February Results and March Goals

My trip to San Diego has delayed this post substantially. Also, this blog has become a lot more "public" in the past month, with several regular players from my 20/40 game asking me about it. Specifically, WTK found the blog and apparently read the post about him, aloud, to the 40/80 table. While I'm sure this was a hoot for everyone in the game, for me it's kind of a problem. I always new that there was a chance some of the people I've written about would find the blog, and while that in and of itself doesn't bother me, I am mildly concerned about regulars in my game knowing I'm a full-time professional. For a brief time I considered stopping the blog (no fun). Then I decided that maybe I just should only tell stories, and somehow cleanse it of any indication that I'm a pro (lunacy). Then I thought I just shouldn't put my results on it (blah). Finally, I've just decided that from now on people's real names aren't going to be used (did that originally but stopped for some reason). So, here we go:

My February results were stellar, thanks to a massive heater that can best be shown in grahpical form



In short, with just a few days to go in the month it was looking to be anohter ho-hum below average result. Then I played 9 hours of 40/80 in San Diego over the course of 2 days and won a rack per hour, tripling my profit for the month (See my previous post for details of the first day....the second day went even better, with me winning just a shade over $5000. You know you're running good when you have the best day of your life two days in a row).

20/40 and Above Hours: 154
40/80 Hours: 16.5
30/60 Hours: 0

Net win: ~12,900

My goals for march are similar:

Play 24 days out of 31, and record 7 hours per day, for a total of 168 hours.

I've decided not to force myself to play higher this month if I don't want to, as that was such a disaster last month (Goal-wise.....I got less than 1/3rd of the hours I wanted to above 20/40. The results were excellent). Hopefully I'll make it up to The Oaks a couple of times, and I'll be spending some more time in the 40/80 games in San Jose.

Now, for my irritating poker story of the day. I arrived at Bay 101 around 10:10am to find the most gigantic cluster fuck in the history of San Jose poker. There were 11 tournament tables going, and they were still early in the rebuy and "alternate" period. What this means is the following. If you bust out of the tournament, you have the option to rebuy. If you chose not to (or have already done so once), an alternate is called who gets to take your place in the tournament. So what this means is that while they started the tournament with 110 players at 10am, at 11am they still had....110 people playing. The number of tables in use was not going down, and consequently my position of 23 on the 20/40 list was not looking too promising. I actually got into my car after calling Dominic (the nice floor man at Garden City) and turned on the car, but decided to stick it out. I got a 40/80 seat around 11:15, and was promptly treated to the following exchange:

Good Poker Player (GPP): "You on break?"
Awful Poker Player (APP): "No, I'm out. I got bluffed by an amateur"

Me, silently....This oughta be good.

GPP: "What happened?"
APP: "On a one card straight board, he went all in with just a set. He won the hand"
GPP: "So you had the idiot end?"
APP: "....????.....I just had the one card"
GPP: "OK, so what happened?"
APP: "So the flop is 986 and I have a seven...."
GPP: "Wait, what's your other card?"
APP: "King Seven"
GPP: "So you're like in the blind or something"
APP: "It was like 7 ways, limped. It was soooooted"
GPP: Rolls eyes. "OK, so 986....what happened?"
APP: "Somebody bet the flop and we called"
GPP: "We?"
APP: "4 or 5 of us, I'm not sure. So the turn is a 5"
GPP: "....????...."
APP: "And the guy bets again, and I just call"
GPP: "You should have raised"
APP: "I didn't want to lose anybody"
GPP: "OK, so then what?"
APP: "The river is a ten, and the guy bets again, and I just call. And this amateur goes all in with just a set. Pocket 5s. Horribly play on his part"
GPP: "So the other guy called and you had to fold?"
APP: "No, we both folded"
GPP: "????"
APP: "He's gotta figure one of us has the straight, right?"

At this point I put on my head phones, as it's more idiocy than I can bear. The guy continues to talk about it for 10 minutes, then eventually follows me to a new 20/40, where he tells the entire story to the table again. It's everything in me not to tell him what I think of his play. I mean, sweet Jesus. Flat calling on the turn with the stone cold nuts? Under-repping your hand to trap? Then complaining that the amateur bluffed you off the god damn nuts? LOL...Maybe I should try playing some of these things....