CARDRUNNERS

Alright, played the 25k, had an awful table draw(Eric Seidel, Yevgeniy Timoshenko, Thomas Whalroos, Tony G, Marcus Golser, and 2 unknowns, one was real bad, one was tight enough that he wasn't *that* -EV early).

I was fairly card dead the majority of the day, guessed wrong against Tony G in one spot where he was bluffing, and Marcus Golser guessed right one hand where I was bluffing, and then I more or less just blinded down slowly before running A8 into A9 bvsb 20BB deep to bust.

Today Watts and I went into the city, went to a cactus garden and basically just got outside of the hotel for a bit. It was pretty nice after being in the hotel/casino almost every day.

I played the 5k 6max tonight and was pretty happy with my play again. I did a pretty good job of guessing right in pots I was involved in as well as pots I wasn't. I made the final 50 of 175 runners, but luck wasn't really on my side in the big pots. I lost a flip, got set over setted in a 4 bet pot(basically lost a 20-80, but Neil Channing decided to call my 4bet for 45% of his stack with kings in an attempt to not stack me) and then lost 2 kinda lame pots against 2 of the few soft spots in the field(the 5k was a fair bit tougher than the 25k I think).

I open the button with J9o to 775 at 150/300/25, SB calls, BB folds
Flop: 865cc, check check
Turn: 7c, check, I bet 1500 at 2000, SB makes it 4k, I call
River: 4, he bets 6075, I tank into the break, he clocks me, I fold a 9 face-up, he says I'm the best player hes ever seen(I doubt anyone in Lebanon has ever folded the 8 high straight on that board let alone the 9 high straight) 

I then get moved to a new table with Eric Liu on my left with like 80k chips, I'm down to like 20k at 200/400/50.

Within 3 hands, I can tell the guy to Eric's left is one of the worst players in the field, he limps UTG, Phil Laak limps the button, I raise to 1900 in the SB with AdAc, both call

Flop: KQ8r, I bet 3725 at 6400, fish calls
Turn: 6, I bet 6500 at like 12k with like 7k behind, I feel like hes the type of guy who will be like "how much is it to call? alright I can afford that much" rather than the type of guy who is like " hes allin, must be bluffin!", he raises, I calls, he has Q6 and I'm busto at 3am

Think I'm done tournaments for Monte Carlo, playing Venice in 4 days, hopefully all my rungood is saved up.

Meh, not that pissed but for some reason satellites always send me on life tilt.

Oh ya, before I forget, I met sheets and he is the fucking man. Shoutout to Sheets for being awesome.


Played the 5k euro buyin today and ran SUPER hot at table draws. I had both of the Boatman brothers who play fine, and actually seem to own fish a decent amount, but are still not like overly tough to play against, and everyone else was really awful. I have one greek friend on the EPT tour who has told me about how bad all Greek players are and before the tournament he came over to wish one of his countrymen good luck and told him I was aggressive.

Hes played 2 major pots, one where he doubled raise-calling 63o, check calling 744 flop and getting it in on a 5 turn. The other one he limpcalled and checkcalled 3 streets on J93TK to lose to my 99. This hand is undeniably one of the worst hands I've seen in live poker, or at least one of the ones thats toughest to justify(ie. some AWFUL bluffs can at least by justified, this was just insane).

4 or 5 people limp @ 50/100, Greek completes SB like 12.5k deep, I raise to 850 with AJo, folds to the Greek he raises to 3500, I jam since he like never has a hand, he snap called K9o and wins. I talked to my friend and apparently he got top 5 in an EPT and has won some smaller tournaments. I wasn't upset or anything after this, was saving my emotion for the 2500 satellite to the 25k high-roller.


The level of play in the 2500 was ridiculous, people in online satellites suck but are infinity times better than in live satellites. It wasn't that interesting, I was super card dead most of it but got chips mid way through, then kind of maintained/lost slightly to be average with like 25 left(12 seats). I got coolered in a small pot(AJs v QQ 4BB deep), then slowrolled and coolered (55 into AA 10BB deep HJ v SB)  to bust 21st. Winning the 25k entry would have been pretty nice, but I guess I'll just win the 25k instead.

I originally wanted to sell off like 30-40% action, but after seeing that 12 of these people are playing, I think I'm just gonna not sell any and swap with friends.

Today I played the 500 shootout and I thought it was just gonna be like 10 tables of 10 where winner goes on but it was actually 12 tables of 10 where 2 go on, then a semi final as well. Having the additional satelite dynamic probably makes my edge skyrocket, but I got 3rd at my starting table after a bunch of cardracking and then losing AA to QQ and 55 to AQ. Andrew(achen) made it through to the 2nd round so I went to get dinner with him and justluck(congrats by the way for winning the recent LAPT).

