1) Play 10,000 hands - Passed with flying colors (17,133)
2) Maintain a 6 BB/100 win rate - Failed (5.39 BB/100 although it was just over 6.5 with rakeback included)
3) Grow BR by $300 (6BB/100 for 10,000 hands) - Passed (+ $413.20) because I played so many hands
4) Achieve a gold medal in the Iron Man Challenge - Failed (Silver) because RL got in the way. 5) Get better - Mixed. I still feel like I make horrible mistakes that cost me huge chucks of cash. I have learned to play 8 tables during this month which has really helped my $/hr.
Here is this month's graph (click for full size):
July Goals
1) Play 15,000 hands
2) Clear my mid-year $100 bonus
3) Maintain a 6BB/100 win rate
4) Grow my BR by $450
5) Be ready and rolled to play 50NL by the end of July (BR > $1200)
6) Make finding hands to post here everyday harder for myself
I'll be starting the month out at midnight tonight. Good luck all!
Well, I've finally recovered from Saturday night's festivities. What a great time. Nothing says God Bless America more than getting too drunk in and on the water waiting for someone to explode thousands of dollars worth of pyrotechnics. Oh, the delicious excesses of it all!
I did manage to play an $11 tourney yesterday afternoon and finished 2nd for $16 profit (although I got my money in good but lost to a 3 outer HU). So yet another day without the cash game grind. I doubt I play at all today but I'll be back at it tomorrow when I start clearing my $100 mid-year bonus.
Anyway, just wanted to write something here now because I didn't want anyone thinking I'd drown on Saturday. I'll post my June results and July goals here later tonight.
Last night went OK. Busted out of the tourney pretty early down $35 ($40 entry but I collected one $5 bounty). So as I sitting there waiting for a cash game to get going one of the guys I play with regularly asks if I want to a play heads-up .25/.50 game. I say sure, but then he only buys in for $20, so I do the same. Third hand of our little game I pick up 99. Brad (pronounced B-Rad) calls the blind and I raise to $2. He glares at me but calls. Flop is 4, 7, 8 rainbow. I bet $3 and Brad raises to $6 (in our games a min raise is actually called a Brad and he'll do it with anything) so I push and he calls instantly showing 47os for 2 pair. I'm sick. Turn 10. River 6. He starts to rake the chips when I ask him what he thinks he doing while pointing out my straight. He starts saying how sick it is and on and on before I remind him that he's the one who was lucky enough to flop 2 pair with 47. He buys another $20 and we continue.
When all was said and done around 3AM this morning I was up $20 on the night having erased my tourney loses and won a few bucks playing cash. I got back home just before 4:30 this morning and slept till just after noon. I'm getting ready to head to my parents river lot with the wife and a few friends to drink the night away on their boat while watching a local fireworks display. America...Fuck Yeah!
So without any real time to play a cash game session I decide to play a $24 turbo donk and go on Full Tilt. Things were going ok and I'd been up and down a little when the following hand occurred.
This is my lack of SnG prowess coming through. I should have never pushed this preflop. Accepting a coin flip for my tourney life on the bubble with a medium pair is just bad play. I'm short but there is one player in worse shape. I think if I'm going to continue to dabble in SnGs I really need to study up on ICM.
Since I won't be playing a cash session today I'm going to finish the month just shy of a gold medal. That means that I'll have a $100 mid-year bonus to clear next month instead of $125. No biggie but gold would have been nice.
Another OK session tonight. I ran just under 5 ptbb/100 over 550 hands for a total profit just over $14. Yay. I played decent for the most part and hit a few big hands. I did stack with AKs preflop and lost the coin flip when the villain (a total lagtard) showed QQ. Meh. I did run into icemonkey9 tonight as he sat at 1 of my tables for a bit. He was only at the table for about 44 hands and he played extremely tight playing only 4 hands the entire time at the table.
Tonight's chosen hand really doesn't look dumb at all at first glance. I call a bet set mining and get all in when I hit. Pretty standard really.
