Rivers and Meadows Both With Big Tourneys Tomorrow

Rivers and Meadows Casino will both be holding rather large buy-in tournaments tomorrow, Saturday, the 4th.  The Rivers one is for$550 if I am not mistaken and the Meadows one is for $330.  The Meadows tournament is also hosted by ESPN Radio, so expect a larger turnout for that one. 

I wanted to play the Meadows tournament, but I didn’t have as profitable of a week as I would have preferred, so it is better I protect my bankroll right now rather than take a tourney shot with 1/5 of my bankroll.  Hopefully I can keep building the roll though and be taking some shots at some larger buy-in tournaments down the road.  Best of luck to those that do play though.

Bump Bump Bump…..Still a Heartbeat….

Well, I had two interesting sessions this week. Both cardiac sessions. Maybe I’ve become the cardiac kid.

Wednesday: I played for about 4 hours. I bought in for $240. For 3 hours I played very solid poker to only have a $20 profit. I asked for a seat change as both the fish at my table were racking up without me getting a real opportunity to hook them. When I get to my new table, I notice a change in the air as the standard pre-flop raise has increased from my previous tables’ $10 to a much better $17. I am happy. I begin to get cards. I am even happier. Then I start to miss flops. My opponents are calling me with 10-5 and hitting. It is going to be one of those nights.

Eventually my stack dwindles to a measly $35. I get A-J hearts in the cutoff. I shove my stack into a raiser and a caller of $11. One gentleman calls my all-in, showing Q-10. Flop comes Q-10-5. There is hope, but I am thin. Turn is a 2. River is a……. King!! After the hand I have around $70 only to find A-J soooooted again, this time in the hijack and of the club variety. There is a raise to $15 and it gets a caller. I call and check out a flop. The flop comes A-K-7 rainbow. I decide to jam my stack once again after it is checked to me. I get the same gentleman to call again, this time he does not table his hand. The turn is a 10 and the river is a Jack giving me two pair. I fully expect to see this guy flip over a Queen with the way my luck has been going. I table my hand and he mucks! New life for me.

ON THE EXACT NEXT HAND, I look down to see two black ladies. I am pleased to see UTG raise it to $21. The same gentleman who has doubled me up twice in a row calls the $21 and he looks a bit steamy. Both he and UTG have about $300. I decide my image is sketchy and decide if there was ever a time to push and get two callers, this is the time. Well, it plays out exactly that way. On the flop, Mr. Double me Up pushes on UTG, doing me a huge favor in the process. The board runs out J-10-5-6-4 with three to a heart flush. I table my hand hoping it holds and Mr. DMU mucks in disgust. WHOOOOO!!! From ashy to classy in less than 5 minutes! This kind of Shi*t never happens for me, so it was a great change. I leave soon after a $185 winner for the night.

As for Thursdays session, it was almost a mirror image but I only left a $15 winner as I was stuck two buy-ins.

Away From The Game

Well, I haven’t been sitting at the felt for almost ten days now. This is definitely the longest period I have been away from the tables in almost 5 months. It is frustrating to say the least, but I blew through my bankroll and this is the penalty I must serve.

I guess it’s good for me since the next time I want to take a shot at the table, I will be humbled when I remember this experience. When I am tempted to play too many suited connectors, I will remember exactly what it is like to not play at all.

I know that worse things could obviously happen, but I think poker 24/7, and not being able to go and play at will is killing me. I am trying to make the best of my time off and the one major positives is that I will renew my fundamentals of the game and am going to try a new approach.

I think by deconstructing my game from the top down, I will inevitably make myself a better player, but the time away from the tables will undoubtedly be a regression. When I am able to return, it will probably take 2-3 sessions to get comfortable with the dynamics, especially considering one of my major strengths is “feeling” the game.

Either way, I look forward to my return, regardless of how long it takes, which at this point looks like it could be a while.

