Where are you Joey Knish?

Where is "my" Joey Knish? The "leather-assed" poker player grinding out a living in the confines of the movie Rounders. When I'm foolish, thinking of shooting/aiming too high, where is this voice of reason, offering up the wisdom from his own playbook. Offering to stake me, and get me out from under? He's not around. This ain't no movie... and I'm damn sure not Matt Damon. Of course on the plus side, I'm not into TeddyKGB for 3 stacks of high-society either. My minuscule bankroll still exists, but it seemed to have gone stagnant. I've imposed a cooling off period of a few days from the felt, whether live or virtual. I've had a lot on my mind, and in the absence of John Turturro's character to send me back in the right direction, I've taken to reading (rather absorbing) everything I can from the poker forums, blogs, and my own personal poker library. It's brought me focus. I'd like to think that in my state of mind I would have listened to Knish and not mixed it up in the first place with the "Mad Russian." Had that cup of coffee and headed off to that soft seat in Queens... Yeah you all know the friggin' quotes as well as I do. Of course I also recall the particular Christopher Young jazz track which was playing in the background...

I'm about ready to walk (not run) back to the tables, and my 4-tabling ways. The soul-searching is at an end. I am emboldened, yet humbled. I'm prepared to make the "right" moves at the appropriate times. Regardless of outcome... the same correct choices each and every time. This is not a game for the timid. Play the role. Don't play the game on autopilot, think and reflect at all times. There is no other way for long-term success. Play within your means. Abide by your own rules, at all times, not just when they're convenient. Time to play!

Regards,

cheer_dad

What news from the world of men?

The light...it burns... I've been elbow deep in paperwork of the most horrendous kind, more specifically contractual documentation. Ugh! Mufasa! So, I've done little other than wade through terms like interconnection, infrastructure, and "organization a" agrees to (blank) for "organization b." Really mind numbing when you hit the same form sheet for the umpteenth customer. But that's why they pay me the "big bucks." I'm still waiting for them.

It's trick or treat night, and I'm still trying to decide whether or not I'm going to be working over tonight. I'm hoping and leaning toward NOT! Just too many things going on. Last night was a long evening anyway. I did my walk at lunch, then when I got home, I fired up the treadmill, for another 30 minutes. Then, I made dinner and went over Cole's story, for his Reading test the following day. In the midst of dinner (the kids and I) Teresa walks in, it appears that Whitney neglected to tell me what I was supposed to be doing...mowing the lawn. So 'round about 6:30, out I go to "start" the task. I finished the mowing. Couldn't trim, or much else. In fact, I think I'll have to go back and double check the yard for missed patches of grass. It gets really friggin' dark by 7:30. I had to ask Cole to turn on some outside lights, so I could get as far along as I did. I'm sure the neighbors were getting a good laugh at the idiot in the dark with the mower.

I realized that I had not mentioned my online play, or bankroll in a while. Well, I haven't honestly played in a while. I have moved my Bodog account up to the $175 mark. Oh and last night I dabbled at a couple of $1 SNG's on Sportsbook.com. The first, I crippled myself when I hit a boat, and lost to the bigger one. Oops! The second, took a LONG time. The chip leader decides to take a powder when we're down to 5. Me and "Bitsy Bets", polish off the rest of the table and then I think his name was "hix11" finally rejoins us. It took a long time, but I finally caught up to him, and between me and "BB" we finally took him down. So, here I am, looking to come out with more than I put in on the two SNG's. Now I'm focusing on the heads-up game. I'm applying pressure in all the right spots. I'm catching up, in a big way. I started heads up with $2,500. I made it to around $7,200...THEN, the table freezes! I check my connection, and it's okay. I hit Google, and I'm still surfing. I even refresh the tournament listings on Sportbook, and it is responsive. Only too late do I close the table and re-open it, to find my stack has been ravaged down to $150. It's shit like that which makes me wonder what the hell is going on sometimes. But the "what" was..."me losing." Same story...you've read it before.

I've listened to several podcasts lately, and I've listened to some of the "top" online players recap their rise to greatness in the poker world, from lowly beginnings. Annette_15 the winner of the WSOPE, all 19 yrs of her, relayed starting out at freerolls, and finally winning $9. Then maneuvering that into SNG's and then Multi-table tournaments. Over time she took that to around $20,000 before really starting to "move money around." She like many of the other interview-ees, espoused the virtues of Bankroll Management. Not just playing your best, and learning and discussing every day, but they found that time was the best weapon available, and the only way to get it was bankroll management. Enabling yourself to play the long term grind. How it wasn't always fun, but absolutely essential. I actually think I might have been further along had the ban on Internet Poker became a semi-reality. I "flinched" a bit too much when they pulled the plug. I withdrew from some places but continued to play as before. Of course I blackjacked some of it off. And the player base continued to improve, since it was more difficult to get money out there, so only those who had money out there, and knew how to keep it and earn it, were your competition. The fish in the pond, weren't fish, and you were no longer in a pond anymore, my friend.

