Poker Trip

I took a trip down to Chumash last week. Joe put me in, and believe it or not there was no action at the 2/5NL game on a friday night...pathetic. For the longest time the only games they spread were 2/4, 3/6, 4/8, the occasional 6/12, and the 2/5NL $200 max. Just recently they started spreading a 1/2NL $50 max buy-in. The game has very little play and is chalk full of horrible players. Of course with horrible players comes a minefield of rediculous calls and terrible beats. And of course, we showed up at around 6PM on a saturday and there was four $50NL games going and ONE friggin $200NL. Joe was staking me on this night, and seeing as how there was a list of only about six players on the $200NL list, it looked to be a while before either of us took a seat. So I figured I'd ante up and play the $50NL game.

After folding the first few rounds I figured I'd take a stab at the pot from the button. There were two limpers and I bumped it to $8 with the Ks8h. I got one caller out of the SB and the others folded. The board came up a pretty decent As Qs 9s. The caller checked and I bet out $15. He tried to check behind me.....and then after he was told that he couldn't check he called the bet. Haha fantastic. The turn was a K. Now I figured to have the best hand as well as, obviously, the best draw. Except now he bet into me. $10 was the bet in front of me. With $60 in the pot and with me on only $20 I had an easy jam and got a quick call. I turned over my hand and he tabled Jd9c. River: Jh. REBUY

I wasn't too upset since I was expecting that in this game goin in, so I quickly bought for another $50. It took less than 20 minutes for me to get into another confrontation with this guy. In middle position I raised it up to $8 after one limper with the 56s. He called without hesitation behind me and it folded around. The board came up with what I thought, again, was a pretty good flop for me. With 3s 4s Jd, I bet $12 into the caller. He raised another $12. And again, with a $50 buy-in, I was forced into another situation where I felt the money needed to go in. There was only one hand that I was fearful of, and that was the AJs. IF he did have that hand then I was only a 2.5-1 dog on the hand but I was getting laid 3.7-1 on my last $18 after his raise. Given his previous hand holdings I highly doubted he had anything that huge, and if he didn't have the AJs then I'm looking to be a 55-45 favorite over any other pair, still ahead against a 4 3, and a slight dog to a set but still facing major odds. Fortunately for ME I overthought the situation and he ended up calling me with Q3 offsuit, putting me as a 70-30 favorite. Fortunately for HIM I blank blanked and had to rebuy again.

That one kind of frustrated me. I took a deep breath and shelled out the next $50. Again, it took me less than 20 minutes to hook up with another guy who wanted to put all of his money in on the flop. Luckily for ME I had flopped a set with my 77 on a board of 5-7-8. Luckily for HIM he had decided to put his whole stack in on a Q6 and managed to turn the 9 as I managed to blank the chance to boat the river. AAAGGHH. It's cool I got more to play. I rebought for another $50 and was able to at least get back another $100 before they finally started a 2/5NL $200 max three hours after we arrived.

I was up and down in the 2/5NL game. I bought in for the max $200 and never broke the $450 mark. I kept getting up to $450 and then getting knocked back down to $200. Then I'd get back up to $400, then back down to $200. I felt like I was playing ok but not great. It's been about a month since I've played a session at the Mash, but I definitely felt better than I did last time when I lost my mind. This time I felt like I was making good plays and good reads to get a little ground, but then I would lose it back in tough situations. There was two situations where I probably could've saved money. In the first situation I got stuck on a tough read. I had two choices and picked the wrong read. In the second situation I got overly aggressive against the wrong player and had I been less aggressive I could've saved a bit of money. Overall I ended up down on the session, but I know what I need to fix and what to get a hold of next time I get a back.

We got Paul's game tomorrow and I'm hopin to take down some cash in that cuz I'm feelin like I can right now. Although I've barely played in the past month I'm feelin like I can cruise right now and take down the ole' weekend tourney against weak players. Updates to come on Sunday/Monday.

Update?

Soon!! I've been really busy at work (yes, yes it's sad to hear, tell me about it), but I'll put up an update soon. Check back in.....half an hour?

