Jeffrey Romano Blog

Yesterday I won the $10k guarantee, otherwise known as the duralast invitational. That’s twice this year, I’m going to keep a tally of how many times I win it in a year. I’m estimating 25 times, that would be cool. Maybe if I hit a stretch goal of 30 times they will actually rename it to what it should be called. I ran hot at the final table, winning 2 flips and A6 vs JJ 3 handed. The guys at the table kept telling me how bad I was and I explained to them it was my first time playing, obviously it wasn’t. Sometimes you get to the final tables and you are just destined to win, I love it when that happens, and I’m sure Joe Cada does too.

Right now I’m at a crucial point in the year. I haven’t saved up nearly enough money for the WSOP. If you are planning on going this year its about the time where you should be trying to bank as much money as you can. I’m trying to save at least 5k a month for tournaments. If I go there and brick every single event I don’t care, at least I gave it a shot. If I don’t give it a shot then I will be really disappointed. So winning this tournament is a great way to start the month and it puts me 1/4 of the way towards my monthly goal. Time to really start grinding.

January is generally the worst month of the year because its so damn cold out. Things are only going to heat up from here. Or maybe I can just luck my way through a sunday million, that would be fun too.

You may have already seen this but its the biggest televised pot ever, kind of cool and a ridiculous cooler for Ivey.

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Man I hate Sundays. I used to love them, but the past 3 months I’ve lost over $2000 on just about every Sunday. What a bankroll killer, oh well variance will kick in and I’ll win something for $50,000+, until then I’ll scrap along.

People are playing really different in MTTs these days. I think the type of player who is just getting comfortable in them and really starting to become creative is the one who is getting hurt the most. I only say this because I’m seeing some pretty good regulars make some serious mistakes. When you have 15 to 30 big blinds you cannot raise light with re-shove stacks behind you. I’m seeing guys raising 2-4x the big blind and folding to a 15bb re-shove from later position. The hardest stack to play is at that awkward level of 15 to 30 blinds. When I’m at this stage I play very tight. As soon as I break that 15 big blinds I’ll start shoving suited connectors, most pairs, and aces in position. However in order for this to work I try to keep a tight image so that I get hands like, KQ A3-AT and small pairs to fold. If you do not have this tight image then you have way less fold equity, and therefor you must tighten up your shoving range. I’d rather have to play tighter with more chips than when I’m getting down to a short stack.

I’m taking a week off from watching any T.V. or playing any video games. Its not 3 degrees outside anymore so hopefully this will encourage me to go outside or something. In a couple weeks it will mark the end of my first year as a professional gambler, and I have no regrets.

This is a long clip from one of the best movies of all time. It kind of reminds me of a final table where its down to 3 people and you just have to have the jump on someone else. Clint is always relaxed and always has the edge. These movies were filmed in the countryside of Spain and have really nice landscapes. Hopefully its not too small to see.

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I finally quit cake sit n goes. I’ve had enough of playing the same 50 people over and over and over again. Two days ago I switched to grinding the 180, 90, and 45 mans on pokerstars, as well as many mtts between the two sites. So far I’m up about $2,000 in 2 days and I final tabled the $20 cubed on pokerstars after losing a flip for chip lead with 11 left.

I have to say my life is 100x better. I’m running a little bit above EV but that has nothing to do with it. There are just 10x as many fish in multi table sit n goes as there are in the 6 max. For anyone who is trying to build their bankroll from 10k to 100k I would very much stress avoiding regular sit n goes. I used to believe that the 6max were the key to building bankrolls, and they were until they got run over by regulars. Even the $16-$72 have at least 2 regs that are good and 1 that is a pro, its worthless to play them…

Anyways I’ve been getting back into routines. Waking up, going to the gym, getting a coffee, playing call of duty/fifa, playing poker for 8-15 hours a day, making dinner, watching a movie, sleep, repeat….A lot of being a grinder is seeing value in everything. Being able to grind out things like gold chip satellites that will take 2-3 hours to finish and pay out a free $150 tournament seat. They suck, but if you play a lot of them they will pay out in the long run. Last year I made about $4000 worth of tournament buyins from grinding gold chip satellites. I even won 2 WSOP packages from gold chips/ gold cards for about $14,000, 2 years in a row. But I’ve taken this freeroll business and applied it to my daily life. With my Bank of America account I have the keep the change program where it rounds up all the change from your transaction and puts it into your savings account. Just about every single day I go to Dunkin’ Donuts and get a medium coffee that costs $2.02. That means over the course of a year I’m going to spend around $700 give or take on just coffee. By using my debit card I’m saving $350 a year, which is half a months rent. I know this is small, but you have to adopt the Japanese idea of continuous improvement. Just think if you can do something like this for 10 different items, you would be saving $3500 a year. Its a lot better to take many small steps in improvement, than 1 giant step.

