got about 2k hands in over the weekend 4 tabling on my laptop. im so used to having dual monitors that it's a real pain in the ass trying to review hands that i missed and what not with only the laptop screen. everytime i get in a big pot im trying to run the equity after the hand is over to try and get a feel for whether i was justified in sticking it in.
i got my pokertracker omaha working so i started going over my stats on saturday. i've been purposely playing uber tight because i think its best to learn a tight style first. that way you're not getting into too many marginal situations that you don't have the skill set to deal with. over the first 2k hands i played i had holdem like pt numbers so i worked on loosening up a little bit more in lp and on the button by adding in some good 3 card hands w/ a dangler.
i lost a buy-in over the 2k stretch of hands. in reviewing my hands in pokertracker and reading some posted hands online i think the one glaring weakness i have right now is overplaying weak combo draws.
if i flop a wrap or a weak flush draw w/ an open ender im sticking it in without thought and getting into some trouble. so i'll work to correct this and will adapt a little more of a fold button in these situations when i'm met with resistance.
here are the big hands of the weekend.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1487765 - i really felt he was on a flush draw and decided that i was calling a shove on the river as long as it came clubless. this player seemed capable of shoving a broken draw on the end as well.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1487768 - i take a flop trying to crack aces and smash it. i have 63.5% equity on the flop.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1487791 - villain in this hand was pretty bad and i've been pounding on him a bit so im going all the way w/ my aces.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1487799 - hit another good flop and get it in as a 57% fav.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1487821 - not sure about this hand. pokertracker tells me i have 46% equity which is good but im lucky not to be up against a flush draw that would kill a lot of my outs and bury my equity.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1487825 - easy game.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1487830 - loose call out of the blinds. i'm pretty sure im ahead on the flop but it's probably a check/fold on the turn since im not beating anything now.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1487960 - slight fav at 52.2% but such flipaments.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1490972 - and a good example of how i'm overplaying weak combo draws. yuk and puke all at the same time. 17% equity, gross! =(
im not frustrated at all and am really having a good time playing.
tg
Monday, September 17, 2007
Saturday, September 8, 2007
haven't played at all
so in the last couple weeks i have barely played any poker.
a couple reasons for this:
1) my girlfriend has changed jobs and no longer works many evenings. this is when i use to play most or all of my tournaments.
2) i got my new puppy last week and he requires constant attention.
so i've basically come to kind of a cross roads. i might have one or two chances a month to play tournaments which doesn't cut it.
basically i no longer have large chunks of time to dedicate to tournament poker but i do have lots of small windows during the week when i can fit in 1 or 2 hour sessions.
soooooooooo, im going back to cash games.
but not nl holdem. i've decided to join all the rage and start playing pot limit omaha.
plo is a pretty fun game and it's going to be a very big challenge to become a winning player but i look forward to it.
i started messing around with it a couple weeks ago and started off pretty poorly. i started out playing like an absolute maniac at .50/1.00 6 max and lost several buy-ins by felting AAxx and KKxx hands.
it got me to thinking about my recent cash game failures and what the root cause is. i finally came to the conclusion that when i took my stab at nl 6 max games i was basically playing with ego and under the idea that i didn't have anything to learn which is ridiculous.
i didn't spend anytime reviewing pokertracker, posting hands or analysing play. i pretty much thought i was playing great and just tilting off massively when things were'nt going my way.
when i first started in poker playing limit holdem i got whacked just like everyone else. what i did to improve was study, read, post hands and moved down to the lowest limits and started from there.
so my plo journey starts at .25/.50 6 max. i'm going to play at least 10k hands before moving up or down. 10k is not a lot of hands but i have plenty of bankroll to handle these limits.
my current br is at about 13k after i took some more money off line to play some live sats to the wpt at fallsview casino near home here.
im not sure how many hands i've played so far because i haven't got my pokertracker omaha registered on my laptop yet. since i have the puppy and my desktop is downstairs i really have to play on my laptop upstairs to keep my eye on him and run him outside when nature calls.
i think im down somewhere around 2 or 3 buy-ins over 1500 hands on my laptop and im unsure of what the results look like on my desktop but i think the sample is pretty small. 2 of the buy-ins i've dropped are due to mis-reading the board so i have something to work on already.
i look forward to getting good at this game so from now on im going to be doing my best to record results and post hands here.
tg
a couple reasons for this:
1) my girlfriend has changed jobs and no longer works many evenings. this is when i use to play most or all of my tournaments.
2) i got my new puppy last week and he requires constant attention.
so i've basically come to kind of a cross roads. i might have one or two chances a month to play tournaments which doesn't cut it.
basically i no longer have large chunks of time to dedicate to tournament poker but i do have lots of small windows during the week when i can fit in 1 or 2 hour sessions.
soooooooooo, im going back to cash games.
but not nl holdem. i've decided to join all the rage and start playing pot limit omaha.
plo is a pretty fun game and it's going to be a very big challenge to become a winning player but i look forward to it.
i started messing around with it a couple weeks ago and started off pretty poorly. i started out playing like an absolute maniac at .50/1.00 6 max and lost several buy-ins by felting AAxx and KKxx hands.
it got me to thinking about my recent cash game failures and what the root cause is. i finally came to the conclusion that when i took my stab at nl 6 max games i was basically playing with ego and under the idea that i didn't have anything to learn which is ridiculous.
i didn't spend anytime reviewing pokertracker, posting hands or analysing play. i pretty much thought i was playing great and just tilting off massively when things were'nt going my way.
when i first started in poker playing limit holdem i got whacked just like everyone else. what i did to improve was study, read, post hands and moved down to the lowest limits and started from there.
so my plo journey starts at .25/.50 6 max. i'm going to play at least 10k hands before moving up or down. 10k is not a lot of hands but i have plenty of bankroll to handle these limits.
my current br is at about 13k after i took some more money off line to play some live sats to the wpt at fallsview casino near home here.
im not sure how many hands i've played so far because i haven't got my pokertracker omaha registered on my laptop yet. since i have the puppy and my desktop is downstairs i really have to play on my laptop upstairs to keep my eye on him and run him outside when nature calls.
i think im down somewhere around 2 or 3 buy-ins over 1500 hands on my laptop and im unsure of what the results look like on my desktop but i think the sample is pretty small. 2 of the buy-ins i've dropped are due to mis-reading the board so i have something to work on already.
i look forward to getting good at this game so from now on im going to be doing my best to record results and post hands here.
tg
Friday, August 31, 2007
long time no updates
been busy but also haven't played too much.
my most recent sessions was a short one on saturday and a couple tournaments on sunday.
saturday i played the $26 at noon and built up some good chips before busting with a bone head move. the button during my sb was making all his lp raises pot sized and it appeared to me he was doing this to intimidate anyone from calling. so i ended up shoving 20bb's from the sb w/ K9o and he snapped me off with AJ. meh, i think although he was scared to play his hand he was also not folding it making the re-steal a bad move.
i tried one of the new $26 180 person sngs and busted 106th uneventfully. i also hopped into a $10 rebuy satellite to the big sunday $216. it only had 23 players and i won one of the 2 seats available after being in for the minimum. (1 rebuy, 1 add-on)
i ran some sngs during the session and pretty much broke even.
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sunday i decided to play some of the bigger tournaments that i rarely play. i started with the $26 noon on ftp and busted 305/497 with my AK vs 99.
i played a $109 super sat to the $500 satellite to the aussie millions. i came 10/14 after losing AQ vs 66 and then KT to T7.
i decided to jump into the party 300k guarantee and busted around the 1000 mark in a 1500 person field.
i called it an afternoon and then played the evenings.
i ran the 6pm $26 along with the $216 750k guarantee.
in the $26 i busted 234/910 when i raised in early position w/ QQ, got re-popped right behind me and i 4-bet shoved. buddy snap called me w/ ATo (i had a fairly solid image) and spiked an Ace on me.
the $216 went just as bad. i had a good stack the whole through until my bustout hand came up. i had been moved to a table with a big stack to my right that was raising very liberally in late positon when it was folded to him. so he opened the cutoff, and i decided to 3-bet 88 on the button and he thought and folded. very next hand he opens from the hijak and now i have KK. i make the exact same raise and when it folded back to him he couldn't shove fast enough w/ A7o. another Ace came and it was gg me again.
i played the 7pm $75 and went out 140/561 when i got it all-in pre w/ AKo vs JJ and the flop came Jxx.
the last tournament i reg'd for was the sunday mulligan. this one went pretty horrible and i ended up shoving my short stack w/ AQs right into AA.
i thought played pretty well in all the tournaments but just couldn't survive the flips late.
f sundays indeed.
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so thats been pretty much it. i played for an hour the other night and won a little bit in sngs and lost a little bit playing .50/1.00 heads up nlh. it's hilarious how bad some players are in those games but it can also be frustrating. one guy took a buy-in off me w/ set over set and left right away. the hit and runs are plentiful in those games.
tg
my most recent sessions was a short one on saturday and a couple tournaments on sunday.
saturday i played the $26 at noon and built up some good chips before busting with a bone head move. the button during my sb was making all his lp raises pot sized and it appeared to me he was doing this to intimidate anyone from calling. so i ended up shoving 20bb's from the sb w/ K9o and he snapped me off with AJ. meh, i think although he was scared to play his hand he was also not folding it making the re-steal a bad move.
i tried one of the new $26 180 person sngs and busted 106th uneventfully. i also hopped into a $10 rebuy satellite to the big sunday $216. it only had 23 players and i won one of the 2 seats available after being in for the minimum. (1 rebuy, 1 add-on)
i ran some sngs during the session and pretty much broke even.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sunday i decided to play some of the bigger tournaments that i rarely play. i started with the $26 noon on ftp and busted 305/497 with my AK vs 99.
i played a $109 super sat to the $500 satellite to the aussie millions. i came 10/14 after losing AQ vs 66 and then KT to T7.
i decided to jump into the party 300k guarantee and busted around the 1000 mark in a 1500 person field.
i called it an afternoon and then played the evenings.
i ran the 6pm $26 along with the $216 750k guarantee.
in the $26 i busted 234/910 when i raised in early position w/ QQ, got re-popped right behind me and i 4-bet shoved. buddy snap called me w/ ATo (i had a fairly solid image) and spiked an Ace on me.
the $216 went just as bad. i had a good stack the whole through until my bustout hand came up. i had been moved to a table with a big stack to my right that was raising very liberally in late positon when it was folded to him. so he opened the cutoff, and i decided to 3-bet 88 on the button and he thought and folded. very next hand he opens from the hijak and now i have KK. i make the exact same raise and when it folded back to him he couldn't shove fast enough w/ A7o. another Ace came and it was gg me again.
i played the 7pm $75 and went out 140/561 when i got it all-in pre w/ AKo vs JJ and the flop came Jxx.
the last tournament i reg'd for was the sunday mulligan. this one went pretty horrible and i ended up shoving my short stack w/ AQs right into AA.
i thought played pretty well in all the tournaments but just couldn't survive the flips late.
f sundays indeed.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
so thats been pretty much it. i played for an hour the other night and won a little bit in sngs and lost a little bit playing .50/1.00 heads up nlh. it's hilarious how bad some players are in those games but it can also be frustrating. one guy took a buy-in off me w/ set over set and left right away. the hit and runs are plentiful in those games.
tg
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
back in action
so haven't really played too much lately. was away/hungover all weekend so had no time to play at all.
i played a little last nite with decent results.
i started at 7pm and only played two tournaments for the nite. the tournaments were the 7pm $75 on ftp and the $109 on party.
both went well to start with. i built a big stack in the $75 due to having a complete donk to my right that would overshove bluff like it was his job. things were going well but i had two players to my left that kept flat calling every one of my raises. even when i raised and they were in the blinds they were flatting me. i managed to take most pots down w/ c-bets on the flop but i pretty much had to stay tight because i knew it wouldn't be long before they hit a flop or made a move on me.
so i basically i got eaten up by the blinds for a while and was down to about 10k @300/600/50a. i opened in ep w/ 55 since i had been playing tight and folded to a min-raise when it was pretty clear that the villain was trying to bait me into pushing. the very next hand w/ 8.2k i open shoved 77 from even earlier position and the same villain snapped me off w/ KK. both plays were pretty poor and annette_15 recently made a post on p5's about pp's late in tournaments with her own guidelines. i'll brush up on that and hopefully plug the leak.
the $109 on party had 226 entrants and i pretty much folded my way around the first 40mins. after that i won a couple good sized pots re-stealing and shoving mid pocket pairs and slowly built up an ok stack. i then got it all-in w/ AK vs QJ (the player limp/called all-in after a re-raise, shove and cold call) vs 88. i turned broadway to win a big pot and was primed for a deep run. i was probably top 5 in chips w/ 20 left, lost 2 huge pots but managed to get most of it back. by the time we got to the final table i was about 8/10 but only had 9bb's. average stack only had about 15bb's though so it wasn't the worst spot. i picked up KK but got no action and eventually busted 9th (maybe 8th) for about $550. the bust out seemed routine but in thinking the hand over after i think i played it wrong. blinds 2k/4k + small party ante, utg raises his 2nd hand in a row to 10k (he had about 60k behind), folds to me in the bb and i shove for another 27k more (shoved my 9bb's) w/ 55. at the time i thought it was a good shove because although i don't have a ton of mathematical fold equity, i thought i had a lot of fold equity when it came to stack size comparisons. anyways, he thought for a while before calling w/ 66 and i guess i don't blame him.
this is really a perfect spot for a stop n go and im 90% sure if i did pull a stop n go he would have been forced to fold the flop. (it came something like QJ7) just folding pre-flop might not be the worst decision either.
oh well, if i keep learning from these mistakes i can only get better.
i ran about 5 $55 turbo sngs at the beginning of the session and only cashed once for 2nd.
after those ran i pulled up 2 tables of 1/2 nl full ring cash and a 8 handed 3/6 omaha hi/lo game. i ran and played well in the nl games and ended up winning about 2.5 buy-ins.
i had some tough decisions in the nl games but seemed to make the right ones each time. i made a nice push w/ AA on a K high drawy board to a turn raise and was right with my read when villain folded.
on this hand i make a big laydown.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1396821
as soon as he check raised i knew i was folding. i don't think he raises here with a flush draw or top pair. you can't always put a guy on a set but this is one of the few times where i think it's fairly transparent. plus, the button could very well be slow playing a big hand. i don't usually ask people what they had since 9/10 times you get a bull shit answer anyways but i did type in my usual "boy i would of loved to see that one". he replied that i didn't want to see it and that he had a set of Tens which i believe.
i dropped about 9 big bets in the O8 game ($54) and basically played donkish the entire time. i like playing O8 but to play at anywhere close to a winning level i would have to 2 table max and give it all my attention.
so a decent profit on the night all though it would have been nice to take down the 6.1k 1st place prize on party. oh well.
tg.
i played a little last nite with decent results.
i started at 7pm and only played two tournaments for the nite. the tournaments were the 7pm $75 on ftp and the $109 on party.
both went well to start with. i built a big stack in the $75 due to having a complete donk to my right that would overshove bluff like it was his job. things were going well but i had two players to my left that kept flat calling every one of my raises. even when i raised and they were in the blinds they were flatting me. i managed to take most pots down w/ c-bets on the flop but i pretty much had to stay tight because i knew it wouldn't be long before they hit a flop or made a move on me.
so i basically i got eaten up by the blinds for a while and was down to about 10k @300/600/50a. i opened in ep w/ 55 since i had been playing tight and folded to a min-raise when it was pretty clear that the villain was trying to bait me into pushing. the very next hand w/ 8.2k i open shoved 77 from even earlier position and the same villain snapped me off w/ KK. both plays were pretty poor and annette_15 recently made a post on p5's about pp's late in tournaments with her own guidelines. i'll brush up on that and hopefully plug the leak.
the $109 on party had 226 entrants and i pretty much folded my way around the first 40mins. after that i won a couple good sized pots re-stealing and shoving mid pocket pairs and slowly built up an ok stack. i then got it all-in w/ AK vs QJ (the player limp/called all-in after a re-raise, shove and cold call) vs 88. i turned broadway to win a big pot and was primed for a deep run. i was probably top 5 in chips w/ 20 left, lost 2 huge pots but managed to get most of it back. by the time we got to the final table i was about 8/10 but only had 9bb's. average stack only had about 15bb's though so it wasn't the worst spot. i picked up KK but got no action and eventually busted 9th (maybe 8th) for about $550. the bust out seemed routine but in thinking the hand over after i think i played it wrong. blinds 2k/4k + small party ante, utg raises his 2nd hand in a row to 10k (he had about 60k behind), folds to me in the bb and i shove for another 27k more (shoved my 9bb's) w/ 55. at the time i thought it was a good shove because although i don't have a ton of mathematical fold equity, i thought i had a lot of fold equity when it came to stack size comparisons. anyways, he thought for a while before calling w/ 66 and i guess i don't blame him.
this is really a perfect spot for a stop n go and im 90% sure if i did pull a stop n go he would have been forced to fold the flop. (it came something like QJ7) just folding pre-flop might not be the worst decision either.
oh well, if i keep learning from these mistakes i can only get better.
i ran about 5 $55 turbo sngs at the beginning of the session and only cashed once for 2nd.
after those ran i pulled up 2 tables of 1/2 nl full ring cash and a 8 handed 3/6 omaha hi/lo game. i ran and played well in the nl games and ended up winning about 2.5 buy-ins.
