CARDRUNNERS

So I think it will be therapeutic to blog about my last few days, get it out of my system, then focus on all the rest of the good stuff i've got left this summer.  I took it easy last night to just try to unwind a bit, and I woke up today feeling well rested and confident.  It's amazing how sometimes lack of sleep and a good routine can contribute to a bad mood and/or bad results!

So a few days ago I played the 5k NLHE tourney.  I didn't really know what to expect from this tournament, as I hadn't played a live tournament since Sept 07 and actually probably hadn't played a tournament in general since then.  I'm not going to go over my tournament strategy in depth here, but it's safe to say I've changed the way I play them a lot over the past few years.  I made some really dumb mistakes a couple years ago, a few times with huge chip stacks fairly deep in events.  I'm sure I cost myself tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars in equity, and I'm not going to make one of those again.  I should clarify that "mistake" and "bluff" are not necessarily synonymous here, more like "mistake" and "bluff against either a bad player who can't fold top pair or against a good tournament player who will never fold anything that beats TPTK."

So I head over to the Rio on Wednesday to take my seat around 1155.  My table looks fairly decent.  Seated across the table is Jennifer Tilly, who I might add looks absolutely fabulous for being I THINK 47.  Wow.  Sorry, I digress.  A woman who I think is Maureen Feduniak (or something like that) is sitting next to her, Antonio Esfandiari is next to her, Eddie from NYC next to him, Burt Butan, Me, some unknown older gentleman, Shankar Pilai, an unknown online kid, and then maybe one other person round out the table.  Not a bad lineup for me, as there is no one at the table that i'm really worried about besides Antonio, who I know quite well and have found he actually plays me pretty straightforwardly.

As an aside, it's always nice to have Antonio at the table.  He really makes live poker much more fun.  It's so boring to sit around and play 25 hands per hour, but when you can bs with people around you it's only mildly boring.

Interesting hand from early in the tourney.  I'm playing very tight the first 3 oribits as literally my best hand was A2o which I raised on the button and took it down.  I look down at AA in the SB when everyone but one limper has folded.  The limper is Shankar who is a pretty good player so if I raise he pretty much knows I have 88-AA or AQ+ most of the time, which isn't good when I really have no idea what he has.  I decide to just complete, keep the mediocre BB in the hand, and hope to have something good happen.  The flop comes a beautiful AdTd8x.  At this point I'm trying to figure out how I can win a big pot, and I also would like to show my aces down.  I feel like when you are playing live poker and you show down a hand that no one at the table thinks you could possibly have had, it really helps your image and people fold to you more.  So I check, old guy checks, and much to my dismay, Shankar checks.

The turn brings another 8, which completes the flush.  At this point, I think no one has much, and it looks strong if I bet here into this fairly scary board.  I just have to hope the BB has an 8 or shankar checked back an ace (unlikely).  I check again, BB bets 400 into 600, and Shankar folds.  At this point I think the guy might actually have an 8, so I just bump it up to 1600.  He calls quickly and we see a river.  River is a blank, and I think for like 60 seconds before betting 2600.  Live players ALWAYS call you when you think for awhile, I don't think I've ever successfully bluffed a live player after tanking it for awhile.  My theory is that when you are thinking, they are runnign through the hands that they can beat in their head.  If you think long enough, you can always find hands that you beat.  The guy quickly calls and shows ATo.  I can't believe we got all that money in with a possible flush and trips out there.

Not a ton happens for the rest of this table.  I actually can't remember how I got short stacked.  I folded TxTy on 7893 3 club board to Tilly when I reraised her minraise UTG (she was splashing around a lot), and she led for 1k on flop, and 2500 on turn, leaving herself with like 4k behind.  I must have lost some other big hand because I was down to 6k when I limp raised QQ UTG+1 at 100-200 25 ante.  I got it all in vs JJ and the board came a straight so we chopped.  Yum.

I picked up one additional pot before the table broke, and my stack was probably at 7500 or so at this point.  I move to this new table and the only guy I know is Genius28 (Chris Lee) with a big stack.  Thankfully I'm on his left, and even if I had a bigger stack it wouldn't be the worst table draw in the world, as Chris is smart enough to avoid the one known good player at a table of 8 unknowns, especially out of position.

