Last night was a fun time. Took down the $10 Mookie blogger for my 2nd win in the Blogger Aussie Millions Freeroll....Challenge? Think that's the full name. Either way, lots of cool people Ive met along the way.
To start off, a few things. Jax something and I got in a little scuff last night. Just so everyone knows, Im roughly 6-15 deep by the time 11PM rolls around. How big of a douchebag I am depends on what Im 6-15 deep in at the time. He made a couple questionable shoves, I made a couple calls and we had a bit of an e-scuffle. Lucky for him, cuz Im pretty badass in real life (not really). No hard feelings. Either way, Im always down for HU for lives.
Moving on. I think most bloggers hate me. Understandable. I haven't played in these things before the Aussie freeroll so Im sure people feel like Lucko is bringing in his ringer friends to do his dirty work (get lots of seats filled). That's really not the case. I've had a ~blog for around 2 years now. The problem with my ~blogs is that they never last long. I have a super short attention span for poker. I'll start a cash game blog where I blog about 5/10-10/20 NL. I'll give that a ride for a bit, go on a bad downswing and then get sick of cash games. Delete that blog, move on to tourney blog. Rinse and repeat. This is probably my 6th blog or so. Ive been a blogger for a long time now, just havent really gotten into it as much as Sucko who everyone adores for his obvious dashing good looks and witty charm.
Last night started with me at a table with a bunch of unknowns. As Im sure everyone who has played against me knows, I really can't find anything but the raise button most of the time. I blame this on alcohol and a rough childhood. Regardless, it's fun and Im pretty good at it I must say. I lost about half my stack maybe 20 minutes into the thing, mostly from betting out on missed flops and getting min raised and then having to fold. For those that don't know me, I have a rule in tourneys that I absolutely live by 100%. If you at any point in a tourney raise me 3 times, we are getting all in, I don't give a fuck what I have. SO, anyone who wants my chips, bluff me twice then have the nuts the third time, you will get my stack (barring the 74% chance that I suckout). So anyway, can't remember his name right now, but the guy min raised me twice on a flop, once when he had position and once when he c/r me. The entire table seemed to follow suit, so I started getting a little quieter than I normally like. The third time said min raiser did this I decided to shove my A high on him with a 9 8 Q flop or something. I had AT. He had a set of 8's. Im a fav here. I of course hit my 87% shot on the turn and the table goes ballistic. One guy was evidently rubbing his eyes in disbelief. Im not 100% sure about this, but he said it in the chatbox and I don't have any reason to suspect he may be lying.
Well, I built up my stack after this from just raw aggression. The thing about my aggression tho, is that I always seem to have a hand at the right time when things are working well. Of course not every tourney works out perfectly, but it sure is fun when it does. I basically just raised a lot of pots that went uncontested. I got contested a few times by Jax and then ended up busting him in the end on a race. I came into the FT with a 2:1 CL and never looked back. I tried picking my spots a bit better since the FT players seemed overall to be pretty solid players. I faced Loretta HU. I have to admit, this guy has game. It was a tougher match than I expected and he actually took the CL from me at one point. I tried to stay aggressive, but at the same time wanted to avoid his constant prf shoves. I got my hand caught in the cookie jar a few times, but fortunately for me I finally shoved him with Q high when he had 10 BB and my Q high held against his A2. I was roughly a 76% fav there. Evidently the first half of the blogger challenge is over according to Lucko in IM 5 minutes ago. Im looking forward to playing in the 2nd half and hopefully I can pull off the overall leaderboard win for that time period. GL to all.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Monday, October 29, 2007
Winnah!!!!!
Took down the Blogger $24 tourney tonight. Won a nice $600 and a freeroll into the Aussie Millions Satty. Looking forward to playing with my buddy Lucko21. Just an FYI, we have been accused of being the same person b4 on 2+2. We play a similar style, but I assure you we are not the same person. For one, Im not a fatty (yet). For two, I like women. Really not much else I can say. GL us!
Prob gonna be playing a bit less the next week or so. Im closing on my first "flip" property tomorrow so I've gotta get things organized for that. Get contractors out, get a realtor to list it, sell it, etc. Big project. Hopefully I can pull this off and get a good business venture going.
Prob gonna be playing a bit less the next week or so. Im closing on my first "flip" property tomorrow so I've gotta get things organized for that. Get contractors out, get a realtor to list it, sell it, etc. Big project. Hopefully I can pull this off and get a good business venture going.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Random Things
Been awhile since I've blogged. Mostly because I've been busy with life. Had my 2nd son, Justin, end of August and I've also started a real estate company. Things are picking up jobwise, I have a deal on a house Im supposed to close on within the next week, then I will take about a month or so to fix it up and put it back on the market. Pretty exciting stuff.
I've been crushing the 8PM DS on FTP lately. Two 3rd place finishes in 4 times played the past couple weeks. The 2nd FT, I had KJ AI on the turn against and ace high FD (he shoved on me after I checked the turn.) Ace on the river, obv. Would've had a massive chip lead if I won that pot. Oh well.
In other news, we just found out Ferris has a vagina.
Arney and WC are coming into town this weekend. Should be a fun time. We'll prob head downtown and go drinking and then maybe hit up a stripclub or something. I'll be keeping up with this thing a little better now that I have some time on my hands.
I've been crushing the 8PM DS on FTP lately. Two 3rd place finishes in 4 times played the past couple weeks. The 2nd FT, I had KJ AI on the turn against and ace high FD (he shoved on me after I checked the turn.) Ace on the river, obv. Would've had a massive chip lead if I won that pot. Oh well.
In other news, we just found out Ferris has a vagina.
Arney and WC are coming into town this weekend. Should be a fun time. We'll prob head downtown and go drinking and then maybe hit up a stripclub or something. I'll be keeping up with this thing a little better now that I have some time on my hands.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
I run bad.....I run good?
Sigh at the police. Sigh....I've been pulled over like 5 times in the last 2 months, and like 3 times out of the 5 I've been drunk. (disclaimer: these are all estimates, I may or may not have been pulled over more times and may or may not have been drunk more times than 3). Anyway, expired tags, fender benders, etc. You name it and I've probably been pulled over for it. The great thing is, even though I was drunk, I got a ticket for expired tags or something similar and never gotten a DUI. Is it incredibly immature and irresponsible? You betcha. Do I care? Well, not really. I guess that's why I'm an internet asshole. Everyone just stopped reading my blog cuz they act like they give a shit about drunk driving. Let's face the facts. Everyone has done it, I've just probably done it more than you have. Get off your fucking high horse and kiss my ass.
Moving on:
Tonight I won about $1,500 total between live and online. I wanted to post a hand not because of any discussion value at all, but because of how awesome it was.
Uhhhh....evidently my pokertracker went busto. Am looking at the hands and it's nowhere to be found. Very weird. Anyway, basically I re-raised AA pre-flop, got a call against a guy who was playing very aggro. The flop is A 8 8 with two spades. I bet out because I'm incredibly awesome at poker, he raises, I call and we get it all in on the turn. He has 6 8. Ship it. Big pot there.
On a sidenote, is anyone else getting sick of this Michael Vick case? LOL at sportscenter. He could face up to 10 years in jail. My fucking ass he could. The dude makes like 10 trillion dollars a year. There are so many holes his lawyer could poke in this case it's not even funny. If he spends 5 minutes in jail I will be shocked. Just get on to the sports highlights and please for the love of god stop showing this shit. It's older than the Barry Bond's homerun record. (thank god he broke it so we don't have to see 30 minute expose's of him every episode)
Anyway, I'm probably a bit angry about being pulled over this morning while on my way to get breakfast. The cool thing for you is, you get to see me ruin my life from the sidelines and have no responsibility but to laugh at me. It's a win/win. My wife's inducement was moved back to tonight. She will be going to the hospital tonight and then will be induced sometime tomorrow morning. I expect at this time tomorrow my new son will be on the way. Thanks for all the well wishes guys and gals. (lol like girls read this)
Moving on:
Tonight I won about $1,500 total between live and online. I wanted to post a hand not because of any discussion value at all, but because of how awesome it was.
Uhhhh....evidently my pokertracker went busto. Am looking at the hands and it's nowhere to be found. Very weird. Anyway, basically I re-raised AA pre-flop, got a call against a guy who was playing very aggro. The flop is A 8 8 with two spades. I bet out because I'm incredibly awesome at poker, he raises, I call and we get it all in on the turn. He has 6 8. Ship it. Big pot there.
On a sidenote, is anyone else getting sick of this Michael Vick case? LOL at sportscenter. He could face up to 10 years in jail. My fucking ass he could. The dude makes like 10 trillion dollars a year. There are so many holes his lawyer could poke in this case it's not even funny. If he spends 5 minutes in jail I will be shocked. Just get on to the sports highlights and please for the love of god stop showing this shit. It's older than the Barry Bond's homerun record. (thank god he broke it so we don't have to see 30 minute expose's of him every episode)
Anyway, I'm probably a bit angry about being pulled over this morning while on my way to get breakfast. The cool thing for you is, you get to see me ruin my life from the sidelines and have no responsibility but to laugh at me. It's a win/win. My wife's inducement was moved back to tonight. She will be going to the hospital tonight and then will be induced sometime tomorrow morning. I expect at this time tomorrow my new son will be on the way. Thanks for all the well wishes guys and gals. (lol like girls read this)
Monday, August 13, 2007
New Baby
My wife is scheduled to go into the hospital tonight, not sure what time yet. She will be induced at 6AM tomorrow morning and should deliver sometime around the noon mark. I will keep you all updated.
Friday, August 10, 2007
PLO
Ive decided that I'm going to learn PLO. Reading the blogs of the high stakes players and seeing some of the shit that goes down even at games like 200/400 is just retarded. There's a lot of money to be made in this game. Right now Im still focusing on NLHE so this will be on the back burner for awhile as the games at my stakes have been pretty good lately. Im going to spend a lot of time studying the basics and then I will probably dip my toe into the 2/4 PLO games or something just to see how the games flow.
Variance is fun
Tonight was pretty crazy. I sat down to a couple 2/4 UB tables and immediately felt it was going to be "one of those nights". Not far into the session, I got a donkey all in prf with KK only to be shown AA. I also got all in with QQ on a rag flop and my opponent again had AA. Kevin and I were playing on a couple tables together and he beat the game pretty bad. I on the other hand ended down $700 after only a couple hours of play. Feeling a bit dejected, I decided to call it a night.
