Sensei’s Poker Dojo

My poker career has never been very goal-oriented. I’ve always simply played as much as I cared to play, and let the results be what they may. Occasionally I’d set a monthly goal, or get halfway through a month and decide to press for a certain amount of winnings, but at the end of the month, win or lose, I’d look back and realize that it didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. A month is nothing more than an arbitrary 30ish day period when you play poker cash games for a living, and I’ve trained for years now to keep my eyes on the long run. That being said, I’ve decided in the last week or two to set some goals for myself as 2009 draws to a close:

Goal A: Win $100,000 from October 1 to December 31.
Between a sizeable downswing I ran into around April, a rough WSOP summer, and periods after both where I didn’t put in much volume, my results this year haven’t been as good as I’d like to see. So I want to buckle down and grind more than usual in the next few months and win a hundred grand. I expect to do so playing mostly PLO, with tripledraw and mix games added in depending on game selection. I’ve gotten off to a decent start so far, winning a little under $9k in about 3500 hands. I’ll need to keep putting in plenty of hours to have a shot, but running good in some bigger games wouldn’t hurt.

Goal B: Organize and execute group PLO coaching sessions with KasinoKrime.
I’ve only occasionally done group coaching sessions in the past, but I think that it offers a good opportunity to offer better value to students without losing much quality and individual attention. John and I have put in some work planning it out and I expect it to be awesome. We’re going to offer group coaching together, focusing on small to midstakes players who are looking to either add PLO to their skillset or take their game to the next level. There will likely be multiple levels of long-session groups (2 sessions of 2 hours each, hoping to cover a lot of ground and make significant progress fast) and a few more specific topic offerings (playing cap PLO, transitioning from NLHE to PLO, etc.) that we’ll offer as a single session. I think we’ll be set up and accepting students within the next few weeks, let me know if you’re interested!

Goal C: Qualify for PCA.
I’m not sure how many shots I’ll take at it, seeing as how I dislike tournaments in general and the best satellites are on Sundays when I usually have something more social/outdoorsy to spend my time doing. It was a blast last year though, so I’d like to win a seat and return in January if I can. It sure would be nice to kick off next year with a seven figure score!

Full Tilt Poker $5/$10 $400 Cap Pot Limit Omaha Hi – 5 players – View hand 323216
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Kelly Kim (BB): $568.00
ASAFI12 (UTG): $522.50
Hero (CO): $3005.50
Rivalz (BTN): $400.00
lakky (SB): $658.00

Pre Flop: ($15.00) Hero is CO with A A A A
1 fold, Hero raises to $30, 1 fold, lakky calls $25, 1 fold

Flop: ($70.00) 3 J 7 (2 players)
lakky checks, Hero bets $50, lakky calls $50

Turn: ($170.00) Q (2 players)
lakky checks, Hero checks

River: ($170.00) 6 (2 players)
lakky bets $170, Hero raises to $320, lakky folds

Final Pot: $510.00
Hero shows A A A A (a pair of Aces)
Hero wins $507.00
(Rake: $3.00)

And then he insta-left the table.

Last week I took my semi-customary fall trip to the east coast to visit friends in DC and Durham. It was an excellent trip as usual, revolving primarily around the Durham beer festival. My college friends and I have been to several of these festivals in the past; what better way to spend time with old friends than a sunny afternoon sampling dozens of delicious craft-brewed beers from around the country?

Saturday morning I armed myself with my new moleskine notebook¹ and my new camera, intending to chronicle the event as well as possible before the charge of the afternoon naturally lead to memory loss. Unfortunately I still haven’t figured out how to shrink and upload my pictures, so I can’t share them. The primary contents of the album are faces and shirts greased with barbeque sauce from turkey legs, boisterous group photos, and some shots of us scheming to hop a barrier and run the bases before we were stared down by the young volunteer security guard who was clearly on to our plan. (Fun fact: the event was held on the outfield of the old Durham ballpark where Bull Durham was filmed.)

The notebook, on the other hand, was used to its fullest potential. I used it to chronicle a list of all of the beers I sampled, also rating them between one and five stars. I have listed those ratings below, accompanied by what more specific memories I have of a beer when relevant. I used a half-star interval, which I came to regret halfway through but which may have been a good decision up until that point. The names of Breweries or beers may not be entirely accurate due to haste. Samples were intended to be 2 oz, but most brewers poured more than that.

