Still SNE, Baby

Another month and it once again came down to the last day to keep my SNE status. This time, however, things were much less stressful and I easily hit the 50K milestone with several hours to spare (despite a brief scare where the software froze (which I don't think has ever happened to me before since I moved into this condo) with about 200 VPP's left lol). I feel like I ran pretty decent this session and ended up booking a big winning day despite running AK into AA twice blind on blind, losing to AQ with JJ on an AKJ flop, running KK into AA from the hijack vs. btn (sometimes a fold I guess), and losing to KK with AA all-in pre-flop in a spot where a good player could find a fold with kings (all pots were worth close to 200 big blinds). On the other side of the coin, I'm pretty sure that I only had 1 meaningful suckout all day and that was with JJ vs. AA blind on blind...hmmm, maybe they always have AA in the blinds lol.

I did however ran good in the sense that I made a ton of hands against people today and got a lot of value out of each of them.



It feels great to ship a $2K+ day to end the month and somehow net me another 5-figure month despite the poor start to June. It also feels great to have stuck to a disciplined schedule and ultimately crank out a ton of hands in the last 4 days and still play good poker!

I figured that I might as well address the comment on my last blog entry about that other poker site losing their licence so I don't get asked a million times over for my opinion. Unfortunately, I don't really have a whole lot to say...I'm just as well informed as the next guy and get all my news from the same places as you guys. I mean, to me it makes sense for the other poker sites to lose their licenses after what has happened with "Black Friday." Ok...so you don't actually have the money to repay your players?? LOL what kind of idiots are running these billion dollar businesses...it's as if not one of these clowns was able to see 1 step ahead of the game and ask themselves "what if." If you're doing illegal things with other people's money do you seriously expect that it won't eventually catch up with you? Obviously I don't know all of the inside details but from an outsider's perspective the whole situation seems rather pathetic.

PokerStars, on the other hand, just gets it. It's seriously as if the other sites are sitting at a table with Stars and it's so obvious that Stars is the pro and the other's are just fish. PokerStars has always handled their business by the book according to the rules/laws and has nothing to hide. People get banned from playing online poker in the States and BAM, everyone's money is refunded ASAP simply because THEY HAVE THE MONEY. Aside from the fact that Stars is not even under the same licensing agreement as the other sites, I see no reason why they would ever have their licence revoked simply because they have done nothing wrong. I couldn't be prouder with my affiliation with the company and trust PokerStars entirely.

Anyways, I'll do a month recap in a couple of days but for now it's off to the gym before heading out for some drinks tonight. Hope you all had a solid month!

gl at the tables!

Fun Day

I took a pretty big beating for most of the day today as I ran quite badly and wasn't playing particularly sharp either. Case in point:

The SB was a fish that I was hoping would come along for the ride, otherwise I'd be more inclined just to fold 66 pre as the UTG raiser is an ok reg. Why can't they both just have AQ?!

No-Limit Hold'em, $2.00 BB (9 handed)
BB ($209)
UTG ($203)
UTG+1 ($270.65)
MP1 ($239.05)
MP2 ($205.25)
MP3 ($214.30)
Hero (CO) ($276)
Button ($200)
SB ($196.05)

Preflop: Hero is CO with 6, 6
UTG bets $5.30, 4 folds, Hero calls $5.30, 1 fold, SB calls $4.30, 1 fold

Flop: ($17.90) Q, 6, Q (3 players)
SB checks, UTG bets $11, Hero raises $34, SB raises $190.75 (All-In), UTG raises $186.70 (All-In), Hero calls $163.70

Turn: ($604.05) 2 (3 players, 2 all-in)

River: ($604.05) K (3 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $604.05

Results:
SB had Q, A (three of a kind, Queens).
UTG had K, Q (full house, Queens over Kings).
Hero had 6, 6 (full house, sixes over Queens).
Outcome: UTG won $601.05

I was originally planning on playing three sets of 4500 hands with breaks in between but ended up playing 14,404 hands STRAIGHT lol. Not an ideal situation obviously but the combination of me needing VPP's/wanting to pull back to even/better than usual games (likely because that other big site lost their licence) meant that I played for 9-10 hours in a row. This is something that I have only done probably less than 10 times in my career and will try to never do it again. It's just not healthy, although I feel surprisingly fine right now or I wouldn't even be on the computer.


