Surrounded by Donkeys!

Yes, it seems that even halfway around the world I still cannot escape the presence of donkeys! The good news it that the donkeys in Spain didn't take my money.

I've been back home in Vancouver for a few days now and have been (and will be for the rest of the month) busy as tits trying to cram a month's worth of work and obligations into two weeks. The work part is pretty standard-I need to earn at least 50K VPP's before June to retain my SNE status until it expires in September...I can predict that there is almost no chance that I will exceed much more than the minimal VPP requirements for this month. As for the obligations, well part of my duties for being on Team Online include hosting a bunch of SCOOP final tables this year (5 in total). A couple of the tournaments that I'm assigned to host will likely end around midnight on Friday and Saturday, which will complicate my plans for the long-weekend coming up but it's all good. PokerStars has been more than accommodating to me in that they took my holiday into consideration while planning the hosting schedule so I'm grateful for that and am happy to help out hosting. I've already hosted 2 "High" buy-in SCOOP events where the winner took home around $150K in both cases...pretty sick money.

On the other side of the coin, I also have the opportunity to play in some SCOOP events that I would normally pass on due to having some more buy-ins to work with for being on T.O. Instead of playing a bunch of low-medium events that I'm more than adequately bankrolled for anyways, I've decided to play a couple of bigger buy-in events to take a shot and gain some experience in larger stake MTT's. My SCOOP schedule is quite small and looks like this, keeping in mind the possibility of adding some minor changes if I see fit to do so at the last minute:

May 17: SCOOP 26- $1050, $109, $11 Turbo
May 22: SCOOP 37- $215 6-Max
May 22: SCOOP 38- $1050, $109 Main Event

I played the turbos today and cashed in 2 out of 3 of the events...but I didn't cash in the $1k so who cares lol! As I said, these buy-ins are compensated so I'm in a zero risk situation and all of the cashes are pure profit but it woulda been nice to at least min-cash the $1k :(

In the $1k, I was extremely card-dead throughout the entire tournament. My only premium hand in 2 hours was AKo and other than that I got AQs in the early levels and nothing else. I remained patient but my stack soon dwindled in half before I eventually found QJo, which looked like the stone cold nuts at this point, and shoved from MP for about 7 BB's and got called by A3o. The board ran out 9KxxT and I doubled back up to the 10K stack I started with. I went through the blinds and then shoved the aforementioned AKo from the Cutoff for 9K and got called by A5o in the Big Blind. That held and I doubled to just under 20K but could gain no momentum. In turbos, there's just no escaping the fact that you need to catch hands...not exclusively premium hands but you need to pick up at least mediocre hands that will play alright if you're called or you need to find a lot of spots to steal. Unfortunately, my position at the table was quite bad because there were a lot of bigger stacks on my right that were opening every pot and I wasn't picking up any hands to re-jam with since I had no fold equity. I busted when it folded to me on the button and I made a standard shove for 13K with KJo (1k-2k blinds) and ran into JJ in the SB. A little disappointing but I think that I played alright.

The $109 showed much more promise as I had worked my 10k starting stack up to $55k at 2.5k-5k blinds right before the money. We were down to around 620 players and 585 got paid and I was dealt AKo in the Cutoff. It folded to me and I decided to min-raise to 10k to induce a shove from somebody that might try to exploit the fact that we're on the money bubble (and assume that I will fold very often). The problem with the min-raise here is that it's should be so painfully obvious that I'm super strong as I would normally just shove my whole range here, especially on the bubble, but I had no reason to believe that any of the players behind me would pick up on this. The player in the BB ended up taking my bait and re-shoved his 50K stack with T4o...unfortunately my fish got off of the hook when he hit a pair on the flop and I missed. This left me with less than 1BB so instead of calling it off on the next hand I took my time and folded into the money a few hands later before busting.

I also made a deepish run in the L event working my stack up to about $140k and eventually busting in a standard hand where I shoved KQhh from MP for 10bb's but ran into AQo in the SB and didn't suckout. All in all, I had a fun time playing and look forward to the rest of the SCOOP and making a little bit of money!

So I'm still pretty jetlagged from my trip...I've been waking up around 7:30am PT (about 5-7hrs earlier than usual lol) and it's been great, hopefully it lasts! I was pretty out of it a couple of days ago though-I spent 15 minutes talking to my friend on the phone thinking it was a different friend the entire time. Hopefully my wits are back with me now.

