2024 Week 3

As I said in the last post I bagged the mystery bounty on Monday 1/15. Tuesday I played online on and off, just hopping in any big games I saw running. Broke even while 1 or 2 tabling on and off for about 3 hours before losing 2 big buy ins in the last 15 mins. Whoops! I wanted to keep playing but had already said I was going to dinner at Borgata with some friends so I headed over there.

Wednesday 1/17 we restarted the mystery bounty at 11am. With Alex Rocha and Ren Lin on my left the conversation was fun. With 180k restarting in the middle of 4kbb I had about an average stack, and got a fair deal being around 5/9 at my table. Not much movement in my stack the first hour. Then I open AA UTG to 11k at 5kbb. MP flats before Danny Lazrus makes it 25k in the HJ covering us both. Pretty bizarre small sizing. CO then flats, covering all of us. When it's back to me I can't really think of a reason not to go all in. I can't imagine there are many other hands I'd want to use a small size with (KK def just wants to shove here with 3 players behind imo), and people have incentive to hunt bounties. I shove, MP folds, Lazrus takes a minute before announcing he's all in. While I won't get a bounty, a double would be very nice to now have some real bounty potential. CO tanks quite a while before folding face up, and me and Danny both show our respective pocket aces as quickly as we can and chop. He lets me know after the hand he didn't even realize I'd raised the first time around (hence the small size).

The only real other hand of note I played comes when Ren Lin, who's been quite active so far, opens to 16k from utg1 at 4k/8k. I defend AhTd. Flop A72cc I xc 15k. Turn Kx I xc 45k. River 5c I x and he shoves for me 140k. I knew we were very close to the money and turn around to see we're at 102 left with 100 paying. I'm assuming we'll go hand for hand once one more busts so I was in no rush to make the decision, which was a tough one even without the bubble in play. Eventually I decide I at least need a club to call down here. I think Ren is capable of bluffing but I'm not really under the impression he was gonna go absolutely crazy in this spot or anything. After an extremely long h4h we make the money, I don't get any spots, get moved, have 65k at 5k/10k. HJ opens to 30k and I have KJo in CO. Marginal spot but I've already seen someone at this table iso a bigger all in when they had Q7o, so I'm hopeful that if I shove, one of the 3 guys behind will reshove some nonsense and give me some protection. That doesn't happen, HJ has KQs, and I'm out in 79th for $2302 and no bounties.

Thursday I played the live $2100 8 max. I end up at a table with Bin Weng, Tony Sinishtaj, and Jeff Stellwagon, so again some fun conversation. I drop to 20k from 30k, then Bin opens, I 3b AA, Bin is all in, I call and beat AQs, he's stacked shortly after. He re-enters and is put back at our table. Jeff opens, Bin 3b's, I cold 4b AQs, Bin is all in, I call and beat JJ, Bin re-enters. I move from my first table with around 60k in chips and am moved to Bin's direct left. To his right is an old woman with a walker who has probably 150k and is VPIPing nearly every hand. Bin is happy to enter pots with her, so being on this duo's left is a dream scenario. Unfortunately I don't really win any of the hands I enter and find myself with 24k at 1600bb. EP opens, I shove 88 from BTN, he calls AJo (a little wide I think but it's Borgata so do whatever you want) and lose the flip to bust around 6:30pm.

In the past I'd probably be a little discouraged after busting a live 2k but my mental game has been way better these past few months so when I see there's a Stars 1k online as part of some series, along with some other decent tourneys, I decide to fire. I start up around 9:30pm and 4.5 hours later I've won the thing for 19k!

Amy hopped on a bus to come visit me on Friday 1/19 so I picked her up around 6:00 and we drank and gambled and went to dinner and had a great time. Saturday I showed her the poker room and some other parts of Borgata before we sat down to play a 75c slot machine. On her 4th spin she hit it for $135 so we played another 5 minutes then drove over to Tropicana to walk around there. We went to a candy store, walked around most of the casino, then sat down at a 45c slot machine. On her 10th spin she hit a NINETY-SIX free spin bonus. After 93 spins she'd won $100. On the 94th free spin SHE RETRIGGED THE 96 SPINS. At some point she got embarrassed about how long it was taking and how loud it was and was skipping the animations every time she hit yet another $20. After yet another 24 spin retrigger she finally ended her $230 spin on a 45c pull and we got outta there.

I rented a car for this series and it ended up being a great decision. In the future I'm gonna see if my mom will let me borrow her car for the week now that she's retired, since the rental is kind of expensive, but having a car there was clutch in that it allowed me to get away from the casinos whenever I wanted. I normally drove to Wawa or Chick Fil a to get some cheaper comfort food than the casinos were offering. But on Saturday 1/20 the car was extra useful. After Amy's very successful day gambling we got in the car and drove about 80 minutes north to my friend's birthday party in Red Bank. At the end of the night one of my friends who lives in Hoboken and hadn't been drinking drove the rest of the Hoboken crew home, including Amy. I slept over then headed back to AC around 2pm Sunday.

I was hungover enough to skip day 1A of the $5300 Main and played online instead. I mincashed the Party 215, had a huge stack in the WSOP Circuit $525 Main before going way down in chips. I hung in there though, something I've been getting way better with in tournaments. When I first started playing tournaments I'd never build big stacks; I was too tight and scared. The better I got, the more common it became for me to build stacks and win tournaments. However, in the tournaments where I built a big stack then lost a huge chunk of it, there was always a bit of a letdown. I wouldn't play BAD necessarily, but I would definitely lose focus and not play my A game. More recently though I do a much better job of staying locked in, of grinding the 10bb stack, of paying a ton of attention to who is doing what at the table so that if I do build a stack again I'll be more prepared to go to battle. So I did that in this $525. I had something like 400k from 25k starting near the bubble, then found myself with 80k an hour or so after the bubble burst. I hung in tough, ran good, and managed to get back to 250k at 12.5kbb. After a button open to 25k and a very large 3b to 109k from the SB, I shoved AKo in the BB for my 250k. SB was priced in with AJ and hit a J to bust me 30th. 57k up top in that thing! In the past that would've crushed me; now it's more just a footnote to the Sunday session.

That was around 11:45pm and left me with 1 table left, a big field Stars $200. The field was big enough that they made it a 2 day event that was scheduled to end at midnight, so I only had 10 minutes left in my day regardless of how it went. I finished day 1 with a big stack 758k from 50k and 18/61 from 746 entries. Day 2 was scheduled for 6pm the next day, at which point I had every intention of being in the Borgata $5300 Main. I made sure my ipad was charged for the next day and went to bed.

Weekly Results

I forgot to post week 2's results last week:
Meditation 6, Stretch 6, Walk 7, Soda 0.
Hours Studied: 10.75, Hours Played: 22, Hours Coached: 1.75, Total Hours: 34.5
On Thursday when I got lunch, watched the Nets game, had a few beers, then passed out at 6pm, I never recovered to do the meditation or stretching that day so those were the misses. 34.5 hours isn't quite the 40 hours I'm looking for but it's pretty close. I once again hardly played at all on Sunday which is an issue.

Week 3:
Meditation 5, Stretch 6, Walk 6, Soda 0.
Studied: 3, Played: 32.5, Coached: 1.5, Total: 37
Given I was in AC the whole week it makes sense that there was way more playing than studying going on. I did a coaching session on Friday before Amy came but other than that there were 0 hours put in Friday/Saturday, so 35+ hours in 5 days is not too bad.

I played the Main Monday so didn't get to post an update here, will attempt to get back to posting every Monday on the 28th with an update on how that went.

Have you played with Bin at all outside of that tourney?

What do you think of his game? He's one of the players I'm most curious about.

He was at my table for maybe an orbit before we broke with 36 left in the $600 I chopped in November but other than that no. He loves to gamble and isn't worried about putting infinite bullets into any event. He's got no fear of busting so is always going to be willing to put you in a tough spot if he thinks you might be weak.

A good example of this came after I got moved to his direct left in that $2100. He had chips now, maybe 80-90k. There was an old woman on his direct right who was VPIPing infinite, had a lot of chips, and was creating plenty of good spots for him to go after. So after CO opens and she flats BTN, Bin starts to tank in the SB. I'm in the BB and start trying to get inside his head. For me, I'd be thinking about which hands I'd normally squeeze here, and how much wider I'd want to go given this specific situation. In cash, the squeeze range would be something like 99+, ATs+, A5s, AJo+, KTs+, KQo, QTs+, J9s+, T9s, something like that. Maybe it's wider in MTTs, idk. In any case, in cash I'd maybe start to use more ATo, KJo, A9s, K9s, A2s-A4s, etc. But when Bin looks at this spot I think he simply decides "this is a good spot so I will 3b." His thought process is much different than that of studied pros in this sort of spot. I'm not so sure he cares what cards he looks at. Maybe we can remove some small pairs that he'd rather flat and some absolute trash that he'll still fold, but I really don't think he's worried about ever being "too wide" in a situation.

So he squeezes, it folds to the button who playfully says "you're just a big bully aren't you?" She folds and he responds, "well I guess I'll show you since you said that," and turns over 63o. He talks about it being a natural 9 and how much he loves baccarat for the next few minutes.

Granted, everything I saw in this tournament was before reg closed, so for all I know he tones it down when re-entry isn't available anymore, but I kinda doubt it. I assume he's the type to absolutely run over fish but struggle with tougher more studied players. That being said, he won 6 big field tourneys last year alone, with buy ins of $1600, $1700, $3500, $5300, $10.5k, and $25.3k respectively, so either he went on the heater of a lifetime (which is certainly possible), or he plays better against tough players than I'd expect. Either way his results last year were absolutely spectacular!

Thanks for all the detail that is really cool to read.

Yeah the run he went on last year is just so insane. I've always wondered what one of his wins in any of those looked like.

The only thing I knew about him before his big run was that he was one of the original students of Chance Kornuth.

2024 Week 4 (Part One)

After I rested and played online Sunday I was ready to hop in 1B of the Borgata Winter Poker Open $5300 Main Event on Monday 1/22. I drove to Wawa for food, sat in the rental car listening to a podcast and relaxing, then got to the Borgata. I'd registered online the night before and knew I only had 4k in cash on me. So I took my $2300 mincash from the mystery bounty to the cage and cashed that out to ensure I'd have a second bullet if need be, then went upstairs and got in the event near the beginning of level 2.

Level 2 was 100/200/200 with a 40k starting stack and I was pleased to see my table seemed quite soft. I didn't recognize anyone which is pretty remarkable given this is a $5300 tournament in my home state. My first VPIP came when I opened AJ in MP and got 2 callers. Flop came JJ7 and I cbet and got one call. Turn A had me a bit on the fence as to what I wanted to do. I definitely wanted to think more exploit than theory, but given this was my first orbit at the table I didn't have any reads on this specific player. I decided to abandon all hope in getting value from a pocket pair and went big to target the case J or maybe a sticky ace high flop float. Checking crossed my mind but I think we get too many check backs here for me to want to do that. I bet something like 2800 into 3500 and got a call, then bet 9k into 9k on the brick river. After a short tank my opponent called and I had 53k on the first break of the day, a nice start to shake off any nerves that may have been present.

The next level was 200/300/300 and the CO in the 1 seat limps before the BTN in the 2 seat makes it 1500 off about 18k. I make it 4500 in the BB from the 4 seat with AA and am very happy to see the CO flick the additional 14bb in there. If that wasn't good enough news, the BTN pretty quickly shoves for his full 18k. I take some time before flatting and the CO wastes very little time before shoving for my 47k effective! I call and see the BTN has 88 while CO has AQs. Flop comes A33 and I'm over 110k very early in day 1. Pays to get to some of these MTTs for the early levels!

As I'm stacking my chips I see Paul Volpe sit in the 9 seat. "Looks like I just missed all the action." I flashed back to the first time I ever played a live buy in over $1100. I was confident in my game and sold a bunch of action to play the Borgata $2700 Summer Open Main in July of 2016. I made day 3 and woke up to see I'd drawn Volpe on my direct left with a large chip lead as the bubble loomed. I asked some friends how to approach the spot and their answers were along the lines of "well that blows, you're in trouble, good luck." Thanks guys. I was officially shook and knew I'd need to stay composed and do my best to simply play my game and not over adjust. More on that later.

