ASHMC2 POKER UPDATES

LHC Webcams

2008-09-22T17:40:00.000-04:00

http://lhc-live.com

Atom Smasher

2008-09-19T21:18:00.001-04:00

I have something for you to check out that I think you would be interested in. First look up CERN. It is the particle accelerator “Atom Smasher” that just started its test runs. It is considered possibly the greatest scientific experiment of all time. They are looking for many things with subatomic particles, foremost among these would be the Higgs Boson “the god particle” - the theoretical substance that gives matter mass and gravity. In theory some byproducts of the testing could create wormholes, mini black holes, strangelets, new universes, new space travel fuels and processes, etc - and possibly show us up to 7 more dimensions that we currently hypothesize yet have no understanding. Oh yea, there is also a slight possibility that it could vaporize everything on the Earth. Figure I might add in that small mundane point. Good nerd stuff. This thing whorls electrons at opposing directions at nearly the speed of light. The loop that the electrons are traveling is 17 miles long and the electrons whip around that circuit 11,000 times per sec. That is just sick.

Sup Guys

2008-08-01T04:55:00.000-04:00

Things haven’t been going too well lately. I lost some huge hands trying to move up. I lost $380 in July. I worked off some bonuses though and cashed out a little. I’m still at $700 so I’m happy.

Another great showing in the Fantasy League. I made 11 events because my pros did so well. I got 6th in one of Tilt’s Fantasy Poker tourneys for a $50 payday. That qualified me for the Main Event Package tourney. 1st paid. It started with 950 or so. I stayed in top 10 from the first 10 mins of the tourney. I averaged 4th for most of the tourney. I finally went out in 22nd. That sucked. I was one of the chip leaders and locked horns with the guy that was in 1st for almost the entire time. I had slightly less than 60,000 and he had 100,000. He was uber agro and kept attacking my blinds from 2 to my left. I came over top big PF with AQo. He called Flop comes QJsmall. I bet pot or so. I should have pushed at that point because I was committed, but I didn’t really think about it at the time and my turn bet wasn’t going to be even half the pot. Dumb, dumb, move. He might have dropped his draw, but I doubt it. Turn comes an 8. all-in and he turns over T9s for the straight that whooped my ass. Man, I wish I’d just lost way earlier. Being that close and putting in all that time really sucks. Hey, it was another fun year and I won $50 and a hat.

The 13th Warrior

2008-06-21T17:02:00.001-04:00

Long Overdue Update

2008-06-21T13:10:00.001-04:00

I have had a good year so far. I am up $1794. I made $800 with my old style. I changed my game up and made the $1100. First off I read both HOH cash game books. That really helped my game. Also I have gotten quite agro in late position. I downloaded the Poker Tracker 3 60 day trial. I will buy this for sure. I have also played a lot this month due to buying a laptop and being on a winning streak. Next month should be a profitable month also, due to Tilt having a mid-year Iron Man bonus. I will get a $250 bonus to work off next month.

Also I got rid of my EP and early MP limps with A-rag-suited and SC’s and gappers and sometimes KQ, which has helped my bottom line. This has helped greatly saving small amounts of money. I had a bad habit of limping in from any position and if it was raised to $1 or less I would call. As you know you don’t hit often enough to make this a +EV play. Plus, when you hit it is usually a draw, thus loses more money because I will chase the flop without odds due to OK implied odds and the small amount for the flop bet. I still only play the right odds for the river card. I fold KQ to a raise PF if the raiser is tight. Now I wait until LP position to either raise with these hands to make it less likely for a raise plus I with be in position on the flop. I don’t play too many gappers. I will cold-call PF raises with SC’s if there are a few callers.

My poker Tracker stats are awesome at the moment. I downloaded it 13 days ago and I have played every day so far. I am up $700. I am on a 13-day winning streak. 28 max buy-ins at the $25 NL tables. I have played close to 40 hours in that time. I have seen 16000 hands. My BB/100 is 8.74. I am averaging $18.48/hr and 53.90 a day. 2 buy-ins a day is very nice. I played a lot yesterday and made $175.

FT started having deep stack tables. At the $25 tables you can buy-in for $50. I always try to get on the deep tables to eliminate the short stack factor at the regular tables. I buy-in for $25 at the moment and with all the big stacks I usually have a chance to double-up if we get all-in. I will ride this streak out before I try to move up to the $50’s. The Hud stats are really helping me pull in some nice pots and fold some hands that I would normally play, not knowing how tight the raiser was due to playing so many tables. (8). I currently have $850 online and hope to not cashout any time soon.

Live I am up over $800 for the year. I have only been to a B&M casino once this year.

I am doing OK in the FT fantasy poker this year also. I have already qualified for 6 $2000 freerolls.

The Good, The Bad, And The Lucky

2008-03-27T02:29:00.000-04:00

I played in a tournament at the local Indian Casino a few weeks back.

Registration filled up quick. I was on hold at 10am when registration opened up. I finally got signed at 10:20 and I was 28th on the list. 30 max. 1 guy from work didn’t make it. It started at 6pm. I got to there at 5:15 and blew $50 in the slots waiting to be seated. We started with 2000 in chips. Blinds went – 10/20, 20/40, 50/100, 100/200, 2/4, and so on. I decided to see a lot of flops due to the early stack/blind ratio.

I hit a few nice hands early on and chipped up. Then I get AA. A chick to my right opens PF. I reraise and she calls. She hits 2 pair on the flop with Q8o. We get all-in on the flop and I suckout on the river to stack her. IMO, she got what was coming to her for raising PF from EP with trash and then calling my large rerasie.

A little later I misread that 1 dude was in a hand because he had his arms on the table, which were covering his cards. I opened trying to blind steal from the button and he pushes for a small amount more. I was embarrassed to turn over my junk, which I never would have raised with if I was paying attention that the shorty limped in. He doubles through me. At 1st break, which was at the end of level 4, we were down to 2 tables, and I had about 9000 in chips. RC went before this break in mid or early 20’s. That’s one from the prop bet down. 10 pride dollars, cha-ching.

We consolidated to 2 tables and I was card dead forever it seemed. Yet I keep stealing the SB from a passive rock that always limped from the small and then would fold to my raises. He was to my immediate right at all three tables and kept giving me his blinds.

Close to the 2nd break, and down to the final table, with the blinds at 500/1000, I’m looking for a spot to push. If it wasn’t for the guy on my right winning hands and then folding to my BB pushes and raises I would have had to find a spot much sooner. A guy limps from MP. The SB calls and I check my Q7o. Flop comes Q7x. Checky-check and MP pushes. He has King-high. Rock folds and I call. He is way behind and I scoop a nice pot. 2nd break I have maybe 16000 in chips. HG goes home in 8th place. 20 pride dollars.

When we start back up players start locking horns as I sat back and waited for the bubble-buster. 5 places cashed. It gets down to 4 and I get KK in the SB. Folds to me and I check to a stack that’s bigger than me. He pushes. I obviously call and he shows KJo. I double-up and he doesn’t even have enough for the 1500/3000 blinds. He goes all-in next hand and 2 of us check him down and HGH (he goes home) in 4th. I steal a few blinds and the chip leader takes out the shortie.

Heads-up. I start stealing blinds with big raises and all-ins especially if he just called the Small Blind. We only played maybe 4 hands before we both got all-in. I think he set me up hoping I would push on his SB call. I had 29,700 in chips and he had 30,300. I pushed and he called with pocket 4’s. He had to think it would be a race, but it wasn’t. I had A2o. I hit an Ace on the flop, leaving him with 600 in chips. The blinds were 1500/3000. I now had him 100 to 1 in chips. LOL. I pushed every hand and after doubling 3 times I finally took him out. $600 for first place and my pic on the wall until next tourney. That was kind’a ghey, but the $600 was cool, and bragging rights with the boys was priceless.

I Won That Tourney Was Week

2008-03-06T15:44:00.002-05:00

I will update with a full rundown of the tournament in a few days once I get back to work.

That is 3 live tourneys now with great results. 2 1st place finishes and a final table.

Later, Ash out...

Update and a Free $15

2008-02-25T04:29:00.000-05:00

I haven’t played that much this month. I will end up with Sliver IM status most likely. I am up over $600 so far this year. I’m not playing the best, but with bonuses and Rakebreak I have made this profit. I have cashed out $700 or $800 so far this year. My online roll is slightly less than $600.

Live, I have been doing well this year so far. We have played 8 times. I just lost my first session. That puts me at 7 wins and 1 loss. I am up or $300. I am happy about this.

I will go the casino for the first time on Tuesday. 4 of us from the Home Game are going to play in a $50 NL tourney. We also have a $10 prop bet going on for who lasts the longest. We plan on staying after and playing some cash NL $1/$2. I’ll keep you posted.

Also, I added an affiliate link on the side bar. I’ll hook anyone that signs under me with a free $15 on Full Tilt. If anyone is interested just e-mail me and we can set it up. Any questions shoot me an e-mail – subject affiliate.

2007 earnings* and 2008 supposition**

2008-02-08T02:26:00.000-05:00

DISCLAIMER: What you are about to read in regard to one’s yearly earnings is only gratuitous nonsensical fiction only stated to make one seem validated and vindicated in one’s time spent playing poker. No real money was earned. All amounts of play money are approximations and likely stated well above one’s actual earnings of play money. All play money is worthless as US legal tender and thus holds no real monetary value.

I had a bumpy year. And here is the run-down. I started the 2007 with $500 in my online accounts. Throughout the year I cashed out $1578.94 in earnings. At year’s end I had an $836.72 online bankroll. So that sums-up to $1915.66 for 2007. That is over $3000 less than 2006.

My goal at the start of 2007 was to double the previous year’s total net. So 10000.00 was the goal. I only achieved 1/5th of that goal. I’m not real happy with that result, but after where I was at earlier in the year, I am happy about the comeback. Early in the year I was down $300 thereabouts. A $2200 comeback in the second half of the year is acceptable to me. So my goal this year is to double 2007’s total. So I want to make $4000 this year.

I got away from my winning game at some point early on. I took a few months off to cool down. TILT was palpable in my psyche. I went from UB and moved my roll over to Tilt. There I worked my way up and back down the ranks many times. Not to losing always, but to cashouts and also to downswings soon after sometimes. I also found that I wasn’t and still ain’t crushing the levels that I used to. I have maintained Iron man status for 7 months straight and am still going. (Not top tear every month.)

I also did my share of Live action over 2007. Most were local home games with my friends from work. I also played a few times with the Family in low buyin tourneys. And I only played at the casino once all year. I made a grand total of $1094 at live action play last year. That is a $327 increase from the previous year’s total. I’m happy here. My 2008 goal is $1500.

Breakdown:
Casino – 2007 - earned $22 – 1 win.
Casino – 2006 - lost $139 – 3 wins/2 losses.
That is a $161 swing.

Local home games – 2007 - earned $1064 – 45 wins/10 losses.
Local home games – 2006 - earned $821.00 – 18 wins/3 losses.
Increase of $243.
That is 34 more games.
My average went from +$39 a game in 2006 to +$19 a game in 2007???
I don’t really have an explanation for this. I will think on it.

Fam Games – 2007 – lost $40 – 1 win/5 losses.
Fam Games – 2006 - earned $85 – 4 wins/0 losses.
This is a $125 swing???
I can’t really explain this either.

There is a couple other live games that don’t fall under these 3 categories that I did play in also. I won most of those that brought my year total up.

My game has transitioned big time during 2007. My TAG, TAG-weak style has evolved into a TAG-weak, yet quite a late position AGRO style. LOL. I would love to get rid of the weak part for sure. That is something that I plan on focusing on in 2008. Also along these same lines, have just noticed by watching my hand stats, that I am especially weak on the river. I am missing out on a lot of wins on this street by not value betting and inducing more profits or wins without going to showdown. I have a bad habit of seeing monsters and check/calling in these situations. I am irrationally near always afraid of the dreaded check-raise if I don’t have at least the near-nuts. I have a lot of leaks that I need to find and work on one by one.

*Earnings: Figurative monetary units.
**Supposition: Estimate of future earnings*.

2007 Review Yet To Come

2008-01-08T22:06:00.000-05:00

How romantic and full of shit I was. I honestly did just learn those things in 2006. Forums like this one did help me greatly. I just have to keep telling myself to keep an open mind to different strategies. I honestly think my game has digressed somewhat in certain areas. I will update with my 2007 year end results. It ain’t pretty. I lost myself somewhere.

2006 earnings* and 2007 Supposition**

2008-01-08T22:05:00.000-05:00

2006: An Old Year in Retrospect and A New Year’s Goals

2008-01-07T19:38:00.000-05:00

This is my 2006 review and 2007 goals. 2007 review and 2008 goals to come.

I learned a lot this year. I also achieved a lot. I am very happy and proud of how the year went. The biggest improvement in my game started early this year when I began read poker books and articles and discussing poker with other players at poker forums. I soon learned some new tricks with the guidance from these sources. I have made a lot of changes to my game last year and hopeful make a lot more.

I now buyin for the max at the table to give me the optimum opportunity to earn the maximum from my opponents’ mistakes. I started the year playing super-tight push-monkey poker while buying in for the minimum. Don’t get me wrong here, you can make money this way as I learned early on, but you are not growing as a player; you’re not gain levels in your poker knowledge. I wasn’t really using my head; I was just waiting for a great starting hand and then pushing with it. I was making money slowly, but I wasn’t gaining any new skills. One positive was that I was getting lots of hands in, gradually letting me see how others were playing hands and gaining experience that only comes from sitting at the table.

I truly learned the value of aggression. This one advancement in my poker arsenal has added expected value to every session. I started the year weak and envisioning monsters under every bed, often folding strong holdings to others’ aggression. I hated to put money in the middle without an almost certain guaranty of returned compensation. I realize now through much trial and error and castigation from peers, that in certain situations it is lucrative in the long-term to bet even with marginal holdings. Continuation bets are a must. It took a lot for my conservative psyche to turn these tricks. I still have a long way to go, yet I am on the path.

I also have learned a bit about position over the year. I started out only playing certain hands and betting those hands the same at a full ring game no matter where I was in the hand. I have begun to be more aggressive with lesser holdings the better my position. It has increased my profits and also wins a lot of hands that I wouldn’t stand a chance with at showdown. The fewer people in the hand the less likely someone hit their hand and when they do how hard they hit. Another bet from position on a later street is quite likely to make them drop their holdings. I still have a long way to go here with my overall game.

I have begun to not only play with the hand I’m holding but also think about my opponents’ holdings and play accordingly. I’m starting to get an elementary grasp of possible holdings due to the way they play the hand. What are their betting patterns showing or portraying about their holdings? At the beginning of this year this was basically a nonexistent skill for me. But if you would have asked me if I thought about what they were holding, I would have ignorantly said of course I do. Yea, I half-ass guessed what they had, but without the depth of thinking currently involved. Once again I have plenty to learn here.

I have lowered my starting hand requirements. I started the year playing hyper-tight poker. I was playing top 15-25 hands solely. As aforementioned, I usually pushed my purposely-intentioned short-stack when I found those hands. It took a while for my mind to comprehend that loosening up didn’t mean going all willy-nilly and just throwing your money in with anything for any reason. I now play lots of combinations of starting hands in an array of situations and positions lucratively, by knowing exactly what and how I expect to hit those hands before investing anymore time or money into the hand. This is an ongoing and I’m guessing ever-changing part of my future game.

I have stopped adhering to my-believed finite rules of play. I have begun to play the player and/or situation. I don’t robotically make the moves that so easily defined what I held. I have begun to portray what I want them to think I hold or don’t hold. I exploit others mistakes with move and counter-move. I have begun to use pinpoint bluffing. It’s not hard to push in your chips and hope for the best. What’s hard is to know or make an educated guess as to when they will fold. I have begun to raise early in the hand for no other reason than to gain information as to their holds and how strong they are. I truly have lots to learn here and would fair to guess always will continue to always learn more and refine.

All of the aforementioned aspects and areas of my game that I have grown and embellished upon this past year, I hope and expect to continue educating myself further this next year. I look forward to it actually. I will keep an open-mind to new concepts and strategies, even if they seem far-fetched at first. I will continue to listen, discuss, and analyze every aspect that I can. Just like the psychology I am studying with fervor and I feel, an inherent love, I also feel for poker. There is nothing that makes a person thrive at something more than a love for it. Numerically I hope to double my earnings from last year. It is obtainable. Am I up to the task? Who knows, but you can bet your ass I will try. Onward I will grow and hopefully hit that unlikely plateau that, we all that love poker surreptitiously hope for, breaking the confines of the harnessed and controlled yoke of corporate society, to become a thriving Pro that lives doing what he loves.

And It Happens Again

2008-01-03T00:58:00.000-05:00

All-in on the flop and BANG - kick to the nads. Getting real old. And then the top it off a 3 came to make it a double 2-outer.

Just My Luck: Three Straight Flushes in One Week

2007-12-29T13:46:00.000-05:00

I played live 3 different times live last week and once each day I saw a straight flush. That has to be some staggeringly enormous odds. Plus, if you add in the fact that I was the one that got beat each time by the straight flush it has to be completely nuts. 2 were one-outers and the other was a 2-outer.

First one the flop came 7c5c4c. I had 75o. I bet and got raised. 3 go to the turn and it is a non-spade 7 giving me a flush. I figured one had the flush already and the other had the A or K of clubs. I check, as does the guy to my left. Flop aggressor bets and I reraise. All call. River comes an 8c. I bet pot. My left calls and aggressor pushes for my last $25. I figured that I was beat. My friends are super loose and reckless so I called. There was 90 in the pot at this point and I figured my friend to the left would also call making it a $140 pot. Guy to my left shows As. Aggressor shows Xc6c for the open-ender SF draw that spiked my ass. What a cooler. I still won $60 this session, but I still lament that hand and all that I could have pocketed.

Second time was at my Mom’s house, where we always play $5 buy-in tourneys when the Fam gets together. I trap 2 players on the turn with a Q-high flush. My Sis just had a pair, but my Bro had a lower flush and was drawing dead to 1 card 1 time. 6s3s was on the board and he has 7s4s. I call the card coming and the 5s rivers and IGH on the bubble.

Lastly, the next day we continue with our Christmas drinking and tournaments. I go all-in on the flop with Mom. I had 2pr. She had a gutshot straight-flush draw. She turns another 5s if I remember the card right. Of course I call this one also before it falls after my previous luck during the week.

That is some bad bad luck my friends. I hate the holidays.

The Creeper

2007-12-14T18:16:00.000-05:00

I have been slowly creeping my way up this week. I couldn’t play much because I was working. I played around an hr to 1 ½ hrs a night, just enough to get my 200 points. Out of the last 5 sessions I have profited 4 times. Once was for $45 and the others were in the teens and 20’s. But I am getting my confidence back and that is always good. I didn’t play well overall, thus bringing in small wins.

I have a friend at work that I have been talking poker with and he has started playing online. He is very green (he had only played twice live a home games,) but it is nice to have someone competent to talk poker and online poker hands with. He is a smart kid and wants to learn and has the drive and intelligence to become a good player once he gets some hands under his belt. Plus, it is cool to help him on his way. He is playing every day like I do, so we talk hands and scenarios daily.

Last night was a roller coaster ride of bad play and coolers. I jotted some big hands down so I could remember them for discussion with him and to show how a few bad plays can effect your night’s profits and bankroll growth overall. I wrote them down, so I mind as well post them here so you can relive my crappy plays and lucky coolers, which turned me a meager profit for the night.

1st hand – I limp in from the Small or Big with K6ss. Flop comes T87 with 2 spades. I don’t remember how many limped but it ended with just 2 of us after our action. I bet-out and the guy raises real big. I push with my pair and 2nd-nut FD. He only had $50 to start the hand and asked for time before he finally called his last $27 with ATo. I whiff and lose $50 soon after sitting down. I normally wouldn’t play the hand that aggressively, but I figured if I did call I would be pot committed anyways with my FD on the turn. It was fold or push IMO, so I decided to do it while I had some fold equity. I probably played it badly by calling or pushing. But I ended up having the better odds of winning the hand with 2 cards to come. But obviously I had to hit a K or spade. I honestly didn’t know this at the time. I’m not saying that is why I did it; I’m just trying to figure it all out now. Weird thing is I actually had better odds if he would have flopped the nuts. Down $50 or so at this time.

2nd hand – A guy had raised PF 3 times in a row. This time he does it UTG. I am the BB. I call the other $2 with K6s. Flop – 987 rainbow. I check; he bets; and I raise. He pushes. I call. He had around $50 or so at the start of the hand. He has pocket Q’s and takes it down. I know that this was horrible on my part. I have been getting stupid like this since the tilt session. It’s like I have some residual after tilt virus invading my play. This is a play that I can honestly say that I never do. OK, almost never. Not only did he show strength PF, he showed uber flop power also. To top this off I was drawing to the dumb-end of a straight. Pathetic. Plus, there was no fold equity whatsoever to make this play; I called his all-in. I’m embarrassed to even show this tripe. These are the kinds of plays that donks pay ME off with. Another $50 dropped. Down $100.

I call a PF raise and a call with 44. Two 4’s hit the flop. I am in position. Aggressor bets $8 and other dude folds. I just call obviously. No legitimate need to worry about him drawing out. Turn X. He bets $20 for me and I smooth-call again. River X. He bets out $30. I only have $64 so I push. He calls. Hand ends and he mucks face down. I’m guessing that at some point in the hand he made a boat. Aces or Kings would have to slow down to my calls at some point in the hand with a pair on the board. I wish I had more at the table because he had $200 in his stack. Well, I can’t play that hand wrong so I can’t sit here and say how I out played this dork. The hand played itself. Position was great in that hand. No guessing. Oh yea, this was one of the coolers I was talking about. Poor bastard. Usually when you hit quads or a boat on the flop you have the board crushed and don’t get much action. I was lucky here. +$100 or so and I’m back to even.

4th hand – Raise from EP and I call from the BB with J-small-suited. Flop delivers 2 beautiful Jacks. I check and he bets and I call again. Turn X. I check-raise him this time, putting in a goodly sized raise. He folds and I scoop a $60 pot. I’m up $30 or so at this point.

I then play a lot of small pots and steal tons of blinds. I get up around $75.

5th hand – Raise from EP again and I call with 99. Flop - Q9x. Check/check. He bets the turn; I raise; he RR’s; and I push. He calls and shows QQ. My 1-outer doesn’t come and I lose a $200 pot. Kick-ass, I’m down $25 again.

6th hand - I get off the computer to sneak a smoke. As the tables are timing out because I didn’t hit the sit-out buttons because I was aggravated with me play. (I know, you hate players that hold up the game.) I am walking back by from the kitchen and see an Ace on the popped-up screen. I also notice that there are like 6 Lemurs limpers. I see that I have A9dd. I call just as it is about to time-out. Flop comes 3 diamonds and I am last to act. Everyone checks to me and I decide to give a free card and hope that someone gets a piece of the turn and also pray that the board doesn’t pair. Turn is a blank. Checks to me again. I bet $3 this time. (Around ½ pot, wanting to look like a position steal.) Folds around and a guy min-raises me to $6. Anyways, we reraise back and forth until both stack arrive in the middle. He shows the best hand possible. (For me obviously.) I didn’t have to worry about a suck-out because he was drawing dead with Kxdd. Hmm…up $75 again.

I mess around for a little while longer and end my session only up $26. It really just goes to show how a few bad or iffy plays can turn good day’s profits into mere change. I am going to get my points tonight and try to play with smart aggression and not just blow all my profits throughout the session.

As an aside: Full Tilt is being very magnanimous this month and is matching your year’s whole accrued Iron Man Points at the end of this month. (Just regular accrual though, not bonus points or anything like that.) So starting January I will have 1496 IMP. I always buy $100 bonuses. They cost 600 IMP’s apiece. But for 300 in one shot you can save 200 and get them for 1600. I really want to buy them as soon as Jan gets here, but I don’t want to just buy $200 and miss out on a 200 savings. Well, last month they started giving bonus IM Points that compound every 500FTP’s that you accumulate daily. Ex: 500 = 2 IMP’s - 1000/5 - 1500/10 - 2000/20 - etc. Today is the 14th so I have half the month left to get 104 points. I will need to put in a few long sessions to accomplish this, but hopefully I can. Damn I love free money for my bankroll to eat. I should have close to $300 currently coming from rake back also.

Wish me luck. Later, Ash out…

Quick Update and a Casino Trip

2007-12-11T15:20:00.000-05:00

Ok, I revised the post. God was it horrid. I was writing at work and got busy, so I just hurried up and posted. I’m sorry for anyone that read it.

I played at the casino for the first time in over a year. After the Christmas party I got put on the waiting list. There was only one table going at that time. It was $1/$2. I was told that 5 dudes were on the list ahead of me, but they had called in ahead of time so I was essentially next up. After 20 mins of throwing quarters in hungry unproductive slots I checked back. He said that I was now 6th on the list again because they were in. I was chatting with the pitboss when someone left the table. He said fuck-it go ahead and jump in there.

I sat down in the 5th seat with a full table of regulars that I had seen before in my multiple visits to a different casino last year. Luckily a guy left and a huge chip-spewing fish took his seat in the 2 spot. I started mixing it up with him right off the bat. I won a few smallish pots from him. I then hook horns again with him. I reaise him with AA. He pushes and I call, making it a $120 pot. He shows AKo. He hits a flush on the turn. I reload $60, putting me back at the max buy-in of $100.

