Bellagio: 3rd Place... F*ck My Life :(by JonnyCosMo, April 14
Got 3rd place after 2 and a half hours of playing at the final table. Gigabet is one of the most aggressive tournament players I've ever seen, and everything he does is pretty well thought out. JC Tran on the other hand... apparently misred my ability to soul read, and analyize situations perfectly. I was looking over the final table chip counts last night and realized an interesting dynamic that was going to pop-up:
1 Roy Winston (Las Vegas, NV, USA) Going to the final table with 255,500 chips - seat 8
2 J.C. Tran (Sacramento, CA, USA) Going to the final table with 200,000 chips - seat 3
3 Darrell Dicken AKA "Gigabet" (Waterloo, IA, USA) Going to the final table with 190,000 chips - seat 7
4 Jonathan McGowan (San Diego, CA, USA) Going to the final table with 156,500 chips - seat 4
5 Kevin Iacofano (Concord, OH, USA) Going to the final table with 90,000 chips - seat 5B
6 Frank Cremen (Las Vegas, NV, USA) Going to the final table with 88,000 chips - seat 1
7 James Hoeppner (Las Vegas, NV, USA) Going to the final table with 65,000 chips - seat 6
8 Vasile Buboi (Anaheim, CA, USA) Going to the final table with 64,500 chips - seat 9
9 Allie Prescott (Memphis, TN, USA) Going to the final table with 45,500 chips - seat 2
Note the chip counts and seats, JC Tran is to my direct right. To my left is Kevin Iacofano and James Hoeppner who were easily the tightest two players I have ever met in my entire life. So... on my button, Gigabet is UTG so his raising range tightens up considerably, while both those nits are going to be in the blinds and it is basically a free round of blinds for me as long as JC Tran behaves himself in the cut-off. So naturally JC Tran isn't going to behave himself, and I'm sure he realizes this situation as well. 6 hands into the tournament, and I'm not kidding, litterally the 6th hand of the tournament we are still 9 handed and this spot happens. Action gets folded around to JC Tran in the cut-off and I'm thinking in my head "He is raising the deck" so naturally he pops it up to 11k at 2k/4k blinds. I look down at Q9o with the plan to reraise anything decent, so obv Q9o in position vs the deck range is good enough and I reraise to 33k. Both blinds insta-fold (standard) and action gets back around to JC Tran. This is what I expect him to do: I expect him to fold some of his absolute crap that doesnt flop well, flat call with everything that flops even remotely well (all the way down to as bad as 53o) and reraise a range of like 77+ and AJ+ for value. My plan was simple, if he reships it preflop I have to fold, otherwise I'm more than comfortable to see a flop in position. JC Tran flat calls and instantly I know that to do this profitably with a wide range (which he does flat call here with a retardedly wide range) he will have to be shipping it in insanely light on the flop to give himself some fold equity. So the flop comes T-9-6 which is almost like the effective nuts for my hand. He checks, I bet 44k and action gets around to him and he tanks for a little bit then shoves all-in. Whaaaa? The tanking threw my off a bit, since I expect him to insta-shove if he was actually doing it light. I looked over at him and said "I don't think I can fold this hand". In my head it just felt like the sickest cooler ever if I was beat in this spot since Q9 on that board beats prolly close to 80% of hands he shoves with on that board (KJ, KQ, J9, 98, 76, 65, J8, 85, etc etc etc)so I call for my last 77k and someone asks if I have an overpair, and I'm like "wat?" He turns up 76s, and I yell "HOOOOLLDD" as I table Q9. The look on everyone's face was fucking priceless since half the table had no clue what in the world was going on, or how I thought Q9 could ever be good there. I looked over at Gigabet and obv you could tell he was just like "so standard, how do u not snap call that with Q9 lol" Turn and river brick, and I double up to over 300k + the chip lead. JC Tran shakes his head after the hand saying "I knew you were making a move" trying to justify his play in some weird way obviously not realizing how bad his preflop call was given the situation vs me.
