Jimmy Fricke

Today was the $500 Stud/Stud8/Razz tournament at the Aussie Millions and I took first place for almost $17k. A small field of 96 players, but winning a tournament always feels good.

Melbourne is great again this year, and people are being incredibly nice (especially the casino staff).

I'm pretty tired tonight since we played the whole tournament in one day, but I'm playing the 1k LHE tomorrow so hopefully I don't get back upstairs until late again.

Lots of tournaments to go, taking another one down would be cool beans.

I'm in LAX on my way to Melbourne once again for the Aussie Millions. I'm going to be updating my blog regularly for this tournament, and since I'm doing all the prelims (hopefully) I should be updating fairly frequently. This year I'm staying in the Crown Towers which I heard are phenomenal, so the next post you get from me will be when I arrive at the hotel.

I hope this trip goes well, probably moreso than I usually do, and hopefully I don't insult the entire continent while I'm over there this time.

I should probably have something thrown at me. I have been up to absolutely nothing over the past few months, and definitely not stuff that you guys would probably have been interested to hear. I'm still on the worst downswing of my career with few final tables and no wins, but I decided to post this hand history of the winner take all 20 person $5k freezeout on pokerstars. I thought the tournament was soft and I had a good chance to win it, but in the end I didn't get enough action with the right hands and I was playing 5 handed with some very tough customers. I'm not sure if I'll play this weekend, but I'd sure like to.

http://gobboboy.homestead.com/files/gobbo5k.txt

If the link goes down, let me know. I don't know how much traffic my crappy little hosting site can handle.

14900 after the first day. I was very very card dead today, and hopefully I get some hands during O8 and LHE tomorrow so I can get some real chips. I certainly held my own during the stud rounds, and hardly ever scooped pots. The biggest pots I won were near the end of the day when I tripled up with a rivered full house in O8 and then won a big pot with a 76 low in razz against someone who thought I paired up.

I talked to Jennifer Harman the last hour or so of the day, as she was on my left, and she's really really nice. Makes me rethink a lot of things I think about the big name players.

Take care all.

Allo allo, it's gobbo reporting from jolly old England. I decided today I have too much money (It's a joke) and I should give $5k to some poor shmuck playing the $5k horse tomorrow at the WSOP Europe. This will be my first bracelet event, and the first one outside of Vegas. If I win this, my life will change a hell of a lot, so wish me luck. I'm playing all 3 events, and you can follow most of the action at pokernews. Hopefully I won't be back until tomorrow night, but we'll certainly see. The structure for this tournament is amazing.

London is expensive as hell, and if I don't pull a winning trip that would suck. Barcelona went poorly, as I played very badly in the main event and didn't run good enough to win either of the smaller events I played there. Congrats to Adam Junglen and Greg Dyer who took 6th and 3rd respectively though. They're both sick good.

Wish me luck tomorrow everyone.

A lot of people have commented on the fact that I didn't actually post a report every day at Turning Stone, and that came from the fact that my sleep schedule turned to hell when it shouldn't have and my routine of writing before going to sleep was thrown completely out the window. So, to recap the whole trip:

I won the $325+40 bounty tournament. I call this a win, though some will point out that I chopped the tournament while headsup. I had a 5:1 chiplead and the tournament staff in all their infinite wisdom decided not to pay the dealers to deal after 2 AM, so they completely forced us to stop until the next day at 4 PM. Now, I never chop unless I get a very good deal. It's not because I have a policy on not chopping or I disagree with the philosophy of it, it's because people don't often give you good deals and you might as well play if you think you have an edge over your chip equity. I definitely know I had an edge headsup and obviously a huge edge in chips, but my options were:

1) Chop then, play the 6max the next day.
2) Come back the next day at 4 PM to play out a 30 minute headsup match deep in the 6max tournament if I'm still in, taking 30 minutes of blinds/antes out of my stack.

Completely ridiculous, but I decided to chop because I didn't want to have to come back to play out the tournament the next day when I could use my time for better things. Unfortunately I ended up giving up too much money in the chop because I did the quick math wrong in my head. Oh well.

Next thing that happened was my good friend Matt LaGarde got 2nd in the 1k tournament for $36k. Good job Matt, much more success in the future for you please.

