Ok so now I will start posting session summary's and results. So far, I have had three sessions at philly parx. There are some good things, and some bad things, but overall at this moment I am frustrated from the session I just completed.
One of the big reasons I am deciding to play poker even tho I currently have a full time job is to just have another form of income. I am also investing the money I earn from my job as well. I just want to keep the money rolling in, and to keep investing. I just want to keep pumping up my capital! AHHH YEAHHH!!!!
Well the first session I had at parx was last friday night, it lasted for 2 hours and I ended up down 19 dollars. I would actually say that I played well, esp for a night in which I was getting my feet wet with live poker again. The one mistake I had was when the table captain, and an obviously experienced player switched seats to my left. I should have switched to another seat or found another table ASAP. Giving him position on me all session wasn't a good thing to do. He did respect my raises because of how I was playing, which helped me to outplay him that night, but I probably could have had a profit if I moved and not a -19 dollar loss.
Next session was last Sunday. I played for 3 hours and won 284. A very good session, I was getting decent cards, and I never really had a huge pot, I mostly grinded up to that number. I was table captain and felt totally in my comfort zone. No one there challenged me in the least bit.
Now to this shit show of a session I had tonight. I got back from work today and quickly got a shower and dressed to meet a girl thing of mine for dinner. We went to Supper, it's on South Street in center city Philadelphia. (I would have to say that I am definitely a food fanatic. My goal is to hit up every top 50 restaurant in philadelphia. I already have knocked out 10) Supper is a sort of experimental restaurant, similar to a new restaurant called Adsum (Which is also very good) in which they have very creative dishes. For example, at supper, one of the appetizers is berch beer wings. They are DELICIOUS! They also have for an entre, duck and waffles lol. And btw, this isn't some sort of hole in the wall, this is all high end dining.
Anyways, I came back to her place and we chilled out for a little bit, I headed back to my place at 9 and started off to the casino at 9:30. I had half a headache and was a little tired to be honest. (Not the best condition to have mental focus and patience) I get to the casino, and play horribly. I had no patience at all. And it wasn't a shitty table either, I just wasn't focused like I should have been, and I had this idea that my goal was to win 200 tonight, and if I didnt achieve it, it was a failure. (Warning: Don't make money goals for sessions in poker. Not a good idea.) Because of that I missed opportunities and made mistakes.
Mistake number 1. There was an aggressive guy two seats to my left at the table, although it was waaay too early on in this hand for me to tell. I raised for the second hand in a row at the table up to 11, and I had AK offsuit. The aggressive guy reraised me from the button to 22. Min reraises usually mean a big hand, like the nuts kind of hands, so I was weary. I felt like he was just doing this because of my second raise but was unsure. I really should have repopped it at him and gotten it all in. The chances of him having AA or KK are slimmer since I have one of each. I have decent outs agaisnt KK if he has it, I beat AQ, and I flip with all other pairs. Well I decide to flat, flop comes 9 high and I check fold it. I felt that I played this hand poorly preflop.
The biggest missed opportunity, which I don't know if I can really blame myself for is the following hand. I see two limpers, I'm in middle pos. I look down to find KK. I raise it up to 13 this time. I get two callers behind me, the BB calls, and the two limpers call. (WTF!!!!MKDCMCK) Flop come QJ7 offsuit. A decent flop, but I'm always weary with so many players in the hand. Most players check to me, I bet 30 (I know the bet sizing is weak, but this seems like a hug bet to most fish, so it will clear all of the bad hands easily). I get a call from one player behind me, and the BB check raises me to 90. WHAAAATTTT!!!!! I think for a little bit and then fold. My reasoning is that he made a very strong play there. I am not very scared about the flat caller behind me, even though he could possibly be a factor, but a check raise like that means a big hand like top two pair or a set. I never really thought through that hand enough tho. I could have had very good reasoning to reraise all in, which I will explain in a bit. What ended up happening inthe hand is that the flat caller behind me called all in, they both flip over their cards, and the flat caller had Q10, the BB had AQ. I would have won the hand!.... FAAAAACCCKKKKK!!!!!! LOL :( Here are the pro/cons for my play.
