Week 1

I was very satisfied with how this week went in terms of my goals. The intensity was not as high as I would of liked, but for a warmup week, I could not have asked for a better start. In the future I will have to step up the intensity a lot if I want to step anywhere near my goals.

Nutrition

Surprisingly, this was the easiest part for me. I allowed myself one cheat night on Saturday, since I was with friends for the night and have a couple of beers and a burger. Other than that, everything was spot on and if I can keep this up for 10 weeks, I am confident in the results that I will see. In terms of actual food logs, I wasn't as consistent in logging as I need to be, but here is a glimpse into what I did record:

Tuesday

8am : ¾ cup oatmeal w/ ¼ cup of raisins and 1 tablespoon of brown sugar.

½ banana

11am: Myoplex Ready to drink protein shake (post workout)

230am: Medium to large Salmon piece w/ vegetables.

445: Myoplex ready to drink protein

7 – Plain grilled chicken breast terryaki w brown rice and small salad

Wednesday

8am: Cereal w milk and 160 calorie muscle milk light protein shake

11:15 : Double scoop protein shake

12:30 : Salmon and veggies

3 pm : Qwest protein bar

6pm : Chicken and brown rice

Sunday

10am : 4 egg whites w/ Spinach, turkey, feta w whole wheat pita and Apple Sauce

2:30pm : Hard Boiled egg and greek yogurt

4:15pm : ½ turkey sandwich with banana

7pm : Qwest Bar

830 pm: Protein Shake (pre workout)

11:30 pm : Chicken breast and cottage cheese (post workout)

The diet remained very clean through the week, I just need to make sure I do a better job recording everything this week.

IMPROVEMENTS – 1. As stated above, better food logs. 2. Although its been clean, I need ot cut down meal sizes at night. 3. Does anyone know a good Iphone app for logging food?

Workouts

I had a good frequency with my workouts this week. The intensity was lower than I wanted, but for a warmup week it was easily enough work. I got measurements on Tuesday with my trainer. I left the sheet at home right now (blogging at coffee shop) but I do remember I weighed in at 215.5. I will get the rest of the measurements next week. I like the 3 on 1 off routine I have going alternating between upper body, core and cardio and lower body.

Tuesday : Upperbody

Wednesday: Core and cardio

Flat lying bicycle crunches 2x1min 8/10

10lb medicine ball oblique Vturns + Ball Toss. 3X15 6/9/9 out of 10

Incline Crunches – 1x12 no weight (highest incline) 1x12 3 notches down. 1X12 all the way down.

(Def struggled on these and not what I used to be able to do)

90 second Plank circuit – 30 sec front, 30 sec side, 30 sec side in a row. X3 7/8/9.5 Last set I added an additional 30 sec front at end of circuit. Felt good.

Hoisin AB Crunch machine – 1x10x70lb 7/10 , 1x50x15 8/10, 1x55x15 8/10

½ mile run 4 minutes 33 seconds. 7 mph for .2 miles, 6.5 mph for .2 miles. Then 7.5 mph for .1 miles. 8/10

Realize its going to get long writing down each exercise, so I wont put you guys through that right now. Let me know in the comments if you guys do want that though. Thursday was Leg day which is the hardest workout by far. This was my laziest workout of the week cause I was distracted by the NCAA tournament the whole time so hoping to get a much better leg workout in today. Friday was my off day followed by upper body on saturday and core on sunday.

WHAT I NEED TO IMPROVE – I need to plan ahead my movements in the gym better so I am not wasting time figuring out what to do next. I also need to step up the intensity more this week. Starting it off with legs today will set a good standard :D. Worked out with a friend last night also and found it easier to have a higher intensity. Just having someone next to you pushes you not to quit early and work harder then them, hopefully the felt the same and had a high intensity workout as well.

POKERFinally, the part that most of you probably read this blog for. Not very happy with how many hours I put in this week. The NCAA tournament cut into my time a ton on Thursday and Friday Saturday. This week I shouldn't have that as much of a distraction with fewer games on. Plan on playing every day except Saturday since we have our Fantasy Baseball Draft (live Auction!).

