Honestly its not really on...other than poker and peoples, I haven't done a whole lot. Again, this is what I expect of my time at home during the summer and I couldn't be more content with it, so all is well on this end....except for school. I got my motor skill development course grade back (KNES370) and I got an 84.9%. Usually this would be pretty standard for me, except that in this class, an 85+ is an A. LOVELY. NO ROUNDING THIS TIME, NO EXCEPTIONS, NO DICE. This 1/10th of a point is costing me almost 1 full GPA point because I did not take a lot of credits this semester, so its really a killer the way this class played out. Theres nothing I can do as this is a result of last minute course grading changes by the professor and I'm shit outta luck. Meh. I run bad at life I guess.
Poker (AC Trip report): My friend and fraternity brother Chuck had a room comped at Caesar's palace in Atlantic City last night, so my roomate and I went up with him for the night. ATLANTIC CITY RULES, even though the games were a bit off while we were there.
The first time we sat was at Caesars. All of us were put at the same 1/2 table, and all I can say about this table is....wow. Every player at the table was penetratingly obviously bad at poker in various ways. The highlights were a drunk guy and an old guy, the drunk guy who wouldn't shut up, who would call huge bets and fold with little money behind later in the hand, and the old guy who made random sized bets, often over betting the pot by 10x and never folding preflop.
Specifically, the old guy and the drunk guy got into it in a pot where the old guy check/called a flop bet, announced a dark check, and then fired 55 dollars on an Ace turn card. The drunk guy flips out, the dealer never heard the dark check announced, and the floor was called over for a 10 minute dispute of the events before the bet was ruled legal (honestly, obviously the dark check must stand should the floor person confirm that it was said, but since theres no way for him to know for sure and the money was in the pot, it was the only sensible ruling in my opinion). The drunk guy timed out with 2 floor people towering over him ,and from then on basically the table took turns calling time on the drunk guy because of how ridiculous his slowing of the game was.
The only interesting pot I played in this game was when i raised a bunch of limpers on the button with 88. The drunk and old guy called (yes I know, theres a trend) and the flop came KQJ. though the old guy didnt often fold the flop, he had at certain points, and since both of their preflop calling ranges were so ridiculously wide, I decided to try and take down this already-medium-sized pot on the flop. I fired 35ish and the old guy called. This basically told me nothing except that he didnt have 43o maybe. The turn was a 4 and we both checked to another 4 on the river. We again checked and I showed my 88. He looked at his cards twice and mucked. As I was raking in the pot someone said that he mentioned he had A4o. I'm not entirely sure why he would muck trips but obviously the pot was mine at this point and I finished this game +50 even though for the most part I was completely card dead and watching the antics of the table instead of playing poker.
After dinner we headed to the Taj and I sat 1/2 while Chuck played a 35+12 mtt (I know, I cant comprehend the rake either) and Aaron (Manchild) played 2/5. Aaron had a look of death on his face the entire time so his session didnt go optimally I guess. Mine for the most part did not either but I was fortunate enough to take down three key pots in this game that gave me a reasonably nice session.
First, I raised a limper with ATdd. He called directly in front of me and we took a flop of KQJ heads up. Shipit. I was check/raised (holla) and called the raise. The turn was a 7d giving me what I like to call the NUTNUT. He lead 50 and I set him in for not even 100 more in a pot of over 100 already and he thought a while and folded. No matter what he had his play was obviously horrendous but I'm pretty surprised he didnt call given the action and the board texture. He was also CERTAINLY not capable of folding TPTK or better but was also semi weak so I'm kind of surprised I missed out on the last chunk of his stack but oh well.
The next hand I limped A5cc in MP, got called by a young kid directly behind me and took a flop of 3 middle straight cards (I dont remember specifically) with two clubs. I led and he raised 10 to 35. I called and the turn put out another club. I checked and he jammed. I called and he showed the T6cc for a lower flush. I didnt even realize he had the 9c as outs for a straight flush but he missed his 1 outer and i took down a decent sized pot even though he wasnt sitting with a full buy in at the start of the hand.
Finally, against a young Russian guy, for the third or fourth time of the session he limp/called a preflop raise of mine. I had AJo and we took the flop HU. The flop came ace high with 2 low hearts (I had no heart). As he had done before he check/called the flop and the turn brought a heart. We both checked and the river put out a 4th heart. He led 35 and with a read of what I thought to be a great bluffing spot for him I made it 80 to go and he folded. In the end I finished the trip +200 after about 6-7 hours of play. The next casino I play in will probably be in Las Vegas so I'm feeling good about that. Thats about it for now, thanks for reading.
-Alex
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Saturday, May 26, 2007
An update!