Pro: There were five other players in the hand, very likely this guy could have hit something like QJ or a set of 7's. Made a very strong play in a check raise, that doesn't normally happen unless someone had a monster. This guy also didn't seem to make any sort of move to this point (still kind of early tho) unless he had some sort of something. AKA, he was not bluffing.
Con: He is obviously a donk, so he can make donk plays at anytime, for example.... Overvaluing top pair with AQ. To a donk, that shit looks like gold. But it really isn't that good of a hand to check raise with into 2 other guys who look serious after their being so many players in the hand. But here is where my read should have come in. He would not have had QQ or JJ. He would most likely have reraised preflop with those. Probably didn't have sort of bullshit like J7 or Q7, cuz he would have most likely folded those preflop with my raise. (unless maybe they were SUUUUIITED!) The hands he could have had that beat me were 77, and QJ. I'm not drawing too bad towards QJ, but I am in big trouble against 77. In other words, his range is very narrow, and I even have a decent number of outs against his range. If he had 77, I would have also expected him to flat call and not check raise, even with the other player in the hand. I honestly just gave this guy too much credit. The proper play would have been to shove all in there and double up.
The other mistake I made tonight was getting involved in an unnecessary pot with the aggressive guy. I felt like he was bluffing me with a big reraise preflop and a same size raise on the flop. I flatted both in postion, and then he shoved the turn and I folded. I should have either folded the flop, or shoved over top of him. I had AJ, from the button and raised to 12, he reraised from the BB to 40, flop was Q98 offsuit, he lead with 40, I called, and then folded a shove all in on a 7 turn. It just felt like he was really trying to push me off the hand to be honest. I should have folded pre, or on the flop, or followed through with my convictions and shoved over him on the flop, esp since I had outs. But whatever. I played for 2 hours and lost 233.
So here are the results so far:
2 hours -19$
3 hours +284$
2 hours -233$
So for 7 hours I made 32 dollars. It's always good to have a profit, but it should be more, I am disappointed in todays session .I will just have to rebound from it, and learn not to play when feeling SHITTY!!!!
Anyways, night
-Coopb20
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011
My poker story part 2
So I think I left off at the start of the poker boom. It had a big effect on me, and also on all of my friends. We really got serious about poker, and starting playing poker at least once a week for a few years. I started off bad, we all were, but I read a few books, played a little bit online, and kept trying to improve. We played with 5 dollar stacks (We had no money lol) but it got to the point that I would leave every game with a 20 dollar profit. Taking a stack from 4 of my friends every time we played, needless to say, they started to not want to play anymore lol. Slowly we all stopped playing poker together, but I kept at it playing online at pokerstars, and full tilt. I played mostly micro stakes, usually topping out at 25 NL. (I play no limit texas hold em btw. And 25 NL means I was playing with .25 cent blinds and 25 dollars on the table.) I would usually deposit 50 dollars and run my money up to 200, and then slowly lose it all back. (Variance ugh) I reloaded only one time before I went to college, and that's when everything actually changed for me.