I logged into FTP not really planning on playing, but I decided to sit down on two different 2/4 heads up tables. The session started very poorly with me getting coolered on both tables for decent sized pots multiple times. I decided to keep grinding it out because I really felt my opponents were playing poorly and I had a significant edge in the game due to the mistakes they were making. Sure enough, 3 hours later I was sitting with over $5,000 on both tables combined. I'm really tired right now so I'm not going to post any hands for discussion, but I was very pleased with my ability to stay focused and play the best poker I know how to play. I believe I ended the day up roughly $3,000 or so.
I logged into FTP not really planning on playing, but I decided to sit down on two different 2/4 heads up tables. The session started very poorly with me getting coolered on both tables for decent sized pots multiple times. I decided to keep grinding it out because I really felt my opponents were playing poorly and I had a significant edge in the game due to the mistakes they were making. Sure enough, 3 hours later I was sitting with over $5,000 on both tables combined. I'm really tired right now so I'm not going to post any hands for discussion, but I was very pleased with my ability to stay focused and play the best poker I know how to play. I believe I ended the day up roughly $3,000 or so.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Rebound
Today started out terribly. I sat down to a couple 2/4 tables and the carnage began. I started off by getting into a pretty sizeable pot against a very aggressive player. I had top pair and had the sense to check the river behind. He had a set. I then go involved in another hand with him and 3 other players. In this hand I called prf on the button behind him with 66. The flop was A 8 6 with two hearts. Bink. Myself and the aggro player ended up getting in on the flop and he had 88. Sonofa....he left shortly after. I then got top two in against bottom set, had to fold QQ on a T 9 x board to a check/raise, etc. It was a pretty shitty hour of poker. I found myself down two buyins ($800) pretty quickly and left before any sort of tilt set in.
I dicked around for a few hours until things got quiet around the house, then fired up UB once again. The 2/4 and 3/6 games weren't really active, in fact there wasn't one 3/6 game going. I looked up at the 5/10 and saw some sick juicy action games with players (donkeys) I recognized from 2/4. Well that settles it. 5/10 it is. I sat down and within the first 30 minutes had doubled on a table with KK against QQ. Tough luck for the other guy. I stayed pretty stagnant the rest of the session and never was up or down anymore than $200 from my original double up on both tables combined. The games started getting more solid as the donkeys left so I decided to step back down to my normal stakes as I don't really want to play 5/10 SH against solid players when there are so many better games to play. I ended up doing pretty well on both my 2/4 and 3/6 tables and ended up $700 total for the day after the $800 loss earlier. Pretty pleased with my tilt control and overall demeanor.
There was one very interesting hand and I honestly didn't really know what the right play would be. Would like to hear comments on this one.
Care2Tango is at seat 0 with $1034.
jmxthievez1 is at seat 1 with $1549.75.
Killer_O is at seat 2 with $200.
lvnoffsklskyb is at seat 3 with $2411.
Gookman is at seat 4 with $3260.75.
feelnlucky is at seat 5 with $985.
The button is at seat 5.
Care2Tango posts the small blind of $5.
jmxthievez1 posts the big blind of $10.
Care2Tango: -- --
jmxthievez1: -- --
lvnoffsklskyb: Td Qd
Gookman: -- --
feelnlucky: -- --
Pre-flop:
lvnoffsklskyb raises to $35.
Gookman calls.
feelnlucky folds.
Care2Tango folds.
jmxthievez1calls.
Flop (board: Qs 6s 4h):
jmxthievez1 checks.
lvnoffsklskyb bets $85.
Gookmancalls.
jmxthievez1 calls.
Turn (board: Qs 6s 4h Jd):
jmxthievez1 checks.
lvnoffsklskyb bets $225.
Gookman folds.
jmxthievez1 goes all-in for $1429.75.
lvnoffsklskyb folds.
jmxthievez1 is returned$1204.75 (uncalled).
I think overall this is a pretty conservative fold honestly. I didn't have a ton of info on jmx tho so I wasn't very sure as to what he would do this with. It sure does look like a combo draw of some sort though. I mean, what Q would he do this with besides QJ? He called prf, then called the flop after a bet and a call from a huge calling station (gookman). I highly doubt he has a set or KQ/AQ here. QJ was really the only Q I could think he would logically have, but sometimes these games are so nuts you see some sort of retarded 46s hand or something. I decided to wait for a better spot as I hadn't really seen jmx get out of line a lot. I don't know. I actually think looking at this in hindsight this is a call. I can't really see what he has that beats me here, but in the heat of the moment I guess I was thinking, "Im not playing such a huge pot against such a massive check/shove here with QT. Meh. Still not sure.
I dicked around for a few hours until things got quiet around the house, then fired up UB once again. The 2/4 and 3/6 games weren't really active, in fact there wasn't one 3/6 game going. I looked up at the 5/10 and saw some sick juicy action games with players (donkeys) I recognized from 2/4. Well that settles it. 5/10 it is. I sat down and within the first 30 minutes had doubled on a table with KK against QQ. Tough luck for the other guy. I stayed pretty stagnant the rest of the session and never was up or down anymore than $200 from my original double up on both tables combined. The games started getting more solid as the donkeys left so I decided to step back down to my normal stakes as I don't really want to play 5/10 SH against solid players when there are so many better games to play. I ended up doing pretty well on both my 2/4 and 3/6 tables and ended up $700 total for the day after the $800 loss earlier. Pretty pleased with my tilt control and overall demeanor.
There was one very interesting hand and I honestly didn't really know what the right play would be. Would like to hear comments on this one.
Care2Tango is at seat 0 with $1034.
jmxthievez1 is at seat 1 with $1549.75.
Killer_O is at seat 2 with $200.
lvnoffsklskyb is at seat 3 with $2411.
Gookman is at seat 4 with $3260.75.
feelnlucky is at seat 5 with $985.
The button is at seat 5.
Care2Tango posts the small blind of $5.
jmxthievez1 posts the big blind of $10.
Care2Tango: -- --
jmxthievez1: -- --
lvnoffsklskyb: Td Qd
Gookman: -- --
feelnlucky: -- --
Pre-flop:
lvnoffsklskyb raises to $35.
Gookman calls.
feelnlucky folds.
Care2Tango folds.
jmxthievez1calls.
Flop (board: Qs 6s 4h):
jmxthievez1 checks.
lvnoffsklskyb bets $85.
Gookmancalls.
jmxthievez1 calls.
Turn (board: Qs 6s 4h Jd):
jmxthievez1 checks.
lvnoffsklskyb bets $225.
Gookman folds.
jmxthievez1 goes all-in for $1429.75.
lvnoffsklskyb folds.
jmxthievez1 is returned$1204.75 (uncalled).
I think overall this is a pretty conservative fold honestly. I didn't have a ton of info on jmx tho so I wasn't very sure as to what he would do this with. It sure does look like a combo draw of some sort though. I mean, what Q would he do this with besides QJ? He called prf, then called the flop after a bet and a call from a huge calling station (gookman). I highly doubt he has a set or KQ/AQ here. QJ was really the only Q I could think he would logically have, but sometimes these games are so nuts you see some sort of retarded 46s hand or something. I decided to wait for a better spot as I hadn't really seen jmx get out of line a lot. I don't know. I actually think looking at this in hindsight this is a call. I can't really see what he has that beats me here, but in the heat of the moment I guess I was thinking, "Im not playing such a huge pot against such a massive check/shove here with QT. Meh. Still not sure.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
A New Day
Today went very well I'm happy to say (minus one incident I'll get into later). I ended up $2,600 on the cash tables at UB playing 3/6. The games are very soft there and I really enjoy playing at UB. The only thing I really have a problem with there is the hand histories. They're very hard to check after the hand while you're playing a couple tables and I wish they would fix that.
I had a couple interesting hands today with one hand kind of confusing me as to the best play. Here it is:
lvnoffsklskyb is at seat 1 with $2219.15.
D_Blake is at seat 2 with $962.60.
BluHorseshoe is at seat 3 with $692.
The button is at seat 1.
D_Blake posts the small blind of $3.
BluHorseshoe posts the big blind of $6.
lvnoffsklskyb: Jc Js
D_Blake: -- --
BluHorseshoe: -- --
Pre-flop:
lvnoffsklskyb raises to $21.
D_Blake calls.
BluHorseshoe folds.
Flop (board: 3c 3s 5c):
D_Blake checks.
lvnoffsklskyb bets $34.50.
D_Blakeraises to $120.
lvnoffsklskyb calls.
Turn (board: 3c 3s 5c 8h):
D_Blake bets $399.
lvnoffsklskyb folds.
D_Blake isreturned $399 (uncalled).
Now, this may seem like an odd fold at first glance and to be honest I'm still not 100% sure about it. But in poker you're really never 100% sure about anything, so I'm OK with that. We are of course only concerned about long term profit and what the best play will be over the long haul. Now my read on this guy was that he was pretty much a loose cannon pre-flop, however, once the flop came out and he got action, he wasn't messing around. If he was playing a big pot, he had a hand. On this hand, he check/raised the flop, then overbet the turn. I will concede that there are definitely hands in his range he would do this with that I beat, but based on my read of his post-flop play and given the fact that I had no FE and no chance of keeping the pot small, I decided to let it go. I think he shows up here with a better hand a lot and I think that even if I had him he probably had a lot of outs to beat me. I think at worst here he has probably 99 or a flush draw that possibly paired on the flop or turn. Not to mention the fact that this guy also calls raise pre-flop OOP with big hands occasionally so we can't rule out QQ+. I'll look at it more in depth later and I suspect that if I plugged it into pokerstove I would have a good amount of equity in this situation, but I think that my fold is correct given my read. Would love to hear opinions on it.
