sick heater

This is my month up to date. I'm on a pretty sick heater over my last 4k hands as you can see. The rest of the month has been very swingy, but I managed to keep in the green all long.
I think a 23 BI heater is probably the biggest I've been on so far. I do think it is justified though given the amount of 80-20s I was losing. In the end everything is variance.

I spoke to Matt today about our hand bet and we agreed to call it off. I'm slighlty ahead of him, but we're both with family friends and having to play poker isn't optimal for me right now.
I think the bet fullfilled it's purpose though, we both put in a lot of hands (by our standards) which is great.
Since I've been in the UK I've been 4 tabling mostly, because I played on my mother's computer and she only has a 19" screen. I'm not sure it made much of a difference in winrate for me, but you definetly have enough time to think about hands and how you could have played them better, which is great.

I think I'll take it easy for the rest of the month since I don't have to play anymore. I'm thinking of getting in some nl100hu hands when if I decide to play. Basically to continue with my 5k hu challenge and work on my HU a bit.
When jan starts I'll jump straight into 2/4 with a healthy bankroll and reasurance in my game.
I'll also be getting xdsl and a new desktop computer with a second 20" screen.
I think at times I wasn't playing my A game, because my hardware tilted me. Somehow I've always managed to have computer's w/ compatability problems. This mainly due to the fact that I always try and get PC's that fit my needs and are not extravagant, but this time I'll try and aim a bit higher than the minimum. I'm looking into a medium-class PC and not an office PC. High-end is a bit over the top for me imo.

I've been watching a lot of comedy lately here on SKY television, I like comedy cause it helps me unwind from poker. A lot of people don't think playing poker is difficult (in a draining sense of way), but it is. The higher you play and the more you think about the game the more it is like studying and you constantly need to focus and be on the top of your game.
Anyways I saw this show called the Sarah Silverman show which is easily one of the most bizzare things I have watched so far. From what I understand main actor is playing an altered version of herself. One that has no shame whatsoever and says whatever comes to her mind.
It's a different sense of humor in a positive way. You guys should check it out and tell me what you think.

2 hands I thought I might share with you:

Pot of the Day

I was contemplating reraising pre, but decided not to. Villain is a reg. He was running @ 18/16 at this point. I had a tight image, but for some reason villain decided I was weak here. I got it in 80-20 and managed to win the flip ;). He must have been putting me on some weaker draw.
I guess the J and the T on the flop let him believe that I was less likely to have a set here and waited my range more to hands that he had FE against. His turn timing was interesting as he made a very quick check raise.

I make a good read

This hand was tricky. I knew I had played with villain before, but my HUD hadn't uploaded yet (when you play with HUDs a lot you tend to start relying on them too much, my bad I guess).
This was my first hand at the table so I tried to use the information I had at hand. I didn't even want to 3-bet pre, because I didn't know how villain would play postflop, but my hand figures to be ahead of an average CO player's range, plus there was potential dead money in the pot so I raised it nonetheless.
Basically I picked up some key timing tells that lead my poker instincts to tell me that I was good here and I guess this shows just how strong timing tells are with weaker players.

This was quite a long blog , I hope you all had nice Xmas dinners.

Take it easy.

edit:

And RTR hasn't been hacked, they sent an email a couple of weeks back and it's just something they're testing, so it's all good.

Hacked

I think my raketherake stats page was hacked. I am not 100% sure yet, but it definetly looks like it. I need to take measures fast to make sure they are unable to hack anything else related to that account.

thoughts on variance

This is my graph for my last 3k hands. As you can see I recovered from my 9 BI downswing within a short period of time. 9 BI is definetly one of my larger down swings in my career so far, but it can happen and you can also play perfectly and lose 12 BIs or play poorly and win 5.
Basically what I am getting at is that poker is a game of high variance and you have to be aware of this at all times. Imo it's crucial to have the correct mindset when playing. Always favour making +ev decisions over winning $ and don't get frustrated when things don't go your way.
Also don't make short term monetary goals. I honestly don't understand people who make prop bets over who can make more money in a given time period on a specific limit, because assuming that both players are of equal skill, play the same amount of hands and never tilt, it's negative ev gambling, because you'll be relying on luck to win the bet (I guess you could argue about this, if say both players were to play 100k hands, but I think you get my point).