The table continues to get tougher, but still not awful, as the day goes on. Anthony Maio, who I'm friendly with and who was fresh off a 3 way chop in the Mystery Bounty, takes the 1 seat. Alex Rocha takes the 7 seat. Paul, Ant, and Alex are all pretty talkative and it helps to make the slow levels go a little faster. I realize that I enjoyed myself much more in this tournament than I did when I was in Las Vegas this summer. I think there's something about playing with other American regs that provides for a friendlier atmosphere. When I play against Euro regs in Vegas I always have this feeling that they inherently think they're better than me somehow because I am American and they are not. Not everyone is like this of course, but the amount of scoffs and eyerolls seem to be MUCH higher in the mid-high stakes in Vegas than they are at Borgata. Just my opinion though.

I go to the 2nd break with 114k and when I come back the 3 seat's been filled by a kid who seems somewhat excited to be there. He's asking a ton of questions about what to do with the receipts. He blasts off and loses half his stack the first hand, then puts the wrong amount of chips out a few times when posting blinds and stuff. I see his last name on his receipt and feel pretty confident this is a guy I play a ton of cash with online. I get confirmation that it's him when I take out my ipad to play day 2 of the Stars $200 at 6pm. He asks me about the MTT so I ask him if he plays online and he eventually tells me his screenname. Since I felt it only fair I share my names with him since I know his, I show him my Stars name on my ipad and tell him my name on Party. "Oh I'm not familiar with them," he says. Checking now to confirm this, I played over 10k hands with him at 500nl and up last year. Big timed!

I'm on 113k after level 6 and we come back to 400/800 for level 7 and 500/1000 for level 8 before bagging for day 1. I stay even through level 7 then have a great level 8. I win a decent sized multiway pot with T6 when I bet T872dd in a 4 way pot that's checked through on flop. The preflop raiser calls, river is a 9d and we go xx and I win. Think I beat an overpair. I knock out the cash guy who "doesn't know me" with AQ>KT for about 9k each. I win a nice one vs Paul where I call a cbet on KJ3 with QT. Turn 9 goes xx. River brick and my instinct is to lead but I think it over a bit and go with a check. Paul's good enough to go for thin value and he'll also find plenty of bluffs (maybe too many truth be told) given how capped I appear here. I've been active enough at this table that I'm hopeful he'll give me credit for finding xr bluffs on river. I'm always frustrated when I bet a non nutted hand for value on river and get xr'ed so it seems to make sense that I throw some of those in. He bets 8k into 12k and while I'm thinking I'm trying to decide what my bluffs would be here, probably hands like JT that block both straights and slowplayed hands from turn. I shove for his 30k or so and he folds very quickly. It's possible he had a value hand that knew it couldn't call a shove, but I think it's more likely I got an additional 8k out of a pretty weak hand.

A bunch of other small pots go my way and I bag 170.8k to end the day going to 600/1200 on day 2. I believe there were 689 entries and around 300 bagged; I was around 20th place with this stack.

I wake up Tuesday 1/23 and see I've got a fun table draw with a bunch of guys I'm familiar with. Seat 2 is Russ Crane and seat 4 is Josh Rothberg, two guys I play a lot of cash with online. Seat 6 is Chris Basile, a guy I used to play a ton of online tourneys with. Seat 7 is Tony Sinishtaj, a live guy I've played some with in the past. I think there were other familiar faces but I can't find the draw online anymore.

Levels are still an hour long and as 2 guys begin the day by blasting and trying to win nearly every hand, I sit back and relax and remember just how much time I have to build this stack. I won't back down from spots, but I'm in no rush to assert my dominance or anything like that. I've got 170k after the 1st break coming back to 1k/2k, then the next 2 levels go great and I find myself with 295k on the break before 1500/3000. I won a flip vs Josh for his last 25k. Later I open AA, BB defends, flop K96 he xr's kinda small I call, turn 6 he bets half pot I call, river 2 he checks I bet half pot (32k into 64k), trying to make sure I don't scare off a hand like KT which I think he has nearly always. He calls and shows AK after I show my hand, which was a bit surprising. I'd certainly have gone bigger on river if I thought he wasn't 3b'ing that hand pre.

The day continues to go well up to the dinner break as I win most hands I VPIP. Will Failla, who is pretty tilted after a kid called floor on him in a goofy situation, opens HJ. I defend K8cc. Flop is 963cc, I x and he snap bets small. I'm deciding how much to raise and as I decide on 18k Will, who I've played with several times in the past couple months and been friendly with, sorta angrily says "let's go bud make it 15k and I call, I know you can't figure out what to do so let me help you." Well, I'd definitely consider calling a bit more if I'd heard this before I started reaching for chips, but I'm not changing the plan now! I make it 18k and he throws the call in before the raise leaves my hand. Turn 7c and as I'm betting 17k he's already mumbling under his breath angrily towards the dealer for putting the club on the turn. Some quality entertainment from Will at this table! I've got 340k going to dinner, coming back to 2500/5000.

One of the guys who had been blasting off pretty hard all day opens from EP. I 3b AA somewhat small given he's only got about 20bb now. He shoves very quickly when it gets back to him and I beat A9o to scoop his 80k. A couple other pots go my way and all of a sudden I'm over 500k at 5kbb. That has to be one of the top stacks in the room as we approach the bubble; maybe 120 left and 87 paying. Unfortunately this is the point I start not winning every hand I VPIP. Will is all in for 30k or so at either 4k or 5kbb. I call BB with A8cc, Will has 97dd, board runs J83AT and Will's still in there. Mike Azzaro moves to my table and now it's his turn to shove 30k. I have KK in the BB, show it to him quickly, he smiles and says "I can beat that" and shows 22. Board runs T6543 and now it's Mike's turn for the small double! I'm trying to apply pressure as the bubble approaches but it simply isn't working; first Tony 3b shoves on me, then a guy who's played solid and aggro all day 3b's me BB vs CO. I think I made it 13k from CO and he made it 54k from BB at 6kbb. I had A9dd and he had about 200k to start the hand. A very big part of me wanted to shove but I decided not to torch it and just folded. He was definitely capable of bluffing but I kinda think guys don't go for it enough from the BB; I might've shoved had he put this 3b in from SB. Felt close. A couple other opens meet resistance and the plan to chip up on the bubble is not going well!

Our table breaks and I'm moved to a new table with Ant Zinno and Mike Wang; otherwise the table looks pretty good. Zinno opens MP to 15k at 6kbb and I defend J8o from BB. Flop comes 963cc and checks through. Turn Tx I bet 26k into 39k and Ant calls. River Tx I bet 75k into 91k. I think this bluff is fine so long as I'm properly controlling my frequencies. I went through and really dissected this hand. I landed on having 70 combos of value that were trips+. I have SO much Tx as played, to go along with probably all 16 combos of 87 and a few combos of full houses. After betting this size I can have 5 bluffs for every 11 combos of value, so I should have around 32 bluffs here in theory. A big part of this calculation comes down to whether or not I defend 75o and 54o pre. Let's assume I do.

On river I control my frequencies by bluffing when I don't have a club and giving up when I do. This might not be all that important in this spot given if he has a hand like 8xcc, 7xcc, 5xcc, 4xcc, etc, he'll probably bet flop. But it's the way I go about these spots so let's just go with it. 54 no club is 9 combos, 75 no club is 9 combos, J8 no club is 9 combos, and we're up to 27 combos already. Now how often would I bet gutshots on turn, like 42s, 52s, 74s, or J7? I'm pretty confident I wouldn't bet the first 3 unless they had a FD to go with them. These make for good "check turn, bluff river" hands. The J7 is close, so maybe I'd bet it half the time and check half the time. So now I have 4.5 combos of that on river to bluff, and we're up to 31.5 combos, which is pretty much exactly what we're looking for. So in theory, I think my bluff is fine and makes sense, granted I'm never bluffing hands like QJ, KJ, KQ, etc. I think a lot of players WAY overbluff this spot because in a vacuum you can make a really good case for betting those missed broadway combos. "I just wanna make ace high and flush draws fold, and maybe we even get some small pairs to fold too." But against good players you're not going to get enough folds and now your strategy is way out of whack.

Anyway, Ant tanks for about 2 minutes then calls with 65s. After seeing this hand I think it's important I remember to underbluff vs him in the future. I think having a 5 in your hand is one of the worst possible cards given I said I'd bluff 75 and 54. However, it's possible he had 65cc, I couldn't see from across the table, just saw black 65. If that's the case, then I don't have the 5c in my range when I bluff and it's not a big deal anymore. But if it's 65ss, then he's called blocking a bunch of my 75 and 54 combos. It's possible he thinks I'm overbluffing here with a bunch of those broadway hands and that factored into his decision. In any case, I think in the future I might not bluff J8 there and instead only bluff J7, 75, and 54. If someone overcalls rivers then the obvious adjustment is to bluff less.

When the bubble bursts I have 399k with 16 mins left at 3k/6k and we take a break. We come back and it's more of the same, a little backslide before bagging 310k going to 5k/10k the next day. I'm 35/65 with over $600k up top. And as fate would have it, I'll be seated next to Volpe on a Borgata Main Day 3 once again!

Just wanted to say big fan of the blog. Wish I had more time to play live MTTs.

Couple thoughts above on some hands.

Hand vs Volpe JTo is way too strong to c/shove, solvers main bluff choice is T9o here, which I think makes a lot of sense, you want to unblock Jx which is a lot of what humans naturally play as b/c/b for value (strong 2nd pairs).

Bubble hand w A9s. Not sure about ICM, but chipev this is a pure flat and not even that close either. Would be curious how ICM influences here - I could see it being a fold but not sure considering chipev you are calling down to A2s and a lot worse stuff too.

Nice analysis on the J8 spot. I think this is a spot where you can overbet and get even more bluffs in the mix that way, but not sure what solver likes

That makes sense about JT. I wasn't particularly worried about coming up with the *correct* combo when I was tanking; rather I just wanted to make sure I could identify the type of hand that'd want to xr bluff here sometimes, namely pair plus straight blocker.

Agree that A9s would be strong enough to flat, but as I said I'm concerned players aren't finding those 3b bluffs anywhere near as often as they should from BB. Add in the fact we're approaching the bubble and I thought this 3b might be quite tight. This player had been battling though so maybe this is a mistake. This is often one of my adjustments in MTTs that I may need to work on if I want to actually play the biggest stuff. If I've been cruising at a given table, winning a lot of small pots and chipping up easily without a lot of variance involved, I tend to pass on these close-ish spots that theory never would. I avoid playing a higher variance, lower +EV spot in order to continue to always have a big stack and keep chipping away without losing an additional 41k or more in this A9 hand. I don't have that mentality of wanting to fight for every pot tooth and nail because I'm confident I'll win smaller pots later that are much surer of things.

It's funny writing this out because while I've never thought of it this way before writing this today, this logic is what you see when Hellmuth or Negreanu play in bigger field, lower buy in MTTs. The difference between the two is that when Negreanu plays higher buy ins he now *does* attempt to take all those lower +EV spots since he understands he's not going to get any of the easy slam dunks later on. This will have to be something I stay aware of in the future if I want to play live MTTs with a price tag of 2k+.

Thanks for the input!

2024 Week 4 (Part Two)

It had been 7.5 years since the first time I played a Borgata Main Event and I was in a very different place in my career back then. For one, it had just started. I had never been backed before and I attempted to practice somewhat stringent bankroll management. Given my roll was not very big, I'd have to sell action for almost any live tournaments I played. The idea that people were going to put up 3 figures for a poker tournament that they weren't even going to play was absolutely wild to me. I believe someone bought half the action as well and I felt so much pressure not to let him down lol. I had no concept of how much money people actually have and I couldn't believe that someone could invest $1500 into something without it being a GIANT investment for them.

So I think my play often reflected this! I couldn't make an "irresponsible" bluff or call down if I wasn't extremely confident in it being correct. Now maybe I'm not giving myself enough credit. I was playing for a living after all and had sufficiently proven to myself that I was good enough at the game to make it my full time job, a decision I didn't take lightly. But I'm curious to go back and read my thoughts on the tournament since I had already started this thread the summer before!

All of this is to say that having someone on my direct left like Paul Volpe with a chip lead was a nightmare for 2016 Dan. My desire to carefully get the money in good and not make a big obvious mistake is one of the easiest to exploit when you're a top notch poker player with a lot of chips and have position. In fact today I think for me personally, the easiest player to play against is someone who knows what he is doing but is simultaneously afraid to get the money in bad. If you're ever unsure about what to do against that player, it's almost always correct to take the most aggressive line and live with the results since that line will get through so often.