Do you see why this hand was the dumbest thing I did today? Notice my stack size. I started the hand with only $18.40. I had just lost a decent pot with AK and failed to reload (I normally use a script for this purpose but forgot to start it tonight). This mistake likely cost me $6.60 or 13 big bets. That's a fairly large mistake to make considering it really had nothing to do with the way I played the hand itself.
Playing live tomorrow night at a friends house. Should be interesting as I haven't played live in 3 weeks (a long time for me). I'll let you know how it goes.
Well I somehow managed to stay awake through tonight's entire session and ended up just slightly ahead of where I started (+2ptbb/100 over 800 hands). Before I started playing tonight I looked back through my last few sessions and noticed that I was going to show down a little too often (~26%) over my last 2500 hands and my SD winnings were suffering because of it. So tonight I made a conscious effort to avoid calling those ever so expensive river bets without BIG hands (Well there was 1 exception but we'll discuss that hand shortly). My WTSD stat was 23.5% and I seemed to be making better decisions overall.
In other news I also broke down and purchased Holdem Manager tonight (thanks Chuck for pointing it out and I wonder if HM gives you commission on all the sales you made at CC). Although since I didn't get the key until a few minutes ago I had to play with PT3 which oddly enough only crashed once tonight. A new record! I need to import all my hands into HM and I think I'll still keep importing to PT3 as well because I'm fairly certain that once they get their issues sorted I'll go back to it. I really just like the interface so much better, but it's the HUD that wins the $$ and it's the HUD that's broke in PT3. Sux. I did only buy the Small Stakes version of HM which only works up to 50NL because it was slightly cheaper ($55) and can be upgraded for an additional $25, so there is no penalty costs associated. Since I'm still playing 25NL at the moment and I likely will be moving up to 50NL next month (that's the plan anyway) it should serve my purposes, for a while anyway.
Now on the stupidity. This hand is one of those blind v. blind hands where 1 blind is trying to rep a big hand while the other actually has it.
I hate villains who flat call with AK! I'm too dumb to see it. Calling his min raise of my cbet here is fairly bad but could someone please explain what my dumb ass was doing on the turn AND THE RIVER?? I really have no clue what I put him on that might call 2 bets but fold on the river because almost nothing does. Just a really really bad play by me here.
So I'm playing 8 tables on Full Tilt last night at around 1 AM. I'm down about $40 and I don't think I'm playing particularly bad, just running into the nuts with 2nd best hands, KK v AA, the usual cooler type stuff. I'm probably 550 hands into what I think will be a 750 hand session and that's when it happens, I fall asleep on the couch. I wake up 2 hours later, tables still open (I've timed out long before), feeling stiff and sore. I shut everything down and stumble off to bed.
What does this tell us? That the dumbest thing I did yesterday was playing poker when I'm too tired to stay awake at the tables. I'm often fond of playing these late night sessions but I think I need to wrap my games up before passing out. It also shows that if the body needs sleep we're helpless to fight it.
I'd also like to mention that FPaulsson has decided that he no longer has the time he feels is needed to write the Cardchat Blog. His insights and analysis will surely be missed, but he has promised to post to his own blog, Fredrik Paulsson, more often. I know I'll be looking forward to reading anything he posts there.
Maybe after I play tonight, I'll post an actual hand. That is if I don't fall asleep first.
Well finally a winning session, albeit a modest one (3.5 ptbb/100). It certainly could have been better if I could only learn to stop stacking off with a couple pretty cards that make top pair or an over pair against mildly competent player. It cost me a couple of times today. For whatever reason I always think that TP is the shit right up until the point where I see that how shitty it really is.