Speaking of my trip, I had a great time in London hanging out with my brother and my cousin and then with my parents in Spain. It was nice to spend some time with the family, especially after missing out on a vacation to Hawaii last year due to the SNE chase. I could really spend hours and hours blogging about my travels but I really need to get some sleep! Basically, in London, I found different ways to amuse myself during the day while my brother and cousin were working and then we would meet up afterwards. Daily activities included getting lost around the city many times, shopping, working out, recruiting girls to join us later at a club (epic fail), and even a 2 hour soccer match one day. At night, we alternated between taking it easy by going out to a movie or dinner/casual drinks and going out to clubs. We went to a couple of amazing clubs, stuff that you'd never see anywhere in Vancouver that's for sure lol. It was very tough to get in since you need to either be a member or willing to drop 150 pounds each at these places but my brother had a couple of connections to luckily bypass the strict entry. It's worth getting in though, especially if you know someone with a table inside. You're basically looking at top shelf liquor, no girls below an 8.5, good music...fk one of the clubs even had circus performers on stilts/strippers lol. And a sexy doorman with the biggest triceps you've ever seen! (inside joooke)

I don't have any pics from London, basically because I couldn't be bothered to carry around my camera. I do have some pictures from Spain though courtesy of my dad. We stayed in a remote village about 1.5 hours out of Malaga where almost no one spoke any English. It was a complete 180 from London and was very relaxing...although we did travel around to a couple of bigger cities like Serville and Marbella. These pics are from the village, Serville, and Marbella, respectively:













Flights. Flights were somewhat of a nightmare this trip. Going over to London wasn't that bad at all, apart from the airline being quite unorganized upon check-in and we didn't have any time to spare once we got past security. The flight to Spain from London was much worse...because my brother and I missed it! We were at the airport before scheduled takeoff but the flight was already "closed" and we couldn't get our boarding passes. It was 100% our fault but after being out quite late the night before there was no chance that we could get up any earlier than we did, especially after we thought that we would still have enough time to make it. We ended up getting on the next easyJet flight after paying a 50 pound "rescue fee."

Coming home was painful. On about 4 hours of sleep, I got my ass to the airport at 8am (2 hours before my 10am flight back to Vancouver) only to see the biggest lineup imaginable for check-in. Apparently the computer system went down earlier so things were very slow and on top of that there were two giant flights checking-in at the same desk (one to Van and one to Calgary). Waiting in what turned out to be a 2 hour lineup was bad but the worst part was that nobody was able to tell us whether or not the plane would be delayed or if it would leave with about half of the passengers on it. Obviously it would be ridiculous to leave without half of the people on it but after witnessing easyJet's "we don't wait for nobody!" policy a few days prior I couldn't help worry about missing yet another flight. Things only got worse when I go to the check-in desk. Each person is allowed a 20kg bag to drop and a 5kg carry-on. My bag was about 15kg but my carry-on was about 10kg, double the limit. I was pretty frantic at this point, still worried that I'd miss the flight so I said fine whatever, I'll drop 2 bags how much is the cost? The man told me it would be a charge of 15 pounds per kg over (75 pounds) so I thought fk that and frantically started shoving clothes from my carry-on into my bigger bag. For the next 5 minutes I was "that guy" who was too stupid to weigh his bags before he left and was now holding up the entire line to save a few bucks. Eventually, after kneeling on my bag to keep it closed, I got both of my bags to fall under the respective limits and I was on my way.

As I had suspected, luckily they did delay the flight so that everyone could board and I walked on to take my seat. I arrived at my assigned seat of 31F only to see a mother with a crying baby sitting in my seat. I figured that she was one seat over from where she should be since the seat on her left was open and thought "you've got to be kidding me!" "Uh, is this 31F?" I asked her. "Oh, yeah, but we switched seats with someone up there" as she pointed in some vague direction. "Okay, no problem, what seat did you switch with?" "23A or B" she said. I walked up to take a look and saw a cute girl sitting in the aisle seat and two empty seats to her left. "Is anyone sitting there?" I asked. The answer was no and suddenly the 9 hour flight didn't seem so bad! We talked on and off between between me watching movies and her reading a book and to make a long story short we're facebook friends. Yeah, pretty much married. We might be going for drinks soon (and by might, I mean she hasn't said no yet)...I haven't decided if I want to use my "one time" on the SCOOP main event or this situation, we'll see.

gl at the tables, thxx for reading!

Back Where I Belong, Yeah I Never Felt So Strong (April Review)

What up guys, it's been a wild month and there's a lot to talk about! I've been crazy busy since around "Black Friday" and have found little to no time to update the ol' blog. I anticipate this post being quite long so let's get to it!

