An NJ Grinder's Journey as a Pro
10-26-2017
, 05:57 PM
)
11-01-2017
, 01:32 PM
11-01-2017
, 03:05 PM
Weekly Update (10/25 - 10/31)
Not a lot of poker played this past week. The desire to play hasn't been there and I did a lot for Halloween weekend that led to very minimal volume. The days I was home I often just 1-3 tabled on my laptop and hung out with roommates in our living room.
Wednesday the 25th
Didn't play poker, watched the Nets beat the Cavs and went wild. That is still their most recent victory
Thursday the 26th
Two tabled the Stars $250 PKO and $100 10K while watching football with one roommate while the other went to NYC early. I got $160 in bounties in the PKO before busting AJ<99/88 for a massive pot with 8 left and 4 paying. Bwah bwah. Bubbled the 10K as well.
Friday the 27th
Into the city I went. It was just my NYC buddy Greg and my roommate Tee Dubs and we headed to the bar that we frequent, the Belfry on 14th and 3rd. I somehow found a spot at the bar and my buddies slowly crept in as well, and for about an hour we just sat, talked, and drank. Obviously this was not the first time we've done something like this but for some reason I don't know if it's ever been more enjoyable for me. I just felt completely relaxed and was having a great time. We drank a ton in that hour, drinking several of their different specialty pickleback shots along with a few beers, and I drank way more than I should have in that time period lol. While we were drinking Greg's friend from his program met up with us and she brought along a friend of hers from outside the program. Pretty much instantly Greg's friend broke off to talk to him and Tee Dubs while her friend and I got to know each other.
Eventually we made our way across the street to Beauty Bar, a place that Tee Dubs and I often (mostly) jokingly assure each other is "not a gay bar." They play a bunch of different types of music in the back, often 80s songs, and everyone dances and it's a lot of fun. But you also often get a somewhat eclectic crowd there. We don't seem to mind though lol. I believe the girl I met and I danced quite a bit but when I wake up around noon the next day in only my boxers at Greg's place and ask what happened, he recounts the night. He tells me that Tee Dubs got too drunk so he took him home and left me with these 2 girls I just met that night. I have no recollection of this. Apparently at one point Greg's friend calls Greg and tells him I am rude, citing that I've called Greg "inconsistent." Greg tells me he heard me in the background yelling "IT'S NOT TRUE GREG, IT'S NOT TRUE!" What a strange insult lmao. I shake off the hangover, get some food, and prepare for Saturday night.
Saturday the 28th
I dressed up as running Forrest Gump for Halloween. In an ironic twist of fate, the day I put the costume on was also the day that my running streak came to an end, and I haven't ran since. I'm definitely gonna get back out there soon but I was so comfortable in my buddy's place and I didn't wanna go out into the cold and try to run around NYC so I just stayed inside. As the day went on more and more people began to come into his apartment and by the time we were ready to head out it was getting crowded. We headed over to Houston Hall where everyone was dressed in costume. A friend of mine brought two of his friends and we hit it off immediately, dancing around like idiots and having a good time.
At some point I broke off from the group and started talking to this girl wearing a Hickory Jersey from the movie Hoosiers who had lost her debit card. I helped her search for it and it seemed like we were hitting it off. Then her friend came, and her friend also seemed interested in me. I am not a boastful guy when it comes to girls so when I say I thought they were interested I really do think they were. However, they start talking about so and so's ex and how they are gonna meet up with other people, and a couple more of their friends show up, and now I'm starting to feel more like a lingerer than a guy who has a shot. At that moment I look over and see a couple of my new friends literally cheering me on. If that isn't funny enough, there was a rope set up, like one that would be in place to direct a line at a movie theater concession stand. It's there to sort of separate the bar from the dance floor. They are leaning on this rope, making me feel even more like a side show that they have tickets for. They're yelling "let's go Dan!" and I look over and pretty much as loud as I can yell, "I don't think this is going to work out, but WATCH THIS ****!" and I proceed to back my ass into the middle of this group of what is now 4 girls and start dancing like an idiot. Now the girls and my group of friends are laughing which is egging me on to pull out every ridiculous dance move I can think of. If this isn't enough already, just remember I was dressed like this:
Anyway, the rest of the night was relatively uneventful and I head back with a buddy of mine around 3AM.
