Have a great New Year's Eve

Hey everyone. The move to Chicago is going well for me so far. A few days ago I ended up buying a bunch of furniture for my place, which will get delivered today. Also, the guy who sold me the furniture ended up being really cool and we've become friends.

Last night, I ended up meeting him and some of his friends at a party called "Eve of the Eve" at Union Station. It was an amazing party and unlike anything I've ever attended before. Basically, it was a very chill social gathering with food, alcohol, live music, and formal attire. I ended up meeting some new people there and had a great time, so I'm glad I went. The party was also for a good cause too as much of the proceeds went to a not-for-profit organization called "HighSight" which provides academic and social support to Chicago high school students.

I also ended up buying a new 55'' Samsung LCD TV, PS3, and a Bose sound system for my apartment so I'm excited for that to get delivered at the end of next week. I think I may have to go back to Best Buy today and pick up a new digital camera as the one I had was broken. I sent it in to get fixed but I probably won't get it for awhile yet and there were a few times last night where I would have liked to take a few pics for the blog. I'm sure it's more fun reading with pics. I have to get a wireless router for my apartment too, so I'll head over there pretty soon because my furniture is going to get delivered in about 3 hours or so.

I haven't figured out exactly where I'm going out tonight but I'm sure any place will be a blast. I hope you all have a great New Year's Eve and I wish you the best in 2010!

The duck has landed!

After leaving ND Sunday afternoon at around 5 PM, my Dad, brother, and I finally arrived in Chicago at around 9 AM on Monday morning. We ended up driving straight through and did not stay overnight anywhere. We switched drivers every 2-3 hours so whoever wasn't driving was normally napping.

I'm glad to finally be somewhat settled in, as we were able to move both of my computer setups as well as all my clothes up into my apartment. I was planning on bringing a desk and chair along with but space did not allow for that. So I've got some shopping ahead of me for the next few days, as I need to buy a bedroom set, TV, kitchen table, two desks and two desk chairs, and a bunch of other smaller stuff like dinnerware.

Seeing my Dad and brother take off back home was the first time it really kicked in that I wasn't going to be seeing my family near as much. Obviously I knew this going into the move but it really didn't hit home until after saying goodbye to them. I'm going to miss my Mom as well as all of my great friends in ND. I'll make sure to come back and visit as often as I can.

I'm actually pretty tired now so I'm going to get to sleep and go to bed perhaps the earliest I have in years. This way I can wake up in the morning and get started in my search for furniture.

Curveball

So it looks like I won't be leaving for Chicago until sometime later this morning... we ended up getting around 2-3 feet of snow in ND and the interstate was closed for most of yesterday when we had originally planned to start the drive there.

My Dad and brother are going to drive me there and we're going to pack everything I need to bring along into the Suburban. I decided against taking my car to Chicago for various reasons. Hopefully the drive there goes well and we end up getting in late Sunday night. I'm only bringing clothes, my computer desk, and my two computer setups along with. I'm just going to buy some new furniture since it would be too big of a hassle to move anything all the way from ND to Chicago, as well as none of the furniture I have right now is really that nice anyways.

Here's a pic of my roommate's car and my brother's van. Looks like my roommate is going to have a bit of shoveling to do in order to go anywhere.

Merry Christmas!

I ended up going over to my family's house for Christmas Eve and we ate dinner with my Grandpa there as well. Then I went home and started packing more stuff, got bored of packing stuff, and put in a session that basically was a nightmare.

UB was kind enough to give me some Christmas gifts in the form of coolers/ suckouts/ flip losses/ etc you name it, it happened. All standard shit, but it would just never end. I probably went like 0/12 in hitting flush draws in medium to large pots. Every time I got close to coming back to even towards the end of the session I'd just continue to get raped in a setup hand. Whatever, it's just one day but damn that was frustrating. I think I ran like shit last Christmas too.


I'm not playing any more for real this time, until I get to Chicago and get my apartment all set up. I have to finish off packing up my clothes and open presents and whatnot with my family tomorrow anyways. It's snowing a bit here, but unless it gets really bad the plan is still to leave sometime on Saturday morning for Chicago.

Hope everyone's Christmas is a great one! And if you play poker at all, hopefully you run better than I did!

Winning day

I played pretty solid today, finishing up $2k over 2,200 hands. I actually was up more before I started my final two hour session of the day, where I decided to make one horrific bluff for my stack and then run poorly in other medium to large pots.

Overall, it was a decent day... I'll take it. I had some SUPER annoying hands throughout the day. I'm glad I didn't tilt and let it get to me much... I just kept on truckin'.

This one made me fume. The guy was a big fish and has 44-JJ here or other draws and plays it the same way.

There were other hands that were large pots I lost but many of them were just flips or standard suckouts. This one I'll throw in for entainment value. It was one of the hands that caused my loss in the final two hour session of the day.

I probably won't play at all over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, as I'll be finishing up packing my stuff for my move as well as spending time with my family.

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and happy holidays!

Swombies

So a few months ago my brother and a bunch of his friends ended up making this insane home movie called "Swombies". It is absolutely hilarious and the footage I've seen of it thus far has turned out to be way better than I expected. They are showing the film on January 4th in Grand Forks, ND, so if you're in town you absolutely HAVE to see this. It's very original.

Here's some more info on it, as well as a Sneak Peak vid of the movie.

I've been on a ridiculous sleep schedule over the past few days and I barely know what day it is. I've decided I'm just going to skip sleeping this morning and just stay awake so I can go to bed around 10 PM today instead of the 6-9 AM I've been going to sleep at lately. Basically, I had one day where I played an extra-long session early in the morning because of a huge fish still hanging around. It caused me to sleep extra long the following day and thus got me into this cycle. Honestly, I have no clue how much I'm up since the last post but I've been winning.

