Z06Fanatic's Poker Blog

what Ive been up to since black friday

2011-06-24T19:13:00.000-07:00

black friday was a real shock for everyone in the poker community - at first I was more shocked then anything and it really took a couple days before I started my normal weekly grind to realize it was over. Since then I've been playing live 5/10 NL for a living. Its been a struggle thus far, but I've gotten alot better over the past 2 months learning to play 200 bb deep. While financially I haven't done as well as I wanted, I've enjoyed the change of scenery - I played online for about 6 years for a living, and as you might guess, it can get very boring and monotonous. This is especially the case with 2011, as I've been running real bad. The 5/10 live grind is nice to do something different and test my skills out in a new ballgame that isn't just 30 bb stacks and very little postflop play. I've also come to appreciate money alot more and the fact that no road is going to be an easy one to travel, and overcoming the bumps along the way will make you a better person and capable of handling much more. I will continue the 5/10 grind but do hope online comes back soon.

blog is movin

2010-10-18T18:05:00.000-07:00

I recently become part of team Pokersavvy - making some training videos for the site and will be blogging from there.

http://www.pokersavvy.com/blogs/z06fanatic/

finally a win

2010-10-05T07:53:00.000-07:00

After a long month I finally got a win under my belt - ended up on the last day of sept winning the 75 super stack on tilt for 7k and taking 3rd in teh 40k tilt for another 4500.......felt good to finally get a win after weeks of getting shat on....with 1 win on the month you'd think my month was pretty bad considering how much I buy in for, but the 3rd in the 1/4 mil stars along with a huge month for my horse made it a pretty successful September. Im currently in the process of finding a training site to produce videos for - Ive been talking to a couple and will be joining a site soon enough. Most likely the blog will be moved there and Ill let everyone know where that turns out to be. I enjoy making training videos and helping others so it should be pretty rewarding, and its nice to have a side income thats variance free. Thats all for now - im starving and need to get some food in my body before I kill myself.

Biggest downswing ever!

2010-09-26T22:43:00.001-07:00

since my stars 1/4 3rd place its been severely downhill......im been getting completely assraped, going on a -16k downswing......luckily my stake destroyed this month to basically cancel out the downswing so that helps but its been brutal.....I havent mined it too much though as I figured something like this was coming my way especially after crushing August...hopefully I can stop the beating soon enough - I recently played a 1k 6 max event at the Borgata the other week and ended up jamming the turn with an open ender into aces and not getting there......maybe the whole hand was spewish but I'll recap for those who care

75/150 13K effective - Ive been opening alot of pots, Ive been 3 bet a couple times and folded to all.......villan in question has 3 bet once before with a very large sizing and then showed Aces - at the same time though he is greeted by a couple other players and I hear him talking about 100rs online so I assume he has a clue what hes doing. on to the hand......I open in CO with A9 to 400 at 75/150, button folds, Villan in SB raises to 1k - it folds back to me and decide to make it 2250 to go......with a little thinking he makes the call...flop comes J87 - he checks, I cbet, he thinks for a little and calls....the turn comes a 5 - at this point I have a little over a PSB left and he checks to me so I jam - he calls, and obv has aces....now the flop/turn plays are very standard its just should I 4 bet this spot or wait for more history - his sizing looked pretty standard for a 3b bluff range to be possible - maybe I should of waited for more information though.......had he made it say 1400 I wouldnt even of thought about going the 4b route......it would of been wierd if I didnt have the open ender on the turn - not sure if Id give up at that point or what

Anyways I hate playing live and feel my live game is way behind my online game - I feel less comfortable live and it takes more time to come up with a conclusion then it does online. its something Id like to work on but my online hourly rate is way higher so Im going to stick with that. Tomorrow starts the final week of September to come out on top - Im still up over 30k for the month with the staking so its still a great month, but Id like to show some profit playing this week. gl me

3rd in 1/4 Mil Stars

2010-09-09T16:58:00.000-07:00

Last week was a bit interesting - I had just came off the UBOC chop and was feeling great about a massive August - nearly broke my single month profit that I did in February......Wednesday was the 1st of the month and I was motivated to crush September - I started off with taking 3rd in the 50r(I believe) for about 8k......then I won the 30r cake for a massive 1600 dollars to continue to crushing - its always funny how Ill play a cake 30r or AP 50 fo where first is 1400 then ill be playing the stars 320 where first is 50k - slightly different payouts....anyways things were going good that day and I was finishing up my session with the 1/4 Mil stars, 80 sniper, and the 75k on tilt.......there were about 200 left in the Stars 1/4 mil and I had roughly 12-15 bb - I thought about how cashing would be cool considering my big day, but regardless if I did or didnt I had a good day.....anyways I had doubled up a couple times in standard spots and made it to the money......from there I just contiuned to chip up - the structure is so slow and has alot of sattiers who prob play 40-50 buy ins and satty into this, so deep with 50 or so left the play is pretty tight overall.....I was able to chip up alot without people fighting back - I had a couple lucky spots along the way as well - I remember someone opened I 3 bet 46s he called......the flop came like A49, he checked I bet he called...the turn came he checked, I decided to fire another bullet for alot of my stack and he folded.

The big turning point came where I got in AK vs KK for 60 bbs.....it was unavoidable imo and obv the KK guy was calling me a fish - short stack with 20 bbs opened and he 3 bet a standard size - I hadnt been at the table long enough to know how he had been playing but regardless Im never folding - granted his 3b is straight for value, but he should be 3b pretty wide there, 66+,AJ+ generally speaking.....anyways we got it in, I binked an ace on the turn, and boom I was CL with 12 to go.....at the final table things went well - won a flip, lost a flip, chipped up slightly and had gotten 3 handed - we talked a chop where I was offered 35k but I declined - 35k was 2nd place money and the shorty was short and I felt I had 2nd locked up alot and wanted my shot at winning a monster rahter than chopping.....long story short I bricked a fl draw and a flip and 3rd place 26k I received.

Since then Ive had very little motivation to play......Ive hit some great scores, made alot of money this year, and am not too motivated to keep grinding....furthermore Ive been golfing a ton and been enjoying that. Im sure my poker interest will reappear eventually, but its tough to be motivated currently....next week I head to AC for a 1k 6 max and a bunch of golfing most likely...it should be a fun time and is coming at a great time for a little break....hopefully I go deep in the 1k and come back rejuvenated......Ive been down 7k since my 3rd place hit so Im not thinking the 1k is gonna go too good :(

UBOC Chop/30r win

2010-08-28T21:12:00.000-07:00

Wed/Thurs of this past week marked some interesting events.....first off on Wednesday I shipped the 20r AP - yeh yeh, its not that much of a cash but shipping it completed the shippage of every AP daily I play during the day......so that includes the 50 FO at 3 est, 30r, 501r1a,50r,20r,20k,30k,30r, and the turbo 75.......not a huge deal but thought it would be cool to one day ship every tournament that I play in my daily schedule......Thurs was a pretty sick day - I started off things with winning the 30r FTP for 6600 - this was the first time I won it so glad to get that monkey off my back....ran like a god short handed - HU I hit everything, ran good, and just destroyed him HU - felt too easy........then the UBOC 320 came up - I never really cared to play these bigger events as the fields are larger and I havent had any success.....also it was getting late and I had very little motivation but decided to reg the 320 UBOC and the 66 deepstack on AP along with the 162 FTP at 8est and call it a night......the UBOC overall was very soft for a 320 - when we got to the final 100 or so players, everyone was pretty passive - little to no 3 betting, the 3 bets I made worked, and postflop play was passive..........when we got ITM at 45 players, I lost a flip, but then had QQ beat KK and continued chipping up.....then I got a double with two tables to go, AA over TT I believe.....I came into the final table with like 25 bbs so I didnt have a ton of hope and had to play pretty tight as I was carddead and 25 bbs isn't much room to manevuer.....I tossed in a nice 3 bet that worked and picked up KK and doubled up with it......6 handed I had the CL or near the CL and began raising a bunch of pots - the players seemed very passive and it definitely seems the money was affecting them.....eventually they started opening up and then I lost A9 to KQ and was short 5 handed......from there I got lucky as 5th and 4th busted bringing us 3 handed.....I had 10 bbs at this point but then doubled up and we decided to talk chopping #s.......3rd was 15,500 and 2nd was 22k - chip counts gave me 17 something but told them I needed another 1k - I ended up getting 18,866 and we played it out for 3k and the UBOC watch.....I busted 3rd the 2nd hand in and that was the end of it. Overall was real happy with how the day turned out and the UBOC wasnt expected whatsoever......its great too cause it gives me the confidence to go deep in the bigger majors and hopefully get a win under my belt.....looking forward to the WCOOP and hopefully a deep run

Strategy post - have a plan

2010-08-17T11:42:00.000-07:00

Was talking to someone the other day and this came about.....when you're playing poker, especially tournament poker, always have a plan for a hand.....I use to make this mistake myself about a year ago where I'd make a play either betting or checking and end up in an awkward situation where I have no clue what to do. People need to think one step ahead and understand all possible outcomes before making their move......the great thing about this is it also makes your decisions alot easier in certain situations - alot of times I'll get to the river and decide to bet/fold - if I get raised its a no brainer fold, and if he calls Im getting some nice value.....you see alot of newer players not setup a plan for the hand and get lost postflop - understand all the variables that are presented and come to a conclusion. Also if you're plan isnt going exactly as you wanted, stick with it. Sometimes Ill plan on 3b/calling someone and their 4 bet sizing will be very scary for example - regardless once I 3b I must stick to my plan - their odd 4 bet sizing could be pretty balanced between monsters and trying to look scary with 99, so I have to go with the plan of action. I think if you always have an intelligent plan of attack, you will always do much better.

Theres my tidbit of info for today now on to the grind :)

continuing to crush stars

2010-08-13T22:09:00.000-07:00

The past 3 weeks have been real sick - I hit my biggest score ever and popped off a couple more 5 figure scores.....anyways last Monday I ended up chopping the 129 KO on tilt for 9400, and the following day on my bday winning the 162 Stars 65k guarenteed for 14,300.........also on those days I won the 501r1a on AP back to back which was the first time I won a tournament back to back like that.......this past week I followed things up with chopping the 50r on Stars for 11.4k 3 handed......The sickest part of that was at one point 3 handed I had 2.2 mil in chips, and the other two guys had 500k combined....I then went on to lose 6 all ins, and before you knew it I had 700k, the CL had 1.1 mil, and the shorty had 300k, and blinds were something absurd like 20/40k.......I pushed for the deal as these players werent good but it had turned into a luckfest and the difference between 3rd and 1st was 6k.....I ended up getting slightly more than 2nd place which is fair and it worked out as I busted in 3rd.......

I also had a win in the 75 dollar 10k turbo on AP the night before for 3300....Its a very soft tournament that is basically a luckfest towards the end - I had gotten down to 3 bbs with like 40-50 left and jammed AA and everyone folded.......at this point I figured I had no chance but I just kept winning showdowns and before you knew it made it to the ft.......the table was ridiculously soft - no one had a clue how to play......it was nice getting a win in a turbo tournament - I dont play too many of them so it was cool to do that for once

alot of big online tournament series are going on now and I know people are pysched up for them but I could careless.......i dont see why people fall in love with these big field big buy ins - majority of poker players see the payouts rather than thinking about their ROI and think oh man I got a shot at winning 100k! meanwhile in the long run these are the players who dont make as much as the consistent grinders......Im not knocking these tournaments - Im sure my ROI is atleast 150% in an FTOPs over a standard tournament, but the extreme variance of these fields makes it less appealing.....Im glad I dont play Sundays as well - it could take years to ever even out with variance and Ill pass on playing with that.......if people took more interest in playing the more profitable least variance games then everyone would be making alot more money.

Stars 100k ship

2010-07-27T01:46:00.000-07:00

2nite was interesting.....last week I lost about 6k and was getting hammered once again today - I came into the night session with no cashes, and after busting the 20k AP I just had the 100K Stars to go.....my stars history is iffy - before this month I would run so awful on that site - after some unlucky spots today I figured my luck was back to reality after my 162 2nd place finish but apparently it wasnt.....ended up shipping the nightly 100k for 23k and change.....I never really had a big stack till the final two tables, then I came into the ft 4/9, and eventually was 5/6 at one point......had actually a funny hand short handed

PokerStars Game #47328259284: Tournament #323011041, $150+$12 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level XXIV (6000/12000) - 2010/07/27 3:35:34 ET
Table '323011041 30' 9-max Seat #5 is the button
Seat 1: dudeoflife21 (289014 in chips)
Seat 5: Z06LUVR (736000 in chips)
Seat 6: UcfChamp (534073 in chips)
Seat 8: joesid88 (714662 in chips)
Seat 9: Tjollerboy (288251 in chips)
dudeoflife21: posts the ante 1200
Z06LUVR: posts the ante 1200
UcfChamp: posts the ante 1200
joesid88: posts the ante 1200
Tjollerboy: posts the ante 1200
UcfChamp: posts small blind 6000
joesid88: posts big blind 12000
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Z06LUVR [Qd Ac]
Tjollerboy: folds
dudeoflife21: folds
Z06LUVR: raises 15777 to 27777
UcfChamp: raises 44223 to 72000
joesid88: folds
Z06LUVR: raises 95555 to 167555
UcfChamp: calls 95555
*** FLOP *** [5h 4h 7d]
UcfChamp: checks
Z06LUVR: bets 37777
UcfChamp: raises 82223 to 120000
Z06LUVR: raises 447245 to 567245 and is all-in
UcfChamp: folds
Uncalled bet (447245) returned to Z06LUVR
Z06LUVR collected 593110 from pot
Z06LUVR: doesn't show hand
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 593110 | Rake 0
Board [5h 4h 7d]
Seat 1: dudeoflife21 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: Z06LUVR (button) collected (593110)
Seat 6: UcfChamp (small blind) folded on the Flop
Seat 8: joesid88 (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 9: Tjollerboy folded before Flop (didn't bet)

so we're 5 handed here - UCF has been pretty aggro up until this point - he had the CL for a while and was definitely 3 balling it light from time to time - anyways my intentions were to get in AQ preflop vs him - I felt his 3b range was pretty wide and a small 4 bet might get him to spazz out and ship in worse.....anyways he flats which was odd since he has a pot sized bet left....on the flop I planned on just betting 370k to put him in but by accident bet 37k! I felt like a total idiot at this point - what to do - I figured the flop didnt improve him and hed ship pre with bigger pairs and I gotta stick to my original plan....I shoved and closed my eyes and it was crazy seeing him fold....

when we got HU we were about even in chips and I offered to talk chop numbers and he quickly declined - I guess he looked at my stars stats and figured i was awful....anyways the final hand was when I raised the button with 26 suited he called from the bb and flop came 26A two clubs - he led I raised he called.....turn came an 5 - he checked I bet he jammed - i called he had 78 and i held......felt amazing winning that tournament and probably the best feeling since winning the 60k FTP back in november......Its been a long year playing on Stars without being a winner and finally I can say I am across all the sites.....it was funny too today cause I was in the stars 50r for 350 and ap 50r for 450 and was just watching my monthly profit disinegrate and boom

goodnite all see you another time

Finally a lifetime winner on stars!

2010-07-11T21:41:00.000-07:00

Since I started playing MTTs fulltime Ive struggled to make money on Stars....Id just constantly lose showdowns, run into better, etc etc etc......This was fine by me as I was crushing AP/FTP and doing decent on Cake so overall everything equaled out, but I always wondered when I'd do my first cashout on Stars....Well finally this week it came - took 2nd in Stars 501r1a and then 2nd in the 162 afternoon for like 14k combined....the first one, the 501r1a I ended up getting HU with about a 3 to 1 disadvantage....HU the button limps and I shove for 30 bbs - he snaps with K9 - I had A8 and he hit and that was that....Obviously a terrible call by him but hed been doing that all final table so nothing new. The second one I came in with about a 2-1 advantage.....I just couldnt flop anything and he apparently continued to pick up hands......I picked off some bluffs, got some of mine picked off - had 1 hand where I 4b pre with like k5 and he jammed - he was playing pretty straightforward and his sizing was giving away info but I couldnt get going...the final hand he opened, I jammed KQ for 20 bbs he obv has AQ......it was frusturating but what can you do......It felt great to withdraw off Stars - took a year to do so, but hey finally.....

As far as the other sites I also did well across the board....won the cake 109, a 50 fo on ap, and another 2nd in an ap.......Ive been feeling good about my game and am in a real good spot with it now.....its funny how much more I'll open now then I use to especially on sites like AP where they dont defend enough.......The only site I wont open too light is Stars cause they defend too much so I go back and forth between playing looser and tighter.......playing some of the softer APs like 50 fo's and the 20k at night you can run over the table so easily its really incredible......Ive also been 4betting more often then before - I still think at mid stakes 4betting is very very borderline as you need to satisfy a couple things before deciding to 4b bluff........had one spot in a FTP tournament where a decent reg opens with like 40 bbs, another decent reg 3bets with like 50 bbs, I got about 50 bbs and decide to put in a cold 4bet with like A3 - I figured its a good spot because the first reg opens with his standard sizing so his range is wide - the 3 bet from the other reg is also the proper 3 bet sizing - both stacks are deep that the 3 bet isnt commiting nor is his plan to isolate the first opener......Bet sizing is so key - had his 3b sizing not been 2.5x the raise then I wouldnt contemplate the 4b but everything was perfect......so I 4 bet - at this point my range is super strong - I dont know if they know who I am or if im capable of 4b without value, so I figured theyd need atleast QQ+,AK to consider getting this all in......anyways the original opener folded, the 3b shoved and I had to fold.....it definitely sucks when 4bs dont work but when they do its a beautiful thing...

Ive also worked on improving some things I was doing wrong........#1 was hero calling against people who arent capable of barreling.....heres an example

blinds 100/200, you have 6k, villan covers....villan is someone thats a reg but not good - hes very straightforward, will never value bet thin, and his sizing isnt the greatest...

villan opens in MP to 500, you flat with AJ, folds around flop comes J77 - he bets you call.....turn is a 2 bringing a club draw - he bets again about half pot you decide to call......river is a non club 6 - he goes all-in......for this player to be betting every street like this he has to have a near nuts hand - even with QQ/KK/AA I think hes that straightforward that he might take some pot control with the 77J flop......his range on the flop is obviously very wide, but I dont think hes capable of betting the turn as a bluff, or if he can its very very rare......when he jams the river its a little over pot so his sizing looks like it could be bluffy but at the same time hes that straightforward that he checks all of his river range except fh's,quads,trips,etc.....anyways I ended up calling and he had A7...I should fold the turn all day....