RandAllin/Randal Flowers chopped the 5k event for $105k while 4 handed. Great score Randal, hope to see you crush live tournaments more in the future. JSchnett/Jeff Schnettler also final tabled the same tournament, so good job him too.

Overall it was a good trip, but I don't know if I'm going back to TS since my schedule for the rest of this year is super packed and I turn 21 next year and thus there will be a lot better choices for me than turning stone. We'll see.

I leave Sunday for barcelona and the EPT there. Talk to you all before I go.

The $325 bounty tournament yesterday ended in success, with me taking it down for $22,500. The field got about 300 players and I ran very very good throughout the whole thing. At 150/300/50 blinds I started with 4k in chips and two hours later I was sitting with 100k in front of me thanks to a few very good situations that came about.

I chip up to around 12k with 0evg0 on my left has the button when the bb is sitting out for this hand, so his 400 is dead with big antes. I pick up QJcc in the CO and decide to limp because of all the chips in the middle, taking away evg's chance to 3bet shove against my open which I fully expect would happen. He limps, which I think he's doing with a wide array of hands, and the sb completes. 3 to the flop of J87 rainbow with no club. Check, I bet 1000 with the intent to 3bet over evg's raise. He raises to 3800 and he started with about 500 chips less than me. Small blind folds and I shove and he snapcalls with a set of sevens, which I honestly thought there was no way he could have because I would expect him to raise preflop with 77, 88 and JJ. If I were behind, I'd expect to be behind 87, T9, J8 and maybe KJ. Fortunately for me, evg runs worse than anyone ever and it comes running eights so the board is J8788 and I counterfeited his set. So I'm up to about 25k and win a few pots to put me at about 35k when the following hand occurs.

The only two aggro players on my left, and it's pretty clear that they want to 3bet me with a very wide range. I pick up 55 utg at 300/600/75 and make it 1700 on a very tight bb. Folds to the guy two to my left who makes it 5800 and it's clear from the way he 3bet me that he barely looked at his cards, almost in passing. Folds to the bb who was very short for a long time and finally has about 30k in chips after going on a huge rush. He looks at his cards and in a cheerful voice says "I call!" This led me to believe he very very likely did not have AA/KK. With so much in the pot, a decent amount of implied odds to what I thought was a mid-high pair against the bb and possibly the reraiser having a hand or flopping something to bet with, I decided to call. The flop comes 543 with two clubs and we check to the guy two to my left who bets 14k. The bb shoves with JJ, I announce "I would like to re-wager" and shove, and unfortunately for the reraiser he flopped a flush draw and had to call off the rest. I turn a 5 and the river's the ace of spades, cause it's always the fucking ace of spades.

So I'm up to the chiplead at about 100k and from then on I just keep chipping up and getting in amazing situations against the shorter stacks. I didn't really get played back at and picked up cards when I needed it. The interesting thing was, once we got to 2 AM we were playing HU and I had a 5:1 chiplead over a regular live player here at TS and the tournament director all of a sudden said "okay, we're done." He was making us quit at 2 AM because it said on the structure sheet that we would have to. We would come back the following day at 4 PM to play the rest out. There was easily less than half an hour of play left, and honestly I would've preferred coming back the next day to play but I decided to be a nice guy and chop with him. Unfortunately I think being up for a long time on not much sleep screwed up my math because I gave him about $1k more than I should've.

But today was uneventful in the 6max, even though I was looking forward to it a lot. I was actually out in the first level when I lost a huge pot when JJ lost to KK on a ten high board against pretty much the only player at the table I would be going broke against, then lost a 2500 chip pot with AQdd v 99. What can ya do?

Tomorrow's a $500, should be fun, hopefully I can get lots of sleep for it though. I'll let you all know how it goes.

Alright, quick entry because I'm very tired and need to sleep for tomorrow's tournament ($325 bounty tournament).

First hand of the tournament, guy open shoves blind from the cutoff. Structure was pretty good with 2500 chips per rebuy/addon but we couldn't rebuy until after the first hand. So he shoves 2500 and the lady next to him apparently folds AQ even though she knows he's blind. I call in the bb with A9dd and he has J9cc and he hits a jack. Then later on after double rebuying I call a small reraise with 54s and flop a straight on a 632 board against aces and tens and they both open shove into me. I only had about 10k and bled down to about 7500, then took the double addon for 5k more and had a manageable stack for the 50/100 level.

