On a heater

Last night I had my most profitable single day of my poker career, making $460 in a 5 hour session. It was probably also one of the softest tables I've ever played at. I got to the poker room around 4pm and sat down with a full buy in at the 200nl game. I started off on the right foot this time, flopping a set of Jacks and slow playing it until the river, where I check-raised a $17 bet. I made it $42 to go, got called by God knows what, and just like that I was off to a good start.

That same player rebuys for another $100 and a few hands later I bust him again when I flop top two pair in a 6-7-8 all heart flop. I bet something like $20 into a smallish pot, he raised all in, $50 on top and I called, hoping he was on a draw. He was, as he tabled Ah7x. The turn and river brick and I drag in another nice pot. Then THE SAME GUY rebuys again, tilts off some of his stack, and I bust him again with QQ vs. his A-10 all in preflop.

That's 2 times that I felted the same guy, all within my first hour at the table.

Then I lose a somewhat medium sized pot when I call down an opponent on every street with KJ on a King high board and he shows AK. I don't let it get to me though, and a few hands later I pick up pocket ducks, flop another set, and get value on every street, from a guy who was wearing a donkey hat that got a good laugh out of the whole poker room. (see above pic.)

The same donkey hat guy pays me off again when I river trip fours on a straddled pot.

I'm not going to lie, I was running like baby Jesus the entire night. I think I got dealt pocket Queens four times the entire session and they held up each time. I also won another sizable pot where I had JJ in the big blind. A player in early position raises to $11 and gets like 5 callers. It gets back to me and when I look down at JJ, I throw out a green ($25) chip and then announce "Make it $25 all day." The dealer announces my action but the player on the button who had called the $11, protests, and says I made my verbal bet after the green chip had touched the felt, thus making my very obvious intention to raise, a call. Whatever, I don't make too big a fuzz about it and throw $11 out and take the green chip back.

The flop comes Q-J-x and I fire out $35 with my set of Jacks. I get one caller and the turn is another Queen, giving me a full house. I make a tiny $25 bet, hoping to get raised by trip Queens, but my opponent just calls. The river is a blank and I try to figure out a good value bet amount into the $175 pot. I finally settle on $75 and my opponent insta-mucks. In hindsight I should have probably bet a little less, maybe $50 or so, but then again, either he has the Queen or he doesn't so I don't think it made much of a difference.

I won a few more smallish pots the rest of the night and cashed out around 9pm for $660 ($460 profit.) Like I said, I was a card rack the entire night, but I also think I played very well and was able to avoid marginal spots by tightening up and not getting too out of line.

Today I decided to hit up the casino again for a quick session before work. I got to the room at 2pm and had work at 4pm. Since I got there just as the tables were getting started, I was stuck in a game full of regs, not exactly what I wanted. I got stuck $100 pretty quickly after calling a bet with 2nd pair on a wrong read and playing a bit too lose. I was down to like $110 and decided to straddle for $4. Five players call the straddle and I look down at pocket sixes. I decide to make it $20 on top, and get one caller. The flop comes 9-5-2 all hearts. I double check to make sure I at least have the 6 of hearts, which I do, and decide to shove ~$85 into a $60 pot.

My opponent calls almost instantly and I figure I'm drawing pretty thin. To my surprise he turns over 10-2off with no heart. He says he put me on AK and thought his deuces were good. My pair of sixes hold up and I double up. A couple of orbits later I pick up AK in early position and raise to $8. I get 4 callers and we see an A-4-5 rainbow flop. I lead out for $20, a guy to my left raises to $50 and it folds back to me.He only has like another $50 behind so I decide to push and he insta calls with AJ. My AK holds once again, and I drag in a nice pot. I left the card room around 3:30 and cashed out for $359. A $159 profit in 1.5 hours. Not bad. Then it was time to go to work, to make half of that in 8 hours, lol.

Anyway, the win this afternoon extended my winning streak at the charity casino to 7, dating back to this past summer. I hope to make it 8 in a row tomorrow. I have the day off from work so I look forward to putting in a longish session.

Two Wins

What's up blog? I feel like the last few times I've written on here, the posts have been prefaced with an apology for not updating this in a long time. (Okay, I just checked my previous entries and this isn't entirely true, but I digress.)

The reason I haven't updated this shit is because I hadn't really been playing any poker at all. I think the last time I blogged, I was headed to a poker game at The Loft, and that was over two months ago. I ended up losing $50 in that session, but chalked it up as a win after being stuck almost 3 bills. I got most of my money back on the very last hand of the night with AQ against pocket 7s and another players unseen cards in a 3-way $250 pot.

Besides that, I haven't been doing much gambling this past couple of months except some regular action on the Mexican soccer league with this guy from work. We each pick a team we like each week (we alternate 1st picks) and then bet $20 on both games. We've been doing it for a few months now and usually end up washing since we both pick the top favorites obv.

Anyway, last week I got the itch to get back on the poker grind and headed to the charity casino. I put in a brutal 6.5 hour session that netted me +$59. That's after being up almost $300 at one point. I think my stack peaked at around $480 ( bought in for $200) but a couple of key pots sent me home a small winner. The first involved trying to use my tight image to try and pull an ill-timed bluff against the wrong guy. I picked up 7-3off on the straddle, flopped bottom pair and fired all the way. After my $50 bluff-bet got raised on the river, I insta-mucked and got up, disgusted with myself.

About 10 minutes after getting back to the table, I pick up QQ on the button. A few limps, then the cut-off raises to $8 and I repop to $20. Him and another player call and we see a K-Q-10 rainbow flop. 1st player checks and the original preflop raiser bets out something like $22. I re-raise to $72 with middle set, and the cut-off's flat call after tanking for a bit, has got me a little worried that AJ might have me hurting bad. We go heads up to a Jack on the turn, (board is now a rainbow K-Q-10-J) and the cutoff immeditly fires out a $100 stack. I hate my life at this point, along with my set of Queens. I tank for maybe 5 minutes, and one of the problems was that I couldn't just flat the $100, it was either push or fold. I kept putting my opponent on AJ, and so many other hands are in his range with his pre-flop raise that ultimately I decided there was no way I was ahead. I muck my ladies face up and my opponent shows JJ. I feel sick to my stomach and want to vomit.

I don't know if my opponent really thought JJ was good there or if he was just bluffing at the scariest turn card possible, but neverthless, the hand put me on mad tilt and I began to bleed chips left and right. I was down to my last two green chips ($50) when I said to myself "Self, you made a good laydown. 95% of the time you are going to be up against a straight. Time to nut up, shut up, and play some poker" So I went into what I like to call my ninja poker mode, which includes hoodie over head, iPod blasting Jay Z on full volume, and complete focus on every hand with no bullshit chit-chat or socializing with anyone at the table. Ninja poker mode was good to me as I grinded my stack back to $259, cashing out around 11PM.

The next day I was scheduled to work but I called in for someone to cover for me and headed to the poker room again. I got there at around 5pm, and there was no list for the 200nl game so I immediately got a seat. And I also immediately got two-outtered pretty ugly. About 6 hands into the session I pick up 10-5off in the BB and check my option. I almost have to double check my cards when the flop comes 10-10-5. With five of us in the pot, it checks around. The turn is a 6, bringing two diamonds to the board. Gets checked to me and I bet $10 hoping not to scare away a flush draw. I get called in two spots and the river is a 7d bringing the flush to the board. I check, hoping to induce a bet from a made flush. The 2nd player to act bets out $22. Then the 3rd player tries to raise, but string bets and is only allowed to call the $22. At this point, I'm hoping they've both made their flush and I'll get paid off with my full house. I raise $53 more, making it $75 all day. One player tanks for about a minute and begrudgingly mucks his cards. The other player insta calls and I proudly announce full house, thinking how nice it's going to be to start off the session being up a cool hundo.

Oops! Not quite. My opponent flips over his cards and tables 10-6 for a better full house. I get that sick illy feeling that only a two outter can produce. I have no idea why he didn't raise me on the river though. Only hand that beats him is 10-7. He missed out on the rest of my stack, haha.