Another leak Im plugging is raising weak river bets on boards that are pretty dangerous.....Had a spot the other day in that 50 FO - heres teh HH

Stage #269536000 Tourney ID 5640136 Holdem Multi Normal Tournament No Limit 40 - 2010-07-09 15:36:16 (ET)
Table: 2 (Real Money) Seat #5 is the dealer
Seat 1 - RAISERAISE87 (1,910 in chips)
Seat 2 - TWIT007111 (1,164 in chips)
Seat 4 - SCHONGIT (2,229 in chips)
Seat 5 - Z06FANATIC (3,154 in chips)
Seat 6 - BIGPATRA (2,852 in chips)
Seat 7 - IRONP0KER (3,090 in chips)
Seat 8 - DA MAD HATTER (3,836 in chips)
Seat 9 - BIGCATOK (2,000 in chips)
BIGPATRA - Posts small blind 20
IRONP0KER - Posts big blind 40
*** POCKET CARDS ***
Dealt to Z06FANATIC [6h Kh]
DA MAD HATTER - Folds
BIGCATOK - Folds
RAISERAISE87 - Folds
TWIT007111 - Folds
SCHONGIT - Folds
Z06FANATIC - Raises 120 to 120
BIGPATRA - Raises 180 to 200
IRONP0KER - Folds
Z06FANATIC - Calls 80
*** FLOP *** [Jh Jc 4h]
BIGPATRA - Checks
Z06FANATIC - Checks
*** TURN *** [Jh Jc 4h] [8s]
BIGPATRA - Bets 160
Z06FANATIC - Calls 160
*** RIVER *** [Jh Jc 4h 8s] [10c]
BIGPATRA - Bets 80
Z06FANATIC - Raises 565 to 565
BIGPATRA - Calls 485
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Z06FANATIC - Shows [6h Kh] (One pair, jacks)
BIGPATRA - Shows [Qd 10h] (Two Pair, jacks and tens)
BIGPATRA Collects 1,890 from main pot

Alright so I open the button here - Im fine with this - I have a suited King in position against weak players who dont defend often....he reraises pre - the sizing leads me to a weaker hand than stronger - either way I have good implied odds to call and can outplay postflop..The flop comes out and he checks - maybe I should be betting here I decided not to as I dont really rep anything and dont want to be blown off my fd......the turn comes and he bets - I probably should of raised here if anything but figured I had alot of equity and hed check/fold alot of rivers....anyways the river comes out and he leads for 80 - its obvious this player is awful and is leading something to protect me from betting alot so I decide to pounce on this and make a substansial raise - of course he calls.....this might work later in a tournament with higher blinds but I think early on I should avoid raising rivers like this because my opponents in a 50 fo arent thinking enough to fold to my range thats either nuts or pure air.....Ive taken spots like these a couple times and definitely seems like burning money :)

Alright im tired and heading off to bed so i can grind tomorrow......no more river bluffs and hero calling

Vegas trip report - Big day yest

2010-06-29T06:58:00.000-07:00

So I went out to vegas for about 5 days to play some poker and have a vacation with the gf......we stayed at the Venetian which is easily the best place Ive ever stayed at - each room is a suite so while one person can be on the bed watching tv, theres a living room area with another flatscreen which is awesome....I could of stayed there for a month and it was around 100/night for the poker rate.....definitely where Ill be staying in the future.....anyways in regards to poker, I played 1 550 Venetian and 2/5 NL while I was out there.....first off live poker is hilarious - I'd probably rank the 550 skill level as that of a 50 dollar freezout online - the level of play early on especially is atrocious.......the structure is great though - 15k starting 25/50, 40 minute levels I believe.......I was very aggressive early on - played my normal online game, opened alot in position pretty wide, a couple 3 bets......got lucky with my 3 betting actually - a guy in later position opens at like 100/200 with about 14k effective.....hes been opening alot, looks like a younger guy, so I decide to 3 bet A7.......he flats and the flop comes 77x.......he checks, I cbet, I think he c/rs and I flat....turn comes another blank - he leads I shove he folds......says he had JJ (wp sir)...A couple hands later I open A3 from sb into bb who calls....flop is 338 - i bet he calls....turn comes a queen - i bet again he calls.....river is an 8 - i decide to valuebet/blockbet into him with intent on folding to a raise - i bet like 35% pot he folds......

So at dinner break I have about 160k and go into the 1500/3k level shortly after......I lose AK to QQ for a flip then my final hand comes up.....I got about 85k at 1500/3k when MP opens to 7500, CO flats, Im in BB with JJ and jam it.......MP calls and i lose a race to AQ....Overall I was very happy with how I played - I didnt feel like I made any glaring mistakes, although its definitely easier to play 100% on your game when your 1 tabling against retards.

So yest was a pretty good day to snap me out of a funk - I won the 20r 6 max Tilt and Cake 162 to get me some wins on the month, along with a couple 7-800 dollar cashes.....Ive also been staking someone recently whos real good and he won the 30k sniper on ap for 8k....while the month still isnt that great, its nice to get some confidence back and get that feeling again of winning.

Offering coaching services

2010-06-11T00:46:00.000-07:00

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/164/poker-coach-listings/mtt-coaching-804529/

So I put up an ad on 2p2 regarding coaching for MTTs.....The going rate will be 80/hr if anyone who reads my blog is interested!

As far as poker its been slow this month.....Im up 4k while getting raped deep in tournaments....The worst part about this is alot of these FTs Ive made with 5 figures+ to first have a bunch of droolers that are pretty terrible.....last week I ft'ed the 40k ftp with 10k to first and busted in like 6th after losing QQ to QT....tonight I came into the 75k FTP 2/9 but got my money in with an open ender for about 40 bbs....I couldnt hit and obv busted like 7th - it was sad too as the two bigstacks I had played with for about 50 hands and were pretty bad.....you could tell this money was big to them and their play reflected it....one was super tight while the other was super spewy, so it coud of been a cakewalk if I picked up a big stack.....oh well cant win them all I guess....on a positive note Ive gotten in 180 MTTs only 11 days into the month which is great - as long as I get my volume in Im happy.

GG May

2010-05-31T18:18:00.001-07:00

May turned out to be a very good month - it was tied for around my 2nd highest profit month on the year, and im not too far off of last years profit......i had one 10k hit this month, and about 8 3k+ hits......site by site, I believe AP/FTP continued to be my biggest winners -I know I won on Cake - on Stars I either broke even or was a slight loser - Stars continues to be my downfall but Im confident itll turn....Ive been having deeper runs on there but continue to run bad deep, but Im sure its gonna pan out eventually - I think I have like 2-3 wins on there this year! The last two weeks were interesting on the month - I went on a 7k downer towards the end but bounced back on last Friday with a win in the 50r AP and the 66 buy in ap, for a combined 8200...the 50r was funny cause I had rebought a couple times and was in for 400 - I was pretty annoyed with the situation but continued to steal until I got some double ups.....with two tables left I chipped up to the CL and continued to chip up......the field was weak, weaker then usual - I will say fridays are a very soft day for mtts - the fields are smaller and weak which leads to alot of overlay...the 66 AP was very soft - I had gotten aroudn the money bubble with 10 bbs and eventually won a couple all ins, had a suckout and had 30-40 bbs.....from there I chipped up, picked up alot of hands and dominated the field.....the ft was super weak- I dont think I got 3 bet once that tournament outside of value hands - when we got shorthanded I lost a huge hand with KK to AK, but after shoving a couple times in spots where they should of called any two, I got 10 bbs back, then 20 then ended up shipping it......all in all was a nice day to get some confidence back and get me back to the peak of the month...

Im looking forward to June and crushing it - hopefully I can knock out another 20k+ month - I think if I get in 350-400 mtts a month 20k is very doable.....I was thinking the other day how the money isnt a factor at all anymore - I have a really strong drive to compete and I truly love this game - winning a tournament whether its a 5 dollar or 1k is amazing and it feels great to battle people on a mental level and come out victorious.......the money is great but its not why I play anymore - I think a year ago I was very money motivated but now the competition drives me....it definitely gets easier to focus on the fun of the game when you have a nice financial cushion, but either way ill continue to put in the hours and grind it out

shipped a 2nd triple crown

2010-05-25T10:46:00.001-07:00

ended up shipping a 2nd triple crown - had a win in that 75 buy in for 10k, won the ap 50r for like 5k, then the cake 109 for 3kish....it was cool to win another - its not really something that requires much skill just being able to grind and run good across 3 sites....since then Ive had some small wins here and there - think I won the 50r again and won the cake 162 as well - anyways profit wise im doing really well on the month - think its going to be tied for my 2nd biggest month on the year - yearly wise my profits are not too far off from my yearly 2009 profit, so thats exciting....would be amazing to match my 2009 profits by the end of the june, but either way Im very happy where Im headed for 2010.....Ive been adding more and more 320s to my schedule - I think the best bang for the buck is the 1/4 mil on stars on wednesday - its a 320 buy in with about 900-1k runners - the average play is probably equal to that of a 501r1a, so value wise its great.....Id imagine my roi could be say 30% in that, or 90 dollars profit everytime I play it. Ive also been playing the 1001r1a on Tilt - its not as great of a value as the 1/4 mil - the average table is alot tougher but even at a 15-20% roi thats still around 60 dollars profit per....its also cool being able to play with some great players and learning to adjust to their game....moorman is a great example of someone who just rapes you nonstop - you raise, he 3 bets, u 3 bet his raise, he 4 bets - its nonstop with him and someone you hate to see at your table......hopefully one day i can terrorize players

nice week

2010-05-06T09:03:00.001-07:00

Had a pretty sick week although Mon/Tues were the winning days...Monday I won the tilt 75 buy in for 10k, Tuesday went 4th in the 60k tilt for 7600, won the 50r for 5500, then chopped the 20k 6 max for another 5300 or so......had a funny hand in the 75k where a guy opened, I had Q4dd and decided to 3bet in position....he called flop came A9J two diamonds....he led out with 20k into a 32k pot, I shoved like 60-70k more, he calls with 78dd - luckily I held and picked up a ton of chips....the ft though didn't go as planned - ran TT into AA 5 handed, then JJ into QQ 4 handed to bust...the 75 buy in did go very smoothly - if anyone cares I uploaded the HH to PXF so if your interested respond back and ill post the link...

taking the day off today, maybe grinding tomorrow - we'll see.....ive been debating going to vegas for wsop - I really dont care to play the live events all that much, but its defintiely a cool atmosphere to be in during WSOP time....maybe ill make my way out west.

April wrap

2010-04-29T20:46:00.000-07:00

well my april is done - ended around 17k in profits......it was a so so month - my roi was around 35% - a little low but nevertheless 17k is 17k.......I did start to incorporate some 1001r1as into my schedule that I didnt do before - I think im +ev in them - the thing is say my choices are a 1001r1a at 20% ROI or a 20r at 50% ROI - the 100 comes out to 60 dollars profit per game, while the 20r comes out to 30 - with that said my ROI in the 100 might even be higher making it a real easy choice....the 100r has to be played alot differently than a 50 dollar fo would be as well - you cant open as much, you're going to get 3 bet more often, and when you do 3 bet theres alot more people that are capable of 4 betting light.....4 betting light isnt really a tool I use much in my daily tournies - think Ive 4 bet light under 10 times since I started playing MTTs full time - its definitely pretty read dependant in the midstakes...in high stakes its pretty common place so you have to get use to using it....also the postflop play is much better - you can't just barrel away or take your standard lines that you would.......Ive been watching more PXF vids to improve in certain spots - im gonna spend the weekend actually watching vids and possibly taking notes.....yes its boring but I wanna get my game to the next level.....I love the level of competition in the higher stakes - playing a 50 FO is like autopilot - most people are pretty tight/straightforward, 3 bets take things down quite often, etc....in the high stakes games youre playing against intelligent people where you cant just steal their blinds constantly or be able to check down 2nd pair without risking many chips.....hopefully May can be a big one

Im also finishing up my first month of p90x - the program is killer! The first week I was extremely sore but since then Ive felt great and the workouts make me sweat like crazy....I didnt weigh myself when I started so not sure what I weigh, but I can definitely see results already......love handles have shrunk, I got more "cuts" especially around the chest, and I can do alot more pushups then I could before....I cant wait for month 2 to start - it should be real intense but the results should be even better....Im also going to weigh myself to keep track of that, even though muscle gain definitely messes that up....Regardless of anything I feel great and hopefully this next month Ill feel even better

big week

2010-04-22T19:09:00.000-07:00

Had a pretty big week, 10k+..........mon I had some small cashes, with a final table in the stars 50k ....tues I ended up getting HU in the 40k tilt and chopping it hu.... I had 1 mil to his 700k HU and after some negotiating took 9k (400 over ICM).....I probably should of played it out as I didnt reallly care about the money jump, but 9k was 1400 less than first so figured I should take it......wednesday was another steady day - won the ap 30r afternoon for 3k, and then took 5th in the 1001r1a AP for another 2500........today I put in another full session and won the 50 buy in on ap for 2100, and then went like 5th in the 75 buy in on tilt for 2200....All in all a pretty good week - the 50 I won today I just steamrolled the whole tournament - the great thing about fields like that is everyone sucks so its very easy to chip up....you never really run into much resistance or people 3 bet bluffing.....the big hand was when we were 4 handed - I had about 100k, hotemogirl who is pretty good had 80k and tw oguys had like 30k a piece at 1250/2500....anyawys hot emo opened the button to like 6k, i had 9s so decided to 3 bet to 17555 hoping for a 4 bet shove......anyways he flatted which was wierd - flop came like Q77 two clubs if i remember correctly - so my logic at this point is his flatting range is pretty polarized - I think 77+ maybe wider he shoves pre, small pairs hes not getting in he folds cause he cant set mine for that many chips, really nothing made sense outside of him flatting say AA.....anyways I bet out half pot with the intention of calling the shove - I cant think of any Queen in his range he flats pre - AQ he gets in, KQ i guess but either way him flatting here outside of AA pre is pretty bad.....anyways he shoved i called the rest - he had 89cc and I held.....from there I just bullied the shorties till it ended.....

gonna take it easy till sunday and grind 4 more days to finish the month up strong....maybe win the sunday mil? would be nice

50r ownage and where I am since making the full time switch

2010-04-09T21:16:00.001-07:00

April was off and kickin - Monday was my first day back at the grind and it turned out pretty successful - shipped the 50r AP for around 4800.....I think I also had a cash for 1k so overall about a +3800 day.........Tuesday I bricked, and Wednesday I ended up shipping the same tournament for 6600 this time, due to the bigger Wednesday field. I've felt real good about my game the past month or so - Monday was great because I felt like I made no bad decisions - I remember playing that 50r and not questioning one play - granted running above reality makes things easier when you don't have as many tough spots, but I just felt in control the whole time....On wednesday I had about 250k of the 900k in chips 10 handed, so it was real easy to run over the table and chip up....Ive head plenty of times your big advantage in tournaments in abusing people later on so noticing whos playing tight or just poorly is definitely key....there were a couple players obviously trying to move up the pay scale so I attacked their blinds.....another thing is attacking stack sizes - its great raising the blinds of people with under 15 bb cause they have to think you're calling them alot when they reshove, especially when stacks get to say 10 bbs...because of this they have to pick up a hand so its easy to pick up chips that way.....Another thing I learned in the past month is slowing down vs overaggro players - I got HU actually in the 50r about 3 weeks ago with Tazedspur - very aggro big winner whos been on a hell of a heater as of late so I had to adjust.....My normal raises got owned when he 3 bet, and when I 3 bet he put in the 4th........now its rare I run into people that play like this cause I don't play much HSMTTs, but I realized with a player like this the best basic strategy is to raise garbage and strong hands Im willing to 4 bet, and hands that have some value but not a ton to limp in especially when im position......I ended up losing but it was an eye opening experience

So its been about 10 months since I made the switch full time to MTTs, and in every regard its been very +ev.....Ive made about 230k in the 10 month period thus far, and its amazing how far I've came playing wise....I remember so many basic spots with say 20 bbs early on I'd have no clue how to play - or picking up QQ early on with 100 bb and what the fuck do I do.....now things are alot easier - I actually remember back in say June I was playing the afternoon 30r on AP right after rebuy period - Wisco murray had opened to 250 at 50/100 - I had roughly 7k - I was dealt QQ and it folded around to me? What did I do well I shoved - what was my reasoning? I wanted to overshove to look weak and get him to call with worse - he ended up calling with AA and I sucked out...how terrible that was and the logic behind it....overall though Ive worked real hard on improving my game - countless hours on PXF, looking on the forums, and talking to good players on AIM to get insight...I guess the big thing is if I lose on a certain hand that I misplayed it bothers me through the day and I must find the solution to any situation that I might of misplayed.....Sometimes with MTTs theres alot of spots that are borderline that you just gotta take and when they work its great, and when they dont well that sucks! Either way though I try to analyze plays that are questionable - Id rather not toss losing up to being unlucky but rather bad play.....everyone tries to blame losing on bad luck and while there is alot of luck especially in MTTs, alot of these people especially in higher stakes don't have the edge they think they do. Thats why I stick to what I play - I might be a winner in say 100r's but Id rather take a large edge in a 109 than take a small edge in a 100r.....in regards to variance over my 10 months it hasn't been too bad - heres a quick recap of what Ive experienced

-500 game breakeven stretch
-2 10k downswings
-400 game stretch of running 4 times over my expectation

Overall thats not too bad at all for what I play....while Im running above reality, theres also some things I do to keep variance down. I play smaller tournies on AP/Cake so variance is reduced, I play alot of Cake/AP tournies where my edge is large so variance is also smaller, and obviously I work on my game to constantly get better to increase my ROI.....People who play say Stars only experience the worst variance cause the fields are huge an their edges are small.....to each their own I guess

Anyways thats it for now.....I ended the week up 7500 after losing 8 tournies tonight, so its a great start to April....with the SCOOPs and FTOPS coming up hopefully I can ship big and take a vacation for the rest of the year (well maybe not).....gl to all

March - weakest month since September

2010-03-31T20:49:00.001-07:00

So the month has came to an end - ended up around 13k in profit - the worst month since September....the funny part was I was at like 4k on Monday then had a +9k tues to get me up there......anyways as you can tell im off to a huge start in 2010 more than I could of anticipated......with that said im going to stop posting financial figures in my blog - I actually had a wierd situation wtih selling my car where a guy found info on me and didnt want to buy it, so goin to try to limit how much information I give out over the net.....Ill def talk about my wins or losses, but wont get into the #s

I also recently sold my corvette z06 and bought a 2008 335xi - found a great deal on one for 30,750 and picked it up last week....been loving the car too much! looking forward to good weather to full enjoy it..

