Daylight is Nice

Yesterday was pretty fucking frustrating. I set my alarm and woke up early so I could play in a WSOP Main Event qualifier on Poker Stars. The buy in was $370 and they were guaranteeing 200 $12,500 packages, so I figured it would be a great shot to get into the Main Event cheaply. For whatever reason, I estimated that there would be roughly 3000 players in the field, many of whom were atrocious, and I could pretty easily navigate my way to the top 200 and be merrily on my way to the Big Dance. I'm not sure what retarded logic gave me the number 3000, buy usually if a site guarantees $2.5 Million dollars worth of seats, you can expect players to come out in droves, and come out they did - over 8000 of them. This was kind of a drag, but I still was psyched to play in it, since the structure was great, and they field was gonna be soft.
As I had expected, things went smoothly throughout the tournament - I picked my spots well, and didn't gamble too much or take any unnecessary risks, and was cruising right along until there were about 1000 players left. I was getting pretty short, but still felt I had reraise fold equity, and was just looking for a decent enough hand to repop someone with and chip up. Well, lo and behold, I get dealt two lovely Kings, and a player in early position opens for a standard 3x raise. I am salivating when the action comes to me, and of course ship my stack, praying he has enough of a hand to call. Indeed, he did have enough of a hand - He snap called and showed two big fat Aces, which he then proceeded to shove directly into the crack of my ass. I was totally dumbfounded, and didn't even get a little sweat, as he flopped another ace and sent me to the virtual rail with my tail between my legs.
Now, I generally take beats and coolers better than the average jerkoff. I play a much higher volume than most people, and after getting kicked in the nuts a few times a day, you tend to get numb to it. However, I guess given the context of the situation, and the fact that it hit me totally out of the blue, I was pretty pissed. This was the second time in my last 3 or 4 tourneys that I ran KK into AA in an absolutely crucial spot, and it was getting old. I then proceeded to get near the money in the $20 rebuy just to lose a race and bust. Bubbling two tourneys in a day is so super standard that I really have no reason to be a bitch about it, but for whatever reason, I let it ruin my day. Whatever, that's all for now - Should be playin in a couple of WSOP events this week, so hopefully I run a little bit better and take one of these fuckers down.

Anything Can Be Great

Is it possible that Paul Newman is the coolest man to ever live? I'm watching The Hustler now, after a pretty long session of grinding SNG's. It's an awesome film, and the perfect way to end a pretty chill day. Today was the first that I've taken off from live poker in about 2 weeks - Ive been playing live tourneys every day, and just needed a little breather. Results wise, nothing spectacular has happened - had a few shitty cashes, but nothing great. Played in the $1500 WSOP O8 event, and really didn't get much going and ended up busting with like half of the field left. Overall, I feel like I'm playing really well, and am expecting big things from this month. I pretty much have a set schedule now, where I wake up, head over to the Rio or Binions to play in an event, bust out, drive home muttering and cursing to myself, then come home and grind SNG's til the wee hours. It's certainly not glamorous, but I'm enjoying it.

I've really been focusing on my SNG game, and have finally started putting up pretty consistent results. Lately I've been 6 tabling the $16 turbos on starts, and so far have been running at %17 ROI, which is pretty sick (and in fact too high to expect to maintain). The fields are super soft, and I think this is about as risk free and consistent money as I've made so far in poker. It's pretty formulaic and can be a bit boring at times, but as long as I set little goals for myself, I stay motivated and interested. At some point I'll elaborate on my goals and results, but right now I'm beat. Later.