The meet up is getting close, let us know if you are attending!
Ante Up Magazine Co-Publisher Scott Long will be in Minnesota at the end of May. The meet up will be held on Sunday, May 27 2012.
The plan is to first meet at the St. Paul Saints game which starts at 3:05 PM.
Let us know if you are planning to attend. Scott is looking into getting a specialty group box if we get between 10 an 40 attendees. Anyone is welcome. Please let us know by May 15th so we can get a head count and reserve the section.
We will then go Canterbury Park to socialize over a friendly game of poker. If we can get enough people, we may even be able to get them to open of our own table.
Let know if you plan on attending. Send me an email at john.somsky (at) gmail.com, scott (at) anteupmagazine.com or post in the forum.
This meetup should be a fun event!
Check out more information on the Ante Up Forums:
http://www.anteupmagazine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3783
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Black Friday Anniversary
Today is the one year Anniversary of Black Friday. On April 15th, 2011 the Department of Justice seized the domains of the three largest U.S. poker sites, derailing the engine that funded much of the growth in the poker industry. Fallout from this event is stall happening to this day.
Personally, I remember fondly playing on PokerStars with the rest of the Ante Up Nation. I'm still jealous of our Canadian brethren that are still allowed to play. Several professional players have either moved out of the country or commute to play online poker occasionally. Some professionals have switched their focus to live poker, others have left poker as a profession to find a job in the "real world". And of course no one has been paid out by either Full Tilt or UB. Some people have staggering sums locked up online.
The damage done by Black Friday probably won't be repaired until poker is regulated in the US. But the world didn't end. Poker is still the game I love and has a vibrant community.
Personally, I remember fondly playing on PokerStars with the rest of the Ante Up Nation. I'm still jealous of our Canadian brethren that are still allowed to play. Several professional players have either moved out of the country or commute to play online poker occasionally. Some professionals have switched their focus to live poker, others have left poker as a profession to find a job in the "real world". And of course no one has been paid out by either Full Tilt or UB. Some people have staggering sums locked up online.
The damage done by Black Friday probably won't be repaired until poker is regulated in the US. But the world didn't end. Poker is still the game I love and has a vibrant community.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Ante Up Minnesota Meetup May 27
Have you ever thought to yourself, "I'd really like to meet the owners of Ante Up Magazine and let them know in person how much I enjoy their podcast and magazine." Well now Minnesotans have a chance.
Ante Up Magazine Co-Publisher Scott Long will be in Minnesota at the end of May. The meet up will be held on Sunday, May 27 2012.
The plan is to first meet at the St. Paul Saints game which starts at 3:05 PM. Let me know if you are going and I'll see what I can do about reserving a block of tickets. (I don't know how that works so no promises yet.)
We will then go Canterbury Park to socialize over a friendly game of poker. If we can get enough people, we may even be able to get them to open of our own table.
Let know if you plan on attending. Send me an email at john.somsky (at) gmail.com.
This meetup should be a fun event!
Check out more information on the Ante Up Forums:
http://www.anteupmagazine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3783
Ante Up Magazine Co-Publisher Scott Long will be in Minnesota at the end of May. The meet up will be held on Sunday, May 27 2012.
The plan is to first meet at the St. Paul Saints game which starts at 3:05 PM. Let me know if you are going and I'll see what I can do about reserving a block of tickets. (I don't know how that works so no promises yet.)
We will then go Canterbury Park to socialize over a friendly game of poker. If we can get enough people, we may even be able to get them to open of our own table.
Let know if you plan on attending. Send me an email at john.somsky (at) gmail.com.
This meetup should be a fun event!
Check out more information on the Ante Up Forums:
http://www.anteupmagazine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3783
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Spring Poker Classic And Heartland Poker Tour
Running Aces Harness Park has their Spring Poker Classic from Thursday, April 12th through Sunday April 22nd. There are several events as well as several satellites to the main event. I'm thinking about playing the $180 Omaha H/L event on April 18th. The $1100 Main Event begins April 21st. It should be a great series. You can get the full schedule here.
And then April 19-30 is the Heartland Poker Tour at Canterbury Park. The $1650 Main Event has four Day One flights, beginning on April 26th. There should be a big turn out. Check out the details here.
