So ... I haven't updated this blog since October 2009, which means I have quite a bit of updating to do.

A bit of background: for around a year from the second half of 08' through the first half of 09' I couldn't win a goddamn hand of poker. There were a few reasons for this, but that's another story.. I sheepishly remember times where I would be chatting on the phone with a friend, fcking around on google maps and playing 500/1k nlhe at the same time. During this run I ended up dropping a ton of money playing big games and running very poorly in them and being underrolled. Staking also went absurdly badly... So I dropped down a bit to play 25/50, but things still didn't seem to be going right and I wasn't sure I was even a good player in the first place and my whole winnings might have been due to extremely good luck. And if that was the case, I'd really feel like a schmuck pissing my illgotten winnings away slowly in games I couldn't beat. Hell, during that year I couldn't find a game on the internet I could beat. Also, I was starting school in the fall. I really wanted to immerse myself in school so I considered cashing out my roll to force myself to focus. One of the odd things about high stakes poker is it's extremely hard to be bored- if I have nothing to do, I just gamble. And making friends and doing school work involves a lot of shooting the shit time. Time which is fun but often a byproduct of being bored and finding random bullshit to collaborate on. Retreating to my poker-cave would not be option if I had no poker to play. So I cashed out every cent.

Unfortunately I didn't find academics as inspiring as I had hoped, and despite my best intentions I didn't see philosophy possibly being as interesting as poker, now or ever. Which- as a sidenote- is sort of depressing- that possibly finding answers to fundamental questions in life bores me but seeing money bounce back and fourth between degens does not. So in late September I found a friend owed me 1k online and I decided to get back at it. Well, truth be told, I never really left, I just love playing poker. In the first few months of the school year I ran up my 1k in play money on ftp to well over 1m. Which is somewhere between really cool and embarrassing, I'm not sure which. After having played play money and *gasp* enjoying it, I decided it might not be a bad thing to take this 1k in real money and do the same thing, starting from the bottom. Sorta like a down and out boxer who has to see if hes still got it. Maybe some sort of penance for my excessive degeneracy during those dark days of 08 and 09. There was a nice symmetry about the whole idea I couldn't get away from.

I'm not going to painstakingly go through every wrinkle, trial and tribulation at the tables since that time, but I did a few interesting things. I started at .25/.50 cent nlhe (20 bi) and moved up around when I had 30-40 bi or so. So I didn't completely luckbox a quick start out of it. I played a bunch of hu sngs as well, which I have definitely gotten better at, but am still not an expert at, as well as a ton of omaha which it appears from my database I suck a lot at. Though I feel like it can't be that hard. Then, in Feb 2010 I decided to try and 16 table 5/10 nlhe so I wouldn't have to wait for hu action. I did a lot of fun stuff with my database in order to design a strong strategy, mostly by trying to solve ranges for whole populations of players (this makes a certain amount of sense at 5/10 because there are so many regulars who appear on all your tables). The idea was that I would play a ton of hands, racking up 100k+ samples at a given limit and then look at my data and see how best to play situations on average against the whole population of the limit. For example, I would go in HEM, search for a given situation: for example, it is folded to me on the button. Then I would filter out all the hands I knew it was almost certainly possible to open OTB for a raise and look at how I fared with the bottom of my range- for example hands like 98o or worse, Q5dd, things like that. If I was making money with the bottom of a given range I would widen it slightly, if I was losing I would narrow it, and so in this way I hoped to find ranges which were optimal against the whole population of the limit in order to make my decisions easier over many, many tables. In turns out this doesn't work well at all and I broke even for 50k hands or so, despite putting in a ton of time with HEM and doing an incredible amount of number crunching. Moral of the story really is that if you are massively multitabling you either have to be an unbelievable quick thinker and be able to process all your information perfectly in split seconds or you have to play against idiots and be a huge nit. Or I suppose you could try to play GTO, which I did try to incorporate some ideas from in my play as well, but the whole exercise was a huge headache.

After that, around the beginning of March, I began to play hu NLHE again since my results have been pretty consistently great in that since forever and it's fun as hell. I kept getting frustrated though because I wanted to filet the bumhunters who were cluttering the lobby trollishly grabbing Abigail V or whatever and playing drunken russians once every 3 weeks. In a characteristically bold move I combed through my aim buddy list and got a stake from a fellow HSNLer who took half my action so I could move up and find someone with the stones to play poker. The only condition was that I couldn't play Ike or Isildur which seemed a fine compromise to me. So I moved up to 25/50 and played everyone for as long as I could, mostly UrNotindanger2, Jungleman, Tcorbin, Raptor, Inorej, BrightGreenPoop, Molswi, Hal0zination, ZeeJustin, Zugwat, Chewy, AEjones and won a bunch, which was really cool. I decided to end the stake after amassing around 50 bi for 25/50 with the plan to reevaluate if I dropped down to 100k. It only took me I think a week and a half to do exactly that, mostly courtesy of Leggo Poker's very own LuckyChewy who clipped my fledgling wings in this exciting pot:

