I'm back grinding, but thankfully I'm at home. Right now that's a little town called Canmore, about 15 minutes outside of Banff in Alberta. It's just a sweet place to be in the summer, with 360 degree views of the rockies from the valley floor and tons of hiking/canoe/whitewater/anythingyoucouldpossiblythinkoftodooutside. There are also some sweet restaurants in town, the best being a bistro called Crazy Weed. I only bring this up as a public service announcement to all you young aspiring food nerds/poker players. Try pork belly next time you see it on any trustworthy menu. It's like bacon's decadent cousin. The dish I had it in was a pork belly salad with watermelon and some kind of sweet Asian inspired vinagrette. mmmmmm. Ditto for sweetbreads, you won't be sorry.

Poker is going reasonably badly lately. I played an ungodly amount of hands in July and won cheeseburger money. I think I ran pretty badly and played pretty well, but then I always think that, though when playing as many hands as I did you aren't going to be playing your A+, well rested, ready-for-anything game. I tried 16 tbling 5/10 one session as well and as usual I got just destroyed, despite game selecting. A tip of the cap to all you multitablers, I just can't do it. I actually had a week straight where I lost every session, which is pretty demoralizing, and during that stretch I only played in very good games. People continually underestimate variance, which isn't surprising given our brains are made to hunt and gather. I'm in a skeptical state of mind with regard to my winrate, my own estimation of my winrate, my BR management, my game selection etc just because I read Fooled By Randomness for the second time. If you haven't read it, I'd check it out as it's a fun read and pretty informative read about qualitative ways to understand randomness. If you aren't scared yet, take a gander at IggyMcfly's thread in BBV where he runs 85bi below EV in PLO in .... 13k hands. Then about 40 other regs chime in and say that the same thing happened to them only it was 120 bi in 40k hands or some other such bonechilling number.

The most fun thing I did during this stretch was do an experiment of 3betting every hand I decided to play from the BB in both NLHE and PLO. There were some strong empirical and theoretical reasons for my trying this, and I might try it again at the slightest provocation. I also love the idea of finding strategies which seem so crazy that people will be wating in line to play me. This strategy led to some unbelievable aggressive dynamics in 3bet pots. This is one of those pots:

***** Hand History for Game 22418760136 ***** (Full Tilt)
$5000.00 USD PL Texas Hold'em - Sunday, July 18, 04:13:12 ET 2010
Table Sands (heads up deep) (Real Money)
Seat 2 is the button
Seat 1: Sauce1234 ( $16073.50 USD )
Seat 2: URnotINdanger2 ( $50101.00 USD )
URnotINdanger2 posts small blind [$25.00 USD].
Sauce1234 posts big blind [$50.00 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Sauce1234 [ Qs Kc ]
URnotINdanger2 raises [$125.00 USD]
Sauce1234 raises [$338.00 USD]
URnotINdanger2 calls [$238.00 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ 9s, As, 4c ]
Sauce1234 bets [$400.00 USD]
URnotINdanger2 raises [$1150.00 USD]
Sauce1234 raises [$1940.00 USD]
URnotINdanger2 calls [$1190.00 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 8c ]
Sauce1234 bets [$2135.00 USD]
URnotINdanger2 calls [$2135.00 USD]
** Dealing River ** [ 8d ]
Sauce1234 checks
URnotINdanger2 bets [$7200.00 USD]
Sauce1234 calls [$7200.00 USD]
URnotINdanger2 shows [7s, Th ]
Sauce1234 shows [Qs, Kc ]
Sauce1234 wins $24125.50 USD from main pot

This was another cool one, against a crazy Swede

***** Hand History for Game 22570312726 ***** (Full Tilt)
$2000.00 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Saturday, July 24, 11:47:11 ET 2010
Table Vilberti (heads up deep) (Real Money)
Seat 1 is the button
Seat 1: Sauce1234 ( $9918.00 USD )
Seat 2: Denoking ( $3113.00 USD )
Sauce1234 posts small blind [$10.00 USD].
Denoking posts big blind [$20.00 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Sauce1234 [ 8h Ah ]
Sauce1234 raises [$50.00 USD]
Denoking raises [$195.00 USD]
Sauce1234 calls [$155.00 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ 2s, Qd, Js ]
Denoking checks
Sauce1234 checks
** Dealing Turn ** [ 8s ]
Denoking bets [$360.00 USD]
Sauce1234 calls [$360.00 USD]
** Dealing River ** [ 7d ]
Denoking bets [$2538.00 USD]
Sauce1234 calls [$2538.00 USD]
Denoking shows [3c, 5c ]
Sauce1234 shows [8h, Ah ]
Sauce1234 wins $6225.50 USD from main pot

As far as goals go, I'm still working a ton on my game, though I can't say it has shown much in my results recently. I'm still waiting for that magical rush where I can do no wrong and am able to run up my BR enough to lose it again playing nosebleeds. I'm at this strange BR level right now where I feel sorta bad donating to people like URnot and chewy and Ashman as it might make me move down after even a few bad sessions in a row. I just can't wrap my head around how many buy ins I need to be playing tough regulars hu, deep, on multiple tables. It's gotta be like 100+. I'll try to learn my lesson, but realistically, I won't.

GL All

Ben