Lots and Lots of Poker

Congrats to all of the BBT winners below, courtesy of Al:

TuscaloosaJohn - Player of the Month for March - $2k WSoP Package
SirFWALGMan - Player of the Month for April - $2k WSoP Package
TuscaloosaJohn - Player of the Month for May - $2k WSoP Package
OMSitsPokerFool - Tournament of Champions - Main Event Seat Package
Loretta8 - Tournament of Champions - Main Event Seat Package
katiemother - Tournament of Champions - $2k WSoP Package
oossuuu754 - Tournament of Champions - $2k WSoP Package
lightning36 - BBT Freeroll - $2k WSoP Package

And a huge thanks to Al for not only being instrumental in putting all this together but keeping it lurching along, providing updated leaderboards, and all the other crippety crap that goes into such an endeavor.

Played a ton of poker of late, with nice steady gains on the cash side of things and some near misses on the tourney side. Made the final table of the BBT Freeroll but was short-stacked and shoved with pocket fours, only to run into aces. The uglier one was the weekly freeroll on Full Tilt for their Main Event Race promotion, which pays out $10,000 packages to the top 3 finishers. You can play your way in via the prelim freerolls or if you pick up 3,000 FTP points in a week you get a ticket that lets you enter the final directly. Not terrible odds, as the finals last week got about 450 entries, so it's not a complete crapshoot as far as trying to wade your way through a freeroll with 5000+ entries.

I hung around for the first few hours then went on a pretty big heater with about 100 people left and was top ten in chips. Lost a huge pot with AA vs. AKo (K K 4 flop, and a K on the river just to rub it in) that would have given me a big chip lead, then lost another huge pot with 1010 on a 10 J 5 flop, when someone with 87o decided that was a great spot to call off all their chips.

But I managed to double up with a pretty steamy shove with 55, then chipped back up and was average stack with 17 players left, and still very much in the thick of things. Until I decided that I could shove someone off a flop of Qc 8c 8h when they led out weakly into a decent pot, coming over the top with my pocket sixes. Not goot timing at all for a move like that when someone is holding pocket queens. Not goot at all.

Pretty bad and annoying, for all the obvious reasons. Just didn't need to do that, by any stretch of the imagination, especially when sitting in decent shape with a 1 in 6 shot at a Main Event seat.

Still plugging away at the $100NL grind, which continues to be pretty profitable if not insanely exciting. I'm still struggling a bit with stacking off with overpairs (which I guess anyone at any level can likely say with 100% accuracy) but have slowly been beating the lesson into my head that at the lower levels, more often than not people are representing exactly what they have.

Yeah, sure, I can talk myself into a shove with KK on a 10s 8s 5h flop when my continuation bet is met with a pot committing re-raise from an oppponent who just smooth called pre-flop, but more often than not villain has a set. Sure, he could be on a flush draw, sure he could have jacks or queens, sure, he could be an aggro push monkey and have AK, but more often than not he's got exactly what he's representing, which is a set.

Very elementary, I know, but it's part of the larger reason why I'm still grinding away at $100NL, which is trying to be more patient at the tables. Strip away everything else and the real reason that more people aren't winning players is simply the lack of patience more than the ability to calculate implied odds or reading hands. Grinding out a ton of hands is reinforcing that, as my losing sessions are almost always when I'm my own worst enemy, losing a few buy-ins early to coolers or draws that don't get there and then pressing too hard trying to get it back, pushing thin edges (or non-existent edges) trying to get unstuck. I haven't quite yet beaten all of that out of my system, thus the continued toiling at $100NL.

Other than poker, not a whole heck of a lot going on. We closed on the last flip house I bought on May 30th, but are waiting for the state of Texas to get off its ass as far as officially wrapping it up, as they keep delaying paying the title company the relocation money owed to the buyers of the house, whose old property was seized by the state to build a toll road. Very frustrating as the state keeps promising that the money will show up tomorrow at noon, tomorrow comes, no money, they swear it'll be there the next day, no money, yada yada yada. Not really concerned about the money showing up, sometime, as it's virtually guaranteed, but the delays are pretty damn annoying as I'm so ready to be completely done with that project and get my hands back on all the money invested in it plus the extra greedy monkey profits.