In a brilliant move the company I work for has decided to change all System Managers to an "exempt" status meaning we are no longer eligible for overtime pay. We were already considered partially "exempt" as we were paid straight time for any hours worked over 48 as opposed to the normal time and a half over 40. They have made this retroactive through the last pay period so I am getting fucked out of 43 hours of pay since I worked so many hours two weeks ago. I'm too pissed to write or even think about poker right now.
The family and I are heading to Branson, MO for the Thanksgiving holidays. As this is the case there will be no updates until my return on the 28th.
See how easy it was for me to give you, the reader, an update as to the fact the I will not be updating this site for a week. Yet the company I work for was to chicken shit to afford me the same courtesy about my pay until after I saw my paycheck.
Monday, November 22, 2004
Sunday, November 21, 2004
2 Down 2 To Go
The Poker Stars and one of my two Party bonuses are now cleared. That leaves one Party Poker and one Paradise to go.
I downloaded and tried out the PlayerView program last night. I opened up two Party tables and began configuring the PlayerView interface to suit my needs. I have to admit I wasn't paying very much attention to the tables and dropped 25BB's between the two of them within an hour. After settling down with the program in place I found that playing two tables was much easier than it used to be when I would be running the Poker Tracker game time windows. In the past between hands I would spend time updating the windows or looking over stats but with the relevant data superimposed directly onto the tables I had enough free time to open up a third table.
This, as it turned out, was a very profitable event. The third table was bringing me the cards and they were holding up. While I continued to tread water or dip down at the other tables I played during the night this one kept handing me the goods. I was able to amass 47.5BB's in 2 hours at this table and that saved me from what would have been a 35BB loss. Three tables seemed as manageable as two while using PlayerView so I'll continue playing them for the time being.
With the bonuses cleared having the 300BB's for a move up in levels will be here even earlier than I anticipated.
I downloaded and tried out the PlayerView program last night. I opened up two Party tables and began configuring the PlayerView interface to suit my needs. I have to admit I wasn't paying very much attention to the tables and dropped 25BB's between the two of them within an hour. After settling down with the program in place I found that playing two tables was much easier than it used to be when I would be running the Poker Tracker game time windows. In the past between hands I would spend time updating the windows or looking over stats but with the relevant data superimposed directly onto the tables I had enough free time to open up a third table.
This, as it turned out, was a very profitable event. The third table was bringing me the cards and they were holding up. While I continued to tread water or dip down at the other tables I played during the night this one kept handing me the goods. I was able to amass 47.5BB's in 2 hours at this table and that saved me from what would have been a 35BB loss. Three tables seemed as manageable as two while using PlayerView so I'll continue playing them for the time being.
With the bonuses cleared having the 300BB's for a move up in levels will be here even earlier than I anticipated.
Friday, November 19, 2004
Back To Business
The massive work marathon is complete, well has been for a few days, and things are finally getting back to normal. Several items are floating around in my cavernous noggin so I'll just spew forth a few quick thoughts for today.
I believe its time for Absolute Poker and I to part ways for a while. They have done yet another software update and the memory leak problem I've detailed in the past has reared its ugly head again. Muti-tabling has become impossible as my laptop bogs down in the quagmire of FPU overload. They have also in their infinite wisdom decided to start charging a $1 juice for the $5 multi-table tournaments. I enjoyed playing these but I can find others at Poker Stars and UltimateBet that are only charging .50. I know half a dollar isn't much in the grand scheme of things but it's the principal of the matter. I didn't like it when they did it to the single table tourneys and I like it even less when it's the multi-table variety. The poker league ends on December 3rd so I'll play till then and withdraw my funds.
Being the good little bonus whore I've taken advantage of the Poker Stars, and Party Poker reload bonuses. I will also be accepting the new player sign on bonus at Paradise Poker tonight in preparation for the Grublog Classic II on Sunday night. This means my play will be moving from site to site for a few weeks until everything is cleared. With the OIC Challenge at The Gaming Club I put my $50 down and played for one night. I made a few bucks but with all the bonus opportunities I have to clear it's just -EV to continue with it.
Poker Stars has been my site of choice for the last few nights and its been a very, very pleasant experience. The $10 SNG's are very good and with the ability to import the data into Poker Tracker this has become my new SNG site replacing Absolute. The ring games have also been good. I'm playing the 1/2 level and I'm witnessing the same number of people seeing the flop as at Party, but they are much more likely to abandon their hand at or before the river. This makes for more thought out play in my opinion and table image can work to your advantage in much greater ways. In the two days I've been playing I've posted a 41.5 and 21.25BB profit respectively. I almost hate to leave and clear the Party Poker bonus but I can't let that free money go to waste.
