway, the rest of the day I played two of the $1600 super satellites and busted both at the same 200/400/25 level that I had busted the day before. Once after getting in enough of my stack preflop with AQo such that I had a potsized bet left, shipping the flop, and having someone flop a set on me, and the other by running QQ into KK with 20bb.

On Monday the $15k tournament started and it looked like it sported a very tough field. I played a soft single table sit-n-go satellite with an $1800 buy-in that paid one seat to the main event. Then I remembered how much I hate those things. Not only did I have to wait around nearly an hour for enough players to start after I bought in, but you start 10-handed and the blinds rise so fast that eventually everyone’s shipping in their 8bb stacks and as such it becomes a race to see who gets luckiest. The players in those in general play pretty bad, but the structure terribly limits your edge. I busted on a super standard 7bb shove with A5o and ran into A2o that flopped a deuce. I decided to give up on entering the $15k tournament and just play cash games the rest of the trip. That night I played a pretty long session of 10/20. The game was super soft but I couldn’t win any of a very rich businessman’s money even though he dropped like 15k in the game. I played until the game broke and ended up losing $400. So nothing eventful had really happened yet; I decided to give up on playing in the $15k tournament, especially after seeing how tough the field ended up being, and already I’m down 7k on the trip. But there were 2 full days left of cash games to be played.

On Tuesday I spent some time studying PLO concepts and then went down in the afternoon to play some 10/20. The games were alright and I managed to actually make a couple hands and won $1600. Here is an interesting hand from that 10/20 game. I’m sitting with about 5k and 5 limpers to me in the small blind. I complete and the big blind checks. So 7 of us to a flop of 5d3c2d. I check it checks around to a regular in middle position who bets out 80, the next player makes it 260 and the button cold-calls the 260. I’m next to act and I make it 1100. A guy in early position who had only invested the $20 he put in preflop tank folds and later exclaims it was the biggest fold he ever made with a set of deuces (lol). Snap folds back around to the button who tank calls my raise and has about 1200 left or so going into the turn. The turn is an offsuit K and I put the guy all-in and he tanks again and folds. I’ll let the reader guess what I had, but I think my hand is pretty face up and for this reason I was considering even making a larger raise on the flop, especially since I was quite a bit deeper against some of the guys in the hand. I find it kind of funny how sometimes in live poker you have to just sit around waiting for the opponent to tank and make some kind of decision. Maybe it’s just how experienced and good I am that I am never surprised by the next card or whatever action somebody takes. It’s probably just the lack of the ability of most people I was playing against to actually put me in tough spots. I guess that’s just good game selection. I seriously doubt I ever took more than 30 seconds to make any decision the entire time I was out in Vegas this past week.

Anyhow shortly after this hand I happened to look over and see that a 25/50 game just started and it had the wealthy businessman from the night before as well as a guy that said he was traveling with Guy in it. Right from the start we made a mandatory 100 straddle and this game filled up so fast. I actually lost a decent sized pot and had to go get some money from the main cage to top up. I ended up losing a few k while the game was great, but won it back as it got worse and actually ended perfectly even in that game. I took a dinner break instead of waiting around to make it into the main game and came back to play in the game a couple hours later as it got going again at 25/50 with a 100 ante on the big blind. I ended up winning $2600 in this game even though it was pretty tough.

Then as the game broke I spent several hours playing Chinese poker against Alec Torelli. I have played some against him online before and he is a cool guy and interesting person to meet. We were playing for high for $100/pt, which I actually haven’t spent as much time practicing, but I felt pretty confident in my game. I started off quickly up almost 3k, but I started to doubt my edge, even though because of the nature of the game I know I was giving up almost nothing, because some of the Vegas regs seemed to think Alec was hustling me and he played well and set his hands so fast. A lot of it probably had to do with how amateurish I look trying to decide the payouts and how slow I set my hands. But then a Vegas reg came and sat in the game who had apparently not really ever played Chinese before and dropped several k. After he left, we started to alternate between deuce to seven and high for a little while but probably only played about 5 or 6 of those hands total. We ended the session on a downswing and I lost about 1500 playing Chinese, which is only 15pts of course. There is a whole lot of variance in high with bonuses, probably less so in 2-7. I still have improvement that I can make in both games I think. Eventually I want to get to be almost unbeatable at those forms of Chinese. Then I have to somehow get quicker at setting my hands to get more hands per hour.

Wednesday I came into the poker room in the early afternoon to check out the action and was surprised to see that there was already a very juicy 50/100 PLO game running with both Sammy and Devilfish in it. I was feeling pretty confident about my PLO game and walked over just in time to see Devilfish show down AJ74 rainbow from early position on a 665K3 board to scoop a large pot from Sammy. I immediately put my name on the list but someone told me the list was incredibly long. So I put my name down for 10/20 and 25/50NL too. I played 10/20 for a few orbits before we started a three blind 25/50/100PLO must-move. The game was tough, but I was just going to test the waters since I think I was one of the first on the list for the main game. I only played several orbits before being called for the 25/50NL game. I was glad to leave the PLO game because it wasn’t that good and they had raised the stakes of the main game so we were no longer a must-move. Also 25/50/100 PLO is easily too high stakes for me, especially considering my lack of PLO experience. I did make a couple good plays though. One that stood out in my mind was there was an open limper in early position playing 6 handed, I limped behind with QJhT2h, there was another limper behind me, and we saw the flop 4 way. The flop came T64 with 2 diamonds and 1 heart giving me top pair with a backdoor flush draw. The early position limper bet 400, I called, and the others folded. The turn was the Qh, giving me top two with a flush draw. He checked to me, I bet 800, and he called. The river was the Kc and he pretty quickly led into me for 2500. He’s obviously repping broadway, but I didn’t think there would be that many combos in his range for leading the flop and that his hand probably had way more missed draws the way he played it. I think it’s also like the perfect river card to lead bluff against an unknown so I decided to call and was good. I ended up winning several pots in the PLO game in the several orbits I was there for a 9k win. This meant it was actually the first time I was in the black for the entire trip.

However, it didn’t last for too long. I was up about 6k in the 25/50 with 100 ante NL game at my highest, about 2 or 3 hours into the session, before I lost a series of pots, and then got stacked on the following after topping up every time. I’m about 12k deep at this point, and a Vegas regular who I’d never played with before and just got moved to the table within the hour raised to 200 from middle position. There was 1 caller and I made it 900 from the SB with red kings. The initial raiser calls and the next guy folds. We see a flop of QJ8 with a diamond draw. This flop really sucks as his range is going to have a lot of two pair and even sets in it. We’re deep enough that I hate getting raised on the flop if I c-bet, and there are a ton of turns that suck if I c-bet and am called, so I decide to check. He bet 2k when I checked. I actually thought about folding because I really got the feeling that he was super strong when he bet, but I figured that would be too weak tight and I’m not nearly confident enough in my ability to spot tells on a Vegas reg to do that. I figure my hand is nearly face up if I check-call, so I checkraised all-in and got snapped by JJ. It’s possible I should have check/called, and it’s possible that he wouldn’t have bet the flop with like AQ/KQ, but I don’t really have a plan for a ton of turns if I do that and we’d still have 9k effective in a 6k pot so it would really suck and I’d probably end up folding the best hand on a lot of later streets. I’m still not really sure what I make of this hand. On the last hand of the night I started with about 9.5k. Early position raised to 200 and got 4 callers, and I see AQo in the BB. I made it 1100 and only one guy folded so I got 4 callers also. So there’s about 6k in the pot and the flop is QQ5 rainbow. I decide to check since I had been playing pretty ABC for a while and I had a read on a couple guys in the pot that they would be likely to continue in the pot on later streets even without a queen if I showed any weakness. The way I figured it I would stack any other queen and get felted by 55, bet or no bet, since the pot was so large relative to my stack. Anyhow, it got checked through and the turn was a 4 with still no flush draw. I bet 2500, get called by the initial preflop raiser, then Elky on the button insta-shipped it and I called and the third guy in the pot folded. He was full with 44 and had me drawing very slim. Obviously the outcome is probably different if I c-bet the flop, but my read was correct on the initial preflop raiser in that he put in 2500 with what was almost certainly not a Q. Anyhow I dropped like 28k in that 25/50/100 game and flew back with my brother the next morning, so ended up losing about 23.5k on the trip. Overall I feel like I played very well on the trip and just ran below average. I am very satisfied with my live game. One of the main things I learned is that I think I gave most live regs credit for being more tricky than they actually are. Some regs just play completely abc and will never make a creative move to get you off a specific holding. When they take certain lines they will always have it and I need to adjust to that in the future.

