June: Wow

WSOP June 12-14 Event #28

I have to admit that I have not really enjoyed writing in the blog as much as I did when I first started. I mainly do it just to keep a record so I know where I am. Today, however is a different story. I am actually really excited to write about this.

I have been playing texas holdem for 8 years and have been really working at it for about 5 years. So it took me about 5 years to get to this point so as you can imagine I was totally amped.

I got a room at the Rio where the event was going to be held. It was a $600 room that I only paid $200 for since I was playing in the tournament. I rented a car that is $250 for the weekend but we paid $85 since we had a coupon plus a membership.

And I dropped $1500 on a tournament.

I took my girlfriend a with me as I really didn't want anybody else with me. I also brought $5000 cash and a debit card with $7000 on it. So it was on. We left Friday afternoon and got there Friday night. We got to the hotel and went straight to the tournement to register. Right there $1500 cash came out of my pocket.

We then went to the room and got settled. We decided to get fucked up and gamble all night. We played craps for about 6 hours that night. (The game with the dice.) I made about $700 and she made about $200. It was a good night indeed. I had already made half of my tournament buyin.

I got up at 9:30 and took a shower. I fucked around in the room until about 10:30 and then we went and had breakfast at the Palms. We ended up waiting 20 minutes in line just to get seated. We didnt get back to the Rio until 12:00 which was when the tournament started. We went back to the room and I got myself together. To get prepared for the tournament I brought about 5 joints filled with blueberry kush. We smoked one of them last night and I took 7-8 really strong hits on the second one right before the tournament. I wanted to be FUCKED UP. I get down to the tournament and my girlfriend is walking with me and it was only then for the first time where I felt really fucking nervous.

I got to the tournament room and it was massive. I had seen it last night but it was different now since every table was full. I showed up about 35 minutes late for the tournament but it was no big deal. We started with 4500 chips at 25/50 blind levels. Blinds were to last for an hour. Every 2 hours there was a break.

I sat down and had 4200 chips. As soon as I sat down I was buzzing hard and became very relaxed. Everyone on my table looked very harmless.

It really took a minute for it to set in but it did. Seeing WSOP on the table brought a smile to my face. Seeing WSOP on the chips was equally awesome. I just sat back watched for a while and it was just like playing online. Everyone was limping a lot and it was pretty obvious when people had it. I was watching every player and I don't think I had ever been more focused in my life.

My first big hand came when the following happened.

I had about 3600 chips and one player limped for 100 and I completed in the SB with AJ of spades. The BB checked. I only completed because in my experience raising with hands like AJ or AQ out of position in the SB is going to lose you more then win. This is why.

I raise and I get called by the limper.

I miss the flop and bet it out. He calls.

I miss the turn.

Now what? Do I potentially risk the whole tourament and make a stupid bluff with a shitty hand like AJ. Or do I check and let him bet me off it which then makes me look bad.

So I decide to just call the small bet and potentially avoid all of that.

The flop comes all rags with 2 spades and I lead out with my flush draw for 200. I get called by the limper.

I miss my flush and check to him. He bets 400 and I call.

River: I hit my flush.

I check looking to check raise fully expecting him to make a big bet. Unfortunately, he checked behind and showed 9 10 off for top pair on the flop. The turn was a King. I probably get called by a small value bet of 300-500. However my gut said he was going to bet and I thought I had a lot more potential for a bigger payoff.

That hand put me to 4700 and I was ready to roll.

I won a few more small pots and got to 5500.

We get to the break and I go back to the room to toke up. I kind of got lost getting back to my room because there were literally thousands of people walking around in the tournament area and I was having a hard time navigating through the crowd. I got back, talked to my g/f and told her to go do whatever she wanted that I was going to be in the tournament for a very long time. I am running late again and run back to the room. My sunglasses are on my neckline and put them in my hand so they dont bob up and down in my face as I am running. At some point, I must have dropped them because when I got to the table I had no sunglasses. I immediately felt uncomfortable but knew I was just going to have to suck up and deal with it. I paid $250 for my persols about 2 years ago so that was a bad beat.

