Slobberknocked

So like I said, I ran like the Jesus until 1 hour into my session yesterday, at which point I was up about $1000 for the day. At that point I looked at my stack and said to myself "Self, this is the point where the hobbyist picks up his chips and calls it a day. You, however, are not a hobbyist, so you must carry on the good fight." And fight I did.

Over the next 6 hours or so of 20/40, I slowly but surely lost a rack and a half (700). At some point I decided to put myself back up on the 40/80 list because the game looked good and I have been promising myself I'll shoot at that game more. So at 5:30 when I got called for the game, I looked at my chips and again spoke to myself..."Self, there is no shame in going home. You're up a few hundred, a fine and respectable sum, and calling it in would be fine. But you're a professional, you're playing well, and that game looks very snuggly. Make it so." So I sit in the 40/80 for less than 60 minutes and proceed to lose about 1800 dollars. Just like...wham, bam, thank you m'aam and that was that. I didn't win a single pot...of note:

I had KJo or KJs in pretty early position 3 times. I raise it and got my ass kicked, all 3 times.

I flopped top set of Jacks...no good.

I flopped an open ended straight draw with KTs on a board of QJ8. The turn was another Jack, putting up two of my suit for good measure. The other two hands in the pot were AJ and 88. Let's just say that one wasn't cheap.

So at 6:30 I picked up, licking my wounds, and drove home. Today I returned for another bludgeoning, losing 1400+ in about 5.5 hours. I made a few mistakes and called down Gordan (the regular prop) a little light a few times....my previous experience with Gordan was that he was kind of spewy and laggy...today he proved himself to be a super nit, failing to extract even close to max value with things like second set turned second boat (twice), or even top set on the river on what was a scary but still eminently bettable board heads up. The total carnage from the 1 hour mark of my session yesterday: -$4000. Ouch.

The only bright spot of today was watching Yodaman win 6 racks in the 20/40 game. It was beautiful. The only way it could have been more beautiful was if I'd had 50% of his action :)

Holiday Heater

I got back from Pittsburgh on December 29th and put in 24 hours of play on the 30th, 31st, 2nd and 3rd. It was, shall we say...good.

Not much happened on the 30th. But New Years Eve came with all the biggest and bestest things heaters have to offer. First of all, the games were fantastic. I mean, absofreakinglutely fantastic. There were 4 tables, and it was as if all the winning players decided to not to come all on the same day. There were 36 players seated and I was sure that I was the best one...without question. To quote the BigBadBabar, they were "snuggie soft".

For my first 2 hours I ran kind of so so, first winning some pots and getting ahead, then finally dropping back below even when my Aces got cracked by some body with some garbage suited hand that made a flush and I paid off. That happened when I was UTG, so I took some Tommy Angelo advice and went for a walk...paid my $3 lobby charge and walked around outside. I calmed myself down, went back into battle, and then....lost a little more. Had to buy a 3rd rack, and really wasn't too thrilled about how things were going. I changed tables and....

I won a pot with AK ui. I won a pot with AK improved. I flopped a set, turned a boat. Dragged a monster. Flopped a set, rivered a boat, dragged a monster. Flopped a set, turned a boat, rivered quads, and dragged a stupendously redonkulous monster. Eventually my stack looked like this:


I was within a stack ($100) of entering "10 rack territory"....I had $4430 or something insane like that on the table. The hits just kept on coming....

Sue, a 40ish Asian woman who is a practicing nurse and mega-fish fantastico was in my game. Sue finished 4th in the morning tournament for a score of like $1000 (lol, donkaments) and was ready to make the gambool even more so than usual. She arrived at the table already smelling of white wine (it was like, 1pm...maybe) and proceeded to play in her usual fashion. This was my favorite pot against her:

I raise AA after like 3 limpers. Somehow the pot goes off only 5 ways and the flop comes down:

K72r

That's right. K72 rainbow. What could be called a "dry" flop, one without much in the way of "draws" available. Short of flopping a set, this is about as good as they get. I bet and two people call, including Sue. At this point, Damn It Feels Good to be a Gangster starts playing in my ears, and a 5 of the 4th suit hits the board.

