An NJ Grinder's Journey as a Pro
08-02-2021
, 02:42 PM
Hoboken Life
It's been almost 3 months since an update! Cliffs of what's gone on during that time:
--Packed up and moved to Hoboken
--Pretty good MTT stretch
--Kinda tough cash stretch
--Unplanned 2 week break due to very bad planning on internet installation
--First two months living in the city
The Move
The morning of May 29 I rented a Uhaul, threw all my stuff in it, and drove to Hoboken. A few friends helped me with the process which made it so much easier than it would've been otherwise. I remember thinking that morning "I just need to picture what it's gonna feel like in a few days when this whole process is over and that'll motivate me to get all this done." Amy went on ahead of us to make sure she was there when our new couch was delivered; after telling us it was going to take 6 weeks, they called her and said it'd be ready the weekend of May 22. We had them push it back to the 29th since we wouldn't even be living in the apartment until then!
After we got everything into the place we went and got some food at a bar that was 2 blocks from our spot. I remember thinking how crazy it was that everything was just walking distance away. The next day I drove my car home and visited with family before taking the train back to Hoboken; keeping a car here seems like a mistake so I gave it back to my parents. My dad more or less gave it to me several years ago so it was the least I could do to give it back.
The First Couple Weeks
I really screwed up by not setting up an appointment to get internet in advance, a mistake I won't make again if we move somewhere else. They weren't able to come until June 10 so I decided to give myself some time off. I'd grinded tournaments pretty hard throughout May so a couple weeks to explore the city seemed fine to me. I spent a lot of time going on runs and exploring the area.
When we moved in I expected I would really enjoy living here and after 2 months I can say it's been even better than I imagined. Everything I need is within walking distance. I've gotten my longer run up to 5 miles which allows me to not only hit any part of Hoboken but to explore Jersey City and Weehawken as well. I think I might go 5 again today and go back into Weehawken. Going 2.5 out would get me past the Lincoln Tunnel. I'm looking forward to getting back into good enough shape to be able to run to Liberty Park in Jersey City, do a loop around the park, and run back. All told that will be about a 10 mile run so that's still a ways away for me.
MTTs
May finished up well with the NJSCOOP competition. I finished with 3 1sts and 4 2nds in the series. Small fields and running good will always help with all of that. It's nice to see I can hop back into playing tourneys without feeling uncomfortable. Despite all of that I still finished 4th in the individual standings, just couldn't overcome the volume of the other guys! On Sunday 5/16 I chopped a Party $535 heads up for 9.5k, then won the WSOP Monday 250 the next day for 9.8k for a sweet couple of days. On Sunday 5/23 I took 2nd in a SCOOP $500 for 5.2k, a much needed day saver after a lot of bricks in other tourneys. I played the last few tourneys the next day and then took 2 weeks off!
Back to Cash
After an incredibly smooth January-March which found me feeling confident, moving up in stakes, and having great results, I had my first losing month in April. I played 26k hands in Jan, 17k hands in Feb, and 19k hands in Mar. However, I got covid in late February, an already shortened month, and still felt some of that fatigue in March, so the lower volume was more excusable. In April I only played 17k hands which I imagine was a result of being frustrated with results. I ran 8k below EV and lost a decent amount of money despite winning at 3bb/100 throughout the month. Basically all of this just amounts to running bad at my higher stakes.
In May I played almost exclusively tourneys and only played 2k hands of cash. I played 3 days and got smashed on the 3rd one for my biggest losing day (at that point), so lost money in May over a pretty meaningless sample.
In June I played 16k hands after missing the first 10 days because of a lack of internet. I ran 6k above EV and still lost money! I won at 4.5bb/100 this time but my all in adjusted bb/100 was -1bb/100 so these were not very good results. I think I was making some mistakes, the biggest of which being game selection. Someone mentioned this to me and I realized I was just hopping in any game that had any type of fish in it and trying to get volume in that way. It was lazy and I paid the price for it.
I finally bounced back the right way in July. I focused more on game selection. I'll play pretty much any lineup at my lowest stake, but I'd gotten sloppy with the next stake up. I'd get into games with 4 good regs and an okay fish and have the worst seat at the table and I'd keep playing anyway. That's a good way to go on a rough stretch and that's what was happening to me in June. In July I played 25k hands, including a 10k hand week, while also getting in tourneys on Sundays and playing some of the WSOP bracelet events. The winrate and all in EV looked good. I ran 3k below again but overall I ran fine and more importantly was focused on the right things, namely game selection and playing well while getting good volume in. However, I think I should've easily eclipsed 30k hands and had a low volume last week to sabotage that. That was in part due to running a 5K on Tuesday the 27th that I was CLEARLY not ready for
. I hit the half mile around 3:00 and knew I was completely shot. I ran probably my slowest 5K of my life in 23:00 and still felt completely drained of energy for a couple days. I eventually bounced back with a smooth 5 mile run on Friday the 30th, (8:18/8:03/7:53/8:07/8:09 for a 40:32 5 miler), took Saturday off, and played good volume yesterday.
The Plan for August
The week in July that I got 10k hands in involved me playing 5 days and doing my best to get 2k hands in per day. I did this by putting in 2 sessions each day, typically trying to get 1k hands in from 6pm-8pm, taking a break to get food and hang out with Amy, and then starting back up whenever I was ready to play 2 or more hours. So with that in mind, a typical week in August should see me playing 1k cash hands on Sundays before my tourney sessions and 2k hands per day the other 4 days of the week. This gets me to 9k hands per week and 36k+ hands per month. However, two things working against me in August are that the summer months seem to lead to fewer games running, and I'm going on vacation Aug 23-28. So 30k hands still seems obtainable and that will be my goal. 27k hands from Aug 1-21, 1k hands on Sun Aug 22, then I'll have the 29th, 30th, and 31st to get those last 2k hands in.
Other goals include continuing to get runs in when I feel up to it. Hopefully this month I'll do a run of 6 or more miles given the 5 miler I did a few days ago felt pretty good. I also plan on continuing to play tourneys on Sundays but I think I'll avoid them pretty much every other day now that the WSOP series is over. I might still hop in the circuit events they have each month.
Some Final Thoughts
I'm currently at a stretch of 58k cash hands where I'm down money! I had my biggest losing day ever in there which felt like a big setback but I've done well to slowly grind it back. Also included in there is a month of MTTs and a 2 week break which included moving. I'm down quite a bit at my 2 biggest stakes in there and have lost some nasty hands so I'm not all that down on myself about it. I feel like I'm back on the right track and after a very good July I'm ready to start beating the games the way I felt I did in the first 3 months of the year.
Tourneys have continued to go well. I took 3rd in a Party 1k on Sunday 7/18 for 9k and 2nd in a $100 75k (which turned into a 98k prize pool) on 7/25 for 11.7k. Going deep in a 1k+ player field felt amazing; I feel like I haven't done that since before Black Friday! I cashed 5 of the bracelet events despite not putting much focus into them. No crazy runs but the idea that a 6 figure score is just a few flips away is still pretty cool. I'm really loving life right now and I feel really blessed to be in the position I am. Living in Hoboken has been even better than I imagined it would be and I think this happiness is going to make it easier for me to get through the tough poker stretches and capitalize on the good ones.