I know this post doesn’t contain much about our Vegas trip other than poker or much about Ben, Mike, and Clark like it might have seemed it would from the beginning. Clark left Monday and Mike left Tuesday night, and overall we all didn’t do that well, but since I didn’t even really see them play any I’ll leave their takes on the trip for themselves.

Right now I’m at my parents’ house, and I’ve been studying some PLO and feel like I’m getting better and better at the game. Also I saw Avatar in 3d last night and it has some excellent special effects and graphics. I give it 3-4 stars out of 5. Merry Christmas!

Also, check out these two links:

Very interesting article about poker and life from David Sklansky:
http://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/issue33/sklansky-schoonmaker-poker-good-for-you.php

Hilarious Bling Blang Blow video in Edgar Allan Poe form:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPvyBxuKePE

Some Poker

2009-12-04T15:10:00.003-05:00

Stymied by inaccurate calculations for VPPs, I believe I will not meet one of my posted goals, which is to attain Supernova status by the end of this calendar year. Based on my most accurate estimates, I'm getting about 67 hands per table hour, and 0.87 VPPs per hand while playing $1/$2 PLO on Stars. As per my goal of developing fully into an unstoppable PLO force, I really don't want to play more than 6 tables at once during my learning phase, which is currently underway. Doing some simple calculations, I would need to play over 232 hours of 6-tabling $200PLO over the next 27 days to achieve Supernova this year.

Now, this wouldn't be impossible if I felt it was necessary enough for my long-term development. However, I'm going to pass on this goal in an effort to continue to maximize my long-term bankroll growth without a strict adherence to goals which I believe no longer fit my cause. Instead, I'm going to focus more of my time from playing towards doing well enough on my finals next week to pass all my classes, making the most of my trip to the Bellagio with my brother, Mike, and Clark, which is upcoming on the 12th, and exhausting the materials I have for PLO study.

I actually anticipate having a pretty good finals week. Only one class is up in the air in terms of passing or not, a 2nd year level electrical engineering class of which I have no interest in learning the material other than for trying to pass the class.

Next Saturday I'm leaving for the Bellagio and that trip should be real fun. It will be the first time I've gone on a trip with poker-playing friends to Vegas. In fact, my brother, Mike, and Clark are probably the 3 people who I talk poker with the most who play poker. The 5-diamond $15k buy-in tournament will be starting at the Bellagio on Monday and I'm going to try to satellite into it as well as play in some of the side games, hopefully mostly PLO if it's running by itself.

I'm working on getting through Tom's PLO book, but I'm only a couple chapters in. It's easily the most comprehensive resource on PLO ever assembled, and I think I can say that with complete certainty. It's hundreds of pages long, and the first two volumes will be full completed soon. It has tons of theoretical and empirical insight, filled with charts, graphs, and text explaining everything you might want to know about PLO. It's very mathematical by nature and I think there is a lot to be learned if the information is analyzed correctly. I'm pretty excited about finishing it as well as a great book by Rob Hollink and Rolf Slotboom about shorthanded PLO strategy. I just picked it up online and it has turned out to be very surprisingly good.

I want to leave with a quote from The Cincinnati Kid that someone recently quoted. I think it's very interesting and maybe says something about my life, whether poker is the direction for it or not.

"On his sixteenth birthday he started running himself ragged trying to figure out why there was a chance for him with cards and why it appealed to him; he made a serious effort to find out and it was not too long, because he really pressed this thing, before he discovered that a betting man with an honest dollar to back his judgement on a subject was equal to anyone, anywhere, any time, and that from time immemorial there had been men who would bet, rich men with poor, smart men with stupid men, black men with white men. The size of a man's bet was not a significant factor, or what he bet on, nor how he bet. It was the idea of a man backing his judgement with something of value and taking the chance of losing. He took his pursuit further and discovered that businessmen were betting on their judgement, and young couples getting married were betting on their judgement, and that a stud game was the same thing, only that it was a very narrow fraternity and did not contribute anything to society, or to the economy, or to the development of a town, or a man, or anything at all, except that it was a way for a man to go, and a way a man might have of making his way. He saw, accurately, that there was not difference between the stud man and the stocks and bonds man, and when he saw that he could dedicate his life to learning stocks and bonds, or real estate, and that it would still be his judgement he would be backing with a bet, he turned back to cards because he had been with cards for so long a time and he had a head start. And then he recognized that he had this truly fine feeling for them."

Tiger

2009-12-04T14:36:00.003-05:00

Tiger Woods has been getting a lot of shit from the world recently. It is apparent that he has privately been carrying on multiple affairs and gone to elaborate lengths to hide them from anyone and everyone. He has in some sense destroyed his wife Elin's life, as far as I can tell. What does this say about Tiger? Equally as interesting to me, does it say something about the people who were most supportive of him and considered him a hero and are now ripping into him?

We all admire Tiger's drive and ability, his focus and dedication and success. We all strove (and do strive) to be like Tiger in those respects. However, what if the very inherent things about Tiger's personality that make him the greatest golfer that ever lived also make him a deceitful liar? I'm saying that the admirable qualities that Tiger possesses are probably only made possible by an incredible amount of testosterone and a natural very icy cold distanced feel when facing what would be extreme feelings for others (stress, success, disappointment).

In other words, Tiger is so naturally competitive that in an evolutionary sense, he is not only the greatest golfer in our society, he is also the type of guy that would be having children with all of the women around him 10,000 years ago.

To idolize Tiger for one part of his personality, and then throw stones at him when you realize the full essence of his being, is a different, but maybe equally detestable act that society has committed against him. The entire world has told Tiger that he is all that is great, while secretly Tiger knows that he wasn't and has had to live discreetly. What a burden must have been on his shoulders, placed there by the very people who are now giving him the most grief.

Like most things, this made me think of poker in a way. When I was spending the most time studying poker concepts, playing and improving my game, other parts of my life suffered. When I was striving for poker greatness, I didn't see some of the "sacrifices" I'd made as such, I was simply on a one-track path to poker success.

The world we live in is very competitive. To achieve something great in this world, you must do something great on your way there. I would argue that it's more significant for the long run that you understand what specific opportunity costs you will be undertaking to achieve your goals. Apparently for Tiger it was succumbing to temptation and losing the clarity of thought that entering into a committed marriage requires. Tiger is to blame and must work out his problems on his own, but I believe the lesson for others is to understand that "all that glitters is not gold" and that there are negative implications on some level for any situation.

Happy Thanksgiving

2009-11-26T10:41:00.002-05:00

I played a session last night, about 1000 hands and achieved Silver VIP status. I ran 7 buy-ins above EV though. Yikes. Should have lost 6 buy-ins, but I won about $200. I also cleared a $300 deposit bonus that required 7500VPP to clear. I had forgotten about it after depositing sometime in August, so it was a nice bonus.

My friend won the Atlanta Thanksgiving Day Marathon today and was coached by my other good friend. I stayed up too late playing poker to make it, but that's pretty cool except that I had action on the field and laid pretty good odds about 2 months ago. He proved wrong the doubters and got in the best shape of his life. I guess that's what I'm doing too.

I'm about to drive to my parents' house for Thanksgiving for a couple days. Not expecting to play much poker but I'm bringing my laptop.

Currently: Silver VIP, 1382 VPPs to Gold, 81,742 to Supernova

PLO on PokerStars just got that much tougher, or How I set some Concrete Goals

2009-11-25T21:32:00.003-05:00

I finally feel a little bit less busy for a few days, and I've taken the time to work out some concrete goals regarding poker for the short, medium, and long term. Goal setting is very important and a skill that I've lacked this year. Playing poker without direction and on a whim without proper preparation is simply not conducive to success. Hopefully I will be able to use this blog to keep me accountable for reaching my goals. I'm planning on posting in good times and in bad, with updates more frequently than my current blogging record indicates.

There are two main influences behind the goals that I have set. The first influence is that of the form of poker Pot-Limit Omaha, which will hereby be referenced as PLO. The increasing prevalence of PLO, with large games running both online and around the live tournament circuit, is kind of a new trend for the poker community. I say kind of because that statement comes with a couple caveats. PLO is really not a new game itself. It's been around a long time and has historically been played a lot in Europe and the southern United States. While PLO has been around for a while, it's starting to become increasingly popular relative to No-Limit Hold'em. In the past 9 months to a year, it's been growing a lot as a game, and I don't think it's just a trend.