Then Sue check/raises the turn. I call pretty quickly, as there are like 10 big bets in the pot and she's probably just got some random ass two pair and I've got odds to draw out on her. The river is a brick (like a ten maybe) and she bets again. I take the phones out of my ears and say "Aces no good Sue?" and she says "If you've got a King you're good". Now from a normal player there might be some gamesmenship going on here. Not Sue. She simply doesn't lie....if she tells you she's got something, she's got it. I respond "well then I gotta call" and call her. MHIG and
the table has a pretty big laugh. I mean, had she just kept her mouth shut, I was probably gonna lay that one down. At least I was gonna try to....

I end up losing a bit before I go home, but still cash out for over 8 racks.

The next day I played (January 2nd) is more of the same. The games are amazing and I just can't lose. I peak at +5 racks, but end up taking home only about 2.5 in profit due to some run bad that I get out of my system toward the end. A hand that puts this day into perspective:

The button telegraphs a fold, so I raise 86 suited in diamonds from the cutoff. The button folds, the small blind calls, but Carlos 3-bets in the big blind. Carlos is a decentish player, but he's too passive. 3 bets here means like JJ minimum....He has a monster....I call though getting 8:1 in position and we see the flop 3 handed for 9 small bets:

Qd 7h 3d

Good result I say. SB checks, Carlos bets, I call, small blind folds.

5s

The astute reader will notice that I now have 15 outs at a fully certified nut hand. Carlos bets, I think for a minute and decide he's never folding because he's got an overpair or a set like 70% of the time so I just call.

4h

I have the nut 8-high straight and there is a zero percent chance Carlos can put me on it. He bets, I raise, and he some how, some way, folds his hand....I drag the monster.

January 3rd was more of the same, although I left up just 1 rack after a short 2 hour session.
All in all when the heater ended (1 hour into today's session), I had won about $6600 in 24 hours of playing time. Tomorrow, we'll talk about what happened when I got too big for my britches in the 40 game....

December and 2008 Results

Something I've noticed happening to myself lately is that my life has lost a lot of boundaries and scheduling constraints. If it weren't for the NFL, it would honestly be pretty tough for me to keep track of the current day of the week. Consequently it didn't occur to me until just today that perhaps I should take a look at how exactly I did in December, my "professional period", and all of 2008. Admittedly I kind of new about where these numbers were going to come in, but taking a good hard look would be a good habit to get into:

December 2008

Here are the actual results, with session win/loss followed by cumulative winnings on each line:

1-Dec	20/40 Limit	Bay 101	1021	1021
2-Dec	6/12 Limit	Bay 101	-71	950
2-Dec	8/16 Limit	Bay 101	-96	854
2-Dec	20/40 Limit	Bay 101	174	1028
3-Dec	20/40 Limit	Garden City	1230	2258
4-Dec	15/30 Limit	Ajs	149	2407
4-Dec	6/12 Limit	Ajs	-54	2353
5-Dec	8/16 Limit	Bay 101	39	2392
5-Dec	20/40 Limit	Bay 101	881	3273
6-Dec	20/40 Limit	Bay 101	-1744	1529
6-Dec	Danielle	Bay 101	13	1542
8-Dec	8/16 Limit	Ocean's 11	-122	1420
8-Dec	20/40 Limit	Ocean's 11	-1473	-53
9-Dec	20/40 Limit	Ocean's 11	177	124
9-Dec	8/16 Limit	Ocean's 11	-214	-90
9-Dec	20/40 Limit	Ocean's 11	-55	-145
10-Dec	4/8 Limit	Ocean's 11	-20	-165
10-Dec	8/16 Limit	Ocean's 11	73	-92
10-Dec	4/8 Omaha	Ocean's 11	-33	-125
10-Dec	20/40 Limit	Ocean's 11	-197	-322
10-Dec	40/80 Limit	Ocean's 11	-374	-696
12-Dec	6/12 Limit	Oaks	-25	-721
12-Dec	15/30 Limit	Oaks	-130	-851
12-Dec	30/60 Limit	Oaks	-119	-970
12-Dec	30/60 Limit	Oaks	410	-560
13-Dec	20/40 Limit	Bay 101	-490	-1050
15-Dec	20/40 Limit	Bay 101	828	-222
16-Dec	20/40 Limit	Bay 101	645	423
17-Dec	20/40 Limit	Garden City	-50	373
17-Dec	40/80 Limit	Garden City	132	505
17-Dec	20/40 Limit	Garden City	238	743
18-Dec	20/40 Limit	Bay 101	-1386	-643
18-Dec	Yoda Stake	Bay 101	622	-21
19-Dec	20/40 Limit	Bay 101	508	487
20-Dec	15/30 Limit	Oaks	-60	427
20-Dec	30/60 Limit	Oaks	-3	424
20-Dec	6/12 Limit	Ajs	66	490
20-Dec	15/30 Limit	Ajs	-126	364
20-Dec	6/12 Limit	Ajs	-47	317
21-Dec	20/40 Limit	Garden City	35	352
21-Dec	40/80 Limit	Garden City	1564	1916
21-Dec	8/16 Limit	Bay 101	-248	1668
21-Dec	20/40 Limit	Bay 101	470	2138
21-Dec	40/80 Limit	Bay 101	1158	3296
21-Dec	20/40 Limit	Bay 101	157	3453
22-Dec	20/40 Limit	Garden City	-563	2890
22-Dec	Yoda Stake	Garden City	-101	2789
23-Dec	15/30 Limit	Oaks	-190	2599
23-Dec	30/60 Limit	Oaks	556	3155
30-Dec	20/40 Limit	Bay 101	203	3358
31-Dec	20/40 Limit	Bay 101	2664	6022

