so i think it’s safe to say that my downswing is dead and buried! i’ve been doing well lately in the POKERS – both online and live.
after i wrote that last post on friday june 18, i went back to the card club to play some more $100max (which i just learned is not $100 maximum buy in, but $100 maximum bet per hand. i just assumed $100 referred to the buy in because people usually buy in for $100). i’m getting a lot better at using information live, figuring out how to play against different types of players, and identifying who to target. i had a great position at my table, with a loose-aggressive crazy directly to my right who kept playing wild, losing his stack and rebuying. i won a lot of chips from him. i also got paid off with Q10 vs QJ on a QQxx10 board, obviously a lucky river for me :) and ended up with a profit of over $500 on the night! it was rather amazing actually. i was hitting hands, but i was also playing well; i’ve become so much more comfortable playing live and being aggressive live, and i think it’s really starting to pay off for me.
then that sunday i hopped into a $10+1 superstack tournament online. i usually play at least one of these a day; i started out playing turbos and superturbos, but i much prefer playing with deep stacks now, because it gives me the best chance to really play, and if i get unlucky i’ll still have enough chips to recover. i think this is a sign i am getting better at poker, especially when it comes to postflop play. i ended up making the final table and took 5th place (out of 2500 players) for $1300! it was so nice to FINALLY rake in another decent cash, and it was a couple days before my birthday, so that was a nice present for me. on my actual birthday, last tuesday, i took another trip to the card club and ended up with $100 in profit.
i went out to VEGAS last weekend to celebrate, and 5 of my friends from LA came out to party with me! it was a fun birthday trip.
my new friend rob hooked me up with a sick suite at the venetian and we spent friday observing the bro-fest down at the pool, hanging in the casino playing craps (well, my friends were; i don’t know how to play craps nor do i really care to learn), and eating yummy italian food. saturday we went to this swanky place craftsteak to have birthday steak, which was amazing!! then we went to a party a ways from the strip, at the house of some young hotshot internet players. i met up with a guy from pokerstatic and we talked about potentially doing some kind of blog or video series for the site, which would be awesome! i’m hoping that works out. after the party we went back to the venetian and i tried my hand at some $1/2 at like 4am. with no success, ha ha. i lost one buy-in after i pushed in with a set of 4s on a 432 flop; got called by AA and she rivered the 5. i bought in again but by that time i was getting hammered (free drinks ftw) and not really on my game. i went for a squeeze play all in with AK over a raise and call; the original raiser had KK, ohhh well. so no poker profits to report, but it wasn’t really a poker-playing trip for me so much. none of my friends who were there with me play any poker, and i didn’t want to just run off and sit at a table for hours when they were all there to celebrate with me!
on sunday we had brunch and then my friends headed back to LA, and i went over to the rio to check out the WSOP! i got there just as one of the tourneys was going on a break, so as i was walking down the hallway toward the tournament rooms, a flood of players were walking toward me, including quite a few i recognized, which i totally got a kick out of. i spotted chris ferguson, phil ivey, and joe hachem, who i believe were all there for the tournament of champions. my coach alex outhred was deep in a $1500 NL tourney, and i got to rail for a minute but he busted with JJ vs QQ shortly after play began. that was a bummer, but he took $16K for that event which is pretty fucking awesome!! rob was also at the WSOP playing the 1K and busted around the same time, so we all went to have some drinks at a bar in the rio which is supposedly infamous for its hookers. unfortunately there were no hookers there! kind of a let-down. whatever. over the course of the afternoon i met a whole bunch of people who i’ve been chatting with on twitter, and that was super fun. it was definitely exciting to be at the world series, though i have to say it seems much more glamorous on TV. i guess everything is probably more glamorous on TV though. i’m really hoping i’m good enough to take a stab at a 1K event next year!
it was a great weekend, but vegas is really a weird place. the tourists and crowds alone would be enough to drive my agoraphobic ass insane, and the other thing was that i don’t think i’ve ever seen such a high concentration of sluts anywhere else on earth. every girl there is teetering around in 5″ heels with her fake tits ready to bust out of her micro-minidress. where do they all come from? what do they do? they can’t all be hookers! aren’t their parents ashamed of them? haha. anyway, it’s clear that i could never in my wildest nightmares live in las vegas. i’ll be happy to go there for tournaments, but after 3 days of partying there i was pretty well exhausted.
so i’m feeling great about my game lately, and as i am getting more confident playing live, last night i decided to take a shot at a LIVE TOURNAMENT at the card club. i’ve only played in one live tourney before, a few months ago. it was $100+20 buy in and i had someone staking me for it; unfortunately i didn’t cash, and i think i was playing a lot more conservatively than i normally would; i suspect it may have affected my game to be playing with someone else’s money. it was just too much added pressure on top of the anxiety about playing my first live tournament. but in the last few weeks i’ve gotten much more experience in the live cash games, and i figured if i can win at those, i should be able to have live tournament success, since all i play is tournaments online! i’ve also been offered potential backing during an upcoming tournament series at the bay 101 in august, and if i want to play that i definitely need to get some live tourney practice in. so last night’s tourney was $80 (+20 tourney fee) with an optional $80 rebuy at any point in the first 4 levels, regardless of chip count. i decided to do what i’d do if i were playing that structure online, which was to take the rebuy right away. so i knew i would be in for $180, which is WAY out of my bankroll, but right now i am keeping a distinction between my online bankroll and my live winnings, so i justified it because the cash for this tourney was coming out of last week’s card club earnings.
so i started with 5000 chips (2500 starting stack + 2500 for my rebuy). it seemed like about half the players at my table took the rebuy immediately. i decided to do it up unabomber-style for this tourney: hoodie, sunglasses, headphones, no table talk. i have heard some women say it helps to be nice and flirtatious at the poker table, but i think the stealth attitude works to my advantage right now because it allows me to focus on what people are doing, without distractions. i’m still learning how to process all the additional information that comes into play with live poker (counting my chip stack, counting other people’s chip stacks, counting the chips in the pot, keeping an eye on the tournament clock, watching for body language, trying not to give off “tells,” etc) and i don’t need to mess around with table chatter while i’m trying to do all that stuff. so a few hands in i picked up KQ, and lost about half my starting stack trying to bluff a guy off a scary coordinated low-card board that started as a multiway pot (possible straights and flushes, plus pair of 4s on board). i’d seen this guy fold to pressure a couple hands previous, and it seemed like a nice spot for a bluff since i hadn’t played a hand yet. i fired big bets at the turn and river, but unfortunately his hand was a lot stronger than i expected (he had AA) and he called me down. so that was an awful start, and i had to show the bluff which meant i wouldn’t be able to do much more bluffing for a while, but i still had 2700ish chips which was more than the people who hadn’t yet rebought.
i laid low for a while and picked some good spots, and doubled when i had a set hold up against an open ender. i also semi-bluffed a guy by moving all in with 99 on a J hi board with 3 diamonds on the turn. i’d bet the flop and he called, and i knew he had something but i could tell he didn’t like the board, and i KNEW he didn’t like the third diamond on the turn. i think i probably got him off a better hand, and i won a lot of chips there, so i liked that play. by the first break i had something like 10K chips and it looked like i was the chipleader at my table. i wasn’t being overly active, but i was being aggressive in the hands i played, and hanging on to my chip lead. there were something like 100 players to start, and we were down to around 30 with top 16 getting paid, when a slovenly fat guy with a huge stack was moved to my table two to my right. he was playing just about every pot and seemed to be bullying the table, which he probably was. unfortunately for me, i got tangled up in a hand with him when he actually had it. i believe blinds were 300/600 at that point, and i raised to 1500 from early position with AQ. he called from the big blind and the flop came 7 hi. he fired out a small bet at the pot, something like 600 when the pot would have had over 3000 in it. based on how active he had been, my feeling was that he had a couple of high cards and he probably also put me on a couple of high cards, and was making a weak attempt to steal the pot. i raised his flop bet there, and unfortunately he called. the turn was another low card, and he bet enough to put me all in. obviously i can’t call all in with overcards and had to fold, and he showed 1010.
so another bluff gone wrong, and i was left with around 10 big blinds to work with. i knew i basically had to find a hand to shove with at that point, and about a minute before the second break a guy in early position raised, fat slovenly flatted, and i looked down at AK. it seemed like a perfect spot; i figured i’d probably be a flip (or even a favorite if he had a weaker A) against the first guy and slovenly’s flat call would be dead money, so it was an obvious all in. and exactly as i hoped, the original raiser pushed in over the top to isolate me, but slovenly didn’t seem to want to fold, and tanked for about two minutes. the other tables had already gone on break and the dealer was pushing him to make a decision – and i don’t know if things would have turned out differently if she hadn’t – but he decided to call, with JJ. i think JJ against two all ins is an obvious fold because the best you are hoping for is a flip, and it was for at least half his chips. anyway, it was really unlucky for me that he called, because the original raiser turned over A7 (!!) and the JJ held up to eliminate both of us.
so that was my second tournament experience. i am disappointed i didn’t cash, but i think i played much better than i did in my first tournament, so i’m glad i played it, and every time i play i learn tons of new stuff – especially live since i’m so new at it. i enjoy playing aggressively and i think it worked out except for the times i got caught bluffing. i am learning more about how the live players at the card club play; they seem to be pretty straightforward. they don’t make any fancy moves, no one is 3-betting either pre or post flop, and i am reasonably certain that no one bluffed me all night. i now know that i mostly have to respect their bets and flat calls as indicating a reasonably strong hand, pound my real hands for value, and give up on trying to get people off their hands because they just aren’t gonna fold. learning, learning..
so that’s what’s been doing lately. i’m feeling really on top of my game right now and i’m hoping it will continue to pay off. tomorrow is friday which seems to be degenerate fishfest at the card club, so perhaps i will give the cash game a go. luck and no unluck please!
–thegroupie