That big spike just before hand #14,400 was after I won a big pot off an amateur player at 400nl. It turned out to be a giant cooler disregarding his poor play pre-flop...I was 100% willing to stack on this flop but was happy with how much value I ended up extracting anyways. On the river, I really had no clue what he was holding and was pretty much just betting because I had what I considered to be the nuts lol (the way he was check-snap calling made me think that he wouldn't have 45, but who knows) and was hoping that he'd call with 1 pair +.

No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (9 handed)
MP1 ($518.90)
MP2 ($479.25)
MP3 ($415.75)
Hero (CO) ($443.45)
Button ($660.55)
SB ($129.80)
BB ($575.25)
UTG ($400)
UTG+1 ($441)

Preflop: Hero is CO with Q, Q
4 folds, MP3 calls $4, Hero bets $20, 3 folds, MP3 calls $16

Flop: ($46) 3, 2, 9 (2 players)
MP3 checks, Hero bets $32, MP3 calls $32

Turn: ($110) Q (2 players)
MP3 checks, Hero bets $76, MP3 calls $76

River: ($262) 6 (2 players)
MP3 checks, Hero bets $184, MP3 calls $184

Total pot: $630

Results:
MP3 didn't show [2s, 2d ]
Hero had Q, Q (three of a kind, Queens).
Outcome: Hero won $627

Anyways, the good thing about that marathon session is that I now only have 4K more VPP's to clear tomorrow to hit 50K. It will still be a long day but there will be no stress about whether or not I'll make it (barring power outage or computer fail lol, that would be a tough beat to take....) but I really hope it just goes somewhat smoothly! Can't wait to take some time off in early July!

gl at the tables!

Solid Session

I put in a pretty profitable session on Sunday netting about $1K after playing just under 4K hands. I was planning on playing longer but decided to call it quits and go to a BBQ with some friends back home. Unfortunately, this now means that I have to earn 20K VPP's in 4 days to once again keep my SNE status. While things won't be quite as hectic as they were last month, I definitely have my work cut out for me before the month expires.

I figured I'd post one of the more interesting hands of the session where I actually had a huge suckout at 400nl. It was kind of a weird spot because the player that overshoves the flop is a huge fish and I have him beat like 95% of the time but the first caller was a nitty reg that could easily be trapping with KK+. At the same time, I think that it's reasonable for the reg to be holding 66-99 and probably even more realistic that they have TT-QQ (which I thought they might actually fold to my shove). The hand also happened fairly early in my session after I had already lost a string of small-medium pots in a row so I guess I took the higher variance line by shoving after already making some big lay downs in the day. Looking back on the hand I guess that I should be folding but I think it's going to be pretty villain dependant.

No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (9 handed)
UTG+1 ($412)
Hero (MP1) ($400)
MP2 ($400)
MP3 ($415.40)
CO ($434.10)
Button ($217.20)
SB ($206.25)
BB ($128)
UTG ($220.10)

Preflop: Hero is MP1 with 10, 10
2 folds, Hero bets $8, 1 fold, MP3 calls $8, 2 folds, SB calls $6, 1 fold

Flop: ($28) 4, 4, 4 (3 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $18, MP3 calls $18, SB raises $198.25 (All-In), Hero raises $374 (All-In), MP3 calls $374

Turn: ($1010.25) K (3 players, 2 all-in)

River: ($1010.25) 10 (3 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $1010.25

Results:
SB didn't show
Hero had 10, 10 (full house, tens over fours).
MP3 didn't show [Ah, Ad ]
SB doesn't show [5c, 5h ]
Outcome: Hero won $1007.25

Anyways, hope I can run well and play decent over the next few days.

gl at the tables.