I get in with him again soon after and push for $35 more on the river, because he checks after being the aggressor on every prior street. It was a river bluff with AQs. He folded and I showed.

I later called $10 more from the BB with 43s to isolate against him again. I hit an open-ender and called a flop bet without the odds but hoping to hit. Turn brings me a pr of 3’s to add to my SD. I call another bet. River is a beautiful 3. He bets me on the river and I shove like the time before trying to portray the bluff again. He throws away his hand and says that he was trying to buy it with overs.

I also got lucky once. A guy to my left was short-stacked after losing a few hands. He pushes for $25 from UTG. Folds back to me in the BB. I have KJs. I decide to call. He shows AQo. I hit trip-jacks.

I also lost some nice bets when I got reraised preflop and had to laydown. I also had to drop a few hands when the turn got ugly. I only got to play 2 hrs because we rode with the in-laws and they along with my wife were ready to jet. I ended the session up $22. Ghey, but at least I didn’t lose. I wish I would have driven a separate car because my table got real juicy just before I had to go. 2 drunk guys sat down and it was obvious to most at the table that they were dead money.

Whine and Cheese

2007-12-08T02:54:00.000-05:00

Your comment was spot-on Sub; I tilted my ass off. I had been averaging $75 a day for the last 2 ½ weeks. (See last post for stats.) I moved up to the $100NL tables a week and half ago. I was in a zone, a little weak on some hands maybe, but playing well. And then 12/17 came. It was a long session. I lost some big hands early and spazzed the fuck out after that and tilted off more and more. I actually quit twice (once I played WoW for awhile and then to watch Poker After Dark,) but kept coming back for more. I started chasing my money. I started calling hands and bets that I normally wouldn’t. I began chasing until the river against pot-sized bets. It was horrible. I started bluffing poorly. I was making bad calls all around and kept spiraling deeper. It was a sick sight. I totally forgot my new “big hands for big pots,” strategy. GOD. That is the biggest 1-day loss of my career.

I’m not normally a tilty player. I have been playing long enough to see just about anything. But I think the $100 a hand losses put me over the edge. 2 cracked Aces hands in a row. It all started with a 1-outer. AA vs TT. I reraise PF and he calls. He hits a set and smooth-calls my flop bet. Turn brings my Ace-nuts. We get all-in with one card to come and bang, mister Ten. It aggravated me but I was OK, sort of. Then I get AA again. I reraise PF. He RR back. I push and he calls $60 more. Guess with what? KTs. K-fucking-Ten-suited for a hundo. 2 Tens hit the board by the river and Tilty-Mcdonk is in full affect. I start playing bad and pair that with a cold deck and I see 3 more stacks leave to SOS (set over set), FOF (flush over flush), and KK vs AA. Combine that with some horrible play on my part and you have a negative 7-buy-in night. I even did something that I never do, because I was out of my flipping mind. I flopped the nut-flush and had a guy check-call me all the way to the river. The board paired and he checked again. I always just check behind after the board pairs the river. But not this time, I push and get called buy a river-boat. My night summed-up. I will give it another shot in the morning. If I hit $1000 I will drop back down to $50NL again until I hit $1200 or so.

The only positive is that I already have more rake this month on the 6th than I did all of last my total. $300 coming back so far. 8 $100 tables add up quick I tellz ya.

Later, Donkass Out…

OUCH

2007-12-07T14:21:00.000-05:00

Quickie

2007-11-29T10:34:00.000-05:00

I’m still doing well. I am pretty manic at the moment again with poker. I am reading non-stop. I got a bootlegged copy of Super System because it seems to be at the top of everyone’s list: the Poker Bible if you will. I also bought 2 Poker books with my Tilt points that I will start reading as soon as they arrive. I’m posting on forums, although most people don’t seem to agree with my theorems. Sadly most HH posts are 6-max these days.

Full Tilt has a kickass promotion going for December. They are matching your Iron Man points accumulated for the year as a bonus if you achieve any IM tier in December. That is cool of them. That means that by January or February I will be able to buy 2 $100 bonuses. That is always something nice for the BR.

BR still climbing. Currently at $1200. I will need to have one hell of a December to catch last year’s earnings. I doubt I will, but at least I have something to strive for. I don’t plan to cashout much so my roll should keep compounding exponentially as I move up stakes. I have currently made $1900 YTD. That’s $2600 below last year’s mark. Come on Lady Luck. $1900 is great considering that 6 months or so ago I was down $300 for the year.

My game has really been evolving in the last month or so. I tightened up my starting hands a bit, but I have become uber aggressive from the Highjack on with any 2. This is getting a ton of action for my normal starting hand range. I’m currently taking down nearly as many pots on the flop as I do PF to my CB’s. I am winning a ton of small pots now. Another big change in my game is that I am usually only playing big pots with big hands. TPTK all-in on the flop is basically nonexistent any more. I know I am folding the best hand often, but folding to hyper flop aggression with 1 pr isn’t too weak IMO. Why risk it with so little invested on the flop. Big hands for big pots is my new maxim. Since I am now winning a ton of smallish pots with my aggression why risk losing profits on an iffy endeavor. Also when I get called with my steal attempts and I flop TP or 2 pr I often get paid off nicely with moderate holdings because they don’t give me credit for a hand because I’m bulling their blinds so often. Lets see how these days off go.

Plus I have a home game tonight. Hopefully I can keep my streak alive. I had 15 straight wins in the home games going. I then lost $17 one game and now have a 4 game streak going again. Plus, I now have been given the invite to a local Corrections Officers’ game. It kinda sucks though because they usually only play $10 buy-ins tourneys, plus they start at 10:30 at night after they all get off of work. I’ve only gone once as of yet because of my work schedule, but I did OK that night. I bubbled the first one due to a horrid suckout, but it happens. The second one another guy and I chopped 1st and 2nd $ because it was 3:30 am.

PIMP YOUR BLOG

2007-11-29T09:27:00.000-05:00

You can register your blog Pokerweblogs It is free and and it automatically updates when you do an update, so visitors of our site can see when you updated your blog. The big advantage is that it will attract much more visitors to your blog.

Rambling On

2007-11-27T06:24:00.000-05:00

Rant to Come - Some of the Worst Calls Ever

2007-11-25T12:01:00.000-05:00

3 big suckouts that cost me $150. I won $200+ this session, but here’s $150 profit lost to 2 total horrid calls and 1 not-so-bad call, I guess. I posted the odds for you.

Hand 1 - The first one the guy had TPTK when the money went in on the turn. I now don’t often put it all-in with TPTK, but when you play AKo that is the hand you are looking to get. I call his PF raise with T9s. Flop brings his King and my 2-pr. I check raise him on the flop. He calls. We get all-in on the turn. If he was going all the way I don’t understand why he didn’t push the flop when he had some fold equity, not that I was folding, but he couldn’t know that. I push the turn and the board pairs our turn card giving him Kings-up. I was a 4to1 fav here.

Hand 2 – It is folded around to the SB, where he tries to limp. I raise PF because I have a small pr and didn’t want to see a flop. He calls with T6s, which ain’t a bad play. I bet this tard on the flop with my set because of the straight and flush draw. This was a blind fight and he could have anything. He calls this second bet with T-high and no flush draw. Just bad unless he though I was CB’ing weak and was going to try to call my bluff on the turn. Well, it turns out that is just what he did with a gut-shot. I push for a way over-bet of the pot. He CALLS. No fold equity bluff mind you he tried but I pushed. He calls with crap and hits for my whole stack. 9to1 odds here.

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Hand 3 – This tard CALLs on the turn with a double belly-buster. 86% fav down the drain and another moron stacks me.

I understand that these idiots are the fish that bring us profits in the long-run, but damn. 2 9to1 spikes in 1 session is just outrageous even for Tilt. I can’t believe I pulled down a 4buy-in session with this crap going on.

Rollin'

2007-11-22T06:42:00.000-05:00

I’ve been rockin’ the last few days on Tilt.

After getting off work on the 19th I played for like 2 ½ hrs on the $25NL tables to get my points. I all-in 3 times PF with Rockets. First 2 times were for the whole buy-ins. Both times AA vs KK and they held up for some odd reason. The last time was a 3-way all-in extravaganza. AA vs AK and 99, but both had push-monkey money and I netted a full buy-in between both their stacks. I only lost a few mid-sized pots that morning. I played one bad and just kept calling his bets with bottom 2-pr. I know that you should always play them hard but I was trying to keep him in and be Mr. Tricky. River paired the board low and he spiked Kings-up to counterfeit me. My aggressive position blind steals, whether PF or to my CB, kept me up on most tables. I ended the session + $90 and change to put me at $708.

20th I gave $50 another go. I had a horrible session of bad beats and total donkary. I also made a few bad calls I guess. Also the set-up set over set in a 3-way on the flop and lost a buy-in in that shitty hand. I got smacked by the worst played hand that I’ve witnessed in a long time. I don’t know how this tard can have the money to sit at these stakes. He tries to limp from late early position. I bump it up to $2 from around the button with big slick and he calls. Flop comes a nice KJ2 rainbow. He checks, I make it $5 to go, and he calls. Turn 7. Same betting and calling on the turn, where I make it $15 and he completes. My Spidey Senses are tingling thinking maybe a slow-rolled set or something. I plan to check call the river at this point. River Q. This time he leads out for $10 into the $45 pot. Ghey steal attempt or value bet. I call and he shows-down AT for a total floating, cold-calling, gut-busting, Broadway piece of ugly no-playing crap fest of a hand. The chat box goes wild and I didn’t type shit. I X-ed off the table. A few suckouts later and I was down close to $100 and about to leave and start the next day back at the quarter tables. I was playing solid I swear and did win a few mid-sized hands or I really would have been down. I start un-checking the auto post buttons on my 8 tabs while I was playing stupid tilty hands. I call a raise with 54 spades because I was tilting and getting off anyways. Late position player reraises and the OR calls, so I say F-it and call also. Flop comes 9c7s2s. Checkity-check, and then a nice bet. We both call. Turn brings the 6s. Now first guy leads out and I raise. Flop aggressor pushes as does the EP guy. I go all-in also afraid but not real worried because what could they really have that could beat me at this point with a PR raise and a reraise and call. OR PF shows KK with no spades. PF reraiser shows a donkalicious TT with one spade. And just as my day’s fucking luck would have it a 4th spade hits the river to give this dude a ten-high flush and I get totally fuckin’ pissed inside at my plight, but can’t move and just stare at the screen in exasperated awe. And then something odd happens and I watch the chips slide my way and my $50 turn into $150. Only then do I look back at the board and see that the last spade was a 3 of spades giving me the straight flush and sticking it right to the dumb no-playing asses. So I log-off only down $5 for the session.

21st I got back on the $50 tables and was in a zone from the start. The basketball hoop looked like a swimming pool. I did make a few ify calls, but all in all I was spot-on with my reads. I was getting some nice hands also. A few mid-sized suckouts against me, but not too many. It was weird I was keeping my ok hands in small pots and playing big pots with my big hands. I was very aggressive also. Only once did I not follow through with a read and didn’t open-bluff the aggressor on the river with my call-stationed bust flush draw. He checked and showed down an aggressively played pair of ducks that took down a nice pot. I won $140ish. I only played for slightly over an hr. I didn’t want to get off while on a rush but I needed some sleep.

That put my roll at $840. I withdrew $100 for some hunting money so I could get Ash-boy out to hopefully get his first deer.

Hopefully Lady variance leaves me be these days off.

Later, Ash out…

2007-11-18T18:04:00.000-05:00

Last 2 Sessions Were Nice or Back To The Top

2007-11-12T22:10:00.000-05:00

OK, here we go again. I hope saying something positive doesn’t bring out the variance swing demons. My last 2 sessions have been nice. The 1st one was at $25NL and I took down 3 buy-ins. That equates to 12 Greb buy-ins. LOL. The last session I started with a roll of just under $650 so I decided to give the $50’s a shot. I knocked down over $80 as you can see in the screenshot. I made a few big laydowns in the 1st one and sucked-out when my PF Kings cracked my amazingly un-whiny opponent. That always helps. 2nd one I had 2 big hands and also had to lay down a few monsters when the board stuck it to me and they pushed on me.

Hand one I raise PF with AK and get 1 caller. Flop comes Kxxsmall. I bet and he smooth-calls. Turn comes an un-connecting mid-range card. He takes the lead and bets out and I pop him back. He then pushes. At this point it cost me around $30 into a pot $60 or so. I think about for a while and hit the time button. I end up calling and he showsdown KQ. No 3-outer and I drag a nice pot. What do you think of this call? I only had TPTK here. What do you put him on? Set maybe? I don’t know how I feel about this call. I have been dropping some of these kinds of hands lately in my winning sessions and waiting for my sets, straights, and flushes for big pots.

Next big hand was a no-brainer. I reaise PF with my AA and get fired right back at. I push and he calls and shows KK. Karma doesn’t intervene and I take this double-up.

I played for a total of 2 hrs in these 2 sessions. That’s around $80 an hr. God wouldn’t be great to be able to do that consistently. Yea, I know better. I have the next 4 days off and plan to put in around 2 hrs a day. Wish me luck at the $50’s.

My Roll is Slowly Growing But Swings Suck

2007-11-10T09:26:00.000-05:00

As of 11/9 I my roll is $560. I got my Rakebreak and lost a few bad hands. I had $680 when my rake came in. I stepped up to the $50’s and took some horrible loses. 3 quick hands where I lost: 1 – Nut flush on turn with me the aggressor the whole hand. Board pairs the river and he pushes. I only have $10 left and getting 9to1. I obviously call and he shows-down a river boat. 2 – I have trips and the board 4-flushes and I have to lay it down with like $30 invested. And 3 – I have an AK for TPTK and the board pairs one non-ace card, I bet and get called. River then commences to pair the other non-ace flop card. He pushes and I have to drop. With some other bad plays and beats I go down $150 for the session. I drop back to $25NL and recoup some. I am still playing $25NL. OK, I’m done whining now. I’m going to get $650 again before I try again. I am still having some problems dropping on the flop with premium pocket pairs to massive aggression. A single pair is often in bad shape in these situations, but it is so hard to drop Rockets on a low board, because sometimes they show smaller premium pockets and are willing to rock and roll with an overpair. I will continue to work on this and watch my stats closely.

A Streak Ends and Hopefully a New One Begins

2007-11-05T04:15:00.000-05:00

Well the streak is over. I had an awesome Home Game streak going 15 straight winning sessions! I finally lost $17 the game before last. I got my A’s and K’s cracked the same session and never fully recovered. The next game I made $65 so I feel pretty happy about that. I was down $27 at one point because I played HU with an agro player (Smitty) and I hit a nut straight on the turn. I just called his turn bet and then the board paired on the river. I didn’t put him on a hand and raised him. He pushed and I called his boat. That was a $20 hand.

I bought back in for another $20 and chipped down a bit and then made 2 nice floats on the flop and turn and then re-raise the river bluffs and a good/bad call. Same agro player bet the PF 3 handed so I put him on 2 unmatched high cards. Flop was all low cards. He bet bigger than his normal bet when he has a hand so I figured he missed and was trying hard to take it down. I paired my 3 and called. He fired another bullet on the low turn card and I called again. He bet the river J hard and bet strong again. There was already a lot in the pot and I stayed with my read and hoped he missed the J. I called and he turned over AQo. I showed 63o and he went Hellmuth on me. I calmly told him that I had a read on him and he says the fuck I did and said it was the worst call he has ever seen. This put me even or so for my $40 buy-in.

Back when it was 4-handed a little earlier 2 players that have some bad blood between then got in some hands together. One guy (PV) has recently changed his style and now bets a lot PF with stuff like Q8s or worse and the other guy (RMc) got tired of holding like I don’t have a problem doing. He called with mid pair to the showdown and lost to a flopped 2pr. He bought back in and chipped up nicely and they got into it again soon after. He min-raised PF with Rockets and new agro-boy re-raises, which wasn’t much - Calling the $1 and raising $1.50. Smitty and I drop. RMc says that he will put PV all-in which was another $19, which was way over-kill and normally an –EV move with an isolated opponent. PV goes into the think-tank and starts saying that he is most likely behind but he loves his hand. He says that he has straight and flush draw possibilities all the while RMc goads him for a call. PV who has already bought in for $80 calls and turns over his Q9s 4 to 1 dawg. He flops a nine; turns a gutshot; and rivers a Q. RMc tightlipped, cashes out and storms off. This gives goofball $46 in chips. He makes some horrible calls and shows-down 3rd pair in a nice pot and pisses off Smitty all over again, who openly and vehemently bemoans his busted every-street bluff and berates both of us for our terrible plays. I am card dead for a while but managed to chip-up $12, while PV kept taking the tilting Smitty’s chips. And then comes the last hand of the night.

3-hand we both call PV’s Pf raise. I had KJo. Flop comes QTx-low rainbow. Smitty folds and I call PV’s flop bet. An A comes on turn giving me Broadway. He bets 3 measly dollars bumping it up from his $2 flop bet. He stares at me, placing the stack of 3 chips down and then places each chip in a row with emphasis on each chip. I smooth-call with no flush draw and hope the board doesn’t pair or bring a K or J and pantomime his chip placement while smiling at him. The river brings an 8. He bets 3 bucks again and does the chip act. I say raise and put the first 3 chips in mimicking him again and then do it again with 5 more $1 chips. He says all-in putting me to the test for my remaining $40. I figure we are holding the same whole cards but obviously call. He can’t wait to turn his J9s over and say he has the straight. I was shocked that he risked close to $40 without the nuts. I throw down my KJ and state that I have the nut straight. His just stares at me wide-eyed as I count out my remaining chip. The game broke up then and there. I waited for that hand all night. They just donk-off there chips between themselves all night while I fold and wait for semi-decent to limp in with and scoop small pots and then they run into my nuts for big pots, game after game. It’s like clockwork with these boys.

Where I'm At

2007-11-05T00:53:00.000-05:00

It has been a good week. I have had 6 straight winning sessions. Halloween in 2 sessions I made over $200. That’s 8 buy-ins at the stakes that I have been playing. My roll is up over $550 now. I also have $100 coming from Rakebreak any day now. When I’m up over $600 I will give the $50’s a try again, but will drop back down if I hit $500.

I also changed up my game again and haven’t had a bad session yet. (Tightened up my starting requirements. I know I will lose eventually, but I think this change is for the best at these stakes. I got rid of my low/mid-end chasing hands. I dropped my suited-connectors 98 and lower and my Ax-suited A9 and below. This is keeping me from chasing so many straights and flushes and halting any urges for post-flop kicker fights. I am still rocking my position raises PF though; they are reaping nice dividends and giving me action when I have nice starting hands from my steal positions. You’d be amazed at the hands they will call you down with once they get tired of your steals. (2nd/3rd pair on the board.) I also have begun to lay down my PF monsters to uber aggression on the flop while I still have very little involved in the hand. (Most of the time anyway.) I was finding that I was often up against made hands in these situations. I know I am likely laying down the best half the time, but why chance it. I am playing 8 tables at a time and usually hit a set on the flop multiple times an hour. I am pretty confident that I have the best and when I call a goodly PF raise with my pairs and hit, they often will put it all-in on the flop. It seems to be working. I can dodge bullets baby! Lets see how it goes the rest of this week and I will have a better idea.

Five Sessions in a Row

2007-11-02T15:48:00.000-04:00

Wheel me a Flush

2007-10-23T16:39:00.000-04:00

Doh - Check Out The Red Highlight - Back to the $25NL Tables Again - Damn

2007-10-18T22:08:00.000-04:00

Full Tilt owes me some damn bad beats. For that matter, I’ll just be happy with some good beats. 10/17/07 really hurt. I lost 5 buy-ins that day. 4 were beats and 1 was a bad call on my part. I played even poker other than those big hands. All 3 times I hit trips and someone wanted to play I got smacked. I did suckout once and the dude had the nerve to whine after I had seen so many that day. I just let him bitch.

Quick rundown:

Beat 1: AA vs QQ. I raise and he reraises. I pop him back all-in and he calls. Q on the turn. Nice 2-outer.

Beat 2: Trips goes down to river flush after money goes in on turn.

Beat 3: Trips on A-high board with 2 clubs. He holds A6c. We get all-in on flop. He flushes me. I can’t say that I wouldn’t have made this same play on his part with TPSK and 2 cards to come to a nut flush.

Beat 4: TPTK on turn all-in. Dudes middle calls. Hits second pair on river.

Bad call 1: 2 callers of my raise PF with my AA. Flop rainbow T87. BB Checks to me. I bet pot. LP folds. BB raises all-in for 4xpot. I call he showsdown 96s for a suited-3-gapper. Here I knew I should have folded but his overbet seemed fishy. CR usually means a set or straight here. It was a bad play on my part but I was steaming.

Suckout 1: KK vs AA PF all-in. K on turn.

Come on $25 tables be good to Ash. $325 BR now. It will turn around.

Quick Update of My Week

2007-10-09T17:58:00.000-04:00

The last week hasn’t been too kind. I only played 4 days this week due to a business trip. Man I hate long rides. The guy that we were following took a wrong turn and turned an already long 9 hr drive there into an excruciating 12.5 hr ride. Back to poker. I dropped back down the $25NL tables for a few days, but now I’m back at the $50 tabs. I started the week with a FT Br of $335 after a proverbial ass-whooping at the end of the previous week where I sat at over $450. I dipped as low as $280 a few times during a few sessions last week. I had a ton of bad beats although I couldn’t fault some of their calls and pushes due to outs or them thinking that their sets were good at the time of the all-ins. I also had a lot of non-beat second best hands that anyone would put all their chips at risk with. 2 SOS, KK vs AA, flopped boats over boat, where I held JJ and they held AJo on a AAJ flop. Luckily I was playing at the $25 tabs during this time and my other winning hands kept me close to even. With my move back up in stakes yesterday and raking-in a $75 win, I actually made $40 for the week. Add in my $175 Rakebreak deposit and I currently sit at $550 again. During this last week I have only given one badbeat of my own in one hand. I think I deserve more. My PF raised QQ went all-in on an innocuous T-high flop. The other dude hit 2-pr on the flop when he called my PFR with 54o. I hit my bitch on the river. Good that felt good. I did figure I was behind when I called his CR, but just said screw-it and hit the call button. So here’s to hoping. Come on roll grow again.

Could someone check my spreadsheet and tell me if it is read only when you view it? It would really suck if someone could muck with it. TY.

My New Spreadsheet

2007-09-26T17:26:00.000-04:00

A new feature that will be on my sidebar is a Bankroll spreadsheet. I ~~robbed~~ got the idea from Katitude while reading her blog yesterday.(Can you tell that I learned how to strike through. LOL.) She is doing a Chris Ferguson Challenge, with the exception that she isn’t doing the freeroll thing Jesus did to start out; she is starting with $100 on Tilt. You can read about the C.F. Challenge and her specific rules here. I basically copied her spreadsheet and did a lot of cutting and pasting along with adding additional categories and formulas. I have PT but I like this medium because all the info is right on one page. This spreadsheet will chronicle my online bankroll and live winnings. It will be updated daily or at least when I play. (Which is probably 25 or more days a month.) Since I don’t blog every day and if you’re jonesing to know how I’m doing, you can just click the link on the sidebar and see my day-to-day progress. It has different sections for Cash Games, SnG’s, and MTT’s. Also it has formulated online withdraw and Rakebreak deposit sections that will keep my BR accurate and up-to-date. I also have on the sheet two sections that display my FT points and monthly FT rake accumulation. And lastly I have an area for notes for online and live comments for that particular day. Steal it if you want and do some cutting and pasting of your own. It is online at Google Docs and I think you need a Google account to view it; but most bloggers and lurkers already have an account. Enjoy it, I know I will.

Upate, a Big Hand, and a Few Questions That I'd Like Your Opinion On

2007-09-26T13:59:00.000-04:00

Well guys it hasn’t been a good week. I started with a Grand. I then cashed out $350 leaving my roll at $700 including $38 on stars. I lost a little under $300 due to bad plays and some of the most horrendous beats imaginable. 4to1 fav doesn’t mean shit these days apparently. I won’t go into them because I really don’t have the stomach to iterate them. I did make $60 last night though and with my Stars money thrown in I have recouped $100. So my FT account currently sits at $470. Man I really needed that win last night. I was feeling discouraged and felt like the RNG at Tilt was fucking with my resolve to the point that I didn’t even want to log-in. I started with $410 last night and really had a hard decision to make. Did I want to step down a level and play the uberdonks at $25NL or stick it out with the regular donks at $50NL. In the end I decided to stake at the $50 tables and if I hit $300 I would definitely drop stakes, but luckily I actually won a session. If I would stop with the withdraws I would even have to worry about this crap, but with the wife still off of work and Comp being dicks, sometimes I need to. But honestly being able to supplement my income with poker is pretty cool. As of yet I have added to our coffers a $1000 from online poker and $800 from my live local home games. I haven’t given the casino a try yet, but damn am I itching to.

