Happy New year and a +EV to all

Happy New Year,

I am glad to not be in Vegas tonight, in fact as I get older, I am glad to not be anywhere on New Years evening, where bullets can full on my head….. grin….

I keep realizing how important the mind-game is in getting serious about playing good poker all the time. Last night on Party Poker I played well in a $20 buy-in getting down to about 150 in a field of 1500, (hey, I didn’t win, but I beat 1350 players who think they are good enough to risk $20… grin)

So I went into Party Poker and played 5/10 in the bad/beat jackpot area and lost about $350…. I noticed as my buy-in of $250 got smaller I became more aggressive and played looser like in tournaments. That is a bad idea in cash-games, I think I just made my “running bad” just lose money faster. So I dropped down to 2/4 and caught jacks. The board came 4,4,7 so I bet and got raised, I re-raised and got re-raised back. Decided to look at one more card and a beautiful jack came on the turn. I bet, got raised, re-raised, and we raised to the limit on the turn and the river. He got angry thinking it was a bad beat when his 4,8 off didn’t hold up. So, I turned off the chat feature, played a little more, reducing my 5/10 loss by a hundred.

I do like playing where there is a bad-beat jackpot possibility… I won two different ones this year. Didn’t win one on-line but won the bad beat jackpot for $8900 with aces full of jacks beaten by 4A’s w/K, at Sycuan Casino in San Diego. In December I got the small end for $3,000 at Pechanga Casino in Temecula, by beating Aces, full of tens with 4 tens. (There is a long interesting story of how that hand finished 2 minutes after the time the jackpot doubled and what we had to go through to get the floor manager to pay the double jackpot rate. But, I will tell that story at another time.)

The bottom line is all my wins at the end of each month, are at live poker. I am down on-line the same amount I am up at live games. Yet, I don’t want to quit on-line I need to figure out my game and what kind of tables to play. Please feel free to email me any suggestions to pastorpoker at cardplayer.com

Again, Happy New year and may you all have a year full of +EV

Dave

Learning to be a Blogger....... It is not Rocket Science.. but not as easy as it looks.....

Ok,
This is my second Blog post and it took me about 15 minutes to figure it out. Sometimes, I make it too difficult for myself.

Ok, I have been using the Internet since Al Gore was in grade school and I have taught people to become Computer Network Engineers by becoming Microsoft Certified System Engineers but there is so much about the Internet I don't know how to do, like blogging, producing webcasts & podcasts, or creating a interesting website.

"Deep thought alert!" Internet & Computers are similar to Poker & Hold'em, it only takes a few hours to learn how to play them but a lifetime to really be good at them. And there are millions of people who think they really are good at them....... when they know so very little of what there is to know..... (LoL)

Here is another similarity from my personal experience..... When I first bought my own personal computer I really enjoyed using it, I tried to become really good at it...... I decided they were going to change my life signifigantly, and I wanted to become a computer professional.

I really enjoyed playing poker, I am trying to become really good at it, it is changing my life signifgantly, and now I want to become a poker professional. grin......

I grew up in a very religious family in Chicago that attended a little pentecostal church... in case you don't know what that is, watch the movie "The Apostle" and you will get a pretty good idea. Dancing, smoking, going to movies, reading the comics before Church on Sunday, drinking, and playing cards, especially poker was WRONG!, EVIL, BAD, SINFUL, etc, etc, etc..... In fact playing Cards were somehow, "of the devil" and thought to mock God, the Church, The Trinity, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and everything else we all held "near & dear". (There was an exception, we could play Rook, with Rook cards. Don't ask me to explain why.... grin)

I was a good little church boy and didn't do any of the above, except the comics & I liked doing magic tricks and strategy games with cards... like poker.


So what do good little boys from churches like that do for a living...? why they become church pastor's of course. So off to Bible College I went to become a ordained pastor.

Playing pool wasn't one of those things strictly forbidden, and since it wasn't, I didn't bother to tell anyone I played for money at the local pool room, but I was able to win enough to pay for my ticket to L.A. where the Bible College was located.

I found a job at the L.A. Times at a copy boy in the evening and when I would get off work at midnight I would hang around with my Bible College Roomate Bruce and we would play pool in the L.A. Times employee lounge until Sunrise, fully intending to dutifully attend classes on the Old Testament and Greek and Hebrew. But soon, the sounds of snores could be heard coming from the beds in our dorm room while our classmates learned their Hebrew and Greek in the classroom.

By the end of that first semester I was learning how to march and shoot guns for our Uncle Sam and a pround member of the United States Army......... Bible College would have to wait... But, I would be back...........

Going pro... My journey to become a successful professional poker player

In the third week of January I was playing poker at the Sycuan Casino in San Diego, California when I looked down and saw a pocket pair of jacks. Three aces fell on the flop, and only me, and a young man in seat 9 were still betting. Two more cards were placed on the table, a seven, then a three The young man turned over an Ace/King. As I showed my losing hand, everybody at the table started yelling. I had just won a "bad-beat" jackpot and my portion was $8,900.

That evening must have loosened something in my head, because from that evening of poker, came the idea that I could become a professional poker player.

This blog narrates some of my experiences in 2005 and the ones I will have in 2006 and beyond, on my way to "going pro".. the dream of many people... will I make it?

I invite you to join me on this adventure and see if I make it?