one more day of grinding

This is going to be the 2nd time in my poker "career" that I've played over 100,000 hands in one month. Last time was in February when I had a prop bet with "carrotsnake" for $1,000 that we'd both play 100k hands that month.

I got 1 outed tonight with 1 card to come. Can't remember the last time that's happened. Still had a really good night tonight though, so I shook it off even though it cost me $800, and I didn't tilt at all.

I have family coming so I won't be playing as much after today, until I get back from Vegas. I definitely need the break. I don't want to get carpel tunnel.

8 days till Vegas

Can't wait until Vegas. Been working really hard lately, so can't wait for a break. Last night's session was another real frustrating session. Was up about $3k within the first hour, then got up to about $4.5k at my high point a couple hours later. Was hoping that I was going to have a huge day. Then, literally within 45 minutes I got some ridiculous beats/cold decks and only finished the day up around $1,300. Realllllly frustrating. I was playing a bunch of tables heads up and heads up can be real swingy. Losing thousands of dollars within minutes isn't fun, especially when I get the money in ahead. One hand I was playing a tough/aggro player HU who had been playing too overaggressive with me. He min raises pre-flop and I make it $32 with KK. he calls. Flop comes 753. I bet $45 and he calls. Turn is a 6. I check because he was trying to bluff me out of pots everytime he could, so I check to trap, and he fires pot. Perfect! I push all-in, and he calls with AJ!!!! River: A wtf!?!?!?!? This was after I had just taken some sick beats on some other tables and I punched my table. My sound on my computer went off, so I figured that I somehow managed to break my speaker. Playing with no sound, and knowing I need to buy a new speaker for my computer tilted me even more. I rarely tilt when I play, but the last few nights have been crazy. I think it's stupid posting about bad beats in a blog, but figure it'd be interesting to people who read this blog who don't play poker, to understand what it's like. I wish I could give a good analogy on what it feels like. Picture you're a sales person and you've worked all month wining and dining a client, trying to land your biggest deal ever, and finally they decide they want to do business with you. So you have the deal just where you want it, about to be rewarded with a huge payday for your all your work, and then when the person comes to sign the contract with you, as you see him approaching your office coming across the street he gets hit by a truck and dies.

I really can't complain though about rough nights, as I'm hopefully going to have my best month ever this month. I stopped playing early last night since I didn't feel I was on my game since I was frustrated. I didn't want to blow any money to tilt. Turns out the punch I landed didn't actually break my speaker either, it somehow muted it. Weird. I didn't even know how to mute it regularly!?!? I think I'd like to buy something I can hit and keep it next to my computer. Maybe a mini-punching bag or something.(any suggestions?) People who don't play poker who are reading this probably think I'm some maniac. I really am probably the calmest/most non-tilting player I know. If you lose thousands of dollars within minutes to bad beats though you'll understand.

I think I might stay away from a lot of HU. I'll still play HU, but if I'm playing HU at a bunch of tables, and get bad beats/get real swingy it makes me want to tilt at my 6 max games, when playing 6 max I almost never tilt. I actually debated trying to play HU full-time because I feel that in heads-up play a good player can create a HUGE edge on their opponents if they are a very good heads up player. I think mentally playing HU full time would be more stressful than I'd want, since you go on more swings. That would make me not want to play as much. Not wanting to play as much would = less money.

Anyways, Vegas in just over a week so I'm going to work hard until then, and then it's vacation time.

I changed my flight on the way back from Vegas to stop in the midwest so I could stop by and see the duplex I'm buying. I couldn't cancel the 2nd part of my first trip or I'd have to pay like $130 for canceling, and then I'd have to book a new flight going to Vegas, etc... Since the roundtrip flight that I had booked was only like $300+, I figured it'd probably just be cheaper getting a new flight on the way back, which is like $400ish, than paying $130 to cancel and then having to book a new flight for when I leave too, which will be more now since the date is much closer. I hate wasting money though, which is what it feels like. I think I may be able to get a credit for the flight I don't go on though since I kept it and it was roundtrip, so we'll see.

