Heading to Iowa

My good friend Alex (background) and I are heading out for Iowa City in a hour or so to catch the Iowa vs. Ohio St. game. I'm really looking forward to seeing a big college football game as I am sure the atmosphere will be electric. It's also always a good time to hang out with Donny (the fish holding the sign) and Tony. How can you not love these guys?

Welcome Swedes

I just checked my stats on the site and I've had over 50 hits from Sweden today. This is undoubtedly because of Mats Iremarks new site and his link to this site on it. I wasn't sure what kind of celebrity Mats has in Sweden, but it is apparently more than I thought.

I also just found the link to "Team Hink", which is a group of four young Swedish guys who I have met traveling in Europe. They are really great guys and exceptional poker players. I've posted a link to their site on the left.

Tourney Donkey

Multi's are tough. I've been playing about 20 multi's a day for the last four days and it's really exhausting. It's also really tough to final table the big events. I'm having some pretty moderate success making the top 50 - 20 but it seems like I have to catch a break or two to make the Final Table. I am up about 5k this week, mostly thanks to the 4th in the $11 re-buy, so it is looking fairly profitable. However, I also know that the strange thing about playing multi's is that most of your profit comes from the big scores. If you can break even on your tournaments where you don't make the final table, then you are doing fairly well. The big scores that you get from your wins are more than enough to pad your roll.

I also need a couple more deep finishes to bring some life back into my run at the weekly TLB on Stars. I think I have dropped to 21st right now due to others accumulating more points than I have in the last couple days.

I think I may go to Iowa this weekend to hang out with my friends Donny and Tony and catch the Iowa vs. Ohio St. game. Donny is maybe one of the funniest guys I know and it's always a blast to hang out with him. I just hope we don't end up at a bar with a pool table, I think I single handedly doubled Tony's bankroll with my pool losses this summer.

I'll probably take my camera so that I can get some pictures to liven up the blandness of this site.

Oh also, my good friend Mats Iremark just got his new website up. It's an exceptional design and when I actually get famous enough to justify building my own site, I'll want one like this. Check it out at www.matsiremark.com

9th on the TLB

I just checked my Tournament Leaderboard Rank on Poker Stars and I am currently 9th on the list. I am still almost 1,000 points behind Jason Strassar but if I final table a couple more tourney's this week I should be able to climb up to at least the top 3. Here's the current Top Ten:

1. strassa2 1983.18
2. thugmpneymkr 1517.97
3. BarnyBoatman 1144.99
4. clarkinatarr 1119.35
5. ElRupert 1105.28
6. Kenny Rap 1076.77
7. ricestud 1057.98
8. thorladen 1044.97
9. runencold 1000.81
10. MaltLiquor40 991.59

Disappointing 4th

I just finished the 55k guaranteed $11 rebuy on Poker Stars in 4th place. It is pretty disappointing since we were all pretty even in chips when it got down to four handed. I still got $4,100 for 4th, but first would have been 14k, which I really wanted. I got pretty deep in a couple other tourneys as well but no final tables. I am very happy with my play right now and feel pretty confident that I can come fairly close to winning the TLB on Stars. That's about all the news for today :)

Multis

Sorry I haven't posted in a couple days but I've been playing poker pretty much non-stop since Friday. I played mostly Multi Table Tournaments (MTT's) all weekend to break up the monotony of fixed limit hold'em. I didn't do well in any of the major's yesterday, but I decided that I wanted to try to win the Poker Stars weekly tournament leaderboard this week, so I played a bunch of smaller tournaments as well. I was close to doing very well in a few of the, I got 40th in the $22/RB when my KK ran into 10 6, got 33rd in the $11/RB, and 20th in a $20 tourney. I also played the Bluff Poker Tour $10 tournament on Full Tilt and got 2nd for 1.3k. The Bluff Poker is a series of tournaments over several months which each player earns points for. The winner at the end of the season gets a entry into a live tourney in the Bahamas or somewhere like that. If I play most of them I am pretty confident that I can win it.

I think playing multi's all week will be a good break from 5/10 and by next week I'll probably be bored of MTT's and be ready to grind again.

If I had won all 4 of those tournaments I would have made about $40,000, and If that would have happened I would have made 1/6th as much as my good friend Cody Slaubaugh won in the WCOOP event yesterday. Cody (thugmoneymkr) got 2nd in the $1,000 buy-in NL Hold'em tourney for almost $250,000. Cody lived with us in Vegas this summer and is now the 4th person from our house to have a score over six figures since Vegas. I like to think that patience is rewarded....