Seat 1: luckychewy ( $32764.50 USD )
Seat 2: Sauce1234 ( $29070.25 USD )
Sauce1234 posts small blind [$25.00 USD].
luckychewy posts big blind [$50.00 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Sauce1234 [ Jd Qd ]
Sauce1234 raises [$125.00 USD]
luckychewy raises [$400.00 USD]
Sauce1234 raises [$1085.00 USD]
luckychewy raises [$2661.00 USD]
Sauce1234 calls [$1876.00 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ Qc, 2c, 3c ]
luckychewy bets [$3625.00 USD]
Sauce1234 calls [$3625.00 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 6d ]
luckychewy bets [$6750.00 USD]
Sauce1234 calls [$6750.00 USD]
** Dealing River ** [ Th ]
luckychewy bets [$19278.50 USD]
Sauce1234 calls [$15584.25 USD]
luckychewy wins $3694.25 USD
luckychewy shows [Kd, Kc ]
luckychewy wins $58140.00 USD from main pot
Sauce1234 doesn't show [Jd, Qd ]

Now, to the untrained observer, this might look like a lot of money to get in with one pair. There is certainly something to that, top pair, afterall, will get flopped around a fifth of the time depending on what cards we play preflop and 1200 BBs is a lot of BBs to be shoveling in there. I had an...

So I've been dabbling a bit poker-wise the past few weeks, just a tiny bit.

Coolest hand(s) I've played in awhile came up earlier.

I'm playing a regular on FTP (cause he has the shiny bronze triangle) who is trying to start 6max PLO tables with me hu on 2 tables at once. He started one table 110 BBs deep and the other 50, but has chipped up on the other one to 140 BB or so. It's 3/6 PLO w/antes and I cover on both. So far he has played pretty well if straightforwardly with no hugely interesting hands coming up, it has been maybe 40 hands total. He has been 3betting more than usual, though this likely to be partially because of the initial shorter stacks.

On one table he 3bets I call w/ 88Jxss or something. Flop comes 995r he checks quickly, I check (he has not checked in a 3bet pot thus far, but all the spots have been like 1-2 PSB behind previously on boards where checking didn't make a lot of sense so I don't really know too much about what this chekc means). Turn comes down a 9, he thinks briefly and bets 78 into 128 or something. I call.

At this point simultaneously on the second table he 3bets and I call with Q2hh63dd. Flop comes 776r.

On the first table the river comes down some blankish card and he bets 210 or so after thinking briefly.

On the second table he bets 72 into 128 or so pretty quickly.

Normally on the first table I would fold, but this time I decided to call.

Why ?

The end of October brought me back to Turning Stone for their Fall tournament series which
started with $100 affairs and culminated in a 1k around a week later. I planned on staying for
the week and grinding hard, I believe I took 5k cash with me for the purpose of playing the 1k main event and 5/10nl cash. On Friday morning me and 120 or so others registered for the 1k. And from
that point on I was just totally dialed in. Really feeling it. One of those times where focus
is effortless and there's that slow stream of adrenaline pushing you to make decisions with
terrible clarity. I doubled through in the first hour perhaps 300bb deep by opening 22 utg
getting 3bet by a BB greybeard to like 14x flopping 2 4 9r and getting it in within 30 seconds
after the flop action started. The field was just populated with these kind of oblivious
droolers. Day one was maybe 14 hours and I got good table draws with a big stack and remained
near the chip lead all day. I was opening and 3betting from everywhere amassing a pile of ante
chips in front of me. At one point I had nearly all the antes at my table and I'd have to
distribute them to all of the nits at the table before each deal where I would just take them
again, slowly converting them from green to red to yellow to blue. It was a very tactile way to
print money. At the end of the day there were perhaps 30 people left and 22 I think were to
make the money. I was the chip leader, a bit abashed but unable to not grin, 19, and almost
universally hated/envied.

Digression: Turning Stone is actually in some ways a very interesting place to play poker in that it serves as a reasonably accurate barometer for the poker world. It's extremely isolated and 18+ and doesn't serve alcohol, so it attracts a clientele in the poker room most of whom drove a few hours to be there and are almost certainly there for the sole purpose of sustained poker playing. In 2007 it was thrumming with activity and filling 40 tables every Friday to Sunday running up to a 10/20 uncapped buy in weekly with 25/50 making an appearance during tournament weekends and special bursts of activity. Today, it's desolate even on weekends filling perhaps 15 tables tops up to 5/5nl and the staff have a grey weary look about them knowing that their future as a room will be decided in the economic climate of the next couple of years. But to bear out my opening statement Turning Stone is the perfect place to gauge the changing demographics in poker we are all so familiar with. The erumpent poker demographic in 07' was the upper middle class internet college kid, hello
readers. The blue collar locals, sallow faced retirees, rich sunburned golf dabblers, bellowing
mafiosoesque new yorkers and tight lipped ethnic conventioneers were all in a state of awe at
the amounts of money and competitive verve we were throwing around. I get the feeling that they
thought we were winning by some bizarre emotional alchemy which is partially the case; not
needing the money + youthful exuberance freed us up to 3bet J4hh at the slightest provocation
etc etc. This was a slap in the face of the multigenerationally passed down "tight is right",
but we kept multiplying so on the one hand our non-mathematically inclined seniors
fully expected we were all about five minutes from slinking home to mom broke but on the other were deeply anxious that they were going to be robbed blind by smooth-faced philosophy majors with no respect or social tact.

