It seems that every time I log in to the Tournament Poker Edge chat room, somebody is at a final table. I could point out a bunch of nice scores, but props to Miniman04 for his third place finish in the Merge 125K. Pretty sick score! Also a shout out to DaNta5iC who has been making final tables like they are going out of style. Keep crushing it TPE Nation! It's been an exciting couple of weeks at TPE. Particularly excited about the bigdogpckt5s/KidCardiff6 109r Dual Sweat that is running right now. So cool to get both guys perspectives, especially when they get in to hands with each other. We have a bunch of other cool stuff on the horizon as well, so keep an eye out for that. On March 2nd myself and most of the TPE crew [More...]
Matt StoutNicky Evans
Mike Leah
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Waking up from 6 hrs of sleep and a feeling that you want to throw up is a pretty good way to start your day. Obviously, i sprint upstairs for coffee and grab my morning cigarette. After the Cig, i immediately start to spit up the nasty taste of nicotine/cig left in my mouth. Too graphic? This is a normal life of a fcking degenerate gambler. in january, i thought i could change my life. My goals for 2012 were: 1.Excercise 5 days a week 2.Meditate daily 3.Stop smoking cig 4.Not to tilt 5. no sports betting 1) I figured i could knock out like 2/5. Im a realist, not a complete idiot. SO lets start with the excercise. Let me paint a pretty picture of a 5'6 3/4 200 lb gray haired beast that sits all day [More...]
Florida poker is BOOMing!! I've basically made the decision there is really no reason for me to leave the state of Florida for live poker anymore. There are tourney series going on somewhere in the state at just about any time with a lot even overlapping. I was just down in Fort Lauderdale for some of the WPT prelims at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. I played three events and managed to go 20/221, 10/94, and 19/996. So I had two cashed and a stone cold bubble. While the cashes weren't anything life changing it always feels good to be making deep runs consistently and I'm feeling even more confidence in my live game coming off Final Tabling the WPT Main event at the Tampa Hard Rock in December. As much as I love traveling the fields are just [More...]
Been a long time since my last post and I have had a crazy roller coaster ride the last three months. Had my biggest month profit wise (2nd in lock 100k=luckbox) followed by my worst month of hemoraging HU and in high buy in 6-mans. Lets face it, the losing month was way more painful than the highs of an even bigger month of winnings before. so std, so std. Transitioning into 6-mans has been a long and brutal process. Im just not used to the variance of turbos and it has been a headache to deal with. January I actually moved down in stakes and was game selecting a bit more and have found success playing non-turbos. My days are longer, but mentally it has been a burden off my shoulders. That has been the key for me. Mental exhaustion can [More...]
The World Series of Poker has announced the schedule for this summer. You can find the schedule of events athttp://www.wsop.com/2012. I was anxiously awaiting the release of this schedule for several reasons, primarily the fact that I have a ton of plans to make and was finding it difficult to do so without know the dates. One of the biggest plans that needed finalizing was booking the Tournament Poker Edge house for the summer. We had already picked out a great house, but needed to finalize the dates with the owner. This year we will have a few new guys in the house, including new pros Danny "DannyN13" Noseworthy and Marc "aznAllin007" Alioto. I think it is going to be a really fun crew this year and I suspect this is the year that someone binks a [More...]
Oddzelot Couch Sessions 2012 Hey Guys, welcome to my first Member Blogpost. I am long time member to TPE, my old nick was AlwaysUltra. Inspired through xandelas goals thread I decided to set something in this direction for myself up. 2012 started with a personal bad beat right of the bat. I got through medical issues for one week into hospital. Now I have to stay at home and take cortison meds until the 4th of Feb. Which is kind frustrating, when y highlight of the day is an 15min walk outside. But I see it in a challenging way to improve every day a little bit. The positive aspect on this, I have a lot of time to grind and watching vids, while laying on the couch. But trust me the medic issues arent worth the free time. [More...]
Ok, so Black Friday sucked for everyone who loves poker. From the inconvenience of not being able to play poker in the US on a mainstream and large site, to those of us who have our money held in limbo on Full Tilt and Cereus – it's bad all around. Obviously, I can't wait for online poker to come back to the states. And it looks like we might have some positive momentum. When it does, I'll be ready for even more success than I had the first time around. Because as bad as it's been, Black Friday has helped me become a much better poker player. I am not in a situation where I can go become a live grinder but I still needed to get my poker fix. So I put a few bucks on the [More...]
The EV is posititive because I qualified in a $60 satellite earlier this month. The location is the aforementioned Seminole Casino in Brighton,FL, on Lake Ockechobee. My main event happens on Christmas Day when the field is divided into two shifts and then combined into a third final table, AM, PM and late PM, the final table is "In The Money" referred to as a 10K freeroll. My starting time is 12N so if I make it, I'll get a rest before the FT. Each shift is composed of 30 players with five getting there. My attitude is looking forward to a positive overlay and improving on October's bubble performance in the same style event. It's a little escape from home for wife, Margie, and me. The Casino has slots and she's received free play coupons from our last visit. [More...]
