march finale and good start to april

so march was a good month and although i only got about 13k hands i felt i made great strides in my game. i ran pretty good i think and luckily suffered most of my bad luck while playing hu at 50nl.

i had a hard time putting in good long sessions after coming back from vegas so i took a couple extra days off from playing and just did some thinking about hands and also started to run some of my bigger hands through ev calculations to see if i was getting it in good. i find the practice has helped me a great deal and it's something i will be incorporating into my study habits on a full time basis. it's sometimes surprising how little/large your equity is in some spots when matching your hand up to a specific villains range.

so my first session of the month came last night and i played 4 tables of 100nl along with the $75 7pm mtt. i lasted into the third hour of the tournament before busting like a fool and double barreling like an idiot when i probably had zero fold equity.

i put in about 1k hands of 100nl though and had my best cash day ever racking up 7 buy-ins! this actually puts me over the threshold of 8k which was my target for moving up to 1/2nl. (40 buy-ins) i actually feel ready for 1/2 so i'll give it a shot in my next session. i'm sure the larger pots/wins/losses will be larger than what im used to but in my old days of limit holdem cash it usually doesn't take long before it becomes the new norm.

i've started a bunch of datamining of the 1/2 games so that the transition will be smoother. i've been running good so hopefully i don't get wacked when i go up but that's out of my control. i think i'll probably drop back down to 100nl if by bankroll drops back to 7k.

here are some of the big hands from my last session:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2381604 - villain in this hand is a maniac and i've got notes on him from a mtt i played with him that he is rather reckless and poor. i've already stacked him once where he c/r me all-in on the turn with overs and a flush draw. i usually don't like calling here set mining but this guy was stacking off with a large range and our stacks are deep enough i think to make it profitable.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2381730 - villain is a huge passive fish that gets aggressive on the turn and river. i didn't spot that T8 got there on the river since i was set on going for 3 streets with this guy. anyways, i'm not folding top set here to a fish since he is just as likely to have some kind of junky two pair. i was pretty surprised to see what he rolled over.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2381761 - interesting hand. not a good flop for me since AK is now beating me and it's a big portion of both of villains range. when the flop gets checked thru im positive the original pre-flop raiser doesn't have a King. he's a cardrunners member and knows what he's doing and i think AK bets there a large portion of the time. turn is a brick and im pretty sure i have the best hand but check again since the 3-bet cold caller could still have a King that he was attempting to c/r with. once he checks again im pretty certain im good. i expect cr member to bet a lot of hands when checked to twice so i call and surprisingly the cold caller calls. KK could be out but i really doubted it. river i check again and its kinda disturbing when cold caller shoves his last remaining stack but i can't put him on a King here and with the odds im getting i call.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2381783 - here i bet 2x pot on the river to try and get him to call and to my surprise he jams with garbage. weeeeeeeeeeee

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2381802 - i just got to the table but i've seen this guy open limp trashy aces so i label him as bad. after i bet the turn (for value) he's only got a few bucks left so i put him in. i'd usually check this behind on the river if we were deeper but since he only called down with little money left i read him as having a failry mediocre hand. woops!

next blog post will feature my venture into 1/2!

tg

online poker in march

so my online play has been kinda minimal this month when compared to last month. i've only played a little over 8k hands this month which is far below the norm. i did however miss a lot of time because of vegas though and was too busy before leaving to put in any real good sessions.

i played some small full ring sessions before going to vegas to get out of the 6-max mindset and it sucked pretty bad. i dropped a few buy-ins over a small sample. i started playing a little heads-up as well at 50nl just because it seemed fun. well it's turned out to be fun and profitable and i've killed it over a very small sample. coming back to 6-max after the vegas trip i've done very well and am up several buy-ins there too. i'll wait to the end of the month before i post exact numbers but this month is looking good over very few hands. i've taken a different approach at the hu tables targetting mostly players that are sitting at tables with less than a full buy-in but more than 40bb's. it's worked out quite well as it's an early indicator of a poor player and often times i get these guys to go off for multiple buy-ins. one guy i sat down with had like a real random amount in front of him equalling roughly 45bb's. i stacked him like 10 hands in and he immediately rebought full. i stacked him three more times for full buy-ins before he quit me. i also had a negative experience though where i was already sitting on 200bb's and a good player sat with me full. now i didn't know he was good at the time but i stack him early on and start to see that he's good and hard to play against. so after i grind a little more off him and give him about 50 hands to get his stack back i sit out and tell him "gg, i'd rather play someone else". he immediately tells me im a hit'n'run artist which bothers me so i sit back in and plan on playing him for a few more minutes. i then stack him again so i feel like i have to stay for even longer now. so about 25 minutes later im sitting on 100bb's, he's got all his money back + my other 100bb's i had initially and sits out saying he'll be back. i left the table and chalked it up to a lesson learned. while i try to be cordial during hu matches and give people ample time to get even or let them know ahead of time when im quitting, i shouldn't put it ahead of my own priorities and that's maximizing my EV.

my all-in equity in hu pots is horrible and i've had some sick suckouts but to balance it i've been winning lots of races in my 6-max games. i had a sick cooler the other day when i raise/called pre w/ QQ and flopped a set on a KQxhh board and got it all-in to see KK. but to get it back i squeezed w/ KK and the initial pfr just called which i immediately thought had to be AA. he was just too tight for it to be anything else. alas the flop came K high and i doubled through.

i also played a bunch of wsop sats on ftp the other night with no avail. i used my saved up rakeback money to replenish my account of the buy-ins so that i can keep building towards the 1/2nl jump. i think when i jump to 1/2 i will also move up to .50/1.00 hu since it looks like there are a bunch of softies that buy-in for 40bb's. ideally i think i'll always keep my hu stakes below that of my 6-max stakes since the extra variance can be a total kick in the nuts.

i've also got the itch to play plo again but im staying with my goals of learning nl cash before i start to dabble in that again. i went back and looked at my pokertracker plo and saw that i dropped 2.6k playing 100plo so obviously its not a very +ev game for me. i think i'll make myself wait till i'm at least winning at 2/4nl before i will venture into 50plo or something like that.

anyways, hopefully i'll get a 3 or 4 more sessions in before the end of the month. i might also play some tournies and wsop sats using rakeback money when the time permits. i might actually have to play 5 or 6 sessions before the end of the month to keep up with the ironman promo requirements. i'll have to double check that.

oh yeah, the ftp bankroll is currently at 6.7k with another 1k in the rakeback account and i think i have about 1k left in cash from my trip. not sure what i'll do with the cash but im up in the air about putting it on another site, putting it back on ftp, keeping it for live play or blowing it on random shit i don't need.

tg

vegas trip report

i've missed two weeks of blogging but for good reason. i spent the first few days of march getting ready for my vegas trip and didn't really have all that much time to play. then it was off to vegas for 5 nights and since i've come home i've only played sparingly. on the vegas trip i ended up down $200 on the trip playing a mixture of 1/2 and 1/3 no-limit. losing $200 is obviously not the end of the world but it felt like a real kick in the nuts when considering how soft the games were. it was truly mind boggling how bad people play and watching them drag pot after pot and build up huge stacks was a bit demoralizing. oh well, it didn't ruin my trip and i had a blast. i played most of my poker at planet hollywood with other sessions coming at the mirage, venetian and ceasars. here's all the memorable hands:


- first night there, 1/2 w/ $200 effective stacks, 3 limpers to me and i raise it up to $15 from the button w/ KcQc. aggro swedish player to my right is the only one that calls. flop comes T96 with two clubs giving me a pretty strong draw. aggro swede checks, i bet $30, he min-raises to $60 and i 3-bet shove. he snap calls w/ 66 and i don't get there.


- 2nd day, 1/2 with deep stacks. i'm sitting on $450ish and a player gets moved to my table w/ over 2k!!!!! (max buy-in is $200) the chatter around the table was that he had been getting extremely lucky at another table hitting all kinds of crazy hands post flop. he limps utg, 3 more limpers and i limp in the CO w/ JTo. 7 way flop, T83 rainbow, checks to him, he bets like $20 which is weird so i call and decide to re-evaluate on the turn, one of the blinds calls. 3-way to the turn and its a Jack giving me top two. blind checks, big stack looks through me and bets $35. i don't think too long and raise to $85. at the time i liked the small raise, i think it entices him to either call with Tx or maybe do something stupid like re-ship. the blind didn't have much money behind so i wasn't really worried about him. blind folds, big stack instantly goes all-in and i snap call. he rolls over Q9o for a turned straight and fades my 4 outer for a $900+ pot. i made the cardinal sin of going broke in a limped pot although i didn't think there was a way in hell he was betting a gut shot on the flop into 7 people. if this hand would have happened an hour or so later there is no way i go broke on the hand. he played very passively limping preflop almost every hand and check/calling 90% of the time. leading out this hand was one of the only times he ever did it. i think i just call/call if the hand happened later on or even just muck it on the flop.


- couple hands before this happened i made a nice fold holding K7o (bb special) on a KT837 board after the hand was checked through 4 ways on the flop, sb bet out on the turn and i called and a tight player to my left called, on the river sb checked, i bet out and tight player shipped, sb folded and i figured it had to be J9 so i mucked and tight player showed me J9. soul reader.


