2nd in 70K on Stars

Took 2nd in the Stars $55 70K guarantee for $9,418. I just played my usual aggro game and held in spots where I needed to hold. Oh and I sucked out against AA with A10o with like 150 players left ha. But I paid for that later when down to three tables as my 1010 lost to 66 AIPF xxxx6 for a monster pot. But I kept my cool and stayed focused. When HU play began I was a 2 to 1 dog in chips and about 10 minutes into the match I ran my AJo into his AKcc aipf and that was it.

This has been a fantastic month and all my hard work has been paying off.

My friend Shanetrain22 posted some of my results from this month on P5s in this thread. Thanks bro!!

I'll throw up a January recap post in a couple days. As always glglgllglgglgl to all you guys out there!!!

Won the 11K

So after winning the 17K last night I just shipped the $20 rebuy 11K guarantee for like $3500 tonight. I'm absolutely in love with this night schedule I've been playing. Small fields, soft fields, very good blind structures, and decent payouts. What more could a mid-stakes tourney grinder ask for?

I put a ridic amount of pressure on my opponents once we got 3-handed and chipped up to a monster CL w/o one single showdown. That put me in good position HU as a 2-1 CL. Got lucky on the last hand but thats how it goes. As I've mentioned in a previous post I don't ever worry about the results of the hand when I'm the one pushing the action. Being aggro and pushing the action is how you win tourneys. Period.

So I guess I'm at about ten FTs for the month with over 30K in profit. Theres still a few days left and I wonder if I can make anything else happen.

Won the 17K

I shipped the 17K for $4500. Nothing too special happened really. I just played aggro and won a shitload of flips when the time was right. Was a Jamie Gold like domination of the FT compliments of my QQ holding against 88 on a 567 flop then my AK outrunning 44 then my KQss outrunning 55 then my AJdd outrunning 1010 ha. In fact I think I knocked out all but one player at the FT. Its good to run good imo.

My last session, on Thursday night, I got 6th in the 18K for just over 1K. My QQ lost to A8ss for a CL pot or else I prbly woulda won that one too ha.

Anyway I wasn't really putting in a ton of volume for a while there but lately I've been feeling like pwning so I'm back to the night schedule I love so much.

January is obviously a month I'll never forget. I can't imagine I'll ever run better than I have been since Christmas. I keep waiting for the downswing to hit but I keep pushing through and hitting scores. No complaints obv ha.

GL guys!

The REAL Professional Poker...

Thinking of going pro? Great! Just make sure you read and understand everything in this outstanding article from the amazing Jennifear on PocketFives.com.

Took a Week Off

I took a week off from playing since my last score to do a few things with my money. One of the things I wanted to get done is to put some money onto Stars so I can start playing a few tourneys over there. Full Tilt will still be my "main" site for grinding most of my tourneys but it will be nice to have a shot at some of the ridiculously huge tourneys they have over there.

Anyway, hopefully I'll be back at things tomorrow. I'll prbly still be playing mostly at night cuz my sleep schedule is all screwy (up til 8am, waking at 3pm) but I really like those night tourneys anyway.

Hope you guys are doing well out there and sorry for a week straight with no posts. Looks like I'm getting a pretty good number of hits recently so I'm gonna be serious about posting frequently even if I'm not making any noise in tourneys.

glglg out there!

btw no doubt you heard about the plane making an emergency landing in the Hudson River in NYC a few days ago. Well here's the surveillance video released by the Coast Guard just today of that landing... this story is so incredible.

7th FT This Month...

Well this month is turning even sicker. I took 3rd in the Saturday $109 75K for $9,847. The entire tourney was a sick roller coaster ride. I was short for the longest time then i was 1/95 and CL for the longest time. Then down to the final five tables my stack fluctuated like mad. I went from 32/36 to 12/30 to 22/23 etc etc. Then at the final two tables my KK held against AKdd and I was back to average. I stayed out of the way for the most part and was able to avoid confrontations for large chunks of my stack. I limped into the FT 8/9 with about 15 BBs. A few hands in I ran my JJ into AA aipf and watched as the board came KQ109x. So instead of being out 9th I doubled to 3/8 ha. 6-handed I was 2/6 with ComeonPhish1 pwning and ran my AKo into the KK of the donk who ended up 2nd. I was the shorty then and somehow made it from 6th to 3rd as the micro stack.

