I’ve been so busy of recent I haven’t even thought about the blog so sorry for the lack of updates. Max and I were in heavy negotiations for a triplex here in Iowa, and we managed to get a great deal. It marks the beginning of a company we just created: Steinberg and Steinberg Real Estate. Basically our plan is to buy real estate to rent out and sit on it. I’ll keep you guys updated on how the business is going. The triplex we just bought was 73k and brings in 1200 a month.

I have 140k vpps to go for SNE. This is probably pretty daunting for most players but it isn’t actually that difficult for me to achieve. Even though this morning I made 8.5k vpps in 2 hours, I make about 2k vpps per hour playing HU Sngs normally. So basically it’s going to be 5 hours a day for 14 days. I do more than that when I’m not traveling so it’s not really a big deal. I’m 100% confident I am going to make it.

In other news, I’m considering what exactly my plan is for poker next year. I am planning to go to Las Vegas in the spring to give high stakes live poker a shot. I think my poker strengths are very well suited to live, but the biggest reason I’m going is for the experience. Seems like a pretty fun thing to do, can’t imagine how pumped I will feel when I bring home a shitload of cash (Not looking forward to how crappy I’ll feel when I don’t).

But that is only going to be a month of the year. A few days ago I was certainly done with Hu Sngs. I did not want to play them anymore because I didn’t think they were going to give me the most earnings. I think the shallow stacked and cap games on PS and FT could be my biggest profit potential. When January comes I am definitely going to give those games a shot and see how I fare over a big sample. But now I’m not so cold on HU Sngs. I think with rakeback I broke even on them this year. But as crazy as it sounds after 2 years of these things I think I have finally gotten to the point where they are going to be really profitable for me. Even if my ROI is just 2%, I earn so much rakeback 6 tabling it becomes a significant winrate. I’m excited next year to see if I can really start seeing results from all the work I’ve put in on them.

Wish me luck.

Max and I both went to Chicago for the WSOP circuit event there. It got hyped up like it was going to get 400-500 people but it only got 220, which was pretty disappointing. To be honest I probably would not have went if I knew there would be so little people.

Max busted out Day 1 while I busted out Day 2. Max found himself at a tough table with Faraz Jaka and Vanessa Selbst. He told me about an insane fold he made against Jaka. The hand went something like this: 30k stacks and 100/200 blinds. Max raised 600 from MP with AKo. Jaka called from the SB, BB called as well. Flop came AKT two hearts, Max flopped top two. Both guys check, Max cbets 1200, Jaka calls, other guy folds. Turn comes a 7. Jaka checks, Max bets 3200, Jaka calls. River is a 9, no flush has completed. Jaka checks, Max bets 7200, Jaka thinks for a bit and shoves. Max folded. We discussed the hand afterwords and decided that even though Jaka was repping basically nothing besides 86hh and J8hh, it would be an insanely bad spot to bluff. Max has every nut hand in his range and there’s no reason for Jaka to think he has anything else than the nuts. So I agree with his fold.

I felt like I played kind of poorly day 1 but greatly improved my play day 2. I realized with these tournaments that you very rarely see hero calls, which means basically whenever someone has a weak hand, no matter what you are repping, they will fold. Clearly after a point of betting and raising a shitload people are going to start hero calling a lot. But until I sense that point has come I’m going to start pounding away at good spots to bluff in terms of what my opponent has, not what I have necessarily.

Unfortunately, after chipping up on day 2 from a short stack to a 28bb one, I busted out. The hand was a pretty standard good bluff hand. I raised to 2.5x BB from HJ with A6o. Guy who had a lot of chips and hadn’t 3bet me yet today, but was young and clearly the type to do so, 3bet me pretty standard, about 8bbs in the CO. My rudimentary math found that he’d have to fold something like 40% of the time for a shove to be good. I think it was pretty obvious that was the case. Despite the fact  I couldn’t pick up any tells from his body language, I went for it anyways and he called with QQ. I didn’t bink an Ace.