Stats for this week – 28 hours +$1570. Ended up right about the hourly rate I am looking for in the games I am playing. Was hoping for a lot more rake back this month from the promotion that Tulalip is running. They have 12 drawings every Wednesday and Sunday for $750 each. There are various ways to earn tickets such as playing in the nightly tournaments, or playing certain cash games or making a full house. I should have been drawn once or twice by now, but am empty so far. Wednesday is the last day I can make it for drawings so hopefully variance levels out.

Hand Of the Week

I loved this hand so much. Love every bit of my thinking through, but also considering the opponet. Ill try my best to do a Hand of the Week every blog, but this blog is already getting very long. Let me know what you guys want to see in the comments!

Hand: QT o 3/5 nl.

Preflop – Weak player posts dead BB and SB in middle position. He checks and I raise to $25 in the cutoff. Button calls who is playing about $1500 and is a winning player in the game. The button sometimes plays in the bigger games. I think he is a winning player and can hand read some but he is a amateur player afaik. Both blinds call and wee see a 4 way flop. I am playing about $500 effective and have been very quiet at a table where people a drinking a stacks are deep.

Flop Q75 r

Both blinds check to me and I decide to check since I will most likely only get 1 street of value on this board and want to control the size of the pot. Also the button player is the type who I might be able to induce bluffs from. I check and the button bets $60. Folds back to me I call. I still consider his range wide and feel I am comfortably ahead of it.

Turn 4.

I check. Button Bets $60. When he chooses the same bet sizing on the turn as the flop I am not liking the situation as much. I take out the nutted part of his range with this sizzing (QQ, 77,55,86). I also take his stone air bluffs out of his range (such as 98). I feel he has showdown value that he wants to ekk out another bet. I call though planning to evaluate the river and the price I am getting on the turn. Since I have the top of my range I feel folding it not a good option yet.

River A

I check. This river is one that I feel if he was bluffing he would continue. I also feel that the only hands that improve in the villains range is AQ and A7 and possible Ax he was barreling on flop and turn. Villain bets $110 into a pot of $340. I have $375. The key part to this river is I respect the villains game enough to value bet thin. I believe this player would bet KQ and AT hands on this river as my hand looks exactly like a weak queen or JJ. I feel that his turn and river sizing indicate exactly that he is going for thin value in my eyes. I feel calling here is not a option at all as I beat 0 value hands. I do feel though that I can turn my hand into a bluff profitably and fold out almost all of his value range other than sets and straights. I might even get him to fold a hand as strong as 57. I believe the villain will fold all of his 1 pair hands as I am trying to rep 2pair plus hands here. IMO no one in the 3/5 player pool EVER turns a made hand into a bluff on the river. He expects to see almost always NUTTED hands because that is what EVERY OTHER player has in the 3/5 player pool here. Obviously I am acting on a lot of assumptions here and I don't try this move against many players, but I felt everything added up here.

I shove $375 villain folds KQ

Just felt this was a cool hand since the situation comes up so rarely at these stakes and stack depths.

What I need to improve on – 1.) Hours 2) Work on my game more and review my play

Weather is starting to look up here in Seattle. Currently writing at a coffee shop on the beach and the weather is awesome. This Saturday is our Fantasy Baseball Auction Draft in the league I play in every year. Looking forward to kicking all their asses and have been doing some research to get ready. Ill post the results in the next blog. Other than that though it will be the usual grind this week of Poker and working out. Looking forward to a better week this week and just keep improving.

Ill leave you guys with 2 things. First is one of the coolest golf shots you will see from Bay Hill yesterday. Ill also leave you with an updated picture of my bracket. It looks messy, but I still have a decent chance to make money in 2 of the pools since my final 4 is intact. LETS GO FLORIDA and Louisville!

The Grind

I am back in Seattle for 10-11 weeks (minus a possible 4-5 day trip to Florida for WPT) and it is time to get back onto the grind. What is the grind? For me it is playing lots of hours of poker and spending lots of hours in the gym, while maintain a healthy diet. These three things will be my primary focus over the next 10 weeks until I head off to Vegas for the WSOP. I wil be blogging here at least once per week with updates in my progress. Look for updates on my diet and exercise (food and workout logs) as well as updates on poker progress.

Why?

I find that while I am traveling I have a hard time getting on a schedule and getting in consistent workouts and hours at the table. While I am at home for a significant amount of time I just feel more productive when I set up a program like this. I feel that blogging about it will also help me stick to the workouts and diet to achieve my goals.

