March Madness

The Winter League is over. My team (CardSchat) was in the lead going into the final game, but I failed to do well. In my final hand I opened on the button, the SB 3-bet, and I shoved with my Q/Q. He had A/K and failed to pair. However, a 2/3/4/5 came on the board, without the saving 6. Oh well. The Team MVP player ended up winning (he doubled up early to someone who stacked with less than top pair/top kicker. However, I was pretty much a lock for MVP going into this game. (I'd have been a lock, but dmorris68 substituted in for another player so if he got first and I tanked he could have passed me). I won MVP. Boo-ya! Out of 45 players, I was the only person in the top 10 last season to finish in the top 10 this season. Poker-wise, I'm in a bit of a funk. This week, 3 times I was getting short and shoved an unchallenged pot in late position with a drawing hand (Q/Js and such) and ran into vowels (A/A). On Sunday I had the day free, so I blew $15.50 in a $5.50 rebuy, then $11 in a CC by-in. Then I played a $5.50 CC game and won $35 (I think). But I played a few tiny games, cashing in one and failing in two, and basially finishing the day about even. Non-Poker: Intersting stuff going on. Work is going okay. More hours would be good. I had a promising first date with someone on Saturday. She's really witty, intelligent and seems really stable, but lives farther away than I'd prefer. It'll be interesting to see how it goes. I'm cautiously optimistic. In poker jargon, this person has really good stats on many levels. I have not been doing my push ups as I'm still hurt. I think it's a tendon thing, not a muscle thing. I think I've been sitting weird, and using the mouse with a crooked arm, so it's straining the tendon by my elbow. The pain has been dissipating, but I've decided not to start push ups again until after my backpacking trip this June. The Trip: I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I'll be going on a backpacking trip to Machu Picchu this summer. I'm excited! The backpacking trip is 4 days, 3 nights. We'll visit other ruins along the way. We'll have guides and porters so it won't be roughing it too much. On Day 4 we arrive at the ruins early, a guide will give us a tour of the ruins, and then we hike down to a bus which takes us to a train which takes us on a loooong train ride back to civilization. The next day we fly back to L.A., and the next day I fly back to KY in the AM. So I'll be traveling a lot. When booking tickets, a trip to Peru from KY had a travel time of 22 hours, and cost a lot. Tickets from L.A. to Peru cost quite a bit less, and had an 11 hour travel time. Tickets from KY to L.A. were *less* than that difference, and had a 6.5 hour trip time. Yeah... do the math. I can travel alone for longer and for more money, or I can travel with my loved ones for less time and for cheaper. I'll fly into L.A. a few days early so I can visit my Mom. Then my brother, father, and I will fly to Peru a few days early so we can adjust to the altitude.

Nom nom nom! I haz all your chippies!

I won a fairly big tournament on Sunday. I played their freeroll on Saturday and went out early, but my fortunes changed soon after. That night (Saturday night) a bunch of us played a "Last Player Standing" game where we put $1 into a pool and whoever finished best in a 90-player S&G kept the pool. Not only did I win the pool, but I won the tournament.

Then, of course, I won the GGE money-added game.
I just floated along at first, taking opportunities as they arose. I IM'd with a buddy who was playing another table and he told me that a good player we know was doing well, so I kept tabs on that guy.
Then I had Q/Q on a K/K/Q flop and stacked a guy who had K/T, which put me in the top 10% of players.

When we were down to 5-6 players the other people were really tight. I stole a lot of pots because nobody wanted to fight back. I became chip leader, with only one guy on my right having enough chips to really hurt me. He was smart too, so I was glad to have position on him.
Position there won me the game. Had he been on my left at that point it would have been a different game. But as it was I could stay out of his way and bully the rest of the table. (Most people don't think about this sort of stuff when talking about wins, but who-sits-where is a big part of the game.)

Eventually it came down the smart guy and I.
I'm goo heads up, but this guy was pretty good as well. There wasn't much for me to exploit.

I was HU forever. 50 minutes! I KO'd the 3'rd place finished at 19:42:56 to put me heads up. Then HU ended at 20:33:39
The game started at 15:00 (but I couldn't get on until 15:14) so that's a 5:34 game where.... what... 15% of the game was heads up. Wow! Patience patience patience.

I had good and bad luck HU. I had two pair a couple times, when the guy turned a flush. But both times the river put the 4-flush on the board to scare us both.

In the final hand *he* had the two pair, but I rivered a set. I shoved, he called, and my tiny chip lead was just enough to end it there.




Good times! I'm playing really well and making some really good reads.

Check out this video I made of me talking to myself last Friday.

