Poker and Life

So I decided to fire up pokerstars to play a few hands for the first time in awhile. I have some money on there and just felt like playing a tournament. The great thing about poker stars is there is always a tournament starting. So I saw a turbo $3 with rebuys satellite to their wsop super mega satellite on Saturday where the seats were $370 and there were 500+ people in it. So I was like cool there will be more then 10 seats and it won't cost me to just dick around. I had no intention of playing the wsop main event satellite as I am not 21 so I figured if I win it I will use the 370 bucs as my bankroll to try to get into some of the WCOOP tourneys coming up in a few months on pokerstars. For anyone that doesn't know what the WCOOP is: Click Here. My mission will to be to play at least two of the events and this blog will probably track that in the coming months, but back to the here and now.

So the tourney began and I really didn't care about it was I was watching TV, but still ended with about 4,000 in chips after the break. In pokerstars turbo satellitea you only start with only 1,000 chips and the blinds go up every 5 minutes which is like every 8 or so hands. Needless to say it is an insanely fast structure that requires 70% understanding math and the structure, 20% poker, and 10% your cards. In other words, its a complete crapshoot with alittle poker. In the middle to end stages you simply push when it folds around to you and you have some fold equity agaisnt the remaining stack sizes or you have a big hand. Everyone is playing so tight trying to make it to the seats fearlessness is the key in these things. In the end it all worked out as every time I got called I had the best hand. The key hand came when I had A8s in the cutoff, and the person before pushed for 40K with the blinds at 6K/12K and 50 or so people left and I 16 more chips then him. Well his range here is basically any two and I figured I will take my 60/40 here instead of getting hit by 20K+ in blinds and basically folding my way out of the tourney. It worked out as he had KJ and I hit and ace on the flop. From there I started bullying the table as the seats were getting really close and ended the tourney as one of the chip leaders with almost 250K (altough I know it doesn't matter how many chips I have as long as I make the top 16). I feel like I played the tourney perfectly from start to finish and my three big all-ins all held for me for once (thats running good to me atleast :-). It just shows me then when I have a little luck on my side I have a shot to win anything I put some effort into.

Here are some screenshot becuase I like screenshots and a funny story after.

This is a screenshot from the final two tables, and the funny story comes from the guy in the 2 seat named wilspeed. One away from the seats he is on the button with 30K somehow after just paying the 40K Big Blind and 20K Small Blind. There were at least 4 maybe more people who were going to be put all-in blind before he would be from the Big Blind. Well it folds around to him on the button with two guys about to be forced in blind the next hand and he calls all in. The SB calls and checks it down with the BB. Well the BB had a5 and the SB had a3 and an ace had hit on the turn. Well smart satellite player wilspeed had called all-in when he is 98% to get a seat by just folding the next few hands with 88 and was out bubble boy. Some people say that poker may be harder to make money at with so much information on how to get better out there already, but after seeing shit like this I say poker will always be profitable for semi-smart to smart players.

Other then that I have played a few live sessions, which I wrote about in my previous blog entry. Also, I played two more rounds of golf. The first one I think I lost over 10 balls as the course was hard and I was playing terrible. However, the second round was on a cheap public course that is only a par 60 with obviously a lot of short holes. I decided to play it with only my irons using my 3 for tee shots on the longer holes. Well I shot a 6 over 66 for probably the best round of golf of my life. I will post some pictures tomorrow but for now its 2:15am and Myia and I spent over 1:30 minutes writing these two blogs hope they were interesting.

I have no where to start, so I guess I'll just jump right in.

First we'll get caught up in my live poker sessions. Lately I've been struggling with maintaining focus and playing well. After a few hours I seem to be able to focus and start making money, but the first few hours of my last sessions have just been ulgy with me making stupid bets and stupid calls. I am not really sure what's causing it but I think it is the fact that my live poker playing summer is coming to an end and I am just trying to force things too much in my last few sessions. The sad part is I've played like shit the first few hours of my last few sessions but have still come out positive in all of them.

Date:	Stakes:	Time (hours):	Result:	Total-Time:	Total:	Wage:	Extras:

7/8/2006	1/2NL	8	$ 180.00	110	$4,335.00	$ 39.41
7/13/2006	1/2NL	4	$ 145.00	114	$4,480.00	$ 39.30
7/15/2006	1/2NL	5	$ 260.00	119	$4,740.00	$ 39.83

Total Profit: $4,740
Total Hours: 102
Hourly Wage: $39.83


Session 1:
This was probably the most fun session I've played all summer and five hours or so in I was stuck $700. To get to this point I lost about $200 playing retarded, $400 getting cold decked, and another $100 playing retarded. I had told Myia, who had been watching me for the past hour, that I would leave if I got to that point. However, I turned to her and said "$800 is more round of a number, so can I put $100 more on the table?" and she let me. I rarely buy in short (less than the maximum buy in) however I was frustrated and wanted to give it one more shot.

