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Well the tournament didn’t turn out the way I expected in more ways than one. Only 24 people showed up. Now I dont think this could’ve been avoided because we had about 30-40 people who had confirmed they were coming and then bailed last second which we couldn’t have avoided. It was ok though because we had 6-8 rebuys so it was like 30-32 people showed up which was still the biggest showing in a while. This tournament actually went really smooth overall and I think its definitely the best venue to have a tournament. Beautiful house and the huge downstairs is finished with a pool table, foozball table, arcade games, any snack you want, and any drink you want.

As for the actual tournament, I started off sloppy. I was finding a hard time flopping a pair so I kept trying to manufacture chips which never works in the early stages of these tournaments. Finally on the last hand for rebuying I doubled with AQ vs. Q3 after we got in on the turn on a J45Q board and I held.

The structure was pretty good. 30 min blinds, I think 1k to start, and we started with 5/10 then to 10/20, 15/30, 25/50, 30/60, 50/100, etc.

Now going into the second hour I had slightly more than the starting chips which I was more than happy with. Unfortunately I couldn’t hit any flops. Now I’m a big believer in that in these particular tournaments, I dont need cards to win and I was determined to prove this to be true. I kept taking advantage of every opportunity I could and eventually got to the FT of 8.

Now I had felt I only played ok to get to the final table but I was determined to put all the info I had gathered such as who wants to make the money together and take advantage of it. Unfortunately I had the huge cl who decided he was gonna attack. Lucky for me he was to my immediate right so I was able to reship him twice with 34o and 57o without a call either time. After maybe an hour we were down to 6 with 5 places paying. There is where I put into 6th gear. I was shoving a rediculous amount of times. If I knew someone was weak, I was shoving. If I knew that the bb wanted to make the money and it was folded to me in the sb, I’d shove every time. Sadly after a while the bubble ended and we were all “in the money.”

I had 6k with the blinds 250/500 and that big stack raised otb to 1k. Now from prior action I put him on A rag, K rag up to KQ and maybe a pp 22-55. I look down at KJhh and as much as I’d like to flat, I’m oop and I know hes gonna bet 1k-3k on the flop so I’d have to hit. I felt he was probably calling here 60% of the time with his stack but I just felt like the equity of him folding combined with the fact that I was pretty confident I was in a cf made it the right shove so I did and he called with A2o.

Flop: 2xx

Turn: J w00t!

River: A  oh : /

gg, gla

So I finished 5th and that big stack went on to win the tournament. Hes a bad player but he beat probably the 2nd or 3rd best player in the game due to his chip lead. Oh well, he seemed like an ok kid altho the only words out of his mouth were “i raise” “i call”. He was extremely quiet, almost too quiet.

We might have another tournament at this kids house later this summer and hopefully this time we’ll get the 40 ppl that were expected.

We’re also looking to have the SSOP (Southington Series of Poker) late in July with 7 events which would be a lot of fun.

As for online poker, its been basically non existent in my life as of late. I just shipped out my laptop to Dell this morning so I’m hoping to get it back ASAP. I played the Midnight Madness idk I think Wed night and cashed in it but nothing interesting. Thats the last online tournament I’ve played. Wish I had something more interesting on that topic but theres nothing worth talking about. I know once I get my laptop back and working, I’ll hopefully be playing a rediculous volume of tournaments and hopefully with some success. Only time will tell I guess.

Double

Today I finished up Junior Year. I’m confused about my feelings towards it. A part of me thinks thank God I dont have to wake up at 6 a.m. for another 3 months and I dont have to worry about tests, quizzes, etc. But another part of me thinks about how much I’m gonna miss the friends that I only see during school and not outside of it. Thats definitely what I’m gonna miss most about school this summer. On the other hand, I kinda want to forget about this year because it was my worse year grades wise. Of course this was my most important year which is perfect timing to completely fuck up but w/e its behind me now and now its time to move on.

Ok something else that I havn’t mentioned, my laptop is cracked. Yup, thats right, cracked. On Thursday morning, I had set it down from off my bed getting ready to go to school and while going over to get some clothes I accidently stepped on it while it was under a sheet with the mouse inside of it. I heard a “pop”, lifted the sheet and opened it up only to see 70% of my LCD panel covered in random colors. The crack is on the inside of the panel, like if you look at it, it looks like the outside screen is cracked but its actually the inside thats cracked so thats a big problem. God damn I loved that computer, why oh why do I have to be so fuckin stupid. Who sets their computer on the ground with the mouse inside of it? Ughhh anyways I later found out that the warranty won’t cover it so gg $300. Dell said they would send a box with specific instructions to me so once they do that I’ll have to send it out to some random Dell place and they’ll fix everything and ship it back within 7-10 days. If all this worked out perfectly and I have my laptop back to me in perfect condition in 12 days I can’t complain. I guess now I’ll just have to wait to get an iPod b/c I’m gonna be busy lighting $300 on fire b/c of my stupidity.  