Another win on the day

Played three separate sessions today and finished up around $1.6k. I started out the day with a pretty terrible session on Stars... losing around $1.4k. Lost with AsQs on a 3s3x5s board to a fish who happened to limp 34... we got it in on the flop. Also lost AK sooooted vs a monkey regular's KK all-in pre-flop. Then lost 50 big blinds to a fish who limp/3-bet on the button after I isolation raised him when I was the big blind... I just shoved my AK in and he snapped with KQ and rivered a flush to win the pot. Basically, the big hands I lost weren't really due to mistakes on my part. The hands were pretty standard and I just ended up on the wrong side of each of them when it was all said and done.

Switched sites and played two more sessions and won about $3k combined from those two sessions. I played pretty well and ran decent, so I'm pretty happy with the way the day turned out. I'm going to start mixing in some preparation for my move over the next few days, as I'm leaving for Chicago very soon. The plan is to drive there the day after Christmas.

Solid day

Ended up playing a few sessions today and finished up $1.8k. I played OK but made a HORRID river call with KK after a fish who just showed me a bluff a few hands before potted the river... basically, it was a situation where the most likely hands for him got there but I snapped it off anyways because the timing of his bet was similar to when he bluffed. Stupid call that cost me $250... basically lit two and a half bills on fire.

Also went with my brother to see the UND hockey team play the USA under 20 team. It was a pretty good game and we got to watch the game from a suite. The suite had a pretty good view of the ice and there was free food and drinks as well, which was pretty cool. USA ended up beating the Sioux 4-2. The USA team will go on to play in the World Juniors Championship in Saskatoon, Canada, towards the end of the year. It's a great tournament with amazing level of hockey. Basically, it's all the best players from each country that are under 20 years old. The tourney was in Grand Forks when players like Ovechkin, Malkin, and Kessel were younger and playing in it.

Broke even today...

...due to a never ending supply of coolers. (sigh). It's short term results, doesn't matter, etc. blah. Maddening hands though.


Set no good

TPTK in 3-bet pot vs. fish = worthless

Top two vs aggro reg. not good enough

flopped set worthless by the river


Looking through HEM, I actually won a ton more pots for 50bbs - 100bbs than I lost. Just a few of those big, key hands above killed me.

Rough day

Ended up losing about $1.8k today over 2.7k hands. I played a bit of $3/6 NL and $5/10 NL as there were some massive fish playing those stakes. Unfortunately, those fish got the best of me.

This one fish totally dominated me at $3/6 NL then left the table shortly after winning the last big pot vs. me so I was unable to get my revenge. So tilting. Here are the hands vs. this one player...

Hand 1: I get it in good and just get sucked out on. Standard.

Hand 2: Based upon how retarded he played the previous hand and whatnot, I felt he's going to overplaying a flush here the majority of the time. Unfortunately, it turns out that he spiked his 2 outer.

Hand 3: He TARPS me.

Hand 4: This is the only one that's kind of questionable. Obviously flatted in position because I wanted to play more pots vs him... river call is kinda "meh" but he was playing pretty erratically and I don't mind the call too much. It just sucks I missed all the extra outs on the river that I picked up because of the turn card.

I also lost a few big pots at $5/10 NL. Ended up getting in QQ pre-flop in the BB vs a SB 3-bet of a late position open... The SB had KK and I didn't suck out. Also, my AA couldn't hold vs the fish at the table in this hand. Super standard.

Overall, I think I played OK. I spewed a bit for half a stack a couple of times, but other than that I don't think I really messed up all that much. Hopefully I have a big weekend.

Heater

Basically, right after I posted my last blog post I ended up crushing at the tables. Over the 13 hours I've played since I made that post, I'm winning at $1 per hand over about 5k hands. Looks like things are turning around for me, which is great. My confidence is back and I'm playing pretty well overall.

I'm going to try and get in some decent hours over the next few days and over the weekend. After that, I need to start packing stuff up for my move.

Today, my family and I went to eat an early Christmas dinner with my Grandpa at his nursing home. The food was actually quite a bit better than last year. He's doing amazingly well for being in his nineties. My Grandpa and my family seem a bit disappointed that I'm moving away, which is understandable. It's a fact that I'm going to see them less, but I'll still come visit at least once every 2-3 months or so I'm sure.

Also watched the Dexter season finale today with Brittni. WOW. What an amazing ending to the season. I definitely didn't see Rita getting killed coming at all. Very surprising twist in the storyline. I can't wait until the next season.

Rocky waters pokerwise

So this month hasn't started off that hot. I'm down so far for the month and lady luck does not appear to be on my side. I can't blame it all on bad luck obviously, as my play has definitely not been up to the high level I was playing at in September and October. Basically, I'm running approximately 9 buyins below EV on the month over around 6k hands and I'm sure I'm down a lot more in EV on Cake poker but I haven't configured HEM to track Cake yet. Just stating the facts here, I'm not whining.

It's super standard to be running a bit below all in EV and I know that, but it's so tough to keep my confidence. I'm trying my best and today I played the best I've played all month, winning two buy-ins despite running around $2k below EV in all-ins. Right around the 1,400 hand mark for the day I was telling my brother that I'm finally running decently hot and then it proceeds to go downhill from there, lol. Basically, I had an OK day that could have easily been a monster day at 400NL.


I've made a lot of spewy plays and has some uncharataristicaly tilty sessions so far this month, so I think if I had played better I could actually be a lot closer to even at this point. Nonetheless, there's no point in focusing on such short term results. Even the past month and a half where I've been treading water isn't really all that big of a deal in the big picture of things. I'm just sort of venting my frustration and trying to turn my mindset positive.

It's so much more difficult to put in hours, play your best, and don't tilt when the times are tough at the tables. You realize that the times you get it in good and still lose you should be happy but getting AA all in pre-flop vs a maniacal villain who you've been 3-bet battling a bit with and losing to his AQ soooted still knocks a bit of wind out of my sails (actually happened today). I don't let it affect my play or get nearly as pissed as I used to, but I just can't seem to totally remove the emotion of frustration. Obviously other poker players feel these types of emotions as well, but the degree of frustration I feel while playing definitely needs to be reduced.

