In October 2016 I will be starting a very high-hour job at a biglaw firm, so I figure that from now until then will be my only chance to play poker in any sort of professional/regular capacity. Because I already have a job lined up, my grades in law school don't really matter anymore, so I'd like to devote enough time to poker so that I can take out a small chunk of my student loans and go on a few awesome vacations during my breaks. I plan on playing fortnightly on the weekends in Atlantic City and for longer stretches when I have time off. I'll probably have a few Vegas trips and trips to other venues as well.

I'm solid when I don't tilt, and I've historically had a pretty high winrate in live 1/2 games in AC, but my sample size is too small to draw substantial conclusions from. I'm fairly certain, though, that I can beat the 1/2 games in AC pretty well. My goal is make some amount of money in the five figures by October 2016, but it's all pretty inchoate now and it depends on whether I can move up in the stakes. I hope to move up to 2/5 by April 2015. I'll have a pretty substantial income in the summer of 2015, so I hope to get my game to the point where I can play 5/10 by September 2015.

My first trip of this challenge is this Friday, and I'll post my results and some interesting hands whether I run good or bad.

Good luck! And live as much as you can now because once big law billing 2500/hrs a year starts, a little bit of you will die everyday

Good luck!!
try to live life to its fullest while you can!

Sometimes variance is nice. Only got in about 10 hours at the table yesterday night and this afternoon, but I ended up $717. Mainly played at Borgata, but played a little at the Tropicana while waiting for my bus back to NY. One guy at my table at the Tropicana was a dead ringer for Jason Schwartzman down to the mole, but it would be difficult to explain why Jason Schwartman would be playing 1/2 at the Trop.

Had a few interesting spots that I'll post later, but mainly just value bet donks, muscled nits, and bluff caught against LAGfish, as one does in 1/2.

The biggest thing I'm happy about for the weekend was that I made a good quit every time I sat down. Whenever I felt myself get even a little tired or gambly I forced myself to fold all non-premium hands until right before my big blind, then left. After a pretty bad cooler where I got 180 bbs in with the turned second nut straight against the flopped nut straight (I had 8d9d against KsQc on a ATJ7xxhh board), I sat out about three hands then bought in again only after making sure I wasn't steaming or tilted. However, I think that I made some costly mistakes, and I was hoping people could give some advice on how to play better in these spots.

This hand happened at the Borgata early Saturday afternoon. I had been at the table for maybe 50 hands. Hero has about $400, V1 has about $90, and V2 has hero covered. V1 is a bad aggressive player. V2 is an ABC player who "likes to see a cheap flop" and will usually only raise or call a raise with a hand that has a good chance to flop an overpair or TPTK. V1 is in the small blind, and V2 is UTG. V2 limps, and it folds to hero in the CO who looks down at AA.

Hero raises to $8, V1 three-bets to $17, V2 calls, and Hero makes it $45 to go. V1 calls, and V2 audibly sighs, tanks, then calls. The pot is $137, and I have about $350 behind, which is a great SPR for my hand. At this point I think that V1 could have any pair "because he's ahead of AK and can hit a set," AK, or AQ, and I think that V2 has a much narrower range of JJ-AA (maybe TT, but he probably puts me on too strong of a range to call with this, especially because I don't have enough back to make set-mining profitable, unless he always stacks me) and AK.

The flop comes: KJ8

V1 checks, V2 checks, and hero bets $80 into $137. V1 calls for the rest of his stack, and V2 shoves.

I think the obvious move here is to fold. V2 has barely showed any aggression at the table, and when he has, he has always had it. I think I may have made an error, though, by not checking behind on the flop. JJ and KK are crushing me and I'm unlikely to get value out of QQ. The only hand I'm ahead of here that will call is AK. There are 6 remaining combos of JJ/KK, and 8 remaining combos of AK. In retrospect, I realize that he would fold some percentage of AK combos by the time all the money gets in the pot, and so it may have been good to check for pot control.

Am I better off checking to keep QQ in V2's range, and hope that he'll attempt to value bet that in addition to AK on later streets, or was it better to bet the flop to get maximum value out of AK?

I hate bet/folding $80 this flop with AA.

I think the whole problem is making it $8 originally. I know you lucked out getting 3bet but I'd go at least $15-20 then his reraise gonna be bigger and you can hopefully just get stacks in preflop. As played, once
He raises to $17 I'm bombing probably like $80-100 and I think one of them always has JJ+ and is never folding. I really don't see any 1/2
Player ever calling $45 with AK and then folding this flop so I think you may have to stack off here as AK is a big part of range imo (absent other reads)

It's been a month since I started this, so I thought I'd update. Since my last post, I've been able to make three day trips to the Borgata. I played 31 hours and 15 minutes of live 1/2 since I started this challenge and have a total profit of $1,245. I hope to get over 40 hours in over the next month, which might be tough to do because I have to take next weekend off.