Then I get card dead, which sucked. Finally we get down to 4 handed and the short stack in the sb shoves into me and I look down at Ac and think about calling with just looking at one, then I squeeze out the other one and bam it's the As. LOL GG! Flop comes A-4-4 and the guy's 88 was dead. 3 handed vs Roy Winston & Gigabet, I have the chip lead. Roy is playing very tight and basically letting Gigabet and I clash. I try and establish some dominance and Gigabet insta-puts me back in my place with some well timed reraises. God he's so good Finally I get coolered when I call out of the bb with QTdd and the flop comes Q-9-9, I check he c-bets from the button and I check-raise an amount leaving enough behind where it looked like I could get shoved off the hand. He shoves, and I snap call caz I felt like I induced the shove given how we were playing and bam he happens to have AQ which was so sick! Finally I squeeze all-in with JTs for my last 12bbs and Gigabet calls with QJo and holds. Out in 3rd place for $58,890. Such a sick life Gigabet proceeds to annilate Roy Winston heads-up and wins. Boo!!!! Fuck my life
well the week break was really good for me i think, i came back last night and today actually wanting to play poker rather then doing it for something to fill the time. I ran really really good over todays session (20bb/100) and felt pretty happy with the way i played over all. http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/9246/april13th14thqz1.jpg
It's a healthy boost to both my BR and, more importantly, my confidence ^^.I'm back over the $300 mark and hopefully i keep running well and make it back up to NL25 in no time :D
so.. i went up to nl25 a few days ago and lost a few buyins there over a few thousand hands, then i went back to nl10 and tilted off about another ten buyins. this was all very sad overall i went about $580-->$400.
anyway, i worked saturday, came home and played and went up about $15 over like 5k hands. which was annoying. worked again today, came home, ate a nice dinner :-) and then played some more nl10 and today happened to catch a lot of cards i guess.. and i think because ive been catching cards ive been able to make laydowns that were killing me in previous days a lot easier knowing im still way up.
i upgraded my software somewhere in there, maybe around $450. i paid full price to buy poker tracker 2 and poker ace hud which are both fantastic and i am very happy to support the creators.
heres the chart for this sunday, and ill link the two highlights of my day, one massive 3-way heater: nut straight vs middle set vs bottom set off the flop, and a cooler hand where a guy felts me with a gut shot higher straight over my nut flop straight.
i apologize for whining on my earlier blog post. i really dont know where im at, at all. so i don't want to come across as melodramatic or conceited or anything like that. anyway, if 1 bi / 1k hands is a good winrate, then i should have just posted that i was very happy.
hopefully i can just get back on track and continue my nl10 grind. i don't want to go back to nl25 until at least 800 if not 1000 on my bankroll mainly because i am mentally not prepared; with the loss on my mind i will really be playing on scared money if i dont have that many bi's.
well my first session on stars went well, i finished up a lil over 2 buyins, and played relatively well i think. some hands i definitely misplayed. one vs an LP reg but w/e shit happens. finally nice to have a winning session. ima watch some CR videos and hopefully bang out some more hands either later tonite or tomorrow after i finish this presentation i have.
if anyone has ever experienced really bad neck kinks from playing poker i suggest u move ur monitor higher up so that u arent lookin up or down at your monitor, it makes a hell of a difference
also got my money off ftp so now my whole roll is on stars. sweeeeeeeet.
currently also listening to rickroll weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
So, after playing some WoW tonight and bored my ass off I've entered a 5+0.5$ 2,5K guaranteed tourney on UB with about 550 participants. First 60 places paid, but until the FT there were really poor prices. I was pretty carddead until the first break, but I could double up several times and I was above the avarage chipstack. I was playing my usual tight aggressive style, and when the bubble came closer I started to play looser. Because of that I doubled and halfed my stack pretty often, but finally I could manage to survive and get in the final table. Because there were shorter stacks then me, I've been patient and it was really worth it. Altough I could not win big pots, I could hold my position after my busto hand. I wanted to steal blinds from the button with T9o, BB called. Flop came T62 with two hearts. Because I didn't have much money to protect my hand I've gone allin, and BB called me with a FD and he hit on the river. I've busted out in 5th place and got a nice 162$ addon to my 330$ BR, woohoo.
