And I win!!

Well it went till 2:45am, but it was worth every minute of it. Once we got down to the final 5 it became very apparent to me that you can really take over a table if you change up your game. I turned the aggression on and off, with both monster hands and semi bluffs. That really set the stage for later parts of the tournament, as people found it hard to call my all-ins. I tried to ensure that I had shown a semi-or bluff hand shortly before I made an all in. And then made sure the all-ins were backed with decent hands.

This all lead to a me taking out 6th, 5th and 4th place. Then my heads up opponent took out the second place. I had a chip lead which was great as it allowed me to get out flopped or rivered a couple of times heads up, and still be in. Must have been all in 8 times heads up, and probably won 5 of them. More important to me though I was ahead EVERY time we turned over the cards. Some of the draws I lost were my A8, vs his A7. 7 on the turn. AJ, vs KQ, he hits Q, etc. Some of them were only marginally ahead on the turnover, but ahead they were.

So all in all a good evening. Very happy with the play and the results. Just the time killed me. lol.

Top 2 get paid....

4 left. Playing pretty good.
Probably the short stack though.
Karl Copp
Field Consultant
7-11 Canada.

Try again...live!

So I am just sitting down at the COOLEST LIVE GAME EVER (sorry felter lol). Hope tonight results are better than last week. (6th).

Last week was a cold deck. Tonight going to try and losen and up see if I can hit a flop. Maybe felters famous 5-6 will work?? Lol.

Anyhow, wish me luck.

Played some 1-2 tonight online. About an hour and finished down 14 dollars. Not bad as the action was a little crazy. Felt pretty good (but not that good, was down afterall).

Karl Copp
Field Consultant
7-11 Canada.

NEW FORUM IS UP!!!

Thats right 2 things:

1) Never play at a 50 cent Table with Felter. Just lose money. No point.

2) Look to the right side of the Blog and you will see the new Forum. It is up and Active!!

The over under is 6 months to get to 5 active members. :)

Cracked 2500!!

Bank roll that is. Just happy as I am viewing that has half way to my stated goal of getting to 3000 by April. Now I know anything can happen, but I do feel that we the progression of my game that is certainly within reach. I can certainly see where Poker Tracker is helping to stop me from pissing away 30-70 dollars away each session on Marginal calls, when I have no business in being in those hands.

And long term seeing a flop with non-monster pocket pairs is paying off. 3 of my 5 most profitable hands sinse starting this blog are JJ, 77 and 88 in that order. 500 dollars right there.

What I do need to work on are suited connectors. I need to work on that piece of my game. I believe IF I am ever going to make those profitable I need more positional preflop aggression.

Anyhow, off to bed.

Poker Tracker Time

Well after numerous people had asked if I used it, the last draw was sensai Bruce saying that we needed poker tracker. So I ponied up the money (Too lazy to go out and play hands at another site to earn it) and bought it. WOW, impressed. I think it took all of 10 minutes of anlysis with that program to poke about oh a million holes in my game.

Still way too many marginal hands in marginal positions.
Stupid, stupid STUPID blind vs Blind wars.
Not nearly enough aggresion when I have good cards.
And going to the river and calling too many river bets with sub par hands (I only am winning like 51% of my showdowns?? Oh my god).
A great reality check and I am look forwarding to data mining more issues for me to look at.

Finished in 6th on Monday

...sorry. Had some computer issues and could not post the results. A neat collection of guys. None really intimidated me, and some were outright bad. (The guy who was the worst apparently won but he was a card magnet and sucked everyone out). I will definately be back at that game.

Trying out the live game

So going out with the hospitality boys (and making Felter jealous) and trying out their weekly game. From what I understand it is a $50 buy in with $50 rebuys first hour. Paying the top 2 or 3. So there is money to be made, I just wonder if it is mine. :)

I know Kevin (guy I am playing with) is a loose cannon, and so I wonder what the other guys are like. I will go out and play my game and adapt as need be. Will go through the night one decision at a time...and hey..my tourny game rocks...right?!??!

Wish me luck!!

You do have to respect the game....

Especially when you go DOWN in limits. That's right. Down. Because then you think that you can loosen up your game, and call with more stupid hands, and then you start down that slope. The one where even though the bets are small, you end up nickle and diming yourself. And then you wonder where the money went. I will update the charts tomorrow but this weekend I pissed away a good 100-150 dollars just calling shit that if I was respecting the game I NEVER would have called.

STUPID STUPID.

And now I got to bed.

To summarize. One you get a sense of what your game is, play that game no matter what limits you are at.

This is for Felter

To help him solve his morality issues regarding Poker!! I knew it was ok.

2 Bounties

Well played in Canadian poker night and did pretty good. Finished in 5th (Out of 100) and better yet, took out 2 Celebs. So that 2 bouties added up to 100 dollars. And finished in the money. Not a bad night.

Off to bed.

Those Damn Hands you should not play.

You know the ones, the marginally nice ones...that seem to come in marginally nice situations. Here is the latest that pissed me off.

In a simple $5 multi table that is winding down. There is like 75 people left, top 60 money. I have 8k in chips left which puts me somewhere in the middle. No worries...

Very tight table, get dealt QJ suited in middle position.

Mistake #1 (Which would not have mattered in the outcome but I can still admit it is a mistake, never call late in tourny). I call the blind of 800. I did not think it would get raised, and it did not.

