Palm the Joker

Played a 4-tabling match at 2/4 HU vs. some taggy guy earlier tonight. It had a pretty interesting preflop dynamic. Villain was 3betting with a pretty ridiculous frequency so I adapted by minraising preflop and he adapted to that by 3betting even more!

Here’s a hand I played well:

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold’em – 2 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BTN/SB: $1520.50
Hero (BB): $1017.00

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is BB with J J
BTN/SB raises to $12, Hero raises to $41, BTN/SB raises to $111, Hero calls $70

Flop: ($222.00) 3 Q 3 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB bets $140, Hero calls $140

Turn: ($502.00) K (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB requests TIME, BTN/SB checks

River: ($502.00) A (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB checks

Final Pot: $502.00
BTN/SB shows 9 6 (a pair of Threes)
Hero shows J J (two pair, Jacks and Threes)
Hero wins $501.50
(Rake: $0.50)

Playing deepstacks OOP obviously blows, and I was shitting my pants on this turn and river combo. Fortunately he only fires the one barrel and I take down the pot.

Here’s a hand I played badly:

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold’em – 2 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (BB): $635.00
BTN/SB: $567.00

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is BB with 9 8
BTN/SB raises to $12, Hero calls $8

Flop: ($24.00) T 6 Q (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB bets $20, Hero raises to $66, BTN/SB calls $46

Turn: ($156.00) 7 (2 players)
Hero bets $144, BTN/SB calls $144

River: ($444.00) 4 (2 players)
Hero requests TIME, Hero bets $413 all in, BTN/SB calls $345 all in

Final Pot: $1134.00
Hero shows 9 8 (a straight, Ten high)
BTN/SB shows K K (a flush, King high)
BTN/SB wins $1133.50
(Rake: $0.50)

At the time I managed to convince myself there was some thin value in a river shove, but looking back on it I think I just really didn’t want to check/fold, which is pretty clearly the correct play. Villain hadn’t really shown a tendency to make any hero calls, and my image was a little spewy but not enough to justify this.

Overall I think I wasn’t playing that well. There were a lot of spots where I had the weaktight “I’ll just wait for a hand” mentality, especially vs. his preflop 3bets. I should have started setting up a balanced 4bet range early on, instead I ended up 4betting pretty much nothing. I’m probably being a little results oriented though, as I ended down 4-5 buyins to this guy. He was running pretty hot and hitting some nasty coolers on me. Meh, what can you do.

Five days to Vegas!

I try to avoid all-nighters, but sometimes you just have no choice. Sometimes you just wait until 16 hours before the deadline to finally get down to business. Sometimes you also happen to have a final exam in a different class right before your big paper is due. It’s not my fault! So I slept exactly zero hours on Sunday night. It kind of sucked, but now it’s over so let’s move on. Woooooooooo done with my shit.

Kinda felt like playing some poker yesterday, but it seemed like a bad idea as my brain was functioning at a very small fraction of its standard cognition levels. So when I run into some dude in BBV looking for a flip, it looks like a pretty easy compromise. We each stick in our $377 or whatever, and my 62 semi-sucks-out to get a chop against his 82. On the second try I get dealt suited connectors, so he’s pretty much boned. My 43s flops a pair of threes vs. his K6 and fades some outs on the turn and river. Ship the 5-figure hourly!

Played some random FPP crap on stars yesterday as well. I’m busto there and I’m slowly running through my cache of FPPs playing stupid tournaments that are more or less a waste of my time. But whatever, sometimes you just gotta donk around. I won a seat in some $33r qualifier and took the W$ which was cool but I also managed to turn two step two tickets in one step two ticket and one step one ticket. FFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUU STEP ONE!! Now that I’ve had 12 hours sleep and am in a state of mind to actually play again, I might try to get a few K back on stars and spend the rest of the week earnestly trying to win a main event seat. I expect all the satellites, which were quite soft to begin with, only get better as we get closer to the big show.

Shoutouts to my good friends Greg and Jesse who are in Vegas right now. They are getting me hella excited for some live tourney action, even though most of the stories so far involve being on the wrong end of coolers or massive suckouts. Also want to give a shoutout to my roommate’s girlfriend, who seemed convinced that I would bang at least one stripper during my trip.

Finally, I want to link up a kickass song that I have been bumping nonstop since I discovered it yesterday:
DJ Deckstream – Life is Good feat. Mos Def
Mos has a new album that drops today (not what this song is from though) and I’ll probably buy it off iTunes. Every one of his releases since Black on Both Sides has been slightly less enjoyable than the one before it, I’m hoping this one can buck the trend.

Coming up on the end of the quarter here at Northwestern, only have 1 paper and 2 finals left to do, and that’ll all be finished up by Monday. That is, assuming I can finish this paper without shooting myself in the face first. At my best, I’m terrible about getting these big writing assignments done, and right now I’m absolutely worthless because I’m too excited for Vegas and the WSOP. Instead of doing any research or actually writing or anything, I’ve spent my time reading every blog and TR on the internet from people who are ballin’ it up in LV right now. Also wasted a bunch of time intensely sweating bilbo-san from SSNL in the 2k NLHE because I had 20% of him. He turned in a solid performance, eventually busting in 74th, good for $6k. Ship the piece! I’m still a net loser in staking though…

So while I’m super excited to fly out to Vegas, I’m not going to be shipping out of Evanston the moment I’m done with finals. All my friends are about to graduate, so this is pretty much the last time we’ll be able to hang out together. It’s kinda sad that these two opportunities conflict, but I think I’m going to strike the right balance by leaving on the 15th. I’ll miss graduation, but that shit is boring anyway, and I’ll get to play in the $1500 NLHE event on the 16th. My plan is to make a deep run there, so I can bankroll myself for a bunch of the other WSOPs later on. EZ GAME

Writing this up has made me even more eager to be done with schoolwork. Once it’s all done, I’ll pretty much have a week to party here and a whole month to gamboool/party in Vegas! My life is sweet.