And check out this hand history. I typed out a comment, and hit send the second it was called, before the hands were revealed.
I highlighted the important part in red:

PokerStars Home Game #58015845187: {Iggysdady's Weekly Game} Tournament #366486361, $5.00+$0.50 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level II (20/40) - 2011/02/20 20:51:23 ET
Table '366486361 1' 9-max Seat #9 is the button
Seat 5: kozlo6pack (1755 in chips)
Seat 6: sachpas3 (960 in chips)
Seat 7: DSOReilly (2405 in chips)
Seat 8: Iggysdady (1875 in chips)
Seat 9: SvgePenguin (1135 in chips)
kozlo6pack: posts small blind 20
sachpas3: posts big blind 40
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to SvgePenguin [Qd Qc]
DSOReilly: calls 40
Iggysdady: folds
SvgePenguin: raises 80 to 120
kozlo6pack: calls 100
sachpas3: raises 120 to 240
DSOReilly: folds
SvgePenguin: calls 120
kozlo6pack: calls 120
*** FLOP *** [Ad Ah 9s]
kozlo6pack: checks
sachpas3: checks
SvgePenguin: bets 100
kozlo6pack: calls 100
sachpas3: calls 100
*** TURN *** [Ad Ah 9s] J♣
kozlo6pack: bets 560
sachpas3: calls 560
SvgePenguin: folds
*** RIVER *** [Ad Ah 9s Jc] 4♠
kozlo6pack: bets 160
sachpas3: calls 60 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (100) returned to kozlo6pack
SvgePenguin said, "I have to fold. I think JJ for Koz, and KK for Sach. Let's see if Im right"
*** SHOW DOWN ***
kozlo6pack: shows [Jd Js] (a full house, Jacks full of Aces)
sachpas3: shows [Kd Kh] (two pair, Aces and Kings)
kozlo6pack collected 2300 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2300 | Rake 0
Board [Ad Ah 9s Jc 4s]
Seat 5: kozlo6pack (small blind) showed [Jd Js] and won (2300) with a full house, Jacks full of Aces
Seat 6: sachpas3 (big blind) showed [Kd Kh] and lost with two pair, Aces and Kings
Seat 7: DSOReilly folded before Flop
Seat 8: Iggysdady folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: SvgePenguin (button) folded on the Turn


I'm just on my game recently.
Granted, there is a ton of luck and I know I'm on a hot streak, but it feels good.

Upswing

Hey, it's my brother's birthday. I need to call him.

Anyway...
I've been playing the Hold'em Freaks nightly tournaments. I was running cold and they were playing a lot of non-hold'em games so I took some time off from playing. (The running cold part was the killer) I've been running cold everywhere.

Anyway...
I'm captain of a new team. Honestly, I wasn't able to pick my team so the woman in charge picked for me. She was able to get two of the people who I had last year, and two pretty good rookies, so I am pleased.
Early yesterday we were in 2nd place, 11 games into the season. I don't know where we're at today because we had a low finish, so I'm guessing we're in 3rd (of 9).
I had a lousy 6th (of 9) place finish in my first game but I won Friday's game.


I didn't play any more poker until Sunday, when I won a $200-added game with the best poker forum, CardsChat.

They're giving out some sort of prizes for whoever knocks the most people out (out of two games, the second being played Sunday... but I'll be at my mother-in-law's celebrating her birthday for the second game). One guy finished with 5-KO's to my 4. He and I went heads up (for the 5th time in the past 6 months) and I beat him for the 5th time. :) He's a good player, but predictable.

Yesterday I played one super turbo thing on Ultimate Bet, as I haven't played on the site for months and I wanted to give it a try. I got KO'd in 7th of 9 in a standard SB vs BB play.


Then I played the Hold'em Freaks high hand early game. I paid $1 to be entered into a pool, where the player with the highest hand wins the $. You have to win the showdown and use both of your hole cards to win. I've made the mistake of betting the river with monsters (quads and such) and not getting called, thereby not being eligible for the high hand pool.
Well, yesterday I made a bad bet on the river too:

Fortunately he made an even worse call. :)
So yeah, I won the high hand pool.
Then I went on to get 2nd place in the game. I had 9k, he had 7.5k, and I 3-bet him with 7/7 and he called with Q/T. He rivered the Ten win. I was unable to come back. But 2nd place is good! :)

An hour later was the second high-hand game, and this one was $2 instead of $1.
This coin flip lead to me winning the high hand in that game as well:

Oh... and then I won the tournament:


So I've had quite a streak. One loss on Ultimatebet, and a string of victories.
1st, 1st, fail, 2nd& bonus, and 1st & bonus.