We got back from dinner to find out that there is a 2k euro 2 table SNG going(about the best side event possible considering that 1 table SNG's aren't allowed, and its gonna be tough to find 20 players to play much bigger(especially while the main event is still going on)).

I register and have floes, justluck, busto_soon, 2 other online guys, 3 old guys and Nelly(the rapper) at my table. I tripled up within like an orbit(2k starting stack, 25/50 blinds) stacking an old euro guy with 93 against J9 on a 953 flop in a multiway limped pot, and stacking Nelly on a 854hhh board with AhQc against 7d7h in a 3bet pot. When I was first getting into music(napster etc) I used to listen to a lot of his music since swearing was pretty freaking cool now that I knew what it was. Its pretty surprising how quickly time flies, since it seems like I've known all the swear words forever, but feel like I was listening to country grammar only a couple years ago.

I more or less coasted from there down to the final table before playing one pretty ridiculous hand.

At the final table about 1/2 of people are really good, 1/2 of people are the opposite of really good(the fish in these SNGs would likely not beat play money SNGs)

Anyways, about 8 handed, HJ-1 opens to 675@ 100/200, I 3bet the button to 1550 with KK, villain calls(hes about 5.1k deep to start the hand)

Flop: 875, check I bet 1700 @ 3400, he tanks for ages(this tournament only has 20 minute levels), he tells me he has a big pair, I clock him, he shoves, I call and hold against 33 and am up to like 11.5k

I then don't really do much, some people bust, I win some small pots, lose some blinds etc and we get down to 5 handed with probably 5 of the 8 or 9 best players in the field(me, busto_soon, floes, JJprodigy, and a random young guy who seemed to be competent)

Blinds are 300/600, payouts are 9-5-3-2-1 and I have like 11k, SB is the rando with like 8.5k, BB is Josh with like 7.5k, Busto and floes each have like 6k. It folds to me on the button with A6o, and I shove assuming that its pretty terrible for either of them to call me light with ICM factors, but at the same time sorta neglected just how bad it is for me to get called as well. I have no idea whether this is the best play, or whether raise folding, or maybe even openfolding??(f SNGs) would be alright.

Anyways, SB calls with 99 and I win and am 4 handed with 1/2 the chips in play. I ran pretty good at the final table and Floes walked me like 7 out of 8 times. I know that something as stupid as this shouldn't mean much, but I feel like folding the SB a lot against comepetent people is one of the things that is most characteristic of being  good at poker. Almost everyone is going to be on like level 0 or 1 or whatever it is and eventually be like "he knows I can fold therefore I'll push even wider this time" and I guarantee most people would have probably done something stupid/bad on one or more of the SB's which he folded and use their "image" to justify it, but he knows who I am, I know who he is, we both know that him folding a couple small blinds doesn't mean all that much.

Anyways, since we got down to like 5 handed, everyone has been playing quite good(there no like dumb lag trying to open every pot when there are no antes), theres no one calling raises to ouplay, theres no one hollywooding, in general everyone was playing pretty good and solid. I open the button 3 handed with like 21k when busto has 4k and floes has 15k in the BB to 1900 @ 400/800. Busto folds, Floes shoves KQo and loses to my AKo(I cardrack hard), I get HU with Busto and first hand he jams 4100 and I folded 6d4d, I didn't quite no equities, I assumed it was like REALLY close to breakeven if hes shoving any 2 and probably hes not quite shoving any 2. After checking, the numbers, its really damn close, a pretty clear call against any 2, a  close fold if hes shoving 90%. Next hand I hold A5 against J7o and ship the 18k euros. I think I now have enough euros to play the highroller even, so its pretty convenient that I don't have to bust my stars account.

So we left Nice, it was pretty sweet, didn't run into any real problems that are characteristic of travelling, had good food, went out one night, swam on the roof and was able to grind for 2 days. Both days went reasonably well, I had a 2nd in the Party 200 on friday, and got 5th in the 109 2r1a and won a ME seat on Sunday.

It was raining the day we came into Monte Carlo so we opted to taxi in rather than helicopter in. Our hotel room is pretty good, but our lock didn't work properly. This morning when I was sleeping, I woke up to see who I thought was ch0ppy opening the washroom. I then realized he had short hair so assumed ch0ppy got a hair cut. I then looked over and saw ch0ppy in bed looking at me.

