PANIC!

I try to have a good attitude and a positive outlook on the future. Objectively I can look back on the last 9 years that I've been playing poker and say that I've made steady improvement and that without a doubt I am a winner in every sense of the word. But in the back of my mind part of me still feels like I'm on summer vacation. I worry that this won't last forever and that someday I'm going to have to go try to finish school or get a job. With the exception of someone close to me dying, or my health failing, that is my greatest fear.

I've had a few runs where I've dropped a ton of money. Gobs of money. Shit loads of money. Not new TV money, new car money. Game show money. After these massive downswings it's impossible not to doubt yourself.

I like to keep at least $10,000 in online accounts to work with. That feels like the minimum I need. I've been fortunate to get that number up over $30,000 a few times, but there was once about 2 years ago that I was down to $500.

At that point I was mentally exploring every option at my disposal. I don't just have plan B. I always have plans C, D, E, F, and G in the works. Who can I borrow money from? How much do I need? What about going back to playing in person? Maybe I should try another site. I could start playing a different game or format. Maybe I should go back to dealing cards. Maybe we should move to southern California and live with my wife's parents for 6 months while I play at the Commerce. My wife could get a job and I could stay home and write a book and become and excellent cook.

It's hard to think about anything else. I bounced back from that $500 and again turned it into enough to make a strong living (that was shortly before my successful quest to become Supernova Elite).

Another time earlier in my career I had 8 losing days in a row. I'm not sure how much I lost, but I sure as hell wasn't going into day 9 thinking "No problem, I'm sure I'll be able to turn this around."

My worst month ever was March 2006. In January I'd started playing no limit cash games after struggling in the sit-n-go's that had been my focus for most of my career. I won $11,000 in January, and $17,000 in February playing $3/$6 blinds games and was feeling like the sky was the limit. Then I lost $11,000 in March which is still my worst month ever. The month started well so you can imagine the downswing it took for me to lose $11,000 for the month.

I mention all of this because I've been having some major trouble this month. At the start, I lost $6,000 over the course of 4 straight losing days. I didn't play any higher than $15/$30 and it was over a weekend which is supposed to be the best time to play!

After that I started exploring the other websites in earnest and was doing well for the most part. I wasn't killing it, but I was winning steadily. Then I dropped $4,000last Monday.

I'd been playing all day and was about to call it quits around 6, about an hour before dinner. Then I made it to the top of the waiting list for a great $15/$30 game and decided to sit down. I was losing $1,500 or so at that point and I was tired, but it was a game I knew I could beat no matter how I was feeling. Also I noticed two of the worst players in the universe had joined the waiting list behind me.

This $15/$30 game was the only one going at those stakes, but there was one player whose name I didn't recognize sitting waiting to start a new game. I was thinking that if I started playing him heads up, then maybe the goofs on the waiting list for the other game would join too. They never did.

I ended up playing this guy for 30-40 minutes and I got my doors blown off. I lost $1,000 to him in the first 5 minutes and another $1,000+ over the next half hour.

What gave me so much trouble was my opponent saw 100% of the flops regardless of preflop action so I had a lot of trouble putting him on a specific hand or even a range. In a 6 handed game or even a 3 handed game you can't get away with that. You'd get decimated. But playing heads up, especially in a format where the small blind is 2/3 of the big blind, you're always getting pretty good odds to call. Of course I think you could do better if you folded the bottom 20% of hands, but clearly this guy had committed.

Normally when you have someone who plays every hand preflop they are not a good player and make plenty of mistakes after the flop. But this guy played well after the flop.

Of course he got really lucky in the first 5 minutes winning the vast majority of the pots and all of the big ones. There was one hand where I had AK of clubs in the small blind (which is also the button in heads up) and raised. He three bet and I capped it. The flop came with 2 clubs and he bet into me. I raised and he three bet it. The turn was a brick and he check raised me. The river was a 6 and with both checked. He turned over 67 of clubs and took the pot with a pair of sixes. That was a $330 pot and not an isolated incident.