Full Tilt, $0.10/$0.25 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 8 Players
BB bets $1.75, MP2 calls $1.75, Hero raises to $10.85, BB raises to $17.65 and is all-in, MP2 folds, Hero calls $6.80
Turn: ($40.90) 8 (2 players, 1 is all-in)
River: ($40.90) 8 (2 players, 1 is all-in)
Results: $40.90 pot ($2 rake)
BB showed K K (two pairs, Kings and Eights) and won $38.90 ($20 net)
Hero showed J A (two pairs, Jacks and Eights) and lost (-$18.90 net)
I don't know why I can't let this hand go (although my foolish pot-sized raise of his flop bet pretty much commits me). I always think this is a flush draw when it's more often a set, 2 pair or an over pair. I also stacked off with TT on a unders flop to a set of fives and I really should know better.
(Sorry I couldn't get the replayer to take the above hand).
Saturday was spent at my buddies wedding. Outdoor affair and more than a little hot in my tux. It was a little disorganized but everything went as well as you can hope aside from running a bit late. When we got to the reception it was clear that they had invited a very old, boring crowd. Basically there was never a line at the bar and there were very few of us drinking. Since he had brought a keg from the reception hall in addition to the open bar I had to drink more than my share of beer so it wouldn't be wasted.
So when my wife and I got home around midnight I was feeling pretty drunk and decided to sit down with a bunch of CC's finest for a crazy 2NL cash game. I ended up winning $4 or $5 but I should have won more if only I'd remembered we were playing seven-duece. Here is the hand.PokerStars Game #18299516662: Hold'em No Limit ($0.01/$0.02) - 2008/06/22 - 02:44:26 (ET) Table 'Philia' 9-max Seat #6 is the button Seat 1: KingCurtis67 ($3.85 in chips) Seat 2: aloevera ($5.60 in chips) Seat 3: dsvw56 ($12.16 in chips) Seat 5: KyleJRM ($3.94 in chips) Seat 6: icemonkey9 ($4.16 in chips) Seat 7: Munchers94 ($13.23 in chips) Seat 8: sindri_93 ($2.68 in chips) Seat 9: WVUHillbilly ($4.09 in chips) Munchers94: posts small blind $0.01 sindri_93: posts big blind $0.02 Munchers94 said, "from each" KingCurtis67 said, "ok" muck__you123: sits out *** HOLE CARDS *** Dealt to WVUHillbilly [2h 7c] <--Note the hand WVUHillbilly said, "just win the chippies and show the hand" <-- Note me talking about how to collect with 72 WVUHillbilly: folds <-- Note my drunk ass folding it sindri_93 said, "damm chaser;)" KyleJRM said, "okay, I'm in." KingCurtis67: raises $0.06 to $0.08 aloevera: folds KingCurtis67 said, "ittl make the game so fun" Munchers94 said, ":D" dsvw56: folds KyleJRM: folds icemonkey9: folds Munchers94: raises $0.16 to $0.24 sindri_93: folds KingCurtis67: calls $0.16 *** FLOP *** [2s 5d 2c] <-- Note the flop Munchers94: bets $0.30 muck__you123 said, "was funny watching that dude on hsp lose 100grand" KingCurtis67: calls $0.30 *** TURN *** [2s 5d 2c] [9d] Munchers94: bets $0.66 KingCurtis67: calls $0.66 *** RIVER *** [2s 5d 2c 9d] [4s] muck__you123 said, "with the 27" Munchers94: bets $1.70 KingCurtis67: calls $1.70 *** SHOW DOWN *** Munchers94: shows [Ac Td] (a pair of Deuces) KingCurtis67: shows [Tc Ah] (a pair of Deuces) ^^^^Note the fact that they both had the same hand (AKA Nothing) WVUHillbilly said, "damni I just folded it ther UTG and I would have won it all" <-- Note me telling everyone that I'm an idiot Munchers94 collected $2.79 from pot KingCurtis67 collected $2.78 from pot KingCurtis67 said, "knew it" Munchers94 said, "wow" *** SUMMARY *** Total pot $5.82 | Rake $0.25 Board [2s 5d 2c 9d 4s] Seat 1: KingCurtis67 showed [Tc Ah] and won ($2.78) with a pair of Deuces Seat 2: aloevera folded before Flop (didn't bet) Seat 3: dsvw56 folded before Flop (didn't bet) Seat 5: KyleJRM folded before Flop (didn't bet) Seat 6: icemonkey9 (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet) Seat 7: Munchers94 (small blind) showed [Ac Td] and won ($2.79) with a pair of Deuces Seat 8: sindri_93 (big blind) folded before Flop Seat 9: WVUHillbilly folded before Flop (didn't bet) <-- Just to confirm my stupidity
A few hands after this Icemonkey actually called Aloe's all-in with 72, which made me laugh pretty hard. You can read all about it on his blog.