I'm actually writing this blog post from South Kensington, London. I sort of decided that I would arrange a last minute trip across the pond to visit my brother and cousin if I had a good month in April and I made my mind up about 1 week ago to go through with the plan after only having like 1 losing day all month. Definitely one of my favorite perks of playing poker for a living is the flexible lifestyle that I can live. I literally packed the morning of my flight and was good to go. I left YVR yesterday and I arrived at Gatwick airport and took the express train into Victoria station, where my bro and cousin were waiting for me holding a sign that said "Big T," lol. The plane left at 2pm pacific time and got in at 7:45am BST (about midnight PT) so I had decided to go without sleep for the day so I would be on normal time today. The three of us had a pretty busy day and I was exhausted by the end of it...went shopping for an inflatable mattress + pump (got both for 17 pounds), went for lunch, went for "tea time" and slammed some tea instead of brews, then played "football" for 2 hours with some guys from my brother's work. I nearly collapsed from exhaustion but feel better for it today. The plan for tonight is to go out to a club and throw some shapes and talk to questionable women (or shoot for teh stars).

Poker went very well this month. I pretty much tied my previous record for the most profit won in a single month (set back in November, 2010), taking around $16.5K off of the tables by playing only 1/3rd of the volume. I'm currently at my all time career peak in earnings and am feeling very comfortable with my game right now. I had to jam a whole bunch of hours in the last few days of the month and wasn't playing anywhere near my "A" game (it started to remind me of last December) but I still ended up winning quite a bit so it's all good. I certainly ran well for most of the month and am fortunate for that...hopefully it continues in May when I resume play around the 15th. I'm also looking forward to playing a lot of SCOOP events in May and will likely even play a couple of tournaments overseas while I'm here (I'll actually be in Spain from the 7th-13th). I'll likely do a detailed writeup of all of the SCOOP events that I plan on playing in the very near future.

I don't have the exact numbers for the month (will update when I get home) because while I can access my Stars account, I don't have the piece of paper where I wrote down my beginning balance for the month. That said, these numbers should be very close:

April

$16.3K Table Winnings
$4K Cash Bonus
---------------------------
$20.3K USD

I had originally planned on playing about 1.5x the volume that I ended up playing to clear the 200K milestone bonus but after "Black Friday," combined with NHL playoff games, I was lucky just to hit 50K VPP's and retain my SNE status. I guess that I only lost a few days to BF-not wanting to play amongst all of the immediate confusion I chose to take some time off and see how things unraveled. The situation in the US is far from resolved and I hope that things will turn out in favour of the US players in the not so distant future but for now, as far as the games are concerned for teh rest of the world, things seem fine (in terms of traffic on the site, quality of the games, cash outs being processed etc.). It will be interesting to see how things unfold over the remainder of the year but I'm optimistic.

I'd say that the main distraction from meeting my volume quote was easily the 7 NHL playoffs games that the Vancouver Canucks were involved in. In my last post, I said that the Canucks had a 3-0 lead in the series and would easily close it out in 1-2 more games. This was hardly the case. Chicago ended up catching on fire and won the next 2 games in blowout-type fashion before forcing a game 7 after an scoring an OT winner in game 6. The city was in a state of depression and anger after witnessing the habitual choking that seems to plague the Canucks in the playoffs every year but I stayed cautiously optimistic about game 7. I really hate bandwagon fans and if there's ever a time that your team needs support it's in big games so to hear people saying things like "F the canucks" before the series is even over is annoying. Of course, after the Canucks won game 7 in dramatic OT fashion everyone is sporting jerseys and car flags again...lol. They're currently tied 1-1 in round 2 against Nashville and I think that it will be a good series. Nashville always seems to have Vancouver's number for some reason but I think that the Canucks are too talented and hungry to drop the series this year. I'm saying 'Nucks in 6!

