M0NIKER poker

no pokers

2009-02-13T15:28:00.002-05:00

Haven't played any poker this month... been busy with life-change stuff. Interviewed for a new job, accepted said job, and am now planning the relocation and looking into buying a home. Gov't Stimulus one time!!!!! (plz plz plz $8k tax credit for first time homeowner) Anyway, no time for the pokes at the moment, but still getting in some decent hand discussion and whatnot with malfaire whilest I should be working. Oh well, see you guys in March/April.

homestretch

2009-01-26T22:50:00.008-05:00

Just wanted to post another quick update. I've gotten about 29 hours of hands in this month -- not bad since I've only been able to play 14 of the days this month. I need to get 11 more hours in the next 5 days, which will be rough but doable I think. I'm really focusing on improving my game as well... reading up on forums, watching vids, talking through hands with myself and malfaire, etc.

Can anyone guess when I really started to kick it into gear (ie: thinking about ways to alter my play and improve my non-showdown winnings)? Obviously some runs-good at the end, but at least I'm not hemorrhaging money out the ass with my redline anymore.

Good luck everyone on reaching your January goals!
Oh, and wishing you many hands like this as well!

quickie

2009-01-20T14:31:00.002-05:00

Okay okay, I know I told everyone to get on me when I don't update. Unfortunately I forgot to mention I'd be out of town for a few days starting last Thursday. My bad guys! Anyway, at the 2/3 point in the month I'm a little behind on my goals. This is fine because I've really only been around and able to play for 9 days so far, so I think that 16 hrs. is pretty respectable. The plan for the rest of the month is to keep to my schedule and I should hit my goal of 40 hrs. Either way, I feel like I'm getting back into the swing of things and starting to learn more again... if I keep putting in the time and effort the results will come.

Month to date:
Hours: 16.5
Hands: 6500
Profit: -$350 (nice recovery after being down over 11BI)

o'nine

2009-01-07T12:18:00.005-05:00

Without dwelling on it too much, 2008 was pretty much an up and down year for. Started off really well as I dedicated myself to becoming a solid 50nl player and moved up steadily to playing in the 200nl games regularly (thanks to mark, ian, brian, dodgy, jason, et al). Unfortunately I became pretty lackadaisical about halfway through the year and my progression ground to a halt. I wasn't booking the hours I needed to constantly improve my game and, obviously, my results suffered. Thankfully I've enjoyed the time away from the tables, so I guess there's a silver lining there somewhere, but I digress...

2009 -- return to form. I've spent the past few days trying to figure out what I want out of poker right now. I know for a fact that it's not going to be used as my primary income anytime soon (and likely not ever), but it is a hobby that I *do* enjoy trying to 'beat.' The past few months I've been unmotivated to play because it had lost that "fun factor" for me... go figure, I'd been losing. Thanks to some brutal honesty from a friend who will remain anonymous I now realize that I had only been fooling myself. How could I honestly expect to keep winning and moving up if I wasn't dedicating myself to actively improving as a poker player?

Enough of that I say. Beginning this week I have a new schedule laid out for myself that will help me start achieving my goals. I'll be playing almost every day as well as reviewing hands, watching vids, reading forums, etc. more than ever. If you don't see any blog posts from me for over a week, please verbally abuse me over IM. Also please feel free to contact me if you want to set up sweats, talk through hands, or whatever else.

Fortunately 2008 was positive as a whole and my bankroll is still more than sufficient, even for 200nl. However, since I'm definitely rusty and am moving all of my play over to a different site (PStars) I think I'll stick to 100nl for this month. I'd like to get in around 20k hands, at which point I can determine if it's time to move back to 200nl for good. Best of luck to everyone on the new year!

mia / bad beats

2008-11-05T11:50:00.002-05:00

Well it's been over a month since I posted... that's not so cool. October was pretty meh, think I won like 3 BI's at 200nl playing a very small volume. I really need to get my act together and transfer my moneys onto Stars. I have little to no motivation to sit on AP with 5 regs and a fish, and it's killing my volume. No excuse though... I'm the only one holding me back.

November has started off pretty much as horribly as it could have. It seems that I'm second best in every conceivable situation so far (A high flush vs straight flush, sets vs straights, QQ/KK/AK vs AA, etc etc etc). I honestly am very surprised that I'm only down 4 or 5 BI's right now this month.

In other news, my xbox360 broke last week. This makes it lucky #3 in the past 16 months, and it couldn't have happened at a worse time. Currently the lil machine from hell is getting all fixed up somewhere in Texas, and all I can do is wait until it comes back before I buy GOW2 and waste away some more of my life. God that game is fun... can't wait.

september results

2008-10-01T13:48:00.005-04:00

Ah September... not really what I was looking for results wise, but I'll take it. Managed to do a pretty good job on my goals this month, which I think will really help out in the long run. Made sure I sat 30+ hrs. during the past 30 days, and even though the hand volume isn't spectacular (just under 9,000 because I ended up 2 tabling during some rough patches) I think that the time was well spent on analyzing the particular dynamics of the tables and trying to put myself in more profitable situations.

Also, watching a good amount of videos and listening to some coaching tapes really has me thinking on a higher level than previously. I truly believe that my success at 100nl over the past few months was due to me playing pretty solid "ABC poker" and generally not making big mistakes. The more I learn about hand reading, putting opponents on ranges, optimizing my lines, getting thin value, etc. the more I realize that my play is vastly different than 1 or 2 months ago. Obviously there will be growing pains with this new approach, and I've certainly experienced them in the past month (see below). I think the important thing to remember is that while there will be small mistakes now, so long as I'm learning from them and enhancing my game they will pay off in the long run.

Here's hoping that October is an extension of the last 3,000 hands of the month!

September Results:

cliff diving

2008-09-19T15:42:00.003-04:00

Haven't really updated much this month, mainly because things haven't really been going well and I just haven't been motivated to post anything relevant. I've gotten a decent number of hours in at the 200nl tables this month, but the results just aren't there. I want to say that this is because I'm just running into the tops of my villains ranges (as I am not really finding spots where I absolutely hate my play), but at this point I'm not really sure anymore. I'll probably start posting some "problem hands" on Leggo in the next week or so as I review them more... validation that I'm not completely effing up would probably help my confidence right now.

I'm trying to work through the downswing by 2tabling 200nl instead of dropping back down the 4 tables of 100nl. This should (in theory) help me to range my opponents and follow game flow even closer than normal (goddamn you AP and your super fast mega turbo tables... fix the regular speed ones). Anyway, I'm not ready to step closer to the ledge, but I'll be honest and say that my ego is a little bruised. Hopefully this is all for the best though and my "luck" turns around soon.... I'd love to stop running poorly.

*/end rant*

august results

2008-09-09T12:03:00.003-04:00

Didn't get much time to play in August, but to be honest, that was expected. Birthday, vacation, fantasy football prep, work hell translates to not much time at the table. Oh well... I still managed to watch a ton of vids, talk through hands with malfaire, and generally try to improve my game as a whole. As autumn kicks in I hope to get more time at the tables and learn even more. 200nl is a much different beast to 50nl/100nl IMO, at least on AP. I'm not necessarily saying it's more difficult (because I don't think that it is), but the play from the regulars seems much different. I think that postflop play is truly the place where I can gain the biggest edge over my opponents and I'm focusing a lot of my efforts on improving my hand reading and winning pots that actually see a flop.

As for goals I pretty much sucked hard again. I'm going to be changing up my goal list to something that I can track throughout the month as well as keep them attainable. I really like malfaire's approach, so I'm gonna gank it. Anyway, results below. Don't read into them too much, the sample is ridiculously low. As malfaire pointed out though, EV doesn't get me anywhere in life. Show me the moneys!!!!!

August Results:

Table Profit: $394.50
ABS Rakeback: $112.51

time for a change?

2008-08-05T10:44:00.002-04:00

Got a bit bored today so decided to dig through my 2008 stats at 100nl (I've decided not to even look at 2007 because the poker player from that year can't even be compared to the one I have been since I decided to take things seriously in January). The chart below shows my monthly progression, and the graph looks pretty snazzy too.

I really wanted to get in 50k hands at the level before deciding whether or not to move up stakes (regardless of what my bankroll was). I thought that this would give me a pretty good perspective of how well I was doing at the level and provide the confidence necessary to tell myself that "no matter how horribly your start off at 200nl, you'll always know that you can rebuild at 100nl to the tune of X ptbb/100." Well, as it turns out, X has ended up being above 5 ptbb/100. Personally I think this could be higher, but hey, stats don't lie. And it's not like I'm exactly upset at this number.

That being said, I've played around at 200nl for a little bit on AP, and even though there are more regulars there I don't see a huge change in play from 100nl -- maybe a little more 3betting, but hey, it's not like that's the worst thing in the world. Bigger pots mean bigger mistakes from opponents post-flop! I'm also pretty confident that I'll be able to run at 2 ptbb/100 or greater from the start (I didn't run at lower than 2.7 for any month at 100nl), which should mean that my bankroll will continue to grow at the same rate.

Enough with the talk... time to take the plunge. Good luck me (200nl @ AP / 100nl @ PS ftw!)

july results

2008-08-05T09:49:00.005-04:00

Holy crap did this month suck in terms of volume. I was just not around to play much at all. I did manage to keep up on the Leggo videos though, and talking through hands with malfaire always helps to improve my game. During the month I played a little bit of 100nl on PStars and also a few sessions of 200nl at AP. Overall I think I did pretty well... just need to carve out more time to sit down and play (which will be tough in August with my bday and vacation coming up). Maybe if I get my act together this fall I'll be at 400nl by the start of 2009!

July Results:

Table Profit: $808.07
ABS Rakeback: $101.55

July Goals Review:

10k hands total -- FAIL (hah, not even close... and it was a low goal anyway!)
9k bankroll mark -- FAIL (got close... $8700 to close the month)
Watch all new Leggo vids -- SUCCESS
One sweat per: Ian, Brian, Mark -- FAIL (1 out of 3)
Watch all new Leggo vids -- SUCCESS
Contact Greg for SSNL Tapes -- FAIL (is it a failure if he *NEVER* responds?)
200nl shot -- SUCCESS

weekly update #23

2008-07-21T10:48:00.002-04:00

7 July - 13 July:
464 hands (100nl)
-$224.20
-24.16 ptbb/100

14 July - 20 July:
2,216 hands (100nl)
$518.48
11.70 ptbb/100

As mentioned before, not making much time to play recently but hopefully I'll be more in the mood to play for the rest of July and into August. Took the first 2 weeks of July off completely and fired some tables up for the first time on the 13th -- obviously was a tad rusty as I dropped 2BI pretty quickly. Put in another session during last week on PStars but don't have those results with me (+1BI approx. as I was testing out PT3). Another -3BI on AP again Friday night and I wasn't feeling very comfortable with my game. Watched some more Leggo vids and proceeded to smash the tables on Saturday for +10BI. Yay me.