Biggest hand of the week: I get 2 guys to put me all-in PF with my Bullets in the hole. I limp UTG and EP raises and then gets reraised by MP. I then elect to re-reraise to ~~see where I’m at~~ pad the pot. EP pushes the rest of his $50 and then MP also pushes, although he only had $30 at the beginning of the hand. I obviously call. EP shows AKo. MP shows JJ. I am totally stunned here. I don’t really know how these guys play because I have so many tables rocking at the same time. Are they normally donkeys or what? I will say that I had a pretty aggressive image at the time, at least from the cutoff on. Every time it was folded around to me I would bet the pot. In the Small or Big I would pot-bet if the Button and/or SB limped. No one improved and I took down a $130 pot, thus netting $80. That is one hell of a pot at the $.25/$.50 tables. I don’t know if my image had anything to do with their ~~shit~~ bad play in the hand. Me personally, I would be thinking I was dominated here with AKo or at least merely a coin-flip. But EP might have actually been pulling a squeeze play, thinking MP would drop all but AA or KK, and that I was full of crap (because of my image) and would also bail, leaving him a nice pot without ever having to see a flop. In my personal experience if UTG limps and then rearaises a PF raise he is almost certainly holding Aces. Maybe I’m weak, but I fold my AKo here every time. (1) How about you? MP is just plain stupid IMO. He obviously had to realize he was way behind with all that action, plus he only had his original $5 reraise invested here. I would drop for sure. (2) What would you do here you were him? If, and I mean If I also push, he will be getting slightly more than 4to1 here. (He would have to invest $25 to make $105.) And almost definitely he has to think he is a 4to1 dawg here. (3) Does the implied odds of me calling give you enough incentive to call here? Anyways, I think they played the hand poorly, but hey, that’s how we win our money. AK kills so many suckers.

Meh, Kind'a Happy

2007-09-10T13:16:00.000-04:00

I’ve cashed-out $500 since my recent post on 8/15 for various reasons. I am doing well though. I currently have $1000 on Tilt and $50 on WPEX, $40 on stars, and $9 on Poker.com even though I haven’t played on those sites in awhile. I gave up my aggressive BR strategy and opted for a little more conservative one; the swings were just too volatile with a mere 8 buy-ins. I am currently playing at the $50 tables. When I hit $1200 I will move up to the hundred tables and give it a shot, but if I hit $1000 again I will drop down at that juncture. I am presently up $1300 for the year; that is a damn far cry from being down $400 a few months ago.

I have stopped playing the SnG’s for $26 tokens. I currently have 5 and that’s enough for the time being. I had 8 but used 3. I wish regular SnG’s for just money would fill up. I would rather have cash in-hand instead of unredeemable (is that a word) tokens. 1 token that I used I got into the same structured SnG but for a $75 token I won that tourney. (Well in the tokens anyways.) I got into $9000 guaranteed tourneys with the other 2. (Bitch time.) 1st tourney I couldn’t really get anywhere. When the blinds started getting too high I reraised all-in with Big Slick and got called by AQ and you I’ll give you one guess what came on the flop. The next tourney I chipped-up nicely early on with a stack of 6000. I have AA with a raise PF before me. I reraised only to be surprised when a guy with around 2000 2 seats to my left pushes. The original raiser also pushes with about 5000. I obviously call. Guy to the right has AKs and the OR shows-up KQs. Mister KQ runs a straight on my. I slowly work it back up to 2000, but can’t get over the hump. When the blinds get big I put my money in with the worst hand while trying to push the blinds and late position players out with JTs. It happens and I’ll get over it. I have 5 chances left and a teir 2 token to try making some nice coin. Rant over.

I am sticking with my pact with the wife and am only putting in around 2 hrs a day.

Live is going well. I still haven't seen the casino yet this year so all my cash is coming from the Home Game. I am up $705 year to date. that ain't bad seeing as how we play $.25/.50. My loses amount to a total of $90 while making that $700. I'm pretty happy about my stats with these guys; they usually just give me their money pretty much. Too bad my wife spends my live roll quicker than I win it. hopefully soon I can keep enough to get 2 buy-ins at the $1/$2 game at the local casino. I would love to give that a go again. My game has really changed and I'd like to see how I would fair. If I get my online roll rolling I might just cash-out enough to start that live roll. We will see.

Later, Ash out...

New Aggression

2007-09-09T18:40:00.000-04:00

I am really becoming more aggressive. I will go through a few examples here illustrating my new moves. They are really adding tons of small pots to my stack while I patiently wait for my big hands. My aggression also gets me more calls when I do have a real hand. Most of these advantageous plays are probably already in your arsenal, but as you all know I am a little slow at incorporating aggression into my Rocky style. I find myself even or above my original max buy-in stake on at least 4 of my 8 simultaneous played tables with-in the first 45 min of my session. And close to even on probably 2 others. So if you aren’t currently using these bets and raises, give them a shot and I think you will be pleasantly surprised at the results. I am playing at the $.25/.50 stakes. My bets are always pot-sized PF and pot-sized on the flop. I use pot-sized flop bets because they aren’t usually portrayed as Continuation Bets. It must also be stated that this is my online Full-ring cash-game strategy. I haven’t really tried it in tourneys yet so I don’t know how it will work in these more aggressive situations and/or at which stage they might be profitable.

1 – If it is folded around to me in the cut-off through the SB. I’m a little more conservative with the PF raise from the cut-off. Often I wait for paint or suited cards with an Ace or King. On the button if it is folded around to me I will bet pot with just about any 2 cards, unless I have very recently made this same move, because then I am more likely to get called or smacked with a re-steal. If it is folded around to me in the Small I definitely raise with any 2. If reraised I drop. If I get called by the Big, I will bet pot out of position regardless of the texture of the board. At this point they think I wasn’t just stealing and fold usually. 2/3 of the time they miss anyway. And often even if they hit it is mid or bottom pair and fold to my aggression. Another move that I have incorporated from the SB is when the button just limps. With almost any cards I will bet pot here. The button has shown weakness and the Big likely has naught. This is usually enough to take the pot PF, scooping an extra $.50 for my effort. This sandwich effect works well because I look strong by betting with 2 to act and the limper already he has a little somethin’-somethin’. Lastly from the Big I will always raise the SB. If I have 2 nice cards I will raise the SB and a Button or Cut-off limper.

2 - If it is folded around to me with 2 left to act before the blinds and I’m sitting on pockets (no matter if it is 2’s or A’s) I will bet pot. It looks less like a steal from this position so I usually pick up the blinds and with mid to small pockets I want to win the hand before the flop. Plus my pair is likely the best at the moment anyways. If I am reraised here I will usually fold here or call if it isn’t too much more and try to hit my set. I have only invested a$1.50 to $1.75 is this situation, which only equates to between 2%-4% of my stack anyways. If I get 1 caller and I am out of position on the flop I usually bet anyways and take it down. If I get 1 caller and end up with position on the flop I get info if they check. Some times they are slow-rolling to the aggressor, but more often than not they caught air and my pair is still best and win the pot. If my flop bet gets called I am pretty much done with the hand because more often than not they are slow-playing a monster or just smooth-calling top pair. In position I will usually get to set-farm the turn card as they check to me again as the aggressor, likely hoping for the check-raise. I will also make this bet with AK or AQ.

3 - In most cases from early and mid-position I will simply limp with mid and small pockets. If someone raises I will usually call and set-farm the flop unless they way overbet. Another likely scenario is when I end up the only limper with the blinds completing. If they check to me on the flop, I always bet no matter the flop. The majority of the time they fold here especially if an Ace or King is on the board. I pick up a lot of these pots.

4 – If I’m in the blinds and there is one late position limper. If I pair any part of the flop or get a draw I will throw out a pot-sized bet. The other blind likely missed or is worried about a kicker fight in the least. The late LP limper will miss 2/3 of the time and I usually take down the pot. If the flop pairs or is real ugly I will often bet, especially if I’m in the Big and it is checked to me. I will often make these plays even with 2 limpers other than the other blind. And as always, if the SB checks and then calls or raises my bet I am pretty much done with the hand. Sneaky bastards.

Later, Ash out…

What a Douche

2007-08-24T17:59:00.000-04:00

I noticed the poker tip section on the Aces Cracked's main page today and because I was bored at work I decided to read them. Most were very generalized but this one made me smile. Just read #4 and notice that you are nodding as you read. What a douche!

Poker Peeves

I have long been an impatient person by nature; those close to me will contest to that. Time is of the essence and I cannot stand when people waste mine. Impatience is easily my worst character trait, not to mention one of my fiercest adversaries at the poker table. Though I do love the game, I often find myself furiously tapping my feet underneath the table, impatiently waiting for a playable hand. The hulking hours and repetitive nature of the game make it easy for its players to develop pet peeves, which, for impatient people like me, can simply drive you nuts. I’ve given the matter considerable thought and put together a list of my top five poker peeves, most of which are strongly driven by impatience. Perhaps you can relate.

1. Tournament players asking for a count when the bet they’re considering to call clearly puts them all in. I typically see this one at least twice throughout the course of a multi-table poker tournament. Usually on the turn or the river, after a majority of the hand has already been played, one player makes a large bet that puts another player all in. After some mysterious deliberation, the player facing the decision asks “how much is it?” when it’s apparent to everyone else at the table that he will be all in if he decides to call. The question bothers me for two reasons: the first, it’s a monumental waste of time! Unless you have terrible vision or are color blind, you should be able to infer from eyeing the size of your opponent’s chip stack and comparing it to your own that you will be all in if you call. Secondly, asking the dealer for a count at this point in the hand is a likely indication that the player neglected to consider his opponent’s chip stack at the beginning of the hand, which is one of the most important factors to consider in tournament poker.

2. Players in a limit poker game who consistently ask questions like: “how much is it to me?” or “how much can I bet?” Now that I exclusively play no-limit or pot-limit games, I no longer have to deal with these ever-annoying questions. Years ago, however, when I first started playing poker, this one never failed to blow my mind. Limit poker games are called limit for a reason. That reason, as I hope all or most of you reading this already know, is the simple and easy-to-understand concept (or so I thought) that the game has predetermined, fixed betting amounts that, with the exception of kill games, NEVER change. In a $4-$8 game, for example, the most anyone can bet on the flop, EVER, is four dollars. No more, no less. Four. Why then, is there always one ignoramus at the table who insists on asking “how much can I bet?” It would be one thing if this player was new to the game and simply needed to know its structure. That’s fine. Ask once, maybe twice if you need reminded, but when you ask the dealer every single stinking time you play a hand, it makes me want to find all of the people responsible for your education and let them know what a fine job they did teaching you how to learn, comprehend and apply the most basic of concepts. Perhaps if teachers were paid more than cocktail servers and garbage men, we wouldn’t have this problem.

3. Poker dealers who average 25 hands per down when dealing a cash game, but no more than half of that when dealing a tournament. I am not generalizing here, as this does not apply to all dealers; only those lazy few who are content with trudging through their tournament downs because they do not get paid per hand like they would in a cash game. These dealers assume that their tips from a tournament will remain the same, no matter how they decide to pace the game, failing to consider that the average poker player is extremely perceptive and often will tip according to a dealer’s performance. Poker dealers who also play the game, tournaments specifically, understand that the more hands you see per round, the better, as the blinds are always on the rise. Fewer hands per level means fewer opportunities to apply your poker skills, instead leaving your fate to chance, in hopes that you will land a couple of premium hands before the blinds raze your chip stack. Tournament directors should ultimately be held responsible for ensuring that their dealers do not take on-the-job vacations during tournaments, especially when you take into consideration the substantial amount of fees subtracted from tournament buy-ins. Shame on you, lazy poker dealer!

4. Jamie Gold and his blueberry fetish. Although this one has nothing to do with my own impatience, it certainly speaks to the issue of wasting peoples’ time. Sure, we know that your “mentor,” Johnny Chan, kept an orange on the table during his back-to-back (almost three peat) main event victories, but he did so to use the scent of a peeled orange to alleviate the smell of cigarette smoke, not to try and add some self-produced, only semi-interesting and utterly extraneous tidbit of personality to his legacy. You don’t need to remind us that those who came before you left their mark on the World Series with character; Chris Moneymaker with his Oakley sunglasses and proper last name, Greg Raymer with his trademark fossils and holograph lizard glasses and Joe Hachem, forever immersed in accented chants of “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie…Oy, Oy, Oy!” I can accept that you needed the blueberries during the marathon sessions you put in at the World Series, but don’t stop the flow of a five hour, six player Poker After Dark sit’n’go, or a heads-up match on national television to try and infuse the name Jamie Gold with a bowl of blueberries. Sadly, your WSOP legacy has already been created for you, in the form of your endless and often senseless table chatter, coupled with the deal you reneged on with Crispin Leyser to share half of your main event winnings. A gambler’s word is his livelihood, perhaps second only to his bankroll, and once it’s broken, it can rarely be salvaged. Sorry, Jamie, but if this was a credibility contest, you’d be out like the fat kid in dodgeball. Please. Enough is enough. Leave the blueberries alone.

5. Set-ups! Topping my list of poker peeves, without question, is the superstitious old guy at the table who asks for a “set-up” when facing a cold deck. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a “set-up” is a brand new set of cards, still in the box, and still neatly arranged by suit. Unfortunately, most card rooms have a policy of honoring any player’s request for a set-up, in order to maintain the integrity of the game. The policy is in place to protect the deck from visible wear and tear or from suspected markings made by cheats. Instead, these disgruntled old men abuse this privilege and ask for a set-up anytime they feel the cards have not been falling in their favor. In other words, when Pops McGrumpypants feels as though his luck is worse than everyone else’s, so much so that no one in the history of poker has ever seen such a terrible run of cards, the game gets put on hold while the dealer spreads, examines and shuffles the new decks for the eye in the sky. Players like Pops fail to recognize that streaks of cold cards come with the territory of playing poker. Sitting out a hand, changing seats or calling it a day (which is probably the best way to deal with a cold deck) are all reasonable methods of “affecting” the cards, if you will, without slowing down the game and subsequently cutting into the dealer’s earnings for the down. What usually happens to players who ask for set-ups? Their “bad luck” continues through the new cards and they eventually find themselves storming out of the poker room, mumbling expletives under their breath, with much lighter pockets. For peeves’ sake, say no to set-ups!
“When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say good bye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music (and poker!).” (Denis Diderot)

By Gary Gates
- Poker Expert

+EV Small Bets

2007-08-24T14:27:00.000-04:00

The value of small flop bets. Lately I have been becoming a more aggressive player pre- and post-flop.

Here are a few examples that are bringing me a much needed small pot game.

In position in an unopened pot I will often bet pot with my normal limp hands. Often I will throw out a small half pot CB in a 2- or 3-way flop or smaller CB on a 4-way flop whether I hit the flop or not. I am taking down a lot of these hands both preflop and on the flop.

Lately I will also limp in preflop from position (Co or Button) with any 2 cards. I am hoping to get called only by the blinds when in the CO so I retain position on the flop. Most of the time the blinds both miss the flop or only hit it lightly and both check. I will go for the steal every time they check it to me, because normally they only held their hands because it was free or cheap in the first place. Usually I come in with a pot-sized bet because that is enough to get maximum scare value and also because anything smaller will often induce a call because the pot call ratio for them with overs or bottom-pr. They figure I have some kind of hand anyways for limping in anyways. I take down a major majority of hands in this situation.

Also if it is just down to us in the blinds and I’m in the BB I will often now bet pot and take the blinds with any 2 cards. If he originally tried to limp he likely didn’t have much to begin with. If he calls, whether because he thinks I’m bullying or because he figured he’d just see a flop because he had already put in some money anyways, I usually take down the pot when I throw out my small CB on the flop. If not I am through with the hand and C/F if I missed with my junk. He is going to miss his hand 2/3 of the time and if he hits mid- or bottom-pr he often will sometimes even let it go to my aggression.

Another situation is when I go to the flop from the blinds and see the flop 3- or 4-handed. If a pair is flopped I bet out half pot even without position with any 2 cards. Often everyone folds and I drag the pot. They know that I could hold anything in the blinds. Also betting half pot looks like I want a call. Plus betting out of position looks stronger than I used a position raise. And who wants to fight for a pot if I might be holding trips. They often fold nice hands here because they can’t beat trips. If I get a call I know that I’m beat and fold to the first bit of aggression, especially if the SB smooth calls after originally checking the flop. This play also usually gives me a free card that might help my stance.

Another way that I’ve been tinkering with a small raise is when I hit a mid- or bottom pair or a draw on a 3- or 4-way flop after limping in and the board is scary. Often this small informational probe will take the pot right there or at least give me a free card if I get any takers. If I get reraised I can get out cheaply or now get OK odds on a call with my draws, especially if they have a big stack. I am happy with how this has been working.

These steals are working out nicely. And added advantage is this runs with the Hellmuth small-ball theory. The pot is staying smaller until I hit my turn monsters and I am also getting a chance to take a lot of smallish pots outright or by outplaying opponents with my reads on later streets. This also works congruent with my TAG style of play. By playing these extra hands it conceals that I am mostly a tight player and gets me some added playback when I get premium holdings. These extra small pots are helping to keep me even or above the blinds and rake while I wait for my big hands.

SnG's and New Playing Shedule

2007-08-23T11:03:00.000-04:00

I have been doing half-ass well this week. I’m not losing anyways and that is always a plus.

I haven’t been fairing as well in my acquisition of $26 tokens. I am barely keeping my head above water in these things. I’m currently averaging paying about $20 for ever $26 token. I guess that ain’t too bad But I would love to get to about $14 per token. I think I will soon. I always, or usually anyways, go pretty deep in these things. I almost always hit the final table but 2/3rds of the time I am not a big stack at the table and end up having to make a move around the bubble. I think sometimes I wait a little too long where my stack doesn’t scare away the bigger stacks and get a call with moderate holdings and often get sucked out on. A lot of these hands are little more of a coin flip. I am still getting used too this turbo structure. I think I am going to employ a new strategy and see where it goes. With the blinds going up so fast I sometimes don’t get enough good starting hands to make it to the final table with enough chips to hit the tokens without pushing with crap. I think to alleviate this pattern I will start playing more hands in the first few levels when I have a good chip to blind ratio and hope to hit some winning hands early on - especially in position. I then can tighten up to my regular game in the later rounds. I will also be able to then push my larger stack around a little and put pressure on the blinds more. I think this just my fair well in these turbos.

I will then start taking some shots at some higher deep tourneys and try to make a nice cash. If nothing else I will gain some much needed tourney experience. I am also finding these SnG’s a refreshing extension to my cash game grinding. When multi-tabling I just open one less cash table and start up one of these instead. I would also probably fair better in these if I was playing less tables, but with my attention span I just can’t stomach single tabling or going below even 6 tables.

Lastly I am going to change my current session timing. I have in the last few months been waiting for everyone to go to bed before I get on so I could spend more time with the family. You see I get obsessive with a lot of things I do to the detriment of my family. The problem is that I am now sleeping longer due to the all-nighters and thereby am spending less time anyways. So to remedy this I will now only play to get my daily points, which takes only an hr or 2, depending on the stakes. I will do this at sometime during the day or evening and just get off at that point. I will then try to stay on their sleep schedule and thus be a normal part of my family. My wife and I think that is a good compromise. I will still occasionally be on at night due to my crazy work schedule. But the majority of the time will now fall on their time frame. I am happy with this as will they be.

UPDATE

2007-08-17T21:31:00.001-04:00

I have had a few bad days currently. Have had currently. Ah, continuity, you have to love it. Anyways the last few days I’ve lost around $200 total. Not a major downswing. It is only 2 buy-ins, but it still hurt because I was playing solid poker. Current roll is $1150 on Tilt. WPEX - $50. Stars - $40. Poker.com - $9, they gave me $20 free. I’ve also cashed out $130 this week. Also in the last week I staked my Bro for 25% in 2 $200 buy-in ($100 total) Tourneys on Tilt. He made it deep in both but right out of the money on both occasions. I will do it again because he is a good player and plays tourneys often. He will make me some loot at some point because he has gone deep often. Damn that sounded sexual. LOL. I am currently up $880 for the year. I cashed out $4500 last year so I am hoping for a nice run in the last 3rd of the year to match that.

I put $50 on Stars to play with the Aces Cracked Team. I bubbled last week, when 4-handed I re-raised Sham’s open all-in and ran my *’s into his 9’s…OUCH. Hopefully I can redeem myself tomorrow night. Greb did well to make the money, because he was short-stacked most of the game. Sham and I hovered most of the time. Penn was the biggie the whole way. One hand that I was impressed with my play was against JB early on. I think I had TP the whole way. JB got tricky and checked the river with an over-pr trying to induce a bet out of me so he could CR me. I checked and saved myself some chips because I likely would have made a crying call when he pushed.

I’m not doing well with my $26 token accumulation efforts. I just started keeping track. I’ve lost 2 in a row so I need to win the next on just to make it even for this current token race. These 2 table $8 SnG’s are pretty plush so I should really start racking up some tokens. I will then take some shots at going deep in some bigger tourneys.

See you on the rail. Later, Ash out…

Rolling Again

2007-08-15T21:58:00.000-04:00

I’m running well again. I’ve made around $500 in the last 5 days or so. My rakebreak came in and I started with close to a Grand again. I decided to give $100NL another try. I made around $250 both first 2 days. I then played even poker for a few. If you add in the $160 or so of a FT reload bonus that was e-mailed to me I made around $300 anyways. I currently sit at slightly above $1300 because I cashed out $100 and staked my Bro for $50 twice in the last few days. He has been Satelliting into some $200 tourneys on Tilt with $26 tokens. I staked him for 25% both nights. He went deep both times but was always a pretty short stack and had to finally make a move. He doubled thru a few times but never really chipped-up enough to ride the wave into the money.

I’ve been tinkering around with the $8, 18-man SnG’s for $26 tokens. These games are pretty fat. Top 5 get tokens and 6th gets a small payday. Hell, you can sometimes steal a few blinds and hit the tokens when it is an aggressive game. Usually a double-up and a few blind steals will guaranty the payout. I usually get 7, $100 tables going and one SnG going. They fit on my monitor pretty well. I have 3 $26 tokens at the moment. I have been getting bad beat a little around the bubble lately though. I know I am getting more tokens than I pay out in tourney costs, but not by much. I will start keeping track just to see where I stand. I don’t count $26 tokens in my roll though. So even though I am playing even the last few days I am really winning buy-ins from my cash game play. I haven’t really thought about how I will spend these tokens. I will likely play in some tourneys with my Bro. I am also throwing around the Idea of playing SnG’s from $75 tokens with the same 2 table SnG strategy. I don’t like satellites because the way I see it you have to win 2 tourneys to actually get paid and going deep twice has less odds and ultimate will likely detrimental to my roll. I just don’t want to waste the effort that I put into acquiring them. But sooner or later I will get into some deep field tourneys and hope for a big score. Tilt runs a lot of nice guaranteed tourneys.

I haven't put in as much time this month, with only 3 days with 500+ point days. But I am still only 2 days from Silver status.

Hopefully your rolls swell and mine also. Later.

Online, Medical, and Live Updates

2007-08-06T10:59:00.000-04:00

Poker has been a struggle lately. I was down to $350 at one time and made it back up to $550. I currently sit at $466. I still have $475 coming in rakeback. I think they are being dishonest with my accrual in rake from FT. I have noticed my rake going down a few times last month. I have just started keeping a daily running tally. If it continues I will ask for and explanation. I didn’t play one day this week and my rake went down $1 form one day to the next. I am just putting in the minimum time required to keep my IM status. After that I have been playing WoW.

On the live home game front I am still crushing the game. Latest 3 game go as follows: +$43, +$38, and +$28. Not a ton, but I am still winning and that is always positive. We have been a little strapped lately so every time I get some scratch built up I have to spend it. I do want to put a live roll together and start frequenting the casino and see where that takes me.

Update on the family work injury issue. On the medical front my wife is recuperating finally. At least she has diagnoses after a year of torment. She had some medical and psychological issues. I’m pretty sure that I have written about her work related injury in the past here, yet I am too lazy to go back and check. Quick background She had a 20lbs box fall on her head at work. She started having tremors some after the accident. She lately went in and got some pain shots in her neck. Once they took affect they took her off the meds that she was on for the prior year. The tremors soon after stopped. One of the size effects of one of her meds was tremors. She was also diagnosed with posttraumatic stress and clinical depression. After a year with no relief or closure, who would be depressed? And just the other day we got the results back from a test that they preformed. They put some kind of dye in her spine and X-rayed. They found a displaced disk in her neck where she had pointed to the whole time. Comp stopped paying over 6 months ago because two neurologists concluded that she had no physical injuries from the accident and it was purely psychological. We disputed at that time and have preformed tests for the last 6 months, with us taking on a lot of the medical bills. To see one Dr we had to pay him $1500 up front. Anyways, her Comp should definitely be reinstated, plus pay retroactive back to when we contested their decision. So hopefully things won’t be so tight soon.

Later, Ash out…

More Crack For Ash

2007-07-31T04:01:00.000-04:00

OK, I’ve found a new obsession and I’m infected my son with my enthrallment. WoW. World of Warcraft for those that don’t know. Shit I actually didn’t play poker for 2 days this week. I downloaded the 10 day trail and I already know I will be a subscriber. My son and I used to play Runescape for hrs on end. WoW is actually a high-end version of Runescape. It is all I can currently think about at the moment. Shit, I’ve been cheating while at work by looking up info on the game and memorizing maps. I am done though. I don’t want to ruin the fun. I am currently a level 9 human warrior. That has always been my character ever time I have a choice in an RPG. OK, enough about that.

