Day 1: Success

Day 1 was good. Yesterday I showed up and had to wait around for about an hour. After my shitty session on Saturday that was basically a result of me playing a hand I shouldn't have been playing, I tried to remind myself of the basic fundamentals that have helped me get back on the winning track.

Unfortunately as soon as I sat down I ran my pocket tens into AK on a king high flop (only lost about $100) and then ran my queens into aces and only lost about $200 because the board ran out a flush as well as a one-card straight so the guy slow-played his aces and then couldn't get paid because the board was so strong.

Didn't make it to the casino. I covered the $2k that I was hoping to win in the two days combined yesterday and had a lot of stuff to take care of today. I'm flying up to Oakland for a few days and then will resume working next Monday.

So here was my day 1 of this new plan:

Day 1 7/27/2010: +$2240 6.75 hrs.

Total: +$2240

Good luck, have a good weekend, 4 yearz.

New goals for the remainder of 2010

Here are my goals that I've come up with today for the remainder of the year:

For the final five months, I'm hoping to make $10k each month. I'm hoping to get in about 25 sessions each month and will look to win $1k each session.

I have two remaining sessions left in July before I leave for Oakland so today and tomorrow my goal is to win $2k combined.

Then once August gets started, I'll start working towards $10k for that month. July has been a GREAT month but I did drop a large amount on Saturday in just two hours.

We'll see how it goes, good luck to everyone.

4 years.

What a week...

It had to be about a week ago when I predicted on twitter that I'd have a great week and it's come to fruition. It's about to end where it started: Vegas.

Okay that's a lie, my good week actually started last Tues when I took the scraps that were left of my bankroll and played the $5/10 no cap game at Hollywood Park. I ended up winning $6k, which basically tripled my bankroll. Since then my sessions have looked like this:

7.6 +$6625
7.7 +$1160
7.8 +$540
7.9 +$2515
7.13 +$2700
7.14 +$1870
7.15 +$3200*

You might've noticed that there's an asterisk after the last session. Why? Because I haven't received the monies yet.

Last night I went out to an ESPY party in Hollywood, got drunk as fuck, spent too much money and then went to an all-Armenian home game in the valley. I'm disappointed to say that I was truly the only player that wasn't Armenian at the game. This was my first taste of the infamous home games that L.A. poker players hear about all the time. I've been to several home games but never anything like this.

The players are all spewy and deep stacked, they turned a 5/10 game into a 10/20 game with a straddle every hand of at least $75 from any spot on the table, so essentially it was a 10/20/75+ game. They only spoke Armenian to each other and they spoke english to me. I had no idea what they were talking about 95% of the time so I just ignored it. The players were all completely easy to read but at the same time, many of them didn't play against each other or gave money back when they won a hand. So basically, all of the other players were playing against me, while every one of them had probably two or three allies at the table. It was an interesting experience that I don't think I'll revisit. And here's why: I won $3200 and didn't get paid. They give out a shitload of markers in the game and told me that once they pay the markers they'll pay me, no later than tomorrow. I could write probably five blog entries about this game. The players were terrible, they were pissed when I won, they were pissed when I left. At one point they told me that I was required to play another 30 minutes because you're not allowed to leave shortly after you win a big pot. I wanted to say "Well why don't you tell his dumbass not to bluff off $1200 on the river with airball," but I just agreed with them and told them it wasn't a problem for me to play another 30 minutes.

Speak of the devil. The guy that runs the game just called me as I was typing this. I answered expecting to hear "Hey I have your money when you're ready to pick it up," but instead he says "I just wanted to let you know that they're still playing if you want to come back." Right. I'd love to come back to a game that hasn't even paid me out yet. As soon as they said they weren't ready to pay, I knew that they were going to use that to try and get me back to the game.

So here's where I stand on the issue: I want my money, but I'm prepared to chalk it up as a loss. They gave me my $2k cash buy-in back so there's no way I'm taking a loss on this, but it will be extremely disappointing if they don't pay me.

So much more to write about this but...

Some of you might know that Phil Ivey made the final table of the WPT Bellagio Classic today. He's a friend of mine so I'm heading to Vegas in an hour to sweat him for the final table and hopefully celebrate the win tonight. I was there when he won the LA Poker Classic, two of his WSOP bracelets (see side pic) and also when he busted out of the WSOP ME final table last year. Hopefully he takes it home.

Then gonna fly back tomorrow to watch the Angels play my home team, the Seattle Mariners. It's amazing how three weeks ago I felt like I was in the gutter with no way out and now I'm feeling like life couldn't be much better. It's all due to one hand that turned it around last Tuesday, which hopefully I'll have time to write about.

Take care, have a great weekend.

4 years.

July Update

So far July has treated me much better than the first half of the year.

Spent last weekend in Vegas for a friend's birthday and didn't play any poker but had a great weekend... Tao and Vanity, XS tried to shit us with a shit table so we headed to Tao, which actually seemed like it was more fun anyways.

As far as poker, things have been going a lot better and I'm trying to keep it going at the 5/10 game at Hollywood Park. The best thing right now is that I'm looking forward to getting big hands as opposed to a month ago whenever I looked at aces or kings I knew I'd somehow find a way to lose my stack. Momentum is everything.

Also been recording some music that I'm happy with.

I'll come back to give some more detailed posts.

