Mehhhh

Waddup

I just came back today from what feels like a very long and extended trip from the Borgata at Atlantic City. I was there since Saturday morning and pretty much played all day, every single day pretty much from when the game started until the game broke which was around 6-7am. Some of the dealers even asked me the next day if I ever got some sleep (lol). With all that playing, I was disappointed to be up only 1.9k, but still very grateful that I won for the trip. I had a lot of interesting hands that I won’t get into too much detail now, but my sessions over these past 3 days can be summarized by me being buried for about $10-$15k after losing a big pot and having to grind my way back up, which was pretty painful. After I did climb my way back up, i would lose it again by an ill timed bluff where i just always happened to run into the nuts of my opponents range. Then grind again. Rinse and repeat. I don’t think some of the bluffs I made were a massively +EV spot to be honest, but I was experimenting and seeing what worked and what didn’t. I think this trip really made me realize that while I most definitely think I am +EV for the game, I have soooooooooo much to learn about the live setting and that I’m not as good as I thought I was. I occasionally get… hm how do i describe it – it’s kinda like when a writer goes through a writing block? I get these “blocks” during a middle of a hand where for some reason because of the added pressure of the pot size or just the pressure of people watching the hand where I’m not able to clear everything out and think critically about my opponent’s ranges and what would be the appropriate move. I also have difficulty assigning my opponents’ ranges because live players play a lot differently than online. This actually lead me to lose one huge pot where I made a massive bluff for $8.5k effective with mid pair and got snapped by one of the regfishes that plays there, all because I got caught up in the moment and trusted my read that he was going to fold. My read turned out to be wrong, however, so it means that I need to think more critically about reads that I do develop during the game. So there’s still a lot of adjusting that I need to do in my live game I think, but I was still putting my opponents in pretty miserable spots, and I think I’m always good at adding pressure, as well as being able to exploit their tendencies. For example, I was giving hell to one of the more annoying regs, who basically raised too much preflop, cbets too much, using various methods. Once I got a pretty pristine read on him, I just made his life miserable and pretty sure I won about 8-9k off of him for the weekend. One night I probably had the most fun I ever did playing live poker because we played the show one card rule and a $100 bounty if you won with a 7-2. The game was really lively with a shitton of action so that was memorable.

During this trip I also got to see some “celebrities” that I’ve only seen on Youtube such as Allen Cunningham, Vanessa Selbst, and some other semi-famous gaks who came to play the ME of the WPT. Also Kinda random, but as i was chatting with this guy who sat to my right at the cash table yesterday, i found out he was the guy who tried to bluff kenny tran in this hand: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhVimRvxxBY. Pretty random but it was weird and cool to see all of these people who i watched on youtube in real life. I also got to meet a lot of the guys I used to battle with online, which was also pretty dope. A lot of the guys were like “oh, you’re danlim1?” which i would typically reciprocate with “oh you’re [insert reg name]” and it was pretty cool to meet them IRL. I honestly don’t know too many people in person from the poker scene, so it was somewhat refreshing to see a lot of my online “peers” and being able to talk about certain matters such as what their plans were and just reminiscing about online poker.

Speaking of which, it’s already been about little over 5 months since BF. And honestly while I still very much miss online poker, I have a very hard time remembering how I was able to manage everything – starting from playing my A-game, to having fitting in somewhere in my schedule everyday, how i was able to play 12-16 tables and not sacrifice my thought processes, and etc. It just seem like ages ago and I have absolutely no clue how I was able to balance my life while pulling off such a feat. I just reread one of my posts from September and it just seems so foreign to me some of the things I said about hand thought processes, coolers, variance, graphs and all that jazz. It has also been about little over 2 months since I’ve moved out from DC but it all seems like a haze now. I can’t remember how it was living in the city; i def. wish i explored it a little bit more while I was there (not that it’s super far anyways).

Anyways, I prob be won’t be going out of my way to play poker anytime soon unless it’s to make a trip with some friends or something. My plans now are to finish my secondary applications within the next 10 days (pretty ambitious TBH) and once I have nothing left to do, I’m going to be making some serious travel plans. Not sure where or for how long though. One thing at a time! Peace.

This blog entry lacks paragraphs.