I feel like I'm playing a lot better over the last few months than I had ever been, and results are finally starting to show up. I've put in more volume than I can really afford to over the last week, considering the amount of school work that I have piled up in front of me. I finished a major assignment at about 9:40 pm Wednesday night and decided against starting my next paper right away, instead firing up some tourneys.

This of course led me to noticing that Wednesday was turbo night on full tilt, so needless to say I played anything and everything that I could afford to play. I ended up playing like 7.5 hours, well in to the morning, and having a net profit of $-6 after bricking a bunch of stuff and making a deep run in one tourney, eventually taking a really disappointing 14th place.

Today I got home from class and planned on starting the paper that I have due this coming week. I did about half an hour of reading, wrote the introduction (which I'm probably going to end up scrapping since it sounds funny), and then firing up more tourneys. Things started kind of shoddy, but I picked up stacks in 3 tourneys (though I 4-bet JJ and ran in to KK in one of them).

I held a chip lead in the UB 5Kg from 39 players down to 12, when TT<A5o and AA<A2s on back to back hands got me short (I may have misplayed the AA one as I flatted a shorty's cutoff raise from the button and the sb ended up coming along and outflopping me, but whatever. A small mistake magnified is still a small mistake, and I ran bad for that hand), and then ended up shoving 86ss from the sb and bricking everything on 9s7x7x4sKx to lose to AJ to bust in a heartbreaking 9th place, which doesn't get me anywhere near out makeup.

Busting that one left me with just one tourney left, which happened to be the ftp 1r. 11 handed I hold a chip lead and 3 bet a monkey with 77 from the sb, he flats (for some reason), and we see a flop of Q43. I lead 99k in to a pot of 167k, and snap call his shove of ~240k more. He clearly has KJo and rivers the J. I make the mistake of telling him how bad he is in the chat (stacks and ICM were def. supposed to be considerations here, as well as the outright atrocity of his shove), but whatever, it should get me spite calls later. I'm left with 22 bb's, and soon bust a guy after my AT>88 to get back to healthy. I come in to the FT with 40 bb's and 4/9.

The chip leader busts 2 people in the first 2 hands to get us 7 handed. ~10 hands later a guy is crippled and moves his last 4.5 bb's in from UTG+1. Chip leader is to my right and flats from the button, and I shove KK for 28 bb's total, which I feel is a mistake, given the fact that 1) it;s a 1r, 2) He's the chip leader, and 3) he's got to be feeling pretty invincible; and therefore I should have made it like 145k (5k/10k blinds) and string him along. Instead I jammed for like 277k or w/e. He folded and I held over the shover.

I got down to 3 handed relatively easily, with the idiot from above having a 3:2 chip lead over me and slightly more than that over the guy to my direct right. CL offers some idiotic chop, so I just reject it and ask to play it out. I pick up JJ on the button 2 hands later and raise to ~52k at 12k/24k with like 920k behind. SB is the chip leader, who instantly jams his 1.4MM. BB gets out of the way, and I fold after thinking about it for about 15 seconds. SB shows QQ. Nice try.

A few hands later I get it in with the guy to my right after he raises, I 3-bet and he 4 ball jams A6o for like 28 bb's. I call with AQs and we chop on A28K8. After this hand, the CL offers a deal slightly less retarded than the one previous, to which I obviously reject again. He spits something out about how he's tired and we should take the deal, so I obv tell him to offer a better deal if he wants us to take it so badly. He tells me to go fuck myself and that he's the chip leader so we should accept his deal (I'm paraphrasing-- I think what he said was something that actually was less coherent than what I just gave him credit for saying, and I believe he was demanding our obedience), but anyhow, we keep playing much to his shagrin. I suggest he relax and bust me so he can rub it in my face, saying "you should have taken the deal" or something like that but all I get is a friendly "STFU".