On top of taking every flop he took it to the turn 85% of the time as well. But the son of a bitch had great timing for letting his hand go. He literally called me down with king high no pair (which was the best hand) when I'd raised the turn and bet the river on one hand and then folded on the flop the very next hand when I had AA. I'd flop the nut straight and he'd fold. I'd have ace high and he'd fire into me relentlessly with 63 and hit the three on the river. He'd three bet semibluff me on the turn and get there while I was missing every draw. I wanted to scream!

Most of the time I just could not make a God damn pair and like I said I was up against a guy who was seeing every flop and calling me down with king high (and sometimes queen high) so I felt totally hand cuffed.

Towards the end of the match I looked up my opponent to see if he was playing any other games. He was sitting by himself waiting to play anyone who came along at two $30/$60 games and a $50/$100. That's not the kind of guy you want to play.

In the end I lost a little over $2,000 to him. If you think about it, we played maybe 125 hands (we were playing very fast so it could have been more like 150 or 175) and our average pot was at least $150 so that means he won something like 70 pots and I won 57. Without a doubt, short term luck fluctuations could be the reason I lost. No matter how good he was, losing that much in such a short time means I ran bad. Maybe he wasn't any good at all, and just ran hot. But it sure didn't feel that way. It felt like I'd been totally dismantled. Embarrassed. Eviscerated. Emasculated. Destroyed.

There was now doubt that I'd been beaten and I felt horrible. All the tension and anger that I was feeling while I was playing, turned into sadness and despair when I was done. I went for a walk down by the water, sat on a log and cried.

Like I said, I ended up losing about $4,000 on Monday. I took Tuesday off and on Thursday I lost another $2,000+. ACK! The problem with these losses isn't just the money. We have plenty of money in our long term savings to get us through and I've lost $2,000 in a day fifty times if not more. The problem with repeated losses is what they say about future prospects.

Online poker games and the state of the poker world is in a constant state of flux. Players come and go. Laws and regulations change. Fads pop up and fade away. New tactics are conceived, written down, taught and implemented. Just because you can beat a game today doesn't mean you'll be able to beat it in 6 months or a year.

I used to dominate $100 SNGs on Party Poker and then on Pokerstars. My ROI was over 10% for thousands and thousands of tournaments (I made over $10 a tournament). Then it was 5%. Then it was 2%. Over the course of a year I went from being able to make $500 a day playing 50 SNGs, to needing to play 80 a day to just make $160. I had to shift gears and start playing cash games to continue making a living and I'm always worried that I'll have to shift again. And I don't want to!

With these losses in the front on my mind, I sat back down to play on Thursday. I started off losing maybe $500 or so. I had about $3,500 left in my pokerstars account and $1,000 on Absolute when I took my lunch break. That looked like two more bad days or one really bad day. By the end of the day I was back to $4,000 in pokerstars and had $1,100 in AP. $100 isn't anything in the grand scheme, but it was good to not have a losing day.

The next day I broke even, but I had a killer weekend. I felt focused, I played well and I got some decent cards. By Sunday night I was up to $6,300 in pokerstars and $3,500 in AP, which is just about the $10,000 I feel like I need.

The money for November's bills has already been set aside, so I'm looking ahead to December 1st when we'll need to pay rent and December 7th when our credit card will need to be paid (we put all of out bills and do almost all of our spending with one credit card and pay it off all the way every month).

So a few days after being in full on PANIC mode, I once again feel fine and hopeful about the future. All of the rakeback that I've earned on AP in October will be paid in one big chunk on November 15th along with whatever I earn in the AP rake race. That should be something like $3,000 total. I'm about to clear a $1,500 FPP block on poker stars, and I'm 80,000 VPPs away from hitting the 600,000 VPP milestone which means another $6,000 before the end of the year. I had all of those things going for me Thursday afternoon too, but they didn't feel like much of a boon then.

I'm going to put in a few light work days today and tomorrow and then my wife and I are leaving our son with his Nana and Papi and going on a 4 day Mexican Cruise leaving San Diego on Thursday. I am ready for the vacation!

Rakeback Vs. FPPs: Which is better?

