Starting Over

Yeah, yeah. I know the Series ended like a month ago, but I am just finally getting around to making a blog entry.

The last couple weeks of the Series were a blur. We fired or suspended a couple floormen, so I ended up working a ton and across all different shifts. There were weeks where I worked days, swing and graveyard all in the course of seven days. It got to where I didn’t know if I was coming or going. My sleep schedule was totally out of whack and I was a walking zombie for a while. Despite all of that I still managed to get some poker in and post some solid results. I made a final table at one of our Binion’s Classic events and I was bubble boy in another. In both events I felt like I was really tuned in, reading players and situations well. Aside from that I played mostly mixed games and Omaha 8 (I think I only played one short NL session during the whole WSOP). Although I didn’t get to play as much as I had hoped too (there are no early outs when your working the floor), I was able to post positive numbers for both cash and tournaments. I was only a small winner for tournaments, but I did very well in cash thanks mostly to PLO.

I have been working quite a bit the last few weeks and before this last weekend I don’t think I have played any poker in a month. The graveyard manager got fired right before the Series ended, and since then I have been covering that shift five nights a week and apparently I will end up being the new graveyard shift manager soon. I am kind of torn on the whole thing. While I am flattered they want me for the position and I enjoy working the floor, I like the freedom that dealing gives me and it allows me a lot more control over how much or how little I work. While we haven’t talked officially, the number I heard as far as salary isn’t drastically different than what I make dealing, especially when you factor in the increased taxes. There is also something to be said for a stress free job, which dealing certainly is. Oh well, enough crying. At this point I have resigned myself to accepting the position if they offer it too me, but not actively lobbying for it.

Aside from that I have been playing lots of golf (sorry if I sound too much like Daniel). A group of us from work had started playing shortly before the WSOP, but we had to take a break with everything else going on. We started back up after the Series, and have been playing a couple times a week. I used to play a lot of golf about ten years ago, but over time I had less and less free time and I hadn’t played at all since I came to Vegas. I was pleased with how quickly the basics came back, now it is just about consistency.

Okay that is all for now. I intend to be more regular from here, but we’ll see lol.

Today was my first day off in almost two weeks. Even though I was dead tired and really wanted to sleep in and do absolutely nothing, I decided to go ahead and play the Caesars Mega Stack tournament. Before the Series started I figured I would play a half dozen or so $330’s at the Venetian or Caesars on my off days. Unfortunately, my off day turned out to be Friday and all the events have been $550’s, plus our events have been $500 HORSE and PLO, so I have only ended up playing one tourney to this point – a $160 PLO at Binion’s where I busted out just after first break. So with that in mind I decided to go ahead and drag my lazy ass down to Caesars.

The tournament started at noon and with a $10 staff bonus you start out with 15k in chips. All of the events now at Caesars are $330 and they have taken out the mandatory 10k seat to the WSOP Main Event they were taking out of the prize pool for the winner. Apparently Venetian has been crushing them on the $550’s and the forced 10k seat was basically dead money for a lot of people which resulted in a lot of upset winners. I have always like Caesars, and while I used to play a lot of cash there this was my first Caesars tournament. Overall I thought the tournament was a good one and I think the structure is solid for the buy in. You start with a good amount of chips and the levels are reasonable (at least the ones I was there for…) so there is a room to play. There were a few things that I didn’t care for, such as the top heavy prize pool. Apparently they only pay the top 9 if they have less than 150 and we were in the 140’s right up until the end of registration. We did finally manage to break 150 though, so that moved us to paying 18 spots. Ideally I would like to see some middle ground between 9 or 18 payouts to smooth the prize pool a bit more. The other thing is something that as a dealer I try not to be to critical off, but they did have a couple of very inexperienced dealers. I am talking about like first day of school type dealers, who couldn’t pitch the cards to the seats and who looked at the ante chips like they had foreign writing on them. You could literally see the hamster wheel turning when someone would ante with an over size chip and they had to figure out how to make change. I have nothing against new dealers, hell I was a new dealer a year ago and everyone has to start somewhere, but I was very surprised at how green a couple of them were. Everyone brings in temps during the Series, but I would have thought a place like Caesars would have enough interested dealers that even the temps would be good. Luckily the blinds were 50 minutes long so even a slow dealer doesn’t totally cost you a level.

