Well Obviously I Am Insanely Lucky

Just binked my biggest score to date- a few bucks shy of 28k for winning the 150+13 75k and ohhh man it feels good, especially after the grueling heads up match with hitthehole, a very aggressive player. His stats were 50/44/74 (or roundabouts) for pretty much the entire final table. I would've thought he was a donk since his raising was so stubborn and he double or triple barrelled almost every single hand but it was working and he held the chip lead for almost the entire final table like that. Luckily I was more to his left than right so I was able to keep myself afloat through the final table by 3 betting him from the blinds from time to time. Finally he picked up a hand to call me when with I 3 bet shoved my KTs from the bb and he flipped up AQo. The KJx flop was merciful to me though so instead of a less than inspiring 5th place finish I was solidly in contention for the top spots. :)

The heads up portion of the match was pretty sick fun, I have to admit. I was only playing one table, really baked, and I was definitely having a great time. We started HU with him having a 4.5-ish to 1 chip lead but I still had over 30 bbs and wasn't shy about using them since he was 2.1x-ing every button- a strategy I like quite well myself, so I was in familiar territory I felt with guessing hand ranges, and in general playing the hyper aggressive Roshambo game. . . except this time there was a 10k difference between first and second. Once heads up I offered to mitigate the difference in pay outs and he declined which I was fine with. When I later took the chip lead it never came up. :)

Overall I'm very proud of my play HU. I was able to win the ongoing battle between him barrelling me off my hands and me taking advantage of his predictable barrelling at the right times, to finally turn the tide in chip ratios. In the final hand I flopped a flush draw with T7s on a 992 flop and I check called the flop planning to checkraise the turn all in which I did when a King fell but he had flopped trips that time, tabling J9o. The river was a surprisingly merciful 5h though and the game was over and I had won my biggest score to date.

Most weirdly, this win comes at a time when I've been feeling especially lazy and malcontent with poker, mostly due to being totally sick of grinding sit and go's, (even though I think they're awesome and very profitable I just feel like I don't have much more to achieve there other than continuing to grind a nice income, but nothing inordinately spectacular. I've been doing 12 tables really comfortably for awhile and know I could easily manage 16 and then probably more. . . but that isn't fun at all. Switching to mtts isn't something to decide lightly either. I've been researching the graphs of some of the mtt ballers out there and it's really no joke- 10-30k downswings are regular for the guys grinding the higher tournament levels, and I've really been trying to analyze if that's something I want to introduce into my life.

I've decided that I kinda do, and wouldn't you know it but I've been blessed with some exceptionally positive variance lately, and it's always nice to have a little luck when you're trying to get something going!

I'll try and return to this later. The lady is home with goodies. Time to celebrate. :)

Day of the Week Sharkscope Graph

I just checked my sharkscope graph to see which days I was most profitable on and I was a little suprised to not see any losing days, which I had a couple of last I checked a year ago, but also that apparantly on Thursdays I have 90% ROI for just under 1k games. I should really be playing poker right now, but getting high and watching the Three Amigos and eating take out sushi with the girlfriend seemed more appealing. Go figure.

Still, I'm not sure these graphs mean anything. Does anyone?

Endless Bragging

After a rocky start to the year I had a few nice cashes at the end of January to finish up 14k for the month. I immediately booked a 19 day trip to Mexico (Portland winters are murderous) and took the week off to plan for the trip and relax as in my head I wrote February off as a non playing month.

So then I spend 19 days travelling the Yucatan having a fantastic time with Carrie, on my Very first day back I bink the 35k K.O. on FTP for 10.5k while playing a warm up 4 tabling session - totally loaded.

I promptly took that as a sign from the gods that everything I've been doing is totally synced with what the universe wants for me, and since what I had been doing was whatever I wanted, I've continued to do that which doesn't happen to always include much poker. Especially not sober poker.

Is combining weed with poker a great idea? It's not the greatest, but I limit myself to 6 tables at a time, and I think cumulatively I'm paying so much more attention to the dynamics and action at the particular tables that it's enough of a significant increase to ROI to offset the potential bad aspects of playing loaded. I don't recommend playing loaded if you aren't comfortable with your general game plan. You need to be able to realize that you are starting to play weak passive for instance, and be able to adjust for that and perhaps even be able to capitalize on your opponents recent perception of you as a weak tight player.

I focus on playing tight- really pretty tight in general- but I'm also always on the look out for reasons to open up my game as I think nailing those little opportunities regularly is a big part of what makes the difference between a highly successful mtt player and a mediocre one. Those little spots really add up over time and help you weather many inevitable storms that could otherwise be devastating if a few extra chips hadn't been accumulated. Mary Jane's dreamy and creative functions seem to highlite such spots for me, when it's working right. Sometimes in poker you really just need to slow down and THINK. . . ie, what's the right bet size? What does he think I have and how will he react? And so forth. Playing 12 tables cracked out on caffeine is a totally different experience. . . one focused on bashing out the most correct play on average as often as I am able. . . playing stoned is a totally different, really enjoyable experience compared to that.

Sometimes. Lately. . . I just haven't wanted to play. And it's not like I have another way to make money at the moment. . . (though I've started work on making my own web based browser game, a coffee product I want to produce, and have half a dozen writing and web projects gathering dust), I just don't want to play. Sometimes poker just doesn't feel right and I don't know if I'm just chronically (heheh) lazy or if I just really need to diversify myself a bit.

Now, there is one ugly truth I'm avoiding looking at. . . the allegations that marijuana use saps motivation. That could definitely be true in my case for a very simple reason- I don't play serious sessions unless I really feel like playing, and I often wake up just cloudy headed enough to want to spend my time playing video games. . . and smoking more pot all day. Which, incidentally, is a lot of fun! It's like I'm 9 years old and can have Saturday any time I want, and this time I've got way better video games and drugs to help me enjoy them. It's pretty awesome.

Incidentally, alcohol and poker is a horrible combination, and as I say that as one of the worlds biggest fans of both. I've just done plenty of the two together to know that they don't really belong. Alcohol and Marijuana for that matter have a similiar issue- The Blowup Factor. Booze has a much higher Blowup Factor in my opinion than MJ, but they both have the potential to produce drastically bad plays.

Or is that excuse making? Lord knows I can make horribly redonkulous plays completely sober.