I lost 10K at PLO in 300 hands as usual. Then went to local casino for the first time in 6 months or so.
Waited in line for an hour.
The action I waited so long for, out of 4 hours total ended up consisting of folding KQ on QT9 in one hand, and bet/folding QQ in a reraised pot with 100bb starting stack on 642 (faceup, guy showed me KK).
Came home disappointed, tilted, played some tourneys. Went real deep in three.
Got knocked out in 8th and 7th in the first two... both were 6max tourneys with huge payouts for the final table... lol
Then busted 3rd in Party one for 3500, meh.
I know to non-tourney or small-stakes players cashing for $3500 sounds good.
Thing is... When I play a tourney session I spend between 2 and 7K just on buyins alone, so if I get one 3-5K cash for the day that's a break even or very small winning session...
So anyway I felt incredibly miserable by the end of the day.
PLO has been tearing away at my soul.
Had a long conversation with Bond18 about how I was feeling unhappy, unsatisfied, wanted to quit poker, pay off my house and then just quit, go do something else, anything else.
I lamented that I do actually enjoy PLO but I get raped every time I play, I do actually enjoy donkaments but they are so unhealthy as a lifestyle that I feel guilty playing them, and that NL cash is a grind because it feels solved, the games aren't that great anymore so the feeling of "printing money" isn't there, it's more like being intently focused and using every last volt of brainpower you have to extract money from something that doesn't want to be extracted from...
After getting all the complaining off my chest, I passed out at 2pm.
Then woke up this morning at 1am, feeling pretty dead.
What else am I gonna do at that time but play tourneys?
I got my **** together and went down the street to 24 hour cafe to grab a coffee and a quiche.
Came back, had a shower, took my laptop to the couch and started the long haul while half-watching some episodes of Project Runway on cable (can't help but enjoy this show!)
I really do always seem to do well when I play tourneys just after waking up.
Being tired and nitty at the start and then opening up as I wake up, being fully immersed in the game from the get-go and most importantly, not being exhausted when I get deep... works very well.
So... fast forward 12 hours and I had booked my biggest ever online tourney winning session.
My scores were:
1st in the FT 100+R, for 20K.
3rd in the 320 6-max, for 11K.
2nd in the 33+R, for 4K.
6th in the Supernova VIP Freeroll (lol) for 2K.
7th in the 109 50K GTD, for 1500 (lost QQ vs AJ and AA vs KK in consecutive hands to bust!)
8th in the Stars 100+R, for 2K.
I also had two 12th place finishes, so I really was crushing.
At one point I had the chiplead in nearly every major tourney running on FT at once, it was pretty insane!
Obviously very satisfying, and reassuring that sometimes I too, can run like god (I played good and all but sure binked some handy 2-3 outers as well)
Quite similar to Vic Champs, which also came when I had been doing all sorts of existential soul searching.
Both times, it was almost as though the universe heard me whining, felt my suffering, reached out to me and said Jay, I'm sorry I took so long, I know I left you hanging there but here you are!
*** FLOP *** [4c Qc Jc]
Annette_15 checks
THE_GOLDMINE has 15 seconds left to act
THE_GOLDMINE bets $177
Annette_15 has 15 seconds left to act
Annette_15 calls $177
*** TURN *** [4c Qc Jc] [Kc]
Annette_15 checks
THE_GOLDMINE has 15 seconds left to act
THE_GOLDMINE bets $609
Annette_15 raises to $727.50, and is all in
THE_GOLDMINE calls $118.50
Annette_15 shows [Ts Tc 7s 9c]
THE_GOLDMINE shows [Ac 2c Qs 3s]
*** RIVER *** [4c Qc Jc Kc] [2s]
Annette_15 shows a straight flush, King high
THE_GOLDMINE shows a flush, Ace high
Annette_15 wins the pot ($2,061) with a straight flush, King high
Have been playing a lot, without much success - but I feel like the playing a lot part is most important, and I'm definitely gaining form and grinder fitness.
It's actually a pretty big acclimatisation back into cashgame swings when you are used to tournaments.
People think that tourneys are just lol varianceaments but it's quite different, I mean you can run bad for a long time as in not hitting a score because you consistently fail to get lucky when it counts... but that just means you break even, you are still making final tables all the time and getting some sort of positive reinforcement each day.
You break even until you inevitably spike.
