Tales of an Poker Grinder

Well after a log break from blogging I'm back. Had a busy winter with work and really didn't even want to look at a computer after I left work. I was really only playing my home game and no online poker all winter long. But the last month my basement "The Poker Room" has been under construction. And it will be another 2 or 3 weeks upon completion. When it is done there will be a full bathroom down there, more heating and a/c vents, and the lighting is really cool. No one will have a problem reading their hole cards. I'm giving the basement a Vegas theme which will be really cool.
So over the last couple of weeks I've been back online playing, it's not the same as live play and I really miss playing cards with the gang. However, playing online has got me back on track with making money online. I've played 8 180-players tourney's and have made the final table 5 times so I've been doing really well on PokerStars. I've also decided because of how well I was playing in live games this year I'm going to take a shot at winning a seat for the WSOP. I really haven't attemped this in the pass. So I've played in 2 qualifiers so far, and both times I was knocked out early when I held pocket aces and pocket queens. Both times I was knocked when the other player hit trips against me. Tommorrow I have the day off of work and I will take another shot to qualify for the WSOP. I plan to really start to journal my efforts again in my blogs.
I'm also coaching baseball for the first time ever. This will be interesting since I only played baseball 2 years when I was in junior high and I really don't care for the game. But my son and his 11 year-old team don't have a coach so I stepped in to help. It's not football so I have to figure out how to coach and teach baseball in a couple of days.
I'm also going Vegas June 6th for the weekend for my 41st birthday. I plan to play in a $2,500 WSOP event that weekend. It's been 2 years since I've been to Vegas and this will be the first time I'm there in the summer. I'm staying at the Polo Towers which has a pool on the roof so that should be fun. Usually I have my whole tripped planned out for Vegas, where to eat, what shows I want to see, where I plan to gamble. But so far I haven't planned anything. One a good friend of mine has moved out to Vegas so I know I will have dinner with him probably Friday night. Saturday I plan to enter and play in the tourney. If I survive the first day, I will do my best to go after the game hard enough to make the final table and stay an extra day in Vegas. If I get knocked out I will look for a show and other dinner options. I should look for a show for Friday night after dinner. I might even sit down with my buddy Wayne and play Blackjack. Poker is my game but after seeing 21 and reading about how the MIT guys actually could count 4 decks I figure maybe I will play some blackjack. I can count cards of course, one deck, no problem. But I've never applied it to Blackjack because you never can play one deck BJ anywhere so I never played it. But I've used my card counting in other games with friends. I'm a math guy, not math wiz like MIT guys, but I'm good with numbers and good with cards. So maybe I'll sit down with Wayne at the tables and he can teach me how to play and I can make a little money and have some fun. He is a good Blackjack player, when he lived here he would usually fly out to Vegas a couple times a year to play Blackjack and always come home a winner. Don't get me wrong he is a low limit player like me. But he would make enough to pay for his trip and come home up $400 to $1,000 playing Blackjack.
So, I'll keep updating this blog.

So I'm sitting here watching the Vikings get beat. I turned it from watching my favorite team the Colts kicking the Panthers butt. I was thinking the Vikes might be able to come back and win here, but I doubt it.
So Thursday night we had our weekly tournament game here at the house. The first game it came down to Dan and I to see who had the Bounty on his. Dan would end up having it on him. I'll talk about that in a minute. So I'm playing very well taking down some good hands and end up as the chip leader. The play is really good, in fact all players are still around when the blinds are $50/$100. As a couple players have been knocked out I'm in the small blind with AK suited. The big blind will be going all-in this hand and everyone folds to the button who raises it big time, I think up to $600 with blinds at $75/$150. I look now and see my hand. Why such a big raise? The big blind doesn't have that much, we know he is going all-in with whatever 2 cards. So I call wanted to see the flop, it comes up garbage and the button, who is my uncle goes all-in. So my thought process pre-flop is he has queeens or jacks. I fold now and he show A3 suited. He has nothing, he loses the hand, that I would have would have won because a king hit the turn. The big blind who hit a small pair is still in the game and I lost my chip lead. I'm on tilt for at least 30 minutes. In live games I've only gone on tilt 3 times ever, once this last Saturday, once against the same uncle's wife, and one hand against my wife. I should say the uncle and aunt are on my wife's side of the family. Other than those 3 times no matter what the bad beat I took I have never tilted in a live game. I have tilted plenty of times on line, but that is in private in my living room where maybe only my wife and kids witness that.
After about 30 minutes I calmed downed and started playing poker again. The key thing was I stayed out of hands while I calmed down so I wouldn't make any wreckless moves. Ernie my uncle would end up going out in third place, I would take second, and Dan, who had the Bounty on his head would end up winning the game taking home $128.
The second game that night I would take out Ernie when he made a big bet under the gun, which was a little over a bet at the time of the game should be made. I looked at AQ suited and I said not again and went all-in. Now the key thing to this hand was me stating "Not again". Because Chris who was next to me on my left folded AQ suited thinking I had AK again. Ernie called with some garbage hand and a queen hit the flop and it was game over for Ernie. This game I would end up in 3rd place, I should have taken 2nd place but the big stack at the table was playing to tight when he had a chance to knock out Jeremy who ended up in second.
Well the Vikes lost like I thought. Now if I can make some sort of mircle and have my fantasy team win. Need Ahman Green to score, that has been a fantasy all season.
As for my online play I'm on UB now trying to turn $50 into $250 like I did so far on PokerStars. I'm down $3 now, but it seems like more, and it's been a grind there. Much tighter play on UB than PokerStars. I even took a break to write this after taking 4th in a sit-n-go which put me on tilt a little bit. I thought I had a chance of winning it when I had the chip lead but I lost that and the other guys were all sitting back to make the money. Well back to the tables.

