Vancouver Review

After running insanely well for the entire trip, I finally got a dose of negative variance today. At one point I was down almost 25K which would have been my worst day ever but I managed to win back more than half of it. Overall, I had one losing day, today, and never experienced more than a 170 big bet down swing over 14K+ hands. A pretty amazing run playing almost exclusively 5-6 handed at high limits.

Overall the trip was a huge success, I ran way above expectation. I played exceptionally well the first week but my game and focus seemed to fade the longer I was here. Part of it may have been running bad but I didn't have the same motivation and focus the last three or four days I was here. I took a much more targeted approach the whole trip though. Instead of 4-5 tabling for 8-10 hours a day, I game-selected mostly at 30-60 and higher. Often I was 2-3 tabling and as a result was able to really hone in on what my opponents were doing and adjust. It's made me wonder whether this would be a better approach for next year instead of going for SNE and subjecting myself to endless hours of grinding at lower limits. We'll see how the games are when I get back on in January, that will likely determine the path I choose.

It's back to California tomorrow. I have a couple of one pocket matches scheduled with Jose Parica this week. I played him earlier this year for two days, about eight hours each day, and ended up down 7 games total. It's was a very competitive match at times and I played really well. I'm out of stroke at the moment but plan on doing a lot of practicing in the next couple days to get ready. It'll probably be my last opportunity to play pool for quite a while.

I don't mention pool too much in this blog but it's the only activity I enjoy more than poker. If only there was some money in the sport.

After California, it's off to Boston for Christmas and then Cancun for New Years and Jamena's birthday. After Cancun, it's off to the Bahamas for the PCA and then Costa Rica to play poker for at least three months. It's going to be a really busy first half of the year for me, hopefully I can continue improving and have another solid year at the tables.

Happy Holidays everyone.

Sweet Start in Vancouver

I came here with fairly low expectations, in fact I would have been thrilled if you told me ahead of time I'd make 20K in the two weeks I was here. Fortunately, I'm already far ahead of that. I'm running so well that I played some 5-10 and 10-20 NL trying to make the Stars Leaderboard and promptly stacked someone at 10-20 catching a gutshot on the river to crack a slow-played set. I don't know if I ended up making the leaderboard, I'll find out at 5 PM tomorrow. Going into the last hour I had 3900 VPPs and 4000 VPPs was the bottom spot which pays $500. I ended up with ~4450 so it's going to be close. $500 may not seem like it's worth chasing but that's 5 big bets at 50-100 which is approximately what I average over the course of 2.5 hours playing a single table of 50-100 so it is significant. These are exactly the types of things I look to take advantage of to reduce variance and improve my bottom line.

As expected, I was pretty rusty after my three month layoff. It was by far the longest stretch I've gone without online poker in the last eight years. In fact, I don't think I ever missed three days in a row over the course of those eight years. I started playing two tables and I felt dizzy trying to keep up with action which was amazing to me at the time. But after a half hour or so I felt fine. This is one of those times I felt like I needed to run well and thankfully I have. I did a lot of studying the week before I came here and made some significant changes to my preflop game, I'd like to think it's paying off. Overall I think I've played pretty well. My gauge as to how well I'm playing is how many medium to big sized pots I think I'm winning with the worst hand and there have been several in the last two days. Maybe I'm getting lucky running into the bottom of people's ranges, regardless I'm happy with my play.

Hopefully I haven't put the hex on myself with this post. Ten days to go, the goal as always is to make the best possible decision, each and every decision.

I should mention I only had half of my action playing 200-400 so the results aren't quite as spectacular, nonetheless it's one of, if not the, best four day stretches I've had.

Good luck to everyone playing this month and Happy Holidays.

What have I been up to?

Good question. I've been playing a fair amount of live poker at Bay101 and the Oaks card club which is about 15-20 minutes away from me. I didn't realize until last week that the Oaks spreads a 30-60 game. So instead of driving an hour to Bay101 to play the 40-80 game, I can drive twenty minutes and play 30-60. The skill level of the two games is pretty similar, so it's hard to say what's more profitable. Driving the extra 90 minutes to be able to play stakes 33% higher or having that extra 90 minutes to play along with saving some gas money to play lower. It's pretty close.

