Went to Florida this week with my girlfriend. She had a timeshare so we are staying in a condo. Upon arrival however, we were greeted with a free upgrade to the most premium suite they had! Can't complain about that.... must be the good karma I had from leaving the taxi drivers an extra good tip. I will be here for a week and then only have a week or two before I move to L.A.
Bought a new car yesterday, the Subaru Tribeca. Its a nice car, only problem is that it burns through gas like a hummer. I like this car because I have never seen a single other person drive one on the road, and it has the sporty look of the lexus rx that I wanted so bad. I ended up deciding that subaru is going to last me the rest of my life if I decide to keep it for more than a year, and has all the features the lexus has for half the cost. Anyway going to bed as I have a long day at the parks and universal studios! The only thing missing is the warm weather I imagined (its fucking like 45 degrees).
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
2009 Recap of my life
So I wanted to write a little recap about my year and some new goals and expectations for the future. I will talk about my development as a person and as a poker player, and how it has changed my life. It is very long so I hope I don’t bore and put you to sleep!
At the end of last year/early this year I remember sitting in my room at my house in Kent. This is where I was going to school at the time and I was on Christmas break. I had managed to rack up a nice little credit card bill upwards of around $2500 dollars. I had no Idea how I was going to continue paying for my education, books, rent or anything really. I was not doing well in poker at the time because I kept playing out of my bankroll and losing. Actually the whole semester before I managed to drop about 5k in poker, which was all the money I had saved up from that time. I had to quit my job as a certified pharmacy technician before I moved down to Kent because the commute would have been too long and expensive, and I had a full load of classes. I had cancelled my subscription to the poker training sites that I had been apart of because of money and I was too busy with school to actually sit down and learn. I had the fire inside of me though to want to keep playing poker so I ended up deciding to reactivate my PokerVT subscription.
My whole life I have been a very hard working and dedicated individual. I am very competitive and do not like to lose. I also never played another other form of poker other than No limit texas holdem cash games. At the time of rejoining the site, they had recently added two new pros to their line up. They were Nick Rainey and Jason Somerville. I remember Nick was strictly a sit and go guy at the time, so I didn’t watch any of his videos at the time. I was very intrigued by Jason’s videos at the time as I had never heard anyone go into so much depth and strategy as he did. The man is truly a genius when it comes to poker and I watched his video many times, taking notes and really trying to learn his new strategy’s that I had never even though of before. I re-deposited 50$ onto my full tilt account again and tried to play a few tournaments. I was actually starting to play a lot better and started winning more consistently. By the end of January I made my first big final table which was in the midnight madness and cashed for 900$. I was super excited at the time because I was actually going to have money for my trip to Las Vegas that I was taking in a week for my 21st birthday. One thing I forgot to mention was that I also only started out taking 12credit hours in school this semester instead of my usual 16-18 so that I could have more time to study and learn poker.
My first night in Vegas I ended up playing a 75$ tournament at Binion’s that started at 2am. There was only about 37 people who entered in it, and I was a little intimidated at the time. I used all my strategies and thinking that I had learned from the previous weeks of study and ended up playing very well in the beginning. It was about an hour in when I recognized a voice that I had heard before. I looked over to the other table to see JC Alvarado, who was a video producer for PokerVT. I had watched all of his videos and knew a little about who he was. I wasn’t actually sure at the time if it was him or not, but when I heard him using poker talk that no amateur would use I was pretty sure it was him. On the first break I was in the bathroom and I asked one of the guys who I thought was JC’s friends if that was actually him and he said “yea!” This guys name is Aaron Been and he is a very successful poker player.(I did not know who he was at the time though.) He was also accompanied by their friend Steve O Dwyer who was also a very accomplished player. Aaron introduced me JC and Steve and I was in shock that I was actually playing with them in the same tournament. I mean who plays a 75$ Binions donkament at 2am?! They were obviously getting drunk and just having a good time, but it was still a really cool moment for me at the time. I had never dreamed that I would actually get a chance to play with some pros at any point in my life! We all ended up making the final table together and the top 3 places where to be paid.
The flys were dropping fast and I continued to play really tight. I got into a hand where Aaron shoved in first position and I was in the big blind with K7s. He had less than 10bb and I figured that he had to have a lot of different hands so I couldn’t be in bad shape and made the call. He ended up having something like A5 and I ended up knocking him out. That was a very cool feeling at the time and I was loving every second of it. One thing I also learned from watching videos from Daniel Negreanu was theory behind the minraise. I was using it to my advantage as everyone had no idea how to react to my small raise size. I remember raising Steves blind one hand and he was like wtf as if confused at what to do. Looking back I know Steve is a very good player and knows how to play hands in every situation, but as a professional now I can see he probably didn’t know if I was any good or not and whether my raise was strong or weak. You just didn’t see bad players min raising at that time. Both Steve and JC ended up getting knocked out and I was in the money 3 handed against some random older guys. The coolest part was that they ended up staying to watch me. I ended up shoving K2o from the sb and the BB woke up with 33. I lost and was out. I remember talking to them afterward about the hand and wishing them good luck before they left. That was definitely the fire I needed to continue to learn and try and become the best poker player I could be.
Upon returning home I continued to watch videos and study. I had never logged onto a poker forum, or any forum for that matter, until I saw that pokerVT had their own. I was reading around and decided that I was going to try and discuss hands with other players. This is where I saw that Nick Rainey had been playing with a few members on the site and making a video of it. I knew I had to try and get in on this video because I had never played with a pro online and was super excited about it. I ended up getting into his 3rd tournament, which was a 9man sng. I had never really studied 9man strategy before and had only played a few back in the day on Party. I got really lucky to not only knock out the pro himself, but I also won it! Nick was giving his own money away at the time for anyone who knocked him out and for the winner, so I got a nice little 75$ boost to my bankroll! This is when I started watching Nick’s videos and started to learn how to play the 9mans. I decided that even though I was getting more and more into debt that I would spend 100$ to purchase sng wizard. It is a program that helps you perfect your calling and shoving ranges in the tournaments that you play. He also had a promotion going at the time that whoever made the most money playing 500 of these, that he would donate all of his profits that he made playing that day. I studied every single hand I played and learned what hands I could and could not play. This is where the bulk of my poker game and career started. I had never played 500 tournaments in my life, and here I was playing them in a period of two weeks. Not only that but I was actually studying every single hand and learning. To this day I actually think I was the winner but never got any money for it lol. There was a deadline for the challenge and by that time another extraordinary opportunity had fallen upon me.