- sit down at a brand new table at the venetian. 1/2 w/ $300 buy-in. about 5 hands in i decipher that the table is fairly bad and a young guy on my right is horrible and the guy on my left calls raises very light. about two orbits in i've lost a few small pots and have been fairly active, bad young guy open limps the CO, i raise AA on the button, blinds fold and he calls and we take the flop heads-up. flop comes down KQ5r which is not a great flop for aces. he checks, i bet out fairly large and he calls pretty quickly. turn is a 9x which is even crappier card since JT gets there and he insta shoves for like a $130. online i probably just fold this but this guy had been playing all kinds of big little hands and chasing the ass end of open ended straight draws with J5 on a 6789 board and hammering the pot so i snap call him. the river is an 8 and he shows K8s to drag the pot. the best part is he asks me if i had him before the river.


- about an orbit after this hand i've reloaded to about $270 and open JTcc from mp and get the usual 5 callers including buddy on my left that calls every raise. flop comes down a beauty J9x with two clubs giving me top pair + a flush draw. checks to me and i bet out fairly large again (can't remember pot sizes or bet sizes but most my bets were close to pot on the flop) and get called by buddy on my left, all else fold. now buddy on my left had previously called a raise before w/ QTo and raised a c-bet and cold call w/ top pair on a Ten high board and folded to a 3-bet so i'm a little perplexed by his call but really have no idea of his range other than i doubt he has a top pair beat. the turn is a club giving me my flush so i bet out just a little bit more than half pot since i don't really know what he has but i don't want to scare him off his precious middle pair. he thinks and calls. now im a little gun shy and start to worry that i'm gettnig stacked again by a bigger flush. the river is another 9 and for some reason i got a sick feeling that it improved him. probably just gun shy from the previous hand but i checked and he immediately cut out $100 and annonced it as his bet. i made a quick call because im never folding and he tables J9o for the rivered boat. puke! (i should bet/calling this river 100% of the time i think)

- 1/2 back at planet hollywood, im hammered and talking it up with the table and this friendly older lady beside me. i raise up limpers w/ AKo from the bb and older lady calls from utg and one other guy calls. flop is Ace high w/ two spades and i have no spades. i bet out like $40 into $50, older lady snap calls and other dude folds. pot is now $130ish and she has about a $100 behind so i'm going with it no matter what since she was kinda bad and has a wide range. turn is a spade, i put her in and she calls quickly with a sheepish "i got u fucked up" look. we flip before the river to be friendly and she's got A2o w/ no spades for just top pair but the deuce rolls off on the end. whaaaaaaaaaa.

- last day in vegas, playing 1/2 at the mirage. i've been very active mostly getting good hands and raising limpers. i've already made a big 3-bet squeeze with AK and took it down pre-flop. villain in this hand is an active young guy that i thought was decent until i saw him c/c flops twice in raised pots w/ bare overcards. he's also 3-bet once before and when the hand went to showdown he mucked claiming to have overcards to the J hi board. i open to $7 in ep w/ AKo and he 3-bets from mp to $30 and it folds back to me. most times i would just call here but this guy seemed aggro/donkish enough to be playing back at me with a large range. i decide to make it a $100 straight committing myself to it. he goes all-in and im worried and call. he's got KK and although i flop a flush draw and turn a gutter ball i don't get there. he does a big fist pump and yells when the river bricks like a true champ.

- last session of the trip, i sit down with the mindset that if i get stacked im probably just going to call it a night and maybe go bet sports or dick around in the pit. limped pot and i check my option in the bb w/ 66. probably 6 way action to the flop of Q64cc. i lead out for $10, all fold to button who calls. turn is another 4 filling me up so now i bet out $30 because i don't think he's folding a Queen and live players never fold flush draws. he calls. the river is another 4 making the board Q6444. this is a gin card for me if he has a Queen as there is no way he's ever folding a boat. he open shoves for like a $130 and i jokingly say well i hope you don't have a four as i call. he tables J4o for runner runner perfect. weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

after that hand i reload to a full stack and start getting bitched at by some lady because i took like $55 in chips off the table and rebought for a full $200 just to make it easier for the dealer and also so i can just reload my stack out of pocket when i get down a little after posting blinds and what not. she goes off on me and the dealer for about 10 minutes basically acusing me of "going south" before finally the dealer tells her he has no idea how to explain it to her other than the simplistic way he already has. the best part about it is she had like $23 in front of her!

anyways, before i could cash out i flopped like 5 sets and ran up like a $800 stack. i guess all the big hands i posted are hands i lost but all the big hands i won were pretty basic and not very interesting. also, a lot of the time i never get to see the losing hand since im usually betting the river and flipping my hand over first so i have no real "he called me with Jack hi" stories. here's one hand where i sucked out and won a big pot against my buddy.

1/2, effective stacks are about $250. buddy raises in ep and i call right behind w/ T9hh. everyone else folds and we take a flop of K52 rainbow with no hearts so i flop complete air. he bets out and 90% of the time he is full of complete shit raising absolute trash like J5o and bluffing tons. so i decide to flat call and take it away on the turn. the turn is an offsuit 9 which now gives me what could be the best hand. he bets out again and i decide against raising since he will often two or three barrel with air. so i elect to just call and the river comes a Ten giving me two pair. he checks and i figure he is check/folding a lot but bet out big just in case he does have a hand. he snap calls and shows me AA. when i showed the T9 i thought he was going to throw up. i then asked him how he liked the flop call because i didn't think he realized i floated complete air. he called me a fucking idiot the rest of the trip and i laughed for about 10 mins straight.

some other random funny shit i heard/saw was this one guy took about 3 minutes on a river decision when he was first to act and had been check/calling the whole way down. after about two minutes the dealer asked him if he was aware that the action was on him which he said yes. so after a while he bets out and me and the other guy in the pot both fold. he rakes the pot in and apologizes for taking so long saying "sorry, im not very fast at calculating my odds yet". same guy about an hour later and a few bud lights, folds in ep and everyone else limps. it's like a 6 way pot and the flop comes out 632. on the flop it's checked to lp when he pipes up and says "damn, i woulda had two pair". the table erupts in laughter and the dealer asks him not to talk during hands he's not involved in and he replies with "well you keep dealing me 62". i couldn't stop laughing for literally 10 minutes. apparently the fella had not tipped the dealers or the waitresses all night (which is a big no no in vegas) so about an hour later my buddy gets it all-in pre-flop w/ JJ vs the idiot's QQ, the dealer puts the flop out and the door card is the Jack. the dealer looks straight at the idoit and says "thats how i roll". it might have been the funniest two hours of my life.

anyways, it was a good time and i look forward to going back in the future. overall im not entirely happy with my play. i was very anxious a lot of the time and impatient at other times. i think i might have forced things a little too much but i did gain a lot of experience playing live. i've always been nervous sitting down in a live game no matter what the stakes because i think i'm afraid to screw up or look stupid. i think i shed a lot of that during this trip. if i had to rate my play i would say it was maybe a 7/10. i don't think i thought out decisions like i should have in some spots and other spots i think i played too spewy pre-flop. one thing that i didn't realize about live play is the need to portray yourself as an action player. a lot of the stuff that you read in supersystem about garnering a gamblers image at the table is really true even when playing with casual players. they want to sit with people who will splash around with them, not some shark waiting to pounce on them with the nuts. i found one good way of giving off this illusion was putting the live straddle on whenever i had been inactive for a few hands or even just limp some trashy hand for the sake of showing them im in there.

way too long of a post, i'll make a seperate one with online results so far this month.

tg

feb results

overall i'd say im pretty happy with this. the first 9k hands is at 50nl and the rest at 100nl with a small hu match that i played at the end of the month vs a bad player.

i sat down to play yesterday but my head wasn't in it so i shut it down rather than dump a bunch. i might only get to play one more session before vegas so we'll see. also interesting was my friday night session i played without pokertracker or hud since i was converting my database to postgeslkjaskjfa or whatever its called. it wasn't near as hard as i thought it would be (playing w/o hud that is) and felt that i had a good read on most players anyways. anyways, i hope to get lots of hands in march but it will be hard missing the first 1/3 of the month being in vegas. im also gonna start to play a little hu when im in the mood since i think edges in hu matches are much larger than ring games.

tg

logging more hands

so i put a good session last nite and managed to log over 1300 hands 4-tabling while also playing in the $75 7pm mtt. i busted around 140ish i think in what was probably a 650 person field im guessing. i had a bit of a roller coaster start and then won a big pot when i flopped flush over flush. after that i won and lost some small pots till i got it all-in pre-flop w/ JJ vs AKs and my JJ held. i blew off some chips later when i made a raise from ep w/ 66 and got cold called. flop came 442 rainbow, i c-bet, cold caller shoved and i folded. with 14bb's left i had a pretty tight image and opened KJs from mp which i hate since i can't stand a re-raise but i thought i was tight enough to get away with it. guy right behind me cold calls and we take the flop head-up. flop is KJx with two spades, i elected to open jam and he snap called w/ Aces and spiked an Ace on the river.

over the course of my cash game session i made a half buy-in. the following all occurred within about 7 minutes at one table near the end of my session.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2183143

about 1 lap later;

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2183155

so i get stacked twice very quickly and decide to play up a tilted image on this hand;

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2183162

fortunately i get very lucky but the verbal berating i got from the poor sucker with the aces was pretty priceless.

here are the other hands where i stacked someone in the session.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2183179 - villain is very loose passive and is playing 50% of his hands to any action. i figure him for a pretty wide range here including all pairs probably Tens and lower and almost any broadway hand. flop sucks and against most players i would just check it back since their range is usually heavily weighted towards pairs which are going to give me action but since this guy is calling with JT and what not i think i have to c-bet. here's where i screw up, i bet, he insta-raises all-in and when i looked at the pot size i thought i was getting like 5-1 since on ftp they include the whole stack he just shoved in. so figuring i probably had 6 outs i made the call, then realized after the fact that i wasn't even getting 3-1. oooops!

