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Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Hello Cardplayer

Hello Cardplayer

Hello everyone! Just want to start by saying how happy and honored I am to be a featured blogger for Cardplayer.com. I hope to give you guys a glimpse into my life, which for now hovers greatly around poker, fitness, and getting hustled by Matt Savage on the golf course. Hopefully, through reading this blog, you can see my motivation and dedication I have towards this great game of poker and how much I want to be successful with all my goals. I also tend to have some fun with this blog, posting random pictures I have taken throughout the weeks, favorite youtube videos, and random sports discussions. I invite you to go back and read the two previous blog posts from this year to see some of my goals of the year, and to give you an idea of what to expect from me this year.

There has been some great poker action in Seattle the past couple of weeks. Last week, I played the $460 re-entry event at the Clearwater casino on Bainbridge Island. The event attracted 95 runners, while small, is about what I expected. I made it through Day 1a, but was quickly ousted from Day 2 within the first orbit of play when my AQ could not outrace 66 to get some decent chips.

All was not lost though, as the cash game action has been excellent here. While I have not been playing the game, they have been running a 5/10/25 PLO game at Tulalip 1 to 2 nights a week. For those that do not know, Washington State has a $500 max bet rule. If I bet $300 on the flop the maximum raise is to $800. You could then chose to raise to $1300. So yes, this 5/10/25 game might be the stupidest game ever.. The game, however, is very good, high variance, but very good. The max buy in for the game is $2000. Last weekend, one of the regulars in the game had close to $50,000 on the table at one point, the most by far ever in the casino on a poker table. I want to play this game, but with the limit poker nuances and my lack of work ethic lately on my PLO game (been refocusing on tournaments and NLH cash) I just don’t feel comfortable playing the game. The 5/10 nl action though was very good this past week here. I believe we had 3-4 nights of 5/10 going at Tulalip and the games were all very good in my opinion.

Stats from last week

Hours played – 39 ( (19) 3/5nl, (13) 5/10nl , (6) 5/5nl, (2) 5/10 PLO)
Profit - $1,818
hourly rate - $46.62

I again crushed the 3/5nl game this week making just over $2,000 in 19 hours of play. I just feel so confident in this game now. I play a very high variance style in the game, pushing every edge, YET the game is still very low variance due to the player styles you run into. I am the one always putting everyone to the test and rarely have difficult decisions calling off my chips. Some ask why I am “Slumming” it playing 3/5, that I should be playing bigger etc. This all has to do with ego, or lack there of. I am trying to remove all ego from my poker game as it had been the demise of so many in our game. Why shouldn't I continue to play in the 3/5 game when I am beating it for a very good rate with little to no variance.

Hand of the Week- Hand reading, bluff catching, putting you opponent to the test.

This hand comes from the new 5/5nl game I have been trying to spread at Tulalip. Same game as the 3/5, but with a Max buy in of $1000 instead of $500.

My image- I have my standard Hyper Lag image at the table and have been playing the most pots out of everyone.

Villains image – Standard 3/5 player. Will play fairly ABC post flop, doesn't get out of line to much, might be playing bigger than normal since this is a $1000 buy in game and he does split time between 1/3 and 3/5.

History – I have 3 bet him once already and showed a “4” after he folded pre flop.

My hand – Jc6c

Weak Hi jack player open limps
Villain Iso raises cutoff to $20.
      • I immediately pickup on his raise size here. Most players in this game like to protect their hand and would raise bigger with their stronger hands to get value. My initial reads puts him on a marginal hand.
I 3bet the button to $75.
      • A little bigger than I normally 3bet, but we are sort of deep (Villain had 6-700 maybe?)
Villain calls quickly heads up.
    • He didn’t even consider 4 betting. To be honest I didn’t expect him to fold pre flop much.

FLOP Ts 9s 5h
Villain checks
I Bet $80
      • Bet sizing is key here, I don’t believe I need to bet much here to see how strong the villain is. This gives me the cheapest price to bluff at the pot. It also allows me room to barrel turn and river if need be. Bet sizing is one of the biggest leaks of 3/5 players I see. I would guess the average cbet here would be in the range of 125-130, $80 accomplishes the exact same thing imo.
Villain snap calls
      • His quick calls indicates a very weak holding to me. If he had an overpair, he would of at least taken a second to consider raising the flop here. Also many 3/5 players are going to raise this flop with any strong hand to protect against the flush and straight draws. You very rarely see people slow play here.
Turn 9c
Villain checks
I bet $130
      • again bet sizing here. The players at 3/5 do not really consider pot odds, rather this just look how much it is to call. $130 Is a lot of $$, again I don’t believe I need to bet much more than this. Also with this sizing it gives me the opportunity to make a cheap triple barrel bluff. I can bet 175-200 on the river here giving my self a good price to bluff. They don’t see what odds they are getting to call, rather they see that I re raised pre flop, bet flop bet turn and bet river.
Villain Snap calls
Again I still feel that he is weak. He again didn’t even consider raising. At this point I am planning on barreling 175-200 on most rivers. I am putting his range on 77-88, AT, KT, JT,QT, QJ, KJ, 78 and Flush draws and the best hands he could have at JJ, QQ, KK, AA with AA and KK less likely cause he would of 4bet pre flop. I don’t expect him to fold QQ on blank rivers.Most of these hands will have a hard time to call a third river bet.
River 6d ( I am now qualified :D)
Villain Shoves $315 (he took about 5 seconds)
Hero calls

