Predator314's Poker Journal

A Royal Pain in the Ass!

If anyone has not played Royal Holdem on UB, I urge you to try it out. Then you can experience first hand what a royal pain in the ass this game can be. Thursday or Friday last week, I sit down at a table on UB thinking it was a regular $3/6 6 max game. I hadn't even heard of Royal Holdem at the time. Then I proceeded to get the biggest hands you've ever seen. I'm talking Aces, Kings, Queens, flopping straights, boats. It was unbelievable. Except for the fact that I was taking a beating. I just thought it was a sick form of variance until I figured out I was playing Royal Holdem. I managed to claw my way back to even once I figured out that straights suck donkey balls with a 20 card deck.

So I sit down at a $1/2 Royal Holdem table again today... on purpose. I started out well and was really putting a hurting on the donkeys that didn't know they were playing Royal Holdem. Then one dipshit decided to educate all the newbs that they weren't playing regular holdem. He decided to lay out the rules for them and tell them which hands were good and which weren't. I told him to do everyone a favor and shut the fuck up. There's something wrong with a person when they would rather seem like an authority than actually win some money. I experimented at the lower stakes seeing what worked and what didn't in the game. One thing I did was check/fold any time I flopped a straight (assuming no Royal opportunities). The only winning strategy I could come up with was to just try to find a table with as many people as possible thinking that they were playing regular hold 'em. It doesn't matter what strategy I've come up with. I've played my last Royal Hold 'em hand.

Another bad thing about UB spreading Royal Holdem is that all the short handed games are Royal. None of the regular holdem 6 max games were running. I sit down hoping to spark a table to start up or even play a bit of heads up, but nobody came. Hopefully all the degenerate gamblers don't flock over to the Royal tables.

I did manage to find a $2/4 game running. There was one other guy at the table that was pretty solid. However, he had no idea I was on a rush (non-royal rush). I proceeded to kick the whole table in the nuts over the course of a couple hundred hands. The cards just kept coming. I would show some interesting hands, but UB sucks and I can't get the hand histories. I'm not at my normal computer, so no little programs to capture the hand histories either. IF ANY ULTIMATE BET PERSONNEL ARE READING THIS BLOG, PUT THE MOTHERFUCKING HAND HISTORIES ON THE HARD DRIVE. JOIN THE 21ST CENTURY.

I'm going to try to play some more poker this evening. Hopefully the rush will continue. The bankroll is very healthy right now. I'll probably take an extra amount in my monthly cashout next week because of Christmas. I'll just have to wait and see. I'd like to leave as much money in their as possible because I want to move up to $5/10. However, I'll just keep at $3/6 until after the first of the year so I can improve my game and bankroll. I currently have over twice the size bankroll recommended for $5/10, but again, I'm being conservative. It's so much easier to take a 250-300BB downswing when you're not about to go broke.

I'm gonna try to sign up for a completely new neteller account this evening as well. I have multiple checking accounts, so I figure I can just tie it to one of them and move money around accordingly. After that, I can use my new Party account with rakeback. I haven't played on Party in so long. It has been nice playing on these other sites, especially Stars. I wish they had a rake rebate program. Hopefully the VIP program will be something useful.

Party just sucks balls lately. Their customer service is a nightmare. You send an email and they send you a canned response that doesn't answer your question. You call them and can't understand them. Their software is slow and shitty. Hopefully they will realize their site is becoming a scum hole and they are losing GOOD PAYING customers to better sites. I did read that Empire was suing them for that whole skins splitting fiasco. Good for Empire. Empire and Eurobet had enough business sense to lure the good paying customers away from Party.

Full Tilt evidently missed the memo that I was on a heater. So I got my ass handed to me early on this morning. However, It's the new "110% Tilt Free" me. I managed to keep playing good poker and turn a horrible session into a 1BB win. After that session, I was only 109% tilt free. But for all you that like the "DEMS QUADS BEETCHES" lovers, here's a hand for you:

FullTiltPoker Game #300141918: Table Mt Hood (6 max) - $2/$4 - Limit Hold'em - 10:54:11 ET - 2005/11/20
Seat 1: jafisherton ($66)
Seat 2: jkocher82 ($0.50), is sitting out
Seat 4: jimmythekid ($87)
Seat 5: WiredAces77 ($145)
Seat 6: Jimbo_Chang ($122.50)
Jimbo_Chang posts the small blind of $1
jafisherton posts the big blind of $2
The button is in seat #5
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to WiredAces77 [Ks As]
jimmythekid folds
WiredAces77 raises to $4
jkocher82 adds $40
Jimbo_Chang calls $3
jafisherton folds
*** FLOP *** [8s Ts Ad]
jkocher82 has returned
Jimbo_Chang checks
WiredAces77 bets $2
Jimbo_Chang calls $2
*** TURN *** [8s Ts Ad] [Js]
Jimbo_Chang checks
WiredAces77 bets $4
Jimbo_Chang calls $4
*** RIVER *** [8s Ts Ad Js] [Qs]
Jimbo_Chang checks
WiredAces77 bets $4
Jimbo_Chang raises to $8
WiredAces77 raises to $12
Jimbo_Chang calls $4
*** SHOW DOWN ***
WiredAces77 shows [Ks As] (a Royal Flush)
Jimbo_Chang mucks
WiredAces77 wins the pot ($44) with a Royal Flush
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $46 | Rake $2
Board: [8s Ts Ad Js Qs]
Seat 1: jafisherton (big blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 2: jkocher82 is sitting out
Seat 4: jimmythekid didn't bet (folded)
Seat 5: WiredAces77 (button) showed [Ks As] and won ($44) with a Royal Flush
Seat 6: Jimbo_Chang (small blind) mucked [Kh Jh] - a straight, Ace high

DEMS ROYALS BEETCHES!

The heater continued today as I finished clearing my Stars bonus. 2 bonuses in a row on Stars where I actually made money. Maybe Lee Jones reads all the good things I say about them on this blog. Maybe he doesn't hate me so much anymore. Thanks Lee!

I know I'm glutton for punishment by posting my success on this site. It has always been bad luck in the past. Fuck it... I'm not superstitious (knock on wood). May the heater never die!

Heater!

It's been a long time since I went on a good heater. The past few weeks or even months, the wins and losses have been going at a moderately steady rate. Tonight, I finally hit a nice heater. I didn't get to play as much as I wanted because of a bowling tournament, but still got in about 400 hands. In those 400 hands, I managed to win over 100BBs. All the hands were played on stars $3/6 6 max. Think that winrate is sustainable?

Also, before I went out tonight, I checked out the $100/200 NL table on Full Tilt. Here is what I saw:



Talk about a tough table!

When I returned a few hours later, here is what I saw:



Now that's a heater.

I have bonuses coming out my ying yang right now. I received a nice letter from Stars yesterday informing me of a 20% up to $120 bonus. So without hesitation I dropped another $600 into my Stars account and fired up a few tables of $2/4 6 max and proceeded to play 600 hands of break even poker. Once again, the games were very good, but this time I wasn't able to take advantage. Oh well.

Tonight I'll probably finish off that bonus. I'll probably go back up to $3/6 while clearing it though. I'm not sure why I played $2/4 last night. It was more of an instinct than anything. I didn't even really think about playing $3/6 until I was finished.

After my Stars bonus is cleared, I'll go back to clearing my bonus at Full Tilt. I still got quite a ways to go there. Then I have a good bit to clear at UB when that is done. All together this month, I've received $620 in bonuses. Looks like there is a 30% up to $150 bonus also going on with Party. I haven't played on Party in a while, but this will probably bring me back. Looks like it will take 1500 raked hands to clear. That shouldn't hardly take any time at all.

I was looking through my newest issue of All In magazine last night and noticed the Holiday Gift guide. They had a book out there I never knew existed. It is called Tales from the Tiltboys. I didn't even know they had a book out. If you haven't read the trip reports on the Tiltboys' website, you have missed out on, hands down, the best trip reports you will ever read. If you haven't heard of the Tiltboys before, it's a group of degenerate gamblers who get together and play poker while trying to put each other on tilt constantly. You've probably heard of a couple of these guys (Phil Gordon, Perry Friedman).

I made a post on 2+2 yesterday trying to get reviews on the Tiltboys book. While in the Books & Publications sections of the site, I found a thread about Matt from ThePokerChronicles.com's book. Surprisingly, the 2+2'ers had some really nice things to say about it. If you don't know the history between Matt and the 2+2 group, you should check out The Poker Chronicles. Short summary is that Matt has always claimed that a winning player can have a 30% VP$IP. Also he states that it can be just as profitable to have a 2+2'er at your table as your normal donkey. I agree with this. The 15% VP$IP'ers on 2+2 take offense. The player must adapt. I think most 2+2'ers play way too tight and are very predictable. I qualify that remark because there are some fantastic players that post on that site. However, the majority of the 2+2 population are donks like me.

That's all I have for right now. I'm planning to play as much poker tonight as I can possibly handle. I'm trying to save up a bit of money for a new Xbox 360 when they come out. Normally I don't care for buying a console at launch, but Project Gotham Racing 3 is one of the launch titles. Enough said.

I watched the Final Table coverage of the WSOP last night. It was pretty entertaining. It could have been really entertaining had Matusow lasted longer. Something about that guy makes me like him. Sure he's a donk, but an entertaining donk. Actually, I'm not sure he's a donk, but in the few hands I've seen him play on TV and the hands I've watched him play online, he has played the role of TURBO-LAG-DONK.

Here's my opinion on each of the final table participants (based on the few hands they showed from each person on television):

Aaron Kanter - Ummmm...he's invited to my home games. Absolutely GAVE away his chips to Tex Barch. A little hint. You have top pair, SHITTY kicker, and no draws, and you get raised twice on the flop, you are more than likely beat. Give it up!