So when I saw I was seated next to Volpe to start day 3 of another Borgata Main, this time on his left, it was a fun reminder of how far I've come in poker. There were no nerves like last time, and while I was still relieved to see I was on his left instead of vice versa, there wouldn't have been any intimidation element if he was on my left again. The table was not great but with 65 left in a 5k it's unrealistic to expect to get a great draw. Borgata reg in the 1 seat, Heimiller in the 2 seat, regs in the 3 and 4 seats, Volpe 5 seat, me in the 6, Nick Pupillo in the 7, James Gilbert in the 8, unknown in the 9. Our table was pretty short though with Volpe with the most at 570k at 5k/10k, which was something like 15th/65 to start the day.

There were not a ton of hands of note on the day. I chipped down a bit and ended up with a few 3b shove spots. The first looked like it was going to come when Abe Faroni opened from the 3 seat off nearly 2m chips (he'd been moved after our original 3 seat had busted). I see I have AJo on the button off 22bb and am pretty sure I'm going to shove. Volpe starts thinking and if he flats I'm going to happily put it in. Instead he 3b's, I fold, and he and Abe get it in for 500k each with Abe's QQ vs Volpe's AA. I'm out if Volpe doesn't wake up with a 3b hand there! Variance works in mysterious ways.

An orbit or two later the exact same setup happens except Volpe flats and now I get to shove my AJo. They both fold and Volpe makes a comment about making a tight fold. Noted. I've got 321k after the first 90 minute level, coming back to 12kbb with 47 left. The rec in the 9 seat, who started the day under 100k and now has somewhere around 800k, opens to 27k from LJ. I defend AsJh and flop comes Q42ss. I check, he bets 30k into 72k, I call. Turn 5x goes check check. River 8s. On one hand, my instinct is this hand is too strong to bluff. On another, the flop size was over 40%, big enough that I might fold some of my dustier backdoor draws. Every immediate draw on flop beats ace high now. Am I calling AsTx, As9x, KsJx, etc on flop? I think I would call AT but fold the other two? Maybe raise them? Maybe too tight and they're strong enough to call? I didn't expect the opener's range to contain too much weak stuff given how he was playing so the LJ open plus the kinda big cbet made me feel like my hand was often no good to AK, 66, 77, 99, TT, JJ, QQ, etc, with the TT-QQ being discounted since I think he's more likely to check those. And I also worried that if he did have a worse ace he might decide to fire away on river and get a fold from me.

I'm certainly going to have some flushes, some A3, some 2 pair, and some Qx that wants to bet here. If my weakest hands are AT and AJ with a spade here then I think I should bluff those. I bet 80k into 132k and after a little while he calls with JJ. I'm worried that I'm trying to fold out hands that he simply isn't going to fold. A rec who's up a lot of chips on the day might be feeling invincible and unwilling to fold any hand that has some amount of showdown value. I'm still pretty torn on this one.

Back to finding the 3b shoves, Abe opens HJ, I shove A9s in SB off about 20bb, he tanks a while then tells me he's making a tight fold. I'm not so sure about these live guys and these tight fold claims! I win some pots post but I'm never really able to get that stack back above 350k. On the 2nd break of the day I'm down to 254k coming back to 8k/16k with 43 left. We lost 4 players total in that 90 minute level. Starting to get down to the nitty gritty.

Again I'm able to win some small pots and chip up a little but can't get off that 20bb threshold. Around 45 minutes into the level the rec in the 9 seat opens UTG, Abe flats MP, and I've got AQo on the button with 20bb for another pretty easy shove. UTG takes a little while then folds, which is great since I'll be flipping at worst now. Abe snaps and shows me I am wrong as he turns over KK! I was pretty surprised to see that hand to be honest. The rec UTG and Abe were like 50bb deep. It's not a spot I'd ever want to slowplay a hand; definitely not KK. Maybe I'd call AA sometimes, but in general I just wanna get more money in against the rec 800k effective. But I guess with Volpe behind always willing to squeeze and me having shoved a few times in these spots now, Abe decided to flat and see what happened. Oh well, just gonna have to get lucky! Flop comes JT9, which is a good start. Turn T takes away my K outs, and river 6 ends my tournament in 37th place. When I'm handed the payout card I feel pretty dumb having not paid attention to the fact that we'd just lost a few players in quick succession. The guy next to me was getting a massage and the masseuse was standing between me and the clock, so any time I tried to look at the clock, me and the masseuse awkwardly would lock eyes. Had I been paying more attention I might have left a chip or two behind when I went all in so that I could at least scan the area to see if anyone was immediately going to bust. Mike Wang followed me right out the door with his 36th place card for an additional $2k. Live and learn!

It was around 4:30 when I got knocked out. Part of me wanted to drive home, but I'd driven Brian Yoon and a couple other buddies to AC from the Jersey City area. The other 2 that had came with us had already left and I told Brian before the day that if we both busted we could leave that night; if we both survived I'd still potentially be able to bring him back to the airport or our friend's place, and if I busted before him I'd wait until the end of the day to see how he did. He did not bust but they bagged around 7pm, giving me the option to go home then. The adrenaline had worn off at that point and I realized just how exhausted I felt. I hadn't been sleeping great and trying to drive the 2 hours home seemed like a daunting task so I used the last night I booked to sleep in AC one more time.

The rental car was due back 10am on Thursday 1/25 and given I needed to drive into Hoboken during rush hour, I got out of there at 7:30am thinking the extra 30 minutes would be plenty of buffer. 2.5 hours later I was back in Jersey City filling it with gas, having successfully navigated rush hour traffic but needing to get to the rental place before 10:30 to avoid being charged another day. Luckily I made it by 10:10, ubered home, and the AC trip was officially over.

Having been bit by the tournament bug I put an MTT session in that night. I took 4th in a small field $320 PKO, 9th/147 in a $100 daily, and added 2 other small mincashes for a small loss on the day.

Friday 1/26 I did some coaching but otherwise took the day off, relaxing and going to dinner with Amy that night. Afterwards we went to a bar with my buddy.

Saturday 1/27 I felt exhausted and was determined to attempt to take a short nap in the middle of the day to be ready to play at night. This did not work and I eventually found the nap around 8pm, waking up at 10:30pm to realize I didn't have the grind in me. I max late regged a $100 tourney, busted it immediately, then watched some basketball. I had a live game boost token on DK for NBA so I bet the Lakers to win at +470, boosted to +625, when they were down 114-108 to the Warriors with 4 minutes left in the game. I figured I'd finish that game then go to bed. 2 overtimes later Lebron hits 2 free throws with a second left to give the Lakers a 145-144 2OT win. Nice.

Because I didn't drink Saturday night and got a lot of sleep, I felt great on Sunday for a change and was ready to play some tournaments. I put in 20 bullets of MTTs and played for about 7 hours, never more than 6 tabling at once and mostly 4 tabling throughout the duration. It was one of the more relaxed grinds I'd had in a while.

I ran into some pretty nasty variance in a stretch of about 10 minutes that had me feeling really frustrated. Many versions of me woulda snapped and slammed a mouse or something but because I'd gotten good sleep and was in a good headspace I was able to shake it off and just keep playing. First I get AA in vs 88 for way too many chips in the Stars $2k high roller they're running at the end of their Winter Series. It's a 2.7m chip pot from 1m starting stack at 15k/30k. Flop is K72 and I consciously thought to myself "this one will hurt if it comes" right before the 8 on the turn. I was a little shook, but I was still 2/5 in a $215 on WSOP with 8k up top. About 5 minutes after the AA hand, the shortest stack doubles his 2bb in the 215 after hitting 3 outs on the river. The next hand I double him up and lose 4bb. The next hand I open AQo bvb off 20bb effective vs the 3rd biggest stack, who is now only 1bb shorter than me while 4th and 5th are quite far behind. He shoves, I call and have him mostly dead after the Q33 flop against his A5o. Princess Bride fans though know there's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead, and after the Q3324 runout, it is I who am mostly dead. A couple hands later I am all dead and bust 5th for 2k.

It's looking like it's gonna be a -3k day but I keep firing and eventually find some heat in a Stars $200 turbo. With 24 left and 23 paying the bubble takes a very long time and a player at my table opens nearly every hand. He has slightly more chips than me and for the most part I let him get away with it but eventually win a good sized pot vs him at showdown to even our stacks back up. The bubble bursts and he opens again UTG. I 3b JJ, he shoves, I call to see he has AK and we're flipping for either chip lead or 2nd place stack. Flop is low, turn's an ace, and I'm again mostly dead before eventually becoming all dead in 19th place.

Similar to last Sunday, it's 11:50pm and my only MTT left is a Stars 2 day tourney that breaks for day 2 at 11:55. I finish the day 59/96 with 23bb and ITM. I end up down around 3k on the day but with $757 locked we're sure to cut into that deficit, and with $42k to first we ain't dead yet!

Weekly Results

Meditation 5, Stretch 6, Walk 6, Soda 0
Studied: 5, Played: 34.25, Coached: 1.5, Total: 40.75

I missed the meditation/stretch on Thursday after driving home from AC and feeling groggy all day. I missed the walk Friday given I thought I'd walk around enough at night at the bars, but we ended up finding a table and I didn't quite reach 5k steps. Had we walked home before midnight I would've, but that doesn't count! I missed the meditation Saturday after feeling hungover and not getting in that mindset. All of these are excuses though and it'll be important to get into routine now that I'm home again.

First week of the year over 40 hours is encouraging. I put in 12.5 hours of play on Tuesday after restarting day 2 at noon, having a long hand for hand bubble, then still finishing the scheduled 9 levels. Over 8 hours Sunday should be expected going forward, but it's the first time I've hit that this year after a slow start. This upcoming week and onwards I expect those study numbers to go back up now that I'm home and can get back into a rhythm.

I actually think that A9s is quite possibly a very good exploitative fold especially w/ the bubble.

Reminiscing on This Thread and a January Recap

I went back and reread some posts from the summer of 2016. Hard to believe that was nearly 8 years ago. A few things struck me.

First of all, I was not as afraid of the big spot as I suggested I might be in my last post, day 3 of the 2016 Borgata Summer Open Main. I knew Volpe would be aggressive but it seemed more like I was excited to take on the challenge than I was worried about being outplayed. If anything I might've been too excited; I shoved a hand to bust that I feel pretty confident I'd check if I played it today. But I was undoubtedly going for it. I was thinking about my opponents' ranges and trying to find bluffs that made sense. I didn't have a good overarching strategy and I'm sure I was still playing too tight in general but I certainly wasn't sitting there waiting for aces.

The way I handled that tournament demonstrates a consistent theme with how I deal with poker variance. When it comes to live tourneys I'm typically extremely relaxed, especially once I've cashed the thing. I feel a sense of accomplishment and I love the challenge and excitement of trying to win at that point. An elongated stretch of negative variance in live poker can still get to me, but it more makes me sad and frustrated than angry or bitter.

Online tournaments, on the other hand, can bring out the rage in me. It was clear in some posts after that live poker post that I was living and dying on so many runouts and results. It's funny to look back on the dollar amounts that were setting me off or getting me hyped. At one point I wrote something like "Tonight I won the 10k for $2700 and got 4th in the 8k for $600; I'm back baby." Amazing. Those feelings still exist for me but they are much less intense and take way bigger dollar amounts to trigger. When I won the Stars tourney a couple weeks ago for 19k I was very happy but I went to bed pretty shortly afterwards. I think if I won a tourney, even just for $1900, 8 years ago I'd be bouncing off the walls for hours. This past Sunday when I hit a tough stretch where I lost two hands in 5 minutes, each where I was a big favorite, each pot worth somewhere in the 4k-8k range, I was upset. Had to do some deep breathing and stuff to relax. But I've gotta be like 10% as worked up as I would've been in the past over 10% of the money.

Secondly, this thread seemed more entertaining and alive back then. It makes sense and in a strange way I'm proud of it having slowed down a bit in recent years. Back then I was SO into every tourney I played. I was constantly posting results and sweats and hands. I also had a lot less confidence in my game. So not only was there more of a sweat in the way I was portraying how things were going, I'd also ask questions about hands and get more engagement that way. Now I have both a group I can talk to and solvers to look at so I've become way less strategy oriented in here. I trust myself to be a good judge of how I'm playing and to be able to recognize when I've made mistakes on my own. Maybe I will bring some of that strat talk back in the future. But I definitely won't be bringing back the part where you wonder if I'm gonna off myself tomorrow since I lost a flip with 12 left in the Party 10k.