WCOOP event #6

I spent the better part of yesterday playing in the WCOOP (World Championships of Online Poker) Event #6, $215 NL Hold'em w/Rebuys. I started off well and doubled up early with JJ vs. QQ on a Jack high flop. This didn't last long though as I lost several tough hands in the next 30 minutes and had to rebuy. I won a few pots before the break and after the add on had about 13,000 chips, plenty above average and was only in for $800. I played for so long that I can't remember all the hands but I slowly built my chip stack over the next 3 or 4 hours and when we hit the money (270 players) I was in the top 20 in chips at 110,000. Then things turned a little. I went pretty card dead over the next 3 hours and never saw any big pairs. I kept my stack sustained by picking good spots, stealing the right pots, and re-stealing in key positions. When we got down to the final 80 or so I started to get a little excited, even though I was relatively short stacked with only 170,000 and blinds of 4k/8k. I had several steal attempts that didn't work when a bigger stack re-raised me, once showing his Aces. I couldn't get any cards but stayed alive. About an hour later we were down to 40 or so and I pushed all in from the cutoff, trying to steal with 99. Unfortunately the BB woke up with AA and I was out in a very disappointing 41st place. First place was almost $225,000 and I really wanted it, unfortunately it just wasn't my night. I was very happy with how I played though and am optimistic about my multi table improvement over the last two months. I'll probably grind some 5/10 tonight and play some multi's tomorrow.

Very Odd

I just put in a 1,007 hand session and am really happy with how I played, plus I felt like I ran decently enough. I had a few one and two outers on me in pretty decent pots, but not anything upsettingly bad. I kept my head the whole time and they really didn't affect me. Usually I never pay attention to how I am doing, if I am up or down, during the session and just wait till the end to see. I usually guess how much I made or lost and am almost always very low on my estimates, meaning that I usually do better than I think. Well, I would have guessed that I was up 300 or so on this session, so it was pretty decent and that means that I was probably up 500-600 or so. Well, when I checked at the end I was down $40.... It was really bizarre because I really played well, didn't run awful, and never really made any mistakes. It really threw me for a loop.

It's just really kind of frustrating I guess. I mean I had a session where I feel like I SHOULD have made money. Nothing went wrong really and I played better than I have in a week. I guess maybe it's just that I am getting more immune to the bad beats. That really could be the only reason I can think of, maybe I ran worse than I realized. I don't know.

I am really disheartened at the moment. I'll try to make some money tomorrow.

No idea

I have no idea how I only lost $650 tonight. I had to stop playing because I really knowingly started playing very badly. I really need to work on my extreme tilt composure, although I hope it never becomes something that I have to call upon often.

Boring

I played way to much today, it would be a good thing, but it was the wrong things I was playing. I played a bunch of Multi's and Satelites and played really well in all of them, just well enough to almost make the money or ALMOST qualify. It sucked. I only put in about 2k hands at 5/10 and think I may have made like 300-400 or so, it was all so spread out that I'm not exactly sure. I need to get out and do something sometime soon, so I may go visit my friend Jon Little in Florida sometime in the next couple months. He's the ultimate grinder and I think staying with him and watching his habits could be pretty beneficial. Right now my biggest enemy is fatigue and burn-out, so i am trying to figure out ways around them. My numbers are acceptable, but I know they could be higher. Since I get rakeback now, I think I will just withdraw my rakeback $$ for living expenses which will leave my poker bankroll untouched and free to grow as much as I want it to. I should probably get around $2,500 a month in rakeback which will be plenty to live off of.

Also, one of my good friends informed me that his brother hit the Bad Beat Jackpot on Party Poker today for a cool $164,000...... sick




My blog gets boring so I figured I'd take a picture of my hair and let you look at something, I have a running $500 bet with my friend Nate on which one of us will cut our hair first. I guarantee victory.

September Numbers:
Hands: 21,463
Profit: $8,373.07
BB/100: 3.9
Rake Back: $1,161

Upset

I don't think I'm mad that the Huskers lost, USC was clearly a better team and our defensive secondary has a lot of work to do before being able to stop them. I am mad that our offense never took a chance and it looked like we played scared the whole game. There was a lot of talk around the state about how it appeared that Callahan wasn't trying to win the game, but just trying to not lose big, I think that seems fairly accurate to me.