I picked up the blinds once at this table, and moved my stack up to about 8k, when the following hand comes up.  At this table there was a ton of limping going on.  I'd say 4 people limped at 100-200 25 and i limped on the cutoff with A8cc.  7 people (!!!) saw the flop of Jc Tc 3x.  This was a great flop for me to gamble with, given that I'm just about even money with any made hand that calls me, I have tons of fold equity, and there's a lot of dead money in the pot.  It's checked to Chris who bets 1200 into the 2k something pot.  I think for a bit and push all in, and it's folded back to Chris, who clearly isn't happy.  He knows I'm not messing around here given 7 people saw this flop, but he has KQo so he shrugs and eventually calls.  This is a great hand for me to be against.  The board bricks off and I more than double up.

That was the last hand before the break, and this young kid from my table came up to me and was talking about something (i think CR related) during the break.  He seemed a little nervous about playing live/being in the tourney, but seemed like he probably was a decent player.  I didn't really take too much away from it but it's always nice to know a little more information about your opponents.  He definitely knew who I was, and when people know who I am, they generally don't like to fold to me.

So I pick up JTs in the Cutoff the first hand back.  It's 150-300 with a 25 ante at this point.  I raise it up to 925, fresh off the break and my newfound ~17k stack.  I had noticed that this young kid that I just spoke of was taking an inordinate amount of time on a few decisions earlier, but I always give people the benefit of the doubt at first.  He took like 2 minutes, then decided to reraise me to 2800.  I was temped to call here as there was a lot of dead money in the pot and I had a pretty decent hand, but I just folded because I didn't really have a read on this player and really had no idea what I'd do should I flop top pair.

The next hand I pick up AQcc from the hijack.  It's folded to me and I make it 925 again.  This kid thinks again for like 1 minute, then calls from the button.  The flop comes down Ad 5d 2c, giving me TP second kicker and a backdoor flush draw.  This is gold against this kid who I now am starting to suspect either doesn't have much of a clue, or just thinks that I never have anything so he should be playing back at me a lot (which isn't completely inaccurate, I suppose).  I also know he would have reraised AK in this spot, so I really can only be worried about sets or maybe A5 or A2 suited, although I don't know if he'd play those.

I bet 1500 into the 2400 pot after a little bit of thought.  I bet a little smaller than I sometimes would because I wanted to give this guy a little more room to splash around.  He thinks for like 45 seconds, and counts out a raise.  At this point I'm thinking of the Mirage obviously, I'm happy to get this in when he raises.  He makes it 5500, or a 4k raise.

I hem and haw and count my chips and all that BS stuff that live pros are good at (plus it makes you look/feel cool).  I then shove all in for what amounts to a little less than 10k more (I might have had my stack sizes wrong, it was something like 9k more for him to call).

He is clearly upset and doesn't know what to do.  This is a mark of a bad poker player, I should add.  When you make a raise on someone and then genuinely don't know what to do, you probably shouldn't have raised them in the first place.  Like let's say you have AT or AJ in this spot.  Raising makes no sense if you aren't automatically shipping your money in the pot when the guy shoves in.  Same goes for a flush draw, air, etc., you **generally** want to know what you are going to do given his reaction to your raise.  Just a tip from the top.

So the floor gets called over cause this kid is tanking it forever.  At this point I don't know what to root for, as it really depends on what he holds.  If he has a pair and a flush draw or something and just doesn't know if he's supposed to call (which is my read), then I'm kinda hoping he folds.  However, I think it's possible he butchered AJ or AT, so I don't even know what to think.  The whole table was pissed at this kid as he was taking forever.  Finally, with like 10 seconds left, he calls, and tables 4c4s, for a pair plus a gutshot draw.