I graduated from high school in 2007, and was headed to Drexel University that fall. The first thing I did when I got there was search facebook for any poker groups on campus. (My attempt to try and find some friends with the same passion as mine) I found one group that played 10 dollar tourneys, and decided to go. That is where I met one of the biggest influences on my poker game, another student and fellow pro by the name of Ray Ross. A very smart guy, I think a computer science major, he was a big online tournament player, as well as an accomplished cash game player. He showed me how to properly play online Sit and Go's, and deposited 50 dollars on full tilt for me to play. Playing against Ray was always frightening to me because he was on such a higher level at the time, but it was also such a great and cheap learning experience. Playing against him, really helped to jump start my poker career, just from seeing how advanced he was, and by seeing someone who was actually playing and winning. Up until this point, everyone I talked to viewed poker as just another form of gambling, all luck. But I was able to witness in person the skill needed to actually win, and that it's really possible. It gave me a very big motivational boost. And I was in a sense lucky, lucky to find a winning poker player. Here is a fact that most people don't realize, most people who talk big about poker, like they are really good winning players.... are most likely lying, or too dumb to realize that one time big win of theirs for a couple G's still doesn't offset their 5,000$ losses. The truth is, only 3% of people that play poker are winning players, and only 1% actually make enough for a living wage. (I fall into the 1%. But I wouldn't say I'm making 100's of thousands)
So I learned how to play SNG's from Ray and grinded my bank roll up from 50 to about 500 and took most of it out. I never really played with Ray much after that first year of school, but I did see him from time to time. I know now and days he plays 5/10 nl at the borgata, but he graduated a while ago and is probably working a legit job and doing poker part time. ANYWAYS, I decided I did not like the variance from playing SNG's too much, and also saw that the more skillful players were cash game players (Which they are) so I made the switch to playing cash games and wanted to start at the bottom of the cash game latter. That's right, I started with 20 dollars (What I left myself from the previous cashout) and started playing cash games for pennies... LITERALLY PENNIES!!!! I played 2NL, the big blind was 2 cents. Boy did that take a lot of patience, but I felt that it was very important to start from the bottom and move up for a couple reasons. 1. I gained a lot of patience. 2. I learned proper bank roll management. (This is the one thing people don't properly learn because it sucks so much. After having played for 100's of dollars and having to drop back down to play for a few dollars at a time really really really reaaaaallllllyyyyy stinks. Which is something I had to do lol) 3. I learned how to play against bad players.
Long story short though, I climbed the stakes by playing in my spare time and won thousands of dollars just from a small starting amount of 10 dollars. Never believe anyone who feeds you the bullshit that poker is all luck, or unbeatable, or that you can't beat the micro stakes.... blah blah blah. It's all bs that people will tell you because they couldn't do it themselves. They'd rather blame the game then themselves. To become a pro, you really have to understand that poker is all skill, that it isn't "gambling" but a game of skill. There are also numerous other things you need too, but I will get into that another time.
Recent actions by the U.S. Government though has banned online poker. So my now I am attempting to play my way up the cash game stakes in live games. The casino I'm playing at is Philly Parx (A pretty good new poker room, a big one too) I am going to be trying to play at least a few hours a night after work, and record how I do, and the significant hands here.
Cool, I'm tired, peace out
-Coopb20
I graduated from high school in 2007, and was headed to Drexel University that fall. The first thing I did when I got there was search facebook for any poker groups on campus. (My attempt to try and find some friends with the same passion as mine) I found one group that played 10 dollar tourneys, and decided to go. That is where I met one of the biggest influences on my poker game, another student and fellow pro by the name of Ray Ross. A very smart guy, I think a computer science major, he was a big online tournament player, as well as an accomplished cash game player. He showed me how to properly play online Sit and Go's, and deposited 50 dollars on full tilt for me to play. Playing against Ray was always frightening to me because he was on such a higher level at the time, but it was also such a great and cheap learning experience. Playing against him, really helped to jump start my poker career, just from seeing how advanced he was, and by seeing someone who was actually playing and winning. Up until this point, everyone I talked to viewed poker as just another form of gambling, all luck. But I was able to witness in person the skill needed to actually win, and that it's really possible. It gave me a very big motivational boost. And I was in a sense lucky, lucky to find a winning poker player. Here is a fact that most people don't realize, most people who talk big about poker, like they are really good winning players.... are most likely lying, or too dumb to realize that one time big win of theirs for a couple G's still doesn't offset their 5,000$ losses. The truth is, only 3% of people that play poker are winning players, and only 1% actually make enough for a living wage. (I fall into the 1%. But I wouldn't say I'm making 100's of thousands)
So I learned how to play SNG's from Ray and grinded my bank roll up from 50 to about 500 and took most of it out. I never really played with Ray much after that first year of school, but I did see him from time to time. I know now and days he plays 5/10 nl at the borgata, but he graduated a while ago and is probably working a legit job and doing poker part time. ANYWAYS, I decided I did not like the variance from playing SNG's too much, and also saw that the more skillful players were cash game players (Which they are) so I made the switch to playing cash games and wanted to start at the bottom of the cash game latter. That's right, I started with 20 dollars (What I left myself from the previous cashout) and started playing cash games for pennies... LITERALLY PENNIES!!!! I played 2NL, the big blind was 2 cents. Boy did that take a lot of patience, but I felt that it was very important to start from the bottom and move up for a couple reasons. 1. I gained a lot of patience. 2. I learned proper bank roll management. (This is the one thing people don't properly learn because it sucks so much. After having played for 100's of dollars and having to drop back down to play for a few dollars at a time really really really reaaaaallllllyyyyy stinks. Which is something I had to do lol) 3. I learned how to play against bad players.
