Poker Journal Day 5
Day 5, February 27th: Only played a short session today as I had plans in the evening. I registered from noon until 2pm. The largest tournament of the day was the Friday Night Fight on Full Tilt, which I wound up final tabling. Unfortunately, I took a cooler with 10 left and came in to the FT very short then pretty much instantly lost a flip with AK, so my hopes for a 30k score on my first week back were quickly dashed. Hmm, apparently dashed isn't a real word according to the WordPress spell check. Who knew?
No particularly interesting hands went down, but on the plus side I felt very focused throughout the day and don't recall sitting back at any point and thinking "Christ you're retarded" at myself.
Poker Journal Day 4
Day 4, February 26th: I often take Friday's off for the purpose of walking about town doing my thing, but I decided to go ahead and work this one. I registered from noon (Tilt $150, Stars $100 rebuys) through 3pm (Stars and Tilt $109) with some random turbo things afterward since they wouldn't take very long.
The overall result was quite a good, a fourth in the Tilt $30 rebuys and a second in the Tilt $10 rebuys. Disappointing that I didn't win the heads up since four handed I had a truly absurd chip lead, but things can change fast and I think I got a bit distracted and hurried by the fact that people were coming over for the small party I was hosting. I did not anticipate being stuck behind my computer for nine hours that session, but that's the risk you take with tournaments.
There were a number of interesting spots on the day. The first comes from early in the nightly Stars $150:
My stack: 3000
Villain: 3150
Blinds 10/20
I hold JhTh in MP1.
Preflop: Folds to me, I raise to 60, 1 fold, HJ calls, the rest fold.
Flop: Kh 4c 5h
I bet 100, HJ calls.
Turn: 9h
I bet 255, HJ min raises to 510, I call.
Alright so the turn looks a bit tricky. For the most party, if someone min raises you on that card on the turn they have a polarized range between monsters (flushes) and total bluffs, though occasionally people will get weird with a strong king and go for cheap showdown or pull this with the ace of hearts. Either way if I reraise I'll get it in against all flushes (unless he hero folds a small one, which he probably won't) but considering the texture there's really only a few possible worse combination's out, such as 78hh and 76hh, both of which might raise the flop considering how strong they are. So by calling we lose the least against the hands that crush us and gain the most from the ones that are going to attempt to bluff us.
River: 7h
I check, HJ bets 760, I fold.
Seems pretty clear at this point. There's no basically zero combination's of two heart hands that I beat, and if he was getting weird with the Ah he's binked it. Additionally, it's very rare for a random to take that line with a king considering he can check back with his show down value and for the most part would never min raise the turn to begin with.
The second hand is from the nightly $150 on Tilt:
My stack: 6,945
SB: 4,183
BB: 20,640
Blinds 120/240 with a 25 ante
I hold Qh Qd on the HJ.
Preflop: Folds around to me, I raise to 575, folds to SB, SB calls, BB calls.
Flop: Ac 7s 9c
SB checks, BB checks, I bet 1,220, SB folds, BB shoves.
My plan at this point was to snap call the SB if he shoved and fold to the BB. The SB would likely ship the majority of the good aces he'd shove with pre so I can feel pretty confident calling him (although sometimes we will see an ace.) After getting shoved on by the BB I have to admit I'm pretty tempted to call. If he had AK he'd be 3 betting pre, as would AQ most of the time which we can also partially discount. I question whether AJ and AT would check shove that board as opposed to check/call (some villains would do the former, some the latter) and if he's flopped two pair I also question whether he'd simply check shove. In real time I decided to fold, but it made me wonder whether I should be doing something else, including possibly checking back the flop. I'm not sure about this one.
The final hand comes from what I believe is the Stars nightly $50, $70,000 gaurantee. I'm not sure, I forgot to copy paste the tournament title with the hand history. Either way, it went down as follows:
My stack: 5,885
UTG+1: 2,935
Blinds 25/50.
I hold 2d 2c UTG.
Preflop: I raise to 150, UTG+1 calls, everyone else folds.
Flop: 9c 3d Ks
I bet 225, UTG+1 calls.