Well that'll have to bring the post to a close. An alarm went off letting me know it's meeting time, very shortly. Oh goodie, I can feel my fun-factor meter beginning to rise.

Regards,

cheer_dad

Some grease for this grind...

The Bodog account is now up to $117.xx. No that's not stellar, I realize, to have moved from 110-ish to 117-ish last night BUT if you'd seen the majority of the cards that I was seeing in last night's session you'd give me credit for moving up at all. Lots of dismal cards from every position last night. And when I would get some feeble little pocket pair, like 3's or 5's from late position, there would invariably be a raise and a re-raise if not more before it got to me. There were nut-jobs at the table pushing $10+ preflop to steal the blinds, which I'll remind you were 5cents and 10cents! I was seeing 3 and 4 people move all-in preflop, with absolute crap hands. So, it was time just to lie in wait. I made some colossal good lay downs too. I waited for better positions, and better days, and watched my statistics take a nose dive. I'm down to a 10% win when dealt cards. I'm seeing the flop only 31%, winning at showdown 60%, and winning when seeing the flop at like 27%. I find that when a table temporarily disintegrates that these uber fast hand cycles tend to skew the stats something fiercely. You're in every hand, raising and bluffing to steal, and dropping when you feel your beat. A few of these rounds will start the stats to spinnin'. Anyway, I did have some good hands too. But there were a number of times when after the flop I was forced to lay down pockets, and AK and AQ. I was beat and knew it. I resisted the urges most of the time to get in there on coin flips. The outlandish play was liable to hit whatever crap boards were coming out. There were times that I kicked myself when I'd folded preflop, when I would have hit BUT more often than not, had I stayed in with my hole cards, I would have gotten coolered by the nuts that someone else was holding. It was uncanny! But put a smile on my face, since I stayed out! I made one mistake as far as I can tell and it wasn't overly costly. I tried to slow play flopped trips, when two 10's hit the board, matching my 10-J nicely. My opponent hit runner, runner, runner flush on me, and I got off easy, only having to pay him off an additional 75cents-ish for it. Lucky there. If he'd popped it, I'd have passed, and I believe that. I did hit a straight flush on a hand, and it took me a while to figure that out. I had to double take on it. The pot had grown to like $4.80 with me and a couple of other guys in the hand. When I realized I'd rivered the SF, I had to do a double take. Then, thinking (hoping) that one of them had the ACE, I popped it hard, hoping to get paid off. Someone must have smelled the rat, but I did take down the pot. Surprisingly to me, I resisted getting into coin flips most of the time except for twice! I was being slapped around at the table, by guys who thought I was week, but I really wasn't getting the cards. Then for some reason, I "felt" something and decided to go for it on a hand. Granted it was AQc, but the $2.00 preflop bet put me off a little, since I'd been seeing this stupidity too much. Granted it's just 2 bucks but this is a LOWLY BUY-IN table folks. That's 1/5 of the BI! But I felt it was time...and also wanted to diffuse my chicken little image at the table. I called him down, and he flipped over pocket 10's I hit two Queens before the dust settled and took the pot and sent him to the rail. Now the other hand felt even better. There was this guy with some "camel-jockey" type name, with the face of some wild-eyed Arab as his avatar, who was playing like he'd declared a jihad against every stinkin' American at the table. (Granted he was probably some high school punk, stateside, but the whole thing left me, wanting to bust his ass.) He kept raising preflop, playing his position at times, other times, just for kicks. He wasn't getting that many winning hands that often. He was just a punk, trying to be table bully. So I'm the big blind, and look down at A-2 sooted! : ) Meek little, play me fer cheap hand! Of course, it gets around to him and he pops it, for his usual amount, and I hesitate for a moment, and decide WTF, just once! I flop two pair...and coyly check it. He fires $1.50, which I double, which puts me close to all-in at that table, which I'd been running horribly on. He mashes the button, for all-in. If he's made his set, then so be it...hang on kids, here we go. Well he didn't...he'd hit the Ace with a 10 kicker. Not a terrible hand, maybe I should have given him more credit. But he didn't double pair, and I took the pot...and he had to rebuy. He stopped his "raisy-daisy" ways, and I got a handle on the table, got back to even + the aforementioned $7-ish, and made my exit stage left. Thankful to be up...more thankful not to have gotten stuck for both my table buy-ins. I'm sure some would not approve of my tighter-than-tight approach, but I'm rebuilding...and frankly I'm climbing albeit slowly. However, these paltry little sums are significant when weighed against the $10 max buy-in. So, I'm trying to think in terms of chips, or units of betting, and not the "true" dollar amounts. It's keeping me sane, and improving my play, I think. Others would argue I'm not seeing enough flops, and I'm not gambling enough. I'm not sure how I feel about that anymore. I still don't like to think of poker as gambling. Calculated risk yes, but not out and out gambling. I'm more apt to try and avoid the coin-flips. There are MUCH better opportunities which present themselves at the table. I'm trying to seize upon these moments for now. Hey, if I can get the Bodog roll up to $400-$500, sure we'll talk, but until then I really can't and won't grant myself the luxury. This is a new disciplined approach to the game. And you can be damn sure there will be NO ONLINE BLACKJACK in the mix again...ever! I really mean that this time. I'm not going to forgive that indiscretion. It cost me in terms of blackjack losses and the tilt factor that compounded poker losses, well it was just fargin' stupid...just bad business. Time to play on the belly for while, and literally GRIND it out. Some of you aren't willing to grind out this low and slow...I am, get over it. It'll pay off, further on down the line.