Times like these I question my career choice, but only for like 5 seconds after I realize the alternatives, lol. Big picture wise, things are still great for me. I'm moving to Chicago, still have a big bankroll online for 400NL even after cashing out a ton for my move, am healthy, have lots of great friends & family, and I'm still up a respectable amount for the year.

No matter what people say, in my opinion, anyone who can make a living from poker is very fortunate. I feel right now that I'm right in the middle tier of pros... I'm not a low stakes grinder earning slightly more than I would at a regular job... but I'm definitely not in the elite group of poker pros just yet. My game is good right now but it needs to be great, and I'm going to work my hardest to move into the top tier of pros as soon as possible.

Moving to Chicago!

About a week ago, during my trip to Chicago, I ended up signing a 15-month lease on an apartment in a high-rise called "Grand Plaza" in downtown Chicago. The apartment I'm renting is pretty awesome... it's on a really high floor so the view is amazing. I can even see a bit of Lake Michigan from my room as well. The Grand Plaza building itself is really nice, as there are tons of amenities such as a nice fitness center, basketball court, indoor hot tub, outdoor pool, outdoor running track, and even putting greens. Also, tons of restaurants, bars, clubs, and retail shopping stores are within walking distance. It's in a really great location.

Here is the floor plan of my apartment and some of the furniture I've picked out that I'll probably end up getting.


I am super excited for my move and it's coming up soon... I'll be leaving North Dakota the day after Christmas. I already have some friends in Chicago and it will be nice being closer to my friend and poker coach, Tim aka "Nutedawg." I'm sure my poker game will go to the next level in 2010 as we'll likely be spending more time playing and discussing poker together.

I'm still going to keep my house in ND since I actually still like my house and don't really want to displace my brother and my two other roommates who are living in it.

Chicago Trip

My 11 day trip to Chicago after Thanksgiving was an absolute blast. I did so many fun things and got to meet up with some really great people.

The first weekend after Thanksgiving I got to hang out and play some poker with Tim (aka "Nutedawg") during the afternoon and went out with Bryan to some bars at night. On Monday night I ended up going swing dancing with Lynn, which was a ton of fun. We went to Fizz Bar and Grill, and apparently they have this open swing dance night nearly every Monday.

Monday and Tuesday afternoon I ended up shopping quite a bit near the Watertower area downtown and bought some pretty sick clothes. I normally don't go shopping at all, so when I do I try and get everything in one swoop so I don't have to worry about getting more clothes for awhile.

On Thursday and Friday afternoon I ended up checking out some of the high-rise apartments in downtown Chicago... I'll talk more about that in my next post since it's pretty late and I just want to talk about my trip right now.

Lynn and I caught the Blackhawks game on Friday night while Tim was working his charm on a date with a new girl he's been talking to the past few weeks or so. The game was a one goal game pretty much all the way up until the end, where the Predators scored a few goals with about two minutes left to thwart any comeback hopes. The game was really fun though, as the building had a good atmosphere and the fans went pretty crazy when the home team scored. Also got to see the former North Dakota Fighting Sioux Hockey star, Johnathan Toews. He's now the Captain for the Blackhawks and one of their best players. He's in the picture below, number 19.




Saturday night I got to see the Second City Comedy show, which was quite hilarious. Afterwards, we went out with Tim and met some of his friends at a small local bar.


On Sunday I ended up playing some more poker with TIm and ended up flying home on Monday. I have been super busy with random stuff ever since I got home. My thermostat ended up going out in my house so it was super cold inside, but ended up getting it fixed yesterday.

I'll make a post later today which basically announces a pretty big step forward in my life. Stay tuned.

New month & Chicago

So I ended up having a losing month in November. Not exactly sure by how much, but I'll find out once I get back home and calculate everything out. Looking forward to playing better in December.

So I'm still in Chicago and have been super busy. My apologies for the lack of updates. I've been hanging out with friends, playing a bit of poker, and bought a ton of new clothes over the past few days. The weather has been decent, although it was a bit chilly for a few days... but I heard it snowed back in ND so I'm definitely in better weather here.

I'm really liking the city and I'm having a great time so far. There's so much stuff to do here; it's very refreshing compared to the relatively tame ND. I'll try and post some more updates before my trip is over.

Update

So I've taken a two day break or so from poker. Hopefully I come back with a refreshed mindset.

On Tuesday, my intramural hockey team ended up getting the "W" with a 7-3 win vs. a very solid team. One of our players went on a scoring spree and lit the lamp 4 times.

I'm headed to Chicago for a bit after Thanksgiving to hang out with Tim, Bryan, and some other friends. Should be fun.

lol FML

haha I just logged onto Cake poker and played 15 minutes and insta dropped 2.5 buyins mainly due to coolers. Add this to losing the past 2 days as well and I'm well into the red for the month.

This is so annoying, it feels like I can't do anything right. I think I'm just going to take the rest of the day off and get some other stuff done. It'll be a miracle if I end up breaking even this month.

Whatever, fuck it

Sometimes poker just plain sucks. My last session of the day was ridiculously maddening.

I'm not even going to post any hands, it's futile. I will just say that I'm glad many of my opponents still suck really badly at playing poker and I can't wait until I can finally start running OK again.

Profitable day, but a bit frustrating

I ended up winning $800 today but had some really annoying hands occur. I just didn't run that well basically and got sucked out by my arch-rival in classic fashion. He's a reg on the site and normally he just insta-leaves when I join his tables. I swear he's 4-bet shipped a suited Ace all in on me like this at least 6 times now and he's sucked out each time when I had AK or AQ (75% chance to win or better). He just simply can't handle light 3-bets when he's OOP and just snaps and ships it in on me as a 4-bet all in bluff.