Speaking of profits my bankroll will be healthy enough in the next few weeks for a move to 2/4. I'm really looking forward to this. I've really seen the bankroll grow recently and separating my rolls out to separate entities has really helped me focus on a bigger picture of overall play improvement.
On a final note I had a fellow blogger join in on one of my tables last night. The Poker Boss sat down and it was nice to feel like I had a comrade at arms joining me in the battle. We didn't end up in too many hands together and before I left he was doing well at holding his own. If you get a chance go check him out. I'm sure he has more readers than I do as the traffic here is rather anemic but I'll give him the mention anyway.
I believe its time for Absolute Poker and I to part ways for a while. They have done yet another software update and the memory leak problem I've detailed in the past has reared its ugly head again. Muti-tabling has become impossible as my laptop bogs down in the quagmire of FPU overload. They have also in their infinite wisdom decided to start charging a $1 juice for the $5 multi-table tournaments. I enjoyed playing these but I can find others at Poker Stars and UltimateBet that are only charging .50. I know half a dollar isn't much in the grand scheme of things but it's the principal of the matter. I didn't like it when they did it to the single table tourneys and I like it even less when it's the multi-table variety. The poker league ends on December 3rd so I'll play till then and withdraw my funds.
Being the good little bonus whore I've taken advantage of the Poker Stars, and Party Poker reload bonuses. I will also be accepting the new player sign on bonus at Paradise Poker tonight in preparation for the Grublog Classic II on Sunday night. This means my play will be moving from site to site for a few weeks until everything is cleared. With the OIC Challenge at The Gaming Club I put my $50 down and played for one night. I made a few bucks but with all the bonus opportunities I have to clear it's just -EV to continue with it.
Poker Stars has been my site of choice for the last few nights and its been a very, very pleasant experience. The $10 SNG's are very good and with the ability to import the data into Poker Tracker this has become my new SNG site replacing Absolute. The ring games have also been good. I'm playing the 1/2 level and I'm witnessing the same number of people seeing the flop as at Party, but they are much more likely to abandon their hand at or before the river. This makes for more thought out play in my opinion and table image can work to your advantage in much greater ways. In the two days I've been playing I've posted a 41.5 and 21.25BB profit respectively. I almost hate to leave and clear the Party Poker bonus but I can't let that free money go to waste.
Speaking of profits my bankroll will be healthy enough in the next few weeks for a move to 2/4. I'm really looking forward to this. I've really seen the bankroll grow recently and separating my rolls out to separate entities has really helped me focus on a bigger picture of overall play improvement.
On a final note I had a fellow blogger join in on one of my tables last night. The Poker Boss sat down and it was nice to feel like I had a comrade at arms joining me in the battle. We didn't end up in too many hands together and before I left he was doing well at holding his own. If you get a chance go check him out. I'm sure he has more readers than I do as the traffic here is rather anemic but I'll give him the mention anyway.
Friday, November 12, 2004
Day 6 Hour 80
The work marathon continues....
all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy .....
all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy all work and no play makes grind a dull boy .....
Monday, November 08, 2004
A Little Pokah'
Played a little last night after getting home from work. I finished 1st and 2nd in the two sit-n-go's I played and then I saw a WSOP freeroll satellite was starting up so I hoped on. The first 5 finishers in this tournament get an entry into the end of the month tournament. This tournament then pays out WSOP prize packages.
1200 people were signed up and I had an opportunity to triple up very early which then led to folding hand after hand for 40 minutes. I went into the first break with 4600 chips, up from the original 1500. There were only 371 players left so the action was coming fast and furious.
During the second round with blinds at 200/400 I had built up a nice chip stack of 22,500. I found the Hilton sisters in late position and when several people called before me I bet the pot of 2100. An early limper was my only caller and the flop came 66J. EP led out with 3,000 and I instantly put him on a J. I raised enough to just about put him all in and he pushed all in. I called and he showed me his 6cJc, my Q never came. I can't fathom why he even limped in with that hand, let alone called a big raise, but the flop was as perfect as he could get and I was down to 8,600.
When the second break came I had blinded down to 7,395 and 116 players were left.