Third, I was playing a lot of live poker! It helped that Borgata and Parx were consistently running things and I had a car, but I still want to attempt to play a bit more live now than I have been recently. I have more money now than I did then so expenses shouldn't be an excuse. I also get cheaper rooms and am way more comfortable flying on my own.

Having this thread to get a feel for where I was through each part of my journey as a professional has been really cool. I'm glad I've kept up with this even though I don't get anything financially from it. It's like a time capsule at this point. I hope I can keep it up as the years continue to go by.

January Results

Meditation 23, Stretch 26, Walk 29, Soda 0
Studied 40.25, Played 110, Coached 4.75, Total 155

Pretty good numbers overall. I found that I got the meditation in most easily when I did it before noon. The times that I missed it always came when I told myself I'd do it later, then never slotted out a time for it. Very proud of going 29 for 31 in the walking category. Both of the misses came when I was sitting down in a public place as the clock struck midnight, not realizing I hadn't gotten to 5k. It would've been so easy each of those nights to get up and finish it off. What I've learned from this month in that regard is to get things done as early as possible. There's this feeling in my head that I should spread things out throughout a day. I'm not sure why. The best way to tackle these goals is to get them done as early as possible to ensure nothing comes up later on.

The hours I worked each week got better throughout the month. 22, 35, 37, and 41 respectively each week, with 20 in the last 3 days of the month. I looked back at my last 2 years of profit and while the numbers were fine, I think I'm capable of a lot more. Poker is a tough game though in that setting a profit goal is not all that realistic given how volatile results can be. So the hourly goal is the next best thing. If I put in the time and the work I give myself my best chance at hitting the profit goal I'd like to see. After a great start to the month I lost nearly 10k this past week. I think I played fine but when you start firing some bigger tourneys it's simply bound to happen! AA<88 in a small field 2k for 3 starting stacks can be the difference between a 30k score and being knocked out. On the flip side, I won the hands I needed to win in the 1k a couple weeks ago, and I also won enough hands to get the 14k cash in the live tourney. So it all ebbs and flows, and all I can do is put in the time.

2024 Week 5

Loooots of poker this week, for my standards at least. 95 bullets of MTTs and a sprinkling of about 1500 cash hands saw me putting in the most hours in a week this year so far. That's 5 straight weeks of increasing hours to start the year but I assume that trend will come to an end this week.

Monday 1/29 I had the restart of the $300 2 day Stars tourney at 6pm. I decided if I busted before 7pm I'd take a break and relax and eat; If I lasted past that I'd start a session up and play straight through. I was out in 67th at 6:40pm so I took a break then came back around 8:30 to restart. Nothing doing and I had only a mincash to show for my $1400 in buy ins.

More of the same Tuesday 1/30 for my 4th straight losing session since returning from Borgata. This time it was a $200 mincash on $3500 in buy ins. Five unsuccessful bullets of $500s will do that. Had a couple starting stacks in the BetMGM $535 when MP shoves 132k at 6kbb from LJ (75k starting stack). I iso JJ and lose to his QT on the xxxxQ runout. I'm happy with some of my comments in my notes section that day. Clearly disappointed to be getting crushed after a successful live trip but focused on how I'm playing and what I can improve on.

Three tournaments but nine total bullets Wednesday 1/31 to go with 700 hands of cash. 0/4 in a WSOP $250 and 22nd/304 in a Stars $100 for another $1200 loss. Also lost in cash.

Thursday 2/1 I'm down to my last 2 tourneys with some okay sweats. I'm 6/8 in the WSOP $500 with 7 paying but the bottom 4 stacks are all pretty close, and I'm hanging in there in a Stars $100 PKO with 20 left from 357 entries. One of the medium stacks gets QQ in vs bigger stack's AA in the $500 and flops a Q to double. Shortly after a shorty gets 88 in vs TT and rivers an 8, leaving TT short. That guy then gets KQ in vs Q8 and holds. We now have a spot where shortest stack has 6bb and I have 8bb and the rest have some breathing room. 6bb shoves UTG and it folds to my BB with A9o.

I don't know what to do in this spot. If I fold he goes to 8.5bb and I drop to 7bb and am on the hot seat. If I call I have a chance to knock him out and still do have 2bb left if I lose. I'd have to imagine I'm doing pretty well from a chip EV perspective here. He's 8/8 with 6bb and about to pay the bb; surely he's going to shove somewhat wide here while he still has some fold equity? I put it in and he has KK so it's definitely possible he's not shoving anywhere near as wide as I'd expect. I could definitely see this being a punt from me but I really thought in game I'd dominate a lot of Ax. It looks like I'm gonna be bailed out after the AQ4 flop, but the turn T river K runout leads to me losing most of my stack. The miracle comeback doesn't happen and I bubble the $1400 mincash.

Eleven bullets in seven MTTs comes down to the Stars $100 PKO, where I'm floating in the middle of the pack with 10 left. HJ limps, I 3.5x KK off about 20bb, he shoves, I call and before I can process him having JTs the flop has come TT4 and I stone bubble the FT for another 2k loss on the day. I do at least get a small win in 200 hands of cash.

Friday 2/2 I do some coaching during the day then take Amy to a nice steakhouse at night. We meet some friends at a bar after and have a great night. That always makes losing easier and puts things in perspective. I've sunran life as far as the position I'm in. I live in a really cool city, have no problem paying rent or affording necessities, have a lot of friends who live nearby, a wonderful longterm girlfriend who supports me. These downswings never last and there's no reason to get worked up by them. But I'd like to end this streak of 6 straight disappointing sessions!

Saturday 2/3 and my parents come to town to get some lunch. My dad lived in Morocco for 3 years with the peace corps so we went to a French Moroccan restaurant. I think he was really surprised and happy with that. We go to a bar afterwards and they leave around 4pm. I get invited to trivia at 9pm which is always a lot of fun. I find the discipline to say no and stay home and work though! Fifteen bullets on six tourneys this night. I start around 8:40 and as has been the tradition for a while now I bust 6 bullets in 10 minutes. At one point I shove 11bb UTG and get called by the BB's 53o which beats me. Most of my volume comes from $100+ MTTs with some $50s sprinkled in, so when I'm losing hands in this fashion after six pretty miserable sessions, I start to wonder what the hell is going on. However, I did a good job, for the most part, of focusing on what was in my control. The thoughts of frustration and anger definitely still seep in, but the more I can concentrate on the next decision and the less I focus on how bad I'm running, the better I'll play and the faster the downswing will end.

On the stone bubble of a $215 PKO on BetMGM a guy with a massive bounty limps utg off 20bb. I iso AQ and he shoves. I'll be 9/9 if I call and lose but this bounty is so big I decide to go for it. He has AA of course and I bubble yet another MTT. The bounty was worth like 1.5x the mincash so it felt like I had to take the spot and as long as he didn't have AA I'm for sure getting the price. Miserable feeling seeing one of those three combos but with how a lot of these NJ MTTs play, that might be the only hand he has and I might just have a fold there. A few minutes later I stone bubble a Stars $100 MTT, finishing 49th with 48 paying. We were hand for hand for nearly 2 orbits which defies some serious odds where there are 7 tables left. I shove my last 5bb with 88 in CO and am yet again dominated by the button's KK. Throughout the session I'd been playing cash, dipping to -$2k before battling all the way back to get even. Maybe 5 hands after I'd gotten out of the hole I quickly lose $1500 and end the day down $1100 in 600 hands. One step forwards, two steps back, one step forwards, two steps back.

On the bubble of my last tourney, a $100 4 max on WSOP, and there's 16 left with 15 paying. I'm short but luckily my whole table is short so I've got some ability to get shoves through and my opponents aren't playing as aggressively as they might if they had chips. I have the other 3 tables open and see a shorty win a flip, then another wins a 30/70, then another wins another flip. I'm starting to feel sick like there's simply no way to avoid bubbling a majority of the tourneys I play. However the bubble finally bursts around 12:45 and I decide I'm not giving up on my sessions so I max late reg the WSOP $250. I bust the $100 in 11th before spinning up a stack in the $250. I get short near the bubble and start to get nervous again but it bursts and all of a sudden I start winning all ins! I shove 64s bvb and beat ATo! I win a flip! It's been one of those stretches where winning two hands like that feels nearly impossible and you're extra grateful for them coming through lol.

We get down to four handed play and it lasts a long time. Everyone moving up and down the leaderboard. Finally we lose 4th place and I'm 3/3. I get Q9s in vs QTo and win!! I start to really chip up and now have something like 500k to the 250k of the other 2 players. I shove T9o on button, get called by A5s, board runs T438A, dammit, 3:1 chip lead heads up if I win that one. I chip back up and find myself in the same spot. Button shoves and I call 44; he has 22! 2 on the flop and he doubles again. Finally I shove K3s bvb and lose to KJo to bust 3rd. A very bittersweet finish. So many chances to close that one out for an 8k score but it's nice to get the monkey off my back and actually win some pots in big spots in a tournament. 3rd/86 for $3500 and a $2100 winning day going into Sunday. (Side note on WSOP tourneys: the number of entries I post, 86 here for example, does not include re-entries because WSOP's software is from the stone age. So this was probably more like 120-130 entries depending on how many re-entries there were. Same can be said for any other WSOP MTT I list in this thread).

I end up playing $8200 worth of buy ins Sunday, which despite being potentially my biggest day of buy ins ever, didn't feel that big. I think it just shows how far I've come the last few years and how little MTT volume I've been putting in. I find myself with 160k from 100k in the BetMGM $2500. UTG opens to 5600 off the same stack at 2800bb. I go 25.2k from BB with AA, he goes 52k and I flat. UTG goes by Spewy and has a bit of a reputation in NJ. I've been playing with him for nearly 15 years and I think we both have a decent feel for each other. I think shove vs call is pretty close and I go with a call. In hindsight it seems pretty unlikely he's 4b'ing here with many bluffs given how insanely tight my range should be in these positions. But in game I was worried he might fold some big hands if I shoved, and it's still possible he finds the occasional bluff. SPR is 1 if I call so what's the worst that can happen?

I call with the plan of never folding post and the flop comes KKQss. He bets 20% pot and I call? Turn 4s and now I don't even beat any Axss bluffs (I don't have a spade). I check and he snap shoves half pot. I think I just have a fold now. Can potentially have KK/QQ/AK and occasionally AJss/ATss. Pretty hard for me to have worse! I make a bad call and bust to AK. Second weekend in a row losing a massive pot early in a 2k+ with AA, but this one I should've been able to save half my stack and fight on with 90k.

I end up putting 35 bullets into 17 tourneys throughout the day. 11/202 in a WSOP 55, 13/112 in a WSOP 215, I'm struggling to FT these things. Mincash in a big field Stars 50, mincash a Stars $250 in disappointing fashion where I had a huge stack the whole tourney then quickly busted post bubble. I find myself with 3 tourneys left hoping to save my day around midnight. I've got $1700 in cashes on $8200 in buy ins so if these don't go well I'll lose a decent chunk on the day. Only one has the ability to give me a nice winning day, the WSOP $320 6 max with 17k up top. Fortunately I have a top 5 stack when the bubble bursts with 30 or so left. UTG opens off 20bb with 20 left and I have QQ in BB. I was tempted to shove but decided I'd go with a smaller 3b and just make sure I use some bluffs in this spot to balance. He shoves AJ and the board runs clean til the river A leaving me with 15bb and near the bottom of the leaderboard instead of 55bb and 2nd/20. I bust shortly after in 17th for 1k.

Final table of a 288 entry $50 MTT and it is quite soft. I can't get anything going though and bust 5th for $700. All that's left is a BetMGM $100 tourney with 201 entries. If I win it I'll still be down 1k on the day. I get 88 in vs AQ with 12 left for 16bb each. Clean flop, A turn, I'm down to 5bb with 10 left as we go hand for hand. What a miserable 10 days of poker since returning from Borgata. The break starts when I have these 5bb and we've lost a player so we've combined to 9. It's midnight and I go get some water from the kitchen then come back and write in my notes, "Gonna grind the **** outta this stack even though I'm at -5k on the day and no way to get out of hole, bc I'm a ****in pro!" I was very tilted by how the day/week had gone and was doing everything I could to stay positive and not get overly worked up about something I couldn't control.

By the 1am break I was 4/5 with 3 whales and a very tight reg. With 30bb I liked my chances but was realistic. I think in the past I'd have put too much pressure on myself. I'm "supposed" to win in this lineup, and even though I have 30bb and chip leader has over 70bb, I'll feel like I've done something wrong if I didn't get 1st. These past 10 days have reminded me that so much can happen in MTTs and you can't take any of it too seriously.

