Got back from Borgata on Sunday and can report that I completely stuck to the game plan I had set for myself. I had the family along and on the first night we added to the riches of Guy LaLiberte by taking in the Le Grand Cirque show at Harrahs. The show was great but the venue is rather antiquated. The sight lines are poor and the sound system is terrible. Unless somebody we have to see is in town it’s likely we’ll stick to the Borgata for future shows.

I played a limited amount of $5/$10 NL cash over my 3-day stay and had another good trip. The Borgata 1K had a start time of 10AM on Friday. I wish all of their events would have the same start time but it isn’t likely to happen. Got settled in for what I hoped would be a long day. I wound up getting what I hoped for without the financial reward at the end. It was a 399 player field paying 36 spots. About 11 hours after the tournament began I was sent to the rail with approximately 52 players remaining, sigh. I was on a short stack consisting of between 10 and 25 BB’s beginning at the 400 level and lasting all the way thru the 3K level when I eventually busted. My cards sucked pretty much all day and I played the short stack to perfection, timing my numerous all ins and steals perfectly, other than my bustout hand when a tighty woke up with a hand that dominated my 8 high, lol. I just never got that double up that I needed to give me some breathing room.

I’m actually pretty happy with my last 2 live tournament efforts, the 1K and last months deep stacked 2K, both of which I played 11-12 hour days and saw lots of hands. Part of me is sorry I decided to skip the 5K Main Event at this years Summer Open. I’m just feeling really on top of my game right now and can no doubt credit a lot of it to Shaun who I’m still working with several days a week despite his busy WSOP schedule.

Online Happenings

The prior month I had really scaled back on the buy in levels while I really learned how to play a ton of tables at once. Seeing Shaun do it really inspired me to tackle this. I figured there would be a tough learning curve while 12+ tabling. So I decided to limit the large $ buy ins while doing so. It was a smart choice because I had a rough stretch between Mid May and Mid June.

On Monday I jumped back into what I hope will be a normal online schedule. My plan is to put in 4 lengthy night time sessions a week for the next month or so and reevaluate things after that.

Monday’s session ended in bitter frustration as I saw chip leads pretty deep in both the Full Tilt $75 and the Full Tilt 50/50 fail to result in a meaningful score. The former saw me lose 2 large 80/20’s, win a small 20/80 (lol) and lose 3 consecutive flips to bust at the final 3 tables. The latter ended when my AA < AQ aipf at the final 2 tables, sigh.

On Tuesday the beats were out in full force including another crucial AA<AQ aipf hand (wtf?), causing a good friend of mine to question how I can continue to take this shit year after year. Anyway my best run came in the Stars $20 Rebuy where I held a top 4 stack with 15 left when a bvb battle ensued for a monster 300+K stack. I had my opponent out chipped by 6K or so with 150+K effective stacks. I opened 3x in the sb with AQs to 12K. My opponent raised to 55K and I jammed causing my opponent to tank a bit before calling off his last 90K with 33. After losing the race the blinds went up to 3/6K and I had less than 1 big blind (6K) remaining. My A6 in the BB was good enough to triple up and then my button shove doubled me up to 50+K when the BB called with 83o. I next jammed the cut off and took the blinds and had a wee bit of breathing room, though I was still the tournament shorty. I stayed in the 50K neighborhood and made the Final table still as the shorty. On my first BB I found 99 and doubled to over 100K against AQ. A few hands later I woke up with AK in early position and standard raised with a 15BB stack. I got shoved on by 88 and lost the flip, finishing in 9th and ending the miracle comeback.

One of these days the flood gates are going to open, I can feel it.

Well it’s been a while since I last updated. Apologies go out to my friends and family who actually read this to keep up with my poker happenings, and thanks for bugging me to update.

A month has passed since Shaun left so there’s plenty to catch you up on. The big cashes continued to elude me as I continually fell just short of final tables in large fields or made them being short stacked. Part of this was clearly my own fault and I’m working with Shaun on some ways to fix this. Beyond that this year as a whole has been so frustrating where my deep runs are concerned. I’ve been reviewing a lot of my tournament hand histories and I simply want to vomit at the card distribution that has been dealt to me pretty much all year. To further compound the agony have been the coolers and bad beats I’ve taken when getting it in with premiums at final tables as thousands upon thousands in equity got flushed down the drain. The good news is that I recognize what my leaks are and I’m as determined as a mofo to fix them. Beyond that I have to believe that the card distribution will begin to even itself out.

The month of May wound up being pretty much break even, actually a tad to the negative online. After my trip to meet Shaun at Borgata early in the month I took another one a couple of weeks ago with my family where we pretty much relaxed, ate some good meals and even squeezed in a show (Kathy Griffin). I did well again at the $5/$10 NL tables and more than paid for the expense of the trip.

Despite being encouraged by Shaun among others to go out to the WSOP this summer I decided not to. My main goal continues to be becoming the online player that I want to be. So the trip to Vegas, while assuredly a great time (I’m sweating the blogs like crazy rooting for all of my online buds – most of whom I’ve regrettably yet to meet face to face) will have to wait another year as I remain dedicated to plugging away online. I’ve also decided to cut back the beefy schedule I had planned for the Borgata Summer Open which is just getting underway. Last year I played a bunch of sub events and the 5K Main Event. This year I’m planning to play in just one of the 1K’s and that’s it. Again it all comes down to wanting to put as much time as I can into an online schedule until I’m totally comfortable with my game. I’m hoping that I’ll be happy enough with where my online game is come September when the WPT comes back to Borgata so I can go enjoy myself down there and play to my hearts content.

That’s pretty much it for right now. My summer work schedule is on the light side by design so I’ve been swimming two-a-days trying to get myself back into better shape, laying in the sun a lot, spending plenty of time with my family and playing lots of hours online. Things could definitely be worse.

-Doyle-