Nutrition

My diet while at home is going to be pretty basic. I will focus on high protein intake. I will only be intaking “quality” carbs such as brown rice, oats, and other whole grains. I will also be focusing on low fat foods and low calorie intake. Here are some of my available menu items

Breakfast – Egg Whites, oatmeal, protein shake, protein bar, hard boiled eggs, smoothies, greek yogurt.

Lunch / Dinner – Chicken , fish , Brown rice, veggies, turkey,

Snacks – Protein shakes / bars, greek yogurt, hard boiled eggs, cottage cheese

This is not everything that I will be eating, but as you can see it is just a very clean diet. Clean, lean proteins with clean carbs. Following some basic dieting rules like limiting carbs I intake later in the day. As far as supplementation goes, I plan on taking a daily multi vitamin, fish oil, and a fat burner.

Fitness

My goal is to work out 6 days a week using a 3 days on 1 day off. My rotation of workouts, at least at the beginning, will be Upper body , core and cardio, and lower body. I will be doing sets of 12-15 reps to help work some cardio into my lifting. I also plan on doing lots of plyometric exercises that will get my heart rate up while lifting. Movements such as up downs, box jumps, kettle bells etc will all incorporate cardio into my workouts. I also want to do 10-20 minutes of additional cardio at the end of every workout.

Poker

Hours, Hours, Hours. Basically the only way to describe this part of the grind. Im looking to put in 50ish hours per week at the tables. I plan on putting in more time working on my game. Towards the latter end I will put a lot of time into my tournament game to get ready for the WSOP. Will be playing my normal small-mid stakes live games 3/5nl, 2-2 and 2-5 PLO.

Goals

To be completely honest I really don’t have any hard number goals for this grind. My main goal is to follow thru everything until the end. In my workout and diet logs I want to rate each day and try to improve on my ratings throughout. In terms of fitness and nutrition, as long as I follow through on my diet and work hard in the gym my measurements will take care of themselves. I want to make small weekly goals that will help achieve everything. For example this week I was trying not to hit the snooze button.

Hopefully you guys will enjoy following my process throughout this. Feel free to comment on here with any help or suggestions on the diet and exercise.

Today I will leave you with a picture of my bracket for the NCAA Tournament. Really like this bracket and did a fair amount of research. I am really high on VCU and Florida.

Dec 6 -13 Goals The Mental Game of Poker

Dec 6 -13 Goals

The Mental Game of Poker

I recently have been reading “The Mental Game of Poker”, by Jared Tendler. Im about 2/3 through the book right now and it is quite eye opening. It makes you realize just how important the mental game is in poker, no matter how strong you think yours is.

I am in town for exactly 7 days before I head out to San Diego for the end of the Circuit event down there. As usual for me I am going to set a goals list for the week to help me keep focus. I have some fun events this week such as Seahawks vs Cardinals game and UFC on Fox in Seattle, as well as catching up with friends, but I still plan on playing a decent amount of poker while in town.

• Develop a poker warm-up plan and follow through with it before every session.
  • Any athlete or business professional before a big meeting has a routine they go through to get themselves prepared for the work ahead. Poker should be no different.
  • My routine will involve workout in gym, 30 minutes of video review, review of goals and mental game notes.
• Focus on my mental game throughout the week.
  • There are a many new ideas, theories, and concepts that have been brought to my attention this week. While I don't plan, or is it possible, to have a perfect mental game in a week, just like poker I plan on working bit by bit to improving my mental game.
    • Finish the book
    • Go through the book a 2^nd time and work through the excercises
• Develop a “Cool Down” routine to objectively evaluate my mental and poker games.
• 30 hours of live play in cash games.
• 6 workouts this week.

Video of the week.

If you enjoy Hip Hop you check out Macklemoore, he is based out of Seattle and is getting popular quick. Any Seattle Mariners fan should notice the 3rd and last song from last season. 

4th Quarter Goals

 4^th Quarter Goals 2012

As I enter the 4^th and final quarter of 2012, I want to set my self up to end the year in the best possible way. I am trying to give my self something to shoot for in order to push my self as far as I can these final 12 weeks of this year. As someone who needs structure in their life I feel now is a good time to set my goals, or even better expectations, for the rest of the year. More importantly is how I will accomplish these tasks.

