I don't know what to title this

I am sitting here in my new Bellingham apartment, and it is 3:40 in the morning. Since moving in to our new place on Monday, I have done very little, and it has been everything I thought it could be. I really feel like Peter from Office Space. All I want to do is have nothing obligatory to do. Today, I woke up around 1, worked on unpacking a little, went on tilt because the directTV guy came and didn't realize we had an apartment, so he couldn't install a dish and now we can't get Comcast until September 13th. I then unpacked my things for a little while, went and put in a well-needed workout, went out to dinner with Grant and Heather, came back, played in about 10 sng's, then stayed up for another 3-4 hours playing Chinese with Grant.

It was the most amazing day.

I feel like I would probably get sick of doing this every day, but right now I am really enjoying it and know that in about 5 years when I am working, I will look back at this summer and be quite envious. But for now, I am going to continue to be on a 4am-2pm sleeping schedule.

Vegas is in one week, and I can hardly believe it. I remember starting the countdown to this weekend at about 900ish, and we are down to single digits. I can't really think of how this weekend could go wrong so that it wouldn't be the best weekend of my life. All the ingredients are there - my best friends, vegas, binge drinking, and, oh ya, gambooooooooooing.

It should be a blast. As far as poker lately, things have been meh, but I am actually getting a ton of confidence back. Two nights ago, I went deep in the $5r on UB but got 21st when I re-shipped QJhh bvb against J10ss for a top-3 stack and lost. Grant was railing me for a while and I really can't think of a bad decision that I made. I was never all in once after the rebuy. I picked my spots perfectly and made great reads.

On that note, I want to talk about something that I have mulled over my head ever since I started to take poker semi-seriously. When I started playing poker, I played tons of freerolls and didn't really have a grasp on much of it. I remember being shocked when someone told me to only play A10+ UTG. I then started reading books and was essentially mentored by Derek to play ultra-tight.

As soon as I felt like I was capable of playing flops better than most people, I started to loosen up my starting hand requirements quite a bit. I felt that my ability to play flops with people was well worth opening up my game. I saw all of these top pros like Negreanu and Ivey who would play any two, and I found myself torn between playing ultra-tight as I had been and playing very loose-aggressive. With today's breed of online pros being loose-aggressive, I felt that that is how I needed to play.

But when someone would ask me what my playing style was, I really didn't know what to say. I wanted to say TAG, but knew that it would impress them more if I said that I liked to see lots of flops cause I have amazing post-flop play :)

I would go through periods, especially being away at college, where I would play tons of online and my play was getting pretty loose. I would then play with Derek and he would comment on how loose I had become, and I then got embarassed and went back to playing tight. I hadn't found my playing style.

Just recently it occurred to me that my playing style is and should be adaptive to the circumstances at hand. You hear everyone say that there is a time and place to play tight and a time and place to play loose. It is identifying these spots and situations that separates good players from great players.

I might brag in this paragraph so be warned. In the past few days, I have noticed that I am very good at recognizing situations and knowing when to put on the pedal and when to put on the brakes. In general, I play tight-aggressive, but I pride myself on my ability to pick my spots and how to get maximum value from my hands. This is essential in online poker and poker in general.

There was a particular hand that happened in the $5r that had me thinking about this. With like 25 people left, I had 42k at 1.5k/3k with J9o on the button. It mucked to the c/o who raised to 9k, as he had done a couple of times. I decided to move in, and he folded. Grant asked me to explain it to him, and I realized that the explanation wasn't all that simple. It was a lot about feel:

1) It was a late pos. raise which means a wider range.
2) The fact that he raised 3x didn't mean much as I had seem him raise 3x from LP twice earlier.
3) I hadn't re-shipped at this table and had a fairly solid image
4) I had a perfect re-ship stack as it wasn't really an overbet but was still enough to where he wouldn't be getting more than like 1.8-1.

It sort of took me a little while to state all of these things, but they were all put together without me even thinking about them. This just shows that I have improved a lot as a poker player over the past couple of years. I am really excited about this and hope that my ramblings have made a little bit of sense.

Right now I am going to finish up an episode of the 5th season of 24 and call it a day/morning/night/I don't know what.

God Bless,

JG

Enjoying Summer

Yes, that's right. For the last couple weeks since school has been done, I have actually been having an absolutely blast doing just about whatever I want. A week and a half ago, Derek and I decided to make a little 3-day trip up to Bellingham which was a blast. Here is a vague schedule of what we did:

Tuesday
- Get into Bellingham at 6pm, to the Pitch by 6pm, out of there by 8:30 in time for the 9pm's on UB and FTP...whiffed :(
- 11:00pm-6:00am: play Chinese poker
Wednesday
- Wake up at 2, head to Sudden Valley to play 9
- Get home at 5, play Chinese until 3am (most of it just me and Derek, but Grant got in for like 1 hand)
Thursday
- Wake up at 1pm, head to the Pitch, go back down South at 10pm

Needless to say, it was a blurrrr of a 3-day stretch. During the 10 hour sesh that D and I had playing Chinese, we really just sat in chairs and watched the olympics for 10 straight hours! Grant, who had lost like $240 the previous night, decided to get in on one hand before he went out. When we play Chinese, we play with royalties (quads are better) which are 3 points (we were playing $5 a point), and if you lose with aces full, it is a bad beat, and the winner pays the loser $30. We always like to slow roll everything also, so it adds a pretty fun dynamic. On the one hand that Grant played, he and Derek went back and forth lying about their bottom hand. Derek eventually rolled over quad 7's, and Grant threw his cards in the muck and yelled. We picked up his hand to reveal quad 8's!!!