The next morning we made a new seat draw and I drew great again with some rich guys mistress
with spectacular tits to my left, a couple of young kids more scared than I was, some black-clad
new york types and some 40+ lower middle classers on up to retirees. I started out stealing in
the same vein as the day before, but within a half hour the tournament halted. There were
roughly 25 of us left with 18 getting paid (recall: 130 entrants= over 10% ITM) and the top
three broke down 'round 42k, 26k, 15k or something but certainly nothing even close to what
is deemed by tournament poker standards as top heavy, without doing a ton of number crunching I
think it might have even been a bit lower on top but I don't have a precise memory for non-
essential non emotionally compelling details like that.

The tournament director stopped play and directed all eyes to a 50ish year old, but looked older because of years of Substances type guy who addressed the assembled saying that "we all" had decided that the remaining 25 "deserved" to be paid at least the initial 1k back and that the requisite 7kish would be subtracted from the top 3 spots in a 3.5k, 2.5k, 1k type of ratio, and that this would be fair to everyone who "made it this far". He continued by saying that the only obstacle remaining in "our" path was that the proletarian decision to alter the tournament structure had to be made unanimously and if anyone not vigorously nodding assent could just raise their hands right now. As emotional momentum/chip leader at this point I'm left blinking stunned that this idea has gained traction and that we are being subjected to this idiocy but since I was at the socially awkward nexus of the terrified seniors' discomfort, what with my age, stack, and ludicrously aggressive playing style
I felt more secure letting one of the other big stacks act in preserving their clear best
interest by dissenting.

Five beats and no one does. Ten. Fifteen. Crackling eye contact between all 25 players,
tournament director passive. I become increasingly nervous, start making pleading eye contact
with other young players possessing big stacks, trying to raise some popular
support. I'm met with downcast eyes. Twenty-five seconds have elapsed in silence and the
Speaker begins to clear his throat and engage the tournament director I assume to ratify said
plan into Law. I stand up, almost visibly shaking and begin a short little speech "C'mon guys
(short glances at other big stacks, longer looks on clearly-mathematically-savvy young players)
this is ridiculous. I'm not going to abstain in a general consent type situation where voting
is just clearly and unequivocally in my best interest given my stack. This is a poker game,
guys (meaning we all set out here under a clearly defined set of rules with the express intent
to take each others chips). I vote no." I likely stuttered and mumbled a less coherent speech
in the moment though, repeat, 19 and nervous.

This caused universal uproar and even after my statement no other big stack jumps to
defend my argument though some have squirmy rodent-like facial expressions. Jowls quivering, blood pressures rising and multiple fists actually raised into the air mob style, the entire old nit
shortstack contingent erupts in righteous anger at me. I appeal wide-eyed at the tournament
director to step in as like a school principal type of authority figure and quiet the bullies,
but instead he exaggeratedly stares at his watch, back at me, and calls a 10 minute break...

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.

................................................................................ .................................................................

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.

So I dont watch tv much, but im living with friends who do, and im of course totally bewildered by half of it.

so today im watching cash-cab, and this group of four tourist retiree types get in the cab. i am of course initially pre disposed to hate on them as they are all loud, overweight and not new york city model hot like 60% of the ppl on the show, and are wearing mumu type garments and fannypacks, but i digress.

premise of the show is that you get in a regular yellow nyc cab and declare your destination at which point the car erupts in psychadelic lights and you are on a game show. the deadline is when you arrive at your stop the questions end, or if you get 3 wrong you get booted onto the sidewalk, they ascend in difficulty and go up to maybe 150$ a pop from 25$ at the beginning,

the retirees are actually quite strong players and bink I believe 13/15 questions, ending in a 950$ win as they reach their destination, at this point you can go for video bonus question for double or nothing which is on average marginally harder than your previous questions. this smug fcking lady stares down the camera with her southern drawl and goes "Oh, well, we aren't gambin' types" and they run wiht the money. as this is a poker blog i will not discuss the EV of their decision, but what i found so infuriating was that they justified their retarded decision not with any kind of logic but just immediately as a moral certainty, these ppl must have elected george bush....

so i begin to tilt visibly to my friend who is watching it and explain the precious ev they are giving up, however, not satisfied to stop at the end of my traditional rant; i had to swing for the fences. my friend attempted to justify their decision like this "if the happiness ev they lose by gambling is greater than the happiness ev of doubling through, and the money isn't particularly large or small, then their quit is fine". though, i must add, my friend was a girl, so it was phrased a lil differently.

