Patterns

Things have been going better as of late. The last Vegas trip ended up much better than it started. After losing a bunch in the beginning we played two more times, the second session I was way up, and the third session I started off really bad but fought back to about even. So we left Vegas with a bit more than we came with, which was great.

We're heading back in a few days, this time for just a fun trip, which will be really nice. Its going to be a very fun trip. We're going to see the 50k HORSE final table, Love, the beginning of the Main Event, and we're going to play a lot of poker. I'm also going to try and play in one of the Venetian Deep Stack events. Its only a $330 buy in, but it will be the largest buy in tournament I will have played. You start with good chips and the blinds go up reasonably slow, so it will be interesting to see how I do.

Other than that things are ok. I'm home with Catherine now because she's having a hard time. That is always an interesting scenario because I love being home with her, but I hate the circumstances. Still though, we were marveling yesterday at how perfectly everything has worked out for us. If things didn't work out the way they did Catherine may not have made it this far. Makes you wonder if there's not someone up there guiding all this nonsense in our favor.

Risk

So I am in Las Vegas, at the World Series of Poker, at the ASSE Safety 2008 conference. In the mornings I get up early on a weekend, when many in this town are just getting to bed, and I go play safety geek with the other safety geeks and we talk about...safety.

At night, Catherine and I head to the Amazon room to watch the insanity that is the WSOP unfold right in front of us. How crazy. What a strange dichotomy.

The trip has been fun though. The first night we got to see Daniel Negreanu win his 4th bracelet. That was a lot of fun. The next night we sweated Bill Edler in the Razz event. And last night we watch the carnage of the PLO w/ rebuys event, which was awesome. Every table was stacked with great players.

We also decided that we just couldn't bear not playing a little ourselves, so we mosied on over to the poker room to play a little 1/3 nlhe. We didn't have much money with us so we decided to short buy for 100 each. It took me about 45 minutes to dust off 3 buy ins. A8 < A3. He flops two pair and check raises me all in on the A34r flop (I folded and he showed). 77 < AKo allin preflop. Of course I was against Catherine on that one. The rake was the only winner on that one. AKo < AQo. Flop was KQQr. I almost folded. QdTd < Kc8c all in on a flop of 6cQcTs where the solid player at the table decided to gamble with zero fold equity.
You know, I hate telling bad beat stories, but this just has been happening so much that I feel the need to prove to myself and others that even though I haven't won in a live cash game in 6 months I am not playing bad (I don't think). Its just so sick that this keeps happening.

But, damn it, I'm a tenacious bastard. I'm not giving up because I know I can beat this game. In fact I've decided to immerse myself in studying poker in general ( not just hold em), because I want to be better. I don't want to play 1/2 my whole life. I want to play bigger cash games and I want to play in the wsop. Poker is most fun when it is difficult.

So, on that note, tonight or tomorrow we will probably take our last bit of money and take another stand in the low stakes nlhe game. I'm a little worried, but still over all confident. We will see what happens.

Brag Post

So I won my first multi-table tournament (freezeout) last night. I outlasted 91 players in an $8.80 tournament to take down about $230 bucks. Not life changing, but very encouraging. I started off doubling up on the second hand after flopping top set against an overpair, but pretty much folded for most of the next two hours, occasionally stealing a pot here and there to stay even. Then, right before things got desperate I doubled up on two consecutive hands to vault me into 3rd in chips with 18 to go. Cruised to the final four players and then had a disaster where I took a bad read and doubled up a player in a weird hand. That left me with about 6 or 7 big blinds with four players left. At this point I had about 7k, two players had between 20k-30k , and one player had over 100k. So at this point I commented to Catherine that we were pretty much playing for 2nd, barring some miracle. Fortunately though I was able to steal some blinds and antes, thanks to my weak tight opponents. I won some pots after that and was able to work my way back to 50k. Then the 3rd place player busted the 4th place player, I busted him when I made him think I was bluffing on a hand that he shouldn't have been in in the first place. This gave me a slight chip lead going into heads up. First hand of heads up the other guy raises, I had 1010 and decided to move in, he called with A9o and I had him drawing dead on the turn. And that was that. I was overall very happy with my play, except for a few hands (including the last one). And now I have a good amount of confidence going into a few trips to Vegas in the next few weeks.

In related news, we still haven't gotten our check for our bankroll. Well, in actuality, we've gotten 1k of it, but that was mostly to cover some expenses we had. Catherine and I have a sneaking suspicion that its not coming, but we haven't lost hope. I really hope we find a way to get some money together so we can play a large amount of poker when we go to Vegas.

In non-related news, I'm exhausted. We've been housesitting for my parents and cat sitting for my sister, so we've been living in the zoo. This has made it nearly impossible to get a solid night's worth of sleep, for two nights in a row. Add to that the fact that I'm super busy at work. Tons of fun.

Catherine is kicking my ass in our WSOP pool. Damn it. Why can't one of my players win? Am I the only one who can win around here!? (i am so cool...)