Next tournament is the NAPT in LA. I’m pretty pumped about this one because it has a HU event which is my speciality.

Until then.

After I got back from London I took 2 days off and now I’m back at the tables. I learned so freaking much there. It was one of the best trips for poker learning I’ve ever had. Max and I really improved our live poker games, and conversations with Urnotindanger and H2olga gave me a lot of insight and reassurance about poker theory. So I’m feeling pretty confident.

Results haven’t showed though, I’m down a lot since my tourney score. I decided to play some 25/50 hu and some 5k hu sngs, and those are basically responsible for all my losses. I think I’m going to stick to low stakes for a little bit until I get back in upswing mode. When playing lower, I go  6 or 7 tables at a time and I feel like im playing fantastically relative to the challenge of that many opponents at once. It’s also pretty sweet to get a ton of rakeback.

I’m considering going to the WSOP circuit event in Indiana at the end of the month. I enjoy live poker tournaments a lot but I’ve been traveling so much I’ve been itching to settle down. However, its supposed to get over 300 players, many of them big fish. And its nationally televised, which is even more awesome. I’ll probably end up going.

In other news, I’m adopting a stray cat. This black cat has been wandering outside my house and we kept leaving out food for it to see if he/she was feral. One day she finally let us get close to her (we saw it was a she) and she was so freaking cute and affectionate, not feral at all. I took her into the vet a few days ago and shes perfectly healthy. Right now I’m looking for a new place to move into, and the search became harder with a pet. At the same time, I love cats so its an obstacle worth having.

Anyways, I’m going to go grind for another two hours.

So I finished in 6th place at the WSOPE ME. First final table ever of a live tournament and it was a lot of fun. I’m not going to share every detail of the tournament, but I will share the most interesting bits.

I felt like I played great throughout the tournament, but there were certain hands that really stood out to me as fantastic.

1. The first was against Ludovic Lacay, a great tournament player who was crazy aggressive. He 3bets insane amounts preflop. We each had about 100,000 chips and the blinds were 600-1200. I raise to 3000 preflop with KT0. Lacay who takes less than 10 seconds on every decision 3bets to 7200. I fail to pick up anything from his mannerisms. I decide to flat call. Flop comes K74 rainbow. I check and he bets 10,000, which is a standard size for him but a more optimal bet size here would be something like 6-7k. I c/r to 27,000 trying to induce a spazz. He takes 10 seconds and shoves all in. I think just to make sure I don’t change my logic. I call and he shows Q4, I hold up.

2. and 3. The Blom hands. After sitting at the same table with Viktor Blom on Day 4 I came away incredibly impressed by his game. However, two hands likely to be shown on ESPN I will be seen having the best of him. The first hand comes right after I 3bet him and he folds and I show 64o. The very next hand he opens again, and I 3bet with A2o in the SB. I expect that his thought process would be to fold a lot because it would be an incredibly odd thought process for me to decide to 3bet him light after 3betting and showing such a bad hand. Unfortunately, he calls. The flop comes AK9 rainbow. This is a tough decision. If my preflop assesment is correct, check folding could be good. This is a terrible board for him to triple barrel, if I were to check, as a bluff, so I wouldn’t expect him to do so. At the same time, I felt like he would not think my bet flop, check turn range was weak so he wouldn’t try to bluff me there either,  not to mention there are so little draws he could call a flop cbet with. I expect I would get value from one pair hands as well that were worse than mine. I decide to cbet and he calls. Turn is a 6. I check, he bets, and I fold after little deliberation. Later he told me he had top two pair.