Side note, I'd like the thank AP for this cooler of a hand; however, why couldn't you have let me hit the BBJ? That would have been quite nifty... I'll share it with the poker community, I swear.

june results

2008-07-21T10:45:00.002-04:00

6,803 hands (100nl)
$663.54
4.88 ptbb/100

164 hands (200nl)
($513.85)
(78.33) ptbb/100

Obviously haven't been putting too much time into poker during the summer months, which isn't the worst thing in the world. I am staying current on the Leggo videos though (even though they have been sparse up until recently). The small "shot" at 200nl didn't work out so well in June, but I still managed a positive month. Yipee.

weekly update #22

2008-06-23T11:51:00.002-04:00

16 June - 22 June:
417 hands (100nl)
$94.04
11.28 ptbb/100

Wasn't too available to play this week... softball, live cardgame with co-workers, and visiting home took precedence. These one session weeks need to end, especially with the purchase of my latest toy (read: 30" Samsung monitor). Oh, and if anyone has any idea on the easiest and most efficient way to withdraw funds from AP (US account) in $1000 chunks that would be greatly appreciated... I have a little bit too much sitting online for my liking. Thanks!

weekly update #21

2008-06-23T11:33:00.002-04:00

9 June - 15 June:
1,703 hands (100nl)
$379.26
11.14 ptbb/100

164 hands (200nl)
($513.85)
(78.33) ptbb/100

See previous post to see my thoughts on 200nl at the moment. Haven't really been playing top notch as of late, but still continue to pummel 100nl at AP, so I guess that's a plus. Probably would have been a breakeven week if I hadn't gone completely brain dead on this hand. I don't think there's any way I should be stacking off with such a low flush here in a limped pot... (yay for me limping and not raising, whiskey tango foxtrot?).

welcome to 200nl

2008-06-15T02:10:00.002-04:00

Thanks for trying, please come again. This is how my shot of 200nl greated me:

Hand 1:
Pretty easy to get away from this, but sometimes I'm stubborn.

Hand 2:
Don't think I like my line, and when I get in here my equity is never great, but still... wtf?

Hand 3:
Do not pass go... do not collect $200.

Screw you 200nl; you are the devil! (I'll be back)

weekly update #20

2008-06-10T15:04:00.002-04:00

2 June - 8 June:
3,100 hands (100nl)
$275.83
4.45 ptbb/100

Not much to say about the beginning of June... it's been pretty meh but I did manage to get in a good amount of hands. I think there are 2 reasons behind this: 1.) I'm starting to mix in some 6-tabling and 2.) Absolute's BBJ was ridiculously high and I really wanted to get me some. Also interesting is the fact that I eclipsed the 8k bankroll goal, so I've started datamining the 200nl games on AP. I also need to figure out how to withdraw some of this cizash so I can buy myself a dandy little 30" monitor. 12-tablin' is for ballaz.

lollercoasters

2008-06-05T15:40:00.006-04:00

Going through my PT database earlier this morning and noticed something funny. Apparently I figured something out since starting anew this year and really focusing on improving my game. The following graphs show the difference in my 100nl 6max play from 2007 vs. 2008. All I can say is "lollercoasters... I used to suck."

2008:

2007:

may results

2008-06-03T14:09:00.003-04:00

Going to start off by saying that I'm gonna skip the last weekly review for May. Needless to say, I smashed faces. Monster month for me in terms of results and growth (IMO); not so much in terms of volume of play. I know that I want to get a ton more hands in on Poker Stars, but would rather wait until PT3 is stable and go from there. In the meantime, I'll take advantage of the ridiculously soft AP games and rack up the rakeback. If I move to PStars, I really need to be getting in a bunch of hands in order to convert VPPs to bonus moneys to soften the blow of no rakesbacks.

In other news, Greg from Leggo finally got back to me about the SSNL Group -- no go. Apparently he's too busy at the moment with travel, Vegas, etc. to devote time to another group, which is understandable. He did, however, offer to sell me the audio tapes (12 hrs or so) from the last session at a reduced price. I'm seriously considering this option, even though I know I'm a visual person and would rather have some sort of interaction. On the other hand, it's probably better than straight lessons, so we'll see. Anyway, on to the results...

May Results:

Table Profit: $1,877.41
ABS Rakeback: $120.91

May Goals Review:

2,500 hands / wk -- MINOR FAIL (final week was well over)
25% hands played on PStars -- N/A (PT3 still buggy... waiting game)
Make 15 buyins at 100nl -- SUCCESS
One sweat / wk -- FAIL (although Ian really is a lucky charm when sweating)
Watch all new Leggo vids -- SUCCESS
Weekly reviews -- MINOR SUCCESS (still need to do more hand analysis)
Sign up for SSNL -- N/A (see above)

weekly update #19

2008-05-27T10:43:00.003-04:00

19 May - 25 May:
2,295 hands (100nl)
$800.00 (weird, huh?)
17.43 ptbb/100

Pretty happy that I got in this volume of hands even though I only played Monday - Thursday. Spent the weekend at home with the family, which was good. Also learned that one of my old neighborhood friends is now a 6'6 350 pound Guitar Hero savant -- I watched the kid get 92% on Dragonforce on Expert mode. Never seen fat fingers move so fast... but I digress.

As far as poker is concerned, I'm quickly approaching the $7k bankroll milestone and really would like to improve my game more by signing up for Greg's SSNL course. However, something like 5 emails and 3 forum posts have gone unanswered in the past month, and I'm starting to think this isn't going to happen. Maybe I should just spend the $750 on Bobbo's book instead. Thoughts? Also, quick shoutout to Ian for the heads up on hhSmithey's new PokerStars datamining service. Even though it isn't even close to all-inclusive, 200k hands per week at 100nl should be a good place to start fish hunting and I'll be moving a good portion of my play back to that site in the near future.

A few big hands from the week:

Hand 1: Villain is a 22/18 regular who is capable of floating both streets with any pocket pair. I don't really like my river check since I'm not getting a bet from a lot of the hands I want value from (99, TT, JJ, JQ). In retrospect, I think I should lead out again since the only hands that will raise me are the ones that have me beat (AQ,55,66,88).

Hand 2: Villain is a 42/10 donk (typical AP) and is just generally god awful, so I'm pretty sure this is just a standard stackoff. Limp KQo ftw.

Hand 3: I'm not so good at the maths, but I'm thinking that I'm priced in to call here. I'm not loving it though. Sidenote: the reason I'm calling the PFR is that I wanted to play any hand I could with the UTG villain (terrible donk who was on tilt and would definitely pay me off). Also, who here hates the flop raise... show of hands?

Hand 4 and Hand 5: Sometimes I flop big and people like to give me $$$.

Hand 6: And sometimes I get lucky (although I'm pretty sure I need to make this play against a donk who could easily have A2, Ax, or a draw...)

weekly update #18

2008-05-14T11:43:00.003-04:00

05 May - 11 May:
619 hands (100nl)
$9.14
0.74 ptbb/100

Lollercoasters! One session for the week is, well, weak. Granted, I was pretty busy and didn't really have time to sit and focus, but still... Looks like I'm really going to have to crank out a bunch of hands in the next 1/2 of the month to stay on track.

In other news, the Pens are absolutely smashing faces on their way to the Stanley Cup. I've never really been a huge hockey fan (been getting more into it over the past 2-3 years... thanks High-Def), but my family is all about the Pittsburgh sports scene and I'm happy to see their years of totally sucking ass are finally bearing some fruit. Sid the Kid, Malkin, and Staal are all fantastic and fun as hell to watch. Let's just hope they're able to keep this core around for the next few years.

weekly update #17

2008-05-06T13:47:00.002-04:00

28 Apr - 04 May:
1,443 hands (100nl)
$385.88
13.37 ptbb/100

Blah blah blah, didn't play enough his week and all that jazz. I need to stop talking about failing and actually carve out time to play more. Unfortunately for me some good poker buddies recently joined the ranks of 100nl AP regulars, which limits the tables and times where I can play on that site (either that or I'll sign up for another sn and sit to their left!!!). This really shouldn't be an excuse since I can just fire up PStars and play there. Oh well, May is a new month... which should bring more play and a renewed focus. As mentioned before, I plan on joining Greg's SSNL class as soon as it gets started again, and I've teamed up with some other 100nl and 200nl players to trade sweats/etc. in the near future.

Oh, and in other news, BTimm is absolutely getting slaughtered in fantasy baseball. One month in, Kevin = 1st place and Brian = 10th place. Just sayin'...

april results

2008-04-30T10:59:00.004-04:00

Swing, swang, swung... gotta love a swongy month. Played a pathetic amount of hands (which needs to change, and fast) but feel like I learned a whole heck of a lot during April. Ended up watching a ton of videos, messed around at 50nl learning to aggress aemfjones-style (nice 8buyin loss, but still beneficial), and came to the realization that I need to take my game to the next level. I've officially decided (with some advice from malfaire) to sign up for Leggo's SSNL group lessons with MYNAMEIZGREG. While the $750 is a little over 10% my current bankroll, I'm basically losing value every time I sit at the tables without taking this class (why? because I'm not that good, and playing when you're not good is -EV). I'll easily make that $750 back at 100nl... sooner, rather than later, with enhanced skill setz.

[On a side note: If I look at my stats after experimenting and tweaksing at 50nl, I ran at 8ptbb/100 over the remaining 8500 hands for the month. Just sayin...]

