Any plans to play the borgata events coming up? I'm going to play the Saturday series 100k.

Do you have a link to schedule?

http://m.theborgata.com/casino/poker...-2015/schedule

Thanks

Yes sir! Not sure which ones yet but this might be the series where I put my first ever package together. I really want to start getting into live tournament poker, ESPECIALLY when I could stay there some nights and still get online sessions in since Borgata is in New Jersey. I also believe I will be playing the SugarHouse 100K that starts on Thursday ($280 buy in, 1A and 1B on Thursday, 1C and 1D on Friday, 1E and 1F on Saturday (probably would not play this day since my 5K is that morning), day 2 Sunday and day 3 Monday). And Borgata is having their "Player's Series" starting this upcoming Sunday, with 1A Sunday and 1B Monday, so if I don't make day 2 of SugarHouse I will have to decide between playing 1A or playing online Sunday, and then possibly playing 1B Monday. It's a "double play," so there is no re-entry if you bust; you can only play once on 1A and once on 1B. It's a $400 MTT with good structure so that seems like a must play too.

I had a really encouraging run today. I did intervals with my girlfriend on a track near her house. I ran a mile warm up and the plan was to do 6 x 800 meters (half mile repeats) at 3:00 each to simulate the pace I want to do (or attempt to do anyway) in Saturday's 5K. The 90 degree weather with no cloud cover made it a really exerting effort but I was really proud of how I ran; everything was incredibly under control and I kept my form even when feeling exhausted and fatigued. I finished 2 of the 800s and realized it was going to be really tough to do 6, so I decided to finish the 4th one and reevaluate from there. After the 4th I decided I'd do a 5th and then see if I was up to doing a 6th. With 100 meters to go in the 5th though I got a bit carried away and kicked as hard as I could so the 5th was faster than the rest. However, the first 4 800s ended up with a total time of 12:00.0 with the fastest being 2:59.6 and the slowest being 3:00.5. What I've learned over the years I've ran is that being able to keep times that consistent is much much much more impressive than running a 2:48 then a 2:54 then a 3:02 then a 3:06 or anything like that. Consistent splits are what allow you to continue to get faster as your body gets used to the shape you are in.

So here's a pic of the splits. I did this on the track so I did not use the satellite which is why all the distances read 0.00.

Played the SugarHouse $280 100K guaranteed today, flight 1A. 30K SS, I busted at 500/1000 (they had a 200 chip ante in this level!! First time I've ever seen an ante be more than 1/3 the SB aside from those big ante tourneys Stars used to have) and think I played pretty poorly in several different hands. The biggest one was folding KK on an ATA9T board vs an aggro kid I have a lot of history with in a 3b pot. If he had an ace the way the action played out it would make sense, but against him and with how passively I played the hand, I think folding was a big mistake. It only left me with 20BBs as well; I would have felt much better about the MTT busting there then just folding and being left pretty short. Live and learn.

The thing that really is bumming me out is I can't come home from that and run it off because my foot is really really hurting now. I did 3 slow miles with my girlfriend yesterday and I felt it the whole way. I'm gonna ice it tonight and not run, and then go buy orthodics tomorrow and go on a light run before the 5K Saturday and pray that my foot isn't messed up. I want to set up an appointment with a foot doctor but when I had similar injury like this sophomore year of college the doctor said he didn't see anything on the x-ray. So I basically feel like it will be pointless.

Didn't play poker Monday, played 4 tourneys Tuesday where I busted 6th in the Party 10K in a pot that would have given me over 1/3 the chips in play, AK<JJ of a kid who got 20th in the main event this year. He cashed for 262K in that and here he is outflipping me in an MTT with 2K up top. Cool. Definitely not bitter about my "luck" because I was lucky in several spots up to that point, winning a flip for my tourney life with 30 left and winning a 20/80 with 7 left. But it is insane that he is one of SEVEN people I've played with on NJ sites who I can confirm have gone top 20 in the main event. Five of those seven were/are November niners, and three of them I've played with in the last 2 weeks in the dinky NJ nightlies. To be fair they all played on the NJ sites before getting there, but damn the grind is real to keep playing these after hitting scores that big.