PLO, judged on its qualities relative to other poker games, provides for a more ideal game. First, PLO has a lot of variance – a whole lot of variance. This is great for a few reasons, the most obvious being that it in and of itself allows for a larger edge. Playing a game that you know has a ton of variance and being able to handle swings well, both from a bankroll and a temperament perspective, creates edge over players who will not handle the variance well and tend to tilt. Another great characteristic of the increased variance is that it makes it far more likely a random poker player will have short term good fortune and therefore overestimate their ability. Another great quality of PLO is that it is deceptively different from No-Limit Hold'em, a game which the vast majority of poker players have some level of experience. For this reason, some types of players new to PLO will make predictable mistakes. I think the combinatorics of PLO allow for a greater winrate as well. The number of unique hands a player will be dealt is so many orders of magnitude larger than that of NLHE, and that makes it pretty impossible to create a reasonable cookie-cutter strategy that can be universally applied. Finally, the greatest quality of PLO for the long-term is that many people play it poorly and there are plenty of people willing to play it for quite high stakes that are relatively not very good. There are enough PLO games that run at high enough stakes and with enough regularity that there is a lot of opportunity for taking a long-term approach to becoming great at PLO.

Before I introduce my new goals, I want to elaborate on the other main influence which is the PokerStars VIP Program. For the poker player putting in enough volume, the PokerStars VIP Program equates to the most attractive player rewards package in all of online poker. The fundamental unit of measure for the VIP Program is the VPP, which is essentially directly proportional to how much rake you generate. Earning different levels of VPPs over various periods of time earns you the status of either BronzeStar (base level), SilverStar, GoldStar, PlatinumStar, Supernova, or Supernova Elite. BronzeStar is the base level at which a player starts. If you earn 1200 VPPs in a calendar month, you'll move up to SilverStar. Get 3000 VPPs in a month and move up to GoldStar. Similarly, 7500 VPPs in a month will get you PlatinumStar. Supernova is the first VIP level based off of yearly achievement. To get this you need 100,000 VPPs in a calendar year. Supernova Elite requires 1,000,000 VPPs in a calendar year. BronzeStar has little value to the player, but move all the way up to Supernova Elite and the value is about $115,000 for the year (roughly estimated based on the value of the tournaments PokerStars will pay your entry for, the concierge value, the VPP Milestone Bonuses, and miscellaneous incentives).

So here's how all this relates to my goals. As of today November 25th, my current VIP status is Bronze, with 825 VPPs collected so far this month. I want to achieve Supernova, which is achieved on a yearly basis, by December 31, 2009. This means that I need to earn the remaining balance of the 100,000 VPPs over the last 37 days of the year. Because I have played sporadically on PokerStars throughout the year, I have 82,535 VPPs to be earned over the 37 days. Yes, that's correct – I earned about 17,000 VPPs over essentially the first 11 months of the year, and now my goal is to earn the last 82,535 required for Supernova over the last 37 days of the year. I'm starting my journey of earning the VPPs at $1/$2 PLO, where I've played 1044 hands so far this month (not all on PokerStars). Over that sample I am earning 0.87 VPPs per hand. Since playing so much and starting at these stakes is exactly what I need to do to master PLO, the goals fit in very well. After some amount of hands of (hopefully) crushing $200 buy-in PLO, I'll move up to 2/4, 3/6, and 5/10 successively, where I'll be earning more VPPs/hand as well as hopefully winning more $/hand while gaining lots of PLO experience.

I'm going to use this PLO “base” of moving up through the stakes, as well as the achievement of Supernova to catapult me into trying to achieve Supernova Elite for the calendar year of 2010. To do this I anticipate that I will need to play roughly 800,000 to 900,000 hands of midstakes PLO in 2010. This is significantly more hands than I've ever played before, and it will be a huge challenge. For the first 4 months of 2010 I'll be taking classes and anticipate graduating at the beginning of May. But for the next 8 months of the year, I'll have no excuse to not put in the volume that I “should” as a professional poker player. The only main time after April where I anticipate falling off pace for the task is in June and July when I will travel to the World Series of Poker again in Vegas and/or travel around Europe and go to World Cup in South Africa.

After plenty of experience at the mid-stakes, the long term goal for 2010 and beyond is to get to the point where I feel confident enough in my PLO game and have achieved a great level of proficiency at PLO such that I can beat high stakes PLO games both online and live.

As for the feasibility of these goal ranges, firstly, I'll state that I have only played about 15k hands of PLO lifetime and I don't think I've ever reached a VIP level higher than GoldStar (I have mostly played on Full Tilt in the past). Just based on these two facts alone, that I have no long-term winning record at PLO and that I have a history of not playing a ton of hands, I should objectively be at long odds to accomplish any of these goals. The only thing I have going for me is my career success in another big bet flop game. Besides this, all of my three goals (Supernova for 2009, Supernova Elite for 2010, or PLO mastery) look equally difficult to be achieved by an outside observer. I think I can do all three, and I'll be blogging about it to express my thoughts for further reflection, victory or failure.

Additionally, it is true that the feasibility of these goals depends on a large change in poker playing frequency, which one would expect to be very difficult. I think that I am so motivated to achieve the same level of proficiency in PLO as I had in NLHE before a hiatus from serious play, simply because the skill has such high value if accomplished.

Currently:
Bronze VIP level, 375 more VPP this month for Silver and 82,535 more VPP this year for Supernova

My Analysis on the Phil Ivey-Tom Dwan Hand

2009-10-14T21:58:00.003-04:00

The first thing I look at when I see a hand posted on the internet is who and what cards were shown down as the winner. I try to make associations about that player and what they did in the hand to make it significant. Then I look at who made a big corresponding action, because after all poker is about a story between two people, not an individual's cards. By the way, most hands posted are heads up by later streets in big bet games (no-limit and pot-limit), and those that are multiway on later streets take a longer time to analyze since they are often telling a larger story.

After figuring out the player to player interactions and what their cards were, I try to see how the play was significant and how the significance relates to strategy. This is almost always the toughest step. Let me demonstrate using the hand I posted at the end of the last blog.

Full Tilt Poker $300/$600 Pot Limit Omaha Hi $100 Ante - 3 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

Phil Ivey (SB): $122899.00
durrrr (BB): $83090.50
Patrik Antonius (BTN): $83983.50

Pre Flop: ($1200.00)
1 fold, Phil Ivey raises to $2100, durrrr calls $1500

Flop: ($4500.00) 8s Qh 4h (2 players)
Phil Ivey bets $3600, durrrr calls $3600

Turn: ($11700.00) Qc (2 players)
Phil Ivey bets $9000, durrrr raises to $26200, Phil Ivey calls $17200

River: ($64100.00) 9d (2 players)
Phil Ivey checks, durrrr requests TIME, durrrr checks

Final Pot: $64100.00
durrrr shows Tc Qs 4d 6h (a full house, Queens full of Fours)
durrrr wins $64099.00
(Rake: $1.00)

durrrr won the hand with a full house, Queens full of 4's with QT64 no suits (no ability to make a flush). Everyone knows durrrr is thought of by his peers as playing a lot of hands and doing a lot of bluffing and thin value betting. In this hand, the river went check/check by both players after a big raise on the turn by durrrr. The thing that's interesting about this hand is that durrrr showed down a good made hand that didn't improve on the river, and he did this without value betting the river. That he raised the turn, yet had the same made hand on the river after not expecting to have improved, but didn't bet for value in a spot where other people might, makes it interesting.

So I look closer at what happened. Phil Ivey was the other player in the hand and he called a big turn raise, but couldn't beat durrrr's hand on the river and made no effort to bluff. Because of the fact that the board is paired, durrrr's raise on the turn indicates either a bluff or a full house. So the fact that Ivey called the turn raise but didn't win at showdown means one of 3 things. Either he was calling the turn raise because he thought he could beat the hand durrrr was bluffing with, he was calling the turn raise because he thought he could beat a hand durrrr was raising for value, or he was calling the turn because he thought he could draw out.

Initially when I looked at this hand I ruled out all three of those options and thought durrrr may have not realized that he had a full house on the turn. But then I gave him credit for the fact that he wouldn't raise this three queens hand on the turn, having to call a shove, that could be drawing nearly dead to a made full house.

A lot of hold'em only players will have pretty much done the same thing (couldn't figure out which option it was). Except if they are really new to PLO they might not rule out option 1 as likely as a more experienced player might. An experienced player would rule out option 1 because there are not many hands that Phil Ivey will have here combinatorically that are good to catch bluffs with. Hands like AAxx don't have enough equity vs durrrr's bluffing range to call a turn raise and then check/guess the river unless you river one of the last two aces. He will play hands like 88xx this way, but like I said, there's not many of them. The second option from the last paragraph is not very possible either. Like I said, durrrr is representing a full house with his raise on the turn, and we already know that Ivey couldn't beat one of the worst full houses that includes a queen at showdown (Q4).

