Another solid day

Played two sessions today, each two hours in duration. Great result, as I ended up $2.7k. I made one super spewy bluff at the end of my session, which was pretty terrible. In a nutshell, I basically tried to bluff a nit after he raised UTG, c-bet, then double barreled on a bad turn card for my hand when he rarely ever double barrels (obviously meaning he almost always HAS something when he fires the turn, especially one that would normally be bad for his range). So I decided to raise the turn, lol?, and jammed the river when checked to only to be shown the stone cold nuts. That was definitely the worst play of the day.

Overall though I'm happy with how the day went besides that one horrific hand. I just need to take a few more seconds to think things through and not always feel like I have to follow through with a final all-in barrel just because I tried to make a move earlier in the hand. Obviously, it's ok to just give up sometimes when bluffing and I need to remember that.

I also watched a few episodes of Dexter tonight with a friend and we are almost done watching season 3. We have one episode left. Then, season 4 starts on Sunday!

Final note. This website is pretty hilarious. I just checked it out today, but I'm sure it's been around for a while. Check it out if you want a laugh or two.

Post Nute Lesson - Day 1

So I had a lesson with Nutedawg early this afternoon. I must say that it went amazingly well. We discussed a few newer trends that were developing in the games and talked about the pre-flop raise sizing strategy I had been using over the past few weeks. Also, we discussed a number of hands that I butchered in the video I had recorded.

The best part of the lesson was that Nute pinpointed like 4 or 5 major things that I was doing wrong... both with my game and approach to playing poker. Then he told me how to fix my errors. All the mistakes I've been making became crystal clear to me after he pointed them out and talked about them for a bit. I am so excited to work on what we went over in the lesson and implement it into my game.

One of the major things was perhaps playing too many hours in a day. Previously, I have been trying to get about 3 or 4 sessions in per day with each session about two hours in duration. Nute suggested that I just play 2 sesisons per day and spend the last 2 hours of my work day watching videos/ studying the game. I think this sounds like a good plan and probably something I already should have been doing... It's good to have a somewhat fixed ratio to play vs study otherwise it's just too easy to put off the studying part because it doesn't immediately make you money (obviously makes you money over the long run though).

So the first and only session I had a chance to play today ended up being a bit longer than normal... I played for three hours and ended up three buy-ins.


I was very happy with my play and was very solid overall. I even mixed in a few of the technical plays we were speaking about in the lesson into my game. I also got sucked out on once pretty hardcore in a limped pot vs a fish. That was the only time I got stacked.

In life news, I'm pretty pumped for this weekeend as duck hunting season opens on Saturday in North Dakota. In celebration of the opening of waterfowl season I'll post a pic of previous duck hunts each day until the opener.

Here's today's pic:

My brother Chad, Dad, and I

Getting back on track

Past few days have been good to me. I made six buy-ins today.. errr i guess it was yesterday because it's like 5 AM now. I made most of my buy-ins over the first two sessions of the day... I wasn't that tired so I decided to play a final session before I went to sleep and broke even during that session. I played a little spewy in the last session of the day, making a few ill advised stabs at pots that cost me some chips.

Overall though I'm happy with the direction my game is moving. I'm sticking to 4 tables only and my graph is showing the benefits of that. I have a lesson with Nutedawg tomorrow so I'm going to get some sleep.

Taking a break from Coaching

I am currently taking a self-imposed hiatus from coaching for the rest of 2009 to focus on playing and improving my own game. I am going to be working very hard to bring my game to the next level. Current students, I apologize for the inconvenience but when I come back I will be better than ever and able to provide elite lessons.

Over the next few months when I'm "closed for renovations" my research and development will include the following: receiving bi-weekly lessons from popular CardRunners Pro "Nutedawg", watching dozens of videos from some of the best players on the Internet that I've yet to find time to watch, getting in a bunch of hands while playing my "A+" game, reading books, detailed daily session reviews, trading sweats with other big winners at the same stakes I'm playing, and moving up the stakes ladder as high as possible.

I am recommitting myself to poker after a few months of focusing on other things in my life, mediocre poker results, and a somewhat complacent attitude towards improving my own game. Over the past six months I have definitely put The Poker Mindset's 7th primary component, "Dedicate Yourself to a Continuous Cycle of Analysis and Improvement" on the backburner. From here on out, that will no longer be the case.

Students, feel free to continue emailing me HH questions you might have over this time as I'd be glad to help you out on those.

Back on the ice

Sunday night was the first time I have skated/ played hockey in MONTHS. It's been WAY too long. It was a blast. We were a bit short on guys though for the ice rental we had... we only had 6 skaters a side, so we didn't get much of a break. It was a great workout and I even had some success while lighting the lamp a few times. I was a little rusty at first with my stickhandling and I'm definitely not in game shape yet, that's for sure. I'm going to begin working out on a regular basis starting tomorrow. I'm going to hit the weights and then run for a bit afterwords. Now that I'm back home for a bit I have no excuses to be not working out other than just laziness.

