Am finally committed to giving this a legitimate go. Have lived in Cabo for the past 5+ years working in real estate investment and eventually property management and this September took two months off to just travel and relax and most importantly play a ton of live poker. I have posted some bs goals before and never followed through because I never took it seriously but after a little reflection I have decided to give it a go for a year playing live cash with the occasional MTT thrown in. I will only property manage the properties that I own, 1 single family home and 1 apartment and the rest of my business I will transfer to a friend in the industry.


Little backstory, there is a consistent game that runs here in Cabo everyday. There are 2 tables running at most but consistently go and the biggest game is 25/50 peso which is anywhere between 2$/4$ or 1.5$/3$ depending on where the exchange is at that given time. On the weekends the casino will occasionally run a 50/100 peso game which is about 4/8$ in todays dollars. Player pool is identical no matter what the stakes, Cabo is small.


There is no opportunity to move up in stakes since the the biggest game that consistently runs is 2$/4$ occasionally 4$/8$so all shot taking will be done on a mini poker vacations somewhere else, LA/Vegas/Bay Area again hopefully with 5-10 MTTS thrown in to keep it interesting. Am taking a Euro vacation with my girl next summer so will definitely be throwing in a few euro hand histories as well!

Over the last two months I took two mini poker vacations, one to tucson to play a wpt deepstacks event and one to vegas to play the wynn fall classic. I did alright in both (small cashes) but had significantly more success playing 2/5 cash and one ridiculous 10/20 session at encore that turned into 10/20/40 and turned out to be the biggest winning session of my life. I punted a lot of this off degening later in the trip on a sick room at Wynn and a wild trip but was in fun mode and not taking it as seriously as I will now. This is obviously no sample size and not really playing into my decision but will definitely be motivation to take some more shots.


I have waffled on this but the total bankroll that I am willing to allocate towards this is $8,000/about 140k pesos. I can afford to risk more but I think for the games I will most often be playing this will be sufficient and give me incentive to grind more/build roll so that I can take trips and shot take every few months while feeling properly rolled.


The games here in Cabo are incredibly soft, a very limp happy passive game consisting of about 30 local regs, (20 of which are very soft fun players. I live in a tourist town so there are always 1 or 2 people in the game on vacation which can go wither way towards raising or lowering the average skill at the table.

I have had a decent amount of success in the past month+ (about 20 sessions). Earlier I posted my win rate which was about 6.5bb's/hr and asked if it was sustainable and got some good feedback that in a weaker game it is absolutely if not more. I am confident in my game against this player pool but not arrogant and there is a ton of room to improve. At the current exchange rate I have about 28 buy ins (however these games start shallow, the average buy in is usually about 50bbs and then get progressively deeper as the session goes on usually finishing with 4-5 people sitting a couple 100bbs deep.

When I put my mind to something I can be a dedicated machine so the 2000 hours I am going to crush, the areas I need improvement on are playing my best game the entire session, no tilt, no table games period and better roll management. I have always viewed poker money as fun money and blasted it off on material things so that will have to be drastically reigned in, and it will.


At the current bankroll, after winning sessions I will be reinvesting 75% of my winnings into my bankroll and setting aside 25% for investment opportunities here, a condo and/or apartment that will start generating income immediately. There are a lot of opportunities in this department.


When the bankroll gets to 60bis I am skewing the formula to 40% savings/investment 60% back into the roll. I have played this game off and on for 5 years and the chance of a 10+ bi downswing is very slim, no jinx. I think this is aggressive in the sense that a lot of the winnings will eventually be going into non poker related funds but if Im not doing that it doesn't seem as worthwhile to me so this is a necessity. By the end of October 2017 ill be posting the photos of 2 modest rent generating condos/apartments here in Cabo bought as the result of a year of hard work and this thread!!!!

I have separate life roll if truly necessary but the majority of my expenses are covered by rents paid, I have several small cash flowing properties which take care of the month to month expenses.


Have read some other goals and challenges threads and am so %$#ing pumped to start this thing off.

Future posts will be more concise, sorry for the length of the first, I'm excited!

Ill be posting HH's from bigger sessions that I think people will find enjoyable. The normal game I play in is pretty unreal so hopefully it will be as entertaining for you all to read as it is to play in it.

Looking forward to an interesting thread. Best of luck!

Sent from my SM-G935S using Tapatalk

First Session!
Result: +8000 pesos about $500 usd

Finally we are underway. Played about a 7 hour session from noon until 7, weird times for me but the game was as good as ever.