2 hands later, CL min-raises the button, sb calls, I jam 66 for 33 bb's assuming that the CL will call me super wide, but he folds quickly. SB covers me by 1.5 bb's and calls off with 44 like a huge fish, and I hold to get hu with a 2 bb disadvantage.

This guy decides to offer a chop again. This one was pretty close to even, but I feel my edge is way too big to chop, so I let it go, and proceed to get out-carded like crazy. I can remember 3 different hands in which I was value betting 2nd pair or better, only to be outkicked, as well as getting most of the chips in with 97 on J77Q2 only to be shown down K7, yet he somehow managed to not get all the chips in the middle, despite us only being 35 bb's effective.

The after the 97 debacle, I shove my last 8 bb's in with A9s and lose to J7o on 65557, just to confirm that (if we take the JJ vs. QQ hand, as well as the 77<KJ hand from above in to consideration) I actually had no chance at all to win this tournament, and that 2nd was as good
as I possibly could have ever done given the way the cards were dealt.

Whatever, I'm pretty close to having enough money to pay off my open liquor fine and still have enough money left over to eat and party and pay rent and buy christmas presents without completely decimating my FTP account, which is rather appealing.

I wish I could time my heaters better; as in when I don't have a bunch of schoolwork. I'm planning on playing a billion tourneys/sng's over the christmas break, but I have plenty of schoolwork and exams before then, so I don't really know when I'll be able to play much between now and then, which kind of stinks, since I typically go on streaks of getting deep in something or other a bunch of times over a period of 10 sessions in a row and then getting cold again and whining about it for 4 months.

OH! Did I mention that mouthbreather's OPR? No, of course not.



I just lost HU to a fish with $6 in lifetime cashes.

-grady

So I got home from class at 3:30 today, and instead of doing what I planned on, which happened to be literally anything that wasn't poker, I sat down in front of my computer, opened my AIM status bar, and typed in the word "LOCKDOWN!" as if I were in an episode of 2M2MM. It was time to grind a Tuesday afternoon like never before.

I highly doubt that I've ever played 40 mtt's in a day (mtt's and mtt sng's), at least until now. I felt oddly at ease, even as I bricked my first 21 90 man's on ftp after running so hilariously bad that I started laughing to myself. (Got some KO's tho...)

I decided that I was running way too bad, and do what I always do when I run bad for a few days- change the "variables" on my computer; that is to say, my ftp avatar (went from the rooster to the little fluffy dog), and my desktop background (from a hot pic of Katy Perry sticking her tongue out, to a hot picture of Katy Perry just being hot and Katy Perry). It took about 15 minutes, but I finally ran kind of hot in one, in a sense that once I got 3 handed, one of the other guys at the table literally shoved every hand irregardless of stack sizes, letting me call pretty well perfectly with K high and win. Immediately after winning that one, I bought in to a few more to completely relinquish the profit that I had on the day.

It took me until hour 9 of my session to get back in to the positive, after ft'ing a $6/90 and $3/90 at the same time, taking 8th in the $6 after AK<AT aipf, and 2nd in the $3, though I don't remember the bustout hand.

I was originally planning on playing until about 7-8 am, but my roommates were upstairs in the living room and it sounded like they were having fun and laughing and such and kept yelling downstairs at me to come up and hang out, so I decided that what I had up was going to be the end of it.

I brought my laptop upstairs and quickly got down to 2 tables, and then shortly after, down to just one of the daily doubles after punting the stack in the other tourney. Long story longer, I FT'ed the daily double B and came 6th to cap off a 12.5 hour session, and a profitable one at that.

It kind of stinks that I won't be able to play tomorrow (Girl Talk ftw!!!!) because I feel 100x better about poker now than I did at the time of writing my last entry, and felt that way even before finally making some money. Who knows, I might wake up early and play a few before going to get wasted before the concert, but I doubt it.