Other than that, standard coolers like running top two pair into quads, etc. Not really mad or anything as I still ended up booking a win on the day. I feel like I really need to pay more attention in the small and medium pots as I made a few retarded call downs that cost me about 1/4 of a stack at least twice.

I'm going to try not to sleep in too long so I can wake up and play the entire day. I really want to play a ton today.

Poker went better today

I ended up winning about 3 buy-ins on the day despite losing with KK vs QQ in a 3-bet pot when 200bbs deep. QQ flopped a set and my opponent was a reg who is extremely liberal in calling 3-bets... I don't like the line I took during the hand really all that much, but either way I was probably getting stacked. Kind of a cooler hand.

Hockey sucked tonight though. We ended up losing our first intramural hockey game of the regular season to the team that beat us in the Championship game last year. We now have 4 wins and 1 loss and are tied with the team that beat us for the top spot in the league standings. It was a dissapointing loss, as we were very close the whole time. We ended up losing 3-4 and the last two minutes of the game were pretty shitty...

I ended up getting called for a bullshit roughing penalty when the guy I was defending crashed into his own teammate and my teammate that was defending the other guy. That left us shorthanded for the last part of the game and then the refs blew the whistle for like no appearant reason with about 1 minute and 50 seconds left... the clock is running time in these games... so everyone was like WTF and confused and it took about 50 seconds for everyone to line up for the faceoff so most of our time at the end was wasted. We were unable to get the equalizer.

Terrible day

Got crushed today. Lost 6 buy-ins. Not much else to say other than I played mediocre, made a few dumb bluffs for stacks, and ran like a midget with a broken leg.

So many annoying hands against massive fish. Ridiculous.

QQ no good. Villain was a terrible player... HUGE fish.

This was against the same HUGE fish as the previous hand... he literally went, pot, pot, pot, every fucking hand when he had the pre-flop lead OOP. I INSTA-shoved this river. I was soooooo far ahead of his range on every street. Such a sick river.

Another hand vs. that same moron in the hands above. Such an amazing flop for me but the board runs out like total dogshit. I correctly fold and he shows the lucksacked 4 card straight after I had him by the balls on the flop and turn.

This guy was a mega-nit. I don't know, if he had raised pre-flop from early position instead of the button I would probably just fold the turn actually, he's so tight. I thought about c/c turn and just c/c river but I don't think he's ever continuing a river bluff with only $125 to bet and he could have something like KJ that's going to call it off on the turn but just give up on the river.

Whatever, it's just one of those days where nothing goes right.

Isildur1 - New Lord of the Ring Games?

Isildur1, which many believe to be Viktor Blom (aka Blom90) from Sweden, has splashed into the nosebleed cash games and ended up going from about even on his FTP account to over $5 million profit in just over a week!


He seems to be playing nearly daily... playing both NLHE and PLO HU at $500/$1000 blinds against the best players in the world. Over the past few days he's had a rough time it appears, losing nearly $3 million to Patrik Antonius at $500/$1000 HU PLO. Isildur1 also lost the biggest pot in online history to Patrik.

Isildur1 has also played CardRunners pros Cole South and Brian Townsend over the past day or two, putting in winning sessions vs each of them.

Isildur1 seems to be down around $600k over the last 24 hours... I logged onto FTP about 4 hours ago only to find him 8 tabling vs the THREE BEST PLAYERS IN THE WORLD!!! All in seperate HU matches !!! at the highest stakes on the internet ($500/$1000 NLHE) !!!

He was playing 4 tables vs Durrrr (who was apperantly playing with his whole roll at the table, as he was shortstacking with 25 big blinds for a while on one of his tables). Then at the same time Isildur1 was also playing two tables of HU NLHE vs Phil Ivey! And had two more tables open vs. Patrik Antonious. Insanity! Ivey seemed to come out ahead around $800,000 and it looks as though durrrr is winning a bit of his money back from the bloodbath he endured about a week ago.

I personally think it's retarded for Isildur1 to play 3 of the best players in the world AT THE SAME TIME! I mean, there aren't that many people who even play that high of stakes... he should spread his games out more so that he doesn't have to worry about adjusting to three different opponents at once.

I actually hope Isildur1 does really well and cleans everyone out at the nosebleeds. Not because I don't like durrrr or any of the other high stakes players, but because it would be absolutely hilarious. Some unknown kid comes and dominates the best in the world over a significant sample of hands (that's yet to be seen) and claims his title as Lord of the Ring Games, lol.

Actually, it's somewhat inspirational that Isildur1 seems to have the ability to have an edge on some of the best players in the world. It's a bit early to tell if he does have an edge or is just running hot, but if he indeed continues to dominate, then it will prove to be a lesson to all poker players what can be done through a bit of hard work.

For those who want to read more about this epic high stakes action you can go here for the offical Isildur1 thread on 2+2 or read INTERNETPOKERS' blog on CardRunners, as he made a post about it as well. I haven't read that blog posting yet but I plan on doing it tomorrow, as I'm definitely curious as to what he has to say.

As far as poker for me, I played three shorter sessions today and ended up three buyins, so it was a decent result. I'm going to get some sleep and hit the tables hard tomorrow.

Awesome weekend in Phoenix!

I ended up flying down to Phoenix last Friday and visited my Uncle. It was a blast. Allegiant Air ended up adding a direct flight from Grand Forks to the smaller Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport. So the tickets were pretty cheap and the flight was a lot shorter than normal, since I didn't have to switch planes in Minneapolis like you have to do if you fly to anywhere besides Vegas. It was actually the first direct flight from Grand Forks to Phoenix ever.

I went to an NHL hockey game on Saturday night and the Phoenix Coyotes were playing the Dallas Stars. The home team ended up winning by a score of 3-2 and it was a great game. They even had a promotion running that if the Coyotes won, then you would get a free ticket to a future game of your choosing! I ended up choosing the game where they play the Chicago Blackhawks on March 20th so hopefully I get a chance to head back to Phoenix to catch that game.