I played a bit of poker today and ended up a few buy-ins. Nothing too exciting really happened. In other news, unfortuantely Nutedawg busted from the $5k buy-in MTT Main Event in the WCOOP that had a $10 million prizepool when his AA were pwned by JJ all-in pre-flop.

Long day

The games were great today and I played a ton of hours. Unfortunately, I only ended up about one buy-in. I also played and lost in a $320 MTT satellite to the WCOOP $5,200 Main Event that has a 10 million dollar prize pool. Here's the hand that KO'd me. I decided against shoving the turn because I thought he'd still shove missed flushdraws on river as well as some air perhaps he decided to 3-barrel with. Also I felt that if I did shove the turn I'd probably only get called by hands that beat me except for maybe one or two hands like KJ or a pretty strong draw he could have. Unfortuantely he lucksacked a 3-outer to win the pot (he also had 4 outs to tie me). Standard donkament shit, lol. I knew I shouldn't have wasted my time or money on it but whatever, it was worth a shot at a seat to the big tourney. I'm definitely not going to play any more tournaments for a while. They just frustrate me too much.

Blah

Had a losing day today. Ended up losing about $900 or so. A few critical hands really ruined my sessions... standardly ran KK into AA for 150bbs pre-flop vs an aggro reg and he's also the same player who 1 outed me for a $1.2k pot. Whatever, nothing I can do about it, obviously I'm happy I got it in as a big favorite... the hand itself is super standard as he's obviously getting it all in there on the flop every time. Those two hands were my biggest losers.

I definitely didn't play a mistake-free session though. I gifted my stack off once with what I thought was a pretty decent bluff but I got snapped off by a 9 high flush on a board where there were 4 of the suit and the board was paired too... It's really amazing at people's unability to lay down hands sometimes. You really have to be careful which players you decide to make a big move on... some will just call you down so light it's ridiculous.

Average day

Didn't play a whole lot today, just got in about 4 hours of work. First session I broke even and the second session I ended up about three buy-ins so it was a decent day.

I ended up running some errands earlier in the day and picked up 5 new pairs of jeans from the local sewing shop, where I got them hemmed. They are all really, really sick jeans. I ended up buying them when I was in LA while shopping with Adam and a few of them will be perfect for going out to clubs in Vegas. I also got some kick ass shirts at the same shop in LA which were pretty sweet as well. I can't wait to wear my new stuff at the clubs when I head to Vegas in the middle of October.

I also managed to watch an episode of Dexter with a friend later on at night.

It was the 4th episode of season 3. I ended up getting my friend hooked on the show and she watched like all of season 1 and 2 in less than a few weeks just like I did when I got hooked on Dexter, lol. It's really an amazing TV series and it's very odd that I even say that because I honestly NEVER watch TV except for NHL games. I caught my brother watching it one day, sat and watched it for 20 mins, and I was hooked. Best TV series EVER! It's almost better than watching any movie, because the plot-line is continuous and keeps building and building upon itself. I can't believe that it actually is getting better each season. Season 4 starts at the end of the month on Showtime and I can't wait!

Good day at the office

I feel like I played pretty well yesterday overall. I ended up four buyins over nearly 3k hands, which I think is a fine result. I managed to play mostly 4 tables the whole time, which was key. It definitely was a bit of a battle as I lost quite a few large, key pots with really good hands. I also gave a poker lesson, which I felt went great.

This is the hand of the day and it reminded me of a post one of my students, Rob, made on his blog. He was talking about how many players who appear on the surface to be "decent" players due to their stats are actually quite terrible poker players overall. The villain in this hand is 24/19 and on the surface appeared to be just another average regular. Obviously I sickly own him on the turn and he calls OOP on the turn with a gutterball for some reason and binks it on the river. I think my river shove is fine, as it really puts the heat on him and I think it's OK to be capable of a play like this so you can get your sets/two pair paid off. Just kind of a weird hand overall.

LOLdonkaments

So I ended up playing in Event #28 of the PokerStars World Championships of Online Poker. It was a $1,050 buyin with a total of 3,268 entries. I was on the fence about whether or not I was going to play it or not, but one of my students, Jason, talked me into it when he offered to take 50% of my action. I normally don't play in tournaments, especially ones with that large of a buyin mainly because the luck factor and variance is just so huge.

I decided to give this one a shot, however, as there was a total prize pool of $3,268,000 and first place was over $500,000. I ended up getting through almost 2/3 of the field before busting out in 1388th place. The top 495 places got paid.