Tex Barch - One cool customer. He seemed to be a pretty solid player and didn't act like a complete tool when he won/lost a hand. He made an excellent read on Kanter with the 2 pair. I'm not sure I could have made that call at that point in the tournament. I'm not sure all the details of what his chipstack would be like had he folded, but there were a lot of hands that beat him. The only thing that would allow me to make that call would be the fact that it was against Kanter. After watching him play, I would have had to put him either on a set, K-10, or a WAY overplayed flush draw. Had I not known the final outcome of the WSOP, this guy would be my #2 pick after Matusow.

Andrew Black - How can you not like this guy? He's got a super-soft attitude, but sure is aggressive with his chips. I love watching the aggressive players. A very likeable guy. A little tip for you Mr. Black: turn your glasses over. Be original!

Mike Matusow - Definitely my favorite at the table. This guy is nonstop entertainment. Once again, invited to all my kiddie home games. Mike is a loose aggressive player (to put it mildly). It brought the biggest smile to my face when he flopped that king on the KK vs AA hand. It was great to watch him jump up and down to the crowd. Too bad, he still lost the hand.

Steve Dannenman - This was the coolest guy at the table. A much better player than he let on. He might not have given himself a chance but after watching the river value bet he put on Hachem in that first heads up hand, I definitely found out who was the better player between the two. He's also a funny guy. He was definitely having a good time.

Joseph Hachem - The champ. He's a decent player that has not chance of repeating that success. I put him more in a Chris Moneymaker class of player as opposed to a Greg Raymer. He played his short stack very well at the final table though.

Daniel Bergsdorf - Hrmmm... I don't remember a damn thing about this guy. I had to read the tournament summary to remember the hand where he lost with JJ vs. Barch's TT.

Scott Lazar - I didn't like this guy. I think he tried to hard to be a "personality" for the TV and failed miserably. He seemed to play fairly decent to begin. However, he really had a nice meltdown to end his run.

Brad Kondracki - Another guy I don't remember much about. I remember he was the quiet young guy with the small chipstack. That's all I have on him :)

I played a little bit of $3/6 6 max before and after the WSOP coverage last night. I stuck with Full Tilt and had a decent session while clearing about $70 of my bonus. I read alot of complaints about Full Tilt's bonus sucking, but it seems to clear fine at the $3/6 limit. I still have $230 in bonus money left to clear on this site and could actually clear it fairly quickly if I could find some time to play.

I'm getting frustrated with my lack of play lately. I want to play, but can't fit in the time. It seems like there is always something going on. On Mondays, I bowl. That ties me up until about 9:00 pm by the time I eat. Tuesday is a good poker day, but I usually eat dinner with the parents and the WSOP comes on at 8:00. Now that the WSOP is over, I will play a lot more on Tuesdays. Wednesday is another bowling night which ties me up until 9:00pm. Thursday is a "free" night, but I'm usually eating with the parents or something, so I don't get a lot of time for poker again. Friday has been my main poker playing night. But sometimes I go out with friends or whatever. Saturdays and Sundays, I usually get some more playing time in, but not like I want. I usually have household chores that need tended to. If I could just get more play in during the week, I'd be happy.

I'm currently looking for a replacement on my Monday bowling league, so that would free up that night. The reason for looking for a replacement is personal related, not just because I want to play mroe poker. The WSOP is finished on Tuesday. Wednesdays will always be bowling up until April I think. Hopefully I will get some more time put in the tables soon.

That's all I have for now. Peace Out!
-Wes

I've been bitten by the flu bug. Oh joy. I skipped out on work on Thursday and Friday. That's how I was able to finish that turd sit n go challenge so quickly.

Now I'm back in the cash games and couldn't be happier. I guess I've made my official move to $3/6. That's all I've been playing for the last few days. I have snuck in a $2/4 table or 2 when I can't find a good $3/6 table. I've been playing all my cash games on Full Tilt and Ultimate Bet while I clear the bonus. I'm not quite 1/2 way to finishing the Full Tilt Bonus, and I haven't cleared very much of the UB bonus.

I got some good news today. I got my first profit sharing/retirement money for my job. Now I just gotta figure out how to invest it. I've been reading about mutual funds and IRAs on the internet and I can honestly say that I'm plain fucking ignorant on the subject. I'm gonna give a friend of mine a call this evening. He's a financial advisor for BB&T banks. I'm just gonna say, "Hey, I got this many thousands of dollars to invest. Where do I put it?"

I tried getting my boss to make out the check to me, Neteller, or even Poker Stars, but evidently that's out of the question. I think I can get a better return on it. Just look at the return I'm getting on my initial $200 poker deposit 14 months ago. I'm not sure how to calculate it, but it's way up there! $200 has bought me a car, truck, 4 wheeler, guitars, computers, part of a home, many other toys, and still enough left over for a $5/10 bankroll.

I'm getting very addicted to the heads up games on Ultimate Bet. I just finished cleaning some donkey's account out.

I also played in that monthly Moose tournament today. I didn't last long. Twice I had top 2 pair and ran into a set. It doesn't take long to hit the rail like that.

I've played quite a bit of $3/6 6 max and $2/4 6 max today on Ultimate Bet and Full Tilt. I've cleared about $50 of my $300 bonus on Tilt. I'm also racking up some nice FPPs to use in their store. I want a Baseball Jersey. A good ways to go for that one though.

Ahhh, back to the cash games. After playing all sit n goes the past few days, it felt good to take some bad beats in a cash game. I've got 2 big bonuses to clear, so I clocked in and was ready for some action. I pulled up Ultimate Bet and saw a heads up table with one guy sitting at it, so I sat down. I also pulled up 2 tables of $3/6 6 max on Full Tilt.

Needless to say, all 3 tables were a donkfest. Let's start out with the heads up match. At the beginning of the match, he kept folding to everyone of my bets and I figured this wasn't going to be such a good game. Then all of the sudden, the full moon came uncovered and the guy turned into a turbo donkey. However, I kept pushing my leading hands, but he kept catching miracle cards on the river to take huge pots on me. It seemed like every time he went for a turn bluff, he would catch his 2 outter on the river. We both started with $150 stacks and it wasn't no time before I was down to $30.

However, I kept plugging along and clawed my way back up to even. I may have even took a small lead. Then he started catching again and put me down to the felt again. I got back to even and repeated the cycle 2 more times. Then something happened. His river cards quit coming and I T-Totally fucked this guy up. He ended up rebuying twice and I was willing to take that money too. I had the guy on major tilt.

I'm still not completely comfortable with heads up play. I need to keep practicing at it. Right now, I'm just pushing the 60/40 edges and staying aggressive. Against a donk like the one I just played, it looks like they tend to fall into a pattern. I was able to pick up on his patterns and take advantage. I realized his patterns and also made sure I mixed things up so that he would not be able to do the same to me.

Also, on my Full Tilt tables, I had one table where I was a very small loser. I was way down on the table, but won a huge pot with aces. Then I had KK beat twice in two big pots where both times aces come on the river to beat me.

On the other table, I dominated from the get go. I took a few beats that kept me from tripling up, but I more than doubled up on that table to make a nice profit for the day.

Fuck sit n go's!

During my session, I managed to clear almost $15 of my $300 Full tilt bonus and about $15 of my Ultimate Bet bonus. I forgot that UB sucks and forgot to have the hand history window up while playing, so I didn't get the stats of that session. However, on my Full Tilt session, I ended up paying $34 in rake. So if you consider the $15 as rakeback instead of a bonus, that's like 43% rakeback. Which is not bad. If they run these reloads every month, Full Tilt may be my new home. The games are really good right now.

Sit N Go Challenge: Final Results

Summary: Play 100 Sit n Goes and check results
Games: 100
Buy Ins: $2458.00
Amount Won: $2443.50
Net Amount: -$14.50
ROI%: -0.59%
Finish ITM%: 38.00%
1st Place: 10
2nd Place: 15
3rd Place: 13

Umm... what a waste of time. More of the same today. Losing every coin flip, losing most of my 60/40 favorites. Kings losing every time (and I had them alot).

Oh well...that sucked, back to cash games and bonus hunting.

Sit N Go Challenge Stats (To Date)

Summary: Play 100 Sit n Goes and check results
Games: 84
Buy Ins: $2026.00
Amount Won: $2173.50
Net Amount: $147.50
ROI%: 7.28%
Finish ITM%: 40.48%
1st Place: 9
2nd Place: 14
3rd Place: 11

I played a bunch of sit n goes today and continued to run badly. Somehow I made a small profit, but I took some hideous beats today to put me out of a bunch of tournaments where I should have made the money.

I figure I'll finish the sit n go challenge tomorrow and then head back to the cash games and try to actually make some money this month.

Sit N Go Challenge Stats (To Date)

Summary: Play 100 Sit n Goes and check results
Games: 59
Buy Ins: $1351.00
Amount Won: $1453.50
Net Amount: $102.50
ROI%: 7.59%
Finish ITM%: 38.98%
1st Place: 8
2nd Place: 9
3rd Place: 6

I'm running poorly in these things lately. Last night, I bubbled out in 4th place twice with horrible beats. Both times with healthy chipstacks, both times with dominating hands on the turn. Both times, burnt by the river. Oh well. If these hands start holding up, then I'm making some money on this challenge.

I think I have an uncanny nack for putting weak tighties on Tilt. I do tend to pick on them alot. Sometimes they snap and do crazy crap like this:

Ultimate Bet 3/6 Hold'em (5 handed) FTR converter on zerodivide.cx


Preflop: Hero is MP with As, Jd.

1 fold, Hero raises, Button 3-bets, 1 fold, BB calls, Hero calls.


Flop: (9.33 SB) 7d, 7h, 2c (3 players)

BB checks, Hero checks, Button bets, BB folds, Hero calls.


Turn: (5.66 BB) Ts (2 players)

Hero checks, Button bets, Hero calls.


