Ballsy Call?

So I'm playing the WSOPc $1600 nl main event on day 1 today and this hand takes place. I'm in the bb...obviously still unknown to the live poker world. I just thought I'd post it because it is somewhat educational for live tournaments...



Gates Eliminated with "Ballsy Call"

Posted 7 hours 10 minutes ago by http://www.pokernews.com/members/donpeters/">donpeters a�� Level 12: 600-1,200, 200 ante

Garry Gates

Action folded to Garry Gates in the small blind and he raised to 3,100. The big blind reraised to 7,200 and then Gates moved all in for 29,800. The big blind tanked for a couple minutes and then eventually said, "All right, I call," with 12,000 chips behind after calling Gates' all-in amount.

Gates turned over the with his tournament life on the line and the big blind tabled the , ahead but with a risky call.

The flop came down and gave Gates a gutshot straight draw to go along with his two live cards. The turn brought the and the river the . Both of those missed Gates after his whiffed the flop and he was eliminated.

"Pretty ballsy call," said David Williams to the player after the hand

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



1) I called because...
2) This guy was chummy w/ David Williams (who was on his right) so I assumed this guy knew how to play a little (eg not afraid to 4bet shove light for his mtt life)
3) I was kinda torn between 3betting and shoving preflop but had a semi plan to induce a shove by worse by 3betting but when it happened I decided to take my time to reevaluate (maybe some of you will say it's just a clear cut shove....probably won't argue w/ that much)
4) Even if I was wrong or I lose I still have 10bbs
5) You need to win a couple of these in multiday tournaments
6) I am a force to be reckoned w/ with chips...w/ less than 30bbs or so I'm just like any other good mtt player (most are proficient w/ those stacks)
7) Great for my table image (willing to 3bet light, gambling, reading people well, not being afraid of calling based on my read, etc.)

So as you can see, what seems like a "Ballsy Call" is actually a well thought out hand, even though it seems simple on the outside (raise, 3bet, 4bet shove, call, bvb).

As for the tournament I had a top 5 stack going into the last level and lost a flip for a huge pot AQ < JJ then another 18bbs to a shortie 77 < TT very last hand of the night.

Oh well, I start back up tomorrow w/ 25bbs, 87 players left and 54 itm...1st being $153k.

You can follow PokerNews to see how I'm doing...oh wait, they just list me as some random dude...nm.

Follow me on twitter at

http://twitter.com/#!/nicolakpoker


In other news my new video where I focus on transitioning from online cash game to live games is out at Cardrunners. I'm making it a series and the 1st one is pretty basic (aimed at those who never set foot in a live poker room...w/ some advice for those that have) but they will get more in depth in the later videos.

Beats galore! (An update)

So I thought I'd update on how I've been doing lately in poker. I guess you can never complain if you're winning but wow I'm running on the wrong side of variance. The 1st thing I'll talk about is my quest for 100 buyins at $5/$10 nl online. Here are my results since I started...




















I guess I'm doing alright but running about $5k below ev. No single hand sticks out...just a bunch of flips lost, sets losing to draws, etc. I do want to mention I feel like my game's improved a lot in just the last 2 months (won't get too much into it because it'll make a good post for another day) even though I haven't been playing much. So I'm expecting to crush in the upcoming months at all forms of poker.

Here's my month so far at all stakes and games online....




















I haven't had the chance to put in much volume but I'm hoping to get in a ton of volume before the WSOP starts. Once the WSOP starts I won't have much time to grind online because I'm planning on playing a heavy WSOP schedule (bracelet one time?).






















As for live poker, I mentioned in my previous post it's going well. It is live poker after all. Also I've been playing a lot of tournaments this year, especially live tournaments. I've been playing extremely well in them but my results are just not there (yet). Here is the list of live tournaments I've played and how I busted...

$1k HPT main event... above avg stack late in the tournament, lost 10s vs AK aipf for half my stack, then bust AK vs 99 aipf, finish 10 away from money

$320 Venetian DeepStack... 4/5th way in busted JJ vs AK aipf button vs bb for top 10 stack

LAPC $1k prelim... midway, bad player limps utg, I iso w QQ, he calls, flop JT2r, he checks, I bet, he calls, turn 2, he checks, I bet, he shoves...I tank and began talking to him trying to gauge his strength....I say it's A2s or some random draw (he c/r's w/ Jx + on the flop from my read)...he comment's "Would I limp w/ A2 here?"...wow, if there was ever an answer screaming Yes to A2, that was it...yet I talk myself into thinking his range is wide enough to call profitably and call and is shown, you guessed it...A2s. So I would say this was the worst hand I've played all year in a tournament because he basically told me he had A2. But a turn 2 is the only card I bust on though, so a little bit of bad luck there.

