Back in Action

I'm finally back home in Tampa and ready to hit the tables harder than ever. I had a great first day back. I'll get into that tomorrow as I still need to wrap up the last day of my Seattle trip. My Dad and I figured there would be no better way to wrap up the trip than a trip to the local native American casino. I felt the essence of mother earth rush through my body as I entered those sacred grounds (well at least they had a man made water fall outside). Luckily they had some real poker (aka No Limit) at this place so I didn't have to rip my eyes out playing limit (read: lose all my money playing craps instead of limit hold em).

The game was 3-5NL with a $300 max buy in. The play started off as a limp fest till most of the people left for the tournament they were running that night. It was 4 handed when I returned from a call from Jared telling me about Rasheed Wallace's insane half court shot. I had missed my big blind so I just posted both and was the only blind. It folded to the button who was a fishy Greek sounding guy with a fanny pack full of hundreds (aka tru balla). He made it 15 and I decided to repop to 45 with my j2o. He thought about it for a while before calling. I knew he thought I was making a play and had just called me with some garbage. I decided to check and let him make a stab then move in to force him to fold his garbage. The flop came 967 , I checked, and he bet $5o like expected. I moved all in and he went into the tank. After a while he finally decided to call. I was dead on with my read he just happened to flop top pair with his dominated trash hand of 920. The always generous poker gods decided to pay off my great play by putting out a J on the turn. He went on mega tilt and kept saying "I's play so goot but I's alway get screwed".

About 2 hands later I made my only real hand of the night. I called his raise with Kd6d the button also called. The flop came Qd7d4d giving me the flush. He checked I bet $40 the button pushed for $150 and tilt monkey called. I just put all the money in and heard the sweetest words a poker player can ever hear "I know you have me this time but I'm going to call anyways". My flush did indeed have his Qs9c beat and I won a very nice pot.

The game got pretty wild after that and I bled off some money trying to make a hand. I think I won one more pot the rest of the night on a small flop bluff. I wish live NL was a bit faster as I have so much fun playing it each time I do. I made a decent $400 profit which was a pretty nice way to end the trip. Now that I'm back in Tampa I'm ready to apply everything I've been working on in the past 3 weeks and am very excited to see how much my game has improved.

Bankroll: $7511
Hands played this week: 200
Bonus cleared this week: 0
Hands played this month: 7150
Bonus/rakeback this month: $151

Limit Poker Is Easy.....

When you flop 2 pair + in 80% of the hands you play. I went with my dad to a local mini casino (yes, in WA you can drive 10 mins and find 5 mini casinos but it’s a felony to play online). The only had 2 poker games going, both 3/6 limit, but I decided to play to get my fix in as well as make a little bit of extra spending money. I only played for about 45 mins but in that period I made 2 pair 4 times, 2 boats, a flush, and flopped the nut straight. If only it had been 3/6 NL I probably would have been up a few thousand instead of $300. I could have made a few more dollas as every player at the table was terrible, but I couldn’t subject myself to the limit poker hell for much longer after make a decent score. After that I joined my dad for some beer + pai gow. All in all it was a pretty good night, but I’m itching to get some NLHE in as I’ve worked a lot on my game since I’ve been gone. Hopefully that will translate into a nice run when I get back.

Since I have a decent amount of money in the bank I'm going to add rakeback from last month and this month into the roll to speed up the moving up process. The $300s on bodog look really juicy and I want to be able to get into that game ASAP. The UB rakeback from last month was $620 so that along with the live session has been added to the totals below.

Bankroll: $7111
Hands played this week: 45
Bonus cleared this week: 0
Hands played this month: 6999
Bonus/rakeback this month: $151

What I've been doing the last few days

Since WA is super lame-o and thinks child molestation = online poker I haven't been able to play on my trip (I may go play some live soon). As some of you may know Jared and I are working on a NL e-book, so I've spent the last few days working on that. I figured I'd give you guys a sneak peak at so of the stuff I've done so far. This is from rough draft section that deals with the mental game of poker:

Managing tilt is one of the most complex subjects in poker. Many players fail at this because they don’t even know what tilt really is. Most people think tilt is when you lose total control of yourself at the poker table and proceed to dump off a large sum of money. While this is a form of tilt it is at the extreme end of the spectrum. If this is what you think tilt is you’re probably losing money for all of the small occurrences.

