Best day everER

A while ago (my last post lol - I did not actually fall down a well), I posted that I had my best day ever.

That is no longer true. Today is my new best day ever! And oddly enough it came at 50nl. Yes, I broke my resolution. The first half of the month got off to a rough start at 100nl, mostly 5 buyin swongs every day. I got sick of that and said ok lets make some money for once and dropped to 50nl to work on some things.

So I played 50nl for a few days and got my confidence back and moved back up quickly to 100nl and some 200nl and haven't looked back for the rest of the month. My graph is basically a 60 degree ruler starting on the 17th and oddly enough it's going to be my best month ever even though I was breakeven the first 2 weeks. The implications for this are obviously exciting!

Last night I couldn't sleep so I fired up some tables. 100nl was pretty dead so 24 tabling 50nl looked appetizing enough. Ran insanely hot and played my best game ever. Seriously. EVER. I then decided it would be fun to top the PTR winner's list for 50nl for today and continued to play that. 3 sessions later and 7500 hands and I'm +20 buyins. That's about 12 ptBB/100 -- while 24 tabling. I'm about 3 buyins ahead of EV too and didn't actually get into a lot of set vs. overpair or any set vs. set situations so I'm going to take the credit and say that I maxed the shit out of value with mid strength hands and picked some sick spots to shove people off their hands in big pots.

Cliffnotes:
Feeling good
Running good
Playing A+ game that makes my old A game look like a C game

Today's 50nl graph:

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.

FTP Rush

I've been checking out the FTP Rush games the past couple days. Couple things I noticed right away: no HUD possibilities, no image, no real reads besides stack size and line (although I am working on a system to do post session review and apply that info to player notes and colour coding). It's basically poker in a vacuum.

Considering it's watered down or completely missing so many key elements of the online game, I almost feel bad to say that I actually enjoy it. Each table basically runs at 4x a regular table in hands/hour. I don't really have any BR over on FTP so this is actually perfect for me. I can play 4 rush tables = 16 regular tables with only 4 buyins + change and build it up quite quickly.

It also effectively turns all the 1 tablers into 4 tablers who are making 4x as many mistakes per hour - well maybe not quite that much since hand ranges are stronger due to the impression of having to play fast (you don't) and the ease of getting better cards with a simple auto-fold pre.

With all that said, I'm still on the fence as to whether this is good for the game in the long term. People will run out of money much faster. People will clear bonuses much faster. People will earn more rakeback. No one can improve playing more than 1 of these tables and having the HH replay open.

Very interesting and innovative concept at the least. I'll have to continue to evaluate. I'm considering grinding out a quick Iron Man on FTP due to this while maintaining Supernova on Stars so that I'm primed for either site in case one takes a nose dive in the loyalty program department.

PokerStars Haiti Earthquake Appeal

Just a quick post to encourage everyone to donate to the Haiti Earthquake Appeal at Stars and the funds set up at other sites. Stars is matching whatever is donated


From the PokerStars News:
The appeal is running until noon on January 31, and here's how you can get involved:

- In the PokerStars lobby, go to Tourney >> Special and enter one of the dummy 'Haiti Earthquake Relief' tournaments listed there. 'Buy-ins' range from $1,000 all the way down to $1. You will not need to play an actual tournament, instead all of the 'entry fees' go straight to the fund.

- Alternatively you can make a private player transfer for any amount to the account 'Haiti Fund'. Go to 'Requests' in the client top menu and select 'Transfer Funds'.

As of January 18th, $400,000+. gogogo

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.

2009: Year in Review

What a busy year. Lots of poker. Lots of life.

I nearly completed my poker goals for the year. I wanted to be a 200nl reg at this point but I'm not quite there yet. Despite that I'm pretty happy with how things have turned out. I ended up with a lot less time online than I anticipated and still managed to learn a ton of strategy and work on my game a lot offline.

I started off the year still playing mostly 25nl with some pretty big confidence issues. After finally figuring out how to consistently beat 50nl in the first few months of the year, I decided I wanted to take a more pro-active approach to learning and decided to cut down on tables for more sessions. I decided to start taking mini shots at 200nl which worked out well for the most part and played a good mix of 50nl and 100nl throughout most of the year.

Confidence is such a tricky thing. Without it, you get run over. With the wrong kind, you get into all sorts of FPS and put small stakes regs that litter the 100nl+ games on this pedestal of genius. But with the right kind of confidence you feel like you can hold your own and that your normal poker thought process is enough to beat this game without going to the 7th level.

I did go through a pretty soul crushing last 2 months of poker for 2009, December being one of my toughest months ever. I came very close to having my first losing month but managed to pull it back together the last few days to put in a decent result.

I also joined some great coaches over on BestFreePokerCoaching.com and started doing a bit of coaching myself. I really enjoyed putting out some videos - and it's tough to do when you're getting crushed by variance in your regular game - and they helped me think through exactly what I was doing and pointed out a few mistakes to myself.

In life, my daughter turned 1 year old and we found out that we are expecting another one this year! So life will be super busy again but it's so much fun and I wouldn't trade it. We're about 96% finished the house we built a few years ago and should be completely done in the next couple months - those last final details always seem to get put off.