Everyone else folds (I was the first to call) and the BB waits...then pushes all in with about 3k more.

Mistake #2. I call. I mean why am I putting what will be half my chips on a call this late in the tourny. Man am I a sucker for playing the blinds.

OK, so I had QJ. Now to play this out, the flop ends up with a JJQxx. And get this....I lose.
Now as the suits did not matter I can say that there was only 1 HAND THAT COULD HAVE BEATEN ME. JUST 1.

But because I was playing a marginal hand...I deserved it. Thats right, I end up with a FH. But yep...he had the hand.

QQ.

BAH!

Finally!!

Only took 4 or 5 tries, but won my 100 ticket in a tubo 14+1. So that is slightly profitable anyhow.

Looking forward to blogging about my big tourny final table. :)

Up and down and up and down....getting sea sick.

So as of late as I have added SLIGHTLY more hands into my game I have experience more fluctuations into my bankroll, confidence, etc. Nothing dramatic but the swings each day have been closer to the 100 or more mark, and not the 20-40 dollars as before. Not a bad thing but I did think that it deserved a comment.

In my quest for winning a ticket to a 100 dollar tickets (And WOO HOO for Felter for winning me one :). I have come up OH SO SHORT a couple of times. I make the "money", but always a place or 2 away from the ticket. But it will come......I HOPE.

And I just found a website called http://www.officialpokerranking.com that gives me hope. Says that in MTT's I am in the money 26% of the time. I am sure that is not great but 1/4 is a great place to start. I would love to get that up to 1/3.

...and I am back in the saddle. Took me 24 hours.

So I got it all back and more in almost exactly 24 hours. Through some patience and a couple of tough, and one lucky call. Actually got it back and a little more. While tying this though I did learn that KKK beats JJJ, even if the K only comes on the river. Bah.

Pretty happy with the recovery. I just really tried to make it back no hour by hour, or even hand by hand, but decision by decision. Really not trying to get caught up in any flow but looking at each decision and deciding if what I was doing was the best thing. It really worked. Did not get distracted and although a couple of times there were some coin-flip type situations I was never really at risk for any serious amount of money where I was an underdog when the cards were turned over.

Really have to work on avoiding any of the situations of where I would call something just becuase I was up huge and could "afford" it. Quite simply that is retarded as you can NEVER afford to make stupid decisions. That is when you need to stop playing.

Tilt Sucks. About $200 worth of suckage.

Ok, so I am pissed at myself. Sitting here beside Felter as I write this all calm, but internally just MAD AS HELL at myself. And here is why.

There was a player at one table just being hyper aggresive. And that I am fine with as I have patience for that. Wait and strike. So I did. Finally had AK on the button. Called the dollar. He is on Big Blind. He makes it 11, so I make it 20. He calls.

Now here is where I made my mistakes...

Flop is QQ something. I am sure he missed. He makes it 10...I push. (Now no need to tell me why this is wrong, I know why). I needed to hit before that. Anyhow. So I did...and he waited till the very end and called. Pocket nines and with only 2 more cards to come I did not hit. So I lost my 100. But I am sure I proved that you can not just push me around :)

Now that was bad, but this is worse.

Very next hand, but at another table. I get pocket QQ's. Someone makes it 4 dollars, and I call. (I was too tilty to even be thinking straight and re-raise to get some more info). Flop is undercards, and without that info I end up all in after a couple of raises. Of course he had the aces, and on any other hand i would have been smart enough to find that out before all my money was in. I mean I made that fold last night.

So I just essentially gave back 200 or 10 percent of my bank roll just because I am not that good and can get tilty. Now I am not saying I should not have not lost any, but I should have


ok...as as I am typing this, the stupid laptop had locked up when I had Kings to the river and lost another 25-35 there. My new challenge is just to make up for this bone headed play today.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Slowly but surely....

I am really starting to believe that it is the small wins that get your to where you want to be. Have not posted much in the last week because I did not think there was anything exciting to post.....till I realize this morning that is a GOOD thing. Of course you are going to have your occasional races but I believe that a solid cash game player should MOSTLY be in charge of his game and his growth. Sitting at just over $2200 now and 1/5th of my way to my goal of 3k by my birthday (Looking at going from 2-3k).

Finished 2nd in a live 10 person tourny on new years eve! Props out to Mike's sister to push all in with an open ended straight. Never expected that from a newer player, and she hit on the river.

Finished up close to 100 today with a combination of solid play and a lucky suck-out where my Jacks caught their set against a smaller stacks all in with AA. Proof that it does go both ways.

Outside of a couple of bubbles for small cash and no tickets, nothing yet from my attempt to enter small multi-table tournies for larger tourny tickets. But i have come close so I do believe I will eventually have some success.

And finally I hear rumors that Felter's announcement of his retirement was premature and that he may be back in the saddle. There is always HOPE!!

And the 2007 starts off with a ......ahh fuck I suck.

Well not that bad. Just had one of those sessions where I only played a few hands. Had KK to AA. AK to AA with a K flop (That one only cost me 45 dollars) and a Set flopped to a gut shot straight on the river. All in all about 100 down when I could not seem to dodge the bombs for the life of me. Not horrified as the hands played themselves. I just take this as the lesson where this is why you play within your bank roll limits as you can run bad and you need to just try and minimize the losses. I tried....
....could have done better....but tried!!