The whole table gasps actually.  I'm not even sure if this is the right call, as it's probably closer than everyone else thought given that he has 6 clean outs with 2 cards to come.  It's just a piss poor play, at any rate, because now he's getting it in ultra bad for a 35k pot when the average stack is 15k.  So naturally a 3 binks off on the turn and I go home crying.  I took it like a dude though and just shook his hand and told people good game.  I'll never get mad at the tables or call someone out for making a bad play, I think it's rude and inappropriate (i'd rather call someone out on my blog heheheh).

So I take the walk of shame back to the cab stand and come home and sulk for a bit.  BUT, good news, the 10k HU is on Friday so I have something to look forward to.

In between wed/fri, I went out to eat at Naked Fish (yum), ate some great Indian food with Emil, Jay, and Brian (flawless victory), went out till 5am weds night, got some work done, and tried to find a new house to move into (our house sucks).

So I get to the Rio on Friday for the tourney.  I realize I lost my seat card 30 seconds before the cards are dealt.  I'm panicking but the floor guy helped me out and I got a new one.  I find my seat and find out that I get to play Flawless_Victory, a very good online player, in the first round.  I run well at seat draws!

In some ways I was happy to play flawless.  I played my/his good friend Emil in the FTP 25k HU tourney last month.  Emil completely outplayed me, and I felt like my play was borderline bad.  I did review our hh's and watched the rest of his matches that day to get a better idea of what I was doing wrong, which I think helped.  I don't like to lose at anything, and I especially hate the fact that someone is better at me at something that I've worked hard at.  Anyway, I was happy to play a good player like flawless because I know beating him would (in my own mind) earn me some respect I feel I rightfully lost from Emil and Co.

We started off the match pretty straightforwardly.  Lots of smallish raises, limping, etc.  Just solid play for the first 10 minutes or so.  Flawless started to 3bet a little bit more, and just started to get very active in general.  It didn't help that I wasn't making any hands whatsoever.

Next thing I know, I'm down 25k to 15k, and I can somehow "feel" flawless starting to apply more pressure.  I know I would be doing exactly that had I been in his seat.  At this point, I know I have to make a stand.  It doesn't mean I have to start going crazy with 3bets or wreckless, but I simply can't let him push me around and as he's extremely likely to be doing.

The first interesting hand comes up.  He raises min to 600 at 100-300 blinds.  I call with J7cc, and we see a flop.  The flop comes down 4h5h6c, and I check to him.  He cbets, as he has done about 80% of hands thus far.  His cbet of 1k was fairly large in relation to the pot, though.  I thought for about 15 seconds and made it 2500.  I've got 2 overs, a mediocre draw, and if he calls here, I don't think he's going to like calling a bet on the turn unless he's got a very very strong hand.  He took about 1 minute and finally called. 

The turn brings a decent Kh.  It wasn't likely to help his 7x type hands, and i can credibly represent a flush.  I think for probably a minute, and bet 3500.  I'm pretty scared at this point because I think I"m going to have to barrel on the river (i'll have 9k left with about a 13k pot, which I think would fold out anything but most flushes.  He thinks for probably a minute, says nice hand, and mucks.  I showed the bluff because I thought it was important for him to know that I was willing to put my tournament on the line bluffing/semi bluffing/etc, not because I wanted him to call me light or something, but I thought that if he knew I might 4bet bluff, or play back at him often with nothing, he'd be more likely to play me straightforwardly (which as an aside, is exactly what happened to me when I played Emil last month).

I really started to open up at this point.  I 3bet him quite a few times, getting folds most of them.  He 3bet me a lot too, and i actually 4bet him twice, once with nothing, once with AKo.  The match was back to even, and then the following hand came up.

He raises, I call with XYs (i don't even remember what I had), and the flop is T 2 6 (something like that, Ten was the top card).  He bets 1k, I make it 2500 again with air, he makes it 4k, and I just KNOW he is full of shit.  I can't see what made hand he is doing this with, maybe AT or an overpair, but unless he thinks I'm likely to shove with air (which i suppose is possible given how I'm playing), I think he'd likely just slowplay most big hands.  I made it 2500ish more with air, and he folded.

