LOL Donkaments

Lol these tournies put me on monkey tilt. 80% ahead PF, can't hit my 36% chance postflop. MP1 running at 55/2/0 and does not have a fold button. I was in 6th out of 45 left. Went out shortly after with another KK loss. Sigh.

Poker Stars, $4 + $0.40 NL Hold'em Tournament, 100/200 Blinds, 8 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

MP1: 4,447
MP2: 9,796
Hero (CO): 7,952
BTN: 1,175
SB: 3,510
BB: 3,880
UTG: 5,895
UTG+1: 890

Pre-Flop: (300) K K dealt to Hero (CO)
UTG folds, UTG+1 raises to 890 and is All-In, MP1 calls 890, MP2 folds, Hero raises to 2,000, 3 folds, MP1 calls 1110

Flop: (4,890) 9 Q K (3 Players - 1 is All-In)
MP1 bets 2,447 and is All-In, Hero calls 2,447

Turn: (10,084) A (3 Players - 2 are All-In)

River: (10,084) 2 (3 Players - 2 are All-In)

Results: 10,084 Pot
MP1 showed T J (a straight, Ten to Ace) and WON 10,084 (+5,637 NET)
Hero showed K K (three of a kind, Kings) and LOST (-4,447 NET)
UTG+1 showed 7 6 (high card Ace) and LOST (-890 NET)

Finished My 25nl Goal

I finished playing 20k hands of 25nl today running at 5.8ptBB/100. The past couple of days have been a little rough even though I'm finishing up 2 to 4 buyins per day. I'm up 8 buyins for 25nl for this month already but I think it could have been about 4 or 6 more. There's been a few hands where I made huge mistakes and put money in way behind. I've put in a ton of hands though.

I think I may be ready to take some shots at 50nl. I'll obviously be cutting down on tables, probably 4 to start with, but I suspect I will be back at 25nl off and on to work on opening up my game a bit, for some reason I've become an ubernit. I guess it works especially on the weekends when no one has a fold button.

Awesome Day - 4 buyins in 2.5 hours

Today (as well as last night) went fairly well. I played ~1800 hands of 25nl and ran at 10.5ptBB/100 so that turns into 4 buyins. I read a great article the other day saying to stop limping/cold calling which has helped me tremendously.

^ Not doing this makes poker very easy. I have initiative. I have position. I make my opponents play fit or fold. I disguise my hand. Cbets = $$$.

Off to bed now. I'm on nightshift.

March Update

One more day in March and I'm not sure if I'll be playing tomorrow or not so I'm updating my blog now. I've had some mixed results for the month playing 25nl - a few really bad tilt sessions, some sessions where I was totally focused and making great reads but losing anyways, and some really great sessions where I found some fish to hand me a bunch of buyins.

I'm slowly getting more used to the 25nl flow. Some players are a lot more aggressive here than at 10nl so patience really pays off. Most of them are still weak-tight though. I've played a total of 11k hands of 25nl this month and about the same for 10nl.

I ran quite poorly at 10nl and that's where most of my tilty sessions were so my winrate for that is only 3.7ptBB/100 over 12k hands, which is quite low for me. I would often drop down if I was playing poorly at 25nl, not really the best idea when I should probably just quit for the day.

25nl was a much better level running at 7.1ptBB/100 over 11k hands. I played a lot more nitty at this level and I think I need to get over that. My work on aggression is starting to pay off though and I'm keeping it above 2 for the most part. I'm going to start taking shots at 50nl hopefully this week if I continue to run well at 25nl. I'm thinking maybe 20k total hands at 25nl would be better before I make the move permanent according to my bankroll management post - that's only another 9k and I'm playing about 2k a day when I get a couple of hours.

I've heard that 100nl is actually easier than 50nl because so many TAG regs get stuck at 50nl and take a long time to move up. I guess I'll have to find out for myself. There must be a bunch of gamblers that figure anything less than a $1BB isn't any fun and that's less than the minimum at most casino's anyways - usually they offer $1/$2. They don't realize that online is MUCH tougher than live. I've read that 25nl is comparable to $1/$2 live and the game plays totally different, not as many limpers and the standard raise is much lower. I hardly ever play live so I don't have a lot of experience with that and can't imaging opening for 12BB and getting 1 or 2 callers.

Anyways, graph is obviously needed:

Small Swong Today

I had a bit of a spewy start to the day. I don't know what my problem was but I was tilting quite a bit, running card dead, and trying to force hands. That led to a 3.5 buyin loss. I managed to get everything under control again though and got those buyins back finishing the day at -$2, lol.

I'm almost 1/2 way to my goal of 10k hands at 25nl for this month and I'm running at 11ptBB/100. I'm actually a little more than 1/2 if I count Everest, but I didn't keep great records there when PT didn't work for me. If I keep running at this rate, I'll have just enough to meet the $ requirement for my BR plan, as well as the required winrate.

