When it comes to poker, October was good. I ended up increasing my BR by $1900. I made my 1st withdrawal from Full Tilt (6 days from request to check). I played decently well and didn't tilt too often or too bad. I did have my share of losing sessions and you can tell tilt was still present because my losing sessions were usually quite large 3+ buy-ins on average, so I still have plenty of work to do. My winnings breakdown for the month looks like this:
Let's looks back at my goals for the month and see how I fared:
1) Play well - Check 2) Tilt less - Check(still plenty of room for improvement) 3) Recognize when I am losing that I might also be playing well - Never had this opportunity this month as I actually ran OK all month 4) Understand that when I am winning I may also be playing poorly - Same as #3 5) Quit better - Check, I actually managed to stop fairly well both when winning and when losing.
I guess I'm going to start November at NL100 and see how that goes even though I haven't played any FR since my buddy passed. I just haven't had any desire for that sort of grind. The only poker I've played since was some HU and a $1 CC buy-in tourney. I guess it's about time to get back at it.
As far as November goals, I think I'll just stick to the same ones I had this month as they seemed to work out fairly well.
No poker update here. I haven't been playing for a few days now. A great friend of mine, Kevin, was killed in an automobile accident on the night of the WVU-Auburn game. He decided to leave our tailgate early (pre-game) because his girlfriend got too drunk to be able to go to the game. He decided that he would leave, get a hotel room and spend the night near Morgantown. He left at approximately 6:30 PM and at 7:19 he was declared dead.
Apparently his SUV left the roadway and when he jerked it back on it rolled over. It ended up rolling 60' down an embankment. Kevin was not wearing his seatbelt and was ejected from the vehicle. He was killed instantly. His girlfriend, Devon, remains in the hospital and her prognosis is uncertain.
Kevin was a great friend. I first met him in HS and we'd been close every since. He has a personality that everyone loved to be around. I've never known anyone who had a single bad word to say about him. Truly one of the best people I've ever known. I'll miss him immensely.
The best thing about Kevin's last day was that he spent it enjoying the little things. He decided to take the afternoon off of work to drive to Morgantown, despite not having a ticket for the game, simply to tailgate with friends and enjoy the big game atmosphere. We drank a few beers (his BAC was under the legal limit), ate some great Del Monaco steaks, played some cornhole, and just enjoyed a beautiful fall afternoon. Twice I heard Kevin comment that he was so glad that he decided to come along because there was no where else he wanted to be. His last day was truly great and I was fortunate enough to share it with him.
When Kevin decided he was going to leave to find a room, I helped him to get his car out around the other tailgaters in the lot. When his car was clear he stuck his hand out the window to shake my hand. As he grabbed it he said "Love ya brother" to which I replied "You too man" and he pulled away. Those words were the last I will ever speak to my friend and I'm so grateful for them, yet I wish with all my heart there could be more.
Kevin leaves behind 3 children (ages 2, 4, and 13), 7 brothers and sisters, both parents, and more friends than I could ever enumerate. He will be missed by all but his spirit and love for life will always live on in those of us that remember him. I'll never forget you brother.
Ok, I know I just posted yesterday but I did one of the dumbest things I've ever done today. I misread my hand. I have no idea how, but I honestly thought I had QQ here:
I didn't even notice as the hand played out. I just saw him turn over AK and then I went on to the next table (I cascade so I can only see 1 table at a time). When I came back to this table I saw that I had won by my doubled stack, no biggie. But then the AK guy kept saying how sick it was and I responded by asking why it was sick that the best preflop hand won a coin flip. He then politely mentions that I'm a fucking retard if I think AK v QJ is a coin flip. QJ, I think, maybe he's talking about another hand, but now several people are jumping on the call MrsPauls a stupid POS bandwagon so off I go to look at the HH. Well you can imagine my shock. I actually apologized to the guy. Oh well, at least now I can be know as the suckout idiot who 4bet/pushes QJ soooooooooooted! Unreal.
Well as you may have surmised by my posts thus far this month things are going really well. I've yet to tilt (Sweet)! I'm bluffing much less. I'm not doing all those horribly dumb things that I used to post here so frequently. I know I am running good (1 buy-in over all-in EV) so I'll temper my excitement just a bit until the bad times hit, but for now I'll just enjoy the ride.
I've also been playing a ton more poker this month than usual. I'm at 13,200 hands played and I've only missed playing completely 1 day (WVU game), so I'm earning a good bit of rakeback as well (~$120). My winrate so far is just over 7BB/100 or just north of $1000 total. When you add in the $980 I won in the rakebreak.com free roll, you can see I have nothing to complain about. October sure seems to be trying to make up for how shitty September turned out to be.
Anyway, here the obligatory graph:
Note the NSD winnings are actually just below break even. As I posted earlier I think for me a relatively flat NSD winnings line is the tell that I'm playing my best poker, although having it be slightly positive wouldn't hurt.