So I did not expect him to ever lead non-club rivers. He shoved the river so quickly like there was very little thought process into my hand range. I begin to analyze his range now, which has greatly changed. I feel the only VALUE hands in his range are TT, AA, 66. I discount 66 due to combinations since I have a 6 in my hand. AA I discount since if he was going to take the line of check/call, check/call to let me keep bluffing (which is a great line IMO) he would almost for sure check the river to let me bluff missed clubs and straights and he would not be folding. TT is probably the most likely value hand, but there are so few combinations. There are way more combinations of missed flush and straight draws here. KJ,QJ, J8s all have either gutters, open enders and over cards. All his nut flush draws or overs and flush draws missed. There are just so few hands he is repping / plays this way for value

I call after about 30 seconds.
Villain - “Shit” and flips AhKh (no fd)
I flip Jc6c
Villain - “What the hell, J6”
I smile and rake the pot :D
While this was one of my favorite and cool hand histories in a long time, there is a lot to learn from this hand. Live tells, timing tells, assessing players ranges and how that range changes throughout the hand. Trusting your range. Realizing when a player does something that makes zero sense.

Changing the subject to fitness, while not a bad week, I certainly did not have my best week in terms of working out and dieting. I broke my diet for the first time last weekend. Went out with some friends and had 3 beers, the first alcohol I have had in 3 weeks since starting the diet. Somehow after the bars we ended up at this taco truck and I couldn’t help my self. I had a carne asada burrito. Soooo worth it. I think this might have been for the best though. It remotivated myself and I come into this week looking forward to having a perfect week in order to make up for last. At last weigh in (now just over a week ago) I weighed in at 207.75. 4 and ¾ pounds from my goal of 203. I now have 13 more days (Feb 13 when I leave for LA) to accomplish my goal and I still 100% am focused on reaching it. I am going to skip my weigh in this week and push my self to the best of my abilities this week. I have 6 workouts scheduled in the gym + snowboarding on my day off from the gym. This plus a perfect diet should allow me to shed a lot of weight this week before I weigh in Sunday before the Super Bowl (my one scheduled “cheat day” of this challenge). I had a great chest, back and shoulders workout yesterday on my own. I got in 27 sets in just over an hour and felt great afterwards. I have 3 workouts planed with Bobby this week (My personal trainer). Lately these workouts have been beyond challenging. We have been working out with Battle ropes and TRX bands a lot lately. While not quite at this intensity a lot of the exercises are similar to these.



Also these new TRX bands are awesome. They allow you to get a full body workout with one piece of equipment. This pushup to knee in exercise is painful and one of the better core exercises.



Finally, for this blog, I want to give a shout out to my sponsor, Poker Income, http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/poker-income-pro-bankroll/id316520188?mt=8 . This app for Iphone and Android allows players to track all of their poker sessions. It records hours played, profit, sessions etc. You can export that information to spreadsheets and even back up the info on their cloud server in order to prevent data loss if you lose your phone or break it. I have been using this app since last World Series to track all my records and recommend nothing else. Download the free trial today.

I will leave you all with some pictures from Seattle this week. I truly do love this city.

 View from my balcony on a awesome winter day.

Same view on another awesome winter day

Downtown Seattle from the Seattle - Bainbridge Island ferry









Tuesday, January 24, 2012

January 16-22


January 16th – January 22nd

Very interesting week for all of us here in the Pacific Northwest. We got our annual dosage of snow in a giant snow storm here. I live in downtown Seattle which gets the least amount of snow and we got 5-6 inches in 1-2 days here. Some of the outer areas, Olympia (60 miles south?) got upwards of 2 feet of snow. As normal, the city almost completely shut down and many roads became impassable. I saw on the news that something like 700 accidents were responded to by the State Patrol in a 24 or 48 hour period. 