I called a couple raises and that put me down to about 3900.

I was almost 3 hours into the tournament when this happened. The blinds are now at 75/150.

The player 2 to my left was a relatively new player. I already knew what he was about before he even played a hand. He was a little Vietnamese man who looked like the typical Commerce player. The type of player who plays loose aggressive, plays every suited hand, and generally calls a lot of raises and limps a lot.

I knew that no matter how hard I tried I was not going to be able to avoid this guy. I pick up AQ and raise to 450. He calls like I expected him too and we go heads up to the flop.

The flop comes

A 10 6

I know that if I bet he might just fold if he has nothing, but will probably call me if he has some sort of draw. If I check, I am certain he will bluff any 2. I check and he quickly reaches for his chips.

He throws out a small 500 chip bet. I was hoping he would bet around 900-1000 because then I could just go all in and make it look like a legitimate bet. If I go all in over only a 500 chip bet then its going to look weird to the whole table and I was trying to get a specific type of image. And going on all in for 3500 more was not the image I was trying to portray.

I check raise to 1500 and he calls.

The turn is a beautiful 4 which I know isnt going to hurt me.

I put in my last 2200 or so and he calls very quickly. I knew right then I was fucked.

Of course he has A 4 and I couldnt come back. I think if I go all in on the flop that he is still calling me. If he does call me and the 4 pops up like that then I am singing a very different tune.

So that was it. Out $1500. I will say that I can't wait to do that again as that was most fun I have ever had playing poker. I am thinking of doing the tournament in 2 weeks but I have a lot to go over first. I had the next couple days to fuck around in Vegas and had a blast.

We played more craps that night and I made another $400 plus she made another $200.

We decide to stay Sunday night and it was a wild night of gambling.

I was up $1100 for the trip which was almost equal to my tournament buyin.

We played more craps and I dropped $700 and was down to my last $77. I decided to spin the roulette wheel and if I lost we would go home and if I won then who knows.

I throw it on red and win and have $154.

I let it ride on red and sure enough I win back to back coinflips and have $300 back.

We played craps all night and I ended making back my losses for the day and ended up breaking even for the day.

All in all, I did about $3000 worth of shit in Vegas and only spent $1000 to do it. A very successful trip even considering the tournament which was still totally worth it.

WSOP

I have started June on a really nice upswing. I am up $3383 on Stars and another $870 on Cake for a total of $4253. I just got 3/1881 which was good for $2694. I was seriously considering it a couple weeks ago and have now decided to play in the WSOP. I am hoping to go in on an upswing and would like to surprise some people.

I have decided to play in Event #28 on June 13 which is the $1500NL event.

I have totalled up all my numbers and am up $30975 since April 10. I also have the biggest bankroll I have ever had and I have decided its time.

It would be so nice to have a nice little weekend heater and get a really nice cash.

One time please.

May

May was a crazy month. I started the month by going on a $2000 downswing. Mainly on cake and my stars account was dwindling. I was down to my last $200 and was going to play it out hoping for a good result. If I lost, I was going to reload but I really didn't want to have to go through all that.

I started off my session May 8 by losing $800 in the cake cash games. I had some random tournaments going and wound up going deep in the $5 rebuys. I wound up getting 2/2700 which was good for $5293.

From there I went on a furious upswing making another $1000 on Stars plus recovering another $1000 from the Cake downswing.

I then decided to invest $1000 in Lebron James.

Unfortunately I didnt think he was going to get throttled by the Magic and I lost $900 betting on playoff basketball.

I then went on another downswing and ended the month that way.

For the month I finished with the following:

Stars $4773.90
Cake $1991 ($1000 withdrawn for Lebron.)

For the month I made $3598 on poker and lost $900 on betting for a total of $2598 for the month in gambling.

