The Old Seabrook

In my opinion, down swings fucking suck! This kind of a losing streak was somewhat annoying when I was multi-tabling online, but with live poker one disappointing event can take all day to lose and is absolutely crushing. So, as you may have guessed I did not win the $250 at Seabrook on Sunday. I ended up getting 8th of 52 players with 6 people paying. There was a suggestion to pay the last few spots, and I was short stacked and on a downswing so I was probably not going to object, but unfortunately there was a very smart player who had the CL and he correctly objected (paying the bubble with his chips and ability would have been a very big mistake).

I ended up playing 2 hands at the FT, both of which I lost. One where I opened MP with Q10o from MP and was called by the button, whom I had not played with either today or ever before. Flop came K47r and I cbet for a little less than ½ the pot and he called. I have 2 problems in this hand at this point I started the hand with 16-17 BBs so if I decide to double barrel I have committed a large % of my stack and since I have not played with this player today or ever I really do not have a good idea of what his peel on this flop means. With a dry flop like this I tend to assume that he has a good hand either a K or 88-QQ or possibly 65 but he was 2nd in chips at the FT and a lot of times people play too loose with a lot of chips, for instance if he is peeling things like all pocket pairs or weak 1 pair hands like 45 or 76 than I really should be firing a 2nd bullet a lot, without a good read on his style however I was planning on giving up unimproved. Turn came a J, fuck that card. I say that not because it is a bad card for me but because it gives me a tough decision, I need to decide whether to jam to bet/call or to check/fold (unless his bet is very small and I have correct odds). This is where being out of position really sucks, if he checks on this card than it’s an easy shove, if he bets strong it’s an easy fold since I don’t expect him to float a AJ or something and bet for thin value, but since I have to act first I’m stuck guessing. I decided to go with my original plan of putting him on a strong range and check/folding even with all the extra equity I picked up on the turn, this was extremely close IMO but what ultimately made my decision is that I expect him to check behind for SD value with anything worse than a K so I get a free card to win fairly often. I checked and he checked behind, FUCK I feel like a pussy for not shoving. The river bricked with a 2 or something innocuous like that and I think about bluffing for like ½ my stack which is lol bad against good players but not at Seabrook, but I decided that the bet check bet line looks like a cbet that gives up and decides to bluff the river after getting a check back on the turn, which is exactly what it is. Also the fact that it’s not really a meaningful % of his stack makes him much more likely to call (it shouldn’t but it does) (And I wanted to have 10 BBs to get my open shove on). I check and he checks back with 66 (I would swear again but I think I did that enough in the analysis for this hand). I actually like my decisions in this hand and GOD the turn was close but I’m just annoyed I hadn’t played with him before and then I could shove the turn and feel good about it.

My second and final hand had much less involved. I had just about 10 BBs and the villain from last hand open limps in EP (which he had done several times at the FT) and the CL on the button iso’d to 2.5X the BB (he had done this a couple times but he had made it a little more than 3 X previously which made me a little worried) I was in the SB with KJo and against the CL (who again seemed quite good) I know that since he is good I am getting called 100% of the time by him, but I expect the limper to fold almost every time and with his limp the BB and the antes the overlay makes it a get in with KJo I think. The limper folds and he insta calls with 88 and wins the flip. I am very happy about the way I played all day and feel like I was on my A game and if not for a couple of coolers I’d have gotten a good score with a great chance to win. I am very disappointed in the way I felt (Though I didn’t show any frustration when I lost) as usually I could care less about losing a flip or losing in general because I get that variance happens but I’m running kind of low on funds for Mississippi and will have to win money before I go or go into life nit mode to have enough to play everything that I want to play there. But still, the fact that brought up “man I wish I won that flip” like 5 times on the way home is stupid and it’s definitely showing the signs of the soul crushing factor in live poker. I plan on doing some study this week since bad players sit around bitching about variance and good players do the only 2 things in their control which are getting better and putting in more volume.

On a lighter note, me and Finch met up with our friends Sarah and Jimmy to go see Bad Teacher last night, which had moments of mild entertainment but in general was pretty horrible. Jason Segel and Camron Diaz saved only decent parts of the movie and had they tried to get other people for those roles I think the whole movie would have been an abomination. BTW I am pretty easy to entertain when it comes to movies so if you are at all a tough movie critic I am pretty confident you will hate this movie.

I believe that I will be able to play 9 hole of golf today after work, so that should be fun and then maybe when I am done I will actually go to the gym since I spent the weekend eating fried food and sitting on my ass 12 hours a day (probably a bad start to getting back into shape). I am going to try to get some work outs in each week during my last 2 weeks on coop but I will definitely be doing I good job of this once coop is over up until my trip to Mississippi since it is clear that a healthy life style is tremendously important to thinking clearly and having stamina to play 10-14 hours of poker every day. If you are of the impression that stamina isn’t important in a poker tournament than I suggest you try sitting down for 14 hours with a 10 minute breaks every few hours where you are constantly paying attention to the table and thinking on a high level.