I want to mention that this was all taking place during March and April, and during this time I became an alcoholic. I had always drank a lot during college due to being in a fraternity and being very outgoing and social. I was going to the bars 2-3 nights a week and dropping shots of crown by myself everyday. I probably had on average about 6-8shots every single day for about a two month period on top of the Thurday/Friday/Saturday nights that I always went out. I even started to have people over on like a random Monday or Tuesday night to play beer pong when I was bored. I had dropped out of one of my classes and was down to only 9 credit hours. One of my classes ended at the beginning of April so I only had to go to 3 classes at that point and two of them were 1 day a week. Needless to say I had a lot more time to get drunk and hangout with friends, on top of all the poker I was playing. I also racked up a lot more debt and wasted the rest of my student loan money on alcohol. In turn I also gained a lot of weight and became mildly depressed. The only thing that helped me through it all was poker.
Nick decided that he was going to choose a couple students to train over the summer. I knew I HAD to get in on this and this was my motivation to continue to learn and play. It was then one day that He also said he had a job for someone and I was the first one to respond out of all the fellow members of the site that were also competing in the challenges. I became Nick’s personal online assistant in exchange for poker lessons. It was a very simple job as I had to go through all of his emails and write back generic responses to the thousands of people that asked him questions. At this point Nick had told me that I had been accepted to come out and train this summer! That was one of the best days of my life as I bragged to all of my friends and family what I had accomplished. A real live pro wanted to train and stake me to play poker!
I ended up going out in June to learn the 90mans on full tilt poker. However because Nick had originally wanted me to be his personal assistant, I did not start out playing a lot of poker right away. I was running around for the month of June doing work for him. The times that I did get to play was mostly live at nearby casinos in LA. I was so mad I told him that if I didn’t get to play I was going to quit and leave. By this time it was already July and I finally had gotten approved to have rake back on my account so he gave in. From then on we played every single day for many hours. We went out to eat or golfing a few times, but other than that we were in the office grinding away. I had never played so many games in my entire life. This is where I learned the dedication and commitment it took to become a true professional at poker. It was at this time too where I started playing HU SNG, and really started to learn more about hand reading and all the little intricacies that each poker hand was made up of. It was scary at first to realize how bad at poker I actually was, and how much I actually still had left to learn! Nick loves to crack jokes and mess with your head, and I definitely was the one who got screwed with the most. So by the end of our training I declined his offer to stay and continue to learn from him. This resulted in a big falling out between us and we did not talk for many months after that.
I went back home but didn’t have a real setup to play on, so for the greater part of a month I did not play any poker. By the time I got my computer back I ended up losing all the money I had. I was definitely out of practice from not playing so long so I went back to studying and watching videos. I ended up buying a new computer and monitor so that I had something reasonable to play on and received a 1k stake from a friend. I was so up and down over the next week and it was very frustrating. If I lost the money I had no way to pay him back. The day before I was supposed to pay him back I finally had a break through by winning the turbo fiddy on full tilt for 5k!
I finally had a bankroll of my own and could afford to pay off my bills and new computer. I played every single day from that point on. I did not leave my house for almost 6 weeks. I did not hang out with friends I did not do anything except learn and play poker. It was at this time I started watching a lot of heads up videos. I bought a subscription to leggo poker and watched all of Aaron Jones videos. He is a genius like Jason when it comes to poker and I love how he keeps his videos entertaining while also giving a lot of good advice. It was at this point something great had happened to me. One day I was watching videos by Jason Somerville when I had an epiphany. I suddenly could see the big picture of poker, and his videos that had once dazzled my brain no longer were interesting to me anymore. I grew bored of listening to his explanations because I finally understood. It was at this point I knew I could produce my own videos at the same quality that he had. Not to take anything away from him, I still watch his videos, they are the best. But I was finally just able to tie all these advanced concepts together that I had been learning for so long and everything made sense!
I had some small success from this point on playing just mtt’s. I final tabled the 10$cubed and the 20rebuy two times for a few thousand. I also went with some friends down to the wsop circuit event in Indiana where I did fairly well. A few weeks went by and I decided to dabble in the HU SNG again. I started playing a lot higher than I was used to and experienced some mild success. I had a fish on the line at the 100$ level and he kept quitting me and sitting in a new game. I kept following him in and eventually he just kept playing me. I had him so tilted and was up almost 8 buyins on him when my life went to shit. I started to lose every single key hand in the big pots that basically decided the match. He went on a super rush and just drilled me for almost 3000$ which was almost half of all the money I had to my name! I felt so defeated so I went out drinking that night and got annihilated. The next day was Sunday and somehow I woke up fresh as can be. It was not a good Sunday as I busted from every tournament and was down to my last 100$ in my account. I had just busted in the biggest tournament of the week after running KK and AK into AA back to back hands. I about lost it. I kept my composure and ended up doing something great. This is from one of my earlier posts where I went on the win the double deuce for 35k!( you can read all about that in the post titled, “this wet dream only cost $22$”). I had finally had my big break through after getting so close so many times, and my first 5 figure score!
