A lot of poker...

School is pretty much over with so I have been playing a lot of poker. Today, I played over 8 hours and did not profit a penny. However, I didn't lose much. I was multi tabling limit like usual and ended today down a little. Overall for the week, I lost somewhere between 1K and 2K. Not a problem since tomorrow I'll be final tabling a major tourney. Dave and I will play in all the majors tomorrow afternoon, hopefully putting in a 10 hour session. I am pretty sick of limit holdem right now and I need a break from it. I am excited to get up for church in the morning and then get started with the tourneys. This could be the day...

3 Finals Left till Summer Bay Bay!

All I have left for this school year are three finals. They should not be too tough though. I am sooo ready for school to get out and get back to the beautiful state of Montana.

I have been playing some poker off and on for the last few days and things were going pretty good. I keep improving at my limit game, which is the most important. After that bad night that I last wrote about, I played for 30 minutes the next day and made everything I lost the previous day back. Since then, I have been grinding and was up a couple thousand until I just sat at a 50/100 5 handed table on Titan. I noticed a huge difference with the players. In the 15 minutes I played, it seemed that these guys knew what they were doing. I was 3 bet every hand I raised and did not catch a thing, so I ended down 2K. No biggie. I am proud of myself because I played 50/100 like I play 5/10. They are just bets, it is not money. This view allows me to have success because being the tightwad that I am, I would not be able to stomach the huge swings involved in shorthanded limit holdem.

I am excited to have a lot of time on my hands to start playing some more tourneys. I really need to improve my tourney game if I ever want to final table a major. I also want to check out some live games when I get back to Montana since the legal age to gamble is 18 and there are casinos everywhere in Billings. This next week, I should be able to play a lot of poker, but I want to spend as much time with my girlfriend and friends as possible since it is the last week of school. Oh, I guess i'll look over some notes for my finals once too. JUST ONCE THOUGH! I'll update again in a few days. Peace.

Frustrating!

I have just found out that if you never hit a pair when playing heads up, you will lose a lot of money. I just played a total hee haww heads up 20/40 and lost about $1600 to him in less than an hour before others started to sit down. I decided to call it quits after after that blood bath. I was also playing another 20/40 table and lost another $800 at that table.

This player is usually the type of player that I profit so much from. He limped almost every sb and he called my raise out the bb every hand. The problem was....I COULDN'T EVEN FLOP A PAIR any hand, and the hands I did hit a pair, he usually had the nuts. 2 out of the last 3 hands I played, i was dealt QQ and KK in the sb. With QQ I raise and he calls, flop was KJ4, he check raised the flop and I called him down. He flips over K6o, nice hand sir. Two hands later I have KK in the sb, I raise he calls, flop A69, he check raises flop and I call down. He flips over A2o. Nice hand sir. I guess that is poker and that is when I need to call it quits for the night, if not for a few days. I hate to walk away from my money at a table, but when things are this cold, I have to call it a night.

Man, being a poker player can be frustrating! Time to count my blessings and go to bed.

Still Running Hot!

Today was a nice little Saturday. I woke up at 10 to go watch my girlfriend's tennis match today. She played extremely well and won both doubles and singles. It was fun to watch. I then played tennis against a friend later on in the afternoon and was serving and hitting well. It is fun to take a break from basketball and play another sport for a change. After I played tennis, I came back to my room and played some poker on Titan. I had a pretty good session, up about a grand or so.

After the session, I ate supper and then Leah, my girlfriend, came over and we watched Face Off. What a great movie! After the movie, we called it a night and a I played a quick session that was less than an hour. I was just hot and played extremely well, making over 2K while playing two 20/40 tables. This week has just been great. I eclipsed the 10K mark for the week, my second in three weeks. Right now, I can definitely say, "I like poka, poka is fun."

Tomorrow, I will be unable to have my routine Sunday. Dave and I have kind of made it a ritual to play in all the big Sunday tourneys on five or six different websites. Tomorrow, however, we have basketball open gym at 8 at night due to recruits coming to visit. I am also supposed to host one of the recruits. So I guess I'm going to have to wait another week before I final table one of those tourneys and have a huge payday. My goal for tomorrow is to finish every single assignment that I have been given for the rest of the school year, so I can have a stress-free final two weeks of school. Life is Good!

Wow!