Hand #52526835-273 at Sun330am2.5K-002 (No Limit tournament Hold'em)
Started at 13/Apr/08 19:27:20
Hero is at seat 0 with $39690 lsmall is at seat 1 with $125555 magico SCP is at seat 4 with $45255 biged72573 is at seat 6 with $121070 nervous24 is at seat 7 with $60960 JOHNNYRUTT is at seat 9 with $45155 The button is at seat 7 Hero posts ante ($300) lsmall posts ante ($300) magico SCP posts ante ($300) biged72573 posts ante ($300) nervous24 posts ante ($300) JOHNNYRUTT posts ante (300) JOHNNYRUTT posts the small blind of $1500 Hero posts the big blind of $3000
So I decided to start playing poker again. Deposited 30 dollars into my ps account and started to work my way up in NL5. After a session of 5 hours im up 12 buyins to 90 dollar. After a month of breaking even or losing some money on heads up sit&go's I'm finally running good again. Hopefully I'll get to 250 after this week so I can move up to NL10. Still have a long way to go :-)
It seems that every blog entries I do now are griping about the horrible time I'm having at NL10. But I try to look on the bright side - it is having a maginificent effect on my ability to control my temper.
Two days ago I was stuck in Charles de Gaulle airport in a long queue for passport control. Everyone's flight was leaving in less than half an hour. The English were swearing at the French. The Americans were swearing at the French. Even the Italians were swearing at the French, and you know you have to be pretty damned slow to make an Italian worry about the time (or so I've heard).
Only I was not swearing at the French, because compared to the AA all in on flop villain hits a straight on turn hand I played before leaving the hotel, this was like getting a deep tissue massage. Not bad for a guy like me, who told a French customs official to shove a bottle of moisturiser up her ass the last time I was in France.
In the 5 months I have been playing poker, I haven't yet told anyone where they can shove their damned set. Possibly the only consolation I have, since Pokertracker is a sea of red right now.
Looking for a small stake. I play mostly small stakes PLO and HU PLO SNGS. I've had success in many small non-hold em tournaments as well. I've recently had little cash flow for poker due to the fact that almost all money has been going towards my wedding which is later next month. I currently play under the name Rxd Rxxf, but have played under my old name of bandr110 recently to use old FPP's for satellites, then unregister and try to run the money up and cash out. I unfortunately don't have any cash stats since I don't have PT, but you can see my HU SNG stats below. If you have any interest or further questions about anything please feel free to PM me or post below. I really enjoy playing and would really like to continue earning money while planning for the wedding.
so after playing roughly 11-13k hands to try to get acclimated at 6max again and improve, i have decided to leave ftp for stars. ftp games are just lame and i havent been doing especially well. i really think there is something about the timing of their games and the avatars that tilt me into doing things that i wouldnt normally do. some of the hands ive misplayed are obv cuz im n00b going back to 6m, but some are just like wtf i never wouldve done that on stars and i knew better. so hopefully my endeavors back to stars will be better than the ~500 i dropped on ftp.
I GOT A LIL OVER 1K ON FTP IF ANYONE NEEDS FTP MONEY
Last night I managed to donk off a few buyins in another one of our sMeee home games of madness. These usually come together when Caleb (crownroyal here on LP) gets drunk and starts harassing me to set one up. We're long time friends from BW days and are both in sMi together, and there's a lot of other poker players in sMi with us so we take his drunken desires and manifest them into maniacal games of NL10 with sMi peepz. Last time we got our table up to about a $30 avg pot with around 45% of people seeing the flop, and waitlist 10+ people long. It was pretty hilarious. Last night I was only kind of drunk and wasn't attempting to keep up with Caleb's 72/68/5.5 stats, so our table didn't achieve the same sexiness as last time. Oh, and he 3bet like 44% as well. Fucking monster.
Next time I gotta take some SS's or record the TS convo. It turns into a pretty fucking fun and hilarious time. I always end up losing in these cause I am clueless on how to play vs the insane aggression other than to just nit it up, but while drinking it's hard to be disciplined about that kind of shit. I also start thinking that we're all leveling each other and I over level or something and make insane calls that are clear folds any other day, but they never pay off, hehe.
