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
Friday, August 3, 2007
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.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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)
Friday, July 6, 2007
long time, no posts.
i really haven't felt like writing in here for the last week or so because i just don't think i have many constructive things to say.
i've been getting destroyed and i've given up on cash for right now. i know i don't play perfect and i feel that i have the ability to judge my play and be unbiased but right now i just cannot get anything going and it's extremely frustrating.
since my last blog i lost about 8 buy-ins at 100nl 6max and heads-up. i dropped down to 50nl for a couple days and the ridiculousness continued until i dropped about 6 buy-ins there.
i took a day off and decided that i needed to get back to mtt's and large field sngs to re-build my br. unfortunately i've been unable to get it going in this avenue as well and my bad run hasn't shown any signs of slowing down.
i had originally thought about posting a bunch of hands but its pointless. everyone runs bad and knows what it's like.
i must say this is the worst downswing and bad run i have ever been on. i lost over 2k in the month of June and thats quite a bit when considering i started it w/ a br of only about 4k.
i haven't played this week so far but i have made my return tonite. i spent the whole week watching mtt videos on cardrunners and pxf hoping to find some flaws in my thinking and i believe i did.
so far tonite has been a bit of a downer but im still left in two mtts.
i played the 6pm $24 on ftp and went deep before this hand.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1240411
i picked up KK the next hand and got no action and was out a couple orbits later.
the 7pm $69 went horribly as i ran KK into AA early. i held on to my 395 chips and doubled up w/ A8s vs some rag hand and the very next hand shoved AQo into KK.
i played a couple 45 person sngs and got a bit unlucky. i ran QQ into AA once and flopped a set against a straight the other time.
still left in the $5 rebuy nl 6max mtt and the $24 limit holdem. both have had some of the most atrocious play i've ever seen so you never know. i might get lucky!
tg
edit: squeeze gone wrong in the rebuy, just left in the limit.
i really haven't felt like writing in here for the last week or so because i just don't think i have many constructive things to say.
i've been getting destroyed and i've given up on cash for right now. i know i don't play perfect and i feel that i have the ability to judge my play and be unbiased but right now i just cannot get anything going and it's extremely frustrating.
since my last blog i lost about 8 buy-ins at 100nl 6max and heads-up. i dropped down to 50nl for a couple days and the ridiculousness continued until i dropped about 6 buy-ins there.
i took a day off and decided that i needed to get back to mtt's and large field sngs to re-build my br. unfortunately i've been unable to get it going in this avenue as well and my bad run hasn't shown any signs of slowing down.
i had originally thought about posting a bunch of hands but its pointless. everyone runs bad and knows what it's like.
i must say this is the worst downswing and bad run i have ever been on. i lost over 2k in the month of June and thats quite a bit when considering i started it w/ a br of only about 4k.
i haven't played this week so far but i have made my return tonite. i spent the whole week watching mtt videos on cardrunners and pxf hoping to find some flaws in my thinking and i believe i did.
so far tonite has been a bit of a downer but im still left in two mtts.
i played the 6pm $24 on ftp and went deep before this hand.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1240411
i picked up KK the next hand and got no action and was out a couple orbits later.
the 7pm $69 went horribly as i ran KK into AA early. i held on to my 395 chips and doubled up w/ A8s vs some rag hand and the very next hand shoved AQo into KK.
i played a couple 45 person sngs and got a bit unlucky. i ran QQ into AA once and flopped a set against a straight the other time.
still left in the $5 rebuy nl 6max mtt and the $24 limit holdem. both have had some of the most atrocious play i've ever seen so you never know. i might get lucky!
tg
edit: squeeze gone wrong in the rebuy, just left in the limit.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
more hands and a pokertracker review
so i managed to squeak in another session Monday nite.
i played 900+ hands and ended the session down $20 which is pretty much break even. most of the hands were at 100nl but i did get in some play at the 160 deep tables. the play was a little better but still pretty poor.
i actually thought i had made money on the session until i checked out pokertracker after the session. i forgot that i stacked off two hands that killed the profit. here are the hands from memory:
hand 1) a mediocre player min-raises from the CO, button who is a little laggish cold calls, sb folds and i call in the bb w/ KTo. (we all have full buy-ins)
(pot $6.50) flop comes K9x rainbow, i lead for $5, CO calls and button calls. (CO probably plays AK and 98 this exact same way)
(pot $21.50) turn is a Ten putting 2 spades on board, i lead for $18, CO folds, button raises to like $50ish, i think and shove and he calls.
he had QJo and hit his gutter ball on the turn. the river was a deuce and i missed my 4 outer. at the time i didn't think he would call a flop bet w/ a gut shot but i've been seeing people stick around w/ naked gutshots fairly often of late. i guess i'll have to start giving people more credit when gutshots hit in multi-way pots like this. i think his flop call is fine here since the CO could of min-raised a monster and im showing strength leading into 2 people on the flop. with full stacks in play i think he can expect to get paid off often enough to make it profitable.
my mistake was thinking he would not of stuck around w/ QJ. i figure he's 3-betting 99 and KK but could have KQ, T9 or a hand like JsTs. the only real hand i thought i had to be scared of at the time was a set of X's (i think X was a 5 or 6)
if i leave QJ out of his range im a 75% favourite against his range. if i include both QJo and QJs in his range im a 42% dog. it's a pretty big difference but even if i'm a 42% dog im getting the odds to play if for stacks but just because im getting the odds it doesn't mean i have to call. in retrospect i think it's probably a fold because i just don't see him showing up with worst hands as often as he'll have a set or a straight.
my thinking that he could be raising KQ is probably a little off as well and when i remove it from his range and keep QJ in there im a 30% dog which makes it a clear fold.
hand 2) folds to me in the CO and i open w/ AhJd (std pot size raise of $3.50), Button cold calls, both blinds fold. the button had a very high cold calling frequency so i think he's doing this with a lot of hands.
