Hello TwoPlusTwo...Inspired by my roommate Matt Moore's thread, http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/10...-tl-dr-659480/, and most recently, coopah's excellent online thread, http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...games-1065250/ , I have decided to start up my own thread to help me live the rest of 2011 to the fullest...first a little about myself...
My name's Dan and here's my story...I go on tangents so bear with me, it's been a year since I wrote anything...Thirteen months ago, it was suggested to me that I visit Vegas, so what was intended at first as a couple week vacation turned into a never coming back adventure, full of highs and lows, but having no regrets along the ride...Since moving to Vegas upon graduating college, Holy Cross (shout out!) I have been living as a live pro and went from playing the 2/5 games all the way to 10/25/50, (bankroll management what?!) becoming friends with 1/2 grinders with sports betting vices who can't keep a roll past couple thousand, to clubbing with jungleman, having him come over, then obv have him coach me while drunk and high at 6am, only to find out the next day that he went for a kiss at my girlfriend WTF! (Yes, Dan, I found out lol) From getting robbed for 15k by my roommate two days before Christmas leaving me with less than 2k in cash to my name to making 20k playing 10/25 thanks to guy whose inheriting Lamborghini in one night couple weeks later...life's a rollercoaster and I'm addicted to it!
I have been playing poker for three years now and I have come to realize that I'm not the greatest player in the world, but I'm good enough to make a comfortable living and have time left in the day to do whatever I want. I value freedom over anything, so this usually includes spending time with my girlfriend, experimenting with all sorts of drugs, and making sense of the universe. While grinding, I might whip out David Ian Cowan's Navigating the Collapse of Time:A Peaceful Path Through the End of Illusions to give you a hint where I'm at...
Right now I'm in the middle of my fourth downswing of the year. The first one came right when I got here, (quickly learned 5betting allin with JJ is a bad idea against anyone over 40) the second one came while living at Commerce for 40 days during the LAPC (readers, never live in a hotel too long, you will lose your mind!), the third right when the WSOP started (thankfully I had my biggest upswing towards the end) and now throughout the whole month basically because of the big games I played while at the Bike (10/25/50 short-handed against millionaire high variance fish) and now lacking motivation to grind lower stakes while back at Vegas, so my game's deteriorated.
Just yesterday, two of my friends were just playing 1000/2000NL in bobby's room against Andy Beal, and I know I'm never going to play that high, but I want to see fear in the 5/10 regs eyes again when they are in a hand against me, only to be friends again since I usually dominate the table conversation, and most importantly, I want to be the ONE that fries the big fish...I gotta step my game up to do this, so here I am, rededicated and now with a responsibility to you readers to keep improving in live poker! Frankly, playing less than 30 hours a week has not been cutting it, and I feel more excited to play than ever, so here we go! Feel free to ask anything you want, I'll try to post a response after every session and will get tips from Matt on how to keep a thread going, so Cheers! I'm Excited!

Did you play on LATB at all during LAPC for that $10/25/50 game?

This could go well...

During LAPC I exclusively played at the Commerce...I did play on Live at the Bike 10/25 game in early August (the one where Joel and Rod got it in KK vs AA last hand the stream) After the stream was over, the game lasted full ring until 2am, where I donated my winnings from the broadcast only to go on a 3 hour rollercoaster 3 handed with Corporation Mike and the Hungarian Fish...probably won't be back in LA until November or until I get to play in Paul Pierce's game

thank you, I hope it does too!! Just showered, off to hustle!