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2183202 - this hand was pretty standard, villain has taggish stats but makes way too many moves pre-flop and post-flop. he 4-bet shoves AK pre-flop all day here so when he shoves on the flop im pretty sure he has a worse Ace, the same ace or a flush draw.

i may play a little tonight but im unsure yet. tomorrow i think i will be getting in a good amount of hands to end off the month. i'm pretty surprised that i've already played over 21k hands this month. thats a lot for me since my playing time is limited and i usually just stick to 4 tabling. my graph so far 100nl over 12k hands looks a little like the mcdonalds arch but 12k hands is nothing to worry about. i'm just going to keep plugging leaks till i reach my goals.

random thoughts/occurrences:

- rakeback account is up to 1.4k and am just gonna let it keep accumulating till i need it.
- i re-upped my cardrunners membership and also joined deucescracked since they look like they are putting out a good product and don't have drm protection on their videos.
- i leave for vegas in a week which is just disgusting to think about. i can't fucking wait.
- my roll is now spread to 3k in pocket for vegas, 5.2k on my ftp account after paying for my cr and dc subscriptions and shipping a friend a hundo, and 1.4k in rakeback.
- i had this feeling of just not wanting to lose in vegas when i go but fuck that. i'm only going to be playing low limit shit and i should be by far the best player at the table when i play so here's hoping i destroy the games.

feb pt screen shot coming saturday!

tg

small sessions

had a small opening to play a few hands two nights and ended up winning a little bit over 500ish hands. i was trying to fix my pt db at the same time so i played exceptionally nitty over the sample. here's the only hand i got stacked on and i think villain played it well if he had a good read on me.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2169989 - pre-flop is standard. on the flop i've been scaling back on my c-betting frequency but even into two players this board is so dry that it's hard for them to hit it. surprisingly they both call and i'm pretty much done with the hand unless i improve. turn gives me a gutter ball to the nuts and i don't see any value in betting here. if i had gotten only one caller i might double barrell this turn since i get floated by a lot of mid pairs on boards like this that will probably give up after the second broadway hits. so i take the free card hoping to hit a Ten and to a lesser extent an Ace or King. so the river now gives me tptk but on a bit of an ugly board. my first inclination was to just show it down but i can't really put anyone on a hand that beats me and checks it twice. so i decide to fire out a smallish value bet to try and entice a Jack or weak Queen to call. when i get c/r'd i wanted to die. three things led me to calling here: a) although i've never seen this player make a c/r river bluff i think it could be part of his arsenal b) my river bet looks extremely weak c) i can't put him on any hand that beats me with that line.

last nite i hopped on for a quick little one hour session and it was kinda sick. the end result was losing close to 4 buy-ins. here's all the big hands.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2177316 - the good

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2177321 - the bad (part 1)
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2177327 - the bad (part 2)
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2177332 - the bad (part 3)
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2177341 - the bad (part 4)

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2177351 - the ugly. villain does not cold call raises often so i really put him on a smallish to med pair that he's not comfortable re-raising with or maybe even an AQ or AJ. on the flop im just calling since if he does have a hand like 77, 88... i don't want to stop him from betting and he only has 2 outs to beat me. also i still have the pre-flop raiser to act and he could be going for a c/r on this flop w/ a big hand. on the turn once again im just check/calling. im not scared of a flush and if he does have the range i think he does, im not getting any more value from raising. on the river i think i should be leading out here since the majority of the time he will give up and hope to show down against a flush draw and if he does have something like 99 he might call thinking im bluffing a busted flush draw. anyways, i checked, he shoved and i was very surprised to see AA.

i'll be playing a nice long session tonight and should be able to sneak in a mtt or two on the side.

tg

such slackage

on the posting that is. i suck and am lazy. i have however been playing a decent amount of poker of late. i think i played a little more of 50nl after the following week after my last post but then one day fired up some 100nl and have been playing that ever since.

my first session at 100nl was pretty bad and i got in a ton of tough spots where i stacked off in questionale spots. after that i went on a good run of sessions and was up in the black again. then i had another bad day and dropped close to 5 buy-ins but have come back on a nice run again and am back at a good winrate

i'm going to save the screen shots for the end of the month but i've got about 18k or 19k hands played so far this month with it evenly split between 50nl and 100nl.

on the tournament front i've only got to play two tournaments this month and didn't do too much in either. in one $26 i built up well before calling it off w/ 99 to a 3-bet shove that screamed AK which it was and lost the race. at the same time i worked my way through a 600ish person field in the $75 and didn't really have chips for most of it. when down to about 90 players i went on a nice rush and built up nicely before running AQ into AK where i probably could of folded but since i had a very lag image i went with it. during the rush my table was playing sooooo tight and the guy to my left warned me that "if he got a good hand, he was gonna play it". so w/ about 65 left and 63 paying, utg shoves like 3bb's, i'm utg+1 w/ just over 10bb's and re-ship w/ AKo, tight player snap calls and i know im done. i failed to hit and his QQ held to bust me just shy of the money.

here are some interesting hands where i got stacked from the last few sessions:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2165597 - here villain is kinda unknown but i had feeling he was fishy. my normal line here would be to 3-bet his min-raise on the flop but i decided to take a slightly different line and go for a c/r on the turn. unfortunately he checks the turn behind. on the river i decide to check again mostly to induce bluffs although the ace probably scares him from betting a Ten so i should probably just lead out. no value in raising his river bet.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2165566 - villain is an extreme fish and calls down with any pair no matter what the action. i don't think he knows there is a fold button. the flop raise is for both value and to protect my hand. i put him on a weak ace when he leads or possibly even just a bare Queen or Jack. i bet the turn for value and now start to wonder if he's maybe also got a bare diamond as well. river blank and he checks to me again, i pretty much insta-shoved for value and got quite the surprise. i was drawing slim the whole way and after reviewing the hand i find it very hard to put him on AQ/AJ when he limp/calls pre but when i check back on his stats he's raising less than 1% of his hands which means he could very well have JJ or QQ there although unlikely. missing seeing that in his hud costs me as i should probably just check this behind. the other holding he could play like this is KTo which also has me beat.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2165559 - fishy player limps and strong tag player isolates him with a raise from the button. this is a very common situation in these games and i think the button has a very wide raising range here. i think this is a fairly standard 3-bet although it's definitly on the aggressive side. folds back to villain tag and he just calls. i put him on a semi weak hand when he just flats. he could be trapping with a big hand but i kinda doubted it and put him on a more mediocre hand like AJ, AQ and mid pp's since he knows that i know he would isolate light and that i would 3-bet light. anyways, on the flop i make a somewhat smaller c-bet which i normally make in 3-bet pots pre-flop. at first i was hesitant to bet this flop because i'm not nuts about getting it in with just the flush draw and clearly behind or getting blown off my draw but this flop is really hard to hit and i think he will release the majority of his range. his raise definitly tells me he's got a hand and at this point i start to ponder whether he has AK, KQ or possibly even KK. i really think that's how narrow his range is here but he's raised small and i actually am getting the right price to see the turn and make my flush. if i don't improve on the turn i'll just dump the hand. the Ten improves me giving me a gutter to go along w/ my nut flush draw. i could shove here and maybe i should but the pot will be so big he's going to have to call even if he thinks there's a good chance he's beat. i check, he shoves but now i realize with the additional outs i'm probably getting the right price if i have a 12 outer like i expect. so i timed down and made the call but bricked out. def an interesting hand and there are many arguments to be made about every move on every street i think. in just writing down my thoughts here im now thinking that i maybe should be 3-bet shoving the flop? who knows, i'll continue to think about it and mabye even post it in the cr forums.

i'll post more thougths later,

tg

almost hit 5k hands

my goal going into the weekend was to play 5k hands and i basically got there. i think the final tally was 4,774 hands or something like that which for me is an absolute ton. my goal of 5k was going to be 4 tabling friday nite, saturday aft and sunday aft but i never got to play friday nite at all. so when i sat down saturday for my session i decided to try 8 tabling. it actually went a lot better than i thought it would since anytime i've ever tried anything over 5 tables it's been tough.

while it helped me to put in a ton of hands i don't think 8 tabling is optimal for a player trying to learn the game. the only time i think it's a good idea really is when you're playing to make money rather than playing to improve, get better and move up limits. So after the dust settled i made a wopping $31 for my effort. the quest started off slow and i was down a couple buy-ins early but came back and finished saturday up 3 buy-ins. then on sunday a hit a few more tough spots and ended up losing back over 2 buy-ins.

i also got out to play live on saturday night and after waiting 3 hours sat down for some 1/2nl w/ a $100 cap buy-in. they've actually started introducing 1/2 tables w/ a $200 cap so i think i'll play those from now on since the 2/5nl game has a $300 cap. the games made me happy to realize that there is still a ton of money to be made in poker. in the two tables i sat at i did not see one player that was good. not saying im great but if it weren't for my raises every pot would have been 7 ways limped. i ended up losing $30 after dicking around a bit at the end of the session and once c-betting what i thought was a heads up pot but not seeing a third guy had limp/called my raise and shoved the flop so that cost me. can't wait to play in vegas but i'll definitly have to be more disciplined than i am when playing live close to home.