Cashgames are brutal by comparison. I mean sitting down and losing 5 buyins in the first half hour, going away, coming back and then losing again... sitting there down a huge amount of money feeling like there's nothing you can possibly do right...
It's a lot harsher. It's great, really. It's a test of character.
I always loved that about poker. The tougher you are, the more emotionally resilient, the more philosophical, the less susceptible to mood swings, the more determined and the more pragmatic you are... the more money you will make.
And yeah, I was always the guy who shrugged off being down 10 buyins and just won them back the same day, and laughed at people posting 30K hand breakeven stretches and whining as though that was so uncommon or hard to deal with...
It was easy, because I was in such good shape poker wise, my grinder muscles were taut and lean and I was able to shrug off all but the harshest of adversity because hey, my game is tight, I know my opponents inside out, and I'll be here tomorrow and the next day so why worry?
Nowadays when I lose the 3rd or 4th stack in a row I start shaking my head and cursing like a mere mortal and wondering if I should just log off
It's been good though, I've been playing a lot, broken up into separate sessions how I like, and I've been doing +ev life stuff like exercising, playing music, seeing family and friends, getting some sun (spring finally starting to kick in legitimately).
I can tell it's gonna fall into place soon enough, I'm seeing the angles and remembering how things work.
I just need the physical grinder fitness, that's all.
I decided to skip APPT Auckland and Pokernews Cup in Melbourne which are back to back in about a week.
It's just not what I need right now.
I'm hitting a groove of 2-3K hands a day, playing whenever I feel like it, and seeing friends and running errands and doing whatever I want in between, and it feels like the wrong time to be disrupting that.
I'm sick of having to miss band rehearsals too.
I'm playing in three bands now, guitar in Extortion plus a band called Drowning Horse (really doomy sludge ala Sunn0))), Corrupted, Eyehategod etc) and then drums in Hospital Beds (sort of indie punk crossover like Lost Sounds, Wipers, etc)
Anyway life is good, just want to win at poker more than I have for ages and I'm not being patient enough about it.
Well I have been getting in a bit of a cashgame rhythm finally, and booked a couple of winning days in a row.
The first one didn't mean so much due to the nature of how I made the money.
I had lost a couple of buyins at 5/10 in sick fashion and was feeling tilted so I got off all my tables before doing anything stupid.
Then a couple of minutes later a 25/50 seat from a waitlist I joined a fair bit earlier came up so I took a look, saw some names I didn't know, and sat down.
It turned out the randoms were actually quite good and the table wasn't much worth playing, but in the process of figuring this out I ran pretty good and took down quite a few pots.
I was sitting with 10K and probably an orbit or two away from unticking when I found AA on the button vs Killer Intent (who had me covered).
He flatted my reraise OOP and the flop came K43...
He checked, I bet, he called.
The turn rolled off an Ace!
He checked, I bet, he tanked and then check-raised me allin - I snapcalled and he had KKK, wow!
So one 20K cooler later and I was all of a sudden up 5 figures for the day, but obviously didn't feel particularly proud as all I had done was tilt-quit a multitabling session and then run like god on one 25/50 table.
It was what can only be described as a fake win.
Yesterday though I won 7 buyins or so, spread over 3/6-10/20 - overall +$8K.
It was very satisfying, and felt like a vintage cashgame day.
I woke up, walked about 1KM to a cafe I like, had breakfast, walked back, sat down, played a session for about an hour.
Went down the road again, had lunch, came back, played again.
As usual around an hour later I started feeling like it was time to quit, but I had uber fish on a couple of my tables, so I closed down all but the 3 tables with whales (good time of day) and casually 3 tabled while browsing forums.
It paid off as I stacked one of them for $1500, and then I quit for the day mid-afternoon, up a bunch, feeling like I had played well and actually earnt/deserved my money.
Last night, to... "reward" myself, I played the Sundays - which was as frustrating as ever
As usual I had the chiplead deep in two medium sized tourneys and then came 10th and 12th (one of them I lost QQ vs KQ and then KK vs AQ both vs Eisenhower on the FT bubble... so gross)
Then in the Stars $500/500K gtd tourney with 30 left there were still 4 Australians in which was pretty cool, we were railing each other and giving each other ****.
$91K for first, and with the evenly spread Stars payouts even 6th place was $17K.
So so nice.
It was looking pretty good, but then with 23 left I got AK allin preflop vs another guy's AK (we each had around average stack) and he flushed me out.
