Big Downswing

Lost 109BB in back to back 40/80 sessions. Both were mostly short-handed, mostly 3 and 4 handed, at most six. Not sure if the loss was totally due to my cards, cold-decks, and combination of bad play. In any case I will be much more careful in the future when playing against these particular players.

On a better note, I hopefully hit the bottom of my downswing and will start running well again. I booked a 4 rack win in the 40/80 last night and I am now down a little over 2k for the year in 97 hours of play, so nothing I can't overcome with a string of winning sessions. I pine for the days of when I seemed to run like a god, and couldn't have a losing session despite playing bad. I think the longest win streak I have ever had has been like 10 winning sessions in a row.

Back to the grindstone.

Happy New Year!

Played my first session of 2009 last night. If last night is any indicator of how 2009 is going to be, I'll be a millionaire before July :-)! Let's just say I had a good night, an outlier on the chart, an aberration, an anomaly. One that I hope to make a regular occurrence.

I showed up at the casino at approximately 10:30 pm, yesterday. My wife and I got a baby sitter and we went out for a nice dinner and a movie, and then my wife gave me her blessing to go play some pokers. I got into a short handed 20/40 that was particularly juicy. I played for a little while, and then one of the weaker spots wanted to convert the game to 40/80. I was in the must move game with 3 other players, and the main game had 8 players. As soon as the main game lost another player, one of the players at my table would have to move, the game would become 3-handed and likely break. I told the floor man, that as soon as that happened that I would just leave, but if he made it a 40/80 game I would stick around for a while. I went to the bathroom to let them sort things out, and when I came back, we were coloring up our chips to play 40/80. The weak spot went busto, we played 3-handed for a little while, when farmer Chuck showed up and we played 4-handed for a while. After Chuck went busto, I went home.

End of the year

So 2008 is pretty much in the books. I probably won't get out for any more poker this year. I played the poker almost as a part-time job this year, almost 1k hours, the most I've ever put in one year. Mostly because my wife spent quite a bit of time away from home with the kids, giving me like a solid two months of being a bachelor, allowing me to put in lots of hours.

From my charts, you can see that I have some very wild swings. I've come to realize that I have a very high variance style, I really like to push small edges whenever I can. I think that if I can plug some small leaks, and ratchet up my value betting, along with making some good river folds, and possibly not always making the high variance play, I think I can kick my game into the next gear. When I am running good, I seem to run like a god, but when I run bad, it's not pretty. Plus there were some stretches of like 5 or 6 sessions, where I know that I played bad and played too late into the night. Keeping focused on the goal at hand, and playing your best poker game is tough 100% of the time. I have a lot of respect for professional grinders who somehow grind out a living doing this day after day, knowing that they need to win.

In any case I had another winning year at poker, and for something that I take as just a serious hobby, it's nice that it pays me as opposed to the other way around.

Here are the charts:

Breaking the 100 Big Bet Barrier

I won $4001 last night playing 20/40 at Oceans-11. Previous to last night, my biggest win in terms of big bets was 98.33 big bets in the 30/60 game at Canterbury Park in 12 hours of play. Last night I won 100 big bets in 4 hours! I was smoking hot, and even the hands I was tossing preflop were turning into gold. I shouldn't have mucked anything! It was an awesome game, because the entire table agreed to live straddle, so every pot was a 3 or 4 bet frenzy with 4 or 5 players usually seeing a flop. I made some monster hands, and some just good mediocre hands, but I played them well and got max value on most of them. I got in what must have been at least half a dozen river check-raises as well, most of them with 2 or 3 other players in the pot too. I only wish that I didn't have to travel today on business, otherwise you would have had to drag me away from that table kicking and screaming!

Last month of the quarter, and things are shaping up well. I am up 8879 in the last two months, with a low point of -5930 and a high point of 10770. I had one really, really bad night where I dropped 8 dimes. Take out that 8 dime loss, and I would be having a really awesome quarter as opposed to just a good quarter.

So with only 1 month to go in the quarter and in the year, let's hope that I can make an awesome run to the end, and get my last half of the year up to the $40/hr mark. I need to win about 14000 in 100 hours to do it. That's a 140/hr, so it's going to be pretty tough, but I will try my best. I'll probably fall short, but I'd like to make at least 20k for the year, and I only need 8000 more to reach that goal. That's a lot more realistic and doable. In any case, I really shouldn't be results oriented, just make good solid poker decisions and the money should come in.

Up & Down

Hmmm, I think I had a good night last night. I won $1700, so I think that is good. There were two 20/40 running last night, a main game and a must move. The must move was short most of the night, and I was at the Jesus table. I was running over everybody, particularly Freddy and the Persian fish. Then lagastic Jason waltzes in a messes up my friendly little 4-handed game, and proceeds to raise like every hand like I was doing, starting a 3 and 4 bet frenzy. Ai-yah! I get moved to the main game up 1700, a little while later the must move game breaks, and they make the main game 10-handed. I proceed to win 2 massive pots and before I know it I have 10 racks in front of me. I play for like another hour and a half, and proceed to play bad (too many chips in front of me syndrome), and get sucked out on left and right. So I had a win of like $4000 at one point, but didn't lock it up, and spewed off $2300. That sucks.

Ship it!

FINALLY! In all of my years of playing poker, I have never won a jackpot, not even a table share. Or any other promotion. In other words, I have never got one red cent from any casino, despite the thousands of dollars I have payed in rake. Tonight was different. I won $800 in Oceans-11 Sunday hourly football drawings. I won the last drawing of the night at 9pm. Earlier in the day I had told the floor man, that if he didn't call my name tonight, I was leaving and never coming back.

Really funny, was when they were doing the announcement for the winner at 9pm, I had just tabled my queen high hand to win a small blind versus big blind battle. I jumped out of my chair, and yelled "SHIP IT!" Half the table thought I was talking about my queen high hand winning! I ended up tipping the two floor guys 50 bucks each, so I only really netted $700, but damn it feels good to win money for nothing. In the grand scheme of things $700, relatively isn't all that much, considering I normally buy in for 2k when I play the 40/80, but as they say, money won is much sweeter than money earned!

I had a good weekend of poker as well. Today and yesterday I played the 20/40, logged 17 hours, and won $3945, plus the 700 from the promotion. Kind of makes up for the 14k loss I had in the 40/80 at the end of October, but not really.

Expert Play

I played an interesting hand last night. 40/80 at Oceans-11. I have just won a couple of pots off of Max and it looks like he was starting to tilt a little bit. He announced that he was going to 3-bet me every time I opened the pot. Couple of hands later, this hand pops up. Mike limps UTG, I 2-bet pocket aces, couple of folds to Max, who 3-bets, button calls, both blinds call, Mike caps it for me, everyone calls. 7 way action 4-bets each. Flop comes JT5 2 clubs, I have the ace of clubs. Check to Max who bets, button folds (really, really bad, not sure how you can fold anything here getting 29:1, with any hand you called with preflop), SB raises, BB calls, Mike calls, I decide to just call, expecting Max to 3-bet. Max just calls (whoops). Turn is a rag spade, now putting 2 clubs and 2 spades. SB checks (can we say flush draw?), BB checks, Mike checks, I bet, Max raises, SB calls, BB folds, Mike folds. River is a red 9. SB checks, I check, Max bets, SB folds. I tank for a little while, Max starts talking, I check/raise after like 30 seconds of thinking. Max instacalls. Pocket kings no good sir. I was going to just call, until Max started chirping.