Hey everybody. Time for an update on my life.

What's up party people? It's been a while since I've made a new entry in my blog so here is an update on what's been going on with me for the last month and my plans for the future.

As some of you might know, I was the vault manager at the Long Beach convention center for 10 years. Quite a fucking grind. I was working 50-60 hours a week at times and I was a salaried employee which means that my paychecks were the same every two weeks regardless of how many hours I put in. Well, May 23rd was my last day. I finally got tired of it and decided to resign from the company. I had no other job lined up at the time, I just decided that I'd had enough and it was time to do something else.

For the last 6 weeks I'v just been playing a lot of poker. Well, a lot for me anyways. I've played about 250 MTTs and 225+ SNGs in those 6 weeks with some cash games mixed in as well. I joined a training site to help with my game and have been putting in some good work. I'm seeing some improvement already and have had some close calls in some pretty good tournies. Most of you know that I live in freakin' micro land (my average buy-in over the last 2 years is $6) but I've been moving up the chain a little bit. Actually, just yesterday, I cashed in both the $27.50 50k guaranteed and the $33 20k guaranteed on Poker Stars. Before those, the biggest buy-ins I'd ever cashed in was a $26 on Full Tilt and a $16.50 on Stars. Now time to FT some shit!

As for what's been going on in those 6 weeks outside of poker, I'm getting ready to move into a new house in Buena Park next week. It's a nice 3br 2ba house with nice yards, a good size garage and a hella huge livingroom. I'll put up some pics on P5s after we move in and get everything set up. Pretty stoked on that. It will be a nice upgrade from my 2br 2ba condo that I'm in now.

As for the employment situation, I didn't have anything lined up when I turned in my resignation to my previous job. I had no plan either. After thinking about it for a while, I decided that I want to be a poker dealer. Not only will this help my poker game, but believe it or not, I will be making more money working less hours and doing something that I will most likely enjoy. Luckily too, thru some P5s connections, I have a pretty good in at Hawaiian Gardens Casino and will most likely be dealing there. I'm gonna take like another month or so off after I get moved into the new house just to play a bunch more poker before I get started at the new job. I plan to update my blog every night after I move into the new place before I go to bed. I'll just recap my days tournies and any interesting everyday shit that happens and then after I start dealing, I'm sure I'll have some cool stories to tell about that.

That's all for now kiddos,

Greg "SICKTIGHT311" Benoit

PocketFives Open Saturday, June 7th @ 2:30pm Eastern time!!!!!

I plan on playing as a blogger in the PocketFives Open. P5s is adding prizes for the poker bloggers out there. The PocketFives Poker Forum is source of the best online poker rankings in the world.In addition, PocketFives has a member list that includes the best players in online poker, including top poker players such as JohnnyBax and ElMastermind.Registered:1896867315

Everybody else come out and play. There are gonna be some WSOP main event seats up for grabs as well as a bunch of other great prizes. If you aren't a member of PocketFives, sign up at www.pocketfives.com

I like the new 180-player sit and go's on Poker Stars

There have been many petitions on http://www.pocketfives.com/ trying to get Poker Stars to bring back the $10+1 non-turbo 180-mans. Well today, they brought them back and also added a $2.20 turbo 180-man. That's cool because a lot of people like to grind the 180's and now there are a variety of stakes to choose from. I played 3 of the $2.20 turbo 180's tonight and on the 3rd one.................


PokerStars Tournament #87236769, No Limit Hold'emBuy-In: $2.00/$0.20 180 players
Total Prize Pool: $360.00
Tournament started - 2008/05/05 - 02:42:02 (ET)

Dear SICKTIGHT311,

You finished the tournament in 1st place.A $108.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account.You earned 181.41 tournament leader points in this tournament.

For information about our tournament leader board, see our web site athttp://www.pokerstars.com/poker/tournaments/leader-board/Congratulations!

Thank you for participating.

WEEEEEEEEEEEE. Hopefully my 6 week stretch of running bad is coming to an end. I also went pretty deep in the $11 Midnight Madness on Full Tilt tonight finishing 55th out of 1,529 people for $33. I min-cashed the 2100 $5 NLHE on Stars and as I'm writing this I'm also in possesion of a good stack in a $1 rebuy on Full Tilt. Hopefully I can get rolling again. The past month or so has been very frustrating.