Rake is the money that the websites or casinos take out of the pot or out of the tournament prize pool to make a profit. At first glance it doesn't seem overwhelmingly significant, but it's like running into the wind. Over a few steps it doesn't make much difference, but over a few miles you'll be more tired and won't be able to go as far. Hopefully this post will help you get more streamlined.

As I mentioned in a few previous posts I've been shifting away from pokerstars to some degree. Pokerstars is still home and I hope I can make it my exclusive place of play again in the future, and perhaps make Supernova Elite again. But for now the games have been so tough that I've been forced to branch out.

I mentioned rake, but what exactly is rakeback? Well, it's a discount. None of the websites offer this discount directly, but rather through a few third party websites who get a piece of the pie as well for promoting the pokersites and drumming up new business. All of the major websites offer rakeback (except pokerstars) and they all offer about 30% give or take a few percentage points.

That means if you play a $55 tournament with $5 in juice then you'll get back $1.50. If you play 1,000 of those tournaments you'd get back $1,500. It's a little trickier with cash games, but as best I understand it anytime you put money in the pot they say you've contributed to the rake. For example let's say you raise preflop and the small blind folds and the big blind calls. You and the big blind go all the way to the showdown, put in a bunch of money and in the end the site takes $3 out of the pot. Even though two of you put in a lot and one player put in a very small amount it all counts equally. You, the SB and BB have each payed $1 in rake and you personally would get 30 cents back. Everyone else in the hand who got dealt in by didn't put in any money on that hand would get nothing in terms of rakeback.

This money piles up and gets deposited into your account either once a week or once a month.

This is a message for the poker players out there who read this blog; YOU'RE THROWING AWAY INSANE AMOUNTS OF MONEY IF YOU AREN'T GETTING RAKEBACK! Read it again. I mean it. You MUST start playing somewhere where you can get rakeback (with pokerstars being the one exception).

I came across a blog of a fellow poker player who played high stakes SNGs. He had made about $5,000 in the past 8 months in the actual SNG tournament play and $200,000 in rakeback and bonuses!!!

For those of you who want to know how you can get on board, let me tell you how to do that now so you don't get bogged down in the rest of this lengthy post. While I know there are other sites the one I use is rakebacknation.com. I don't know if they are the best, but they've paid me on time, I got a response for support in about an hour when I e-mailed a question, and they have deals with all of the major sites (and a few minor ones too). In short I trust them.

If you want to sign up for rakeback with an existing account, you are probably out of luck (although there is an area to submit an existing account for rakeback consideration). But it's worth it to have your spouse or a friend open a new account and then let you use it. Or you can switch sites. I know how easy it is to get comfortable at one site, but there's no reason to limit your game selection and like I keep saying RAKE BACK IS HUGE! There is a calculator on the site that will show you how much you can get back and it seems accurate to me.

If you want to sign up please do so using the referral code: wes1279. Or by clicking on the link below.

http://www.rakebacknation.com/?affiliate=wes1279

I have no idea what they're going to give me if I sign someone up, but I assume it's not nothing. In fact if you're going to use my magic code (or even if you aren't) please feel free to post any questions you might have in the comments section and I'll help you to the best of my abilities.

I've written a long post already and I haven't even gotten to what the point of this post is supposed to be!

Pokerstars doesn't do rakeback because they have FPPs that are worth something (the other sites have FPPS, or other points for play, but they're not worth nearly as much). But which is better: pokerstars FPP program or rakeback?

Let's start with what it's worth to play on pokerstars. This year I'm going to end up playing about 430,000 hands of $10/$20 and above which is what it takes to generate 600,000 base FPPs. Assuming I did the same next year, as a regular Supernova I'd earn 2,100,000 regular FPPs which would be worth $33,600. I'd also earn $2,000, $3,000, $4,000, $5,000, and $6,000 milestone bonuses along the way which is a total of $20,000. But each bonus actually costs 50,000 FPPs each (which is kind of a stupid mean trick they play on you) so my FPP total would actually drop by 250,000 to 1,850,000 FPPs which are worth $29,600. So for 430,000 hands of 6 handed $10/$20 I'd get back $49,600.