But a hold'em player will rule out option 3 as well, and that is what I believe is where great analysis leads to the correct scenario. Ivey actually was drawing, even though hold'em players don't instinctively think of this since they are programmed to think they are drawing dead if their opponent has a full house.

A hand that's much more likely for Ivey here than 88xx combinatorically is a hand like AKQJ or something almost as good. If he has that he has 22.5% equity, being essentially a 3.5 to 1 dog to make an unbeatable hand on the river and stack durrrr's likely worse full house. Essentially he is calling a raise of $17,200 more with possibly a 3.5 in 1 chance to take down a roughly $175k pot.

But not so fast. durrrr played great against Phil Ivey by not giving him the benefit of that implied situation where Phil Ivey would win durrrr's entire stack. Ivey didn't hit the 9, as he could have had Q9xx as part of his draw but obviously didn't or he would have won the pot at showdown. durrrr didn't know Ivey didn't hit, so his check implies that Ivey wouldn't have won that huge pot that he thought he might. durrrr's play says "Even though you're right that I wasn't bluffing, we can assume I won reciprocal money on that play, because it's more likely that you had AKQJ than 88xx, and you called a $17,200 raise to hit at best a 3.5 to 1 shot and would have only netted $46,900 from the call, instead of my stack". In some ways this isn't 100% true because we can actually probably give Ivey credit for playing the same way as durrrr and vice-versa from the turn on. But maybe Ivey would have tried to value bet the river, who knows. I also forgot to mention that Ivey would almost certainly have shipped the turn with 88xx because of the fact that durrrr could actually be raising the turn with a hand like AKQJ.

Finally, what does this really say about the relationship between durrrr and Phil Ivey at the pot-limit Omaha table? First, let's look at the preflop action. There is absolutely nothing special about QT64 rainbow (durrrr's starting hand). In fact, it is a well below-average hand. It doesn't make straights very well at all for an Omaha hand, it can't make a flush, and it doesn't have any good high card value. This says that durrrr is calling with an extremely wide range to Ivey's raise preflop, assumingly because even bad Omaha hands run relatively close in equity, and durrrr almost assuredly correctly assumes that because he is deep and in position, he can realize more equity than his hand is worth due to his position.

We can figure out what durrrr is thinking about Ivey by considering the other lines he could have taken from the flop onwards, and comparing them with the line he did choose to see why they were not as good or the one he chose was best. He called the flop because top and bottom is not that strong equity wise in PLO compared to the better made hands that Ivey could have, along with possibly having many drawing hands with tons of equity. He chose to exercise his position later in the hand.

The queen on the turn that made durrrr the full house was obviously a good card for him so would instinctively trigger the thought to raise, but let's look at why he might or might not have raised the turn. He might choose to not raise the turn if he felt that Phil Ivey would be bluffing the turn a lot, so as to allow him to possibly continue bluffing the river or value bet worse. The fact that he went ahead and raised the turn indicates that he either felt Ivey has a balanced game in the spot where the turn card pairs the top card on the board, or it could mean that he feels Ivey doesn't barrel as a bluff enough when the top card pairs the board.

The real way to learn poker is to think about hands like this. It's really amazing how much analysis you can make from a single hand. I probably thought of nearly all of this in about a minute or two. The reason you want to think about poker a lot away from the table is because it raises the number of unique thoughts you can have about a hand during the quick timing of the hand. Imagine if one could think out all of that I posted while the hand was going down. You would probably be durrrr.

Why I haven't been playing poker, why I'm not worried about finding a job, and why I think I'm a better poker player than ever before

2009-10-14T14:17:00.000-04:00

A lot of people in my life have been wondering what the hell I've been doing for the last 3 months with regards to poker. Many are calling me lazy, citing the fact that I haven't been playing much.

The truth is that, yeah, I haven't played that much in the past 3 months. I still enjoy poker and feel the desire to play and study the game, and I hate telling people that I just haven't been playing if poker is to look legitimate as a career. But it's true. It's like I want to play and study, improve and make money, but just not right now.

I've spent a lot of time recently trying to figure out why it is that I don't want to play right now. I tried to rationalize it at first, figuring that extra money doesn't really change my quality of life too much right now while I'm still in school and that I should just enjoy finishing up college. That's not too convincing though, because I don't have enough money to retire, so I'm effectively just putting off poker to be played later in life.

Then I thought I had an epiphany when I decided that I am just lazy. But at the core, that's not really true. How could I have spent so much time on athletics, school (until poker success), or on improving my poker game in the past if I wasn't stubbornly ambitious at heart? Even though I currently give a less than fair effort to my schoolwork, every time I've entertained the idea of dropping out of school, I've decided to finish.

So what is the real reason why I'm not printing money like I should be? If one is given the choice between watching The Big Lebowski for the 5th time or 2 hours worth of my EV from playing poker, I'm pretty sure everyone in their right mind would choose the latter at least most of the time. So why am I figuratively choosing the first option currently every time? There must be something about the act of playing poker that I'm fearing or for some reason trying to avoid.

Then the answer hit me all at once, but it was a lot of things. Part of it was a discovery I made suddenly very recently. Part of it came from a conversation with my brother. Part of it came from some realizations I made about my poker game slowly over the past 3 months. Let's start with a brief analysis of my poker career.

In early 2008, I ran hot and the games were easier. In 2nd quarter 2008, I ran bad, played bad, and I realized I had just run hot previously. That motivated me to put in a lot of work. In the second half of 2008, my winnings almost seemed exponential. At the end of 2008, I ended up playing in games that were over my bankroll, in games where I was a dog, and both, and I still won. I've played ridiculously high stakes online poker, winning and losing hundred thousand dollar pots. Despite how it sounds, I'm really not proud of this point in my career, but it is what it is. Because of how well I ran and how I got caught up in ambitiously but foolishly chasing bigger and bigger limits, I lost the appreciation for and ability to put in long hours to play and study and improve.

In early 2009, I played in a lot of big games, and to be honest, I wasn't quite as good as I thought I was. I just didn't quite understand the range versus range nuances that make great players great and ensure their job security. I hit a 40 buy-in downswing, a buy-in being anywhere from 1k-7k for the most part, and that really hurt my bankroll. At the heart of my 40 buy-in downswing was truly only a 15 buy-in downswing with another 25 buy-ins worth of purely terrible luck tacked on (losing way beyond expectation during all-in situations). A poker pro putting in any decent amount of volume should expect 15 buy-in downswings every once in a while. The problem was that I lost a lot of confidence due to the toll this one took on my bankroll. I realized that this shouldn't have affected me as much as it did when I was talking to my brother yesterday about a similar downswing he is experiencing. I should have put in more work, just like I advised him to do.

Also something I discovered recently is that during a period of 2009, I believe I was scammed out of some percentage of a decent starting salary worth of money. I know that's very ambiguous, but due to the nature of the situation I don't want to say anything further. The thought of being scammed out of that kind of money hits like a ton of bricks. As a poker player, it hurts thinking of yourself as a mark, especially because this is a situation that has also undoubtedly contributed to my lack of confidence in my game.

In addition, the games are tougher. It's true. If you're going to multitable 10/20+ no limit hold'em on Full Tilt or Stars, you really have to be great to make what people used to 3 years ago with no problem. And without regular play, it's hard to just jump back in to that. In fact, when I start playing a lot again it will definitely be focused on pot-limit Omaha and mixed games.

No doubt I ran really well at the world series this year, but it couldn't have come at a better time for my bankroll. The problem with my success at the WSOP though was that it really didn't help my confidence too much because I know how lucky you have to be in tournament poker to do as well as I did this summer.

I have definitely had my share of good fortune at the right times. But the bottom line is that I've had an overall pretty rough “2nd year” as a poker pro, and I've been reacting to it negatively. Unrealistic success has bred complacency which leads to unrealistic expectations and a lack of confidence when those expectations are not met. All things considered, including my lack of playing, I am pretty happy to be relatively slightly in the black for 2009.

However, there is plenty reason that I should be confident about my decision to pursue poker full time. Even though my results have not been overall outstanding this year, that's because poker is definitely something which you get out of it what you put in. I now know better than ever what my poker ability is and what I can expect out of the game. I now know the level of understanding you must have of a game in order to be able to expect to be a winner against a tough lineup. And I fully believe that I am a better poker player than I was 3 months ago. I haven't completely stopped thinking about poker. Beyond a certain level for each individual, poker is all about experience, and that really doesn't just leave you. As long as I am willing to and capable of thinking critically about my game and reviewing my experiences, I will be able to find poker games to beat for a nice rate.