Anyone want some coaching?

2010-03-19T22:33:00.000-07:00

Well I was on 2p2 looking at coaching threads and thought, hey I could see myself doing that. I'm obviously not the greatest at MTT/MTT SNG play, but a proven winner at mid stakes/some high stakes games over a decent sample. Now I don't even know who reads this blog but I figure I'll post this up anyways. I'm looking to coach small stakes/midstakes MTT/SNG players, whether that maybe be reviewing HHs, reviewing HHs via skype, sweating players, or any other form of coaching they may want. My sharkscope results show the following for MTT play

YouGotBeat 1,022 games played, 80,198 in profit, 73% ROI
Z06Fanatic 764 games played, 75,106 in profit 92% ROI (never counted my 80k win)
Richard Gere 432 games played 30,655 in profit 64% ROI

Stars is about even so I wont even post :(.......anyways my sample isn't that large for results via tracking sites, but thats over 200k in profit dating back to June. Why do I want to coach? I enjoy the game of poker and enjoy talking about it on a more indepth level and like to see people succeed(sp?).....I had one student already for a session over skype that went well...anways my rate will prob be around 80/hr - my hourly in MTTs is probably higher but this is variance free and atleast I can do an hour and stop....anyways if you're interested reply here otherwise I'll post back when those figs double and hopefully garner some interest!

50r win and some thoughts on how becoming complacent can be the devil

2010-03-09T21:33:00.000-08:00

first off, i won the 50r ap 2nite for 5k and change....i came into the ft 3rd or 4th in chips - ended up chipping up here and there - when we got 4 handed i donated alot of chips to pokerho when i got 88 in the bb vs his button open with 30 bbs or so - we got it in he had kk.....I then chipped back up and lost anotehr big race to him , but eventually won a big race and had 4-500k in chips 3 handed.....we got hu and eventually i 3 bet qj pre, flopped the nuts, and buried every street till i got paid off by k8 for like a 80 bb pot on a 89T93 board

Ok now a little bit about complacency in poker.....you see it alot - people get good at one form of poker, grind it for hours on end and save up the money, never thinking about the future.....at the same time, they dont improve their skillset, thus just grinding out their hourly and praying that the hourly will always be there....well we've seen how much tougher games have gotten, especially SNGs, and people have to realize mindlessly grinding and never improving is a recipie for long term failure - yes you can still make plenty of money, but the games continue to get harder, so if you're not ahead of the average pace you're losing money slowly.....SNGs have been the big example of this - SNGs back in 2004 were ridiculously easy and extremely profitable - big winners were making 500k+ plus for sngs! its pretty amazing to think about compared to todays profits....I think after looking on SS for 2009 the biggest winner had 80k or so in actual profit? Now thats now bad with bonuses - I mean its still possible to make 100-150k with SNGs but nowhere near where they use to be, and in 2010 the games will get harder.....MTTs too aren't the toughest thing to beat - the 109s and under don't require amazing poker skills to beat - playing 20-30 bb stacks isn't that tough, but its still very profitable....anyways the point is to always improve your game if you plan on playing this game for a long time - you see alot of players come and go and very few are still playing for a living over a 5+ year period - just realize if your not improving daily your losing money

chopped up the 40k tilt

2010-03-08T23:10:00.000-08:00

Last Wed I chopped the tilt 40k for 9800 or so......I got heads up and had 1.6 mil to about 500k and icm dictacted he'd get 1k over 2nd place but he wanted more.....since he had nitted most of it and hadnt shown being that good I declined and said take icm or we play....we ended up playing and i ended up losing a race to him....eventually we got to about 900k in chips a piece and decided to chop it up - blinds were high and even if i had an edge it wasnt that big at that point.....I think its definitely been to my advantage to have all these scores over the past 6 months - when I get to the ft's with 10k+ 1st place payouts I dont think about the money whatsoever....i remember back in August id make a ft with first being 8k and worry bout it - now first can be 30k and it doesnt influence me...its definitely helpful as you can see others tighten up trying to move out the payouts which makes it insanely +ev to chip up off of them

anyways its a nice little start to the month.....I want to get in some good volume in march, but its tough being motivated lately.....its really a grind but i gotta toughen up and get in my games.....we'll see how march pans out

February wrap up

2010-02-23T20:27:00.000-08:00

Im heading out to California for vacation tomorrow so Im going to wrap up the month. It was a small month in terms of volume, but profits were very high. This turned out to be my biggest month of my poker career, and probably for a long time....Anyways heres the #s

262 MTTs Played 62,118 in profit 193% ROI

So I got in some lower than expected volume but I guess thats due to ending the month on the 23rd and slacking here and there - its tough to get in 400 mtts a month especially since I dont have 15 table and play 60% like some of the other high volume grinders, but im happy with my situation. I should of gotten a 2nd triple crown last week when I won the 501r1a AP, 162 on Cake, and the 60k on Tilt, but because the ap had under 100 entrants it didnt count....booo let me get my 2nd triple crown of the month! Overall Im obviously very happy with how the year is shaping up - Im a little under 90k in total profit for the year which is fantastic, but I also understand im running way above expectation so its not like Ill be making 500k this year.....I feel like I have a great grasp on the stakes im playing - I still dont have the chops to cut it with good thinking players, but against your average 109 FO player I feel like my edge is huge.....hopefuly I can continue to improve and take down some more larger fields next month.....Ill also be heading to AC for the WSOPC coming to town - hopefully ship a tourny there or dominate some cash games.....2010 is lookin good :)

Think I won the triple crown?

2010-02-04T19:47:00.000-08:00

So this week was ridiculous.....Monday I won the 35k KO on tilt for 9500, Tuesday the 302r1a on Stars for 3800, and Wednesday the 80k Sniper on AP for a chopped 19,200. So this should be a triple crown but since I chopped the AP I dont know exactly how that computes. Pretty sure I am awarded 1st though cuz I had more chips during the chop and got more money. Anyways Wednesday turned out to be very interesting....I had those two ships on mon and tues and went into wednesday with hopes of winning a cake or ap for the triple crown. Its not something im dieing for but a cool little accomplishment I guess, although if you grind MTTs full time eventually you're gonna hit one. I loaded up about 20-25 MTTs on the day and had bricked all of them with 2 min cashes, and literally had the AP 80K as my last tourny to go. I was also pissed after making a questionable 4 bet in the FTP 60K with JJ into QQ, and then I blew a ton of chips in the 30r ftp when I got 77 in against AA on the flop like 60 bbs deep BvB. Anyways I was cruising in the 80k when I ran 99 into a flopped set which brought me down to 15 bbs about 20 away from cashing. At this point I went totally card dead and played the nitty shortstack game for a while...I would double up winning a race and then grind back down......Anyways I eventually got to like 30 bbs when a guy opened, I 3 bet JJ and he shoved 910 and I won...from there the ft came, it was prety nitty overall - when we got 3 handed it was me bbb333 or whatever his name is - a very good player - and a very weak non regular.....bbb wanted to get 17k rather then 15k a piece chopping, so the deal was never made....he eventually got coolered running ak into aa - this was great for me since bbb was easily the best left.....when we got hu he wanted to chop and ended up giving me 19,2 when he got like 17 something.....ill take it

hopefully feb can not go to the shitter after peaking the first week

End of January

2010-01-29T18:14:00.001-08:00

Today was my last day of playing for the month of January. Heres the results

394 MTTs played 74,583.00 in cashes, 47,889 in buy ins, = 26,694.00 in profit 55.7% ROI

Overall was a very successful month even after my dismal -10k start. I don't think I had alot of wins, outside the 75k early in the month. Just alot of 4-6k cashes. With rakeback that puts me slightly over 27k to start the year, obviously a great start. My ROI doesn't seem that far off from my true ROI - I figure I could atleast do 40% over all the sites - AP/Cake are obviously much higher than Stars and Tilt, and overall on the month I do about half and half of the weak sites with the tougher sites. AP has definitely been getting harder in the past couple months - the afternoon 30r which I thought use to be very soft is now getting tougher sadly - its a small field and I think roughly 20% of the field are winners. I also started mixing in some 50rs and 320s. The 50r is the AP one - definitely a tough field but I figure if I invest 200 on average in it and can do a 20% ROI its worth it. Im also adding the Stars weekly 1/4 million 320 buy in to my lineup. Its a soft field and definitely the softest 320 you can play during the week outside Sundays. I hate playing bigger buy ins with 1k fields, but Im playing for long term profit, so just have to deal with the variance. Last wed I was going to play the AP 1001R1A but after looking at the field I passed. I loaded it up and literally 30 of the first 40 players were winners. Yeh Ill pass :)

Febuary I hope to hit atleast 350 MTTs and hopefully 15k or more profit - If I spend 50,000 in buy ins I shouldn't have an issue turning 15k profit a month longterm, although I think I can turn 20k/mo more likely. Ive had 3 straight months now of 25k+ profit, so things are looking good.

Mid January results

2010-01-14T23:23:00.001-08:00

I was thinking the other day of who even reads this blog but I guess ill keep it going - something cool to look back on years down the road.....anyways heres the mid jan update

13,129.00 profit, 51.25% ROI, 213 MTTs

Ive decided to do 400 MTTs a month for the year. With that said I wanna set aside time for going to Aruba, Vegas, and anywhere else I may vacation to this year, so I want to get ahead on that quota to "reserve" time for vacations. I figure if I can do say 20-40 extra per month, build up a month of vacation time to do whatever i want...yea it sounds retarded but whatever i wanna hit this volume goal for the year so i can hit some profit goals as well....anyways the month is looking good thus far - had a huge week with the 75k chop, and then today made 5k ft'ing a couple mtts.....hopefully i can keep my roi at 40% this month but obv variance could careless.....ill be back feb 1st

Shipped 75k Tilt

2010-01-12T06:49:00.001-08:00

So I was slumping big time this month - got to about -10k yesterday when I was deep in a couple big ones - stars 100k, Tilt 40k, Tilt 75k, Cake 20k......I was actually like 2/70 or something in the Tilt 40k when we got ITM - everytime I opened I got 3 bet, and obv couldn't get hands....eventually this guy who had been opening a ton of buttons opened again at like 1/2k to 5k, I had Q8ss and decided Id make my stand with 40k.....I reraised to 20k and he shipped me - obv had TT and I couldn't hit. Stars I had been riding a decent stack but getting near the money I fell down to about 9 bb when the sb shoved me in I had K7ss made the call, he had Q4 and binked the queen on the flop....The Cake 20k I actually became CL at the final table when I won a big flip, but eventually I had KJ on a 98QT3 where another guy had the same hand but of hearts so that knocked me way down low pretty quick....I took 5th for like 1300. The 75k was really my last chance - I wasn't that big in it at any point really till we got down to about 30 players - I forget how I got there but eventually I had a 200k stack and decided I'd just relax and play pretty solid, some weak 3 bets but nothing too crazy.......had one hand where this guy opened i 3 bet k9 he called flop came k36, he checked i checked......turn came Ts putting three spades up there, he bet like 10k into a 40k pot or something like that so i called....river came a non spade 9 - he bet half pot for 44k, i called, he had A high.....he wasnt too happy to see me 3 betting him with k9.....it setup the next hand vs him though where he raised and i 3 bet again this time with KK. he called the flop came all blanks, he checked and I made another 50% pot bet where he raised and we got it in. At the final table there were some real good players there - Tmay420 and Miltman were the notables and obv two players I did not want to see get stacks.....I did notice when we got to the FT how nitty alot of the people were playing.....I lost a race 6 handed with TT vs AK for a decent sized pot and fell to 6/6.....I got my hopes down at that point but kept picking up blidns here and there when Tmay opened the button and I 3 bet from sb.....he 4 bet and I got in JJ - he had AJ and doubled me up.....it was great to get a double from the best player at the table as I crippled him and just had miltman who was short left to deal with....I got reshoved by miltman about 7 times lol - sadly had nothing everytime as I was dieing to call him...he eventually busted 4th or 3rd (cant remember).....when we got heads up the ICM chop was 19,6 and I wanted 20k flat - he wouldn't budge so whatever Ill do the ICM chop.....anyways went from -10k on the month to +10k so was an eventful night. hopefully I can have a repeat of it tonight as well

fuck u 2010

2010-01-07T11:19:00.001-08:00

getting owned to start off the year.....currently -7100 the year, after 95 mtts....my plan for this blog this year is to cover the highs and lows of grinding midstakes/high stakes MTTs and to show the good, the bad, and the ugly.....Im happy though getting nearly 100 mtts in 7 days into the month - when Im getting owned I tend to play more and work harder.....my average buy in is roughly 120 so not a huge swing but definitely not a fun thing. Another good thing is Ill have to the penny the exact profit I make this year considering Im gonna be tracking via a spreadsheet from the beginning.....Anyways stay tuned - hopefully im not -15k in the hole next week!

2010

2010-01-02T23:18:00.001-08:00

2010 has finally arrived.....had a good NYE drinking with some friends and the gf......tomorrow I shall start the quest of domination for the new year hopefully winning the sunday mil and calling it a year :).....I ended up playing 1 day last week and had a couple 1k cashes bringing Dec to a 24k profit and 80% roi....im real pleased with the past couple of months - ive been workin on my game and have seen real good results.......im obv running above expectation the past two months with about 80% roi, prob double my expected roi......anyways tomorow is a sunday and i plan on palying a full schedule - im glad i dont play a ton of sundays for the simple reason that im going to be playing the alot of 215s with huge fields and obviosuly high variance. playing fields of 1k and larger is just absurd in terms of ever hitting a true expectation, so sundays can be huge sucesses or monster failures - for example the 50 fo on stars i play has about 1k-2k entrants between the 3pm one and the 5 pm one - i dont have any final tables in those touranments...getting through a field of 400 is tough let alone 2k....anyways gl to me

2009 wrap

2009-12-24T12:37:00.000-08:00

theres still a couple days left in the month so i figure id wrap up December. I ended up profiting 21,029 with a 76% ROI over 240 MTTs. I peaked at about 18k when I had those two 5k wins, and then dropped down to 12k on the month, until the other day when I shipped the 20k 6 max for 6300 and the 501r1a on AP for 3k. Overall a pretty good month running above expectation. So heres my results on the year since August in MTTs (includes no rakeback, credits for cash, staking)

August
+12,600 31% ROI
September
+545.00 1.62% ROI - YESSSS
October
+14,359 53.09% ROI
November
+25,434 79.22% ROI
December
+21,029 76% ROI

Also included was 2000 in credits for cash, roughly 2000-2400 in rakeback, and about +4k in staking.

As for how I did site to site, I was over 100% ROI on AP for the year - PokerDB shows me up like 60k but theyre missing a 30k win in Aug for 8k and prob some other ones here and there, so Im sure AP profits are around 75k roughly in MTTs. Cake on sharkscope showed me up 14k last time I looked, FTP Im up about 26k in MTTs, and Stars Im probably slightly up, only about 1k-2k at best. In terms of rakeback made on the year during my 6 month SNG run, I beleive I paid around 83k last time I looked, so that would give me 24k or so in rakeback on the year. In SNG profit I was definitely a loser on the year - not sure exactly how much - I know SS showed me -12k but I think it was less then that. Prob a slight loser at -8k over a gazillion SNGs. That was fine though with the massive amounts of bonus money I made off of 2 race cards (I beleive it was like 25k), a TON of reloads, and credits for cash.

Im very happy how the year turned out and Im excited to get '10 rollin....I wanna crush MTTs a little harder next year and hopefully improve in that department. According to what I wrote in my blog and the spreadsheets I have since August I should be around +190k on the year.....200k next year one time? Lets hope so.

Triple crown one time?

2009-12-05T02:03:00.000-08:00

Since ive been back from aruba ive been tearing up mtts - obviously running above expectation. I think Im up somewhere in the neighborhood of 60k in that 2 month span.....anyways tonight i ran good again and shipped the 501r1a on tilt for 5k, and the 30r nightly on ap for 5500. Both are somewhat weak field tournaments, with AP being the weaker of the two. The AP ft had no one good at it - piscato was there - hes somewhat solid i guess, but everyone was very tight and trying to move up payouts. I chipped up here and there, got HU, turned 2 pair and got him to ship it in. The tilt one was funny - at one point I was down to 8 bbs for about an hour of the tournament - I was lucky to double up twice and then from there I won 2 flips and a couple 60/40s.....The FT was also somewhat weak - Very little 3 betting going on and generally passive play. The players were defintiely better than AP but nothing amazing. I got 3 handed and eventually took her down....Fri nights have been good to me lately - i guess staying in like a loser pays off in the end....with these two wins tonight I got 2/3 of the triple crown completed - I dont really care to win this - I wont go out of my way by playing every cake/stars tournament with a 10k prize pool for a week straight, but it would be nice if I could achieve this.

One thing thats annoyed me about MTTs is sleeping sucks. I usually go to bed at 3 am - it takes me time to fall asleep and when I finally do I never really get 8 hours....once I wake up at all in the morning i wanna get up and cant fall back to sleep. i remember when i worked a normal job years ago id always sleep real good - i guess not being on a set schedule can do that. oh well i guess its part of the job description right?

