My New Year goals

Here are my poker goals for 2009 in no particular order:

1) Win 3 satellite entries to the WSOP main event for less than the cost of 1 main event buyin
2) Win at least 1 live event with a buyin over $100 and with at least 140 entrants
3) Work on my reads harder than all of the last 3 years put together
4) Develop a workable cash game to effectively freeroll tourney buyins
5) Have at least 10 4 figure scores and at least 2 5 figure scores
6) Play less poker while attempting all of this so I can spend more time with my family and keep my wife from killing me (or worse divorcing me).
7) Respect every person I come accross playing poker. I am getting sick of the elite top lambasting others horrid play when they lose a pot. That is bad enough, but then they go on to worship their cronies plays when they do the exact same thing. You will see, "sick read" or "pwned" or similar verbage. I respect a lot of their games, but if some were as good as they thought they were..they would never lose despite having runs of bad luck. Maybe this is why I always wish Loretta8 and twoblackaces such luck in their felt endeavors. They win with class and they lose with class. They actually seem thankful when they have a good run instead of arrogant. Twoblackaces seems to get past 95% of the field over 40% of the time he enters. Seems like he doesn't get 1st 2nd or 3rd often enough for how many times he is able to get to the final 2 or 3 tables. I would definnitely like to incorporate more of both of these bloggers games in to my own game. I hope twoblackaces has a PXF subscription and watches a lot of the final table segments from past recordings (especially Pearljammer and Apestyles) as I think their play is similar. Best of luck.
Take care.
JD

Finally

Finally something happened blogworthy. Played a few superturbos, a few mtts, and a $69 qualifier to the 750k yesterday. Only had 1 second place in the supers and 0 other cashes there. In the 750K qualifier, I doubled up the 2nd hand cracking utg's AA with a flopped set of nines (which turned in to quads on the turn). That left me 1st with 16 left (6 get a seat and 7th=$160). I typed in chat "uh oh..card rack early usually means bubble boy late." Guess I am prophetic as I bust 8th for $0. CMitch played and successfully milked a shortstack throughout all the way to a successful $215 entry. He seems to own these qualifiers. I played the 10am $26 buyin guarantee and made it fairly deep before succombing short of a payday. Now the good news...I won a $26 90man knockout tourney for approx $550 incuding bounties. I also played the $10 1 rebuy 1 addon 6.5K guarantee. I worked my way up to a top ten stack about 1/4 of the way in to the tourney and was able to stay top 10 pretty much the rest of the way. Chatted back and forth frequently with fellow blogger Jestocost who was coasting to the final table as well. He ended up busting 8th when his AK got allin to villian's 10 10. Jestocost flopped and ace but villian rivered a 10 for the win. This pot was fairly large and would have put him in 3rd I think. Anyway, he played great and will take it next time. I was hoping we'd finish 1st and 2nd (respectively lol). Anyway, after what seemed like a 2hr final table...I was able to lucksack my way to the win for about $2,100. I am going to upload the tourney to PXF as I am interested in seeing what my puff (i.e. PXF stats for how lucky you get with great/good/moderate/borderline/crap hands). I suspect it will be around 90 (which is very high). This usually means you were lucky enough to get a lot of premium hands and less garbage hands. I have found this to be somewhat misleading though as you are more likely to be able to easily get away from garbage hands when you get a lot of them and are more likely to get cracked for large pot losses when you catch a lot of monsters. Oddly enough, I had a ton of monsters in this tourney preflop but rarely got anything more than the blinds. I used this info (noone defending or playing back) to rape and pillage. One guy played back at me quite a bit so I waited for a good trap opportunity...and it paid off. See you at the tables!!!
JD