I went on a last minute beach trip this week for a few days with some high school friends....definitely part of a balanced summer kick-off. I'm not gonna lie, we basically just drank the entire time, but seeing everyone and hanging out together after months of barely being able to keep in touch with them because of things happening at school...crucial. Great trip overall, and a big thanks to my Goldy for putting us all up and being such an awesome host (and thanks to his parents for trusting us enough to not burn down the place).
With all of that done, I got back to school last night and my roomate aaron (manchild on 2p2) had people over to drink and hang out. Not being able to turn down a fridge fully stocked with beer...yes, I think I've been drinking for 4 or 5 days now. We wound up at the bar but last night was by far the most ridiculous Ive gotten this week. I think it involved car bombs and rum at one point, but I'm still alive to tell the tale. Alex one, alcohol 0.
Other than that, looking forward to seeing everyone else I haven't seen. I plan to just continue the awesomeness that has ensued since school let out until I head out west.
Poker:
I've decided to just continue with sit and gos online until I either reach my money goals pre-vegas or have a yearning desire to play more online cash in the next few weeks. Despite the fact that SNGs are rigged, they get me to focus more than I generally do (leak that I'm fixing steadily) and the swings are much more manageable especially since I have an easier time playing deeper bank-rolled in tournaments.
I only managed to get in 250ish sit and gos in the 3 days I got to play for the PokerStars double VPP promotion. The first 2 days I was running hot and ended up at about a 33% ROI and was about to break a 1K 15 tabling 16 dollar turbo SNGs after only a few hours of work. On the third day I lost a bit but still would up with a 21% ROI over the small sample and still made more than I would have 6 or 8 tabling the 60 dollar games.
I'm also going to continue to put in some time at the live 1/2 games locally and continue to "condition"/pwn before Vegas. Though I was not all that happy with the way I played at my last live session, I still have yet to be a loser at any one live 1/2 game (at the games Ive played more than once, meaning when I stopped going to the game I had won money overall). Thats about all for now, thanks for reading.
-Alex
With all of that done, I got back to school last night and my roomate aaron (manchild on 2p2) had people over to drink and hang out. Not being able to turn down a fridge fully stocked with beer...yes, I think I've been drinking for 4 or 5 days now. We wound up at the bar but last night was by far the most ridiculous Ive gotten this week. I think it involved car bombs and rum at one point, but I'm still alive to tell the tale. Alex one, alcohol 0.
Other than that, looking forward to seeing everyone else I haven't seen. I plan to just continue the awesomeness that has ensued since school let out until I head out west.
Poker:
I've decided to just continue with sit and gos online until I either reach my money goals pre-vegas or have a yearning desire to play more online cash in the next few weeks. Despite the fact that SNGs are rigged, they get me to focus more than I generally do (leak that I'm fixing steadily) and the swings are much more manageable especially since I have an easier time playing deeper bank-rolled in tournaments.
I only managed to get in 250ish sit and gos in the 3 days I got to play for the PokerStars double VPP promotion. The first 2 days I was running hot and ended up at about a 33% ROI and was about to break a 1K 15 tabling 16 dollar turbo SNGs after only a few hours of work. On the third day I lost a bit but still would up with a 21% ROI over the small sample and still made more than I would have 6 or 8 tabling the 60 dollar games.
I'm also going to continue to put in some time at the live 1/2 games locally and continue to "condition"/pwn before Vegas. Though I was not all that happy with the way I played at my last live session, I still have yet to be a loser at any one live 1/2 game (at the games Ive played more than once, meaning when I stopped going to the game I had won money overall). Thats about all for now, thanks for reading.
-Alex
Monday, May 21, 2007
Back in the swing of things
Cuervo shots are the only way to take shots nowadays with me and my weak stomach for most liquor. We celebrated the downstairs-jews crew's graduation with some high quality liquor. It went well overall (no one died). Beyond that, nothing terribly exciting except that STEPH IS HOME FROM SPAIN. Awesome. I'll see her today (I feel like its sunday still but I'm pretty sure now that we have monday daylight I'm officially over "the line") so thats basically the highlight of the day. My good friend Andrew is also on a breakish from the Israeli army and he'll be coming back to the states basically until I head to vegas, so I'm really excited for the upcoming months in basically every way. I haven't felt this good about stuff in a long time and all i can say is...wow, how refreshing. Those are the highlights of my life right now, onto the grind:
Poker:
I'm finally not shipping my moniez to fish. It rules.