I say no! not taking such a logically imperative gamble just displays a profound ignorance about the way probability operates in everyday life. Or, to put it more succinctly "Lady, do you realize you're driving in a FCKING CAR RIGHT NOW". every time you get in a car, you deliberately risk your entire life in exchange for some value, whether it's getting to work quickly, seeing a friend, etc. whenever you smoke a cigarette you lose whatever it is, 10 min on average of your life i forget, what im getting at is just the fact that risk taking (read:gambling) is inextricably bound up with living, by blinding yourself to the relatively large risks you are assuming daily you are living a dream. gambling should be defined as what this lady and people like her have been doing their whole lives:: making unreasoned decisions without considering the myriad possible outcomes, both material and emotional of the things they take for granted.

im gonna need another non- 1am blog to flesh this one out, but i wag my finger at you, cash cab lady, don't judge me! grrrrr

I've had a ton of interest in the past, but in general have decided against coaching as my schedule was fluctuating so much and I felt I couldn't give the best value to students. for the first time in over a year however I plan on being in one place for the next 6 months, and plan on keeping a regular schedule as well as playing more hands than I have the past few months. Being more focused on poker I think I will be able to take on 1-4 students, perhaps more, in varying capacities.

First of all, I want to get one thing straight: while I do enjoy teaching poker, poker is first and foremost my job, so the goal here is to make any hour I spend coaching more +ev than time spent playing my main games (25/50 to 200/400 nl, sprinkled with PLO and HA)(note to me: say NO to 500/1k). I'm also adding to the fact that any time spent coaching people playing slightly lower than I play now will eventually make games tougher for me down the road. Spose' I sound like a bit of a Machiavellian fckhead, but there it is. In the past when I was making videos or coaching for well less than my hourly rate I constantly had this feeling of regret which caused me not to put 100% into the time I spent. So realize that while these rates might seem outlandish I have to balance my time so that coaching is a good poker-business decision. It's going to be up to you to see if my coaching is worth your money.

I also want you as the student to have a ton of options. Here they are:

1. Sweat via Mikogo/Teamviewer: $175/hr if you don't currently play in my 25/50 games, $1000/hr if you do. No skyping or direct interaction. If you can get a group together of enough people to supplement my hourly I will play as low as 2/4nl, though I'm guessing this would apply mostly to 5/10, 10/20nl regulars.

1b) Take notes, ask questions, note specific hand histories and send me an email after one of these sweat sessions with those questions. I will respond with descriptive answers of my reads and logical reasoning, but without in depth pokerstove theory discussion. I haven't thought of accurate pricing for this yet as I want to shy away from a $/hand type of thing as that would induce you to ask only a few specific questions and not for instance things like "why did u fold 97dd in the BB to X's CO raise?", I also want to shy away from a $/time spent by me because that would induce me to overbill you or work slowly and just leads to dishonesty. Any ideas?

1c) Sweat w/ discussion via Skype. 450/hr. I will try to answer your questions as fully and honestly as possible during the session, but reserve the right to say "I have to think!" at any time as I'll be playing 4+ tables usually. I also, will have the right to end the session at any time, but you won't be billed for the nearest hour to the time I stop it , for instance if we do a 40 min session and I decided I'm not able to continue talking you won't be charged a penny unless it's some ridic angle shoot where someone is blasting Britney Spears through their headset or something. Also, we will take a 15 min break at the end of the hour to talk through anything we might have had to gloss over. I donno, I've always wanted to do this, would be like watching a poker video, but instead you are able to control the discussion as the observer. You can also split this with multiple people with the base price being 425/hr+ $225 for each extra person.

2. HH analysis via email. Same problems as 1b regarding pricing. Don't really want to do $/HH just because that would again induce me to work quickly through your hand histories:: this needs to be different from regular forum posting and requires a lot of thought. I'm sort of shying away from this option right now, just because of the prevalence of forums etc but wanted it listed.

3. Private Sweating. The typical "poker-coaching" arrangement. I sweat you in your games while we talk on Skype and discuss hands post-session. Since my playing hourly is completely cut-out from this it all comes out of your pocket. $1600/hr. Includes sporadic AIM questions and email questions. Can also focus on theory.

That's it for now, I'm going to think on this a bit more and see what else I can think of. Probably the most advantageous thing for most is going to be some kind of sweating me. The only other option not covered here is some kind of arrangement where I take a percentage of your winnings over the long terms in exchange for coaching, probably 5hrs/week+ at the start and downhill from there. this is just plagued by trust issues, so if I don't already know you well, probably not. Have heard so many horror stories.