Breath of Fresh Air

Every now and then, no matter if nothing is going bad, life is difficult to be happy with. Even though nothing is wrong, things might just be stressful, if perhaps not blatantly stressful but maybe on a subconscious level, and for no reason at all you just feel uncomfortable and it seems like nothing can make you happy. Have you ever wondered why this happens? I'll tell you why. It's because every now and then, no matter if nothing is going bad, you just need a breath of fresh air.

Lucky for me I found mine.

HALO, The New Apartment, and Sports

Ok so apparently I suck at HALO. I've never really played the game with the exception of a few times spread apart over months and years at a time. Well now since there's three XBOXers living in the new apartment (as opposed to just myself previous to the move) I'm gonna have lots of times to get my ass kicked. My two roomies were HALOers before when they lived on campus at UCSB and they did the whole XBOX live thing and all that. Now although they haven't played in a while, they still know the game. I definitely don't, and I've been proving that all week. But I'm improving! And that's saying something, right??........

Aside from that, the new apartment rocks. The living room is a decent size, my bedroom's a decent size, and it's cool being able to live with these guys, as the three of us have kind of been the best of friends over the last couple years, and living together is pretty fun. The area's quieter than my other place, which is a definite plus because I was living in brand new apartments JAMMED into the slums of Santa Barbara, so my place was awesome but the surrounding noise of the hudlums sucked. Our new place is tucked way back, so it's a nice change for me. And there's also tennis courts right down the street. Hey look, another thing I suck at.

I've never played tennis before, but I think it's something I should get into and it's probably something I can get really good at. I think that I have a pretty natural sense of sports, although some who know me as a poker player and nothing else would beg to differ. I enjoy playing sports, but I've been a casino rat for so long that I'm kind of coming into my athletic self. So although I've never played tennis before I went out and bought a brand new Prince TT Ultralite. Being that I've never played before, I could've bought a $20 racquet, but I'll be damned if I have to learn how to play a game with less than moderate equipment (as you can see my problems in money management). Although I'm having some problems controlling the ball, I'm feelin pretty good on the court and think I can pick up the game pretty quickly.

If there were some decent basketball courts close by that would rock, and I definitely need to get back on the golf course sooooooon. I haven't been to the range in forever, and it hurts inside. I've never really found time to get good at golf, but perhaps it's coming in the near future. I should get a new set of clubs first though...

On to something that I'm decent at: volleyball. Down here in SB there's a lot of beach, and with a lot of beach there's a lot of beach volleyball courts. My parents play beach volleyball and have been playing for a few years regularly, and they've been preaching the joys of the game to me and trying to get me to play for a long time now, but they haven't succeeded. Recently though, my parents decided to move across the country to New York, and what a time for me to branch out into sports again. It sucks because I would've definitely loved to have played with them since they're pretty good players and they play hard, and good competition is what makes playing sports and games fun to me. But nevertheless I've been improving over the weeks and feel like playing against better players so I can get my skill level higher. Lovin the game.

And in more sports news football is back!! Yes ladies and gentlemen, it's that time of year once again that Sundays are no longer open in my schedule. The NFL is wonderful and time spent without it is time in the dark as far as I'm concerned. The Eagles have a pretty new team as far as the team's makeup goes, and while losing a great LB in Mark Simeanou, I'm definitely glad they were able to get Donte' Stallworth for the trade, as the Eagles are in dire need of a superstar receiver if they're gonna get back to the Superbowl any time soon. Last season was a huge disappointment after so many years of dominating the NFC East, yes that's right, DOMINATING :) But however new and young the team is, they sure showed their capabilities in the first game of the season. Sheppard got injured on the first play of the game, but Roderick Hood should be quite an acceptable sub for Sheppard's serious injury, the guy's got some game in him. And although the first game was against the Texans, I can think of quite a few teams in the past two years that fall far below Houston. Nonetheless it's gonna take a little more to beat the Giants than it did the Texans, and the Eagles are game. Here we come NFC, watch out now.

Here's lookin to more sports played and more sports watched.

