Crush Club

1st rule of crush club:  You do not talk about Crush Club.

Yep, I jinxed myself of course and got absolutely destroyed in the 40/80 on Friday night.  Must remember the rules of Crush Club, otherwise I am going to get expelled.

On a side note, I may need to inaugurate a new member of Crush Club.  CC (his initials), seemed to have a very good night, and if he broke the 100 big bet barrier in under a 24 hour session, is welcome to join.

Admission Criteria to Crush Club:

• Must win 100 big bets in 24 hours or less, from buy-in to cash-out.
• Can't be prick or someone I don't like.  
• Doesn't count if you double or triple dip, or if the game breaks and then restarts later and your combined win exceeds 100 bets.  

Them's the rules.  You don't like it, make your own damn club.

Year to Date

Looking only at the limit games I play, I am simply destroying the game this year, particularly here in the last couple of months.  It's starting to get a little ridiculous, I must say even for myself.  Everyone says that I am running good, and while that's probably true to some extent, the way I like to think about it, is I give myself every opportunity to win, and am unafraid to push small edges, particularly in the 20 and the 40 games.  The 8/16 I play much differently, since the aggression level is much less, and the number of multi-way pots is much greater.

In any case here's the year to date stats:

8/16 Kill 231 bets in 42 hours
20/40 460.875 bets in 345.5 hours
40/80 262.7 bets in 92 hours

By any stretch of the imagination, I don't think this level of winning is sustainable, but heck you never know.  I do know that I have been playing very well lately, and seem to make that extra value bet when I should, and make the correct folds when I should as well.

Hope, I just didn't jinx myself for the rest of the year.

Learning to Ride

I've played limit holdem for a very long time.  I'd like to think that I'm pretty good at it.  I have been a consistent winner for many years, and consider myself an excellent short handed and heads up limit player.  However, I would like to make myself a well rounded player, and have started to delve into no limit a bit.  I've mainly played the 5/5 no limit at Oceans-11, and I usually buy in for 200 big blinds, although occasionally I will buy in full for 300 big blinds. 

However, this creates a dilemma for me.  Since I am still learning this game, I am for sure not a winning player yet, unless the game is full of droolers, which is usually not the case.  So I am giving up both real dollars and opportunity cost by sitting in this game instead of a limit game when one is running.  So I need to consider, what is the overall cost, and what is the future expected value I can expect by eventually becoming competent, and a winning player in that game.  Can I expect to win more than $60/hr consistently in that game?  I don't know.  I'm not sure what a reasonable win rate is to be expected in that game for a competent winning player.

So I have been back from Vegas for a little over a week, and got in a quite a bit of poker play since then.  I am still in between projects at work, and my work load has been considerably lighter than normal.  I start my new project in earnest next week.

Here's a list of the sessions I put in last week:

8/16 Kill +20 15 minutes
5/5 NL -5000 8 hours 20 minutes
20/40 +1920 3 hours 24 minutes
5/5 NL +63 10 minutes
8/16 Kill +376 14 hours
5/5 NL +735 2 hours 10 minutes
20/40 +3385 7 hours 10 minutes
5/5 NL -145 20 minutes
8/16 Kill +314 25 minutes
20/40 +455 8 hours
40/80 -800 7 hours 30 minutes

And thus the dilemma is revealed.  In the limit games I played, I won $5,670 in 40 hours and 44 minutes of play for an hourly rate of $139.20.  However, in the no limit games I played, I lost $4,347 in 11 hours of play for an hourly loss of $395.18.  Now granted I had a huge loss of $5,000 in an absolutely horrific 8 hour session, but unfortunately, sessions like this are going to happen, and in terms of real dollars, they count.

I read a poem recently by William Ernest Henley, that I think is particularly inspiring, and I think also is apropos for me with regards to my poker playing, and I think can also be applied to virtually any part of your life.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

I like this poem so much, I am thinking of getting a framed copy of it so I can put it up in my office to read each morning when I come into work.

 

 

Burned!

You play with fire, sometimes you get burned.  My Las Vegas trip was a complete debacle gambling wise.  I did have the opportunity to hang out with friends and enjoyed many good meals in good company.

I arrived on Thursday around 11:30 am at McCarran airport, and the limo was waiting for my arrival.  I checked into the hotel, met my host, got my massage at the spa all arranged, and got my bearings all situated in the hotel room.  I stopped by Julian Serrano's for lunch at the bar by myself.  Had a shrimp tapas and the seared tuna salad with sherry vinaigrette.  I've had this salad before, and forgot about how briny the olives were.  The addition of the olives completely unbalances the flavor profile and I of course had to pick them off.

After lunch, I shuttled over to the craps table, and proceeded to go on a massive heater and picked up a nice package.  Then it was off to the spa for my massage.  Massage was nice and relaxing and I was feeling very good about this time.  I went back up to my hotel room changed and hit the blackjack tables in the high limit room.

I played for about 4 hours, picked up a small little package, and by this time two of my buddies had shown up, and I made dinner reservations at Jean Georges Steakhouse.  We had an excellent meal here.  We ordered the chilled seafood platter and hamachi sashimi for appetizers for the table.  After that, I started my meal with the cream of tomato soup, and for my entree I had 8oz filet along with grilled asparagus. Everything was excellent with the exception of the asparagus.