(pot $8.50) flop is JhTx8h, i lead for $7 and the button min-raises to $14. his range is so wide here and the flop is so draw heavy i 3-bet to like $50, he puts the rest in and i call.
he cold called w/ Qd9d and flopped the nuts. he fills up on the turn and i miss my runner runner.
i ran his range through pokerstove and it came out pretty much 50/50 so i don't think getting the money in is a mistake especially after he min-raises the flop. im pretty much forced to 3-bet as he could be min-raising a ton of hands i have crushed and there are a ton of potential scare cards that can come on the turn. once i 3-bet im pretty much committed. tough hand.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
last nite i didn't really have much time to play so i fired up a couple tables of 50 plo and did some pokertracker review for the month.
i did a filter on my biggest losing hands of the month and the top 3 in order are: ( i don't remember if they were suited or not)
1) A9
2) JT
3 KJ
going through those hands and other big pots i lost i realized that im doing way too much smooth calling on flops where i have a mediocre top pair. im going to start mixing in some raises to better define my hand and find out where i'm at. i reviewed a lot of hands where im smooth calling the flop in position and getting blown out on the turn. maybe if my hand reading was a bit better i would be better able to adjust but for now i think im better off raising in pots where my opponent could be betting a lot of different hands and taking it from there.
also, im losing most of my money on A9 and JT when im raising a limper up and getting called. i think the reason might be that some of the limpers im raising are limping w/ better hands than A9 and JT and therefore my raises aren't really for value. this is only over 20k hands but its something im going to pay closer attention too.
one good sign was that in a few hands that i reviewed where i paid off river bets i stopped the replayer and guessed the opponents hand. in 2 hands i pretty much pegged him in a narrow range and would of actually folded had i played the hand out again. (these are not hands that i remember actually playing)
so it was a good review and gave me some things to think about for my next session. i dropped about 1/2 a buy-in at 50 plo while playing but had a blast doing so. plo can be a pretty fun game but i think i will work harder on my nl game right now and when i get up to the mid stakes i'll start putting some time into devloping my plo game.
i won't play tonite but i think i'll be playing a bunch later in the week and over the weekend and am looking good at hitting gold status on the ironman challenge.
tg
i played 900+ hands and ended the session down $20 which is pretty much break even. most of the hands were at 100nl but i did get in some play at the 160 deep tables. the play was a little better but still pretty poor.
i actually thought i had made money on the session until i checked out pokertracker after the session. i forgot that i stacked off two hands that killed the profit. here are the hands from memory:
hand 1) a mediocre player min-raises from the CO, button who is a little laggish cold calls, sb folds and i call in the bb w/ KTo. (we all have full buy-ins)
(pot $6.50) flop comes K9x rainbow, i lead for $5, CO calls and button calls. (CO probably plays AK and 98 this exact same way)
(pot $21.50) turn is a Ten putting 2 spades on board, i lead for $18, CO folds, button raises to like $50ish, i think and shove and he calls.
he had QJo and hit his gutter ball on the turn. the river was a deuce and i missed my 4 outer. at the time i didn't think he would call a flop bet w/ a gut shot but i've been seeing people stick around w/ naked gutshots fairly often of late. i guess i'll have to start giving people more credit when gutshots hit in multi-way pots like this. i think his flop call is fine here since the CO could of min-raised a monster and im showing strength leading into 2 people on the flop. with full stacks in play i think he can expect to get paid off often enough to make it profitable.
my mistake was thinking he would not of stuck around w/ QJ. i figure he's 3-betting 99 and KK but could have KQ, T9 or a hand like JsTs. the only real hand i thought i had to be scared of at the time was a set of X's (i think X was a 5 or 6)
if i leave QJ out of his range im a 75% favourite against his range. if i include both QJo and QJs in his range im a 42% dog. it's a pretty big difference but even if i'm a 42% dog im getting the odds to play if for stacks but just because im getting the odds it doesn't mean i have to call. in retrospect i think it's probably a fold because i just don't see him showing up with worst hands as often as he'll have a set or a straight.
my thinking that he could be raising KQ is probably a little off as well and when i remove it from his range and keep QJ in there im a 30% dog which makes it a clear fold.
hand 2) folds to me in the CO and i open w/ AhJd (std pot size raise of $3.50), Button cold calls, both blinds fold. the button had a very high cold calling frequency so i think he's doing this with a lot of hands.
(pot $8.50) flop is JhTx8h, i lead for $7 and the button min-raises to $14. his range is so wide here and the flop is so draw heavy i 3-bet to like $50, he puts the rest in and i call.
he cold called w/ Qd9d and flopped the nuts. he fills up on the turn and i miss my runner runner.
i ran his range through pokerstove and it came out pretty much 50/50 so i don't think getting the money in is a mistake especially after he min-raises the flop. im pretty much forced to 3-bet as he could be min-raising a ton of hands i have crushed and there are a ton of potential scare cards that can come on the turn. once i 3-bet im pretty much committed. tough hand.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
last nite i didn't really have much time to play so i fired up a couple tables of 50 plo and did some pokertracker review for the month.
i did a filter on my biggest losing hands of the month and the top 3 in order are: ( i don't remember if they were suited or not)
1) A9
2) JT
3 KJ
going through those hands and other big pots i lost i realized that im doing way too much smooth calling on flops where i have a mediocre top pair. im going to start mixing in some raises to better define my hand and find out where i'm at. i reviewed a lot of hands where im smooth calling the flop in position and getting blown out on the turn. maybe if my hand reading was a bit better i would be better able to adjust but for now i think im better off raising in pots where my opponent could be betting a lot of different hands and taking it from there.
also, im losing most of my money on A9 and JT when im raising a limper up and getting called. i think the reason might be that some of the limpers im raising are limping w/ better hands than A9 and JT and therefore my raises aren't really for value. this is only over 20k hands but its something im going to pay closer attention too.
one good sign was that in a few hands that i reviewed where i paid off river bets i stopped the replayer and guessed the opponents hand. in 2 hands i pretty much pegged him in a narrow range and would of actually folded had i played the hand out again. (these are not hands that i remember actually playing)
so it was a good review and gave me some things to think about for my next session. i dropped about 1/2 a buy-in at 50 plo while playing but had a blast doing so. plo can be a pretty fun game but i think i will work harder on my nl game right now and when i get up to the mid stakes i'll start putting some time into devloping my plo game.
i won't play tonite but i think i'll be playing a bunch later in the week and over the weekend and am looking good at hitting gold status on the ironman challenge.
tg
Sunday, June 24, 2007
back at it
ended up not being able to sleep last nite so i put in about 1200 hands.
i made back about $150 and played pretty well.
i also got a chance to log a few hands tonite.
i played 800+ hands and ended the session up about $160. about 215 hands of that was @ .40/.80 deep stack ($160 buy-in - 200bb's)
there were 2 tables of this going and it was unbelievably soft. guys stacking off 300bb's w/ ATo. unfortunately i couldn't pick up a hand before the 2 donkeys busted so i pretty much broke even on those tables. my session would have been a little more profitable but on one of my 100nl tables i was getting absolutely pwned by this uber donk. he called every raise and outflopped me in every pot.
the $160 deep tables are just so unbelievably soft when i play that i think im going to start sitting on them just to try to get them going. it's just unbelievable.
anyways, i posted in the cr forums about how some of the more experienced nl 6 max players find the swings. it seems that a 4 buy-in swing is fairly normal for a session (something i started to wonder about) and some guys say they swing anywhere between 8 buy-ins.
i think this gives me a better perspective of the game and what to expect.
tg
i made back about $150 and played pretty well.
i also got a chance to log a few hands tonite.