I was hoping to play a little more tonight, but the tables are dying down. There's only 65k people on, and that's only 1/2 of what it is at peak hours. Surprising for a weekend, but maybe it's because of the holiday.

I'm starting to notice a lot more regs than at lower limits, too. There's a few guys that seem to be machines that are able to play 16 hours a day on at least 4 tables (I'm assuming because they're on in the morning and still on in the evening when I come back). I don't know what they're doing at 25nl if they can play that much. That's got to be at least 3-4k hands a day if they take a couple breaks and they don't run too bad either.

Long Term Plan - Bankroll Management

I decided on a longterm bankroll management plan to help me move up levels. I stuck around at 10nl far too long (over a year) without considering moving up. $25 was a lot of money and it was scary to lose that much in one hand until quite recently for me.

So here's my plan, I play one level until I hit the top $ limit, have at least 10k hands at that limit, and I am beating that limit for at least 5ptBB/100 over the last 10k hand stretch. If I meet those requirements, I move up. If I drop below the lower $ limit at the current level, I have to drop down and work myself back up to the upper $ limit fo the lower level. fjdsajflk; That's confusing so:

10nl - $0 - $500
25nl - $400 - $1500
50nl - $1250 - $2500
100nl - $2000 - $6500
200nl - $6000 - $14,000

... and so on - hopefully.

This essentially gives me 5 buyins to lose at the new level before moving back down and regaining confidence. And the higher up I go, I give myself more of a cushion in terms of buyins.

I withdrew about 1/3 of my roll today to pay for some bills since I'm technically rolled for 100nl but have no intention of moving up from 25nl for another 8500 hands, and I'm still overrolled for 50nl even after my withdrawal so no sense in having that money sit there and do nothing when I don't need it.

Back to Stars 25nl

I moved back to Stars 25nl yesterday. Everest was going good but it was a bit much in terms of variance for 10nl - nevermind 25nl. That and the bonus clears so slowly at the micros; I cleared about $30 in probably 15 hours even though I tried to start tables to earn double points and clear 2x as fast. That and I was really starting to miss PT and PAHUD.

So I went back to Stars and started nitting it up at 25nl full ring again. My game is usually a bit more open than this but I am trying to be very selective in the hands I play and for what reasons, and making sure I have a reason to play a hand. This leads to very little cold calling preflop and I almost always have the initiative when I'm in the hand. I think my nittiness is a bit misleading for the regs because my range is not actually what a regular nit would have and I probably play a few more speculative hands when I'm up against someone giving me good implied odds. The HUDbots are definitely going to be off on their reads.

Today's been good: running 9/6/6 <--- yes, finally working on my aggression factor. I got some advice that I should be deciding on the flop how I want to play the hand and putting my opponent on a range and acting accordingly right away while my actions are still inexpensive. According to the Fundamental Theorem of Poker you basically want to raise when you're ahead and fold when you're behind (ie. play the way you would if you knew what your opponent's cards were), the only time you should be calling is when you are getting pot/implied odds to hit your draw and even then calling is not always the best option.

So for today that has resulted in postflop aggression factors of 6, 14, and 2.5 for each respective street. I've been running pretty good today so that's why they are quite high, but I am normally trying to keep my flop and turn AF at least around 3 and my river AF around 2.

Played just under 1000 hands today 6 tabling and ran at 27ptBB/100 for a nice profit.

Wow I Suck at Flipaments

I found a table that appeared to be doing flips this evening, which is pretty standard for Everest. There's a guy shoving over anyone that limps, so I'm obviously limp/calling my strong hands and folding the rest.

I went on a nice 4 buyin slide against this guy:

AQ<22
AQ<87
AK<98
AQ<65 (there were 3 other callers here with AJ, A8, and KQ - 65 won with 2 pair AI PF)

Villain sits out up 7 buyins after shoving 350BB into 2 stacks of 200BB each with T2o. Sigh.

It's been a good couple days at Everest

Everest is being quite good to me so far. I find that the 10nl tables play similarly to the 2nl tables on Stars in terms of table dynamic - a lot of limping and calling and calling down with any pair, top pair no kicker hands are the nuts, etc. The skill is probably a little better than the 2nl tables on Stars but not by much for the most part.

You'll often see a couple of guys like me that are cleaning up multiple tables sitting with 3+ buyins and the rest are sitting with 1/2 to a full buyin so it's really easy to see who to avoid playing pots with and I think those players understand this, too. So it hasn't been too much of a struggle playing without my HUD. I still can't figure out those hand histories even after converting them in Poker Tracker. They won't import for me. I'll probably just MS Paint those hands into my graph later, lol.