I still plan on getting 200 points a day but will likely get off as soon as I acheive that daily goal.

Later, Ash out.

GOSH

2007-07-30T04:45:00.000-04:00

New pet peeve: people that say racist when they mean prejudice. Ex: “That’s racist man, you shouldn’t pick on fat people.” OK then, let’s pick on dumb people because you’re in a race of your own. God, this aggravates the hell out of me.

Slip-sliding Away

2007-07-24T11:35:00.000-04:00

These last 4 days of playing sucked also. After work every night I would play for a few hrs to get my 200 points. I actually got at least 300 every night. I started the week with $850 and as of the end of last night’s schedule I now sit at $715. I hovered around even all week, winning and losing pots at and even rate living just above the rake.

Last night was different. I started with $865. I lost $100 on a hand where I knew I was beat, but for some dumb reason I just had to push and hope for the best. These are exactly the plays that I have been working on and were costing me so much hardship. These are the hands that I was folding and thus my roll was building. I can see that I need to revisit my strategy and buckle down again. I have been loosening up on big pots again, along with chasing.

Anyways here it is. I hold pocket Q’s. I raise to $4 PF and a guy in LP reraises it to $10. At this point I usually would have all the information I needed to get away from the hand. I normally would fold this right here the majority of the time or occasionally call and hope to spike a Q. But no not this time. I call and flop comes 9-high. I check and he bet $20. It comes to me and I push for close to $90. He insta-calls and shows his cowboys. $100 down the drain.

I started the session by opening 8 tables and registering for an $8 18-man SNG. I wanted to see if I could get a $24 token. These are turbos. I hate turbos, but decided to give it a shot anyways. First hand I have cowboys. Guy to my right raises. I quadruple his raise. Folds around and he calls. Flop is and uncoordinated T-high board. He pushes. I call and he shows AQo. No A and I double through on first hand. I blind down for a few blind increases. I win a few blind stills. I then see cowboys again. I win the blinds. The very next hand I get dealt QQ and raise it up again. The guy must have thought I was switching gears and bullying because he pushes with junk with 2500 in chips. I have him covered and call. I have him crushed because he had low QTo. The board saves him with a 76543. I would have been able to go get something to eat and still still have gotten my token if I would have scooped that pot. Later the blinds over 200 and I’m in the Big when a guy pushes with 700. I folds to me and I call the over 500 with AQ. He has 99 and doubles through me. It hurt and I blinded to the final table. Next thing I know we are down to 7 and I find myself with the shorty just over 1000. I push with AJs and double plus the blinds putting me back to around 3000. We get to 6 left and I have a high pocket pair. A guy with a bigger stack than mine pushes with 93 of clubs. I call and he hits runner-runner clubs to knock me out on the token bubble. I make about $5 for my efforts. Boo I say. It is so unfulfilling to bubble like that. At least it was a slightly profitable bubble.

I will get home tonight with just enough time to get my 200 points, eat, and shower before a local cash game starts. Looks like we will have a good turnout. It is at a different dude’s house so I won’t know a lot of the players that show-up. I will start slow and get a feel for them. Hopefully it is a very lucrative evening. I here that the CO’s are pretty fast and loose. Just the way I like them.

WWWWAAAAAAAAAAAA

2007-07-22T16:29:00.001-04:00

Not good on the home front. These last 4 days off I had some swings and ended the week back down to $850. I made it up to $1600 twice and lost my buy-in both times and had to drop back down to the $100 tables again. First time was a horrible 2-outer. The next time I went in with the worst hand. KK vs AA on the flop. Ouch. I hung around till I hit $1300 and gave up the try at advancement. On the $100 tables I took a $400 smackdown session. I know you are tired of hearing my bad beat sob-stories, but I’m telling you the last 2 days were the saddest days ever. I’m not going to go into detail but I got smacked on just about every big hand I played in and most of those I was a big favorite. The last night I took so many bad beats, yet I actually won $30. This was a super session. I played 8 $100 tables in a 10 hr all-nighter. I actually made more than 2000 FT points in that session. Guaranteed if it wasn’t for B-B’s I would have over $2000 in my BR. Variance has to go my way soon. So my roll went on a swing these last days off between $650 and $1600. I played stakes between $50NL and $200NL. I will play a few hrs tonight to get my $200 points. Hopefully it goes well. Just a few more days and I will be Iron Man for the month.

Quickie Update About Moving Up Stakes Again or Bad Beats Pay Big Dividends

2007-07-16T03:48:00.000-04:00

I was at $1485 at the end of Thurs session. Well the last 2 mornings after getting off of work I got on just to get my 200 points. I made around $50 the first morning and then on Sun morn I made around $150. I now sit at $1675. That is over my 8 buy-in rule so in the morning when I get off of work I will be opening 8 $200 tables. I will have to drop to $1400, which is one buy-in from my minimum requirement to play that stake. So I have $275 to get me going in the right direction. $200NL is the highest I have ever played. I hope not to change up my game and go conservative due to being scared money. I will try very hard not to let it get me worried. I need to just think of it as a buy-in and not $200.

2 mornings of bad beats and I made money. I should probably also mention that I was the one delivering the bad beats. I was in a big pot for $50 or $60 of my money the first morning. I had JJ. PF a guy min-raises before me. I elect to just call and see a flop. I had this same scenario happen a few times in a row earlier. I reraised a small raise with JJ twice and QQ once. The flop came with overs and I throw out my CB and get raised. I had to let these hands go and each time we are talking at least $10, so I think I was a little gun-shy. Anyways the flop 9-high with no straight or flush possibilities. He over-bets the pot. I raise. He pushes the rest in although he only started the hand with around $50. At this point I already have slightly over $20 involved. With his reraise it was going to cost me about $30 more to call over $70. I honestly thought I had him beat here. I call and he turns over AA. Where I messed up, obviously now that it is all over, is PF. If I would have reraised his min-raise he likely would have revealed the strength of his holdings and I would have gotten away from his trap. I hit my 2-outer on the river to stack him. He wasn’t a happy-camper. The girly-chat was texted with hatred for me. The guy acted like he had never lost to a bad beat before. Welcome to my world buddy; that’s what I say. It invoked in me something that I usually steer clear of even when provoked: writing back and forth in the chat-box. Maybe the real reason I don’t do it is because I play so many tables at once. I acted stupid and typed stuff like I had outs and I had the odds to call and rebuttals to his continued reviling words. I did this until the blinds came back around and I left the tables with his money.

Yesterday morning I have AKo and raise PF I get called buy at least one guy. I don’t remember all the details about the betting sequence on the flop, but both of our $120 stacks go in the middle, on a board of K84. It was early in my session, when I haven’t gotten in my routine yet and I catch myself gambling a bit. That is usually more than I’m willing to put in with TPTK. I will admit when I put my money in I was fairly certain I was beat. Anyways he turns over K4o and my heart drops. Not trips which is good news. The turn comes another 8 and the river brings a 9 or something close. So we both have Kings-up K’s and 8’s, but now my A plays. This dude also writes tons of shit. I write back: TY u just bought my boy’s school shoes. I waited for the blinds and left as the epithets continue.

So I get lucky for 2 days, which are most of those days’ winnings. Hopefully I do well in the morning and my roll continues to swell. I know that I will have a downswing at some point but I sure hope it ain’t soon.

Iron Man Status and Overall Rake

2007-07-15T21:52:00.000-04:00

I’ve made 8000points as of yet this month. That is a shitload my friends. You really accrue points fast at 100NL and I have put in quite a few hrs on the last 4 days off. I’ve played every day this month so far and in the last 4 days off I’ve made more points than the rest of the month combined. I have also made FT $700 in rake so far this month. That is almost 1 ½ last month’s rake already. The big difference is that I have been playing at $25-$100NL all month. I played $25 early on. I wasn’t at the $50 tables for long before I hit $800 and advanced upward to the $100NL game. Can’t wait until the middle of next month to get my Rakebreak, plus I can’t wait to see my month’s total rake. Holy shit, I wonder what kind of rakeback these guys that are playing $5/$10 are getting back every month. I hope to find out one day. Only 2 days early on this month did I get only 100 points, the rest have been over 200. I will definitely hit Iron Man this month, hopefully anyways. I have like 12 or so days left that I need 200. That leaves me a 3 or 4 day window. I still haven’t decided what I want to do with these IM points. Buy some tokens and try to cash in a big tourney? I don’t know. I rarely play tourneys so I feel like I might just be wasting my free cash. That is why I opted for bonus points instead of the freerolls. Plus with my schedule I’d likely end up letting my Bro play a lot of the time and splitting my winnings all the time. Not that I mind sharing, but there really isn’t a reason why I should purposely set myself up to not be able to play myself.

My Recent Jump Back Into the Ring

2007-07-14T23:42:00.000-04:00

So now to sum-up my journey back into the game and where I am currently. It really starts about a month and a half ago. I started playing fulltime at the beginning of June. I start with $350 and play my hardest and still continue on a downward spiral. I Hit $80 left on Tilt and $50 on WPEX. I was only playing FT though. Desperate then, I critiqued my game and really tightened up my big pot game. I hit $60 and while at the $10NL stakes began to start winning sessions. I then changed my BR management strategy, as to take more shots at the higher stakes. Now a month later I now have a $1500 BR, playing at $100NL, an on the cusp of moving up to the $200 tables if I earn another 100 bucks. $200 is the biggest stakes I have ever played and I am close. I started the year with $500, lost $400, and am now in the black up a G. I have to date made $1150, with the WPEX roll and also added in the $100 I have rolled one of my Bros, thus taking that money offline. I am happy. I have taken some bad sessions and still am swinging forward. Let’s hope my rush continues upward.

My Last 4 Days Off - Long Post

2007-07-14T23:28:00.000-04:00

Lots to discuss. I had a crazy week. I’ve played a ton of hands and moved up stakes. I am close to doing it again, as long as the Force stays with me. I had some losing sessions along with some winning sessions. I also got money from 3 different sources to keep me from dropping back down in stakes during these last 4 days off. I had some crazy swings.

Night 1 - I was at $800 the 1st night when I got off of work due to Bro’s HORSE win so I started at $100NL for the first time during this comeback. I really passed through the $50 stakes very quickly. Hopefully I never look back and see them again. I got a little help from my Bro’s Horse win that night to keep me art the $100 tables. I only ended up winning $37 instead of $167 due to a loss of $130 that night. But even though I was pissed about my shitty night’s work, overall I did make money that night.

Night 2 - I was going to have to start the next night on the $50 tables because I was so close to $700 again, but during the daytime my Bro played enough to get me my referral $100 bonus for bringing him over to Tilt. (I knocked out my whole 1000 points the night prior. He needed 500 to fulfill his part of the deal and had some computer issues and ended quitting at 99% complete with a mere 6 points left.) So while I was running around during the day, his single ass was playing and got me back up around $800, so I could continue at the $100 stakes for another night. I ended up making close to $200 that night, although I made a few bad plays and calls. For the most part I did play solid poker.

Night 3 - The next night I made over $100, bringing me to around $1100. I was up to $1275 at one point during that night’s session. I once again made a few iffy calls and bad plays. I starting tilting somewhat after these hands and lost more due to more bad calls and chasing with bad odds, seeking those lost profits back.

Night 4 – This night hurt horribly. I got smacked for my second worse night ever. If I keep moving up stakes, I will surely lose more in a session due to the buy-in, though it will be a smaller percentage of my BR at that point for the same reason. But at this point, it feels like an arm and a leg, when I was already a paraplegic. I lost $350 this night. I got a few bad beats, but this night was due more to second best hands were you pretty much are guaranteed to put in a big portion or all of your stack. I got smacked with a flush-over-flush. I took a set-over-set for a dry-humping that hurt deep inside, and I likely won’t shit right for a week. I also got a cracked set when the board brought a turn and river same-suit flush for a guy that couldn’t get away from TPSK. This all happened in the same night, so I can’t really be surprised that I took a beating here. I did some tilting and also won some big pots to stay close to even other than the aforementioned losing hands.

The one solace, although I’m in no way happy about, is that I didn’t totally tilt and lose as much as my bro. He fell into an almost bottomless trap of mostly his own making and trying to take me with him for the fall, to which I luckily am almost immune. We decided that day that we were going to do the ole split our winnings deal like before. (You know, where he ended up $750 for the session and I end up a mere $52. So I reaped the benefit lopsidedly that night getting $375 from him and making him a cool $26 LOL.) But really it is truly a win-win situation in a way. Yes you lose some earnings if you win more than the other guy, but you still have the extra security of gaining some money even if you have a bad session. But sometimes both lose and all the losses are of your own, which is the way this session ended for us.

He had a nice session going before I got on that night to play. He was already up $400 or so and on the previous few days while playing he had also added to the $600 that he had put on the site earlier in the week. So at the time we decided to consolidate our winnings from that time on, he had slightly over $1200 and I had around $1100.

He did his usual agro game – not as agro as he gets sometimes, but loose and aggressive overall, and chipped-up steadily. I blinded down about $60 and lived there for a while. He hit a few really nice big pot hands and was up close to $1500. At that point I had lost 1 big pot and a few mid-sized ones also, throw in a few medium wins I was sitting about $150 to $200 in the hole.

The big hand that I lost at this point in the evening was a total mistake on my part. The flop came 567, 2 of which were hearts. I had A8 of hearts. I misread the board thinking that I had not the nuts but the high-end straight plus the nut flush-draw. I thought that the only current hand that had me beat was 98. I would like to blame it on multi-tabling, but I won’t try to shirk responsibility. There were at least 3 of us to the flop. BB, which 1st to act over-bets the flop. Bro, who was the 3rd player in the hand with me, calls. Seeing this much action I decide there is little reason to smooth-call here and I make a substantial raise to see if I can get paid-off by UTG. He pushes. Bro asks what the hell I have. I tell him the high-end straight and the nut flush-draw. I obviously call and as I have alluded to, and lost the hand, by a measly low-end straight of 43o. I was sickened by my play here; I know that some of you don’t find this as a bad play on my part due to the OESD/nut flush-draw, but that isn’t a move that I would usually make. I am a little more conservative here. I usually would just call here with my draw had hope to hit instead of making the pot any bigger than I have to before I hit. Maybe it wasn’t a bad move because I either take it down right there or have 15 outs as back-up; that is if he isn’t holding 98, wherein I lose 3, because one 4 is a heart. I definitely did have the odds to make the call. But the play whether OK or not isn’t the real problem for me, it is that I misread my hand and IMO over-played it. OK, now my bitch. With a call of his over-bet and then a push for $50 or $60 more after 2 players before him, do you think the bottom end of the straight is good? I don’t, but that’s me.

I was feeling like shit, mad at my night’s luck so far as well as at my stupidity, but more so because I thought he was holding up his end of the bargain, and I once again wasn’t. With my share of his winnings I was about even. We joked about that fact. And then it happened: he lost 2 big hands within 30 min or so of each other. While he was obsessively bitching about the first one, wherein he got the infernal KK vs AA, he took a bad beat where the guy hit runner-runner after all the chips went in on the flop. He then really goes on a tirade, which didn’t end until he got off at 5 in the morning. And believe me when I say that I heard about it for the rest of the night. He is a lot like Hellmuth; we loving call him that at our Fam games when things don’t go as planned for him, especially if he has had a few too many hops. We were wearing our headsets and talking via MSN Messenger so the berating of players was constant. After awhile it gets old, even when his arguments have validity. Outs are there for a reason. I know that we all bitch and me quite often on this very blog when I get a few sessions of negative variance, but he can be up 8 buy-ins for the night and take one bad beat and harp on it the rest of the evening. That sadly of course isn’t how this night ended, but you get my point.

Real quick I have another point to throw your way while I’m thinking about it. Back to the MSN for a minute, because I know that a lot of you scoffed at the mention of Messenger. We don’t really cheat. We just talk to each other all night while we play to break up the monotony. We live 2 hrs apart and don’t get to see each other often. Plus we get along well and both have an insatiable appetite for poker. We spend a lot of time talking theory and showing each other different styles and discussing what we think about them. Often showing examples in our play at the table to try to prove our views. We are usually playing 6 tables together (because he isn’t currently used to Tilt’s interface yet and can’t do my normal 8) and obviously there isn’t much time for cheating when you are making decisions every few seconds. We do say when we are in a big hand and what table it is on so we and click our options on as many tables as possible so as to maybe have enough time to watch the hand progress to showdown. If we miss how the big hand ended we talk about it and what the guy had and if it is a bad beat or about anything else that happened. Once again not so we know how the guy plays, because with 6 tables going, you really are playing solely your cards and your reads on how the opponent is playing the hand. [If my damn PT wasn’t locking up I would have some nice statistics on the players at the table though.] The closest thing that we do to cheating and maybe it kind of is, we will tell the other what we folded if the other is getting involved in the hand. Often we don’t even have time to pop up the table and give that info anyways but we do try to see if we have lost an out or not. We will also ask what the other guy raised PF with and get out usually, but this is really no different than if anyone was at a table with a friend. If I go to a casino with a friend or 2, I try to get out of any hand that they get into because I don’t want their money. Shit, that is basically like 3 or 4 regulars at the table. They try to all feast on the fish that has haphazardly wadded into the pool and not mix it up with each other. OK, I’m done with this huge argument on how I’m not an online cheater. Make your own decision, which you already have anyways.

Now back to the rest of the night’s debacles and misfortunes. He starts tilting and fueled by, IMO, too many brews, begins loosening up even more. He starts calling a lot of hands even for goodly-sized bets, which in itself was a major reason that he continued to chip-down. He then made some bad calls and bad bluffs, to which he ranted to me his opponents’ calls of his raises, as I will admit that I had also earlier in the evening about the dude going all-in with the low-end. Usually he has an uncanny sense of when to slow his aggression or drop a hand while playing his agro-style. That is what makes a good lag: their ability to ram and jam and when to bale-out and start aggressively again the next opportune moment. He seemed to not have this radar working properly and continued to fall. He took some more bad beats, which added more fuel to his internal inferno as he began to spontaneous combust. All of a sudden he is down like $800. We are talking the nights $700 profits plus $100 of the last few day’s winnings.

He then says do me a favor and let’s try something. I ask what? He wants to close all of our tables and get on one $400NL 6-max table. I tell him absolutely not, that I won’t chase my money, and that way leads to the Dark Side. He keeps on about it. I ask him to give me a competent reason why it was a good idea, to which he could only say that that’s where the money is. I try my hardest to explain to him that we have good potential to win money with much less risk at 6 $100 tables than at 1 $400. I tell him that no matter what he decides to do he can count me out because I have my trusty BR management system that I won’t stray from. He is quiet for a while and the next thing I know, I notice that he is missing from my tables. I look him up in the find a player drop-box and lo and behold he is sitting on a $400 6-max table with 4/7 of his total BR. (Like a nice respectable gentleman like Dan Harrington would phrase it: Absolutely fucking crazy!)

I then get my normal 8 tables going, hoping for a nice late session rally, all the while checking up on his progression or more aptly put digression downward. He talks for a little while saying how he was going to thrive at $400 and get it all back and then he was dead quiet and the only time he said anything was when I told him about a few tough losses that I sustained. I also slowly kept swinging, yet always further down with each swing. Lots of 2nd best hands as I mentioned before. He lived between $200 and $300 for a while and then I checked and he was gone. I later find out that he dropped the remainder and ended his session down $1200 from his highest. If I’m right he now sets at around $300, which is half of what he bought in for the other day. Now that is one hell of a swing with his BR. He really on lost like $500 from the start of his session. He was so upset by the end of the night that he didn’t even say goodbye, he just logged off. He always does this when he has a bad night or leaves for the night because of a nasty bad beat that he can’t cope with. I won’t lie; this act does piss me off. I see it as common courtesy. I would never just get off without saying later or good night, but that is just me. I got off soon after and ended down $350 – down 3 ½ buy-ins. That is an ass-whooping, for sure. Not really a bad beat losing night, just a bad luck night. Plus I’m happy that I was strong enough to not chase my money.

Night – 5: 12th late/13th early – I was back slightly below $700 due to the previous night’s ass-whipping, plus I BR’d the other Bro again for $40 and also I paid the share I owed from the HORSE tourney, which I forgot until reminded the night before. So I was all prepared to start my last all-nighter before going back on shift on the $50 tables, but to my delight, opened the cashier screen and found that I was sitting pretty at slightly over $800. I figured what it was and checked my E-mail and found my guess was correct, that my Rakebreak had come in finally. It comes about 1/3 to ½ way through the subsequent month. So this is 3 times in just about as many days that a nicely timed $100 bonus of some sort has saved me from dropping in stakes down to $50 again: Referal bonus, HORSE winnings, and last month’s Rakebreak. This doesn’t bode well for my confidence about my ability to play at the $100 stakes. This night turned out great. I actually think it might be my greatest one-day win. I made almost 7 buy-ins and ended the session at $1485. This was an impressive night of poker, although I had a bumpy start. Right out the gate I raise PF with AK. I get bet into on the flop and I raise back at him with TPTK. He pushes. At his point I only have $20 or so invested, but I put my remaining chips in and get throttled by a set. I am on the verge of dropping back down with on $20 above my $700 cutoff. From here I shot for the stars. Every big hand that I got into the remainder of this all-nighter I put my money in with the best hand and my hands held up. Pure unadulterated positive variance. It was crazy. I got sucked-out in a few mid-sized pots, but that really didn’t have much of an impact on my roll. Must of my CB’s were taking down vulnerable pots on a consistent basis. The plants just seemed aligned. It was truly a was a fun night to be at the tables. I didn’t what to quit, but the sun came up, so I figured it was time to halt my super session.

My Current Addiction

2007-07-14T01:29:00.000-04:00

By the way I don't know who this tard is - I googled addiction.

I’m currently pretty addicted again. Poker lives in my thoughts most of my waking hrs. But the big difference between this time and many times before in the last 3 or 4 years, is that I play almost solely at night, as to not interfere with my time with my family. I am working hard at that. Poker pops in my head often and I actually have to stop myself from going to the computer. My mind tries different plots all the time to find reasons that I should play. It is crazy I’m telling you. Excuses will pop in there and I have to tell myself to stop BS’ing and just deal with not playing for a few hrs. Sad really. I took a few months off as my few regulars well know. Obviously when I go from 20 posts a month to 3 or 6. But at least it isn’t making me neglect my family this year other than my internal struggle to band poker thoughts all damn day long. I will keep fighting and it that way, in regards to not letting it affect family life. Otherwise I don’t really see where it is a negative thing. It doesn’t affect my Psychology studies because I usually only study at work anyways. I don’t use my family’s money to support my habit. I would be playing games or some other random addiction with my free time anyways. At least this addiction has always made us money, due to winning poker play and strick bankroll management, and on multiple occasions supplemented our income or helped pay for emergencies or expensive repairs or down payments. Starting halfway though last year and to date my wife has been out of work without pay due to a work-related injury so lat year my winnings really helped out and so far this year my live roll has been needed on a few occasions. I have as of yet just kept enough seed money to not dip into our money; the rest has gone to the family in one way on another. I’m not trying to justify my addiction, well I guess I am, but it does have its positive side. Oh yea, I almost forgot to mention another aspect of my poker addiction: Poker related merchandise. We have been tinkering around with E-bay, selling off my old “addictions” LOL: Books, comics, cards, video games, DVD’s, and odds and ends. We have made around $400 or more. I have spend over $100 of those earnings on poker shit, “that I just had to have.” I bought 2 Full Tilt Matusow jerseys off E-bay, as well as, a bulk lot of plastic cards with 36 decks, a Teddy KGB card guard, and the 2004 DVD edition of Rounders. I have also spent a lot of sites’ points for and odds book, poker shirts, and a hoodie: Stars shirt, UB shirt, FT hoodie and 2 different styled shirts. Plus I was playing live very often. But all in all, I’m happy with where I’m at currently in my poker career. Hey, maybe addiction is good sometimes! I need my fix baby!!!

HORSE Freeroll

2007-07-13T23:36:00.000-04:00

My Bro played that Horse tourney freeroll on Sun. He started at 3:10pm and when I got off of work he was still playing. I think it was about 8pm when he finally busted out. He made it to 4th place and cashed for $335, which we split for a nice payday of $167 apiece.

As luck would have it we both lost around $130-$140 that day and won a buy-in, LOL. He didn’t have his account at Tilt open yet so I let him use my roll while he was on my account playing the tourney. He didn’t use my preferred bankroll management strategy, for which I was only rolled for $50NL, and instead opted to play $100. He got the old PF all-in battle of KK VS AA and dropped $100. He also lost $40 more just playing, so He ended up winning $26 for the day. Me, well I just sucked that night and made some iffy calls, to which I lost $130 at the $50 tables. 2 ½ buy-ins ain’t that bad really; it is going to happen at times, hopefully due to bad beats so you can at least have the solace of feeling justified in your good plays. But no, I really did suck and played like total shit.

But on the bright-side we both ended up for that day’s session.