First Session Since Thread--Threads=Run Good

I pull out of my gate and I'm faced with two decisions, drive left to the B or right to the V. The traffic was blooming on flamingo so I drive the 30seconds to get to the Venetian. While driving, I talk to Matt, my roommate who is coming back to town after spending a very expensive six weeks backpacking across Europe. I tell him about the thread idea and he completely has my support and will proceed to give me tips on how to make a thread as great as his (best thread eva??) So, I arrive and I'm immediately surprised that they have a 5/10 going. Resisting the urge to go back to my bread and butter, I go and sit at the must-move where there are five guys just waiting around. I talk as if I have a ego and say I'll even pay you to play me until we move, but the grandpas don't play. Around ten minutes go by until I'm finally seated at the 1k max 2/5. (Always buying in for max at any 2/5 for the record) First hand I play, there's one limper and I iso on the button with j2hh but immediately get three-bet by the sb and i lay it down. Nice try I guess. Couple hands go by and I get my first opportunity to win a pot in a limped 5-way pot w 23ss. It's checked around on j104, turn is a 9 and this old around 60 year old cowboy leads out 20 bucks, and young headphone kid calls 20...i immediately think john wayne has a one pair hand, maybe with a straight draw, headphone kid's range is weaker, def not on a complete float, but in the same range hand as cowboy, so I take the advantage of being position and with my 23 i reraise to 120, knowing that even if they call, they can't call a shove unless the straight hits and most of the time they can't call this bet...immediate folds...next Under the Gun, I pick up QQ and get 3 callers...flop is a dream, Q32ss...ch, i decide to check with two more people to act, and guy bets 120 bucks into the 85 dollar pot with around $200 bucks left. I raise to 400 and get it in. Turn is a 4s, river is an Ace of diamonds, so i'm like damn it, but he has kq and i ship it.
One orbit later, I pick up JJ utg and my friend to the left, is the only caller. I nicknamed him 'flicker' because of the way he puts chips into the pot. So before I see the beautiful flop of KJ8ss I say "it's just me and the flicker of the wrister". He calls a 30 dollar bet, then on a 7 turn, which brings two flush draws, i bet 65 dollars. He takes a little bit of time and Reraises me to 165. This player was playing the loosest at the time, which wasn't saying too much, but haven't seen him mess around post flop. With a little over 400 left, decide to just call. River is an off suit 6. He immediately bets 200, and I decide whether to call or raise, thinking now that his immediate bet is no longer 910 (the nuts) so I prob should raise, but This week i'm def not playing my best so I just call and he shows AK, nice.
After those hands, and up around 750 bucks in less than an hour, I decide to rush back home before another session, smoke a joint with Jay, a 2/5 regular who is back in vegas after having an unfortunate incident happen to him couple months back. Maybe some of you know who I'm talking about...let's try it out, one sober sess one high one
So now fully high, I'm based with another decision. What to play? Should I go to the Wynn and play some 2/5 while looking at the "Wynn Parade," a full night walkthrough of the most beautiful women in the world, where early on they walk fast in their heels excited for the night out, boobies bouncing, make-up well done, and hour after hour, they walk the other way around back to the parking lot stumbling and cleavage almost hanging out some nights. This is one of my favorite 'downswing' past times...Or get some revenge on the Aria from yesterday, or play some 5/10 at the B cause I feel like I'm going to keep running hot! Update soon!

I think this may be an interesting thread, but my eyes refuse to read blocks of text with no paragraphs.

Great thread paragraphs or not!

Growth thru Tilt
I just woke up this Sunday morning, wait, it's 2:12PM, so I guess it's afternoon, typical, and I just finished meditating, a habit that I'm glad I picked up for it has tremendous health benefits. Meditation is a lost art in our upbeat society, and although almost everyone in the ancient cultures did it, you hardly ever hear about it now and days. If interested in increasing your quality of life, I highly suggest working on your breathing and letting things flow.

Letting things flow...Not forcing the action...Gawd...why didn't I do this Friday and Saturday night?!?! Instead, I played my most aggressive poker to date at the 2/5 Wynn and Venetian. A good recipe on how to start playing literally 80% of hands in a full ring game is A) Getting stuck two buy-ins off the bat due to flips/stuck-outs B) Playing in the tightest table of all time. Why don't I listen to myself? Why didn't I just quit and change tables? But oh, was it so much fun just raising and taking down 7 dollars at a time lol...

I acknowledge that I was tilted all night, but my aggressive image did get me paid off like in this hand: I'm in the straddle and the nits still have not adjusted to my straddle. Meaning, if your going to straddle profitably, which is very tough, you have to be ready to squeeze and play a wider range of hands then you would like to and play those hands aggressively, since your going to be out of position just about every hand. Somehow these nit-tards didn't adjust and raise my straddle so I kept squeezing, oh well, it's good for the game.

Anyway, there was a young black man with a white girlfriend that gave me some action when there were three or four limpers in my straddle and I pop it up to 60 with k4hh. The flop comes out j104 one heart. I lead 80, he calls, and I hope for a good barrel card. An off-suit Q comes and I'm like sweet, now I got a draw. I bet 160 and he calls rather quickly which makes me believe that he now has two-pair or a pair and a straight draw. If i don't hit I believe I have to check in shame and give up the pot, but to my delight, a burst of run-good came upon me and the wonderful 4 of spades hits on the river giving me trips. He's got a little over 500 left, what to bet? Get the guaranteed couple hundro or go for the gold? Screw it, with my image and he's grudge against me, I'm going for it.."All-in" I say, and BOOM!! Snap call with J10...what the F***! Good game sir...

And it should have been good game for me too, because like I said it was the worst game in town. Confirmed by John, my cool hippie floor guy at the Wynn, who decided to join our game right after his shift was over. This is def something I need to work on, there's so many games in Vegas, why play in ****ty ones? I do this all the time and it hurts my hourly rate. At 5/10 and esp 10/20 where there's only one game running, yes, you don't have a choice, but 2/5? Cmon Dan, your smarter than that, let go of the ego...