The month was setting up nicely to be an unmitigated disaster, since as you can see I was under water as late as the 18th. This was primarily due to the slobber-knocking I took on my 3 day trip to San Diego and Ocean's 11. Rest assured, I'll be back to reclaim those racks. With a 6 day trip home for the holidays looming, I was already preparing myself to accept an actual loss for the month. But between a massive win on Sunday the 21st (when I left a juicy Garden City 40/80 game because Hank sent me a text alerting me to Neil's presence in the Bay 101 20/40), and huge win on New Years Eve, I somehow managed to post a $6000 win. This game seems to be all about surviving the break even stretches between heaters.

All told I played 148.5 hours this month, with very minimal hours logged in small games (I did have one rough day at Ocean's where I spent 4 hours languishing in a combination of 2/3 NL, 4/8 Limit, 8/16 Limit, and eventually 4/8 O8). All told, it looks like all but 20 hours were at 20/40 or above, with 5 more hours accounted for by the Oaks 15/30 game. Given that I went home for 6 days, I think this number is excellent.

Professional Period and 2009

My "professional period" of this year started on August 1st. During that time my spreadsheet shows gambling winnings of $39,444, or just a shade under $8K/month. Obviously I'm quite happy with this result.

In the 7 months of 2008 that I had an actual job, I won somewhere around $10,000 (I have some entries not yet in my spreadsheet from Vegas and Reno trips), bringing my total winnings for the year to just around $50K.

My 20/40 win rate currently stands at $58.27/hour. When I quit my job that number was a scary $32/hour. My 2008 20/40 graph looks like this:


Yes I am an excel fish, but you can guess....money on the left, hours along the bottom. I totaled just under 900 hours of live 20/40 for the year, with the majority coming after August 1st.

In short, I am happy to report nothing but a complete success for my 5 months spent as a professional poker player. I still have no plans to look for work, and am really now just trying to decide how to go about playing more 30/60 and 40/80.

A Word on the Ads

Many of you have probably noticed that ads went up on my blog on New Year's Day. I decided to give this a shot, mainly because it makes me feel cool to have a website that enough people read that the space on it has non-zero value. Danielle helped me place them in such a way that they should be a minimal distraction to those reading (originally they were wider, which looked fine on my laptop....but it's a wide screen), and I've decided to stick to text-only ads for now. On the first full day the ads were up I earned a whopping 46 cents. I don't think I'm going to quit my day job :)

And in Closing: Marley and Me

Spoiler Alert: If you don't want to know what happens, stop reading now....

Marley and Me was probably the saddest movie I have ever seen. It's basically about a couple in their late twenties being all happy at first and getting a dog who chews lots of stuff and is really hard to deal with and then their lives not turning out as they planned and them feeling that they didn't accomplish as much as they'd like by the time they turned 40. And then the dog dies. That's it. It was very, very sad. When I got home from the movie and went to give my dog Tyson a big hug, I found him like so. Tyson, like Marley, is awesome.