Now of course this means I’m out a compuer. I only have this reeeeally shitty computer which is what I’m typing this on. Its a piece of shit, and I dont even want to be on it even to check my email. Of course I dont really have a choice but I dont think I’ll be playin much while my laptop is bein fixed b/c I just can’t stand this thing.

I’ll start the summer with half the bankroll I had just 2 months or so ago and shorter than when I started 2007. Its not all poker losses though, I’ve transfered friends money and got it paid back to me in cash, paid for PXF, paid off prop bets, etc. So I think overall I’m actually up for the year online but not by a lot. But I’m gonna be starting the summer pretty short which is not what I want but I’ll figure out some plan of attack as for the avg buy in I want to play and just go with it. If I’m a good player, I’ll win no matter how much variance I’m experiencing.

As for live poker, this is something I’m loving. We had another home game tourney at a friends house who lives really close to me and I guess you could call him my protege. Hes come a long way and hes eager to learn despite all his success as of late so big ups to him. Anyways, so we got 11 degenerates to show up, and I took it down. Definitley nice to win, especially seeing I think I went 3-4 tournaments without a win. While I love live poker 20x more than online, I dont know how well I’ll fair when I head to Turning Stone in December. One thing that I’m noticing is that I hate taking huge pots/busting people. I just feel bad. Maybe its just because they’re all my friends but idk I know this has to change.

The win is nice coming on the heels of our “Main Event” if you will which starts tomorrow. At the moment we have about 25 people that are confirmed to come but I’m sure theres gonna be more and theres talk of professional dealers comin, I’m definitely pumped to play it. I’ve won live tournaments in a zillion different locations but never one of these. Theres different people there which is always a nice challenge. The first hour is kind of spot as many tells as you can if I have a table of people I’ve never played with before. Thats always a fun game to play especially when you see the most obvious stuff ever. lol  I’m gonna crash at a friends house tonight, hopefully get a little bit of rest and play it out. The kid whos hosting it also said that the final table might sleep over and play it out the next day. How cool would that be? We didn’t have this end of the year tournament last year due to some stupidity on his part but I’ve been lookin forward to this for a long time and I know a lot of other people who share my same feeling so its definitley gonna be a good tournament.

Double

So lets see on Saturday I was dedicated to put in a full day multi-tabling tournies and I started bright and early at 9am which I dont think I’ve ever done mainly because I never wake up that early on the weekend. Anyways so I pretty much 4-tabled nonstop from 9am to 6pm. I had 4 cashes, one final table, amounting to a small profit on the day. I took some really gross beats late which I wont bore you with but they didn’t tilt me so thats good. I’m finding that I actually might play better while I’m multi tabling but I’ll save that for a later blog. Overall I felt I played well on the day so thats all that matters. Lately I’ve been focusing on just playing well, not tilting, and not bitching about anything and its been goin pretty good so we’ll see.

So at 6pm, a friend of mine calls me up and asks if I wanna head down to his house and play a tourney so I figure alright I’ll give up some equity to do something that I’ve been dieing to do lately which is play some live poker. As usual I get there and theres a couple people I dont know but this was different because one of the kids who we’ll call “John” was so fuckin high. The kid who was hosting said John had been smokin weed all day and he had smoked 6 bowls right before the tourney.

John was at my starting table and I found his “highness” hilarious, as did he, although he found everything hilarious. lol  The rest of us who weren’t high were fuckin with him and I dont know how we got onto the topic but somehow we started talking about the city of Troy and in his classic stoner voice he was like “duuuuuuude i love my boy Troy, hes awesome bro.” So i said “yo hes right there” as i pointed to the refrigerator behind him and he goes “oh my god troy, whats goin on bro?” and then proceeded to have a conversation with the refrigerator. lmao  I will say its hard to read a kid who has no clue why theres playing cards in front of him.