I think most of my room for improvement at this level exists in not being spewy where I have very little fold equity, and so I'll post some of the worst spews I had over my last three sessions.

Some of these hands would be totally fine as played in many other contexts, but were totally ridiculous in the context of a LLSNL game. In this hand a really dumb read on my part led me to believe I was operating in one of those contexts. The villain had been at the table for only around 10 hands, and during this time he had seen me open-raise about half of hands. He was two seats to my left, was young, had headphones in, looked intelligent, and had yet to open limp, so I pegged him as someone with online experience.

After one limper, I raise in the hijack with Ad8d to $8. Villain 3-bets to $25. Because of my preliminary read on villain as an internet player, my weak perceived range, my ace blocker, and because I don't want to call a three-bet with this hand out of position, I decide turn my hand into a bluff and make it $70. He shoves for over 200 more, and I fold.

At the time I wasn't too upset about my play, but then after a couple more hours playing with the guy I saw him open-limp in early position many times and didn't see him 3-bet for the rest of the night, and so by stereotyping the guy and convincing myself he was capable of 3-betting light I cost myself $62.

I made a similar mistake in my last session where I 3-bet a check-raise on an 872 two-tone flop, because the flop missed my perceived range and I wanted to rep an overpair. Turns out the dude just had 87, but more importantly very few people check-raise flops light in live 1/2, and it was ridiculous of me to think my opponent would notice that the flop missed my middle-position opening range and decide to check-raise me with air or a draw. So that self-inflicted leveling cost me about $80.

Probably the spewiest thing I did was check-raise jam TPTK on the turn of a paired board against an old guy who had just potted it. He obvs had trips, and my stupid tilt-shove cost me $180. There was no way he was ever calling me with worse, and probably only a really small chance he would fold trips with weakish kicker.

The second area where I know I can improve a lot is to value bet larger and more thinly against some players. I didn't fully realize until my last session how inelastic a lot of non-nit's calling ranges were.

One hand where I did this really well occurred three weeks ago. I had been at the table for maybe 20 hands and was up around 100 due to some good cards. The player to my immediate right, who was basically a Jesse Pinkman lookalike (which made me really want to take his money) was playing very loose-aggressive preflop and very loose-passive postflop and had recently been pushed out of two pretty big pots that he had bloated. Since those pots, he had open-raised five hands in a row to $17. Each of those times I was unable to 3-bet because of my poor position and holdings, and each of those times the table folded around. On the sixth time he opened to 17 I was in the hijack with Jh2h, and I made it $45. It folded around, he tanked, and then called. At this point, there was about 90 in the pot and he had around 60 back. The flop was a two-tone KQ2. Bingo. He checks to me, and I jam. I figure that he'll call me with any 2, any 8-9 card draw, and any ace, and that he'll fold a lot of hands with 6-10 outs against my hand, so given his extremely wide range here, my bet does a lot of good. He ends up calling, tabling 32o, and instaleaving when the board runs out clean.

The hand where I really realized how big of a leak my value bet sizing was occurred as follows. It was around 3:30 in the morning and one of the two fish left in the game had been calling down really light all night and value betting waaay too thinly. I adjusted to this fine by basically just playing a tighter range than him, but I knew that I was leaving money on the table. Potentially a lot of money as well, since he would reload every time he busted. Though he was on my immediate left, it was easy to play pots with him when I wanted because he basically always called preflop, so I could essentially isolate him if the pot was unopened to me.

I open to $6 with Q9s on the button, villain calls in the small blind, and bb folds. The flop comes KJJ. He checks, and I bet $8 with my gutter expecting to fold out his air. He calls. Turn is T, completing my straight. He checks again, and I bet $15. He calls. River is a blank. There's about 60 in the pot at this point, and it's at this point I realize that he probably has some K or J and is never folding to basically anything I bet, so I bet 90 on the river, which he calls with a weak K.

Is this like a $100 max 1/2? I think you should definitely be opening bigger . A8 is easy fold pre. And seems like you are generally over estimating your 1/2 competiton. There are tons of 1/2 players that aren't even thinking about what you might have ranges etc. so repping hand vs them is generally impossible .