I've managed to put in about 6 hours in the past 3 days and I'm up 10 buyins at 10nl so far. I think I'll be playing the 25nl tables there as soon as I have about $200 on that site (I just made the minimum deposit of $50 for the bonus I signed up for). My calculations show that I'm running about 21ptBB/100 over 2500 hands with 3ptBB/100 of that coming from the bonus. I went on a bit of a variance swing last night with a 3 buyin swong where I had 80,90, and 95% equity on 3 hands when I got all the money in and lost so I would be running a little better than this if not for those hands.

My bonus is 10% cleared so far so I'm guessing it will only take me another 25 hours to clear at 25nl if pots are double the size.

Trying Out Everest Poker

I started playing at Everest Poker today to get a break from Stars. I still really like playing there but I thought this would be a nice change of pace. I signed up and got the bonus so I started out playing some 10nl to see what the competition was like...

Well I just might stay at Everest for a while - the games are very very soft - I must say they are much softer than Party. I'm not sure if this has to do with all the gamblers coming in from the casino section or what, but I sure like it.

The only drawback so far for me is that I'm having trouble with getting the hand histories into Poker Tracker properly, but just taking notes instead seems to do the trick. At Stars I had been assuming everyone was weak-tight until they showed me otherwise. The players at Everest are a little different, most of them are loose-passive/passive. They are calling down huge pot sized bets and turn c/r with a bare top pair no kicker and hands like that.

For example, I was getting 3bet every other time I raised by the same guy whether he was in position or not so I pick up QQ and 4bet him back and he 5bets all in with 88 <-- the 5th bet is not always AA apparently. And here is one of the last hands I played today with me having AA:

Flop: Ac9s8s - I pot it. Villain calls

Turn: 9d - I pot it again. Villain min-raises. I call (he's only got 1/2 of his stack left now so I figure I'll let him try to hit to stack him since I think he could fold to a shove if this was one of the weak-tights at Stars. Meh, who am I kidding he wasn't folding).

Flop: Kd - I figure either he was on a draw that missed or he'll bet an Ace or 9 so I check. Villain bets $1 out of his remaining $5 into a $10 pot and calls down my c/r with ATo. I know, right?

So if this continues (me winning 4 buyins in the span of 1.5 hours) I will stay at Everest for a while. Maybe it was the deposit boomswitch, lol, but being incredibly patient for any 2 pair or better hand pays off huge at this site.

I've got a banner link on the right side if anyone's interested in checking it out. I'm sure some of you have noticed that I'm trying out the affiliate thing. They've got a nice $100 "Welcome Bonus" that clears incrementally as you play instead of you having to clear a certain number of points before you get any of it like most other sites. I just can't find the mysteriously hidden Everest Points Store...

Settling back into full ring 25nl

I decided to settle back into grinding 25nl today, just 4 tables. During my breakeven stretch I think I was a little tilty in the impatient department and played far too many marginal hands. So I sat down and crunched a few ptBB/100 numbers and made myself an Excel ptBB calculator to remind myself that you don't have to be up a whole lot in an hour to be considered to be crushing the game - I consider "crushing" to be 10+/100 at 10nl and 8+/100 at 25nl etc. This sure helps to reduce the number of marginal situations I get myself into and the result is me playing more hands that I am in control of.

Played 500 hands so far today at 15/100 and would like to play another ~9500 in the next week or so before I start trying to move up to 50nl. I am currently overrolled for 50nl and almost rolled for 100nl, lol I'm such a nit.

Oh and here's my graph for the year so far - I haven't posted it in a while. That ugly stretch in the middle is the last week of January until the last week of February.

BBV4Life Update

I just got home on Sunday. I haven't played much poker in a while as I've been away at the hospital waiting for the arrival of our baby girl! This week has been pretty busy with everything going on and all the visitors, but things are starting to get back to normal. She's quite adorable and is letting us sleep at night so far, which is nice. So pics are needed obviously:



Other than that, I have been playing some 10nl full ring trying to get back into it and I'm playing fairly well. I'll be trying to put in 2k-3k hands per week minimum from now on. I haven't played at Party in a while so they shipped my $40 to play with and gave me 2 weeks to clear 320 points to unrestrict it. I turned that into about $100 during this week but didn't manage to clear the points before the deadline today with everything going on so I quickly blew the last $35 that I couldn't cash out on blackjack 1/2 an hour before the expiry. Probably should have just flipped it to double up fast and cash out some more. Oh well. I'll be back at Stars for a while until they ship me some more free cash.

Brag: New baby!
Beat: Not as much time for poker.
Variance: I don't care that there's not as much time for poker.

Changing my game and not breaking even

I think I've finally stopped my 40k hand breakeven/downswing streak (about 35k was breakeven, and the last 5k was a cliffedge). I dropped back down to 10nl for a bit to regain some confidence and work on changing some parts of my game that I was not happy with.

