200nl shot, fail

I'm obviously not ready for 200nl yet psychologically. I played pretty decent today and I think I can compete there, but I finished the session down "only" 1.5 BI after starting up 1.5 BI and I feel kind of sick about it. Thankfully that's all I was down after running 2nd flush into nut flush 3 hands in a row on the same table against the same 30/15.

Kept running into sets after that even though I pot controlled it pretty well and got away with not paying them much but then got a little frustrated about flush under flush and overpair vs set situations happening constantly and spewed my JJ overpair vs a BB (12/11 with 25% c/r) c/r on a low board. Decided it was time to quit after that when I was telling myself just fold to the c/r just fold, it doesn't matter just fold, but no i 4bet/call the flop, sigh.

Will try again next month.

Run Good Part Deux: MOAR!

Put in my 2nd best day ever yesterday. This wouldn't have happened due to my insta-MTT-tilt syndrome when I reg'd for the Supernova freeroll but then I decided to get it in with AQs on the 3rd hand so that I don't have to sit there all day. TT and AK hold and I'm out and I avoid the whole tilt scenario I get into after playing 4 hours to bust 50 from the bubble and decided to fire up 100nl instead of donkaments.

I unfortunately ran into the 1k hand breakeven stretch after the first 1300 heater. Lately I've been plateauing like this and deciding to quit. I don't check my graph while I play, but you can sense after a while that you're not getting anywhere besides accumulating FPPs. So I took a break and really didn't get back to the table and wish I would have. My reads were insanely good yesterday and the largest pot I lost was $22 at 100nl 6max. This makes for a wow-session considering I only managed to win full stacks 2x and ended up with 5 buyins - the other $100 was 50nl. For once I was the one pushing people off of 50BB pots and not creating dead money I intended to fold.

Favorite hand of the day. BTN is 21/19 and stealing 45% with a decent fold to 3bet % so I go for the 3bet and semi-bluff. Turn is amazing   =)

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players - View hand 338502
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

CO: $100.00
BTN: $103.00
SB: $250.25
Hero (BB): $107.60
UTG: $152.35

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BB with K J
2 folds, BTN raises to $3, 1 fold, Hero raises to $10, BTN calls $7

Flop: ($20.50) 7 9 Q (2 players)
Hero bets $12, BTN calls $12

Turn: ($44.50) T (2 players)
Hero bets $23, BTN raises to $81 all in, Hero calls $58

River: ($206.50) 9 (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $206.50
BTN shows A Q (two pair, Queens and Nines)
Hero shows K J (a straight, Nine to King)
Hero wins $204.50
(Rake: $2.00)

100nl 6m: Finally some run good!

I've been running really substandard in my 100nl 6max shots so far, plus I think I've been a little spewy in the 3bet/4bet/5bet wars and I'm trying to cut that out and it seemed to help a lot today lol. Not so surprisingly a little patience goes a long way against people that don't like to fold much and like to play back a little more.

I mean, "they're not playing back at you" yeah. But in terms of what they are willing to play back at you with becomes wider since they game is probably 3x more aggressive than 50nl 6max imo. It's not really playing back at you when they have a draw and choose to semi-bluff rather than c/c. That's just standard better play.

Some highlights from today:

Terrible looking "shortstack" table I know, but these aren't shortstacks, they're just 40/10's that ran out of money. My auto-post blind is turned off. Setmine FTW.

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 333978
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BTN: $20.50
SB: $171.40
BB: $153.65
Hero (UTG): $101.60
MP: $22.75
CO: $20.00

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is UTG with 6 6
Hero raises to $3, 1 fold, CO calls $3, BTN raises to $8.50, SB calls $8, 1 fold, Hero calls $5.50, CO raises to $20 all in, BTN raises to $20.50 all in, SB calls $12, Hero calls $12

Flop: ($82.50) 5 6 3 (4 players - 2 are all in)
SB bets $8, Hero raises to $81.10 all in, SB calls $73.10

Turn: ($244.70) 3 (4 players - 3 are all in)

River: ($244.70) 7 (4 players - 3 are all in)

Final Pot: $244.70
BTN shows K A (a pair of Threes)
SB shows 8 8 (two pair, Eights and Threes)
Hero shows 6 6 (a full house, Sixes full of Threes)
CO shows J T (a pair of Threes)
Hero wins $162.20
Hero wins $1.50
Hero wins $78.00
(Rake: $3.00)

This hand was pretty standard but gives you and idea of "not playing back" hand ranges that I tend to see a lot with a slightly higher than average 3bet/4bet %. He's playing completely correctly in stacking off according to my range imo lol except it should be pre.