Hoe Hoe Hoe

Well I tried to sign up for the Pokerstars blogger championship...and they said no post...no dice. Figured I might as well try to get back on the horse. Haven't had much to blog about since I have been running (I mean playing) bad. I did go to Turning Stone in NY over Thanksgiving to play a couple of live deep stack tourneys. I preregistered via phone with credit card and it was still a 45 minute process to get my seat assignment. It was a great structure. My first table I got seated 3 seats left of Irongirl. We had never met, but it soon became apparent she was a blogger from the table conversation. Play at my first table was the usual mixture of TAG LAG with a couple of rocks. I built a decent stack and our table finally broke about 4 hours or so in. This entire time we may have had 6 allins at that table (not totally unusual given ratio of the blinds to the depth of stacks). Any way, I get moved to a new table and there are 3 allins in my first 2 orbits there. Completely different atmosphere. Saw crazy shoves and crazy calls. There were 387 runners and the payouts started at the top 40 people. The tournament director announced that play would stop at 3am and resume the next day at 1pm. I had already registered for the 11am tourney the next morning and asked how that would work. He said I could play in both at the same time. I didn't see how that was going to work but figured i would see how things went. When they called time, I was 3rd in chips and there was 28 of us left... In the money, but we were all still deep stacked relative to the blinds. The next day, I started the 11am tourney with the hope of building a decent stack that could withstand me sitting out through blinds once the other tourney resumed. I managed to chip up to 32k from the 16.5k starting stack by the time it was 12:50 (10 minutes before the other tourney resumed) when my do or die hand came up. I am dealt JJ utg+3 and raise 4xbb. I had been very active and got called by both the cutoff and the small blind. Flop comes QJ9 rainbow. SB checks, I lead for 2/3 pot, cutoff calls, sb shoves allin and has me barely covered. I call hoping he has the slow played overpair KK or AA and was trapping me since I had been so aggressive trying to build my stack. The cutoff folds and the small blind shows K 10 off. His flopped straight holds vs. my flopped middle set and I am off to resume the tourney from the night before. My stack wavers back and forth between 660K and 410K. My critical hand comes when we are down to 19 players left and I am at 642K. Guy to my left has 390K. UTG is a short stack and limps for 20k (current blinds ante were 10k/20k 2k ante). I am 3rd to act and raise to 80K with AKsooted. Next player to act had 3 bet 3 of my last 4 raises and shoves allin for his 390K. Then a guy 6th to act that has me covered goes in the tank. He eventually folds his pocket jacks and everyone else included the shorty limper from utg folds. Action is back to me and I am looking at calling off 318k of my remaining 560k to win a pot of 816k. I tank and decide to call given his frequency 3 betting me as this would make me chipleader by a significant amount with 18 people left if I win. I figured that I could battle my way back if I lost with 240K. He had KK and held and I ended up going cardead thereafter. I took 14th for $757 (buyin was $260 i think) after my A9sooted shove (once down to 6bb) over a button raise couldn't get there vs. his JJ. First place would have paid $17K. I could have folded and stolen my way up the payboard when I had the $642k stack...but went for king of the mountain status by calling off with a drawing hand. I would probably do it again though...so lesson not learned. Till next time, don't get them allin drawing dead!
JD

the one that got away

I played in the Bodog Player's Choice tourney tonight ($250+ 25) that awards a $12k buyin package to any 10k buyin event of the player's choice. There were only 27 people that played (i.e. a $5K overlay on a $12k prize...sick sick sick). At one point on the final table I lost a big pot to get down to 1800 chips...fast forward to heads up where I was a 2:1 leader. I lost a big pot heads up that could have ended it (KQhh<33)> Congrats to my buddy Brad who took down his first ever win in a MTT with more than 200 people tonight and also to Two Black Aces who made another good run in the 8pm 32k guar on ftp.

GO DEEP or don't go at all!!!!!!!!