When I arrived home, to my delight my roommate Deep and one of his friend's were getting ready to smoke a jay. It's already late, and Deep passes out shortly afterwards, but for two hours I chat it up with Sha-Traz, another tall Indian with black plastic glasses. He looked a little out there, and my gut was right, he was...This guy was actually a stand-up comic and probably a good one too because my stomach was rolling all night from our convo!

I tell him my joke, "Women's rights" (Get it?) to show him that I also am a comic in every day life, and then beg him to tell me one. After some deliberation, he says, 'fine, ok, just pretend like your viewing me on stage, I'll tell you about the time when an older gentleman came up to me after my show and said, "Kid, want good material? I have the best joke-book ever, and I can give it to you if you want." Obv I agreed, and once I got this book, I was laughing so hard that I just had to share it with others too." At this point, I'm sitting there, mouth wondering, eyes already tearing, wondering what can this book be, and then all of a sudden, he takes his hands off the cover and shows me the New Testament. HAHA!

Our conversation was jammed packed, largely due to him being a 'dark' comic and me being a so-called conspiracy theorist. I'm very confident in what I believe in because it makes sense to me. Didn't Buddha say something like, only believe what makes sense to you? Well, that's me YAAA! So while I was trying to tell him about the Becker Hagens Grid and ancient cultures, he was just ripping me apart, mocking me, but all in good fun, and I got a kick out of it too cause really, how can you not laugh a little bit when your talking about aliens for an hour lol...

Saturday was much less the same as Friday, and I ended winning a couple hundred bucks for the weekend. I get into one interesting spot where I still have no idea what the right play is. There's three limpers and I raise on the button to 35 with KK. Older black gentleman, who is playing 5% of hands, insta calls in the sb, and so do two or three more limpers. Flop comes AQ6dd...checks around...turn J, big blind leads for 25 bucks (wtf?) so with my blockers to k10 i pop it up to 200 and then older tight black gentleman reraises me to 500 with 800 behind, me covering...in retrospect I should have flatted, but I decided to lay it down because I didn't think he was going to lay down a set...weird spot, and he claimed to have a flush draw on the turn, which still doesn't make sense because there was a flush draw on the flop, but whatever, I'm still convinced he either had QQ or JJ and making people fold sets in live poker is usually not a good idea...

So with the girl gone, roommate hungover, post completed, it's now time to go eat then hit up the Venetian...I feel way better about my 2/5 game now after playing it for the past couple of days and talking strat over with "Mr. Anderson" Mike, a reg at the V who reminds me alot of my friend Sam Grizzle, meaning, how polar-opposite they are. Two life-long poker grinders, but with two separate bankroll amounts. I decided this is where I'm going to set up post for a week before some of my friends come in from the east coast, should have some interesting stories about nightlife when they arrive...Cheers, Dan

How Dan Got His Groove Back
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI (song came to mind)

Phil Laak told me a couple weeks ago that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in something. Its been three years since I learned how to play poker, and although I haven't done the exact math on my hours played, I feel that I've played enough to know the ins and outs of the game. So why am I not playing nosebleeds yet? Why aren't we all playing nosebleeds yet? Well, for me, I feel its a matter of awareness and execution. Live poker can be extremely stressful at times and then times are tough, I have a tendency to play awful poker, forced poker, trying to do some fancy play and 3 or 4bet with air just because...well, I'm bored. This feeling happened to me yesterday, but fortunately, I "caught myself" and left before I damaged my stack.

I got to the Venetian around 8PM yesterday and there were two games going. I buy-in for 500 and get dealt 55 utg. A young kid that I played with saturday night sees me sit down and immediately asks for a seat change to get position on me. I noticed this happening to me throughout the week, so I take it as a sign of respect. I limp utg with my 5s and the kid raises to 25 utg plus 1. There are three callers, and instead of calling, I shove it all-in and everyone does their hollywooding, taking fifteen seconds or more EACH to fold, and I take it down. I play for about thirty more minutes and notice that this is the tightest game I have ever played in. I'm like, "Are you serious" and "is this going to be like friday night" and quickly thinking about my tilt during that experience, I decide to book the hundred dollar profit and go hit up the Aria where there were four games running.

I play in a pretty aggressive game mixed with young pros and degen Asians, along with a surprise from my ole' pal Uncle, a man who I last played with the week of Christmas. I remember him because he said some words to me back then that stuck with me. It happened when I caught a nice heater at the 5/10 and won something like 5k in less than two hours. Seeing how he was the only other person at the table with a stack, I started to take jabs at him. Instead of jabbing back, he told me, "I've been playing with punks like you for over thirty-years. Watch out, it won't be this easy all the time."

