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.

Best Day Ever

Yesterday was fun:

• +6 BI in 330 hands and then played another 1k hands on the plateau. Stop at $2/hand imo.
  
• Won a 27 person donkament for $100. 
  
• $82 Step 3 ticket --> $215 Step 4 ticket --> playing in my first Sunday Million which is actually the Sunday 2 Million yay!

Also going to play in the Turbo Takedown considering the sick changes they've made to it. Basically going to be playing to try for consecutive cash's which give you free bonuses of $100(n) up to $1k. And I guess a car would be nice too.
_____________________

I managed to bust out of the WBCOOP Event #2 shortly after this hand which tilted me slightly being results oriented and all. PLO is the game of the future if this is going to continue to be standard. I'm definitely not any sort of PLO expert yet but this baffles me.

Poker Stars Freeroll Pot Limit Omaha Hi Tournament - t125/t250 Blinds - 8 players - View hand 499287
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: t17225 M = 45.93
UTG: t23395 M = 62.39
UTG+1: t70 M = 0.19
MP1: t18214 M = 48.57
MP2: t2640 M = 7.04
CO: t25867 M = 68.98
BTN: t5730 M = 15.28
Hero (SB): t35107 M = 93.62

Pre Flop: (t375) Hero is SB with J 8 7 Q
UTG raises to t875, 5 folds, Hero calls t750, 1 fold

Flop: (t2000) 9 7 6 (2 players)
Hero checks, UTG bets t2000, Hero raises to t8000, UTG calls t6000

Turn: (t18000) 2 (2 players)
Hero bets t18000, UTG calls t14520 all in

River: (t47040) A (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: t47040
UTG shows A J 5 J (a pair of Aces)
Hero shows J 8 7 Q (a pair of Sevens)
UTG wins t47040

This tournament kept me away from FPSing a lot in my cash games. I might throw one in if I'm planning on playing a longer session and see how it works out.

Blizzards, Run Goods and Donkaments, oh my!

So today is the first time in the decade since I got my drivers' license that I actually got stuck. At least I did it right. Black ice and white out conditions made for some interesting driving on my way to work this morning. I'm pretty thankful no one happened to be coming in the opposite direction - I did about 60 feet each at 45 degrees, sideways, and backwards. A co-worker happened to be behind me and brought me to work (yay!) and another co-worker brought me right back before I was going to call a tow-truck and pulled me out (bink!). ty sirs.

The grey lines represent where the road ends and the ditch filled with 5 feet of snow starts. Unfortunately I don't drive a Jaguar irl but I can put one in my diagram because it's my blog.

Other that that January has been super awesome. On track for my best month ever. The major factor here has been my no-50nl-FR-New-Years'-resolution which I have stuck to. Plus it helps that I've been running at 5 ptBB/100 at 100nl FR over what's becoming a small significant sample.

I'm about to start playing in WBCOOP Event #1. I have a love/hate relationship with donkaments - namely loving the start and hating the end. I've been reading a bit about cEV and some of Tommy Angelo's thoughts on dollar value of your seat so hopefully that will start to work out for me.

2010 Resolution

New Year Resolution for 2010: No more 50NL Full Ring. It's time to move up. You can't really become comfortable doing something unless you actually do it.

I've had a really good start to the year at 100NL and 200NL FR. I'm starting to really enjoy the game dynamic at those levels and I'm finding myself getting a lot better in 3bet/4bet pots. Also feeling a lot more in control postflop and manipulating peoples' ranges pretty effectively. I'm still playing 50NL 6max as I haven't accomplished the winrate that I think I should be having there yet.

I recently read Dusty Schmidt's new book, Treat Your Poker Like a Business. I'd say it's about 30% motivational, 20% promotional (which I found quite lame considering I already paid $ and anyone reading this book already knows about rakeback and Stox) and 50% content - about 1/3 of that new-ish content. I was actually hoping for more of a workbook style, but it ended up being more what to think about with not much what to do. Anyone thinking about going pro (ie. people that need to know this info) might be a bit disappointed in it seeing as how most of the what to think about is already available for free on most forums. Still a decent read.

But if I take anything from this book, it's the fact that I need to treat my bankroll not as money, but rather as inventory. It's just an inventory of chips used to aquire more chips. Invest x chips here and expect a return of x + y chips here. Hopefully I can maintain that mindset and continue moving up this year.

Good luck to everyone in 2010.

November is finally over

Haven't posted in a while. I seem to post a lot less when I'm not winning, which has been the case the past couple of weeks. I've been basically breakeven after a very swingy second half of November.

I think it's a combination of bad sleeping habits and trying out new stuff, then trying to find my way back to fundamentals when something doesn't work out. That can lead to some frustration and trying to force things. I've also taken a couple of failed shots at 200nl FR and 100nl 6max in the past week so that has a lot to do with it as well.

Part 2 of my 25nl series is out now and Part 3 is on the way. If only I could keep running as hot as I do in my videos... lol... maybe I should just start recording all my sessions and talking through my thought process out loud.

25nl Crushing the Quarter Part 1 Released!

The first installment of my series, Crushing the Quarter, on Best Free Poker Coaching has just been released. I hope you guys enjoy it. There's lots of room on the video page or in the forum over there if you have a questions or comments about anything in the video.

I ran pretty horrible this week. I'm going to say that it's probably mostly due to bad play even though I feel kind of under expectation, but my sleep schedule has been absolutely terrible and I don't think my thought processes this week were anywhere close to optimal wrt assessing my play or really anything at all. I'm sure the slightly under average run got to me and ended up with more than a bit of tilt.

I decided to put one more terrible night into it but I changed it up drastically. I moved up. I cut tables - lots of tables. 100nl 6max 4 tabling and taking extensive notes seems kind of gross when I think about it but is amazingly fun when I'm actually doing it. I'm writing this down so that I can refer back to it when I get the urge to mass table when I should be trying to improve.

I played a 45 minute session 4 tabling just trying to book a win. As a rule I don't agree with using stop-wins, but when you're downswinging over several days or weeks, I think getting that winning session in despite it really meaning nothing in terms of anything other than mental stability and confidence is important. My goal was 1 buyin. I ended up wiping out my losses for the week.

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 377387
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $113.90
MP: $122.20
CO: $103.00
Hero (BTN): $115.45
SB: $174.35
BB: $217.45

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BTN with A A
UTG raises to $3, 2 folds, Hero calls $3, SB raises to $16, 1 fold, UTG raises to $38, Hero raises to $115.45 all in, SB raises to $174.35 all in, UTG calls $75.90 all in

Flop: ($345.80) 6 5 3 (3 players - 3 are all in)

Turn: ($345.80) 9 (3 players - 3 are all in)

River: ($345.80) 5 (3 players - 3 are all in)

Final Pot: $345.80
UTG shows Q Q (two pair, Queens and Fives)
Hero shows A A (two pair, Aces and Fives)
SB shows K K (two pair, Kings and Fives)
Hero wins $3.10
Hero wins $339.70
(Rake: $3.00)

*This play was reads based. SB and BB were both squeeze happy regs running rather loose-ish.

It's all thanks to a cold deck of course but I'll take it. +1 more buyin when I get QQ in vs 44 BvB and hold.


 ** Side note: either I'm typing too fast or my keyboard isn't working properly but some of my esses are not always showing up. My grammar really isn't that terribad that I forget to pluralize where necessary =)

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)