Ship the 20r

Shipped the afternoon 20r on full tilt for $5575. Yummy. I was under 5 BBs with fifteen players left but hung in there then caught a sick rush of cards at the FT including AA > QQ and JJ > 99 and a sick gutshot on the final hand where I bluff-committed myself to the pot and hit lol. Ppl will call me a luckbox but I play to win and I play aggressively. We don't have any control over the cards but we do have control over the amount of pressure we apply to our opponents and the spots we pick.

Anyway this was a nice little boost for me to end the month of Feb. I only had two FTs coming into today. Granted I haven't been putting in much volume but its still frustrating to go a while w/o a good score. Back at it tomorrow.

gllglglglglgllglglglgllgl

Irony

On Tuesday I bought a very nice used truck, A black Chevy S-10. Its puuurty.

I paid for it with cash, poker money (brag obv :)

On Thursday I found out my drivers license was getting suspended for six months.

Neat.

Apparently I had a few speeding tickets and went over my point limit. It also didn't help that I've had my license suspended a couple times before and that I've had seventeen speeding tickets since 2001 ha. Its nothing to brag about but if there were an award for most speeding tickets 9 to 14 MPH over the speed limit I'd be the winner. Just to be clear I've never had a DUI or any kind of reckless driving ticket. In fact I've never even been in a wreck. I'm a pretty safe driver to be honest I'm just a magnet for countless minor speeding infractions.

My lawyer says theres a small chance he can get this thing repealed or some legal term but he doesn't sound too confident so I'm not holding my breath.

I'm trying to view this as a positive thing. I'm trying to take the "Whenever one door closes another one opens" approach. This is how I'm seeing this situation:

In the past whenever I've had success online with tourneys I would get burned out and not feel much like playing anymore. I'd take a week off or I would go play live games around town or just mess around at night and not play poker. I was wasting so much potential online success. Well the "opportunity" here is that I'm pretty much stuck at home for a long time and this forces me to play poker online. This has got to be +EV given my success in MTTs and 45-man SNGs.

I would like to set some kind of goal to accomplish in online poker between now and August 24th (when I get my license reinstated). I'm open to suggestions.

Nothing much else going on. I'm planning on going back out to Vegas in early April for the next Venetian Deep Stack Series. Between now and then though, for the month of March, its gonna be a serious online grind for me.

Well thats it. I should be posting pretty frequently now that I'll be home and playing a lot. I hope its all good news :)

glglglglgllglglglglgl

Airports

I'm at the airport in Salt Lake City waiting for four hours for my plane so I can fly home to Colorado. God I hate airports and I hate flying. I'm not sure exactly what it is about aviation travel but I know standing in massive lines at McCarren Airport in Vegas and being hearded around like cattle is no picnic. Anyway...

I ended up making nearly 5K in Vegas playing 1/2 and 2/5 cash and a small tourney win. Thats not bad for four days of play. I played for nearly three days straight and it was an absolute blast. I can't wait to go back again. The Venetian is running the Deepstack events again in April and I'm prbly gonna be heading out for a full two weeks and playing 10 or 12 tourneys.

I met tons of awesome poker players and made a few online contacts so it'll be cool running into them online after having played live with them.

Tonight I've got a poker league tournament but starting Saturday I'm excited to get back to grinding online MTTs again and making FTs. There is nothing like the thrill of playing in high pressure money situations where you can sense your opponents hesitation and put the pressure on full throttle.

My birthday is Sunday also. I'm not sure how I feel about turning twenty-seven. All I know is I'm definitely not getting any younger and there are certain things I want to have accomplished before I'm thirty. Oh well more on all that later.

glglglglgl

Vegas Update

It's been a very fun trip so far. I got in late Monday afternoon and didn't have time to do any tourneys @ The Venetian so I played the little $65 buy-in @ The Sahara where I'm staying and took it down for $1600ish. Ninety-two players. Was definitely a blast. Then I played the $330 Deepstack @ The Venetian yesterday and bustod in like level nine with QQ < JJ aipf AQ9108 (so gay) for a monster pot. There were 300 players and first paid just over 26K. Sigh. I am going to hit one of these someday.

Anyway afer that I played the 7pm $120 tourney with 151 players and bustod 10th. Following that I played 1/2 NL for 14 consecutive hours all thru the night and walked with 2K. I was so exhausted that I couldn't even play the deepstack tourney @ noon today and had to come back to my hotel room for some sleep. Oh well.

I'm playing some incredible poker right now and my reads and my aggression and my confidence are all at the right levels. I'm considering extending my trip for a few extra days but I'm not sure yet. Hope fully all continues to go well.