I had some fun in the snow. I built a snowman out side my condo and dressed it up like Jake Locker, the current QB of the Tennessee Titans and former University of Washington QB. 



I chose not to mess with the roads at all and basically spent 2 straight days at home. This didn’t deter me though from working towards my goals. I put a lot of work in reading Elky's tournament book, “The Raisers Edge”. I am about 2/3rds through the book and while much of the content is stuff I already know in my head, it is a great refresher and is definitely a very good, current state, tournament poker book. I am taking my time going through the book really concentrating on the concepts and noting the key points throughout. I hope to get through the book this week and move onto the books predecessor Kill Everyone which has a bunch of shove charts that I want to study and work through.

Speaking of tournaments, this past weekend I played in all 3 of the Muckleshoot Winter Classic poker tournaments. They had a $300 (5k added), $500 (15k added), and $1000 (25k added). The $300 and $500 had quick and not deep structures early and required you to get some chips (like the 1k wsops but worse). In both of these tournaments I feel I played 1 hand bad in each and was left short and busted both in the first 2 levels.

$300 hand of the week. Key Concept- Assessing a players range and board texture for that range.

Q4dd Button (8000 chips 50/100 blinds)

Folds to me on the button and I make a fairly standard raise to 250. I had a very loose image as I had been involved in a ton of hands early, but not with much success. Both blinds were very weak players. The SB was a big station pre flop but seemed to plat fit or fold post, but hadn’t gotten to showdown so I had not confirmed that. The BB was very passive and had already flatted AK and KK pre and played them horribly post flop. Both blinds called.

FLOP 653R (1 diamond 1 club) pot 750
Both blinds check. I make a very standard cbet of 400. Both call. I am already planning to double barrel lots of turn cards as I feel you must if you are going to Cbet this flop

Turn Ac (back door clubs (pot 1950)
Awesome turn card to double barrel. Both check and I barrel 1100. the Small blind quickly calls and the BB folds. At this point in the hand I am putting the sb on still a very wide range and doesn't have to have an Ace. 64,54,34s,78,67,57,A4, 77,88,99,TT,JJ,QQ.

River Kc (pot 4200) I have 4800 back
SB Checks. If I put this SB on the above range I should be betting this river 100%. All his pair and gutters have missed and there are not many A's in his range. He may have hit some back door club draws. Basically this is the best triple barrel spot ever. The one problem is my stack. I have 4800 back with 4200 in pot so im not getting the best price to shove (if I had 3-4000 I would shove). Also if I bet something like 2500 I don’t have a read on this guys river play yet if he will fold for a smaller amount and if he calls im basically crippled. I got very gun shy here and checked back. I figured I had some showdown value vs random 4's and 78. I hate my check here and wish I bet like 2800 on the river. The SB showed A4 and won the pot. I still don’t know if he folds the river with that hand but by checking back im letting 64 win the pot so much that is never calling a river bet.


The $1000 was pretty uneventful as well. I lost a decent size pot at 100/200 leaving me with 10k chips (much better structure, we started with 20k and 45min levels). I hung around 10k for the next 90 mins or so until we got to 300/600. I doubled up with A5dd vs A7o when the button opened and I shipped 17bb he made a good call but I got there. Then raised the button with A2hh and 10bb stack shipped Jtdd and I lost. Finally got 20bb in with Aqss vs 99 on TT2ss and bricked. At least I had a chance to get some chips in this one but I don’t think I made a single mistake the whole tournament.

This week I have the $460 main event at the Clearwater casino in Seattle. This is a re entry with a pretty shitty structure I think and I have no idea how many people since it is a smaller poker casino.IM hoping for 200 and 20-25k to first. This is day 1a friday 1b saturday and day 2 sunday. If I don’t make Day 2 I have the $300 end of the month event at Tulalip that I will play. Other than those 2 tournaments I just plan on the normal and grinding a bunch of cash here. O ya I did well in cash games at Muckleshoot this weekend and made $1700 in the 3 days at 3/5 nl.

As for health, I had a pretty good week with the diet yet still have a lot of room to improve. I need to stop eating bigger meals at night, which is hard since I normally stay up late (1am ish). I weighed in at 207.75 this week, meaning a loss of 1.25 pounds last week. Im going to push very hard and try to get under 200lbs but the time I leave for LA.

I have been watching this motivational video at least once per day, mostly right before I go to the gym and it is awesome. If it doesn’t inspire you then something is wrong.


Random video Jeff Madsen posted on my FB wall this week. From the Savage Invatational golf tournament last year


Monday, January 16, 2012

WE ARE BACK IN 2012!