i had some tough decisions in the nl games but seemed to make the right ones each time. i made a nice push w/ AA on a K high drawy board to a turn raise and was right with my read when villain folded.
on this hand i make a big laydown.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1396821
as soon as he check raised i knew i was folding. i don't think he raises here with a flush draw or top pair. you can't always put a guy on a set but this is one of the few times where i think it's fairly transparent. plus, the button could very well be slow playing a big hand. i don't usually ask people what they had since 9/10 times you get a bull shit answer anyways but i did type in my usual "boy i would of loved to see that one". he replied that i didn't want to see it and that he had a set of Tens which i believe.
i dropped about 9 big bets in the O8 game ($54) and basically played donkish the entire time. i like playing O8 but to play at anywhere close to a winning level i would have to 2 table max and give it all my attention.
so a decent profit on the night all though it would have been nice to take down the 6.1k 1st place prize on party. oh well.
tg.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
played a bundle tuesday nite with zero success.
bust outs were your normal mixture of pushing a short stack w/ rags, bad beats and what not.
i busted the 7pm party $109 on like the 4th hand w/ AK on K426 rainbow board. i raised a limper pre and he called and then got c/r on the flop and called and called it off on the turn after he thought for a good 10 secs. he had poor results according to opr and although i had no real read of him as a player it felt like he would play any top pair that way and just had a gut feeling that my hand was good. he had 44 and i was dreading dead. woops!
i can't remember how i busted in the ftp 7pm, i played the 7:15pm limit and got rivered by a ragged 2 pair and had to fold KK in a 5 way pot on the turn.
i lost 99% of my stack on the 5th hand of the 8pm $26 when i got it all-in on a T hi spade draw board w/ QQ against KTo and got turned.
in the 8pm $163 i got it all-in near the end of the first hour against a total donk that was just dying to give his chips away. i raised a limper up w/ KTs and he cold called from the sb and we got it all-in on a KTX board and his QJo got there on the turn.
i busted every tourny before the 9pm ftops event even started. i was a little aggravated and almost un-registered for the event but didn't. if it was a nl holdem event i would have but since big O8 tournies only come around once in a blue moon i decided to rough it out.
i lasted about 3.5 hrs before busting 413 out of the 1067 player field. i played ok but definitly did not stay patient enough. i lost the majority of my chips w/ an overpair Q's and the second nut low in a 3 way pot where one guy had the nut low and the other had a naked pair of K's. the play was pretty bad as you could tell a lot of players were holdem players and couldn't fold an overpair no matter what the board action dictated. anyways, i definitly did not deserve to win and sucked out a couple times to get as far as i did.
all in all one of the rougher nights that most mtt players are accustomed to but something that i prepare myself for.
i snuck in a short cash session tonite and it was pretty successful. i started off w/ 2 $55 turbo sngs and went out 6th in one and won the 2nd won.
i ran a couple of 3/6 O8 6-max tables and lost about 15bb's over the course of playing them. i opened a couple of 1/2 nl full ring games and made close to a buy-in on those.
then i hopped into a .50/1.00 head-up game. some guy came and dusted off 2 buy-ins to me in that while playing like a complete idiot. i set him up beautifully and played like a weak nit for the first few minutes. then i just ran him over and eventually had him 4-betting all-in pre w/ T8o. it was good times and i think i'll dabble in low limit heads-up a little more often.
i sat down at a 3/6 stud game too but couldn't keep up with the action with all the other tables around so quit that before i got skinned.
the total for the nite was about $420 profit which is pretty good for donking around for an hour. it's good to make a mental note of these nights because they'll be times when i drop that much in an hour and will blame poor luck.
i had to withdrawal another1k from my roll today to help cover puppy expenses so with cash win and withrdrawal my roll is now just over 15k.
basically i've broken dead nuts even after my win and have taken the 4k out for personal stuff.
gone for the weekend so im done with ftops (thankfully) and prob won't be playing again till early next week.
tg
edit: just sat down at another hu .50/1.00 table while watching some pxf vids, got ran over to start and was down 1.5 buy-ins before coming back and taking the guys initial buy-in off him. hu is addictive, i couldn't stop him until i got back even.
bust outs were your normal mixture of pushing a short stack w/ rags, bad beats and what not.
i busted the 7pm party $109 on like the 4th hand w/ AK on K426 rainbow board. i raised a limper pre and he called and then got c/r on the flop and called and called it off on the turn after he thought for a good 10 secs. he had poor results according to opr and although i had no real read of him as a player it felt like he would play any top pair that way and just had a gut feeling that my hand was good. he had 44 and i was dreading dead. woops!
i can't remember how i busted in the ftp 7pm, i played the 7:15pm limit and got rivered by a ragged 2 pair and had to fold KK in a 5 way pot on the turn.
i lost 99% of my stack on the 5th hand of the 8pm $26 when i got it all-in on a T hi spade draw board w/ QQ against KTo and got turned.
in the 8pm $163 i got it all-in near the end of the first hour against a total donk that was just dying to give his chips away. i raised a limper up w/ KTs and he cold called from the sb and we got it all-in on a KTX board and his QJo got there on the turn.
i busted every tourny before the 9pm ftops event even started. i was a little aggravated and almost un-registered for the event but didn't. if it was a nl holdem event i would have but since big O8 tournies only come around once in a blue moon i decided to rough it out.
i lasted about 3.5 hrs before busting 413 out of the 1067 player field. i played ok but definitly did not stay patient enough. i lost the majority of my chips w/ an overpair Q's and the second nut low in a 3 way pot where one guy had the nut low and the other had a naked pair of K's. the play was pretty bad as you could tell a lot of players were holdem players and couldn't fold an overpair no matter what the board action dictated. anyways, i definitly did not deserve to win and sucked out a couple times to get as far as i did.
all in all one of the rougher nights that most mtt players are accustomed to but something that i prepare myself for.
i snuck in a short cash session tonite and it was pretty successful. i started off w/ 2 $55 turbo sngs and went out 6th in one and won the 2nd won.
i ran a couple of 3/6 O8 6-max tables and lost about 15bb's over the course of playing them. i opened a couple of 1/2 nl full ring games and made close to a buy-in on those.
then i hopped into a .50/1.00 head-up game. some guy came and dusted off 2 buy-ins to me in that while playing like a complete idiot. i set him up beautifully and played like a weak nit for the first few minutes. then i just ran him over and eventually had him 4-betting all-in pre w/ T8o. it was good times and i think i'll dabble in low limit heads-up a little more often.
i sat down at a 3/6 stud game too but couldn't keep up with the action with all the other tables around so quit that before i got skinned.
the total for the nite was about $420 profit which is pretty good for donking around for an hour. it's good to make a mental note of these nights because they'll be times when i drop that much in an hour and will blame poor luck.
i had to withdrawal another1k from my roll today to help cover puppy expenses so with cash win and withrdrawal my roll is now just over 15k.
basically i've broken dead nuts even after my win and have taken the 4k out for personal stuff.
gone for the weekend so im done with ftops (thankfully) and prob won't be playing again till early next week.
tg
edit: just sat down at another hu .50/1.00 table while watching some pxf vids, got ran over to start and was down 1.5 buy-ins before coming back and taking the guys initial buy-in off him. hu is addictive, i couldn't stop him until i got back even.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
poor showing last nite
didn't play well last nite and it showed in the results.
started with the 6pm $216 turbo and $26 both on ftp.
built up a stack in the 200 turbo and had around 4.7k @ 100/200. big stack w/ 12k gets moved to my direct left. i come in for 600 w/ TT in fairly ep and he instantly shoves for 12k right behind me. it folds back to me and i was dead certain he had AK since there is no way he would play AA, KK or QQ that way. i doubt it's JJ since he's got a bunch of players left to act so i don't think he would shove. (he wasn't the only big stack) i decided to gamble for a stack since it is a turbo and if i win the flip im top 10 in chips. im not sure if it's a good call or not in hindsight, i can fold and still have 20bb's and there could be a chance he does over shove AA or KK since i myself mix my play up with that move at times. if he does have AK though im actually 56% favorite so i don't know. if you have any advice on the hand plz leave a comment.
anyways i called and he did indeed have AKo and i lost the race.
the $26 went well and i had more than doubled the starting stack early when i baited a bad player into pot committing himself w/ middle pair vs my AA overpair. stayed pretty much around 3k until early in the 2nd hour. i picked up AQs in the sb and a very active lp player raised it 3x @ 60/120 so i shoved since im way ahead of his range and don't want to play AQ out of position. unfortunately he had AK and i was knocked down to a measly 250 chips. i decided to dig in and try to make a comeback. i folded the full lap until i was in the bb w/ Ac6x. two lp players limped for the 120, the sb completed and i checked my option leaving myself 130 chips behind. the flop came ragged w/ 3 clubs, the sb chkd, i bet my 130, both limpers folded and the sb called me with T6o for a T hi. i won that pot to get up to 760 chips and folded my sb to a raise the very next hand and was down to 680 chips since the blinds had went up to 80/160. i folded another full lap and had to fold my bb to a raise and a re-raise. in the sb i had a ragged K5o, the big stack button (sb from my prev hand) open min-raised and since he was so loopy i decided to shove praying my cards were live. the bb folded and the button called w/ the mighty 52o and i doubled through to 1200. i shoved a ragged ace from the button on the very next hand to pick up the blinds. about 5 hands after that i open shoved 99 and got no callers and now had 1600 @ 100/200. all of the hard work went down the drain when i got carried away and shoved KJo from ep. i was cold called by a big stack that only had 33 so i was very close to getting right back into the tournament but the board bricked out and my reign as short stack ninja came to an end.
the KJ push kinda pissed me off cuz i knew it was bad and then losing the race just made it worse.
i played the 7pm $75 on ftp and went bust in a badly played hand. with blinds of 40/80 and about 3k behind a fairly aggressive player opened for 240 in the hijak. i called the 240 w/ KsTs on the button. as soon as i called i hated the play. i don't need to play KTs for a raise here so early in the tournament even though im in position. villain is going to c-bet the majority of flops and im either going to have to float w/ air or a mediocre hand to win the pot. i will hardly ever hit a flop that im comfortable playing for stacks with. anyways, we took a flop heads-up and it came Jc7s2s to give me an over and a flush draw. he bet and i called. the turn was an offsuit Q to give me another 6 possible outs. he bet out kinda small (600 into a 1000 chip pot) and i shoved for 2200 total. he called quickly w/ QQ and my monster semi-bluff was nothing more than a 30% dog.
i also played the $109 on party at 7pm. everything went great early and the play was horrible. people were tripping over each other to get all-in w/ trash hands for 20bb's and i just kept calling w/ big hands. down to 35 w/ the top 30 paying i made a dumb mistake. i had 14k at 400/800/25a and a very good player that had just doubled up to have 24k opened from the CO for a std 3x raise. i shoved without thought w/ KQo from the sb and ran right into his AA. a lot of players probably make the same shove and honestly if he folds im probably patting myself on the back for it. the thing that bothered me about it though is that i was able to steal and pick up blinds fairly easily and the table was playing pretty tight around the bubble. i only had one big stack to my left but he wasn't giving me much trouble at all. i usually don't start re-stealing light until im below 15bb's cuz with anything over that im pretty comfortable about standard raising and folding.
i also played a couple $15 super sats into the $55 satellite to ftops event 8, omaha hi/lo that im already in. i played mostly for practice and was crushing in both of them till late. i had some family stop by and pretty much blinded out and donked off while visiting with them.
i felt bad at the end of the session becuase i never got fully focused and in tune. i kept getting phone calls and people dropping by. i also got a call from a family member that needed a hand with something so i told them if i got knocked out before 8pm i would come help them. i think that led to a lot of uneccesary risk taking since i felt kind of guilty for not being able to help.
anyways, hopefully got the bad stuff out last nite so i can take a serious run at the ftops event tonite. im going to play a pretty full schedule tonite starting at 7pm and am looking for some good results.
tg
started with the 6pm $216 turbo and $26 both on ftp.
built up a stack in the 200 turbo and had around 4.7k @ 100/200. big stack w/ 12k gets moved to my direct left. i come in for 600 w/ TT in fairly ep and he instantly shoves for 12k right behind me. it folds back to me and i was dead certain he had AK since there is no way he would play AA, KK or QQ that way. i doubt it's JJ since he's got a bunch of players left to act so i don't think he would shove. (he wasn't the only big stack) i decided to gamble for a stack since it is a turbo and if i win the flip im top 10 in chips. im not sure if it's a good call or not in hindsight, i can fold and still have 20bb's and there could be a chance he does over shove AA or KK since i myself mix my play up with that move at times. if he does have AK though im actually 56% favorite so i don't know. if you have any advice on the hand plz leave a comment.
anyways i called and he did indeed have AKo and i lost the race.
the $26 went well and i had more than doubled the starting stack early when i baited a bad player into pot committing himself w/ middle pair vs my AA overpair. stayed pretty much around 3k until early in the 2nd hour. i picked up AQs in the sb and a very active lp player raised it 3x @ 60/120 so i shoved since im way ahead of his range and don't want to play AQ out of position. unfortunately he had AK and i was knocked down to a measly 250 chips. i decided to dig in and try to make a comeback. i folded the full lap until i was in the bb w/ Ac6x. two lp players limped for the 120, the sb completed and i checked my option leaving myself 130 chips behind. the flop came ragged w/ 3 clubs, the sb chkd, i bet my 130, both limpers folded and the sb called me with T6o for a T hi. i won that pot to get up to 760 chips and folded my sb to a raise the very next hand and was down to 680 chips since the blinds had went up to 80/160. i folded another full lap and had to fold my bb to a raise and a re-raise. in the sb i had a ragged K5o, the big stack button (sb from my prev hand) open min-raised and since he was so loopy i decided to shove praying my cards were live. the bb folded and the button called w/ the mighty 52o and i doubled through to 1200. i shoved a ragged ace from the button on the very next hand to pick up the blinds. about 5 hands after that i open shoved 99 and got no callers and now had 1600 @ 100/200. all of the hard work went down the drain when i got carried away and shoved KJo from ep. i was cold called by a big stack that only had 33 so i was very close to getting right back into the tournament but the board bricked out and my reign as short stack ninja came to an end.
the KJ push kinda pissed me off cuz i knew it was bad and then losing the race just made it worse.
i played the 7pm $75 on ftp and went bust in a badly played hand. with blinds of 40/80 and about 3k behind a fairly aggressive player opened for 240 in the hijak. i called the 240 w/ KsTs on the button. as soon as i called i hated the play. i don't need to play KTs for a raise here so early in the tournament even though im in position. villain is going to c-bet the majority of flops and im either going to have to float w/ air or a mediocre hand to win the pot. i will hardly ever hit a flop that im comfortable playing for stacks with. anyways, we took a flop heads-up and it came Jc7s2s to give me an over and a flush draw. he bet and i called. the turn was an offsuit Q to give me another 6 possible outs. he bet out kinda small (600 into a 1000 chip pot) and i shoved for 2200 total. he called quickly w/ QQ and my monster semi-bluff was nothing more than a 30% dog.
i also played the $109 on party at 7pm. everything went great early and the play was horrible. people were tripping over each other to get all-in w/ trash hands for 20bb's and i just kept calling w/ big hands. down to 35 w/ the top 30 paying i made a dumb mistake. i had 14k at 400/800/25a and a very good player that had just doubled up to have 24k opened from the CO for a std 3x raise. i shoved without thought w/ KQo from the sb and ran right into his AA. a lot of players probably make the same shove and honestly if he folds im probably patting myself on the back for it. the thing that bothered me about it though is that i was able to steal and pick up blinds fairly easily and the table was playing pretty tight around the bubble. i only had one big stack to my left but he wasn't giving me much trouble at all. i usually don't start re-stealing light until im below 15bb's cuz with anything over that im pretty comfortable about standard raising and folding.
i also played a couple $15 super sats into the $55 satellite to ftops event 8, omaha hi/lo that im already in. i played mostly for practice and was crushing in both of them till late. i had some family stop by and pretty much blinded out and donked off while visiting with them.
i felt bad at the end of the session becuase i never got fully focused and in tune. i kept getting phone calls and people dropping by. i also got a call from a family member that needed a hand with something so i told them if i got knocked out before 8pm i would come help them. i think that led to a lot of uneccesary risk taking since i felt kind of guilty for not being able to help.
anyways, hopefully got the bad stuff out last nite so i can take a serious run at the ftops event tonite. im going to play a pretty full schedule tonite starting at 7pm and am looking for some good results.
tg
Monday, August 13, 2007
weekend off
didn't play any tournaments this weekend. was pretty busy with personal stuff so i never had time to fit in a good session.
i had the option of playing the ftops event last nite ($300 nlh) but decided to pass. i just didn't think i was going to be geared up enough to play and i don't want to plunk down $300 and play my C game.
the only action i fit in was a couple of short cash sessions. i put in about an hour friday nite and an hour last nite playing 2 tables of 1/2 nl full ring and 2 tables of 2/4 and 3/6 limit omaha hi/lo.
the nl started off bad and i was down 3 buy-ins quick before i dished out a couple of coolers to finish the two sessions off up 1/2 a buy-in. i broke even in the O8 games but was up for most of the time. i played so few hands of O8 it's hard to say whether i had an edge or not but i definitly have a ton to learn about the game. i think i'll make it my little side project as i want to keep my main focus on mtt's.
i'll probably play a little tonite and then i'll be playing the ftops event #8 omaha hi/lo tomorrow nite so it will be accompanied by the usual cast of mtt's. i've already satted my way into the $55 satellite for event #8 but if i don't get in there i will buy-in direct.
tg
i had the option of playing the ftops event last nite ($300 nlh) but decided to pass. i just didn't think i was going to be geared up enough to play and i don't want to plunk down $300 and play my C game.
the only action i fit in was a couple of short cash sessions. i put in about an hour friday nite and an hour last nite playing 2 tables of 1/2 nl full ring and 2 tables of 2/4 and 3/6 limit omaha hi/lo.
the nl started off bad and i was down 3 buy-ins quick before i dished out a couple of coolers to finish the two sessions off up 1/2 a buy-in. i broke even in the O8 games but was up for most of the time. i played so few hands of O8 it's hard to say whether i had an edge or not but i definitly have a ton to learn about the game. i think i'll make it my little side project as i want to keep my main focus on mtt's.
i'll probably play a little tonite and then i'll be playing the ftops event #8 omaha hi/lo tomorrow nite so it will be accompanied by the usual cast of mtt's. i've already satted my way into the $55 satellite for event #8 but if i don't get in there i will buy-in direct.
tg
Thursday, August 9, 2007
ftops events #1 and #2
finished event 1 3075/4165.
i was excited to play it all day until i saw the field size. i have a hard time getting up for a tournament when there are that many players in it.
no real interesting hands came up. i played uber tight for the first few laps and just tried to get a read on the players. i called a couple pre-flop raises w/ pairs in position but folded on the flop.
i opened up a bit and ended up bluffing off some chips w/ A9o. picked up a couple pots w/ pre-flop raises and pretty much hovered around 2400. early 2nd hour, utg limps, mp raises and i re-raised w/ QQ and they all folded.
the bust out hand came when i was in the bb w/ about 2500 and blinds of 40/80. utg w/ a 12k stack raised pot, folded to me and i re-raised to 1k w/ AKs, he put it in and i called it off. he had 88 and im pretty sure he folds most of the time but was willing to gamble w/ his stack size.
anyways, that was it for event 1.
i spent all day cramming for the 2nd event, horse. i was trying to get up to speed on the stud games since im a total stud donk.
started off losing in holdem, winning in O8, losing in razz, winning in stud hi and came out of the 1st hour w/ about 50 more chips than i started with.
