Hey all, long time no blog
Guess I haven't updated since April 29th. Whoops. I'm not very good at the internet. I just obsessively respond to forum posts and try to call my mother once a week, everything else is gravy. I will start by saying that I conveniently go to school at the University of Toronto (which is in Canada!) so after Black Friday hit I just said I was in Canada and sent the sites the corresponding documents and I've been good to go. Unfortunately, they would not accept a picture of me making a thumbs up sign from my patio with the CN Tower in the background.
I spent a fair amount of May obsessively trying to get money off of FTP, but around mid May I decided I don't care anymore since I already have way more money than I ever thought I would have and it won't be the first time I've lost a million dollars so I'm just going to see what happens. I'm well aware that this attitude may seem almost pathologically laid back and immature, but I don't see any particularly rosy options for myself since .50cents on the dollar seems too low to trade FTP for given my read of the situation. I'm very frustrated that FTP died when it did since I had just learned to play big bet draw and was thoroughly enjoying myself degening it up with Yan and Durrr et all at high stakes in a new game where no one knows anything. I also finished finals for school and have time off until July 4th when I start my summer courses, time which I have been spending seeing family, going to Vegas, and drinking in the park/laying in the sun.
In Vegas this year I did my customary ritual of getting really excited to play big live and then degening it up in the poker room until all my money was gone. To prepare myself for highstakes cash I put in a weekend of 16hr 5/10 full ring NLHE grinding sessions to get my feet wet and turn all of my excitement into boredom. I also managed to put in one serious social outing and had dinner with Aaron, Chewy and about 12 other poker players and poker girlfriends, in the middle of which I got serious food poisoning and had to excuse myself to the bathroom to puke and shit my brains out and totter out looking more pale and disheveled than normal. I continued doing that for the remainder of the night/morning until I dragged myself to the 25k hu where I lost in the first round to newlywed Edawg who came in from the golf course to completely stomp me, although I did outplay him pretty badly I think.
From there I took myself over to Bobby's Room and played in the 200/400/100 ante 2-7 NLSD game which was running on Early Bird time with Billy Baxter, Yan Chen, Doyle, and Shawn Sheikhan as well as some others. I have to say, Billy Baxter is one seriously smooth gambler, and he's sharp as hell for being, what, 60+ certainly. He's also an unbelievably solid deuce player, waaay less splashy than Yan (who is also very good) and just plays balanced with the right level of aggression. I managed to donk off around 150 in the game over the course of my stay in Vegas, most of which is probably attributable to running bad, but for reasons either deluded or prescient I'm ultra-paranoid about being a tellbox live and so quit the game after 3 sessions. I felt that people made an incredible number of good river decisions against me, which I didn't like at all. I also played a bit of 50/1 plo at the Rio and played the 5k NLHE event, both of which were boring and uneventful. I can't really think of any hands from the trip which were incredibly interesting, although there were a lot that were pretty interesting. It was definitely fun to play in the old men's deuce game in Bobby's Room and talk shit, those guys have a line for everything- I guess that's a luxury you have when you're playing 40 hands/hour. The art of the well timed needle is important live, where as they say people eat like a bird and shit like an elephant. One guy did his best to make me play the elephant, but instead I just quit the game.
The best part of the Vegas trip was seeing some old friends. I got to crash at one friend's place, eat some good food, hustle some pool, go golfing for the first time (where I bet 100$/hole with an 8 handicap per hole vs my friend's par) and go on a couple hikes at Red Rock and in the Mt. Charleston area. As I was bushwhacking through the desert around Mt. Charleston I found a 4leaf clover pendant buried under the scrub which I kept, but like a donk I didn't go play anymore live poker after that although I'm sure I would have run amazing. After 9 days or so in Vegas I was ready to get back to Toronto though, since I tend to live a degenerate existence in Vegas which isn't much fun when I'm not winning.
Since I've been back I've had to re-learn plo and get good enough to crush since that's all that runs it seems like. The 25/50 plo game on stars is very, very, good and runs 4+ tables daily that I've checked. I had what amounts to maybe my first poker epiphany about a week and a half ago when it dawned on me how absurd a near optimal level of aggression is in plo. It's a psychotic game, there really isn't any other way to describe it. When I play Isildur my standard deviation is 460 bets! Who knows what my true winrate is, but it better be damn high to justify playing in a game like that. I say that, but I'm too much of a competition junky not to play other strong players hu. For me, that's the point of poker beyond paying my bills. I couldn't feel good about myself bumhunting, and I couldn't feel good about myself not striving to get better. And the best way to get better is to get beaten and figure out why. That mentality I do respect in the top live pros- sure, when Doyle/Billy/Yan sit down in Bobby's Room they hope a tellbox like me is in the game, but if I go hiking instead, they're going to find something to play anyways and who knows who's winning sometimes. Maybe that's a little bit sick, but so far it's worked for me. I just try not to get hustled for too long or too much and then I get em right back.
Gl
Ben