I left the table @ 3AM and passed out rather quickly. When I got up this morning (anything before noon is technically morning right) my head was absolutely pounding so I downed a few advil and crawled out to the couch. A few hour later my wife left for the evening to go to a play with a few of her friends and I was feeling well enough to play some poker. Looking back I wish I hadn't. I played 1300 hands and dropped anothe $44 (-6.75 ptbb/100). So now I've almost lost all my gains from late last week and I noticed at the end of the session tonight I was playing very tentative poker and hoping not to lose too much money. That's never good but hopefully now that I've identified it I'll be able to stop the bleeding. This is probably my worst played hand of the session and it's a fine example of getting it in with a draw that isn't nearly as big as it looks.
Ok I hate our villain's slow play of AKos preflop and throughout the hand but when he gives us great odds to call his turn min raise we need to take it and not push our chips in and hope for the best. We do pick up 8 outs on the turn but out equity is actually slightly less than it was on the flop. We are however getting odds to CALL his bet and see if the river makes our hand. I don't know how often he'd have to fold here to make our push +EV (maybe Zachvac will answer that one) but from his stats (32/4/2.5 and WTSD 34%) I should have known he isn't folding even TP here let alone top 2.
Dropped $110 tonight in ~750 hands (-30 ptbb/100). Some BIG suckouts and some dumb play. I'm fairly certain I've offended some higher power with my brag post yesterday and for that I humbly submit to your awesomeness. I had to go to our DC office again this afternoon to fix that same damn server (hopefully permanently this time), so the whole day sucked. I missed the rehearsal for my buddies wedding tomorrow. I had to fight DC traffic for the 2nd time this week. The seatbelt in my car won't come out, so I'll likely get pulled over and ticketed soon. Then to top it off I come home and drop 4+ buy-ins! Actually now that I think about my last horrible session was the last time I went to DC. Hmmmmm...coincidence?
I'm going to do 2 things I've never done thus far on this blog. 1st I'm going to post a bad beat (I think this one fits any definition of bad beat) and 2nd I'm going to post 2 hands. Both hands will feature the same villain (59/24/2.5).
Yuck! I get sick just looking at it. We're about 92% to win after the flop and 18% after the turn. Of course it's the 0% on the river that counts! I guess you could say that I should have folded to the buttons 3bet but I called only because I knew he would have a wide range because of his past history with the villain (basically the villains huge stack was taken from the button on some vicious suckouts). The button in this hand starts talking about how mondaymonkey is cheating and that he knows what's coming and blah, blah, blah. I hate when people tap the tank so I just told him I thought it was a good push by the villain and that most of the time everyone will just fold and he'll win the pot. Of course I believe none of this but I really do want this guy to keep pushing with air.
Ok now ~35 minutes later again with the same players as last hand.
WTF am I thinking? I don't know. I know that the best I can hope for is a flip. I know that occasionally the worst players get the best hand. I know that I wanted to "beat" this lucky SOB. I know that I wasn't going to be pushed around. I know that I stopped playing good solid poker the minute this guy hit his runner-runner in the previous hand! This one's all on me.
So there it is. More than half of tonight's losses in 2 hands all to 1 very bad player.