2nd hour started off great as i ran it up in stud 8, holdem and O8 and had a high water mark of close to 4900 chips.
razz was the last event before the 2nd break and i managed to dust off 1400 chips out of my 4200 chip stack right before the break. once running it off w/ A624 against a short stacks 2346 all-in on 4th street. then i made 3 pair w/ A23 and lost another decent pot.
came back in the 3rd hour to stud hi and had david singer (who was sitting out the entire time) to my left. people started trying to pick off his bring-ins so i got frisky and decided to 3-bet the girl to my right when she completed w/ a 4 in the door and i had (J5)K. in hindsight i should prob just let her steal because she was playing pretty awful and wouldn't have folded any pair or any draw for the world. anyways i ended up getting trapped in with a flush draw and rivered J's but lost to what i think was her rivered trip 10's.
i anted off a bit after that and ended up trying to rep a big hand against a donk that i was pretty sure had a naked pair of 5's. by the time i made my play at the pot i was committed and donkey boy never considered that his 5's were no good and it was gg me.
so i finished 714/1063. very dissapointing. im actually a little steamed now and when this happens i usually toss and turn in bed thinking about hands for the rest of the nite.
not sure if i'll play the sunday event or not. i will play the O8 event and if im not up to anything i might even play the stud hi event now that i have a resemblence of a clue.
tg
i was excited to play it all day until i saw the field size. i have a hard time getting up for a tournament when there are that many players in it.
no real interesting hands came up. i played uber tight for the first few laps and just tried to get a read on the players. i called a couple pre-flop raises w/ pairs in position but folded on the flop.
i opened up a bit and ended up bluffing off some chips w/ A9o. picked up a couple pots w/ pre-flop raises and pretty much hovered around 2400. early 2nd hour, utg limps, mp raises and i re-raised w/ QQ and they all folded.
the bust out hand came when i was in the bb w/ about 2500 and blinds of 40/80. utg w/ a 12k stack raised pot, folded to me and i re-raised to 1k w/ AKs, he put it in and i called it off. he had 88 and im pretty sure he folds most of the time but was willing to gamble w/ his stack size.
anyways, that was it for event 1.
i spent all day cramming for the 2nd event, horse. i was trying to get up to speed on the stud games since im a total stud donk.
started off losing in holdem, winning in O8, losing in razz, winning in stud hi and came out of the 1st hour w/ about 50 more chips than i started with.
2nd hour started off great as i ran it up in stud 8, holdem and O8 and had a high water mark of close to 4900 chips.
razz was the last event before the 2nd break and i managed to dust off 1400 chips out of my 4200 chip stack right before the break. once running it off w/ A624 against a short stacks 2346 all-in on 4th street. then i made 3 pair w/ A23 and lost another decent pot.
came back in the 3rd hour to stud hi and had david singer (who was sitting out the entire time) to my left. people started trying to pick off his bring-ins so i got frisky and decided to 3-bet the girl to my right when she completed w/ a 4 in the door and i had (J5)K. in hindsight i should prob just let her steal because she was playing pretty awful and wouldn't have folded any pair or any draw for the world. anyways i ended up getting trapped in with a flush draw and rivered J's but lost to what i think was her rivered trip 10's.
i anted off a bit after that and ended up trying to rep a big hand against a donk that i was pretty sure had a naked pair of 5's. by the time i made my play at the pot i was committed and donkey boy never considered that his 5's were no good and it was gg me.
so i finished 714/1063. very dissapointing. im actually a little steamed now and when this happens i usually toss and turn in bed thinking about hands for the rest of the nite.
not sure if i'll play the sunday event or not. i will play the O8 event and if im not up to anything i might even play the stud hi event now that i have a resemblence of a clue.
tg
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
ship the t-shirt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
possibly my greatest acheivement ever!
Hello Trevor,
Congratulations! You busted Chip Jett in a recent tournament. We will becrediting your Full Tilt Poker account with a bounty prize of $24.We're pleased to send you a t-shirt to commemorate the occasion. To receive a free t-shirt, you must reply to this email including your current mailing address and t-shirt size. T-shirts are available in the following sizes: M, L, XL, XXL, or XXXL.
Full Tilt Support
I busted him in the ftops satellite to the horse tournament. i believe it was in stud h/l and i basically chased him down hoping to bust him since he was short. i think i had something like A6789 on 5th street and his board was pretty ragged so i went with it and won. wwwwwwwwwwwwwweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
Hello Trevor,
Congratulations! You busted Chip Jett in a recent tournament. We will becrediting your Full Tilt Poker account with a bounty prize of $24.We're pleased to send you a t-shirt to commemorate the occasion. To receive a free t-shirt, you must reply to this email including your current mailing address and t-shirt size. T-shirts are available in the following sizes: M, L, XL, XXL, or XXXL.
Full Tilt Support
I busted him in the ftops satellite to the horse tournament. i believe it was in stud h/l and i basically chased him down hoping to bust him since he was short. i think i had something like A6789 on 5th street and his board was pretty ragged so i went with it and won. wwwwwwwwwwwwwweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
hitting my stride
played yesterday starting at 3pm and had a little success.
3pm $150 on ftp went very well. i final tabled it out of 298 runners and played very well throughout. i built up a good stack early and was top 15 from the 1st break on and stayed there by stealing and picking up small pots. then with 60 left i had a top 10 stack and a player 2 to my left had the same. earlier he had 3 bet my utg raise w/ AKo which i found kinda weird since we were both deep and i know i would just normally smooth call there. anyways, i had been fairly active but nothing nuts, i open in the hijak w/ a 3x raise and he re-pops me from the sb. given the situation i wasn't about to fold my QQ so i shoved and he insta-called me for his stack w/ AQs. pretty poor call as im never shoving anything that he is remotely ahead of. he should have known too since i had only smooth called w/ AKs when he re-popped me earlier and that time i was playing the hand out of position.
so i doubled through and was now chip leader. i stayed top 5 all the way down to the cash bubble. (top 36) with about 24 left it folded around to the sb who raised pot and it looked extremely weak to me. i had 33 in the bb and shoved even though he was pot committed. he took his time and finally called it off w/ 22 and i was in a great spot until the river deuce.
so now i was about 8/20 and not in bad shape at all w/ about 25bb's. i won some pots w/o showdown and before i knew it i was chip leader w/ over 100k and 14 left. a fairly active player raised up from somewhat early position and i re-raised w/ JJ. he had been raising and folding to re-raises quite a bit so i wasn't going to smooth call, especially when he would throw a fit when someone re-raised him calling them all sorts of names. i was pretty sure he was coming after me with a wide range so i was happy to get it all-in pre. he shoved and showed me KK and took half my stack.
i was back to about 10/13 and forced to stay fairly tight since the table was playing very aggro w/ tons of steals and re-steals and i was no longer the big stack. i dwindled down to 12bb's when i was forced to make a move w/ about 14 left. a player to my right was opening tons of pots and i had yet to play back at her, so when she opened again i shoved KTo over top of her w/ plenty of fold equity. unfortunately she had an easy call w/ QQ but i hit a straight on the turn to put a massive suckout on her.
a few people busted and we got to the final table i was 7/9. i was staring at a another 5 figure score since 1st paid over 11k but never really got it going at the final table. i was extremely card dead and was pretty much forced to sit and wait since my stack wasn't big enough to make standard opens and fold. i shoved a couple of times and picked up the blinds until my bustout hand came up. late position raised and i re-shoved just over 10bb's w/ 88 from the bb. he thought for a while and called w/ A9o which is prob a good call based on his stack and how aggressive the table was. we raced it off and he caught the ace to send me packing in 7th for $1400.
i wasn't all that upset, i played great and the field of this tournament is stacked.
i had one other cash and that was in the 4pm $55 on party. it had over 500 entrants and i believe 1st was over 6k. i had a gazzillion chips and was chip leader w/ over 30k at the first break. from there it just kinda dwindled away, i lost a couple flips against short stacks and lost a sizeable pot when i isolated a short stack pusher from the sb and the bb woke up w/ KK. i eventually busted in the 40's i think for a small cash ($110 or something).
other than that, i played and busted in the following:
3pm, $26k pot limit holdem
3:30pm, $55 nlh
3:45pm, $26 horse, sat to ftops event (i took a beat in stud h/l that kinda sent me tailspinning)
4pm, $75 nlh
couple side notes:
- i think i was had. during the final 3 tables of the $150 the online player thay3r came in the chat and asked if anyone wanted to make a side bet. i said i would and we bet a last longer between me and another player of a similar stack for $150. it was no big deal and i thought it might make it a little more exiciting. long story short, i lost the bet, shipped the money to him and when i double checked his name in the chat it said thay9r (with a nine instead of a 3), i shipped to him anyways since im a man of my word but when i checked the pokerdb the guy has like $500 lifetime winnings and a negative roi so i doubt i was getting my $150 if i won. my own stupid fault for not recognizing his name in the first place. the only reason i didn't catch on earlier was that there were quite a few big names left in the tournament so it wasn't all that unreasonable that thay3r would be railing and another observer typed in the chat that he makes sidebets like this all the time. oh well, lesson learned.
- i was sick hungry to play yesterday and can't wait for the ftops. i haven't gotten to play too much lately but it's really making me focused when i do play. i think often times i play my worse when im playing 2 or 3 days in a row w/ 6-8 tournaments a day. before you know they all blend into one and you can just say fuck it to a tough decision since you are in so many others at the same time.
- i prob won't be putting more than the initial $500 onto party. i withdrew 3k originally from ftp to put on party but since have made a purchase. i bought a pure bred english bulldog puppy for $2500 and i think it's the best investment i've ever made. from now on, i'll always have a loyal rail bird (dog)
- played live saturday nite. went to the casino with some friends and played 1/2 nl with a max buy-in of a whopping $100. the play is just so horrendously bad that i often imagine you could grind out a steady living in that game if you played it daily. anyways i didn't have a ton of cash on me so i played solid early and picked up a few pots. then i opened up and started raising limpers from lp. i ended up getting caught once w/ 96s but flopped a flush. i ran good early and had my $100 up to $300 until i ran a semi-bluff into my buddies AA. a picked up a couple smaller pots and was back around my high water mark when this drunk kid sat down and started talking trash to the table. he raises his 5th hand in a row to $10, woman who calls all and never folds calls $10, i pick up AKs in the sb and raise to $40. drunk kid cuts it out and calls and somehow the woman folds. flop comes 567r, i lead for $55 cuz i really didn't think he was that strong and i figured i had 6 outs if behind. he ponders and raises all-in for $85 total so $30 more to me. i make the crying call getting a billion to one, tell him he's got me and flip up my hand, he says no you don't and throws his Q9o and it goes flying off the table. the floorman picked it up and declared it still live, he spikes the 9 on the turn and slammed his fist on the table in joy. i ended up down about $40 after all said and done.
- played a little omaha h/l cash yesterday but played badly since i was multi-tabling so i shut it down since i was just donating needlessly.
looking forward to ftops which starts wednesday night. im already in event #1 via satellite so im hoping for the best.
tg
3pm $150 on ftp went very well. i final tabled it out of 298 runners and played very well throughout. i built up a good stack early and was top 15 from the 1st break on and stayed there by stealing and picking up small pots. then with 60 left i had a top 10 stack and a player 2 to my left had the same. earlier he had 3 bet my utg raise w/ AKo which i found kinda weird since we were both deep and i know i would just normally smooth call there. anyways, i had been fairly active but nothing nuts, i open in the hijak w/ a 3x raise and he re-pops me from the sb. given the situation i wasn't about to fold my QQ so i shoved and he insta-called me for his stack w/ AQs. pretty poor call as im never shoving anything that he is remotely ahead of. he should have known too since i had only smooth called w/ AKs when he re-popped me earlier and that time i was playing the hand out of position.
so i doubled through and was now chip leader. i stayed top 5 all the way down to the cash bubble. (top 36) with about 24 left it folded around to the sb who raised pot and it looked extremely weak to me. i had 33 in the bb and shoved even though he was pot committed. he took his time and finally called it off w/ 22 and i was in a great spot until the river deuce.
so now i was about 8/20 and not in bad shape at all w/ about 25bb's. i won some pots w/o showdown and before i knew it i was chip leader w/ over 100k and 14 left. a fairly active player raised up from somewhat early position and i re-raised w/ JJ. he had been raising and folding to re-raises quite a bit so i wasn't going to smooth call, especially when he would throw a fit when someone re-raised him calling them all sorts of names. i was pretty sure he was coming after me with a wide range so i was happy to get it all-in pre. he shoved and showed me KK and took half my stack.
i was back to about 10/13 and forced to stay fairly tight since the table was playing very aggro w/ tons of steals and re-steals and i was no longer the big stack. i dwindled down to 12bb's when i was forced to make a move w/ about 14 left. a player to my right was opening tons of pots and i had yet to play back at her, so when she opened again i shoved KTo over top of her w/ plenty of fold equity. unfortunately she had an easy call w/ QQ but i hit a straight on the turn to put a massive suckout on her.
a few people busted and we got to the final table i was 7/9. i was staring at a another 5 figure score since 1st paid over 11k but never really got it going at the final table. i was extremely card dead and was pretty much forced to sit and wait since my stack wasn't big enough to make standard opens and fold. i shoved a couple of times and picked up the blinds until my bustout hand came up. late position raised and i re-shoved just over 10bb's w/ 88 from the bb. he thought for a while and called w/ A9o which is prob a good call based on his stack and how aggressive the table was. we raced it off and he caught the ace to send me packing in 7th for $1400.
i wasn't all that upset, i played great and the field of this tournament is stacked.
i had one other cash and that was in the 4pm $55 on party. it had over 500 entrants and i believe 1st was over 6k. i had a gazzillion chips and was chip leader w/ over 30k at the first break. from there it just kinda dwindled away, i lost a couple flips against short stacks and lost a sizeable pot when i isolated a short stack pusher from the sb and the bb woke up w/ KK. i eventually busted in the 40's i think for a small cash ($110 or something).
other than that, i played and busted in the following:
3pm, $26k pot limit holdem
3:30pm, $55 nlh
3:45pm, $26 horse, sat to ftops event (i took a beat in stud h/l that kinda sent me tailspinning)
4pm, $75 nlh
couple side notes:
- i think i was had. during the final 3 tables of the $150 the online player thay3r came in the chat and asked if anyone wanted to make a side bet. i said i would and we bet a last longer between me and another player of a similar stack for $150. it was no big deal and i thought it might make it a little more exiciting. long story short, i lost the bet, shipped the money to him and when i double checked his name in the chat it said thay9r (with a nine instead of a 3), i shipped to him anyways since im a man of my word but when i checked the pokerdb the guy has like $500 lifetime winnings and a negative roi so i doubt i was getting my $150 if i won. my own stupid fault for not recognizing his name in the first place. the only reason i didn't catch on earlier was that there were quite a few big names left in the tournament so it wasn't all that unreasonable that thay3r would be railing and another observer typed in the chat that he makes sidebets like this all the time. oh well, lesson learned.
