Gaining momentum

So WSOP has been over for a few weeks now. I obviously am not at the final table of the main event right now but I did cash for 21k or so and I really can't complain about anything this summer. I played about as many events as I expected, cashed twice, ran great online and in live cash and netted over $35k for the summer. I had an awesome time and made some new buddies that I lived with for the month of June.

So now I am trying to plan atleast the near future as far as poker goes and I want play a live and travel a bit more. I'm still going to be doing the same online grind as always, but there are just alot of places that I would love to travel to and play some tournements series. I guess now that I am back home in Orlando I just realized how much more exciting WSOP was this summer than being home with nothing going on, so I would like to get out a bit. I'm planning a trip in September to Atlantic City to the Borgata for the WPT. They lowered the main event buyin this year to 3.5k because the economy sucks and no one wants to play 10k events anymore. They also have a $1600 Heads up tourney which should both be pretty fun plus its during WCOOP so I can do all of that at the same time. Once we see how that goes then I will decide on Aruba classic, PCA in the bahamas, Aussie millions and LAPT in LA all which are between now and february. Tons of options and places I want to go and hopefully I can drag Loraine around with me if she doesn't get a job teaching! Also gotta plan the wedding soon. Busy Busy Busy.....

Heading to Day 4...

Seriously way too tired to write too much right now these 13 hour days are destroying me. I finished today with 147.5k going into 2k/4k/500 tomorrow. I had an unbeleiveable table today everyone was so bad I can't even get into it right now but I will in the next few days. I peaked at 260k or so then lost a modest pot where I bricked a J9xxdd board all in with QTdd agaisnt AJ. Meh, woulda put me around 350k. Still can't complain too too much as I'm still alive with 800 left. 648 make the money and it is $21,000 or so to cash so I'm lookin foward to some serious grinding tomorrow to make it there. I'm gonna flip my shit if I go this far without cashing but it's all about shipping the main event back to Orlando! Time to get some rest.

WSOP Main Event: Heading to Day 3

Wow alright haven't updated as much as I should but, the title say's it all. I finished day 1 of the tournament with 15,700 chips and had a terrible day. My table had Alex Jacob and another kid who was super aggressive and I couldn't win any pots all day long. I got to 39k or so once then just dwindled down being super frusterated and doubling up Alex all in pre AQ to 55. On top of that I felt super sick and couldn't stop sneezing.

So then day 2 came along. After finishing day 1 I really didn't think things could get worse then I looked at my table draw which included: Joe Hachem (Wsop 2005 ME winner, fish), Brian Lemke (won a bracelet few weeks ago, super solid had tons of chips), and online players Rizen (Eric Lynch) and JohnnyBelow. On top of that there were two other decent players at the table so I figured there was gonna be a ton of luck involved.

I got blinded down to about 11-12k pretty quick because I was card dead and short then found a few good spots where I shoved KQs to a raise, I 4 bet KK to Joe Hachem preflop and he folded, and then I won all in preflop with AKs to Joe Hachem's QQ and out of no where I boosted up to 54k. After that I ran pretty hot and rivered a set on some guy, then won all in pre with AK to AJ to get to dinner break with 90k.....WOW what a rush. After dinner I moved to a great table where everyone was HORRIBLE. For the first time in the tournament I was in control of the table and raised like every other hand and went from about 90k all the way to end the day with 121k almost without ever going to showdown. My table was letting me steal alot and folding the flop all the time it was a dream.
Tomorrow is day 3 and my table and chip counts are as follows:

Longobardi, Alessandro 79,700
Magill, John 106,100
Viglizzo 64,500
Sebok, Joe 122,800
Dodge, Robert 98,500
Foreman, Gerald 131,300
Brown, Randel 78,700
Gersel, Anders 42,800
Sackler, Jason 121,400

Joe Sebok is Barry Greenstiens son and from what I've seen is pretty weak and a big nit. John Magill I looked up and he got like 12th in the main event in 2006 but hasn't done anything else and looks like a fish. So I'm pumped as usual. Tonight is the Pokerstars party at club Rain at the Palms and Nelly is performing but I think I'm going to rest for tomorrow. I will post updates on how tomorrow ends up. 2044 people left and 648 make the money. ONE TIME!

First WSOP Cash!!!!!

Woooot, cashed in event 36 $2000 nl event. Had 1695 people to start and I bustoed in 89th place for like $5600ish. Only cashing for that much is kinda depressing but I have mixed feelings because I was short on chips going into day two when we were 40 from the money or so and ran kinda good/got it in bad a couple times to stay alive....hah! One hand we were 15 people from the money and I shoved 6-6 from cutoff and the big blind was this old man who tanked for like 2 minutes and kept looking at the screen to see how close we were to the money. He eventually folded T-T face up and said "I think I have you" then got a penalty for exposing his cards. So once we got into the money I never got higher than 45k or so in chips between the 1k/2k and 1.5/3k levels and finally with 89 left I shoved from the cutoff for 40k with AK and the big blind who was new to the table called more than half his stack with A6 and the door card on the flopp.......6 ball. Oh well gg it was a fun run.

Today is the razz event, I have mixed feelings on if I want to play it or not. I think I have some edge in the field but I need to get a good table draw. If I get a table with 7 other live pro nits then it's going to be impossible to get chips. Part of me feels like taking a shot at like 10/20nl with $2500 is a better investment than the tourney but we'll see I have until 5pm to decide. There is also a $2100 venetian deepstack event on friday and I kinda want to play that since the structures there are great. And ofcourse the main event which I need to register for soon is coming up in 10 days or so. Aight, I'll update later in the week on how it all unfolds.

Expect some awesomeness in the next two weeks.