No poker tomorrow due to the wedding, so no post. I'll be back again late Sunday / early Monday. Oh yeah and thanks to IceMonkey9 for stopping by this table in the middle of the madness just to say hey. Make sure you check out his blog (he should really be a writer or something) :)
Ok, still using Holdem Manager as described in yesterday's post and still running hotter than a half-fucked fox in a forest fire (a favorite saying of my father-in-law). I played only 1 hour on 7 tables for a total of 350 hands and ran over 55 ptbb/100 for a total profit just over $95! I'm still not sold on HM but I must admit I like the results! :)
In tonight's session I won BIG pots. Three times I won a 100bb+ stack and only once did I give a stack away (nut flush to rivered FH on paired board). Winning big pots is the #1 key to playing profitable poker. If you're afraid to get all your money in without the immortal nuts you're undoubtedly losing value. I'll often overbet pots on the river with really goods hands because you just never know what your opponent may just call with. I probably lose a few $$ now and then when my opponent may have called a small 1/2 pot bet but I more than make up for it when some yo-yo calls my 6x pot bet with top pair.
Now that I'm done telling you how wonderful I am (cough...lucky...cough), let me show you a horrible calling station at work.
Ok, I have no problem with my play up to the river. We make our cbet on the flop that isn't raised so we call a bet on a turn that could easily be a bluff or a hand worse than ours, but when our villain bets this river we need to let our pretty pocket pair fall into the muck. I'm basically calling here just to see what he has, when I already know what he has; A better hand than mine.
On yet another positive note my roll on Tilt has now gone over $900 (should be more but I financed a friend a few months ago) and it's looking like NL50 isn't out of the question by the end of the month. I plan to move up at 22 buy-ins ($1100) and back down (if necessary) at 18 buy-ins ($800). I've never played beyond NL25 (nope not even once) so there certainly could be some adjustment period. I hope I'll find out before too long.
Edit: 2 hours after the above post I'm up another $98+ on 550 hands and the roll now sits at over $1000! Yay me!
Good day today which managed to make up for yesterday and then some. I finished +$70 over 1150 hands (12 ptbb/100) while trying out Hold'em Manager as an alternative to the constantly crashing Poker Tracker 3. While HM worked as advertised and the HUD was rock solid, I just didn't really care for the overall look and feel of the program. I would however recommend that if you're in the market for current generation tracking software you at least test both products. I'll be the guy waiting for PT3 to get fixed. :(
So even with a good day overall there were actually several hand that I played pretty badly tonight. I stacked off once with 88 v. KK on a board of all unders and again with the following hand.
Paying off sets is something that I seem to do fairly regularly and often it is the correct play (because they're just so hard to spot) but this one I think I almost knew before I called his shove that I need to hit another Q to win. Our villain here is 14/8/1 over 250 hands and he's likely never pushing this flop without a hand that beats us. Still can't bring myself to fold big overpairs. Need to work on that.
What a terrible day. 1st I called in sick this morning because the installer was coming to hook up my satellite internet access. I had been on dial-up before (what can I say I live in the woods). He was supposed to arrive between 8 AM - Noon. He got here at 12:30 (so just a little late. Anyway my work called me at least 10 times before he arrived so when he was done and my phone stopped ringing I thought it was time to get in some hands. Wrong. I fired up Tilt and before I had picked my first table my cell rang. It was work. Our content filter / rules based firewall had crashed in our Falls Church VA office. All internet connectivity to the internet for that office was cutoff. After an initial attempt or 2 to "fix it" over the phone I had to accept the fact that I was going to have to drive 2 hours into DC to resolve the problem myself. So after a quick stop y my local office for some utilities and software, I was on my way to DC. I fucking hate driving in DC. People who do it everyday should be committed immediately.
So I pull into our offices down there at 5:30PM and finally get the problem (corrupted software registry hive) resolved at 9PM. After getting everything running smoothly again and testing it all I pulled out of the parking lot at 9:45 and got back home just slightly before 11:30 and I still hadn't played a single hand of poker today! And from the way that worked out looks like I should have kept it that way!
