Marco's blog

In order to win 1.2 million dollars, livb112 will have to play an inordinate amount of volume pretty much everyday of the year. From what I read, he usually plays anywhere between $550 turbos to $2200, and when he gets good action, he plays the 5K HU sngs as well. If he maintains a 10% ROI, he would have to play 15 HU a day at the $2200 level, but that's not likely to happen. Unless he finds a big pool of fish to play against, he won't have a 10% ROI, not to mention that he needs to get action.

Furthermore, they mentioned that he already made over 100K in January, so it's definitely possible. In any case, I'm sure that livb112 is making this bet primarily because he wants motivation to grind as much as possible in 2008, and if he pulls it off, mad props to him. I think Shipit got the better end of that deal though.

I'll be watching some of these regulars' game from time to time. Inevitably, I will move up in limits this year on FullTilt, so it's just a matter of time before I go head to head against them. I'd rather be prepared if it ever gets to that. My goal would be that they find out how good I am as fast as possible, so that they stop giving me action sooner rather than later, which would improve my ROI.

It's because I'm tired of all these tired, re-packed, fluff articles that all these annoying "pros" are passing off as valuable information.

It's fucking bullshit. There, I said it.

http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/tip-email-135-de...

Thanks for letting us know about the finer points of tilt, Ben. gfy now.

(I have a lot of anger in me right now. I think I need a drink.)

If you're going to write something about tilt, please make it interesting. Maybe you can write about a time where you lost 200K, going all-in every hand because you were frustrated. Maybe a story about how you punched a wall and broke your fist when some rich douchebag caught a 2 outer on you for a million bucks.

He's supposedly a great cash game player by the way. I just didn't like his article. (He probably didn't even write it himself.)

Well. I feel much better now. Have a nice day all. :)

Last night, I met mostly cool people. Poker players tend to be be laid back by nature, so it's not hard to be friendly with us. There was a guy that was involved in one of Montreal's biggest underground room, and another one of his friends that had been playing non stop since the opening of the poker room. There was a guy that kept talking about his grandfather, and how he had invented the electronic poker table, and the old wood frame television. He was just joking around, obviously, but it did start a few interesting conversations. There was nother one that kept telling his opponents what to do. Not obnoxiously, but in a funny way. The worst is that most players listened to him. And pretty much everybody else were cool as well.

I guess it's because it was getting late, and everybody was a bit tired, and wired on coffee. It also helps that a few of the players on the table already knew each other, and that we all pretty much knew we were regulars.

There's one thing that really got my attention though. From listening to my opponents, I learned that I've been missing out on a lot of poker in Montreal over the years. If I had been involved in the live poker scene, I would probably have had many opportunities to make a lot of money. They were talking about these juicy 25-50 nl games where most players were just spewing chips, being degenerates and all. They even mentioned that Garou played in some of these games, and that he was a huge donkey when he was drunk. It kind of pissed me off a little bit, but it does give me a motivational boost to play more this year.

Moving on.

There's one hand I got involved in where I wasn't 100% sure how to proceed. The more I think about it now, the more I think I made a mistake.

It was late, and the table was breaking up. There were only 5 of us left on this 2-5 nl table, and I asked the floor man to give me a place at another table, so this was my last hand.

I was playing against what seemed to be a good poker player, and I thought he was fairly tight aggressive. I didn't see him play junk at all during the time we were at the table. We both had about 180 BB, so we were somewhat deep stacked.

I got QQ on the button, and the two others folded to me. I raised to 20, the SB called, and the BB(villain) re-popped to about 110. I called, and SB folded.

Flop: 10h 9c 4h

He bet 200 into a 240 pot fast, and I called.

Turn: As

He moved all-in fast, and I folded.

At that point, it's very hard for me to call on the turn, since I lose to any hand I put him on except for JJ. I didn't want to raise on the flop because I was committing myself, and I thought he wasn't folding much.

I think the best strategy would have been to 4 bet him preflop. I had a tight image, and he probably would have put me on either AA, or KK, and maybe QQ and AKs. I think he can't do much at that point but fold most of his hands. He would probably call with only AA or KK, so it's easier for me to put him on a hand. Remember that I really think he puts me on AA or KK if I 4-bet because of my image, and because I know that he knows what he's doing.

I would really appreciate some feedback on this hand.

http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5iB3an2KDzu_k3lMfCYgNWYizUz8g\

Honestly, I couldn't give two shits about the dealers if they go into the direction of blocking the Montreal Poker Room from opening.

We have been waiting for this for 3 years boys and girls. How dare you fuck it up for all of us?

I wonder how much a dealer gets paid per hour, and how much in tips he gets from the player. I would imagine that the pay is more than reasonable for the job characteristics and requirements. Let's face it, it's a government job, so it can't be that bad.

Wake up! You guys are dealing cards! You're not rocket scientists, or medical doctors, or engineers, or university professors, or even elementary school teachers. You're just godamn card dealers.

The poker room better fucking open this Friday, or I'll get on mega-monkey-tilt.

It was a terrible day poker-wise, and I managed to lose about $2000. I didn't cash in any of the major Sunday tournaments despite having had a great start in all of them. I ran into AA with KK in Stars million when I had about 40k in chips. I lost 66 versus KJ all-in preflop in the FTP 750k. etc. I played a few HU, but kept losing, so I decided to just quite for the day before going on major life-tilt.

