No money in full ring...

[ ] everyone's solid.

Had a sick good run in a short 45 minute session last night finishing up nearly 4 buyins. I found the following hand a little amusing.

Back story:

I sit down at this table specifically because of this guy sitting 2 to my right. I've only got 75 hands on him at that point but so far he had been running 45/30 and had stacked top pair 2x and 2nd pair 1x vs regs, losing all 3 hands obviously.

My 2nd hand at the table I'm dealt KK in the SB. An MP reg opens, my target 3bets, I pretty much snap-cold-4bet. MP reg flats which I found slightly disturbing and fish flats too. Whatever I'm not folding KK if the board comes out low, which it does - 973 two tone. So I obviously bet/call the flop although I think it's close between checking and letting the reg ship his QQ+ but I'm scared that being OOP it's going to check through which I don't want. Reg tank-calls his QQ (yay!) and of course this genius to my right shows up with 77 and ships. He then goes on to say how hard he owned us both.

The very next orbit, he's already lost $100 out of the $300 stack immediately prior to this hand (another bad 1 pair stackoff where he was actually ahead):

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 7 players - View hand 726635
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $131.10
UTG+1: $43.20
MP: $134.25
CO: $100.00
BTN: $203.40
SB: $188.40
Hero (BB): $120.50

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BB with K A
3 folds, UTG says "nice ha", CO raises to $3, BTN says "brutal", BTN calls $3, 1 fold, UTG says "lol", Hero raises to $14, UTG says "only at pokerstars", BTN says "only at jokerstars", 1 fold, BTN calls $11

Flop: ($31.50) 8 4 K (2 players)
Hero bets $19, BTN calls $19

Turn: ($69.50) 4 (2 players)
Hero bets $34, BTN calls $34

River: ($137.50) 3 (2 players)
Hero bets $53.50 all in, BTN calls $53.50

Final Pot: $244.50
BTN shows T K (two pair, Kings and Fours - lower kicker)
Hero shows K A (two pair, Kings and Fours)
Hero wins $241.50
(Rake: $3.00)

BTN says: "wtf"

BTN says: "how did i lose that hand?"

BTN says: "we both have top pair"

UTG says:  ;)

I lol'd irl. Good to see that there's still actually people out there that don't fully understand the rules. I miss the days of Jack high call downs, but this confirms that poker is not dead.

It's a Boy!

We finally had our 2nd child 13 days overdue last week. I was waiting to post until I was able to put a few pictures online but life has been a little bit busy so far with two kids now. Busy but fun!

8 lbs 12 oz and 21.25" tall. Very hungry little guy who we've knicknamed "Starvin' Marvin" (no that's not his real name lol).

Managed to grab this photo off of Facebook so far. Need to get better ones online still. Thanks for the comments guys!

OTF OTT OTR = tilt

Just a little rant here but it appears that some forum somewhere has started using acronyms for "on the flop," "on the turn," and "on the river" and the influx of noobs with less than 50 posts seem to be bringing it with them in waves to 2p2. I don't know why it bothers me considering a ton of other stuff is standard to acronymise (is that a word?) like UTG and SB and EV but it does.

I will continue posting using all three words with respect to which street I'm talking about out of spite. I'm also rather old in terms of online poker players (late 20's) and I am probably just resistant to change.

=)

6max so far...

First week of May was absolutely amazing and I made a lot of money because 82% of "regs" call down with absolutely any piece

Second week of May has been absolutely terrible because 82% of "regs" call down with any piece and have added +78 to their weird 2 pair making skill. The apparent strategy reminds me of homegames. "If I can hit my Queen... (Q5s on T42r)..."

I find it amazing that cbets have been working approximately 34% over my last 12k hands while I manage to win at showdown 42%. Easy adjustments obviously but I need someone to turn off my doomswitch so I can get my run-average back. Here's to hoping I can start fading luckboxes again. I do find it comforting that the vast majority of 50nl puts me on AK 52% of the time. The other 48% of the time the flop is Axx or Kxx and they put me on KQ or AQ.

May = 6max

After putting in 100k hands of full ring in April I think I'm going to give 6max a shot. I want to see which one suits me better for long session grinding and I want to keep my skills in both dynamics up to date. I did play a few thousand hands of full ring the past couple of days as well as final tabled a 135-player Rush tournament for a decent score. That was mainly the result of me swonging +4/-4 buyins at 100nl to breakeven on FR cash yesterday and feeling kind of bad about it, still up several buyins there for the month.

I've played in a few SCOOP events but so far haven't really been able to chip up very well. Typically running around average stack for the first 3-5 hours and then crash and burn. Very card dead plus I feel like I've wasted 4 hours of my life when I run set under set or Queens into Kings or some other random postflop bullshit that cripples me or knocks me out. It's really not worth it for me if it makes me feel like not playing poker at all afterwords... might as well stick to cash then. Kudos to all the donkament pros out there that can handle the long hours and months of winning nearly nothing in anticipation of that huge score without jumping off a bridge in the meantime. I had to laugh at the 42% final table payout for the last SCOOP event I played considering there were 18k entries. Seriously, spread the wealth a little.

Today I decided to start watching a bunch of videos again and really think about my decisions at 6max. So I obviously 18 table 50nl so I could focus and get back into the game flow =) 7k hands later I'm up 10 buyins so far. Will probably put in another 3k hands or so today. Pretty sure I win the internets for volume in micro-6max games (aside from CJ and Chiren of course).

I'm really hoping I can move up to 100nl 6max without getting crushed again. I think my understanding of ranges vs lines is approximately 34x better this time around compared to the end of last year so it shouldn't be a problem.

Baby was due last Saturday so I'm expecting to become even more busy any day now. My 2 year old daughter is extremely excited so that's nice.

Planning to hit Supernova for 2010 sometime next week. Time for some milestone bonuses!

EDIT: Make that 1 more hour for a total of 8k hands and 14 buyins and my last Stellar bonus for the day!