anyways, here are all the hands that i got stacked with during the course of the weekend. some are just plain ugly play but i'll explain my thoughts.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2082883 - villain just sat down and is complete unknown, against a good player i can get away from this but i have a hard time folding w/o a read. maybe i should be folding to unknowns too.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2082882 - villain was very bad maniac and has a huge opening range and his flop min-raise is so wide that i'm never folding to him. i only call the raise cuz if i shove he might find a fold but will almost certainly shove the turn thinking he has fold equity.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2082881 - i get stacked again w/ an overpair to an unknown villain on a super bad flop for my hand.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2082879 - ugghh, embarassing. i didn't have any pahud stats on villain yet but he's been aggressive and has 3-bet my raises a couple times already. i decide to call light in position this time and get married to top pair. the thing that made me call down was that he was timing down every street before making his bet which i thought was weak. oh well. he ended up being a very snug player and i think every move i saw him make early was a legit hand.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2082877 - this one is pretty standard.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2082875 - a beat to spice things up.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2082874 - this one sucked. villain is playing 70/30ish over a good enough sample and i snap called. i think this is a very borderline ev call and im not sold on folding or calling either way.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2082873 - this hand me sick to my stomach. villain is playing 13/9 over a large sample and is on two or three of my other tables. i've not seen him get out of line once and when he put the small 4-bet in i was 90% sure he had Aces but went with it anyways. i went through the math and it looks like he would need to be showing up w/ QQ a small % of the time and AK a decent % of the time to make it worth calling. i've never been one to agree to folding KK pre but this hand might make me a believer.

tg

getting in the groove

didn't get to play this week until last night where i put in a nice little 1200 hand session. i ended up down a buy-in but think i played pretty well. for the first time ever, i'm actually confident playing a nl cash game no matter 6-max. i think i've turned a corner from playing a guessing game when thinking out a hand to becoming a lot more in tune with ranges and how certain style players would play certain hand types.

something about it just seems a bit clearer for some reason. i had an excellent coaching session last night that brought to light a major leak i have and that apparently is pretty common, especially in a player that is coming from a limit holdem background. also, some of the hands i've misplayed over the last week, i've analysed after the session and come up with the correct decisions that should have been made.

so this weekend i should have quite a bit of time to play. i'm going to set a goal of 5k hands but won't force on myself if i feel im not playing at the top of my game. i might also get a chance to play some live saturday night which i've absolutely been itching for. i'm so pumped right now that i'm actually dying to move up to 100nl from 50nl. i think since i started playing 50nl in late jan i've played maybe 11k hands and am up around 6 buy-ins.

we'll see, it wouldn't really be taking a shot per se since i have the bankroll for it but in the beginning i did say i wanted to play 50nl for the month of feb so maybe i'll just stick with that.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

so when i haven't been playing this week, i've been researching another site to put $ on. i love everything about full tilt and would never fully leave the site but i would like to take a few shots on other sites to try find the softest competition possible. i've researched pretty much every site on the net and have come to two sites that i'll probably try out. party poker and pacific poker seem like the most logical. for one, party is supposedly still pretty soft and if i can back door a rakeback deal there i think i'd like to try and play a couple thousand hands so i can make my own judgement. pacific has recenlty added rakeback so i would have a rakeback deal there plus they supposedly have the softest games online still. the software seems a little clunky but manageable. for now im going to stay on ftp but maybe once im back from vegas in march i will re-invest some of that roll into a diff site.

ftops is running currently but i haven't had the urge to play anything. i might try to sat into the sunday 6pm event but other than that i will probably play a few regular mtts during the course of the weekend.

hopefully my next update will include a couple hands with thoughts.

tg

bunch of nl cash

so i've mainly been playing 50nl 6-max of late. i feel i have a lot better mindset for tackling these games now than i did back last summer. i managed to play about 6k hands of 50nl at the end of january finishing down a little over two buy-ins. i was up as much as 7 early and then had a horrid session losing close to 9 buy-ins over a stretch of 1800 hands.

i had a coaching session last week which went well and re-affirmed a few things i was doing well and addressed a few areas where i could be leaking money. since the beginning of february i've played about 3.1k hands and am up 9 buy-ins i believe. definilty running hotter than expectation but i think im starting to get a better grasp at the games as well. one thing for sure, the 50nl games on full tilt probably play like 10/20 nl live. it's unbelievable, i spend so much time hopping tables since there are plenty more tags than there are fish in the games. still, i think i'm playing the tags well and even though most have good pt stats, i find they are still making some fairly big mistakes against me.

so far i think im playing pretty close to 20/17 with an af > 3. the af should come down some as the sample size gets bigger. i'm hoping to start reviewing hands in the blog but for now i don't have pokertracker holdem on this computer which makes it hard.

i think i've only had a chance to play two tournies since my last post, one i busted early i believe and the other, surprise surprise, i finshed 31st out of 1198 people for another close but no cigar finish.

i withdrew 4k from ftp yesterday for my vegas trip and a few expenses that have come up. i think i'll end up having around 3k to play with in vegas + a few extra bucks for the odd time i'll actually eat. i guess i've pretty much passed off the idea of playing in any events at the wynn while im there. if they have satellites and i have time i might hop in one of them but i'm not going to plunking down 1.5k on one tournament. i still have time to hit a decent score in a tourny online but variance makes it unlikely. for the next month i will probably only playing mtt's on tuesday nights and even then i'll probably only play the 7pm $75 and the 8pm $26 on ftp. upon coming back from vegas i might stick some money on another site since i think there have to be softer spots online than full tilt right now. the problem is finding a site that i can get rakeback on, supports pokertracker and pahud and has the soft traffic im looking for.

not sure how long i'll play 50nl for but will probably just move up based on feel and what my winrate is over a more significant sample.

til next time.

tg

all over the place

so i haven't posted in a long time after trying to get back in the groove of posting. i guess for the most part i've slacked on posting because there has nothing really noteworthy to post about. i played a ton of poker between my last post and last week but didn't really have much to show for it.

on the tournament front it's been the same old story. play well, run well, get deep, bust out in the final 3 tables. i finally had an early bustout the other day when i ran KK into AA pre but other than that i'm usually making the 2nd hour of everything.

for most of the time i've been playing cash and it's been a mix of lhe 6-max, limit O8 and razz. i started picking up on razz a bit and really enjoy the game. my first session i won like 40bb's one tabling on the side. since then it's been a slow bleed and i've probably lost that back plus some. very fun game but very frustrating at times. i had one session where i was getting dealt premium after premium and then bricking 4th and 5th if i made it that far. lo8 has gotten kinda boring to me and i've also found that i get a little too impatient and end up spewing chips in spots where im beat handily. i still plan on playing some to switch things up but for now am only hopping in good full ring games. limit holdem went well and i've probably made another 60bb's or so after going stale for a bit.

last week i had a bit of a frustrating night. i don't do well playing a heavy schedule and when i've played for more than 3 or 4 days in a row i tend to need a break from the game. last week i think i had played about 5 days in a row and was in need of a night off. instead i played again trying to make something happen on the tournament front since i have been getting close. it ended up in a bit of a disaster and tilted off my tournaments after just not caring. that pisses me off when i do that so decided to take a little break. i didn't play thursday or friday, played a nice litlle 850 hand session of no-limit 6 max (more on that later) and then took sunday and monday off as well. the break has done me good and i've come away with a few realizations.

1 - i have a short attention span and find it hard to stick to one discipline (poker wise) which leads me to game hopping. in the last year i've went from mtt's ----> sng's----> nl cash ---> back to mtt's ----> plo ---> back to mtt's --->hi/lo games ----> limit holdem ----> .....

now, this might not be the worst thing in the world since i have got experience at almost all games except for stud hi. i think with the experience i will have a decent edge in most of these tournaments now since most fields for games other than holdem are quite weak. the flip side of this is im never really building bankroll, rather losing some when trying to get around the learning curve of a game i've never played before. so once again i've got the itch for nl cash. my session last week came at 50nl and instead of filling my game with laggish fps, i went at it tight and solid. i need to develope a good tag base of my game and learn the fundamentals before i can start splashing around with more advanced strategies. i think improving my nl cash game will only benefit my tourny play and will also help me build bankroll since there are always a plethora of nl games to choose from.