I'm a good poker player, that doesn't necessarily make me a great poker coach. If your looking at value per dollar spent, for SURE your best bet is to watch all of the video coaching sites, 50$ for the amount of videos on Leggo is just such a steal if you put in the time to study them thoughtfully. Nothing I can do will guarantee you getting to the next level, but I probably think about poker a bit differently than anyone who you have talked to before. I've been happy with all the poker coaching I have ever received in totally different capacities, from Krantz and Tommy Angelo.

Again, people have asked about coaching, I have the time now, just wanted to write this down at least in rough form so that your questions are answered. If you think of anything else, float it by me.

-Ben

Day One- wasn't that bad


Two days ago, call it a Tuesday I arrived in LA. All hotels were booked so I've sequestered myself at the Ramada 8 mins down the street.

Next morning (Wednesday) I hustled on down to the Commerce to register for the 10k hu no limit event. I first haggled with a few people at the front desk in order to receive the 100k wire I made here, there was one moment of nervousness where the two tellers were conferring in the back utterly confused as to whether it had arrived or not. It did though, sweet. Cashed out 40k for walking around money and went to register a full 3 hours before the event with great success. Finding myself bored with 3 hours to kill pre-event I wandered downstairs, happening upon a 20/40nl game, with 200 BB ante and a 300 2-7 bounty. Naturally I sat. Things zipped along smoothly with me opening a pot here and there, winning a few continuation bets, but mostly just sitting on a tight/solid image. The table was just awful for a live game, the lineup was the Bermans, Keith, Kevin and a couple of other live pros playing tight. Not one mark.

7 handed, the weakest player at the table opened UTG+1 to 200, Brad Berman called, Keith called, and Lyle called from the small blind. I picked up QQ in the BB with a 20k stack or so and after some quick internal debate made it 1500, the PFR folded, Keith called and Lyle called from the SB. Pot 5k or so on the flop of 8s 4x 3s. I again had a bit of a tough decision as betting commits me to the hand, but I thought they might think I would bet AK here as well as some of my SC type hands and sometimes people are more apt to put you on a bluff the first time you show aggression (specially if you're a scruffy young kid). I bet 2500, which coincidentally was the number of white ($100) chips in front of me, mostly because I hate talking when I'm in a big pot OOP with money behind, declaring 3400 or so while tossing in a flag I'm not really sure what kind of intonation to go for to project weakness to two strong live players. Keith thought for 4 beats or so and called, Lyle folded. The turn came an offsuit ace which presents a couple problems. Pot is around 11.5k with 16k behind so my only real option if I decide to bet is to bet/fold. This is of course completely fine if I expect my opponent to never re-bluff, never spazz with worse pairs, and to never ship an 8-out draw. I'm not sure if that's the case, also I had seen Keith make some floaty/bluffy plays in the past, and I was sure he was capable of turning pairs into bluffs. So I checked. He thought for a bit longer and bet $3600 (leaving me 11.6k I remember behind). As a continuation of my previous reads this meant one of two things: he had a draw/bluff- hands like 55 or 65, or he had a set. Sets are difficult to get, so I called, taking an appropriate length of time to do my live-poker dance and make a variety of weak looking gestures, hopefully subtly. River came an offsuit 2, improving hands like 65, 55, I checked and he pushed for 11.6. I decided at this point to put him on JTs, QJs type of hands or perhaps 66, 77, 99, TT, JJ as he shoved very quickly. Getting 2.5 to 1 I called, though it's very close, I also discounted hands like AQ AK and A4 A3 which were a part of his range on the turn, so let's not think this river card was TOO terrible. He had 888.

Then I headed upstairs for the 10k hu. They had the most idiotic table assignment system imaginable. There were 110 entrants, and maybe 20 first round byes. Instead of simply creating a bracket and letting us look at it, they had 110 degens lined up like highschool graduation to listen as they announced each match individually in monotone. Zzzzzzzzz. Also, in a miraculous coincidence 19/20 (or 1 less than the total, I forget the exact number) of first round byes were given to various live pros of differing significance. Sure seemed like a hundo in the right place could net you +10k equity, though this is of course completely unsubstantiated and is a conspiracy theory. I was lucky enough to not even be assigned a table, such is my stature in the live poker community. After finding my opponent we convinced the tournament staff to give us one.

My opponent was Jason Griffin, who I believe is a live-pro playing 10/20 and 20/40 at the commerce. Not surprisingly he folded quite a bit too much preflop and called too much postflop, but otherwise played reasonably solidly. The match went back and forth and we eventually got all the way to the 500/1k blind level with 20k starting stacks, which actually remained 20k stacks. He limped in for 1k, and I made it 3k instead of jamming with KQo. He called and the flop came 732r. I knew he was getting it in with any pair or draw, and occasionally bluffing and so thought bet/folding or calling would leave me in a terrible spot. I checked and he checked behind pretty quickly. The turn came an offsuit queen. I thought for a bit and checked as I thought he would put me on ace high at best as the match up to this point had been playing very straightforward and I had been aggressive, caught jamming over his limp with Q6o for 10bbs, etc. He bet 4k pretty quickly and I called med-quick. River was some blankish card, an 8 maybe and I checked. He jammed quickly again, I of course snap and won against T6hh, boo-yah!

