xmas wasn't so merry

on the poker front at least.

i got home from work and fired up 4 tables of 200nl before heading to the casino and quickly dropped $600 on pretty standard stuff i think, can't really remember. that put my ftp roll to 8k so i decided i was done with 200nl for a bit and would drop down to 100nl for the next little while.

headed to the casino which was dead and there were only 2 tables running full of regulars. luckily the regulars are just as incompetent as most of the tourists, they just know how to handle chips. i was kinda card dead most of the session, i had QQ early but got multiway action on a Ace hi flop and folded the turn. JJ same thing and then i picked up AA, two limpers utg and im 3rd to act. i make it 16 cuz either guy never folds once he's put money in, all fold to utg who calls and miracuosly utg+1 finds a fold. flop is K62 rainbow with a single spade, utg check/calls, turn is a brick spade putting a flusd draw out, utg check/calls all-in, a 3rd spade hits the river and he shows As5s for the nut flush. it was pretty hilarious and the guy tried to justify it and was just spewing at the mouth. the only thing that irked me about it is that he's a hot head at the table and if the rolls were reversed he would have been irate. didn't matter to me, so i rebought.

i crusie along and end up building a stack back up to like $260 (from the $100 cap buyin) when this hand comes up. im in the hijak and a really bad loose passive makes it $6 from mp, i cold call with 64o (kinda loose), the co who is somewhat sane and borderline decent makes it $20, btn cold calls which means he has two cards, fold back to mp and he calls and im getting a good enough price. (i think) flop comes down a beuty 235 rainbow giving me the nuts, we all check and the turn is another 2, mp checks, i lead out, co raises, btn goes all-in which is either a boat or 2, nothing less but more likely a 2. i ship in and co tank calls w/ AK muttering something about having outs to our overpairs. i show my straight, co mucks and leaves the table before the river is dealt drawing dead and btn shows J2o for trips. river is a 5 fillng him up, he shakes my hand and tries to leave the table thinking he lost before i tell him to sit down and that he won the pot. dealer tries to push the pot to my buddy in the sb that was never even in the hand.

after that, i rebought one final time and was in for $370, after my stack had dwindled down to like $80 i shoved over a raise and call w/ AQo and got called by JJ and lost the race. dejected and somber from losing in such a juicy game i did what any other respectable poker player would do and took the last $90 in my pocket to the roulette tables. 90 on red and a hundo black got me back to only being stuck $200 on the day.

my buddy and i then left the casino to go to our usual home game. except this time they wanted to play a cash game rather than our usual sng format which is something i've been trying to get them to do for a long time. so we get there and they are playing .50/$1.00 with a min buyin of $20 and a max of $40? so right away im arguing that there should be no max and after a while get my way and buyin for a $100 easily covering the table. then im told that we are going to be charged a rake for playing? keep in mind this is 6 friends playing, not some random people showing up. we play on a fucking plastic table top octagon that doesn't fit the table. i kinda went off about it and said if you want, we can play at my house where i have real table and good chairs and i won't charge a dime. then i offered to pay everyones rake up front cuz it was christmas and i thought the idea was ridiculous. anyways, the rake idea was abolished it was 6 handed game. i dicked around a little bit winning lots of small pots uncontested and losing most of the ones that were contested.

then this hand came up which almost ruined a good friendship and christmas in one fowled swoop. i raise utg w/ AcKc and the host calls on the button. hu the flop is 246cc or something similar, i bet he calls, turn is a brickish Ten or something, i bet he calls, river is a 5x and i shove for a little more than pot. now i was kinda drunk and dicking around so i won't defend the play at all but at the time i just figured he had like A6 or something and would never call a bet for the $71 i made it on the river. he thinks for about a minute and asks me to count it out and then says "call, i have the nuts" and rolls 8c7c. now to my friends defense, they don't understand how poorly it is to slow roll or laugh at people when they lose pots. they all thinks it's fun to rib and it usually is, but when i've dropped 2k in the last 2 days online and then donated $400 to the fish at the casino my tolerance for being slow rolled is a little low.

so that was christmas eve, christmas day i decided not to play and forgo the gold ironman status for the month since it's probably only another $10 to my bonus and im risking losing hundreds when playing tilted.

on boxing day (26th) i decided to play and started off 4-6 tabling 100nl in the morning and played around 800 hands. in my afternoon session i decided to try and 9 table to see where it got me. i actually really enjoyed it and was amazed about how many hands you can get in per hour. i had no real problems keeping up with the action on all the tables other than the odd time out pre-flop. the bad news is i ran like absolute trash but the good news was that i played pretty well and managed to come out of it up a $100 over 2k hands.

the next day i put in two sessions of about 1k hands each and did the run good and made around $750 on the day. i find i get worn out quicker playing 9 tables but a little break does me a lot of good and then i can get back at it. putting in 2k hands a day is pretty insane for me but im pretty optimistic i can make it work. i'll stick to 100nl for a little while longer because i don't think i'd be able to get away with it at 200nl. the competition at 100nl is just so much softer.

gonna play tonight aiming for another 2k hands.

tg.

i never liked festivus anyways

well a continuing theme of this blog for the last few months, i got smoked last night 6 tabling 200nl to the tune of 1.3k.

i held my emotions in check during it and it wasn't that bad until i lost two huge pots in succession and made a mediocre stop. i don't have the hh's but the big pots were:

AJ vs K3 on a AT37 board, villain was a spew monkey playing wildly bad so i extended my session cuz i was on his left, anyways, i 3-bet him pre knowing he would never fold anything, potted the flop and check/called his inevtable shove on the turn. he binked a K on the rvr. this was a $500 pot.

KK vs 6c4c on a board that ran out 7c3c3x5c3x and i got raised ai on the river when we were both pretty deep. when he raises the river i think im beat 99% of the time but i had earlier made a huge river c/r on him and got him to fold a big hand which he was none too happy with in the chat so i had a feeling he wanted to play back at me. this led to me calling but i knew it was wrong. $700 pot.

AQ vs JJ on JxxAx board, $600 pot, villain had be calling a lot of my raises in pos and floating the majority of flops so i cbet the flop 3w (i believe i had a bdfd to go with the overs) and he just called, turn Ace i check/called thinking i'd give him the opportunity to try and take the pot away although in hindsight im not sure how often he'll stab at an Ace on the turn. on the river i check/called all-in which i think i have to now that my hand is so under repped and he had top set from the get go.

so 3 pretty shitty spots but in the last 2 hands my play was not optimal and i need to take repsonsiblity for those results. so this has knocked my roll down to 8.5k on ftp, 1.2k in rake account and a couple hundo on stars. im going to stick to 200nl for now but will move down to 100nl if my ftp roll hits 8k.

im actually off work in an hour and am heading to the casino this afternoon for a little xmas 1/2nl. i'll also try to squeeze in a small session before i go to get the 200pts i need for the day.

tg

snowed in

so i was snowed in all weekend which resulted in lots of poker. i got home friday afternoon and between then and sunday morning i played about 3700 hands which is quite a lot for me. a lot of it was 4 tabling but i ramped it up to 6 tabling later in the weekend. last night i played a bit again and got another 800 hands in or so.

not sure of the net result of the weekend but i did peak at my montly results last night since i was really uncertain where i was at. i knew that sunday morning was a pretty poor session where i got stacked a few times and was involved in some pretty marginal spots. on the contrary my saturday sessions were good and i ran up stacks on most of my tables.

turns out that after about 9k hands this month im down $100 but have a winrate of 2.5bb/100 since i made about $500 when i moved down and played some 100nl. at one point i was down 1.8k on the month but then went down to 100nl and have got it back to even now.

something else i've noticed is that i seem to dial in a lot more on my reads when im playing more tables rather than less. this seems counter intuitive but it the more thats going on, the better i focus and the less i drift off. (i've always thought it was the opposite) the negative to multi tabling that i've felt in the past is that i rush too many of my decisions. i think this all stems from an ADD problem but im no doctor. so i think from now on my main game will be 6 tabling as long as games are good.

i might also take a crack at 9 tabling once in a while but would probably move down in limits before attempting that.

also, i need to collect 200 points a day for the final 9 days of the month to get gold iron man status which in turn will increase my iron man year end bonus so i will be playing everyday for the rest of the year, albeit sometimes just long enough to get the 200 points required.

tg

this week

i played a little 200nl earlier in the week but only for about an hour 4 tabling. i recorded the session and marked down some hands for review but unfortunately im having a hard time getting the video to play on my laptop so i haven't got to watch it.

i did review some hands that were pretty interesting. here's one:

Villain is 21/19/34, cbet 72.

