JamesMackey

Day 1 of the 40k

2009-05-29T18:53:19Z

Had a swingy day in the 40k. My starting table had vanessa russo, john juanda, thorladen, noah schwartz, ivan demidov and johnny chan. I didnt play many hands for the first couple levels then at 500/1k I accidentally raise to 2k with 9s (meant to make it 2500) juanda makes it 6800 and I call. The flop comes 910q with a fd I check he bets 10k I make it 35k he shoves for about 50k more I call he has aa and I just about double up to 220k.

But after that I never really got much going. I ran a big bluff on russo and lost 100k when it completely failed then lost a few more pots and got down to about 50k. After that though I went on a nice run and got up to 250k then back down to 160 and finally ending at 205.

I played kind of meh overall I lost about 50 pots to russo in some of them I made a couple mistakes and in others she just outflopped me like crazy. Then later in the day sorel mizzi got moved to the table and he played really well and sort of ran over the table. I had position on him and should have put up more resistance unfortunately I was card dead against him but even so there were some spots I should have been more aggressive. Against everybody else at the table I thought I played pretty well I was never all in the entire day and mainly won a bunch of medium sized pots without showdown. So was overall a meh day in terms of how well I played and pretty happy to have ended up with 205k

So blinds are going to be 2500/5k and I feel pretty good after getting some rest so just going to try and play the best I possibly can and hopefully run well.

Highroller bust and moving

2009-05-25T16:43:49Z

Been kind of hectic since I busted the highroller at monte carlo. I busted the high roller ak vs aq in a 5bet pot for a big chip lead with 20 left against david steike. Sucks a lot but oh well thats how things go no big deal.

Anyway since then I flew back to missouri and moved all my stuff to vegas, and its been a huge hassle. I found a moving company to ship my car for about 700$ and everything with that went smoothly but then I have had a lot of problems with the company I got to actually move my furniture and such. I talked to and got quotes from a bunch off different moving companies and eventually with e-z movers because they offered the lowest price. I gave them an inventory of what was being shipped and they gave me a price for it and said as long as I didnt add anything else that would be the set price but there might be some small charges if anything else gets added. Well I had forgot a couple things when I gave the inventory over the phone so when the guys showed up I did have an extra couple of items but they werent that large and it definitely didnt even add 5% to the total amount that I had already listed to be moved. But the way the company charges for the move is by space taken up and since I had a couple extra things they didnt give me the original quote price + a few charges they gave me a completely new price which was more than double the quote. So they can give a ridiculously inaccurate/small quote and then if you have any extra stuff they can just completely come up with a different price. But unfortunately I dont get this price until I have already placed a deposit that I cant get back, and now all my things are packed and on the truck so not a whole lot I can do. And then if that wasnt bad enough they told me my stuff would be here in around a week but its been over 2 weeks and my things still havent arrived and I called them only to find out the truck didnt even leave for over a week after picking up my stuff. So now iam just hoping I can get my stuff before wsop.Oh well live and learn and if I ever move again definitely wont be with them.

Other than that just getting ready for the wsop going to be playing the 40k on thursday. Going to try and work out a full schedule of potential events to play in the next few days.

Monte Carlo High Roller event Day 1

2009-05-02T07:21:07Z

Yesterday was day 1 of the 25k euro high roller event. I made it through day 1 with around 144k (starting stack 50k average is about 120). So iam in pretty decent shape at the moment. I havent had any really interesting hands just mainly winning a lot of small pots and busted 1 player TT vs 75s when he attempted to resteal. Also I made some mistakes early on in the tournament so I feel very fortunate to have 144k now. The structure has been very good with 50k starting stack and 75 minute levels and despite it being such a big buyin and a small field, it got 79 entries, there were several very bad players in the field. However, with the amount of extremely good players in the field and the quality structure I think most of the soft spots wont make it much deeper into the tournament.

Anyway going to go get some breakfast before I start again will update later on how it goes.

Busted Monte Carlo

2009-04-30T11:47:36Z

Going into the tournament I was pretty jet lagged but felt like I could still play pretty well. I started the day just grinding through the early levels without having very many big pots. I was up to about 40k (30k starting stack) at 200/400 50 ante when I played my first big pot. The cutoff raised to 1100 I called on the button with 56ss and the BB called. The flop came J56 rainbow, bb and cutoff checked I bet 2k the bb check raised to 7k cutoff folded I shoved for around 25k total he called with 88 and I held.

Anyway so I entered the 300/600 level with around 60k and unfortunately I didnt make it to 400/800. I lost with an oesd and bdfd vs 2p, tried a small bluff that didnt work, had aj vs aq aipf against a short stack, and lost with an overpair vs pair+sd. I lost all of those hands in around a 30 min period and I was out. Really frustrating to have a big stack in a very soft tournament like monte carlo and then just hit a bad stretch and bust so quickly. But thats the nature of tournaments just have to put it behind you and move onto the next one.