I received an email from the Team Online manager at Pokerstars a couple of weeks ago asking me if I would be interested in organizing a night out in Vancouver with some Supernova VIPs and everything would be paid for. Would I be interested in doing what I would likely be doing anyways only bigger and better and I wouldn't have to pay for it? Hmmm let me think about it. I set it up so that a limo would pick me up at my place and then we'd round up the other guys. I didn't really know what to expect in the other poker players but it turns out they were all really cool, down to earth, sociable guys. Two of the guys decided to meet us at Joey's on Burrard and Robson (where I had dinner arrangements) because one of them was from Montrael and was sweating the Montrael/Boston game and the other was at a final table playing for 36K lol. We popped a couple of bottles of campaign on the way to dinner and the 7 of us took our table. The other two guys joined us shortly after (one after winning $10K from the FT) and I told them to order whatever they wanted without going insane. When I got back from the restroom there was like 10 appetizers and 3 trays of shots waiting on the table...as it turns out, no one even ordered a meal lol all the money went to appies and mostly drinks. We left Joey's just after 10pm and got back into the limo and went down Granville to Ceili's, which is an Irish bar that turns into a bit of a club on Friday/Sat. I figured it would be a good choice of venue since not everyone likes dance clubs and not everyone likes to sit at a bar so it was a bit of both worlds. I had a guest list but wasn't aware that it expired at 10pm (wtf is the point of a GL before 10pm lol Vancovuer) so I had to negotiate our way in through the bouncer. He originally wanted $180 to let the 9 of us in but I got him down to $120 for the group...not sure if he would have gone lower but it didn't look like it. Once inside, before I even set up a bar tab the dude from Montrael had already ordered more shots. I'm pretty sure that he made sure that everyone either had a shot in their hand or there was one on the way for the entire night now that I think about it. There was a pretty good scene there that night, it was actually busier than I expected and we found a couple of tables to relax at and continue talking. I think that a lot of people found it kind of weird to talk about poker and actually have the other person understand what they were saying...sometimes poker lingo can be like another language and because of that I normally never go into great detail when I'm with my friends (and it seems to be the common course of action according to the other guys as well). Anyways, I certainly didn't need a heck of a lot more liquid courage after already being at Joey's for a couple of hours and a few of the players started approaching some random girls. I thought that I had a good thing going with a redhead for a while but things just fizzled out. It was for the better though, as I met a cuter girl shortly after on the dance floor. How I could even muster a coherent sentence at this point I have no idea but I eventually convinced her to leave with me despite her saying that nothing was going to happen (lol, never heard that before...). The rest of the crew kind of dispersed around the same time (2am) and made their own way home. I got on a bus with the girl and noticed that her friend was with her and thought that this might be trouble. I had no idea where I was going and again the girl told me that nothing could happen tonight but asked me if I wanted to see her another time and offered her number. I declined, like an idiot, pulled the eject cord and got off the bus at Granville and Broadway I think. One of the other poker players who I had been kind of wingmaning with I guess called me shortly after and said that he had a cab going back to his place. I asked him if he would pick me up on the way and he agreed. I ended up crashing at his place on the floor and that was that. All in all, I had an absolute blast and met a lot of really cool people, most of which I'm still in touch with via FB and hopefully we can all go out again at some point. Thanks PStars!

All right, hope you guys had a solid month and things go well for you on and off of the tables in May.

gl at the tables from London!

No Comment

I'm sure that almost everyone that reads this blog is now aware of the current online poker developments taking place in the US. If you're not, the gist of what happened is that the US government banned their own citizens from playing online poker for real money on any of the major poker sites on Friday, April 15th. The situation still remains very muddy and PokerStars has understandably requested that I do not make any comments on the issue. To be honest, I don't know anything more than the information that's been made public anyways, although I do have my own opinions on the matter at hand/the future of online poker that I'm sure I'll be able to express in a short period of time. For now, I would recommend watching a good interview with Ryan "The__D__RY" on PokerTube, as he rationalizes the irrational situation very well (should be easy to find on the front page).

My volume is once again lacking a little bit this month, not because of the frenzy that took place on April 15th but because my days have often been cut short due to the NHL playoffs!! The Canucks are on fire right now and took a 3-0 lead in the series last night against the former Stanley Cup champions the Chicago Blackhawks. The Hawks are no match this year as their team was decimated by the salary cap and they've lost 1/3rd of their squad from last year. Before the series started I predicted that the 'Nucks would win in 5 games but at this point I think a sweep tomorrow night is more probable given how good the team is playing. However, the Canucks have a bit of a bad habit of making it to round 2 every year and then losing so the true test will come next round...if the 'Nucks make it to round 3 they will undoubtedly experience a huge confidence boost after shaking the monkey off their back and will have a very legitimate shot at the Cup. Let's just take it one step at a time.


Like my hockey team, I've been unbeatable at the tables so far this month, as my heater has continued. I haven't had a single losing day after playing about 14 days this month and have almost averaged winning $1K a day even before rakeback. As is often the case when I'm running well, my volume usually decreases. I haven't played over 6K hands on any given day and the average number of hands has probably been around 3.5K (currently sitting around 28K VPP's). Now that I've made this post, I fully expect things to take a drastic turn for the worse but I'll hope for the best!

