Well At Least I Earned Like $10 in Rakeback

Nice long session tonight. 1090 hands for a total profit of..... 35.....cents! I really had to work to get back to even, even though I had no idea where I was while I was playing. I shipped 2 stacks with AA and 1 with AKs early and then scratched my way back. Here is my biggest win of the night thanks to a LOT of luck:



Shorty was tight but the original raiser's range was pretty wide here. He actually started giving me shit in the chatbox about shoving with QQ saying how much his opinion of my play had changed (like I care) and how he was "changing my color" in his notes! I told him to make his note say won't fold QQ preflop to a 4 bet from me and that was that.

Since IceMonkey's comment yesterday I figure I should add a hand that I have a question on:



Can we value bet this river? If he has the flush he would have bet the river right? If you're value betting here, how much?

The Downward Spiral

Haven't posted lately because basically poker sucks. In my last 3,331 hands I'm down $321.40 or -9.65BB/100. Sucks. I've essentially given back all of September's ring profits once again. Up and down. Up and down. Never gaining. Just moving ever up and down. I guess it could be worse and just be down and down.

Here are the most horrible hands from the bunch:



Unknown raises from MP and I flat from the worst position at the table. I then proceed to "slowplay" (basically because it's hard to play OOP) and ultimately I play off the big raise on the end. Horrific from start to finish. Don't play like this kids.



Here I make a serious mistake. I try to never call a AI preflop against a tight player (12/8/3) with AK. But a little tilted call now and then slips through. This is invariably the result.



Villain here wasn't very good but on the river what do I really beat? Answer not a whole fucking lot but my calling station ass calls anyway. I just had to "see it"!!!! It's an illness (and an expensive one).



Bluffing is fun. Bad bluffing is expensive. Piss poor play is expensive. Tilting is expensive. Shoving 3rd pair as a check-raise on the river. Priceless, as long as by priceless you mean expensive!

My entire bad run hasn't all been crap like the hands above but these type of hands don't help. I mean having 3 villains in a row hit 3 outers on the river sucks, but then when I give away another 3 stacks due to stupidity it just compounds the issue. Oh and since I see so many using all-in EV to "prove" how bad they're running, I'm $290 below all-in EV over these last 3330 hands and I'm over 8 buy-ins below EV at nl50. I'm sure it'll all even out soon.

Fingers crossed chin up.

Keep Firing A$$holes!

Love that movie and it so perfectly describes today's dumb play.



No idea why I decided to lead out with 2 Kings onboard. Basically I'm turning my hand into a bluff. Oh well at least he was short. Speaking of that, what kind of self-respecting shorty fails to get AK AIPF? Whatever.

Tonight session was actually very good once again. I ran at 18BB/100 for 520 hands for a total profit of $93.10. Still loving playing with FR nits. I really think that my play works best when I am playing as the loosest of the tight players, rather than the tightest of the loose player.

Mid Month Update And A Bad River Call

Just a little quickie update here. FR is going well, probably too well. I'm running at over 11BB/100 over a small sample of 3600 hands. I'm definitely more comfortable at FR than 6-max. I seem to be making mostly good decisions with only a few mistakes. Catching a good run of cards hasn't hurt.

Anyway here's some pretty pics:
nl50 FR only
With the failed 6-max experiment included:


Add in the $220 I'm ahead after winning that bounty tourney and the month is going very well thus far. Had I not started with 6-max it possibly could have been better but I think 6-max taught me a few lessons that I am now figuring out how to apply at FR. So I guess the 6-max time might have been good for something after all, just not my mental health!

Here is a ugly pic:


What could he have on the river here that we beat. Got to stop throwing these bets away.

Anyway, hope your September is going well and I hope mine continues to stay on track.

Inauspicious Beginnings And Flopping Quads

Tonight's session started rough. Really rough. Here are my 1st and 5th hands of the night:



First hand. No prior hands. Not sure if I should be calling his river bet here. I guess with this board I almost have to. Then, moments later, this:



This one sucked. I actually went on to another table and didn't see the suckout. Wasn't till the table came back up that I saw what happened. Oh well.

So after that beginning to the night things could only get better right? Sure did.



It's nice when AA decides not to push preflop, well as long as your QQ flops well. Actually I was certainly stacking against this guy preflop had he pushed. He was 38/9/3 so my QQ was likely good against his range. Just not this time. At least until after the flop.