LAPC $5k prelim... super tough field w/ about 90 entrants yet I feel like I'm one of the favs to win. Basically lost some chips w/ underset vs overset where most would've gone broke. I played 33 cautiously on a 743hh board vs 2 players inc. aggro preflop raiser who had 44, turn Th and everybody froze up, riv Qx and I called aggro's value bet. Later I bust w/ AK vs QQ in a postflop flip situation (nfd+ 2overs).

LAPC $10k main event... great tournament, great structure, great turnout...yet I busted in the last level of day 2. After chipping up some on day 1 on a pretty tough table I couldn't win a hand on day 2 on a softer table. Got to play some w/ Jennifer Tilly on that day and even though she's not that great, she tends to play big pots that increases the variance for her opponents. She just beat me every hand we played together. Finally I lost a key pot during the last level where a kid rivers a gutter w/ T8s (he turned a fd) vs my KK. I shoved w/ my last 13 bbs w/ KQo in the co and ran into button's JJ and couldn't win.
















Wynn $500 prelim #1...decent structure for a $500 buyin event and a great turnout..over 800. Played pretty well on day 1 to make it to day 2 and down to 100 players. I chip up and become the 2nd biggest stack on a very soft table. W/ 45 players left I run KK into cl's AA and bust. Sucked because 1st was $85k and the field was pretty soft. At least I have my 1st live cash of the year...for a measly $900. I had the pleasure of playing w/ Andy Frankenberger who was a really cool and nice guy (good poker thinker but needs a little work on the fundamentals).

Wynn $1k 6max nl prelim...If I'm not a big fav. in this one, I don't know what I'm a fav. in! I don't really pick up any hands all day (and especially don't get on the right side of cooler spots that allow you to get deep in tournaments) but manage to hang around w/ 15-30bbs in the later stages. Then w/ 30 players left I get in 99 vs J9o aipf and lose most of my chips. I manage to chip up w/ the best hands aipf and win a key race w 22 vs ATo (finally I win a flip!!) and get to 25bbs w/ 18 players left (9 get in the money). I get in my stack w/ AJo vs A7o bvb and bust.

Wynn $1k prelim...this was a very fun tournament for one reason. A "name" live mtt pro tweets "other than Vanessa Selbst, a soft table" early on. He happened to be on my direct right, Selbst on my direct left. Let's just say that he didn't think it was a soft table....after I busted him! I 3bet him relentlessly all day until he took a stand and 4bet jammed JTo...into my KK. At this point I was one of the chipleaders w/ about 40 left and 15 itm. Then I lose a flip postflop (go figure), go card dead, then cl (w/ about 120bbs) opr utg, I jam w/ 20bbs total w/ QQ in the co, and he tank folds AQ faceup! Are you kidding me??!! Very next hand, aggro hijack opr, I jam AJs w/ about 25bbs, button wakes up w/ AK and that's all she wrote. Obviously the cl who folded AQ the previous hand regrets folding that when he sees my AJ...obviously I regret it more!! So I busted 23rd, and 15 get in the money.




















That's it for live tournaments. Now my online tournaments... jk. I've played a bunch and I know I've been running as bad in those as I have in live ones. I just finished playing the $109 multi entry miniftops where 1st was $181k. W/ over 9,300 entrants I busted 250th. Here's the hand....

No-Limit Hold'em Tournament, 2500/5000 Blinds (9 handed) - Hold'em Manager Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com
MP3 (t350817)

CO (t72109)

Button (t104344)

Hero (SB) (t179784)

BB (t225496)

UTG (t159480)

UTG+1 (t178998)

MP1 (t172561)

MP2 (t266073)

Hero's M: 23.97


Preflop: Hero is SB with Q, J

7 folds, Hero bets t10000, BB calls t7500

Flop: (t25000) 10, Q, 8 (2 players)

Hero bets t15500, BB calls t15500

Turn: (t56000) 4 (2 players)

Hero bets t32500, BB raises t196896, Hero calls t118684

River: (t358368) 9 (2 players)


Total pot: t358368

Results:

Hero had Q, J (straight, Queen high).

BB had K, J (straight, King high).

Outcome: BB won t363768

Winning this pot would've put me in the top 15 but it was still a long ways to go...but still!

So that's about it for poker. Other than that, life is great!

