MTT Month

I decided I'm just going to play mtts this month and 180s and see how I do. I've been running badly in sngs for the last 5k games at $1.35/game which is awful. 45s are getting very swingy too so if I am going to deal with massive variance everyday I might as well try out mtts. Most of the ones I plan to play are $50 or less but I'm going to play the sunday mil too. I went fairly deep in the $55/200k yesterday but busted in 30th or something. Dropped 1k yesterday and 200 today. I also got a subscription to pokerpwnage and a lot of the videos so far seem very good.

Going to see how this works out and then re-evaluate next month. Seems like it's getting harder to make 10k a month without putting in tons of volume, like 3-5k games. I want to go golfing often this month so playing 3k+ games probably wouldn't happen. I have a big enough roll to take a shot at mtts for a month b/c I don't need to make x amount every month for expenses since I have so much saved up and I'm playing way overrolled for online. Just trying to get better adjusted and maybe make more of a move to MTTs. Looking for that big score too. Or at least something 5 figures.

Being TAG Again

I don't know how I got a laggy image but seriously stop it. You don't need to iso my MP 5bb jams w/ k7s. Like how is that ever good. Games are ridiculously loose the last week. Not sure why. Maybe because it's the summer. I think randoms have seen all the light calling regs do against regs and they are trying to copy that but they do it in really stupid spots where we don't shove wide.

So obviously I am joking, but I'm officially serious when I say... I am playing TAG from now on. You need like Aj/88+ to iso me now.

I've been listening to this live music stream at www.di.fm . The urban jamz have some good songs but their loop of music seems like it;s 20-30 songs. There are some really awful songs. That Beyonce "Put a Ring On It" that Two Jacks in the Hole always talk about is terribad. I'm listening to one that's like "when I wake you up with a cup of folgers. Make some pancakes. You're on the top because I'm on the bottom because weeeeee traaaaaded plaaaaaces." Also that cop one with Lil' Wayne is really annoying. Weee oooo weee like a cop car. How do you have that voice and that stupid laugh and not be retarded.

I can't get enough of this 2p2 vid. Heard about it on the pokercast and listened to it like 5 times since yesterday.

golf, gambling and excuses

In Vegas I played 4 times and had to use rentals and tennis shoes and shot pretty badly, 120, 103, 104 and 110. I stopped taking mulligans and counting every stroke, no kicking the ball from under a tree and stuff. I couldn't hit the driver there at all and I kept saying I wish I had my clubs. Well I went out today with my family and I shot 103 from the whites at a course I've played probably 30+ times. I had some wicked slices on my driver/hybrids and hit a house. Got out the old 5 iron and just hit that off the tee most holes, which is basically what I did in Vegas. Still had some good holes but a lot of shit too. Definitely need to go to the driving range but the one near my house is closed b/c it's municipally owned and the city workers are on strike here.

Somehow my bro shot an 83 when he usually hits 100-110. Idk how he did it but it made me look pretty bad lol. Still was fun. Haven't driven in a while and I really love going out at night in my car. Just nice to slow things down and get some time to think as long as the thoughts aren't really destructive. I'm just chilling out to Bright Eyes now kinda bored. Checked facebook, twitter, TG, sngmentors and read a bit of a book. When I don't play poker/read about it, I guess I don't have a whole lot else to do. I played once this week for a few hours, won a 180, thought I was running ok and won a few hundred. I had a ton of 30-40k stacks turn into 4th or 5th but whatever. Still stuff seemed fast so going to take a while to get back into it. Having the buyin and tourny size in the tab is pretty nice.

I've also realized that I really like drinking, not necessarily to excess, but having a couple for no general reason. I used to think that that was a problem, like I had some alcohol addiction, but that's probably just me trying to find an excuse for my sometimes depressing life, or maybe I was thinking I drink to escape that. I often overanalyze things, tell myself I have generalized anxiety disorder and am not very well rounded. I think I like to find excuses for why I don't have a really normal life/social life. It makes sense though. I gamble for a living and a lot of more inactive social things I do I find boring, I can't find that much pleasure in them. I saw Transformers 2 the other night and was pretty bored, it wasn't a very good movie but still I was thinking of all the fun I had in Vegas and I am still wondering why I left. There's definitely bad effects on your brain/reward system when you gamble for a living. A lower dosage of dopamine is probably released doing normally fun activities like playing pool because the whole reward system from gambling is totally fucked over.

It's not like it's a huge problem. Just me rationalizing this and trying to explain why I don't enjoy some things as much as I used to. I think I like to make excuses so I don't have to do things that I get nervous about or dislike.

I'm going in to get tested for some hereditary disease that is pretty common in my family on Tuesday. There's a decent chance I have it. It's not fatal but having it is a bitch. Run good in health once I guess.