So ****ing filthy
Fortunately I traded 10% with MonsterDong and he came 2nd, so I got $6K for that to ease the pain and booked probably a 4-5K win on the night.
Once again, very soulcrushing to come so close... but to be honest I've been so much happier and healthier lately playing cashgames that in the long run, a big tourney score was probably the last thing I needed right now anyway.
One of my favourite all-time actors, Paul Newman, died yesterday
A lot of you probably haven't seen one of his best films - The Hustler - though it should be compulsory viewing for any serious poker player.
He plays an extremely talented pool hustler, who's only downfall is his own ego, which frequently swells up to compensate for his low self-esteem while under pressure.
This lack of centredness causes him to ultimately lose back all the money he grinds day in and day out when he takes shots against high-stakes sharks, because, even though he is more talented than they are, he is also less inwardly controlled and more prone to letting emotion get in the way when large stakes are on the line.
Sound familiar? Sound at all ****ing relevant?!
If there were an application process for becoming a professional poker player, one of the core components would have to be seeing and reflecting on this film.
It was heralded in its day (2 oscar wins, 9 nominations) and is a great film in any context... but for a poker player, jeez.
Absolutely compulsory viewing for anyone with any attention span whatsoever.
One of my favourite scenes comes after Fast Eddie's backer gives up on him, telling him it doesn't matter how talented he is, he was a born loser and thus will always lose when it counts (he has just tilted off his roll playing a 48 hour match where he was crushing at the start and tilting at the end).
Eddie starts off lamenting his own mistakes to his girlfriend, berating himself, but in the process winds up delivering some of the most inspirational film dialogue I have ever heard:
"Now why'd I do it, Sarah? Why'd I do it? I coulda beat that guy, coulda beat 'im cold, he never woulda known. But I just hadda show 'im. Just hadda show those creeps and those punks what the game is like when it's great, when it's REALLY great.
You know, like anything can be great, anything can be great. I don't care, BRICKLAYING can be great, if a guy knows. If he knows what he's doing and why and if he can make it come off.
When I'm goin', I mean, when I'm REALLY goin' I feel like a... like a jockey must feel. He's sittin' on his horse, he's got all that speed and that power underneath him... he's comin' into the stretch, the pressure's on 'im, and he KNOWS... just feels... when to let it go and how much.
Cause he's got everything workin' for 'im: timing, touch. It's a great feeling, boy, it's a real great feeling when you're right and you KNOW you're right. It's like all of a sudden I got oil in my arm. The pool cue's part of me.
You know, it's uh - pool cue, it's got nerves in it. It's a piece of wood, it's got nerves in it. Feel the roll of those balls, you don't have to look, you just KNOW. You make shots that nobody's ever made before. I can play that game the way... NOBODY'S ever played it before."
Chills every time.
Is this not why every talented poker player continues to play the game once they begin to understand it?
Is this not what we all strive for?
See this film.
The Sting is another one of my favourites, and other obvious great Newman roles are Cool Hand Luke and Butch Cassidy - all three are similar type of hustler/outsider roles that should appeal to poker players.
With all the activism, charity work, his successful salad dressing business (!), amazing roles, and admiration from beautiful women it must have been an amazing life.
The promoter kinda ****ed us around a little bit and the turnouts weren't huge, but the kids were very into it and we had a lot of fun in the car and hanging out at the house we stayed at.
A high percentage of the people that saw us cared a lot about seeing us, but it was a bit like, did we really travel this far to play to 50 kids type thing...
I had another couple of days off poker which was good, and I had to fly while the WCOOP Main Event was on which was also good as it didn't get me caught up in the tournament world again (it's a tarp!).
Trying to quit tournaments is seriously like trying to break an addiction. It's quite sickening.
But fortunately lately I have been actually enjoying playing NLHE cash for the first time since the start of the year!
I made a $1KNL video last week, and spent a lot of it talking cynically about how mechanical NL has gotten and how it isn't fun to play anymore, how sometimes it feels like you're just playing a tournament anyway because preflop opening ranges and looking at the players/stacks behind you are so important now...
Then the night after that I did commentary with Greg on a video of me playing HU from a while back, the two of us discussing my lines as I don't have much HU experience.
Between those two video-making experiences I think I had a few revelations about how to approach and how to beat the games at the moment, and since then I have actually enjoyed all of the sessions I have played (and been leading more towards NL than PLO).
