what would you do? (hand 1)
08 April 2008
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?
Posted byM0NIKER at 4:12 PM 2 comments
weekly update #13
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.
Posted byM0NIKER at 11:33 AM 1 comments
March Results (... aka "a whole lotta fail")
01 April 2008
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)
Posted byM0NIKER at 4:43 PM 3 comments
weekly update #12
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.
Posted byM0NIKER at 4:32 PM 0 comments
weekly update #11
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.
Posted byM0NIKER at 4:27 PM 0 comments