It was fun though as by the end of the night we had me, caleb, fakesteve, nero, aurious and dada on one table and mostly donating money to nero and caleb, hehe. We only managed to get our Avg pot size up to like $13 last night, mostly thanks to nero deciding to try and be more gosu than caleb - and in our game, being gosu means that you have the most aggro stats.
Played a session of NL50 today and recouped my losses from last nights homegame. Gonna get back to grinding and hopefully be taking my NL100 shots in the next 7 days, depending on how the luck goes. So far I've avoided coolers in big pots which has lead to a steady influx of money for once. Let's hope that continues through my NL100 shot!
Today was a good day. I'm getting more comfortable playing loose. I recommend everyone at low stakes on PS table select like crazy because then this will happen...
Submitted by : tae-g
PokerStars Game #16700576719: Hold'em No Limit ($0.25/$0.50) - 2008/04/13 - 13:26:27 (ET)
Table 'Hamal II' 6-max Seat #5 is the button
Seat 1: TORBREM ($58.20 in chips)
Seat 2: asia2110 ($104.60 in chips)
Seat 3: SwissCantMis ($55.10 in chips)
Seat 4: ExumaKeys ($96.65 in chips)
Seat 5: MITCHOU0NE ($106.45 in chips)
Seat 6: VasileAlex ($61.70 in chips)
VasileAlex: posts small blind $0.25
TORBREM: posts big blind $0.50
Showdown ExumaKeys : shows (a straight, Nine to King)
MITCHOU0NE: mucks hand
ExumaKeys collected $193.55 from pot
Summary Total pot $196.55 | Rake $3
Board
Seat 1: TORBREM (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 2: asia2110 folded on the Flop
Seat 3: SwissCantMis folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: ExumaKeys showed and won ($193.55) with a straight, Nine to King
Seat 5: MITCHOU0NE (button) mucked
Seat 6: VasileAlex (small blind) folded before Flop
So I've been grinding for six hours straight now to be down a buyin,I mean this is so damn ridic!Its sunday and it seems although I try I can't find the damn fish.
They're probably playing 6max so im off there tee-hee.
Waiting for the sunday mill qualifier and sunday 100k,I seriously need to take down something big today.
again a super ugly session.
1,5 K hands - 200$ / 4 buy ins)
Ofc , i missplayed a few hands which probably cost me aroudn -70$
rest i lost like 130$ to insane ugly stuff.
Its really lol , cause in the last days i really either run +15bb/100 every session
or -15bb/100 the other day T_T
Sad but i think i have to take a few days break again since i must figure out wtf is wrong there.
For the most part today , simply my monster draws didnt hit and my strong made hands got outdrawn.
I had like 20 big draws this session on the flop that were like 40% chance to win
FD + 2 overcards FD+ Gutshot OESD + backdor FD mid pair + FD FD+ OESD etc.
i simply never ever hit one that made me win a pot the whole session.
this costed me the most money today.
Other than that i realized that it seems i didnt even have a chance to win any money from the beginning.
I had only 1 big pot won in 1,4 K hands >-<
All my made hands got raped by the board river cards.
all my 1 pair hands got massive action from 10/8/2 nitz ...
and i didnt flop any monsters either the whole session.
I made 2 sets in 1,4 K hands and both only took the flop.
2 times i hit my flush i run into higher flush.
I maybe should start to make a stop-loss session mark of 2 buy ins.
Really seems , that if i start the session bad -> i will run bad till i quit the session.
During current Hold'em 1on1 session you were dealt 5934 hands and saw flop:
- 1034 out of 2967 times while in big blind (34%)
- 896 out of 2967 times while in small blind (30%)
- 0 out of 0 times in other positions (0%)
- a total of 1930 out of 5934 (32%)
Pots won at showdown - 332 of 657 (50%)
Pots won without showdown - 2954
Bellagio: Event #5 - Final Table Zoom Zoom!!!by JonnyCosMo, April 13
About freakin time, I've played a total of 5 events this week, and went zero for 4 in the first 4 events I played which was really discouraging along with the epic fail of a bubble expierence in my $2,000 event. Anyways, today things finally went my way. Woke up this morning to play the $2,500 event and found that there were over 230 players entered which made for a sweet prize pool. To make things better, instead of paying out 27 like they usually do for these size fields, they decided to pay out 18, making the bottom pay-out x2 your buyin for once, and making it a pretty top-heavy pay-out. Got a godly table draw with no one I knew and a bunch of old guys that played like absolute fish for my starting table. Scott "BigRiskky" Clements was then moved to my table but looked pretty card dead for the most part. The first 4 hours I showed down exactly one hand, and that was a forced showdown where Psyduck was short stack and shoved on my blinds and I woke up with 77 and snap called and held vs his A2.