- i was sick hungry to play yesterday and can't wait for the ftops. i haven't gotten to play too much lately but it's really making me focused when i do play. i think often times i play my worse when im playing 2 or 3 days in a row w/ 6-8 tournaments a day. before you know they all blend into one and you can just say fuck it to a tough decision since you are in so many others at the same time.
- i prob won't be putting more than the initial $500 onto party. i withdrew 3k originally from ftp to put on party but since have made a purchase. i bought a pure bred english bulldog puppy for $2500 and i think it's the best investment i've ever made. from now on, i'll always have a loyal rail bird (dog)
- played live saturday nite. went to the casino with some friends and played 1/2 nl with a max buy-in of a whopping $100. the play is just so horrendously bad that i often imagine you could grind out a steady living in that game if you played it daily. anyways i didn't have a ton of cash on me so i played solid early and picked up a few pots. then i opened up and started raising limpers from lp. i ended up getting caught once w/ 96s but flopped a flush. i ran good early and had my $100 up to $300 until i ran a semi-bluff into my buddies AA. a picked up a couple smaller pots and was back around my high water mark when this drunk kid sat down and started talking trash to the table. he raises his 5th hand in a row to $10, woman who calls all and never folds calls $10, i pick up AKs in the sb and raise to $40. drunk kid cuts it out and calls and somehow the woman folds. flop comes 567r, i lead for $55 cuz i really didn't think he was that strong and i figured i had 6 outs if behind. he ponders and raises all-in for $85 total so $30 more to me. i make the crying call getting a billion to one, tell him he's got me and flip up my hand, he says no you don't and throws his Q9o and it goes flying off the table. the floorman picked it up and declared it still live, he spikes the 9 on the turn and slammed his fist on the table in joy. i ended up down about $40 after all said and done.
- played a little omaha h/l cash yesterday but played badly since i was multi-tabling so i shut it down since i was just donating needlessly.
looking forward to ftops which starts wednesday night. im already in event #1 via satellite so im hoping for the best.
tg
Friday, August 3, 2007
played last nite for the first time since my win
didn't go all that great. i think i was expecting to win another one which in the wacky world of multi's is not all that reasonable.
i funded my party account so i could play a couple tournies there. i started with the 6pm $33 which has a 5k guarantee. i probably won't play this tournament all too much but i wanted to get my feet wet with the party structure. i busted early 2nd hour with no real notable hands other than chopping a 3-way pot with one other player. we both had AKo, the 3rd player had KK and we sucked out and hit our 2 outer. i think i lost a race to go out.
i played the 7pm $109 on party also and when i looked up the players at my table in thepokerdb there was some massive winners. so maybe the tournament isn't as soft as i think it is but i'm still going to be playing it. for a clear indication on how bad the tourny structure is at party, i played one pot and stole the blinds in the first 45 mins and was down to 13.5bb's. after 45 mins of play and a 3k starting stack the blinds go to 100/200 which is pretty crazy. i think i play a mid to short stack well though so i believe i still have a good edge in this tournament. unfortunately the 2nd hand i played i shoved 10bb's w/ 99 and ran into AA for a gg and welcome back to party poker.
the 6pm on ftp was uneventful and i busted just before the first break
i went off again in the 7pm building a massive stack. i had 16k at 60/120 and was 2nd in chips only to go bust at the 200/400/50 level. i was playing pretty aggresively throughout trying to pick-up blinds and i got played back at a ton. so i was up and down between 11k and 15k before i made a steal attempt on a short stack in the bb. i raised w/ Q9s from mp and he shoved his 6bb's in with 33 and i lost that race. no big deal, it was a small pot for me right?
about one orbit later the short stack now has about 5k and raises from mp. i had 77 in the bb and re-shipped it in since he was playing a little laggy since doubling up. he snap called me for his whole stack w/ the powerhouse K6soooooooooooooted.
obv he flopped the world and i was down to 8k but still in good shape. the hand tilted me a bit and before i knew it i was raising his blind w/ A9o. he called and when he weak led the A hi flop i shoved and he called w/ AQ and it was gg me again.
he was now sitting on over 20k and i was bust. no more than 20 mins before i was sitting on 15k and he was clinging onto a measly 6bb's. this seems to be re-occuring practice for me, i double up the shorty and then later in the tournament he busts me.
since i had a stack in the 7pm i decided to take a shot at the $150 at 8pm. i was all over the place in this tournament and eventually busted in 121st out of 400+ players when i made a re-steal w/ 88 from the blinds and lost the race to AJs.
during the tournaments i also fired up some $55 and $110 turbo sng's. i played 3 $110's and bubbled two of them and didn't get close in the 3rd. out of 5 $55's i believe i ended up with 2 wins and a 3rd which helped balance the night out. i think i will stick to $55's for now until i get more comfortable and start showing a good profit in those.
not sure if i'll be playing online saturday but all signs are pointing towards a live session of 1/2 no-limit down at Niagara falls Casino. should be fun as the play is horrible and i usually get half in the bag while i play which makes for a fun time.
monday i will play quite a few tournies starting late in the afternoon and if im feeling froggy i might even hop into a satellite for the big 1k that night.
other than that i need to get ready for the few ftops events i'll be playing which means brushing up on my o8 and stud games.
tg
i funded my party account so i could play a couple tournies there. i started with the 6pm $33 which has a 5k guarantee. i probably won't play this tournament all too much but i wanted to get my feet wet with the party structure. i busted early 2nd hour with no real notable hands other than chopping a 3-way pot with one other player. we both had AKo, the 3rd player had KK and we sucked out and hit our 2 outer. i think i lost a race to go out.
i played the 7pm $109 on party also and when i looked up the players at my table in thepokerdb there was some massive winners. so maybe the tournament isn't as soft as i think it is but i'm still going to be playing it. for a clear indication on how bad the tourny structure is at party, i played one pot and stole the blinds in the first 45 mins and was down to 13.5bb's. after 45 mins of play and a 3k starting stack the blinds go to 100/200 which is pretty crazy. i think i play a mid to short stack well though so i believe i still have a good edge in this tournament. unfortunately the 2nd hand i played i shoved 10bb's w/ 99 and ran into AA for a gg and welcome back to party poker.
the 6pm on ftp was uneventful and i busted just before the first break
i went off again in the 7pm building a massive stack. i had 16k at 60/120 and was 2nd in chips only to go bust at the 200/400/50 level. i was playing pretty aggresively throughout trying to pick-up blinds and i got played back at a ton. so i was up and down between 11k and 15k before i made a steal attempt on a short stack in the bb. i raised w/ Q9s from mp and he shoved his 6bb's in with 33 and i lost that race. no big deal, it was a small pot for me right?
about one orbit later the short stack now has about 5k and raises from mp. i had 77 in the bb and re-shipped it in since he was playing a little laggy since doubling up. he snap called me for his whole stack w/ the powerhouse K6soooooooooooooted.
obv he flopped the world and i was down to 8k but still in good shape. the hand tilted me a bit and before i knew it i was raising his blind w/ A9o. he called and when he weak led the A hi flop i shoved and he called w/ AQ and it was gg me again.
he was now sitting on over 20k and i was bust. no more than 20 mins before i was sitting on 15k and he was clinging onto a measly 6bb's. this seems to be re-occuring practice for me, i double up the shorty and then later in the tournament he busts me.
since i had a stack in the 7pm i decided to take a shot at the $150 at 8pm. i was all over the place in this tournament and eventually busted in 121st out of 400+ players when i made a re-steal w/ 88 from the blinds and lost the race to AJs.
during the tournaments i also fired up some $55 and $110 turbo sng's. i played 3 $110's and bubbled two of them and didn't get close in the 3rd. out of 5 $55's i believe i ended up with 2 wins and a 3rd which helped balance the night out. i think i will stick to $55's for now until i get more comfortable and start showing a good profit in those.
not sure if i'll be playing online saturday but all signs are pointing towards a live session of 1/2 no-limit down at Niagara falls Casino. should be fun as the play is horrible and i usually get half in the bag while i play which makes for a fun time.
monday i will play quite a few tournies starting late in the afternoon and if im feeling froggy i might even hop into a satellite for the big 1k that night.
other than that i need to get ready for the few ftops events i'll be playing which means brushing up on my o8 and stud games.
tg
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
time to party
so i was talking to dtrain (pxf member) on aim the other day and told him how i was hoping to hit a nice score so i could put some money back on party poker and play their 7pm $109 20k guarantee.
well now that i hit the score i'm going to put 2k back on party to play this tourny. i mentioned in one of my first blogs about putting $500 on there this past spring and playing that tourny a couple times and taking it down once for a 5k+ score. 2k is obviously not a big enough roll to play a $109 tournament regularly but it's 2k im willing to gamble with.
the tournament is super soft. i'd say the play in it is equivalent to a $10 tournament on ftp. i guess my sample size is short but in the long run i truly believe this tournament can be a big money maker for me. it usually draws about 205-220 players so the field is very managable even though the party structure leaves something to be desired.
i guess the field is so soft cuz
1) party doesn't allow US players
2) a 7pm est time tournament might be a tad late for some of the big european players
3) a lot of the top Canadian players are probably chasing down bigger scores in the pokerstars $109 and the various rebuy tourny's.
anyways, im really excited to start playing on party again. the software is crap, the customer service is frustrating and they seem to freeze funds at will but it's where i started my online poker career and i guess there is just something about it that makes it feel like home. i think a lot of players have a soft spot in there heart for the site they first started on.
other than adding the $109 7pm and possibly the $33 6pm on party im going to stick to my regular schedule on ftp during week nights. since i work a regular day job i like to get to bed at a decent hour so i don't usually start any tournaments after the 7:15pm limit holdem. i might start playing the nightly $150 at 8pm occasionally and depending on field size the 20 rebuy at 7:30pm but thats about it.
on weekends i'll step it up and take a few shots at the higher buy-in tournaments like the $109 i won and $150's they run. i might mix in some rebuy tournaments but probably nothing higher than the 30 to start since im not crazy about rebuy tournaments.
as far as sunday majors go i'll probably be mia (missing in action) on most sundays as im usually spending it with family. i probably get to play on sunday once a month or so and when i do i will start playing the big sunday guarantee on ftp along with the mulligan. i'll also play the sunday 300k guarantee on party which starts at like 1pm est i believe.
i haven't really thought out whether i would buy-in direct to the big sundays or if i would try to satellite in. im a real nit so i think i'll probably at least play the huge satellite where they guarantee a whack a seats before directly buying-in. we'll see though.
i also looked over the ftops series and pretty much decided to stick with my original schedule. a lot of the tournaments are either 6-max, rebuy or both and im not really comfortable with those style of tournaments yet. the ones that i would think of playing have a $500+ buy-in and thats just way to high for me. so i'll probably stick to my original schedule and see how that goes.
i had never paid attention to the wcoop before since i never had a roll big enough and dislike stars in general. i looked over the schedule and there is really nothing there for me. i hate stars and the odd tournament that i would like to play starts before i typically get home from work. i also noticed on stars website that they have a weekly (or bi-weekly) $109 limit holdem tournament which intrigued me until i checked it out on the pokerdb and it only gets like 20 players.
im done rambling for now.
tg
well now that i hit the score i'm going to put 2k back on party to play this tourny. i mentioned in one of my first blogs about putting $500 on there this past spring and playing that tourny a couple times and taking it down once for a 5k+ score. 2k is obviously not a big enough roll to play a $109 tournament regularly but it's 2k im willing to gamble with.
the tournament is super soft. i'd say the play in it is equivalent to a $10 tournament on ftp. i guess my sample size is short but in the long run i truly believe this tournament can be a big money maker for me. it usually draws about 205-220 players so the field is very managable even though the party structure leaves something to be desired.
i guess the field is so soft cuz
1) party doesn't allow US players
2) a 7pm est time tournament might be a tad late for some of the big european players
3) a lot of the top Canadian players are probably chasing down bigger scores in the pokerstars $109 and the various rebuy tourny's.
anyways, im really excited to start playing on party again. the software is crap, the customer service is frustrating and they seem to freeze funds at will but it's where i started my online poker career and i guess there is just something about it that makes it feel like home. i think a lot of players have a soft spot in there heart for the site they first started on.
other than adding the $109 7pm and possibly the $33 6pm on party im going to stick to my regular schedule on ftp during week nights. since i work a regular day job i like to get to bed at a decent hour so i don't usually start any tournaments after the 7:15pm limit holdem. i might start playing the nightly $150 at 8pm occasionally and depending on field size the 20 rebuy at 7:30pm but thats about it.
on weekends i'll step it up and take a few shots at the higher buy-in tournaments like the $109 i won and $150's they run. i might mix in some rebuy tournaments but probably nothing higher than the 30 to start since im not crazy about rebuy tournaments.
as far as sunday majors go i'll probably be mia (missing in action) on most sundays as im usually spending it with family. i probably get to play on sunday once a month or so and when i do i will start playing the big sunday guarantee on ftp along with the mulligan. i'll also play the sunday 300k guarantee on party which starts at like 1pm est i believe.
i haven't really thought out whether i would buy-in direct to the big sundays or if i would try to satellite in. im a real nit so i think i'll probably at least play the huge satellite where they guarantee a whack a seats before directly buying-in. we'll see though.
i also looked over the ftops series and pretty much decided to stick with my original schedule. a lot of the tournaments are either 6-max, rebuy or both and im not really comfortable with those style of tournaments yet. the ones that i would think of playing have a $500+ buy-in and thats just way to high for me. so i'll probably stick to my original schedule and see how that goes.
i had never paid attention to the wcoop before since i never had a roll big enough and dislike stars in general. i looked over the schedule and there is really nothing there for me. i hate stars and the odd tournament that i would like to play starts before i typically get home from work. i also noticed on stars website that they have a weekly (or bi-weekly) $109 limit holdem tournament which intrigued me until i checked it out on the pokerdb and it only gets like 20 players.
im done rambling for now.
tg
Monday, July 30, 2007
ship me 16 dimes
played quite a bit on Saturday and won the 60k guarantee on ftp for a cool $16, 587.50!!!!!!!
it was such a sick tournament. i played my absolute best game ever and got rewarded big time w/ my biggest score.
it was pretty cool how the day layed out. i started at noon and played the 12pm $26 which i can't even remember how it went.
i played a couple of satellites into other tournaments like the winners choice and i think maybe an ftops event. i busted in both of those.
i played the 2pm $26 DS which got 1127 players and i went deep in this one. i played really well in this tournament and with massive blinds just kinda got unlucky to run AQ into AK when an active player made yet another lp raise. i finished that tournament 43rd for a $76 payday which was a little short of the 6k i was eyeing for 1st.
@ 2:30 i decided to play a $26 satellite into the $109 60k guarantee. it received 67 players and the top 14 paid seats. w/ 19 left i was 19th and w/ blinds of 250/500/25a i only had about 2k in chips. i've never really studied satellite strategy but i basically played it like a money bubble in a sng. i only shoved from lp w/ ok hands into stacks that would be crippled if they called me and luckily i managed to squeak through and ended up building a stack to secure my seat. it was a pretty slow brutal bubble as tons of guys were stalling and what not.
i played the 15k $55 at 3:30 and it went piss poor the whole way through. for some reason you get 2k chips to start this tournament instead of the usual 1.5k or 3k. i was down to 800 chips early, doubled to 1600 and then slowly spewed my way down to 1.2k before getting it all-in against a bad player that outplayed me. he limped in ep which was always doing, the sb completed and i checked my option w/ KsQx in the bb. the flop came QsTs3x, sb checked, i led out, limper min-raised, i shoved and he had AA.
the 4pm $75 was a bit of a horror show as i busted just before the 1st break. i chipped up to 2k, went down to 1.2k after losing a pot to GB2005 who was on my left. i then doubled through a guy w/ AA when i min-raised his standard 8x the bb open. i lost some chips and was down to 1.7k when a shorter stacked shoved for 800 utg and isolated w/ JJ. he had Tc8c and hit a flush on me to put me in trouble. the ending came when i shoved over an mp opener w/ 99 and i believe he had TT and i didn't suckout.
those tournaments brought me all the way up to 5:55 so i took a 5 min break before starting the 6pm $109 that i had satted into and the $26. im not very good at playing long stretches so im used to having a couple hour break on saturdays between my afternoon and evening sessions.
i have no idea what happened in the $26 6pm but opr tells me i busted 205th out of 635 players.
the $109 is a pretty big blur right now. im hoping to upload the hh to the pokerxfactor replayer so i'll just go over the main highlights of the tournament.
i started off good and worked my chips up to 4k before losing some pots and going down to around 2.4k. late in the 2nd hour i doubled a few times and started to get a reasonable stack together. i some how got a big stack and then took a pretty bad beat.
ep raised 3x, i re-raised from mp 3x his raise, it folded back to him and he shoved for a little bit more than my re-raise. i was in good shape w/ QQ vs KJ but he flopped a King and proceeded to tell me that KJ is his favorite hand and it never loses for him. sigh.
i rebuilt up again and actually remember making a few shoves so i must have been in the 10-15bb area. after shoving twice in previous orbits a big hand came up. mp raised and was cold called by another mp player. i shoved JJ from the sb since i would be committing a lot of chips with a re-raise and i would have to play the hand out of position. so i shoved and the initial raiser folded and the cold caller went into time bank. while he was thinking another player that wasn't even a part of the hand started telling this guy to call me. i went nuts and reported the idiot.