Wow, I didn't realize how easy this game can be. This week, I have just been grinding at 10/20 and 20/40 on titan and 15/30 on pokerfantasy. Before tonight, I had been up about 5K on the week after a few sessions here and there. However, tonight was amazing. It has been one of those nights when I can do no wrong. I started out 2 tabling, 20/40 on titan and 15/30 on pokerfantasy. I made about 1K on each in less than an hour before the tables broke. I then sat at the heads up 10/20 table on titan and waited for people to sit with me. I love doing this because people like to sit with $100 with me because they don't like money or something. I usually bust these people in less than 5 hands (ok, sometimes it takes 10) and then they rebuy for $100 or leave. Tonight was different though. First a guy sits with around $600. I run pretty well just grind him down until I eventually bust him. That took around a half hour. Immediately afterwards, another guy named igrok33 sits with me with $1K. My first couple of buttons he 3 bets me so I think to myself that he is a decent player and may not be profitable to play against. So he starts off up about $200 on me. I decide to stick around for a while longer and then I discovered the real igrok33. I pick up a few tendencies from him.... HE LOVES TO RAISE AND RERAISE. The good part about it is this... he hardly ever has hands when he raises and reraises. So I start chipping away only playing pots when I have something. When I say something, I really mean ANYTHING. Anything was good against this guy. I could also do no wrong. When I call down with A high, it wasn't good some of the time, it was good ALL the time! I can not express in words how bad this guy was. It was only a matter of a minutes before I took IT ALL. I would look at the history of each hand to see what I was being called down with and he would continually call with J high or even worse. I came to the conclusion that this guy was either extremely drunk or extremely rich and stupid. I ended the day up about 3.5K. This session was just the epitomy of fun!

After I played this guy, I called it a night and went to play tennis under the lights with a few friends of mine. What a great night! Here is a screen shot of a hand in which a was capped out preflop and flop, 2 bets on turn, and capped out on river. Note that he called me on the river with 4 high and he didn't even have a draw the whole way. I mean this guy was GOOD!

The week starts on Tuesday

It was great not having school today since Monday is my toughest day of the week. However, poker was pretty frustrating today. I woke up at noon after coming back from my friend's house last night and played in a couple of 10$ mtt qualifiers. I busted out of those without making any noise. I then decided to play some super qualifier sngs. Even though I had a freeroll for tonight's Super Monday, I wanted to build some more up. So I played in those 2 this afternoon and took 2nd in both! This is extremely frustrating, especially after having a 5 to 1 chip stack on one of the guys heads up. I guess 2nd is better than 3rd though because you get your money back.
After the qualifiers, I sat down with 1,000$ at 10/20 on titan. After a little while a guy sat down with 100$. So I decided that I wanted would take it. I take down the first 2 pots and he is soon down to 30$. I put him all in the next 2 hands. I had the best hand both times when we put all our money in, but he eventually caught up and started building a stack. So we started to play real poker with his chip stack at a decent level. This player is toughest player I have ever played against. His plays were soooo unorthodox and I had such a hard time putting him on hands. I think he preferred playing out of position in the bb because he loved betting into me. So for the first 45 minutes, I was running extremely cold and he had built his stack all the way up to close to 600 and I was down to under 500. There were multiple times that I would raise in the sb, which I do every hand, then he would call. Flop would come and he would bet, I would raise, and he would call. Turn. He bets, i raise, he calls. River. He bets, I raise, he calls. This would happen so often, but usually I would have to fold on the turn or river because I had nothing and could not really do anything with my nothing because he was sure to call down. I decided I was just going to play fairly tight after the flop and wait to have a decent hand. I just cannot emphasize enough how odd this person's play was. He would alternate every other sb by limping and raising. I think he just decides before he gets his cards if he is going to raise or limp, I don't know. Anyways, I was extremely cold the first 45 min. I could not flop a pair to save my life and he hardly ever let me get away with taking down a pot that I had nothing. Of course the only times he folded out of the bb were the times I had AA. After 45 minutes, I was tilting really bad and had to force myself to take deep breaths and concentrate. After doing this, I started hitting some hands and of course was getting paid off. Another 45 minutes later and I had finally busted him. I had 1,017$ when I left the table. The rake took 83$ from us in an hour and a half. That's sad.
After that stressful session, I went and shot baskets and had a good workout for about an hour and a half before I played in the Super Monday. I got back to my room in time to play some more Super Qualifier sngs. I played 4 and was knocked out while having a dominate hand in 3 of them. Oh well.
8:00 came along and it was time to start win the Super Monday. 8:12 came along and I was out. haha. What a waste. I suck at poker. I lost more than a quarter of my stack with a semibluff. The guy was not folding though and I missed my flush draw. A few minutes later, I pick up QQ and push on a guy who raised in late position. He called with AK and a K flopped and I'm out.
Though poker was bad today, it was still nice to not have school. After poker, I watched a couple episodes of South Park (I have them all downloaded on my laptop) and Fun with Dick and Jane. So not a bad day overall. Time to quit blabbing. Maybe tomorrow will be my day.

