Monday, February 14, 2011

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

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