Home Sweet Home

I haven't updated this blog in almost a month. I've been in Vegas for pretty much the whole month. I was there for about 3.5 weeks and it was tons of fun. I stayed with JP OSU, rsxpunk, Benza13, PageUpV,GeoffRas22 klink10k, tt_fold and Underoath57. It was really awesome. Flying by myself was a little different I suppose. Nothing too noteworthy happened on the trip. I'll talk about a few interesting things that happened.

One night Bond18 posted about a party he was having at his house. It was a BBQ pool side party type thing and there were a ridiculous amount of MTT players there. Bond seemed really chill and so did most everyone else. I got super fucked up to the point it was pretty tough to walk. At that point tt_fold decided to bet me at 5:1 on $100 that I couldn't do 3 Tequila shots in two minutes. I was quite hesitant at first but figured fuck it I'd try it. Obviously not a good idea. Tequila is probably the worst tasting thing ever.

Part of the bet was that I couldn't chase for like 30 minutes, and couldn't puke for an hour. Also there were no shot glasses which makes doing a shot way more difficult. I was also way too fucked up to properly do a shot. I pretty much just drank them and had a mouthful of Tequila. Imagine me with my cheeks puffed out filled with the nastiest shit ever created. So nasty. Somehow I managed to actually do the shots and hold them down. I seriously have no idea how. I still cringe when I hear the word Tequila. Ship the $500!

Vegas was super degen as expected. There was some form of gambling pretty much every single night. At one point I was stuck like $5K from mostly Acey Deucey (In-Between). I lost a massive Acey Deucey pot where I had K2 and potted it for $1800. Obviously I bink an A and gg $1800. I was stuck a fair bit in random other stuff as well. Luckily I luckboxed the homegames we had, and won a lot back flipping one of the last nights there. I think I ended up down like $1100 for the entire trip which is really trivial considering I was there for almost a month.

Other than that nothing too exciting happened. I got to meet some pretty cool people down there. Everyone in my house was pretty chill and I didn't have any problems with anybody. PageUp was a fairly big life-nit but that didn't really stop us from having a bunch of fun. I got to meet ActionJeff, JCarver, SuperflousMan, MattG, mlagoo, and a few others. Gobbo and I played a homegame over that house and it was pretty fun. I talked to JCarver a ton and he seemed ridiculously smart and cool. I played HU with him for a while and we talked for a couple hours. ActionJeff is a pretty weird dude by the way.

The rest of the trip is sort of a haze. I ate a lot of really good food and just chilled and played poker for the most part. Summer has been solid so far. Basically I've just been playing poker and hanging out. Nothing really productive as expected. Not looking forward to going back to school at all. At least there's a lot of Summer left.

Poker has been really so-so. I haven't won anything since the $150R and I'm back in decent makeup but it's not really a huge deal. I've been grinding really hard and playing better than I have in a while. I feel pretty good about the future. I've also started coaching which so far has been fun. I basically started coaching for a new challenge. I also believe it will help me improve as a poker player. Thinking about the game and having to rationalize every play I make definitely will help me get a lot better. I did a coaching session tonight and it went very well. Everyone that was involved seemed to love it and learn a lot. It went a lot better than expected actually. Hopefully I can have some good students for the future as a long term type thing. I eventually want to be able to back/coach people as a decent chunk of side income.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/101/coaching-advice/completedonk-offering-low-midstakes-mtt-coaching-528627/

Good night!

-Brandon

Loving Life

Finally a happy blog post. At 1:30AM on Sunday, June 7th, I was smiling uncontrollably. I finally did it. I broke my 6 month downswing, and finally won a big tournament. I won the $150R for a little over $61K, basically clearing my makeup for Matt. It felt absolutely amazing. I don't think I've even been happier in poker. The funny thing is, I didn't really profit off of it. It still felt really amazing and I'm much more upbeat now. I have a feeling the next couple months are going to be great.

I have a pretty booked schedule for the upcoming week. Somehow I managed to get 12 hours of community service from school for pulling a cell phone out of my pocket to check the time. It's my second offense of getting my phone taken away, so it's an automatic 3-day suspension. Since it's finals, they can't suspend me so I do community service instead. I'd honestly rather be suspended but whatever. Today I had finals from 8-11, then made up my Gym final that I missed, and did 1 hour of community service. I have to do 11 more hours, which means doing 4 tomorrow and 7 on Friday. Friday is going to suck, but at least it's the last time I have to set foot in that god awful school for another three months.

Back on the positive side of things, I'm leaving for Vegas on Monday. It should be amazingly fun and I'm really looking forward to it. I'm staying with my friend Wesley (w33ktight) and a few others in a beautiful house. I know tons of people that are going to be there, and I'm a sucker for a really good steak which happen to be abundant in Vegas. Getting away from the house/everyday stresses of life will be cool too. Should be really relaxing and fun.

