All Time Low (2/16/2011)

Online just went up in flames today as I somehow ended up down 10 buy-ins total (-$500).  Until the last 5 hours I felt like I was making progress, then everything goes to shit.  All the loss came during the last 5 hours.  It's like no matter what I did I COULD NOT win a pot.  Nothing could go right.

Meanwhile, last week I lost for the second week live on 2-5.  So I'm just in a world of hurt right now.  Looking to take a break tomorrow and regroup for live sessions which I will start Thursday.

This is definitely shaping up to be a losing month, but I have some time to turn it around.  It's pretty scary when everything goes wrong at once.

Don't feel like typing much because I'm very disgusted at the moment.  Will try to stop in and throw a live update soon.

I'll find a way to bounce back or just quit poker I guess lol!

-bag

Casino Tales (2/11/2011)

As a side project I want to start writing down some funny things that I hear people say at live casinos.  Also scenarios will work.  Sort of like I created a collection for corporate adventures.  I'd like to keep some of the content here.  Two nights ago I have my first line.

After meeting seat 5 (a fifty year old white guy) for a total of fifteen minutes he decided to turn to me and ask:  "Do you need any drugs?  I have lots of drugs".

I replied "I'm ok at the moment, but thanks anyways........."

Ok the guy is kind of my hero.  I should have just given him money even though I didn't need any drugs at the moment.  Just keep it man, I WANT YOU TO HAVE IT.  You're the man....

-bag

Terrible Week Continues Live (2/6/2011)

The terrible week continues.  I really don't have anything that has gone well for me during the past week, poker or personal life for that matter.

Lost a good amount playing 2-5 this weekend.  Around -$600.  So much for the good start.  I played good and stayed disciplined, just nothing could go right.  One of those weeks man.  All three nights I lost money actually.  -$380, -$120, and -$140.  I believe only the second net loss weekend live since I've started grinded around late October.  Came at a bad time though.

The variance in 2-5 can be crazy.  A lack of action was certainly not the problem Thursday-Saturday for me.  Just nothing could go right.  Like the Saturday session.  All in on the turn with top pair ace, queen kicker.  Fish rivers the flush draw with about 19% equity.  There goes an over $500 pot.

Then comes the next buy in.  I dwindle down some.  Eventually I pick up a spot and shove a complete maniacs open $180 all in.  HE CALLS ME BLIND.  I'm not kidding, he called my $160 raise preflop blind, without looking at his hand.  He was wearing a 20k rolex so meant nothing to him, sort of funny guy though. 

He turns over 33, wow not bad for playing a hand blnid there.

FLOP  A, 3, T

GG lmao.  At the time I wasn't even mad, I just laughed said good hand and moved on.

So the next buy in for $200 I ended up chipping up to $570 until I left past 5 a.m still down -$140 on the night.  Just so many mind-blowing situations that went completely wrong for me.  Very sick.

Also sucked out of the quarterly million SN tournament all in with the typical 2 outer just missing a pay-out.  

Did some studying today, haven't even logged a hand yet.  Have some decisions to make online, but it depends where the action goes.  Might have stack 100NL a while, and when/if that goes really bad move to 50NL.  Or keep nova status minimum while switching sites.  Not even sure if keeping that status is worth it right now.

I just need to stay focused and make sure the personal shit doesn't leak over into my poker game, that is really the last thing I need.  Need to find some motivation and remain strong right now.

-bag

The Atomic Bomb Has Been Dropped (2/4/2011)

So the “atomic bomb” has been dropped on me by the girl I’ve been dating this week.  I’ve really only told two people about this, but I’m going to post it here.  Since my real identity isn’t exposed I can talk about it freely here (or “type” freely about it whatever).  Also, maybe it will make me feel somewhat better getting it out… probably not, but worth a shot anyways.

As of last week she found out she was pregnant.  She’s 2 months pregnant.  No it’s not mine.  It’s her ex’s and I guess she hooked up with him a month before she met me and that’s when it happened.  She said she was on birth control pills so she didn’t even consider the possibility that she could be pregnant until she got some dead on symptoms.