Another hand later on I had stopped 3betting him but we were both 100bbs deep. I get AJ in the BB and he opens the CO. I figure Blom’s 3bet calling range is wide enough where AJ is an easy 3bet. He calls again, but very quickly. Flop comes K64 two diamonds. I cbet and Blom visably looks frustrated. Not sure what I thought about that, on one hand I knew he wasn’t acting, but at the same time it seemed kind of strong. A decision with KJ is more frustrating than one with A6. Turn was a 7 of diamonds. It’s a great card for me because I expect Blom to raise the flop with flush draws but my line is still congruent with a flush. Also, very little 7′s in his range besides 77, K7s or 76, which would hit the turn. I bet out 2/3rds pot, about half my stack. He thinks for awhile and folds. I tell him later I had AJ no diamond, he says he’s embarassed to say what he folded. I’m excited to see this one on ESPN if it makes it there.

4. This hand was at the final table. 6 or 7 people left, I have about 2.3 million and Ronald Lee has me covered. 20k/40k blinds. I raise T6o to 100k  in what is essentially the CO because James Bord looks at his hand before the action comes to him and it’s clear he’s folding. Lee OTB, who had been very loose preflop all day, flat calls. Everyone else folds. Flop comes QsTs6x. I cbet to 125k. Lee looks straight at me, which I was inclined to think this is weak. When Lee had a nut hand he tended to stay within himself. He calls. Turn was a 9x. Terrible card. I look at Lee and something has changed: He seems no longer interested in what I am going to do. I’m not sure of it but I was inclined to think he hit the turn. I considered c/fing, but I figured I didn’t want to give too much weight to the live tell. I bet 250k into a 500k. Lee doesn’t think for long and raises…. to 420k.

I laugh because he raised less than 2 times my bet, which is not allowed, and I thought it would be ruled a call and I’d have a chance at boating up. Instead, they make him change the raise to 500k. It doesn’t take me that long before saying “This sucks but it’s an easy fold” and I muck T6o face up. Lee puts his hand on his head, almost saying with his mannerisms “Why can’t I get the best of this guy?” Later I found out not surprisingly he had KJo, turned straight.

…………………………………

Lee got his revenge though. I had about 1.3 million at this point and Lee had me covered. Lee opened preflop in MP, and I had a tell on him that helped me realize he was weak here. Given he was opening 50-60% of hands when folded to, my decision to 3bet AJs from the BB when it was folded to me was an easy one. He had raises my 50kbb to 110k, and I 3bet to 285k. Lee shoves it all in after a short time of deliberation. It was a pretty trivial call at this point but I took my time just to make sure I didn’t pick up anything. I finally decided to call. Lee showed 44. It held up on all streets.

After I lost, the experience was a little surreal. I felt like I had played really well so whether I won or lost the all in became totally irrelevant to me. Everyday I use the logic that I can’t control the results so I should just be happy when I play well, but it rarely manifests itself completely. It didn’t in the KK hand. But when I got it all in with AJs, it did, and I think everyone saw that in me. I was happy because I played exceptionally, the result truly didn’t matter. Nicolas Levi, a very good french pro to my right, told me the nicest thing I think anyone has ever said to me. “I told Roland that I knew it would be the best for us if you lost the all in, but I didn’t want you to.” I turned to James Bord, the coolest guy I’ve ever met at a poker table, and shook his hand. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that expression he had on his face on anyone ever before. His smile and head nod seemed to say he was honored that he got to play with me at the poker table. After I exited the table the ESPN reporter, who was about to interview me, started tearing. I asked her with a big smile “Why are you crying? Don’t be sad there is no reason to be sad .” She replied. “I don’t know… I mean some people come over here all upset but you seem genuinely happy.” I know this whole paragraph may come off as incredibly self centered but I don’t mean it to be, it’s just honestly what happened.

Anyways, I had a great time and felt like I learned a ton from my experience. I have the EPT London ME left to play, and then I go back home. And you never know. Luck is independent, maybe the result can be even better there.

Not talking about the song.