I'm probably going to try to grind (if you can call it that) super turbo sngs tonight for the small leaderboard promo they have going on right now. I'll also throw in the major MTTs as well. Got a dentist appointment tomorrow at 9AM and will probably go to SugarHouse after that. The structure seems good so I'd like to arrive earlier than I did today (got there at level 5 which was either 400 or 500BB). I'll update tomorrow with how it went.

So it appears that in the last 2 days I am down a total of $109.99. Sounds like I got a discount from something. Today I think for the most part I played pretty well, both live and online, and after a mostly disappointing day I had a solid yet slightly unsatisfying finish. First, the live tourney.

Ended up firing 2 more bullets into the SugarHouse 100K and neither stuck. Played a couple irritating pots vs the second most aggro player I've ever seen play live (behind Kevin Grabel), a guy named Greg Fishberg. His PFR was at least 70% (not exaggerating) and his 3b was way up there too. It's interesting to see the two of them do what they do and try to pick up little things that might work here and there (since I never plan on trying to employ a strategy THAT extreme; while it does seem more fun it also seems like it's easy to fire a ridiculously high number of bullets doing that, something I don't want to do). Anyway, I end up flatting a Fishberg open with A3ss from the SB and the BB calls as well; BB was 300 at this point with 30K SS's. I c/c Greg's bet on a Q32 one spade flop and turn a flush draw when the 10s hits the turn. I c/c another bet, which might have been 60-70% pot. I wasn't totally sure because Greg used a 5K chip to bet 800 and instead of breaking it, the dealer announced "change owed, it's on you", points to me and deals the turn. He's one of those dealers that is over the top friendly and gets away with doing **** like that because of it. It drives me insane.

Anyway the river comes Ax completing the Qs3x2xTsAx board and I decide to c/c a 6800 bet into what I think was about 10K at this point (it didn't really matter because I just can't fold this hand to Fishberg). I probably don't beat many value hands but just giving up with this hand vs this player seems awful. He turned over 54ss and I felt a bit sick in the fact that I had 7 outs to cooler him and he had 3 to cooler me and it went that way. Oh well. Eventually moved tables and got AT in vs AK bvb to bust.

Second bullet was pretty amusing. I 4b stuffed 99 in a spot I should probably fold but it feels pretty hard to just fold 9s after not seeing a better hand for 5 hours. I know this is fish logic but you really just start thinking "if I haven't seen a hand in 5 hours how can someone show up with better on this specific hand??" Well obviously they can it's pretty simple math lol he had QQ and I was left with like 4K at 1200BB. I fold 82o UTG1 then fold 92o UTG before sticking it in blind vs significant action in my big blind. Grabel takes a while to fold vs a kid who I know as a solid player's 3b squeeze jam. The flatter folds and after I look to see I have 32o I ask Ben if he has a 3 or a 2. He says yes and turns over A3 lol. Board runs xxxx2 and I'm back to about 10BBs. A little later Grabel gets chopped down and jams his 15 or so BBs in, consisting mostly of black 100 value chips, from EP. I stick my last 7 bigs in with QT and beat his A6. He pays me in all blacks, about 8K worth LOL. So after all of this I'm back to close to starting stack and Fishberg moves back to my table. I fold a lot as I am prone to do with that stack size as I watch Fishberg start opening every hand again; he had over 100K in front of him. Eventually he opens CO and I jam KJ from SB for about 10BBs. Greg has AK gg me. How can he just have it every time!!

I came home and played a bunch of sngs and MTTs. I made a run in both of the biggest NJ MTTs before busting 12th in the Party 10K. I open 66 w 20BBs from CO and the BB 3b's to 5BBs. I should probably find a fold vs this villain but I stuck it in to see his 99. Felt pretty bad to bust in a spot I probably could have avoided. Played well and ran good in the WSOP 10K, which had a significantly larger prize pool than the Party 10K. From 9 down to 4 it took maybe 10 minutes; it was absurd to watch. I saw a reg flop quads against my buddy with 44 vs buddy's 66 right after he had taken most of the rest of his stack with 88 vs buddy's 66 and I wondered if 66 was the hand to avoid tonight. I watched this guy flat a 3b shove for like 9BBs with the guy who opened with 18BBs still behind him. 18BBs jammed and guy called with 55. I start thinking "how does this kid win so many tourneys??" 5 in the window and 99 and KK bust in 8th and 7th. Question answered! With 4 left I had 190K and the other 3 were all over 600K. I ended up 3b jamming, you guessed it, 66, and same guy had 88. Guess it's his night! 4th went for $949 in that one though so it was a nice day saver.

