Sort of a good news/bad news type thing. Good news: I got a NY Times interview (see last entry) that apparently got reprinted in a few places that friends of mine actually saw, and I started playing poker again. Bad news: none of the poker playing led anywhere, obv. After some initial rust wore off, I found myself making a couple of good reads for stacks at 5/10 FR NL (did I mention I'm a nit?), but I did dust off a little more than I got from the reads during the rusty phase. In addition, I seem to be on quite a decent streak of getting everything in the TPGK to set range cracked or coolered by stuff, both in FR and in tournaments. It hasn't really concerned me much, but I hope it works out better at LAPC (leaving tomorrow in the very early morning - if the flights hold up one time, getting there in time to play a cool televised SNG. More on that later.)

I'm doing quite well in a few things, though. I think my FR play is better now than it was when I was playing it full time; I'm more aggressive now and have a better grasp on what my image lets me do, which is to get away with some second barrels and to make some big (for FR) calls vs. LAG's. I'm also murdering sats, although my sample size is too small to matter these days - only a few good ones that I want to play go off every week. There are also some business ventures that I will be discussing in LA, including some with Tworags; you will likely see a lot of cool things coming up in the near future of this site.

Couple of fun hands because I haven't posted any in a while:

1)Close Sunday river decision: I raise AKo in EP and get called by MP early in the UB 200K (effective stacks 2500ish @ 15/30.) Flop A53; I lead 150 into 225 and the guy, whose stats are 13/4 over 30 hands, calls after a few seconds. Turn Q (worst card in the deck, IMO - I might not check/fold here but I think I usually should); check/check. River brick. Now what? I think all three choices (b/f, c/c, c/f) have merit, but you can't really c/f very often unless you *know* the guy can't have AJ or be floating, and 30 hands aren't enough. C/c has merit because AK is at the very top of your range here and he can mistakenly value bet (or just bluff) quite a few hands. But how much do you call? I didn't want to have to call a PSB of 525 - which happens a lot on UB because they just mash the button - so I bet 300, he shoved and I shrugfolded. Oh well.

2)Big 5/10 FR hand: There weren't enough tables running on Cake so I fired up a couple on FTP and ran into a fellow CR pro multitabling every single one of them with big stacks on each. After sitting for about an hour and getting coolered/bleeding down a bunch, I picked up red tens in the SB. With two limpers, including a weak/tight looking guy UTG, the CR pro - playing a very LAGTAG 26/20 - made it 55 in the CO, I coldcalled and UTG overcalled.

Flop 776. What now? Against a 26/20, tens in that spot, where he's isolating the limpers so wide, are probably the nuts. What I didn't want to do, though, is checkraise, because although I'd call a 3 bet it would probably make me hate life. Instead, I chose to lead out 2/3 pot - telegraphing my hand - and hope he bluff raised my nitty ass so I could shove. UTG folded, but instead of making it the 350 I kinda expected, CR guy just shoved for an effective 900 more. Umm...okay...well, you can't have AA-QQ here, so I have the second nuts/I call? He turned over T9 and I held.

This hand shows how much FR has changed from a year ago. It's still way nittier than 6 max, where I'd just 3 bet PF and feel happy about it; IMO, 3 betting here is definitely not good given that setup and sorta turns a good hand into a bluff. But postflop, the game is simply more aggro. Back during Cake's heyday, or even at the 3/6+ games on Stars/FT last year, a shove in that spot would be AA-JJ virtually every time; now, enough people have gotten the point of aggression that you actually have to think about ranges and get it in relatively thin against a lot of people. (Next time I run this play against this same guy, I'm obviously folding, though.)

Meh. I can still beat these games for a clip :)

In fact, I don't think I broke the 2 hour mark anywhere.

Good news: I made the NY Times!

NY Times article

It's not about poker, but hey, I'll take it.

Good news: I made my first '08 final table last night. (That sounded really bad until I realized I'd played 30 donkaments all year, lol. Which leads me to:)

Bad news: I took 7'th because I actually made an impatient reshove. Yeah, it was 7 BB to a minraise and probably didn't even cost me much in equity, but it's still very dumb and not something I should ever do. And, after some thought, I'm pretty sure the reason I did it was because I didn't play enough recently.

