Getting ridiculous

This is just making me sick. I'm not playing another hand of poker until I re-read the entire book, The Poker Mindset. I'm just disgusted right now. I've totally lost my motivation to play.

Just played for a little over an hour, 449 hands and lost $2.1k at $2/4 NL. Biggest pot I won was 1/4 of a buyin. Got felted a bunch.

My 6th hand of the session

5 minutes later

I had just 3-bet him about 3 minutes ago and he seemed to time bank tank the first time and wasn't happy about folding.

Yay


FML

Nute's prop bet

I haven't blogged about this yet, but it's definitely worth talking about. My coach, Nutedawg, made a prop bet with some other poker players that he could get to Supernova Elite on PokerStars by the end of the year. He's getting great odds on his bet and if he wins he'll win a bunch of money. I hope he makes it.

To reach Supernova Elite VIP status on Stars he needs to accumulate 1 MILLION VPPs (like frequent flier miles for playing poker a lot). When he started a few weeks ago, he had 39,000 VPPs. He's playing mostly SNG tournaments because they accumulate more rake paid. He's also, unfortunately, running really badly in them and is over 50 buyins below equity (getting pretty unlucky). Nute has made a blog about his quest for SNE. You can and should visit it and root him on! Here is the link. If he is successful, I will be very impressed as it's pretty tough to get SNE, especially in only half of a year. GL Nute!

In other poker news, I'm on a bit of a downswing... I've had a rough week and had a lot more losing sessions than winning ones. My confidence is a bit lower than it normally is. I haven't been running the greatest and losing key pots when I'm a big favorite has really been the norm lately and I think it's been affecting my play in other pots as well. Besides being thousands below EV in all-ins, I feel like I'm getting unfortunate more often than normal in other situations postflop (for example, board always seems to come running flush cards on turn and river... Ah 5d 4s 6d Td... and I'm holding As Qh here, bet flop and turn after villain c/c twice and I never seem to have the flush.)

I think I'm going to follow Nutedawg's advice to me. He told me to move down to $2/4 NL for awhile to get back in the winning mindset and regain my confidence. Bankroll wise, I still have plenty of buyins to play $5/10 NL comfortably but I am a pretty big bankroll nit so I'd prefer to have over 100 buyins online spread amongst the four sites I play on before I go back to $5/10 NL full-time.

Looking back on the past week or so, besides running like a midget with a broken leg, I think my main problem has been playing too many tables. I've let myself get back into my bad habits of just rolling up 8 tables or so and going on auto-pilot. I'm a much better player than that and going on these multi-tabling tirades really kills my winrate. I saw a few of my friends in Vegas playing a ton of tables so I guess I figured that I should be able to do it as well... the fact of the matter is, for me personally, I really believe I can make more money playing four tables than 6+ tables.

SO, the short term plan is to play four tables of $2/4 NL for the near future, pad the bankroll, get my confidence back, and look to be back to playing mostly at $5/10 NL hopefully no later than September. Also, I'm going to make sure I limit my sessions to strictly two hours in duration. I'm going to try my hardest to play well and make the correct decisions while playing during the last week of the month. I want to hit the ground running in August, so having a good upcoming week would certainly help that.

At least I've been winning in the stock market lately, so not all has been lost. Hopefully my poker graph starts going up soon as well.

New phone and stacked a PokerStars Pro

I bought a new phone a few days ago, called the BlackBerry Storm. Here's a pic of it:

So far, I like it. It's got a ton of features on it, so I'm still getting used to it. One of the things that is very handy, is the instant notifier whenever I get an email. Now, when one of my primary fish log on to a site and start playing, I'll get the email from tableratings.com and I can rush to my computer just like a doctor would rush to the hospital if he got an order to come in when on call, lol.

I was interested in looking at iphones, as some of my friends I hung out with in Vegas had them, but Verizon doesn't carry iphones and I wasn't going to switch service just to get a particular phone. So this one appearantly was the closest I could get.

In poker news today, I played against John Duthie, a Team PokerStars Pro. He masterfully stacked me at $5/10 NL 6 Max and he was playing a super goofy style, something fairly fishy like 47/21 at the time the hand occured. I guess I should have 3-bet a little larger pre-flop but I figured he'd call with all sorts of crap then not be able to fold when he hit top pair... since I was pretty sure he's a tourney donk.