i played 800+ hands and ended the session up about $160. about 215 hands of that was @ .40/.80 deep stack ($160 buy-in - 200bb's)
there were 2 tables of this going and it was unbelievably soft. guys stacking off 300bb's w/ ATo. unfortunately i couldn't pick up a hand before the 2 donkeys busted so i pretty much broke even on those tables. my session would have been a little more profitable but on one of my 100nl tables i was getting absolutely pwned by this uber donk. he called every raise and outflopped me in every pot.
the $160 deep tables are just so unbelievably soft when i play that i think im going to start sitting on them just to try to get them going. it's just unbelievable.
anyways, i posted in the cr forums about how some of the more experienced nl 6 max players find the swings. it seems that a 4 buy-in swing is fairly normal for a session (something i started to wonder about) and some guys say they swing anywhere between 8 buy-ins.
i think this gives me a better perspective of the game and what to expect.
tg
Saturday, June 23, 2007
401 hands of hell
funny how this blog has turned into a how much money i've lost today kind of theme.
i sat down and quickly dropped 4 buy-ins ($409.30) in 401 hands.
just a sick sick session. i actually held my composure until the final beat and then for the first time ever chucked my mouse across the room. (felt kinda good except that i timed out in all my other hands)
here are the hands:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1200430 - standard cooler
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1200443 - villain is your standard maniac, he shoved the turn so fast i was expecting to see a pair w/ the ace of clubs or something.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1200445 - a hand against another uber maniac. im not usually a big fan of jamming AK pre in cash games but im way ahead of his squeezing range and i "thought" i had fold equity but apparenlty 99 is good.
and the mouse smasher to finish it off,
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1200450
days like this make me wish i just dicked around and played $5 sngs for fun like some of my friends.
this month has just been so sick. it seems like i go small win, big loss, small win, big loss.........
admittedly i played poorly at the beginning of the month and deserve those results. its just so frustrating lately. i get on these uber aggressive tables and everytime i raise im getting 3-bet and forced to fold. then when i finally pick up a monster i get zero action or sucked out on. (obv over generalizations because im losing)
so it looks like im going to have a big losing month for the first time that i really remember. im not sure how in the red i am in mtts but im done quite a bit in cash.
im bitter and depressed. my br is a shade under 3.3k now but i have about $400 in rakeback owed to me. if it wasn't for rakeback i'd probably be playing 1cent/2cent underolled.
im going to go puke.
tg
i sat down and quickly dropped 4 buy-ins ($409.30) in 401 hands.
just a sick sick session. i actually held my composure until the final beat and then for the first time ever chucked my mouse across the room. (felt kinda good except that i timed out in all my other hands)
here are the hands:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1200430 - standard cooler
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1200443 - villain is your standard maniac, he shoved the turn so fast i was expecting to see a pair w/ the ace of clubs or something.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1200445 - a hand against another uber maniac. im not usually a big fan of jamming AK pre in cash games but im way ahead of his squeezing range and i "thought" i had fold equity but apparenlty 99 is good.
and the mouse smasher to finish it off,
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1200450
days like this make me wish i just dicked around and played $5 sngs for fun like some of my friends.
this month has just been so sick. it seems like i go small win, big loss, small win, big loss.........
admittedly i played poorly at the beginning of the month and deserve those results. its just so frustrating lately. i get on these uber aggressive tables and everytime i raise im getting 3-bet and forced to fold. then when i finally pick up a monster i get zero action or sucked out on. (obv over generalizations because im losing)
so it looks like im going to have a big losing month for the first time that i really remember. im not sure how in the red i am in mtts but im done quite a bit in cash.
im bitter and depressed. my br is a shade under 3.3k now but i have about $400 in rakeback owed to me. if it wasn't for rakeback i'd probably be playing 1cent/2cent underolled.
im going to go puke.
tg
Friday, June 22, 2007
tons of hands, small win
played close to 3200 hands of 100nl today. i think to some multi-tablers that's not that much but to me that is a ton.
before the last week or so i would consider 1k to be a very big volume day. i tried 6 tabling today and actually felt fairly comfortable playing that many at once. i can't see myself ever playing more than that but 6 seems like the sweet spot.
i went back to 100nl and was very happy with my play. obviously there are always going to be a couple hands that are misplayed but overall i thought i played well.
i ended up just over a buy-in but was stuck 3 buy-ins early when i just got stuck in very bad spots. i could of actually been up a lot more but i took a couple of nasty beats that felted me.
here's a graph for the day.
i was planning on playing a bunch of mtt's but the way they started off i decided to concentrate on cash games. i played the 10am $24 and busted from that fairly uneventfully. i then played the noon $24 and about 15 mins in i got my AA all-in pre vs. KK and the board came xxKKx and i decided i had enough for a while.
next i played the fifty fifty again and went out about 1.5hrs in when i pushed AJ and about 15bb's overtop a couple limpers and one of them called w/ 99 and it held up. i also played the 10pm $24 and lasted about the same amount of time before getting short and pushing 77 into KK and thats all she wrote.
i might get some hands in tomorrow morning but then my girlfriend is coming home so my play schedule will be slowed considerably.
tg
before the last week or so i would consider 1k to be a very big volume day. i tried 6 tabling today and actually felt fairly comfortable playing that many at once. i can't see myself ever playing more than that but 6 seems like the sweet spot.
i went back to 100nl and was very happy with my play. obviously there are always going to be a couple hands that are misplayed but overall i thought i played well.
i ended up just over a buy-in but was stuck 3 buy-ins early when i just got stuck in very bad spots. i could of actually been up a lot more but i took a couple of nasty beats that felted me.
here's a graph for the day.
i was planning on playing a bunch of mtt's but the way they started off i decided to concentrate on cash games. i played the 10am $24 and busted from that fairly uneventfully. i then played the noon $24 and about 15 mins in i got my AA all-in pre vs. KK and the board came xxKKx and i decided i had enough for a while.
next i played the fifty fifty again and went out about 1.5hrs in when i pushed AJ and about 15bb's overtop a couple limpers and one of them called w/ 99 and it held up. i also played the 10pm $24 and lasted about the same amount of time before getting short and pushing 77 into KK and thats all she wrote.
i might get some hands in tomorrow morning but then my girlfriend is coming home so my play schedule will be slowed considerably.
tg
back to basics
i've logged 1600 hands at 50nl the last two days and am up 2 buy-ins. i've been happy with my play.
my stats are a pretty much the same as before. (17/12.5/4) im not sure why there is such a gap between my vpip and my pfr % but i'll pay some extra attention to that to make sure im not playing too passive pre. the total AF might be a little high as well but im not too concerned about it.
i might try some 100nl today, we'll see.
i've only been stacked twice so far at 50nl. here are the hands.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1194354 - not sure about this hand, im going to post it on cr forum and see what the opinion is there. villain in the hand very rarely cold calls but he is fairly donkish and is a calling station post flop. i had a bad feeling it was a set throughout the hand but im not sure how else i can play it since he could easily have AQ or AJ and i pretty sure he checks behind on the river with these hands if i check to him.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1197609 - im pretty sure i had this guy on tilt since 2 hands earlier i had flopped a set of 9's against his QQ. this hand im not sure i can get away from given the circumstances. my thinking at the time was to fold pre since he's tilting he's going to be looking for a chance to play back at me but the 9c8c is just so damn pretty i couldn't resist.
