Crushing Some Tournaments

I played a couple of WPTs recent. The LAPC and Bay 101 Shooting star event. They were both 10k buyins, and I did pretty well in both. I feel kinda disappointed though, I could've gone a lot deeper. As usual, I had action sold out in both events.

At the LAPC, I had a good day 1, decent day 2, and crushing day 3. On day 3 I drew a tough-ish table and things broke my way, and I ended up with like 420k going into day 4. The average was only 300k, and I had an amazing table draw where I didn't really recognize anyone.

I caught an ugly break of cards where I lost several substantial pots, before I coolered a guy with a straight against top set. He slowplayed the flop and I caught my open ended straight draw on the turn.

Ironically I would get crippled against Joe Hachem in a similar spot where I raise 77 he calls with 45h, and the flop comes out 763. We end up getting it all in and I'm pretty short stacked after that. At least I lost it to Joe, we're pretty good friends and we played together on Day 1 and Day 3 together too.

I was down to about 80k at 3k/6k blinds and somehow found a fold with AQs preflop to Joe who had AK. That's a pretty big fold, and I feel really proud of it. Felt like I was freerolling. I got table changed and managed to grind my stack back up to 200k. Got lucky all in preflop once in a standard spot to get up to 140k, then got the rest with no showdowns.

Busted after jamming 88 vs AQ against Sorel Mizzi when he caught a pair on the flop. Cashed for 23k not bad.

I kinda have a funny story about Sorel actually. He played a pretty crazy hand where he got AJ all in preflop against another players T8o. He lost when the guy spiked an 8 on the river and Sorel was down to 700 chips at 1k/2k blind and somehow managed to finish 10th place. He went on an amazing upswing where he tripled up in three consecutive hands, then just beasted people nonstop for the rest of the tournament.

Since I cashed at LAPC, I decided to fly out to Bay 101 and take a shot there. It's a pretty small

casino compared to Commerce or Bike. I liked it though, staff was friendly and the games were pretty decent. They even gave away these cool decks of cards with pictures of well known poker pro's on them. I decided to start getting them signed, it seemed fun and I know someone who likes stuff like this.

In the tournament itself I did pretty poorly at first. Started with a 30k stack and down to 6k after the first couple of hours. Thankfully I got a lucky sweat by a few friends and ran my stack back up. I collected a bounty for busting Erik Seidel. At Bay 101 they give away 5k bounties for busting certain pros, so that was a nice bonus to the signed T-shirt. I got another 10k for ending up finishing day 1 as the chip leader, so I'm suddenly +5k going into the second day. Pretty nice start, and had a day off the next day, so I got dinner with a friend who lives in the San Jose area.

Day 2 was miserable though, I got JJ, QQ, and KK 4 times, and lost everytime. That'll make a chip stack shrivel up pretty fast, and I barely squeaked into the money. I'm glad I at least cashed though, so I ended up profiting 21k on that event. Not a bad trip for 4 days, got to make some new friends so that was cool.

These two events really made me feel good in my NLHE tournament game, so I think I might play some more events. I decided to take a trip to Harrah's Rincon since it's not that far, and the WSOP has a neat promotion for it's circuit events. There is a million dollar freeroll this summer during the WSOP, and they give away 100 seats to top performers at the circuit events. Given that the fields should be soft and small, I think I have a pretty good shot to win one of those 100 seats. It's worth about 10k extra, and they have some pretty decent buyin tournaments anyways, so I think it'll be worth the trip. I feel like I'm due to win something, and winning a $1500 circuit event doesn't sound half bad. I might just have to wait to the WSOP though.

Life's been interesting lately, might get even more so if I start travelling more.

I'll see you across the felt.
Bryce

February update

February	Cash Games	Live	($3,521.00)
		Online	$0.00
	Tournaments	Live	$5,492.75
		Online	$0.00
	Poker		$1,971.75
	Staking		$0.00
	Other Gambling		$50.00
	Month's Expenses		($1,240.96)
	Net on month		$780.79

Really tired so I don't want to explain much.
I'll try to get another blog post up tomrrow

New Year New Goals

These are my goals for 2012.

Win $250k+

Avg $125+/hr

Play 1600 hours+

and lose 20 pounds.

Lol gotta include the weight loss.

Here are my 2011 results and December results.

December	Cash Games	Live	$1,031.08
		Online	$0.00
	Tournaments	Live
		Online
	Poker		$1,031.08
	Staking		$940.00
	Other Gambling		$1,865.00
	Month's Expenses		$0.00
	Net on month		$3,836.08

Net on Year	$84,991.45		Net on Year for Staking		($8,468.50)
Net on Year for Poker	$101,373		Poker Related Expenses		$8,976

Other Gambling ($91)

I didn't have what I consider a very good year. I mean $85k is pretty good, but I feel like I could just win so much more. That's why my goals are set so high this year. But we're off to a pretty terrible start.

