Turns out I'm a pretty good player at this point - and it was nice to book such a nice win, $1100, last November.
Since then, almost 3 months later, I've played in 15 tournaments and cashed twice. Thankfully, they've all been small events - but it is frustrating looking at all that red on my poker results app.
But I have to remember, it's all part of tournament poker, it's really quite normal.
I still feel good at the table - in any given event I do truly feel like the best player in the room or at least near the top. I would love to keep on keeping on and take down a few more tournaments here in the upcoming months.
I also have been pining to start playing in meaningful cash games - this is largely because I've fallen in love with watching poker vlogs on YouTube. Brad Owen and Andrew Neeme have great channels with lots of hand breakdowns - and then there's a bunch of newer guys who are just as interesting.
My current favorite is this guy Wes Cutshall - he's a hilarious dude who lives in Texas and vlogs about, get this, 5/5 cash games where the buy-in is uncapped and typically is around $5000! Also you can straddle from any position with ANY AMOUNT. Yes, you can stick 5K in the middle pre-flop (pre cards being dealt) from UTG if you want. It's crazy, and crazy fun to watch.
So my plan in 2020 has kind of morphed here - I really want to play more cash. I am planning a trip to Phoenix at the end of February for baseball spring training, and for the two nights I have there I plan to go play 1/3 or 2/5 cash at Talking Stick. I hope it goes well - I plan to bring two buy ins and play until I bust or am up a lot! We shall see, but that likely will set the tenor for the rest of the year as far as me playing cash goes.
I don't mean if I go bust I'm not going to keep playing cash - I'm really actually not too concerned with results. - more rather I want to see how it feels playing deep in a cash game and how well I play, as opposed to results after the money goes in which I can't control.
I have had a great time, and good results, playing in my micro stakes home cash game; and I want to keep hosting those games - but it's hard to tell if I'm playing well or not when the stakes are so low and people are so eager to call with money that is basically meaningless. We shall see how the big leagues go soon enough.
And as for tournaments - I'm really looking forward to playing plenty of them as well. I know I will never give them up, they're just too much fun, even though they often are painful. It always stings to bust, no matter the stakes or circumstances. Just the nature of the beast really.
I haven't played in my regular league at the Moose yet (I had to miss the January event for work) but I did play in a different league at the same Moose lodge and final tabled and cashed for 3x my buy in. That was a good feeling, and I would love to keep playing in the league as I feel comfortable there and not outmatched at all. The league has overall better players than my Saturday league, but still, I think I have a decent edge over most of the field.
And then there's the World Series. I'm glad it looks like I have 3 guys from my home game who will be coming along this time, hopefully there will be more and hopefully we will all be getting together several times before we go to have discussions and maybe some hand labs or small tournaments.
I'm looking at the same week I went last year - the week of the Colossus and Crazy 8s. This year the Crazy 8s is a single re-entry, last year it was unlimited. That's a HUGE difference and a much bigger incentive to play. I plan to bring two bullets for each event. If I do happen to cash, I will plunk down $1500 that Sunday for the AMAZING tournament / lotto ticket called the Mystery Bounty event. It is incredible - really! Click here to check it out.
I love the idea behind this event so much! Actually, so much that I plan to host my own version of this format later this year. Stay tuned on my home poker game page for that.
I'm pumped about going back to the Rio - I just finished watching a series of vlogs by this guy, Ryan Depaulo, who cashed in the same Colossus event I did last year - only he final tabled and binked 200K+ in third place! Very inspiring, a semi-pro player, degenerate gambler who does study his game (despite his wacky image in the vlogs) and has had a deep, deep run in the WSOP and understands and appreciates the significance and the rarity. I highly recommend starting with this video and watching all 3 episodes that show his entire Colossus run. Yeah, he's a bit obnoxious, but I really like that he's not a robot when he plays. My goal in playing tournaments going forward is to be rather gregarious, but always kind and hopefully stay on the other side of the obnoxious line.
And speaking of inspiring, then there's this fellow, Bryant Morrison - a fellow student from the last LearnWPT workshop and hand-lab that I attended. I think that's him across from Chewy in the pic. The guy in the 10 seat also looks familiar. Turns out, Bryant only plays a handful of tournaments a year, including the WSOP, but studies his ass off. And holy shit he binked a big ass Circuit event. He's clearly in his 70's, and yet with GTO solver software and a bit of elbow grease, he was able to take his game to a stratospheric level. I wanna do that! And I think I can, though it will take doing the work.
My plan is to take another, my third, WPT workshop in a couple of weeks. Between now and then I will be hitting the software solver and also going over my last workshop notebook. I paid good money for all of that information, and I want to actually put in study time. I confess I haven't done my due diligence since the workshop - but going forward I will. Then the workshop itself will help reinforce all of the work that I plan to do and also put me in the right frame of mind to keep doing it. If Mr. Bryant can do it, I KNOW 1000% I can!
So the plan is - from here on out, Tuesdays and Thursdays after work and after dinner, is study time. Watch a full WPT video (15 minutes or so) an hour on the GTO solver and a half hour of review and maybe one more video. Easy enough right?
Anyways, this is fairly rambling - but it's where my mind is at re; poker. January was very hectic for work, and now briefly we are slowing down. I want to make sure that I take advantage of this lull and hit the books and felt hard so I can reap the rewards this summer.
So excited for poker this year! Stay tuned for more updates!