Long ago, I heard this old codger say during a live tourney that he would only play aces it they were suited. Liked this so well that we adopted the name when available. Decided to get back to live play and went to Brighton, FL, Gator Country nearly on Lake Ockechobee. Was so nervous, couldn’t count chips or Big Blinds. When I finally raised first in, another old guy, I’m 71, asked “Did you have Kings?” My reply was Kings no, but I’d play aces if they were suited.
After a bit of downtime, it has felt great to get back on the MTT grind. I came back with a bang! On October 16th I took second in the PokerStars Sunday 500 for $45,000 and then on October 23rd I shipped the PokerStars Sunday Warmup for another $106,000. Always nice to ship back to back big scores like that. In other news, I am really excited about the upcoming arrival of my baby, who I like to refer to as “littledogpckt5s”. He should be here within the next week to ten days, and I could not be more stoked about it! I’m also really excited about all the stuff we have going on at Tournament Poker Edge. We recently added a bunch of new pros including Mike “goleafsgoeh” Leah, Daryl “aaaaaaaaa” Jace, Brendon “brendooor” Rubie as well as [More...]
The holidays always always are a tough time to get in volume. That has been especially true for me. I've been traveling to spend time with family for the last couple of weeks, and it has really cut in to my grind time. That being said, I'm excited to be leaving tomorrow for Atlantic City to play a few live events at the World Series of Poker Circuit Event at Harrah's. I'll be heading up with a few guys from my home game and also meeting a bunch of Tournament Poker Edge members up there. TPE pro Tim "TTwist" Kelly will also be on hand, so be sure to come find us and say hello! I have a goal to crush in December. I'm really going to be ramping up my volume and playing a ton on Lock Poker. [More...]
Overall, November proved to be a pretty successful month for me. I'm recapping it now because, due to my schedule for the rest of the month, I think I am done playing until December. Cash Games NL Games: ($190) over 2500 hands at 50 NL and 100 NL I was up for quite a while and then had one bad session where I played my C+ game and ran into the top of people's value ranges a lot. PLO Games: $550 over 4000 hands at 50 PLO and 100 PLO I'm still a PLO fish. I don't mind saying it. I am probably not 3 betting pre-flop or bluffing enough, but I am a very good hand reader and so I can compensate at micro stakes and small stakes by picking off bluffs and playing my hands for max value [More...]
November 2 2011 Day 2 started off a little bit later at (10am) as i was catching up on episodes of Workaholics and Bored to death. With some extra sleep and the incentive that i would get to watch xfactor after work, i was pumped to get my grind on. The morning started off slowly as games were filling at a "turtle" like pace. For those of you that are new to poker I will explain what i do when i first open up my Lockpoker account. I literally will register (sit) in every 6 max sitngo from $30 to $200. Its around 30 games which sounds like a lot, but the most i will get running is 12, before i will unregister from the rest of the games. The point in sitting in 30 games at a time is [More...]
Hello TPE! Marc Alioto aka "aznallin007" doing my first blog post for Tournamentpokeredge.com. I have been a professional sit' n go grinder for 3-4 years now and i am going to be documenting my play for the month of November. I am currently switching to 6/10 man turbos and 10 man dons because 6 man dons have ended. For those of you that don't know anything about me, you should check the podcast i was in here: http://www.tournamentpokeredge.com/podcasts/ My grammar is pretty bad, so bear with me through this adventure into the mind of a grinder. My goal is to get players/members from the TPE community to understand a different side of poker. Most people read about final tables and big scores. I am here to show you that with hard work and dedication, one can become a winner without the [More...]
So I have had a couple of sessions since deciding to come back to playing and in the first I scored a ticket to the Merge 100k tomorrow. I decided to register, hey why not I have the ticket might as well use it right? With that in mind I sat down last night for a session to make sure that I am feeling comfortable and starting to apply what I know and shake some of the rust off. While I have to go back and look through everything I am pretty sure I made some mistakes, but overall not too upset with how I played. Managed to score a 2nd in the Fast Fifty and 5th in a $2 Bounty. I was $4.50 in for the evening and walked out +$40. While it isn't big bucks at the moment, [More...]
I'm back. It is just that simple. I wobbled around the non-poker world for a while, lost my way with the game, got frustrated and come back full circle to where I started a year and change ago. I recently moved into my first house, so it had been taking up a lot of time, giving me some much needed distance from the game for a while to clear my head. After Black Friday like a lot of US players I struggled to come to grips with things. I was really starting to hit my stride in the game right around Black Friday and I felt cheated and deflated after it went down. I took a little time off, started playing free and eventually found my way back to Merge. I have dabbled there for a while. Not really doing [More...]