January

January	Cash Games	Live	($29,922.00)
		Online	$0.00
	Tournaments	Live	($725.00)
		Online	$0.00
	Poker		($30,647.00)
	Staking		($6,268.75)
	Other Gambling		$3,605.00
	Month's Expenses		($71.44)
	Net on month		($33,382.19)

Wow what a disaster. I don't even know where to begin. I've had terrible luck this month playing. Like horrendous. It's times like this I'm incredible grateful I've been selling out action because I would have severely damaged my bankroll if I had to eat all my own losses.

I've been buying pieces of friends of mine who are good players, but they keep losing too. It's really brutal. At least the LAPC is around the corner, and I'm really looking forward to that. There are a lot of tourneys I'm looking forward too. Maybe I'll get lucky enough to win one. That'd be nice I haven't won a tourney in a long time. Hoping I flip it all around.

I'll see you across the felt.
Bryce

It's A Fantasy World

So, I've been playing a lot of home games lately. They are pretty big, like 25/50 PLO, 50/100 NLHE. I had a pretty bad experience last year playing at home games, but I feel confidant these games are straight.
I know the guys running the two games I've been going to for over two and a half years now, and I feel like they are good people. One of them actually helped me out a lot last year. I also have to thank him for getting me to play these home games again, cause I've been doing quite well so far.

I've played 127 hours in them since the WSOP. And I've won about $111.7k. That's a pretty damn good hourly rate, and I think it might be a little high, but I can probably sustain something fairly close to that number. That said, these games are so large, I can't have all my own action in them. I usually have somewhere between 25-40% of myself depending on how large the game is in a given night.

Given how stretched my bankroll was at the beginning of the year, it feels nice to have a lot of cash to play with again, and I don't want to jeopardize that with one bad week at these enormous games. I think I may finally be following proper bankroll management. But then again who knows. I always want to play bigger and bigger. It's like a test to see if I'm good enough to keep winning at a higher level.

These games really are insane though. I've seen a guy lose $100k in 5 hours and have a blast. It was like he felt like it was just a game, and I guess if you don't care about the money, it really is just a game. I seen another guy win $100k in a night, and a fair chunk of that came from me. Since I started playing these games, I've had three nights where I've lost $25k or more. That's freaking crazy to me. I know that it's not all my money, but the amount of money flowing back and forth in these games is mind boggling.

And then, you always have to wonder if you are going to get paid. None of these games use cash, who would carry $100k with them? So it's all on markers. I'm still owed $27k from this January at home game I never got paid on. And I probably will never get paid. The good thing is these new games I'm at, I've had no problems like that, and hopefully won't in the future.

These games are so different from casinos. The players are different, we get a lot of rich successful people, and some very famous ones. The environment is different, it's usually in some incredibly nice location, and they offer free alcohol, food, and massages. It makes you feel like a VIP, but the cost is in the rake. It's way way way more than a casino.

Anyways, overall going back has been a good experience for me. I hope it stays that way. I'm looking forward to 2012. If everything goes right in this upcoming year, it could be pretty huge for me. My goal is to make like $200k, but if I get lucky it could be way more than that.

Wish me luck. That's all a gambler can ask for.

I'll see you across the felt.
Bryce

November

November Cash Games Live $18,663.25
Online ($714.00)
Tournaments Live ($2,001.60)
Online
Poker $15,947.65
Staking $0.00
Other Gambling $1,136.25
Month's Expenses ($1,181.68)
Net on month $15,902.22


I was breaking even until the last day of November then I booked a nice win in those home games to have a pretty good month.

WSOP Main Event Final Table!

I got to watch the November nine play out the WSOP final table at the Rio two days ago. It's so exciting watching it live, the energy in the room is insane. A different cheering section breaks into an outroar after every hand.

I can't even begin to explain how much fun it is, especially as a professional poker player. It would be like a baseball player watching the World Series. It's the premier event of the sport.

They are playing down from three handed to a winner today, I'm going to try to watch the rest of it.

I'll see you across the felt.
Bryce

October update

October

Cash Games

Live $40,158.25

Online ($501.24)

Tournaments

Live ($300.00)

Poker $39,357.01

Staking $0.00

Other Gambling ($220.00)

Net on month $39,137.01

I'll put out another blog talking about my numbers in a little while.