April Results:

Table Profit: $654.89
ABS Rakeback: $170.48

March Goals Review:

2,500 hands / wk -- MINOR FAIL
2,000 hands played on PStars-- FAIL (didn't really get around to it... I like rakeback)
Make 10 buyins at 100nl -- SUCCESS
One sweat / wk -- FAIL
Watch 2 instructional videos / wk -- SUCCESS
Weekly reviews -- SUCCESS (kind of... still need to do more hand analysis)

weekly update #16

2008-04-30T10:44:00.003-04:00

21 Apr - 27 Apr:
1,656 hands (100nl)
$248.70
-7.51 ptbb/100

Wow, talk about an epic fail week. Not only did I play only 2 nights, I didn't play very well either. Some pretty good examples of where you should not put money into the pot because you are surely behind, but I won't bore everyone with those specifics. I need to start writing down specific hands during my sessions that I am lost in and follow up with some more in depth analysis post session. I'll try to get that going in May... but obviously my discipline has been lacking lately.

weekly update #15

2008-04-21T13:27:00.003-04:00

14 Apr - 20 Apr:
2,288 hands (100nl)
$514.23
11.24 ptbb/100

Didn't get as many hands in this week as I would have liked, but I'll take it since I didn't really have a chance to sit until Thursday night. With softball starting up and weekends starting to yield some decent weather (high 70's and sunny), it seems as though it will be increasingly difficult to carve out time for poker. Here's hoping malfaire keeps me on track.

Continued to watch and learn from Leggo's vids, particularly late position aggression and finding spots where AP villains are 'one and done' kinda guys. Knowing when I can profitably double barrel has had a huge impact on my overall play. I've also been working on upping my Att. to Steal Blinds (from 24% thru March to 32% since April) and my Won $ When Saw Flop (33% thru Mar. to 38%). To me, attaining certain "ideal stats" is a waste of time, but I like to see that I am effectively opening up my game in late position and taking away pots where neither me nor my opponent make a good hand. I believe aejones was the one who stated in one of his vids that most of the time both you and your opponent flop jack shit, whether it be a weakish pair or nothing at all. The more skilled player will be able to take these pots down, and therefore increase their winrate. Now that I am starting to understand that, I'm working to incorporate that level of thinking into my game and steal away pots where the villain isn't likely to have a hand that he is willing to get to showdown with.

Anyway, I'll post some problem hands once I've had a chance to browse through the sessions.

weekly update #14

2008-04-16T14:46:00.004-04:00

7 Apr - 13 Apr:
2,773 hands (100nl)
$816.23
14.72 ptbb/100

I runned spicy hot last week. Sustainable? No. But does it illustrate that I'm improving my game and finding more spots to make money -- I like to think so. We'll see if this continues throughout the month, but I feel like the videos I've been watching lately have really been sinking in and some of the hand analysis I've been doing with malfaire has really been beneficial. Some decent hands to take a look at below, and then a few where the poker gods decided to say "Congrats for trying to improve your game, why don't we let you hit the flop so hard it's impossible to misplay your hand." (As an aside, I will also display how this logic is flawed, as I successfully managed to mess up quads for 200BB stacks -- yay me!)

** No results posted for now, as I don't want them to influence responses (will update) **

Hand 1:
Villain is 38 / 8 / 1.3 over 75 hands. Didn't really know how to interpret his flop and turn leads, as I don't know if he would be doing this more often with a draw or weak top pair type hand. If it's a draw, am I better off just calling? Or is getting it in on the turn here fine?

Hand 2:
BTN is playing 27 / 21 / 3.5 over 80 hands; BB is playing 55 / 6/ 0.5 over 150 hands. Being 185BB deep in this hand vs. the original raiser had me a bit spooked here. I really, really do not like my line vs. his range. I think I know what I would like to change about my play, but what line would you take?

Hand 3:
UTG is playing 41 / 4 / 0.4 over 260 hands; BTN is playing 32 / 9 / 1.0 over 200 hands. Not too concerned with the flop and turn play, except possibly the turn bet size (thoughts?). I feel as though I need to play this hand fast due to the wet board, but is there any merit in checking the river and feigning a missed flush draw? What if I told you that the villain's river AF was 5.0?

Hand 4:
BTN is playing 25 / 17 / 1.9 over 250 hands. Should probably be leading the flop and turn here seeing as though I've got top 2 on a pretty wet board, but sometimes the inner donk in me shines. I don't really have a problem getting it in on the turn here, because I think I'm maximizing my value vs. draws (whether they be Qx or clubs), but once again I hate my line. Thoughts on how better to approach this hand?

Hand 5:
Villain is running 43 / 6 / 0.6 over 180 hands. Pretty sure my flop and turn bets need to be slightly larger to charge the potential draws, but once the villain wakes up on the river with a 1/2pot bet how do you react? Is this the sign of someone hitting a chased flush, or is it a slow-played weaker Ax trying to get value from a perceived missed draw? Call behind, fold, raise for value?

Poker Gods givith:
Hand 6:
Would be quite interesting if I didn't river the K and he still shoved...

Hand 7:
Note how I miss about $25 in value because I'm a retard. He obviously has a smaller set that rivered a boat (uh, duh m0niker, you are holding the other two Aces so he does not have AK) and is calling a shove. Granted, I almost peed my pants when I saw the 4 glorious aces, but such silly mistakes make me upset with the hand.

And Poker Gods taketh away (on the river no less):
Hand 8
Hand 9
Hand 10

surprise

2008-04-10T11:54:00.003-04:00

Looks like Christmas came early this year...

http://weaktight.com/156559

Too bad that my entire session last night hinged upon this hand's results -- I was breakeven besides this hand over 500 hands. I've really been trying to focus on selective aggression after watching LeggoPoker vids. Bobbofitos is absolutely ridiculous in terms of knowledge and the way he explains things, and if I had $750 to burn right now I would buy his book immediately.

what would you do? (hand 1)

2008-04-08T16:12:00.003-04:00

CO Villain is 24/6/0.8 over 800 hands
UTG and SB are unknown

$0.5/$1 No Limit Holdem (6 players)

Stacks:
UTG: $439.85
Hero: $156.00
CO: $188.65
BTN: $94.65
SB: $197.60
BB: $96.75

Pre-flop: ($1.5, 6 players) Hero is UTG+1

UTG calls $1, Hero raises to $5, CO raises to $12, 1 fold, SB calls $11.5, 1 fold, UTG calls $11, Hero calls $7

My image at the time was super nitty and I figured I needed to start opening up some hands to try to alter this fact, but 9To UTG+1 isn't the right hand to be doing this with. That being said, once there are 2 coldcallers with effective stacks being 150BB, I think I'm obligated to tag along. Can't really put the unknowns on ranges, maybe small pocket pairs or suited broadways, but I think the CO has QQ+ or AK here 100% of the time. It should be pretty easy to play against him knowing this.

Flop: ($49, 4 players)
SB checks, UTG checks, Hero checks, CO bets $33, SB folds, UTG folds, Hero ?????

Decision time here... checking the flop is standard, but I know that this board has to be scary for our villain because his hand is, for all intents and purposes, face up. The folds by the SB and UTG villains rule out sets, flush draws, and most likely Jx on their part. So what do we do: fold, raise, or call? Let's make a case for each, and I'd like some feedback on what you'd choose and why.

1.) Fold - We know he very likely has us beat at the moment and need one of our 8 outs to make the best hand. Even if we hit our straight, though, 2 of our "outs" make a flush and can either make him the flush or give him redraw outs. It's not worth it, just fold now.

2.) Raise - The board is pretty scary for a 1pair hand, with easily made sets and flush draws abound. Unless he has AdAx he should be hard-pressed to find a call. However, he might also simply be playing his cards and see a big pair that he can't fold. I'll take my fold equity + my outs and roll the dice... now, how much do I raise to?

3.) Call - I've got 8 outs to make my hand. I can also probably use diamonds as decent bluff cards to fold out AA and KK with some regularity. Jacks can probably be bluffed with some percentage of effectiveness as well. Let's call here and re-evaluate the turn.

3b.) If you choose to call, what is your line if make the straight? What is your line if a diamond comes? What is your line if a J falls on the turn?

weekly update #13

2008-04-08T11:33:00.002-04:00

31 Mar - 6 Apr:
3,080 hands (100nl)
-$151.05
-5.8 ptbb/100

930 hands (50nl)
-$425.65
-45.77 ptbb/100

Oh man that stings just looking at it. Obviously not the results I was looking for to start off April, but I think that there was a lot of great learning over those 4000 hands. I started off the month pretty poorly at 100nl, which wasn't a big deal. Hit up a ton of LeggoPoker vids (all of craig's low limit stuff) and tried to soak up all of the selective aggression information. After some PT review and reflection I decided that my game was pretty straightforward and I needed to make some alterations in order to prevent falling into tagfish mentality. And so started the 50nl "let's get into tough spots with marginal hands and learn how to play" adventure.

I'd like to give myself an "A" for effort, because I went all out crazy trying to get into marginal spots. I think I did a pretty good job of that, running 29/25/4.5 over the 900 or so hands I put in. However, I get a nice, big "FAIL" for my overall results. While I effectively got into these marginal spots, you can't really say that I managed them even close to profitably. Of the overall 8 buyins I lost during the process, I'd say that about 3 of them were due to coolers (KK vs AA, QQ vs AA, JJ vs QQ), a couple due to combo draws not hitting, and the rest was just bad play on my part. Growing pains were to be expected, so I'm not too concerned. In general though, I was really pleased with the process, as I started to get the hang of when to float certain villains and take the pot away on the turn, who and when I could 3bet lite preflop, what boards I could profitably (and not so profitably) double barrel, etc. We'll call it a $250 lesson and move on knowing that I've gained a ton of knowledge that should help my overall play.

Some interesting hands that popped up through the week that are worth discussing:

Hand 1:
Villain is 22/11/0.9 over 220 hands and we've tangled a bit in some smaller pots. I'm playing pretty loose at this point in the session, opening a lot of hands late position with very little resistance from the table. Being as though we're both 200bb+ deep I think a call of his 3bet here is pretty mandatory. He's likely not 3betting with his mid pocket pairs here, so he almost certainly has JJ+, AQ+ and if I can flop big I might be able to build up a fairly significant pot (implied odds ftw). Check behind on the flop leads me to believe he's got a decent hand that has showdown value, basically just looking for some pot control. Turn is gold for me as it likely doesn't improve my perceived range and he's obligated to make a call with literally anything in his range outside of AQ. Here's where I think I mess up the hand... I bet $14 into $24 and end up missing a significant amount of value in the hand because of it. What hand can he possibly have that is calling $14 but not calling $20? Nothing. So if I bet out to $20 here and get a call then I have a $64 pot on the river that I can fire $55 or so at and likely get a call from AK still. As played, though, I still like the river bet size in relation to the pot in order to maximize my value. Overall, I likely missed out on at least $20 more from him simply by betting too small on the flop. Baby steps... baby steps...

