Monday, August 09, 2010

L.A. Misery

I'm home now and finally after many delays ready to give a synopsis on my 6 tournaments at the Bike.

The first was a $335 re-entry tournament. There were four "day 1s" for this event and if you played day 1A and went broke you could try again on day 1B, 1C, or 1D. I ended up playing on day 1D and on that day alone with had almost 600 entrants. In total I think there were 1,500 or so paid entries and a first place prize of $130,000!

We started with 8,000 and I ran my starting stack all the way up to 40,000 before I had two hands go against me. On the first I got a little frisky and it didn't work out. The blinds were 500/1,000 with a 200 ante and I was in the big blind. We took the flop 4 way and it came down A 2 8. After 3 checks the last player to act bet 4,000. I thought there was a fair chance this was total bullshit and I felt like he was a player who could fold a hand as good as a weak ace so I made it 11,000 to go with total air. Before my chips were out of my hand he was all in for 25,000. I folded and he rolled over a set of deuces.

Some time later I was down to about 18,000 chips and the blinds were 800/1,600. Again there were three callers in front of me and I was in the big blind. With the antes there was about 9,000 in the pot and I thought there was very little chance I get called so I moved all in with 34s. Shockingly the second preflop limper had JJ and I was out. I finished about 100th of 600ish needing to get to the top 28 to make day 2.

The equity of those 40,000 chips was $1,500, but I couldn't turn that equity into cash.

The next event was $225 shootout. The structure was pretty fast and I got TT when the big blind had AA. Not much to do there, but go broke. Interestingly I'm 99% sure the guy who busted me was Bill Fagerbakke who played "Dauber" on the TV show Coach.

Later that same day I played $275 NLH with $50 bounties. 10 minutes in I made a set vs top pair and doubled up (I just missed the bounty leaving my opponent with 500 chips). Later in the tournament I picked up one bounty when I busted a short stack, but never really got anything going.

The next day should have been a good one for me. At 1 pm was 6 handed no limit and then at 6 pm was HORSE. Again we started with 8,000 chips, I played great and ran my stack up to 37,000 at my peak.

Then I had three hands go against me. On the first I had QQ and lost about 15K chips to KK. On the second I raised with JJ, got called by Q6 suited, all the money went in on the flop (he flopped a flush draw) and the river was a queen. Finally I had 77, raised under the gun, got called by the player to my left who had A2, and the flop came three aces. Annoying!

The equity of those 37,000 chips was $925, but I couldn't turn that equity into cash.

The HORSE tournament was the hardest loss to take. We started with 160 players and I finished 23rd. We started this one with 5,000 chips and at a time when the average stack was 18,000 I had a chance to scoop a pot that was 70,000 chips. We were playing stud hi-lo and I made an ace high flush and a 7 5 3 2 A low, but the guy who lost his mind with trips and no low made a full house and I got half.

That still put me with 35,000 chips and twice average, but I couldn't get the job done. On my final hand I made trips (playing Stud), got it all in by 6th street and at that point my opponent had a straight draw and a flush draw. I think I was about a 3 to 1 favorite to win a 35,000 chip pot and be above average very close to the money, but he hit and I missed.

Between the 6-max and trhe HORSE I played from 1 in the afternoon to 3 in the morning with no more than a 10 minute break every 2 hours. It was not easy, and it sucked to put in all that effort and lose $500. I did get to spend a few hours playing against Laker's owner Jerry Buss who is an avid poker player and is clearly playing because he enjoys it, not for the money.

The equity of the 35,000 chips I had at my best in the HORSE was $1,400, but I couldn't turn that equity into cash.

My final tournament was another $335 re-entry. Again I doubled my starting stack of 8,000 to 16,000, but didn't get the breaks I needed when the stakes got big.

The total damage for my trip was -$1,620.

I have to say I'd give the people who ran the tournament a C-. Every time a floorman was called to make a decision they seemed like an idiot who took forever to grasp the situation. Also once I saw a decision that was flat out wrong.

Another thing I didn't like was the juice. I everyone one of these tournaments the juice was more than 10%. Then on top of that for an extra $10 (that went to the staff as a tip) you could get an extra 2,000 chips. So for $335 you could get 6,000 chips or for $345 you could get $8,000. What a fat pile of shit. If you're going to make the juice 15% and give some of it to the staff, fine, but don't make it seem like there is a choice to be made.