In all fairness, he seems like he's a pretty good tournament player though, as he has close to 2 million in total prize winnings according to his website. He actually was a really nice guy and accepted my HU challange and played me at $10/20 NL HU, although he would only play one table... it took about an hour or so but I finally felted him for a $5k pot. I guess the hand was a bit of a cooler, obviously it was a good flop for me, lol. I think he played the hand fine, but he was drawing pretty slim (I was 97.9% to win on the flop). Still fun to beat a PS sponsored pro. It was a good match, I hope we get a chance to play again.

This is the first weekend in a LONG time where I have just stayed home, relaxed, and got a chance to play some poker. I've been busy doing something, going out, traveling, going to a show, shooting clays, or whatever it seems every single weekend so it's nice to just relax for once. I don't think I've played poker any significant time during the weekend in the past two months, up until this weekend. That's sort of bad for business, as of course the games are juciest on Fridays and Saturdays. I hope to play a bunch of hands tomorrow and win some money.

Defend your right to play poker!

Hey everyone. Chances are, if you read my blog, you are probably a fan of poker. As many of you know, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA) negatively affected online poker and made it more difficult to deposit money on the poker sites.

This week, July 19-25 is National Poker Week. It's a "call to arms" to all people who play, watch, and care about poker to voice their opinions to help keep online poker legal in the United States. EVERYONE, PLEASE go to this website: www.nationalpokerweek.com

Once you get to the website, take a few minutes to write your members of Congress (they have pre-written letters, all you have to do is fill out your address information so the Congressmen know that you are actually one of their constituents). I've done this before and it's actually kind of cool because they will likely mail you a letter back in reply eventually.

Then, call your members of Congress.

Also, make sure to join the Poker Player's Alliance as a Premium member. The $20 it costs will allow this excellent special interests group to fight for poker friendly legislation now and in the future. Everyone who plays poker online MUST be a member of this group. If you play poker for a living or make any siginificant income from the game at all and you aren't a member of this group, it's just simply disgusting. Join now!

Sign the poker petition here. This is a petition that will be delivered to President Obama and essentially states that Americans should have the right to play poker and states that poker is not a crime.

And if you're really feeling motivated, you can even go here and make a video about your poker story to further convince the world that poker is a game of skill and should be a part of America's past, present, and future.

I've already done everything but the poker story thing so far, so you guys have some catching up to do. Make sure to get all of this done as soon as possible. Taking the 15 mintues do the aforementioned things will potentially open up the online games for more new players (make it easier to deposit funds), thus making the games more profitable. Sacraficing a bit of time now could potentially earn you thousands of $ more in the future.

Thanks for defending your right to play poker and I'll see you on the tables!

Back in Grand Forks

I'm finally back home for a while. We got back from the National FITASC shoot late Sunday night/early Monday morning. I'm looking forward to finally getting some online poker in, as it feels like I've been slacking in that category for the past few months.

The shoot was definitely a good time. I didn't win anything but I shot a respectable score of 156/200 on some of the most difficult targets I've ever shot before. I ended up finishing 30th out of 129 total entrants. The winner of the event shot an amazing 178/200.

Here are some pics and video from the shoot:

- Vid of me shooting FITASC -
I ended up hitting 4/4 on the doubles (pairs) on this peg

Chad smashing a clay

Me and our Canadian friend, Stan, who refereed us on one parcour

Chad hits a clay

Dad shooting sporting with Chad watching

Chad shooting at a rabbit target

Dad shooting FITASC

Me shooting FITASC

Vid of Dad shooting a rabbit target in sporting

Day 2 of shoot

I ended up shooting quite a bit better in the main event today. I shot a 61/75 in the FITASC event. So right now, I have 116/150 with 50 targets left to be shot. I don't really have a chance to win it at this point; a few of the big name pros have a significant lead over everyone.

We also shot 100 targets of sporting clays today but I was really fatigued from the FITASC. I got destroyed on my first station, shooting a 3/8 and the targets weren't even that difficult on that station. I shot the worst score I have in a while at sporting clays... I only got 75/100. The second 100 targets of the sporting event will be shot tomorrow. I'm way far out if it in this event, even with it only being halfway completed. I think the top score was a 93/100.

Poker went pretty well today. I booked a big win in a two hour session before we ate dinner. I made $5k that session. I ran pretty well, which was definitely nice for a change. Then I played a bit more later on when we got back to the hotel room and I lost about $2.5k so I finished the day +$2.5k or so.

I got stacked in an unraised pot vs a player who I perceived as somewhat wild but appearantly he was a little tighter than I thought... he had slowplayed a bigger two pair on the flop and I turned two pair and played it very aggressively because I thought he was the type to overvalue top pair (he actually still may have been that type, but I didn't see him play enough hands for that situation to occur). I felt kind of "meh" for getting stacked there, as I could have played it like a little bitch and just folded when he 3-bet the turn.

