Journaling, tracking, etc.

-Truth

After my recent big win it occurred to me, and others around me, that I should really have been keeping a written record of my poker year. Partially because I have the world's worst long term memory, and partially because the process of journaling is in itself cathartic and beneficial. So I decided to put to paper a brief synopsis of 09 to date.

In October 08, I embarked on a small experimental journey of living the life of a poker pro for 10 days. It wasn't actually all that effective of a plan, and if I had it to do over, I would have done the same thing in Vegas instead of San Jose. There simply are not the correct opportunities available in the Bay Area to support "random 10 day period being a poker pro".

I played in 1-2 live tournaments per day, at Bay 101 and Garden City. I discovered a couple of things. One: I was not a poker pro yet. I failed to cash in any of my 14-18 tournaments, that I can remember, although I recall going deep several times. Two: The field strength at Garden City is generally higher than at Bay 101.

From there, I discovered that I could effectively play the LATE night tournaments at Bay 101 and still keep my day job. I also noticed that the fields were decent sized, provided a strong prize pool, and the format was favorable for my play style. 10k starting chips, 100/100 blinds, no antes ever, and 15 minute rounds. I can do this...!

I played in most of that tournament season. I got off to an early lead, and held first position in the rankings for quite a while. This lead me to get complacent, and due to some dating I was doing, I skipped over a month worth of tournaments. I ended that season in 4th or 5th place with a couple of late season cashes. I played in the seasonal free roll, and did poorly. That could have won me a seat in the 09 WPT Shooting Stars event, but I donked it pretty big by taking a month+ break.

The next season (April to August), I devoted myself to playing EVERY SINGLE event. The season started out with 2 events per week, Sunday night and Monday night, which works out to nearly 50 tournaments. A few things happened that caused me to not make every event. First, a couple of times that I won the tournament, I would then skip the next day. A win means the event ends at roughly 5-6am, and then I have a normal work day starting. Second, they added a third weekly event, Tuesday nights about 75% of the way through the season, increasing the total number of events to about 62-64ish, and lastly I went on a week long family vacation, which caused me to miss an additional 4 events.

I spent a considerable portion of this latest season in first place, but ended up in second ranking overall with 7 cashes, 4 of those being first place wins. This was sufficiently high in the ranking for them to simply award me a free seat to the Bay 101 Open $1k buyin event held August 29. I also played in the season end freeroll event, but did not place. In the freeroll, they awarded 2 full sets of tournament entries to the weeklong Open event, 8 different events totaling $6500 buyin value.

I played in the 1k event on Saturday, and played STRONG!~ Ninja and Cute Helpful were on the rail from about the second break on, supporting me throughout and keeping me positive. As I look back on my play for the whole day, I can only identify one hand where I made a tournament life risking mistake. I have found that most of my major cashes have had this attribute... Looking back I can only find a couple of visible mistakes in my play. This time it was a totally poor read. I had AQo in early position, and the guy who was sitting 2 seats to my right had shown down a couple of really wonky plays recently. He was advertising, and it worked. When I made a 3x raise with my AQo, it folded around to him in the BB, and he went over the top all-in. I thought about it and decided that he was at best playing a mid pair, or most likely nothing at all with such a huge raise. I thought he wanted me out, and that I was good. I called off my stack, which was roughly 3/4 of his and he showed me KK. I got lucky that the flop came with an ace, and the turn came with another and I doubled up.

I played a conservative but aggressive game for the rest of the day, and I ended up winning first place. I absolutely got some very lucky timings of hands, having AA 4 times in the last 3 tables. Twice they held up and doubled me (vs JJ I had him by one chip and vs AJ I just doubled), and once more knocking out a 2/3 of my stack guy, and lastly at the final table AA vs QQ to double through a very loose and super lucky guy that had been plaguing me since my first table.

At the final table, I held the second largest chip stack the entire table, with minor fluctuations in sizes and who owned the other bigger stack. I knew that I could beat whoever ended up with that big stack heads up, so I just played tight and sniped off small stacks where I could get them heads up low risk. Since my stack and the other huge stack represented 80% of the chips, I could safely do crazy things like call UTG to sweeten pots to induce all-ins from the micro stacks, etc.

Once I got heads up, I knew I was golden. I had played with the other stack for at least 2 hours now, and I had a good understanding of his skill level and capabilities. We sparred for almost an hour heads up, but every time a tournament life was at risk, it was his. Eventually I got him, and won the 10k WPT Shooting Stars seat for March 2010.

I had told several people that I planned to win that event, and that I had three things planned for the money. First, I would buy the next day's entry, the $2k event. Second, I would plan to attend the October Heartland Poker Tour event in Denver with Sheriff. Third, I would design and order a custom poker table for my house.

I worked with a guy I know, Scott from SMMGAMING.com, to design the perfect table for me. Work has begun on it, and it should be ready sometime in October for use.

Specs:
7 foot table, 8 stainless steel cupholders inset in a black vinyl rail. (room for 9 players comfortably, 10 slightly less so)
3" maple rack track, under the raised rail with inset blue accent lighting.
custom printed blue gaming suede (design TBD)
Accent nails outside/below the rail
Maple pedestal legs
and lastly an octagonal maple dining top, so the table can be used full time in my dining room.

-Truth