Full Tilt Poker, $1/$2 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com Hand History Converter

CO: $214
BTN: $40
SB: $400.15
Hero (BB): $219
UTG: $580.70
MP: $67

Pre-Flop:
dealt to Hero
(BB)
UTG raises to $7, 4 folds, Hero calls $5

Flop: ($15) (2 Players)
Hero checks, UTG checks

Turn: ($15) (2 Players)
Hero checks, UTG bets $10, Hero calls $10

River: ($35) (2 Players)
Hero checks, UTG bets $23, Hero raises to $88

i think pre-flop is fine, im ahead of his range but an adjustment i've been making is not letting regs play perfectly against me pre-flop. what that means is that if i 3-bet here pre-flop villain will know that im not often bluffing (sb 3-b to utg open = strength) and will fold most hands i dominate (99, TT, AJ) and 4-bet all hands that crush me. (QQ-AA) so basically the only time i get action im in trouble. (not counting the times he just calls w/ AK or something)

anyways, i think his flop check is a pretty good indicator of his hand, he does not have a huge hand here and i think it's probably AJ and less. so on the turn i naturally check/call since the 8 does not change anything on the flop. i think his range for value betting the turn is something like 99-KK, AT, AJ and possibly a 8xs hand but not as likely. i do think though he still has air enough here that i can't just c/f the turn.

the rvr is interesting because i think i am most likely being value bet, but value bet from a hand that is most likely a 1 pair hand. a call is a spew imo and folding is definitly the default but i chose to raise. the pros to a raise is that it looks extremely strong and most tags will simply look at their AT here and figure there is no way they are good and muck, after all who c/c's the turn and c/r the river?

a con to this play that a friend brought up when we went over it together is that it's very hard for me to be repping anything. villain can probably rule out AA or 88 since it's highly unlikely combo wise (assuming he has an ace, ), i prob don't call w/ 55 on the turn so he can rule most of those combo's out leaving only 22 as a viable option. i guess i could also have something like AK which now that i think about it would be a pretty good way to play it.

anyways, villain ended up shoving so i had to fold but im positive he had to have a had a big hand to make the play. if he shoved on me with AT, then all the power to him.

------

after that session the next night i added some sick table mods which really helped freshen up the grind. i decided to sit and play 100nl just to try and get back into winning ways, boost the confidence... i played very well i thought and was pretty dialed in most of the time. im not sure of the financial results but i ran at like 28/23 over 600 hands and felt like i was at a much higher level than the rest of the table. of course it doesn't hurt when you only run into 3-4 regulars when you're 4 tabling. after that session i did about a 3 hour sweat/discussion with a study partner i've hooked up with through a poker forum. we both played about a 45 minute session with the other critiquing play and then reviewed a bunch of hands. i think we both helped each other, and i've picked up some different lines that should help me get action on some of my bigger hands.

wednesday night i also played 100nl again and got 1k hands in 4 tabling with a little break in between. it went well and i think i continued to play pretty focused and reviewed a bunch of hands from that session as well.

last night i was kinda tired and out of it so i chose not to play and just hit the sack early so i'll be ready to grind tonight and tommorrow. i'll move back to 200nl tonight and attempt to crush some regs in attempt to get back to the holy grail of 400nl.

im also thinking of doing some experimental 9 tabling but if i do it will be a lower limit.

tg.

live pokers

i managed not to play anymore internet poker for the rest of the weekend but did get out saturday for about 5.5hrs of live 1/2 pokers. it was really fun as always and was exactly what i needed. the game has a $100 cap buyin and thats what i was in for. the majority of the players do buy-in for the full amount and a lot of them are just really bad degen regulars so often the stacks can get pretty deep.

so early on im sitting the opposite end of the table from my buddy and when the opportunity comes up i switch seats to his left since we both usually dick around and shoot the shit when we play. i also like to have position on him so i can own his soul. so when i make the move a bunch of guys at the table warn me that it's a bad luck seat and i jokingly thank them for warning me once i had already moved. sure enough, about 5 hands in to my new seat, i open J9s from mp, middle aged loud guy that is the table captain and rule enforcer calls in lp and a young guy with about $800 behind calls. (im only a $100 deep) flop comes KQ5ss so i flop the gutty + fd and lead out, middle aged table captain calls, young guy raises, i shove, middle aged table captain tanks and folds and the young guy makes the trivial call w/ KQo. he fades my outs as table captain tells me he had K9 and was waiting for the turn to shove on me because he knew i didn't have a K and that he put me on a Jack hi flush draw. loooolz

so i reload, play a couple more hands, flop a big draw but don't get there and reload another $50 to get my stack up to $100 again. then in the sb we see a 7 way flop in a limped pot and i have 54o, flop comes K54 with a fd, i lead out, bb immediately raises, the rest of the table folds and i really thought i might be in trouble but shoved because it's live poker. dude had KJ and was like, i gotta raise cause i have the King and then spiked a King on the river.

i rebuy again then just starting rolling. i flopped a couple big hands and got flop action and slowly built my stack up. once i got over $200 in my stack i started playing a lot more in position and outplaying people post flop. then i get dealt AA and open the pot up from ep and table captain pipes up that i've been pretty quiet for a while and i tell them it's true and that i must have aces. a couple people call and he goes on to tell me he knows im always lying about what hand i have an how great his reads are blah blah blah. flop comes 542r which is as good as any for me, i lead out and KJ guy from before calls, rest fold. at this point i think he's got something like 65 or 66-TT and sometimes a set. turn is an 9 which isn't great but not bad either, i bet out again (i think i opened to 7 pf and had 4 callers making the pot 30ish, bet 20 on the flop making the pot 70ish on the turn and bet 36) and he sighs and says, do you really have Aces? and i say nothing and he calls. the river was a 10 and i really thought he wanted to fold his marginal hand so i only bet 41 and he tanked and called. i showed the aces and looked over at the table captain to see what his reaction was and it was pretty priceless. KJ dude insta mucked and i asked him if he had like 88 or 66 and he just shook his head so i think he was looking me up pretty light.

after that hand and few others i had close to a $450 stack and a couple of pints in me and started to get more aggressive 3-betting the big stack young guy and raising limpers a lot. i was bluffing people out of pots left right and centre and showing them my air after they folded and they just wouldn't adjust to it all. one young guy thats a regular sat down during this time and started trying to talk me out of raising pre-flop with stuff like "careful" and "i wouldn't do that if i were you" and i basically told him, 3-bet me pre-flop and i'll fold like a little girl, no questions asked. instead he cold called my isolation raise pre-flop oop and c/f to a delayed cbet on the turn of a rag board. he says, we've got the same hand but im going to fold, i asked really? what do you think i have, and he says AK. i flipped the ol QTo and after that he shutup for a bit.

the hand of the night came near the end of the session when i was fairly buzzed, big stack young guy raises, i 3-bet w/ AcKh from mp, this weird guy that was acting real tough and seemingly thought he was some kind of poker professional cold calls from the sb, short stack bb donk shoves allin but its only like $10 on top of my 3-bet, the big stack folds i call and smug guy calls. flop is QTX with 3 clubs giving me the gutty plus nut flush draw so i ship it in and smug guy snap calls and states "i wish i had more money" with a shit eatin grin on his face as he tables QQ. all i said was "no you don't" and proceeded to spike the 3c on the turn and brick the river. i gave him a little jab after the hand telling him he should wait till the hands over before he starts counting his money.

that was about it, i doubled a drunk reg up when he set mined with 40bb's and got there and i ended up cashing out like a $110 profit which wasn't bad considering i was buried from the start.

it was a nice little night that made me realize that im not the worst poker player in the world and that although the last few months have been pretty shitty online, i may still be better than i give myself credit for sometimes.

im going to hook up my new mouse tonight and give it a go. i think im going to record my session as well for review later on.

tg

fuuuuucccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

just played a short 4 tabling session. the session ended something like this.

