Tunica in September!!!!

Ok it's booked! I will be playing several events in the Mid America Poker Classic at the Horseshoe Tunica from Sept. 15-20!!
I'm super excited! I got a cheap flight for $340 and the poker room rate at Harrahs was $40 per nite!!!!!
The structure for these tournys is terrific. I will be playing in 4 of the $340 events and a few other satallites as well. The $340 tournys have a PF factor of 19.84, awesome.
Thats all for now!

A Desicion to be made.

ok so i played the coushatta $230 again on 8/23. as i have mentioned before i have played this tourny 4 times and made the final table all 4 times. i knew a time would come that i woulndt make the final table but i dreaded it. would this be the one?

about 5 hands in to the tourny i look down at pocket jacks. long story short there is alot of raising and reraising going on...lots of money in the pot. then the flop comes something like 8 6 2 (2 clubs). alot more betting a raising and rerasing ensues then the turn. a 3 of diamonds. then i bet, shortest stack goes all in and another guy goes all in. wow...i have a decision to make now. i'm sure that i'm up against a set or a pair better than my jacks. but i call because i have so much invested in the pot and there is SO many chips in the pot from all 3 of us!!!
we turn over our hands and to my suprise: one guy is on a flush draw and one guy has a pair of 9's. my jacks are so far the best hand holy crap!!!!! the river is a blank and I basically triple up within the first 15 mintes of the tourny!!!!!!
for the next few hours i am playing soooooo good!!!! i am taking down every single pot that i enter with the exception of one hand which even though i lost the hand i lost only a few chips. i had an Ace high straight but i checked it down because there was 4 spades on the board and i did not have a spade. my straight was beat by the flush but like i said i didnt lose much on that hand.
anyway i'm totally in the zone and before i know it we are down to 2 tables!!! i have plenty of chips to get to the final table. in fact i could just fold my way to the final table if i wanted to! but here is where i had my big desicion to make: i could play super tight not play any big pots no matter what cards i had and make it to the final table for the 5th time in a row and cash for maybe 2k ooooorrrrr i could really go for it and try and accumulate alot of chips while everyone else is tightening up and try to get the final table with a moster stack and go for the win of 6k!!! Obviosuly option B was more risky but i felt like at this point i had already proven to myself that i could make the final again if i wanted to so i decided to go for it!
a hand came up, i had pocket queens. i raised and got called. the flop was all little cards, did not look dangerous at all. i bet and got called. the turn was again another little nothing card. i moved all in and got called by pocket kings. river did not help me and i was out in 15th place becuase he was the only person who had more chips that me at out table. oh well...thats poker.
it was a bummer, 2k would have been nice. but i'm still happy with my decision to go for it even though it didnt tuen out like i had wanted.

Why I Love/Hate Online Poker

Ok so yesterday logged onto Pokerstars and here is one of the first hands that i played (i'll just give the brief version):

There is a raise in front of me, I have KK in late position so I reraise BIG, some other fool calls with an 8 3 offsuit knowing that there was a raise and big reraise in front of him. Guess what the flop comes??? yep....8 3 Q. My hand does not improve from there and I lose the hand. That's why I hate online poker.

Of course I eventually won it all back from him and other fools that play so dumb. And that's why I love online poker.

Anyway, I ordered some samples of cloth and vinyl for the poker table that we MAY be building. Ok that we ARE building. What the hell. Why not take on another project! If real estate and poker don't work out then maybe i'll become a poker table builder!!

Online Poker

In my last post I started writing about online poker and my inability to make any real money at it. I certainly have not been able to match the results I've had playing live poker. BUT>>>>I think i'm going to try again. I've been reading alot about bankroll management and also about cash games as opposed to tournament poker and I think I'm getting a better handle on it. I'm ready to try out my new strategies. I am going to start at the micro limits .05/.10 with a $200 starting bankroll on Pokerstars. I'll track my results here on my blog. This is obviously much lower stakes than I play live. (When I play live I usually play $2/$5 at coushatta.) So .05/.10 will be a challange to take seriously but I really think it is best for me start at the bottom online and work my way up. I also have a pretty cool monitor that is fairly new that I want to multi-table on. I'm not talking about 20 tables or anything like that, the most tables i play is 4.
Wish me luck on my endeavor!

Poker on the Brain

If I am not playing poker then chances are I thinking about poker in some way. My latest idea is that I want to start hosting a regular game at my house. But before I do that I want to have just the right poker table and chips. Sure I have a table and chips now but the table is just one of those fold-up tables (nothing too fancy) and the chips are just a basic set of white, blue, black ceramic like chips with no values on them.

I want a badass poker table and a badass set of real clay chips. I'm all about the accessories!!!! I'm going to post a picture of the table that i want. What do you think? I can have them make it without the cup holders. Or here is the really crazy idea: Dawne and I are thinking of building it ourselves!!!! I have the plans and I think we can do it! If we decide to do it I will post our progress on this blog.

I've been collecting poker chips for few months now and I have recently aquired some antique chips on Ebay. I also bought a copy of the original United States Patent that was submitted by Harrahs for the poker chip as we now know it. Like I said if I'm not playing poker then I'm thinking about poker!!!