River: (7.66 BB) 2h (2 players)

Hero checks, Button bets, Hero calls.


Final Pot: 9.66 BB


Results in white below:

Hero has As Jd (two pair, sevens and twos).

Button has 8h 5h (two pair, sevens and twos).

Outcome: Hero wins 9.66 BB.

I just called this guy down because I had a hunch he was pissed at me always raising his blinds or something like that. I also wanted to show him that I will call his bluffs down. He played some sort of insane bluff a few hands earlier on another guy and ended up hitting a 2 outter on the river to win anyway.

I've finished my old bonus with Full Tilt. I've cashed out and as soon as the money hits Neteller, I'm re-depositing back to Full Tilt for the $300 reload bonus. In the meantime, I'm working on Sit N Goes and Ultimate Bet.

Sit N Go Challenge Stats (To Date): Half Way Home!

I've played 8 so far tonight, so now I'm up to 50.

Summary: Play 100 Sit n Goes and check results
Games: 50
Buy Ins: $1108.00
Amount Won: $1273.50
Net Amount: $165.50
ROI%: 14.94%
Finish ITM%: 42.0%
Avg Finish: 4.46
1st Place: 7
2nd Place: 8
3rd Place: 6
Other Place: 29

I might play a few more later if wrestling sucks. Right now the divas are on and I'm out!

This sit n go challenge is pretty hellish. These things are so mind numbingly boring. It's awful! I guess I'm going to go ahead and finish out my challenge. However, after going about half way through the challenge, of come to this conclusion: CASH GAMES KICK SIT N GO'S ASS!

The competition is pretty soft in these sit n go's, but the bottom line is they just aren't very fun for me. I guess I'll go ahead and finish the challenge though just to say that I did it. It should only take a couple days to complete anyway.

As soon as I finish the 100 sit n goes, I'm going back to short handed hold 'em. Short handed play is just so fun for me. It's an action game, and I guess I'm an action junkie.

I'm kind of at a cross-roads in my poker playing right now. I know the games that I want to play, but not sure where to play them.

Party is on my shit list right now for various reasons. 1.) They should spread 6 max tables at all limits. 2.) Their customer service is down-right horrid. Email them, they send some sort of canned response the doesn't remotely answer your question, phone them... well good luck trying to understand the Jibberese they are speaking. 3.) After venturing into some of the other sites, I don't think that their games are the best online anymore.

As bad as I hate to, I think I'm going to be playing Party all the time when I move up to $3/6 full time. The only reason for that is rakeback. I have a new username set up on Party for rakeback (25%), but I'm still trying to resolve the small problem of getting money into the account. Neteller claims they can do something on their end, but I gotta get my butt into gear to square that situation away.

All that being said, I really don't have a home right now. I guess Poker Stars is as close as it gets, but as you all know, they hate me. In all seriousness, Stars is the best site I've ever played on. They do so many things right. Good, but ugly software and great customer service.

Once I finish my 100 sit n goes, I'm going exploring. There are quite a few online sites that I haven't played at. I haven't played any Prima Sites, The Gaming Club, Any Crypto site with the exception of Interpoker, Noble, Titan, and probably many more.

I can use this adventure to clear a bunch of bonuses as well. Bonuses (bonii??) make being homeless more fun. Here's my gameplan:

1.) Finish my last $20 in bonus on Full Tilt, then re-deposit before the end of the month to take advantage of the $300 reload they currently have going.

2.) Clear my Ultimate Bet bonus.

Note: Full Tilt and Ultimate Bet bonuses pay more like a rakeback program would, so if they keep offering monthly reloads, I wouldn't have to worry as much about rakeback.

3.) Open an account with a new site (under a reputable rakeback affiliate if possible), clear the bonus and evaluate the competition.

4.) Repeat step 3.

I'm excited to see the details of the Poker Stars VIP club that's coming soon. Hopefully that will give me some nice incentive to stay.

Full Tilt is growing on me. The have got great software and seem to have pretty good customer service (even though I haven't really dealt with them). They have good stuff in their FPP store, the action is soft, and they have some pretty decent tournaments. Plus I've made quite a few final tables on their site. They don't seem to hate me as bad.

Bottom line is that Poker Stars has the best chance of being my #1 site as long as they can do something to keep me away from the competition (reload bonus, rakeback, some sort of incentives). Full Tilt comes in a close 2nd, and Ultimate Bet a distand 3rd (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MAKE THE COMMUNITY CARDS BIGGER!).

My ultimate goal is to have a good conservative bankroll for $3/6 and $5/10 fairly soon. My bankroll is actually above the 300BBs suggested for $5/10, but I'm being VERY conservative with it because of the monthly cashouts for expenses and I seem to go through very swingy times, where I'll lose 300BBs, then make them all back up with one ginourmous heater (haven't had one of those in a while). But what it all comes down to is that I honestly play better when I don't have to worry about the money.

Enough babbling. I expect to play quite a bit this evening. Hopefully I can get get a good chunk of those sit n goes knocked out before I fall asleep. I've been 4 tabling them. I think I'm going to try 6 or 8 tabling them to see if things get a little more exciting. I'll try to take time to call Neteller this evening as well, so I can go ahead and bite the bullet and start the dance you have to do to sign up with a new Party account.

Sit N Go Challenge Stats (To Date):

Summary: Play 100 Sit n Goes and check results
Games: 40
Buy Ins: $838.00
Amount Won: $1003.50
Net Amount: $165.50
ROI%: 19.75%
Finish ITM%: 42.5%
Avg Finish: 4.43
1st Place: 6
2nd Place: 7
3rd Place: 4
Other Place: 23

Found a bit of a downturn in my last 10 sit n goes. My finishes are 9th (with a wicked beat), 8th with KK running into AA, 4th, 6th, 5th with another bad beat, 2nd, 5th with a bad beat, 4th with a bad beat, 3rd with a bad beat, and 2nd with a bad beat (this one was my QQ vs his 10-7 suited which he seemed happy to donk off 2/3 of his stack with... of course, he rivered his flush... all the money went in before the flop).

I've already lost count of my hours, so bleh on that. I think I'm gonna use a little time clock program I wrote for our Payroll system at work to log my hours. It keeps histories for ytd, mtd, qtd, etc.

Sit N Go Challenge Day 3 Results:

Summary: Play 100 Sit n Goes and check results
Games: 30
Buy Ins: $568.00
Amount Won: $823.50
Net Amount: $255.50
ROI%: 44.98%
Finish ITM%: 46.67%
Avg Finish: 4.30
1st Place: 6
2nd Place: 5
3rd Place: 3
Other Place: 16

I moved up a bit and played 8 $27 turbos this evening. I still did pretty well. I won 2 out of 8 and placed in the money in half of them. I also logged about 2 hours. Bringing my approximate # of hours to 6.5 with and hourly rate of $39.31. Now we're getting up there. I'm happy with a $40-50 hourly rate considering the limits I'm playing. I'm not sure if that rate is sustainable at this level because I'm not sure how the average winning player's stats look. I don't know if I'm running good, running average, or what.

I'll probably play a few more of these things tonight. I'll update the stats on this post if/when I do.

Ok, that's not another banner ad for the site. Just the UB logo because I'm gonna talk a bit about UB.

I got wind of Ultimate Bet's 50% up to $200 deposit bonus. I haven't played on UB in quite some time. So I decided to give it a shot. I put in my $400, bringing my UB account balance up to $407 :) Isn't it great to find $7 that you can just add to the bankroll?

So I'm off to clear a bonus. According to their terms, I guess I have to achieve 2000 UB points to clear the bonus. I ended up clearing about 1/10th of that in my short session.

I played 2 tables of $3/6 6 max. I got 2 doozy tables too. The first was full of weak tighties, spouting of some babble about pot odds. This little tirade went on for 30 straight minutes. My other table had 1 big league donkey and 4 calling stations. Needless to say, it was juicy.

So now I'm playing 2 completely different games. On the calling station/donkey table, I have to tighten up and minimize the bluffing. Whereas, on the weak/tighty table, I'm playing almost the opposite. Both gameplans worked pretty well and I had a nice session. Check the stats on this KING donkey:

Hands: 62
VP$IP: 88.71
Att to Steal Blinds: 90.00
Amount won: -$333.00
BB/100 Hands: -89.52
PF Raise: 70.97

I made about all my money on this guy. I couldn't isolate him though, because the other guys were making desparation calls with low suited connectors and shit like that, even to 3 bets. You can lose a lot of money at tables like this, but I got lucky and most of my showdowns were good.

So, the games at UB are getting an A+ so far in my book, but it's a small sample size. UB's interface, however, is horrid. What's the deal with having huge hole cards, but having tiny community cards. I'm squinting just to see the suits. The clanks and clicks that they call sound are annoying as shit too. I have to turn on the iPods to drown out the sounds.

It looks like they are paving the road in my neighborhood, so I think I might be stuck here all day. I might get a shit load of poker in.

Sit N Go Challenge, Day 2 Stats:

Summary: Play 100 Sit n Goes and check results
Games: 22
Buy Ins: $352.00
Amount Won: $486.00
Net Amount: $134.00
ROI%: 38.07%
Finish ITM%: 45.45%
Avg Finish: 4.27
1st Place: 4
2nd Place: 4
3rd Place: 2
Other Place: 12


For some damn reason, my pokertracker is missing 4 sit n goes. I've compiled these stats manually (with help of OpenOffice.org spreadsheet), so there's a slight possibility of some errors.

I took some horrid beats tonight which left me on the bubble all too many times. There are some real donks in some of these things. Others have better players. None have great players. I feel pretty confident in the $16's on Poker Stars. The good players are few and far between.

I played 14 sit n goes tonight. I logged approximately 3 hours. That brings me to a total of 4.5 hours and a win rate of $29.77/hr. Again, not exactly a great win rate. I might try some of the $27's later in this challenge or as part of a new challenge.