2010 is going to be interesting. I'm probably going to get a decent amount of time off and that should help with some family time and VPP accumulation. I finished up 2009 with 150k VPPs. I was hoping for 200k but it just wasn't going to work out. So this year I'm hoping for 200k-300k or more and that's going to require some moving up. Hopefully those goals will work together.

I hope everyone out there had a great Christmas and Happy New Year!

50nl 6max regs wars (lol)

I haven't posted in a while. This month has felt pretty rough so far even though it shouldn't. I went on one of the biggest heaters of my life in the first 3 days winning something like 30 buyins spread across 50nl, 100nl and 200nl. I can actually say that most of this was due to good play. I was the most on top of my game that I've ever been and it felt like face up poker even at 200nl. Then I proceeded to dump half of it back. Poker feels so easy when you're playing well and then you wonder what happened to that mindset when it disappears for a while.


I'm also having an odd reoccurance at 50nl 6max. I keep running in to the same 2 regs who play every 50BB min table there is. They both play insanely long sessions during peak hours and it's pretty tough to avoid them. Luckily one is extremely exploitable despite going to showdown an oddly high % of the time and winning at showdown a rediculous % of the time over a large sample.

The other reg is where most of my problem at that level is lately. We are both very good at putting each other in tough spots using position so part of the solution is to make sure I have good seat location relative to him. If I don't, I rarely profit on that table since he totally wrecks the flow I'm trying to create. It's a lot tougher if he starts a session before I do since most seats opening up are on his right. I'm going to have to do an in depth analysis of his play if I want to keep winning at the same rates I have been there and hopefully figure out his ranges a little better. He's really well balanced vs regs.

10 days until Christmas holidays!

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 =)

Omaha is kind of fun

Took a break from NLHE today and spent the day playing PLO50. Was quite a bit of fun and I'm understanding the equity side of things more and more. Seems to be a ton of 60/40 all-in situations which is why the variance is so high - set + FD vs wrap + FD type of stuff - and my standard deviation is 2x my NLHE standard deviation despite a winrate that's 5x larger.

Ended up winning a ton of flips today, probably 80% of them if I had to guesstimate. I have to say that the PLO fish population is worse than NLHE fish population. It's becoming rare to find a 60/5 type player in holdem at any level, but in PLO you get 4 cards so it's pretty standard to have 2 or 3 players running something like that trying to fullhouse mine and they're still willing to get it in with AAxx no draw postflop as if they're playing holdem. Super profitable. I'm not really sure at what point I should try moving up from PLO50 but I'm thinking the skill level for PLO100 might be somewhere around the level of 25nl-50nl. Maybe next weekend.

Put my stats on the graph. I have no idea if these are standard TAG or fishy or what but they're pretty close to my stats over my entire 12k hand sample. Super heater today.

Also, congrats to knn and tom on the Sunday Mil scores!

Feeling pretty good right now

Thought I'd do a quick update. Played a few amazing sessions today and playing my A+++ game. Getting a lot of max value in some thin spots (ty Joop) and playing way more effectively aggressive than I normally do.

I skipped a few days worth of playing already this month because I just didn't feel like playing. But the past few days, and especially today, I feel like I've had some aha moments wrt manipulating people's ranges and stuff recently and am now super motivated again. Playing face-up poker is just so much fun.

Obligatory brag graph:

I obviously enjoy photoshopping and was a little bored so.... yeah.

Continuing to put some big scores together more frequently. Hopefully I can keep this up. I'm also extremely excited about playing some tournaments in December as part of a potential uFR team. Someone has to hit it big.

Other than that, the first video of my series "25nl: Crushing the Quarter" is due out on Friday the 13th on Best Free Poker Coaching

First 3 25nl videos almost complete

Well I've almost got the first few videos for my 25nl series on Best Free Poker Coaching finished and hope to have them up soon. I think I'd call it more of an intermediate level series. From my own experience this is about where most winning 25nl and even 50nl regs are at. They typically have a really good understanding of fundamentals which puts them ahead of the average losing/breakeven player but sometimes have a bit of a disconnect between applying some concepts correctly and meshing their overall strategy.


So I'm going to try to demonstrate how a lot of those standard concepts work together to help the 25nl reg get to that next level in their game with this series.

The first video is going to be about the 3 types of advantages we have in poker and how to use them to make decisions about whether to play a hand or not along with player categorization and tendencies and what kind of adjustments we can make according to that information.

The second video will build on that and look more at hand selection and ranges versus different types of players. Based on this we can look at playing different types of hands against different types of players and having a plan for those hands that meshes our preflop actions together with our postflop plan.

The third video is still a little up in the air as to what I want to look at. Right now I'm thinking of going more in depth with our postflop plan in terms of equity and aggression. I imagine this will look at finding more spots to maximize value and steal pots using our equity. Probably more focus on hands like suited connectors and suited broadways that give us those equity shares where we can remain aggressive rather than the more binary hit or miss hands.
So look for those to come out soon on Best Free Poker Coaching. By the way, I need a name for the series, so if you have any ideas for that or other concepts you'd like to see, let me know!

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)