Good luck and happy days to all of you.

**EDIT** Went very deep in the 10 cent turbo @0400 at Stars. LOL. I got AQ sucked out on by AJ all-in preflop and lost. Would have had a 5th place stack with 2 tables left. :(

PokerStars Tournament #87142177, No Limit Hold'emBuy-In: $0.10
1343 players
$50.00 added to the prize pool by PokerStars.com
Total Prize Pool: $184.30 Tournament started - 2008/05/05 - 04:00:00 (ET)
Dear SICKTIGHT311,
You finished the tournament in 19th place.A $0.65 award has been credited to your Real Money account.You earned 45.74 tournament leader points in this tournament.

For information about our tournament leader board, see our web site athttp://www.pokerstars.com/poker/tournaments/leader-board/

Congratulations!Thank you for participating.

Dealing with variance A.K.A. running bad for an abnormal amount of time.

So it's nothing huge but I've been running bad since the 9th of April. 3 weeks now. A run that has seen me drop 15% of my bankroll. This downswing occurred during a run of 97 MTTs and 24 SNGs. I've cashed in 21 of the MTTs and 4 of the SNGs. Not far off my normal in the money percentages but I haven't had any nice scores. I've bubbled a couple 180-mans as well as a couple 180-man final tables. I got 25th out of 1,875 people in the Midnight Madness on Full Tilt for $77 when first place was $3,400. Took a very sick beat to get knocked out of that when the pot I lost would have guaranteed me a final table. It's been a lot of that. I'm getting close to some very good scores because I've stepped up my average buy-in a little but I keep getting the door slammed in my face when it matters. Key pots are just not going my way right now.

So far this has not affected my game as far as tilting or playing differently. I'm sticking to my gameplan and what has been working for me which I'm proud of. I just have to ride it out. I've been through an extended bad run before, about a year ago, and I guess you just have to ride it out.

One of the things I'm going to do in the next couple weeks is decrease my volume a little bit and do some other things outside of poker. Like tomorrow for example, I'm playing golf with some friends at 11 in the morning. The weather has been great here in Long Beach, CA lately and when we played 2 weeks ago it gave me a little bit of the golf bug. That combined with the fact that my cable provider finally got The Golf Channel back and I'm really into golf again. I found that after working the Long Beach Grand Prix for 4 straight 18 hour days (in which I didn't play at all) when I finally got around to playing again after 4 days off, I was really excited and focused.

Hopefully it will end soon. I've been getting close to some nice scores and when one of these swing pots goes my way deep in a tournament, the grind will all be worth it.

If anyone has any suggestions or things that they do to try and counteract a bad run, feel free to leave a comment.

Adios,

SICKTIGHT311

Time for an entry about some other people

So I gotta give some props to my boys. FLB-PUNKER as some of you from http://www.pocketfives.com/ know, is my roommate Ian. On February 11th, he deposited $25 on Poker Stars. 6 weeks later he has just over $400. There are a couple things I think that have contributed to this sweet little micro run. I used to try to give him advice and he'd say something to the effect of "It's cool man, I got it." He wouldn't listen. Now he listens, we discuss hands, we help each other. He rarely visited P5s. Now he's been posting more there, although mostly in OT, but being involved in the community, railing other P5ers and talking to some of them via AIM has certainly helped.

As for how that roll was built, he's won 21 seats to the Sunday Hundred Grand in sattys for those. He got 1oth place in a $3 MTT with 1,455 people. Final tabled a $3 HORSE tournament. Final tabled a $4.40 180-man. Final tabled a $1 RAZZ tournament. He also has been doing very well in $1.10 and $3.25 45-man SNGs. He basically just playing good all around poker.

Now on to someone you guys probably don't know. Ryan Snyder A.K.A. SQUADFATHER. For some reason when he signed up for P5s a few months ago he put his screen name as Ryan Snyder. Oh well, we'll see if we can have Adam switch it. Anyways, Ryan has been best friends with me and Ian forever. Ian and Ryan knew each other since they were like 3 years old. Went to school together, played little league baseball together, yada yada yada. Well they got separated from schools in high school. That is where I met Ian, we joined the golf team and became very good friends. Well, one day whilst playing against Ryan's school, Ian introduced us on the driving range and a trio was formed.