I played really well again today but was very card dead, and shortly after moving to a new table, a middle position player makes it 500 at the 75/150 level with about 10k behind. I call on the button with QQ and the bb also calls despite only having about 1600 behind. Flop comes 873, he shoves his 1600 in and MP calls after about 10 seconds. I also just call because he's unlikely to call a shove with anything I have beat and is never folding anything I lose to. Turn is the 9h which is a really ugly card, so when he checks I bet 3k to get it HU with the allin guy. He folds and the bb shows A8o and spikes an 8 on the river to stay alive. I was down to about 8k and after I folded to the 100/200 level, I raised two EP limpers to 1100 with AKo and got reraised by BigEgypt, so I stuck it in and lost to his QQ.

I'm really looking forward to the shorthanded tournament on Tuesday, but tomorrow will be fun too. Take care all.

Sitting here in my hotel room at an ungodly hour (5 AM) when I have a live 200r to be playing in five hours. Turning Stone casino in Verona, New York was the first place I played real live poker in March of last year. I really enjoyed meeting all my friends here, and this trip has a TON of crazy talent here. There are a bunch of tournaments that are going on so I'm just going to let you all know how things go.

Note, this place isn't Vegas. It's only 18+ because they can't serve alcohol and the stakes aren't going to be massive. But as for gaining experience, I definitely picked up basically all of my early live experience here and met some great friends.

Anyway, today's tournament was the smallest of the series, a $300+40 that actually picked up almost 500 runners. Hopefully that means the bigger events will also be pretty big. I registered late, so I was stuck on a table that included two people I knew, one of whom is my friend Nath Pizzolatto, who picked up 2nd place to Bill Chen last year in the $2500 shorthanded NLHE event. He's definitely has a reputation for being very aggressive, and this is a hand that I played against him in the first level.

25/50 blinds, effective stacks are about 5000. He open limps, which is strange for him but not completely crazy. A fairly predictable player limps behind him and I limp on the button with T8dd. The bb checks and the flop comes 843 with two hearts. The bb checks and Nath bets out 125. I expected him to be betting basically anything in this spot, and my eights absolutely crush his range, especially since I think it's bigger than any eight he would be limping. I ruled out pocket pairs and thought he pretty much has to have a small-mid suited connector in this spot. I made it 375, the others folded and he called very quickly.

The turn was the 2s, putting two flush draws out there and completing the only obvious straight draw. He checks and I bet 700, which in hindsight is definitely too big in retrospect. I should've bet about 500 and would get the same information. He quickly raises to 2k, and at this point I tell myself he either has 65s, 43s or a mid level flush draw. The main thing though that tells me he probably has a stronger hand is his raise size. In my experience, anything between a minraise and a 3x raise is damn near the nuts in the player's mind as long as they have money behind. Nath isn't exactly committed to the hand, but in his mind there's no way he's folding once he makes that raise. I don't really think I've seen anyone make a really small raise like this and then fold to further action if the bettor has already defined his hand thoroughly.

In the actual hand, I make a quick call but regretted after the hand was over (and I'll at least pretend I'm not being results oriented). I don't think Nath is messing around enough this early to make calling on the turn profitable, especially with the read I had about his raise size.

So I called, the river is the Js and he bets the rest very quickly and I tanked for a while but eventually ended up making a fairly easy fold (yay being able to fold). Nath told me later he did have 65s, so take that for what it's worth.

Unfortunately I wasn't in the tournament very long, since right before the third level I am down to about 2500 after the Nath hand when a very loose regular limps from EP for 75 at the 50/75 level (strange level but it really does give us a lot more play). The guy behind him limps and I pick up red kings in late position. I make it 400 and the loose player calls. Flop T76 with two hearts and he checks to me. I bet 500, he makes it 1700, I shove and he snapcalls AT and hits an ace on the river to make it an early day.

Alright, I'm going to try to sleep before the tournament tomorrow so I'll let you all know how that goes. Take care.