Hand 2:
Villain is 19/8/1.3 over 170 hands. More missed value on this hand, I think. A flat behind from a villain with these stats likely means a mid to low pocket pair (22-TT), or some sort of suited broadway cards. Pretty standard cbet on the flop here, although I'm not 100% pleased with the size. I've been trying to change up my bet size between 1/2pot and 3/4pot, but don't think this is necessarily the spot for the former. Anyway, on the turn I need to be firing out more than $14 into $24 (coincidence? more likely a trend...). Standard Zeebo theorem applies, and I just made second nuts. Same goes for the river, as the J likely doesn't improve my hand here. Probably another Andrew Jackson left on the table here.... frown face.

Hand 3:
Villain is 31/22/2.4 over 150 hands. Pretty standard isolation here, and obviously jumping up and down in my seat when the flop hits. However, what line is best to take in these situations. I know that the original raiser is crazy aggressive on the flop (9.5 flop AF), so I elected to let him stab at it. I didn't want to c/r him off of a hand like KQ, QQ, JJ, or some other randomness. Felt like he might take another stab at it on the turn, and I'd still almost always get him to stack off with AQ and maybe AJ, but does c/c flop + check turn actually "look too strong"? Anyway, figured a river bet of like $15 would look like a blocker bet with mid pocket pair, but maybe I should have just let him attempt to bluff the river. I know it's all theoretical at this point, but what line do y'all think would get the best value here?

Hand 4:
UTG+1 Villain is 56/21/1.7 over 170 hands; CO and SB are unknown but I'm not giving the CO any credit with his stack size as it is. 69s isn't a hand I'll typically play, but given the multiway nature of the pot I figured it was good enough to see a flop. Leading the flop here is pretty standard, I think. Turn completes the flush draw, so betting out here might not be the greatest idea, but I still think it's fine. If I get raised up here it's an easy pitch, but I dont exactly know what a flatcall suggests... he minraised preflop UTG+1, flatted a flop bet, and now flats a turn bet. It didn't really add up to me, and I figured he might have something like AJc or something of that nature, so I went for some value on the river. Was this a mistake? I don't really think I can call a raise here, but I just can't quite figure out what he could possibly have here.

** I've got 2 more hands that I want to post, but I'm only going to put up partial streets in order to get feedback on lines. Hopefully I'll have time to get those up soon.

March Results (... aka "a whole lotta fail")

2008-04-01T16:43:00.005-04:00

Talk about a bad month in terms of personal goals. I had wanted to crank out like 15k-20k but actually played even less in March than I had in February. Overall I think that I may have burnt out a bit and just chose to spend time on other aspects of my life, which I think is a good thing. I don't want to be sitting at the tables if my mind isn't into it. However, I did manage to watch a ton of videos and finish up reading Prof. No-Limit Hold'em (overall, I'd give it a solid conceptual rating, but don't know how applicable it is to real life play... I'll certainly be reading again when I get the time).

I think one of my big problems towards the end of the month was lack of accountability. Once the group that I was in dissolved, I found myself lacking the motivation to sit at the table and grind out hands. This certainly isn't meant to put the blame on anyone else, as this is 100% my problem -- I should be accountable to one person, and one person only. That being said, I think that a solid group of players surrounding me definitely enhanced my game, and I hope that in the near future I'll be able to get some more sweats in and eventually find another group to be part of. In the meantime, I need to work on setting a schedule for myself and sticking to it. I can't get better if I don't play... "If you want to be the man, you've got to beat the man."

March Results:

Table Profit: $504.53
ABS Rakeback: $142.30
PokerStars Reward: Nintendo Wii (finally got it... time to mod it)

February Goals Review:

3,00 hands / wk -- FAIL
Sustain > 3.5 ptbb/100 -- FAIL (ran just under 3... at least I was in the green)
1 non-group sweat session / wk -- FAIL (do we see a trend?)
Watch 2 instructional videos / wk -- SUCCESS (at least I blew this one out of the water)
Weekly reviews via blog posts -- SUCCESS (kind of... need to do more hand analysis)
Finish reading Professional NLHE -- SUCCESS (not quite sure how I feel about it right now)
Begin reading The Poker Mindset -- SUCCESS (started it... even though I'm not very far)

weekly update #12

2008-04-01T16:32:00.002-04:00

24 Mar - 30 Mar:
1,307 hands (100nl)
-$181.80
-6.95 ptbb/100

See last post... except even more vids. As mentioned before, I chose to leave CR in favor of LeggoPoker and have been very impressed. Craig's videos are top notch and I already feel like I've picked up a few things from his play that will help me out once I get back into the swing of things. Here's hoping I don't fail so hard in April!

Side note: btimm thinks that just because he is leading fantasy baseball on opening day he is somehow going to pull a victory. Such a bad move, overconfidence is.

weekly update #11

2008-04-01T16:27:00.002-04:00

17 Mar - 23 Mar:
772 hands (100nl)
-$25.64
-1.66 ptbb/100

Nothing to see here folks... didn't play a lot due to other things going on in my everyday lifes. However, did manage to watch a bunch of vids in my free time, so that's a plus I think.

so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye

2008-03-27T17:43:00.002-04:00

Finally pulled the trigger and opted not to renew my CardRunners membership. I haven't been getting a whole hell of a lot out of their videos lately and have decided to give LeggoPoker a shot. I transferred the requisite $400 (thank you rakeback) over to them this morning for a year long subscription and look to hid the vids hard in April. Maybe this will help since I've dropped about 3 buyins since getting back into the swing of things this week. Running a combo flush+straight draw doesn't do so hot against a made full house. Such is life.

On a side note, btimm is gonna go down so hard in fantasy baseball next week he won't even know what hit him. Oh, and let's send out a prayer for malfaire, who is currently partying up a storm down in Miami -- I'd say that there is a 22.4% chance that he does not return alive.

non poker related junk

2008-03-24T10:42:00.003-04:00

As mentioned earlier, I haven't had a ton of time to sit at the tables over the past few weeks. A combination of corporate slave-labor, fantasy baseball, NCAA March Madness, and Easter holiday traveling have cut into my table time, and although it's not the best for my bankroll or development, I think the break has been good for me mentally. I'm excited to get back into the swing of things later this week, and will likely push to get in 3000 more hands prior to the end of the month. Let's hope for more green figures! Unfortunately, I will be going at it alone since the poker group I belonged to has disbanded. I guess I'll probably start looking for some consistent 100nl or 200nl winners to team up with, as being part of a group was extremely beneficial to me. I'll get on that in April and set a goal to have another group set up before the end of the month.

NCAA March Madness
Well, my dad is a Pitt alum and ever since I was a kid I've been a Big East fan (making a trip to the Big East tourney at Madison Square Garden for at least one of the four day even each year since 1992). Unfortunately, this bias translates into my bracket pickings as I just cannot pick against this conference. Every year Pitt gets a top 5 seed, and every year I am convinced that "this is their year" to make the Final Four. Every year they disappoint me and destroy my bracket. This year is no different. (On a side note, I did get the Nova and WVU Sweet 16 picks correct due to this bias... yay me.) Despite the fact that I did in fact burn my brackets on Saturday night, I love this time of year and the craziness that ensues. Here's hoping Stephan Curry takes his team to the Final Four and scores 8 billion points along the way.

Fantasy Baseball
A few years ago a colleague at work convinced my boss and me to join his fantasy baseball league despite our constant protests and complaining that "we don't know anything about MLB." Said co-worker played on our competitive nature and goaded us into joining his head-to-head league by mocking us and insinuating that we were not up to the challenge. Despite the fact that I had only ever competed in fantasy football prior, and hadn't watched any MLB outside of ESPN highlights for years, I had to accept and defend my honor. That year I autodrafted a team that consisted of 21 players whose names I did not know and could not pronounce (seriously, who is this Mark Teixeira guy I got in the first round?). Being the competitive person that I am, I piloted that team to a 1st place victory against some seasoned fantasy baseball vets and have been hooked ever since. For anyone out there who doesn't play, you should -- it's a heck of a lot of fun (especially the trash talking).

Anyway, I decided to do 3 different leagues this year with both friends and co-workers. The one that I'm most focused on winning is our 10-person H2H league (which includes BTimm this year). This league's format isn't the best, nor is it the highest buyin league that I'm in, but I want the win for bragging rights. Nothing is better than smack-talking your boss over the interweb via Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball (renaming my team name to "Cry Eyes" after he complained about a particularly demoralizing loss last year is a personal favorite -- subtle, yet effective). My team, as drafted, is below. I plan on dominating.

C: Joe Mauer (4)
1B: Adrian Gonzalez (10)
2B: Kelly Johnson (16)
SS: Rafael Furcal (8)
3B: Alex Rodriguez (1)
OF: Carlos Lee (3)
OF: Corey Hart (6)
OF: Matt Kemp (11)
Util: Ryan Zimmerman (9)
BN: Brad Hawpe (15)
BN: James Loney (17)
BN: Evan Longoria (19)
BN: Billy Butler (21)

SP: Jake Peavy (2)
SP: Brandon Webb (5)
SP: Francisco Liriano (12)
SP: Rich Hill (13)
RP: J.J. Putz (7)
RP: Matt Capps (14)
RP: George Sherrill (18)
RP: Jonathan Broxton (20)

weekly update #10

2008-03-24T10:34:00.002-04:00

10 Mar - 16 Mar:
2,592 hands (100nl)
$137.69
2.66 ptbb/100

Nothing too stellar jumps out from this subset of hands but maybe I'll do a more in depth analysis if I get some time. Things have been really hectic lately and I haven't had the time to play let alone do proper reviews. Maybe things will lighten up this week.

weekly update #9

2008-03-10T11:51:00.003-04:00

3 Mar - 9 Mar:
3,991 hands (100nl)
$659.23
8.26 ptbb/100

Crushed the tables hard this week and ran pretty hot to boot. Really felt like I played pretty well, and deciding to 6-table really helped increase my volume of hands. I do feel like I am playing too tight at the moment, and after a discussion with Brian have since decided that I really need to look for optimal spots to loosen my game. I still stand by the fact that you shouldn't be targeting specific stats (ie: "I want to play an x/x/x game"), but agree that changing up your game to be looser in certain situations will certainly benefit you as you move up stakes. Hopefully as I migrate towards playing some PokerStars in the next few weeks I'll be able to target some villains with more standard stats and get into different situations (on AP it seems like whenever I try to isolate limpers in position all that happens is I get 3 calls and end up having a 4way $20 pot on the flop... fun times).