Ng IMO

I feel like the only good reasons to open for larger amounts than I'm currently opening to are to get value out of my premium hands and to isolate people who will limp/call for basically any amount then play fit or fold after the the flop. While I frequently open for larger amounts in the latter scenario, I don't like to raise larger amounts with premium hands preflop because I don't want to give away the strength of my hand, and I really don't want to use a larger bet sizing with some of my hands I'm opening in late position to steal/semibluff with. While most of the people who play 1/2 at the Borgata aren't great hand readers, most are at least paying enough attention to figure out that someone has something good if he bombs it preflop.

I've had responsibilities recently, so last weekend was my first session since my last post. I decided that I want to see some other parts of the NE besides Atlantic City, so I went to Parx and SugarHouse.

Parx was amazing. The slightly higher rake than Borgata was more than compensated for by the action, which was completely unlike anything I've ever seen in a 1/2 game. On Saturday afternoon I played at a table of what were actually competent players who were going completely insane from booze and no sleep. At first, one guy was consistently making a $20-40 blind raise each hand, which was awesome (though a couple of local degens were complaining about how it was making it more difficult for them to win the high hand and bad beat jackpots, lol), but **** truly got cray when one guy (on my immediate right unfortunately) started open shoving his 300 bb stack blind preflop. I didn't do great at this table, but the opportunity was nice in any case.

Saturday night was less crazy, but it was more profitable for me. I more or less hustled a local ****ty regular, which was nice, since money won from a reg is twice as sweet as money won from a tourist. Like most poker hustles, it started with some luck on my part. I raised after a few limpers with J7o in late position and villain called on the button, which led the limpers to call because lol pot odds. The flop comes T73, and I check call villain after everyone else folds. Turn is a 7, and I check call again. River is a J, and I check planning to raise, since ****ty live regs have basically only strong made hands and strong draws when they bet two streets in what start as multiway pots. He bets, I raise, and he calls with A7o. He predictably berates me for raising with such a weak hand preflop, and I start berating him back for calling with A7o in a multiway pot, and I tell him how he deserved to lose for playing so badly. At this point I can feel the tilt coming off of him.

A few orbits later it's limped to me in the big blind, and I check with 93s. I flop a flush, overbet the flop, pot turn, and pot river against the same ****ty reg. He goes to berate me again but has to stop himself when he probably realizes that his weak play is the reason he lost half his stack in a limp pot. Now that he's in "raise every hand preflop, c-bet, then fold to raise" mode, I play every pot I can with him and show him my trash holdings after I push him out. Once I sense that he's tired of getting pushed around, I decide to wait for a value hand. Luckily I pick up KK in the BB, and the ****ty reg has raised from UTG+1. I 3bet, he calls, and the flop comes a beautiful J high. I bet pot, he calls. Turn bricks, I pot it again, he jams, and I call, since I'm getting heaps-to-one and he probably thinks I'm bluffing. I show him KK, he claims that he had QQ (a different regular sarcastically says "sure you did"), he tells the table he's getting more chips and coming back, but then he leaves the room. It was probably karma that I ran AQ into A5 on an A54 flop and then QQ into TT on a T64 flop within 3 orbits of the guy leaving.

On Sunday, I played at SugarHouse in Philadelphia. I liked the room, even though it was a tent, but the action was not particularly good. There were two really bad loose passive players at my table and four players that were talking about the SugarHouse thread on twoplustwo. I had to leave after about an hour and a half to catch my bus, and I only had one interesting hand during that time.

It was limped 4 ways, the small blind completed, and I checked 9d5c in the big blind. The flop came 8s8d2s, and I bet to take it down, since people weren't fighting for limp pots and most people probably missed. The UTG limper calls and everyone else folds. I decide that this would be a good time to triple barrel since his range is saturated with small pocket pairs, suited aces, and suited connectors as a UTG limper who called on a dry two tone flop. Also, I block some combos of 98, which is one of the only hands I'm really afraid of in addition to T8s, A8s, and 87s, and I can rep almost all 8's since I checked in the bb and haven't been out of line yet. Turn is Kd, which only helps like 3 combos in his range, so I barrel, and he calls. I don't recall the river, but I do remember that it wasn't a spade and that it helped very few of his hands, so I bet about half pot to fold out his missed spades, and he snaps with 98. I felt kind of silly at the time losing a $120 pot with 9-high and no draw, but after checking the math on the bus I really like this play, especially if my assumption that he would fold most small pocket pairs on the turn was correct, which I think it was.

Challenge numbers:
Total Hours played: 44 hours 30 minutes
Total profit: $1,760

Now that I've been at this for a little while, I have a better idea of what my actual poker goals are for at least the short term.
1) Play at least 5 hours per day that I have off of school on average.
2) Continue to work on my game off the felt. Construct at least three "vacuum" ranges for different board runouts per week with alterations for different common tendencies in live games.
3) Save enough to start taking shots at 2/5 by the end of January.