Boy, was this guy right, but its not due to something like variance, I HATE using the world variance, for I feel it's just some dumb excuse for poker players to use when they are losing. Instead, I blame downswings on a lack of awareness, motive, intention, and will. Like I said, I know what to do, but do I know what to do in that exact moment? It's all about the moment baby.

During this four hour session, I came up a steady grand, no hands really sticking out to me as being too interesting. The biggest pot came when the most aggro person on the table raises a limper to 25 and I rr with AK to 90. He calls and we see a A1010 flop. It goes ch/ch and turn is a 7 giving a flush draw. He bets out 90 and I call, seeing there's no point in raising here. River is an offsuit 6 and he bets out 240. I snap call and he says I'm good. EZ game huh? I think he tried to bluff me out of the hand and didn't believe I had an ace...(Only other pot I played with him was an hour earlier when mp raises to 15, he 3bets to 50 in sb, I rr to 130 in bb with kq, and he shoves...I fold)

You know that aura of comfort you feel when playing your A-game? Well, I got that back, so I expect to sail through my next couple sessions, coasting to easy wins because when an experienced poker player's execution and awareness is on point, not even variance can stop him...

nice profit for the session, keep it up and the good trip report.

When Rocks get in your Pond

I grew up in very poor conditions. I was raised by a single Polish immigrant mother in the Ivy Hill projects of Newark and as youngster, it took me a while start branching off to the world. During my pre-teen years, I stayed at home and watched a lot of tv, but when times got really tough, like when my mother battled breast cancer, the cable had to get turned off and I was left at home with little to do. But for some reason though, call it fate maybe, we had ONE vhs, a recorded over tv vhs of Kickboxer 2 with sasha mitchell. To this day, its maybe my favorite movie of all-time, even though I literally watched it over a hundred times (not exaggerating)

Why is it my favorite? Check these quotes out---During the start of the movie, David Sloan teaches his students that, "if you can control your emotions, you can control your life." If only I can understand this concept...I apply this to poker for I feel my winrate is largely dependent on how I feel. David preaches that your mind is like a pond, and you can't let anyone put rocks in your pond. Last night's 7 hour graveyard 5/10 session is a perfect example of how a rock got into my pond and it stopped me from making good decisions.

I arrived at the Aria planning to put up a quick four or five hundo and hang out with my gf, who just came back from Cali. Fast forward less than two hours and I'm up five hundred in a pretty juicy 5/10 where the big fish is the hottest grandma I have ever seen. Like, it's that serious...This petite Asian Gilf had large breasts, a blooming personality, a leopard striped tight and short dress, with matching nails, and most attractively, boat loads of cash! Although I was running card dead, I knew if I was patient eventually this sugar-mama would feed me.

Then...my girlfriend calls me up saying she's going to be hanging out with two dudes that she hasn't seen in two years, at 2AM, with alcohol. Now, I trust my girl ever much, we've been going out for almost a year, but I had a bad feeling about this. For the next four hours, I text and call, and no response. WTF!!! Then, at 6AM, with me about even, I decide to text her mom, who dislikes me equally as much as I dislike her. She also gets worried, but little do you know, she gets a response from her. My girlfriend then texts me saying, "OMG baby, you were worried? I'm fine LOL" This enrages me so much that I tilt off 500 bucks like it was water and then before I can get my money back, hot granny gets her rack, and I beat her to the cashier tilted as all hell.

I had such high hopes for last night, but what are you going to do. Maybe I should have just left, or maybe it was right that I stayed, but not really, since this is how I played: Limped five ways, I complete in sb with k10os flop comes k47dd, i lead 60 button, tight reg who just got stacked, calls. Turn os 5, i ch he bets 100. I call, river os J, I ch he shoves for 400 and my dumbass still calls him. Of course he has two pair, 75...

I guess I can learn from yesterday's session though. Usually, I struggle playing for long hours, which is why I usually never play more than 25-30 hours a week. But, I played for eight hours yesterday, so I know I can grind for long periods of time. If anyone's got tips got how to keep your butt in the casino i would love to know, cause once the partying stops, it's going to be all poker in sept...

This thread looks like it'll be a good one. Good luck to you OP

A bit of an oxymoron there don't you think

haha I could see that, but my girl's actually pretty cool and low-maintenance, you can say I lucked out. Once this thread develops some more, I'll definitely post pics during cool freedom-like activities and you'll see what I mean. I guess you lose freedom once you get married, so it's a good thing I don't believe in that piece of paper.

Great thread clubhopper! Rematch of those HU matches at "The Crack" when i make it out to vegas