At 9AM I will be running the 5K I won last year. It's in a different place and I just learned tonight that it will be on all trails which is pretty brutal for me right now. I didn't run yesterday or today because my foot has really been hurting me. I iced it as much as I could the last 2 days but having to deal with roots and stuff might end up being a real pain tomorrow. I hope I run well though and maybe pull out the win! Most important thing is my health though so I really hope my foot doesn't give out while racing. I gotta go for it though I already paid the entry fee! Updates tomorrow!

The 5K went well this morning! Was just hoping to run sub 19:00 (and truth be told I would have been fine with sub 19:30) and was hoping my foot would hold up. I ended up considerably under 19:00 given 3 circumstances:
1) My watch had the run at 2.96 miles. It's possible it was a full 5K since my watch gets funky when there are trees around but I've noticed a lot of the road races seem to come up short according to my watch. Either way I'm calling this a full 5K
2) The course was incredibly flat. I don't think there was even a 5 second stretch of uphill the whole way, and it was an out and back, so 1.5 out and 1.5 back. This also makes it fun since everyone on the way out sees you coming back and you'll often get some nice words from other runners.
3) The weather was beautiful and I'm not used to it being so cool, which made it much easier on me.

Here's the time:



I ended up finishing 4th and since 2nd place was also in his 20s I didn't even get an age group award lol. Pretty wild to win a race last year then come back the next year, run it over 60 seconds faster, and not even win age group. Oh well, it makes sense since it's a different course in an area with more athletic people imo. It was a fun time and I'm glad I posted that time!!

He had 3 to cooler but an extra 10 to win the pot outright. Why are you flatting A3 from the SB here vs someone who is gonna barrel aggressive? Just asking to get blown off our hand or left guessing way to often, not like you're gonna make lots of flushes, this has to be a losing peel pre. 2ndly why aren't we check raising this flop that most likely doesn't hit him and winning the pot? You know he is barreling everything, what are you gonna do if you check call an a 8d peels? Seems like this hand was played terribly on every street but the river

These are good questions and when I described this hand to my friend I kinda just shrugged when justifying the preflop call. It can certainly be a fold but I think he almost never folds to a 3b and it's hard to watch a guy open every hand and give no resistance ever. It can def be a fold pre but I decided to peel since we were super deep and I've been quite confident in my postflop play as of late.

Check/raising the flop seems a bit ambitious to me. The upside to it is that we protect our hand, but I'm not sure I see much other upside than just winning the pot right there. I assume I have the best hand a lot here but when I c/r I think this villain might be able to make me fold the best hand really often later in the pot. If he flats I'm now playing a bloated pot with a pair of 3s against an aggro player who likes to float and still has a wide range, a lot of which has me beat now. Do I just c/f that same 8d turn now? Bet/fold? It seemed like a silly spot to bloat a pot in a hand where I have the best of it pretty often. I also have the added equity of the backdoor flush draw.

The turn is similar in that if I c/r and get 3b I've got too much equity to fold but am almost never good (I would have been in this spot and he would have had possibly the only hand that gets it in this deep that I beat).

At the end of the day I think I botched this hand simply because i should fold pre. But I think saying "c/r flop" is a little results oriented because for the most part I'm either making him fold his air or bloating the pot with a vulnerable hand that may or may not be good at showdown and this villain WILL make me guess.

Not sure how it's results oriented, you would have lost more. Can also 3 bet pre. Not sure why you want to fold such a strong hand vs a wide range but to each their own. Agree to disagree good luck

Hey man you're probably right like I said before I'm not super comfortable live and I'm just giving you my thoughts during the hand. They could certainly be incorrect and it wouldn't surprise me if they were. I don't think it's really THAT strong of a hand and it doesn't flop great but I think in game I was thinking there are implied odds if I smash the flop since I know I'll get at least one bet and if I get just a piece of the flop I'll have to trust that I make the best play. This might be an example of me not making the best play and therefore an argument for simply folding pre. I was also not a fan of 3 betting because I think I get flatted a lot but truth be told I have an ace blocker AND it's suited so there is some equity with it so it's probably a great hand to 3 bet.