Here's an interesting hand from yesterday where I make a non-standard call pre-flop hoping to win a big pot with the button involved, who had already shown signs of being a weaker player (61/35). Thoughts on the hand can be found below:

No-Limit Hold'em, $2.00 BB (9 handed)
UTG+1 ($270)
MP1 ($205.85)
MP2 ($217.65)
MP3 ($362.70)
CO ($200)
Button ($300.30)
Hero (SB) ($201)
BB ($53)
UTG ($100)

Preflop: Hero is SB with 3, 5
3 folds, MP2 bets $6, 2 folds, Button calls $6, Hero calls $5, 1 fold

Flop: ($20) 4, A, Q (3 players)
Hero checks, MP2 checks, Button bets $9, Hero raises $28, 1 fold, Button calls $19

Turn: ($76) 5 (2 players)
Hero bets $48, Button calls $48

River: ($172) 4 (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $75, Hero calls $75

Total pot: $322

Results:
Button had 7, J (one pair, fours).
Hero had 3, 5 (two pair, fives and fours).
Outcome: Hero won $319

I didn't have to think too long before calling the river bet with 3rd pair given that there are many draws in his range and more importantly there are very few hands that would just call the flop/turn and then value bet the river. If he had a hand like A4+ he would very likely just go with it on the flop, or at the very least the turn. I think that AK or 4x would be pretty much the only hands that would take the line of call-call-bet in this spot and given the pre-flop action I think that AK needs to be discounted because even some recreational players know to 3bet AK.

So, what was my plan for the hand? Well, with my flush draw + gutshot I check-raised the flop with the intention of stacking off. Given his call pre-flop and his loose style, his flop bet is going to be weighted to a lot of pretty bad hands (ie. a naked 4, a Q with a decent kicker, medium pocket pairs, Ax, broadway cards that have a gutshot). I'm happy to take the pot down right there with my C/R and even if he has a real hand we still have a decent amount of equity assuming we're not up against bigger spades.

After he calls my small check-raise (my sizing was poor and likely done in a hurry due to being on many tables) I'm left in a bit of an awkward spot with $167 behind and $76 in the pot. I decide to try and use my fold equity again and bet out $48 because I think that he is going to call the flop with a bad ace a lot of the time and now hopefully fold, given that my check-raise on the flop was so small. Even though I have spades, I have to now start to seriously consider that he might have a bigger spade draw since that is the most obvious hand that will be flat calling flop check-raises. The good news is that we've now made a pair and are ahead of every flush draw except the nut flush draw (and that may likely 3bet the flop) and we are almost never going to get raised on the turn given the action unless he has A5. Even if the villain shoves, we're still calling and are going to have some equity in the pot.

As it turns out, we were in pretty much the worst case scenario had the money gone in on the flop. Thankfully, this is what happens when you're on a heater.

I'm going to hope that things continue to go well at the tables for the rest of the month and hope that the American players can run better off of the tables. Obviously this situation affects every poker player but I truly feel sorry for those that have had their livelihood affected immediately. Hopefully things will unfold favourably and in a timely manner and work out for the best. Aside from that, I have no further comments for now.

gl at the tables.

Let's Talk Poker

April is off to a fantastic start on the poker tables. I still haven't fixed my Holdem Manager because to be honest, it's been refreshing to not have to constantly think about what my results are during a session. I think that not being able to check HEM while playing has probably had a positive impact on my game, though any impact likely hasn't been drastic. The drawbacks to having a "broken" HEM are that I'm not getting accurate HUD info on some of my tables (I think the hands that aren't importing properly are isolated to 400nl/600nl tables) and the bigger drag is that I don't have any graphs to show you guys. I've also been recording my results by pen and paper each day and while this is kinda lol it's actually the most accurate way of doing it.

That said, I do plan on fixing my HEM in the near future-likely after I go on my next downswing. For now, things have been going very smoothly online and I've been running exceptionally well having earned over 8 stacks already this month. I put in some fairly heavy volume April 1-5 and averaged over $1K each day and then took a 3 day weekend. I put in around 4K hands on Saturday and then another 4.5K hands today and won a bit over $3k in the process so things are obviously going wayyyy better than normal. I've been playing well but haven't radically changed anything in my game since the start of the year so most of my upswing can just be chalked up to variance and running well. I expect a downer in the near future but hopefully I can ride the heater out a little longer!