I dropped 160bbs when I got all-in preflop with QQ to villain's AA. Normally that would qualify as dumb but the guy with the rockets range was HUGE (74/34/7) so I still feel it was the right play, just a little unlucky this time. Total loses on the day of nearly $35 but after reviewing the session I couldn't really find anything too dumb! I guess maybe this post is the dumbest thing I did today?
Up and down day today that ended up about +$15 on almost 950 hands (~3 ptbb/100). Standard beats mostly with a few really costly losing sets thrown in for good measure. Whenever I lose with a set it, of course, sucks but it doesn't tilt me because I know no matter what I'm almost always going to be willing to stack with them. I figure I'll win more than I lose and that it is a play with positive expectations.
Now for a play with negative expectations! I'll try to explain this lunacy away by saying that the villain had been stealing quite a bit (50% over 60 hands) and I really just thought this was another steal attempt.
So I don't hate my preflop call or even my flop raise (remember I think he's stealing and that my fours are likely good) but my bet on the turn after he's called my raise on the flop is bad. He's checked to us and is willing to allow us to see the river for free so we need to take it. Luckily, and surprisingly, he's still slowplaying those rockets and just calls my turn craziness thus allowing me to catch my set on the river. Honestly though when he pushed the river I really figured a bigger set was likely, but, like I said before, I just don't fold sets.
So once again dumb gets rewarded and someone else gets to type "spewtard" into their notes on me! I hope someday you'll see my face next to that word on Wikipedia. Until then I guess I'll just have to be happy in the knowledge that I can play horribly yet there is just enough chance involved (4% in this case on the river) to get me through.
Ok, still a little hung-over from last night. Not your traditional bachelor party (no hookers or blow) but still a good time. Ended up being 10 of us there. All high school buddies, just sitting around by a fire at the river, drinking keg beer, and telling stories from our wasted youth. Great memories.
Now for a little mid-month poker update. I'm set to meet or exceed all my goals for the month. I wanted to play 10,000 hands at 6 ptbb/100. We so far I've played 8700 hands at 7.9 ptbb/100! Playing to hit the gold medal level this month really has me playing a lot more hands than I normally would. Adding tables (currently 8 at a time) to do it in the time I have available should really help my $/hr (currently $11.50) from now on. It's just too bad my 1st 2000 hands where break-even or I might be playing NL50 by now (originally a goal for next month). Anyway here is my graph thus far.
Ok, now on to what makes this blog, something dumb that I did today! So I'm running like Apollo tonight (+$90 on the night on 1000 hands) and everything is going my way when I run into the following hand. I've got a good number of hands on the villain and I know he plays tight and passive (14/7/1) so my flop check/raise here accomplishes nothing but giving away $$. I should have just cbet and then thrown this one away if he raised and moved on. Oh well, if I didn't do anything stupid I'd be out of things to write about and I might get bored just counting my money! :)
Decent session tonight. Got back yesterday's loses and then some. Up ~$50 in 880 hands (11 ptbb/100). I figured out that the weekend crowd can't be bluffed but they will pay off when we hit. So I don't know that I made more than a couple of bluffs all night (I'm including things like double barreling here) but I did value bet any time I had TPGK or better. Need to remember to loose a little of my normal aggression when I don't have a hand against the drunker than usual weekender's.
Tonight's dumb play has us getting all-in crazy on the flop in a limped pot with bottom 2. I don't know how often our villain here (50/4/6) gets all-in with a hand that we beat (probably not too many in a limped pot) but I do know our deuces are very vulnerable to being counterfeited even if we are ahead on this flop.
Tomorrow (well today) is a good friend's bachelor party so no posts. I'll be very drunk and asleep in a tent at this time tomorrow. I'll check back in here with some other stupid move on Sunday, no doubt.
Last night was bad, really bad. I dropped $30 (-11 ptbb/100) in just 533 hands and it could have, probably should have, been much worse. I played many, many, big hands last night. A lot of my hands were for stacks. I won a few but I lost more than I won, obviously.