2 - im putting too much pressure on myself to build up a big roll. lately the frustration of getting deep and not finishing big has caused me to chase bigger tournaments in search of bigger scores. from now on im not going to worry about making enough money so i can take a shot while in vegas. if it doesn't happen it doesn't happen. i have lots of time to progress as a poker player.

so thats it, one big rant of a post and hopefully i can stay on track posting from now on. i am on the lookout for another coach for nl. i think it's well worth the investment and can really alleviate a lot of the growing pains as a player.

tg

weekend results + last night

played some on the weekend and overall probably lost a few bucks. i played friday night but didn't get started till late so i missed all the good tournaments and when i don't start till 11pm i don't like to play tournaments since it will mean staying up to the weee hours if i get deep. so i stuck it out 4 tabling 2/4 lhe 6-max and mixed in some 5/10 l08. i think after about 1k hands of lhe and maybe a hundred or so of l08 i think i broke dead nuts even.

saturday night i sat down around 10pm and played the 10:15pm $26 horse mtt and finished something like 65th/241. i also played the $10 rebuy at 10:30pm and pretty much dinked around the rebuy period and finally doubled up near the end w/ 7k before taking the 2k add-on. after the rebuy period i probably played the nittiest poker of my life and pretty much sat there and folded for the entire 2nd hour minus one or two small pots played. it was pretty much a combo of dead cards and poor position at an aggressive table. after that i picked up KK and doubled up when a really bizarre hand occurred.


utg (good player) has about 11k, i have about 5.8k and sb has about 14k to start the hand and the blinds are 200/400/50a.


utg raises to 1k and i decide to just shove and the sb tanks. i figured he must be pretty strong but was rooting for a call. somehow sb called w/ Q8s????????? and utg folded. so i doubled there and then busted sometime later. i was still playing pretty tight and when mp opened i decided to play my AA a little differently. he raised and i smooth called hoping the sb from the previous hand might do something stupid in the bb. he didn't and we took a J98r flop heads-up. kind of a crappy flop but im not folding here anytime so i check, mp bets my stack and i called. he had KJo and spiked a K on the turn and another J on the river to send me packing.


so after that i put in another 700 hands or so of lhe and maybe a 100 or so at l08 and i think ended up losing $80 or so in lhe and broke even in l08 after jamming with what i thought was the nut high and was shown the real nut high. duh.



------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

tournament poker stunk last night. here's the recap:

7pm $75 - up and down like a yoyo before busting before the 1st break by c/r all-in w/ middle pair against a button limper that i felt was auto betting the flop when checked to. he had a ragged top pair.

7:15pm $26 limit holdem - busted 2nd hour after being crippled with top two against a set.

8pm $26 - lost close to a 1/3 of my stack on the first hand calling a raise in position w/ 76s, called a bet on a J65 one diamond flop, called another bet on a Kd turn, checked behind on the river and was shown AJo. doubled shortly into the 2nd hour re-stealing w/ ATs from the sb and won a race against 99. eventually got short again and lost a flip w/ 88 vs AQo.

8pm $165 - lost 1/2 my stack early flopping top set TT on a T54r board against a donkey when he c/r me all-in and the turn river came 23 and he scooped it with A4o. then used said donkey as my whipping boy and took almost everything back plus some and really ran over the table for a while. late in the 2nd hour i call a min-raise in the bb w/ 22. flop came T73, i checked and pre-flop raiser checked behind, turn came a 9 and i fired out a bet and he called. river came a 7 and i fired another bullet putting him on AK or AQ and he called w/ QT. now im hovering around w/ 16bb's, last hand of the 2nd hour, utg limps, mp limps, sb completes and i check J8s in the bb. flop comes a beauty 858. sb checks, i check, utg bets 2/3 pot, mp calls, sb calls and with so much already in the pot i just shove instead of getting cute. all fold back to sb who calls with Q8o and i don't catch up.

also played a couple $75 45 person sngs and did nothing in them and ran a couple $33 turbo sngs and had one 3rd place.

after that i put in a little hour long session of 2/4 shlhe and 5/10 lo8 and broke even.

next post will have some goals including the upcoming ftops.

tg

been a while

but i haven't really played. i took almost all of the holidays off from poker. it wasn't really planned but i was never really in the mood to play so i spent sometime reading but that was about it. i played a little bit late last week but it was mostly just some limit holdem and omaha hi/lo cash.

my december was an ok month, i made about $500 playing nlh, lost about $250 playing lhe, won about $750 from omaha hi/lo, made a little bit playing sng's and probably broke close to even in tournaments.

i put in my first real session of the year last nigth. played the 7pm $75 and got bounced early on a bad beat that i can't really remember at the moment. the 8pm $26 was unlucky as well as i ran Q2o from the bb into the sb's Q6o on a Q62 flop. the 8pm $163 was another good showing and for the 879434798102348 time i made it deep but finished 27th. i took some beats in this tourny as well early when i built up a stack and then lost QQ vs AQ, KT vs 77 on a T8x flop and chopped AK vs KQ on a KT3 flop when the turn and river came 33. it's getting a little frustrating getting this deep in this tournament and never even getting a sniff of the final table but i guess it could be worse and it's really over a small sample when i think of it.

during the tournaments i ran up to 4 tables of 2/4 6-max limit holdem and got about 1150 hands in. the results were pretty good finishing up $650 which is a sick 162.5bb. i obv ran like god but the opponent play was atrocious. i'll continue to work on my limit holdem game especially 6-max since that's were all the action is at. i also logged some hands playing 5/10 omaha hi/lo and played one hand very poorly that resulted in me being down about 5 bb's in that game.

not sure when i'll play next but my next post will probably include my goals for the first half of '08.

tg

more of the same

played a couple times in the last few days. played some more mixed games pretty much breaking even in limit holdem, losing a little bit playing stud 8 (played very bad one day) and up a decent amount in omaha 8. a few of the omaha 8 sessions were up at 8/16 because thats all that was running so i took a shot. the play was pretty poor for that level and i managed to make some hands and scoop a nice little profit.

tournaments have been the same. played a few last nite and went deep in the 10pm $26 but eventually busted like 60th out of a 1200+ field. im probably up a little in sngs but have way too many 2nds and 3rds compared to wins.

i hope to put in a nice session today and play a few of the early afternoon tournaments. oh yeah, i also hopped in a satellite for the 750k sunday and won a seat so i'll have a rare opportunity to play that as well. since im playing it i will probably also play the mulligan and the horse event.

tg

playing some mixed games

haven't really played much since the last post.

put in maybe an 1.5hr session saturday night before going out and then played for about 3hrs yesterday. all of it was cash and most of the time i had two 3/6 full ring limit holdem tables plus one 2/4 stud eight or better and one 2/4 or 3/6 omaha eight or better.

i think after everything is said and done im probably even in stud 8 although i played one hand so bad it made the baby jesus cry. i think im up about a $100 or so in omaha 8 and down probably close to $250 in holdem. i ran like total garbage yesterd in holdem and dropped about 40 bets over the course of like 450 hands. it was pretty sick but the good part is that a lot of it was due to poor play by opponents.

im almost done reading the stud 8 portion of hi/low split by ray zee and im starting to feel more comfortable with the game although i'll probably need to put in a lot of hands and re-read the book again before i can say im fully competent. i'll read the omaha 8 portion next and then hopefully the books i ordered come in so i can start on them. i ordered "sklansky on poker" which deals mostly with razz, "seven card stud for advanced players" which is a stud hi book and the new revised version of "tournament poker for advanced players". hopefully they will come in during the course of the holidays when i should have lots of time to read up. otherwise i'll probably bust out holdem for advanced players since i feel my holdem game is lacking a bit and i never made it all the way through that book. i'd also like to re-read theory of poker since i read it very quickly when i first bought it and probably didn't understand a lot of the concepts at that time. when i haven't been reading i've watching a lot of cardrunners and pxf vids. sometimes i feel like i have a really good handle on tournment poker when all of a sudden i'll watch a rizen video and be blown away. 2 weeks later i can't believe how bad i used to play and realize that i have so much more to learn.

i should be playing tonight but im not sure if i'll have the whole night to dedicate to tournaments.

tg

i can't win cack bro!

aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

busted 39th in the $163 again for a small cash. felt i played great in this tournament and was down to 1.8k at 200/400/50a blinds and fought all the way back to have like 30k a mere 10 minutes later. here's the bust out hand.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1812786 - im not sure if i can play this any differently.

also went deep in the $26 plo tourny busting 11th on a sick hand where this guy that was berating others play decided to call off his tourny life on the turn w/ an open ended straight draw and ragged pair.

finally cashed in a $75 45 person sng coming 3rd for like $500 or something so i made a little money on the night but not as much as i could of.

i think i'll play a little cash today and if i don't end up going out tonight i might hop into some more tournies.

tg

getting deep....

but can't finish.

i've went deep in 3 tournies over the last two nights and busted in the final 3 or 4 tables of each.

two nights ago was the hardest. i played the $163 at 8pm and 1st place was a tasty 20.6k. i had my eyes on taking it down all day but it wasn't meant to be. i ended up busting 32nd when my 99 got drawn out by A7o. the hand played itself though as i only had 10bb's in the bb and the sb had about 30bb's and was shoving on me everytime it was folded to him.

last night i went deep twice. the first was the $26 6pm where i busted 26th out of like 604. the bust out in that hand was a pretty sick cooler. the blinds were 800/1600/200a and i had about 20k behind and was in the bb w/ Q7s. mp min-raised and the sb called. both had me covered and i was getting over 6-1 to flick the additional 1600 in so i did since it doesn't really change the flexibility of my stack. the flop came down QQ9r, sb checked and i decided to lead out for 4k into the 11.4k pot. i thought this bet would induce a lot of shoves from a lot of pair hands that mp might have been raising since i would still be able to fold if shoved on. he shoved, sb folded and i obv called. he had 99 for the flopped underfull and i didn't improve.

after that i had went on a nice run and built up chips in the 7pm $75. down to 36 i had about 18bb's and picked up AJo in the cutoff. folded to me and i raised a little less than 3x but was committed to the hand since all three players behind had 15-20bb stacks making it a likely situation for a re-steal. sure enough bb (who just had me covered) re-shipped and i snap called and probably looked like a donkey doing so but i was correct and he had 55. i lost that flip and shortly thereafter shut it down for the night after busting in the 200's of the 1200 person field in the 8pm $26.