I've taken a bunch of ugly beats this month but I've been running pretty "pure" for the most part. Most of my rungood up to this point has just been centered around being on the good end of cooler situations (ie. sets holding vs. draws, draws getting there when they need to, AA vs. KK a lot etc.) Of course, hands like this help!

No-Limit Hold'em, $2.00 BB (8 handed)
UTG($218)
UTG+1 ($88)
MP1 ($214)
MP2 ($80)
CO ($216.20)
Button ($155.20)
SB ($201)
Hero (BB) ($200)

Preflop: Hero is BB with A, A
3 folds, MP2 bets $5, CO raises $18, 2 folds, Hero raises $54, MP2 raises $75 (All-In), CO raises $100, Hero raises $144 (All-In), CO calls $82

Flop: ($481) 10, Q, 9 (3 players, 2 all-in)

Turn: ($481) 4 (3 players, 2 all-in)

River: ($481) 8 (3 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $481

Results:
Hero had A, A (one pair, Aces).
MP2 had K, K (one pair, Kings).
CO had K, K (one pair, Kings).
Outcome: Hero won $478

Always nice to fade the Jack.

Usually, every Sunday I try and play the 2500 FPP VIP satellite to the Sunday Million that runs at 11:30 PT. I'd say I normally wake up on time to play it about 60% of the time and cash in it about 30%-40%. Last week, I also discovered another high value satellite to the "Mill," the 1500 FPP round 4 hyper-turbo satellite that runs around 12:30 PT I think. If you win the round 4 satellite (which pays 1 seat per every 3 entrants) then you move on to the 4500 FPP round 5 satellite, which again grants entry for 1 person to the Sunday Mill for every 3 entrants. Anyways, all I'm getting at is that for 4000 FPP's (valued at $64) you can have a very inexpensive and probable way of playing the Sunday Million (or any Sunday major, for that matter). I would assume that I have about a 50% chance of cashing in at least 1 of these satellites every week, although that number may be a bit high. Regardless, I'm going to try and continue to invest in both of these satellites every week because not only do I enjoy playing in such a potentially life-changing tournament each week, I also think that it will be profitable in the long run. Even though at this point I have a big enough bankroll to be adequately rolled for most tournaments online, I just think that there can always be more value added from satellites. I also find it more exciting to play knowing that even a min-cash will earn me a profit of around $300 instead of around $100 (if I just bought in). Anyhow, I just thought that I'd bring this to the attention of other high volume players that may be interested in dabbling in high-value tournaments for a minimal cost.

Today, while I had my 24 cash tables up and running I was also playing in the Sunday Million after gaining entry through the before mentioned round 4, 1500 FPP satellite (and of course winning round 5 as well). Things started out fine and I won a couple of small pots by isolating and then value-betting against a couple of weak players bringing my starting stack up from 10K to 12K. I went pretty card-dead for a while after that until I got my then 10K stack in the middle against my opponents 7K stack holding AQ vs. AT on a Axx board and held. Things went pretty quiet for a while...I called one opponent's small bluff with 4th pair and won a couple of uncontested pots pre-flop moving my stack up to 20K. I eventually doubled up again with KK vs. 67 on a 456 flop and was sitting on 40K. I opened a couple of pots but was met with some 3bets and had to fold, dropping my stack back down to 30K. My tournament ended 195 people away from the money when it folded around to the button and he opened to 6K at 1k/2k blinds and had me covered. I looked down at ATo in the SB and had a decision to make. Even though the button had been playing pretty tight up to this point, re-shoving ATo with 15 bb's here is obviously profitable as it should be well ahead of the btn's opening range. That said, folding here basically locks up $300 for me as I would probably have to wait about 1 more orbit until the money bubble bursts. I think if you have a small bankroll or satty'd into the tournament and the $300 means a lot to you then folding these +EV spots is fine...I couldn't bring myself to do it, however, as losing another orbit of blinds combined with the ever increasing blinds would greatly diminish my chance of a deep run/higher cash in the tournament. Having said that, I shipped my 30K stack and got called by 77 and lost the flip to bust me out of the tournament. There's always next week!


With the SCOOP upcoming in May, now seems as good a time as any to work on my tournament game. I plan on playing in many SCOOP events, although I haven't made a schedule for myself just yet. I'll likely be making a detailed post about the SCOOP in the near future and I'd be interested to hear what you guys are planning on registering in as well...maybe we can get some friendly/low stake last-longer bets or competitions going if there's enough interest.

gl at the tables!