played a couple donkaments last nite with no success. i played the new fifty fifty on ftp ($50+5 buy-in, 50k guaranteed) and things were going ok until my AQ ran into QT that turned a T for 2p to send me out about 540th out of the 1000+ runners. i also played the 10pm $24 which i believe is a 26k guarantee but im not sure. nothing much happened in this tournament and i eventually pushed 9bb's from the CO w/ A8s and the button called w/QQ and i bricked a river on a 2458 board to get bounced around the middle of the pack.
im off work today so i hope to play a ton.
tg
my stats are a pretty much the same as before. (17/12.5/4) im not sure why there is such a gap between my vpip and my pfr % but i'll pay some extra attention to that to make sure im not playing too passive pre. the total AF might be a little high as well but im not too concerned about it.
i might try some 100nl today, we'll see.
i've only been stacked twice so far at 50nl. here are the hands.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1194354 - not sure about this hand, im going to post it on cr forum and see what the opinion is there. villain in the hand very rarely cold calls but he is fairly donkish and is a calling station post flop. i had a bad feeling it was a set throughout the hand but im not sure how else i can play it since he could easily have AQ or AJ and i pretty sure he checks behind on the river with these hands if i check to him.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1197609 - im pretty sure i had this guy on tilt since 2 hands earlier i had flopped a set of 9's against his QQ. this hand im not sure i can get away from given the circumstances. my thinking at the time was to fold pre since he's tilting he's going to be looking for a chance to play back at me but the 9c8c is just so damn pretty i couldn't resist.
played a couple donkaments last nite with no success. i played the new fifty fifty on ftp ($50+5 buy-in, 50k guaranteed) and things were going ok until my AQ ran into QT that turned a T for 2p to send me out about 540th out of the 1000+ runners. i also played the 10pm $24 which i believe is a 26k guarantee but im not sure. nothing much happened in this tournament and i eventually pushed 9bb's from the CO w/ A8s and the button called w/QQ and i bricked a river on a 2458 board to get bounced around the middle of the pack.
im off work today so i hope to play a ton.
tg
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
dropping down
i've decided to drop down to 50nl for a little while. not sure for how long, could be a couple sessions or could be a couple weeks.
i've been thinking about my play, reading lots and watching a lot of low limit cr vids and i think i see the flaws in my game.
starting back at 50nl will be just less pressure. dropping 5 buy-ins at 50nl is not really that damaging to my br so i won't feel the pressure to win.
br to me is more a matter of being comfortable rather than risk of ruin. (to a certain degree) most people will say that 25 buy-ins is a good br for nl cash as long as you're willing to drop down when you go on a losing streak. so far, i've basically stuck to a 40 buy-in rule for nl cash which is pretty conservative. even that sometimes doesn't feel like enough but at the same time i've seen some really good limit players that were overly conservative with there roll and imo lost out on a lot of profit and growth as a player.
so for now it's down to 50nl to get my confidence back.
a couple other things,
- i cashed in some ftp points and got "the poker mindset", a book that is supposedly really good and deals w/ the mental side of playing poker. i think this will be a good read and should help me w/ my tilting ways. i started reading "poker and zen" a long time ago and never finished it. i found it ok but a lot of it seemed to advocate weak passive play and i never had the urge to finish it.
- im going to start posting in and browsing the nl cash forums on cardrunners. im hoping this will help me plug a few leaks and offer some insight into how others play certain situations.
- lastly, no way im making iron man status on ftp after hardly playing the last week. i might be able to pull out gold but we'll see.
hopefully i'll put some hands in tonite and play well.
tg
i've been thinking about my play, reading lots and watching a lot of low limit cr vids and i think i see the flaws in my game.
starting back at 50nl will be just less pressure. dropping 5 buy-ins at 50nl is not really that damaging to my br so i won't feel the pressure to win.
br to me is more a matter of being comfortable rather than risk of ruin. (to a certain degree) most people will say that 25 buy-ins is a good br for nl cash as long as you're willing to drop down when you go on a losing streak. so far, i've basically stuck to a 40 buy-in rule for nl cash which is pretty conservative. even that sometimes doesn't feel like enough but at the same time i've seen some really good limit players that were overly conservative with there roll and imo lost out on a lot of profit and growth as a player.
so for now it's down to 50nl to get my confidence back.
a couple other things,
- i cashed in some ftp points and got "the poker mindset", a book that is supposedly really good and deals w/ the mental side of playing poker. i think this will be a good read and should help me w/ my tilting ways. i started reading "poker and zen" a long time ago and never finished it. i found it ok but a lot of it seemed to advocate weak passive play and i never had the urge to finish it.
- im going to start posting in and browsing the nl cash forums on cardrunners. im hoping this will help me plug a few leaks and offer some insight into how others play certain situations.
- lastly, no way im making iron man status on ftp after hardly playing the last week. i might be able to pull out gold but we'll see.
hopefully i'll put some hands in tonite and play well.
tg
Monday, June 18, 2007
re-tooling
haven't played too much lately but when i have played it hasn't been good.
i didn't log a single hand thurs, frid and sat. i was pretty busy with other stuff and by the time i got a minute to sit down and play i was tired and unfocused so i decided not to play.
i got up early yesterday and logged about 800 hands of cash. i made 1/2 buy-in that time but didn't necessarily play well. i went out and did some stuff and came back to log another small session. in about 300 hands i played like total garbage and lost about 3 buy-ins. i was pretty sick, walked away and ran some erans. i came back more focused and made 1-1/2 buy-ins back in another 400 hands. i played ok during this time but still not great. i came back at nite to put one more session in and try to get even for the day. once again i played like crap, tilted like a moron and was a total fish in the game. i lost 3-1/2 more buy-ins to make my total loss for the day in the $470 range.
i was depressed, sick to my stomach and emabarassed about my play. the fact that im getting the crap kicked out of me at 100nl is embarassing to me.
a day later and looking at my play i came to a few conclusions.
1) i tilt way too easily when playing cash games.
2) im playing with ego, not smarts.
3) im playing way too lag for my skill level.
4) im not taking my time to make decisions.