Cool story I heard

I heard this story last month from a friend of mine, who's another professional poker player. The story happened to his friend, who also plays poker professionally. There are all sorts of entertaining stories that happen with poker players. Heres one of them(I'll do my best to get all the details right):

So Zack(not his name; we'll call him this for the story) decides to move to Los Angeles to move in with some other poker pros out there. He's an online player, but decides he wants to give the live games a try for a while. The guys he moves in with are live regulars out there. He's only 19 years old, but he has a fake ID. So, he lives out there for about a month with those guys, and does really well. I think he started out playing 5/10nl, and played all the way up to 40/80nl by the end of the month since he was doing real well.

Anyways, he gets tired of the grind, and decides he's had enough of live poker in LA, so he gets set to head back home. He packs up his belongings, which now includes about $130,000 in cash. He thinks nothing of it, throws it in his backpack and heads on the plane. Or at least, that's what he intended on doing. During the screening at the airport security stopped him for having all that cash on him, and authorities ended up seizing all of his money!

They didn't believe him when he told them he was a professional poker player and he made the money at the casinos. It took him a few months to recover the money, with the help of his lawyer.

Grinding away.......

I've been playing a ton of hands lately. I just checked and in the last 9 days I've played about 50,000 hands. I'm probably not going to play anymore tonight since I want to make sure I don't burn out. Been getting a lot of coolers lately, so that makes it easier to burn out. I think I've gotten 2 outed about 10 times within the last 72 hours, also lots of KK vs. AA hands in $1k+ pots. Amazingly, I've still been having really good results through it. Today was actually my first losing day since June 14th. I think I'm playing real well lately, but sometimes going through rough sessions you start questioning a lot of your play. One play today I raised pf with 34s. One of the blinds called. Flop was 2-3-2. He checked, I made a continuation bet, and he raised me. I decided to put him all in because I felt I was ahead of him(and he didn't have a full stack), even though the only hand that I beat is air. I thought he was making a move with overs. He's a regular and I feel he usually 3 bets hands like TT+ pre-flop, and he doesn't usually raise flop here with hands like 44-99 on the flop, I felt that he would normally just call. I felt that even if he did decide to do that this hand, I could potentially push him off 44-99 type hands, so I went with my read and I pushed. He calls with KQ. Turn: Q. :( A bunch of hands like this over a couple days span will make you lose your desire to play pretty quickly.

Although I've been taking some bad beats, I don't think I've taken any as bad as this guy:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoID=1381587673

Prodigys in the making

The student I mentioned in the June 12th post has been doing real well. After about a week or so he was already up around $5k. He's had some internet problems in the last week, but is still well on pace to hit the $15k goal we set for him. I can't take much credit, he's been grinding, putting a lot of hands in and doing real well. We've only done a couple sessions.

I've also started helping my brother get started in poker. Since we're living together this summer he's been watching me play some of my sessions and asking me questions, and I'm trying to turn him into the next small stakes superstar. I wrote him out a hand chart I wanted him to use, and I've been watching him play a bit to make sure he's doing okay. He just started up this last week with a bankroll of $90, and has already turned it into like $160. I have him just playing the penny tables. The plan is to have him play the .01/.02 tables until he reaches $200. Then I'm going to have him play the .02/.05 tables until he reaches about $300. Then I'm going to have him play the .05/.10 tables until he hits $500, where he'll move to the .10/.25 tables. When he gets to that point, that's when he can start making some decent side money. He's working a full time job this summer, so he's just playing a couple hours here and there when he's off from work. I'm hoping I can get him to the point where he's making a decent hourly rate so he'll have a good side income when he goes back to school in the fall.