My mishap of the day occured this afternoon. I was playing two seperate tables on UB and had KQs on one and AQo on another. I re-raised both pre-flop from the small blind against pretty aggressive players that raised in LP. Both players on both tables called. On one table the flop was all rags, something like 7 5 2 and I led out. I was called and the turn was an ace which was a money card for me because this guy was stacking off weak aces like it was his job and I was fully convinced he would call me here with bare ace high. I led again and he insta-shoved. I pretty much beat him into the pot and the river was a Q. He showed AK and I was thinking, "wow he had a hand, unlucky for him" as the pot slid his way. I quickly checked the board for flushes and saw none, so obviously I was now a bit annoyed at the pot sliding to him. I then looked at my other table and saw AQ on my monitor. Fuck. I just called an all in on the turn for an $1,800 pot with K high. Bah. Moral of the story: look at your cards before calling an all in. :)
I had a couple interesting hands today with one hand kind of confusing me as to the best play. Here it is:
lvnoffsklskyb is at seat 1 with $2219.15.
D_Blake is at seat 2 with $962.60.
BluHorseshoe is at seat 3 with $692.
The button is at seat 1.
D_Blake posts the small blind of $3.
BluHorseshoe posts the big blind of $6.
lvnoffsklskyb: Jc Js
D_Blake: -- --
BluHorseshoe: -- --
Pre-flop:
lvnoffsklskyb raises to $21.
D_Blake calls.
BluHorseshoe folds.
Flop (board: 3c 3s 5c):
D_Blake checks.
lvnoffsklskyb bets $34.50.
D_Blakeraises to $120.
lvnoffsklskyb calls.
Turn (board: 3c 3s 5c 8h):
D_Blake bets $399.
lvnoffsklskyb folds.
D_Blake isreturned $399 (uncalled).
Now, this may seem like an odd fold at first glance and to be honest I'm still not 100% sure about it. But in poker you're really never 100% sure about anything, so I'm OK with that. We are of course only concerned about long term profit and what the best play will be over the long haul. Now my read on this guy was that he was pretty much a loose cannon pre-flop, however, once the flop came out and he got action, he wasn't messing around. If he was playing a big pot, he had a hand. On this hand, he check/raised the flop, then overbet the turn. I will concede that there are definitely hands in his range he would do this with that I beat, but based on my read of his post-flop play and given the fact that I had no FE and no chance of keeping the pot small, I decided to let it go. I think he shows up here with a better hand a lot and I think that even if I had him he probably had a lot of outs to beat me. I think at worst here he has probably 99 or a flush draw that possibly paired on the flop or turn. Not to mention the fact that this guy also calls raise pre-flop OOP with big hands occasionally so we can't rule out QQ+. I'll look at it more in depth later and I suspect that if I plugged it into pokerstove I would have a good amount of equity in this situation, but I think that my fold is correct given my read. Would love to hear opinions on it.
My mishap of the day occured this afternoon. I was playing two seperate tables on UB and had KQs on one and AQo on another. I re-raised both pre-flop from the small blind against pretty aggressive players that raised in LP. Both players on both tables called. On one table the flop was all rags, something like 7 5 2 and I led out. I was called and the turn was an ace which was a money card for me because this guy was stacking off weak aces like it was his job and I was fully convinced he would call me here with bare ace high. I led again and he insta-shoved. I pretty much beat him into the pot and the river was a Q. He showed AK and I was thinking, "wow he had a hand, unlucky for him" as the pot slid his way. I quickly checked the board for flushes and saw none, so obviously I was now a bit annoyed at the pot sliding to him. I then looked at my other table and saw AQ on my monitor. Fuck. I just called an all in on the turn for an $1,800 pot with K high. Bah. Moral of the story: look at your cards before calling an all in. :)
Sunday, August 5, 2007
A Disappointment and a Setback
Played my first session in a few days last night...drunk. Yesterday was my birthday so my wife and I went to the live games to hang out and have a good time. She actually ended up crushing it over there for like $700. I won about $150 myself then came home and like an idiot signed on to my account.
It's not like when Im drunk I just play out of my mind or do these crazy things (usually) and just mindlessly donk off money. It's more that if things aren't going well I tilt easily and play real fast without much thought to the hand or past history, etc. The damage wasn't too bad, but it was a couple thousand dollar setback and that annoys me. Some of the hands really were gross though and I ran very poorly. I played a guy 5/10 HU on UB and some of the shit he was hitting was amazing. I flopped two pair on an A high flop, he called me down with a bare pair of 4's (he had 44) and hit a running flush. Then he called a big c/r on the flop with a bare pair of 8's (he had 88) and turned an 8. I need to find that guy again when I'm ready to play 5/10 regularly. Anyway, I think I've realized that I just need to cut alcohol out of my life completely. There really is no need for me to drink and it just causes problems for me. I'm pretty upset at myself, not really because of the money because I think that I would have lost most of that last night had I been playing sober cuz I was just running so badly. But Ive made a commitment to not play drunk and it really shouldn't be a hard thing to do. I'm going to stop drinking. Wish me luck.
It's not like when Im drunk I just play out of my mind or do these crazy things (usually) and just mindlessly donk off money. It's more that if things aren't going well I tilt easily and play real fast without much thought to the hand or past history, etc. The damage wasn't too bad, but it was a couple thousand dollar setback and that annoys me. Some of the hands really were gross though and I ran very poorly. I played a guy 5/10 HU on UB and some of the shit he was hitting was amazing. I flopped two pair on an A high flop, he called me down with a bare pair of 4's (he had 44) and hit a running flush. Then he called a big c/r on the flop with a bare pair of 8's (he had 88) and turned an 8. I need to find that guy again when I'm ready to play 5/10 regularly. Anyway, I think I've realized that I just need to cut alcohol out of my life completely. There really is no need for me to drink and it just causes problems for me. I'm pretty upset at myself, not really because of the money because I think that I would have lost most of that last night had I been playing sober cuz I was just running so badly. But Ive made a commitment to not play drunk and it really shouldn't be a hard thing to do. I'm going to stop drinking. Wish me luck.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Life Tilt
I didn't play any poker today, mostly because my internet connection was fading in and out, so I didn't wanna chance getting in the middle of a huge hand and my connection going down. I've decided that every once in awhile I'll do a "Life Tilt" blog about things that are pissing me off whether poker related or not.
My current state of life tilt is focused on the movie Ghost Rider. I rented it tonight and couldn't believe how awful this movie was. This movie is about as worthless as foot fetish porn. Im pretty sure a 13 year old wrote this script. The movie already has Eva Mendes and it's pretty hard to fuck up a movie with her in it, but to make things worse the concept itself is off the charts awesome. The dude makes a pact with the devil and rides around all night on fire pimpin' a sick ass chopper fighting demons with a flaming chain from hell. How in the hell does someone fuck this up? There are more corny one liners than a Schwarzenegger movie. In once scene, Ghost Rider busts out of jail (he got caught by the cops in human form) and a cop chases him out of the station and hits him in the back with his club. Ghost Rider turns around and puts his finger up and goes, "uh uh uhhhh". Pathetic. They seriously couldn't think of anything better for him to say? Also, this movie features the guy from Road House who played Patrick Swayze's awesome bouncer buddy (evidently 60 year old dudes that weigh 140 lbs kick a lot of ass). It's amazing to me this guy isn't dead yet. He looked near death in the 80's but is somehow still playing the role of a badass at the age of 91. The one thing this movie had going for it was the phenomenal special effects. They really owned hard in that department. Other than that this shit is unwatchable and that pisses me off. Fuck this movie. Im so tilted.
My current state of life tilt is focused on the movie Ghost Rider. I rented it tonight and couldn't believe how awful this movie was. This movie is about as worthless as foot fetish porn. Im pretty sure a 13 year old wrote this script. The movie already has Eva Mendes and it's pretty hard to fuck up a movie with her in it, but to make things worse the concept itself is off the charts awesome. The dude makes a pact with the devil and rides around all night on fire pimpin' a sick ass chopper fighting demons with a flaming chain from hell. How in the hell does someone fuck this up? There are more corny one liners than a Schwarzenegger movie. In once scene, Ghost Rider busts out of jail (he got caught by the cops in human form) and a cop chases him out of the station and hits him in the back with his club. Ghost Rider turns around and puts his finger up and goes, "uh uh uhhhh". Pathetic. They seriously couldn't think of anything better for him to say? Also, this movie features the guy from Road House who played Patrick Swayze's awesome bouncer buddy (evidently 60 year old dudes that weigh 140 lbs kick a lot of ass). It's amazing to me this guy isn't dead yet. He looked near death in the 80's but is somehow still playing the role of a badass at the age of 91. The one thing this movie had going for it was the phenomenal special effects. They really owned hard in that department. Other than that this shit is unwatchable and that pisses me off. Fuck this movie. Im so tilted.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
I Hate Live Poker
I think I'm starting to come to the realization that the live games around here are really a waste of time. I remember talking to Kevin (Lucko) when I first started going and he told me he would never go to games like that because they're probably rigged. All the guys there are really awesome and a lot of fun to play with, but is it possible they're ripping me off? I honestly couldn't say a definite no, which didn't bother me before, but is starting to bother me.
I ended down $1,000 tonight at the 5/10 game. It really does seem odd to me though how badly people play and how consistently they get bailed out. I came home after the live game and won $1,600 online in a few hours against much better players. There are a number of things this could be. Online you see more hands allowing variance to even out quicker, the players are better, which means they are less likely to chase trash and make really spewy plays, etc. But I've been playing these games for a number of months now and I'm a significant loser in them. I hardly ever walk away with a win. Contrast this to Las Vegas where I have never walked away a loser and in fact have crushed the cash games out there. It is all just getting a bit too fishy for me. Is it possible Im just running bad? Of course. And that is more than likely the case. But there is doubt in my mind and that makes me a bit uncomfortable. A few hands that I've lost really couldn't have been written better in novel form for my opponents.
