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.

I somehow have not played any poker this week since Sunday. I took Monday off from work completely and then was a major slacker the next two days with website work. Fail.

I’m playing Day 1 of the $550 BCPC event today.

My birthday is this Saturday and so I’ll be taking that day off from work too. This has been a lazy week!

Today was almost the standard fail Sunday but I got lucky and one tabled my way to a PCA Ladies package 🙂 The tournament is only $1,100, but it’s worth $3.4k mostly because of the outrageously priced accommodations. I get $700 for my flight (which will barely cover it).

Words cannot describe how badly women play in these satellites. It’s actually mind boggling. At one point the chip leader in the tournament kept getting lucky against me and I lost my temper. I said something like, “LOL. I just can’t beat you, you keep winning against me in the most idiotic ways” in the chat. I instantly regretted it and then felt even stupider when she was so nice to me about it, lol. I’m ashamed that I lost my cool like that. I can blame it on the fact that I had a terrible day of tournaments and I was sick of one tabling, but blah blah blah. Fail.

Think of the weakest players in any standard low stakes tournament on PokerStars and then multiply that by almost the entire field. That is what it is like to play in these satellites. They’re $215 buyins but most of them satellite into the $215 via qualifiers that start at $2.20. They’re so soft. But then of course they’re going to be high variance, especially when they pay ~5% of the field (4 of us won packages out of 70 entrants). They’re really frustrating and not fun at all. The first two I tried really pissed me off, lol. I feel lucky to have won the package after 3 attempts. I do think I played well, though. I was short stacked for a lot of it once we got deep, and I chose my spots very carefully.

Good thing my luck box is working at the moment.

Hello!

Thank you for submitting your video audition. We enjoyed watching it but the casting team would like to know more about you.

Please complete the attached form and return it to this address along with a digital photo of yourself no larger than 500kb. Some of you will then be contacted for a telephone interview.

The Big Game has completed taping for season 1 and we are now in the preliminary phase of casting for future seasons. You may not hear any response from us for a while so please be patient.
Thanks for participating!

Jessica Cummis
Audition Coordinator
PokerStars.net

Got this email at the start of the week. I filled out a 2 page word file filled with questions about my personal life, job, and poker history and also sent them a still photo of myself. Now I play the waiting game again.

Today I skipped online donkaments and went to play live instead. They had a $550 at River Rock. What surprised me was that they also ran a super satellite to the Main Event of the BC Poker Championships (which starts next week). They had a sign on their desk that said that cash games were to be stopped at 11:30 in favor of tournaments and would then resume once there were free tables. I can’t believe they actually stopped cash games to accommodate donkaments.

90 players for the $550, 9 places paid, >$15k for 1st. Not bad. Nice structure too: 15k chips, 30 min blind levels. There were huge antes which would have been great if I got more spots to push. I ended up busting ~27th with JJ. Shoved 12bb in EP and lost a flip to AQ.

Late next week we’re going to be playing the $550 of the BCPC. I didn’t bother satelliting into either of the other events because they just don’t work with my schedule at all. Too bad.

Tomorrow is another Sunday of doom. This week went by amazingly fast for me…

I placed 2nd in the Double Deuce yesterday for $21k!!

Needless to say, I had an amazing Sunday. It’s very surreal. The Double Deuce is kind of like a myth…like you hear about people winning and you know that the wins must exist, but you can’t imagine ever doing it yourself because it’s pretty much impossible. Like the Sunday Million and the $250k, you play it every week and just bust and think nothing of it because you bust every week anyway.

Actually I thought I was going to make a run in the $22 1R1A (which had almost $20k for first, wow). I busted ~48th in that after losing a flip, and then I was one tabling the Double Deuce. I was slightly tilted by this because at this point I had 60bb, there were >600 people left and I just wanted to stop playing for the day.

I started caring about the tourney when it was down to around 150 people. At this point I realized that I might actually have a shot to go really deep. And then when it was down to like 5 tables, I actually started physically feeling the fact that I was deep in something that was worth a lot of money. What I mean is that my heart actually pounded whenever I was in a big pot or whenever I was all-in. It has been years since I’ve actually felt this way in a tournament. I never get worked up anymore, but I also haven’t been deep in something like this before. I barely felt disappointment the other week when I bubbled the final table of the $26 FO, but 1st place was only $9k in that.

I can’t believe that I made this final table. I can’t believe that I finally cashed for something significant. The strongest feeling I have right now is relief. Sweet sweet relief. I was down almost $9k playing an average buyin of $30. That is a lot of money. To be up five figures right now is just incredible. I am so grateful. I don’t take for granted the run good involved in this cash.