The Bad:
Hand 1
I'm getting frustrated with overpairs in multiway pots and am starting to feel like I shouldn't be felting this. However, I don't want to be too results oriented. There are a ton of draws out there and I think I just need to go with this hand. Whatever, keep playing 37s you retard.

Hand 2
Button is playing 24/7/0.8 (30% WTSD). I typically don't cbet into two villains with air but figured this was a dry enough flop that it didn't figure to hit anyone too hard. If called I'd simply reevaluate the turn and likely give up. Of course, the turn brings me a combo flush + gutshot and I chk/raise all in expecting to get a fold from weak Q's enough of the time for this move to be profitable. I didn't decide to get it all in until after checking the turn though, so this clearly wasn't good in terms of "planning out your hand." I don't hate getting it all in here, but what are your thoughts? Do I have enough fold equity for this to be profitable?

Hand 3
Not so sure I like how I played this hand. Should I even be calling this turn shove by the SB? SB caps the raising, but UTG+1 surely has a big hand if he's raising into 2 players here. Does that mean big flush draw, 2 pair, set? Or can I conclude that it's 89 enough of the time to fold. Thoughts... I just really do not like this situation?

The Good:
Hand 4, Hand 5, Hand 6
Nothing really to note here other than "flop big hands, get paid." Hand 6 is interesting because the villain and I were 130BB effective and he's a regular playing 18/15/2.5. If I flop a big hand here he is handing me his entire stack 90% of the time. By the way, he was none to pleased with the "ty sir" that he got after stacking off with AA.

Hand 7
Pretty straightforward hand... didn't really feel the need to push off our UTG friend off a hand so I just called UTG+1's 50BB shove. I guess he would have tagged along with QQ had I shoved, but what's the point?

Hand 8
Flop cbet was incorrectly sized by me (not intentional) but it worked out well. No reason to bet/3bet him off of a hand with no draws out there, so I decided to let him stack off with his Ax. K on the turn scared me in the sense that it might prevent him from calling another barrel, but I figured that if he wanted to chk/minraise the flop he's gotta like his hand. A chk/minraise on the turn as well must mean he really likes his hand now, and basically telegraphed that he either had AK, A2, A8, or 22. Good game son, let me relieve you of your chips.

Hand 9
Unknown villain here but min3bet PF typically means his holding is super strong; at the time I'm thinking TT+, AQ+, and maybe some random garbage because players are just so bad. Flop doesn't hit me so I'm just folding if he bets. Thanks for the free card, pal... 2 pair is good enough to continue for $5. Rivered my boat and obviously AK still has me beat (only 3 combinations), but I think a value shove here is correct hoping he was a moron with his JJ or KK. Thoughts?

weekly update #8

2008-03-10T11:42:00.002-04:00

25 Feb - 2 Mar:
2,697 hands (100nl)
$153.56
2.85 ptbb/100

0ops, forgot to post my results for the ending week of Feb. Pretty swingy but ended up in the green and got in the requisite number of hands for BTimm's challenge... +EV. If I have a chance to peruse for problem hands I will post them up later.

February Results

2008-03-03T11:21:00.005-05:00

Built upon a great month for me in January with quite the solid February. Actually made the most total profit (rake/rewards included) in any month since focusing solely on cash games, even though I only got in 12,000 hands. I really need to try and carve out time to get in 15k-20k hands per month, but I don't want to detract from my personal life. It's really hard (in my opinion) to get in this volume with a 40hr+/wk job and an active social life, but I'll be doing my best.

One thing that I might be considering (now that my BR is sufficient for 100nl) is grinding out 6 tables of 100nl at a more "straightforward" play 2-3 days out of the week and playing a more focused "experimental" game at 2-4 tables the other 2-3 days. This should increase my volume while still allowing me to learn and grow as a player. I'm not 100% sure I'm going to try this approach, but the fact that I recently purchased SmartBuddy and can chase the fishies easier should keep 6tabling profitable even if I'm on semi-autopilot. (On a side note, my online bankroll has finally eclipsed the $4k mark, which has always seemed like an invisible hurdle for me. Now that I'm past it, I hope to never look back.)

February Results:

Table Profit: $967.75
ABS Bonus: $195.00
ABS Rakeback: $171.56
btimm Challenge: $125.00 (unofficial)
PokerStars Reward: Nintendo Wii (apparently on backorder -- still waiting)

February Goals Review:

2,500 hands / wk -- SUCCESS
100nl shots at least 2x / wk -- SUCCESS (now my normal game unless I see some juicey fishes at 50nl)
Sustain > 8 bb/100 for the month -- SUCCESS (ran at a combined 5.13 ptbb/100)
At least 1 sweat session / wk -- SUCCESS (3 Millennium Group sweats plus a few random others)
Watch 2 instructional videos / wk -- SUCCESS
Weekly reviews via blog posts -- SUCCESS
Finish reading Professional NLHE -- FAIL (almost there, just need to buckle down)
Begin reading The Poker Mindset -- FAIL (Ian is really pushing this for the group)

btimm challenge update #3

2008-02-29T22:11:00.002-05:00

Finished up my requisite hands at about 10pm on Friday (nothing like bringing it down to the wire). Final stats below... gotta love finishing strong. Don't know if this is good enough to win, but I'm quite pleased with my results overall. Would have been even better if I didn't go all "Noel-like" (peten2toms) and sit when I was not in the right frame of mind (bye bye 1.5BI in 30 hands).

5,120 hands (3 hands 50nl / remainder 100nl)
+$662.69
6.50 ptbb/100

weekly update #7

2008-02-28T12:09:00.003-05:00

18 Feb - 24 Feb:
3 hands (50nl) --- fish I followed didn't like me sitting next to him and left
$3.15
105.00 ptbb/100

4,289 hands (100nl)
$521.63
6.08 ptbb/100

Pretty good week for me, both in terms of hand totals and results. Since I wanted to participate in btimm's challenge this forced me to get more hands in during the weekend than I was used to. I think I ended up nitting my game up to compensate with the fact that I was 5 tabling vs. fish, and I'm not really pleased with that. In general, I just don't have enough free time available to me right now to put in 5k hand weeks, so I shouldn't be pushing to achieve this volume. One day, sure, but not right now as I attempt to retool my game and ensure that I'm making proper decisions at all times based on table dynamics (c).

Another thing I plan on doing is moving some of my play back to PokerStars in mid-March (need to clear out the remainder of my Absolute bonus $ first... free money what???). The reasoning behind this is the fact that the majority of players on AP are just so horrible that I'm not feeling like I'm getting the requisite experience playing against aggressive players that I need in order to become a winning $200nl+ player. Hopefully the knowledge I've gained in the past few months transfers over and I can continue my winning play across both sites. In preparation of this shift I'll need to revamp my PAHud display for PokerStars, as I've begun using many more stats to aid my play in the past few months. I'm thinking about mimicking the FTP layout used by tannenj (check out his recent 400nl CR vids if you haven't). I really want to get the most out of my PAHud and the fact that I have a very big DB of observed hands for both AP and PStars (ty malfaire) without getting to the point where my screen looks like a warzone (see appleseed's layout and your eyes will bleed -- I cringe just thinking about it).

The Good:
Hand 1
CO's limp/call (playing 48/3) combined with his chk/raise min on the flop led me to believe that he was either on some sort of a combo draw or had made a set of 5's on the flop. Versus the broader portion of his range, which included all sorts of flush and straight draws, I think I need to be re-raising this pot to protect my hand. Too many turn cards can come that would kill my action, and I think there's a good chance that he may be willing to get it all in here with a draw regardless. Turns out I had him completely dominated, which is always fun for me. Thoughts on the flop action?
Hand 2
CO is playing 18/12/2.1 over 200+ hands. Was contemplating c-betting here, as I'd do this with most hands that I am 3betting from the BB when an ace flops, but this villain had a flop AF of 10.0 so I figured I'd try to gain some value by letting him bet into me. His bet was so weak here that I didn't want to go for a chk/raise and blow him off of a hand that he appears to have liked (thinking maybe AK, AJ, or possibly TT/JJ). Opted to re-evaluate on the turn, and as it was relatively safe opted to check it back to him again to see what he would do (sidenote: pot was $42 vs. his remaining $39 so I figured I could get it all in on the river even if he opted to check the turn). Obviously villain obliges and fires the turn and we get it all in with me an 80% fav. Ship it.
Hand 3
UTG+1 is a "regular" who is playing 44/2/0.6 over 4k hands (yeah, gotta love AP). I've been in a ton of hands with this guy and know that he is calling down every street with almost any piece of the flop (WTSD 38%; W$SD 48%). Villain chk/calls my obligatory flop c-bet and I instantly know that he has a weak made hand. The fun thing about this villain is that I've seen him fire near pot out of position with a strong made hand, so I am 100% sure he doesn't have a set and very near 100% sure he doesn't have QT when he checks the turn. The rest of the hand is just pure value. I think that my history and notes on this guy really paid off in this hand as there are some instances where I will check the turn Q in hopes of getting a bluff from villains on the river -- this was clearly not the case in this hand.