Time To Reconsider

Well, I think it is time for a temporary hiatus. During the first two weeks of August, I was on top of my game like at no other time in the past two years. I then met up with fellow reader Tim and it has all went south since then. This is not Tim’s fault, it is rather my way of marking how long it has been since I posted a plus in the books. Tim’s patience at the table did show me one thing though; I really need to work on my game as it has gotten sloppy.

For the first year of playing hold em’, I felt a fear with every hand I entered. I think this mentality almost served me well. Even though I wasn’t cognizant of it at the time, the reality was that I was playing pot control in most of the hands I was involved in. I never committed my entire stack unless I had the nuts or damn close. Granted, I gave a WHOLE lot of value away by playing this strategy, but it resulted in a very low variance game and one I could stomach.

Fast forward to today and I am playing an entirely different style. My aggression has grown exponentially and I think of optimal strategy on just about every hand played. Although this sounds like a positive, FPS (fancy play syndrome) is getting me away from just playing profitable poker. I do feel that my game right now is best suited for tournaments, but I have always preferred cash games. Maybe that is something I need to change.

Anyway, I need to get back to basics. I need to reconfigure my poker brain into starting hand ranges that are more in line with basic strategy and become a truly tight rock. Otherwise, my bankroll will burn up just about as quickly as it has just now.

Therefore, since I have burnt though my bankroll by playing poorly and by playing 2/5 while I was underrolled (even though my game is suited better for 2/5), I must wait until I can put together another bankroll until I can play again. Therefore, I need to get myself a steady job with some disposable income, although I don’t see that happening anytime soon with all my student loans.

Unfortunately, I feel that is where this blog will take a downturn, as I won’t have as much first hand info to post and readership will surely take a turn for the worst. I will do my best to keep abreast of information though.

I think one of my major leaks is just loving the game of poker too much and being entirely too competitive. I have a drive to win each and every time I hit the table. However, often we just run bad and there is little we can do but limit the losses. That is what has always frustrated me the most about the game. The intangible variance that we all must fight through, regardless of how good our game is. My competitive nature took over about a year into playing poker, where just playing to have a good time wasn’t enough. I began to eat, sleep, and breathe poker. I still do and that is what will kill me to be away from the game. However, all that passion has in a way led to my demise. I am an extremely confident person, but I am humble. My humility allows me to say that right now I am not beating the game of poker and I might have to step away for a while. Quitting is not in my nature though and I am just not sure how long I can stay away from the game.

What I do know is that my normal life can no longer sustain my losses at the table. I do give every true “grinder” out there tons of credit. I can only imagine how tough that road is. And all I am doing is trying to grind out some cash while attempting to find employment. Anyway, I will continue to keep posting my random thoughts about poker and eventually I may make my prodigal return, we will just have to wait and see. That’s all I can do. Wake up and pick myself out of bed. That’s the best I can ask of myself. Grinding doesn’t have to be just at the table. It is life itself.

Puke

That’s what I feel like right about this moment. I’m not sure I could run worse or play worse than I have in the past two weeks. I try to maintain composure when I miss every flop and find the second best hand every time but I am not immune to being beaten down.

I’m pretty sure this is the last time I have been beaten down, but then again I have said that time and time again. I think if I could just get a full time dreaded J.O.B, I could swallow the losses a little better, but right now, all I want to do is hurl at the thought at what has taken place over the past few weeks.

Poker is a fucking sick merry-go-round. You listen to the music and enjoy yourself while you are ahead, but next thing you know, you get thrown on your ass. You see everyone else still having a good time and smiling, so you get back on your horse. Then again, rinse, wash, and repeat.

Fuck I wish I had a dream story to go along with this pipe dream, but I’m all burnt out and full of excuses. The biggest regret of these past two years for me I think is not dedicated more cash to tournaments. I think my game would have served me well there as bets have to be respected that much more. But, one can’t go back in time and I’ll just have to live with the failure to play some donkaments.

