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Tomorrow I’m taking the LSAT and driving up to D.C. for a Super Bowl party.  On Monday I’m moving to New York City.  So basically that means that I have to spend all day today packing (I’m done with practicing for the LSAT at least…I got a 179 on today’s practice test so I’m feeling pretty confident), wake up tomorrow at 7 a.m. to take the LSAT, move all my stuff into one car, drive to the airport (45 minutes away) to rent a car, move my stuff into that car, and drive up to D.C. (like a 4 hour drive).  On Sunday I’ll be getting drunk and watching football.  Then on Monday I’m driving up to New York and dropping my stuff off at a friend’s place until my lease starts on Thursday, then I have to move all my stuff into my new place on Thursday.  In other words, my life will be a constant procession of annoying chores and long-distance driving for the next few days, so I might not be blogging for a little bit.

A lot of people are asking me why I’m taking the LSAT.  Professional poker is not something I’ve ever wanted to do for the rest of my life, and while I’m not sure I want to go to law school it would be helpful to have it as an option when I decide to move on with my life.  The score is valid for 5 years, so I can take it now and make up my mind about law school at some later date.

Finally, shout out to my boy Dan.  He shares my posts on Google Reader like crazy.  Check out his blog: www.delinodeshields.com

It’s been a long time since I’ve ended a session because I could feel myself be too tilted to play. I generally don’t have tilt issues: I try to only play games for which I’m over-rolled so nothing that happens affects me too much and if I lose big I drop down in limits (that’s why I’m playing 5/10: I went on a 20k downswing which depleted my accounts after cashing out so I’m rebuilding). Sure I get upset during sessions but I rarely feel as though my play is significantly affected and I rarely feel so upset that I just can’t bring myself to play. Today, though, I almost couldn’t think straight as I lost 8 buy-ins in my first 20 minutes of 5/10 NL. Most of my play was on a site with nearly-impossible to read hand histories so I’m just going to give the cliff’s notes.

I lost $5336 to start the day just to one guy. In 117 hands. I’ve only lost more than 5 buyins to somebody HU three time in my life and I did it to this guy in 117 hands. He’d been reraising me a lot so I called his reraise 130BB deep with 67s. The flop came down 269 with a flush draw and he bet 120. This was maybe 30 hands into the match but we’d been reraising and playing big pots so I figured if I raise him he’d jam any draw and any overs and since he was reraising so much I wasn’t worried that his range was skewed to big hands. He jammed, I called, he had AA.

9 minutes later I reraised him with KK he called,we got it in on a 8 high flop (he had jacks)and he turned a jack.

6 minutes later we were 130 bb deep and I reraised him with QQ. The flop came down 8 high with a flush draw I bet he called. The turn made the flush and gave me a flush draw I bet and he jammed KK with no flush draw and his hand held

3 minutes later he c/red me on a A4T flush draw board with 44 and I 3bet AK and got it in

2 minutes later I reraised JQs, the flop came down 9Tx with a flush draw and I bet/called vs his QQ.

It was a rapid and stunning sequence of cold-decks and bad beats and I quit him to focus on some other HU tables that had come up, content to quit him only a 228 PTBB/100 loser. Within the next 20 minutes I dropped another 3 buyins. My favorite one was this sexy river play. A guy who I hadn’t played much against but had datamined as having a low WTSD% limped UTG, the SB completed, and I checked 8Js. The flop came down 25J rainbow and I donked for the pot and the limper called. The turn came a 9 that gave me a flush draw and I checked. He bet and I called. The river came an offsuit 4 and I checked and he made a standard bet of around 170. I figured his most likely hand was a better jack and if I c/red all in for another 700 he’d fold. So I c’red him all in and he tanked. To the last second. And called with a set of deuces. The fact that he almost folded the absolute best non-nut hand he could have there made me like my bluff a lot but the fact that he had a set and called made me not so happy.  After the hand he asked me in chat if it was a value bet or a bluff and I decided not to dignify that stupid question with a response.