$100K Means That I Can Afford a New Chair

Ahhh, it has finally happened, one hundred thousand dollars earned through playing a card game! Alright, well technically I've earned more than that already in my poker career but not through straight table winnings. Earning $100K is no small feat, especially given the stakes that I play. The fact is that with SNE you can actually earn over $100K a year just by breaking even and cashing in on FPP's but if you're as competitive as I am then that will not be satisfying enough. I would say that it takes a very good player just to break even at mid stake cash games so making a living off of rakeback is certainly nothing to scoff at. It takes an exceptional player to have any sort of decent win-rate at poker and a truly elite player to crush the games while playing 24 tables. I can only think of like, less than 5 people that I would put into this last category (and no, I would not include myself lol). So with all of that in mind, I'm very proud of how I've advanced in my poker career and am pleased with my growth thus far. Variance is a biatch, so who knows how long I'll be staying above that 100K profit floor. Thankfully, I've been through enough at this point that I should know how to claw my way back if and when I dip below it!

Yesterday, disaster struck...I was feverishly doing what I love and my chair collapsed (playin' poker ya pervs). It was a long time coming and she will be deeply missed. She was with me since the early days of my professional poker career and has had a strong impact on the posture bestowed upon my back. Without her, I may fully well be half an inch shorter than I am today.

Given the circumstance, I had to make an unscheduled trip out to IKEA this afternoon. After navigating through more people than at a sold out Vancouver Canucks game, I was able to find a deserving replacement.

BEFORE



AFTER


I didn't trade up just for looks, this new chair has a few new features that my old chair did not:

1) Comfort
2) It swivels
3) It goes up and down

May my new chair and I see many hands together.

gl at the tables!

I Did It Again (March Review)

Sigh, once again I can't seem to learn from the procrastination mistakes that I made last month and had to scramble together a 6K hand session today in order to retain my SNE status for at least one more month. It wasn't quite as close to the final hour this time (made it by like 17 minutes last month) and I had secured my black stars with about 1.5 hours to spare!

So with 50K VPP's earned in March, I'm looking at enough FPP's to buy a $4K bonus and cash in on my $1200 100K VPP Stellar Rewards-not bad for putting in below average hours compared to last year's standards.

Overall, I feel like I ran pretty awful at the tables but I won't be able to prove anything in terms of EV since my HEM has been giving me trouble all month and won't import around 20% of my hands. I've been putting in no effort to fix the problem since I've actually found it quite nice not to be able to check my results until the end of my session...even if that means recording my results the old fashioned way by using a pen and paper! That said, I managed to win enough money to record another 5-figure month...so I won't be complaining anymore.

March

$5,653.81 Tournament + Table Winnings
$4,000 Cash Bonus
$1,200 Stellar Reward Bonus
$150 Reload Bonus
----------------------------------------------------------
$11,002.81 USD

Again, I'm satisfied with the results although it was ugly compared to last month. Also, because of HEM missing so many hands I don't have an accurate graph to post...I'll be sure to fix it before I play too many hands in April.

With all that said, I'm actually going to make a volume related goal for April for the first time all year. I'm going to try to earn 76K VPP's by the end of the month to reach 200K for the year and collect the first milestone bonus worth $2600. With some discipline, this goal should certainly be attainable. Hopefully I just run good...I feel like I played a whole lot better in March than I did in February but the results don't reflect this. I'm about $2K away from reaching $100K in profits according to ptr so this is a pretty exciting milestone that I hope to cross in April.


Away from the tables, March was alright. I worked out a lot and have been eating relatively healthy all year so that's definitely a plus. I had quite a few good nights out but a lot of the fun was overshadowed by drama. It's tough these days, being such a recognizable poker icon around the city, every girl that I meet has already read my blog and wants nothing to do with me. Alright, that might have only happened once and nobody knows who I am but you get my point. I also had to deal with some roommate drama amongst other minor things but life is good :)

Anyways, I might have some good karma coming my way because I donated a bit of money to the Japan Earthquake Relief tournament(s) on PokerStars. If anyone is interested in donating, click on the Tourney-Special tab and you'll see a wide range of purple-coloured tournaments labelled "Japan Earthquake Relief" ranging from a $1 buy-in to a $1000 buy-in. These aren't actually tournaments, you just register for whatever one you'd like to donate to and all of the money goes to the Japanese Red cross.

Hope you all had a good March and get it done in April.

gl at the tables!

