Brag post - mission accomplished - huge goal and milestone @BrokeLivingJRB

On March 3rd I tweeted

@BrokeLivingJRB inspired me 2 tweet br. Couldn't sleep last night, donked off 92% of br. Hope to pass @BrokeLivingJRB next wk. br $13.27

and then

@BrokeLivingJRB trying to pass you in bankroll by playing $.05 / $.10 on Cake Poker. Hope to be ahead by next week. br $13.27.

Well it took me two weeks, not one, but mission accomplished. From twitter today:

@BrokeLivingJRB Jean-Robert Bellande

PLO @BenbaLamb misreads the flop and gets the cap in w 9h7h5cTs. Board is Jh8h5h. I have AhKh. Capped Pot 22k. Can we run it 3 times?

"Let's just run it once" - @BenbaLamb... Same words Billy Baxter used. gg. Busted and out of action.

...and when the 6h hit the river, crazy mike was right there to yell "OMG! Straight Flush!".

So let's recap how I got here. I really haven't played much at all the last two weeks because I have been very busy with work and the kids have had a ton of end of season Hockey commitments and travel soccer is ramping up. @BrokeLivingJRB just kept playing in his normal game and went from about $11,000 to exactly zero, which puts me up about $12.50. It is great to work hard and accomplish a stretch goal like this in poker. 2011 looks like it is going to be great!

From October 10, 2008 - Failure or Experience?

Another historical blast from the past....
 
So it was an interesting qualifying season for the Fallsview WPT. I played in 5 $170 single table satellites and two $460 single table satellites. The 170s had a single winner ($1240 satellite voucher) and runner up got a replay at 170. The 460 awarded three $1240 vouchers and fourth place got a $460 replay. I won 3 of the five 170s and 1 of the two 460s, for a very nice ROI. I should note that I finished last in both of the 170s I didn't win.

So I had four shots at the main event, and I ran bad and played even worse. In attempt 1, I was eliminated in 7th place, when a loose player utg raised to 700, a mp player called, and I looked down at 77 in the BB with 1900 in chips (you start with 3000 in this format). Blinds were 100-200 with a 25 ante, and I believed that I was ahead of both players, and could probably end up racing with one of the two or even force two folds if I shipped it here. I pushed all in.

I thought I was probably dead when both players called. The flop brought and ace, which I was sure had sealed my fate, and all of the money went in on the flop for the other two players. One held AK and the other A9. No sevens came, but the turn was miracle 9 for the utg guy, and he knocked two of us out in one shot.

The second $1240 was my best shot. I was dialed in and playing well. With 8 players left, I was at 3100 chips, but had a pretty good beat on the table. I looked down at QQ from early position, we were at the 150-300-50 level, and I just smooth called, hoping to get raised. It actually folded all the way to the BB, who made it $700 to go. He was the chip leader having eliminated one of the two first outs, and chipping up a little more after. He didn't look super strong. I acted agonized, before raising it to 2200 to go (1500 more), leaving 900 behind.

The guy went into the tank for about 7 minutes before deciding to call. I was sure I was ahead by quite a bit here, and I'd put my last 900 in on the flop, and maybe get away if an Ace came. The flop looked great - three babies, three suits (467). He immediately pushed, which did give me pause, but I called anyway. He had flopped a set of sixes, and I was out. Ouch.

I immediately sat for another 1240, probably not a great decision as I was still a bit steamed. I got chipped off early to about 1900 chips. I raised from the BB at 100-200 to 700 with AKs, with four limpers, and got one caller on the button. The flop came A94, three suits. I checked to the button, hoping to induce a bet from a weaker ace from the button - he bet 700, I pushed, and he snap called, which of course left me with a very sick feeling. I didn't need to see the cards - he had a set of 9s, and I was essentially dead. A pretty crappy play by me, and a pretty tough circumstance as well, but I should be smart enough not to go broke there with top-top.

Finally, I went up to play my fourth and final 1240, and again felt very dialed in. About 10 minutes into level one a kid raised under the gun to 200, I looked down at AKo from the cutoff, I repop it to 550 and he folds. I could tell he was pissed. 10 minutes later he makes a raise to 250 from the same position. I could tell that he was stronger this time. I look down at beautiful black KK. I make it 750 to go. He does a little bit of hollywood, checks his cards and pops it back to 1200 more (1950 to go). We are 20 minutes into level one (25-50). Warning bells should be going off for me here, but I'm only thinking about felting this kid.

I go into the tank for a second and then announce all in (about 3400). He snap calls and I know immediately that I've made a horrible play. The flop comes babies, so I'm not sure that the end result isn't the same, but he did have AA. I was left with 150, and was out 6 hands later. Cold deck yes, but I should be good enough to let this go when he repops to 1950 - I still have more than enough behind to do damage in this relatively slow structure, and he's showing strong, and has pretty much announced he's got AA.