A day in the life

As per request from a fellow tweeter (or twitterer, not sure what the proper term is), I'm going to talk about a typical but busy day for me. That day also happens to be today. Today was busier than usual for me because I'm leaving for a wedding in Santa Barbara this weekend then heading to Los Angeles for the tail end of the LAPC where I pursue my adventures in live tournaments (plus live cash games). I will be updating my progress on my trip include all my tournament runs on twitter for those interested. You can find the link to the right for those interested. (I always say there's better things to do than follow twitter but I guess millions of people think differently...tbh I've become more active on twitter so I guess I'm falling for that twitter bug).























Anyway I woke up at 8am today (gasps from all the new generation of poker players, some thinking that's when they go to bed) to see my kid off to school. I've talked about this before but I like to take care of my family duties before anything else and that includes poker. The last thing I want my daughter to see is her father immersed in the world of poker...poker is just a means of providing a good life for my family and myself. I want to show my kid that poker is just a job and I want be the best dad that I can be, especially in her eyes. Naturally the next thing I do is head straight back to bed for a couple more hours of sleep. I'm one of those people that needs 8hrs+ of sleep or I'll be cranky all day. Somehow my wife loves talking to me while I'm snoozing even though she realizes this. I guess the trade off of having somebody "listening" to her is worth me being cranky all day. Women.

So I woke up again at 11am, do a little prep work for the podcast I cohost w/ Jeremiah Smith called "Cash Plays". I also drink my French Vanilla Slimfast for lunch. Losing weight is hard. We interviewed Greg "FBT" Mueller about his recent appearance on Poker After Dark. Greg and I actually go back a long ways. When I started playing poker for a living 13 years ago in Vancouver, Canada I tangled w/ him often in the limit hold'em games around town (yeah, the dark ages of poker, before nl hold'em became popular, before online poker was introduced). I knew then that he would become big time in poker because of his loud personality but more because of how sick good he was at poker. We also interviewed Jared Tendler, a poker mental game coach. Also we did our hand 2 hand combat where we break down a hand or two from cash games. Anyway for those interested the podcast will be available on PokerRoad and Cardrunners next Tuesday.

Then I spent the next two hours coaching a student, actually my only student currently. I've been hesitant to jump into coaching for a few reasons, mostly because I can't match my hrly coaching vs. playing. I'm coaching this particular person because she's a good friend of a good friend (and I am getting paid). I've been mulling getting into coaching on the side and will announce it here if I do decide to do it.



















After this it's time for dinner and my wife, kid, and I head off to Hot 'N' Juicy Crawfish for dinner. We invite a friend of my wife's and her 2 kids and order a few lbs of juicy crawfish and crab. I shy away from the crawfish...just seems like too much work for too little meat...plus sucking the juices out of the heads doesn't sound appealing to me. I order 2 lbs of snow crab legs, medium spice, 1lb in garlic butter flavor and 1lb in hot'n'juicy flavor.

I come home and see how my bets in sports did. I have a guy that has been a handicapper for years and has a winning track record so I bet his plays. He put out Nashville -115 and Edmonton +115 and both won (dingX2). I bet relatively small compared to what I make in poker so even if I run bad here I don't lose much (compared to my poker bankroll). This is the mini degeneracy in me..but very mini...and again I actually expect to come out ahead in the long run.

I decide to put in a session of online poker. After winning $1800 last night playing $5/$10 at the Venetian (thank you pocket Aces and old man gone wild syndrome) I decide to test my mettle vs. the virtual world tonight. I hop into some $3/$6 and $5/$10 nl 6max games on FTP and run pretty good and win $2200 in about an hr (only if I can sustain this hrly). Graph of my session tonight...























Now I have a couple of more things left to do for the day. I need to finish up my next video for Cardrunners. I will probably use the footage from tonight's play and just add my commentary for a nice polished product and ship it to my bosses at CR. Believe it or not but making a poker video is quite a lot of work..not just from my end but from the editing department and management before they put out the final product. So I thank you guys that put in the time and effort to put out the final product.

After this I will go through all my mail and bills and make sure everything is up to date. I had a personal assistant before that handled all of this but it didn't quite work out. I'm on the lookout for a PA actually so if anybody knows of a good one for a reasonable price, feel free to let me know.

Things that I didn't do today that I wish I had include getting in a workout, watching a poker video, doing some poker analysis, or reading something about poker theory/concepts, doing that Pokernews article Kristy asked me for (postponed til tomorrow), and spending some time w/ my kid...after all I'll be gone for a couple of weeks and away from my kid.

