Disgusted With Myself (4/25/2011)

I wrote this before I went to bed, but didn't get to post until now:

It’s about 4:00 a.m and I’m disgusted with myself.  Tonight I made my worst mistake as a 2-5 player.  Stacking off a $700 stack like a moron to a regular with over-pair KK on a Js 7s 6 board.  Lead out $60 on the flop.  With position he raises to $160.  This is A FOLD, on the flop.  Somehow I tank and level myself into thinking this fucking ABC nit-ass player could be making a move on me here.  It’s a super-wet board with tons of draws out there.   As I was tanking on the flop:

“HE HAS A SET HE HAS A SET HE HAS A SET.  No wait.  Come on he has to be making a move sometime.  What if he has AJ, AQs or QQ.  What do you beat here?  AJ, AQs, QQ, some random shit like 89s.  You lose to JJ, 77, and 66.  Very unlikely, but he must have a set here.  But why did he raise so much?  Is he trying to blow me off a hand?  He must know I’m not going to call such big value with an over-pair if he hit a set.

For some reason I flat.

TURN 7x.  Great so now he can only be repping JJ and 66.  I take some time and check.  He makes it $220, I only have about $300 left behind. 

After tanking and some asshole calling time on me, I make the most imaginative stupid fucking shove in the past 3 months.  My imagination did not pay off.

He obviously snap called and showed JJ full-house.  River a meaningless queen.  That player was not capable of playing anything else that way.  The line I took was fine against any other player on the table, but NOT him.  I’m rightfully disgusted with myself.  A hand I’ve laid down thousands of times before, whatever compelled me to make such a stupid fucking play there I have no idea.  I deserved to lose tonight.  Instead of having a break even 15 hours, it’s become -$1300+ thanks to that.

The last 40 hours of live play have been just over break even, capped off by my $700 donation tonight.  It concerns me because during this time I’ve made two mistakes that I would have never made a few weeks ago.  Yes I have ran TERRIBLE during the last 40 hours of play.  But I could have salvaged the last 15 hours to around break even, rather than being down -$1300 in that time span.  I mean I don’t have to mega-spew a hand like that.  It’s ok to take a break even session if nothing is going well. 

 April Results (so far):

Started off amazing, but I’ve managed to fuck up a great situation (like usual).  During the past 15 hours of play things have not gone so great.  The good news I’m still up just over 8 buy-ins for the month in a total of 110 hours.  If the month ended right now I could live with that result.  So it isn’t the end of the world.  Ok I made one big mistake tonight, yes it happens sometimes.  This is the time to rebound and keep things in perspective.

Here is what I’m going to do so I can sleep tonight.  I’m lumping my live play from 4/18 (Monday)- 4/24 (Sunday) into one week.  Finished +$135 in 40 hours!  Ok I broke even for the past week.  You just train-wrecked at the finish line this time.  But guess what?  During the first 70 hours of the month you made +$4000 in 70 hours.

And we have one more big week left in April.  I want to aim for close to 40 hours live this week (4/25-4/30).  My job isn’t to make money during this time.  It is to play MISTAKE FREE.  If I get one more stack in with the worst of it I will cut my ass off and time myself out on a shit 1-2 table for the rest of the month.

I’m not kidding.  You want to shove $500+ stacks all in with the worst of it and level yourself to doom against the most ABC player in a 50 mile radius?  Go fuck around on a 1-2 table for a week then, because you don’t deserve to be playing 2-5.  So another big mistake and I will pull the plug on myself for 2-5 until next month.  Hopefully it won’t come to that.  HOPEFULLY the stupid play you just made tonight represented some sort of ultra-rare statistical anomaly of you lapsing into idiocy for that one unexplainable time in the last 110 hours.  Let’s keep it an anomaly and not make a trend out of it, unless you want to rot on 1-2.

12 Goals and things to keep in mind for the week:

1)  Admit you fucked up with the KK hand mentioned above and move on.

2)  Log at least 35 hours of live play

3)  Silence your phone while in session and really try to focus more.

4)  Play mistake free poker during those 35+ hours.

5)  One more unacceptable play = banishment to the hell that is live 1-2 for the remainder of the month.

6)  Go out a night and have fun?

7)  Don’t let the last 40 hours of live poker results own your life.  Come to think about it, don’t ever be results oriented.  It’s amazing I have to keep telling myself this after being a pro for over 6 months.

8)  Work out 3 times.

9)   Eat healthy.

10) Don’t let a horrible girl ruin your life.

11)  Take a few hours to read a book.  Not poker related for the love of God.

12)  Get in touch with at least 5 friends you haven’t talked to in a while.

Running Very Well (4/22/2011)

I'm certainly running well for the month of April so far.  I don't want to report specific results and jinx myself, but it's been my best month live so far.  And the month is far from over.  There are still two more weekends of big volume ahead.  I've also been finding good action on weekdays, which is very promising.  I even logged a huge win on Sunday night, which is a night I wouldn't normally go into the casino if online poker was still around.