Nov - biggest month of the year

2009-12-01T00:07:00.000-08:00

November turned out to be my biggest month of the year, with my biggest single cash as well. I had 25,400 in profit during the month, with a 79.22% ROI over roughly 275 MTTs. I made a couple hundred in rakeback and about 1200 in staking, so about a 26.5k month. Overall I was very happy how the month went - I ran way above my expectation which is always nice. Ive been working on some new ideas with my game - been floating alot more in spots I normally use to just give up and have had some good results. BvB or Bv button type of spots usually involve very marginal hands, so really it comes down to outplaying your opponent and setting up certain lines as well.....My handreading has also improved - I think Ive been doing well with combining bet sizing and different lines to put my opponents on more accurate ranges. Overall things continue to head in the right direction - Im glad I made the transition to MTTs but wish I did it earlier - so many months/years were spent on SNGs grinding out basically bonuses which never helped me improve in terms of poker. Its so easy to get complacent in your abilities and never improve, and when your dealing with rake races theres no need to. Now I cant fully knock SNGs - they were key to getting me going in poker - but in terms of getting better theyre a brick wall. The bottom line is you get better at things in life by challenging yourself and facing tougher obstacles - the same applies to poker. The deeper the stacks and the better the players the tougher it is and the more you learn.

Outside of poker I bought a new laptop the other day - my old one was from 2003 and was getting pretty beat up these days. I ended up going with a Gateway I saw that got high reviews on Cnet, and thus far its been working great. Its amazing how much nicer it is over my old laptop and the ease of use/speed is amazing. Its sad I waited this long to buy the damn thing lol. Its so nice to have 10 games going, 4 different poker sites open, aim, a couple websites, and have zero slowdown! Anyways in December I plan on getting in atleast 300 MTTs -I might also be making a trip out to AC for a WSOPC event or two, although Ill probably endu p playing more cash then anything. Live MTTs sound fun but I don't think I want to sit there for hours. We shall see.

won a 75 buy in on tilt

2009-11-11T22:39:00.000-08:00

shipped the 24k gtd on tilt for 8k on tues, along with a 2k chop of the ap afternoon 30r, and had my stakee go 3rd in the ap 20k for another 1k in profit that day. I think my 3 day week so far went -1k monday, +8k tues, -1400 today.......the 24k was a real weak tournament when we got down to the final two tables - I don't know if people were trying to move up in the money or what, but they were very tight and made it easy for me to chip up.......at the final table everyone was super nitty - people folding down to 4 bbs trying to move up payouts it was hilarious....thats the good thing about hitting bigger scores atleast mentally for me - of course everyone says they go for the win and dont think about the money, but if your dealing with a 1st place prize thats larger then uve ever hit itll definitely effect you. With this case it was 8k so it had zero effect on my play. I never look at payouts when Im deep in a tournament or at a final table - I hate knowing how much Im going to get outside of first and really any payout outside of first is a failure. I ended up winning some showdowns and got HU with like 70% of hte chips in play - we got it in pretty quickly preflop with me holding ATs vs his AKo but I flopped the flush and it was all over. Ill try to get the HH from the tournament - had a interesting hand with 12 to go that I wanted to post up.

thats it for now - im definitely gonna continue the grind for the month even with the great profit.....Im also going to try to watch some more PXF videos - ive been lazy about it but I gotta put in some more time learning the game. Alot of people when they run good think its because they played great but the reality is its alot easier to play good poker when you have easy decisions and your winning flips nonstop. Thats the problem with success - you dont learn anything from it, if anything success is bad for improving your game. You get lazy, over confident, and lose touch with reality. Some people might even move up to higher stakes when cards are running their way being blinded by luck. I know where my game stands and thats why you dont see me in 1ks, 100rs,etc where you have to play against real good players. I do well vs idiot fish but against good thinking players its alot tougher. So count me out of those MTTs for a while :)

Chopped 60k Tilt

2009-11-06T10:40:00.000-08:00

Chopped it for 17.7k....We got HU where I had a little more chips then him, so according to ICM I got 17,701 he got 17,300.....I probably could of squeezed another 1k out of him but I had 7 other MTTs going at the time and was new to the chopping software so I just wanted to end it quick and get some extra guarneteed money. 2ND was 13k first 23k, so not in the mood to play HU for 10k. Its great finally hitting a big score and it'll help my play next time I make a FT with a 20k first place payout...Ive had so many missed opportunities even to hit 10k+ payouts so finally breaking that feels real good. I dont think I had any monster suckouts outside of beating AA with JJ at like 150/300 level for a big double. After that I ran good in terms of winning 4-5 flips, and was able to make some hands and have em hold. Either way obv have to run real good to win a 600 man tourny....Hopefully theres more nice scores like this to come

Oct wrap

2009-11-02T10:25:00.000-08:00

October has come to an end and I had a great run towards the end....I ended up making 14,359.00 over roughly 250 tournaments - 27k in buy ins, 41,408 in cashes, resulting in a 53% ROI....the big help was a +8-9k day on the 28th - I won the 501r1a on AP, took 9th in the 60k on tilt, and then 4th in the 80k on AP for 6500...overall I was happy with how the month went - only one win but a ton of deep finishes....I think im finally out of my dry streak that lasted from sept to mid-late October. For Nov my plan is to get in 400 MTTs - I think I should be doing 100 mtts a week and any less is just me being lazy - 100 mtts is about 40 hours of work so its not like im pushing myself to do something I can't obtain. Hopefully all goes well

Im also looking around at new/used cars.....I have an 02 Corvette Z06 which is alot of fun in the warmer months, but when it rains and snows the car is useless. I've been looking around at other things but can't seem to find something that really gets me interested. Im trying to sell the z06 and only spend another 10-15k on a car so my options are somewhat limited - I still want a sports car feel with some luxury and AWD, but the prices are too high for what I want....The Audi S5 really interests me but getting a used one with low miles is gonna cost mid 40s...I can easily afford that but I just cant justify selling my car and then spending another 25k on a car. I like the Infiniti G35 Coupes as well but those only come in RWD. Same goes for used M3s and alot of other sports cars....I guess if I want to get sports car/luxury/ and AWD in one car im gonna have to shell out....Maybe I can ship a monster this month and just buy it outright :)

A couple deep runs

2009-10-21T21:39:00.000-07:00

Its been slow this month in MTTs - i missed the first 10 days or so of the month so I had a late start....Anyways I had gone a nice stretch breaking even in MTTs - yes the variance sucks but I also feel my game needed some work....I think the biggest issue was not 3 betting enough - 3 betting is so key these days in poker, if you dont do it enough your missing out on alot of ev....Now im not just talking about 3 betting your premiums or 3 betting when your short, im talking about 3 betting with your weaker hands that still carry some value, and then just 3 bet bluffing to people who are opening too wide...its tough to do this without commiting yourself when your under 30 bb, but with stacks over 40 bbs its so key these days to be a good winner....Its so effective as well in the 109s and the mid stake tournaments where people will never 4 bet light....Im going to work on making this more of a staple of my arsenal then it was in the past, and I think it'll be very beneficial.

I had some deep runs last night - 7th in the 40k stars, and 9th in the FTP 75k.....the stars I got nothing going and when CO opened I shoved KQ with 20bbs - he had AQ and held. The 75k I just lost AK to QQ for like 500k chips....tonight I went 2nd in the 30k KO which was dissapointing as I had the villan 10 to 1 in chips HU. I got him all in pre twice and he held. Then I had top pair when he had two pair, and the final blow was when I had top pair with a queen kicker to his overpair and couldnt hit. It sucked but oh well - I ran pretty good to get HU. On a sidenote I heard a great podcast on 2P2 featuring sheets - it was in regards to live tournament poker, staking, etc...definitely a good listen and great for someone who is considering going pro. Alot of kids my age and even younger are trying to make it pro and its really not that great of a road as people think it is. def a good listen.

anyways im off. ttyl guys

Aruba wrapup

2009-10-12T09:25:00.000-07:00

Aruba was a great time and also the perfect time for a vacation. 90 degree weather along with a 5k poker tournament is paradise for me, and I really needed a break from the online grind as I wasn't doing too well the past couple weeks. I started Day 1b of the tournament - 15k starting stack 25/50 starting, 90 min levels - the structure is fantastic....So my starting table had Jeff Madsen on my right, although he lost to a nasty 2 outer about 10-15 hands in - good thing he did cause he played every single hand up until busting......I had one hand with him where he had raised in later position and I called with AJo...The flop came 89T giving me an open ender so I check/call his flop bet. The turn comes a Queen - I check again and call his turn bet. The river pairs the board with a T - at this point I figured hes going to fire the river a high % of the time considering how aggressive he is - at the same time I can't really c/r the river here incase he shoves then I'm in a really tough spot. I decide to c/c on the river and he mucked. A little later on our table broke and I got moved to Liv's table. At this point I have maybe 17-18k when I pick up QQ in the BB I believe. It folds around to Wiscomurray in the CO I believe who bumps it up to 700 at 150/300 - Liv is on the button with 8k I believe and 3 bets to 2100 - I decide to raise to 5100 at this point basically putting Liv all in - wisco folds she gets the rest in and has TT - I hold and pick up a nice pot putting me around 25k. Soon the table breaks and I get moved to a table of unknowns. Not too many big hands played out there - one hand that was interesting was when I was in the BB with QTo. It folded to the CO+1 who just limped I believe at 150/300 - he had about 12-14k in total. the SB completed and I checked the BB. The flop came T85 with two diamonds - sb checked, I bet 60% pot, and the CO+1 raised from 600 to 1800 - sb folded and I called. Turn came an offsuit Ace - I checked he fired 3k - Not too much made sense at this point - Any pair would be opening preflop, any ace as well - what did he limp 85o?? I wasn't planning on going anywhere with this hand so I called. River came a blank deuce. I checked and I saw him getting ready to put all the chips in but he checked behind and I was good. Had he shoved the river logically I wanted to call, but being a pussy I might of folded :(.....his line just didn't make much sense. Day 1 ends with 28k.

Day 2 was pretty rough - about 1 level in we have to redraw for tables - great I draw table 1 - the problem with this is this table will never be broke - the higher tables like 20-30 eventually break up, so if you draw a tough table 1 your pretty fucked. Well obviously thats what happened. Heres the lineup - seat 1 - laggy euro guy - seat 2 - titantom32 - seat 3 - Matt Brady - won the event last year - seat 4 - Roothlus - seat 5 myself - seat 6 james mordue a pretty good live player - seat 7 Tmay420 - seat 8 basebaldy, seat 9 a young internet player.....so ya this was godawful and the problem was I couldn't open that light vs this table.....I played pretty nitty the whole table - I was able to make some hands here and there, although after roothlus got knocked out a new kid moved to his seat, and I ended up calling his sb shove to my BB with a6 for 12 bbs when he had 77 and I didnt get there. I ended up getting down to 20 bb but doubled after holding JJ to Tmays AK. I didn't get much going though after that, and ended the day around 38k after bluffing 10k off with KQ on a 23555 board.

Day 3 we had I believe 80 or so players left and I started the day with 20 bbs roughly. Nothing was going my way - I wasn't picking up hands and when I did I couldn't connect on any flops whatsoever....Eventually I got down to 12 bbs 10 away from the money or so. It folded around to the SB who put me all in - I looked down at A2o and made the call - he turned over K7s - I flopped the ace but he backdoored the flush and sent me to the rail.....boooo.....

I gotta say now I understand why people say how internet and live poker are so different. Its almost like a whole different game your playing - Understanding stack sizes and pot sizes is so important, and the mentality is so different. You're now face to face with people and if you make a shitty bluff it might be shown, where as online you don't have that physical factor....I remember one pot we had 6 limpers - I had 77 and it took me a minute to figure out the right raise pre - online its so much easier and I'm more comfortable...I also think I play better overall online - I think I see more spots where as live I was more cautious. I guess over time that will change but this year I definitely understand how live is a big change. Anyways Im off to play online today - I played most of the majors yest but bricked em all, but felt great how I played - hopefully I get some wins this month. Till next time

Month has ended, some random thoughts

2009-09-30T23:44:00.001-07:00

September has finally came to a close and I'm up roughly 500 bucks playing, 1700 in staking, 1k credits for cash, and about 4-500 in rakeback, putting me roughly +3700......Im fine with that really, as I have no need for cash and felt like I played decent....I was was at one point -6k playing on the month, so to get positive I guess I shouldn't complain much?? I had an amazing 1.5% ROI in the month over 320 mtts. I rule. So some random thoughts poker related

-why do people play strong 100rs,200rs,1ks, etc? As time progresses more and more people are learning mtts - the losers are becoming breakeven, the breakeven are small winners, small winners have become big winners, etc....theres so many names popping up that no one knew of a year or two ago that are now crushing big...yeh variance helps, but these guys also play pretty good. I was on P5s the other day and looking at HH's at 6 max 100r tables with like 4-5 winners - wheres the edge? Another example is the 1k on AP - usually gets about 120 entrants - Id say atleast 40-50 players are winners - so lets assume 50 people are winners, that means at a 9 man table your looking at about 3-4 winners a table - wheres the longterm edge? Of course you can still have an edge with these types of tables even if the winners are just small winners, but who wants to deal with 1ks and small edges? There will be one day when 100r's are unbeatable or near breakeven unless the US regulates poker. One day.

-why do people show bluffs?? I understand if you want to tilt someone, otherwise its the dumbest thing ever. Example - I was deep in the 20k on AP 2nite when I got 3 bet and folded - he showed K3. Amazing buddy - I had been opening a ton so of course you'll be able to 3 bet me with garbage.....What does this accomplish? Well I'm not tilting from it, I could care less.....the problem for him was I had a large stack so I could easily come after him more and make him make tougher decisions for his tourny life. Yeh this is great if your a great player vs a bad player, but him being OOP and having a 1/3 of my stack seems like -ev for him to show that bluff.

-If you care about the money in a MTT you're losing alot of profit - its funny how money is such a big influence in MTTs and how alot of people play. This was definitely me not too long ago, tightening up in bigger MTTs late...the problem is to win that 25k you need to have every chip in play, so don't think about trying to survive, but how can you accumulate. The amount of luck late in mtts is insane, so play to win. I think subconciously the payouts can affect people and they dont realize it. Just go for the win

-raise/folding - alot of spots it seems people will raise/call way too light with stuff like weak aces, K10s, etc against players who are simply not reshoving that wide - I think we got it driled into our heads that raise/folding to stack that are under 20 bbs is just bad but if theyre not reshoving that wide its perfectly fine. Id be curious to run some math on what range a villan needs to reshove to make raise/folding unprofitable. Alot of times people aren't reshoving light as we would suspect because the general consensus is the original raiser isn't folding. I tend to raise/fold alot on AP since the majority of AP players aren't reshoving anywhere near what they do on stars or tilt. Its just crazy how wide some people call

-bluff lines - when setting up a bluff its good to represent a hand unless your bluffing against a total idiot whos just paying attention to making a hand....sometimes I find myself running a bluff line that makes no sense - why do I do this? laziness I guess....I had a hand come up tonight where I had ATs in UTG+2 to a 7 man table. I raise 2.5x with like 40 bbs. SB calls who seems not that great with like 25 bbs behind. Normally with his stack I'd be hesistent to get testy with him postflop, since usually when people are calling with stacks near that 20 bb threshold theyre not folding often, but I didn't think he was all that great. Anyways flop comes J83 two hearts - he checks, I check back. no clue why I don't fire. turn comes Qs, he checks so I decide to fire 60% pot he calls. River comes a 2, he checks, I fire again, he calls with KQ and I lose. First off him calling with KQ there pre with that stack was bad but I figured he was calling somewhat light. I was just mad I didn't even think about what I was repping - maybe it was late at night and I wanted to sleep who knows....thinking is +ev - i should do that someitme :)

thats all for now. alot of rambling i know but just some ideas that i wanted to get in print. anyways im off to sleep to dream about winning aruba for like 800k and stopping poker for the year. we can dream right?

Slow month - need a vacation

2009-09-24T09:49:00.000-07:00

September has been a shitty month thus far - I was down on the month playing up until Monday when I went on a +9500 2 day swing....I took 4th in the 40K Stars for 5k, then the next day took 3rd in the 30k KO on FTP for a little over 4k...I've also had some cashes here and there under 2k to keep me moving....At this point on the month Im +3k with a dismal 11.49% ROI (didn't count my 5500 aruba seat in this figure)....oh well thats MTT poker - I've been feeling alot better about my late game....Ive been getting deep in alot and just getting unlucky - hopefully before the month ends I can get my profits to atleast 10k, but even if I don't I don't mind where Im at.......I've gotten in roughly 230-240 MTTs during the month, so Im definitely on pace to match last month of around 320-340...at this point Im just trying to do no more than 8 tabling, and maybe as I get more comfortable with MTTs/get better, I'll start 10-12 tabling, but for now I'd rather play less volume and keep a higher ROI....Aruba is right around the corner - I leave a week from this Sunday and I'm very excited...this month has been killer on me and I really need a relaxing vacation and a shot at big money with nothing to lose. It really is a great time down there and I wouldn't go anywhere else for vacation. I'll be gone for 6 days, so when I get back I'm going to start grinding real hard so I can keep my volume up for the month. I'm dieing to hit a big score and plan on working real hard to get it. Stay tuned.

won aruba package

2009-09-07T09:25:00.000-07:00

september has started and so has a downswing....ive been bricking everything even though ive been happy with my game....ive improved alot in august - reviewed alot on PXF and talked to better players about HHs I had questions on....obviously I have a ton to learn but im feeling good about my playing now - my goals are really to crush AP/Cake and be a decent winner on FTP/Stars - its funny how different Stars and FTP are from AP/Cake - a big winner on AP could be breakeven on those sites, or even a decent AP winner could be a longterm loser....it really is a different ballgame and if your able to beat FTP/Stars at a decent ROI then beating AP is a joke..

so I ended up shipping the 20,000 credit entry Aruba package, where 40 entered and they gave one package away...I played pretty standard the whole way - there was one player who continually would open so eventually I got around to 3 betting him light but found he would not fold to 3 bets so after those spots decided to nit against him...4 handed he was CLin - I basically tried to play some pot control against him postflop and try to see cheap showdowns with my marginal hands....eventually though he never slowed down, so I picked up KK and had him stack me up to the CL.....I took him out and came into HU with 80k to 40k at 500/1k......eventually i got him down to 20k and got A8 in against KQ and held....see u in aruba

August coming to an end - weight loss/get in shape goal for September

2009-08-29T14:36:00.001-07:00

So August is coming to an end and I figured Id post up the stats along with my weight loss plan for the month....the week started off good with a +3k day on Monday, but I leaked back that profit throughout the week, which included bricking the 1k on tilt and the 1k on ap....always fun! here was my bustout hand in the 1k

