Saturday, March 16, 2013

5/5nl $500 max

Played with a pretty reg infested game today. Met an asian named Win.
I started out playing pretty tag, then opened up a bit and started to try and isolate bad limpers. Its very hard to do this live, since people just LOVE to call preflop.
             Anyways, there was a pot where I held AJo.. 3 limpers and I raise to 40. I get 1 caller ( UTG) .
Flop 238    Pot $90
He checks, I bet $60, he calls.
Turn 6     Pot $210
He checks, I decide to double barrel.... I bet $150
He makes this meh face, acting like he hates his hand..and then shoves all in for $400 more LOL...
Live players are so funny, I see this so often, where they act like they super hate their hand and then shove all in....sure buddy....you got nothing..RIGHT
I fold, he shows 45o ...
 -$250 that hand :(.......he was a regular also, its not uncommon to see these guys limp call with such trash.

Table is somewhat passive preflop..I get dealt ATo utg+2, I limp ( 45o guy is in the bb)...guy limps behind me, and Win ( asian) raises to 40 on button. He has been doing this pretty often on his button.
Everyone folds and I call, limper behind me folds. Its headsup
Flop 998 rainbow
I check, he bets $50, I call.
Turn J   Pot is $180
I check, he bets $100, he has about $350 behind.
I shove. He tanks for about 10 minutes...and then calls
River Q
He takes forever to show his hand, I show my AT for rivered straight, and he shows QQ for boat :(



After this hand, a reg said my KK was good I knew it ! He was talking about a previous hand I had vs him where I check raised flop, bet turn, and shoved river. on a J28Q5 board. But I had his KK beat that hand.

So now I rebuy....and I have this crazy image of course.
UTG fat white guy limps, folds to me and I raise to $25.
All fold to white guy who calls.
Flop 258 rainbow. Pot $55
He leads out to $35, I raise to $100. He calls
Turn Q    Pot $255
He checks, I shove $300
He instacalls with J8o loooool....river blank and I stack him.


He keeps on not believing me and I take him to value town on small pots, where he is calling me 100%  thinking I am just a crazy aggro player and never have anything. He thinks he will catch me bluffing soon :) . 


So now im on BB with QQ..UTG+2 raises to $20 with $400 stack... 4 callers, I re-raise to $120.
Folds to UTG+2 who folds, the other 3 callers end up calling ! ( one of which is the white fat guy)

Flop AQ2 rainbow. Pot $500
Fat guy checks, I bet out $200  ( these guys are so damn loose that I dont want to see a turn T, J, or K in an already big pot. I am just hoping someone gets stubborn with Ax given my crazy loose image.
Folds around to the fat white guy who instacalls me pretty much.

Turn K   Pot $900
He just shoves for his remainder $220 and says, I know your gonna bet so..ill just bet first.
I call.

River 3 $1,300 pot
He shows A8 loool :) and gets super mad saying of course it has to come AQx...and makes some comment sorta implying that he will stack me soon.

I get into a few more pots, one of which
I limp utg Q9s.....45o guy raises to $25, fat white guy calls, I call

Flop Ks 2d 8h
Checks around

Turn 5s
Fatty checks, I check, 45o guy bets $25, Fatty calls $25....I raise to $100
Both fold, easy game...I show and fat guy gets a little more upset :)

 I ended up leaving the game when 45o guy raises to $25, I call with 77 on the button. and BB ( asian) raises $95 more....45o guy calls..I call.  We are a little deep ..asian has about $800 and 45o guy has around $1200.

Flop comes 992r Pot $330
Asian checks, 45o guy checks, I bet $100, feeler bet and to have AJ,aq,ak fold out.

Asian calls, 45o guy folds.
Turn J   Pot $530
Asian checks, I check

River Q  Pot $530
Asian checks, and I check behind
Asian shows 97o  and I muck :(........this tilted me so hard that he had 97o and flops 99x vs my 77

He continued to flop super strong, trips etc on the next hands and about 20-30 minutes I just got up and left. I felt as if I was going to get setup with KK vs AA on AK2 kinda board vs him.


