+1600 2/5 session the other day

Been doing more in my personal life and it has prohibited me from playing as much as I would like.

The good news - free rooms every wednesday and thursday next month at foxwoods so my poker schedule is going to be awesomely filled. If I am not at 10k+ at the end of Feb I suck as a player.

should be about 10 full days of grinding next month, which I love. Playing much more 2/5 now that my bankroll is in the neighborhood of 6k.

5. SERIOUSLY so annoying

You can't lose what you don't put in the middle, but you can't win much either.

Yes that's a cliche rounders quote.

Finished up my 3 day stint at foxwoods a few days ago, ended up about -200 for the trip after close to 30 hours of play.

I misplayed some big hands, ran terrible, lost every flip.

My losses came from hands like qj on j98hh and not improving.
Lost a bunch of 1k flips, probably 0/3. Had AJ on J56cc vs aqcc and lost. Aside from that I played pretty well I think, except this hand.

I recently table changed cause my game was dying and I can immediately tell that my new game is about 1000x better. Bunch of older gambly guys sitting incredibly deep, 2 young internet kids with 1500-2kish stacks.

I have about 800 from my other table.

Straddle pot, hero overcalls LP with 89. Do not want to raise because the straddle is on making stacks less deep and my IO are not as good and inflating the pot with 9hi, even in position is a bad idea, opponents probably arent L/F enough to make it profitable.

Anyway. Flop comes Q 10 8

Solid internet kid leads for about 55 into 80. I elect to call. Looking back idk if this correct as it set me up in a bad spot for future streets, even though I am IP. My thinking is that he is not leading anything that will fold to my flop raise so I'de rather just call and keep the pot smallish. We are about 150bb deep.

Turn 4 - He leads 115

Such a bad spot. I call which is the typical passive moron line.

river 10

He leads again for 160.

What the hell do I beat and why the hell did I call his river bet. Just fyi he shows KJcc and got 100% max value out of me. I felt so terrible after that call because I know I played the hand horrendously. Kept playing and made a few hundred back from the fish but everytime I looked at my stack I kept thinking how much more I would have if I didn't completely butcher that hand vs that kid. ie my stack is 800 (could be 1100 if you didn't pay that kid).

Oh well. Leaks gonna leak. I learned a lot though from this trip. One is that I'm bolder at 2/5 because I know its more likely the younger regularly are clicking it back on me with less than premium holdings, also these kids tilt like crazy.

One hand- kid has 800 and I cover, very late at night probably 3:30ish, kid is steaming as well cause his set of aces got beat by a gutshot.

Straddle on, kid limps 10 utg+1

I iso to 45 with AQ. He calls.

Flop is Q 8 2x.

I cbet 65 he makes it 165. I pop it back and he shoves.

4 OTT makes me cringe.

He ended up saying he had 72 and just verbally saying "you win" with a dejected tone at showdown. didn't see his hand.

Felt really good to see his face because when he shoved I snapped it off so he probably though I flopped a set or something.

Why am I so scary?
Enough HHs.

One thing I think is incredibly important to your poker game is to make sure your opponents are unaware of how adept you are.

Essentially when I play I want to seem like a recreational gambler who is just as clueless as everyone else.

Sometimes people (i.e antisocial 2p2 idiots) who can tell I have a clue by my betsizing/lines, ask me about strategy at the table.

This is incredibly frustrating for me because no matter what I do, it's bad. My standard response is just playing ignorant like, "I don't know what that means", when I obviously do, then they think im a jerk. Obviously answering the question seriously is bad because the fish hear that I know things about the game and the better regs get a peak into my thought process. All bad.

For example at foxwoods I played a hand where I opened with JJ got 3 callers and a young, pretty good foxwoods 2/5 reg 3 bet me to about 125 out of the BB. I called and we were heads up to a flop of like 2 6 8 or something. All blanks.

He cbet 165, I called (were deep) and the rest of the hand went c/c c/c.. He says "your pairs good" I show and scoop and thats it.

After the hand he says something about his awkward stack size being unprofitable to double barrel and how he should of c/r to represent more strength against my middle pair.

I responded "your thinking too much about it, I had a pair I had to call". I didn't really want to tilt the kid but I also don't want to talk strategy across the table either.


Another thing that happened to me this weekend was a comment by an older gentleman to my immediate right after this hand. It's funny because he has no idea how much his comment bothered me.

Young kid opening light raised to 15. Old dude OTB 3bet to 50, I cold 4bet out of the sb with AKdd and he folds.