I've been playing a bit of everything lately, and while I wouldn't recommend that everyone do this - you should generally pick a game you like and stick to it - I think it's helped me find holes in my game in other games that I play. I've pretty much played everything from 2nl-25nl full ring, 2nl-10nl 6max and a bit of 6max 5nl Omaha H/L, which I have basically never played before.

The main two things I've done is to really work on my agression and open up my game in late position. I was finding myself in a lot of tough spots during my breakeven stretch and I think it was because I was not agressive enough. Playing agressively - 3betting, cbetting, reraising flops, etc - make hands really easy to play, especially against the plethora of weak-tight players at the micros.

I also find my new style also helps me put players in one of 2 groups:

1. The weak-tight player that is easy to push off hands and is not stacking off without 2pair or better most of the time, so bet until they give you a reason to stop betting. Agression factor of 1 and he's betting... he's got at least top pair and I get away cheap.

2. The wannabe LAG who stacks off with most top pairs and some second pairs and a lot of draws and bluffs a lot. Sit back and value bet them to death/let them hang themselves. Playing LAG requires excellent hand reading skills, and the players at this level do not have them.

US Presidential Race

This being a poker blog and all, I won't usually venture outside the realm of the game, but I think this is important:

Being a Canadian, I find the way American's choose their president to be somewhat better than our way of choosing a prime minister. And whomever American's pick for their president actually has an effect on my life due to our countries being linked so closely economically and politically. I like the fact that American's get to vote directly for whom they want to have as president, but I am a little troubled by the role that the media plays in all of this. I watch and read a lot of mainstream news and I took a lot of socio-political/history classes when I was working towards my degree.

From the start of this race for party nominations, the media has consistently told their audience who the "top tier" candidates are and many out there have accepted these as the only viable candidates. In effect, the media is choosing who you get to choose as your president.

I am not going to hide who I feel is the best, and I feel only real choice in this race; unfortunately I cannot vote. I have been watching and reading about Ron Paul's campaign and platform and it is the only one that makes sense to me.

That being said, the media and the Republican party seem to be absolutely terrified of having Ron Paul as president. The media has basically censored him out when they are not asking him irrelevant questions. I have read articles and watched news stories regarding the Republican nomination where he is not even mentioned and it is now being written as if it is a 2 man race.

Take for instance the first 2 debates. Online polls from the host news sites showed that he won both debates. Then there was the FOX debate which he was excluded from even though his support was higher than Guiliani, who was in the debate.

And the sealer for me that the Republican party is actively working to make sure he is not the nominee among other things was Romney's withdrawl from the campaign being in 2nd place and still very viable according to the media, effectively squashing the chances for a brokered convention in which Paul might actually have a shot. Who does that? This speaks volumes about the morality and integrity of the party as a whole. As Ron Paul said, "The party has lost its way."

Because of this media blackout and work being done to censor Paul, many are still out there saying Ron Who? without even getting a chance to hear what his platform is nevermind think about voting for him in a primary.

IMO he is the only candidate that would fit the role of a president that could get American policy, foreign and domestic, back on track as he is the only one who has shown by his voting record and his platform that he will actually uphold the oath of office, that being to defend the Constitution.

I encourage everyone who is still asking Ron Who? to check out his campaign site and find out what his platform is www.RonPaul2008.com

Running aweful <-- Understatement

I haven't posted in a while. I've been having a pretty sick breakeven stretch of 45k hands, which has turned into a downswing in the last 5k. I don't know what's going on. Going over my hand histories, in pots that are 40BB+ I am making the correct decision 65% of the time, yet I am just running horribly awefully bad.

My sessions pretty much are me taking down some pots on the flop with top pair type hands and I slowly build up a nice stack of about 150BB. Then I get involved in a big pot where I'm usually around a 75% favorite with a set or an overpair vs. a draw or overpair and BAM I'm down to 50BB. Sets are only holding out just under 60% of the time and my overpairs are getting cracked all over the place. I feel like they can see the rest of the community cards before they're out, lol.

Checked out my stats from January and compared them to the last 2.5 weeks that this has been going on and I can't find the difference. The only thing is my agression has gone up from 2.0 to 2.5 and that's about it, which is actually a good thing. I reread Theory of Poker at the start of this breakeven stretch and maybe I'm trying stuff that was in the book that is not working out.

I think I just need to take a break. I cashed out so I won't play anymore until I feel a little more confident again. On the bright side I ran my KK into AA 2 times and lost with KK to JJ today - all in preflop on all 3 - within a span of 150 hands and I did not tilt.

Variance Continues

The sick variance continues on Party Poker. It must be me. I don't know what has gotten into people lately but I wish I could cash in on it. They're out there chasing the idiot end of a gutshot straight with an underpair to my pot sized bets - and hitting. All sorts of garbage like that. I really need to start value betting harder and maybe overbetting pots, but it is so tough when you feel like you're behind when you're 70% ahead.

