WCOIP wrap up and Week in Review

Well my first week back from Vegas is in the books. Unfortunately I was sick at the beginning of the week and never fully got grinding like I hoped, but I did manage to log a paltry 12k hands for the week. The cash games combined with my few small tournament cashes still led to a very profitable week, nearly half as much as I made in the month of February. And speaking of tournaments, as you may or may not be able to see in the above picture, I was able to win another WCOIP event, the Pot Limit Omaha Championship on FeltStars. For my efforts I won an insignificant amount of money, but more importantly a new Rolex Submariner watch. I'm pretty excited about the silly watch because it is a luxury item that I would not buy for myself. In fact, I am still wearing the $60 Pulsar by Seiko watch that I bought for myself on my 21st birthday (I'll be 29 in 2 months)! I also will be awarded a WCOIP gold bracelet for winning the PLO championship.

I also got heads up in the No Limit Championship going for my 3rd win out of the 6 events that I played in the WCOIP. I started heads up with a 100k to 32k chip advantage. After losing the first 5 hands I was still in the lead 72k to 60k when I was dealt KK and got all in vs my opponents JJ. I dodged a T-5-2 flop, but unfortunately he hit a J on the turn to cripple me down to 12k in chips. I lost the next hand. Aside from the small pay jump between first and second, I really wanted those Kings to hold up so that I would be the winner of both bracelet events in the WCOIP and be the only person in the world to own WCOIP bracelets. Yeah, I know, it's silly, but whatever. I guess I'll have to settle for a WCOIP bracelet on my right wrist, and a shiny new Rolex Submariner on my left. I know, tough life!! LOL.

I just played my first session for the week after doing household chores all day. Unfortunately my concentration level was abysmal as illustrated in this hand:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5295195

Obviously I NEVER check the river back with the near nuts, but I literally think that I fell asleep or something. After this hand I realized that it probably was best to call it a day, get some rest, and get back to the grind tomorrow. I did start playing a little higher tonight. Instead of 4 tables of 1/2 NL Rush poker, I played 2 tables of 1/2 NL Rush poker and 2 tables of 2/4. Eventually, hopefully, I will phase out the Rush poker all together and play 9 to 12 tables of 2/4 NL. This is assuming that I stop checking the nuts behind on the river! :-P

Hopefully I will be able to grind a lot this week, with less emphasis on number of hands played and more emphasis on working up to playing more 2/4 and less 1/2. I feel confident enough to be moving up and am properly bankrolled, so I'm gonna cross my fingers, close my eyes, and enjoy the ride!

Til Next Time....

Vegas Trip recap + I hate colds!!

Well, another 2 weeks have passed since I last blogged, along with another trip to Las Vegas. This trip was par for the course- great food, great friends, mediocre poker. The long and short of it is that I made enough money to cover my expenses for my flight, rental car, a few gifts for Kim, and all my food and entertainment(I didn't have to worry about lodging as I stayed at a close friends home). The truth is that I really look forward to playing live poker, but then after a few hours of playing I find myself wishing I was seeing 1000 hands an hour on the internet. Go figure!!

There were some highlights of the trip though. These highlights included spending at least 10 hours watching friends play online over several sessions. I think that I will not be able to put a price on the lessons I learned in this time. I also was able to hang out with all of my friends, join them for nice sushi, Italian, and Vietnamese dinners, basketball games, and even a night of live poker where they beat up on me pretty badly! I'm not gonna rant about this, but note to self: If you can't play hard verse close friends when real money (hundreds, not quarters) is on the line, then don't play at the table with them..plain and simple! I also spent a night playing a home game with another group of great friends which was a blast. We played quarter limits badugi, badeucey, 6 card Omaha hi-lo, and various other fun games. These are the things that I miss most about living in Las Vegas. People have always told me that it's hard to make friends in Vegas because there are so many fake people. I can see that logic, but I can also so that I have made some of the best friends thus far in my life in Las Vegas. These are people who I would trust with my bankroll, and if you know how tight I am that says a lot! LOL.

The unfortunate part of my trip was that I started coming down with a slight cold the day before I left. It seems to be almost gone now, but it has caused me to miss playing poker the last 3 days. Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow and can get back to the grind.

I had extensive conversations with my friends who's advice I respect very much when it comes to poker about moving up in limits. Based on my skill level I have kept myself playing relatively small. While some play NL games on 20 or so buy ins, I have been playing them on a much deeper roll due to a lack of confidence in my own skills. I think after talking with my friends, I will begin to integrate a few games of the next level into my daily grind. If I feel comfortable in doing this I will hopefully make a full transition to the next level by the end of April. I think this will give me more than ample time to be confident in my skills and keep winning at a higher stakes game. In the meantime I will continue studying videos on Bluefire poker as well as reviewing hand histories with friends whos games I really respect. Hopefully all of this will be a recipe for success.

My "student" who is really not a student at all but the friend who's home I stayed at during my last two trips to Vegas has been working on his game. I spent 6 or 7 hours watching him play online during this past trip, reviewing hands, and discussing strategy for the 9-handed games in which he plays in. He is being very stubborn and resisiting change for the most part, unwilling to get his 100bb stack in to the middle in situations that demand it. In his defense, he moved to Las Vegas in 1978 and remembers a much more passive game where the good players were nits and would sit back and collect the money. I don't think this holds true as much today as in yesteryear. I have promised him a few hours a week of help to review his hands. Hopefully he will progress from a 2.5 year break even player to a goal of 1bb/100 winner before rakeback. He is considering retiring soon and just getting him to that winrate would suffice for him to maintain his standard of living. If only I could get him to stop folding AK and QQ preflop...sigh.