In terms of results, May finished very strong after I binked a $10k day in the midstakes cash games on FTP. I was around +$12k for the month, so I obviously needed that brief monster heater. I’ve only played one session so far in June, and finished down 3.6 or so. Bilbo’s cash helped me recover a bit, but I’m still in the red for the month. Maybe I’ll get a chance to grind some more before hitting LV, but I’m not counting on it.

One last note: I bought a new laptop yesterday, suitable for travelling and grinding. It’s from the Sony Vaio line and has pretty decent specs including a 16.4" 1080p screen. Not quite as good as the full 1900×1200 but I guess it’ll look nice for watching movies. I’ve downloaded basic stuff like Chrome already, but I’m still going to have to do some more prep before I go. Gotta load up HEM, all my music, all poker sites, etc. Fun, easy task I don’t mind seeing on my to-do list.

Okay, that’s all. PEACE

Just bought Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” yesterday and devoured it, finishing up about 30 minutes ago. The thesis of the book is basically that the people at the top of their fields who we assume have risen to such success solely based on their own abilities and genius actually received several less obvious advantages along the way. As I find myself doing with most things nowadays, I started thinking about how the lessons could be applied to poker.

The part that stuck out to me the most was a chapter called “The 10,000 Hour Rule,” which details how, in nearly any arena, someone won’t really achieve world class status until they have put in 10,000 hours of practice. The rule is not Gladwell’s invention, but it was my first prolonged exposure to it, and it really got me thinking. To be honest, I’m not sure there’s anyone that’s put in 10,000 hours playing online. After all, that’s pretty much 40 hrs/week every week since the very first poker rooms opened. And when you think about online superstars, most of them aren’t even old enough to have been playing legally for more than 3-4 years. How does live poker fit into that mix? There are probably plenty of old grizzled dudes that have been making a living playing live for decades and put in way more than 10,000 hours. But generally those aren’t the ones that anyone thinks of as the best.

That stuff is all idle speculation, but basically what I got out of it is that to be the best at anything requires a level of commitment and dedication that is bordering on unhealthy. Even guys that we generally consider to be geniuses with unnatural levels of talent and ability have to put in ridiculous hours to get to the top. I honestly get guilty reading about it, because I (very immodestly) feel that to get to where I am now after the limited time I’ve put in required some innate ability. If I had the drive and dedication that a lot of the world’s most successful people have, I could be playing the highest stakes available right now.

Anyway, I feel like I didn’t really do this subject justice, but my plane is about to board. Pick up the book if you get a chance, I really enjoyed it.

Couldn’t find more than one good spot at 3/6 HU NLHE today, so I decided to mix in a 1/2 HU PLO game. Villain was waiting for HU action at multiple tables, which made me prematurely tag him as a strong winning player, but I figured fuck it, it’s just 1/2 and I’m strong HU in any big bet game. Well we get into the match, and I feel like I’m playing very well. He’s a bit passive and weak-tight, and I’m making moves with good frequencies and controlling the pot well. He has a kind of hilarious leak where his button VPIP is way too low. Ship all the small blinds, please. I semi-cooler him in a couple spots that he might have overplayed a little, example AAxx v KKxx in a match that was playing pretty passive preflop.

Well he starts talking a bit of trash, saying I’m getting really lucky and whatnot. He’s right that I’m running hot, but I still think my edge was significant. He asks for more tables, which I initially refuse as I don’t want to play more than 2, but soon the 3/6 NLHE villain quits me up a little bit. PLO nit says he wants 2/4. I tell him that I’m still learning the game, which was honest but I probably should have snap-accepted given the way he was playing. I’m a chatfish, but I guess I sucked out because instead he asks “2/4 NLH then?” LOL yes please.

He expresses his dedication to 2-card spew right away with this gem of a hand:

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold’em – 2 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (BTN/SB): $407.50
BB: $431.50

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is BTN/SB with Q A
Hero raises to $12, BB raises to $40, Hero calls $28

Flop: ($80.00) 2 8 3 (2 players)
BB bets $66, Hero raises to $145, BB raises to $391.50 all in, Hero calls $222.50 all in

Turn: ($815.00) 7 (2 players – 2 are all in)

River: ($815.00) 5 (2 players – 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $815.00
Hero shows Q A (a flush, Ace high)
BB shows K 7 (a pair of Sevens)
Hero wins $814.50
(Rake: $0.50)

Ship it? Damn, I don’t know what I would have done if he’d won that pot. I’m on my last keyboard now, can’t break any more of those.

Rest of the NLHE match doesn’t produce anything too exciting. A little ways in I realize he’s floating my c-bets in reraised pots everytime, so I kinda shut it down. Basically he is getting too wild for me to do anything but sit back and try to catch the spew. Meanwhile, I keep grinding him down on the PLO table and he starts getting pretty tilty there too, eventually making some shove with like 10% equity versus my top set. He stacks off one last time in the unlimited betting game and snap-leaves with this chat line: “i love you.” Um, thanks? I guess he meant my plays were pretty bad, and to that I say SCOREBOARD.

Ended +~1100 in PLO and +~850 in NLHE vs this guy. About half of that subsidized my loss at 3/6, so it didn’t really end up as an amazing day, but it feels good to absolutely destroy a dude.