My goal is to stay disciplined and focused.  I need to keep playing fundamentally solid and waiting for the right spots.  I don't need to force anything, I have nothing to prove to anybody.  The remainder of my month will be replaced with a clear disciplined focus.  No multi-day alcohol binges, no clubs, no wasting time on stupid girls.  This is not the time to slack off because things are going well.  This is not where I say "Oh whatever I've won more than double of what I would have made in corporate already for the month, let's just take off and have fun!"

In contrast, this is the perfect time to UP MY VOLUME, since the pressure is off.  Just have fun and see what happens.

I also received promising news from Pokerstars about being able to cash-out hopefully sooner rather than later:

“We were very pleased to receive the news that allows US players to cash out their real money balances.

In response to this update, the Cash Out option in the PokerStars Cashier will temporarily be unavailable, to allow us to prepare the technical solutions and formulate the plan and processes required to allow you to cash out your balance.

Please be assured, US player balances are safe. We will notify all US players as soon as the cashier is available to allow you to proceed to cashing out. In the interim, any pending cashouts will be returned to your account in order to ensure players have the opportunity to cash out orderly.

Providing you with the facility to cash out is our top priority right now, and hopefully all US players will be able to cash out via the PokerStars Cashier in the near future.

We apologize for the temporary delay, and sincerely appreciate your patience and cooperation, as we continue working towards providing you with a solution to cash out.”

Awesome sweet, so there is a high probability that MY MONEY will be returned to me?  Excellent news A+++……..

Obviously  I’m still going to be set-back some.  My Supernova status is gone, I have FPPs I will never be able to use, and any other perks are wiped out.  But this is great news.  I need to take the roll out and use it to start over online eventually.

For the record I have no hard feelings towards PokerStars.  In my opinion they should be rewarded.  If I could play on Stars tomorrow I would.

They stuck it out when other sites bailed and helped fund ways to fight the ridiculous US laws.  They provided superior software and security compared to other sites, and they helped promote the game to ridiculous levels.  They even helped us donate to charities and disaster relief funds, often matching donations.  They provided jobs to millions of people.  They provided me a path to survive on my own, as opposed to declaring allegiance to a wage-slave corporation.  Millions of people were provided with the entertainment they freely chose.  It seems Stars stood up for American citizens and their constitutional rights more often then some of our own government officials did.

-bag

Post Black Friday Update (4/18/2011)

Black Friday being April 15th, which I'm sure anyone who reads this blog already knows about.  The Department of Justice has indicted the three major online poker sites.  This includes PokerStars, which I had a Supernova status on.  I haven't updated because I've really been in a state of shell-shock from the entire situation.  Friday it was confirmed as I received the message:

"We are sorry, but playing real money games is not allowed in your area"

As for my plan I have no idea.  I had a lot of money online and was generating income playing online around 25 hours per week, not to mention around 8k of my assets are indefinitely frozen which I couldn't really afford to lose.  I was actually going to withdraw 2k to go towards living expenses/rent in May.  It took me a year and a half of busting my ass to get where I was online.  For periods of time I had no life, now it's all gone in overnight.  My plan was to possibly shift 90%+  of my play online by next year.

I've never been more disgusted.  All I can do is wait for the dust to settle and see what happens.  Hopefully I can somehow get my Stars money out eventually and start over online somewhere.  I tried to wire a $1,000 out of my Stars account.  If the transaction ends up going through I will try to wire the rest out, but I'm expecting to lose it all.

Meanwhile, I have to go all live, I have no choice.  I might make more short-term weekly, but every week I'm not online hurts my growth as a poker player.  I'm also not sure if I can play live poker 50 hours per week.  Maybe 35-40.  Online was obviously a big part of my plan going forward.

The only good news in my life is I'm on a mini-heater live right now.  I don't want to get into it much because I don't want to jinx myself.  I'll just report results when April ends, or when a down-swing comes.  It's been my best profit month as a pro and it's only April the 18th!

Every time something has gone incredibly wrong in my life a new door has opened.  Maybe the new door this time will be focusing 100% on live poker.  It shouldn't hurt my net profit at all, if anything online was bringing that down in the short-term.  Maybe it will be good to focus on one format (live poker) for a month+ straight.  It should be interesting to see how the live games change.  You would have to assume an influx of former online pros will now be playing at brick and mortar casinos.  They certainly won't be lining up for 9-5 jobs.

Man how life has changed in a week.