What could I earn playing 430,000 hands on Absolute poker? There are actually 4 components to the AP bonuses I'd earn. The first is rakeback. I'm not entirely sure about this but my best guess after some limited experimentation is that I'm paying about 28 cents per hand in rake (that includes all hands that I'm being dealt in not just the ones in which I contribute to the pot). So at first glace that looks like 430,000 hands times 28 cents per hand which is $120,400 in rake or $36,120. This is pretty close to what the rakeback calculators tell me I'd make in the amount of time it would take to play that many hands.

But there's actually more to it. The second part of the puzzle is AP's VIP program called FAME. Unlike pokerstars where it took me 365 days of last year to make it to the highest level (Supernova Elite), it took me 2 weeks of playing about half time to make it to the highest level on AP (Diamond Elite).

Playing at the diamond elite level I earn 10 VIP points (I think that's what they're called) every time I play a hand where I put money in the pot which is about half the time. As far as I can tell if I play 100 hands I'll earn something like 450 VIP points. Over the course of 430,000 hands that would be 1,935,000 points which are worth $13,723 (the let you convert points to cash at a rate of 141 points to the dollar). That's actually more significant than I thought! Actually I can only trade in $1,000 a month for cash so I'd have to take $1,723 in merchandise or tournament entries.

But wait! There's more! Rakebacknation runs what they call a "rake race" for their customers. They give out a $4,000 prize pool to the 25 of their customers who pay the most rake on AP each month (there are other rake races for other sites). The player who pays the most rake gets $1,000 with 2nd paying $775, third paying $600 and so on. I don't know much about my long term prospects of winning the rake race, but from what I see right now I like my chances. Last month the winner paid about $8,000 in rake, second place paid $7,000 and third place was in the $4,000 range. My plan above would have me paying $10,000 a month on average. Even not giving it my all I'm in second place for this month and was in first for a while. I expect that I could win the rake race at least half the time and finish in the top 3 or 4 every time. Let's call that $9,000.

Amazingly there is even more! AP also offers frequent reload bonuses. In fact there have been 5 days in the past two weeks where they offered a bonus if you made a deposit that day. For example on the 29th of last month they would match 65% of your deposit up to $150 if you entered a code that was advertised right in the lobby. So I deposited $400 and got $150 in bonus money. This money gets released in $5 increments as you earn points. In practice it takes me about 100 hands to release $5. In total I've deposited $2,260 and gotten $1,350 in bonus money. It's going to take me a total of 27,000 hands to release all of that money, so it's far from instant cash, but it's real money and in the end I'm going to get it.

If these past two weeks were typical (which I doubt a little) then I'll be adding 5 cents a hand to my profits (or a little over 15% more to my rakeback) all year long! That would be another $21,500 over the course of 430,000 hands. I think they can get away with offering so many deposit bonuses because they make it hard to cash out. You can't take any money out within 48 hours of a deposit and they have fees for withdawls (which I think is B.S.)

So in total I'd be looking at $36,120 in rakeback, $13,723 in points and $9,000 in rake race for a total of $58,843. That's pretty close to pokerstars, but if you add in the deposit bonanza it's going to look more like $75,000-$80,000 (depending on the size and frequency of the reload bonuses) in rewards. That is shockingly significant and amounts to getting close to two thirds of my rack back. If I can just win a little from the other players I'll be in great shape.

I won't take you through all the math for two other scenarios, but I'll tell you that the more you play the better pokerstars is in comparison. If you play 7,500 hands of $10/$20 in a year, you'll be a silverstar player and only earn $240 in FPPs, but you would have gotten $630 in rakeback and $240 in VIP points! That is a shocking disparity!


If you play 75,000 hands on pokerstars (just enough to make supernova) you'll make $5,880 in FPPs, but could make $6,300 in rakeback and $2,393 in VIP points on Absolute.

On the other hand if you play 750,000 hands (enough to make Supernova Elite) you'll make $37,200 in FPPs (Or $53,142 if you start the year as SNE) and $59,000 in milestone bonuses and major tournament entries. On AP you'd make $63,000 in rake back and $23,936 in VIP points.