What is tilt really?

Tilt is making a decision you know is not optimal because the emotional pleasure you will get temporarily out weights the monetary gain of the play. Here are a few examples that should help explain this definition:

· Making a call when you know you’re beat because you want to see that you’re right.
· Making a call when you know you’re beat because you are more attached to the strength of your hand than the money you will lose.
· Bluffing someone who has been pushing you around not because the time is right, but because you feel the need to “take a stand”
· Firing a 3rd barrel when it’s pretty obvious you’re going to be called because you really want to win this pot.
· Putting all your money in bad because “they couldn’t possibly have hit again”.
· After winning and getting a big stack you tighten up to “protect your profit”
· After winning and getting a big stack you start to play trash hands because “your hot"


When I say pleasure I’m speaking more to a fat guy eating a whole pizza because he had a stressful day at work than I am enjoying an ice cold brew at the beach

Thinking About Poker

My trip so far has given me a lot of time to contemplate many poker related issues. I've come to the realization that the times where my enthusiasm for the game has faltered have come at times where I'm not thinking about the game on a deep enough level. If I get into too much of a rut and fall into a pattern of taking the game at face value the desire to play quickly goes away. I love the complexity of the game and trying to put all the pieces together is really what drives me to succeed. If I'm not constantly improving my game my subconscious gets bored and wants to explore other activities.

Luckily I haven't been in this sort of rut for a while, but being able to recognize when it's happening will go a long way in making sure it doesn't last long. It really shouldn't be that hard to prevent, as I really do want to be constantly improving and learning everything I can. It's the attitude I want to wake up every morning with, but that's easier said than done. Nobody can maintain a completely gung ho attitude, especially when you are putting in a large amount of hands per week.

When people start to get burned out they are usually given the advice "Take a few days off and don't even think about poker". That may work for some, but in my case I would be better off taking a different approach. Instead of taking a retreat from poker I will take a poker retreat. If I feel I'm getting stuck in a routine I'll take a few days away from the table and immerse myself in poker theory. I'm of the belief that after you reach a certain level of experience that you need to do a large portion of improving away from the tables. When you first start of the experience will have the most effect on your profits (so improvement comes from 75/25 playing to study). Once you've seen most of what the game has to offer you need to do a lot of brainwork and then test those conclusions at the tables (improvement now comes 75/25 study to play). I’m not saying you should spend 75% of your time studying poker, just that when you reach a certain point that’s where most of your improvement will come from.

I don’t think many people really understand this and it gets a lot of mid stakes players in trouble. When they hit their first road block after crossing the tipping point instead of doing some deep analysis of their own play they do what has always improved their game the most; hit the tables. When this doesn’t give the same results it used to they can become incredibly frustrated and even burn out of the game. If they would just spend a little extra time thinking about poker and then testing their conclusions at the table, I think they would be very pleased with the results.

This turned out a lot more articley than I had originally planned, but that’s ok. The whole point was basically to say that if I fell like I’m falling into a bad rut that instead of taking time away from the game that I will sink myself in as deep as I can to get those brain juices flowing. I guess the real conclusion that can be drawn is: If you ever find yourself in a bad poker mindset just figure out why you love the game and immerse yourself in that aspect for a few days. With that at the front of your mind it will be hard to not be excited about poker.

UHGGG Bodog

The last few days at bodog really haven't gone as I would have liked. I really have not been playing great poker. I think the main problem is I've been too lazy with my reads because of the low quality of play. In many situations you want to get a lot of money in with medium strength hands, but you also need to make sure you minimize your losses when it's obvious you're beat. I really haven't been doing the latter all that well and it's cost me a bit. That being said I have been getting a sick number of coolers and bad beats, but I could have most likely saved about half of what I've lost the last few days. I've temporarily fallen in the trap of being blinded by some players donkidness. Instead of reading their actual hand I just assume that they have some garbage. While they usually do have garbage, the times they don't are pretty obvious and I could save a lot of money by getting away from those hands. I'm going to play the $100 6 max tables until I'm certain that I've made all the necessary adjustments. I've played 2425 (wow that seems so low for the # of hours played) and lost $950 so far this week. I am about to hop on a flight to Seattle to visit my father for a few weeks. I'm not sure how often I'll be playing yet, but I'll keep you guys updated when I do.