OK, listen up. You'll notice the Absolute Poker banner at the top. This is probably the last time you'll hear me pimp that banner unlike some other bloggers that have to promote their Party Poker signup code every 3rd sentence in all their posts.

Absolute is a great site for the little man. If you are struggling to build a bankroll, use their 200% up to $200 bonus for new signups. They also have tons of reload bonuses.

Thank the Good Lord... It's finally Friday! Man, it has been a LOOOOONG week. I'm gonna try to work my ass off today so the day will pass by quickly.

I didn't play as much poker yesterday as I wanted to. I had dinner with my Mother last night and spent some time at her house. On the way over there, I got pulled over. The cop pulled out behind me as I passed the gas station below my house. It's about 3 or 4 miles to my parents' house from there. He followed me all the way until I turned into my parents' neighborhood. As soon as I turned, he hit the lights. I got pretty pissed too, because I didn't do anything worthy of being pulled over.

As the cop gets out of the car, he shines his flashlight on my license plate. Uh oh, I knew the problem right then. Actually, I figured it was one of two problems. If you take a look at my truck, you will see the license plate has a smoke colored cover over it. This thing is pretty dark and makes seeing my license plate damn near impossible at night. Also, if you notice, I have 2 4" exhaust tips coming out the back. Those things are no longer connected to a muffler. Straight pipes baby. Needless to say, my truck is pretty loud. Also, I have a very loud stereo system and I happened to be blaring out SRV's rendition of "Little Wing", which in my opinion is far from noise pollution.

Now the cop comes up to my window and asks to see my license and registration. I reach in my back pocket... empty! I check my console, no registration either. That can't be good. I explain the predicament to the cop. He was pretty cool about it. Finally, he just said he pulled me over to ask me to remove my license plate cover. I agreed with him and went on my merry way.

All this brings me to my next beef. I'm a big fan of police officers. They don't get paid nearly enough for what they do. However, during my little 3-4 mile trip with this cop behind me, I witnessed 1.) A car pull out in front of me and then went speeding on, oblivous to the fact there was a cop behind him, 2.) Another car pull out in front of me, then stop dead in the middle of the road for no apparent reason, then finally make a left hand turn with no signal, and 3.) 2 vehicles in front of me not stop at a stop sign before pulling out. However, I got picked to be pulled over because of my license plate cover. Such a bad beat. No ticket though, so I guess I sucked out.

Enough of that little story. Tonight is Friday night. There are no football games of any importance tonight. I do have a few DVDs coming from Netflix. I'll have PCU (great funny movie), Eric Clapton Unplugged, and Alice in Chains Unplugged. I know I will watch PCU and probably AIC unplugged to wind down before I go to bed. Also, I want to buy an Xbox game. I'm debating on a football game or that Far Cry Instincts game. I'm not sure what I want.

Also, on my agenda tonight, I want to play at least 12 more sit n goes. That will put me up to 20% of my goal being completed. I'm aiming for 20, but I'm not sure if I can stay focused long enough to get 20 played. I can sit and play cash games for hours because it's nonstop action. Put me in a sit n go and I do good to stay awake.

One last semi-poker related tidbit: I want a new TV for my new place. I'm really aching to get a new DLP televison somehwere in the 50" range. I bought one of these a year ago, but it was a gift for my parents. I would really like to have the same TV. I can hook my laptop up via the DVI port and play poker in 50" HDTV bliss. It would also be nice to have some HD programming, and I'm going to get the Comcast DVR package. The only reason this is poker related is because poker is gonna be the only thing that allows this to happen. So let's all hope I can run good through the end of the year so I can buy one of these jewels.

Night One of the Sit N Go Challenge Stats:

Summary: Play 100 Sit n Goes and check results
Games: 8
Buy Ins: $128.00
Amount Won: $189.00
Net Amount: $61.00
ROI%: 47.66%
Finish ITM%: 50%
Avg Finish: 4.50
1st Place: 1
2nd Place: 3
3rd Place: 0
Other Place: 4

I also noted by each entry in my spreadsheet of when I have taken a bad beat to get eliminated from the tournament. Tonight, it was all 4 of the tournaments where I didn't make the money.

I learned tonight, it won't take long to play 100. I only played about 1.5 hours. So I'm making a decent hourly rate. Very small sample size we're looking at though.

More to come...

I've been working on some ideas for different content for this site. As it stands right now, this site just falls into same realm as 938928374928374 other blogs out there. "I played this many hands and made/lost this much money. Oh yeah, all poker players are idiot donkeys". That pretty much sums up 95% of the poker blogs out there. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy many of those blogs. They just don't have anything to really separate them from the rest.

While playing a bit today this hand gave me inspiration for one idea:

PokerStars 2/4 Hold'em (6 handed) FTR converter on zerodivide.cx


Preflop: Hero is UTG with Qh, Qd.

Hero raises, 1 fold, CO calls, 3 folds.


Flop: (5.50 SB) 2d, Kh, Jc (2 players)

Hero bets, CO calls.


Turn: (3.75 BB) Kc (2 players)

Hero bets, CO calls.


River: (5.75 BB) 3h (2 players)

Hero bets, CO calls.


Final Pot: 7.75 BB


Results in white below:

Hero has Qh Qd (two pair, kings and queens).

CO has 5h 2h (two pair, kings and twos).

Outcome: Hero wins 7.75 BB.

As you can see, this guy really just donked it up on that hand. This sparked an idea. How about every so often doing an article called

The Inner-Mind of the Online Donkey

. The title could use some help, but the idea is there.

The basic idea is to take a hand where you are a player at your table really just plain donked it up. Put yourself in the role of the donkey (assuming you weren't the donkey to begin with) and walk through the hand, sharing the donkey thoughts that flow through your mind and why you played the hand the way you did. This can get entertaining. Also, if you would like to contribute, feel free to email submissions to leonardw@nospam-gmail.com. Please remove the "nospam-" part.

Look for the first inner donkey article in a day or 2. I got some other ideas too. They will probably piss off 2+2ers and bloggers alike. Sometimes you'll have that.

Congrats on the 'Eers beating the snot out of those UConn fuckers last night. That score could have been 80-3 or so had Rodriguez not let up.

I've reached the end of my break. I'm all freshened up and ready to do some check-raising. I got some new goals to share.

Goals: Play 1 more month of $2/4 short. After my cashout last month, I think I'm gonna stay conservative with the bankroll and suck it up at the $2/4 tables for one more month. I'm winning at over a 4BB/100 on these tables, so they are still profitable. However, the play at the $3/6 tables is not any better. The tables are full of donkeys these days. Especially with the WSOP playing on ESPN.

I want to focus on cash games this month. They are my bread and butter. I love the fast limit poker style. However, I've been running good in the $16 sit n goes on Poker Stars too. I want to play at least 100 of these puppies this month. That's right 100 sit n goes. They are boring, they are gay, but they are profitable. That's what poker is all about to me. Fuck the pureness of the game. I'm here to make money.

So I got a nice little spreadsheet all laid out ready for some sit n go crazyness. I have no concept of how I'll end up in my 100 sng challenge, but it will be a learning experience.

Another thing I'm going to try to do is keep a log of all the hours I play this month. I want to try to come up with an hourly rate for my time. I'm not going to set a pre-determined # of hours I want to play. That never works for me anyway. Things have been going good when I play when I want, so I'll continue those ways.

Hopefully November will be good to me this year. Last November was my best month ever. I netted over $20,000 last November.

I'm gonna try to play quite a bit tonight. There's nothing going on this evening as far as I know. So I'll probably settle in after dinner time and put in a few hours at the tables. I'll probably 2 table some cash games on Full Tilt (clearing bonus), while I 2 table the $16 sng's on Stars.

Also, this evening, I need to call Neteller and see what to do about my account and Party Poker. I got my rakeback set up for Party, but I can't deposit because my Neteller account was used on my old Party account. So I emailed Neteller and they said to call them and they can fix it. It will be nice to have rakeback again. Especially when I'm getting ready to hit the $3/6 6 max tables wide open.

Happy Halloween. I got a bag full of Butterfingers, Hershey Bars, and Reese's Peanut Butter cups to satisfy all these freeloading ankle biters tonight. I'm not sure how many trick or treaters I will get at my new place. Hopefully not a lot.

I pretty much kept away from the poker tables this past weekend with a few exceptions. As you can see, I placed 4th in a 180 man sit n go on Friday night. I donked off almost 2 buyins in the blogger game while playing in the sit n go.

I also played a few single table sit n goes yesterday. I think I played 4 all together. I won 2 and finished out of the money in 2.

I spent most of my weekend cleaning. I did go to a Halloween party Saturday night. It was nothing special. I came home early.

Tonight, I'll take on last day off. I have to go to Columbus, OH tomorrow so I'll be away from a computer tomorrow night. Wednesday night will be my return to the grind. Hopefully this November will be another good month.

PokerStars Tournament #14392162, No Limit Hold'em
Buy-In: $20.00/$2.00
180 players
Total Prize Pool: $3600.00
Tournament started - 2005/10/28 - 22:57:53 (ET)

Dear Predator314,

You finished the tournament in 4th place.
A $288.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

You earned 154.72 tournament leader points in this tournament.
For information about our tournament leader board, see our web site at
http://www.pokerstars.com/tlb_tournament_rankings.html

I forgot to mention that on Wednesday I bowled a 607 series. I bowled 185 in game 1, 224 in game 2, and 198 in game 3. That's my highest series of the year and my 2nd highest series ever. The only other time I broke 600 was a 636 I bowled this past summer in a mixed gender league. But that was on a very easy oil pattern, plus I probably figured bowling a 600 series would impress the chicks :)

Last night made 3 days in which I have not been a single hand. I feel rested and relaxed. In my last post, I mentioned taking the rest of the month off. However, I think I'm ready to play some again.

