January 16th – January 22nd
Very interesting week for all of us here in the Pacific Northwest. We got our annual dosage of snow in a giant snow storm here. I live in downtown Seattle which gets the least amount of snow and we got 5-6 inches in 1-2 days here. Some of the outer areas, Olympia (60 miles south?) got upwards of 2 feet of snow. As normal, the city almost completely shut down and many roads became impassable. I saw on the news that something like 700 accidents were responded to by the State Patrol in a 24 or 48 hour period.
I had some fun in the snow. I built a snowman out side my condo and dressed it up like Jake Locker, the current QB of the Tennessee Titans and former University of Washington QB.
I chose not to mess with the roads at all and basically spent 2 straight days at home. This didn’t deter me though from working towards my goals. I put a lot of work in reading Elky's tournament book, “The Raisers Edge”. I am about 2/3rds through the book and while much of the content is stuff I already know in my head, it is a great refresher and is definitely a very good, current state, tournament poker book. I am taking my time going through the book really concentrating on the concepts and noting the key points throughout. I hope to get through the book this week and move onto the books predecessor Kill Everyone which has a bunch of shove charts that I want to study and work through.
Speaking of tournaments, this past weekend I played in all 3 of the Muckleshoot Winter Classic poker tournaments. They had a $300 (5k added), $500 (15k added), and $1000 (25k added). The $300 and $500 had quick and not deep structures early and required you to get some chips (like the 1k wsops but worse). In both of these tournaments I feel I played 1 hand bad in each and was left short and busted both in the first 2 levels.
$300 hand of the week. Key Concept- Assessing a players range and board texture for that range.
Q4dd Button (8000 chips 50/100 blinds)
Folds to me on the button and I make a fairly standard raise to 250. I had a very loose image as I had been involved in a ton of hands early, but not with much success. Both blinds were very weak players. The SB was a big station pre flop but seemed to plat fit or fold post, but hadn’t gotten to showdown so I had not confirmed that. The BB was very passive and had already flatted AK and KK pre and played them horribly post flop. Both blinds called.
FLOP 653R (1 diamond 1 club) pot 750
Both blinds check. I make a very standard cbet of 400. Both call. I am already planning to double barrel lots of turn cards as I feel you must if you are going to Cbet this flop
Turn Ac (back door clubs (pot 1950)
Awesome turn card to double barrel. Both check and I barrel 1100. the Small blind quickly calls and the BB folds. At this point in the hand I am putting the sb on still a very wide range and doesn't have to have an Ace. 64,54,34s,78,67,57,A4, 77,88,99,TT,JJ,QQ.
River Kc (pot 4200) I have 4800 back
SB Checks. If I put this SB on the above range I should be betting this river 100%. All his pair and gutters have missed and there are not many A's in his range. He may have hit some back door club draws. Basically this is the best triple barrel spot ever. The one problem is my stack. I have 4800 back with 4200 in pot so im not getting the best price to shove (if I had 3-4000 I would shove). Also if I bet something like 2500 I don’t have a read on this guys river play yet if he will fold for a smaller amount and if he calls im basically crippled. I got very gun shy here and checked back. I figured I had some showdown value vs random 4's and 78. I hate my check here and wish I bet like 2800 on the river. The SB showed A4 and won the pot. I still don’t know if he folds the river with that hand but by checking back im letting 64 win the pot so much that is never calling a river bet.
The $1000 was pretty uneventful as well. I lost a decent size pot at 100/200 leaving me with 10k chips (much better structure, we started with 20k and 45min levels). I hung around 10k for the next 90 mins or so until we got to 300/600. I doubled up with A5dd vs A7o when the button opened and I shipped 17bb he made a good call but I got there. Then raised the button with A2hh and 10bb stack shipped Jtdd and I lost. Finally got 20bb in with Aqss vs 99 on TT2ss and bricked. At least I had a chance to get some chips in this one but I don’t think I made a single mistake the whole tournament.
This week I have the $460 main event at the Clearwater casino in Seattle. This is a re entry with a pretty shitty structure I think and I have no idea how many people since it is a smaller poker casino.IM hoping for 200 and 20-25k to first. This is day 1a friday 1b saturday and day 2 sunday. If I don’t make Day 2 I have the $300 end of the month event at Tulalip that I will play. Other than those 2 tournaments I just plan on the normal and grinding a bunch of cash here. O ya I did well in cash games at Muckleshoot this weekend and made $1700 in the 3 days at 3/5 nl.
As for health, I had a pretty good week with the diet yet still have a lot of room to improve. I need to stop eating bigger meals at night, which is hard since I normally stay up late (1am ish). I weighed in at 207.75 this week, meaning a loss of 1.25 pounds last week. Im going to push very hard and try to get under 200lbs but the time I leave for LA.
I have been watching this motivational video at least once per day, mostly right before I go to the gym and it is awesome. If it doesn’t inspire you then something is wrong.
Random video Jeff Madsen posted on my FB wall this week. From the Savage Invatational golf tournament last year
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