This hand was my biggest loser and I have no idea what I think he might have here that I beat. I'm just really throwing chips around at this point and probably should have quit before this hand even occurred. I recognized that I wasn't playing my best earlier in the session but I kept on playing to reach 100 FTPs for the day to reach gold medal this month. If that's not the dumbest reason to throw money away, I don't know what is.
Hopefully tonight will be better and I know it will if I play better. These hands that I post here are not bad beats, they are just dumb plays. So if I eliminate the mistakes (especially these huge mistakes) I know I can continue to build my bankroll. Speaking of bankroll, despite yesterday's loses my roll got bigger because yesterday was rakeback payment day. Last month it was only $50 but that's 1.25 ptbb/100 over that time.
Another terrific day at the tables. I ran amazingly well and finish 641 hand +$80 (25 ptbb/100)! I had great cards. I hit sets. I sucked out when I needed to in some huge pots (My KK v villains AA was my biggest winner when I flopped a set). Truly easy money when even your dumb plays get rewarded. Such is the case with tonight's entry.
Our villain is well-known to us as a very tight aggressive short-stacker. We've got 700 hands on him and his stats are 7/6/4! He always buys in for 20 big blinds and leaves when he doubles. So basically he plays the short-stack well. So when he pushes over our raise here we can narrow his range to something like JJ+/AK. Our AQo doesn't fair to well against that range (something like 25% equity).
So of course with our 28% equity (actually slightly better than against his whole range) we make a dumb call and get rewarded. Basically we've made a $3.75 call with an expected value of $2.85 (EV -.90). Pretty dumb.
First, just a quick update on yesterday's post. Seems everyone over at Cardschat thinks we need to bet for value on the river, so maybe it wasn't the dumbest thing I did yesterday after all! If your interested the discussion thread is here.
Another very solid day today. +$40 in a little under 650 hands (12.5 ptbb/100). Few big hands but mostly small gains with the occasional loss. Recently I have been adding more tables to my normal game (played 8 tonight) and I have found that so far my bb/100 has gone UP! I think the main reason is that I'm playing a slightly tighter game and not getting myself into as many sticky situations with trouble hands (KJ,KQ,AT,AJ) because I'm only playing them in late position. This hurts the blog but helps my bottom line (screw the blog!).
On to today's stupidity. After our villain calls our cbet we really shouldn't ever call his bet on the turn without VERY strong reads. We're drawing to at best 6 outs and none of them can be considered clean, so at best we have about a 12% chance of winning after the turn. We could also be drawing dead.
Even with hitting the ace on the river we should probably still fold this because there are almost no hands that bet this river that we beat. That's just another reason to fold the turn, because now we've hit our hand and we're still almost always behind. Of course the calling station in me pays him off on the river because I just had to see it (very dumb).
Another decent night tonight. Up a ~$25 over 600 hand (8ptbb/100). Could have been much better but got hit with set over set once and had top set lose to a rivered straight, but such is poker. Whenever I get sucked out on I think of a time when I did the same or worse to someone else and I quickly put it aside (generally anyway!).
Anyway tonight's dumb play is really more a questionable play than anything. Our villain here is 35/13/1.5 (we don't know this at the time of the hand as we just sat down) so basically he could have almost anything here including the dagger card (any ten). We have tons of showdown value and if our villain decides to bluff all-in on the river we basically have to fold. So I think the real mistake I make here is reopening the bet on the river.
Our opponent folds this time but checking behind to see the SD probably makes the most sense, although if we think he might call with 2 pair betting for value could be correct. As you can see I'm still torn about the best play on the river here. I think I'll post this one on CC for some HA.
No post yesterday because I was playing live (not very successfully). Went out rather early in our monthly $40 buy-in MTT (42 players this month). I then went to the cash table and played till the wee hours of the morning and only won $11 there.