Got no vids but I got some music…

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For some reason ever since I went to Europe I’ve become the biggest fan of mustard on the planet. I used to love ketchup, but now I almost don’t even like it compared to mustard. I guess it was in Munich that I found my passion for mustard. They have this huge open market where you can get just about any food you want, fresh! This includes home made mustards, cheeses, jams, fruits, everything. When we woke up in the morning we would hit this market and get sausage for breakfast, loaded up with mustard, then walk 15 miles. Unlike ketchup, you can get mustard in a wide variety of flavors. If you are sick then get it super hot and clear out your sinus, if you have a really unique taste of a food just get a mild mustard to compliment it. Anyways, I think it would be cool to open up a shop called, “Jeff’s Mustard”, really original. I don’t know how much business it would get, so I might have to open up a poker sweat shop in the backroom.

Since I’ve been playing poker so much I’ve started to even sleep poker. In my dreams I go over hand situations and actually think them out. About 90% of the hand histories I go over are when I’m heads up at the final table of the main event, would be nice right. My long term plan right now is to open up a mustard shop so that I don’t have to dream about poker. I play enough, 10 hours a day, I shouldn’t have to deal with it while I sleep. I don’t care about money, as long as I have enough, so I would just run it out of passion.

Maybe I’m doing too much playing poker, watching jersey shore, watching cheap horror movies, watching football, watching soccer, and not enough blogging. Maybe I’m also doing just fine though, so no worries.

I always like to make bold predictions at the beginning of the year. Its fun to make them just so you can say later on, “I called that”. If you end up being wrong you just have to know that you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet. So I’m going with, Celtics win NBA chip, George Clooney wins best actor, Taylor Swift doesn’t do anything big, Saints win superbowl, Asher Roth and Kid Cudi rise to super stardom, Snooki from Jersey Shore gets her own reality show, Arsenal wins the EPL, Pot gets fully legalized ina Cali, Chirs Brown assaults Rihanna again, Mike Tyson goes to jail, Tarantino makes a movie that wins best picture next year.

Got any ridiculous predictions that you called before anyone else??

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Where have you been? Its 2010 rush poker is here. I honestly have no idea how to play cash games so there is no edge in rush poker for me, but I bet there is for most of you. I have to say it is the most addicting form of poker I’ve ever played. If this was around in my college days I would be mixing uppers and downers, chain smoking cigarettes, and playing 30 hour sessions, seriously.

A lot has already happened in 2010. Good game health care bill, hate or love it, that’s what you get for giving a bunch of Massholes the responsibility of our country’s future. I can’t say I have had huge success so far, but I’m doing alright. I’m trying to be #1 in the world for some sort of subset of sit n goes. I have been for about 4 days but the swings are really hard to keep a lead so I’m lingering around top 3. I took down the daily $10k on lock, aka “the duralast invitational”, and just today I took 4th in the rebuy. But my daily swings are between $500 and $3000 so it doesn’t really mean much.

New year’s resolutions are pretty funny because they generally last about a week, maybe a month. I was going to make a resolution to blog every day but that’s not logical or possible for me. A while ago I tried to swing some sort of FTP sponsorship. All I wanted was a high rakeback so that I could make $200k a year just on rakeback. I got the shaft, oh well.

For some reason when you get a in a funk everything just starts to seem so standard. I used to love following politics. Now I just don’t care that much. No matter what I think or argue my case, nothing is ever going to change. It’s hard to understand that concept. I’m looking at political analysts on T.V. and they are just so out of touch with what is really going on. Instead of thinking about what’s good for the country they just think about what is good for their political motives. Look at Keith Olbermann, can you ever take this guy seriously?

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh anyways, I think I’m going to start playing more live, online poker is getting to me a bit. I spend so much time looking a screen I can’t believe its good for me…plus I slammed my comp and the screen cracked in half after I threw a hissy fit like a little girl : /

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It’s just like Vegas except, smaller, colder, and filled with jersey shore kids…But who cares, the casinos are fun.