cold caller ended up calling w/ AQo and flopped a Q but i also flopped a J and took down a big pot. just as i finished reporting the idiot i got into a big pot with him.
he min-raised utg and i picked up AK on the button. i re-raised committing most of his stack and he thought for a while before just calling. the flop came down AJT and he opened shoved and i called. he had a poorly played AJ but i run goot and rivered a K to win the pot. (then i trash talked him a bit)
after that i had a top 5 stack and pretty much stole stole stole to keep myself alive. that worked for the most part until i had an opponent to my left start re-popping me all-in and i had to slow down.
i remember losing a big pot but then got it back when i re-raised a button stealer w/ AA and he called. (i was in the bb) the flop came down A94 and i checked knowing that he would probably shove a large portion of his hands, he did and i called and killed his A7o.
i tried to stay aggressive and steal blinds and before i knew it we were at the final table. the only notable was Jordan (imsolucky0) Morgan but he was two to my left so i didn't have to worry too much about him. i started the final table 9/9 but doubled up fairly quickly w/ AK vs jordans KT on a AK5 board. i had raised from ep and he called out of the blind and check raised me all-in.
i was now at 4/9 for all of 30 seconds. two hands later i was in the bb w/ AQo, a player i hadn't played w/ yet raised from middle to late position. i re-shipped it all and he snap called me with ............................................... A7s.
he wasted no time in flopping a 7 and i was back down to 9/9. we had a break right after that so i went and cleared my mind. often times a hand like that can give you an excuse just to ship it in with your short stack and tell everyone how unlucky you got. i didn't want this to happen and although i was shortest stack i still had 15bb's to work with which is a ton at this point in the tournament.
i blinded down to 100k at 4k/8k/1k when utg raised and i shoved w/ a beautiful KK. the sb tanked and ended up calling for 1/2 his stack and then utg called as well. i was pretty worried but the flop came Ten hi w/ 2 hearts and i had the K of hearts. the turn was a 3rd heart and the sb then moved in for the rest of his stack and utg folded. sb showed AKo no hearts and i faded to the 2 outer to more than triple up.
this put me 3/8 and i rolled from there. i was a complete card rack at the final table and slowly but surely we got down to 4 i was 2nd in chips. jordan then got bounced in 4th and i took the chip lead a few minutes into 3 way action. after a while i was back to 2nd in chips when i raised 55 on the button. the sb 3rd place stack shoved on me and i called him pretty quickly. i had folded to quite a few re-shoves at the final table and this player looked to be re-shoving on me light so i knew i had to take a stand at some point. plus, even if i doubled him up i still had some chips to play with.
he had A9o and i won the race. going into heads-up (against the same guy from the A7 hand) i was in a 1.2m to 800k disadvantage. after a few hands we had flipped spots and i had 1.2m but then lost a couple pots to the point that we were actually even. then the winning hand came up:
he limped the button and i checked the option w/ Qx9c.
the flop came Qc8c3c. i checked, he bet and i raised. he thought for a minute and called. the turn came an offusit 5 and i bet the pot, he raised all-in for a little bit more and i called instantly. for some reason i was extremely confident i had the best hand. not sure why but i went with it.
he had JxJc and i needed to fade the 8 clubs for the win. i did and that was it.
i had a whole bunch of friends over for a home game that turned into a real life rail of an online tournament which was pretty cool.
i ran deep in the 7pm $75 once again but failed to cash. i was at a table w/ andy mccleod on my left and the assinato on my right so it was pure hell. i made a really nice re-re-steal on andy at one point. he had been either cold calling or re-raising all of my lp raises so when i raised in the CO w/ KTo and he re-popped a small amount i 4 bet all-in and he folded. felt nice to put a move on a top player like that.
after all the success of the nite we finally got our home game started at 1am. we bumped the buy-in up to $40 since we only had time for one game. i played the heater out and was in every pot early. w/ 4 left (of a starting 6) i had 202 of the 300 chips in play but ended up finish ing 2nd after my open ended straight flush draw missed.
oh well, can't win'em all
tg.
btw..... bankroll now exceeds 19k :)
it was such a sick tournament. i played my absolute best game ever and got rewarded big time w/ my biggest score.
it was pretty cool how the day layed out. i started at noon and played the 12pm $26 which i can't even remember how it went.
i played a couple of satellites into other tournaments like the winners choice and i think maybe an ftops event. i busted in both of those.
i played the 2pm $26 DS which got 1127 players and i went deep in this one. i played really well in this tournament and with massive blinds just kinda got unlucky to run AQ into AK when an active player made yet another lp raise. i finished that tournament 43rd for a $76 payday which was a little short of the 6k i was eyeing for 1st.
@ 2:30 i decided to play a $26 satellite into the $109 60k guarantee. it received 67 players and the top 14 paid seats. w/ 19 left i was 19th and w/ blinds of 250/500/25a i only had about 2k in chips. i've never really studied satellite strategy but i basically played it like a money bubble in a sng. i only shoved from lp w/ ok hands into stacks that would be crippled if they called me and luckily i managed to squeak through and ended up building a stack to secure my seat. it was a pretty slow brutal bubble as tons of guys were stalling and what not.
i played the 15k $55 at 3:30 and it went piss poor the whole way through. for some reason you get 2k chips to start this tournament instead of the usual 1.5k or 3k. i was down to 800 chips early, doubled to 1600 and then slowly spewed my way down to 1.2k before getting it all-in against a bad player that outplayed me. he limped in ep which was always doing, the sb completed and i checked my option w/ KsQx in the bb. the flop came QsTs3x, sb checked, i led out, limper min-raised, i shoved and he had AA.
the 4pm $75 was a bit of a horror show as i busted just before the 1st break. i chipped up to 2k, went down to 1.2k after losing a pot to GB2005 who was on my left. i then doubled through a guy w/ AA when i min-raised his standard 8x the bb open. i lost some chips and was down to 1.7k when a shorter stacked shoved for 800 utg and isolated w/ JJ. he had Tc8c and hit a flush on me to put me in trouble. the ending came when i shoved over an mp opener w/ 99 and i believe he had TT and i didn't suckout.
those tournaments brought me all the way up to 5:55 so i took a 5 min break before starting the 6pm $109 that i had satted into and the $26. im not very good at playing long stretches so im used to having a couple hour break on saturdays between my afternoon and evening sessions.
i have no idea what happened in the $26 6pm but opr tells me i busted 205th out of 635 players.
the $109 is a pretty big blur right now. im hoping to upload the hh to the pokerxfactor replayer so i'll just go over the main highlights of the tournament.
i started off good and worked my chips up to 4k before losing some pots and going down to around 2.4k. late in the 2nd hour i doubled a few times and started to get a reasonable stack together. i some how got a big stack and then took a pretty bad beat.
ep raised 3x, i re-raised from mp 3x his raise, it folded back to him and he shoved for a little bit more than my re-raise. i was in good shape w/ QQ vs KJ but he flopped a King and proceeded to tell me that KJ is his favorite hand and it never loses for him. sigh.
i rebuilt up again and actually remember making a few shoves so i must have been in the 10-15bb area. after shoving twice in previous orbits a big hand came up. mp raised and was cold called by another mp player. i shoved JJ from the sb since i would be committing a lot of chips with a re-raise and i would have to play the hand out of position. so i shoved and the initial raiser folded and the cold caller went into time bank. while he was thinking another player that wasn't even a part of the hand started telling this guy to call me. i went nuts and reported the idiot.
cold caller ended up calling w/ AQo and flopped a Q but i also flopped a J and took down a big pot. just as i finished reporting the idiot i got into a big pot with him.
he min-raised utg and i picked up AK on the button. i re-raised committing most of his stack and he thought for a while before just calling. the flop came down AJT and he opened shoved and i called. he had a poorly played AJ but i run goot and rivered a K to win the pot. (then i trash talked him a bit)
after that i had a top 5 stack and pretty much stole stole stole to keep myself alive. that worked for the most part until i had an opponent to my left start re-popping me all-in and i had to slow down.
i remember losing a big pot but then got it back when i re-raised a button stealer w/ AA and he called. (i was in the bb) the flop came down A94 and i checked knowing that he would probably shove a large portion of his hands, he did and i called and killed his A7o.
i tried to stay aggressive and steal blinds and before i knew it we were at the final table. the only notable was Jordan (imsolucky0) Morgan but he was two to my left so i didn't have to worry too much about him. i started the final table 9/9 but doubled up fairly quickly w/ AK vs jordans KT on a AK5 board. i had raised from ep and he called out of the blind and check raised me all-in.
i was now at 4/9 for all of 30 seconds. two hands later i was in the bb w/ AQo, a player i hadn't played w/ yet raised from middle to late position. i re-shipped it all and he snap called me with ............................................... A7s.
he wasted no time in flopping a 7 and i was back down to 9/9. we had a break right after that so i went and cleared my mind. often times a hand like that can give you an excuse just to ship it in with your short stack and tell everyone how unlucky you got. i didn't want this to happen and although i was shortest stack i still had 15bb's to work with which is a ton at this point in the tournament.
i blinded down to 100k at 4k/8k/1k when utg raised and i shoved w/ a beautiful KK. the sb tanked and ended up calling for 1/2 his stack and then utg called as well. i was pretty worried but the flop came Ten hi w/ 2 hearts and i had the K of hearts. the turn was a 3rd heart and the sb then moved in for the rest of his stack and utg folded. sb showed AKo no hearts and i faded to the 2 outer to more than triple up.
this put me 3/8 and i rolled from there. i was a complete card rack at the final table and slowly but surely we got down to 4 i was 2nd in chips. jordan then got bounced in 4th and i took the chip lead a few minutes into 3 way action. after a while i was back to 2nd in chips when i raised 55 on the button. the sb 3rd place stack shoved on me and i called him pretty quickly. i had folded to quite a few re-shoves at the final table and this player looked to be re-shoving on me light so i knew i had to take a stand at some point. plus, even if i doubled him up i still had some chips to play with.
he had A9o and i won the race. going into heads-up (against the same guy from the A7 hand) i was in a 1.2m to 800k disadvantage. after a few hands we had flipped spots and i had 1.2m but then lost a couple pots to the point that we were actually even. then the winning hand came up:
he limped the button and i checked the option w/ Qx9c.
the flop came Qc8c3c. i checked, he bet and i raised. he thought for a minute and called. the turn came an offusit 5 and i bet the pot, he raised all-in for a little bit more and i called instantly. for some reason i was extremely confident i had the best hand. not sure why but i went with it.
he had JxJc and i needed to fade the 8 clubs for the win. i did and that was it.
i had a whole bunch of friends over for a home game that turned into a real life rail of an online tournament which was pretty cool.
i ran deep in the 7pm $75 once again but failed to cash. i was at a table w/ andy mccleod on my left and the assinato on my right so it was pure hell. i made a really nice re-re-steal on andy at one point. he had been either cold calling or re-raising all of my lp raises so when i raised in the CO w/ KTo and he re-popped a small amount i 4 bet all-in and he folded. felt nice to put a move on a top player like that.
after all the success of the nite we finally got our home game started at 1am. we bumped the buy-in up to $40 since we only had time for one game. i played the heater out and was in every pot early. w/ 4 left (of a starting 6) i had 202 of the 300 chips in play but ended up finish ing 2nd after my open ended straight flush draw missed.
oh well, can't win'em all
tg.
btw..... bankroll now exceeds 19k :)
Saturday, July 28, 2007
quiet night
i only played a couple tournies last nite.
6pm was fun. i was down to 500 chips early after flopping 2 pair and getting away from it on the river. it's kind of fun trying to rebuild from being so low early and i enjoy the challenge. i worked it back up to 1150 w/o playing any big pots until i a lost a race w/ AK vs 77 early in the 2nd hour.
i chipped up beautifully in the 7pm until this hand.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1309259
this is as close to a 50/50 as possible so no regrets.
then i played this hand pretty poorly. my flop decision was based totally on his bet size. i thought before hand if he made a 2/3 or 3/4 pot size bet i would fold but anything that looked a little weaker i was going to shove since i was pretty sure we would fold better hands (TT-QQ).
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1309266
in hindsight i think i can actually fold pre. i've played a little cash w/ this player and he's not getting out of line utg. i don't have near enough chips to set mine and im not going to be happy about putting it all-in if i flop an overpair to the board.
i played a $26 sat to ftops event 1. 24 runners and top 2 got seats w/ 3rd and 4th paying cash. i built up a top stack early but had dwindled down to 7/9 by the time we reached the final table. i played aggressively knowing that i had build a stack to get top 2 so i took a few gambles and won a race to get down to the final 3. from there i hit/smashed every flop and slowly chipped up to the chip lead. then i got lucky to seal the deal.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1309393 <<<<<<<<<<<<< i didn't feel bad, i've been on the receiving end of this lately.
so im in event #1 which is great.
after that i only had the limit holdem event left. i just left that table up and played pretty abc while i went over the latest annette_15 100r hh on pxf. i plugged away and never really had chips until we got down to 30 or so. i picked up a couple nice pots and all of a sudden was looking good to cash. (top 18 paid, 151 runners)
then i went on absolutely sicko run picking up AA, KK and QQ in the span of 5 hands and got paid on all of them. w/ 18 left i was chip leader w/ 40k to 2nd places 20k.
unfortunately due to some absolutlely horrific play (by my opponents) i ended up losing half my stack in the span of 5 hands and by the time we reached the final table i was 7/9.
i stuck tough though and waited my way out and w/ 5 remaining i had like 3bb's. the once chip leader (who had absolutley destroyed me playing horribly) went from over 100k to busto in 5th and i happened to win a big pot w/ AA in eliminating her. this put me 3/4 and before long the 4th place player busted.
i was way behind in chips when my busto hand came up.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1309427 - i know im toast on the flop but the pot is so huge and i've already got 2/3 my stack in so i went with it.
oh well, 3rd paid $462 which will help pay for some mtt buy-ins. it's my 3rd final table in this event in the last month or so i have been playing it so thats a good sign.
i'll be playing a bunch today so here's to running gooooooooooot.
tg
** on a side note i caught myself yelling "PASS THE SUGAR" when winning a few races last nite. damn you Joe Hachem!
6pm was fun. i was down to 500 chips early after flopping 2 pair and getting away from it on the river. it's kind of fun trying to rebuild from being so low early and i enjoy the challenge. i worked it back up to 1150 w/o playing any big pots until i a lost a race w/ AK vs 77 early in the 2nd hour.
i chipped up beautifully in the 7pm until this hand.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1309259
this is as close to a 50/50 as possible so no regrets.
then i played this hand pretty poorly. my flop decision was based totally on his bet size. i thought before hand if he made a 2/3 or 3/4 pot size bet i would fold but anything that looked a little weaker i was going to shove since i was pretty sure we would fold better hands (TT-QQ).
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1309266
in hindsight i think i can actually fold pre. i've played a little cash w/ this player and he's not getting out of line utg. i don't have near enough chips to set mine and im not going to be happy about putting it all-in if i flop an overpair to the board.
i played a $26 sat to ftops event 1. 24 runners and top 2 got seats w/ 3rd and 4th paying cash. i built up a top stack early but had dwindled down to 7/9 by the time we reached the final table. i played aggressively knowing that i had build a stack to get top 2 so i took a few gambles and won a race to get down to the final 3. from there i hit/smashed every flop and slowly chipped up to the chip lead. then i got lucky to seal the deal.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1309393 <<<<<<<<<<<<< i didn't feel bad, i've been on the receiving end of this lately.
so im in event #1 which is great.
after that i only had the limit holdem event left. i just left that table up and played pretty abc while i went over the latest annette_15 100r hh on pxf. i plugged away and never really had chips until we got down to 30 or so. i picked up a couple nice pots and all of a sudden was looking good to cash. (top 18 paid, 151 runners)
then i went on absolutely sicko run picking up AA, KK and QQ in the span of 5 hands and got paid on all of them. w/ 18 left i was chip leader w/ 40k to 2nd places 20k.
unfortunately due to some absolutlely horrific play (by my opponents) i ended up losing half my stack in the span of 5 hands and by the time we reached the final table i was 7/9.
i stuck tough though and waited my way out and w/ 5 remaining i had like 3bb's. the once chip leader (who had absolutley destroyed me playing horribly) went from over 100k to busto in 5th and i happened to win a big pot w/ AA in eliminating her. this put me 3/4 and before long the 4th place player busted.
i was way behind in chips when my busto hand came up.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1309427 - i know im toast on the flop but the pot is so huge and i've already got 2/3 my stack in so i went with it.
oh well, 3rd paid $462 which will help pay for some mtt buy-ins. it's my 3rd final table in this event in the last month or so i have been playing it so thats a good sign.
i'll be playing a bunch today so here's to running gooooooooooot.
tg
** on a side note i caught myself yelling "PASS THE SUGAR" when winning a few races last nite. damn you Joe Hachem!
Friday, July 27, 2007
so close yet so far
played a pile of tournaments last night.
the 6pm $26 nlh started off crazy as i doubled up on the first hand w/ AA vs AJ on a J hi flop and just kept going from there. i believe i had close to 7k at the break. in the 2nd hour i kept on running until i picked off a short stack move-in w/ TT vs his A5. the flop came down AAx and it took a chunk of my stack. i lost another good sized pot and all of a sudden i was down to about 13 bb's. the earlier short stack was now the big stack and was playing uber laggy and calling all-ins w/ K hi on an A hi board? he made a lp raise again and i re-shipped my 88 from the sb and he made the call w/ A9s and bounced me when he paired the board.
the 7pm $75 nlh also started off really well. about 15 mins i doubled through w/ a set of 6's against QQ. i slowly kept chipping away well into the 2nd hour until i doubled through the chip leader.
i had 11k to start and chip leader had 41k in the bb.
he had played very loose in the few hands since he had moved to my table so i was pretty certain he was calling my raise in the bb.
w/ blinds at 200/400/50a i raised to 1100 from ep w/ 99. it folded around to chip leader who called.
the flop came Js7s3h and he immediately led out for pot (2850). with 9900 behind it was either push or fold. i hit the time bank even though i was pretty sure i was calling. there is no way he leads w/ a good Jack, a set or a random 2 pair as it would be a pretty standard c/r w/ those hands. i think for him to make this bet he either has to have a weak Jack, middle or bottom pair or a flush draw. the way he was trying to bully the table around it seemed pretty clear that this bet was meant to intimidate and push me out of the pot. after thinking for a couple seconds i was fairly certain that it was a flush draw and shoved.
he called and showed a King rag of spades for the flush draw and i held.
i was now sitting on a really good chip stack and was pumped that my read was right. over the next hour and a half i stayed aggressive and bobbed and weaved my way through a pretty tough field. when we got into the money i had slowly started to become short chipped but managed to make a few re-steals against one of the big stacks to stay alive. i stole and re-stole to keep my head above water and when we got down to the final two tables i was 3rd in chips w/ 112k.
when down to 16 players a big hand came up.
w/ blinds at 2k/4k/500a a fairly aggressive player shoved 42k from mp. i was in the bb w/ my 112k stack and insta-called him w/ TT. he showed QJs and i was racing for a final table stack. unfortunately the door card was a Jack and i was down to 70k.
i was whittled down to 40k at 2.5k/5k/600a w/ 13 players left. i shoved utg once w/ 55 and picked up the blinds. i shoved from lp w/ 33 and picked up that pot. down to 6 handed (12 left total) i shoved 50k utg w/ 66 and picked up the blinds again.