As everyone knows from my prior articles about the best value tournaments, I'm always on the lookout for ways to maximize my return on my money. I've been playing a little bit of poker on Bodog and recently came upon this promotion they are having. http://www.bodog.eu/play-now/superbowl-freeroll/optin.html. Basically if you bet opt in to the promotion and bet $25 in a given week on NFL you get entered into a $5,000 freeroll on the following Wednesday. So I did this for week 2 of NFL and finished 23rd out of around 230 people and got paid something around $40. I did the same for week 3 of NFL and ended up winning the $5,000 freeroll out of 240 players for just under $700. The added incentive is the winners of all 17 weeks of freerolls get entered into a championship freeroll [More...]
Part of your evolution in poker is watching training videos and reading strategy forums. Another part is playing hands. I think the biggest part, though, is experimenting to see what playing style you are comfortable with and what works well. As a poker player you need to be brutally honest with yourself. If you have a negative ROI over many games you are doing something wrong. You're not just running into coolers or taking bad beats. Over a big enough sample size there is something else happening which is preventing you from winning money. No one person is inherently luckier than another person. Do some people run better in big spots? Sure. Look at Darvin Moon at the WSOP Final Table. Phil Ivey will never again in his lifetime get it in with AK vs AQ for tons of chips [More...]
There is more than one type of fish and you need to be able to categorize them pretty quickly at the poker table in order to maximize your expectation. Passive Fish – There are two types of passive fish. Type 1: The fish who doesn't fold to anything pre-flop but folds to many c-bets and 2nd barrels. With this type of fish you should basically be figuring out the absolute smallest amount it takes to isolate them at your table, and then ISO often. Since they won't fold pre-flop you don't want to bloat pots with vulnerable holdings, but you do want to isolate with those holdings since you will either be ahead in the hand or you will win it post-flop through solid hand reading and bet sizing. Typer 2: The fish who opens many hands and backs down [More...]
It’s been a while since my last blog, so I figured I should give a quick recap on what I have been up to. Of course we are in the middle of WCOOP and I have played 5 or 6 events with a couple of mincashes. I made a deep run on Sunday but lost KK to A7 with 16 people left, so needless to say I was not too happy with that result. I have also been playing a lot of Heads Up SNGs and Double or Nothings on Lock Poker. My friend, and fellow Lock Pro, Marc Alioto has been giving me some tips and I’ve been giving him some MTT coaching. Speaking of Marc, he is one of the four new pros that we have added over at Tournament Poker Edge. The other three are Brendon Rubie, [More...]
So as i have mentioned before, I play occasionally in this local home cash game. It's really more of an underground game I guess. I consider my home game a home game. Pass the deal, no rake etc. This game is a raked, has a dealer, and so on. it sucks that I live someplace that I have to worry about being robbed to go play some poker, but so be it. Like I have said, it is my excuse to get out of the house and socialize a bit. I've been killing the game lately. I think I have had 6 or 7 straight winning sessions, a couple of them of really decent size. I think I have gotten to the point where I have really good reads on every regular. There is one guy who I thought I [More...]
It's not quite Thanksgiving yet, but I felt like it was time to give thanks. Our goal at Tournament Poker Edge has always been to be the best MTT training site…period. We've tried to create a community that is friendly, helpful and educational. I'm pretty proud of what we have accomplished so far, and in the last couple of weeks I think we have made some really solid additions to the site with the new pros that we announced. I feel really motivated right now to continue on this path. We have more exciting things (yes, including even more new pros) in store for you guys, and I pretty much just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you all for your support. Black Friday threw the poker community for a loop, but I feel very confident that we still [More...]
Well, I've been back from the World Series of Poker for about a month now and I have had plenty of time to make up for lost time with the family and take care of loose ends that were left with me being gone for nearly 2 months. I've done enough laying around on the beach which can only mean one thing…back to the MTT grind! I pretty much got back in to the groove last week and put in 3 solid sessions, including my first Sunday in a while. While I have not had that big score yet, I've had a few wins and other final tables in smaller buy in tournaments. While that does not help pay the bills, it does remind me that I can still play and gets me motivated to crush again. I feel like I [More...]
I'll probably end up doing a couple different blogs like this – the aim is to write down some things I've picked up along the way whether it's from a training video, article, or something I figured out on my own. 1. VPIP, PFR, and 3 Bet Stats can be dangerous if you don't know how to read them. These stats give you a foundation with which to build strategy but if you're only glancing at some HUD stats and making decisions solely based on that you might find out that you're either having break even or losing results. Here's a good example. Villain 1: 20/18/8.5 Villain 2; 36/28/8.5 Each of these villains are going to have a very different 3 betting range from each other. One is likely to be polarized and the other is de-polarized. Also, you need [More...]
Sometimes you do it all right and it doesn't work out. That was last night. Let me start off by saying that last night wasn't all bad, actually quite the contrary, it was rather excellent. I met up with Wein and we had dinner. It was great to see him again and catch up. He is a great guy if you have never talked with him. Quite a bit more knowledgeable than his years, plus he's pretty damn funny. That was the fun part. We decided to go and play a little 1-2 PLO live for fun. Well it was sort of fun. Okay, maybe not totally true, it was quite enjoyable. I ended up stacking a girl two to my left when I picked up 3 different straight draws on the flop and she hit a set. We ended [More...]
