Spring Break and Turningstone

It is almost finally here. The time where I regain sanity from all this work that I have been doing and also time for me to get over this cold! I have had some variation of the plague for the past two weeks that has been getting worse/getting better/getting worse in f*ing weird stages. Anywhoo, I will get to sleep in my very own bed starting tomorrow night and play some crazy amounts of online poker since the gf is working.

Tuesday, oh Tuesday! Normally I have terrible Tuesdays (alliteration intended) with 3.5 classes in one day accompanied by work and a 9am class. However, this tuesday,
Ferociousness, his friends from home, and I will be shipping up to Turningstone Casino in upstate NY! This will be my first real casino experience since most casino's I am still not eligible to play given that I am at the wee age of 19. I have been working at my college's library like a fiend to save up enough money that I feel comfortable taking with me! We will be leaving Tuesday night and plan to arrive at 3am or so. We then will just start playing from then on! Pretty crazy, but should be an awesome time. I am sure we will also be playing all the nightly tournies. I have had a little 100 dolla buy in experience, playing in only one, but cashing for a nice $900 in a 4 way chop. I can't wait to partake in this Spring Break Experience and will most definitely blog all about when I get back! Hope all is well with everyone!

The Connection Between AROID and poker

First off, I have not posted in awhile. It's kind of a refreshing thing to be writing this right now! I have been UBER busy here at the college as now I have survived the first round of Midyears with 1-2 more rounds to go!

I wanted to write about this awhile back when I read Hoyazo's good posts about his opinion on AROID, but just havent had the time. Anyway, when I saw the video with Rodriquez and Katie Couric, something struck me of a connection between this whole steroids debacle and a possible tie to poker. Back in the 90's with the MLB, steroids were illegal, but nobody tested. Im sure that with the players, they just wanted to get ahead and were worried that some farm kid was going to overpass them if they didn't themselves take that ball-shrinking medecine I know it is not deemed illegal, but what about poker software? I haven't done much research into the companies that make these programs and also given that I have a Mac, most software is not even compatible for me. Also, I am just not good enough or trying to make a killer profit in the online world to even want poker software. However, my friend has it and seems to make a large profit with the help of this software. This HUD display that shows a player's betting patterns right on the screen as your playing allows my friend to play 10-12 cash game tables at a time. Also one can know everyone's 3bet percentage or fold to 3bet percentage without having to take notes! Definitely seems to be some sort of edge. Another connection too, is I am sure that a donk wouldn't use this to their full advantage, but so wouldnt steroids! You usually just dont have some Joe Schmo take steroids and expect to get big. It's those heavy weight lifters or a-holes like AROD that take steroids.

Anywhoo, that's some fuel for thought. I hope to post later in the week about my poker playing as of late! =)

lol donkaments

I <3 New Zealand and their funny shows on HBO, but this really brings a smile to my face.

It reminds me of 3-4 years ago when I would play on stars in those 10,000 person freerolls. I'm sure everyone has been there, but looking back on them, (they were fun as shit) but also pure death for two reasons:

1.) if you cashed, the first pay structure was .04 cents. quite the bargain. dodging a minefield of about 8,500 raging donkeys and staying up till ridiculous hours for a fraction of what my mom pockets when she does the laundry. been there, done that. simply embarassing if I ever responded truthfully to someone's "What did you do over the weekend?" question.

2.) They played hand for hand in EVERY LEVEL OF PAY STRUCTURE. yeah.

Anyway, things have been stagnant on the poker front. I have been on a heater with heads up sng's finally playing 100 h/up's and actually winning 60 of them. you better believe it. OP AHHH me. Despite that, I have been lacking in my usual skill with regular 9-man's, but Im sure I will bring that back to form. That's about it coming from me, but hope everyone enjoys their Sunday!

Hot and Cold

Lately, I have been playing with some consistency and overall have seen some nice progress with the occasional donkyness from time to time. However, I have seen my bankroll double as a result of some good tournament play. I have made two final tables in six days. I also played my very first 24+2 and actually ran really well until about two hours in when I got massively sucked out to come in second in my other MTT I was playing at the same time. This caused me to make moves when I could have just sat on my massive stack. However, here is what I was looking at after the first 45 mins into the 28k guarantee.
The hand that put a large hurt on me was about fifteen minutes after I got sucked out in my other MTT so I wasn't playing optimally at all. However, it wasn't too bad of a play imo.

I was dealt Q5o in the sb about two hours and fifteen minutes into the tourney. Co makes it a solid 3x to 1800. Having seen this guy be quite aggressive near the button, I pushed the time button so I can have time to fake like I'm pondering make a decision when I was pretty set on restealing here. I was real card dead for almost an hour straight so this (in my tilting head) looked like the place to chip up again. So I decided to make it to an even 4000 (with about 8000 behind), repping some pretty big cards despite my gross ass hand. He thought for a long time, but eventually made the call. The one thing I regret is not having a solid read on this guy on his playing ability so I only could put him on a range of a small pocket pair like 77 or 88 since I really had no range on him from previous hands. The flop came an ace high, rainbow board. So because I dont think my post flop play is that good, I'm usually very aggressive preflop and on on the flop. I open pushed him on the flop, obviously continuing with my aggression on this hand. Again he pondered, but reluctantly called with A4o. And i was sent packing with my complete air of a hand and just short of the money.