Moving on though, I pretty much crushed FTP tonight. I played HU and 6 max 2/4 just 2 tabling and focusing. I know that a lot of players like to play 6-8 tables at once and that really used to be me, but I have found that focusing on one or two tables has significantly improved my play. I just see so many things that others that are playing a lot of tables may miss. I get away with a lot of bluff raises and very thin value bets simply because I'm paying attention to everything going on while my opponents may not. I'm currently running at 17BB/100 at 2/4 HU. Im not really sure if that's great or anything since I don't have any numbers to compare this to, but I suspect winning $136 every 100 hands HU at 2/4 is pretty damn good. I ended the night on a very sour note. I had about 3K on one table and was playing a guy with a full buyin. He was a good player and the game was incredibly aggressive. We got AI prf me with QQ and him with AA. I immediately left after this hand as it is very easy to tilt after a cooler like that. One thing I have improved 100 fold in my game is the mental aspect. I don't play drunk anymore and I really feel no tilt at all because I leave when I feel my play deteriorating. I don't play when Im tired or don't feel like it. Back in the day I used to log in and just auto-pilot to "get hands in". Im fully convinced I can make more money playing 100% my best on a few tables rather than 50% at 6 tables and my results are proving this. Well, it's 7AM and I just finished a long session, so Im gonna head to bed. Good luck at the tables.
I ended down $1,000 tonight at the 5/10 game. It really does seem odd to me though how badly people play and how consistently they get bailed out. I came home after the live game and won $1,600 online in a few hours against much better players. There are a number of things this could be. Online you see more hands allowing variance to even out quicker, the players are better, which means they are less likely to chase trash and make really spewy plays, etc. But I've been playing these games for a number of months now and I'm a significant loser in them. I hardly ever walk away with a win. Contrast this to Las Vegas where I have never walked away a loser and in fact have crushed the cash games out there. It is all just getting a bit too fishy for me. Is it possible Im just running bad? Of course. And that is more than likely the case. But there is doubt in my mind and that makes me a bit uncomfortable. A few hands that I've lost really couldn't have been written better in novel form for my opponents.
Moving on though, I pretty much crushed FTP tonight. I played HU and 6 max 2/4 just 2 tabling and focusing. I know that a lot of players like to play 6-8 tables at once and that really used to be me, but I have found that focusing on one or two tables has significantly improved my play. I just see so many things that others that are playing a lot of tables may miss. I get away with a lot of bluff raises and very thin value bets simply because I'm paying attention to everything going on while my opponents may not. I'm currently running at 17BB/100 at 2/4 HU. Im not really sure if that's great or anything since I don't have any numbers to compare this to, but I suspect winning $136 every 100 hands HU at 2/4 is pretty damn good. I ended the night on a very sour note. I had about 3K on one table and was playing a guy with a full buyin. He was a good player and the game was incredibly aggressive. We got AI prf me with QQ and him with AA. I immediately left after this hand as it is very easy to tilt after a cooler like that. One thing I have improved 100 fold in my game is the mental aspect. I don't play drunk anymore and I really feel no tilt at all because I leave when I feel my play deteriorating. I don't play when Im tired or don't feel like it. Back in the day I used to log in and just auto-pilot to "get hands in". Im fully convinced I can make more money playing 100% my best on a few tables rather than 50% at 6 tables and my results are proving this. Well, it's 7AM and I just finished a long session, so Im gonna head to bed. Good luck at the tables.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Story Time
I woke up abrubtly this morning. I have been doing that the past few mornings for some reason. After 7 hours or so of sleeping my body will just wake up and I can't go back to sleep. For my blog entry today, I decided that I wanted to share a story with you that hopefully you will find interesting.
Let me start off by saying that this story is incredibly personal to me and something that I'm not proud of in any way, shape or form. Not many people know about this actually, but I am making a choice to make this public in some respects because I am fully determined to never let it happen again.
As many of you know, I am not a compulsive gambler at all. I don't really like to play table games like craps, roulette or anything of the sort. I'll play the occasional couple hours of blackjack while in Vegas, but it's never anything more than $300-$400 or so and I never play online.
We'll start about a year ago, when I was playing 5/10 and 10/20 NL (mostly 5/10) on Party Poker everynight for my living and had been for awhile. I had been doing very well in the games and was averaging a couple buyins per session. During this time I struggled with what I would call a moderate form of alcohol addiction. I was drinking probably 6 nights per week on average and I wasn't having just 1 or 2 drinks, I was downing 2 bottles of wine and a few beers, or an assortment of liquor and beer. It got to the point where I wouldn't play unless I was a bit drunk. At this point in time I actually thought the alcohol improved my game, so being convinced of the fact I would only play drunk. This continued for months on end and had my family very concerned about me. It got to the point where if I was awake, there was a good chance I was either drinking or planning on drinking in the near future.
Fast forward to December, about 8-10 months or so after my alcohol addiction had become something I came to accept and live with. I started playing more tournaments and went on an insane rush. In 3 weeks time, I finished 3rd in a UBOC event, won the 100r on stars nearly twice (finished 2nd once), won the 50r twice, won a $100 freezeout on stars, won a $100 freezeout on UB, won the 100r on UB, and had a myriad of final tables and great finishes in some very tough events. In less than a month's time I was up almost $80,000, by far my best poker month ever. It was at this time I decided it was time to move up in stakes and play 25/50 full time with my newfound riches. Unfortunately, I was still drinking 6-7 nights per week and this would not change. I did alright when I first started out. The games were definitely a bit different than I was used to, but I was determined to beat these games as badly as I was beating the 5/10 games I was accustomed to. I was up and down at first, but after a week or so was up a little bit and feeling good about the situation being careful to not play any of the bigger name players at those stakes just yet.
December 30th, 2006 turned out to be a day that I will never forget. It was the night of a big UFC event. I bought a huge bottle of Absolut for myself and had already decided that I was just going to take the night off and enjoy myself with my wife and watch the fights. I started drinking about an hour or two before the fights started and was already a bit drunk when they began. Just to pass time during the smaller events, I fired up Stars and was one tabling 5/10, more to just give me something to do. After 4 hours of drinking or so, I found myself multitabling the 25/50 cash games. I was drinking vodka and red bull and as the night wore on it turned into a lot less red bull and a lot more vodka. I don't remember exactly how the night went and honestly don't remember who was even fighting that night. But what I do remember is that I lost $30,000 that night, by far my biggest losing day in poker. I woke up the next day beside myself and couldn't believe what had happened. I checked the bottle of Absolut and it was almost gone. I had singlehandedly drank the whole bottle by myself in 8 hours time.
At this point I vowed to never drink while playing again, but it was too late. I had been building terrible habits for the past year and even though every part of me wanted to stop drinking, I simply couldn't play without it. Instead of being smart and dropping down limits to get my losses back, I kept playing any high stakes game I could find and continued chasing my losses. I also continued drinking when I played. I would love to tell you that I battled back and won back my money and then some crushing all opposition in my path, but unfortunately this is real life and the players I was up against were a different caliber than I was used to. It was going to be tough to beat these guys when I was sober and in my right mind, let alone sitting there hammered and spewing EV all over the place. By the end of January I was down nearly $80,000, which was basically all of my tournament wins from the month before. Those tourneys were not easy and I put in a lot of hard work to get those scores. Looking back at the past 2 months it was amazing my change in attitude. In December, I was probably the most confident poker player on the face of the planet. I was quite certain I could play anyone and win and I think during that month I wouldn't have been far off. Everything was clicking for me. I was playing excellent poker and had supreme confidence in my game. At the end of January I was a different person. I went from feeling on top of the world to sinking into a state of depression that would last for a long time.
For the next couple months, I tried to get back into tournaments and my usual stakes cash games, but I could never shake the memory of that one month period no matter how hard I tried. It was in the back of my mind at all times and it affected my play to the point where I was scared money at any table I was at. Couple this with the fact that Neteller, where I had many thousands of dollars, had just shut down to US customers and I didn't know if I would ever see that money again. Whenever I played, all I could think about was somehow getting myself out of this 100K+ hole I felt I was in. I was just playing to gamble and wasn't playing any sort of good poker at all. I even continued to drink to just numb the depression and pain I felt every time I was sober.
During my lowest point, my wife and I had pretty much given up on the marriage and I had been planning on moving out at some point in the near future. Looking back on those times, I was doing a lot of blame-shifting as to the real problems that I had and was blaming her for everything. Your mind works in weird ways when you have a huge problem and want to rationalize it to yourself. I kept telling myself everything was fine, but when I look back at myself during that time I cannot believe that I was blaming anyone else for my own problems. It was blatantly obvious that I was the one who was causing most of the stress in our marriage and I regret that very much. My addiction to alcohol almost led to me losing first and foremost my family and very distantly second, my job, friends and mental health.
It took a long time, but today I feel like I am a new person. I have kicked my addiction to alcohol with the help of my family and don't drink even close to what I used to. 98% of my play is done without the use of alcohol and my primary goal is to get that number to 100%. The only time I drink and play is when I play live 1/2 with my friends. Although I am not addicted to alcohol anymore, I am not foolish enough to think that it couldn't happen again and have taken steps to assure that it won't. In my fridge right now I have 3 beers total and I never keep liquor in the house. If I am planning on drinking on a certain night, I buy just what I think I'll need. Part of my problem before was that I would "stock up" on my alcohol, and once I started drinking I usually could go on as long as I wanted with an endless supply of booze on hand. If I had a friend over today, we would run out of booze in 15 minutes. That's the way I want it. I don't want to go back to that lifestyle. I don't want to wake up in the morning feeling that anything I do that day is meaningless and I certainly don't want to put my wife, my son and my soon to be 2nd son in a position where their father is a raging alcoholic.
Part of the reason I wrote this is because I really haven't talked much about it since it happened and honestly, it feels good to get this all written down. I also want to keep myself accountable so that this never happens again. I don't think I was ever to the point where I was what you would consider a severe form of alcoholism, but I was definitely leaning in that direction with no sign of slowing.
Today, I feel like I have a new direction, both in life and in poker and it's good to have momentum in the right direction for a change. I am grinding lower limits now and have very good results so far and am overall a better player than I ever was before. It's not going to be easy, but I am committed to improving not only my play at the tables, but also my overall lifestyle. I am confident that with hard work I can achieve whatever goals I have set for myself. Right now, my goals are to just play good poker, with little thought for the money, which was my sole focus for so long. I hope you enjoyed this post and found it interesting. For those of you suffering from any form of alcohol addiction, I really urge you to get ahold of it before it's too late. You may not blow through a lot of money like me, but it will deteriorate your overall lifestyle and your relationships to those close to you at the very least. Good luck at the tables.
Let me start off by saying that this story is incredibly personal to me and something that I'm not proud of in any way, shape or form. Not many people know about this actually, but I am making a choice to make this public in some respects because I am fully determined to never let it happen again.
