A Little 6-Max To Get Right

I played 2 sessions tonight. The 1st was my standard 8 table NL50 full-ring session. It sucked. I ended up cutting it short at only 300 hands and while down $58 (-19.5BB/100). I closed Full Tilt and realized that I might not have made the required points for the day to hit gold level Iron Man (I needed 1 more day over 100 FTPs to hit it). So sure enough I logged back in to check and I was 10 points short! Well that meant I HAD to play again but instead on NL50 FR I decided to sit down at 4 NL25 6max tables since I've seen all the cool kids over at CC playing 6max! Anyway I killed. These guys were stacking with any pair it seemed. It's like if you take away 3 seats the collective IQ drops to an average of 60! Anyway I played 300 hands there and finished up $75 (48BB/100). So net profit over 600 hands of $17. Better than if I'd quit after session 1, but I will admit that sitting back down to hit some stupid number may be the dumbest reason ever to play.

Anyway here's a little 6-max stupidity:


Villain (70/13/6) and I here have a bit of history as I've taken his $10 buy-in twice in ~45 hands. I've also 3bet him several times thus far and he's decided he's had enough. So when he min raises me here I decide he's got nothing and I'll try to push him off with nothing. Unfortunately he doesn't want to cooperate and I have to fold with a bit of $$ in the middle. When he makes the 4th min bet he could have anything from JT and the nuts to complete air. I would catch him a bit later for another $20 so I guess I got this money back before I left the table.

I'll give this month's final numbers on Friday night since I won't be playing again til Monday.

Mental Bankroll Barriers

Ok so with my recent ups and downs, I've been looking at my game and I know it's far from perfect but I've also noticed other times when I've hit these type patches. The 1st was as my BR neared $500, then somewhat at $1000, and now $2000 seems to be the sticking point (how I breezed by $1500 is beyond me). Come to think of it, it was exactly the same when I played at Bodog. It's like I hit these invisible barriers that I have to get through before I can get back to playing good winning poker. Is it self-sabotage? Well from some of the hands I post here, it's a definite possibility, but I don't think so. I really think it's the money!

I don't want to think about poker that way, but I do (especially lately). If a pots large and I missed whatever draw I was chasing or I think my opponent outdrew me on the river, I don't do what I should and give up. I either bluff if I missed or I call down light if my opponent bets. It's like I don't want to give up the pot because it's soooo much money. Crazy I know. I also know that if I did play better in these spots, I'd win more money! This month my BR has been fluctuating (just using that word reminds me of this brilliant Tommy Angelo quote) between $1600 (when I was down for the month) and $2200 (those 2 wonderful days when I was way up) and it currently sits just $40 shy of $2000. Here's to a barrier breakthrough coming real soon.

I did play some poker over the past couple of days. Some good, some bad, ending up $80 over 1250 hands (6.35BB/100). I can certainly live with that. Here is the worst:



Villain here is 20/0/.5 over 40 hands. I can't even explain to you why I didn't get the rest of my stack in on the turn. Had I pushed there I would have turned a stupid river call into a bad beat. Basically I needed to take BW's advice on this one. This guy is NEVER betting that river without a hand the beats my kings. Just bad and a prime example of my issue with folding in big pots even with weak hands compared to the board. Maybe one day I'll get it and break on through.

Oh and if you'd like to read more from Tommy Angelo check out his blog, and pick up his book, Elements of Poker for a great read.

Finally A Good Run With Only One Real Mistake

Really good run tonight. 600 hands, $170 profit (28BB/100). I feel I actually played well, although I do think I'm way too results oriented when it comes to my perception of my play. Anyway, I did get a bit lucky to have AA vs KK and I also won a stack with AKs v 88 AIPF. So I do realize, had the cards fallen slightly differently, the end result could have been much different. Either way it feels good to book a solid win and get back in the green for the month (although still just barely).

Here is the one hand I feel I made a serious (read expensive) mistake on:


Wow, that looks really bad! The villain here had decent TAG stats (13/9/3) but I had seen him lose a stack with AK in a very similar spot (he 3 barreled that pot from OOP as well). So when he bet the river I used all my time and decided to make the "hero" call. Let's rename it the sucker call shall we. Whenever a villain turns over a boat and you have to show 2nd pair on a paired board, well let's just say dumb is about the best thing that I felt.