Hey There Children

I haven't been writing recently because, frankly, I hate writing about losing. And as much as I try not to be a biased writer, writing about losing sucks if that's ALL you do, as is the situation I've come to feel like I am in. And also I hate the way my posts have been coming in. I don't like posting an uplifting "I knew I could it!" post one day just to have it followed by a "Dammit I suck at life and should not ever play poker ever cuz I suck" post. It's probably not fun for you all to read, and it really seems immature to me. And while things haven't been going well for me recently, rather than re-explain all the depressing bad beats and bad plays, I'll just say a few words about life.

Recently I had an epiphany of sorts. After getting crushed in the $350,000 guaranteed at Chumash, and getting handled at the cash games afterwards, I kind of took a step back to evaluate and wonder: 1)what I am doing wrong, and 2)what the hell is wrong with ME. After thinking for a long while, the reasons listed below are what I came up with.

I've never been the best money manager, I'll admit to that. Is that a good thing for a gambler? Of course not lolp. Most of the time I spend too much money on useless crap that I never use, I eat out a lot, and I usually spend money on things that I don't NEED even though there are clearly things that I DO need. I am a big idiot in this field, that much is apparent. I also pay for people a lot even though I'm not (and have never been) in a situation to do so. Luckily for me, I have people in my life that understand that I have great passions that get in the way of practicality, and I also have enough sense not to get to a point past saving.

I haven't been the healthiest person in the world lately, lately being the past year. I definitely am not fat, but I could use some excercise and diet changes for the pure healthiness of it. Now as any serious poker player knows, these two things are key to being a successful player. Whether or not these two things (or lack of them) are directly related to my inconsistant success, I don't know, but I'd have to guess they do.

Another thing is that because of my lack of financial responsibility I'm broke, just flat out. Santa Barbara is a crazily expensive place to live. As a matter of fact Forbes Magazine ranked Santa Barbara, CA as the 7th most expensive city to live in in 2005 with a starting median housing price of $2,050,000. We made another top 10 for 2006 as well. Prices aside, I've been living out here for barely over a year now since leaving CSUN with nothing, and I have nothing to show for it. I have no cash, a beat down car, and still haven't gotten back to school since I relocated. Being in this depressed (and depressive) state for the past year hasn't helped my game at all.

Overall my poker game has definitely improved. I've been making some good folds, some great calls, and some even better plays. I don't make the right move every time, but nobody does. But regardless I really don't feel like I'm at the level where I should be, and I honestly think it's because of the situations I've stated above.

Guess what Loyal 5. It's all about to change. I'm moving into a new apartment tomorrow and plan on eating in a LOT more than I do now, because currently I'm NOT eating in. I started playing beach volleyball, if that's what you want to call it...I suck, but in any case it's excercise and sunlight. And, because my recent losses have left me short on cash, I've adopted a new view on cash flow and money management. Things are also going well at work. Some things are going to change in the future around the office that are really going to be in my favor. What does this all mean?

Well for starters, I won't be playing cards. Sure if Darsky or Joe wants to put me in a game, I'd be happy to take the stake and split the treasure, as that has seemed to work out quite well in the past. I'll also be playing the monthly at Paul's as well as the crazy quarter games that pop up every once in a while. But basically I won't be putting any money into the game for a little bit. Once things settle down a bit after I move in, I have to take care of certain expenses that have been hanging over my head for some months now. After that I'll save up a bit so as not to get in sticky situations again, and by that time I should be in a perfect mental state to take down some sick cash playin cards. I know I have the ability to do it (it's true, I've been told so), but without discipline skill means nothing in the world. It's really sad that I've let things slide for so long, but I'm really feelin like I'm turnin things around. And it's not that I've slid SO far, but I know that I'm better than where I have let myself get to.

Anyways I won't be abandoning this blog at all, and in fact I might reach out more to other viewers without as much poker talk coming through. But in time I will return and really put myself in the game like I have in the past, just this time I'll really be able to take a hold on it. I know things like this happen, and the greatest of pros have been broke multiple times early in their careers, so I'm not scared.

Until next time.