Most of the trip was filled with poker, drinking and getting really fucked up on a lot of occassions, but we did manage to do a few more wholesome activities towards the beginning of the trip. For the first few days, Cardlo's cousin came and he doesn't gamble, so we went dune buggying ($250/2hrs) which was really awesome and I would recommend it to anyone. It's expensive but definitely worth the cost. The buggies went like 50mph or something around there and the terrain was very rocky to very sandy. Jamming down the gas going off jumps was awesome but made for some very tough landings. I was going too fast a couple times and went off the track and had my buggy fill with rocks, which somehow jammed the gas pedal so it basically wouldn't stop. That was a bit of an issue till I fixed it. Dan and his cousin had to get the instructor to push them out of some dunes because they were driving like pussies and going way too slow. Other than having to wait around for them and trying to unjam the gas pedal, it was great.

Later that night we saw O. We didn't even have time to change, so I had a sand stained white t-shirt which got us a better discount for the cirque show. The seats were kinda junky at $80/ticket but we could see most of the stage at all times. I saw zumanity last summer and O was definitely not a let down. I'd recommend that for sure.

Other than those things, we basically just played an mtt or 2 every day. I went golfing 4 times and had to rent clubs which kinda sucked, but I got to play at some very nice courses. I played like shit for the most part but won some prop bets so I basically paid for my rounds/rentals all the time.

We started off playing the venetian deep stacks with bad results. One guy from ptp who stayed with us for a week chopped the 550 venetian for 50k. Draqq bought a piece of his BAP on the car ride over to the Venetian and hit big. I played 3-4 venetian events but bricked them all. The structure got much better in the middle over last Feb, but I didn't really build many chips. One mtt I went from 15k to 50k, back to 10k and back to 50k in about 2 hours. KK vs AA for the last hand before the break wasn't fun. I can't remember many hands from any mtt really, well I can remember some bustout hands, but they were pretty standard.

The Rio 340 nightly mtt was one of the softest mtts I've ever seen. The 2nd day I played it, Joe/draqq finished 3rd for $5030 (had to pay taxes on it) after he played a hand kinda meh. The next day I FT'd with a nice chip stack and they all wanted to chop. I refused and ppl got pissed off. We eventually got 5 handed and I had 300k out of 900k chips in play. They still wanted to do an even chop but I wanted too much money. I got in a 300k pot bvb k9o vs kto and bricked, so I went down to 120k chips when avg was 180k. Someone makes a joke saying that "you wish you chopped now." Some dude I busted in 9th kept walking in the room and saying "don't let this homo chop now." I kept running into him the next few days and he'd say "this is the biggest homo I've ever seen" in his Eastern European accent. They all laugh it up and then eventually say "yeh we should chop." Avg was 180k and they wanted to give me an even chop. Umm, ok I'll take the 7k, give me 5th place and not make me pay taxes. It was all good, but from 4am to 530am these guys argued who would take what place b/c obv no one wants to take 1st place so then they'd have to fill a W2 tax form. The other 4 guys were a bunch of idiots and argued with each other forever. It took one guy to count out 4k to pay me my extra money about 5 minutes. Eventually they realize that they gave this Israeli kid 3rd place and the US gov't held 33% of his winnings. Everyone else feels bad for him and I tell them I knew it was going to happen. I take my money and leave at 6am. The mtt started at 7pm. So ridiculous. Ran into a lite call but still got 7k.

I played 4 1500 wsop events, cashing in one of them for $3500. I came into Day 2 with a top 10 stack out of 350. Bubble was 297th. I raised like 50-60% of hands and kept getting flatted/3bet by the nuts or they flat and flop tptk. Definitely didn't work great and I lost a big pot right on the bubble w/ QTcc (utg) vs AQdd (utg+1) on a AcTx6c board AI on flop. Obv I brick after the guy tank ships the flop. Made another light raise/call off pf against a dude w/ AT vs KJ and board runs out Q86QK for another big pot. I got moved tables and my best hand in 5 rotations was A9o. Never got folded to me and I eventually busted in 120th running T4s into AKs for like 10 effective. I was short for all of that table but never got to open shove or had enough FE to 3bet light. Sour stuff but at least I got the cash.

All the wsop fields were filled with huge spewtards or massive nits and some very solid players, but overall they were very easy fields. Other than mtts Dan and I focused on sats that paid out lammers. We combined rolls for this and on the first day I took down a $525 winner take all 10 man stt for $5200. He took down a $325 that day too. I took so much shit at those sats people saying "why don't you play a flop, etc." One black dude kept going off on me and I was saying nothing since he was huge. He made 2 horrible folds against me pf (TT and JJ when I iso'd over a limper or shove) and he was super tilted from that. I lost a couple pots, won a few when behind and he keeps going off on me and I say nothing. Eventually he makes some assanine comment and I erupt which I am kinda known to do. People just don't expect it from me since I'm usually very quiet, especially so at the tables. I eventually lost and he starts laughing and making random comments calling me an internet donk and how the young kids don't know anything about the game or care about money. It definitely steamed me and I went on a tyriad towards Dan. Usually I don't get that pissed, but I hadn't said one thing and he had no reason to continue. A couple other times people slowrolled me in snap call spots but other than that I was playing with confidence/not tilted at all. Going off on idiots doesn't serve much purpose obviously, just makes them want to not play anymore or they get better, but it's not healthy to keep all that anger bottled up.