Sunday the 29th
I hang out at Greg's for most of the day, watching football and having a letdown of a brunch. I get back to my place around 9PM, just in time to max late reg the $200 on Stars. I get lucky to chip up but then bust 48th with 36 paying, oh well. I watch the rest of the football games and in what is a pivotal matchup in my fantasy football league, it ends up that I will need Harrison Butker (KC kicker) to tie or outscore Alex Smith (KC QB) to win the matchup. In our 8 man league, the top 3 teams have all locked up the wins and will be 8-0, 6-2, and 6-2 respectively, and both me and the guy I'm playing were 3-4, with 6th already having lost to drop to 3-5. With 4 making the playoffs, the winner of this matchup will be outright 4th, and since I currently own the tiebreak on both the other guys, a win would be big. The rest of the night I stay up with my 2 roommates and the one's girlfriend and we all drink wine and play this board game we got recently. We stay up entirely too late but it was an awesome time and I really enjoyed myself.
Monday the 30th
I one table the Party 10K on my laptop while watching football with one of my roommates. I chip up to maybe 70K at one point before everything goes downhill and I bust 20th with 10 paying. At halftime I'm down 2 points in the fantasy matchup and need Butker to not only score points but also need Smith to somehow not score much in the process. I go to get Wendy's with my roommate and right before we leave Butker drills a 43 yarder to give me the lead again. While we were out he hits another field goal, and now I have a 4 point lead or so. As we're walking in the door he is kicking another field goal, literally just a couple minutes after the last one and I have no idea how it got set up like that. Butker ends up being the high scorer on either of our fantasy teams with 21 points and I win the matchup by 9
Tuesday the 31st
Halloween! I'm a bum all day and by the time I'm considering going to get some candy my roommate's girlfriend texts us asking what sort of candy she should pick up so I decide I don't need to go out. However, kids are starting to come to the door and our dog often gets hyped up when people do that, so I take him upstairs and hide out in my room until she gets here. Around 6:30 I come down and her and her boyfriend/my roommate are watching the Purge so I sit down and watch it too while we (read: roommate's GF) hand out candy. Around 8:00 I fire up the $250 on Stars and decide to 1 table it while hanging out with everybody. I get off to a good start, 65K from 25K, but lose a couple flips and run an unsuccessful bluff before busting at 2Kbb. **** it I say and re-enter, quickly losing another flip to bust. **** it again! I re-enter for the 2nd time in the last 5 minutes before late reg ends and now I'm in for $750, fully ready to say **** it a 3rd time if need be.
I catch some heat and spin it up to about 85K at 2800bb. I open HJ to 7K with 99 and am 3b to 22.2K from the CO who is playing about 70K to start. I have a note on him that says he has minraise/folded bvb with 9bbs to start the hand, which is enough for me to feel alright about shoving here. It's not great and I expect to see better hands a decent amount of the time, but when guys 3b this large I think they often have very good, non-nutted hands that they "just wanna take it down" with. So I think AK will be what we see here quite often, as AA and KK probably go smaller and I *think* TT will just shove. JJ might go either way, and QQ will probably also make it this size. Idk. In any case it was QQ this time and I flopped a 9 to move up to 150K.
Later on I open the button and SB, a friend of mine and reg, shoves 18BBs or so. I have A9s and decide to call and lose to JJ. Back down to 80K. Now I find AQs and I believe we're at 3200bb, so I open to 8K. Scott Blumstein defend the BB and then x/r's really small on QQJr. I think he just tries to exploit maximally in every spot and knows I'll often c-bet 100% on a board like this, so we definitely just want to keep clicking call and allow him to bluf it all off. Turn is a brick and he bets small again, but river will still only be a 70% pot shove or so, so I call again. River is an 8 so now T9 gets there but that's all we really lose to, and he x/f's to my shove.
A couple hands later Scott shoves maybe 50K at 3200bb from HJ. SB flats, and I have 150K in the BB with KK. I go all in, SB snaps with AQs, Scott has 55 and I hold to get to 350K and a pretty sizable chip lead on the field. I get up to about 400K on the bubble, 13 left with 12 paying, and I think I did a good job of putting pressure on but not getting too crazy. There were at least 2 regs at the table who I think probably care much less about cashing than most players do, and one of them still had 50bbs or so to my 100bbs, so it's not like I'm just easily going to steal every hand from him. That being said, I got a bunch of 3b's through, shoved often when it folded to my SB or button with both players on my left under 20BBs, and finished the bubble around 500K.
