Short version: I went 1 for 6 today, but the 1 was a 7'th place in the UB 200K for 7,000. This one's bittersweet; I sucked out on the first hand of ITM (just like the FTPment) so it's another freeroll, but after surviving ~45 minutes of 11 handed play with a nice stack, finishing seventh is really annoying. The culprit was the only guy at the FT that I'd say was bad, who led into me on a JT5 board with A3 (making effective stacks a PSB at that point) and then hit a 3 outer (okay, 7 outer, turn gutshot ftw) when I decided to let him bluff. Doh...now *that* one hurts, because it's only a good play if he leads a river blank, but he didn't even have the decency to be good enough to lead the river ace. In other words, I might have played it bad vs. a bad player with lots of money on the line, which sucks. (oh yeah, and then I ran Ax with 8 BB into his jacks. lol donkaments etc.)

Still a good pair of Sundays, though, and sets me up nicely for Vegas, where I hopefully - cross my fingers re: the weather - arrive tomorrow.

In between taking a couple of days off (I always do this when I play so late it messes up my sleep schedule) I've been analyzing my play in the donkament and making several videos out of it. So far, I've got about a half hour of raw video, covering just under half the MTT, but it's by far the less juicy half so it looks like my next month Cardrunners schedule is covered early. (Gotta finish this before I head to Vegas on Monday - otherwise, I'm gonna be doing this in my friend's apartment rather than playing. Yuck!) The way I do these videos is actually fairly time-consuming, because I record every important hand and often need several takes to get the commentary right; so far it looks like it takes me about three hours to record one hour of video, not counting prepping the HH for the converter and fixing any crashes. It's definitely not something I'd do for free, but on the other hand, the after the fact play by play lets me rethink every major decision, which is a big help.

Flashback: once upon a time, I was a low to midstakes SNG player just going up to the 100's on Party with a pretty small bankroll. To make a long story short, I was cold-PM'd by Gigabet and asked to analyze the play of all his opponents in the 1K Steps that were just starting to go off at the time. I did that and prepped a couple of dozen detailed scouting reports on people playing the highest stakes games on the Internet at the time. I credit that task to getting me where I am today, transforming my game and making me take a giant leap in my thinking and abilities. CR, PXF and other training sites are a lot easier than poring over every hand that went to showdown for every player in a 10K sample, but I don't think you can beat something like that for getting into your opponents' heads. That's essentially what I'm forced to do when I make a big vid, and it's been doing a lot for my aggressiveness in MTT's since I started recording them.

One question on the topic I've gotten is "aren't you afraid that people will see your play and adapt?" Meh, not really. Most of my game is typical generic TAG, which can't really be exploited well short of 3 betting me light in certain spots, and most people don't pick those spots well so it doesn't even matter. Further, I can and do easily adapt to regulars, and I also have a couple of tricks I keep back even from the vids. It's just way harder to exploit a thinking TAG than a LAG in the same situations, since you can 3 bet LAG's light without being nearly as scared that they've got the nuts. (That isn't to say that good LAG play isn't better. I actually think it is, but it's so hard to do that only a handful of people can pull it off without crashing and burning somewhere.)

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The good news about that win is that, coming when it does, it basically seals up another really good year on top of the last one. I've been extremely lucky in that I'm making as much as I would have in my former career path, while playing maybe 1/4 as much as I'd be working. Of the dozen or so people from law school and three good friends I keep in touch with two years later, only two are still on their first jobs, and three or four have already left the law (both are totally standard but still really icky given the amount of loans everyone's got). I'm by far the best story out of all those guys not gunning for partner, and while I have no idea how I got here, I'm definitely enjoying it.

With that win sealing the deal and living in Vegas in the summer taking that idea off the table (how many roaches can you seriously have in one backyard? Damn), I'm officially looking for a condo with my wife. It looks like places I'd like to live in in NYC are about 300-500K depending on the number of rooms and the location; the former's not a problem, but for the latter I'd have to win another donkament somewhere to be totally secure. I plan to solve this by getting there a bunch more times. I can't stress this enough: to be a true tournament professional (that's "donkamenteur" in French), it's very important that you suck out as often as humanly possible.