Poker is looking up for the month. I've had two decent winning sessions in a row and am feeling a lot better about playing. I may have had a subtle form of unconscious tilt earlier in the month... the break over the past few days I think was both helpful and necessary. I ended up winning $1k today overall.

I'm still down overall for the month at this point, but as Nute said to me... it really doesn't matter. A month is just an arbitrary measure of time that a lot of poker players seem to use in order to evaluate their results. I can't get flustered or upset if I'm down in the arbitrary time period of a "month." I just have to play the best poker I am capable of and everything will fall into place like it always seems to do. I'm still up a decent amount for the year and I absolutely love my job. Life is good.

Site switch = winning day

Obviously a super tiny sample, as I just played one session today but I ended up 3 buy-ins after switching to a different site for the day. I felt pretty good during the session but made one river bluff that I actually liked but didn't work out. I think sometimes something as small and stupid as a different visual look of the tables and different software can help me re-focus and get back to playing good, solid, basic poker.

Although it's obviously retarded to think you are "running bad" on a particular site, sometimes if you've had a long string of losing sessions on that site you might actually subconsciously expect to lose from the moment you log in to start the session, which should be avoided at all costs. I definitely don't feel like I've logged on expecting to lose for any of my sessions this month, but I had that feeling in the past (like a year ago or so) for sure. I'm fairly certain my mental game is past that now.

Tonight we won our 4th intramural hockey game by a score of 7-1. We absolutely shelled them in the end, but our goalie played amazingly well at the beginning of the game to keep us in the lead by at least two goals in the second period. It was a very fun game and felt good to crush a team by a lopsided margin while improving our regular season record to 4 wins and 0 losses.

Another rough day

I'm really tail-spinning this month... need to kick it back in gear. I'm losing key hands at terrible times... basically I just start to feel good during a session, playing well, then BAM cooler. I'm letting it get to me a bit, which is not good.

I'm switching sites for a few days, maybe a different look will make a difference for me...

Durrr loses again

I am pretty sure Durrrr was up $1.5 million halfway through Tuesday but then dumped it all back to Isildur1 and lost a few hundred K. Here's the most recent news on it....

Here's a pretty sick hand from their session today... I don't know if this 6-bet shove with AKsoooted is very good at all... mainly because Isildur1 has been pulling a lot of his bullshit post-flop and hasn't really 5-bet that much or even been super crazy with 4-betting from the hands that I've watched. Of course he's been pretty rampant with the 3-bets.

Full Tilt Poker $500/$1000 No Limit Hold'em - 2 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

Isildur1 (BB): $347477.00
durrrr (BTN/SB): $650051.50

Pre Flop: ($1500.00)
durrrr raises to $3000, Isildur1 raises to $12000, durrrr raises to $31600, Isildur1 requests TIME, Isildur1 raises to $76800, durrrr raises to $650051.50 all in, Isildur1 calls $270677 all in

Flop: ($694954.00) 8 9 T

Turn: ($694954.00) 9

River: ($694954.00) 8

Final Pot: $694954.00
Isildur1 shows A A (two pair, Aces and Nines)
durrrr shows A K (two pair, Nines and Eights)
Isildur1 wins $694953.50
(Rake: $0.50)


I ended up losing 3 buyins today. About 5 minutes before I quit I flopped the K high flush vs the A high flush. GG my 200bb stack.

Anyways, my outlook on my future poker sessions is good, however. Today one of my friends, Forrest, (who plays $2/4 NL on FTP) and I had a long video review discussion and chat about today's games. Rob joined in as well. I must say, Forrest has some really great ideas and I can't wait to watch the video he's going to make for next week's meeting. Today was a really good study session; I learned a ton.

Most epic online HU match ever!!!

Ok so over the past few days on FTP, Tom "durrrr" Dwan (who some consider to be the best or one of the best online poker professionals in the world) has been playing super high stakes HU matches with a player known as "Isildur1". Ironically, durrrr just signed with FTP as part of "Team Full Tilt" like a day or two prior.

If you want to read more about it, go here. But in a nutshell, the two have played dozens of hours already and durrrr is getting absolutely annihilated. He is down over $2.3 million over the past few days to this opponent.

I've been watching bits and pieces of the match throughout the day, and I can't believe that durrrr is still playing this guy at 3 AM!!! They were playing earlier this afternoon too. There have been so many insane hands played, with numerous $400k pots. Durrr seems to be losing it here towards the end, as when I'm typing this out he's made 2 or 3 really dumb bluffs that cost him his stack.

It's getting late and I'm going to bed, but I wouldn't be surprised if durrrr is busto by morning. I just don't understand why he continues to play this guy as it doesn't seem like he has an edge at all. If I were him, I'd take a day or two break and review all of Isildur1's hands in HEM and try and figure him out... it's fairly likely that Isildur1 did this to durrrr and probably researched some durrrr HH's to figure out a counter-strategy to his style... there's really no other way he could be crushing durrrr this badly.

Deer hunting

Went out deer hunting on Sunday and ended up filling my doe tag so I'm finished with deer hunting. We actually didn't see that many deer, which was surprising. We did quite a bit of walking so I kind of figured we'd run into a lot more opportunities to shoot some deer but I only ended up seeing three deer all day and two of those we shot.

I played poker a bit after I got home from hockey and lost about a buy-in. I made a really terrible play in a 3-bet pot when I was 200bbs deep with a regular. I basically check-raised all-in on the turn for no reason and was only getting called by better... sure enough he had flopped the flush and my TPTK was no good. I definitely played lackluster today and I really need to get into gear and start playing well if I hope to have a good November.

