$60k in 60 days -- Days 40 & 41

[Schneids]

Day Forty (June 21, 2004) and Day Forty One (June 22, 2004) -- 06.23.04, 01:45

I am a broken record player because all I ever have to begin these journals with is something along the lines of "I run so streaky bla bla bla yesterday I wanted to pull my hair out today I cannot remember what it feels like to lose bla bla bla what is going through some peoples' minds as they play this game?" It's the same story, and I know I'm growing to accept it better since now I can joke about it where as before I'd feel it. Well ok, losing hands on 4 tables at once to river jobs isn't fun, and winning four hands at once on four tables will still bring a smile to my face -- but overall, it is getting easier and easier to look at this bad boy as a long-run game.

Monday started off very well. I played four 15/30 full tables for an hour and a half in the afternoon and won $1290. I played at night for an hour, was down $639.50, took a short break, played another hour, lost another $1176.50, took a break and gave satellites some more tries (won my entry into the million guaranteed on my first try, as well as an entry into a $150 tourney which I used this past night), took a short break to research the extra starting chips deal for the Party million guaranteed, and screamed when I found out it'll take 10,000 raked hands before 11pm central time Friday to get the full extra T1000. So, with around $450 sitting in my Party account, I dicked around on four 1/2 six-max tables for 20 minutes while trying to decide whether I wanted to add money into Party and sacrifice some rake rebate dollars I could earn by sticking with Empire the next four days, then tried out a 3/6 bad beat jackpot table that had 5 players on it for 15 minutes and made a quick $60 score there, and finally decided I'd deposit $4000 into Party and hope that'll last me in 10/20. I played a little 10/20 then for about 30 minutes with my Party name, was up $340, and finally decided to call it a night, finishing the day down $186 with about 4.5 hours of play.

I know it's kind of late now, but one thing I wish I would have done better during this quest was to get on a more consistent schedule. I think it's too easy to break away from exceptionally bad or good sessions when I haven't mandated any set, day-to-day playing times for me and some nights stay up until 1am playing, and other nights 6am. And, even though I'm a night person, I still hate the fact that when I'm up until 6am or later it usually means I'm trying to get myself out of bed at 12:30, and finally succeed at getting up sometime around 2. Call it a sacrifice that comes with this "job" if you like, but I'll call it a pain.

I also wonder whether these journals would have been better or worse if I'd have made them more personal -- be it simply larger summaries of my day outside of poker, or more descript/emotional/thorough accounts of events in my personal life, or social commentary and opinions on hot current events -- since thus far I've opted to usually give short summaries and talk about more universally relatable topics such as sports whenever I've delved away from poker... I dunno, it's just so easy to get absorbed in poker and sometimes neglect the rest of the world around us. A world with people dying every day in war, and a world that finally has a successful commuter space ship. I think I'm going in this direction because I've realized lately if I have free time, it's going to poker more and more, and even if I can claim to be aware of the world, there's still the fact that twoplustwo receives more of my reading time than cnn.com, or espn.com, or imdb.com, or any other source of information. I guess this all serves as a self-reminder that in striving to become the best I can in one disciple, it's equally important to keep equilibrium with the other aspects of my life. // End non-cohesive mini-rant.

I suppose it's fitting that my mini-rant comes on a day where it feels like all I've done is wake up, shower, eat, and play poker. Sure, I've done a little more than that, but not much.

Since I'm barely clinging onto a Top 40 position in the Empire VIP race, I decided to go wild this afternoon and try something new to me: 6-tabling. I played four 10/20 6-max tables with my Party account, and two 15/30 full tables with my Empire account. I honestly don't think this effort will be enough to keep me in the top 40 the next three days (if I continue to do it this way), but hopefully it'll keep me within striking range to get back into the top 40 by the end of June. Anyway, I am now in love with this 6-tabling structure! In my first session, I played from about 3:30 to 5:00, and was up $848.50, then played another 45 minutes before the "Super Tuesday Night NL" tournament and was up $1005.50, played the tourney (which I will talk about more momentarily), took a short break then played for another three hours finishing up $651.50 in the third session, putting me up $2505.50 with about 5.25 hours. For what it is worth, $1850 of the win came from 10/20 6-max and the rest from 15/30 full tables.

Anyway, I was aiming to use this tournament tonight as some practice for the million guaranteed. I think I was successful in doing just that. Early on, I blew about 400 chips on stupidity (all of the tourney hands will be coming from memory): The blinds were 15/30 I believe, and there was 1 EP limp, and the SB completed. I had A8 in my BB, and the flop was ace-high. I bet something like T40 or T50, and EP called. The turn brought another ace and I bet something like T80, and got raised the minimum. I called. The river was a blank and I checked and called the T200 bet, and lost to EP's A9. I think it would have been better to just let this hand go instead of pouring ~T400 into it. A little after this, I made a straight against a set of 9's and doubled up to get back to T1300. This shows how chip preservation is important in tourneys because if I wouldn't have dumped T400 in that other hand, I would have been sitting at T2000 with my straight hand and been in good position at the time (average was around T1300). Later, I got JJ in MP2. MP1 limped, I made it T300 to go (blinds 50/100), and MP1 moved all in (and had me covered). He had been playing tight, so I mucked. A couple hands later in my BB, I was dealt 99. The button open limped, SB folded, and I was very suspicious of the button open limp, so I checked (mistake? Nate asked a similar question in this type of situation in the MTT forum and opinions varied, so I'm still not sure about it). The flop came 854 and I checked, button bet the minimum, I raised him another 200, he moved all in, and I folded, leaving myself with T625 or so. Next rotation, I won a hand from my BB with AT flopping a ten, so I found myself with T1000 again. This was short lived though since I had KK run into AA (who luckily only had T425), and I died shortly after this making a desperation open raise with A8 that lost to 99. The only other interesting hand for me was when 10 minutes in, I was dealt AKo on the button and there were two limpers, and an MP raise to 200, in which I mucked... I wonder if this tournament would have went any different had I pushed all in, been called, and won the hand?

I think I'm going to try to win an entry into the PPM IIII satellite now, and then get to bed an hour or two earlier than last night's 6am bedtime...

Total for Day 40: -$186
Total for Day 41: $2,505.50
Goal to date after 41 days: $27,508.24/$60,000