Once I graduate and pursue poker full time, but likely also on the way to that, I will be putting in some good time working on poker. And when I do, I fully expect to dominate the games I'm playing in again. Until that point, I just need to continue to enjoy life and learn about myself. Once I finish out 2 months of classes I will then hopefully cap off the part of my life that has been school with an interesting Senior Design project, which will essentially be my only class in the spring. Poker will always be there. I just have too much experience for it not to be.

PS. I think a lot can be learned if you are a good poker player and you spend your time going through the high stakes hands and try to figure out what people were thinking during the hands, especially the players you perceive to have an edge in the game. I'll leave one hand that I think a lot is going on in and see if you can figure out what durrrr is thinking throughout this hand and what it must mean about what he thinks of Phil Ivey's game.

Full Tilt Poker $300/$600 Pot Limit Omaha Hi $100 Ante - 3 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

Phil Ivey (SB): $122899.00
durrrr (BB): $83090.50
Patrik Antonius (BTN): $83983.50

Pre Flop: ($1200.00)
1 fold, Phil Ivey raises to $2100, durrrr calls $1500

Flop: ($4500.00) 8s Qh 4h (2 players)
Phil Ivey bets $3600, durrrr calls $3600

Turn: ($11700.00) Qc (2 players)
Phil Ivey bets $9000, durrrr raises to $26200, Phil Ivey calls $17200

River: ($64100.00) 9d (2 players)
Phil Ivey checks, durrrr requests TIME, durrrr checks

Final Pot: $64100.00
durrrr shows Tc Qs 4d 6h (a full house, Queens full of Fours)
durrrr wins $64099.00
(Rake: $1.00)

A Heads Up Match

2009-08-02T19:24:00.000-04:00

I'd like to dedicate this blog to my good friend and former roommate EC, who just moved back to his home state of Alabama to go to business school after graduating this spring and ending 4 years of living in Atlanta. I know he's an Alabama family man at heart so I'm sure the move is pretty permanent and I'm sad to see him leave Atlanta; he's a great guy.

Tuesday night as we were going to go out for a farewell dinner, I was pretty randomly challenged to play a high stakes heads up match by a local on the underground Atlanta poker scene through a contact. The player was Indian, female, probably about 40 years old, and apparently had heard of my success as of late and just wanted to test her mettle against me. And that she did. We played for about 11 hours and she beat me out of 5 buy-ins. There just wasn't much that went my way really. Of course now she and anyone that was there at the game or will hear about the game is going to assume she is such a great player and I'm an inferior one, just by the nature of how live players are so results oriented. lol deep stacked HU 500 hand sampleaments. Anyway, at least I figure that I'll probably permanently get action if I ever decide to play underground games in Atlanta in the future.

The cost of playing underground is just so high. Not only because the people hosting need to get a cut and the dealers need to be paid, but also just for a plethora of other reasons such as the lowered security vs a casino, the illegality of it, even the hassle of driving and carrying around or going to get cash, and especially when you figure in the opportunity cost of playing elsewhere (online), it's in almost all cases not +EV. I was excited because I'd get a match where I was certainly going to face an opponent of a skill level you can't often find online at the same stakes, but before getting so excited, I really should do some critical analysis.

The game is mostly just too slow and costly unless you are facing a real drooler. For instance, we had our match set up so that there was no rake, but the players would have to pay the dealer, and the house would be expecting some payment for hosting the game and guaranteeing the money in play (it's a lower quality "guarantee" than of a casino for sure, but not much EV is lost). I didn't pay either parties since I lost the match, but apparently the going rate for dealers in Atlanta is $50/hr. So I'm guessing she paid the dealers about $500, and I'm sure the house didn't get any less. That's a direct cost of about $2/hand, even averaged over hands where no flop was seen. More importantly, the cost is only spread out amongst 2 players. Given a relatively conservative estimate of winning $300/hr online with near 100% availability, I would need to be beating a $25/$50 heads up opponent out of at least 16 big blinds per 100 hands for it to even be neutral EV in terms of opportunity cost, and certainly significantly more given risks involved and driving time, etc. Maybe if I was actually a heads up specialist I could achieve that expectation or more vs her, but even then that's quite a burden to only be achieving EV neutrality.

Anyways, the match went as follows. We were playing 2 rounds of NLHE and 1 round of PLO. I'm up 2k pretty quickly, starting off the match minraising 100% of hands on the button so I can see more showdowns and more quickly get an idea of how she will play certain hands in different situations. Before long it is apparent that she has no intention of folding preflop either in or out of position in either game, which is pretty terribad, especially with how big my postflop edge is on her, especially in PLO.

Not long into the match she makes a very small 3-bet and I 4-bet call off her 60BB with QQ and run into KK. I top up with 5k more and before long she makes another small 3bet OOP. I call with T7hh 7k deep and the flop is T53hh. That's pretty much the nuts. We get it in on the flop and her JxJh holds. Just what I need, 2 coolers to start off the match down 10k and giving her momentum. I'm sure she would play much worse during the match if she started out down than I would, but nothing to do about that now. I reload for 10k.

At some point after this in PLO she called a pot-repot-repot on the river in a single raised pot where the flop and turn went check-check with the low end of a rivered straight. It hits me that she is terrible at PLO and when she asks me if she should have called I of course reassure her that it was a cooler. At some point I stop minraising the button every hand, even though it's accomplishing just what I want it to (enticing her to play every fucking hand from out of position), simply because I am more experienced playing postflop with a strategy of raising 3x with like 70-80% of hands.

In the next big hand, I have her covered 16k to 9k (even though I'm still down 4k on the match) and she does one of her minraise 3-bets OOP. I call and the flop is 854r. She c-bets. I realize that my range hits this flop but hers almost never does, since she doesn't seem to be reraising often enough to have much of a 3-bet bluff frequency and has only shown down solid hands after these 3bets. I decide to make a little less than 3x sized raise to about 1400 with air. She calls pretty quickly. The turn is another 8 and I think this is actually an ok card to barrel, but not ideal. The card helps my range way more than it helps hers, but furthermore she is actually the type of player that could bet/call the flop and then c/f the turn here with a hand like TT. I bet 1600 and she calls again pretty quickly. The river is a 6. She checks again and I put her all-in. I think this is the perfect card to shove river on if I'm going to. Maybe I could have shut down, but again I also think she's the type of player that is widely exploited by going beyond the commitment threshold with a hand and then folding. Maybe I wouldn't have bet turn with like 75, but honestly I don't think I'm super polarized here either. I'm shoving anything here on the river that beats an overpair. She actually doesn't take too long to call with KK. Her hand here is basically ace high because nearly all she beats is some amount of, nontrivial I guess, pure air that I decided to run a huge bluff with. There aren't even any flush draws on the flop. What's sick is that even though there's no difference between KK and nines or tens here, I feel she doesn't understand that and that she would have played those hands the exact same way but maybe folded the river some % of the time. I costly learn that she is not the type of player to ever fold aces or kings postflop. Ugh.

So I add on another 5k and I'm up to about 14k at my highest point and get grinded down all the way to like 1600 at my lowest point. From this amount, I work my way back up to 11k at my peak. This is a very long part of the match and I begin to learn a lot about how she plays. I make some river calls in spots where people bluff a lot but realize that she just keeps making slightly better hands. Furthermore, she is not betting the river with a polarized range, which is good. But she merges her range terribly. Somehow any time I make an ace high call she has like 4th pair. When I had 1600 I doubled up on the following hand. I open KK and she calls. She c/r's a K72 flop, I call. She shoves a T turn, I snap. She has QQ. That's the type of range merging I'm talking about. Where it's like she has no idea what she's doing but that she would have like accidentally owned my soul if I had like JJ. And of course she's just killing it by flopping sets and top pair in 3-bet pots.

On the last hand of the night, I have 4.5k and open J9cc. She makes a min 3bet and I call, obv. I flop a double gutter with backdoor flush draw on KT7. She c-bets 400 and I make it 1100. She calls. The turn is the Ac giving me a flush draw to go with my double gutter. She checks and insta calls my turn shove with AA that turned a set of aces. River bricks, gg 25k.

That was an 11 hour match, and I now have to go to the bank to get money, then drive 45 minutes home. She is on top of the world. I am a great sport. But taking such a loss is easier knowing that she has been trying to play a lot online recently. The money I lost will be online and flowing up the pyramidal poker economy before I can say "downswing".

Since Vegas

2009-07-22T03:49:00.000-04:00

So I was meaning to update my blog very often while I was in Vegas, and that maybe would have been really cool to read in detail while it was happening, but I didn't get around to it. Not that I was extremely busy the whole time I was in Vegas, but I just got behind and kept realizing I was going to have to sit down and write a lot to catch up and never did so. I still will have a Vegas trip report, but it won't be in as great of detail is all.