I ran kings into aces once before in an important spot, during the FTP main event (500+35). After the third break I was the chip leader and got it all in against a very large stack KK vs. AA and it precipitated my run from first to out in a 25 minute interval.

So maybe I've learned something here. It has been exactly one year since I qualified for the WPT fallsview, and I've really been playing for that long (and maybe 9 months before of online on and off). So it is early in the game, and I'm still developing. We'll see at some future point if I'm good enough to minimize damage KK against AA, but the experience sure helps.

On a positive note, my net result this year ($0 result) is better than last year ($340 for two satellites). I made two ATM withdrawals, and paid them back plus all of my tournament entries through winning consistently in the NL cash games. This is becoming more and more comfortable for me, particularly at the 2/5 or 5/5 level with a 300-500 buy in. The fallsview room really has quite a few inexperienced players who come down from Toronto with many hundreds of dollars that can be exploited. I won the biggest cash pot of my life the other day ($1,850), and just missed out on a $1,900 pot playing some PLO when I flopped top set (kings), turned the nut flush draw in addition (but was behind a made broadway), and then missed my 19 outs on the river.

So I played for free though this process, but am pretty disappointed to have missed another opportunity at a big main event in my back yard - I do feel a lot better equipt to have dealt with it this year than last - I felt I could have gone a lot deeper this year and had a big advantage by knowing what to expect. My game has come a long long way, but it was not to be.

So I want to start getting regular table hours at 2/5 or 5/5 and working on my bankroll, to give me more flexibility to try some tournament stuff. My goal is to have $2,500 prior to going to vegas in November (I am going to play the venetian deepstack $540), and to get to $10,000 by the turn of the year. I want to money a major (POY) tournament in 2009, and maintain a five figure, growing bankroll.

There are positives. This is the first time in a while that my learning curve didn't have a price tag. My stamina is better - I can play longer sessions and am doing a better job of managing my mindframe with diet, sleep, etc.. I have more situational and hand experience in the NL format, and am playing with a lot of confidence. I still have to do a better job of putting together the situation when my adreline is going, instead of going with the rush that comes when you are on a big decision. I'll try to take more time with each decision, and see if I can't make myself a harder out in tournament situations. I'll let you know how I make out.

A blast from the past, some historical perspective

So a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away I thought I would start a blog. For myriad reasons I was far from prolific, and the entries died. That said, a few of them set some historical context for where I am on my poker journey, so I will reenter a few of them here. The first outlines how I fared in the year after some accidental success in a WPT satellite lead to me me playing more poker. I was very much in a learn and trial by discovery phase at this point.

From June 24, 2008...

I'll start with some background and an update on my pursuit of poker as a source of income, and perhaps a downstream career possibility.

The last few months I haven't been running so great. It has featured a lot of losing from ahead in some pretty big spots, or running good and not closing the deal. I hate when players write or talk about their bad beats like they are the only ones who lose from ahead, (or like they never get their money in bad and suck out) so I will make it a practice to spare all of the gory details of hands where I feel like the poker Gods have forsaken me.

I was at the WSOP to play the 1,500 limit hold 'em and the 1500 shootout events, as well as to take the opportunity to play some bigger cash games than I have in the past (I was specifically looking forward to playing the $30-$60 Bellagio game - it has been a goal of mine since I stepped into the Bellagio room for the first time two summers ago playing the $4-$8 to see how I could hang at that level with $1500 in play).

So to link this back to bad beats with gory details, some of the most interesting moments for me at the WSOP were of the people watching / amateur armchair psychologist variety. At the onset of any break during any event, I quickly learned that the hallways would immediately flood with a sea of twenty something event participants in their standard poker "costumes" (ball cap, grubby tee, chris moneymaker shades, 12 hour shadow, the occasional phil laak hoodie), all engaged in fervent conversation on their cell phone with some loved one or a homeboy about how some jackass caught up to them when they never should have been calling, blah, blah, blah...

A sea of analyst participants, broadcasting their sob stories to whoever was sweating them from a distance. Quite an interesting phenomenon to absorb for sure.

So anyway, my updates back home during these cel-telephonic updates weren't great. A three hundredth place finish in the 1500 limit, with about 880 runners, midway through level 6, and not even close to a sniff of the money (something like 90 paying), and really I was pretty freakin' overmatched by the format (and probably my experience level in limit mtt events). By the time we got to level 5, the average stack had about 9 big bets, which really didn't leave a lot of room to miss if you weren't chipped up from the early going. I played it like a nit, and was going fold, fold, fold until I realized that I would have to pick a hand and go with it, because the format was running me over. Probably not the best strategy if you want to win the event, and it made me pause to reflect on what I was going for. I think I was playing not to lose instead of to take the thing down, so a part of my take away from the series is to always play to win (never play not to lose).