1 star – Undrinkable (ex: Bud Ice, Schlitz)
1.5 stars – Only if there are no better options (Budweiser, Bud Light)
2 stars – Average (Stella Artois, Pabst Blue Ribbon)
2.5 stars – Slightly interesting (Blue Moon, Dos Equis)
3 stars – Good beer, would drink again
3.5 stars – Quite good (The best beers of many microbreweries will fall in this category and the next)
4 stars – Very good beer, excited to see it
4.5 stars – Memorably delicious
5 stars – Transcendent

Brewery Beer, Rating

• Ska Blonde, 2.5
• Holy Mackerel Golden, 3
• Fort Collins Chocolate Stout, 4 – My bias towards stouts, porters, and IPAs may become apparent as you read on
• Dale’s Gordon Red, 3.5 – Dale’s (more accurately, Oskar Blues) makes some of the best canned beer in the country.
• Widmer Drifter, 3.5
• Sweetwater IPA, 3
• Breckenridge Oatmeal Stout, 3.5
• Tibet Lhasa Lhasa Lager, 2 – I was compelled to try this beer because it was of Tibetan origin, but, as expected, it tasted like most light American lagers.
• Saranac Pumpkin, 3.5
• Peak Organic Nut  Brown Ale, 3
• Blue Point IPA, 4.5
• Blue Point Oatmeal Stout (cask), 5 – An amazing beer, they had just opened the cask before we sampled it. Perfectly balanced, smooth, and delicious, even at lukewarm temperature
• Duck Rabbit Marzen, 4
• Duck Rabbit Baltic Porter, 3.5
• Foothills Double IPA, 4.5 – Maybe the most well-balanced double IPA I’ve ever had (watch out Dogfish Head 90 minute!)
• Foothills Porter, 3.5
• Highland Kashmir IPA, 3.5
• Highland Gaelic Ale, 3.5 – Perhaps my most nostalgic sampling of the day. This beer and I spent a lot of time together on Thursday nights my senior year at Duke.
• Asheville Amber, 3
• French Broad Wee Heavy, 3
• Kind Beer Belgian Red, 3.5
• Kind Beer Pale Ale, 3
• RJ Rockers Bald Eagle Brown, 3
• Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye, 3.5
• Bosteels Tripel, 4
• Great Divide Yeti, 4
• North Coast Brother Thelonius, unrated (previous referenced in this post)
• Left Hand Smokejumper, 4
• Malheur 12, 4
• Dogfish Head Punkin, 3 – I was disappointed both by the Dogfish Head offerings (only two modest beers) and the flavor of the Punkin. It was certainly good, but not as good as other pumpkin beers I had tasted earlier.
• Blowing Rock Winter Ale, 3.5
• Victory Baltic Thunder, 3.5
• Mother Earth Wit, 3.5
• Mother Earth IPA, 4
• Blueprint Rastafarye, unrated – My handwriting at this point is clearly deteriorating, and I have given up on rating beers, opting instead to try as many as I can before we have to leave at 4.
• Fort Collins IPA, unrated
• Holy Mackerel Mack and Black, unrated

Upon reviewing my ratings I noticed a greater amount of variance early in the session, when my taste buds are fresher. In the middle segment the ratings cluster around 3.5, both because my palate was overwhelmed by delicious beer and because my selections tended more towards beers I expected to be very good than beers located the closest to my glass²

The standouts of the session were clearly Blue Point and Foothills. I had not heard of Blue Point before the festival, but their beers were astoundingly good. The brewery is located on Long Island, surprisingly, but their website was too poor for me to obtain useful info from so I gave up. If you see some beers of theirs somewhere, you should try them! Foothills was also new to me, though it had been hyped up by my friend Sam. Apparently located nearby in Winston-Salem, they had a wide array of top-notch offerings.

On the whole, it was an excellent afternoon. I got to see many old friends, enjoy some excellent southeastern fall weather, and sample all of those beers. The only downside was that the hangover kicked in around 9 PM (but I was back at full strength for Sunday brunch!)

1. Apparently moleskine notebooks are associated with hipsters? I had no idea, otherwise I might have avoided it. It is a pretty fantastic notebook. [↩]
2. Actually a plastic cup. They used to give out a glass. Lame. [↩]