Clearly if you can start the year and SNE and make $112,000 that's the best, but otherwise it's $97,000 vs $87,000 which is closer than I thought. Add on the rake race and it's a dead heat. Add on the deposit bonanza and it actually looks better to play on AP than on pokerstars. Surprising! I was sure supernova elite was the best thing out there. I think I underestimated the value of the VIP points since they seemed pretty worthless as I was earning them and in any initial calculations I made I didn't factor in rake races or reload bonuses! This has turned out to be a fruitful exercise!

The big problem with some of this is that pokerstars has all the games. At peak hours you can find 4 $10/$20 games on AP, but I've never seen more than that. Often times I've been stuck playing either $5/$10 or $15/$30 or 9 handed $10/$20 along with one or two $10/$20 games.

Anyway the worst possible thing you could be doing is playing at full tilt with no rakeback. Those points are pretty much garbage and there are no VIP levels.

My Weekend

My spell check has revolted so sorry for all of the major spelling errors in this post that paint me as a total buffoon!

After a terrible start to the week last week I knew I needed to put in some major effort over the weekend. It's a fact that the games are more beatable on Friday nights, Saturdays and Sundays. That's when the players who play a few hours a week or a few hours a month are logged on and gambling it up.

Here is a hand from Friday night.

PokerStars Game #33562256651: Hold'em Limit ($10/$20 USD) - 2009/10/02 19:38:33 ET
Table 'Aisakos' 6-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: Stane1985 ($1133.50 in chips)
Seat 2: ACESEDAI ($1199 in chips)
Seat 3: al0075 ($683 in chips)
Seat 4: billx ($270 in chips)
Seat 5: sethypooh21 ($400 in chips)
al0075: posts small blind $5
billx: posts big blind $10
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to ACESEDAI [Td 8d]
sethypooh21: folds
Stane1985: folds
ACESEDAI: raises $10 to $20
al0075: raises $10 to $30
billx: calls $20
ACESEDAI: calls $10
*** FLOP *** [6h 9h Jc]
al0075: bets $10
billx: raises $10 to $20
monk117 has returned
ACESEDAI: raises $10 to $30
al0075: raises $10 to $40
Betting is capped
billx: calls $20
ACESEDAI: calls $10
*** TURN *** [6h 9h Jc] [Qs]
al0075: bets $20
billx: calls $20
ACESEDAI: raises $20 to $40
al0075: raises $20 to $60
billx: calls $40
ACESEDAI: raises $20 to $80
Betting is capped
al0075: calls $20
billx: calls $20
*** RIVER *** [6h 9h Jc Qs] [7s]
al0075: bets $20
billx: calls $20
ACESEDAI: raises $20 to $40
al0075: raises $20 to $60
billx: folds
ACESEDAI: calls $20
*** SHOW DOWN ***
al0075: shows [Jh Js] (three of a kind, Jacks)
ACESEDAI: shows [Td 8d] (a straight, Eight to Queen)
ACESEDAI collected $588 from pot

There are a few things to note about this hand. First of all I three bet the flop with an open ended straight draw with the plan of checking the turn if I missed and betting if I hit it (the old "free card" play). But then my opponent who hit top set on the flop capped it and bet the turn. On the turn I made the second nut straight, but since I pushed the flop my opponents didn't think I had a straight. In fact the guy with the set of jacks probably wasn't thinking at all about what I had, he was just thinking he had a monster hand. and wasn't going to slow down no matter what.

On the turn I capped the betting and the guy with a set fired out into me on the river! This is pure madness. When I get capped on the turn the first thing I put the other player on is the nuts and then I work backward from that. I need a good reason to think I'm not against the nuts to put in any more money than the minimum.

Even more amazing was the fact that he three bet me on the river! I'd put in as much action as possible the entire hand, screaming that I couldn't be beaten and he had the 5th best possible hand on the river (He'd lose to 85, T8, KT or QQ). I thought about capping, but I figured only a fool would reraise me on the river without KT or T8.

