An Aaron Sighting

My friend Aaron who has been playing very sporadically has turned up in San Jose for the bay 101 today. I hope he kicks some ass. Looks like a crapshoot format. Only 10,000 in starting chips and they blasted 2/3 of the day one field yesterday. Looks like luck will play a big part of who wins this puppy. With 500 players should be a decent payday. Go Aaron. He needs a win, look for a deep run from him in this one. He is DUE!!. Talk to you soon...SJ

Checking In

I know I have not been playing much or posting much so this blog has not been all that great or exciting to come visit. I have not been motivated much to go play right now, and need to find some motivation and some time. If there is anyone out there with some good poker reads please pass them along to me. I am looking for some new poker thoughts or stories. Got any good ones? Anyone even still coming to this blog?

Also, I have a new link on the top for Rakeback. If there is actually anyone who has not signed up to play poker online, I find this hard to believe, go ahead and sign up for rakeback using the above link. Make sure you use the referral code Seattlejohn if you do. I have a rakeback deal at UB and at least you get a little back when you play. I guess you can create some new accounts and then sign up for rakeback at places you already have an account. I have just been too lazy to do that. Maybe the link will motivate me to do that.

I will not play until next Tuesday as this week is going to be too busy at work. Anyone going down to Vegas in April or May. Drop me a line as I would love to meet some of you down there. Hope you are all winning. Talk to you next week most likely. SJ

I had to play

Well I broke down last night and went to go play. I just could not stay away from the game that long. The beats and losses have started to fade in the memory banks, so it was time to take a small shot. I did not want to drive all the way to the Muck so I just went to Parkers last night to jump into the 8/16 game with a 1/2 kill to 12/24. I have not had a great couple of last sessions so this is what the doctor ordered. Go play in a lower limit game just to get some sense of winning back. I got a late start so I did not play a very long session. I did end up in some great games as always up there. Lots of gambling and big pots, just like I remember. I have not been up there in about 6 or 7 months so it was good to see some old faces I had not seen in a while. Some of them I had seen in LA just last week and even one regular from the Muck who had the same idea I had, which was to not drive that far to play cards. I played tight, played somewhat aggressive. I think this last month or so has made me a little gun shy on being super aggressive and taking more shots at pots that might be had with a bluff. I need to work on that the next session.

Good news is I booked a win, a small win but a win. Cool. I will be too busy to play next week so I will probably get back at the second week of March. Talk to you soon..SJ

Still Not Playing

I have still not played since I have been back from LA. I just wanted to pass on my congrats to Sean Ly who made it deep into day three of the LAPC. He unfortunately busted around 58th to not make the money, but had a great trip nonetheless. He will cash huge this year sometime. He is too good not to. I also noticed that the TV bubble player was a player named Anahit Galajian, I played with her in the $100/200 game for about three hours. I was not that impressed with her game or her personality. She was really grumpy and cynical at the table. I did notice that there were a lot of really mad/mean players at the Commerce this year. I don't know if people are just getting burned out on the game so they take it out on other players or that is just what the culture is turning out in LA right now. Either way it is not fun to play around people like that and it will not attract new players to that game. I know that I quit when it got down to just some of the regulars in the game as it just was not fun. Hope you are all having a great Feb. I will probably get back to the game in March. Talk to you soon. SJ

To live and DIE in LA

So I have not been playing that much poker lately as I am sure you can tell by my lack of posts. I did manage to take my trip to the LA Poker Classic last weekend. Left on Thursday to get down there for the $2500 buy-in limit tournament. I really wanted to play that one as limit is my game of choice and that is all we really have to play in Seattle. I thought I would have a reasonable chance to do well and I was excited to play in the event. I got down there about an hour before so I had plenty of time to buy in and go make the rounds downstairs in the main card room. It was just jammed. This event just gets bigger every year and is tied with my favorite event of the year with the WSOP. I like LA even better than Vegas as a city, but the tournaments are more fun at the WSOP. There were tons of guys from Seattle there. I ran into at least 6 people. Some regulars in our games in Seattle and some from Seattle that had moved down there recently. All fun stuff.

