Fridays = live poker

Friday night means that my live poker game at a house not too far from where I live takes place. It is the one day of the week where I am assured to actually get out of the house and talk to people face to face rather than over a headset while seated at my computer. The game is full of genuinely good people who are at least decent at poker, so I always have a good time.

I am going to spend the afternoon cleaning up the house. Tomorrow night I will spend with my wife, and then hopefully I will be back fully recharged for a good Sunday.

Taking a deep breath

No matter what I do to try and break the cycle, I can't help but dwell on things when I get close to a big score and then fizzle at the end. And since that has happened twice this last week I have been sleeping like crap.

I put in an evening session tonight, played great, ran poorly and ended early but it has given me time to just sit, reflect, take a deep breath and a step back, and as usual at the end of these cycles, I realize how fortunate I am.

I am actually up this month, and although of course I wish I had seized my final table opportunities better so that I was WAY up, I still am doing fine. My bankroll is healthy, I am playing well, as long as I keep grinding I should keep making money. So tomorrow I will put in another session and keep living the life.

Still sort of stewing

I know I should be happy since I had a very profitable day. I know I should be happy that I am playing really well. I know I should be happy.... but I'm not.

I got 5th in the afternoon $162 tourney on stars for $5700 which is great. But I was 2nd in chips with 5 left and 4 of the 5, including myself, were willing to chop which would have given me $12.7k but one guy refused so we keep playing and I end up out in 5th in a basic cooler hand. So I can't help but feel that I lost out on $7k and hence the dejection.

Stewing

Barf. I just came in 8th in a $55 freezeout on Stars which was worth over $10k for the top 3 spots and I was by far and away the chipleader at the final table. I actually don't feel like I played horribly, I just got hosed. I went from first to 4th on a hand that I could not fold. From 4th to last when I had JK on a JQx flop, and then out a couple hands later. But the feeling that I left good money on the table is just really really hard to shake.

I am upset with myself, I am upset at the game, I am upset at pokerstars, just generally upset. I know at some point soon I will be able to take a step back and realize this all just part of the game, but right now I just want to bang my head repeatedly into a wall.

Settling back into a routine

Tourneys have been bad for me the last two nights, as in I haven't cashed in anything, but cash has been okay. There are some obvious strategy differences in fullring cash that I don't really want to get into on here, but I think I am a quick learner so hopefully I have righted the cash ship and can keep on cruising.

Tomorrow should be more of the same.

Back to Real Life

So our little house survived 3 days with 13 people and 2 dogs (the picture includes everyone but no guarantees on how well they are portrayed). It is always nice to have family around... and it always nice for things to get back to normal as well.

Supposedly comcast is doing something to improve the cable in our neighborhood this next week and their might be outages, so I basically can't play tourneys during the day because if service is interrupted I would just be screwed. So the plan this week will be to play cash during the day and play tourneys at night.

INVASION!

We are being invaded this weekend but in a good way. My family is all coming here for the MLK weekend. My sister and her brood, my dad, step-mom and their brood, and my cousin and her brood are all coming. So we are looking at something like 13 people and 3 dogs in our nice little 2 br/1 ba 1000 sq ft house. The weather is supposed to be crappy so I am thinking it is going to be a games/movie/shopping mall type weekend. No matter what, I have fun with the fam so it should be a good time. I'll be back playing Monday night.

My dejection is nothing in comparison

Even though I couldn't help feeling that I had been punched in the gut last night. Even though I couldn't help repeating the what if's in my head as I went to sleep (what if I had just folded that last hand, what if I had won $50k, what if I had taken a different line, etc.) last night. I do realize how fortunate I am and I am cognizant of the fact that many in this world are not as fortunate.

If you are in a giving mood (and yes Haiti is on my mind) here are two great organizations that can always use your donations:

Partners In Health

American Red Cross

Want to poke my eyes out

I got 13th in the Quarter million on stars. I just can't finish on that site. 1st was over $50k. 13th was just over $2k. I am so dejected right now it is hard to put in words.

Hemorraghing staunched

I cleaned up the house this afternoon and then played a nightly session and feel like I played super duper well. I made 1 final table and 2 final 2 tables and felt like I had a shot to win all three tourneys. In the end I did win a $26 tourney on FullTilt for just over $8k so I am back in the black again for the year. I am going to try and get some decent volume in this week so hopefully the run good and play good continue.

Trying to stop the hemorrhaging

January has been a complete dud so far. This is the part of my job that is hardest to explain and to deal with mentally. Friends, family, and random schmoes just see or hear the wins I make but the fact that I can lose $1k a day over multiple days doesn't always sink in.