Finals are coming to a close on Thursday as well. Everything seems to be coming together just in time for Summer which is the best time. The overall run good switch has been turned on and seems to be in full force. Everything just seems to be working out. I had two finals today, English and Biology. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing on Bio final, but managed to lucksack a 73% on it. Honestly I thought there was no way I was passing. I literally had no idea how to answer most of the questions but guessed my way to a C. Going to pull off a B in that class somehow overall. My English final was great as well. I wasn't at school for one of the stories that the Final asked about. There were 12 questions about that one story out of 100 questions. I managed to get an 86% on the final and should get an A in the class. Ship the run good!

Here's a screenshot of my win for good measure/brags:



Hopefully this keeps up and I continue to do well. I feel better than ever and I'm super motivated to make something happen this Summer. I also plan on having a ton of fun outside of poker. I definitely am going to be exercising much more, and starting to work out and play more basketball. I really love playing sports and haven't played that much since I started taking poker seriously. I definitely miss it a ton.

Thanks for reading!

-Brandon

Life Tilt (Rant Post)

I really don't know what to do. It seems like anything I do fails in poker. I don't really understand and it's starting to get to me. Today I played by far the best poker I have in a really long time. I played close to flawlessly and was/am very happy about how I played. I can't say I've ever played better over such a long period of time for a full session. I played from 12:45 until around 1:25AM, over 12 hours straight, and played absolutely amazing. 

I got really close to huge scores so many times today. I got ~150th in the Warmup, 69th in huge 100r, ~150th in FTOPS 6-Max, 32nd in 150R, and 16th in the $500/$500K. I was one-tabling the $500/$500K for multiple hours and played very well. I managed to run ridiculously bad and continuously recover. I had TT lose to 99 for a monster pot with 50 left, then KK lost to 66 for a chip lead pot with 18 left.

There's nothing else I can really do but to just keep grinding and hope I stop running like this. It's starting to get really gross but whatever. The best players are able to take these runs and get over them. It gives me a nice reality of how bad MTT variance really is. I see all of these players that just constantly run extremely well and win everything. Most are very cocky and don't understand the extent of the variance that one can suffer. It's alright though. I'm really young and have a lot of time left in my career to get over it. 

I never really cared about recognition and stuff before, but I'm starting to honestly get jealous of a lot of these players who have won a huge sums of money online. I've played with most if not all huge winning high stakes MTT regulars. I honestly feel like I'm on par with a lot of them and better than some. It's all good though. I hope I'm saving my run good for something really huge. I think I'm around $40K in makeup right now if not a bit less. Not a huge deal, but it just sucks because all of the MTTs I was deep in today had 1st prizes over $60K which would've cleared my makeup and still gave me a nice score for myself. Unlucky I guess. 

Sorry for the huge rant, I really just needed to vent and get a lot of stuff off my chest. I probably come off as ridiculously arrogant in this post, but it's not really so. I'm just super tilted! :)

-Brandon

Update

I haven't posted a blog in a while. No real reason, just haven't been thinking about it and have been quite busy lately. I'm still running ice cold in MTTs, but FTOPS is coming up in a couple days so hopefully I can turn that around with a couple scores and possibly a gold jersey. FTOPS has been heart break for me in the past though.

I've been playing a lot of cash lately, HUNL mostly. I'm now being coached/staked by Eskabor (EskaborReturns) for 400NL HU. It's a really well ran operation and I'm happy with it so far. I haven't been running very well and I'm only up $1800 after like 10k hands but I'm not too worried about it. I think I'm playing pretty well and learning a lot along the way. Eventually I have to go on a heater in some form of poker IMO.

School is out for summer soon, about another month left. That will be really awesome and I'm looking forward to it a lot. I think it'll be really interesting to see what happens after summer. I have a lot of plans, including playing a lot of poker and hanging out with friends a lot. I've also talked to a couple people about going to Hawaii for a week or two which would be absolutely sick. I've always wanted to go there. It's absolutely beautiful and would be awesome amounts of fun. Would also be a nice break from the boring daily stuff I do all the time. Hopefully that works out and I'm good money wise to blow a couple thousand there. Tickets are like $1K round trip so it'd be an expensive trip, but well worth it if I'm doing well by then. Looking at around July after WSOP since 2/3 of the other people will be going to WSOP and playing the Main. 

I forgot I never updated the essay thing from the last blog. Everything worked out find and I got like a 95% on the essay when it was all said and done which is pretty awesome. She totally forgot about out conversation and apologized for it. No hard feelings, but she did manage to stress the hell out of me for a day or so. 

I'll update again when anything interesting happens. Thanks for reading.

-Brandon

I am frustrated with you, Brandon!

Today was another pretty bad Sunday. I got 2nd in the $215 PLO on Saturday, and like 6th in a $30 2+1R+1A earlier in the week. Those are my first two final tables in a very long time, probably over a month. I still haven't won an MTT in a couple months which sucks a lot. Running horrible etc. I'm starting to lose the passion for MTTs, at least for putting in a large volume at them. I've been focusing a lot on cash lately, mostly Heads Up cash. Heads Up PLO is a great game and really fun. It's also extremely soft, and easier to get action at than NL Heads Up. I've been playing a mix of NLHE HU and PLO HU and have been doing quite well. Probably up around $7K in the last week or so. 

