Back in Vegas

LA was fun, but not profitable. In the end, I cashed in nothing. I played 5 or 6 events and a satellite with nothing to show for it. I got put into a lot of tough spots in the tournaments, but in general, got slowrolled often. The deepest run I made was in Wednesday's 500. I busted around 68 with 54 paying. The bust hand was really quite complex. I raised UTG +1 with black fives to 2200 with 400/800 blinds at an 8 player table. The big blind can best be described as the exact stereotype of a player that plays live tournaments often. He plays fairly loose, so it wasn't a shocker that he decided to call. He has me covered with his stack slightly bigger than my 32,000. Flop comes down 7 6 4 rainbow. He leads out into me 4000 chips. I quickly called the flop bet. The turn was a K of hearts. It put two hearts on the board, but I wasn't worried about a back door flush too much because of his lead out bet. He bet another 6k on the turn. With this bet, I almost raised all in on the turn. This weakish turn bet seems nothing close to the nuts and almost certainly is scared by the K. At this point, I was kind of confused. Let me explain the confusion how I see it. He bet 6k into a pot that is probably 13-14k. The bet size to me could make sense for either the super strong hand or marginal hand here. On one side of the argument, the smaller bet could be a way to get more money in the pot with a set type hand with a K being a decent payoff card. The smaller bet could also be because the K is a scare card in a way. It turns AK into a better hand over 88 or 99 at this point. I really thought through it at this point for about a minute. I counted out my chips and wanted to see what my options were. I decided to call. I was basically drawing with implied odds to get paid off from a set or resigned to just fold and save myself the last 19k. The river comes an 8 of hearts. It is my money card.....oh wait. He fires 8,000. At this point, I have around 11k left. I nearly just called here. What made me change my mind was the fact that I really thought he would instantly call with any of the sets (not likely against an average good online player). I also could put him on absolutely no hand with hearts. I shoved my chips. He waited about a minute to slowroll me with 5 6 of hearts for the flush. His hand makes perfect sense now. It was a critical mistake in a way, but also probably for close to the chip lead.

In the Zone, Pump Up Blog

First off, I'm not going to complain about anything.

I'm only going to get in the zone. This is the Pump Up Blog.

Tomorrow starts my second trip around at the LA Poker Classic. Basically, I drove 280 miles from Las Vegas to LA where I am going to play at the Commerce Casino. I was just looking at the remaining tournaments in the LA Poker Classic I will be playing this week. Tomorrow is a $335 NL Hold em tournament. The chips looks short and the structure looks good. Basically, it's going to strategically mean that you may get involved in several large pots early. I'm planning to just feel out the table pretty quickly. I expect it to be extremely weak tomorrow. It's President's Day and Americans and foreigners alike will spend those paper rectangles with President's pictures on the front them. Some have Franklin. Some have Washington. Some have paper ones printed with a top hat guy with a cane. They will likely be heading to the Commerce to play the great American past time poker. I have confidence tomorrow. I have been making deep runs, but have not been closing. I've been losing key pots deep and sometimes having bad days; however, I'm due. I've worked hard. I've studied the game. I've played thousands of hours over the last year alone. If I'm going to reach my potential in this game, it's going to come soon.

I've had a few live tournament finishes that were noteworthy. The most disappointing of those came in the $500 event at the Borgata. With $80,000 on the line, I played great poker when it counted, but got my money in with AA vs KJ after a JT8 flop for approximately 2nd-3rd place. The turn was a J and I was sent home with not even a five figure cash and lots of disappointment. The next tournament disappointment was the Belligio tournament last April. A 6th place finish in my biggest live final table was largely a lack of me never playing a hand. When I folded AQ off suit on the first hand of the final table, I think it may have been my only chance to alter the tournament. I folded to an early raiser with AQ off from the button. I had 90k chips with 3k/6k blinds at the start. You can read about that here I didn't realize we still had 2 minutes of time left in the 2/4k round. This makes kind of an interesting debate. In knowing that my stack is going to move from a range of over 20 big blinds (bb) to maybe 10bb if I call and lose the hand, do I play tighter or looser here. I say tighter, and I did fold. It was a pretty tough decision for my first hand at a final table with 6 figures to the winner. You can't help but wonder what might have flopped, or what would have happened if I just shoved. I heard he had 88.

