A couple of tasty treats enjoyed during my travels:



The Johnny Walker Blue was a gift from a mutual friend of mine and the guy I stayed with in LA. The Blue was a gift celebrating my buddies decision to move to LA to pursue a career in acting. My friend's path reminds me a lot of my own and many poker players out there. We finished off the bottle to celebrate my leaving my 9-5 and starting my own journey.

I haven't read all the way through, but I'm loving this thread. Best of luck to you, Zombie!

Thanks, boss! As you know I've been following your thread as well.

I'm not going to politicize my thread, but do want to illustrate the region that I live in for those of you who may live in an area unlike OKlahoma. I know that in my time of nearly two weeks in Las Vegas and Los Anegles, I heard scant a word about politics. This was very nice for me.

So, the majority of my table last night has already expressed their support for Donald Trump. That's fine, I am starting to get used to it in my state. For illustration purposes, one of said supporters mid-conversation with me, after peering around for certain people, comments that black NBA referees are not as good as the others. Yeesh, who says that to a stranger, and who says or thinks that regardless.

Also, got into it with a 50-60ish year old man. The long and short of the incident was: 20ish year old kid shoves turn ~$150 on a board, villain calls, an the river blanks for villain's win. The kid moves his hand towards the muck face down, villain asks the kid what he had, kid does not answer, villain insists to know and tells the dealer that he wants to see the kids hand. The dealer flips over the kids hand.

Basically the situation evolves into the kid telling the guy that is "BS" and that his move was poor etiquette. The villain responds with "I got a right to see your hand and etiquette's got nothing to do with it." Additional comments to the tune of "These kids watch poker on tv and think they know what they're doing." I chime in with additional comments of it being poor etiquette and that since the villain won the pot there is no need to rub in the loss.

Anyway, the villain goes on to tell every passerby, every dealer, anyone that even hints of possesing hearing ability what happened. The reaction was pretty tepid, ranging from: people wanting to change the subject, to his table neighbors picking up their stack and leaving, to a dealer telling him that his move typically only occurs in tournaments.

Good, a little conflict can be good to get some action going.

Played 8 hours 5 min, +$122

Time Played: 60 hours 33 min.
Bankroll: $9,569

No problem, Zombe. I enjoy your writing, and your general outlook on things. Thanks for following along in my thread also.

Fwiw, I think the older guy was out of line in the hand you described above. In a small stakes cash game, there's no reason to tell the dealer to flip over the kid's mucked hand. Poor etiquette, imo.

GL today!

Great thread,enjoyed reading it sofar!!
Good luck on the tables OP,will be following

Thanks, man! I usually don't comment on on things like this, but I haven't seen this kid playing in the room much and I know the older guy is a reg. Basically, I didn't want to jeopardize the kid not coming in to play more frequently, and I knew the old guy would just bitch about it and continue to so up and donate regardless.

Great! Welcome aboard! Also, thank you!

Couple of interesting spot from last night:

My image is TAG, Villain has only been in the game for an orbit or two. I have a $220 stack, villain covers me, and I cover the CO.

Action folds to CO who limps, I raise to $12 otb w/ KJ, villain in the sb calls, and CO calls.

Pot: $38
Flop: 69J

Check, Check, I bet $20, villain calls, and CO folds.

Pot: $78
Turn: 10

Villain leads out for $35, I contemplate for ~1 min. and call.

Pot: $148
River: 5

Villain leads out for $35. Again, I think and call. I really did think that I was beat, but I was getting laid way to good of a price to fold. However, the more I thought about things, I do not think that villain has a big hand, the line would be way to weird in my way of thinking.



In another hand against a thinking player, who rarely gets out of line w/ big bets. From my experience he will bluff smaller amounts but won't bring out the big guns on a bluff.

I start the hand w/ ~$425 and villain covers. I have KK utg and raise to $12. two middle position players call and villain calls otb.

I can't remember all of the particulars after, but action went something like this:

flop is TxJ2, I bet $25, villain calls. Turn is 10x (Can't remember the suit but the flush didn't come in). I check and villain bets $70. I think for a bit and call. I think that if he is repping the 10 and doesn't have it, he will check back the river. The villain has seen me make a couple of calls that I don't think that he is going to try bluffing me out of big pot, plus my initial read on him. River is Ah. I check, villain bets $170 very deliberately and calculated. I tank for a bit, and I make a comment of "Why does it feel like you have quads?" to which he kind of giggles. After his reaction to my comment I am almost sure that he has a big hand. I almost talk myself into a call. Just due to the way that I have played the hand, villain being in position can almost play the hand perfectly as he knows that I have a big pocket hand, but vulnerable to the board. Also, I think that my hand is pretty under repped so he could be pouncing with worse, I'm considering maybe QQ.