This event gave you plenty of play. We started with 5,000 in chips and blinds of 25/50 playing 50/100 and 60 minute rounds. I had Kenna James at my starting table as well as John Myung. Kenna was just hilarious. He was singing at the table, making fun of people, and even brought two pens to sign autographs(I think it was only a half joke, as they were real pens to write on pictures) He said you could take a picture of him for $5 and he would sign it for $10. That was of course a joke too I hope. He played super aggressive poker and was out fast, maybe into round three. He might have even been the first out of the tournament. If not first he was in the first 5. His style did not work for limit very well, but it worked the next day as he actually won Friday's $2,500 no-limit event. Good for him. I played tight aggressive and actually got some hands during the first two rounds. I built my stack up to about 8,000 and then nothing went right. I picked up AQ twice in three hands and lost both when an A hit the first and someone else was slow playing AK and I had my hand in the SB and called a limp out of the bind. The second I raised in EP with the hand and got called by K,9s and a 9 hit the board on the flop and I lost that as well. I then went card dead and was just treading water. At the 200/400 level just before the dinner break I had my key hand that cost me a run at the tournament. Here it is and I am still pissed at myself for the play. I had about 4,000 in chips in the BB with J,8 spades. One middle player limed for the 200 and the SB limped as well I checked my option. 600 in the pot and the flop came 10,7,4 with two spades. I checked the middle position bet and the SB raised. I had a flush draw with the gut shot and called. 1800 in pot now. The turn brought a 6, not spade. I bet out representing the straight(which might have been a bad play right there) and got raised by the middle player and then three bet by the SB. I now had a double gutter with a spade draw, at best I had 15 outs and at worst I had 6. I was getting 5.25 to one to call the 800 and was likely getting 5.75 to one to call because the middle player was going to call the raise. I reduced my outs a bit because I did not know if my flush draw was the best, and then I talked myself out of calling completely because I did not want to invest another 800 into the pot from my ever shrinking stack. I got conservative when in a tournament sometimes you need to take chances and here I was getting the right odds to take a gamble and I still talked myself out of it. Just bad play all the way around here, I sucked on that hand. Of course I would not be telling the story if an offsuit 9 did not hit the river giving me the mortal nuts and of course I was not there to collect the 5,000+ pot. That would have propelled me much further. I did manage to survive until about 40 people were left, but never made any real noise and went out w A,4 in late position. Even this hand was fun. I went all in at the 300/600 level for about 800. The SB three bet and got called by the BB. The flop completely missed me and the SB bet, the BB mucked and the SB turned over pocket KK's. Cool bring and ace and I triple up. BAM and ace hits the turn, then BAM a K hit the river, OUT. BUMMER.

I went down to play $100/$200 and did nothing all night. I continue to not get my fair share of good starting cards and just about anted myself to death that night. Lost a little not enough to write home about and went to bed to get ready to play the next day. The room stayed jammed most of the night and there were 5 $100/200 games, yes 5!

I hit it just after noon on Friday and got into a newly started $100/200 game, I think the 4th table of a must move game. I played well all day and built up my stack to recover my buy-in from the day before plus the loss from the game and a little extra. Then after 10 hours of play I made it to the main game where there was a really drunk guy going off for about $25,000 that night. Of course he is the one guy I can't beat and he proceeds to take a nice chunk out of my stack before losing it to everyone else at the table. Then I play tired and poorly for a little longer and lose all the money I had made in about two hours. How demoralizing. I decided to quit at that point and call in a day. I did not want to get any more stuck and I was tired and not playing my best anyway. O well, I had a fun time seeing my friends, playing some cards, and taking another beating. This has been the story so far this year. I think I am going to take a few weeks off and get back to cards at the end of the month. Hope you all had a better weekend than I. Good luck, and here is a picture of what could have been just to make myself feel bad. This is a shot of my stack just before the big slide. I took out my phone to take a shot of Liz Liu but could not get a clear shot without looking like a complete stalker fan so I just shot my stack. Makes me depressed just looking at it.

Comments Response

Wow two real posts in one day. Might be a record. I just finished reading all the comments I missed and here are some answers to them right here rather than go back to the posts and answer them there.

#1) Foodbanker is a player here in Seattle. I don't see him that often, but have played with him at both Parkers and at the Muck. He plays mostly medium limit but he has played in the $50/100 game on occasion. He is a good player, and hopefully is doing well in his pursuit as a pro poker player. I actually saw him last night, but he did not come over and say hi. I was in the game and by the time I was unfocused on the game I did not see him anymore. I don't even know his real name. Really nice guy though.

