Overall, with a month and a half still left in the year, I've had a great poker experience in 2019. My results show me up over $2000 in profit for 2019 so far - pretty great considering I play once every other week or so in $40-$100 tournaments and then also indulged in a week of multiple WSOP tournaments at $800 and $600 a pop.
On the horizon right now is my Moose Tournament of Champions for the Silverlake Rounders group - I'm hoping I run better than I have been running at the Moose of late. Yes, the players have adjusted to me at this point and they understand I get out of line a good amount (way more than is the average there) but I've also been nailed by just running into bigger hands.
Case in point, at a recent final table just 3 from the money, I 3-bet stuck my 20 big blind stack in with AJ soooted and my opponent (who had me covered by a bit) went into the tank, asked for a count and then somehow found a call with Pocket KINGS. LOL, ok. Lost my cool a little bit at that one. I've been playing for almost 15 years at this point and have never run into a tank call against KK.
The very next day at the Moose I got all my chips in against a rock who was "on to me" with two pair vs his one pair - runner runner flush for him. Yay.
So it's been like that. Plus like I say, they're on to me a bit when it comes to my shenanigans, which overall is a good thing, it means I get folks to stack off with top pair marginal kicker (just have to avoid the runner runner flush thing.)
Then there's the last couple of tournaments left in my home game - HORSE in 2 weeks and one more NLHE event in December, then a big break until the TOC in January.
The home game has been great - though I haven't won a tournament - it's just been such a good time and my results are not indicative of the fun I've had with such a great bunch. Though the results have been decent. My results for my garage are up over $1000 in profit. Not too shabby for not taking a tournament down, though there are still two tournaments left!
And so I look forward to another great year playing the game I love - I am seriously eyeballing yet another WPT Workshop (for the record it would be my third) but it's an Advanced Course and it's at Commerce in February. We shall see how the schedule shakes out.
I think I forgot to mention the second course I took, it was just this last year at the Bellagio and it was the LearnWPT Tournament Mastery Course, run by the master Nick Binger and co-hosted by Eric Lynch and Lucky Chewy. It was a great three days, including an immersive hand lab that had all sorts of great info to chew on with Chewy. Super nice guy by the way - super chill and every bit the zen master that we've seen on tv.
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| Chewy giving me advice to chew on. Get it? |
I will say, that a lot of the course was focused on GTO (Game Theory Optimal) play, and while I think it's important to grasp the concepts and also practice at applying them (that's what Learn WPTs fantastic GTO training software is for) - it is a much less interesting aspect of the game for me and it also doesn't factor in so much when playing ultra-low buy in tournaments with recreational opponents.
Still, I do study and I do practice - so the next time I'm at a table with stone cold killers, like I was on day 3 of the Main in 2018, I think I will have better than a fighting chance. In the meantime, against players who are highly exploitable, I still plan to exploit them as much as I can.
So that's that for now - looking forward to finishing up the year strong, and carrying on in 2020!