The Bad:
Hand 4
Gotta love when the table empties out and you're heads up against the fish that you sat at the table for in the first place. Then you really have to love when he wants to get it all in vs. your set. What you really don't love is when he shows up with a higher set. Oops. I really don't think I can get away from this hand as said fish would be making this same exact play as light as QK, and I'm 90% sure of that. Oh, and for the record, he insta-bailed after this hand. kthxbye
Hand 5
Also gotta love posting hands that make you want to vomit when you look at them post-session. Button was playing 22/18/2.7 with an Att/St. of 38% (note to readers: this is a completely irrelevant stat in this situation, as he is obviously not attempting to steal the blinds). Unfortunately, I misused this stat to conclude that he was 3betting this hand light and put in a 4bet with my TT (fail!). I then decided to call a 5bet shove with my lowly TT (fail x2!). At least the poker gods put me straight by teasing me and then smacking me into oblivion. Note to self, TT is not a good 100BB AI preflop hand. Learn that. LEARN IT!!!!
Hand 6
UTG+1 is playing 32/2/0.5 and CO is playing 60/3/0.4 (wow, just wow) so I feel obligated to raise up PF with AJo. Opting to chk/call this flop vs. such terrible players is mistake #1. Should certainly be content with c-betting this and taking it down, as with such passive players I'm not getting any value out of AT and below or pocket pairs in the long run. Chk/calling the turn is pretty bad too. The worst possible thing to do on the river though is to put out a small value bet and call a reraise by such a passive player. Note to self: don't be such an idiot, you are losing this hand 99.999% of the time. Uglies.

btimm challenge update 2

2008-02-28T12:01:00.002-05:00

Haven't been able to get much play in since the weekend, and even when I have it's been suboptimal (hates self):

21 Feb - 27 Feb:
4431 hands (100nl/50nl)
$368.72
4.20 ptbb/100

btimm challenge update 1

2008-02-24T01:49:00.002-05:00

Quick update for all of those in btimm's challenge:

21 Feb - 23 Feb:
2951 hands (100nl/50nl)
$424.18
7.14 ptbb/100

Hope everyone else is running at 7 ptbb/100... gl at the tables.

weekly update #6

2008-02-20T11:03:00.002-05:00

11 Feb - 17 Feb:
269 hands (50nl)
$156.64
58.23 ptbb/100

2,352 hands (100nl)
$143.19
3.04 ptbb/100

Not too bad of a week considering I was sick early on and had to play massive amounts of hands over the weekend. I am glad I have laid out goals for myself though and I really think that this motivated me to get the hands in and not slack off. Baby steps...

The Good:
Hand 1
So lucky that I hit it big on the river, although I was pretty sure that the villain was on big overs on the turn and felt that my pair of 7's would be ahead a good portion of the time.
Hand 2
Caught a villain who at 2 of my tables tilting super hard after taking a bad beat on the other table. I don't think he overshoves this flop with AA or KK, so I think it was a pretty easy call here given the particulars of the situation.
Hand 3
Pretty standard hand here considering effective stacks were 125BB and I was quite sure a made set was getting paid off the majority of the time against this villain (looks like I was right).
Hand 4
Likely not the best call on the flop but figured a draw was a good portion of his range and would reevaluate the turn. Lucky for me it was the J and not the K. Best play is probably to fold this flop.

The Bad:
Hand 5
I really, really need to learn to respect paired boards more. Don't know what the correct line is here given the PF action, but I don't believe it to be what I took. Thoughts appreciated.
Hand 6
I can probably find a fold here, especially since villain is 14/12/2. What is he possibly flatcalling a 3bet with PF and check/raising with on this flop. I guess I'm ahead of AK or KQ, but that's about it in terms of possible chk/raise hands. Maybe I'm just over-analyzing...
Hand 7
Yeah this one was pretty much butchered. Either go with it on the turn or admit that your weak 2pr isn't good on the river and muck it. I think I'm much better off just pitching to this river bet; one day I'll learn.

The Ugly:
Hand 8
Absolutely one of the worst "bluffs" I've ever decided to run. I could make the excuse that I was on severe tilt at this point and had convinced myself that he "can't call without a monster here," but that's not an excuse at all (and certainly isn't even true). Fortunately for me, he did have a monster and pounded me into oblivion for my terrible decision-making process -- I will learn from this mistake.

m0niker group sweat review 1 - 100NL Absolute

2008-02-19T11:37:00.009-05:00

This week was my turn for the Millennium Group sweat with Brian, Ian, and John and I was playing some 100nl on Absolute Poker. Overall the session turned out alright, with a good deal of interesting spots that generated some very worthwhile discussion post-session. Unfortunately I ended up down a little over a buyin for the session and was forced to play a pretty TAG game based on the tables I was sitting at (not so pleased with this... I'll certainly be making sure I table select better or possibly play at PokerStars for my next sweat). It was really great to have everyone watching and discussing the situations during the session, and really think that I'm learning a ton by having these guys around to bounce ideas off of -- most +EV play of the year was joining this group. Anyway, here are a few hands that I found interesting and worth discussion. I also had 3 key hands played against the same villain that I'll post up in a separate topic that I'd like commentary on as well (separating them due to their villain-specific play). Without further adieu...

Hand 1:
Absolute Poker, $0.5/$1 No Limit Holdem, 6 players

UTG: $79.30
UTG+1: $198.50
Hero: $141.15
BTN: $112.50
SB: $104.30
BB: $40.00

Pre-flop: ($1.5, 6 players) Hero is CO

2 folds, Hero raises to $4, BTN calls $4, 2 folds

Felt like this was a pretty standard open raise here given the game's flow. Villain is quite the aggressive player with stats of 25/21/2.9 over a decently large sample. He also has a ridiculously high cold call stat and pretty much plays any 2 cards on the button.

Flop: ($9.5, 2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $8, Hero raises to $26, BTN calls $18

Given the villain's extremely aggressive nature I elected to check/raise this flop, as I figure him to be betting out literally any 2 cards when checked to here. I'm not really playing my hand as TPTK here so much as I am putting him on a hand that can't continue. A call behind is not what I'm looking for here as it's quite easy for me to pitch to a 4bet shove... reassessing on the turn.

Turn: ($61.5, 2 players)
Hero bets $32, BTN raises to $82, Hero folds

Obviously I didn't do a good job or reassessing on the turn, as a bet/fold is (after further review) the absolute worst thing I can do in this spot. As Ian pointed out in the post-session review, I took the standard line for a check/raised pot (which is to fire the turn) but failed to fully assess how the turn card affects the villain's range. Villain could certainly see my check/raise on the flop as being 2overs + flush draw and elect to call with 77 or 44 on this flop. If this is the case, he is almost certainly pushing this turn card. Villain could also be on some sort of combo draw, such as As3s or As4s, which would also certainly push this turn. Regardless, I'm being offered 3.5 to 1 and need to call this shove.

I'm also quite interested in seeing what others would narrow this villain's range to, because even with a range of {22-TT, 57s,79s, AsXs, and a few random other spade hands} I'm getting 45% equity, which would indicate getting it all in on this turn regardless of the action. Thoughts?

Final Pot: $125.50
BTN wins $172 ( won +$60 )
Hero lost -$62.00

Hand 2:
Absolute Poker, $0.5/$1 No Limit Holdem, 6 players

UTG: $45.35
UTG+1: $214.75
CO: $66.85
Hero: $94.80
SB: $24.85
BB: $160.05

Pre-flop: ($1.5, 6 players) Hero is BTN

1 fold, UTG+1 raises to $2, CO calls $2, Hero raises to $10, 2 folds, UTG+1 calls $8, CO calls $8

Pretty standard isolation from the button with KK here. UTG+1 is an unknown villain and CO is playing 31/0/0.6 over several hundred hands.

Flop: ($31.5, 3 players)
UTG+1 checks, CO checks, Hero checks

Quite the awful flop for me and I elect to check here in a multiway pot fearing a chk/raise (specifically from the CO who has only ~$60 behind). I would fire a flop bet here almost 100% of the time if this hand was heads up, but given the stacks and multiway nature, I'm not wanting to fall too in love with my KK here.

Turn: ($31.5, 3 players)
UTG+1 checks, CO checks, Hero checks

Lots of debate here as to whether or not I should have fired this turn after being checked to for a second time. I really don't mind the check here, but John voiced his opinion that he would make a 1/2pot bet here in order to prevent a river bluff. I really don't think that I'm in agreement with his logic here, since you would only be getting called by a better hand if you bet this here. If you want to gain $15-20 of value from weaker hands, I think a check here with the intent of calling a mid-sized river bet is a better approach. Since we checked the flop I don't really feel like I can rep an big ace and move anyone off of AJ or AT, so I think playing for a cheap showdown here is best.

River: ($31.5, 3 players)
UTG+1 checks, CO bets $25, Hero folds, UTG+1 folds

The villain in the CO wakes up with a very strong river bet and I think the T hits too much of his range (AT, JK, TT) to be calling this bet, especially with UTG+1 as the original raiser still left to act. Had the bet been $10-18, I may have called... I'm not 100% sure. The villain actually told the chat that he caught the straight on the river when asked, but I don't put too much weight into that.

Final Pot: $31.50
CO wins $54.45 ( won +$19.45 )
Hero lost -$10.00
UTG+1 lost -$10.00

Hand 3:
Absolute Poker, $0.5/$1 No Limit Holdem, 6 players

UTG: $221.35
UTG+1: $76.70
CO: $199.50
BTN: $87.80
SB: $126.61
Hero: $99.75

Pre-flop: ($1.5, 6 players) Hero is BB

1 fold, UTG+1 calls $1, CO calls $1, BTN raises to $2, 1 fold, Hero raises to $10, UTG+1 folds, CO folds, BTN calls $8

Another standard 3bet preflop with KK against a 41/8/1.9 villain.

Flop: ($22.5, 2 players)
Hero bets $12, BTN raises to $24, Hero goes all-in $89.75, BTN goes all-in $53.8

My decision to size this bet smaller than usual was made with the intention of looking weak and getting a smaller pocket pair to raise me up. I incorrectly discounted the number of hands he is calling my 3bet with that include a Q (he was a 41 vpip after all); however, I do think he makes the same move with 99+ as well as the hands that include a Q and am getting 45% equity in that scenario. Is this still as terrible a shove as it looked at the time? I tend to think so.

Turn: ($202.05, 2 players)

River: ($202.05, 2 players)

Final Pot: $178.10
BTN shows:
Hero shows:

BTN wins $174.6 ( won +$86.8 )
Hero wins $11.95 ( lost -$99.8 )

Hand 4:
Absolute Poker, $0.5/$1 No Limit Holdem, 6 players

UTG: $191.15
UTG+1: $201.00
CO: $93.00
BTN: $90.25
Hero: $102.50
BB: $80.80

Pre-flop: ($1.5, 6 players) Hero is SB

UTG calls $1, 3 folds, Hero calls $0.5, BB checks

Decided to just complete with ATo here from the SB. UTG is a semi-regular player with stats of 29/10/1.1 and is pretty aggressive on most flops when checked to.

