The Crooked Link

Life of a Low Stakes Gambler...

Monday, March 23, 2009

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.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

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.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

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!