In conclusion and/or summarizing this entire entry:

1)I'll write some more from Vegas
2)lol donkaments

Step 1: suck out hardcore ~5 times
Step 2: play pretty well
Step 3: set up, then lose a big flip for 2/3 the chips in play 3 handed
Step 4: massively profit anyway and feel pretty good about it

trip report here/CR vid coming eventually.

lol tournaments. Jeez, can I stop losing with AA to Ax for a week? I think that's three in a row now. :(

Oh well. In lieu of anything resembling a deep run, at least I've got time to play videogames. In the meantime, here's the hand analysis video I promised:

Hand analysis video

(This should be a live link by tomorrow morning...blurry, but watchable. Why does Google/Youtube blur quality so much?)

Keeping a promise to myself to at least briefly update the blog after Sundays:

Everything considered, it was a pretty mediocre day, one of those "oh, they've got the extreme top end of their range this time" surprise-filled funfests that make you curse the concept of G-bucks. I ran pretty bad and didn't even play that well (blah), dropping a little under a grand all told. My only cash was in FTOPS, though, and I'm 3 for 3 in that series, which is always nice. (Annoying sidebar: the guy to my left for 2 hours was pretty bad, but is still in with 2 tables left as of this writing. Of course, I doubled him up from a ~10x stack on a pretty bad button vs. SB "2:1 call" that should really have been a fold because he had just enough chips to make it bad. Meh.)

Tomorrow is "video Monday", which basically means I've been slacking on my CR vids and have to finish up recording a couple of hours worth of replays for Cardrunners. I have a good tournament HH saved up for it - the FTOPS 6 max event - and it ought to make a good video, because I play a pretty nitty 6 max style that nobody really teaches but works very well in donkaments. The natural aggression in 6 max combines with tournament players to create people that don't know how to hand read but keep on betting for no apparent reason, which means all you have to do is to keep calling their bluffs down and you make moneys. Easy game (when they don't wind up with a full house at showdown, but really, who makes those?)

After that's done, I'm going to get this blog back to analyzing hands in some detail. It's been a while.

Since the AP thingamajig started, I've played very little and have gone on a very peculiar streak. On the one hand, I'm "almost" playing well - making deep run after deep run after deep run. Since early September, I've only played 72 online tournaments (lol @ calling myself a "pro" right now - this *is* changing with FTOPS season)...and cashed in 26 of them, a > 35% clip. Given these things pay 10%, that's insane and totally beyond the normal definition of "white hot". To put it another way, last year, I had a 2xx% ROI (return on investment), another white hot number, but only cashed something like 15% of the time!

The bad news - very little money to show for it. Oh, I've made some cash, but there are only a handful of final tables in here, and it's not because I'm folding into the money. The last two days pretty much cover it, along with the playing "almost" well part; out of 8 tournaments, I cashed in five and bubbled another, while managing to lose a couple of hundred bucks yesterday and winning about 1500 today. It's not the end of the world, but in that timeframe, I managed to get it all in with overpairs on raggedy boards for lots of chips four times and be behind all four times. That's just ugly, and it's made uglier by the fact that a couple of those were folds that I should normally make. Then, there are days like today, where I got a couple of lucky breaks to get very deep into the razzament only to go 0 for 3 with A247, A42, and A543 in a 20 minute span for big pots. You can lose one of those hands and still be in decent shape; I even managed to lose two and keep some chips. But to lose all three adds up to a 92/8 or so cooler that you can't possibly get out of in a limit game.

So, essentially, I'm mildly confused as to how I'm doing. On the one hand, it seems like I'm running white hot and playing well while, on occasion, making good reads and picking my spots very well. On the other, I also seem to have a case of "I have an overpair, time to stack off" syndrome and have left my ability to fold second best hands in big pots somewhere (this'd be better if the pots didn't get big *after* I don't fold them) along with a legitimate case of running bad late in events. This type of thing is pretty rare - nobody stays at a 35% ITM rate and doesn't make huge amounts of money for very long - so either I'm overdue for a month or two that makes me hate life, or I'm about to find myself a lot better at poker. I'll find out soon enough.

After a nice two mostly poker-free weeks (although I've put in a few hours in the last several days), I'm finally leaving Seoul tomorrow. It's been a lot of fun, but I'm ready to head back. More pics forthcoming (although not too many more because our camera decided to die. Tip: putting in wet, probably sandy seashells in the same bag as a digicam is dumb.) Take it from me, though, that Seoul is a great city to be 20-something in...if I spoke Korean I'd probably never leave. The nightlife is hopping, everything's cheap even with the bad dollar, and the food is surprisingly good even if you don't touch anything spicy. Mmm, Korean bakeries.