As far as play goes, I was happy with the way I played but I really couldn’t get anything going. My table had several good players at it and I pretty much just bounced back and forth between 10k and 20k. I got a little short on level 3 when I had KQ on a QQ8 board with two hearts. My opponent ended up having 88, so while I lost some chips and dropped down to about 10k I was very happy with the way I played the hand and the fact that I didn’t go broke there. Antes kicked in the next level and I started chipping up. By the start of level 5 I was back to 20k with the blinds at $300/600 and a $75 ante. Three different times I opened for $1700 only to get reraised. The first two times I had marginal hands and had to fold and the third time I had tens, but I laid those down as well after getting smooth called in one spot and reraised to 4k in a another. I didn’t think I could just call as I would have been left with one pot sized bet out of position. I thought about shoving, but the three better seemed strong so I went with a fold. Turns out I was right as the smooth caller had QQ and the reraiser had AA and they got all the money in on a 789 flop. The turn was a Jack and all of a sudden I was wishing I played bad as a mistake would have left me stacking a huge pot. Nothing much really happened after that and I entered the last break before dinner with a little over 10k in chips. Blinds were $400/800 with a $100 ante and I told my self I didn’t want to go into an hour and a half dinner break short stacked. I really only played one had at the level and I played it horribly. I was on the button with QTs and a player two to my right opened for $2200. My first reaction was that it was a typical late position steal raise, so I gave way to much credit to how much fold equity I had and shoved. In hindsight, I really hadn’t seen him get out of line too much and I still had 10k in chips so I had plenty of time to wait for a better spot. Plus I had come over the top and three bet a lot of late position raises so I could have easily gotten called down light by a lot of marginal hands that I would have still been in bad shape against. He ended up having me crushed with Kings and I was out the door.

The good news was I got to come home and watch the end of the hockey game, eat some pizza and take a nap!

Time just keeps flying by this summer. Between working and trying to play a bit, it seems like all I do is come home long enough to go to sleep.

Last weekend was a busy one. Matt from Life is a Bluff came into town so I ran around a bit with him. On Saturday night we went to the WSOP Launch Party. This was the first time I had been to a party where you had to be on a list to get in and it was also the first party where I bypassed the list and got taken straight in with no questions asked. Matt seems to know everyone in the poker world and he is constantly networking. We bumped into Dennis Phillips on the way to the club, so as we walked up they just pulled the ropes aside and in we went. I don’t know if it was because of Dennis or Matt, but either way it was pretty cool. The party itself was pretty mellow, but I did get to meet quite a few poker celebrities including the commissioner himself (PS Liv Boree is now my ultimate dream girl…no pun intended).

Otherwise, just been working my ass off. I ran four tournaments last week for our Binion’s Poker Classic, which was very cool. I am still very new to tournament directing, so I was very happy to get an opportunity to run some of our big events. On two of the days I was the swing shift director, which meant I handled play as they got down to hand for hand play, into the money and then thru the final table. Granted most of our events have buy ins ranging from $150-300 and a couple hundred runners, but I still love the energy and excitement when it gets down to crunch time.

I haven’t been able to play a ton since the Series started, but I was able to get a couple of sessions in at $1/3 PLO. I have played a small amount of PLO online, but I am definately still learning the game and these were my first live sessions. I made some mistakes in the first session, including miss reading my hand once and smooth calling not once but twice pre flop with AA double suited (both of which my friends in the game and on the rail found very amusing), but I ran pretty well and posted a nice win. The second time I felt like I played much better and I still ran well so I booked an even better win. I can tell I have a lot to learn about hand values and gauging where I am post flop, but I really love this game. I would play this game every night if we could get it going regularly. Otherwise I am just playing O8 as I really haven’t had much interest in playing hold’em. It is the World Series though, so I think I will try out some NL games this weekend and see how the action is.

Man May went by quick! I had good intentions of posting once or twice a week, but time has flown by and I haven’t made a blog in weeks. Alas, it is getting late so this one will be short, but I wanted to get something in before the Series starts.

Overall May was a good month. Went out with Matt Waldron from Life is a Bluff and Jimmy Fricke the first week of May. I ran well that week, took fourth in a Venetian nightly we played and did well in the cash games. Matt ran like shit and pretty much lost every all in he had. I was seated on Jimmy’s left for a short part of the tournament and it was very cool to see how he accumulates chips. I liked my spot as I thought I would have some chances to resteal, but unfortunately the table broke before too long. Otherwise, I played a bit of Limit HE and PLO online. I was crushing PLO for a while, but then I came back to earth last week and ended up about even and I made about 3BB per 100 at Limit.

Our tournament series, the Binion’s Poker Classic, began this week with good numbers. I have been working about half floor and half dealing shifts, but next week it looks like I will get four days as tournament director, which is great.

Planning on playing quite a bit this summer, starting tomorrow with the PLO event at the BPC. I was planning on playing a Deep Stack event at the Venetian, but we are giving out really cool jackets to the winners and I would really like to win one for my dad.