Turn: Ad
I bet 555, UTG+1 folds.
The actual double barrel isn't particularly interesting. However, I bring up the hand because I think it's a spot where if I'm called on the turn I should strongly consider a third barrel. The reason being is that in a $50 freezeout players are a bit looser pre flop, so they may very well turn up with hands like KQ and KJ, or peel the flop randomly with stuff like AQ or AJ. Additionally, many players know that when the A hits the turn it's a perfect card to double barrel. The end result is that these days, against some opponents, you need to both increase your river bluff triple barrel frequency. Some guys quite simply won't fold top pair, and you obviously shouldn't fire there. However, many guys will peel the turn with a king on the obvious scare card, but give up when you launch that third barrel, particularly when you're raising from early position.
This spot in particular the third barrel is questionable since he can certainly flat preflop with AK or have a set on such a dry board so it's certainly not perfect for it, but the point of including the hand is to make people aware of situations to look out for.
Poker Journal Day 3
Day 3, February 25th: Woke up late AGAIN like a fucking moron. Could have sworn I set my alarm for 90 minutes earlier than that too. Seriously think I may have woke up, turned it off, and have no memory of it.
Only got about 90 minutes of registering in plus a few late random turbo tournaments. No particularly deep runs or interesting spots, just a lot of short stack poker. Am making sure I get to bed very early tonight in preparation for long day.
Poker Journal Day 2
Day 2, February 24th: Thought I had gotten to bed early last night but apparently not early enough. I forgot to set an alarm and came downstairs to be informed by Jarred that it was 1:30pm. Then I got on my recently set up desktop and found out that although UB allows me to connect, Full Tilt and Stars do not for reasons I am incapable of correcting. Luckily Jarred soon vacated his computer and allowed me to use it, so I got a brief session in without any serious results. There were no particularly interesting hands, though I recall running a horrid bluff moderately deep in the Tilt $109 6 max. No more of those please.
I got feedback on the previous days interesting hand, the 22 rebuys hand with 99 on the raggy flop. Pretty much the whole forum agreed that once he does the tiny reraise we can safely fold the flop. I think that's a good fold vs a random who isn't going to balance his range by making that raise with draws, and I'm always happy when people back up my instinct to make a nity looking fold.
Lucky for me a recent friend named Issac came over and checked out the desktop in the evening. He realized that because it had been in storage for so long the internal battery that stores the date and time had switched off, meaning that when the computer attempted to log in to Tilt and Stars they recognized it as some form of illegitimate computer and potentially a bot, and therefore blocked entry. Very reassuring to know UB makes the same effort that they do. Now all I need to do is thoroughly clean up the desk and set up both monitors that I'll be using, then get in the habit of firing up hold'em manager with every session. Additionally, I'll need to fix my sleep schedule to the point I'm up at 9am every day, meaning I need to pull it back about 4 1/2 hours, which will likely take me a week or two knowing myself and my internal clock. They've recently released the SCOOP schedule, and having gotten a look at that I've decided I might as well fuck the whole month of May up and get up at 3am every day and grind 10 hour sessions for the month and work out twice a day six days a week, since any attempt at living an normal life with that thing looming on the horizon is pointless.
Poker Journal day 1
Day 1: Woke up this morning and still felt a bit ill and tired. Allowed myself another hour of sleep. Did a brief session of registering between 1pm and 3pm, and late regged the things that started a bit before on Stars. Luckily one of those wound up being the $109 turbo which I ran very hot at and won. Have a couple interesting hands from today, one of which was played out heads up at the final table.
Hand 1: Stars 22 rebuys.
My stack: 5000
Villain: 8230
Blinds 75/150. I hold 9d 9h in MP2.
Preflop: Folds to me, I raise to 400, folds to the SB, SB calls.
Flop: 5c 3c 2s
PapamooSe75: bets 300
Generally when people do these tiny leads to me I consider it like they basically checked. It mostly seems like draws trying to get to turn cheaply, or some kind of weak pair, which doesn't make a lot of sense here given texture but it's possible 66's or 77's might lead out from a strange player.
