That's total tournament thinking, there is no advantage to the OOP player just because he can shove first, he can't bust the other player (supposedly, unless he is playing for his last $ which might happen on rare occasions)

As for the hand esp in 1/2 Id never bet the turn here. You fold out everything worse mostly and nobody ever folds a J. I mean on rare occasions either of the two might happen but not enough.

I think there is even a saying to that, I dont recall exactly but basically it says peeps dont fold boats, no matter the situation/action. That makes it a good value bet if you have an A and a terrible bluff. Id bet more here too with an A. I normally advocate aggressive play but thats the wrong situation here

And 25 game cold streaks are totally standard in tourney poker even if you have a supposedly strong edge. I think that's not a huge part of your BR but that's your stuff. I'd be more concerned about the rake and structures, it's hard to have a huge edge when you have like 20min levels and 30% rake.

In a few posts, you guys have concisely and effectively summed up the pros and cons of grinding small stakes liveaments. The Wynn/Encore has added a real nice one starting Oct 15th: $140, $5k gtd, 30 minute blinds, $T15,000 starting stacks--AFAIK the best live offering at that level in Las Vegas.

I'll be playing that once a week. If I cash there, or otherwise run well in cash/freerolls from the previous week, then I'll add a second TBD tourney off the proceeds--trying to minimax the tourney eROI over variance x time.

Have you seen this?

Thanks Sheep! I'll be using that as a reference.

The challenge had a setback at the Orleans on Wednesday. I had AA and KK cracked within 4 minutes of each other, both on low SPR flops where I was never folding.

The shorter stack giveth; the shorter stack taketh away. I still have two stacks and a short buy left to burn at $1/$3, so all is not lost.

I'm getting behind on my posts, which is appropriate, as I have one on the front burner about procrastination. That will be posted...eventually.

Wednesday: Orleans: 4 hours:
(-$600)

Three Stacks Challenge:$1/$3 Level:

Link to Challenge Rules

Starting bankroll: $600
Last bankroll: $1315
Challenge day progress: -$600
Current bankroll: $715
Bankroll needed for $2/$5: $1875

Procrastination

Two years ago I found and bookmarked a post on the top page of Reddit titled along the lines of "Watch this video and never procrastinate again!"

I watched it today for the first time

A lot of the video is standard rational emotive Psych PhD gobbledygook, so I'll give the most basic cliffs: we procrastinate because it feels good in the short term. Later, when the consequences hit us, there's a disconnect between the pain we feel in the present and the pleasure we felt from avoiding it in the past. We treat them as two separate events, only tenuously related.

The negative conditioning of avoiding pain > the punishment later on. Punishment rarely ever establishes a good conditioning link; it only leads to more avoidance behaviors.

I'm a grown man who has literally pumped his fist in the air after deciding to put off an arduous task until some unspecified later time. As an example, I've avoided buying health insurance for months. I've looked into it and it looks complicated as ****, because it is as complicated as ****. But if I don't get it, and I get hurt or sick, I'm ruined, busto, bankrupt. I'll look into it tomorrow.

So yesterday, I had 7 more hours still to play at the Flamingo to make their 15 hour nut required for their weekly freeroll. It's a good freeroll: $5 (nuisance fee) entry, usually 100 runners: top 20 get $400 each, 21-40 get $200 each. $500 in, $12,000 out. Easy game.

The freeroll starts at 10AM on Friday. At 2PM on Thursday, I'd had a big buffet lunch and was feeling a bit logy on my way to the cash game. I went home instead and took a long nap, helped along by two big cans of 14% alcohol Four Loko Gold.

No problem: I would simply play from midnight to 7, have breakfast, and hit the freeroll. I had all the time in the world.

I got on the table at 11:40PM. After that it was a grind. I was up and down, up and down. Around 4 AM a terrible thought hit me and I checked my poker log to confirm. I had underestimated my hours. I had actually needed 9, not 7 hours, to make the freeroll.

No problem: I would suck it up and play until 8:40 instead of 6:40. I'd still have enough time to grab breakfast at the end. I'd just have to roll with a 9 hour session, although I've never been equipped to go much past 7 hours at one table.

Around 7AM, with the morning sun beating through the glass doors, and the morning smells permeating, and the fresh scrubbed faces walking around, I was dead even and dead tired, thinking of myself as being in an overtime purgatory of my own making. That's when I picked up TT on the button multiway and saw a T4489 board.

I almost never slowplay the flop at $1/$2. You make a hand and you bet and raise it early and often, and that's how you make money at this level. But I had smashed that flop to splinters, so I just flatcalled the opener on it. On the turn I ran into an unfortunate fellow traveler holding 88, and I got his stack. Massive cooler sir.

Around 8:20 I was in the home stretch. Only 20 more minutes...19 minutes. I heard the dealer explaining the freeroll to one of the players. I heard the words 'up until 8AM'. 18 minutes....17 minutes until 8:40 and my 15 hours.

I popped up in my chair. "Is there a cutoff? For today's Freeroll?"
"Yeah, it's 8AM." The dealer told me.



I racked up and double checked my hours for the week with the floor. I had a few extra minutes in there from previous sessions. I had 14.68 hours for the week, cut off at 8 AM. Anything after then didn't count towards my 15 hours. I was not going to the freeroll.