Anyways, I haven't really played much poker yet since coming back from Vegas on July 9th. Some people have been asking me what I've been doing with all my time then. I was also kind of interested myself, since the days have been flying by.

In the week and a half since I got back, I've gone to a family reunion, played 2 rounds of golf, played pickup baseball games on 2 days, hung out with friends, spent a weekend at the lake, and started up running again.

The lake at Thomas's place was a whole lot of fun by the way. I really enjoyed going out on the boat in the day and hanging out by a fire at night with friends. That's the good stuff in life.

Other than that I don't think I've accomplished a whole lot, though I have been preparing for some other pursuits and getting ready to start the grind again. But before I write up my Vegas trip report, I figured I'd go ahead and let the world know what I'm doing now while living at my parents house for another 3 weeks by writing down the stuff I did today.

I started off the day by waking up after 1pm. Actually didn't get that much sleep because the other night after getting back from the lake I slept for 14 hours and couldn't get to bed till 5:30 after doing that. I ate breakfast and then got online and shopped around for some clothing and accessories I was interested in. I make impulse purchases sometimes, but I often think about them for a while, if that makes any sense. Along with that, I read some product reviews and checked prices on large flat panel TV's that could possibly go in the living room to my new apartment. I ended up deciding that I'll wait until I have enough Full Tilt points to get the 50" Samsung in their store.

I booked a hotel for my trip to Tunica on August 6th to play in some poker tournaments they are having as part of a poker tournament series. There should be a lot of PLO action there and I can't wait to really improve on my PLO game and tear up the cash games there.

After that, I spent hours today contemplating the question of whether to own a gun or not to own a gun. I think this is a very important consideration for one's life that I really hadn't previously given much thought. One might argue that I've done fine so far in life without owning a firearm and there is no reason to do so now. But I don't think that's such a good argument against it. First of all, you cant just go through life pretending that firearms don't exist and just hoping that they never negatively affect you in any way. Whether you think about it much or not, firearms have played such an incredible role in shaping what our lives are and what our isolated little world is that my friends and I live in in ways that are so obvious and general that I don't think I need to discuss them.

Firstly, I would just point out that the Supreme Court has ruled that it is in fact my right according to the Second Amendment to own a gun, so it would be lawful. To be honest, it's mostly been a consideration for me from thinking about the increased armed robberies and shootings happening around Tech's campus that have been aimed at students. Other than the fact I don't live in the immediate area of the robberies and shootings, there are only minor differences between me and the student victims. The thing that bugs me a lot about the increased violence is just how helpless the victims seem during the whole situation. Their entire lives and existence are just sitting in the hands of people that are by all means unethical and possibly crazy. Although life is not fair, it just seems unjust on such a primitive level that you feel there must be something to do about it. But that doesn't necessarily mean I should own a gun. There are a lot of other things to consider.

Currently, I am sure that I am not skillful enough with a firearm to competently operate it in a difficult situation with adrenaline pumping. But even if I could, would it really increase my safety? Maybe it would just decrease my chances of being successfully robbed but increase my chances of being killed in the event of a robbery. Would it help my chances of protecting my property? Maybe. But at what value of property is it worth potentially killing someone to protect? If someone is trying to steal $200 from me, I don't know if I could honestly feel good about pulling the trigger. But you can't really just venture to ask them if they only want to take your $200 or shoot you in the face as well.

It seems to me, and whether this is true or not - I am hardly in a position to judge, that the police have not really done an excellent job by any means in deterring this pattern of crime. Especially not saving lives in the moment of the crime, at least. But this may surprise you. While doing my research, I came across something I didn't know about police. I guess I had just never put 2 and 2 together. It has been ruled several times in court that it is not actually the polices' duty to protect individual citizens from harm. Well you knew that, you don't have a police escort everywhere. But what significance does that really have for you as a potential crime victim? If you are killed as a helpless victim of a crime, but the police later find the perpetrator and put him behind bars, they have done their job. They have successfully protected society as a whole. But how does that help you? Do not equate someone getting killed with the police not successfully doing their job, or more significantly, assume that for every innocent person that is killed, there must be a significant ratio of people whose lives were saved by police in action at the scene of the crime.

The bottom line is that you need to take responsibility for your own safety. Does that mean owning a firearm? Maybe. Maybe the founders of the constitution were on to something with their Second Amendment.

I haven't decided whether I will be purchasing a firearm or not, but I imagine if I do I won't be concealed carrying. Even if I decide that I don't need or want one for self defense, it might be interesting to get one for the opportunity to exercise my Second Amendment right and take part in the rich history of owning a firearm, as well as being an interesting activity to undertake learning how to clean, operate, and fire a weapon.

Anyways, all of this thinking and research somehow led me to reading about the Kennedy assassination and related articles on wikipedia. I saw the Zapruder film for the first time today, and I recommend everybody see it if you haven't. It's online and a big part of the nation's history, even if it is maybe a little graphic.

Other stuff I did today - watch the Braves game online, signed an online petition for poker players' rights and looked up my representatives to maybe get around to sending them letters. I discussed poker over the phone with my brother, and discussed tax lien auction strategy at dinner with my dad.

I researched and compared potential credit cards and applied to get a new one with my bank. Also, I opened up my Charles Schwab account that I hadn't done anything with in years for online accessibility and chose to stop receiving paper monthly statements.

At the request of an open invitation to make poker videos for a training site, I brainstormed whether I should apply based on the implications that doing so might have on the games I play in and how it may impact my winrate in the future. I tried to estimate whether that would be worth the immediate profit from getting paid to make the videos and what impact, positive or negative, it may have on my poker reputation with regard to future off-the-felt deals. I decided that I will send in a video and see how it progresses.

I also researched different types of IRAs and tried to determine whether I should open one and which type if so. I decided that I won't open one at this point in my life.

I spent some time making changes to my fantasy baseball team that I have so severely neglected over the past 2 months. And I also ran 3 miles today and wrote up this blog.

So that's what I've been doing since Vegas. Today makes me seem really productive in comparison to some of the other days. I guess usually if I'm not playing poker or wasting time, I'm spending my time researching something or pondering life's important philosophical questions. Vegas trip report to come soon. It will probably be more interesting.

Vegas

2009-06-11T19:54:00.000-04:00

Well since my last blog I had about a week in Cumming before Vegas. I mostly just played poker and a little golf. I also played baseball a couple times with my brother again. Each time I injured myself making diving catches in the OF on a shitty field in shorts. But I also hit home runs in each game so ship that. I've been playing golf very well, for me at least. I made a couple adjustments to my grip and I'm hitting the ball really well. I'm driving it like 275 on a good shot, 260 consistently for sure. Only problem is occasionally I'll pull it pretty hard, which never used to happen. I'm chipping and putting very well for the most part too. When I played 9 on Sunday, I was only 2 over through 6, trying to keep pace with my dad, who ended up shooting a career best 38. But I blew up on the last couple of holes, actually hitting it over the green in 2 on the par 5 and it was unplayable. Then I hit it in the water on the last hole. I ended up with a 44 which is really not that bad I guess. Anyways, I probably won't be playing again for about a month since I'm in Vegas.

On Monday I had some errands to run before leaving town. I went to the bank to get a cashier's check and then to the T-Mobile store and got a Blackberry Curve 8900. I like it a lot but I haven't got internet set up for it yet. I checked into my flight the night before online and decided to spring for a business class upgrade. I'd never flown business class before and it was pretty awesome. I ended up sitting next to this really friendly, down to earth, and very attractive girl my age named Jackie who is finishing college and works part time as Snow White at Disney. She's in Vegas for a week with her family. We definitely took advantage of the free drinks available and had a great flight. When I got to the hotel to check in I tipped the guy working at the front desk a little bit and got a room with a great view of like 5 of Rio's pools and a night time view of the strip. The cage had to verify the cashier's check with my bank so I couldn't get my money on Tuesday night. I was tired though so no problem. I went and bought into Event 22 and played a little 1/2 PLO with the money I had on me. By the way, live 1/2 PLO is basically people handing out free money. I played for about an hour and a half before going to bed and won $230. Ship it!

Poker has been going well for the most part. Since my last blog I shipped 27k before leaving for Vegas, so that was a nice pad to the bankroll. I feel really good about my play in the 30BB cap games that have been running a lot. The action is great and there's usually some soft spots playing, and I've been running hot and crushing. I made what I think was my first call down with king high for a 3k pot too last week and felt good about that. Hopefully my solid results in these shortstacked games will bode well for my tournament play for the summer.

