Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Back at the Office

Yesterday was the first day of the month that I logged some hours on PokerStars after I played about 4200 hands in 3 hours. The first day back can always feel a bit rusty but I think that I played decent enough and ran pretty well too. I ended up booking a win to the tune of a few buy-ins...which obviously means close to nothing at this point but feels satisfying nonetheless. The game quality yesterday seemed to be a bit above average and I was able to find spots against randoms where I could win big pots with little to no risk. Case in point:

No-Limit Hold'em, $2.00 BB (9 handed)
UTG ($203)
UTG+1 ($247)
MP1 ($210.30)
MP2 ($202)
Hero (MP3) ($200)
CO ($270.05)
Button ($171)
SB ($251.40)
BB ($85.25)

Preflop: Hero is MP3 with 7, 8
1 fold, UTG+1 bets $6, 2 folds, Hero calls $6, 2 folds, SB calls $5, 1 fold

Flop: ($20) 7, 5, 8 (3 players)
SB checks, UTG+1 bets $9, Hero raises $36, 1 fold, UTG+1 calls $27

Turn: ($92) 8 (2 players)
UTG+1 checks, Hero bets $56, UTG+1 calls $56

River: ($204) 6 (2 players)
UTG+1 checks, Hero bets $102 (All-In), UTG+1 calls $102

Total pot: $408

Results:
UTG+1 had J, 10 (flush, Jack high).
Hero had 7, 8 (full house, eights over sevens).
Outcome: Hero won $405


I talked a little bit about what I had been doing with my time off in my last post and I mentioned that I was heading up to Penticton for the weekend with my two good friends Ben and Brandon. Well, that trip has now come and gone and I had a great time up there despite the vacation being relatively short. I'm used to the weather being a bit hotter than it was but on Saturday it was still about 26-28 Celsius and sunny all day, which meant perfect beach weather. After waking up at some unearthly hour (8am-9am), we grabbed a quick breakfast and then made our way into the center of the city with plans to tube down the canal that runs through the city. For those that have no idea what I'm talking about, one of the "things to do" in Penticton is to grab some kind of flotation device (or you can rent tubes) and some beers and spend 2-4 hours chilling while floating down the river towards Skaha Lake. Since it was about 10am and we were all somehow hungover from the previous night (all we did once we arrived around 9pm was sit on the balcony and slam some drinks while randomly creating offside parody lyrics to "Last Friday Night" by Katy Perry because the song came on Penticton's one music station every half hour) we skipped the brews and brought a football instead. There was so much water in the canal this year that we went down in 1/3rd of the usual time, which was fine because that meant more time could be spent at the beach later. The tube ride was relatively uneventful-though at one point Brandon almost lost our football by trying to through it over a bridge that we were floating under. I told him that he didn't have a chance of making it from his sitting position but he insisted that it wouldn't be a problem...he through it up and at first it looked like it would be lost forever as it was heading for the center of the bridge. Luckily, it didn't even have enough juice to make it that far and hit the near ledge and dropped back into the river. $10 saved.

After the canal float, we gathered our beach supplies and headed to the lake. Obviously the most important part of the beaching experience is choosing prime real estate close to as many girls as possible so that you can try and meet them throughout the day. I guess that there are many icebreakers that one could use to introduce themselves to those around them but something that has worked well for me in the past has been to through a football just out of your partner's reach and have it land near the target. Once the girl has kindly returned the football you can thank her and ask her to join in with a witty line, such as "thanks, you actually throw better than he does, did you want to join in?" I can't tell you how many girls that I've rounded up for a campfire later using this technique (at least 1). It is quite immature and slightly retarded but that's what I am sometimes.

Anyways, while the beach was somewhat crowded it was mostly filled with families and there was a noticeable absence of people in my age range. It was slim pickins' and unfortunately I didn't even get an opportunity to hit anyone with my football. We just spend the day relaxing in the sun over some beers and it was quite nice.