Anyway, that pot got me off to a rocky start and I couldn't get anything going for a while. I kept raising with big hands and then whiffing the board and having to check fold. Once again I found myself short stacked with about $35, when I decided it was time to go into Ninja Poker mode again. So on goes the hoodie and the headphones, and my luck immediatly starts to change.

I pick up Aces and win a smallish straddled pot. Then I doubled up with AK on a K high flop against KJ. A few hands later I pick up KK in the small blind, and make it $16 to go. I get 5 callers and the flop comes 2-3-4 with two diamonds.. I'm first to act and bet out $50 not wanting to fuck around, with such a draw-heavy board.. The guy sitting next to me, this young kid who is somwhat of a decent player tanks for a bit and then calls. Folds around to the button who goes all in for $67 total. I call the extra $17 as does the other kid. The turn is an offsuit 5. I hate my Kings at this point, but the pot is just to big so I throw in my last $45 or so hoping neither player has an Ace. The young kid tanks and finally makes a crying call asking if I've made my straight. Since me and the button are all in, we all turn our cards up, and I find out I'm up against the young kid's pocket 8s and the button's 9d-10d for a flush draw. The river blanks and I drag in a nice pot.

Then some weird shit happens a the table. The player in seat 2 comes back from smoking a cigarette or something and asks the dealer what the fuck happened to his stack of chips. At first the whole table thinks he's kidding, but it soon becomes apparent that he isn't. He says he left around a $50 stack on the table and now it was gone. I'm sitting in seat 4 so the dealer starts asking everyone on our side of the table if we saw what happened. I honestly didn't see shit. I definitely saw the guy get up from the table but I don't recall whether he left his chips or not. Just a few minutes before the guy had come back to his seat, the player in seat number 3, a white dude in his mid 20s, had gotten up to cash out. The table starts theorizing that maybe he accidentally grabbed the guy's stack when he was racking his chips. I honestly doubt this is what happened, but whatever.

The floor is called, and then the floor calls the guy who runs the entire charity casino. He has a long talk a few feet away from the table with the guy who lost his chips. I'm not sure what is said, but I guess the guy didn't want to fucking deal with this shit over $50 so he reaches into his wallet, and hands the guy a crisp Grant note.

The whole thing is forgtotten and we continue to play poker. I went on a bit of a heater and started dragging in small pot after small pot. The last big pot I won on the night was when I turned a straight with pocket 5s and got paid off by a terrible player who made Aces up. I cashed out for $430 (+$230 profit) around 10pm.

Today is Tuesday and I'm planning to head to the card room again around 2pm. Hopefully I can keep the winning streak going, and I'll try to post another update tonight.

Peace out homies and good luck at the tables!

P.S.- I've jumped on this twitter craze, so check out my tweets on the left hand side of the blog. I don't tweet too regularly, mostly when I'm at the poker table.

The Comeback Kid

I know I haven't been keeping up with the online grind updates like I said I would but blogging about winning $10 or losing $20 just seems kinda boring. But I thought I'd post a quick blog since I'm about to head out for some live poker.

I haven't played live since I got my ass skinned about a month ago. Dropped $600 that session, the most I'd ever lost in a single day. But I'm back at it today looking to make some mad bank. I'm playing at this underground game called "The Loft" (because it's on the 2nd floor of a loft building, ldo.)

Not sure how soft the game is going to be but I'm packing two buy ins for the $200NL game. I'm probably going to nit it up a little bit and not try to pull off any crazy moves or anything. But who knows, the game plan always depends on the kind of players at your table so I've gotta see what I'm up against first.

If I have a good session I'll probably hit up the tables again tomorrow night at another game off Irving Park. Not a lot of charity casino events near me in the next few days so if I can get a bankroll going I'll probably do most of my grinding at these two underground games which are actually pretty well run.

Anyway, going to go hit the shower and then I'm off to the game.

Good luck at the tables!

Good Start

Off to a good start grinding 10NL. I didn't play Thursday night cause I got home and wasn't really in the mood to play. But I put in another session last night and ended up a litte over 2.5 buy ins. (+$26.70) in 215 hands.

A couple of hands from the session:

-$23 pot with 88

-Trying to figure out if I misplayed this.

Session graph:

I'm about to leave for work in like an hour but I'm going to play a $6.60 sng and try to cash in that. And then I'll probably play another 10nl session tonight.

Good luck at the tables! Peace.

edit: Bubbled the fucking SnG obv.

1st Day of Grinding

Yesterday marked the beginning of my online grind with my new plan as outlined in my previous post. Tuesday night I was able to get $200 on Stars using one of the All Access Visa gift cards. I highly recommend these if you're having trouble depositing any amount of money on Stars. They're super hassle free and I'm going to see if I can use one of these to deposit on my sports betting account soon.

Anyway, I installed PokerTracker3 on my laptop and then spent 45minutes trying to figure out why my hands were not importing into the database only to find out my dumbass did not have PokerStars configured to save my hands to my hard drive. So after fixing all that I finally started playing.

I lost a buy-in @ 10nl pretty retartedly so I decided to play a $6.60 SnG instead. That didn't go to well either as I busted out pretty earlish when I flopped top two against a straight. I went back to the cash tables where I continued to get anally raped. Then another SnG where I bubbled pretty brutally. I was chip leader with 3 players left (top 2 get paid) when I suffered this massive cooler that was reminicent of the legendary Negreanu v. Hansen hand on High Stakes Poker. Sure that was a $600,000 pot and this was a $6 sng but still, lol. Losing to quads with a full house is never fun.

I still had some chips left after that cooler but ended up busting in this hand. Got rivered nasty and GG me. I went back to the 10nl tables where I tilted away two buy ins and finally decided to stop playing cause I was getting super tilty. At this point I was already down almost $50. (3.5 buy ins at 10nl and 2 $6.60 sngs) All of a sudden my $200 bankroll was down to $150.

I chilled for a while and went to get something to eat. I came back home and just planned to watch the America v. San Luis soccer game that I had $50 on. But since I was no longer steaming I decided to get back on the laptop and fired up another 10nl table. This time things went ALOT better. I played for about 2 hours while watching the game and ended the session up 5.5 buy ins cashing out for $64.55 total. I not only ran well but was playing an extremely effective tight aggresive game, imo. Part of this I think was because I was watching the game at the same time so I was really only playing premium hands and not really getting too out of line. Here's some of the bigger pots I won:

-$30 pot with Aces.

-Getting there with an open-ender.

-Aces again.

Anyway the session helped recoup my losses from earlier in the day which felt pretty damn good. I celebrated my robusto day by smoking a bowl of kush and watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia the rest of the night.

Graphs!

I'm beginning to love PokerTracker3 more and more each time I use it. It's such a powerful program but the thing is you have to know how to use it properly. It gives you a ton of stats about your session but that's all meaningless unless you actually take the time to study those stats and find leaks in your game, which is what I plan to do. I also love the pretty graphs that it generates! Haha.

This is the 5.5 buy in Session of 230 hands:


And this is the graph for the entire day:

Was down $35 at one point and ended the day up $20. 564 hands in total. Not a lot of hands per say, but I'm not quite ready to start multi-tabling.

I plan to put in a short session after work tonight. Hopefully I can run decent and make that bankroll grow!

New Plan

I've decided to get back on the online poker grind. For a couple of reasons, one of them being I just don't have the time to play live as much as I'd like but I still want to keep growing as a poker player.

Now, being honest with myself, I know that I'm probably a lifetime losing player online. But I blame this more on the fact that I just have never really practiced "proper" bankroll management. I'll usually go on a nice winning streak, then start losing and play higher and higher. Evidence of this are the $50 HU matches I started playing after a few losing streaks in the $6 sngs a few months ago. That's something that I will try to avoid this time around.

The plan is to throw $200 on Stars sometime in the next couple of days and then start grinding 6max 10NL and 6max single table $6.60 SnGs. $200 really is a bit of a dangerous bankroll to start with, considering I'm playing 6max poker for the most part, which usually requires a larger bankroll, but I think I'm okay for now. If I start off on a huge downswing I'll just replenish the bankroll with another deposit.