And then a few hands later the definition of flopping good:


This guy (41/21/3) was loose preflop but generally gave up to aggression postflop so I slowplay my absolute monster and just wait for him to start throwing money at me. Wish he had a bigger stack, then I could have raised the turn and likely still have got it all. Oh well he ended up donating $105 to my cause before I left the table. Nice guy.

All total since my last post (2 sessions) I've won $98.55 over 900 hands (10.9BB/100). Certainly running so much better since switching back to FR. Flopping well helps.

6-Max: It Ain't Me Babe!

My only real goal for September was to play 5K hands at 6-max. I will fail at this goal. 6-max is just a short-hand way of saying tilt-inducing, mindfuck poker. I can't take it any more. It brings out the worst in me. I tilt. I tilt hard. I tilt more often. I tilt to the point that the any 2 carders are justified playing pots with me. I'm done. 6-max totals: $-149 over 3325 hands (mostly NL25 with a 350 NL50 6-max hands thrown in).

Tonight started with me opening 4 NL25 6-max tables. Within 31 hands I was down $22 and I was steaming, so I just shut everything down (literally just held the fucking power button down til the PC shutdown). After taking a few minutes to breathe and calm down I restarted the PC, reopened Full Tilt, and sat down at 8 NL50 FR tables. Ahhhhh, just like home. For whatever fucking mental ass reason my brain was happy again. I just played my normal FR, tight-ass, nitty game and I cruised to an easy and unrealistically good $260 session over 550 hands (48BB/100). Now the deck did run me over quite a bit and I did have one major suckout go my way but even when I got sucked out on it didn't matter. I never felt rushed or confused about my next action despite playing twice the number of tables. I never felt the need to defend my blind with total junk. I never tilted. I never shipped away a stack with Ace high. I never pushed all-in on the river praying for a fold that I knew wasn't coming. I never want to see a 6-max table again.

Having said all that I can see where 6-max could and would be very profitable for those with the mental game to withstand the sick beats. I don't have that yet and I'm fine with that. For me 6-max is definitely -EV and fortunately there is something I can do about it without having to work on my brain; Play FR. So that's where I'll be. Damn and I so wanted to be a cool kid.

Here's a horrible hand just because I haven't posted one for a while:


Just couldn't pull the trigger on the end. He was fairly passive (AF=.7) and may have folded TP here but then again he might have looked me up because I'm not sure my turn bet fits with a flush draw and it would have meant that I raised preflop and didn't have the Ace. On second thought not firing again here was probably the right move. The 2nd barrel was probably pretty bad though.

It's Been Awhile

Not in love with 6-max like so many fellow CCers seem to be. The main problem seems to be that I turn into a giant spewtard (yes, even more so than when I play FR). My aggression goes through the roof (current AF over 8) and I stupidly try to blow my opponents off pots with huge, stupid overbets. These work just fine when my opponents have nothing or small hands. The problem is that when my opponents have big hands, I'm losing BIG pots. So I'm winning small and losing big. Hard to make any $$ doing that. Here's how the NL25 6-max 5K experiment stands thus far; 1900 hands, -$15.85, -.85BB/100.

After last nights 6-max session (-$100) I'd had enough so I did something I haven't done for quite some time, I loaded up a $11 KO tourney on Full Tilt. End result:


Yes, that's right, I ended up winning the thing for a total profit (with KOs) over $235! Nice little pick me up. I had some really nice hands when I needed them (you know won flips, stole blinds, etc.). In the end the defining hand played itself (the 1st hand of HU BTW):


3 hands later and it was all over. I haven't won a MTT in over 3 months, not that I play many, but it was still nice.

Donk v. Donk; Donk Wins!

Crazy ass session tonight. Basically I played break even poker except for 1 hand. That hand happened to be the craziest, stupidest, most stats based thing I've ever done at the poker table. Without further ado I present it to you here (names hidden to protect my future earnings):



Looks bad? Insane perhaps? Well perhaps it was. Villain here is a genuine 95/65/2 nut-job that I followed to this NL50 table after I stacked him at a NL25 table (albeit with a MUCH better hand). The UTG raiser was solid (17/12/3) but had definitely figured out the villain here (he'd taken over $100 from him thus far) and was trying to isolate him every chance he had so I didn't think his raise necessarily meant super strength. When the horrible player min-raised and the UTG raiser called, I thought it was a good spot to 4-bet bluff, but then I remembered the maniac would likely call with any 2. When I hit the 3 on the flop I figured I might as well carry through with the bluff and hope to fold any hands I was behind (obviously this would be impossible). When he called I figured I was done (oh yeah this was a snap-call as well, no thought required with QTos on a King high board!). When his cards were exposed I couldn't believe it. Not only had I 4bet A3 soooooooted, but I had somehow won said 4bet pot with bottom pair! Insanity.