Until then, I'll be the one rolling change to take to the cashier's window!

Regards,

cheer_dad

Coolered but okay w/it

Yesterday I opted to use some of the "player points" on Bodog for the first time. 100 points was the cost of a tournament that paid out T$29 which would get you into a quarter-final round of another tournament. Basically a pathway to some bigger tournaments. 220 people started out and it would pay the top 12. I went out in 18th place. DOH! And I wasn't short stacked at the time, one more score, and I probably could have "skated" to victory. BUT, when you look down at pocket Kings, in late position, what're you going to do. I popped it...got reraised and then we both ended up all in. Yeah, you guessed it he flipped over his Rockets. But hey, I'd played well, and don't think there was any way I was going to get away from the hand. I'm afraid if I'd played it way conservative and stayed out of this and other hands...I would have bubbled, as in relation to my chip stack I was in 13th place as far as chips went. BUT, hey it wasn't a suck out, it was just one of those inevitable hands. I wasn't even all that upset over it. NH...move on. In that same tournament earlier in the first hour I got involved with A-10s, but paired my Ace on the flop. Got smooth called all the way, until the River by one guy, and with 3 Kings on the board...making me a boat Kings full of Aces, he popped it big. And you guessed it I had to pay it off. Yup...Kings full of Aces beaten by QUADS. I guess I should have seen it coming. I mean I only had the 3rd nuts hand. He could have had pocket rockets too, but a King was enough. I survived that onslaught, but had only 3,000 in chips left. I was able to bounce back from that in a few rounds though, and was semi cruising along with 11,000-ish chips. I played well. I played TIGHT! Tighter than I have in a very long time...and it was getting me there too, if only Lady Luck had smiled. I'm really thinking of trying this same approach again in the home game. I deviated from the style which consistently put me on the final table, and a cashout. BUT I did this when the competition continued to improve, or at least I thought so. It might very well be a viable strategy, since my big raises have been ignored as of late. Maybe it's time to wait for the monsters again and get paid. Have to try it out...and let you know, of course if you're reading this you'll know it's coming. Let's see how many of you are! : )

I have bounced back on Bodog, not quite back to where I was, but back to $95.xx. Does little to soften the blow of Friday night's loss, but hey, I'm not out yet... I need to get back to some basics. I read a post by Daniel Negraneau, that said that too many players (amateurs) are used to TV and online play. Fast paced, multiple tabling (online) and constant action, with Degree All-In Moments. Whereas big stack poker tourneys and ring games, aren't like that. It is entirely likely for an hour or more to elapse before you even get a playable hand. Although, with Daniel, I find this UNLIKELY, given that he plays in the neighborhood of 80% of his hands. His game is much more developed and his reads are nothing short of AMAZING! The more I read, and observe, for me during this BR rebuilding time, I need to go back to the slow grind. I won't make a lot...but I won't lose either. I just gotta suffer through it, and one day get back in the fight. I'm frankly not going to forgive myself for poker play indiscretions until I win (back) around $600. So, I'm in for a very long haul.

Football game today for Cole, against Ravenswood. Gonna be a rough one people. Hope we do our best, and that's all that can be hoped for. May it be an injury free day. Go Bullets!!!

Regards,

cheer_dad