Online Poker Tournament Rankings

So, I went to play my first major live event in Copenhagen, Denmark last week. I played in day 1a my first table had Dario Minieri and Claus Nielson which both have had great success in the live poker world.

Within the first hour I had AA,KK and QQ all losing hands but KK was the only one I showed down and crippled me. At the first break I had 2800 chips from the 10k starting stack which had been down to 1250 . At the end of the first hour i had KK in sb with 4 limpers so I raised to 600 at 25/50 and get 2 callers... flop comes Qh9h2d the first caller is a scandi donkface he didnt even know that you need to leave your chips on the table at break lol and the 2nd caller is Claus Nielson who appears to be real solid. I lead out 1250, donk calls, and Nielson folds so its now heads up. turn comes 7d to make double flush draw and this players range is fairly big im thinking Q10 plus and any pocket pair because he had already limp called in a similar spot twice this being his third time. I bet 4k on turn he thinks forever and shoves for 6k so its only 2k for me to call obv i call with KK and the he flips set of 9s. that hand seemed pretty standard just annoying that it happend so early.

After that hand i was down to about 1800 and just grinded playing my stack and picking small spots to pick up chips and stay alive. Finally I get a PERFECT squeeze spot on the button...Hijack raised 3x cutoff calls and im sitting in button with AQ and 37% of my stack in the middle so I shoved, but not instantly because I wanted to entice a call from the 2nd caller. So, I paused for about 30 seconds to make it look like im calculating to see if its a good squeeze spot (obviously I already had this figured out before I was dealt cards) then shove. The intial raiser folds and cutoff calls with A4s. Flop comes A45 I dont improve gg me. It just wasnt my tourney and I had AA,KK,QQ,99,88,AQ all losing pots, so im extremely happy with the way I played and preserved my stack in this deep stack environment.

The next major live tournament I plan to play is the Irish Poker Open march 17-24th, but I might play shooting star at bay101 in northern california next week if I pull some backing together. But, for the next week or so im most likely just going to grind out some online poker and get back in the habbit of playing full time and working on my businesses full time.

Outside of poker over the last month and a half or so I have been in the process of moving from Maryland to Los Angeles. I am renting a 3 br house in hollywood hills and absolutely love it out here so far. I havent had much time to get settled, but the weather is great and the people are awesome, so I cant really complain. Commerce and hustler are juicy as hell, so it should make for some real good times.

I arrived in dublin, Ireland on thursday 3/20 to play the 2008 Irish poker open and played Day 1b yesterday. The first half of the day was pretty exciting and I am extremely happy with how well I was playing which wasnt too difficult because the irish are psycho's and terrible at poker I dont care what anyone says this tournament is super weak. They do not fold post flop no matter what which is like a dream for me.

During the 4th blind level at 100/200 I lost 20k pot with 910 on a jq7 raindbow board. I raised preflop from middle position and both the cutoff and button call. I lead 3/4 pot, cutoff reraises 3x, button folds, and I reshove with fold equity and the crazy irish man calls with AJ like a psycho. I couldnt have played this hand any better just bricked the hell out of it. This was the first hand I played at this table sorry for lack of details but typing on iphone is annoying. After this hand I am down to about 2500 at 100/200.

About 15 hands later I reshoved 89o with 2500 left in BB at 100/200 which is a perfect reshove spot since these psycho irish raise with anything and cutoff calls with ak...I bink the flop and double to about 5500.

About an hour later I raised AQ to 800 in the small blind at 150/300 with a 4500 stack and BB shoves with KJ i snap call and flopped an ace. At dinner break through 5 of 8 levels i had 9200 and avg was 12.6k.

I busted day 1 with only 1 min before the day ended. I had been grinding for 4 levels with an M of 4-8 pretty much all day so I couldnt really do a whole lot just played my stack. My busto hand was with an M of 3.8 in BB with A6. Hijack raised 2.5x standard raise and My thinking to stop and go here was it is the absolute last hand before the day is over and if I fold im going into day 2 with an M of 2 so I stop and go with A6 and an M of 3.8 flop comes 1053 rainbow I shove about 3500 into ~3500 flop he calls with AJ I didnt improve.

 

So, this Sunday started off as the normal get a bunch of top 30's in small stuff along with my 3rd Pokerstars sunday warm up cash in a row then BAM I won the UBOC main event $1k buy-in with 804 entrants for $181,575 first prize.

sorry for short post ill try to make a longer one tomorrow

I know! I know! i said I was going to keep up with this blog, but between traveling so much, and just being lazy with the blog has prevented me from posting as frequent as I should. Anyways, This is going to probably be a really long post about everything going on in my life right now.

So, first lets start with how I have been doing in tournaments. I have been playing a very low volume of tournaments since my big score, but since my big UBOC win on December 16th 2007, I have the following final tables:

Ultimate Bet:

3rd in the UB bounty for $2464

PokerStars:

4th in Sunday 2nd chance for $14,425
7th in a $109 for $1770
3rd in a $55 1 rebuy 1 addon for $1161
1st in a $50r for $15,721
1st in the Nightly $100k guarantee for $27,818
5th in $55 for $2843
6th in the sunday $215 heads up matches for $1792
5th in $33r 6max for $1429
8th in saturday $320 for $3385

Full Tilt Poker:

2nd in $75 for $6502

Bodog:

8th in the 100k guarantee for $2400
1st for a $12k live package

Cake:

1st for a $12k live package


So, even though I havent been putting in full time hours I have still had alot of success since my UBOC win. After I completed my backing deal with The-Toilet I told my self I was going to take a much needed break from playing MTT's online full time, because it is much more profitable for me to focus on making money in the real world. Dont get me wrong there is great money to be made playing online poker, but its just capped to a certain point whereas my time spent in developing new websites/businesses is far more profitable and uncapped income. If you think about it even live poker is capped. Even if your incredible at poker and run incredible your not going to make anymore than 10-50 mill in a lifetime and to make that much your saying your the absolute top tier of all poker players in the world. My point is not to show that I am greedy, but just that I realize my potential is FAR greater outside of playing poker, but for now I still want to pursue both until my growth as an entrepreneur prevents me from being able to play under the same circumstances.

In between grinding online tourneys over the last month I decided to put school on pause and took the time to travel with some friends from my hometown that I haven't kept the closest touch with over the last few years because I know to pursue what I want is just impossible living in maryland, and I wanted them to understand what I have been doing the last few years while i was away at school before I move across country.

So, Last friday I moved out to Los Angeles (Hollywood hills) with two friends from home. The first project I am working on out here is a new website within the music industry that has never been done or even tried. I want to talk about it more than anything, but until we reach the right time to go public it is in my best interest to keep it to my self. My friend Larry came up with the idea and it has HUGE potential, but I dont want to get into talking about this project so much just yet. Just keep checking back on this blog and I will do my best to keep everybody updated on whats going on, but I wanted to show how excited I am about starting another new business.

Over the last week or so we have just been living out of a hotel because it was ALOT harder to lease a house than I thought. There is nothing more frustrating than not being able to spend your money simply because your not old enough. I cant even count how many times I have been turned away just because of my age which nobody says because its illegal to discriminate because of age, but its fairly blatant what they are doing every time I go look at a new house. But, anyways I finally found a real estate agent that isn't super old school and found me a house in Hollywood Hills, California. I will be signing the lease and moving in on Monday morning, so im really excited about moving into my first house.

Thats all I have for now I hope you like it and don't be afraid to post comments which will also help motivate me to keep this blog updated :)