Here are some pics from deer hunting:

Morning Sky


Dad wearing deer hunting required orange clothing



Walking around looking for deer


My new AR-15


Taking aim


Duckslayer007, lol

WOW

Got crushed today. Played two sessions... four hours total. Lost $4.3k playing a mixture of $2/4 NL - $5/10 NL. Ran $3.3k below all-in EV. Only played 114 hands of $5/10 NL and got coolered all-in pre-flop with QQ on the BTN vs a very aggro regular in the CO who had AA. I was running like 55/44 with a 10% 3-bet at that table over like 40 hands.

I don't know what else to say really. I pretty much ran bad in every way in the book. Besides running way below all in EV I got coolered a ton as well and didn't have any coolers go in my favor except for one hand.

I feel soul-crushed right now. This is frustrating. I'm calling it a night and probably going to go out tomorrow and take my frustration out on some deer with my new AR-15 rifle fixed w/ a scope.

Still even on month

Past two days basically canceled each other out. Yesterday I lost 2 buyins and today I finished up about $1k. I'm going to try to not look at my results month-to-date from now on until the end of the month. We'll see if I can restrain myself.

Yesterday, my intramural hockey team played a pretty intense game. We ended out coming up on top 5-4 but it was a battle. We were up by one with like 5 minutes left in the 3rd period but they came right back and scored to tie it up. We ended up lighting the lamp for the 5th goal with only a few minutes left in the game. The last minute or so of the game was insane. The puck was in our end and basically I just ended up eating a decent chunk of time off the clock by holding the puck close to the corner boards with my skates.

They had a face-off right outside our zone with about 20 seconds left... they won the draw and shot it towards the goal. I blocked it with my stick and started skating the puck towards the corner to kill the last 10 seconds or so and someone gave me a savage slash to the stick, breaking my stick in half. They got a penalty on the play and time expired but wow, that slash was pretty unnecessary and it broke my favorite, new stick.

Slow and steady wins the race?

Another day where it seemed like not a whole lot really happened. I played 3 sessions for a total of about 5 hours worth of play and ended up $1k. This puts me back to even for the month and I've finally recovered from that really bad day I had on the first day of the month where I ended up dumping $2.5k.

One thing I really want to focus on in my play over the next few days is being aware of when a reg is likely fed up with my 3-betting and is going to 4-bet and other similar types of situations. Also, I'm going to try and avoid making speculative plays when the villain I'm up against expects ME to be frustrated and make a stand... It seems lately over the past week or so my timing has been off in this area. Mainly, it's just a matter of paying attention and then leveling. I'm going to work hard on getting better at this over the near future.

Another small win

Ended up playing three sessions today for a total of about 7 hours... finished up $650. Nothing spectacular but I really didn't play amazingly well either. I think I'm not focusing enough on my tables... I'm getting distracted easily by surfing internet, monkeying around with music, looking at my HEM $ won stat (terrible habit by the way, super -EV). I'm going to do my best to just knock all that shit off from now on when I play.

I finished watching Nutedawg's second part of the 100NL vids on CardRunners that he made. Awesome two videos. Definitely check them out. It's obvious to me that he pays full attention when he plays, as I think if I had been playing I probably miss half of the spots or more in which he makes a unique play to scoop the pot.

An email from one of my students alerted me to the upcoming date of December 1st, 2009... the date that banks are supposed to be legally responsible for complying with all the UIGEA regulations. I totally forgot about this and I think I'm going to research the expected impact this might have on online poker and cashing out. If anyone has any good articles to point me towards on this let me know.

Slowly climbing back

So I played two sessions today and finished up two buy-ins. Nothing fantastic but it sure beats a swift kick to the shorts. Mainly, I continued getting standarly coolered which is expected since it felt like I've been running pretty decent over the last few months. I'm not mad about it or anything, just stating the facts.

Basically, these two hands prevented me from coming away from today's play as a big winner. These were the only two hands in which I got felted for 100bbs, which I suppose I should be happy/proud about. This hand, the villain was a MEGA nit... He was something like 22/8 with a 3-bet of 0.9% over a huge sample. Sick life.

In this hand, the villain was also the mark at the table. He was pretty passive but bad... so I actually figured he had a hand here, something like AQ or AJ. I just call him down (standard IMO) on the flop and turn since he's betting so big and quickly... it was so likely he'd at least bet the river, so then I could just jam the rest in. Well turns out he just ships it in for me on the river after binking his 4 outer.

I actually took these two hands a lot better than I normally would. Of course I spazzed the chat in all caps a bit just for fun/show, but I really didn't give a fuck that I just got sucked out on at all. It's tough to completely remove emotion from the game after you get an unfortunate result. I've always been a little pissed when shit like this happens. I never really let it affect my play at all, but really there's no point to even be pissed off at all in the slightest bit. I think reading this article over before I started the session was really good for me. I definitely recommend everyone to read it. I don't know exactly who the poster is, but I saw someone recommend that Rob, my student, read it... so I took a gander.

The post was written a long time ago (2006) but I feel what he's talking about as far as mentality and approach to the mental game still is relevant. The stuff he talks about is pretty standard and known by most poker players but how many people actually have that kind of attitude? We all know we should be happy when a fish sticks all the money in vs. our monster when he only has a 10% chance to win. It's the luck factor that brings the poor players back and makes this game possible to profit from. But how many of us actually take the attitude that Tien is speaking of in this article?

From now on, when I get sucked out on, my mentality = "Whatever I don't give a fuck" It's a hell of a lot simpler than remembering all the stuff from "The Poker Mindset", lol. Basically it's a way for you to help yourself master #1, #4, and #6 of The Poker Mindset's key principles (Understand and Accept the Realities of Poker, Desensitize Yourself to Money, and Remove all Emotion from Decisions).