"Excuse me"

"Ya?"

"Errr, who are you"

*pause*

"I think you have the wrong room"

 

Sweet, random people walk into our hotel room and try to use the washroom, good times. I played the 500 1r satelite to MC and busted it, and then played the main event.

My table draw was fairly tough in that no one sucked and would have been quite tough later in a tournament, but some people didn't play particularly great with the deeper stacks.

At my table I had Randalin, Luca Pagano, Greg Raymer, BFineman, David Kitai, Martin Hansen and 2 randoms(one who wasn't awful).

I felt like I was playing really good throughout the day, almost always knew where people were at, but I just had the second best hand almost every pot(which is sick considering I had KK+ 6 times in under 4.5h of play)

I kinda just won the blinds with my big pairs, missed my sets and draws, and lost the only 2 decent sized pots I played.

The first was at 100/200/0

I raised the HJ with KcKd to 525, Raymer called the button, Martin called the BB
Flop: 652ss. check, check, I bet 1100, fold, call(pretty quickly)
Turn: Js check check
River: 9 he bets 2250 at like 3875 and I fold. Villain is like 25, scandi, seems to play a lot of hands, but in my minimal experience he doesn't try to value bet super thin, probably won't turn a ton of hands into bluffs, thought it seemed like one of those folds I often talk myself out of when I'm not playing good, but thought it was alright here

Other interesting pot, Luca opens HJ-1 to 700 @ 100/200, I call 99 in the HJ

Luca is quite tight overall and apart from one hand he played today which was insanely sick(and came after this hand) I've never seen him really do anything as a bluff

Flop: 542dd, check, I bet 1200, he calls
Turn: 2, check, I feel like most players ranges here are prmarily Ax type hands, I think Luca tends to have pairs more often than not, but I feel like I should probably go for a second barrel against him. He seems to think I'm a monkey(one hand he limp caled A4s preflop and checked all 3 streets on an AK9xx board and talked me out of value betting T9 on the end)  so I thought he could reasonable have like KK here. I feel like hes not folding smaller pairs, but might if I check and bet river, so I opted to bet 2500(probably a little big in retrospect, kinda prefer 2200 or so). He calls
River: 7, he checks, I check, TT is good

Against Bfineman, one hand I opened to 800 UTG+1, got 2 callers, he squeezed to 3k, I jammed like 15-16k and he folded, and by my comments I think I (unintentionally) convinced him I had jacks

Early at 150/300/25, Luca limps UTG, I raise to 1225 UTG+1 with AcAs, button calls, BFineman makes it 4k in the small blind, Luca folds, I have like 21k and shove. I rarely try to make big folds to online guys, but I feel like if he expects me to be jamming like JJ type hands, and a nitty player limps, hes probably rarely 3betting with the intention of folding. I'm still never folding QQ, but think JJ and AK can be folded. I jam, he has KcKs, and I lose


After that ch0ppy and I went swimming in the sand bottomed pool which is very nice except for the fact it was 61 degrees. Tomorrow I probably won't do much but in a couple days they are running the 25k high roller so I'll probably end up playing that. I haven't played either of the EPT high rollers (got bored in London and flew home before the 40k buyin, and I slept in too late to register for the 25k at PCA,)so getting the opportunity to lose significant monies at an EPT should be fun.

Hey, we left San Remo and have a few days between SR and MC. We flip-flopped where we were going quite a bit but eventually decided to go to Nice. The hotel is probably the nicest I've stayed at in Europe besides the Monte Carlo Bay, but its a pretty close second.

I was really lazy in San Remo, more or less just ate and slept, and have no idea where the rest of the time went. There wasn't a gym, and the city was small enough and had enough traffic I couldn't really jog. Our hotel has a pool and a gym on the roof, so hopefully I can be slightly less lazy. It also has MUCH better internet, so I plan on doing some grinding in the few days here.

I've done 1 or 2 pro chats on FTP and I really need to learn how to reply better. On 2+2, most of my replies are some sort of trolling and when I play at a table, almost everything I say is some sort of trolling, but now when I do pro chats/ play at tables, I need to be a lot more serious. In my first pro chat a few friends starting asking questions and I would give them joking answers, but other people in the chat room took them to be inappropriate, so I guess I need to be a little more mature.