Stage #1853895732 Tourney ID 4570889 Holdem Multi Normal Tournament No Limit 300 - 2009-08-26 23:59:58.006 (ET) [ 2009-08-26 23:59:58 ]
Table: 17 (Real Money) Seat #6 is the dealer
Seat 6 - Z06FANATIC (6,809 in chips)
Seat 7 - BREAST MILK (4,205 in chips)
Seat 9 - LOCKDOWNTEX (11,435 in chips)
Seat 1 - THEBUBBLE1 (12,397 in chips)
Seat 2 - KRS528 (10,508 in chips)
Seat 3 - ALBARI (9,694 in chips)
Seat 4 - BOANERGES7 (12,735 in chips)
Seat 5 - POTROAST00 (8,896 in chips)
THEBUBBLE1 - Ante 25
KRS528 - Ante 25
ALBARI - Ante 25
BOANERGES7 - Ante 25
POTROAST00 - Ante 25
Z06FANATIC - Ante 25
BREAST MILK - Ante 25
LOCKDOWNTEX - Ante 25
BREAST MILK - Posts small blind 150
LOCKDOWNTEX - Posts big blind 300
*** POCKET CARDS ***
Dealt to Z06FANATIC [6c 6s]
THEBUBBLE1 - Folds
KRS528 - Folds (Preselection)
ALBARI - Folds (Preselection)
BOANERGES7 - Folds
POTROAST00 - Folds (Preselection)
Z06FANATIC - Raises 700 to 700
BREAST MILK - Folds
LOCKDOWNTEX - Raises 2,150 to 2,450
Z06FANATIC - All-In(Raise) 6,084 to 6,784
LOCKDOWNTEX - Calls 4,334
*** FLOP *** [3d 4c 8d]
*** TURN *** [3d 4c 8d] [3h]
*** RIVER *** [3d 4c 8d 3h] [Qh]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Z06FANATIC - Shows [6c 6s] (Two Pair, sixes and threes)
LOCKDOWNTEX - Shows [4s 4d] (Full house, fours full of threes)
LOCKDOWNTEX Collects 13,918 from main pot

I'll be playing about 20-25 mtts on Monday to end the month as well as a 25 seat qualifier to Aruba on Sunday. Ill update my monthly stats if I make anything significant. With that said here's where i stand for August

+13,738.02 MTT profit - 36.21% ROI
+1988.29 in staking
+1000 credits for cash
+554 in rakeback

+16,950.31

As far as the weight loss deal - I got aruba coming up early october and want to get in better shape so I decided to do a 1 month workout/diet plan. I've also been feeling really lazy lately and want to start feeling more active - even when I go to the gym these days I get lazy and leave alot earlier than I should. So my plan is to start on Monday and go one month - I want to hit the gym 4-5 days a week, trying to do 3 miles of running and a short weight training session as well - shouldn't take more than 45 minutes for everything. Eating Im going to keep a low calorie diet with 1 day a week being a maintenence day, and 1 day every 2 weeks being a day where I can eat above maintenence....Im not looking to lose any crazy amount of weight - Im sure 10 pounds is my best bet if that. Regardless though any weight loss would be great, and if it makes me feel more alive Ill definitely enjoy that. Hopefully I can crush that goal and also crush the tables.

First 10k day

2009-08-18T23:30:00.000-07:00

Finally had a nice day in MTTs...last thurs I profited like 10.5k after winning the 30k sniper on ap for 7500, taking 2nd in a stars 20r for 3800, and a couple cashes here and there....it felt nice finally to show some decent profit for the month, as I was hovering around breakeven/+3k......Ive been looking at some HH's from top players along with talking to people about tournament poker and watching alot of PXF vids, so I'm definitely improving here and there.....I've also really stepped up the aggression on AP - the site is super soft and the players are very passive compared to Stars/FTP...Actually theres alot of adjustments to make playing AP vs the main sites - I open alot lighter, play more aggressively post flop, and call shoves alot lighter. Its funny how I can play a tournament like the 30k sniper and never get 3 bet outside of big hands, then play a 20 rebuy on Stars and have guys 3 betting me so light....Its definitely a big change, and alot of times I find myself having to fold hands that I would normally snap so quick on Stars....I've also started staking my stakee again - I talk with him alot about poker and he plays very well - hes already staked on stars/tilt, so I took him up on AP. My only problem is I worry he won't put in the volume, but if he does he should have no problem crushing...tomorrow I got the 1k to play on AP that I qualified earlier this week and the 80k sniper.....my only goal with these tournaments is to play semi well and not make dumb mistakes - I make a terrible play in the 6 max AP 20k today that I was pissed about, so hopefully Im not lighting money on fire tomorrow...heres the stats for the month thus far

+13,427
52% ROI
234 MTTs played

Not the August start I was looking for

2009-08-11T10:29:00.000-07:00

August has started a little slow - now I cant really complain as I'm still up for the month +2915 with a 24% ROI, I just expected a little better....Ive had one win on the month thus far, and a ton of getting to the final table and not getting top 3.....I don't think people realize how much MTTers spend in buy ins each week - I didn't even realize it till I started doing this full time....This month I've already spent 12,100 in buy ins, and even with 15,000 in cashes Im only up a couple grand. Crazy to think about. The one thing that I have felt good about lately is my late game play - I use to mentally think about the payouts and how much more I'd make moving up a certain place - after making alot of FT's with dissapointment, I guess I dont get my hopes up anymore when Im deep with two tables left....My goal is to win and I could careless about cashing for 2k, consideirng that just covers a day of buy ins....Hopefully my winning attitude translates over to actually winning some more tournaments :(

I also bought a new external monitor - its a 25" by Hanspree - some no name, but it was 250 bucks and does wonders for how many tables I can do. Now I can 10 table with basically no overlap, where before 8 tables was my max. If I can fit 4-5 more MTTs in per day that would be great and definitely worth the investment....My goal with the new monitor is to get in 25 MTTs a day, and try to do 100 a week. At 100 mtts a week, 400 a month, I should be able to invest 40,000 in MTT buy ins, and even at a 50% ROI thats 20,000 a month. I'm pretty sure thats possible to do, considering sites like AP/Cake where I do 7 MTTs of the 25 a day are prob 80% ROI sites, I just don't know what I can expect on Stars/FTP longterm. Either way I'm going to continue the MTTs for a while and see how things work out. Wish me luck.

July wrapup

2009-08-03T21:13:00.000-07:00

July has came to an end, and because OPR/PokerDB are pretty inaccurate I don't have an exact figure on profit. PokerDB missed a ton of FTP this month - even AP looks low, and since Cake isn' t tracked it makes things even harder....I could rummage through account balances but Im too lazy so I'll try to give a ballpark figure. I did well once again this month on AP, lost on Stars, slightly up on FTP, and maybe even on Cake? I think Im looking at +7k roughly, so we'll go with that number for now. For August I'll be able to give exact amounts as a fellow poker player made a great spreadsheet where I just enter in the buy in and the result and the excel sheet calculates the rest....

Last week I had a brief 3 day trip to the Borgata in AC- we ended up playing about 10-12 hours of poker over the 3 days - all 2/5 NL. I didn't feel like getting tied down to MTTs while I was out there, and the 2/5 NL game is soft so I figured I'd give it a shot. I ended up maybe +450 on the trip - Im easily a winner in the game but shear boredom made me make some -ev plays...Another issue is figuring out chip stacks - I had one hand where an aggressive player opened in MP1 to 20 or 25 pre, 1 guy calls, I call out of BB with Q10s. Flop comes 244 with 2 spades. First guy checks , I check, original raiser bets something like 60 into a 80 dollar pot....I take a look over at his stack and decide to make it 175 to go with the intention of calling his shove.....It looked like he started the hand with 300 or so, so really the only course of action here is to c/r commit myself and hopefully get him to lay down on the flop here.....at this point he goes all in and I ask the dealer how much more it is to me......Dealer says something like 245 more to you - d'oh. Apparently he had like 450 to start the hand, and I had that covered, so here I am stacking off a FD for nearly 100 bbs effective, oops.....Anyways he turns over KK, I dont get there and now Im realoading another 500....its funny how when the money is infront of you how much things change - online I could careless about 500 but taking it out of your wallet and placing it on the felt is a little different feeling...

It was a fun though and a nice change of pace...It is wierd getting use to the chips though - alot of times I was making a bet and taking forever to count out as alot of times your dealing with the 5 dollar chips and they love to stick together....It definitely felt akward....another thing is how dirty the poker room is - those chips have been all over the place and I dont think they ever clean them or replace them for long periods of time....playing live poker and eating food immediately after with your hands is -ev and I wish I washed my hands more when I was down there...

more to come half way through the month - now back to losing this ftp 50r1r1a

Southcjay hits big, Im shooting blanks

2009-07-21T09:20:00.000-07:00

I've been having a good time with MTTs this month even though I'm not up all that much (roughly 7-8k at best)....They really have renewed my interest in poker and I actually look forward to starting them when I wake up. There's not a better feeling then winning a tournament, especially a larger one with a bigger field. Of course when you win the tournament you have to realize the ridiculous amount of luck that went your way, but knowing you were #1 of that field for that day is a good feeling. So yesterday my buddy jay won the FTP 50k and came 2nd in a 50r1r1a on Stars for a nice +20-21k day. Thats always nice to see when I had a -1100 day :(....He was due though he had been running like shit in MTTs the past month. Even though I had a -1100 day, I felt great about my game and had no spots where I regretted how it went down. I made one final table yesterday, the afternoon 30r on FTP, but busted 9th after losing 2 flips with 10 people left. I came into the final table with like 7 bbs and was basically out 5 minutes later. I also was deep in the 40k gtd on Tilt but had AK cracked by AQ and some other nonsense go down. Oh well, thats tournament poker. I've been watching a ton of videos lately on PXF from the likes of JohnnyBax, Sheets, Rizen and a couple more. I gotta say, if you don't subscribe to a training site your missing out on a ton of positive EV....Even if your a big winner in whatever game you do, its always good to watch other sucessful players and how they approach things. I think alot of people don't join training sites simply based on ego - to think spending 20/mo is not worth what is available on the sites is ridiculous.

Next week Ill be spending 3 days in AC with Southcjay at the Borgata. AC in my opinion is a pretty big dump outside the Borgata - the other hotels are garbage and the area is very ghetto. Our plan is to play a couple of the daily tournaments over there (they got a 340 on Friday), and probably some cash games. I haven't had much success live even though the players are terrible, so I'll be looking to tear up the 2/5 NL game and maybe higher if things are going well. My postflop has definitely improved over the past month or two so Im sure I could easily beat the 2/5 NL game longterm, and probably a slight winner at the 5/10 NL. Its funny because online I'd prob barely a slight winner at 1/2 NL and probably a loser at 2/4, yet in person the stakes are alot easier. After that my birthday is coming around and I'll prob relax with my gf for that one. Can't beleive Im going to be 24 and still playing online poker. What a waste I am.

running bad turns into running good

2009-07-14T00:42:00.001-07:00

MTTs are an interesting animal. The luck involved in a single MTT is ridiculous, especially those with weaker structures. One may be a long term winner but over 500 MTTs be a loser and quit them for good. The opposite can also happen, where a long term loser can crush the game over a couple hundred even 1-2,000 MTTs.....With that said, this past week was brutal. I got killed in really everything I played - I ended up the week only -2k or so, but the process of losing that 2k was excruciating. MTTs are really a kick in the gut compared to SNGs and cash. With SNGs and cash, you can always reload, while in MTTs a bad beat or two at a major final table can be so tough to bear mentally and financially. Luckily I think I take bad runs pretty well - I understand variance real well and how expectation can deviate in both directions dramatically, especially in bigger tournaments. I came into today with an open mind - I was looking forward to playing a long session of 20-22 MTTs, so I sat down at 3 PM EST and began my schedule. Throughout the day I took the worst beats imaginable - I lost pair to under pair 3-4 times, ran into AA a ton, and just got raped every way possible. I registed all the way up to the AP 30r, and with 5 to go on the day and zero cashes, I was thinking it would be a wash.

In the end I had the 20k,30k, and 15k 30r left all on AP as my final three. First came the 20k where a shorty shoved, a big stack flatted, and I reshoved AQ with like 18 bbs. Me and the shorty had AQ, big stack 10s, gg me. Then came the 30r - I had about 35 bbs when I 3 bet a UTG raiser with AKo. He flatted and the flop came all rags - I wasn't too happy 3 betting pre looking back on things, but I ended up throwing out another bet to see where I was - he min raised me and I had to fold. Eventually I got it all in and busted. The 30k was my final hope - the funniest part of the tournament was I had gotten KK/AA with about 10 bbs and gotten no action. I thought to myself there's no way Im doing anything in this tourny if I cant atleast get action with the big hands and being so short. At this point luck came my way - 44 cracked 99 for a double. Some donk slowplayed KQ and let me get there with a weak hand to pick up another 15k, and slowly I was gaining some chips. I doubled later on with A6 vs A3 in a blind battle, and later on got some value out of AA(finally). I came into the FT in 2nd, and worked my way to 3 handed. This hand was pretty big

Stage #1772396594 Tourney ID 4446726 Holdem Multi Normal Tournament No Limit 6,000 - 2009-07-14 02:48:05 (ET)
Table: 22 (Real Money) Seat #6 is the dealer
Seat 5 - JWC64 (334,050 in chips)
Seat 6 - ETHANSKY1234 (298,942 in chips)
Seat 8 - Z06FANATIC (210,008 in chips)
JWC64 - Ante 600
ETHANSKY1234 - Ante 600
Z06FANATIC - Ante 600
Z06FANATIC - Posts small blind 3,000
JWC64 - Posts big blind 6,000
*** POCKET CARDS ***
Dealt to Z06FANATIC [10d 10c]
ETHANSKY1234 - Raises 18,000 to 18,000
Z06FANATIC - Raises 54,200 to 57,200
JWC64 - Calls 51,200
ETHANSKY1234 - Folds
*** FLOP *** [Jh 5d 4h]
Z06FANATIC - Bets 134,200
JWC64 - All-In(Raise) 276,250 to 276,250
Z06FANATIC - All-In 18,008
JWC64 - returned (124,042) : not called
*** TURN *** [Jh 5d 4h] [9d]
*** RIVER *** [Jh 5d 4h 9d] [6d]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
JWC64 - Shows [Ad Qs] (ace high)
Z06FANATIC - Shows [10d 10c] (One pair, tens)
Z06FANATIC Collects 438,616 from main pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total Pot(438,616)
Board [Jh 5d 4h 9d 6d]
Seat 5: JWC64 (big blind) HI:lost with ace high [Ad Qs - P:Ad,P:Qs,B:Jh,B:9d,B:6d]
Seat 6: ETHANSKY1234 (dealer) Folded on the POCKET CARDS
Seat 8: Z06FANATIC (small blind) won Total (438,616) All-In HI438,616) with One pair, tens [10d 10c - P:10d,P:10c,B:Jh,B:9d,B:6d]

We got HU and just chopped it. yes im a pussy when it comes to these situations, but the guy played semi well and whats really my long term edge here? Even so, this was a short term situation and we both had equal stacks, 80 bbs deep, and I figured what the hell let me chop it. I got 6600 for the ordeal, and turned my day from in the gutter to a very good day. Its funny how quick things can change in MTTs, and how a little bit of luck can turn things in a whole new direction. Anywyas back to the grind tomorrow - my only real goal lately is to win the 75k on tilt, so lets hope that happens tomorrow.

MTT schedule

2009-07-05T22:58:00.000-07:00

I don't know if anyone really reads this blog to begin with, but what the hell I'll continue posting when I'm bored. Since im sitting here at 2 am not wanting to go to sleep, I figured I'd throw up my MTT schedule. I've been running this schedule about 3 days a week, and then running a half a day on one of my off days. My goal is to get in 80 MTTs a week - originally I wanted to do 100/week but figured thats not gonna happen unless I kill my social life and start 12 tabling. Here's my current lineup

All EST times

3 PM - Stars 55 80k
AP 30r 8K
Cake 30r 20k
FTP 162 50K
330 - FTP 50+5 20k
4 PM - FTP 75 22.5K
430 - FTP 30r 19.5 GTD
5 PM FTP 120 KO 30K
5:15 Stars 50 1r1a
530 - Stars 30r 2r1a
7 PM - Stars 100 40k gtd
FTP 75 40k
AP 50r(debating tossing this in)
730 - Cake 109 20K gtd
8 PM - FTP 162 75K
AP 120 20K
830 - FTP 30r
9PM - Cake 30r
AP 30K Sniper
10PM - AP 30r

So right there is 20 MTTs - I might try to work more in from time to time, but after 8pm I got 8-9 rollin so thats definitely not when i wanna add more. I end up spending around 2100-2300 in buy ins on these full days, and I figure with atleast a 50% overall ROI I should see some good profits. So far its been fun but ive also ran above expectation....I raped AP last month, and finally hit a FTP top 3 when I went 2nd in the 30r the other day for 4700. Im hoping I can hit one of the bigger ones soon enough - Ill continue to try to satty into the FTP 1k/AP 1k, as the qualifiers (especially on AP) are super easy. Stars hasn't offered a ton to my schedule and so far ive skipped out on the Nightly Hundred Grand hearing that its not the most +ev MTT. My main focus is playing the rebuys, and all the AP/Cake tournaments. There's some terrible players on these two sites, and Ive done real well in my AP career, although Cake has yet to show me any profit.