Winning the deuce was the not the best thing that happened to me. I finally had a big enough bankroll to grind all the tournaments I wanted to play but I got lazy after that. I felt like I was the best and that I did not need to play everyday or study anymore. I started going out and drinking a lot again. Luckily It did not get out of hand this time and I still played a few times a week. I ended up final tabling the Sunday Brawl a few weeks after that and ended up finishing 5th for ~30k. This was a few weeks ago and since then I started playing a lot more. I won a few more tournaments and had finally crossed the 100k mark, in just two months. I am very proud of how far I have come. I never gave up and continued to work as hard as possible. Nick and I eventually made up and are now good friends. He really is a great friend and person if you give him a chance. He is very egotistical and I had never met someone like that before so It was hard for me at the time to realize the good in him. Since then he has gone on to win many tournaments, the stars TLB, and over 100k in cashes, and all of this just in November! Between the two of us I believe we will easily make over 1 million dollars next year. I want to thank him for giving me an opportunity to do well and succeed when everyone else was against me. I could never have gotten to this point in my career without his coaching and help, so thank you for everything you have done for me! All it takes to succeed in life is a passion for whatever your doing, a very strong work ethic to achieve it, and someone to believe in you. If you want something in life, go out there and fucking get it. Everyone was against me, and still to this day there are many people saying that I can‘t make it. All I have to say to them is I fucking made it. I made it without them or their help, so go fuck yourselves. When I win 500k next year DO NOT come to me and ask for charity, to double your money, give me praise, etc. Just continue to work your worthless white collar job while I continue to enjoy the satisfaction that your sorry ass life is about as hopeless/sad as Tiger’s marriage. Sorry the average American is too ignorant and stupid to understand the life of this poker player.
Anyway, Good luck in your future endeavors and Happy Holidays!
-Josh
At the end of last year/early this year I remember sitting in my room at my house in Kent. This is where I was going to school at the time and I was on Christmas break. I had managed to rack up a nice little credit card bill upwards of around $2500 dollars. I had no Idea how I was going to continue paying for my education, books, rent or anything really. I was not doing well in poker at the time because I kept playing out of my bankroll and losing. Actually the whole semester before I managed to drop about 5k in poker, which was all the money I had saved up from that time. I had to quit my job as a certified pharmacy technician before I moved down to Kent because the commute would have been too long and expensive, and I had a full load of classes. I had cancelled my subscription to the poker training sites that I had been apart of because of money and I was too busy with school to actually sit down and learn. I had the fire inside of me though to want to keep playing poker so I ended up deciding to reactivate my PokerVT subscription.
My whole life I have been a very hard working and dedicated individual. I am very competitive and do not like to lose. I also never played another other form of poker other than No limit texas holdem cash games. At the time of rejoining the site, they had recently added two new pros to their line up. They were Nick Rainey and Jason Somerville. I remember Nick was strictly a sit and go guy at the time, so I didn’t watch any of his videos at the time. I was very intrigued by Jason’s videos at the time as I had never heard anyone go into so much depth and strategy as he did. The man is truly a genius when it comes to poker and I watched his video many times, taking notes and really trying to learn his new strategy’s that I had never even though of before. I re-deposited 50$ onto my full tilt account again and tried to play a few tournaments. I was actually starting to play a lot better and started winning more consistently. By the end of January I made my first big final table which was in the midnight madness and cashed for 900$. I was super excited at the time because I was actually going to have money for my trip to Las Vegas that I was taking in a week for my 21st birthday. One thing I forgot to mention was that I also only started out taking 12credit hours in school this semester instead of my usual 16-18 so that I could have more time to study and learn poker.
My first night in Vegas I ended up playing a 75$ tournament at Binion’s that started at 2am. There was only about 37 people who entered in it, and I was a little intimidated at the time. I used all my strategies and thinking that I had learned from the previous weeks of study and ended up playing very well in the beginning. It was about an hour in when I recognized a voice that I had heard before. I looked over to the other table to see JC Alvarado, who was a video producer for PokerVT. I had watched all of his videos and knew a little about who he was. I wasn’t actually sure at the time if it was him or not, but when I heard him using poker talk that no amateur would use I was pretty sure it was him. On the first break I was in the bathroom and I asked one of the guys who I thought was JC’s friends if that was actually him and he said “yea!” This guys name is Aaron Been and he is a very successful poker player.(I did not know who he was at the time though.) He was also accompanied by their friend Steve O Dwyer who was also a very accomplished player. Aaron introduced me JC and Steve and I was in shock that I was actually playing with them in the same tournament. I mean who plays a 75$ Binions donkament at 2am?! They were obviously getting drunk and just having a good time, but it was still a really cool moment for me at the time. I had never dreamed that I would actually get a chance to play with some pros at any point in my life! We all ended up making the final table together and the top 3 places where to be paid.
The flys were dropping fast and I continued to play really tight. I got into a hand where Aaron shoved in first position and I was in the big blind with K7s. He had less than 10bb and I figured that he had to have a lot of different hands so I couldn’t be in bad shape and made the call. He ended up having something like A5 and I ended up knocking him out. That was a very cool feeling at the time and I was loving every second of it. One thing I also learned from watching videos from Daniel Negreanu was theory behind the minraise. I was using it to my advantage as everyone had no idea how to react to my small raise size. I remember raising Steves blind one hand and he was like wtf as if confused at what to do. Looking back I know Steve is a very good player and knows how to play hands in every situation, but as a professional now I can see he probably didn’t know if I was any good or not and whether my raise was strong or weak. You just didn’t see bad players min raising at that time. Both Steve and JC ended up getting knocked out and I was in the money 3 handed against some random older guys. The coolest part was that they ended up staying to watch me. I ended up shoving K2o from the sb and the BB woke up with 33. I lost and was out. I remember talking to them afterward about the hand and wishing them good luck before they left. That was definitely the fire I needed to continue to learn and try and become the best poker player I could be.
Upon returning home I continued to watch videos and study. I had never logged onto a poker forum, or any forum for that matter, until I saw that pokerVT had their own. I was reading around and decided that I was going to try and discuss hands with other players. This is where I saw that Nick Rainey had been playing with a few members on the site and making a video of it. I knew I had to try and get in on this video because I had never played with a pro online and was super excited about it. I ended up getting into his 3rd tournament, which was a 9man sng. I had never really studied 9man strategy before and had only played a few back in the day on Party. I got really lucky to not only knock out the pro himself, but I also won it! Nick was giving his own money away at the time for anyone who knocked him out and for the winner, so I got a nice little 75$ boost to my bankroll! This is when I started watching Nick’s videos and started to learn how to play the 9mans. I decided that even though I was getting more and more into debt that I would spend 100$ to purchase sng wizard. It is a program that helps you perfect your calling and shoving ranges in the tournaments that you play. He also had a promotion going at the time that whoever made the most money playing 500 of these, that he would donate all of his profits that he made playing that day. I studied every single hand I played and learned what hands I could and could not play. This is where the bulk of my poker game and career started. I had never played 500 tournaments in my life, and here I was playing them in a period of two weeks. Not only that but I was actually studying every single hand and learning. To this day I actually think I was the winner but never got any money for it lol. There was a deadline for the challenge and by that time another extraordinary opportunity had fallen upon me.
