A week ago Friday I met up with Shaun at Borgata for what would be my first face to face coaching session. While I waited for him to arrive I churned some $5/$10 NL profits. Shaun navigated his way to AC a little late due to his GPS going haywire on him. We grabbed a quick bite and headed to the room to begin the nightly grind. The plan we discussed at dinner where Shaun would limit his tables to about 6 or so to allow us to really focus on the coaching aspect quickly went out the window. Shaun just can’t help himself, he’s a true blue “degen” and I mean that in a good way. Within a short time there were a gazillion miniature tables all over Shaun’s laptop. From 8PM until 3AM Shaun kept up the grind and continued coaching me as I tried to absorb it all.

At some point past midnight we loaded one of my old hand histories into a replayer on my laptop and reviewed it in fine detail as Shaun continued to multi table (he’s clearly a savant). I received plenty of well deserved “dude wtf’s” and discussed plenty of spots with Shaun opening my eyes to different ways to look at situations, awesome.

Not only is Shaun a professional grinder but the boy knows how to sleep. I on the other hand must have been a farmer in a past life because when daylight breaks despite blackout curtains, my internal clock says it’s time to make the donuts, just brutal. So at 5:45 after 2+ hours of sleep I lay in bed awake trying to will myself back to sleep to no avail. At 7:00 I shower, detour to Starbucks and wind up at the $5/$10 tables. After a few hours and a few more bucks to the positive I head back to the room and wake Shaun up. We head downstairs, eat a quick breakfast of Philly Cheesesteaks and Cheeseburgers and get back to the grind. Oh the healthy life.

The grind session began early afternoon and went well into Saturday night. During the day I met a fellow 2+2er steve the donk who joined us in the room during his 15 minute Super Satellite breaks where by the way he crushed his way to a seat. After a failed attempt at a nap late afternoon I loaded up some tables and grinded while continuing my education sitting alongside Shaun.

After another great information filled day we got to sleep at a decent hour so we’d be ready to play the $2000 NL Deep Stacked tournament on Sunday morning. I got a solid 5 hours weeeeeee and repeated the prior mornings steps winding up at the cash tables before 8AM. There was already a line formed for the 2K registration and I quickly jumped on. After a brief cash session the line had diminished and I went to grab some breakfast, Shaun had wanted to sleep until 10-10:30 (tourney started at 11:00 and he still needed to register). Big mistake. When we finally made it downstairs the lines stretched from the Poker Room well out into the casino, way past Wolfgang’s for those familiar with Borgata, wow. Long story short a limited number of alternate tickets were handed out and subsequently scalped to the highest bidders. Borgata accommodated 776 players and probably another 250 got turned away including Shaun and Gboro, meh. I sat down to play at 11:00 while Shaun and Gboro headed up to the room to grind the Sunday donkaments.


I went up to the room during the breaks every 2 levels. Early afternoon Astrolux joined the Sunday grind session in our room. The 2K liveament wasn’t really interesting, my opening table was very tight solid, no real spewiness and therefore it was tough to extract chips because we were playing 11 handed due to the oversell and somebody always had it. I won a couple of really nice pots with the 64cc and lost every time I found a big Ace. I saw AA shown at my table at least 15 times. Big pockets were widely distributed all around except to my seat, oh wait I got QQ once and flopped quads and found no action. The only known player at the table was Karlo Lopez who I’ve played with before and spent some time chatting with, I always find Karlo a fun guy to have at the table. With the table chip lead about 8 ½ hours into the day my table broke and I got moved to the table from hell. As I took my seat the dealer was peeling the turn card in what was a pretty juicy pot already. 20 minutes later it goes check check on the river, wtf!!! I would’ve called a clock had Bodog Ari not been in the hand. As it turned out he raked a really nice pot and would go onto a 3rd place finish good for 6 figures, well done sir. On it went, every hand everybody had a seemingly life or death decision to make. What a brutal table. My day ended during the last level of the day. I’m not in the mood to type out the action, but in my mind I got slow rolled really badly by AA which fit with the theme of the slowest acting table ever, I mean ever. Live players suck really bad and the more I play live the more I don’t want to which makes no sense at all.

At 11PM after busting the boys were still in the room and we just hung as Shaun continued to grind after Gboro and Astrolux finished up their sessions. Sometime around midnight Gboro says “Hey Doyle wanna go for some drinks?” LOL, not this early riser who’s been up since 6AM. Gboro and Astrolux headed down for some booze and I grabbed another couple of hours of coaching and room service as Shaun continued to grind, what a frickin’ baller. At 2 or 3AM Gboro and Astrolux were back in the room trying to convince us to head downstairs to play a live SNG with them, oh to be young again. We had the good sense to decline and eventually got to sleep.