Birth control pills are something like 99.9% effective.  So at first I thought “Oh wow is she unlucky, she’s that .1%, holy shit??!?”  Then after talking to another female it seems to me that the “.1%” failure only happens when you personally do something incorrectly.  So most likely she fucked something up when taking them.  Missed a day, forgot a day, got drunk and threw up a night when she should have taken it, etc, etc.  I probably shouldn’t feel that bad for her.

Even worse, it sounds like she’s set on keeping the kid despite the fact that it may completely ruin her life.  IF she decides to keep it I’m not sure what I can really do.  This is horrible, but if she got an abortion I think I still might be able to date her long term.  But not if she had the kid.  I don’t date people often, and when I do I expect it to become more serious (not saying I’m looking to marry but you know).  I’m never just messing around on a fling or something.  I don’t see how I could be with someone long-term who has a child that is not mine.  That might sound selfish, but I’m 25, it’s really not what I signed up for.  If she has the kid her life becomes irreversibly attached to the ex for the next 20 years, and I think I’d have to be nuts to not walk away.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not planning to just cut her off and never talk to her again.  I’d really try to be there as a friend and she could talk to me whenever she wanted.  But if she decides to keep it I’m not sure how I could possibly keep dating her even though I really like her.  She’s made my life better since I’ve met her, I’m not ready to never talk to her again.

I talked to her a few hours about everything.  She is incredibly emotional right now.  No reason she gave me about keeping the kid had any sort of logic attached, all EMOTIONAL.  She’s going to throw her life away to the emotional, I just know it.  So I guess all I can do is wait a few weeks until she decides she is going to keep it for sure.  And after that I can just have a talk that you know I can’t continue to date her even though I actually do love her, or something like that.  But I will be around to help her out in anyway.

She doesn’t make a lot of money and she can’t even support this kid on her own.  To make it worse her family is very traditional and she already flipped out and told them when she found out.  Now if she gets an abortion she will probably be shunned by her family for all of eternity.  It just would suck if she threw her life away and had the kid right now when she’s not even close to prepared for such a situation.  It would tear me apart if that happened and I had to walk away even though I’d do pretty much anything for her.

When it’s too good to be true it usually is.  And this is why you stay away from clubs if you have my luck when it comes to picking girls.  But that’s what is going on right now and I feel like a gaping hole is in my stomach.  I’m still in a very big state of shock right now, this all happened very recently.  That’s about it.  If anyone happens to read this and has some input or advice in anyway I’m all ears.  I’d straight up tell her what a horrible decision she is making and lay out 50 reasons why she shouldn’t do it.  But I don’t want her to text me something in a year like “you killed my baby” or some crazy shit.

At the end of the day she has to make the decision for her and only her, I did tell her that at least.

I lost around -$350 playing 2-5 last night, didn't make any mistakes just a bad session.  It just seems really insignificant compared to what’s going on anyways.  Back to the tables tonight and Saturday, I’d be lucky to have my C game, but can still beat out some fish-towns for decent money 70% of the time as long as I stay disciplined.

-bag

2-5 Starts off With a Heater (1/30/2011)

I started mixing in 2-5 games to my live schedule on Thursday.  Thankfully things have started off extremely well.  I went on a bit of a heater this week up around +$1500 in just 25 hours of play from Thursday-Saturday.  Most of the winnings came on Saturday night (+$900 in my 12:00a.m- 6:00a.m session).

I can’t stress how important starting off good was, it takes pressure off big-time.  It would have sucked if 2-5 started off really bad and I had to drop to primarily 1-2 another month or so.

As for the games, they can be just amazing.  There is a lot of money to be made.  There are still plenty of mistakes just like 1-2, only the games are just enormous.  Little mistakes are really magnified on a 2-5 table.  If someone makes a slight error against you in 1-2 you might only win $30.  In 2-5 you can easily win $60-$120 from a small mistake and it’s not uncommon. 

The biggest pot I saw during my session on Saturday was around $2,500.  An aggressive regular who is a bit of a gambler, but better than most players 3-bet raised $120 some pre-flop.  A whale who had been tangling with him all night CALLED.  The pot is now $350. 