I'll just play it by ear this evening to see how things go. I'd prefer getting a few friends together and playing some donkey poker, but if I can't swing that, then I'll probably play in some cash games online and get started on next Month's nut.

It's kind of hard to take these breaks, but I think an occasional break is important. Even when things are going well. My advice to the grinders out there is to give yourself a day or 2 breather every now and then. Don't just wait for the bad times and then walk away.

I had a few movies to watch during my break. I mentioned Starsky and Hutch. Last night's feature was Sin City. I have subscribed to Netflix (for the 3rd time). I love the Netflix service. Some of my coming movies that I'll be excited to get in the mail are all music related: Eric Clapton: Unplugged. The famous concert where he put the MTV Unplugged series on the map. Alice in Chains: Unplugged. AiC is one of my favorite bands. Cut down in their prime by our friend, Mr. Heroin. Lastly is Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble: Live at Montreux 1982 & 1985. SRV is hands down the greatest guitar player of all time. The man was a genius.

Nothing much to report. I have now gone 2 days in a row without playing a single hand. Yesterday was bowling followed by a screening of Starsky and Hutch. The movie was pretty damn funny. I know it came out a long time ago, but I don't watch that much TV or movies.

I had a really good Month of October and that's the biggest reason for my breather. I've already cashed out my money to pay bills, so I'll probably ride out the rest of the month without playing. I feel more rested mentally when I don't play poker. It's weird.

I didn't play a single hand yesterday. Just took a break from poker. I finally got setup with rakeback at Party. I'm going to make my deposit on there and cross my fingers.

I've also withdrawn a bit out of my bankroll to help cover some expenses for next month. I had a very good month. Hopefully November will be better.

I took a break from poker yesterday. I played very little. I played a $16 sit n go on Stars and won it. Then I played about 20 hands at a single table while waiting for qualifier on Empire. In those 20 hands, I won about 10BBs which was nice. The qualifier blew goat butt though. I had one good hand where I flopped quad 6's and won a nice pot. But that was early and this was a limit tournament. Then I met my demise on the following hand:

I'm dealt AJ suited UTG. I raise and I get 3 callers including the big blind.

Flop comes A,J,2 rainbow. I bet and all 3 call.

Turn comes a blank. I bet and the big blind calls.

River 2. I'm check raised by the big blind, I call, he turns over 6-2 offsuit and takes the pot from me. Bah.

I chose not to play in the deep stacks tournament yesterday. When I went to register, I saw there were going to be over 1000 entries. That makes for an awesome prize pool. However, it makes for LONG tournament. It was a work night and I just didn't want to risk it. I check this morning. The tournament started at 6:15pm yesterday. It ended at 7:03 am this morning. Just in time for me to leave for work :)

I'll play these bad boys on a weekend when I don't have any plans.

Tonight, I think I might take another break and just watch poker on TV. With the string of beats I took this past weekend, I think I need a break.

I've been thinking about the structure of these internet tournaments. It's horrible. Everyone talks about Pokerstars and the great tournament structure they have. In my opinion it's no different from Party. The blinds escalate too quickly. You don't start with enough chips either.

I was surprised to see a starting chipstack of 2,000 yesterday instead of the normal 1,500. That helped a little bit, but after the 2nd break, it's pretty much a dice shoot unless you have a humongous chipstack already. 1 bad beat and you're to the felt. It's a shame really. However, it's in the best interest of the sites to get these tournaments over with ASAP.

So, I'm logged into Poker Stars this morning just checking out the tournaments they are having this weekend and I see something that catches my eye. It's a $30+3 tournament called "Deep Stacks". I start looking into it further and notice that you get a starting chipstack of $5,000 and the blinds increase every 30 minutes. That's what I'm talking about.

So at 6:15 this evening, I'm gonna give this one a shot. I'm not sure how many entries there will be. If there are a bunch of entries, this thing could go a long time.

The slower structure gives me a chance to actually play. I don't have to sit on my ass and push with the first Ace that comes along. Also, if I get that big chipstack and some asshole wants to put all his money in the pot with KJ offsuit (see yesterday's post) and he cracks my Queens, I still have an opportunity to rebuild without having to go into push mode.

Some may disagree with me and I'm not basing this on first hand experience, but the WSOP main event has a kick ass structure. Watch the episode where Negreanu and Farha are at the same table. Danny busts out, but he took some beats in that tournament that were hideous. However, I noticed that he never busted out and in fact had enough chips left to play around. I know it's edited and he probably won some hands we didn't see, but the good structure allowed for the better player to stick around longer.

I hope these deep stack tournaments catch on with the other sites as well. I'm willing to pay just a little extra in tourney fees to have that structure. I would think a $30+4 Deep Stack tournament would be +EV over a $30+3 regular tournament.

Results of the official blogger tournament:

Lee Jones: 2
Me: 0

I bubbled out of the prizes taking 138th place. I started off well at my first table. I was fortunate enough to get a table where nobody knew what they were doing. One guy was king donkey and I put my sights on him. I ended up taking 3 big pots off this guy. Here are the hands:

Hand #1:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t30 (9 handed) converter


Button (t1805)

SB (t1900)

BB (t1680)

Hero (t1620)

UTG+1 (t1670)

MP1 (t1890)

MP2 (t1615)

MP3 (t2220)

CO (t3600)


Preflop: Hero is UTG with As, Qd.

Hero raises to t120, 4 folds, CO calls t120, 2 folds, BB calls t90.


Flop: (t375) Ad, 5h, Ts (3 players)

BB checks, Hero bets t300, CO raises to t600, BB folds, Hero raises to t1500, CO calls t900.


Turn: (t3375) Tc (2 players)


River: (t3375) 8s (2 players)


Final Pot: t3375


Results in white below:

Hero has As Qd (two pair, aces and tens).

CO has Ac 2d (two pair, aces and tens).

Outcome: Hero wins t3375.

Here's the 2nd nice pot:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t50 (9 handed) converter


UTG+1 (t1820)

MP1 (t1870)

MP2 (t1740)

Hero (t3510)

CO (t2820)

Button (t3387)

SB (t1725)

BB (t1985)

UTG (t2783)


Preflop: Hero is MP3 with 2s, 2c.

UTG calls t50, 3 folds, Hero calls t50, 3 folds, BB checks.


Flop: (t175) Th, 2d, Jd (3 players)

BB checks, UTG bets t50, Hero raises to t250, BB folds, UTG calls t200.


Turn: (t675) Qc (2 players)

UTG bets t500, Hero raises to t3210, UTG folds.


Final Pot: t4385


Results in white below:

No showdown. Hero wins t4385.

And finally hand #3 where I put him out of his misery:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t50 (9 handed) converter


BB (t1820)

UTG (t1870)

UTG+1 (t1965)

Hero (t4385)

MP2 (t2820)

MP3 (t3237)

CO (t1700)

Button (t1910)

SB (t1933)


Preflop: Hero is MP1 with Ks, Kh.

2 folds, Hero raises to t250, 4 folds, SB raises to t450, 1 fold, Hero raises to t4385, SB calls t1483 (All-In).


Flop: (t6368) 7c, 8d, 2d (2 players, 1 all-in)


Turn: (t6368) 5h (2 players, 1 all-in)


River: (t6368) 5d (2 players, 1 all-in)


Final Pot: t6368


Results in white below:

SB has Th Ad (one pair, fives).

Hero has Ks Kh (two pair, kings and fives).

Outcome: Hero wins t6368.

Here's my next important hand. I had a lot of outs on the river to take a nice pot:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t50 (9 handed) converter


Button (t1540)

SB (t1490)

Hero (t5293)

UTG (t5945)

UTG+1 (t1515)

MP1 (t4685)

MP2 (t1505)

MP3 (t1535)

CO (t3700)


Preflop: Hero is BB with 9s, Qs.

UTG raises to t200, 7 folds, Hero calls t150.


Flop: (t425) Td, 6s, As (2 players)

Hero checks, UTG bets t300, Hero calls t300.


Turn: (t1025) 8d (2 players)

Hero checks, UTG bets t400, Hero calls t400.


River: (t1825) 7h (2 players)

Hero bets t1450, UTG calls t1450.


Final Pot: t4725


Results in white below:

Hero has 9s Qs (straight, ten high).

UTG has Qd Ac (one pair, aces).

Outcome: Hero wins t4725.

I forgot to copy the hand history, but my only mistake of the tournament which I have a hard time playing differently is when I raised pre-flop, cold called by the small blind. flop came A,K,Q. We get it all in and he turns of AK for top two pair.

The next pot was only a couple hands later. I had tried stealing on this table a few times and each time, the guy on my left came over the top on me. I figured he was bluffing, but I couldn't call. I had also seen him bluff at a lot of pots by check raising the flop. Now lets see the hand:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t400 (9 handed) converter


MP1 (t34811)

MP2 (t3740)

MP3 (t5720)

Hero (t6668)

Button (t8595)

SB (t4520)

BB (t2020)

UTG (t6040)

UTG+1 (t10280)


Preflop: Hero is CO with 5h, Ah.

5 folds, Hero raises to t1200, 1 fold, SB calls t1000, 1 fold.


Flop: (t2400) Qd, 5s, 9h (2 players)

SB checks, Hero bets t1200, SB raises to t3295, Hero calls t2095.


Turn: (t8990) 4s (2 players)


River: (t8990) 2d (2 players)


Final Pot: t8990


Results in white below:

SB has Ac Tc (high card, ace).

Hero has 5h Ah (one pair, fives).

Outcome: Hero wins t8990.

I thought that was a pretty sick read to call that all in on the flop. I was pretty much putting the whole tournament on the line with my read.