I think this is also something to think about in terms of bankroll management. I believe I practice very good bankroll management and always have. I started off with a 15 BI rule and right now I am at 45. It definetly requires a lot of discipline to play 15 BIs well, assuming you don't want to busto. I wouldn't advise people who think they can easily tilt not to consider using this for obvious reasons.
If I were to start a new career from nl 2 like I did originally I'd most likely follow a 25 BI rule till I hit nl 100 and switch to 30-40 from then on.

I've played my 5k hands on 1/2 and I could move up to 2/4, but I am not sure if I want to do this right now. I'll prob wait untill january and give it another shot. Even though I am not playing with scared money large $ swings may effect my mood and it's christmas after all :).

HERE you can find my biggest hand for the day. When he checked to me I thought it was pretty apparent I had the best hand, but I was a bit worried about being check raised valuebetting so thinly. I thought about this for a second and I realised this is a good spot to bet to induce a check raise. It took villain 4 seconds to shove on me and I'm glad my play worked out. He obviously thought I wasn't repping much, but he wasn't either ;).

graph + KRANTZ

I decided to graph the session for you that I was talking about yesterday.
Right now I am rereading KRANTZ's well post from the 2+2 archives. Some interesting stuff in there, you should check it out. KRANTZ had a sick run this year and I believe is the biggest winner in NLH for the year. He is also the owner of the training site 3-bet.net which offers various coaching possibilities. The site however seems to be hacked right now (lol).
I think I am gonna go and chill a bit and then play some 1/2 when the games are good.

Huge Swings

Today during my session on Absolute I was down 2k at peak, which is the equivalent of 10 stacks. That is a pretty huge swing to have during one session. However my mental strength is probably one of the keys to my success and I was able not to tilt and win back 1.5k leaving me at -500 for the day. I am glad I am having this variance on 1/2, even for me being down 4k during a session is tough.
I am not going to bore you with HHs of coolers. Basically I couldn't win flips and was also losing as a big fav (80%+ equity).
I'll try and get back to posting some interesting hand histories.

Besides poker I guess all is well, I haven't been too social so far as I've been grinding to catch up on my hand prop bet. I'll make the minimum of 30k hands for sure, but not sure how much I can play after that. Unless I don't hit a heater soon I prob won't be playing 2/4 this month. But that's no biggy for me. I realize I have the skills and I just need to patient and disciplined.

lol ub

Seriously UB, your site could be so good, but you just don't get it. I was playing when all of a sudden the software crashed on me. It's not like this is the first time it happend to me either. It's a fairly well known waiting list bug which they claimed to have fixed. But whatever, I gave UB like a billion chances and they disapoint me time and time again (which is the main reason why I withdraws from their site). Atleast I was able to leave them on a "positive note" as I was up a little bit over 2 buy ins on 1/2 when this happend.

UB

I'll be playing on UB for the remaing days of December. I like to change sites when running poorly on a specific site. I think I'll play 5k hands on 1/2 and then go from there. I still have enough money to continue playing 2/4, but I think it will be good for my game to move down for a bit.

I transferred money from Absolute to UB and that took about 10 minutes which is pretty nice, however I shouldn't be playing right now, but packing (same procedure as every year).

Poker and Life

Hi guys! Been running poorly @ 2/4 lately. Dropped 1.7k yesterday. I think I am playing well though. I've been analyzing my plays and posting hands on Cardrunners. I am running into a lot of obvious coolers aswell:

Top set

Fwiw I'll get it in here all day. I had 74% equity on the flop. I intentionally reraised instead of shoving to get him to do something silly and he complied.