My original plan for getting back on the virtual felt was to wait til I saved up around $800, then deposit that and start grinding 25NL exclusively. But I think I'll try to work my way up instead. I actually don't think I'm ready for 25NL as the games on Stars aren't as soft as they once were so I'd like to see me beat 10NL over a decent sample before I move up. I'll also be purchasing PokerTracker3 along the way to help me track results and put some graphs up on the blog.

Hopefully I can make the deposit tomorrow and begin the grind!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I won $40 in a couple of soccer games over the weekend off a guy from work. I had $20 on Mexico v. Costa Rica and $20 on the U.S. v. Honduras. I was going to double down on the Mexico v. U.S. game on Sunday liking the U.S. but backed out which was a smart decision as Mexico raped them 5-0.

I've got another bet on tomorrow's America v. San Luis game. I've got $50 on San Luis and the only reason I made the bet was because I was getting even money since I'm betting with another guy from work. The actual line for the game is San Luis -150 so I'm getting a bit of equity there. Hopefully San Luis comes away with the win.

My Biggest Loss

I remember when I used to blog it up almost every day here on the Crooked Link. These days it's looking more like a couple of posts per month. So again, I do apologize for that. But like I said in my previous post, my job schedule has been kinda goofy the past few weeks. But now that my guy Z. quit and I'm working more days, it'll probably mean more time to blog since I seem to do most of my blogging from work.

So what have I been up to the past two weeks? Oh I don't know, just having the worst poker session of my life is all. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. First let's backtrack a bit to where I left of in my previous post (7/6/09). I decided to take that week off from Gigio's and try to put in some solid time on the tables. I had a solid session on the 8th, cashing out for $475 (a +$275 profit). It was kind of a short session, playing around 4 hours but I felt good about my game and was also running extremely well. In fact I won the my biggest pot that day like this:

5 limpers before me and I limp in the small blind with Ac6c. Big blind checked and 7 of us saw a flop of 9c-5-c-2x.

I check, as does the big blind and a short stack in early position goes all in for his last $12. The rest of the table and their pet Chiguagua proceed to call the $12 including myself. Then the big blind decides to go all in for another $100 on top. It folds back around to me and I contemplate for a bit before making the call, getting almost exactly 2-1 on my money. (There was $198 in the pot, and it cost me $100 more to call). I know at worst I'm a 3 to 1 dog here, but knowing I'd been running good lately helped me make the call.

As it turns out, I was in better shape than I thought, as my opponent turned over Q-9o for top pair and a look of disgust when he sees I called him with a flush draw. A beautiful club hits the turn and I have my opponent drawing dead. I dragged in the $300 pot as I'm serenated by the losing player's bitching about how unlucky he is...

Anyway aside from that pot, I just picked up a couple small ones here and there leading to the +$275 for the day.

I definietly loved the venue where that charity casino was held. It's probably the nicest place I've played live poker and a super nice contrast to the usual dirty smelly venues the charity casino usually hosts their events.

It was held in a country club out in Bensenville and I decided to snap a couple of pictures for the blog.

Outside the Country Club's banquet hall.

They had about 8 cash tables running.

Waiting for a table, with my $200 buy in.


Nice view.

Grinding out my stack.

Final cash out: $475

Anyway I left feeling REAL good that day because I'd managed to build a nice little $800 bankroll with the profits of the last 3 sessions (+$415 on the 2nd, +$150 on the 6th and +$275 on the 8th.)

Of course this all went to shit, and my ship came crashing down the very next day. I realize $800 can't even be considered a bankroll for playing 200NL but just knowing that I built up that $800 on the tables had me feeling pretty invincible. In fact $800 in just 3 sessions of poker had me wondering why the hell I still had a real job. I soon found the answer to that question.

So the next day (the 9th) I decide to hit up the 200NL tables at a private game. I got there around 9:30pm and by 10'oclock I was already down one buy in ($200). My second buy in didn't go to well either as I ran my top pair into a set and then lost a couple of smallish bullshit pots. I considered quitting at this time but said fuck it and reloaded once again. Bad mistake. I tilted off that buy in with stupid donkey plays like re-raising out of position with marginal hands and getting myself into some tough spots. I finally got all my money in with what I thought was a live flush draw only to realize I was drawing completly dead when my opponent called with a bigger flush draw.

I hung around for a while, trying to absorb the fact that I'd just lost $600 in about 2 hours. The guy who runs the game told me I could play on credit which I didn't want to do. I still had another $200 in my pocket as well, but I decided to just call it a night and left.

Now, for having just lost $600 (the most amount of money I've lost in a single day) I think I took it pretty well. I didn't let my frustration show as I left the game, and really the most upset I got was on the drive home. But once I got home I told myself I wasn't going to let the loss faze me, and instead I rolled up a blunt and chilled the rest of the night watching TV.

I haven't been back to the tables since. I used up the rest of my "bankroll" to go out with friends and shit, and since I took that week off from work, I haven't had any money to try and rebuild. I could still hit up that private game if I wanted to and play on credit since I'm a regular at that game, but I'd rather play with my own money.

Hopefully maybe by next week I'll have a couple of buy ins saved up and I'll go back to get my revenge. Til then I'm still going to try and update this blog as often as I can, just rambling about random bullshit.

Shit, this post is getting a little too long so I'm going to cut it off right here.

Peace and good luck at the tables!

Quad Aces

I got to the game last night around 9:15 and bought in for $200. We were playing 7 handed so I decided I'd loosen up just a little bit but that did not work out all too well. Within in the first 30 minutes I was down $100 after missing my draws and firing big river bluffs. Then I got pocket Aces, decided to get cute and limped in early position, only to have the rest of the table and their pet iguanas limp behind. With a very coordinated board I decided to dump my Aces on the turn after calling a bet and a raise on the flop, all the while kicking myself for not raising preflop.

So as I'm grinding a stack of around $60-$80 I get Aces again and this time put in a pre-flop raise of $8. I get three callers and the flop comes A-A-2. Nice! I can't bring myself to bet my quads on the flop or the turn which is a 4. When the river 5 hits, a player bets out $8 and I mini-raise to $16. A third player calls and the original bettor folds. I drag in the smallish $64 pot when I realize that if this game was taking place at Mike's place (the place that got robbed a week ago) I would have been able to lock up a nice $100 bonus that is handed out at the end of the night for the highest hand made using your two hole cards. It would have been pretty tough to beat quad Aces.

But anyway as I'm grinding along I keep fluctuating between $80-$150, until finally I hit my much sought after heater withinin the span of about 5 hands. I get Queens and get paid off, very next hand I get Queens again, and make a gutsy call on the river to drag in another big pot, then right after that I get pocket Tens, flop top set and get value on every street. A couple of hands later I call a shortstacks all in with AQ. He as pocket Fives and I catch up with an Ace on the turn.

So my heater has my stack up to about $375, which I was very pleased with given that I was down $150 at one point. As the game draws to a close I decide to protect my win and don't get involved in many big pots. I lost a couple smallish pots along the way but still ended up cashing out for $350. A solid $150 profit that has me on a winning streak that I hope will continue.

I ended up getting home around 2:30am last night and fell asleep around 4am. I woke up around 11:30am today and the plan is to first go take out an ID because I've been too lazy to replace the one I lost a while ago. Then grab something to eat, come back home to shower and hit up the Charity Casino in Elmhurst to keep that winning streak alive.

Summer Is Here

Damn, I've been away for a while, lol. I've actually got a good excuse though, besides being a lazy bastard. I started working at my job full time about a month and a half ago because this other guy quit. So my schedule was pretty busy with work from 9am-5pm Monday thru Saturday. I also could not bring my laptop when I was working mornings because we were always busy as hell, so I just never had any chance to update the blog.

Well, today was my last day working full time at Gigio's. I've decided to take the rest of the week off and then start working the phones again part time starting next week.

So what have I been up to this past month and a half? Not much really. A little bit of poker and a little bit of sports bets.

Let's begin with the latter.

I've been collecting on sports bets from co-workers almost every week the past month, mostly on Confederation Cup soccer games. I've been picking mostly heavy favorites and laying decent odds. I did get burned badly on a game when Mexico lost to I think El Salvador and I was laying 4 to 1 on that game. I think I ended up losing like $200 but other than that I've been collecting on small bets between $10-$50 every week. I haven't yet deposited any money on my online sportsbook yet, but I'll probably throw some money there a little later this summer.