The WSOP of circuit events were running this past weekend. I went down to Harrah’s in AC to meet up with friends. General ts0, ximsopaid87x, and paulgees are their online names. I hate to address them as those names but there really isn’t any other way to recognize them until they start crushing the live circuit.

My first night there I was so tired when I got to the casino. I lost $500 in my first 20 minutes of playing and just quit for the night. The next morning was the Borgota triple play. It was a $350 buy in that had a really cool structure. There were 3 days, 1a, 1b and 1c. If you busted on the first day you could rebuy the 2nd day, if you busted the 2nd day you could rebuy the 3rd day. The people left from each day went on to play on Monday. It was kind of like a really long rebuy tournament. Anyways, Jamie Gold’s mom sat at my table and I busted her with a 98 on a 10 J Q board. So suck it Jamie Gold. Actually I felt kind of bad because she was a really nice lady and she made some really good plays on people, but if someone had to bust her, I was glad it was me. I ended up going 11 hours into the tournament and ran into king jack with pocket aces. The pot was equal to 6 times the starting stack and a guy won the lottery with a miracle king on the river, tough life.

Tommy, ximsopaid87x, entered the 1k circuit event and was really deep. He had 2 ridiculous beats in a row and ended up busting 11th, bubbling the final table. It was horrendous to see him play well and just get crushed by the dealer. Furthermore, 11th paid out 3k and 10th paid out 10k, what kind of payout structure is that? A few players surrounding the final table of Tommy’s circuit event seemed like tools, they kept talking about misclicking in live events, which is a dumb played out joke. I feel like those types of jokes just aren’t funny and make online poker players look so disconnected (pun intended).

Once Tommy busted we went back up to the room and Paulgees was deep in the mini FTOPS. I got 5% of his action which turned out to be really good. The $10 rebuy mini FTOPS had a field of 11,000 people and a 1st place prize of $60,000. We watched Paul play the last 3 hours or so and the spots he got in were really interesting. It’s really informative to watch other people play especially when they are good. When I watched him play I realized a few leaks I had in my game. I believe that patching up your flaws will really change you from a good player to a great player. He ran really well throughout the tournament having his hands hold, and I think he only got it in bad 1 time in a small pot. It was really impressive to see how he navigated through a field of 11,000 players and ended up shipping it for around $57,000. I think that tournament may have been the largest $10 rebuy in the history of the universe.

It’s hard to know exactly how to get sponsored. You have to win a lot, and then you have to make sure everyone knows that you won. After that you have to have people, you don’t know, want you to win. Isn’t it interesting that during the WSOP main event you wanted Phil Ivey to win? It’s not like you got any of the money he won…just something to think about. The pokerdb and sharkscope didn’t record Paul’s win, and unless it’s talked about it will go without notice. So I feel like the least I can do is help spread the word because he did indeed ship me $3000 for just sweating him all night.

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Finally figured out how to beat these super turbos….it only took 5000 games. By tightening up my calling range and vastly opening up my shoving range, I’ve seen my ROI jump a lot. Over the past 2000 games I have a 12% ROI, which is much higher than it should be but it still shows improvement. Enough of boring super turbos though.

Will poker ever be legalized????

If it hasn’t yet, whats holding it back?

Over the past few weeks I’ve been talking to people online and offline about whether or not it will be legalized. They all say, within 5 years it will be. But then I ask them, why? There are absolutely no signs pointing to its legalization. Its funny though. Its like marijuana. Anyone can get it from anywhere, and people are always going to use it, but its still illegal. What has changed since it became illegal?

The only things that have changed since its illegalization is really long wait periods on checks, and harder competition. There is nothing holding anyone back from depositing money online and playing poker.

I digress…With so much going on in our economy right now people are departing from their old ways. People are starting to shift from relating to liberals or conservatives and are becoming independents. Everyone wants the best from both sides and wants to kick aside the worst.

My solution…I run for president. I make gambling legal. I pull all our troops back into the US. I give the banks $1 billion dollars that they must loan out to small business. Our country grows rich and so do you, fun times. Oh then I win the main event while being president.

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Not too long ago, last week, my friend got $20,000 stolen from his quicktender account. How good does that feel? I’m sure you can imagine.

The lesson we can learn though, is that no matter how good you are at online poker, you better have good security.