At least today finished on the positive side. Barely. Sigh. So frustrating. Off to work now. fjdskal;f

Monkey Tilt on Stars

Stars has doomswitched me for the last 2 days, so I cashed out now from there. Probably go play at Party for a bit. My sets and overpairs just were not holding out today - my money made off of sets was actually way in the negative today, which is not supposed to happen that much.

I cashed out before I tilted it away. Already down 3 buyins from my sets not holding. Lost with KK on KdTd5d board after a guy with 8d6d 3bet me preflop. Next hand I lost with KK after limp reraising to 50BB preflop and a fish (70/0/0.5) calls all in on the turn J957with 44 and hits his 2 outer on the river. I really don't understand the thought process here, I don't think there is one. Sigh, so frustrating, and on top of that I couldn't hit a flop if my life depended on it. I don't know what happened but I am getting 3bet left right and centre and I'm really tired of it. I'm going to take a break now.

Moved Back Down...

... but only for this morning. I got home and the 25nl tables were really dead and they had 1 guy on basically every tables waiting list and I didn't feel like hanging around waiting. 10nl was very busy so I jumped down there to splash around a bit. The difference in play is amazing now that I've played so many hands at 25nl.

I started crushing 8 tables, so I bumped it up to 16 and ran at 16ptBB/100 for 2500 hands over the course of 2.5 hours (I'm going to start typing in terms of ptBB/100 again, people will think I'm playing limit otherwise). As I said, I'm rereading Sklanksky's Theory of Poker and there is one major part of the game that I was never paying attention to, and why my aggression factor was always so low - and that is the art of semi-bluffing. It is now a healthy 2.8.

Semi-Bluffing

This is a wonderful play because of several factors:

1. You take the initiative in the hand and allow your opponents the chance to fold.
2. You disguise your hand, which is very important against expert hand readers.
3. You can get yourself a free card often enough.
4. There is virtually no defence against it.
5. It is mathematically +EV compared to check-calling which is -EV.

As Sklansky says, you gain from having a combination of fold equity and the odds that you will hit your hand. For example, there is $100 in a heads up pot and you are drawing with 3:1 odds, and you know your opponent is going to make a $75 bet if checked to. If your hand is worth a call, your hand is worth making that bet yourself. If you add in that he might fold, say, 20% of the time then this is what you get:

EV of check-calling = (0.25 x 175) - (0.75 x 75) = -$12.50

EV of betting $75 = 0.2 (1 x 100) + 0.8 ((0.25 x 175) - (0.75 x 75)) = +$10

Your positive expectation comes from both the chances of hitting your hand AND having fold equity. That's why you don't semi-bluff calling stations with no fold equity, because then you are right back to the same as check-calling, which is -EV.

Consider this, if your opponent is semi-bluffing, how are you going to defend. If you figure that he's semi-bluffing 55% of the time then the obvious answer is to raise, right? Wrong. Out of that 55% he will hit is draw often enough that he will win more than half the hands he does this with. You have to commit a large number of chips to find out if he is semi-bluffing or not, and this lets him get away cheaply win he is, and costs you a lot when he's not. That's why this play is so powerful.

Another Awesome Day at 25nl now served with 6 max

I played about 1000 hands of 25nl full ring today and ran pretty well pulling in just over 3 buyins in 2 hours. 700 of these were normal full ring no limit, but the other 300 were actually pot limit. I didn't realize what kind of tables I opened and I was playing on 3 pot limit tables and wondering what was wrong with the slider and why my preflop raises were only $0.85, lol. I only figured it out after about 250 hands when I opened up Poker Tracker ring game stats and wondered why there were PL hands being imported. 300 hands later I'm up 1.5 buyins at pot limit.

So I take a break and decide to try out the 6 max tables with the intentions of leaving if I encounter some really aggro players or lose 1/2 a buyin. I was just getting ready to leave when the following 300+ BB hand took place:

Poker Stars, $0.10/$0.25 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

MP: $31.45
CO: $24.60
BTN: $24.45
SB: $5
Hero (BB): $24.25
UTG: $24.65

Pre-Flop: A Q dealt to Hero (BB)
UTG folds, MP calls $0.25, CO folds, BTN raises to $1, SB calls $0.90, Hero calls $0.75, MP calls $0.75

Flop: ($4) J T K (4 Players)
SB checks, Hero checks, MP bets $1.75, BTN calls $1.75, SB calls $1.75, Hero raises to $12, MP calls $10.25, BTN raises to $23.45 and is All-In, SB calls $2.25 and is All-In, Hero calls $11.25 and is All-In, MP calls $11.45

Turn: ($78.15) 4 (4 Players - 1 is All-In)

River: ($78.15) 7 (4 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: $78.15 Pot ($3 Rake)

MP showed 9 8 (a straight, Seven to Jack) and WON $0.40 (-$24.05 NET)
BTN mucked K T and LOST (-$24.45 NET)
SB mucked J A and LOST (-$5 NET)
Hero showed A Q (a straight, Ten to Ace) and WON $74.75 (+$50.50 NET)

My hand held and amazingly no one was on the flush draw. This is probably in my top 5 favorite hands I have ever played. After that I decided I am not ready for this kind of agression so I am going to stay at the full ring tables for a while now. I think I would be safer in my 6 max endeavors if I stay a buyin below where I am at in full ring. They play for stacks WAY to easily at these tables, imo. But I'm a nit.

