2011 Update: Park City, Pretty Lights and Final Tables

View from the peak of McConkeys bowl in Park City Utah. This was ~13,000 feet at the top of the peak, and a forty five minute hike from the top of the tallest lift. After taking a break every ten steps struggling for air, we finally reached the peak. The view from the top was amazing and the ride down was second to none. I've been snowboarding for four years and this was my first trip out west - I fell in love. I'd love to move out there the second that I graduate from college. The town was amazing, bars up and down main street, which made the IU bar crawl very enjoyable, but whoever made the decision that we should go to the bar with steps from the street down to the front door should be shot. We will just pretend that I didn't fall down the last few steps at bar number 3 (I'm actually amazed i made it down as many as I did before tumbling into the front door).

Besides being the most amazing start to any year that I could have dreamed for, I was introduced to my new favorite music artist. Pretty Lights = perfect. Both for rocking out on the slopes for hours, and for keeping motivated during a long grind session. All of his music can be downloaded for free at his website which can be found here. It is more of a softish techno style, which helps me keep focused and tilt free (for the most part :p). I highly suggest downloading all of his CDs and putting them on shuffle for your next session and see how it works.

Ok now to poker, which seems fitting seeing as this is a poker blog. As many of you know, we've been looking to add new students to our team of SNG grinders for awhile now. After months of whining to Alain about starting students, we've finally been able to find and start working with three new micro grinders. I'll go into more depth about them on another page later, but I would just like to say that we are very pleased with all three of them. They all come from different backgrounds poker-wise, which has made coaching fun and a huge learning experience for Alain and I.

The amazing thing about poker is there is a million different ways to win. My favorite commercial is the Full Tilt commercial with Tom Dwan about him learning how to play. You can watch that commercial here. It gives me chills everytime I see it while I'm watching Poker After Dark. This commercial is amazing and I can relate to it completely. When I first started off, my goal was to mimic my cousin, who had been playing for just over a year before getting me into poker. I tried to learn cashgames by 9 and 12 tabling .01/.02 before I even knew what the term "double barrel" meant. When we first start out playing or moving to a new game, we need to focus on how the game plays before we start upping our volume. If we never learn how to play correctly, we are going to be either losing money or we are not going to be making as much as we could be.

My advice to new players is to watch as many videos as possible and talk to friends or other players about specific hands, but do not try to mimic their play exactly. You want to have your own style. The best compliment you can get as a poker player is when people argue about what type of player you are. A few months ago, I was playing live and I play at a the casino and I know lots of the players down there, both good regulars, and terrible players with money who think they are good. But one guy mentioned to me how tight I was playing that night, and thats not how I normally play. And another guy jumped in and said I always play super tight, I never bet without the nuts. This is exactly what we want as poker players, the more deceptive we are, the more effective we are going to be while we are playing.

So just a quick update on the beginning of this year. Running well doesn't come close to describing how I've been playing for the beginning of this year. In just a handful of weeks I'm well ahead of pace for my goal to make $25,000 this year. If I reach that goal well before the end of the year, I will definitely be setting a new goal for the rest of the year and trying to move up to the highest stakes I'm comfortable at. Yesterday I final tabled my first MTT, it was just a 3$ Rebuy that paid a cool $4,000 to first. I ended up getting 5th, but I should have been KOed sooner after getting coolered shoving 66 into QQ for 4 Million chips. Anyways, it felt good finally final tabling a bigger MTT and I'm looking forward to playing more of those small MTTs in the future.

Here's A graph of 2011 so far:



Good luck and see you guys at the tables.

- LUCKBOX

2010 Recap and 2011 Goals

I haven't been the best at keeping this updated, and I apologize to the two subscribers for not posting anything for two months, I'm sure you're heartbroken and I promise thats the last thing that I want. Last summer Addicted19 and I took on coaching hughezy1 for the 90mans. He was a recreational player who wanted to learn how to play poker semi-seriously. Hughezy1's progress and results can be found here. Through lots of three hour hand history reviews and lots of hard work, Hughezy1 was able to post some great numbers. Moving from a complete fish playing the 3/90s, to beating the $13 sngs in just two short months. Personally, he has been an inspiration to me by proving that, although poker may not be fair, the harder we work, the more often we will be putting ourselves in great situations. Thanks Hughezy1 for being such a great first student.

We've picked up 2 more students since the summer and would like to continue adding more as the year progresses. I will be making a page for one of them soon. We are also looking to pick up another student in the next day or so once we figure out the details.

I didn't have a great finish to the year, but it wan't bad either. I didn't put in as much volume as I would have liked, but I was still making (a lot) more than I was losing, so I can't complain. I was even able to cashout enough to fund my entire snowboard trip to Park City Utah during hte first week of Jan. I also cashed out enough to play live two nights before we left for Utah, and did well enough to treat myself to a goPRO HD video camera that took some amazing footage of every run in Utah.

When I came back my bankroll was running low and on top of that I was coming off a two week period without playing. I broke even for the first few hundred games of January and I was really getting frustrated with poker... But thanks to Hughezy, January has been my highest profiting month, and I've only played half the number of games that I have in previous months.

Here are my 2010 sng results on ftp. Keep in mind that I didn't switch to fulltilt until late June, and I played cash for two months as well as playing some live with great results.



I recently switched to a new game, just to try out this year and I'm in love. I know I'm running well, but I'm also playing very well at the final table, which has led to some deep runs and some very solid profit in just the two short weeks I've been playing them. Here's the last two weeks:



I kept telling myself at the end of last year that this was probably my last year to play poker seriously. I'm probably not going to pursue it as a profession, but I will always use it for some extra spending money. That being said, my goal this year is to make $25,000. To accomplish this, I'm going to need to play at least 800 games/month all year. 2011 is my year, and I am ready for whatever is going to be thrown my way.

Good luck at the tables,

LUCKBOX