April

So April for the most part has been like the rest of year. Since it was that way it's a good thing that I didn't get to the tables that much. If I remember correctly, I had only played once 10 days into the month. Overall I only played 17282 hands of cash poker on Cake. I also played in 81 tournaments on Stars but that is a rather high number because about 20-30 of those were triple or nothing tournaments which aren't real tournaments.

I did really well on Stars but the RNG still fucked me all month long. I got really really deep in quite a few tournaments but I don't ever get lucky on stars.

Example 1:

$3 rebuys... 10 players left out of 4100 and we have been 12 handed or less for about an hour. People keep barely avoiding elimination and I know that the longer I have to wait to make the final table the more likely I will be the bubble boy. Sure enough, it happened.

I have 2M chips and am in 6th place and a guy who has me covered shoves UTG. I call with AK and he has AQ. Before this hand, I had been dealt this 4 times in a row in different tournaments and won. Each time I won, it was a huge spot where I couldn't afford a bad beat. When I saw his cards I knew I was fucked. I will never win the same scenario 5 times in a row. I am just not capable. It will never happen. I can lose the same way 20 times in a row but to win 5 times in a row is a huge stretch. I didn't even look at the board because I had that horrible feeling I get everytime I am about to get fucked over. Sure enough a queen hit the flop, I lost a 4M chip pot and I am fucked out of $6K and for the second time in my life I get 10th place in the $3 rebuys. Seriously poker, when the fuck do I get mine? Never? If thats the answer then just fucking tell me already so I can quit and stop wasting my time.

I really don't know why I keep playing on this site. My account is extremely close to bust and yet I am contemplating reloading if I get cleaned out. Please don't ask because I don't know why.

As for Cake, I got to my wits end playing the 50NL. I get fucked over at 50NL more then anybody. The hands that people show down when they win are unreal. I have gotten KK and AA cracked by bullshit like 3 6 and 9 4 for months on end now and I finally said enough was enough.

I have adopted a new strategy and for the first time in a really long time, I have picked up a strategy that is actually working.

I decided to start shortstacking 200NL and 400NL. I buy into 1/2NL with $120 and 2/4 with $200.

I played in these games on Cake a really long time ago and some things have changed and others have not. 2/4 is still extremely difficult. I know I am a much better player because I have been able to hang whereas I got killed the last time I played in this game.

The game is hard enough to where I actually stopped playing in it. Altogether I made about $500 in that game. I only play if I need one more table and I don't like the $200 games.

As for 1/2NL that has become my new game. The game seems a lot easier then from when I played it before. It's not as aggressive as I expected and you get to see a lot of cheap flops. The average player is not much different then the average 50NL player. They just have a few more tricks. With the exception to a couple hands where I lost full stacks, I find the players at 1/2 to be much more predictable. Only because they don't play bullshit like 9 4 and 8 2. So now when I get AA and bet the flop I don't get checkraised on boards that look like this anymore: 4 2 2. When I do get c/r on those boards they have a pair smaller then AA and I just have to fade 2 outs.

I have played 1/2 for about 10 days and have done really well. When I started my accont was down to $2050. When I called it a month I was all the way up to $3990. Remember thats from $120 buyins and not $200 buyins.

For the month I made $313 in rakeback.

Speaking of rakeback, I have another incentive to play bigger. I did the math and I get paid triple what I get paid at 50NL in terms of rakeback. Unfortunately 80K hand months are a thing of the past. I will probably make the same amount in rakeback as I did before at 50NL however I will only need to play about 25K hands to make $1000 in rakeback.

I have also come to the conclusion that I am not a good mass tabler. When I play 8-10tables this is what happens.

Bad beat, lose big pot. Cooler, lose big pot. Win small pot. Win small pot. Bad beat, lose big pot. Bad beat, lose big pot. Bad beat, lose big pot. Win big pot. Win small pot.

That will all happen in about 5 minutes.

Now when I play I have no more then 4 tables of NL200 going on at once. The most tables I play altogether is 6 when I have tournies going as well.

For the first time in a while I am pretty excited about poker because I really think that I can take a lot of money out of the 1/2 game.