It's been almost 3 months since an update! Cliffs of what's gone on during that time:
--Packed up and moved to Hoboken
--Pretty good MTT stretch
--Kinda tough cash stretch
--Unplanned 2 week break due to very bad planning on internet installation
--First two months living in the city
The Move
The morning of May 29 I rented a Uhaul, threw all my stuff in it, and drove to Hoboken. A few friends helped me with the process which made it so much easier than it would've been otherwise. I remember thinking that morning "I just need to picture what it's gonna feel like in a few days when this whole process is over and that'll motivate me to get all this done." Amy went on ahead of us to make sure she was there when our new couch was delivered; after telling us it was going to take 6 weeks, they called her and said it'd be ready the weekend of May 22. We had them push it back to the 29th since we wouldn't even be living in the apartment until then!
After we got everything into the place we went and got some food at a bar that was 2 blocks from our spot. I remember thinking how crazy it was that everything was just walking distance away. The next day I drove my car home and visited with family before taking the train back to Hoboken; keeping a car here seems like a mistake so I gave it back to my parents. My dad more or less gave it to me several years ago so it was the least I could do to give it back.
The First Couple Weeks
I really screwed up by not setting up an appointment to get internet in advance, a mistake I won't make again if we move somewhere else. They weren't able to come until June 10 so I decided to give myself some time off. I'd grinded tournaments pretty hard throughout May so a couple weeks to explore the city seemed fine to me. I spent a lot of time going on runs and exploring the area.
When we moved in I expected I would really enjoy living here and after 2 months I can say it's been even better than I imagined. Everything I need is within walking distance. I've gotten my longer run up to 5 miles which allows me to not only hit any part of Hoboken but to explore Jersey City and Weehawken as well. I think I might go 5 again today and go back into Weehawken. Going 2.5 out would get me past the Lincoln Tunnel. I'm looking forward to getting back into good enough shape to be able to run to Liberty Park in Jersey City, do a loop around the park, and run back. All told that will be about a 10 mile run so that's still a ways away for me.
MTTs
May finished up well with the NJSCOOP competition. I finished with 3 1sts and 4 2nds in the series. Small fields and running good will always help with all of that. It's nice to see I can hop back into playing tourneys without feeling uncomfortable. Despite all of that I still finished 4th in the individual standings, just couldn't overcome the volume of the other guys! On Sunday 5/16 I chopped a Party $535 heads up for 9.5k, then won the WSOP Monday 250 the next day for 9.8k for a sweet couple of days. On Sunday 5/23 I took 2nd in a SCOOP $500 for 5.2k, a much needed day saver after a lot of bricks in other tourneys. I played the last few tourneys the next day and then took 2 weeks off!
Back to Cash
After an incredibly smooth January-March which found me feeling confident, moving up in stakes, and having great results, I had my first losing month in April. I played 26k hands in Jan, 17k hands in Feb, and 19k hands in Mar. However, I got covid in late February, an already shortened month, and still felt some of that fatigue in March, so the lower volume was more excusable. In April I only played 17k hands which I imagine was a result of being frustrated with results. I ran 8k below EV and lost a decent amount of money despite winning at 3bb/100 throughout the month. Basically all of this just amounts to running bad at my higher stakes.
In May I played almost exclusively tourneys and only played 2k hands of cash. I played 3 days and got smashed on the 3rd one for my biggest losing day (at that point), so lost money in May over a pretty meaningless sample.
In June I played 16k hands after missing the first 10 days because of a lack of internet. I ran 6k above EV and still lost money! I won at 4.5bb/100 this time but my all in adjusted bb/100 was -1bb/100 so these were not very good results. I think I was making some mistakes, the biggest of which being game selection. Someone mentioned this to me and I realized I was just hopping in any game that had any type of fish in it and trying to get volume in that way. It was lazy and I paid the price for it.
I finally bounced back the right way in July. I focused more on game selection. I'll play pretty much any lineup at my lowest stake, but I'd gotten sloppy with the next stake up. I'd get into games with 4 good regs and an okay fish and have the worst seat at the table and I'd keep playing anyway. That's a good way to go on a rough stretch and that's what was happening to me in June. In July I played 25k hands, including a 10k hand week, while also getting in tourneys on Sundays and playing some of the WSOP bracelet events. The winrate and all in EV looked good. I ran 3k below again but overall I ran fine and more importantly was focused on the right things, namely game selection and playing well while getting good volume in. However, I think I should've easily eclipsed 30k hands and had a low volume last week to sabotage that. That was in part due to running a 5K on Tuesday the 27th that I was CLEARLY not ready for
. I hit the half mile around 3:00 and knew I was completely shot. I ran probably my slowest 5K of my life in 23:00 and still felt completely drained of energy for a couple days. I eventually bounced back with a smooth 5 mile run on Friday the 30th, (8:18/8:03/7:53/8:07/8:09 for a 40:32 5 miler), took Saturday off, and played good volume yesterday.The Plan for August
The week in July that I got 10k hands in involved me playing 5 days and doing my best to get 2k hands in per day. I did this by putting in 2 sessions each day, typically trying to get 1k hands in from 6pm-8pm, taking a break to get food and hang out with Amy, and then starting back up whenever I was ready to play 2 or more hours. So with that in mind, a typical week in August should see me playing 1k cash hands on Sundays before my tourney sessions and 2k hands per day the other 4 days of the week. This gets me to 9k hands per week and 36k+ hands per month. However, two things working against me in August are that the summer months seem to lead to fewer games running, and I'm going on vacation Aug 23-28. So 30k hands still seems obtainable and that will be my goal. 27k hands from Aug 1-21, 1k hands on Sun Aug 22, then I'll have the 29th, 30th, and 31st to get those last 2k hands in.
Other goals include continuing to get runs in when I feel up to it. Hopefully this month I'll do a run of 6 or more miles given the 5 miler I did a few days ago felt pretty good. I also plan on continuing to play tourneys on Sundays but I think I'll avoid them pretty much every other day now that the WSOP series is over. I might still hop in the circuit events they have each month.
Some Final Thoughts
I'm currently at a stretch of 58k cash hands where I'm down money! I had my biggest losing day ever in there which felt like a big setback but I've done well to slowly grind it back. Also included in there is a month of MTTs and a 2 week break which included moving. I'm down quite a bit at my 2 biggest stakes in there and have lost some nasty hands so I'm not all that down on myself about it. I feel like I'm back on the right track and after a very good July I'm ready to start beating the games the way I felt I did in the first 3 months of the year.
Tourneys have continued to go well. I took 3rd in a Party 1k on Sunday 7/18 for 9k and 2nd in a $100 75k (which turned into a 98k prize pool) on 7/25 for 11.7k. Going deep in a 1k+ player field felt amazing; I feel like I haven't done that since before Black Friday! I cashed 5 of the bracelet events despite not putting much focus into them. No crazy runs but the idea that a 6 figure score is just a few flips away is still pretty cool. I'm really loving life right now and I feel really blessed to be in the position I am. Living in Hoboken has been even better than I imagined it would be and I think this happiness is going to make it easier for me to get through the tough poker stretches and capitalize on the good ones.
08-07-2021
, 08:39 PM
08-08-2021
, 12:39 PM
08-08-2021
, 12:49 PM
08-11-2021
, 05:26 PM
08-15-2021
, 12:58 PM
08-15-2021
, 07:51 PM
08-17-2021
, 10:43 PM
And there it is! Most hands I've played in a month, 17 days into August 
...don't judge the relatively low volume, I'm still pretty new to this.
...don't judge the relatively low volume, I'm still pretty new to this.
09-07-2021
, 10:22 AM
09-09-2021
, 02:58 PM
09-09-2021
, 04:04 PM
Updates Since 8/15
Week #3 of August
Once again broke my record for hands in a week, this time with 11,001.
