"Game Report": 12/13/2020 9:25am

 Harumph...

 I'm still in first place in spin and go but I can't play because I'm basically untouchable right now.  All I would do is potential harm by playing a spin and go.  I want the god damned ring.

So I've been playing sit and go tournaments (by hosting my own).  That has been fun but today's opening sit and go was pure and very hot bullshit.

Table fills up and the opening hand comes out.  It ends up down to me and one other dude and we split a pot on a board straight.  I tried to bluff that I had the higher straight but he was too stupid to understand what I meant by that bet so we split it.

 Flash forward like 1 or 2 hands and I have pocket rockets.  A-A baby.  I don't act like a hillbilly about it, instead go for the slow play.  It ends up down to the end of the turn and it is me and one other dude.  So I'm like "I don't want anyone catching some shit on the river" so I bet like I meant it.  He calls.  River comes, its a king.

I open the betting round and bet hard again, this time its unknowingly into king trips for my opponent.  He calls and I'm positive that I have it.  All hope was dashed when the cards turned over.  K-K vs A-A with a K on the river.

OUCH!

Now I'm sitting here writing this instead of busting out dudes at that table.  Because A-A will make you feel like god and then will let you down more times than it will hold up.  At least I wasn't beat off of rockets with a 2 pair though.

Game Report: 12/10/2020 7:27am

Woke up still #1.  That felt good.  

I noticed that I was only up by $10k so I needed to pad my lead.  So I had me my spinach and headed into the 10k spin and go.

First match was against a guy and a lady.  The guy was very timid and did not last long.  Now the lady on the other hand, she was very cocky and would get on the mic regularly to taunt and laugh.  She busted the timid man with almost no effort.

Now it was down to her and I.  She had beaten me a few hands before she busted him so I only had about 430 or so of my starting 500 chips.  Her voice comes across the mic "hahahhahahaaha" when she beats me on another hand.  I simply hold up 1 finger as if to ask her to wait a moment.  She continues to talk that shit though.

A few hands (that I lost) later, she has me on the ropes.  At this point I only had about maybe 220 chips left.  I think I had gotten her to fold a few but I had to be a maniac to do it.  

I had enough of her shit, I cued my mic and said "I am going to burn you down and you are not going to believe it until after it happens.".

I needed to make a move.

So I did.

I pushed all in with an A-Q or something to that effect and she called it.  She had A-K.

When the dust settled there was an ace on the board, turn didn't help me, but that god damned river sure did.

Q

Wu-tang!

Very next hand I got her to fold something decent by betting a shit flop with 9-2 (w00t) and of course I showed it to her.  She was mad.

She ended up winning another hand or 2 after this but no serious amounts of chips were involved.  Finally, she was short stacked because I kept making her fold with all ins.  She gave in to this and said defeated, "I don't want to play this game anymore.", then threw all her chips in.

It was J-K for me, 7-3 off suit for her.

Guess who won.

ME.

It was only $20k but it put a $30k buffer between myself and 2nd place.  I needed more though because I'ma have that ring.

Queued up for the next match, immediately lost first hand to some bullshit.

Queued up again and got a good match.  The numbers go round and round for the payout and land on $100k instead of the normal $20k.

Shit just got real.

I completely submitted to the Badman.  Unfortunately I do not have much of a story about defeating these guys because I fell back on my jedi training and let the Mazzy Star album I was listening to take control.

When it was over I was the only one left and I had a trophy in front of me.  It also said I won $100k.

I hoisted the trophy high.  Then I went back to the lobby to look at the hockey sign that displays the high scores.  My name in lights; 

#1.  $230,000

#2.  $140,000

Yes a $100k win for the #2 person would put them over the top of me.  That is a near insurmountable lead though.  I will sit on this for a day and see where we end up.

I WANT MY RING.

I will not care about the leader board other than to amuse myself with if I can pull this off and get my champ ring this week.  Wish me luck.

The Badman

 Through playing several thousand hands of poker over the last few weeks, I have started to really zero in on some key things.  Poker is not about what most people think it is about.