After the game on Saturday I didn't play at all, far to depressed, so I went out with some of my friends. Yesterday was Sunday and traditionally Sunday's are big for poker players. This week was even bigger as the WCOOP (World Championships of On-line Poker) got under way. PokerStars had a $500 NL event instead of their regular $215 Sunday million. It was a huge field and I lost exactly 97% of my chips 5 minutes into the tournament when I re-raised a pre flop raiser with an gut shot straight flush draw. I actually had another guy push over the top, and the original raiser call, so I was getting slightly better that 8:1 to call off the rest of my chips. I ran the hand on CardPlayer and found that I was 45% to win, but it didn't happen.

I also played the mill on party and cashed for like $500, and I almost cashed in the FullTilt 500k guarantee but came up just short. The day was pretty uneventful otherwise and I just relaxed and watched TV for the rest of the night. I want to put in a lot of hands at 5/10 this week and make some money, so I will be focusing on that for a while.

Friday night lights

Instead of heading out to the bars with some friends like I normally would on Friday night, I decided to actually put in a session. But before a good session you need to re-fuel your body so Nick and I decided to go out to eat at Famous Daves. It was delicious. After we got back I really wanted to play which is unusual, especially since I have been running less than optimally. I put in a really good four hour session and felt like I played really well. I dodged a few of the tough hands that I had been running into and actually posted a good win for the session. The numbers for tonight ended up at 1870 hands at + $1,407. This is more the kind of session I have been expecting and it is nice to put one up. One change I did make was that instead of six tabling, like I had been, I decided to just four table. I felt like when I was six tabling I didn't get as much of a chance to pay attention to the way my opponents played and I think it was costing me a bet here and there. I think I will stick with four tabling for a while until I really get the hang of it and feel comfortable enough to move up to more.

Earlier this afternoon I played a few little sub-satellites on PokerStars and won a $475 seat in tomorrows super satellite to the EPT Dublin event. I think it would be really awesome to get to go to Ireland again and would be really pumped if I won the package.

September running numbers:
Hands: 19,319
Won: $8,169.14
BB/100: 4.23

I'm a little disappointed in the BB/100, but I think it's mainly due to the 2 losing sessions this week.


Go Huskers!!!!!
Prediction: NU 27 USC 21

Party = Adidas

Adidas recently launched a new ad campaign featuring the slogan "Impossible is Nothing". This catch phrase is meant to give the impression that despite the long shot odds, sports dreams can and do happen. I think Party Poker should buy the rights to this slogan and use it in their new TV adds. They could show sreen shots from the tables I play while the television audience gasps and sits in anticipative silence as each 2 and 3 outer nails the river.

I HATE bitching about bad beats, but I also just need an outlet to let a little frustration out so that I don't explode. You are the lucky outlet. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Done, I promise from now on I will make no mention of any bad beats.

I played well for the first hour of my session, then slumped off a little towards the end so I quit. I played 683 hands and lost $296 on the session.

loving it

***** Hand History for Game 5178736092 *****
$5/$10 Texas Hold'em - Friday, September 15, 20:09:40 ET 2006
Table Monster #1293670 (Real Money)
Seat 2 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 2: hitking57 ( $251.30 )
Seat 3: bridge6989 ( $247.75 )
Seat 6: MarieG777 ( $309.96 )
Seat 1: Joey_Pistone ( $323 )
Seat 5: letitride50 ( $128.75 )
Seat 4: jhjf2007 ( $190.50 )
bridge6989 posts small blind [$2].
jhjf2007 posts big blind [$5].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Joey_Pistone [ Kc Kh ]
letitride50 calls [$5].
MarieG777 calls [$5].
Joey_Pistone raises [$10].
hitking57 raises [$15].
bridge6989 calls [$13].
jhjf2007 folds.
letitride50 folds.
MarieG777 calls [$10].
Joey_Pistone raises [$10].
hitking57 calls [$5].
bridge6989 calls [$5].
MarieG777 calls [$5].
** Dealing Flop ** [ As, 7c, 3d ]
bridge6989 checks.
MarieG777 checks.
Joey_Pistone bets [$5].
hitking57 calls [$5].
bridge6989 folds.
MarieG777 calls [$5].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 2d ]
MarieG777 checks.
Joey_Pistone checks.
hitking57 checks.
** Dealing River ** [ 4d ]
MarieG777 checks.
Joey_Pistone checks.
hitking57 checks.
MarieG777 shows [ 7h, 2h ] two pairs, sevens and twos.
Joey_Pistone doesn't show [ Kc, Kh ] a pair of kings.
hitking57 shows [ Jc, Jh ] a pair of jacks.
The time at which hand ended:Sep 15 2006 20:09 ET
MarieG777 wins $101.50 from the main pot with two pairs, sevens and twos.
You have options at Table 109577 Table!.