After dinner we headed out to the petting zoo. A good time was had by all, and by this time another buddy finally made it in from San Diego after driving through the night.  We left there, and at the hotel, my buddy and I played the IGT heads-up limit poker machines.  I beat it, while my buddy kept losing to it.  No wonder, I always beat him whenever we play heads up.

I finally hit the bed at around 6am in the morning, and as usual, I can't sleep in strange hotel beds and I am up by 10:30 am or so.  I shower, change, and head down to the craps table.  I met a girl I know from Oceans-11 at the craps table, and we proceed to blow through a bunch of cash.  Eventually I end up having lunch at Lemongrass with two of my buddies.  We proceed to order a buffet of food, although I think the best thing was the soup that I ordered.

After lunch, I decide to play some more craps, and I ended up about even, although I did hit a 1k eleven, that paid me back 15 dimes!

At this point, I am extremely tired, so I decide to head off to the room for a nap, prior to going to the 2+2 Vegas meetup, like I had planned.  I never made it there unfortunately.

After tossing and turning for 15 minutes, I decide that I can't fall asleep and will go kill some time playing blackjack.  Little did I know what was in store for me.

I kept swinging like a yo-yo, getting massively stuck, then even, then up a little, then massively stuck again.  Eventually I quit with a mid 5 figure loss.  The rest of my crew picked up another hitchhiker and we had a nice meal at Blossom.  Best bite I had in Vegas was the Peking Duck in the steamed bun.  I was so focused on playing blackjack that I told my buddies to order without me and let me know when the food showed up.  Fortunately, or unfortunately, my getting felted at the blackjack table coincided with the food being delivered for the most part.

After dinner, I played the heads up machine a little more, and then crashed early at about 2:30 am in the morning and finally get a reasonable amount of sleep, and I am up around 11 am.  I put some more time in the blackjack tables and only get stuck further.

Eventually we have lunch at Julian Serrano's again, and I notice that the menu in the main restaurant versus at the bar is completely different!  This again was an excellent meal, with probably the 2nd best bite of food I had this trip being the traditional Spanish chicken croquetas.  They were simply awesome, and I will be sure to order these again next time I am in Vegas.

After lunch, I put in a last ditch effort to salvage something from the trip, and ended up winning back 5k of my losses to put a small dent into the ditch that I dug for myself.

In all, I had a fun trip.  Wish I would have quit the second blackjack session after I had gotten myself even, but in the world of advantage play, there is really no reason ever to quit playing, unless you are making mistakes, which I was not.  It seemed like every time there was a good positive count and I was firing out large bets, the blackjacks ended up on the wrong side of the table.  I'm sure that the Aria would love to have me back, and have me pegged for the biggest blackjack fish ever.  I am now on a mission to get all of my money back plus some from Aria.  I give myself two years to pull this off.  I may be going to Vegas every free chance I get now in order to accomplish this, but I will do it, unless they wise up and back me off prior to that.

Very Sexy!

I wonder what it must feel like to hug all that money!

Grinding!

So I went and played some blackjack at a different local casino on the recommendation of a friend last night and ended up staying well into the early morning.  I showed up at Harrah's Rincon casino a little after 9pm.  A little after 6am this morning, I finally cashed out a 4k winner and came home to crash.  Fortunately, I am on vacation all this week, and my sister-in-law and her two kids are visiting.

The casino is quite a drive from my house, almost an hour.  The rules for the double deck blackjack there are the same as Barona, hit soft 17, double any two, double after split, late surrender, re-split aces.  However, there are some other significant differences, which I am not sure if I will go back there again or not.  The penetration is very good.  They hand cut the stub, as opposed to Barona which uses a notch in its discard rack to get a pretty consistent cut off of about 35 to 40 cards.  Some of the dealers at Rincon were cutting down to 20 cards or so.  So that's great, but here are the things I dislike about it.  The high-limit room is rather small, doesn't have a convenient restroom near it, the night I was there the table max was 3000, I couldn't find any 9/6 full pay jacks or better video poker, they change cards every two hours, and the floor person informed me he couldn't allow the dealer to drop the deck any time I felt like it.  The biggest annoyances to me are of course the constant deck changes every 2 hours, and the small table max.  Last night I was spreading from 100 to 1600, which is fairly conservative for me.  At Barona I was spreading from 500 to 4000, with the occasional table max bet of 10,000.  At Rincon, I don't think I can play that big, which limits its attractiveness to me.

In reality I actually only won $2900 on the night total.  I won 4k playing blackjack, but had to pay the wife tax of 500.  Then I lost 500 on video poker, before I realized that I was getting short paid and was actually playing 8/5 jacks or better instead of 9/6 jacks or better.  8/5 JoB returns 97.29%, while 9/6 JoB returns 99.54%.  That's a big difference in return!  Then while waiting for the card change to finish, I put 100 on banker in baccarat.  First hand I pulled a natural 9, but tied with the player.  Next hand, I pulled a natural 8, and lost to a player natural 9!

Lastly, I noticed that one of the floor persons working the early am shift, was some guy I went to high school with.  Not sure if he recognized me or my name, but I remembered him.