I've also played poker a couple of times with decent results. My last session at the charity casino was about a month ago. I think I hit the $200NL game for about a buy in. Then I played at this home game in Wrigleyville, where I ended up losing $100 for the night after being up a little bit, losing a big pot with Jacks and then going on tilt.

Interesting story about this game at Wrigleyville, it's not really a "home game" per say. It's just a raked game that this guy ran out of his place a couple of times a week. That is until the game got robbed at gunpoint about a week ago. The game is set up in a small 3rd story apartment, and apparently what happened was, this guy Spencer, a regular at the game whom I've played with before, went out to the fire escape to have a smoke and got confronted by two big dudes with bandanas over their faces. They put a gun to his head, walked him back into the apartment and they proceeded to rob everyone at the game, inlcuding taking everyone's cellphones/mp3 players and shit.

Obviously the guy running the game was pretty shook up so he's no longer running it. Instead he gave his player list to a couple of friends who are going to run the game out of a much safer location. I went to the game at this new location on Thursday and it went pretty well. They have a much nicer set up with room for about 5 tables, although only one was running since it was the first night. And they have this off-duty cop running security in the room to make the players feel alot safer.

Anyway I played on Thursday from about 9pm-1am and ended the night up a nice $415, cashing out for $615 total. I got hit in the face with the deck pretty hard though, getting Aces like 4 times, Kings once and hitting my draws when I needed to. I was actually sitting with around $800 at one point but lost a key pot with Aces after I should have been able to get away from it on the river but I paid off a value bet like a donkey anyway.

I also played another interesting $400 pot where we got it all in on the turn with me holding an over pair to the board and my opponent (a decent player who played a couple of WSOP events this year) holding top pair with an open ended straight draw. I didn't wanna take a bad beat here with one card to come, for a $400 pot, so I proposed to run the river twice. My opponent somehow bricked both times and I dragged in a nice pot.

Anyway, that's really all I've been up to this past few weeks. Like I said earlier, I've taken the rest of the week off work so I plan on hitting the poker tables hard, starting tonight. I'm about to leave for a game in a few minutes and if things go well, I'll be back at it tomorrow again.

I'll try to write an entry when I get back, or if not then maybe tomorrow.

Wish me luck!

Swingy Session Part 2

Okay, so I'm back to finish updating on my 8 hour session from Tuesday, as well as the home game I attended last night.

So in my last post I had just finished writing about the heart-breaking cold deck I suffered against Mr. Korea. I actually posted that hand in the strategy forum on FCP to get a little bit more insight and criticism on how I played it. Check out the thread here.

Opinions ranged from it being an insta-shove on the river to being able to find a fold on the flop (completely disagree with this).

The problem in the hand arises from the fact that I know Korea is a straight forward player, so for him to check-call the flop for $15 is a bit out of line with only a gut-shot. I don't think my call on the river was in any way terrible as Korea ends up showing a set a lot more than 9-10, in my opinion.

But anyway, on to the rest of the session. I was still up $150 after that hand but tilt got the best of me and I slowly started bleeding chips again. I make stupid plays like calling a player's all in after I bet a flop of K-10-x with Q-J. Villain surprisingly turns over A-10 saying something about how he KNEW I had Q-J and decided to go with his read. Of course I brick the turn and river and lose a big pot.

Then a short while later I have Q-Q UTG and make it $10 to go. I get 1 caller, a shortstack on the button with like $50 left behind. Flop comes down something like Q-J-7 rainbow giving me the absolute nuts with top set. I decide to make a small $10 bet into the pot and he insta-ships his stack all-in. I immediately call turning over my hand and he says "Aw shit, I thought you were making a play at me. I'm pretty sure I'm drawing dead."

As he says this, he still hasn't turned over his cards, and is holding them over the muck about to fold them. Mind you, if his cards are to touch the muck his hand is dead and I win regardless of the turn and river. But the dealer deals the turn and river in lighting-fast speed. A King and then a 10. The button immediately double checks his cards and says "Oh shit, I think I have a straight" and sure enough he flips over a retarded A-3off. Nice hand sir.

He runner-runner'd me but as bad a beat as it was, it did not hurt as much as it should have because he was so short stacked, so I only lost like $60 on the hand.

I had however, dwindled my stack to around $250 after having almost $500 in front of me a couple of hours earlier. I rely my frustration to Z via text:

10:31 PM: I am heartbroken Dr. Z. Im up a measly $47 bucks. This hurts...

He in turn does not offer much consolation with his response:

Zhagui: Lol,oh the swings, how I miss those.Weren't u up like a cool 100 a couple hours ago.

F*ck you Dr. Z.

Haha, anyway so I'm feeling like shit and ready to leave but Z has agreed to pick me up after he gets off work at midnight. So I have about an hour and a half to make something happen, and make something happen I did. In all honesty though, I have no idea how I was able to make a comeback in the last hour of play because I didn't really play any big pots. I did win a nice one when I limped with J-3, flopped two pair and got paid off by what was probably A-J, but other than that I guess I just built my stack with small pots here and there. Finally, when the table was about to break I had a nice $434 stack in front of me.

Final numbers for the session:

Buy in: $200
Cash out: $434
Profit: $234

Hours Played: 8.25
Hourly Rate: $28.36/hr

Sustainable? I think not! LOL.

So that was Tuesdays session after which I was completely exhausted both physically and mentally. It's definitely one of the longer sessions I've ever put in and I tip my hat to the guys who do this day in and day out grinding it out everyday at the poker table. The phrase Poker is a Hard Way to Make an Easy Living never rang so true to my ears.

On Wednesday I woke up around 10am to say goodbye to my mom who left for Houston for a couple of days. Seems my grandpa is pretty ill, but hopefully all goes well with him. Anyway, I went out to eat, came home and bummed around then left for a home game I got invited to out on the west side. Now, the way I came upon this specific game was a little bit shady, and I didn't know a single person who was going to be there, so I was a little skeptical about the whole thing.

I sent my guy Z the following text:
7:11 PM: Ok dude im about to go to this home game i found on craigslist. In case this is a set up, the address is xxxx xxxxx, aight, lol.

His response:
7:13 PM: Lol alright bro don't get raped tell me how it goes later.

Somehow I don't think he was referring to getting raped at the poker table. After all, we all know about the dangers of craigslist....but I digress.

So I got to the game which wasn't actually a home game at all. It was being held in this commercial office space that apparently one of the guys organizing the thing owns. It's a pretty nice set up with about 4 poker tables and a fridge full of all you can drink beer, wine and soda. We would also ended up ordering a couple of pizzas later in the night.

A couple of snapshots I took before people started arriving:



But anyway, I'm one of the first people there and we chill around till we have enough people to get a game going. We start off six handed 1/2NL , and I buy in for $200. Everyone else at the table buys in for around $50-$80 except for the guy on my left, a hilarious dude named Gabriel who also buys in for $200. As the only threat to my stack I've made up my mind not to get involved in any big pots with Gabriel unless I have a monster hand, and instead try to focus on bullying the shorter stacks.

All that goes out the window when I'm holding K-Q on a J-10-2 board. The pot is still pretty small at this point since there was no pre-flop raising. We check check the turn which is a blank and then I hit the nut straight on the river with an Ace and no possible flushes out there. I bet $10 into the still small pot, and it's music to my ears when Gabriel announces raise and goes $25 on top of my $10. I cut out my chips, announce re-raise and make it $75 all day, double checking my cards one more time just to make sure I do indeed have the absolute nuts. Gabriel announces all in and at this point I'm a little upset at the realization that we're going to end up chopping the $400 pot because we both have KQ. I insta-call and Gabriel does indeed turn over K-Q as well. Yikes, why couldn't he have a set there, just one time! Haha.

So the game is pretty dull for the next hour or so with not a lot of action, yet somehow I'm managing to lose a bunch of small pots by playing way to loose, doing random shit like calling with Q-8 out of position and check-folding most flops. Then a bit of drama ensues when a guy named Rick makes it $7 to go from middle position and another dude named Albert re-pops to $27. Rick tanks and calls the $20 while Albert announces that he is all in for his last $50 blind before the flop, despite the fact it it's an out of turn bet. The flop comes 4-4-2 and since Albert's all in bet was binding despite it being out of turn, Rick insta-calls the $50 and flips over.....4-2 offsuite, lol!

