It was a short day, I was super card dead and when I finally got a hand I folded the winner on the flop. Got the last of my chips in against Mark Teltscher with 88 vs 66 and lost that too. Here's the one interesting hand:

400/800 a100 I open in early-middlish position to 2200 with JhJ and 20K more behind. Joe Cassidy calls 2 to my left (though I forgot it was him at the time) and and a middle aged asian guy calls right after him. The flop comes 853hh and I bet 5K. Cassidy makes it 11K, and the asian guy INSTA-shoves for 40-50K or something that covers both of us. I only have 15K left and really don't want to fold again but it's hard for me to beat both of them here. I feel like the speed of the all-in move weights the asian guy's range towards a draw a lot. He has a set or a draw and most people Hollywood with their sets a little at least. But I still have to worry about Joe and I have no idea what he has. I ended up folding and Joe called with A8cc and held vs A3hh. So that really sucked. I think maybe the live reads were strong enough that I should have called but I'm not sure how results oriented I'm being.

Anyways now that that's over it's back to Newfoundland this Friday for Christmas which I'm definitely much more excited about than any poker tournament. In other news I've done 2 videos now for PokerSavvy and it looks like I will be doing a lot more. They've got a lot of other very good players making videos there as well so if you're thinking about joining a training site you should go over there and check it out. I think they still have a 24-hour free trial offer on. Also, for people that haven't seen it yet I got "felt'd" by Kristy Arnett from CardPlayer. It's basically the poker version of Punk'd. Here's a link:

Felt'd =/

I don't really know what to say about it but hopefully you get a good laugh out of it on my behalf. Either that or you'll feel super awkward the entire time watching it like I did. Alright I'm out, possibly no blogs for a while over Christmas depending what I'm up to.

Mike

Hey hey it's time for a little update about what I've been up to here in Vegas. I got in Tuesday night and played the $5k tournament on Thursday. I got off to a good start in that one but lost a biggish pot to Mark Teltscher that I played weird and then got KK vs Shannon Shorr's AA so that was that. I played Day 1A of the $15K main event on Saturday but unfortunately it was a really frustrating day where not a whole lot went right. I finished the day with 32K of my 45K starting stack though and with blinds starting at 400/800 tomorrow I still have some room to play. Here are some key hands:

Hand 1: 100/200 A player limps in MP, I make it 1k in the SB with A8dd and he calls. Flop 666 I bet 1250, he calls. Turn 4 I bet 2500 he calls. River 2 I bet 550 he calls with TT and wins. Yay obvious 3-barrels.

Hand 2: Amnon Fillipi limps the HJ, Matt Hyman limps the CO, I make 1050 on the button with AJo and both call. Flop AK2cc, Amnon checks and Matt bets 1750 which I call as does Amnon. Turn Js putting a 2nd flush draw on board. They check to me and I fire 6K, Amnon thinks briefly and shoves for 19K more. Matt thinks a bit and folds and I tank for a long time before finally folding. From what I've seen of Amnon he is very spewy in a call stationy way preflop and on the flop but when he puts his chips in he usually has it. He's quite capable of making the elaborate slowplay with a set of 2s here as well as peeling the flop with QTo, and while there are a decent number of hands he could semi-bluff with on the turn I don't think he is particularly likely to make a big move like that.

Hands 3-7ish: I raise and #1pen 3-bets me and I have to fold. wtf he's supposed to be a nit like me.

Hand 8: 200/400 a50 Solidish player opens the HJ to 1200, Amnon quickly calls, I make it 4800 in the SB with 98o and Peter (#1pen) cold 4-bets to 10.5K in the BB. Can't imagine he didn't have a monster here but when someone picks you off time and again like he was it's pretty tilting even if it seems like he's probably just running good picking up hands on you most of the time because you just don't know for sure.

Hand 9: 300/600 a75 Young short stacked guy open to 1600 in MP with like 10K behind and I shove in the BB with AK and hold vs his AQs.

Hopefully day 2 goes better and I can put chips in the pot a few times without getting raised out of my seat. Or ya know just get raised when I actually have it.

Today I played Sunday tourneys online and got owned. Just a couple small cashes to show for it. Anyways I better get some rest for tomorrow. Cheers,

Mike

So I stuck to the plan and took a week off of poker while I was down in NYC partying with some friends. New York was awesome, really an amazing city, but more importantly hanging out with some good friends I don't see often enough and partying like we were still in university was just a great time. I also got to visit my aunt and uncle in Brooklyn and check out their neighbourhood, and even though I'm lazy and don't do it often enough it's always good to see family. I really love that poker gives me the freedom and means to pick up and take trips like this one and I should really make a point to try to do it more often (trips purely for fun with no poker).