For April I ended with the following:

Cake: $3990
Stars: $276

Thats a total profit of $921. Yay.

For the year I have made $4134 which is obviously better then losing but I expect to make more then that in May just playing 1/2 NL. Hopefully I don't stick my foot in my mouth.

Sunday May 03.

Right now I am up for the month. I have the following on my sites.

Cake: $4179+$133 in r/b = $4312
Stars: $254

As for the WSOP, I have the money to play in a bunch of the $1500 buyin NL events but I like having money and I am not really in the mood to play the lottery. Although frustrating, I like making money slowly. I like making money fast but I can't hold up in 4M chip pots when there are 10 players left in a tournament so I have to rely on grinding. In the unlikely event that I get some big tourney scores I will more then likely not be making my first ever appearance in the WSOP. And although I have more then enough money to play I don't feel bad about it at all.

March

I have been meaning to write like always but I could not have more shit going on. I am not going to get into any details but I am seriously fucking stressed out right now. Combine that with the fact that I am trying to lay back on smoking which is going bad and good at the same time. All in all, I am waiting for this little period of crap to pass my by. Due to how busy I have been I have only played poker one day this entire month and that was today.

As for March, another bullshit month of playing poker. I played 65K hands on Cake and I lost $120. Pretty much every day was the same. I would sit down and within 15 minutes I would be down 3-4 buyins. I would spend the rest of my session trying to recover my losses. I probably lost 20 days for the entire month. That probably makes me a losing player.

I had 5 different 10 buyin downswings because I am such a great player. My account fluctuated between $1210-$1910. I got up to $1900 3 different times but could never get passed that number. I also fell to $1200 3 different times. My only real big upswing came in about 5 minutes when I came up about $400. It was crazy. But of course I had to lose that over the next 3 days.

I lost to 1 outers five times and gave one outer bad beats 3 times.

I lost 3 400BB pots (two were set over set) and I won 1 400BB pot.

I made $873 in rakeback and $150 in extra bonuses.

As for pokerstars, this site is such a fucking joke. I don't know why I am wasting my time on here. I truly feel its rigged for certain people. I get knocked out of every tournament by either a bad beat, a cooler or I lose a big flip.

I played in 30 tournaments and cashed in only 5. Not once did I even come close to getting something worthwhile.

I watch these "great" players who win big all the time and I see the same shit over and over again. They constantly shove all in and when they actually get called they always have some bullshit hand like J 7 and they suck out every fucking time. It would be easy to win 100K in one shot if I could suck out every time I got it in bad. But like always I almost never get rewarded when I get it in bad.

My account on Pokerstars went from $1202-$870.

When my account gets down to $500 because I have absolutely no expectation of getting a huge cash since I lose so often when I get it in good and never give bad beats I am just going to cash the rest of it out.

On Stars I lost $332.
On Cake I made $903.

In total I made $571. What a great month

I am seriously tired of all these 65K hand bad runs. When am I going to get my 20K hand upswing. Seriously?

I have come to the conclusion that poker will never get me anywhere in my life because I constantly have months like this one. Therefore, I am just going to supplement my income. I have also learned that the worse a player is the more they are likely to suck out. I cannot tell you how often I watch someone catch a 2 outer on the river on an all in only to just dump it all to a regular 3 hands later. So basically I am constantly losing to the regulars w/o actually having to play against them. When am I going to get rewarded for how stupid the fish play?

To start the month my accounts are as follows.

Cake: $2475
Stars $870

How about one time I have a really sick month. How about a $7000 cash in a tourament? How about a 30 buyin upswing playing my cash games?

It seems like I breakeven most the time which makes me think that I am nothing more then a breakeven player even though I get it in good on my all ins almost every time.

February: Finally where I want to be.

February has come and gone and I played almost no poker. I would guess that I played 10 days out of the whole month. Overall, I made a whopping $32 because I run good. Actually I ran terrible. I lost $545 on Pokerstars and made $427 on Cake plus I made $150 in a live home-game.