And then April 19-30 is the Heartland Poker Tour at Canterbury Park. The $1650 Main Event has four Day One flights, beginning on April 26th. There should be a big turn out. Check out the details here.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
3 Months $3,000 Summary
My 3 Months $3,000 experiment has reached its conclusion. I was trying to win $3,000 over the course of 3 months playing live poker for the challenge. Instead the challenge included my largest career downswing ever, although I did start mounting a comeback toward the end. This blog is a summary of what I learned doing the challenge.
Over the course of the three months I played 167.5 hours of live poker spread across 58 sessions for a total loss if $2,749. This compares to 4 hours of live poker played over the same time period in 2011. Of course in 2011 I was still playing quite a bit of online poker. And I've also increased my live play since becomming an Ambassador for Ante Up Magazine. However I'd guess that the challenge caused me to at least double the amount of poker I would have otherwise played in that time frame.
I played 50.8 hours of live tournaments spread across 25 events. I lost $2,306 without achieving any significant cashes. I did make several deep runs and was within 4 or 5 places of cashing several times, but didn't quite make a big score. Prior to becoming the Ambassador for Ante Up, most of my tournament play was done online. Since most poker coverage involves tournaments, I thought I should increase my live tournament play. I am still trying to become proficient at live tournaments, and hopefully that will be possible since I did have some success at online tournaments. 25 tournaments is small enough of a sample size to no be statistically significant, so it's unclear what conclusions can be drawn from the numbers.
I played 58.8 hours of cash games across 33 sessions. At my low point I was down $4,023. I ended up making a come back and was down only $433 in the end. I probably had a couple of larger losses than I should have in the beginning, but I felt I was playing well toward the end.
Overall Impressions
I think I felt quite a bit of pressure from the challenge. I am a little surprised by this. After all no one forced me to do this challenge, and I could have stopped at any time. Additionally my blog gets fairly low traffic, so not very many people are seeing it anyway. Despite all that, the challenge added extra pressure to me and may have affected my play. I must say I did have a harder time trying to actually blog about the challenge after a losing session. And it isn't fun sharing your worst losing streak ever with the entire internet. (Or at least the 7 people who actually read this blog.)
The losses playing tournaments aren't statistically significant so it's hard to draw conclusions, but I definitely think I need to improve my tournament game. Strictly speaking I shouldn't have played any tournaments for the challenge since the variance is too large for such a short challenge. But I do want to improve my live tournament game so I kept playing.
I think there was a little bit of run bad too. For example I had 70% equity in an $1800 pot with one card to come. Had I won that pot, it would have cut my losses in half. I think there were other examples of running below expectation in the beginning. But it is also likely that I was running a little bit above expectation in the end, so maybe things evened out.
It does make me appreciate professional players who have to win day-in and day-out in order to make a living. I, on the other hand, have a steady income and do not rely on poker winnings in order to pay my bills. But just post the results to the internet was enough to throw me off my game. I choked under the pressure I manufactured in my own mind.
Having said all this, I'm considering repeating this challenge next year. I enjoyed the challenge, despite being demoralizing at times. If I want to become a better player I need to handle pressure in all its forms. I need to be able to win when it counts!
Over the course of the three months I played 167.5 hours of live poker spread across 58 sessions for a total loss if $2,749. This compares to 4 hours of live poker played over the same time period in 2011. Of course in 2011 I was still playing quite a bit of online poker. And I've also increased my live play since becomming an Ambassador for Ante Up Magazine. However I'd guess that the challenge caused me to at least double the amount of poker I would have otherwise played in that time frame.
I played 50.8 hours of live tournaments spread across 25 events. I lost $2,306 without achieving any significant cashes. I did make several deep runs and was within 4 or 5 places of cashing several times, but didn't quite make a big score. Prior to becoming the Ambassador for Ante Up, most of my tournament play was done online. Since most poker coverage involves tournaments, I thought I should increase my live tournament play. I am still trying to become proficient at live tournaments, and hopefully that will be possible since I did have some success at online tournaments. 25 tournaments is small enough of a sample size to no be statistically significant, so it's unclear what conclusions can be drawn from the numbers.
I played 58.8 hours of cash games across 33 sessions. At my low point I was down $4,023. I ended up making a come back and was down only $433 in the end. I probably had a couple of larger losses than I should have in the beginning, but I felt I was playing well toward the end.
Overall Impressions
I think I felt quite a bit of pressure from the challenge. I am a little surprised by this. After all no one forced me to do this challenge, and I could have stopped at any time. Additionally my blog gets fairly low traffic, so not very many people are seeing it anyway. Despite all that, the challenge added extra pressure to me and may have affected my play. I must say I did have a harder time trying to actually blog about the challenge after a losing session. And it isn't fun sharing your worst losing streak ever with the entire internet. (Or at least the 7 people who actually read this blog.)