Rollin' Along

March is beginning to shape up quite nicely at the poker tables despite the fact that most of my sessions have being incredibly frustrating. I managed to put in just over 6K hands on Saturday and booked an $800ish win but played pretty badly throughout the day. It was just one of those days where I was being way too much of a calling-station and would go against my read because the standard play would seemingly be to call. I think that I'm definitely capable of making huge laydowns a lot of the time in spots where most people would snap-call but I was totally off of my A-game today. That said, I was a little unlucky to be put in such tough spots but hey, that's the name of the game. I managed to run really hot in the last 1500 hands of the session getting lucky on more than one occasion, including 1-outing TYROMPER when I got it in with set under set with a flush draw out there and binked the river. The games were also very good so I was able to find a lot of spots where I could get my money in as a huge favorite and ultimately grind out a decent profit.

Here's an example of a hand that I'd like to have back from Saturday where I probably should have folded. This was against a reg and while his shove is pretty lol, there really aren't any other hands that he would likely do this with unless he was just tilting like crazy, I guess:

No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (8 handed)
MP2 ($420)
CO ($400)
Button ($400)
SB ($955.20)
BB ($451.70)
UTG ($469)
Hero (UTG+1) ($597)
MP1 ($414)

Preflop: Hero is UTG+1 with K, K
UTG bets $12, Hero calls $12, 2 folds, CO raises $400 (All-In), 4 folds, Hero calls $388

Flop: ($818) 5, 7, 8 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Turn: ($818) 5 (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: ($818) 9 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $818

Results:
Hero had K, K (two pair, Kings and fives).
CO had A, A (two pair, Aces and fives).
Outcome: CO won $815

Annnnd here's a hand where I got lucky! This hand happened shortly after the hand posted above. I don't usually shove in these spots against randoms because while their hand is almost always face-up as a medium strength pocket pair, they almost always make the bad call anyways. They don't seem to care that they can't really represent anything of actual strength and are essentially guessing whether or not that they are crushed. It was a bad move on my part to even think that I had fold-equity but I was kinda steaming from the KK hand a few minutes prior:

No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (9 handed)
MP3 ($325.60)
CO ($237.95)
Hero (Button) ($400)
SB ($858.95)
BB ($523.40)
UTG ($412.20)
UTG+1 ($433.50)
MP1 ($529.20)
MP2 ($400)

Preflop: Hero is Button with A, J
5 folds, CO calls $4, Hero bets $20, 2 folds, CO calls $16

Flop: ($46) 4, 7, 4 (2 players)
CO checks, Hero bets $24, CO raises $52, Hero raises $356 (All-In), CO calls $165.95 (All-In)

Turn: ($481.90) J (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: ($481.90) A (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $481.90

Results:
Hero had A, J (two pair, Aces and Jacks).
CO had 8, 8 (two pair, eights and fours).
Outcome: Hero won $640.95

Finally, here's an example of getting my money in good risk-free!

No-Limit Hold'em, $2.00 BB (8 handed)
Button ($117.85)
SB ($81.20)
Hero (BB) ($369.40)
UTG ($331.65)
UTG+1 ($180.60)
MP1 ($215.50)
MP2 ($301.15)
CO ($200)

Preflop: Hero is BB with 4, 10
1 fold, UTG+1 calls $2, 5 folds, Hero checks

Flop: ($5) 10, 4, 7 (2 players)
Hero checks, UTG+1 bets $8, Hero raises $26, UTG+1 calls $18

Turn: ($57) 4 (2 players)
Hero bets $42, UTG+1 raises $152.60 (All-In), Hero calls $110.60

River: ($362.20) 6 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $362.20

Results:
Hero had 4, 10 (full house, fours over tens).
UTG+1 had J, 10 (two pair, tens and fours).
Outcome: Hero won $359.20

All in all, I think that I'm up around $5K at this point and will hopefully be able to close out the month strong. I'm looking at about $4-$6K in bonuses this month so another 5-figure month is in sight. I'm currently sitting at 42K VPP's for the month and will likely close around 50K-55K VPP's.

I've also been working on some training videos for PokerStars's Poker School Online. I've got to get two videos finished by the 31st and currently have the footage done for one and need to add the audio tomorrow. It's certainly going to be a busy next few days but hopefully I can get everything done and run alright to finish off March.

Away from the tables, life is good. The weather is finally getting nice outside and it looks like spring is finally here in Vancouver. I got to dust off the old sunglasses + football the other day and enjoy some time outdoors. I've been going out a reasonable amount as well this month and despite this blog almost ruining my chances for me to hang out with this girl that I met 2 weeks ago, she decided to give me a chance. Gotta love it when a simple google search can lead to how I will only talk to girls that are > 7/10 to go along with detailed write-ups of my nights out. I probably should have seen this coming but what can ya do.

gl at the tables.