I am more or less done with stars. I am convinced that there is something wrong with the software. I am down at least $1000 in cash games if not more. My sharkscope SNG graph is a total trainwreck. I am a losing player over a 1000 game sample. Every time I play in a tournament, countless times people hit there miracle card when I am playing for the biggest pot of my tournament. On the other hand, when I put it in bad, it seems that I hit that miracle card 5% of the time or less. If I held up in a just a couple more pots I would be a big winner in tournaments but I only get a good cash once every 300 tournaments. So, with that said, I am pretty much done with Stars. I have $2933.12 to start the month and I just withdrew $1700 via personal check. I am leaving the last $1200 with which to fuck around with. I am going to play a tournament here and there whenever I get the itch, but other then that I am over tournaments for a long time.

I am back into the full swing of cash games and I couldn't be happier about it. Cash games are pretty frustrating for there own reasons but I crush the games and I can beat them consistently. Unless, I have a change of heart, I am going to be a short-term lifer in the 50NL games. The money is good, the rakeback is good, and the games are really easy. As long as I am making money at a satisfactory rate I have no reason to stop playing cash. Plus the rakeback is huge. Last month I was only able to play 12K hands on Cake and made $181 in rakeback.

I started off with $1115 and of course had to deal with the standard downswing. I was all the way down to $580 and was cursing the world. In about two days of obsessive playing I was up to $1300. I ended the month at $1541 and was happy about my little $1000 upswing.

It took me about 10 months but I am finally back to where I want to be. I have paid off all my debts and on top of that have 1 years worth of expenses. So, if I lost my job tomorrow, I could survive for a year. I have never had that kind of cash flow before so I look forward to the future.

With that said, I am really fired up about poker and am going to try and clear as much reakeback/bonuses as I can. I have already played about 4500 hands this month and have made $130 plus about $60 in rakeback. I plan on going balls to the wall for the next month and hope to keep up the volume. Hopefully I run good.

My cake account right now sits at $1671.85
My stars account right now sits at $1202.62

January

It has been a while since I have actually sat down here to write and report on my results. There has been a lot going on in both my personal and social life and as a result I just haven't been able to put the time in that I would like. Unfortunately, deciding to have a life has cost my poker game.

On the one hand, I did fairly well for the limited amount of time that I played in January. In January, I would estimate that I played 18 out of the 31 days in the month. During that time, I made $2610. I lost around $600 during the NFL playoffs because nothing turned out the way it was suppose too. I do not have that exact figure as it's been a while and some of those games made me sick to my stomach. The poker number is exact though.

I have been quite frustrated lately, because no matter what I do I can't seem to expand my overall bank account. I have been sitting on the same number give or take about $2500 for the last 4-5 months now. It is better then losing, but I have gotten a lot of things taken care of lately and I am hoping to focus more time to poker and hopefully to make more money. I am happy to report that I have paid about $7000 over the last 6 months to credit card companies and just sent in my last payment about 10 days ago. Hopefully, I can behave myself from now on and will be debt free in the future.

I am back to playing on Cake full-time as well as playing tournies on Stars. I have been on hiatus from Cake for the last 10 days or so because my computer (I have 2) that had cake installed on it crashed and the computer was not worth fixing. Just today I bought a brand new Dell for $500 and am ready to start paying for the computer that I am typing on right now. Another reason why I have been unable to make money has been unexpected expenses. I also got the California cell phone ticket which I have yet to pay and thats another $131 that I will never see again.

I ran pretty decent on Stars last month but didn't have much to show for it unfortunately as I got into a lot of random bad spots late in tournaments. My main cash was 4/3906 for a cash of $2128.

I also made $700 playing 50NL cash on Cake. For the time being I am going to stay with 50NL because it is just easy pickings and the money combined with rakeback is pretty damn good.

To start the month I have the following in my poker accounts.