Long story short though, I climbed the stakes by playing in my spare time and won thousands of dollars just from a small starting amount of 10 dollars. Never believe anyone who feeds you the bullshit that poker is all luck, or unbeatable, or that you can't beat the micro stakes.... blah blah blah. It's all bs that people will tell you because they couldn't do it themselves. They'd rather blame the game then themselves. To become a pro, you really have to understand that poker is all skill, that it isn't "gambling" but a game of skill. There are also numerous other things you need too, but I will get into that another time.
Recent actions by the U.S. Government though has banned online poker. So my now I am attempting to play my way up the cash game stakes in live games. The casino I'm playing at is Philly Parx (A pretty good new poker room, a big one too) I am going to be trying to play at least a few hours a night after work, and record how I do, and the significant hands here.
Cool, I'm tired, peace out
-Coopb20
Poker is all about luck!
Poker is all about luck right? FALSE. Nope, not at all, and as a matter of fact, I can confidently tell you that poker is 100% skill. Does that mean luck isn't involved in some way or another? No, but theoretically, poker is a game of all skill. Before I get into all of that though, I want to explain the reasoning behind me starting this blog.
First, some info about myself. I am currently a college student working towards my bachelors in mathematics. I'm in my 4th year, in a 5 year program, and for this summer, I have been working full time as an intern for a financial company in center city Philadelphia. Which is really nice, except that my pay is a significant downgrade from my previous job, which was a professional online poker player. :) But unfortunately I can no longer play poker online, if anyone has read the news lately, the U.S. Government sued the online poker companies and banned U.S. citizens from playing. There goes my additional income :( F@#K!
I am creating this blog to record my trials and tribulations as I attempt to become a live professional poker player at my local brick and mortar casino. I also want this blog to help keep my thoughts in order about my life in general, but mostly about poker. (AHHH YEAAHHH)
So my first post should probably explain how I got into poker in the first place...... Way back when I was still in elementary school, my family would always have some sort of a game night with my grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, etc. And I LOVED playing, and for a kid, won my fair share. I was always pretty smart, I am able to catch onto things pretty quickly if it peaked my interest, and games definitely did. Gambling is also kind of promoted in my family as well, both sets of my grandparents go to the casino monthly (almost weekly), my parents go to the casino monthly as well. So, to see a game that was fun, and could also win money at the same time, was definitely intriguing to me. To say the least, ever since I was young, poker peaked my interest.
I never got serious about it though until middle school, because around 2003 "The poker boom" occurred. For those of you who don't know your poker history at all, let me explained what happened, because I was there for all of it.
Every single summer, there is an event held in Las Vegas called the World Series of Poker. It is a serious of tournaments where all of the top poker pros in the world come to play. The biggest tournament in the series is simply called "The main event" or "The No Limit Texas Hold em World Championship". It's a really big tournament with a 10,000$ buy in and over a million dollars rewarded to the winner. This very tournament, and a very cliche story surrounding it that year, caught the attention of millions.
