Thursday, May 26, 2011
Turning Stone update
I forget to give my Turning Stone update.I played the $100K guarantee and busted about halfway through the field. I stayed up the night before playing $2-5 against a pretty tough lineup and ended up posting a $37 win. Hardly worth losing the sleep over. I did make an $800 hero call on a flop with A high and a high conviction about my read, ended up right, but had the villain end up hitting his gut shot straight draw on the turn to lose a $2,400 pot. It hurt later when I turned a straight against another kid's top two and was only able to double up (he had me covered by $800 or so) - the first hand cost me the $2,400 plus the additional $800 later. C'est la vie. A $37 win is better than a three buy in loss : )
More 5-10 madness
I've discovered a local $5-$10 game that is a lot of fun to play in. It's a little bit of a haul (1 hour 15 minutes from home), but it is worth the trip.
Last game I played I was able to post a $2100+ win which was nice. I'm starting to shift gears and consider getting back to grinding out a bankroll instead of having a comingled poker budget. I want to be able to play higher, and that's the only way I will be able to do it.
I'm not banked to play 5-10, but I've set $2,700 of my recent winnings aside and I want to see if I can get it up to $10,000. Hope to post occasional updates.
Last game I played I was able to post a $2100+ win which was nice. I'm starting to shift gears and consider getting back to grinding out a bankroll instead of having a comingled poker budget. I want to be able to play higher, and that's the only way I will be able to do it.
I'm not banked to play 5-10, but I've set $2,700 of my recent winnings aside and I want to see if I can get it up to $10,000. Hope to post occasional updates.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Ship It! Borgata prelim and Cash game run good
It has been some time since my last update - it has been very busy with work and kids etc... Plus, with online not an option, there has been no grinding away.
My wife and I did get down to Atlantic City to play a $200, $75,000 guaranteed re-entry preliminary event at the Borgata Spring Poker Open. It was our first time playing at Borgata.
There were 990 entries and I manged to chop three ways for $22,000 (it did require a second buy in as I busted my first in about one hour). It was a great experience, and I feel like my prior experience grinding long days and making day 2s in major tournaments helped prepare me to take this one deep. For the first time at a larger event I wasn't content simply making the money, and it helped me to focus and play down from 90 to the final table. I'm hoping this helps with the few events I play at this year's WSOP. I plan to play a $1,000 and a $1,500 as well as a few live satellites to the main event. I'll be in Vegas from July 2-7. Hopefully I can build off of my two cashes in three events run from last year, but actually get deep in one of these tourneys for a bigger score.
My live cash game has been coming around as well. I had been resolved to playing $1-2 NL because it won't ever hurt financially in any sort of downturn, and the games are softer. When we got to the Borgata and I went to the registration desk all of their $1-$2 tables were full, so I chose to take the immediate seating that they had in a $2-$5 game. I put my whole $450 cash game budget for the trip into play, and sat down to get a feel for my table dynamic.
From table talk and behavior, it became clear pretty fast that everyone at the table played and quite a bit. Some of the players traveled on the minor league circuit, some were regulars grinding it out in AC, and a few were online players in town for the events. I thought it could be problematic, but after a few orbits I realized that even though this group of characters were probably winning players at this level, they were still making exploitable mistakes. I really think that getting 30,000+ hands in over Christmas break on Pokerstars was a great development experience for my game.
I ground it out from 10 PM until around 5:30 AM and posted a $770 win. I figured at a bare minimum I had my tournament entries and most of my travel covered for the trip. It was good for my confidence, but I found that it was easier to beat that game than $.05 / $0.10 online. That's a crazy thought for me.
Since then I've logged about 8 hours playing $5-10 locally and am up ~$1,600. Again, I have found the games exploitable. I stumbled across one regular $5-$10 game that runs in a local casino once a week and it has one of the softer cast of regulars that I've played with in a while. I couldn't believe that 7 of the 8 other seats really were fully recreational players with a full range of blatant tells, and folks who don't understand basic concepts like bet sizing, position, and hand ranges. There was a ton of preflop limping, and passive and scared play. It's over an hour to get to this card room from my home, so it is hard to schedule it in, but I am going to try to switch my schedule up over time to see if I can regularly play with this group. I gave the floor staff my cel number and told them to text or call me whenever this game came together. I think it is too great an opportunity not to make an effort. Hopefully I can continue to run good and play well - I have been playing poker recently with a budget rather a bankroll, but am up over $20,000 this year (I went 0 for 2 at the Fallsview events in January, but at least satellited into one), and would like to try to build a bankroll that is fire walled from my personal finances and is suitable to play $5-10 live.