#2) I have never been to the new Tulailup casino up north. It is really out of the way for me. I work in the South end of Seattle so the Muck is only 15-20 mins away. To go North from work would take me an hour and a half. From home it would be an hour. The game never gets that big and the NL game is not really no-limit. The max bet in Washington state is $500. So if you get a big pot, you can not push someone out with a big bet. Not my idea of a good game. May try it once though this year sometime.

#3) Sorry to the person who posted the question about money and limits. I never saw the post so I did not mean to blow you off. To be adequately bankrolled to play the $50/100 game on a regular basis I would use about 200BB to have in reserve. You may never need it but it is nice to know it is there. You could argue you need more, I have been told you would need less. I like to know I have $20,000 in reserve. With respect to how I got the bankroll to play the game it came from a job, not playing poker. I have been lucky enough to work at something I love and make a lot of money doing it. The downside to that is that I do not get to play that much. Comes with the job part. No big deal. I play enough to make me happy. The average net worth of the people in that game is all over the board. There are some of us that have good jobs and I suspect the money part is not that big of a deal as consideration to play the game. They like me don't really keep a bankroll. We keep some money around to play cards and then take out more to play bigger and put it back when we don't need it. If I started losing on a regular basis I would rethink my playing. Hope that won't happen soon. There are professional players, I suspect a few have $100,000 plus bankrolls. There are some that are just taking shots at the game. They have enough to play one session or two. If they lose they are back to the 10/20 game or lower to build back up to take another shot. If they are lucky or good or both they stick. They win enough to stay in the game on a regular basis and never look back. I don't see too many of those. They usually go broke and then we don't see them for a while.

With respect to moving up limits, I guess that I just did it when I felt I could beat the games. I had enough money to play higher many years ago, but I was not a good enough player to jump up in limits. Even if I could afford to lose the money, I HATE to lose money. I play cards to win, and that means the money. Until I could beat the lower limit games on a regular basis and started getting bored, then I moved up. It was also a function of the games not being available in Seattle. The bigger games only started happening in Seattle two years ago. The $50/100 game only started happening in October of 2005 so not that long ago. We actually started a $100/200 list last night but could not get the game going. It is only a matter of time however. It will happen soon in Seattle. The move up in limits does change your game slightly when you first start to play. You are scared shitless the first time you jump to a really big level, like going from $10/20 to $80/160. I did that the first time, went right to $80/160 in Vegas from the local $10/20 game. You play a little scared at first but then you realize there are the same types of players every limit. They all make mistakes, they all make moves, some just better than others. You tend not to find as many bad players at the higher limits but they are all there. The money is just relative. They are super rich and like to play a little cards so they sit in the $80/160 game, just like the local recreational player will sit into your $10/20 game. Once you sit there for while you get used to it and then you don't even think about it. They way I got used to playing $50/100 was to go to Vegas and jump into the $150/300 game. I did that and then came back down. The money then did not register as an emotional feeling. They are just units or bets. You get chips, you bet chips, then you add up the chips at the end of the night and see how you did. They just happen to be chips of a different color. don't know if that would work for everyone, but it did for me.