I love the internet though. I just learned that the first 3 episodes of Jericho have been leaked on Bittorrent, probablly on purpose by the network. I have always loved the post-apocalyptic genre, and Jericho really delivers. The show was originally canned by the idiots running(ruining) CBS, but a major campaign from the fans made the network reconsider its decision.

I really have nothing else to say.

I had a great day poker-wise yesterday. I finished 4th in the UB 8pm bounty tournament, and then, I took a down the Fifty-Fifty tournament on FullTilt. Also, earlier that day, I won a satellite for an upcoming FTOPS event worth 300$, not to mention all the HU. I was up a little bit less than 13K for the day, which adds up as being the best day profit-wise that I ever had.

I'm especially happy with my second final table, which is my first important win of the year(hopefully, more to come). I think I played fairly well, especially before the final table, and when we were down to 5. I played a bit tighter than usual, but it's because there were a lot of players willing to play back at me. The funniest thing is that I was on the brink of elimination with about 200 players left and a 2000 chip stack, close to the bubble, but somehow, I managed to double up at least 3 times. The blinds were at 150-300 at that point with antes. It also helps that a bad player doubled me after that when I had 99 after shoving with K4s. I had 30 000 chips 5 minutes later.

On UB, I think I played well all the way, but I made a mistake on the final table. I was low stack with 4 left, and I pushed a tight player with 10 5 suited after he raised in position, and I was on the small blind. He had 55, and he called. I had about 55k chips, and the raise was for about 12K, so I had a bit of fold equity, but I think I could have been more patient. The way I saw it was that he had the 2nd smallest stack, and if he lost against me, he would be crippled, so he might fold a lot of hands. My analysis was simply wrong. 

I finished my last exams last week, so unless I did terribly, I will graduate with a B.A.A in finance.

I'm not going back to college next semester, as I want to concentrate on the things I really want to do, like playing poker. I might go back to school eventually, but right now, I think it's the best time for me to try something new. To tell the you the truth, I was fucking tired of this university bullshit anyway.

It's funny because I didn't even feel like celebrating after my last exam. Instead, I played a bit of poker; at least 80 HU, a few hours of cash games, and a couple of tournaments. Notably, I played the 1K UBOC main event yesterday after winning a satellite earlier that day. I didn't cash, but with the good structure, it really was worth playing. I wrote about in the forum:

Finished like 200th. I think I misplayed 2 hands in the tournament that cost me a lot of chips. First of all, i probably shouldn't have gone all-in with 33 to a middle position raise for half my stack. I had an average stack at the time, so I thought I could afford flipping, but the guy had been way too tight before. I hadn't really seen him play anything.

Also, I went all-in with 87 suited to a late position raise against a player with a wide range. He called with A3, which I think is pretty loose. I probably should have just raised a little less instead, and call a shove. I think he would have folded since he would have put me on a better hand, like a pocket, or AK, AQ, and AJ. There's simply more value to a smaller, pot re-raise and a shove on the flop if called than the shove all-in preflop.

For the past 2 weeks, I occupied myself mostly by watching movies, by watching hockey, and by playing a little bit of Guitar Hero 3. That game really is addicting. I went through every song at the medium level, and about ¾ of the songs at the hard level, and now I'm stuck on Muse by Knights of Cydonia. The annoying thing about it is that the first 2/3 of the song is amazingly easy, so you have to play for four minutes before the hard stuff kicks in. At that point, there are two sections riddled with pull-offs and hammer-ons, and unless you have perfect timing, you lose. Here's a video of someone playing the song on expert.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=dieAKfSINhU

I went to Edmundston for a few days. The highlight of my weekend was when I woke up hung over saturday morning, got a 12 inch pizza from Rossi's and ate it while watching Marked for Death. 

Well, almost.

My downswing continued yesterday, but it wasn't really that bad until I finally went on perma-tilt after losing a few games, and dumped another $3000. I saw a very bad player sitting in the $1000 HU waiting list, and I counldn't resist playing him. I knew my EV was through the roof against that guy.

The game was going fairly well. He was playing a very loose aggressive style, so I tightened up a bit and waited for better hands. I had him by the balls with top pair medium kicker when I put him all-in for the win, but the lucky sack of shit caught trips on the river for the suck out. He was holding middle pair(10 10) on a K 8 2 rainbow flop. He bets the flop, and since I'm pot committed if he re-raises, I put him all-in instead. He thought for a while before calling. Yeah. Then I lost a coin flip. GG.

Afterwards, he sat down in the $2000 waiting list, and the rest is history. I was fuming. I lost about 10k in the last week, but at least 3k could have been prevented.

It's not a pleasant feeling when you start a session all energetic and excited, just to get slap in the face hard by variance, and failing to accomplish a simple challenge. It's the kind of thing that makes people quit poker. It can really fuck you up psychologically and emotionally. You start questioning your game, and questioning whether you should just do something else with your time other than playing poker. That's inevitable, but I'm not done with poker just yet.

Anyway, I'm leaving for Edmundston tonight for an undetermined period of time. It's probably good to play less poker for a few days while I think about what I'm going to do to get out of this slump.