The past is the past. I've had several big wins online over the past year, but I want success in live tournaments. I want people to know that I can look them in the eye and still beat them. This is the pump up blog. I'm pumping myself up for tomorrow and the rest of this week. It starts tomorrow.

Quick LAPC update

My LA adventures can be summarized with hardly any results.

Tourney 1- $545 Shorthanded No Limit

In summary, I folded a straight flush pre-flop when neither player had any business playing their hands the way they did. I lost AQ vs QQ short stack and 99 vs JJ short stack to basically cripple me out of the tourney.

Tourney 2- $545 Stud Hi/Lo and Omaha Hi/Lo mixed

I continuously missed in Stud Hi/Lo, and they hit. I didn't lose any chips in the Omaha portion but played big pot after big pot in Stud. It was the best structure at a live tournament that I've seen for a mixed game.

Tourney 3--$545 No Limit

I went from 4,000 to 15,000 in the first two hours by winning AA vs KK and set over set 99 vs 77. I proceeded to pick up several pots for the next 2-4 hours. I then when into an Iacofano frenzy and eventually was called by a guy who "just wanted to gamble" with the King Ten. I had 99 and lost the elusive race.


Online

Chewy's dog (my friend who I'm staying with) lived up to his owner's nickname and shredded my power cord. We think his dog's masochism is awkward as the cord was plugged into the wall while being chewed up. This likely means he was continuously receiving a 120? volt charge in the mouth.

When I got my new power cord back, I played a bunch of tournaments yesterday. I had a notable 14th place finish in the Stars nightly when I went into a super aggressive and failed to win lots of races with low pairs. I also took 2nd in the first round of a shootout. This is about the same as a bubble in a tournament because the 1st place person moves on and 2nd place gets nothing.


I'm playing the $1k with a rebuy today at the Commerce. Here's hoping that I have to skip the Sunday online tourneys.

Correction

In the last blog, I claimed to win the prop bet for 3 or more unanswered scores by either team by picking NO. There were 3 unanswered scores. The safety counted as one for Arizona, but I couldn't believe the guy at Red Rock. He went in the back and looked everything up for me. I really love that casino because I'm sure that even though he was 100% sure they wouldn't mess up, he went to check for me anyways and get a detailed list of the scores. That casino is really one of the best. On a side note, it's very close to Red Rock Canyon where I went for a hike last weekend. This is probably one of the best parts about Las Vegas. The hike was unbelievable. I'm hoping to do some more hikes in the near future.

Saving the Sunday

After watching another exciting Super Bowl, I was manage to save the day with a 2nd place finish in the $215 Omaha Hi/Lo on Pokerstars for 5100. I got simply drilled heads up and am just going to chalk up the deck to my misfortune as I got scooped on several crucial pots. That brought me net on the day to about 2500 in the black as I blanked out of every other tournament. It was an absolutely dreadful Sunday. I probably lost every key pot but two that I can think of on the day. I can't complain though.

The real complaints come with watching Pittsburgh win the Super Bowl by having both my alma mater represented at QB for the Steelers and favorite team represented in the Super Bowl MVP. That last Miami U to OSU connection is going to haunt me for a long time. Since I pretty much will never get to see the Browns win a Super Bowl, all I have left is to hope for pain in Pittsburgh. Tonight, they once again figured out a way to win. It's something that team does so well. It's something I've only seen on my 7-9th grade basketball teams and the Mentor Cobras, my travel soccer team that just couldn't lose.

Good news from the game comes in the sports bets I placed at the Red Rock. I won 3/5 of them.

Winners: Arizona +7, Over 46.5 points, and "No team will have 3 unanswered scores or more"

Losers: Larry Fitzgerald 1st TD of the game, Arizona TD in 1st quarter


I'm heading out to LA tomorrow to play some live events at the Commerce Casino. I plan on playing 3-5 events depending on how far I get in certain events and which days tournaments fall on. I'm definitely playing Tuesday in the $500 shorthanded no limit event. If I can, the $500 Omaha Hi/Lo, Stud 8 or Better mixed tournament on Wednesday. If I can, the $500 No Limit Hold Em tournament on Thursday. Saturday is the $1000 with a single rebuy. I'm going to check the structure for this and see if this is a tournament where I will end up putting in $3000, $2000, or $1000. This depends on how they run their single rebuys. Wish me luck and I know I'll be winning something.

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.