Sick thought though that I could have played at least 7 of the smaller buy-in events at the WSOP with the roll that I have burnt up this year. Sick thoughts.

And It All Comes Crashing Down

Well, it was only a matter of time, but I’m on a three day cold streak that basically wiped out a good two weeks worth of profitable sessions.  Locking away small profits on short sessions, yet posting large losses on longer sessions.  This is a receipe for disaster I know and after almost a year of this shit, one would think I would know better.  I’m not sure how many times I can beat this dead horse before I throw in the towel. 

I have such a competitive nature and I think my ability not to humble myself has cost me more money in various poker rooms than any number of coolers ever could have.  I love playing the game at the 2/5 level, yet I find myself always back at 1/3 because of a bad run at 2/5 or a few misplayed hands.  Mistakes cost a lot more at the 2/5 level.  Two bad reads usually means two buy-ins lost.  However, when I drop down to 1/3, I always find myself having trouble readjusting my style of play.  For 1/3, it is easy to sit back and just play ABC poker and value bet the shit out of everything.  However, my comfort level in the game is usually not just ABC poker and it is why I’ve always found more profit and more comfort at the 2/5 table.

 I know it almost sounds counterintuitve, but the play is more predictable at 2/5.  It is much rarer to see someone playing 7-9 offsuit out of position to a big raise just because “it’s one of my favorite hands.”  Therefore, I can usually exploit the 2/5 level by opening up my normal starting range a bit.  However, 2/5 players are much more difficult to push off draws, as they usually are willing to go a few buy-ins deep and the swings therefore are much harder to swallow. 

Anyway, I now sit here like I have a million times, questioning whether I want to continue in this endeavor.  I love poker, I truly do, but I play for money only, and the thrill of winning is just a way of putting extra money in my bankroll.  A loss is extremely difficult for me to swallow, especially the large losses I have been sustaining.  It is rare to see me smile at the poker table, as it is much more serious than when I first learned the game.  I yearn for those days, as ignorance is bliss, but I just can’t readjust my mindset to that style anymore.  The game of poker has changed for me.  It once was an escape from normal life, yet now I feel it is life that is the escape from poker.  I never could have imagined that my poker game would have graduated to this level, but poker is so much more than just learning the game.  It is all the aspects that surround the game itself: tilt, patience, bankroll management, game selection.  Out of all of these, I am strong except for patience.  The lack of it causes me to open my range up too wide and end up trapping myself in the process. 

Lastly, I think once the money in the game became so important in relation to my life, it affected my play both negatively and positively.  The positive being that I began to lock away profits much more often, since I saw a winning session as simply that and I cared very little about being the pride of the room walking to the cage with multiple racks.  A profit was a profit and I could use it as such.  However, I think I began to walk away from games too soon when I had a crushing edge at the table.  The negative being that when I had a losing session, it became more than that for me.  It became a loss that I’m not so sure I could afford.  Granted, it was coming out of bankroll, but what if that went busto?  The failure of a dream?  I can honestly say I have gained so much knowledge of the game, and I’m playing at my best skill wise.  However, since I began to try to play to pay for more than just mere fun money, the intangibles have gotten the best of me, causing me to make crucial mistakes at the worst of times.  I fucking hate you poker.  I truly do.  You are such a bittersweet pill to swallow.

The Hit and Run

Well, over the past few sessions, I have really been implementing this into my game. I used to detest those who hit and run, but the more and more I have been playing, the more I’ve said, “Can’t beat them, join ’em.” I know there are plenty who advocate this style of play because it lowers your variance and enables you to always lock away the profit, as opposed to stacking up to about $600 only to get beat by set over set for your whole stack after 4 or 5 hours of play.

This is not to say that I haven’t learned this method the hard way. Having a casino 5 minutes from me also helps a great deal. Before, I would drive an hour to play and then hit a big hand early. Inevitably, I would ask myself, “did you drive an hour just to leave after 20 minutes?” I think all of us have been in this position a couple of times.