-grady

I haven't felt so indifferent about poker in a really long time. I don't really know why, but nothing has really been going right on a consistent basis since like March. I basically just hit a small score midweek and then slowly bleed it back down on Sunday to where I was before over and over. I'd probably be fine with that, since that's just the way things go, but there are a few reasons why I feel so sick about it all this time around.

1) I put in so much more volume than almost anyone playing exclusively at my stakes (at least I think I do), which essentially means that I should have a good enough sample size to determine whether or not I'm even remotely good at this game.

2) I sit on the couch and own people while my roommate watches me and giggles when I call out their exact hand, or say something to the effect of "I'm about to own this guy" and then do. I know for sure that I've improved so much over the last year and I'm just not getting the results.

3) I actually need to make money for the first time in a while. It's been about a year since I've actually needed to make money. I've won enough (combining live poker and online) to pay for whatever I needed to and still be comfortable with my online roll. Beyond that, I can distinctly remember multiple times in which I needed some money and just saying "Yeah I'm gonna need some cash soon. I better win a tourney." and then go ahead and do just that. I don't specifically need money tomorrow the way I did the last time I said the above, but whatever. I'd way rather just win something now and get this shit out of the way.

4) I haven't actually won a tourney with >200 runners since April. Part of this is due to my switching from playing almost exclusively mtt's to more sng's than anything. The amount of deep runs I've made in big fields in the last 6 months without booking a win makes me sick to my stomach. Even in the 90 man's I've made so many 2nd places.

Fuck this blog sounds retarded and whiny and emo.

I'm going to a Girl Talk concert Wednesday, and am fucking jacked up for it big time. My school (see: the student body) won a contest in which we stuff a ballot box, and the winner will get a free concert. The only problem being that the school is a bunch of idiots who decide that they would like to have it in the smallest venue possible instead of in the arena that could easily hold anyone that wants to go; instead 700 people had to wait in line only for half of them to be disappointed. Meanwhile, there were 60 extra tickets reserved for the student union for some reason, even though they had no more to do with getting the concert than anyone else.

Anyway, I'm going to get stupidly hammered for it and then hopefully by Thursday afternoon I'll be ready to play again. I have some schoolwork due like 2 weeks from now, so I'll probably just get a headstart on that.

-grady

I would have had an awful lot of fun winning a damn tourney yesterday, that's for sure.

I had a good day Friday, picking up 3 2nd's on Friday in 90 mans on FTP, which is always half-convenient and half-frustrating. It;s always cool to take money but I don't think there's a single thing in the world that I hate any more than finishing 2nd in something. So in order to get even with life, I drank a billion beers and dressed up awesomely.

The only reason I wore a tie was to have the ability of doing the Bond18 tie trick (right before the Snoop pics). At one point, I was flirting with some girl who was dressed as a catholic schoolgirl, and thus, was wearing a tie. I said to myself that I was doing my own style of inverted tie trick in which I pull her tie in to me, which worked like a charm.

Saturday was a day of hangover recovery and costume building for actual halloween night, so I didn't play a single hand of poker until like 9:30 when I was already drunk. I think I stacked a guy playing 25nl, but I don't really remember. Anyways, we went out again Saturday.

I somehow lost my headphones for my iPod at the bar, and was told by my roommates that I passed out in the wrong bed, among other awesome hilarious stuff.

Sunday morning 'I woke up later than I usually do due to a decent hangover that I had acquired via being the drunkest human on earth the night prior. My first tourney that I played was my favorite tourney, which happens to be the $2 rebuy turbo on ftp, which I FT'ed but made a bad shove to bust in 8th. I proceeded to brick every other tourney for the rest of the day until taking 11th of 5190 in a $2 6-max on stars for not nearly enough money to make me happy. Needless to say, Subway was absolutely necessary for me to avoid suicide.

I am, once again, so over donkaments until next Sunday, and am probably going to grind 90's again until next Sunday, in which I will take 213th in the FTP double deuce and cash in nothing else.
-grady