So I got back in town a little bit worse for wear but well-rested mentally and was ready to get back to work and crush the tables. I quickly proceeded to lose around $125K in ~800 hands of 200/400 PLO. Omaha sure is a fun game. There were a few hands I played pretty questionably and ended up getting it in really terrible for a decent amount of money. Two in particular were basically courtesy of Gus bluffing, and me getting stuck in the middle of him and a 3rd player who ended up having the nuts holding something fairly strong but kind of marginal myself. If not for Gus making a move I probably get away from at least one of those hands without too much damage, but so it goes. Oh yeah I guess I should post them:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3556785 - Trips is a pretty tricky hand to play sometimes, especially here when I have a weak kicker and a pair in my hand leaving me with very few outs when I'm behind. Maybe I still could have found a fold but I think Gus is bluffing so often and Cole certainly doesn't have to have a monster either, and once I call the first time I'm pretty priced in.


http://www.pokerhand.org/?3556807 - Getting 25K in drawing dead is just not as much fun as it looks, trust me. This may well be spewy but other options didn't seem like too much fun either.

I didn't play much 200/400 for the rest of the week, or even all that much poker really, but I did put in a few sessions at smaller stakes to work on my game a bit. I played some hands at 5/10 and ran extremely well so that made me feel more confident in my game again. The Sunday tournament lineup was pretty strong this week with a bunch of big stuff on Ongame and iPoker. I woke up early as I have been all week and played a super long session starting at 11:30am and not ending until around 2am. I ended up finishing 13th in two tournaments that I had a ton of chips in at one point, which would normally be super frustrating, except I finally won a (online) tournament! Ongame had a tournament series which I had missed all the events of but at the end there was a special $5K buy-in tournament with no rake that they bought all the winners of the tournament series and leader board into. It only got 78 runners but it had a sick structure and the field was not especially tough. I ended up getting lucky in several key pots after a series of hands on the bubble where I really hated my play and blew a lot of chips. I got heads-up behind in chips against a really weak player and then ran insanely hot to take it down for 117K. To celebrate I lost 16K at 200/400.

Tomorrow I'm off to Vegas again for the last couple events of the Five Diamond series at Bellagio. Everyone was screaming that the sky was falling after the turnouts in the first few events but it seems like the fields in the last few $5K events have actually been relatively large and I expect the last $5K preliminary and the $15K main event that I'm going to play to be more of the same.

Mike

I've easily been on the biggest online heater of my life this month and this week was just more of the same. I didn't really play all that much this week, mostly just 200/400 PLO when I saw a decent looking game running and 5 tournaments. I final tabled 4 of them placing 2nd, 4th, 4th, 5th for a total of ~54K. On Wednesday night I played the four 9pm majors, and for the first time in my career I made 3 final tables at the same time. I got yet another 2nd in a tourney on Absolute, 5th on UB, and 4th in the FTP 100r. I recorded the end of these so there's a pretty good chance I'll turn them into a training video at some point. I also played the AP $500 tourney on Saturday and got 4th this time after just losing every pot at the final table after having the chip lead at one point. The play at this final table was some of the most ridiculously hilariously terrible play I've ever seen and I recorded that as well so maybe I will turn it into a video where I mock everyone relentlessly for entertainment.

Speaking of videos I finally finished my 1st video for PokerSavvy which I expect to actually be up this week. It didn't turn out as well as I might have hoped but that was probably inevitable the first time around while still getting used to the software etc... I think it still turned out pretty good though, I guess I'll get to see what people think soon enough. I believe PokerSavvy still has a short free trial promotion going so you might be able to go check that out once it's up. So that brings us to PLO.

I basically have just continued running stupidly good all week at 200/400 running up short stack buy-ins. I'm just going to tell you the story of Thursday night/Friday morning since that was my biggest shot yet and also my biggest win. I jumped into a game just after midnight and did my usual luckbox thing:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494156

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494160

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494162 - Not sure if my flop semi-bluff is good in this one as my wrap can easily be in bad shape on this board with the flush draw. Still, I feel like if either of them had a hand they really wanted to go with they probably would have just bet it themselves so I think I have a decent amount of fold equity. Gus ended up calling the flop real light though he's a coin flip against my actual hand but I am too lucky.

So that was pretty sick I quit up my 55K and the games broke so whatever. I was still up in the morning though and there was more 200/400 PLO action going than almost ever with like 6 tables running. I started running up stacks on them but this time I didn't quit when I got deep stacked if I had good table position. I ended up 4-tabling for around 4 hours and having a really swingy session. The variance of these games is really sick and from my +55K starting point I went as high as +110K then dropped as low as just +16K. I bounced back and ended +95K. It was a really crazy session but it was also really fun and a great learning experience. I've never had anywhere close to that much money in play before in my life or played that many high stakes tables at once before. I definitely made some mistakes but I didn't feel like they were related to the amount of money on the line, I've just still got a decent amount to learn about PLO and even the best make mistakes sometimes. Here are some more key pots:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494206

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494207 - Ups. A slightly lighter 3-bet from me here.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494212


http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494216

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494217 - This looks ugly but it's actually pretty standard. I have to call the flop with possibly 6 outs and preflop is correct too. Oh yeah I do lose some pots too:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494227

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494232

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494234 - I guess I could jam the flop but I have 3 hearts and I have to be concerned about whether my 7 is actually live. Certainly I don't figure to have much/any fold equity at all so I decided to just peel.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494251 - Having 3 diamonds sucks but I don't really see what else I can do here there should be enough semi-bluff hands in his range that I have good equity against.