As many of you know, I am not a compulsive gambler at all. I don't really like to play table games like craps, roulette or anything of the sort. I'll play the occasional couple hours of blackjack while in Vegas, but it's never anything more than $300-$400 or so and I never play online.
We'll start about a year ago, when I was playing 5/10 and 10/20 NL (mostly 5/10) on Party Poker everynight for my living and had been for awhile. I had been doing very well in the games and was averaging a couple buyins per session. During this time I struggled with what I would call a moderate form of alcohol addiction. I was drinking probably 6 nights per week on average and I wasn't having just 1 or 2 drinks, I was downing 2 bottles of wine and a few beers, or an assortment of liquor and beer. It got to the point where I wouldn't play unless I was a bit drunk. At this point in time I actually thought the alcohol improved my game, so being convinced of the fact I would only play drunk. This continued for months on end and had my family very concerned about me. It got to the point where if I was awake, there was a good chance I was either drinking or planning on drinking in the near future.
Fast forward to December, about 8-10 months or so after my alcohol addiction had become something I came to accept and live with. I started playing more tournaments and went on an insane rush. In 3 weeks time, I finished 3rd in a UBOC event, won the 100r on stars nearly twice (finished 2nd once), won the 50r twice, won a $100 freezeout on stars, won a $100 freezeout on UB, won the 100r on UB, and had a myriad of final tables and great finishes in some very tough events. In less than a month's time I was up almost $80,000, by far my best poker month ever. It was at this time I decided it was time to move up in stakes and play 25/50 full time with my newfound riches. Unfortunately, I was still drinking 6-7 nights per week and this would not change. I did alright when I first started out. The games were definitely a bit different than I was used to, but I was determined to beat these games as badly as I was beating the 5/10 games I was accustomed to. I was up and down at first, but after a week or so was up a little bit and feeling good about the situation being careful to not play any of the bigger name players at those stakes just yet.
December 30th, 2006 turned out to be a day that I will never forget. It was the night of a big UFC event. I bought a huge bottle of Absolut for myself and had already decided that I was just going to take the night off and enjoy myself with my wife and watch the fights. I started drinking about an hour or two before the fights started and was already a bit drunk when they began. Just to pass time during the smaller events, I fired up Stars and was one tabling 5/10, more to just give me something to do. After 4 hours of drinking or so, I found myself multitabling the 25/50 cash games. I was drinking vodka and red bull and as the night wore on it turned into a lot less red bull and a lot more vodka. I don't remember exactly how the night went and honestly don't remember who was even fighting that night. But what I do remember is that I lost $30,000 that night, by far my biggest losing day in poker. I woke up the next day beside myself and couldn't believe what had happened. I checked the bottle of Absolut and it was almost gone. I had singlehandedly drank the whole bottle by myself in 8 hours time.
At this point I vowed to never drink while playing again, but it was too late. I had been building terrible habits for the past year and even though every part of me wanted to stop drinking, I simply couldn't play without it. Instead of being smart and dropping down limits to get my losses back, I kept playing any high stakes game I could find and continued chasing my losses. I also continued drinking when I played. I would love to tell you that I battled back and won back my money and then some crushing all opposition in my path, but unfortunately this is real life and the players I was up against were a different caliber than I was used to. It was going to be tough to beat these guys when I was sober and in my right mind, let alone sitting there hammered and spewing EV all over the place. By the end of January I was down nearly $80,000, which was basically all of my tournament wins from the month before. Those tourneys were not easy and I put in a lot of hard work to get those scores. Looking back at the past 2 months it was amazing my change in attitude. In December, I was probably the most confident poker player on the face of the planet. I was quite certain I could play anyone and win and I think during that month I wouldn't have been far off. Everything was clicking for me. I was playing excellent poker and had supreme confidence in my game. At the end of January I was a different person. I went from feeling on top of the world to sinking into a state of depression that would last for a long time.
For the next couple months, I tried to get back into tournaments and my usual stakes cash games, but I could never shake the memory of that one month period no matter how hard I tried. It was in the back of my mind at all times and it affected my play to the point where I was scared money at any table I was at. Couple this with the fact that Neteller, where I had many thousands of dollars, had just shut down to US customers and I didn't know if I would ever see that money again. Whenever I played, all I could think about was somehow getting myself out of this 100K+ hole I felt I was in. I was just playing to gamble and wasn't playing any sort of good poker at all. I even continued to drink to just numb the depression and pain I felt every time I was sober.
During my lowest point, my wife and I had pretty much given up on the marriage and I had been planning on moving out at some point in the near future. Looking back on those times, I was doing a lot of blame-shifting as to the real problems that I had and was blaming her for everything. Your mind works in weird ways when you have a huge problem and want to rationalize it to yourself. I kept telling myself everything was fine, but when I look back at myself during that time I cannot believe that I was blaming anyone else for my own problems. It was blatantly obvious that I was the one who was causing most of the stress in our marriage and I regret that very much. My addiction to alcohol almost led to me losing first and foremost my family and very distantly second, my job, friends and mental health.
It took a long time, but today I feel like I am a new person. I have kicked my addiction to alcohol with the help of my family and don't drink even close to what I used to. 98% of my play is done without the use of alcohol and my primary goal is to get that number to 100%. The only time I drink and play is when I play live 1/2 with my friends. Although I am not addicted to alcohol anymore, I am not foolish enough to think that it couldn't happen again and have taken steps to assure that it won't. In my fridge right now I have 3 beers total and I never keep liquor in the house. If I am planning on drinking on a certain night, I buy just what I think I'll need. Part of my problem before was that I would "stock up" on my alcohol, and once I started drinking I usually could go on as long as I wanted with an endless supply of booze on hand. If I had a friend over today, we would run out of booze in 15 minutes. That's the way I want it. I don't want to go back to that lifestyle. I don't want to wake up in the morning feeling that anything I do that day is meaningless and I certainly don't want to put my wife, my son and my soon to be 2nd son in a position where their father is a raging alcoholic.
Part of the reason I wrote this is because I really haven't talked much about it since it happened and honestly, it feels good to get this all written down. I also want to keep myself accountable so that this never happens again. I don't think I was ever to the point where I was what you would consider a severe form of alcoholism, but I was definitely leaning in that direction with no sign of slowing.
Today, I feel like I have a new direction, both in life and in poker and it's good to have momentum in the right direction for a change. I am grinding lower limits now and have very good results so far and am overall a better player than I ever was before. It's not going to be easy, but I am committed to improving not only my play at the tables, but also my overall lifestyle. I am confident that with hard work I can achieve whatever goals I have set for myself. Right now, my goals are to just play good poker, with little thought for the money, which was my sole focus for so long. I hope you enjoyed this post and found it interesting. For those of you suffering from any form of alcohol addiction, I really urge you to get ahold of it before it's too late. You may not blow through a lot of money like me, but it will deteriorate your overall lifestyle and your relationships to those close to you at the very least. Good luck at the tables.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Tough Session
Played a 4 hour session today, some on FTP and some on Absolute. The FTP games in the afternoon are just terrible. Everyone at the table is running at 20/15. Basically just a bunch of nits. Unfortunately for me I didn't really realize this fully until I dropped 2 buyins. I decided to high tail it out of there and check out Absolute. This site has never failed me. No matter what time of day I've played there, it's always the same. Super weak tables full of limp/callers/folders who let you run them over, don't bet their big hands, and just overall play terrible poker.
I ended up breaking even at Absolute due to a few hands where I couldn't really get away. Oh well, it happens. I was extremely pleased with my play today and have really been focusing lately on keeping my emotions in check and just worrying about making the best possible play available to me at the time.
I wanted to share two hands that I thought were interesting, one of which I thought I played very well and one of which I think I should have gotten away.
The first one is on FTP and goes like this:
A decent player raises UTG to $14. I am right behind him and make it $45 with two red queens. We both have a full buyin with him covering slightly (2/4 NL so $400). It folds back to him and he pretty quickly makes it $140 or so. Well now...with my image at the table being pretty active, I decided that I could very well be ahead here, but if I shove him back then Im really kind of forcing him to have KK or AA to call. I decided to call and see a flop before getting my money in. The flop comes J rag rag all clubs. He insta shoves into me. Sigh...now I have half my stack in, an OP and am getting about 2:1 on my money to call. My first reaction to this was to fold, but I decided at the last minute that he could easily be doing this with a couple combos of AK where he has the K or A of clubs, which would mean that this was an easy call against that hand. Thinking back though, the prf 4 bet from a nit and then an insta shove really narrows down his range here. First off, Im pretty sure his prf 4 betting range from UTG is going to be TT+ and AK. When he auto shoves the flop, TT is basically out (altho there is a small chance of course), JJ is now ahead, KK and AA crush me and Im racing against the A or K of clubs and two overs. I also have no club in my hand for backup in case he does have something like two red kings and just wants the action over with. I think that taking this all into consideration, this was probably a fold even though I was getting decent odds and had pretty good equity. Oh well. It definitely wasn't a terrible play per se, but I think that I should be getting away in spots like that.
The second hand I wanted to share was on Absolute and I thought my play here was awesome.