FTP has these HA tables, which are PLHE and PLO mixed HU. There are pretty much no regulars and I'm usually the only person there sitting at empty tables, so I get action a lot which is awesome. People usually suck at at least one of the games, and usually both. It's also a great change of pace to switch games every 10 hands and there's a lot of action. It also prevents me from auto-piloting and makes me play better. 

On a non-poker note, I'm going back to school tomorrow as Spring Break is over, which obviously sucks. I had to do a paper over Spring Break because I was gone from English class for around 7 days and missed a ton. The day I got back from missing a ton of school the paper was supposed to be due. I talked to her during class and we agreed that it'd be due the Monday after break, which would give me more than enough time. She told me to e-mail her any questions I had on Thursday or Friday as that's when she'd be getting back from Florida on vacation. 

So, I e-mail her on Friday night asking a simple question about the paper and the format of it. She sends back a reply that pissed me off a lot. She has a sort of a history of forgetting things. She's probably forgotten every one's name in the class at least five times. Anyway, here's the reply:

Brandon,

I don't mean to be rude, but I just flew back into Michigan from Florida.  The research paper was due on the 7th, but the deadline was extended twice until the 9th.  You type me this e - mail on the 17th in the evening asking about how to write the introduction/conclusion of a paper that was due over a week ago.  You had two examples:  One written by a past Annapolis sophomore and the other written by a publishing company.  I asked daily re. any questions after going through details over and over.  I am frustrated with you Brandon.

Tell you what Brandon:  If and only If you have turned in all past deadlines and you have gotten full credit on every single one, will I accept a final draft from you at the next A.R.O. held on the 25th.

Thank you for understanding my position,
Mrs. LeBeau

ARO is basically Saturday school, which sucks really bad and there's absolutely no way I'm going to it. I was super pissed after reading that. I ended up figuring out most of what I needed to know by myself anyway, but I'm still not sure about something unrelated to the paper directly. I've sent her 3 replies and she still hasn't sent me one back. Pretty ridiculous and really unprofessional in my opinion. Hopefully things work out tomorrow. Tomorrow could either be a really bad day or a really good day depending on how many things go right. 

Wish me luck,

Brandon

Sick Brag

Just learned today that I don't have mono. The blood work got back, pretty happy about that. I apparently just have a virus that should be gone soon'ish. 

Played a bunch of tournaments today and had so many deep runs but no big scores. Probably cashed like 7 tournaments with zero final tables which sucks. SCOOP is tomorrow, playing the 5R and 50R. The 5R should be insane, already like 16K people registered. Hopefully I can ship one, would make the rest of the series much better. GL me.

-Brandon

Life Swongs

I've been pretty sick lately. I've had a fever on and off as well as a soar throat/stuffed up nose for a few weeks. I again got really sick Sunday night with a fever etc. I went in to the doctor's on Monday. I was told that I most likely have Mono. I'll know for sure tomorrow after the blood work gets back. I really hope I don't have Mono. It's really bad. Basically you're tired constantly and never get good sleep. You're also really sick on and off, and it doesn't go away for up to a couple months. Really a terrible thing to have, and there's no treatment for it but getting a lot of rest and drinking a ton of fluids. 

Poker has been kind of bad still, had a terrible sunday with no cashes. I did resolve the backer situation though. I talked to Fees and basically told'm I didn't like what was going on at all. We decided that he'd be no longer backing me for MTTs, and that I'd be clearing the ~50K make-up I owe him in cash. Obviously it's going to take me a very long time to clear that, but I'm just happy to no longer have to deal with the MTT thing with him and Doug. 

So, I needed a backer, and fast. SCOOP is in a couple days and I certainly don't want to miss it. I talked to a bunch of people, and Gobbo said he'd ask around and try to help out. Luckily he's awesome and got me in contact with Carter "cking" King who just won the Million after winning the WCOOP Main Event not long ago. He has a backing team for High Stakes MTTs with mattg. I worked out a deal with cking which is pretty cool. I'm going to start off playing pretty much everything I want to. The only thing I cannot play is weekday 100R's, and the Friday $500 6-Max. No worries though, mattg said it's just a sort of a trial. When I start putting in volume for them and am up ~$5K, I can play those tournaments. Pretty much their whole stable plays them now, and all of them started off the same as I did.

Overall I'm really happy and optimistic about the new deal with Carter. It seems they run a really awesome operation. Carter and Matt seem like cool people as well, and hopefully I can learn some stuff about MTTs from them as I respect both of their games. Maybe Carter's money will run good as well and I can ship a couple of SCOOPs. 

Before I end the blog I definitely have to thank Gobbo for setting up this deal. Thanks Jimmy!

-Brandon