In fact, it's pointless to even post or look at hands where you know you did everything right but just got unlucky. I don't even know why I posted those two hands above, lol. I guess they are fun to look at sometimes, but really it's a waste of time. I'll try to minimize posting hands like that in the future. I guess I show hands like that sometimes because I don't really want to show the super interesting or hands I played trickily because I'm sure some of my opponents read my blog. :)

Anyways enough about that, here are a few pics from Halloween! I went out to the bars with some friends and it was an absolute blast. I even ran into my friend Brea, who I've known since I was like 12. She's the daughter of the sporting clays range owner in Bismarck so she was there throwing targets or keeping score every time my Dad, brother, and I went there to shoot. We didn't get to talk all that much though, as she took off with some friends to a different bar after awhile. Here's a few pics she took of us.

Brea and I

Brea, myself, and Kevin

Graph posting curse, lol

Ok so I post a graph then I get the well-deserved pile of coolers the next time I play, haha. I actually don't believe in that, but damn I ran pretty poorly on the first day of the month. I've got a little bit of a hole to dig myself out of already.

Ended up putting in two sessions for a total of about 5 hours worth of play. Lost $2.5k. Ran at EV but the hands I lost were mainly coolers vs shitty players. This one was the worst of them. No point in 4-betting pre-flop as this guy was a mega-nit. Also, if I raise the turn he might even lay down AK since he's such a nit... so I think I played it super-standard. Terrible river obviously.

This one was very frustrating as well. It was versus a very random/ spazzy fish. Earlier, I saw him 4-bet all in for 200bbs vs my button raise of 2.5xs the bb. I had him covered and folded my trash... after everyone folded he triumphantly flipped up his fish-hooks to scoop the $16 profit. I think there's no getting away from this because he was the mark at the table and the turn overbet actually made me insta-call... I figured a player like that would be shoving something like KdQx not a flopped flush. If I was 100bbs deep it's a no-brainer stack off, but since I was a little over 150bbs deep with him it was a sickening hand. Still feel it was a cooler though vs this particular opponent.

Pretty standard here. I just jammed because his 3-bet is so large that a smallish 4-bet would almost appear comitting anyways. Villain had a 3-bet and squeeze stat in the double digits over a large sample. Ran into a monster and ended up drawing dead once the flop rolled out.

Other hand, also lost 100bb's with a flopped top two pair. The villain had top set. We were mega deep (450bbs) and it was played in a very interesting way by both players so I'm not going to post the HH. There was a massive fish in the pot as well that appearantly we both were trying to drag into the action unsuccessfully.

I definitely didn't play perfectly though, I spewed off at least 2 buyins do to random, non-logical bluffing. Really didn't pick that great of spots.

I'm going to just forget about today and start with a fresh mindset tomorrow. No point in worrying about the past.

October Results

So October ended up being a great month for me. It was my best month since May of this year. Feels good to crush for an entire month and re-establish myself as a dominant player at mid-stakes.

Plan for November is probably going to be continue on working towards my bankroll goal of 100 buy-ins for $5/10 NL and mix in some $3/6 NL on my way. I'm going to continue taking bi-weekly lessons from Nutedawg and hopefully have another great month!

I'm going out to the bars downtown tonight for a bit of drinking with my friends. It should be a blast.

Friday work day

So I was basically 50/50 on whether or not I was going to go out drinking to the bars or some other party tonight... ended up getting on some amazing tables right around the time I would have had to probably head out if I was going out for the night, so I ended up playing poker pretty much all day. I'm sure I'll do plenty of drinking on Halloween night.

My decision to play poker instead of go out tonight was definitely a profitable one. I had a really solid day, ending up $2.7k over 3,300 hands. I played three separate sessions on the day for a total of 10 hours. Each session ended up positive. My final session of the day was kind of crazy... I ended up getting off to a really rough start. This was a frustrating hand, as the villain was kind of fishy. It happened right away in my final session of the day. Also, I lost QQ vs AA all-in on a raggedy flop, in a 3-bet pot just seconds after the previous hand. I battled back though in that session from a low of -$1.8k to finish up $1.4k. Quite the swing.

Overall I thought I played pretty well on the day. I made a few retarded river calls and probably should have folded. Also, the QQ hand that I mentioned earlier was actually kind of a questionable stack off vs. the particular opponent and the fact that he had raised UTG, we were 150bbs deep, and he seemed to be like half fish/ half passive nit. I should have folded on the turn to save $300 as I doubt he does that with TT or JJ. I also got standardly coolered for a few stacks, which is expected when you play 3k hands in one day. I lost with JJ vs A5sooted all-in pre-flop and got over-setted once for 100bbs.

One thing I'm noticing in my game, as compared to a few months ago, is that I'm value betting much more effectively and thinly when possible. Just looking at my pots won compared to pots lost... I have many more pots that I won about 50bbs on than where I lost 50bbs on. Hopefully I can keep this up, as I think it's having a major positive effect on my winrate.

One day left in the month! I will probably only play one or two sessions in the afternoon since I'll be going out at night. Hopefully I can finish out the month strong.

Halloween cooking!

I like never cook stuff, so I figured I'd blog a bit about it when I actually do, lol. I had an absolute blast today cooking and decorating Halloween cupcakes with Brittni. It was her idea and I'm glad she thought of it. I never really thought cooking would be much fun, but it's actually kind of rewarding to start with a bunch of random shit and end up with a cool looking, great tasting, edible product.

Frosting


Beginning stages of the project


Cupcakes - finished product


Quite impressive creations IMO

I have basically been running on fumes today though, since I didn't sleep at all last night due to that marathon session. I got in like 2-3 hours worth of sleep in the middle of the afternoon while napping, but it definitely wasn't enough.

I played in my intramural hockey team's second regular season game tonight. Tonight, we had 3 additional skaters who weren't at our first game and boy did it make a difference. We played much better with those guys. It also helped to have more bodies on the bench; it allowed us to get a little more rest in between shifts. We absolutely dominated the game flow and ended up cruising to a 6-1 win.

