The Sunday tease
Date: Mon, May 5, 2008 Professional Tournament Internet Live
After my big win last Sunday in the FTP750K, I was ready and excited to play again on Sunday. The day started with a bang. At one point, I was 2nd in chips in the FTP WSOP satellite with about 12K in chips, I would have been top 40 in the Sunday Millions with 3 times the avg stack of 28K except my aces lost against J3s, and I built a stack up to 12K in the FTP750K. In fact, I actually built nice stacks in practically every tournament I was in. I'm pretty sure that I at least doubled up in about 7 of the 10 tourneys I was in.
With such a great start in so many tournaments, it is baffling that I didn't cash in one. In fact, I didn't get close to cashing. To fall so hard I had to suffer some pretty bad beats. The J3s hand was probably the worse but there were plenty of other bad ones. If anyone wants a good site to play at, try Cake poker. My opponent called a big checkraise on the flop with a gut shot and 2 undercards on the board and the stacks were relatively short - just a horrendous call and unfortunately he was rewarded for his mistake by hitting a 3-outer.
My buddy Rizen knocked me out at Poker Stars. It was a race with my AQs vs his 99, but the gods wanted to punish me and let me flop a pair only to see Rizen hit his 9 on the river.
I did misplay some hands, particularly in the 100RB event where I misplayed aces. A horrific turn card came and I couldn't drop my hand when my gut told me I should. There were a couple of other tourneys where I got my money in bad.
It was all one big tease. Build up some really nice stacks only to see them all fall.
I won't be playing next Sunday as it is Mother's day so I hope to be back in the saddle in a couple of weeks.
I won the FTP 750K!
Date: Mon, Apr 28, 2008 Professional Tournament Internet Live
Last Fall I made a conscientious effort to start playing more online - specifically on Sundays. I've probably been playing 2-3 times a month since last August. That may not sound like a lot to the regular online pros, but that is a lot more than I have played since 2003. For the regular readers of my blog, I've had lots of good deep runs, but would frequently finish just short of the "real" paydays. Now all that effort has finally resulted in a big win.
I won the FTP 750K good for $132K. There were a little over 3500 players in the event. I have done particularly well in this specific tournament. I've probably played in it 9-10 times this year and now have 3 top 100 finishes, 2 final tables, and one win. The other final table I finished 6th good for $26K. It is fun to finally have broken through and won one of these really big tournaments.
It is my biggest poker win to date. My 2nd was for 80K in the 2004 WSOP when I finished 33rd. My biggest online win before this was for 29K last year when I won one of the Poker Stars nightly tourneys.
I checked my online ROI a couple of months ago and it was about 75%. This win should make it skyrocket! I don't play nearly as often as the online pros do, but I am pretty happy with the success I have had in the limited number of tournaments I am playing.
I think there is no question that working with Rizen, Pearljammer, and Apestyles has been a tremendous help to my game. I feel like I have improved my game every year, but every year I never have played as much as I would like and I've always felt a little "rusty". But this last year has been different. I am playing at least once every couple of weeks, while at the same time I have been in constant dialogue with the 3 guys on the Hands book. The discussions I have had with them have definitely helped my game out,as well as perusing in detail what they have written for the book. It just takes a few little tricks here and there to have a dramatic impact on your results.
I'll post later this week a little more details about my win and some of the hands.
I'm ready for it to be Sunday again!
Cover Design Contest for Pearljammer, Rizen, and Apestyles book
Date: Fri, Apr 25, 2008 Professional Tournament Internet Live
We are getting very close to completing the first volume of the hands book. If any of you are interested in trying to design a cover for the book, go to this link to the ITH poker forum to get details. I am awarding $300 or a $300 stake into his WSOP winnings to the winning design.
My daughter Isabel!