SQUADFATHER has been playing online for a couple years now and he's one of those guys we all know who had bad bankroll management. The classic shot taker. He had some decent scores but always lost his roll. About two months ago I transfered him $25 on Poker Stars. That is now just over $300. We had him join P5s, put him on a bankroll management plan, although once in a while he steps a little bit outside it but not much. He's been pretty good about it. He's been killing the $4.40 180-mans. He has a 1st, 2nd, 5th, 7th and 8th in like 20 tries. In one of his "shots" he played the $5 rebuy on Stars. He got 60th in a field of 2,912 for $86.

The three of us have called ourselves the LBC Squad for a while now. We play HORSE home games and a variety of other games at my house. We are all commited to learning and getting better and I think the 3 of us are playing the best poker we've ever played right now and we expect it to only get better.

SHIP THE YAMS

pz,

ST311

Balls deep

So I've been getting deep in some big fields lately and just overall in general. I used to get a lot of min-cashes and not reach the good money very often. I think a lot of it has to do with my play when I'm shortstacked and also when I'm in between 10 and 20 big blinds. When I have between 10 and 20 big blinds, I'm generally not raising preflop unless I'm really committed to going all the way with the hand. If I fall below 10 big blinds, well then it's time to find a good hand in a good spot and just stick it all in.

If the antes haven't kicked in yet and I'm down to 7-8 big blinds, I'm not shoving crap. You can still be patient, there isn't as much in the pot to win. Once the antes kick in and you are 10 BBs or less, I'm just looking for any spot that I think has potential for one reason or another. Maybe the BB is a nit, maybe you have 2 limpers, maybe it folds to you in middle position and you have J-10ss. Whatever it is, try to find a spot where when you shove, you have a reason for doing so. Don't just blindly shove because you are short. Have a reason for every play you make.

If I'm above 20 big blinds I will make calculated steals based on who is in the blinds and my postition. I'm not going to raise stacks who are very short. I'm looking to pick blinds of the medium stacks. Stacks whos sizes are such that you can fold to a re-raise if you were raising with air. If a shorty shoves and you are priced in it's just spew to be raising their blinds with junk.

Date Buy-in Tournament/Event Place Entrants Winnings

3/3/08 $3.30 NL Hold em 20 1338 $14.05

3/3/08 $1.10 Razz 14 216 $3.56

3/4/08 $4.40 NL Hold em 180 5 180 $46.80

3/4/08 $0.50 NL Hold em 16 3652 $5.48

3/4/08 $2.20 NL Hold em 21 2087 $10.44

3/10/08 $11.00 NL Hold em 6 621 $263.93

3/14/08 $4.40 Pot Limit Omaha 7 463 $70.38

Those are my deep finishes for the month. Hopefully I can keep it rollin.

F beanie

One of the most screwy tournaments I've ever played

Tonight/this morning I played the $11 NL on Stars at 0300. I had only 1,670 at the first break. Barely more than my starting stack. Then in the 75/150 and the 100/200 levels I went on a nice run and got up to 12,000. When we were approaching the money bubble (top 90 paid, we were down to about 105) I got disconnected from Stars. My internet was working. I was posting on www.pocketfives.com. I don't know what the hell happened but 30-40 minutes later when it finally let me back on I had blinded down to 4,600 at the 400/800 level and we were in the money with 53 people left.

Well, I tripled up shortly after and then doubled that on the next orbit. Before I knew it I was in 4th with 22 remaining. I went pretty card dead and my steals weren't working and I started getting short again. I made it to the final table in 8th place out of the 9.

On the 3rd hand of the final table I get disconnected again. This time for only about 10-15 minutes. When I got back on we were 8 handed and I had 20,000 chips at the 2000/4000 level. I doubled that and doubled again later and somehow managed to take 6th place for $264.

Who knows what would have happened had I never got disconnected. Maybe I take a bad beat somewhere along the way and never make the FT. Maybe I make the FT with a lot more chips. I'll never know but it was an interesting ride for sure.


Later days