Today's dumb thing has us once again trying to bluff the unbluffable. Our villain here is 60/53/.08. Players like this (very loose preflop and very passive postflop) are generally good candidates to bluff but when our villain bets out here we need to fold unless we have a real hand. After we raise the flop, betting the turn is just throwing money away. The only good thing about this hand is that he bets again on the end (confirming we are beaten) and this allows us to muck without showing our trash.
The Slowplay. It's likely nothing has ever caused more loses (by allowing suckouts and losing value even when we hang on to win) in poker than the slowpay. Another problem with the slowplay is that often when someone draws out on us because we let them get there for free it causes us to go on monkey tilt and give away even more money. It's also so overused that against many bad players you can use it as a tell; They slow down (checking and calling) only when they have a big hand. This hand wasn't tilt inducing nor did I slowplay here because I though my trips were a lock. I just simply made a mistake and thought one of my opponents would bet and allow us to raise. Bad assumption on may part.
On a positive note I had another good night tonight (10ptbb/100 over 500 hands) and it could have easily been much more if Tilt hadn't timed out when I had a bad player on the button 3bet me (I had AA). By the time the screen unfroze my cards were in the muck! Folding AA preflop is a VERY dumb thing but nothing I could do about it in this case.
Really great session tonight. I ran +$163 over 530 hands! I made a brag post on Cardschat here: Brag Post about my run over the last 30 days. Still made few mistakes though. Nothing too costly but the hand I picked out today has us calling a bet on the river with top pair that we rarely can win. Basically the only hands that our villain bets here are hands that beat us or bluffs. Unless he's completely horrible he's never showing up here with a worse ace.
Not the most costly mistake I've ever made but as I've said before all these little mistakes really eat into our bottom line.
Ok, long session tonight. Trying to maximize my mid-year bonus from Tilt so I'm playing a lot more than usual. Tonight's dumb play is really only one street's worth of bad. Total cost for this "one street" mistake? $9 or 18BBs. I like my call preflop (the implied odds are huge). I like my bet postflop even with 3 others still in the hand. But leading out into the 2 remaining players on the turn is just suicide. But hey at least I didn't throw the rest of my money away and call!
Overall not as many dumb plays today but still a few too many. At least now I'm starting to think about plays and how dumb they'll make me look here before I act. It's not much but it's something.
Just a horrible day today. I've dropped nearly 3 buy-ins in just over 600 hands. Both pathetic plays and bad beats. Today's DTIDT is another example of overplaying TPTK. Villain was hyper-loose VP$IP over 60% but when he put serious $$ in he either had better than TP or a complete bluff. He was very willing to limp/call with ATCs preflop but I really should have known I was beaten when he raised to $12. The shove by me is just spewy.
Got in a lot of hands (667) hands today. I'm trying to play 10,000 total this month while maintaining my 6ptbb/100 win rate. Up $35 overall or about 10 ptbb/100 on the day. Should have been a lot more. Took a bad beat for about $20 when my Queens full of sixes ran into quad sixes which is absolutely standard and just part of the game. The real huge mistake I made today actually cost me more (~$28) and I had so much less.
Alright I'd like to say this hand isn't as bad as it looks, but it's close. I had a good read on the villain here and really thought he was bluffing. He'd been caught earlier (maybe 40 hands prior) in a similar pot. He 3 barreled that hand as well and showed an unimproved AQ. So this was my chance to make the hero call! They call it a hero call because just like running into a burning building can be dangerous it's totally worthwhile when you save the kid. They never mention the times the kid escaped unnoticed and you burn up looking for the little bastard.
This hand did have some good side effects because everybody want to pay with the idiot who though TT was good on a K high board. I got no lack of action after this one and made a few bucks back, but nothing close to what I lost on this hand. I MUST eliminate these huge loses with only a single pair if I hope to continue building both my bankroll and my game.
Only because I didn't try! I ended up going to see today's NASCAR race in Dover DE. Has a good time, drank a bit, a sat in the bright sunshine. Boring race but well worth going. Might play some poker tomorrow.
A
2