Sunday: 1376, including a good result at the highest stake they've got here in NJ
Monday: 2084
Tuesday: 2128
Wednesday: 46, Took the day off but saw a good higher stakes 3 handed game during the day, which broke after these 46 hands
Thursday: 1130
Friday: 3808, By FAR the most hands I've ever played. Got into a rhythm, felt good, and booked the biggest losing day I had of the month lol. Not a big loser though, the month just went well from that standpoint.
Saturday: 429, Once again planned on taking the day off but found some good daytime games, booking a loss of $3.35
Missed the Thursday 2K goal but made up for it by putting almost 4K hands in the next day. On the running front I got 3 days in.
Tuesday 8/17: 3 miles in 23:53 (8:21, 8:14, 7:17). I ran up the hill that takes you to The Heights in Jersey City which is most of the 2nd mile, with the 3rd mile coming back down.
Thursday 8/19: 2.7 miles in 22:31 (8:13, 8:47, 7:50 pace for final .7). Same route as Tuesday but the humidity really crushed me and found me stopping before the full 3.
Friday 8/20: 4.2(?) miles in 32:20(?) (7:41, 7:49, 6:33 (incorrect), 7:58, 7:45 pace for final .2). Watch bugged out on 3rd mile, I probably stayed consistent with the rest of the run and went in the 7:50 range.
Los Cabos San Lucas
From Monday the 23rd through Saturday the 28th Amy and I were in Mexico! We more or less walked through a hurricane to get to the train in Hoboken around 5am Monday. My clothes were soaked through by the time we got there despite have an umbrella. We took a 9am flight out of Newark which wasn't delayed much to our relief. We stayed at Riu Palace Cabo San Lucas and had some all inclusive package with drinks and meals included for the week. It was beautiful the whole week but also really hot; a couple times I really wanted to just go lay in the hotel room but stuck it out for Amy's sake
.
We did the trivia they had on Wednesday and got 2nd out of 30 teams; the next night we redeemed ourselves and won. They made Amy get on stage and do a dance in order to claim the prize which was pretty amazing. Friday we went on an excursion which had us on a pirate ship for some reason. It ended up being a lot of fun though and included unlimited drinks and a half hour or so of snorkeling in beautiful warm water. There was a bachelorette party of girls from Mexico and a group of guys from the US. I was really trying to get the guys to make something happen there but all we really ended up with was a drunken dance party on a small pirate ship. At one point this kid, probably like 8 years old, came over and crossed his arms and started doing that Russian dance where you squat and kick your legs out. I started doing it with him and we were all hyping him up. Girls from the bachelorette party started literally bouncing off of anyone standing in the circle surrounding the "dance floor." Overall the vacation was a blast.
Southern tip of Baja California Sur:
Amy and I in a pool at the resort:
End of August
Got back to NJ late on Saturday the 28th. Didn't have much energy to play the 29th, planned on playing some MTTs but only got 1 in. Should've probably put a small session in on the 30th but went out with my buddy who just moved to Hoboken. Did at least manage to get back before 9:45 to max late reg the WSOP ring event. Got 4th for 5k while somewhat drunk the whole way.
Played 646 hands on Tuesday the 31st and finished the month with 32,113 hands, eclipsing that 30k goal. I ran 2 miles while in Mexico in 15:21 (7:34, 7:44), and it was HOT. Decided that would be the only run of the week after that one.
From the post on 8/2:
Did pretty well with all of this. Managed to eclipse 2k hands most days I played which allowed me to hit that 30k mark before leaving for Mexico. I did continue running but didn't get a 6 miler in which I'm okay with and will explain more in next paragraph. I did play Sunday MTTs, ended up playing 17 bullets of MTTs and 13 tourneys overall in 5 days of MTTs. Made almost 10k lol. The birds have been good to me this year. Definitely has something to do with me feeling way less pressure when playing them since I've always got cash to go back to.
Back to running. After getting back from Mexico I decided I wanted to be more structured and start trying to really get back into running shape. After my Sunday run I realized I needed to take it easy in order to have that consistnecy. The preliminary plan was 5 days per week starting with 3 miles each day for week 1.
Sunday 8/29: 4.5 miles in 35:41 (8:04, 7:41, 7:45, 8:10, 8:01 pace for final .5), I planned on going 3 then felt good so kept pushing, ran up a big hill on 4th mile. After this run I realized I needed to start slower and build so I didn't get hurt (sigh).
Monday 8/30: 3 miles in 24:22 (8:15, 8:12, 7:51), very relaxed.
Tuesday 8/31: 3.12 miles in 24:10 (7:58, 7:44, 7:30, 7:48 pace final .12), consciously telling myself to slow down on 3rd mile but felt very in control and probably woulda gone 7:10-7:20 if I hadn't been holding back. Good sign.
Wednesday 9/1: Planned off day.
Thursday 9/2: 3 miles in 23:44 (8:12, 7:56, 7:27), legs felt heavy on first mile then I got into rhythm.
Friday 9/3: 3 miles in 23:16 (7:47, 7:50, 7:20), right calf got really tight around 1.25. Started to feel like it was okay around 1.75. Not sure why I took off on the 3rd mile, think I was frustrated and was trying to run through the pain.
I haven't ran since the 3rd because the calf got quite painful the next few days. It doesn't hurt much now but I'm pretty worried running on it is gonna reaggravate it. Probably gonna try again tomorrow and pray it's alright.
September Week #1
Slow start, I often have a tough time coming back from an extended break so I took it easy with volume, just making sure I'm getting back into the rhythm of sitting at the computer and playing some amount of poker.
Wednesday 9/1: 525
Thursday: 840
Friday: 1023
Saturday: Went to the NY Ren Faire
Sunday: 1494 and MTTs
Monday: Went to LI to visit Amy's fam for Labor Day
Tuesday: 1293
5175 hands in week 1 when I was hoping to aim for 40k on the month, not a great start. There's also a COOP series that I was talked into joining a competition for which will take away some volume. So I'll aim for 2k hands per day on the days I'm not playing MTTs and at least 1k hands per day on days that I do play MTTs. I imagine I'll play MTTs probably 10 days this month. There are 23 days left in the month after the first week and I plan on playing 17 of them. So 10 days of 1k, 7 days of 2k, that's 24k hands on top of the 5k from week 1. So we'll round up to a 30k hand goal for September. Let's get it.
Week #3 of August
Once again broke my record for hands in a week, this time with 11,001.
Sunday: 1376, including a good result at the highest stake they've got here in NJ
Monday: 2084
Tuesday: 2128
Wednesday: 46, Took the day off but saw a good higher stakes 3 handed game during the day, which broke after these 46 hands
Thursday: 1130
Friday: 3808, By FAR the most hands I've ever played. Got into a rhythm, felt good, and booked the biggest losing day I had of the month lol. Not a big loser though, the month just went well from that standpoint.
Saturday: 429, Once again planned on taking the day off but found some good daytime games, booking a loss of $3.35
Missed the Thursday 2K goal but made up for it by putting almost 4K hands in the next day. On the running front I got 3 days in.
Tuesday 8/17: 3 miles in 23:53 (8:21, 8:14, 7:17). I ran up the hill that takes you to The Heights in Jersey City which is most of the 2nd mile, with the 3rd mile coming back down.
Thursday 8/19: 2.7 miles in 22:31 (8:13, 8:47, 7:50 pace for final .7). Same route as Tuesday but the humidity really crushed me and found me stopping before the full 3.