I want to mention that this was all taking place during March and April, and during this time I became an alcoholic. I had always drank a lot during college due to being in a fraternity and being very outgoing and social. I was going to the bars 2-3 nights a week and dropping shots of crown by myself everyday. I probably had on average about 6-8shots every single day for about a two month period on top of the Thurday/Friday/Saturday nights that I always went out. I even started to have people over on like a random Monday or Tuesday night to play beer pong when I was bored. I had dropped out of one of my classes and was down to only 9 credit hours. One of my classes ended at the beginning of April so I only had to go to 3 classes at that point and two of them were 1 day a week. Needless to say I had a lot more time to get drunk and hangout with friends, on top of all the poker I was playing. I also racked up a lot more debt and wasted the rest of my student loan money on alcohol. In turn I also gained a lot of weight and became mildly depressed. The only thing that helped me through it all was poker.
Nick decided that he was going to choose a couple students to train over the summer. I knew I HAD to get in on this and this was my motivation to continue to learn and play. It was then one day that He also said he had a job for someone and I was the first one to respond out of all the fellow members of the site that were also competing in the challenges. I became Nick’s personal online assistant in exchange for poker lessons. It was a very simple job as I had to go through all of his emails and write back generic responses to the thousands of people that asked him questions. At this point Nick had told me that I had been accepted to come out and train this summer! That was one of the best days of my life as I bragged to all of my friends and family what I had accomplished. A real live pro wanted to train and stake me to play poker!
I ended up going out in June to learn the 90mans on full tilt poker. However because Nick had originally wanted me to be his personal assistant, I did not start out playing a lot of poker right away. I was running around for the month of June doing work for him. The times that I did get to play was mostly live at nearby casinos in LA. I was so mad I told him that if I didn’t get to play I was going to quit and leave. By this time it was already July and I finally had gotten approved to have rake back on my account so he gave in. From then on we played every single day for many hours. We went out to eat or golfing a few times, but other than that we were in the office grinding away. I had never played so many games in my entire life. This is where I learned the dedication and commitment it took to become a true professional at poker. It was at this time too where I started playing HU SNG, and really started to learn more about hand reading and all the little intricacies that each poker hand was made up of. It was scary at first to realize how bad at poker I actually was, and how much I actually still had left to learn! Nick loves to crack jokes and mess with your head, and I definitely was the one who got screwed with the most. So by the end of our training I declined his offer to stay and continue to learn from him. This resulted in a big falling out between us and we did not talk for many months after that.
I went back home but didn’t have a real setup to play on, so for the greater part of a month I did not play any poker. By the time I got my computer back I ended up losing all the money I had. I was definitely out of practice from not playing so long so I went back to studying and watching videos. I ended up buying a new computer and monitor so that I had something reasonable to play on and received a 1k stake from a friend. I was so up and down over the next week and it was very frustrating. If I lost the money I had no way to pay him back. The day before I was supposed to pay him back I finally had a break through by winning the turbo fiddy on full tilt for 5k!
I finally had a bankroll of my own and could afford to pay off my bills and new computer. I played every single day from that point on. I did not leave my house for almost 6 weeks. I did not hang out with friends I did not do anything except learn and play poker. It was at this time I started watching a lot of heads up videos. I bought a subscription to leggo poker and watched all of Aaron Jones videos. He is a genius like Jason when it comes to poker and I love how he keeps his videos entertaining while also giving a lot of good advice. It was at this point something great had happened to me. One day I was watching videos by Jason Somerville when I had an epiphany. I suddenly could see the big picture of poker, and his videos that had once dazzled my brain no longer were interesting to me anymore. I grew bored of listening to his explanations because I finally understood. It was at this point I knew I could produce my own videos at the same quality that he had. Not to take anything away from him, I still watch his videos, they are the best. But I was finally just able to tie all these advanced concepts together that I had been learning for so long and everything made sense!
I had some small success from this point on playing just mtt’s. I final tabled the 10$cubed and the 20rebuy two times for a few thousand. I also went with some friends down to the wsop circuit event in Indiana where I did fairly well. A few weeks went by and I decided to dabble in the HU SNG again. I started playing a lot higher than I was used to and experienced some mild success. I had a fish on the line at the 100$ level and he kept quitting me and sitting in a new game. I kept following him in and eventually he just kept playing me. I had him so tilted and was up almost 8 buyins on him when my life went to shit. I started to lose every single key hand in the big pots that basically decided the match. He went on a super rush and just drilled me for almost 3000$ which was almost half of all the money I had to my name! I felt so defeated so I went out drinking that night and got annihilated. The next day was Sunday and somehow I woke up fresh as can be. It was not a good Sunday as I busted from every tournament and was down to my last 100$ in my account. I had just busted in the biggest tournament of the week after running KK and AK into AA back to back hands. I about lost it. I kept my composure and ended up doing something great. This is from one of my earlier posts where I went on the win the double deuce for 35k!( you can read all about that in the post titled, “this wet dream only cost $22$”). I had finally had my big break through after getting so close so many times, and my first 5 figure score!
