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.

Losing day

Lost about 3 buyins today. Didn't play the greatest, lost a lot of pretty ridiculous hands, seemed to be one of those days where the worst card always peeled off and I was holding a pretty good hand but a slightly better one always beat me.

Not the end of the world of course, just a fairly standard losing day. I didn't really get much sleep last night though, it was tough for me to fall asleep. Probably because I slept a ridiculous amount the day before... for like 12 hours. The lack of sleep probably didn't help matters at all.

My Dad, brother, and I are off to go duck hunting this weekend. Hopefully there's going to be lots of ducks around and it won't get too cold out!

Sweet poker song

For those of you who haven't downloaded and listened to this poker song, you must go ahead and do so right now. It sounds pretty good actually and is quite hilarious. Check it out.

Also, Nutedawg pointed out a pretty funny youtube vid that Verneer posted on the internet. It gets good at the end of the vid.

Poker went OK today. I ended up about 2.5 buyins on the day. Got felted 4 times today... twice was a flip loss on the flop, got over-setted once, and lost with KK vs QQ all in pre-flop. All pretty standard losses and I don't think I'd play any of them differently so I'm pretty happy with my play overall. I think it took me too long to adjust to everyone's pre-flop tendancies today to not respect 3-bets... I should have cut down on the 3-bet bluffing much sooner. That probably cost me like half a buyin or so for not adjusting quickly enough.

Back to work

Every time I get back from a trip or vacation from poker I always seem to be in a great mood to get back to playing poker. That's a pretty good sign, in my opinion... means that I still like my job. I'm even getting this feeling of high motivation after my Vegas trip, which was primarily a poker business trip anyways. Playing live poker in Vegas makes me realize how lucky I am to be an online pro and not a live pro. Honestly, don't know if I could be a professional poker player if I had to go to a casino and play live poker each day. It's so boring often times and the 9 handed play definitely doesn't help matters.

On Monday, I put in two sessions... the first one was a winning one and the second one basically canceled out the first session and I ended up winning like $78 on the day.

Today, however, I played and ran really well for both sessions of the day. Ended up playing a little over 4 hours for the day. Also, it was nice to run about $1k above all in EV. Obviously super short term results, but this month has been going pretty well for me so far despite not getting in as much volume as I would like.


I actually only got felted for 100bbs twice today. Once was a classic KK vs AA in a blind vs button situation. Super standard. And the other stack lost was a blind vs button situation vs an aggro reg where I 4-bet/called it off with AQ soooooted and he won with KK.

I played in our team's first intramural hockey game of the season tonight. We ended up winning 3-1. Our team played decently well, and our goaltender was fantastic. We just had a bit of trouble burying the puck into the back of the net... we had a ton of chances and we could have easily won by a lot more.

I also picked up a brand new hockey stick before the game and used it for the first time. It's soooo light it's almost ridiculous. So far I like it and I'm probably going to pick the other one up from the store tomorrow, as it's difficult to find a curve pattern I like in a LH stick with the right amount of flex I want. It's the CCM U+ stick.

Back from Vegas

Wow, what an amazing 10 days. I got back in town yesterday and I must say, I'm still recovering from 10 days in Vegas. I definitely lost out on some sleep which I've been making up over the past few days. The trip was a blast. Bryan and I got a lot of poker, clubbin', and drinking in over the course of the trip.

This past weekend I ended up going to XS with Bryan, a few of his friends, and my buddy Greg and his girlfriend. It was amazing, as always. XS is by far my favorite club in Vegas.


Here's a pic from the week before, when we went to XS.

Brett and I with a few new friends

Here's a great pic of the group that I went out with to the nightclub "Pure" at Caesar's Palace for bottle service one night.

Here are a few pics from my room at the Hard Rock

A few pics from my room at the Trump

As far as how poker went over the trip, I ended up about breaking even in live poker. So I ended up coming home with less cash than I came with due to all the clubbin', eating out, etc. Bryan and I did coin flips between us to see who would pay for dinner... I won the flip for the $30 bill and ended up losing the next 3 flips in a row for bills of like $60 (Bellagio Buffet), $90 (Wynn Buffet), and another bill that was about $60 at the Grand Lux cafe in the Venetian. A little run-bad in a non-poker setting, lol. It was fun to flip for paying though.