Friday 8/20: 4.2(?) miles in 32:20(?) (7:41, 7:49, 6:33 (incorrect), 7:58, 7:45 pace for final .2). Watch bugged out on 3rd mile, I probably stayed consistent with the rest of the run and went in the 7:50 range.
Los Cabos San Lucas
From Monday the 23rd through Saturday the 28th Amy and I were in Mexico! We more or less walked through a hurricane to get to the train in Hoboken around 5am Monday. My clothes were soaked through by the time we got there despite have an umbrella. We took a 9am flight out of Newark which wasn't delayed much to our relief. We stayed at Riu Palace Cabo San Lucas and had some all inclusive package with drinks and meals included for the week. It was beautiful the whole week but also really hot; a couple times I really wanted to just go lay in the hotel room but stuck it out for Amy's sake
. We did the trivia they had on Wednesday and got 2nd out of 30 teams; the next night we redeemed ourselves and won. They made Amy get on stage and do a dance in order to claim the prize which was pretty amazing. Friday we went on an excursion which had us on a pirate ship for some reason. It ended up being a lot of fun though and included unlimited drinks and a half hour or so of snorkeling in beautiful warm water. There was a bachelorette party of girls from Mexico and a group of guys from the US. I was really trying to get the guys to make something happen there but all we really ended up with was a drunken dance party on a small pirate ship. At one point this kid, probably like 8 years old, came over and crossed his arms and started doing that Russian dance where you squat and kick your legs out. I started doing it with him and we were all hyping him up. Girls from the bachelorette party started literally bouncing off of anyone standing in the circle surrounding the "dance floor." Overall the vacation was a blast.
Southern tip of Baja California Sur:
Amy and I in a pool at the resort:
End of August
Got back to NJ late on Saturday the 28th. Didn't have much energy to play the 29th, planned on playing some MTTs but only got 1 in. Should've probably put a small session in on the 30th but went out with my buddy who just moved to Hoboken. Did at least manage to get back before 9:45 to max late reg the WSOP ring event. Got 4th for 5k while somewhat drunk the whole way
.Played 646 hands on Tuesday the 31st and finished the month with 32,113 hands, eclipsing that 30k goal. I ran 2 miles while in Mexico in 15:21 (7:34, 7:44), and it was HOT. Decided that would be the only run of the week after that one.
From the post on 8/2:
Quote:
The Plan for August
The week in July that I got 10k hands in involved me playing 5 days and doing my best to get 2k hands in per day. I did this by putting in 2 sessions each day, typically trying to get 1k hands in from 6pm-8pm, taking a break to get food and hang out with Amy, and then starting back up whenever I was ready to play 2 or more hours. So with that in mind, a typical week in August should see me playing 1k cash hands on Sundays before my tourney sessions and 2k hands per day the other 4 days of the week. This gets me to 9k hands per week and 36k+ hands per month. However, two things working against me in August are that the summer months seem to lead to fewer games running, and I'm going on vacation Aug 23-28. So 30k hands still seems obtainable and that will be my goal. 27k hands from Aug 1-21, 1k hands on Sun Aug 22, then I'll have the 29th, 30th, and 31st to get those last 2k hands in.
Other goals include continuing to get runs in when I feel up to it. Hopefully this month I'll do a run of 6 or more miles given the 5 miler I did a few days ago felt pretty good. I also plan on continuing to play tourneys on Sundays but I think I'll avoid them pretty much every other day now that the WSOP series is over. I might still hop in the circuit events they have each month.
The week in July that I got 10k hands in involved me playing 5 days and doing my best to get 2k hands in per day. I did this by putting in 2 sessions each day, typically trying to get 1k hands in from 6pm-8pm, taking a break to get food and hang out with Amy, and then starting back up whenever I was ready to play 2 or more hours. So with that in mind, a typical week in August should see me playing 1k cash hands on Sundays before my tourney sessions and 2k hands per day the other 4 days of the week. This gets me to 9k hands per week and 36k+ hands per month. However, two things working against me in August are that the summer months seem to lead to fewer games running, and I'm going on vacation Aug 23-28. So 30k hands still seems obtainable and that will be my goal. 27k hands from Aug 1-21, 1k hands on Sun Aug 22, then I'll have the 29th, 30th, and 31st to get those last 2k hands in.
Other goals include continuing to get runs in when I feel up to it. Hopefully this month I'll do a run of 6 or more miles given the 5 miler I did a few days ago felt pretty good. I also plan on continuing to play tourneys on Sundays but I think I'll avoid them pretty much every other day now that the WSOP series is over. I might still hop in the circuit events they have each month.
Back to running. After getting back from Mexico I decided I wanted to be more structured and start trying to really get back into running shape. After my Sunday run I realized I needed to take it easy in order to have that consistnecy. The preliminary plan was 5 days per week starting with 3 miles each day for week 1.
Sunday 8/29: 4.5 miles in 35:41 (8:04, 7:41, 7:45, 8:10, 8:01 pace for final .5), I planned on going 3 then felt good so kept pushing, ran up a big hill on 4th mile. After this run I realized I needed to start slower and build so I didn't get hurt (sigh).
Monday 8/30: 3 miles in 24:22 (8:15, 8:12, 7:51), very relaxed.
Tuesday 8/31: 3.12 miles in 24:10 (7:58, 7:44, 7:30, 7:48 pace final .12), consciously telling myself to slow down on 3rd mile but felt very in control and probably woulda gone 7:10-7:20 if I hadn't been holding back. Good sign.
Wednesday 9/1: Planned off day.
Thursday 9/2: 3 miles in 23:44 (8:12, 7:56, 7:27), legs felt heavy on first mile then I got into rhythm.
Friday 9/3: 3 miles in 23:16 (7:47, 7:50, 7:20), right calf got really tight around 1.25. Started to feel like it was okay around 1.75. Not sure why I took off on the 3rd mile, think I was frustrated and was trying to run through the pain.
I haven't ran since the 3rd because the calf got quite painful the next few days. It doesn't hurt much now but I'm pretty worried running on it is gonna reaggravate it. Probably gonna try again tomorrow and pray it's alright.
September Week #1
Slow start, I often have a tough time coming back from an extended break so I took it easy with volume, just making sure I'm getting back into the rhythm of sitting at the computer and playing some amount of poker.
Wednesday 9/1: 525
Thursday: 840
Friday: 1023
Saturday: Went to the NY Ren Faire
Sunday: 1494 and MTTs
Monday: Went to LI to visit Amy's fam for Labor Day
Tuesday: 1293
5175 hands in week 1 when I was hoping to aim for 40k on the month, not a great start. There's also a COOP series that I was talked into joining a competition for which will take away some volume. So I'll aim for 2k hands per day on the days I'm not playing MTTs and at least 1k hands per day on days that I do play MTTs. I imagine I'll play MTTs probably 10 days this month. There are 23 days left in the month after the first week and I plan on playing 17 of them. So 10 days of 1k, 7 days of 2k, that's 24k hands on top of the 5k from week 1. So we'll round up to a 30k hand goal for September. Let's get it.
09-13-2021
, 01:42 PM
I'm going to try to get into a rhythm with updating this thread each Monday and holding myself accountable to any goals I set.
Cash hands since last update:
Thursday: 1619
Friday: 71 (Planned off day)
Saturday: 0
Sunday: 0
The cash volume has not started off well in September lol.
Running:
Friday: 0.5 miles then stopped because calf tightened right back up.