Flamingo: 9 hours:
+$313

I appreciate you, Sheep!

Update: I'm losing and things are spinning a bit out of control.

Let's start with the new Wynn daily tourney: $140, $5k gtd, 30 minute blinds; an excellent structure--the best in Las Vegas for the price in terms of maximizing ROI for a low stakes TAG tourney reg. Let's continue with results from yesterday: 6 1/2 hours spent, out in 10th, 2 from the bubble.

Now let's do the math. If I average 6 hours a pop in this generous show, with a 30% ROI over the rake--an ambitious estimate--I'll make $7 an hour.

No can do. I'll have to stick to the higher variance 20 minute blind tournies.

So I'm losing, I'm not putting in the hours, I'm drinking, and my identity is being diffused a bit. If I'm not a winning poker player, then I'm a losing poker player, and that's not the sort of identity one should aspire to. (BTW, it's perfectly okay to end your sentences with a preposition. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a rules nit.)

Eastern philosophy treats the death of identity, aka the ego, as a good thing, and a step on the path to Enlightenment. Western philosophy begs to differ, and labels it as a crisis, one commonly occurring in the middle of one's life.

For a solution: simply put, I need some structure. I need to make up a definitive schedule and to follow it in the short term, and I need to quit drinking in the medium term. Details to follow.

Bally's: 4 hours:
(-$439)

Bally's Freeroll
+$85

Flamingo: 4 hours:
(-$127)

Wynn $140, $5k gtd:
(-$140)

Mr. Suitedjustice, I am not a philosopher. So, take this as just the musings of an interested observer of your awesome blog.

IMHO...

Our actions flow naturally from our identity. We do what we are, or what we *think* we are. Of course, we are in control.

If you are unsatisfied with your doings, then you need to figure out what you really are.

Whatever you are will also be better without the booze.

The winning or losing at poker, ultimately is beside the point and way less important than resolving your identity. Also, many poker players play better when real life outside poker is in good order.

If you were sunrunning in poker right now, would you be having an identity duffusion? I think so, and as it should be. Your poker is a doing, not your identity. Ultimately it is just a job to pay the bills. Too many men derive their identity from their job.

I want you to win all the money in Vegas, Mr. Suitedjustice. But more importantly I want you to be satisfied with the reflection in the mirror.

Well said Robert

If you think that ultimately drinking will get the better of you (and only you know this), whether it be one day or 6 months from now, you should just give it up. It will be a slippery slope until the inevitable.

Booze + betty = much regretty (but only if you think so!)

robert, my heart is full. I'll need to sober up a bit to address your profoundly wise post. But for now...

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To some extent, we are responsible for our own happiness. I write this with a big caveat for the people who suffer from clinical depression. They are expected to run the happiness program on systems which aren't designed for it.

I don't think that I'm depressed. Graded on the spectrum, I'm somewhat melancholic, but there's probably not much neurochemically standing in my way, so it is up to me to make more of an effort. I'm sure that decoupling my identity from the job--with its extreme ups and downs--is a step in the right direction.

I will be quitting in a few weeks, after I get back from a trip to Japan and Taiwan, places where abstaining from drinking is a poorly understood concept.

I'm more of a Wilma guy. It's always been easier for me to chat up redheads, for whatever reason.

because they are redheads?

I take that back immediately...

YASSS REDHEADS

Also solid gifing ITT

Leveling Up

By now, I know a dozen or so Flamingo $1/$2 regs by name, and I've been noticing something odd going on with them: a number of them seem to be asking for table changes more often than I've noticed in the past.

The most likely explanation is that they've always moved around a lot, and that I simply didn't notice them moving around before I started tagging them as regs and noting their various foibles. The second most likely explanation is that the game has become more reg infested, and that they're moving around more lately to find better games. The least likely explanation--and of course the one that I like to entertain the most--is that they're moving away from me.

Lately, I've picked up some compliments on my play from a few regs, coming when they've not been in the hand, which tends to mean more. I've also been kidded about always having a big stack in front of me. I picked up the trick of always topping up from Bart Hanson's articles. The max buyin is $300, but I often have $500+ in front of me. Half the time it's because I've won the $200+, but it's just as likely that I'm in for $500-$700, having topped up at some point or points, then won some of it back. Hanson writes that the regs will discount the latter spot and always assume that you're winning a lot of the time. I think he's right.

If things keep progressing along these lines, I will consider taking some shots at $2/$5 soon.

I also hit the next tier on my Caesars Group Total Rewards Card. I'm platinum baby. I skipped over my first hour-long buffet line this morning at the Flamingo. Feels good man. Their breakfast buffet has a $1 all you can drink Bloody Mary special. With me being a drunk and a nit, there is no resisting that offer.

I've experimented with unlimited Bloody Marys in the past, and generally they contain too much sodium to support very large unit consumption--thus the availability of specials--however, unlimited drinking should not generally be the goal for mid-week breakfasting. A nice morning buzz will suffice.

Naptime now. I will hit the Orleans later for some overnight $1/$3 challenge hours.

Wednesday: Flamingo: 5 hours:
+$93

Thursday: Flamingo: 6 hours:
+$263

Friday: Flamingo Freeroll: 2.5 hours
+$185