Ill tell you a little bit about the setup, the casino is downtown cabo and the poker section is two tables upstairs in a little glass box area. Downstairs is about 500 people playing slots, chain smoking and eating pretty standard casino except there is usually live mariachi music at night.

The game was a new game started with 6 players 25/50 blinds about 1.50/3$ usd. 3 regulars, myself and 2 tourists from Seattle who were incredibly sunburned and drunk for noon. Reg 1. Mexican OMC Reg 2. A legendary punter, he owns a marble business in Cabo, plays an erratic style and generally loses enormous but fairly happily. Reg 3 is the wife of reg 1 old mexican lady who buys in for 20bbs limps 4 hands per orbit, blinds down and then buys in for another 20 bbs until she eventually retreats to the comfort of slot machines. So for the playwin casino on a random thursday this is a good but not great game yet.

Reg 1 buys in for 4k, Reg 2 buys in for 10k and Reg 3 buys in for her standard 1k. I full buy for 5k pesos as do the 2 guys from Seattle who seem like cool guys enjoying vacation and have a semi understanding of the game.

Nothing really notable to start the session lose a flip to the older lady, lot of limping I am raising 4x and winning with c bets on a lot of boards. In the first hour, besides me, I think there are 2 pre flop raises and Reg 2 the punter shows 73o. Then Reg 2 raises again this time shows QQ like he's pissed no body called him.

Hand 1.
About 1 1/2 hours into the session 2 players have joined the game, average passive regs.

I have 5,800, punter has 10kish. Villain (punter) limps UTG+2, Villian 2 limps, Hero on the button has AQ and make it 225
Villain 1 calls
Villain 2 folds
Flop (550) A39
Villain: checks
Hero: 400
Villain: calls
Turn A39J r
Villain donk shoves for 5k effective
Hero: ???

These are the kind of spots that come up in this game a ridiculous amount of time. I pussed out and folded because WTF and because this happens often enough where I actually will find a better spot.


Hand 2: I have been folding a lot for me in this game, but winning 1-2 pots per orbit without showdown. Im at about 9k. the game is now 9 handed and starting to play deeper. Even though not everyone buys in full, usually about 3-4 hours into the session there will be several people sitting deeper. Villian in this hand is 200bbs 10k pesos deep and the best player that plays here (would be an average TAG player in a 1/3 game in LA.)

I am UTG with J10 raise to 150, Villain 3 bets to 500 from HJ folds back to me. I snap 4 bet to 1600 and he cuts out a raise like he has a really tough decision and then just calls.

3 bets without the nuts are almost non existent in this game but this is the one player that is capable of doing it, especially against me who he views as a little crazy. The 3 bet initially just felt like he was fed up with me opening a lot. I 4 bet because this would normally take it down right here. His call confuses me, but makes me think he has a hand like 77-10/10.

Flop(3250):9Q:A
Hero: 2000
Villain: tank calls
Im now a little worried, although he's a thinking player this is a scary board for what I thought was his range and he's not the type to get sticky in spots like this
Turn(7k) 8
BINGO!
I shove for my remaining 6k he snap calls 99 and I fade the board pairing.

By far the biggest pot of the night and really the only significant pot at showdown. I play for another few hours no really significant pots a couple of AIPF's with the shorties and I call it a night at about 7. Not an incredibly eventual evening but a good start to the challenge.


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My homage to the great DGIharris.


Will try to only update when there are interesting spots or I take a big trip somewhere.

Planning on taking a little mini poker vacation later in November to Venetian and play couple of their deepstacks events and play some 2/5 cash. Until then.

Third Session -5000 pesos

Had a small winning session yesterday with nothing too notable. Today was a good learning experience about the game despite taking a loss and making some really poor plays. There were two tables running, for the ease of translation I'm going to convert all the peso figures into dollars. 9 handed game 2/4$ 3 good regs 5 horrible "regs" and me.

First hand is one that I absolutely hate the way I played upon examination. The hand is against probably the best regular player in Cabo, he has cashed the main event multiple times which is a huge deal for Mexico and is the only true professional I have meet down here. We have a ton of history and he is a good hand reader and very aggressive. Generally we try to avoid each other but he has called me down VERY light in the past and is definitely capable of putting pressure. Effective stack is 150bbs deep about $600, I cover.