The Next 15

Well, the next 15K VPP's have gone much better than the first 15 but unfortunately that isn't saying a whole lot! Nonetheless, I think that I've won enough money to be even on the month or up some meaningless amount (aside from rakeback ldo). It feels good to be running better though and I think that I'm still playing solid. The games always seem to slow down in the summer a bit and that ain't making things any easier.

Aside from this Fri/Sat, all that I've been doing everyday for the past 10 days or so is playing poker and working out. It feels nice to have some structure in my life for a change. Usually, I wake up in the afternoon and when I eventually get around to "working" I end up playing until the early hours of the AM. Over the last couple of weeks, however, I've been waking up extremely early (before 8am in most cases) and have gotten the pokah out of the way early enough to have most of the day to relax and keep on top of chores/gym. The main reason why I've been making an effort to get up early is to play during busier hours (now that Euro's comprise the majority of players...well maybe Canadians, not rly sure) and it's been working out pretty well so far.

Oh yeah, I finally got around to opening a new database in HEM also and should now have accurate graphs that aren't missing a ton of hands. This should be a pretty precise graph of the month so far:



After a somewhat stressful work week I was ready to get my drink on this weekend. Friday night involved going over to my friend Dan's place for a going away party as he is leaving in a couple of days for summer employment. I ended up hanging around there for a while and then left to go downtown with Ben and Brandon. We were planning on going to a place called "Library Square" because we knew a few people that were already there but once we arrived there was a massive line-up. One of the girls that we knew there came out to talk to us and showed us her stamp. I suddenly had a stroke of genius and thought that I could replicate the stamp if we could find a sharpy. We hit up a nearby 7-11 and bought a black felt and walked back towards the bar. The three of us drew our best impression of what we thought the stamp looked like on our wrist and I volunteered to go first and try to fool the bouncer. I walked up to the line and took out my phone and pretended that I was talking to someone to make it look like I had just left the club to make a call. The bouncer opened the rope to let someone out and I tried to walk in simultaneously while flashing my wrist to the guy. The conversation went like this:

Bouncer: "Wait a minute, let me see that stamp again."
*I show him again*
"I don't know about that. Bouncer #2, hey Bouncer #2! Come and look at this stamp. Is it real?"
Bouncer #2: "I dunno"
Bouncer: "Ok, well how much is cover tonight?"
*I don't have a fing clue*
Me: "Ten bucks"
Bouncer: "No!"
Me: "Yeah, I paid $10 earlier."
Bouncer: "No, cover is $12."
*I try to convince the bouncer that I paid $10 for cover 2 hours ago but he isn't having any of it so I turn and walk away. Fail.*

After we couldn't get into L.Square we ended up going to a couple of places down granville. I'm pretty sure we went into a strip club at one point but Ben was too cheap to pay $10 cover...I don't ever want to hear that I'm the cheap one again, though I didn't care at all and hate strip clubs to begin with. We spent most of the remainder of the night at an Irish bar and it was relatively uneventful. When we arrived the three of us went up to an empty table and were approached by 3 girls claiming that they already had the table reserved. I told them "no problem" and started to walk away when they said that they were "just joking" and wanted to share it with us. Nothing developed though. Fail #2.

I went out with Brandon again tonight to the Lamplighter where we were meeting a group of about 15 people and I had only previously met 3-5 of them. I like the venue at the Lamplighter, although it is a bit cramped, and I ended up talking to one of the girls in the group for quite a long time. It was a difficult task because it was incredibly loud in there but she was very nice and down to earth...though i wasn't overly attracted to her. Brandon and I spent several hours in the bar before texting our friend Ryan, who was at a nearby club, to see how his night was going. He told us that we should come and meet up with him so we bailed on the L.L. and walked down the street to meet him. He was hanging out with three girls, one of which I've met before and two that I've never seen. It turned out to be a pretty perfect arrangement...I had a great conversation with one of the girls before we all headed to the dance floor and kind of paired off and threw some shapes and got our grind on. I ended up getting the number of the girl that I was talking to so hopefully I see her again soon because I had a great time.