<<<<<<<<<<<

i thought i was playing well but was just getting owned by horrible players, then got stacked w/ AK vs AA when facing a squeeze from a habitual 3-bettor, i had a bunch of decent sized bluffs that all got picked off or shoved on (so maybe i wasn't playing very good?). then i tilted and decided to give myself a few more laps at each table to get things back in order (stupid move obv, get off the fckn tables) and tilted off a couple buyins with more bluffs and called it off w/ AJ vs AT on a ATxxx board. the clincher was a horrendous player that would c/c my turn bet w/ K9 on a AT46 board and spiked the ol King ball on the rvr. ( i had JJ)

that was it, i chucked my mouse at the wall but that wasn't enough so i ripped the phone out of the wall and chucked it at the wall too. im pretty embarassed about it and it's only the second time it's every happened to me (see june 07 blogs, i think it's around there). i've cooled down since but at the time i just wanted to quit.

i don't know how much i lost but i think i might move down to 100nl and see what happens. sometimes i think i should just play 24 tables of 50nl with 8/6 stats and make money.

tg

2 tabling

i've been 2 tabling the last couple nights and i find i do focus more but also at the same time i haven't really been getting into many interesting situations since very few hands are getting played.

i've played around 2k hands but to tell the truth im not sure how much im up or down. thats because im no longer checking the cashier or hem after my session to see the $ result. instead i've removed the $ earned and bb/100 stats from hem so i can concentrate on playing my best and letting the money fall where it may. this goes hand in hand with another thing i've been doing lately which is not analyzing hands played until after the session. i'll often play a hand and start wondering if it was a bad or good stack off and what i should have done different. during this time im not concentrating on the hands im playing and im also beating myself if the play turns out to be -ev. so lately once the hand is over its over, i tag it using the hem hud feature for later review, take notes if necessary on my opponent and clear it from head until my post session review.

all these little mental things seem to be improving my mood and enthusiasm during play and i think will do a lot of good in furthering my developement. i'll probably check my balance and winnings/loses at the end of each month as long as i feel something horrific isn't happening and im no longer rolled for a certain level.

i do know though that im down a bit to start off because my first 2 tabling session was a disaster and i dropped $700 in 300 hands with most of it coming from a horrible river call very deep.

tomorrow is my b-day and it looks like im going to the casino to play a nice long 1/2 session and drink lots of pints. i will play tonight but i think i'll probably go back to 3 or 4 tabling since 2 tabling is not getting me thinking too deeply.

tg

what i've been up to

i was playing quite a bit throughout early november and was well on my way to playing at least 20k hands in the course of the month. then one week i just got burnt out from other things and was tired and unfocused so i didn't really feel like playing, so i didn't.

that only left me a couple days left to play because i was leaving on the 29th for a weeks vacation. i played two sessions which were absolutely horrible and anfocused and i managed to drop about a 1k over the course of 900 or so hands. that was it for me for the month and i'll have to dig through hem at home but i think i made about $500 over the course of 13k hands or so.

kind of a drag because up until those sessions i was having a pretty decent month being up like 1.6k which was a good confident boost.

the bitter taste of the last few sessions really left me pondering my problems over the past couple months. my thoughts led me back to the same old thing, lack of focus and concentration. as much as i try to learn and improve away from the table, the second i sit down i fire up 4-6 tables and go on auto pilot. and my auto pilot system is not that good. i tend to make knee jerk reactions based on emotion and generally make educated guesses. the end result is a lot of standard lines and a real lack of hand reading. when looking at my play im really only playing my hand strength a lot of the time, when my hand is weak i fold no matter my opponents range, when my hand is strong i bet/raise no matter my opponents range and when my hand has mediocre strength i play the guessing game.

so what can i do to fix this? well, i think the first thing is to reduce the amount of tables i play. i've never even considered playing less than 4 tables but i think my focus and concentration will improve if i start just 2 tabling or even playing one table at a time. so this means that the small amount of hands that i play a month will probably get smaller but at the same time whats the point of playing 20k hands a month if im not playing any of them optimally.

when i focus i have the ability to play pretty well imo. so my goal for december to start is to play 5k hands 2 tabling and see how i do. if i feel more focused and see better play emerging i will consider adding a third table. i really don't see myself going back to 4 tabling for the next 25k hands or so but im not going to write anything in stone.

i think down the line i can see myself having some sort of structure where i play 4 tables 75% of the time but go back to 2 tables 25% time to ensure im thinking and learning and not just grinding.

anyways, i played about 500 hands the other morning when i got back from vaca and made about $90 playing the "old" style.

im going to play tonight a bit but will ease back into things. i think i might also start playing on deep tables since i think a lot of regs don't adjust their strategy when deep and tend to make a lot of exploitable mistakes. i also might start mixing in hu into my play since i really only play 2 tables of that at a time anyways and it would help with getting hands in.

tg

haven't played much

well i kinda bailed on my plan of playing tons of hands friday night/saturday and only ended up playing about 750 hands friday night total. the results were good though and i made close to $800 over that time span. saturday i didn't get up until 1pm so i obv needed the rest and decided to just chill out and not play since i was a little out of it. i did however put in a 7hr session that night playing 1/2 live at the casino. the game has $100 buy-in cap and it's ridicuously soft and rather entertaining to play. i busted my first $100 getting KK in vs 88 on a 982cc flop where i had no clubs and a King was dead. after that though i pretty much just had my way and built up a $450 stack from second $100 buy-in. i lost a couple pots near the end though and ended up booking a $100 win.

i played a little monday night but was getting totally run over while not playing all that great and managed to drop $550 over another 750 hands or so. last night i didn't play at all and chilled out and watched wsop main event final table. it was pretty exciting watching a tournament where i knew none of the results and now i have the urge to play a bunch of tournaments. i think i'll hold off since i don't want to waste bankroll chasing stupid mtt dreams. i'd rather just grind away and get back to 2/4.

i'll play the next few nights and hopefully play well.

tg

gettin hands in

i've played about 5.6k hands so far this month and am up around $850 which is nice. i basically try to get in around 1k hands per day, usually over two sessions that are broken up between a visit to the gym. last night i only played around 600 hands and booked most of my profit so far for the month and felt like relaxing afterwards. i generally don't play on sundays so im going to try and grind out around 4k hands between tonight and tomorrow during the day so i can take sunday off. i've also had a real craving to play live again so i think im heading down to play a little 1/2 live saturday night. im going to try and stay somewhat disciplined and not splash around as much as i usually do when i play live and hopefully i'll book a little win.

here's a hand from last night.

Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players

CO: $242.00
BTN: $411.30
SB: $740.35
BB: $202.00
UTG: $413.20
Hero (MP): $436.60

Pre Flop: ($3.00) Hero is MP with K :diamond: J :heart:

UTG calls $2, Hero raises to $11, CO calls $11, 4 folds

Flop: ($27.00) 7 :spade: 2 :spade: 8 :club: (2 players)

Hero checks, CO checks

Turn: ($27.00) 2 :heart: (2 players)

Hero checks, CO bets $15, Hero raises to $48, CO calls $33

River: ($123.00) 2 :diamond: (2 players)

Hero bets $90, CO folds

Final Pot: $123.00Hero shows K :diamond: J :heart: (three of a kind, Twos)Hero wins $120.00(Rake: $3.00)

villain is tag reg and when he cc's the iso raise his hand range is probably pairs 99 and down and maybe some suited broadways. on the flop he's never folding a pp and there are more combo's of pairs in his range that suited broadways that he doesn't 3-bet so i chose to check and give up but he checks behind. on the turn im in a similar boat as that of the flop except for one thing, i highly doubt that he checked a strong hand back on the flop. i think he's either a) pot controlling a small pair or b) trying to take it down w/ his big sc's w/o showdown. so i check again and decide that if he bets his hand range can't handle the heat of a c/r. when i c/r i can legitimately be repping an overpair or a set since i might have been going for a c/r on the flop and missed. the turn isn't a scary card if i have those hands and im not afraid of a flush draw since he would most likely bet that on the flop. now, the important part to the hand is that when i chose to c/r the turn, i must follow up with a river bet. i think 55 or 99 is gonna be suspicious of a turn c/r and could possibly put me on a semi-bluff and call but will have a hard time calling a river bet. i fire the rvr, he folds and i actually showed the KJ and made note of it. next time i face the same villain i will take this line with the nuts and relieve him of his stack.

tg

poker is shight

after my big win last week i had another small session where i won a buy-in and was feeling good. then as if howard lederer had some sort of webcam in my house and could see me smiling i got doom switched again and had my worse session ever at 1/2 dropping close to 1.6k.

i got back at it nov 1st and wiped the slate clean. so far i've put in a decent amount of hands for me and am hoping to play 25k hands 6 tabling this month. i'd also like to win the monies but that might be asking too much of team full tilt.

tg

confidence booster

so i made my triumphant return saturday and decided to play 3 shorter sessions of 200nl with each session being roughly 500 hands. 4 tabling this equates to just over an hour per session and helps to keep me focused while playing. i ended up playing only 2 sessions since i ran out of time and decided it was best for me to just book a win at this point.

my first session went well and i built up stacks on most of my tables before shutting down. i never checked HEM to see how much i was up or down because i think part of my problem sometimes with playing small sessions is that my results after each small session (whether it be positive or negative) seem to affect my session going forward.

my second session i felt once again that i was playing well and had a rather bad player on my right on most of my tables. i had pissed him off pretty badly by 3-betting him a lot and he was spewing to me pretty good.