It's good to feel my mindset switching back into cashgame mode also.
Instead of looking at the clock and calculating how many hours until tourneys start and deciding whether to stay up all night or not, I just ask myself "Do I feel like playing atm? Or should I go do something else?"
I am going on tour with my band this weekend, it has been a while since I played a show musically.
Practices have been going well though.
Because of the tour I'm not going to be able to play the WCOOP Main Event, which I'm pretty sure is going to be the biggest tournament ever held online, and which I already had sold half of myself for.
I'm also not going to be able to play Aussie Millions this year, yet again (have never played it) because we are touring USA.
Now I mean, missing out on some hobby type stuff because of a job is normal, but this is missing out on one hobby for another hobby, and I've been thinking quite a bit lately about just how weird my life is, because everything in my whole life is a hobby.
I never really grew up.
I mean, my life is pretty sweet, but it is strange... It is kinda like the imagination of my teenager stoner brain fast forwarded and personified.
I always loved music, and I always loved games.
Now I spend my life playing music, and playing games.
Pretty good deal I know.
But I alternate between playing in one of the fastest bands you will ever hear, with 30 second songs and stuff, and playing online poker in the middle of the night like some kind of socially acceptable gaming addict, living on whatever time I want.
It's a lot different to if I was say, a stockbroker during the week and then played in some kind of nice little rock band on the weekend.
That is the responsible, normal, adult equivalent. My life is the **** you version.
Last night 2/4 started feeling too small so I played some Party 10/20 NL, won a couple buyins.
Then played some PLO, got crushed, then crushed some more.
I was taking some pretty sick beats, ended up downswinging $10K or so, but I degened onto 25/50 and stacked a good reg KK > TT on low flop, and then started dragging pots in PLO so I wound up a small winner on the night.
To confirm my degeneracy I decided to enter the 500 cubed WCOOP event even though I was really tired, and then I passed out halfway through it and slept away $1500.
It is really strange to think that I just straight up burnt $1500 perfectly usable dollars like that.
But on the other hand, I can't help but think "lol, sif I would have cashed anyway".
It's probably good that I'm going away this weekend cos I think I'm clearly still feeling burnt out.
Anyway to reinforce how strange my life is, here is a youtube of my band.
I dunno what images and sounds run through your mind when I say I am in a band, but I'm guessing they are probably not these ones.
I won the first tourney I entered last night, the $109 at 12:00 on FT ($5500ish).
Then I came 2nd in another one of the first wave of tourneys, the $55 cubed ($5500ish too).
I was headsup vs POKERPR0, got it in ahead three times and lost all three, it was so sick.
First after chipping him down to 80/20 I got A4cc vs QJo allin preflop for the tourney win, but he doubled back to 40% of chips in play.
I outplayed him in small pots for a while (typical MTT pro thing where he just folded way too much), then got Qs Ts allin on Js 9s 5... vs 65o somehow (hes a nit generally), it came blank blank, so disgusting.
Now he had the chiplead but I held my ground, and we are almost exactly evenly stacked when I reshipped 88 - he called AJo and won again, sigh.
Then soon after that I final tabled the Party High Roller tourney, but busted in 6th for $4000.
So before the US wave of tourneys had even started I was already freerolling and up a significant amount.
The rest of the night was a huge tease.
I kept building up stacks, and going super deep... but never closing out, always losing the last flip.
I came 9-18th in 3 different tournaments, 2 of them with over $100, 000 prize pools.
It was ridiculous.
I know that I can't complain after net profiting at least $10K on a Sunday somehow but I feel very disappointed to have gotten so close to a really memorable night, but winding up merely booking a boring, solid win.
I was only a couple of flips away from doing something really sick, like 5 FTs in a night, or 2-3 wins in a night, or $50K of cashes in a night, something along those lines was really so close...
But yeah, I guess I'm running a bit better now and I played very well I thought.
I had a downswing a couple days ago at PLO, lost 6 buyins at 5/10 quickly which hurts when you've mostly been playing 2/4...
Feeling alright though, and settling in to playing PLO in the week/MTTs on Sundays.
Had a good weekend, saw a friend's band play, had dinner with one of my favourite people, and caught up with some others that I miss too.
I also made two videos, one of Party $1000NL, other of MTTs.
The sound didn't come out great - I think my new headset sucks.
Hopefully they are usable though because I felt like I was talking well!