After the game, I ended up chatting on AIM with my buddy Kyle for a bit. It was cool to catch up with him a bit since we haven't talked in a while. After that, I put in a short, one hour session and managed to finish up $200. It was a good result considering I got felted by this reg like 5 minutes into the session. Wow I'm tired, can't blog anymore. Goodnight/good morning!

Long day...

So I haven't slept yet today/yesterday and it's almost 7 AM. Today, I played my first marathon session (more than 2 or 3 hours) in months. I played for nearly 6 hours straight. I don't think it was the greatest idea, but I think it worked out alright in the end. Basically, every one of my tables had massive, MASSIVE fish. One table in particular had a very erratic fish with whom I ended up getting 650 bb's deep with. Eventually he left the table but I made a big dent in his stack before he took off. Then I decided to end the session.

I definitely made some mistakes in the session. I didn't give people enough credit in a few hands... which cost me my stack. I felt I really should have been able to find the fold button on two of the hands I got felted on. They weren't very good calls. I did make one pre-flop mistake towards the end of the session vs. a regular and that cost me a stack as well, so I didn't play perfectly for the 6 hour session. Could have been up more had I not made those mistaken calls, but I'm really happy with how I played almost all of my big value hands. I was value betting very well.

So the marathon session went decently well. I ended up $2.1k for that session. I think the lesson I took from Nutedawg earlier in the day helped me a lot. I definitely took a lot out of the lesson, even though when I watched Nute play for the last 30 minutes of the lesson he ran like total shit after putting people on their near exact hands, which was unfortunate.

Earlier in the day, I gave a lesson to one of my students, Rob. I made an exception for him to receive a lesson during my break from coaching because he's actually getting very close to quitting his job to become a full-time poker professional. I want to make sure he's getting the information he needs to be successful. He goes to part time in November, so I'm sure he can't wait to finally have more time to play poker. I'm looking forward to seeing him start crushing once he doesn't have the stress of a full-time job to worry about or hold him back. You can follow his journey by reading his blog which is linked right here.

The lesson went really well I thought. We decided to do a live sweat format, with me playing for about 1 hour first then we switched over and he played for the last hour of the lesson. We both ended up winning a buyin at $1/2 NL. So I actually finished the day up about $2.3k in poker playing profits.

Pretty bad day

Gross day today, down $2.4k. Got unlucky, made some dumb plays, and basically running quite poorly accounted for much of the loss. Ran $1k below all in EV not that it matters that much but whatever, that's the facts.

I'm not even going to show any hands, it's pointless. I'm still doing decent for the month so far, considering how I've only played about 20k hands so far. Five more days in the month left so I'm going to play well each day and not even worry about the loss I had today. Just like the poker mindset preaches, emphasize correct decisions over making money and play for the long term. I feel like sometimes I let day-to-day results affect me too much, which is retarded. I need to be able to realize that days like this are bound to happen, no matter how good you are. It's weird though, yesterday I felt like I was playing the best poker of my life and today I feel like a fish, lol. Funny game we play.

Solid day

I only played one session today but it ended up being quite a successful one, as I finished up around 5 buyins. A few hands were pretty frustrating at the beginning of the session, this one being one of them. I later got revenge on him towards the end of the session.

I played in my weekly hockey ice rental pickup game and our team got absolutely slaughtered. It seemed like they scored on every single shot they took. We must have lost by 15 goals. They even scored from the corner. Good thing that these games are just for fun and don't count for anything.

Nutedawg and I chatted on google talk for a bit and he ended up picking out a new watch online. I really like one that he suggested for me. It's a Raymond Weil Parsifal Watch.


Definitely tempting to buy it, but I don't really need a really nice watch right now. We'll see... I'll think about it for a few days.

Duck hunting trip cut short

So my Dad, brother, and I headed out on Friday afternoon to go duck hunting in our normal spot near Devils Lake, ND. We set up camp on Friday night after we got there, slept overnight, and woke up early on Saturday morning to head out for the hunt. When we pushed the boat out, my Dad noticed that the water pump on the boat motor wasn't functioning for some reason.

That caused the motor to heat up really quickly and we could only use the motor for short periods of time or else it could get ruined. So we set up in a non-optimal spot for the morning that was closer to where we needed to go back to shore when we were done, set out the decoys, and hunted for about 3-4 hours then called it a day. We started picking up the decoys around noon and paddled about half the way back and used the motor for the other half. Paddling a 14'' duck boat filled with 3 people, 6 shotguns, ammunition, decoys, cooler, and other equipment with one small paddle is pretty difficult. We managed to make it back to shore.

We decided to just call it a weekend due to the motor not functioning properly, the hunting not being all that great (we only shot 6 ducks total), and the fact that it was supposed to rain nearly all late afternoon/night on Saturday and through the night until Sunday morning. The roads leading up to the place where we hunt were already really wet and damp so it's probably good we took off and went home today, or else we could have gotten stuck.

It was still fun to spend some time with my Dad and brother, but it's unfortunate the last weekend of duck hunting ended up getting cut short and not being that successful as far as getting much of a quarry. Oh well, we're probably spoiled, as it seems like nearly every other year we've always gotten our limit of ducks when we go out hunting. Running bad in duck hunting I guess, lol.

Here's a video of some ducks flying over our decoy spread when we were setting them up in the morning. It might be tough to see them in the video, they're kind of small.

Before Sunrise


Sunrise


Chad paddling the boat


Picking up the decoys


Snow geese in the air


Snow geese in the water

So I played a few sessions of poker when I got home. The first session I ended up losing a buyin and didn't play all that well. I totally monkey-spew bluffed off $600 in one hand vs. an opponent that I should not have been pulling big bluffs against. That was a big mistake. I regrouped, however, and in my second session of the day I crushed everyone. I ran at EV in all-ins and finished up about $2.8k for the day. I'm very satisfied with the way I played in the second session. I just need to keep that high quality "A game" going and be as consistant as I can be.