July results. Resolutions for August.

July isn't over just yet but I don't plan on putting in any kind of volume today. Last night I went out and had a few drinks. I came home and loaded up a set of 10 SNG's and didn't money in one of them. Got overzealous on the bubble in one of them but other than that I thought I played 98% to perfection. I've vowed to not to do that again.

As far my July results, they look at lot better than how I feel about them.
+$10,235 11.2 ROI
+2k in bonuses and rakeback
-1k in MTT's

I was up over 15k a week and a half ago but a combo of running bad and making a few errant mistakes and my results were back down to earth. Still, this will be my 1st 10k+ month from purely SNG's.


Now for August. I've found that setting goals is pretty pointless. Saying that I'm going to play this many hours or this many SNG's is bad thinking. In order for me to truly be motiviated play more than I I have been is to slightly alter my lifestyle. I've been going out too much and need to cut back. I plan on only going out 2 nights a week from now on. That's still a lot but a lot better than 4+ nights. Baby steps.

I've got a lot of activities planned for this month. A friend and I are planning a bar golf outing for pretty much all of Cape on August 10th. It's just a glorified pub crawl but you have to dress up in ridiculous golf outfits and keep score. The following week we are going to have a huge back to school 80's bash. Then on the 24th I'll be going up to Wisconsin to see Rage Against the Machine. I think the week after that is Labor day. These should give me plenty of reasons to work hard during the week.

September I plan on going to Europe. Of course, that all depends on how well my August goes. I pretty well want to pay for my entire trip in August(is this a goal? Hope not). This should give me a little more incentive to put my hours in.

Going to go look at cars now. Will put some pics up if and when I finally buy one.

I suck at running good

I've put off writing this because it sucks reliving events that don't turn out they way you had hoped. I would love to write a full trip report of the main event but it would take 30+ minutes. My table makeup consisted of:

Seat 1: Euro guy, a limit specialist.
Seat 2: Jennifer Harman
Seat 3: Some guy decked out in WPA gear. Pretty sure he was a pro but certainly wasn't that great.
Seat 4: Some mid 30's guy with jean shorts. Seeing his outfit I knew he was probably a weak tight guy.
Seat 5: A very outgoing singer/actress. She was very attractive and a lot of fun to play with. Her poker skills could use some work.
Seat 6: A Euro pro.
Seat 7: Me
Seat 8: Another mid 30's guy. Another weak tightie.
Seat 9: Another euro guy. Probably a pro.
Seat 10: Some guy got moved here after the 1st break. Mid 30's weak tight.

To make it short, st 300/600 I limp utg with red 4's with about a 42k stack behind me. Guy with about 10k limps directly behind me. Aggro tard who's already been caught bluffing twice raises to 3200 from CO(we have even stacks). Both blinds fold, I call, and shorty folds. Flop comes 246 all spades. I lead into him for 5k, he raises to 15k, I shove, he thinks and says he's committed and calls with AsQx. Turn 7 clubs, river 8 of spades. I'm left with 75 chips after the final count and go out on the ensuing hand.

So that sucked. After I busted I immediatly booked the next flight home as I was completely burnt out on Vegas.

The Main Event looms

The big dance has arrived. Day 1 is tomorrow and the final table is 11 days later. I know it's a pipe dream but somehow mining through the field, it'll be 7k+, and making it to the final table would be so incredible. 9 players will have this distinction. 7000/9 = a 1 in 777 shot at making the final table given all players are of equal skill. I'd like to think my chances are slightly better at least 1 in 500. Whatever, I can still dream about it until I bust out.

After the big show I'm most likely headed back to Missouri even though we've got the house until August 6th. It's so hard to work here. So many distractions. I also hate going out here as drinks are way too pricey and I have yet to have a night to remember in Vegas.

We were going to play in the Rio 1k mega satellite today but when we got there it was a complete zoo and the line to register was a good 2 hour wait. Instead we jetted over to the Venetian for their $550 at 5 PM. I couldn't hit a flop and I was down to 6500 from the 10k starting stack. At 100/200 25 ante a MP raises it to 600 and gets to callers. I look down at AK on the button and shove my stack. Folds around to the 2nd caller and he hims and haws for a minute. I try to look uncomfortable so he calls, he eventually does. Unfortunately, he had 77 instead of something like AQ or AJ. I miss and am sent packing.