2007-07-13T21:37:00.000-04:00

Being a Poker Player Doesn't Mean Being a Gambler

2007-07-08T15:25:00.000-04:00

This post is my advice to fellow blogger's post yet was too lengthy to put in his comments section, so I will leave him a linky-link to this post. I think it is sound advice if you want to stay in the game. If you think not, leave me a rebuttal or your theory, and we can have a conversation on the matter. I have an open mind. lets talk. Am I high-strung?

I can’t disagree with you more XXXX on your BR management theory. Your friend got lucky if he was risking 1/4 of his roll at once and made money. I will bet it wasn’t long-term with that percenage of his roll on the table everytime he played. Plus you said he made money on his “last roll!” You want to talk physics of poker, lets talk about variance. You can play perfect poker and be the best poker player in the world and still lose 4 buy-ins in a row. I know I’ve had 4 bad beats in a row before, not to mention adding in a few hands are made to take your buy-in also, like set-over-set and AA VS KK. That is just an inherent aspect of poker’s odds. Playing with that much of your roll on the table, you are destined to go belly-up; you can’t support a downswing. And obviously if you scooped it up to $400 you would give $100NL a shot with this theory. At that pace, staying on that path, you won’t be heading up the ladder for long. Yea, you’ll have a huge rush while your climbing that ladder on a heater, but with risking that much you statically will be back to nothing before long, so you better enjoy that success while it lasts. I’m not trying to be a nay-sayer here and tell you how to live your poker life, I am just trying to save you some bumps in the road. I went bust a few years back, with 2 small buy-ins of $25 when I first started out, because I sucked and didn’t know how to play, but once I read a few books and frequented forums I gained some skill and became a winning player. I won enough to take off my original money so I could play with sheer profits. That was at the beginning of last year and I have never gone bust again. This is because I’m a winning player that uses BR management. Once I had a 3 month downswing, but although I lost money over and over and over, I was never near going broke because I didn’t put a large percentage of my BR at risk.

The reason why most players go broke is because they won’t take advice and learn the whole game from wiser more accomplished players. (Not me – Pros) And when I say the whole game I don’t mean only the cards, hand odds, and outs; I mean the business, the lifestyle, and how to safely go pro. If you listen to the pros, it is a methodical systematic process, not taking risk after risk. Being a poker player doesn’t mean being a gambler.

Most Pros say to always have 15 to 20x the max Buy-in at the NL stakes you are playing. I used that system last year and went from the Penny tables on UB to playing $200NL and cashed out $4500 last year. This year as of yet, I suck and am playing like a punk and dropped down to $60 playing and having to play $10NL on Tilt, but in the last month and a half I’ve built that back up to $600 and playing the $50NL tabs again. If I would have stayed on tables with 1’4 of my roll, I would be working over-time to get some more seed money.

Most Pros say no matter what, never have more than 10% of your total roll on the table at once. I will say that I have junked both of those theories just because I have already crushed these stakes before and have already learned the differences between each level on my up the 1st time. But I am doing something close the 10 buy-in rule. I am playing tables if I have 8 buy-ins. Ex: to play $50NL I reached $400. If I lost 1 buy-in and hit $350 I would drop back down to $25NL and get that $50 back. That means if I lose 1 buy-in at the start of a new level and have to drop down I have 3 full buy-ins at that level that I’d have to lose before dropping down again. That is pretty safe if you ask me. With this system I get the best of both worlds: I am conservative enough to sustain downswings due to variance, yet willing and ready enough to move up stakes quickly. I think this hyper-minimized-management strategy is the most liberal you should ever be with your BR. Any looser with your roll and guaranteed you will go broke. Try this management system at least, if you can’t conform to the Pros more conservative management systems and you will be able to move up stakes quickly enough for your gambler’s spirit if you do well and secure enough that if you do badly, you will still have enough of a roll for another shot when the downswing is over. It takes discipline, but you will find it hard to go broke using BR management system.

The Solace of Losing

2007-07-08T12:00:00.000-04:00

I was down $50 at one point while getting my 200 points. I was actually all over the place. I was never up any money though; bad play and a suck-out made sure of that. Right out the gate, even before all of my 8 tables where around to the BB so I could begin playing, I get dealt QQ. I reraise a guy PR and he pushes. It was only $15 to call, ergo I disregard my usual fold in this situation due to the fact that it was less than half my stack, plus it was $15 to call $22. He turns over 88. The flop comes with an 8 for his 2-outer and I’m down $20 to start my session.

After that hurtful event I fight back grinding small pots and then I donk off a nice pot where I knew I was beat but couldn’t make the lay-down. I really have been good about the dumb calls lately since I changed my game, but the last few nights I have been making some bad moves and calls. I grind back a little and win one nice pot to put me back within $10 of where I started the session.

I get in a hand with AK from LP. I raise it to $2 and get 2 callers. Flop comes K75. EP bets $8. MP raises to $15. I have $40 or so at the time and I jam. Original flop bettor calls with the $15 he has left and so does MP guy who has me covered by a few bucks. EP guy shows AJ whom I have crushed. 2nd guy has 75s for a spiked junker. The board doesn’t pair, nor does an A or K and I’m down close to a full buy-in on the hand. This was a horrible play IMO. Not because I lost, thus just being a results oriented bastard, but because with a pot-sized bet and then a raise before me, I have to think that my TPTK isn’t good here. It screams trips actually. I only had $2 total invested in the had at that point and with double-aggression before me on the flop, I definitely should have folded and waited for a better opportunity.

I have had an issue in the last few days with these kinds of plays, where I will call or bet when I am pretty positive that I’m beat. I luckily haven’t lost a lot much because of my grinding and a few un-sucked big pots to put me back close to even – slightly up or slightly down. I have just wanted to get my chips in there and hope for the best. I think the problem here is that I also win some of these hands. So by getting rewarded on occasion, it is hard to extinguish the bad habit. (It’s a lot like trying to teach your dog to stop begging for food at the dinner table, but occasionally handing him a little snack off your plate. This intermittent reward will ensure that the bad habit will never become extinct.) It is the reason why fish keep coming back for more; they suck-out and think they played it well or at least they were rewarded with a nice pot here and there. Make sense? And since I understand what is going on, I have the opportunity to change. Now I just have to follow through. I’ve been so good lately. I honestly think this is where my game went earlier this year; I was playing like shit, doing exactly this bad habit. I will now make a conscious effort to stop and hopefully at least alleviate the issue. Of course I will make some bad plays and bad calls, but if I think through the big decisions on the monster pots and be willing to fold, I will make more profits because I am already coming out close to even, even with these bad plays and suck-outs. I just don’t want to revert back to my lemur big hand style. I fixed that leak over a month ago and I will fight tooth and nail each time I see it rearing its ugly head. I’m positive that if I would have just folded my iffy calls and bad all-in raises, I’d be up around $300 more last week. That is huge. I’m not talking normal calls and raises where you likely have the best hand and just were wrong; no, I’m talking stupid plays were if you think about how the hand was played out or looked at the scary board, you know your most likely beat.

Another thing I need to work on is value beating the river when the only way I get called, most of the time anyways, is if I’m beat. You know what I’m talking about. Where someone checks to you on each street, and when they check to you on the river, and you don’t have the nuts or even real close, but still bet the river. Or when the river pairs the board or completes the flush or straight draw, making your strong hand weaker and more vulnerable. I have improved substantially, but I still need to work on it. I don’t want to be overly passive either and miss out on extra profits. I’m just saying that I need to think about it a little harder.

A solace last night at least is that I came back from being down $50 and ended the session down only $20. I can live with that. Being down ½ a buy-in on a losing day truly isn’t bad at all. I am currently sitting at $445. That is after taking off $60 and BR’ing one of my Bros. I also still have my $130ish coming sometime soon from RakeBreak. So I am finally up for the year again and that truly is a solace to me. I have mentally been so negative about poker for most of the year, feeling defeated and unskilled, so this really has given me a much-needed psychological boost. I can honestly say that I once again feel in control of my game. I feel that I once again can and should be earning money the majority of the sessions like I used to. As I play now I check the cashier pop-up and watch my status every so often and my trend is always positive. If I lose a nice hand I drop of course, but then it starts climbing again steadily earning above the blinds and rake. So I know if I can keep the iffy big pots under control and I don’t get too many bad beats I will always end sessions in the black for the most part. I finally have a winning style again like last year’s and I don’t want to stray too far from grace. I honestly think my current game has more earning potential than last year’s tried and proven style, plus I’m not playing like a robot. I am currently out-playing opponents with my aggressive flop play with marginal hands and taking down a lot of smallish pots, where my old style I always waited and waited for a nice hand and then rammed and jammed a tight-weak-aggressive game. It worked but I wasn’t really learning anything new and I was earning less over the same amount of hands. I think once I made it up the ladder too much further the players at those stages of the game, with their higher poker thinking levels, they would have seen right through my uncomplicated and robotic style, and I would have found it difficult to make a profit at those levels. I would have been stuck at $100NL or maybe $200NL forever. Not that I couldn’t make a nice profit at those stakes, but I truly do have aspirations to go higher. I mean shit, some under-aged kids are playing on their father’s accounts or finding other ways around it and are pulling in so much money that they will never even think about going to college or if they do, it will be totally for educational purposes and not to find a decent paying career. I know a kid that sold his Stars’ freemoney, starting out with $10 that he made from those free dollars, and in his senior year in high school, made $100,000. Could you imagine being 17 year’s old with 100G’s of your own money. It is likely a good thing that I didn’t, because I’d probably be dead. But anyways, I am happy with my game and if I stop with the shitty big-pot play, I think I can start to make some nice coin and continue to learn more aspects of the game. One of the reasons that I took the time to write an in-depth account of my current style, is in case I start losing again, like up until just recently, I have something to go back and reference, so it hopefully doesn’t take as long to fix the leaks like it did this time.

Lastly, today is the day for the HORSE tourney. As I stated yesterday, my Bro is playing for me. It starts at 3:10pm. I get off at 7pm and I hope he is still in it. Being limit I’m guessing it is longer than a 4 hr tourney. I don’t really know, because I don’t play many tournaments. Total cash pool is $5000, with 1st place paying out a cool $900. $450 would really boost my BR. $90 places pay out. If the previous 3 freerolls that I’ve qualified for were any indication of how this tourney’s turnout will be, I’d say 400 out of the 1000 will register. Well since this one is for $5000 instead of $2 Grand more players will likely make time. Plus it is on Sunday in the middle of the day, so that might also increase the turnout. I hope not, because they pay 90 places no matter the turnout, so the less the better.

My Current Style: Part 4

2007-07-08T10:37:00.000-04:00

D-Hands

Now here comes the fun stuff that is here to test my post flop savvy and reading skills. All D-Hands have some things in common: I will not call a PF raise with them and the only way I will limp in PF is if I can get in half price from the SB, although I will try a blind steal with a few. All have some major draw-backs and thus weren’t a part of my old strategy, I now have enough hands under my belt that I have somewhat of a post flop game. But in most cases I expect to hit these hard on the flop or I’m done with them.

AJ, AT, KT, KJ,QJ, QT, JT

A lot of people love paint. Paint is made to be dominated. Often you would have better odds of winning the hand with mid-suited-cons or even 2 medium unsuited cards because at least both cards are usually live. These are the kinds of hands that pay me off. People hit a pr and are then willing to get in a kicker fight. I really don’t get it, but hey, it makes me money. I will not raise or call a raise PF, hell, I don’t even limp with these hands. I will occasionally try to steal the blinds in an unraised pot from the button or steal the BB from the SB with these hands, because they likely have junk that they will fold or if they call, I likely can steal on the flop even if I don’t pair-up. The other time I will enter the pot PF is from the SB where I get in for a discount. They do have straight potential after all, or likely will be TP if you hit the board, plus you could always spike 2pr or trips. But ultimately I play these very cautious post flop. Depending on how many players are in the hand with me dictates how I play it on the flop. I will most often be 1st to act so I’m out of position. If I hit a pr on the flop it is most likely TP or 2ndpr, so if it’s 1-3 players with me I will lead out a pot-sized bet, and if I get RR’d I drop. If I am called I usually C/C or C/F the remaining streets depending on how aggressive the betting gets. So position is huge factor on how I play these paint cards. So basically it is thrifty SB call, blind steal or fold. It’s that simple.

King anything suited – KTs, K9s, K8s, K7s, K6s, K5s, K4’s, K3s, K2s

There are some obvious drawbacks here with K-suited. With the A-suited hands you know you have the nut flush, but with K-high flushes you can stand to lose a few big pots. But most of the time 2nd nut is usually good. With the KTs and K9s I also have the straight possibility as a bonus. Also Kings-up is a monster when it hits, so overall I am willing to throw in the other half of the blind. But as with most of my hands I won’t fight too hard without a good certainty that I’m good or that there is a good indication that they will drop before I fold and wait for a better play to risk my stack. I refuse to get into a kicker fight with a pebble in my hand if the stakes get high.

Suited-Connectors – 65s, 54s, 43s, 32s

These are total junk hands, but they are so concealed when they hit that they can make you some good money. But they have some major drawbacks so I will only see them for half price from the SB. Here’s what makes these SC’s so much worse than their SC big brothers. They are almost always the bottom pr, the low end of a straight, and a vulnerable flush. If you hit your flush on the flop and make a pot-sized bet you are often called with 1-card flush draws and if that 4-flush hits on the turn or river you are usually forced to lay it down before the showdown along with all the money that you already invested. They are also real susceptible to being counterfeited on the turn and river even when you hit a strong hand like 2pr. So you really have a lot of stressful decisions to make when playing these cards. And sadly sometimes even when you hit your hand you are already nearly drawing dead. But it’s almost worth all the risk solely because of how bad it tilts some players when you reveal these cards at showdown and scoop the pot. I can see the chat box light up now expletives comments about my intelligence.

Suited –Gappers – KTs, K9s, QTs, Q9s, Q8s, J9s, J8s, J7s, T8s, T7s, T6s, 97s, 96s, 95s, 86s, 85s, 84s, 75s, 74s, 73s, 64s, 63s, 62s, 53s, 52s, 42s

And last but not least – uh actually they do rank least – we have the Suited-Gappers. These cards totally suck, but they do have both straight and flush possibilities, and they are so well concealed that you can snipe off some nice pots when you hit hard. With these holdings I hit hard or I saying bye. Sometimes hitting the flop I can push out 1 or 2 opponents that whiffed. I try not to spend much on the draws either.

Summary

I would say that most of my big pots come from A and B hands, but C and D Hands are well concealed and bring in good money when they occasionally hit really hard. My A-hands also win a lot of smallish pots where everyone drops to my PF raise or they fold the flop to my CB. Position isn’t a big aspect of this current strategy PF except for the frequent blind steal attempts. If I hit any part of the board with any hand that I’m in I will bet it against 1 or 2 opponents on the flop. I am quite aggressive against few opponents because they are just as likely to have missed or barely hit as myself. If I am in position against 1 or 2 players and get checked to, I bet pot. I take down many smallish pots this way also. Often because I am limping in pots from lots of positions PF I find myself on the flop with only the blinds and I’m in position. Likely they check to me and I take the hand with a pot-sized bet. Often the blinds are folding hands where they hit BP or 2ndpr but figure I paired the over-card to their pr, especially when an A or K comes on the flop and I bet from position, they figure I stayed PF with A or K rag which is an extremely common occurrence. So the big concepts of this strategy are: 1 - Play only hands where you know how strong you are when you hit. 2 - Play mostly hands that aren’t at a disadvantage due to bad kickers. 3 - Play lots of hands that you can get in with cheaply, but pack a powerful punch when they hit. 4 - Win lots of small pots due to blind steals and aggressive short-handed flop aggression.

My game has changed enormously from last year, with me adding more starting hands and being a little more aggressive on the flop when putting in a bet isn’t killing my stack but is surely scary to players that missed their holdings. I am still fairly weak with some hands and my aggression with them, so hopefully I can at some point move some more of those hands up in my rankings. My current style is a mere semblance of last year’s, so who knows what another year will hold for my game?

QQ: The Lemur Hand

2007-07-07T18:41:00.000-04:00

I played last night for around 2 hrs. I decided to get 200 points. I was up $60 right as I neared 200 points. I then get dealt QQ. It was raised before me. I reraised his $2 raise up to $5.50 and he called. Flop came TT8. He bet out about $8. I raised it to $15 and he called. Flop came an A. He checked and I pushed. He called and showed AK. OK, so he bluffed the flop. I raised him. I think he made a bad call here, because he took his stab and I raised. You think someone would let AKo go. Shit he didn’t even have a pr. But I admit played the turn like a total donkey. I really couldn’t put him on a hand so I just pushed like a lemur. He raised PF before I reraised and then he just called. Possible hands that would do that. A slow-rolled AA or KK after the initial raise. Most likely they would just reraise again and try to get it all-in PF; so not too likely IMO. QQ, JJ, AK, TT. QQ – very unlikely because I have 2. JJ and TT – both quite likely PF holdings. JJ might try to throw in a flop bet and see where he was at due to the Ten-high board, but you’d think he would have to fold to the raise. But some people can’t fold an over-pr with their tiny little brains; shit some people will even call with just over-cards, obviously. TT – likely PF holding, but why not check to the PF raiser if you spiked quads? I didn’t believe that for a sec. AK – really don’t see how you don’t fold to the flop raise of your ¾ pot bet. I really just couldn’t put him on any hand really. Hmm, ATs or A8s or 88? I don’t know too many people raising with any of these from EP PF and then calling a PF reraise. I don’t know? All I know is that I played it bad. Maybe check the turn and then Check/Call or Check/Fold river? So anyways I got my points about 15 min after that and got off $20 ahead. Hell, at least I won something.

I am now in 8th place in the Full Tilt Fantasy Poker League. Now with only the Main Event earnings standing in my way, I have 2 weeks to wait and see if I get knock out of the Top100, lose my entry to the final freeroll.

I have to work tomorrow so I can’t play in the HORSE freeroll, because it starts at 3:10 PM. I have my Bro playing for me. I told him we’ll split anything he wins for me. SUCKER…no wait…shit I had to give him my ID and password so he could play. I was just kidding Bro, I wasn’t going to renig on our agreement. Jokes, it was all just jokes.

My Current Style: Part 3

2007-07-07T17:43:00.000-04:00

C-Hands

There are 3 categories of C-Hands. Each is played a little different, but one thing they have in common is that I intend only to limp in with them PF.

Ace anything suited – AQs, AJs, ATs, A9s, A8, A7s, A6s A5s, A4s, A3s, A2s

A-suited doesn’t hit hard often, but when it does flush you have the nuts on an unpaired board, so it is possible to make some change. Conversely it also put you on a lot of draws to which you can waste a lot of coin. Another adverse problem inherent to A-suited is when an Ace comes on the board or the rag is top pair you are very vulnerable – now you have to really be careful. These are the kinds of things that I don’t enjoy. I like to know where I stand, especially on the flop, before I start putting in a lot of chips, and with A and B hands I usually know right where I stand – not tons of think-tank moments. But hitting TP can really cost you here if you choose to get in a kicker fight. So I play these hole cards sparingly after the flop. I do take some small pots against 1 or 2 players if they check to my position or if I bet out because I paired and they whiffed. But I refuse to lose my stack with A-shitkicker. I limp with these hands. If I already limped and it is min-raised on the way back around I will call also as long as there are at least a few other callers also, giving me a nice pot to look forward to. The more people that get in these hands the better. I will try to steal the blinds in an unopened pot from the CO or the button with the AQs, AJs, or ATs.

Suited Connectors down to 65s – KQs, QJs, JTs, T9s, 98s, 87s, 76s, 65s

I obviously play these cards because of the triple-threat – straights, flushes, or maybe the 2pr/trip possibilities. These cards can be deadly when they hit, because they are well concealed, and therefore can win you some nice pots. The flushes can be scary at times, but overall you are best when you hit. I currently only limp with these cards, although I have been stacked on many occasion when someone calls my PF raise with them. If I already limped and it is min-raised on the way back around I will call also only if is a multi-wat pot giving me good money to draw for. The more people that get in these hands the better. Unless I hit hard I don’t waste a lot of cash after the flop. Once again this can be a chasing hand and you can chip down if you get greedy. You must be careful not to over estimate you outs when chasing with these holdings, because you could be dead if you hit your flush or your straight at times. You have to be on you game when playing low junk. I will try to steal the blinds in an unopened pot from the CO or the button with the KQs, QJs and JTs because even if they call I have position.

AQ, KQ, KJs

I will limp with these hands. I know a lot of players love these hands – shit to some of you they are A-Hands. Now why I don’t hold them in high esteem. If you raise with them and are called you are often dominated, especially when you hit the pr you were looking for. When someone raises PF I fold these cards for the same reason. If I have already limped and someone else then min-raises, I won’t even throw in another BB. Weak you say? Safe I say. I make enough winning small pots with flop aggression that I don’t need to hazard what these cards can bring When someone’s hand is good enough for a PF raise it is possible that you are crushed even when you hit. It is quite possible that you only have 1 live out. That can mean some big losses. Like I have stated before, this strategy is about having a real good idea of where you’re at before getting too much money in the middle. Now don’t get me wrong these are great holdings, I just like their power in unraised pots where if I hit I am usually in good shape. I will try to steal the blinds in an unopened pot from the CO or the button.

D-Hands and Summary yet to come...

2007-07-07T11:27:00.000-04:00

I was doing a little archiving of my old blogroll and came across this diddy from TripJax. Give it a look-see - you will be glad you did.

Get Your Asses To Bed Kids

2007-07-06T16:51:00.000-04:00

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

shit (17x) fucking (5x) bitch (4x) hurt (3x) fuck (2x) bitches (1x)

Give it a shot you sickos.

What the hell, you can't say hurt! What kind of kiddie party are we talking about here. You know what I say...FUCK IT!!!

Last Night

2007-07-06T14:40:00.000-04:00

Well last night didn’t go as well as planned. Within in the first 10 mins on I get dealt pocket K’s. My fuckin’ mouse was dirty for some reason. (You know, the internal wheels that that form the ball socket were built up with junk.) Therefore the mouse was locking up and just being jumpy, thus making it difficult to manipulate. So between the mouse issue and tables popping up, all I got to do was min-raise PF. Well, about 3 callers complete. Pretty innocent looking board so I bet pot. All fold but 1 guy; he goes all-in and I make a crying call. He had hit 2-pr on the flop with total unadulterated shiat. I’m down a buy-in right off the bat. The golden rule is not to go all the way with minor holdings like over-pr or TPTK on the flop when it was unraised PF. They could have anything. And a min-raise is pretty much an unraised pot. Bad play on my part. I suck I know, but man sometimes it is so hard to get off an over-pr. It wouldn’t have been as bad a play if I had put in a nice raise PF like I meant to, but time was running out and I couldn’t get the betting slide bar to move where I wanted due to the dirty mouse. But hey, we have already been through this once already. I suck, lets move on. So after about 10 min I am down around $60 due to that hand and the consumption of blinds at 8 tables. I started worrying that I would have to move back down stakes if I lost another buy-in. But I started winning my normal small pots and they quickly added up. Throw in a few slightly larger pots and I was catching up nicely. I was only on an hr and when I logged out I was only down $16. I’ll live with that after being down right out the gate. So I’m back up to 2 buy-in before I drop down if needed.

At the $50 tables that I am currently playing I get my 100 Ironman points in about an hr. That is nice when I am working, because I work 12 hr days so I need to hit the hay as soon as possible. So an hr is perfect when I am on day shift – eat, shower, poker, and then an hr or 2 for the family.

I looked and I’m currently at 6th overall in FT Fantasy Poker League with only 2 events left. Hopefully the Main Event doesn’t stick it to me and knock me out off the top 100. That would suck.

My Current Style: Part 2

2007-07-06T10:20:00.000-04:00

A-Hands

AA, KK, QQ, AKs, AK, JJ

I don’t worry about position with A-hands. I raise PF with all of these hands. I will reraise PF with AA, KK, QQ. If the aggressor is another player I will reraise PF with all 3 of these. If someone goes back overtop of my goodly sized reraise I will push all-in with AA and KK. I will fold the QQ to this aggression because the predominate holdings are AA or KK. Yes you might get the hyper-aggressive reraise or push with QQ, AK, JJ, AQs, and AJs, but I think in the long-run you will pay out much more than you will win in this situation. Depending on how much the reraise was I will call the flop and see if I spike that Q. With AK or JJ I just call a PF raise and hope to hit a nice flop and can hopefully then bet or more often CR the flop. I am cautious with JJ on low flopped boards. I will bet or CR it and if I get too much resistance I am done with the hand or depending on bet size C/C to showdown. I prefer to just bet it and see where I stand instead for calling bets. I figure if I’m willing to put a certain amount in the pot I mind as well put him to the decision because if they don’t have a premium hand or are afraid of overs they are more apt to fold to that aggression. If I am the PF aggressor and get 1 or 2 callers I will always CB the flop no matter the board. With 3 or more in the flop hand I will always bet AA and KK. I will sometimes slowdown with overs on the board with my PF raised QQ and JJ, because with 4 callers odds are that I’m beat and they are looking to CR. Sometimes I will bet a little over ½ pot to reduce the field and gather some info. If I’m CR’d here I’m done. If my AK whiffs the flop I will always CB with 1 or 2 PF callers. If 3 or 4 are with me to the flop, I either check hoping to see the turn or I will bet a little over ½ pot to see where I stand. I don’t go broke as often with K’s, Q’s, AK, and JJ anymore. I do still find it hard to let K’s and Q’s go if there are no overs. But now if I get all-in action over my CB and there are overs on the table I drop and save my stack for another opportunity. I might hold the winning hand on occasion but why risk it all the time. The rest of strategy wins enough small pots that I don’t want to lose all my grinding money on one big hand where I put it all-in with the worst hand. I will break my own rules here if I have a read on the player, but that goes without saying. If I totally crush the flop with a set or trips I will usually slow-roll till the turn or depending on their aggression CB the flop instead. If the board isn’t all that innocuous, but instead is coordinated with straight and flush draws, I bet out even my monsters as to make them pay to chase. A big no-no for me is slow-playing PF. I always bet PF; I don’t care if is folded around to me in the SB, they pay to play – this ain’t a Holiday Inn Express. Lastly, I obviously bet PF to isolate against 1 player or 2 at the most; anymore than that and you are just asking for trouble.

