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Scansion - The Sequel Scansion - The Sequel

10-02-2013 , 03:22 PM
Buying update.
Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-03-2013 , 09:41 AM
Great thread, looking forward to following it.
Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-04-2013 , 03:07 AM
You say that you'd be back now
After your last more flight
And so I see you off well
And look the other way with all my might.

And I, I might be addicted
To where and how you land up on your feet
Yeah, I might be addicted
To how you always get the best of me

I say out loud this is the last time!
I say out loud this is the last time...

I wonder if you'll back down
There is no end in sight
Am I a fool to hang on?
And will we ever really get it right?

Universe, how strong am I?
There's one more exit flies on by.

Yeah, I, I might be addicted
To where and how you land up on your feet.
Yeah, I might be addicted
To how you always get the best of me.

Morgan Page - Addicted



April 27th, 2013

We’d had intense conversations before. Nearly four months after The Meeting, the pseudo-casual conversation where I let her know there were no hard feelings about our past drama, we were sitting down again, except not on a bench on campus – in her living room. The time she’d spent this semester quietly getting back onto my good side had resulted in something of a friendship between us; even having deeper conversations than either of us had previously allowed ourselves. Eventually, mere friendship wasn’t enough for me, and I could tell part of her felt the same. So today I initiated a conversation that it almost seemed like she'd wanted to have, yet didn't know how. Communicating mainly the rational process behind my perspective while avoiding displaying whatever emotional fuel underlies, I was surprisingly unsure about the vibes of a person I'd begun to develop an intuition of.

“I’m not a risk taker.”

Amidst a dialogue of unemotional thoughts, something stood out -- and despite the vague nature of the claim, it seemed more definitive than anything else she’d said. The fact that she didn’t want it nearly as much as I did was obvious, and the time we’d spent this year getting to know each other better made it much more crushing than I’d expected.

But what was clearer than either of these things was that we could no longer play with fire while trying to be friends – I needed to move on. Our departure much less dramatic than before, I left the room with what, this time, really felt like a goodbye.




June 26th, 2013

A slightly above breakeven Sunday followed by a $2.2k win on Monday find me continuing the rungood into the week, and Tuesday brings more than a win. The main constant of the week so far has been the Bellagio regulars – grinders who recognize WSOP events as a high variance endeavor not worth their time. As if cash games are variance free. One of the familiar faces is the Canadian from a few days back, whom I stacked with aces before moving to 10/20 for the first time. We’ve battled occasionally, and I recognize him as a thoughtful player who plays better than the recreational image he all too neatly has developed for himself. His constant chatter that tables tend to thoroughly enjoy makes him come off as anything but a professional, and a chip stacking style that would make a 1/2 regular scoff completes what actually seems to be a practiced charade.

A handful of other quieter yet generally good-natured regulars complete the summer crowd, and some of them have been doing well. But I’m the biggest winner, and a nickname has surfaced, courtesy of the gregarious Canadian: kid sickness. Leaning on people with an intuition of how much pressure they’ll allow me to apply, recognizing the right spots for a 4-bet (which in many cases is the first three-bet) and exploiting the fact that people simply don’t want to play with someone who’s running hot, I’ve become the talk of the high limit games. After racking up a five-figure stack and booking a $5.7k win on Tuesday, I hear a “take care, sickness” on my way out and realize that this name might stick.

It’s on Wednesday that I really intend to break the game open, a day before my backer arrives, already excited about my initial success. Up over $25k already and coupled with a flattering nickname that at least one person at each table knows well enough to greet me with, I realize it might be beneficial to exploit this proverbial fifteen minutes.

Buying in a little deeper, I turn my $5k into $8k on an outer table, before being moved to the main game in the evening. The discussion of the table becomes one of UltimateBet somehow, and a Vietnamese player in his 40s lets me know his screen name – it turns out he’s someone I’ve battled with considerably. With $10k neatly placed in front of him, a rack of $20 chips and nearly one black, the nine stacks seem to zig-zag towards the middle of the table, their formation representing the odd lines he takes with various parts of his range – with the value of the buy-in implying his confidence and success at doing so.

