January Wrap-Up

I'm happy to say that January was a huge success. In all honesty there were times last year that I told myself not to play this January because I was such a big loser over the course of the past two January's. So while my goal for 2009 is to win $7000/month, in the back of my mind I was really hoping to come out a small winner or break even this January.

Not only did I beat breaking even but I doubled my goal of $7000 and finished up $14,873. That number should have been even higher ($16k plus) had I not ended the month with three out of four losing sessions, with the only winning session a very small one ($94) at Caesar's Palace this past Saturday.

In one of my last losing sessions I caught a bad beat when some guy tried to steal with a re-re-raise with K-5 off. I had KcJc and we both checked a flop of 9-7-6. A king hit the turn and I check raised him all-in. He insta-called and I thought he was slow playing a set. Obviously the 8 hit the river and I was in disbelief. But that's the way the game goes. He thought he hit his money card on the turn and that's fine with me. I hit several other coolers during the month as many of the players I've played with have noted, but I'm not here to complain. Overall I've been running well.

Here are my numbers from January through my poker diary at hendonmob:



I ended the month in Vegas, flew there on Saturday morning and despite my intuition not to, I did a lot of gambling on black jack, the Super Bowl and craps. It was extremely up and down but I ended up a big winner (in my standards) of about +8k.

I pretty much broke even in black jack with several losses of $100-200 and one big +$2300 win at the Venetian when we were just bored thinking of what to do.

The Super Bowl was crazy for me. These are the bets I had (if I can remember them all):

Cardinals +7 $1800 to win $1500 (won)
Cardinals Money Line $1000 to win $1800 (lost)
Kurt Warner to throw exactly three TDs $100 to win $500 (won)
Any Cardinal to score two or more TD $100 to win $450 (won)
Any Steeler to score a rushing TD $50 to win like $35 (won)
Fitzgerald first catch to be over 11.5 yards $50 to win $50 (won)
Kurt Warner first pass to be over eight yards $50 to win $50 (won)
Roethlisberger first pass to be incomplete $100 to win $160 (lost)
Edgerrin James to score a TD $100 to win $360 (lost)
Cardinals to get more than two sacks $100 to win $100 (pushed)
Anquan Boldin to score a TD $100 to win X (can't remember) (lost)
Total game score +46.5 $220 to win $200 (won)

I'm sure I had a few more and some of the numbers are slightly skewed but overall I put in about $3000 exactly and ended +$900-1000. If the Cardinals had won, I would have finished up nearly $4000. The second Fitzgerald touchdown was like a orgasm for me because it gave Warner 3 TD passes and Fitz 2 TD scores, plus it gave Zona the lead with like three minutes left in the game. I thought I was good so we headed down to the sports book to get in line and by the time we get there Holmes is on a mad dash to the 10-yard line with a minute to go. I definitely jinxed it. So to all the people of the world that had Cardinals and the money line, I apologize.

I also hit two nice bets on UW vs. ASU ($100) and the Lakers/Grizzlies over (+$200) so sports betting went well this weekend (those were my only bets outside of the SB).

Aight now here's the craps story, which is a good one. The last few times I've gone to Vegas, I've stayed with my boy, who is best friends with a high profile gambler. The gambler is a big craps guy and if we are with him and he's shooting dice, he always has everyone shoot to see who has the hot hand as far as luck goes. Everytime I've taken my turn, not only did I not really know everything that's going on, but I didn't really have a solid way of throwing the dice. Obviously on Saturday night I'm in the same situation. I roll a 7, I hit an 8, then I crap out. If you know craps, it's not good to hit one point, then crap out. Because after I hit the 8, then rolled another point, he spread money across all the numbers.

So I decided that if the craps tables were dead, I was going to try my luck. And lucky I was. Not only did I learn the complete game of craps and all the odds, but I got a nice little roll down and jumped in a game. I basically took $100 to $400, then left. Then I jumped back in and took $600 to $1200 before my boy called me to go eat. Then when he went to sleep at 4 a.m. I decided to stay on the craps tables to work on my style and because I wanted to stay awake until my 7 a.m. flight. That's when it got good and I went on fire, taking my $1200 to $8700. Unfortunately none of my friends were at the table but the other four people that were at the table finally realized they should just leave the shooting to me and we all got rich. One guy placed a bet for me because I was so hot on the hard eight. I hit the hard eight without knowing he had bet for me and the dealer gave me the money. I asked who it was from and the dealer said "Just take it," but at that moment the guy says "You can parlay it if you want!" so I did and hit the hard eight again, making $1k off of a $10 bet that I didn't even place.

Of course as I'm on fire my guy Raheem hits me because we need to catch the cab to the airport so I had to cash out in the middle of my heater but I can't complain -- there's no telling if I would have continued to be on fire or lost the money back. I'll take the cash. That was a great way to start the month of February after a good month of January. On a lucky streak.

I'm going to play for two hours tonight so we'll see how poker starts off in February.

Good luck.