I was down about $1000 in the game and I only brought $1,500 with me to the casino.
I had $450 ( $100 in pocket) on the KK hand vs the fattys J8o

I ended up profiting +$900. The fatty was still at the table, and I did not want to leave as he was "out to get me" and I could continue to stack him, but that 97o hand really bothered me, so I left the game.

Bankroll : $6,900

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Reg Day

Played yesterday ( Tuesday). First time playing on a non weekend day. I wanted to see how tough the field would be, since I would encounter less fish/drunks etc and more regulars who either play part time or play poker full time.
         There were 5 regulars on the table. So yea, it was a tougher field, but still these regulars are not as imaginative/solid as the players online are. Online is very tough and everyone has a more balanced range and put you in more difficult spots more often.
                 The regs here played pretty pretty solid, but no check raise/air  / 3bets etc. If they did 3 bet, sure enough they will have KK +  .....of those 5 regulars, 1 was a pretty bad regular, and the other were ok, nothing great or any cause for concern. There was only 1 reg who I felt was very good and he seemed to have good hand reading skills. So he will be tough to stack in the future, I would rather not play too many pots with him because of that, or maybe I can just be more imaginative vs him since he is a thinking player :) He was an older white guy, business looking 45 year old.

          Overall, I feel I have a good edge vs the "regulars" . I will continue to work on my game, as I think most of my early success in this endeavor is due to my good hand reading skills and feel.
          Ended the day with +$430 for 2 hours of play....( took 1.5 hours to get a seat.....unreal)
I will be a little more aggressive in shot taking at higher stakes, simply because this bankroll is not my life bankroll, it is a separated from my funds I have saved for life expenses. Thats not to say im going to be ridiculous with it, as I have always been a bankroll nit :)

Total Bankroll : $6,000
Goal by December 31, 2013 - $40,000  and a regular at 5/10 nl
And fully transitioned back into full-time poker, hiring someone to take over the accounting part of my business.

Monday, March 11, 2013

Post Black Friday (4-15-11)

Well, It has been a while since I have posted. I will be posting updates as often as possible, to see how I progress and to hopefully look back and smile upon this blog :). If anyone is still following, cool. I was pretty much printing money (expression) right before black friday. For those of you unaware, on April 15, 2011 the DOJ seized the domains/ accounts of Full Tilt Poker as well as Pokerstars. Long story short, Full Tilt Poker did not have segregated player funds and operational funds and when all of this went down, they basically did not have enough money to pay out all of its players. Pokerstars on the otherhand did have everything in order and they payed out their players within a month with no issues whatsoever, it was very smooth ( bankwired to your account or by check etc). It was a chaotic time and many players still have money stuck online, ranging from a couple hundred dollars to a few hundred thousand dollars.

On this day, I ended up asking a non-usa friend if I could transfer him the money online and then have him wire it to me. He graciously accepted and I then sent him a large portion of my money to him, which he later sent to me as agreed. My friend on the other hand tried to do the same thing about 2minutes later, and the site had already blocked his ability to transfer money on the site. He was 2 minutes too late, and he has all his money stuck online. I was very very fortunate and my friend was very unlucky. This was a horrible day for all online poker pros.

So now, there I was, out of a job. A job I have had for about 7 years. A lot of ups and downs, both in poker and in life investments. I was at a point where I was just absolutely printing money and all of my hard work was finally paying off 10-fold. I had put in a shit-ton of studying hours and was at a point where my worst month would be 5 figures +, mainly because of my ability to optimally play lots of tables at one time. After Black Friday, I was literally waking up and listening to a shit-ton of podcast about this situation where they had guest lawyers, reps from online casinos and other insiders. While I kept pressing F5 on a poker forum for the latest updates. I mean I went crazy doing this, I did this allllll day. I would run downstairs grab some junk food go back upstairs because I did not want to miss a minute of the podcasts.