I carefully size up a few opponents and put pressure on in the right spots, building up north of the $10k mark by late night while listening to the chatter about one of the only other games in the room: a 100/200 PLO featuring NBA star Paul Pierce. Tonight he’s crushing dreams and thoroughly enjoying it – the occasional hearty laugh and report from railbirds lets us know that his stack is apparently north of the quarter million mark.

I’m in top form at 8am, up almost $8k with a comfortable groove of exploiting predictable tendencies in 3bet pots, and applying solid fundamentals to the “creative” lines of two tired recreational players. The heavily tatted twenty-something to my right with a classic afro seems antsy to take a seat in the bigger PLO game, but is fine to grind it out at 10/20 in the mean time. By about 8am I get the sense that the table has hit a collective groove of uncreative play – nobody wants to get extremely stuck doing something odd when they’re not as alert as they were at midnight. The more confident I become in this read, the more ripe it is for exploitation; the more profitable the table becomes.

The first order of business is attacking a shortstack three to my right in seat 3, but after a few 3bets get through and he folds to my aces I feel little reason to continue to do anything but show him the nuts. Across from me in seat 9 is the regular from half a decade ago who gave me more trouble than I’d care to admit in some of the bigger online games. Apparently comfortable to isolate the occasional pot, he has settled into his session but is still about even. I know what he’s capable of, however, and what he’s seen me do today as well as years ago in the trenches of one of the shadier poker sites in history.

It’s difficult to bother him, aside from opening pots in late position and not going away if he 3bets, but we develop somewhat of a dynamic. It’s nearly 10am when the battle reaches a surprising climax, in the form of one of the more dramatic pots I’ve been a part of.

I’m in the big blind when UTG limps, and our Vietnamese villain isolates to 100 in UTG2. It folds to me in the big blind and for a number of reasons not limited to simply adding the hand to my value range, I 3bet two black queens, keeping my head lowered slightly and my eyes drifting near the general vicinity of that zig-zag stack across the table. The limper folds and it’s back on him.

I’m in an interesting position here. I have a hand that’s clearly one I’ve decided to 3bet with the intention of making money when he doesn’t fold, but one that things might get hairy with if he doesn’t call either. When I found the cards and discovered that my intuition quickly disallowed merely flatting, it was because a 3bet would look exceptionally weak. And because a 3bet would look exceptionally weak, given my grasp of who I’m playing, the gameflow, and the raw hand strength of queens against he hands he’s value 4betting, I can anticipate him finding parts of his non-nut range that he’d prefer to neither fold nor call with.

I wait another thirty seconds before he cuts a stack of black in half, cuts it again and riffles a few times, then calmly announces to the dealer, “900”. All I hear is a simpler phrase. Let’s dance.

Following his reaction down from the recognition of my 3bet, to the patience of waiting for the limper to get out of the way, to the attempt to appear balanced in his deliberation, to the 4bet, I have a first impression on the hand that doesn’t seem to want to go away.

His value range is kings and aces here – but my 5bet value range is only those two hands and possibly just aces. It’s a neat 4bet because many of his early position isolation hands can calmly flat the 3bet and play a pot in position 500 big blinds deep. However, I know it’s a big 3bet – and he knows how strong it might look to take the AJ suited and put in another raise preflop. He’s conscious of the fact that I may very well fire multiple streets if he flats, so it could be hell on most boards playing a marginal hand. I sit and I think and I feel and I come to the conclusion that he knows I know how weak his 4bet looks – but I’ll never flat it with anything but possibly AK. Leaving me one way to win the pot with my 3bet bluffs.

I peel a stack of black chips and add six more to the top, sliding the tower over the line. The 5bet to $2600 stands in front of me and I look at it, my body motionless aside from the habitual riffling of chips. I stare as if those black chips are a curse that I only now realize as such, the high of their presence intoxicating me until I finally recognize their real value, the true nature of such things – developing confidence in detachment, before finding the strength to let go.

I feel him go deep, and every aspect of the phenomenology arrives on a sleepy Thursday morning at the Bellagio, resting in front of both of us. The table recognizes it but we don’t so much as acknowledge them, my riffling becoming much merely an act of listening to clicks, far beyond a conscious exercise of fine motor skills, and his subtle head-weaves from side to side approaching my mind as implying a genuine thought process. This isn’t a Hollywood.