i can't complain about not running well though as i think i ran very well to get as deep as i did. in the $163 i put a big suckout on another player for my tourny life when i shoved 7bb's from lp w/ Q8o and snapped off his AQo. also in the $75, i was very short and shoved 43s from lp and snapped off another AQo when the flop came a tasty 256r. all of my big favorites have been holding up and i've been winning my share of flips, i just can't finish the job.

oh well, i think im playing my best right now so that's all i can really ask for. i think i'll take tonite off since it's my b-day and i'll probably be back in action tomorrow night.

im also going to add a win in the nightly $163 to my christmas list.

tg

bankroll -1k

just had to withdrawal 1k from my full tilt account to cover some personal expenses.

bankroll now sits @ 10.7k.

aaarggghhh.

guess i have to win something tonite.

played a whack

played quite a bit friday nite. started around 6pm and played mostly tournaments but early on i had a couple of cash tables going to fill the screen.

i had two 1/2 nl full ring tables going early and managed to make a couple buy-ins on those by mostly flopping sets to overpairs. after about 8pm though i had a pretty full screen going of mtt's so that was it for cash.

here's the rundown w/ a brief recap if noteworthy:

6pm $26 - busted 381/649

$44 turbo sat to $150 - busted 28/43

7pm $75 - busted 245/522 but not without a story. @ 80/160 and about 2.4k, if you told me i would get dealt KK three times in a row i would imagine that i would end up somehow around 5k. not the case. here are the three hands that happened in succession, in this order.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1792971
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1792972
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1792974

8pm $26 - busted 26/1258 for $141 in this one which was the deepest i got all night. was very happy with my play and i was chip leader when we got down to about 100. after that though the blinds were insanely high and any pot played severely swung your stack size.

8pm $163 - busted 142/433. once again was very happy with my play and i hung around like a bad a rash while short stacked. an interesting hand was the cause of me getting short stacked. w/ blinds @ 120/240/25a, i was in the bb w/ AJo and about 5k behind. a player in lp opened to 580 which was his standard raise. he was very active and was definitly opening light. in the sb was the___dry_ who was also playing very aggressively and several times had open shoved 15 and 17bb stacks. the___dry_ re-shipped about 3.7k on top of the lp raise and knowing what i knew i came over the top with my AJo. lp folded but unfortunately the__dry_ had AKo and i didn't suck out. interesting hand though and i definitly like my play although i've never played with the__dry before so maybe he is tight and had a hand all those times. not sure but i feel that AJ is beating his pushing range there the way he was playing.

9:15pm $26 plo - busted 45/185 after monster chip leader villain that played every hand turned me on a AAxJ board w/ AJxx against my AKQx.

9:30pm $55 - short stacked the whole time it felt like but hung around long enough to bust 226/944.

10pm $26 - 876/1243 uneventfully.

10:15pm $26 horse - 113/175 after losing half my stack in a limit holdem hand w/ Qs8s on a Qx7s4s4dAs board against A4o and then playing an O8 extremely poorly after holding on short stacked for a while.

That was it for Friday night. Sunday morning i played for a couple of hours but mostly mixed games. last week i played a couple of tables of horse and rather enjoyed so sunday morning i looked to do more of the same. unfortunately at that time there was only one horse game going so i added a 3/6 limit holdem table, a 2/4 stud hi table and a 2/4 omaha h/l table. later on a second 2/4 horse game got going so i added that in place of the stud hit table.

i made up a spread sheet to track my wins/losses in the horse games and i'll also be able to tell what games im doing better/worse in. i think so far on the actual horse tables im up a few bucks but i made out good in the stud hi, limit holdem and omaha h/l tables to come away with a about a $120 win. maybe i should just buy the stud version of pokertracker and save myself the headache of trying to track things manually.

i played some hands very bad so i finally busted open the Ray Zee 2+2 hi/lo split for advanced players book that i've had for a couple months. i really think i should read the sklansky/malmouth/zee stud for advanced players first so i might order that along with another sklansky book where he goes over razz concepts. if im going to play mix games i'd like to be good at all of them so i can be as profitable as possible. as is there are a number of bad players in the games to make it worth my while.

so now i have like 4 books on the go and want to order a couple more. im a complete idiot and must have ADD the way i jump around from thing to thing.

anyways, gl at the tables.

tg

tuesdays session

quick update. i played tuesday night with poor results in mtt's and break even in cash games. i say poor results in mtt's because i went off in the $20r 6-max for $222 total which ain't cool. i thought my play was sloppy early in on in most tournaments but i think after a bit i zoned and played well. i got bounced in the 7pm $75 when i opened the button w/ TT, bb called and i was 90% comitted to the hand post-flop since this player seemed to want to take a shot at me. the flop came 652r and he check-raised me all-in w/ A5o and rolled the Ace. i made up for it though by dishing out a couple beats in the 20r. funny thing about the 20r, there were two players talking about going off and playing nuts (i think they knew each other) and 5 min in i had like 8.5k on my single rebuy and thought of actually just going into nit mode but instead 2 hands later i stacked off with AJo vs 55 going for a massive stack and it ended up costing me.


cashed in the limit event like 13th or something for a tiny win. both 8pm tournies were tough as i never got going and slowly bled down both to the point i was short stacked. i was happy with my short stack play though and thought i hung tough and didn't mail it in.

more later.

tg

couple of goals to shoot for

i was thinking about it last nite and in order for me to take a shot at one of the 1k buy-in wynn poker classic events while im in vegas i need to build up a 20k bankroll before then. so basically i don't want to risk more than 5% of my bankroll taking a "shot". so i'm about 3 months out from my trip but since my only means of cashout on ftp right now are via cheque i probably need to request funds by the beginning of Feb. i guess i'll look into other means of cashout in the meantime since it would give me more flexibility when deciding on how much i can afford to bring.

so, if i only want to take shots for 5% of my bankroll that also means i will probably need a 30k+ roll if i want to play in two 1.5k wsop events this year. i'll still go with the rakeback plan of just letting it build up without cashing it out and then hopefully that can cover some of the buy-ins when the time rolls around.

so that means i have to grind out 8k profit in the next 3 months (or less) and then depending on how my vegas trip goes i'll have to re-evaluate from there.

the 30k goal is a little unpredictable since i might go on a downswing between now and vegas and that would screw everything up so i won't really be setting that one in stone until after i get back from my trip.

the 8k profit to get me to a 20k roll though is now my main goal and focus. i think this is very doable but with the small amount of playing time i have and the variance of mtt's you never know what could happen. here's what my schedule is going to be right now:

6pm - $26 nlhe (probably won't get to play this one too often)
7pm - $75 nlhe
7:15pm - $26 lhe
7:30pm - $22 rebuy 6-max
8pm - $26 nlhe (might not play this all the time since it runs pretty long)
8pm - $150 nlhe

these are all on full tilt since that's the only place i have $ right now. ideally i'd like to find another site or two that have a good tournament in this same time frame. i should also be able to get 2 or 3 $75 45 person sngs in during this time too and i will play as many as possible.

tg

lots of decisions

played a litte friday night and never really got into it and played poorly in most everything.

decided to just shut it down rather then waste buy-ins only to dust off chips.

played close to 30 sng's in the $22 and $33 turbos on Saturday and broke pretty much even. went down to Casino Niagara sat nite with some friends and played a little 1/2 nl. the games as usual were extremely soft and i ran up the max buy-in of a $100 (lol 50bb's) to around $260 at one point playing pretty well. then i got a couple beers in me, got bored and a bit cocky and ended up walking out down $35 after a 4 hour session. one interesting hand came up during the session. it was about 2.5 hours into the session, couple loose passives limp in late position and i decide to just complete with AJo in the sb (about $220 behind) and the bb checks. flop comes J54 with two diamonds (i have no diamonds). i lead out for pot ($10), bb folds and two loose passive players call. the turn is an offsuit Ace, i lead out for $30 (pot is $40, villain 1 has about $80 behind and villain 2 has about $200). villain 1 hums and haws and looks like he is most concerned with villain 2 than me and eventually folds, villain 2 calls. the river was the 3 of diamonds (worst card in the deck) and i check (mistake, should probably make a blocking bet here) since i thought for sure he had a flush draw at that point and even if he did have 76 it got there as well. i checked and he instantly went for chips and bet out $50. i was sick, villain 2 had shown some moxy before raising a bunch of limpers on the button with Q8s so it wasn't like he was uncapable of making moves but the only other time i saw him value bet a river he had two pair. i took as long as i have ever taken in a live game and eventually mucked. i told him i mucked top two and he told me i was behind the whole way and that he flopped a set but when another player at the table accused him of bluffing he started laughing so who knows. i think long term the fold is +ev but in a live game who knows.

so i also have hardly played any plo cash games of late. i had a planned lesson for thurs night but my coach no showed and i dropped 3 buy-ins while waiting for him mostly on a couple beats and losing two big flips. i've determined one thing in my poker life. i cannot grind anything. i have a short attention span and when i go on these little quests to conquer new games or cash levels i just don't have the focus to play one discipline all the time.

the only exception to this is mtt's. i think i can handle playing tournaments since they are constantly changing dynamics and building to a climax. also, i think i would have made a lot more money this year if i had just dedicated myself to tournaments. so im going to be playing tournaments tuesday and thursday nites from now on. now of course when i bust early or need to fill the screen with other games i will still fill it occasionally with cash games or sngs. i think as long as i mix things up i can do well in almost anything i play. i'd also like to mix in all different kinds of games and formats so i could be playing anything from nl full ring cash to shorthanded plo to 8 handed horse games. i think the variety of poker is the most appealing to me and i have no idea why i restrict myself.