In any case, I fold. About 20 min. later, villain taps me on the shoulder and asks me to come over to the side to chat with him. Villain says that he doesn't usually reveal his hands, but he like the way that I play and wanted to tell me what he had. Villain tells me that he had AT. I believe the guy. Another old man that had just sat down at the table that watched the hand go down said that he thought villain didn't have anything and would have shoved all-in on him. I kindly and respectfully disagreed.

Lately I have been working on the psychology of my opponents. I am going with my reads on players and what their bets mean about 90% of the time. I think that going with your read is really the best thing that you can do at the table. What I mean to say is that, I don't see monsters under the bed and pick out 1 or two hands that an opponent could have to beat me. I strongly consider all of the psychological aspects of things that have gone on during the course of the current and previous hands, and go with my gut. I don't get mad when I am wrong, or to happy when I am right, I just use the information acquired for future play. The other 10% I don't go with my gut is if the price is too great, like the first hand I posted.

6 hours 38 min., +$146

Totals:
Time Played: 67 hours 34 min.
Bankroll: $9,715

I totally agree w/ your line of thinking here. I always want the cash game to be fun and welcoming. The last thing you want to see is a player leave and not return cuz some guy was a dick.

The hands you posted were interesting. The first one, as I was reading it, the guy's bet on the turn screamed blocker bet. And his bet on the river is just LOL bad, and obv you needed to call. Nicely done.

Second hand was just an unlucky runout. You can't really get away from your hand when the 10 pairs on the turn, but luckily for you, the Ace came on the river, saving you some money. Nice that the guy came over to tell you he had you. Seems pretty likely he was telling the truth.

Have a good one, buddy.

Played 8 hours 11 min for +$145

With the exception of my losing session at the Bike, I have had 7 winning sessions in a row. None of my wins have been huge, I think that my biggest was $345 or so, but I will take the positive momentum. I am slowly but surely digging my way out of the big early hole that I got into. I firmly believe that a player with even minimal skills can sit down and grind out a profit at live 1-2 NL, the players are just not very good.

I wish that I could go back to the start of this journey. I shouldn't have pushed so many small edges. I could have easily gotten away from some of my early sessions with smaller loses. However, the positive thing came from my early troubles, is my raised awareness of how I need to be playing moving forward. I feel like I shook a lot of rust off my game in those first 30-40 hours.

Totals:
Time Played: 75 hours 45 min.
Bankroll: $9,860

I am planing on firing at least one bullet towards the 100k guarantee of the Oklahoma State Championship of Poker tomorrow. I will probably be playing cash games afterwards.

Since I don't have an extremely firm goal or detailed pathway, I am kind of blindly swinging away. I think that through my process I am going to discover what it is that I want to do. I have certainly uncovered several things that I do not want to do. Taking a line from Billy Murphy of Forever Jobless, "You can't pay me to hate my life."

Here is an amusing bathroom wall post (the original forums) from Lubbock, TX:



I believe that this is a George Carlin quote. George Carlin, Kurt Vonnegut, and Mark Twain are my three favorite philosophers btw. Don't be surprised if some of the aforementioned's musings show up itt.

GL in the 100k. Outstanding choices of top philosophers.

Thanks, brother! I think that my favorite philosophers offer more practice advice/commentary to the world that we all currently live in.

I was off on the tourney schedule by a day. Thursday will be a standard grind day and Friday will be tourney day.

Gl man

Subbed, GL op, etc.... I love Carlin, Vonnegut and Twain - Vonnegut is probably my favorite thinker that I've ever read - but I wouldn't run around calling them philosophers. Serious philosophy people will have their butts hurt because they wrote long books and theses and dissertations and stuff. Those other guys just talked about their dicks, more or less, which imo is more important. I guess I'm saying art and philosophy are different.

Thanks, boss!

Thanks for joining in and reading. Also, I appreciate your response. You may be more precise in the sense that a philosopher, by your definition, deals in the realm of academia, just a guess on my part as to your metric for defining a philosopher. However, I do assess the individuals that I mentioned as philosophers due to their inspection of life, and their attempts to codify reality and the subconscious. While the approach that they typically take is one of humor, that is their chosen device for creating a metric in approaching an answer to the question of "why?" for many aspects of life, and one that I find quite effective in my understanding and desire to know more.

Whatever the nomenclature we prescribe for these individuals, I believe that we both agree that they were remarkable thinkers and stupendous comedians.

Wish I had the balls to do what you do..anyway,good luck in life and poker wise

Subbed

1000x subbed haha great thread! Currently working my ass off in order to go on a similar endeavour. Cheers for the motivation!

Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly.
Man got to sit and wonder "why, why, why?"
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land.
Man got to tell himself he understand.

Thanks, dude!

When you get fed up enough with your current situation and are financially stable, I think that anyone has the capacity to take similar steps. If you have met the previous two criteria, maybe you could pursue something similar. That something similar doesn't necessarily have to be poker, but anything you truly enjoy.

Best wishes to you!

I had several threads and posters that proceeded mine in providing me with my motivation. I am glad that I can be commensurate with that effort. I wish you luck en route to your own journey and once things get kicked off.

"An educated man, now I really do hate you." Not really, just a line from Tombstone that I thought might play humorously, but I am not sure it does. Just probed back over these line that you provided from Cat's Cradle. What a great book!

3/3, Played 4 hours 7 min., +$53
3/4, Played 5 hours 33 min., +$271

3/3, fired a $150 tourney bullet and overplayed AKdd<AA
3/5, fired second $150 touney bullet. Lost all-in w/ QQ<AK for a 65 bb stack near the end of day 1. Then lost my last 12.5 bb all-in pf when called by two. TT<A3 & 99. I would have lost to both hands but 99 flopped a set. It was somewhat laughable as the 99 hand open limped the button w/ ~16bb. I then shoved my TT from the SB, and the BB shoved his 8 bb, and button called. I thought it was a bad call but I am not a tourney expert. I would say though that the limp was the wrong play for him initially.

One intersting hand from the 3/3 cash game. MP player limps and I raise AA from the button to $15. MP calls and asks for 4's & 7's to come on the flop. The flop comes 47T. The table laughs. The villain leads out for $20. I told him that I believed him and he confidently said that I should fold. I fold. I prod him a little and he turns over 77.

I get introspective after busting out of tournaments. On my way home from the casino I considered what I feel is one of the greatest installations of fear that I know in existence, mine at least. That fear revolves around time. Time to accomplish our goals, time to cherish and be with our loved ones, whether our time will end abruptly, or painstakingly. Essentially, I feel that if we can begin to live in the moment and enjoy our present time, we begin to conquer one of the greatest perpetrators of fear, for myself at least.

Totals:
Time Played: 85 hours 27 minutes
Profits: +$191 (first time breaking into the black, or green in this case, since starting the journey.)
*Not including tournament buy-ins/wins in profit/bankroll category.

Hey are you going to be playing in the Hard Rock Tulsa $675 this weekend?

Sucks that there's no thread about the casino or the tournament series anywhere here.

I doubt that I will play in the tournament this week. The event that I played had a really good turnout and the cash games were flowing with poor players. I was kind of surprised that there hadn't been a thread started on this tournament series, but I think that generally means that the field is going to be a little softer than the ones for which threads exist. Are you playing in the tournament this weekend?

The next tournament series that I will probably involve myself in will be the Choctaw Poker Series in Durant.

Will be going to Pensacola end of this week for about 5 days. I am going to try and squeeze in some poker and capture anything of interest for this thread. Anybody out there have suggestions on any poker rooms that I should look at visiting, or things in Pensaocla worthwhile?

http://www.pokeratlas.com/poker-room...cola-greyhound

Could check out that place. I've heard from locals here on the Gulf Coast that games there can be good, but that the poker room itself isn't much to brag about. I think they get a 5/5 Big O going on weekends.

Depending on what all games you want to play there is plenty of 5/10 NLH and some 10/20 NLH at the dog track. Brother who lives there and the games are generally all the wannabe regs and couple soft spots.

Thanks, guys.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I didn't play any poker on my trip to Pensacola, then Tunica, and back home. Went on a pretty big bender in Pensacola, haven't had any alcohol since. I am planing on not imbibing for some time. In fact, I have a $100 no drinking bet with a buddy that lasts until May 26th. If both of us make it past that date, we push. Alcohol hasn't been a huge problem in my life, but I have not been proud of the amount of my recent consumption. This challenge/adventure may take another twist in the near future.

I have been playing this nightly $2.20 dollar tourney on Carbon just for fun. I believe that I have fired at 4 of them now. I didn't deposit, but rather received a $7 casino credit, cleared said bonus at blackjack, and walked away with $12. I won a couple of SNG's, hence when I started playing the $2 tourney's. Not a big score or anything, but finished 3rd in the tourney last night for $82. I will probably play around on Carbon some more and get back into the brick and mortar casino soon.

Studying philosophy and following politics lately have kept me busy and preoccupied.

I have an interesting hand history from last night's tournament that I will post for feedback soon.

I hope everyone is well and making great strides towards accomplishing their goals.

Fyi carbon is basically busto so I wouldn't waste your time playing there.