He re-checks the stack that I knew from the start was within $200 of ten thousand. His practiced stack-cutting routine of taking twenty chips and making four five-high stacks out of them is what he resorts to here, before restacking them and arriving again at the same problem of deciding what exactly the 5bet looks like. But it appears, subtly, as if he’s reached some conclusion. He turns slightly towards the dealer, and softly commits himself.

“Ok, I go all-in.”

I splash the riffle chips in, and we agree to run two boards. The first is king high and I wince, and the second is one of the same, coupled with a few high cards that ultimately make my queens a pretty mediocre hand even against his 6bet bluffs.

Regardless, I table the hand and am met with the response I hoped for.

“Yeah, you’re good.”

His hand goes into the muck, and I win the biggest pot of the summer.

Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-04-2013 , 05:56 AM
sickness. love it. well written.
Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-04-2013 , 06:56 AM
On the train this morning so thoroughly enjoying this last post I rode right by my stop. Bastard!
Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-04-2013 , 08:32 AM
Love how you build the tension here and describe your thought processes.

Your writing causes me to move the screen down a couple of lines at a time, in case my eyes accidentally flick to the end and reveal the outcome prematurely.

Great post and great thread generally. It's difficult to decide which I prefer out of your TRs and AKAD.
Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-04-2013 , 10:06 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by 3)????4)Profit

Your writing causes me to move the screen down a couple of lines at a time, in case my eyes accidentally flick to the end and reveal the outcome prematurely.
this
Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-04-2013 , 10:39 AM
Epic.
Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-04-2013 , 11:08 AM
Thanks for this. Great writing, great poker, [x] chip porn.
Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-04-2013 , 11:11 AM
Quote:
Following his reaction down from the recognition of my 3bet, to the patience of waiting for the limper to get out of the way, to the attempt to appear balanced in his deliberation, to the 4bet, I have a first impression on the hand that doesn’t seem to want to go away.
Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-04-2013 , 12:16 PM
write you must, sickness.

the part about the girl and not being a risk taker... then calling a 6bet shove w/ QQ!!!! aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-04-2013 , 12:28 PM
Scans, I'm curious as to why you didn't make him show his hand first so that you could see what he had? Loving the report.
Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-04-2013 , 12:38 PM
must be that moment when you just know you're good
Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-04-2013 , 12:56 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Crozbee
this
+1
Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-04-2013 , 01:56 PM
Well worth the wait, I wish you would update it more frequently for purely selfish reasons, obv.
Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-04-2013 , 02:42 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by amusedlol
write you must, sickness.

the part about the girl and not being a risk taker... then calling a 6bet shove w/ QQ!!!! aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
I got the impression she said that...

“I’m not a risk taker.”

...despite the vague nature of the claim, it seemed more definitive than anything else she’d said.
Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-04-2013 , 09:07 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by razztapes
Lol... Hes made 4 post in this thread, albiet quality posts. Little early for GOAT, no?
Oops....

Scansion, truly great post. Worth the wait! We will all be anticipating the next installment

Good luck
Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-04-2013 , 10:22 PM
Very nicely written
Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-05-2013 , 12:48 AM
Reading Scansion's TR does for me what 50 Shades does for millions of women out there.

Fulfillment, and I thank you.
Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-05-2013 , 04:14 AM
Wickedly great as always.. So he did have AJ or A10 there.
Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-05-2013 , 02:32 PM
Scansion you could write a book about dung beetles and I would pay american currency for it.
Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-05-2013 , 05:33 PM
Incredibly talented on and off the felt, well done!

I'm surprised I'm the first to say this, but that gal is smokin'!
Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-07-2013 , 05:08 AM
Loved the last TR, and this one is just as good so far.
Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-07-2013 , 06:03 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bdywax
Scans, I'm curious as to why you didn't make him show his hand first so that you could see what he had? Loving the report.
I wondered this also. Is it perhaps enough to know what his bluff range doesnt include (i.e. Kx, whatever combos would have given him 2 pair+ etc)?

I'm sadly nowhere near this level, but I'm sure there's a reason.
Scansion - The Sequel Quote
10-07-2013 , 09:49 AM
Damn your friend is gorgous. Sick hand with qq. Any more pics lol?
Scansion - The Sequel Quote

      
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