not how you want to start

played 243 hands tonight before shutting it down due to the fact i was tilted which is good. i can be happy about that. here are the hands i got stacked on:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3674793 - super high variance play but villain 3-bets a lot and since the rest of the table was pretty soft i expected to be there for a while and wanted to send a message to him early. his message back was "i have the nuts".

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3674813 - not a great flop and i didn't expect him to be calling too light here pre-flop. (22/18/41 over 120 hands) i put his flop raising range at JJ+,AQs,KQs,QJs,JhTh,T9s,AQo and against that range i have 44% equity so i think i played it fine.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3674840 - villain is unknown but early reads was that he was fishy. flop kinda sucks since if he is fishy he has Ax and KJ hands in his range although probably lots of pairs and sc's as well. i really just want to get it to showdown and may bet the river if he checks a third time to try and get value out of a curios pp or 8x hand. assuming he bets the following range on the river 88,ATs+,KTs+,QTs+,JTs,AQo-ATo,KTo+,QTo+,JTo my value jam will be called by 88,AKs,KTs+,JTs,KTo+,JTo which i have 92% equity against so i think it's a pretty easy play.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3674874 - both villains in this hand are pretty terrible and have been limp/calling a lot of flops and check/folding to lots of cbets. it's not the worst flop to cbet 3ways since i have overs + gutty + bdfd. turn jam is extremely terrible and in excusable. i'd say he's folding the turn less than 10% of the time and the turn if anything has improved him so yeah, pretty terrible. sucked even more when he started explaining to me how he was trapping me on the flop (with a gut shot). owned by a fish :(

tg

09 goals

haven't played a session yet in the new year but spent the weekend going over some possible goals for 09. i think setting goals for a full year in advance is a bit unrealistic as so many things change over the course of a year so i will set my initial goal for the first 5 months of the year.

• play on average 15k hands a month keeping it to 4 tables at a time unless a massive whale is on a bunch of tables.
• start back at 200nl (tonight) and be playing 400nl by June 1st.
• this means that i'd be winning at roughly 3bb/100 over that time which is higher than i've averaged so far (2.50bb/100 in 08) but i also plan on getting better and playing better.
• hook up with a coach and have weekly sessions.
• work harder on game away from the table more than ever before.

now there could be a few potential hickups for these plans.

• i might have to withdrawal 3k to pay off some bills
• im probably going to vegas in late february/early march and will need to withdrawal some money for that.

my roll as of right now is 8.7k on ftp and 1.3k in my rakeback account. i also have $350 on stars but i'll probably just use that to pay for coaching expenses. i treat rakeback as kind of a savings account so i do not include rake money earned into my winrate. so my hope is that i can use rakeback money to fund my vegas trip and this year i will grind my ass off while there and try to make some coin. but if i have to take 3k out sometime this month for bills it will put me below my 40 buy-in bankroll requirement for 200nl, thus meaning i'd probably have to drop to 100nl and grind back up to 8k before i could start playing 200nl again. this would set me back big time and kill my goal for june 1st.

for now, im going to stick with the goals above and if i have to i will revamp them when the time comes.

excited to play tonight after a nice little break.

tg