Top two

This hand may not seem so obvious, but I think his range is polarized towards combo draws and weaker two pairs. He was 33/20/3 so a lot of hands that have me beat he will typically be raising pf.

Standard

Vs a reg on this board for 100bb I am never folding.

Middle set

Another standard hand vs a reg for 100bb.

Thos were the biggest coolers from my session yesterday. Add some tricky spots and your down 4 stacks.
I am still playing some good 1/2 tables on the side to fill up my table slots. Running pretty well on 1/2 made 400 from the couple of tables I was playing.

I'll be travelling to Kent tomorrow over christmas. I'll be taking my notebook with me and 4 tabling some. I am thinking of depositiing and playing on UB for a while to mix things upand because the Absolute software on my 15,4" screen is really hard to read.
Right now I gotta get some stuff done before I leave, I'll be updating if anything interesting occurs though.

L8rments.

NL 400 meh + video

Ran pretty badly at 400 yesterday, basically I got stacked three times in 7 hands in cooler situations. Here a brief summary of that orbit:

1

Probably the closest of the 3 hands. I was getting 1.7-1 to call and I had a note on this guy that he likes to gamble. I need 37% equity to call. It's close, because he raised UTG, if he was raising from a later position this is an easy call anyway.

I am in bad shape vs QQ+:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 20.701% 16.81% 03.89% 22456944 5190822.00 { QQ }
Hand 1: 79.299% 75.41% 03.89% 100721124 5190822.00 { QQ+ }

but if you had AK into the mix:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 40.207% 38.35% 01.86% 114253440 5540034.00 { QQ }
Hand 1: 59.793% 57.93% 01.86% 172607388 5540034.00 { QQ+, AKs, AKo }

Then I should definetly be calling. Even if this was -EV I don't think buy much so to me this is a cooler. Given that it's so close I think folding is fine here too though, especially since villain was a weaker player and we can probably get our money in with a significant edge at some point later on.

2

Set over set on drawy board.

3

This guy was a preflop and postflop maniac.

Despite getting stacked on my NL 200 table aswell I managed to only be down 1k for the day.
Shortly after this I decided to go and make a video.
It's on NL 100. I think it's ok, but I also think that I can do better. If I make a video in the future I'll probably try think about some concept that I'd like to address in it.
I hope you like it and feedback is always welcomed:

VIDEO

Winning again

Was able to put in a winning session yesterday. Ended up +840. Matt was sweating me and I think the session went pretty well. Just a few hands:

Big Pot

This was a pretty funky hand. At this point I had no idea what an overbet by villain meant. I decided that a raise looks strong and if he was making some kinda move calling gives him room to go crazy on the turn again. The turn card is awful, but I figured there are still a lot of hands that he could play the same way that I still beat I call and he shows the underset which is a great result untill the BB goes wild. I call with odds and suckout. I run g00t.

Variance

Brought me quickly back to reality though by reversing my river suckout.

Fold flop lol

Not much I can say here, glad he improved on the turn.


As for non poker related stuff, uni is now over and I still will have to learn for my finals in january and february, but I now have a more flexible time schedule.
Next week I'll be travelling to the UK for christmas so that should be fun to meet friends and family again.
Today I'll be having a small a party at my new place. It's the first time I am inviting people over, should be good.
Get back to you guys later.