FLOP: Tc, 7s, 5c,  

Regular bets $200 on the flop with, whale thinks a moment and calls.  Pot is now $750

TURN:  8h

Regular leads out again, this time around $350, whale calls.

RIVER:  Ks

Regular leads out $500 this time.  The whale CALLS.

BOARD: Tc, 7s, 5c, 8h, Ks

Regular shows T8o off-suit, two pair.  Whale mucks in disgust.

Pot size:  about $2,450.00

The guy who lost was on my immediate right and we got along.  He later told me he had K9.  Yes woof-woof king fucking nine.  His explanation was he didn’t think the regular had shit, then he had a draw, then he thought he was catching a bluff on the river.  The only thing he was right about was the regular did have a very weak 3-bet range in that scenario.  But I know that guy and there is no way he is firing that much money on the turn and river without at least two pair. 

A guy who walked by later struck up a conversation with me about the game, since he saw me in a few big pots and was curios about my hands.  He had been playing at a table close by and watching the action.  He claimed that the whale had A9 on the $2,500 pot because he held his cards up slightly before he mucked, meaning he called the $500 river bet with ace high.  The whale hadn’t lied to me all night, I believed him when he said he had K9.  However, the guy who had been watching insisted to me that he 100% saw the A9.  Either way it was a horrendous play on the flop, turn, and river.  I’d like to believe he at least had K9 with a pair, that would make a little more sense, with the logic that the regulars starting hand was shit and he’s going to catch some bluffs there.

This may all sound a little mind-blowing and it really was.  However, there was a dynamic between the two players, which I won’t really go into now.

This Week

Just getting over the flu completely and want to at least work out twice.  Haven’t done so since I got sick.  I feel great with poker because of the winnings over the weekend.  I’ll resume the live grind on Thursday.  It’s sort of sucked with the girl I’ve been dating.  I’m not sure things are going to work out, but I’ll get over it.

Online Poker

Officially a side-project, even know I’m not going to give up on finding a nitch somewhere and establishing a win-rate.  The bills are getting paid with live poker even know I don’t have many expenses.

The last week I’ve been studying and cross reference my database to plug leaks online.  I lost -1.05 BB/100 during the last 150k hands, so I still have a lot of work to do.  I’m making a lot of adjustments and I’m going to implement them during my next 100,000 hands logged.  After that I’ll analyze those hands and make more adjustments.  Hopefully one day I’ll get it right.

Also we have PokerStars again fucking with the buy-in structure.  The 20-50BB tables are being eliminated and that’s where I’ve primarily been playing buying in for 50BB stacks.  I adjusted my game to play those tables because that’s where the action was.  Most of the hands in my analysis are from 20-50BB tables which will soon be extinct, so it’s really a bad time for the changes, in the middle of my database analysis but that’s life.  Whatever happens I’ll find what tables the action migrates to and make that my new home.  The 20-50BB tables are being replaced with cap tables which is beyond stupid.  Stars has again caved to “pros” (or exclusively 40-100BB pros) whining for format changes, who obviously only want to funnel fish into an exclusively 40-100BB NL format environment.  They want fish in this environment because it’s their personal comfort zone.  Even know everyone hates these tables because it’s the same 6-8 20 tabling robot nits on every table.  I don’t know what is worse, cap or 40-100, guess time will tell.  But yeah now a casual player is restricted from buying in for 20.1-39.9 BBs on a stake of their choice. 

I spent the last few months where 70% of my tables online where 20-50BBs because that’s where the highest percentage of recreational players went.  I adapted and changed my game to follow the action.  Now the 20-50BB is arbitrarily removed without warning.  So yeah I have to say I do feel screwed over.  If you want to play online poker you have to adjust and dealt with NL format popularity accordingly.  Unless you play 40-100BB, then just bitch because your win-rate obviously sucks due to environment changes.   Not even recreational players are stupid enough to sit on your tables.  But Stars will work with you to keep trying to force them into that format, don’t worry!

Anyways this week I’m going to make the final recommended adjustments and log some hours.  But I’m going to try to not beat myself up if it doesn’t go well.  I’ll try to focus on logical things.

Long post, that’s it for now.

-bag