Friday, September 08, 2006
You Crazy Monkey!
Apparently when I wrote in my last post that I was looking forward to playing the 20-40 game at the Borgata later this year, I meant about four days.
Went up there and produced another great result in the 10-20 game, which is absolutely and conpletely wild for anyone who hasn't played it yet. I highly recommend it but variance could be high. Anyways, Duke and PokerDon were upstairs sleeping before the start of the $500 tourney and I was trying to make it through the night so I could sleep while they tourney'ed it up during the day. JT finally made it up after work and walked into the poker room about 5am and found me at the 10-20 table. We caught up for a minute and ended up next to the 20-40 game and it looked crazy. He made a comment about me sitting in but I brushed it off at that moment and after he sat in at another table I went back to the 10-20. But I couldn't shake the thought and decided to just go for it.
For the next three days I promptly ran about as hot as I have ever and was killing the 20-40. In my second session, no exaggeration, of the first twelve times I had a pair, I hit a set nine of them. I ended up making about 14 sets in the entire run, and it got to the point where people just expected me to turn up three of a kind of a full house on the river. It was absurd in a wonderful, show me the money, kind of way. I also had my biggest single day loss in my fourth shot at 20-40, when my luck reversed and everytime we got to the river someone hit a draw on me.
I was really just happy with how I handled that session. I think among the hardest things for non-poker players to understand (and even some poker players) is that losing is just a reality of the game. Sometimes it's losing big or losing for an extended period of time, and even though it sucks something terrible, you just have to be able to put it in perspective. For that day when everything was horribly wrong, I was able to keep my concentration and keep playing as well as I could.
The one thing I noticed was the level at which the good players were better than me. Thankfully though, there really weren't that many good players, which surprised me. I expected to find a bit more resistance at that blind level, but I wasn't impressed with too many of the players. But I learned more about limit and poker in general over the last two weeks than I have probably over the last year. The challenge of the game and being up against better players in new situations I think really started my overall ability on the way to a new level.
So hopefully I can keep grinding out at 10-20 with occasional shots at 20-40 for the rest of this year and keep improving my overall understanding of the game. I'd write more about this trip but I only have 24 hours till I leave for Vegas so time to wrap this up and go get to some laundry and whatnot.
Perhaps some live trip reports from Vegas next week.
Went up there and produced another great result in the 10-20 game, which is absolutely and conpletely wild for anyone who hasn't played it yet. I highly recommend it but variance could be high. Anyways, Duke and PokerDon were upstairs sleeping before the start of the $500 tourney and I was trying to make it through the night so I could sleep while they tourney'ed it up during the day. JT finally made it up after work and walked into the poker room about 5am and found me at the 10-20 table. We caught up for a minute and ended up next to the 20-40 game and it looked crazy. He made a comment about me sitting in but I brushed it off at that moment and after he sat in at another table I went back to the 10-20. But I couldn't shake the thought and decided to just go for it.
For the next three days I promptly ran about as hot as I have ever and was killing the 20-40. In my second session, no exaggeration, of the first twelve times I had a pair, I hit a set nine of them. I ended up making about 14 sets in the entire run, and it got to the point where people just expected me to turn up three of a kind of a full house on the river. It was absurd in a wonderful, show me the money, kind of way. I also had my biggest single day loss in my fourth shot at 20-40, when my luck reversed and everytime we got to the river someone hit a draw on me.
I was really just happy with how I handled that session. I think among the hardest things for non-poker players to understand (and even some poker players) is that losing is just a reality of the game. Sometimes it's losing big or losing for an extended period of time, and even though it sucks something terrible, you just have to be able to put it in perspective. For that day when everything was horribly wrong, I was able to keep my concentration and keep playing as well as I could.
The one thing I noticed was the level at which the good players were better than me. Thankfully though, there really weren't that many good players, which surprised me. I expected to find a bit more resistance at that blind level, but I wasn't impressed with too many of the players. But I learned more about limit and poker in general over the last two weeks than I have probably over the last year. The challenge of the game and being up against better players in new situations I think really started my overall ability on the way to a new level.
So hopefully I can keep grinding out at 10-20 with occasional shots at 20-40 for the rest of this year and keep improving my overall understanding of the game. I'd write more about this trip but I only have 24 hours till I leave for Vegas so time to wrap this up and go get to some laundry and whatnot.
Perhaps some live trip reports from Vegas next week.