I played what I believe to be my best tournament ever. Everything seemed to click and I managed to play a nice tight/aggressive strategy. Having said that I did not make the top five. I busted out in 82nd position. After building back up to 17,000 chips I ran into a player who slowplayed his pocket A's. The player in question would bet with the smallest pair on the flop so when I had top pair I pushed him and we became pot committed. I had him covered by about 3,000 but after losing that hand the blinds were to big for me to sustain anything. I pushed in the next hand and just missed my flush.
I left the tourney feeling very good and happy with my play. Take away the two mistakes and I played better than any other time, even the win and money finishes.
1200 people were signed up and I had an opportunity to triple up very early which then led to folding hand after hand for 40 minutes. I went into the first break with 4600 chips, up from the original 1500. There were only 371 players left so the action was coming fast and furious.
During the second round with blinds at 200/400 I had built up a nice chip stack of 22,500. I found the Hilton sisters in late position and when several people called before me I bet the pot of 2100. An early limper was my only caller and the flop came 66J. EP led out with 3,000 and I instantly put him on a J. I raised enough to just about put him all in and he pushed all in. I called and he showed me his 6cJc, my Q never came. I can't fathom why he even limped in with that hand, let alone called a big raise, but the flop was as perfect as he could get and I was down to 8,600.
When the second break came I had blinded down to 7,395 and 116 players were left.
I played what I believe to be my best tournament ever. Everything seemed to click and I managed to play a nice tight/aggressive strategy. Having said that I did not make the top five. I busted out in 82nd position. After building back up to 17,000 chips I ran into a player who slowplayed his pocket A's. The player in question would bet with the smallest pair on the flop so when I had top pair I pushed him and we became pot committed. I had him covered by about 3,000 but after losing that hand the blinds were to big for me to sustain anything. I pushed in the next hand and just missed my flush.
I left the tourney feeling very good and happy with my play. Take away the two mistakes and I played better than any other time, even the win and money finishes.
Saturday, November 06, 2004
I've never posted twice in one day but I finally got around to checking out Daniel Negreanu's newly redesigned Full Contact Poker and he's added a poker blog to the other items at his site. Not a lot of actual poker content yet but he does talk about two days of play. In one sitting he dropped $140,000. It's nice to know even top pros lose sometimes. But Daniel the next time you feel like dropping that kind of cash just send me a check. I could just about pay off my house with that.
128 hours in 10 days
That is my work schedule for the next ten days starting today. That includes having Tuesday off so other than maybe Sunday and Monday night I won't be playing much poker for the next week. I was happy to see that Iggy has posted a large list of new blogs, at least I'll be able to read about poker at work to kill some of the time. I'm also going to work on a post about tracking ones bankroll and I should have time to finish up that Hellmuth DVD series I started on way back when.
Last night was the first PokerSourceOnline.com Poker League tournament. I managed a 12th place finish. Only 41 people signed up so it's not that impressive. The play was excruciatingly tight and no one wanted to give up anything. I don't think the first person was even eliminated until we were 45 minutes in. I got caught with my hand in the cookie jar a few times while blind stealing and I wasn't able to build up anything. Good experience though and I'll know what to expect next week. I'm going to try to play from work so we'll see how that goes.
Last night was the first PokerSourceOnline.com Poker League tournament. I managed a 12th place finish. Only 41 people signed up so it's not that impressive. The play was excruciatingly tight and no one wanted to give up anything. I don't think the first person was even eliminated until we were 45 minutes in. I got caught with my hand in the cookie jar a few times while blind stealing and I wasn't able to build up anything. Good experience though and I'll know what to expect next week. I'm going to try to play from work so we'll see how that goes.
Friday, November 05, 2004
Well There You Are
I didn't fall off the face of the earth, just took a few days off. I've kept playing poker and the limit game is coming along nicely. With the bankroll building and my recent devotion to Multi and Single table tournaments growing I've decided to split my bankroll up.
I believe that my tournament play has gotten to a point where it should be self sustainable. With that in mind, I decided to break my bankroll into three separate entities. I have the main ring game bankroll, a sit-n-go bankroll, and a multi table tournament bankroll. I have no fear of my ring game bankroll running dry but if either of my tournament rolls do, then I will stop playing those games until I have had a chance to fully analyze why it happened and have padded the ring bankroll enough to bleed some funds off.
Just as I instituted this change in bankrolls I decided to move my sit-n-go play from Absolute to Ultimatebet. That decision was a mistake. In the first 10 I played I only managed a third place finish three times. This really cut into my sit-n-go roll and with that I'm going back to Absolute where I know I can beat the games. I'm not saying that the Ultimate games aren't beatable. In all reality if I wanted to spend a few weeks getting the experience in I'm quite sure I could have success, I just don't feel the need to put the effort in yet since I already have games I can beat. Not exactly "growing the skill set" but when I can pad the roll a bit I'll try branching out again.