This year I have had a higher fish to regular ratio at HU SNG’s, but I have not had nearly the kind of success. And I feel like the reason why is because I am getting killed by loose stationy fish. I wouldn’t be surprised if I wasn’t a winner against them. But why is this the case?

My instincts and adjustment tool set seem to bode much better vs a fish who can fold well or a tight, aggressive or passive regular. For people who have played me, this is fairly obvious. I’m a bluffing machine. I wouldn’t be surprised if I bluff fish more than any other non fish in the world. But this isn’t an honor I’m proud of having.

However, while bluffing vs fish is a problem, I don’t think it’s my biggest problem vs maniac fish. My biggest problem is not postflop, it is preflop. It seems if I do not stop and think for a few seconds, I can’t help but raise every hand on the button and call all those pretty cards out of position. The problem with playing loose out of and in position is it gives me more air and weak hands postflop. And versus someone who doesn’t fold and plays very aggressively, this is the worst possible strategy.

So my second goal for this month: Play a more optimal strategy against loose, aggressive, stationy fish.

In other news, the play a lot of tables experiment is going decently. Sometimes its difficult to focus that hard. I want to just go into robot mode and relax. But I’m trying to catch myself dozing off as much as possible and reaffirm my goal.

So if you’ve been watching the Stars lobby recently you may have seen me playing some 5k sngs. Recently, a new player name NU Gatsby came onto the sng scene out of seemingly nowhere, and started sitting at the 5k non-turbos playing basically anybody. I decided to take a shot at him with Danny taking half my action.

It turned out that even though his play was unorthodox and he seemed like a big fish initially, after about 5 or so games I started to realize he wasn’t really all that bad. He was weak late-game but because of the structure of the non turbo a lot of times we never got there I actually learned a lot from playing him and have incorporated a little of what he does into my own game. I ended up getting rocked for 8 buyins in the first 15 games or so, and although he was an ok player I still felt like i was getting the best of him.

By the tenth game I had a great feel for him, and at this point I think we’ve played 20 games and I’m down 4 buyins. Hopefully he’ll sit more because if he does I think I have a really great edge.

Another player sitting at the 5k’s recently was Joe Cada. I played him for about 15 sngs and was up a buyin. He actually played much better than I expected, and honestly he got the best of me in those 15 games. I was in an impatient mood which plays into his strengths and he actually made a couple good big calls. Besides that he just ran hot, and when someone runs hot against you what ends up happening is 1) you never seen what they have 2) they have a sense of what you had because you folded and because of this 3) they have a huge advantage. I’m sure he’ll sit again and hopefully I can take what I learned against him the other night and beat him down.

Now let’s talk about SNE, when I first started this blog, I wanted Danny and I to be the first twins ever to be SNE. However, since I’ve been behind one SNE ever since I started in April, I would have to play exclusively on Pokerstars to achieve it. The fact of the matter is getting SNE as opposed to playing normally, I would only get the equivalent of about a 1% roi increase in sngs. But playing on ftp and being able to game select better, would give me a 3-5% increase in roi. And furthermore, the new superturbos on ftp are so fishy that it would be dumb to pass up playing them.

But I haven’t exactly given up on SNE. There are a couple of factors that may inspire me to make a run at SNE. Pokerstars will have dealt it’s 50 billionth hand in a few weeks and it’s possible that they have a double vpp week during this time. If this happens I could knock down 200k vpp or even more in that week, putting me close to pace. Or, if Joe Cada, NU Gatsby, or another player I think I have an edge on decides to sit at 5k’s for a while, I may be able to make a big vpp run. If both these happen, then it’s probable that I get SNE.

For now, I’m grinding pretty hard on both Stars and FTP, and I’ll continue to do so.

I declared this month SNG month. I certainly took the most risk I have ever taken playing SNGs, but it didn’t bode particularly well for me. I played in a lot of $5600 games where I played either new players who played odd but were actually pretty good at poker. I still felt like I had an edge in those games but the results didn’t show.