Then started my demise. I got put at a table with one of the chip leaders. He was an aggressive donkey raising every other hand. I patiently waited for a hand, but it never came. Then Lee Jones apparently showed up to work, saw me prospering, proceeded to kick me in the nuts:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t600 (9 handed) converter


CO (t34986)

Button (t5200)

SB (t2495)

Hero (t11563)

UTG (t15000)

UTG+1 (t3998)

MP1 (t4560)

MP2 (t18855)

MP3 (t8380)


Preflop: Hero is BB with Qs, Qc.

UTG calls t600, 2 folds, MP2 raises to t2400, 2 folds, Button raises to t5150, 1 fold, Hero raises to t11513, UTG folds, MP2 folds.


Flop: (t19963) 8c, 9d, 7h (2 players)


Turn: (t19963) Tc (2 players)


River: (t19963) Th (2 players)


Final Pot: t19963


Results in white below:

Hero has Qs Qc (two pair, queens and tens).

Button has Kd Js (straight, jack high).

Outcome: Button wins t19963.

However, 2 hands later, I got this hand:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t600 (9 handed) converter


UTG+1 (t36136)

MP1 (t13900)

MP2 (t3945)

Hero (t5913)

CO (t13300)

Button (t2298)

SB (t3760)

BB (t17605)

UTG (t8180)


Preflop: Hero is MP3 with 7d, 7s.

4 folds, Hero raises to t1800, 1 fold, Button raises to t2248, 2 folds, Hero calls t448.


Flop: (t4846) Kh, 9s, Qs (2 players)


Turn: (t4846) Qc (2 players)


River: (t4846) 7h (2 players)


Final Pot: t4846


Results in white below:

Hero has 7d 7s (full house, sevens full of queens).

Button has Ah Ts (one pair, queens).

Outcome: Hero wins t4846.

However, it was not to be. I got cold decked and blinded down from there. I made my final stand and was shot down as a 4 to 1 favorite:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t1200 (8 handed) converter


UTG (t48526)

UTG+1 (t13075)

MP1 (t11244)

Hero (t4836)

CO (t13350)

Button (t13715)

SB (t19230)

BB (t27195)


Preflop: Hero is MP2 with 7s, 7d.

3 folds, Hero raises to t4761, 3 folds, BB calls t3561.


Flop: (t8847) Ah, Kh, 5d (2 players)


Turn: (t8847) 8h (2 players)


River: (t8847) 6h (2 players)


Final Pot: t8847


Results in white below:

BB has 5s 5h (flush, ace high).

Hero has 7s 7d (one pair, sevens).

Outcome: BB wins t8847.

Basically, I played near perfect poker. The best I've played in a while. However, Lee Jones loves to torture me.

I really wanted an Xbox 360.

I decided to go ahead and play in the Wil Wheaton tournament on Stars yesterday. I did decent considering the cards I was getting. Boy Genius put a hurting on me early when he dropped the hammer on me and hit a straight. He had me to the felt early. I regained my chips after some strategic all ins and a little luck. Someone else put a bad beat on me later to leave me short stacked. I can't even remember the hand. I finally pushed with something like A8 and was called by AJ.

Speaking of AJ, did I miss that memo that this was a good hand to put all your money in the pot when you don't have to? AJ is a decent starting hand, but it's behind a shitload of other hands. That is unless you're playing me. You will catch that jack or flush or straight or whatever you need on the river.

I played a $11 tournament on Full Tilt last night and made it to the money. I got the minimum again when my AK fell to... you guessed it, AJ.

I did have a great hand that rocketed me towards the top of the chip leaderboard. I had AA on the button. There was an early position raiser. Then a re-raise from the cut-off. I shoved. Both called. Early position turned up QQ, cutoff turned up KK. It was a huge pot.

I've spent a bit today playing some more $2/4 6 max on Stars. I can't get away from this game. It's been a goldmine so far. I've had a couple downward spirals, but that's just because it's a donkfest.

Here are my stats so far at the $2/4 6 max game:

Hands: 14,694
VP$IP: 28.38
PF Raise%: 19.61
Att to Steal Blinds: 32.44
BB/100: 4.43

You can probably do the math to see what kind of boost this game has been to my bankroll. It's hard moving up with that kind of win rate. Although I don't think it's sustainable. I think 3 BB/100 is definitely sustainable at that game though.

I've also been playing quite a few $16 sit n goes on Stars and have been doing good with those. I played a few last night and took 1st, 2nd, and 4th. I played 2 this morning and bubbled out on both. They were much tighter. I got played in my last one. The blinds were at 100/200 with a 25 chip ante (I think) and I was in the big blind with A4 suited. Folded to the small blind who limped. I raised it with up with about half my chips. He pushed. I figured it was a donk play. I called. He had AA.

I'll probably play some more cash games this evening. I'm gonna run some errands now. I'll be ready for the blogger tournament tomorrow. Hopefully Lee Jones will help me win an Xbox 360. I'll take the WPT package too, but my goal is the Xbox.

Mr. Jones over at Poker Stars decided he wanted to turn my doom button on last night. I played 4 sit n goes. I took the big Oh-fer.

All sit n goes were 9 handed $16 turbos. In sit n go #1, it's fairly early. I'm in the small blind with AK. A couple limpers and then the button raises to like 4 or 5 times the big blind. I cold call so I can get away from the hand and fight another day.

Flop: A,K,Q rainbow.

Checked around to the raiser. He bet roughly the size of the pot. I check raise all in. Folded to the raiser who instantly calls with...... AJ offsuit. Total domination.

Turn: rag
River: 10 giving him the straight and giving me the door.

#2. I lose a coin flip with everyone at the table, but the blinds at 50/100. I push with QK on the next hand and triple up. I eventually take the chip lead, but fall to 2nd in chips with 4 left. I try a few blind steals, but the chip leader pushed on me both times. I get pocket Jacks on the button. Standard raise. Chip leader pushes again! I call. He has Queens. I have a bubble finish.

#3. Nothing major happened had happened and the blinds were going up, so I wasn't desparate, but I wasn't going to be able to cruise to the money. I get AK in the cutoff. 2 limpers and a pre-flop raise. I shove. Big blind calls with 6-8 offsuit (m'kay), pre-flop raiser calls almost all of his chips with ... that's right ... AJ offsuit. The turn brought a jack and I'm out of that one.

#4. About the same as last game. The blinds are getting up there and I don't have enough chips to cruise to the money. I get QQ in late/middle position. 50,000 limpers in front. I push. I'm called by A-8 offsuit. The river Ace had me tossing my new Mx1000 mouse across the room.

TILT!

In hand #1, I'm roughly a 5.6 to 1 favorite. In hand #2, I was a 4 to 1 dog, but I can't see myself playing it any differently. In hand #3 I was roughly 2:1 favorite. Hand #4, I'm roughly 2.5 to 1 favorite. I can't complain. Just one of those nights.

All was not so bad though. I did play some ring games on Full Tilt to try to clear the remaining $50 in bonus I have left. I ended up recouping my sit n go losses here.

I haven't played a lot so far today, but this hand sure was cute:



FullTiltPoker Game #260126165: Table Baltimore (6 max) - $3/$6 - Limit Hold'em - 16:07:48 ET - 2005/10/21

Seat 1: grinders101 ($55.50)

Seat 2: bummer56 ($130)

Seat 3: Owen Money ($91.50)

Seat 4: sendit2fbt ($275)

Seat 5: Hero ($205)

Seat 6: Badturn ($101)

grinders101 posts the small blind of $1.50

bummer56 posts the big blind of $3

The button is in seat #6


Holecards:

Dealt to Hero [ ]

Owen Money folds

sendit2fbt folds

Hero raises to $6

Badturn folds

grinders101 has 15 seconds left to act

grinders101 calls $4.50

bummer56 folds


Flop :
[ ]

grinders101 checks

Hero bets $3

grinders101 calls $3


Turn:
[ ] [ ]

grinders101 checks

Hero bets $6

grinders101 calls $6


River:
[ ] [ ]

grinders101 checks

Hero bets $6

grinders101 calls $6


Showdown:

Hero shows [ ] (four of a kind, Queens)

grinders101 mucks

Hero wins the pot ($43) with four of a kind, Queens


SUMMARY:

Total pot $45 | Rake $2

Board:
[ ]

Seat 1: grinders101 (small blind) mucked [ ] - a full house Queens full of Sevens

Seat 2: bummer56 (big blind) folded before the Flop

Seat 3: Owen Money didn't bet (folded)

Seat 4: sendit2fbt didn't bet (folded)

Seat 5: Hero showed [ ] and won ($43) with four of a kind Queens

Seat 6: Badturn (button) didn't bet (folded)

My gameplan tonight depends on the weather. No Rain = Football game, then home to play some cash games. Rain = Walmart to buy an Xbox game and play in Wil Wheaton's tournament on Stars. It's raining right now.

Where to begin. I was counting on a big boost to my bankroll last night, but it didn't happen. Some lucky fucker in Oregon won the $340 Million Powerball.

I've been ripping up the $2/4 short handed games on Poker Stars recently. This has been a really good boost to the bankroll. Add in a multi-table victory on Sunday and my bankroll looks pretty good right now. I think I'm ready to move up.

No "ifs", "ands", or "buts", my next move is to $3/6 6 max on Party. This game is a goldmine. I've played a few thousand hands there and I'm a marginal winner so far. I've run bad a couple times in those couple thousand hands too.

I'm going to make some "preparations" for my move up. I still want to be conservative with the bankroll. I have a healthy bankroll for $5/10 right now, so I think it would be ok to move up without making these preparations. However, better safe than sorry.

In preparation for my moving up in limits, I will do a little more bonus whoring. Empire has a 100% up to $300 going right now, but it's a 20x to clear in 10 days. I think I'll skip that one. However, Pokerroom has a 40% up to $200 reload going on. I think I'm going to start with that bonus.

After Pokerroom, I'm going to whore bonuses and collect a little schwag in the process. Amazingly, there are a few poker rooms out there that I've never signed up for. So I'm going to go to Poker Source Online and collect on some free shit.

