What an interesting night this last Saturday evening. My Saturday was filled with mundane life things. I got home from my Friday night session around 4am and go to sleep and wake up around 10:30 am. Wife does her workout with her trainer and I need to drop my car off at the dealership for some maintenance and recall issues to get fixed. After lunch with the family get home and nap a little while the baby naps and the wife spends some time with the middle daughter bonding.
Dealership service guy is supposed to call me at 4pm to let me know status of my car. Instead I get roused by my wife around 4:45pm and I realize that the service adviser never called me. I am of course slightly annoyed and call him instead to find out the status of my car. Fortunately, my car was done and I was still able to get over there before the place closed.
After picking up my car, the wife and I decide to go to Saturday evening vigil service at our church. I like going to Saturday evening mass. It makes Sundays a bit easier to deal with, but my favorite mass is actually Sunday evening, since that's when they have the best music. But it's tough with the kids, since they have school the next day and it makes dinner unusually late and gets them in bed later than normal.
In any case, I get a text from Andy during mass that the 40/80 game has gone overnight from Friday night well until Saturday! CC the poker playing animal played well over a 36 hour session and simply cleaned up. Turns out the game played through Friday evening into Saturday morning until lawyer David showed up and started playing the 40 game with Cecil and I believe it was JA. As it turns out they kicked it up to 80/160!
Now I don't normally play Saturday evenings anymore since there is usually no game on Saturdays, but after getting this message from my bird, I sweet talked my wife into letting me go.
I did ok in the the 80/160 portion of my night. I won 1k, was up more, but gave some back after David rage tilt felted quit, playing 3 handed with CC and Andy. I did get to 5-bet David with the nuts holding QT on a J893 two diamond board on the turn. He had a set of eights and the river was a the ten of diamonds and he check/called my river bet and then went super tilted and started mumbling to himself.
Eventually he quit, after he short bought for $100 so he could play his button. He folded and then his under the gun hand, he went all in and I tried to 3-bet the AT but since he didn't have enough for a "complete" raise, I only got to complete the bet, which meant that CC was going to able to come in. Not to worry I flopped top pair and a gutshot draw on a AKJ rainbow board. David quit, and the three of us continued to play, as it is bad etiquette to break the game as soon as the fish quits. Plus David has been known to "quit" and come back within 20 minutes plenty of times. Playing 3 handed I lose 2 racks of my 3 rack profit to break the game up only 1k.
Cecil eventually succumbed to the bodily need for sleep and went home looking much worse for the wear. Not sure how that guy can repeatedly do that to himself. It's really not good for your health and its really hard on your body, particularly your heart.
After Cecil quit, Andy and I kicked the stakes down back to 40/80 and played heads up for about 3 hours. I won a little over 2k before Andy needed to go home since he had an early am flight this morning. Was an interesting heads up session, and I ran well and won the first meaningful hand where he raised the button with QQ, and I defended with KJs, and proceeded to flop top pair. I check/raised the flop and bet turn and bet river. There were some hands where Andy played a bit unconventionally that I don't necessarily agree with. Andy for sure defends his big blind a lot more than I do (he got me with 32o on a 764 board when I had 65s, and he check/raised the flop!), and opens his button relentlessly.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Summer Wrap Up
Well summer is over and I am back in to the swing of things with kids and school. Plus I have started my new project at work and am busy with that. I got to play a lot of poker from Memorial Day through Labor Day due to the many visitors we had, plus a scheduled vacation, and the family going to Minnesota. Now that the family is back into its school routine, my poker hours are going to see a significant reduction. I will be back to my semi regular schedule of pretty much just playing Friday late afternoons/evenings.
I am a little worried about the state of the limit holdem games at Oceans-11. With the new management, and the policy of no longer giving a drop reduction when the game gets short, has really had an impact on the number of players willing to play, especially at the 20/40 level. We used to be able to keep a 5 or 6, or even as short as 4 players game going pretty consistently, but a number of players that used to be willing to play short aren't willing to do it, plus some of the more marginal regulars (either break-even or slightly losing players) are no longer even willing to sit in the game unless it's super good. The regulars need to realize that if they aren't willing to keep a game going, that pretty soon there won't be any game, as the occasional recreational players aren't going to even bother to show up if they can't get a game. Not sure what's going to happen with the prop players either. If there is no 20/40 game for them to prop, there is really no reason anymore to employ them, which is not good for their future prospects.
