I didn’t get in any poker this weekend due to having a million other things to do. I was able to fit in a session today, but I wasn’t really playing too well so I cut it short. For the entire month I’ve been playing pretty much nothing but 2/4 and my results have been solid, running at about 15bb/100 over my last 20k. I’m going to force myself to get in another 10k before the month ends.
This weekend:
I love this saying, it makes me giggle and feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Heres an example:
$2/$4 No Limit Hold’em - 4 players
Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.comBTN: $697.00
Hero (SB): $589.80
BB: $564.20
CO: $566.40Pre Flop: Hero is SB with 2
2
CO calls $4, BTN raises to $20, Hero calls $18, 1 fold, CO calls $16Flop: ($64.00) 8
2
J
(3 players)
Hero checks, CO checks, BTN bets $45, Hero calls $45, CO foldsTurn: ($154.00) 9
Hero bets $84, BTN calls $84River: ($322.00) 2
Hero checks, BTN bets $175, Hero raises to $440.80 all in …..
BTN in this hand is a little nitty. I just call the flop for a number of reasons, the most important being that the CO in this hand is a mega fish. If he calls this flop he is NEVER folding his hand. So doing anything that could potentially push him out of this pot is nothing less than retarded.
The turn lead is pretty standard for me. I don’t want this guy to take a free card with a draw he may have just picked up or try to control the pot with an overpair. Now, the really odd thing about this hand is my turn bet size. I thought about betting closer to 100% of the pot, but that puts us in an odd river spot if he calls. I would basically have to bet 100% of the pot again on the river, close to 100bb, and he will probably fold an overpair here taking that amount of heat from me. The goal here is to win his stack, so I figured betting around half the pot was correct. Heres why:
I can then check the river:
a) He will have a large enough stack for him to bet/bluff with his busted draw.
b) It will really confuse him and he will want to value bet his overpair, since now my line looks really strange. This is the primary goal of this hand, and since an overpair makes a huge part of his range now its also the most likely to happen. It is also going to confuse him even more when he gets check raised on the river. He will have no idea what to do, and ultimately since he is getting such a good price he will make a crying/wtf call. Yahtzee!
Both options A and B cover his entire hand range once he calls my turn bet. The river card changes nothing, it does not improve my hand one bit and the BTN should know that it also does not improve his hand, since I never have J9/89 in this spot.
In retrospect I absolutely should have bet a bit more on the turn, $100, just in case a river check raise fails. Also, I would only make this play against a player who I know is going to try to squeeze value out of his overpairs when I check this river. 90% of the people monkeys I play with would snap check this river and then be so happy/thankful they just won a pot if their hand holds up.
I just got done reading a great post over on 2+2. The thread is about what things make up a good poker player. One of the respected no limit players, limon, posted this:
the key to being a long time winning pro is making poker less than 1/5 of your income over a 10 yr. period from the time you start.
Post by limon, link
When asked to explain this he went into further detail.
in my experience most wanna be pros start out thinking their gonna love playing poker forever and so they never prepare for that day when it all comes crashing down. so when they make their first 50k playing 5-10nl or whatever they just move up to the next highest limit that they can barely afford. so even though they are moving up limits their lifestyle isnt changing and they still have all thier eggs in one basket. this is bad for financial and psychological reasons.
inevitably they go on a massive losing streak and because they were always playing right on the edge of what they could afford it buries them. now they have to work their way out of this hole and it becomes a horrible grind, many go on life tilt at this point. fully coming to the realization of how many hours theyre gonna have to put in ,they borrow money (from people like me) to make a quick hit and then really get stuck.
a smarter plan would be to move up slower and invest on the way so you never have to do any one thing to survive. sooooo, instead of jumping straight from 5-10 to 10-20 buy a little triplex. instead of jumping straight from 10-20 to 25-50 buy a laundromat or a parking lot. instead of buying into 20 events at the wsop parter w/ someone in a business venture that you find interesting.
instead of playing 70 hours a week play 40 and get a part time job you really enjoy (i still do golf club repair to this day). keep your ears open at the casino for opportunites, (one of my biggest f-ups was not partnering w/ co owner of an l.a. casino who was starting an offshore sportsbook a decade ago), pretty soon you realize that you never have to play poker again…then your poker game becomes unbeatable and you see the grinders in a totally different way.
i guarantee you 10 years from now the “winners” who post on 2+2 will NOT be the guys playing 6 screens 80 hours a week at higher and higher stakes. it will be the guys who are writing books or software or starting “poker schools” and it wont be because they made a fortune doing any of these things it will be because they diversified early and stepped out of the boom/bust cycle.
