PLO Pimpin'

What’s up Degens?

Ok, if you don’t feel like reading a long entry, you should probably stop here. I haven’t written in awhile, and a ton has happened to me in the last month or so, and I kind of need to get some thoughts out, so here’s your forewarning. If you haven’t noticed from my other entries, I have a hard time keeping things short, lol.

I’ll start off with poker content, since that’s probably what people read my blog for in the first place. I’ve finally started playing poker again, which feels pretty fantastic tbh. I was so damn hungry to play when I was on my trip, and I think I drove 150mph to Vegas so I could hit the tables. I played my first session last night, and while I ended up losing 2.5 bi’s, I still felt ok about my play, but was definitely rusty. I’ve mostly only been playing live NLHE the past couple of weeks, so online PLO plays quite different. I noticed the biggest thing I was having trouble with was hesitating with my plays, and basically just not trusting my instincts as much as I normally do. I would make up my mind about something, and then suddenly change it. It really is amazing how often your first instinct is the most accurate one. Normally the thought process I use is acknowledging what my first instinct is, and then seeing if I can intelligently put together why I feel that way. imo, this is a good way to progress your poker thought process. Humans experience thoughts/emotions for a reason, so it’s important to always be assessing exactly WHY you’re feeling/thinking that from an objective standpoint.

I’ll post some hands from my session, but to be completely honest, they were all pretty standard, and truthfully there’s none that are even worth discussion. Literally all standard, but I’m going to post them anyway.
http://weaktight.com/1519558
http://weaktight.com/1519559
http://weaktight.com/1519560
http://weaktight.com/1519561
http://weaktight.com/1519564
http://weaktight.com/1519567

It kind of hurts to move back down to 200plo after playing a summer of 400plo, but it’s important to realize that being a professional and managing a roll is all about the long term, and detaching your ego from your roll. I only need to focus on playing good, and to be honest I need to rebuild for awhile before I can handle the swings of 400plo again. I’ll probably grind 20 or 30k hands at 200plo, and then move back up once I start the coaching in a couple of weeks. Plus, since I haven’t played in awhile, it will be good to fine tune my game and get some confidence back. I’m really excited because I finally scheduled my first session with Tom (LearnedFromTV), and will be getting his ebook later this week. I’ll be writing a lot about what I’m learning, and how the impact of the coaching on my play. I’m assuming it will be really fun for me to finally be the student, rather than the coaching, which is something I’m not used to.

So my goals for the session today will be to not play hesitant, and concentrate on just playing good and thinking logically through every decision. I’ve also started watching videos again, and I think this it’s really important to continue learning each day. I’m going to devote an hour each day to watching a video or reviewing hands for sure.

I’m finally back from my random vacations, or “mini-retirements”, lol. The last time I wrote a post, I was sitting in a cafe in Spain, and while I swore to myself I’d be writing a blog post at least every other day when I started this thing, it just hasn’t been realistic the past month or so. Nevertheless, I’m going to do my best to be more committed to writing more often, because I find it really therapeutic, and it makes me feel productive as well.

Europe was really sick. I got to hang out with my friend a lot, party a ton, and get a little cultured in the Spanish lifestyle. For those who are interested in seeing my pictures from Europe/Spain/Vegas/LA the past month, you should just checkout my facebook page, because I’m wayyy to lazy to copy/paste all the images into this blog. Plus the format on facebook makes the images much easier to view, so just do it there. Here’s the link for those interested http://www.facebook.com/john.beauprez?ref=profile

The girls over there were pretty unbelievable, I must say. The last couple of days we were there, we met a couple of guys from Sweden that were telling us about the women up there. I friended him on facebook, and GOOD LORD he wasn’t lying. I’ve heard about Swedish chicks before, but man, I gotta make it up there eventually.

This is kind of off topic, but my friend in Seville and I were having a conversation about the differences between American women and European women, and it became rather obvious why a lot of American women are such bitches, or are really hard to “get”, and also are more superficially oriented, or at a higher “price”, for lack of a better term. I think it all goes back to the law of supply and demand. There’s economics in every aspect of life, and the laws that define the interaction between women and men are no different. No one who’s been to Europe can tell me that there isn’t way more beautiful women in the cities over there in comparison to USA, that’s a fact, but why aren’t they as bitchy or superficial as American women? I personally think it’s because there’s so much more competition for the hot chicks in America because there’s less of them, so they can afford to be bitches, or charge a higher “price” for their love life, whereas in Europe, since there’s like 5 times as many beautiful women, they can’t afford to be bitches because any guy worth a damn will just move on to the next beautiful girl with ease. Does anyone else agree that this is a possibility?

After I got back from Europe, I went to Steamboat Springs for a pig roast my parents were having at their ranch. They’ve got 1350 acres about 30 minutes outside of Steamboat, and every year they invite over 250 people to come drink, eat, and listen to some live music. It was pretty fun, and needless to say there were several awkward moments with relatives who I’m supposed to know the name of, but have no fucking clue who they are, but they know who I am somehow from family pictures etc. Overall it was pretty fun though. If you haven’t been up in the CO mountains, I suggest you try it out. It really IS God’s country up there.

The next day, I went to the CU vs. CSU game. Like any other in state rivalry, it gets pretty rowdy, and it’s always held on labor day weekend, which always happens to fall on my bday, which is also the first game of the year. So it’s usually my favorite weekend of the year, and this time it was no different. We got pretty hammered, but the buffs lost which was kind of a vul but whatever. I’m not sure if anyone follows CU sports, but good lord how is Cody Hawkins our QB? We’re a Big 12 school, we should probably be able to get some pretty significant bad asses to lead our team, rather than some guy who is not only small, but slow, and can’t throw further than 25 yards unless it’s a looper? The guy at the bar next to me last weekend described his arm strength with the following analogy, “a baby T-Rex with a torn biceps tendon could throw it further than him”. Ouch Cody. Haha, I think I have a hateful disposition towards Cody because when my gf and I were on a break, he tried to move in on her… Thankfully she folded, hahahah.