On the poker side, I played 3 tourneys today and wound up making another Cake FT, although it was only 50K this week and I still only got 6'th for a couple of thousand. No video this time, but the highlights included 4 shoves with 2-5 BB stacks and getting 4 folds, and sucking out on aces AIPF for the donkament life twice. In further fitting Cake fashion, my bustout hand included me shoving 8 BB UTG and getting called by the button's J8 sooooted for 98% of his stack. lol. Regardless, consecutive Sunday tourney FT's are always nice.

Looking forward to more playing time/videos/etc. after Tuesday.

Most of this week's been pretty uneventful, with the exception of me blowing lots of chips in the WCOOP 5cd event (not that anyone knows how to play 5cd, so it hardly counts) and losing a couple of really big 2:1's in the 6 max. Today was a weird day - I went 0 for 4 in the main tourneys with 4 early busts, didn't really feel like playing anything else, then entered FTP's 215 HORSE on a whim and wound up second for 4K. I even had a 3:1 CL HU in Stud 8 and went into the hold'em round with a 180/130 edge, but then went 0 for 13 hands in hold'em. Having said that, the structure late in that thing is terrible and it had been a crapshoot the whole way - as an example, I went from a CL with 11 left to 2 BB with 9 left - so I don't particularly mind the finish; when you're playing 8/16K with 130K effective stacks, there's no real skill involved, just flopping pairs.

More importantly, I'm unhappy about the fiasco on Absolute (check BBV if you're unsure of what I mean.) This will probably not affect the industry as a whole - it's not going to be mainstream news, poker's survived much worse, Annette (read: an 18 year old girl) winning a couple of mil will deflect attention anyway - but the fact is that the sites depend on a lot of implied goodwill to do business, and as of today, that's gone. As of right now, it's been almost a full two days and AP has done absolutely nothing about a business-threatening situation, while the affected parties are busy chip dumping in a mind-numbingly stupid attempt to take the heat off themselves. That's completely unacceptable to those of us who make a living trusting these places with five or even six figure bankrolls.

After this is over, and AP has taken whatever half-assed action they wind up taking (keep in mind that some people might be 50K in the hole here - that's worse than Pokerspot - and there's no way AP will pay them back, because they're Absolute [censored] Poker), I'm going to pull a few strings and ask for reassurances behind the scenes of the industry. This must not ever be allowed to happen again.

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Woke up this morning - looks like JCarver's up another 200K from a nice FTP donkament. GG :)

Also got a bunch of videos out of it, but still trying to figure out how the software works. I might have something up later.

Anyway...77'th/3499 on FTP, ending with 44 < AcTc on a 9c5x4c board for a top 10 stack, and 59'th/1100-something in the Cake 100K when I lost a flip for 20BB to yellowsub. This later one wouldn't be a big deal if it didn't come within 30 seconds of the first one. Barf. It's probably a good thing that that particular segment of the video didn't record for some reason/I'm getting tired of super deep runs in big tournaments ending up with 5-15 buyins when I lose as a big favorite. Really.

On the bright side, while skipping tournaments for most of the rest of this week, I've discovered that I'm almost definitely a winner at FTP's higher stakes razz games after all. It's good to know that NL can end tomorrow and I'd still make marginal amounts of money off Internet video game equivalents.

BTW, to follow Bond's lead: who wants some non-poker content in this thing? I've been keeping it 100% poker so far and have no problem doing that, but either way, I'll leave it up to the comment section.

There's no particular overriding theme to these hands, but I think they're worth posting and make for a good read...

This is a story of 3 hands from the 1K sat I managed to bubble the other week (heh). After a $10 dealer addon, we started at 11K chips and 25/50 blinds. Other than me in Seat 4, my first table had a couple of solid 2+2'ers, but otherwise seemed pretty loose passive, with the exception of Seat 6. Seat 6, a late 20-something guy with an Ipod who looked confident, was playing at least half of his hands - open limping and overlimping everything, then firing at a lot of flops. Unlike most people that play like that, though, he clearly took flop texture into account; he'd never fire, say, an Axx board, but he wasn't afraid of 2 barreling when the flop and turn were low. As a result, he picked up a truckload of small and medium pots without a showdown or even a river and had around 13K at the end of the 30 minute first level.