From there not a lot of great things happened, but not a lot of bad things happened either. I looked for spots but didn't find many and found myself in the middle of the pack 5 handed, still about 40BBs deep though. We all shuffled spots around quite a bit and I was really happy with the patience and lack of anxiety I felt. I focused way less on what each spot paid. I also focused way less on what place I was in or how many chips I "used to" have and instead just did my best to take each spot as it came to me. At the end of the day I just got lucky to double up when I did, but I think a different version of me might have busted before running into that situation, so I'm proud of how I played before then. Anyway, I open HJ (UTG 5 handed) to 22.5K at 9Kbb with about 240K to start the hand. It folds to the BB who is an MTT reg and he makes it 55K. I have seen him make appropriate 3b sizings before (maybe like 58K in position, 68K out of position against my raise size here) but here he is making this incredibly small sizing that I see all the time from MTT regs and it is just ALWAYS the goods. I had a spot on Thursday where I raised 99 with 20bbs, ready to snap against any shove, and then the BB 3b really really small and I just felt so sad because I knew what was coming but didn't feel disciplined enough to fold to a small 3b but call a shove. I shoved, he had AA, and again I got there
But this time I was the one with AA, and against a bigger 3b sizing I probably would have flatted. But against this face up sizing I went all in, he called with KK and I held. When we got down to 4 handed a player lost an all in to drop to 2bbs, then tripled, then doubled, and was back to 18bbs when he shoved CO and I reshoved button with AKs and won the flip vs 66! As 3 handed play started I was in 2nd with 60BBs, 3rd had 50BBs, and 1st had 90BBs, and I noticed both other players had the deal button checked. I decided to take an ICM chop and cashed for a little over 4K. It doesn't quite get me out of my own personal "makeup" but gets me pretty close as the roll grows to 24.3K. I'm hoping this win will have me feeling more motivated to start putting sessions in again since I've been feeling that lack of drive pretty strongly recently. In any case it was nice to run good in one of these things; it's felt like a pretty long time.
Not a lot of poker played this past week. The desire to play hasn't been there and I did a lot for Halloween weekend that led to very minimal volume. The days I was home I often just 1-3 tabled on my laptop and hung out with roommates in our living room.
Wednesday the 25th
Didn't play poker, watched the Nets beat the Cavs and went wild. That is still their most recent victory
Thursday the 26th
Two tabled the Stars $250 PKO and $100 10K while watching football with one roommate while the other went to NYC early. I got $160 in bounties in the PKO before busting AJ<99/88 for a massive pot with 8 left and 4 paying. Bwah bwah. Bubbled the 10K as well.
Friday the 27th
Into the city I went. It was just my NYC buddy Greg and my roommate Tee Dubs and we headed to the bar that we frequent, the Belfry on 14th and 3rd. I somehow found a spot at the bar and my buddies slowly crept in as well, and for about an hour we just sat, talked, and drank. Obviously this was not the first time we've done something like this but for some reason I don't know if it's ever been more enjoyable for me. I just felt completely relaxed and was having a great time. We drank a ton in that hour, drinking several of their different specialty pickleback shots along with a few beers, and I drank way more than I should have in that time period lol. While we were drinking Greg's friend from his program met up with us and she brought along a friend of hers from outside the program. Pretty much instantly Greg's friend broke off to talk to him and Tee Dubs while her friend and I got to know each other.
Eventually we made our way across the street to Beauty Bar, a place that Tee Dubs and I often (mostly) jokingly assure each other is "not a gay bar." They play a bunch of different types of music in the back, often 80s songs, and everyone dances and it's a lot of fun. But you also often get a somewhat eclectic crowd there. We don't seem to mind though lol. I believe the girl I met and I danced quite a bit but when I wake up around noon the next day in only my boxers at Greg's place and ask what happened, he recounts the night. He tells me that Tee Dubs got too drunk so he took him home and left me with these 2 girls I just met that night. I have no recollection of this. Apparently at one point Greg's friend calls Greg and tells him I am rude, citing that I've called Greg "inconsistent." Greg tells me he heard me in the background yelling "IT'S NOT TRUE GREG, IT'S NOT TRUE!" What a strange insult lmao. I shake off the hangover, get some food, and prepare for Saturday night.