100nl on ftp right now is quite an aggressive game. for some reason im pulling maniac moves that i would never pull in a mtt. its like my inner donk from 3 years ago is coming out. i don't believe anything anyone is telling me with their betting. for instance, a hand from yesterday. mp limps, i raise from the CO w/ 55 to isolate, bad player cold calls on the button and the bb 3-bets pot. the limper folds and i shove because it looked like a squeeze play. bad player folds and bb calls and shows KK. when i pushed the 55 i did it instanly, no thinking, no use of the time bank, no looking up pahud stats. just a knee jerk reaction of "this guy is full of shit, i'll show him".
this is how im playing nowadays and this is why im losing. at first glance yesterday i made the excuse that "im running bad". although i did run poor yesterday, i played even worse. i would estimate that if i a good player had been playing in my spot yesterday, they might have ended down a buy-in. instead i played and am down 5.
so im going to re-tool.
brystmar (guest pro) on cardrunners has a 5-part series out right now about becoming a solid winning tag in the micro to low stakes. im taking tonite to study these vids and get back to the basics. i watched a few of his vids in early may and they were quite eye-opening to me. since then i've slipped into some bad habits that i need to correct.
on the mtt front, im going to stay patient. im getting deep regularly, just not closing the deal. im pretty confident in my mtt game right now even though the results haven't been there.
my br has slipped to about 3.6k which is scary but i have $300+ in rakeback that i can cash in for. ( thank god for rakeback)
here's to turning over a new leaf and getting back on the winning way! (and howard if you're listening, throw me one of those sicko rex55 runs <<<<<<<<< 6 ft's in one week)
tg
i didn't log a single hand thurs, frid and sat. i was pretty busy with other stuff and by the time i got a minute to sit down and play i was tired and unfocused so i decided not to play.
i got up early yesterday and logged about 800 hands of cash. i made 1/2 buy-in that time but didn't necessarily play well. i went out and did some stuff and came back to log another small session. in about 300 hands i played like total garbage and lost about 3 buy-ins. i was pretty sick, walked away and ran some erans. i came back more focused and made 1-1/2 buy-ins back in another 400 hands. i played ok during this time but still not great. i came back at nite to put one more session in and try to get even for the day. once again i played like crap, tilted like a moron and was a total fish in the game. i lost 3-1/2 more buy-ins to make my total loss for the day in the $470 range.
i was depressed, sick to my stomach and emabarassed about my play. the fact that im getting the crap kicked out of me at 100nl is embarassing to me.
a day later and looking at my play i came to a few conclusions.
1) i tilt way too easily when playing cash games.
2) im playing with ego, not smarts.
3) im playing way too lag for my skill level.
4) im not taking my time to make decisions.
100nl on ftp right now is quite an aggressive game. for some reason im pulling maniac moves that i would never pull in a mtt. its like my inner donk from 3 years ago is coming out. i don't believe anything anyone is telling me with their betting. for instance, a hand from yesterday. mp limps, i raise from the CO w/ 55 to isolate, bad player cold calls on the button and the bb 3-bets pot. the limper folds and i shove because it looked like a squeeze play. bad player folds and bb calls and shows KK. when i pushed the 55 i did it instanly, no thinking, no use of the time bank, no looking up pahud stats. just a knee jerk reaction of "this guy is full of shit, i'll show him".
this is how im playing nowadays and this is why im losing. at first glance yesterday i made the excuse that "im running bad". although i did run poor yesterday, i played even worse. i would estimate that if i a good player had been playing in my spot yesterday, they might have ended down a buy-in. instead i played and am down 5.
so im going to re-tool.
brystmar (guest pro) on cardrunners has a 5-part series out right now about becoming a solid winning tag in the micro to low stakes. im taking tonite to study these vids and get back to the basics. i watched a few of his vids in early may and they were quite eye-opening to me. since then i've slipped into some bad habits that i need to correct.
on the mtt front, im going to stay patient. im getting deep regularly, just not closing the deal. im pretty confident in my mtt game right now even though the results haven't been there.
my br has slipped to about 3.6k which is scary but i have $300+ in rakeback that i can cash in for. ( thank god for rakeback)
here's to turning over a new leaf and getting back on the winning way! (and howard if you're listening, throw me one of those sicko rex55 runs <<<<<<<<< 6 ft's in one week)
tg
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
more bloggage
tuedsday nite i played the 11k guarantee nl @ 6pm, 22k guarantee nl @ 7pm and the 3k lhe @ 7:15.
11k i lasted about 45 mins when i lost a flip w/ 88 vs. AK.
22k i lasted about 2.5 hrs before busting. i think it had over 550 runners and i got knocked out somewhere in the 150-180 range i believe. i was super short the whole time after losing a big pot early w/ AQ vs AT and another w/ TT to a slowplayed KK. i was stuck between 8-11bb's most of the last 2hrs and managed to hang in there. i had a chronic limper on my right that i kept pushing overtop of that helped keep me alive. this is something that i've been doing lately and it seems to work quite well. the limper shuts out the bigger stacks behind from taking shots at you w/ mediocre pairs and hands like AJ and if the limper is playing too many hands there will be no way they'll be able to call profitably. (this particual limper was playing over 40% of her hands but was raising the good ones and limping the trash so it was pretty easy pickings)
here's the hand of the tournament.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1173916
this wasn't the chronic limper but i liked the spot and i had been fairly inactive for a while so i took a shot. T7o, not a problem.
my bustout hand came w/ about 8bb's and i open pushed the button w/ T9o and was called by the sb who had 44. flop was 567 giving me another 4 outs, turn was a 3 giving me a total of 4 outs and the river bricked out to send me packing. another pxfer, rex55 ended up taking this down for a big score so congratulations to her!
the lhe tournament went fairly slowly and i ended up busting about 80th and once again the play was horrendous. my bustout hand came when i was fairly short, utg (very short) raised, i 3-bet AQo from lp and the bb cold called 2-bets w/ the mighty 54o and end up taking it down once we got AI on the flop w/ bottom pair. (utg had QTo so i was in good shape)
cash games were a bit of a rollercoaster and i made one big mistake pre-flop that cost me a $300 pot.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1173847
villain had 3-bet me from the blinds a couple of times already this session and i make a bad call pre. if i think he's 3-betting my lp steals light i should just 4-bet pre and force him to a decision while repping a big hand. instead i make the worst play in poker (calling) and im pretty sure i have to felt top pair, a gut shot and the 2nd nut fd there. bad hand but lesson learned.
here's a hand where i had a pretty strong read on both players and got away fairly inexpensively.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1173855
sb is extremely lag but not stupid, ep limper is bad. the flop is decent for my hand and when the limper calls i put him on something pretty mediocre (weak king or some sort of pair) but i was fairly suprised when the sb called. the turn is pretty miserable but im committed to calling off the limpers last $20 and im 90% sure he'll push his remaining stack in with any kind of pair so i check figuring that i'll get to see what the sb does. when the sb calls i think he's either got a naked 8, 7's full or T9 for an open ender. i decide to call the fairly small bet and see what happens on the river. the river is another horrible card and i figure there's nothing left that im beating so i muck and it turns out im right.