also, im off to vegas the beginning of march for 6 days 5 nights of poker and can't wait. it will be during the wynn poker classic so if all goes well the next 3 months online i might take a shot at one of the 1k events but i'll cross that bridge when i get there.

bankroll is just over 12k right now with about $400 in my rakeback account.

tg

I Love Tournament Poker!

ahhhh, the highs and lows of poker.



so last weekend i put in a ton of hands of plo. (for me at least) I played a couple hundred hands Friday night and lost close to 3 buy-ins. in that session i lost about a 265bb pot where i was 75% favourite that would of made the session break even.

saturday was a massacre. i played early in the day and lost a couple more buy-ins. later that evening i put in a good long session and unfortunately lost some more. the whole weekend put together i think i played around 2200 hands and lost 11 buy-ins. ($1100) it definitly sucked but at no point was i ever playing steamed or tilty. i was level headed the whole time and never really payed attention to how much i was down although i knew it was fairly significant. i sent some hands off to my plo coach and there were some definite mistakes and although i didn't play perfect i don't think i played awful either. i can only think of two hands where i made big mistakes and most of the other mistakes was stuff like felting bottom set to a fairly passive player and what not. i ran a little bit below expectation over the course of those hands as well so the loss was a bit easier to take.

saturday nite i also played some mtt's. i started with the fifty fifty at 9:30pm and got knocked out of that fairly early on when i ran AJ into AK on a AxxA board and was pot stuck. the hand went like this:

ep raises and gets multiple callers to me on the button. i elect to call with AJs which i normally insta-muck to a raise but since i was suited, the pot was multi-way and i had the button i thought it was playable. flop comes Axx, it's checked to me so i fire out a little more than 1/2 pot, ep raiser calls as does one other player. the turn is another Ace and there are no draws out there. it checks to me once again and i bet, ep raiser c/r all-in and the other guy folds. i have to call off like 800 to win a ton so i call knowing im crushed. ep raiser was a good aggressive player and my initial read on his flop call is that he might have had a hand like JJ-KK that he didn't like the Ace but couldn't necessarily fold to a button that might stab at this flop a high % of the time without an Ace. i don't know, i think the third player in the hand screwed me up cuz i think i have to bet my trips in case he was check/calling a weak ace and is now ready to go broke with it. if the pot were to be heads-up with the ep raiser i think i most likely check the turn through for pot control.

after that i played the 10pm $26 and went semi deep for my first cash since returning to mtt's. i placed 169/1232 for $38 and snuck into the money w/ less than 5bb's and was probably in the bottom 5 of the tournament from 200 down.


i also played the $10 rebuy at 10:30pm and busted in that 87/440 but i don't remember how.

so Sunday i was really tempted to play but decided not to since i was tired from playing late the night before.



my next session came tuesday night but i didn't play a hand of plo. i felt a little burnt out on the game and thought maybe it would be best to take sometime away from it. after my very small cash on saturday and i really started craving the tournament action. so tuesday i decided to play nothing but mtt's and see how it went. i didn't get started till 7pm but i threw a few bucks on stars as well so i could play there as well.

here's a recap of what i played and how it went:

7pm $109 on stars - this tournament was going well and i was getting some playable hands and probably had an active image. i worked my way up to about 3600 picking up small pots when i got it all-in pre just before the break w/ QQ vs AKo and lost the flip leaving me with 116 chips. i busted shortly after that. although i like this tournament i don't think i'll put any more money on stars to play it. it's really the only tournament i could play on stars since most of the fields on stars are like 2000 people and they run until the weeee hours of the morning which is not ideal since i have to go to work the next day. also, the two tables i played at had like 5 known players at each which can't be all that great for my expectation.

7pm $75 on full tilt - lost some small pots and slowly got down to about 2200 from the original 3k (i think this is how i start this tournament every time) until i was on the receiving end of set over set and busted fairly early.

7:15pm $26 limit holdem on ftp - played poorly i think and eventually busted early in the 2nd hour.

$75 45 person sng on ftp - played 3 of these getting knocked out early twice and going deep in the third one finishing 2nd for $776. should have won it but oh well.



$22 180 person sng on stars - nothing really happened in this one and i eventually busted around 60th i think.



8pm $150 on ftp - went fairly deep in this one without any real crazy hands. pretty much hung around below average but not quite shortstacked for most of the tournament until i made a bone head move. 59 left with top 54 paying (520 runners) and this hand goes down:


http://www.cardrunners.com/members/display_hand.php?session=s%3A5%3A%2211495%22%3B&hand=s%3A6%3A%22381589%22%3B

it's bonehead cause im not deep enough to make the initial raiser fold pre-flop since he'll be getting close to 2-1 on a call.

7:30pm $20 rebuy 6-max nlh - picture is worth a thousand words.


so yeah i won. pretty cool, just over 3k for first. i usually don't like to play 6-max tournaments but decided since i can only play tournaments that will end at a reasonable hour that i should give this one a shot. i double rebought right off the bat and build up to about 4.5k, then lost a big pot w/ KK vs 97 on a J9x board all-in and had to single rebuy to get back to 3k. after that i cruised and had 10k after taking the add-on at the end of the first hour. (in for $82 total)

i played some big pots (don't quite remember) but somehow built up to a big stack of about 40k and then got into a big hand. i had been opening liberally and picked up TT in the Co and made a standard raise. the sb a very good (according to opr) player re-raised and i 4-bet since i thought he was re-raising light. he shoved and i had a tough decision. i can't find the hh but i believe i was getting 2.5-1 and although he's showing up with a big hand here often i thought he had a wider range than a normal shover there and ended up calling after timing all the way down. the other reason i called is that even if i lost i still would have had an above avg stack. to my surprise he had AQo and i held to be top 3 in chips. (running it in pokerstove even if he is only shoving JJ+ and AK i am only a 2-1 dog so im well within my odds to call.)

after that i was planning on raising everyhand since i was like 8x avg but of course being 2nd in chips full tilt moves the chip leader to my exact left. i stayed active but everytime i moved tables or got a big stack moved from my left another came in so i couldn't go too nuts.

i managed to get down to two tables and was still top 4 in chips and the chipleader at my table. i had two complete maniacs to my left that were doing everything in there power to go bust. they kept 3-betting my raises, raising my blind even though i was 3-bet shoving them wide and this is after i call there all-ins light and they get there. eventually i busted one of them and then with 7 left i busted the other one when he raise, the sb cold called and i shoved and he snap called me with AJo and i had AKo and held.

i had 295k when we got to the final table and was chip leader by about 100k so my plan was to tighten up since i had final 3 chips already but i was getting a lot of good starting hands for 6-max and ended up being the laggy player at the table. when we got to 4 handed i was actual the shortest stack w/ 145k. i hung tough and soon two others busted and we were heads up almost dead even with about 500k each @ 2.5k/5k/600a which plays pretty much like a cash game. i felt i had a good edge on him and eventually had ground him down to about a 700k/300k disadvantage when i picked up AA for the 2nd time heads-up (i had AA about 5 times in the rebuy period and never got action with them), villain raised, i re-popped fairly big cause i was pretty sure he was calling and i wanted to build a bigger pot. he called and the flop came down Jxx all diamonds and i held the Ace of diamonds. i open shoved the flop and he snap called me with J7o no diamonds and it held for the win.

this is getting long so i'll write some more in my next entry.

tg

tournament poker sucks

it's a love hate relationship.

i played the 7pm $75 again last night. i played pretty tight since im mostly concentrating on my plo cash tables.

here's the first significant hand:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1722584 - thats an ugly turn and river but his bet on the river made me feel more comfortable with calling. so i pick off his bluff and get some good chips early.

the second hand:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1722585 - same villain, betting light and probably muttering to himself that im a fkn calling station.

leads to the final hand:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1722587 - same villain again opens the button, i make a simple 3-bet from the bb and it's literally probably the 6th hand i've played in the first 90 mins. he snap shoved and i snap call.

so despite his best efforts, the poker gods would not allow to take all his chips. i guess looking at it a day later the third hand is probably a bad call but i had a feeling he was pissed with me for not folding the AJ hand and was playing poorly against me.

only got about 600 hands of plo in and broke pretty much even after being down a couple buy-ins to start. i think im misplaying sets on dangerous boards so it's something i'll have to go over.

tg

another 1k hands of plo and a few tournies

friday nite played a nice long session.

started around 7pm and played the $75 nl mtt and got bounced in the 3rd hand. i pick up KK in the bb and folds around to sb. sb raises 3x and i 3-bet him pot, he insta-shoves and i called figuring i was coolered by AA. he somehow shows up with TT, flop comes K67, turn 8, river 9. gg me and then he shit talks a bit. i told him he sucks, he tells me to check his stats, i look him up on opr, he has like 35k in profit over the last 120 days so i shut my mouth and accept the fact that i got "outplayed".

during the same time i played a $26 turbo satellite to the 6-max limit holdem ftops event. it had something like 70 runners with 7 seats paying. it got down to about 22 people and i had just below an avg stack with 4200 and blinds of 200/400. in the bb i got 52o and it folded to the sb who was sitting on about 2000. he just limped to my surprise and i checked. the flop came T43 and the sb checked. i bet my open ender and sb check/raised and i pretty much had to go with it so i 3-bet and sb 4-bet all-in. i assumed he had flopped a junky 2 pair or a half decent Ten but no, he had the almight K5o for no hand no draw but the best hand. i failed to improve and was crippled and went out 18th seatless.