The losses playing tournaments aren't statistically significant so it's hard to draw conclusions, but I definitely think I need to improve my tournament game. Strictly speaking I shouldn't have played any tournaments for the challenge since the variance is too large for such a short challenge. But I do want to improve my live tournament game so I kept playing.
I think there was a little bit of run bad too. For example I had 70% equity in an $1800 pot with one card to come. Had I won that pot, it would have cut my losses in half. I think there were other examples of running below expectation in the beginning. But it is also likely that I was running a little bit above expectation in the end, so maybe things evened out.
It does make me appreciate professional players who have to win day-in and day-out in order to make a living. I, on the other hand, have a steady income and do not rely on poker winnings in order to pay my bills. But just post the results to the internet was enough to throw me off my game. I choked under the pressure I manufactured in my own mind.
Having said all this, I'm considering repeating this challenge next year. I enjoyed the challenge, despite being demoralizing at times. If I want to become a better player I need to handle pressure in all its forms. I need to be able to win when it counts!
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
3 Months $3000 Results
Here are the results of all the sessions I've played for the 3 Months $3000 challenge.
- Running Aces is Running Aces Harness Park
- Canterbury Park is Canterbury Park
- St. Croix is St. Croix Casino in Turtle Lake, WI
- NLHE is no-limit hold'em
- SLHE is spread-limit hold'em
- LHE is fixed-limit hold'em
- SLO is spread-limit Omaha hi
- Survival tournaments are no-limit cash games in tournament format
- Meskwaki Casino is Meskwaki Bingo Casino Hotel
Sessions
| Session | Date | Type | Description | Hours Played | $ Won | Total $ Won |
| 1 | Jan 1 | Tournament | Running Aces - NLHE Tournament ($5K added) | 3.9 | -$133 | -$133 |
| 2 | Jan 1 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 3.4 | $279 | $146 |
| 3 | Jan 2 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 1.2 | $165 | $311 |
| 4 | Jan 2 | Tournament | Running Aces - NLHE Tournament ($1K added) | 2.9 | -$18 | $293 |
| 5 | Jan 5 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 3.9 | -$600 | -$307 |
| 6 | Jan 8 | Tournament | Running Aces - NLHE Tournament | 1.2 | -$46 | -$353 |
| 7 | Jan 8 | Cash | Canterbury Park - $4-8 LHE | 2.1 | -$193 | -$546 |
| 8 | Jan 8 | Tournament | Canterbury Park - Survival NLHE Tournament | 1.7 | -$440 | -$986 |
| 9 | Jan 9 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 2.5 | -$360 | -$1,346 |
| 10 | Jan 14 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 3.1 | -$600 | -$1,946 |
| 11 | Jan 17 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 2.7 | -$340 | -$2,286 |
| 12 | Jan 21 | Tournament | Home Game | 3.1 | -$40 | -$2,326 |
| 13 | Jan 22 | Tournament | Running Aces - NLHE Tournament | 2.5 | -$250 | -$2,576 |
| 14 | Jan 22 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 3.2 | -$301 | -$2,877 |
| 15 | Jan 27 | Tournament | Running Aces - Satellite | 3.5 | -$67 | -$2,944 |
| 16 | Feb 1 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 2.7 | $46 | -$2,898 |
| 17 | Feb 4 | Cash | St. Croix - $1-2 NLHE | 4.5 | -$502 | -$3,400 |
| 18 | Feb 11 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 0.1 | -$2 | -$3,402 |
| 19 | Feb 11 | Tournament | Running Aces - Super Satellite | 1.0 | $159 | -$3,243 |
| 20 | Feb 11 | Tournament | Running Aces - Satellite | 1.4 | -$260 | -$3,503 |
| 21 | Feb 11 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 4.0 | -$408 | -$3,911 |
| 22 | Feb 12 | Cash | Running Aces - $3-6 Kill LHE | 0.6 | $70 | -$3,841 |