I haven't really played any cash games yet since I only got my money last night. However, I have played and busted out of two tournaments. I played Event 22 the $1500 NLHE Shootout. I didn't really recognize anyone at my table although I thought there were a couple good players. Shootouts are right up my alley as far as tournaments go, because they play like cash games. Also, in order to make the money, you have to win a heads-up match. So when we got down to playing with about 30bb in the shootout I really started chipping up and taking down a lot of pots.

I played well for the most part except two hands. This guy to my right was ordering gin and tonics and really didn't seem to care whether he busted or not. He had showed down a few hands and I could tell that he wasn't playing well at all. We are playing 7 handed at 100-200 and he has about 2600 chips, I have him covered. He limps UTG and I make it 600 with K9cc. Folds around to him and he limp reraises all-in. Now a limp reraise is usually a very strong play, and he would definitely do it with hands that dominate mine, but I'm getting better than 3 to 2 on a call. As I type this up, I realize now it's about 7 to 4 on a call, which is even better. I think that's a spot where I would have snapped him on the internet, and I should have used all my judgement about his play and the situation to definitely call there. I agonizingly folded and he showed JTcc. It's like for some reason I assume while playing live that people just play straightforward and never get out of line or make terrible plays, which is just not true. I guess it's because online, I can evaluate people's plays in terms of their betting pattern, and if someone looks like they are making a terrible play, I just assume they are in fact making a terrible play and that they are either drunk, stupid, tilting, or don't care. It's like if I'm playing live at the table with the guy, and none of drunk, stupid, tilting, or not caring applies, then I assume he must be playing alright. I just need to trust my poker skills and lower my expectations of how well others play.

The hand that I busted out on I felt like I played it horribly after it happened, but after a lot of thought I decided it wasn't as bad as it seemed. I definitely could have played it the standard way, which is probably much better, but I didn't make any horrible individual decisions, just when all added up the hand kind of looks terribad. I have KK on the button 6 handed with 15bb. Two limpers to me, and I smoothly limp behind. Now obviously I'm just shoving here the vast majority of the time, and despite what goes down on the flop, I think this is where I messed up the hand the most. It's basically jackpot if somebody from the blinds squeezes, especially because if that happened I felt it was very likely the terrible guy to my right would call the squeeze and then I could overcall with the virtual nuts and have a great situation and maybe triple up. The blinds were really not aggressive enough for this play though. Maybe in the games I usually play in they are, but here they weren't. I don't think I had enough reason to limp behind, even though you could definitely argue that it could have resulted in a very favorable situation. Anyways, we see the flop 5 ways, so there's an 1800 pot and I have about 6k left. The flop is JT9 rainbow and it checks to me. Obviously this is not a great flop, but I bet 700, which I really didn't mean to bet that small, but hopefully it gives someone with a one card straight draw to maybe think they have folding equity anyways. There are 3 folds and then the guy who had JT for the limp reraise earlier shoves it all-in and has me covered. Now even though it's only a limped pot and was 5 ways, it's only heads up now and the pot to stack ratio is only 3. I think the board would have to be even worse than that to get away from a flopped overpair 15bb deep, especially because he has KQ there about never (blockers, wouldn't overbet, didn't raise pre, etc.) So I call and he had flopped a straight with Q8, gg. So there is a bunch of stuff in that hand I could have done differently (shove pre, don't bet flop, don't call shove), and it probably looked horrible to the table, doing the old beginner slowplay then stack off with an overpair when you are "obviously" beat. Oh well.

Last night I walked by the Brasilia room late and I was thinking the 10k 2-7 lowball world championship might still be going on, finishing up Day 1 of it. So wayyy in the back of the big secondary ballroom is like every high stakes poker player all playing on just a few tables. I saw Phil Ivey playing about 20 yards away. I was kind of far away but I could faintly feel the aura. It was so weird, because it was so late at night and tucked away that I just stumbled on it, and there were relatively like no other spectators. I just stood there watching Phil and some of the other players for about a minute, just waiting for something to happen. I have no clue what I was expecting was gonna happen, because I couldn't even see the action at his table. Maybe I thought Phil was going to suddenly eat all his opponent's chips or something, I don't know.

So today I played Event 24. I got there a little late, but only lasted about 3 hours in this one also. I happened to get seated two to the right of my online nemesis and Full Tilt Pro Eric Liu. He was a nice guy and I enjoyed playing with him. We didn't really get in any pots together though, although he did bust me when I shoved over a loose old guy's 4bb open with only an 11bb stack.

There was only one hand here that I think I should have played differently and where I should have followed my instincts like I was talking about before. The fact that I didn't own this guy's soul kind of makes me cringe. Eric Liu went to the bathroom, so there is a big blind with no cards to defend it. Guy who opens light and sucks makes it 3x from 3 off the button, I call on the button with J7dd. Flop is QQ2 two hearts. He checks and looks back at his cards. At this point I thought to myself, the combination of the fact that he didn't c-bet, plus the fact that he looked at his cards again, makes it almost sure that he doesn't have a queen. I decided I was going to bet here and then barrel him off of whatever he had if he called, either slowing down or following through on a heart, I was yet undecided. So he check calls a half pot bet. The turn is an offsuit 5 and I bet 750 into a 1500 pot, leaving myself about 2700 more. He doesn't take too long and min check raises me. This is either like 55 or a bluff. Would someone terribad ACTUALLY play a queen like this? Again, I just didn't think someone would make such a fucking weird bluff either as I'm sitting there like, are you fucking serious? I was so close to shoving over his min c/r but finally folded. He showed the Td without saying anything or looking at me. Of course. Maybe he had QT but I doubt it, because the Qd was on the board, and it would be weird to show the T after that.

Anyways, I think I am really playing well but I just need to follow through with my reads in the live setting.

I'm not playing any tournament tomorrow, and I've got my money, so I'll probably grind some cash games tonight. I'm hoping there's a Chinese poker game going like there was 2 nights ago for $100/point. I'm really good at Chinese poker for high, but they were playing 2-7 the other night. I've been working on perfecting my Chinese poker 2-7 play and if that game runs a lot this summer at $100/point I might be licking my chops. However, it's not something I have a lot of experience doing so it's one of those things that looks real juicy but could backfire. We'll see.

Early Summer Activities

2009-06-02T23:06:00.000-04:00

Well, it's been a while between the first and second updates of my blog. Since my last post, I played a decent number of hands for about a week and ran ridiculously below all-in EV. Then I went on vacation to Charleston for a weekend with Lindsey and Ashley and that was a whole lot of fun, probably one of the best vacations I've taken. We stayed with a bunch of guys I didn't know at all but who knew the town really well and were fun to hang out with. We went to some cool beach spots, hit up local bars and events and even took a couple boats out to a remote island where a ton of people just go and party on the weekends. I love Charleston and there are definitely a lot of girls there, especially relative to Georgia Tech, so it's a fun place to be. Then I briefly came back only to drive to Destin the very next day. I stayed there for 5 nights with a bunch of friends and that was also a very fun vacation. We rented a very nice house almost right on the beach. The combination of the two trips just involved a ton of drinking and being at the beach and were pretty tiring overall, but fun.

Since I've been back for about a week and a half I have concentrated on playing a lot of PLO and trying to improve my game. I've really only come to the conclusion that I have a lot to learn and I know I haven't been playing that well in it. But it's turned out ok so far because I've been playing in some very soft games.

The World Series of Poker has started out in Vegas and talk of it has gotten me pretty motivated to grind. Last night I played for 8 hours straight for 4500 hands, which are both records for me. I won about 4k which is hopefully about expectation but who even knows anymore. One week from today I'm flying out to Vegas to stay for a month and I'm excited about that. By the way, I'll probably update the blog way more often when I'm out there. For the most part, I'll be treating it businesslike and I've decided to play a lot of the smaller events which I was originally not planning on doing. I probably have a sick ROI in most of the smaller events and my bankroll can no longer just pass that up. It also gives me a better shot to, dare I say, win a bracelet. That would be pretty awesome but I'm sure is at long odds. At any rate, I'll be grinding whenever I'm not playing an event. Hopefully there will be some sick juicy PLO or mixed games, maybe even juicy NL games, but if there isn't then I'm staying right there at the Rio so I can just go play online with relatively little hassle.

By all accounts I really have not played a lot of hands this year. But I have put in some and when I do play I have been running pretty bad. It's hard to keep saying that over tens of thousands of hands, especially because it's been dragged out over time like downswings will be if you don't put in the hands. But I'm not saying I've only been running bad. For the first few months of the year I was reaaallly experimenting with my game, playing a ton more pots than I ever had before, and realistically was probably playing way too loose. Obviously this caused me to get in a ton of tough and really marginal spots that I'd never seen before and obviously I made mistakes. And for a while this year I could just not find the fold button anywhere. Then there is the fact that I was at one point this year down 25 buy-ins in expected value when all-in. I don't care who you are, and especially if you're trying to do a lot of experimenting and are probably not playing that well in the first place, that will get you off your A-game. Needless to say, I have gotten very good at quitting this year. To be sure, that is actually a very good skill for a professional poker player to have, to be able to recognize when you're playing worse from getting frustrated or when your expectation is no longer very good in the game because other players are playing well. And I've got it near mastered.