B-Hands

All prs Ten and under – TT, 99, 88, 77, 66, 55, 44, 33, 22

I play these cards for set value. I usually limp and do a little set-farming. If I’m able to limp in and hit the flop I usually slow-play the flop. If the flop is bet I CR or smooth-call opting for the turn bet or CR. If there is a bet and 1 or more callers on the flop, I add their bets to the current pot and raise that amount, because they are showing that they are willing to add money to the pot and if they are on draws I definitely need to make them pay to see. If the board is scary I don’t even mess around, I just bet pot and see where we go from there. I will fight a little bit on the flop if I have an over-pr (usually opening or RR’ing for info and hopefully taking it down right there) but as a rule you should never put all your money in on an unraised pot, because the other limpers could be holding anything because they weren’t forced out PF. (2pr is a very likely holdings.) With TT and 99 I will raise PF in an unopened or un-limped pot if I’m the cut-off or button because I will have position on my side if I get any takers. I will call a PF raise with any of these pairs for set value. This tactic works especially well against a PF raiser, because they might have premium hole cards that they will find hard to fold and double me up. The more people that get in PF the better, because it usually juices up the pot for my set. Also the PF raiser usually CB’s the flop, which increases the pot. I usually check to the PF aggressor, then I decide to smooth call or CR according to the board. I prefer to CR on the flop and hope we can get all the money in right there, and optimally they are drawing to a 2-outer, but it also keeps them from drawing cheaply. If I’m out of position and it is a drawy board I just lead out and hope to take it down.

C and D hands plus the summary coming up next.

2007-07-06T09:13:00.000-04:00

My Current Style: Part 1

2007-07-05T18:05:00.000-04:00

My current game

It is somewhat passive, but it is designed to let me know where I stand on the flop, and to minimize hands where I’m dominated. I make money with this style so don’t knock it too readily. I am averaging over a buy-in per session. (8 tables for 1 ½ to 2 hrs) With no bad beats on big hands I am making 2 or 3 full buy-ins. I have added in some hands omitted from my old rock stratagem, so I play more hands, and thus get more callers when I do have premium hands, plus I spike more junk hands because I’m seeing more flops. I have added in these other hands because I have gained a post flop game and often can take down small pots without risking much. I’m not great, but don’t check to me. I’ll go through the basics of my PF strategy. I will also explain how I play some things on the flop. I know a lot of players would rank some of these hands different, but this is my current style. In case you are wondering – this Style is made for Full Ring Micro to Small stakes play. In this 1st segment I will just give you the hand ranks, to be elaborated on in subsequent posts.

A-Hands

AA, KK, QQ, AKs, AK, JJ

B-Hands

All prs Ten and under – TT, 99, 88, 77, 66, 55, 44, 33, 22

C-Hands

Ace anything suited – AQs, AJs, ATs, A9s, A8, A7s, A6s A5s, A4s, A3s, A2s

Suited Connectors down to 76s – KQs, QJs, JTs, T9s, 98s, 87s, 76s

AQ, KQ, KJs

D-Hands

AJ, AT, KT, KJ,QJ, QT, JT

King anything suited – KTs, K9s, K8s, K7s, K6s, K5s, K4’s, K3s, K2s

Suited-Connectors – 65s, 54s, 43s, 32s

Suited –Gappers – KTs, K9s, QTs, Q9s, Q8s, J9s, J8s, J7s, T8s, T7s, T6s, 97s, 96s, 95s, 86s, 85s, 84s, 75s, 74s, 73s, 64s, 63s, 62s, 53s, 52s, 42s

Nice Week - Still Moving Forward

2007-07-05T10:43:00.000-04:00

Poker is continuing to go well. As long as I don’t get hit with too many suck-outs in my session I usually end up money for that session. If I don’t get any big hand bad beats I am currently doing rather well. I took that $300 from last week and have turned it into $500. At $400 I got on the $50 tables and hovered around $425. I decided if I dropped a buy-in would drop back down to $25 and make my way back up again for another try. I won some nice hands hit $550 at one point in that night’s session. I slowly dwindled back down to even due to a mix of bad play, bad luck, and bad beats; I would say that most of it was due to tilting after a few ugly hands. I got a few mid-level pots taken away when I went in with the best. And then I slow-played my set of 4’s on the flopped board of A4T rainbow. Turn comes a 3 and I raise his bet, to which he pushes. I call and he shows 52o for the nut. My boat misses port and I drop another buy-in. At that point I’m back to even and was playing badly. I knew it was time to get off. I un-check all of my auto-blinds and as I’m waiting for the blinds I get dealt KK. I reraise PF to $5 and get a call from the original raiser and another player between us. How come 2, 6, 8 - 2-suited. It is bet and I push for the rest of my chips. $80 worth of calls from the 2. If I lose this hand I am down a buy-in for the session and would have been totally distraught at how the session went to shit. The tables got out of hand for a min and when I finally clicked back I was up 80 bucks. I didn’t even look to see what they called with. I finally gave out a bad beat other than a coin-flip. I had KK I raised and got 1 caller. The board was something like J,8,2. I bet the flop and he shoves. I just couldn’t see justifying a lay-down here. Yes, a set comes to mind, but so does AJ, or an aggressive AK. A lot of people can’t give up that AK. AA or QQ would have likely reraised or pushed the flop. I call and see I’m looking at a 2-outer some kind of triple-runner. River brings my king and the unlucky bastard started with a tirade of expletives about my donkass skills and overall intellect.

I loaned out $40 to one of my Bros so I currently sit at $460. I still haven’t gotten last month’s rakebreak so I still have a nice chunk of change coming. I’m really accruing a lot of rake this month as of yet due to being on the $50 tables. I’m keeping that same strategy as I try to move my way back up. If I reach 8 full buy-ins for a stake I will move up and play at that stake. If I lose a buy-in I will drop and make it back to 8 buy-ins. Hopefully I hit $800 soon so I can play at the Hundo tables. I think this strategy gives me the best of both worlds: bankroll management and advancement opportunity. I play 8 tables at a time so it works out well, especially if I chip-up early on so I get a little cushion.

Oh yea a really cool thing. A guy at work told me about the Fantasy Poke League on Tilt over a month ago when I started back on tilt. I picked my 15 pros and just stuck with them through every single event. My picks have done well. I have now won entry into 3 events. And I am in 4th place overall in the entire league. There are only 3 or so events left to go in the WSOP for the ’07 series. If I stay in the top 100 I will get an entry into a big tourney with a chance at a seat in the ’08 Main Event. I also won a hat. I could easily get bumped out of the top 100 if a few pros cash in the Main even and they aren’t my picks. I did pick 3 bracelet winners: Helmuth, Cunningham, and Deeb. One of the tourneys that I got in was Stud Hi Fixed. This really sucked and I wasted 1 ½ hrs of my life playing this slow game. Now I have qualified for the Horse freeroll. I played a SNG just to see how to play somewhat. I got 2nd. Not bad but I’m pretty sure I will get my ass handed to me. 1000 players max, yet so far in these freerolls, less than half the people register. I cashed in 1 event. NL with 388 starting. I end up felting in 37th for a measly $10 cash. I was in the top 10 for the whole tourney right until the end where I lost a huge had to a bad beat and then I donked off the remainder within the next 3 cycles.

Live Update and Analysis of My Home Game Players

2007-07-01T05:45:00.000-04:00

Live is still going well. Shit actually it is booming. I have the game totally under my control. I’m not running the table, but I am waiting in the wings ready to pounce as often as I can. I often fold, fold and watch the blinds and missed flops eat away my stack and then swoop in and accumulate a moderate to large pot. I then eat myself slowly away again and play the waiting game. But as this happens my stack grows larger each time well above what the blinds are doing to me. I do see a lot more hands than at a FR game due to the shorter game and because I can often out-play certain players. I out-play opponents and they call me dirty for the moves I use to get the maximum chips from the hands that I play. I get deep respect from some players and they are scared of my bets and I can often push them of their hands with a well-timed bet. Some are calling-stations and I do need the best hand because we are likely going to showdown. I know the players so well that I know exactly how to approach each hand by which one of the guys is in the hand with me. This has been a long process, but we have played together for so long that it’s hard not to learn their styles. Here are my results since my last live update: +$31, +$136, +$20, +$74, -$7, +$59, +$27, +$15, +$34. 10 to 1 win/loss ratio isn’t bad that is for sure. This in itself is a big factor why my bets get respect – they know I almost always go home with a win and they don’t want to risk being a help to lining my pockets. I’m not trying to brag up my game here I am just telling you how well I have the usual players figured out. Knowing everyone’s weaknesses, strengths, motivations, plays, and abilities does help enormously and lets you know which moves you can make on which players because you know where each one’s knowledge base is at. But that doesn’t always mean you will win. Earlier in the year I lost 4 out of 5 sessions and was totally bummed about my ability as a player. I was also sucking at online poker, which I have most of this year anyways, and that was adding to my negative outlook. I was second-guessing every decision that I made and really was furthering my plight, but the card dead nights and horrible multi-suck-out sessions left and I was back in business, with variance back in the black.

I also played the Fam Game twice since the last update. We always play small $5 tourneys. 1st time I dropped -$20 and the 2nd time I lost -$5. Some to bad play on my part and some to horrible and moderate beats. It is about playing with family and less about winning, but I am always very competitive. I can’t help that and of course you are supposed to play your best game every time out anyways, right? I don’t care that it is only $5 when I make my decisions; I play with my stack and I play as well as possible. It does frustrate me some when I go in with the best and am called with shit and the shit hits. Races don’t bother me ever, that just is poker in my mind. But a bad call from an opponent for all my or their chips when I am 70% or better cuts me deep when they spike their shit. I know that there are outs for a reason but damn. I guess it hurts because it doesn’t often go the other way because I hardly ever put my money in with the worst of it. Not to say that I’m this great player that never makes bad calls, I’m just stating that I more often than not go in with the best of it, so the suck-out ratio is skewed towards the other players. Basically I’m saying that when I play cards I am never in Freeroll mode. I always do have fun at the Fam Game, I just think I take it a little too seriously sometimes.

I will now tell you about each player’s styles and weaknesses and strengths and little tells and odds-and-ins I have noticed with their games. These are the Home Game guys not the Fam Game players. The rest of this post is on each player’s current style – just warning you so you don’t waste your time if you don’t like player analysis of people you don’t know. I’m am really doing it more for myself because as I write, it makes me really think about their game and my counter-methods to their styles. Long post ensues.

Smitty – He is a total LAG. He has never seen hole cards that he didn’t like. He always wants to see the flop no matter his holdings. He will either raise PF or call and will rarely fold to a raise or reraise PF. If he is the aggressor just let him keep betting for you and depending how innocuous the board is make your decision on which street to raise or CR him. If I have the hand and he is in position I just bet out and forget the slow-rolling because if he has any pr or any possibility of making a flush or a straight he will chase it as long as I don’t bet too much. If he has 4 cards to a straight (even gut-shot or the low end) or a flush he will find it hard to fold to any sized bet. If he has 2 hearts and 1 heart hits the flop that constitutes a flush-draw in his mind or if he has 2 cards and the flop brings 1 more card in succession that constitutes a flush-draw to him. So for example, if he has Ts, Jc and the flop brings Ks, 7s, 2h he will see the turn for a nice bet just to see if another spade or an A, Q, 9, 8, comes so he can chase again on the river. Sometimes he hits these long-shots and rivers a huge pot, which keeps him trying. He is very aggressive. If he raises PF, which does often, he will CB every street no matter the board or if he hit anything or if the board is all overs to a small PP. So if I have any suited-cons, PP’s, or nice paint is dealt to me I will call for the possibility of a nice score. You can usually CR the river and he will call with any pr just to see if you are bluffing. He hates to be out-played. If you bluff him he takes it as a personal slight towards his manhood and will call you down most of the night just to make sure you don’t hurt his pride further. So basically I will bluff with a busted draw often early on in the session just so I can turn up the bluff and induced the vendetta grudge mode. He amasses tons of chips early on every session with his aggression. This always happens because he is betting on just about every hand. He then gets pissed because in his mind he should win any hand where he showed aggression the whole way. If he loses a few busted aggressive hands, especially if someone calls him down with horrible holdings in a short period of time, bad beats, getting bluffed, river beats especially if they called to the river with total junk where he had them crushed the whole way, or any combination of these 4 common occurrences he hits ultra-full-tilt-mode. Guaranteed he will push all-in PF or on the flop very soon after he starts bitching about others horrid play or his unwarranted bad luck. He usually has shit and needs to prove to himself that he is in control of the table again. Depending on how much he has left when he shoves and what I holding I will call even with minor holdings that I normally wouldn’t call with because he see making this move PF with any Ace, any suited cards, small pr, paint, and on the flop if he hit any part of the board or with any flush or straight draw. If he doesn’t get smacked-down too often in a short period of time he doesn’t tilt and I can continue to take nice pots from his growing stack. He ends sessions usually up big or down big and both happen about half the time. It looks like a lot to remember, but really he is pretty predictable. Oh yea, one tell that he has makes and/or saves me large river bets. If he takes a long time on the river and keeps recounting his chips in a stack like he is trying to figure out exactly how much he wants to bet, he almost is always bluffing a busted draw. If he just bets river quickly he can have it or be on a bluff and put you to a decision, but if he does the long think-tank chip stacking routine he is usually full of shit and on a busted draw. He is still pretty new to the game and I try to teach him here and there, even though it took him a run of losing sessions before he would fight his ego and listen. He still has issues with reading the board at showdown. He has trouble with the best 5 card rule and how to figure out which cards play. I argued with him for 3 minutes just last game before he relinquished the pot. The board was 664QQ. He bet with T4 and was called by Van Horn with K7. He just kept saying that he had a pr and that it shouldn’t go to kickers. I told him that your trying play 3pr. He also has a hard time deciphering kicker fights and what cards exactly play on the board. I often have to actually push the cards up for both players and count out the 5 cards that play. He is smart so I really don’t get why he is having suck a hard time with this basic aspect of the game.

Van Horn – He is loose-passive to the extreme. He wants to see every flop, yet doesn’t raise often, but when he does, it is usually just a min-raise. The min-raise is usually nice paint. When he bets a little more he has a PP, you just have to figure out how high. He will always CB once if he raised PF. If you CR him he will usually just call. If he has an over-pr to the flop he will reraise your CR. That is when you know your holdings and drop out with weak holdings. If the flop brings a flush draw or a nicely coordinated straight draw he will just call your CR and check-call the rest of the way. So you can lose some change if you don’t be careful. He will usually call to the river with his small PP’s set-faming the turn and river for the anemic 2-outer because he doesn’t realize how bad his odds are of spiking – he will usually drop to the river bet with his small PP. If 4 cards to a flush hit he will call a moderate bet with a weak card of that suit and say that he had to see. He likes being the sheriff and if everyone folds he is more apt to stay in to “keep you honest.” Back to PF - he loves to see the flop and likes junk cards for odd superstitious reasons. Anytime he folds he always states that he hated to fold because he just knows it will hit. He makes a big deal when it does hit and that is a big reason why he such a call-station. He barely ever goes home with any money unless he gets some monster hands or sucks-out on some monster hands. Over the session he just calls it all away. He is the one that usually ends up putting Smitty over the edge, by hitting the river with junk that anyone else would have folded PF or to any bet. He is a checker, slow-playing most hands that he hits. But he doesn’t raise much on the river when his traps work. Often he just calls. He is a very weak player. You barely ever know when he has you beat or not because he just check-calls all the way to showdown even with nice hands. He is afraid of the board often thinking monsters are in the closet at every flush, gut-shot, or paired board, yet he almost always will call to the showdown to sheriff the table. He usually wins these pots, but since he calls bottom-pr and mid-pr and every possible draw imaginable to the river or showdown. Ultimately he usually ends up short-stacked early in every session with Smitty accumulating most of his chips because he calls all Smitty’s bets to the river and then usually folds. He is the ultimate weak calling-station. When he gets short-stacked he always says it’s almost time for an all-in hand and then subsequently he pushes within a few hands with marginal holdings at best – usually suited though. Since Smitty and Van Horn both love to see the flop they often call each other’s all-ins when the pusher is tilting with their shorty with holdings just as marginal and near races ensue. Van Horn always buys back in and plays the exact same style. Just hit the flop and keep betting and he will usually call you better hand to showdown and build your stack.

Smutek - He barely ever wins and thus doesn’t play often. When he does play and loses his first buy-in of $20 or $25 he calls it a night. He is so predictable that everyone knows his game and get out of the hands and he only takes the blinds or one bet. If he bets the flop he usually has TP or better. Everyone folds and he wins a baby pot. Also if he weakly hit the flop he will look down at his chips for a second, shit sometimes reaching for his stack, and then he will check. At that point most people check their draws opting for a free card or put in a nice bet and he usually folds his pr. He respects my game to the point at he folds even nice hands to my bets thinking I’m suckering him in for his money. He folds the winning hands quite often because he thinks that every time a flush or straight is on the board that a bet from someone means that that’s what they have. He plays scared which isn’t winning poker in the least. Everyone knows this and just slowly scares Smutek out of pots or folds to his bets so he wins minuscule pots and his stack keeps dwindling. Often he will double up once short-stacked because he finally has to make a stand and the other players are still in predator mode thus bullying with shit. Therefore he most often drops that last hand to bad beats which always sucks to exit with. He also will lose a big hand when 4 cards to a flush or a 4-flush is on the board. He will call the flush with marginal holdings and fight with the small side of the straight. I have been working on these leaks with him but he is slow to grasp what I’m trying to teach him. I have stopped a few of his bad habits, which is helping his game. First of all I told him to stop showing his cards when people fold. He is the only player that folds PF more than I do, so when he does get into a hands he is already under scrutiny by everyone at the table. So when he bets and everyone drops and then he shows them that he had it, they know that they made the right call and that predictable Smutek hasn’t changed his game. Now he never shows his hands unless they pay to see. The other leak that he had was telling everyone at the table when he was on a draw. He would call someone’s bet and say out loud that he wanted to see one more card. So if a coordinated card hit the board they could slow down in the hand or if the card whiffed, they would bet hard knowing he would fold. I am working with him on other aspects trying to help him compete. But as it stands right now, if he gets in a hand and he acts first and bets you drop or if he checks you bet. If you are first to act you make a nice bet and if he calls you know he has something. It’s sadly that simple.

Phil – He is a weird player, but also highly predictable at times. But he will put money in the pot with good cards and shit cards with equal frequency so you have to be careful. He likes to see the flop, but will fold total junk. If he is up he usually sees every flop. He will call PF raises with marginal hole cards. He will pay moderate calls to the river chasing his flushes, often even large bets. He then folds if he misses. He also opening but unwittingly visually and sometimes vocally lets all know he is on a draw. You know to raise if next card is innocuous. He finds it hard to get away with from small prs and will bet them just as hard as if he held TPTK. Sometimes I put him on 2pr or something nice and once everyone folds he will show pocket 6’s. At other times I will reraise him and he will keep calling my bets for the remainder of the hand, often leading the betting again on the next street and I will slow down. I then bet big on the river with a monster and he calls and shows down pocket 4’s that was lower than any card on the board, thus only beating a total bluff. He honestly doesn’t think your bluffing, he just has some weird idea that if you likely have the best hand PF you are supposed to win the hand. I don’t get it, but at least once a session he makes a horrible call for a lot of money with a total shit hand that has everyone scratching their heads. I always just hope it is when I’m in the big hand with him. He has brain farts – that is the nicest way I can put it. Like he will miss-read his cards and think he has a straight or last time he paid off a full-boat for a huge pot with “3 pair.” No lie, he thought he won the hand. He often goes up early on and accumulates chips because he doesn’t know how to fold and picks off Smitty’s BS bluffs, which in turn infuriates him. He also picks up pots where his big bets make players drop. Honestly he aggravates me often, to the point that I won’t sit beside him. Every time around the table you have to remind him that he is the big blind and then most of the time tell him that he is the small blind on the very next fucking hand. And I mean every time around the table. And then he has trouble putting in the right amount of chips for the blinds that he is in. I’m not joking. You can probably see how this can be irritating. And then if that isn’t bad enough when the action comes back around to him in the small blind he will say check or put in a whole big blind instead of the other half of his small blind so the guy next to him has to at that point, to speed up the game, just scoot him back has original small blind chip. And if he is in the big blind you have to yell out a preemptive strike by telling him that he can check because he will always throw in a chip because he remembers that he is BB. And if you don’t catch him before he throws in his chip, depending on how you phrase it, he will either pull it back out or bet it. If you say you can check, he will say oops and pull it back out or if someone says are you raising it, he say ahhh, yea I’ll raise it. He really slows down the game and aggravates the fuck out of me until I get 1 beer in me or I find a way to stop ruminating of his stupidity. When we first start playing I can’t help but focus on it when it is about his turn. It will say to myself, he it comes. Just to put this little rant into perspective – will never get better, we have been playing for 2 years now, so if he hasn’t figured it out by now he never will. I actually like it when he doesn’t show up to the games; it really takes down my stress level. The only reason I have never snapped and hurt him is because he can’t help it and he is the nicest person you will ever meet, who is willing to help out any friend with whatever shit task without even thinking twice about it. Nice but fucking aggravating.

To be continued…

Full Tilt and a Few Leaks Plugged

2007-06-29T21:40:00.000-04:00

OK, it has been a month since my last update. I achieved my gold status for the month. I only missed the 100 points on one day. I have played every day this month. I have had my ups and downs. I got that hoodie plus I’m back up around 3000 points again. I opted for extra points as my Ironman bonus.

I started the month at $350 and was playing 4 tables at the $50 FR tables. I lost a few buy-ins but stayed at those stakes and tried for the comeback. I went all the way down to $150. I started playing the $25 tables and slowly dwindled down below $100. I hit $80 and was forced to drop to $10 tables. I started playing 8 tables with my whole roll at 8 different hopeful seats. I decided to play my regular game but really go into the think-tank on all-in hands, which is really hard for me because it is only $10. When you have played $200 and $100 tables for months only 6 months ago and recently $50 and $25 tables $10 just doesn’t hold as much respect in one’s eyes. But I had to focus on the fact that I only had $80 and $10 was actually 1/8 of my total BR. I began my refined game and hit 2 bad beats where I was at least a 70% favorite. It just seemed that lady luck was being at total bitch to me. I was now standing at $60 and 6 buy-ins. I held the line and continued on that same strategy. The bad beats stopped for a while and I began to gain in money. It was difficult to fold some of the big hands, especially when guys at these small stakes will call your PF raise and if they hit any piece of the flop will shove and put you to a tough decision. Usually I would still call if I had and over-pr to the flop. Occasionally that had hit their sets and I paid the ultimate price, but more often than not it turned out to be a semi-buff at best. I did lay down some hands where I was likely the best, but I was winning tons of small pots with my semi-tight-semi-agro game. I figured why lose all those hrs of grinding to one bad call. It was hard for me. I continued to gain all the while getting my 100 points a day. I decided on a new BR management strategy because I had already surpassed the 1st 4 or 5 stakes. I be scared to move up when I’m not scared money at those stakes. I will now move up stakes as long as I have 8 buy-ins at that level and at that point be willing to stay at that stake until I lose 2 buy-ins or advance up the ladder to the next stakes. I hit the $200 mark not too long ago. (2 weeks or so.) I moved up stakes back to the .10/.25 tables. I was finally playing solid poker. I wasn’t gaining a lot on each session but I wasn’t dropping big amounts either. I was making less bad calls on big hands. I also gave up the nasty river bluffs with busted draws when if called I would lose big pots to due to the size of turn pots and the amount that one would have to put in to make it a tough call for my opponents. I actually gave that up back at the strategy change at the $10 stakes. This was definitely one leak in my game. When it was I well timed bluff I made a nice hand payout, but when I was off in my assessment I wasted all my hard earned money. Now that I have taken out the nasty bluff and the bad all-in calls I am playing winning poker overall. Most of my wins and loses each day were very small due to some daily horrible beats. All that grinding gone to shit almost every session. But when the bad beats didn’t come in a session I usually made a buy-in or so. I continued to grind it out and make my 100 points a day. I had a nice 4 session rush this last week and built up my roll to $380. I was about to make the move up when some ugly beats have been dropping my roll. I am currently at $280. I have lived right around $300 for a week now, with a $25 swing or so either way. The last 4 sessions have brought some ugly beats. My roll hasn’t suffered too bad because my current game is winning enough small pots to sustain most of these horrid suck-outs. I’m telling you when the money goes in and I watch the cards turning over towards showdown I call-out the perfect suck-out cards because I just know they are going to hit. Coin-toss – fucking forget it, it just ain’t happening. I know everyone gets hit with these hands, but currently it feels like the world is a little skewed against my accurate decisions. It just hurts when you get all the money in, thus out-playing your opponent, and they stick it in you ass – no lube mind you. Last 4 days here are a few. PF AA vs AJ and JJ. J comes on river. That was over a $60 swing instead of being up $45 or so I go down $25. I haven’t even looked that hand up but I really shouldn’t be losing that too often. And twice the normal pr over pr 2-outer loses. I call a raise with TT – flop comes T – all-in on flop vs KK – river K for a $50 swing in my roll. Once my set gets smacked by a 4-flush, but I did slow-play the flop looking for the CR, so the guy did have his flush-draw. And lastly this morning after work I had my normal 8 tables going and soon after getting on another guy and I get all-in with $30 apiece in chips with AA vs AA. I called it – I just knew it was coming: 4 fucking clubs on the board. God that just really hurt after 4 days of this shit luck. I looked it up. 2.17% that he was going to win. OK, lets put this shit into perspective. If we played this hand 100 times I would only lose it twice. So a lost triple-up pot to a pure 1-outer and today a 4-flush Aces vs Aces beat – it just am finding it hard to stay positive. Luckily I ground my way back this morning and only ended down $8 for the session. What will tomorrow bring. If no bad beats it should be a nice session. One solace is that I get rake back through rakebreak at 27% and I will have accrued around $500 total rake for Tilt (damn they are pulling the dough) so I’m looking at around $130 added to my roll around mid-month when they add it to my account. So If I can tow-the-line for the next little while I will get my shot at $50 very soon.