On the surface it appears to be an innocent game of cards.  It gets just a little bit less innocent when you learn that real money can be gambled as you play it.  A lot of people will read book after book on how to play 7-2 optimally or how to bluff right in or out of position.

That is not what poker is.  Think of the cards and the chips as the "thumbs" of poker.  You wouldn't be able to do it with those thumbs.  There is no real way to teach someone what poker is about.  It just has to click one day when you are playing it.

One of the hardest things for me to realize as I started to get better at poker was dealing with uncertainty.  As I was playing one day and mucking hand after hand into the center of the table, I realized that the only weapon you can fight uncertainty with, is more uncertainty.  The feeling you get when you see shitty hole cards or miss a flop, your opponents feel those feelings too.  You can miss a flop and bet like you nailed it.  

The thing that no one will teach you is that there is no "standard" bet size.  You have to understand the person you are playing against to know what is not enough, too much, or just right, depending on your desired outcome.

The only difference between a bluff and an honest bet with the nuts is intention.  You have to wear that intention in just he right way to convince someone to do what you want.  We are back to bet size and knowing your opponent.  There is no quick and dirty way to be good at poker.  You just have to know what you are doing and know what to look for.

Here is the real kicker in the situation.  We all get cards from the same deck.  Some of us are minnows, and some of us are sharks.

That is where this next piece comes in.  There is a certain way I feel that lets me know that it is time to play poker.  I have to cross a certain threshold and I know exactly what it feels like when I do.  When this occurs I become the Badman.  I didn't pick the name, it just came to me when I asked myself what the feeling was.  

"That's the Badman".

Game Report: 12/9/2020

Had a bad beat yesterday and got bumped out of 1st.  It doesn't really matter the story, you've heard it before.  Had the best hand, got called on big bets for no reason.  Lost.

Got back up on that horse again and rode.  Saw Gary Shook in a game, its always nice to run across him.  He plays great, and he plays pretty honestly.  Way to honestly for a piece of shit like me.  It is always intense though, I've had to alter the way I play against him because he knows my default mode too well now.  Actually, come to think of it, we played twice.  He beat me early in the morning and then I beat him in the late morning.

Won a $60k spin and go a little bit ago which propelled me back into the #1 spot for the week.  After a few more wins, most notable was just now against a lady that had me down pretty bad.  I literally said to myself, "I'm going to have to make a move now or I'm done for.".  I made a move on a A-3 hand or something like that and like a true shyster bastard, caught the ace on the river.  That got me back up to a little over my beginning chip stack.

Play went on and I had gained confidence.  Me gaining confidence in a match is the first step.  I made a couple of sick, off kilter moves on the next few hands to get wins wins wins.  There is something about a few losses in a row that will convince your opponent that they can no longer beat you.  It wasn't long after that I started to notice her taking longer and longer to decide what the next move would be.

I was close I could feel it.  She was going to break.

Unfortunately, her luck broke before she did and I cleaned her out on some sneaky backhanded middle pair or something.  It was rather unceremonious.  I do so like to crack the egg, it is still as entertaining as it was the first time.

I am #1 though right now and that feels pretty nice.

Game Report: 12/7/2020 8:42am

 Played a sit and go this morning on pokerstars vr.  Early game I lost, a guy called me an asshole and muted me because I bluffed a 3 of a kind and he called it with a high card.  Of course I lost this hand because I had nothing, but he couldn't have known that.  I got on the mic to relay my dissatisfaction with what had transpired as he had called a potential 3 of a kind with nothing.  Got muted.

 Just played another couple and won both, same opponent for both games.  It was not very hard to take care of the guy, though he was pretty nice.  He did play short stacked for over 10 minutes though so I gotta give him that.  Finally put him out with a pair of kings.

 Last person I played with in this run was a guy from South Korea.  It was a great game and I had a ton of fun.  Not only was it good poker, but my opponent was fun.  I was listening to some hip hop beats and dancing to them and when he spawned in he started dancing too.  I ended up beating him but respected him so much that I bowed to him.  He bowed back!  So then I fist bumped him and waved goodbye.

 Not sure what you are up to today, but I started my day with a fist bump from South Korea!