I do plan to play the $350, $100,000 guaranteed event at Turning Stone on Friday. They are giving away seats to the event, so it should create a nice field, and first prize should be in the $30,000 range, so its worth taking a PTO day and making the 3 hour drive to take a shot. I'll play some cash games on Thursday night, and then play the event on Friday. After that it is just Vegas and the WSOP, with maybe a quick stop in between for one night at Foxwoods while I am taking a course at Harvard Business School in Boston the first week of June. I'll deliver more updates as I go, but it's been a good first half to 2011.
My wife and I did get down to Atlantic City to play a $200, $75,000 guaranteed re-entry preliminary event at the Borgata Spring Poker Open. It was our first time playing at Borgata.
There were 990 entries and I manged to chop three ways for $22,000 (it did require a second buy in as I busted my first in about one hour). It was a great experience, and I feel like my prior experience grinding long days and making day 2s in major tournaments helped prepare me to take this one deep. For the first time at a larger event I wasn't content simply making the money, and it helped me to focus and play down from 90 to the final table. I'm hoping this helps with the few events I play at this year's WSOP. I plan to play a $1,000 and a $1,500 as well as a few live satellites to the main event. I'll be in Vegas from July 2-7. Hopefully I can build off of my two cashes in three events run from last year, but actually get deep in one of these tourneys for a bigger score.
My live cash game has been coming around as well. I had been resolved to playing $1-2 NL because it won't ever hurt financially in any sort of downturn, and the games are softer. When we got to the Borgata and I went to the registration desk all of their $1-$2 tables were full, so I chose to take the immediate seating that they had in a $2-$5 game. I put my whole $450 cash game budget for the trip into play, and sat down to get a feel for my table dynamic.
From table talk and behavior, it became clear pretty fast that everyone at the table played and quite a bit. Some of the players traveled on the minor league circuit, some were regulars grinding it out in AC, and a few were online players in town for the events. I thought it could be problematic, but after a few orbits I realized that even though this group of characters were probably winning players at this level, they were still making exploitable mistakes. I really think that getting 30,000+ hands in over Christmas break on Pokerstars was a great development experience for my game.
I ground it out from 10 PM until around 5:30 AM and posted a $770 win. I figured at a bare minimum I had my tournament entries and most of my travel covered for the trip. It was good for my confidence, but I found that it was easier to beat that game than $.05 / $0.10 online. That's a crazy thought for me.
Since then I've logged about 8 hours playing $5-10 locally and am up ~$1,600. Again, I have found the games exploitable. I stumbled across one regular $5-$10 game that runs in a local casino once a week and it has one of the softer cast of regulars that I've played with in a while. I couldn't believe that 7 of the 8 other seats really were fully recreational players with a full range of blatant tells, and folks who don't understand basic concepts like bet sizing, position, and hand ranges. There was a ton of preflop limping, and passive and scared play. It's over an hour to get to this card room from my home, so it is hard to schedule it in, but I am going to try to switch my schedule up over time to see if I can regularly play with this group. I gave the floor staff my cel number and told them to text or call me whenever this game came together. I think it is too great an opportunity not to make an effort. Hopefully I can continue to run good and play well - I have been playing poker recently with a budget rather a bankroll, but am up over $20,000 this year (I went 0 for 2 at the Fallsview events in January, but at least satellited into one), and would like to try to build a bankroll that is fire walled from my personal finances and is suitable to play $5-10 live.
I do plan to play the $350, $100,000 guaranteed event at Turning Stone on Friday. They are giving away seats to the event, so it should create a nice field, and first prize should be in the $30,000 range, so its worth taking a PTO day and making the 3 hour drive to take a shot. I'll play some cash games on Thursday night, and then play the event on Friday. After that it is just Vegas and the WSOP, with maybe a quick stop in between for one night at Foxwoods while I am taking a course at Harvard Business School in Boston the first week of June. I'll deliver more updates as I go, but it's been a good first half to 2011.
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