Sorry this was so rushed and erratic. With everything going on the next few week I am not sure how much I will be blogging.

Well I just finished my first week as a DeucesCracked member and I must say I am impressed. I watched bits and pieces of a few videos to get the general feel, but since I am playing full ring limit hold’em right now the first series I decided to watch from begin to end was LAG’s on a Leash. Prior to signing up with DC, I had just started to play limit again after years of NL so this series was great a great refresher. There were a couple of concepts they went over that really impressed me. The first time DeathDonkey said, “I think I am going to bet here for value and to protect my ace high which is likely the best hand” it blew my mind. I was very impressed with the way they were able to make so many thin value bets with marginal hands, which was a change I immediately made in my own game. The other big thing that they did that I wasn’t doing enough myself were the isolation raises. I was doing a little too much limping behind rather than raising to isolate, so again I changed this in my game and saw immediate results. Other ideas that I thought were helpful were the frequency of steal attempts and the continued level of aggression even when opponents started to play back. Both coaches were excellent, but DeathDonkey’s reads were amazing. I would definately recommend this series highly. I think I will watch Real Life Micro Grinder next or maybe some of the HORSE videos.

I have played a little over 5k hands at 50/1 in the last 10 days or so, which is very good for me (I am a live player so I am still getting used to multi-tabling). I am pretty much break even at this point, up about $12, which I think is good given how rusty my limit hold’em game is. I just started playing online again, really for the first time since the UIGEA, and I was really pushing to get to Silver Star on Poker Stars before the month was over. As a result, I was often playing a lot more tables that I was comfortable with so combined with the fact that I was basically relearning how to play limit I will take break even. This next week I will continue to play mostly online during the week to keep fine tuning my game and then I will probably head down to Bellagio on the weekend to play a little $4/8.

I failed. There I admitted it, that wasn’t too difficult.

Now I didn’t fail in the traditional sense. I didn’t go busto. I didn’t party like a rock star and blow all my money on strippers and booze (although that actually sounds like a lot of fun). I just sat at home most of the time watching TV and playing World of Warcraft, but the end result was the same. I came to Vegas to play poker and I failed…because I didn’t actually play much poker.

I’ll go into the whole story of how I got to this point some other time, but here is the cliff notes version:

I had spent the previous 13 years in the hotel industry, and while I had a successful career it just wasn’t my passion anymore and I was pretty much burnt out. I had been playing poker on the side since 2000 and I had always posted solid results. I had been considering making the move to playing full time for a couple of years, but I finally took the plunge in September of 2007.

Unfortunately, my first month of playing poker for a living was also my first loosing month. To make matters worse, my second month of playing poker for a living was my second loosing month. Not the kind of start I was looking for, but that’s how it goes sometimes. I ran into some coolers on some of the big pots I played and I was pretty much just on the wrong end of variance, but I could also tell the reality of playing as my sole source of income also had it’s affects on me mentally. I will get into that more later as I think that will be interesting to people in a similar situation.

The following month things turned around and I was able to get back into the black, but then some personal issues started to crop up. First my mother’s husband passed away out of no where from an aneurysm and then later she ended up going thru several major health problems of her own, so I ended up making multiple extended trips to Texas to be with her. A few months later my father also started to have some major health issues. For some reason that was even harder on me emotionally. With my mom being sick it was natural to step up and be protective of her. With my Dad, he was always so strong and in control that having him be so vulnerable and weak was very difficult.

Anyway, between being out of town repeatedly and being in a bit of a funk emotionally I got off track and I stopped playing regularly. I went along this way for a pretty good while. I would play sporadically, but I wasn’t motivated or focused and more often than not I would just stay home and fuck off. I decided I needed some structure in my life, so I started dealing cards. I worked a few tournaments and then in November of 2008 I was officially hired at Binion’s. It wasn’t strictly about the money (although it is nice to have a steady source of income), it was more about getting my life back in balance. I had just gotten into a rut where I wasn’t doing anything and as a result I wasn’t enjoying life. Having an actually job has given me some structure, gotten me out of my hole and back to being active again. For the last couple months I have been playing a little here and there, but mostly I have just been making up for lost time and having some fun again (golfing, seeing shows, exploring the city, spending some money on things instead of rationing it like a miser etc).

Now that I have a well rounded life again (really for the first time since I moved to Vegas), I am ready to start playing poker again full time. My plan is to start from square one and rebuild my game from the ground up. Unlike the first time, I am not going to focus on a number that I need to hit each month and instead I will just focus on playing good poker. For starters while I get back in the groove, I am going to play mostly $1/2 NL and maybe some $4/8 limit (the Bellagio has a great game and I actually miss playing limit poker) plus I will playing some online poker.

More details to come…