Winning the deuce was the not the best thing that happened to me. I finally had a big enough bankroll to grind all the tournaments I wanted to play but I got lazy after that. I felt like I was the best and that I did not need to play everyday or study anymore. I started going out and drinking a lot again. Luckily It did not get out of hand this time and I still played a few times a week. I ended up final tabling the Sunday Brawl a few weeks after that and ended up finishing 5th for ~30k. This was a few weeks ago and since then I started playing a lot more. I won a few more tournaments and had finally crossed the 100k mark, in just two months. I am very proud of how far I have come. I never gave up and continued to work as hard as possible. Nick and I eventually made up and are now good friends. He really is a great friend and person if you give him a chance. He is very egotistical and I had never met someone like that before so It was hard for me at the time to realize the good in him. Since then he has gone on to win many tournaments, the stars TLB, and over 100k in cashes, and all of this just in November! Between the two of us I believe we will easily make over 1 million dollars next year. I want to thank him for giving me an opportunity to do well and succeed when everyone else was against me. I could never have gotten to this point in my career without his coaching and help, so thank you for everything you have done for me! All it takes to succeed in life is a passion for whatever your doing, a very strong work ethic to achieve it, and someone to believe in you. If you want something in life, go out there and fucking get it. Everyone was against me, and still to this day there are many people saying that I can‘t make it. All I have to say to them is I fucking made it. I made it without them or their help, so go fuck yourselves. When I win 500k next year DO NOT come to me and ask for charity, to double your money, give me praise, etc. Just continue to work your worthless white collar job while I continue to enjoy the satisfaction that your sorry ass life is about as hopeless/sad as Tiger’s marriage. Sorry the average American is too ignorant and stupid to understand the life of this poker player.
Anyway, Good luck in your future endeavors and Happy Holidays!
-Josh
Monday, December 14, 2009
1st in stars nightly 70k for 12.5k!
Finally got to FT a tourney after another long sunday! Also took 3rd in a 109$ turbo for 2k and a bunch of mincashes of all kinds. Finally broke 100k for the last quarter of the year and looking forward to becoming a millionaire next year. I am finally starting to like pokerstars so I might decide to win the weekly tlb this week. As for this week im going to grind hard so that I can buy myself a new Lexus RX350 for Christmas. Still deciding where I should move, its close between LA and Vegas. Hopefully ill have everything figured out for my next post and also a list of new years resolutions (aka goals) for my life and poker. Here is a pic from my victory tonight!
Sunday, December 6, 2009
5th in Sunday Brawl for 28.6k!
This will be short and sweet!
This occurred last week for the record. Had a screen shot but forgot to save it after I busted on that crazy bizarre hand. Ill post it but it's not on this computer so you'll have to wait! It was a great run and I definitely think I played like a champ the whole way through. Little disappointing to get 5th as I definitely felt I was the best player at the final table, but that's how things go sometimes. I will update soon on my new goals for the month and for 2010 in a few days. Right now I'm exhausted and have a headache from my session earlier today so I'm going to get some sleep and wake up bright and early for another long day at the office. See you at the tables!
This occurred last week for the record. Had a screen shot but forgot to save it after I busted on that crazy bizarre hand. Ill post it but it's not on this computer so you'll have to wait! It was a great run and I definitely think I played like a champ the whole way through. Little disappointing to get 5th as I definitely felt I was the best player at the final table, but that's how things go sometimes. I will update soon on my new goals for the month and for 2010 in a few days. Right now I'm exhausted and have a headache from my session earlier today so I'm going to get some sleep and wake up bright and early for another long day at the office. See you at the tables!
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Live Poker and Vegas Report
A few days after winning the deuce I was searching the 2p2 forum and stumbled upon a poker mansion that was available for rent. I ended up emailing omgbarackobama about possibly moving in and asked him if I could stay there for a week while the Venetian deep stack series was going on. I flew out last Wednesday and ended up staying out in Vegas for a week. The poker house was huge and everyone that lived in the house was chill as fuck. It was only a 15$ cab ride each way and you could even see portions of the strip from the balcony. I might end up moving in to the house but for now it is all still up in the air.
I played in the thurs/fri/sat events and the satelite on sunday to the main event. Needless to say I ran like shit and ended up losing some crucial flips and having my QQ and KK run into AA halfway through the day. I even bubbled the main event sate having my k5s run into AA bvb into the bb of one of the famous Trans for 10bb. The next bad beat came when I was 10min too late to register for the next one so there went my shot at the main event. However, one of the guys living in the house came with me on Thursday to play and ended up taking 4th at the final table. He is a well known cash player on stars and has owned a supernova elite account for the last 3 years. When it came down to the wire the short stacks kept doubling up and he lost A7 v qj bvb to end his run. It was a nice score as he cashed for 7k, and he treated us to Noodles at Bellagio. We did a lottt of sake bombs and had a great time. Sapporo Reserve beer is also one of my new favorites!
I ended up meeting with my buddy kyle after busting on Sunday, so we went back to noodles and played the credit card roulette, where once again I was victorious. It's finally nice to actually win something after all the losing that was going on. After that we went to caesars to play drunk cash as we railed his dad in a tourney. Unfortunately he busted as did my stack as I ran a set into a flopped straight etc. I seriously could not run good for the life of me so I decided I would play the caesar 160$ 7pm the next day. I made a sick read on a guy early on where I bet/called an all in for a 200bb pot with AK high on a 234 board where he showed down AQ. I was chipping up real nicely until I ran fucking KK into AA again for like all but 10bb of my stack. I managed to hold on and double up a few times to make the final table. The structure fucking sucks and I will never play this tournament again because they kept skipping levels. By the time we were 7 handed I had 7bb, where the button shipped 6bb and I snapped with A8o. Unfortunately once again he had to have TT and leave me with 1bb. I almost had a hard on when I 4x my stack the next hand but then had to post the BB where I got KT v A4 where the guy flopped a straight flush. Then to top it all off my flight was delayed 3hours on the way back. Fuck vegas and the fucking mirage and fuck live poker for the time being. I cannot wait to get back to online poker and start owning souls again.