Post by limon, link
I think this post is awesome. Too many poker players move up when their bankroll allows it, which is fine, even correct, but they do not diversify their bankroll at all. Sure, a bankroll may allow someone to play at certain stakes, but thats it, it only allows them to play poker. When we all first started playing poker we all knew of some bankroll requirements, thats why we are all still playing today. None of us would ever dream of buying into a game with our full bankroll… Well, a few years later that same concept should apply. Since this time we are dealing with so much more money, why would we ever want that all in poker. Lets diversify that money!
I’ll make some more posts on this subject later, specifically what to actually invest in so that your money can be diversified.
I just spent a really fun weekend in Vegas with a bunch of friends. Unlike some of my past Vegas trips everyone who was down there was a poker player, which was great. We got to discuss a ton of poker, talk hands, and make fun of the locals (my favorite part). Although everyone plays poker, there are no NLers in the group, so its hard for me to bring up certain hands that I really want to discuss.
I only played 2 days of poker, about 12 hours total, but I managed to take about 5 buyins out of the room. That may seem like a lot, but everyone in that game probably suffered from some sort of mental disease. Hand reading is so easy that maximizing your winning hands is a piece of cake compared to online poker.
I just started playing online poker after about a weekend and a half off. Reason for this was my poker computer, which is about 2 years old, stopped working on some of the poker sites newer updates. I purchased a new computer that finally got here the other day, thank god too, I was going crazy not being able to play. I also picked up a 30″ monitor about a month ago that is a must have for poker. I can multi table on the screen with no problems what so ever. This may sound stupid, but using one 30″ monitor is so much easier than 3 20″ monitors.
My goal for December is to play 30,000 online hands, which may seem low, but I am going on three different trips this month. One which was Vegas, and then home for the Holidays as well as Skiin/Snowboarding with a group of friends.
Ok, this post sucked and was boring.
I just got back from a poker filled weekend in Vegas. Every time I go to that city I am always amazed at how bad they are.
I started off playing 5/10 NLHE at the Bellagio. Everyone one in that game sucks at poker. The ‘winning’ players are just a bunch of set mining nits that are super easy to play against. The loser players are a bunch of drolling retards that refuse to fold. When I play online I am constantly in thinking situations which can (and often do) lead to tough spots. This seems to never happen in these small stakes live games. Of course, the only downside to live poker is playing 10 handed and getting 30 hands an hour.
The next day I played in a four handed 10/20 NLHE game. Over the past year I have really been focusing on my short handed no limit play, so this game was a perfect match for me.
Seat 1 was some asian gambler who didn’t play bad, but he also didn’t play good. Seat 2 was some guy who was just weak passive bad. Seat 3 was David Sklansky who was more interested in betting on horses than playing poker.
We played a few hands where I was just a total LAG. I won a bit without going to showdown so I had a pretty good image. Seat 2 got up to leave and I was left heads up with the asian guy. Effective stacks were about 3k and he was not reloading.
On one of the early HU hands I raised the BB, bet the flop, then check raised the turn with nothing. The guy folded.
I was then opening about 80% of buttons, which was super aggressive, but this guy didn’t really like to showdown so I thought this was fine.
I open K3o, he calls in the BB. Flop Kd 5h 3h, Perfect! He checks, I pot, he check raises, I 3bet. I was expecting him to play any king hard against me since I had been betting/raising so much. I was hoping he would put in his reminding 1.8k here, but he folded. Oh well.
At this point it finally clicked in my head that I am totally running over this guy. I starting bluffing raising a ton of flops/turns, betting whenever he showed any weakness, and just playing like a huge aggressive retarded… And it worked! He did not adjust well to it. He started open limping every hand on the button. I would raise the BB… he would call and then fold most flops. I would slowdown on some rivers when I wanted to induce a bluff from him… that worked once in a big pot.
After about 30 minutes of this he got moved to the main game so we were done. There is nothing better than playing a heads up session where you have total control over the table and the other guy cannot adjust to it.
I will post some fun stories later this week.
So I am going through another phase where I want to start blogging. It will probably last for a month, then another month of no posting, then posting again. Blah.