Flop: ($3, 3 players)
Hero checks, BB checks, UTG bets $2, Hero calls $2, BB folds

At this point I have no reason to believe that the villain has a better hand than me. I've seen him raise AK and AQ preflop from UTG before, so that's likely out of his range and he could easily have a weak Ax or Kx-suited. I could chk/raise here, but don't really think I can rep anything strong given the fact that I only completed from SB.

Turn: ($7, 2 players)
Hero checks, UTG bets $6, Hero calls $6

Villain fires again on the turn, which is pretty standard for him even with weaker hands, but he is extremely passive on the river and I still think that I am ahead of his range a majority of the time. I am almost never making this call here except vs. this particular villain, but it's still probably not profitable here regardless.

River: ($19, 2 players)
Hero bets $11, UTG calls $11

River is gin for me and due to the passive nature of my opponent I decide to lead out and get some value with an $11 bet. I believe Ian was leaning towards a value-shove on this river, but given stack sizes I don't think I'm getting a call from a weak Ax, 2pr, or a set. I'm wondering if this is a situation where I should fire something over pot like $24 and hope the villain overshove-bluffs. I guess the question I have is: "what's the best way to get the rest of his stack given the fact that there's an obvious 1-card straight on the board?" (for the record, my read was completely wrong on this villain as he held AJs and had me dominated until the river)

Final Pot: $41
Hero shows:
UTG shows:

Hero wins $38.45 ( won +$18.45 )
UTG lost -$20.00

this week in review

2008-02-12T10:44:00.000-05:00

04 Feb - 10 Feb:
13 hands (50nl)
$43.00
661.54 bb/100 -- sustainable???

2,467 hands (100nl)
-$305.44
-12.38 bb/100

Overall a pretty awful week in terms of net won/loss, however I'm not too worried about the bottom line results. I think that there were a ton of sticky situations that I got myself into, and the deck just wasn't hitting me very hard at all. I had to fold a lot of big pair type hands on scary boards, made some bad plays, etc. but in the long run I think it served as a pretty good learning experience for me. I'll post a few hands that I had some second thoughts about at the bottom of this post, but most of the big ones for the week have already been displayed in previous posts. As evidenced by the breakdown of hands played, I also decided to step up to 100nl as my main game for now. My bankroll is sitting just over $3100 and I'm confident enough in my 50nl game as a rebuilding tool to say that I'll be at 100nl from now on barring any downswing that drops me below $2600. Good luck to me in my second shot at 100nl.

Something that I had set as a goal for this month was to participate in at least one sweat session per week... managed 2 this week (one where I railed malfaire at 200nl and one where malfaire and btimm watched me tank at 100nl). Also joined up with btimm (Brian), appleseed (John), and ladymuck (Ian) to create a poker review group which I think will be greatly beneficial to us all. Hopefully we follow in the steps of UF2B and end up hitting the midstakes tables in the next few months. First group sweat session was last night, with btimm playing some 50nl. Overall a good session with some tough spots and a massive cooler (that was played well IMO) which ended up preventing a +1.5BI run. I guess I'm up for the group sweat next week, so stay tuned.

Problem Hands:
Hand 1
Can I really get away from this hand? The flop looked pretty innocuous to me, with the only real threat being a hand like 9T or 67. While the villain is 40/10/1.9, and these hands are definitely part of his range, I'm not necessarily thinking that I need to raise up this hand on the flop. When the villain leads the turn as well, I'm starting to think that he has a pretty strong hand, maybe some crazy 2 pair, a lower set, or even AJ or KJ. I'm ahead of all of these hands (and he almost never has QQ here), but am completely dominated by 9T. However, I don't think I can narrow his range down to the made straight, so I think I have to call his push as played. What do you think?

Hand 2
Hands like this really confuse me and I have no idea what to do on a flop like this. I really think that I need to pop up this weak isolation by the CO (42/7/1.2), but his range is extremely narrow here and I am utterly baffled when he flats my 4.5x 4bet OOP. Should I be c-betting when he checks this A flop to me? What about the turn? I really don't like my line at all, but feel as though I need to be calling his ridiculously weak river bet since he's showing up with TT-QQ at least 15% of the time here (sidenote: calling a 4.5x 4bet OOP preflop with AQo is really, really bad... -endrant-). Thoughts?

teh sickness

2008-02-11T10:46:00.000-05:00

Immune system decided to fail me this weekend and I came down with the flu. Therefore, no poker activities took place as I constantly shifted from shivering under the blankets to sweating my ass off. Gallons of gatorade, boxes of theraflu, and countless attempts to keep saltine crackers down later and I think I'm finally coherent enough to resume poker-related activities. Group session 1 is tonight with Brian playing some 50nl I believe, so if I'm not otherwise preoccupied with my projectile vomit I plan on soaking up some knowledge. Here's to a better week... or at least one that involves less cold sweats and more of the poker variety.

that stings

2008-02-07T16:43:00.000-05:00

Last night pretty much sucked... hard. Mark (malfaire) and Brian (btimm) were gracious enough to sweat me some at 100nl and apparently the folks at Absolute Poker didn't like that very much. I proceeded to drop 3.5BI in just under 500 hands and get into a ton of sticky situations. While I really think that the session proved very beneficial in terms of learning experience, it didn't really do too well for the old ego. Oh well, good thing I'm properly rolled and I can shrug off a loss like this. Can't really expect to win too much when you have to fold AA, QQ, JJ, etc. to flop re-raises in 3bet pots. Good game, me. Today is a new day.

Top 3 Losers: (analysis later when I have more time)
I really need to cut this out of my game
Value shove gone wrong
Dealer loves me

Top 2 Winners: (ditto)
Definitely missed some value here
This is my 2nd biggest winner??? Sad...

less than stellar

2008-02-05T10:59:00.000-05:00

Decided to fire up some 100nl at Absolute Poker last night and see how I managed playing 3-4 tables (my total bankroll was back up over $3300 so I figured it's time to start getting serious about the move). All I've got to say is that the fact that AP lets you buy in for 200BB is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it allows you to profit insanely off of fishies. On the other, if you mess up a big hand, you can mess it up hard. I'll point out instances of both at the bottom of this post, but for now I think I'm going to limit myself to 2 tables of 100nl when playing on AP. I think the games play so much different than what I was used to at PokerStars that I'm falling into some bad habits that need to be ironed out. I came across a post in the forums on PokerTrikz and feel like it has some great advice that I need to put into action at the tables (even though he is speaking of play at Cake / Red Star, I think it still applies to AP as well):

"You should just play your standard aggressive game [regardless of the site]. People will let you value bet them so hard and you should still be 2 barreling the standard stuff." -- Trikkur

The Good:
Villain is 60/30/1.8 with just over 100 hands played, so I am set mining all day with the stacks as deep as they are. On the flop I decided to flat call behind, but popping him up here would have been perfectly legit seeing as though the board is ridiculously draw-heavy. If the turn comes any K, 8, or diamond I am slowing down, but for now I'm content with playing a smallish pot. With his 1/2 pot bet on the blank turn I feel like his range is more along the line of a made hand that he is insecure about (such as KJ-KA, JJ, or QQ) than a draw. I wanted to size my raise here to an amount that left his remaining stack large enough to bluff-shove profitably (in his eyes) -- however, I don't think our remaining stacks were conducive to this, so I did the best I could. It worked, so I guess it's the correct play, right? (No seriously, what line would you all take?)

The Bad:
Villain is 35/15/1.7 regular whose attention to steal over 3k+ hands is 35%. Against a player like this I think the 3bet preflop is pretty standard since his opening range against one limper is extremely wide. The flop is great for me, but going for the c/raise is wrong on so many levels. First, all it does is telegraph to my opponent that I have AQ, KQ, or QQ+. This would cause him to fold out holdings such as AK, JJ, 88-TT, which is really what we're looking for value from. Second, it puts entirely too much money into the pot without me having a clear idea of what the villain is holding. By this point I have half of my stack invested with TPTK and can I really fold this to a guy with such a wide PFR range? The answer is yes... run away, run far far away, as the flop bet/3bet line for 200BB is bad news bears for me. Unfortunately, I am not yet adept at conceding my hands and hung my head as I shipped my stack across the virtual table. One day I will learn.

On a side note, as soon as I brought my session to a respectable -1/2 buyin (bleh) over 550 hands I sat down and railed malfaire for a good hour or so at 200nl. He was 6-tabling and running like the Sun. Seriously, the kid was getting pocket pairs and AJs+ all over the place. Unfortunately, he was put into a ton of tough situations postflop, but I think we played a lot of the hands profitably. There wasn't enough time to do a proper review at the end of the session as it was pretty late, so I'm looking forward to a post from him with a bunch of the hands... great stuff in there.

January Results

2008-02-04T13:35:00.000-05:00

January ended up being a super month for me, and not just because it was in the green for the first time in a while. I actually made a lot of progress in terms of figuring out what I want from poker and laying out a plan of action to get myself there. Baby steps, son... baby steps. I'll start the pot out with some graphs (everyone likes pretty pictures), then the numbers, then the analysis of goals and areas of improvement. Key thing to note is that most of these stats are from Absolute Poker, and I'm still adjusting my play to that particular site (I wouldn't necessarily say that 20/14/2.4 is my normal game). And without further adieu:

January Results:

Table Profit: $723.57
ABS Bonus: $120.00
ABS Rakeback: $110.39
PokerStars Reward: Nintendo Wii

January Goals Review:

2,500 total hands / wk -- COMPLETE (barely made this... 2 tabling 100nl hurt the overall hands though)
100nl shots at least 1x / wk -- COMPLETE (see above)
Sustain > 6 bb/100 for the month -- COMPLETE (achieved almost 2x this goal... I runs hot)
Stop the tilt (institute -2BI stopgap) -- COMPLETE (only occurred once, but I immediately quit so 'yay')
Watch 2 instructional videos / wk -- COMPLETE (CRE & PokerTrikz... Leggo & Deuces Cracked next?)
Read professional nlhe (100pg) -- COMPLETE (finished first 2 sections)
Read the poker mindset (100pg) -- INCOMPLETE (this is important... need to make time)
Start blogging again -- COMPLETE (isn't this evidence?)

2 point 4 percent?