On Monday after some more profitable early AM cash I went back to the room and woke Shaun. We decided to drive back to my house in Pennsylvania and spend the day grinding. While Shaun grinded from the minute we hit my office my body and mind began to crash. We headed outside to the pool deck, Shaun with laptop in hand and I took a lounge chair and caught some zzzzzzz’s. After I woke we loaded another of my old HH’s into the replayer and did another great review while eating dinner as Shaun multi tabled. I began my session at 9PM which culminated with a Final Table in the Stars $20 Rebuy. Sitting comfortably in 3rd place I got it aipf from the BB against the player in 4th place who held AQ and snap called my shove. The A on the turn crushed me and I would up a disappointing 7th.

On Tuesday Shaun spent some time reconfiguring my desktop to make my multi tabling experience easier and then headed off to Turning Stone. During our time together Shaun was often times complimentary of my game, something which kind of surprised and inspired me. He also told me he got plenty out of discussing situations and hands with me too. I guess I was able to give him some insight into how somebody not nearly as good as him views certain situations :-)

Another thing we spent some time discussing was adjusting my life schedule so that I can play in the better nightly events as opposed to the early AM and occasional afternoon sessions that I became lazily accustomed to. Next update I’ll let you all know how it’s going.

Shaun and I have made plans to do this again in about a week from now. Hopefully the weather will be good so we can spend some time at the pool in the sun before grinding. All in all it was an enjoyable 5 days for me. Shaun’s a really good kid with a good head on his shoulders. I couldn’t be happier with my choice of a coach.

-Doyle-

I love poker, the Tournament side of it that is, which comes as no surprise to those of you who are close to me or happen to read this blog. I’ve been playing for the better part of 4-5 years now and despite moderate success here and there I am firmly sitting on the frustrated side of variance. Not being one to rant and rave about luck, in print that is, lets just say that if this variance thing is supposed to even out I’m due a big time major heater.

Now, being a self reflective person by nature, I spend a lot of time thinking about my game, specifically tournament poker. While I consider myself better than the average player in the world of MTT’s, I’m far, far, far away from the elite level and it’s time for me to try to find new ways to close that gap some. The desire to improve upon my skill set and thereby increase my bottom line has been building within me for quite some time. To those that don’t grind the online MTT’s, it can be hard to conceptualize just how difficult it is to be meaningfully successful. The line is an incredibly fine one that I often find myself on the wrong side of.

Being that I’m no longer 21 and can’t travel the world with all of you young ballers has made finding new ways to improve my game pretty tough. Thus far I’ve been pretty much self-taught. Being a working man with a family has robbed me of that constant conversational element which is a benefit to those who are lucky enough to have it. Hearing and discussing different ways to approach the game, play hands etc…. is an invaluable resource. I do the best I can within a small circle of friends, most of whom are predominantly live game players. The major exception has been my friend Body Man D, an online junkie like myself who shares similar life circumstances and is presently having a breakout year. Way to go man, very well deserved.

Being a big fan of Bond’s articles (isn’t everyone) and knowing how important Adam Junglen was to his progression as a player I decided a while ago that finding a coach would be a natural next step for me. My search began several months ago with a PM to Shaun Deeb to gauge if he’d be interested in mentoring me. Fast forward several months and we have a deal in place. Why Shaun? Well I wanted to aim high (no pun intended), he’s an immense talent with a super LAG playing style which is different than my own and he has the sickest ability to grind like no other mortal. Furthermore, he’s full of integrity, a trait I find very important as the online scene becomes more and more prevalent in the poker world. Bottom line is he just seems to get it and on top of that he’s an incredibly nice guy. I also must add that I’m absolutely flattered that Shaun has agreed to take me on as his student. Admittedly having a coach who is presently on a world tour that would make many rock stars envious comes with its own set of challenges, the biggest being time. We’ve been doing the best we can while Shaun’s been in Europe and with his return to the States imminent the time element should improve some until we have our first face to face session.

So a great big humble welcome aboard Coach Deeb. Hopefully you can teach this old dog some new tricks.

It wasn’t enough being sick for more than half the month, the Poker Gods also decided to kick me while I was down.


Tournaments

March was my worst month of tournament poker in a long, long while. The bad beats and coolers that began in full force with the start of 2008 reached epic levels in March. Dare I say (or pray) that things can only get better from here? In limited play without any significant cashes I dropped nearly 5K, barf. What I hoped would be a breakout year has had a pretty horrible start. Alas, help is on the way.


Cash

I may be done with $1/$2. My last 5 online sessions have been at $2/$4 and I intend to try to remain there during the infrequent occasions I sit down for a cash session. I think it became really difficult to take $1/$2 seriously after playing a lot of $5/$10 and $10/$20 live at Borgata over the past few months. There’s a healthy amount of $ in play when 4-6 tabling $2/$4 so it appears that I’ll be giving it a solid try in the coming months.