Also at a table yesterday,  I played one hand against a guy who seemed loose call stationy where I raised A7hh, button called, BB called. Flop: A65 rainbow with a heart.
Check, I checked, button checked
Turn: 3, BB bet, I call, button folded
River: A, BB checks, I shove like 2x pot
He tanks says "78?" "smells a lot like 78" "33" thinks some more and eventually folds saying like "well I know you didn't have the A"

I decided I'd troll him if I got the chance, and on a later hand opened 66 with a spade, and BB called
Flop: K52ss, check, I bet he calls
Turn: Ts, check check
River: 8s, check, I bet like 65% of pot, he thinks some, and eventually calls K7cc

And I was like "wow, thought I could make you fold a bigger spade"

As soon as I said that people started making fun of live pros and I realized that I need to smarten up a little bit.

Alright, I'm heading to the beach now I'll wrap this up and write more later.

10 down, 1 to go, today started awfully and ended on an alright note. Still finished down a decent amount, but ended up winning the 109 turbo on Stars to roughly halve my losses. At the final table I decided to make a video. Unfortunately, I won it in only 16 minutes so I doubt you guys will ever see it, maybe I could just host it on youtube or something for people who want to see how awesome I ran.


Today I busted the 5k PLO pretty early geting it in with an overpair, pair, gutshot and bdfd against top and bottom pair(was a 40/60) and got fairly somewhere in the 50 PLO and 500 LHE. I swapped with a friend whose still in the LHE, so if wins that, it will be a winning day, but I came up short in each. I also played a decent number of satelites today, but couldn't really but anything together in any of them.

Overall today, was nothing too special, I more or less just didn't have that many close spots, didn't have that many big hands, didn't take many bad beats, didn't dish many out either. Just kind of minded my own business while my stack shrunk.


The last part of my video series came out, I've got something new coming out after that which I plan on working on this week once SCOOP is over(apparently no one has done a video like this on CR, so it should be interesting). Also, I got some other pretty good news recently which I should be posting about in the next week or so. Sorry for all the secrets, I just want more people to read the blog, and if popular television has taught me anything, its that this is how to keep peoples interest.

Tomorrow I'll be playing all the SCOOPs except the 25k, and hopefully can run super hot and put me in the black.

Wow, tournament buyins sure do add up. Today I didn't even play the $5,200 o8 and I still managed to only breakeven despite over 20k in cashes.

I played a ton of the 109r hyper-turbo satelites and although I think  I can have a decent edge, I probably won't play too many in the future since I almost feel bad. The areas where I get my edge are soooo far from "good poker" that its ridiculous. I have no problem with killing these tournaments so here is how you beat them(this is assuming the buyin you are trying to satelite into is about 20-50x that of the cost of a rebuy).

1) In a poker game with an ante, you have an edge by being shortstacked. The simplest example is if you have 1 chip at a 9 handed table with a 1 chip ante, you will 9x your stack much more than 1/9th of the time(since people fold). So in these tournaments since the antes are absurdly high, doubling your stack never quite doubles your value. So what this means is you should be pushbotting a little bit tighter than what ordinary CEV would suggest
2) A lot of your value comes from the fact the addon is bigger than the rebuy. Make sure you last to the addon, and play in such a way that you minimize the expectation of what you are in for without it affecting your CEV too significantly(in other words, SINGLE REBUY, DON'T DOUBLE REBUY, this is one of the biggest mistakes people make).
3) And this is the main reason I feel bad about playing these tournaments. STALL STALL STALL. Learn how to stall such that you get the button after the addon as frequently as possible. Stalling every hand during the rebuy period is probably correct since it likely cuts down the number of hands you play which in turn means that the other tables will be spending more money per chip than your table will(since a higher % of the money your table contributes will be in addons). Also try to learn when which tables break so you can hopefully dodge the BB whenever possible(I don't know this, so the "good regs" probably have an edge over me).

My problem with these tournaments is its all a "hustle" more or less, some guys know a few more tricks than other guys(I'm sure some people have a bunch of things figured out that I didn't in the 2 times I've played them), but these are really dumb based on the fact that you can probably triple your ROI through effective stalling.

Anyways, I won 4 $2100 seats in these and broke about even in them. Across other MTTs, I won entry into the 10k again(got 3rd in another satelite to it) and bricked all the SCOOP events today. I made decent runs in 3 of the 5 events I played(22r, 2100r, 530 o8). I was like 7 from the money in the o8, had 25k chips for a good amount of the 2100r before getting it in nut flush draw against a set, binking and then having him rebink, and also finished like 100 from the money in the 22r.

Guess today wasn't a bad day considering I bricked a $6,100 tournament, tomorrow I'm likely going to just play the mid and low buyins, but may play the 5k PLO if the field looks at all soft.

Just 2 more days to go!