After my bad run at 6 max cash online, I decided to accumulate my double VPPs (VIP points on stars, double for their site anniversary promotion) the way I came up online...sit and goes. When i left 9 man tournaments I was 18 tabling the 27 turbos. Recently as sngs have gotten tougher I've heard that 27s basically = 60s nowadays and I didnt feel like more variance by playing higher after a long Sng break/a straining bankroll. I decided to 12-15 table the 16s since saturday, and I'll continue to do so at least until tuesday at midnight when double VPPs end. I'll reevaluate as I put in more time playing, but so far so good. I've run at about 35% ROI over my first couple hundred games. Today alone I made back more than half of my cash downswing that took place over the past couple of months between a hundred sngs and a few hours grinding live NL200.
Live 1/2 was soft as usual, but the short trip report (its 6am and as is obvious in my writing, I'm brain dead) is that things started off terribly. I didnt feel comfortable with my friend Tim (solid cash game player, 1 of the 4 degenerates living in this apartment come the fall) having position on me, but more significantly I just had to donate in small pots until I was stuck half a stack. I rebought and again found myself stuck about 90 bucks and feeling stupid when I couldnt reach showdown with a winner against awful players when the following hand turned my night around:
Sitting with about 220 an extremely LAG asian whom I have played a lot of live cash with (he was playing much more aggro than usual tonight) raised over a habitual weak/tight limper to 12. I reraised to 40 out of the SB with AKo and the weak/tight limper cold called my 3 bet. This was a little unnerving and I wasn't entirely sure what to make of his range at that moment. The villain open raiser jammed and had both of us covered behind. There was 100 in the middle when the action got back to me with the player behind. I'm tired, if you want to talk about any of this session in detail, IM me.......I took a solid 3 minutes to put my money in, and weak villain behind folded AKo while the asian LAG turned over two queens. ack! I run good, so the flop came AKx and I doubled up. I basically played aggro in a couple semi big pots, some with the nuts some with air and ended up 300 for 800+ day combined with my SNG performance. Great day, I'd love not to lose money tommorow, but regardless, I'm going to continue to grind hard and perhaps fall asleep as it is now 6:30am. Goodnight/goodmorning/good day and thanks for reading.
-Alex (AMT)
p.s- mad props to my roomate aaron (manchild) for a monster 3k day yesterday, coming in 5th in a 6max 100 dollar MTT with 450ish runners for 2kish and about a 1k day playing cash games. about a 4k day for our apartment...not too shabby.
Poker:
I'm finally not shipping my moniez to fish. It rules.
After my bad run at 6 max cash online, I decided to accumulate my double VPPs (VIP points on stars, double for their site anniversary promotion) the way I came up online...sit and goes. When i left 9 man tournaments I was 18 tabling the 27 turbos. Recently as sngs have gotten tougher I've heard that 27s basically = 60s nowadays and I didnt feel like more variance by playing higher after a long Sng break/a straining bankroll. I decided to 12-15 table the 16s since saturday, and I'll continue to do so at least until tuesday at midnight when double VPPs end. I'll reevaluate as I put in more time playing, but so far so good. I've run at about 35% ROI over my first couple hundred games. Today alone I made back more than half of my cash downswing that took place over the past couple of months between a hundred sngs and a few hours grinding live NL200.
Live 1/2 was soft as usual, but the short trip report (its 6am and as is obvious in my writing, I'm brain dead) is that things started off terribly. I didnt feel comfortable with my friend Tim (solid cash game player, 1 of the 4 degenerates living in this apartment come the fall) having position on me, but more significantly I just had to donate in small pots until I was stuck half a stack. I rebought and again found myself stuck about 90 bucks and feeling stupid when I couldnt reach showdown with a winner against awful players when the following hand turned my night around:
Sitting with about 220 an extremely LAG asian whom I have played a lot of live cash with (he was playing much more aggro than usual tonight) raised over a habitual weak/tight limper to 12. I reraised to 40 out of the SB with AKo and the weak/tight limper cold called my 3 bet. This was a little unnerving and I wasn't entirely sure what to make of his range at that moment. The villain open raiser jammed and had both of us covered behind. There was 100 in the middle when the action got back to me with the player behind. I'm tired, if you want to talk about any of this session in detail, IM me.......I took a solid 3 minutes to put my money in, and weak villain behind folded AKo while the asian LAG turned over two queens. ack! I run good, so the flop came AKx and I doubled up. I basically played aggro in a couple semi big pots, some with the nuts some with air and ended up 300 for 800+ day combined with my SNG performance. Great day, I'd love not to lose money tommorow, but regardless, I'm going to continue to grind hard and perhaps fall asleep as it is now 6:30am. Goodnight/goodmorning/good day and thanks for reading.