He says something like "I don't want to mess with you". Not that I had been playing particularly tight or anything, had actually put in a 4bet before (with qq I think vs an aggro fish).

I responded "whys that? haha"... He says because I can tell you know this game inside out.

This post is not meant to toot my own horn, old guy has absolutely no idea how wrong he is. If I knew the game inside out me and durrrr would be slamming hookers in Macau ontop of stacks of money.

The point is that I struggle to give off a recreational vibe sometimes. Especially since I recently moved to 2/5 and the money is very real in this deep stacked games. I asked him what I do to give off that type of vibe and he says "its just your aura, can tell from sitting next to you".

This comment bothered me for a little bit because I try my best to not be "that guy", I'm certainly not but the fact some random old dude can tell I study the game is not a good situation for me to be in. The fact he is scared to play pots with me because I am better then him is bad.

Certainly I can use that to my advantage but i'de rather have him l/c 68dd OOP "because were gambling" if that makes any sense.

Maybe I'm looking too much into it, but it did bother me.

-Until next time.

the 89cc hand, if im reading that right you lost the minimum, really theres not a whole lot you can do about getting overflushed, atleast you didnt get stacked.

Fold river.

He leads flop into 6 people. Left out that it was a big MW pot. He just wouldn't do that with anything like 56cc, and all his sets filled up on river. I beat nothing. His river range 100% beats me.

Really well written and inspirational OP.

Good to see the literate making money at poker

Thanks.

3 days at fw again starting tommorow.

hey you gonna be playing friday night too then?
and do you play tourneys ? gonna play the main event ?


also i saw you started with mohegan and now foxwoods. I have only done foxwoods as I have heard its better (although want to do some tourneys there but not cash) is that true. Especially as far as comps go.

maybe ill see ya friday, would like to hear your thoughts on 1/2 vs 2/5 difference at foxwoods more.

This is a great thread. I think you play very well, Rob. No criticism there. You may be looking into the guy's compliment too much though . It's definitely better to have a recreational vibe. You can wear nice clothes, drink, etc. But when you play, it's hard to maintain the ruse. I don't want fake-mishandling my chips to distract me from deciding whether I should 3 bet the frequent raiser with A9o or whether I should fire the 3rd bullet vs the solid reg. Just play your game, and slowly, you will find yourself more comfortable and able to give off a more relaxed vibe. Just tell the fish they're unlucky if they lose or nice hand if they win a pot. They'll love you.

And yea, 2/5 regs talk about strat way too much. I don't mind it. The 'fish' probably have somewhat of a clue and prob have money, so they're not going to be scared off like clueless 1/2 fish. I just add an occasion 'mhm' or 'yea, true'. I'll gladly take any information good players want to give away about their thought processes.

Definitely following the thread. Good Luck!

Don't play tourneys. Got a few horses I backed in megastack but thats it. I may decide to eventually play some when a 300$ loss doesnt hurt my BR that much but with a 6-7k I don't really want to play tourneys.

I started playing at Mohegan Sun because the 1/2 is better there imo and I like the room better overall.

My switch to mostly FW now is because
1. They give me 2 free rooms a week like clockwork.
2. The 2/5 game (which I mostly play now) at Mohegan is absolutely terribleeee. Bunch of regs sharing bankrolls and checking it down vs each other.

It has gotten a little better at mohegan because you get treated like a high roller playing 2/5 lol, as its often the biggest game in the room.

They bring you free shrimp, free sandwiches and stuff, so it's kind of relaxing. But the actual game is pretty bad.

I mostly do just throw in the "mhm" routine and stuff, or play ignorant. I feel like an asshat though because I'm pretty much shutting the kids down when they want to talk strat. I absolutely hate when younger players talk about playing good and visually take the game too seriously.

This will make me sound like a lolloser but I've recently been exposed to a book called the "The Game" which is about picking up women and using certain social skills to make yourself seem more alpha and desirable. I plan on working on keeping conversations going with random people (guys as well) at the poker table, so that will make me seem less serious also.

Fwiw I'm not a dweeb and have hooked up with plenty of girls in my life, it's designed to make you seem desirable when cold approaching women at bars/public spots, as opposed to "oh man, some random guy hitting on us again". Been using the techniques from the book at bars recently and it has been working quite well. Definitely worth a read, once you can get over the lame aspect of it being a book about speaking to girls/stories about the author hooking up with girls.


I will be at Foxwoods this friday grinding, young dude in a West Virginia hoodie.

