Saturday, April 18, 2009

big session




grinded like crazy last night for about 7.5 hours and booked a very nice 7.2k win. Mostly at 2/4 with a little 5/10 and 3/6 mixed in. A little wiped out right now so I'm not going to write a long post, but I had to brag about that. Oh and gotta thank those poker gods for the run good.

Went to the first game of the Bruins playoff series on thursday night and that was a lot of fun. I hadn't been to a professional hockey game since the mid 90s when Huntington had a minor league hockey team called the Blizzard. We used to go to a couple games a year at the Civic Center where they had the rink and it was always a lot of fun. But obviously seeing the Bruins playing the Canadiens in the NHL playoffs was hockey at a whole new level. It was a great game and the Bruins won 4-2. The game was tight the whole way with the Bruins scoring the winning goal with 5 minutes left in the third period. The final score included an empty netter in the last minute which really got the crowd celebrating. After the game I hit up the town with a couple of friends and had quite a few drinks. It was a fun night but it kind of knocked me out yesterday and I spent more of the day sleeping.

When I finally got up Katy and I got cleaned up and went to dinner at a hot pot restaurant with another couple. If you've never been you should definitely see if they have one in your area. It is a japanese style of eating/cooking that is very similar to fondue. Except instead of cheese, broth, and chocolate fondues they stick to very spicy (sometimes hot) broths and lots of seafood and veggies. You can also get other meats and I usually get the surf and turf which comes with thinly sliced beef, squid, shrimp, whitefish, salmon, clams, fishcakes, and scallops. Everything comes out raw and you cook it in the hot pot in the middle of your table. Everyone gets their own broth and you can mix and match which adds to the tastiness. It isn't very expensive either and I think with everyone getting a huge meal and our party had 4 beers (none for me lol) and we only came up to $90. In boston that is pretty cheap considering the quality and amount of food we had. Plus dinner ends up taking 2 hours which is fun because you can actually hang and talk and enjoy yourselves instead of feeling rushed when you finish your meal.

thats all for now. hope everyone is enjoying their weekend.

Friday, April 10, 2009

comeback session



so this was an extremely frustrating but ultimately rewarding session. I start off by getting multiple coolers (sets against flushes, undersets, KK vs AA, AK vs AA, etc etc). Standard stuff and nothing worth losing my mind about, but then when I'm trying to battle back and can't win any pots where I get it in with a big edge, well you kind of want to puke.

But eventually a few big pots go my way and I start to battle back. Then a couple more huge pots start to go my way. I start hitting some sets, and because everyone thinks I'm always bluffing and full of it I start getting paid off. Anyway to tie up this somewhat boring story I finally get up for the night, and decide I'm effing done with this session. A +5k hand grind and I'll take the $350 win.

Made some delicious homemade pizza tonight, and finished it off with some leftover birthday cake from yesterday. Katy made me a delicious light lemon-cake with whipped icing. With a little vanilla bean icing it can't be beat. Plus she worked hard to clear her schedule, so the nicest thing about the b-day was just being able to hang out last night and watch lost and not have to worry about her having to stop for work or to go to sleep or whatever.

Planning on going to dinner/drinks with friends on saturday as kind of a late birthday dinner, but other than that no big plans for the weekend. I'm hoping it is going to get a little warmer around here, but I don't have much hope. Topped out in the low 60s today and that was actually nice enough that I opened all of the windows and let in as much fresh air as possible.

I think I'm going to start watching Band of Brothers again. I got about 6 episodes into it one time when I got distracted or something and I never finished the series. But I watched Saving Private Ryan the other night for the third or fourth time and I really enjoyed it, although that is a weird thing to say. It is hard to enjoy watching so much suffering and tribulation, but I guess the thought I'm looking for is moving and touching. Remembering conversations about WW2 with my grandfather, and the time I spent visiting with the American Legion veterans at Boys Nation, and I definitely got a little teary-eyed at the end of that movie.

anyway that is enough random stuff. The reds won today (yay!), the red sox lost (boo!), and the Masters looks like it could be great this weekend. Everyone enjoy their easter weekend and thanks for reading.

later

jim

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

March Wrap-up

graph at bottom. Good month overall. Started off really well and continued my hot streak from jan and feb, but then ran break even for the last week and a half of the month. For the most part I'm pretty sure I was running below expectation because I had some brutal suckouts and stuff, but I still felt pretty good about my play.

