Careful what you wish for!

How can you make a $500 win feel like a loss? Start off with a $3400 win, and lose it until you have only a $500 win instead!

As you can see from my last post, I like to keep my chip stacks in a big triangle. You get a perfect triangle at the following number of stacks (a stack being 20 chips): 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36, etc. I had my chips up to 27 stacks plus change on Friday night, and I wanted to get to that next perfect triangle and call it a night. Instead Mike Landucci shows up and proceeds to run over the table including myself. It was a combination of me playing bad, getting sucked out on, and going on mini-tilt! Stupid triangles!

I'm not a big movie fan or TV watcher. I think most of the things that come out of mainstream Hollywood is garbage. I am not a pop culture kind of guy, haven't been for the past 5 years or so. The TV that I watch is generally sports, documentaries, Discovery Channel, and Food Network TV. That being said, I did watch a good movie last night based on a friend's recommendation. August Rush , was a very enjoyable movie, despite the obvious made for the movie "moments". It struck somewhat of a personal chord with me as well, having quite a bit of empathy with the main character, and understanding his intense desire to be reunited with his parents.

Chip Stack

Had a great Wednesday night. Played 4.75 hours and booked a 3900 win in the 40/80. Chris(aka DeathDonkey) a fellow alum from UCSD although he attended much later than I did, along with Mike Landucci were in the game. Both were on my left, making me play much tighter than normal, as they were liberally re-raising when in position. Chris runs a website called deucescracked.com, which I hope is doing well. Here's a picture of my stack I took that night.

60 or 160?

Damn, playing pool is killing my expected value. I put in a short session yesterday. I showed up at the casino at around 8:45 pm, got into a 20/40 game and won 708 in 2 hours and 45 minutes before I got called for the 40/80 game. I won 295 in 45 minutes at the 40/80 game. I told Danny that I wanted to win another $60 bucks so I could be up a thousand on the night. The game was really juicy, and I'm pretty sure that I could have cleaned up, but Danny really wanted to go, and I was up almost 1k. So I tell Danny just let me play this last round and let me see if I can make my 60. This is after the button has already passed me, and I have like 4 or 5 hands to go before i have to post the big blind. I muck all the hands until I am under the gun. I get ace-king, raise it up and everybody folds, making me exactly $60 and putting me up a little over 1k for the night, so far.

Then I played pool with Danny, and dumped off 60 bucks to Danny plus 20 for time so a total of 80 on the night. That two hours at the pool hall only cost me who knows how much from what I could have made at the poker table. Next time if my win goal is 1k for the night and Danny wants to go shoot pool, I'm going to tell him I need to win a hundred extra to cover my pool losses.

Tourney Time

I'm currently playing the 3K guaranteed on bodog.com
I have 22k in chips, average is 10.7k, 37/266 runners remain.
I'm guaranteed at least 37th place which pays 15.00. The buy-in was $8.80. But I used tourney credits to buy-in so it's pure profit as far as I'm concerned.

Most of these players are complete donkeys. I had only 1 real bad-suck out on me. All folded to me on the button. I raise with AQo, BB calls with a small stack. I flop an ace, we end up allin on the flop. He has pocket queens, no straight draw no flush draw. He pushed into me! Spikes the last queen in the deck on the river.

First pays 735. I'm hoping to final table.

Update 1: I'm currently chip-leader with 51k in chips. 22 remain.
Update 2: Just busted a big stack with AK vs AQ. We both rivered a boat. Have 81k in chips now.
Update 3: Made the final table as chip leader 92k in chips. Blinds are 1500/3000
Update 4: On break at the final table. 4 of us left. I am second in chips with 124k. Big stack has 215k, 2 small stacks with 39k and 21k. Coming off the break blinds will be 4000/8000 with some ante probably a 1000. I'm sure the big stack and me will try to take out the small stacks first and then play heads up for first place. We'll see what happens. I'm tired and want to go to bed however. I didn't think I would make it this far when I started the tourney at 10:00pm PST. It's now after 1:15am in the morning.
Some stats from the tourney so far: I have played 233 hands winning 20% of them. I have seen a flop only 17% of the time. When I see a flop I win the hand 55% of the time.
Update 5: Finished 2nd. Won $465. Going to bed at 1:45 am.