Bankroll: $6191
Hands played this week: 2425
Bonus cleared this week: 0
Hands played this month: 6954
Bonus/rakeback this month: $151

MMMM Bodog

The decision to go to Bodog is looking like it was a great move. The players are so bad I find myself laughing hysterically every 5 minutes. I’ve had hands where I was called all in on the turn with J high no pair no draw, and had someone just call my large river bet with the nuts. The only downside is the inability to play more than 3 tables. I enjoy playing these games so much that I’m putting in 8 hour days easily, but that only equates to about 1500-2000 hands. I guess this goes to show that the number of hands played determines your session length threshold, not the actual number of hours. I really hope they allow at least 6 tables in the near future, as that would basically be a license to print money. If any of you play less than 4 tables your money should definitely be in Bodog. The players are giving away money like it’s going out of style. If you don’t already have an account you can sign up for Bodog rakeback here.

I ran a little cold this week and since it’s pretty much impossible to bluff anyone at Bodog it’s harder to manufacture wins during those streaks. There are so many situations where people get money in with terrible hands that when they actually show up with something real you just have to pay them off with your over pairs. I did make a few mistakes trying to bluff people, which is obviously the worst idea ever at Bodog. I had a little UB hang over and tried to pull some of the big moves that worked over there, but get called by 2nd pair at the dog. I learned my lesson fast and will not be doing very much bluffing in the future. I made $223 in 4529 hands since my last update. I expect to be making awesome money on these tables in the coming weeks.

Bankroll: $7141
Hands played this week: 4529
Bonus cleared this week: 0
Hands played this month: 4529
Bonus/rakeback this month: $71

Bodog Here I Come + Feb Review

My money made its way into Bodog Wednesday evening, and I was able to get a session in before I went out. Things are going to be a little different playing there, as you can only play 3 tables. This will be fine for March as I’ll be spending most of the month in Seattle visiting my dad, and will only be able to play on my laptop. This is going to mean a lot less hands, but I think playing against worse players at fewer tables will increase my win rate enough to compensate.

My first Bodog session, and final session of Feb, was as good as it could get. I played 435 hands in 2 hours (like I said the hands will be much slower) and made $551 at $100NL 6max. I’m not getting any bonus money at Bodog, so I’ll just be posting rakeback updates as I get them. My roll is getting to the point where I can consider moving up again in the next few weeks. Bodog has no $200NL 6max games, so the situation is a little tricky. I will probably stick with $100NL 6 max mixing in some $200NL, when I can find a good short handed game, until I have 9k and can try my hand at the $300NL 6 max tables.

February was a very good month. I fell short on some of my goals, but I’m not too worried about that.

Profit: $2357
Rakeback: $1668
Hands: 29105


Let’s see how I did with my goals:

Play 55,000 hands: I only got in about 30k hands this month so I fell short on this goal. I don’t really have a good excuse, I just didn’t get in the time I should have. 30k hands is still a lot, and I made pretty good money so it’s not a huge deal.

$2600 in Bonus Money + Rakeback: This is pretty much based on the number of hands I played, so it only makes sense that if I missed that goal I’d miss this as well.

Improve My Game: This was the most important of my goals, and I’m happy to say I accomplished it. I’m very happy with where my game is at now and exited at where I can take it in the next few months.

I’m not going to be setting any specific goals for March, as I really have no clue exactly how much I’ll be playing. The week before I leave I’m going to be hitting the tables pretty hard and I’d like to get at least 5k hands a week while I’m in Seattle. I think the Bodog games are going to be a lot of fun. I’m happy that it’s still possible to make a living at this game, even in such rough times. If you can do it now it’s only going to get better in the future. I’m going to be working on my game a ton this month and anyone who is serious about this game should be doing the same.