more hands and a pokertracker review

so i managed to squeak in another session Monday nite.

i played 900+ hands and ended the session down $20 which is pretty much break even. most of the hands were at 100nl but i did get in some play at the 160 deep tables. the play was a little better but still pretty poor.

i actually thought i had made money on the session until i checked out pokertracker after the session. i forgot that i stacked off two hands that killed the profit. here are the hands from memory:

hand 1) a mediocre player min-raises from the CO, button who is a little laggish cold calls, sb folds and i call in the bb w/ KTo. (we all have full buy-ins)

(pot $6.50) flop comes K9x rainbow, i lead for $5, CO calls and button calls. (CO probably plays AK and 98 this exact same way)

(pot $21.50) turn is a Ten putting 2 spades on board, i lead for $18, CO folds, button raises to like $50ish, i think and shove and he calls.

he had QJo and hit his gutter ball on the turn. the river was a deuce and i missed my 4 outer. at the time i didn't think he would call a flop bet w/ a gut shot but i've been seeing people stick around w/ naked gutshots fairly often of late. i guess i'll have to start giving people more credit when gutshots hit in multi-way pots like this. i think his flop call is fine here since the CO could of min-raised a monster and im showing strength leading into 2 people on the flop. with full stacks in play i think he can expect to get paid off often enough to make it profitable.

my mistake was thinking he would not of stuck around w/ QJ. i figure he's 3-betting 99 and KK but could have KQ, T9 or a hand like JsTs. the only real hand i thought i had to be scared of at the time was a set of X's (i think X was a 5 or 6)

if i leave QJ out of his range im a 75% favourite against his range. if i include both QJo and QJs in his range im a 42% dog. it's a pretty big difference but even if i'm a 42% dog im getting the odds to play if for stacks but just because im getting the odds it doesn't mean i have to call. in retrospect i think it's probably a fold because i just don't see him showing up with worst hands as often as he'll have a set or a straight.

my thinking that he could be raising KQ is probably a little off as well and when i remove it from his range and keep QJ in there im a 30% dog which makes it a clear fold.

hand 2) folds to me in the CO and i open w/ AhJd (std pot size raise of $3.50), Button cold calls, both blinds fold. the button had a very high cold calling frequency so i think he's doing this with a lot of hands.

(pot $8.50) flop is JhTx8h, i lead for $7 and the button min-raises to $14. his range is so wide here and the flop is so draw heavy i 3-bet to like $50, he puts the rest in and i call.

he cold called w/ Qd9d and flopped the nuts. he fills up on the turn and i miss my runner runner.

i ran his range through pokerstove and it came out pretty much 50/50 so i don't think getting the money in is a mistake especially after he min-raises the flop. im pretty much forced to 3-bet as he could be min-raising a ton of hands i have crushed and there are a ton of potential scare cards that can come on the turn. once i 3-bet im pretty much committed. tough hand.

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last nite i didn't really have much time to play so i fired up a couple tables of 50 plo and did some pokertracker review for the month.

i did a filter on my biggest losing hands of the month and the top 3 in order are: ( i don't remember if they were suited or not)

1) A9
2) JT
3 KJ

going through those hands and other big pots i lost i realized that im doing way too much smooth calling on flops where i have a mediocre top pair. im going to start mixing in some raises to better define my hand and find out where i'm at. i reviewed a lot of hands where im smooth calling the flop in position and getting blown out on the turn. maybe if my hand reading was a bit better i would be better able to adjust but for now i think im better off raising in pots where my opponent could be betting a lot of different hands and taking it from there.

also, im losing most of my money on A9 and JT when im raising a limper up and getting called. i think the reason might be that some of the limpers im raising are limping w/ better hands than A9 and JT and therefore my raises aren't really for value. this is only over 20k hands but its something im going to pay closer attention too.

one good sign was that in a few hands that i reviewed where i paid off river bets i stopped the replayer and guessed the opponents hand. in 2 hands i pretty much pegged him in a narrow range and would of actually folded had i played the hand out again. (these are not hands that i remember actually playing)

so it was a good review and gave me some things to think about for my next session. i dropped about 1/2 a buy-in at 50 plo while playing but had a blast doing so. plo can be a pretty fun game but i think i will work harder on my nl game right now and when i get up to the mid stakes i'll start putting some time into devloping my plo game.

i won't play tonite but i think i'll be playing a bunch later in the week and over the weekend and am looking good at hitting gold status on the ironman challenge.

tg