Playing well

I just put in a 90 minute session 6-tabling on Party and felt like I played really well. I actually ran worse (I didn't think it could get worse) than I have already been running, but I fought through it and didn't allow myself to go on tilt. I was really impressed at one point in the session with my composure. I was in very large pots on 3 separate tables: On one table I had a pretty solid hand against a couple of terrible players, KQ on a KJ10 flop. We got 3 bets in on the flop and the river was a Q, one of the guys flipped A8 to take it down. On the next table at the same time I called a raise 3 ways out of the BB with 99, flop comes A 9 3, DINK!, check call to keep the SB in as well, turn A, DINK!, I lead, 3 bet because I know he has Ace garbage, river Ace :( I check called even though I shouldn't have. On the last table I take a free flop out of the BB with 56 off suit, The flop comes 235 and I lead call a raise against a very bad aggressive player. The turn is a K and I check raise, he calls, river is a 10 and I bet, he calls and shows 10 7 off, no draw. After that hand I sat there and forced myself to not go on tilt, it was pretty relaxing actually and I was impressed that I could keep my composure as well as I did. I ended up playing about 750 hands and lost $550, no worries.

When I said a few days ago that I believe that it would be next to impossible to have any significant losing day, I was wrong. It is possible, but REALLY unlikely. I'm pretty sure that it just isn't going to happen really almost ever. I don't like to talk about how bad I am running, but to give you perspective, I really can't imagine running worse and have never experienced anything worse than the last few days. I fully expect to make a ton of money this month and as long as the improbable subsides for a little bit, I will.

Running bad

I hate running bad. There were times tonight that I just sat for a few moments and stared at the screen in disbelief about the way a hand had played. I can safely say some of the worst players in the world play 5/10 limit on Party. These players are what make the tables so profitable and without them there wouldn't be guys like me, but the times when these players get very hot can be extremely frustrating. It really isn't a normal frustrated either, it's more like a personal attack on me frustrated. When you play 2,000 + hands a day you get to the point where you pretty much KNOW if you are going to win the pot before your opponent acts on the river. If you were beat they world raise, so when they just call you expect to get the pot, with some of these players, they just call when they should be raising and THAT is what really bugs me. I fully expect the pot to come my way and then BAM, they flip the 2nd nuts and rake the chips in. It's like they are slow rolling you on-line, or as close as they can possibly get to it. I can just picture these guys sitting on their couch ignoring their screaming kids and disfunctional family, playing a little 5/10 on Party, and thinking to themselves..... "Man I'm just not sure of Queens full is good here, he could have flopped Quad Deuces and have me beat, I better just call after a 6 or 7 second deliberation for dramatic effect."

Okay, I am done ranting, I was going to actually post a couple of the hands I had crush me tonight, but even if I did I am pretty sure some people wouldn't believe that they were real and I had changed the Hand History in some way. I played like 2k in hands today and thought I was down quite a bit, but ended up about $300 or so.

I did in fact lose money the other night, $500 to be exact. I ran bad and was really truthfully playing poorly. I made myself quit even though the tables were fairly soft because I was playing so bad.

Here are my numbers for September so far, not one day :)

Hands: 16,052
Won: $7,794
BB/100: 4.86

As you can tell my BB/100 has dropped significantly during this cold stretch, it's to be expected. I am trying not to focus on that number, or the profit and instead focus on the # of Hands played. If I just try to put in a lot of hands and play as perfectly as possible every session then the profit will take care of itself.