On the Multi table front I'm breaking close to even but down a little. I've made the money in a few but only enough to barely cover the buyins for those particular events. I'm stuck at a point where I can't seem to break through the first payout level. Last night was a huge disaster as I didn't even make it past the first break in either of the tournaments I played in. I really need a big score before the end of the month so I can actually do things during the cruise excursions. Maybe I'm putting too much pressure on myself and that's leading to performance anxiety. It all comes back to attitude and "Mr. Anonymous" is right again. Mr. Anonymous isn't really anonymous anymore as the author of the comment has revealed himself. It's just more fun to keep referring to him that way.
The ring games are coming along nicely. I think some players are starting to avoid me though. I've been running pretty wild lately and one player who I like to play against because he's a rock, and thus, predictable, has gotten the habit of leaving when I sit down. It might be coincidence but my over inflated ego wants to believe that I scare him, or at the least I'm taking away his action. I had the opportunity to play during the daytime hours on Wednesday for the first time. I'm still playing at UltimateBet to clear the bonus which should be accomplished this week. I have to say daytime play there sucks. The players were so incredibly tight that I couldn't get any action except on the kill games. On these games every time their was a kill the action was so overly aggressive it wasn't worth the money to be in without a monster. This type of play really negates my normal style so I had to leave with a loss and my tail between my legs. Fortunately after busting out of the tournaments last night the games were back to normal and I was able to recoup.
I was happy to hear that a live blogger tournament has been planned. I was unhappy to read the date it was being played on. That is the same day we are due to arrive back in San Diego so I won't be able to attend. I probably wouldn't be able to attend anyway but at least now I have a good excuse.
I believe that my tournament play has gotten to a point where it should be self sustainable. With that in mind, I decided to break my bankroll into three separate entities. I have the main ring game bankroll, a sit-n-go bankroll, and a multi table tournament bankroll. I have no fear of my ring game bankroll running dry but if either of my tournament rolls do, then I will stop playing those games until I have had a chance to fully analyze why it happened and have padded the ring bankroll enough to bleed some funds off.
Just as I instituted this change in bankrolls I decided to move my sit-n-go play from Absolute to Ultimatebet. That decision was a mistake. In the first 10 I played I only managed a third place finish three times. This really cut into my sit-n-go roll and with that I'm going back to Absolute where I know I can beat the games. I'm not saying that the Ultimate games aren't beatable. In all reality if I wanted to spend a few weeks getting the experience in I'm quite sure I could have success, I just don't feel the need to put the effort in yet since I already have games I can beat. Not exactly "growing the skill set" but when I can pad the roll a bit I'll try branching out again.
On the Multi table front I'm breaking close to even but down a little. I've made the money in a few but only enough to barely cover the buyins for those particular events. I'm stuck at a point where I can't seem to break through the first payout level. Last night was a huge disaster as I didn't even make it past the first break in either of the tournaments I played in. I really need a big score before the end of the month so I can actually do things during the cruise excursions. Maybe I'm putting too much pressure on myself and that's leading to performance anxiety. It all comes back to attitude and "Mr. Anonymous" is right again. Mr. Anonymous isn't really anonymous anymore as the author of the comment has revealed himself. It's just more fun to keep referring to him that way.
The ring games are coming along nicely. I think some players are starting to avoid me though. I've been running pretty wild lately and one player who I like to play against because he's a rock, and thus, predictable, has gotten the habit of leaving when I sit down. It might be coincidence but my over inflated ego wants to believe that I scare him, or at the least I'm taking away his action. I had the opportunity to play during the daytime hours on Wednesday for the first time. I'm still playing at UltimateBet to clear the bonus which should be accomplished this week. I have to say daytime play there sucks. The players were so incredibly tight that I couldn't get any action except on the kill games. On these games every time their was a kill the action was so overly aggressive it wasn't worth the money to be in without a monster. This type of play really negates my normal style so I had to leave with a loss and my tail between my legs. Fortunately after busting out of the tournaments last night the games were back to normal and I was able to recoup.
I was happy to hear that a live blogger tournament has been planned. I was unhappy to read the date it was being played on. That is the same day we are due to arrive back in San Diego so I won't be able to attend. I probably wouldn't be able to attend anyway but at least now I have a good excuse.
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