Campfire Stories

Back From Vacation, and the Year in Review.

Well, it's been two weeks since I played a serious live session, and I finally made it back into a 30-60 game at the Wynn. I won $824 in a three hour session, and I was pretty stoked on that. It started out ugly, losing $800 in the first hour while making zero pairs, one straight, and bluffing my way out of two pots. One interesting hand came up that got me thinking a bit. We were six handed and a retarted player (raising goofy hands, calling in goofy spots, etc.) opened in the cutoff. I three bet 66, and we saw the flop heads up. It came AAT. I bet, and he raised. Now, he had a blatant tell that let me know that he had NOTHING. I knew that he literally had nothing. Nada. Zip. So, my plan was to check raise the turn just in case my read was off and he had some weak pair. The turn came the K, I checked, he bet, I raised, and he called. Kinda surprised with the call actually, but still felt that my read was strong enough to fire the river. He called and held his cards out ready to fold, and he showed me the K7o. It got me thinking that since I knew he had a weakish hand, I was still vulnerable to hands like, K7 say, and he was retarted enough to call down if he hit a pair. He would've folded if I three bet the flop. Should I have taken that line, or was my line just fine? Should I have bet the river? I dunno... was definately a weird spot. Anyways, stoked I had a winning session, but still ended up stuck around 25k this month.


As I have been reflecting on the past month during my vacation I have thought about many things, wondering where I went wrong to lose more money in a month than I have ever had before November. It truly has been a sick run, but when I think about it, I have only lost about 200 big bets, and about 9k of the losses have come during tournaments. I have been on runs much worse than this one bets wise, just never for this kind of money. Looking back I cannot complain too much. My roll is still 8k higher than it was two months ago and I bought a motorcycle, paid back a bunch of money on student loans, paid for Christmas and all my other expenses. I had almost forgotten how brutal this game can be and the skills necessary off the felt required to be successful in the long term.

It's been a great year. January of 06 my roll dipped all the way down to $1500 while still owing $4500 to my backer. I avoid going bust, built it back up, lost, and had it somewhere around $5k heading into the 2006 WSOP. I arranged for a backing deal of $10k for the entire series, taking 20% of all tournaments and 50% of all cash games with no make-up. It was basically a 10k freeroll to be used however I wanted. I took second in the first event, the $500 NLHE Employees event for $66,500. 20% of that was pocketed, and the rest gave me an opportunity to play higher than I had before and more tournaments than I had planned on. It's kinda ironic that the $500 event was the only one that I had planned on playing on my own dime and it's the only one I cashed in, but I wanted to be fair to my backer and included it in the docket. Oh well...

I then moved to Vegas after the series with my brother and buddy Danny, which has turned out to be an incredible thing. When all was said and done after paying for expenses, backers, and moving across the country, I had my roll around 15k. My blog was picked up here which has been a ton of fun. I found myself on the cusp of breaking out in the poker world, and really wanted to push myself to success. I had a good August, losing September, very good October making two final tables, excellent November winning a tournament, crushing the 100-200 game, and crushing the 10-20NL game hammered, winning just over 47k in the month. Y'all have heard plenty about December.

So, I've gone from a net roll of 3k with a backer to over 25k on my own. I've put money in the market and started re-building my credit. I started getting paid to write strategy articles. I recently got picked up by a magazine and will have my writing in print for the first time ever. I've dealt with some life issues and moved on, and I've met an incredible girl in the past two months. I'm happy as ever and am excited to see where life takes me next.

Looking forward to 2007, here are some of my goals:

* Net over $200k.
* Make a WSOP final table
* Play in the main event (never done that) and cash
* Make a TV final table
* Become a respected poker author
* Begin a book
* Get back in shape, losing 25 pounds.
* Spend some time guiding on the river, and get back to the mountains in Colorado.

I believe that all these goals are attainable... I need to keep focused, play well, and catch a couple of good rushes in key times!

Thank you all for your support in this blog. It has been a blessing meeting many of you over the past few months and reading the e-mails that you have sent me. It has meant a lot to me and has kept me writing as much as I have been . Thanks.

Happy 2007! I hope you have an excellent New Years! God Bless.

Peace, good luck, and go Trojans!

Devo

posted by Devo @ 4:26 AM |