Not a good sign

It's never good when your stack looks like this.

Getting my ass kicked so far, down 150. No big hands. Reraised preflop with AQ, guy reraised me all in, fold. Missed with a bunch of pairs. Nothing special. Probably will jet in a few.

Aria is hella busy!

Damn, Thursday night and the Aria is banging. 22 names on the 1/3 list. Luckily I got called in and I'm waiting at the top. Time to crush some noobs!

Wynning!

Last night we went up to the Wynn again.  My wife and our other friend swore up and down that they were not playing.  Sure enough, by about 8:30 PM everyone was there playing.  :-)

My wife shared this article from the WPT Boot Camp site with me before we went last night : http://www.wptbootcamp.com/dont-dwindle-reload/.  Basically the guy was just saying you should buy in for a full stack and keep it loaded so you don't get a big hand and not get all the money you should from it.  I have been a little hesitant to buy in for the full buy-in at Wynn ($500 at the 1/3 game) just because if I do something stupid, I'll lose an extra $200.  Especially because with our strategy, I might be putting my whole stack in with a draw or possibly stacking off lighter than I would have in the past.  

However, I think she is right.  We have been playing way better than any time in recent history.  Yes, I might get in a weird spot where I end up dumping way more than I should have on a hand.  However, I think there will be more spots where I could capitalize and ship a giant pot where I would have missed out on a few hundred dollars by not buying in for a full stack.  So I like her strategy, and I'm down to buy in for the full stack all the time.  I'll definitely start doing that every time we go to Wynn from now on.  Tonight we are heading to Aria and the max buy-in at 1/3 is $300 (lame), but we'll be back at Wynn soon.

Last night went really well for me.  I actually got some hands and got some good action when I did. I flopped a couple of sets and busted a guy both times.  Nothing interesting - I am in there with 6-6, flop K-6-3 or whatever, get the guy all-in, win.  I never doubled up exactly, but I did win some decent pots.  

I'm really surprised at how often our continuation bets are working.  It's a REALLY high percentage of the time.  I think in the past we just wouldn't bet enough.  Now we are betting around 2/3 pot, and it's working really well.  

Couple funny recent poker stories too.  Last night this guy was saying how he lives in California and was just out in Vegas to "party", blah blah blah.  Our friend notices that when he opened his wallet, he had like EVERY player's club card in town in there.  Haha.  So we think he was local and just pretending that he was from out of town, lmao.  

Even better was the other day.  Two guys at the table were speaking some foreign language.  They sounded a lot like Roman and Maurice from Rounders.  :-)  I was thinking, "We know you're talking about pierogies and snow and shit, but....".  Anyway, our friend says she can speak their language.  And then she is like "I know you were talking about the ace of spades".  Later she told us that she actually saw one of the guy's cards when he peeled them up and one of his cards was the ace of spades.  Haha, it was pretty hilarious that she called him out on that secretly, I'm sure they were like "WTF?".

Well anyway, I'm out of here.  Final tally from last night was that I won $310 and my wife won $270.  Going to Aria tonight, wish me luck.  

Last night at Wynn

Played again at Wynn last night.  It was super slow for me and I ended up losing $100.  Over the last 2 days, I played 8.5 hours and lost $75.  It has just been dead.  No big hands to speak of.  I'm playing the same strategy I've been using for a while, but it's just one of those things.  If you don't get into any interesting situations, there is just nothing to report.

One hand I was pretty happy about was this one.  I raised with A-10 offsuit and got 1 caller.  Flop came J-4-4 and I bet, she called.  Turn was an ace.  She checked.  My hand wasn't that great and I figured I wanted to put one (and only one) more bet in.  I figured if she had a jack, she might fold to my bet.  So I just checked, planning on betting the river if she checked.  River came another jack and she checked.  I thought about betting, but decided against it.  I thought her most likely hand on the flop was a jack.  If it wasn't, what else could she have?  I guess she could have something like 7-7 (although I didn't think of that at the time).  She could also have a 4 and be slowplaying it, who knows.  Anyway I just decided to check.  She had A-K so I lost.  Now that I'm recounting this hand, it was pretty much garbage and I'm not thrilled about it.  What can you do though.  This was one of my more exciting hands.  :P  If I had thought of the possibility of her having something like a pair between 4s and jacks, maybe I could have bet very small on the river planning to fold to any raise.  

Might play more tonight, we'll see.  Definitely going to play tomorrow night, and probably all weekend.

Uneventful Monday night at Wynn

Got up to the Wynn last night at 6 PM, immediately got into a new 1/3 game.  Played till about 10:45.  Won $25.  I basically had NO hands the entire night, so while it was frustrating, it was still awesome that I broke even.

