Courtney

I have to say that it’s days like this where playing MTTs really sucks. I played tourneys for 10 hours, stone bubbled a 55 FO final table, still lost $100, and I still have to do minimum 2 hours of website work. I usually love my life but I don’t today!

The day started bad and pretty much stayed that way. I’m sure I would change my mind about the day if I had made the final table of the $40k, but since I didn’t, I can keep my opinion that today was awful.

Not playing well and running badly is a good formula for losing money. I made a few bad calls and a few pushes that I would love to take back. One of those pushes was post flop when I was trying to rep something that made no sense. The other couple that I regret were both 3bet pushes preflop with AQ.

The worst part about today wasn’t the beats but my reaction to the beats. I spent the first few hours trying not to react to the first onslaught of bad beats, but as they continued, I couldn’t control myself anymore and I started getting pretty annoyed.

My bad beat tilt serves more of a distraction than anything. Whether I dwell on them for a few seconds or waste a minute writing an annoyed note about the idiot that 3-outed me, I waste time thinking about it. I can’t remember a time when I directly punted chips because I was on tilt, but I’m sure the distraction of feeling tilted has affected my playing to some degree in the past. I usually don’t stay annoyed for five minutes, but I that’s five minutes too long in my opinion.

I just can’t understand why I can’t get over it. This is how it goes. Sometimes you get 2 outered a bunch of times in a row to go from chip leader to out on the bubble. That’s just how it is. I wish I could get over it and stop getting annoyed. Usually I’m fine for the first few hours of a session but if things don’t improve (which they usually don’t with MTTs), then I just get pissed off during hours 4-8.

I suppose that as I keep playing, I will get desensitized. I hope I’m right. Maybe it’s like getting used to losing money everyday… you have to get used to getting bad beat and losing flips everyday, especially when playing MTTs.

I had a whole bunch of other stuff to write about but I’ve just wasted this entire post talking about bad beats. How stupid.

Happy New Year!!

Overall 2010 was a success. I quit my full time job and worked from home the entire year, working part time for FTR and playing poker part time. I ended the year with almost the same amount of life money in the bank as I had at this time last year. My bankroll is bigger, though, which is cool.

The year itself had its ups and downs, including tons of downs where poker is concerned. By August, when I stopped playing cash and started playing donkaments, I was up ~$150 from poker the entire year (including cash, tournaments, and some bonuses). I lost almost $9k playing tournaments from August to the end of October, and then between the end of October and the end of December won around $27k. In the end the net is around +$19k playing poker which I am quite happy with.

I am extremely excited about 2011. I probably won’t get to travel as much as I had hoped because of my personal life, but I’ll still be going to the Bahamas and Scotland for sure. I hope I can at least go to Vegas for the WSOP ladies event, although I’d like to play a few other $1k events if I can afford it. I’m sure PokerStars will have more ladies events to satellite into next year, too, and I fully intend on making it into every single one.

My main online poker goal this year is to play at least 4k tournaments. Along the way I’d like to push my average buy-in up a bit, and I’d like to be improve my multi-tabling a lot. I’ll be playing 4 days per week, usually Thursday through Sunday.

I upgraded my monitor yesterday, getting rid of my 19 inch for a 27. I wanted a 32 but they’re more than double the price of a 27… not worth it.

I played 25 tourneys today and dropped almost $800 on a typical Sunday. Bad start to the year, IMO. I’m excited to play again this week, though, mostly because my monitor is so sexy.

thankyou2010: what an idiot
thankyou2010: 60 pot…bet well over 5000…meatball
thankyou2010: that is pure donk

thankyou2010: nice bluff
thankyou2010: you must be taking lessons from courtie

LOL I love the chat box. Apparently shoving 5k with 1.5k effective stacks into a 60 chip pot in rebuy hour is pure donk 🙁 Oops sorry, next time I’ll try to get value out of quads another way.

I haven’t made any money since that 22c final table. Still two more days of poker in 2010 to go, though, so hopefully I can have a couple last minute wins 😀 I’m definitely gonna earn that stellar reward, though, which is awesome.

I definitely won’t be getting in as much volume as I’d like next year because of my part time job. I do intend on playing 4 days per week, though. Right now I usually play around 20 tournaments per day. This should go up as I learn to multi-table better. Assuming I only play 20 per day, though, I should be able to play at least 3.7k donkaments next year. Right now my average buy-in is $30. That should go up for sure next year as I plan to start putting a few $75s and $109s into my schedule pretty much right away (the early ones and on Sundays).

Aside from this minimum goal for volume, I definitely need to start studying more next year. I need to watch videos and go over hand histories much more often. Now that I’ve played a bunch of donkaments and I’ve gotten some experience the past few months, I should be working to become a better player.