I am almost positive this is how last year started as well until like the middle of the month when I got second in a big tourney and turned things around. And that's just the nature of this game. Lose, lose, lose, lose, lose, pull out hair, get frustrated, get stressed, and then bam, I win and things are fine again. So I'll keep grinding, playing as well as I can and wait (hope) for things to turn around.

Trying to keep upbeat

This game is mentally hard:

I made three top 20s last night but no final tables and one horrific beat late which would have guaranteed a final table which = a net loss for the day;

My KK have lost the last 4 times I have played them;

I didn't cash one tourney this afternoon and except for some minor mistakes in one tourney it was not because of my play but simply because of my luck....

But I also realize that all of the above is very much blah blah meow chow. No one cares about my recent bad luck, or my bad beats and they shouldn't. I know I sure don't care about yours.

The problem is I care. The problem is I still get frustrated when I lose. The problem is even though I can rationally discuss how every player must wade through the variance inherent in poker, when the variance is hitting me square in the face I become irrational.

I am much better about not spazzing out in my other tourneys when the bad beats/lost races/coolers start flowing but I have yet to find a way to control my frustrations. At least I have a couple of hours to burn and simmer down before I start my nightly session.

Feeling a little less rectally abused

After getting repeatedly hosed (and playing a little poorly as well) the last couple of days I went and played my nightly live session. It's a fun mix of people and we are friendly enough that I can call people fuckface and not have to worry about them taking it personally or getting my face busted in. There is one guy who just likes to tangle with me (and vice versa) so we basically ended up just flipping for $40 stacks on a number of occassions. I probably broke even for the night but I had fun and it definitely helped get me back into a better mental framework.

So I played my regular afternoon session today and although I didn't cash in any of the 8 tourneys I did recoup a vast majority of my cash losses from yesterday. I played full ring $1/2 NL and just joined new tables as I got knocked out of tourneys. After spewing off a buy-in a and a half because I don't believe people preflop, I then hunkered down and won like 5 buy-ins. So I finished up like $650 playing cash which more or less covered my tourney entries for the day. My plan is to continue to do the same thing. Playing cash should keep all of my spots on my computer screen full so I don't waste as much time surfing the web, and as long as I stop bluffing in bad spots I think I will be able to beat the game at a pretty nice clip. We'll see how it goes...

Tonight I am playing the big Wednesday tourneys so the possibility of a big payoff is there. Hopefully the cards will fall my way.

Semi-Tilt Session

I played an afternoon session yesterday, and actually played really well, got semi-deep in a couple of tourneys and just flipped out a bit when I lost 4 races in a row to knock me out. I then proceeded to take a break, watch the Boise State/TCU football game and decided to play some cash after the game....

Cash went miserably. Between bluffing at the wrong times, making hero calls that blew up in my face, getting coolered, and not winning races I ended up losing close to $3k. Blech.

Thankfully, I didn't keep chasing my losses after that and just hung it up. I am going to try and keep playing cash this year because it is a skill that I feel I very well might need in the future if I am going to be able to continue playing fulltime, but I need to make sure that my mindset is right when I play it.

In better news, I sold out my WSOP BAP, so I am definitely going this summer.

Average Crappy Sunday

My wife left the lights on on our pickup so the first thing we had to do this morning was jump start it since she killed the battery. Of course both of us are mechanically retarded, so we had to google how to use the damn jumper cables in fear of exploding batteries and sparks flying everywhere. But amazingly that went down without a real hitch.

Since she had to study before going off to work today, I put in an afternoon session and the only tourney I cashed was the one I cared least about for a minimum cash. There is some part of me, I guess, that keeps expecting the losing to somehow get easier... but it doesn't. I still hate it. It doesn't matter to me that I played fine. It doesn't matter to me that I did not tilt off my chips or make a bad read or just a stupid mistake. It doesn't matter to me that people are dying in Africa and the Middle East. It doesn't matter to me that I probably ran above expectation last year. All that matters to me when I lose is that it still sucks to lose.

Anyhoo, my wife starts nights again tonight which tends to throw the house into a state of flux so I am going to try and get the house semi-clean tonight, get in a workout, and then I'll be back at it tomorrow.

Happy New Year = Planning for the WSOP

I am definitely an early bird, but I like to get my finances set up early so I have already put up my BAP for the WSOP. For those that don't know what a BAP is, it stands for Buy A Piece, and it is the method I use to sell my action for the WSOP.

You can find my ad here.

