2009- Year of The Fucking Finally

Awesome year comes to a close. . . I've been cobbling together income from small stakes poker games for years, always felt like I could succeed, yet I never was able to establish a real money making groove until this year.

My biggest accomplishment by far is finishing the year #1 on a Sharkscope leaderboard. . . now mind you there's a lot of categories to fight over. My category is

Most money won in 2009 in tournaments that started with between 4 and 6 tables, with a buy in between 16-$35. Any site.

To achieve this I played 2,285 $24+2 45 player sit and go's at a pretty spectacular %57 ROI for a total win of $33,772 in this category, which happened to be the most this year. There's a day left so perhaps I shouldn't be documenting this yet. . .

Add to that some nice wins in some other brackets, a recent slew of mtt successes (or near successes depending upon outlook) and 2009 completely outstripped my expectations and was an unequivocal success. For the first time since working in the casino's I earned a proffessionals living wage and I did it working my hours on my terms.

Pretty awesome.

What's on the horizon? I'm not sure. Cash games keep calling to me siren like just for the shear flexibility of the game. Being able to play as long as I like, whenever I like, for as little or as long as seems good. . . sounds awesome. I'm definitely going to work on improving my skills in that area, it's just a matter of figuring out which form I want to specialize in.

That's how I work. I specialize. If I'm going to play a game I study the hell out of it. I think this stems from my chess background and how much work needs to go into preparing your Openings. But it's true. Every poker format has it's own strategies and conditions. A friend of mine recently asked me for a book recommendation- specifically for NLHE cash games. Another friend present suggested Harringtons Tournament Series because it was an excellent book. . . and it is . . . but totally inappropriate for cash games! So many of the concepts just don't properly carry over.

Here's an example.

In a 45 man sng it can be appropriate to reraise, get all in with AK on the first hand.

In a traditional 9 man sng it pretty much never is.

In a cash game AK can be folded or played for less than all in preflop in many, many situations. Stack size and previous action play a large consideration and can lead to a variety of plays.

So about a year ago was when I finally decided to specialize in poker. I had seen some regular success in the 45 man sngs and wanted to see if I could get more, more often.

One of the problems was that I was only playing 2-6 tables a year ago, and I was often doing that in compromising situations, like while watching t.v..

Some of the biggest strides I've made in the last year have been in the realm of multi tabling. I now play 12 tables quite comfortably, and am now itching to get my second monitor working so that I can move to 16 without overlap.

Not only did multi tabling help me put in more volume, but it also helped me plug some leaks. In particular I'm a chronic sufferer of Fancy Play Syndrome, but in order to play 9, and later 12, games comfortably, I finally said good bye to a lot of the moves that I knew were marginal at best yet were difficult to play in even the best spots to account for the limited attention I could give particular hands playing 12 games at once. Basically, playing a bunch of tables at once forced me to finally play more or less correctly- which is pretty damn tight- at least in this format of poker.

There's a whole train of thought to come after this I'm sure, but it's a little late for that.

Happy New Year, Reader, Apologies for the rambling, it's been a sloppy, and happy holidays.

Good luck in 2010!

DUDE

Just had the most grueling night ever, except that I made $3500 on it! How could that be??

XXXXX <---- INSERT SHARKSCOPE GRAPH OF MY SUCKAGE HERE

Unfortunately the formatting on the sharkscope graph went to hell, and I'm too tired to fix it, but I busted out of everything I played tonight, or had to settle for penis cash, in almost every game but two. Agonizing soul crush after agonizing soul crush. . . except that in two games out of 40-whatever I actually went deep before being soul crushed. . . so made some nice coin.

In my big cashout, the 3rd place in the 25k guarantee- I had a rather dissapointing finish. After sparring with other final 3 players for almost 45 minutes (these rebuy tourneys have a ton of chips- they're awesome), both of them big winners, I raised 9To on the button to just over the minimum, the small blind flatted and the big blind folded. I very happily bet about 1/2 pot on the flop of QJ8- giving me the nuts! The bb called. He check called the turned King, and led on the river 3 for about half pot. I tanked and wound up shoving as the pot was so large I thought he'd be committed with many worse holdings. He snap called and showed AT for the turned nuts.