Hero CO Jc10c opens to $12
Villain Button: calls

Flop: ($27) KcQh3h
Hero: $18
Villain: raises to $48
Hero: calls

I actually considered folding here, because this game is very soft and I can definitely find softer spots later on. This may be my first mistake in the hand, but with 6 clean outs and more likely 8 + bdfd I thought I would peel one card off. I also thought that hearts would most likely be cards that I could win with as well. In the moment this felt like a value hand from villain and not a draw as I felt he would be more likely to take a lower variance route with a big draw in position.

Turn ($123) KcQh3h Ac
Hero: check
villain:$95
Hero: ???????

What I did in real time seemed totally fine but the more I thought about it and after he told me what he folded I felt like maybe it wasn't. I thought for about 45 seconds, maybe a little longer than I normally take on decisions, and c/r to $235. He folded rather quickly. In game I put him on a strong range.

Second interesting hand of the night was against one of the weaker players at the table an older female who plays on the weekends and is on the nittier side. Has a decent understanding of opening hand selection but is the kind of player who will open raise 7x with QQs and blast flops with what she perceives to be strong hands that she doesn't want to get cracked. Her image of me is a probably very aggressive maybe even spewy. In an earlier pot on a Q high board she bet 99's 3 times, presumably for value and then said she thought I was calling her with AK. We are roughly 100bbs deep $450, I cover.

Villain UTG+1: limps
2 more limpers to me on the button
I raise to $18 with 2 red J's
Villain 1 calls
fold/fold

At this point I put her range on pocket pairs maybe AJo+ almost all suited paint.

HU flop ($45)
9h9s10h
Villain leads for $50
Hero: ????

My thought process was that this is very rarely if ever has a 9. Unless she has specifically 99, which doesn't make any sense as a bet, the pre flop action removes most if not all 9's from her range. Its also very difficult if not impossible for her to have a big combo draw as i hold the Jh in my hand. QQ raises pre flop as does KK. AA was a possible candidate for limp/call but I thought this type of villain is more likely to limp/raise AA pre especially not closing the action and with 2 players behind. My dilemma was that it didn't feel like a bluff, it felt like she was scared of a draw with a value hand. I was confused but decided she would probably do this with a hand like A10s and occasionally 88 77 type of hands. The value range that is beating me is 10/10, A9s? and maybe AA. I thought for awhile and..

Hero: calls

Turn ($145): 2s
Villain: $140
Hero: ?????


It really felt like she was going to go broke with top pair here against someone that she thought could have a very wide range, and against an opponent always worried about the potential flush draw.

Hero:calls

River 5d

Super brick villain waits 15-25 seconds and sloppily goes all in for her remaining $250 or so, kind of spills her chips and then says all in when its not clear how much she was trying to put in. I didn't know how to interpret her shove but rationalized my call by the fact that this was a perfect runout for her if she has a strong 10.

After this hand I was very tilted because had I not gotten so fixated on one hand, a hand I could beat this would have been a rather straight forward fold I think. I left after one more orbit and booked a full bi loss. gonna get back at it tomorrow!!

subbed good luck. I would call JJ aswell unless V is super passive

Subbing, am curious what you specifically do in real estate investing. Are you doing the investing yourself? Running a REIT or fund?

I moved down here directly out of college working for a commercial developer. I worked there for almost 2 years and had purchased a few rental properties for myself and then started a small property management company with my business partner. Our focus was on purchasing as many SFH/condos/apartments as we could for the company and tying up long term agreements for other rentals we didn't own. About a year later the market started to come back here and it became difficult to find as many deals as we had from 2011-2014 (it takes us usually about 2 years to feel the effect of anything going on in the states, positive/negative). With less deals to be had we put more focus on vacation rental and less on purchasing additional properties. My focus now that i have less and less interaction with the business is to add to my personal portfolio. There are still +EV investments to be made here just takes a lot more work then it did 5 years ago

Thanks, gonna be fun!

Thanks, super weird spot in the moment but after looking at it I think I could have found a fold because there is a small possibility she plays QQ and maybe A9s like this as well. She had set of 10's obviously.

4th Session: +11,300 pesos


For the purpose of this thread I'm gonna create two new terms OMC, and OAC.

Old.Mexican.Coffee and Old.American.Coffee both are members of the traditional OMC club but are hybrid strains in my game. OAC's are similar to the states, we have a lot of older expat dudes that will play in the game and for the most part are the standard OMC's except replace coffee with Tecate Light often through a straw.

Now OldMExicanCoffees are a totally different animal. They are old (over 60) they only drink coffee and they are Mexican. However they tend to be 10 times looser pre flop and don't like losing to young Americans (me) so they can get very sticky post flop and unlike their American brethren will contest almost any pot they are in.