We probably played the rio nightly 12 times total and played probably 20-30 sats for $13k profit total. Of course I made $10k of that myself and Dan made $3k but we split it evenly since we combined rolls. He ended up on the trip like 10k but I only made like $2500. Still a nice winning trip but could've been much better.

I didn't take many pictures at all, but grabbed a few at allofit29's suite in the rio after he took 7th or something in a 1500 wsop event. I met a lot of ptp and other people and they were really chill. Our house was cool, but vedder's was so much better with a pool table and a pool. Definitely got to do it up more next year. Going to come earlier for those sats because they are the softest things ever if you can afford them.

I have some other longer stories that I might share later, but don't really want to do it now. Going golfing this weekend and going out for my friend's bday. I want to get back to online very soon, hopefully tmrw.

I realized I haven't read a book in a year that isn't a poker book so I'm reading one about self-employment that I got for my bday. I kind of feel like I am losing a part of myself b/c I used to be interested in a bunch of causes and have strong opinions but now I am more apathetic and I am realizing that I was a bit of a self-righteous douchebag that never really had original ideas. I used to think that I had this really special/extrapersonal part of myself that was hard for me to share, but I think I was just trying to make myself feel special and original. Maybe I lost it, I don't know.

It's really dull here now after being in Vegas but Dan and I are going to look for places. I was really happy playing all day, getting hammered and playing Chinese poker. I am learning that I really don't like being by myself. Too much free time isn't good for me, it makes me more depressed. Being at home doesn't really compare to Vegas so I guess that's natural to feel bored.

Update Coming Soon

I'm leaving in a few days. I'm about even which sucks. Still my best Vegas trip yet. I had a small cash in a 1.5k NL wsop event when I came into day 2 w/ a top 10 stack. Lame. Lost a big pot for 1/2th the chips in play in a rio nightly 340 and then got a crazy good deal to chop 5 handed for 7k. Dan and I have been crushing sats on a shared roll. I've gotten really fucked up several times and met lots of people. Has been really fun. Some interesting hands too.

Leaving For Vegas Tomorrow!

Haven't played since last Friday. Went golfing twice on the weekend and that makes 4 times in a week. I bought a new set of Taylor Made Irons which I really like so far. The 3 and 4 iron were replaced by hybrids which are much easier to hit. I am really looking forward to getting out a lot this year, hopefully 2-3 times per week if I can manage that. Hopefully I can go in Vegas w/ whoopsy dazy and draqq.

I added up all my buyins and if I don't make any day 2s and I play everyday almost, I'll go through about 7k in buyins. Probably going to play 2 1.5k wsops and some satellites. Here's what my schedule looks like:

June 11 - Grand Canyon

June 12 - $550 Venetian

June 13 - $1.5k WSOP

June 14 - Day 2 or or Binion's or Caesars or Rest

June 15 - Day 3 or $330 Venetian

June 16 - $330 Venetian

June 17 - $550 Venetian

June 18 - $550 Venetian

June 19 - $550 Venetian

June 20 - $1.5k WSOP

June 21 - Day 2 or $1k Venetian

June 22 - Day 3 or Day 2 or $550 Venetian

Hoping for my first positive Vegas trip. Really got adjusted to the deep stack structure at Venetian in Feb and playing looser earlier on. Might not have tons of time to update this but will probably have more short updates on twitter: http://twitter.com/xversx

Wish me luck!

Vegas Soon!

Can't wait till Wednesday when I leave for Vegas. Tons of people are going to be there and I definitely feel like good things will happen in MTTs there. Huge fields I've heard for everything and I am playing so well.

This week has been very funny. I am running ridiculously hot in 27s and hot in 38s but terrible in everything else so I'm even over 600 games or so. Funny how that works out. I got deep in the 33r wsop qualifier but ran into a hand. Never got much of a stack really.

I went into Golf Town looking to buy a sandwedge and I ended up buying a new set of Taylor Made Irons. They replaced the 3/4 iron with a hybrid which should be great for me since I always had problems hitting them. I'm going golfing twice on the weekend, making it the 4th time I'm going to go out in a week which is great. I've gotten a lot better this year but my anger/prone to tilting is still a problem. I really enjoy it and I know I can play at a pretty decent level and should be able to shoot 85-90 more regularly.

Might only have 1 more day of online before I leave for Vegas. Hit me up if you're going to be there and PM me on 2p2 for my number or something.

Also Chris Moneymaker is following my twitter updates and you should too! www.twitter.com/xversx