I really wanted some of those chips, but with him to my left, this was going to be tricky. I resolved to play loose preflop, knowing that I'd be folding a lot but would get some of his c-bets in the pot when I hit - especially with my no doubt weak image. I got to see a couple of flops, missed them and folded (there's no reason to play a hand with guys like that without hitting *something*), so the first important pot came during 50/100:

Seat 6 limped UTG, three more people limped and I completed 87o/the BB checked. The flop came Q76r, we checked to him and he bet ~350 into 600. Everyone folded to me. Ordinarily, I'd obviously just fold, but here, I called, planning on check/calling the turn and river unimproved - a risky play but one I felt I could afford to try this deep with what was quite possibly the best hand. A very nice 8 hit the turn, I checked, he fired about 800, I thought before raising to 2200 and he turbofolded, for the first decent pot he'd lost all day.

[Sidebar: The reason I CR'd here was, of course, value in case he actually had a queen/to protect my hand in case he randomly turned any one of a number of draws I'd have to pay him off on. This was not, however, the way to get the most chips in the pot - if a 7 came off I'd likely check/call and possibly even check some rivers. I might also do this if I had Q7 on a Q762 board. In those cases, where his marginal hands would be drawing dead and I wouldn't be so vulnerable to most of the deck, I'd usually want to let him see a scare card like an ace on the river and decide to fire again.]

After that hand, the guy clearly geared down for a while and the rest of 50/100 passed without much incident from our side of the table, but he'd taken a couple of more pots off loose players at 75/150 and was probably around his original 11K when Hand 2 came up:

I caught jacks in EMP and raised. Seat 6 called (I got the feeling he wanted to play a pot vs. me) and we saw a KT8, 2 spade flop HU. I bet ~700 into 1225 and he predictably called. [Sidebar: the reason I bet here is to control the bet size - no reason to check/call 1K - and because I could probably fold to a raise. If I felt I couldn't, this would likely be a check/call.] The turn was a brick club - making two clubs - and went check/check.

The river: a red jack. Ordinarily, we'd just bet and hope to be called by a ten, a bad king, etc.; even if he were to bluff a missed draw a lot, we'd likely get paid more on average if we set our own bet size, since he'd never call a checkraise. But here, when we just checkraised the villain once already, the CR is a perfect play; most live players would never be able to resist a call with any showdownable hand the second time around. So I checked, he bet 1100, I made it 2600, he called and mucked.

Hand 3 came at the end of that level. A 2+2'er raised in MP (not needing too much), someone called in LP, I overcalled KJ on the button, and Seat 6 made it four handed to a K97 flop. It was checked to me, and I bet 1200 into ~1700, mostly just wanting to take it down. Since this is called '3 hands against the same opponent', Seat 6 naturally shoved for about 7K.

I thought it over for a full two minutes. Basically, against any other player at the table, this would be an autofold - except for three straight draws, it was a dry flop, 97 was a distinct possibility, and he would certainly shove with a set. Could he be tilted enough, or mad at specifically me, to do this with a worse king? Possibly, but what worse king? On the other hand, I couldn't see him with AK, and thought he probably wouldn't be here with K7s. Overall, I felt that I was right around 40% - maybe a shade less - against his range and getting just about the right odds. Eventually, after taking longer than anyone at the table to that point, I made the call against what, luckily, turned out to be KT. Oddly enough, I'm still not sure that a call was the right play - it turned out that he *could* have a worse king, and, of course, I had to take his potential tiltiness vs. me into account, but if I'm right and sets/97 need to be weighed more heavily in his range, I might have lost a few G-bucks here.

C'est la vie.

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A quick announcement: As of today, I'm officially the newest guest pro at Cardrunners.com, where I'll be doing videos and the occasional full tournament HH summary/review (like the ones I used to do at 2+2 a long time ago.) The good news is, while CR is a paid content site, I'll no doubt have a bunch of outtakes and the like left over, some of which I'll definitely be posting here. Expect to see an "Adanthar busts out half an hour into a bunch of tourneys" video or two around mid-September.