Its sick how well we play when we feel like we have nothing to lose.

Anyway my January goal is met as of now. I have like 22K in profit but theres still 20 days left. Things can turn shitty just as quickly as they turn good. So I'm just gonna keep my head on sharp and continue to play within my bankroll and whatever range buy-ins I feel comfortable with. I think a lot of good players make the mistake of jumping up into higher stakes before they're actually ready. I'm going to take my time and pwn slowly but surely.

Sharkscope Leaderboard!

I was looking at my sharkscope stats and thinking that they looked pretty solid so I decided to plug my name into the leaderboard search function to see if I qualified for any leaderboards. I wasn't expecting it to come back with anything but apparently I'm ranked 12th for the year 2009 already in total profit in Multi-Table SNGs from $16 to $35 buy-in.

Weeeeeee I've always been envious of players with stars next to their names on sharkscope and now I'm one of them ha. I want to progress this to a gold star meaning I'll be in the top 5.

2009 has been such a fun year for me already... making money, making friends, and earning stars like a 2rd grader ha. I hope you guys are out there working hard towards your goals and having some fun along the way-

-Adam

6th FT in January

Well I kept the final table streak going by finishing 7th in the Big Double A tourney tonight for like $450. Its not a noteworthy score but there's something to be said about having seen blue lights every single night I've played since December 30th. It sure does keep me confident in my game and the plays I make. I'm not hesitant at all to make a play if the situation looks right and most of the time I'm not wrong in my reads. This game is all about confidence. Its a great feeling right now.

Also I played about ten 45-mans tonight and shipped two 1sts and two 2nds. I've been pretty much raping the 45-mans since I started grinding them in early December. I give a LOT of credit to my daily grinding of the 45-mans to my recent string of final tables and solid scores. The 45-mans keep me incredibly sharp at final two table play, final table bubble play, final table play, shorthanded play, and HU play. All the necessary skills to pwning MTTs can be learned and sharpened in 45-mans. Obviously, 45-mans are just abbreviated MTTs and the situations are all the same. Here are my 45-man results since December 1st:





And the graph:



















And this is what I truly mean about "raping" these:














After playing nearly 300 of these things, the position I've finished in the MOST times (out of all forty-five possible finishing positions) is 1st place. And clearly once I'm down to three-handed play I'm completely dominating as I have five more 1st place finishes than 2nd and 3rd place combined. I was blown away when I looked at this chart earlier today.

I'm 110% sure all my practice and aggression in the 45-mans over the last 40 days is a major part of my recent string of final tables and nice cashes in scheduled MTTs. Confidence breeds more confidence in poker and the confidence from the plays I make in the 45-mans to push deeper and deeper in the field easily spills over into the MTTs. I'm in a really good zone right now and I wouldn't trade it for the world.

January Goal: 20K profit
Actual: 14.2K profit

Five FTs/Five Nights

K its just getting scary now ha. I shipped 2nd in the $109 30K 6max tonight for $5100. Was completely card dead HU. Oh well. I got sick lucky at the start of the FT when I 3 bet shipped A7o against AJo and the board came 3J645 ha. I never worry about results when I'm the one doing the aggressing.

This is kinda funny cuz just yesterday I was doing some serious complaining about how I've never even made it to the second hour of this tourney and how I was so upset I was thinking of cutting it out of my schedule ha. Its silly the things we say in the heat of the moment. Anyway, I was completely card dead in this tourney all the way through the 3rd hour. I was like 171/171 and then 154/154 for the longest time. The slow structure is super helpful, another reason I love the late night tourneys on Full Tilt.

So this is 5 FTs in 5 consecutive nights for like 15K or something. Too sick. I'm playing well and obv running well. Plus this nightly schedule is amazing imo (see my last post). Its nice being a jobless, familyless bum who can play tourneys all night long like a total degenerate ha.

Looks like I'm getting closer to my goal of a 20K profit month. I'm only four days into the month and I'm at like 13K already. But I know I won't be running like this all the time and progress will get slow. THAT is when the true test of a tourney player's abilities are tested. EVERYONE looks like a genius when they're running well but only the best of the best rise to the top during the bad times. I hope I can be one of the best.

