Quick general update: As of tomorrow I start school at Reed college in Portland Oregon. I've cashed out all my poker moneys, don't plan on coaching or playing for at least my first semester. It's almost cliche now eh? So don't pm for coaching, sry guys. I plan on completing this series of poker stories up to my present quit-date in the next couple of months. Also, I've deliberately left out how poker effected my personal life, I'm not sure if that's interesting, I don't really wanna start with that too much as these things could float on around the internet forever. I'm also pretty sure reading this could help your poker game in its present form.

So referring back to the end of my last entry I've rocketed up the ranks of pokerstars to 10/20nl, it's September 2008 and I have a 150k bankroll. I'm feeling gooooood.

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Pokerstars in 2008 only went up to 25/50. Different from today there was quite a bit of NL action at each limit and there was a different caste of regulars populating the 5/10nl tables and the 10/20nl tables with not a ton of movement back and forth, at least relative to today. HU was also a blip on the collective radar screen reserved for grudge matches between the elite players at the highest stakes, a sport for rich connoisseurs, like polo or foxhunting. 10/20nl would typically have 3-8 tables running at once usually with the exact same lineup of 4-5 regulars at each 6max table plus a rotating collection of fish, semi-fish and shotakers. There were two regulars who were almost universally feared at this time and seemed to play 24 hours a day, or at least were on the same sleep schedule as I was: JMC and Punketty. Both were party refugees and Punketty at least was the legendary Samo, who had tightened up from his highwater mark of like 41/29 to a respectable 34/23 or something by this time. JMC played around 26/21. Keep in mind this was in the days when there were wildly divergent NLHE preflop strategies just like there are in PLO now, but most of the people considered TAG were playing 18%-21% vpip. So this was my first experience playing people who both seemed to play more hands than me, and play them better than I did. Those this took me 4 months and 100k in losses to fully appreciate.

I sank into a routine where I would skip most of my classes at Umass and play poker with JMC and Samo all day. I would fiendishly replay hands and stare at my pokertracker most of the day and constantly tweak my gameplan in order to get ahead of these two. The first thing I noticed about JMC was that he never ever folded to flop bets in position. Just wouldn't even consider it. So I ended up check/folding marginal on the turn or check/calling and check/calling the turn/river, but was still betting far too many of my strong hands out on the turn making my check/call range exploitable even by his weak float-y range as he could value bet me twice with say TP no kicker on 2 streets and I wouldn't fold in an effort to bluffcatch. Similarly he was able to flat turn and fold river often as I'm betting once with various draws/strong hands but then not following through enough on the river against his weak range with my misses. Bonus question: what is my proper adjustment here? Or series of proper adjustments?

Samo totally melted my skull because he played every single pot with me. If I opened the button to 3x with around 50% of my hands, he would defend the BB (or SB even) with 60% of his range and then 3bet maybe 8%. He would open preflop from everywhere constantly and call an open with anything suited and even remotely connected regardless of the opener. I noted all of these things and in my head I had been drilled via 2p2 that he had to be doing something horribly wrong. Yet as much as I tried to make him fold too much or call too much he just seemed to make straights and flushes and induce me to payoff in spots I had not even envisioned. I vividly remember two hands where after the river I replayed the action in my head over and over shuddering like a soldier with post-traumatic stress disorder, blinking irregularly.
I open UTG to 3x with AK and 160 BB stacks, aggro regular on the button makes it 11x, samo flat calls in the BB. I think and make it say 28x, btn reg folds, samo calls after a slight pause. Flop comes down something innocuous and paired say 884r. Samo leads out for maybe 42bb into a 70bb pot I have 130BB behind or so. I'm dumbstruck and replay the hand in my head, decide he would be far more circumspect with a hand like TT or JJ or QQ, would jam AA or KK in preflop and so must have the other AK or maybe an AQs type of hand. I jam, he snaps, shows down AA. Blink.
Folds around to Samo in the SB, who opens for 3x with 110 BB stacks. I have ATs and make it 10x as he doesn't fold to 3bets even oop and tends to 4bet strong so I can 3bet/fold my hand (good job me). he calls flop comes down QT4r. He checks I check with what I suppose is the intention of inducing something and getting to showdown, which is fine. Turn is a 2h bringing a runner FD. he checks I bet 2/3 pot he calls. I remember at this point being so sure I had the best hand, and the betting lead that all I was considering was how big I could get paid off on the river. River 8h or something similar. I bet pretty large trying to represent (what am I bluffing with?) AK or air I suppose Samo ships it in I snap thinking he must be bluffing since why would he check/call a draw once I had checked the flop? He has 65hh. Blink.

This began one of those strange moments in my poker career where I actually improved as a poker player but began to play worse and worse. People thinking on three levels effectively had prodded me into the consciousness that these levels existed and could be used against me. But in this new realm of possibility I would constantly see phantoms, monsters under the bed and completely lost sight of what was readily apparent to my opponents. I was a giant calling station, so they would find ways to make me call. Some of my countermeasures against Samo and JMC began to bear fruit but all this did was slow my decline which was also fueled by my first serious downswing, I think I lost 50k or so going into October without realizing why.