What ended up happening is that the spring and summer leading up to the television airing of the 2003 main event on ESPN, ESPN showed re-runs of the 2002 main event, which grabbed the attention of many, including myself. With that initial attention, ESPN aired the 2003 main event. What made this event so crucial to the poker boom was the journey of the eventual winner, Chris Moneymaker. Yes, that's right, his last name is money maker. ESPN did a great job of explaining his story throughout the tourney. He had entered the main event by playing a 40 dollar satellite. (A Satellite is basically a tournament which has a first place prize of an entry fee into another bigger tournament) He then battled his way through countless professional poker players to win the 2.5 million dollar first place prize. YUP, some guy name Moneymaker, took 40 bucks, and turned it into 2.5 million in sponduli, WONDERFUL. You couldn't have asked for a better story, big time underdog with a cool last name, taking nothing and winning millions. This story caused the world to blow up over poker, and so did I.
Well I am getting tired as it is 3am, so I will finish my poker story in the next post.
-Coopb20
First, some info about myself. I am currently a college student working towards my bachelors in mathematics. I'm in my 4th year, in a 5 year program, and for this summer, I have been working full time as an intern for a financial company in center city Philadelphia. Which is really nice, except that my pay is a significant downgrade from my previous job, which was a professional online poker player. :) But unfortunately I can no longer play poker online, if anyone has read the news lately, the U.S. Government sued the online poker companies and banned U.S. citizens from playing. There goes my additional income :( F@#K!
I am creating this blog to record my trials and tribulations as I attempt to become a live professional poker player at my local brick and mortar casino. I also want this blog to help keep my thoughts in order about my life in general, but mostly about poker. (AHHH YEAAHHH)
So my first post should probably explain how I got into poker in the first place...... Way back when I was still in elementary school, my family would always have some sort of a game night with my grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, etc. And I LOVED playing, and for a kid, won my fair share. I was always pretty smart, I am able to catch onto things pretty quickly if it peaked my interest, and games definitely did. Gambling is also kind of promoted in my family as well, both sets of my grandparents go to the casino monthly (almost weekly), my parents go to the casino monthly as well. So, to see a game that was fun, and could also win money at the same time, was definitely intriguing to me. To say the least, ever since I was young, poker peaked my interest.
I never got serious about it though until middle school, because around 2003 "The poker boom" occurred. For those of you who don't know your poker history at all, let me explained what happened, because I was there for all of it.
Every single summer, there is an event held in Las Vegas called the World Series of Poker. It is a serious of tournaments where all of the top poker pros in the world come to play. The biggest tournament in the series is simply called "The main event" or "The No Limit Texas Hold em World Championship". It's a really big tournament with a 10,000$ buy in and over a million dollars rewarded to the winner. This very tournament, and a very cliche story surrounding it that year, caught the attention of millions.
What ended up happening is that the spring and summer leading up to the television airing of the 2003 main event on ESPN, ESPN showed re-runs of the 2002 main event, which grabbed the attention of many, including myself. With that initial attention, ESPN aired the 2003 main event. What made this event so crucial to the poker boom was the journey of the eventual winner, Chris Moneymaker. Yes, that's right, his last name is money maker. ESPN did a great job of explaining his story throughout the tourney. He had entered the main event by playing a 40 dollar satellite. (A Satellite is basically a tournament which has a first place prize of an entry fee into another bigger tournament) He then battled his way through countless professional poker players to win the 2.5 million dollar first place prize. YUP, some guy name Moneymaker, took 40 bucks, and turned it into 2.5 million in sponduli, WONDERFUL. You couldn't have asked for a better story, big time underdog with a cool last name, taking nothing and winning millions. This story caused the world to blow up over poker, and so did I.
Well I am getting tired as it is 3am, so I will finish my poker story in the next post.
-Coopb20
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