STAGE #718221580: HOLDEM NO LIMIT $4 - 2007-07-26 16:59:57 (ET)
Table: FRIENDSHIP LN (Real Money) Seat #4 is the dealer
Seat 4 - I_PLAY_GOOD ($830.40 in chips)
Seat 5 - CUBBIEBLUE10 ($998 in chips)
Seat 1 - THEPLAYA13 ($626 in chips)
Seat 2 - EBISCO05 ($341.80 in chips)
Seat 3 - DOMA911 ($184.30 in chips)
CUBBIEBLUE10 - Posts small blind $2 THEPLAYA13 - Posts big blind $4
*** POCKET CARDS ***Dealt to I_PLAY_GOOD [Kc 8c]
EBISCO05 - Calls $4
DOMA911 - Folds
I_PLAY_GOOD - Raises $16 to $16
CUBBIEBLUE10 - Folds
THEPLAYA13 - Folds
EBISCO05 - Calls $12
*** FLOP *** [8d 6d 6c]
EBISCO05 - Bets $32
I_PLAY_GOOD - Raises $95 to $95
EBISCO05 - Raises $158 to $190
I_PLAY_GOOD - Calls $95
*** TURN *** [8d 6d 6c] [5h]
EBISCO05 - All-In $135.80
I_PLAY_GOOD - Calls $135.80
*** RIVER *** [8d 6d 6c 5h] [6s]
*** SHOW DOWN ***EBISCO05 - Shows [5d 5s] (Full house, sixes full of fives) I_PLAY_GOOD - Shows [Kc 8c] (Full house, sixes full of eights)
I_PLAY_GOOD Collects $686.10 from main pot
Now, this hand may look a bit nuts at first, but let me explain my train of thought here. First off, I am a limper raising fool. I just love doing it. It's so +EV long run and creates this insane image where people never give you credit for anything. I had raised this guy at least 10 times already and he had been folding every single time. He had just doubled up (was short stacking) and the last 3 times or so, he had called my prf raise and led out on the flop, evidently sick of my raising. I had just folded to this the first two times, but now I hit what I thought to be the best hand. A lot of times I may elect to call here, because it is certainly not out of the realm of possibility for him to be sitting on a 6 here. But in this situation, I was really convinced that I had the best hand and that he may make a move on me if I raise him. I also didn't want something like an A, K, Q or J to fall to kill the action. When he comes back over the top of my raise, I was really putting him on a range of like top pair weaker kicker, 77 or 55 with the small possibility of a junk hand like 68, 65, or a FD. I was pretty sure from watching him play that he would never limp call 99+ so I pretty much dismissed those from my mind. On the flop, I decide to call here after thinking for my whole timebank. My thought here was that if I shove, I think I would fold out something like 55 or 77, but I didn't think I would fold out an 8 and I certainly didn't think I would fold out a 6 or a FD. Based on this, I decided that the highest +EV play was to call here and let him shove the turn into a huge pot, or if the turn bricked, let him check, I shove and then have him try to make a hero call for the rest of his smallish stack into a gigantic pot. (let me make it clear that I was not planning on folding no matter the turn, but I mentioned the turn bricking from his standpoint) I think that this play maximizes my win long term much moreso than shoving the flop. He actually sucked out on the turn and had pretty much exactly the sort of hand I thought he had, but fortunately I ran good on the river and hit a higher FH.
So that pretty much sums up my session for the most part. Started off my session getting coolered a bit with the QQ and then I turned a FH on Absolute which gave my opponent a higher FH. I actually had the discipline in that one to just call on the river because he played it so obviously. I'm telling you guys, if you aren't playing on Absolute you really are making a mistake IMO. It's like the new age Party Poker. Overall, I actually think Im playing the best poker of my life right now and am very excited about what's to come this year. I plan on huge things by the time December is here.
I ended up breaking even at Absolute due to a few hands where I couldn't really get away. Oh well, it happens. I was extremely pleased with my play today and have really been focusing lately on keeping my emotions in check and just worrying about making the best possible play available to me at the time.
I wanted to share two hands that I thought were interesting, one of which I thought I played very well and one of which I think I should have gotten away.
The first one is on FTP and goes like this:
A decent player raises UTG to $14. I am right behind him and make it $45 with two red queens. We both have a full buyin with him covering slightly (2/4 NL so $400). It folds back to him and he pretty quickly makes it $140 or so. Well now...with my image at the table being pretty active, I decided that I could very well be ahead here, but if I shove him back then Im really kind of forcing him to have KK or AA to call. I decided to call and see a flop before getting my money in. The flop comes J rag rag all clubs. He insta shoves into me. Sigh...now I have half my stack in, an OP and am getting about 2:1 on my money to call. My first reaction to this was to fold, but I decided at the last minute that he could easily be doing this with a couple combos of AK where he has the K or A of clubs, which would mean that this was an easy call against that hand. Thinking back though, the prf 4 bet from a nit and then an insta shove really narrows down his range here. First off, Im pretty sure his prf 4 betting range from UTG is going to be TT+ and AK. When he auto shoves the flop, TT is basically out (altho there is a small chance of course), JJ is now ahead, KK and AA crush me and Im racing against the A or K of clubs and two overs. I also have no club in my hand for backup in case he does have something like two red kings and just wants the action over with. I think that taking this all into consideration, this was probably a fold even though I was getting decent odds and had pretty good equity. Oh well. It definitely wasn't a terrible play per se, but I think that I should be getting away in spots like that.
The second hand I wanted to share was on Absolute and I thought my play here was awesome.
STAGE #718221580: HOLDEM NO LIMIT $4 - 2007-07-26 16:59:57 (ET)
Table: FRIENDSHIP LN (Real Money) Seat #4 is the dealer
Seat 4 - I_PLAY_GOOD ($830.40 in chips)
Seat 5 - CUBBIEBLUE10 ($998 in chips)
Seat 1 - THEPLAYA13 ($626 in chips)
Seat 2 - EBISCO05 ($341.80 in chips)
Seat 3 - DOMA911 ($184.30 in chips)
CUBBIEBLUE10 - Posts small blind $2 THEPLAYA13 - Posts big blind $4
*** POCKET CARDS ***Dealt to I_PLAY_GOOD [Kc 8c]
EBISCO05 - Calls $4
DOMA911 - Folds
I_PLAY_GOOD - Raises $16 to $16
CUBBIEBLUE10 - Folds
THEPLAYA13 - Folds
EBISCO05 - Calls $12
*** FLOP *** [8d 6d 6c]
EBISCO05 - Bets $32
I_PLAY_GOOD - Raises $95 to $95
EBISCO05 - Raises $158 to $190
I_PLAY_GOOD - Calls $95
*** TURN *** [8d 6d 6c] [5h]
EBISCO05 - All-In $135.80
I_PLAY_GOOD - Calls $135.80
*** RIVER *** [8d 6d 6c 5h] [6s]
*** SHOW DOWN ***EBISCO05 - Shows [5d 5s] (Full house, sixes full of fives) I_PLAY_GOOD - Shows [Kc 8c] (Full house, sixes full of eights)
I_PLAY_GOOD Collects $686.10 from main pot
Now, this hand may look a bit nuts at first, but let me explain my train of thought here. First off, I am a limper raising fool. I just love doing it. It's so +EV long run and creates this insane image where people never give you credit for anything. I had raised this guy at least 10 times already and he had been folding every single time. He had just doubled up (was short stacking) and the last 3 times or so, he had called my prf raise and led out on the flop, evidently sick of my raising. I had just folded to this the first two times, but now I hit what I thought to be the best hand. A lot of times I may elect to call here, because it is certainly not out of the realm of possibility for him to be sitting on a 6 here. But in this situation, I was really convinced that I had the best hand and that he may make a move on me if I raise him. I also didn't want something like an A, K, Q or J to fall to kill the action. When he comes back over the top of my raise, I was really putting him on a range of like top pair weaker kicker, 77 or 55 with the small possibility of a junk hand like 68, 65, or a FD. I was pretty sure from watching him play that he would never limp call 99+ so I pretty much dismissed those from my mind. On the flop, I decide to call here after thinking for my whole timebank. My thought here was that if I shove, I think I would fold out something like 55 or 77, but I didn't think I would fold out an 8 and I certainly didn't think I would fold out a 6 or a FD. Based on this, I decided that the highest +EV play was to call here and let him shove the turn into a huge pot, or if the turn bricked, let him check, I shove and then have him try to make a hero call for the rest of his smallish stack into a gigantic pot. (let me make it clear that I was not planning on folding no matter the turn, but I mentioned the turn bricking from his standpoint) I think that this play maximizes my win long term much moreso than shoving the flop. He actually sucked out on the turn and had pretty much exactly the sort of hand I thought he had, but fortunately I ran good on the river and hit a higher FH.
So that pretty much sums up my session for the most part. Started off my session getting coolered a bit with the QQ and then I turned a FH on Absolute which gave my opponent a higher FH. I actually had the discipline in that one to just call on the river because he played it so obviously. I'm telling you guys, if you aren't playing on Absolute you really are making a mistake IMO. It's like the new age Party Poker. Overall, I actually think Im playing the best poker of my life right now and am very excited about what's to come this year. I plan on huge things by the time December is here.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Marathon Man
Just finished a 16 hour straight session between live and online. I feel like shit. Tonight my buddy Mark spread a 5/10 game at "The Depot" as we call it. It's basically an old auto repair shop that he refurbished inside and has room for 4 full tables, a pool table, ping pong, plasmas all over the place including an enormous one in the middle of the room with an Xbox, and a full bar area. For a game in SC, this place is where it's at. Always nice to know the right people.
Anyway, I think if I could play one game the rest of my life, it would be Greenville, SC 5/10NL. The play is so mind numblingly atrocious I sometimes have to act like I'm coughing after hands to not giveaway the fact I'm about to break out into laughter. It's like LOL, except in real life. This game is actually kinda weird in that you have to literally play poorly to win in these games. For instance, there are 4 limpers in front of you. Normally online, I would be raising a wide range here, but when I see something like 67s, I auto muck. Why? Well because these guys are playing stuff like J7 consistently, and they will limp call any raise you make. 4 limpers you make it $60, ur getting 4 callers for a $240 pot. Now ur in a huge pot where no one is gonna fold anything with 67s. I know it sounds weird and I probably didn't explain it very well since Ive been up for more than 24 hours, but trust me, you have to play "bad" in a sense to beat these games. Unfortunately for me, I didn't play bad enough tonight and I lost about $400. Im happy with my play though, I thought I played extremely well. I lost one of the biggest pots I played the whole night against a drunk guy with AJ on an A 2 4 flop. He had A3 and we got it all in on the flop. Turn is an auto 5. NH.