2008-02-04T11:08:00.000-05:00

28 Jan - 03 Feb:
1,591 hands (50nl)
$296.61
37.29 bb/100

534 hands (100nl)
$34.47
6.46 bb/100

Overall I was pretty happy with this past week's results. I didn't get to play as much as I would have liked, but was busy with happy hours, dinner dates, Super Bowl parties and the like, so I'll take the moderately light week on that tables in exchange for satisfying social interaction. I hear it's pretty +ev. Anyway, I won't get into too much detail as to what aspects of the game I feel I need to work on in this post as I will be posting up a January monthly recap later today, but I will highlight some of my big winners and losers for the week. (Oh, and even though it doesn't show up as a big net hand for me, I did manage to get 1-outtered in a multiway 300BB pot... and yes folks, that's a 2.4% suckout against your's truly.)

Top 3 Losers:
Free money for Villain
Don't know what on earth I was doing here. Villain is playing 42/5/0.8, so when he bets out on not only the flop, but the turn as well, I have to know I'm beat. Oh well, we make mistakes so we can learn from them.

Learn when to 3bet
Probably shouldn't be 3betting here with KJcc, but villain is a habitual big loser at the 100nl game on ABS (-$1.4k over 7000 hands) and plays 45/18/1.3, so I figured I'd be ahead of his range a majority of the time and could take his whole stack if I flopped well. Don't really mind the flop c-bet to see where I'm at, but I don't think I should be calling the minraise if I'm just planning on check/folding the turn. After looking back at the hand, I don't know what card could have come on the turn that would have made me want to continue other than the Tc, and even that is sketchy at best. Oh well, I guess I shouldn't be 3betting OOP with such suspect hands that leave me questioning where I stand when I flop top pair. Bad m0niker.

No free cards
Villain was playing 44/6/0.8 and had been calling my PFR out of position and check/folding the flop a few times now. I put him squarely on a weak ace on the flop and figured I'd get it all in on the turn provided no heart hit. I was fairly comfortable doing this since I was holding the Qh in my hand, but in hindsight maybe I should have just raised him up here. Either way, 3-outters are fun.

Top 3 Winners:
Free money for Hero
Chat history on this table looked like such immediately prior to and after this hand:
Villain wins ($101.20) with (One pair, sixes) -- BS hand where 63cc beat 58ss that somehow got all in
Villain: wow this is easy
Villain: lol... moron
Hero wins ($200.40) with (Three of a kind, threes)
Hero: no sir, that was easy
Villain: not at all, let's play heads up -- sucks HU isn't a solid part of my game yet, and I had to decline (frown face)

Suckouts work too
Don't really know why villain was flat-calling a PFR OOP with AK, or why he was checking on a K high flop, but either way he had me throughly confused as to what he held. I figured I could fire a 2nd barrel on the Q turn, but that obviously backfired. I tried to do the math quick in my head and thought I was getting decent enough implied odds to hit my 2pr or set, but upon further review I certainly need to brush up on my impromptu odds calculations. Should not have called that turn raise, but I'll take the $$$.

More free money
Pretty standard... get dealt overpair vs. 40BB stack, proceed to bet/raise/get it all in against said shorty, pray he didn't play something awful and suck out on you.

malfaire says what?

2008-02-01T11:38:00.000-05:00

Last night I had the pleasure of being railed by malfaire (damn right it's a pleasure, he makes you feel so good). Overall, the session turned out well -- couldn't catch hands or hit flops for my life, but ended up +2BI. Over 400 hands I showed up with AA, QQ, and JJ a grand total of 0 times, KK 1 time, and any incarnation of AK (suited or offsuit) 1 time. Fun for me! However, since everyone at Absolute Poker is ridiculously terrible, I didn't need good hands to get paid off. (Side note: If you do not play on AP, please stop reading and go sign up there now. In my month of playing there I have never sat with at a table with a combined table VPIP less than 30 or at a table with a combined table PFR over 10. It's like Party Poker reincarnate, at least at 50nl and 100nl.) Anyway, the tables I was sitting at this session led to me playing tons of hands in position for cheap in multiway pots. Alas, I just couldn't seem to hit a goddamn thing. I also tried to take some creative lines against these ridiculous donks in order to force them into making large mistakes... so creative (or dumb) in fact that on several occasions malfaire was reduced to "what the hell are you doing? e'splain yourself!"

40BB Losers:
Isolation Gone Wrong
Simple hand of me trying to isolate the initial bettor for his 25BB with a mid pocket pair. Put him on small PP or 2 overs, so I liked my chances. Unfortunately, I don't know how to read stack sizes correctly and my bet size got all messed up. I'm still fine getting it all in here with the stack sizes as they were. I think weaktight is messing up the hand results, but original bettor had 44 and the other guy AA(h). I like drawing to 1 out... it's +ev.

Just Believe...
Villain here was playing 29/9/1.5 and I was going for some thin value on the river. I actually think I approached the river absolutely the wrong way given the range I had the villain on. I would prefer a check call here, since I don't think I'm getting called by anything that I'm beating and the only way to get a random J, K, or busted Q straight draw to give me chips is to let them bluff the river. A flush is obviously raising me here, and a straight is at least calling. Bad decision to bet the river + terrible call of his minraise = -32BB for me. (Note to self... don't play large pots in unraised hands without the nuts when every possible draw hits!)

40BB Winners:
Malfaire says what?
Villain is playing 42/12/1.1 (however, his turn/river AF are ridiculously high compared to overall AF). I went for a completely non-standard line here on the turn strictly to vary my play. Admittedly, I had no idea if this would work, but I remember both reading about similar play and observing an example or two in a recent videos and decided to take a shot with it. Given villain's stats here, his range is ridiculously wide... he could have any pair on the flop, random 2pr, straight draw, overs. His check/call doesn't really give us any information due to the nature his passive play, so on to the turn. The K hits and he checks again. Now we certainly aren't going to check this behind because straight draws can still catch up with a free card, so it's either make a standard second barrel or do something unexpected. I think if we fire out a standard 2/3 pot bet here of $10.5 we're likely to fold out all air a small pieces of the flop because it shows that we aren't afraid of that K hitting. By overbetting this turn I'm polarizing my range, telling my opponent that I either have a monster or I'm really afraid of that board and want him to fold out right now. At this limit I think that the players just simply don't want to ever give you credit and are more willing to make a terrible mistake in bluffing big. Villain obviously obliges and makes an absolutely horrendous c/raise bluff with a gutshot. I certainly don't think I get him all in if I make a standard c-bet here, but what does everyone else think?

Malfaire also brought up a good point during the session review as well: "Do you make the same play if the turn bricks?" I think the answer is no, since I'm no longer ahead of random 2pair/set that will surely be check/raising me. A c-bet of $10.5 here would still allow me to fold to a CRAI, but at $16 I think I'd be dangerously close to commitment with only an overpair.

Combo Draws are Fun
As mentioned previously I was trying to see as many multiway flops as possible from late position, which is why I think I'm okay limp/calling a hand like A7hh from the button in these games. Board obviously comes extremely nice for me and I'm getting it in here on the flop if need be. My reraise size is a little small here, since I want to commit myself to a turn bet by Villain, but I was timing down and just threw something out there to beat the clock (AP time runs down quick IMO). Malfaire and I went back and forth on the turn as to whether or not I should take a free card, but in the end I think we made the right decision. Good river, and went for some value... shame he didn't call. Oh wells.

Valuetown
Pretty standard play. If Villain has AQ or Q9, more power to him. If not, I'll take your money in small chunks... kthxbye.

Overall Session Stats:

January Update

2008-01-29T13:49:00.000-05:00

Okay, I said in my last post that I'd update on how things have been going since getting back up and running in January, so I'll post the weekly breakdown of hands played and results at the bottom of this post. I'd like to do a weekly rundown on Mondays, so from here on out, that's what I'll do. Also, I'll post the details of the top 5 winners and losers of the week with any necessary analysis, as well as some of the key points I want to work on in the upcoming week. Hopefully this will keep me thinking about what I've been doing at the tables and where I need to improve (as always, any insight via comments is greatly appreciated).

Top 5 Losers: (analysis to come)
http://weaktight.com/91961
http://weaktight.com/91962
http://weaktight.com/91963
http://weaktight.com/91964
http://weaktight.com/91965

Top 5 Winners: (analysis to come)
http://weaktight.com/91966
http://weaktight.com/91967
http://weaktight.com/91968
http://weaktight.com/91969
http://weaktight.com/91970

Things I need more work/focus on:
1. Observing bet patterns and working that into villain's range
2. Utilizing all PAHud stats available (<3 AP data-mining)
3. Having a plan of attack for a hand from the very beginning

Things I'm improving on (in my opinion):
1. Extracting value via thin value bets
2. Manipulating pot sizes (Pot Control / Inducing All-Ins)
3. Trusting my reads

01 Jan - 06 Jan:
0 hands

07 Jan - 13 Jan:
1,720 hands (50nl)
$39.18
4.56 bb/100

14 Jan - 20 Jan:
2,577 hands (50nl)
$337.92
26.23 bb/100

48 hands (100nl)
$33.04
68.83 bb/100

21 Jan - 27 Jan:
3,584 hands (50nl)
-$157.98
-8.82 bb/100

953 hands (100nl)
$307.40
32.26 bb/100

don't call it a comeback...

2008-01-28T11:41:00.000-05:00

... I been here for years (or something like that, right LL?). Unfortunately, I haven't been blogging, or playing for that matter, nearly enough for my liking. The back half of 2007 was filled with an insane amount of stress at work, which may or may not have lead to the reduced number of hands put in and subsequent failed attempt to break into 100nl. My bankroll ended up taking a pretty decent hit and I lacked all motivation to play. The one good thing, however, is that during that time period I continued to watch the CR videos, stay up-to-date on member blogs that I found important (see right), and talk through the game with malfaire. Kudos to me, right? Fail!

Anyway, fast forward to January 2008. Finally decided that I don't enjoy work nearly enough, and that poker is one viable option to open doors into other lifestyle realms -- or at least work in conjunction to such an end state. However, in order to do this I need to buckle down and start improving my play. I've always been a small winning player, and that's what I'll always be if I don't start taking advantage of all the resources available to me. I'm not content with where I'm at as a poker player, and now's the time to do something about it -- make great strides forward or quit, and I'm not a quitter. More to come regarding Jan 1st - Present adventures, but for now I'll sign off by quoting the Governator...

"I'm back."