So for the rest of the trip right now my plan is to play the 5k euro nl event today and if I dont make day 2 of that I will be playing the 25k euro high roller event tomorrow and possibly some of the other prelims.

Monte Carlo

2009-04-29T00:47:01Z

Last week I played in the 25k wpt championship at the bellagio. I made it deep into day 2 and had 280k which was well above average but unfortunately lost some key pots and was out before day 3.

Anyway iam now in monte carlo to play the 15k euro buyin ept championship. The total travel time from vegas to monte carlo was like 21 hours for me because of delays and right now iam really jet lagged right now blah. Not the best condition to be playing a large tournament in but I should manage ok.

The structure for the main event is unfortunately kind of fast with the levels on day 1 being only 60 minutes long and the levels on day 2 and later being 75. But I did get a chance earlier to walk around the resort and the town earlier and the area around here is really beautiful so if I bust early I will take some time off just to relax and explore the town some more. Anyway going to try and get some sleep before the tourney starts in a few hours.

I suck asdf

2009-04-10T18:54:24Z

On wednesday I played 5k 6max scoop. It was probably the scoop I was looking forward to the 2nd most behind the 10k main event. Unfortunately I busted within the first 100 hands. I only played 2 big pots and I lost both of them.

http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/670344

Here is the first hand I lost. The table had been extremely aggressive and already there had been a couple 3bets between me and rivercrime. Against a tighter player I would probably just call pf since I think I would lose value by 3betting. However, I think rivercrime was going to call my 3bet in position with a very large range that ATs would play well against. On the flop I make a standard cbet, on the turn I picked up the nut fd to go with my gutshot and unfortunately I bricked the river. I dont really have any problem with how I played the hand the only somewhat questionable play is maybe firing the river but I think it was correct. I had been aggressive but I hadnt shown down any bluffs and early on in a big tournament people are less likely to run huge bluffs so I dont think he knew I was capable of firing three barrels with air. Also early on in a big tournament players are less likely to make a hero call before they have established reads so I felt that rivercrime would fold hands like kq k10 AJ a high % of the time. And even though I think most times he has a busted draw hes going to check behind river and my A high will win theres certainly some people who will fire river if they miss and force me off my hand. If he had a hand like aa/ak he 100% would have flatted on the river so after he shoves river his range is narrowed down to KK JJ 22 KJ and a rare bluff. JJ and 22 are the most likely since kk he will more often 4bet pf and KJ hes more likely to raise a previous street since the hand is more vunerable to being drawn out on. And if he was hero enough to have a bluff then he deserves to win but that seemed pretty unlikely.

http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/670343

Here is the 2nd big pot I lost and this one I was really upset about. The first hand I lost I thought I played fine, I was just unlucky to miss my draw and run into a big hand. However, this hand I think was a big mistake. Now normally with how aggressive the game was playing how often people were 3betting I would have no problem with my 4bet and I wouldnt have any regrets but I had a couple pieces of information that made this hand bad. The first thing was I didnt really feel he would be 3betting here that light. I dont really have a reason behind this but after you have enough experience you start to get a feel for table flow and just when people are going to be aggressive and try and bluff you and when they arent. But if this was the only information I had I still would have 4bet shoved because even though I didnt think it was a spot he was going to 3bet bluff that often in, it had still been less than 100 hands so I couldnt be certain on my read on the situation + my hand is really strong compared to a lot of aggressive 3bet ranges.

The other piece of information I had was his 3bet size. Throughout the level his standard 3bet had been to 300 every time. After he made it 270 I immediately thought he might have aa/kk and thats why he made it smaller. But I ended up talking myself into it being because I had folded the last couple times he made it 300 so maybe he thought he could make it 270 and risk less chips to still get me to fold or maybe he just wasnt paying attention and accidently made it 270 instead of 300. So I was pretty pissed at myself that I didnt listen to my reads and talked myself into doing something dumb. But everyone makes mistakes you just have to learn from them and move on.

Today iam playing the 2k 1r 1a so hopefully I can play better and maybe have a better result. Edit http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/670346 oh well haha guess just have the 10k to hopefully do well in now

Anyway besides poker I went and saw adventure land with my roomate the other day. It was pretty good. It actually had less comedy than I expected but had a good story so I didnt really mind. I thought kristin stewart did a really good job and the movie had some nice 80s nostalgia moments. I did think it might have been a bit too long and it moved kind of slowly at times but overally I would recommend it.

SCOOP

2009-04-08T03:49:05Z

So this last week pokerstars has been running their first annual scoop series. Scoop can be an extremely stressful time for a lot of online players with how high the buyins are and how big the variance can be. And its even more stressful for people who back a lot of players. So far the guys that I back havent had any big scores but have had a few close calls and a couple cashes so my guys are definitely down for scoop but not getting completely destroyed.