So that's not going well either
. I think I'm gonna take 10 days off, ice and stretch, and hopefully be good to run after that.
It hasn't been all bad though, another PokerStars series has started and they always seem to go very well for me. Good start to that this series!
Another trophy to add to the windowsill in my office
. I got talked into joining the COOP competition again and through 3 days I've got the most points, despite taking the first day off. The point system is so much better this time with only the top 6 scores of each player counting, so that playing every single MTT doesn't just instantly give you a big edge. I don't plan on grinding as hard as I did in May; I still want to put in a lot of cash volume in September. That 30k hand goal though might not happen if I do start grinding these MTTs harder. There's a pretty sweet Party series going on right now along with the circuit events starting back up again soon on WSOP so my attention might really be fixed on the birds this month.
Cash hands since last update:
Thursday: 1619
Friday: 71 (Planned off day)
Saturday: 0
Sunday: 0
The cash volume has not started off well in September lol.
Running:
Friday: 0.5 miles then stopped because calf tightened right back up.
So that's not going well either
. I think I'm gonna take 10 days off, ice and stretch, and hopefully be good to run after that.It hasn't been all bad though, another PokerStars series has started and they always seem to go very well for me. Good start to that this series!
Another trophy to add to the windowsill in my office
. I got talked into joining the COOP competition again and through 3 days I've got the most points, despite taking the first day off. The point system is so much better this time with only the top 6 scores of each player counting, so that playing every single MTT doesn't just instantly give you a big edge. I don't plan on grinding as hard as I did in May; I still want to put in a lot of cash volume in September. That 30k hand goal though might not happen if I do start grinding these MTTs harder. There's a pretty sweet Party series going on right now along with the circuit events starting back up again soon on WSOP so my attention might really be fixed on the birds this month.
09-20-2021
, 11:08 AM
First Full Week of NJCOOP
Cash
The cash volume goal is out the window. Seems I can't enter a tourney competition without going all out for it. Cash volume since last update:
Monday: 1033
Tuesday: 1572
Friday: 504, the craziest 500 hand stretch of my life so far
And that's it. 11.6k on the month and nowhere near the 30k goal but that's okay given the MTT volume I've been putting in. That 500 hands saw me win 2.5 buy ins at my biggest stake (there's one bigger stake but I've only played about 200 hands there), followed by losing 5 buys ins at my next stake heads up vs a whale to book a very small win on the day. Went from one of my bigger winning days ever in cash to almost taking a loss. I've run kinda crazy bad at that stake, both HU and ring, but again, the swings in cash pale in comparison to those in MTTs.
MTTs
Moneywise, not the best of weeks in MTTs, though it could certainly have been worse. Results-wise, I'm making a lot of runs and giving myself quite a few chances. Yesterday I recorded my 5th and 6th FTs of the NJCOOP series, all of which have been top 5 finishes. The fact that 4 of my 6 FTs came in 6 max events probably has something to do with that.
After winning a trophy last Saturday I was hungry for another one yesterday. I had a lot of chips late in the $300 50K but as the FT began stacks got shallow and close and the tournament slowed to a grind. I was proud of my patience in this one. I think I often try to do too much when I notice people have tightened up a lot, especially when I'm on a shorter stack but still want to find a way to take advantage. This time I just played the game, lots of folding, shoving when it made sense, folding some good hands when facing a shove, etc. I won enough of the key all ins to find myself in the top 3, still with a shorter stack but certainly not out of it; however, it wasn't meant to be!
I've reclaimed my individual lead in the NJCOOP competition with that 3rd place finish yesterday but we've still got work to do as a team. I don't think we're as far behind as it might seem. The leading team right now is made up of the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th place scorers overall in the contest, which is quite impressive. However it means that they've all filled up the spreadsheet with 6 solid scores, whereas we have more room to improve with 2 of our guys yet to record 6 scores overall. Any results they have this week will be pure points added to our total. So we'll see what happens!
Lastly, I finished day 1 of the WPT Borgata Online $3500 with 1.09m (from 1m lol) coming back to 40k/80k. I'm 78/88 with 48 paying so my expectations are realistic given I've played enough of these to know how often this will be a 10 minute day for me. I'll be playing other tournaments tonight anyway though so hopefully I won't put too much emphasis on this one. 180k plus a 15k live seat to the winner so I wouldn't mind using up all the run good here.
I've got a wedding to attend Saturday so this week's temporary plan is to take off Friday/Saturday and play the other days, but Friday might be shifted to a different weekday if something comes up. I'm hoping to finish NJCOOP off strong and then get back into the cash streets.
Cash
The cash volume goal is out the window. Seems I can't enter a tourney competition without going all out for it. Cash volume since last update:
Monday: 1033
Tuesday: 1572
Friday: 504, the craziest 500 hand stretch of my life so far
And that's it. 11.6k on the month and nowhere near the 30k goal but that's okay given the MTT volume I've been putting in. That 500 hands saw me win 2.5 buy ins at my biggest stake (there's one bigger stake but I've only played about 200 hands there), followed by losing 5 buys ins at my next stake heads up vs a whale to book a very small win on the day. Went from one of my bigger winning days ever in cash to almost taking a loss. I've run kinda crazy bad at that stake, both HU and ring, but again, the swings in cash pale in comparison to those in MTTs.
MTTs
Moneywise, not the best of weeks in MTTs, though it could certainly have been worse. Results-wise, I'm making a lot of runs and giving myself quite a few chances. Yesterday I recorded my 5th and 6th FTs of the NJCOOP series, all of which have been top 5 finishes. The fact that 4 of my 6 FTs came in 6 max events probably has something to do with that.
After winning a trophy last Saturday I was hungry for another one yesterday. I had a lot of chips late in the $300 50K but as the FT began stacks got shallow and close and the tournament slowed to a grind. I was proud of my patience in this one. I think I often try to do too much when I notice people have tightened up a lot, especially when I'm on a shorter stack but still want to find a way to take advantage. This time I just played the game, lots of folding, shoving when it made sense, folding some good hands when facing a shove, etc. I won enough of the key all ins to find myself in the top 3, still with a shorter stack but certainly not out of it; however, it wasn't meant to be!
I've reclaimed my individual lead in the NJCOOP competition with that 3rd place finish yesterday but we've still got work to do as a team. I don't think we're as far behind as it might seem. The leading team right now is made up of the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th place scorers overall in the contest, which is quite impressive. However it means that they've all filled up the spreadsheet with 6 solid scores, whereas we have more room to improve with 2 of our guys yet to record 6 scores overall. Any results they have this week will be pure points added to our total. So we'll see what happens!
Lastly, I finished day 1 of the WPT Borgata Online $3500 with 1.09m (from 1m lol) coming back to 40k/80k. I'm 78/88 with 48 paying so my expectations are realistic given I've played enough of these to know how often this will be a 10 minute day for me. I'll be playing other tournaments tonight anyway though so hopefully I won't put too much emphasis on this one. 180k plus a 15k live seat to the winner so I wouldn't mind using up all the run good here.
I've got a wedding to attend Saturday so this week's temporary plan is to take off Friday/Saturday and play the other days, but Friday might be shifted to a different weekday if something comes up. I'm hoping to finish NJCOOP off strong and then get back into the cash streets.
09-27-2021
, 01:46 PM
NJCOOP Wrapping Up
I've gone into all out MTT mode this week after our team competition got about as close as it could be. To add to that, I realized there was an individual competition that PokerStars seems to have made an effort not to make known to the public. All of this has led to me firing very hard in the COOP events with some pretty good results.