The next day I recovered a little bit, and then mostly just packed up all of my stuff. I left for Vegas a day later, and ended up staying there for five days with 11 other friends. We got hooked up pretty well at Palazzo with three connecting suites which was fun, and we only had to pay $159/night, which I felt was an unbelievable bargain, particularly since there were 4 of us in each room and the rooms are giant. I got to play some cards though, and won a 600bb pot at 2/5, hahaha. Set over set FTW. The overarching theme of the trip for me though was getting completely hammered and still winning at cards somehow. I think I ended up +5800 for the trip, but I’m really not sure on the exact total. A funny sidenote about the trip was how much I lost on my LAST HAND of the night each time I played. In total it ended up being 1750. Here’s how one of the hands went down. I’m 3200 deep at the Venetian 2/5. I limp 33 UTG (btw I’m all racked up, ready to go because it’s my last hand and like 9am, but fuck it, I want to see my last hand since I’m v deep with some players and they’re really really fish). Aggro guy with 2k makes it 30, huge fish with 750 calls in the CO, I obviously call. Flop is 345hh, I check, aggro guy bets 40 into 90, which I felt like is never a strong hand, maybe weak draw or small OP or something, but his range here is just really wide. Most people with overpairs at these games tend to bet big when the board comes short, particularly MW, so I wasn’t scared of him at all, fish calls 40, and obviously his range can be huge as well. Either way, calling would be a sin, so I make it 160, opener calls which was a little confusing, but then the fish shoves for a little over 500 straight. I call of course, and the opener folds. Turn brick, river is a deuce, and the fish turns over A7dd… GG fishy guy. I hate last hands!

Anyway, after the debauchery in LV, I drove to LA to meet up with one of my students and to also stay with a good friend of mine who’s an actress out there. I partied with her the first night, and the next morning she got to do a photoshoot for the album cover of John Mayer’s next album. So congrats to her! She deserves it for sure. The next night I went to Hustler Casino with my student, and we degened a bit at the tables. He’s a LHE player and kills the games out there, but is trying to get some PLO skills going, and he’s improving really fast it seems. In the past, I haven’t enjoyed doing sweat sessions as much as video sweats with students, but lately I’ve had a lot of success with live sweats, so I think I’m going to do that. The problem with live sweats is students have a tendency to just sit there and let me tell them what to do, and it’s hard for me to resist the temptation to just “give them the answers” instead of having good discussion. I’ll have to think about this a little more I suppose.

After LA, I finally reached my current destination in Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz is so sick, I can’t believe it. I live with another poker player in a beach house, which is markedly different than where I’ve lived in the past. I’ve always lived in Colorado, so this time of year is normally bittersweet because I absolutely hate cold weather, but love to snowboard, but generally only get up the mountain a couple times of year. If anyone can give me some recommendations for what to do in Santa Cruz, then hit me up here!Living somewhere warm and near the water will be a good change of pace, and I’m really liking it so far.

I wanted to write about all the stories from everywhere I’ve been, but there’s literally just too much to write. I could literally write a book about it all, but I’d rather just breeze over it a bit. Besides, I doubt anyone gives a shit about my random life happenings, so I’ll try to keep it more poker oriented.

I finally returned from my playing online playing hiatus, and put in 1200 hands yesterday. One of the things I discussed in an earlier blog was about how I wanted to devote myself to getting very good, like I used to. Sometimes I feel like I am trying to hard, or hold myself to unrealistic expectations when I play, and it kind of affects my win rate. For example, if I have anything less than a perfect session (which basically never happens, ever ever ever), I get bummed out. I’m like ok, you coach PLO, write about PLO, have devoted countless hours to this game, and you’re still making obvious mistakes. wtf is wrong with you?

But I don’t think it’s healthy to have such high expectations. The people who know me personally know I went through some fairly dramatic life changes in the past year, and consequently I learned a lot about myself and the causes of many different emotions that humans have. For example, expectations are the biggest reason for dissapointment and negative reactions to anything you do. One of the things you’ll often hear me talk about is relationships and how you can learn about yourself from the experiences you have within them. For me personally, feeling heartbreak is the worst emotion I’ve ever felt in my life, and for a long time I didn’t understand why I was so broken hearted about the things that happened to me. A big part of this was because I felt like the girl was the “one for me”, or that we were going to be together forever. That’s a pretty big deal! If it was just some chick I banged in one nighter, and afterwards she said she never wanted to speak to me again, I would feel pretty indifferent. But since my long term expectations were so high for her and I, I was devastated.

I think this relates to poker a lot. If your expectations are to beat the nosebleeds, and you have a perfectionist characteristics, you’re probably going to feel like a failure more often than not. Speaking of failure, what is “failure” anyway? I read something awhile ago that kind of impacting me. It’s interesting to consider how failure doesn’t actually exist in the natural world. Failure, is something humans made up. You can’t throw failure at your friend. You can’t trip over some failure, or have failure for dinner, and buy some failure. If you remove the idea of failure from your mind, it’s really liberating, and allows you choose your actions using much more logic.

Ack, I wanted to write more, but I have to meet up with a friend for some lunch. I’ll write more later! Hope everyone is doing great.

John