Mookie Win!

With the cash games going so crappy the last two days (see graph below), it sure is nice to have a some tournament success. Wednesday's are my usual MTT night, so I fired my regular games. The 50/50, the 24k, FT & Stars $10 rebuys, and of course the Mookie. I cashed in the PokerStars $10 rebuy, and I won the Mookie.

I think I played some pretty good, solid poker. I had my fair share of starting hands (Though no Aces). Most of them held up. I doubled up off of BigSlickNut with QQ vs 77. I again had Queens a little while later hold up vs AQ and knocked out PokerPeaker. I knocked out a shortstacked Smokkee with AJ vs KQ.

When down to 2 tables, I got it all-in with Queens again against Pureprophet's 77, but he flopped a 7. I was 2nd in chips, so I still had a good stack. About 2 orbits later, I got Kings and got it all-in vs Loretta8's AJ. Ace on the flop,a nd that put me down to an average stack. But two hands later I doubled up with AK vs Anguila's AQ.

From there until it got down to 4 handed, I just stole stole stole. Once down to four, pvanharibo raised it up from the button. I found JJ, and with about 18 BBs, I decided to push. She called with AQs, and I won the race. That gave me the chip lead with over half of the chips. The very next hand, I knocked out the two short stacks (pvanharibo and anguila) with my T9s vs A8s vs J6. The flop had two Tens, and it was down to heads up between myself and pureprophet. He already had a TOC seat, so we played it out and about 6 hands later, I raised it up with KTs and he called. Flop was Ten high and I bet, and he pushed. I made the easy call, and he had K8 and pretty much drawing dead.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOM

******************************************

Ugg, cash games have sucked the last two nights. I'm down 6 buy-ins in EV in just 700 hands. That's terrible. I can't win a pot at a cash game to save my life. My Won When Saw Flop and Won at Showdown numbers are under 30%.


But no more complaining. I won the Mook!

Cheers!

Ahhhhh, Poker

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. I'm going through one of those stretches where I don't feel like playing too much poker. And with that comes me not having much to say in this here poker blog.

BUT..... I think I am out of my funk. I wouldn't really call it a downswing though. I'm actually up a few bucks this month. Most of that has come from winning a bunch of FTOPS satellites. I have almost $700 in T Dollars right now. I won a $24 FTOPS Main event satellite and one other $300 satellite. Those things were really soft. And quite fun. I'm going to have start playing in more of them.

The cash games have been up and down. I started the month off with a nice little streak. But the next week and a half kind of sucked. I even played some 400NL when the games were really good. I would have had another $1,000 day if it wasn't for my Aces getting cracked by Kings in a $900 pot. We got it all-in on the Ten high flop and he turned a King. I'm pretty sure that was my biggest losing pot ever. It didn't hurt too bad though since 30 minutes earlier some donk gave me their $400 stack with K4 against my AA in a 3-bet pot, lol.

I played short session this morning and won $350 and I felt really really good. So I think I'll be putting Call of Duty back on the shelf and play some more poker instead for the rest of the month.

**************************************************

I installed PokerTracker 3 last night and played around with it for the first time. I have mixed feelings about it right now. The only positive I have seen so far is having Pre-flop 3-bet stats. Other than that, this thing is a HUGE resource hog. And there are some really annoying things I have noticed. For example, I can't figure out how to get a table to show up on my screen when it has been minimized. In PT2 and PAHud, you would have to double click the table in PAHud. I don't know how to do it in PT3. SUPER ANNOYING! I don't know, maybe there is an option in there somewhere about minimizing tables?

Another is filtering stats. I was updating my excel spreadsheet today, and it is a lot more button clicks to have one day show up in the stats window. In PT2 there was a Preferences tab, but not in PT3.

Table averages seem to be screwed up. In PT2/PAHud, I had VP$IP, PFR%, and Average pot showing up. But I can't find a stat for average pot in PT3.

I also like having a list up of all the tables I have open and their respective Table Averages. Then I can sort by VP$IP and get on the juicy tables. But I don't see this anywhere in PT3 (Though I haven't tried out the table selector in PT3, so maybe it is in there).

So is all that crap worth it to have 3-bet stats? Ehhh, I don't know yet.

*********************************************

I played in the Mookie last week, but busted out fairly early. I had 7 other MTTs going on at the time, and I think that is just a little too many (Ya think?) Anyways, there was a hand that I was involved in and another blogger felt that that play was so bad that he had to both berate me in the chat and on his blog.