First hand back from break I open AA on btn, BB shoves for my 30bb with KTo and I hold. Guy ran 21/10 for 90 hands, decent amount of that short handed, and had apparently had enough. We get down to 3 handed and most of it is whale on 70bb, me on 50bb, tight reg clearly playing for 2nd on 15bb. Whale is on my left so I have to play more carefully than I would if he was on my right. I lose a flip to double the shorty but he settles right back into 15bb soon after. We play 3 handed for quite some time before I finally win a flip to bust the shorty and start heads up at 1:50am. I have 4.3m at 90kbb to his 5.7m. He's been complaining in chat that I've been playing too slow and now he offers a chop. No.

The tournament is over 11 minutes later, which includes the 5 minute 2am break. He makes a ton of very questionable decisions that allow me to win way more than I should with medium strength hands. Final hand comes when I open A7dd off 22bb effective, he defends then xr's small on T98dd. I call, turn 3d, he shoves 1.5x pot, I call with the nuts and beat 8h6d. GG man.

$3.9k for that win turns my -$5k day into a -$1k day. Given I busted my 3 biggest buy ins for a total of $4k, this is a pretty good result, and a really impressive grind. I decided at midnight I wasn't gonna give up and I was gonna focus hard on that last 6bb even though it felt kinda silly given how many big buy ins I'd busted on the day. Tourneys like this are often the difference between a good win rate and a great win rate. I'm down around $10k in MTTs since getting back from Borgata. When I inevitably rip off a $15k score, I can look back at this win and say, "yep, that's why I'm up 5k instead of 1k over the last 2 weeks." It's easy to feel like these wins aren't that important when you start to get in a big hole but they really are. I finish the week with $13k in cashes on $19k in buy ins for a $6k loss. Between the $250 I max late regged on Saturday and this $100 (which I also max late regged after busting a bullet and considering not firing again), this easily could've been a $13k-$14k losing week. The ability I've been developing to keep my head down and just keep playing is keeping me afloat, and eventually I'm gonna rip a few off and get back in the black.

Weekly Results

Meditation 7, Stretch 7, Walk 7, Soda 0
Studied 12, Played 34.5, Coached 1.5, Total 48

The perfect week! I did well to get everything done early in the day, rather than waiting until later and occasionally missing out because of it.

48 hours of work is quite the week, probably the biggest week I've ever put in excluding live stuff. Tournaments force you to stay at the computer longer and I'm hopeful that playing them will lead to longer cash sessions as I get used to sitting at the computer more. I enjoy studying but I think it's important I put more hours of actually playing in this year. I have a profit goal in mind but since volume is the only thing I can actually control, I want to make sure I hit my goals in that regard.

I don't expect to get as many hours in this week. I'll take Sunday off for the Superbowl like I do every year so I'll miss the day I put the most hours in for MTTs. Originally Saturday was slated to be 59 degrees here but looking now it says 54 with rain potential. I initially thought I'd miss a lot of Saturday being outside, but if it's not going to be nice then maybe I will still get a good chunk of volume in this week. We'll see!

Been enjoying these breakdowns, nice job with the volume and gl this year

as always appreciate the writeups.

You may have answered this, but why do you seemingly play so little MTTs at a time? Seems like you'd have a much better hourly if you added in more 50s or even some 30s.

Thanks Jerrad, hope you're doing well buddy!

I pretty meticulously plan my sessions before they start with the goal of not going over 6 tables at a time. Am I capable of playing more than 6? Sure. But there are multiple reasons I try not to:

1) I think six tables is the maximum I can play before I start rushing decisions and playing worse than I'm capable of. This tends to be the same for cash. Tourneys normally have more than 6 players per table so there's less hands per hour, but they have much more complicated and diverse decision points than cash. I'm CONSTANTLY trying to exploit and look at hud stats and notes I've taken (and continue taking new notes!) I try to dive deep into what ranges I have and what I think my opponent has. Can I 3b smaller than all in here? Do I ever bluff like this? If I bluff this combo I'm way overdoing it, is that okay vs this guy? Do I really think he's gonna fold 2 pair in this spot? Did this guy just lose a big pot, did he open shove 18bbs because he's over it or is his range still gonna look relatively normal? After years of experimenting I'm pretty confident 6 is the number I max out at before I struggle to think as deeply as I'd like to about each decision I make. If there's a great MTT going, especially if registration is about to end, I'll make exceptions and go over 6, but since I plan the session out beforehand I normally have the 6 spots reserved for the tourneys I want to play, filling them in with the next tier of tourneys when I bust some.

2) I'm confident that adding smaller tourneys simply for volume's sake will lead to less profit. Playing a $30 tourney that potentially takes focus away from a $500 tourney seems like a big mistake to me. The ROI in that tourney cannot be anywhere near high enough to justify making a mistake in a tourney with 20x the buy in. I also think it'd make more sense for me to fill a 7th table with a cash game to maximize profit over smaller buy in MTTs but again, I want focus on the MTTs I'm already in. Probably any tourney with a buy in less than $100 could be replaced with cash, but for the sake of staying in a rhythm I'm willing to throw the good value $50s in there.

3) Playing six with full focus is way more relaxing than playing 8+ and the stress that comes with it. My mental well being is better when I play less than 8 tables! Some people love playing a ton of tables. Some really can handle it, but I think some do it to alleviate anxiety and think less about decisions. Digging deep in a tough spot and being wrong can be more discouraging than playing 12 tables and auto piloting every decision and never allowing yourself to be put in a tough spot. One of the things I encourage my students to do is cut the table count, at least for one session. If they feel anxious about not having enough decisions to make at once, they should watch hands play out and take as many notes as they can. This will keep you engaged and potentially help a ton later. There have been countless times on WSOP, where there is no HUD allowed, that I had a close spot vs an unknown, only to open notes and see I've tagged them as someone who overbluffs rivers. I call with my close bluff catcher and beat a nonsense hand that shouldn't have even made it past the turn. Paying that close attention to what you do can make a lot in the long term.

Those are my main reasons for doing what I do. I think this is an underrated skill in poker. Everyone believes that hard work means studying a lot and putting in an immense amount of volume. For me it's digging deep to find the obscure line that someone auto piloting never could; the line that makes way more than the standard line. Thanks for the question, it's nice for me to confirm that I approve of what I'm doing during my sessions!

2024 Week 6

First full week of February and I'm feeling motivated as ever. This is often where that "new year energy" starts to slip so I'm glad I'm still excited about firing up sessions.

Monday 2/5 I finally felt some run good at the beginning of a tourney session. I only re-entered twice in 7 unique MTTs where I was willing to max fire all of them. At 11pm I still had all of my original tables up after starting at 7:45 which is pretty tough to do! I noted that I felt way more willing to pull the trigger and run bluffs I thought would work and fold big hands I thought were no good. Running hot always seems to lead to that level of flow and A+ game; I'm conscious of this and am working hard to have that A+ game whether I'm winning or losing.

The run good eventually ended and despite cashing 5 of my 7 MTTs (and 9 bullets; cashed over half of them!) I only profited $1400 or so. 8/177 in BetMGM $100, 18/334 in Stars $50, 10/257 in WSOP $100 KO, 13/290 in Stars $100 PKO, 9/71 in WSOP $250. 5 cashes, 5 8th-18ths. Painful. The last one was pretty rough. The WSOP $250 saw the guy on my left get A2 in vs AT and river a 2 to double, then someone else got T8 in vs 88 and rivered a T to double. Still on the FT bubble (8 make FT), I shove 33 for 12bb in SB, which is actually a decent amount of chips in these poorly structured WSOP MTTs. BB (guy who A2>AT to survive earlier) calls A2s and rivers a flush to bust me.

The next day on my walk I was thinking about how I react to busting a tourney like that. If I shove 33 and he calls 88 to bust me, I shrug and say variance. If I shove 33 and he calls A2s to bust me, I feel robbed. If I shove 33 and he calls 54o to bust me, I wonder if some cosmic joke is being played on me. At the end of the day though, every scenario is the same in the thing that matters: I shoved a hand that should be shoved. That's it. That's all the control I have in the situation and the only thing I should be focused on. I'm still wasting too much energy on breaking down the variance. In some ways I understand why I'm searching for answers. It was the 5th day of the month and that 9th place marked the TENTH time I finished a tournament in 8th-18th in February alone! But one day I will reach the point where I can FT bubble every MTT I play and genuinely shrug them all off and move on.

Tuesday 2/6 found me with a pretty big chip lead early in the WSOP 500 before losing a bunch of all ins and eventually mincashing. I mincashed a $75 on WSOP as well before finishing 2nd/176 in the BetMGM $100, marking my 3rd straight day of FT'ing that tourney. That got my day back to a very small win in tourneys. I also played over 500 cash hands and booked a small win there as well.

I did some review on Wednesday 2/7 then played MTTs that night. It's funny a pattern I've noticed when I review Wednesdays. I often play poorly that night but play better long term. I either incorrectly apply things or get something wrong in my head and almost always feel uncomfortable when playing right after a review. But those concepts I've been thinking about eventually settle and I always play better the following days. I played terribly the first hour of my MTT session this night. At one point during the review someone described one of my opponents as "very tight." I pushed back, saying he was 25/18 in MTTs, where we're often playing 8 handed. "Yeah, that's tight!" I looked up my buddy's stats to see he's 26/20 in MTTs. I guess I took some offense to this comment because I'm ALSO 25/18 in my sample! So when my session started I didn't realize I was subconsciously trying to VPIP more. It's not an awful strat overall early in some of these tournaments, but I was doing it in a very sloppy way that is uncharacteristic of me. I eventually cleaned it back up but only managed 2 mincashes (including the BetMGM $100 to make it 4 cashes in a row). 2k loss on the day.

Thursday 2/8 I did a little study and a little cash before going to the Nets game with my Cleveland fan buddy. The Nets got smoked and we got outta there early and hit some bars in Jersey City. It was a really great time and it was nice to blow off some steam after grinding pretty hard the last few weeks.

Friday 2/9 didn't see many MTTs on the slate but I played what was there. I made it a point to take pride in being in for few bullets and to not get sloppy with re-entries just because the buy ins were lower than usual. All I had left at the end was a 20r on WSOP but it had 3k or so up top so I did my best to stay focused. With 9 left and 8 making the FT I get AQs in vs 99 and lose the flip to bubble another FT. -$800 on the MTT day but the 276 hands of cash I played while playing these tourneys went well and more than saved the day.

At the end of Friday night I realized I was going to have to put a lot of hours into Saturday or I'd miss the 40 hour mark for the week. I set up a plan and got to it. I got the meditation and stretching out of the way early then went to lunch with Amy and a couple of our friends. I got back at 2:15 and told myself I needed to play 3 straight hours of cash and attempt to 6 table the entire time. If there weren't enough 2/5+ games I'd add in 1/2. My goal on the session was to play until 5:15 no matter what. I often find myself stopping if I'm frustrated but that was not an option this time. I need to start building that muscle where when I lose a bunch of tough hands in cash I power through it. Too often I make the excuse "ah I'm not gonna play well now, let's call it a day." While it is better to stop if you aren't playing well, it's clearly best to teach yourself how to fight through the tough negative variance and continue playing well when things are going poorly.

I only played 2/5 and 1/2 and lost over 2k in 1200 hands. I'd make a strong hand, get a decent amount in by river, and face large bets/raises that led me to need to decide between losing a little and losing a lot. Very little of the "bet river, get paid" simplicity that often helps me get into a rhythm. However, I never quit and I hit the goals I set out to hit.
I got off the computer at 5:30 and took care of some non poker stuff before going out to dinner with Amy and our friends again; twice in one day! I aimed to be back home and on the computer by 8pm and I was! I've found myself saying "screw it" in that situation in the past and going out for drinks, but my motivation is high and I'm doing well in that sense.

The tournaments were frustrating again. Made the money of the BetMGM $100 for the 5th straight time playing it (5th time in 6 days overall). Had a big stack on the bubble but lost a lot of hands right after and finished 27/209. Nearing the bubble of a Stars $100 lost KK to AJs for a big stack then TT<KQ for 20bb each to bust 70th with 61 paying. Lost a flip in a WSOP $215 to bust 26/169 ITM, and ended the day with a $100 4 max on WSOP. With 10 left my 3 handed table lost a player, and they didn't fill the seat in on time (lol WSOP software) so I played a hand heads up with guy who covered me. I open 99 off 25bb, he shoves JTo and I kinda just know I'm stone dead after seeing how fake this flip is. TT3 flop gives me yet another 9th place on the week. Lost 2k on the day but was in for 2 bullets on a BetMGM $1k so was dead even outside that MTT.

