Poker Game Journal

September 2007

September 26
I certainly played a "go big or go home" style today in the six-handed No Limit World Championship of online poker event. On the fourth hand of the tournament I flopped a set versus my opponents open end straight flush draw. All our chips got into the pot and I lost the hand when he made a straight on the turn and I didn't improve on the river.

After I was eliminated (I was the sixth person out), I remembered The Bike is having their Big Oktober Tournaments going on right now. I am going to play in the Omaha/Stud HiLo event tonight and am pretty certain I can do better than I did earlier.

September 25
I watched Survivor last week with Jean-Robert Bellande and was not impressed. One thing I never want to see again in my life is Bobby without his shirt on. He certainly gives Phil Hellmuth Jr. a run for his money in the "worst shirtless" physique award. One thing that I was very surprised about was the lack of comments on the online poker forums about how he looked physically. If it were a chick, she would have had been torn apart. It's kind of sick how a large portion of the online forum posters comment about the way women in poker look. It's all about whether she is hot or not and that is pathetic.

Back to Survivor: I have always been a fan of the show and have watched it every season. I have never really been a huge fan of Bobby because I don't think he is the brightest crayon in the box. I think that really came across on the show. He gained nothing by grilling the flight attendant and letting him know what his read was. He basically called him out as a clever player and the only thing it did was make the flight attendant suspicious of Bobby. He certainly didn't make a friend of him and on that show you need every friend you can get. The million dollar vote might depend on it. The previews for this week's Survivor shows Bobby under fire from the other tribe members because of his poor work ethics. The show doesn't like to give out hints to the outcome of the votes, so that makes me think he is going to make it through another week.

Tomorrow is the 6-handed No Limit WCOOP tournament. I am looking forward to playing it and hopefully can play like I played in last nights small $27 buy in tournament. On Sunday I played in the $1050 No Limit tournament and played pretty well, but didn't feel like I was playing to win it (I played a little scared). During last nights small tourney, I played to accumulate chips. I had more of a "go big or go home" attitude and it helped a lot. I didn't play the sissy game that I have been playing the majority of the time over the course of this year. I ended up making it into the money and got eliminated in a typical race situation (I had JJ against my opponent's AQ). If I had won that hand, I would have been in great shape to make the final table. I have to remember that while playing tomorrow. The size of the buy-in makes a difference in my play. It is much easier to get your chips in when your investment is smaller. I really have to get over that. I am going to have to treat tomorrow's tourney like a small tournament if I want to have a shot at winning.

Read some the poker terms in my definition section: buy, stand pat, marked cards, to-go, marker, and stacked deck.

September 22
I haven't done so well in the three WCOOP events I have played in. The first one was the Omaha event and I did the best in that one. It is pretty important to showdown a winner on occasion and in the last hour of my play I had difficulty doing that.

The second event was the $215 w/ rebuys. I invested less than expected, but never really got the ball rolling. I immediately did the rebuy so I had 6k in chips. The first hand I got involved in, the player didn't rebuy so I lost 3k of my chips when his QQ held up against my AK. The next hand I took AA against KQ. On a board of Kxx he made a pot size bet and I just called intending to make a move on the turn. A queen hit on the turn and he bet out again. I immediately told myself "Shit, he has KQ", but he didn't have a lot of chips and if my read was correct then I still had outs. I didn't improve and lost that hand too. Once again, I didn't lose all my chips so I could only do one more rebuy. I finished the rebuy period with the same amount I started with (6k) and did the add-on during the break. My luck didn't run any better after that and I was out about an hour later.

Yesterdays Razz tournament was ridiculous. My favorite episode of the WSOP was when they aired the Razz event in 2004. It was so amusing to watch the top pros get so irritated while playing and nearly all of them said "this is a stupid game" (or something to that effect) at some point or another. That is exactly how I felt yesterday. I waited and waited and waited for some good starting hands and they were coming few and far between. I remember the first thing Steve taught me about the game was that one of the most important factors in Razz is patience. So, I tried to not get frustrated, but it was difficult. Finally a few hours into it, I got this great run of starting cards and four hands later I was out because every single one of those hands I lost. I started with 653, 234, 245 and on my final hand I had A24 against 843. These four hands were dealt consecutively and I hit a king on three of four of them. Once I was eliminated I was cursing the computer screen about what a stupid game it is. The funny thing is that I actually love the game, but at that moment I was seeing red.

Today is the HORSE tournament and I am hoping things go better for me. I am ready to stay focused and do what it takes to take the thing down (if the cards cooperate of course).

September 18
My trip to Wisconsin went surprisingly well and I even had some time to hit up the local casino. Getting used to rules at new places is always an adjustment, but on this trip I had a particularly hard time.

In California, you can move your hand in a forward motion with a handful of chips and place only one on the table. In this casino, any chip that moves beyond the "courtesy line" is considered the bet. I got called twice on this because I have a habit of keeping chips in my hand (often times I am doing tricks) and will bring them all forward and drop one chip if I am just calling. The dealer reminded me of it twice and let it slide, but said that if I did it again, they were going to have to make the bet stand. I got close a couple times, but never put more than the intended amount in front of the "courtesy line" again. I can understand that rule, but some of the other ones they had were just ridiculous.

