I arrived home yesterday for a short break from the summer grind. My wife Leann welcomed me home with a fresh pot of homemade chilli and a fridge full of new IPAs that I have never tried. I'm taking my son to see "Super 8" tonight and then I'm going to do a whole lot of nothing for the next few days before heading to our beach house in the Outer Banks for a few days of fishing, sun and birthday celebration (my birthday is July 4th). I was really happy to finish up strong in Vegas (although not as strong as I would have liked) before coming home for this break. Now my confidence is up and I'll be well rested when I get back to finish off the summer. I have 3 more Venetian Deepstack tournaments on my schedule [More...]
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Mike Leah
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Home Sweet Home
Failure
Well, to say that my summer in the TPE house for the WSOP was a failure would be a vast understatement. I went out there focused and prepared to do something epic. I did none of this. I had high hopes because in my limited live play experience I have had some pretty decent results. Nothing mind blowing, but I have done ok, including a second in a WPT prelim as well as some WSOP Circuit results that include a few final tables including a main event. I had just come off a cash in the PCA main event as well as making a couple deep runs in last years WSOP and I only played 5 events that year. My mind was in the right place but I wasn't prepared for the trouble I ran into. I have had Sundays online before where I have [More...]
Trying Something Different
Well I returned back home on Friday and had a relatively busy weekend catching up on all of the things that I hadn't done while I was gone so I didn't get a ton of poker in this weekend. I did manage to sneak in a bit of a session last night and played some 10NL and 25 2-7 Lowball Triple Draw. For those who haven't diversified or haven't given it much thought, may I make a recommendation. Find a second game, learn it, think about it, play it. You will enjoy NLHE a lot more when you have something to counterbalance it. I have recently started to work on diversifying my game and playing a lot more PLO and to a lesser extent Stud. With the WSOP going on and like the junkie that I am watching and following [More...]
Venetian Deep Run and an Update
Sorry it took so long for me to make this update…things have been a little hectic the last few days. So, when I made day two of a Venetian DSE $350. I went to day two with 204,000 chips which was just slightly above average, but only good for 25 BBs. I wold have had a much nicer stack, but in the last 10 hands of day one I lost QQ <66 and JJ <78 (both all in preflop) for a combined 400K in chips. But it was was it was and I felt good about my chances. Day 2 started and I picked up a pot right off the bat getting me up to 240K. But then my my next 2 opens got jammed on and a raise/cbet got jammed on and suddenly I was down to about 170K. [More...]
A little live cash action
This one will be a quicky, not much happened yesterday. I went to Blackhawk, Colorado to check out the town and the casinos and sneak in some poker play. Gotta say it was a pretty cool little town, very clean. The casino's are impeccable, very clean. There were some downsides, average age is dinosaur. I went with the intention of sitting at the Golden Gates Casino where they play the HPT stops, but rapidly changed my plans. Was very not impressed. I'm not sure how they swing it on TV, but they make that poker room look a ton better than it did in person. I took a wander across the road to the Ameristar which was a much nice outfit and enjoyed a couple of hours of entertainment. I made about half a buyin, but it took me some [More...]
See-ya in two weeks, LV
Adios Las Vegas. Tournament poker is a brutal game. Live tournament poker - can really break spirits. I came to the WSOP this year feeling amazing. In 2009 and 2010 I went cashless, and played less than ten events totals due to mostly personal issues coming up. In 2011, with an engagement on the way, I figured there was nothing between me and a successful World Series. I've never felt better. Unfortunately, i have again gone cashless. I played six events in the span of two weeks – the $2500NL, the $2500 mixed, two $1500NL, and two $1000NLs. Live tournament poker is really slow. The WSOP events are an hour long, and you maybe see 25 hands in an hour. In all NLHE events, you start with 3x the buyin for starting chips. That doesn't leave a lot of room for deep [More...]
The Power of Storytelling
Sorry it has been a couple of days since my last post, but I have been doing some traveling and I hadn't had time to write. First thing I'll give you the weekend update (everytime I say that all I hear is Kevin Nealon in my head). I played a handful of tourneys over the weekend, The Fast Fifty, a PLO Freezout, PL HA tourney and the 1r all on Lock. I mananged to FT the PLO Freezeout and cashed the Fast Fifty and HA, almost cashed the 1r, where I busted on a stupid mistake (which led me to todays topic of choice). My NL cash is getting stronger and I am making solid leaps in improving my play and results there (also as a direct result of today's topic). So without further adu lets get into the core [More...]
Summer Poker Series 2011 – WSOP Event #20
If the Saturday 1.5k starting table was a dream, the 1k starting table was a nightmare. Actually, my official starting table lasted about 5 hands and then I was moved to a tough table. At the official starting table I was able to turn my 3k starting to 3.8k super easily. I flatted QJ from the sb against a raise and 4 limpers and got value on 3 streets from TP when i flopped 2 pair. Of course we were at 25/25 so i wasn't able to stack the guy because he just called 3 times, but I was able to add a nice chunk right off the bat. Then, I got moved. As I walk over, I recognize 4 of the faces. One of them was Believer82, a very successful online player. And everyone else is young and wearing [More...]
Summer Poker Series 2011 – WSOP Event #18
Saturday brought my first event of the series, the $1500 Event #18. I geared up in TPE swag and headed over to the Rio with the team. I was super excited to play because I feel like my game has grown so much in the past year since the last WSOP since I’ve been talking even more poker with the bigdog, wein and the team and learning about table dynamics and how to exploit them. I feel that while I’ve had success in the past and a lot of it was due to being aggressive against weaker players and getting my chips in for big pots that carried me deep, I needed to understand how to adapt to going to 4 and 5 bet pots because so many players are good enough to 3 bet these days that it’s [More...]
Waking Up
Sometimes it amazes me how much I can learn and then stop paying attention too. If you have been reading I have been struggling some is picking back up my NLHE game from pre-BF, while my PLO game is taking off. I have been confused and flustered trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I started to look and think about what is going on, and I was starting to realize what I was doing. I seemed to forget the basic tenets of the game and had completely gotten away from solid decision making and extracting information properly and decided that if I just play whatever hands I wanted to from anywhere on the table and just beat people into submission. Poor choice. Very poor choice. So that being said, back to basics on my end. I [More...]