Poker

• $24,000 Profit

• How- The grind is how I accomplish this. Poker is my job and thus I must treat it like one. All other goals are geared towards me reaching this goal. This goal is all about putting hours in at the table. I need to make $2,000 a week to accomplish this. That will take me roughly 40 hours a week at the minimum! At the beginning of the week I need to set my schedule so I get in those hours. Start by scheduling any events (Huskey Games, Seahawks, Softball etc) and schedule my work around those. I need to stick to those hours also. I will have some flexibility but those are work hours and I need to stick to them.
• Work Harder on my game then ever before.
  • How- I need to be putting in the hours outside of the tables to get to the point where I want my game to be. I want to be a complete all around poker player. I want to be able to walk into Commerce and sit down in whatever the best poker game is in the room. There is a great thread on 2p2 written by Tony Dunst 2 years ago. http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/61/mtt-community/theory-grinding-tl-dr-822668/ I focused more on the bottom end where Tony lists the 10 ways to work on your poker game.
    • 1. Playing poker
      2. Hiring a coach
      3. Watching training videos
      4. Reading forums
      5. Reading books.
      6. Reading articles.
      7. Reviewing your own hand histories.
      8. Reviewing the hand histories of others.
      9. Discussing hands with friends or watching them play.
      10. Watching poker television.
    • I plan on focusing on Playing poker, watching videos, reading books, articles, hand histories of mine and others, and discussing hands with friends.
• Final Table a Live Event
  • How- Put in volume in live events. I will be playing a decent live schedule (traveling 1 week or so a month) so I will have a decent chance to grab a FT. I need to work hard on my tournament game. Practice shove ranges, call ranges, play with poker stove. This is all about putting in hard work to get what I want out of poker
• Increase my poker Image → Blogging more
  • How – I want to turn this blog into a marketing tool for the future. Expect to see more strategy articles. I may not be the best right away but I do plan on trying my best. Current ideas include a article on “The perfect 2/5 nl player”. I have some other ideas I want to pump out. This blog is small right now, but by pumping out more content I can increase my image within the poker community.
• Become more competent and proficient at other forms of poker
  • How – My studying time will not only focus on NL Holdem, but plo, stud, draw games. Like I said above, I want to become a more well rounded poker player. I want to be able to kill any form of poker. Books will most likely be the best place for me to start with games like stud and draw. Through books, forums, videos and articles I should be able to get a solid background in all forms of poker. I would love to win a circuit ring in a horse or other mixed game event.
• When Traveling, Make poker my sole focus
  • How – My routine should not be changing while traveling. My focus / goals remain the same, I just adjust to the setting and keep my routine the same. Yes, I want to do some sight seeing etc and I will try to schedule 1 or 1.5 days off to go to a sporting event or see stuff, but I travel for 1 reason and 1 reason only and that is to make money.
• Make Poker my life, devote more time than ever before
  • How – There are a lot of people who want to play poker for a living. They all want the same things I want. I just need to work harder, faster, and more proficiently then them. I need to put in more hours, QUALITY HOURS, to get there quicker than them. No one said this was an ez gig. I was going to work in the finance industry before poker and 60-70 hour weeks would be expected. Nothing changes, except instead of finance its poker. I need to work harder than everyone else.