Probably about 80% of my 1/2 play has been at Mohegan, but I have played close to 100hrs of 1/2 at Foxwoods, again, I could break down Mohegan's 1/2 games in and out but I have somewhat limited exposure to Foxwoods, I will give you my opinion based on 100hrs of play.

1/2 at Foxwood's has more of an older regular crowd as opposed to Mohegan's younger/drunker crowd. This is the general vibe of the respective casino atmosphere as well. I feel foxwoods has an older, more dedicated serious gambler crowd. Mohegan is more oriented toward 21-30 year olds.

This is 1/2nl, of course there are fish and the game is obviously very beatable. It's more profitable to play 1/2 at Mohegan, that I can almost guarantee. Mohegan offers 1/1 which intercepts some fish, but the 1/2 games at Mohegan are still better.

2/5 at Foxwoods is capped at 100bb to preserve the health of their regular 5/10nl game. They do not take a BBJ dollar from 2/5 games at FW, you are not eligible for the BBJ at 2/5 (which I personally like cause I couldnt hit anything for a jackpot if my life depended on it). 2/5 at foxwoods has several good younger regular types that I see topping their stack off at 500. There are also a ton of 2/5 games as opposed to Mohegan which usually gets 4-5 tops on a weekend. During a weekday your lucky if you see 2 2-5 games at mohegan.

More games = more fish = more game/seat selection = good.

1/2 at Foxwoods has a lot of shortstacking and a lot more old man regulars that play 1/2 to qualify for Black card/gold card. These are the guys that fold for 3 hours and 3bet to 45 and complain they got no action.

Live poker is live poker though, everyone's pretty much equally terrible. The players that are good are usually identifiable within 10 mins of me sitting down, any place any stake.

Another 3 dayer at Foxwoods inc.

#grindmode #protential?

Grind on the Mind
Lately I have been playing a lot of poker. Like an insane amount for me. Regularly playing 30 hours a week and actually doing quite well.

Unfortunatly I haven't been able to update this thread because I smashed my fist into my computer's keyboard during a starcraft 2 game where I got proxied (I suck) and broke my comp. Ordering another one soon.

Anyway, poker has been going quite well. Been doing pretty good at 2/5 which is all I play now and been playing wed/thurs/fri pretty much every week. Enjoying myself as well.

I can honestly say that I consider myself good at live poker now. I used to just coast, but I have been playing exceptional well the last 2 or 3 weeks. Folded kings preflop to a 4bet to 240 and just generally making more disciplined laydowns. As I have said so many times in this thread the challenges of live poker is not whether to call raise or fold, it's controlling your emotions and not making erroneous plays due to tilt/boredom/alcohol/ego etc.

I might get that tattooed

The 2/5 games at Mohegan and Foxwoods play looser than 1/2, yet they are much harder because there are legitimate good regs that are capable of 3betting light and owning me postflop.

For example- hand against a young regular who I see playing 2/5 at Foxwoods all the time. Had a few conversations with him, obvious 2+2er, may or may not play professionally, could potentially be in a similar situation to me, overall really solid player.

I'm SB hes in the HJ. Roughly 900ish eff stacks

He raises to 25 pre and I 3bet to 80 with Ak

Flop (160) QJ9

Hmm. This is a very bad board because it essentially lights up his calling range, my line is to c/f because he wont flat my 3bet with a small pocket pair because he knows his IO's arent that great vs me and he's not tilting or anything.

Check. Check.

Hmm. He checks back the flop, this tells me he cannot have 1 pair beat right now. All his sets and QJ are going to bet this flop 100%.

Turn 3
Completes the rainbow. I can maybe rep a scared overpair or a set I was intending to check raise. I bet 100. He calls confirming he is not that strong because his sets absolutely pop the turn.

River 2
Completes the rainbow and now I'm sure my bet can get him to fold.

I fire 165. He thinks for about 20 seconds and calls with Q10.

These are the type of players you just don't encounter in 1/2. He just owned me that hand for a few hundred dollars. No big deal, although I was rather annoying when he told his friend behind him "flop top pair and call, just clicking buttons", 2p2ism I've said before so I can't really fault him. NBD, it's only money right? In order to be good at winning you have to be really really good at losing.

Ego

Let me pump my ego.

Here's a 2600$ stack I amassed at Foxwoods 2/5 on thursday night. Played till about 330 am.



Recent pokerjournal log -


Ego Ego Ego. Can be the downfall of so many people, not necessarily just pertaining to poker either. There are so many people I encounter at the poker table, as well as my daily life that would greatly benefit from having their ego downsized.