| 23 | Feb 12 | Tournament | Running Aces - NLHE Tournament | 4.2 | -$8 | -$3,849 |
| 24 | Feb 12 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 2.2 | -$174 | -$4,023 |
| 25 | Feb 13 | Tournament | Running Aces - NLHE Tournament ($2K added) | 0.3 | -$15 | -$4,038 |
| 26 | Feb 13 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 3.6 | -$300 | -$4,338 |
| 27 | Feb 18 | Tournament | Running Aces - Super Satellite | 0.4 | -$90 | -$4,428 |
| 28 | Feb 18 | Tournament | Running Aces - Super Satellite | 0.6 | -$60 | -$4,488 |
| 29 | Feb 18 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 6.2 | -$320 | -$4,808 |
| 30 | Feb 19 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 1.8 | $205 | -$4,603 |
| 31 | Feb 20 | Tournament | Running Aces - NLHE Tournament ($2K added) | 1.0 | -$16 | -$4,619 |
| 32 | Feb 20 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 3.0 | -$25 | -$4,644 |
| 33 | Feb 25 | Tournament | Canterbury Park - Survival NLHE Tournament | 2.0 | $105 | -$4,539 |
| 34 | Feb 25 | Tournament | Canterbury Park - Survival NLHE Tournament | 1.8 | -$530 | -$5,069 |
| 35 | Feb 26 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 3.9 | $35 | -$5,034 |
| 36 | Feb 27 | Cash | Running Aces - $3-6 Kill LHE | 0.5 | -$38 | -$5,072 |
| 37 | Feb 27 | Tournament | Running Aces - NLHE Tournament ($2K added) | 2.1 | -$16 | -$5,088 |
| 38 | Feb 27 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 0.3 | -$76 | -$5,164 |
| 39 | Feb 27 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE/SLO | 2.9 | -$184 | -$5,348 |
| 40 | Feb 28 | Tournament | Running Aces - NLHE Tournament | 2.3 | -$125 | -$5,475 |
| 41 | Mar 3 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 6.9 | -$400 | -$5,875 |
| 42 | Mar 5 | Tournament | Running Aces - NLHE Tournament ($2K added) | 1.3 | -$16 | -$5,891 |
| 43 | Mar 5 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 3.0 | $4 | -$5,887 |
| 44 | Mar 10 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 4.1 | $402 | -$5,485 |
| 45 | Mar 12 | Tournament | Running Aces - NLHE Tournament ($2K added) | 2.4 | -$17 | -$5,502 |
| 46 | Mar 15 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 5.0 | $36 | -$5,466 |
| 47 | Mar 17 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 10.9 | $500 | -$4,966 |
| 48 | Mar 18 | Tournament | Running Aces - NLHE Tournament | 4.0 | -$66 | -$5,032 |
| 49 | Mar 18 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 3.1 | -$28 | -$5,060 |
| 50 | Mar 19 | Tournament | Running Aces - NLHE Tournament ($2K added) | 2.0 | -$15 | -$5,075 |
| 51 | Mar 19 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 2.4 | $700 | -$4,375 |
| 52 | Mar 24 | Cash | Running Aces - $2-60 SLHE | 6.4 | $430 | -$3,945 |
| 53 | Mar 29 | Cash | Meskwaki Casino - NLHE | 5.4 | $460 | -$3,485 |
| 54 | Mar 30 | Tournament | Meskwaki Casino - $250 Satellite | 2.0 | -$250 | -$3,735 |
| 55 | Mar 30 | Cash | Meskwaki Casino - NLHE | 2.9 | $776 | -$2,959 |
| 56 | Mar 30 | Tournament | Meskwaki Casino - $90 Super Satellite | 0.7 | $160 | -$2,799 |
| 57 | Mar 31 | Tournament | Meskwaki Casino - $250 Satellite | 2.5 | -$250 | -$3,049 |
| 58 | Mar 31 | Cash | Meskwaki Casino - NLHE | 8.2 | $300 | -$2,749 |
Hourly Rate
| Type | Hours Played | Total $ Won | $ / Hour |
| Cash | 58.4 | -$443 | -$3.80 |
| Tournament | 50.8 | -$2,306 | -$45.43 |
| TOTAL | 167.5 | -$2,749 | -$16.42 |
Progress Toward Goal
| Total $ | |
| Goal | $3,000 |
| $ Won | -$2,749 |
| $ Left | $5,749 |
Sunday, April 1, 2012
April 2012 Ante Up Magazine Article
This month I interview Minnesota poker pro Jason Senti to see how he has dealt with Black Friday.
http://www.anteupmagazine.com/featured-column/poker-pro-jason-senti-making-the-most-of-situation.htm
http://www.anteupmagazine.com/featured-column/poker-pro-jason-senti-making-the-most-of-situation.htm
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