I actually thought long and hard about what sort of cut I wanted to offer this year. Last year there was basically a buying frenzy before the World Series so I offered what was a very good cut for myself at 67/33 (the investor gets 67% of their profit share) and was still able to sell it out. I was thinking of offering the exact same cut this year since I was one of the few on parttimepoker who actually profited last year, but I decided in the end to offer an even better cut to my investors and ended up offering a 75/25 cut. Since I will buy 1/3 of my own action (i.e. I will pay $10k of my own money and am looking for others to pay $20k), I will end up keeping exactly 50% of any profits I make this year and distributing the other 50% to my investors.

I did this for quite a few reasons:

1) I believe that the amount invested for this year's series is going to be much lower than it was last year.

2) I wanted to help set the bar for this year's series. PTP has gotten a little bit out of line with "standard" staking deals. A standard deal is usually an 80/20 cut without makeup or 50/50 with makeup. Obviously the players who are trying to sell their action can and should try and get better deals if people are willing to pay for it, but the standard 70/30 cut on PTP is really a steal for the players and I am not so sure investors will be jumping at that cut anymore.

3) I want to sell out as quickly as possibly and with as few investors as possible so I am willing to give up some percentage in myself in order to do so.

When all is said and done, I try my best to be as fair as possible. I don't like getting cheated and I don't like cheating others. I felt like this offer is pretty rocksolid in terms of fairness. Now I get to wait and see how the market feels.

End o' year stats

I lied and played a session tonight and basically bricked out.

My end of the year stats are as follows:

198 cashes in 1326 tourneys with 34 final tables and an ending ROI of 96.65%.

Here's to another successful year in 2010!

Boring New Year's Eve

I took the car in to get its 15k mile tune-up and when I made the appointment the guy told me that they would drive me home so I could wait comfortably until they finished it. Of course when I actually got there they were like, "well the shuttle just left and we think we can finish it pretty quick so why don't you just wait?"

If they had said this when I made the appointment I would have brought my laptop and been fine. Sine they didn't, all I got to do was read the paper and wait, and wait, and wait... for 4 fricking hours!! Argh, it was definitely aggravating but what else could I do? Anyhoo, errands are done, and I was thinking of actually playing tonight, but I realize that I just don't have the mojo. So instead I'll just lock up a positive year and a positive month and start the new year off fresh.

As far as big new year's plans - come on, let's face it, I am a big poker playing dork who doesn't get out much so my plans include me, my remote, and my dog Chula. My wife is on call tonight so she will likely deliver the first baby of the new year, so I'll probably just try and steal her coolness by living vicariously through her.

Random Thoughts

I finished reading The Professor, The Banker, and the Suicide King which is a book about Andy Beal, a biliionaire banker, who basically decides that he wants to play super high stakes heads up limit poker against some of the best poker players around. He had so much money that the poker players were required to pool their money together and play him as a conglomerate - it helped them in many respects because they could rotate players in and pounce on him when he got tired. I really enjoyed the book because it delved much more into the mindsets and backgrounds of the players rather than getting into strategy (which I deal with on a daily basis through playing and through pokerpwnage). I have also played with, and even busted, the author of the book which made it an added plus. Reading about the amount of risk these players were willing to take was both a little mind boggling and also made me realize that if I really want to move up and make tons of cash I am probably going to have to delve more and more into cash games.

On the poker front, I put in a session this afternoon and felt that I played pretty exceptional poker in the one tourney I got semi-deep in. My 3-bet bluffs were working, my postflop play was taking pots down, everything felt spot on... but then I took 2 bad beats late with KK and poof I was out in 39th. It was somewhat fitting because some of the newer guys on the vent channel I use to "talk poker" have been bemoaning their luck and whining about bad beats lately. I can't say that I no longer get upset or frustrated when I take bad beats now, but I do feel like I have a much healthier mindset about them now then I ever have before. All I can do is play my best and let the luck work itself out.

I decided to take tonight off because I wanted to watch my Badgers play and I was pleasantly surprised to see them pretty much manhandle U of Miami. Tomorrow I am off to my first pt appointment for my knee but I am hoping to get in a session tomorrow night.

Last workweek of the year

So the family has come and gone. We had a good Christmas even though it was too quick and somewhat of a whirlwind and now it is quickly back into the same old routine. Especially since my routine is heavy on finding reasons not to play. I took today off after waking up early, doing an hour coaching session, and then taking a nap and waking up in time to watch Monday Night football.

I am planning on actually working tomorrow and then I have my first pt appointment for my knee on Wednesday and have to take the car in for its 15k mile maintenance on Thursday.

Other than that I should be getting back into the same old same old of grinding, playing some live games, and just trying to enjoy life as best as I can.