The Comeback

The time has come. One my goals for 2012 is to restart my blog that I briefly began last year and had some mild success with. While I don’t have any specifics for the blog, I do plan to blog 1 time per week and hopefully give some of you an inside look at the life of a Professional Poker Player. Some things I hope to carry over form my old blog include Video of the week, Picture of the week, reports of my week in poker, and reports of my week in health and fitness.

This blog will recap January 9th - 15th (my weeks are Monday → Sunday)

This week was the 1st week of my 2012 diet. Basically I am going on a 35 day body cleanse before I head to LA for 1 month for the LAPC and Bay 101 (my first big live tournaments of 2012). During these 35 days I have a goal of losing 8 pounds and 1-2% body fat. Last Monday with my trainer (Bobby) I weighed in at 211. I cant remember the last time I weighed in under 200 pounds so that is a huge goal for me to see 199 on the scale. I peaked in weigh around 2010 at about 270.

My plan on how to achieve these goals are fairly simple. Cutting the basic bad things out of my diet. No alcohol (minus Superbowl), no obvious fatty foods, etc etc. My basic diet looks something like this

Breakfast – 3 egg whites with sun dried tomatoes and artichoke hearts / piece of fruit
Gym
Snack – Protein Shake
Lunch – Turkey Patty (Home made w/ ground turkey breast, and seasoning and spices
w. cottage cheese and salad
Snack - Protein Bar
Dinner – Chicken breast , brown rice, veggies
snack – protein shake

Nothing special in the diet, just clean cut. As for the gym aspect I have a fairly basic 6 day a week plan. 2 of the workouts (IMO the 2 hardest) will be done with Bobby, my personal trainer.

1- Chest / Back / Shoulders
2- Legs
3 – Arms
4 – Agility w/ bobby
5 – Full body w/ bobby
6 – core / cardio

So thats my 2012 opening diet I guess. I will keep you guys updated every week with the progress on that. This week went very well with no mishaps on the diet. I did miss my last 2 workouts of the week since I was very sick and did not have the energy to hit the gym

POKER

Now to the part of why most of you are reading my blog. Poker! 2011 was my first losing year in poker ever. I had 1 5 figure score all year in tournaments and had a horrible year in cash games. This was all my fault. I did not take the game seriously , I did not work on my game hard enough. I took the money for granted and did not play my best at all times.

I am using last year as the greatest motivation to have my best year yet in 2012. I am rebuilding, I blew a lot of money last year cause I played like shit. I have spent the last month in a ½ back in Seattle doing nothing but grinding the shit out of an awesome 3/5nl game at Tulalip. I have gotten rid of my ego, something that kills many poker players. I don’t care what people think if they see me grinding 3/5nl. This game is awesome and I am crushing the game. Since December 13th over 190 hours (yes I am playing a lot) im beating the game for $61/hour. Probably by far the biggest win rate in the game

Last week I played 40 hours in the game and profited $4129 for $105 / hour. Basically until February 13th when I go to LA I will keep grinding 40-50 hours a week in this game and keep on my workout schedule. Next week I plan on having a hand of the week for the blog.

Coming up this week I actually have some decent tournaments in Seattle. The Muckleshoot casino has their Winter Classic series Jan 20-22. A $300, $500, and $1000 tournament with $50,000 added over the 3 events. I plan on playing all 3 of these tournaments.

Poker Goals for 2012.

I wrote these down on Jan 1st and I guess I should write them on here. I am going to do everything in my power to accomplish these goals

  1. $200,000 profit for the year
  2. Be known as the biggest / best winner in 5/10 nl, PLO, Horse games etc in the Seattle area casinos where I play most my cash games.
  3. Become more proficient @ other forms of poker i.e. Horse / plo, triple draw / badugi etc
  4. Spend more time Studying the game (perhaps the most important)
  5. Start poker blog (YAY) and build my media image (website?) getting ready for potential sponsorship deals when / if online is legalized
  6. Major TV Final table / wsop ft / win a live tournament (have won 1 life time a $200)
  7. Have a work ethic equalized by no one.
  8. Focus more on the game while playing (reads etc)
  9. Start Coaching program.
Health goals
      1. Drop weight to 190
      2. Rebuild w/ muscle to 205
      3. Gym and diet
      4. Continue to workout with my trainer Bobby
So this blog got a little bit long. Like I said I hope to blog ATLEAST once per week. Hopefully Ill get into the plan of doing some strategy articles hand history reviews etc. Looking forward to another great week health wise and poker wise. Got 3 great tournaments this week so see if I can get year off to a great start.

Heres my Video of the week. Best UFC KNOCKOUT EVER! Just look how limb he goes. Out cold.

Please leave any comments or suggestions on what you would like to see in the blog. Also ideas for some strategy articles!
Talk to you all soon!