I played in the thurs/fri/sat events and the satelite on sunday to the main event. Needless to say I ran like shit and ended up losing some crucial flips and having my QQ and KK run into AA halfway through the day. I even bubbled the main event sate having my k5s run into AA bvb into the bb of one of the famous Trans for 10bb. The next bad beat came when I was 10min too late to register for the next one so there went my shot at the main event. However, one of the guys living in the house came with me on Thursday to play and ended up taking 4th at the final table. He is a well known cash player on stars and has owned a supernova elite account for the last 3 years. When it came down to the wire the short stacks kept doubling up and he lost A7 v qj bvb to end his run. It was a nice score as he cashed for 7k, and he treated us to Noodles at Bellagio. We did a lottt of sake bombs and had a great time. Sapporo Reserve beer is also one of my new favorites!
I ended up meeting with my buddy kyle after busting on Sunday, so we went back to noodles and played the credit card roulette, where once again I was victorious. It's finally nice to actually win something after all the losing that was going on. After that we went to caesars to play drunk cash as we railed his dad in a tourney. Unfortunately he busted as did my stack as I ran a set into a flopped straight etc. I seriously could not run good for the life of me so I decided I would play the caesar 160$ 7pm the next day. I made a sick read on a guy early on where I bet/called an all in for a 200bb pot with AK high on a 234 board where he showed down AQ. I was chipping up real nicely until I ran fucking KK into AA again for like all but 10bb of my stack. I managed to hold on and double up a few times to make the final table. The structure fucking sucks and I will never play this tournament again because they kept skipping levels. By the time we were 7 handed I had 7bb, where the button shipped 6bb and I snapped with A8o. Unfortunately once again he had to have TT and leave me with 1bb. I almost had a hard on when I 4x my stack the next hand but then had to post the BB where I got KT v A4 where the guy flopped a straight flush. Then to top it all off my flight was delayed 3hours on the way back. Fuck vegas and the fucking mirage and fuck live poker for the time being. I cannot wait to get back to online poker and start owning souls again.
Monday, November 16, 2009
This wet dream only cost $22$
Last Friday I had one of the worst sessions of my entire life. I ended up playing all night against a mega fish HU and nearly lost my poker bankroll. Not only that but I had a horrible week of mtt and it nearly cost me my roll. I am not going to complain about how ungodly bad I ran, because it's part of the game, but it definitely was one of the lowest points in my career. That being said the next night I went out and got extremely hammered. This of course was Saturday night, the day before the mtt grind. Not the smartest thing to do I know, but I woke up on Sunday morning fresh and ready to start over again. (I did however wake up a few hours later than my normal starting time lol.) I woke up just in time for the brawl and that's where my session started.
I didn't have any success in the first couple hours of tourneys, and was losing all the satellites I usually play. What else is new, especially after the week I had. I signed up for the ftops sunday millions and started out running pretty well. I then amped my aggression up and really started tearing it up. I managed to have a top 10 chip stack at one point and hovered in the top 100 for most of the tournament. It was then with about 850 left and 700 getting paid I had my KK run into AA and then THE VERY NEXT HAND AKs run into AA by the SAME PLAYER! Going from top 100 to bust in one of the largest sunday millions on fulltilt sucks. Before getting upset about it, I quickly realized that I had a huge stack in the double deuce with about 200 people left. Right after losing those hands I had QQ and doubled up to be the actual chip leader in the deuce. I suddenly wasn't as mad anymore and put my whole focus and attention on winning this tournament. From 100 on I knew the tournament was mine. I had the chip lead and no one could stop me from running away with it.
It felt just like a 3$ 90man at that point and I continued to grind all the way up to the bubble of the final table. I was 3rd in chips at the time with 10 left and had been 3betting and raising relentlessly. I had just 3b villian light two hands before this one happened. I raise 66 from ep and the villian in the big blind 3bets me to 2.5x and I flat. The flop comes 246 and I ck/c his cbet. The turn was a 9h so the board was rainbow. I thought this would be the perfect card for him to barrel again because it was an overcard to the board and would likely get me to fold any 1 pair hand under nines that I was holding, maybe. I ck/r him all in on his turn bet and he snapped me off with 49o LOL. I had a feeling he was trying to play back at me light preflop but the hand really just turned into a cooler and I stacked him taking a commanding chip lead into the FT.
I played hellmuth poker early on with a tight strategy, picking my spots carefully. I won a couple races and knocked a few people out. When the table got shorthanded, I decided it was time to amp up the aggression again and start 3betting the shit out of everyone. No one gave me any reason to stop so I kept going with it. I also had the perfect loose passive opponent just give me his stack by calling all my raises and ck/f every flop. It truly was a dream final table situation and when we got HU it only got better. The opponent was from Sweden, but definitely did not play like it. He folded just about 90% of hands, either in position or out. He wanted to make a deal so I told him if he quit now I would give him 24$ more than what he would have gotten. He didn't like that too much since it was basically an 11k hu match, so we kept playing. It was hard to get chips from him but I won just about every single hand and knew when he had one. I lost a few pots when I actually did have a hand in the 3b pots and actually lost the chip lead at one point. I knew I couldn't lose to someone playing this poorly and after about an hour had him down to the 10bb range. (side note: Our stacks were surprisingly deep at the FT, so when we started the hu we were almost 60bb effective). I ended up doubling him up but continued to grind him back down. I have never seen anyone online play so poorly in my life. Even 2$ HU SNG players knew more about general strategy than this guy. I finally decided to stop minraising and make it 3x with my AJo 15bb eff, when he finally came to his European ways and reshipped his 78o. He finally made a play because I deviated from my strategy, but too bad he didn't realize that's exactly what I wanted him to do. I finally won the hand and shipped it!
I wasn't nervous at all or even thinking about how much money was on the line the entire time. Partially because I was so freaking tired, but more because I knew I was in command and was the best player at that table. There was even a decent pro from what I understand at the table, but I didn't let him get in my way and ended up taking down my first 5 figure score and the biggest cash of my career!