Came home from live and settled down into a couple tables on Absolute. For those of you not playing on Absolute, I highly recommend it. The play is among the worst I've seen online. At most of the bigger sites, a lot of players have adapted an optimal style of playing where if they enter a pot they raise, they 3 bet a lot in and out of the blinds and basically make life miserable for any player trying to take over the table. Not so at Absolute. There's evidently a limp/fold epidemic on that site, not to mention the atrocious postflop play. Tonight, I had KdKh on a J 5 6 3 diamond flop. This guy had been playing incredibly poorly, so I had pretty much decided on the flop that no matter the action I was going nowhere. I just felt his range was going to be too wide against me for me to make any sort of good fold here. I bet almost the pot on the flop and he calls. The turn is the 8 of hearts. He checks and I bet half his stack. He c/r all in. Now of course I have to call, but Im figuring to be up against at least some sort of combo draw with the ace if not a flopped flush. The guy felts A7 of spades. NH. You just can't really find players that bad on the major sites anymore for the most part. It may have something to do with my playing so early in the morning (started my session around 6:30AM), but I haven't seen a play like that (OK, I have, but very few and far between) since the old Party days. These guys were doing this as a habit. One guy was shoving $600 in prf after another raised $12. He did this like 15 times. It was amazing. I started the session up about $600 in the first hour, swung down to where I was down $800 overall and then ended the session up $1K for the night. So with my live losses I'm hovering right around $600 profit for the day.
You know, everytime I go to play live I kinda regret it just because Im about 1,000 times the player online than I am live, but I really can't help myself. It's not everyday you get to play people willing to stack off $2K pots with trash. I actually am pretty convinced I am running like total shit in the games. I've given it a lot of thought and think I have adjusted my game properly, it's just a matter of not getting coolered (My two biggest pots lost have been middle set to top set and A9 on a 9 9 J flop to J9) and not getting sucked out on. My buddy that deals and I have a running joke now it's gotten so bad. The joke isn't really funny, so Im not gonna try to tell it, but basically it's just a joke about how badly I run in the games...SO.....that being said this was a terrible blog entry and I apologize. Next one will be better I promise. I have a lot of shit going down in the next couple weeks. I need to get both my houses rented out as Ive been stuck with both mortgage payments for a month. Both houses need to have some work done on the walls, etc. Im super lazy so I've been putting it off, but it's like flushing money down the toilet, so I have to get off my ass and do it.
Anyway, I think if I could play one game the rest of my life, it would be Greenville, SC 5/10NL. The play is so mind numblingly atrocious I sometimes have to act like I'm coughing after hands to not giveaway the fact I'm about to break out into laughter. It's like LOL, except in real life. This game is actually kinda weird in that you have to literally play poorly to win in these games. For instance, there are 4 limpers in front of you. Normally online, I would be raising a wide range here, but when I see something like 67s, I auto muck. Why? Well because these guys are playing stuff like J7 consistently, and they will limp call any raise you make. 4 limpers you make it $60, ur getting 4 callers for a $240 pot. Now ur in a huge pot where no one is gonna fold anything with 67s. I know it sounds weird and I probably didn't explain it very well since Ive been up for more than 24 hours, but trust me, you have to play "bad" in a sense to beat these games. Unfortunately for me, I didn't play bad enough tonight and I lost about $400. Im happy with my play though, I thought I played extremely well. I lost one of the biggest pots I played the whole night against a drunk guy with AJ on an A 2 4 flop. He had A3 and we got it all in on the flop. Turn is an auto 5. NH.
Came home from live and settled down into a couple tables on Absolute. For those of you not playing on Absolute, I highly recommend it. The play is among the worst I've seen online. At most of the bigger sites, a lot of players have adapted an optimal style of playing where if they enter a pot they raise, they 3 bet a lot in and out of the blinds and basically make life miserable for any player trying to take over the table. Not so at Absolute. There's evidently a limp/fold epidemic on that site, not to mention the atrocious postflop play. Tonight, I had KdKh on a J 5 6 3 diamond flop. This guy had been playing incredibly poorly, so I had pretty much decided on the flop that no matter the action I was going nowhere. I just felt his range was going to be too wide against me for me to make any sort of good fold here. I bet almost the pot on the flop and he calls. The turn is the 8 of hearts. He checks and I bet half his stack. He c/r all in. Now of course I have to call, but Im figuring to be up against at least some sort of combo draw with the ace if not a flopped flush. The guy felts A7 of spades. NH. You just can't really find players that bad on the major sites anymore for the most part. It may have something to do with my playing so early in the morning (started my session around 6:30AM), but I haven't seen a play like that (OK, I have, but very few and far between) since the old Party days. These guys were doing this as a habit. One guy was shoving $600 in prf after another raised $12. He did this like 15 times. It was amazing. I started the session up about $600 in the first hour, swung down to where I was down $800 overall and then ended the session up $1K for the night. So with my live losses I'm hovering right around $600 profit for the day.
You know, everytime I go to play live I kinda regret it just because Im about 1,000 times the player online than I am live, but I really can't help myself. It's not everyday you get to play people willing to stack off $2K pots with trash. I actually am pretty convinced I am running like total shit in the games. I've given it a lot of thought and think I have adjusted my game properly, it's just a matter of not getting coolered (My two biggest pots lost have been middle set to top set and A9 on a 9 9 J flop to J9) and not getting sucked out on. My buddy that deals and I have a running joke now it's gotten so bad. The joke isn't really funny, so Im not gonna try to tell it, but basically it's just a joke about how badly I run in the games...SO.....that being said this was a terrible blog entry and I apologize. Next one will be better I promise. I have a lot of shit going down in the next couple weeks. I need to get both my houses rented out as Ive been stuck with both mortgage payments for a month. Both houses need to have some work done on the walls, etc. Im super lazy so I've been putting it off, but it's like flushing money down the toilet, so I have to get off my ass and do it.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
A Very Nice Night
It's 7AM and I just got finished with a live/HU session. The live game I play in is the most +EV game you can imagine. If you want to see a table full of 9 people who are doing exactly the opposite of the right play every single hand, you will come sit at the home games I go to. Unfortunately for me, I run like total ass in them, so there's that complication...I played a guy HU tonight in a PLO/8B and NLH mixed game. I ended up taking him for ~$300 and then losing that on the NL tables after we quit. I ended the session down $75 live. A guy raises, calls my RR (which was half his stack) with T8 and flops trip 8's. Very well played buddy. People come to gamble, nothing much you can do.
I came home a bit dejected and decided that I was going to play some HU 2/4 on FTP. I watched a Stinger HU vid on cardrunners last night and it was incredible. I learned so much just by sitting there and hearing his thoughts throughout the session. If any of you have seen the commercials for the movie Hot Rod where the dude is kicking another guy's ass and is like, "I'VE BEEN DRINKIN' GREEN TEA ALL DAY" that's how I felt after watching Stinger's HU vid.
I sat down and had a semi-retarded opp who hit n run me after he got up a buyin. Oh well, keep pluggin'. I got a guy to sit down who seemed like a pretty decent opponent, but man did he make some really, really dumb tilt plays. I was playing my normal semi-insanely crazy aggro style and he seemed to get to the point where he was just playing his cards. I was betting him out of almost every pot, and when he did have a hand he just c/r and I folded easily. Here is the biggest hand we played the whole night:
Just to give you a background of the game, we had both been opening each other very light (basically every hand on the button was raised). There wasn't a ton of 3 betting, but I had started 3 betting him a lot because of his prf aggression. I finally pick up a hand that is actually worth 3 betting here with AA...and here we go:
FullTiltPoker Game #3012776961: Table Gass (heads up) - $2/$4 - No Limit Hold'em - 6:49:31 ET - 2007/07/21Seat 1:
RightThurrr ($1,129.50)Seat 2: lvnoffsklskybux ($819.50)
RightThurrr posts the small blind of $2 lvnoffsklskybux posts the big blind of $4
The button is in seat #1*** HOLE CARDS ***Dealt to lvnoffsklskybux [Ad Ah]
RightThurrr raises to $12 lvnoffsklskybux raises to $42 RightThurrr calls $30
*** FLOP *** [Qh Ks 6s]
lvnoffsklskybux bets $70 RightThurrr calls $70
*** TURN *** [Qh Ks 6s] [2h]
lvnoffsklskybux bets $180 RightThurrr calls $180
*** RIVER *** [Qh Ks 6s 2h] [7h]
lvnoffsklskybux bets $527.50, and is all in
RightThurrr calls $527.50
*** SHOW DOWN ***l vnoffsklskybux shows [Ad Ah] a pair of Aces
RightThurrr mucks lvnoffsklskybux wins the pot ($1,638.50) with a pair of Aces*** SUMMARY ***Total pot $1,639 Rake $0.50Board: [Qh Ks 6s 2h 7h]Seat 1: RightThurrr (small blind) mucked [Ts Qs] - a pair of QueensSeat 2: lvnoffsklskybux (big blind) showed [Ad Ah] and won ($1,638.50) with a pair of Aces
During the session he was complaining about how good I was running. I really wasn't running that good honestly, but (almost) everytime we showed down I had a great hand. That's exactly what you want HU. You want to take down a lot of pots without show, but when you do show you want to win with quality hands. At the low limits, this forces your opponents into a mindset where they think they cannot win without a great hand themselves and thus they just play their cards. This makes them incredibly easy to play against.
In this hand, I decided to go ahead and value shove the river. This card was very good for my hand and earlier during the session he had shown a propensity to just call down with top pair. I decided that if he had top pair (which is what I thought he had) then he would call a value shove as much as he would call a value bet, thus the shove. Of course, I only had a PSB behind anyway and I think that I setup this hand perfectly to shove on the river by keeping my turn bet an amount that I thought would be called, but also keeping the stack sizes perfect for me to go ahead and shove the river and make it look a bit bluffy rather than look like the value push that it was. He made a tilty (terrible) call on the river and I scooped. He left immediately after. All in all I ended the night +$1,600 after being down ~$500 before this opponent sat. Nothing like the feeling of totally dominating an opponent HU.
Food for thought:
When playing hands postflop, it is important to "set yourself up" for later streets. In other words, let's say that you have a hand which you do not plan on folding to any action. What you want to do is make sure that you bet your hand in such a way that you leave yourself room to play. Let's say there is $200 in the pot and you have $400 behind on the turn. You decide to bet the pot, ($200). You have left yourself no room to play on the river at all. If you have a hand you do not plan to fold to any action, I would recommend betting ~$125-$145 on the turn, this way you can make your hand look a bit more bluffy on the river and hopefully get a call (if you have a big hand). If you actually are bluffing, you want to bet your hand in a way that will leave you a decent amount of fold equity on the river. This same bet of ~$125 or so will leave you room on the river to go ahead and shove without keeping your opponent pot committed to call any bet as he would be if you bet $200 on the turn and then shoved $200 on the river. Of course, you need to be mixing up your bluffs and value shoves in this situation in such a way that your opponent will basically be stabbing in the dark as to whether he should call or fold. I probably explained this terribly, but I try.