I was then moved to the most nightmare table ever. Two seats to my left was my boy Blair Hinkle (mig.com's roommate) who just lucksacked a stack of like 75,000+ at 200/400 blinds. To his left is Gigabet, and to the left of that is JC Tran. Gigabet played pretty tight/solid for the most part, and as expected JC Tran was playing an insane amount of pots. It was actually interesting watching him, caz there were clear spots were whatever he was doing was just totally retarded spewing. But then there were spots where it was just fucking sick pwnage. He is a really weird player. Anyways, I played pretty tight for the most part while being at that table, then as luck would have it, I was moved over to another table which happened to be the easiest table ever. I was hovering around 20,000, and built it up to 50,000 right before dinner break at this new table just by raising every single hand for 20 mins. I come back from dinner break and it was just sick bubble ownage after that. We went from 28 players left to 21 really fast, and during that time my stack went from 50,000 to 120,000 without showdown. My table had 6 complete super tard tight nits, and one REALLY fucking good young kid named Dan who apparently plays the highest live cash games around. When I didn't raise, Dan raised, and Dan didn't raise I raised. It was a pretty cute trade off, but something had to be done about his raising so I tried to get the upper hand with some 3 bets on his opening raises. He proceeds to get into a 3 & 4 betting war with me and it was at this point I realized this kid was definitly not going to have my shit.
Then it happened... With 20 players left, some nit opens utg, and Dan flat calls in middle position. The flop comes Q-7-4, the money goes in, Dan shows 77 and I'm like thinking: 'wtf sickest life ever caz now he's going to have a fucking massive stack and and be able to do some fearless annilation of the bubble'. But NOPE! UTG tables QQ for top set, and the most mega cooler I've ever seen. ROFL!!! Dan loses half his stack and is stuck around 40,000. This gives me a little upper hand as he was more careful of his opening raises now that he couldnt 4 bet bluff me and that my 3 bets clearly committed me to calling a shove. With 20 players left, Dan had chipped back up to about 70,000 and then I proceeded to run like fucking god as someone from the other table busted leaving us with 19, and they decided to move Dan from my table to the other table leaving me with 6 complete retard nits. I zoom zoom my stack up to 140,000 before the bubble burst. Once again, I redraw the easy table, with Roy Winston being the only other person I recognized. Dan was also at my new table but was pretty crippled after his AA got cracked by Roy's flopped flush. This table was a breeze compared to the other table which had Danny Wong, Gigabet, JC Tran, and Bakes. Roy Winston made it clear that he wasnt going to have my shit either so I played a pretty tight/solid game and cruised to the final table.
Tomorrow's final table starts at 3:00pm, the blinds are 2k/4k with a 500 ante for 15 minutes, then the blinds increase to 3k/6k with a 1k ante. I'm 4th in chips with 156,000. Roy Winston is the chip leader with 250k+, JC Tran has 200k, Gigabet has 190k, everyone else left has under 100k. Tomorrow is going to be very interesting indeed... lets see what these live pros are made of. Key to tournament poker success: Fuck getting cards, Run good with table draws and pwn the donkeys.
And on a small side note, I came up $7,500 at 10/20 NL yesterday. Up close to $15k in cash games on the trip after playing a little over 15 hours total. Live poker is so easy
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Finally I get coolered when I call out of the bb with QTdd and the flop comes Q-9-9, I check he c-bets from the button and I check-raise an amount leaving enough behind where it looked like I could get shoved off the hand. He shoves, and I snap call caz I felt like I induced the shove given how we were playing and bam he happens to have AQ which was so sick! Finally I squeeze all-in with JTs for my last 12bbs and Gigabet calls with QJo and holds. Out in 3rd place for $58,890. Such a sick life 
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