4th time was not a charm and i shoved 60k utg w/ 66 again and ran it into a player that called an all-in for 42k w/ 88. we both flushed and i was down to 18k w/ 5k going into the bb the very next hand.
same player i just doubled isolated me w/ A6o and i called off my remaining 13k w/ J3sooooted.
i flopped a 3, he turned a wheel and i rivered a flush to get back up to 40k.
i don't even rememeber the busto hand but i went out shortly after in 12th. i believe it was my A2 shove against A4 and he paired the 4 to send me packin but its all kind of a blurr since i was busting in the 8pm $26 at the very same time.
the 8pm went great and i had an absolute sicko stack by the 2nd hour. @ 150/300/25a i had a 26k stack! almost 100bb's deep in a online freezeout is pretty sick but the best part was there were tons of players at my table that were also deep stacked so i could bully but still play post-flop.
i pretty much did whatever i wanted and would chip up to 27 or 28k and then lose a 6k pot. chip back up and go back down. it was like this until i was getting kinda short just inside the money.
when down to 135 players (top 180 paid, over 1200 runners) i picked up AA. utg raised and i made a smallish re-raise hoping he would shove me. he did w/ JJ and i obv called. he flopped a jack and once again i was pretty much poofed. i battled for a while before going in 120 something. (i believe full tilt crashed again before this tourny finished so the bad beat might have actually saved me from going on connection tilt)
the rest of the tournies were kinda sour. i played a few satellites for ftops events w/ no success. i think i played 5 45 person sngs and didn't crack the top 15 in any. the limit holdem was going very well until an opponent hit runner runner on me for a massive pot. i think i went out 35th in that. i also played the 8:15pm $26 razz tourny and while razz is one of my favorite games in the horse rotation it got pretty old pretty quick. i managed to give it my all but my premium starting hands were getting destroyed on 4th and 5th street.
so all in all it was a bitter sweet night. the sweetness is how proud i am of my play in the 7pm. i think it's my best played tournament ever which kind of makes it bitter than i didn't hit the big score (8.3k for first). i guess the 60k push utg 6 handed is somewhat debatable. i have 11.5 bb's and i have shoving a lot so i'm bound to get called. the other factor is that the bb had like 260k so he probably has a wider calling range than most at that point in the tournament. not sure.
oh well, i guess all i can do is take another stab tonite. i'll probably only play the few earlier evening tournaments tonite but tomorrow will be an absolute marathon as i have the whole day and night cleared for whatever i want to play.
special thanks goes out to Rex55 who gave me some top notch rail support when i needed it the most!
tg
the 6pm $26 nlh started off crazy as i doubled up on the first hand w/ AA vs AJ on a J hi flop and just kept going from there. i believe i had close to 7k at the break. in the 2nd hour i kept on running until i picked off a short stack move-in w/ TT vs his A5. the flop came down AAx and it took a chunk of my stack. i lost another good sized pot and all of a sudden i was down to about 13 bb's. the earlier short stack was now the big stack and was playing uber laggy and calling all-ins w/ K hi on an A hi board? he made a lp raise again and i re-shipped my 88 from the sb and he made the call w/ A9s and bounced me when he paired the board.
the 7pm $75 nlh also started off really well. about 15 mins i doubled through w/ a set of 6's against QQ. i slowly kept chipping away well into the 2nd hour until i doubled through the chip leader.
i had 11k to start and chip leader had 41k in the bb.
he had played very loose in the few hands since he had moved to my table so i was pretty certain he was calling my raise in the bb.
w/ blinds at 200/400/50a i raised to 1100 from ep w/ 99. it folded around to chip leader who called.
the flop came Js7s3h and he immediately led out for pot (2850). with 9900 behind it was either push or fold. i hit the time bank even though i was pretty sure i was calling. there is no way he leads w/ a good Jack, a set or a random 2 pair as it would be a pretty standard c/r w/ those hands. i think for him to make this bet he either has to have a weak Jack, middle or bottom pair or a flush draw. the way he was trying to bully the table around it seemed pretty clear that this bet was meant to intimidate and push me out of the pot. after thinking for a couple seconds i was fairly certain that it was a flush draw and shoved.
he called and showed a King rag of spades for the flush draw and i held.
i was now sitting on a really good chip stack and was pumped that my read was right. over the next hour and a half i stayed aggressive and bobbed and weaved my way through a pretty tough field. when we got into the money i had slowly started to become short chipped but managed to make a few re-steals against one of the big stacks to stay alive. i stole and re-stole to keep my head above water and when we got down to the final two tables i was 3rd in chips w/ 112k.
when down to 16 players a big hand came up.
w/ blinds at 2k/4k/500a a fairly aggressive player shoved 42k from mp. i was in the bb w/ my 112k stack and insta-called him w/ TT. he showed QJs and i was racing for a final table stack. unfortunately the door card was a Jack and i was down to 70k.
i was whittled down to 40k at 2.5k/5k/600a w/ 13 players left. i shoved utg once w/ 55 and picked up the blinds. i shoved from lp w/ 33 and picked up that pot. down to 6 handed (12 left total) i shoved 50k utg w/ 66 and picked up the blinds again.
4th time was not a charm and i shoved 60k utg w/ 66 again and ran it into a player that called an all-in for 42k w/ 88. we both flushed and i was down to 18k w/ 5k going into the bb the very next hand.
same player i just doubled isolated me w/ A6o and i called off my remaining 13k w/ J3sooooted.
i flopped a 3, he turned a wheel and i rivered a flush to get back up to 40k.
i don't even rememeber the busto hand but i went out shortly after in 12th. i believe it was my A2 shove against A4 and he paired the 4 to send me packin but its all kind of a blurr since i was busting in the 8pm $26 at the very same time.
the 8pm went great and i had an absolute sicko stack by the 2nd hour. @ 150/300/25a i had a 26k stack! almost 100bb's deep in a online freezeout is pretty sick but the best part was there were tons of players at my table that were also deep stacked so i could bully but still play post-flop.
i pretty much did whatever i wanted and would chip up to 27 or 28k and then lose a 6k pot. chip back up and go back down. it was like this until i was getting kinda short just inside the money.
when down to 135 players (top 180 paid, over 1200 runners) i picked up AA. utg raised and i made a smallish re-raise hoping he would shove me. he did w/ JJ and i obv called. he flopped a jack and once again i was pretty much poofed. i battled for a while before going in 120 something. (i believe full tilt crashed again before this tourny finished so the bad beat might have actually saved me from going on connection tilt)
the rest of the tournies were kinda sour. i played a few satellites for ftops events w/ no success. i think i played 5 45 person sngs and didn't crack the top 15 in any. the limit holdem was going very well until an opponent hit runner runner on me for a massive pot. i think i went out 35th in that. i also played the 8:15pm $26 razz tourny and while razz is one of my favorite games in the horse rotation it got pretty old pretty quick. i managed to give it my all but my premium starting hands were getting destroyed on 4th and 5th street.
so all in all it was a bitter sweet night. the sweetness is how proud i am of my play in the 7pm. i think it's my best played tournament ever which kind of makes it bitter than i didn't hit the big score (8.3k for first). i guess the 60k push utg 6 handed is somewhat debatable. i have 11.5 bb's and i have shoving a lot so i'm bound to get called. the other factor is that the bb had like 260k so he probably has a wider calling range than most at that point in the tournament. not sure.
oh well, i guess all i can do is take another stab tonite. i'll probably only play the few earlier evening tournaments tonite but tomorrow will be an absolute marathon as i have the whole day and night cleared for whatever i want to play.
special thanks goes out to Rex55 who gave me some top notch rail support when i needed it the most!
tg
Monday, July 23, 2007
changing gears
i played a little last night for the first time in a while. i've been too busy to get a session in but managed to sneek in a couple tournies.
i started with the 7pm $75.
as the title of the blog mentions, i've decided that i haven't been changing gears enough (or at all) and it has really been costing me. actually, when thinking back on my play for the past month or two i've basically been playing tight aggressive early and then falling into a weak tight style during the mid to late stages. this is not a winning style and i've been hungry to set out and change my game for the better.
so in the 7pm i came out and wanted to convey a somewhat loose image so that i would hopefully get paid off if i picked up a hand. early on i made a few late position raises and either picked up the blinds or won the pot w/ a cont-bet on the flop.
here's an interesting hand where i went w/ my read and it was right.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1290175
for some reason, when he donked the turn i just put him on a flush draw. i just didn't see what else he would be doing it with. i think the majority of the made hands that are beating me would probably c/r the flop so when he led the turn i decided to just call. i only called because although i was pretty confident in my read i wanted him to bluff me on the river as well and i don't think im getting him off his flush draw by raising. also by just calling i keep the pot relatively small so i can't get blown out by a pot sized river bet. the big river bet actually made me even more confident in my original read. i just had to hope he wasn't semi-bluffing KQ of hearts and rivered me. i made the call and berated me for the next 10 min. explaining to the table how horrible of a call it was. i liked it.
after that hand i was feeling great about the tournament, i had a great image to get paid off on now. (and added to it showing down 54s from middle position to take down another pot)
the good vibe wouldn't last, a laggy player raised from mp and a short stack shoved over the top for 800, i re-shipped w/ AKo and got heads-up w/ the shorty. he had KQo and i was in great shape until he turned a Q.
it was a bit disheartening but i kept up my play and managed to chip back up to 4k. i was splashing around quite a bit crafting my image until i got moved just after the 1st break. my new table was crazy aggressive and almost every pot was opened by the time the action got to me so i was forced to play tight. 20 min. in i decided to use my tight image to fire a rare 3 barrel bluff which didn't work out.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1290179 - obv it didn't work out but i was actually quite happy w/ the play. usually when i make a play like this im so pissed off with myself but here i actually thought there was a good chance he would lay his weak looking hand down on all streets.
i survived as a short stack for quite a while moving my 12bb's around and picking up uncontested pots.
since the 3 barrel bluff hand, the villain had continued to limp the sb into my bb. every time i checked and i was pretty sure that he was looking to trap me into shipping some garbage all-in. so when this hand came up i was praying he was trapping, he was but it wasn't my night.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1290184
during this i was also playing a couple other tournies.
the 7:15pm limit holdem ended badly. http://www.pokerhand.org/?1290186
i also played a super satellite to the ftops omaha hi/lo event. i came in 3rd out of 24 players so im in another satellite the day of the event that pays 30 seats. it was good practice and although i got max value out of an early hand and played well at the end i think my play overall was fairly poor. i'll look to improve before the actual event.
the ftops is coming up again as it seems full tilt is gonna run one every 2 months. it kinda sucks because i don't have the br to buy directly in and im also going to be away for the final weekend of it so i for sure won't have a shot at playing the main event.
in the past i've really blown a lot of bankroll trying to satellite into these big buy-in events. at one point i blew over $600 trying to satellite into a $500 sunday event. the only time i ever seem to show a bit of degeneracy is when trying to satellite into big events. im not going to let it happen again. (basically cuz i can't afford it)
so my plan as of now is to try and satellite my way into the following events:
event 1 - $200 nlh
event 2 - $200 horse
event 6 - $300 nlh
event 8 - $200 o8
i might also take a shot at event 3 - $200 plh but since i've never really played pot limit im not sure.
all other events i either have no interest in the game, the buy-in is too steep or im just not able to play on that day.
i played a horse sng w/ the winner getting an entry but busted 7th out of 8th.
i also picked up the full tilt tourament strategy book and it's actually pretty good. i wasn't originally gonna get it since i figured it would have a lot of abc kind of stuff (which it does) but it also has some great stuff in there as well. im only partially through it but it's worth the money already.
not sure when i'll play again this week but hopefully soon.
tg
i started with the 7pm $75.
as the title of the blog mentions, i've decided that i haven't been changing gears enough (or at all) and it has really been costing me. actually, when thinking back on my play for the past month or two i've basically been playing tight aggressive early and then falling into a weak tight style during the mid to late stages. this is not a winning style and i've been hungry to set out and change my game for the better.
so in the 7pm i came out and wanted to convey a somewhat loose image so that i would hopefully get paid off if i picked up a hand. early on i made a few late position raises and either picked up the blinds or won the pot w/ a cont-bet on the flop.
here's an interesting hand where i went w/ my read and it was right.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1290175
for some reason, when he donked the turn i just put him on a flush draw. i just didn't see what else he would be doing it with. i think the majority of the made hands that are beating me would probably c/r the flop so when he led the turn i decided to just call. i only called because although i was pretty confident in my read i wanted him to bluff me on the river as well and i don't think im getting him off his flush draw by raising. also by just calling i keep the pot relatively small so i can't get blown out by a pot sized river bet. the big river bet actually made me even more confident in my original read. i just had to hope he wasn't semi-bluffing KQ of hearts and rivered me. i made the call and berated me for the next 10 min. explaining to the table how horrible of a call it was. i liked it.
after that hand i was feeling great about the tournament, i had a great image to get paid off on now. (and added to it showing down 54s from middle position to take down another pot)
the good vibe wouldn't last, a laggy player raised from mp and a short stack shoved over the top for 800, i re-shipped w/ AKo and got heads-up w/ the shorty. he had KQo and i was in great shape until he turned a Q.
it was a bit disheartening but i kept up my play and managed to chip back up to 4k. i was splashing around quite a bit crafting my image until i got moved just after the 1st break. my new table was crazy aggressive and almost every pot was opened by the time the action got to me so i was forced to play tight. 20 min. in i decided to use my tight image to fire a rare 3 barrel bluff which didn't work out.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1290179 - obv it didn't work out but i was actually quite happy w/ the play. usually when i make a play like this im so pissed off with myself but here i actually thought there was a good chance he would lay his weak looking hand down on all streets.
i survived as a short stack for quite a while moving my 12bb's around and picking up uncontested pots.
since the 3 barrel bluff hand, the villain had continued to limp the sb into my bb. every time i checked and i was pretty sure that he was looking to trap me into shipping some garbage all-in. so when this hand came up i was praying he was trapping, he was but it wasn't my night.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1290184
during this i was also playing a couple other tournies.
the 7:15pm limit holdem ended badly. http://www.pokerhand.org/?1290186
i also played a super satellite to the ftops omaha hi/lo event. i came in 3rd out of 24 players so im in another satellite the day of the event that pays 30 seats. it was good practice and although i got max value out of an early hand and played well at the end i think my play overall was fairly poor. i'll look to improve before the actual event.
the ftops is coming up again as it seems full tilt is gonna run one every 2 months. it kinda sucks because i don't have the br to buy directly in and im also going to be away for the final weekend of it so i for sure won't have a shot at playing the main event.
in the past i've really blown a lot of bankroll trying to satellite into these big buy-in events. at one point i blew over $600 trying to satellite into a $500 sunday event. the only time i ever seem to show a bit of degeneracy is when trying to satellite into big events. im not going to let it happen again. (basically cuz i can't afford it)
so my plan as of now is to try and satellite my way into the following events:
event 1 - $200 nlh
event 2 - $200 horse
event 6 - $300 nlh
event 8 - $200 o8
i might also take a shot at event 3 - $200 plh but since i've never really played pot limit im not sure.
all other events i either have no interest in the game, the buy-in is too steep or im just not able to play on that day.
i played a horse sng w/ the winner getting an entry but busted 7th out of 8th.
i also picked up the full tilt tourament strategy book and it's actually pretty good. i wasn't originally gonna get it since i figured it would have a lot of abc kind of stuff (which it does) but it also has some great stuff in there as well. im only partially through it but it's worth the money already.