Four FTs in Four Nights

Tonight I made my 4th FT in four consecutive nights of playing. Its not uncommon for high volume players to do this but it still feels pretty good and I'm definitely going to give myself the credit. I got 4th in the $30 1r1a for like $1300. I had a nice, deep stack ready for a long shorthanded battle but I did something stupidly overaggressive. This is a flaw I have in my game that I really need to put a cap on. But anyway...

The four finishes are 3rd, 6th, 1st, and 4th. I think thats pretty solid that they are all top 6 at least. Combined scores are like 11K or so but obv thats not total profit over the four day period. Still though its a great rush and I know it won't last forever so I'm really enjoying it and cherishing it while its here ha.

I have a pretty specific goal for this month. I want to have a 20K+ profit month between 45-mans and scheduled MTTs. To do this I will have to put in a lot of volume and play every day even if I'm running awful. This will be a pretty big challenge for me as I tend to "freeze up" and back off from playing when I start running real bad. Its like a genetically programmed response ha. It's not healthy and I think the only way to break free from it is to just force myself to get in there and play every night.

I've been working on this late night schedule and I think I'm really onto something. The fields on Full Tilt from 22:00 and later are very, very reasonable especially in the $55+ buy-ins. Usually looking at between 250 and 500 players max. This is perfect because they are big enough that the prize pools are still worth fighting for but the field size isn't ridiculously huge and you have to win 10 flips in a row to get deep. And honestly fields ranging from 250 to 500 players are pretty rare online these days. You usually either have monstrous fields of like 1K to 5K players (on Stars and on Full Tilt during the evening) or you have very small fields like on UB/AP. But the late night tourneys on Full Tilt are perfect for having consistent results I believe. Also the buy-ins fit very comfortably into my bankroll as I am a complete nit about my roll and the buy-ins I'll play.

Here's the current sched:



















So its ten tourneys for an average buy-in of $60/tourney. I think this is solid. The field sizes are solid. The buy-ins are solid and fit perfectly into my BR. Did I mention I think this is solid? Ha I threw the Midnight Madness in there for fun and cuz I think on the few occasions I can build a big stack deep I'll have a more significant edge over the field than usual. Plus its getting 2,500ish players/night and 1st place has consistently been around 5K. Anyway I'll prbly be tweaking this schedule as I go. I might throw in the Big Doubles or the $50 1r1a at 22:30 and cut the $10r out I'm just really not sure yet. All I know is this is what I'm currently comfortable with and its working.

My biggest challenge will be to play every single night. I can't have a 20K profit month if I don't put in the volume. I have no clue how sprstoner and The Yid and AKSharky and some of these other guys put in the volume they do but I'm striving to be consistent when it comes to playing daily rather than just playing based on my emotions that day.

I hope this month goes as planned. Its off to a killer start.

First 2009 Win!

So I FTd the $75 23K Guaranteed KO tourney last night and got 6th place after three consecutive unlucky hands landed me from 2nd in chips to out. I picked up a disappointing but satisfactory $1350 for that. Well tonight I found myself back at the FT of the same tourney coming in 2/9 in chips again but this time the result was different. I played aggressive and solid and after a brutal HU match with an amazing player (IntegraTypeR777) I took it down for almost $7,200. The brutal truth is that I got really lucky to win HU. He had a 4 to 1 CL and wasn't making ANY mistakes. Only the cards saved me. Thats how it goes sometimes.

Besides that tourney my night was a complete disaster. I played a bunch of 45-mans w/o a single cash and like eight other MTTs w/o a cash and a bunch of brutal bubble finishes to make it even more painful. By 2am, after the dust was all settled, I had only one tourney left and was looking at a -$850 session. I was upset to say the least. But I didn't tilt and kept my head on straight and that last tourney worked out.

This is two FTs and a win in back-to-back nights to start off the new year. I can't imagine a better start tbh. GL everyone!

Good Start to '09

Quick post here. I started the new year and new month off well with a really deep run in the 1600+ player 21K and a final table in the 23K KO for a 6th place finish worth $1350. Also my good friend Arsonist88 finished 3rd in the 2300ish player 40K on Stars last night for almost 5K. I've watched his play progress for over a year now and he has truly become an amazing tourney player. Its just a matter of time for him.

This is great news as we are making plans to move to Vegas sometime in the first half of this year. We're just working on getting our BRs built up and this was a great way to start things out.