anyways, i finished up the day with just over 1k hands played and close to $1.1k profits. that's the biggest day i've ever had at 200nl so im happy about it. after that i went over to the home game and went 2/2 winning both "sngs" we played which may be the greatest accomplishment of my life since i never win in the home game.

i think i've kind of had a "aha" moment after reading my coaches ebook and while i don't understand 100% of it yet (it's a lot of info to digest) i feel as though im on the right track with my game. a new version of his ebook comes out today with additional info added by cts which is sick so i hope to start going over that asap and keep cranking out results.

tg

gots to stick wit it

so after my thurs session i shut it down and didn't look at anything poker really. i've had a few ideas of what to do. my initial reaction was to take this break which i think is by far the best idea. i was also pondering switching games for a bit. i would love to get back into plo and study the game but there are two things that make me hesitant to try:

1. plo is more volatile than nlhe which would be kind of a silly reason to switch over since i would be taking a break from holdem due to harsh variance.
2. i would drop down in stakes considerably and would basically be looking at making a few hundo at best over the next couple months when i can make that in a session at nl.

now, money has never been the sole reason why i play. i play because i love the game but it's hard to seperate poker from money. my goal at the beginning of this cash game adventure was to reach 2/4 nl since you can make a real good chunk of money there. i got there earlier than i expected but also exited back to 1/2 which i wasn't planning on. while i think learning a new game is refreshing and productive to clear your negative mindset of your current game i don't think it's the best idea for me at this point. for example, i've always had a hard time with jumping from game to game when unsuccesful (lhe->sngs->mtts->nl cash->mtts->plo->mixed games->nl cash) and i don't want to let this downswing set this reoccuring problem in action again. i think i've made great strides in my nl game this year and i don't want to throw some of that progress away by getting swept up with something different.

so i will continue with 200nl when i return to action later this week and im gonna grind my ass off. im already pretty hungry to play but im gonna hold off a couple more days. in the meantime i will go over a really good e-book my coach wrote and try my best to understand some of the ideas he presents in it.

tg

final straw

played sparingly tonite just trying to have some fun with it. played 3 tables of 200nl and 1 table of 200ha (plo/plhe mix) which most of the time was hu. two beaut's in the plhe rounds have pretty much driven me to the edge of my patience. Q9 on Q96ccc3x board no good against A2cc and KK (no club) vs 9c9x on T743ccc board no good.

lost like 500ish on the 400 hand session. im done. going to grind 1c/2c stud h/l for the rest of my life as punishment for sucking.

tg

still sliding

i've played another 3k hands or so this week and am down another 1k or so. last saturday i played about 1.3k hands and came out down only $70 which felt like the biggest win of my life the way the deck was treating me.

then the other night i sat down and played was up for a while and running well until i ran QQ into AA pre for a buy-in vs a 65/50 player that was crazy donating and then i misread a guys stats and ended up pulling a pretty huge float/turn semi bluff 140bb deep and then realized the guy was the biggest nit ever and had 3-b pre, bet flop and bet turn. anyways, he tank called, i missed and finished the session down a little over a buy-in ($250ish)which felt like a huge loss.

last night i went through and freshened up my setup on ftp going back to the racetrack table, modding the background, reconfiguring my hud and starting over fresh; then lost $600+ by mostly running big pairs into bigger pairs.

so in going through hem i was kinda interested in how buy-ins this downswing was so far and was surprised when i figured out i am down 29 buy-ins over the last 2 months or so at 2/4 and 1/2. i never in my wildest dreams thought that it was possible to go on that big of a downer although i've heard a lot people say it's happened before. but, i guess on the bright side im not really that pissed off or frustrated like i imagined i would be if i took bath like this so thats good.

right now im contemplating on maybe messing around at lower stakes plo games or playing a couple tables of horse along with some mtt's just to get back to having pressure free fun. im also considering moving my roll to party or stars for a change of pace but i think i'll save radical changes like that for if i really hit rock bottom.

fwiw, br now at 11.3k + about $600 in rb.

tg

driving me to drink

i just can't seem to win lately. after my last post i played a session where i was 3 tabling 200nl but was on a 400nl table that i noticed had 2 huge fish on. overall i lost $700+ that night including $400 to the fish on the 2/4 table.

i followed that up with a small win of like $300 or something 2 tabling and then another $400 loss the day after. tonite i played about 950 hands 6 tabling and felt i played pretty well other than a really spewy 5-b bluff that cost me a stack. anyways i dropped close to 1k tonight putting me a grand total of 2.7k in the whole over less than 5k hands for the month.

im kinda sick over it but kinda not at the same time. i think im playing well (lately) but i really don't know i guess. maybe shits just not lining up for me right now or this just could be a correction from running good up until a little while ago. i really can't say, all i can do is just keep blasting away at it and trying to get better.

bankroll is down to 12.2k plus a couple hundred bucks in my rb account. this game truly is depressing some times.

tg

im back

wow, full month w/o posting. so my return kinda sucked as i realized that i was still playing kinda bad and unfocused. my number problem by far is lack of focus but outside of going to a doctor and asking for ADD meds im unsure of what to do about it. im thinking of implementing a thought structure to every hand i play to ensure im going through a full thought process and not knee jerk reacting and kicking myself after.

anyways, i played a little bit of 200nl but prob only got in 8k hands for the rest of the month making like 3 or 4 buy-ins but ending in the red for the second straight month. one of the reasons i didn't get hands in was that i was spending some time with the gf before she left for a 3.5 month tour of europe.

so this left me pumped poker wise to play tons of hands before the end of the year however it's started off kinda shitty and im down like 4 buy-ins over my first 2.5k hands. i also have been in a bit of a mopey mood so at times i've stayed away from the tables but im gonna do my best to grind out hardcore and hopefully be crushing 2/4 by the end of the year.

my new coach is very good and although we haven't spent much time together i've got a copy of an ebook he wrote which is extremely good and seems tailored for me. i'll keep reading and studying that and in the meantime try to crush some souls at 200nl.

tg

aug results + more losing = small break

first losing month this year, but not really a big deal since my volume of hands is so low.



























my sept started off okay winning 2 buy-ins in my first session but then quickly unravelled again as i lost a couple thousand back and am negative again for the month. i must admit i got pretty tilted near the end of my last session even after i dropped down to 200nl.

so i've taken about 3 or 4 days completely removed from poker and think i'm ready to come back with a clear head.

i'll be coming back at 200nl though since my bankroll has shot downwards over the last 1.5 months. my bankroll high point was 27k+ but since then i've:

• had a 7k downswing
• shipped all kinds of money off to friends, training site memberships and coaching
• withdrew 5k to send my gf to europe

so all that has knocked me down to 14.5k online so my plan is to drop back down to 200nl and grind back to 16k before moving back up to 400nl.

tg

getting owned!

since my last post i've been getting absolutely destroyed. this is by far my worst downswing since i've started playing nl. im not sure of the amount of hands but im down roughly $5.5k which equates to roughly 14 buy-ins. now, i shouldn't really complain cuz my year so far has been a pretty smooth journy upwards. until now i don't think i've had a downswing larger than 5 buyins and they were usually just really bad sessions that i rebounded back from and never lost much confidence.

this one however has been like getting beat to death with a hammer. it's just a continuos pummeling and it's got my confidence down a lot. i've had points so far at 400nl where i feel im getting owned by regs and it doesn't help when everyone is owning me at the same time.

here's a couple hands from tonites session that caused me to quit my session:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3106005 - i've got no idea.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3106012 - this hands illustrates a running theme for me, i'm working on becoming more aggro post flop but every time i do i seem to stack off horribly. i have no idea what he's doing here on the flop.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3106032 - and when i get them to stick it in bad they bink.

ok, thats the end of my feel bad for myself rant.

here are the positives i can take out of the last week+ as well as what i have to look forward to:

1. i'm actually +1.5k in all-in equity on the month
2. i can only get better
3. i've made some very good "quits" and controlled tilting very well
4. i've hooked up with a new coach who im really excited to work with and have sent off a 35 min video of my play to him for analysis. he also has setup a bit of a program that seems to be right up my alley.
   
5. im running sick hot in the ftp nightly $163 and am 8/65 on the bubble.
6. i've run the $125 i had left over on stars after paying for coaching into $219 playing micro stakes plo.

tg

on the grind

so as most months i started off playing hardly any hands this month. i played maybe 1k hands in the first week of august and had continued to be lazy. i think there is a real fine line for me between not playing when in a -ev mindset (tired, tilted, stressed etc) and general laziness. this partly comes from starting the last couple months off great and being up a good number for most of the month. i feel no pressure to play since im up a good chunk and have a positive outlook on my game.