Also I've been meeting some sick sick good poker players who couldn't be any cooler. Last night I played with this guy Adam whos the same age as me and also makes his living playing online poker. We joked around for hours and talked poker strategy on the cash table. I really enjoy playing live more than I enjoy playing online but I wouldn't give up online poker for the world. Its so good to get out from in front of the computer and interact with "real" players.

Well hopefully theres more to update soon. Glglglgllglglglgl everyone!

Can't Sleep

My flight leaves for Vegas in like 6 hrs and I can't sleep. I hate flying and usually can't sleep prior to the day of flying. I've just been up messing around online.

FTOPS was pretty horrible for me. I played most of the NLHE freezeouts events except for the shootouts. I only cashed the 109r. The ME was ridiculous as was everything else. Oh well. These monster tourneys are supposed to be ridic 99.9% of the time.

I'm looking forward to playing live in Vegas.

Why can't I stop watching this?

Vegas

I decided to head to Vegas for four days next week to put in some live play. I'll make an update while out there. I haven't been playing online as much I wanted to but I did get 4th in the $109 6max on Full Tilt the other night for 3K.

K well this was just a real quick post gl out there guys.

Update

Been about ten days since I posted. Not much going on. Been playing live home games around town a lot lately and its been getting in the way of my online play. I'm down -1650 playing 2/5 live and it pisses me off cuz not only are these live cash games not worth my time (when compared to online play) but now I'm really frustrated from all the ridic fish suckouts. And when I get frustrated I usually keep at it until I get the result I want. So I'll prbly be playing live fairly often (at least a couple times a week) trying to get my money back. Ha its silly I know but thats how I am.

I've been putting in some decent volume the last couple days online and its been fairly rough. The last FT I made was on Feb 2nd on stars where I got 4th in the $77 6max for like $1450. Haven't made much noise since then. I also haven't won a 45-man in what feels like weeks. Been stuck getting 2nds 3rds and 4ths. Obvs I'm not running too hot at the moment. I did have a deep run in the $109 rebuy FTOPS event where I finished like 150ish out of 2200ish for a min cash.

So I'm gonna be back online playing at least five nights a week and try to play live the other two nights. This should be a good balance. Let the pwnage begin again imo.

On a non-poker topic I've been watching the show "Cold Case" a lot lately. TNT shows reruns late at night almost every night and I'm totally addicted to this show. I'm also pretty sure I'm in love with Kathryn Morris (right), the lead detective in the show. Shes got such a soft, pretty face I can't take my eyes off of her. She reminds me of Elizabeth Shue (left) for some reason, the girlfriend from "Back to the Future" and "Leaving Las Vegas". I'm a total sucker for a pretty face. Anyway if they never stopped making "Cold Case" I wouldn't be upset. The show starts off with a flashback to the year the murder took place and they play a few Top Ten songs from that year. Then throughout the episode they show the characters as they were at the time of the murder and how they are in the present. They come up with some pretty incredible stories.

Well I'll have some posts pretty soon of some final tables. When I get motivated to play I usually don't slow down until I get some results. I'm feeling the bug again after feeling "bluh" about online poker for a week or so now.

gl guys and girls

January Wrap-Up... Two Thumbs Up!

At the start of January I posted here on my blog that my goal was to make $20K in profit. I was feeling pretty confident saying this as I was coming off a $13K profit December. Well I pretty much doubled my goal of $20K. I finished up January with $39,756 in profit.

I know a 40K profit month isn't uncommon in online poker but what sets me apart from other players with this kind of profit is that I didn't have a single score above 10K. I made ten final tables. Six of those final tables resulted in top three finishes with three of those being outright wins. My average buy-in was only at $42 bucks and I played less than twenty tourneys with a buy-in of $100 or higher. Now thats what I call mid-stakes domination!!

I can't imagine that I can replicate a month like this again in terms of profit by only playing mid-stakes tourneys. But like they say "if its not broke don't fix it" so I'm gonna stick to playing primarily mid-stakes daily tourneys. I feel very comfortable and confident in these mid-stakes tourneys to make the moves and plays I know have to be made to win tourneys. As far as Sunday majors and other large tourneys go I am currently just playing them occasionally. I think a lot of good players focus too much of their efforts on trying to hit one huge score that they end up bleeding away a ton of their bankroll or miss out on plenty of juicy daily tourneys.

Anyway...

I have no clue what February holds but I'm not going to set a monetary goal for the month. Poker is just one long journey where you get paid for every single good decision you make. The reality is that its pretty silly and irrational to set a monetary goal in poker over a certain period of time. I just want to play my best and hope I can continue to dominate mid-stakes tourneys and eventually hit a huge score.

As always glglgllglglglglgllgl out there!!