Recently I’ve gone deep in tournaments but just cannot win. Today I lost late with queens, yesterday it was kings, just the way things roll. However the holidays came at a great time, the first time in a while I’ve spent 3 days without looking at a computer. Not to mention, I crushed a huge bird and alot of stuffing. My friends from my hometown were around and we got all banged up at the bars. Holidays remind me how much fun it is to reunite with my whole family, I feel bad for people who don’t get to enjoy that feeling, seriously.

Down the street from my apartment there is this Indian grocer. I call the guy who runs it, The Dhali lama, because he has infinite wisdom. Last time I was in there with my girlfriend I bought a water. The change came out to 1 cent and he asked if I wanted it. My girlfriend said, “In this economy every penny counts”. Then the Lama said, “Yes, but you cannot get rich off of pennies”. I look to see where I’m at in my poker career right now. I cannot get rich off the stakes I’m playing, but that isn’t my goal. My goal is to move up stakes and get rich off those. So where does this put me? If I’m not moving up stakes over time, I’m simply quitting poker. Too much stress comes with the job, so if the money doesn’t justify the stress, its not worth it. I guess its good to understand what you want out of the game and how far down that path you are.

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Got so banged up on the tables I didn’t feel like writing anything for the past 2 weeks. On my worst stretch I went 2 days in a row without cashing in a tournament or a sit n go!!! So my net for the last 1 1/2 months is -$4,000, pretty lame.

About a week ago I came 3rd in the $20 1r 1a on pokerstars for about $5000. The hand I busted on was a little interesting but I don’t think I will ever fold in this spot in my life. We were 3 handed and I was sitting small blind with 2.4 mil in chips, while the big blind had 3mil in chips, the blinds were large, 50k 100k I think. The button had 500k in chips which makes this hand interesting. Button folds and I have AK in the small blind, I make it 300k and the BB shoves and has me covered. If I fold I’m losing long run but I will probably move up another $1600 due to the fact that the button is going to bust soon. I call and the BB shows 55 and sets the flop, oh well.

This past weekend was wild. I went to NYC to visit my friends and we had an outrageous time. It was my first real experience in the city going out to clubs at night and all you can drink breakfast in the morning. Its awesome to just rip down a spliff and cruise the city drinking it all in. NYC has so much more style than anywhere else I’ve been in the world, too bad I can’t say the same for their sports teams. We got table service at these clubs, where the bottles were about $300 each, I believe. We got maybe 5 bottles at each club and paid $0 because of my friend’s connections, which was very gratifying. Its really funny to watch these dudes at clubs, with blowouts, creeping all over underage girls from Jersey. They are relentless and won’t stop until the mega mix does.

I realized this past weekend that time off from poker isn’t time off unless you get out of fcuk out of dodge. I can’t just take 2 days off in my apartment and forget about poker, it’s just not an option. Next time you get burnt out at your desk, just go visit friends in a different part of the country, its cheap and a lot of fun.

You probably have all seen this video but if you haven’t you have now….

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What the hell was I thinking yesterday? Planning to drive 2 hours to play a live $400 limit tournament was probably an indicator that I just running bad online. Now that I think about it I’d rather get a lap dance from Rossie O’donnel after she crushed 4lbs of barbecue ribs, than play live limit. I woke up at 8am, first time in a while, and went back to sleep 30 seconds later.

Yesterday was a losing day on all my sites, but the Yankees lost so I got that going for me. Also the Celtics might go undefeated this season, if they stay healthy. There is no team in the world as good as the Celtics when they have their full roster, and I really want to start putting money on them. However, I’m down about $5000 life time in sports betting so I’m probably not going down that road again.

I’m trying to figure out the trends in poker right now. I’m getting 3 bet now with hands like KJ and A9+. I’m starting to see that aggressive play is starting to bite me in the ass. Maybe this is just me running bad in the short run but the game has changed a lot. I’m thinking about playing a few days super tight and seeing how it turns out. Think about poker a while back, if you were 3 betting light during the moneymaker boom you were making a lot of money. So the super aggressive players were winning, and everyone noticed this. Now if the majority of players are super aggressive, its going to be the really tight players that make the most. Maybe I’m wrong, I really don’t know. However, I like to try to think about the game as opposed to just how I play. I’ve been running so ridiculously bad in the super turbos that I’m beginning to think I’m only going to be a break even player in them. However with rakeback I’m still making over 2k a month in those, which isn’t a bad way to bankroll my MTTs (where I make all my money).

I’m predicting that the music industry is going to shift. I believe the hit songs are going to be a combination of feel good techno and rap. Gangster rap is done, and the Kanye West college rap scene has to move on. Time will tell….

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