HOWEVER, I played some cash while I was playing these MTTs and it went very well. In just 200 hands of mostly 5/10 (with a little 10/20) I made enough to be up overall on the day, early cash games and the night's MTTs included. It felt great after the session I'd had earlier. I looked back on my notes from after that afternoon session and felt proud: "If I can play longer sessions and push through losing I'll improve my winrate/volume drastically. I did that today and although I ended up losing a bunch, there was a stretch where I almost pushed back to even. That will happen sometimes after a bad start. But if I quit after that bad start I'll never get to realize that potential." Potential realized, at least for today!

So that brings me to Sunday 2/11. It's noon and I'm going to leave as soon as I'm done this to get some food then uber to a friend's house for the Super Bowl. We hang out every year and drink a lot and bet a lot of dumb stuff and always have a great time. Writing in this thread today got me the extra hour of time I needed to hit 40 hours on the week. I've been really happy with my effort so far in 2024. I look at my profit number on the year and feel like it doesn't (yet) reflect the effort I've put in. However, the number is actually pretty reasonable and I'd have an okay year if I made that much every 6 weeks. But I'm looking for bigger and better things this year so I'm hopeful I'll continue to grind the way I know I'm capable of.

Weekly Results

Meditation 7, Stretch 7, Walk 7, Soda 0
Studied 10.5, Played 28.75, Coached 1.25, Total 40.5

Another perfect week, assuming I stretch and get the steps in today after writing this. I'm really happy with this level of effort and this is what I can control. When I look back on the year at the end of it I shouldn't focus on profit as the main concern. Rather the hours I play and the things I do to get ready to play those hours will be the most important. I'm doing well in that regard through 6 weeks.

2024 Week 7

Over halfway through February and motivation is still there. My most important goals (40 hours a week, walk/meditate/stretch daily, update thread once a week) are still on track. I try to focus on continuing to stay on track through April, August, December. It'll be so easy to have a bad day/week and give up and I'm determined not to let that happen.

The Superbowl was a lot of fun, although my 49ers buddy did not have a great reaction to the loss lol. By the end of the game I realized that if SF could hold the 22-19 lead, I'd win something like $700 when all my bets were combined. It wasn't meant to be, and after hanging out another few hours, the Hoboken crew got an uber home. I walked from my friend's apartment back to mine around 3:30am to get some steps in towards Monday since I knew I'd be exhausted the next day, then fell asleep around 4:30.

I focused Monday 2/12 around making sure I was ready to play that night. I knew the idea of playing during the day would not fly when I was as hungover as I was, but I wouldn't allow myself to sacrifice an entire day just because I drank the night before. I got on the computer at 8pm and played until 1am. I ended up with 4 mincashes for $700 on $1500 in buy ins in the regular tournaments, but managed to win a 17 entry (2 were me) $250 satty for a $4k package. $3k for a seat to a 1m guarantee at MGM National Harbor in MD (basically Washington DC) and $1k in cash. I was on the fence about going to play this tourney regardless, so winning the satty seemed to be a sign it was meant to be!

Tuesday 2/13 I planned on getting back on track with playing cash during the day and MTTs at night, but we got over 6 inches of snow overnight and Amy had off from work, so I pivoted. This is something that is going to happen more and more as I get older. Making a schedule is great but I'm going to have to develop the ability to be flexible and go off track when something comes up. It's funny because my fun side is happy when these things come up, but the side of me that's trying to be more serious this year about work is not. Amy and I walked around Hoboken in the snow, eventually walking through Stevens campus. A lot of the kids there were playing in the snow so we found a spot that overlooked Manhattan and made a snowman. I realized it'd been many years since I had fun in the snow like that and it was a blast. We were out there a few hours before heading back home.

I started tournaments at 8:30 and finished at 1am again. I played 15 bullets of tourneys for $2.5k in buy ins and had finishes of 7th, 12th, 13th, 21st, and 34th. The 21st in a 55r with 13k up top was probably the most painful. Had a lot of chips in it at one point and stalled out. I ended the night with a $100 turbo on Stars that doesn't run regularly. After winning AJ vs QQ all in on J98 with 2 tables left and enduring the loser of the hand go crazy on me at chat (he got very personal for some reason lol), I find myself with QT on JTTA3 with 7 left. My opponent is the same guy from the last hand and I shove river. He tanks a long time then calls AA to bust me, proceed to tell me to "**** myself" and other nice stuff like that. Mind you, we have no history and I said nothing in chat; my crime here was winning a hand against him. I went to respond in chat but observer chat is off so I couldn't. The fact that I even wanted to give this guy any attention shows my mental game is still so far from where I want it to be. It felt unfair that someone who reacts to a bad beat like that gets to sunrun the rest of the tournament, but all is fair when it comes to poker and even after over 8 years playing professionally, I still need to get that through my head!

Wednesday 2/14 is Valentine's Day so I plan on getting as many hours in as I can before going to dinner with Amy that night. I started playing cash at 1pm with a specific goal in mind. I was going to play 3 straight hours and 6 table as much of it as I could. The goal was volume and that isn't something I've been great at the last few years. I typically game select 2/5+ and if that means playing 6+ tables I'll do it, but I'm happy to put in low volume and really focus on exploiting as hard as I can. However I want to develop the ability to play long hours. I've been cultivating that by playing all these tourneys so I decided to try it out this day. It went great! I had to put a lot of 1/2 in to ensure I had 6 games going at all times but that put a lot less pressure on results. I ended up playing 1599 hands, 1111 of them at 1/2. I was up over 1k 850 hands in, down money overall 1200 hands in, and finished the 1600 hands booking a win. I got stacked 3 times from hands 850-1050 and it's crazy how my instinct is always to stop the session. I think I have this idea in my head that if I'm not playing my A game I should take a break. I want to get out of that habit. Playing my B game is definitely better than not playing and I want to practice playing even when the A game isn't there. If I can get my mind right in those situations and put in volume even when I don't feel great I'll make way more money longterm. A fish sat and left 10/20 in the middle of the session and in the last 2 HU hands against a reg I 4b/folded and lost $460 without seeing a flop. Feels pretty bad when you've mostly been playing 1/2 all day and you know the 10/20 probably isn't gonna start back up! But I ignored results and remembered that all that mattered was to keep playing. Amy and I had a great night and I went to bed ready to play well the next day.

Through 3 days I was at 13.5 hours so I was gonna have to pick it up the back half of the week. I did a half day Monday due to being exhausted from Sunday, a half day Tuesday due to snow, and a half day Wednesday due to Valentine's Day. Not much I can do to avoid this kind of stuff! But I can make sure I work harder the rest of the week to make up for it. Thursday 2/15 I ended up putting a shade under 10 hours into poker. I woke up early and couldn't fall back asleep so I studied for an hour then hopped in a 5/10 for an hour after that. From 2-4:30pm I played cash, eventually wrapping it up a half hour short because I was very tired. After not getting enough sleep and still wanting to play later that night it made sense to stop here. I studied that last half hour to make sure I got the time in. I came back at 8pm not quite ready to play so I studied til 9 then played til 12:40. I ran hot in preflop all ins in the WSOP $250 40k 6 max, feeling like this was finally gonna be my tourney. With 3 tables left they moved an aggressive reg to my direct left with a lot of chips and he continually got me to put chips in then fold. I think I played fine honestly, but sometimes you just have the hand that needs to call flop and turn and fold river a few times in a row, and in tournaments this is gonna lead to your stack dwindling quickly. I was pretty sad after another 11th in this one with 12k up top. I wrote down that me feeling that way was probably due to how exhausted I was. They've been doing construction on a street outside my place for weeks, maybe months at this point. That jackhammer is blasting away before 9am each day and when I stay up til 1-2am playing poker, and it takes me an hour or two to fall asleep after, I'm simply not getting enough sleep.

Friday 2/16 I studied from 11:30am-noon, played from 1-2, coached from 2-3:15, studied til 3:45, then played from 3:45-5:45. I got brutalized in that first 200 hands from 1-1:30 but just kept going and was rewarded right before I stopped to coach. Hand goes something like fish limps for $5 in MP, BTN makes it $20, I make it $70 with AJs in SB, fish calls SB folds. Flop KT3r with 165 in there and 240 back for the fish. I decide to bet $40 and fold if he shoves. I'll shove most turns if he calls. He raises to $85 and I have a pretty dumb spot now. It's $45 to win $290 and he has another $150 back that I assume I'll get if I hit a Q. So if I assume I'll win the full $440 if the turn is a Q, I need to be getting 440:45, or about 10:1 to call. I'm 43:4, or just under 11:1 to make a straight on the turn. I've also got an overcard and backdoor diamonds, and I don't think it's a guarantee he has a nutted hand here, though it is quite likely. I call, turn is a Q, I check and he checks, which I was kinda shocked by. River 2 I shove and he takes a while before calling AA. That was kinda shocking to see he flatted pre and didn't shove turn with that hand. Weird one but I was glad to win it as my mini one hour session came to an end and I recouped some of my losses from earlier.

I got back on after my coaching session to see a 10/20 was going. Fish limps EP, I 80 CO with AcQs, he calls. Flop KT4ccc he donks 62 into 190 I call. Turn Jx and he's all in for 2.1k into 314 lolll. I always joke that I cannot seem to figure this specific fish out and this hand is a great example of it. I can't recall EVER seeing this guy shove 7x pot before in the 2200 hands I've played with him. I lose to {flushes} and I have the Ac, which both means he can't have the nuts and I have outs if I'm beat. I decide I'm gonna see sets and 2p here sometimes and call to see he has Q9cc. He even prevents me from winning with the Jc with that hand. No worries though as the river is the 3c and I win the 4.5k pot. Good lord. I study til 6:20 then take the rest of the day off to hang out with Amy as planned. The 9:50 I put into Thursday has made it so I'm confident I'll hit my 40 hours by the end of the week.

Saturday 2/17 saw me study for a little while during the day then meet Amy and her sister out at a bar around 4:00. I had two drinks, spent some time with them, then came home to rest for a little before playing. I'd never have the restraint in the past to drink a little on a Saturday and then not make a whole night of it. I got on the computer at 8pm and played til 12:45am. For the first time in a while I recorded my session and talked out decisions. I felt pretty locked in doing this and had a few moments where it was clear I was on my A game. In one hand I defend Ah9s vs a reg btn open and a reg SB flat about 40bb effective in a $320 circuit event. QJ5dd checks through, turn Ad SB checks I decide to check as well, btn bets 50% I call. River 3c I check he bets 2/3. On one hand, you could easily argue I'm too high up in my range and this is a clear call. But thinking more deeply I think it's easy to argue that this player bet turn 3 ways and is now betting river against a range that's going to include a lot of Ax; are we actually good often enough to call?

Listening to my thought process makes it clear I was thinking well about this spot in game. "Alright. What is his value...so, flushes he would've had to check back flop with a flush draw. Straights he would've had to check flop with KT. 2 pair he would've had to check back flop with 2p or have a hand like AJ or A5, I block those. You gotta show me." This is so clearly a spot where if I'm not on my A game I can either say "I'm high in range" and call without thinking, or say "he wouldn't bluff 3 ways and keep going once he faces a turn call" and fold without thinking. I could label the first thought process as "theory" and the second thought process as "exploit." But both are lazy. With the way I actually talk through the hand, it's a little bit exploit (I assume he wouldn't check flop with FDs and SDs but theory surely does at some clip and I imagine he has SOME combos at least) and it's a little bit theory (I note that having an ace in my hand makes it less likely he's turned 2p). When I fully think through hands like this I really don't mind calling and losing because I'm confident in my decision, whereas I might feel worse about the call if I call and lose and didn't put that deeper thought into it. In any case, I call and beat 9h8d. The speed and efficiency with which I go through these ideas in game is one of my strengths. I think a lot of people can come to these conclusions when someone walks them through that. Others can do it when they have a lot of time away from the table to break a hand down. But me being able to do that in game while 6 tabling is one of the things I do best. And to go back to a point from a previous post, there's no way I get to that level of thought if I'm playing 9 or more tables.