Overall I am currently happy with my game now that I have exposed a few leaks in my game that were killing my bottom-line. I still make bad calls here and there but I have alleviated the big pot mistakes. My current game holds me up on most of the 8 tables that I simultaneously play. Although I have been playing one superstitious sort of rule: If I hit over $30 at a $25 table I wait for the blinds and exit and start a new table. Not totally superstitious I guess, but I just don’t want to put that extra money at risk. I feel that if it is in my account balance, it is building my roll and can’t be taken from me. I know that I should actually have it at the table for the same very reason that I play max buy-in poker: To optimize my profit potential against the other large stacks at the table when I hit my monsters against them. So that is where I currently sit. I will try to update more often in the future since I am playing fulltime again.

Later, Ash out…

Where I'm at

2007-06-03T18:14:00.000-04:00

Live is still going well. Last 6 games: +$21, +$21, -$21, -$15, +$94, +$39. I can live with that. Now if I can just get the ole lady out of my BR I’ll be rolled for whatever I feel like doing.

I started playing at Full Tilt again. It has been a while. Back when I used to play there was no Iron Man stuff. I plan on being gold this month. I only need 1000 more regular points to get a cool hoodie: red and black. I brought over most of my bankroll from UB. $350 total. I’m going to give $50NL a go but if I drop a buy-in or 2, it is back to the $25NL tables. I am doing 4 at a time.

I’m still not playing solid poker. I just don’t get it. I play pretty well and get up on most tables and then blow it all on one big hand where either I get sucked-out on or I just have 2nd best hand.

At least I started playing again.

A NEW HOPE

2007-05-21T16:18:00.000-04:00

I have really been off track this year. I have only put in a few true sessions this year as of yet. Last year I used to put in solid month after month of multi-tabling, utilizing every moment that I wasn’t working or sleeping, sadly sometimes to the detriment of my family. I started with $180 last year after starting on the penny tables the year prior. I took that $180 and turned it into slightly over $5000. I was an anal little bitch and didn’t move up levels until I had 25 to 35 buy-ins and was crushing the current stakes. Sadly life threw me a few curves and I cashed out all but $500 of my roll. Shit I had just started playing the $200NL tables. I was making it. And since the cashout I haven’t been motivated to play. I was crushing the game overall when I left. 5 winning sessions to 1 losing. Now I am finding that I am playing even poker at stakes that I used to fucking destroy. I now sit at $650 total on 3 different sites. God, the year is over 1/3rd over and I am up $100. I need to get going.

My game has evolved to the point that I don’t where I was at before. I think I have too many tools at disposal. (That sounds conceded right?) I think it is time for me to step back and hit reset. I think I need to play standard old boring ABC ghey poker. No nasty bluffs. No betting and raising on every street with my draws. No expensive chasing. No playing just out of position. No playing junk in position. Just monsters and play ram and jam. Get in cheap with my prs and do some set-farming. I know playing this style will suck, as I will just know I could take a hand down with a move, but I think I shall refrain for awhile. It’s time to play punk-ass rock style. I will be so temped though with my PT and Ace Hud data mining these tards. I will play straight full ring and multi-table.

I’m going to put in some time and try to pump up this egg-roll. If I, fuck that, when I get it big again I am going to keep stepping up. $5000 is a lot, but I would love to give this a shot at the title. I want to make Vegas money baby. I want to be making lobster loot. It was in my grasp last year I know it was, but I gave it all up. I was on the cusp…standing at the precipice ready to take that big money leap of faith. I’m giving it another shot bitches. As LL used to say, “Don’t call it a comeback…I’ve been here for years.”

Later, Ash out…

Update: Breaking Rake

2007-05-19T09:05:00.000-04:00

I played for the first time in forever last night. I kicked up 4 $25 FR tables on Stars. BTW, I have a cool Stars T-shirt coming in the mail. Points baby. “You call me baby…you be all done,” as Scottie would say. I took done a $120 bonus that has been sitting there since July of 2006. That just goes to show how much I play at Stars.

At first when I played 4 tables at Stars it was really awkward to see and play the Tables. I would size down the screen and get all 4 on the table at once. It was frustrating. But I have gotten used to it. I really like it now. It is nice to see all tables at once without popping through different screens; you can just focus on the ones that have cards. The only thing that is aggravating to me now with the set-up is that you have activate the table first before you can push a button. So if you want to fold you first have to click the table once and then you can click the fold button. That drives me nuts. I now make the screens a little bigger and let them overlap the other tables a little. To do this you have to organize the tables so you aren’t sitting in the middle of the screen where they will get covered by the overlapping tables.

I cashed out my $250 to Epassporte. It was instantaneous. That was the first time that I have ever had an instant withdraw. They had a deposit bonus going but I became ineligible by withdrawing. That sucked. I will likely put it back on Stars until UB has a bonus going.

I hope to start playing again. I have been in a funk pokerwise lately. I really just don’t feel like playing and when I do finally decide to play I get off quick because I just can’t get into it. I want to start playing and hopefully start winning again.

One bitch hand from last night. I have $28 or so. I flop a straight from a slightly PF raised pot. I’m also in position. Board 972 with 2 clubs. 4 of us in hand – 1st - $12, 2nd - $15, 3rd - $3.5, and Me - $28. 1st checks. 2nd bets $1.5. 3rd goes all-in for 3.5. I make it $6. 1st then goes all-in from $12. 2nd puts in the remainder of his $15. I obviously call. The only thing that beats me at this point is a set of 9’s. I figure someone has a flush-draw and 2nd who was the PF raiser has an over-pr. I was right – 1st has A8c, 2nd has JJ, and 3rd mucks at showdown. I need to stay away from some outs here I am guessing because I don’t know there hands until showdown, although it was pretty obvious what I was up against unless these guys where total loose-cannons. Turn brings a Club like figured. I still had $3 measly bucks that I could win, but yep, you guessed it. The guy hits a J on the river to totally stick it to me and let me know how Lady Luck currently feels about me.

I know this kind of shit happens, but lately it has been disproportionate. I’m telling you my hands aren’t holding up like they should. I think this is one of the main reasons that I haven’t wanted to play. It gets old after awhile.

Current bankroll:

Epassporte - $257

FT - $55

WPEX - $47

UB - $404

Total = $763

That is only $263 for the year. Hey, at least I’m in the black.

So far this year if I added up my bonuses and rakeback, That would be all my profits for the year. I am playing even poker. I'm just beating rake and only bringing in the little extra that sites give out for hanging around. When I get back to playing and get some hands in I will have to reevaluate my game.

Later, Ash out...

UPS and DOWNS

2007-05-03T09:48:00.000-04:00

Ah, the poker scene. Once again I haven’t played a lot, but I do have a little bit to share. The second time I got on after deciding to play the higher stakes my Bro gets on. I was still playing full-ring. He lays out a proposal. He says that 6-max is where the $’s at and that we should get 3 tables going and split any winnings. I obviously say yes. Has been on a real heater. I loaned him $100 not too long ago and he has turned it into $2000 or so.

We get on 3 $100 6-max tables and sit across from each other so we don’t raise each other’s blinds all the time. His game has changed from when we used to play. He has become a LAG. But he plays it well. He had all 3 tables on total tilt. He was raising, what seemed like every hand. When someone would reraise, he often would call. If he missed the flop and they raised, he would fold and show his junk. If they checked and he was in position he would bet out. If they did a C/R he would usually fold and show his junk. These hands where he was flinging money out the window were setting the table up for when he did hit, because they had no respect for his holdings. They thought he was a dumbass that was just bullying the table with no ulterior motive. Also he won most hands right out PF or 2/3’s of the time on the flop when he bet and they missed their holdings or didn’t hit hard enough to call. And if he called their PF raise or reraise and they were holding high pairs, he would usually stack them when he hit hard. His 46s would take down their KK and they would leave or rebuy, but ultimately the table would be on total tilt. People started hitting 2nd-pr and finding it hard to let them go. They were playing out of their comfort zone and he was raking in the money. He was also hitting some cards on the flop and turn, which was really helping his bravado out. Put it this way, I was totally impressed. He was the King of the Rounders the whole night.

We played for like 13 hrs straight until 9:30am. I was up as much as #350 at one point. Late in the game I lost some hands that just happened to be 2nd best and a few bad beats thrown in. But truly counting all the hands that we played, my earnings should have been a reflection of my total game. Still it is possible that a just had a bad variance night, but I doubt it. I think that my full-ring game is where I thrive. I ended the night up $26. He ended up making $750. So he put $375 into my account and I placed a badass $13 into his. LOL. Overall a very goodnight.

Since then I haven’t played much. The next time that I did though, I played the $100 tables and lost around $250. Honestly it was to bad beats, but it really smacked my confidence into the dirt. I dropped down to the $50’s again. The next time I played I lost more. I got down to $300 or so on UB, thus losing pretty much all of that night’s earnings. I only really played once more after that and now sit at $400. So on all sites tallied together I sit at $650 or so for the year. That is a cool $150 profit for the year. I really haven’t put in much time this year, but with the time I have, I should be up quite a bit more. I am truly disappointed with myself and my game. Unless I play with my Bro again I plan on playing full-ring.

Hey Another Update

2007-04-18T18:57:00.000-04:00

I have really neglected my blog lately. I have been having some personal issues. I have not played much poker in the last month and a half. I checked my blog and saw Ricky’s comment and went over to X’s blog. I started to wonder if that was why I had been losing and playing even poker at the micros. Had I actually outgrown it? Had I learned advanced moves that most at those stakes just weren’t getting? You can’t trick someone if they don’t at least have the skills to be caught. I only have maybe $500 in my roll at the morning. Yes, pretty much right where I started the friggin’ year at. So I decided to take a hundred and give it a shot at the stakes where I was frequenting before my cashouts. I know variance has had a chance to slap me around yet but I made $130 last night. I have 2 hands here, one that made me money and one that lost me cash. Neither were real smart I think. If the first guy had a higher flush I’d be saying how bad I played it. The second one there is absolutely no mistaking my horrendous play. I kind of sucked myself into it. You’ll see.

I’m in small blind and decide to call with 64 of spades.

I don’t usually play that shit, as Greb could attest, if he is still around, but I’ve started playing those types of hands at local live games. They are pretty concealed when they hit, but also can get you into trouble. I usually only play hands that I usually know right where I’m at in the hand on the flop and can start the ram and jam technique or get out. I have to grow sometimes right?

Flop comes T86 with 2 spades; obviously you know the ones.

I min-raise and the guy to my left goes over the top. All fold back to me. I call, fishing for a black shovel. Oh yea, a 6 would be cool also.

Turn – 2 of spades.

I check to the aggressor. He bets slightly less than pot. I ram hard. He pushes the remainder of his $75 that he started the hand with. Huge pot now. I don’t totally remember what I needed to call this pot with. Likely around $40. I have no read on this guy. I have only been at the table for twenty and I had been playing the fold junk and back to web surfing thing that I do. I’m really hoping for trips on his part, or even better, what he actually had because he was drawing dead. I really doubt that he would have raised my bet with the flush draw. I know I would usually call and get a cheap look. But if he was that crafty, he most likely had the higher flush. Enough drama – at showdown he turned over a Big Blind Special or more like a BB Fuckin’ of 97o for the flopped straight. I take $75 in that hand. If I would have lost that hand I know I would have taken it as a bad omen and said the hell with poker for awhile longer. Thanks Lady Variance or sucking me back in. LOL.

Next I played like a total amateur. I am truly ashamed of losing $40 with the obvious losing hand.

It comes around to me and I raise it up 4 or 5xBB with my Hooks. I get min-reraised by a guy a few seats to my left. Everyone folds back to me and I decide to call.

I normally fold in this spot, knowing that I am near always dominated here, and at best a coin-flip with AK. But I decide to pay the little and hope to spike a J and likely stack him if I do.

Flop comes 9-high.

I know I’m beat here and had already decided to just see the flop. Yet wee, I have an over-pair and get enthralled by its allure. I check and he bets. I push because he only had $40 to start the hand. He calls and at showdown he shows his Cowboys. Dumb, Dumb, Dumb. This is a hole that I pledge to fill right now. I fold that now PF and even QQ in this situation. Another option would be to see that flop but have the will-power to fold if you miss no matter the flop.

All in all, I played well. I ended up playing 2 big hands and won them both. The rest of the time I really just stayed slightly ahead of the blinds.

Let’s see how tonight fairs the weary traveler.

Later, Ash out.

I Almost Forgot – I Have Played Live a Few Times Lately.

2007-04-11T03:25:00.000-04:00

The night before I left on my trip C called me and said that there a local game that was short and was looking for players. I of course I couldn’t turn it down even though I was leaving the Fam for a week. They were playing tourney style with rebuys before the start of the fourth round and no add-ons. They only wanted to buy-in for $10. Cheap game. That is why I like playing cash games. The rounds were overly slowly raised. We all started with like 2500 to 3000 in chips and blinds went like 10/20, 20/40, 30/60, 40/80, 50/100, 60, 120 etc. At least at those humble stake changes I was able to sit&swoop, sit&swoop. By the 4th round I was up nicely. I had hit a few nice hands and got some loose calls to showdown. The chip leader was a dude I’d never seen. He didn’t look up often and wore a chook (nit cap) although it was hot as shit in the house. He had accumulated all those chips and I noticed that he had never even went to showdown. He was aggressive at the right times. I was impressed because he had double the next largest stack. Finally at like level 7 we lost a player or 2. Numb-nuts finally had to showdown a hand. He had raised with 65o and kept betting it to the end. The chick beside me had called his bets the whole time with a paired king. Both had hit there pr on the flop. K’s vs 5’s to the river and he hit his 6 for 2 pr. She called and we got our first glimpse of his play. Within the next 2 or 3 rounds he had lost most of his stake and was one of the shorties. He then made a hell of a comeback. The shortie at the table doubles-up like 3 times in quick secession. He then bets hard PF. I push figuring that he will call. He does and my KK hold up and I am one of the biggies. Chook dude works his way back to top stack. Only 3 places pay. $75, $25, $10. Chook guy and I make it to HU with me having 2/3rds his stack. I go hyper-agro. He folds a bit and then fights back nicely. WE play forever. Then one hand gets ugly. I have 2pr and raise his flop bet and take control on the turn. He keeps calling. There’s a straight draw on the board. The river puts 4 cards to a straight on the board. He checks. I bet. He raises me hard. God don’t tell me this fag hit this crap straight. I won’t have much left if I fold. I call. He didn’t even have a pr. He was totally playing the player there. Maybe not, but he was playing that hand with the sole purpose of bluffing me off of it if he missed his flop. I have a nice chip lead but slowly lose way do to him pushing non-stop. I finally get KT and check hoping for the push. He bets hard instead. I push. He sits there forever. We had started at 8:30pm and it was 12:30am. He finally says that he would normally fold here but it was little. He turns over KJ and has a stranglehold on the hand. I make $15 bucks for my effort. I played well and put some moves on a few people. I think I already have these guys’ respect. Hopefully I get a callback. $10 tourneys suck, but at least it’s a change-up from my normal mundane cash games. Now that’s a freakin’ paragraph.

I played two mini cash games. 1st one I made $18. There were 4 of us all with $20. $18 ain’t bad. 2nd time at the mini cash game we play with a total of $80 and I win $3. not too bad considering that I was down to $5.50 once midway. 3rd game I lost $12.

Trip Stress is Over Because I Passed

2007-04-10T01:24:00.000-04:00

Trip is over. I passed my tests. Man am I glad to be home. Living out of a hotel really sucks.

I played a little on Sat and Sun. I did alright. I just sat and waited to hit hard and start jamming. There are so very loose callers on Px, which helps my bottom-line.

Very first time I sat and played I got the KK vs AA smackdown. Nothing like seeing 2 raises before you at a 6-max table when you’re in the BB. I raised big and the guy pushed. And bang there goes a buyin I really couldn’t afford.

After that hand I sat and pounced. I made a little money. Now that they paid my Mon rake and I now sit at $125. 2 months of playing and I am up $25. God I suck.

Whine Time: Deal With It

2007-03-31T13:33:00.001-04:00

I just can’t believe the fucking beats I am taking. Once again if it wasn’t for no-rake I ‘d broke. I raked in over $50 this week, which I will get back on Monday. These beats are bad, but we all see them from time to time. Well, these 3 all can in the same session. I be up big time if not for this shit. Come on I deserve some breaks soon.

1 – KK and I raise PF. He calls my raise with 86o. Flop 8-high. I bet flop and he pushes. Maybe this is a bad call on my part? I don’t even know anymore. Should I think set every time some jerk-off pushes my flop and I only sit with an OP. (over-pair) What do you think, do you fold here and what for a better time to get your money in? I call and he shows his 86 and I laugh aloud. Got caught with your pants down aye punk I’m thinking to myself, when the river brings a 6. I am devastated.

2 – AA hero. He raises $1 PF with Q9s. I make it $3. He calls. The flop comes Q82. He checks. I bet the pot. He pushes. Once again do you fold thinking 2pr or set? I call and he shows TPFD. (top pr – flush draw) River 9 and I’m livid. I scream out loud and tell my wife who has just been interrupted for watching some gay sitcom that the world is against me.

3 – To top this BS session off, I get a guy to go all-in PF with his QQ vs AA. Q right on the flop. I scream like a little girl and logout for the evening.

I haven’t played much in the last 2 days because I have been playing a RPG game called Fate. It came installed on my new Dell that came in this week. My 6 year old computer in now living in a box in the back room where it’s slow ass belongs.

Today’s my birthday. I’m 32 today. That’s cool I guess.

This will be the last update for a week or so. I have a company trip to go on.

Later, Donkass out.

Donkass Strikes Back

2007-03-26T23:30:00.001-04:00

The last 2 mornings after work, I played at World at the $25NL 6-max tables. I played 3 hrs each day. I took a few beats and only ended up about $15 the first morn. I played a decent game both days overall. I am getting pretty good at position moves on the 6-max tables.

This morning I ended down like $10. I played a decent game both days overall. I got slapped by an all-in with my set of K’s vs the nut flush draw. I bet, he raised, and I pushed. At the point of the push he did have the odds to call, but it still hurt to get stacked when you go in with the nuts. I also miss-played a hand I call a $1.50 PF raise with AKo and end up isolated against him on the flop. K-high, small, small rainbow flop. He bets ½ pot. I more than double his raise, slightly less than what pot would’ve been with his bet added in with the current pot. He pushes and had me covered. I have Like $20 left in front of me at that point. I can’t make this call right? Oh yes I can. That is the kinda shit we are talking about. This was an atrocious call. It screamed set, but I just couldn’t let it go. So I’m looking at $20 in that 1 hand that absolutely shouldn’t have touched that pot. So a few big hands; one a rivered flush and then a bad play on my part. I am down for the session and I can only think about the what if’s. One variance and one straight-up donkified goodness. I can only improve on the donkey shit.

I can’t stand my game this year. I didn’t really make any money; I played pretty much even poker. This shit is getting old. I’m up maybe $150 for the year as of yet. It is really frustrating the shit out of me. I know winning $5000 last year at the small stakes that I played at wasn’t just luck. I do have skills. I am just in a horrible slump or I changed something very dramatic in my game. I don’t see it though. Same old me, far as I can guess. Something is wrong though because this is over tons of hands so variance should really be out of the equation at this point this year, unless you can really hit a 3 month slump. If not for rake in the last few weeks, if I would have stayed at my current stakes, I’d likely sit at $10 or $15 dollars right now. I am currently up $10 or $15 on World. The big thing that I have noticed this year so far in regards to my slump. I have beaten the rake as of yet and actually make decent money at $25NL. But every time I climb to the $50 so far I have lost big in the very first session that I decide to give it a try. Once I was drunk and the other set-backs were do to bad beats and bad plays. So I think I will try to stay away from the 50’s for now.

Later, Donkass out.

Not Good...AKA... Bitch (Lady Variance) is That All You Got

2007-03-23T20:50:00.000-04:00

Poker didn’t go good this week. I played mostly at World. I took 3 huge beats. 2 5-outers and 1 2 outer. I also lose to the flush-draw that called my KK allin on the turn. Ok done whining I think. I played enough to make $50 in rake, that I’ll recoup on Monday. With the rake I will be slightly above the hundred I started with a few weeks ago. So really not too bad with variance slapping me around. So if I keep up this pace, once variance turns, I’ll be making rake money. I can deal with that.

Last night I played at Px until all the tables fizzled away. I was pretty drunk by that time on some Chabis. I was playing a few tables at a time while reading blogs. When Px died I took my ass to UB. I got on 2 $50 tables. In the first 30 min I was down $125 due to some bad play on my part. I guess that’s what I get for playing drunk. I just can’t seem to go forward this year. It’s the old cliché: 1 step for 2 steps back. I need to break the cycle.

I really must have some leaks going. The only real difference I see is that I’m now playing 6-max. I don’t know if I won’t to go back to full ring though. I have to figure this thing out. I know I make some bad plays. Like putting it all on the line with the flush draw. I really need to stop the chasing; it is killing me.

I do think if I spend most of my time on Px I will make some cash in the long run. I need to make enough though to move back up stakes, so I can get back on the $50 and $100 tables. It is actually pretty soft there. There are a lot of Swedish players there that are super loose and will go all the way with shit. All-ins PF with AJo, QJs. They often don’t worry about kickers. The one thing that you really have to watch out for is them calling your PF raises with junk and hitting hard. They try the crap often. It is so well hidden that it is hard to get off your PF monster, especially knowing that they fight with crap. There are also a lot of push-monkeys that buy in cheap and play hard and loose.

It will come to me, I have to keep trying. I am still up for the year, yet barely. Good luck at the tables.

Not About Poker But Damn Funny

2007-03-17T17:32:00.000-04:00

Connors you sly dog you!

Little Update

2007-03-17T14:53:00.000-04:00

I didn’t play a lot these days off. I played a little on UB, Px, and Stars. I won a little on UB and currently sit at $430. On Px I played dead even poker, but raked in $20 in rakeback, so I sit at $120. Stars. I won around $15 and am at $150. I am slowly working my way to that bonus. I still have a ways to go. I didn’t play at FT, but I have $55 there.

I took $100 off in Jan. or early Feb to start my cash roll. I just put $100 back on out of my cash roll, so that evens out.

So far this year I have netted $255. I’m not happy with that. I really need to get going if I’m going to replay last years $5,000, not to mention my lofty goal of 10,000.

The big problem is starting with such a small BR. I need to maybe take a few chances and hopefully score a few nice cashes, so I can move up stakes farther. You’re only going to make so much playing $10 and $25 tables. The problem is that the 2 times so far that I tried to risk the $50 tables I’ve taken a setback, thus diminishing the roll enough that I had to move back down to recoup.

Home Game

2007-03-15T12:57:00.000-04:00

We had a home game again these days off. This was 1 of the 3 times that I left the house. Only 5 of us showed. It was a good time. We played from 6pm to 1:30am. Crazy play tonight. I lost 2 hands that would have made me a big winner if life was aligned with the planets. I played well. No big prs for me all night long. AK a few times.

2 big hands of the night. Sad play in both of these hands.