Midway through the tournament I lost a huge, key pot when my AK lost to KQ all-in pre-flop. Then later on, I busted out in classic donkament fashion with the exact same hand scenario that damaged my stack earlier in the tournament. I shoved my AK for about a 8xs re-raise all in pre-flop vs an early position opener and he snap-called with KQ and backdoored into a flush to knock me out of the tournament.

I definitely had a huge edge in the tournament and it was kinda fun playing one since I hadn't done so in so long, but I'll be sticking to cash obviously. My friend Kyle is definitely the true touuuuurney pro, so I'll leave them to him!

Play well + run well = great day!

Had an awesome day on Tuesday. Ended up CRUSHING $2/4 NL for a 9 buy-in profit. Helps that I actually ran good today... about two buyins above expectation. I am not going to look at the EV stat anymore because I really can't do anything about it... and if I play enough hands it theoretically evens out.

Here's the graph of the day:


I played near flawlessly, only getting felted for 100bbs twice over the 2,400 hands I played. One of the times I got stacked I just lost a simple coin-flip with QQ vs AK. The other stack I lost was my AA vs JJ all-in pre-flop. Definitely nothing I can do about those two hands.

I finally got around to merging my holdem manager databases on my laptop and desktop computer so I could do my accounting paperwork and figure out exactly how I ended up over the past three months. There weren't any surprises; July and August were losing months. I also figured out how much I'm up year-to-date. I'm still on a decent pace to make good money for the year... albeit slightly behind pace to make what I made last year.

After reviewing my month-to-month results for 2009, I think I need to be more of a "steady eddy." What I mean by that is I need to do everything I can to become more consistent as far as earnings go per month. I have some massive winning months and a few pretty big losing months as well. I can completely eliminate the big losing months by cutting out high-stakes shot taking, which I think I will in fact cut out for the rest of 2009. I won't be playing $25/50 NL no matter how big of a fish is playing. The swings are just too ridiculous compared to my yearly income.

I also need to cut out playing 5+ tables at once. I CLEARLY play my best 4 tabling. Playing too many tables has absolutely slaughtered my winrate in the past.

Since I'm the biggest bankroll nit ever, I'm going to play $2/4 NL for a few more months until I have 200 buyins for that limit. Then, I will move back to $5/10 NL with about an 80 buyin roll. I'd definitely like to be playing a decent amount of $10/20 NL by the end of the year, but we'll see how it goes. There's a TON of money to be made at $5/10 NL, so staying there for a bit would probably be fine.

That's the plan. Now I just have to execute it.

Most depressing win in a while...

So today was pretty much a nightmare. I guess I should say yesterday/early this morning was a nightmare. I played some of the best poker I've played in MONTHS and wasn't even close to fully rewarded for it. Days like these are tough to swallow and an obvious reminder that in the short-term luck is a huge factor in your results.

I ended up playing three separate sessions for a total of about 8 hours of play. The result? Finished up $547.25. In all actuality, I actually ran probably the worst I ever have run in one day at $2/4 NL. I don't want this whole post to appear like a whine or whatever... I'm just reporting the facts about how my day went. I understand and accept the realities of poker, realize that luck is part of the game, so I'm not like actually mad at the results of the day, but I'll admit I'm a tad bit frustrated.

I know the all in EV adjusted stat doesn't account for stuff like set over set, other types of bad luck, etc. but I had to just peek at it after this session to see how bad it really was. Apparently, if I had average luck, I would have won about $3.8k yesterday. That's 8 buyins below expectation. Ok this is turning into a whine, but whatever it's my blog and I need somwhere to vent, lol. Quit reading if you don't like it.

Here's the graph of the mayhem:


Overall, I'm proud that all this running like shit didn't effect my play one bit. I guess if there's something to be learned from all this... it's an example of how if you stay focused, play 4-5 tables like I did the whole time, and keep playing well that you can turn a day filled with disasters into a winning day.

I'm not even going to bother to post the individual HH's because you'll probalby puke all over your keyboard, but I pretty much got sucked out on/coolered in every way possible in the book over and over.

The saying that poker is a hard way to make an easy living is pretty true. I don't think a day like this would have got to me as much as in the past... it's annoying because I feel I'm right at the turning point from getting away from the losing results of the past few months to start winning again and I played my heart out today and kind of got slapped in the face.

Oh well, I'll suck it up and play even better tomorrow.

Poker update

I put in three separate sessions today for a total of about 7 hours of play. The result wasn't the greatest... I ended up losing three buyins at 400NL.

I had quite a few annoying hands. Standardly ran KK into AA AIPF and lost, lost to a set with a gutterball and flushdraw on the flop, a regular lucksacks me here on the turn... he's pretty aggressive so I don't think folding is an option on the turn... he can have 87 he's semibluffing, 67, AsJs, and some other stuff. I felt like my hand strength here was nearly equivalent to a set, and I take a pretty sexy line here with AA and get rewarded for it vs. a reg.