-Alex (AMT)
p.s- mad props to my roomate aaron (manchild) for a monster 3k day yesterday, coming in 5th in a 6max 100 dollar MTT with 450ish runners for 2kish and about a 1k day playing cash games. about a 4k day for our apartment...not too shabby.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
hmmmm
Life stuff:
First day back after school/exams have been done with. I took my anatomy exam at 8am (and by "took" I mean showed up, filled out the multiple choice part of it, wrote an angry note to my TA, and bounced), and then basically came back here and did nothing. It felt nice to be a waste with no academic responsibility for the time being. We'll see what comes of it...
Poker:
A couple of hours later I finally worked up the energy to play poker for a while. Much to my dismay, the most recent downswing continues. I only played 300ish hands today because I started late, but the only big pot that I played had me getting it all in out of the SB with an OESFD (open ended straight flush draw) vs the buttons J7s (top and bottom pair). I did not improve and ended the day down almost 2 buy ins. Typical day, everything was standard but when its the 512512878 "typical day" in a row, it gets a bit frustrating. I just can't seem to get any help from the deck right now in any regard. It seems everyone around me runs well when I'm losing. Such is life.
Beyond the whining, I'm going to try and put in some time live over the next few weeks before I head to vegas. I did well in my only recent live full ring cash game outing, and the tables are great, so we'll see what comes of that. If I keep facing what I've been in the middle of for months online, it'll probably be back to sit and gos for me for a while...*shudder*. Wish me luck.
Thanks for reading,
Alex
First day back after school/exams have been done with. I took my anatomy exam at 8am (and by "took" I mean showed up, filled out the multiple choice part of it, wrote an angry note to my TA, and bounced), and then basically came back here and did nothing. It felt nice to be a waste with no academic responsibility for the time being. We'll see what comes of it...
Poker:
A couple of hours later I finally worked up the energy to play poker for a while. Much to my dismay, the most recent downswing continues. I only played 300ish hands today because I started late, but the only big pot that I played had me getting it all in out of the SB with an OESFD (open ended straight flush draw) vs the buttons J7s (top and bottom pair). I did not improve and ended the day down almost 2 buy ins. Typical day, everything was standard but when its the 512512878 "typical day" in a row, it gets a bit frustrating. I just can't seem to get any help from the deck right now in any regard. It seems everyone around me runs well when I'm losing. Such is life.
Beyond the whining, I'm going to try and put in some time live over the next few weeks before I head to vegas. I did well in my only recent live full ring cash game outing, and the tables are great, so we'll see what comes of that. If I keep facing what I've been in the middle of for months online, it'll probably be back to sit and gos for me for a while...*shudder*. Wish me luck.
Thanks for reading,
Alex
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
First post
Ok so I finally got this blog set up. Once I decided to head to vegas for the world series for a month I figured it would be worth while to keep track of my playing and activities on here. Kind of a personal blog in that way, but anyone who wants to see what the life of a degenerate college student/poker player is like is of course welcome along for the ride. For random craziness during my Las Vegas trip, I will direct you to http://sihwb.blogspot.com/. Bengiec set up that blog without telling me so I said I'd post on both. I leave the 20th so I'm looking forward to that.
Beyond that, on this blog I'm going to keep the general stuff to [hopefully] interesting things. In my life, outside of poker thats basically drinking and running around in my underwear...so really this is going to have a lot of poker stuff, and then other random other stuff. If interesting hands come up I will probably post them here and look for some discussion/if people just want to take a look. I haven't yet decided if I want to share my actual results throughout my schedule of playing full-time. I've always been a self-conscious person to an extent, and that has trailed into poker in that way. It might force me to plug certain minor leaks in my game that are rooted in some of my mentalities....we'll see.
Finally, through writing my first entry, I've decided the blog will continue with my first day back at the tables/after the death trap that is school is finally over, which is basically sometime tommorow (thurs) through the weekend. Stay tuned, maybe it'll get more interesting....
Thanks for reading,
Alex
P.S- I couldn't think of a good blog title, I'm tired and cranky and my brain is mostly shut off.... so be creative.
Beyond that, on this blog I'm going to keep the general stuff to [hopefully] interesting things. In my life, outside of poker thats basically drinking and running around in my underwear...so really this is going to have a lot of poker stuff, and then other random other stuff. If interesting hands come up I will probably post them here and look for some discussion/if people just want to take a look. I haven't yet decided if I want to share my actual results throughout my schedule of playing full-time. I've always been a self-conscious person to an extent, and that has trailed into poker in that way. It might force me to plug certain minor leaks in my game that are rooted in some of my mentalities....we'll see.
Finally, through writing my first entry, I've decided the blog will continue with my first day back at the tables/after the death trap that is school is finally over, which is basically sometime tommorow (thurs) through the weekend. Stay tuned, maybe it'll get more interesting....
Thanks for reading,
Alex
P.S- I couldn't think of a good blog title, I'm tired and cranky and my brain is mostly shut off.... so be creative.
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