 Some online pros moved to Mexico/Thailand/Canada throughout this. As Pokerstars was up and running to everyone except US players. I thought about this, but wanted to wait a bit to see what would happen with this situation. I was optomistic/hopeful that something would progress and I would once again be able to play on FTP. Months passed by and it was now June/July. I was still somewhat optomistic as it felt sooo crazy that I would not be able to play online poker. During this my mom had this freight brokerage business that she was wanting me to invest in a couple months before black friday. I was still waiting for the dust to settle regarding online poker before I made a decision to move out of the country, so I grew tiresome of listening to the podcasts and pressing f5 on the forum hoping to see "ONLINE POKER IS BACK !!" posted somewhere, so I decided to hear more info about her business.

  I had not ever wanted to learn anything of her biz in the past because she would ask me for money here and there, which I would obviously give her. Because of that, I thought.. " If your business is so good, why are you always asking me for a couple thousand here and there." I did not want to waste my time or money on a breakeven or losing business while I was doing so good, and in my flow/zone. Well, now I was out of a job, soul crushed, and my only backup was I used to be a Loan officer and also had my real estate license. Both of which, I wanted nothing to do with anymore :). It just wasnt for me, I had no passion for it. I did not know what other career I wanted to pursue, as I was so used to having complete freedom in working whenever I wanted, being my own boss, and not having to answer to NO ONE. No ass kissing the higher ups in the corporate world, no dealing with scummy co-workers, and the ability to play in my boxers :).

 So here I am, now hearing the info about her freight biz. It sounded real interesting and after doing some numbers, I saw a potential to make some pretty good money but in a different way. Despite entering the biz with her where I saw she had about $7,000 in debt I needed to clear in order to expand the business I decided to invest and buy some diesel trucks/trailers and hire some drivers to drive them. With their (mom/stepad) help and knowledge I started to grow, albeit slowly. The past 6months it has been torture though. There is just too many repair costs going on with my trucks and have been breaking even lately. I am having to pay for her mortgage/bills as well, as I think its fair since they are helping run this business, as I am just the investor/ advisor/accountant for the biz. ( I have to be in control of all this as they do not take the math approach and are very nooby when it comes to that stuff. For example, I will put it in a gambling sense. Mom will goto the casino and play slots ( lol) and she will later tell me "I won $2,000". When I say really?, nice....I go and check the bank account and I see a bunch of withdrawals totaling $2,500. And I ask her, did you withdraw $2,500??. She says yea, I was losing but then I won the $2,000. This just really makes my head spin, and I have to correct her and show her the error of her ways countless times. I say okay so you did not win $2,000. You lost $500...why did you say you won $2,000 ?????? She says I got 3 cherries or whatever she always says. I then go on a rant and explain she did not "win nothing" because her net is - $500 no matter how you look at it. Anyways, that is the approach they have had in the trucking business as well and do not take into account all details to see the true profit of a specific lane/situation. Needless to say I have limited her casino outings.

So now here I am writing this blog today. I have been feeling very unhappy with my job lately. It just isn't fulfilling and I am not seeing the returns for my work. I feel I am just working for nothing every month and not seeing any progress. about 2 weeks ago, family came over. Poker came up as a topic for about 10minutes, because a cousin asked me what I did for a living. My brother chimed in and said she wouldnt believe how I got to what Im doing now ( poker money I used to invest in the biz). I told her my little story, but I know it went over her head, as I am sure 100% of latino older folks see poker as pure luck where I am just simply betting on black on roulette and crossing my fingers. I cant blame them for being ignorant on this subject, as I am ignorant in many other fields as well. It is a bit frustrating though. That night, made me reflect on my current situation a lot deeper. I was very mad at myself for basically giving up on poker at potentially my highest point. I did not move out of the country, I did not try live poker. I did nothing. I was mainly a high stakes sng player, and I had issues with tilt control on cash games a LONG time ago, which is why I had made the switch to sng games in the first place. So needless to say I was a bit scared of my inability to control myself at live cash games and not burn money there.