There are 3 more events left in the WCOIP series on FeltStars.com. I have not won a second event yet so my wrist is still without a free Rolex. Hopefully I can win one of the last 3 and snag that watch! It concludes on Sunday the 21st, so I'm sure I'll blog sometime after the last event about this week back from Vegas and whether or not I'll be getting a nice new timepiece.

Til Next Time....

WCOIP Event #1

Just a quick note. WCOIP event #1 on FeltStars just finished and I won the tournament. The prize money is peanuts since it was only an $11 buy in with 79 entrants. The good news is that if I can manage to win 1 more WCOIP event then FeltStars will send me a Rolex! I've always wanted one but I dont think I'd ever plunk down that much money for a watch. Hopefully I can snag another title and the Rolex. I'll keep you updated. It will be hard to play 5 or 6 of the events while I am in Vegas, but I'll try my best to squeeze them in.

Til Next Time.....

February Recap and Vegas trip

So February is already over! The month went by really quickly. My month was filled with up and downs in regards to poker, but when the smoke cleared I was relatively pleased with my results. The good side is that I put in 93k hands over the 28 days of February and maintained a win rate of 5bb/100 according to my Hold Em Manager. The bad news is that I actually lost money from hands 60k-93k. I know that I ran a little below EV during this stretch, as well as I was on the wrong end of a bunch of coolers. I also somehow lost money with pocket Aces during this stretch as well. Ultimately though, upon reflection, I feel part of the reason that I lost was due to overconfidence. After starting the month up 50 buy ins in 2 weeks, I felt semi invincible. This "confidence" can be great when it sharpens your reads and helps you think through bluffs better, but "over confidence" can be very harmful. Over confidence can leads to FPS (Fancy Play Syndrome), in which you think that every bluff will work. The problem with that is that you begin to tell not so believable stories. Thinking players will start to sniff out these "bad bluffs" and cost you buy in after buy in. Over confidence also hurt me in that I became a POW (Pay Off Wizard). I stopped relying so much on my reads and started calling most bets of $25-$100 because they seemed "small". The problem is that over a 5k hands session these "small" bets added up.

Luckily I was able to identify these problems and hopefulyy will be able to rectify them in future sessions. The old me would have just jumped up to the next higher limit, but I have my reasons for staying in my current limit for at least several more months, and at least 250k more hands. I'll try to include my graph if possible for the month. Once again the red line is Non Showdown $ (this line in a perfect world would stay around zero or be a bit above, but thats very hard to do). The dark green line is money won. The light green line is ALL in EV (in a prefectly mathematical situation this line would end at the same place as the dark green line). The dark blue line is total winnings for the month including rakeback. Finally, the light blue line is winnings at Showdown (This total minus the red line total equals the actual money won, or dark green line, before rakeback is added in).

Tomorrow I am leaving for Las Vegas for 11 days.  I am really looking forward to seeing my friends while I'm there, as well as grubbing up at some of my favorite restaurants that I miss from my time living in LV.  My plan is to play some cash games while there, along with one or two tournaments going on at the Wynn Classic.  Also, I'm hoping to go to my friends house and watch him play online to help me improve my game as he is an unbelievably talented player.  Other than that, I will just enjoy being in the city that always feels like home to me.

The WCOIP (World Championship of Internet Poker) on FeltStars begins today. It is small buy in tourneys ranging from $1 to $100. The neat promotion accompanying it is that if you win 2 events (and i promise some fields will be 50 players or less) you will win a Rolex Submariner watch along with the prize money. I will be trying my best to play as many events as my schedule allows in hopes of getting a free Rolex! The schedule is as follows:

WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP OF INTERNET POKER TOURNAMENT SCHEDULE

1
NO LIMIT (10 HANDED)
MARCH 1
7:30 PM
$10 + $1

2
NO LIMIT (10 HANDED)
MARCH 2
7:30 PM
$5 + $0.50

3
NO LIMIT (6 HANDED)
MARCH 4
7:30 PM
$5 + $0.50

4
POT LIMIT OMAHA (10 HANDED)
MARCH 6
4:30 PM
$5 + $0.50

5
NO LIMIT (10 HANDED)
MARCH 7
4:30 PM
$25 + $2.50

6
NO LIMIT WITH REBUYS AND 1 ADD ON (10 HANDED)
MARCH 8
7:30 PM
$1 + $0.25

7
POT LIMIT OMAHA (9 HANDED)
MARCH 9
7:30 PM
$10 + $1

8
NO LIMIT (10 HANDED)
MARCH 11
7:30 PM
$20 + $2

9
POT LIMIT OMAHA HI-LO (9 HANDED)
MARCH 13
4:30 PM
$20 + $2

10
NO LIMIT (10 HANDED)
MARCH 14
4:30 PM
$50 + $5

11
NO LIMIT (10 HANDED)
MARCH 18
7:30 PM
$30 + $3

12
POT LIMIT OMAHA MAIN EVENT (9 HANDED)
MARCH 20
4:30 PM
$50 + $5

13
NO LIMIT MAIN EVENT (10 HANDED)
MARCH 21
4:00 PM
$100 + $9

If you need money on the site to play the events, or havents signed up for a FeltStars account yet, email me at bootnteepoker@yahoo.com and I'll try my best to get you set up.

Other than all that good stuff, not much is new. Kim and I are becoming anxious and excited about our wedding in May. I guess I better get to packing for Vegas.

As a side note:  I thought this blog was deleted before publishing due to a misclick so I just spent another 30 minutes creating a similar (but not nearly as detailed because I was super tilted) blog.  I will just post this original one as I think it is better.  Hope whoever, if anyone, reads this enjoys my 1.5 hours of work between the two!!  Haha.

Til Next Time....