Realistically my days aren't this busy (eg the podcast is once every 2 weeks, along w/ making a video for CR) but having to leave town for a couple of weeks, and being the procrastinator I am, today just turned out to be a very busy but productive day.

So is my life baller? Probably not, but hey, my family is taken care of and I'm enjoying my life and really, that's all that counts.

Finally a shout out to my buddies Adam Friedman who got 2nd in the $1k FTOPS 10 game mix for $38k (but seriously, how did you not win it after having a 6-1 chip lead hu??!!) and Jaymes Rosenthal (you need to come to CR from that other training site) for taking down the recent Venetian Deep Stack tournament for $15k and a trophy...both occurred today. Hopefully I can make my own magic happen next week in Los Angeles.

Oh, here is my setup/grind station as requested @PokerLawyer ;) A few months old (there's a football game on tv) and a lot cleaner than it is right now.

Road Bump

So I started off the new year w/ a major goal in mind...achieving sne. Well that didn't last long. After 2 weeks and being ahead of pace I decided to give up that goal for a couple of reasons. The main reason is that I didn't think being tied to one poker site for the entire year is beneficial for my long term earnings. I enjoy playing different games and stakes across Stars and FTP. Also I keep hearing about how soft the games are on different sites so I want to check those sites out. Also living in Vegas, I have been playing more live and have really been enjoying it (not to mention the games are softer). Another reason I gave up sne is that I can't stand Stars software!! It really started bothering me multitabling 15-18 tables after a couple of weeks. I know everybody has a preference and I prefer FTP software...it is what it is I guess.

I started the year grinding $2/$4 nl on stars w/ the intent of building my roll on there and moving up stakes. I started adding in some plo along the way w/ a little bit of success. Everything was going ok until I had a nightmare session. Well here is a snapshot of my HEM for the past 3 weeks...I'll let you figure out where that nightmarish session is...












I seem to have 2-3 of these sessions annually and hopefully this will be my lone one this year. I know I ran incredibly bad during this session but I contributed to the destruction by playing past my bedtime and playing while my focus was wavering. I've talked to a couple of guys and have mentioned my results suck when I play past 2am. This isn't because the games are tougher after that time, but because I'm usually tired and not in a 100% state of mind to play my A game. I preach playing one's A game all the time and I'm susceptible to falling off that path because I'm human like everybody else but damn it I should know better!! I do a better job than most when it comes to consistency but I still need to work on some things, notably quitting at 2am or quitting when tired (this should apply to just about everybody, except for maybe the times a game is so good that even playing tired is +ev).

Here is the graph of my night...Doh!!























Even w/ that bad session the month wasn't all that bad and I'll be doing a January wrap up next time (thanks live poker, rakeback, and staking!).

The week that was

I've had a pretty eventful week (for me anyway). Started the weekend w/ a bang by participating in the Cardrunners' 5th anniversary $5 rebuy tournament on Saturday. Several CR pros had bounties on their heads including myself. I gave away a free lesson but the guy that busted me has yet to claim it...wonder if that is saying something...lol. I was fortunate to bust a fellow CR pro ChipaHoya who was giving away a cake...yes a cake. I received it the other day and took a picture of it. Wow it came in a big box and was expecting it to be a big cake but apparently it was wrapped heavily and had ice packs in it to keep it cool so it turned out to be a lot smaller than I thought it would but nonetheless it was good....thanks Chip!



















Anyway I ended up cashing in the tournament and fortunately I busted out when I did (not often you hear that statement) because I needed to attend the Las Vegas Wranglers' game that was starting shortly. They are a minor league ice hockey team here in Las Vegas. I needed to attend because my kid was part of her school choir singing the national anthem and some popular Christmas songs (during intermission). Well after the Wranglers scored their 1st goal people starting throwing teddy bears into the rink. It was quite a site...pic here...



















Apparently it was toys for tots night or something like that. Obviously I thought it was very cool for the team to do that and had I known I would've brought a big teddy bear to toss myself (or maybe a note of me giving away a free poker lesson and my contact info since I have an unused offer).

Sunday was obviously football all day. I was in contention for playoff spots across my 3 leagues and unfortunately 2 of my teams choked and missed the playoffs. At least my 3dime team made the playoffs and is the #1 seed. I did take a pretty sick beat in one fantasy league where I was up 50pts going into Monday Night Football and had AP and Joe Flacco vs other teams' Matt Schaub, AJ, Sidney Rice, and Minn defense. I was probably at least a 10-1 fav and we had a total pts bet for $500 w/ me having the 50 pt lead and lost when Schaub and AJ went bonkers.