i put in 1k hands of cash and ended up making 3/4 of a buy-in which is a win but i wasn't very happy about it. i started off playing well but i think i played very sloppy near the end and bled away a good chunk of money.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
yesterday i was thinking of taking the day off. i've been playing a lot more than im used to and i felt the grind of the cash games starting to wear on me. so i was humming and hawing when i logged onto opr, saw that rex55 crushed the 7pm the nite before and was suddenly inspired to do the same.
so i played my usual, 6pm nl, 7pm nl and 7:15pm lhe. i stuck to just these tournaments and left the cash games for another day. my goal was to put 100% into these 3 tournaments.
the 6pm (over 600 entrants) started out awful, about 15 mins in i raise up KQo from mp and get one lp caller and both blinds come along. the flop comes KJx rainbow, both blinds check, i bet about 1/2 the pot, lp folds, sb min-raises and bb folds. i should probably dump the hand right here but sb happened to showdown Ato in the last pot which was also raised and called so i didn't hold his play in high regard. i called and the turn came a T which now gave me and open ended straight draw to go along w/ my top pair. he now leads out fairly small into the pot but the bet is half his stack (bet 400 w/ another 440 behind, i believe the pot was approaching 900) so i call hoping to hit and make my river decision easy. the river is a brick, he bets his last 440 into like 1700 chip pot and i determine i can't fold getting layed like 5-1 so i call and he shows me KJo.
so im down to 380 after going through the blinds and the level is 15/30. my initial reaction lately is to ship it in and get ready for the 7pm but instead i buckled down and decided to play it out. in reality i still had close to 13bb's so i wasn't in that bad of shape.
so for the next few levels i managed to pick up a small pot here and there to stay on pace w/the structure until 30/60. w/ 580 chips behind, i open pushed from early to mid position w/ KTo (prob not a good push) and was immediatly called by a mp player. he flips up AKo and im toast until i flop a T and turn a flush to double through. not a problem!
i chip away and by the time we hit the 1st break i have 1900. i continue to chip up a little in the 2nd hour when i get an uber donk moved to my left w/ a about 8k. i c/r him in a couple pots because he auto pots the flop when checked to. i get it up to over 2.8k doing this until i double through him AI pre w/ 88 vs his AcKc. (action went 1 limper, i raised and he 3-bet pushed pretty fast which didn't look too strong so i called off my stack) once again howard (lederer) has a little chuckle and gives me the old 8cXcX flop but cuts me a break and bricks the turn and river shipping me the pot.
now im sitting at 5.8k or so. i cruise along winning pots here and there but don't really remember anything too special happening. we get into the money (top 63 pay) and i im sitting around 11k at 400/800 w/ ante. a lp player opens for the 2nd straight time, i have A7o in the bb and re-ship, he surprisingly thinks for a bit before calling w/ AQo. i type nh, gg, gl everyone until i roll a 7 on the turn to suckout for the 2nd time in the tourny.
i now have 25k @ 500/1k w/ 125 antes and get moved tables. w/ 27 left howard now decides ok, i let you suck out twice, now its time to punish you. my table has 3 of the top 4 chip leaders including 1 and 2 who are hyper aggressive. i pick my spots and let them run the table. @ 800/1600 i had about 32k and was punishing the guy on my left by just moving AI when it folded to me in the sb. (he had about 15k) with about 25 left and blinds @ 600/1.2k w/ antes i pick up JTs and decide to raise w/an 8k stack in the bb. he had been playing very tight and had the aggresive chip leaders on either side of him. also, he can't play back at me without a hand because he has zero fold equity. (this is also the guy i had sucked on w/ A7o) he jams and i make an obv call, he has 88 and i fail to improve so i get knocked down to about 24k. the blinds go up to 1k/2k 250a and finally pick up a beautiful KK and make it 5.5k out of my 22k stack. w/ 20k the same bb calls again. the flop comes down Q73 rainbow, he checks, i bet 5k into a 15kish pot, he moves AI, i call and he shows 33. he told me after the hand that he was pulling a stop n go as long as he didn't flop a set so i guess his play isn't that bad. i bow out 2 hands later in the bb and took 19th for a whopping $69.
7pm was another roller coaster. i never seem to start off good in this tournament as i dipped down to about 2.3k early from the 3k starting stack. i then had a big hand where i doubled up (can't remember what it was) and had some decent chips.
@ 50/100 and a 4.6k stack, i raise to 300 utg w/ AKo, scott fischman calls, mp shorty pushes for 360 total, donkish player in lp calls the 360, bb calls, and fischman and i both call the extra 60. the flop comes K high w/ 2 spades, bb checks, i lead for 1400 into the 1800ish chip pot, fischman folds, donkish player flat calls 1/3 of his stack and bb folds. the turn is a third spade and i tank. donkish player could very well call on a fd. i check to see what he would do and he insta-shoves. i tank again and figure i can't beat much so i fold saving my remaining chips. the hands get flipped up because of the AI player and donkish player has KQo w/ no spades and drags the massive pot. i throw up all over my desk and we go to break.
so as if i'm not steamed already, this girl at the table (who had been calling scott fischman a donk and a calling station for most of the first hour) starts giving me shit for betting a dry side pot when a player is AI ????????????????????????
this woman wanted me to check it down w/ 308 people left in the tourament?????????????????????????????????
i asked her if she was fucking nuts!
she says no, and asked me why would i bluff on the flop and give the AI person a chance at getting back into the tournament?????????????????????????????????
so i kindly told her that i had AK and thought i was outdrawn on the turn or already beat on the flop.
then she says "why did you only call pre-flop w/ AK"
i puke all over my desk again before i politely tell her that i was the one that raised.
finally she lets me off the hook by berating the donkish player for a bit so i can regain my thoughts.
after that, blinds are 60/120, lag mp raises to 360, i re-raise to 1200 out of my 2200 chip stack committing myself to the hand, the player right behind me pushes, initial raiser folds and i call it off.
he has JJ and im gonzo.
the lhe went great in the 1st hour. i had about 4k entering the 2nd hour and couldn't make a hand. i eventually busted w/ AQ vs AK on an Ace high board and bowed out around 80th out of about 160 runners.
all-in-all a bit of frustrating nite. i thought i played very well and i think my mtt game is back to where i want it to be. just a bit frustrated about getting deep and not getting the big payday in a while.
i guess it'll come eventually.
tg
11k i lasted about 45 mins when i lost a flip w/ 88 vs. AK.