I think I'll start out by signing up for The Gaming Club and get some free poker chips. It only takes 750 raked hands. Plus I get a free $50 bonus.

Next, I think I'll go for the Titan and a free set of Copag cards with some chip racks, cut card, and dealer button. Also, Titan has a 100% up to $500 bonus. Not sure how hard it is to clear. We'll find out.

So, I'll probably have those 2 bonuses, plus what little bit of rakeback I get this month. I also have some bonus left to work off at Full Tilt. I guess I should finish that thing before it expires.

I also want to get a Party rakeback deal going. I haven't heard from my Empire affiliate which is supposed to be hooking me up with a deal at Party. However, I have heard from another reliable affiliate that will hook me up with 25%. I think I'll just go with that.

I'm really excited to be moving up to $3/6. Playing $2/4 after being used to playing $5/10 for so many months was getting pretty boring. It's a little more fun playing short handed on Stars, but it's still $2/4 and even with a decent win rate, I'm not making as much money as I want.

Moving up to $3/6 will be a lot better. If I can maintain a 2BB/100 win rate, that's $12/100 hands. So I'll be making roughly $40-50/hour plus rakeback. With my mediocre volume, I should still pull in $600-$700/month.

Also, the $3/6 6 max game is pretty fun to play. Once I move up, prepare for a bunch of posts cussing these 6 max fuckers that donk bet me on the turn and catch their inside straight draw on the river.

Not really much to report. Yesterday, I had that no-sugar hangover I've been expecting. I felt pretty bad all day long. I think I've slept it off. I feel much better today.

As a result of me not feeling well, I played minimal poker yesterday, but had a very good day. I played a little under 300 hands of $2/4 6 max on Stars and racked up. I also played a $16 turbo sit n go on stars while I was waiting for the new WSOP Main Event show to come on and placed 3rd in it.

I got rivered pretty badly in the sit n go. I was the short stack and was dealt QJsuited on the button. I raise. Cold called by the big blind. Flop was Q,3,x. I push, he calls with A-3 offsuit. Turn rag. River... fuckin' 3.

I watched the WSOP shows last night. Nothing too interesting. Phil is pure entertainment though. The AK hand was pure fucking genius entertainment. "HOW MANY PEOPLE IN THE WORLD CAN MAKE THAT LAYDOWN?". LOL. You the man Phil, you the man. I also caught myself chanting "throw a jack dealer, throw a jack!" when he had the AK vs KJ. How does this prick not get his ass beat? Phil, you're a weak/tight entertainment genius. Keep it up.

I think Marcel Luske is one of my favorite players to watch on TV. His whole attitude about life and poker is just too damn cool. I bet he gets all the pussy back in Amsterdam. Doesn't even have to pay for it! He played some very good poker yesterday in my opinion.

I was suprised X22 didn't get more airtime than what he did. The man is dangerous. It looked like he had a monster chipstack. I think I would have made the same play against Phil with that chipstack. Off course, had the tides been reversed, Phil would have cold called and checked in the dark. I like watching X22 or whatever the fuck his name is. I just wish he would fix that damn nose. It looks like a monkey hung from it for a year or so.

Another thing I've done the past 2 nights is watch a little bit of Live @ The Bike. This is pure fucking genius as well. No soap opera 30 minute timeouts because Matusow said "Fuck". Just pure cash game. It is well done with commentary and hole card cams. I think it said that tonight will be a $5000 mininum buy in game. A game regularly played by Jerry Buss. I'll be tuned in tonight after my bowling league.

In preparation for the Blogger tournament this week, I'm going to work on my no limit tournament game for the remainder of the week. I'll probably play some regular and turbo sit n goes on Poker Stars. I'll probably even play a few mult-table sit n goes. I'm going to work on maintaing focus and spend the "down" time takign notes on everyone at my table. Hopefully I can make this a habit.

That's all I got for now. Keep 'er cool!

Ok, starting to feel the sugar hangover effects. This will be a tough couple days.

On to poker...

You know that great feeling you get when you just have someone's number? No matter what they do, you are one step ahead of them. I had that feeling today against a guy claiming to be 12. He was VERY aggressive, but too loose to be profitable.

Here are a couple hands where we clashed:

PokerStars 2/4 Hold'em (6 handed) converter


Preflop: Hero is SB with As, Qh.

2 folds, CO raises, 1 fold, Hero 3-bets, 1 fold, CO calls.


Flop: (7 SB) 8s, Js, 2s (2 players)

Hero bets, CO calls.


Turn: (4.50 BB) 2c (2 players)

Hero bets, CO raises, Hero calls.


River: (8.50 BB) Td (2 players)

Hero checks, CO bets, Hero calls.


Final Pot: 10.50 BB


Results in white below:

Hero has As Qh (one pair, twos).

CO has 9s Ah (one pair, twos).

Outcome: Hero wins 10.50 BB.

Normally, this would probably be a -EV decision to call the river with Ace high, but I was pretty confident with my read.

Hand #2:

PokerStars 2/4 Hold'em (6 handed) converter


Preflop: Hero is CO with Qh, Kh.

UTG raises, 1 fold, Hero 3-bets, 3 folds, UTG calls.


Flop: (7.50 SB) 3s, Kc, 4s (2 players)

UTG bets, Hero raises, UTG 3-bets, Hero caps, UTG calls.


Turn: (7.75 BB) 3d (2 players)

UTG bets, Hero raises, UTG calls.


River: (11.75 BB) 8d (2 players)

UTG checks, Hero bets, UTG folds.


Final Pot: 12.75 BB


Results in white below:

Hero has Qh Kh (two pair, kings and threes).

Outcome: Hero wins 12.75 BB.

In this hand, I purposely overplayed the KQs because I was still confident in the read on this guy.

Last hand:

PokerStars 2/4 Hold'em (6 handed) converter


Preflop: Hero is UTG with Jd, As.

Hero raises, 3 folds, SB calls, 1 fold.


Flop: (5 SB) Js, 7d, 7s (2 players)

SB checks, Hero bets, SB raises, Hero calls.


Turn: (4.50 BB) 5s (2 players)

SB bets, Hero raises, SB calls.


River: (8.50 BB) 9c (2 players)

SB checks, Hero bets, SB calls.


Final Pot: 10.50 BB


Results in white below:

SB has 8h Jh (two pair, jacks and sevens).

Hero has Jd As (two pair, jacks and sevens).

Outcome: Hero wins 10.50 BB.

This hand pretty much played itself.

The kid is probably a winning player at $2/4. He is definitely one of the most aggressive players I've seen at the tables. He just overdoes it.

Day one of my new lifestyle began bright and early this morning. 6:25am to be exact. Damn, do I wish that I had went to bed earlier. I feel like shit today. I'm working on about 4.5 hours of sleep.

So far as for the diet, I'm doing good. I had some Special K cereal and a banana for breakfast. I had a turkey sandwich on wheat with mustard and some sugar free jello for lunch. Right now I'm munching on some carrot sticks as my afternoon snack. I haven't drank any water so far, but I'm grabbing a bottle as I type this up. I did have a diet Dr. Pepper for lunch because there wasn't any cold water available. That will be the only soda I drink today. It's milk and water from here on out.

It's been easy so far, but I've kept busy today. I had to be at a customer's office this morning. I haven't felt any effects of the lack of sugar in my body yet. However, I do expect to have some sort of withdrawl symptoms. Contrary to popular belief, food can be addicting. At least mentally.

One thing I've decided to do is keep a journal of everything I eat. No I'm not going to post it on this blog, because frankly I'm sure nobody gives a shit.

On to poker. I have no gameplan for this week or the remainder of the month. I figure I'll just stick to the ring games and play an occasional tournament. The tournaments are nice when you win. However, they are B-O-R-I-N-G. My first place finish took nearly 5 hours yesterday. That's with only 50 entries. Now, it was a rebuy tournament. Once we got to the final table, I had a blast. That's just because I had a nice chipstack and could bully people. Let me tell you people. It was truly a work of art how I used the chipstack to my advantage.

I had a friend stop by and sweat my victory. Actually, he came by to pick up his mail and got interested in watching. After about 5 minutes, he said "So, are you just going to raise every hand?". The next hand was something like AJ suited. I raised it again and replied "Scott, when you get cards like these, I'll raise every hand and there's no excuse for losing".

And now finally:

The True Story about My MTT Victory Yesterday

Yes, I did win the tournament, but there was a portion of the tournament that I didn't blog about yesterday. In fact it was a big portion. There were 19 people left in the tournament at the time I started blogging about it.

When the tournament first started, I took a bad beat right off the bat that cost me about 75% of my chipstack. I really went on tilt. So I figured I'd hit the away button and walk away from the game.

I put in a load of laundry and was checking out something on the TV and then the phone rang. I forgot all about the tournament in the process. After I remembered, I walked into my office and saw that I was still in the tournament. I only had 230 chips or so with an average of something way above that.

They were just coming back from the 1st break. I decided I'd just push with any decent hand. I think I pushed with 9-10 suited and doubled up. I worked my chipstack up rather decently after a while. Then I got the pocket 7's hand where I flopped a set against 2 over pairs and more than tripled up. That was my tournament right there.

So to be honest with you, I won a tournament that I forgot I was playing in. Beat that!

I'm currently about 3rd in chips with 19 remaining in a $2600 Empire tournament. Only the top 8 get paid though. Here is the sweet ass hand that put me up near the top in chips (sorry for the shitty hand history, but I can't get the converter to work on tourney hands).