Saturday the 28th
I dressed up as running Forrest Gump for Halloween. In an ironic twist of fate, the day I put the costume on was also the day that my running streak came to an end, and I haven't ran since. I'm definitely gonna get back out there soon but I was so comfortable in my buddy's place and I didn't wanna go out into the cold and try to run around NYC so I just stayed inside. As the day went on more and more people began to come into his apartment and by the time we were ready to head out it was getting crowded. We headed over to Houston Hall where everyone was dressed in costume. A friend of mine brought two of his friends and we hit it off immediately, dancing around like idiots and having a good time.
At some point I broke off from the group and started talking to this girl wearing a Hickory Jersey from the movie Hoosiers who had lost her debit card. I helped her search for it and it seemed like we were hitting it off. Then her friend came, and her friend also seemed interested in me. I am not a boastful guy when it comes to girls so when I say I thought they were interested I really do think they were. However, they start talking about so and so's ex and how they are gonna meet up with other people, and a couple more of their friends show up, and now I'm starting to feel more like a lingerer than a guy who has a shot. At that moment I look over and see a couple of my new friends literally cheering me on. If that isn't funny enough, there was a rope set up, like one that would be in place to direct a line at a movie theater concession stand. It's there to sort of separate the bar from the dance floor. They are leaning on this rope, making me feel even more like a side show that they have tickets for. They're yelling "let's go Dan!" and I look over and pretty much as loud as I can yell, "I don't think this is going to work out, but WATCH THIS ****!" and I proceed to back my ass into the middle of this group of what is now 4 girls and start dancing like an idiot. Now the girls and my group of friends are laughing which is egging me on to pull out every ridiculous dance move I can think of. If this isn't enough already, just remember I was dressed like this:
Anyway, the rest of the night was relatively uneventful and I head back with a buddy of mine around 3AM.
Sunday the 29th
I hang out at Greg's for most of the day, watching football and having a letdown of a brunch. I get back to my place around 9PM, just in time to max late reg the $200 on Stars. I get lucky to chip up but then bust 48th with 36 paying, oh well. I watch the rest of the football games and in what is a pivotal matchup in my fantasy football league, it ends up that I will need Harrison Butker (KC kicker) to tie or outscore Alex Smith (KC QB) to win the matchup. In our 8 man league, the top 3 teams have all locked up the wins and will be 8-0, 6-2, and 6-2 respectively, and both me and the guy I'm playing were 3-4, with 6th already having lost to drop to 3-5. With 4 making the playoffs, the winner of this matchup will be outright 4th, and since I currently own the tiebreak on both the other guys, a win would be big. The rest of the night I stay up with my 2 roommates and the one's girlfriend and we all drink wine and play this board game we got recently. We stay up entirely too late but it was an awesome time and I really enjoyed myself.
Monday the 30th
I one table the Party 10K on my laptop while watching football with one of my roommates. I chip up to maybe 70K at one point before everything goes downhill and I bust 20th with 10 paying. At halftime I'm down 2 points in the fantasy matchup and need Butker to not only score points but also need Smith to somehow not score much in the process. I go to get Wendy's with my roommate and right before we leave Butker drills a 43 yarder to give me the lead again. While we were out he hits another field goal, and now I have a 4 point lead or so. As we're walking in the door he is kicking another field goal, literally just a couple minutes after the last one and I have no idea how it got set up like that. Butker ends up being the high scorer on either of our fantasy teams with 21 points and I win the matchup by 9
Tuesday the 31st
Halloween! I'm a bum all day and by the time I'm considering going to get some candy my roommate's girlfriend texts us asking what sort of candy she should pick up so I decide I don't need to go out. However, kids are starting to come to the door and our dog often gets hyped up when people do that, so I take him upstairs and hide out in my room until she gets here. Around 6:30 I come down and her and her boyfriend/my roommate are watching the Purge so I sit down and watch it too while we (read: roommate's GF) hand out candy. Around 8:00 I fire up the $250 on Stars and decide to 1 table it while hanging out with everybody. I get off to a good start, 65K from 25K, but lose a couple flips and run an unsuccessful bluff before busting at 2Kbb. **** it I say and re-enter, quickly losing another flip to bust. **** it again! I re-enter for the 2nd time in the last 5 minutes before late reg ends and now I'm in for $750, fully ready to say **** it a 3rd time if need be.