Cake: $1119
Stars:$3478

I have yet to play on cake this month so the balance is still the same but I am down about $400 or so on Stars. The last couple days that I have played on Stars have been quite pitiful and I have run like shit.

I did make about $200 in a home poker game so I am only down a couple hundred for the month.

I have gotten a lot of menial tasks done over the last few weeks and am hoping to devote more time to poker.

One time please.

2008: The best year of my life

It's finally over and I could not feel better about it being over.

December ended pitifully because I can't catch a break.

This is how the year ended up.

I started in April as I had quit poker in December after a bunch of shit in my life had fallen apart.

In April I started working a job for my dad/brother's business. I don't really make much money and don't really have a lot of responsibility but I could not be more grateful then I am right now to have a job considering our economy. I am not going to lie, they more or less did this for me as an act of charity. They did not need me but I don't really have any relationship with either of them and they were generous enough to help me out and also wanted me in their lives.

I more or less make enough to barely pay my bills and any other money that I spend comes from poker. Fortunately, I am a total Jew when it comes to my money and have become a master at frugality. So, I very rarely use poker money to pay for anything else. At least not at this point in my life.

So after my first week working for my dad/brother I took $300 off my very first check and deposited it into Cake and had a 33% rakeback deal. I started off playing NL20 which is a $20 buyin NL cash game. The rest is all history. This is how I did.

April (Mid April-Mid May) $2400
May (Mid May-End May) $2700
June $2170 (I actually lost money playing poker but made a killing in rakeback)
July $4477 (Second best month ever playing poker)
August $2700
September $1560
October $290
November $1400
December $-370

Total: $17327.00

That number includes live poker and sportsbetting.

I had a horrible year sportsbetting and lost approximately $1000-$1500. I had my worst day ever sportsbetting and I have never been more upset in my life with gambling then I am right now. More on that later.

Look at the last 4 months of my poker playing. Wow, I hope that changes. I only made $2900 during that time and I think I would have rather have not played at all during that interval. The only thing that makes me slightly happy is that I was putting in much lesser volume during that time. In the early months when I was doing really well I was playing absolutely obsessively. I literally had no life. I would come home from work and start playing poker immediately. I would usually play until I went to bed. I swore off women during that time and my social life definitely was hurt as a result. I have no regrets about any of that because I think it needed to be done. My guess would be that I was playing about 60 hours of poker per week from April-Mid September.

The last few months I have skipped a lot of days but have had some of my most legendary benders. I have had several sessions that have gone 18-20 hours in length. Unfortunately, I never had any major wins during any of those benders. Minus the benders my estimation would be that I was playing probably about 20-30 hours per week. My social life for the most part is doing much better and I am casually seeing someone.

As for the sportsbetting story. This is seriously fucking terrible and this is installment #64 in the story of my life and why I will never become wildly successful in my life.

I had intentions of betting huge on the Rose bowl game between USC and Penn State. I initially was going to bet $600 and then decided to up the number to $1000.

In order to bet that much I needed some help.

My friend Kevin degen is a professional gamber and makes most of his money handicapping sports. He was going to lay the bet down for me and we would pay each other cash win or lose.

I saw him last night and decided to up my bet to $1500 and he told me that he would do it for me. I told him to call me the next day when the bet was placed and I wanted to know what my line was and what the payout was.

I get a hold of him 30 minutes before the game and he tells me that he is capped out with his main bookie as he has $16K of his own money on the game. He tries to get a hold of his secondary bookie but could not reach him. I then offered to purchase some of his action and he refused.

Because this is the story of my life I miss out on betting $1500 which would have been a great way to start my year and of course USC kicked the shit out of Penn State and I get fucked out of $1500.

If any of you ever wondered what it is like to be me that more or less exemplifies it. Constant missed opportunities and constantly getting fucked over.

I know that if I wanted the bet I should have just made it myself but making a bet of that magnitude was impossible as I do not have the neccessary funds electronically. I did have the cash in my hands which is why I was willing to place the wager.

This just better not be a sign of a fucked up year to come.