Now this league is the 1dime league comprised of mid - high stakes online regs and I think I lost to a certain guy I play vs. on a regular basis in my games. What's significant about this guy? Well this guy played a hand vs me a couple of months ago at nl600 where we got in $600 each w/ AK vs AK preflop and we ran it twice and he won both!! He had AK of spades and flop rolled off w/ 1 spade both times and both times it came runner runner spade. Yeah I guess you could say that guy owns me in everything.

Also on Sunday I played a multitude of tournaments for once (been awhile because of NFL) including the nl hu miniftops. I managed to beat my 1st 2 opponents fairly easily then lost to the biggest donk in my 3rd round matchup. I had him down 5-1 in chips and somehow he came back and won. It was also tilting because that was the bubble round..if you win that round you cash. Anyway I find out later that Kristy Arnett of Pokernews won it. She covers tournaments around the world and I didn't know she played online poker but apparently she's been getting coaching and playing 6max nl cash games online. What's significant of this? Well besides the fact that she's female, attractive and just won a nice tournament for $31k, I got to interview her for our podcast Cashplays (look for that soon). I really came away impressed by her knowledge of poker but unfortunately she would not give me back my buyin for that tournament when I asked. Side note...asian women are awesome at poker and at life...Barry G and Doublefly (his blog link on the right) know what I'm talking about and that's why I married one ;) . Kristy pictured...

















I had to hurry to my kid's school after that interview to watch my kid sing in her choir for her school's annual Christmas play. Obviously as a dad it was awesome watching my kid be in it. I did get her Guitar Hero last year so it's good to see that she put that game to good use (improving her vocals). Now only if she would stop asking me for a real guitar (or maybe I will give in to that this Christmas). I managed to get a few good snapshots of the play including this one...



















As for poker I managed to find time to play a little (but not too much). I made a couple of videos for CR where I played some nl1k 6max and hu. The hu match was interesting in that the guy got up $2700 or so on me but the whole time I felt like it was a matter of time before I beat him, and beat him I did. The videos are available on CR again for those that have a subscription and are interested in checking them out.

Also I played a hu match w/ my CashPlays cohost Jeremiah Smith the other day. We did it because he likes giving away money...I'm kidding...we did it because we thought it would be cool since we're cohosts on a podcast that focuses on cash games and maybe we can make a video or two out of it to share w/ our listeners and CR members. I went in thinking of making it a live session but after we played I think it's better to make it a leakfinder series where I help out Jeremiah and point out some of his mistakes and how to go about fixing them. The match lasted a couple of hours but it will be a 10 part series because of all the numerous screw ups Jeremiah made (zing!)...no it will probably be a 2 part series I'm thinking right now and I really think they will be informative. I won't reveal how the match ended up other than that Jeremiah might as well have played w/ his cards face up ;) .

Anyway since I haven't talked about poker much lately here is an interesting hand I played...

Full Tilt, $5/$10 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 6 Players

Poker Tools by CardRunners - Hand Details

MP: $1,000 (100 bb)

CO: $2,169 (216.9 bb)

BTN: $543 (54.3 bb)

SB: $3,963 (396.3 bb)

BB: $1,000 (100 bb)

Hero (UTG): $1,000 (100 bb)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with 8 8

Hero raises to $30, MP raises to $95, CO folds, BTN calls $95, 2 folds, Hero calls $65

Flop: ($300) 9 8 8 (3 players)

Hero checks, MP checks, BTN checks

Turn: ($300) A (3 players)

Hero checks, MP bets $150, BTN folds, Hero calls $150

River: ($600) 7 (2 players)

Hero checks, MP checks

Results: $600 pot ($3 rake)

Final Board: 9 8 8 A 7

MP showed A K and lost (-$245 net)

Hero showed 8 8 and won $597 ($352 net)

I don't want to get into too much detail here because villain is a fellow CR pro and we have history and definitely some kind of metagame going but wow is his river check back sick. He tanked down to a few seconds and I knew at the time he had a big diamond, possibly AQ w/ the Q of diamond (because the K of diamond would surely bet) and he was thinking whether betting had any value vs. me because he knows I probably won't call w/ much worse (even though sometimes I would) while I could check/shove w/ better. I was pretty shocked to see his hand tbh and I think I get an opponent to bet that hand 99% of the time (so I can check/shove all in).

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everybody!