Other than that, I just spewed off about a buyin playing a bit more aggro than I normally do. I was playing around 26/20 with a 3-bet of around 10%. I think it was working OK but I need to pay more attention to people's breaking points... in other words, I need to try and guess more accurately when I think people will become fed up with me. I made one pretty poor 4-bet bluff and then 3-bet bluffed this one nit one too many times (he caught on).

Last day of the shoot tomorrow will be pretty much just for fun as I don't have a chance of placing. Being in Master class is sort of bittersweet; I am in the highest class possible so it's sort of nice to have that status and proof of my abilities... however, I need to shoot near perfection to win because in the bigger shoots I'm actually competing against professionals.

I'm a very competitive person so when I'm not shooting well enough to have a chance to win, sometimes it becomes difficult to have fun while shooting. I'm doing a lot better at this than in the past, but I was getting a bit frustrated during the 100 bird sporting clays event. Shooting is a hobby and I need to remember that. I had fun today, but I still am taking it a bit too seriously. I can still try hard and attempt to hit every target and have fun without taking the game too seriously.

Quick update

Decided I'd make a quick post before I go to sleep.

I shot the first 75 targets of the main event today and hit 55 of them. I'm about ten targets off the lead. FITASC targets are all normally pretty challenging, so to do well you really have to step up and shoot near perfection. I didn't do that today and shot below my capabilities. Oh well, it was still fun and there are two more days of the main event to go.

I played a few hours of poker tonight but it was quite uneventful. I think I won like thirty bucks, lol, over a 2-3 hours of $5/10 NL. So yea, I pretty much broke even. No big hands really occured except me losing an all-in pre-flop flip with my QQ vs AK.

I'm going to get some sleep now, as we have to wake up pretty early. We shoot at 8 AM.

First day of shoot and winning poker session

So today we shot the first event of the National FITASC Tournament at the Caribou Gun Club. We shot 100 targets of Super Sporting. I ended up in a tie for 4th overall out of 67 entrants. I shot an 89/100. There were a few big name pros who shot the event. Wendell Cherry is one of them; he won the event with an insane 98/100. I felt that I shot pretty well overall, but leaked a few targets that I shouldn't have missed here and there. Hopefully I can shoot well tomorrow, as we shoot the first 75 targets of the main event.

I played a four hour poker session today and finished up around $5.6k. I played really well and only made one significant mistake. It also helps that I ran AVERAGE for once. I still got coolered for stacks two times, but the reason I won was because I had all of my big hands where I got the money in as a 75% favorite or higher hold. Obviously, it's nice to not get sucked out on in big pots when you're ahead.

This is my favorite hand of the session. I lucked out a bit and got a really good flop. I was also fortunate that the guy with AK butchered his hand pre-flop.

This is the hand where I made a mistake... I feel that this particular player would have never raised my overbet on the river without the precise hand that he had... I guess it was difficult for me to believe that he peeled the turn looking for a gutterball. I think I probably spewed off about $400 on this hand by calling the river because the villain was pretty tight and non-bluffy.

This hand is pretty standard, other than the fact that the villain is a MASSIVE fish and I can remember him doing this same thing, precisely, versus me in the past... where I flop a set in a 3-bet pot and he happens to bang out the nuts on the flop.

Again, another standard hand. It's only annoying because this particular reg has coolered me like at least a half dozen times over the past week. He runs so so so so so so so so good vs me. It's digusting.


That's it for now. I hope this session is a sign of good things to come poker-wise. I'm satisfied with my play and my confidence is at a fairly high level right now.

Back from Vegas

I had spent 36 of the last 43 days in Las Vegas until I got back home this past Monday night. I must say that the past two months have easily been the best two months of my life. I went out at night to club/go to bars/ etc. probably at least 30 days of the 36 days I was in Vegas. It was crazy.

I really enjoy traveling, doing new things, and meeting new people. Over the past two months I visited Chicago, Las Vegas, Kentucky, then back to Las Vegas again. As I mentioned before, renting a poker house for the month of June was an excellent experience. I met two new professional poker players who I'm sure I'll continue to be good friends with. They both went out with me in Vegas on numerous occasions and I feel like I've known them both for years, instead of the actual month or so I have known them.

It was also fun to stay in a house that Charlie rented for the last week that I was in Vegas. I met some cool foreign poker players there. The house got pretty ridiculously messy though and we had a bit of an ant problem, lol. I also got a chance to go out with my friend Greg who's going to school at UNLV here. He and I went out clubbing for like 5 nights in a row the last week I was in Vegas.