I guess all I meant by results oriented is if I c/r flop here he probably flats and then I get a great turn card to barrel and the money goes in and I'm a favorite. But most of the time I think it gets stickier for me. That being said, thinking about it more I tend to agree with your line of thought more than my own. That's what poker is all about; bouncing ideas off of each other so that each individual person can come up with what he thinks is best and maybe expand the way he thinks about certain concepts. I definitely didn't mean to offend and I appreciate you taking the time to try to help me with this hand!!

Naw you didn't offend I am not great and don't play many tourneys, your way is prob best, especially if you are uncomfortable with said spot

Didn't go through the whole thread so sorry if i missed this-

Any reason you've decided to try and make a career in poker in tourneys over the cash games?

It's a lot of text to sludge through so no worries. Not sure if I even answered that question yet myself.

It's funny you asked that question today because I actually put a session of about 80 minutes in today at 1/2 online, just 1 tabling while relaxing after my race. Stacked the same guy on back to back hands and ended up winning $467.58 on the session.

In short I love MTTs because there is an ultimate goal and different strategies throughout to try to best achieve that goal. I have nothing but respect for cash game players and I do believe that you need to be better overall at poker to be a consistent winner in cash vs MTTs, but that's also why I believe the best of the best MTT players shouldn't have too much trouble winning at cash. I did quite well playing live 1/2 when I turned 21 before poker came back online in NJ. I have considered playing cash online but I'm not sure about it because it really is the same 5-10 guys grinding the higher stakes games consistently and none of them have huge leaks from what I have seen; I'm sure they are beatable but they certainly aren't giving the money away.

I did try grinding cash several months ago online and realized I really didn't like the swings. However I was way too much of a bankroll nit back then and I think I'd have a way better time handling those swings now, so maybe in the future I'll mix cash in. But tourneys will always be my favorite because of the strategy involved and that feeling of WINNING the tourney; a feeling that is really hard to simulate playing just cash games.

Hey guys I'm here posting from Borgata at the $400, $100K guarantee "players series" tourney. 45 minute levels day 1, 60 minute levels day 2 and 3. Just finished dinner break I have 495K coming back to 5K/10K with 19 left. $27K up top hoping to run good!

Is that near the chip lead?

Good luck, Also a recent grad trying to make it from Jersey. Ship it!

Heroed correctly: http://playersseries.blog.theborgata...sewnig-heroes/

And then didn't win any pots after lol. However after a flurry of knockouts in quick succession I've made the final table 10/10 with 197K at 8K/16K. There's about 24 minutes left in the level and with hour levels all day I will be grinding hard and will understand ICM better than most so it's just time to run good!

Sick call. What was your thought process or was it all live reads? Pretty nasty

Villain seemed really solid and when I checked the river I did it with the plan is possibly calling a bomb. He ended up betting half pot so I need to be good 1/4 the time to be profitable. Full action of hand: he goes 26K OTB at 6K/12K I defend BB K7cc. Flop: (74K pot) 732hh goes check check. Probably not the worst spot for a donk but went with the check. Turn 732hh8h I bet 30K he calls. I could probably go bigger or maybe even c/c again. River (134K) 732hh8hJh I check pretty quickly knowing he's probably bluffin if he has air. He bets 64K.

Thoughts: Against a random it's an easy fold imo. The call on the turn would have to be a better made hand or a heart. I think this villain realizes my line looks pretty weak though and was capable of floating with the plan of bluffing river if I shut down. He'll also certainly have a big heart sometimes. I also don't think it's very likely he'll bluff with better to try to make me fold a small heart, and if he did I think the sizing would be bigger. So while I don't think he has to have a huge heart to value bet here I do think he's checking back a decent amount of value hands.

As far as live reads he was still as a statue but he's probably looking like that even if he has it. It did make me feel like there was a slightly better chance he was bluffing but that's probably just results oriented thinking. So yeah when I called I think he turns over a better hand a decent amount but not over 75% of the time so my call would be profitable. It was nice to be right this time! I didn't even realize Will (the blogger) saw the hand because no one at my table seemed to be paying attention when I showed my hand. It was nice to see someone saw

Keep it up man! Hope you run well.

Question for you, is this structure different from the Saturday series 100k?

Yes it is an amazing structure that allows you to be a nit but also rewards players who can balance chipping up with preserving tournament life. I really felt in my element during this one. 30K starting stack, 45 minute levels on day 1 (the day ends at the conclusion of 800/1600), 1 hour levels day 2 and beyond.