Going out to play again tonight.  Maybe Venetian.  The Wynn was really slow last night, and by comparison, the Venetian had 10 1/2 games going on.  So I can swing by there and see what I can do.  Unless my wife wants to play, in which case we'll probably hit the Wynn again.  She did pretty well last night, won about $300.  

Tonight I think our friend won't be there, so we'll be able to table select a bit better.  Moving 3 people to a new table is always tougher than moving 2, and also my wife has been super down to move lately.  Table selection is huge and she has been really smart about it lately, proactively moving even if we are in great seats right next to each other.  That is super smart.

Haha, just texted her and it sounds like she is probably down to hit the Wynn again.  Me too.  :-)  Time to crush some Tuesday night poker!

Poker lately

I haven't had much time to post lately.  I've been playing a ton of poker and I've been loving it.  I've also just been working and working out a lot too, so my time is pretty short.  Doing P90X right now and I'm through the first week.  Hopefully I can stick with it through all 90 days and turn into a super beast!

Who cares about that though, let's talk poker!  After the WPT Boot Camp poker has been going really well for me.  I've been playing good, or at least following their system as well as I can.  I'm also taking select hands and running them through PokerCruncher to see if I made any mistakes.  I also quit drinking a couple weeks ago and have been playing decent since then.  Definitely had some insane drunken crazy poker nights the previous weeks.  Actually didn't do that bad during that time, but I'm doing pretty well since then.  I'm currently up $1153 over 42.5 hours of live poker in that time.  Just playing all 1/2 and 1/3 NL around the valley.  

We have been playing at SO many place.  Red Rock, Santa Fe Station, Wynn, Golden Nugget, Aria, MGM, Excalibur.  It has been a blast driving around and just "rounding", lol.  Also, we have been having a lot of fun at the table.  I'm playing with my wife a ton, and we also met a new friend that we are having a ton of fun hanging out with.  The 3 of us get on the same table and just get loud and have fun.  It puts me in a better mood and sometimes helps the other people at the table open up.  I think having fun at the table has SO many benefits.  You go on tilt less and get bored less.  You might get other people to open up and get information out of them, or even just talk to them and have a good conversation which makes the time so much more enjoyable.  And for the people that are 100% serious and refuse to open up, it puts them on tilt and they might play like shit.  Overall it's a good thing IMO.

I don't know if I've had that many super interesting hands lately.  I'm just trying to stick to this WPT Boot Camp strategy as much as possible.  It's awesome because I'm playing SUPER aggressive in some hands where I never would do that before, and I'm not getting myself in trouble in other hands.  And when I have a big hand, I'm hammering the pot and am winning bigger pots than I might have in the past.

Few fun hands (maybe not that interesting) lately:

Last night at Wynn.  It folds around to the cutoff and I say "I don't chop" just so the guy knows (I'm in the small blind).  Folds to me.  I look down, Q-Q.  Raise to 12.  Guy reraises me to $30.  I reraise to $100, which is basically his whole stack.  He goes all-in with K-10, I win.

Santa Fe Station, Saturday night.  I have about $300 in front of me.  I raise to 10 with AcKc in middle position.  The blind reraises me to $30.  I reraise to $90.  He thinks and thinks, and goes all-in.  I had about $200 left.  I called, he had K-K, and he flopped a set.  I figured his range was probably QQ+.  Maybe JJ, but I figured I would just rule that out.  I thought I had odds vs QQ+, since I was getting almost 2:1.  However, I wasn't getting even 2:1 on the call (only 1.85:1), and I needed 2:1 if he was pushing with QQ+, based on PokerCruncher.  It says I have 34.7% equity against QQ+.  That was interesting to me though because I didn't know my equity would be so high.  Also what was interesting is that being suited REALLY helps your equity a lot, especially if you are against KK+.  

Wynn last night.  I am in the big blind with Q-3, check.  Flop comes Q-J-3 with 2 hearts and we are 3 handed. Small blind checks.  I bet out 6 bucks.  Guy calls.  Small blind (old woman) raises me to $12.  I reraise to $36.  She just calls.  Turn is a blank, a 2.  She checks, I bet $55, she calls.  River is the 4 of hearts.  She checks.  I figured she was probably drawing, so I checked behind.  She had Q-J.  :P

Guy limps and I limp with 7-4 suited.  Flop comes K-7-7 with 2 diamonds, bam.  I bet $6, guy calls me.  Turn is a 5.  He checks, I bet $20.  He raises to $40.  I got a little lost here.  I just called and planned on calling the river.  Not really sure what I was thinking though.  River comes a jack.  I thought that was actually a good card for me because the kicker is not very likely to play.  He bets $75.  I thought about it and didn't think there was any way I could really fold.  I called, he had 7-5 for the boat.  In retrospect maybe I can just fold there.  On the river the pot was about $104 ($12 preflop, $12 on flop, $80 on turn).  I had to call $75 and I figured he had a 7.  So I'm calling $75 to win $50, and some percentage of the time he is going to have a boat.  So I think really I can just fold there a lot of the time.  Alternatively I could raise the turn and fold to a reraise, but that puts me in a bad spot if he bets the river too.  Overall it's sort of a cooler IMO.  I figured I chop with 8-7 and 7-6.  A-7, yeah that gets me.  I don't know, probably should just have folded.