Well tonight I took 2nd place in a $5 buy-in invite from Railbird. Really I fell into 2nd place. When I made the final table I thought maybe I could make it to 4th place. Once we got down to the final four I was pretty sure I would end up in 3rd, but the chip leader had other ideas and before I knew it we were heads up. The funny thing in the final hand we both had starting pairs and hit trips except his 8's were bigger than my 4's.
I now exceeded my goal of getting my PokerStars account to $200 before I moved on to UB. Sure it's a week later on my goal but I exceeded the goal so that is just fine. I will only play on PokerStars when invited to freerolls from Railbird. Once I build each of the 4 other sites to $200 each than I'll build each one to $500, next to $1,000. One day I will have $10k in each one.
I can hardly wait for my home game tomorrow night. Last week we got back into it after a long break while I coached football. The football season is over so I can get back into poker. I took 3rd place in the first game and I had the flu. I'm healthy and ready this week.

So today I played in a tourney with 533 players playing pot limit hold'em 6 seated. I was playing well early on but lost a big hand right up to where we were about to get into the money. So I decided just to sit back play tight with only coming into the pot with good hands and make the money. I make in the money of course, now I want to move up or bust out of course. But the problem starts, my mouse will not let me drag to raise, so I'm stuck playing limit poker in pot limit which is not good at all of course. Some how playing with no ability to raise more than the blind I make it all the way to 7th place, one spot off of making the final table.

I've been playing good poker these last couple weeks. Online I've been doing well in large tournaments on PokerStars, finishing in the money in sit'n'go's on UltimateBet, and last week during my poker tourney's at home while we watched the WSOP Main Event pay-per view I took 3rd place in all 3 games we played.

I just plan to keep playing patient aggressive poker and continue to build my bankrolls up. I need to get on Fulltilt and play and double my bankroll there. I have the least amount of money there and haven't had great luck there at all. It's really the only site I seem to lose money at. I really want to change that. It seems when I get up there I lose it all back and then some. I'm going to just play sit'n'go's there for a while instead of playing the 180 man tourney's there and see how I do.

The last couple of weeks I've been playing some good poker, making the right bets, laying down hands knowing I'm beat. I've cashed in the money in 5 large online field tournaments. And I won my last Thursday night poker game hands down. In a field of 1500 I made it to 17th, twice I've made it into the top 150 players with the field being over 2500 players, and made it to the last 2 tables in the stud high/low game with a field over 500 players. Stud is not my game but I like to play HORSE so I will play Stud and Omha tourney's once and a while for practice. I do well at Razz tourney's and will play those more often than the stud and Omha games because I usually always place in the money in Razz.
I've been playing really focused poker and playing more aggressive. I would say smart aggressive. Really playing position poker and letting hands go if I know I'm beat. The biggest mistake I see right now is players can't let that ace go, especially big ace after the flop. I don't understand why players will call off all there chips with big slick or worse ace five. I won a hnad with pocket two's recently because I knew the player had big slick. He bet all the way to the river with big slick. Sometimes after the turn you have to say I'm beat, especially against a solid player. Every large field online tournament I play in half the field is gone in the first hour, it never fails. The first hour in a tourament you should really play solid hands, wait for loose players to make mistakes and grab theri chips. If you get knocked out because of some donkey suck-out, let it go, that's poker. You want the donkey's in the game, they bring money into the game and most of the time they lose. Yes they may win a game here or there but 98% of the time they are losing. Play solid poker and win! When the donkey beats you say good game, remember what he did so you get him next time.

