Dinner break

We're at dinner break at the moment. Play resumes at 8:30 PM PST, I have around 42k chips, we started with 20k. I have a good table and hopefully things continue to go well. I'm at table 35 seat 9.

Flying to the Big Dance

I'm here at El Paso airport, waiting for my Southwest flight to Vegas, I just booked it yesterday along with my hotel room and a car rental (so I don't have to walk under the 115 degrees sun). The main event is already under way, many people was already eliminated yesterday on Day 1A, I'm starting tomorrow on Day 1C and as usual, I'm pretty excited, playing the Main Event is a great adventure, no matter the result. Hopefully I'll post some interesting things from Vegas and from the tournament, but as usual just wishful thinking, I'm a terrible blogger. I have so many interesting hands from my cash in the $1500 NL, I played there more than 24 hours and there were some amazing hands, material enough to fill at least this blog for a week. I haven't played barely any poker since that tourney, I've played some online 5-10 NL 6-handed hands, but that's about it. Still I feel pretty good and in the mood to have a good tourney.

P.S. I'm already missing my family, it's weird to travel without them.

Going to the WSOP Main Event

I decided to play the Main Event, last week I walked to the Rio's cashier with 2 purple 5k chips and paid my registration. I chose day 1C, so I will be starting Sunday July 8th. Last week I went to Vegas to play just 3 events in the WSOP. I cashed in one of them, event#38 $1,500 No Limit Holdem, I placed 14th out of 2778, good to win around $30,000; so I decided that was my "satellite" to the Main Event and decided to use $10,000 to play it.

This will be my 5th main event, despite my 8 for 25 in cashes in the WSOP, which I think it's pretty respectable; I'm 0 for 4 in the Main Event, hopefully that changes this year. I feel good and I will be leaving for Vegas next Friday. May the poker Gods be with me.

Stacking

Well, I'll post at least a hand a day, that's easy.

This is one from my 5-10 NL 6-max play. It shows basically the most usual mistake of a cash game NL player, that is, playing all your stack with just top pair.

Full Tilt Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $5/$10
5 players

Stack sizes:
UTG: $1272.95
Hero: $1188
Button: $1003
SB: $2373
BB: $1354.30

Pre-flop: (5 players) Hero is CO with K♥ K♠
UTG raises to $35, Hero calls, Button calls, SB folds, BB calls.

Flop: K♦ A♥ 9♠ ($145, 4 players)
BB checks, UTG bets $145, Hero calls, 2 folds.

Turn: 4♥ ($435, 2 players)
UTG bets $300, Hero raises all-in $1008, UTG calls.

River: Q♠ ($2451, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $2451)


Results:
Final pot: $2451
UTG showed Qc Ad
Hero showed Kh Ks


Hopefully I keep stacking people in the 5-10 game, so I can play some WSOP events.

Monday tourneys

I played 2 tourneys on Monday, none on Sunday, my first 2 since May 10. I keep getting deep in the tourneys, but not deep enough. I was 17th out of 413 on the Full Tilt $163 for $434 and 19th out of 1069 on the Stars $162 for $673. Of course pretty disappointing as usual. I think I made some mistakes in the Full Tilt one, especially a bluff going wrong that crippled me. In the Stars one, I'm not sure about my last decision of going all in from the BB with A7h when the button raised to 18k, I have only like 43k and was the short stack at the time, I don't have too much fold equity there and besides that the jump between 19th and 18th was $500 (but of course 1st place was $33,000); but I figured he was stealing and to have the best hand, unfortunately he had 99 and no ace or hearts came to rescue me. The important thing is despite almost not playing tourneys I keep getting deep on them. After that I played a little 5-10 NL and I won like $100. Sunday and Monday were pretty good for my sports bets, I won around $2000, hopefully the streak continues and I can get even on Sports.

My adventures as a sports bettor

So far they have been terrible, I started late last year and kind of seriously in February, and not counting Movie bets, I'm losing around 7k betting NBA, NCAA basketball, MLB, MMA, Box, well, almost everything. And I can't say I have been lazy, I've worked my ass trying to learn, reading books and all over the internet, comparing lines, shopping, finding arbitrages, everything, but it's just too hard. I'm about to give up on Sports, the only thing I've beaten so far is movie awards, I won around 6.5k between the Golden Globes and the Oscars. Basically I have won in the only events I have a good amount of knowledge. Following people with "knowledge" on other areas has been a disaster so far. So, until I have an amount of knowledge of baseball, basketball, MMA fighting and other sports at least comparable to my movie awards, I would be better off not betting at all. But I can't help it for now, I love sports and it's so much fun !!

Pretty good all night sesion 5-10 NL

I had a pretty good session playing from 11PM to about 6AM. I played 5-10 NL 6 handed on Stars and Full Tilt, 3 tables. At the end I won almost 8k, and I finished April with good numbers, winning in cash games and winning in tournaments (well, I only win like $600 on tourneys, but much better than losing).

The most interesting hand I played this night was the following:

Full Tilt Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $5/$10
6 players



Stack sizes:
UTG: $988
Hero: $2666.75
CO: $1580.75
Button: $2240.25
SB: $1005
BB: $955


Pre-flop: (6 players) Hero is UTG+1 with
UTG folds, Hero raises to $35, CO calls, Button calls, SB calls, BB folds.


Flop: ($150, 4 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $80, CO calls, Button calls, SB calls.


Turn: ($470, 4 players)
SB checks, Hero checks, CO bets $400, Button raises all-in $2125.25, SB calls all-in $890, !! Hero folds !!, CO calls all-in $1065.75.
Uncalled bets: $659.5 returned to Button.