Health

• 5 workouts a week 1-2 with Bobby (Personal Trainer)
  • How- This is straight up motivation. Nothing to this other than not being lazy and getting into the gym every morning. I prefer working out first thing after I workout as it gives me energy throughout the day.
• Weight / Body fat % reduction #'s
  • How- I am doing measurements with Bobby on Wednesday so I will have the numbers to work towards. I want goals that are both reachable and allow me to completely surpass my goals.
• Each workout devote the whole 60 mins w everything you got
  • How – This is something that Bobby will help me with a ton. If I could afford to do every workout with him I would, but unfortunately that is expensive and probably unnecessary. I am having him give me “homework” in between workouts. This is just a straight up motivation goal and if I want to meet my #'s I will need to accomplish this goal first.
• Log Food Everyday
  • How- I need to be accountable for what I am eating if I want to reach goals. This helps me stay accountable. I will have cheat meals occasionally but I need to make sure I'm eating right. I will be recording my food intake on pen / paper or on my phone then every night or 2 I will log it online on my trainers food record sight.
• Schedule Cheat meals around events (Football games etc)
  • How – By knowing when I will be eating bad meals I can make sure mi eating clean up to the event. This will help me stay clean with my meals as much as possible.
• Eat good while eating out.
  • How – I need to focus on good low calorie meals while eating out, which I tend to do a lot as I'm out of the house 8 hours a day while playing. Chipotle is awesome with Chicken bowls (Brown rice, fajita mix, chicken, and salsa). There is a good terryaki place by Tulalip also where I can get Plain chicken breast with brown rice. Also Applebees is near by and they have a good menu of meals under 500 calories. Unfortunately the casino doesn’t offer many good healthy options other than Salmon and breakfast options on the night menu.

Life Goals

• Be more efficient with time
  • how – I must set a schedule. Every Sunday night I need to schedule out my week. What events I have, When I'm going to play, when I'm going to study. Everything. Each night before I go to bed I need to adjust my schedule for the next day. Sleep is the other big thing. I need to rest, not sleep. Sleep is when you go to bed when you want and wake up when you want. I need rest, my 6-8 hours then get back to the grind. Setting an alarm and GETTING UP when it goes off, because I know what I need to accomplish that day.
• Routine
  • How- I feel routine is key to my success. During my most profitable time as a poker player I had set schedules. By setting a schedule I get the most use out of my time. Wither I'm at home or on the road I need to develop an easy repeatable schedule. This will revolve around poker and exercise and my personal activities.
• Weekly check ups on my goals
  • How – At the end of each week I need to see how I am progressing on my goals and what adjustments I need to make for the next week in order correct my mistakes.
    
    
    
    

Over Betting

Beginning of September Stats

Hour Played - 33

$ / hr - $77

Profit - $2,568

I am getting super excited for Borgata this week. I fly out Wednesday and will be spending 9 days out in Atlantic City with the only goal of poker. Have 4 – 5 tournaments on the schedule out there. Playing a $1500 mix max, $1000+$500 bounties, $1000 6max and $3500 main event. Should be 4 very big prize pools that can provide a nice payday. Been looking at the live action report there all week and the cash game action looks insane right now. AT certain points they have had 60+ games running with 18 2/5nl games. Mostly will be playing 2/5 down there but will dabble into the mid stakes (15/30 20/40) mix games if they are running.

As for the stats this week, hours were down again this week but not to concerned cause I plan on playing tons over the next 10 days in AC. Week started out miserable with a -$1500 session, but back to back +2k and +1500 sessions saved the week and turned it into a very profitable one. This last week helps me stay on track to reach my goals for September. I need to still keep focusing on working on my game and keep recording hand histories. Other than that I am very happy with the start of this month.

Hand Of The Week

BB Ajo $3/$5 no limit holdem

MP Opens $15 – He is waiting for the big $10-$25 PLO game thus this is small stakes for him. I imagine he will be playing looser than he should and is opening decently wide.

2 Calls (co / button)

I flat the Big Blind

FLOP – Q32 rainbow

Everyone Checks

Turn – 9c (back door flush draw)

I lead $45

Mp opener calls

Button Calls

River 4h Pot (195)

I lead $80....

A somewhat basic hand this week but I feel it is an interesting spot that comes up a lot. I also feel I made a mistake in this hand.

Preflop – I feel this is close between a 3bet squeeze and flat pre. The reason for squeezing would be im out of position thus by taking the aggressive lead in this hand it gives me the initiative to be betting when the flop comes out Q32 rainbow like this. By just flatting it makes It hard for me to rep any hands on this flop and take it down. Also the situation is perfect with a player with a perceived wide opening range followed by 2 weak flats from weak opponents. This lends to me taking down the $45 in the pot pre often. As for sizing, we are only 100 BB deep so I would probably make it 70 or 75. I would prefer to be another 1 or $200 deeper to 3 bet pre.

Flop – Very dry flop that probably has missed everyone. Not surprised that everyone checked through.