OUCH.

After shoving and winning a couple flips in the next two orbits I actually clawed my way back into contention for 2nd place but the blinds had gotten large and my 9x shove was called by the chip leader who was holding K4o which was more than enough to beat my 68s. GG. Both players at the final 3 were very competent so the third place didn't hurt as much as it might normally. . . but I'm definitely starting to get a little nervous about my short handed game as I haven't been able to clinch one of these in awhile.

The crazy, stupid fucked up thing about playing poker for a living is that even though I had a killer night at "work" it was absolutely dreadful to participate in! The wins came late in the night, and were a damn good turn of events for me since I was down $1000 in tournaments already- almost all of them $24-$50 buy ins and just getting fisted every single time I entered the pot until I was screaming at my monitor and pounding my computer mouse every ten minutes! I was livid, bent, frustrated, impatient, I think I went on tilt a dozen times tonight! Thank god for those 5 minute breaks I get to spend with my dogs. They really hook me up at times like that- the look of mortal concern in their eyes reminds me I'm being a total fucktard, and playing with them afterwards is great for the spirits. Dogs rule.

So yeah, the pleasure/pain ratio in poker is totally fucked. After having my mind ground to dust over 40 painful bust outs tonight I finally win some good money- but am STILL left to curse the HOWs of getting only 3rd place (the money for first and even second is much better, and good players take pride in being able to "close the deal"), and the actual money won. . . well it doesn't seem very real right now.

Fuggin lame. But I suppose there could be worse things. Some of my friends take orders, give orders and stand up for up to 16 hours a day. :P

I slept through another tournament

I really need to stop pre registering for tournaments. I just slept through miniftops 13, which only cost my $33 but still.

I've had very, very little motivation to play poker recently. I've just been feeling like there are other things I want to do. . . but I wind up just smoking weed and playing on my xbox or reading sci fi- (btw, The Player of Games by Ian M. Banks is excellent, addictive reading). I don't know if it's this dismal weather (grey, cold, often wet) or what but I have not been wanting to play poker!

Even though "my game" is clearly the 45 man sngs I've just felt really bored with them lately. Today I played almost all mtts, and started the session tonight by playing 4 tables of 1/2 6 max N/L w/ antes (always a mouthful!) According to pokertablratings.com I made 1200 on the cash session. . . not too shabby at all. . . especially considering I got a bit tilty (and shnockered) and lost $700 playing $15/30 Razz two nights ago. . .kinda gross no matter how you consider it!

sorry for all the bitching

3k downswings are going to be really routine now that I've amped up the stakes a bit, and I need to not start moaning every time I have one!

In better news I put in my first serious session of the month playing 40 games, and due to taking $7,200 for 2nd place in the $30 rebuy (I re bought 6 times I think?) I booked a very welcome and fun $8,200 win for the night.

That tourney was excruciating the whole way through- I got beat up a little bit early so that by the time the rebuy period came I was in it for $180 and had no stack to show for it. A series of miracles happened and I had a top ten stack with 130 left (459 started) but went absolutely card dead only finding a couple spots to pick up chips all the way down to about 3 players actually. I was seriously just hanging on by my fingernails for most of that time with a 8-22 bb stack the whole way. It was a really aggressive tourney and my opponents had ESP for the most part since I was getting no action on my decent hands and they were 3bet shoving on my mediocre ones. So I folded. Folded. Uh oh, time for a button shove. Sweet! THEY folded! Then I fold some more.

The final table was the same- I clung for dear life, had a lucky suck out or two just to stay afloat, had all my raises reraised so had to stop raising unless I wanted to shove, and my hands sucked so I just folded. . . pretty much not playing poker at all with the exception of knowing when and with what to go all in. Luckily, the table as a whole was almost maniacal and I watched as much bigger stacks than mine exploded and disappeared all around me.

Okay I'm rambling. Good job me, g'night.