Overall, another very successful day! Maybe this night shift thing helps me play in the mornings because I feel very awake until about 11:00 AM local time after work.

Up and Down Day

Today was just gross. I went on a heater this morning winning 5 buyins. I take a break for lunch and come back and take a 3.5 buyin loss within the first hour. Set over set 3 times in a row, flush over flush 3 times in a row, 74o flopping 2 pair in a 3bet pot. Just can not finish the trip to value town without variance throwing in a little detour. AHHHHHHH!

Enough of my ranting, as you can tell I'm on night shift. Currently re-reading Sklansky's Theory of Poker over night and taking notes this time. It sure makes a lot more sense the 3rd time through. I highly recommend it even though it is kind of dry and reminds me of those high school textbooks. Very helpful concepts and theories though, so it's a must read.

I plan to be at 50nl sometime next month at this rate. I'm still finding 25nl easier to beat than 10nl because there are so many more reasonable players that it's easier to put them on a hand rather than the random 2 pair trash hands in multiway pots that the people at 10nl seems be involved in. For my style of play it works much better because cbets are folded to a lot more by the fish here because I find them more weak-tight than weak-passive at this level. The fish here seem to be much more exploitable as I am guaranteed to have less of them in the hand and I'm finding it easier to isolate them - less gambling and more poker is to my advantage.

First $100 Day

I finally hit my first $100 day, which is 4 buyins at 25nl obviously. I've hit 6 buyins at 10nl before but this felt like much more of an accomplishment. I started the day off pretty shaky, dropping a buyin just from preflop and c-bets when I couldn't hit a single flop on tables with aggro players. Took a short break and a few hours later I find myself up 5 buyins from where I left off.

I pretty much managed to avoid my overpairs getting cracked by sets which was nice and I stacked a couple of players with sets of my own. I made a couple of really bad plays where I just couldn't make myself fold even though I couldn't beat anything, and I would have been up probably another 1-2 buyins if not for those.

So far I have almost 13k hands in this month, 5k of those have been at 25nl with about 1/2 of my profits coming from that and the other half from the 5nl 6max tables I've been trying out. 7 BB/100 for 25nl in my first official week of playing it isn't too bad I don't think. At this rate I'd like to get in about 20k total hands at 25nl for the month and if I continue at my current rate that would leave me up about 30 buyins for 25nl for the month and I would be bankrolled with about 25 buyins for 50nl. But I definitely want to get in at least 20k hands at 25nl before I even consider moving up again.

Getting used to 25NL

I'm getting more and more positive that I am going to be able to keep playing well at 25NL. From what I've seen so far it's not that much different 10NL. I'm up about 3.5 buyins in 600 hands over the last couple of days so that's pretty good for me.

I've cut way down on tables so that I can concentrate on the action and take more notes so right now I'm starting off with 4 tables and when those seem to be going well, I add another 4. I'm getting the hands in a lot slower than when I was playing 12-16 tables at 10NL and lower, but I think my quality of play really makes up for that.

The really nice thing about 25NL so far is being able to earn FPPs at a decent rate. At Stars, the pot needs to reach $8.00 for a $0.40 rake to earn an FPP. This was quite rare at 10NL, the rake was usually between $0.10-0.30 - just under the limit, but it is quite common at 25NL and virtually every 3bet pot earns an FPP. I hope to hit Silver VIP for the first time this month.

I'll see if I can get a video together for FR 10NL soon, considering that I've been playing well/running hot lately. I had been holding off on making one since I was in a bit of a slump through December.

Moving Up to 25NL

I officially decided to move up to 25NL today - I think. I had been trying to convince myself for the past couple of weeks and decided I would have to do it sooner or later. My confidence in my game is pretty high right now so I thought that this would be as perfect a time as any.

I was up just over 2 buyins, then lost 1/2 a buyin on a stupid play I made trying to push a guy off his hand as he had been floating me a lot; unluckily for me he flopped quads. Reminder to myself not to invest too much OOP with overs when I get heavy resistance. I didn't even run that well to begin with and was nitting it up at about 10/7/1 but then caught a good run and finished up $34 at 9.4BB/100 over 700 hands and improved my agression to about 11/8/5.