--------------

In non-poker news...
I'm getting out of the house more. Even when home, I'm hiking in the woods.
My social life is expanding.
I'm still doing my push ups, but I'm not following the plan. The tendon in my right arm is getting better, but slowly. I don't want to move up to the feet-on-chair push ups for fear of agitating it, so I'm just doing the standard sets. Well, instead of 14/10/6 I'm doing 15/11/7.
I have a new Droid phone with a data plan, so I can hook it to my computer and get 3G on my home computer. :) That's exciting, but I'm afraid that I'll go over the 5Gb limit.

Wrapping up the year

Quite a bit has happened since the last post.
My grandmother passed away a couple weeks before Thanksgiving, so I flew to CA to attend the memorial service with my family. My parents had tickets to fly to KY a few days later, so stayed a few extra days so could share the return flight with them.
Having them here for Thanksgiving and my birthday was nice.

Poker-wise, my team clinched first place the day before the final game. We would have tied if we forfeited somehow (like entering multiple players, or not registering for the game) *and* if the team in 2nd got 1st place that game.
I was #1 in the MVP race (based on average score) and risked my first place status by playing the final game. I only needed a 5th place to keep the title, but I went ahead and won it. :)
My team was composed of half of the top 8 finishers (3 of the top 5). There were 35 players total. We had one other player, who managed a couple big scores (a 2nd & a 3rd) at the end to move up and finish in 34th place.

I'll be a team captain again next season.

I've been running a bit cold lately. I'll be short and make a standard shove with 6/6 in an unchallenged pot from the button or SB, and the button will wake up with A/A. Or someone will limp with Q/9s and I'll shove my 11bb's with 8/9s and they will call.
I had a period where K/K was poison, but then I flopped quads Kings and someone was nice enough to shove with absolute air in an attempt to bluff me off the pot.
But anyway, like I said, right now I'm doing a lot of standard shoves that get called by monsters or hands that were suicidal to call with.

Tonight: Some friends had a wedding anniversary to I helped (with another friend) babysit their kids while they had a night out. I was good to be around babies again, and fun to watch the little runts process things. I had a good time.
When I got home I was bored and played a 9 player S&G, winning it.
When I was short I did shove with 8h/9h in the SB and the BB called with K/4. I paired the flop though, and took down the hand to bust him. That made me chip leader with about 5 left.
I lost the chip lead while heads up, but gained it back. In the final hand I had T/T and he open-shoved with 6/2 off. We were still too deep to bluff like that. I called, he paired the 6, but I won the hand and the game.

Push ups: I'm probably going to be a set short today. Oh well. I have been keeping up with my routing though. I strained a tendon in my right arm so I've been taking it easy and am not doing any of the trickier stuff. I'm just sort of maintaining the same routine I was doing before.

Bling pow

Quickie...

In the team games, yesterday the #1 team got last and we had a middle finish, so we gained ground.
Today we got last and they had a 3rd, so they're even more ahead than at the beginning of the week.
I'm not super-confident about our game tomorrow, but Friday I'll be playing my A-game and hope to even things out.

Actually... honestly... I hope I get heads up with that same guy again, even though he's the biggest threat to my team. It would be a blast.

Exercise:
I started doing push ups today. I've been off about a week so I'm going slow. My back is still a little sore. I'm doing the minimum routine. I completed the first two, but had trouble finishing the third set because I got tired.
I'll do the final set later tonight.

Non-poker

In earlier posts I mentioned that I've been doing the Perfect Push Up routine.

Based on my max, I'm supposed to be doing a 14/10/6 routine. (14 push ups, quick rest, then 10, quick rest, and then 6) However, I decided to start out doing them with my feet on a chair (making them harder) and I kind of pulled something in my back the second day. It's only slight, and I only feel it when doing push ups.
So instead of doing them on a chair I started just doing more. I was doing 18/14/8 and that strain wasn't going away and started getting worse.

A few days ago I decided that I need to stop for awhile and let myself heal. I keep looking at equipment and I'm eager to start again.

I find the push ups to be sort of therapeutic. I like focusing my body and mind 100% on something. It hurts but I'm in control of that pain, so it's nothing. Real pain comes in lack of control.

It's also a good time killer. I do four sets, every-other day, and each set takes two minutes.

So anyway, I'm writing this because I'm sitting in my chair, looking at my Perfect Push Up grips thinking "This is a perfect time to do a set" but I'm forcing myself not to do them.

Oh... I know what I can add. While I have a definite change in my triceps, and some slight change in my shoulders and chest, almost nothing was happening with my biceps. I read up on it and push ups do almost nothing for the biceps. ...but pull ups do. So I've been adding pull ups to my routine.

