final table?

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

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

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

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

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

tg

since the last post

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

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

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

tg

biggest day ever

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

tg

movin on up

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

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

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

stuck/unstuck

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

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

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

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

meh, whatever, thats my ramble for the day.

tg

pretty good start imo

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

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

tg

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

june results + lack of focus

Here's June results:

Holdem:

plo:







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

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

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

tg

omahaha

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

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

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

tg

quick update

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

will play some today.

tg

earning my stripes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

tg

still not playing lots

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

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

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

tg

not a bad turn around

cap plo results:

bankroll now > 14k.

tg

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

last nites holdem results.

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

tg

cap plo is killing me

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

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

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

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

tg

break even nite + holdem manager

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

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

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

might play tonite and tomorrw. who knows.

tg

quick win

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

biggest nlhe hand:

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

biggest plo hand:

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

tg

may results

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

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

pics:

tg

enlightened

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

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

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

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

tg

on a tear

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

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

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

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

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

tg

blip in the radar

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

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

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

things i need to work on:

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

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

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

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

tg