Hand 1 – I have A7s. AJ has Q7o. PS has 65o. All limp. 779. PS checks, AJ bets, I raise, and PS calls. Turn a 2. PS checks. AJ checks. I make a bet. PS raises me. AJ calls, as do I. River is the miracle 8. PS goes all-in for $16 more. AJ thinks awhile and also calls. I look at the board. There is a straight-draw on the board. There is also a flush-draw. The board is paired, so the boat could be lurking out in the water. With 2 already willing to put their money in, I decide to fold. I lose like $15 on the hand. But I saved the other $16 by not calling. AJ was devastated with PS’s play on the hand. He whined for a good 1/2 hr. I thought both of them played it poorly. PS playing crap. AJ calling the river with that board and me having showed aggression on the last street and still yet to act behind his call.

Hand 2 – AJ and CS. AJ raises PF with AA. CS calls with J8o. Flop comes something like T92 all hearts. AJ raises to $7 in a $4 pot because he doesn’t have a heart and wants to take it down right there. CS thinks about it and calls. His J was a heart, plus his straight-draw. Turn comes an unsuited Q. AJ bets $15. CS raises all-in for $5 or so more with his draw. AJ calls. River is a blank and CS goes home mad at his luck. I sat with him at work and explained to him how badly he played the hand and why. He still doesn’t quite understand. He has that Dealer’s Choice with wild cards mentality and likes to leave it up to luck too often. I try to help him, but he usually says that he knows what he did wrong, even though he only realizes about half of why he misplayed a hand. It is truly hard for a know-it-all to learn. I think that he is so competitive that learning is even competitive for him. It is up to him.

CS lost again - $25.

DS lost close to $40.

PS won $2.

I won $7.

AJ won close to $50.

Sleep of the Dead

2007-03-15T11:19:00.000-04:00

I was depressed this week. I slept for 16 hrs a day on my 4 days off. I would get on to play and be done within an hr and go right back to the bedroom. Last week I ran out of my anti-depressants and I actually was energized and happy while off. Now that I renewed my script, I have zero ambition. I think I will get off of those pills and see if was mere coincidence or not. I only went outside 3 times these 4 days off and 2 of those were commitment that I couldn’t shirk. I slept right up until I had to go.

I took a hundred of my live bankroll and added to my online BR. I put it on WPEX. I have played a little there this week when I actually played. I made a little bit plus $20 in rake coming back on Monday. I also played at UB with my Bro for a few hrs. I sat 3 $50 tables. I doubled-up once, so I made $50 on UB this week.

Hopefully I get on next week and actually feel like playing.

Later depressedass out.

Mini Home Game

2007-03-12T14:58:00.000-04:00

I played a mini-home game with just 3 others for 2 hrs or so. We had stuff to do so we didn't play long. It went fairly well. good game. I didn't win a hand for 30 min or so. No cards. I played quite a few flops, with it being short-handed, but still didn't hit any. I then turned it all around and took over the big stack. we decide to give about 20 mor in when my big hand comes. It doesn't turn out good for me though. I hit the nut flush-draw on the flop. I call a bet and hit air on the turn. I call a bigger bet. River brings my straight, but it also pairs the board. D bets, I raise, and he reraises. It wasn't much more to call, plus D over-values often. Not this time; his 2 pr becomes a boat. I lose a lot of my stack. We quit soon aften so I run out of time to try to get it back. Not a lot of money was spent because of the short time frame. Rundown below.

DS - +$13

Me - +$7

CS - -$4

PV - -$15

Famous Last Words

2007-03-11T06:44:00.000-04:00

…Things were looking good. The river brought my flush, but it also paired the board…

Even Steven or Son-of-a

2007-03-08T20:45:00.000-05:00

I got on Tuesday and played awhile. My bro got on and since we were going to play together I dropped 2 tables so we could concentrate on 1 table. I suggested that we bump it up to a $50 6-max game. I’d been playing 3 $25 tables so 1 $25 just seemed like it wouldn’t give me my fix. I need that rush, baby. Stupid move on my part. I set up a new database in PT and got on. There was a guy that was 75/15/3 or something very close. Even without HUD going it was obvious that this was the guy to target. Pretty early on I get AQs and call his PF raise. I get my A on the flop. I smooth-call his bet. Or I thought I did. Turn x and I raise his bet this time. He calls. Q hits the river giving me Aces-up. He bets; I push. He calls and shows down a flopped set of 3’s. I go on to lose another $25 with TPTK against someone different. He has to go to work, which was a good thing, because I could be a punk and drop back down to my new home: the perpetual $25NL tables.

I set my database back and startup my 3 tables again. I played for a little while and recouped the $75 with some big hands. I took off a few hrs and hung-out with the Fam. I ended up going to bed at 10pm or so. I didn’t take my sleeping pills purposely because I needed to stay up all night, due to having to work Wednsday night shift. I woke up at 2am and went and got on. I was tired and should have played super-tight while I was getting the lethargy from my system. I got in a few big hands and dropped a few buyins. That woke my ass up real quick like. I had been playing for 20 or 30 mins and then just realized that I had forgotten to hit the start timer in PT. It didn’t even dawn on me that the stats never popped up on most players after 25 hands. Only the stats for people that I had already logged were showing up. So the ass-whippin’ got the sleep out of my eyes and I set in for the long grind. I got back to even at about 6am and then took a few bad beats this time to drop me down again for the session. I was sick of it so I went to bed.

I checked PT for the 5 day session I’ve been on. I played 5000 hands or so. I lost $50. So that’s -$1/100 or –4ptbb/100. I paid out $70 in rake. I also accrued $50 in the points program, so ultimately I am even for the week. That really sucks my friends. I apparently have more leaks than I thought. One variable might also be that I am new to the 6-max game. At least I didn’t lose any money this week. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

'81 WSOP Main Event

2007-03-08T02:30:00.000-05:00

Give these vids a look-see. It is the ’81 WSOP Main Event. There were bad beats back then also. LOL. You can tell by the clothes and hair that disco hadn’t quite died yet. Thank god that it did. It looks like a poker party at Dirk Digler’s house. There is also an old fat dude at the final table with a top hat on. There’s even a young Texas Dolly in the background. (He must have busted out earlier, because I’m pretty sure he wasn’t just there to watch the show. $10,000 is a lot of money now, so you could likely buy a nice car for that kind of loot. Stu Ungar is the defending Champ. Young Stu is only slightly less ugly that older Stu. I doubt Pepsi was knocking down his door to do any commercials With all the parts it is around 60 min long. So sit back, plug in the lava lamp, turn on some Bee Gee’s, and watch some U-tube with me.

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Slow-rollin'

2007-03-08T02:27:00.000-05:00

Turbulent Sleep or

2007-03-06T07:43:00.000-05:00

I did something weird last night...err, well I did 2 weird things last night. One is private and very sick; the other one more mundane, but unusual as of late. I went to sleep while it was still dark outside. I actually went to bed at 11pm. I didn't take my prescribed sleeping pills like I was supposed to because I planned on getting up to play after Ash-wife went to sleep. I decided to stay in bed though. Of course I tossed and turned most of the night, awaking from stage 1 and 2 dreams over and over. I never got lucky and found that 3-way dream either, but I did use that special sock anyways... and the curtains... and sadly the wall. Actually I did the wall first and just tidied up with the sock and the curtain. Who says guys can't clean.

I basically played poker for my 4 days off and made like 15 smackers as of yet. And I put in some big hrs. I was up like as high as $80 and low as -$2. So my UB bankroll currently sits at $287. I also loaned out $50 to BR the bro. And I have $200 or so across Stars, Tilt, and Epassporte. You take out rake - I'm up big. You take out my shit play - I'm up big. I can only do so much with rake, so I need to focus on my bad plays. And not just results oriented bad plays - no bad plays in general. The results just make me more aware to look at those particular hands. One of my biggest problems I see is investing too much in drawy hands. I need to keep those pots small so when I miss I'm not out much. I'll estimate about half of those hands I could have kept the pot smaller. I don't know if I would make more money in the long-run by keeping small pots when I miss or making big bigger pots hoping to hit. I know, small when I miss and large when I hit. Brilliant. Only if were that easy, shit if I could magically or at least technologically see there hole cards every hand, that would be great too. I'll have to look into that. Well, it is something that I am going to focus on hard and tweek to help out the bottonline. As for the rake issue, there's only so much one can really do. UB has a weekly turn points to cash program, which I will make this week. Hopefully for $50 and not just $25. That just shows how much I played these days off. I hope to get to 1000 points and that's a shitload of hands at the $25 stakes. Also, my wife is planning on buying Ash-boy a laptop soon. I plan on downloading my programs and commandeering it when he doesn't have homework. God, I'm selfish. Can you imagine my being able to run around the house freely, cooking, or more correctly stated, snacking, and being able to play while taking a piss or dropping a bomb. If you are currently imagining me taking a dump, I would very much like you to go ahead and cease that right about now... veins protruding out on my forehead and that deep furrow between my brow. Damnit, I said stop picturing it. But if you do picture me pissing, hook a brotha up and add some major length to my man-junk. BTW, if you guys are done imagining me at my private tasks, lets get back to my rake issues if you please. With the new laptop and new IP address I can create a new UB account and get rakebreak. So, with the rakebreak, the points bonus (which lowers the rakebreak % slightly) and the occasional reload bonus, I should be able to cut down my rake significantly and make some better earnings. But ultimately I need to work on my leaks.

I have to go back on night shift tomorrow night, so it didn't really make any sense to have slept last night. But when do I ever do the sensible thing. Hell, I never should have done all those drugs when I was a kid, or for that matter, watched that Mexican donkey show. Damn, mine eyes!! I plan on putting in a super session today and tonight, with some family breaks thrown in of course. What was that which Greb commented last week: Family can be -EV for the bankroll. You're truly a sad piece of work Sir.

I have a Vid I will post today or tomorrow. I enjoyed it very much. And the retro clothes and hair styles were the cat's ass. Um... I really don't know where that saying came from, but for some reason the cat's ass means good.

Later Donkass out.

Donkass Donks Off Some Earnings

2007-03-05T11:33:00.000-05:00

I played like a total nimrod. I was down $75 within 30 min of playing. I just couldn't get away from a few hands where I knew I was beat. Afterward, I played well even though I didn't win any back. One of those times when you win one then you lose one. The ol' yig-yag session. I think I will try not to mix it up until I get a little time under my belt and get into the flow of the game. Easier said than done, but I will try. I ended up dropping $80 or so.

I didn't start until late last night because we had an impromptu home game. Dougie called and we started up a small game at 6pm. That really worked out nice. I was home by 11pm.

It was just 4 of us. D, C, AJ, and me. AJ has become a regular and the only player that I have to watch out for. He tried all night long to slow-roll me, but luckily I dodged his tricks except for a few small pots. It is hard for me to win anything off of him. He respects my game too much for some reason and misses value bets, which is advantageous, but he also folds to my aggression often. He also often folds PF even if I limp into a hand. He once folded a flopped flush where he held T4s. I flopped 2 pr and when he bet the flop I raised hard to see if I was beat or not. He thinks long and hard, then he throws in his flush face-up. I show and he just shakes his head.

I played great. I ran the short table the whole session; 2 nice runs of cards helps too. I hit sets 4 times, twice with aces. D bought in twice and C bought thrice. I kept taking their money and talking them into reloading. I felt like a pusher-man. Get your fix here... I have got's da good shit baby... You can't win 'less you play baby... It takes money to make money... Bitch where's my money... etc., etc, and on I pimp my hoes.

Big hand of the night was the last hand of the night. I rasie PF with A9s. C calls. Flop comes A9x-small. C looks at his cards hard and long. So I know he has something. He is a huge calling station. He always goes for the Um-possibles. he then just checks, I bet, he calls. A on turn and daddy likely. I check after he does. X-small and he opens this round. I more than double. He announces a raise and never even looks up. I realize that he has the other Ace and was smooth-calling the whole hand and going for the kill. He thinks if he doesn't look at me I will think weakness. I'll have to remember that. I asked what he had left and told him that I'd put him all-in. He pouts and says that he had to call. He shows ATo and I rake in all his cash. We call it a night. I won $65. AJ won almost $25. This is the third time in a row that C has lost and the third time I've won. I am glad, honestly that he has been knocked down a notch. He was ridin' too cocky. The bragging has ceased. Reality his descended upon him and hopefully humbled him somewhat.

Edit: I just remembered that I didn't proof read this early this morning before I went to bed. Boy was it rough. So sorry to anyone that read it before I fixed it.

Poker Broker

2007-03-05T11:15:00.000-05:00

I dropped by Mr Subliminal's blog and saw this pic. I saw it earlier on Waffles' spot. It still makes me laugh.

Vendetta-tilt or Good Night

2007-03-05T00:26:00.000-05:00

Good night last night. I made a few miss-steps early on. It is almost like I need to work the donk plays out of myself through pain and embarrassment. Then I usually tighten-up a bit and stop loosely chasing draws. Anyway, I made $80 for the night 3-tabling 6-max $25NL.

One issue that I need to work on is allowing certain players to put me on tilt against them. I'll have a loose player or total donk hit some crap on me and I will spend extra time trying to get my money back. I will loosen up against that player and play all paint and any type of coordinated boards to try to get redemption. I am especially vulnerable to this vendetta-tilt if they antagonize me in the girly chat. I don't ever type anything after a beat but often another player will berate their play and then they will start bragging. My ego swells and I go into payback mode. Often I lose more money to these assholes because they either hit some crap on me or more likely I get into a fight with them with a junk kicker or marginal holding that I normally wouldn't even play. Often this perpetuates me into total tilting donkdom.

Case in point. I get in a hand with a guy that just steps onto the table 2 cycles prior with $5. In those first 2 circuits at the table he is in 3/4 of the pots, often winning with questionable kickers and gets up to $12. This dude's handle was Gotchanigga. Likely some young punk that thinks he's funny with his racist screen name. You'd think UB would oust those kinda names. I flop 2pr on a pretty innocuous board. He bets, I double his bet. He pushes the rest of his $12. I gladly call. He hits a gut-buster straight-draw. He then writes in all caps: GOTCHA NIGGA. This was very racist towards me, because I am packing a mammoth package (not only in total length but also in overall girth) with a gargantuan afro of a man-bush, so obviously there is some black somewhere in my lineage. This was a totally pathetic statement and put me on insta-tilt. I then blew the rest of that buy-in until he leaves 30 mins or so later. God was I mad. After he left I calmed down and began to play my normal game again. This definitely is a leak and is something that need to work on. My Psychology book should have a chapter on poker. That would be cool.

No other big hands to report. OK, well, one more. I limp with A2s and get raised to 6xBB or so. I get adventurous and call. Flop comes 543 rainbow. Booya. I cha-check. He bets pot. I figure him for high PP. Obviously , odds of 76 or 62 are super low. I raise him hard. He pushes; I call $35 total. 6 turn. 7 river. He shows AA and we spit the pot. Even though I didn't lose here, I felt cheated. I'll stop whining now.

Later.

The 3-way or Going for the Draws Hits Home

2007-03-03T21:53:00.000-05:00

Last night was a long grueling grind. I dropped 2 buy-ins in the first couple of hrs. Both buy-ins were due to me semi-bluffing with a nut flush draw. Well, one of those I wasn't the aggressor, I actually called a double all-in with my monster draw. Probably not a good move, but just like all guys, I couldn't withstand the allure of my first 3-way. This 3-way didn't turnout well for the whole group though. (I've heard it can be like that.) Only 1 person climaxed, there was an awkward silence, and 2 of us were left unfulfilled, broke, and riveted by thoughts of what might have been. OK, enough with the innuendo for now. I think that I got a little caught-up in the aggressiveness and fast-paced nature of 6-max early on. I then tightened up my belt another notch and sat back and waited for good hands so I could pounce, like a dormant seed patiently waiting for the first rays of spring. I sat for hrs and slowly some nice hands came my way. And when they did, I sprang forth and germinated all over their faces. Oops, their goes that innuendo again. In the wee morning hrs I got back to even and actually was up slightly. Then, BANG, 2 horrible bad beats within 20 mins on the same table and there I am down 2 freakin' buy-ins again. The first was a runner-runner double-gutbuster straight.( I think I actually pooped just a little in my drawers when he showed down that shit. 2nd one was a 4-outer gut-shot draw semi-bluff that I correctly called with one card left, with my set; the river brings his miracle. But hey, I did hit a 2-outer earlier in the night of my own, when my QQ ran into AA PF vs an AGRO bastard that was raise 1/4 of the time PF. It was 6am in the morning and I was totally tilting. I took my sleeping pills and hit the dream world to see if I could tune my REM stage onto a fantasy 3-way channel. I keep that spare single sock by the bed just in case.

McDonald's

2007-03-01T21:25:00.000-05:00

Every freakin' time I go to McDonald's, they screw up my order. I have to get out, go break in line, and tell them to fix my order and give me the rest of my caloric goodness. This used to really piss me off. I would ride home with my blood pressure boiling, contemplating their deaths, in horrible manners.

But not tonight - I walked in calmly, an with a polite and serene demeanor, asked the fat, overly-feminine, manager to remedy the situation. My psychology studies have really helped me out lately; the more I study the more I learn and understand human behavior and truly what really makes people tick. It didn't bother me that they messed up tonight because I now realize that they can't help it. They are, in scientific terms, what they refer to as, total incompetent, no-goal-setting, under-achieving, absolute, unadulterated, fucking, morons. And obviously that is why they work at Mickey-D's at 35 year's of age. It is also why they likely still live in mom's basement jerking off to sticky, old issues of Maxim Magazine, using discarded fryer grease to lube the ol' johnson up.

Man I'm telling you, these psych classes are honestly making a difference, giving me a positive view towards life. God I love education. Serenity now.

Later, Donkass out.

A Moment of Thought and Reflection.

2007-02-28T10:27:00.000-05:00

I will not play tonight. My wife was mad at me last night. I can home from work at 7pm and got right on the computer. I didn’t really even talk to her and the kids – just a comment here and there. I ate my supper at the computer while playing cards. I played till 9:30pm, got off, took a bath and read a book for ½ an hr, and went to bed. When I got out of the tub Ash-wife and the kids were already in the bed. When I slid into bed, my wife distantly and somberly told me how that made her feel. Honestly I didn't even realize that I was being distant and selfish with my time. It didn’t even dawn on me. I'm dumb like that sometimes. For someone that watches everything at the table, you would think that I'd be a very observant person. I do empathize with her and see it from her perspective. So tonight I will come home, put poker out of my thoughts, and spend the remaining evening with the family. (Like I should.)

It is weird how sometimes things, that once pointed out to you, seem so obvious, yet you can be to totally oblivious to it without help. It is called hindsight bias. I will have to think about how my poker affects my family and not just blindly jump on the computer the moment that I walk in the door. It makes it seem like they come second in my mind. So I will try to play most of my poker these next days off after everyone hits the hay.

Just a little food for thought. This is a side of online poker that isn’t discussed often; probably because we subconsciously don’t want to admit that we are sometimes neglecting our duties in life. It is actually a sign of addiction. I do know that I’m not addicted or at least not too bad anyways. I don’t play every waking hr or anything such as that. I also often take multiple days off and do other things. So check yourself and make sure the next time you get on, that your priorities are where they should be. Also take a minute and empathize with you family and think how you are affecting them. Basically think about how others see you and how you make them feel. Make poker your hobby, not your life.

Later bad, bad Donkass out.

Playing With My New Software

2007-02-28T10:25:00.000-05:00

I played last night after work. I got on and played with my Bro. We got on UB on a $25NL 6-max table. I set up a new data base on PT for the stakes, type, and site that I was playing, as to be able to manage the stats better and also to track common players over time. My Bro has been playing as long as I have but doesn’t frequent forums or read many poker books so he had never heard of PT or Hud. I told him and immediately he sad isn’t that cheating. I told him kinda, but not totally – I added how most other players were using the technology. The only think that still doesn’t seem fair is seeing hole cards at showdown, even if they don’t want you to and muck. He downloaded the trail version of both and I ran him through the setup and config. He was impressed with the stats. We both discussed how we have been at an unfair advantage the whole time we have been playing without this – especially at 6-max. I honestly think poker would be better off without the software. But since it is out there, you need it to just the playing field. No wonder they fold when I get the Big 4. Bastards. Plus seeing my hole cards totally showed them what I was willing to play and draw with. They could and I’m sure they did take that into account on subsequent hands.

The hands were coming fast with only 6 of us at the table. Also good cards were coming fast for me. I played for 2 hrs and got in almost 200 hands. I hit some nice hands and got paid off well. I took a few beats also. 1 2-outer for $10. But I kept climbing. I was feeling the table well. I ran a few guys off the table. I played against 2 guys (one at a time during the 2 hrs) were I got real aggressive. I showed a lot of bluffs and got called down when I had something multiple times. It felt good to run the table. Me being the TAG guy, I don’t get to run the flow of the table, I just hit and wait – hit and wait. So yea, it was exhilarating and quite the rush. But at 6-max you have to loosen up if you want to bet the blinds and rake.

Here’s my session. Later donkass out.

UB 6-Max $25NL

2007-02-27T21:43:00.000-05:00

The 4 Days Off

2007-02-27T13:00:00.000-05:00

Here’s the rundown of my last few days. I played only 2 lengthy sessions and that was yesterday. I couldn’t get any money on WPEX, because they don’t take Epassporte or Click2pay. They take Visa so maybe I can use my debit card.

Anyways, I put $250 of my roll on Stars. I have never played at stars other than forum tourneys. I played $100 NL 6-max that first morning of my days off. I only played 1 table. I was up $80 or so when I decided to try and go to sleep. I couldn’t go to sleep even though I was wore out. I got back on and ended up not only losing my mornings profit, but also $50 .

I played just a little over the next few days. I would get on and get someone to go in on the turn with me ahead and miraculously hit some junk on the river. I now know why they call it River Stars. I would get sucked-out on and just not feel like playing anymore that day or for at least for hrs anyway. Once I had 2 pr and go in against a guy with aces for all his cash and the river pairs the board giving him Aces-up. Onther guy stacked me when he went in against my set with a gut-shot and spikes. I end up down for those 2 days another $80.

Yesterday I got on and took anther hit for $ 50. I then got off and delved into my Poker Tracker software and learned how to set it up. I then did some searching on the net for Pokerace Hud. I downloaded their trail and configured it with PT. I got back on Stars and went to the $10NL Full Ring tables. I got 3 going with PAH and PT going. The trail version only allowed me to use stats on one table and a few stats were also blocked. All in all, I really don’t know why I never used it. It isn’t really cheating. Everyone has access to it. The stats are more than I could divulge by watching the table that is for sure though. The one item that Ace Hud does do that pretty much constitutes cheating is that if a hand goes to showdown you get to see the hole cards whether or not the person mucks facedown. I can see that being a real benefit. It really sinks in how much info players are using against me. They can tell if I most likely will fold my SB and/or BB to a steal; if I will usually CB or not, if I will usually fold on the flop, turn, or river bet; how many hands that I put money in; how often I raise PF, flop, turn, and river; ect., ect., ect. I honestly see now that I have been at a huge disadvantage for a long time and surely more the higher I went up in stakes. I will be buying the full version very shortly. I also can see the info working better at 6-max than at FR. With only 5 others at the table you could really use those stats to manipulate yours and their play. The cutoff and button really becomes a weapon. I will have to get back in there and try some 6-max in the future. Obviously you are up against Ace Hud at the 6-max tables with almost everyone using it I’m guessing.

I played 900 hands and made like $40. I am happy with that. I also have a $120 bonus I am working towards. I am over halfway there. I got it for depositing in August of last year. I think I will stay at these stakes for a little while on Stars. I will also play on UB with my Bro sometimes. I like playing 3 FR tables and 1 or 2 micro tourneys at the same time. I really like Stars tourney structure.

2007-02-27T11:33:00.000-05:00

Home Game

2007-02-27T11:28:00.000-05:00

We had a home game on Saturday night. I did well again. A few new people came, but we had less total people than the last 2 times out. AJ showed up again. He is the only person that I really even have to worry about. All the other guys are pretty predictable. AJ actually has one bad habit that I hope to exploit at some point. I haven’t had a hand yet to call his play. He pushes his whole stack in on the flop or turn with either a strong draw, to protect his hand from a draw, or a bluff with overs. He doesn’t do the overs often, yet I have seen it once. But I have never seen him just push with the nuts; he usually value-bets the monsters on an innocuous board. I lost one big hand. Pat opens PF to $4 at 8xBB. He does this move often with with any pockets. I pushed with Ladies knowing he would call. If it is good enough to raise with he will not fold to any aggression guaranteed. He Shows Cowboys and I lose close to $25. I end up making $48 for the night. Nothing big to discuss really. There was the usual horrid calling-station plays. Good game. We played till 3am when Pat kicked us all out. He had quit playing hrs before.

Music Would be Cool

2007-02-25T03:45:00.000-05:00

Poker Sites

Oh yea, I'm actually off of work this time. I can see me now... sitting in front of the computer with my Ivey phones on, trying not to show any virtual tells.

Comic Relief

2007-02-23T05:09:00.000-05:00

I was perusing the blogiverse (that sounded ghey and I’ll never say it again, promise) and stopped by our favorite marathoner’s blog. IG has started posting a-comic-a-day segment. I read a lot of poker comics and figured why not be a total piece of mimicking shit and post some comics. But here’s my twist: I won’t do it every day. That makes me original, right? God I hate myself. So anyway, I will post the funny ones that I run across. I’ll have to archive back on a few sites and hit you with some memorable jokie-jokes.