i played the $26 8pm and was on a roller coaster for the first hour and it felt like a victory to have 2800 at the break even though we started out with 3k. early on in the 2nd hour i doubled up with KK vs AQo and was in good shape. i lost a few small pots and then a good sized one when i snap called a 11bb button push from a bad player with KJs in the bb. it's a definite muck but i'm a little rusty in these tourny spots and thought he was pushing a wide enough range to make it worth while. he was fairly weak with 77 and i lost the flip and a little less than 1/2 my stack. after that hand i got moved and played very bad. with about 12bb's i decided to make a blind steal w/ JTo from the hijak. the button called as did the sb who both had me well covered. the flop came down AKx w/ two spades and i had no spades. the sb checked and for some reason i decided to rep strength and bet out 1200 of my remaining 2k. the button immediately raised, sb folded and i pathetically folded getting a bazzillion to one on my last 800 chips. mistake 1 was blind stealing w/ 12bb's and mistake 2 was continuing a steal with no chips when getting called in two places. i shoved my 700ish stack w/ A9s utg after that and ran it into AQo and busted deservingly.

so during all this i was playing 4 tables of 100plo. i felt like i was playing well and was probably up quite a bunch before it came crumbling down and i lost a couple big pots playing deeper than the usual 100bb's. on one table i had two extremely loose passive players on my left that were absolutely killing me. they cold called every raise i made and never folded to a c-bet and i was often check/folding turns to them. i guess it's my fault cuz i didn't adapt in time and i probably should of started check/folding flops when i whiffed or maybe even just shut down the table altogether and find a better table.

so combined that with getting horribly outdrawn on in the 9:15pm $26 plo tourny i started to get a little irratated. (see tilted) so i made an executive decision to donk off my short stack in the plo tournament so i could shut down my cash tables before i started tilting. when i checked my pokertracker to see what i was up for the session in cash i was actually down $14 after being up close to 4 buy-ins or so. this pissed me off as well.

so i chilled out for an hour or so playing xbox and clearing my head. i came to realize that plo is just a massively swingy game and sometimes im going to be up and lose it back and sometimes i will be down a bunch and win it back. poker is just one long session that way and i don't need to worry about the wins and losses day to day or even month to month for that matter.

i logged probably another 300 hands of cash after my break and finished up $147 for the night in cash which felt good.

i haven't played since except for a little home game saturday night in which i finally one a game. we pretty much play a turbo sng with anywhere between 6-8 guys and most are chopped heads up according to chip equity. we usually only get 2 games in a night but we were all hyped up for the 3 games so i didn't get home till 4am. the first game was $20 buy-in and i busted w/ TT vs AKo. 2nd game was a $40 buy-in when i got short with high blinds i busted with KJs vs AJo. 3rd game was a $20 buy-in and i pwnd it outright for a cool $120. the final heads-up hand had me shove my opponent in with Q3o on a AQ8 rainbow board. he snap called me with 75soooooted and i managed to hold up. it's a good game. it's also the first game i've won outright in probably close to a year. :(

tg.

just had a thought

something i was just thinking. i've seen a couple posts on cardrunners about people spending there fpp's. i started getting extreme jealousy since i thought the fpp program was pretty sick when i decided that i could really just do the same thing with my fulltilt rakeback and save it up and let it sit in my rakeback account.

so i think i'm going to neglect cashing out my rakeback until i have a couple grand and then it will kind of be like a free roll when i want to cash it out and go to the wsop and play an event.

it also will act as an incentive to play more since the more i play the more rakeback i get.

two posts in a day! BOOONGGG

i suck so bad at posting

i've meant to write like 3 updates since the last one but keep forgetting. now i've forgotten most of it but here's a shot.

- had my first plo lesson last thursday and my second last nite. both went very well and im starting to feel very confident playing. im still making the odd horrid mistake but for the most part playing well. i've been up playing 100plo again and feel comfortable at this limit although i haven't had an opportunity to put a lot of hands in. pre-flop i've identified a few spots where i was playing too tight and my last nights session i played at 29/16 pretty much.

- i've played a couple tournies without cashing. i went semi deep the other night in the 7pm $75 but made a bone head play to cripple myself and then another bonehead play to dust off my remaining 4 bb's. i took a stab at qualifying for the $535 ftops horse event last nite but went out 8/8 in a $133 satellite.

- i had a lot on the go last weekend and never got to play so the number of hands i've been putting in is a little pathetic of late. if i want to get better and make actual money i have to start dedicating myself to putting in hands. i often only play when i really feel like playing and if im feeling a little bit lazy than a seem to use that as an excuse. from now on im going to set a goal for hands per month since on a week to week basis i might not have a set amount of time. my goal for now is 15k hands of cash plo a month + mtt's on the side. i won't really have a goal for mtt's since i will just play them sporadically when time permits. this month i've only managed 2k so far but im still gonna try and hit 15k somehow. my goal for december will probably be higher since i am off on vacation for a week around christmas and should be able to play a lot more.

- i've been craving live play lately and am also looking into possibly playing some smaller wsop circuit events if the times are right and my bankroll permits it. i'd probably need to hit some kind of score in a mtt or run well and move up in the cash games to be able to afford it. oh, and i've been looking into a vegas trip in more detail and have hope of going early in the new year.

- gonna play a wack tonight and might get a chance to play either a home game saturday nite or a possible casino visit for some 1/2 nl.

tg

a little bit of everything

played last night with mixed results.

once again i was back playing some mtt's.

i came 43/45 in a $75 45 person sng once again. action went limper in ep, i raise in mp w/ QQ and player behind me cold calls and the limper calls. flop comes 882 with two diamonds. limper checks i bet out about 2/3 the pot, cold caller min-raises, limper folds and i tanked for a bit before shoving. he showed JdTd and the rest is history.

i then reg'd for a $44 sng and came 17/45. down to about 27 i had about 12bb's and the aggy sb open shoved 6bb's into my bb and i called w/ K8o since he's shoving any two. he had 55 and i lost that race. i then went into short stack ninja mode and eventually ran my 4bb's up to 12 again. then i lost 1/2 my stack some how, doubled w/ 55 vs QQ (not a problem) and then ran 88 into AA. (a problem)

the 7pm $75 went well and i was pretty happy with my play. i ran it up early to about 5k and had about 6.5k at the first break. the 2nd hour was pretty sick as i had more than the avg stack and was still one of the shorties on the table. i got down in the 12-15bb's range a couple times and made some nice re-steals to chip back up. then with about 12k @ 250/500+a i opened the button to 1300 and was pretty sure the bb was gonna re-ship any two. the sb cold called the raise and sure enough the bb piled his 10k into the middle, i insta re-shoved and the sb folded. bb showed T2o but he flopped a Ten to knock me down to 2.2k. i short stack ninja'd again and doubled up w/ TT vs A9o that kept me alive for another orbit or so until i picked up 55 in the sb and min-raised shoved an ep raise. his AQ hit on the river and i finished 84/491.

during this time i reg'd for a $75 plo satellite into the $535 ftops event. it only got 9 entrants but since it was 6-max we played short handed to start. i pretty much folded my way to the final 6 after picking up one pot where i check/called the river with a straight flush and was up against a donk with the nut flush that was certainly going broke. down to 6 handed i won a big pot with top set against top and bottom pair. from there myself and one other guy had about 5k each with the other three players all left with around 1k. i pretty played tight and folded my garbage and before i knew it i was heads-up with one of the previous 1k stacks. we were about 50bb deep when i got it all-in w/ top and bottom on a A96 flush draw board and was shown top two w/ a club draw. so i just missed a seat there but made a whopping $11 for my efforts. i always seem to get 2nd in those sats and was really unsure about the flop play of the bustout hand.

the last tournament i played was the 8pm $26 and i bounced out of that 925/1210 when i raced off AKo vs JJ.

i tried to keep it around 4 tables all night so as i busted in a tournament i would open up a cash table. by the time i busted all my tournaments i was running two tables of 100plo 6 max and two tables of 100nl full ring.

in about 220 hands of plo i made about $109 after being stuck a buy-in early. couple hands in i got dealt AA24 double suited to the aces and got it all-in pre against AA46 single suited to an ace and lost when the board came 6xx6x. after that i won a massive pot after making a speculative call pre. ep (playing 1/2 a buy-in) limps, i limp behind w/ AQ44 single suited to the ace and the sb (big stack) raises pot, ep calls and i decided to call. flop comes 984 with two clubs. sb leads for pot, ep shoves, i shove over the top and sb makes the call. ep shows T7xx for a bare open ended straight draw and sb shows AQJT with three clubs for top wrap + nut flush draw. for the main pot i have about 44% equity and my hand held up to take it down. after that i beat up on a donk that kept buying in for 1/2 and getting stacked.

in nl holdem i only got about 115 hands in and lost $66. the only big hand occured when a player playing about a $65 stack raised in late position and i cold called with 9s8s in the cutoff and we took the flop heads-up. the flop came down a beauty Q88 rainbow and villain bet close to pot and i elected to just call. the turn was an offsuit K and villain once again fired close to pot and i put him in. he called pretty quickly w/ KQo and rolled a K on the river to drag the pot.

it was really fun to mix up my play between cash and tourny, holdem and omaha and it really kept my interest on the games the whole night where as i usually get disintersted from time to time when just playing one form of poker exclusively.

i hope to play a more balanced schedule like this in the future.

tg.