Team Competition
Here's the updated scoreboard with just 3 point scoring events left tonight, along with day 2 of the main event left to conclude:
For perspective on how close a 7 point difference is, my 6th highest score (and therefore the lowest one that counts toward the team total) is 55.95. The main event is down to 15 players and we have a player in 3rd while Team Loxon has a player in 13th. The win there is worth 316 so if either of them wins it all but guarantees the win for the team.
Individual Competition
I only learned about this leaderboard on Tuesday but when I saw a trophy comes with the 1st place cash prize I fixed my sights on winning.
The point formula is a bit goofy with every tournament awarding the same number of points, regardless of buy in or field size. The top 9 in each event get points, with 1st getting 100, 2nd getting 80, 3rd getting 65, all the way down to 9th getting 10. The guy in 3rd place here is 13/15 in the main so if he comes back to win he'd take a 5 point lead on me. There are 4 events tonight, so even though 1 won't count towards the team leaderboard (it's a total PKO so the standard prize pool will be 0), I'll be max firing it and probably playing it in a very strange manner if I find myself close to the top 9. I'd effectively be trying to ladder in an MTT where there are no payjumps.
Non-COOP Poker
I played 119 hands of cash and made $18 so go me. I've thrown in some other tournaments, namely the WSOP circuit events and the Party $109 to go along with the COOP events. I seem to be stuck in events that have the words "bracelet" or "ring" in the titles. It feels like the money doesn't come back to me nearly as often as it should after going in during those tourneys. However, everything else is breaking my way so while I'd like to win some WSOP hardware, it's not something that I'm dying for. On Monday I won the $300 4 max COOP event for 6.2k. On Tuesday I won the Party 535 6 max for 6.3k for my 3rd straight day with a 6k score. On Thursday I took 2nd in the $150 turbo COOP event, losing HU to a player on team Lox for what would have been an additional 43 points, so an 86 point swing there! The result was still good for 2.7k though. I finished 3/29 in the $200 limit hold em event on Friday for 1.3k, which proved to be big for the individual contest despite not improving my team comp score.
And finally yesterday, after a disappointing 7th in the early $100 COOP event for $500, a disappointing 7th in the Party $215 major for 1.3k, and a disappointing mincash in the 525 circuit main, I finished 3rd in the WSOP 320 for 9.4k. This was only a little disappointing given the winner got 28k because of WSOP's refusal to flatten their pay structures, but 9.4k is a great score and I'm happy with it. I've realized that the more I win, the more money I tuck away into the bank, and the more experience I get, the easier it is for me to be happy with results that aren't wins. Two years ago I probably would have been distraught with this result. Today I'm just happy I ran well enough to get 3rd. I vividly remember having a conversation about 2 years ago discussing how I'd feel complete if I simply had a little more money in the bank. That I wouldn't lose my mind over the swings that I know are supposed to come during tournament poker. I'm happy to say that I was right. I can now handle the variance infinitely better than I use to be able to.
Future Plans
Tonight I'll grind these tournaments and then probably take 2 of the next 3 days off to wrap up September. In October, at least for the first half of it, I plan on getting back into the flow of playing cash. Tournaments are so much fun when you're playing well and running good. But man are they miserable when they aren't going your way. I'm grateful they went well during this stretch but I have no plans on going back to playing them full time. I used to always tell myself that I needed to get my head on straight; that if I was really a pro's pro then I could swing with whatever variance threw at me without feeling it at all. I've come to accept that I don't think that's true anymore. I think tourneys **** with your head and all you can do is manage it, rather than stop it completely. I'm human and the swings really affected me and my mood.
I don't feel like that when I play cash. I feel like a pro when I log my 4 hours and then get up feeling good win or lose. There's the occasional day where I lose a lot and feel bad but it's rare and less extreme even when it does happen. I'm thrilled to be able to do that full time now. I'm more thrilled that I spent so long working on my tourney game so that when I decide to play a series and take a break from cash, it doesn't feel out of the ordinary for me to run away with the player of the series award (disclaimer: I might still lose it, but I'm just talking about the ability to win it, rather than the act of actually doing it).
I was asked in an interview about a year ago who I thought the best player in New Jersey was. My answer involved picking players who I thought were not only good at cash but were able to crush tournaments whenever they did play them. A year later I think it'd be hard not to put me in that conversation. By no means am I saying I'm the best; in fact, I'm definitely not. But I've never had this level of confidence or skill before in my life. I take a break from cash, put together a 30k month in tournaments without a 5 figure score, and nothing feels out of the ordinary, to the point that I know this is just a very nice upswing and I need to go right back to studying cash to continue improving. My head is exactly where it needs to be with the awareness that I've run good to do so well in this series, but also the clarity to realize I am very good at what I do. I watched the replay of one of my final tables and saw just how many good folds I made that I really doubt most of the player pool would make.
With the potential for states to combine seeming to be getting closer and closer, being good at tourneys and capable of handling the swings of huge fields will be more and more important. I'm confident I'll be ready when that time comes. The Main Event is slowly approaching and I'm feeling more and more willing to fly out there as each day passes. Covid's had me very weary of playing live poker for quite a while now but the Main might be too good to pass up.
I've gone into all out MTT mode this week after our team competition got about as close as it could be. To add to that, I realized there was an individual competition that PokerStars seems to have made an effort not to make known to the public. All of this has led to me firing very hard in the COOP events with some pretty good results.
Team Competition
Here's the updated scoreboard with just 3 point scoring events left tonight, along with day 2 of the main event left to conclude:
For perspective on how close a 7 point difference is, my 6th highest score (and therefore the lowest one that counts toward the team total) is 55.95. The main event is down to 15 players and we have a player in 3rd while Team Loxon has a player in 13th. The win there is worth 316 so if either of them wins it all but guarantees the win for the team.
Individual Competition
I only learned about this leaderboard on Tuesday but when I saw a trophy comes with the 1st place cash prize I fixed my sights on winning.
The point formula is a bit goofy with every tournament awarding the same number of points, regardless of buy in or field size. The top 9 in each event get points, with 1st getting 100, 2nd getting 80, 3rd getting 65, all the way down to 9th getting 10. The guy in 3rd place here is 13/15 in the main so if he comes back to win he'd take a 5 point lead on me. There are 4 events tonight, so even though 1 won't count towards the team leaderboard (it's a total PKO so the standard prize pool will be 0), I'll be max firing it and probably playing it in a very strange manner if I find myself close to the top 9. I'd effectively be trying to ladder in an MTT where there are no payjumps
. Non-COOP Poker
I played 119 hands of cash and made $18 so go me. I've thrown in some other tournaments, namely the WSOP circuit events and the Party $109 to go along with the COOP events. I seem to be stuck in events that have the words "bracelet" or "ring" in the titles. It feels like the money doesn't come back to me nearly as often as it should after going in during those tourneys. However, everything else is breaking my way so while I'd like to win some WSOP hardware, it's not something that I'm dying for. On Monday I won the $300 4 max COOP event for 6.2k. On Tuesday I won the Party 535 6 max for 6.3k for my 3rd straight day with a 6k score. On Thursday I took 2nd in the $150 turbo COOP event, losing HU to a player on team Lox for what would have been an additional 43 points, so an 86 point swing there! The result was still good for 2.7k though. I finished 3/29 in the $200 limit hold em event on Friday for 1.3k, which proved to be big for the individual contest despite not improving my team comp score.