My next opponent was The Grinder, along with his entourage of maybe 10 friends who hung out on the rail talking sht. I booked a 5k sidebet with one of them pre-match to spice things up a little. The first hand I misplayed kind of badly, Michael 3bet my open with 98dd to 1500 with 20k stacks. I decided to call and float some flops. KT7 one diamond, he bet I floated. Turn was something random, a ten I believe and he bet some tiny amount I think 3k into 7k or so. I called again. River was a blank and checked. I probably should have checked here as I need him to fold hands like AJ AQ 22-66, 7x, which I'm not sure he will. I bet 3600 as I had no showdown value and he tank-called with 97o. NH Grinder I guess. He won a bunch more pots grinding me down to 8k or so when I won a flip 55 vs AJ aipf. I stole a few more pots and got my stack up to 21k, opened KJs otb at 200/400 and Grinder made it 2k (over my 800). I called. Flop came J74ss I believe, grinder made a med-sized bet, but a big bet for him as he had been min bettng and just generally making tiny probing type bets all match, mostly with weaker hands. I called. Turn was an offsuit queen and he bet med again. This was actually kind of a tough spot as I thought he was likely semibluffing this card a ton, but not necessarily betting weaker jacks or hands like 88-TT but what can I do but call? River was a king and he bet 4500 or so. I jammed and he thought for easily 10 minutes, drawing a crowd of maybe 20 people to the rail. I decided to do the stoic stare at the table thing as he seemed pretty intent on eliciting tells all match. He did all the live pro tricks, clanking chips to see if my eyes darted, fake moving in or betting in different spots, stacking and unstacking. Finally he called with Kx.

My third match was against Vivek, Psyduck of 2p2 fame. I expected him to be a bit overaggro in certain spots, and perhaps to play overly ABC. I'm not sure if I was right. This was my third tough match of the day, starting at 11pm...

Notes: 1) The Leggo software is messed up, anytime I do a draft of one of these it automatically shows it as posted. Don't click! From now on I'll throw out a DONE! or DRAFT in caps beforehand.
2) I could do a lot better with editing. I tend to write pretty sloppily, but usually I just bang one of these out and then I'm pumped to post it so I just fire it out there. Good luck.

Part 3: Grindcore


Starting on January 28th 2007 I pretty much geared my head up to become a poker-pro. I had my island-journal filled with 6max tables scribbled with ranges and a variety of bankroll management goals. I only remember #1: Don't move up limits until you think you are the best regular at your limit and have 25 buy ins. This was at the persistent urging of Danny and Max, who had recently introduced me to the world of 2p2, and put the tools of learning winning poker in my eager hands. They also seemed ok with lending me money and so the day after my plane landed back on Cape Cod I borrowed $500 and went to work at 25nl to make $10,000 by December 31st.

Sitting down to play poker is probably the most exhilarating thing I've done in my life. Sex can definitely be better, drugs too, but for pure consistency of enjoyment without baggage or side effects, poker does it for me hands down. Poker rarely has the extreme peaks and valleys of life experience. I've never felt as whole playing poker as I have staring at the moon in Yosemite, but for pure sensory gratification the bumpy uphill ride of moving chips can't be beat. Contrary to popular belief, poker has gotten consistently more boring as I've played for more and more money. Probably more stressful in some real-world ways, but when I was starting out every hand was a puzzle, and everywhere I turned my attention possibilities abounded. In 2007, no one knew anything, the players beating the biggest games were shooting from the hip just like the rest of us, but with faster reflexes. So in this climate I thought that with enough dedication, anything was achievable. And failure would be expected, while being a successful gambler would blow my friends' minds.

I think I played 25nl for 3 days. I'm 100% sure that at no time in my now long poker career have I been a winner at 25nl or 50nl. For some reason the style of play at 50nl in 2007 caused me to tilt almost instantaneously. I think it was almost TOO soft. I was interested in a high tension battle of check raises and bluffs, and instead what I found at 50nl was tables full of passive weekend warriors idly tossing in chips from any position trying to flop something good. This infuriated me for some reason and I found myself trying to just rip every chip on the table from their lazy faces. And you can't do that, cause they were playing tight. So I found myself repeatedly getting in big pots with say 92ss which I had 3bet against someone playing 20/8, and then stacking off on a 94J flop because he had to have AK. Each session I would review my hands and realize that most of my equity at these tables came from my ability to win tons of small uncontested pots with big raises in position. And I just couldn't do it, it was like waving red in front of a bull, I'd charge in guns blaring and when the turn checkraise came I was steaming forward so recklessly I couldn't get out of the way.