Turn – I decide to take my stab at the pot here. I am repping a very narrow range, but vs these opponents I don’t believe that matters much since they play their own hands more. Its very difficult for anyone to show up with a Q. I know this preflop raiser would of C-Bet any strong hand on the flop and the button and cutoff probably are not checking one back on the flop. When the raiser calls the bet I am putting him on all weak 1 pair hands, turned back door flush draws. When the button overcalls he almost always has a flush draw or some sort of gut shot.

River- This is the best river card here as all of the flush draws missed and the only straight draw would be a 65cc type of hand. I have to bet this river 100% of the time here. I just need to find the correct bet sizing here. Bet sizing in my opinion is one of the most overlooked parts of poker, while being one of the most important The pot is 195 here I want to find the amount here that gives me the cheapest price to bluff while giving the highest fold %. Basically here I feel there are 2 options. Small and Big and by Big I mean really big.

Option 1 – Betting small, a little under half the pot. The reasons for this sizing would be that I am really just trying to fold out missed flush draws and to do that I don’t have to bet much at all. Thus by betting only $80 here, my bet only has to work about 1 in 3.5 times to become profitable. The real question here is wither the original raiser will fold TT to a bet on the river and if he will fold it to this sizing. While I do feel I can get a fold here 1 out of 3.5 times due to there being a player behind him that he has to worry about. Without the 3^rd player I feel I 100% have to bet big on the river to get him to fold TT.

Option 2- Bet really big. Full pot or close to. I would probably size it at $175 or $200. The reasoning for this sizing would to be to completely polarize my range. We are under the assumption that the original raiser is bluff catching us with TT or so and that the 3^rd player is on a flush draw. By betting huge here vs someone who is bluff catching we give them the worst price possible on their call. Another thing with his sizing is that many villains in these games don’t play their opponents range, they play their own 2 cards. A majority of opponents here would see a $200 bet and just immediately think that their TT is not worth $200 and toss it in the muck without thought here. The disadvantage here is that my $200 bet has to work 1 out of 2 times to break even. Say the villain checked back KK on the flop, there is no $ amount he will fold for. I could shove for $400 and he would call. They get in this mindset that once they slow play they can never fold. So I do run that risk that a certain % of the time this villain will have one of these types of hands.

The more I think about this hand the more I feel I should be betting HUGE on this river. For the points above I think there is just way more chance he folds TT for $200 vs $80 because of the mindset these guys play with. They play their own cards and judge the value based off only those 2 cards. They don’t consider opponents ranges etc. Over betting for both value (in those spots they have KK on this board and will never fold) and bluffing (when they are obviously bluff catching) I feel it will be great to add into my game.

One thing I want to add here is feel free to leave comments on things you want to hear about in this blog. Always looking for new ideas and suggestions.

September Goals

So much going on in Seattle lately that I am trying my best to get out and enjoy the nice weather while it lasts. Spent most of last weekend out and about. Saturday was spent all day preparing for and watching the University of Washington vs San Diego State home opener for college football. Monday I went to Bumbershoot which is one of the bigger music festivals of the year in Seattle. Saw two main acts M83 and Skrillex. Both were absolutely amazing.

Here are my goals that I wrote up for the month of September

$8,000 Profit in cash games this month.

       How – 40hours / week at my $50 / hour clip will get me to where I want to be.

       How – Exceed my goals. Play more than 40 hours.

       How – Take breaks throughout session to make sure I'm always playing my best.

       How – Take Dinner / Workout breaks to ensure mental focus

Have a successful Borgata trip

       How - Study tournament game hard for next week and a half before heading out there.

                   Cash games will be only focus after I bust tournaments.

                  Workouts and poker will be only activities in borgata

                   Stay focused and Game select well

                  Manage My Expenses

Continue to work on my poker game

                  how – Watch 30 mins of video before any session

                  Work on my PLO game more

                 Continue to work on my mixed games

                 Re read some over Elky's tournament books

                 Discuss hands with a few of the 3/5 regs that I respect

Health

5 workouts / week minimum

         how – Upper Body

                    Lower Body

                    Kettle Bell

                    Cardio

                   Beach Workout

Nutrition

My standard nutrition. Not a hard core diet, but eat healthy 80% of the time so I dont feel bad the other 20%. Make health conscious decisions.