River: ($3715.75, 0 player + 3 all-in - Main pot: $3140, Sidepot 1: $1151.5)



Results:
Final pot: $3715.75

CO showed and won $4,288.50

Button showed

SB showed

A difficult fold in a Final Table

This was an interesting hand I played in the Final Table of the Sunday $200+15 Stars Warm-Up:

5 players left

Payouts: 5th is 18k, 4th is 23k, 1st is 80k

Stacks are between 2 Million and 5M

Blinds are 100k-200k with 10k ante

BodogAri is in the button with around 2.3M

I'm in the CO with around 3.1M

Both blinds cover us.

I open to 600k with AT

Ari reraises to 1.9M leaving himself with 400k (basically AI)

Your move?

I have played many tournaments with Ari before, including some final tables. I knew he knew I was calling his raise because of the size of my raise and my chip count, so he knew his FE (fold equity) was almost zero. So basically he should have a good hand and his move was legit. I thought for a while, didn't like my AT and folded.

Any comments?

It's update time !!

I think this is the longest I have gone without writing anything in the blog. I spent all night playing 5-10 NL and did pretty well, so, I'm happy and ready to write something.

It should be easy to write a post every day, I write plenty of posts in the 2+2 forums, so, from now on, I'll simply copy and paste some of my posts from 2+2 if I don't have something new to add to the blog.

One of my last posts in the 2+2 forums was the following:

You'll die in 6 hours

"With all my experience in life; it looks to me that everybody lives like they will never die; in practice, everybody thinks is immortal. When you think about death, you think about it like something that is going to happen in a very distant future. But what about if you know you're dying today.

Suppose you know you will die in 6 hours (In order to make the experiment interesting you really need to imagine it, picture it, you're dying !!). What would you do? How will you spend those last 6 hours? and why? "

Pretty interesting responses so far, if you want to take the time and read them over there, and of course it would be nice if you post your response here in the blog (If there's anybody left who reads this blog)

About poker, these last days I've been taking shots at 5-10 NL, I've already taken shots at 1-2, 2-4 and 3-6, so, what the hell, why not 5-10?, well, the reason I shouldn't "It's the bankroll, stupid"; so far I've done well at all the levels, but of course not enough hands played to know for sure if I don't suck, you know me, I just can't put the hours, that's one of my principal problems as a poker player.

About tournaments, I played exactly ZERO, NADA, in March, so, I decided to make a bet for April with some internet friends from 2+2, the proposition was something like:

"PROP Sirio to have a April winning month on tournaments played on Stars and Full Tilt (they must be easily traceable, by OPR for example). Minimum to have action on the YES is 30 tourneys. If I play less than 30 tourneys, the NO wins, doesn't matter if I won the Sunday Million or whatever."

Grafyx, a pretty good tournament player took the bet, so I have a $400 bet with him, I need to play at least 30 tournaments with buy-ins higher to $50 (he needs to play 50) in April and have a winning month. I think I'm on pace to do both, play the 30 tourneys and win $$ on the month. So far I've played 17 tournaments on Poker Stars and 6 tourneys on Full Tilt, with 1 week still to go, it must be easy to satisfy the quota, and since I already have 2 final tables, I think the $$ thing is also done.

You can check my stats on OPR:

sirio11 Poker Stars
sirio11 Full Tilt

2 final tables in 23 tourneys, I got 9th in the big Sunday Second chance on Stars ($200+15), and 3rd in a $75 tourney on Full Tilt:





Pretty disappointing finishes (Are there any other kind?) with my usual bad beats on key hands in the final table, AcJc vs Kc9c with 10 left in the Stars and 33 vs 22 in the Full Tilt with 4 left; but at least I'm winning money, and I'm playing !!!.

So, that's it for today, let's hope I'll write an entry every day again. Blogging is easy, blogging is easy, blogging is easy, blogging is easy, blogging is easy, blogging is easy, blogging is easy, ........, if I repeat it enough times, I'll believe it, ha. Just do it.

Agnostic gambling: February tournament report

February was my best poker month in a while. I had a 66% in the money in Poker Stars tournaments and 33% final table appearances, haha what a month in Stars. Of course I played exactly 3 tournaments in Poker Stars all month.
I played 13 tournaments total in February, since I played 10 tournaments at Mansion (one of the benefits of living in the border). There (Mansion) I had a 10% in the money and 10% final table (1 out of 10).

So, pretty good month, played 13 tournaments, cashed 3 times, with 2 final tables. Most importantly I had a whopping 1400% ROI. Yuhuuuu!!!

The 10 mansion tournaments ($100 buy in) had around 500-600 people each, I made a final table and won around $3500.

My 3 Poker Stars results as you can check in this pretty good database site were:

PS $162 NLH, 16 out of 922 for $1,037
PS $162 NLH, 1005 out of 1017 for $0
PS $215 NLH, 5 out of 2053 for $18,354.

The 5th place was in one of the $200 Sunday tournaments on Stars, the "Warm up" one. It's my best result in a while, I don't know why I didn't even post it here, probably because I don't care too much about this blog nowadays, but here is the tournament results picture:



This is the first time I make a final table in one of the big $200 Sunday tournaments at Stars. I had made the final 2 tables several times before, but never the final table. Now I just need to win one.
So, I won more than $20k in 13 tournaments, which is pretty cool. The funny thing is that Poker was a distant 2nd or 3rd place of my job activities during February. Maybe that's the answer for variance. You want to have good poker results?, then go and do something else, just don't care about poker and the results will come. There you have it, the recipe for tournament poker success !!

Is this month a great thing?. Meh, not really, I still hate poker, variance sucks !!!

10 more months like this one, and I may consider forgiving the Poker Gods and come back to the belief there's a poker heaven. Until then, I'll continue with my agnostic gambling.