I should have foreseen this, but finals got in the way of all of the above goals, and between the time of my last post and yesterday I played only one eight-hour session at SugarHouse. Yesterday, after over a month without poker, I decided to visit Canterbury Park while in the Twin Cities to see my parents for the holidays. I played four hours in a 2-100 spread limit game, which, unfortunately, was a little bit tougher and played smaller than the games out east. Unlike the stereotypical 1/2 game, the standard raise was about 3x, there was very little open limping, people squeezed and played draws aggressively, and while none of the players were particularly good, none of them were as weak as the fish that populate the 1/2 tables of the Borgata whom you can count on to limp/call, then check/fold all day long. Fortunately, I turned a profit of $266, and I'll go into some of the interesting hands from yesterday as well as the more interesting hands from my session at SugarHouse.

Challenge Numbers:
Total Hours Played: 56 hours 29 minutes
Total Profit: $2,088

Went back to Canterbury tonight. Turns out 1/2 players are bad everywhere after all. I must have just had a bad table Monday. I played 6/12 for about 45 minutes while waiting for a seat in the 2-100, and I ran good, and then I got a seat at a table where the second best player routinely limped under the gun. Unfortunately, the table broke after about an hour and a half at 2:00.

total hours played: 58 hours 53 minutes
total profit: $2,390

I'm on something of an upswong, which is nice.

I played in the 6/12 FLO8 w/ half kill for four hours where I won $207. I would have won heaps more had I hit a couple of my massive nut draws in the kill pots, but I can't be too sad about profiting in my first non-hold'em live game.

After O8, I played in a 2-100 spread game, where I lost about $300 in my first two orbits. I polished off about $180 when I ran a possibly spewy bluff where I bet called a Q83r flop with JT with a bdfd in position against a perceived nit who I put on a range consisting mainly of top pair type hands. Turn was an 8, which I raised, and then I bombed the river when a K hit. Somehow he had 87, which made me lol.

After generally sucking for a bit, I hit a set against top two and got paid to the max, I got position on the solid LAG who was two seats to my left, and I had a succession of fish sit down on my immediate right. I was in for $800, and I cashed out for $1388 after 4 and a half hours.

Total time played: 67 hours 48 minutes
Total profit: $3,185

I basically ran into the top of people's ranges all night tonight, but my session was saved when I coolered one of the better players in the game a couple of times when stacks were pretty deep. There were some pretty interesting and slightly torturous dynamics present because of the $100 max bet including 7-betting with AA v KK preflop. Like, in a deeper no limit game, I could be jamming over a 4-bet with A4s, but my range is exactly AA when I put in the seventh bet preflop in a 2-100 spread.

Total time played: 74 hours 30 minutes
Total profit: $3,312

Probably the biggest thing I learned over the past few days of being able to play a decent amount of poker is that good games shouldn't be taken for granted, and that it's stupid to leave after a few hours just because I'm up a little, I'm tired, and I'd be sad if I lost a big pot and I had to leave the casino with less money than I entered with. I had to play in a few of the toughest 1/2 type games I've ever played in over the past couple of days, and I was super happy every time anyone new sat down because of the small chance they wouldn't be a nit or a solid reg. Any time one of these people did sit down, all of the competent players would jostle to isolate them to have a chance at the small fraction of easy money to be had at the table. It made me think of all of the games I've left over the past few months where half the table would limp call with unsuited one gappers and fold the flop even when they made bottom pair, and how I wish I could go back to those games instead of continuing to sit in games where my true winrate is possibly only around $10 and hour.

I've only played 1 session since my last post (it went well), because I was on a road trip with a few friends and my gf. I'm now up over 20 buy ins at 1/2 (with a little 1/3 and few limit games thrown in), so I'm going to start taking shots at bigger games. While this will mostly be 2/5 NL, I also hope to play some 1/2 PLO and some 10/20-ish limit games. I plan on gradually increasing the percentage of 2/5 I play until I have a 10k bankroll, when I'll cut out 1/2 and 1/3 entirely unless I judge that I have a higher expectation in one of those games than the 2/5 or there is no 2/5 running wherever I am.

I'm flying to Vegas tomorrow with my family, so I'll probably take my shot on Saturday night if Friday night 1/2 goes well.

gl.

i'm a law student in NYC as well (2L). play 2/5-5/10 at borg mostly. kinda surprised how nitty my classmates are. none play poker and i tried to start a fantasy baseball league but no one was willing to play for money so it got kibboshed.

have pretty similar goals as you though i played fulltime before law school and i'm not sure i can play live 1/2 without going full psychopath. shoot me a PM.