Also worth noting is the other guy who tagged along the whole way until the river. What the hell did he have? On a Monday morning this pot would have been half the size it was.

I put in 1,000 hands or so Friday night and lost about $200.

On Saturday I feel like I had some of the worst luck that I've ever had. Big wins and big losses often stem from two things: big pocket pairs and 5 card hands. If you lose with your big pocket pairs or you run into a bunch of big pocket pairs it's hard not to lose. Also if you make very few 5 card hands (straights, flushes and full houses) or run into a bunch of five card hands you're in trouble. I had the perfect storm of missing seemingly all of my draws, having my opponents nail theirs, and getting my pocket aces and kings repeatedly smashed by all kinds of junk.

I also had one guy stomp me worse than I can ever remember. It wasn't that he was so good. In fact it was the exact opposite. He bluffed often and wouldn't fold no matter what when he got involved in a hand with me. But he kept making just enough to beat me.

He was one spot to my left so when he was in the small blind I was in the big blind. The table we were at was fairly tight and so we got into it heads up often. A typical hand would go like this. He would raise K4 from the small blind, I'd reraise with AQ and the flop would come down queen high. He'd check raise the flop with nothing and I'd call. He'd bet the turn, I'd raise, he'd three bet still with nothing and I'd call. On the river he'd hit the king, bet and I'd call.

This kind of thing happened over and over and over. It was maddening! Over the course of 2 hours or so I pumped at least $1,500 into his stack. I think he beat me out of at least 10 if not 15 or 20 consecutive pots where we were heads up on the flop. It was unbelieveable. It wasn't like he was getting AA or KK every time. We usually go into the flop about even or 60/40 one way or the other. If we were playing in person I'd be 95% sure I was being cheated.

Towards the end of the beating this hand came up (note that the table name is nemesis!):

PokerStars Game #33599185337: Hold'em Limit ($10/$20 USD) - 2009/10/03 17:57:06 ET
Table 'Nemesis' 6-max Seat #5 is the button
Seat 1: KID 777 ($357 in chips)
Seat 2: ruwi100 ($399.50 in chips)
Seat 3: ACESEDAI ($563 in chips)
Seat 4: Goldshark ($681 in chips)
Seat 5: fishcentral ($1087 in chips)
Seat 6: Suriek ($307 in chips)
Suriek: posts small blind $5
KID 777: posts big blind $10
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to ACESEDAI [Ad As]
ruwi100: raises $10 to $20
ACESEDAI: raises $10 to $30
Goldshark: folds
fishcentral: folds
Suriek: folds
KID 777: folds
ruwi100: calls $10
*** FLOP *** [Jd 3s 8s]
ruwi100: checks
ACESEDAI: bets $10
ruwi100: calls $10
*** TURN *** [Jd 3s 8s] [Th]
ruwi100: checks
ACESEDAI: bets $20
ruwi100: calls $20
*** RIVER *** [Jd 3s 8s Th] [Qh]
ruwi100: bets $20
ACESEDAI: calls $20
*** SHOW DOWN ***
ruwi100: shows [Kh 9h] (a straight, Nine to King)
ACESEDAI: mucks hand
ruwi100 collected $172 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $175 | Rake $3
Board [Jd 3s 8s Th Qh]
Seat 1: KID 777 (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 2: ruwi100 showed [Kh 9h] and won ($172) with a straight, Nine to King
Seat 3: ACESEDAI mucked [Ad As]
Seat 4: Goldshark folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: fishcentral (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: Suriek (small blind) folded before Flop

I just about lost it. Before the flop I was 82% and on the flop I was 95%. A 19 to 1 favorite. I've lost with AA literally thousands of times. I've taken thousands of beats worse than this one. But in this case I was against a guy who had beaten me out of an absurd number of pots in an absurd number of absurd ways. When you get AA in a spot like this all you can do is think "AH HA! I'm going to get this bastard now! I'll grind him into dust on this one! PLEASE try one of the crazy bluffs that you've been running on every freaking hand!" And then I lost. Again. When I was an astounding favorite. Even though the pot wasn't that big it was devestating.