I raise to 950
planning to be fine getting it in against a shove considering how draw heavy the board is and that most large pairs often either reraise preflop, or check raise flop.
The SB makes it 1650
And now I want to vomit because he's min 3 betting me and seems to think he has the nizzles on a weird ass draw board. Will post for thoughts.
The second hand comes from heads up in the $109 turbo. The villain seemed overall pretty aggressive, capable of bluffing/light moves, and was 3 betting with moderate frequency pre flop. I'd been pretty aggressive pre, but mostly straight forward post and a bit on the passive side.
Hand 2: Stars $109 turbo.
My stack: 545107
Villain: 464893
Blinds: 8500/17000. I hold 8d5d in the BB.
Preflop: Villain completes, I check.
Flop: 4s Qd Td
I check, villain bets 17000, I raise to 42225, villain reraises to 99999, I call.
I'm pretty sure we're just barely priced in here considering implied.
Turn: 8s (Pot 238223)
I check, villain bets 115000.
Spot seemed fairly close, we have perhaps 25% equity against his range but it's 115000 to win 353223 with likely more implied than reverse implied. The diamond will almost always be good since most flush draws don't 3 ball flop then barrel turn (some could though) and the 8 is about always an out, with the 5 occasionally being safe for us as well. I called.
River: 2c
I checked, villain checked. I won the pot because villain had KsJs in a possibility I didn't bother to consider, that my hand was good against a draw that was incapable of firing the third barrel some % of the time. Can't imagine that's a particularly likely outcome though, I was surprised to win that pot.
Moving Forward
The last week has been a total waste. I was correct in my self diagnosis of strep throat, and it kept me coughing and exhausted for the majority of the week even after getting penicillin from the medical center. I got two small sessions of poker in on Thursday and Friday but both times I was by no means at full mental capacity, though I managed to pull off a deep run in the FTOPS 300r which ended generically somewhere in the 50 something places. Otherwise I have been mostly lying about my couch watching movies and longing for the gym, which I returned to this evening with about half the energy as usual. It felt good to be there either way.
Mid way through the FTOPS event I found myself on the same table as infamous online player Chad "Lil'holdem" Batista. Around four years ago I recall doing an interview with pocketfives and mentioning that I thought he was overrated. In the time after that I was critical of his table talk (notably his angry words for "Intervention") and wrote a comical script about the whole affair. In the early few years of my online poker career I was critical of a ton of guys, be it their play or their personality. I've met Chad since and in person he's a pretty chilled out and personable guy, and I think we had a laugh over what we wrote. We had some friendly table talk, and I told him I'd say he's likely among the five best online tournament poker players around.
I don't know if it's been the years of accumulated beats (and I'm not saying mine are worse than others), or the pick up, or the working out, or all the weed, but somewhere along the way I became pretty much the most chilled out guy around. I don't really see the point of hating on anyone anymore, unless they truly and genuinely are a scumbag like say JJprodigy or Men "totally legit poker hall of fame candidate" Nguyen. I believe that's his nickname. The point is, I think most of my early career trash talking mostly came from a place of envy. I'm not saying criticizing someones play or character is out of line, but there are mature and adult ways of going about it that aren't taking cheap shots or being rude. I can still confidently say I think Chad's comments to "Intervention" were out of line (it's old news at this stage, and I'm pretty sure water under the bridge between those two), I can still say that Hellmuth's behavior is pretty clownish (and likely awesome for TV ratings), but these days I'd rather get to know a guy thoroughly and try to understand his motivations than make snap judgments about him. Chad and I talked about blazing some joints together in Vegas and I'd happily follow through with it and supply as talking poker with that guy would be fascinating even if he can't always articulate why he knows what he knows.