Heading to NYC this week so probably not much poker will be played for a bit. Take it easy and watch my video let me know how bad it sucks.

Mike

That's what I've been doing this weekend. Well, just Saturday to be more accurate, I gave some back today. Saturday was one of the best days of my internet pokers career though so I'll tell you all about that now. The day started at 2pm with a bunch of tournaments and some 200/400 PLO shots. I made 24K at PLO so that was pretty sweet. Here are the biggest pots I won:


http://www.pokerhand.org/?3461326 - 3-betting preflop is probably more standard but stack sizes make it awkward when he calls and I hadn't been 3-betting much. Obviously get it in on the flop and hold the 56-44 how lucky.


http://www.pokerhand.org/?3461335 - Flop pretty good turn better river ok also.


http://www.pokerhand.org/?3461339 - I guess I have to get it in on the flop, though if I run into the nut flush draw I'm fairly dead. Getting called in two spots was unexpected, as the hand played out I'm not really sure what they had. With the blockers against the nuts bombing the turn definitely merited serious consideration but I went the more conservative route this time. When Ozzy checks the river I'm almost certain my hand is good and decide to go for a checkraise since Patrik should either have made a flush himself and be looking to value bet it or turn something into a bluff a lot. Pretty easy checkraise for value once Ozzy folds since Patrik would almost surely have raised the flop with the nut flush draw.

After that I just concentrated on my tournaments. The awesome $5K 6-handed FTOPS was on but I busted super early losing a big flip with AK vs JJ. It was just a spot where even though we were 200xBB deep I had to put the money in. I did much better in the other early FTOPS event though, the $500 heads-up tournament. I was actually really happy with how I played these HU matches for once and I was making a lot of pairs and winning races and stuff as well which obviously helps a lot. I think I was doing a very good job getting maximal value in a lot of spots where in the past I may have made the mistake of playing for pot control too much. I rattled off five quick wins with more than a bit of luck on my side (my 88 beat QQ all-in preflop for most of the chips in the 5th) and as I was waiting for my 6th match I ended up playing HU in two other tournaments!

The first was a Step 6 satellite for a PCA seat. I got heads up around even in chips with jorj, one of the regulars who plays every single step 5/6 that runs basically, and I got lucky to win a coinflip for almost all the chips to take down the $14K package. I'm definitely glad I was able to get that seat out of the way early and without spending too much on satellites. Next up was the AP $500 tourney. I had a huge chip lead throughout most of the final table which I was able to increase easily as all the short stacks had around the same number of chips and several were clearly just playing to try to move up a few spots. I just moved in preflop uncontested time and time again to pick up the large blinds and antes. When we got 3-handed though I lost a big pot to apestyles with 99 vs AA and then doubled up the short stack when he finally called one of shoves to all of a sudden find myself as the short stack. Ape did something crazy and sucked out on the other guy to get us heads up but with me way behind in chips. I doubled once but then lost QJ vs J8 aipf to bust 2nd for $24K.

As the heads up of the AP tournament was being played my 6th round in the FTOPS tournament started. My new opponent was actually pretty weak but after I grinded him way down he doubled up twice to take the chip lead from me momentarily. I got back to a 2:1 chip advantage and then ran my 88 into his 77 to end it. The next round I ran into a much tougher opponent though and got behind early. I won a flip to get back to even and then another big pot where I turned the nut straight to take the chip lead. I had a 2:1 chip lead when I checkraised him on the turn of a QT96 board with Q6 and called his shove only to run into 87. I won A7 vs A5 to get back in it but on the final hand I got all-in on the flop with J8 vs his KJ on the J-hi flop to end my run. I finished 9-16th for $7500.

So as you can tell all those scores added up to a pretty big day. Not final tabling a $10K+ buy-in tournament big but still probably a top 5 online day for me. Then I got to watch a pretty sweet UFC 91 card so it was just an all-around super day. The hot run didn't carry over to Sunday though unfortunately. I only cashed the early $100 buy-in FTOPS event and the $200 rebuy on Stars for less than $2K total. Now that FTOPS is over this week figures to have less poker. I'll keep working on my PLO game and maybe play a couple of the bigger tourneys but that's likely about it. I also need to get my first PokerSavvy video out asap. That's all I've got for now, keep it real homies.

Mike