Also notice that my opponent started this hand with $399. I'd directly deposited $1,500 or so into his stack in maybe 90 minutes and he had less than the $500 he started with because he was playing like such a goof that he spewed my chips out to all of the other players like a God damn fire hydrant that had just been hit by a truck!

It was a long day. I won $1,700 or so playing $15/$30, but lost $3,000 playing $10/$20.

On Sunday things turned around. I spent the morning and early afternoon at a brunch party watching football, eating great food, and hanging out with my friends, wife and son. I got home about 3 and put in about 1,000 hands on pokerstars winning $400 or so. I felt lucky to win that much since the games were not good at all for a Sunday.

Since the games were poor I decided to switch gears. As you might recall I opened an account at Absolute poker with the plans of playing on my laptop at night and trying to win enough to pay for a cruise that my wife and I are going on in a few weeks. I'd been doing well in limited action and decided to check out the games. I jumped into four $10/$20 games and picked up what felt like and easy $500 in about 45 minutes.

By that time dinner was close to ready and I logged off. But after dinner I got back on on my laptop. I was amazed and delited by the poor play of my opponents. The were so straightforward! I totally ran them over. It was like they'd never seen someone who would bet the flop and turn without a real hand. "he's betting the turn again! He must have it! 47 hands in a row this guy has bet the turn, but I'm sure he had something every time." I made $1,500 in about 2 hours playing in 3 games.

So all in all I managed to win almost exactly $1,000 over the weekend (not counting $500 or so in FPPs and rakeback) and played a little over 5,000 hands. So I guess you'd have to call that a success.

I've won about $4,000 playing a few hours here and there on my lap top at night. Opperation Pay for Cruise has been a total success and now I'm entering into Opperation Pay for House. I think I'll just bang out about 30 $2,000 days in the next two months and we'll use that money for a house down payment. :)

100 in 100 Challenge

I mentioned in a previous post that I have a goal of playing 100,000 hands of $10/$20 limit hold'em in the last 100 days of the year. The plan is to keep immaculate records and come up with some sort of projection for what I can expect to make in 2010 with a given effort.

So far my projections tell me that I'll be turning to a life of crime by February. I've gotten off to a terrible start! 5,006 hands in I'm losing $3,612 which is -$.72 a hand.

After some time off here and there and after another $1,000 five hour beat down of the players at the Oaks club yesterday, I'm at least feeling neutral if not confident going into he weekend. I'm hoping I can get back on track by trouncing the Friday night gamblers and weekend warriors.

If I can avoid the distractions of real life I should be able to get in 5,000-6,000 hands. Showing a $1,000 profit plus points over that stretch would leave me feeling satisfied and anything much better than that would make me happy.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Bad, Bad and More Bad

I have been getting my ass kicked this week! I lost somewhere in the neighborhood of $5,000 over the past 3 days playing a mix of $10/$20 and $15/$30 6-max limit cash games. You'd think after 6 years of playing and having runs like this 50 times It wouldn't bother me anymore. But it does! It sucks!

Everything had been going so well for past few months in the cash games. Sure I had a bad WSOP and a bad WCOOP this year, but they weren't terrible and I could always count on my bread and butter. It felt like my opponents were powerless to stop me. I didn't win every day, but I banged out a bunch of $1,000 and $2,000 days in August and September. The more I played the more I won which, of course, is how it's supposed to work!

In fact things were so steady that I fell into a bit of a trap. I didn't push it when things were going well. I made enough to pay the bills and cover my tournament disappointments, but I didn't top off the reserves. I had WAY to many days where I put in 1,000 hands and called it a day. I took too many breaks that lasted too long. I played in bigger games sometimes that weren't good, because I was bored only making $500 or $1,000 in a few hours! What the hell is wrong with me!?!

Having a good, positive, confident mindset is key to playing poker well and there's no way to fake it. If you're stressed or upset or just feel like you're going to lose, there's no switch to flip or magical tactic that you can use to take yourself back to feeling the way you need to.