I catch some heat and spin it up to about 85K at 2800bb. I open HJ to 7K with 99 and am 3b to 22.2K from the CO who is playing about 70K to start. I have a note on him that says he has minraise/folded bvb with 9bbs to start the hand, which is enough for me to feel alright about shoving here. It's not great and I expect to see better hands a decent amount of the time, but when guys 3b this large I think they often have very good, non-nutted hands that they "just wanna take it down" with. So I think AK will be what we see here quite often, as AA and KK probably go smaller and I *think* TT will just shove. JJ might go either way, and QQ will probably also make it this size. Idk. In any case it was QQ this time and I flopped a 9 to move up to 150K.
Later on I open the button and SB, a friend of mine and reg, shoves 18BBs or so. I have A9s and decide to call and lose to JJ. Back down to 80K. Now I find AQs and I believe we're at 3200bb, so I open to 8K. Scott Blumstein defend the BB and then x/r's really small on QQJr. I think he just tries to exploit maximally in every spot and knows I'll often c-bet 100% on a board like this, so we definitely just want to keep clicking call and allow him to bluf it all off. Turn is a brick and he bets small again, but river will still only be a 70% pot shove or so, so I call again. River is an 8 so now T9 gets there but that's all we really lose to, and he x/f's to my shove.
A couple hands later Scott shoves maybe 50K at 3200bb from HJ. SB flats, and I have 150K in the BB with KK. I go all in, SB snaps with AQs, Scott has 55 and I hold to get to 350K and a pretty sizable chip lead on the field. I get up to about 400K on the bubble, 13 left with 12 paying, and I think I did a good job of putting pressure on but not getting too crazy. There were at least 2 regs at the table who I think probably care much less about cashing than most players do, and one of them still had 50bbs or so to my 100bbs, so it's not like I'm just easily going to steal every hand from him. That being said, I got a bunch of 3b's through, shoved often when it folded to my SB or button with both players on my left under 20BBs, and finished the bubble around 500K.
From there not a lot of great things happened, but not a lot of bad things happened either. I looked for spots but didn't find many and found myself in the middle of the pack 5 handed, still about 40BBs deep though. We all shuffled spots around quite a bit and I was really happy with the patience and lack of anxiety I felt. I focused way less on what each spot paid. I also focused way less on what place I was in or how many chips I "used to" have and instead just did my best to take each spot as it came to me. At the end of the day I just got lucky to double up when I did, but I think a different version of me might have busted before running into that situation, so I'm proud of how I played before then. Anyway, I open HJ (UTG 5 handed) to 22.5K at 9Kbb with about 240K to start the hand. It folds to the BB who is an MTT reg and he makes it 55K. I have seen him make appropriate 3b sizings before (maybe like 58K in position, 68K out of position against my raise size here) but here he is making this incredibly small sizing that I see all the time from MTT regs and it is just ALWAYS the goods. I had a spot on Thursday where I raised 99 with 20bbs, ready to snap against any shove, and then the BB 3b really really small and I just felt so sad because I knew what was coming but didn't feel disciplined enough to fold to a small 3b but call a shove. I shoved, he had AA, and again I got there
But this time I was the one with AA, and against a bigger 3b sizing I probably would have flatted. But against this face up sizing I went all in, he called with KK and I held. When we got down to 4 handed a player lost an all in to drop to 2bbs, then tripled, then doubled, and was back to 18bbs when he shoved CO and I reshoved button with AKs and won the flip vs 66! As 3 handed play started I was in 2nd with 60BBs, 3rd had 50BBs, and 1st had 90BBs, and I noticed both other players had the deal button checked. I decided to take an ICM chop and cashed for a little over 4K. It doesn't quite get me out of my own personal "makeup" but gets me pretty close as the roll grows to 24.3K. I'm hoping this win will have me feeling more motivated to start putting sessions in again since I've been feeling that lack of drive pretty strongly recently. In any case it was nice to run good in one of these things; it's felt like a pretty long time.