It was completely brutal, and I honestly felt bad, as there had been 4 bad beats over our sessions, and Grant was on the winning end of all of them for a loss of $120. I didn't feel too bad though, as Derek obv ran like Durrr and took $280 from Grant and $260 from me. I just can't explain it, but I have never had one winning session against Derek in Chinese - not 1, besides maybe a 4 or 5 hand sesh before we get into a poker game. Lifetime I am stuck close to $800 to him which is silly. After I lose and lose, I take about a month or 2-month break then decide that my luck will turn around and just want to punish him for like $1k, so I sit with him and lose my ass again. Maybe I have a gambling problem.

Other than that, today I worked my 2nd day in shoe care at the Boeing Classic at Snoqualmie Ridge. I decided to volunteer there because I worked there last summer and love it. We are getting paid ~$125 a day, which is cool, and we all got like 5 really sweet polos for free. I am working that through Sunday then heading straight up to Bellingham to move :(

Pokerwise I have not really played many MTT's lately but have focused mainly on $20 SNG's over the past week or so. I was stuck $390 to Derek and paid him back in 3 nights playing SNG's which feels good. The last 2 nights, I have played 4 SNG's, placing 5th in one and 1st in the other 3 for a cool little profit.

One of the SNG's I played tonight, which I ended up winning, I played a real goofy hand against a LAA player:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3082740

This was the first hand I had opened, and it was in the 3rd level, so I decided to come in with 10-7cc. This guy had been pretty active, so I felt there was a decent chance I was going to be c/r'd on a this paired board. He decided to flat call p/f with KK then flat my flop bet and weak-lead the turn. I really felt pretty strongly that I had the best hand, beating 66-88 and sometimes I thought he shows up with AJ-AK. I didn't really consider an overpair, but he played it goofy and owned me. Yay for the 2 subsequent double ups!

I got my FTP check in the mail, so I am no longer broke ass poor. I think that played a huge part in me having a bad summer financially. I had gotten in the routine of spending so much money, and, when I realized that my roll was diminishing a little bit, I just tried to hard to hit it big and wasn't in the right mindset. For the first time in the while, I actually feel confident in my poker game and am ready to crush as soon as all my obligations are over and I have about a month of nothing.

That said, Vegas is in 15 days, and I couldn't be more excited. I am playing in a golf tournament the day before with Paul, Henry, and Bubs, and it will most definitely be the best weekend of my life tbh.

Well I gotta get up early tomorrow and go watch some 50+ golfers play better than I ever will.

God Bless,

JG

Withdrew from FTP

I just withdrew all of my $1700 from FTP after busting in the 9pm $75 KO. I was planning on doing this soon anyways, but I'm pretty sure it was a sign that I needed to do this when I got it in on the flop in a 3-bet p/f pot with 99 against 76ss on a K 6 4 K 6 board.

I then went busto in the UB 9pm and am sitting here in a precarious situation. It has been an absolutely shitty summer in terms of poker. I have played in 84 FTP tournies with my highest cash being $275.60 despite me finishing in 35/100 on average. I have exactly one final table on that site and am just happy that I don't have to go through the fucking bullshit every night where I play awesome poker for 5 hours then get in auto-bust spots or can't win a race.

I always hate listening to people whine about how they can't run good late, and I truly do understand that this is such a small sample size that I have nothing to worry about. But it is just frustrating to seemingly go through the same routine every night with the same results. I guess I am just expecting money to come easy as it has for the first couple years in my poker career. It just sucks to go through a run like this when it is the summer and all I want to do is try and build my roll because I know I am not going to have enough time to play a whole lot once school starts.

I really don't know what my plan is from here. I have a little under a grand on UB with which I plan on trying to build. But I am really starting to doubt my poker skills and it has been a while since I have been complemented on my game because I haven't won $10k in an online poker tournament in my life and haven't had a big score in a while. I'm not saying that my psyche is so fragile that I need someone to tell me that I am awesome at poker, but I think it is just so stupid that no one has said how sick I am at MTT's solely because I haven't had success as of late.