The most impressive accomplishment of the night would have to be me writing this blog right now, while quite boozy, with minimal grammatical and spelling mistakes!

gl at the tables!

Bad Beat Jackpot?

Of course there is no actual bad beat jackpot promotion on PokerStars but if there was I would have been involved in it today (well, depending on the requirements I guess...I've seen some pots qualify for the BBJ if aces full (AA as hole cards) gets cracked but it might be more common to have to have quads get beat)! Regardless, since there is no BBJ, I'm glad I came out on the winning end of the cooler lol.

No-Limit Hold'em, $2.00 BB (8 handed) -
Button ($91.10)
SB ($152)
BB ($213.30)
UTG ($288.25)
UTG+1 ($222.85)
MP1 ($200)
Hero (MP2) ($200)
CO ($200)

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with Q, J
1 fold, UTG+1 bets $6, MP1 calls $6, Hero calls $6, CO calls $6, 3 folds

Flop: ($27) A, K, 10 (4 players)
UTG+1 checks, MP1 checks, Hero bets $16, 1 fold, UTG+1 calls $16, 1 fold

Turn: ($59) 4 (2 players)
UTG+1 checks, Hero bets $36, UTG+1 calls $36

River: ($131) K (2 players)
UTG+1 checks, Hero bets $76, UTG+1 raises $164.85 (All-In), Hero calls $66 (All-In)

Total pot: $415

Results:
UTG+1 had A, A (full house, Aces over Kings).
Hero had Q, J (royal flush).
Outcome: Hero won $412

Always nice to get full value out of the nuts and more importantly get to show down a royal flush! I've heard of people actually checking behind royal flushes to get a badge on ptr but the value of such a badge to me is about $0...so unless I misread the board or misclick expect me to raise the nuts on the river heh!

gl at the tables.

The First 15K

I guess that I've been pretty fortunate up to this point to not really have any sort of downswing at all this year. It seems as though I haven't been running very well all year but I also haven't been running terribly bad either.

That said, the first 15K VPP's have been nothing short of brutal this month. Just standard running bad...losing flips, getting coolered etc. I've also been playing sort of spewy and have been making bad calls in close spots and it seems that I've been wrong most of the time. I currently find myself down about $1700 and considering that I won't be hitting any milestone bonuses this month, it would take nothing short of a miracle to prevent this from being my worst financial month this year (well, not counting January!).

Thinking positively, my deficit can be erased with 1 good day so it's certainly nothing worth panicking about but it's obviously annoying. Oh well, hopefully it doesn't get worse before it gets better!

I was going to post a bunch of bad beat histories for therapeutic reasons but there were too many and the post got ridiculously long. That and no one cares. I'll leave you with one of the more tilting hands of the day...it was only a flip but his play is so bad that it seems like a beat lol. The play was made by a huge winning player as well, so either he made all of his money back in 2006 or I'm doing it wrong...he reps exactly what he has and there's no way he can ever have anything of real strength in this spot so unless he thinks that I'm squeezing with like A2 and is shoving for value the play seems spewy at best. If only I didn't have the bottom of my range here or if only I won the flip!

No-Limit Hold'em, $2.00 BB (8 handed)
Hero (BB) ($200)
UTG ($200.30)
UTG+1 ($419.35)
MP1 ($202)
MP2 ($203)
CO ($188.55)
Button ($200)
SB ($382.45)

Preflop: Hero is BB with A, Q
3 folds, MP2 bets $8, CO calls $8, 1 fold, SB calls $7, Hero raises $34, 2 folds, SB raises $374.45 (All-In), Hero calls $164 (All-In)

Flop: ($416) K, 4, 2 (2 players, 2 all-in)

Turn: ($416) 7 (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: ($416) J (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $416

Results:
SB had 8, 8 (one pair, eights).
Hero had A, Q (high card, Ace).
Outcome: SB won $595.45

Anywho, hope this month is going more smoothly for the rest of you! Will give another update in 15K VPP's or so.

gl at the tables!