I am so relieved that I got through my downswing. I just can’t describe how it felt to be down almost 300 buyins. You hear about these downswings and you hear people say that one day you are going to run worse than you ever thought possible, but you never understand it until it happens.

Poker is hard. It is so hard. And I am talking about the emotional and mental part of it. I’m not even fully playing for a living and it took a huge toll on me. When I was losing $500 every day over and over again, I didn’t think I was going to be able to make it. There were a couple days where I actually broke down and wondered why I was doing this and wanted to quit. Those moments never lasted longer than an hour, but they happened. I am usually emotionally strong when it comes to poker and I am ashamed that my downswing affected me this way. But I literally could not help it. After losing 200 and then almost 300 buyins, I really began to question everything about what I was doing. Not to mention losing a third of my BR sucked.

My downswing would have sucked a million times more if Dave weren’t there for me. The entire time he kept telling me that I am a good player and that I will make money. That it will be worth it. That running bad like this happens, that other people get through it, and I will too. I am not sure how many times he had to tell me this. I remember sitting here after busting deep in yet another tournament, feeling more frustrated than I can remember. He just came in and sat on the floor and waited for me to say something. He was just here for me and I needed it. It’s stupid that I needed to hear these things to feel better about it, but I did.

Thanks to that downswing, I will never understimate how bad I can run. While it is unlikely, there is a chance that I will run just as bad or even worse in the future. I will be ready for it, and hopefully I will be mentally and emotionally stronger. I am surprised by how dark the days can feel in the midst of such a downswing, but now I know.

I feel like my week has been really busy even though I don’t really have much to show for it. On Sunday I made my Big Game audition video. My friend was really awesome and put together a really cute and cozy set in her kitchen. I talked for around 2 min about myself but I changed into different costumes and did different things while doing so. I think it turned out okay.

PokerStars responds to everyone that submits a video, so I will hear back no matter what. Hopefully it’s not a rejection right away, although I highly doubt it will be. I’m sure they’ll string me along a bit first 😉

On Tuesday I went to Edgewater and played a $365+$35 ladies tournament. We started with 300bb and levels were 30 min long, and it was pretty cool to have so many chips for such a small buy-in. Unfortunately there were only 46 entrants, which meant that 5 people paid and first was $6k. I think I played really well. I got some nice hands at the start of the event and got full value for all of them.

When the final table formed, I had around 20bb. I was looking forward to push/folding my way to glory, but unfortunately I went out in 9th. I standard raised KK in EP and got two calls, cbet a J high flop and called a push by AJ. The turn was a J and that was it. It’s pretty disappointing because I cash pretty much 100% of the time when I win that pot, and then obviously I also have a great shot at winning.

Because of my Big Game video and the Tuesday live donkament, I feel like I’ve been struggling to catch up with everything else all week. I only played online tournaments 2 days this past week, and I lost a couple hundred both days. Today I have a bunch of website work to catch up on, and I also hope to fit a few Step satellites in. I’ve been using them to grind VPPs because despite my horrible volume this month, I’m pretty close to Goldstar. It’s crazy how tough it is for me to hit Goldstar while playing MTTs. I was on pace for Supernova when I was playing cash before I stopped playing on a regular basis.

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LOL @ the sizes. I need like XXS and I get to choose from M to XXXL. Does anyone want a free FTP T-shirt?!

So I had a good day of poker. What a relief. I took 1st in a $26 turbo on FTP, 2nd in a small $27 KO on PS, and then I had a few small cashes. I was down about $8.5k (since August) before the day started, and now I’m down only $4.5k. It’s a relief to cut the losses almost in half; it was getting a bit too close to 300 lost buy-ins for my liking. I actually took 10th in a bigger $26 last night. Would have been epic if I had made that FT too.

Next step is breakeven 😛

The middle of my session was hectic. I’m pretty comfortable 6-tabling, so occasionally I’ll add a 7th if there isn’t really anything I need to concentrate on. It was apparently a mistake today, though. I wasn’t counting on staying alive for so long in a couple other turbos and I was 7-tabling when I was at the FT of the $26. It’s a good thing it was push/fold at the FT otherwise I might not have won!

This past Sunday I was able to win Round 3 of the Big Game satellite on PokerStars, so now I have to make a casting video. I’ve pretty much figured out what I want to say, so hopefully I can think of a way to present it in a way that isn’t massively boring. I’m so glad I don’t have to play anymore of those satellites!