My next tourny is on August 23rd. It's the $230 at Coushatta again. I'll be staying for the weekend and playing some $2/$5 cash games on Sunday. In the meantime I might venture back to Pokerstars. I swore to myself that I was finished with online poker but I keep getting sucked back in....and then sucked out on! Why cant' I win online???? I do pretty well live, I even drop down in linits when I play online but still no cashes to speak of.

IN THE MONEY AGAIN!

Well I had a very profitable weeekend at the tables so I figured now would a great time to begin blogging about it.
I got up early on Saturday morning (Aug. 2) and I drove the 3+ hours to Coushatta Casino all by myself. :( Dawne (my gf) and Lucy (my dog) were going to go with me but Lucy hurt her leg last week while plying with one of the cats so we figured it would be best for her and Dawne to just stay home.

I arrived at the casino around 10:30am which gave me enough time to check into my hotel, freshen up and head over to the poker rooom.

Ahhhh the sound of poker chips!!!! God I love this game. I registered for the tournament which cost $230 and started at noon. I like this tournament, it suits my playing style. I have played it 4 times now and I have cashed in it every single time. We start with 8000 in chips, the blind levels last 20 minutes for the first 4 rounds then 30 minutes after that. Overall the tourny last about 7-8 hours depending on when we decide to stop playing and chop the pot. (Usually around the final 4 players). This tourny draws a little over 100 players each week so the prize pool is about 21k.

I grabbed a quick bite to eat just before the tourny then drew my seat card and sat down at my table. Unfotunatly I drew a table that I knew would be one of the first to break. Basicaly that meant that any table image that I worked to cultivate would be worthless when my table broke and we were all sent to different tables. What this meant is that I would not waste any chips on "advertising" in order to gain more profit in future hands.
Things were pretty uneventful for the first hour or so. By the first break I was still at about 8000 chips, I had not chipped up at all but the blinds were still so low that I was not worried at all.

Sure enough after break I began picking my spots and chipping up. To be honest I don't remember any key hands, I had no major double ups and I never had to put my tournament life on the line. I just slowly and steadily built my stack, always staying well above average in chips by using good hands or well timed bluffs. In fact that is always the way it has been for me in this tourny. Slow and steady all the way to the final table. (In future tournys I will jot down some notes on interesting hands so that I can post about them)

Once we got down to the final 2 tables I began getting more aggressive. As usual everyone else tightened up because they so desperately wanted to make the final table. I was able to pick up alot of blinds and limps to further build my stack. Once we were down to about 12 players I really started applying pressure and was able to go into the final table with a very healthy chip stack. One key had I remember is being in the big blind and it folds around to the smal blind who min rasied me. I called with I think a 78suited with a plan to take the pot away regardless of what the flop brings. The flop did not hit me. I remember it had king. The small blind bet into me and I moved over the top all-in with nothing. I had him covered so I was basically forcing him to decide if he wanted to end his tourny so close to being in the money. You know he might even have had a king but he layed it down because he sooooo badly wanted to cash. He said "That was a gutsy move". I smiled as I raked a decent sized pot.
On to the final table...

Of course right away someone suggested chopping the pot right then for about 2k each. A few people were for it but as I have done many times before...I held out. I told them that I would be open to a chop but not just yet. We kept playing and knocked out 1..2..3..4 players. Once we were down to six players the idea was brought up again to chop. I said I would be willing to but not for an even chop as I was second or third in chips at this point. Basically first got $3100, 2nd and third got $2800. We finished around 6:30pm so all in all not bad for a days work. That's about $430 per hour! Did I mention how much i love poker????

Afterwards I had a terrible headache. I almost always have bad headaches after long tournys. I am concentrating so long and doing so many mathmatical calculations that my brain just hurts! I hit the buffett and then headed up to my room thinking I might clean up and rest and then hit the $2/$5 table later on. That didnt happen. I watched a movie (Mr. Woodcock) talked to Dawne on the phone then attempted to get some sleep in that concrete bed!!! ( Not the Tempurpedic that I am used to thats for sure!!)

The next morning I woke up early hoping to get in a few hours at the $2/$5 table before my next tourny. I was also hoping that there would be some people at it that had perhaps still be there from the night before. Hopefully they would be very tired and give me some of their money!!! I bought in for $500 at a brand new table so no sleepy people that I could see. A few regulars and about 3 donaters. I spotted them right away and tryed to play pots with them. I only had time to play for about and hour and a half but in that time i made about $200. Most of that came from this guy trying to buff me out of a pot. By the river I had only made second pair but there was something about his $75 bet that made me think he had nothing and was just trying to bully me. I called it and sure enough...it was all mine! Plus it showed the rest of the table that I would call them down if I didnt think they had it and not to try and push me out of pots. I cashed out and got ready for my next tourny.

This buy in was only $150. The structure was the same but it had a much flatter payout...it paid the top 20%. There were 140 people i think. This was a private poker tourny for a league from Houston. I am not going to spend alot of time writing about this other than to say that the majority of these people did not know how to play very well and many of them had no concept of poker etiquitte. It was painful. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to just get put out of my misery so that I could go and play the cash games whick I knew were getting juicy by the minute as these awful players were busing out of the tourny and heading over there. Ahhh but my competiveness wouldnt let me so I kept on grinding away and eventually got my aces cracked and went out in like 13th place for $220 (inlcuding one bounty). Considering I played that tourny for like 6 hours it was a HUGE waste of time.

All in all it was a great weekend though. I can't wait to go back. And I can't wait till my next blog! This is fun!