But yeah, I think within the last few days especially, I've just finally decided, what am I doing? I just need to man up and grind my way into the black. I am way too good at poker to be down a decent chunk of cash for this entire last 5 months, especially I think evidenced by the fact that I taught my brother, from near scratch, to make more money playing poker than he is at his day job in the span of about the same 5 months. I mean, a lot of credit goes to his work ethic but at least that keeps me sane in terms of my playing abilities. I feel like I'm a way better player now than I was when I was on a sick heater last year, even though my results haven't been as great. I'm way more mature in terms of my poker habits now too. I've already begun to turn things around but hopefully I will have a really great rest of the summer.

Anyways, my phone really sucks, having had a pretty good beating in the last month or so. I just so happen to mention to my mom today that it is near broken and she tells me that we can get a new one for free. I was expecting to have to leg it out to December, but now I can get one of those newfangled Blackberrys that get internet. I think having one is really going to come in handy for long tournament days out in Vegas and I'm glad I happened to mention that. I'm going to try and see if I can get an iPhone with T-Mobile but I'm not really sure about how that might work yet and might just settle for a Blackberry.

I played baseball with my younger brother and a bunch of his friends last week and that was really fun. It wasn't fast pitch but still baseball. We had a full game with about 18 of us total, and I hadn't played in so long. They are all about 16 years old but it's still very fun. I got there late so I got stuck playing right field. Not two outs from me being there and with no warmup at all there was a long fly hit over my head. I probably hadn't caught a fly ball in about 10 years, but luckily I am a pretty natural baseball player and managed to catch it, and I had an assist later in the game. My first at bat I hit a ground ball to the third basemen and beat the throw for a single. I think they were kind of caught off guard by my speed, even though I am only fast relative to them. Then the next time up I caught a low pitch right on the sweet spot and sent a towering home run probably about 300 feet, which was easily far enough to clear the 270 foot fences and I think is pretty long in general to hit a 30 mph pitch. Anyways, I finished 3 for 4 with a single, triple, HR, RBI, 2 R, and a walk. 2.8 OPS.. sustainable. We are playing again tomorrow at 1pm so hopefully my brother will wake me up to go.

Oh yeah, and while I was writing this blog post I had a good session where I made my 5^th ever Royal Flush.

Full Tilt Poker Game #12589426926: Table Marry (6 max) - $25/$50 - $1,500 Cap No Limit Hold'em - 23:54:26 ET - 2009/06/02

Seat 1: pernoctali ($2,325)

Seat 2: SirGAMBLE11 ($9,379.15)

Seat 3: danpatcole ($2,394)

Seat 4: KrakenOut ($1,672)

Seat 5: Negrodamus2 ($5,246)

Seat 6: marcopolo28 ($3,208)

marcopolo28 posts the small blind of $25

pernoctali posts the big blind of $50

The button is in seat #5

*** HOLE CARDS ***

Dealt to SirGAMBLE11 [Qs Ks]

SirGAMBLE11 raises to $100

danpatcole folds

KrakenOut has 15 seconds left to act

KrakenOut has requested TIME

KrakenOut calls $100

Negrodamus2 folds

marcopolo28 has 15 seconds left to act

marcopolo28 folds

pernoctali calls $50

*** FLOP *** [3h Ts Js]

pernoctali checks

SirGAMBLE11 has 15 seconds left to act

SirGAMBLE11 bets $200

KrakenOut has 15 seconds left to act

KrakenOut has requested TIME

KrakenOut folds

pernoctali raises to $925

SirGAMBLE11 raises to $1,400, and is capped

pernoctali calls $475, and is capped

SirGAMBLE11 shows [Qs Ks]

pernoctali shows [3s Th]

*** TURN *** [3h Ts Js] [Jd]

*** RIVER *** [3h Ts Js Jd] [As]

SirGAMBLE11 shows a Royal Flush

pernoctali shows two pair, Jacks and Tens

SirGAMBLE11 wins the pot ($3,122) with a Royal Flush

Beginning of the Summer

2009-05-04T22:19:00.000-04:00

So I decided to start a blog. I have thought about doing so for a while, and finally decided that I have enough interesting ideas that maybe people would want to read them. That's kind of like how my life goes though. The other day I was going to go for a run at about 2pm and finally got around to running at 11pm. I am always late and doing things later than planned but I usually get around to them, just late enough that nobody suspects I was actually going to do it.

Today starts the first day of summer. I can still say that because I'm not graduating until next spring. I've completely moved off campus and settled in back at home, which ended up being a 2 day process. Yeah, I'm 22 years old and pretty much the only person I know that lives at their parents' house over the summer. I guess that's not completely true because between vacations and Vegas I'll be gone for about 7-8 weeks of the summer. But whatever, I'm only 40 minutes away from most of my friends so that's not too bad. And it's actually kind of nice. I am extremely productive at home with usually no distractions if I'm hard at work. At home I eat well and never miss a meal or anything like that too. Like today I was playing a session and hadn't eaten lunch yet and my mom made me a toasted steak sandwich and brought it to me to eat while I was 9-tabling. You really can't beat that.

Talking about living arrangements, I would just like to throw it out there that I don't have any place to live for the next school year '09-'10. I apparently got bumped from my previous informally arranged housing plans due to somebody's negligence and now I don't have a place planned to live or any planned roommates. It's hard to say who messed up in the planning since I believe there was no malicious intent and the plans had to go through a string of people. Add to it that I have been faulted by some for trying to figure out who dropped the ball, and you have a pretty gray situation. But I do have to disagree with that view. I think it's a very fair position to try to figure out what exactly went down, basically why I no longer have any roommates, without accusing or pointing any fingers, of which I have done none and have been very open to different points of view about the situation. At any rate, I would just like to say for anybody that may be reading that they could possibly have an extra roommate.

So back to where I'll be this summer. I'm currently grinding a serious amount of hands in Cumming at my parents' house. I've already played over 2600 hands today and haven't even started a night session. Other than that, I'm going to Charleston next week with Ashley and Lindsey, which was pushed back because of shitty weather. That should be fun, going to stay with Adam Jones and maybe my uncle will even be in town at that point, who knows. After that is my grandfather's 90th birthday. Then I'm going to Destin for a week with several friends. This is all from about May 13-23. Then more grinding at home. Then I booked 29 nights at the Rio starting June 9. That's the most that they let you stay, then they kick you out apparently. But it should be a great time playing cash games out there. I'm looking to sharpen up some of my other games so I can play in some mixes. I am also planning to play several World Series of Poker events including the main event if everything is going well. Then I'll probably get a room at the Bellagio to stick around for their tournament after the WSOP, but I guess I'll just play that by ear. And at that point it'll be mid-late July.

I should note that I just played my first, and only so far, live tournament back in March at the Bay 101 in San Jose. I had an extremely tough table draw in that event, with 8 of the other 9 players at the table being pros. But at that table was Yevgeniy Timoshenko, who went on to win the WPT Championship last week for like $2.1m. Man I just need to luckbox a donkament then I'll be set.

So yeah, summer is here and it couldn't have come any sooner. I studied a good bit during finals week. I really hope I passed all my classes cause that would suck if I had to attempt more engineering elective hours. I'm already on academic warning or something like that. I should have gotten an A, a C, and a D, and then it just depends on whether I passed ECE 4823. I kind of liked that class to be honest - in general I like the subject of game theory. Except the part about having to program MATLAB to solve Sudoku for homework and how abstract the lectures were really sucked. I did none of the MATLAB homework. That's probably the reason I'll fail if it turns out I did, homework was such a big percentage of the grade.

Oh yeah, I went to work out this evening at the YMCA that was built right by my house. They have a small section of the gym that has your standard free weights like squats and bench and stuff that I use to work out. It must have been the meeting place for the North Georgia Center of Douchebaggery or something. It was a solid mix of washed up early-mid-life crisis former high school athletes and actual high school athletes. It's a real suburban area so there really aren't many college aged people or young professionals. But I think there must have been an unwritten rule that you have to try to draw the most possible attention to yourself and only communicate by swapping thinly-veiled brags. Anyways, maybe I can make it out to the gym more often when these types are at work or school.

Off to the Grind...