Blowout Potential

Man oh man, the last couple of days have been insane.

At some point, something clicked and I started playing better than I have in a long time, possibly ever. On Tuesday I followed some maniacs around and let them spew their money off to me for hours on end. This led to probably the most profitable day I have ever had in the cash games. On Wednesday I played a bunch more, and although the games weren't quite as soft I still made an insane hourly clip. Over those two days (plus this morning's insomniac session) I more than doubled my bankroll. Feast your eyes:

Obviously when I'm having this much success I'm more than happy to play for hours on end. That graph is from over 21 hours of play, times 4.05 tables on average. Anyway, suffice to say I'm pretty ecstatic about this and am going to be looking to put a ton of hours in so I can actually start spending this money.

In other news, I have a pretty sweet weekend planned. One of my female friends from high school is in town and we're going to dinner on Saturday, then I'm TOing the Conflux prerelease on Sunday at TU. After the prerelease hopefully finding at least 5 more people to draft the new set while watching the Super Bowl on the projector. Should be fun.

Hands to go out on:

Failed double barrel hits gin on the river

Maniac in action, river scared me for a second

Hand vs another maniac

Probably should have led the flop, not sure about the river

I think this was right but it still sucked

DEUCES.

-Ben

Help legalize online poker

Vote for this:
http://citizensbriefingbook.change.gov/ideas/viewIdea.apexp?id=087800000004m5M

It's part of the system Obama is using on his site to rank issues and gauge what is important to Americans. Let him know you want online poker to be legalized and regulated.

By the way, the whole change.gov site is pretty tight. I'm glad this administration appears to be aware that technology exists and can be a useful tool for government

Last night my teeth fell out like ivory typewriter keys

This weather sucks. Snow and ice make important things hard to do. Luckily, I don't have many responsibilities but do have a space heater which comes in clutch this time of year.

I played several hours yesterday and deep into the morning (5ish) but it wasn't a really focused, hardcore, grind-it-out session. I started off playing some cash games, but much LAGgier than usual. Overall yesterday I ran 22/17 over 2678 hands, which is a bit looser than my usual 19/15, but I think it's an upgrade. The added looseness and agression allowed me to confidently make some calls in big pots with hands I would otherwise not have had the courage to call with. I ran bad for awhile and lost two pots for full stacks with KK and then AA after getting it in on the flop against unimproved A5s (runner-runner wheel) and 22 (runner-runner straight again).

I've noticed that after I get unlucky in a big pot or two, not matter how much I force myself to smile or ignore it, I almost always lose money for the next 30 minutes. I'm not sure if it's my table image, undiagnosed tilt, or just superstition/coincidence, but about 30 minutes after those big pots I decided to stop and donk off some money in a couple of the guaranteed MTTs. I used to do well in MTTs, but I haven't played them much lately and honestly didn't expect much this time. I lost 1/3 of my stack in the first one in a pot I shouldn't have gotten involved in, then lost the rest with AKo vs JJ all-in preflop. In the second tournament things were going pretty well, but then this hand happened:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3776139

The river was a definite "just call." Even after I raise, I should just throw the hand away rather than call off the last of my chips to his 3bet, since basically I'm never ahead and he's never bluffing. 20BB isn't much, but it's better than nothing. I'm not really sure if I should have reraised preflop, but I didn't want to have to stick over 40BB in preflop, he was 1st in chips at the table and I was 3rd, and he raised from early position, so I think it's fine.

After busting out of those two tournaments I watched some videos on PokerTube, and eventually opened up four more tables. One of the videos I watched was an episode of "I Bet You," Phil Laak and Antonio Esfandiari's reality show where they bet on anything and everything. In this show they bet on who would be a better Love Line host, who could train a mouse to run through a maze the fastest (w/Shannon Elizabeth), who could carve the best ice sculpture (also w/SE), who could pick the best Roshambo ringer off the street to play Annie Duke, and more. It moved along pretty well. If you like Phil and Antonio, or just degenerate gambling, you'll enjoy the show.

Anyway, for the rest of my pokering I played fewer tables than normal, and tried to table select and concentrate a little more than I normally do; any at all would be an improvement. Most of the time when I play online I'm playing enough tables that I don't pick up reads beyond the pots I play and the stats my HUD tells me. In addition I often get bored and check email or Youtube or mess with Media Player or whatever. Last night I found that playing fewer tables doesn't decrease my hourly rate by much, if at all. I'm still experimenting and trying to find that sweet spot of profitability.

Some hands:

Flop a set vs top pair, villain turns two pair

Sweet revenge on the guy that cracked my KK+AA

Sometimes people spew when you 3bet a lot

More of the same

In the end I made back what I lost in the early cash games and tournaments plus about a buyin and a half, and tinkered with a lot of different ideas. Not a bad night.