But recently i've been thinking about why my motivation to play is at a all time high when i'm stuck or running bad. i have no problem playing then because i'm eager to get back in the positive and work on my game. i need to keep that attitude while im running well and winning.
i'm at the point now where i can make some serious money at 2/4. the stakes are significant enough that winning and losing 2k in a session can be fairly common. to put it in perspective, a decent session for me is the same now as a two week pay cheque from my 9-5. i put a lot of effort in to get here and if i want to maximize the gains of that work i need to start grinding a little harder. now, im not gonna go off in another extreme and start 12 tabling and playing in a -ev mindset but i have been playing 6 tables lately and feel my play hasn't really dropped off from when i 4 table. the one thing i have to keep on top of is not getting too tight pre-flop which is easy to do.

so last thursday during my coaching session we set a goal of 10k hands played by today. i've logged close to 7k so far and will probably get another 1.5k in tonite. so 8.5k hand is very good production for me in a week and if i could somehow keep it up i believe i can become one of the bigger winners at 2/4 on ftp. my plan from here to the end of the year is to basically grind my ass off but to have fun at the same time. my gf is going to be away for a couple of months starting some time this fall and this will be by far the biggest money making opportunity i will ever have as far as poker playing goes.

oh and on a side, it's been cool to have enough br to be able to randomly buy into some of the ftops events. it was always my goal when i was an mtt player to satellite into them but i never really had many chances. now i can pretty much just buy-in without it being a big dent to my roll or affect me phycologically. i played the $216 4x shootout a couple nights ago and managed to get hu on my first table but got owned pretty hard by a 10/20 reg. then last night i played the $322 mixed holdem event and was up and down like crazy before busting shortly after 2 hours.

anyways, happy grinding!

tg

way late w/ july results

+ 4k tournament score. best month ever.

tg

final table?

sat down to play last night around 7pm and cashed in one of my freebe $75 tokens into the $35k guarantee and loaded up 4 tables of 2/4nl. i almost went bust like 5 min in as i had a bunch of stuff going on and was check/calling down w/ 77 on a T643 board before i wisened up and folded. after that i sailed slowly building up and being in the top 20% in chips for most of the tournament. there were 671 entrants and when we got down to the final 3 tables i was the chip leader. i held that distinction till there was about 7 left when shit started going sour for me. w/ 6 left i was 5/6 w/ about 225k to the short stacks 125k and called his jam w/ A6ss and lost the flip to T9ss to be crippled at 6k/12 + ante. he then went bust on the next hand and i managed to double up shoving J5dd utg 5 handed and getting called by A9o. i got there on the river when the board on the turn read 842A and i binked the old 3 ball to double up. i somehow doubled up again and we were down to 4 players left. the chip leader had a little over 700k, i had 470k, 3rd stack had about 400k and the small stack about 270k w/ blinds at 8k/16k + ante i believe. on the button, the 400k co opened, i 3-b w/ AKcc, blinds folded and we got it in for the chip lead and i bricked off against his TT.

first place paid 11k plus but i settled for 4k for fourth. not bad for a freeroll i guess and the adrenaline rush was pretty sick.

as for cash i made about $500 over the course of 1k hands before feeling really burnt out and just single tabled my tourny from then on. i think i played a little spewy in a few spots but also had some interesting hands playing pretty deep.

i'll probably play tomorrow and then have a good start to august with a wide open schedule on the weekend to play.

bankroll sits at about $23.5k, an all time high.

tg

since the last post

i haven't played much. i did manage to drop $1200 over the course of 900 hands or so last week playing kind of bad and unfocused.

then on saturday morning i got up and put in about 1k hands and booked about a 1k win. suprisingly the games were much more soft than that of the weeknights i've been playing.

not sure of how many hands i've played this month but i think it's going to be a record low.

tg

biggest day ever

i still had not had an official 1k day although i've been close a bunch of times. my first session at 2/4 was pretty good and i booked another close to but not quite 1k day. the 2nd session i did extremely well and killed two birds with one stone scoring my first 1k and my first 2k days ever. good times!

tg

movin on up

sat down the last two nites for short sessions and made about $700 over 1k hands which breaks the 16k threshold bankroll required to play 2/4nl.

i think im better prepared for the move up to 2/4 than i have been in my previous move ups to .50/1.00 and 1/2. i know i've played with quite a few 2/4 regs that also play 1/2 but i'll be prepared for a much tougher challenge. i expect there to be a lot less fish and a lot of tougher opponents that probably drop down from 3/6 and 5/10 at times so im going to stay on top of my game selection as there are still a ton of tables to choose from.

with that said, here's the graph of my journey through 1/2.

stuck/unstuck

played quite a bit since my last post and think i'm up maybe a $100 over 2.5k hands. my first session after my last post i got buried quickly and managed to come out of it in the green. since then it's been a bunch of break evenish sessions. on friday nite i played higher than i ever have before. i was playing with a mega fish at 1/2 who had been on a couple times earlier in the week. anyways he busts from the 1/2 table and i went to search him through the find a player to see whether he went to another table. there i find him playing full stacked on a 5/10 table. so i got on the waiting list assuming that he would bust before anyone left and i would get his seat and obv not play. instead i got a seat two to his left and sat down with the max 1k buy-in. i ran it up to 1.4k pretty quickly by bluffing the fish in a decent size pot and taking down some other small pots against the regs. i then lost a bit in blinds and getting 3-bet and having to fold. the biggest pot i lost was when the button limped, fish raised pot from the sb which meant nothing and i raised about 5x his raise w/ AKo in the bb. i made it larger since he was calling with a huge range. button folds and he calls, flop is 789cc and he donks out for pot and i fold like a girl. i left a short while later when the fish left and the end result was +$75.

i also broke my mtt cashless streak and cashed fairly deep in two tournaments saturday nite. the first was the fifty fifty and i finished 53/1070 or something close to that. the 2nd was the 28k guarantee $26 with 1300+ runners where i finished in the 60's somewhere. both tournies ended kinda shitty as i was in really tough spots with 10bb's and had no opportunities to jam steal. the end result was i ended up super short and a slave to the deck and got bounced in both tournaments. there must have been some spots i misplayed late but i guess im just happy to cash. i've got a couple $75 tournament tokens through the ironman promo so i'll probably play the 7pm a couple times to see if i can hit it big.

in all honesty i really felt like shit after busting those tournies and i can't really imagine how i was able to play mtt's exclusively before. i think when you have the experience of playing cash games and grinding out good money, playing x hours in a tournament and busting for 2x your buy-in just feels like such a waste of time. i was following the main event at the wsop and two guys that were probably top of the field skill wise when they got deep got busted out where they were waaaaaaaaay ahead. it would be so frustrating to play a tourny like that where you play great/run great for 6/7 days only to bust out as a huge fav. i guess thats just tournament poker but it seems rather sick to me.

every year i say im going to go play in a wsop event and every year when the time gets close i usually don't have the br to plunk down 1.5k in a 3k person tournament. this year however if i really wanted to go i could have. it wouldn't have been smart from a br management perspective but it wouldn't have set me back much at all. however when i look at the situation, what would i rather do: a) plunk 1.5k down on a wsop event or b) plunk down 1.5k in a live 5/10 game a take a shot. right now i'd much rather b and maybe i've truly lost my hunger to be a donkament champion. i still have a goal to go to the wsop next year, and probably stay for a good week or so but my plan is to play only cash games. im actually thinking that i might not even put a dime towards wpt fallsview (which i never have anyway) and instead will hope to have some roll and take a shot at some side games.

meh, whatever, thats my ramble for the day.

tg

pretty good start imo

nice start to the month. im back feeling focused and think im playing my best poker ever. i think i might have had such a hard time focusing before because i was eating horribly and not working out at all. im back on a good diet and working out regularly and it seems to really help.

im playing tonight and am about $750 short of the 16k required to move up to 2/4 nl. i have like $200 in rakeback so if i can keep running/playing good maybe i can get there sooner rather than later.

tg

* also note, im playing a little looser now as well, hence the 21/17 rather than 18/15.

june results + lack of focus

Here's June results:

Holdem:

plo:







So i really sucked balls at putting in hands. i also sucked balls at plo but have stuck to my goal of not playing plo anymore. the last few sessions i've played i've felt like i have been totally unfocused and seem to be going through the motions. i need to keep working on this, maybe even reducing the amount of tables i play until i feel i get a better grasp on the issue. i played my first session of the month last nite and won about 2.5 buy-ins over 1200 hands and also played 3 tournaments including the 7pm $75, 8pm $26 and 8pm $163. i bricked all three without cashing and this has run up my cashless streak in mtts to 29 straight which was surprising. i knew i hadn't had a deep run in a long time but that is by far the longest streak of my career. i feel like i should try and correct this but last nite even having some mtt's on the side was distracting me from my cash tables so i think i might just dick around with the odd tourny when bored.