I am going to stick to my bankroll management and move down if I drop below 19 buyins for 25nl and keep taking shots at it as soon as I am over 20. Hopefully my days at 10nl are over now. I am currently sitting at 24 buyins for 25nl.

First Impression of 25NL

1. People do not stack off with top pair as easily. Of course there are still the 53/5/1 fish that will, there are just fewer of them.

2. People float a lot more, or at least appear to. I think there are more players that understand how to float a cbet with overcards here so that means there are at least a few 2nd level thinkers here.

3. Play is not that much tougher than 10NL. I actually found hands easier to play as people were a lot easier to put on a hand than the crazy ATC players at 10NL and below. There are also players that are 3betting 99-JJ and AQs+ preflop here, which you see almost none of at 10NL and below so that widened range needs to be taken into account against some players.

Happy New Year - Graphs and Such

Time for a graph update. This graph is from the start of this blog on November 1st to today. I only made about $140 mostly at 5nl and 10nl - FR and 6 max - in December due to it being such a busy month and I didn't really feel like playing much. The last 22k hands are from December.


I wanted to be playing 25nl by now but I took a couple of shots with some bad results. I will be moving up to 25nl in January as I currently have 20 buyins for that level - probably once I have 25 buyins.

I also had this hand today which put me on major tilt, I considered cashing out because I run so bad on this site for some reason, but thought twice about it and decided to stay since the games are so loose. I'll keep plugging away at it. Managed to get my money back about 100 hands later from the same guy. The appearance of tilt after it's gone can sometimes work amazingly well - ie. shoving AA the next hand after a bad beat, there is a huge chance you will be called by 99+/AJ+.

Full Tilt Poker, $0.05/$0.10 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 4 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

BB: $20.35
Hero (UTG): $15.50
BTN: $9.95
SB: $4.30

Pre-Flop: T T dealt to Hero (UTG)
Hero raises to $0.35, BTN calls $0.35, SB calls $0.30, BB calls $0.25

Flop: ($1.40) A 8 T (4 Players)
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets $1, 2 folds, BB raises to $3, Hero calls $2

Turn: ($7.40) 6 (2 Players)
BB bets $4.20, Hero raises to $12.15 and is All-In, BB calls $7.95

River: ($31.70) 8 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: $31.70 Pot ($1 Rake)
BB showed 8 8 (four of a kind, Eights) and WON $30.70 (+$15.20 NET)
Hero showed T T (a full house, Tens full of Eights) and LOST (-$15.50 NET)

Frustrated with Full Ring - Card Dead

So far this month I've played full ring on Stars, Full Tilt, and Party and have made a whopping $38 over 14,000 hands. I've been pretty much card dead for most of it and missing most flops and draws. People are not folding to c-bets at all either, which would be awesome if I was catching hands!

According to PokerEV I'm making the correct play 61% of the time that hands go to showdown, which is quite high, but it's just not paying off and I'm getting hit pretty hard with the bad beats lately, ie. flop a flush or a straight and get the money in and villain rivers their full house or what have you a lot more than usual; flop a set that doesn't hold up after the money's in, etc. Apparently I'm down $40 overall due to all-in luck.

I'm also flopping sets only about 8% of the time that I hold a pocket pair so that doesn't help either as that is my main source of income. Hopefully this will swing itself around again.

But when negative variance is done with me it will move on to the next person, so I just have to get through it. I'll probably continue to study a bit more of my game from November since my graph looked a lot better than it does now, lol. I find that trying out other games and formats helps me see situations that I hadn't seen before at the FR NL tables.

I think I go through a couple weeks at a time where my hand reading skills are excellent followed by a couple weeks where it's way off and then some time where I'm pretty much not confident in my game at all and see monsters everywhere. So I need to snap out of that.

Trying to play superLAG

I watched a couple other people's videos today where one of them were playing extremely LAGgy in 6 max. I normally play 6 max the way I'd play full ring with the first 3 hands folded. So in the video the guy says, "T8s UTG, I'll raise that... Q8o UTG+1, I'll raise that" and I'm thinking Wai... Wha...? It just blew me away. The preflop play and his incredibly wide range wasn't what was so mind blowing, it was the overall postflop play and the image he was creating even at extremely low stakes. He said you still have an image at the micros, it just takes really exagerated plays to adjust it.

So I tried this out today in 6 max at the 2NL tables on Stars - my experiment level - and finished exactly breakeven over 500 hands running at 40/30, something that is completely foreign to me. I actually played 1/2 of my hands on the button and cut off - weird. I think this is going to work with some practice. What is happening and what I hadn't really thought of before is that by making slightly -EV plays preflop and in small pots, you increase the value of your +EV plays by so much more in large pots, especially against the TAGs and the HUDbots who will either misinterpret your stats or get tired of you raising and playing so many hands. I think this most resembles Daniel Negreanu's style of play, lots of pots and lots of small ball play. When they come back at you you know they have a hand for the most part unless they've figured you out (at which point you can switch gears) and they commit a lot of chips to find out if you have a nut hand or not.