22k i lasted about 2.5 hrs before busting. i think it had over 550 runners and i got knocked out somewhere in the 150-180 range i believe. i was super short the whole time after losing a big pot early w/ AQ vs AT and another w/ TT to a slowplayed KK. i was stuck between 8-11bb's most of the last 2hrs and managed to hang in there. i had a chronic limper on my right that i kept pushing overtop of that helped keep me alive. this is something that i've been doing lately and it seems to work quite well. the limper shuts out the bigger stacks behind from taking shots at you w/ mediocre pairs and hands like AJ and if the limper is playing too many hands there will be no way they'll be able to call profitably. (this particual limper was playing over 40% of her hands but was raising the good ones and limping the trash so it was pretty easy pickings)
here's the hand of the tournament.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1173916
this wasn't the chronic limper but i liked the spot and i had been fairly inactive for a while so i took a shot. T7o, not a problem.
my bustout hand came w/ about 8bb's and i open pushed the button w/ T9o and was called by the sb who had 44. flop was 567 giving me another 4 outs, turn was a 3 giving me a total of 4 outs and the river bricked out to send me packing. another pxfer, rex55 ended up taking this down for a big score so congratulations to her!
the lhe tournament went fairly slowly and i ended up busting about 80th and once again the play was horrendous. my bustout hand came when i was fairly short, utg (very short) raised, i 3-bet AQo from lp and the bb cold called 2-bets w/ the mighty 54o and end up taking it down once we got AI on the flop w/ bottom pair. (utg had QTo so i was in good shape)
cash games were a bit of a rollercoaster and i made one big mistake pre-flop that cost me a $300 pot.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1173847
villain had 3-bet me from the blinds a couple of times already this session and i make a bad call pre. if i think he's 3-betting my lp steals light i should just 4-bet pre and force him to a decision while repping a big hand. instead i make the worst play in poker (calling) and im pretty sure i have to felt top pair, a gut shot and the 2nd nut fd there. bad hand but lesson learned.
here's a hand where i had a pretty strong read on both players and got away fairly inexpensively.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1173855
sb is extremely lag but not stupid, ep limper is bad. the flop is decent for my hand and when the limper calls i put him on something pretty mediocre (weak king or some sort of pair) but i was fairly suprised when the sb called. the turn is pretty miserable but im committed to calling off the limpers last $20 and im 90% sure he'll push his remaining stack in with any kind of pair so i check figuring that i'll get to see what the sb does. when the sb calls i think he's either got a naked 8, 7's full or T9 for an open ender. i decide to call the fairly small bet and see what happens on the river. the river is another horrible card and i figure there's nothing left that im beating so i muck and it turns out im right.
i put in 1k hands of cash and ended up making 3/4 of a buy-in which is a win but i wasn't very happy about it. i started off playing well but i think i played very sloppy near the end and bled away a good chunk of money.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
yesterday i was thinking of taking the day off. i've been playing a lot more than im used to and i felt the grind of the cash games starting to wear on me. so i was humming and hawing when i logged onto opr, saw that rex55 crushed the 7pm the nite before and was suddenly inspired to do the same.
so i played my usual, 6pm nl, 7pm nl and 7:15pm lhe. i stuck to just these tournaments and left the cash games for another day. my goal was to put 100% into these 3 tournaments.
the 6pm (over 600 entrants) started out awful, about 15 mins in i raise up KQo from mp and get one lp caller and both blinds come along. the flop comes KJx rainbow, both blinds check, i bet about 1/2 the pot, lp folds, sb min-raises and bb folds. i should probably dump the hand right here but sb happened to showdown Ato in the last pot which was also raised and called so i didn't hold his play in high regard. i called and the turn came a T which now gave me and open ended straight draw to go along w/ my top pair. he now leads out fairly small into the pot but the bet is half his stack (bet 400 w/ another 440 behind, i believe the pot was approaching 900) so i call hoping to hit and make my river decision easy. the river is a brick, he bets his last 440 into like 1700 chip pot and i determine i can't fold getting layed like 5-1 so i call and he shows me KJo.
so im down to 380 after going through the blinds and the level is 15/30. my initial reaction lately is to ship it in and get ready for the 7pm but instead i buckled down and decided to play it out. in reality i still had close to 13bb's so i wasn't in that bad of shape.
so for the next few levels i managed to pick up a small pot here and there to stay on pace w/the structure until 30/60. w/ 580 chips behind, i open pushed from early to mid position w/ KTo (prob not a good push) and was immediatly called by a mp player. he flips up AKo and im toast until i flop a T and turn a flush to double through. not a problem!
i chip away and by the time we hit the 1st break i have 1900. i continue to chip up a little in the 2nd hour when i get an uber donk moved to my left w/ a about 8k. i c/r him in a couple pots because he auto pots the flop when checked to. i get it up to over 2.8k doing this until i double through him AI pre w/ 88 vs his AcKc. (action went 1 limper, i raised and he 3-bet pushed pretty fast which didn't look too strong so i called off my stack) once again howard (lederer) has a little chuckle and gives me the old 8cXcX flop but cuts me a break and bricks the turn and river shipping me the pot.
now im sitting at 5.8k or so. i cruise along winning pots here and there but don't really remember anything too special happening. we get into the money (top 63 pay) and i im sitting around 11k at 400/800 w/ ante. a lp player opens for the 2nd straight time, i have A7o in the bb and re-ship, he surprisingly thinks for a bit before calling w/ AQo. i type nh, gg, gl everyone until i roll a 7 on the turn to suckout for the 2nd time in the tourny.
i now have 25k @ 500/1k w/ 125 antes and get moved tables. w/ 27 left howard now decides ok, i let you suck out twice, now its time to punish you. my table has 3 of the top 4 chip leaders including 1 and 2 who are hyper aggressive. i pick my spots and let them run the table. @ 800/1600 i had about 32k and was punishing the guy on my left by just moving AI when it folded to me in the sb. (he had about 15k) with about 25 left and blinds @ 600/1.2k w/ antes i pick up JTs and decide to raise w/an 8k stack in the bb. he had been playing very tight and had the aggresive chip leaders on either side of him. also, he can't play back at me without a hand because he has zero fold equity. (this is also the guy i had sucked on w/ A7o) he jams and i make an obv call, he has 88 and i fail to improve so i get knocked down to about 24k. the blinds go up to 1k/2k 250a and finally pick up a beautiful KK and make it 5.5k out of my 22k stack. w/ 20k the same bb calls again. the flop comes down Q73 rainbow, he checks, i bet 5k into a 15kish pot, he moves AI, i call and he shows 33. he told me after the hand that he was pulling a stop n go as long as he didn't flop a set so i guess his play isn't that bad. i bow out 2 hands later in the bb and took 19th for a whopping $69.
7pm was another roller coaster. i never seem to start off good in this tournament as i dipped down to about 2.3k early from the 3k starting stack. i then had a big hand where i doubled up (can't remember what it was) and had some decent chips.