Online has been going great. After only winning 2k or so last month I'm already up over 5k this month. I know this will probably jinx me but I don't care as I've been running unsustainably hot. I really want to get 2k SNG's in this month but I doubt it happens(hopefully I'll be playing in a certain tourney until the 17th). For whatever reason I'm so f'in lazy when it comes to working. For example, I'm writing this blog instead of playing.

Back in Vegas

The trip home was a good time. I saw a lot of friends and had way too much fun every night. Plus, no poker for over a week felt really good.

I got back to Vegas on Monday after missing my flight on Sunday. It was really dumb for booking a flight the day after a wedding. I actually caught the same flight as my buddy that was flying out to see me. While he was here I continued to party way too much.

Saw Hoover Dam for a 2nd time and decided I'm never taking the dam tour again. On Wednesday night we went to see the Crazy Girls show at the MGM. It was only 50 bucks and well worth the money. I fell in love with about 3 of the girls and every skit they did was amazing. It felt so good when my buddy left. I'm way too old to be going out 7 out of 8 nights. That much partying probably took a year off my life.

On Thursday I played the 1k Stud 8 or better event and never got anything going. My table had 3 name pros and there was only 1 or 2 weak spots. I played fairly well but got outdrawn a few too many times.

Yesterday I entered the 3rd largest live poker tournament ever, event 49 $1500 buyin. I started out on a very good card rush. Hit a set vs a guys top pair, won a 3 way all in for 1/3 of my stack with 99 vs JJ vs AK, won 2 fairly large coinflips that would've hurt me but not busted me, and got AA, KK, and QQ a couple of times in which I won medium sized pots. I did lose a fairly large pot with AA on a 873 2 suited board. Got it all in on the flop and the lady had pocket 8's. I didn't feel too bad as she was probably the nicest person I had ever played with and had supposedly just gotten out of the hospital after getting a cancerous tumor removed. I managed to recover and got my stack up to 45k at dinner break when the average was 15k.

There was about 600 people left after dinner break and 320 spots got paid. I knew I would money if I didn't do anything stupid but playing just to money is a terrible strategy in these large tournaments where top 10 get paid so much more than everyone else. I went card dead the first hour after dinner. My image wasn't the greatest and with a big stack nobody ever believes you have something so I played pretty tight. Eventually, I picked up 55 in the SB. It folds around to me and I raise to 2400, blinds were 400/800. BB raises to 7000. The BB has been really friendly and is definitely just a casual player there to have fun. He hasn't been too active but he's not the type of player that is afraid to go busto 200 or so before the money. He has about 15000 behind him after the raise. I decide to shove as I think I have some fold equity and winning this hand will really set me up to dominate the bubble. He instacalls with AJ and he wins the race. I would've been up to 66k if I would've won but instead down to 22k. I'm fairly certain I made the right move as even if it was -Cev I think my future equity is much greater with a huge stack as I could've really picked apart all the medium stacks.

After that nothing really exciting happens for awhile. I would pick up a few small pots and then would get knocked down when I raise pf and my cbet gets check raised. Wasn't hitting flops and didn't really pick up any decent cards to play back at anybody. Eventually the bubble burst. I had about 17k and the blinds were 800/1600. Folds around to me and I look down at 72s and shove. With blinds and antes this shove is almost always correct as SB and BB rarely call correctly here. SB and BB fold. Few hands later I pick up KK and raise some 2.5x BB and get no action. I think I win the blinds and antes one more time when my bust out hand occurs. Sitting at 22k I'm in the SB with QQ. A blonde hair kid that looks exactly like one of my friends but has blonde hair and scandanavian raises to 4500. I think for a few moments and shove. He thinks for about 20 seconds before calling with K9s. Vs my range there it's a pretty bad call but I could care less as I now have a 66% chance of getting my stack up above average. Well the flop comes 2 of his suit and the turn brings him the flush and I'm sent packing. So lame.

I get something like 3k for my efforts. Of course, it takes Harrah's over an hour to pay me out. I would've gone home earlier if I hadn't have busted out, bleh.