We met a couple of guys at the end of the canal float that recommended two places that we should go out to at night-the first being a bar right on Lake Okanagan and the other being a club down the street. Both places were pretty good, although the crowd was definitely on the douchey side of the spectrum. We were at the bar for a while because it was beautiful sitting outside on the patio and pitchers of beers were only $10. For no particular reason, I suggested that the three of us swap names with each other for the night and from that point on I introduced myself as Brandon for the duration of the evening. Unexpectedly, the swap turned out to be slightly in my favour after some drunken bafoon ended up sitting next to us later in the evening and introduced himself as "Tyler." He basically lost his shit with excitement when he found out that Ben had the same name as him (after having to introduce himself as "Tyler") and I didn't have to deal with that. Our waitress was pretty cute and very nice and she spent a lot of time almost hanging out with us lol. She seemed to enjoy our company as I'd like to think that we were a relief from the normal crowd that she has to deal with, such as Tyler on our left, whose response when asked if he was doing alright was "No, you're too slow again. I had to send my buddy up to the bar to get drinks." I also realize that it's her job to flirt for tips but our entire bill for the evening was less than $30. After Tyler (who now decided that he was a boss) ordered shots for our table and the table on his right (3 girls that wanted nothing to do with it), I had to endure one of the most painful conversations of my life with his buddy who slurred out a story about how he installed Andrew Ladd's cable and it was the greatest moment of his life for almost an hour. WINNING. It was getting quite dark out by now and after Douch Mcdoucherson (Tyler) spewed out some comment about how the Germans really won WW2 because they killed 6 million people, our friendship could no longer be bought with free shots and we headed inside.

We ordered a few more beers and played a bit of Foosball before some random girl came up to Brandon and straight up asked for his phone number. He thought it was probably some kind of immature dare and said she was "terrible" anyways, although I thought she was cute. Obviously one of us had more to drink at this point I suppose. He gave her his brother's phone number. We eventually made our way over to the club around midnight but the three of us were almost like zombies by then. Drinking in the sun all day seems good in theory but in reality has some flaws-such as having little to no energy by the end of the night. We didn't stay very long...I remember making a single effort to meet what I thought was a cute girl on the dance floor, only to discover that she was a 4 at close range and left after a brief conversation that was heading nowhere. We went back to our place and shot some hoops before passing out around 2am.

The next day, we were all awake before 10am and just spend the day playing a bit of tennis and chilling at the beach briefly before making the 5 hour drive home. I'm definitely looking forward to more vaca's this summer, even if they are just weekend adventures.

I was at the gym yesterday and looked out the window to see this sign. I lol'd so I thought that I'd share:



Alright, I should probably start work for the day.

gl at the tables!

5 comments:

  1. Nice trip report.

    Any plans for launching the next installment of your:
    "How I got where I am now as a poker player"-series?

    Looking forward to that!

    gl

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey, thanks for readin' man.

    Yeah I've been meaning to get around to that but everytime I think about writing it I realize that most of my poker story was told in the filming I did a month ago for "I am frosty012," which should be coming out soon in the near future. That said, I'm not sure how much detail will be in the film so I'll try to get a good write-up done within 1 week for those that are interested.

    Thx for the comment

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nice report,
    but 5 hours driving for a short we trip, i think it was really exhausting.
    A new video of your poker story? Can`t wait till it comes out...

    Few questions..
    When did you made that 24tables video? Was it this year? Will you make another one?

    I saw it couple of times and it was really helpfull (not only for multitabling), everytime i discover something new but logical.
    Thank you very much for that.

    GL at the tables...

    ReplyDelete
  4. frosty

    hows it going mate, nice trip report mate, i have just done an equally long one with videos, check out how we do it in the UK lol

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hey gile, thx for readin' buddy

    I made that video near the beginning of last year...I feel like I've improved soooo much as a poker player since I made that video and I could probably spot some mistakes watching it back. That said, the main focus of that video was on how to actually keep up with playing 24 tables and I wasn't really emphasizing on strategy but I'm glad that you learned a few things.

    As of now, I have no immediate plans to make another video in the near future but if there's a lot of interest I could maybe be up for it sometime in August. As sort of a give-back promo thing I was thinking about offering some free coaching for a few people in August since I've already done the video thing a couple of times so I'll keep you posted on that.

    Also, I actually made 2 videos for pokerschoolonline.com a while back but I'm not sure as to when they're going to be released. The videos are more centered around strategy and poker theory so I'm only playing 4 tables IIRC. Keep an eye out for them in the near future though if you're interested.

    Rossi,

    Great stuff mate. Looks like you had a great time!

    ReplyDelete