I am kind of firm that I would have made this play tilting or not, but it was obviously not the right move. I feel I'm very aggresive, which obviously is good and bad.

Anyway, I am curious for any feedback from anyone on how I played the hand or the way I phrased the hand, since I'm still a pretty new blogger. =)

Mental Funk

Coming into this week, the last full week of winter break for my college, I was all psyched to visit one of of my good friends in Maine with a bunch more of my friends. It being so close to my thirty days without online poker, I decided to ease up on my ban and play on pstars because I still had a teency amount of cash moniess on there and everyone else was going to be playing too. I ended up really well, grinding my big $1.80-$35.00 thanks in part to the special donkeys on the low limits of stahhhs. I began to play again, only to tilt so fast that I stopped playing after only a douzen sng's. I actually cashed the first six for a few nice scores, but I tilt soo fast. I have to find a way to recover fully recover.

Fast forward a few days... I still don't have my game. I am playing close to usual, but I just feel like I'm going to lose every time I register for a tournament. Obviously, not the best mentality. Having this mentality definitely doesn't help if you're playing MTT's so I'm just not gonna play very consistently to not playing at all. I fair alright in H/UP's just because I still feel I can outplay people there, but I am in a serious mental funk. Not good not good. 

However, I have other priorities anyways, given that a new semester has just begun. This set of classes definitely seems to be the most demanding of my college experience thus far. Holy tits.

Zee Goals for 2009

After reading Hoyt's great review of his 2008 goals, I thought it would be a good idea for me to create a set of goals for myself to follow or not follow as 2009 gets underway. I want to make it clear that these goals are not going to be a constitution for me that I live by every day. Some goals will obviously be more prevalent than others, but I am doing this as a way to gauge progress as well as look back  and see how smart/stoooopid I was.  Without more bs, let's get into it baby!

Goal: Play situational poker while keeping strategy in mind.

To clarify, it feels like I play more strategy based poker and not use the current situation to help me make decisions. This is an obvious flaw in my game, which will be difficult, yet not impossible to fix because I'm gonna have to make an adaptation in my thought process despite the easiness of going back to my game where I live off of aggression, a lack of cognitive thoughts and making plays based on the book. So, I would like to just play more thoughtfully, than do what is easy when I play on the virtual felt.

Goal: If I ain't feeling good, don't play.

This will also be a tough goal to accomplish because I like to play to let off steam. This mindset has never been a profitable time to play at all. However, this hiatus of the past thirty days has shown me that I can limit myself no problem, which definitely was reassuring. So given my new MTT strategy, I will gauge myself on how I'm feeling before I sign up for a tournament. Numerous times I have felt like shit, ran alright, then got massively sucked out. The times that I've run amazingly well as well was when I had no attachment with either a win or loss. I was hanging with friends, in a good mood, but I was playing that this tournament is not going to be the life or death of me. There is this weird phenomenon that whenever I "late register" into a tournament, I nearly always cash. To me, it's because I just played on a whim and had no expectations.

Goal: Break into the 300's and 400's.

I have never had a sufficient bank roll due to me cashing out or being donkery. So getting in those regions definitely would be a self esteem booster.

Goal: Take phucking FIRST in a large MTT

It's always been a hard thing for me to close the door. I have final tabled a few big MTT's but never have I took it down due to bad luck or final table inexperience. This goal probably might the most meaningful due to the amount of time that I have put into MTT's in the past.

So that's it. I hope to look at this next year and see if I actually, hopefully, somehow accomplished these goals.    =)

The New Strategy + Entourage

The hiatus is going well. Every so often I really want to play on the virtual felt, but it hasn't been as bad as I thought. Scale of 1-10 - one being indifferent and ten being fucking addicted, I'm like a 4.75. Not so bad, but not indifferent. Anyway, when I'm back to playing, I thought of a brand new strategy. I am very willing to hear feedback from a anyone who stumbles upon my blog.

MTT's

Ever since I began playing online poker, I played about 80% SNG's and 20% MTT's. I consider myself an okay SNG player, but I have never really made a killer profit playing SNG's. I don't know what what's fucked up with my game, but obviously I got on massive tilt sessions within my bankroll and just bloooooowwwwww. So instead of that, I will play more of the crazy players out there and play a disproportionate amount of MTT's over SNG's. I think this will work well for two reasons. I think my style of play promotes an eventual big score and this will help with my late game MTT practice because I desperately need it. Numerous times in the past 6-8 months, i've run deep in the low stakes MTT games, but just can't close the door and come in 8th or 10th and fall short of the nice money and in turn, feel like complete shit. So with a really limited bankroll right now, I can afford to play 3 and 5 dolla MTT's and hopefully just build from there. However, I am going to be open to have to rely on SNG's again given the percent of actually cashing these MTT's. Anyway, it is late and I have to get up at an ungodly hour to work at the local hardware store where I worked all through High School. Now that I'm on break, what better way to spend boring ass times...