PokerWorks

A blog of sorts, a story to be told, the true depth of poker is about to unfold:

What’s up guys?  When you last heard from me my fiancé and I were looking to become first time home buyers, and things were starting to turn around on the online felt as I got a boost in confidence due to 2 big wins in one session resulting in over $40k in profit. This was just what I needed after dealing with the hacking situation, and a minor downswing in poker that had me feeling like I was getting in a rut. If you paid attention in physics class, you would know that once momentum starts gathering in one direction, it has a tendency to continue to do so. This obviously sucks when you’re running bad, but when you get on a hot streak it can be pretty epic.

After these wins I had decided to take a break from poker for a few days so I could continue my house search with the fiancé. We had seen a few that we liked but nothing that we were incredibly excited about dropping 6 figures down on.  For some reason this seemed like a pretty big life decision, so we weren’t willing to just settle. On the Saturday that week we were set to check out a few more places, though we were already thinking about making an offer on a house we had seen a week ago.

That morning was a rough one, as we had decided to stay out late and party with our kickball team to celebrate a perfect record through half the season. That’s right, grown ass men can still play kickball. I was more than a little hungover as we rolled up to the first house, and it looked a little small from the road. However, once we got inside we were more than pleasantly surprised. The entire floor had been redone with hardwood which we really liked since our dogs have annihilated the carpet in our last few places. The floor plan of the house was super open, and it had a nice sized office which would be great for my home business (AKA poker). The kitchen had also been remodeled, giving this house a much more modern feel than some of the previous ones we’d seen. It wasn’t until we reached the fenced in backyard that I was reminded of how many beers I had consumed the night before. I was proud of myself as I fought the urge to puke behind the tool shed. Believe me guys the last thing you want to do when you’re doing a home walk through is to vomit in said home. We left the house seriously considering making an offer, especially after our realtor explained how fast a house in this good of a location would get sold even in the rough market.

The rest of the day no other houses really stood out besides the initial one, and so we went home and proceeded to create a very specific pros and cons list. Alright, I’m Just kidding I don’t do lists. But we did have to decide between this house and the other one that we had liked. We decided we were going to check out the new house again the next day, which was Sunday, otherwise known as the holy day for online poker worship. After getting to see the house again under different circumstances where I didn’t have a massive headache or an urge to get sick in a remote area of the property, we discovered this was definitely the home for us. With that decision out of the way, it was time to get home and return to the grind.

I made it home just in time to late register for the tourneys that start at 2pm EST. This included the Sunday Brawl on Full Tilt, a tournament that I had been deep in several times but never even managed a final table in. This was another KO tourney where you get paid $40 for each person that you bust from the tournament. From the start of this Sunday session I could tell things were going to be different from most. It was already 2 hours in and I hadn’t been sucked out on once, that basically never happens.

I built up a stack in the Brawl while doing well in most of the other 15 or so tourneys I was playing at the time. I was using my stack to let people at the table know not to mess with me, as I wasn’t afraid to 3 bet and 4 bet in spots where it seemed like people were trying to steal. This aggressive strategy propelled me toward the bubble of the tourney with a pretty decent sized stack, however not long after I lost a key hand against a good friend when he moved all in on me with A-8 and I snap called him with 9-9 knowing how aggressive he likes to be, especially on the money bubble. He managed to smash an A on me, and I was left crippled with just a few big blinds to my name.

It looked like this was just going to end as another disappointment in a sea of Sunday agony; however I’m not the type to just give up that easily. Check back soon to see if I manage to make a miraculous comeback, and also find out how the home search ended in the next installment.

Study poker with Jeremy “Chipsteela” Menard at DragtheBar.com