Sick three-bet bluff on Cake Poker

I showed, of course.

Long days of poker with not enough sleep in between. Made it well past dinner break today ($3000 NL) but still busted short of the money.

I will post more specifically about these last two days because I found myself in what I think were a lot of interesting situations. But frankly, right now I'm just too tired to elaborate on anything. More later.

Tomorrow is the $2500 shorthanded and Tuesday is the $5000 heads-up. These are the two matches I'm most excited about.

Hi.

While I assume you at least know something about who I am if you're here, I can't be sure. So let me tell you a little bit:

My name is Nath Pizzolatto. I've been playing tournament poker seriously for about two years now, and supporting myself exclusively from it for about 20 months. I made my first deposit online of $300 in April 2005, and won my first tournament in early August-- an $11 on UltimateBet for about $900. I won a $22 6-max tournament the next week, and suddenly I had a bankroll of nearly $2000, more money than I'd ever had at any time in my life.

I never looked back. My tournament career peaked at last year's WSOP with a second place finish in the $2500 6-max event for over $238,000. Since then, however, it's been a lot of struggling to maintain balance and not let the money make me lazy and complacent, or get me to jump into games I'm not ready for. (I've done a lot of both, and it shows.)

Flash forward to now. I'd taken a month or so off from poker while I did some traveling and visting friends, and the vacation was just what I needed, after a harsh downswing that cost me somewhere in the mid-5 figures and a great deal of the confidence I had in my game. I thought I was ready to come back and go at it, but my first day resulted in a losing session across the board at tournaments and cash games.

This led to some frustration on my part, but it also got me tons of worthwhile advice about my mental makeup and approach to the game (some of which I'll talk about in a later post).

The advice paid off almost immediately: I had two nice scores over the weekend, winning the $500 event at Turning Stone's East Coast Poker Championships, and then taking down UltimateBet's big Sunday tournament, the $200 buyin $200,000 guaranteed. The total prize money for these two was over $70,000-- my share of which is more than enough to reinvigorate my bankroll from its latest swings and provide me with a nice cushion as I prepare for Vegas. (I'll write up a report of the key hands from each next.)

My life isn't like many of the online grinders. I'm almost 26; many of them are under 21. I have a vast array of outside interests, and balancing them all can be difficult. I'll share some of them and my methods for balancing them with you as we go along.

In the next month or so, I'll be playing a lot of tournaments online while I get ready for the World Series of Poker. I'm spending June and July in Vegas, hoping to snag that bracelet that eluded me last year (as well as a lot of money). Since I'm returning to school next year (to finish an undergraduate degree I dropped out from some three and a half years ago), these next few months will be my last as a full-time tournament player for a while. This is a big reason I've taken on a backer; while I have enough money to reasonably play all the tournaments I want to play, the risk of ruin, especially with the WSOP coming up, is too high, and I'd rather ensure I had money saved for my trip back to school.

So that's my story. I'll continue to tell parts of it as I go along, and hopefully you'll enjoy the ride with me.