The turn and river don't seem to help what Albert says was pocket Aces and he doesn't take the beat well as he storms off to get a drink. When he comes back he rebuys for another $50 and over the next 30 minutes we have to listen to Albert's bitching about what a bad call Rick made pre-flop with the 4-2. Not only that but he continues to berate Rick's plays until I guess Rick has had enough and tells the dealer to cash him out. Keep in mind Rick is the big winner thus far, up about $200, including a nice pot he won off me when I paid him of with a weak Ace on an uncoordinated board and he woke up with a two pair.

So as Rick is cashing out Albert starts talking. " I'd sure like to leave a winner too Rick. You know if you leave right now, every single person at this table is going to be pissed off at you. Don't you have any idea what ethics are?" Rick in turn responds "That has nothing to do with it Al. You just can't handle a bad beat and I'm tired of your bitching bro. I didn't even want to come tonight but Gabe asked me to." As he walks out Gabe informs me that Al and Rick are actually pretty good friends.

Alas, the game continues 5 handed for a few more minutes until the pizza arrives and we take a short break. When play resumes I add another $100 to my stack because I've lost about $150 of my original buy in. So I'm now in for $300 when a bunch of other dudes arrive so we finally have a full game going. My bad run continues though as I just can't seem to get anything going despite having some ultra-fish in the game including this guy named Richard who has been sipping on wine the whole night and is falling asleep at the table.

My impatience gets the best of me and when I look down at A-Koff in early position I raise it up to $12. A player in late position 3bets to around $30 and I push my remaining stack. The other guy, who seems to be somewhat of a decent player calls nonchalantly although he does not turn over his cards. The board runs out all small cards and I figure his over pair is good. It is indeed as he flips over pocket Jacks and drags in a monster pot leaving me with around $30 left.

It's around 1 am at this point and I figure I'll lose the $30 and head home, having gotten my ass kicked. I dwindle the $30 down to about $7 or $8 bucks and go all in blind UTG with several callers. The board runs out something like Q-10-6-3-2 and when I finally look at my cards I see that my 10-5 is the best hand. Then I manage to crack a dude's Aces with 6-2 in another blind all in and before I know it I'm back to $100.

I announce to the table that this will be my last round, and limp with K-7 of spades on the button. 4 of us see a flop of K-Q-6. Player in early position bets $15 and gets 2 callers including myself. The turn is a 7, giving me two pair, and the previous raiser now goes all in for around $50. Folds to me and I make the call hoping I haven't run into a set. Nope, the other guy flips over Q-6 and when he doesn't improve on the river I drag in yet another big pot putting me down only around $75 for the night.

I play the last few hands of the round losing around $25 in some straddled pots but finally call it a night being down $102, which actually feels like a win after having been stuck close to $300 and grinding my last $7 all the way up to $225.

I ended up getting home around 3 am again exhausted from what was a longish 6 hour session.

Swingy Session Part 1

Okay finally some good content I can throw on this blog. As I said in my last post, I hadn't really played any poker in a while so there was really nothing much to write about. But I decided to hit up the casino last night and had quite the swingy session. I played some monster pots, took some massive beats but ended the night in the green.

As I made my way to the casino I was fully intending on playing either 2/4 or 3/6 limit. Needless to say I've never played limit poker in my life, but I've been wanting to learn the game for a long time now and I figured I'd give it a shot. Unfortunately when I got there, there wasn't a single limit table running. So I decided to sit in my usual 200NL game instead.

Before that though, I had a bit of a problem at the cage. I didn't have an ID with me because the charity casino rarely cards. In fact I can only remember being carded like two times there in my life. But the guy refused to sell me chips with no ID. I decided to go talk to this floorguy T.C. and see if he could help me out. T.C. went and talked with the guy at the cage and told him I was a fairly regular player there despite the fact that I haven't played there in months, so that was cool of him.

So I finally sit down with a rack of $200 at the NL table around 3:40pm. I'm pretty much card dead for the first hour at the table, getting dealt like K3 and J2 every other hand. I'm slowly bleeding chips and then lose a biggish pot with Ad 10d after chasing a flush draw, not getting there and giving up on the river. So after that hand I'm steaming a bit and decide to gamble it up and raise with 5-2 of spades UTG. I make it $12 to go and get 4 callers to the flop. Flop comes A-Q-5 and I figure I can represent an Ace here with my pre-flop raise. I lead out for $22 and get one caller, this older lady who kept reminding me of Mac's mom from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Anyway, the the turn brings a second Ace on the board and I decide to check. Mrs. Mac's Mom checks behind and I'm now fairly certain she has a Queen and I need to bet big on the river if I want to get her off it. Mind you I still only have a pair of fives at this point. Luckily the river brings another five, giving me Fives full of Aces. Now instead of betting big I try to figure out an amount to bet that she can call with a Queen. I settle on $25 and she thinks it over for a bit and finally calls. She seems a little shocked when I turn over the 5-2 of spades and mucks KQ face up.

I then send this text to my guy Z who is asking about my session.

4:50 PM: Bro i just won a sick $140 pot wid the good old 5-2 of spades.

So that pot brings me up to about even and then I go on a mini heater raking in a few smallish pots in a row. So I'm sitting with around ~$240 when I get pocket Jacks in MP. A couple of limpers before me and I pop it up to $10. Then the small blind, this gangsta looking black dude re-pops me to $30. Folds back to me and I have a bit of a decision to make. I can 4-bet and commit myself to the hand there, or wait to see what the flop brings. I decide to smooth call and we go HU to a flop of 2-2-2. Gangstalicious thinks it over for a bit and then throws two green chips out ($50). I go into the tank a bit, asking myself if he would do this with anything other than AA, KK or QQ. Tens seem possible and I say fuck it, and push all in. He calls rather quickly which makes my heart sink thinking I've run into Queens most definitely. But surprisingly he flips over AK of clubs and I sweat the turn and river and can't help myself but to fist pump in celebration when he goes brick brick. I drag in what's probably one of the bigger pots I've won in my life and send the following text:

6:33 PM: Just won a $445 pot bro! Now netting $245 for the day.

Shortly thereafter though, I suffer a heart breaker. I'll tell it as best I can remember.

UTG and MP limp in before me and I look down at 4-5 of diamonds on the button and decide to limp in as well. The SB folds and the BB checks. The flop comes down 6-7-J rainbow. BB checks, UTG who I have a bit of history with (more on that in a bit) checks and MP, a player who just sat down, bets out $15. I call the $15 on the button with my open-ender, BB folds and UTG calls the $15 as well. The turn is an 8, completing my straight. UTG checks, MP again bets $15 and I raise it to $45 on the button. To my surprise they both call my raise and we see a blank river, something like a deuce of hearts.

So the board now reads 6h-7c-Jd-8c-2h. To my surprise, UTG leads out for $70. Now, UTG is this older Korean guy in his 60s who I've played a lot with in the past. He's a straight forward ABC player but he puts me on tilt every time he seats at my table just because he acts like the biggest douche bag in the world. Every single decision the dealer makes, he wants confirmation from the floor which slows the game down. He berates the dealers for absolutely no reason and is just an all around jerk. A few hands earlier I asked if he could trade me some of his white ($1) chips for some of my red ($5) so I could pay the blinds, and he refused, mumbling something about how he likes his stack to look bigger with the white chips or something, so the dealer had to call a chip runner to bring me some whites.

Quick snap shot of Mr. Korea I managed to take with my phone for the purposes of this blog.

But ANYWAY, back to the hand. Mr. Korea (is this racist? I don't really think so, I just can't come up with a more clever nickname for him) leads for $70 on the river and MP tanks for about two minutes before making a crying call. Now I have a huge decision with what is effectively the second nuts. The only possible/reasonable hand that beats me at this point is 9-10. (9-5 beats me as well but makes no sense what so ever.)

