Way behind. 14 hours played this month. 66 hours to go, with 19 days left.

So I was talking to a friend the other day, and he said something like "Since you called turn you have to call river" This is taken out of context, but I sort of want to talk about statements like these and how it's detrimental to becoming a better player.

A statement like this uses poor rationale. The reason why it's poor is because you are taking a very broad static statement, and trying to apply it in very dynamic situations. So rarely will you find two situations that are exactly identical. Think about all the variables that go into a poker decision. What is his range preflop, what is his range on the flop and turn and river, what is his calling range, what is his betting range, what is his raising range, what does his bet size tell me, what does his timing tell me, what has my image been like, what has his image been like.? That's only to name a few.

Now, that's not to say that some of these statements aren't the right play the majority of the time. An example of this would be, turn check raises are always the nuts, you should fold to them. Now a statement like that is probably going to be right atleast 70% of the time. In general, I think you should be folding here, but that assumption is not based on relevant information. It's based on large sample sizes and experience. Learned behavior. The problem with this type of thinking, is that you start to ignore the relevant information and base all your decisions on past experience. Once you start ignoring the relevant information, you stop becoming a better player. Your game becomes a series of things you've heard or learned and not really understood the reasonings behind them. Not properly analyzing your opponents ranges, and simply put, being lazy.

Here are some of my favorites,

"I can't fold an overpair/top pair/set/flush etc."
"I can't fold top pair in a 3b pot"
"I shouldn't 3bet because I don't know what to do if I get 4b"
"Turn check raise is always the nuts"
"Donk lead flops is always air"
"I'm at the top of my range so I can't fold"
"I have to call because I under repped my hand"


Let me know if you guys can think of some more dumb poker logic.

Play 80 hours of poker.

I HIT A HOLE IN ONE TODAY! EARLIER THIS YEAR, I HIT AN EAGLE 2 ON A PAR 4. THIS IS MY FIRST YEAR GOLFING, OBVIOUSLY I RUN REALLY GOOD AT GOLF.

PM me if you want in. Put your e-mail address down, if we get 4 or more people, this will begin starting August. 50 dollary buy in. Prize yet to be decided, will be based on entrants.

Things went well, I played 2 sessions of 1.5 hours. I actually cut the second session shrot b/c I was losing a ton of 3b pots, and just wasn't feelin it. I felt I played really well except at the end. But here are the results.

I don't really know why I winner's tilt, but I know how I'm going to correct it. Atleast 2 1.5 hour sessions a day where I can't look at the cashier or HEM. Quitting if I feel I'm playing bad is acceptable. Everytime I hit refresh, or look at the cashier during a session, I will have to ship my friend Joe 5 dollars.

I have never felt grosser, sicker, and more motivated about poker in my life. My downswings only drive me. They make me thirst for more knowledge, and makes me want to grow as a player. It hurts... a lot. But itt makes me want to be better, work harder. As the saying goes, "what doesn't kill you will only make you stronger" "No pain no gain". I've fixed many leaks now, and I expect the rest of this month to be incredible.

So I want to start a monthly competition, where the winner of this competition gets a prize. It'll be something like a 50 dollar entry, and anyone can join. Basically, it'll be a competition of who can win the most buyins in a month. The winner will get a prize yet to be determined. For example, if we have 4 entrants, 200 dollars. Winner would get Bacon of the month. I think this would be pretty fun if we get 10 or so people and have first place be a pretty decent prize. This will encourage people to grind and play well. Let me know if you are interested.

First of all, Vegas was awesome. I met a lot of cool people are there, and won't ever forget it. I'm waiting for my computer in the mail, so I'm bored as all hell, so this blog post might be semi-long.

The first day I get there, I'm waiting for my computer to be shipped out there (Total cost round trip for that was 360). That sucked. But I decided to play some live poker while I waited for my computer. The first hand I played, I pick up AK from MP, and a few limpers ahead. I raise it to 15, and get 2 callers. Board comes 2 3 5, guy donk leads 1/2 pot, and I call with AK. Turn K. He checks, I check. River brick, he checks, I vbet 50ish, and he snap calls, but acts like a complete douche. He says, "ok ok, you got it, I call". (He really thought he had it, just pretended like he didn't) He shows 88. I show AK, and he gets PISSED. He proceeds to berate me for the next 20 minutes LOLOL, because I floated with AK. Then I owned him a few hands later and he leaves. He tries to save some face by trying to say he'll flip the rest of his 120 dollar stack with me AIPF. I politely declined. But that was hilarious, first hand in vegas, and I got berated.

Week 1: We had Jason. I wrote a blog post earlier about those shenanigans so you guys can read my earlier blog post.
Week 2: British Mike and Kwab. Let's start with Mike. He's from the UK, but LOVES america. Of course the first night we're here, we have to take him to the spearment rhino. I've never seen anyone so happy to be alive. He gets a few dances, and eventually we leave at 9 am. For anyone that hasn't been up at 9am in vegas, it's fucking bright. Anyway, if you ever meet this guy, he rocks at beer pong, loves hot dogs, pizza, and strippers.

On to Kwab. Half human, half machine. This guy never slept. When I woke up, he was grinding when I was sleeping, he was grinding. We went out at 3am to play some 3/6 HORSE (Stupid idea), until 9 am. I can barely keep my eyes awake, on our way back, he says, "I'm motivated to grind some because I got my ass kicked in HORSE" All of us were like, ok buddy whatever. Of course he passes out on the drive home. I go upstairs and pass out, but from what my sources told me, he did in fact continue to play poker that morning. What an animal.

Week 3: This week was pretty chill, we had Nic come in, and we did quite a bit of poker grinding. He's a really nice and chill guy. I'm not sure too much exciting stuff happened since I was pretty cash poor, and racking up quite a huge credit card bill.

Week 4: Troy was our student for this week, and an all around cool guy. He's playing the ME, so GL with that, win it, then BR me for MTT's. My GF came this week also, and we did a few vegasy stuff since this is the first since she was 10 being in vegas. We went to KA at the MGM. It was an ok show, I like 'O' at the Bellagio way better. We also went to Stratta. That place is insanely good. I had the lobster and filet there. We also got the VIP treatment at PURE. Grant of course did not get in. Pretty standard at this point in our trip.

Few notable memories:

"Done"
"It's not right"
"Let's do this"
The Grant dance move
Mike's Everest
Grant's Everest LOL
Grand Lux
0/24
Mike making a wheelchair girl's night
Celine dion
running bad in fortune cookies (Got a fortune cookie that said. Q: What is K.M.S.? A: Keep mouth shut, the golden rule)
So many more that I can't think of right now. I'll edit this blog as I think of more stuff. All in all, one of the best months of my life.
grant trying to drink a gallon of milk in an hour
Greg Driving - It's always a sweat. He stops at green lights, on yellow lights, he gets half way through, then reverses back into the lane. Get's stuck behind buses. 90% fail rate when trying to turn into our subdivision. There was a night where it took us more than 10 minutes to turn left on spring mountain, with 0 traffic.

Zaitsev Out.

edit: And joe was there too