My first few years of poker I focused purely on 6 max texas hold’em and heads up cash. These past two year I branched out in to CAP games (for those not familiar with Full Tilt these games are where no matter your stacksize, 30bbs is all in) and heads up SNG’s. With both, I am decent winner. I just started playing some of the 20-50bb games and seeing if they may be worth looking into. I realize that most of the top players seem to prefer 100bb poker, not many innovative thinkers left for the short buy in games.

That theory certainly held true. I have lost a small amount playing the 5/10 game the past week but overall I see a weak overall strategy from many of the regs and a lot of fish too. I’m going to try to put in a 100k hands over the next 30 days at the games and seeing what kind of winnings I can put up. Hopefully they’ll be pretty good of the get go, and I’ll have a new good game to choose from.

Over my trip to Washington I managed to have a day where I play 60 SNGs. Because this was basically all high stakes action, I made around 15,000 VPPs. With some rudimentry math, I calculated that these amount of VPPs equated to about $1500 in rakeback. Playing 364 days a year, thats over $500,000 in rakeback alone. Not too shabby considering I only played about 4 hours.

Max has been playing exclusively SNGs recently so we’ve been bouncing a lot of idea off each other. It’s been surprising how much I have learned that past 2 months regarding optimal play in them. There are a lot of major changes I made in my game that I think are going to pay big dividends. I don’t want to say what they are, but I will say the changes regard how playing with different stack sizes causes optimal play to vary radically.

I got back from DC today after packing up everything I left at my old house into my car and driving 16 hours over the past 2 days. For once in the past 3 months, I will be in the same city for more than a month at a time.

Time to put in a lot of volume.

So I busted out in about 400th place in the WSOP ME for about 32k. Going deep in the ME is the most exciting thing I have been a part of in my life. I tried not to, but the day dreaming of final table and victory is just too strong to fight. The hand I ended up busting on I felt like I totally butchered. I ended up getting it in on a J74 two club flop with 55 vs Christian Harder, a good tournament pro. He had J9 and I was sent to the rail.

After the hand I realized that there were factors I failed to consider which would have swayed my decision for the better. This was obviously depressing for me. At the same time, my failure to consider factors wasn’t random, I felt like it was the result of subtle tilt. I had a session with Jared Tendler today to work out the issue and I feel confident that I will solve this problem over time. I unfortunately had some proof of my progress today, as I lost a lot of money and felt that I still maintained a high level thought process and did not feel depressed afterwards.

I’m back in my hometown in Iowa in the immediate future. I’m trying to decide what to do in the future, currently I’m leaning towards going back to school for engineering. But for now I’m going to be putting a lot of hours in playing poker. Max and I are also going to start investing in real estate in the bay area and midwest. I’m excited to get that going as well.

I’m going to DC on Friday to move my stuff from my old place. I’ll drive my car and likley a U-haul attached to the back. Probably going to download some Klosterman audio books to kill the time. 16 hour drive, here I come.

Max and I are in the HU WSOP tournament today. $10,000 buy in. My guess is if the tournament is a full 256 players, first prize is going to be around 550k…. I’ll settle for that . Max and I are hoping to be heads up at the final table, although it would take an absurd stroke of luck both bracket wise and winning wise.

The structure is very favorable to us because of our experience with both HU cash and HU SNGs. In our matches, we start with 120bbs and the blind levels go up every 20 minutes. I feel like at basically any blind level I am going to have a significant edge on whoever I’m playing. Versus a guy with HU SNG experience, I will be very good against him deep. SNG players do not tend to polarize enough and make big enough folds when they are deep. On the flip side, if I play someone who is better than me deep, I still feel like I’ll have a big edge late game. In late game the math is not intuitive at all. Good cash game players will have no idea what they should be reraising and what they should be calling reraises with 25bbs or less.

The tournament starts at 5 PT so feel free to rail! Updates to come tomorrow.