Actually, not fine. 15% juice is fucking ridiculous. If you can't run a $300 tournament unless you make it 15% juice, make it a $500 tournament with 10% juice.

I also managed to drop $3,000 playing online while I was there and bricked in a $535 FTOPS HORSE event (with 7% juice - just for comparison). I was not a profitable week.

Thursday, August 05, 2010

A Comment Response

Someone put a nasty comment on one of my posts asking how I could be down $33,000 on pokerstars and still call myself a pro poker player. While I'm not going to post the comment I am going to address the issue.

It's true that if you look up Acesedai on pokertableratings.com it will show that since August 2008 when they started tracking me I'm a substantial loser in the game play. But that is a small part of the story. It also says that I've played 465,000 hands.

That many hands earned me about 700,000 VPPs. I was supernova for about half those hands and supernova elite for the other half so that's about 3,000,000 FPPs. Those FPPs are worth $48,000. Also pokerstars has milestone bonuses. I won't go through the specifics, but I made more than $25,000 in milestone bonuses during that stretch. Then there's the supernove elite year end bonus which was $30,000 in free tournament entries.

The long and short of it is I sacrificed profit in the games, played many games at a time and many hours to get all the FPPs and bonues. It's not glamorous, but it's money.

Let's not forget that I have accounts at 6 different poker websites and use them all.

Also this doesn't take into account the fat pile of money I made playing tournaments, during this stretch. All you have to do is read my blog and you can find out about the 20 wins I've had in my career of over $10,000.

Also none of the money I've made playing in person shows up in anyway
.
Look up Patrik Antonius and you'll find him losing 2.6 million on fulltilt, but he's one of the top 50 players in the world. As of a month ago Daniel Negranu was losing $300,000 on pokerstars and he is also one of the most famous and successful players in the world. No database takes everything into account.

So that is how I can be "down $33,000 on pokerstars" and call myself a poker pro.

Tuesday, August 03, 2010

L.A. Update Coming

I've been busy playing tournaments here in the L.A. area. I haven't been doing great, but I have been busy. I don't have anything planned for tomorrow so I'll be recaping all the action then.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Legends of Poker

I'm leaving tomorrow for a mix of vacation and poker in Southern California. The poker will be playing a half dozen tournaments in the "Legends of Poker" series at The Bicycle Casino.

Here is my schedule:

7/31 6 pm $335 "re-entry" NL hold'em
8/2 1 pm $225 NL hold'em shootout
8/2 6 pm $275 NL hold'em with $50 bounties
8/3 1 pm $225 NL hold'em 6 handed
8/3 6 pm $225 HORSE
8/4 6 pm $330 NL hold'em Deep stack
8/6 6 pm $335 "re-entry" NL hold'em
8/7 6 pm $335 "re-entry" NL hold'em

The re-entry tournaments are interesting. The first one on my schedule is actually day 1D of a massive tournament where if you bust out you can reenter. Day 1A was yesterday, 1B is today, and 1C is tomorrow. If you go broke on any of those days you can try again the next day. And if you go broke before a certain level you can try again the same day.

The last two tournaments on my schedule are the same (In fact they are days 1A and 1B). If I don't make it through day 1A, I'll try again on day 1B. Hopefully I won't have to fire too many bullets in these and can get into a tournament with a huge prize pool for not to much cash.

The other tournaments are pretty standard, but I'm looking forward to playing a field that should be almost all amateurs rather than the fields of all pros at the WSOP. I'm sure my online hourly rate is higher than my expected hourly rate in these tournaments, but they should be enjoyable and if nothing else I'm looking at this as a training exercise.

If I can find two deep cashes or one final table the series will be a solid success.

I'll be tweeting updates on every break so you can follow the action as it happens.

The FTOPS starts on August 4th so that will be intertwined with the LOP action, but I'll post more on that later.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

An Interesting Article

Apparently someone has succeeded in using "bots" - computer programs that make all the decisions - to beat some of the small stakes games on pokerstars. It looks like the jig is up now though. It also seems like they did a shitty job with the tactics based on some of the moves they had the bots make.

Here is the full story.

I talked to a guy in Vegas once who had created a bot and tried it out. He said he let it run for about 8 hours in three $.02/$.04 cent limit games. At the end it was ahead a total of about $30 which is 750 big bets! That would be $15,000 at $10/$20! He said they caught him the next day and closed his account.