 Well, its never too late I guess. 2 years later, and I am now giving live poker a chance. I was going to give myself a $10,000 roll for poker and see where it got me using solid bankroll management. I had some money lying around, so I decided to check out the games. I said I would play 1/2 nl. When I got to the casino ( commerce) I saw that the 1/2 nl game was a $40 buyin or something ridiculous like that. Whereas online it was a $200 buyin ( the more the better as it allows you to play poker, and not make it a gamblefest of all ins. It was too horrible a structure, I saw that they had a 5/5 nl game $500 buyin. It was a much better structure so I decided to play that instead as my first time playing live. ( I had played a couple times before like 3-4 years ago, but not much).

 March 1st 2013, Saturday....I sat down and was very nervous at first, trying to calm my insides etc on each hand. after about 30 minutes and seeing the bad play by some of the players at the table, I started to relax and open up my game. I pulled some pretty solid bluffs and overall was very happy with the way I played except for one big mistake where I had 3-bet preflop to $70 and a guy with $350 shoved all in. He seemed like a solid reg, and I called off with QQ, and he showed up with KK. It was a horrible call by me and I should have mucked, lesson learned. I knew it was a bad call right after I called, now I am able to relax more and think it through and dont make snap decisions. I ended up playing only a couple hours that Saturday night and cashed out with + $308 profit. Not a very big profit, but at least a booked win, and some confidence to go with it.

 Everyone talks about how soft the games are during WSOP in vegas in June/July. I would like to build my bankroll and get an apt for the month and take a shot at some tourneys/ play some cash games and use it as a bankroll booster. Since my first outing, here are my results.
March 1st - +$308
March 2nd - +$555
March 8th - +$2086
March 9th - +$507
Total profit +$3,456.00

 My goal is to play Friday/Saturdays as it is the fishiest, while I continue to improve and plug my leaks for live cash games. I will no longer give myself a bankroll but rather use whatever money I grow from poker + the money laying around as my poker bankroll ( $100s only, non $100 bills I will just use for random stuff/food.) I will be playing weekends only, as I have work to deal with, but will try and play during the week as well. I have 3 months until June Wsop comes along, here are my goals.

Goal #1 - Maintain a $50/hr winrate live.
Goal #2 - Reach $10,000
Goal #3 - Take $2,0000 shot at 5/10 nl
Goal #4 - Reach $15,000 by Wsop

 Total Bankroll as of 3/12/13 = $5,600 ( found $400 lying around thats not pictured)
 

Friday, January 28, 2011

Took yesterday off and went to see traces at Ricardo Montalban Theatre in L.A. Pretty good show, its an acrobatic show. 90 minute show and they filled it up nicely. I usually buy tickets from ticketmaster, but found this one site and tested it out with this show, and no issues..and it was about 50% cheaper..if you join up, use my ref link at least :)

www.goldstar.com




Today I ran bad as you can see the redline is what I should have won or lost, and the green line is what I actually lost. It all evens out in the end, and the way I ran, im really surprised I didnt lose 10-15k today.....well -6.3k...feelsbad.jpg :(


Tuesday, January 25, 2011

+7.6k....

On a side note, I got about a $700 refund for the last day i lost like 8k....i probably lost about 3k in equity at minimum though, which sucks...they only refunded me on the sngs where I could not return fast enough, and I got blinded out. The thing is, there was games where I was headsup at, and I ended up getting 2nd on all of those which is a HUGE difference, $400 each one basically( and I was 14-16 tabling) so each time this happened I was headsup in at least 2-3 games..and this happend 2 times that day..also not to mention the other sngs where I had the chiplead on the bubble, and got blinded down because of their software crashing on me.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Took Sunday off, heres today..going to end the day short, my computer is lagging hard while I play, so gotta backup some stuff and restore it :\...+5.5k