P.S. This is a bs email I received today from Pacific Poker. I'm pretty disappointed because I make a lot of money from bonus points.

Dear Alex, This is Russell M. from the Operations Department at Cassava (Gibraltar) Ltd. Cassava (Gibraltar) Ltd operates "Pacific Poker". I am contacting you in regards to your Pacific Poker account with username "CUbball". Our bonus point's scheme in Pacific Poker is a great benefit that we are happy to present to our members. This scheme is not targeted towards expert poker players but rather to help the average player overcome losing streaks. Please notice that our Bonus Policy states that we reserve the right at our sole discretion, to deny any bonus or promotion, or rescind any policy in respect of that user, either temporarily or permanently. Since you are a very successful poker player (as can be seen from your total winnings), we have decided to stop bonus points from being added to your account. The current bonus points that you have in your account, can be converted to money and placed into your bankroll until the 25th of April 2006. From this date onwards, although your points will keep accumulating, you will not be able to convert them. Please note that this by no means will hurt any of your other privileges as a successful player on our site - we congratulate you on all your winnings and we hope to see you continue to prosper in our poker community. Regards, Russell M.

Screw this Russell guy.

Time to Start Writing

I keep telling myself that I'm going to start writing about how poker and life is going. Well now it is time. Today has been extremely relaxing. No school today since it is Good Friday. I woke up at about 11 and have left my room only twice today. I have just been watching some movies and i played some poker. Poker didn't go so great today. I played some 10/20 HU this afternoon and made about 1K then I saw a guy sitting all lonely at the 50/100 table and I decided to take his money. The exact opposite happened. I lost 1K on the first 3 hands and another guy sat so I decided to leave. booo. Later in the afternoon, I sat with this total donk at 30/60, but I was just running real cold. Then when I hit huge hands, he had bigger. It was just one of those sessions. I ended down about 1.5K and I then decided to call it quits with limit for the day. I always feel devastated whenever I lose 500 or more in a session, but then I remembered last weeks profit of over 10K and I decide to not let it bother me too much. I decided to play in the Friday Special, so I played 3 sngs qualifiers. I won with first, took 4th in the second, and took 2nd in the third and lost on a horrible beat but oh well. So I qualified for the Friday Special.

As for the Friday Special (200 +15 buy in), I was playing really well early on. I had 4500 in chips and AQd utg (blinds 30/60). I raised to 180, 4 callers. Flop As 9d 3d. Beautiful. I bet 3/4 the pot. Everyone folds to the button who calls. Turn Jd. NUTS! Pot is about 2000 and i decide to check. Button bets the pot and I push on him. He immediately calls with 99 and the river is a cute little 5c. My stack then is a little over 10K and I'm sitting well early on. About a half hour later, I have KK utg. I raise 3x and get 3 callers this time. Flop 5J8 rainbow, I bet the flop and get called by a station on my left. Turn 9. Ok good card right. Wrong. I bet, he pot and he pushes for not much more. He flips over 10 7. I guess he knew his gutterball was coming. I take a hit that hand and am down to about 4500 chips with the blinds at 50/100. Still sitting fine. I pick up a few small pots during the next hour and don't really build up a big stack until I see AQo in the sb (about 6000 chips, blinds 150/300). Folds around to the cutoff who flat pushes with 4500 chips. I call instantly and he flips over the very dangerous 34c. I am a little nervous until I see the Q door card. yeet yeet. But hold on. Flop Q35, turn 6, oh crap. River 7. I am crippled. A few hands later I am pretty much forced to push all in (1500 chips) with A10s and the bb calls with K9, K flops and that is the end of me. So a dissappointing Friday Special, but thats poker and that pretty much sums up how tourneys have been going for me the last 2 months or so.

Well this is kinda long so I'll end it here. I probably should get as much homework done during this 4 day weekend as possible so I wont be stressed out the remaining 2 weeks of school. I'll try to update this blog as frequently as possible. Time to get a good 12 hours of sleep then probably play in the absolute poker 100K guaranteed tomorrow. Until next time...

P.S. Jesus died for all. 3 more days...