I ground him down to 9400 just by reraising, cbetting flops, etc, nothing but standard HU play.  He probably didn't catch many cards at this point, which makes it hard to do anything with a medium, but not short stack.

The blinds are at 300-600 at this point and he ships it in from the SB.  I look down at A8o and snap call.  He has K5o and I'm in good shape.  The turn gave him a king though so we are now dead even.  Ugh, poker.

So he wins a few pots and has a 21 to 19k chip lead on me.  He's very very active at this point, and I realize I'm going to have to make a stand otherwise I'm in trouble.  I minraise K2o on the button, the blinds are at 400-800 by now.  He calls, and the flop is KT4 rainbow.  I bet 2k into the 3200 pot, praying for action.  He announces all in, and I snap call.  I think he looked a little surprised, and knew he was in trouble.  He tabled Q9o for the gutshot draw, and I had him in good shape.  The turn card was a jack which filled his straight, and I was sent home.  Tough luck.

I thought I played well, but you can't win em all.  Good luck to Brian as he is a very good player and he won his next two matches, as did Jay, Emil, and some of my other friends.  I hope one of them takes it down.

No more sob stories for the rest of the summer.  My mom and Aunt are in town tonight and tomorrow, we are seeing Love tomorrow and getting some dinner at Japonais.

Taylor

Ugh, what a day.  I was going to write a really emo blog post about last night's meal because we had a nice group of ppl including David Benefield, but I'm too pissed off and tired to mock him.  If I was writing it, it'd say: "Last night I had a delicious meal at my favorite sushi place Naked Fish.  We had just the right amount of yummy tuna, sushi, and some incredible fried ice cream/friend bananas.  I ate 1297.3 calories, but I'm still really cute and young and i bought a great house and i'm the man.  I'm going to get up tomorrow morning and run 20 sprints for 30 minutes, throw up, then weigh myself, I hope I am 205.  - David Benefield).  Just kidding, sorry, i love your blog and am jealous that you show more emotion in it than I do.

So today I headed over to the Bellagio to get the money that I've had in an account there for awhile.  They woudln't let me send it home because they didn't think I played there or something, so I had to just leave it there to play it.  I had 19500 and I took it to the poker tables ready to take on the world.

The game was fairly bad for live poker standards.  There were a few live nits, some mediocre donks that didn't have a lot of chips in front of them, David Pham, some asian tourney pro who acts really confident which makes me scared sometimes, and then a few random decent players.  This one live pro was annoying the shit out of me.  He took a few very mild beats and wouldn't shut the hell up.  He claimed that all the young kids are way too aggressive and all he does is slowplay hands heads up and trap them.  He went on to say he has won 9 of 10 satellites this year when he gets heads up and he never raises the button, after all, "I limp 72o and I limp Aces, you never know what i have."  I failed to point out to him that it's much more likely that you have a 72o type hand than aces, so in actuality i have a good idea of the type of hand you are likely to hold when you limp the button.  The only time he lost heads up was when he got a cooler, he had pocket sixes and the other guy had pocket Jacks. (???)  I finally asked him if he gave lessons because he kept mention his incredible heads up results.  He said he didn't give lessons.

So some very donkish Euro guy who wasn't that aggressive but was really loose raised my button open of 200 to 500.  I had 55 and i figured he had a pretty big hand so obviously i called.  The flop came down Ace high and he literally bet 1k instantly.  At this point i hadnt been out of line much at all and i figured this guy was capable of folding TT-KK on the ace high flop, so i made it 3k after some thought.  Thinking about it now, there's probably no reason to be bluffing a donk who obviously will never fold an ace and might not even fold a big pair, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.  He thinks for a few moments and shoves all in, and i insta muck.  The jackass live pro goes "OH MY GOD THAT WAS SUCH A BAD RAISE, I KNEW YOU HAD NOTHING."  I look at him and go "well don't know you know everything."  He was probably just pissed at me for asking him about coaching.  If it wasn't impossible to go on tilt playing live poker compared to playing online, I'd definltely have been on tilt here.  Instead I put my headphones on and thought about how depressed I was.