I was dealt 99 in mid position with about 1500 in my stack (25/50 blinds). The blogger raises it from EP to 150. He had been really active so far, so I decided to 3-bet to 500 with my nines. But then the unknown and tight SB comes alive and basically min-4-bets to 1100. Hmm, I wonder what he has. Sure, I put in 1/3 of my stack PF, and would be getting 2:1 on my money, but I decided to fold and play on with my 20 BBs I had left instead of hoping it was a coinflip. Blogger thought that was really bad and berated me. I posted a question to the poker forum I frequent and everyone said that going with my read and folding was fine. Though they did say that I should have raised less (like to 400) Pre-Flop instead of 500. I agree with that.

(Edit: I found out that SB had KK)

***************************************

American Idol Final is tonight. I think I am going to puke if David Archuleta wins. Everyone in my house does not like him. I'm a David Cook Fan, my wife really just notices Archie's annoyingly loud breathing, and my daughter was a huge Jason Castro fan, so she isn't interested anymore.

I think it is a given that Cook will be the star in the future from this season. I see him being as popular as Chris Daughtry. The only way Archuleta becomes popular is if he gets on the Disney channel and sells records to the Hannah Montana/High School Musical crowd. There is no way that someone over the age of 21 buys a David Archuleta album.


***************************************

Oh Crap, I almost forgot. I turned in all of my Full Tilt Frequent Player points for a 32GB iPod touch. This thing is totally awesome. It's a laptop that fits in your pocket. Now if only I could play poker on this thing.......

Cheers!

Disney World!

Our Florida Trip was something that we planned on really short notice. I had mentioned to my wife earlier in the year, that if I continue to make some decent money playing poker, I should withdraw a bunch of it and we should all go to Florida and Disney World. April rolled around, and we knew that if we were going to go, it would have to be soon. But I was in the midst of a pretty crappy downswing, so I was procrastinating on making the decision. As you have read, I made a huge turnaround and went on a super heater, so the weekend of April 19th, we decided to pull the trigger and leave for Florida the next weekend.

Other than extended time off during Christmas, this was my longest "vacation" I have taken since I graduated college. Every other vacation has only been long weekends, so it was really nice to get away from work for a whole week. This would also be the first big trip with the four of us, and my son's first plane ride. The kids did awesome on the plane ride and both had a really good time at the airport and on the plane. My son even took a good nap, so that was a plus.

The first two nights of our trip we decided to spend at Cocoa Beach. We had a tough time deciding between Cocoa Bach and Clearwater Beach, but ended up going the eastern route, mainly because it was only an hour from the airport, and half as expensive as the gulf coast. The weather both days were perfect and in the low 80's. We spent most of Sunday sitting on the beach and swimming in the pool. My daughter loved the ocean and finding sea shells. We also built a huge sand castle.

Unfortunately, we all got sunburned pretty bad. And that was even with two coating of sun screen. Everyone but James got some sunburn. He spent the prime sun time under the umbrellas taking a nap on the beach. Being of Scandinavian heritage and living in Minnesota, we weren't used to the sun. Especially since this past winter was brutal. Our skin hadn't seen sun in six months! We only went to one sit down restaurant there, Fishlips. I wasn't too impressed by the food. We ordered crab cakes for an appetizer, and one of them had shells in it! I'd give it a D+.

Monday was our travelling day and we heading off to Disney World where we would spend the next four nights. We stayed at Port Orleans Riverside at Disney World. This resort was awesome, and I am really glad we chose this one instead of one of the All-Star resorts. A lot of the reviews we read before our trip complained about the torpedo toilets and the noise they make and the busing issues at this resort. But we didn't experience anything negative during our stay. It was nice and quiet and relaxing. Another plus was that the food was awesome. At the cafeteria in Riverside, they had a pasta station that made some really good food. Actually, the food everywhere at Disney World was awesome. I definitely give it an A.

Tuesday we spent at the Magic Kingdom. For lunch, we had our first character meal. This one was with the Pooh gang, and the kids had a blast. And of course, the food was great. They had some of the best salmon I've ever had. After lunch, it was back to the rides, but this time to some of the bigger rides. My daughter had no fear, and we went on Thunder Railroad and Splash Mountain. She didn't really like Splash Mountain (because we got wet right away), but she loved thunder railroad. She would have been happy going on just this ride the rest of the day. My son's favorite rides were the race cars and the dumbo ride.