And finally yesterday, after a disappointing 7th in the early $100 COOP event for $500, a disappointing 7th in the Party $215 major for 1.3k, and a disappointing mincash in the 525 circuit main, I finished 3rd in the WSOP 320 for 9.4k. This was only a little disappointing given the winner got 28k because of WSOP's refusal to flatten their pay structures, but 9.4k is a great score and I'm happy with it. I've realized that the more I win, the more money I tuck away into the bank, and the more experience I get, the easier it is for me to be happy with results that aren't wins. Two years ago I probably would have been distraught with this result. Today I'm just happy I ran well enough to get 3rd. I vividly remember having a conversation about 2 years ago discussing how I'd feel complete if I simply had a little more money in the bank. That I wouldn't lose my mind over the swings that I know are supposed to come during tournament poker. I'm happy to say that I was right. I can now handle the variance infinitely better than I use to be able to.
Future Plans
Tonight I'll grind these tournaments and then probably take 2 of the next 3 days off to wrap up September. In October, at least for the first half of it, I plan on getting back into the flow of playing cash. Tournaments are so much fun when you're playing well and running good. But man are they miserable when they aren't going your way. I'm grateful they went well during this stretch but I have no plans on going back to playing them full time. I used to always tell myself that I needed to get my head on straight; that if I was really a pro's pro then I could swing with whatever variance threw at me without feeling it at all. I've come to accept that I don't think that's true anymore. I think tourneys **** with your head and all you can do is manage it, rather than stop it completely. I'm human and the swings really affected me and my mood.
I don't feel like that when I play cash. I feel like a pro when I log my 4 hours and then get up feeling good win or lose. There's the occasional day where I lose a lot and feel bad but it's rare and less extreme even when it does happen. I'm thrilled to be able to do that full time now. I'm more thrilled that I spent so long working on my tourney game so that when I decide to play a series and take a break from cash, it doesn't feel out of the ordinary for me to run away with the player of the series award (disclaimer: I might still lose it, but I'm just talking about the ability to win it, rather than the act of actually doing it
). I was asked in an interview about a year ago who I thought the best player in New Jersey was. My answer involved picking players who I thought were not only good at cash but were able to crush tournaments whenever they did play them. A year later I think it'd be hard not to put me in that conversation. By no means am I saying I'm the best; in fact, I'm definitely not. But I've never had this level of confidence or skill before in my life. I take a break from cash, put together a 30k month in tournaments without a 5 figure score, and nothing feels out of the ordinary, to the point that I know this is just a very nice upswing and I need to go right back to studying cash to continue improving. My head is exactly where it needs to be with the awareness that I've run good to do so well in this series, but also the clarity to realize I am very good at what I do. I watched the replay of one of my final tables and saw just how many good folds I made that I really doubt most of the player pool would make.
With the potential for states to combine seeming to be getting closer and closer, being good at tourneys and capable of handling the swings of huge fields will be more and more important. I'm confident I'll be ready when that time comes. The Main Event is slowly approaching and I'm feeling more and more willing to fly out there as each day passes. Covid's had me very weary of playing live poker for quite a while now but the Main might be too good to pass up.
09-28-2021
, 02:12 AM
10-04-2021
, 03:37 PM
NJCOOP Summary
As stated in last post I finished 2nd in both the team and individual competitions after being favored to win both going into the last day. I had a 95 point lead on 3rd place, who was still 13/15 in the main event heading into day 2. The point system has 9th getting 10 points up to 1st getting 100 points. He finished 6th in the main for 25 to cut the lead to 70, then knocked me out of a turbo en route to a 2nd place finish for 80 points and a 10 point lead. We were both in the middle of the pack in a $20 event with 10-15 players left, and he had chips in a $100 tourney with 15 left, so I was now a big underdog. I lost back to back all ins to bust the $20 in 10th and end the competition there. He took 10th in the $100 and 5th in the $20 to win the contest by 45 points, meaning a 4th place finish in that $20 would have won it for me! I think that would've been a fitting way to end the series; grinding the smallest buy in event I've played in years to edge out the W.
I can't be upset though; my 10 FTs almost carried enough weight to beat his 15 FTs. He also grinded harder than anyone in the series I'd imagine; I'm not sure if he took a day off or ever turned down firing another bullet when available, so if anyone was gonna beat me I certainly don't mind it being him. Having 5 less FTs/point scoring results than the person I almost beat speaks to how I play poker and it's something I'm proud of. Over the course of the series I finished 1st twice, 2nd once, 3rd 3 times, 4th once, 5th twice, and 7th once. Nothing else in the top 9. I'm focused on winning tournaments and having chips when I make FTs. I look to ladder when appropriate but I do think one of the biggest leaks in a lot of players' games these days is WAY overfocusing on ICM and laddering. ICM calculations don't take into consideration how much damage you can do AFTER doubling. They simply say "your stack is worth this much now." If you're capable of running the table over and pushing that lead to the limit after doubling up with 8 left, the value of that double is worth so much more than ICM suggests. That's why I play the way I do. On top of my FTs I finished 10th twice, 11th 3 times, and 12th once. If I'd turned all of those into 9th place finishes I'd have won the individual leaderboard. I still don't regret anything I did all series!
The team comp came down to the wire too. The guy who beat me individually was also on the team we were competing with. He took 6th in the main while my teammate took 5th, giving us a 5 point lead or so. The other team then mashed all 4 of its members into the top 7 of the $150 turbo, eventually going 1-2-4-7 to take a big lead. The contest came down to the very last event, with our team member being in the final 5 of the $100 event, and only 1st place carrying enough points to give us the win. He gave it a great effort but ultimately finished 3rd, sealing our 2nd place finish. With 16 individual contestants in this thing, 7 of the top 8 were from our 2 teams. It was a great battle to the end!
Past Week
Not much going on over the last 7 days. I got the Oculus Quest 2 Monday night and have played a ridiculous amount of hours on it since then. I played a hand on PokerStars VR that really reminded me of all the poker dreams I've had. 25/50, 2 limps, I 300 with AJo, 4 calls or something, A86 I cb 1200 get 2 calls, turn 2. At this point I try to shove but the software wants you to literally do the shoving motion with your hands to go all in. I try like 5 times and eventually it registers my hand going past the line to tap the felt and check. I mutter "****!" and everybody starts laughing. Button now bets 50 into 3500. SB calls. I now do the biggest raise I'm capable of, grabbing the rest of my black chips and making it 1k. Btn snap folds which might be the funniest part of the hand tbh. SB now says "well maybe at least one of us can figure this out" and then shoves. I really should've folded but it would've felt like a massive angle in the virtual world for fake chips so I called more or less knowing I was drawing dead after that speech and lost to 66.
I took Tuesday-Thursday off and had a great convo Thursday about taking time off and how to feel about it. My conclusion is that given I've done a great job of allocating time off and still working hard over the past two years or so, I shouldn't feel any guilt when taking off. So I decided if I took Friday off as well, I wouldn't feel bad, but I did want to play some amount to kick October off and start getting my feet wet again in the cash streets. I got 573 hands in after an hour and called it a day, booking a small win. Saturday I took off again, going to Stone Street in downtown Manhattan with my gf and her friends for the Oyster Festival, where I had lobster mac n cheese, drank a lot of beer, and ate 0 oysters. Sunday I was ready to combine cash and MTTs but when I started at 5:00 I realized the cash games were slow and there was only 1 real MTT to play!