Anyway, long story short is I played for 7 more hours and ended up the day +2k. A lot of people think it’s easy to be a pro poker player but in actuality it can be extremely demanding. For a good 4 hours I was stuck and every time I made a little run to only be down 4k (which is something I’m normally indifferent to either way: 4 buy-ins one way or another is a “meh” session and the bigger wins/losses are the ones that I care about) I’d lose constantly and everything would go wrong. But instead of giving up I kept on playing, forcing myself to put in more hands than I have in a long time. I game selected well, played 6 tables, and ended up the day up 2 buyins despite being 5k below equity on my all-ins according to PokerEV. I’m not only pleased with myself for recouping my losses, but also happy that I had the determination to keep playing and keep playing well despite losing so much so quick.

8:03: Barack starts off his opening comments by paying homage to John Edwards, noting the valuable contribution Edwards made by bringing issues of poverty to the presidential campaign. Looks like somebody’s angling for an endorsement.

8:06: Barack’s “90 second” speech is still going

8:07: Fish minreraises me with 77, then check/raises AK9 with a flush draw. I shove all in with K9 and he calls.

8:08: Something about health care.

8:09: I reraise AK and bet a 9high flop and think about calling it off when my opponent pushes but his aggression factor is way too low.

8:10: Barack says his plan doesn’t mandate health care, so if you don’t want health care you don’t need to get it. I used to think health care was -EV and didn’t want it, but apparently the economies of scale involved when your insurer negotiates for pharmaceutical goods lowers prices enough that they offset your expected loss from paying premiums (you don’t get the same lower prices if you’re not in on the health care plan)

8:11: Get it in with KK vs JJ on a 9 high flop and lose. That pot would have covered like a half a year’s worth of health insurance. Sigh.

8:13: All of a sudden 3 fish sit down and now I’m going from 5-tabling on my laptop to 8-tabling, and the site I have 4 tables on doesn’t re-size. If Hillary can get resizable tables for me, she’s got my vote

8:14 Just kidding. I don’t vote. I think it’s fundamentally irrational (I used to run a debate case advocating non-voting but had to retire it because it turns out to be unfair to the opposition to make them defend wasting your time with no benefits)

8:15: Fish doubles up then I bluff him in a big pot and he says “gg.” I try getting him to stay and he says “Honestly, just too tired mate.” I get him to admit that he wouldn’t be too tired if he were stuck or even, and he admits that he’s a hit-and-runner. It’s a nice moral victory as he leaves with $600 of my money

8:18: Hillary looks wack in HD. When Nixon and Kennedy debated in the first ever televised debates people who watched the debates thought JFK did better because he was younger and Nixon had a bad makeup set-up and looked awful while people who heard it over the radio thought Nixon won. In this new era of HDTV and with nobody listening over the radio I wonder if a wrinkly-faced pale chick with a lot of make-up can avoid losing ground to a younger and healthier looking opponent. I guess it doesn’t matter either way, because both of these candidates look like L’Oreal models when standing next to John McCain

8:19: I had the jesus seat on a 49/3/.8 fish with 400BB effective stacks and he left. Sigh

8:33: Obama can’t stop dropping Kennedy references

8:45: Apparently whether or not illegal immigrants get driver’s licenses is a really big deal to some people. Que?

9:01: The candidates are asked about why they should be elected “CEO of the nation.” Hillary points out that Bush was an awful president despite executive experience and then Obama makes a joke about Romney’s poor “Return on Investment” during the presidential campaign. I guess Obama used to play sit and go’s.

9:03: Hillary responds to Ted Kennedy’s endorsement of Obama by pointing out that she’s got some other Kennedys’ endorsement. That would be great for her if anybody gave a crap about any Kennedy other than Ted and JFK (who’s dead and not able to endorse anybody).