So, 197K to start the day today at 8K/16K with 2K ante, and 2 players in the 15BB range. 10th paid $1200, 9th $1900, and 8th $2900, so ICM would be important. I folded KJ from UTG3 first hand and one of the short stacks won the pot. The other short stack won the next pot, and I squeeze AQo the next hand from UTG1. Before I can jam my chips though, UTG shoves about 250K. YUCK wtf do we do here??? UTG is possibly the best player at the table and he is certainly not over it or anything. I don't think he ever has AJ here, and with the way these older guys seem to care NOTHING about the pay jumps I decided to fold. I have no idea what the best player is here.

I ended up folding ATo a little later vs an UTG opener and a flat, and I have now folded 3 pretty good hands and have exactly 10BBs with 160K. And then the card rush comes! One of the big stacks loses a pot and opens the next hand from UTG2, so this time I feel confident when I find the ATo OTB. Money goes in and Abe "scumbag" Korotki (won a lady's event at Borgata, well known, long time angle shooter, etc) starts tanking from the BB as I stare at the felt straight in front of me. AT LEAST three times he puts both his hands behind his stack as if to shove and then brings it back, and I was tempted to do something I never do and start talking. Woulda been along the lines of "you can keep doing that **** as much as you want but you're not going to get a reaction out of me" but I elected to stay silent. Finally he folds and then the opener SNAP folds!! I thought for sure I was gonna need to win at showdown there. Maybe 2 hands later a kid (who I thought was decent but he clearly thought he was one of the best) opens and I get to jam 99 now. He tanks a bit and folds. A few hands later I find KK and now have enough chips that I can just open. Everyone folds and I'm now playing over 340K!

The blinds go up to 10K/20K and one of the shorter stacks busts. It was an old guy who I learned this morning won a WSOP bracelet in 1994!!! OG in the house. So anyway at this point I have not shown down any of my hands so I expect people might beginning to suspect that I'm jamming light (even though I haven't been) and I squeeze AA. WOW how do you get aces at a final table. I have 300K to start the hand and am in early position. I MIGHT rip it all in if every player at the table was competent but even then I might just open; at this table it was for sure going to be just an open. Korotki flats and the guy who shoved 25BBs on the stone bubble yesterday with JTs and got there vs AA 3b's to 125K. I swear I was saying "please please please do it" in my head and when he did, this strange feeling came over me. It was along the lines of "if you bust this hand, you have done your job for the day and you damn well better walk out of this place with your head held high." I took about 20-30 seconds before jamming just to balance when I actually have a decision in this spot, then put it in. Abe folds, guy snap calls with KK and starts crying about it, and board runs 457K (He POUNDS the table to the point that chips bounce around) 8 and my tournament is over in 9th for $1943.

The K on the turn made me go numb for about 5 seconds but after that I stood up, shook hands with "The Worm" (Joe Palma, solid player and really nice guy, giving me all the condolences he could without being over the top about it), shook hands with the solid Scottish player who came into the day with almost a short a stack as me, shook hands with Will the blogger (really cool guy btw who works SUPER hard at his job) and said good luck. Going into today I really wanted to make sure I shook everyone's hand before I left if I busted, just to prove to myself that my mental game is where it needs to be, but this one was a bit too painful to muster up that energy so I simply gave a little wave and walked to the cage. Here's the write up on the blog for anyone interested: http://playersseries.blog.theborgata...l-sewnig-1943/

So the pain is real, but I am really proud of myself for my reaction. For those who were wondering about my whole bankroll situation, winning this tournament would have, almost to the dollar, exactly doubled my bankroll. So it was a pretty big deal to me. That being said, I'm just gonna work that much harder. It's not my time yet to have the big score that sets me up nicely for a while. Maybe it is for the best that the hunger and passion is forcibly kept alive now since I will need to get back to the grind to set up my financial goals before the end of 2015. I'll comment more on those in the next post. I'll end this one with some chip stacks from along the way; I wanted to post them while playing but couldn't figure out how to do it on my mobile.