4 days down

Aight it took me a little bit to get settled but it's 4 days into the WSOP for me. The first two days were kinda rough. I'm super dissapointed in the Rio's cash games because they are flooded with young online players and it's like impossible to play these games. The 5/10 is like sitting at an aggressive 5/10 game online with no fish and everyone is constantly 3-betting preflop and gambling a ton. Obviously there are the selective good games but overall I've been somewhat dissapointed in that aspect. The Venetian as I predicted has the best games filled with half decent players and half rediculous fish. So far it seems for cash this is where I will be playing the most.

On the tournament side, I've only played one event which was the $1500 6-max event yesterday and meh, went busto right before dinner. I actually got moved 5 times in this tournement wtf...? That's rediculous sounding even for an online tournament in 5 levels, but whatever I experienced 5 pretty interesting tables. Definitly no big names at any of my tables or anyone in particular to even note, but all of my tables were two extremes: Either really stationy horrible old people like my first table, or 5 other solid 6 max internet players with headphones that played pretty solid. As for other events it's kind of in the air to what I'm going to play. The $550 tomorrow is a good possibility though.

Other than having a good time, met up with some old friends and met some new cool guys too. An old buddy of mine from when I was like 14 years old met up with me here and I hung with him and some of his friends tonight which were really cool. Jeff Garza (Actionjeff) was one of them, real cool kid and hopefully we'll all meet up and do something sometime throughout the series. We talked about getting a home game sometime this month with everyone from their house and ours which would be pretty hilarious.

That's all for now. One time.....

gg college

I graduated!!!! Hellz yeah, never thought that was gonna happen. Basically it's time to just play a ton of poker and grind away. Got my birthday in a couple of weeks and then leaving for vegas a week later so lots coming up. Nothing too exciting today atleast - another Sunday down the drain. I blew through about 800 in tournements which nothing seemed to go right in. I built a stack up in the million, blew it 500 from the money. Played two FTOPS events today and built a nice stack in the $330, blew through that one. I need to do some work on maintaining my chips when I get them. I seem to get chips easily now then enjoy dropkicking my stack when it becomes important. Oh well.

Trying to update this more often often, especially when Vegas rolls around. Hopefully there will be alot of good things to talk about next month. I'll finish up here with a lesson on running good:

Dealt to Fisheye25 [Th 9h]
ashlee319: raises $4 to $6
Fisheye25: calls $4
*** FLOP *** [8h Jh 2d]
Fisheye25: checks
ashlee319: bets $6
Fisheye25: raises $16 to $22
ashlee319: calls $16
*** TURN *** [8h Jh 2d] [Qh]
Fisheye25: checks
ashlee319: bets $36
Fisheye25: raises $220.70 to $256.70 and is all-in
ashlee319: calls $67.70 and is all-in
Uncalled bet ($153) returned to Fisheye25
*** RIVER *** [8h Jh 2d Qh] [8c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Fisheye25: shows [Th 9h] (a straight flush, Eight to Queen)
ashlee319: shows [5h Ah] (a flush, Ace high)
Fisheye25 collected $262.90 from pot

Time to get OPRAH RICH!

Wow so it's been a rediculously long time since I've updated last. I skimmed over this blog from my last bunch of post and holy shit so much has changed. As far as my life aside from poker, I got engaged to Loraine finally, I SHOULD be graduating college this week (pending if my witch of a teacher curves enough) and we moved into a new place in Avalon in Marc's (People Mover) neighborhood. Pokerwise, I guess you can say I've progressed and matured lightyears since I started this blog. Before the last 8 months or so, I was grinding low limits playing approximately 20 tables of full ring cash games or playing mid (sometimes high, usually way too high) stakes razz making a steady $6k+ a month between playing and Pokerstars VIP bonuses. For a while I was very happy with that especially being young and in college it was way more than I could have asked for at the time. However, last year I decided to be a little more ambitious and take my knowledge of the game to a higher level and see what I could accomplish.

The most important upgrade to my game was completely mental. I learned a lot about dealing with losses and the swings that come along with poker and I feel like I got a complete new attitude makeover. I think a big part of why I used to take losing so bad was that I have always been extremely conservative and nitty when it comes to bankroll management. Ever since I started playing poker I always felt like I was gaining a ton of knowledge every day and had the mind for poker, but I always had a fear of progressing higher in limits and building a bankroll. Well the biggest thing I've learned or atleast come to realize since moving up through the middle limits is that I am a winning player and I have poker is one giant session in the long run. It sounds so simple and retarded but I've gained so much confidence in the past year and expanded my comfort level to where I am now consitently beating the middle limits all the way up through 5/10nl.

Mechanically I have played a ton of heads up poker in the past 6 months or so that has improved my game astronomically. I played a ton of hands at 1/2nl heads up and in the last couple of months finally gained the confidence to move up through the limits. I also have a cardrunners and deucescracked membership which has also been a pretty helpful tool in improving my play. All in all I feel like I am a different person as far as poker from 1 year ago and I have a ton of confidence and momentum right now. It's almsot WSOP time again and I am so unbelievably excited about it. Not excited as in past years when I looked at the WSOP to be extremely fun and hope I broke even between taking shots at tournements and grinding cash games, but I have some goals set in mind this year and I really want to accomplish something this time. I rented a huge house in Summerlin with a bunch of really great friends and poker players for the summer starting June 1st and I'm shipping my car up there too so I don't have to rent a POS and waste money. Also, I won a seat to the WSOP Main Event this past Sunday so I am STOKED to say the least. I looked over the structure for the tournement - 30k starting chips with a few added levels from last year should make for a ton of play.

That's all for now, I will update more as the series gets closer. W00T!!!