I started playing PLO, pot limit omaha hi, which is a great game. I only have about 5,000 total hands played at this game, so I am about as fresh as they come. However, learning a new game is exciting and all the new situations that come up keep me very entertained. One thing I have noticed in this game is 3betting sucks. In NLHE all my money came from abusing the extremely high FE that takes place in 3bet pots. In PLO I keep finding myself in a shitty spots when I 3bet with marginal hands. Of course, I do not want to be one of those players who only 3bets suited aces and big runs. I know that in any form of poker you need a nice balance of your actions. However, I think I need to play a bit slower and maybe ditch that maniacal LAG aggression that has servered me so well in NLHE.
Just thinking about becoming a nit makes me puke though. So hopefully within a few thousands more hands I can find the correct spots to ‘LAG it up!’
I’ll try to post some hands this week.
This week has been nothing but swings and roller coasters. Earlier, around Tuesday I believe, I lost about 10 buyins in a matter of four or so hours. Then in my last hour of playing I won about nine of them back. While all this was happening I was totally clueless to being up/down that amount of money so my play was not effected.
Yesterday I played a short session and did well, about +2 buyins in 1,000 hands.
Then today I started off my session running very well. I won +2 buyins in probably 1,000 hands. And then the fun stuff… I think I lost every single hand for about 2 hours straight, resulting in a 7 buyin drop.
So, in just 3 sessions (and about 6,000 hands) I had a -10 buyin drop, a +13 buyin upswing, and then -7 buyin downswing. Pretty crazy as I haven’t experienced a swing like that in a long while.
I had to quit early today because of the beats I was taking. I know I like to believe that running bad doesn’t hurt my play at all, but it does. If I am aware that I am running bad, like I was today, then I play poor poker and it just results in me losing more. Over the past year this is probably the biggest poker accomplishment I am most proud of: Realizing that the games will be there tomorrow and theres no need to “get back to even”.
Full Tilt Poker - No Limit Hold’em Cash Game - $3/$6 Blinds - 6 Players
SB: $619.00
BB: $1,147.50
UTG: $178.20
MP: $236.00
Hero (CO): $597.00
BTN: $567.00
Preflop: Hero is dealt K
K
(6 Players)
2 folds, Hero raises to $21.00, BTN raises to $72.00, SB folds, BB calls $66.00, Hero raises to $291.00, BTN folds, BB calls $219.00
Flop: ($657) Q
5 3 (2 Players)
BB bets $306.00, Hero calls all-in for $306.00
Turn: ($1269) 6 (2 Players - 1 All-In)
River: ($1269) 6 (2 Players - 1 All-In)
Pot Size: $1,269.00 ($3 Rake)
BB had 2 4 (a flush, Queen high) and WON (+$669.00)
Hero had K K (two pair, Kings and Sixes) and LOST (-$597.00)
I just played about 1,700 hands and really spewed. I made an awful river raise, got 3bet, and misclick called. My hand had showdown value, but certainly not vs a bet/3bet. And to be honest my hand would have never been good vs a bet/call. It’s the worst feeling ever when that happens. Good bye one buyin!
At other times I would try to semi bluff raise huge calling stations or just make some really bad bluffs. I started the session off immediately losing about 2.5 buyins and then grinding it out and won 2 buyins total. The games were great, but I forced myself to quit because I was playing so poorly.
Today
This month
I will probably take the rest of the week off from poker because I have a ton of work to do. Will be a nice break since I did play a lot last week.
I played a bit online today, few hundred hands, and I was in one of the best online games I have ever played in. It was only mid stakes, but the players was awful. Open limping, min betting, and min raising from literally every single player. I seriously felt like I was in a limit game where everyone else could only bet the size of the big blind, and I was the only one is was allowed to bet whatever he chose. This screen shot should give you a pretty good idea to how the game was.
The best thing about this screenshot is 1) Obviously the VPIP/PFR/POT stats, 2) The button open limping, very common, and 3) the SB leading out for a 33% pot sized minbet on this board.
After playing online I headed to the local casino to play live. Heres a hand.
4 handed, and folds to the SB, he opens and I 3bet 4h 2h in the BB. He calls. Effective stakes are 100bb.
The flop is Ah Qh 5s. Sweet, He checks, I bet 70% of pot, he snap calls.
The turn is 3d. He checks, I pot, he calls.
The river is a 6c. He leads for some crappy amount and I raise 3x which puts me all in. He snap calls and flips up 7d 4d. I love his turn peel with 7 high.
I cant really complain (and I shouldn’t) because this month has been great. I have been playing a good amount online, a few thousand hands of shorthanded poker and am up about 10 buyins. On top of that I have already earned about $1,000 in rakeback. Sunday I plan on putting in a big online session since I didn’t play at all on Friday and only a few hundred hands on Saturday. Plus, the Sunday games are always great.
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