***** Hand History for Game 2854992286 *****
150/300 Tourney Texas Hold'em Game Table (NL) (Tournament 16461095) - Sun Oct 16 12:56:49 EDT 2005
Table $1500 Daily Guaranteed(485330) Table 2 (Real Money) -- Seat 5 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 1: GodsmackBLS (3693)
Seat 2: Edward57 (2988)
Seat 3: ShiptheChez (4930)
Seat 4: dragan_hemsk (4675)
Seat 5: Dan_Banan (9590)
Seat 6: st0rballe (10631)
Seat 7: Nada10 (7185)
Seat 8: zidane84 (5162)
Seat 9: jamie834 (12870)
Seat 10: biboune2004 (1316)
Nada10 posts small blind (75)
zidane84 posts big blind (150)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to GodsmackBLS [ 7c, 7h ]
jamie834 calls (150)
biboune2004 folds.
GodsmackBLS raises (600) to 600
Edward57 folds.
ShiptheChez folds.
dragan_hemsk calls (600)
Dan_Banan folds.
Nada10 calls (525)
zidane84 folds.
jamie834 calls (450)
** Dealing Flop ** : [ 2s, 7d, 8d ]
Nada10 bets (150)
jamie834 folds.
GodsmackBLS raises (800) to 800
dragan_hemsk raises (2000) to 2000
Nada10 calls (1850)
GodsmackBLS raises (2293) to 3093
GodsmackBLS is all-In.
dragan_hemsk calls (1093)
Nada10 calls (1093)
Creating Main Pot with $11829 with GodsmackBLS
** Dealing Turn ** : [ 2d ]
Nada10 checks.
dragan_hemsk checks.
** Dealing River ** : [ Jh ]
Nada10 checks.
dragan_hemsk checks.
** Summary **
Main Pot: 11829 |
Board: [ 2s 7d 8d 2d Jh ]
GodsmackBLS balance 11829, bet 3693, collected 11829, net +8136 [ 7c 7h ] [ a full house, Sevens full of twos -- 7c,7h,7d,2s,2d ]
Edward57 balance 2988, didn't bet (folded)
ShiptheChez balance 4930, didn't bet (folded)
dragan_hemsk balance 982, lost 3693 [ Th Td ] [ two pairs, tens and twos -- Jh,Th,Td,2s,2d ]
Dan_Banan balance 9590, didn't bet (folded)
st0rballe balance 10631, sits out
Nada10 balance 3492, lost 3693 [ Qd Qc ] [ two pairs, queens and twos -- Qd,Qc,Jh,2s,2d ]
zidane84 balance 5012, lost 150 (folded)
jamie834 balance 12270, lost 600 (folded)
biboune2004 balance 1316, didn't bet (folded)

We just came back from the 2nd break and it's hand for hand all the way to the final table. I've been in this position many times before. I think I'm just going to lay low and try to slowly work my chipstack up to a good point.

I'm gonna blog my way through the rest of the tournament starting now:

- I'm currently 2nd in chips with 11904. #1 is on my right.

- I get 79 hearts. 118 limpers, I check in the big blind. Flop came A,7,5, with the 5 of hearts. MP bets minimum. Me and another guy call. Turn is 8 hearts. Now I have a flush draw with a straight draw and middle pair. I think about betting, but decide to check. It's checked around. Checked around on the river and I take the small pot to give me the chip lead.

- I lose a small pot with A5 against AA when he tried to slow play and the board got too scary for him to do anything.

- Tournament play is boring and slow. I was playing some $2/4 short handed on Stars, but decided to focus on this tournament. Not a lot of action so far.

- Uninvolved in a hand, I became 2nd in chips. Dude won a nice pot and took the chip lead.

- I raise with AJ from MP and take the blinds.

- Still 19 players, but there are quite a few short stacks. Avg is 6200, but there are 12 out of 19 below that. Most of those are extremely below that.

- We get one to bite the dust on our table. AJ rivered 2 pair, but lost to a set of 5's.

- Some asshole is stalling even though it's hand for hand.

- I try to steal from the button with KT offsuit. BB reraises 1000, I call. Flop came A,3,5. He checks, I bet 1200 as a stab. He folds. I'm back in the chip lead.

- I raise with QJ offsuit from late-middle position and take the blinds.

- I just noticed that this was a rebuy tournament. Shows you how much attention I paid at the beginning of this thing. Guess what? I didn't have any rebuys :)

- Another one bites the dust at our table. However, I've moved to 2nd in chips with 17 remaining.

- Chip leader went for a blind steal, but I called with QK suited on the button. Flop was all rags. He bet small. I raised and he folded. I'm back in the chip lead.

- They ain't doing shit on that other table.

- Down to 16. 55 lost to 66, I'm 2nd in chips as a result though.

- 15 remaining. I'm 3rd in chips. I'm not losing any, but the 2nd and 3rd place guys are just knocking people out. It's a close battle at the top though.

- Agggh. These people suck. Dude has the damn nuts and a short stack reraises him. The bigger stack doesn't put the short stack all in, he just called.

- I lost a small pot with the chip leader. His J8 beat my KJ. Still 3rd in chips though.

- Down to 14. 3rd in chips.

- Down to 13, AK beat AQ on the other table. Chip leader also had his KK cracked, but lost less than he should have. It's a 3 way battle at the top.

- I just won a very nice pot when I rivered a flush against a couple limpers. One of those limpers happened to be the chip leader with KK. They kept min betting, then I put in a huge raise on the river with the nuts and chip leader called. I'm new chip leader and have almost 2 to 1 advantage on 2nd.

- AK beats A3 and we are down to 12. I'm still 1st in chips, but the gap was closed after that last hand. 4 more til the money.

- I'm 2nd in chips. Chip leader is on the other table. He only has a couple on me.

- Down to 12. 2nd in chips.

- Down to the final table. I'm not sure where #11 went, but I don't care. 2 more til the money. I'm barely in 2nd place behind the chip leader.

- Still 10 left. Things are going slow and I'm card dead. I did get one blind steal with K5 suited from the CO. I'm still 2nd in chips though and the chip leader is on my right and he is a DONK! At least I got good position.

- I regained the chip lead when I caught a king high flush with 4 spades on the board. I should have won more, but I was playing it careful.

- Before I got the above typed I lost the chip lead when 2nd won a hand. However, I regained it by coming over the top of donkey 3rd place with KT suited when he tried a blind steal from the CO.

- By the way, we are down to 9. It's been like that for a while. 1 more til the money. There are 3 extremely small stacks. I'm gonna play it safe. Folded 55 from UTG. Of course the flop brought a 5.

- 2nd in chips again. Damn I'm starving.

- In the money. 8 left.

- Down to 7. I just won a coin flip with AK vs 99. I'm leader again.

- I just missed a chance to eliminate a guy. He limped and I checked from BB with 4-2 off. He had less than 1/2 a bet remaining. I put him all in. He called with KJ and I caught a 2 on the turn. He caught a J on the river.

- I had drifted back to 2nd in chips, but made a move on the chip leader with pocket 6's and it worked out. Back in the lead.

- All in from small stack, 2nd in chips calls, small stack win.

- big hand transpired between 2nd and 3rd in chips. 2nd just took 2/3 of 3rd's stack. Now I'm 2nd in chips.

- Down to 6. 2nd in chips.

- Almost even at top of chips. Had pocket 8's in the small blind. Chip leader limped from the button (he's a donk). I raise to 6 times BB. He calls. I push on a 7 high flop and take it down.

- Empire is getting ready to fuck up. My client is getting very slow for some reason.

- I just lost a pot to the chip leader. I'm still 2nd in chips though.

- Only the me and the chip leader have over 10,000 in chips. He has 59,000, I have 32,000.

- Down to 5 as teh chip leader takes another one out. He's playing every hand and catching cards right now. This will be tough. He's min raising every hand too. I'm gonna get that douche.

- This thing has been running 4 hours and only 50 entries. Rebuy tournaments suck. Even if you don't know it's a rebuy tournament.

- small stack went all in with AJ, BB went all in with 10J. AJ held up. Still at 5 people

- Small stack goes in, chip leader calls with better hand. Small stack catches a boat.

- I take out the 5th place guy when my A7 suited holds up against his K9.

- Down to 4. 2nd in chips. 2 small stacks.

- bridge between me and the chip leader has dwindled to almost nothing.

- I'm new chip leader after I hit a straight against chip leader's 2 pair.

- Down to 3, I'm 1st in chips.

- Still 3 left, I'm still the chip leader and punishing.

- 2 left. My QQ beat 10-10.

- 2.5 to 1 advantag in chips.

- I kept dwindling his chipstack until this hand:

#Game No : 2855117082
***** Hand History for Game 2855117082 *****
NL Texas Hold'em Trny:16461095 Level:13 Blinds (750/1500) - Sunday, October 16, 15:30:01 EDT 2005
Table $1500 Daily Guaranteed(485330) Table #1 (Real Money)
Seat 2 is the button
Total number of players : 2
Seat 1: st0rballe ( $20746 )
Seat 2: GodsmackBLS ( $97754 )
Trny:16461095 Level:13
Blinds (750/1500)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to GodsmackBLS [ Qd 6d ]
GodsmackBLS raises [3850].
st0rballe calls [3100].
** Dealing Flop ** [ 7c, 4s, 6h ]
st0rballe checks.
GodsmackBLS bets [21900].
st0rballe is all-In [16146]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 8d ]
** Dealing River ** [ 8c ]
GodsmackBLS shows [ Qd, 6d ] two pairs, eights and sixes.
st0rballe shows [ Th, 4h ] two pairs, eights and fours.
GodsmackBLS wins 5754 chips from side pot #1 with two pairs, eights and sixes.
GodsmackBLS wins 41492 chips from the main pot with two pairs, eights and sixes.
Congratulations to player GodsmackBLS for winning tournament $1500 Daily Guaranteed
Player st0rballe finished in 2 place and received $520
Player GodsmackBLS finished in 1 place and received $780
st0rballe has left the table.
GodsmackBLS has left the table.

Victory is mine!



That's MTT victory #2 for me. Victory #1 came some time last year after I busted out on the 2nd hand of a blogger tournament.

It's time to clean myself up and hit the grocery store. I'm fucking starving.