I do hate it when you lose $10,000 straight, but it happens. You also win $10,000 or $20,000 straight. My biggest streak last year was $19,000 almost straight up, felt cool. I have mentioned before that I have a friend Aaron who plays super huge. I have had the fun to go sweat him on a number of occasions. He won't even play the $50/100 game locally because it is not fun for him. It is like playing $4/8 to me. I have a hard time fathoming that comment but I guess I know what he means. The first time I saw him put $65,000 dollars in a pot on what looked like a bluff I just about crapped my pants. It was about 4 years ago and I sill remember it. Aaron was playing $100/200 blind pot limit hold-em heads up at the Commerce with someone I did not know. I was watching behind him as he picked up pocket QQ's on the Button and raised the pot. The other guy re-raised the pot and Aaron just called. The flop came A,6,6 two diamonds. The guy bet the Pot of like $6,000 and Aaron called. The turn came the 3 of diamonds. The guy bet around $20,000 into the pot and Aaron moved in all his money of around $65,000 with the two QQ's and no diamond. The guy thought for 15 minutes and then folded KK's face up with the K of diamonds. I thought holy crap you just put all of your money into that pot drawing to two cards. He had the read that the guy could not call so he went with it. I can't do that, it is not in my blood. That is a lot of money to anyone, even a super rich guy. Just amazes me when players can do that and distance themselves from the money that much. I guess you get used to it the way I did with the limits I play. I don't know if I could ever feel that way about $65,000, but some of you might say that about $3,000 and that to me is part of my game. It is what makes him such a great player. That and he is a damn good player anyway. He has since played in the big game in Vegas and won and lost like $750,000 pots. I watched him run $10,000 into $200,000 at the World Poker Open in Reno a few years back. I also was there when he won his only WSOP bracelet in a limit event at the 2004 WSOP and cashed for $234,000. I got to carry the money back in a bag to the Bellagio. It was heavy and looked very cool laid out on the table. So I guess it is all relative. If you can get comfortable you can play. He was the one who told me to play a short session way above what I wanted to play and then go back down. It worked for me, of course it cost me like $8,000 to get comfortable. But it did work.

I hope that answers everyone's questions from the last month of missing posts. I promise I will not do that again. Talk to you soon. SJ

Great comments

I just read some of the comments. Great comments. I feel really badly that I missed them when they hit. I feel really stupid. I will try to write a post and answer them latter today. Thanks for reading, send me some luck in LA. SJ

UGLY,UGLY,UGLY

Wow, I just found out last night while talking with Barry that my comments section was not working and that is why they were not popping up on my BLOG. I must have come off as a complete asshole for not answering any of the comments or allowing them to post. What a dumbshit I am. I am feeling really stupid right now, but I accepted all the comments and now need to go back and read them to see what you all said. I thought because I am such a crappy writer everyone just stopped reading. Glad to see that there are a least still a few of you around. You might still think I am an asshole, but at least it won't be because I was ignoring your posts. SORRY.

On the side of poker I went down and played last night at the MUCK in the $50/100 game. As you can surmise by my title is was UGLY. The last time I played in the game I won the second most amount of all of last year. Well yesterday I posted the 5th biggest loss from all of last year. Ain't variance a bitch. I can accept that my variance will be a little higher than some of the better players in that game because I tend to action it up a little more that most decent players, and I think I can play post flop better than an average player in that game so in the long run I should come out positive EV. But last night was just brutal. I was getting my money in with the best and just getting rivered to death. I had people right where I wanted them and then a 2,3,4,6 outer kept happening. Over and over and over. It was just super frustrating. But hey that's poker. You have those days. I just had one a month ago in Vegas so this should not have happened so soon after, but I guess there is not much I can do about it. I am not going to bore you with bad beats but I took all of them last night. The only thing I did not have happen was full house over bigger full house. I did have the dreaded set over set happen twice last night, and those are expensive hands. I think I handled it pretty well. I did not tilt, I did not start playing weaker hands to make it back, I just sat there and kept playing my game. I might have come off as a little bummed, but all in all I was happy with not tilting.

I continue to run pretty mediocre, I had AA once in the blind and had one player come with me to the river. KK's twice and went 1 for 2. I still don't have a full house ticket in the box. I actually made a full house last night that qualified, but they did not give me a ticket. I forgot to remind them, o well what's one more bad beat. Not like they draw my name ever. I spent an inordinate amount of time folding crap all night. I probably played three hands I am not happy that I played which all cost me money because I caught a piece of the flop and paid off, and I paid off maybe 6 or 7 river bets into huge pots when I lost on the river to the suckouts. Other than that I was ok with my play. Just one of those nights. The game was good too, a few weak players and some of the usual good players. We are starting to get some new blood into the game which is good. Maybe this game will get going every day now. I still can only play on Tuesdays, but good for the other regulars down there. I need to work on not making that payoff bet on the river when I know I just got beat, but it is so hard into those big pots not to pay that last bet off. You only have to catch a bluff about 1 out of 10 to make it worthwhile but last night they were all wrong.

I will most likely not play next Tuesday, but I am planning on going to LA next weekend of the 10th to play in a limit tournament on Thursday and maybe the NL on Friday, as well as the cash games at the Commerce which are always just awesome during tournament time. Hope you are all running better than and I am and good luck. SJ