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Took my shot yesterday. Lost about $150 at 1/3 PLO after 20 minutes, then I moved to 2/5 NL, where I played a 10 hour session. I played very well (for me) for the first 9 hours or so, and then I lost an $1800 pot boat v. quads, spewed a couple hundred, then left to book the biggest losing session of my life. Back to 1/2!

Won a little bit back over the past two days playing 1/3 $500 cap at the Wynn, and 1/2 at MGM. Also, I lost $100 less in my 2/5 adventure than I initially thought, which gave me a total profit of $50 over 35 hours of play in Vegas.

Biggest pot I played at MGM yesterday:
Hero (covers) opens to $20 in a straddled pot in MP with AA
BB (500) calls

Flop (40): AJ3r
V checks
Hero checks

Turn (40): AJ3Qcc
V checks
Hero bets 30, BB calls

River (100): AJ3Q7 no flush possible
V checks
Hero bets 80, V raises to 180, Hero jams, V calls with KTo

My thought process on the river was that he would stack off with any set, and possibly AJ and AQ, and I didn't think he would have the full 16 combos of KT in his range, though this probably was a bad estimation on my part. I tanked on the river before jamming and considered calling, but I decided the most profitable course of action would be to go all in even though I knew there was a decent chance I was behind if called.

Booked my first winning session at 2/5. $39 of profit after a 13.5 hour session at the Borgata. Was down around 1k at one point after running like absolute shyt (second nut flush v. nut flush (lost the min!), then ran top set into a turned straight and got stacked), but I was able to make it all back when the game got really good at 4 am.

I finally caught some run good at 2/5 and had my first 1k+ session when I played last Sunday night at Bally's. I only ran decently well based on the cards I was getting, but I ran extremely well in that I was in the right place at the right time to get into what was probably the softest 2/5 running in AC that night.

Two hands that sum up the night well:
Young wannabe grinder who thinks he's good because he won part of a bad beat jackpot limps on the button after two other limpers. I raise to 30 with AQo in the SB. 1 mp limper folds, 1 MP limper calls, and button limper raises to 120 with 150 behind. I jam. MP limp/caller folds. Button limper/reraiser folds.

Nitty eastern euro limps in ep, sb limps, and I check in the bb with 35o. Flop is Q64hh. Sb checks, I bet 15, V calls, sb folds. Turn is an offsuit T. I bet 35, euro calls. River is the 9 of hearts, and V mucks while I'm thinking about whether to barrel the river.

I played a little over 20 hours this weekend of mostly 2/5 with a little bit of 1/2 on Thursday night. I ran terribly at 1/2 and lost about 300 bbs in 6 hours, and I didn't do great at 2/5, but I didn't play/run too terribly.

Here's a fun one from Friday afternoon at the Borgata:
Folds to me in the HJ and I make it 15 with AsTc. Positional semi-LAG calls on the button and the blinds fold. Effective stacks are 500.

Flop: 9d6x3d
(35) I bet 25, and V calls.

Turn: 9d6x3d (6x)
(85) I check, and V checks

River: 9d6x3d6x (8x)
(85) I check, V bets 75, I tank for about a minute, toss in a black chip, and my hand is good. I saw that V had QTdd since he pitched his cards high as he mucked.

I randomly thought about this thread and thought I'd update. I've "retired" or whatever from live poker until maybe June because I deposited my entire bankroll to pay my bills and living expenses until I start my job this summer, and because I wanted to focus on finishing this semester well. I ended up winning a little under 7k for the school year, and I stopped playing live about a month ago after crushing souls (ie running good) at the Aria 1/3 PLO and 2/5 NLHE for a weekend. I wish that I had been able to get in more hours this year, though, and I ended up with a little under 250 hours of play since September. Right now the only poker I'm involved in is microstakes on Bovada, where I'm really just trying to work on my fundamentals and learn games besides NLHE, though I've made a decent amount of money and have been able to move up in stakes pretty quickly. I plan on using all of the money I make on the site towards my bar trip in the summer of 2016.

This summer I plan on playing a few weekends while I work, but I definitely won't be able to play regularly. On the plus side, I'll easily be able to save up enough to be sufficiently rolled for 2/5 come fall plus enough to cover living expenses for a while so that I can actually build my bankroll. My goal is to make 20k from August 2015 to May 2016 playing live poker and to be playing 1/2 on bovada by the beginning of 2016. Of course, I wouldn't mind making more or playing higher, but these are the numbers I really, really want to hit.