Tuesday, January 19, 2010

WBCOOP 2010

Online PokerI have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! This PokerStars tournament is a No Limit Texas Hold’em event exclusive to Bloggers, you too can take part by registering on WBCOOP
Registration code: 004130

Monday, January 11, 2010

Second week in January?

Wow, 2010 is moving along quickly.  It's already the second week in January and I have not put in the tournament volume I had been planning on.  Yesterday (Sunday the 10th) should have been a mtt grind day, but the wife and I took my daughter to Disneyland.  We go there about 4-5 times a year since it is so close to San Diego so its always funner when we can keep it a secret and surprise her by telling her we are going somewhere else.  I must say, it had to be one of the most enjoyable Disneyland trips we have ever taken.  The weather was perfect and we rode every ride with minimal wait since it was not very busy.

That means I will have to make up volume this week and the upcoming weekend.  Last week during the week was also pretty slow.  I didn't play much.  The most significant poker related event was me late registering for a $3.30 mtt on Stars and busting out in 38th when when I shoved Ah5h with 17BBs and couldn't suckout on AdJd.  I was actually way ahead on a 5 X X flop with 2 hearts, but he managed to fade the flush and spike a 3 outter on the river to retake the hand.

I will most likey have to put in the volume in the wee hours of the morning during this week since my Chargers are playing the Jets in the playoffs on Sunday.  I guess if I did some early 7:00am or 8:00am mtts, I could finish in time to catch most of the game.  We'll have to see how it goes.

Go Chargers!!!!

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Coping with the Bad Beats

As my game develops, I find that I am able to consistently build decent to deep sized stacks in the micro tourneys I am playing. This has greatly increased my confidence level tremendously. But for the past few weeks, I am now faced with the emotional effects of taking bad beats in the mid to late stages of tournaments and how it affects my concentration and my ability to play solid poker in tourneys I am running simultaneously. Early game beats don’t bother anymore, but it’s when you’re in the money having invested about 3 to 4 hours, built a top 15 stack and take that awful bad beat from a table chip leader to knock you out. At first this was really difficult to handle, but I am slowly adjusting.

I have been watching an awesome video series that was recently posted on Poker X Factor. Doubledave22 did a live recording while grinding a bunch of tourneys. I watched as he played excellent poker and still took some ridiculous bad beats. This just reinforces that fact that I cannot be results oriented and by playing solid poker, skill will outlast luck in the long run. The online pros are a testament to this ideology.

I was at home yesterday and took the opportunity to play some tourneys. I played maybe 12 tourneys between PokerStars and Absolute Poker. I took bad beats to get knocked out of the tourneys near the bubble in 7 of the 12 tourneys. The other 5 I just never picked up any playable hands to help me build a stack which is pretty standard. I am happy to say though, that through all the beats yesterday, I continued to play solid poker.

Last night I grinded the 6-max NL cash game on both Stars and AP to win back my tourney buy-ins for the day. I am happy to say that my 6-max game is still strong enough to pull off a nice little profit. You have to keep in mind that I play .02/.05 NL on Stars and did a little .05/.10 NL on AP. I am actually rolled for a much bigger game on AP but I feel like playing lower is just easy money. After all was said and done last night, I ended up +$29 on Stars and +$33 on AP. I was curious and wanted to see what my stats looked like after a short cash session. I remembered to reset the stats on Stars and this is what it looked like after one hour of play:

(2 tabling)
Hands dealt: 122
Hands played (saw the flop): 35
Hands won: 24
Hands won at showdown: 10
Hand won without showdown: 14

Hopefully things go better the rest of the week. I am really focusing on building my roll as the UBOC is coming and I plan on playing a few of the “mini” events.

As for live poker, I have the monthly South Side Players tourney this weekend and I have the Viejas Poker Classic II satellite in two weeks. I also heard that Oceans 11, a card room about 50 miles from me, spreads some great tourneys that I may have to check out. Apparently they run deep stack tourneys with 30 minute level for about $100-$120.

That all for now, good luck at the tables!

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Happy NYE 2010

2010 is finally here!  Happy New Year everyone!

So today was the first Sunday grind session of the year.  I ran way below expectation in my opinion as I was coolered multiples times today.  The two biggest tourneys I played today were the PokerStars Sunday Quarter Million and the Absolute Poker "The Dime" tourney.  Obviously the prize pool on Stars was $250K+ and The Dime is a 10K guaranteed but is usually much larger.  Along with these two tourneys, I played a ton of tourneys across the three major sites which also includes Full Tilt Poker.

I made an observation today as I was 12 tabling online tournaments.  12 tables is WAY TOO MANY tables for me to manage.  It's too difficult to pay attention to what the other players are doing as well as making sure I am playing solid poker.  When you have 12 tables and have built some medium stacks, about 60-80BBs, on each table, you really need to pay attention and mix your play up so you don't polarize your preflop range.  From now on, I will try to run 6-8 tourneys and only add new ones to my schedule if I bust out of the early tourneys.

I will also have to start tracking my buy-ins and figuring out my ROI.  This will allow me to track my progress from month to month.  My poker training site, Poker X Factor, provides software to track your results, but it is very clunky and difficult to manage.    I may just end up making a spreadsheet.

So I must have played about 15 to 20 tourneys today.  I think I played very well until I had too many tables opened up at once.  I netted about $200.58 today.  Not bad for micro tourneys.  This number should be a lot higher, but I lost a lot of chips in coolers all day.  I think this is a good start.  I really expect to net about $300 - $400 per Sunday.  I also play a few tourneys during the week but these usually occur during week nights and I get too tired to focus.  I use these to pad my bankroll for the Sunday tournaments.

See you at the tables!  GL