I'm sure there are some other bots out there, but for the most part, I'm not worried about them getting the best of me. And even if I knew for 100% sure that there were lots of the most advanced bots constantly playing in the exact games I play, it wouldn't stop me from playing since I'm winning anyway.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Legends of Poker, FTOPS, and UBOC

August is going to be a busy month for me.

At the start of the month I'm going to spend a week in southern California with plans to play 7 or 8 tournaments in the "Legends of Poker" series at the Bicycle Casino. All of the tournaments are in the $225-$330 range so we're not talking life changing stakes, but there will still be some significant cash on the line . Also I'm looking forward to playing some live tournaments without the massive pressure of the WSOP.

Starting Aug 4th the 17th version of the Full Tilt Online Poker Series kicks off. Looking at the schedule there are 10 events that look playable to me with buy ins ranging from $216 to $640.

Finally starting on August 18th is the Ultimate Bet Online Championship. I'm likely to play another 9 or 10 events in this series with buy ins ranging from $162 to $1,050.

All of this tournament action will if nothing else lead to a boat load of blog posts in August. More details later.

Monday, July 12, 2010

A Drunken Final Table

When I came back from the WSOP I spent some time neglecting my cash games and instead playing multitable tournaments. In Vegas it took me 7 playing days to play 4 tournaments. But back at home base I could play 10 (or more) in a day with little difficulty. It was very hard to resist and I was salivating thinking about winning something outright or at least going deep.

But after a bunch of bricks I instead moved my focus back to cash games. There's nothing sexy about $15/$30 limit hold'em, but it pays the bills and that is always the primary goal for me.

In order to get my multitable fix a few time recently I found myself playing multitables recreationaly. Almost all of my playing is at my desktop with my 30 inch monitor and no distractions. It's serious business and requires maximum focus. When I say recreational I mean smaller stakes, in front of the TV on my laptop, with a beer or a glass of wine.

On Friday I spent the morning playing tennis and the early afternoon at a movie. I banged out about 500 hands of cash games in the late afternoon and even though I intended to play 2 or 3 times that much, I hit and ran when I found myself up $1,500.

That night seemed the perfect time for some recreational play. At 7:45 I jumped into a $33 with rebuys towards the end of the rebuy period on Absolute and shortly after I was in two $75 tournaments on Full Tilt and a $77 6-max NL on pokerstars. That is also when I started drinking.

When I first started playing online in 2004 it was not unusual for me to have a drink or two or three when I was playing. But it became perfectly clear in no time at all that it was affecting my results. I felt like I was making the same decisions, but clearly I wasn't. After this realization, I had a span of years in the middle of my career where I never had a drop of alcohol while I was playing.

While it's certainly not optimal, after a few million hands and a thousands of tournaments (ten of thousands if you count sit-n-go's), a few drinks doesn't throw me off like it used to. I guess I'd say it takes my "A' game out of play, but usually I'm still capable of my "B" game.

Fast forward a few hours into my story and I'm still in the the $33 with rebuys. We started with about 175 players and 18 spots paid. I made the money with more than twice an average stack.

This was the ultimate no fear situation. I was up $1,500 on the day in the cash games, I'd been drinking for 3 or 4 hours, and while 1st place was just over $4,500, 9th was less than $300. This was a situation where I was not fucking around. I was going for the top.

On the other hand my opponents went into full blown pussy mode. I was raising at least 50% of the hands that were folded to me and getting away with it. Soon I was in the tournament chip lead. If someone played a hand and didn't move all in, I was frequently reraising no matter what my cards looked like.

There really weren't many big hands to speak of, because on so many pots my cards didn't matter. From the time we made the money until the end I never had more than half my stack in the pot.

The biggest break I got was playing 3 handed when I called a massive all in with 99 and beat AQ. When we started heads up play I had 600,000 chips to my opponents 300,000. After 10 or 15 hands I knew it would take a massive run of bad luck to lose against this guy. He was clearly nervous and I quickly ground him down to under 200K. On the final hand I reraised him all in with KJ suited, he called with A5 and I made a flush.

Like I said 1st place was little over $4,500!

At the same time I was also in a $55 tournament that started at 9:00 with 236 players. I made the final table of that one too. The first tournament wrapped up at about 12:30, but this one lasted until 2 am. I can't say I recall many of the details, but I know I finished 3rd which paid about $1,200.

All together it was about a $7,000 day!

My WSOP 2023 Plans and Missions

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