I use my spiral staircase and do them on days opposite of my push ups. Come to think of it, that might be a contribution to my sore back. It uses a lot of the same upper body and core muscles so I may not be giving my body enough time to recuperate. Tired muscles don't work like they should, which can put strain on other parts, which can lead to injury. So I should probably just do them all on the same day? Maybe?

Anyway, after fighting through it for over a week I gave up a few days ago and probably won't start again until Wednesday, which will be about a week off.

Whine whine whine...

Also, last night I fell asleep on the sofa, which left me with a soar back. ;) I actually slept really well, and I'm sure it'll go away quickly.
It's times like this I wish I had my daughter here to walk on my back.
Back when I was married I didn't ask for back rubs a lot, but this is one of the times when I'd probably ask. I guess single life some disadvantages.

Okay, a little poker...
Last night I played two $4+$.40 Rush tournaments and only cashed in one for $6.75, for a $2.05 loss. Then I played two $2.10 super turbos and cashed in one for $3.60 for a $1.50 loss.
This morning I played a $10.50 knock-out HU tournament (weird) and wont he first round for the $5 bounty, but lost the second when he shoved with 8/5s and I called (still with a big stack) with A/T and he made trips. Had I won that, he'd have been crippled and I'm confident I'd have won. Oh well. So that game was a $5.50 loss. So I'm down $9.05 in tournaments for the last 24 hours.

I have no plans for the day, so I may play a 6-max game that CardsChat is putting on. (Cardschat is the poker forum I'm active in).

Not quite a Rush

For the past nine days I've been playing the Take-2 promotion by getting points at a $25NL Rush table. On Tuesday I lost about 4.5 buy-ins. A buy in is $25. It wasn't fun. I flopped a set of 7's on an A/K/7 board; he had pocket Aces. Twice I flopped top two pair and got rivered by a bigger two pair. One time I got all-in pre-flop with Q\Q in the small blind vs the big blind who had K\K.
That's quite a deficit to come back from.

Today was the last day of the promotion. I finished with a $36.73 deficit. I'll be getting a $25 bonus for completing the promotion, so I'm down $11.73. I also paid $43.66 in rake, which I'll be getting 27% ($11.78) back from my rake-back affiliate (27%). So that means I have a $.05 profit!

I honestly LOL'd when I did the math. :)

If Full Tilt hadn't changed their Rakeback policy I'd have made a $3.78 profit. But oh well.

Team Series:
Once again I am a team captain for the CardsChat league. My teams normally have some pretty back luck, but this season my luck seems to have turned.

There are 9 teams of 5 players, and the games are each weekday. I have the same people playing each day of the week, for simplicity's sake. If we're in contention at the end of the season I might change things around, sitting out some players and giving others more games. Hopefully it won't come to that, but money-wise it's best for all of us. (The top teams get money at the end of the season. It cost us each $5 to play.)
Scoring:
Place Points
1 60
2 48
3 38
4 30
5 24
6 20
7 16
8 14
9 12


Were in week 3 of the 11 week season, and my team is tied for second place.

Notice how my team name has arrows that mocks the other teams?

Oh... if you'll notice there is an MVP race as well, and soooooooomebody is in the lead. :)

In the three weeks I played, I got 3rd in the first game, 1st in the second game, and 1st in the third game.

That Justfives guy plays Fridays with me. He won the first game, and came in 2nd place the next two. That means I beat him HU twice. We played HU (Heads Up) a lot, and I mean a whole lot!

Yesterdays game:
The entire game yesterday was 145 minutes.
We started HU @ 22:04 and ended at 22:54, so we were HU for 50 minutes!
HU and we had 131 hands.

Last Friday he and I played HU 20 minutes, for 42 hands, and I was raided by a pretty tight friend who told me mid-way through, "I don't know how you're still playing this. I'd have been shoving by now."

Anyway, I think I'm better heads up than the guy I keep tangling with, but in all fairness I've been getting more breaks than him. He is *not* apt to overplay so I have to adjust to that a bit, which makes the game last a bit longer. So I am more active and steal more, and have to wait to cold deck him, while making lay downs I wouldn't normally make.
I think I can read him pretty well. He can probably read me to a degree, but I'm more likely to switch things up.
Yadda yadda yadda... all said and done things went well for me.

Unfortunately, my team had a slow week this week, and #2, #3, & #7 in the MVP race are all on the same team so they have a significant lead.

Anyway, there are 8 weeks to go and weeks 6-9 are worth 1.5x more, and weeks 10 & 11 are worth 2x more. So we've just scratched the surface, but I'm really happy for now.