catching up for December.

Holiday time has been fine. I really haven't gotten anything accomplished, but that's actually OK. It's not like the leaves in the yard won't still be there next weekend.

Pokers has been way silly annoying. After getting back to break even, immediately dumped a few hundred running -40% ROI in just a few days to go even deeper in the red than I had been over the last couple of months. Damn short-run SnG/MTT variance.

Typical session: final table a $11 2R1A tourney on Stars. Winning would even out the negative run. Finish 6th or something silly like that when someone opens from the CO and tank calls my 10BB effective button shove with AQo (LOL nits). Look down, and including the cash, I'm still down $5 for the night.

Starting to read all the prep posts about the blogger gathering coming up, and am actually wishing I could get out there - except I couldn't drag along one-month old BabyGirlHeff as a card protector or something - at least my parents finally got up here to visit their granddaughter over Thanksgiving and she worked her charms on them. She basically cooed and slept while they held her during the day, then cried and stayed up until 4am for me and Jenn to make up for that :-).

Fantasy football has been a disaster this season: I win three games by 12 points total and get absolutely smoked the other eight weeks to run 9th in a 10 team league. For every smart move I make (Steve Smith off waivers, Brett Favre as a last round draft pick) I make dopey ones (draft Westbrook/Jacobs/Boldin with first three picks, drop Favre in Week 2 because I have Rivers and OldManBrent won't do shit anyway, sigh) Obv I will rethink my draft and waiver strategy next year.

I am going to have most of December off from work to burn up the rest of my vacation time and watch the daughter as Jenn starts working again. 2010 is shaping up to be a year of change, that's for sure.

One thing to wait for, though: Friday I was watching The Price Is Right for the first time in years and saw the BESTCONTESTANTEVAR! Once I find the video, the epicness will be posted...

I am flatline man.

I actually do decent in the Mook. Pick off some bluffs and cooler people right before the break - QQ v JJ, QQ v AQ in back to back hands - to get to 11K by the first break. Play overaggro (KQ into AA on a JTx flop, AQ from the button into KQ and AK in the blinds) to spiral back down to 3K, and then I get to run QQ into lightning36's AA, AGAIN, blind v. blind, to disappear 12 of 31.

Someday I will quit running into monsters in this tourney and it'll be a beautiful night.

I win a SnG for nice profit. I busto from everything else. I look down afterward and see

+$0.50

Whee.

There are times where I legitimately hate this game.
This may be one of them, and it's not even a losing session.

it's wednesday, so I post.

Life continues to move on... at one point last week, I had finally gotten myself into the black since September... then promptly nosedived down back in the hole -$250, which is about where I've been treading water for the last few weeks. Having an hourly rate of -$1 for almost three months is so stupid.

Ultimate Bet tried to win me back (I haven't played there for 3 years for a ton of reasons) with a free $25, so I'm trying to be bad bankroll management guy and see how big I can blow that mobney up. I got it up to $90 before settling back down to $26, which is approximately and appropriately (all together everyone) BREAKEVEN.

Play there has gotten LOL bad at the low stakes. I easily final tabled a PLO8 tourney there with literally no hard decisions for three hours, then got heads up with a 10-1 chip lead... and promptly pissed it away to finish second. Now that was tilting.

I am just zigging when I need to zag too much - too aggressive when I should tarp people, stationing too much against randoms that aren't going to bluff multiple streets.

Since we've got a few weeks left in 2009, I should at least try to move up in the Skillz and Mookie leaderboards - as if anyone's keeping track anymore :-( - and see about making more money for babygirlheff when I can.

I predict well...

AIPS:
Get a bye first round. play someone decent in the second round.
Get a small chip lead. Raise AQo 2.5x from the button in level 1 knowing I'm getting reraised given the flow of the match.
Get minreraised. Go ahead and shove over 70BB pre because shit, he can't call me unless he has three or four hands, and I've got great equity vs. most of them...
...except for AA, and I'm down 10-1 when I just hit one queen on the board.
Go out quickly when I end up checkraising second pair into top pair (not like it would have mattered, K6 hits two pair on the river) 60 of 81, really 64 given all the first round byes - unreal, God I suck so bad at this series this year.

Mookie:
Get up early, then keep getting checkraised on the turn and miss everything on the river when nothing gets there, finally checkraise an OESD into a flopped two pair and go busto again, 23 of 31.

Solution for monkey tilt after I play like shit for an hour?

Go play a $36 Turbo SnG, win it, make +$100 overall, and feel better about the night as a whole.

I still suck though. I can't take my own advice and analysis for shit.

I must be the low expectations clown...

because I watched the WSOP final table broadcast Tuesday night, and I actually didn't think it was all that bad, to be honest. I was actually entertained for the first time in a number of years.

Look, no one is ever going to be happy with ESPN when it comes to poker broadcasts - the days of ESPN simply showing a tournament (like the 2006 USPC at the Taj, with the Morgan/Jacob/DeMichele FT) with actual postflop play that doesn't involve a preflop shove and a two-outer are long gone.

