CARDRUNNERS

What's Your Edge

Mr. Menlo's Poker Blog

April 23, 2009

So as most of you probably know by now I won one of the first SCOOP events on pokerstars for about 100k, it was very nice to ship it, not only because the money was nice especially since I was in a downswing and it was tax season, but I feel like it really helped me regain confidence. It's weird, you never really think that you are lacking confidence when you are in a downswing, but you pretty much always are, and it takes coming out of the downswing to realize the confidence you were lacking. Since then I have been on a pretty nice heater in online cash games playing 2550-100200 NL and a little bit of PLO at the same stakes. I've won a pretty nice chunk and helped boost my online bankroll big time, which a few months ago was hurting quite a bit.

I just got home from Vegas where I played the WPT championship and as you can probably tell from the title, it didn't go nearly as well as it has been going online. I played the 5k prelim and built up a pretty nice stack with about 30 left. The blinds were 800/1600 and I had about 120k, which was most likely good enough for a top 5 stack in the tourney (I don't know for sure, because theres no leaderboard or anything, but if not top 5 very close), anyways my friend Marco Johnson (Crazy Marco) ended up playing a huge pot where he had a naked flush draw and I had AA, I lost that pot and was out. Then the main event came around and day 1 was very boring, they started us off with 100k chips and the blinds at 50100. I hate to gang up on the Bellagio because it seems tha they are receiving a lot of hate these days, but seriously get a clue, we don't care if we start off with a thousand big blinds if the rest of the tournament has a crap structure. Anyways nothing really happened the first day and I ended with 80k in chips. To start the second day things were going very well, I was playing well and hitting some hands and built my stack up to about 140k without one showdown. However, later in the day I had a massive brain fart and made a very uncharacteristic huge bluff that did not work out. Honestly I don't think that I made is that bad, but I gave the player I was trying to bluff a little too much credit in terms of being able to fold a hand (he is actually a friend of mine and a good player, I just felt that since he knew a decent amount about my game he would know that it is very very unlikely that I was bluffing in this spot), either way while I don't think it's that bad I still regret it and think it was very uneccesary. After that I ran JJ into AA in a spot where maybe I could have folded but was probably a little too steamed up from my failed bluff to do so. Overall I was pretty disapointed in the way I played in this tourney and expected a much better result. Oh well, sometimes you just don't have it I guess.

After I had cooled down for a few hours after my bustout I decided I was going to go play a cash game for a few hours and try to make a little money before my flight left the next morning. To my delight there was an amazingly juicy looking 25-50-100 game with not one person that I recognzied, which is very rare these days (not to say I'm a veteran of the live poker scene or anything, but I've been travelling around for a good 3 years now and if there isn't one single person I can recognize in a game, I like it's potential). It turns out my suspicions were confirmed and the game was amazing, everybody in the game was drinking and everybody besides me and one other guy were stuck. I started off running very hot, I flopped a set and stacked a guy, then a few hands later stacked another guy when I flopped top two. After playing for about 2 hours I was up about 35k. Shortly after that, the people at the table were getting even more drunk and for the most part even more stuck, so a lot of them were putting on multiple straddles, one pot was even 25-50-100-200-400-800. Anyways, after starting off extremely hot, I picked up KK in a pot straddled to 400, raised one limper to 2100, the big blind who was really really stuck and steaming bad, shoved in 11k, and the limper took some time and shoved in about 35k, I took a second to consider the fact that he may have aces, but then I realized that he was on about his 9th jack and coke and was probably stuck about 20k. So I called, and low and behold he had AA, sigh, pretty rigged. Anyways after that I played for a little while longer but couldn't get much going and the game stopped being straddled and got way less crazy (it was almost like everyone saw that pot and was like "wow, I can really play a 100k pot with this straddle, probably should stop doing this") I grinded out a small win of about 5k, but I have to say with how good the game was and how much I was up early, it feels more like a loss than a win.

Besides the poker part of things Vegas was a lot of fun, I ate at some really good restaurants, including this new one that I hadn't been to called Lotus of Siam, it is a really small, cheap Thai place off the strip and it is absolutely amazing, probably the best Thai food I have ever had. We also got a sick table at Tao and got pretty drunk and had a good time there. Most importantly though, I picked out a place to live for the summer and I couldn't be any happier with it, me and Zach Clark (Crazy Zachary) and Ben Palmer (ShankingYou) are staying in a penthouse apartment at Panorama Towers, we went and checked it out and we all instantly fell in love, it is truly an amazing place in a perfect location and I think it is going to make for a legendary summer both on and off the felt.

That's all I got for today, Gl everyone,
Isaac

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Apr 25, 09 03:57:49

I like how bluntly you admitted that you could have gotten away from the JJ vs AA in the bell 25k , but u cudnt fold because u were tilting as a result of your failed bluff.

there is something that must be said about a person who can admit when/why he makes mistakes. It says a lot about you.

Gl in the pokers and sorry to hear about that "oh ur up 35k ..now ur up 5k session." Thats rough. But hang in there blazer.

charliemultitable

Apr 25, 09 10:01:47

id like to check out that apartment this summer, sounds awesome.

see ya in a month or so

-tay

Taylor