I did end up playing online a few hours a day and actually did quite well, so I was able to make some cash while out in Vegas despite breaking even in live poker and spewing money doing other stuff.

Amazing trip, great weather, can't wait to go back!

Staying at Trump International Hotel

So Bryan and I decided to switch hotels halfway through our trip just to get more of a variety. We actually had decided to do this and lined up the reservations before we arrived in Vegas. Yesterday we both checked out of our rooms at the Hard Rock and we each checked into our rooms at the Trump.

I was pretty impressed with the Hard Rock, great rooms, good service, decent price, but the location isn't really ideal because it's off the strip a little bit so cab rides to wherever you want to go are a bit longer, etc. The Trump is ridiculously sick. Probably the nicest room I've ever stayed in. The room is quite large and has a really expensive look and feel too it. The bathroom is massive as well; it has both a full bath and a large shower. Also, the Trump is a little better location, as it's more near where we're playing poker frequently.

The plan for today is to play some live poker in the afternoon, but we probably won't start playing until a few more hours. Bryan didn't get to sleep until 8 AM so he's going to take a nap. I'm going to get in an online session and get some hands in.

In other news, I see that some of my friends' facebook statuses had "snow" in them, so if that's true I'm definitely not looking forward to the weather when I get back to ND.

Amazing weekend in Vegas!

This is going to be really short, because I'm ridiculously tired right now and I'm going to be going sleep right after I get done writing this.

I had an absolute blast this weekend! It was so much fun. There is really nothing else that compares to the best clubs in Vegas... definitely the best night-life spot to go out in the U.S. We went to the club XS at the Encore on Friday night and went to Pure at Caesar's Palace last night. We ended up getting bottle service both nights and last night I actually drank quite a bit and was feeling it this morning. Need to pace myself a bit better next time we go out.

Probably going to play some live poker tomorrow since I haven't really played a ton so far. When I have played nothing has really happened, pretty much just broke even each session. Six more days in Vegas! I'll post some of the pics when I get home, because I'm pretty sure I forgot to bring the cord that connects my camera to my computer.

Hope poker is going well for everyone!

First day in Vegas

I arrived in Vegas around 1:30 PM PST and went to go check in at the Hard Rock Hotel. I tried the $20 dollar bill trick and it worked. I got a free room upgrade for the six nights I'm staying there. I got upgraded from a regular room in the hotel casino to the brand new paradise towers on the 18th floor. Sick view.

All you do for the trick, is when you are checking in, fold up a $20 bill in between your credit card and driver's license when they ask for it. Hand it to the hotel employee checking you in while asking if they have any "complimentary upgrades available." Basically, the employee gets the $20 tip and upgrades your room to a better view/bigger room/newer room. I've done this a few times in Vegas at different hotels and it normally works unless the hotel is near capacity. If they are unable to upgrade you, the times that's happened to me anyways they hand back your $20. So you can't really lose by trying it. Definitely a cool trick.

My friend Brian arrived in Vegas around 6 PM and we went to eat at "Pink Taco," a mexican place in the Hard Rock Casino. It was pretty decent food; I liked it. Afterwards we went out to the club "TAO" at the Venetian for a bit. It was super loud in there but a lot of fun. Didn't hit the dance floor at all, as I mainly talked and drank a bit the whole time.


I also forgot to mention I played a session online for a few hours before dinner and ended up winning a few buyins. Definitely a fun first day in Veags.

VEGAS!!!

I'm flying out to Vegas tomorrow. I'm meeting my friend Brian, from Chicago, there. We're going to play a lot of live cash games and likely hit a few clubs on the weekend. It's going to be a blast. I'm looking forward to some nice weather, as it's been pretty rainy, crappy, and starting to get cold in ND. I'm still going to try and get some hands in online though while I'm there so I don't go insane from just playing live poker.