You want that, go watch a cash game broadcast (HSP) or maybe an EPT tourney stream over the Internet. WSOP broadcasts are what they are - the bread and circuses, the silly fluff, you just gotta wade through. Yeah, it would awesome if there was a live stream without holecards - but there was a pay one in 2007 - I still remember calling Lee Childs' hand with QQ and thinking nooooooo when he folded to Yang's shove - and so many people ganked it (me included) that I doubt there will ever be one again.

That being said, at least I feel like they are trying to do a better job editing down these 20-hour sessions to a watchable 2 1/2 hours. But I'm probably a bad person to ask about this because..

- I don't try to stay in the dark about results, LOL that in the 21st century. I find out what's happening as it's happening.
- I paid attention to Twitter, PokerNews, 2+2, while the FT was going on, so I feel like I may as well have watched a live broadcast anyway.
- and because of all that, I knew the broadcast was running 30 minutes over, so I didn't get hosed on my DVR like a lot of people did.

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that went by the boards - Schaffel's continual raise/folding, any hand showing Buchman doing anything until he busted, the J4/54 hand Cada held with 5BB to start the long rally back to begin with - but there were some nice nuggets/points of interest as well -

*Ivey folding JJ to Saout's threebet preflop - and in general, Ivey played OK at this FT - but as great as he is, even he would probably tell you playing a 20-30BB NLHE tourney stack is not in his comfort zone, and it showed. He's got seven bracelets, but none in unlimited hold them, after all - he's the anti-Hellmuth.

*Moon with his inexplicable "I had Queens" babble after the KQo fold getting over 7-1. WTF. Either he's the greatest leveler ever or thinks everyone around him is as dopey as he is. Probably both.

*Saout goes from 90M and the chip lead to out in five hands, holding QQ and 88. Yeah, tournaments suck.

*Cada.. well, he's probably a lot better at tourneys than cash games. The shoves with small pairs weren't anywhere near as sketchy as raise/calling Shulman with AJo (Happy's never shoving light enough to make calling with JackAce a stellar idea) or trying to blow Moon off of aces up with small river raise after whiffing his draw (right idea, wrong execution against the wrong guy) Still, anytime you rally from 1% of the chips in play to win, it's a nice comeback and proof you should never give up during a tournament no matter how short you are.

At least he respected the power of the LuckBox (v3.2 with the SetFlopper expansion set) and came across as a fairly levelheaded, non-douchebag 21 year old who knew he ran sosogood to get there. Also loved him hugging JohnnyBax while sweating the board instead of his parents, girl, or crew....

* Heads up was fairly interesting, actually, given that we only saw seven of 80-something hands.

I think Moon's betsizing made Cada's call with J9 fairly easy, though - he never really trapped or bombed the pot/shoved for value at this FT, so all Cada can really be worried about on a TT95 board is a draw or a better nine (which would have been silly sick) It's hard to get a feel for an erratic player who will openlimp QQ but fourball shove AJo and call off 70 million chips with QJs - but I got the impression Moon didn't want or care about the scrutiny the spotlight brings and basically just played for his own amusement - so how the hell do you read that?

Regardless, I think the casual player/bar poker cat would have found the broadcast pretty exciting - and that's good in a couple of ways for the serious player, because now the average donk will think

1) OMG, so many bad beats, so much luck involved, bigpairs never hold, I fold all my meh hands, nit up, and just get involved with the nutz...
2) or conversely, I shove all my pairs preflop because they always get there, you gotta make big bets and calls to get a stack, AQo is the nizzles...

Either way, anything that gets people playing sub-optimally, even though it increases variance, is a good thing overall.

I plan to run the AIPS HU tourney and play horrible, play the Mookie and play worse, and rely on Cadaing my way to some mobney tonight. Good times for me :-)

man, this is hard work..

This week's Mookie went down a standard road... I get up to 4K, go down to 2k, get back to a starting stack when JOELPOKERGOD limps UTG+1 for 120, lightning36 raises to 480 from MP, I cold fourball from the big blind with KK, and when lightning snap shoves over my raise, I'm not good enough to get away from the second nuts and call, see AA and bounce 23 of 32. It seems like I run into AA or the virtual nutz every time I play a big pot in the Mookie for the last few months.

I try and play when I have a free hour or so.. mostly PLO8 SnGs and some 100NL cash - and I'm basically treading water. While I have been playing a little too wide open with a big stack late in SnGs... it's ridiculous how much I can't get a 70/30 or 80/20 to hold in a crucial spot deep. I'm probably lucky to just be breaking even over the last two months - I can't remember the last time I ran good when it counted, as opposed to early on when it's helpful, but not mandatory...

BabyGirlHeff continues to love her Mom like you wouldn't believe, and I manage to make her cry more often than not when I hold her (probably not doing it right, or more likely, I don't have the feeding factory to make her happy) - I keep bouncing between. "Hey, she's the most alert, wonderful, mellow baby ever" and "OMG, she makes weird sounds and stuff, I hope she's OK, ohshit" on an hour by hour basis, so it's probably good that I go back to work next week and have something else to worry about.