Last night at Wynn at the 1/3 game.  Guy opens to $40 (LOL) under the gun.  I look down - pocket aces.  OMG.  I make it $120.  I only had about $250 total.  Comes back around to him, he looks at my stack and goes all-in, I obviously call, and win.  He had pocket queens.  

That's about it for me today!  I'm going to play after work today, and hopefully I can start writing more regular blogs.  I'm pumped though.  I feel like I'm playing good and making good decisions based on the game plan I'm trying to follow.  It's also a ton of fun.  I'm really hoping this year is THE year for me and I get back to being a winning player, and move up to 2/5 NL soon.  That would be awesome.  I would be in heaven if I am solidly, without a doubt playing 2/5 at the end of this year and sometimes taking shots at 5/10 games.  That would just be sick.

Back In Action

Don't have time for a huge post today, but I think I'll be posting a lot more frequently soon.  I'm definitely getting back into poker in a big way.

First off, I attended a WPT Boot Camp 2-day cash game thing a few weeks ago.  My wife actually won it for me in this online contest.  That was great, because it costs almost $2000 and I would never have bought that for myself.  She was looking into getting me a 1-day thing, but entered and won the contest.

The camp was actually really good.  It started off slow.  The one instructor was not enthusiastic.  He started the first day a few minutes late, complained about how early it was, it was weak.  And the course material looked really basic.  I was thinking, I'm glad we didn't pay for this.

Luckily throughout the day it got much better.  The second instructor Nick Brancato was fantastic.  He was really insightful.  The slides were worthless, but as I listened to Nick I was frantically writing down notes so I could remember everything he said.  He talked about some CRAZY things that I would never think of.  And it wasn't crazy like, crazy aggressive (although they do recommend playing pretty aggressive when you are in pots, which is what I figured).  He had a lot of out of the box ideas, even about folding or not playing hands that you would ALWAYS play.  Also just talking about the mental aspects of the game, having a game plan and just executing on that.  It was really awesome.  The first guy got better as well, but he just wasn't nearly as good as Nick.  By the end of the first day they lay out a strategy for you and it was pretty exciting.

The second day was even better.  No slides, and we just sat around a table playing.  They would deal out hands, we would play them, and we would walk through the decision making process for all players at the table.  I was again frantically taking notes.  I took literally 2 small notepads full of notes, and ended up writing on the back of some of the pages too.  At the end of the second day they talk about PokerStove and how to use it, which was also great.  I never really learned much about it or how to do things with hand ranges, so that was really insightful.

Everyone else in the class was clueless, except for a few people.  It was mostly old people.  That surprised me, but then again it's not too surprising when you take into consideration that the class costs thousands of dollars.  It's crazy though how you can tell NOBODY is going to get anything out of the class.  I took TONS of notes and I'd say 99% of the useful information I got was from listening to these guys talk and writing down their thoughts.

Watching people play the hands was insane.  They lay out a SUPER simple strategy to follow - raise with 5% of your hands in early position, 15% in middle position, etc.  But from hand 1, people are doing things like raising with Q-3 suited, calling raises with hands that you should clearly not be playing, etc.  I couldn't believe it.  I thought there might be mistakes later in the hand for sure.  But especially when they give you a VERY simple strategy, like only raise with X hands, and you aren't even playing for real money, how do you not do it 100% right or at least try to do it 100% right?  Same thing with betting.  They said if you are going to raise, raise this amount.  But people would be betting/raising WAY different amounts for no reason.  Just try to do it the way they are suggesting!  If you aren't even going to try, why did you put up the money and come to this thing?

I'm really hoping that this turns my game around.  Results have been good so far, and I have been having a lot of fun playing which is really important.  I've also been reading a GREAT book called "The Mental Game of Poker" that they recommended.  It's really helping me stay off of tilt and understand a little more about how I can improve my game.

Playing the Aria tournament tonight!  For now we're just having fun and I'm drinking a lot while I play, which I know is bad.  But after this week my wife is getting back to school and I'm going to really focus on playing sober, sticking to this strategy, and trying to execute perfectly.  We'll see how it goes!