Good luck, I hope everyone is winning big.

4 years.

Email to my sister's friend...

Just wrote this to a friend of my sister's who asked me about going pro....

Hey Santiago..

Sorry it's taken me so long to reply to you. To be honest right now I'm in a huge downswing and I guess it's a good time to let you know about the bad side of playing professional poker.

I haven't really expressed this to anyone but the hardest part about what I'm going through right now is the fact that I told my family and friends that I'm a "good" poker player and that they can believe in me. Now everytime I have kings, someone has aces, if I have a set, someone has a higher set. Anytime I'm in a big pot, I find a way to lose.

And to be honest the hardest thing is not the money. Obviously losing money at a constant rate is terrible, but the hardest thing is acknowledging that I'm failing at what I told everyone I could do. It's very hard to deal with.

I'm not sure what type of person you are or what type of lifestyle you live, but money management is the key to being a successful professional poker player. This is something that I've failed miserably at.

When I have a session where I win a lot of money, or if I'm on a heater, I will spend the money like it's nothing. Then when I go through downswings I think about all the ridiculous things I spent money on and just get pissed at myself.

So I would say if you feel like you can manage the money when you are doing well, go for it. I'm definitely glad that I tried professional poker and I've definitely been a winning player since I started, but I've failed to manage my bankroll properly and now I'm facing some major decisions about what to do with my future.

That being said, I've traveled more than I ever have the last year because of the freedom that poker gives me. I've met hundreds of great people through poker and had some truly amazing experiences through poker.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Kevin

Cougars

Watched the Finals final last night with a cougar that I met playing poker. She was great company and much better conversation than most chicks that I go on dates with, but I have to say it's a bit awkward being out with someone who's probably 25-30 years older than me. Definitely a lot of situations where I would have made a move on a chick my age but I felt weird doing it in front of people considering she's visibly older than me. I was in the valley though, land of the MILFs.

Fuckin' game killed me. Pau Gaol's missed rebound when the Lakers were up six with 20 seconds left was a dagger to my heart. I covered my losses with a bet on the under, but today USA and Germany both failed me ridiculously and my sports account is now maxed out. I'm gonna stop sports betting and focus on poker. Definitely a good thing.

Going to HP today, peace.

Day 1: The Great Get Back

Day 1 of the "Great Get Back" was a success.

I flirted with the idea of going to Hollywood Park all day long but I opted to do laundry, get my car washed and go to the batting cages. Traffic on the 405 was horrible so I decided if I was going to hit HP, I'd wait until traffic was over.

Early in the evening my boy that recently started his home game hit me up and let me know that he wants to improve his game by adding house players, which would include me. He also wanted ideas from me on how to improve the game.

So I went over to his condo at the W hotel around 9 pm to play in the game and talk to him about improving it. When I got there, he was there with the dealer. No one else. They were sitting around playing some first-person shooter game on x-box.

For the next two hours we talked about improving his game, which basically meant adding more girls that would flirt with the players and getting more action players, less grinders. The entire time I was wondering 'Is there even going to be a game tonight?' Didn't look like it. It was already 11 p.m. and I was still the only player there. At this point, I was actually getting a little impatient. One of my boys was telling me how good the action was at Hollywood Park and another friend was requesting my help to recruit strippers from the strip club for his birthday party on Saturday. Instead of doing either, I was sitting in this empty condo watching video games.

Finally around 11:30 p.m., a guy called and said he was coming with two friends. That makes four players. Throw in my boy who owns the condo and that's five players. Then the second dealer decided he would play. Six. Then my boy told the security guard to buy in for $100 house chips and play. Seven. We have a game, $5/5 blinds and I'm in for $500.

I told the security guard that I was going to put pressure on him because he's so short stacked. My first button and his small blind, I raise to $20 with Ad8d. He shoves all-in and says "That's for picking on me."

I know he's scared to lose the money and plays super tight. He probably even has AK, minimum. I'm 100% positive that I should fold and I'm way behind. But it agitated me that he said I was picking on him. He deserves a bad beat. So I called the extra $75 and he turned over kings. I told him I needed an ace. Flop: J-4-5. Turn: 3. River: 2. I didn't even think I made a hand but I looked at the board three times and then realized I had the wheel. Goodbye security guard. He was pissed.

Later in the game I won a big three-way all-in pot. My buddy straddled to $10. One of the three other players min-raised to $20. I was in the small blind with QQ and I had been the main aggressor the whole game to this point. I made it $110. My buddy who straddled called. The min-raiser re-re-raised all-in to $250. I went all-in and my buddy called for $280 more. I told him "You idiot, I have queens." He says "You want to just chop it up right now?" I said, "Hell no, you're trying to suck out on me. $100 rebate either way." This is the benefit of home games, you can do shit like this. My buddy tabled J9 of spades and the other guy turned over A-9 off-suit. The flop came jack high to give me a sweat but it bricked out and I won the pot. Finally, after a month of running like dog shit, I have a hand hold up in a big pot.

We only ended up playing for two hours and I won $1300, which was nice. After everyone left I played Chinese poker with the dealer and my buddy and broke even after an hour. Overall, it was a good night for me and the $1300 is a big boost right now.

I'll start tracking my winnings and where I'm playing.


Day 1 (6.16) Home Game: +1300 2.0 Hrs.