My results so far have been disappointing. I'm on about a seven session live losing streak over the last month or so. It terms of hands it's probably 2,000 hands which is literally one half of one day of playing online for me but it feels a whole lot worse than that since it's been spread out over several weeks. Live poker is brutal in that regard, I feel like I can play through losing streaks online, with live poker that could take months.

I have been playing some tournaments at the Oaks as well, trying to get sharper for the PCA. I final tabled the first tournament I played. Well came 10th out of about 75, but final tabling it sounds better. The rest of the tournaments I've played, I haven't cashed. I'm heading to Vegas on Monday to play some of the Venetian deep stacked tournaments.

Aside from that, I'm heading to Canada after Thanksgiving for about two weeks. I'm planning on grinding as much as possible while I'm there and trying to get back into the swing of things. I'm sure I'll be very rusty at first so I intend on restricting most of my play to lower limits until I'm confident I'm playing well.

I'll be heading to Boston for Christmas, Mexico for New Years, the Bahamas for the PCA and then likely Costa Rica for 3 months to play online next year. I just contacted Poker Refugees to help with the move to CR. We're hoping to get a nice place on the ocean with reliable internet. It doesn't sound like CR has any problems with online poker players being in their country so that's nice. The only potential issue is opening a bank account there which I've heard is a hassle. Ideally, I'd like to keep the Canadian accounts and continue withdrawing there but it's still a little unclear whether Poker Stars will allow that.

Good luck at the tables everyone.

Relaxing

I haven't done a whole lot since I got back other than play pool and relax. I did make it up to Bay101, a card room near me, the last two weekends. They regularly run limit games up to 80-160. I played the 80-160 game last night for the first time and surprisingly most of the players were decent. I'd equate the game to about a 15-30 full ring game online. I say surprised because the 40-80 games I've played in have an amazingly low skill level. In many ways they are tougher to play because the players are much less predictable and have wider ranges. There are a lot of multiway pots where several players can have almost any two cards which makes the decision making very difficult. It's hard to say which game is more profitable, I'd guess the 80-160 is slightly more profitable but comes with a whole lot more variance. I'm planning on heading up there every couple of weeks to play.

I haven't done any studying on my game yet but I have a whole list of things I want to look at and that's something I intend to start doing in the next couple weeks. There's a NL tournament in Reno next month I might go play. I'll be playing the PCA in January and would like to get some more NL tournament experience in before that.

I do miss online poker already and am looking forward to playing next year. It's possible I may even make a trip up to Canada before the end of the year to put in a week or two at the tables. I am worried about getting rusty and I don't think live poker is going to help much due to the low volume of hands.

Not much else to say. Good luck at the tables.

SNE Hat-Trick/Canada Recap

I made it for the third year in a row. 720k VPPs in 3.5 months. I'm certain I'll never play that much poker again in that short of a time ever again. It was grueling to say to the least.


Overall the Canada trip was a huge success. I far exceeded my expectations coming up here. I knew I could make SNE but I didn't know how difficult it would be. I didn't expect to do nearly as well money-wise mostly because I didn't think I'd be able to get in much volume at 15-30 and higher particularly after the first two weeks when there were very games running. Overall I think I ran about average, maybe slightly below average. I hit a 100K hand break-even stretch in terms of money and big bets. That seems to be about a once every year or two occurrence. Given the amount of hands I was playing, I think I played pretty well. At times great, at other times not so great. The only negative was running so badly at 100-200 but it always got my full attention and best game so no regrets. I also ran way above average at 100-200 early in the year and have run exceptionally well at 50-100 for over a year now.

It's back to the US tomorrow morning. And although I don't even want to think about poker right now I"m sure I'll be doing a lot of work on my game when I'm home. I'll likely be playing some live poker from time to time as well. I just registered for the PCA in January and I'm hoping to be able to stay in the Bahamas for a month or so and play online during that time. It's not really clear with PokerStars whether that's feasible yet. I'm also still worried about using the banks up here. I haven't had any problems yet with TD or BMO but I have a significant amount of money coming into the accounts over the next week so my fingers are crossed.

Thank you to everyone that supported me both here and at the tables. There were at least a dozen regulars in my games over the last few days that wished me luck and said a lot of nice things. It was completely unexpected and I really appreciate it.

Here's what the last 3.5 months looked like. After I send nearly half my money to our state and federal governments, pay a bunch of bills, and make some investments, I should have a few bucks to spend on myself.