As for the actual tourney, I felt I played well, did the usual playing the person live game which I love so much. It would be the worst strategy of all-time online but it works live b/c it really and truely does not matter what my cards are b/c these guys either shopped at tells-r-us, or I can read pretty good. There was actually a hand at the final table where I had 76 on a 76T2A board. There had been some action going to the river which I checked and he quickly fired out sloppily which I immediately thought was weak but I wanted to make sure that my first impression was right so I started talkin to him and even puposely made the joke of “What would Troy do?” and he gave a genuine laugh so that along with the fact that he was breathing normally made me think that my 2 pair couldn’t be good. It was also the things he said that made he think he had to have TT so I folded and he showed me the tens. Like saying a joke to get a reaction might sound weird but idk its just one of the things I’ll use to figure out what they have. Another is just talking someone into a call or a fold which is one of my favorite things to do. Its not that hard once you figure out what makes each person tick. This time I actually didn’t win b/c I lost 3 consecutive coinflips 3 handed so I finished 3rd. Blahhhhhhh I can’t win EVERY one ; )

Theres a huge tourney the day after school gets out (June 19th) and I’ve heard as many as 50 people are goin and it possibly being a 2 day event but we’ll see, I’m expecting around 25 and it just being a really long day. I’m definitely lookin forward to that and ending junior year.

Double

I got a lot of positive responses to my last entry so I might start making more entries that aren’t directly related to whats going on with me in poker. Seems like I keep repeating myself…..”i’m on a horrible run, hopefully i snap outta it soon” which is prob boring.

Anyways so back to my favorite past time, prop betting. The more rediculous, the better. Just a couple days ago, I picked a horse to win the National Spelling Bee. lol  Its hard to find people who are on the same degenerate level as you are but I’ve found a couple people and we bet on everything. I love it, the other day Mike, Reeves, Steve and myself were talkin and Reeves kept touching his face so me and Mike secretly bet on who would touch his face first, Steve or Reeves, obv I picked Steve to make it interesting and 2 seconds later Reeves touched his face so I lost 5 bucks lol. What I’m currently betting on is the WSOP. Its definitely been fun, we bet on how many ppl would be in a couple events and I guessed really close both times so at the moment I’m up which is always nice. Hope I keep running goooooooooooooooooot

Double

One of my goals for this current year was to become a ranked player on www.pocketfives.com Now this has been a goal of mine for a little longer than 6 months and its still a goal of mine. Being a ranked player almost validates the fact that your’e a good online tournament player. While you have to play a rediculous volume of Mtts, and even after all your 5 figure scores you still might be broke, it still earns respect and thats something that I’d love to gain. Personally, I dont think I’ll be able to achieve that goal by the end of the year for a couple reasons. One of them being out of my control which is that I just dont have the time that these players have to play. I have to go to school every weekday from 7am to 2:30 p.m. Another that I completley control is how hard I work on my game and I dont work hard enough improving it. The combination of the two probably equals me not being ranked at the end of 2007.

Now while I would like to eventually achieve that goal in becoming a ranked player at www.pocketfives.com, I hope I never act like some of the players that are ranked. I’ve been reading the forum lately and some of the things that are being said by these players has made me realize how egotistical they really are. For example, Corey Carroll who finished runner-up to Jonathon Little in the Mirage Poker Showdown along with Phil Ivey who finished 5th recently made a thread after the tournament where Corey (”UGOTPZD” online) said he by far played the best at the final table and that Ivey played horrible. This became a mega thread with a ton of top online ranked tournament players basically trashing Ivey and saying that all live tournament pros play horrible. All the while showing their true colors and showing how big of an ego they have.

I dont think they get it. I’ll make this very clear. There is not one single online mtt player that is on Phil Ivey’s level. Not a single one. Oh you just won a freezeout for $8,000? Thats one big bet for Ivey in the big game. Where do they get off saying they’re better than Ivey? Honestly, they’re not even on Ivey’s level. Especially Carroll in particular, its pretty clear now that he has an unbelievably huge ego. I was listening to the podcast he was on and he just comes off as an arrogant jerk. Its unfortunate because all these guys that you think are at least somewhat humble and you admire their play, just have huge egos and think they’re God’s gift to poker.

I mean listen its very fair to say that in general online tournament pros are better than live tournament pros, even I would agree with that but to say that you are on Ivey’s level as a NLH Tournament player, let alone better than him is absurd. How many major live tournaments have you won Mr. Carroll? Yes thats right, despite what you think, track records do count for something. And you can’t pull the “well he won those tournaments back when there were 50 people in them” because he hasn’t.

It upsets me that people so smart and so poker savvy can say things so stupid. And it wasn’t just UGOTPZD, it was ppl like SCTrojans who just won 3 triple crowns in a single month, and even online legend Ari said some things like Imper1um is a better tournament player than Ivey. Obviously Sorel is an unbelievable tournament player but maybe win one live tournament before you say that hes better than Ivey?

If I ever become a ranked player or a very successful live tournament player I hope I never ever act like these people. I hope I dont have their ego. One thing I’m trying to do a lot of lately is be brutally honest with myself. If I feel I played a hand poorly, then I need to admit it and go back and look for an optimal way to play it. So if these guys truely feel they are better tournament players than Ivey, they are lieing to themselves and thats unfortunate.

Double