i just came across a post on 2+2 where some dude had datamined all the limits on ftp and had the 15 or so biggest winners at 1/2. there were a lot of regs that i battle with daily on there that were making like 8-10k a month which i found surprising. they were also putting in a lot of hands, a lot more than i ever could, but it has motivated me not to be lazy and play as much as i can as long as im in a +ev mindset.

i think the dust off at the plo tables may have been a blessing in disguise as i really think i need to make a lot more improvement before im ready to tackle 2/4. right now i think i'd be led right into slaughter so im going to work my ass of this month and see if i can back on track and make some progress.

tg

omahaha

well i've played a little over the last couple nights and am up about $270 in holdem and down $220 in plo. my play in the plo games has been bad and i've come to the realization that im kinda terrible at it and seem to be on constant tilt. for some reason the game just makes me irresponsible and impatient. i said earlier this year that i would like to get into plo once im a solid winning player at 2/4 and 3/6 nl since i'd have more roll to play with. then earlier this month when i started messing with plo i said i would just dick around with 25plo so i wouldn't distract myself from my holdem game. well, i got carried away with it, probably because i had early success.

now it has become a hinderance, it's ruined what was likely to be my best month ever and pushed me farther from my goal of playing 2/4 nl. i've also probably played just as much plo this month hand wise as i have nlhe which was not what i envisioned. im going to retire any plo interests for the time being and if i do have a craving to play (it is a pretty sick game) i will play 50plo instead of the cap games.

anyways, i might get a good session in tonite playing exclusively nl and then i'll be off for 4 days on vacation. im also really anxious to move up to 2/4 nl but won't until i have the 16k required for 40 buy-ins. if i have to i will probably add some rakeback money to my account to get me there. my game is going to have to get a lot better to make the move up profitably but i have a great coach and am confident i can rise to the occasion.

tg

quick update

played a little last nite in small amounts. dropped $300 in plo and made about $400 in holdem. i've worked on getting my pokertracker omaha setup with hand categories so i can better review my play. i went through every hand i played in a cap pot in the last few days and found some leaks. i'll plug those and keep going.

will play some today.

tg

earning my stripes

so up until this point in my poker life, i've never really played regularly at stakes where i can get really stuck. in my limit holdem days my worst downswings would usually be about $500 and i had a 2.5k roll to withstand it. in my mtt and sng days, i would frequently lose a couple hundred in buy-ins in a night if i took shots but never more than $700 or so. i think the worst sng downswing i had was i lost $1100 in a weekend 8 tabling $55 turbos but luckily had a final table at the same time that covered the loss. fast forward to now, im playing 200nl and my biggest downswing so far has only been about $950 but both times i got stuck that much it's been mid session and i've climbed out to get close to even. i think this is pretty lucky, not getting stuck more than 5 buy-ins at a given limit. from what i understand, downswings of 10-15 buy-ins in nlhe games are the norm and not to be unexpected. i've heard of 30+ buy-in downswings from people who were playing great and making zero mistakes but often these people think they play great 100% of the time and don't look at their game with the same eyes that they view others.

anyways, this weekend everything changed for me. i've been riding high, having my best moth ever only half way through it, learning some plo and being succesful rather than the disastrous attempt i made at the game last november and my bankroll was up to just shy of 15k. i came home friday and decided to play for an hour or so before going out and quickly made about $200 in holdem and $300 playing 1/2 & 2/4 cap plo. i was feeling great, only about $500 away from moving up and playing 2/4 nl and maybe sticking at 2/4 cap plo with shots at 3/6 cap plo.

i went out, had a great night and came home around 11pm and decided to play some more before hitting the sack. it got ugly from the start. i loaded up 6 tables, couple 1/2 plo cap, couple 2/4 plo cap and two 1/2 nl games. over the first hour i made another $100 or so on the holdem tables but had lost my $300 profit from earlier in the night on the plo tables. a half hour later im now stuck like $500 in plo and like $200 total for the day. i wasn't really tilted and felt challenged to get unstuck. almost all the players in the plo games i was playing were just horrendous. on guy was playing 96% vpip and 66% pfr and went from $150 when i sat to about $1300, busted that, rebought for $200, ran that up to $3600 before going down to about $2700 when i left the table. (all at 2/4 $160 cap) so i closed out my holdem tables and 1/2 plo tables in favor for some 3/6 $240 cap plo games. a lot of the players that were in the 2/4 games were also in these games. shit kept going wrong and eventually one of the 2/4 tables broke. i opted to stay hoping it would get going again since now i was stuck like a grand. some random sits down w/ a $150 and instantly starts potting and repotting any 4 and stacks me like 4 times in literally 5 minutes and takes off. now im a little pissed so search the guy and get on a wait list where he is playing 2/4 uncapped plo hu. i sit down with him and take an early lead, then play a hand brutally and get stacked for a full buy-in, get stacked again and he's sitting on like $1500 after starting with like $500. i manage to stack him for a change to get back within $500 or so and he immediately sits out and leaves. i go back to my other tables, win a few pots, lose a few pots before finally deciding to call it a nite.

the end damage was close to $2600 in plo and i made about $300 in holdem putting my end result at a $2300 loss for the nite. at the time i wasn't that upset, it sucked but i didn't think that much about it. the next morning though i woke up and felt sick about it, i quickly started another session saturday and was down another $600 quick. i took a break and went to clear my head and do some thinking. i came to the conclusion that:

1. plo is high variance
2. i tilt easily playing plo more so than holdem
3. the games are great
4. i should stay at 1/2 cap for a while and probably not move up to 2/4 cap until im playing 2/4nl and get used to bigger swings.

so with that i came back and erased my $600 loss in plo playing 1/2 cap by making over $900 and putting +$300 on the day. i also booked a win playing holdem. then yesterday i played a short session booking another holdem win + a $600 win in 1/2 plo getting me right back into things. i think my holdem winnings over sat and sun were prob $500ish meaning out of the $2300 i lost friday night, i've made back $1400 of it. not bad.

in a year or so, i'll probably won't even blink at these numbers but for now, it's my craziest weekend yet.

tg

still not playing lots

i still haven't been able to put in a lot of hands of late. most of my sessions are small 1.5hr 4 tabling sessions which don't really rack up the hands like 4hrs of 6 tabling but i feel 4 tables is optimal for me and my winrate drops off a lot when adding two additional tables.

over the week or so since my last post im up about 1k playing 1/2 and 2/4 cap plo (had a small loss playing .50/1.00 cap plo) and down about $600 in holdem. last night i really felt like i played poorly in holdem and need to step my game up. being up a good chunk early this month has probably caused me to get lazy with my play so i'll get back on the horse and try and put good hours in over the next few days. combined between the two games i've only played 5500 hands this month which puts me at a pace of only 15k hands for month. i'd like to get that number higher but i will also be away on vacation for 4 days and won't be playing then so im likely to be lacking in the # of hands i get in this month.

might play tonite and have a small window for a coaching session tomorrow.

tg

not a bad turn around

cap plo results:

bankroll now > 14k.

tg

pretty........pretty......pretty good.

last nites holdem results.

+ about $35 from plo gave me a 1k session. (only a $900 day though due to plo losses earlier)

tg

cap plo is killing me

after my quick $200 score during lunch yesterday i've dropped close to $700 playing 1/2 $80 cap plo. (down close to $500 overall) i did however make a little over $400 playing holdem last nite but it still stung basically because i know i was donating and playing horribly in the plo games. i played at lunch today again and got stuck even more but made a nice comeback at the end. i enjoy the games though and they are incredibly soft, im just playing as incredibly bad. the good news is that i think i know the adjustments i need to make to absolutely kill the game at this limit.