-bag

Progress (4/13/2011)

Finished online this week up +$360 in just under 29 hours.  I guess 7 buy-ins in 29 hours is not a lot, but at least I didn't lose.  And there were signs of improvement.  Based on the way things went I'm not sure how I even ended with any sort of profit.  I ran KK into AA over 4 times.  I stacked off 3 of those times.  Every one of those times the opponent had AA and held.  Probably laid it down once or twice.  It has come to a point where I have to be losing money with KK.  This is insane, but I now need a solid read before shipping KK all in preflop playing 50NL on Pokerstars.  The environment is actually that nitty and stupid.  If the villian hasn't shown they are capable of getting all in preflop with anything but AA over a decent sample size I will fucking throw away KK, it just has to be done sometimes.  I laid it once or twice this week.  I didn't get dealt AA over anyone's KK in a somewhat deep situation either, funny how it never balances out.  Probably for the better, they would just spike the king anyway.

There were also two very deep buy-ins lost set over set against regulars.  And they weren't small sets either.  It was a frusterating week at times, but I hung in there.

I've been keeping it around 10-12 tables.  There are now extended periods where I do feel in the zone and very comfortable.  Tuesday I ended up playing 11.5 hours.  The final session was 1:30 a.m to 6:30 a.m.  I didn't plan for it to go that long, I just got in a groove and kept playing.  Fuck it, I really don't care about my schedule anymore at this point.  As long as I'm eating healthy and working out a few times per week who cares.  Also I'm drinking less than I ever have in my life so that's good.

I'm starting to clear decent VPPs and FPPs again.  I'm currently around 130k FPPs.  I'm going to wait until 250k so I can take the highest $4,000 bonus.  During the last 5 hour session I cleared 5k FPPs.  I want to clear a minimum of 25k FPPs per week online.  If I stay around that pace I can expect to clear that bonus after about 5 weeks of playing 25 hours per week.  If I can play at least break even until mid-May that bonus would almost double my online bankroll from 5k to 9k.  Sure focusing on improving and win-rate are my top priorities.  But the pending bonus is massive so a secondary goal will be at least 25k fpps per week.

In my first 85k hands of full-ring I'm up a little over FOUR BUY-INS BABY!!  +$208.  That came out to $1.19 per hour!  Ok I am trying to look at the bright side.  With bonuses I'm actually making a lot more than $1.19 per hour.  Furthermore, I have really improved as a player.  I'm playing on another level when compared to where I was a few months ago.  If I didn't quit corporate it may have taken me years to get to this level of skill.  I have a LONG way to go, but progress has been made.  Also, this has been my FIRST strech of full buy-in online.  First I wasted a half a year+ messing around with an unsuccessful short-stacking strategy.  Then it was a period of playing 50BB half buy-ins on the 20-50 tables.  So if I can finish the first 100k hands with any sort of profit (ignorning bonuses) that would honestly be great.  One more thing, all of these hands were logged during the worst part of the week.  Since I play live on the weekends, online has been getting the bad traffic days of Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.

I was going to hire a coach to help me review my database after the 100k hands, but I might hold off some.  Reason being?  I feel my last 30k hands were nothing like the first 55k hands of full buy in.  Therefore, only the last 30k are applicable to my play right now.  I think a good time to get a coach involved is when there are no signs of improvement after a long stretch.  So if I bomb during the next 20k hands I will probably hire him and get it started.  If I think I'm improving at a level that is acceptable on my own I will hold off on it.

I'm taking off tonight.  I've played 7 nights straight live/online so I'm forcing a break.  Tomorrow it's back to live.  Hoping to build on 3 consecutive winning live weeks.  As always I have a very humble attitude going in, you never know what is going to happen during a sample size as small as a weekend live.

-bag

Saved By Saturday Again (4/10/2011)

Ran ok tonight up +$850 in 8 hours.  Would have been up over $1,000 but decided to run a 3-street semi-bluff/bluff with JQs which cost me -$250.  Dude calls me down 3 streets with a bottom pair on the (4 T 8 K 3 board, ok wow.  Great job that was the only hand you beat in my range there.  I could have gave up on the river, but decided a $150 bet would take it down most of the time.  This time it didn't work out.  Anyways, I'm not going to beat myself over it.  I had him as a decent regular, knew he was weak, and thought I could barrel him off the hand a very high percentage of the time.  Didn't work out that way, so oh well.

Finished up +$475 total on the live week, all of the profit coming from Saturday alone.  Hopefully next week I can START OFF stronger, it's getting stressful getting saved by Saturday each week.  The last two weeks all of the profit came on Saturday.  I should have just played 1 Saturday per week during the past two weeks and my win-rate would have been through the roof!!!

But really just kidding around, no correlation there.  Just a statistical anomaly of me running good the last two Saturdays while running like dog-shit Thursday-Friday. 

Up close to $500 is really just a buy-in, it's the mimimum I'd want to average winning weekly during the next few months, but it's not bad.  3 winning weeks in a row and trying to keep the momentum going.  I might even check out a week-night live on Monday or Tuesday.  If I find nothing I'll just leave and go online no big deal.

-bag