@ 50/100 and a 4.6k stack, i raise to 300 utg w/ AKo, scott fischman calls, mp shorty pushes for 360 total, donkish player in lp calls the 360, bb calls, and fischman and i both call the extra 60. the flop comes K high w/ 2 spades, bb checks, i lead for 1400 into the 1800ish chip pot, fischman folds, donkish player flat calls 1/3 of his stack and bb folds. the turn is a third spade and i tank. donkish player could very well call on a fd. i check to see what he would do and he insta-shoves. i tank again and figure i can't beat much so i fold saving my remaining chips. the hands get flipped up because of the AI player and donkish player has KQo w/ no spades and drags the massive pot. i throw up all over my desk and we go to break.
so as if i'm not steamed already, this girl at the table (who had been calling scott fischman a donk and a calling station for most of the first hour) starts giving me shit for betting a dry side pot when a player is AI ????????????????????????
this woman wanted me to check it down w/ 308 people left in the tourament?????????????????????????????????
i asked her if she was fucking nuts!
she says no, and asked me why would i bluff on the flop and give the AI person a chance at getting back into the tournament?????????????????????????????????
so i kindly told her that i had AK and thought i was outdrawn on the turn or already beat on the flop.
then she says "why did you only call pre-flop w/ AK"
i puke all over my desk again before i politely tell her that i was the one that raised.
finally she lets me off the hook by berating the donkish player for a bit so i can regain my thoughts.
after that, blinds are 60/120, lag mp raises to 360, i re-raise to 1200 out of my 2200 chip stack committing myself to the hand, the player right behind me pushes, initial raiser folds and i call it off.
he has JJ and im gonzo.
the lhe went great in the 1st hour. i had about 4k entering the 2nd hour and couldn't make a hand. i eventually busted w/ AQ vs AK on an Ace high board and bowed out around 80th out of about 160 runners.
all-in-all a bit of frustrating nite. i thought i played very well and i think my mtt game is back to where i want it to be. just a bit frustrated about getting deep and not getting the big payday in a while.
i guess it'll come eventually.
tg
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
a good nite
put in a good session last nite even though it started off on the wrong foot.
i got in around 6:30 and logged on to ftp to register for the 22k guarantee nl $75 mtt. i was in a hurry because i still had some stuff to do so i quikly went to the tournaments tab, saw the $75 buy-in and registered. i stroll back to my computer @ 7pm and notice that the tourny is in full swing and im down to 1260 chips! like an idiot, i registered for a turbo satellite to the big monday 1k.
i was pretty pissed because a) i hate satellites and seem to suck at them and b) i looooooove the 7pm multi and was jacked to play it. (it was too late to register)
i gave the sat my best shot, there were 34 players and top 2 got seats and 3rd got $224. i was extreme short stack after losing a race w/ around 18 people left but amazingly lasted until i got knocked out in 8th. (i had between 2-5bb's around this whole time)
since i missed the 7pm nl mtt i decided to quench my tourny thirst by hopping into the 7:15pm 3k guarantee lhe that i wrote about earlier. the tournament only drew 107 players which resulted in a nice $432 overlay provided by ftp. (thanks howard)
as i wrote previously, the play was pretty poor and i managed to get the chip lead w/ about 70 players left and stayed top 3 in chips till i got to the final table. the final table was an absolute roller coaster and im not sure i played optimally but i still think i held my own. i eventually bounced out in 5th for $225. 1st payed $810 and i was definitly eyeing that but im fairly happy finishing 5th since i've probably played less than 400 hands of limit in the last year. it was kinda funny how all the subtleties came back to me after so long.
so during the tournament i logged 900+ hands of nl cash and came out of it up a buy-in. i thought i played very well and was very focused throughout instead of making knee jerk reaction plays and going through the motions. i was finally on the giving end of a cooler as someone ran their KK into my AA. i also made some nice laydowns (i think i did at least, i guess you never know) and played my players well. i made a couple nice reads and calls that were unfortunately not rewarded as i got sucked out on both times but that's pokah!
anyways, playing again tonite so prob update again tomorrow.
i think im actually going to hit iron man status on ftp as i've played everyday except one so far this month. most months i prob only get to play an avg of 3 or 4 times a week so i sometimes creep into silver at best.
one other thing, im doing more reading lately so i hope to give opinions of books i've read. i just finished Ace on the river by Barry Greenstein and it was a good book. mostly geared towards players who are venturing out to become pro and the pitfalls to avoid but a good read for anyone that plays and follows poker.
i just started reading Read em and Weap by Joe Navarro. it's a book about reading people and tells and i heard it's pretty good. it's also endorsed by 11-time WSOP champion Phil Helmuth so before long i'll be looking into peoples souls and dodging bullets baby!
gl @ the tables.
tg
i got in around 6:30 and logged on to ftp to register for the 22k guarantee nl $75 mtt. i was in a hurry because i still had some stuff to do so i quikly went to the tournaments tab, saw the $75 buy-in and registered. i stroll back to my computer @ 7pm and notice that the tourny is in full swing and im down to 1260 chips! like an idiot, i registered for a turbo satellite to the big monday 1k.
i was pretty pissed because a) i hate satellites and seem to suck at them and b) i looooooove the 7pm multi and was jacked to play it. (it was too late to register)
i gave the sat my best shot, there were 34 players and top 2 got seats and 3rd got $224. i was extreme short stack after losing a race w/ around 18 people left but amazingly lasted until i got knocked out in 8th. (i had between 2-5bb's around this whole time)
since i missed the 7pm nl mtt i decided to quench my tourny thirst by hopping into the 7:15pm 3k guarantee lhe that i wrote about earlier. the tournament only drew 107 players which resulted in a nice $432 overlay provided by ftp. (thanks howard)
as i wrote previously, the play was pretty poor and i managed to get the chip lead w/ about 70 players left and stayed top 3 in chips till i got to the final table. the final table was an absolute roller coaster and im not sure i played optimally but i still think i held my own. i eventually bounced out in 5th for $225. 1st payed $810 and i was definitly eyeing that but im fairly happy finishing 5th since i've probably played less than 400 hands of limit in the last year. it was kinda funny how all the subtleties came back to me after so long.
so during the tournament i logged 900+ hands of nl cash and came out of it up a buy-in. i thought i played very well and was very focused throughout instead of making knee jerk reaction plays and going through the motions. i was finally on the giving end of a cooler as someone ran their KK into my AA. i also made some nice laydowns (i think i did at least, i guess you never know) and played my players well. i made a couple nice reads and calls that were unfortunately not rewarded as i got sucked out on both times but that's pokah!
anyways, playing again tonite so prob update again tomorrow.
i think im actually going to hit iron man status on ftp as i've played everyday except one so far this month. most months i prob only get to play an avg of 3 or 4 times a week so i sometimes creep into silver at best.
one other thing, im doing more reading lately so i hope to give opinions of books i've read. i just finished Ace on the river by Barry Greenstein and it was a good book. mostly geared towards players who are venturing out to become pro and the pitfalls to avoid but a good read for anyone that plays and follows poker.
i just started reading Read em and Weap by Joe Navarro. it's a book about reading people and tells and i heard it's pretty good. it's also endorsed by 11-time WSOP champion Phil Helmuth so before long i'll be looking into peoples souls and dodging bullets baby!
gl @ the tables.
tg
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)