1. tighten up a smidge pre-flop (i think im around 26% vp$ip right now but closer to 20% is probably optimal)
2. quit 3-betting all but monster hands, especially out of position
3. stop c-betting completely unless i hit
4. zero fps
5. only stack off with top two + re-draws or better

it's a little cookie cutterish but i think it's probably good enough to earn a good buck. most of my losses have come from assuming oponents will fold but im getting called down by just ridiculous shit like top pair and one guy even called my turn c/r cap with a bare nut flush draw when he wasn't even close to being committed. so, stop bluffing, start value betting. i also had a guy call down three streets today with no pair, no straight draw and a 3 hi flush draw. games are good.

i'll play tonite, probably mostly holdem though. i finally got my holdem manager hud stream lined and it's fucking awesome. i feel like a new man with it and it's definitly going to help improve my game.

tg

break even nite + holdem manager

i actually managed to get a session in last nite that i wasn't supposed to but it ended up not being very productive.

i've been awaiting pokertracker 3 but it seems to be rather flawed and i don't want to deal with the hassle of software bugs. i heard about holdem manager and how sick it was so i dropped the $80 on it and picked it up. so far im pretty impressed with it and the shear volume of info is pretty overwhelming. so instead of playing i ended up tinkering with the hud for a couple hours before firing up 4 tables of 200nl. i was pretty happy with my play but managed to only break even through 750 hands after a few tough hands/beats. pokerhand is down but it was basically AK vs KQ on a KQxx board after i 3-b in position and villain called willing to stack off since i was abusing him, 54 on a 552Tddd board after villain that had abusing me (stacked off w/ A8s once in a bvb 5-b bluff) with villain check/calling all-in on the turn w/ 77 (no diamond) and binking his two outer on the river and lastly KK vs QT on a Q22TQ board after villain c/c pot sized bets on every street and jammed the river offering me 4.5-1 on a call.

i did however hop on two 1/2 cap plo tables ($80 cap) while on lunch today and made about $220 in 20 mins. i got it in with AAxx on a Kxx flop against top set and hit runner runner quads. i think i'll play more cap games when experimenting with plo since the shallowness of the game allows for less mistakes and it's a little more exciting of a game. (gamboool)

might play tonite and tomorrw. who knows.

tg

quick win

i had a very small window to play yesterday and logged roughly 250 hands of 200nl and 250 hands of 50plo. results were good and i made about $430 in holdem and about $140 in omaha which is far above expectation but also gladly welcomed.

biggest nlhe hand:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2704963 - i like his play pre-flop but he needs to raise this flop. i made a larger than normal c-bet on this flop since i wanted to maximize my fold equity.

biggest plo hand:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2704940 - beauty hand pre, flop well and i thinks it pretty easy getting it on this flop although it looks a lot better than it is. with the 3-way action my two pair/trip outs are probably no good and if one of thed villains has a higher wrap (AKJx) im in trouble.

tg

may results

i sucked big time at putting in hands this month. i was on target to hit 20k hands for the month and then pretty much haven't played the last 1/3 of the month.

im obv very happy with the winrate and look forward to a big june. i'll also be mixing in some plo again to keep things interesting and hope to grow an edge in that game.

pics:

tg

enlightened

so i was pretty happy with my play last week although i felt weird about some of my post-flop play. for some reasons there's spots where im just betting out or checking based on whether or not i think my opponent hit the flop which probably isn't the worst strategy but also not optimal. after going over a few hands with my coach, he starting telling me how bad some of this was and all of a sudden it just kinda clicked in my head. i kind of got the concept he planted in my head about two weeks ago and has been hammering in ever since.

i have to get rid of my fear of being bluffed. it's a lot more than that obv but this is probably the root cause of it. i look forward to making great decisions tonite.

also, i've been a little burnt out from watching nlhe videos on cr and dc lately so i decided to watch a bunch of plo videos just to change it up. i want to keep my concentration on nlhe but plo videos are refreshing and i might also mess around with some 25plo and try to work my way up slowly. i don't want to risk hard earned bank roll from playing nlhe on being a mark in a plo game although i don't think anyone is really all that good at the lower limits.

oh and i dropped about $350 playing during my lesson the other nite over 500ish hands.

tg

on a tear

since my last post i think i've put in around 4.5k hands which is pretty good since i didn't play too much late last week and never put in a monster session since i was sick and am pretty useless most of the time. i make a rule to not play when sick because i have zero discipline and a general "fuck it" kind of attitude.

i stayed home from work on friday and was feeling a bit better by late afternoon so for fun i hopped into a couple satellites for ftops event #12 ($216 nlhe) and won a seat on the first try. i lasted about an hour and a half and was quite active throughout the first hour. i was down early after losing a decent size pot w/ KK on a AAxxx board when i checked the flop thru and called small turn and river bets and lost to A5s. at my lowest i had about 1.5k and at the end of the 1st hour got back to about 2.7k after flopping a set and making a boat against a tight mtt reg that unfortunately didn't get paid off. early in the 2nd hour i pick up QQ and raise utg, he jams from mp with a smallish stack and i was really happy with the spot since i think he thought i was horrible and would jam lighter than usual. i lost a flip against his AKo and now i was on life support. with blinds at 60/120 i think i had around 1.2k and jammed over a loose lp raiser w/ 33 and he snapped me off w/ AJo. i was actually thinking about it the other day and if i had to guess it's probably been about 25 tournaments since i've even cashed. yikes. in all fairness though i haven't really taken them seriously and have done some stupid things with good stacks like limp/jamming in the sb to a bb raise w/ 98o and getting shown AA. meh.

as for the 1/2 journey things have been going good. i think i played pretty well over the weekend and after getting unlucky a few times still managed to be up about $1800. i was very pleased with how i played for the most part but i have noticed some poor play while going through the hands in pt today. i'll probably look at those during my coaching session and keep improving. im also enjoying the professional nl holdem book and while nothing is ground breaking yet it has clarified a few concepts i was fuzzy on. hope to finish that up soon.

i think i've only played 11k hands so far this month and it will get tougher since i have a bunch of work to do this week and might have much time on the weekend to play. most of my sessions now i've been 5-6 tabling so that helps when it comes to getting hands in. oh, and i also sat in a 2/4 razz game the other day and pretty much busted half the table in about 20 mins and broke the game. it's insanely funny how bad people are at these games.

anyways, bankroll is healthy at 12k and the rakeback account is almost bust due to tournament buy-ins and coaching costs. 4k more and i'll start my 2/4 journey although i have lots to learn before then.

tg

blip in the radar

im down about $900 over my last 5500 hands or so. i did something pretty stupid last friday; i sat down to put in a quick session that got cut quicker than i thought but in the few hands i had played i had a guy (w/ prev history of playing uber aggy pre) 3-bet me everytime i opened a pot. no matter what position or no matter what his hand was it was an auto 3-bet. so i was shooting the shit on the phone with a friend and decided to just leave this table up and gambool with him. the end result was i lost like $600 in about 20 hands to him by 4-betting everything i opened and either getting it in pre or jamming the flop. well he started picking up hands and i ran AJ into KK, 88 into AK, 55 into 88 and 55 into TT. obviously the 55 hands were probably too thin to be jamming but i think a 4-bet/jam flop range of 88+, AJ+ would be profitiable against this guy. i did a little googling on this guy after to see whether or not he's just some hsnl player dicking around and saw that he was playing 25/50 online in early 06 but he's def a reg now at 1/2. pretty interesting and i hope to run into him again because as long as i can handle some variance i think it will be a great spot for me ev wise.

after that session i was a complete tilt monkey so i went and cooled off and had a relaxing night, put it behind me and got in a decent session on saturday aft. things couldn't have started off worse and about halfway through the 1200 hands i was stuck close to 1k but stayed strong and came back to only lose about a half buy-in which felt like a great success. since then im basically even although i ran pretty bad last night and managed to only book a small loss.

im pretty happy with the quantity of hands i've been getting in and should be able to make my goal of 20k hands for the month. im getting a little more comfortable with 6 tabling now so i will do that from time to time but won't make it a constant. i've also noticed a general sense of passivity has come into my game and i think often times of late i've been making the easy decision of just calling instead of raising/folding. this is esp geared towards 3-betting and i've been passing up great spots to squeeze or 3-bet loose openers. so i've been opening that up a little bit and i think it def makes me harder to play against and should also help me get action on my bigger hands. i've also slightly increased my opening range from utg and mp in 6-max with good results and should aid in blurring my range a little more. im also getting back into the habit of pounding on limpers with decent hands but have adjusted my isolation raise to 5.5x the bb instead of the typical pot sized raise of 4.5x the bb. this helps build a pot in pos with a bad player while keeping the more aggressive players from 4-bet bluffing me since it's a much more expensive play to make compared to pot size raising.

things i need to work on:

- assigning villains a hand range and then further narrowing down that hand range based on street by street action. (<<<<<<<<<< this is a big one)

- mentally going through and determining my rough equity against a villains range during the hand

- maximizing value in small to medium sized pots when i know i have the best hand

i got my books in the mail yesterday and will start on the proffessional nl holdem book first. i also realized when i opened the box that the stoxtrader book is a limit holdem book, not nl so i might return that. i've also been mixing in a table of o8 or horse once in a while when winding down my nl sessions and have made some good money just playing tight solid. it's such easy money and even on a 2/4 table there are rarely any players sitting with more than 10 big bets. i think after i read the plo book by hwang i will probably study up on some videos and start playing cap plo games once in a while. i don't see myself playing anything other than the cap plo games in the near future as i want to keep my main focus on studying and crushing nlhe.