I sun run a $75 super turbo I registered last minute and win it for $3600. Some of the least work I've ever put in to win that much and it was sweet to run hot. After a very long bubble we're ITM of the $320 circuit event with 30k up top and 36 left. I get AQ in vs AA for 8bb each when I have 13bb to start the hand and make trips to knock a player out. WOAH. Maybe this is my tourney. Two hands later I 3b shove 55 for 25bb CO vs HJ (same guy from the A9 hand) and he calls 99 to bust me. I look at a preflop chart later to see that 55 is not a shove there and now I feel really awful. Not only do I finally win an all in, ITM, where I'm a massive underdog, but I immediately make a mistake to bust and "waste" it.

After cooling down for a bit I realized this type of thinking isn't great. Shoving 55 might be a "mistake" there but it can't be a huge one. It feels bad to blast off 25bb like that but against an aggressive opener the small pairs make for pretty good shoves in general, even if they aren't quite on the chart. And the idea of "wasting" rungood is ridiculous. You don't choose when you win or lose hands, you can only make the best decisions based on your current situation. And if you play tighter or more scared immediately after getting lucky because you don't want to "waste" it, then you're not playing well overall. 34th for $800 in that tourney, 4.7k in cashes on 1.9k in buy ins for a 2.8k win in tourneys, and a small $600 win in cash after MTT table count got low late in the night for a good day overall.

Sunday 2/18 I started at 5:15pm and things went well. I was building stacks and feeling good. Around 8pm the wheels fell off. I was hungry and hadn't eaten yet so I ordered doordash. The heat in my apartment was blasting and it's an old baseboard that's hard to control so there wasn't much to do about it. And the exhaustion of not enough sleep all week combined with putting a lot of poker hours in finally caught up to me. I punted 4 off the money in the BetMGM $215 and played my D game or worse for the next 90 minutes. By the end of that stretch all I had left was the $100 100k PKO on Stars and I decided I was gonna 1 table that and call it a night. I wrote paragraphs describing how frustrated I was with how I played and how I wanted to address this in the future. I need to get better sleep going forward. Ear plugs are a must to ensure I get 8 hours with the never ending construction going on outside. I need to actively make sure I'm relaxing the right way and not sneaking poker in when I've planned for time off. And I need to make sure not to go over 6 tables. When I was 8 tabling it led to higher levels of stress and I think it led to me making some uncharacteristic mistakes. Going forward the only way I'm going to go over 6 tables is if some big main event is about to leave late reg and I already have 6 going. Which is going to happen almost never. I finish the day 1 tabling the PKO on my ipad while hanging out with Amy in the living room, eventually finishing 45/1183 for $400. 2.3k loss on the day but a refreshed view of how I'm going to deal with the potential of burnout in the future.

Weekly Results

Meditation 7, Stretch 7, Walk 7, Soda 0
Studied 6.25, Played 34.5, Coached 1.25, Total 42

That's 3 perfect weeks in a row, and my 4th straight week of 40+ hours. I've been doing way more playing and less studying than I was last year which I think is actually fine. I'll still want to make sure I get those study hours in there but at the end of the day you make money by playing poker, not by learning it. I'll be headed to Washington DC for some tourneys on Wednesday and should be there til Sunday or Monday, so I expect to get a bunch of playing hours in live this upcoming week. It'll be important I find the time to get the non-poker daily goals accomplished.

2024 Week 8

Monday 2/19, Amy's off for President's Day, we go to the American Dream mall and people watch before getting home around 5:30. I start playing poker at 8:30 and max late reg a $320 circuit event while watching a 25/50 game hoping to get in. After a half hour a reg leaves and I snag the seat. No big pots for me and the rec busts about 15 hands into me being there. While waiting for him to reload or leave I lose a small 3b pot, then go 3b pre, bet flop, bet turn, xf river with A4cc on Q33cc7x6x. Rec leaves the next hand and I end the game down 3.5k. I still manage to play 400 hands of 2/5 after but lose another 1k there.

Tuesday 2/20 it's back to the MTT grind where I finish 7th/140 in the BetMGM $100, 18th/321 in the Stars $100 PKO, but find no luck in the 1k, 535, or 250s I played. 0/2 in the 1k and 0/3 in the 250 leaves me with a 2.7k loss on the day.

Wednesday 2/21 it's off to Maryland for the Potomac Winter Poker Open at MGM National Harbor. I leave my apartment at 9:30am, take the train and get to my parents house at 11:30, go to lunch with my mom, then start the 3.5 hour drive at 1:30pm. I arrive to my hotel at 5pm, relax for a bit, then get to the casino at 8:00 for the $1500 50k they have running. After wondering if I'll know anyone in the room, my first table has Joe McKeehen, Bin Weng, and Arian Stolt along with 2 unknowns. I win some small pots to go from 50k to 60k then 3b/c KQo HJ vs UTG for 20k each at 1kbb. This might sound too wide, but I was fairly sure this guy was tilting it off, and him showing he opened then 4b shoved T9o confirmed this. I didn't win so found myself below 40k. I double after coolering Arian with 88 vs QT on QT8 then lose some small ones before our table breaks.

Next table is Charder in the 1 seat, me in the 2 seat, Nick Verderamo in the 3 seat, James Collopy in the 4 seat. So not the SOFTEST tourney ever but the fish were quite bad and I've gotten way more comfortable playing with a bunch of regs and one fish playing online cash. I chip down to 33k at 1600bb before 3b'ing QQ (no club) CO vs Charder's HJ. He c's and alarm bells are already going off in my head. 762cc flop I cb he calls, turn Jc he checks and SPR is around 0.5. I was kinda tempted to check but decided to shove to at least make 88-TT have a decision. He calls AA and I head back to the hotel.

Thursday 2/22 there's a $3500 at 11am but I decide to visit Washington DC during the afternoon rather than grind all these silly early levels. I found a parking spot and walked a mile to the Washington Monument, looking at other stuff along the way. I saw the Lincoln Memorial in the distance and decided if I came back I'd start on that side next time. I drove to the casino and got there at 5pm with 70k in chips at 600/1200. 60bb 6 hours into a tourney that is slated to be one day is not a well crafted structure but here we are. I open KJo MP first hand I'm dealt, HJ and BB call. J72cc checks through. Turn Jx BB bets 7500 into 10k, I call, HJ calls. River 3x BB is all in for his 55k, I barely cover. I call, HJ folds, I beat T6o.

I lose 13k in a 3bp, lose ATs<66 for 20bb each, fold JJ pre in a very weird spot where I probably could stick it in, lose some more small ones and find myself with 40k at 2400bb. I shove JTs btn and BB calls A3o, I win. Win AK>TT a few hands later and I'm back over 100k. I open QQ off 120k to 6500 at 3kbb from CO, SB calls. 743r I bet 9500 into 19k he raises to 22k I call. Turn 7h he bets 30k I call. River Kh (bdfd gets there) he's all in for my 63k. I tank a long time and fold. I think this is a spot where most people are either way overbluffing or simply have zero bluffs. If I had to guess with this guy he'd be in the "zero bluffs" camp but he was younger and handled himself well so maybe he's more balanced than I'd give him credit for. There are so few natural bluffs here though; I guess A5s is 3 combos but people like 3b'ing that pre. You'd have to really err towards the aggro side to start xr'ing 66 and 55 on flop. If you wanna xr random overcard bdfd hands on flop I'd imagine you'd barrel when you pick up a FD. That FD gets there on river in this hand. I have KK, AA, AK (sometimes) as well so I'm not folding everything by folding QQ here. Let me know what you think. I fold and save my last 63k. I proceed to fold nearly every hand until finally getting to shove AQs for 27k at 5kbb and busting to KQs.

Friday 2/23 I get in the 3k Main Event at 1:30pm. My table is very very soft and after losing my first few hands to drop from 60k to 44k, I chip up to 120k by getting max value with my made hands and folding the close spots that I think I'd often pay too wide early in tourneys. Our table gets a little tougher but then breaks. My next table has Darren Elias, Mark Radoja, Joe, a guy named Matt I've played with before who isn't afraid to mix it up, and this kid from NYC who is blasting pretty hard. I talk to Joe on break and it's clear he's not having a great time at this place, and unfortunately it's about to get a bit worse. UTG blaster opens to 4800 at 2400bb, 2 flats, Joe makes it 21k from btn, I shove AKo from BB for 120k, Joe calls with AKo and we're poised to chop the dead money. We each have 2 unique suits and I ask Joe if he's feeling lucky. Flop comes 2 diamonds; I have one. I start rubbing my hands together and smiling at him. Turn diamond and I do it more only to see Joe's face does NOT look amused. River diamond and Joe's out the door before we count down stacks (think I had him covered by like 5k).

I open AA from EP to 5200 at 2400bb and blaster, who now is around a similar 220k stack with me, 3b's to 15k. BB calls off like 45k, I make it 52k, blaster is all in(!), BB TANK folds, I call and blaster has KK which seems extremely unfair. I hold and am most likely chip leader at this point. The last 3 levels I slide back a bit, losing a small flip, losing some 3b pots, etc, and bag 355k coming back to 4k/8k. 33 of the 164 in our flight survive and my stack puts me 11th of that group.

Saturday 2/24 I go back to DC while day 1B plays out. I find a spot much closer to the Mall and walk over to the Lincoln Memorial. A huge protest for Ukraine is going on so I watch that for a bit then walk the steps up to the statue. From there I walk along the reflecting pool, back towards the Washington Monument, then to the White House, before getting back to my car to drive to the casino. I play a $320 KO tourney while there to relax and have fun. I try to chat up a guy after playing a pot with him but he seems really angry, I guess since I won the pot. This is the lowest live buy in I've played since before the pandemic and I realize I forgot that the lower the stakes, the more intense the players! I win a flip to win a bounty then don't fold top pair and lose to a strangely played better top pair to bust. I'm kinda relieved to get outta there at 7:30pm and go back to my hotel to relax.

Sunday 2/25 I get to the casino around 11am, walk around a bit, get some breakfast, then get into day 2 at noon. My table breaks early, then again, and I find myself with around 400k at 5k/10k at my 3rd table. The field is dropping rapidly. Day 2 started with 90 from 444 total and 45 paying, and we're down to 63 before the first break. I open AQhh CO to 22k, BTN calls, Lara Eisenberg shoves SB for 190k. I iso, and while BTN's tanking Lara stands up and says "good game everyone." BTN folds 99 faceup and Lara has AK. Gotta be honest, I didn't think AQs would be a big underdog given that comment but here we are! Flop comes QJ4hh and runs out clean to get me the KO. There are 50 left on break and I have about 700k going to 6k/12k.

Hand for hand starts with 46 left with 35:56 on the clock; 2 minutes will come off each hand. I'm opening a bunch and the table isn't 3b'ing me so I'm getting after it. I open 65cc CO, BB defends off maybe 500k. Flop 962ssh xx. Turn 3h and he bets 110k into 72k. I played with this guy in the $3500 and he's young and friendly. I kinda get the vibe he's gonna be willing to put this overbet in as a bluff but not follow through all that often on rivers so I call. River 8x and he checks. I'm pretty worried I'm gonna lose to an 8 here but I think I'd rather bluff missed flush draws than a pair of 6s. I check and beg him not to show me an 8. He does not abide and I lose to 87o.

Next hand I open QdQs and CO calls playing well over a million. Flop Q94dd I xc 25k into 84k. Turn 8x I xc 110k. River Jd and with 350k in the pot and me with 400k back, he tanks a long time before betting 215k. He seemed genuinely unsure of whether he wanted to bet or not. Looking back this might make it obvious he had a T, but in game I couldn't shake the idea that he didn't have a flush and he wouldn't bet a T for value. This guy had told me earlier that he folded QQ UTG for 4bb 20 off the money in the Borgata $800 and made the money. He made sure to let me know he woulda busted to AJ if he had shoved. He hasn't been abusing the bubble much, but did mention he was putting "ICM pressure" on someone earlier in a spot where that term didn't make much sense to use. Being so sure he didn't have a flush (I had the Qd, Jd is on the board, he only bet half pot, etc) and feeling that he'd sometimes check a T, combined with getting 3:1 and still being in the tourney if I called and lost, combined with him being chip leader and probably wanting to assert his stack at SOME point, I couldn't bring myself to fold this hand. I call and lose to JTo (no diamond).