I have yet to be tempted back to SNGs - mainly because im so sick of playing them, but my overall profits without race cards wasn't too hot. It also didn't help last year I never took advantage of reload bonuses, so that definitely hurt me alot. With race cards Im sure the hourlys are very comparable, but in a sense 1 hour of MTT play isn't as brutal to me as 1 hour of SNG play. Grnding a 4 hour clip of SNG's use to brutal, and during the races I'd go 4 hours break, and go another 4 hours. Even 2 hours got boring to me, but with MTTs the feeling Id get after 4 hours of SNGs usually comes 10-12 hours in. Also obviously theres more excitement when your deep, especially in a bigger buyin tournament where first place is over 10k. Its hard to get too excited about a 3-4k cash considering a full day of buy ins is 2k, but cracking a 15k score is always real exciting. Another silly thing is checking out PLB points on pocketfives - yes the leaderboards are pretty worthless considering you could be ranked in the top 100 and still in the red, but it keeps me interested and sort of something to look forward to. I'd like to get up there in the ranks one day even though the whole thing is silly, so we'll see how long that takes. Anyways I guess ill wrap this up so i can go to bed and get ready to ship some mtts tomorrow. Later folks

June wrap

2009-07-01T08:22:00.000-07:00

MTTs have been going great thus far - Ive ran like a god on AP this month, so so on FTP, decent on Stars, and slightly up on Cake. Ive also been watching alot of PXF vids to work on my game, and it seems to be going well - I feel alot more comfortable in 30-40 bb spots where before I was a little out of place. Im glad to be breaking from SNGs for a while as they were very boring and really weren't doing too much for my game. I'll still keep them around but for now Im just running MTTs until AP offers some ridiculous free money to come back. Heres the stats for the first half of 2009

Second half of June 09 -

+17,378.92 in MTTs
-750 in live losses
-550 from not making 1k in the rakebreak race that I factored into race cards

+16,078.92
2009 stats

Total profit 102,327.28
Hours played 879

Hourly rate = 116.41

On a SNG Hiatus

2009-06-24T13:17:00.000-07:00

So race cards came to an end on the 16th and I've been playing solely MTTs since..Its been a nice change and I think I'm going to try this out atleast for July. My hourly this year has been satisfying but without race cards I'm sure its more near 90/hr....90/hr is still great but my goal is to make more money and the way for me to do that is MTTs....Ive done decent in them in the past (think Im +40k or so overall), so its not like im jumping into this without an idea. Also my bankroll is way overrolled for 100-200 avg stake, so I should be fine in terms of that. I think MTTs are the way to go in terms of long term goals - I dont really improve my poker game playing SNGs so really Im just grinding out and never improving...MTTs will allow me to work on my game and become better, and eventually move to higher stakes where I can make 200/hr+....so as of now Im playing up to 200 FO's and 50r's......Im playing Cake/FTP/AP, but mainly FTP - they have a ton of MTTs with amazing structures - Cake has the worst structure of them all but the fields are super soft so I will definitely stick around on that site. Overall I believe Im +6k or so since I started this experiment, but Ill figure out the correct numbers once June ends. In July my goal is to play atleast 300 mtts, and hopefully with say a 50% ROI that would be around 15k....I might try to do more than 300, but I figured 300 would be a decent goal I could set on a 40 hour work week. July should be very interesting and Im excited to give this a go. Ill update the end of the month so I can get exact figures.

Done with race cards finally

2009-06-12T11:10:00.000-07:00

So its Friday and the race cards promo runs till midnight on Monday but I'm taking the weekend off and definitely wont have anyone pass me unless they go nuts this weekend. I had a nice run in the 25k sniper last night, taking 3rd for 3k......I picked up a huge stack with like 50 left - think I had 64k at 400/800....It seems though everytime I get a monster stack early I never seem to get far - maybe the positive variance catching up? Anyways I played pretty aggro and got all the way down to like 25k.....from there blinds had gone up so I tightened up and built back up....at the final table things were up and down....I lost QQ to 44 4 handed which was definitely a blow to my stack...after that I won QQ to AK but then made a move with an open ended srt draw 3 handed with an overcard and ran into the nuts. oh well...

Anyways here's the breakdown to the best of my ability - it really is a bitch trying to figure the exact profit and where it all came from. here we go

+11,000 Race Cards Bonus
+6500 in MTT profit
+9400 in rakeback
+3k credits for cash
+3300 rakebreak rake races
+4000 500k credits for gift cards
+6900 in reloads
-1600 in staking
+3430 in playing 6 mans/9 mans/ 100 HU UT's (where the real skill is)

+45,930

So there's the stats. I fell pretty far down the race towards the end as guys were pushing alot harder than I expected. I could of gotten higher but whatever - Im not going to kill myself for it...Ended up playing not as many hours as I expected - 313 total hours.....comes out to about 140.7/hr which easily was my highest hourly rate over any race.....For the rest of the month I'll prob take it easy and definitely lay off SNG's and play more mtts....I put some money on FTP to play MTTs there and plan on playing more of em from now on....heres some yearly stats

2009 stats

Total profit 86,248.36
Hours played 799.5

Hourly rate = 107.8

EDIT - had to play 7 more hours on Sunday to hold my position - ran like god in 100 HU UT's, so I had a nice profit. figures are updated.

Won 30r - still grinding sngs

2009-05-23T23:27:00.000-07:00

So the 30r was interesting today...it was the 10k gtd on saturdays - during rebuy period I had busted my stack and was going to call it a day, but since I had the auto rebuy checked I already got 1500 in chips back so figured id rebuy again and get back on track......funny how many times I was close to giving up good things happened....anyways I had chipped up to roughly 10-11k when I flopped a set of 6s in a 3 handed pot on a board of J65 rainbow - went check check guy fired out, I called, other guy calls and turn brought a 5......I believe at this point I checked 2nd guy fired out 3rd called, I just flatted again...river came a J which obviously killed everything....at this point I was pretty screwed in the hand - I checked, 2nd guy fired around pot for like 10k, 3rd guy goes all in, I fold - 2nd guy shows a bluff, other guy showing AJ.....funny thing is if I push the flop or turn I m probably going busto.....not really a tough fold on the river there just a shitty situation....after that I ended up cracking KK with A4 after shoving like 17 bbs from button....Later on I believe I won 2 coinflips with about 5 left....3 or 4 handed I pick up QQ to RSaleh's 7s which brought me to about 180k going into HU, while the other guy had 400k.....HU was quite interesting - he was making large raises/reraises pre and postflop.....I remember a couple hands at 1200/2400 I raise to 5400 preflop, he pops it straight to 200k - interesting to say the least...anyways I ended up picking up 7s raising pre - he repopped it to something ridiculous like 60 bbs more so I got it in - he had 57o off and I held....he definitely handed me the 1st so ill take some free handouts....

sngs went so so - broke even but I was fine with that.....my goal was to just play my game and let the money go where it may......Im looking forward to the end of the race so I can relax a little and plan some vacation time....

biggest day in online poker thus far

2009-05-18T22:31:00.001-07:00

so first of all if you play mtts dont read this, as the number will be laughable, but ended up making 6900 from playing/bonus money today.........Ive had bigger weeks then this but a single day previous record was like 5500, so I was happy........roughly 4500 of it came from SNGs, with the rest coming from a 3rd or 4th place in 20k ( I forget).....the only issue I had was my donking out of the 20k......seems like when Im shorthanded I tend to overshove bvb type situations, which leads to my busting when its not necessary...I had something like 50-60 bbs in the BB vs an sb who opened to 6 bbs - I had 88 and reraised to like 70k commiting me.....the problem with this whole situation is I basically turned my hand into a bluff - 22-77 prob fold out, alot of weaker aces fold - the worst part was this guy was semi tight and hadnt shown anything crazy he would have to give alot of credit to my reraise.....anyways he shoved, i called, he had aces.....I think the best line would be to flat here - granted the flop was 10-8-2 so I might be going broke anyways, but the ridiculous reshove was terrible by me....wish I would think twice before getting 60 bbs in preflop....outside of that hand though I thought I played well - made a couple 3 bet bluffs here and there, some value bet bluffs, etc......Im definitely making a point to not make retard shoves anymore in MTTs - I tend to not think enough when I have alot of SNGs going as well, so these plays are definitely costing me some money.....

as for the rake race, things are going well.....I believe im in 8th right now and have been turning up the heat this month.....50 hours a week for the rest of this race is my goal, so hopefully I can move up to 5th or 6th and pocket around 16k.....gl me

Running like God

2009-05-07T22:20:00.001-07:00

For the past month or so I've been on a godlike run mainly in SNGs.....it wasn't so much the start of race cards but the past 2 weeks I've really been tearing it up....Last month I made around 20k with about 7k in bonuses, so 13k in actual play, and this month I gotta be up another 6k or so in playing/reloads....I guess this was due after my year of running bad in SNGs thus far - I think this run is equivelant or better than my run in July when I also ran like god...Ill get exact figures once the race ends as I dont feel like calculating total profits right now....As for race cards Im behind pace in terms of where I thought I would be.....I figured by now I'd be top 6 or top 7 at the very least, but Im stuck in 9th. My goal for the rest of the cards is to do 50+ hour weeks and get atleast top 5 (16k).........Id still be happy with my +40k off this whole race, but considering how good ive ran Im sure it will be more than that. On the staking front, my stakee has been doing real well - he took 2nd in the 20k gtd last week for 3200, and a couple cashes here and there......I played the 535 FTOPs shootout tonight but busted after losing two races....I don't know why SNG players think these shootouts are extremely +ev to them - granted the first table is pretty much like a SNG and theres not too much postflop play, but the 2nd table is pretty deepstacked and theres alot of good postflop players in these things...I remember the last FTOPs shootout I did was a 6 max - I won my first table and came to my 2nd table with 40-50 bbs and a ton of aggressive players....So really a high stakes sucessful MTT player would be much more +ev than any SNG player IMO in these things....Granted you could nit it up but I chose to 4 bet AQ for 35 bbs into AK :(.... oh well....

Anyways Im off to play video games.....I dont know if Ill post till the end of race cards as Im going to wait till then update the exact money figures....stay tuned

people trying to scam under my name

2009-04-27T16:09:00.000-07:00

so I know theres a couple people trying to scam under my name....First theres z06fanatic on AIM - thats not even my AIM name...watch out for that and any others - I'd give out the second name but that would reveal my AIM name and don't need scammers trying to make things any worse. I never need money from anyone so just tell them to fuck off if they message you. that is all!

Rake Race IV has started

2009-04-22T23:03:00.000-07:00

Things have been going well as of late. Ive had a nice upswing in MTTs/SNGs which has led to a solid start to this rake race/a good month playing wise. I decided to cut my stats through the 15th of this month so I could track stats for the whole rake race. Anyways I ended up playing in those 15 days about 37 hours with 5385.36 in actual profit from playing. Since then I've gone on a 7k upswing so Im sure this month Im around +14k overall....So the rake race started on the 15th and Im barely breaking top 10. So far Ive gotten in a little under 50 hours, somewhat slacking the first week.....I dont really have a goal profit wise during this whole race, but I was hoping for around 40k...Im also playing mtts during this race as well as playing afternoons to somewhat offset the tougher games later at night.....I stopped MTTs in past races which probably cost me a couple thousand a month. Ive also started staking someone in MTTs as of late - hes a very good player whos taught me alot lately, so I figured this was definitely +ev.....so far hes already shipped the 20r for about 2k, so Im thinking this is a good idea. As far as the stocks, I ended up +550 or so then pulling out last sunday...this turned out to be good as monday was a big drop....the bottom line is the market had a huge upswing over hte past couple weeks and i assume is going to come down....I think though I might take the money and run cause really Im probably -ev with the little I know about it. I made a nice return and think I might just wait till I know a little bit more about what the fuck im doing. Oh well thats it for now - expect an update next month

+50k roughly on the year thus far

back to poker, stocks doin well thus far

2009-04-14T08:55:00.000-07:00

So I finally got back to poker on sunday night....I ended up making around 1800 or so on Sun, then taking 2nd in the 20k last night for 3200, putting me around +5k on the month, excluding rb....The stocks have been pretty good as well - citigroup has nearly doubled and ge has gone up a decent amount - sirius has been holding steady so hopefully it starts heading in the right direction. so far im up 4-500 off the stocks, but I dont plan on making that much off them to begin with considering I only invested 2k.....anyways going golfing in a little bit before race cards starts 2nite - it should get interesting....I also started staking someone in MTT's recently so we'll see how that pans out - hes a real good player but with the variance in MTTs who knows what the results can be....def a +ev investment and hopefully it will work out well..that is all for now - stay classy san diego

Stock investing/small rant

2009-04-03T13:01:00.000-07:00

So since I have a couple days off from poker I have more time to write out some ideas in these blogs and post a little more often...first off I decided to invest in the stock market....I've never invested in the market, I don't know shit about the market, but I'm still willing to take a small gamble for a couple thousand. Basically in my opinion, its a great time to invest in companies if you feel they can make it through this down economy. Alot of big companies that are going nowhere have seen their stock prices plummet but I'm sure they will come back up when the economy turns around...when that may be I do not know but I think we are starting to see the worst its going to get...Once again I dont know shit so dont listen to me :)...Heres my picks if your interested

1.Sirius (Siri) - So this stock took a plummet when it was announced they were filing bankruptcy....The reality is they had to dump a ton of money into infrastructure to create this company, and that also came with alot of debt....The fact of the matter is its a very profitable commodity - theyre the second largest subscriber company in the world, and with Howard Stern on their airwaves I don't think theyre going anywhere....I think the company might of been better not joining with XM, but I still think its a profitable investment...I wanted to get in when it was around 11 cents/share, but now its up to 34 cents/share...

2.Citi Group (C) - So the main reason I got interested in this was the fact that Citigroup isnt going anywhere - theyre a monster company that needs to stick around and the government wont let them fail.....there stock was around 55/share a couple years ago and bottomed around 1.11...it currently trades in the lower 2's, and I cant see this company ever going down...Sure the government owns about 30% of them now so at the very least I'll breakeven on this one....they have a new CEO and I think things will turn around...

3.GE - I dont know much about GE at all except its been very profitable over the past 20 years and has a good financial record...my parents like this stock alot and it is pretty low, so why not?

All in all these investments could be -ev but Im willing to take a chance.....Don't flame me for my picks or reasoning - I've never traded before and have no knowledge of the market, but I guess the gambler in me is coming out :)

So a quick rant - I really hate people who have to let everyone know how they went from a 10 dollar bankroll to making whatever they have in poker. First off poker is a business investment - who cares that you made money in poker, plenty of people do....Its not a great acheivement and doesn't take a genius to figure it out....You don't see people who own small businesses bragging how they made a small investment and have made 50,000 off of it....it happens all the time and is nothing new. In general too many people brag about poker earnings and have big egos about their game....unless your dominating your field of expertise, I don't see the need for it and really makes him or her look like a moron..

/rant

the end of the race cards madness

2009-03-31T20:16:00.000-07:00

So finally the month has come to an end - thank god I wanted to blow my brains out....I ended up losing 7402.00 playing this month, which seems definitely below expectation but not terribly....the first week and the last my table selection was a little weak, the first week definitely playing a ton of -ev games, but the 2nd/3rd weeks I barely played 100s and was picking pretty carefully. Anyways heres all the bonuses I got out of this madness

13,500 for the race (me and maverick chopped)
4260 in reloads
6900 in rakeback
1100 rakebreak race
1000 credits for cash
2000 additional credits(rough estimate)

+21,358

Ended up playing 175 hours or so, so made roughly 122/hr.....in total on the year I'm around 35-36k, putting me around 86/hr or so......I expect my hourly to definitely be around 100 when I get mtts back in the schedule, so stay tuned..anyways I plan on taking a small break for a couple days to enjoy life for once and then Ill be back to the grind.....maybe next month I can be a winner in 50s on AP :)

blog is back!

2009-03-28T23:24:00.000-07:00

So SNGAcademy ended up shutting down for personal issues....I thought about asking snggrinders if they were interested, but since ss just started tracking and my results show me as a total fish I think ill wait lol.....think im down roughly 7kish in sng play on the month mainly due to bad runs and tough games....the first week I definitely played alot of losing games, not table selecting and putting up 30k status points, so I guess that was expected. The rest of the month I smartened up and table selected probably 90% of the time, which resulted in playing alot of 65s/50s...So heres how the month is looking in terms of profit

-7k playing
+ 13k race cards
+7kish in rakeback
+1k in credits for cash
+3k in reloads(maybe more not sure)
+2k in extra credits for cash

total = +19k

So the month is shaping up to look really good and my hourly will definitely be over 100/hr, so thats always good news. Im looking forward to April though as I want to work hard and get back to MTTs....Ill definitely be relaxing more though in April as I plan on golfing more and playing more live poker....the grind online has really gotten bad this month and Im glad this whole thing is over in 3 days....If I make 19k this month I be up around 32k on the year, after having a losing month last month. gl me .

2008-12-03T14:29:00.001-08:00

Nov coming to an end - where has this year gone?