I was playing in the $100-500 buy-in game and I bought in for the maximum amount. While sitting there, a player came over to the table and tried to buy in for $150, but they wouldn't allow it. The casino rule is that all buy-ins have to be in increments of $100. That rule is extremely silly, but I chose not to question the ruling because I won't be going back there any time soon. They also will not allow you to add to your stack unless you are below $100. If you buy-in for $500 and then go down to $130, they will not let you buy in for $300 more. In order to do the buy-in, you have to lose the $30 and then you can bring your stack up. I have a list of pet peeves when it comes to poker and they touched on a lot of them. They never pulled bets in if there was a raise, they ALWAYS counted out chips if players went all in even if his opponent didn't ask for a chip count. If two players went all-in heads-up, they made the pot right instead of waiting until the river (you don't have to make it right if the person who wins the pot has more chips than the other player)... I could go on. I wasn't even losing and I felt like I was on tilt because every time I turned around they did something else idiotic. Despite the rules, I pulled off a win and enjoyed myself somewhat.

This morning I played in a fpp tournament. I thought it was a tournament for a seat, but it was only a satellites for the round 2 event. I turned 1,000 fpps into 5,000 fpps because I have no intention of playing round 2. Steve always teases me about being the queen fpp player and he really razzed me about playing to win a whopping 5k points.

Tomorrow is the Omaha Hi/Low tournament of the WCOOP and it also happens to be the first event I am playing in. I plan on playing Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday too. I am looking to start out tomorrow with a bang and am planning on doing it by really focusing and getting a good nights rest. I am still on Midwest time, so I have been going to bed early and waking up early (by my standards - 9:30 am). My new schedule should work out good for the next couple events.

September 12
I have been playing some of the small qualifier tournaments to get me ready for the WCOOP. So far, I have won four seats, but have unregistered in three of them. I am not sure which tournaments I am going to play, but I know I will play a lot of them.

I know I won't be playing in the first few because I am going out of town for a days. Two of the seats I won were for the Sunday $530 tourney. I will be flying home on that day, so obviously I won't be playing in it. I think my first event will be on Wednesday. Making my first tournament the Omaha Hi/Low one is probably a good idea. I could really start my series off with a bang. I have been playing a lot better online than I have for awhile. I thought for sure I was going to break my "no cash" streak this past Sunday in the Omaha tourney, but I caught a horrible run of flops (and cards) and was knocked out a few out of the money. I have really noticed that my online play isn't anywhere close to my b&m casino play. I have been working on playing better by not multi-tasking and by focusing more. I have a few tricks to keep me from letting my mind stray while playing the WCOOP events. We'll see how it works out for me over the next couple of weeks.

Check out my recent profile of Jean-Robert Bellande (Bobby). He will be on one of my favorite television shows of all time, Survivor. I have always thought a poker player would have the skills to win the game, but Bobby wouldn't have been one of my choices. We will see how well he does.

September 4
I played in the $11 w/ rebuy tournament on PokerStars tonight and I am a little disappointed in the way that it turned out. I am not a huge fan of the tournament, but every once in awhile I get the urge to play in it. I was just eliminated and I will probably not be playing it again for awhile.

I played for more than four hours and played some really good poker. I did a lot better tonight staying focused and really limited my multi-tasking. After four hours of play, I finished with a profit of $10.24. There were 1767 players in the tourney and I finished in 100th place.

There were several hands that I could talk about, but I am going to talk about one only. There is absolutely no way a player can win a tournament if they don't win hands in the following situation:

A player limped in early position and I decided to just flat call on the button with AJ. We both had average stacks and I wanted to play with this player while I had position on him. The flop was AQ5. He bet 6k and I was pretty sure that I had the best hand because he would have raised preflop with AK and if he hit a huge flop like AQ, he would have checked to me on the flop. I thought about just flat calling on the flop, but then decided to just push because based on a hand earlier I figured he would call me if he had any sort of hand. He called and turned over A5. The turn was another queen so he was drawing very slim to chop the pot and sure enough another queen fell on the river giving us both a full house. He ended up going broke 3 hands later giving his chips to another player.

I think I am going to play some ring games over the next couple of days because tournaments are making me crazy.

September 2
Last night I played in a satellite to the Omaha WCOOP (World Championship of Online Poker) event on PokerStars. They gave three seats and I won a seat.

I don't know what possessed me to play it. I felt like playing a little tournament poker and the satellites looked like a good choice. For the most part, I played really well and when we got down to one table I thought I had a strong chance of winning my seat. I had that confidence that I once had and that can make a huge difference while playing.

Today I decided to try a couple regular tournaments, but didn't have as much luck. The first one I played was the $215 HORSE and only made it through half the field. A lot of my chips were lost in the Holdem round when I had an overpair (AA) to my opponents flopped set of threes. I ended up getting eliminated in the Stud Hi/Low round on a hand that is very questionable. Looking back on it, I played it poorly and will try to play better next time.

This evening I played in the $55 w/ 1 optional rebuy and 1 add-on. I started out really well and when the first break rolled around, I was the chip leader. I had 17k in chips and the next person had 12k. The really big hand that I won before the break was when a player pushed in from early to mid position and the person behind him pushed for $3900. I had about 7k and I needed to decide whether I thought my hand was best. I had JJ and I thought that the second guy wouldn't push in if he had AA, KK or QQ because he would want to entice action. The first guy only had about $2 in chips, but I didn't think he would push with a reasonable hand, so I was pretty certain my hand was best. I ended up pushing in (which was irrelevant because I was in position and the $3900 it was going to cost me to play with player number 2 would have been enough to have them covered if they decided to play). The player in the big blind ended up overcalling. Player number one had A-rag suited, player number had AK, I had JJ, and the big blind had QQ. I flopped a jack and scooped the huge pot. After the break, I lost two hands with AK and TT. I lost another pot with QJ of diamonds when I was in the blind and called one player. I hit the jack, but he had KK. I ended up getting eliminated in 21st place. They paid 18.