I would have finished up quite a bit in terms of BB if it weren't for this hand and a couple others. It's a bad beat obviously, but it demonstrates just how light you can expect to be called down and this is the situation I want to put myself in every time. This guy had been calling me down with 2nd pair a lot and since he bet 1/5 of his stack, I figured a min raise would pot commit him with anything he's opening with, with a smaller chance of pushing him out. He'd be c/r with a set here I think, so I put him on a draw or 2 overs or a bare 7. Notice how he overplays a hand that beats nothing but a bluff - which he obviously thought I was. Great hand history converter by the way:

Poker Stars, $0.01/$0.02 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

MP: $1.32
CO: $1.09
Hero (BTN): $5.78
SB: $1.19
BB: $1.89
UTG: $2.47

Pre-Flop: K 7 dealt to Hero (BTN)
UTG folds, MP calls $0.02, CO folds, Hero raises to $0.08, SB folds, BB calls $0.06, MP calls $0.06

Flop: ($0.25) 2 7 3 (3 Players)
BB checks, MP bets $0.50, Hero raises to $1, BB folds, MP calls $0.50

Turn: ($2.25) Q (2 Players)
MP checks, Hero bets $0.25, MP calls $0.24 and is All-In

River: ($2.73) 6 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: $2.73 Pot ($0.10 Rake)
MP showed 6 7 (two pair, Sevens and Sixes) and WON $2.63 (+$1.31 NET)
Hero mucked K 7 and LOST (-$1.32 NET)

Changing Gears for December - SnGs

I haven't posted in a little while. It's been a busy week again so not much poker going on. I think I burned myself out a little bit in the cash games last month and I haven't really felt motivated to play them for the past 2 weeks, considering my breakeven stretch and all.

I thought I'd recharge a bit by switching it up. I'm currently playing a lot more SnGs than I normally do and the odd MTT with mixed results. I really like the way my opponents play the SnGs on Full Tilt and I've pulled in a ROI of 75% in the 15 or so SnGs that I've played there so far. 1st place: 5x 2nd place: 4x 3rd place: 2x ITM: 62%

Example of why I like playing here, this is from the second level of a 1 table SnG:

Hero is dealt KK

UTG limps, UTG+1 limps, MP2 limps, Hero raises to 6BB, UTG calls, UTG+1 calls

Flop: 3s 4d 5d <--- not a particularly nice flop for me, but wait...

UTG open shoves a 6x pot sized bet all-in, UTG+1 folds, Hero thinks a set/76/A2 would slowplay or value bet smaller so this is obviously 66-AA and Hero thinks he's way ahead most of the time so Hero calls

UTG shows 66, not a particularly bad play on his part with the OESD but a smaller bet or a check raise scares me a lot more than this.

Turn: blank
River: blank

Stars is just the opposite and seems to be so nitty in the SnGs and I'm running a -20% ROI there so I think I'll stick to Full Tilt for a while and see what kind of stakes I can take down. I've played a bunch of 45 man tourneys as well on Stars, but unfortunately I'm finishing around 10th most of the time. I think my tourney game is starting to improve though, so I think I'll continue to play these.

I've been keeping track of my preflop all-in hands in tourneys to see what kind of equity I have when we're getting closer to the endgame. One thing I noticed is that I have slightly more equity with the hands that I am calling an all-in with than the hands that I am open shoving. This becomes quite clear when I look at my and my opponent's range for each situation and it pretty much demonstrates the gap concept.

I'm also spending more time on studying my game and reading some books to help me improve both cash and SnG games and I hope to be back at the ring games around Christmas. And also, I just became an uncle last week, which is awesome!

Not much going on this week

I haven't posted much this week as my time has basically been spent shovelling snow, lol. The snowfall amounts are crazy here right now due to it being so warm for November/December - ie 2 feet of snow on my driveway x2 this week. I'm going to try to get some time in probably tonight and the rest of the week. I've been trying out some SnGs with some pretty drastic changes to the way I play them, and this has been, for the most part successful. Even taking down a few turbos which I normally suck at because I was always such a nit.

November Graphs and Stats

It's December now so I'll post my stats and graphs for November. Overall it was a pretty good month except for the last couple of days where I've been on a 9 buyin downswing. 46k hands played and running at 10.5BB/100 on average. My winrate sure has taken a hit at 10NL because the downswing was almost exclusively at that level. I played about 30 SnGs and MTTs as well but finsihed about breakeven for those.


I found this program kind of interesting, too. Not sure what to make of it but it's kind of inetersting to see what happens in these situations. Apparently I'm pretty good at flopping sets :)


I hope I can start turning this downswing around soon.