Later some youngish kid that didn't look like an online player sat down.  He seemed loose and medicore after playing with him for 20 minutes when the following hand came up.  The loose confident asian pro raises to 200, he reraised to 700, and I had AKo on the button.  I had 15k, confident guy covers, and the new player seemed to have about 5500.  I really wasn't sure exactly what to do here, online I would sometimes 4bet smallish and get it in vs the shorter stack, but being deep against the pro and likely getting called with awkward stacks remaining vs the other guy didn't seem like good options with my hand fairly face up.  I just called and saw a flop with only the guy who made it 700.

He bets 1200 on a K33 flop.  At this point I'm liking my hand, but i see no point in raising here.  I call and the turn comes a 2.  He bets 1500, and I'm really starting to think he actually likes his hand, which means he likely has a king or AA.  Whatever, I call, i have TPTK.  River brings some blank, and he basically insta shoves.  I'm almost positive he likes his hand here, which doesn't seem like a good thing for me.  I ask and it's only 2700 so I gotta call.  He tables TT and I drag the pot.  Nice.

Last meaningful hand of the day.  A lpayer who looks like he plays online and seems pretty good raises to 200 from the cutoff.  He's pretty active so I figure i'll take it down here with AQs on the button.  He thinks for a bit and calls, he has about a 6k stack I would estimate.  Flop comes a QdTdx.  I think and bet 1k, he shoves all his chips in.  I call and he has TT, pretty coolerish.

In the end I lost about 12k.  It was nice to get to meet some CR members at the tables, but other then that, it kidna sucked.  I met some nice guys at the tables, at least.

I'm gonna go eat some pizza, later.

taylor

I've been giving live updates via text at twitter for the past few days.  I'm not sure how much I like it, but it's an effective way to basically give facebook status updates wherever I am.  I'm just not sure why people should care where I am, but then again, I'm not sure people should care what I have to say in my diary i mean blog.  The URL there is www.twitter.com/taylorcaby

I haven't played any poker out here yet and I am seriously itching to.  I wired out a lot of money over to the Rio so I could play in as big of games as I want out here (maybe no higher than 300-600 comfortably, I guess), just in case the action is big and soft.  I'd really like to play in Bobby's room this summer, but we'll see if I get the chance.  After running into Phil Galfond at the Rio the other day and hearing him talk about how he wants to win a bracelet and is playing a lot of events to try to do it, I really sort of want to win one myself.  These tourneys are a huge luckfest, to a point, but it would really be an awesome accomplishment to win one.  It'd be really cool to look back in 10-20 years when all is said and done with my poker career and show my family my WSOP bracelet.  It would be a great memory to have, and who am I kidding, the money isn't bad either :).

The last two days we've been holed up in a conference room at the Hard Rock.  We got a lot of great work accomplished and have some cool things coming up at CR.  I'm happy because over the next 1-2 months my primary focus is improving the content at CR, something that I feel I rarely get to work on.  We've had so many freaking things going on that I feel like I'm just being pulled in ten different directions at once.  It's not like I'm disgruntled or feel like I can't handle it, it's just that I think I haven't been able to contribute to the content at CR lately, and let's face it, the content is what got us to where we are today.   I recommend you visit the thread on the admin>feedback forum to give your input, or simply PM me.  It's my job to make sure you aren't disappointed.

I'm just itching to get out and play some more poker.  I did get to play about an hour of HU PLO yesterday with Brian T sweating me.  I'm really impressed with Brian's Omaha game.  He talked about probably 5 concepts I've never even heard of, and it was like a light bulb just went off in my head.  I'd really like to be a winner at 10-20 HU PLO, as it's a fun game and you can really make a lot of money in the games these days.  Sadly, I doubt I'll be able to put in enough hands to really be a great PLO player.

Today we've got a few more meetings, then I have all day tomorrow booked for something I'm working on with FTP.  I'll be playing events as soon as possible after that, and I think I'm going to have my gf come out this weekend.  Congrats to CR Pro Devin Porter for getting 3rd in the 6max event.  Devin's a great guy and I'm happy to have him making MTT vids at CR.

Gl everyone,

Taylor