Maybe I simply don't have the time to be a hater anymore? After a three week delay I'm finally getting back into my routine tomorrow. I won't be waking up at some insane hour to do a huge Monday (Sunday for you boys in the States) since I'm still getting over the strep, but I'll get up and play a normal sized session. After that I'll head straight to the gym to crush myself, then right back home to get showered and changed. I'll then head over to Crown where prior to eating dinner I'll make sure to chat up at least one girl (no weed allowed on the day until I've attempted at least one pick up which guarantees I won't make any excuses about it) then back home to write an entry for each of my various logs on the new website before I can finally relax and blaze away. Some nights I'll have a girl over, others I'll sit on the computer and review a friends hand history because I'm a geek like that and I enjoy studying poker again these days. If they're comfortable with it, I'll copy/paste the interesting hands from the review into my pokerlog and include our discussion on the hand. Some guys are more relaxed about their play being exposed than others. I'll only be taking one day off a week (likely Saturday) from all of this and the exceptionally strict diet I'm on will prevent me from any late nights drinking or big dinners out. I think to most online players spending that much time grinding is a hellish idea, but I'm really looking forward to it all. I miss my job. Nothing about any of this will change until I leave for the WSOP.
SpewingwithBond18.com
After accumulating five years of material all over various blogs and websites I've decided to consolidate it on a proper website of my own, though it is little more than a WordPress blog. Either way, as of today I will be updating my website www.spewingwithBond18.com on a daily basis. The reason why I didn't go for a more simple title, like say, www.Bond18.com would be because some time ago Full Tilt poker apparently purchased all of those. I believe it was during my time of employment with them.
The website seemed like a logical next step since my "poker blog" has now veered off in so many different directions and was becoming increasingly inappropriate for the strictly poker venues it was held at. The poker and general blog content will be still be hosted on those websites the same as always, but the website will allow me to get more depth on topics. The site still needs quite a bit of work in terms of going over old entries and editing them, since they were often written for 2+2 or something else very informal. I likely won't bother for old trip reports since I prefer them in their original version, but for things like informative articles it seems necessary that they read and flow well.
Contained there is every piece of the "Things it took me a while to learn" series, every trip report I've ever written, every informative article on any subject I've written, all previous blog posts, random stories from my travels, and things like detective TJ Cookier comic which remains unfinished.
The main elements of my writing going forward will deal with poker, dating, and fitness. I'll mix in trip reports and informative type things, mostly related to those topics, or anything else that strikes my interest such as fashion or travel. My plan had originally been to start updating on a daily basis for a fitness and poker log starting immediately after the Aussie Millions, but I wound up taking a trip to Sydney and Adelaide with Sirwatts (aka Mad Dog), Luckychewy, and KingDan. I may write some trip reports for that period when I find the time, though that depends on how much time I have available to me. I decided that the first Monday after coming back (today) I would get down to business and begin my serious grinding, working out, and dieting but instead I've caught what I believe to be strep throat and my throat is so fucked that I can't even casually swallow without pain and speak without discomfort, so instead I'll be going to a medical center and hopefully be receiving penicillin (assuming I've properly diagnosed myself, which doesn't seem so hard since I had it 10 months ago and the symptoms I'm experiencing are identical.)
The goals for the poker log portion of the website are to play six days a week, track results, post interesting hands and the feedback I get on them from other intelligent players, and generally give me an area to stay motivated and post quality material. I've got a friendly dinner bet with Ben Delaney about reaching number one in Australia (I'd say he's a big favorite given that he's playing great high volume poker and a couple thousand points ahead of me) and while I have pretty lofty and likely unobtainable goals hopefully they provide the necessary motivation to stay hard on the grind for the next three and a half months. I've also begun accumulating hand histories from other very good players and doing reviews of them for the purposes of my own education, and if it's okay with those players I'll post their HH's and the comments I made on specific hands.
The goals for the fitness log portion of the website are to reach 8% body fat by the time the WSOP rolls around. I'll actually be shooting for 6%, but I'll be a happy man if I can make it down to eight. I'd guess my current level is roughly 15% and based on my research and speaking with my personal trainer, given the exercise and diet routine I'll be enduring 14 weeks should be enough time to reach my goals. I'll be going back on the same diet as before which is almost entirely meat and vegetable based, with only a few unprocessed carbs and no liquids outside of water, black coffee, and protein shakes that have been mixed with water. I'll get into more detail in the fitness section of the website.
Anyway, I'll get into more detail in the future, but for now I'm going to get some rest and try to make it to the doctor.