Here's a couple hands with a fish that I played with the other day that was followed by some chat:

I'm playing this guy heads up at $2/$4 no-limit. One hand he raises, and I re-raise QQ to $55. He calls. The flop is 6-8-T. I bet, he pushes, and I call. I think he only had like $300ish so there's like $600 in the pot. He flips over K9 for the inside straight draw, and ends up hitting on K on the river. I think he says something, trying to taunt me or something. Then a few minutes later this hand comes up: I raise to $14 from the button with 66. He calls. He has just over $600 and I cover. Flop is QKJ. He checks and I check behind. The turn is a 6 and he checks. I bet $27 and he min raises me to $54. I call. The river is a K. He checks and I bet $135. He pushes all-in for $539. So I start wondering if he could have KQ or KJ here for the higher full house. He easily could since he check raised the turn, but it's doubtful he's checking two streets with hands like that since I was the pf raiser and he'd probably at least bet the turn. His hand seemed more like AT which he was slowplaying the flopped nuts. If I was wrong, he still might have pushed any K all-in on the river there. I called him, he showed AT and and I took down the pot. He was not happy:

snowbank wins $1,214.70 with Full House, Sixes full of
Kings
fish: fukc you
snowbank: ;)
fish: this site is full of $hit
fish: fukc you
fish: fukc you
fish: you ruined my life
fish: fukc you
fish: you lucky piece of s**t
fish: you cheat
fish: you piece of fukcin s**t

Buying a duplex

I've been negotiating back and forth with a seller on a duplex in the midwest for the last couple weeks. Their initial starting price was $79,900, but they had recently dropped it to $74,900 since they hadn't gotten it sold yet after being on the market for a while. The property had good cashflow, so I decided to make an offer. I offered $58,000. They came back with a counter offer of $72,000, saying that was their final offer. I countered back again at $65,000, splitting the difference. They came back later that week and said they could do $69,200, but that was the lowest they could possibly go.(my realtor told me they even dropped the commission from 8% to 6% to be okay with this price- we weren't sure why they initially were paying their broker 8%) I waited a bit and decided to come back and offer them $67,500, although they seemed to be close to maybe taking no deal at all and just holding out. I figured that since it had been on the market for 100+ days and my counter was just $1,700 short of their last "final offer", they'd be crazy not to take it. If they really wanted to sell, I figured they should take the deal. I heard back a couple days later, and they decided to accept my offer. So, now I need to get out there and check it out soon. I may try and change my flight on my way back from Las Vegas and make a stop in the midwest to do a walk-thru, meet with some property managers and check out the neighborhood. Also, I'd really like to meet with the realtor I've been working with. She seems like she really knows her stuff, and if things go well with everything I plan on doing more business with her. It's very hard to find realtors who actually know about investment properties, and she knows a lot about them, and does a lot of investing herself, which seems to be rare with most realtors who just want to sell you whatever they have, regardless of whether or not it makes sense as a good investment. I wouldn't mind gearing my investment strategy towards cashflow properties if I have a good team(realtor, and property management) where I don't have to hassle with much. I can focus on making money, and I won't have to worry about all sorts of different deals, I can just buy something that will cashflow and have my PM deal with everything. That's the tough part though. Hopefully I'll find a good PM.

Vegas, staking update, etc.....

Been a while since I updated. I've been putting a ton of hands in, which is why. I'm going to Vegas the first week in July so I'm trying to make a lot before I leave, since I won't be working as much while I'm in Vegas. I'll be there for about 10 days. The main event for the WSOP(world series of poker) will be going on, but I'm not playing. I'm just going to hang out, party, and play cash games. My friend that I'm going with is playing, and I know a handful of other people playing, so hopefully they do well.

The person that I was thinking of staking came to meet with me a couple days ago. We talked some poker, talked over terms of the deal, and I told him I'd get back to him in the next 24-48 hours. The next time I talked to him he had received $400 in rakeback payment and turned it into $1,800 that day, so he didn't need a stake anymore since he only needed a couple thousand anyways. So, glad it worked out for him.

Just finished a long session and I'm going to try and get a coaching session in with a student tomorrow when I wake up, so I'll update more later.