One last thing to note: PokerStars hasn’t emailed or called me about the Big Game yet, which is good news because I don’t want a call until January. LA here I come?

Yay for Sundays. I came 4th in the PokerStars $22 1R1A for almost $8k. I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t at least top 3 but there wasn’t much I could do about it. I think overall I played really well and I felt really good for most of the final table.

When I think about it, it was a pretty up and down ride for me once it got down to 2 tables. On the final table bubble I lost a huge flip for the chip lead, and then I had to 3-outer someone to avoid being the bubble girl. I was short at first at the final table, and then I won some nice pots and was chip leader when we were 6 or 7 handed. Then chips got traded back and forth for a LONG time. I went down to last place and then back up to chip leader at one point, but for the most part I was 2nd in chips until we were 4-handed. Unfortunately people just didn’t bust when the opportunities presented themselves, and I ended up busting after shoving AQs over a button raise and running into KK. I sure hate getting snap called 😛

There’s quite a bit of playing left to do in December so who knows if I’ll still have a profit when it’s all over, but so far so good this month. I was about break-even before the day started so now I’m up a healthy amount. I would be pretty happy if I could go break-even for the rest of the year because that would mean a +$20k year for me playing donkaments. That is way above expectations considering it’s over only ~1k tourneys (or I guess by the end of the year it will be like 1200 tourneys). And also considering how badly it started with my downswing… well I’m really happy!

I’ve been having another crazy week (in a bad way). There seems to be a lot to do and this week will stay busy right until the end. When Sunday comes, I am determined to have at least one week with a normal schedule this month.

My PokerStars interview did not go perfectly, but it was overall okay. I was watching my brother at the time and earlier on in the day I had warned him that I was going to get an important phone call, so PLEASE leave me alone during it. Of course he did not listen. While I was on the phone I could hear him yelling at me in the background even through my closed door. After like the 4th time I asked the guy to hold on and told him to STFU (although not in those words).

The PokerStars rep doing the interviews is in charge of the VIP program I think. Very nice guy. The interview ended up being a test of my poker aptitude. I was slightly surprised by this. He asked me about the games I play, and then he gave me some hand scenarios, asking me to walk him through my thought process. I messed up one hand but overall I think it went fine. At the very least I showed him that I understand position and ranges, which should put me ahead of 80% of the women that make it this far 😛

Now it is, once again, a waiting game. His report gets sent to the casting team in LA and if they are interested in me, they get back to me in January. Then I go to LA for a screen test. So this is almost the end of the selection process! Apparently they get back to me no matter what, and the longer I don’t hear from them, the better.

I usually start playing poker at 12 PST and register until 3 pm. This usually produces 6 hour playing days (on avg) and I usually get in 14-17 tournaments. The problem with this schedule is that sometimes I have nothing to play at 2 pm if I do badly at the start of my session. Between FTP and PS there isn’t really anything worthwhile for low/midstakes except for the $55 40k. It’s really tilting because then I’m like 3 or 4 tabling for an hour while I’m waiting for 3 pm (which has a ton of stuff to play).

I’ve always known that starting a couple hours earlier would be ideal because there is a TON of stuff to play around 10 am, but I’ve never been able to get up early enough 🙁 I have plans tonight but I still wanted to get a session of poker in, so I decided to play as early as possible today. I somehow got up at 8:30 and started at 9:30.

I just love this early schedule. There’s some soft $22 FOs, the $26s on FTP are super soft at this time, and then there’s a bunch of turbos on PS. I really like the $54 KO on PS as well as the $55 turbo 2x chance. There’s a $109 on FTP at 9 am and a $109 on PS at 10 am that I might try sometime. I’m pretty sure that registering from 9 am to 1 pm is the best thing ever, and I’m going to try really hard to make this my regular schedule. I’ll miss the 500 cap but I’m sure I’ll get over it 😀

I went deep in the $55 turbo 2x chance and had a top 5 stack as we got close to the FT. Unfortunately on the FT bubble I played a hand with a complete idiot and lost (he called my push on a 798 flop when I had 79. He had Tx). This left me with 3bb. I did make the FT, but then I made a bad push with 59s and busted in 8th. I’m really disappointed that I made this push. There was a 1.5bb stack behind me and I simply was not paying attention when I pushed. It’s a fine push at any other point in the tournament, but not at the FT when I’m short and there is someone shorter. Sigh.

I know that my mistake is due to the fact that I’m not used to making final tables while multitabling. There is no way that I make that push if I’m playing less tables. I hope that as I gain more experience, I won’t make that mistake again.

I’m looking after my 9 year old brother from Nov 26 to Dec 5, so I won’t be playing much poker between then. It kind of sucks but I’m doing a favor for my parents while they’re on vacation. The most tilting thing is that I have to miss the $100k freeroll and Turbo Takedown this weekend because of driving him around.