Awful Day

I just played for about 2 hours, 900 hands, and HAD to stop because I was running so incredibly bad. Almost every hand I had for about a 20 minute strech got outdrawn on the river. I know that this is going to happen but it happened so many times in a row that I could feel myself about to TILT so I had to stop. It was really ridiculous, I almost lost money on the session, which hasn't happened yet and really now I don't think that it is likely. I may play more later, but right now need a break tonight.

Still pwning

Hands: 11,309
Profit: $7,511.24
BB/100: 6.64

Sick

I'm going to a wedding this weekend in Valentine Nebraska, two of my very good friends are marrying each other and I couldn't be happier for them, congrats Tommy and Keira. I'll probably be back and playing on Sunday.

Going strong

First off, the picture is of my set-up in my "office". I just got the 2nd monitor today, it's the first time I've used a dual monitor system, and I have to admit, it's really sweet. I'm the type of guy that has a hard time concentrating and differentiating between very small tables. This new set up allows me to have four full size tables open with no over lap. My roommate Nick had the extra monitor, so he's letting me use it and said that he would probably just sell it to me later.

It hasn't really felt like it, but I have been CRUSHING the games on party. I will be playing and think that I am down for the day or just about even, and when I check it turns out that I am way up. I am pretty sure it's because when I start running bad, I feel like I am losing money, but in fact I'm breaking even or making a little despite the "bad beats". My numbers are sick, way above what I expected at this point. I played 4 tables for about 5 hours today and didn't feel like I ran particularity well, but ended up almost $1,800. Right now I can't see this approach ever not working, I know it is early in the experiment but I feel like I am actually running bad and making a lot of money. I don't think that it would be out of the question, if I ran very very well, to have a $5,000 day playing 5/10 limit. That's mind boggling. I'm almost at 10,000 hands and have been at this only 8 days. Here's my numbers...

Hands: 9,824
Won: $5,962.71
BB/100: 6.07

If I can maintain at Six BB/100, I will be very happy.

First 5k hands

here's the numbers through my first 5,000 hands in this 5/10 6-max experiment. 5,000 hands is still a small sample size, when I get to about 25,000 - 30,000 I will have a much better idea about how profitable grinding low limits could be.

Hands won: 15.76%
saw flop: 30.05%
won: $2,954.93
BB/100 hands: 5.91
pre-flop raise 16.68%
showdowns won: 56.6%

If anyone has a good idea about where these numbers should be at, any comments or advice would be really appreciated.

Chuck Hoang Wins!

My very good friend, Adam Geyer just won the Poker Stars Million guaranteed for a cool $156,000. That is a very good day. He goes by the name "Chuck Hoang" on most sites, but on Poker Stars he goes by "simmsux". Congrats to him, it really could not have happened to a better guy. Now I am just anxious for my turn :)

Getting pwned

I didn't have a chance to write about it, but my session friday night went very poorly, I got pwned by bad luck and it was really awesome. I mean that seriously, because I ran awful and still made about $200 over 700 or so hands. This is really exciting to me because I was begining to think that I was just running hot and the when the heater ended I would start losing money. That looks like a much less likely explanation now.

I spent the weekend in Kearney with my family. My mom was married this morning to a very nice guy named Lowell. It was great to see all my family altogether and I'm very happy for the new Mr. and Mrs. Peeks. I think it's spelled that way :)

I'm anxious to put in a lot of hours this week before heading out again next weekend for another wedding.

Slowing down some

Well, my pace has slowed down a little bit. I played yesterday on Stars for a couple hours and couldn't really do much, plus I ran pretty bad, and the tables were pretty tough. It cost me about $200 or so over 300 hands. I decided since the games weren't very good I would try my new account on Party and deposited $500 into it. I have to say that I have never been very fond of Party's cash games. I always felt like they were pretty full of decent players and it would be hard to ever make a lot of money. That defiantly wasn't the case last night. I ran very well, had a bunch of big hands hold up, and most importantly was playing at tables that were very weak. I don't know if it will keep up like this but if it does, then I am going to be very happy :) I ended up on the night 300 or so I think, not the insane $1,000 days of 5/10 that I have been having, but still a very nice day for only playing 800 hands or so. Nick Van Newkirk, my roommate, and I decided to go out to the bars around 10:30, so it cut the night short. I'm probably gonna grind here for the next 5-6 hours then I think we are going to go out again tonight.

Hands: 3,497
BB/100: 6.28
Profit: $2,197.86

Acceptable, but I want to get to 25,000 hands by the end of September, if not more.