2008-11-25T23:41:00.000-08:00

It seems like the year has flew by. I remember in highschool thinking each week was way too long, now it seems like these months go by like crazy...Anyways on to the poker....my buddy Duderino AB opened up his training site - theSNGAcademy.com.....Im a lead 6 man instructor on there with a couple other 9 man/HU instructors......we're commited to hearing what the member wants and making videos around that, so Im thinking this site can become a premier sng teaching site in the near future....outside of that I also made a switch over to FTP instead of Cake for a couple reasons. #1 - the software on Cake has been having some MAJOR issues...games not popping up, freezing, etc...its been out of control so I pulled my money last week...#2 - obviously my downswing - sure my table selection wasnt the greatest but it was ridiculous how I ran on that site, considering the sngs are very soft, and Ive been a winner in AP sngs at double the stakes over 20,000 games....hopefully FTP goes a little better, but only time shall tell...Im also very excited about Cereus which launched last night - the MTT schedule looks great, and I'll be taking advantage of that..Like ive said before, MTT's really help your hourly rate...throwing 1 sng out for 1 mtt can add 20-30/hr so theres really no arguing with that. Ill be sticking to AP MTT's maybe FTP MTT's when I get more of a roll on there...Im not too sure where I am profit wise on the month, I want to say roughly 8k or so, putting me at 128k on the year - in 09 ill definitely keep track better of my profit and hourly rate....anyways everyone have a happy thanksgiving and ill be back in december with another post

Interesting past couple of days

2008-11-19T00:47:00.000-08:00

So the past two days I went on 5k downswing on AP...ran like shit in sngs, bubbled a bunch of 200s....today I ended up making 5400 (outside rb/bonuses/etc)...I went on a mtt tear - 2nd in 20r, 2nd in 8k, 10th in 30r....First off with the 20r - we got heads up and I ended up folding 2nd pair to a reshove on a flush draw board after assuming the player was pretty tight/passive, as he had been 4 handed...after talking with some mtters I realized it prob was a call, but what can you do.....in the 30r I had a MASSIVE stack when we were 15 handed or so.....Was sitting on about 220k at 1500/3000 with 2nd around 110k and ended up busting 10th...I was raising prob 90% of pots, and got in an all in or two against 20-30k stacks....I lost the all ins, then continued to bleed....The biggest pot was a flip where I was sitting about 150k deep at 1500/3000, another player who had been playing very aggressive and whom I thought understood how wide I was opening had about 90-95k.....Anyways, I opened to 7500 and reraised to 22,222....Before he even repopped I planned on shoving regardless of anything.....I shoved with AQ, he had JJ, I bricked out.....After this I shoved 11 bbs with 810s into his bb and he won with an ace.....Pretty sick how deep I was to bubble final table, but I thought I played the tourny well and played the bigstack like it should be....Anyways I ran hot as hell today so I cant complain - hopefully I can get into the 100k tomorrow night and get a decent cash in that one, or just ship the 150k on sat :).....I missed playing the mtts so im glad im back in em - the sng's have been getting very boring so I need something else to motivate me to put in the hours....hopefully a big score is right around the corner

November off to a bad start

2008-11-09T23:02:00.001-08:00

So Ive decided to mix in a 200 for every set on AP....Ive been finding them to be very profitable, and some 200s are easier than 100s that contain more regulars....it also seems that the fish are tighter and playing more scared money, so this could turn out to be very worthwhile....on cake I took a dive and started coming back......its utterly ridiculous Im the biggest loser in the 50s, but I can still use variance as an excuse.....If I hit say 5,000 games and am still in the hole then it should get very interesting.....Ive also been working alot more with SNGPT, trying to close up leaks in my game and improve in certain spots....Hopefully this week will go well and I can make a couple grand. gl me

ending to a long but good month

2008-10-30T21:51:00.000-07:00

So theres 1 day left in the month so I dont have an exact profit amount as Im not gaurenteed 9k in this race or to breakeven tomorrow but ill post amounts as they are as of now.....overall I didnt run that good in sngs - I made money but I think I ran below expectation. Im so glad this is coming to an end though - I put in a 60 hour week, 50 hour week, and this week prob around 70. I also generated about 23k in rake which is about 7k more than I ever did before...Im also glad the 25/50 cash games are over - Im not sure how I ran in them - I think of might of slightly profited but considering I was playing a nitty game while 12-13 tabling, I doubt I made much at all....The good thing about the cash was I got a taste of 6 max action and how things play out - suprisingly the 25 50 players are better than I expected - maybe I just didnt run all that hot but I thought the play there was better than in the sngs I play.....its funny how easy you can double up in a sng or get value bets on the river called vs the cash games...it seemed tough really getting paid on some bigger hands against better regulars....I also found myself incorporating minraising into my game - it really is a good tool to bluff with against a decent player who can fold....Anyways heres the details of profit

Profit from SNG's on AP - 7500
Profit from SNG's on Cake - 800
Rakeback - 7k
AP Race Cards race - 8 or 9k (hopefully I can hold onto 3rd)
Rakebreak Rake race - 1500
Points for Cash - 1k
Points for 5 ps3s - 1500

Total est - 28,300

So for November im considering staking a sng player in the 10s-50s on AP.....Im also considering going back to 200s and taking my shot....I played a couple 200s this month and theyre still really soft if you table select, so Im thinking I should table select them in November and play the easy ones...Ill prob do the same for 300s and maybe take a shot at a 500 here and there.....Im so worn out from this race Ill definitely take the weekend off, but im hoping on monday I can start another 40 hour week and continue with that through the month....This promotion also helped me get near this 150k goal on the year so im hoping i can pull out 25k over hte next two months

been taking big swings + a little rant on tipping

2008-10-22T23:16:00.000-07:00

first ill get to the poker - the swings have been all over the place - past couple days went +1300, -2500, +1800, +3500, -700,etc.....not too many breakeven days.....Ive moved up to 8th on the race - im putting on the heat putting up 5k fame points a day, smoking the guys right ahead of me....Im thinking 5th place for 7k should be easy to obtain.....Im also using some ap credits to purchase a bunch of ps3s from the ap store - im going to resell them on ebay since ap caps the amount of credits u can trade infor cash monthly....should be a 20k+ month easy

so I was reading something on 2p2 in regards to tipping....I think tipping is ridiculously overrated and overdone in this country....When I think of tipping, its the idea that you give a tip when service goes above and beyond expectations...If Im at a restaurant for example and the waiter/waitress does an amazing job, then I should be tipping...the sad part about this country is these employers pay employees shit and thus the employees are forced to rely on customers tips.......the funniest example was when I was in aruba - we all went out to eat at a nice steak restaurant - anyways the bill came to 480 or something like that - included in the bill was a 15% service charge....First of all this service charge is a joke - its just a way to sneak in 15% ontop of bill and theres not much you can do about it....then we leave no tip on top of that and the waitress comes over complaining about it......you seriously want us to leave you 30% of the bill ontop of paying the bill?? its not even like there service was any good - they didnt really speak english andwere alittle slow with the orders...they shouldnt of been tipped anything, not even that 15% service charge....bottom line is a tip should be given when service goes beyond expectations...if the service is just alright, then no tip should be given......tipping in general is way out of control and employers should really stop forcing the customer to pay employee salaries

October going smoothly

2008-10-16T22:11:00.000-07:00

So thus far on AP im roughly +4-5k on the month and +800 or so on Cake excluding all bonuses....Ive played roughly 1100 sngs on Ap so far this month, along with 400 or so on Cake. The AP racecard race has been going decent - I think Ill be in 9th for tomorrows update, making my way up the ladder...some of the guys ahead of me are slowing down, so Im thinking that 7th place for 5k will be achievable. Im thinking I can make 10k from AP/Cake, 5-6k in RB, 1k for credits, 5k for AP race, 1200 for Rakebreak race, making me around 22k or so on the month. We'll see how things go.

back from aruba and grinding for a big ap promotion

2008-10-10T22:14:00.000-07:00

Aruba was amazing....I got in on monday and met with some ap players and a couple people who work for the company. I spent alot of time with a guy named AD who seemed to be a higher up at AP - we talked a little about what needs to be changed on the site and a possible deal they might work out with me....they might be adding a higher vip level to award the long term grinders, that would hopefully give SNE on stars a run for their money. The tournament itself was a let down - day 1 I ended with 23k. Day 2 I planned on opening up my game and going deep. I chipped up to about 80k at 500/1k when my downfall began. first I lost a 30k pot pre with AQ vs 79. AQ proved to be my downfall again when I was rivered by a flush and had to fold top pair on the river to lose 12k more. Finally I flopped the nut straight, c/r'ed all in the turn to a turned straight/flush draw and she hit. gg me.

So now that Im back AP is running one of their biggest promotions yet - a 100k race giving 15k to first and coming down, with 7th getting 5k, 10 getting 2k. Sadly missing 3 days of the month put me in bad shape to get top 3 in this, so Im shooting for 7th(5k). Games have been running strong, and between AP and Cake I got in about 850 sngs this week, making about 3500-4k(outside bonuses). Amazingly Im up roughly 1k on Cake this month, still putting me in the red on sharkscope but a possible sign that this ridiculous run is turning. I also put in a solid 60 hour week, which comes to about 14-15 games per hour. My goal is to continue with atleast 50 hour weeks the rest of this month and hopefully break my previous rake record of 16k, and play atleast 2500 games. If I can run like I should Im hoping to do atleast 20-25k with all the bonuses. GL me.

going to the aruba classic!

2008-09-26T21:47:00.000-07:00

Sooo today im running my normal routine(ap and cake), when i get a call from ap....they ask me what im doing this weekend, and eventually offer the 8500 package to me.....while im thrilled to be going, its also been very stressful trying to get a flight/hotel out there for a decent price.......the last thing I want during a big downswing is to be spending more money on unnecessary shit....the 3k doesnt go that far, as that is barely covering my hotel/flight, and thats only 4 nights! people who go the whole trip booking this late would be there 6-7 nights, and id spend prob 4k....throw in another 500+ for food, drinks, jetskiing,etc, and ur almost 2k over what they give ya.....oh well, this is a great experience that i cannot pass up, so hopefully it goes well...im also selling %'s of me if anyone wants a piece - 1% is 55.00 and u can ship to z06fanatic on ap or diaf fish on cake. i cashed last year for 8k, but this year ill be playing to win rather than cash....i played very nitty last year as the cash was 25% of my bankroll, but this year im not too concerned about 8k...

outside the trip, theyre finally shipping out my 5k tiffanys gift card....I plan on reselling it, so if anyone reading this wants a deal for say 4200-4400, email me or respond on the blog.....poker has been going terrible as of late - think im around breakeven or so for the month, easily being my worst month to date. Cake is still doing terrible, but im confident in my game and know im playing very well....downswings can be brutal mentally, but I think in the longrun theyre very profitable....this downswing has forced me to play better, and do more work with ICM....i seem to focus more now on hands and can make better decisions 12 tabling....oh well, maybe in aruba ill run like jamie gold and take the rest of this year off :)

still running like shit

2008-09-17T14:19:00.000-07:00

im still running at a negative roi this month which is also entertaining.....ive been happy with my game though so i dont mind it all that much....on cake i had a glimmer of hope when i went on a 1600 upswing yesterday, but now that has fallen to a 800 upswing. Im still down a ridiculous number of buy ins but hey I guess we can call this late august/september run my second big downswing on the year.....the only positive that has come out of my past month has been being more comfortable 10 tabling - i feel i can 10 table now playing near 100% - i feel 10 tabling isnt really stressful....12 i still find somewhat stressful and taxing on my ability to play them 100%, but hopefully over time that will get easier as welll. I also jumped back in ap rebuys - my ROI in rebuys is in the mid 100s (small sample), so I think its necssary for me to play the 20r/30r as much as possible. With the 30r for example, a 100% ROI would make 120 per 30r played, and if the average tourny lasts 3 hours, thats 40 an hour off that single table......thats so ridiculous how i could do that tournament and 8 or 9 sngs that i have to get back in it.

Getting railed in September

2008-09-09T16:39:00.000-07:00

Ive been bending over since the start of this month - Im probably down a couple grand easy on AP and my Cake roll is nearly depleted. Today I went to Sharkscope myself on cake - I was roughly -5600 or so without bonuses....thats fucking sick right there, considering my avg stake is around 55, bringing my swing to 100 buy ins......Im a little concerned about that as I dont think I should be dropping 100 buy ins where I would have an ROI of near 10%, but who knows.....Ive dealt with being a loser over 2k games before, so thats nothing new, but this is sickening.....anyways Im gonna keep grinding it out and hopefully things will turn around....I expected this kind of railing to happen on AP cause of my sick run in July, but this Cake run is really getting to me.

August comes to an end, new change of pace

2008-09-03T14:20:00.000-07:00

So August has finally ended - including the 5k diamond Im up roughly 8k on the month :(....I havent gotten the official word about winning it, but after speaking to vip on the 31st, Im pretty damn sure its mine. I was hoping to crack 100k for the year in August but that will have to wait.....Another goal I set, to make 50k this summer happened, which was great....Last year I think I made 30k so Im slowly moving up the ranks.....So for hte month of September I decided to focus more on Cake - the games there are easier, even though im running like complete shit over there.....Also the games on AP (esp 100s) have gotten stacked lately with more regulars, so really my plan is to 6 table on cake and 4-5 table with game selection on AP.......We'll see how it all works out, but I plan on playing a ton of games this month and get cake where it should be....Im owed prob 5k in equity on there :(

Total yearly profit (93,000 est)

Still negative on the month outside all the bonuses

2008-08-26T08:06:00.000-07:00

So I think im around -3k on AP for the month and -500 or so on Cake. It really is disturbing that im still running like shit on cake and still in the red after about 1500 games. Ive been through those swings before but this is just brutal. My only saving graces are all the bonuses and this 5k diamond. I figure 4k in rakeback, 2500 in rake races, 1k in credits for cash, 5k diamond, would put me at 11.5k....So really my goal for the rest of hte week is to break even on the month cause profiting outside these bonuses seems far fetched :(

Why do people help others for free?

2008-08-19T18:48:00.000-07:00

So I was reading a post on p5's asking questions about sngs and a well known user that knows sng's very well posts a detailed response, with links to ICM programs,etc. Now I know we all want to help people, and its really in our nature, but do we not play poker for profit? I really think alot of these "helpers" are naive about the poker economy and the game itself. The bottom line (especially with SNG's since they have the flattest learning curve) is games are getting harder, and people offering free information are just burning their own money. I also see this alot with MTT'ers, especially the more sucessful ones who think their profits won't be hurt. That's pretty ridiculous to think people cant learn to beat high buy in MTTs - I don't think you need a natural born talent to beat MTT's of that nature, just alot of studying and dedication. I also see alot of people responding to posts to stroke their ego - show the new player how much they know and how good they are. Thats great but really put your wallet before your ego. I have to admit I use to tell people how bad they played, etc - it was immaturity and now I definitely stem away from any negativity about someone's game. So in conclusion I would like everyone to think twice next time they post useful information either in an IM, forum, etc. Sure we love to help people, its in our nature, but if your playing poker for profit your hurting yourself in the longrun.

Back from Vegas, rough start to the month

2008-08-16T09:05:00.001-07:00

Vegas turned out to be amazing after a 3 hour plane delay getting there....the hotel was huge - you had the casino and club area, a food court, pool/lounge area and a ton of shops......we also visited caesars, the venetian and some others that were also pretty sick......if you ever go to vegas just walk around and check out all the hotels/sites, its really amazing.....the clubs were sick as well - Pure in caesars was really cool - we got a pussycat doll show while we were there....ghost bar at the palms was great as well going up to the 54th floor and overlooking vegas....I didnt really play much poker down there -I wanted to relax and not do any type of work while on vacation......as far as AP, I missed the 2k diamond last month which really annoys me, but Im also in great shape for this 5k diamond that ends this month. I got a guy "crudebar25" putting up some points, but I think I had him by 25k last month so I should be fine. On AP I think im maybe +1k on the month so far, and about +1500 on Cake(yes im actually up this month on cake outside bonuses). Sad thing is Im still down overall on Sharkscope :(...So my plan for this month is to win the ap rake race, generate maybe 3-4k in rakeback, win this 5k diamond, and hopefully make atleast a couple grand.....we'll see how things go

Biggest month yet playing poker

2008-07-31T19:08:00.000-07:00

So I decided to take today off since this week has really been a struggle in terms of getting hours in. I shattered alot of personal records this month - ended up getting in around 2k+ games, averaging 50-55 hours a week, winning 3 tlbs, and clearing over 20k on the month....Funny thing is none of this really came from Cake - Im literally up roughly 2k on the month on cake, with only 500 of that coming from actual profit - Im still a loser on sharkscope with rakeback and rake races putting me in the green. Pretty sad, but atleast running like shit there translated into a good month on AP....heres the breakdown on profit although its not too accurate as my record keeping is non-existent :)

+5k in rakeback
+2500 in rake races
+1k in credits for cash
+500 on cake
+1200 AP MTTs (bluffmag shows me down but i recieved roughly 3 weeks of free entries)
+11k AP SNG's
+2k diamond (hopefully they follow up on their promotions)

+23,200 (if my math is correct)

Year to date (estimated) - 87,000

My goal with the new monitor now is to do no less than 40 hours a week, and roughly 15k/mo....Maybe on Cake I can be a winning player for once and start making money on there, but for now its just AP :(

A couple quick bonuses, and a trip to vegas

2008-07-27T09:42:00.000-07:00

So instead of trying to win TLB this week, i just chopped it with twolip for 500 bucks....I agreed on him sending me 500, and he could win all the free buy ins and the red chat...it worked out well cause I didnt want to have to play all those buy ins during the week, and next weekend I wont be able to play the 150/75k anyways...I also picked up a quick 400 reload bonus on AP, and cashed the 150k for 1k yesterday. This Saturday, the 2nd, Ill be going to Vegas with my gf, my buddy southcjay7 and one of his girls......definitely looking foward to it as this will be my first time there.....i dont plan on playing much poker, although if I do, I plan on playing cash games, since I dont want to be sitting in a tournament with ridiculous rake for hours on end.....

This week Im gonna try to fit 50 hours in - I might make a TLB run if no one is really pushing for it...Hopefully I can make a couple grand more and get to 25k on the month

An interesting week thus far

2008-07-23T17:09:00.000-07:00

So I took the majority of Saturday off to play golf, then spent all of Sunday chillen with my gf....Its nice to a break from work, and when your playing 40-50 hours a week, 7 days will burn you out quick.....Monday was pretty uneventful, losing a couple hundred over a 12 hour span....Tuesday began the rollercoaster....I started the afternoon out playing the 20r and a ton of sngs between Cake/AP. Quickly I was getting murdered on AP, putting me roughly -2k on the day.....I ended up going deep in the 20rebuy, shipping it for roughly 2200, leaving me breakeven at my first break around 5 PM. Nothing better than winning a MTT only to find your at where you started the day. During my nightshift, I made a couple hundred on Cake, and ended up going 3rd in the 8k for 1200. Once again I checked the account and I was still at where I started the day :(......I did make an error in the 8k that I really wish I could of folded...we were 3 handed and I had battled the CL a number of times postflop, and assumed he would loosen up(this guy was playing ridiculously tight).....Anyways I picked up A10clubs in the sb, made a standard raise prob 25 bbs deep, he reshoved prob 40 bbs deep, and I called. Against any decent aggressive player this is a pretty easy snap call, but against a total nit I think I should of folded. For me really to be calling with A10 there, he'd have to be shoving KQ,QJ,A6+, and to be honest this guy was THAT tight......looking back on it I guarentee he'd never reshove KJ,A6 there(would prob just call to see a flop), but who knows.

Im also on pace for 16-17k in generated rake, making me roughly 5k in rakeback. Im currently #1 on the AP rakerace which will net me a 2k bonus, #7 on cake for 400 bucks, and destroying these diamond promotions AP is offering.......Im finally profiting on Cake (although only by rakeback this month), putting me +3k on the month. Hopefully in August I can start running half way decent and get positive on sharkscope. Im sick of the fish bowl :(

time to cut out the fat

2008-07-14T16:02:00.000-07:00

So recently I came to the conclusion that playing the normal AP MTT's while playing SNG's isn't really that profitable for me, and for that reason Im cutting back on them....The main reason is concentration - I can 12 table Cake/AP sngs all day, but once I throw in some MTT's its going to slow me down/become more stressful....If im playing a MTT and its cutting me out of 2 games, thats 3 an hour im losing, and in the end Im not really making much more on a MTT 8-10 tabling than 12 tabling all sngs....Ill still do the goldmine tournys like the 30rebuy/maybe 100ss, but ill mainly just play the free entries I get from winning tlb.....Also Im trying to win both the AP/Cake rake races so I need all the games I can play...im currently 2nd on AP and 10th on cake.....cake i prob cant win but ill try to get top 5 so i can make 2k between both races.