On hand #15 of hand for hand a player is all in with 88 vs TT on J42. Turn is an 8 and h4h continues. Hand #17 I defend my BB then xf flop and now have 140k with 1 hand left at 6k/12k. Hand #18 it folds to my SB and I have A2o. There are clearly players attempting to fold into the money but with the average stack around 600k I'm pretty sure no one's on <6 or 7bb. If I shove and get it through I'll have 164k at 16kbb; folding leaves me with 134k and that much less fold equity if I do get dealt a hand I need to shove. Shoving gets through so often here, and I do win some amount of the time when called. I shove and am absolutely snap called which was kinda devastating. It was just 5 or so hands earlier that I had a 550k stack and QQ on Q94dd vs a guy who covers me, thinking that some non zero amount of the time I was going to double to over 1m and be among the chip leaders. Now I'm poised to miss the money after a 75 minute bubble. No one on other tables is all in so TD comes over and we show our hands. He has AK, and I'm out of my seat after the K64 flop preparing myself for the long drive home.

Weekly Results

Meditation 7, Stretch 7, Walk 7, Soda 0
Studied 9, Played 34.25, Coached 0, Total 43.25

I did a meditation Friday before the main that talked about accepting uncertainty without judging it or having any feelings towards it. It was a very calming idea for me, as I'm used to trying to control the uncertainty and plan for every outcome. Being able to let go and accept that I do not know what is coming is a very freeing concept. It also spoke about accepting reality. That isn't to say you shouldn't try to change a situation if it's negative, but rather to simply accept things that may be negative that aren't able to be changed at the moment. Kinda like the serenity prayer. Those two ideas floating around in my head worked together to make this experience as painless as it could've been for me in my life so far.

When I was at a soft table to start the day it was easier for me to accept that I didn't know if I'd run over this table the way I'd hoped. Maybe I'd get coolered, maybe it'd go great. It didn't matter though. I was just going to accept what happened. I might have felt guilty after AKo>AKo and played more conservatively in order to not "waste" the run good. I didn't do that because I simply accepted that I won this time. I accepted winning AA>KK and how fortunate that was. I accepted having a big stack and made plans on how to best utilize it. I acknowledged that calling 65cc on turn might lead to me needing to make a difficult river decision or losing a big pot that would put me in danger of bubbling. But I wasn't worried about that uncertainty in the future because I was confident my decision on the turn was correct. The same thing applied when calling river with QQ. And finally before shoving A2o I realized that some amount of the time it'd lead to me stone bubbling in painful fashion. But I accepted the uncertainty of what would happen next if I shoved, then accepted the reality of walking out the door without the $5400 mincash as the rest of the room celebrated.

I'm struggling a bit right now, both in poker and life. I'm having similar feelings of anxiety that I had when I was a kid that used to absolutely cripple me socially. I've learned over the course of my life how to deal with them so I can still function, but it's been a while since I've felt them this hard. But I am controlling just about everything I can control in the best way I know how. I didn't miss any of the meditations despite being in a janky hotel room or a casino most of the week. I stretched each day and any day I knew I'd be in the casino a long time I made sure to get the steps done before then to ensure I exercised daily. I was tempted to skip poker Saturday but thought I might just miss out on 40 hours if I busted day 2 quickly on Sunday, so I got a couple in to make sure I didn't. I'm working hard and taking care of myself. There are still things I could be doing better and I'll focus on them more this week. I'm determined not to let anything derail me.

Hanging in there, may help to volunteer a bit to help with the mental strain that is inevitable with poker. volunteering at an animal shelter never fails to cheer me up.

BDFD hand - I agree 100% with your analysis. This line is vastly underbluffed as it require the player to correctly checkraise a small percentage of 0ev over cards for the sole purpose of bluffing when the BDFD completes. Most regs will only checkraise with some sort of backdoor equity and will give up too much when their BD misses on the turn.

Rooting for ya!

Love your updates and your hand breakdowns! Hope you feel better soon!

Thanks guys. I had a good day yesterday that put my mind at ease about some non-poker stuff. I feel a lot more ready to get after it today than if I'd played yesterday.

Volunteering is a good idea fast. I've thought about doing it before but never pulled the trigger. Maybe I will at some point in the future.

I agree with everything you said about that hand. My fear live is always that someone has an extremely random combo that doesn't make any sense and they've just decided to go for it this time. Or they have a hand on flop they were value/protection raising (ie 88) and they get to river and realize their hand probably isn't good, so now they decide to bluff with it. This guy didn't seem like the type to do those things either though so I think my fold is alright at the end of the day. Looking back at my QQ hand I don't really think my opponent was the type to bluff 3 times either, but it's so hard to give him no credit for being able to bluff when he has CL on the bubble. I'm still on the fence about how I feel about that call. He ended up winning the tourney after a heads up chop for $246k.

No idea how to play nl but reading that QQ hand seem like there were at least three biases that causes you to make that call. You should check out Charlie Munger's list of biases. Fyi I play lhe and there are tons of situation when we get 6-1 on riv when there are aggressive and it a easy fold against majority of the player this is base on being able to see hold card on bovada and understanding people biases. I think people underestimate the emotional side of poker because you can't put a number on it but relay too much on math/combos.

I'm briefly reading through them now...which three (or more) do you think led to me making the call?

There's certainly something to be said about using pot odds as a cop out to make a lazy call. It's possible that's what I did here. I really struggled to come up with which value hands he'd show up with. Even the hand he turned over I'd ruled out in my head. Why would someone flat pre with JTo CO vs HJ when he has chip lead of the tournament on the stone bubble? It isn't strong enough to call and seems like the perfect type of hand to use as a "too wide" 3b against someone who's been opening a bunch on the bubble.

But this player flatted, and while I didn't think this specific hand would be in his range pre, I did think it was possible his preflop range looked a lot different than I'd expect it to. Which in my mind made it more likely he could have a totally random hand I hadn't thought of as a bluff as well. Him flatting a lot pre doesn't equate to him being likely to triple barrel bluff a lot post. But with all things considered, I really did not expect him to have a flush and wasn't sure he'd bet a T for value on river. If I KNEW the guy had a better hand than clearly calling just because I'm getting a good price is a mistake. In game though I felt like it was close and I used the price I was getting (and the fact that he didn't bet as big as I'd thought he would with a better hand!) as a kind of tiebreaker after 3 minutes of tanking didn't push me overwhelmingly towards one side or the other.

Anyway let me know which biases you were thinking of DonJuan. I've always found limit hold em interesting in the pride players take in folding a good hand getting a great price because they're simply that confident they're correct. To your point, I'd definitely struggle with that.

Right when I read it come to mind with Confirmation Biase+Availability-Misweighing Tendency. Then you might have Doubt-Avoidance Tendency and then it become a big Lollapalooza Tendency where 2+2=10( all biases comes together and yur brain will only see toward one thing). There also another biases but I cant think of thr right name atm but you hit a set on flop you going to think you deserve to win and it hard to let go vs let say somehow you got lucky and set on riv on straight/flush board, people are more likely to fold here.


Good book explaining Charlie Munger biases https://a.co/d/dBnihqL has nothing to do w poker but it will increase your edge

Yeah I think the most likely thing I'd actually have run into during this hand was what I've always called "entitlement tilt" (think I got that from The Mental Game of Poker). I'd like to think that live, with so much time to sit there and think things through, I wouldn't be more likely to call a river simply because I had QQ on Q94 and expected to win the pot on flop. But it's certainly possible!

Thinking Back to 2021 and a February Recap

My best year of poker results, by a pretty big margin, came in 2021. I went back recently to look into what was going on and what's been different in the last 2 years. Let's get one thing out of the way up front: I ran HOT in tournaments. I lost at MTTs in January and December (but crushed cash in each of those months). From February-November of 2021 I had one losing month, and that was June, when I played tournaments on exactly one day that month. I'd moved to Hoboken the first day of June and hadn't planned for internet properly so had no access the first week or two of living here. There were some loooow volume months in 2021 where I still found an $8k win. Cash also went amazingly all year and the amount I profited compared to the amount of hands I played was wild. If the online results weren't enough, November comes around and I go to Vegas and play a total of 5 live MTTs. I cash one of them, a 79th place finish in the WSOP Main Event for $81k.

So I ran extremely hot that year. What else was going on? Michigan hadn't merged with NJ yet on Pokerstars so I still had 2 ringed in markets at that point. This not only made cash a bit easier, it led to less variance in MTTs. It is way easier to win a weekly $200 $30k on Stars with 175 entries than it is to win the $100 $65k. Final tabling the former isn't that crazy and naturally can give you some confidence if you're in a tough stretch. Final tabling a tourney with 700+ players is extremely hard to do and enough 11th place finishes in a tourney like that can drive a guy insane!

Cash has gotten much more difficult as well. Michigan merging hasn't helped, but even in NJ there's been an influx of an army of regs who play around the clock. Idk if a stable got wind of NJ online and threw the kitchen sink at or what, but whereas getting in games on Party in 2021 was fairly easy, in 2024 it is always a battle to beat the other regs to the table before it fills, nearly around the clock. In 2021 I could put a few hours in during the day and see very few regs, especially if a 5/10+ game got going. Now if I log on at noon and anything high stakes is running, it's nearly a guarantee it'll be full.

To put it all simply, everything is a battle now. In 2021 I got good at cash, I played in a smaller market, and I crushed. Any top player would have crushed with the circumstances I was given, but I was still new to cash and felt great about how it was going. This confidence probably bled into MTTs and it wouldn't shock me if I played better in those then compared to now. I ran hot but certainly could have had a much higher ROI at that point too. But part of that has to be due to how good the average player was then vs now. The advent of sites like GTOWiz has allowed every person who has any desire to get good at poker an incredible resource to do so. In 2021 I found myself in a great spot with coaching and backing and I was a quick learner even without a tool like GTOWiz. But now that edge has been dulled given everyone has access to it.

So what's the point of all this reflection? Am I saying it's time to lay down and die and give up the ghost? Of course not! It's time to decide exactly how much I care about being a professional poker player. Do I want to make this work or do I want to go do something else? The fire is still inside of me and that's why I came into this year with some passion and a plan. That's where this 40 hours/week and meditating and exercising every day idea came from. In 2021 there were only a handful of guys in my markets who could do what I do. Now there are dozens. I haven't gotten worse; in fact I think I've utilized the new tools to get much better. But there is so much more competition than there was in the past. That means I need to find even more edges if I want to have any shot of replicating my success of the past.

So my focus is on meditating each day and learning to relax my mind and accept reality in all its forms. My focus is on exercising and ensuring I don't ignore my physical health. My focus is on spending time honing my craft, rather than focusing on the results themselves. The variance is higher and the EV is lower than it ever has been, which means I'm simply going to need to put more work in to get the results I'm looking for. February was a GRIND and I did not get the results I wanted. But I had my shots and I kept coming back after every disappointment. If I keep this level of focus and effort the results will come and I think the extent of them will surprise me.

February Results

Meditation 29, Stretch 29, Walk 29, Soda 0
Studied 38.5, Played 134.75, Coached 4, Total 177.25

I completed the perfect month in February. I meditated, stretch, walked, and abstained from soda every day. I worked 40+ hours every week. And I lost money! I was up small through 3 weeks then got pounded on the 4th. I lost a medium sized 25/50 pot on 2/19, lost in tourneys 2/20, then lost a little over $8k in my trip to MGN National Harbor in Maryland. So why do I not feel bad about this? Well if I river a club in the 25/50 pot I (probably) win 3k instead of losing it. If I win a couple more flips in the big buy in tourneys on 2/20 I either break even or win. And going from 700k at 6k/12k with 46 left and 45 paying in a live tournament to bubbling the tourney 18 hands later feels like something that happens well under 1% of the time. I almost always come away with at least a $5400 mincash, and sometimes come away with the $270,000 win.

I'm becoming more accustomed to these swings. If I'm going to happily accept a win in a 1k for 19k in January followed by a 14k cash in a 5k, I've got to be able to deal with the losses in February. I don't think I cashed any of the 15-20 biggest buy in MTTs I played, which is almost always going to lead to a losing number. A big part of me feels like I should more or less win every time I play and I've worked hard to let that feeling go. I'm so much more confident in my abilities than I ever have been, so it's important to both be realistic about the fact that I won't always win and understand I'll still go on prolonged downswings. I need to make sure I stay sharp and don't allow my confidence to lead to a development of leaks I don't plug.

When I have a big March or April I'm going to look back on how I dealt with February and realize that that's what allowed for the big results of the future. That focus on getting 40 hours in, rather than a focus on results, will ironically be what brings the best results. In the past I might have taken a step back and taken some time off, but the 2024 version of me is full steam ahead.