I'll be missing our first intramural hockey game though, as we have an exhibition game scheduled for Thursday night. Oh well, I'm sure they'll do fine without me. The game doesn't count for the season record anyways. Basically it's just a warm-up.

My sick tear to start the month has slowed down a bit over the past few days. Yesterday I played just one session and finished down two buyins. Really, I don't think I played that bad. Just lost a few critical pots. This hand pissed me off. Ridiculous. The guy is a regular in the games, and a winner. No clue what he's thinking when he INSTA-calls my shove there.

Hopefully, I can get in a few sessions today after I'm done packing for my trip.

First bad day of month

So I played just a short, one hour session today and finished down three buyins. I didn't play my best at all and didn't run that hot either. I slept in really late on Monday, ran a bunch of errands, then watched the newest episode of Dexter, season 4 so I didn't have much time to play today at all.

I'm kinda pissed off about this hand. I think I made a mistake here. I didn't have much of a read on this player, but since he seemed kinda fishy I think it's a pretty clear fold on the river as I don't see him bluffing much and/or value betting worse. I made a pretty poor river call.

This one, the 3-bettor is a reg who's a pretty big nit with his 3-bets. I would have liked a call pre-flop to see a flop and play it from there much better than just 4-bet/calling it off, as I think his range there is super tight... maybe QQ-AA and AK. He may not even 3-bet AK and QQ all of the time... maybe half the time. Also probably never bluffing in that spot, although I can't be 100% certain.

I'm still up a lot for the month, up about $6k over 6k hands, so I've really got nothing to worry about. I just need to keep playing like I did the first 4 days of the month and I'll be fine.

Mini-tear to start the month

So I've had a great start to the month so far. Hopefully it continues, as I feel like I'm playing some of the best poker I've ever played. Played two separate two hour sessions today and finished up 5 buyins total. I'm pretty happy with my play overall. I'm especially pleased to see that I was able to run at a very aggro VPIP and PFR without spewing all that much. I think if I can keep that style of play up it's going to be a lot more annoying for the regs to play against me.



My Dad, brother, Kevin, and I went out hunting again Sunday morning. Didn't have much luck once again. We ended up going about an hour west of town and spent the first few hours of the morning trying to get in between two flocks of Canadian Geese so we could pass-shoot them. It didn't work out though, so we aborted that plan and went after some ducks. Most of the sloughs with ducks in them were posted with no hunting signs, so we couldn't hunt there. We did end up getting one duck, which our dog, Boogie, went and retrieved. Chad recorded her bringing the duck to us, it's pretty cool.

Here are some pics that I took:

Boogie spazzing out after being released from the Suburban

Dad and Boogie walking back to the Suburban

Chad trying to get Boogie to release her newly-found duck

I also played a bit of hockey Sunday night during our weekly ice rental. We had a lot less people there than normal. I think a lot of people went to the UND college hockey game instead of skating themselves! Oh well, it was still a good workout and a lot of fun. I'm really tired though. Waking up at like 6 AM for hunting a few days in a row really catches up to me fast. I NEVER wake up that early, except for hunting!

Fun Day

Went out duck hunting in the morning but it was basically a total disaster. One of our neighbors told us about a slough where there were tons of ducks, but he gave us really vague directions so we never ended up finding the place. Of course, the direction we traveled to find the place had really no other decent potholes or sloughs so we only got one duck and one mourning dove. We ended up quitting pretty early anyways as my Dad had to get back to town for something.

I played only one session of poker, finishing up a buyin.

Then, at night I hung out with a friend and we went out to eat dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings, went to a movie (The Hangover), and went out to the bars downtown. It was a blast. I'm super tired now though and I'm going to hit the hay as we're waking up early again to go duck hunting in about 3 hours.

Takin' names and kickin' ass

First session for Friday:

Nice to finally have a sick heater during a session. Played for 2 hours and basically crushed everyone. Feels good to absolutely dominate. I definitely think my play is improving.

Not sure if I'll play any more today or not. I'm going to take a break and run a few errands. I kind of want to go out tonight to the bars or something but we'll see. I'm going hunting pretty early in the morning so I don't really want to be out too late. We're not going to our normal hunting spot as the roads are probably too wet and muddy to get into our camping site. We'll just go somewhere about 1 hour west of town and set up in a small pothole or jump the ducks out of sloughs.