Here's a summary of my major gambling activities over the summer:
So excluding my blackjack results which is mainly due to my implosion at Aria over my weekend Vegas jaunt, I basically crushed it at poker winning 32.7k over 490.5 hours for an hourly rate of $66.67 per hour, while getting crushed at blackjack. The blackjack is obviously not a large enough sample size to do it justice, but you can see the variance in blackjack is just huge. I can easily make that up in a single good session of blackjack. I have won over 20k in blackjack in a single session over 15 times in the last year alone, and over 40k in 7 sessions. It just goes to show that blackjack has a huge variance, and you really need to put the hours in before it all starts balancing out. Advantage blackjack play is all about getting the hands in, particularly when the count is good and you have the edge.
Don't know when I'll get a chance to play some more serious blackjack. Barona is being very strict with me. I went out there with a buddy a little while ago, and I was sitting at the table with him watching him play, when I topped off one of his bets with some of his chips when the count was good, and within 30 seconds I got a tap on the shoulder and was told that I was not allowed to sit with my friend while he was playing, nor touch his chips or his wager. Sheesh.
Barona is still sending me promotional offers in the mail. The August promotional offer was good for $250 in cash, which I made sure that I went in to get. However, the September mailer was only good for $30, so I'm not sure if they are trying to send me a subliminal message or what. I'm guessing that their offers are determined by some formula based on the amount of action you have given them in the past 90 days, and since I haven't been playing there much my offers have gone down significantly. When I get the October mailer, I'll be curious to see how much it is worth.
Well that's about it for this update. I'll try and post more often, but with my increasingly busy schedule, not sure how many interesting gambling stories I will have to tell. On a personal note, my 8-year daughter went out on her first "date" with a boy. We ended up getting our two families together for dinner at a local Korean BBQ restaurant, because my daughter and the other family's son wanted to have dinner together. It was cute, and every time I ask my daughter about her boyfriend she gets embarrassed. It's funny.
I am a little worried about the state of the limit holdem games at Oceans-11. With the new management, and the policy of no longer giving a drop reduction when the game gets short, has really had an impact on the number of players willing to play, especially at the 20/40 level. We used to be able to keep a 5 or 6, or even as short as 4 players game going pretty consistently, but a number of players that used to be willing to play short aren't willing to do it, plus some of the more marginal regulars (either break-even or slightly losing players) are no longer even willing to sit in the game unless it's super good. The regulars need to realize that if they aren't willing to keep a game going, that pretty soon there won't be any game, as the occasional recreational players aren't going to even bother to show up if they can't get a game. Not sure what's going to happen with the prop players either. If there is no 20/40 game for them to prop, there is really no reason anymore to employ them, which is not good for their future prospects.
Here's a summary of my major gambling activities over the summer:
| Game | Result | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| Blackjack | -37.8k | 29 |
| 8/16 kill | 3.8k | 53.75 |
| 20/40 | 23k | 286.75 |
| 40/80 | 9.5k | 122.25 |
| 2/3 no limit | -0.25k | 0.5 |
| 5/5 no limit | -3.35k | 27.25 |
| totals | -5.1k | 519.5 |
So excluding my blackjack results which is mainly due to my implosion at Aria over my weekend Vegas jaunt, I basically crushed it at poker winning 32.7k over 490.5 hours for an hourly rate of $66.67 per hour, while getting crushed at blackjack. The blackjack is obviously not a large enough sample size to do it justice, but you can see the variance in blackjack is just huge. I can easily make that up in a single good session of blackjack. I have won over 20k in blackjack in a single session over 15 times in the last year alone, and over 40k in 7 sessions. It just goes to show that blackjack has a huge variance, and you really need to put the hours in before it all starts balancing out. Advantage blackjack play is all about getting the hands in, particularly when the count is good and you have the edge.
Don't know when I'll get a chance to play some more serious blackjack. Barona is being very strict with me. I went out there with a buddy a little while ago, and I was sitting at the table with him watching him play, when I topped off one of his bets with some of his chips when the count was good, and within 30 seconds I got a tap on the shoulder and was told that I was not allowed to sit with my friend while he was playing, nor touch his chips or his wager. Sheesh.
Barona is still sending me promotional offers in the mail. The August promotional offer was good for $250 in cash, which I made sure that I went in to get. However, the September mailer was only good for $30, so I'm not sure if they are trying to send me a subliminal message or what. I'm guessing that their offers are determined by some formula based on the amount of action you have given them in the past 90 days, and since I haven't been playing there much my offers have gone down significantly. When I get the October mailer, I'll be curious to see how much it is worth.
Well that's about it for this update. I'll try and post more often, but with my increasingly busy schedule, not sure how many interesting gambling stories I will have to tell. On a personal note, my 8-year daughter went out on her first "date" with a boy. We ended up getting our two families together for dinner at a local Korean BBQ restaurant, because my daughter and the other family's son wanted to have dinner together. It was cute, and every time I ask my daughter about her boyfriend she gets embarrassed. It's funny.
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