Sample “diet that I normally use”

Breakfast – 3 egg whites w spinach peppers and feta cheese on whole wheat Pita

Snack – Protein fruit smoothie (peanut butter banana w/ vanilla protein yum yum)

Lunch – Turkey Sandwhich

Snack – Vanilla protein

Dinner – Salmon filet w veggies

August 20 - 26

 

August 20^th - 26^th (Note I do my weeks Monday – Sunday)

Cash Games

Hours – 18

Profit - ($1527)

Tournament -

$250 buyin 7^th place for $1500 (193 runners).

Had a very rough last week to say the least in cash games. My records are missing 1 session I believe since I thought I lost $2500 in cash this week. Nothing seemed to go my way and unfortunately I did not record many hands in order to review my play. I really need to focus on this more. Every single spot that I have any doubt about I need to be recording and reviewing both during and after my sessions. I have taken a step by taking a orbit break every two hours or so to both write and look over hands.

Didn’t play many cash hours (again missing a session, prob closer to 25) as I took both Friday and Saturday off to regain some focus and take a short break. Friday was fun and we played 45 holes of golf. Was a super up and down day for me and ended up playing good 2 of the 5 9s (1 was a mess around where we played with 3 clubs. Shot a 42 on the first 9 and a 41 on the last 9 and played pretty shitty in between. I really like my swing right now, I just need to put in more time on the range to get more consistent with it. Seems like it is more 1 or 2 bad holes / round and great play otherwise.

I took Saturday off as well to go to 107.7 The Ends Summer Camp at MaryMore park. This was awesome with FUN. Headlining the concert. I found a new band, Walk The Moon, though that I had never heard of who are amazing. Here are a few of their songs

Came back Sunday fresh off of 2 days off and apparently it helped a lot. Tulalip had their end of the month tournament. $250 buyin with 193 runners. With about 30 people left I had around 350k of the 2.3 million in play which was almost 4 times the average stack. Went very card dead the final 2 tables and came into the final table 3/10 with around 20ish big blinds. Basically folded everything until I had a really good spot where UTG opened for 35k at 8.16k and I re shoved 250k with Aqhh and got snapped by Qjcc. Awesome spot for me and if I would have held I would of loved my chances to win the tournament as the play was awful. Unfortunately he turned a J and I was out for $1500. This did however saved my week from being a complete disaster.

HAND OF THE WEEK

Going to have a hand of the week every week. Just a hand I thought was interesting and made me think.

Reads – UTG1 very loose passive player.

BB – Brand new to table have never seen him before. Bought in $400. Assuming standard Loose passive 3/5 standard player

Kqo

UTG 1 limps 5

Hero HJ – Raise $25

BB calls UTG1 Calls

FLOP 974ddc

both check to me. I bet $50.

BB Calls UTG1 Folds

Turn 6c

BB Checks

I check

River Jh

BB Checks

I???

Preflop – Super Standard iso vs a loose passive opponent with a wide limping range.

Flop – This is a very close Cbet or Check Back. Still not sure if CBET is good here or not because most likely it will take 2 bullets to get them to fold. By cbetting i'm preparing my self to barrel any J K Q A.

Turn – This is probably the worst card in the deck for my to continue with a double barrel on. This card really hits the Villains check/calling range on the flop. 98,78,t8, all improve to either and Open ender with a pair or to a straight, 76 makes 2 pair, 86 picks of a pair. Basically now i'm going to put the villain on a ton of Pair + Str8 draws or pair + FD or FD + overs and he is basically never folding any of those in my opinion.

River – I was planning to value bet any KQ on the river or Bluff any A, although an A will improve some of his hands (Nut Flush Draws and Aces up). The Jh is super interesting cause it doesn’t really make any 2 pair combos besides J9 and doesn’t complete any of the straight draws. The pot is now $175 and unlike the turn I have the opportunity to take him off his pair + Str8 draw hands such has T9 and 98 now. This spot always comes up though because most people hate folding in this game. People are always curious and suspicious. Unfortunately like I said this player was brand new and I had no reads on him. IF I am to bet here I feel that I would need to bet on the bigger side, probably around $125 or so. FWIW I would value bet any J here. After talking to a couple of people it seems it is super close but I do feel I should be betting between $125-150 here on the river to fold out all his weak 1 pair hands.