not sure when i'll play again this week but hopefully soon.
tg
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
hero calls
i played a little last night and for some reason i decided to be a hero and make some loose calls to show off how great my hand reading skills are.
the first time i called a c/r all-in w/ 99 on Jd6d5x board. action went ep raise, i flat call in the CO and villain calls out of the bb. checked to me on the flop, i stabbed at it and bb re-raised all-in. i bet 380 into a 760 chip pot and bb c/r shove was for 2.3k. i really ruled out a big hand since he's playing it so fast. i put him on a flush draw a large portion of the time and a weak Jack or straight draw to a lesser extent of the time.
i called and he showed me JJ for top set and was probably playing scared of the flush draw.
the second one was less dramatic. (and just plain bad) basically it was an over push from the blinds that most of the time is AK but also could be in the 99-JJ range. my 88 is in rough shape against that range but i managed to convince myself it was AK and called it off. he showed me QQ and it was another gg.
so not a great night play wise but those days will happen.
i've been cashing a lot in the $22 turbo sngs but it seems im always busting 3rd. i bucked the trend by taking down 1st in my last two of the night which felt good.
the limit holdem tourny stunk, i ran KK into AA again (thinking about changing the title of this blog to "Kings into Aces") which cost me even more than usual since we had a donk in between us trying to cap every round (including the turn) w/ a naked flush draw. that took a good chunk of my stack and then i played an AJ hand very well (imo) but got rivered by a guy calling multiple bets on the turn w/ a gut shot.
other than that i played 4 45 player sngs and took 5th in one and got knocked out at the midway point in the others.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
the world series finish off last nite/early this morning. another year in the books and another year that i have failed to play an event. this year was looking promising since i had a 13k bankroll put together but for a plethora of reasons i didn't make it.
im hoping that by next year i will have a roll big enough that i'll be able to play some of the smaller events and maybe try to satellite into the main event. it's weird but i don't really have that much desire to play the main event. i'd much rather play a bunch of the smaller events.
another goal that kind up just snuck up on me is the WPT North American Poker Championships. last year was the 1st year this tournament took place in Niagara Falls (Canada) at Fallsview casino. im only about a 25 min drive from Fallsview and it would be so sick if i could somehow satty into it. Last year they also had the Canadian Poker Championships held there a week prior to the WPT and had a much smaller buy-in of 2.6k.
i haven't heard anything about the Canadian Championships yet but the 10k is a go. they don't run any prelim events for this leg of the wpt since fallsview's poker room is only about 10 tables. from what i understand they totally revamp the casino floor just for this one week tournament.
i downloaded the satellite schedule and they have a lot of different options to getting in. it's pretty much like the party step sngs. i'm going to make an effort to get down there and play a few since last year i heard they were super soft and if that fails i might take a few stabs on ftp with the winners choice tournaments.
i also realized today that im only 2 months away from a planned vegas trip. i've never been to vegas (or on a plane for that matter) and i haven't booked anything of yet but me and a few friends are looking at going down in late september. this means i need to build up a bigger roll in a hurry! my original plans were to bring about 3k for playing purposes only and right now that would be case money which is not an option.
hopefully in the next 2 months i can keep improving, get a little lucky and take down some nice scores.
tg
the first time i called a c/r all-in w/ 99 on Jd6d5x board. action went ep raise, i flat call in the CO and villain calls out of the bb. checked to me on the flop, i stabbed at it and bb re-raised all-in. i bet 380 into a 760 chip pot and bb c/r shove was for 2.3k. i really ruled out a big hand since he's playing it so fast. i put him on a flush draw a large portion of the time and a weak Jack or straight draw to a lesser extent of the time.
i called and he showed me JJ for top set and was probably playing scared of the flush draw.
the second one was less dramatic. (and just plain bad) basically it was an over push from the blinds that most of the time is AK but also could be in the 99-JJ range. my 88 is in rough shape against that range but i managed to convince myself it was AK and called it off. he showed me QQ and it was another gg.
so not a great night play wise but those days will happen.
i've been cashing a lot in the $22 turbo sngs but it seems im always busting 3rd. i bucked the trend by taking down 1st in my last two of the night which felt good.
the limit holdem tourny stunk, i ran KK into AA again (thinking about changing the title of this blog to "Kings into Aces") which cost me even more than usual since we had a donk in between us trying to cap every round (including the turn) w/ a naked flush draw. that took a good chunk of my stack and then i played an AJ hand very well (imo) but got rivered by a guy calling multiple bets on the turn w/ a gut shot.
other than that i played 4 45 player sngs and took 5th in one and got knocked out at the midway point in the others.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
the world series finish off last nite/early this morning. another year in the books and another year that i have failed to play an event. this year was looking promising since i had a 13k bankroll put together but for a plethora of reasons i didn't make it.
im hoping that by next year i will have a roll big enough that i'll be able to play some of the smaller events and maybe try to satellite into the main event. it's weird but i don't really have that much desire to play the main event. i'd much rather play a bunch of the smaller events.
another goal that kind up just snuck up on me is the WPT North American Poker Championships. last year was the 1st year this tournament took place in Niagara Falls (Canada) at Fallsview casino. im only about a 25 min drive from Fallsview and it would be so sick if i could somehow satty into it. Last year they also had the Canadian Poker Championships held there a week prior to the WPT and had a much smaller buy-in of 2.6k.
i haven't heard anything about the Canadian Championships yet but the 10k is a go. they don't run any prelim events for this leg of the wpt since fallsview's poker room is only about 10 tables. from what i understand they totally revamp the casino floor just for this one week tournament.
i downloaded the satellite schedule and they have a lot of different options to getting in. it's pretty much like the party step sngs. i'm going to make an effort to get down there and play a few since last year i heard they were super soft and if that fails i might take a few stabs on ftp with the winners choice tournaments.
i also realized today that im only 2 months away from a planned vegas trip. i've never been to vegas (or on a plane for that matter) and i haven't booked anything of yet but me and a few friends are looking at going down in late september. this means i need to build up a bigger roll in a hurry! my original plans were to bring about 3k for playing purposes only and right now that would be case money which is not an option.
hopefully in the next 2 months i can keep improving, get a little lucky and take down some nice scores.
tg
Sunday, July 15, 2007
bah to poker
just chilled out tonite and played a couple mtts on my laptop in front of the tv.
6pm, $26 had 888 runners.
i chipped up early to about 1900 and the lost this pot.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1267529
late in the first hour i got my double up.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1267540 - villain makes an absolute horrible call to my benefit.
in the 2nd hour i get another double thanks to more poor play.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1267545
after this hand i tightened up because i was pretty sure i had tilted the villain from the last hand. sure enough, i decide i've layed low long enough and start to open up and every time he 3-bet me.
the third time he showed me AK so i felt good about staying patient.
i got fairly short and decided to look for a re-steal opportunity since the late position players in my bb were stealing pretty weak. i made the re-shove here and he makes a nice call but i run goot.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1267556
sitting on a good stack and at a very aggressive table i decided to play my Kings a little differently. note the villain is the same from hand 2.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1267568
hard to believe but i looked this guy up on opr and he actually has some good scores.
anyways that knocked me out 95th, 14 short of the money.
the 7pm was very uneventful. i basically bled down to 2k and in the 2nd hour got it all-in short w/ A9 vs T9 and lost that one too.
the 7:15 limit went really well in the first hour and i had doubled my initial stack to 3k by the first break. everything that went right in the first hour went bad in the second and eventually busted 35th out of the 148 runners.
some side notes:
a) i hate rebuys on full tilt. i think i will stop playing for the time being. i really just don't feel they are that profitable for me right now. the lower limit ones seem to play so tight early. i usually find there are only one or two other players that double rebuy to start and it seems that i have to dump a couple rebuys just to try to loosen the table up. basically i have to play like a maniac and be willing to go off for a big number just to play it optimally which is not my forte.
b) i suck in the deep stack tournaments. its kind of funny but almost every one i play lately i end up down to 2k within the first 20 mins and have a constant up hill struggle to get back to having an average stack. im sure its just short term variance but it's frustrating at the same time.
6pm, $26 had 888 runners.
i chipped up early to about 1900 and the lost this pot.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1267529
late in the first hour i got my double up.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1267540 - villain makes an absolute horrible call to my benefit.
in the 2nd hour i get another double thanks to more poor play.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1267545
after this hand i tightened up because i was pretty sure i had tilted the villain from the last hand. sure enough, i decide i've layed low long enough and start to open up and every time he 3-bet me.
the third time he showed me AK so i felt good about staying patient.
i got fairly short and decided to look for a re-steal opportunity since the late position players in my bb were stealing pretty weak. i made the re-shove here and he makes a nice call but i run goot.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1267556
sitting on a good stack and at a very aggressive table i decided to play my Kings a little differently. note the villain is the same from hand 2.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1267568
hard to believe but i looked this guy up on opr and he actually has some good scores.
anyways that knocked me out 95th, 14 short of the money.
the 7pm was very uneventful. i basically bled down to 2k and in the 2nd hour got it all-in short w/ A9 vs T9 and lost that one too.
the 7:15 limit went really well in the first hour and i had doubled my initial stack to 3k by the first break. everything that went right in the first hour went bad in the second and eventually busted 35th out of the 148 runners.
some side notes:
a) i hate rebuys on full tilt. i think i will stop playing for the time being. i really just don't feel they are that profitable for me right now. the lower limit ones seem to play so tight early. i usually find there are only one or two other players that double rebuy to start and it seems that i have to dump a couple rebuys just to try to loosen the table up. basically i have to play like a maniac and be willing to go off for a big number just to play it optimally which is not my forte.
b) i suck in the deep stack tournaments. its kind of funny but almost every one i play lately i end up down to 2k within the first 20 mins and have a constant up hill struggle to get back to having an average stack. im sure its just short term variance but it's frustrating at the same time.
two final tables yesterday
and neither of them were in holdem!
i played a ton yesterday and ended up playing a total of 14 mtt's. it's pretty crazy since i think the most mtt's i've ever played in a day is probably 6. i usually find myself really burnt out after 5 or 6 tournaments if they haven't went well but for some reason every time full tilt advertised the next tournament in the chat i found myself registering.
anyways, here is how the day layed out.
started w/ the noon $26 nlh and busted about 15 hands in when i got AQ all-in pre vs Q9. i usually would never get it AI that early pre w/ AQ but this dude was a complete idiot and when he squeezed my raise it was a pretty easy shove.
i ended up grinding out a bunch of $22 turbo sngs and a 45 player sng until the next mtt i was interested in. ran well in the sngs and took 6th in the 45.
my next multi was the $10 rebuy pot limit omaha @ 1:30. i played it fairly tight and at the end of the rebuy period i was in for the minimum and had an ok stack. i eventually busted 54/125 fairly uneventfully.
next was the 2pm $26 deep stack. once again i busted very early, here's the hand. (no hh since ftp tournament hh's are horrible)
villain is sitting on about 2.5k and ep has about 850. i cover villain by 15 chips, blinds are 20/40
ep limps, i raise pot and it folds to villain in the sb who calls. from what i've seen of villain early he calls tons of raises and plays any broadway cards. when i raised pot i was 90% sure he was calling.
folds to ep limper who shoves for his 810. i decide to flat call for 2 reasons:
1) villain obv hates folding so he might decide to reship me here since i haven't shown that much
strength
2) even if he flat calls he's getting it all on the flop w/ any peice which is fine by me.
i call and villain calls.
the flop comes down KT7 and he open shoves his remaing 1600 or so into the 2500 chip pot. i insta call and he shows QJo for a straight draw.
he gets there on the river and im left w/ 15 chips. i like my play here, just a bit unfortunate to not hold up.
after that i played a couple more sngs and decided to play a $26 satellite into the $109, 60k guarantee @ 6pm. once again i ran fairly well in the sngs and after about 2hrs won my seat to the 60k.
i took a break/nap and got ready to come back for the 6pm.
the 60k has a great structure and despite having no real chips i managed to last into 3rd hour before busting 233/671.
next i was onto the 7pm $75. once again i had really no chips the entire tournament and when i finally picked up a premium i ran my AK into AA to bust 95/404.
the 7:15 $26 limit holdem was the typical roller coaster when i busted on a bit of a cooler.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1265623
the 8pm $26 didn't go well. i busted 889/1069 after making a bit of a silly play.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1265629
a bit embarassing looking at in hindsight but at the time he just looked so weak and i really thought he was full of complete shit. he was weak but i was weaker. bad hand.
next was the 8:30pm $3.30 nlh rebuy. i went off a bit in this tournament and the first hour was brutal. i ended up w/ the minimum 5k stack at the end of the first hour and was in for 10 rebuys and the add-on. early into the 2nd hour i went bust with this hand which is pretty bad. getting it in drawing dead, never good.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1266217
i was planning on the rebuy to be the last tournament of the night but i figured if i was still in the rebuy (which i was at the time) i might as well keep going.
i entered the $26 deep stack plo at 9:15. the tourament drew 171 players and i started off pretty slowly. i slowly bled chips until about 1/2 through the second hour when i took down a couple big pots and slowly started building up chips. before i knew it had about 30k w/ 30 players left w/ avg being around 15k. i hit a nice run of cards and stole some nice pots pre to keep building down to the money bubble of 18. from there i bounced between 30k and 40k until we reached the final table. we lost 3 players pretty quickly and i was sitting around middle of the pack w/ 60k. down to 5 and i was now low stack w/ 50k and the chip leader potted it for about the 4th time in a row. it folded to me in the sb and i decided to take a stand and reship w/ QQ9T single suited, bb folded and chip leader made an easy call w/ AAxx. i failed to improve and was out in 5th for $307.
during this i was also going semi deep in the nightly fifty fifty. ($55 buy-in, 50k guaranteed) early on i was making hands and ran up my stack to a peak of about 9k. things went really dry from there and on the money bubble (top 135 pay) i was sitting w/ about 6.9k at 300/600/75. about an orbit after the bubble burst i met my demise. after picking up the blinds i had 8.1k at 400/800/75 and in the sb i picked up KK.
the action went short stack shove in mp, mp donk cold calls, button thinks for a minute and then raises to 7k, i shove my 8.1k in and mp donk calls off the rest of his stack.
short stack showed rags, mp donk shows Td9d and button has AA obv. i come 3rd in the pot when T9s flushes on the river and im busted in 126th for a minimal cash.
the 10pm $26 was all over the place in the first hour. i had some really big hands but never really got paid off past the flop. i ended the first hour w/ about 2.5k but slowly dwindled down before making re-steal w/ 87o and about 13bb's from the bb and getting called by KJo. i ended up busting 419/1191 in this.
finally, my last tournament of the night was the 10:15pm $26 horse. the tournament had 204 runners and paid about 1.5k for first.
i lost a good chunk of my chips very early when in holdem i flopped an open ended straight flush draw against a set. as funny as it sounds, i didn't play another holdem hand till the final table. i was just completely card dead throughout the holdem portion which sucks since its my best game in the rotation.
i hovered around 700 chips for the first hour. i was picking up concealed kings during razz and A23 during stud hi. everything was backwards until i picked up a huge pot in stud hi w/ trip Kings. that put me at 3k going into the first break. in the second hour i hovered around my 3k stack for awhile before winning a couple decent sized pots and chipping myself up to 7k. before i knew it we were down to 30 people w/ the top 24 paying. the thought of cashing in a mixed game event pumped me up pretty good and i buckled down and tried to concentrate on each hand. i picked up lots of well timed pots and then got super lucky to have a very good mtt player dump me two straight pots in stud hi. i saw the blue lights once again and was sitting as chip leader w/ 6 left.
down to 4 and i was 2nd in chips. the chip leader had about 105k, i had about 89k and the other two players were in the 40-50k range.
then everything went down the tubes. i dropped a few small pots in razz but the blinds were so high that it put me down to about 60k. all of sudden we were all fairly close. then a big hand happened in stud hi where i made a very bad fold.
the bring in had a 4 up and i raised w/ TT in the hole w/ an Ace up. the bring-in called. we both caught rags on 4th and i bet and he called again. on 5th i caught another rag and he caught an Ace and led out into me. it looked so weak to me and although i have almost no stud experience i thought for sure he was trying to take the pot away from me.
at this point the pot was a decent size and i was sitting w/ 42k behind. instead of raising i just called for some reason. it was a classic donk move, too scared to raise and not willing to fold. on 6th street i caught an Ace and he caught a rag and for some reason that i still haven't figured out i simply check/folded.
he dragged a big pot and showed me a lowly pair of 5's. i was so fucking steamed at myself. i totally read the situation right and just didn't have the confidence in myself to go with it. that's very dissapointing and i won't let it happen again.
i was left w/ 30k after that and w/ a 1k ante i was running out of time. for the next 12 hands im guessing i was the bring-in about 8 times which just totally destroyed my stack. eventually i was all-in pre 34J against KKJ. i managed to make 2 pair on 6th but he hit a flush on the 7th to send me packing in 4th.