Also since I don't post as much as I used to I guess I should throw in a hand here at the end to remind you and myself that I do still do some dumb shit even when I'm winning:
I choose this hand because this should be a auto fold to the BTNs (20/10/1.5) 3bet (6%). Not because his range has me crushed but because it's too hard to play AQ OOP post flop in a 3bet pot. This is the basic stuff that I know I shouldn't do, yet there I go calling his 3bet and donking into him on a nothing flop. Bad play on me.
Today was my rakeback site's, rakebreak.com, monthly 20K free roll. It's available to all RakeBreak and ThisIsTheNuts users who rake more than 500 points on Full Tilt in the previous month, which is the easiest thing in the world. I've played it several times before, when I remember to play, but have never cashed in my previous attempts. Well today that changed when I took down 5th place for a really nice bankroll boosting $980.
Here's my major suckout that occurred just before the bubble burst:
I really don't think my push was a mistake here as the villain was raising with a WIDE range (42/22/3), but it did take a major suckout to make the $$. It was the only time I won a hand the entire tournament when I wasn't at least a coin flip.
So after I completed the tourney I played a few cash tables and continued to run extremely well, in fact, I never lost a full stack in over 900 hands. Since my cash winning were well over $20, today was my 1st $1K day ever! So despite cashing out $500 on Friday, I'm now rolled to take my shot at NL100. I think I'll stick to NL50 for at least the remainder of the month and will evaluate the state of my game before moving up.
My next update will be my mid month review. Also if anyone is interested in joining RakeBreak contact me for my referral code, if you don't mind.
Ok, so in getting back to my mandate to post horrible, stupid, and idiotic plays, I offer you today's most excellent example:
Villain is tight and solid (10/9/3) so unless he has AK we're likely behind from the flop. Probably flatting preflop with AQ was a mistake, but the river call? The absolute worst.
Overall still doing well, but the hand above scares me that I might be getting back to my calling station ways. I hope not but we'll see.
Love that movie and my topic today just reminded me of that clip. I'm of course talking about showdown (SD) versus non-showdown (NSD) winnings. Now I've always had positive NSD winnings which isn't all that common but it's not really rare either. It means that I bluff a bit, maybe bet a little more often on the river, perhaps make slightly larger bets than some other TAG players. Nothing wrong with any of that. In fact, I'd say on a whole those things are good, if used in maderation.
Here is my PT3 graph from the 1st half of July when I was playing very good poker. My stats for this period were: 14/11/5 with a WTSD of 24%
Now here is the 2nd half of the same month when I was still winning but not as much. My stats over this period were: 15/12/3 with a WTSD of 29%
Just for a little more proof, here's my horrible graph from last month. My stats for last month were: 17/14/3 with a WTSD of 28%
So what can we take away from all these pretty pictures? Basically that becoming a bluffy, calling station is BAD for your (and my) bottom line. So this month this is my focus. I want to keep my WTSD % right around 25% because while winning pots with big bluffs is fun (I mean who doesn't like a good bluff), winning money is even more fun.
So far this month, I've been able to do just that and I'm really playing well. Of course I still get caught bluffing occasionally, but if you don't you're not doing it enough. I'm also still making some mistakes, here is a couple of my worst on the month thus far (note that these occurred on the same table with the same villain all within 15 minutes of each other):
Very 1st hand at the table but we have stats on our villain. He's 52/33/3 with an ATS of 85% over 50 hands. I obviously felt that I was WAY ahead of our villains stealing range and I like to make big raises when I first sit down to keep these pesky blind stealers at bay. Of course this time he has AK and we're down a stack!
Hand replayer is displaying the result of this one incorrectly. I lost another stack to the maniac with AK yet again. Hey, he can't have it every time can he?
This time I'm given good odds to call the shorty's push to see the flop but I was gun shy. I'd see this movie one too many times and of course he's still holding AK. He left the table shortly after this hand, I would assume to go buy lottery tickets. Oh well, sometimes bad players get good cards. Maybe someday I'll let that sink in and not get crazy with my AJ+ hands. Then again maybe not, I mean what's 200 bbs among friends?
The month started bad at 6-max and ended bad at full ring. In the middle I played some decent poker, some bad poker, I got lucky a few times, and got shafted a ton. Overall September pretty well sucked. So there it is, I lost ~ $70 at the cash game tables this month in a little over 16,000 hands. I did have the KO tourney win for $230, so the month ends up ever so slightly. With rakeback thrown into the mix my BR increased by ~$320 overall. Pretty disappointing.
My plan for October is to cut down on the number of tables I'm playing slightly to 6 and to try to avoid tilting quite so bad. Oh yeah, winning a few more hands when I get my $$ in good would be nice too.
In an attempt to detach myself from individual session results, I plan to update here only a few times each week and not update any dollars until mid-month. I'm going to attempt to avoid looking at and obsessing over my BR in general so posting those updates here would be counter to that.
Official goals for October: 1) Play well 2) Tilt less 3) Recognize when I am losing that I might also be playing well 4) Understand that when I am winning I may also be playing poorly 5) Quit better