I am going to Vegas this week to check out a baller mansion some other pros are renting out to see if I want to move in. The best part is they all specialize in different aspects of poker, so I'm very excited to talk some good strategy and improve my game. I will also be playing in the remainder of the Venetian Deep Stack Series. I plan on then going to the wsop circuit event in Atlantic City with a few more of my buddies I met in Southern Indiana and taking down a tourney or two. In the meantime I'm going to be grinding mtt and HU sng online. Pz
Favorite chat quote from a random fish in the deuce "I brought 22$ and a dream, and all I got was a nightmare" ROFL
I didn't have any success in the first couple hours of tourneys, and was losing all the satellites I usually play. What else is new, especially after the week I had. I signed up for the ftops sunday millions and started out running pretty well. I then amped my aggression up and really started tearing it up. I managed to have a top 10 chip stack at one point and hovered in the top 100 for most of the tournament. It was then with about 850 left and 700 getting paid I had my KK run into AA and then THE VERY NEXT HAND AKs run into AA by the SAME PLAYER! Going from top 100 to bust in one of the largest sunday millions on fulltilt sucks. Before getting upset about it, I quickly realized that I had a huge stack in the double deuce with about 200 people left. Right after losing those hands I had QQ and doubled up to be the actual chip leader in the deuce. I suddenly wasn't as mad anymore and put my whole focus and attention on winning this tournament. From 100 on I knew the tournament was mine. I had the chip lead and no one could stop me from running away with it.
It felt just like a 3$ 90man at that point and I continued to grind all the way up to the bubble of the final table. I was 3rd in chips at the time with 10 left and had been 3betting and raising relentlessly. I had just 3b villian light two hands before this one happened. I raise 66 from ep and the villian in the big blind 3bets me to 2.5x and I flat. The flop comes 246 and I ck/c his cbet. The turn was a 9h so the board was rainbow. I thought this would be the perfect card for him to barrel again because it was an overcard to the board and would likely get me to fold any 1 pair hand under nines that I was holding, maybe. I ck/r him all in on his turn bet and he snapped me off with 49o LOL. I had a feeling he was trying to play back at me light preflop but the hand really just turned into a cooler and I stacked him taking a commanding chip lead into the FT.
I played hellmuth poker early on with a tight strategy, picking my spots carefully. I won a couple races and knocked a few people out. When the table got shorthanded, I decided it was time to amp up the aggression again and start 3betting the shit out of everyone. No one gave me any reason to stop so I kept going with it. I also had the perfect loose passive opponent just give me his stack by calling all my raises and ck/f every flop. It truly was a dream final table situation and when we got HU it only got better. The opponent was from Sweden, but definitely did not play like it. He folded just about 90% of hands, either in position or out. He wanted to make a deal so I told him if he quit now I would give him 24$ more than what he would have gotten. He didn't like that too much since it was basically an 11k hu match, so we kept playing. It was hard to get chips from him but I won just about every single hand and knew when he had one. I lost a few pots when I actually did have a hand in the 3b pots and actually lost the chip lead at one point. I knew I couldn't lose to someone playing this poorly and after about an hour had him down to the 10bb range. (side note: Our stacks were surprisingly deep at the FT, so when we started the hu we were almost 60bb effective). I ended up doubling him up but continued to grind him back down. I have never seen anyone online play so poorly in my life. Even 2$ HU SNG players knew more about general strategy than this guy. I finally decided to stop minraising and make it 3x with my AJo 15bb eff, when he finally came to his European ways and reshipped his 78o. He finally made a play because I deviated from my strategy, but too bad he didn't realize that's exactly what I wanted him to do. I finally won the hand and shipped it!
I wasn't nervous at all or even thinking about how much money was on the line the entire time. Partially because I was so freaking tired, but more because I knew I was in command and was the best player at that table. There was even a decent pro from what I understand at the table, but I didn't let him get in my way and ended up taking down my first 5 figure score and the biggest cash of my career!
I am going to Vegas this week to check out a baller mansion some other pros are renting out to see if I want to move in. The best part is they all specialize in different aspects of poker, so I'm very excited to talk some good strategy and improve my game. I will also be playing in the remainder of the Venetian Deep Stack Series. I plan on then going to the wsop circuit event in Atlantic City with a few more of my buddies I met in Southern Indiana and taking down a tourney or two. In the meantime I'm going to be grinding mtt and HU sng online. Pz
Favorite chat quote from a random fish in the deuce "I brought 22$ and a dream, and all I got was a nightmare" ROFL
Sunday, November 1, 2009
WSOP Circuit followup
I headed down to southern indiana with the royalton poker crew on tuesday. Our first stop was a crazy little restaurant in Louisville where I had the best beer I have ever tasted. We stopped at the liquor store and picked up a few bottles of everclear, and finally after a 6hr drive, made it to the horseshoe. I was quite impressed that given the location and size of the casino, it was a pretty nice establishment. The first night I sat into a cash game and met a good friend who is pretty damn good at poker. We sat by each other at the table and each made more than 600$ playing 1-2nl in a short 2hr span. I would have liked to play higher but they only had 2 2-5 tables going at the time. The next day was my first wsop circuit event.
The event was a 345$ turbo and I honestly wish I had never played it. It only took me a few hours to bust, but I could have spent my time with the fish at the cash tables than hopelessly trying to win 292934 flips to win the thing. After I busted I did in fact treat myself to a 1-3nl 500$ cap for the next 15hrs and came out 1500$ up. I only took 1 45min dinner break and played some of the best cash poker in my life. After that I headed to bed to get a few hours sleep for the event I was looking forward to the most, the 555$.
I had a good table draw except for a younger kid on my left who was later very aggro until busting. I couldnt get anything going and ended up winning a few small pots when shortstacks were shipping it in. I grinded it through though and was able to manage a 30bb stack before getting moved to a new table a few hours in. I was not happy to see a kid I met earlier that day sitting on my left and a few other young aggressive players at the table. I was dealt premium holdings my first 3 hands and lost all 3. I went from 30 to 10bb in a matter of minutes until the poker gods decided to give me a break. My friend from EP raised it up and a very tight player just flatted behind him. I looked down in the BB to find TT and shipped it in. They both called and checked it down on a K459J board and both showed down AQ. I tripled up and was right back into the swing of things. After another few hours I was dealt 74s in late position in a limp pot. The tightest player at the table limped utg so I knew he was probably sitting on a big hand so I limped in from the CO. 5 of us saw a flop of 742 and the small blind led out 1/3 pot. The tight kid flatted and I raised 3x to only be cold called by the button limper, the tight kid called too. The turn was a T bringing a rainbow and I shoved all in. The button called and showed down JJ and I took down a monster pot minutes before dinner break. The kid at my table and I went up to the bar to eat and talked a little poker before getting back into the grind.