Running like God in AP SNG's

2008-07-02T13:25:00.000-07:00

Since saturday I think ive made 7-8k off ap sngs - running like god.......cake im still getting hammered, dropping about 1k the past 2 days.....one day Id like to profit on there....

I also qualified into the 100k 2nite through a 25 dollar qualfier....hopefully i can get a big score and get to take some days off

Finally got a new monitor - getting hammered on cake

2008-06-29T23:39:00.000-07:00

so last week I decided to pick up a monitor - I ended up getting a 19 inch LG for 200 from best buy....with that i grabbed a mouse and went to work...the new monitor makes such a difference -now i can 10-12 table with cake games in the mix and not have to worry about constantly timing out...overall I think its a great investment and going to make me alot of money down the road....

as far as poker, ive getting raped on cake and doing pretty good on ap. I think im down 1600-1800 the past week or two playing 78s on cake, running terribly.....ap has been going well, basically cancelling out this cake downswing and making me some money, although ive been missing the big mtt cashes lately.....im excited about july since my rakeback site will now be offering 2k to first in the ap rake race, and 1200 to 1st in the cake rake race, so im hoping to make some bank off of that and some TLB wins...gl me

back from vacation, made some money

2008-06-20T13:29:00.000-07:00

Had a great vacation in St Martin this past week.....at first I was skeptical - driving by the villages and the town, everything was really run down and our hotel was about 30 minutes away from the action....The hotel turned out to be amazing, and we ended up having a great time....Nothing like relaxing on the beach in the carribean or tearing it up on a jetski in a beautiful location.....

On Wednesday I got back to the action.....Wed/Thurs was uneventful, breaking even, but today turned out to be a +4k day after a 20r victory and running well in sngs on both cake/ap....its crazy how quick mtts can turn - in the 20r i was down to 1200 chips at 150/300 early on after 2 pair ran into a set on the turn......somehow i chipped up from there and had a huge 3 way all in suckout with qq to put me in great position....feels good to get a decent mtt hit since its been a while.....

just woke up and making a post

2008-06-03T07:59:00.001-07:00

so last month turned out to be somewhat profitable - not sure exactly how much I made but roughly around 12k give or take 1k....June has started off in the red with a -2k swing the past couple days, but Im about to clear a 3k arp bonus on ap and recieve 700 from the rake race, so that should help things out....cake is still in the red but hopefully this month I can start turning a profit.....Im gonna try to knock out 40-45 hours this week since Ill be on vacation 12th-17th

solid week thus far outside pokerdb being ghey

2008-05-28T23:47:00.000-07:00

Sooo its been a solid week in both sngs and mtts....Sunday night i shipped the 100ss for 2700, and then today shipped 4500ss for 1800 and a 3rd in 30r for 1800 or so....SNG's have been so so, not too sure where Im at profit wise with them.....Ive also decided to quit keeping track of this 50k goal as I dont have an exact number....hopefully tomorrow and friday I can clear this 3k arp bonus as I need 15k more arps to do so.....

I mentioned pokerdb because they failed to record my 100ss win on Sunday..after contacting them i was told they cannot manually enter in a tournament result, thus fucking up my chance at tracking results on the year....not the biggest issue ive faced but nevertheless annoying.

rollercoaster week so far

2008-05-22T08:25:00.000-07:00

Poker is absoutely crazy in terms of the ups and downs....some days you finish loving poker, some days you are ridiculously stressed out wishing you didnt play.....monday and tuesday I had rough days - lost roughly 2500 of that 4700 I had made over the weekend, but then last night went on a quick heater and made 2k in about 3 hours....Im glad I dont play 200s right now cause dealing with those swings would kill me mentally, so hopefully I can make another 40-50k and not care about dropping 10k in horrible swings....

On a side note, Im pretty annoyed at pokerdb on bluffmagazine.com....The 100ss win I got never updated to their stats, and they told me it could take a couple weeks....I dont see why they cant manually enter it in now but I guess thats how it goes....today I plan on getting in 5-6 hours of play since Ill be out tonight and Friday Ill prob be busy all day......Im also about 35k arps away from 200k so Im looking foward to that 3k bonus.

had a good weekend

2008-05-19T00:59:00.000-07:00

finally got a couple hours in on sat-sun after a sort of breakeven week....played 2 hours of sngs on sat , made about 700, got home sunday for about 4 hours of play and made roughly 4k with a 100ss 9k win.....felt good to win a tourny as the last one was the 30rebuy i dont even know how long ago

Treating poker like a business

2008-05-11T16:29:00.000-07:00

This past week after lackluster performance, I decided to take a look at highly sucessful players in order to possibly learn something from them other than their actual poker skills. Just like any business in a specific industry, paying attention to your competitors moves is extremely important, and in poker, copying these moves can lead to making a higher hourly wage. I've never been big on change, and it costed me dearly. Wasting hours on end in the 40s last year hurt my profits, and being hesistant about jumping in 100+ mtts hurt my profitability, but at the same time maybe its good I'm more cautious then your average player. Anyways I've made two moves

1.Cake Poker - I talked about this earlier but never followed up on it. During the daytime, AP is slow and I can't 8-9 table, 6-tabling seems to be the average from noon-5pm. Cake is gonna allow me to keep the hourly wage I make at night during the day

2.UB - UB has some good MTT's, and I really need to get on there. The best part is I can xfer from there to AP so getting money on/off is a breeze. Either way this seems like a good business move

So there it is. The real goal is to get more games in, which leads to higher profits, lower variance, and an overall better strategic plan. I have found 8 tabling to be a breeze, so 9-10 tabling shouldn't be too bad....we shall find out soon enough

50K Sept Goal

+2500(roughly)

Summer is here - sort of

2008-05-02T13:31:00.000-07:00

I always considered May 1st - Sept 1st to be summer......I guess the real reason is I finish school usually the first week of May, and start around the first week of September, but this year September 1st I won't be starting anything :)....In the past the summer has been very productive in terms of moving up in poker - I started profiting in poker 2 years ago in July, building my roll up to 1k and having a huge August....last year I made the full time to jump to 100s in August and ended up having the biggest month(at that time) and picking up a seat to the Aruba Classic....So to up the ante, I decided to set a goal of 50k over the next 4 months.....its very achievable if I put the time in (only 1 vacation is scheduled so far for the summer), and hopefully itll push me to get better....Ill keep an update at the bottom of my blog entries and hopefully the goal is reached.

I also got the lease signed to this beach house - we move in on the 15th of the month and Im really looking foward to this....will be nice to play poker all day then drink/pong/etc at night...the place is somewhat small but being under a block from the beach is amazing

September 1st 50k goal
+643.00

end to a good month

2008-04-29T22:09:00.000-07:00

still running well in sngs.....im roughly +2k so far this week...had some mtt cashes as well - 7th in 100ss the other night for 500 i believe then a 1k cash today in 4500ss.....nothing too exciting.......it feels great to have the biggest downswing ive ever had in sngs and climb out of it sucessfully - makes it easier the next time one of those roll around.....

in other news I got my last final tomorrow night....its great to be finishing up college - somewhat of a scary feeling though that financial security is gone, and its really all on me at this point....at the same time im excited to never see a textbook again or listen to 50 year olds recite passages in a textbook that have no relation to making money in the real world....there were definitely some classes that were valuable to me, but alot were just a waste of time.....im also 99% about moving into this beachhouse in a couple weeks, so its a very exciting time....hopefully things go well

Long week - 40 hrs in 4 days

2008-04-24T16:16:00.000-07:00

So last week I set a goal of getting in 40 hours a week, similar to a "real" job but more importantly to get in high volume so I could start making money again. I ended up breaking even all the way till today, and finished +1500 through sngs....in the past week I dont think I had one MTT cash :(....April is starting to look like a good month - after reviewing past posts Im around +11k in sngs/mtts, +2k in RB, +1k or so in ARPs, and most likely +1k from this rake race, putting me around +15k so far this month......Id like to hit 20k one of these months but Id need to hit a mtt in the next 6 days to give that a shot.....lets go ap gods :)

Im also thinking about moving to Cake Poker so I can consistently get in 8-9 tables at a time when AP is slow.....Cake SNG's are a real joke, much like AP.....they're a little slow but AP is too, so combining the sites might be worthwhile....The downsides are withdrawing - check seems to be the only viable option as of now, and they dont even offer a courier method.....rather not wait 20 days for my money...

Tomorrow I will be taking off the whole day to play golf, check out this new house I might rent, and see my girlfriend...Its been a long week of grinding so I really need a solid couple days to relax and actually enjoy living

Some friday night poker and a weekend of rest

2008-04-19T11:42:00.000-07:00

So I got home around 7 to get a night in of poker.....decided to do that donkfest 10k since I planned on sitting there from 8pm-2am.....I havent done a 50 dollar freezout in a while, since the prizepools never really interest me, but this ended up paying around 3k to first so I figure id give it a roll....Ended up losing AA to KK when I was 2nd in chips with like 16 to go - was sort of shocked at the time but thats poker....essentially if I won that I would of had prob double the stack of 2nd place and I would imagine I could ship that a high % of the time considering how little chips are in play....I gotta say though that tournament is REALLY soft.....I know AP tournaments in general are much softer than other sites, but theres very little blind defending in the 10k, and around the bubble the majority are trying to cash and playing ridiculously tight.....Theres also just a ton of donkey shoves so I would definitely recommend this tournament if you want some easy money :) Ended up busting the 30r,100ss and being about breakeven in sngs...

This weekend im just gonna chill and relax....the weather is real nice today so I wanna take advantage of it...Also I find myself hating poker when I play a little 6-7 days a week, so Id rather just play a long week rather than stretch it out....usually when I play the weekend I find myself dreading to play on Monday

Return to normalcy (or just running good)

2008-04-17T01:01:00.000-07:00

So I started the week on Monday after being gone over the weekend...Mon I dropped about 1500 in sngs/mtts, but then went on a heater making that 1500 back and another 2k on top....then tonight i shipped the 30rebuy for 4500 bringing the weekly total to around +6500....feels good to win the 30r outright, as ive only chopped it before or fallen in 2nd....Ive also made a conscious effort this week to keep track with the amount of hours Ive been playing...my goal is to play 40 hours this week, and its tough fitting this in with a school schedule,gym, and a social life.....I believe im around 30 hours on the week, so hopefully I can fit in another 10 between thurs and friday....

Outside of poker playing, my sleep schedule is all fucked up......becasue alot of these tournaments run till 3 in the morning, I find myself sitting here at 4:10 AM wide awake, failing to fall asleep after some attempts.....Just to make it worse I have class at 9:30 AM, and I definitely can't miss it....good times

good day - ran hot in sngs - the end of the bad run?

2008-04-11T13:44:00.000-07:00

ended up around +2k over a couple hours...went 3rd in 20rebuy and ran hot in sngs.....could this be the end of my run?? i hope so, but who knows.....currently at about +3500 this week, so Id like to continue the trend and possibly end around +5k...

outside of poker, it looks like the house i was gonna rent fell apart, so i was a little dissapointed with that. regardless we will keep looking and eventually throw some sick parties

poker, taxes, and golf

2008-04-08T23:21:00.001-07:00

things been going ok in sngs lately....past 2 days im up about 1500 even with dumping prob 600 in mtt buy ins, so glad to see Im really +2k or so in sngs......I havent had a real cash in a mtt lately, but found it funny cashing the 20r today for 78 bucks....so i lose 2 dollars for cashing???

Im also in the process of completing my taxes for 07 - its alot of fun giving money away to the government but I guess I don't have too much of a choice...luckily I made under 100k last year so I wasn't hit too hard...

Finally the temps are starting to hit the 60s, and its time for me to hit the links....I logged about 8 hours today so I could take alot of tomorrow off and play - hopefully I do decent and break 100 for once....

Come join my RB site, make money and make me money :)

2008-04-07T14:30:00.000-07:00

I dunno if all the rakeback sites have done this but rakebreak.com has now made it so you can cash your rakeback out at any time which is great....Along with that they also have prize payouts to those earning the most rake during the month which is definitely pretty nice...So if you wanna make some extra bank sign up at rakebreak.com and use referral code "z06fanatic" (end shameless plug)

A couple MTTs and a quick rundown of my expectation

2008-04-05T14:10:00.000-07:00

So I slept over my gf's last night, got back home around 130 pm today and signed up for the 25k,10k, and 4500ss....10k first hand I repop with KK guy calls, flop comes 3 diamonds, I got the Kd. I basically get it all in on the flop with the shallow 1500 stacks, he calls with flopped flush obv(36dd), gg me...4500ss, I end up busting with tptk into set....25k im still goin - wish me luck!

So I was driving to my girls thinking about my expectation and how ridiculous this has been...so I decided to run some numbers to get an "idea" of what my expectation is. Now that I dropped 200s for now, Im going to just calculate 65s/100s, as well as mtts. Lets say I average 1000 games a month, and say my ROI in 100s is 6%, with a 10% ROI in 65s(no idea where my true ROI is, but I'd think that my ROI is higher than this).....Lets say 600 100s and 400 65s....as for mtts lets say I do 50 a month, avg buy in 100, with a longterm ROI of 60%(rather keep my estimates conservative)...sooooo

600 100s = 65,400 a month in buy ins, 3924 in profit(6%), 1620 in RB = 5544.00/mo
400 65s = 28,400 a month in buy ins, 2840 in profits(10%), 720 in RB = 3560/mo
50 mtts = 5,000 in buy ins, 3000 in profits(60%), 3000/mo

That equals 12,104.00 profit per month + ARPs which usually equals to around 80-90,000 a month or roughly 1300, so 13,400 lets say.

I think thats a conservative estimate of my profitability, and at the same time 150k for the year would make me really happy. So lets say I take the last 4 months and compare them to my expectation. Dec I was +6k over expectation, Jan +1k, Feb -10k behind expectation, March -7500 behind, thus going into April Im technically 10k behind expectation.....all in all this 150k mark is still not that far away, but it would be nice to run at "expectation" for once.

-ps - if anyone has any info that could help me narrow down true ROI's in these games Id appreciate it.

been slackin on blogging

2008-04-04T12:07:00.001-07:00

thats mainly due to not making the monies :(....after my last blog post, the follow day i chopped the 20r again and ended last week around 3k-3500.....ive been really raping these small mtts on ap and way ahead of my ROI goal for 08 of 50% or more...Hopefully I can keep the ROI atleast something respectable (50-60%) on the year...

SNG's have still been a struggle as I took a -3k swing this week in em.......On a positive note my rakeback site is offering payouts for those who earn top rake for the month, so Im hoping to win that leaderboard

easter and a decent day to follow

2008-03-24T16:26:00.000-07:00

Had a good easter with my family and my girlfriend.....ate a TON of food which wasn't the greatest idea for my diet, but hey im only human.....today I got up early enough for the 20rebuy - ended up taking 2nd after running a8 into 99 and losing to a runner runner flush earlier, but I did get very lucky early in the FT where my JJ > QQ......Also made something like 6-700 in sngs, bringing the total to +2k......tonight Ill try to play the 30r/100ss and obv a ton of sngs, and hopefully I can continue profiting in SNGs....Over the weekend I also took the time to buy some training videos featuring beanmo, a highly sucessful SNG grinder on FTP, that has a TON of money in the 55-200 buy ins....Overall his calls/shoves/etc were on point with my rationale but what I realized was he played somewhat tighter than I did in terms of shoving....he wouldn't push 100% in some spots, especially against bbs that were deepstacked or he was abusing previously....I almost think some of his folds there were wrong because ICM says otherwise, but hes the one making alot more than me so Im willing to follow:)

Also haven't been keeping up with profits for the year, mainly because I dropped a ridiculous amount of money in sngs.....Overall though I think im around 20k on the year which is pretty bad - hopefully I can get something big going soon

small mtt ship

2008-03-19T14:02:00.000-07:00

won the 4500ss - had like 40 people in it so its really not a true MTT but nevertheless got 1800 for the win...sngs are still no fun - yest i had a +1k run in em - thought i was out of the cold streak but then i dumped that money back today.....been playing less 200s just till things get better again - the difference in buy ins is really annoying cause everything depends on how i run in 200s....i could kill 65s/100s, but if i run like shit in 200s i make no money...even shipping an mtt isnt a big deal if i drop 5-10 200s.....obv in the longrun it doenst matter but stringing together some consistent days would help my confidence and get me back on track.....

outside of poker me,southcjay7 and my buddy are still on the hunt for a house starting this summer.....we found a nice spot in milford beach area, but theyre too jewish to pay the 7-800/mo it would cost......hopefully we find something soon that isnt a shithole.

won the 9k sngs still not fun

2008-03-11T00:48:00.000-07:00

luckily won the 9k tonight.....seemed to breeze through it without any issues - the guy i got HU with was pretty bad imo....sngs still been sluggish - im happy with my game in those so im not too worried about things. hopefully things turn soon enough.

Poker is definitely not an easy job

2008-03-06T22:14:00.000-08:00

So the streak continued - while im not dropping money anymore im just staying between +500 and -1k lately....its been rough - alot of thoughts run through your head if your even +ev in these games and if you'll ever profit again.....personally i still feel im a winner in 200s - ive proven to be a decent winner in 100s, so I figure at the very least im a slight winner in the 2s....in my opinion alot of the 200 players still have a TON of leaks - alot of the "regulars" dont know ICM, call too lightly, and overshove in alot of spots......I think alot of the 200 players outside a couple regulars that I know are cash game players who dont really know the push/fold game, and tend to overcall pre and try to outplay opponents postflop when stack sizes are just too shallow to do this....in general outside the money, stack sizes are short and theres really not alot of spots to double barrel opponents when your 12-15 bbs deep.....of course theres times when the 200s are real tough with some great opponents, but overall i gotta be profitable.....time will tell