I played the Party 215 and a couple tables of cash while sweating Boston's last game of the season and watching some football. When 6:00 came around and the Stars 200 and WSOP 320 began I waited to reg them, which was a good thing since Party completely kicked me off and wouldn't let me log back on. This seemed to happen to 90% of the players on the site but the other 10% stole blinds until my 68K at 2Kbb was gone. Still no word from Party if I'll be getting a refund or not but that really got me out of the mood to play. I went to the living room to watch a movie with Amy then came back at 8:55 to max late reg the other 2 MTTs and play a little more cash. All in all I played 169 hands over the course of 1:30 of cash lol and busted the other 2 MTTs.
The $500 bracelet event started at 8:30PM EST with late reg going until 12:30 Monday morning. The event ended at 8:30AM here in New Jersey so I won't be playing any of these bafflingly scheduled events. Despite not having a job to wake up to in the mornings I'm not willing to completely destroy my sleep schedule to finish 84th in an event at 5AM for $900. I'm not sure who benefits in Vegas from the 5:30PM start / 9:30 late reg close / 5:30AM finishing time of those events but apparently that's the way we're going this year.
Upcoming Week
I don't have any solid plans other than getting back in the swing of things and getting 5 days of work in. I'll talk to Amy when she gets home to better plan which 2 days I'll take off this week and then stick to my schedule. I'm glad to be back in the swing of cash. It's a much more consistent and less stressful grind. When you start playing MTTs you're locked in for hours. Cash can be 1 hour of playing, take an hour off, come back, 1 table while watching a movie, pause the movie and grind 8 tables, play an hour and go play video games, etc. I enjoy it so much more.
As stated in last post I finished 2nd in both the team and individual competitions after being favored to win both going into the last day. I had a 95 point lead on 3rd place, who was still 13/15 in the main event heading into day 2. The point system has 9th getting 10 points up to 1st getting 100 points. He finished 6th in the main for 25 to cut the lead to 70, then knocked me out of a turbo en route to a 2nd place finish for 80 points and a 10 point lead. We were both in the middle of the pack in a $20 event with 10-15 players left, and he had chips in a $100 tourney with 15 left, so I was now a big underdog. I lost back to back all ins to bust the $20 in 10th and end the competition there. He took 10th in the $100 and 5th in the $20 to win the contest by 45 points, meaning a 4th place finish in that $20 would have won it for me! I think that would've been a fitting way to end the series; grinding the smallest buy in event I've played in years to edge out the W.
I can't be upset though; my 10 FTs almost carried enough weight to beat his 15 FTs. He also grinded harder than anyone in the series I'd imagine; I'm not sure if he took a day off or ever turned down firing another bullet when available, so if anyone was gonna beat me I certainly don't mind it being him. Having 5 less FTs/point scoring results than the person I almost beat speaks to how I play poker and it's something I'm proud of. Over the course of the series I finished 1st twice, 2nd once, 3rd 3 times, 4th once, 5th twice, and 7th once. Nothing else in the top 9. I'm focused on winning tournaments and having chips when I make FTs. I look to ladder when appropriate but I do think one of the biggest leaks in a lot of players' games these days is WAY overfocusing on ICM and laddering. ICM calculations don't take into consideration how much damage you can do AFTER doubling. They simply say "your stack is worth this much now." If you're capable of running the table over and pushing that lead to the limit after doubling up with 8 left, the value of that double is worth so much more than ICM suggests. That's why I play the way I do. On top of my FTs I finished 10th twice, 11th 3 times, and 12th once. If I'd turned all of those into 9th place finishes I'd have won the individual leaderboard. I still don't regret anything I did all series!
The team comp came down to the wire too. The guy who beat me individually was also on the team we were competing with. He took 6th in the main while my teammate took 5th, giving us a 5 point lead or so. The other team then mashed all 4 of its members into the top 7 of the $150 turbo, eventually going 1-2-4-7 to take a big lead. The contest came down to the very last event, with our team member being in the final 5 of the $100 event, and only 1st place carrying enough points to give us the win. He gave it a great effort but ultimately finished 3rd, sealing our 2nd place finish. With 16 individual contestants in this thing, 7 of the top 8 were from our 2 teams. It was a great battle to the end!
Past Week
Not much going on over the last 7 days. I got the Oculus Quest 2 Monday night and have played a ridiculous amount of hours on it since then. I played a hand on PokerStars VR that really reminded me of all the poker dreams I've had. 25/50, 2 limps, I 300 with AJo, 4 calls or something, A86 I cb 1200 get 2 calls, turn 2. At this point I try to shove but the software wants you to literally do the shoving motion with your hands to go all in. I try like 5 times and eventually it registers my hand going past the line to tap the felt and check. I mutter "****!" and everybody starts laughing. Button now bets 50 into 3500. SB calls. I now do the biggest raise I'm capable of, grabbing the rest of my black chips and making it 1k. Btn snap folds which might be the funniest part of the hand tbh. SB now says "well maybe at least one of us can figure this out" and then shoves. I really should've folded but it would've felt like a massive angle in the virtual world for fake chips so I called more or less knowing I was drawing dead after that speech and lost to 66.
I took Tuesday-Thursday off and had a great convo Thursday about taking time off and how to feel about it. My conclusion is that given I've done a great job of allocating time off and still working hard over the past two years or so, I shouldn't feel any guilt when taking off. So I decided if I took Friday off as well, I wouldn't feel bad, but I did want to play some amount to kick October off and start getting my feet wet again in the cash streets. I got 573 hands in after an hour and called it a day, booking a small win. Saturday I took off again, going to Stone Street in downtown Manhattan with my gf and her friends for the Oyster Festival, where I had lobster mac n cheese, drank a lot of beer, and ate 0 oysters. Sunday I was ready to combine cash and MTTs but when I started at 5:00 I realized the cash games were slow and there was only 1 real MTT to play!
I played the Party 215 and a couple tables of cash while sweating Boston's last game of the season and watching some football. When 6:00 came around and the Stars 200 and WSOP 320 began I waited to reg them, which was a good thing since Party completely kicked me off and wouldn't let me log back on. This seemed to happen to 90% of the players on the site but the other 10% stole blinds until my 68K at 2Kbb was gone. Still no word from Party if I'll be getting a refund or not but that really got me out of the mood to play. I went to the living room to watch a movie with Amy then came back at 8:55 to max late reg the other 2 MTTs and play a little more cash. All in all I played 169 hands over the course of 1:30 of cash lol and busted the other 2 MTTs.
The $500 bracelet event started at 8:30PM EST with late reg going until 12:30 Monday morning. The event ended at 8:30AM here in New Jersey so I won't be playing any of these bafflingly scheduled events. Despite not having a job to wake up to in the mornings I'm not willing to completely destroy my sleep schedule to finish 84th in an event at 5AM for $900. I'm not sure who benefits in Vegas from the 5:30PM start / 9:30 late reg close / 5:30AM finishing time of those events but apparently that's the way we're going this year.
Upcoming Week
I don't have any solid plans other than getting back in the swing of things and getting 5 days of work in. I'll talk to Amy when she gets home to better plan which 2 days I'll take off this week and then stick to my schedule. I'm glad to be back in the swing of cash. It's a much more consistent and less stressful grind. When you start playing MTTs you're locked in for hours. Cash can be 1 hour of playing, take an hour off, come back, 1 table while watching a movie, pause the movie and grind 8 tables, play an hour and go play video games, etc. I enjoy it so much more.
10-11-2021
, 09:59 PM
10-11-2021
, 10:14 PM