Date: Wed, Apr 23, 2008 Professional Tournament Internet Live
Not running good
Date: Sun, Mar 30, 2008 Professional Tournament Internet Live
I haven't done very well the last few Sundays. On Saturday, I had a couple of hours to blow and played a 5-table $50 sitngo. 45 players and I take it down. I got so lucky towards the end. I'm waiting to get lucky like that when the real bucks matter!
Today, I literally got knocked out at the same time in the two biggest tourneys of the day. I have pretty good emotional control but that's a hard swipe at the same time!
I did run very deep in the Cake WSOP satellite. Unfortunately, I finished 6th and they gave away 3 seats. I was awarded $720 for my efforts. I went out with KK vs A9s. I raised UTG 25% of my stack and the SB with a big stack pushed me allin. I'm a little surprised by his move as he had such a big stack and could just coast into 3rd place without taking big risks. Cake by far has the fishiest tourneys on the web. The players overall are just very bad.
I played 9 tourneys today and am mentally exhausted. I just don't see how some of these guys play over 20 in a day.
Still waiting for the baby :). I may not be playing for a while which could be a good thing given how crummy I have done lately.
Not running good
Date: Sun, Mar 30, 2008 Professional Tournament Internet Live
I haven't done very well the last few Sundays. On Saturday, I had a couple of hours to blow and played a 5-table $50 sitngo. 45 players and I take it down. I got so lucky towards the end. I'm waiting to get lucky like that when the real bucks matter!
Today, I literally got knocked out at the same time in the two biggest tourneys of the day. I have pretty good emotional control but that's a hard swipe at the same time!
I did run very deep in the Cake WSOP satellite. Unfortunately, I finished 6th and they gave away 3 seats. I was awarded $720 for my efforts. I went out with KK vs A9s. I raised UTG 25% of my stack and the SB with a big stack pushed me allin. I'm a little surprised by his move as he had such a big stack and could just coast into 3rd place without taking big risks. Cake by far has the fishiest tourneys on the web. The players overall are just very bad.
I played 9 tourneys today and am mentally exhausted. I just don't see how some of these guys play over 20 in a day.
Still waiting for the baby :). I may not be playing for a while which could be a good thing given how crummy I have done lately.
Good vibes
Date: Thu, Mar 27, 2008 Professional Tournament Internet Live
You know how you sometimes just wake up and feel great. This is one of those days.
I think the main reason is that we are now finally ready and prepared for our new arrival in the next couple of weeks - Isabel. Last night I picked up my mother-in-law from the airport and she is really the last piece of the puzzle in having the house organized and ready to go have our baby.
I have been working my ass off the last month with the main objective of getting work stuff done before Isabel's arrival. I don't think I announced this before, but Albert, my good friend and Operations Manager of my website, left the company at the end of February. I am now back to managing the day-to-operations. It is adding a lot more work to an already hectic schedule, but I must say that I am enjoying it. I was really worried as I have been separated from the day-to-day operations for quite some time now and wasn't sure if I would be motivated in getting back into the details.
But the fact is, I love this stuff. I love ITH, I love the website, I love the business side of things and I'm having fun even though it is a lot more work. We have been making a lot of small little modifications to the site and most of them are now complete.
I have also worked hard on getting the hands book draft finished so that the copyeditor can get busy. He is busy and most of my part is finished. Between those two things, I feel good about the business side of things and finally feel "relaxed". Now I can concentrate on our little baby's arrival and enjoy the moment. But I'm sure after those first couple of weeks, it will be full-steam ahead as I crank out the book cover, typesetting, and printing of the book as well as move ahead with some other ideas I have for the websites.
Speaking of websites, we just launched www.winewonks.com, a sister site to www.pokerwonks.com. You can see what my two favorites pasttimes are :). I love blogging and I am excited about both pokerwonks and winewonks and what they could do in the future. One thing we have planned is to expand beyond blogs and allow people to post articles, videos, and pictures.
So,
ith - ready
winewonks - ready
hands book - more or less ready
house organized - ready
reinforcements arrived - yes! (my mother-in-law)
It's time to have a baby!