So far during the scoop I have played the 500r, 1500 2x turbo, 1500 shootout, 10k horsem, 3k nl, 1500 nl hu, and 3k mixed holdem along with the medium events for all of those and the 215 plo 1r1a and 215 triple draw. The only event I have cashed in so far was the 1500 turbo which I got 13th in. So pretty disappointing scoop so far. For the rest of scoop I think iam going to be playing the 2k razz, 4175 8 game, 5k nl, 2100 nl 1r1a, and 10k main event. I may play the 5k plo, 5k fl 08 and 3k stud but those are maybes.

Overall I think the scoop has pretty good but I do have some complaints. Structure wise so far the nl scoops have been really really good however I thought the 10k horse structure was pretty bad and some of the plo events played a bit too fast early on. Also the payouts have been pretty garbage. Stars has been paying out way too many spots and for a couple of the medium events if you min cashed you didnt even get your buyin back. And while I havent played many of the satellites I have heard a lot of people complain that stars hasnt done a very good job setting up satellites that will actually run and I think the field sizes have been hurt by this.

Other than scoop I won a 100r on ftp a few days ago for like 27k so thats nice helps to pay for most of scoop that I have bricked at least. And some of the biggest events are still to come so still have a few good chances at getting a nice score.

Shooting Star finish

2009-03-22T01:28:30Z

So I managed to bust like 4 hours into the shooting star 10k. I played ok ran poorly early and dropped from starting stack to about 14k. But during the 2nd level I flopped a set vs an overpair to get to about 23k. Not much else happened until the 100/200 25 ante level when I busted to kathy leibert. I got it in for 125bb ak vs kk which is very very rare for me. I am usually pretty hesitant to get in huge pots pf when iam super deep with ak but kathy is a very good player and I thought she was making a move oops. But mistakes happen just gotta move onto the next tournament and try not to make the same mistake next time.

Anyway after busting out my roomate blake busted like 2 hours later and we just immediately drove the 8 hours back to vegas. So ended up driving 16 hours to stay in san jose almost exactly 24 kind of a waste haha.

And now iam just hanging out in vegas until april when the bellagio wpt championship series and SCOOP starts. Also I own a house in vegas but may need to move soon so I may start looking into finding a new place.

Wynn 2k and Wpt bay 101 shooting stars

2009-03-17T07:33:11Z

So recently I have been busy traveling and playing some stuff live. I am playing the 10k shooting stars tourney in a couple hours so just going to do a quick summary of whats been going on the last week or so and do a longer post where I go more in depth later.

Last week I got back into vegas (I had been back home in missouri) to play the some of the wynn events that were running. I only got the chance to play the 1k rebuy and 2k events.

The 1k rebuy only got around 90 players so it only paid final table. I ended up getting 16th in that tourney played pretty well overall but chopped aa vs 1010 deep in the tournament for a big pot and was card dead towards the end.

The 2k wynn event got around 180 people and I ended up getting 5th in that for something like 16k. I think overall I played very well in the 2k, I made a couple mistakes here and there and one bad reshove on the final table but overall things went well. I will try to come back and talk more about the wynn 2k in a future blog post because I had some interesting hands from it.

So anyway today me and my roomate blake drove from vegas to san jose for the shooting star event tomorrow. The shooting star is a fun tournament to play its probably the only major tournament in the world that has bounties so it adds an interesting dynamic to how a lot of the hands are played. Anyway I will update later on how things go in it.

Introduction

2009-02-27T01:21:04Z

For my first blog post I am just going to do a quick summary of my poker career.

I started playing poker about 5 years ago when I first went to college. I was going to college as a premed with the goal of becoming a doctor. I initially deposited 50$ twice on party poker I lost the first deposit in about 10 minutes, the 2nd deposit I lost over the course of about a month. After that I deposited 75$ on pokerstars and never had to deposit again.

I started out grinding cash games and using my profits to buy into tournaments. Then whenever I had a decent tourney score I would jump up limits. I did this until I reached 5/10 when I decided I liked mtts more and I would play them full time.

Towards the end of my sophomore year I was contemplating trying to play fulltime. So I decided that summer I would play full time and depending on how I did I would decide whether to go back to school or play poker professionally. I ran very well that summer and ended up making around 150k so after that I dropped out of school and have been playing professionally ever since.

Once I went pro I grinded online for about a year until the wsop. I had a built up a decent sized bankroll but I wasnt really comfortable potentially losing 60k+ over just a few tournaments. So I worked out a backing deal with my friends ryan daut, who had just won pca for 1.5m, and victor goossens, a dutch cashgame player. During the wsop I won the 5k nl event for 730k which I got half of. With that money I decided I had enough to go on my own. Shortly after the wsop I was lucky enough to win the 1k wcoop for 580k. With that money I decided to go into backing with daut and victor.

Since then my online volume has decreased a lot and I have spent a lot more time playing live and focusing on the backing which has grown a ton over the last year.