Additionally, the same thing happens when I’m playing in Vegas or AC since I have really seen everything I wanted to there and getting drunk is just not appealing as it used to be. Therefore, I would be up at a table and end up staying just because I wouldn’t want to go back to the room and do nothing but think about poker. Granted, in Vegas, it is easy to move from casino to casino to enable the hit and run, but it is harder for me to take the initiative and do it instead of just thinking about it. Lastly, I think having a busy social life outside of poker, keeping all the bills and household in order, and completing the inevitable studying gives me the initiative to leave the casino after a hit and run when said casino is sooo close.

The other avenue I must now tackle is calling it a bad day and booking a loss when I know I am just off that day and it is better to take a couple hundred loss instead of losing another buy-in. This ultimately, is the biggest challenge for me and the biggest leak I find in my game. With time though, I think it will correct itself. As there was a time when I never thought I would be locking away short term wins with pride.

I will do my best to upload some of the pictures of the poker room I have taken with my phone.  I have just been delayed as the pictures aren’t the best quality and honestly I’m just a bit too tired to do it.  Plus, I’d rather just rant about poker than spend a couple minutes uploading some pictures.  But, I understand most would probably just rather have the pictures.

On another side note, the dealers appear to be getting better, i.e. more comfortable, and are not making as many of the same basic mistakes.  The room was packed tonight, with 21 of the available 24 tables filled at 10:30 P.M and there was a 4/8 Omaha Hi/Lo game going.  Respect to the Rivers.

Rivers Poker Room Opening – And My Bankroll Closing

Well poker, I still hate you. Even with having a casino less than 5 minutes from me, I am still finding the same leaks. Patience is my killer. Anyway, I had a great morning session (was there when the first hands were dealt) and when I went back to the casino at night they were jammed packed. All 24 tables filled with waiting lists 30+ long. The kicker was that there was actually a line of 20+ people waiting for the front podium just to sign up and get on the lists! This room is going to be crazy for sure for at least a couple months. However, tonight, I felt like I could get nothing right. I’ve been feeling this way for quite a while now. I’ve re-evaluated and although my game will be solid for the first hour or two, the patience leak begins to happen. All I can do now is move down in stakes to strictly 1/3 so that I can re-evaluate again and humble myself. I’m not sure the patience will be there though.

PLO Anyone?

Recently I have been browsing a thread on 2+2 which has been attempting to get a PLO game started at the Rivers on a regular basis once table games begin.  I encourage anyone interested to check out the thread and post your interest in it.  The post can be found Here.

As far as PLO goes, it is certainly the game with the most interest behind Hold Em’ right now and has steadily grown in interest.  I think it would be great to see a regular PLO game go off on the Rivers as I will make an attempt to regularly play in it.  My experience with playing the game is rather limited, but I will play any game as long as I have a positive EV in it.  The beauty of PLO is that even the more experienced players in the game don’t have tons of experience themselves.  I welcome a regular PLO game going off as it will provide a needed break from Hold Em’ from time to time.

Vegas In T-6 Hours

I will be in Vegas in less than 6 hours. I can’t wait. I definitely have some bankroll recovery to do so it will be nice to finally have some extremely soft games to play.

2/5 in Vegas in basically the equivalent of an ATM for those who have never been. The Bellagio as a matter of fact is the king of ATM’s when it comes to Vegas.

Anyway, I hate to use the blog as a point to brag, but hey, I’m paying good money for this trip. My goal for the trip has already been stated and I’m going to work damn hard to make it. The simple fact is that this trip is all business, that business being poker. I have had all my fun trips and I’m all entertained out. I’ve eaten my way through Vegas as well. I have scouted out pretty much every 2/5 game through trial and error on my past trips. So, this is my opportunity to take down the marks I have already set up. We’ll only see how it goes. I plan on making posts from Vegas, but since free Wi-Fi is as absent as water out there, I’m not sure how successful I will be.