Had a couple of great fantasy football drafts yesterday and managed to stay relatively sober. I have 3 drafts to go and they're all this Sunday! Looks like it's going to be a long day. Good thing Monday's a holiday!

You'll Only Get Called By A Hand That Beats You Or Me

Few sessions since Friday's post with no real BR movement one way or the other. Total profit of $6.75 over 850 hands. Meh, at least I didn't give away too many stacks. I'm really beginning to wonder if I have what it takes to play this game for any kind of real money (not for a living but for some decent fun money). I mean I've been playing so much more than my usual over the last few months and I really felt I was improving and my BR agreed. Now when I look back at some of the horrible mistakes I've made this month, I wonder if I hadn't just been lucky for a few months and this month is closer to my real expectations? I hope not, but I'll admit I have been considering that possibility.

Anyway you know the poker cliche that says that in certain spots you shouldn't bet because you'll only be called by a hand that beats you? Well that obviously doesn't apply when you're playing me:



So we hit our set on an Ace high flop and get a caller to our check-raise, great! Why then do I fail to bet the rest of his stack on the turn? Then when the board gets amazingly scary our villain turns his very strong hand into a bluff but gets lucky because he's playing my dumb ass. This is a hand we beat no where near enough to call when he pushes here. Folding the river should be pretty standard (especially to a loose/passive player like this villain 36/2/1), but I just can't fold my incredibly weak, for this board, hand. Ugly.

Anyway tomorrow marks my first fantasy football drafts of the season. The first is for a keeper league I have been the commissioner in for 4 years (I'm not in that league I just run it) and it will be held at a friend's bar. I'll have my laptop with the software (Fandraft) connected to the big screen and I'll just be running the draft while enjoying a few beers. Then a few hours after that draft ends I'll be participating in the draft for my longest running (7 years) league. It's an online draft but I'll be hanging around the bar and doing it from there (the owner of the bar is in that league as well). I can't wait to get going. I love this time of year. Even better yet it's only 6 days to opening day for my beloved WVU Mountaineers!

Oh No, We Suck Again

August sucks. I haven't posted in days, because well, there just nothing good to say. Since my last post I've dropped $301 in just under 1900 hands (-16BB/100). On the month I'm down $45 before rakeback. In my largest losing session since my last post (-$180) I had not 1 but 2 full houses beat by quads! And then I started tilting and bluffing away stacks. Just really, really ugly.

Worst hand? Hell there all bad right now. Here's a random one for you:


Horrible. This was from the session where I dropped the $180 and was one of those tilty, make no sense bluffs I was talking about.

Well, it's Friday night so I guess I should go see if the fish are biting. Hopefully, I don't get eaten.

3 Good Sessions, 1 Bad Bluff

I've played 1300 hands over 3 sessions in the last 2 days. I ended each session up and won a total of $146 (11.3BB/100) proving once again there's nothing like a weekend to turn things around. I don't know when I last saw so many horrible calls and bad plays, probably last weekend.

Well it seems that www.pokerhandreplays.com (the site I use for the cool hand replayer) is not converting at the moment so it looks like my bad bluff hand will have to wait. Sorry you won't get to see me do anything stupid today.

Running Backwards and Mid Month Update

I've figured out my current problem, I'm running backwards. What the hell does that mean you say? Well it means that when I get my $$ in as a big favorite I'm getting beat and losing stacks
and when I'm getting in with the worst of it, I'm sucking out (sometimes pretty hard)


The 1st hand above is from a session I played late last night. I finished down $77.60 over 570 hands (-13.7BB/100). I never mind getting AI with KK and when he turned over Queens I figured I was good, but then I forgot I was running backwards.

Hand #2 is from tonight's session (up $62.15 over 357 hands) and looks much worse than I thought at the time. The villain here had pushed KK earlier into an Ace high flop and was called but hit a King on the river to win. She's also lost more than she gain with A-rag several times and I thought I had her range crushed with AJ here. When she flipped AA I nearly shed a tear, but then I remembered that I was running backwards. It's hands like these that make me glad I turn off chat when I play.

My mid month update is somehow uglier than hand #2 above! Here's the graph:


My goals are in shambles and I doubt any of them are realistic now other than maybe the number of hands goal. What I really need now is a heater like I had for the 1st 2 days of the month!

Here's to hoping that I at least get turned around and start running forward for the rest of the month.