On day four I played 50nl. I saw no substantial difference. On day five I played 100nl, where a few regulars were starting to mess around. So I played 200nl. I revised my bankroll management strategy by only buying in for 100$ as I could not yet envision a run of bad luck occurring where I would lose five times in a row. I began to play like a nit, and on day seven I went broke for the first time. I borrowed another 500$ from Max and Danny which coincidentally was the balance of my bank account and dropped down to 100nl. Though at the time I thought I was sure to win, this was actually one of the points in my life where short-term luck was an incredibly important factor. Had I lost this money, I would probably have never played poker again in a competitive manner for at least six months to a year and would have had to get a job. It was more or less a fluke of running white-hot on my first trip to the casino which brought me back to poker for my second go-around, and a chance meeting with Danny and Max which gave me the tools to win. Had those tools seemed to have failed I probably would have walked away disgusted, and I have no idea whether my life would be better or worse as of now. For me losing has always felt much worse than the joy I feel winning, so I would not be funneling paycheck after paycheck into poker if I had lost.

When I read high stakes players stories half the time I hear "So I won a freeroll for $500 and never looked back. Within six months I was beating 2knl." What people so often forget is that to ever reach high stakes gambling, it's almost essential that you run better than average, pretty much forever. I take the opposite view of most gamblers who attribute their success to some genius combination of intelligence, balls, and personal style, which has somehow vaulted them out of the seething millions of poker players world-wide who want to be high stakes players. I'm sure that of all the people who have studied poker I'm probably in the top 10% in terms of logic, discipline, and emotional control, but I'm sure there are hundreds just as smart as me who have failed because they did not run as well at important times. And there are some people who are worse than me who are playing higher. In any profession involving randomness, you just HAVE to get lucky to be extremely successful, there is no other substitute, and if you think there is, you're fooling yourself.

With that last $500 I got lucky. Very lucky. I started playing almost every day back at school, usually for two or three hours six tabling 100nl. I probably spent another 3 hours initially posting in forums and just studying. I also had five academic classes to daydream about poker, and really whenever I was alone and my mind was adrift poker began to sail through in slow circles. I only have a timeline of my forum posts at flop turn river to tell me how well I was doing as that old database has long since been deleted, but using my various posts as markings for my increasingly vague recollections of those early grinding memories seems to be as good a place to start as any. This is one of my first posts ever, on February 18, 2007, 30 days after I began playing online. http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...ns-t50896.html. It's interesting because it's such a mixed bag. I'm not concise at all, or particularly specific, or even correct, but I'm somewhat impressed that I had been check bombing rivers so early into my poker career. I suppose I always relied mostly on empirical evidence when playing poker which is the miracle of pokertracker: does this play work in practice? Then I'd try to pick out some kind of explanation of why that might be the case. Especially when beginning in poker it's easy to get stuck in some circular morass of theory-talk. There was just so much to think about.

In most Well threads people ask the question "Did you have any 'Aha!' moments as a poker player?". My basic answer is that there is danger in 'Aha!'. Usually these moments are bi-products of doing something terrible and...

That's a quote from my new favorite radio show Theme Time Radio Hour with Bob Dylan. The week's theme? Luck. Warning: it's more or less all Americana and a lot of it's old so you better like blues/folk/jazz really everything, cause Bob has only played one Wutang song so far. Though if you like hearing Bob Dylan talk about WuTang than maybe this is your thing too. It's on XM or you can just torrent obv. Some good themes: Blood, Cars, Lock and Key, Money, but they're all good.

gl,
Ben

As to hands, I played an extremely frustrating session today and I'll share a few hands, cause they are pretty difficult spots, and because I feel the sting still (-190k) and I want to exorcise it! Today WSOP ME champion Peter Eastgate made his entrance on to the Stars nosebleed tables, playing anyone and everyone on 100/200 and 200/400 nlh. Up early and coffee in hand I sat down scanning my usual FTP haunts, but seeing his sn Lsser sitting this high made me decide to run up my 49k stars roll via 200/400 nlh. A quick aside, before his WSOP victory his screen name had been seen on stars playing 25/50 for about a week, where he had been forming games around him and playing crazy. So this was the same idea, but for 8x the stakes and he was insisting on HU NLH, my best game. My friend was playing him at 100/200 at the time, and after winning a few stacks from lsser, lsser demanded 200/400. He has been running awful lately and so passed the option on to me. And so here I went spamming my aim list for people to send me money. One friend acquiesced and shipped me 120k + another 20k from a friend and so off to the races I went playing one or two tables of 200/400.

I'd like to say that this is the best game I've had in the last 4 months. Not because I had the biggest edge, but because I had a very clear fundamental edge that I could hold on to, and I knew he had just won the friggin WSOP ME, and I knew that meant he was young and rich and European, a deadly combination in high stakes poker. He wasn't gonna quit, and I thought this my chance to make 300k+ in my best game.