tg

keep on keepin on

i've played a couple small sessions prob amounting to 2k hands or so and am up 2 buy-ins over that time. i had a lesson last night and felt fucking stupid when we went back and looked at some hands in poker tracker that i had played before the lesson. two hands where i couldn't believe it was me playing them when looking back and was utterly embarrassed about my play.

one thing that's been happening lately is that i've felt the need to make crazy laggy plays where it's totally unnecessary. i think i've spent too much time lately browsing hsnl threads on 2+2 where the plays are so much more advanced that it's getting me confused and blurring my thinking. i've also watched a couple high stakes vids on dc and cr and i see maniacal play and feel like a dull ol grinder since i pretty much try and stick to fundamentals.

after my coaching session i decided to just shut it down for the night and get my mind off poker for a day or two. i think i've made great strides of late just analyzing my tables and opponents on my own instead of trying to implement other people's strategies and i've gotten away from it. i think i'll take a few days off from browsing forums or watching instructional vids and instead just kinda start fresh on my thurs nite session.

another ftops series starts again today but looking over the line-up i doubt i'll get to play any. there are a couple events that i wouldn't mind playing but they are the European friendly start times that i have no shot at making. i might try and satellite into the $535 horse event because the field will be ridiculously soft and although i suck in most games i'd prob still have an edge. other than that i'll see if i can maybe get in the main event or something since the pay day is unbelievable.

ordered a couple books today as well. i enjoy reading at night so i picked up "winning in tough short handed no-limit games" by stoxtrader, "professional no-limit holdem vol 1" by the 2+2 crew and the pot limit omaha book by jeff hwang which i heard was good. i'll prob read them in that order although i do have several poker books that i've never read past the first chapter. im not really sure how much you can learn from books but since they only cost like a c-bet in the games i'm playing now it must be a +ev purchase.

tg

$21.60 short

of having my first 1k day. very nice way to start off the month and i managed to get in over 1400 hands playing mostly 4 tables but occasionally 5 or 6 when table selecting. the new ftp software update came out yesterday and they've changed the deep tables to be regularly spread limits instead of the kinda in between limits. there were a few tables going and played on some although they were pretty much just crowded with the normal 1/2 regs.

goal for the month is to get 20k +ev hands in.

tg

interesting thought

i was kinda thinking about goals and when i started playing nl cash i thought if i could be a winning 2/4 player by the end of the year that would be cool. i just made a spreadsheet to see where i would be at the end of the year based on the following assumptions.

• 40 buy-ins per level
• 20k hands a month played
• winrate of 3ptbb/100 (12 buy-ins per month)
• moving up once i hit 40 buy-ins for the next level
• not counting rakeback towards bankroll

so with a bankroll of roughly 9.6k right now and assuming a nice easy transition from level to level (highly unlikely) and a steady month to month income (once again unlikely) i would be playing 5/10 by the end of the year and have roughly a $53k bankroll come dec 31st.

so as unlikely as it is for all those ducks to line up, it is motivating.

tg

april results

played my final session of april last night and did well ending up about $400 i think. i played a mix of 1/2nl 6-max as well as starting a game at 1.5/3 nl deep. (200bb table) i found even last summer when i really sucked that there were a lot of fish at the deep tables for some reason and a lot of players don't know how to adjust there game when playing with deeper stacks, myself included. it's something that i'm working on and thinking about though and i'd like to take a shot at those games to further develope my understanding of deep stack nl. i think becoming more confident in deep stack play will help when i get 2 buy-ins (or more) deep with others in the 100bb cap games and will give me a much larger edge. i also have been thinking about venturing into more live games as my br increases and possibly even playing some games like 5/5 in the future and i believe the buy-in in those games may be a bit deeper than the 50 or 100bb buy-in for the small 1/2 games.

i also had another coaching session last night which went great. it was good to get some positive feed back on a few of the hands i played well and identify a few spots wehere i was not taking optimal lines. we discussed a pretty cool hand from another coach which was quite eye opening and i had really have to look at it more to digest it.

i only played like 800ish hands or so because of the coaching session and only 4-tabled after that.

here's april's results:

live pokers to the rescue

after dropping $851 on saturday afternoon i shut down ftp and went and chilled out since i didn't want to get stuck anymore at the moment and that's my biggsest single session loss ever and probably largest single day loss as well.


so i chilled out, got the ring a little later to round up a few friends for a casino run and decided to put in another small session online before i left. i made back about $260 in a hour or so i played and then headed off for some live 1/2 fun.


i got my name on the list for 1/2 $200 cap buy-in but they only run one table of that and then like a bazzillion tables of 1/2 $100 cap buy-in for some ungodly reason that i can't comprehend. anyways, i got right into a $100 buy-in game and started running like god immediately.


my 2nd hand, a couple players limp, some dude raises to $7, i cold call from the sb, bb cold calls and both limpers come along. (pot $35) the flop comes KQ8r, i chk and it chks to the pfr, he bets $30 and i do the old min-raise to $60, bb and limpers muck and dude goes into the tank and asks how much blah blah blah and then says he's all-in. he bricks off w/ AQo and the dealer counts out the additional money for his call. when the dealer does it though he says he took too much from him and gives him back a small stack of reds and then pushes me the pot. when i looked at it i asked him if he was sure it was right since the stack looked too small but he told me he counted it out twice and was sure so i figured whatever. after a couple hands, i count out my stack and he only pushed me $183 when the pot should have been $217 so i felt like an idiot for not double counting it. then to make matters i find out dude that i stacked is a regular there and knows every dealer in the joint so im starting to wonder if it's intentional.

anyways, lesson learned and after losing a pot with TT i decided to start running like god again. a dude that seemed fairly nice but kinda wired (see coke head or something) started running his mouth and making fun of people at the table. he's played everyhand since i sat down and run about $35 into around $180. he also made fun of some kid because he folded A8o to a raise after limping and the flop came down A8x. he's yacking off about how could he fold an ace for only $10 and that it was so stupid and bad. fast forward a couple hands i limp in w/ 65hh and mouthpiece raises to $17, folds back to me and since im there to gambooooool and would love to snap this idiot off i call. flop comes down 667 and i check/call. turn is a 9 and i check/raise all-in. he calls and says i hope you don't have kings and then shows AA. lets just say he shut his mouth pretty fucking quick and went into a how could you play 65 to a raise yadda yadda. i started telling him how 65s is actually a better hand than A8o and how does he expect me to fold for just $12 more. it was humorous but was capped off when he says this place (casino) is just like pokerstars.

like 4 hands later while he's still complaining i limp/call once again w/ KQo (because im a loose passive fish) after he raises and the bb comes along. flop is QT7r, bb and i both check, mouthpiece shoves for $53 and starts trash talking the bb when he tanks saying that he's on tilt and wants a call. bb folds and i call and am ahead of his JTo. he gets a glimmer in his eye when the turn is a Jack but i crush his soul with an Ace on the river. he gets up from the table and mumbles something about getting owned, maybe the proudest moment of my poker life.

a while later, greasy gross guy limps, same dude from the first hand raises and i just called with AJo from the bb and greasy gross guy calls. flop comes down a beauty AJx with two clubs. i lead out for $20, greasy gross guy shoves for a $100, pfr folds and greasy gross guy doesn't flip his cards but shows the Ace of clubs and mucks after the board has run out. as i stack the pot he tells me he had a flush draw and an overcard to my Jack for a better two pair draw and that he wasn't positive but thinks he was the favorite on the flop.

not much happens for a while, then i run TT into JJ and double a guy up that had maybe a $100 behind. down to 7 handed, utg limps, i limp 32hh right behind and everyone else limps for a 7 way pot. flop comes down a pretty decent A45 with one heart, blinds and utg check, i bet $10, calling station that can't fold top pair no matter what the board is calls as does the button, everyone else folds. turn is a 9x and i lead again for $31 into $44 and both call again. button was pretty sick about calling so i thought for sure he had like 76 or something. river is another 9 and i lead again for $100. calling station shakes his head and calls quickly, button folds (told me he had 63) and i table my wheel which is good against AJo.

the last hand i played of the nite, utg limps, i raise with QhJh which was probably only the 4th time i raised all night, greasy gross guy cold calls which is any two from the bb and limper calls. flop comes down T87 with two hearts giving me a massive draw, chkd to me, i bet like $25 into $31, greasy gross guy tanks and folds A3hh apparently, limper c/r all-in for another $50ish and i call quickly and am the favorite against A9o. i get it over with quickly and bink the 9 on the turn and claim another victim.

i walked away $447 winner for the session which is rare since i usually get owned there.

i played for like 40 mins online tonite and made like $360 playing holdem and dumped $40 playing capped plo and o8.

tomorrow i have a coaching session and will try and put in a good long session afterwards to cap off april.

tg