Im gonna finish watching cartoons with my son and then get some sleep. We're watching Jimmy Neutron right now. My son also loves Spongebob Squarepants and lovingly refers to him as "Bob Bob". :) Best of luck at the tables.
I came home a bit dejected and decided that I was going to play some HU 2/4 on FTP. I watched a Stinger HU vid on cardrunners last night and it was incredible. I learned so much just by sitting there and hearing his thoughts throughout the session. If any of you have seen the commercials for the movie Hot Rod where the dude is kicking another guy's ass and is like, "I'VE BEEN DRINKIN' GREEN TEA ALL DAY" that's how I felt after watching Stinger's HU vid.
I sat down and had a semi-retarded opp who hit n run me after he got up a buyin. Oh well, keep pluggin'. I got a guy to sit down who seemed like a pretty decent opponent, but man did he make some really, really dumb tilt plays. I was playing my normal semi-insanely crazy aggro style and he seemed to get to the point where he was just playing his cards. I was betting him out of almost every pot, and when he did have a hand he just c/r and I folded easily. Here is the biggest hand we played the whole night:
Just to give you a background of the game, we had both been opening each other very light (basically every hand on the button was raised). There wasn't a ton of 3 betting, but I had started 3 betting him a lot because of his prf aggression. I finally pick up a hand that is actually worth 3 betting here with AA...and here we go:
FullTiltPoker Game #3012776961: Table Gass (heads up) - $2/$4 - No Limit Hold'em - 6:49:31 ET - 2007/07/21Seat 1:
RightThurrr ($1,129.50)Seat 2: lvnoffsklskybux ($819.50)
RightThurrr posts the small blind of $2 lvnoffsklskybux posts the big blind of $4
The button is in seat #1*** HOLE CARDS ***Dealt to lvnoffsklskybux [Ad Ah]
RightThurrr raises to $12 lvnoffsklskybux raises to $42 RightThurrr calls $30
*** FLOP *** [Qh Ks 6s]
lvnoffsklskybux bets $70 RightThurrr calls $70
*** TURN *** [Qh Ks 6s] [2h]
lvnoffsklskybux bets $180 RightThurrr calls $180
*** RIVER *** [Qh Ks 6s 2h] [7h]
lvnoffsklskybux bets $527.50, and is all in
RightThurrr calls $527.50
*** SHOW DOWN ***l vnoffsklskybux shows [Ad Ah] a pair of Aces
RightThurrr mucks lvnoffsklskybux wins the pot ($1,638.50) with a pair of Aces*** SUMMARY ***Total pot $1,639 Rake $0.50Board: [Qh Ks 6s 2h 7h]Seat 1: RightThurrr (small blind) mucked [Ts Qs] - a pair of QueensSeat 2: lvnoffsklskybux (big blind) showed [Ad Ah] and won ($1,638.50) with a pair of Aces
During the session he was complaining about how good I was running. I really wasn't running that good honestly, but (almost) everytime we showed down I had a great hand. That's exactly what you want HU. You want to take down a lot of pots without show, but when you do show you want to win with quality hands. At the low limits, this forces your opponents into a mindset where they think they cannot win without a great hand themselves and thus they just play their cards. This makes them incredibly easy to play against.
In this hand, I decided to go ahead and value shove the river. This card was very good for my hand and earlier during the session he had shown a propensity to just call down with top pair. I decided that if he had top pair (which is what I thought he had) then he would call a value shove as much as he would call a value bet, thus the shove. Of course, I only had a PSB behind anyway and I think that I setup this hand perfectly to shove on the river by keeping my turn bet an amount that I thought would be called, but also keeping the stack sizes perfect for me to go ahead and shove the river and make it look a bit bluffy rather than look like the value push that it was. He made a tilty (terrible) call on the river and I scooped. He left immediately after. All in all I ended the night +$1,600 after being down ~$500 before this opponent sat. Nothing like the feeling of totally dominating an opponent HU.
Food for thought:
When playing hands postflop, it is important to "set yourself up" for later streets. In other words, let's say that you have a hand which you do not plan on folding to any action. What you want to do is make sure that you bet your hand in such a way that you leave yourself room to play. Let's say there is $200 in the pot and you have $400 behind on the turn. You decide to bet the pot, ($200). You have left yourself no room to play on the river at all. If you have a hand you do not plan to fold to any action, I would recommend betting ~$125-$145 on the turn, this way you can make your hand look a bit more bluffy on the river and hopefully get a call (if you have a big hand). If you actually are bluffing, you want to bet your hand in a way that will leave you a decent amount of fold equity on the river. This same bet of ~$125 or so will leave you room on the river to go ahead and shove without keeping your opponent pot committed to call any bet as he would be if you bet $200 on the turn and then shoved $200 on the river. Of course, you need to be mixing up your bluffs and value shoves in this situation in such a way that your opponent will basically be stabbing in the dark as to whether he should call or fold. I probably explained this terribly, but I try.
Im gonna finish watching cartoons with my son and then get some sleep. We're watching Jimmy Neutron right now. My son also loves Spongebob Squarepants and lovingly refers to him as "Bob Bob". :) Best of luck at the tables.
Friday, July 20, 2007
Getting Back in the Swing
Well, since everyone (Croda and NFulton) stole the look of my last blog, I decided that I would get a new look for the new blog. I think that overall blogs are really gay, but I also think they help you keep track of mistakes and overall just force you to write out your thoughts, which can be a good thing when it comes to keeping sane playing poker.
My first entry is going to be pretty simple and just cover a few basics. For one, I've decided to get back into cash games. The term "loldonkaments" applies here. Ive been playing mostly tourneys for a few months now and I really am just sick of them. I'll still play tournaments, but it won't be on a full schedule anytime soon. They're incredibly time consuming and frustrating. In the past month or two I've played the 100r on stars maybe 20 times. I've bubbled the final table at least 4 times and bubbled the cash at least 3-4 times. I had one final table on a Sunday which I hit 10K for 5th, but was bitterly disappointed with that.
Now on to what I plan on doing:
I started a new account on FTP "lvnoffsklskybux" which so far is aptly named. Last night I was involved in one big pot all night which was for a buyin at 2/4 on FTP. An aggro button raiser isolated a donkey limper for the 15th time and I have KK in the SB. I had been wanting to repop this guy for a long time, but I really didn't want to get involved with things like 94o. I had already decided the first time I got anything that resembled a hand I was coming over the top. Well, so I get KK and he raises to $18. I make it $55 or so and he insta-shoves when it's back on him. I call and the flop is A 9 A. WP sir. Sklansky bucks: $400 (not the exact number since AQ is supposed to win sometimes, but for the sake of my sanity Im calling it $400). Real money: $0. I think I ended down $150 or so on the night after losing that pot, but that's fine. I dominated the table after that and worked my way back up from $400 to over $800 without a single showdown. I quit shortly after because I was getting tired. SO....that was my night.
I also wanted to take the time to name a few blogs that I do and don't like, basically just to fill space:
Blogs I don't like:
Gene's blog - Ive actually never read this blog, but seriously, the sole mission of the blog is to convince people that he runs worse than anyone else. The whole concept annoys me.
Croda's blog - This is just a spinoff of the +1er and obviously has Zack on life tilt for the time being.
Dwal's jogblog: ...
Blogs I do like:
Lucko - Very interesting blog and surprisingly, even though Kevin's vocabulary consists of "fag" and "lol" he has decent writing skills.
NFulton's blog: Even though he stole my template, this is a good blog.
+1er: I like this blog a lot since it makes fun of people.
My goal for this blog is to write out my thoughts on poker and become a better player while also taking over the blogging world. I'm thinking of getting some sort of sidebet going on the number of readers I will have in 3 months. Probably more to come on that in the sidebet section of +1.
My first entry is going to be pretty simple and just cover a few basics. For one, I've decided to get back into cash games. The term "loldonkaments" applies here. Ive been playing mostly tourneys for a few months now and I really am just sick of them. I'll still play tournaments, but it won't be on a full schedule anytime soon. They're incredibly time consuming and frustrating. In the past month or two I've played the 100r on stars maybe 20 times. I've bubbled the final table at least 4 times and bubbled the cash at least 3-4 times. I had one final table on a Sunday which I hit 10K for 5th, but was bitterly disappointed with that.
Now on to what I plan on doing:
I started a new account on FTP "lvnoffsklskybux" which so far is aptly named. Last night I was involved in one big pot all night which was for a buyin at 2/4 on FTP. An aggro button raiser isolated a donkey limper for the 15th time and I have KK in the SB. I had been wanting to repop this guy for a long time, but I really didn't want to get involved with things like 94o. I had already decided the first time I got anything that resembled a hand I was coming over the top. Well, so I get KK and he raises to $18. I make it $55 or so and he insta-shoves when it's back on him. I call and the flop is A 9 A. WP sir. Sklansky bucks: $400 (not the exact number since AQ is supposed to win sometimes, but for the sake of my sanity Im calling it $400). Real money: $0. I think I ended down $150 or so on the night after losing that pot, but that's fine. I dominated the table after that and worked my way back up from $400 to over $800 without a single showdown. I quit shortly after because I was getting tired. SO....that was my night.
I also wanted to take the time to name a few blogs that I do and don't like, basically just to fill space:
Blogs I don't like:
Gene's blog - Ive actually never read this blog, but seriously, the sole mission of the blog is to convince people that he runs worse than anyone else. The whole concept annoys me.
Croda's blog - This is just a spinoff of the +1er and obviously has Zack on life tilt for the time being.
Dwal's jogblog: ...
Blogs I do like:
Lucko - Very interesting blog and surprisingly, even though Kevin's vocabulary consists of "fag" and "lol" he has decent writing skills.
NFulton's blog: Even though he stole my template, this is a good blog.
+1er: I like this blog a lot since it makes fun of people.
My goal for this blog is to write out my thoughts on poker and become a better player while also taking over the blogging world. I'm thinking of getting some sort of sidebet going on the number of readers I will have in 3 months. Probably more to come on that in the sidebet section of +1.
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