Well it's been some time since I've posted. So far I have had a very busy summer. When you are father of 5 you can get busy. To be honest I don't think things will slow down for me until the end of fall. I'm trying to have my Thursday night games this month after almost skipping all of June. Soon I start coaching football and I will be really busy. I will be a head coach after years of being an assistant head coach. I'm pretty exciting running my own offense, I've always been the defensive coach, so no worries there, my team will shut down teams like before. If you loved the 85 Bears defensive that is what I run, attacking at all times and you never know where that extra guy is coming from. It's very hard for parks to stop, unless you practice against it.
As for poker, I haven't played that much. I think 3 home games in the last 2 months. As for online, I haven't had much time other than to play a sit'n'go here and there. On Bodog I've been averaging 2nd place everytime I sit at the table. I think maybe 2 times out of maybe 15 tourney's I haven't finished in the money. But on any other site I play on I haven't finished in the money at any of them. Bad beat after bad beat, I kid you not. I always have had the best hand preflop and post flop only for some crazy to call me to the river and hit their magic card or they go all-in after the flop on some crazy draw and they hit, especially on Full Tilt. I know that's just part of the game but it's frustrating when you run into that guy willing to gamble all his chips away and they get lucky. That's poker.
As for my quest of 10k on each of the five sites I play on it's going to be a while before I get back on the poker run since I'm so busy. That's another reason why I'm trying to not just play Bodog, even though I've been doing very well there I want to keep my accounts balanced. Right now I have the most money on Poker Stars, second is UB, 3rd is now Bodog, then Absolute, and last Fulltilt which everytime I win money in a big tourney 180+ players, I lose it all playing sit-n-go's there. Maybe I just play 180+ player tourneys there and forget the sit-n-go's.

Well I didn't win the Absolute Dream on Sunday. To start off the field wasn't as big as I thought it would be, only 575 players. Of course the bad news was only one person was going to walk away a winner, I would have loved to see 2 spots but there would have had to be a field of thousand players for that. Early on I got be cards, pocket aces, pocket kings, and pocket queens. The problem is in this tournament where you have a mix of players who got in for free and others who dropped $200 to play the play was very tight at the beginning. So my big hands all won but very little when the blinds are $10/$20 to $20/$40. I pretty much stayed up for the game for the first couple hours, never in the top chip leaders but I was holding my own winning small pots. The one thing was I had a guy at my table who won a freeroll to get in but had no idea what he was playing for. Early on he won a huge hand and moved into the top 5 chip leaders and now he was playing every hand. The problem was he was half way across the table from me so I couldn't attack him. He kept building his chips with loose crazy calls, even calling pre-flop all-in's with hands like 5 6 and getting lucky to win. Now of course he doubled me up a couple of times which was very nice, just wish I was closer to him to win more chips from him. So we get down to about the last 150 players and my worse nightmare comes true for any poker player. The chip leader of the tournament gets seated at my table and right to my left. Now anything I do has to go by him. And this guy just wasn't the chip leader for a little bit but the chip leader for a couple of hours. So I knew this was going to be tough.
Now the hand I hate the most. I'm on the button and everyone folds to me. I have ace 9 so I go all-in thinking as long as the chip leader doesn't have a hand I can pick up the blinds and ante. The blinds are $500/$1,000 with $100 ante. The chip leader folds and the big blind who if calls my all in is down to less than $2k in chips. This is another reason I made the all-in move. He calls and to my surprise he turns ove Jack 2 suited. Now I have never made a move out of line at least that I had to show down. The flop comes up 5 7 of hearts and a nine of diamonds. So I make top pair with the ace kicker. The turn brings another diamond, I don't even remember the card but I knew the river would bring another diamond to give this moron a flush. Sure enough the next diamond hits the board and I'm out in 109th place.
I've had Jack 2 suited beat me three times in major tournaments, twice online and one live one. All 3 times the player had no business calling my raises or all-in's. All 3 times I put those players in jeopardy of either getting knocked out or crippled. Just killer, my achilles heal Jack 2 suited. Oh well that's poker. Until the next tourney.