My game tonight was filled with OMexicanC's and it went according to plan . There was a gentleman from straight off his ranch wearing cowboy hat boots etc and he was an absolute wild man. He managed to accumulate about 30k pesos (6 bis) by just turning and rivering the **** out of some people. A sample hand

don't remember pre flop but theres about 400 in the pot

flop J 8 2 r 3 handed

Villain 1 200
villain 2 fold
OMC rancher all in for 9k effective
V1 call

Turn 3
River Q

OMC rancher turns over Q10o and wins pot. AN ABSOLUTE MANIAC, super friendly dude but who really had the game wide open by the time I got there. I was determined to try to isolate him as much as possible, make a pair and just hold on and for most of the night thats what I did. However as the session went on a couple of the other OMC's caught on and lead to some interesting spots. I can't remember exact stack sizes but we were all deep 150bbs effective about 8k I'm the effective stack. Villain 1 is OmexicanCoffee reg, we have a lot of history although nothing super significant for this hand

Villain 2 is OMC Ranchero Edition


V1 ep limp
v2 limp
2 more limpers
I'm on button with K9hh make it 350 at blinds 25/50

This seems enormous but pre flop sizing was irrelevant to OMC Ranch so I had been sizing 5-7x over limps to fold out the rest and inevitably get hu with him. V1 calls v2 calls 2 folds

Flop 8h7hQc (1200)
V1 c
V2: picks up the amount of black chips (100's)that fit in his hand and drops them in. works out to be 1500
This had been his normal procedure, if he hit ANY piece of the board he picked up chips and put them in, this had also been the case with gutters, 2 overs etc literally any piece

Hero: ??? Never folding but couldn't figure out what to do. Most likely he is shipping the turn no matter what comes, this had been a standard line. We have about 6k behind and I want to see both cards. This might sound crazy but I might actually be ahead here some portion of the time and I think 50% of the time my 9 is good and 90% of the time my K is good as well as the obvious Heart outs and bdsd. Calling felt bad, what am i going to do on a brick turn when he overbets or shoves?

What makes the spot interesting is I have close to 0 fold equity. He had not folded once he put chips in. I just hate the idea of playing an enormous pot with a hand that isn't even drawing to the nuts, in a game this soft. But I tried to just put the spot in a vacuum and move on regardless of the result. I don't know maybe this is trivial but I tanked for a few minutes and really thought this through. Nothing tilts OmexicanCoffees like tanking and he starts mumbling and getting all worked up yelling "tiempo tiempo!!!"


Ultimately I put it in, Vilian 1 folds and I binked heart on the turn and held. He mucked which was rare but also made me feel like he probably didn't have the K high beat as he absolutely would have loved to show the table how unlucky he got had he gotten it in good.

Rest of the session was pretty standard, nothing to interesting other than this 300bb pot where I got it in with K high against a 65 year old. WTF!!!


Playing in this game restores my faith in poker, no matter how tough games get, how much rake makes games unbeatable there will always be OMC Rancheros or some iteration of them around. I am thoroughly enjoying this challenge, obviously winning helps but I've walked into the casino with a purpose and excited each night. Going on a 2 night mini vacation tomorrow to La Paz with my girl tomorrow to drink and go play at the best beach in southern baja but will update when I get back!

Here on a mini vacation in La Paz, if you ever go to cabo definitely check out La Paz, its about 2 hour drive. Best beaches in the state and pretty awesome main drag boardwalk with lots of good restaurants and bars/nightclubs

First picture is where we spent the day today, Balandra Beach. Sunburned and drunk feeling good! coolest place in southern baja, you can walk across the entire bay in about waist deep water. Guys walk around with these floating coolers of beer that you can buy and people just float around on inflatable tubes drinking and relaxing, just a super fun place. Around the corner from this bay theres boats or jet skis for rent and you can cruise the whole coast. Super secluded and nice to get out of Cabo.



Second is the malecon, the main drag right on the ocean with all the bars and restaurants. Everyone is out on the street and the boardwalk all night, really cool fun scene.



This is last night in Cabo, did a little BBQ at home and epic sunset. Nice little break starting to feel super relaxed without the daily grind of work.










Gonna put in a lot of work on my game when I get back Wednesday. 3 hours in the morning of studying reviewing HHs and then putting in 10+ hour sessions for a week!