Weekend Update

This weekend was pretty tight. Went to FNM Friday and 4-0ed with Chapin's 5-color control. Deck was pretty tight. I just played the original maindeck with a Counsel of the Soratami over Courier's Capsule, though I think Courier's Capsule might be right now. The sideboard I ended up liking was:

2 Glen Elendra Archmage
3 Negate
2 Oblivion Ring
2 Firespout
2 Cloudthresher
1 Broodmate Dragon
3 Condemn

The Oblivion Rings were pretty nice against B/W tokens since they handle Bitterblossoms and Planeswalkers. Everything else is fairly standard.

Saturday I went to another random Standard tournament and won 3 more matches. Came home, played some poker, then logged onto AIM. Got an IM from a screenname I didn't know. Turned out it was Matt Hansen, a very good Magic player who I met at Nationals. I had heard that he quit Magic for poker. We got to talking and realized we are at about the same place as poker players, so we had some nice chats about hands and more. As feared as Matt was as a Magic player, it's exciting to have him on my side at the poker table.

Had a lazy Sunday, hung out with friends for awhile and found out about a new card game called Epic, which is set to have prereleases February 21 and 22, and release in stores March 1. We downloaded the free starters and played some games. It's deceptively simple, and was developed by Frank Karsten, Darwin Kastle, and Rob Dougherty, among others.

In a nutshell, here's how it works. First off, it's very simple to Magic. There are dudes ("champions"), counterspells/Stifles ("Stop" cards), action card that destroy other cards, and many keywords that have Magic equivalents. There are a couple of main differences: resource system and win condition. Instead of using lands or permanent incremental resources, you get one "action point" per turn, and every card costs either one or zero action points. This creates interesting situations and makes counterwars basically impossible. There are two main win conditions: taking your opponent from 30 to 0 or decking yourself. All the games I played with the starter decks were won on life though.

Another exciting thing about this game is that it has already been announced that there will be $5k tournaments for it, simliar to the Star City $5ks for Magic.

For more information, go to epictcg.com.

Thanks That Was Fun

So, a running theme of this blog will probably be me bitching about variance in poker, whether I like it or not. I'll try to keep it to a minumum. The above graph is of 6,768 hands I played in a roughly 27 hour span starting at midnight Thursday. Nice little tilt-fueled rollercoaster. When I hit the lowest point I went and slept for a couple of hours, came back and rallied. Should be able to move up tomorrow or the day after if I don't tilt. Some hands:

I river the nuts and my deepstacked opponent shoves into me

Quads get paid off

Nice turn card

Might have gotten a little out of line preflop

As far as Magic goes, I need to play some games of Extended at some point. I think old Death Cloud decks will probably be replaced by more aggressive brews like Michael Jacob's, but we'll see. If TEPS becomes a mainstay it may be time to dust off your Elves. I'm interested to see what people will do with the new stuff out of Conflux, but it seems like there's a lot of ridiculously overpriced (manawise) cards again. First they make smaller sets, now this? Forecast: cracking packs will be an even worse idea.

Aaand we're live

About a month ago I looked at my Facebook notes and realized I had written 21 of them. I decided that meant I should start a blog. I'll probably just randomly post my misadventures in Magic, Poker, and life. I guess I'm technically a pro poker player at the moment, though I have about 2 years to go for a Finance degree and plan on finishing that starting in the fall. In the meantime I'm grinding out $25NL on Full Tilt Poker, 8 tables at a time, and traveling to as many Magic tournaments as I can justify.

I just got back from Grand Prix: Los Angeles. I went 5-3 with two byes and played Death Cloud, with all of my losses coming to Faeries. It's pretty disappointing that I didn't prepare enough for the deck that I expected to be the most played at the tournament, but I got what I deserved. It's been a long time since I've done worse than .500 at any tournament, but I also haven't had that breakout performance yet. I do think that if I prepare a little better I'll eventually run hot in one of these things and actually win money. On the other hand, LA was insane despite my mediocre performance. I got to hang out with a lot of friends I don't see often and meet a few new people, as well as see the ocean and enjoy the awesome weather. Driving 21 hours straight from Oklahoma might seem miserable, but I saw it as an adventure which made it bearable. We had enough drivers that I slept about 10 hours each way, so it wasn't that bad.

My friend Jeremy, whose car we took, is a huge Lil' Wayne fan, which is something I just don't understand. "Nobody can do the shit he does," he tells me. I'm glad for that, because the shit he does is just not impressive to me. Another friend of me told me he really liked Lupe Fiasco, so I downloaded some of his stuff and was quite impressed. I also got some vintage Nas, his album called Illmatic, which is actually insane and required listening for anyone who claims to like rap. I can't really stand most modern rap which seems made for clubs, but Nas's stuff isn't like that. Even though I normally like emo or indie-type stuff, I can't really help looping Illmatic. So sue me.

Back to griding poker, wish me luck.