4th paid about $375 but i wanted that win so bad. not even for the cash as much as the win.
that was it for the day. all in all a pretty good day but it could've been a lot better.
i'll write more later but this blog has gotten way to big.
tg
i played a ton yesterday and ended up playing a total of 14 mtt's. it's pretty crazy since i think the most mtt's i've ever played in a day is probably 6. i usually find myself really burnt out after 5 or 6 tournaments if they haven't went well but for some reason every time full tilt advertised the next tournament in the chat i found myself registering.
anyways, here is how the day layed out.
started w/ the noon $26 nlh and busted about 15 hands in when i got AQ all-in pre vs Q9. i usually would never get it AI that early pre w/ AQ but this dude was a complete idiot and when he squeezed my raise it was a pretty easy shove.
i ended up grinding out a bunch of $22 turbo sngs and a 45 player sng until the next mtt i was interested in. ran well in the sngs and took 6th in the 45.
my next multi was the $10 rebuy pot limit omaha @ 1:30. i played it fairly tight and at the end of the rebuy period i was in for the minimum and had an ok stack. i eventually busted 54/125 fairly uneventfully.
next was the 2pm $26 deep stack. once again i busted very early, here's the hand. (no hh since ftp tournament hh's are horrible)
villain is sitting on about 2.5k and ep has about 850. i cover villain by 15 chips, blinds are 20/40
ep limps, i raise pot and it folds to villain in the sb who calls. from what i've seen of villain early he calls tons of raises and plays any broadway cards. when i raised pot i was 90% sure he was calling.
folds to ep limper who shoves for his 810. i decide to flat call for 2 reasons:
1) villain obv hates folding so he might decide to reship me here since i haven't shown that much
strength
2) even if he flat calls he's getting it all on the flop w/ any peice which is fine by me.
i call and villain calls.
the flop comes down KT7 and he open shoves his remaing 1600 or so into the 2500 chip pot. i insta call and he shows QJo for a straight draw.
he gets there on the river and im left w/ 15 chips. i like my play here, just a bit unfortunate to not hold up.
after that i played a couple more sngs and decided to play a $26 satellite into the $109, 60k guarantee @ 6pm. once again i ran fairly well in the sngs and after about 2hrs won my seat to the 60k.
i took a break/nap and got ready to come back for the 6pm.
the 60k has a great structure and despite having no real chips i managed to last into 3rd hour before busting 233/671.
next i was onto the 7pm $75. once again i had really no chips the entire tournament and when i finally picked up a premium i ran my AK into AA to bust 95/404.
the 7:15 $26 limit holdem was the typical roller coaster when i busted on a bit of a cooler.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1265623
the 8pm $26 didn't go well. i busted 889/1069 after making a bit of a silly play.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1265629
a bit embarassing looking at in hindsight but at the time he just looked so weak and i really thought he was full of complete shit. he was weak but i was weaker. bad hand.
next was the 8:30pm $3.30 nlh rebuy. i went off a bit in this tournament and the first hour was brutal. i ended up w/ the minimum 5k stack at the end of the first hour and was in for 10 rebuys and the add-on. early into the 2nd hour i went bust with this hand which is pretty bad. getting it in drawing dead, never good.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1266217
i was planning on the rebuy to be the last tournament of the night but i figured if i was still in the rebuy (which i was at the time) i might as well keep going.
i entered the $26 deep stack plo at 9:15. the tourament drew 171 players and i started off pretty slowly. i slowly bled chips until about 1/2 through the second hour when i took down a couple big pots and slowly started building up chips. before i knew it had about 30k w/ 30 players left w/ avg being around 15k. i hit a nice run of cards and stole some nice pots pre to keep building down to the money bubble of 18. from there i bounced between 30k and 40k until we reached the final table. we lost 3 players pretty quickly and i was sitting around middle of the pack w/ 60k. down to 5 and i was now low stack w/ 50k and the chip leader potted it for about the 4th time in a row. it folded to me in the sb and i decided to take a stand and reship w/ QQ9T single suited, bb folded and chip leader made an easy call w/ AAxx. i failed to improve and was out in 5th for $307.
during this i was also going semi deep in the nightly fifty fifty. ($55 buy-in, 50k guaranteed) early on i was making hands and ran up my stack to a peak of about 9k. things went really dry from there and on the money bubble (top 135 pay) i was sitting w/ about 6.9k at 300/600/75. about an orbit after the bubble burst i met my demise. after picking up the blinds i had 8.1k at 400/800/75 and in the sb i picked up KK.
the action went short stack shove in mp, mp donk cold calls, button thinks for a minute and then raises to 7k, i shove my 8.1k in and mp donk calls off the rest of his stack.
short stack showed rags, mp donk shows Td9d and button has AA obv. i come 3rd in the pot when T9s flushes on the river and im busted in 126th for a minimal cash.
the 10pm $26 was all over the place in the first hour. i had some really big hands but never really got paid off past the flop. i ended the first hour w/ about 2.5k but slowly dwindled down before making re-steal w/ 87o and about 13bb's from the bb and getting called by KJo. i ended up busting 419/1191 in this.
finally, my last tournament of the night was the 10:15pm $26 horse. the tournament had 204 runners and paid about 1.5k for first.
i lost a good chunk of my chips very early when in holdem i flopped an open ended straight flush draw against a set. as funny as it sounds, i didn't play another holdem hand till the final table. i was just completely card dead throughout the holdem portion which sucks since its my best game in the rotation.
i hovered around 700 chips for the first hour. i was picking up concealed kings during razz and A23 during stud hi. everything was backwards until i picked up a huge pot in stud hi w/ trip Kings. that put me at 3k going into the first break. in the second hour i hovered around my 3k stack for awhile before winning a couple decent sized pots and chipping myself up to 7k. before i knew it we were down to 30 people w/ the top 24 paying. the thought of cashing in a mixed game event pumped me up pretty good and i buckled down and tried to concentrate on each hand. i picked up lots of well timed pots and then got super lucky to have a very good mtt player dump me two straight pots in stud hi. i saw the blue lights once again and was sitting as chip leader w/ 6 left.
down to 4 and i was 2nd in chips. the chip leader had about 105k, i had about 89k and the other two players were in the 40-50k range.
then everything went down the tubes. i dropped a few small pots in razz but the blinds were so high that it put me down to about 60k. all of sudden we were all fairly close. then a big hand happened in stud hi where i made a very bad fold.
the bring in had a 4 up and i raised w/ TT in the hole w/ an Ace up. the bring-in called. we both caught rags on 4th and i bet and he called again. on 5th i caught another rag and he caught an Ace and led out into me. it looked so weak to me and although i have almost no stud experience i thought for sure he was trying to take the pot away from me.
at this point the pot was a decent size and i was sitting w/ 42k behind. instead of raising i just called for some reason. it was a classic donk move, too scared to raise and not willing to fold. on 6th street i caught an Ace and he caught a rag and for some reason that i still haven't figured out i simply check/folded.
he dragged a big pot and showed me a lowly pair of 5's. i was so fucking steamed at myself. i totally read the situation right and just didn't have the confidence in myself to go with it. that's very dissapointing and i won't let it happen again.
i was left w/ 30k after that and w/ a 1k ante i was running out of time. for the next 12 hands im guessing i was the bring-in about 8 times which just totally destroyed my stack. eventually i was all-in pre 34J against KKJ. i managed to make 2 pair on 6th but he hit a flush on the 7th to send me packing in 4th.
4th paid about $375 but i wanted that win so bad. not even for the cash as much as the win.
that was it for the day. all in all a pretty good day but it could've been a lot better.
i'll write more later but this blog has gotten way to big.
tg
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
ended up bubbling the final table of the limit tourny from my last post. not a big deal since i put a huge suckout on some guy w/ AA when i had A8soooooooooooted so i should've have been busted 15th anyways.
i played a little two nights ago. started w/ the 6pm $24 and busted near the end of the first hour w/ AKs vs 99. i cashed in some ftp iron man medals for a $75 tournament token so i also played the 7pm deep stack.
it went well, i played very tight and paid close attention to position. i bounced between 3k and 4k during the first hour. the 2nd hour i managed to double up and was chipping along well into the 3rd hour when i almost tripled up in one hand. this put me about top 5 in chips w/ 60 or so remaining. when the bubble burst at 45 i had just over 50k which was above average. the thing w/ these ftp tournies is the antes are so big that its hard to play tight late and you're forced to steal or pick up hands in order to survive. unfortunately i was unable to do either, i had a steal attempt re-popped and pretty much caught garbage cards. it was a tough spot because i had the the_dean221 (recent p5's triple crown winner) a few to my left and he was re-stealing a very high percentage of the time so in turn the guy on his right had no chance to steal so he started re-stealing. basically i had to fold and prey to pick up a hand while i watched my once 50k stack bleed out to a 24k stack. so @ 1.5k/3k w/ante i pushed my 8bb's all-in utg w/ 22. not a very desirable situation but by this time the massive chip leader (and eventual winner gimmeda1time) had been moved 2 to my left and there was no way i was running a hand past him. so i gambled it up and was called by AJo and lost my flip to go out 24th.
the $24 limit tournament was painful and i busted in that without doing much. i've said it before but the play in this tournament is the absolute worse i've ever seen. i actually think i may be playing to aggresive in this tournament and im probably better off waiting for good hands and pounding them for value. people in this tournament cold call 3-bets like its there job and i've seen so many atroucious beats that it makes my head spin.
the rest of the night i pretty much filled my screen w/ $11 turbo sngs and $20 45 and 90 player sngs. i made a little in the turbos but didn't get anything going in the 45's or 90.
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i played again last night w/ the usual line-up of tournaments.
something crazy happened in the $24 6pm. i had a 6.5k stack at the first break! i never usually accumulate that many chips in the first hour but i kinda got hit w/ the deck and my hands werer holding and my draws were hitting. into the 2nd hour i had built up to close to 13k when i got moved tables. my new table was the avg setup for a tournament at this stage except for one player that was sitting on about 11k two to my left. i immediately looked him up on opr to see whether or not he was gonna be tough. he had only cashed in 2% of his touraments the biggest being a score of $10.
my first priority was to see how he would play me and my stack. i needed to know whether he got the stack from playing like a maniac or if he was going to tighten up and fear the fact that i could bust him. about 5 hands in i raise AKs up from utg+1 and he cold calls in mp and the rest of the table folds. the flop came a pretty dry Q hi w/ no draws so continuation bet about 1/2 the pot and he thinks for a minute and shoves. i instantly folded and got the feeling that he was gonna be a pain in the ass.
over the course of the next couple orbits i raised a few pots in position and he always played with me. he would either donk the flop and id be forced to fold or the pot would end up multi-way and i'd give up after missing.
i was back down to about 9k when the following hand took place. im pretty sure i played this hand poorly.
another 9k stack opens @ 80/160 to 480 from the hijak. he had been fairly active and i think he's got a somewhat wide range here. the short stack sb shoves for about 1400 and i have 88 in the bb. i don't think flat calling is an option because the hijak would be getting over 3-1 on a call and then i would be out of position w/ a tough hand to play post flop. i guess i could fold but it just felt a little weak since im pretty sure 88 is ahead of both their ranges.
so my decision was to raise but this is where i made my mistake. i min-raised the sb shove which ended up being 2600 or so. my thinking at the time was that it would let the hijak know i have a hand and he'd dump a lot of the mediocre hands he'd open with. if he had a big hand im pretty sure he'd shove over the top and i'd be able to get away cheaply.
unfortunately he just called which i found very odd and i started worrying about him trying to conceal a monster hand. the flop came down T96 rainbow giving me a gutter ball in addition to my 8's. w/ the pot sitting at about 6500 and us both having 6400 behind i totally pussed out and checked. i just didn't see him having any hands that im beating. surprisingly he checked behind and i was now pretty sure he had AK so i was going to shove the turn until an Ace hit. i check folded pretty easily and he showed AQo and the sb showed two rags.
after that i still had an ok stack but for some reason being down to 6k after having 13k felt horrible. i chipped back up and to about 8.5k before losing a big race w/ AK vs 99 in which i failed to improve which put me back down to 5k. i was whittled down to 4k @ 200/400 w/ante when i made a bad shove w/ A4o from the CO into mr.2% who was now sitting on 42k and another big stack that had 40k. they both called and i deservedly finished 90th or something like that.
the limit tournament was another side show and i busted about middle of the pack. the 7pm was a bit of a rollercoaster and i was all over the place in the first hour finishing up w/ just under the starting stack. i then 4-bet all-in w/ ATo when the guy to my left re-popped my previous 2 raises. he had QQ and it was good game me.
on the bright side i did ok playing $11 and $22 turbo sngs and finally won a $20 45 person sng which is a nice little confidence builder.
won't play tonight but i think i'll play quite a bit over the weekend.
tg (sorry no proof reading)
i played a little two nights ago. started w/ the 6pm $24 and busted near the end of the first hour w/ AKs vs 99. i cashed in some ftp iron man medals for a $75 tournament token so i also played the 7pm deep stack.
it went well, i played very tight and paid close attention to position. i bounced between 3k and 4k during the first hour. the 2nd hour i managed to double up and was chipping along well into the 3rd hour when i almost tripled up in one hand. this put me about top 5 in chips w/ 60 or so remaining. when the bubble burst at 45 i had just over 50k which was above average. the thing w/ these ftp tournies is the antes are so big that its hard to play tight late and you're forced to steal or pick up hands in order to survive. unfortunately i was unable to do either, i had a steal attempt re-popped and pretty much caught garbage cards. it was a tough spot because i had the the_dean221 (recent p5's triple crown winner) a few to my left and he was re-stealing a very high percentage of the time so in turn the guy on his right had no chance to steal so he started re-stealing. basically i had to fold and prey to pick up a hand while i watched my once 50k stack bleed out to a 24k stack. so @ 1.5k/3k w/ante i pushed my 8bb's all-in utg w/ 22. not a very desirable situation but by this time the massive chip leader (and eventual winner gimmeda1time) had been moved 2 to my left and there was no way i was running a hand past him. so i gambled it up and was called by AJo and lost my flip to go out 24th.
the $24 limit tournament was painful and i busted in that without doing much. i've said it before but the play in this tournament is the absolute worse i've ever seen. i actually think i may be playing to aggresive in this tournament and im probably better off waiting for good hands and pounding them for value. people in this tournament cold call 3-bets like its there job and i've seen so many atroucious beats that it makes my head spin.
the rest of the night i pretty much filled my screen w/ $11 turbo sngs and $20 45 and 90 player sngs. i made a little in the turbos but didn't get anything going in the 45's or 90.
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i played again last night w/ the usual line-up of tournaments.
something crazy happened in the $24 6pm. i had a 6.5k stack at the first break! i never usually accumulate that many chips in the first hour but i kinda got hit w/ the deck and my hands werer holding and my draws were hitting. into the 2nd hour i had built up to close to 13k when i got moved tables. my new table was the avg setup for a tournament at this stage except for one player that was sitting on about 11k two to my left. i immediately looked him up on opr to see whether or not he was gonna be tough. he had only cashed in 2% of his touraments the biggest being a score of $10.
my first priority was to see how he would play me and my stack. i needed to know whether he got the stack from playing like a maniac or if he was going to tighten up and fear the fact that i could bust him. about 5 hands in i raise AKs up from utg+1 and he cold calls in mp and the rest of the table folds. the flop came a pretty dry Q hi w/ no draws so continuation bet about 1/2 the pot and he thinks for a minute and shoves. i instantly folded and got the feeling that he was gonna be a pain in the ass.
over the course of the next couple orbits i raised a few pots in position and he always played with me. he would either donk the flop and id be forced to fold or the pot would end up multi-way and i'd give up after missing.
i was back down to about 9k when the following hand took place. im pretty sure i played this hand poorly.
another 9k stack opens @ 80/160 to 480 from the hijak. he had been fairly active and i think he's got a somewhat wide range here. the short stack sb shoves for about 1400 and i have 88 in the bb. i don't think flat calling is an option because the hijak would be getting over 3-1 on a call and then i would be out of position w/ a tough hand to play post flop. i guess i could fold but it just felt a little weak since im pretty sure 88 is ahead of both their ranges.
so my decision was to raise but this is where i made my mistake. i min-raised the sb shove which ended up being 2600 or so. my thinking at the time was that it would let the hijak know i have a hand and he'd dump a lot of the mediocre hands he'd open with. if he had a big hand im pretty sure he'd shove over the top and i'd be able to get away cheaply.
unfortunately he just called which i found very odd and i started worrying about him trying to conceal a monster hand. the flop came down T96 rainbow giving me a gutter ball in addition to my 8's. w/ the pot sitting at about 6500 and us both having 6400 behind i totally pussed out and checked. i just didn't see him having any hands that im beating. surprisingly he checked behind and i was now pretty sure he had AK so i was going to shove the turn until an Ace hit. i check folded pretty easily and he showed AQo and the sb showed two rags.
after that i still had an ok stack but for some reason being down to 6k after having 13k felt horrible. i chipped back up and to about 8.5k before losing a big race w/ AK vs 99 in which i failed to improve which put me back down to 5k. i was whittled down to 4k @ 200/400 w/ante when i made a bad shove w/ A4o from the CO into mr.2% who was now sitting on 42k and another big stack that had 40k. they both called and i deservedly finished 90th or something like that.
the limit tournament was another side show and i busted about middle of the pack. the 7pm was a bit of a rollercoaster and i was all over the place in the first hour finishing up w/ just under the starting stack. i then 4-bet all-in w/ ATo when the guy to my left re-popped my previous 2 raises. he had QQ and it was good game me.
on the bright side i did ok playing $11 and $22 turbo sngs and finally won a $20 45 person sng which is a nice little confidence builder.
won't play tonight but i think i'll play quite a bit over the weekend.
tg (sorry no proof reading)
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