Nit stack #1 from early on day 2:



Up to 340K at 5KBB after catching a strange punt AQ>Q4, then KK>AT SB vs button (which got in on JT4 flop), then very next hand open 86cc OTB, Jesse "noxcape" Elliot (big NJ online grinder who I play with quite often) flats SB, I c-bet A84cc to 12K he 3b to 27K I 4b to 75K ready to go and he gives me a sheepish smile before folding:



Nit stack #2 from late on day 2 (510K maybe?):

I want to list some goals I have for the last four months of this year. They are going to be very ambitious and will require a lot of run good, along with continued persistence in studying to improve and continued focus. I am going to be a little bit more open with everything, occasionally mentioning my bankroll and opening up about personal finances. I used to write a blog on a small poker forum called Surfers Poker and include what my bankroll was after each day, but I think that put too much pressure on me to produce winning results each day or I would start feeling like a failure, which is obviously a ridiculous way to feel as a poker player. So I will not be posting day to day updates of my bankroll but will be giving a basic idea from time to time.

The Major Goals

Here are the three major goals I have by January 1, 2016. I will not be totally disappointed if I do not reach them since, like I said, they are very ambitious and will require some serious run good.

1) Have at least $10,000 in my savings account, and maintain that at all times. This will be the first thing I shoot for since I think it is vital to have money saved in case poker starts going really bad really fast.

2) Have at least $5000 in checking for spending. As of right now I am spending about $1200 per month, which includes about $140 per month for student loans and $240 a month for phone bill and car insurance. I could probably lower this $1200 if I stopped spending money on fun, weekly things like the beach/movies/arcades/recreational Atlantic City activities, but then life would not be as fun, and I don’t want to be a robot focused solely on making money while I’m still in my early 20s.

3) Have a $50,000 bankroll. It is currently hovering around $30,000, and for perspective on how well I will need to run to get to this goal, here is a list of my monthly results this year:

a. January: +$8270
b. February: +$1380
c. March: -$2530
d. April: +$1210
e. May: +$7120
f. June: +$6160
g. July: -$3650
h. August: +$7500 (as of August 28)

I’m averaging right around +$3200 per month. There are some things to take into consideration about this though.

Thoughts on This Year's Results So Far

February through the beginning of May I was taking a class at Ramapo, which is 80 miles from my house. I would stay with my girlfriend and spend time with her, along with spending time on the class, which took away time from poker. This is probably a big part of the reason I was up a whopping +$60 combined through those three months. That being said, getting the degree and spending time with her were absolutely the priority then and I don’t regret a minute of it. If we exclude those months though, the average is now around +$5100. I also was not in “serious” grind mode in January; I binked a 4th in a $500 tourney for about $5000 which accounted for much of that profit. I also took a month long vacation from June 27 through July 18, then came back and ran the worst I ever have to end July. So the -$3650 in July was certainly a good example of what negative variance can do, but is also partly because I missed 2.5 weeks that month. If we exclude July now along with February-April, my average month is over $7000.

Thoughts on the Rest of the Year

So does any of this really mean anything? I did just remove my four worst months and averaged out my four best months, but is $7000 per month sustainable if I focus really hard and keep on the grind? I don’t know. My mom recently asked me, “So Dan, is a year enough time to tell what your true win rate is? Would it give you a good idea of how much money you would make per year if you continue to do this for a long time?” I couldn’t give her an accurate answer! “Probably not, but it should at least give a very basic idea” was the main answer I gave her, but variance is a tough thing to decipher sometimes. A good example of this comes from a few days ago when I got 9th in the live tourney. AA<KK to bust is unfortunate but just a part of the game. However if I hold there and then continue to run and play good and go on to win the tournament, then August would have been +$32,500 instead of +$7500!! Those average numbers would be insane now! So good years and bad years are also certainly a thing. The main thing to focus on is to simply continue playing well.

Conclusion

Which brings me back to my original point. These goals I am making are ambitious and if variance hits me in a negative way, I need to simply shrug and not worry about missing my goals. If it hits me in a good way though, the goals will be reached and then some. Had I won the live tourney, I would have taken that additional $25K I’d won, thrown 8 of it into savings, 5 of it into checking, 11 of it into student loans (and have ZERO student loan debt), and had an additional thousand to pad the bankroll. As it is, the grind must continue! I expect to spend $5000 in expenses from now until January 1. I want an additional $5000 in checking, $8000 in savings, and $20,000 in my bankroll. That means from now until January 1 I need to make $38,000, or about $9500 per month. To reach this goal I’ll probably need a big live score along with continued success online. This is still probably way too overly optimistic, but putting the 10K away into savings is the only really big important goal I want to make sure I hit. Otherwise I can continue to just withdraw $1200 each month to pay for the next month and continue to build the roll. Only time will tell but I think setting goals like this while being realistic about the fact that they will be hard to reach will only make me hungrier to grind hard and get it done.