JD

Heading to Atlantic City (a.k.a. shithole extrordinaire) in 10 days

My buddy Brad and I are going to Atlantic City one week from this Wednesday for some poker donkathons. I was able to get a room comp for 3 nights at any Harrah's property casino. I chose this guy's favorite spot...Showboat. The last time I went to AC I played all of my poker there exclusively and loved it. It wasn't as big as Borgota or some of the other ones...but it was clean, well organized, smoke free, and very quiet (it was nowhere near the main casino floor so there was no slot machine racket to be heard). I heard they have moved the cardroom though, so this may no longer be the case. Anyway, only plan to play their tourney on the 1st night we arrive ($80+ @7pm i think). After that, we will be playing at the Borgota for cash games and their daily tourneys. On Friday, they will have a $300+40 $75k guarantee that starts at noon. Hopefully most of my degenerate gambling brethren used all of their vacation time to go to Vegas during the WSOP and can't make this tourney to make for an overlay of BoDog proportions! Nice to see a lot of the Bloggers making big scores in lots of the online guarantee tourneys. Shout out to LJ for mentioning my turbo hundo score on her blog. She has been killing it these last few months. Had to work a rare day shift today (for some coin to take to AC)...so had to miss the Sunday majors. Will play the 10pm daily doubles and 10pm $26 buyin guar on tilt when i get home though. If anyone will be in AC in a week and a half and wants to meet up, give me a shout. TID...
JD

Turbo Hundo on FTP Victory!!!

Just finished up winning the Turbo Hundo that starts at 3am on FTP for $7k. I don't know how to post screen shots...so you will just have to take my word for it. If anyone reads this, please respond with how to do screen shots on the blog. Anyway, I will post the tournament on pxf replayer if anyone is interested in watching a donk lucksack his way through the field. Saw a lot of tough regulars from BoDog playing this tourney (Fin2Win, DaisyXoXo, SoggyDogg (who is SoggyVag on BoDog) to name a few. Looks like Iggy is the last blogger standing. Hated to see that Lucko, LJ and Loretta8 did not go deep. I plan on playing next year but wish I had gotten to play this year for the experience. All for now. GLGL.
JD

The heater continues

After last Thursday's and Friday's big scores, I have continued with some big wins and lots of final tables. From Saturday to Tuesday (finished Wednesday a.m. about 07:30 actually) I have won a Bodog 5k guarantee $44+$4 for $1500, got 4th in a Bodog $50+$5 rebuy 8K guarantee for $975, got 5th in a Bodog $30+$3 5k guarantee for $280, got 2nd in a Bodog $20+$2 rebuy 5k guarantee for $1050 and got 1st in the 01:59EST $69+$6 FullTilt ?guarantee(doesn't matter guar. on ftp since there is almost never an overlay anyway) for a $4800 score. Was looking good in the 3am Turbo Hundo on fulltilt when I got AA all in pre against AJo and TT till the river 10 sent me to the rail (would have been top 10 stack with that pot). This is the 3rd time I have won the 01:59 event on FullTilt. Usually have been drunk off my ass when I won it including this time as I had been over to my friend Brad's for an evening cookout with the family. He is convinced that the 2 jack and coke's I had is the secret to a successful tourney...but maybe the 11 beers that followed didn't hurt either. Hate that I have to start back my 7 straight days of work tonight (will cool me off from my heater), but such is life. Most of all I hate not being at the WSOP Main Event as my game has really come around lately. I suck at live poker though because I can't read people for shit, but people can read me like an open book. I also have trouble playing such a small number of hands per hour as I usually have 6-8 tables going at once online:>). I am fairly certain at least one of our blogger brethren will go DEEEEP in the WSOP ME. LJ, Lucko, and Loretta8 are all on sick heaters right now and all stand a great chance go deep. Hope TuscaJohnny hits on his mega sat and plays as well. Don't know who backed him for the sat, but I would say it was a good investment. Not sure if CK is playing the main event or not, but if she is...I wouldn't want to draw her table either. I don't know how well I would adjust to such long levels and the superstack of chips. See so many push monkeys shoving so early in the ME that I would snap call my flopped top set to an allin shove from the guy who flops the OESD and he would hit his 8 outer on me. Guess we'll find out next year as I need to log some live practice time before I take my shot. I think Brad and I are going to go to the Borgota later this month and hit their daily tourneys for a few days. Definitely want to play the $300+$40 75k guarantee they run on Fridays. Till next time...felt the fish and bust the donkeys.
JD