I had a conversation today that involved the amount of focus that I have at the beginning of poker tournaments. I've always had a bad attention span and I've actually been told that it's possible that I have some form of ADD. This didn't come as much of a surprise, considering that everyone and their mothers are being diagnosed with it these days, and I think for my profession in particular it's going to end up costing me in the long run.

I've always thought that discipline is my problem, and that's definitely true. My weight problem is mostly caused by the fact that I'm too lazy to get up and exercise when I should for basically no reason. In the past six months I've had almost no motivation to play poker like I did before basically because I was so worried about going busto. Now, thankfully, I don't have to worry about that, but a friend of mine put it expertly when he said, "You're not a poker player because you say you are, you're a poker player because you play poker and make money off of it." I have definitely not been a poker player in the past six months.

A lot of interesting tournaments are coming up, a lot of them live, and I feel as if I'm being too impatient in the early parts of live tournaments. I definitely play a lot of hands, and most of them are good spots to be playing lots of hands, but some of them aren't and it's in those hands that I tend to spew off a lot of chips. With a combination of being way too results oriented in the moment, I have a tendency to unfocus and start to play bad in the early stages of live tournaments. I have an absolutely amazing record of going deep in the tournament if I make the antes, but unfortunately my play before then has been less than stellar. Both 10k events where I went really deep had the antes starting in the third level (which is something I love, obviously).

So it comes down to lacking discipline to do the things that I know I should be doing, which is true in a lot of parts of my life, and I know other people have problems in it too. Why do I do it? Because I really, really want to win pots. It's a good feeling to drag a huge pot after snapping off a bluff. Making a sick fold doesn't have nearly as good a feeling, does it? I feel like I have incredible instincts but I just don't have the ability to make awesome folds, because when I actually do make a good fold they ALWAYS show a bluff (because bluffing gobboboy certainly is a good play in most positions). As a result, for the next few tournaments I enter I'm going to try to focus, not drink any caffeine, and maybe keep a few trinkets nearby to remind myself that at the top of my game, I'm a good player and need to trust my instincts.

I'm an avid reader of most of the forums on twoplustwo.com, and the Televised Poker forum is definitely not one that's full of particularly good poker players. Most of them are people who are fans of the game but don't actually play it, so a lot of the discussion is one sided to a few players who get shown on TV a lot. To anyone who doesn't really 'get' tournament poker, Phil Hellmuth is probably a god. There was one thread in particular called "Who is the best NL Holdem player in the world?" Phil's name got tossed around a lot and I was one of the adamant people on the opposing side. I've seen people play him in cash and I've talked to a bunch of people who have, and they say he's pretty laughable. Most people will say that he is one of the best at beating weak players in NLHE tournaments though, even though he is weak against the good players. To me, this idea makes no sense.

So, what, are the good online tournaments players not good against the weak players? Of course not. A 'good' player wouldn't be good if they weren't good at exploiting the bad players' tendencies of being bad players. So if a good player is good against other good players, that would make them a great player. How can you be considered the best NLHE tournament player if you're not good at playing against other people who understand tournaments? That would make you a bad POKER player.

I think the reason that so many live pros who obviously don't understand NLHE as a whole go deep in big live tournaments consistently and seem to do well deep in tournaments is that their image as a live pro gets them extra fold equity in all the pots they play. People like Hellmuth have such a table image from television that they get folds maybe 20% more than they should, and in tournaments when you play a lot of pots, that's a hell of a lot of chips you get to pick up without a showdown! The online pros don't get nearly that much respect, and people will play seriously against them. It would be easy to be Phil Hellmuth in tournaments if people always fold to you and then all of a sudden try to bluff you off your monster. That's not to say Phil isn't a good tournament player, he obviously plays a lot of them and has a ton of things that work for him, but figuring out things that get you chips and being a good NLHE tournament player are different. Some things will get you chips but unless you actually know the reasoning behind them it won't make you the best in the world. Some of Phil's commentary at the final table of the main event this year was laughable.

I know my opinions aren't going to be popular, but I don't parse words when I think something is one way. I welcome anyone who thinks I'm wrong and a douchebag to talk to me, but keep it civil. I have no problem having a friendly discussion with people who disagree.