People on 2p2 are finally discussing me a little in the midstakes full ring forum. I figured it would only be a matter of time before I got the occasional mention or wtf. The reason is that I'm winning with almost as good of a winrate as some of the best 2/4 players (maybe as good as the best) but I'm playing 25/17 preflop. Which if you follow preflop stats is pretty loose for full ring. Most of the regs play around a 18-15/15-12 type style, and quite a few of the winners play a really tight 12/9 type style. I also 3-bet almost twice as much as most of them, and attempt to steal blinds about 33% more. I think this is about as loose as I can profitably play, and I think any attempts to play more loosely will probably result in spew or me being in horrible spots.

For now though I feel really good about my game because my range is so much wider than the other regs that they are consistently playing guessing games against me while I usually have a very solid understanding of most of their ranges. Plus I tend to get a bit more action on my big pairs than a lot of other players.

In other news I was obviously dissappointed by the end of the season for the Blue Devils. I went to the game in the garden and was all excited to watch my boys play after seeing the Pit and Xavier game. I wasn't impressed by either of those teams play in the first game (and we beat Xavier by 20 earlier in the season) and felt that if we could get by Villanova we were very likely going to make the final four. Unfortunately it was not to be. First I'll give credit to Nova. They played oustanding pressure defense and didn't let up the whole game. They showed great leadership and hustle and I really think their coach knows how to motivate his players and get the right system for the guys he has. The definitely deserved to win and move on to the Final Four after beating Pitt. But I have to also comment on the reality of the game. If Duke shoots our normal % from threes, twos, and FTs then we likely win the game in regulation. Despite Nova getting 10 pts in garbage time we still would likely have scored nearly 80 points if we are hitting shots. And I was at the game and can tell you that many of these were wide open threes, relatively easy close range twos, and obviously free throws. I mean we shot so poorly that a stellar defensive effort (and I thought our first half defense was outstanding) went totally to waste. The only reason that Nova ends up in the 70s and not in the low 60s in point total is that with less than 7 minutes remaining and being down by 12 Coach K realized that we had to go all-or-nothing press on them and hope to make up the difference. The problem with all-or-nothing is that when it doesn't work it turns a bad loss into a blow out. Instead of coming up with steals, turnovers, and converting them into quick baskets we just gave nova easy two pointers and endedup committing a lot of dumb fouls and sending them to the line. It was just a ridiculously frustrating game because going into the game I thought that the teams were very even and the game was likely a 50/50 coin flip. After watching us get blow out by 22.... my opinion didn't change a bit! If we were to play them again I'd still think we were a coinflip. I know this sounds ridiculous and extremely biased, but the fact of the matter is that with the shooters we have it is unlikely that we would shoot like that in another game. And while I give some credit to nova's D, most of the blame has to go to us and our simple inability to make open shots.

I also thought the guys looked very tired in the second half, and I think there was some since of a letdown when after all of the hype things weren't going their way. Plus of course all of the Pitt and Xavier fans became anti-Duke and were booing them from warmups, and the nova fans were typical classy Philly folk (lol) so again it was like Duke was playing a road game. Despite all of this I was extremely proud of the team and the season. A record of 30-7 with the hardest schedule in the nation is outstanding. We won the ACC championship, made the sweet sixteen, and I think set ourselves up nicely for a great year next year. I really hope that Henderson decides to come back. He has a lot of work to do on his game both improving his jump shooting and developing his left hand (right now teams are forcing him to go left and he is really struggling) and if he does we have to be on the short-list of favorites to win it all. If he leaves I would hope for a season similar to this year, and our success postseason would depend on how dominant of a player singler could become, and how much the fresmen are able to contribute.

In other news I'm going to NOLA this weekend for a friends bachelor party. Never been there before so that should be fun. After this weekend of traveling though I think I'm going to lay low on the flying around for awhile. I have two trips scheduled in May, and I'd really like to get a hundred hours of poker in April.

Also I really don't like April Fools. I just don't find it funny to trick people especially when people fake tragedies and stuff. I guess there are some good april fools pranks, but I'm usually to lazy to think of or implement any of them.

so I'm going to wrap this one up. I'm going to start looking for interesting hands to post up in the blog, but a lot times in the middle of a 4k hand session I see a really cool hand where I make a sick bluff or call down but then I totally forget it by the end of the session. Plus people don't seem to comment on the hands that much so I'm not sure it is even worth me putting them out there.

hope everyone had a great march and let's hope april is even better.

later

jim


GRAPH: