Sorry for the lack of updates in the past week but I have been busy with poker, poker and more poker.† The cash games have been very soft both live and online this month so I’m trying to put in as many hours as possible so I can work less the rest of the year.

Since I made the final table I haven’t†been able to get anything going in the tournaments.† I think I have been playing generally well and making good decisions but the cards just haven’t fallen my way.† In the 5k shootout I got all in with AT vs A9 on a AQ5 board for 70% of the chips at the table and a 9 hit the river.† And in the 2.5 NL I got a big stack all in preflop with AA vs 36 (Really!!) and lost.† But such is the nature of tournaments and if I keep playing well results will follow.† I just have trouble bringing my A game to some of the smaller events and try to play a very violate style early so I either build a big stack or bust out and then can go play tournaments.

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The last three days have been very stressful for me as I’ve lost $100,000 in live cash games and won $100,000 on the internet.† The games live have been very soft with some extremely wealthy players, whom are successful in endeavors beside poker, juicing up the games.† Often to find the best game live you have to be willing to play extremely big, recently I played $100/$200 blind NL with a $1,000 ante on the button, minimum buy in $50,000.† This is a much bigger than the games I play online (or any game that runs regularly online), and it plays very crazy with people straddling, double straddling, and making sleeper bets.

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Anyways, I either overestimated my edge in the games, or I ran bad in them.† I had a† -$65,000 session which really made me sick to my stomach.† The games in Bobby’s Room are still slightly above my comfort† level (only when I lose), as I find myself thinking about all the things I could do with the money afterwards.† I still think the games are extremely profitable but due to the small number of hands played compared to online the stakes variance is huge, and I’m still not sure my hourly is higher than online since I can’t multi-table.

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Yesterday, I sweated my friend Alec ‘traheho’ Torelli†http://www.alectorelli.net/†playing heads up for the bracelet in $10,000 Heads Up Championship vs Kenny Tran.† I’ve played a lot with both Alec and Kenny so I had a good idea on how I’d play the match if I was in Alec’s shoes.† It was a very exciting final table to watch for me because I was able to follow all the action and talk to other highstakes pros about what each player had in every hand.† It was also very exciting because I was betting with Doni Stern and Jonas (riverboating), about what cards would come on the flop.† I wasn’t very good at guessing what cards would come down and ended up losing $5,000.† Alec, not knowing that I had bet on him decided to lose the match, so I was down another $1,000 from that also.

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I think Alec played extremely well during the match and ran pretty meh.† Kenny, is also an extremely good player, so whoever ran well for the 200 or so hands the match was played was most likely going to win.† Brandon Adams had heavy action on the match and was laying 1.3:1 on a Kenny Tran victory.† I thought this was a pretty unbelievable line as Alec has been one of the biggest heads up winners online over the past two years and the edges on heads up normally aren’t that big.† I know from a technical perspective that Alec is a better player, if this match was played online he would definitely have an edge.† But Brandon Adams is a smart guy and probably wouldn’t of made the bet with those odds unless he thought he was getting the best of it.† So I concluded† he must think that Kenny can pick up a lot of ‘tells’ on online players.† I don’t think that it is possible to pick up enough tells on a world-class player to offer the line Brandon did but it makes me wonder.†† I’ll keep it†in mind my next few times playing live.