So I make the call as well, not even remotely considering a raise, and of course Korea turns over the 9-10. As soon as he did, I wanted to grab my cards and throw them in his face. I just could not believe I had gotten cold decked in such a sick pot against the one person at the table I'd hate to give my chips to the most. But I kept my cool, said nice hand and went for a short walk, sending the following text:

7:11 PM: Major tilt dude. Just lost a $350 pot wid the 2nd nuts. Woulda been up $500 for the night man. still up 150 tho.

I actually have to cut this post short for now because I gotta get ready for a home game I'm headed to tonight. It's another 200NL game and hopefully I can create a bit of a win streak for myself. Anyway I'll try to update the info for the rest of yesterday's session as well as the results for tonight. Peace!

Drunken Soccer Bet

Geez, more than a month since I updated this thing. Let's see, I think the last post I made was right after blowing up my roll on Stars. I started talking about giving up poker, how I can't handle the bad beats, blah blah blah. Lol, basically all the shit that goes through your mind after a bad session.

But of course I haven't given up poker, I just haven't been playing much lately which is the reason this blog's been neglected the past few weeks. I've been wanting to hit up the casino but work has got me tied up. Everytime they have an event close by, I usually have to work.

For example today I wanted to go donk around in the $20+$5 Early Bird crapshoot at 2pm but I had to be at work by 4pm. And it's not like I can head over there after work because since its a charity casino, they're only allowed to run the events til midnight. Blah, can't wait to turn 21 so I can f*cking drive to the Horseshoe at 3 in the morning if I feel like it.

Hopefully I can put in a good session sometime soon though. I think my guy Zhagui is going to be working again with me during the summer so that'll definietly make my schedule more flexible.
I know those donkey's at RCG are just dying to give me their money. :-)

Anyway, I've also cooled off a bit with the sports betting as well. Haven't reloaded my Bookmaker account but I have been making small $10-$20 bets on soccer matches with the dudes from work.

Actually, about 3 weeks ago I was at this party where a bunch of the guys from work were at. Needless to say I was quite wasted and towards the end of the night I found myself in the washroom of the banquet hall, discussing soccer with a driver from work who I never talk to. (Alcohol will do that to you, I suppose.)

Anyway, that day my team Chivas had played against and beaten his team Club America 1-0, so the shit talking began and we somehow ended up making a $100 bet on who would accumulate the most points in the last 3 games of the season between Chivas and America.

Now even as drunk as I was (I'd been drinking non-stop since I got there around 7pm and it was already 1ish am) I knew I was making a bad bet because of the remaining 3 games for both teams, Chivas had 2 away games and 1 at home while America had 2 at home and 1 away. Home field advantage is HUGE in soccer, but despite all this I still went ahead with the bet.

Well in the 1st of the last three games for both teams, I caught an early break when America lost 2-1 at home against Tecos and Chivas managed a 1-1 draw in an away game against Pumas. So I was up 1 point on the bet but then last week America managed a miraculous last minute win against Monterrey while Chivas couldn't take advantage of their home turf and again only managed a 0-0 draw against Puebla.

So it looks like the bet is going to come down to the last game of the season for both teams. America has accumulated 3 points to Chivas' 2. It's not looking good for me since America will be facing a weak Necaxa team at home while Chivas will be visiting an inspired Indios squad. I need America to lose and then Chivas to draw just to push the bet. In a more unrealistic scenario I could still win the bet if America draws and Chivas pulls off the away win.

Meh, anything can happen I guess. Definitely going to be sweating the games big time this weekend.

I'm Done

I'm pretty sure I'm done with Poker.

What a shitty past couple of days. Just cooler after cooler and bad beat after bad beat. Just CAN NOT catch a fucking break.

I've dropped $150 since my lost post although the last $50 was in a HU match that I played out of pure tilt. Surprise surprise I got coolered there as well. Got it all in on a K-7-10 flop with K-7 and villain woke up with K-10.

Yea yea I know $150 is NOTHING. Shit I drop twice that at the live sessions without breaking a sweat. But when you lose it bad beat after bad beat, it just stings a lot more.

Anyway, I'm not sure what the point of this post it. I'm not really sure if I'm done with poker or not, it's just been a shitty weekend. And I've got some real life family shit going on that's obviously more important than anything.

I still have $100 left on Stars. I'm thinking of just withdrawing it but I'm really not in the right frame of mind right now to make that decision. I'll do that tomorrow when I'm not so tilted. Alright that's all for now. I'll probably post tomorrow to see what I plan on doing.

A Victory!

I ended up losing the $90 soccer parlay last weekend when Lazio got destroyed 3-0. The other two teams in the parlay were AC Milan and Barcelona. They both won quite easily. So now I'm officially broke on my sports betting account which sucks. I don't think I'm going to reload for a while though. At least not until I'm able to deposit at least $300 so I can start making fewer picks but for higher money.

I've been too lazy to go back through my bets history to update my record but I'll get to it eventually...

Anyway on to the good stuff. Poker! So I was down to $12 on my Stars account and like $4 on Full Tilt and figured I would have to be reloading soon unless I was able to go deep in something. Well, deep I went! I was able to take down a Stars $4.40 180man sng on Tuesday night for a sweet $216. I ran like god for most of the way and had some disgusting suck outs. I was rivering 3 outters left and right like nobody's buisness! Haha, anyway there was a key pot with like 50 players left where I basically got it all in with K-9 in a 6-7-8 board against a player who already had the straight (4-5). I rivered the 10 and then immediately after that I got it all in with 99 and got called by QQ and some other random hand. This time I turned a set and tripled up giving me a huge chip lead that I held for quite some time.

I lost a pot right around the final table bubble so I came into the final nine with 4th in chips but I quickly regained the chip lead after picking up pocket 10s early on and getting value from what was probably 7-7 or 8-8.

Anyway the final table was easy sailing until we were down to 3. We played 3 handed for probably close to 30 minutes as the chip lead kept changing back and forth. Finally I was able to knock out a guy who overplayed Kings up after I made a straight on the turn. The heads up battle started with me having a slight chip lead over my opponent.

We actually discussed just chopping the tourney for $180 each, but we weren't even sure if Stars allows you to chop SnGs so we said screw it and just played it out. Heads Up lasted for like 15 minutes. I realized I was getting to passive and my opponent was building a chip lead so I decided to start playing back. We finally ended up getting it all in with my AJ vs. his KJ. I miracolously held and shipped the tourney.

Winning it felt great. I can't remember the last time I took down anything bigger then a couple of tables. And I'm happy about the way I played the final table with the chip lead. Being aggresive but not retarded.

I know it's only one tourney, and one result, but I think I really want to start concentrating on multi table tourneys and abandon the cash games for a while. I'll also continue to grind the $6.60 6 max single tables, which have always been kind to me (took one down last night) and I'll probably donk around in the 1c/2c game on Full Tilt when the crave for cash games arises.

So thus far my online roll consists of $252.14. Not bad considering two days ago it sat at $16, haha.

I'm Not Dead

Just in case you were wondering, I'm not dead or anything. A couple of friends reminded be that I haven't updated this sh*t in a while so I thought I'd check back in.

What have I been up to the last month or so? Nothing really. Same old. Losing in poker and losing in sports betting, haha.

Let's start off with tha pokah.

I got staked in the Stars 5k Guaranteed about 3 weeks ago. Out of 1016 players I ended up busting in 15th for a measly $76. First place money was $4,500. I wanted to final table that bitch sooooo badly, so when I busted I was pretty bummed out. I thought I was finally going to reach that elusive 4 digit score I've been seeking but no dice.

And the way I went out was kinda shitty too because I'd been shortstacking it for a while but got myself in position to have a decent stack at the final table but I somehow got it all in with KQ against KJ and lost.

Anyway I also got crushed at the 200NL live game a couple of weeks ago. I went ice cold and got coolered a couple of times. One hand at the beggining of the session got me pretty steamy and I think it affected how I played the rest of the way.

With 5 limpers before me I look down at 9d6h on the button and decide to limp in as well. SB completes and BB checks.