There is some play that I've observed from top young, aggressive players, as well as seasoned pros, that seems to support the merit of taking this approach. Really, if paydays are weighted heavily for finishing number 1, I've got to figure out how to accumulate chips quickly, and a part of this will be being ok with the semi-occasional early exit. This may run counter to the way that I'm wired (patient - trapping - great joy derived from outplaying, not winning flips), so I'll have to make some adjustments and play around to see how I can reconcile this notion into my own particular poker idiom.


I tried out an early version of this concept at our local poker league this last month and took down first place while playing from behind in more than a few key hands. But the fold equity in my aggression made it so even though I was 42% in a couple of key spots (OK, and 22% in another), I always had my opponents well covered. My buddy Ted may never talk to me again, as I busted him by playing from behind in two consecutive hands.

I don't want to be in the habit of playing without the house edge, but I think the long term EV with an aggressive posture, especially when you are deep enough to have some fold equity when you are three betting, and relying on some basic weak / strong tells at the table, while creating more volatility in results for sure, has to yield more wins (even if there are fewer moneys). I'm going to play with this for the rest of '08 and I'll touch base and let you know how its going from time to time, although between work, building a house, and having a light bankroll after my WSOP debacle, I don't have a lot of plans to play a lot of stuff in the rest of '08.

If the Fallsview WPT satellites get rolling again, I'll try to do some of that, but I think that the WPT may be going busto - something is fishy and I read that they are losing their television contract with GSN, and I know their stock has been getting hammered, so we'll need to see why Fallsview stopped the sats. I want to play some low dollar MTTs online (maybe some Fulltilt daily doubles, as well as some of the pokerstars $5+.50 limit tourneys, like 2-7 lowball and what not), but I'll probably wait until we get out of summer and the weather gets crappier. Online is a better crappy weather sport, especially when you live in Buffalo with five kids, and summer is like six weeks long.

I'll also be playing in the monthly local league, as well as hosting a monthly home game. I'm going to try to avoid the Seneca rooms like a plague - they only spread 2-4 (occasional 3-6) limit, and I definitely don't play with an edge in any of the NL cash games there, and it feels like playing the showdown lottery - not a lot of room for subtlety to be honest.

High Stakes Poker thoughts

I watched episode two of the Norm McDonald High Stakes Poker season this weekend. Just a few quick thoughts.

First of all, the show is worse. Gabe Kaplan is a far better analyst than Norm McDonald, and Kaplan's really missed.  There was  a play this week where one of the amateur players (the guy who invented silly bandz) laid down a baby flush on the river when Phil Ruffin (Owner of Treasure Island on the strip and another billionare amateur) made a giant overbet on the river. Why are you playing baby suited cards if you are going to lay down your river flush? The silly bandz guy then showed the table his flush when he folded. (And he was wrong, by the way - the flush was good).

Of course all of the professionals at the table immediately took note that Mr. Silly Bandz can easily be pushed off of very strong hands. McDonald made no mention of it at the time, though it definitely affected action in the remainder of the episode. Just very bad commentary.

The players on the show are also definitely worse than in past seasons. I know that Venssa Selbst has had more success in the last year than I will in my poker lifetime, but she called one of the amateurs who had raised her all in, acting out of turn. The guy was so excited to get his money in that he acted before Antoni Esfandiari decided his action. And then she called with a hand that easily could be beaten, it was strange that she didn't make the right read.

Unlike in previous seasons where there were better cash game players (read Full Tilt sponsored pros), I'd watch and think "I'd be the dead money at this table", this season I watch and say "I wish I had the bankroll to go 30,000 hands with this group of players, because over that sample size I'd be very +EV and could probably quit my day job". The soft spots are unbelievably bad.

That said I am watching the season. The idea that players this bad will pony up $200K to play on TV makes me wish that I had the bankroll to play (and to locate) comparably wealthy and inept.

Cake Poker Fail

I've been busy lately with obligations for the kids, but I'm also feeling not a hell of a lot of motivation to grind these days.

Last week I played way above my roll at Cake and lost most of the $200 or so that I had in there playing $.25 / .50 six max and heads up. When my rakeback hit my account last week it brought me up to about $40, most of which I promptly lost playing $.05 / .10 6 max. I don't want to reload, and am not super amped up to grind $.02 / .04 limit to get the account back up. I've got about $6 in the account right now. I'll take a little breather and then get back at in later in the week.

@BrokeLivingJRB

I've gotten a kick out of Jean Robert Bellande and his twitter account (@BrokeLivingJRB) which features his bank roll updates. Generally it fluctuates between $0 and $100,000, but inevitably lands at $0 with some regularity. He's pretty self deprecating about it, and it is entertaining. I do recommend following him.