The next two hours I went on a complete tear just running the table over with raises and knocking out short stacks. It was then there were about 40 left and 27 were payed when I had two new fish sit at my table. The very first hand the guy got his money in terrible against one of the younger kids and doubled up. I was liking my position on him and being table captain until the tournament director told me that I had been moved to a new table. I was pretty upset that had happened but I moved to my new table and recognized only 1 guy from my first table. About 10 hands in the guy I knew raised from the HJ and I 3b from the sb with AA. He ended up folding and I took a nice pot. The very next hand on the button the CO opened and I 3b again. This 3b made the CO committed, where he should either shove or fold, but he decided to flat. The flop came qj8 rainbow and he ck'd and I shoved the remaining chips into the pot. He thought for about 2minutes before rolling over 89................UGH WTFFFFF. I had 44 but it really doesn't matter what my cards are in this spot. I was clearly representing AA (players at the table even called out what they thought I had before flipping it over) and got beat by a retarded southern hick. I kept my class though and did not berate him nor say a single profanity other than "are you fucking kidding". It is very important not to berate players because you only hurt yourself in the longrun from either 1) they quit and never feed my kids again or 2) study and learn to get better where making money is now harder. I was then left with 10bb and grinded a few orbits before shoving A4o from the CO. I ran into 99 from the bb and finished in 32, five out of the money.
All together it was a great trip and a good live tournament experience. I don't think I would have played the hand any different other than folding preflop and am happy with how I played throughout the entire trip. I will probably go back next year and if the 1 and 5k are not on halloween again, ill probably play those too. Other than that I had a horrible sunday as fulltilt froze up about 29493 times while trying to load that retarded 50k player tourney. It cost me a huge pot for most of my chips 20 away from the money in 1 tourney, and timed out of a few good hands in decent size pots in others, not to mention all the folded hands I did not see from being disconnected for so long. Hopefully this does not happen again because I ended up donking off all the rest of the tournaments and quit for the day from being so tilted. Time to catch up on sleep and start knocking out my goals. Later
The event was a 345$ turbo and I honestly wish I had never played it. It only took me a few hours to bust, but I could have spent my time with the fish at the cash tables than hopelessly trying to win 292934 flips to win the thing. After I busted I did in fact treat myself to a 1-3nl 500$ cap for the next 15hrs and came out 1500$ up. I only took 1 45min dinner break and played some of the best cash poker in my life. After that I headed to bed to get a few hours sleep for the event I was looking forward to the most, the 555$.
I had a good table draw except for a younger kid on my left who was later very aggro until busting. I couldnt get anything going and ended up winning a few small pots when shortstacks were shipping it in. I grinded it through though and was able to manage a 30bb stack before getting moved to a new table a few hours in. I was not happy to see a kid I met earlier that day sitting on my left and a few other young aggressive players at the table. I was dealt premium holdings my first 3 hands and lost all 3. I went from 30 to 10bb in a matter of minutes until the poker gods decided to give me a break. My friend from EP raised it up and a very tight player just flatted behind him. I looked down in the BB to find TT and shipped it in. They both called and checked it down on a K459J board and both showed down AQ. I tripled up and was right back into the swing of things. After another few hours I was dealt 74s in late position in a limp pot. The tightest player at the table limped utg so I knew he was probably sitting on a big hand so I limped in from the CO. 5 of us saw a flop of 742 and the small blind led out 1/3 pot. The tight kid flatted and I raised 3x to only be cold called by the button limper, the tight kid called too. The turn was a T bringing a rainbow and I shoved all in. The button called and showed down JJ and I took down a monster pot minutes before dinner break. The kid at my table and I went up to the bar to eat and talked a little poker before getting back into the grind.
The next two hours I went on a complete tear just running the table over with raises and knocking out short stacks. It was then there were about 40 left and 27 were payed when I had two new fish sit at my table. The very first hand the guy got his money in terrible against one of the younger kids and doubled up. I was liking my position on him and being table captain until the tournament director told me that I had been moved to a new table. I was pretty upset that had happened but I moved to my new table and recognized only 1 guy from my first table. About 10 hands in the guy I knew raised from the HJ and I 3b from the sb with AA. He ended up folding and I took a nice pot. The very next hand on the button the CO opened and I 3b again. This 3b made the CO committed, where he should either shove or fold, but he decided to flat. The flop came qj8 rainbow and he ck'd and I shoved the remaining chips into the pot. He thought for about 2minutes before rolling over 89................UGH WTFFFFF. I had 44 but it really doesn't matter what my cards are in this spot. I was clearly representing AA (players at the table even called out what they thought I had before flipping it over) and got beat by a retarded southern hick. I kept my class though and did not berate him nor say a single profanity other than "are you fucking kidding". It is very important not to berate players because you only hurt yourself in the longrun from either 1) they quit and never feed my kids again or 2) study and learn to get better where making money is now harder. I was then left with 10bb and grinded a few orbits before shoving A4o from the CO. I ran into 99 from the bb and finished in 32, five out of the money.
All together it was a great trip and a good live tournament experience. I don't think I would have played the hand any different other than folding preflop and am happy with how I played throughout the entire trip. I will probably go back next year and if the 1 and 5k are not on halloween again, ill probably play those too. Other than that I had a horrible sunday as fulltilt froze up about 29493 times while trying to load that retarded 50k player tourney. It cost me a huge pot for most of my chips 20 away from the money in 1 tourney, and timed out of a few good hands in decent size pots in others, not to mention all the folded hands I did not see from being disconnected for so long. Hopefully this does not happen again because I ended up donking off all the rest of the tournaments and quit for the day from being so tilted. Time to catch up on sleep and start knocking out my goals. Later
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