Wednesday we started out at Animal Kingdom. There aren't a lot rides here for the young kids, so we only spent a half day here. During that time, we saw the Lion King and Pocahontas performances and went on the safari ride. That was pretty cool. We got to see some animals you don't get to see up at the Minnesota Zoo.




Here is video of me on the Expedition Everest Roller Coaster at the Animal Kingdom. What an awesome ride. It is definitely the best roller coaster I have ever been on. One great thing about Disney World at their really big rides, is that they have single rider lanes. I was able to go on this ride three times in 20 minutes. I was lucky enuogh to get the front row on the last ride and for this video. I was sitting next to a nice lady from Ireland. Behind us were her Mother and Aunt. They hadn't ridden on this yet, so I was telling them that I heard that there might be some broken tracks up ahead. They had great time.

Wednesday night we spent at Epcot. We really didn't do too much here since we didn't get there until around dinner time. We went on Soarin' (Isabella got to go twice) which was really cool and went to the Monsters Inc laugh factory.


Thursday started off early, as we had a character breakfast at Hollywood Studios. Of course, the food was excellent. Again, Hollywood studios doesn't have too many rides, so most of our time was spent at the performances (Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast). We did get to go on the Star Wars ride, so that was nice. I also was able to go on the Aerosmith Rock-n-Roll roller coaster. This one was pretty neat, but doesn't last very long. Maybe 1.5 minutes?




And we finished off our Disney World trip by spending the rest of Thursday back at the Magic Kingdom. It was open later, so we were there until after 10 PM. If your kids can handle one really late night, this is the way to go. The lines are really short and the crowds weren't everywhere. We got see a lot of characters and get a lot of pictures taken. We discovered the Barn Stormer roller coaster, and James was just tall enough to go on it. He loved it. We went on it at least 5 times.



I'm really looking forward to going back in the next couple years. I think we are going to have to make Disney World a bi-yearly trip. Especially if I keep making money playing poker. That's why I play poker. To make some extra money for some fun things that we wouldn't be able to do otherwise.

One last thing to add about Disney World: The people who decided to really market the Disney Princesses are frickin geniuses. It is unbelievable how many little girls are into them. I'm sure Disney is making a ton of money off of all of that. And being a Dad of a five year old, I sure am glad my daughter enjoys Disney Princess stuff over the other crap that is out there, like Hannah Montana, etc...

Can you tell we are all tired in the picture?

Cheers!

Riverchasers Win*

At the last minute, I decided to sign up for the Riverchasers tournament last night. I figured I'd sit down with the wife on the couch and play while we watched Grey's Anatomy. I usually don't play the Thursday night Blogger tournament because of the earlier start time. The kids are never in bed by then, and last night was no different, as I didn't sit down and play much until 45 minutes had already passed.

I think I played pretty well and was pretty aggressive with steals and re-steals. The tables I was at was playing really really tight, so I got away with a lot of steals. The only person that stood up to me more than once was RasingCayne. Around the middle of the 2nd hour, I won a nice pot with AA vs KK. From there I hovered Between the top 3 and top 10 right up to the final table.

At the final table, I had a couple massive suckouts. I don't feel too bad, because I don't think I made any huge mistakes. When you raise with A5s and someone pushes all-in, and you are being offered 3:1 on your call, you have to call with pretty much any two cards.

The two big ones were my AJ vs AK all-in PF. Flop was KQx giving me just a gutshot. But the turn and river were both Jacks, giving me the pot. I also got it all-in vs CK31 with my A5s vs JJ. Flop was Jack high, but it gave me a gutshot, and I hit it on the river.

I put the * asterisk up in the title because when it got down to heads up, it was between Loretta8 and myself and we made a deal giving me the TOC seat, and Loretta8 the money. I'm ok with that because Loretta had a 3:2 chip lead (I know, not much), but I suck at heads up play. Plus, I won about the same amount on the cash tables last night as I shipped over to Loretta. So I think I came out ahead.

That's right folks, another cash game specialist is in the TOC. Woot!

*****************************************

April Results

After the brutal start to the month, I turned things around, and ended on a super duper hot streak. When the month was over for me, I had a new Best Month Ever . It feels pretty good to fight back from being down so much. Here is the cash game graph.

I think my MTTs were pretty much even, and then I'll make $500 or so in rakeback. Not too shaby!

*****************************************

Disney World was awesome last week. I'm going to put together a bigger post with more pictures and a trip report maybe later tonight or this weekend. But in the meantime, here is a cute picture of the kids with Piglet at one of the character meals we went too.

Cheers!