Got back from the trip we had a great time, got incredibly drunk our last night and met another couple at karaoke which was the last thing I remember being the only white guy in the place singing sweet home alabama and getting some weird looks. Drove home hungover which was a drag but got home and decided to put in a long session wednesday night (11 hours). Was profitable +9500 pesos which was a good overall result but did something that I have been doing a lot recently near the end of the session and gave away a lot unnecessary.


Villain 1 is mid 30's canadian, I think he is a sales guy but grinds this game almost daily. definitely on the thinking side of players for down here and is a good reg for these games, really puts in a lot of hours so i'll be playing with him a lot. Is aggressive and pretty selective with what spots he will take pre flop.

Pretty upset at how I played this hand. At this point I was up about 15k pesos (about 1k dollars) and was feeling good. I had shown down a lot of strong made hands but had definitely been stealing a bit for the last few hours and probably didn't have the best table image at this point. Villain is effective stack with 6k we cover. Another important note is that villain is down 2 bi's and has taken a couple of silly beats.


Limp
Limp
Villain limps
Hero in CO makes it 250 with AsKs
fold
fold
villain calls

Flop (625)
QsQxJx

Villain leads for 400.

I have played probably 40 hours with this villain and cannot remember him once dunking, at least in hands we have played together so this confused me. It felt like he wanted to just take the hand down right here with a semi weak hand, single J or 10's-8's something like this. I decided to

Hero raises to 1250
villain calls

I hate this in retrospect. What am i trying to represent? I would have preferred a call as there are a lot of favorable turns for us where he will shut down and we can take it away or that improve our hand.

Turn (3100)
QsQxJx Ax
Villain checks
Hero bets 2200
Villain tanks and shoves his remaining 4500


****! Now we are getting like 4.5-1 in a spot where I hate our hand. Just everything about this hand I hate. I ended up calling and he shows KQhh and we lose but to lose a 125 bb pot with one pair was very frustrating especially after working for 10 hours to get there and to lose it at the end. I have been running into this a lot at the end of winning sessions.





Maybe I am just getting arrogant or over confident after beating the game for hours but its definitely a frustrating leak that has to get fixed.

Have been looking at taking a trip to the states this month before thanksgiving when my family comes down and think I'm gonna go to Vegas and play some of the Venetian deepstack events and a lot of 2/5 cash! Gonna be a good month

Just got home from the shortest winning session I've played so far, only 4 hours total but the most profitable one by far. +14,900 pesos

Game ran big to start with a mandatory 100 peso straddle for the first 2 hours. Ran good in 2 all ins and found a ton of good pre flop spots to take down big straddled/limped pots.

Just a quick update on this challenge

Since first post have played 7 sessions (6 winning 1 losing) for a total of:
48.5 hours played
Total p/e: +57,200 pesos (about $3.2k usd)
Avg. Hourly 1170 peso/hr ($65 usd/hr)
23bbs/hr

Obviously extremely happy with early results.

For the more experienced live cash guys how sustainable is a 23bb/hr win rate in a VERY very soft game where there is the ability to win a lot of variance free chips per hour? I am happy with the early results which confirm some of my prior thoughts on the game but am keenly aware that this may not be sustainable and I have obviously been running well.

Second thought: is it profitable at lower stakes live cash to play in a game with 40bb deep effective stacks even if you have a significant skill edge?

Tonight an american tourist came into the game ran like god and left after 2 hours with about 30k peso profit (6 buyins). This left the table super shortstacked as people weren't topping up or were rebuying for the minimum 2k in a 25/50 game. I left shortly after as the remaining players were all 40bb or less deep. I have played in silly short stacked 1/2 games in LA and always felt it wasn't as beatable but the overall quality of player was better in those games then what I'm playing in here, if you can believe that.

Good start to the goal, definitely taking a trip to vegas this month to see if we can run it up at 2/5 and probably try to bink a tourney or two. Thanks for any feedback.

Session 9 -4000

Goddammit!! Played my normal game and it was a short stacking heaven, which is turning into my personal hell. The casino made the call on a crazy busy Saturday night to play two 10 handed tables, to add to the delight nobody at my table had more than 40bbs to start and most people had 20bbs. Nothing notable I really need to work on my short stack game, because although this style of poker is unbearable to me I can see it is beatable. I tilted for the first time in a long time and left early to have a few bears and watch the end of paquio fight with friends.

Gonna study a lot of short stack strat and this annoying session really pushed me over the edge to take a little mini poker vacation, no confirmed dates yet but gonna book my flight for sometime this week.