After reading a bunch of the cardrunners' blogs, I am starting to realize that I might not have a significant edge in MTT's. I think that I play really well and pick my spots optimally most of the time, but I am starting to think that I just ran well above EV for a while and thought that I could make a living playing $25-$50 MTT's. I'm not sure if this is the case, but I am not sure if I am emotionally ready to commit myself to playing a lot of cash games. It is a really odd situation that I am in, and I am considering just going back and playing $20 sng's to build my roll.

I withdrew my FTP money because my bank account was getting low, and I need some money to live off of for Vegas and for the rest of the summer. The thing that I absolutely hate about poker for me personally is that I never seem to have success when I really need it. This would definitely be the most annoying thing about being a tourney pro.

Anyways, I am up in Bellingham and Derek is also up here. We will probably be playing poker the next couple of nights even though I really hate the idea of trying to play under-rolled 4-8 at the Slo Pitch or going deep in a MTT only to bubble the final table. Hopefully things turn around soon and I can do some bragging, which is what I have wanted to write about for the past 3 months.

That is all I got.

God Bless,

JG

Playing Right Now

Just wanted to post a ridiculous hand that I just played against a nutso.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3018745

I like to do a lot of button limping in spots like this where the blinds are deep and don't play very well. Especially this BB who was playing like a monkey, but this hand is just unfathomable. I also think this is a pretty sweet flop to go ahead and put in a bluff raise on the weak min-bet. When he snap-called, I was like 99% sure he was on 7-6 (I was obv. wrong) and was going to press the pot button on the turn. He obv does the same stupid min. bet again, and I ship in, and he beats me in the pot.

I would just like get some sort of insight into the mind of this guy. I know it's tough to misread your hand online, but I just can't explain it any other way. Just kinda funny, but it's nice to know that these players are still depositing money online somehow.

Anyways, I'm done with classes and pretty pumped about it. Right now I am just hanging out, watching the Hawks 2nd-string players stomp all over the Vikes and playing some online. I am 0 for 3 thus far but have a pretty nice stack in the 6:20 on UB.

Well, gotta get back to the tables.

God Bless,

JG

Meeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhh...

Well...things haven't been going great at all poker-wise. I have been a little bit busy with these 4-week classes that I'm taking, so I haven't had a whole lot of time/desire to grind it out. I am at the part of my poker career right now where I just expect to have consistent big scores weekly with little to no effort which is how I swear it used to be. But they're just not coming.

I had to make a withdrawl from UB last week to help pay for Seahawks season tickets (WHOOOO!!!) which I was pretty pumped about. Derek and I will be splitting two tickets in the Hawks nest, which is my favorite place and sweetest atmosphere in the stadium. They are only 4 rows up from the main concourse for $1400, which was quite a steal IMO.

Since then I have actually been a little tight financially since I haven't had any big scores in the past couple months. After spending the $700 on Hawks tickets, my checking account was dangerously low while waiting for my UB check to come. Right now I have about $2kish on FTP and a little over $1k on UB. I am really contemplating withdrawing like $1500 on FTP to live off of for the rest of the summer and then just going back to grinding out some lower BI MTT's for a while once school rolls around.

It is sad to think that I may not be able to get through another year of college without working and just playing poker. With the stakes that I am playing, I would have to devote a good 25-30 hours a week to poker, and that is something that I just simply do not have the time for, nor do I think I am dedicated enough to do. It's not like my confidence is all gone, but I am just putting an unhealthy amount of pressure on myself that it is hard to have success.

Last night was quite silly. After a presentation and filming a movie, I went and played golf with Grant which was awesome. I have made a ton of swing changes lately that I hope will eventually get me to where I was late in HS. I feel like I am close but just haven't been able to put together a solid 18 holes yet.

After golf, we came back home and hung out for a while. Then Grant and Heather went out, so I decided to hop on and play some SNG's on FT. I bought in for a $30 9-seat and a $30 18-seat. In the 18-seat, I completed AJss from the SB with like 4 limpers. Flop came 7s 3s 3x. I checked, and it checked to the c/o limper who bet 80 into a 150. I decided to raise to 220. EP limper flatted, better mucked. Turn 8s, and I lead 300 into a 750. He flats, and I am now suspicious of 77733 or 3333 but can't really do anything. River 6s and I ship in 900 into a 1200, and he snaps with 3333 :( Not really sure if there is much I can do in that hand. He could easily show up with a dry 3 or a lower flush, but meh, whatever.

I then just lost it and raised A10hh from the button in the 9-seat behind a c/o limper. Flop came 9s 5h 3h, and he moves in for 1k into a 500 and without thinking I snap call and he shows A5dd, and I brick. I'm not sure what happened there, but it was evident that I let the other hand get to me psychologically.

I then decided to sit down at a .5/1 HU Deep table and lost $200 after 3 people sat in and tag-teamed me LAWL!

Oh well, it didn't really phase me that bad which is probably a bad thing. I am getting a little bit careless with my depleting roll. I will try to get in the right psychological state Friday once classes are over and I have nothing else to think about.

Until then, gl to everyone.

God Bless,

JG