Not to say that I am completely humble, because I am not. I enjoy telling my friends that I regularly win and lose 1000's of dollars (when they ask), because it is simply incomprehensible. I have friends that have a slight clue about gambling/poker and then friends who go nuts at betting 10$ in a hand of blackjack and are convinced the house is cheating when the dealer makes a 6 card 21. Not to say having fun betting 10$ is looked down upon, just I have separate types of friends.

I am 21 years old. We get a bad rep for acting like know it alls. I know nothing. I know so relatively little about poker and life its almost sad. A lot of my friends in college who pursue "real world jobs" with massive college debt would not be so keen to admit that. Managing money is difficult, managing friendships and relationships with friends and my parents is even more difficult sometimes.

I was recently attending a friend's college in Rhode Island (I'm from CT), so I drove up there straight from Foxwoods on Friday night. Of course my drunk ass friend introduces me to all his friends as a "professional poker player". My mother cooks me dinner and buys me socks, I'm far from a professional. He just knows the money that circulates and it's obviously semi-interesting to him because your average person is looking for the cheapest roulette table in the casino. Losing 1k in a poker game would break every single one of my friends hearts for about a month. For me its Thursday.

There was a girl there whom I attended high school with. Late at night she was talking to my other friend about how she is getting into an internship for something and how she is great at managing money and knows all about return on investment, risk of ruin and equity management. I was just lol'ing at this bright eyed, pretty young girl who has literally no idea what the hell she is talking about. You can't learn to handle money by reading a book.

That sounds douchey but it's the type of logic that causes him to introduce me as a pro poker player.

It's awkward/annoying when my friends do this nonsense (I constantly tell them to not bring poker up around people), because
1. They have a story about their uncle who lost a fortune playing craps. So be careful.
2. Some random dbag wants to tell me about his quarter homegame in which his aces lost to 68 suited.
3. Girls think that your FOS and trying to impress them.

Not once has anything good from that statement. When I first started playing I thought telling girls your a professional would be so impressive, it's not.

I either tell girls I work for AT&T (I once did), or I'm taking a break from college. The general public (in the northeast at least) does not view poker in a positive light. Which is fine.

My Future
To me this is the biggest concern. I have no desire to go back to college. I absolutely hated it the second I stopped living there and couldn't party all the time with my friends. Those days are simply behind me. When I was 18-19 I was a complete maniac, drank 4 times a week, smoked a lot of weed, experimented with drugs a good amount. My grades were bad to average until I eventually decided to drop out and work full time for AT&T. Hated that job after a while, quit, and decided to pursue poker for now.

My future is the biggest thing I am concerned with at this point. The present is pretty awesome. I can guarantee my hourly playing poker (true hourly after gas/food etc) is significantly higher than my friends who work "real" jobs. I worked on a golf course where I had to get up at 4am to go blow leaves and use weed-whackers for 10$ an hour. To hell with that.

The problem is that they won't have a 4 year gap in their resume that they have to explain to potential employers.

I have met several people who claim to play poker for a living that are in the 25-30 range, I never have the balls to ask this but-
Are you still going to be grinding at 45 years old? 50? Probably not, so whats your plan?

Like I stated earlier. Right now I can do this without fear. 21, single, low cost of living, ambition for the game, mental toughness, drive.

That is going to wear off some day, I have no idea what I'll be doing 20 years from now. Hopefully I can back a horse or bink a tourney myself and then open a bar or something.

In all seriousness you would be ignorant to assume that poker money will be around for ever. The future will be interesting.


Haven't posted in a while, just wanted to put my thoughts into text. If anyone wants to follow me on twitter, I post random poker stuff sometime...

@robbyrobbb

thanks

At least I got my new computer.

-1k from my BR though

Break
I haven't played poker in a week and a half or so. This is a combination of me taking a mental break and enjoying my social life more.

I coach baseball for an AAU team in CT and our legitimate practices are starting now so I'm busy with that for the most part.

Since I havent had a computer in a while, I have been unable to browse 2p2 either so this was a complete break from poker. I have been studying and posting in LLSNL the past few days as I got my new computer in the mail (YES PORN!) and I feel I'm getting back into the poker mindset again.

I spent 1k on an asus that runs starcraft really smoothly and I'm super happy with it thusfar. Big screen and great definition, perfect for online poker as well even though I don't play.

Will be at Foxwoods saturday and sunday more than likely to resume my grindful ways.

Good luck.