End of October

Well the main event didn't quite go as I had hoped or planned. I was the chip leader at the dinner break but then was ridiculously card dead for the next 3-4 hours and got chipped down. It wasn't as if I could have made many moves with how active the other players were. I got a guy to check raise all in on a QJ9 board with 88 vs my KQ and bang an 8. That hurt. As we got close to the bubble I lost a flip and then won a flip before getting KK allin vs AK preflop for top couple places in chips. It came JJTQ3 and I was out on the bubble. I played the best tournament poker I've ever played so while I was dissapointed, it didn't sting as much as if I had done something dumb.

I finished october with a lot of poker. Looking at my HEM It had me playing 175 hours online (43) per week which is even a little strong for me. I played another 50 hours at canterbury so October was a masher month. Up there for most poker probably ever. I ran bad overall at the end but hot at the bigger games and worse at the smaller games so I'm on a nice little upswing at the moment. I'll probably play a good amount the rest of the year too, but not likely as much as october. I'm having a decent enough year. At the beginning of the year if you told me i was going to be wehre I am I would have been satisfied, but I haven't made any progress dollar wise since May (bets wise yes, doing well there, but opposite situation than the end of october..win at small games lose at big ones). I really would like to finish the year strong so I think I'm gonna cut out some of the bigger gambling and focus more on the more consistant games.

I think I found the snow tires for my truck. I'm pretty pumped to not be sliding around ridiculously like my acura tl. It's given me an unnatural fear of driving in the winter. I'm not going to be one of those assholes in a truck driving 70 in the snow BECAUSE I HAVE A TRUCK I'M INVINCIBLE, I'm just not going to be a bitch about not wanting to drive in the winter because of the snow.

canterbury survival

I went to canterbury on wednesday night with the intention of leaving by 2 for sure because I needed to wake up the next day to play the tournament...This was looking very possible as the 30/60 game was down to me and another guy and he is a regular worker who probably wasn't hanging around too much longer.. when a business man/poker player approached our table looking to play anyone in the building heads up survival. Survival poker is canterbury's way of getting around the max bet of $60 in minnesota. Basically you play for 2 hours and then at you cash in your 'tournament chips' for their equivalent value in dollars. You can also 'rebuy' when you have half a stack or less.

I had played in a couple $200 and $500 survivals and had quite a blast. Just the change of pace of NL and playing with more recreational/social players led to a very fun poker game. The biggest Canterbury had ever had up to this point was $1000 survivals so when we told them we wanted a $2500 survival it created a little buzz in the room. We had actually agreed on 3k but so far their only approved for 2500. One of the other rules for the gaming commission is you need to have escalating blinds, so we agreed on 5/10 for the first hour and 10/20 for the second hour. Long story short I coolered him twice and won a few other pots so had stacked him twice in 35 minutes. I was pumped, I hadn't played heads up nl person to person in a long while and playing it for meaningful stakes got my adrenaline going. Almost all of my NL heads up online is $1/2 with some 2/4-5/10 but I've decided not to play 10/20nl+ because of a couple bad sessions that threw off all my hard work I just don't feel like dealing with.

The first had I had JJ vs 98 on the 994J4 board. I would have gone broke with his hand too. The 2nd one was my 8h6h vs his Kc9c on the 9h6s4h3hKd I probably would have lost the same amount in his spot so again, nothing but luck on my side. He finally went bust when he 3 bet and called my 4bet with J8s vs my TT. I had lost a bit at 30/60 so I didn't end up as much but it ended the night well and early and I got to go home and get some sleep.

The next day I played the tourney I didn't really ever get anything going. I did flop the first set I can remember in a tournament and win a nice pot only to lose an equal one the next hand buffing off some chips. I busted by making 3 7's vs a flush. Nothing I could have done so out I was. I played some 30/60 for awhile during rush hour before going home.

I'm gonna wake up early tomorrow to play the main event...wish me luck!

twins, new york, house, life, etc

I have a few minutes left on my flight to new York to hopefully sweat the twins hopefully take two from they hated Yankees. It’s been a depressing postseason and while I’m not giving up hope it doesn’t look too good. Michelle, Schneider, hoppman and I thought it’d be fun to make a little weekend trip and check out the new Yankee stadium. We’re staying in Manhattan and if we don’t have a game 4 I’m sure we’ll find something fun to do around town.

I’ve been putting off blogging because I felt like I should give a recap of everything since I last blogged but now I digress and am just going to go forward.

Poker is pretty good this year it’s just been slow the last few months. I’ve been doing well winning bets but have been losing small at the bigger games so it’s been breakeven for a bit. I’m in a really good place mentally though and also with my methods for making money…heads up limit and I’m finally a competent heads up no-limit player. I’ve also this year learned and turned a profit at 30/60 stud hi/low and stud high as well but I’m not really big on the latter. My latest game I’ve been working on is PLO which was kinda fun and I don’t really have any expectations with it. Everyone just gets super excited about it but I really don’t know too many people who have stuck with it for the long haul. I started with cash, but I sucked at it and the rake kills you because of all the flops you see so I changed to sit and goes and I’ve played a little more than 100 $33 hu sng’s. The players are very bad and that has helped with the fun factor for me as I’m so competitive and winning makes it more fun.

My house is finally coming together really well. I remodeled the basement this summer and all that is left is carpet which will be installed in the next couple weeks. I got a pingpong table for down there and was planning on a pool table but I decided I’d rather have the space than something I wouldn’t use very often. I’m working with a vendor on getting a custom golden tee machine with all of the courses and I’ll get a dart board also.

I pick up on the way home from NY now…

What was hopefully going to be a sweet baseball weekend turned into an awful baseball yet unexpected fun tourist trip…for some reason I was just so focused on baseball that I didn’t even really think about new York city, but we actually had a lot of fun checking it out. We decided to wear our twins jerseys on our day trip around the city and it was fun getting razzed. One guy even opened his like 4^th floor apartment window to yell at us. We rode the subway there and back and man is that convenient. I wish I could do something like that for the twins games. I know some people have the light rail, but it doesn’t go into the north metro. And the north star just doesn’t sound all that convenient.

Brilliant me (and partially schneids fault cause he actually bought the tickets, I just clicked on them initially) got tickets for the ALCS instead of the ALDS which we didn’t realize til we were standing in line at the stadium. Omg. We walked around for 45 minutes and literally saw 0 scalpers. It was very weird and frustrating. We decided to see if somebody at customer service could somehow help us and we found out the game was actually not sold out. Idiots. Who would have thought though? We said give us your best seats and he gave us 4 wheel chair row legends club seats and in we went. When we got to our ‘seats’ which I say loosely because there were no chairs there, we talked to the usher about getting us chairs and they wanted to split us up so we didn’t block the view of the season ticket holders who were sitting on the patio behind our row. No shot. We didn’t fly all the way to new York, pay 300 for seats next to each other and then get split up. Long story short we were able to ‘upgrade’ to normal seats for another 50 dollars and that was that.

The flight to/from NY is so short seeming so I had to finish that tonight (10/19). Since getting back I went to the wild home opener (they’re supposed to be kinda brutal this year so I’m just going to enjoy it for what it is). I’ve also gone to Canterbury a few times. I haven’t played any fall poker classic events yet but I’m going to play the 6max no limit on Thursday as it sounded fun and the main event on Saturday. Michelle has been deep into her school work so I’ve also been getting a lot of hands in online.