Overall I ended tonight's session up $56 over 550 hands (don't know how to figure BB/100 since the session was mostly NL25 but the bulk of the $$ were won at NL50). Not sure what to think of 6-max thus far. I think I may be getting a little to crazy-aggressive against some opponents (maybe that explains the madness above) and I think that's costing me $$. I do find the number of near 100 VP$IP rather amazing at these 6-max tables. If I could just control my own game I'm sure they'd be very profitable.

6-Max Action At Two Different Levels

Ok, so in my last post I mentioned that my only real quantifiable goal for this month was 5K hands of 6-max poker. So to work toward that end I fired up 4 tables of NL50 6-max Monday night and promptly got my ass handed to me. I dropped $95 in 310 hands (-30.5BB/100). I was really letting myself get pushed around and when I did pick a spot to make a stand I was usually crushed. An example:



The BB here was a total fish (86/64/18 over 60 hands). SB is bad as well at 35/21/.05 over just under 50 hands at the time. The BB had shown several bluffs where he pushed with little to nothing. If the SB hadn't stuck around I would have called the BBs river shove here with TPTK and felt pretty good about it. With the SB still in the hand though, I knew when the flush card hit someone had gotten lucky and it wasn't me. I suppose I should have called the BB here even if I thought the SB got there because I could have won about $4 overall on the hand (a $34 swing) due to the stack differential with the SB, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

Here is an earlier big hand with the villain from the previous example to prove my point about his willingness to get it an with not a whole lot:



Anyway after last night's terrible outing I decided that NL50 may not be the best place to start playing 6-max. So tonight I when I fired up Tilt I opened 4 Nl25 6-max tables instead. Let's just say that things couldn't have been anymore different. I ended the session after 515 hands up $120 (46.5BB/100). I did have a great run of cards when I needed them but I also for whatever reason just felt more comfortable. I made some pretty decent reads on my opponents ranges and generally acted accordingly.

Here is a hand where I'm just unsure I played correctly:



I'm OOP with an overpair on a board that nails my LP opponent's (38/3/1, 50 hands) range. Is check-calling my way to SD appropriate here? Can we find a bet on the river to possibly get more value? Just not sure here.

Overall my 6-max experiment is up so far. Not sure I like the way NL50 is going so my plan is to play at least these 5K hands at NL25 and then reevaluate from there.

End Of August Update

Well, I've played zero poker in the last 2 days. I went to opening day for my Mountaineers on Saturday to witness the offensive display put forth by Pat White and the boys. It was a great day of tailgating and football. I love Morgantown in the fall. Then I all day yesterday was spent with fantasy football drafts, 3 of them to be exact. It's the same basic group of core friends in each league but each league is slightly different (keeper, redraft, and auction). Draft day is always a full day of beer drinking, trash talking, football fun and yesterday was no exception. Good times.

Now to sum up poker in August; SHIT.

Graph:




Rackback again added just over 1BB/100 to the total above so August ends up a total of $377.94.

My goals at the beginning of the month now look stupid but here they are:
August Goals

1) 15,000 hands at 50NL - Failed (14,060 total)

2) Withdrawal 1/2 of my August profit (or $500 whichever is less): Hahahaha No!

3) Maintain a win rate of at least 5.5 BB/100: Not even fucking close

4) Grow my bankroll by $500 after withdrawal: Not even without a withdrawal

5) Quit spewing chips pushing with under pairs and crap draws (they're not going to fold): Nope still stupid

6) Tilt less. Uhhhhhhh.....No

7) Post at least 5 hands for analysis on CC: I think I only managed 4

8) Watch a ton of videos over at Stox. : Some but not enough



So now it's time to post some simple goals for September:

1) Stay positive (in every way)

2) At least 5K hands at 6-max because well everyone else is doing it and seemingly having great success.