Poker

As I said in a previous post, I sold half my action in the $1.1k Ladies PCA event. I feel that I owe my backers a trip report, so here is my attempt to write one.

This will, however, be the most boring TR known to man. If I take out the breaks, I played for ~7 hours, but it was an extremely boring tournament for me. In fact, I only went to show down (in a non AI pot) twice.

96 women entered the tournament, which was a slightly fewer than I expected. I drew a BAD table. PokerStars player minko23 (ranked on p5s) was two to my left. Victoria Coren was a few to my right. A lot of the girls there played online, and a lot of them had high stakes playing boyfriends/husbands. There was also a lady that final tabled last year.

Something I should clarify is that the table was tough only by ladies tourney standards. This just means that it wasn’t full of limp/calling, 6x raising droolers. Some of them actually raised <3x preflop and played okay post flop.

So I’ll talk about the two show downs I had.

Hand 1: First level, so we were ~200bb deep. I was on the BU and the CO raised 3bb. She hadn’t raised yet, and it was the first time it was folded to us in LP. I flatted the BU with ATo. Flop came Kxx and she checked. I bet half pot and she called. I checked behind A turn and snap called the river (can’t remember what it was) and lost to KK.

Hand 2: I think it was the 3rd level of blinds. I know that I was 80bb deep. I raised in MP ~2.5bb with 99 and the BB called. She had been calling a fair amount preflop and the most important thing to know about her was that she was donk betting extremely frequently. Probably 80% of the time. She had shown down a few donk bets and we saw that she had been doing it with both made hands (TPTK) and bluffs. Anyway, the flop came Qxx and she (of course) donk bet. I was slightly surprised about the sizing, though, which was pot sized. There was no draw on the board, so I was confused. I called. Turn was a A and she bet half pot. I think that perhaps I should have found a fold to this second bet. I hadn’t seen her bet the turn as a bluff yet and she has an ace a decent percentage of the time when she bets. Obv I called, though. River was a Q and we both checked and she showed AJ.

After that hand I had about 60% of my starting chips. I almost doubled up before the 5th blind level, though, without going to show down. I raised Ax suited in LP <2.5bb and got called by a lady that just got moved to the table in the BB. I cbet a flush draw flop, checked back the turn, and pushed over a bet that was 40% of my remaining stack on the river after hitting my flush. Apparently she was bluffing, though, because she folded.

That hand got me to a little above my starting stack, and it was unfortunately the highest my stack would go for the rest of the tournament. I was pretty card dead the rest of the way and didn’t play too many pots. The pots I did play all ended on the flop with a cbet (I won a couple and lost a couple of these… probably broke even overall).

I eventually got moved to a different table which was easier than the first one, but my stack (and cards) prevented me from taking advantage of it. The highlight of the table for me was pushing over a BU raise in the BB with AJ with ~8000 chips at 150/300 25 ante. The BU, who was a PokerStars pro that I won’t bother to name, totally freaked out when I did this. She was like, “WHAT? You’re pushing 8000?! Why so much?! Do you want a call?! I actually have a hand! You probably don’t think I have anything because I’m on the button…” She thought about it for a minute, mucked, and kept asking me if I wanted a call. She said to herself, “Of course she didn’t want a call…” Then she asked me (in an annoyed tone of voice), “Do you play online?” It occurred to me that I could lie about it, but then don’t most of the people at PCA play online? Meh. I told her that I play “a bit”.

The funniest was when her friend came over to the table and she said to him, “You’ll never guess what just happened to me!” I heard her telling him about the hand and then I heard her say to him, “She plays online,” as if that explained everything. Haha – definitely the highlight of the tourney for me.

So blinds got higher and my stack didn’t increase. I got it all-in with QQ and chopped with another QQ. I also got it all-in with TT and chopped with another TT, wtf. I got KK right before the dinner break and shoved UTG with 11bb and won the blinds. I think I could have considered min raising with the KK, but a couple players at the table would have been suspicious of this.

I was disappointed to come back after the dinner break and discover that I had been moved. I had a good image at my table and would have gotten a lot of folds for my pushes 🙁 I got moved to a table with huge stacks in front of me, FML.

I played only two hands at this new table. The first hand I was in the BB and I folded. The second hand I had ~12bb and 55 in the SB. I shoved over a 3bb CO raise. The lady said, “This is probably a bad call” and called anyway with KTs. I lost. GG

I felt terrible after losing that flip, more terrible than I expected. At first I wished that I hadn’t pushed. I thought to myself that I was probably going to be able to chip up pretty decently by open shoving preflop and I didn’t have THAT much FE with my 3bet. I also did not like the fact that it was only my second hand at the table and I had no reads on the lady.

After thinking about it, though, I stopped being results oriented and felt okay with it. I DEFINITELY had plenty of FE versus a random woman in a live donkament with my stack. The fact that she raised 3bb shows that she probably wasn’t an online player, which gives me even more FE (IMO). If I could go back in time, I might not make that push because I think that I maybe have more to gain by open push/folding, but the difference is perhaps so trivial that it’s not worth thinking about.

Obviously if anyone disagrees, please let me know (especially if you were one of my backers).

Thanks to Jono, Josh, and Mike for buying my action. I hope this TR was sufficient (although I know it was super boring. In fact, maybe you’re not even reading anymore, lol). I was extremely disappointed that I couldn’t make you some profit, but hopefully there will be a next time. My ITM is like 50% in ladies events, so I’m practically guaranteed to make a profit next time 😉

This was way longer than I expected. I’ll write again later this week about the rest of my trip. I’m playing online tomorrow which I am excited about because it feels like it’s been a while.

I’m sitting in the Toronto airport waiting for the flight that will take me to the Bahamas. I am ridiculously tired right now, I haven’t slept in 20+ hours. By the time I get on the plane it will be almost 24 hours, so I really hope I can sleep at least a bit on the plane. I am just so terrible at sleeping anywhere that isn’t a bed, though, so GL me.

I’ll probably get to Atlantis at like 4 pm and then apparently I’m supposed to attend some seminar. I have no idea what it is right now although I vaguely remember that it sounded interesting back when I registered for it.

Tomorrow I’m gonna go to Vanessa Rousso’s bootcamp (hooray?) in the morning, and then Day 1 of the $1k ladies event is in the afternoon. I’d really love to run good in this! I sold half my action to reduce my variance, and I’d really love to make my backers some money.

If I don’t make it to Day 2 of the $1k, there’s a $300 side event for ladies on Saturday. I have no clue how many ppl it’ll get but I’m sure it’ll be insanely soft, so I’ll definitely play it.

No free Internet at Atlantis and I’m too cheap to pay for it, so I can’t update while I’m there. I’m hoping my cell works, though, and that I can text updates en route to my 1st place finish 😀

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.