It's obviously just one day but I've been playing quite a bit this month and but I haven't really been getting the results I want. Part of this is due to playing too many tables while experimenting with the TableNinja program, that pretty much makes multi-tabling a breeze on Poker Stars. Like I've said countless times, I'm going to stick to four tables for the rest of the month. I mean it this time, lol. The other part, I'm not quite sure.

I don't feel like I'm playing poorly overall, but I don't feel like I'm playing my A+ game either. I think I just have a sort of glass-half-empty look at the game right now unfortunately. I think on a subconcious level I might still be a bit disappointed that I ran so bad over the past few months when I played a few sessions at $25/50 NL chasing MASSIVE fish. If things had went my way, it would have turned the past two losing months into average winning months. That's history and I need to re-tool my attitude. I'm working to fix that and am re-reading The Poker Mindset (I'm about 50 pages in right now).

I'm going to start recording every session I play so I can pick out a good one to review with my coach, Nutedawg. It's been awhile since we've had a lesson due to me being busy traveling around as well as Nute working hard at his SNE prop bet. He is actually finished with the bet now, as the people who bet against him bought out of the bet. Nute still made out with a boatload of cash from the bet and can now stop playing those wretched SNGs. I'm hoping he can help me get my game back on the right track as he has done countless times in the past.

The month is still young so far and I'm only down about 3 buyins overall so there is really no reason to panic. I'm just shooting for a solid, winning month in September after two consecutive losing months (2nd and 3rd losing months out of 20 months as a pro). I plan on playing a ton tommorow, so hopefully it goes well.

Mourning Dove Hunt

Yesterday I went out mourning dove hunting with Kevin. We brought along my family's dog, Boogie, to help us find the birds.


Boogie did an amazing job, finding all of the doves we shot except for one. In total, we ended up getting 15 doves between the two of us. It was a perfect day out yesterday and an awesome hunt. Definitely was a lot of fun.



Boogie also wanted to attack a group of four horses that we saw that were a ways away from where we were hunting. She started to sprint and ran up to them but thankfully I had a shock collar on Boogie and gave her a small shock and she came running back. I guess Boogie was planning on jumping the barbed-wire fence and taking on all four horses. Don't know how that would have turned out.


When my Mom first got Boogie, she had a tendency to attack all other dogs. Eventually, with some training, she was weened of this tendency but obviously she still has a bit of that attack instinct in her. She's always been great with people though.

The best story of the day though, happened when we were taking pictures. I was taking a picture of Kevin and told him to have Boogie hold a dove in her mouth for the picture... well, he handed her one just like I said and then as I took a few pics Boogie started to chomp down on it and start eating the dove whole! You can actually see her


By the time we realized this, there was only a few wing feathers sticking out of the side of her mouth and she ended up eating the whole thing, lol. I'm sure she'll be fine, as the dove she ate was a really, really small one and she's ate other things (like a whole rabbit before) and been fine. Overall, it was a great hunt and by far the most doves Kevin and I have ever gotten in one day. We only went out for about 3 hours as well. We both shot excellent and only missed one or two doves each.

Shoot Results

The Minnesota State Sporting Clays Shoot went really well for me. It was probably the best shoot overall that I've ever shot. I ended up winning two of the three events I entered in. I have never won HOA in such a large event before. I won the Preliminary Event with a score of 93/100 (162 people shot this event). And I also had a come-from-behind victory in the FITASC event, shooting a 92/100 (93 people shot this event). Also, in the Main Event, I hit 176/200 which was good enough for non-resident runner-up. There were 217 entrants total in the Main Event and I got 7th overall after you add in the Minnesota residents' scores.

I'm especially proud of my FITASC win because after the first 50 targets we shot on Saturday, I had only hit 43 of them. I had looked at the scoreboard before we shot the remaining 50 targets on Sunday and knew that a 91/100 was the high score so far in that event. In order to win or tie for first, I needed to hit at least 48/50 on Sunday. I managed to hit 24/25 on my first parcour on Sunday and finished up by hitting all 25 targets on our final parcour of the event. This gave me a 49/50 on the day and putting me in first place by one bird with a 92/100 total score.

I had a lot of fun at the shoot as well. Shooting is always a great way to spend time with my Dad and younger brother. We also saw a bunch of our friends at the shoot over the weekend. This is almost certainly the final shoot of the year, so I'll put the clay shooting gun away for the season and start hunting. My friend Kevin and I plan on going Mourning Dove hunting tomorrow, as the season opens on the first of September.

Here are some pics from the shoot:

Dad walking out to shoot

Chad waiting to shoot

The Preliminary Course

Me shooting


Chad taking aim at a target


Tower


Gun Smoke


Dad shooting at a target