11-05-2017
, 11:51 PM
11-07-2017
, 11:08 PM
11-08-2017
, 12:33 PM
11-08-2017
, 01:02 PM
11-15-2017
, 02:07 PM
11-20-2017
, 01:24 AM
11-21-2017
, 02:18 AM
11-22-2017
, 12:52 PM
11-22-2017
, 01:03 PM
Weekly Update (11/15 - 11/21)
So the notes I took after sessions took up over 4 pages on Word. I'm going to post them here but put them in spoilers so you can easily get past them if you want. Warning: there's lots of whining in there and it's how I felt right after all of my sessions this week. They pretty much all were frustrating so there's a lot of negativity, outside of the fact that I made sure it was clear that no matter the variance I was gonna keep grinding the next day.
So I actually did make $450 this week which surprises me a bit. I guess the feeling of "what could have been" on Sunday made me sort of forget I did end up having a pretty good day overall. I haven't won a tournament in over a month now despite final tabling (and cashing) 25 MTTs. I have five 2nds, three 3rds, and five 4ths in that span, meaning that over half of my FTs I have finished 2nd-4th. I'm giving myself chances every night but just losing all the big ones when the money is on the line! The crazy thing though is in the monthlong span I am break even despite not winning anything. I'm also dead even in the calendar month of November. So things could be better but things could also be worse. What I've noticed since I've gotten my head back on straight and started grinding 5 days a week again is that bad results don't hurt as much. Sure, they're just as frustrating, but since I know I'll have the next day and the next day and the next day(...) to try again, the "permanence" of a daily loss is much less severe. In other words, I don't feel like the light at the end of the tunnel is as far away when I'm able to just grind through the frustration, even if that frustration feels like it's never going to end.
On my off days this week (Friday and Saturday) I headed to the city for the usual shenanigans then came back to our place Saturday to have a birthday party for my roommate's girlfriend. It was a lot of fun, met some of her friends which was a good time, and then resisted the urge to take Sunday off to hang out with friends. The weekend was good. Outside of my fantasy team putting up a bunch of duds and another 2 of my players getting hurt! My team is in shambles but I'm clinging to 4th place and the last playoff spot with a 5-6 record while 5th is still a game behind at 4-7. Hold!
So the notes I took after sessions took up over 4 pages on Word. I'm going to post them here but put them in spoilers so you can easily get past them if you want. Warning: there's lots of whining in there and it's how I felt right after all of my sessions this week. They pretty much all were frustrating so there's a lot of negativity, outside of the fact that I made sure it was clear that no matter the variance I was gonna keep grinding the next day.
Spoiler:
So I actually did make $450 this week which surprises me a bit. I guess the feeling of "what could have been" on Sunday made me sort of forget I did end up having a pretty good day overall. I haven't won a tournament in over a month now despite final tabling (and cashing) 25 MTTs. I have five 2nds, three 3rds, and five 4ths in that span, meaning that over half of my FTs I have finished 2nd-4th. I'm giving myself chances every night but just losing all the big ones when the money is on the line! The crazy thing though is in the monthlong span I am break even despite not winning anything. I'm also dead even in the calendar month of November. So things could be better but things could also be worse. What I've noticed since I've gotten my head back on straight and started grinding 5 days a week again is that bad results don't hurt as much. Sure, they're just as frustrating, but since I know I'll have the next day and the next day and the next day(...) to try again, the "permanence" of a daily loss is much less severe. In other words, I don't feel like the light at the end of the tunnel is as far away when I'm able to just grind through the frustration, even if that frustration feels like it's never going to end.
On my off days this week (Friday and Saturday) I headed to the city for the usual shenanigans then came back to our place Saturday to have a birthday party for my roommate's girlfriend. It was a lot of fun, met some of her friends which was a good time, and then resisted the urge to take Sunday off to hang out with friends. The weekend was good. Outside of my fantasy team putting up a bunch of duds and another 2 of my players getting hurt! My team is in shambles but I'm clinging to 4th place and the last playoff spot with a 5-6 record while 5th is still a game behind at 4-7. Hold!
Last edited by Redsoxnets5; 11-22-2017 at 01:22 PM.
12-01-2017
, 12:47 AM
12-03-2017
, 11:45 PM
12-04-2017
, 06:32 AM
12-07-2017
, 12:59 AM