Decent start to October

I played quite a bit more aggressive pre-flop than normal today and it seemed to work out alright as I finished up about $1k for the day. I've been experimenting with 3-betting in different spots and I'm beginning to identify some unique spots. I've founds some cool positional set-ups to 3-bet bluff in as well as 3-betting a little bit different value range than I have in the past. I definitely like it so far. Normally my 3-bet stat is around 6-7% but today it was near 10%.


As you can see, I started out the day kind of rough, running into two unavoidable losses. This one, I just lose a big flip. This one, I get standardly two-outed on the turn when stacks were likely to go in irregardless of the card that peeled off.

The final two sessions of the day went a little better. I lost this hilarious hand halfway through my final session of the day. lol fish. I did run decently well though as I was able to stack a decent amount of opponents later in the day. Here's a nice hand where I was basically gifted a stack courtesy of a regular in the games. Really no other way for me to play this hand. I like the way it turned out obviously.

I'm going to sleep now, as I'm going to wake up a bit early tomorrow so I can go to the "Free Dance Friday" that the ballroom dance class runs. I'm a teaching assistant for the ballroom dance class at the university here so tomorrow is basically a practice day for the students before they take their test on Tuesday. They are learning the "waltz" right now. I really enjoy this class. It's a great way to meet new people and helps to relieve stress.

Solid result for September

I am pretty satisfied with my results in September. I finished the month with a total poker profit of about 18k. I nearly made the 20k mark but had a bad final day of the month. It feels great to post a solid winning month since the two previous months were kinda rough. I played almost all $2/4 NL.

I'm going to grind $2/4 NL again for another month and hopefully do even better than I did in September. Plan is to get around 100 buyins for $5/10 NL then move back up to there. I might start mixing in some $3/6 NL as I don't see any reason not to, because I now have over 100 buyins for that level online now spread amongst the sites I play on. I kind of skipped $3/6 NL last time I moved up to $5/10 NL and I don't know if that was a good idea, bad idea, or didn't matter. I guess it wouldn't hurt to grind out 30-40k hands at $3/6 NL while building towards my target bankroll for $5/10 NL.

I'm going to try and get a bit more structured in my approach to each day. I'm going to write out a schedule and do my best to follow it. Maybe once I get it wrote up I'll talk a bit about how I decided to arrange my daily schedule.

I'm going to a Captain's meeting tonight for my intramural hockey team, Blue Steel. We're going to have a pretty solid team this year... in fact it could possibly be our best team ever. I just have to pay the registration fee then track down all the jerseys and socks and we'll be ready to play our first game in about the middle of October.

Looks like I'll be going duck hunting again this weekend, with my Dad and brother. So I'm looking forward to that.

Duck Hunting

It's been awhile since my last update, which has mainly been due to being ridiculously busy. I ended up going out duck hunting last weekend with my friend Kevin. My Dad and brother also went hunting in the same spot but they hunted out of a different boat.

It was kind of a last minute deal getting Kevin's boat and everything ready to go but it worked out. I thought Kevin was going to go hunting with his Dad, but his Dad ended up going to the lake so Kevin came with us. He just had a trolling motor on the boat which was just barely enough to get by on the lake we were hunting on. Saturday was a good day of hunting as Kevin and I shot 8 ducks and one Canadian Goose total between us. Sunday it was super windy out and we just hunted from shore and killed 3 ducks. We drove back Sunday afternoon and played in our weekly hockey ice rental that night.

It was a fun weekend but we really didn't get as much shooting in as I would have liked. The ducks all seemed to be in the flooded fields instead of flying over the lake we were hunting. Next time we go out we might have to find a different location to hunt from.

Here are some pics from the hunt:

Kevin the Skipper

Kevin putting out the decoys

Kevin calling in the geese

Me taking aim

Kevin spots a flock of ducks

Me calling 'em in

Kevin's "Navy Seal" look... lol, we were bored because the ducks stopped flying

Slaughter photo