So now I'm pissed! Pissed that the games have been super tough these last few days. Pissed that I'm getting bad cards or running into tough situations. And pissed that I'm pissed, because it means I'm not in the right mindset. I'm worried about losing instead of expecting to win.

Today was the last day that I get the benefits of being Supernova Elite. In 3 hours I go back to being regular Supernova. :(

I'm going to take the next day and a half off, spend some time with family and friends and then get back on the horse Friday night. Hopefully when I come back I'll be at least feel neutral instead of negative.

Back to the Oaks Club

I got my start playing poker at the Oaks Card Club in Emeryville, CA. I know now that it's a medium to small poker room (it has about 25 tables), but when I was 21 it seemed enormous and intimidating to say the least.

The games there are a little small for me now, and playing one game at a time is more than a little slow from my perspective. But about every six months my friend Jake and I go in to have a few drinks and have a good time. Yesterday, was one of those days.

The main reason I started going to the Oaks was they were the only place in town that had a $1/$2 hold'em game (at all of the other clubs the smallest game was $3/$6). We're not talking $1/$2 blinds no limit here. This was 2001, two years before Chris Moneymaker and the poker boom, so everything was fixed limit. This was a game where you could get in for $10 and most people had $20-$30 in front of them. It still terrified me because I didn't have any money.

In those days the big game was $15/$30 and it was tough. By the time I'd moved my way up to $3/$6 I knew all of the $15/$30 regulars. They didn't know me, but I watched with envy and awe as they swapped massive piles of yellow $5 chips back on table 18. I thought someday I'd somehow come up with $500 I could afford to lose and take a shot against those guys. Of course I eventually made it into that game, took my lumps at first, but eventually beat it to death for a little while and then moved on.

While I might be a little bored $15/$30 somewhere else, I get a kick out of playing at the Oaks. The place looks exactly the same, the game is played at the same table in the same spot, and while there are plenty of new faces, there are still many of the same employees and players. The difference is instead of standing on the rail in awe, I'm in the game and I'm far and away the best player. It's like going back to high school and all of a sudden being the most popular person or the stud quarterback or the valedictorian.

While a 10 handed $15/$30 doesn't have the pace, risk or stakes of some of the games I play in, it's not chump change. Everyone at the table had between $500 and $1,000 in front of them when I sat down and there was a lot of action. After 5 hours I won $900, 4 snifters of Grand Mariner, 4 beers, one Redbull and Vodka (I was buying drinks for my self and Jake out of my stack), an order of Chicken Satay and a grilled cheese sandwich (I'll call your Bud draft and raise you a grilled cheese!).

Even though Jake didn't do as well I did, we still had a great time and I always enjoy taking the walk down memory lane that I go on whenever I go to the Oaks.

Today it's back to Pokerstars. I'm going to take my stadard shot at a few $215 buy-in tournaments and do my best to beatdown the weekend warriors in the cash games.

Team Pokerstars Pro Online

Sponsorship is the dream of any serious poker pro. When I logged on to Pokerstars today I got a pop up message about "Team Pokerstars Pro Online." I'm guessing everyone who is Supernova Elite got this message.

In the message was a link to a very brief online application. Essentially I had 200 words to make a case for myself. I mentioned my WCOOP, SCOOP, and WSOP cashes and the fact that I've been playing poker for a living since 2003. I spent the other 175 words talking about how I'm really, really, really ridiculously good looking and much taller than average.

In all seriousness what I wish I could convey is that above and beyond my poker playing I would be a perfect person to promote pokerstars! I don't want to disparage my online brethren, but let's just say some of them are perhaps not as personable as I am. If I make it to the next stage and there is any sort of interview process I expect that I will kill compared to other players with equal poker qualifications. Hopefully I'll make it to the next stage.

The message said to not mention the terms of a potential contract publicly, so I'll have to leave you wondering, but I will say that it looks very interesting to me!

My biggest hurdle is going to be the fact that I'm an American man and pokerstars is looking for a diverse group of people from all over the world. My only hope is that they are looking for 100 people or 200 people instead of 10 or 20. I'll keep you posted.