Since my lost blog post many major things in life have changed. I’m not sure how much poker I’ll be playing in the near future so there may not be much reason to update.
Wedding
I got married to a beautiful woman on March 31. We spent 8 days honeymooning in Italy and 4 days in Prague. We started in Room and saw the sights then spent time in Tuscany and Genoa before flying out of Milan. The countryside was beautiful, I could definitely spend more time out there especially in warm weather. As for the crowded Italian cities, I’ll pass.
Dog
My dog of 11 or so year died, of all things she collapsed on our wedding day and died a few hours before the wedding. Impeccable timing. I had to leave her at the vet and she passed naturally shortly.
Poker
As most of you know stars and ftp stopped serving US customers after getting criminal charges lodged against them by the US DOJ. All US player funds are currently frozen by stars but they promise cashouts will be available within “several weeks.” Stars will most likely survive, FTP I’m not so sure. Hopefully this spurs regulated online poker in the US in the near future. In the meantime I’ve not been playing at all. I may load a small amount on one of the smaller sites still serving the US and try grinding it up.
Future
The last few weeks I’ve spent working on some remodeling projects in my house. I put in new floors and will work on getting back into good shape and lifting weights. It’s hard to predict the future but poker will probably not be a huge part of my life for a while. I’m going to find some new things to do in my spare time for a while and move forward for now, and hopefully poker will be back soon.
Take care all, and good luck.
Just got back from 3 days in Vegas that was pretty much non-stop poker.
On Friday I played a $2k Wynn Classic tournament. It got around 110 runners and paid 12. At first the field was very soft although you could spot a legend or 2 at every table. I chipped up from a starting stack of 15k to around 25k without showdown then played a couple of interesting hands.
First hand I raise 56o from the CO and Jon “pearljammer” Turner flats out of the blinds. Flop comes a decent Q45dd and he checks. I bet around 1/2 pot and he raises just a little over minimum. It’s actually not a great spot for me because there is not as much implied odds with the flush draw out but I elect to call. The turn comes a beautiful offsuit 7 and Jon bets 1/2 pot. To protect from the flush draws I put in around a 2/3 pot raise. He mutters to himself and tells they guy next to him that its a sick spot. He asks me I speak English and I just nod. He asks “American?” and I say in a probably terrible Russian accent “what is this you are asking me?” He sigh folds. Pretty hard to put him on a hand here, I would guess some kind of marginal Queen.
The second interesting hand I played was against David “Bakes” Baker. I open 93cc from mp2 and Bakes calls from the bb. Flop comes QQ9 which is a great flop for me and great flop to cbet (of course Bakes knows this as well). He checks and I bet 1/2 pot and he flats. I would expect him to not float air much OOP and to check/raise most his bluffs here so I am suspicious. The turn is a random low club giving me a flushdraw. Bakes checks and I check behind, which is somewhat debatable. A third club hits the river completing my flush, and Bakes bets out around 1/2 pot. I decide that as played he very rarely has a flush, and the vast majority of his range is made up of queens that a call a raise, that he would re-raise full houses but not a naked Queen, so I raise the river with intention to fold to a shove or re-raise. Bakes tank flats and I was pretty shocked to see KJcc for a higher flush. I’m not sure I like his call on the flop but he may have intended to make a play at the turn but picked up a lot of equity on the turn. He probably intended to check raise the turn after the club hit.
After that hand the blinds went up and I was stuck with a resteal stack for many hours after that. I won a flip with 55 vs AQ and then with 27 players left got moved to a table full of great online players. Literrally 8 online pros and 1 fish with a huge stack at the table. As the blinds went up I was one of the shortest stacks in the tournament. I shoved a few times without showdown but ended up getting short and shipped 88 into 99 to bust around 20th place.
After the tournament I played a few days of $1/$3NL and am really happy with my play. I was playing very lag and creative and ended up around $600. My buddy/stakee breckgoat was also playing cash and was up over $1k at $1/$3 in 1 night worth of action. The small stakes vegas cash games are incredibly soft and have a decent hourly rate if you are a good lag player.
In the online world I’ve been holding steady bankroll wise but haven’t been putting in much volume. I’ll be playing this Sunday but then am getting married next week and spending a few weeks honeymooning in Europe. So I’ll see you guys in mid-April.
I haven’t updated much because I’ve been doing generally terrible so far this year. I shot up $5k in the first few days but am now down around $5k, for my worst downswing ever. Unlike other big downswings I have had, this one is mostly from doing poorly at SNGs. It seems like every day I rack up $500-$1k loss in them. I am reviewing a lot of hand history and I am confident I am playing well. Luckily I have a great staking group behind me that is doing well so I don’t have to worry about going busto quite yet. You can see from this HEM screenshot that I am running terribly:
As you can see from HEM’s analysis of my hand history, my expectation from my play so far this year is a little over 1.2 million chips. In reality, I lost almost .9 million chips. When you consider I won 450k chips in a freeroll that is included in these statistics (which won a $1k homegame featuring Victor Ramdin), I actually lost around 1.4 million chips in real money tournaments. So my best guess is I’m running around 2 million chips below ev in the first month a half of the year. It’s no fun at all.
But, if you consider the sample size of tournaments I have played a run like this will happen once or twice. I am looking forward to it being over. The good thing about poker tournaments is when the heaters finally do hit, you can recover losses and get in the black quickly.
Good luck out there.
I pulled out a few wins in the last few days of the year to somewhat salvage 2010. Still wasn’t a great year, but pulled out decent profit. This was despite playing about twice the volume I played in 2009.
On close examination you can see exactly why I didn’t have a great year.
Below is a graph of all 2010 games with a buyin under $50:
Below is a graph of all 2010 games over $50
So basically I was down heaps at larger buyins over a small sample. Even if I had broken even at these games I would have had a much better year. So definitely work to do there next year.
At least I got back to breakeven. I got good volume in but did not run well at MTT’s until the last few days, when I won a small 5R and final tabled some turbo MTTS.
Team Lagtard is doing amazingly well, had 2 more graduations in November and have recruited a bunch of new grinders to being in December.
For the low introductory price of $100 per month, a maximum of 10 people will be able to participate in Team Lagtard’s weekly training SNG sessions in November. The sessions are almost always held at 7PM Central on Wednesday evening, last from 1 to 2 hours, and feature SNG hand history reviews by brad2002tj or top tier guest coaches. You never know who will be stopping by. This is the best SNG coaching value available.
If interested contact brad2002tj via AOL Instant Messenger.
Had a good first week of September and crossed 100k total profit as tracked by sharkscope.
Although 2010 is not going as well as I had hoped I am happy to hit this milestone.
August is turning out ok, having a good run the last few weeks and had a good Sunday.
I recruited many new lagtard team members, and they are already putting up good results. We will have over 10 members by the end of the week.
I have not been updating much, mainly because there is not anything good to report. I continue to more or less tread water and make only small gains despite good volume. I have made good money at SNG this year but am more or less bleeding money at MTT’s. My roll has taken a hit recently and I will need to focus on SNG more to replenish it. All I can do it continue to work hard and get better.
Here is a graph of 2010 year to date:
In other news, team lagtard is doing well and after 2 months the team of 3 is collectively up about $3k. One will be taking a shot at the $12’s soon and hopefully the others are not too far behind.