Flop comes 9c-6c-3h. Early position bets $10. Middle position calls and I raise it to $45 on the button with my two pair. EP insta-calls and MP tanks for a bit but calls as well. EP and MP both have ~$35 and ~$50 left and I've got them both easily covered so I've made up my mind to push on the turn if anything but a club hits.

The turn is a 10s. They both check to me and I think about slowing down now that a straight draw might have hit, but decide to push anyway. Again EP insta-calls and MP tanks for about 2 minutes before finally calling.

EP flips over KK and MP has Ac2c. Of course a f*cking club hits on the river and I lose the ~$280 pot.

Now, I know that it wasn't a horrible beat. Even KK had a lot of outs against me, but it was the fact that I lost the big pot early in the session that got me steaming. See, I feel a lot more comfortable at the table when I'm playing deep stack poker. I just feel like I have a lot more room to make plays and don't feel so pot commited on every big hand.

So instead of sitting with a $400 stack early on I was down to $100 annd lost that over a couple of coolers.

I rebought for another $200 but again wasn't able to get anything going. Lost a huge pot with QQ on a 2-7-9 flop. I had to meet someone so I left earlier than I wanted to, being down $339 overall for the session.

I haven't been back since and I have a bunch of bills to pay in the next week or so which means I probably won't be back to win my money til sometime at the end of March. But I will be back. That's a given, haha.

Now on to the sports betting.

I've been raping people here at work on Mexican soccer games but unfortunately those results haven't translated into my BookMaker account. Last time I updated this blog (2/12) the bankroll was sitting at $181 but unfortunately I've managed to cut that in half over this past month.

It's mostly been due to retarded huge favorite parlays in the Spanish, English and Italian leagues. I've also used the account to book a couple of bets for some friends who wanted to bet on the Mexico v. Bolivia game because they liked Bolivia's +400 odds. So even though I lost the money from my account, I still got paid as I was only booking the bets for them.

Speaking of retarded parlays, I've decided to throw my last $90 on one for tomorrow, lol. It's a three teamer with 2 Italian league games and one Spanish league.

All the teams are -450 or bigger favorites but of course that doesn't mean sh*t in soccer, haha.

Anyways I'll post the parlay either later today or tomorrow morning and I'll also try to backtrack through last month's bets to update the record.

I'm out, peace!

Unpatriotic

Sigh...

Yes, I went with the U.S. yesterday instead of Mexico. Turned out to be the right decision but nonetheless I felt shame in not having faith in my own country, lol. Oh well, money is money and I cashed on both of my plays in last night's game:

United States -0.5........$30 to win $10.53

U.S. v. Mexico Under 2.5........$30 to win $17.14


Total Record: 213-209-18

Bankroll: $181.66

Total Profit: -$18.34

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So I've been putting in a few sessions on the micro cash games at Full Tilt Poker even though I said I wanted to focus on the 6max SnGs. But I've been running pretty good in the 10NL game and taken a couple of shots at 25NL for which I'm severely under rolled.

I actually took a couple of horrendous beats at 25NL last Friday.

Here's the first one.

I guess I could have just flat called the 3bet on the flop but I knew villain had A10-AK so might as well put the money in as a 3 to 1 favorite.

That beat wasn't as bad as this next one though.

I basically flop the nuts and almost jizz my pants when the big stack moves in after my check raise and then the 3rd player calls as well. I knew one of them HAD to have flopped a set so I was just praying for the board not to pair. But of course an ugly Queen hits the river and I lose the $83 pot.

So that basically busted my Stars account. Thankfully I still had $35 on Full Tilt and over the past few days I've been able to run that up to $115 at the 10nl game including a nice 3 buy in session a couple of days ago. I actually had it up to $135 but had a bad couple sessions yesterday.

I'll probably continue to grind the 10nl game even though I'm technically still under rolled for that as well with only 11.5 buy ins but anything lower than .05/.10 I just can't take seriously for some reason and always end up spewing off chips.

Anyway I really wanted to hit up the casino last night to put in my first live session of the year and was really pumped up for it but I ended up using the money I had to buy a new phone instead, lol. I've been phoneless ever since I sold my Sidekick 08 so I bought the Samsung Behold off a dude on craig's list. I've only had it for a day but so far I've had no problems with it. I wish the web browser was a little faster but overall a nice phone and it's got a kick ass 5.0 mega pixel camera.

So the 200NL game is going to have to wait for now. Maybe next week, although I'm looking into buying a LCD for my room in the next couple of weeks so I really don't know.

Sports Betting Update

Haven't felt like updating this in a few days. Been busy grinding the 10nl and 25nl games on Full Tilt. I'll post about how that's been going sometime tomorrow but for now here's a list of the plays I've made on BookMaker since my last post.


2/6:

Boston -6.5.......$15

Golden State +9.5........$6

2/7:

Parlay; Chelsea -0.5, AC Milan -0.5........$40

Denver -2.5........$10

Detroit -4.5........$10

2/8:

Parlay; Calcio -0.5, Barcelona -0.5..........$10

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Total Record: 211-209-18

Bankroll: $153.99

Total Profit: -$46.01


So overall during the weekend I went 3-3 on the picks but unloading $40 on the parlay on Saturday really cost me.

Didn't have any plays yesterday or today but I might throw some money on the Mexico v. USA soccer game tomorrow night. Which side I play is still undecided. My heart says Mexico but my brain says USA, lol. It's hard to admit but USA has just owned Mexico when playing at home.

I think Mexico's scored a grand total of 3 goals against USA in American soil. Not to mention the fact that both Guardado and Arce are out for the Mexican squad. Oh well, I'll make my decision sometime tomorrow.

Laker Show

I collected on my final Super Bowl bet today and decided to hit up Best Buy to pick up a new 360 even though I'll probably get my broken one back from Microsoft in about 2 weeks. I shipped that one off today in the pre-paid box they sent me.

I just didn't want to go 2 more weeks with no system though. I actually busted out the old PS2 yesterday just because I was craving some gaming, haha.

Anyway so yea, I picked up the Arcade version which was $200. I'll probably try to resell it on Craig's List for $150ish when I get my Elite back. I also picked up a Turtle Beach X3 gaming headset that I'd been wanting to get for a long time. Those were $100 although after trying them out for a little bit before I left for work today, I'm not sure they're worth it. I can't even use them on the 50'' Plasma in the living room because since they're wireless they use IR technology that interferes with the Plasma IR so all I get is a bunch of static on them.

They did work great on the 22'' monitor in my room though since that's an LCD. And playing Rock Band with them on was pretty awesome as well as kicking ass in CoD4 cause now I can hear every single mofo trying to sneak up behind me, lol. But the LCD in my room doesn't have HDMI hook up so the graphics look washed out unlike the Plasma downstairs where the graphics are sweet.

The only solution I forsee is buying a new LCD tv with HDMI hook up for my room, lol.

Went 1-2 yesterday with my Bulls bailing me out of an ugly day. Should have thrown some money on them moneyline, but w.e.

Tonight's only play is Lakers +6.5.

The freaking line went down from +7 to +6.5 the second I was trying to get my bet in. So if I end up losing cause of that, I'ma be pissed cause it's a $20 bet.

My boy Viet over on the Paper Chaser has money on Lakers moneyline so let's hope we cash this!


Lakers +6.5


Day Profit: +$18.18

Day Record: 1-0

Total Record: 208-206-18

Bankroll: $176.36

Total Profit: -$23.64

Wednesday Picks

Played a little poker this morning. First a $6.60 6 max SnG in which I donked out of pretty early which left me kind of tilty so I fired up a $25NL 6 max table and proceeded to lose a buy in pretty quickly which left me even more tilted, lol.

So I decided to try my luck on a Full Tilt cash table instead and ran better there. Bought in for $20 at a 25NL table and cashed out for $45 20 minutes later.

I might play a couple of $4.40s tonight also.

I've got three bets tonight. All NBA and all for $10. A 3-0 day would be nice, haha.

Cleveland -5.5

Houston -5.5

Chicago +2.5



Day Profit: -$10.91

Day Record: 1-2

Total Record: 207-206-18

Bankroll: $158.18

Total Profit: -$41.82

Super Bowl Results

All in all, a very nice Super Bowl for me last night. I won $200 from Luis (he gets my Sidekick), $50 from Alex, $50 from Mauricio, $45 from Kobe2Odom8 (dude from the FCP forums), and $20 from BookMaker for a total profit of +$365 on the game.

