For those of you who don't know already, I'm a Junior at Santa Clara University, located in beautiful San Jose, CA. This past week was FINALS WEEK and I spent all day Saturday/Sunday preparing for three (yes 3 in 1 day) Monday finals. Obv when I say all day I mean 1 hour studying, then 2 or 3 hours watching football/wasting time, then rinse and repeat (hey, atleast I didn't play poker). Only taking 3 classes this quarter because of the difficulty I foreshadowed in September (no actually I'm just too lazy to do 4)...Marketing 181, Spanish 1 (lol, I know), and OMIS 40 (aka Statistics). I was originally only scheduled for 2 Monday afternoon/night finals and 1 Tuesday afternoon final, but my OMIS class was bumped out of our room for a graduate class so obv I run goot and get it scheduled for Monday morning instead.
I was really nervous over the weekend, because well let's just say I missed 6 of the last 7 OMIS classes heading into the Final. My other two classes I had missed a few days as well, also resulting in partial anxiety (which if added with standard anxiety = nervous breakdown). After an excruciatingly painful day of my head face down starring at a mixture of statistic problems, spanish dialogue, and marketing concepts that began at 9:30... I was done at 7:45, and partying by 8. I felt pretty much the same heading out of each test...which was meh, I did alright.
The partying continued thru Tuesday night when the rest of the guys on the golf team finished (Oh yeah, did I mention I play golf for the school?). It was really fun cuz everyone was shitfaced and just lettin' loose, including a couple ladies from the women's team who came over and partied with us for a bit. I was able to capture some hilarity that ensued on the cycorder, after modifying my iPhone (thanks DoubleDave). I couldn't believe what these ladies were spitting out of their mouth (That's what she said - did I mention I <3 The Office) ... But I don't have any idea how to upload it to a computer to share (expect a PM Dave).
Anyways, I decided to play an afternoon/night schedule on Wednesday to see if I could get some momentum going before I came back home (Yeah, I just drove from school for 6 hrs this morning to my home in Lake Forest, CA). It went aight for most of the sesh, until I went out 11th in the $55 6-max on stars on a sick hand after bigstack opens cutoff for 3600 and folds to me in BB with AQo and obv I try and ship w/ only 15 BB but I misclicked the slider and end up making it 8400 instead. The guy tanked, then flatted. Flop comes T82 rainbow, I obv ship, he snaps with QTo. GG me. I mean I'm happy that he is willing to call there pre, but its really gay nonetheless. I end up tilting out of my last two tourneys semi deep in just god awful situations. Leaving me depressed as to why I am only good at MTTs (sometimes).
I end up consoling my friend Mike (who plays as blaten and also goes to Santa Clara) about how I'd like to be more than just a tourney donk. The conversation eventually leads him to telling me how I play about 50% of my cash game hands wrong and 20% of my mtt hands wrong. I mean I'm a winning low limit cash player, but 50%??? Talk about ripping on my game (which I'm actually happy he gave me an honest opinion about). So, he has to study for his last final on Thursday afternoon and offers to let me come over and watch him play some deep low limit cash when he's done.
So after failing his final (haha his words), I head over to his place and watch him 8-table $.25/.50 nl deep. Over like 10k hands he's played during the fall quarter, he's netting ~ $75/hour which is pretty ridiculous at those limits considering he's running at about EV. Obv the play isn't stellar at .25/.50 but he just absolutely crushes. Mike was in control of every pot. He emphasized trying stuff out and getting into tough situations.
So that's what I've been doing the past couple days, grinding it out at .25/.50 deep...the profit is minimal but I'm beginning to understand why good players make the plays they do instead of just mimicking what I see in training videos. I'm also thinking more clearly during hands and making way better decisions than I would in the past. I'm not procraimling to have figured it out overnight, however I have figured out the process to figuring it all out (if that makes sense).
Well, I guess that's all for my first post. Hope you enjoyed. Going to play a full Sunday schedule tomorrow so I'll be sure to post my results as well as some key hands.
- Scott
P.S. I managed a B+ in Spanish which is bittersweet, will wait and see regarding my other two.