One Last Thing

Reading through my posts here so far and reading other people's posts in PG&C I have realized that my posts are a bit sloppy since they aren't broken up at all. I'm going to try to continue to separate my thoughts by using headings and other things so that if you are bored with one section you can skip to the part that might interest you without having to weed through the rest. Hopefully that will make for an easier read in the future!

Edit: Just reread my last post and realized I made one of my biggest pet peeve mistakes, calling a raise on the flop a 3b!! I think I just remembered the fact that I did in fact 3b Jesse postflop in this hand and then I wrote it too quickly, but yeah I bet Jesse c/r I 3b Jesse fold.

Super Turbo Sit n Go Leaderboard

I tried to grind super turbo sit n gos today but they really just don't get off the ground. Today was the last day of the 2 week leaderboard promo they had and while the payouts for the winners isn't anything spectacular, it is free money to be had while grinding sng's which are already soft and quite profitable to begin with. I was in a 3 way battle with a guy who is easily the biggest sng grinder on the NJ sites and another guy who I have seen around but never seen grind that hard. Here's a look at the leaderboard going into today:



I was right in the mix and then I took 3 days to play that silly live tourney and fell behind. 1st gets $230, 2nd $130, 3rd $90. Points are awarded with the formula "square root (buy in * entrants / place finished)". Since really only the $25 and $10 6 man supers ever ran, you could get 12.2 points for winning a $25 and that ended up being the max. For some reason the top 50% of finishers in each sng got points, so even if you got 3rd and didn't cash you'd still pick up some points. I'm not sure if I did enough to move into 2nd today to pass GucciMane69 (great screenname) but I'm positive I got at least 3rd. So either way, free money is cool.

The Concept and Pain of "Profitable" Shoves

I just finished 6th in the WSOP 10K, the biggest MTT that runs on weekdays in NJ. There was $2900 up top and I was 1/11 at one point, so 6th is a bit of a bummer. The way I busted is more of a bummer because while I think the way I busted was theoretically profitable, I'd imagine it was far from optimal. I'll present the situation and then explain what I mean by all of this.

Six left, I have 265K at 5K/10K and have a similar stack to 2 other players. A 3rd is around 180K, 1st has 600K, and 2nd has maybe 400K. It folds to the CO who has the same stack as me and opens to 20K. Button folds and I have 77 in the SB. There is 42K in the middle and I have a hand that does much better preflop than post. I am not quite deep enough to set mine, and 3b/folding with this hand seems pretty terrible. I could flat without the intention of just set mining, instead hoping to make really good postflop decisions without a huge window to make mistakes in. But I think jamming pre is profitable. I'll get folds a ton of the time since getting stacked here will cost him lots of money, and he should be pretty wide opening from the CO. And I do flip with some of his calling range. I shove, he snaps with AA, and I bust in 6th for $500 and change, missing out on a potential $2400 more. Ouch!!!

I still argue that this shove is profitable! In the long run I will make chips in this spot! However, when he does wake up with one of the 7 hands (42 total combos of these hands too since PPs, with 6 combos each, are less likely than non PPs, like AK, which have 16 combos each) that beat me (and truth be told there's a non zero chance 88 finds a fold here), it is pretty devastating. So those are the breaks! The shove might be profitable, but the variance will be higher. If I flat the raise I end up c/f'ing a lot and probably give away more chips in the long run. But I do not bust there very often at all after flatting. So with the ICM implications of it all, I'd imagine flatting is best. Shoving here might have been a very costly mistake indeed.

Today's Results

I made $401.56 in tournaments today, $558.70 in buy ins and $960.26 in returns, but that 10K is really gonna stick with me. If I laddered one more spot I'd officially finally have a 30K BR, and if I won I coulda take a little chunk off for savings and spending money for next month. The plan is to only withdraw money on the first day of each month, so this woulda set it up nicely. However the grind must just continue now! I've been setting up a package for the upcoming Borgata Poker Open in September and I am quite excited about it. Hopefully another live run will be coming my way. More details on that later though!