The most frustrating moment of the night came in the biggest pot I have played in my life. I raised to $20 with KK and the guy on the button, who I knew for a fact would only reraise QQ KK or AA, reraised me to $60. Looking back on the situation I don't know if he would even reraise me with QQ preflop. It rolled around to the big blind who went all in for $200. I had played with him for a few hours and knew he was a beginner and a huge fish. I think his range there was 1010-AA and AQ+. However the way he did it, I really thought I had him beat. So the pot was $380, $180 for me to call and I had another $200 behind the $180 with the tight guy on the button having me covered. So what do you do here? You can flat call the $180 letting the button call or reraise me or you can go all in an try to get the button to fold less than KK. I elected to push and immediately the button called time saying he needed to think about it. This is where it gets sick. Immediately I am jumping up and down in my head thinking he'd have to think about QQ-KK but would instantly call with AA. Well he takes over a minute and calls. The pot is $950+. I walk away from the table and waited to be told that the five cards had been dealt. When I came back I saw a board of XXQXX and knew there was no chance I was winning this pot. The fish turned over AK and I revealed KK and waited to see the button's hand. Well he proudly reached into the center of the table and slammed down his AA. To say I was pissed was an understatement. This fucking old asian guy slow rolled me in the biggest pot of my life. I obviously flipped a shit and told him he was a classless sob. I am not a prejudiced person at all, but man some of those old asian guys have no respect and simply go to their friends and laugh and talk in their fucking asian languages. It makes me pissed every single time I think about it.

The second interesting hand of the night came 7+ hours in. I had my last $100 buy in up to ~$400. We had a complete maniac in seat 10 who was raising to $20+ every hand and betting every flop. He was stuck $500+ but had built his stack back up to $500 with maniac plays that worked out. He was two to my left on the button and I picked up AK. I limped in knowing he would raise to see what everyone else would do before I had to act. Two people called his $25 raise before it got back to me. If I had had position on him I would have reraised to isolate, but since he was raising any two cards I elected to call and try to hit a flop. The flop was 883 and the two checked to me. I would normally take a stab at the pot here, but I knew the button would bet and I could see how the other two players reacted. He bet $50 and first two players folded. I knew this guy would bet any two cards and most likely had anything from Q high to 6 high. So I check raised him to $150 and to my horror he called. However he was a straight forward player and I knew he would reraise me there with an 8 so his range changed from a mid pair to a 3. Off rolled a beautiful K and I checked to him making him think I was scared of it knowing full well he'd bite and make a big bet. Well he obliged and bet $150 and I went all in for $159 more. I immidiately got up from the table as this pot had gotten massive and was scared that he'd call with a hand such as 77 and hit a 7 on the river. Eventually he called and the river was a 7. I immidiately said AK and turned it over. He started to flip over his cards which a player usually does when he knows he has the winning hand and the first card I saw was a 7 and almost shit my pants, but underneath was a 3. I won the pot of just over $1000. The new biggest pot of my life. Thanks to him I finished the session up and was really lucky to escape.

Two funny side notes from the session were that I got into an argument with this one guy on my left who said he would fold AA preflop in a cash game if the bet was too big. I countered that if he can't make that call in the cash game he's playing in, then he shouldn't be playing in it, but he continued to argue with me and I tried to make a $100 bet that we could take a survey of the poker room but he wouldn't put his money where his mouth is. Secondly, I met a 20 year old gol pro who is currently the youngest player to receive his card on the Canadian golf tour. I had a great time talking to him and he said the he would play a round of golf with Myia and I when we got back from Vegas. Here is a link to his CPG profile: link

Session 2:
I actually played well this entire session. I called one raise with J10 out of the small blind knowing the guy would only raise with QQ-AA and won a nice pot off of him after the pot was 789. I also missed a 10 8s draw on a KQs9s board. Other than that, no other interesting hands came up as the table was tight as hell and I couldn't move to a new table because there was no waiting list.

This sessions however involved one of the players I hate playing with the most. He sat down about 2 hours into my 4 hour session. He's the guy that anyone who's played live poker has played with. The guy that thinks he is God's gift to poker, that everyone cares about his random poker stories that happen to everyone, and who tries to tell each player what they did wrong in every pot they play whether he's involved or not. It is counter intuitive to anyone who is trying to make money playing poker and causes me to lose complete respect for anyone who is like this individual.

Sessions 3:

Again I started off playing like shit in this session. It was mainly due to the fact I wasn't feeling well at all and was generally wasn't in a good mood. I really need to learn to just walk away when I am feeling like this, but because I am only getting to play live this summer it hard and I stayed. I rebought and was down to my last $40 when the comeback started and I began to focus. By then my table had become tight as I had ever seen and I was pissed that I was stuck on it, but couldn't get moved anytime soon. So I stuck with it called an all-in bet at one point with second pair on the river when the guy was obviously bluffing moved to another table with $190. Some may say why not stay at this tight table and run it over. Well, they weren't paying off shit and you can only raise so many hands in a row until they get pissed and just reraise you big preflop which is what they started doing. And at that point a few juicy table opened up where I hit a few hands and ran my money back up. No interesting stories or hands at all from this session just me making stupid bluffs and value bets early that cost me. Maybe that's why I started off so bad I got bored and combining that with not feeling well caused me to lose all patience.