In March I broke even at $1/$2 and won 3+ buy ins at $2/$4. I didn’t play any live cash.


On a final note, Johan Santana is the nuts.

The long and short of it is I got absolutely walloped by the Flu. Been over 2 weeks now and I’m still not completely recovered. It started a day and a half before I was supposed to leave for a 5 night vacation with my wife to Vegas. Needless to say the trip got cancelled as I was relegated to bed for nearly 10 straight days. Hopefully I’ll be back to 100% soon because being sick just sucks.

February Recap

Made a late month cash surge and erased the deficit turning it into a shallow gain. Donkaments were profitable to the tune of @ $3500 but another month passed without a big score. Live action netted me @ $1500 as per my last entry.

March

Haven’t played all that much obviously. Cash games show me even in $1/$2 and ahead 3 buy ins at $2/$4 which I am becoming more and more comfortable playing. Tournaments on the other hand have just been torture. I’ve had so many big chances and simply couldn’t seal the deal 1 time. The coolers and bad beats have been epic but I’ll also admit I’ve made some mistakes along the way too, probably out of frustration. I presently stand in the hole @ 3K for the month in very limited action, blah!

I’ll get back to updating the grind as soon as I’m feeling better. Just wanted to get this quickie up for now. Hope all you guys avoid the Flu, it’s down right nasty.

-Doyle-

Left early yesterday morning on what was supposed to be a 3-night stay at Borgata. After grabbing a quick bite I sat down at $5/$10 NL at around 1PM. We began 5-handed (yum yum) and I scooped a bunch of small early pots before the table filled. Our table was a must move and about a half hour later I get moved and take a seat directly to the right of my buddy Jack who happens to be one of my closest friends in the world.

About an hour in at the main game I scoop a sweet $2700 pot with pocket KK. About a half hour later I scoop a $900 pot with AK (tptk) against a player who calls me down with A hi thinking I was bluffing I suppose. All is good in the world except I feel like I’ve been hit by a mack truck. I’d been up since 4AM and am really tired. On top of that my family is all under the weather and I’m mentally wondering if I was fortunate enough to escape it or if it was starting to hit me too? Now picture the poker room full of sniffles and coughs and I’m totally freaking out.

It’s now 4:30PM and I’m ready to crash, not a good sign. I decide I’ll hang in a bit longer since I love the table I’m at. In middle position after a limp and a raise to $35 I look down at two black KK’s. I have no reads on the limper but the raiser who is sitting directly to my right may be the worst $5/$10 player I’ve ever come across, really ever! I repop to $110 because it’s a sure thing he’ll call with any two cards. It folds to the early limper who calls (hmmmmmm) and of course the original raiser completes. The flop is an all red 10 10 5. They both check to me and I bet $200. Early position doesn’t look at his cards and quickly calls (ruh roh Shaggy). Mr. genius to my right thinks for a minute and pushes all in for about $750. The action is on me. Mind you this is the easiest call ever against the genius to my right but there’s the early position player to consider. I ask for a count on early position who is playing about $1400 more. He is calm as one can be, counts out his chips without a worry in the world, no inflection in his voice nor are there any cracks in his demeanor.

This totally sucks. I’m convinced that early position has me beat. I begrudgingly muck my Kings. Early position finally takes a look at his cards all poised to call and a look of sheer horror fills his face. He announces that he’s misread his hand and mucks. He says that he thought he had 10 8 when in fact he had 9 8. Mr. terrible shows me two red 4’s and my tilt factor hits a million trillion. So now I’m exhausted, maybe sick (or incredibly paranoid) and severely on tilt.

I decide to pick up my chips about $1500 to the positive and head to the room for a nap. I sleep for a whole 45 minutes, yippee, and when I wake up at 6PM I feel really crappy (there’s a shocker). The TV’s on the local 6PM news and all they’re talking about is a winter storm heading our way, poised to start at around midnight and a severe flu epidemic crushing the whole country. The last place I want to be sick and trapped is in Atlantic City so I make a spur of the moment decision to pack up and drive back home. I did stop at the poker room to say good-bye to Jack who looked at me like I was a total looney bird.

I drove home with toothpicks holding my eyelids open and easily beat the storm with a couple of hours to spare. Here it is the next morning as I sit here typing this and I feel just fine other than being a little tired. So I’m not sick and now I wish I was back at Borgata but it’s been snowing for the last 10 hours and I’m simply not going anywhere except maybe to an insane asylum. Guess its back to the online grind. Yaaaaaawn.

-Doyle-