It is nice to finally be back home though. I haven't been home in a while so it was good to see my Dad, Mom, and brother again, even though I did in fact see my Dad and brother when we shot the U.S. Open together in Kentucky. My house is a bit of a mess though, so I'll need to call a maid to clean it up.

My Dad, brother, and I are already travelling again tomorrow to go to the National FITASC tournament in Minnesota at the Caribou Gun Club. That shoot will run from Thursday-Sunday and I'll be back home probably late Sunday night. Hopefully starting next week I can finally get some hands in online and play a ton of poker.

Here are some pics from the Vegas trip:

Golfing in Vegas

Yesterday Charlie, Denis, Greg, and I went golfing at Las Vegas National Golf course. It was a blast. I was really rusty and played one of the worst rounds I can remember. I don't think I hit one decent drive. The course was really nice; quite challenging as well as scenic. I'm glad we went out and got outside for a bit.

Here are some pics from the adventure:

Denis, Eric, Charlie, Greg

Group Pic #2


Greg putting



Dennis makes a great drive


Charlie putting



Cart



Denis hits a shot


Charlie must have botched a shot, lol



Greg hits a shot

Yesterday's events

I'm now living in a different poker house for my last week in Vegas with my friend and student, Charlie. It's been a good first few days so far. I'll post some pics of the house later on.

Today, we got out of the house and went shopping for an hour or so then Charlie, Denis, and I went to the Cirque du Solei show called "Mistere" at the Treasure Island. The show was very good and had a lot of gymnast type stunts in it. I'd definitely recommend it to people in Vegas. I also saw the Ka' show at the MGM Grand last Friday and that was also fantasic. I'll say that I liked Ka' slightly better. Last year I saw "O" at the Bellagio and that remains my favorite show.

After the show, we grabbed a bite to eat and I decided to play some live poker. I played some $2/5 NL at the Venetian and ended up profiting about $660 after about 6 hours of play. My cash supply has been drained from going out clubbing, taxis, eating, shopping, shows, etc. so I wanted to try and make some actual green. It was the first time I've played live poker in at least a few weeks. I didn't really have enough cash on me to comfortable play $5/10 NL and I didn't feel like getting money out of an ATM either.

It's super late now so I'm going to hit the hay. I think we might be going golfing tomorrow afternoon so that should be fun if it materializes.

2009 U.S. Open

I've been so busy since I got back to Vegas from the U.S. Open Sporting Clays Championships in Kentucky that I haven't had a chance to post any pictures from the shoot.

I ended up getting 6 punches overall from the shoot (punches are like "win points"). They don't do me any good really, because I'm already in the highest class possible (Master class), but they are a measure of how good you are doing. So I did OK in small gauge events but did not shoot well enough to get a trophy despite earning punches.

Both my Dad and brother shot decently well and received some punches. My brother was the only one who received a trophy; he got 1st in B class in the 20 gauge event.

The shoot was a lot of fun, despite the weather being very hot most days. The targets were challenging and fair. The only thing that was lacking in the shoot was the scorekeepers on the first day of the main event were pretty inexperienced. Other than that, it was an excellent U.S. Open.

Here are some pics and video from the shoot:

Flags

Tower

Lodge and Lake

Me Shooting in the Woods



Me Shooting Over Pond



Chad Posing for a Pic



Dad Shooting Over Pond



Chad with Award



Vid of me shooting

June Poker Results

Despite getting crushed by one of the biggest fish on the internet at $5k NL towards the end of June, I miraculously ended up with a winning month. Definitely not even close to an acceptable month but I'm happy to just be positive after running so bad at pretty high stakes.

I wasn't able to get in as much volume as I had liked when I was in Vegas. I ended up playing for about 81 hours total in June, which is a little more than half of my normal time spent playing. I played about 25,000 hands for the month.

I ended up going out clubbing or to some other nightlife event almost every single day... taking only about 3-4 days off from going out. Going out to a club is a ton of fun and I don't regret any of the nights I went out, but it's a huge time investment as well. Aside from the fact that you're spending about 4-5 hours at night in the actual club, it takes a few hours ahead of time to round everyone up and get out there. Also, if you drink, then you're likely to sleep in until the afternoon the next day, which leaves you only a block of about 4-6 hours during the afternoon to play poker.

But I've had an amazing time in Vegas so far. I'm glad I stayed in a house that me and 6 other online poker pros rented for the month of June. I made many new friends, which was the main reason I was going to Vegas anyways: to have fun and meet new people.