Anyway, it has inspired me to tweet my bankroll updates as well. After an ill advised night of playing way above my modest bankroll on Cake Poker, my bankroll shrunk 92%, and now sits at $13.27. My hope is to pass JRB by sometime next week. I will continue to update my progress on twitter (@eapoker9).

Inaugural Post

This is my inaugural blog Post. I'll post some basic background about why this blog exists. I am a young non-profit executive with a family. I love my job and love my wife and kids. I also love to play poker. This blog is a way for me to log my poker journey.

When I was a kid I would visit my Grandma's House on Cabrini boulevard in the Fort George neighborhood in New York City once or twice a year. All of my mom's sisters and brothers would be there. It was a smoke-filled cauldron of crazy Filipinos. At night, inevitably, the games would begin.

The women tended toward Mah Jong, while the men would play poker. As a kid if I was lucky I could sit in for my mom or dad in one of the games.  They typically let me keep any profit from these games. I remember thinking as a kid that this was a great way to make easy money. The spoils of a nickel quarter game were a big deal to an eight year old!

The poker variants tended to be games like seven card stud, queens and followers, Little "L", five card draw, Jacks progressive and other dealer's choice games. I learned them all, enjoyed playing, but didn't think much of it.

We had a summer place on the lake in the finger lakes. Twice a year my dad would host a weekend long poker game with his work buddies, and they would install or remove the docks on the water. It was a lot of fun. The games were similar, though the stakes were higher than the family game on Cabrini. Opportunities were fewer to "sit in" during this big game. It wasn't a family game, and I remember that hundreds of dollars could change hands over these weekends. I was astounded by the stakes.

My college roommates and friends would also get dealer's choice games going about once a month. I once won every material belonging of my best friend Pete in an all night poker / pool match. It consisted mostly of crappy skateboard parts and smelly concert T-Shirts, but it was something. We'd gamble to see who had to do the dishes, or who would need to buy dinners. It seems like I generally had an edge, and was often free-rolling for meals and dishes. I once had 66 free Mighty Tacos banked on account with my friend Lane.

That said, I never really gave much thought to poker as a pursuit. There were no brick and mortar card rooms near my home in upstate New York, and online wasn't a thing yet. Of course that all changed with the Moneymaker boom, and like a lot of other folks, I made a deposit on to Party Poker and won some and lost some at some very small stakes. I still wasn't thinking much about it.

My wife and I got a kick out of playing on FullTilt against some of the characters that we saw on Television. We played a $1 razz tournament one night and knocked out Chris Ferguson on our way to winning the first prize of about $55. It was pretty big news in our house and we earned a Tee Shirt that said that we had knocked Jesus out of a tournament. Defeating a Demi-God and world champion was a pretty big accomplishment, but I didn't really know anything about the game.

Two events changed how I thought about poker. The first is Annie Duke's fault. My wife and I were up late one night watching a short lived show that preceded Nightline. Annie Duke was the subject of a half hour interview / profile, and she explained in some detail how she made her living from taking money from tourists at the Bellagio poker room. She talked about her background and what led her to this vocation. I was abso-freakin-lutely riveted. Knowing me as she does, my wife let out an "uh oh" when the show ended. "She's a female you - now you are going to want to play poker for a living." This got it into my head that there were people on earth who could earn a good living playing a game, a novel concept to me at that time (the interview happened pre-boom).

The second game changer that occurred happened basically on a lark, which was that I experienced some accidental and moderate WPT success. I'll cover it in more detail in a subsequent post.

Anyhow, I've had a small dilemma in life. I'm pretty sure that if I were younger and singler in life I would give professional poker a go. As it is, I've got many kids, a great life, and am moderately well accomplished for a young man professionally. I earned an MBA from Duke University. Earning six figures makes the barrier to entry / switching costs to poker prohibitive. Having a slew of kids makes the variance and uncertainty intolerable. And being an executive at a known brand not for profit, makes my poker interest somewhat controversial.

I wouldn't trade my life for anything. I'm not likely going to ever be a professional poker player and I'm very ok with that. I love what I do, and am pretty good at it. I did, however, this past December, decide to take poker more seriously, and put a little discipline to the pursuit of mastering the intricacies of this great game. A part of that is a commitment to doing more than just playing - to spend some time studying and analyzing as well. I want to become active in the forums. I want to start at the bottom and progress through all the levels, not skipping any, and see how far I can get. I view it as a fun challenge.

With my work and life obligations, I don't have a ton of time to devote to poker, but I will devote some. This blog is a way to express my thoughts about the game and my journey in a safe and anonymous way.