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 333982
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

SB: $242.50
BB: $104.00
UTG: $98.50
MP: $26.95
Hero (CO): $117.35
BTN: $104.85

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is CO with Q Q
2 folds, Hero raises to $3, 1 fold, SB raises to $10, 1 fold, Hero raises to $30, SB calls $20

Flop: ($61.00) 6 7 Q (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $35.50, SB calls $35.50

Turn: ($132.00) 7 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $51.85 all in, SB calls $51.85

River: ($235.70) 3 (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $235.70
SB shows J J (two pair, Jacks and Sevens)
Hero shows Q Q (a full house, Queens full of Sevens)
Hero wins $232.70
(Rake: $3.00)

25nl Full Ring Video Series Ideas

I'm going to be doing a 25nl Full Ring series on Best Free Poker Coaching over the next few weeks and need some ideas. If there's anything you'd like to see, leave a comment and I'll try to incorporate it into one of the videos. I'll be starting off with some pretty basic stuff and hopefully move into slightly more advanced topics towards the end.

Some concepts I'm thinking about covering:

The 3 Advantages
Player Tendencies and Hand Selection
Isolation, Cbetting and Texture
Bet Sizing
Basic hand reading
Equity and Aggression

Each subsequent video will build on the concepts of the last and my goal is to provide an overall framework for how to turn the 25nl Full Ring game into your personal ATM =)

I'll keep this post updated as I think of more topics I want to cover.

New Full Ring Coaching Site

There seems to be a lot of demand and short supply of Full Ring NLHE video content and Best Free Poker Coaching is going to be a great resource for this. I joined the other 7 coaches there and we will be making full ring videos and offering coaching. These guys are just amazing and I've learned a ton from them so make sure you check it out. There's some great deals too like gift cards and licenses to Poker Tracker 3 or Holdem Manager with the purchase of package deals.

I've been looking to get into coaching for a while now and this is the perfect opportunity for me and I think making videos will be a lot of fun and help me improve my own game as well.

Other than that I've been playing a good mix of full ring, 6max as well as getting into some PLO 6max which I find extremely fun to play and so much more complex in a lot of ways. It's nice to keep things fresh with a number of different games that I can beat and I'm starting to see equity and play making spots in some games that are more common in others.

Put in a nice 6 tabling session of PLO25 today and ran pretty well: +7 buyins over 700 hands. I decided to purchase the HEM Omaha addon yesterday and I'm using my NLHE HUD but I'm not really sure that it's all that useful beyond identifying fish via VPIP as per usual. Air is so minimal from 99% of the players that I've encountered so far and I guess that's expected in a game that's about making the nuts with a redraw to the nuts.

I started off with some really fishy stats of 38/17 and was cold calling 33% - I don't know for sure if this is fishy or not and have no idea what "standard" is. But I'm starting to notice a lot more good spots to isolate and I'm starting to understand the preflop equity a bit more so those numbers are slowly merging - I'm now running 35/23 but still have no idea if this is proper strat or not. I'm going to see how much of this game I can figure out on my own, it's a good complicated math problem.

The rest of the month has been a bit of a roller coaster... er... make that 2 way escalator, of winning money at my regular game, taking shots, running sub-standard during shots, repeat - but I'm still happy with the results as I'm learning quite a bit during my shot taking sessions.

So yeah, make sure you check out Best Free Poker Coaching and all the coaches there!

Tired... but I just have to post this hand

Trapaments gone wrong.

I'm super tired right now, it's 3:30am here but I feel the need to brag a little after I loled really hard on the turn and into the next orbit. 50nl 6max deep effective stacks. This guy is running 58/40 with 15% 3bet and I've just been waiting to pounce (again). I'm obviously going for a flop c/r with the intention of getting it in on the flop. He decides to get trappy instead.

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players - View hand 317903
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

CO: $62.75
BTN: $74.95
Hero (SB): $85.75
BB: $98.85
UTG: $51.90

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is SB with T K
3 folds, Hero raises to $1.50, BB raises to $3.50, Hero calls $2

Flop: ($7.00) J 2 Q (2 players)
Hero checks, BB checks

Turn: ($7.00) A (2 players)
Hero bets $6, BB raises to $95.35 all in, Hero lols $76.25 all in

River: ($171.50) K (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $171.50
Hero shows T K (a straight, Ten to Ace)
BB shows J J (three of a kind, Jacks)
Hero wins $169.50
(Rake: $2.00)