So, a short term fix = me playing most of the FTOPS events and enough other donkaments to fill my screen before I leave for LA. That ought to be enough to get me un-rusty.

Oh well, at least I made moneys/got the Bodog runbad streak out of the way.

(Bodog runbad streak: a 2000% ROI over the course of a year and a half/70 tournaments, followed by an 0 for 48 streak that brought it down to 500%)

Only $200 or so, but hey, money's nice. I only played about four tourneys, bubbled the UB 200K, but went very deep in the Stars 1M again before busting out 200-something. It's also got enough plays in it to be a CR vid or two, so I'm set for this month.

If you're in the appropriate states, don't forget to vote today :)

For whatever reason, Day 2 is easier to remember than Day 1...

My first table had several decent players, including WacoKidd with an identical stack to my right, but the main factor was the guy immediately to my left, a middle aged, very obese guy who had about 100K. On the very first hand, the action went, IIRC: old, nitty looking short stacked guy raises in EP for 1/4 of his stack, two callers including Waco in LP, the obese guy in the BB 3 bets pretty big, nitty old guy snap shoves. The first caller folds nines, Waco folds jacks, the old guy has tens and loses to the fat guy's...Q8 sooted. He then goes on to play every hand that can make a straight or flush while the rest of us are all salivating. Sample hand from the rest of the hour and a half I spent there: Waco raises on the button to 3200 at 600/1200, I flat call jacks because I want the guy in, the guy obviously overcalls. Flop Q92. I check, the guy instabets 10K, I get ready to c/c 3 streets when Waco snap raises to 35K, and I briefly debate shoving anyway but fold. The fat guy mucks pocket fours face up and Waco shows KJ. If I'd had QJo that hand, the chips were getting turboshoved.

Eventually, the table breaks with me still having about 70K and I get moved to a much tougher one. This one has a couple of bad calling stations on my left, but features an obviously good Internet player (who turned out to be Obsidian) one to my right, Joe Tehan ('07 Mandalay Bay winner) - a good, mostly TAG player who could smell weakness and 3 bet surprisingly often - directly to my right and some other people I can't remember now. There was also a guy across from me who'd been at my table for six hours the day before and probably thought that I was way more LAG than I am, which I figured I'd use somehow.

I forget how, but I bled off some chips and was down to just under 60K when I won a huge pot. With a well over 100K stack at 4/8, Obsidian raised on the button to 2200 (I didn't know who he was yet but figured his range was top 90%), Joe Tehan called from the SB with about 25K, I looked down at T9, decided squeezing Joe was too risky and called.

Flop 874. Joe checked, I checked obviously planning to CR, Obsidian bet 6K (I thought this meant some kind of a hand but still figured on him having a large range), Joe thought for a while and called - this would have been really bad but he genuinely agonized over it - and I took about ten seconds to make it 25K, just under half my stack (I thought I had 60K left at the time but evidently I had 55. Whatever.) Obsidian immediately snap shoved, Joe folded, and I made the 'hate life but whatever' call. I think we were both very surprised to see each other's hand when he turned over...96o (he'd misjudged my stack, too, and thought he had FE). The table and rail went nuts, of course, especially when we didn't improve and T high won the monster pot.

From there, I shortly won another big pot. The guy from my last table limped in MP at 600/1200 and I checked Q3o in the BB. Flop A33 ("gin"). I checked since MP wasn't calling a bet without an ace, he bet 2K, and I kinda thought about what to do on future streets. After a few seconds, I figured "hey, I'm from the Internet, he'll fall for this", double checked my cards for the flush, and called. Turn 9x; I checked again, he bet 7K since I had a flush draw, I double checked my cards one more time and called. River 2x, I immediately led out 12K, he instacalled and mucked his ace. That put me at 157K, about twice average at that point.

The downward spiral started after that, though, basically involving two hands. One was against Obsidian: I flatted his MP raise with KK on the button, got CR'd on the 772 flop, and called him down on an 88 board to see J7, lol (I think I should have folded the river, but it wasn't a huge deal). The other was basically a terrible 3 street calldown with TP against a tight FTP pro that I'd never played with before - after playing with him two more hours, I'd have never made it, but since I didn't know him, it cost me about 40K more than it should have. After that, I simply went carddead and busted several hours later shoving 33 into QQ. Meh.

Cutting this entry short in anticipation of Sunday.