Good Old Fashioned Poker Hands

I realized I've gotten away from talking about the hands that I play, which is probably one of the things that the average person reading this enjoys the most. So, here are some hands that I played with a brief description and a link to discussion on two plus two:

Hand 1 - I contemplate a river donk bluff

In this hand I open-raised KT of clubs and got 3-bet by a somewhat nitty but probably overall winning prop player. His range of possible hands could be narrowed so substantially just from his 3-bet preflop that I elected to play a strong flush draw incredibly passively because I figured he was showing down just about his entire range on just about any board. The flop came down:

J53 with two clubs

I just checked and called him. The turn was a brick, and I checked and called again. On the river an Ace hit. I checked, but posted the hand above as if I bet. The question on the bet is this...what hands will he fold? He's got a pair of some sort, and he should just call me and show it down. But might he fold, say, pocket Queens? What about pocket Tens? Are pocket 8s in his range preflop? Pretty mathy stuff :)

Hand 2 - I get into a mess with Q5o from the big blind

In this hand I get a free look at the flop from the big blind. I hold a red Queen and the 5 of spades and get a flop of:

QJT with two spades

I imploy the "check and see" line, three other players check, and the button bets. The button is a maniac whose range consists of practically anything you can imagine that improves the board in any describable fashion, plus some other stuff that doesn't. The small blind calls, and I raise it. One player folds, but somebody takes two cold and the button and small blind both call.

On the turn the 9 of spades hits the board. I check, basically surrendering any claim to the pot. I mean, that's the worst freaking card in the deck...or so I thought. The only thing is, the street checks through. The river brings the King of Spades (which is the actual worst card in the deck), making the final board:

9TJQK with 4 spades

The small blind checks, I check, the cutoff bets (he's the player who called two cold on the flop), and then the button and small blind fold.....I have a baby flush in a pretty sizable (7.5 big bets) pot, but make the lay down. Correct? It was hard for me to believe he didn't have a big flush here the overwhelming majority of the time. Players don't just bluff into 3 opponents on the river. The advice I got on two plus two basically came down on the side of folding, but there were some dissenting opinions. Also, some people wanted me to drop the hand on the flop.

Tommy Angelo is the Nuts

Unless otherwise noted, all quotes are from Tommy’s book. I hope he doesn’t sue me.

It’s been said dozens of times on Two Plus Two, and countless others in countless other places, but Tommy Angelo and his book Elements of Poker do in fact combine into a near-nut holding. Now some of you are probably scratching your head saying “I read that book, and I just didn’t get anything out of it”. Others will do the same thing in the near future, either based on my recommendation, someone elses, or purely because you got a gift certificate for Christmas. If you find yourself feeling this way, it’s probably because you’ve never tried to be a live cash game pro (which, with the possible exception of a joy for teaching and writing, is probably the only thing I have in common with Tommy Angelo. Note that I said joy of…not proficiency for). If you have tried to “support your rent and food habit” by playing live poker, Tommy is for you.

Here’s what you won’t get out of Tommy’s book: Almost any technical discussion of how to play play poker whatsoever. There is a small section where he talks about the basic principle that ace-high sometimes drags the chippies UI, but other than that his purpose is not to teach you how to play poker. He assumes that you’ve already got that part of being a poker player under control.

Here’s just a little of what you will get out of Tommy’s book:

An understanding, if brief, that you don’t always play your best poker. Not even close. And a realization that the best way to improve your win rate might not be to improve your best poker game. It might be to improve or curtail the deployment of your worst poker game. Think about it…

An interesting way to look at the game as a series of decisions, most of which don’t involve cards or betting. Deciding to (not) change seats. Deciding to (not) change tables. Deciding to (not) quit the game. Deciding how much money to bring to the table. Deciding how many chips to have on the table (one metric ass-ton). Deciding how much cash to keep at your house (Ten (10) “largish” losses for your game. This is more than 300 big bets for those of you quick with the maths).

Discussion on how to play 6^th street (the time from the the last betting action until the hand is done being talked about) correctly, including what to (not) say, and how to handle or even implement slowrolls, fastrolls, slowcalls, slowfolds, fastgrabs and fastrolls.

And finally, one of the most inspiring passages I have ever read in a poker book involving taking a shot and going pro. This passage was coupled with Tommy’s realization that going pro is often a chicken and egg problem for many players. You can’t get good enough to quit your job unless you quit your job…I beg to differ J