January

The first month of the year has gone pretty well in poker. I've had 8 final tables and two wins. The two wins were both for about $3,000. I've had several close calls at big final tables, but haven't been able to cash in to the big tournaments. I've drastically increased my volume. I've been playing around 15-20 tournaments per day including some satellites. I don't quite know how I feel about this process just yet. First off, there are basically no breaks from playing starting at around 11am and playing until hopefully towards midnight when I put in a large volume day. This creates problems in both focus as it's very tough to maintain over 9-12 hours. It also creates problems with the amount of tables up at once (9-12). Furthermore, I get extremely hungry, so I usually wait until I'm down to 3 tables or so and then go make dinner, which is another distraction. Hunger is a greater distraction though, so I just suck it up and try to be quick and eat healthy to get ready to close out the night. I think that these large volume days might be better to limit to days like Saturday and Sunday. Also, from a bankroll perspective, if you are going to play this many tournaments in a day, it's going to cost around $1500-$2000. That means that you need several large cashes or at least a top 6 finish to just break even. The multi-table tournament game is about living on the big cash. The 5 figure cash is the goal. As a result, I want to add another goal to my list of goals for the year.

I want to record 17 $10,000 cashes. I had 14 last year including both online and live. I have just 1 so far this year. When putting in a lot of volume though, these are how you make money and have big months. Having at least 1 $10,000 cash per month when not playing live tournaments will basically give you a profitable month if you do even ok with a few cashes in between.

That's the update for now. It's been nice to start with some small wins and be in the positive for the year.

5th Sunday Mulligan

Welcome to Sunday! $13k cash will get me out of the initial short term red for the year and into the black. I just took 5th in the Sunday Mulligan against a tough final table. Here is my knockout hand.

Full Tilt Poker Game #9994251120: The Sunday Mulligan (73518065), Table 57 - 10000/20000 Ante 2500 - No Limit Hold'em - 1:34:53 ET - 2009/01/12
Seat 2: BLUFFforRENT (1,481,939)
Seat 3: kice32 (427,611)
Seat 4: mman_status (658,613)
Seat 5: qjuice14 (297,716)
Seat 8: stpauli111 (389,121)
BLUFFforRENT antes 2,500
kice32 antes 2,500
mman_status antes 2,500
qjuice14 antes 2,500
stpauli111 antes 2,500
BLUFFforRENT posts the small blind of 10,000
kice32 posts the big blind of 20,000
The button is in seat #8
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to kice32 [Ad As]
mman_status folds
qjuice14 folds
stpauli111 folds
BLUFFforRENT calls 10,000
kice32 has 15 seconds left to act
kice32 raises to 65,000
BLUFFforRENT calls 45,000
*** FLOP *** [4s 3c Jh]
BLUFFforRENT checks
kice32 bets 60,000
BLUFFforRENT has 15 seconds left to act
BLUFFforRENT raises to 128,000
kice32 has 15 seconds left to act
kice32 calls 68,000
*** TURN *** [4s 3c Jh] [Qh]
BLUFFforRENT checks
kice32 bets 232,111, and is all in
BLUFFforRENT calls 232,111
kice32 shows [Ad As]
BLUFFforRENT shows [Jc Qc]
*** RIVER *** [4s 3c Jh Qh] [6d]
kice32 shows a pair of Aces
BLUFFforRENT shows two pair, Queens and Jacks
BLUFFforRENT wins the pot (862,722) with two pair, Queens and Jacks
kice32 stands up
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 862,722 | Rake 0
Board: [4s 3c Jh Qh 6d]
Seat 2: BLUFFforRENT (small blind) showed [Jc Qc] and won (862,722) with two pair, Queens and Jacks
Seat 3: kice32 (big blind) showed [Ad As] and lost with a pair of Aces
Seat 4: mman_status folded before the Flop
Seat 5: qjuice14 folded before the Flop
Seat 8: stpauli111 (button) folded before the Flop


I'm pretty happy with the finish to the day as I was pulling out my hair earlier in the day. I know I got lucky in several spots and had several key hands hold, so I won't complain too much. I'm still trying to think if I should have shoved the turn in terms of would he have paid me off with just a J8, J9, J10 type hand, or is the turn shove -EV. I don't know, but I feel like if I shoved the rest on the flop there is a slim chance he folds given my chip stack. Either way, I can't say that I saw a Sunday Major final table on Full Tilt all last year, so it's a good start.

I'll be playing the rest of the UBOC events mostly on the Absolute interface with my name on there being BINGORAT even though no one really knows this. I don't like how they merged the sites and I would have preferred to keep my normal name Absolute, but I wasn't given the option. Quite frankly, the Absolute interface is now far superior to UB. I've been unable to type bets in when playing multiple tables or type in the chat box. As for now, I want to get refocused and do some damage in some of these UBOC events.

2009 Goals

After much thought and reflection, I've come up with some of my goals for 2009.

1. Win 1 major online tournament series event including the UBOC, FTOPS, WCOOP, SCOOP.

2. Final table 2 major online tournament series tourneys including the UBOC, FTOPS, WCOOP, SCOOP

3. Win a World Series of Poker Bracelet

4. Win a live tournament

5. Win 10 online tournaments

6. Play a satellite to every live tournament main event where I enter a preliminary event

7. Reach 80 final tables including all events with over 50 entrants (not including sit and gos)

8. Win an entry to a European Poker Tour event and go play it.

9. Play at least 5 events in every live tournament series I enter where there are at least 20 events.

10. Win 1 Sunday major from the following list of tournaments: Sunday Brawl, Sunday Million, Sunday 500, Sunday Warmup, Full Tilt 750k or 1 mill, UB 200K, Full Tilt Mulligan, Stars 200 Rebuy