I don't know that I think about hands in quite the same sense as some people. I mean they aren't isolated at all. So this is my sort of profile on Eastgate psychologically, and then over the course of today I learned exactly how he plays NLH. I sort of wrote down all these reads stream of consciousness style, I usually build a player profiles rather than just analyze hands in a vacuum.

I'll start with three, though there were many more interesting spots on the day (as their usually are when you lose a lot, interesting=close), but I'll use these three as they are probably the most fun.

I'm going to start with the good and move to the bad. The first hand against him was relatively early in the match, I had been minraising because he was 3betting maybe 38% of hands, and my goal was to play a bit more postflop and try to reduce my variance a bit when my options were close in value (so less 4bet bluffing and more flatting in pos). I min raised to 800 with Qh 9c and he predictably 3bet to 2800 with effective stacks of 29k. Now, this isn't one of my best preflop calls, and unfortunately not even close to one of my worst and I called. The flop came 9c 3s 6s and he led out 3100 into 4800. My read on him at this point was that he can have almost any bway combination, some small and med pairs, and some suited connector hands which have hit the flop in some way. I just stoved my hand against what I think his range is preflop and I'm a 68% favorite which is actually pretty substantial when you consider how wide ranges are here preflop. I don't think him betting out changes that in any meaningful way as he is apt to check and call with some of his weaker pairs and bways, but let's say against his betting range I only have maybe 65% equity as an estimate (I stoved this too, but against a player as arbitrary in his decision making as Peter it's not as strong an assumption). So, I made a small raise on the flop to 7200, which should leave him some fold equity on a jam and may allow him to pull some kind of silly stop n go with a 55 or AK type hand if he decides I'm on a draw. Again, with a med-strong made hand I want to allow him to get the last bet in. To my surprise, he flat called the flop with 19k behind in a 19k ish pot. The turn came Ad and he checked. I thought on the flop that flat-calling was the least likely action he would take with any of his range, and so I had to reevaluate. I still don't think he has Abway, because it's a huge disaster to allow me the last bet with a bluff or draw when he has overs which beat a draw and one pot sized bet left, and I don't think he plans on check/calling down AQo on this board. I also think with any small trace of fold equity he would jam a draw on the flop, so I discounted OESDs slightly and more strongly flushdraws from his range. That left weak made hands, weak gutshot type and 87 type str8 draw floats, and slowplays. Against this new range, betting only is valuable for protection, and risking a PSB on the turn when I'm likely to only be called by better and I estimate his non-slowplay range has 20% equity or less is a weak play. He also can have A6 or A3 occasionally which improved. I made a med-long timing tell which I think can indicate anything from a FD to a bluff which gives up on an overcard, to a slowplay. I'd also like ot add I don't think he was thinking nearly this deeply about the hand, I get the feeling his postflop play consisted mostly of mashing buttons and trusting his "gut", it was my job to make sense of his gut. The river came down a Js and in less than a second he jammed for 19k. Other than the big bet he had just made this didn't change my assesment of his handrange in any meaningful way from the turn. And the more I thought about the hand, the more it actually narrowed it, and pushed me towards calling. Peter rarely acted instantly on later streets, especially when the board changed, and the flushdraw coming in on the river given my line is just very important even if he doesn't think I have it particularly often, I certainly should have it more than he does. So when he insta-jammed I figured his slowplays had to be discounted as none of his slowplays beats a flush, and he's not tricky or stupid enough to snap jam an Ace or med 2pair on the flush card without thinking about it for a second. What that left me with was him turning a pair into a bluff because an A + flush fell, or him bluffing with one of the random str8 draws which all missed. I called, he showed T7cc. Ship.


The second hand I think I misplayed slightly. Lsser opened the button for 1200, I made it 4000 with TT, with 55k effective stacks. I had been 3betting more frequently as stacks got deeper but it probably wasn't too noticeable to him. At this point he made it 11000, with 45k behind, giving me 3:1 ish preflop and 8:1 ish on his stack. This was his first 4bet in 580 hands total so his range has to be something like JJ+, AK, and the occasional bluff. First of all, getting it in sucks. I ship in 55k to win 11k and when called I have 36% equity or so. Before I call I need to run some postflop situation through my head in order to play profitably. Any non AK board I'm considering a blank and so peeling or CRing has to be an option. The big sticking point here is that in only one specific scenario can I peel preflop profitably and that scenario is if he does not bet AK on the flop so that I can play perfectly on the turn/river and maybe get a bet from AK unimproved (which is 50% of his combos btw so this isn't trivial). I expect him to always bet overpairs on the flop so in this scenario of checking AK unimproved and betting overpairs I can win with TT, but then I can win any pair as well. Since I had no 4bet pot play with him, my only info was that...