The BookMaker play was Arizona +6.5 and I actually wanted to unload a lot more than $20 but ultimately decided not to, which sucks.

Now, you would think that after an almost $400 profit weekend, I'd be pretty damn happy. And I would be if it weren't for the fact that my Xbox 360 died on me yesterday morning. I got the infamous red ring of death which basically means the system is dead and the only way to revive it is to send it in to Microsoft to have it fixed. Who knows when I'll see my system again once I send it in. From a bit of online research it could take anywhere from a week and a half to over a month.



Going a month without my Xbox is like asking me to go a month without betting on anything. It just ain't gonna happen, lol. So if Microsoft tells me it's going to take more than a month to fix when I call them tomorrow, I'm probably going to buy the Xbox 360 Arcade version for $200 and then resell it when I get my Elite back.

Anyway I'm out. About to head to the movies but I do have a play on the Lakers just for the sake of it.

Lakers -5.5......$10


Day Profit: +$9.09

Day Record: 1-0

Total Record: 206-204-18

Bankroll: $169.09

Total Profit: -$30.91

More Super Bowl Bets

I took some more Super Bowl action today. First with Alex who accepted my 1.5 to 1 money line odds so I'm putting up my $75 against his $50 on a Steelers win. Then with Luis although this one is a little different. I've been trying to sell my new Sidekick 08 because it still doesn't seem to work with my SIM card.

It's the weirdest thing because it's not the phone that's defective since I pop in my sister's SIM card and the phone works great, but it's not my SIM card either because I pop my card into my sister's phone and it works also. So I don't even know what the problem is and just want to sell the phone and get something else.

But anyway, so Luis wanted to buy it from me for $150 but I wanted $200 for it. So we decided to leave it up to the Super Bowl. If the Cardinals win, I'll sell him the phone for $100. If Steelers win I'll sell him the phone for $200.

So I'm selling the phone either way. I actually paid $150 for the phone but still have a $50 mail in rebate voucher that I haven't sent in so I don't really lose money if I sell the phone for $100.

I'm still trying to get a little bit more Super Bowl action on the FCP forums although that'll probably only be in the $20 range and maybe another $20 on props. Don't know if I'm going to place a bet on BookMaker yet. I'll probably decide on Sunday.

Speaking of Sunday, it turns out I might have to come in to work which sucks. I doubt we're even going to be that busy but my manager wants me to come in anyway. This is going to be a hectic ass weekend at work cause I have to work tomorrow from 4pm-1am then Saturday from 9am-1am (double shifts ftw!) and Sunday from 2pm-10pm.

At least I can look forward to a nice paycheck!

Oh yea, almost forgot I bet $10 on the Mexico game yesterday and lost. LOL, I had actually forgotten they where playing but I was at Best Buy and using the Internet on one of their laptops and remembered about the game. So I rushed home to see if I would get there in time to bet it. I did and they freaking lost. They're going to get crushed by USA in a couple of weeks too probably.

1st Super Bowl Bet

Got my first Super Bowl bet down yesterday with Mauricio from work. Even money, straight up with no point spread, for $50. He only wanted to bet $20 but I pushed him towards $50. I'm also offering Alex 1.5 to 1 odds for another $50 so he's still considering that. (True money line is like 2.3 to 1 but w.e.)

I'm also probably going to get a couple of bets down on the FCP forums with my Stars poker roll so I REALLY hope Steelers don't lose, haha.

Oh yea last night before I went to bed I placed a tennis bet on Federer -400 for $20 to win $5 so I cashed on that. Sports betting roll now stands at a healthy $150 plus like an extra $20 that I have saved up in BookMaker's Loyalty Rewards program but I don't plan on cashing that in yet.

I played a quick one hour 5NL session yesterday morning before work and made like $7. Then this morning I lost a $5 HU match but took 2nd in a $6.60 6 max SnG. Will probably put a couple more of those in later tonight.

I also got a stake today to play the Stars 200k Guaranteed on Sunday so I hope to make a deep run in that. There's even more incentive to run good in this one because there's a last longer bet with 9 other FCPers and the winner gets staked into a $55 freeze out. I just hope I get to play it because there's the possibility that my boss asks me to work on Sunday since it might get busier than usual because of the Super Bowl. I hope this doesn't happen.

Good Sunday

Sorry I haven't updated the blog this whole week. My dad got injured at work and had surgery this past Friday so that was pretty much the only thing on my mind the entire week. Surgery went well though, so that's good. He should be back at work in a month or so.

Anyway played a little bit of poker online today with good results. I had been planning to deposit some money on my Stars account sometime this week but just hadn't had time so I played a $4.40 on a stake today and managed to take second for $144. Obviously cause I was staked I only got $72 but that plus another $15 I had on Full Tilt should be enough to make something happen.

I gotta admit I ran extremely well through out the whole tournament winning flips and dodging coolers. I actually got really lucky around the final table bubble when I ran my Queens into Aces but was able to suck out with a flush.

I started the final table 4th in chips but it quickly got down to 5 handed where it remained for a while. That's where I took kind of a sick beat. I made an awesome soul read where I knew my opponent was really weak on the turn and I decided to put him all in with Ace high. He decided to call me with a 5 high flush draw with one card to come and he obviously got there. That was the biggest pot of the tournament at that point and would have put me in a commanding chip lead 4 handed. Instead I was down to 40k.

When it was 3 handed I was still shortstacking around 35k-40k while both my opponents had over 100k. Got lucky and cracked a dude's Jacks with 8c9c and then got to HU with about a 5-1 chip deficit. I played Heads Up pretty poorly though. Way too passive til I got impatient and bluffed with a hand all the way and got called by like 2nd pair.

Oh well, I'll take a $144 cash anyday. It was the first final table in a while too which was nice. So right now the onlie poker roll stands around $91 which like I said earlier should be enough to try to build off of.

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Also managed to cash on a soccer parlay for $15 to bring the sports betting roll to $145. AC Milan easily won 3-1 while Real Madrid struggled but squeezed out a win against Depor.

2 Team Parlay................$20 to win $15
-AC Milan -0.5
-Real Madrid -0.5



Day Profit: +$15.00

Day Record: 1-0-0

Total Record: 203-203-18

Bankroll: $145.41

Total Profit: -$54.59

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On a completely unrelated note, I've been on the most normal sleeping schedule in a long time the past week or so.

I've been waking up around 8 or 9 am and going to sleep around 10pm at the latest. Yesterday when I had to work til 1am I got home and was COMPLETELY pooped out and went straight to bed whereas I would usually jump on the XBOX and play til like 7 in the morning.

I'll definitely try to keep the normal sleeping schedule cause I just think it's a lot healthier than going to sleep at 7 or 8 in the morning every day and waking up at 3 or 4 pm.

Ballin'

Mas Futbol

Nice 2-0-1 day yesterday although it would've been 3-0 if Chivas had been able to hang on to a 2-0 lead. Instead they forgot how to play defense and the bet pushed with a final score of 3-3.

The Chelsea game was actually a lot closer than I thought it would be and I ended up winning that in injury time. Chelsea was down 1-0 but tied it in like the 87th minute and then won it in the 92nd so I got lucky there.

Another parlay today although not as heavy favorite as yesterdays. From the 3 games the one I'm worried about the most is probably the Toluca game. They're the defending champs and they're at home but the Mexican league is just so inconsistent that an upset is very possible. Real Madrid should roll over Osasuna and the EPL game should be interesting since both teams are in horrible form but I think Tottenham can pull off the home win.

Looking at some later picks I'll probably take Santos at home vs America. I've also got $20 on that game with Alex from work.

Haven't decided yet if I'm going to throw some money on either football game today.

3 Team Parlay..............$20
-Toluca (pk)
-Real Madrid (-0.5)
-Tottenham Spurs (pk)

Santos (-0.5)............$20

Pittsburgh Steelers (-0.5)............$15


Day Profit: -$10.17

Day Record: 2-1-0

Total Record: 202-203-18

Bankroll: $130.41

Total Profit: -$69.59