Practicing Spanish with ABS support

lol:

Esteban: Please hold one moment
you: vale
Esteban: Do you speak Spanish?
you: a little bit
you: i am learning it at university
you: do you?
Esteban: Si, yo hablo español. That is an easy sentence.
you: yea
you: i figured you might because your names sounds spanish
you: por eso he escrito en espanol
Esteban: That is very good. Your writing is perfect.
you: muchas gracias :D
Esteban: Con gusto! :)
Esteban: The bonus has been credited to your pending account now.
you: k cheers
Esteban: Good bye!
you: good bye
you: hasta luego ^^

Rough Day

Had a rough day at the tables today. First I made a mistake early on for 500$ where I stacked off for 150bb with KK to AA vs a guy who had a very low 3 bet %. I wasn't looking at the stats at the time and then after I stacked off I realised his only holding in that spot could be AA. Frustrating, in retrospect, but mistakes are expensive in NL holdem.
Besides this I was getting moved in on every time I was bluffing and people were never paying off my big hands. The times where I had average strong hands my opponents had slightly stronger hands.
I guess I wasn't running completely bad as I somehow managed to end up only -120$ for the day over 1.5k hands. I was lucky to get on a table with a maniac who payed off my top two with K high (he leads shoved into me on the river with a missed draw giving me 3-1 to call).
So far I can't really complain as I am still up on my shot @ 2/4 and if I can lose little whilst adjusting that's great. I am gonna go review my session and post hands on Cardrunners. L8rs.

Small 2/4 session review

Decided to try and add more pictures for eaziness of reading. As you can see the session turned out well. Had to quit early though, because I had a slight headache which sucks cause I am behind in the hands bet, but I should be able to balance this out once uni finishes at the end of the week.
On to some hands:

1.41k pot

I think this is my biggest pot so far in my poker career. I did think before sticking it in as my opponent was a fairly reasonable player. He claims to be a PLO player that plays NLH because the games are so good. I was able to narrow down his range to a point where I felt confident enough in my hand to reshove. Imo with a player behind him he should be inclined to play sets fast on this board as well as KJcc for the combo although going for an overcall with a weak player behind isn't that bad of a play. It's very unlikely he is peeling the naked gutshot. I also 3 barrelled villain out of the last hand we played so he could be frustrated at me. Given all these factors I felt confident in reshoving and I was a bit surprised at villains holding, I thought his range was more polarized towards draws.
After this hand villain was constantly berating me saying how bad I was and how much luck is involved in NLHE, not very classy. He also claimed that he was constantly outplaying me, he went on and on which was slightly frustrating, but I think he will be a profitable player in the future.

Easy money

This guy was playing really bad. Raising 35% of his hands and never folding to a reraise. If the flop comes one over card I am not folding.

Value betting

At first I felt like shoving here, but wanted to make it look like I could have a bluff so decided to raise. Imo his line looks a lot like air or a J and these guys don't like folding. I don't even think it's that thin since these guys call worse a lot.

Thin

I don't think he has a K here too often and there are a lot of draws on board. I think it's important to think about a comittment decision on the turn. WIth a higher kicker it's probably a no brainer.

Meh

I really don't like my flop check here. My first thought was I check here to mix up my range between the times when I check fold so that villain can't steal relentlessly, but a) this guy was passive and b) this guy's a donk so I am levelling myself by mixing up my range here.

On the other hand

I like my play here. Similar idea to the above hand but makes a lot more sense given the stack sizes and my hand.

Board: 5c 2c 8c
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 49.798% 49.80% 00.00% 493 0.00 { AcKs }
Hand 1: 50.202% 50.20% 00.00% 497 0.00 { TcTh }

Interesting that I am not a favourite here in this hand, I think it's due to the fact that villain can make a set and negate my overpair outs, but nevertheless I got it in well and have FE against a lot of 1 pair hands.

standard

Had a lot of decisions when this hand occured. Pretty standard in retospect for 50 bb, not much I can do. It was just one of those spots where I had a weird feeling before hand. Must have been villains bet sizing that gave me that feeling. I purchased a book called "blink" which discusses how we subconciously process certain situations and this must have been one of them. Villain was 35/16.

this was bad

Flop raise was too small. This happens to me quite often when I move up in stakes. 84 looks like a large amount but in reality it isn't, 104-120 is far better here. On the turn I call getting 2.55-1 needing 3-1 to hit my boat. My plan was to lead all in if I filled up figuring he was commited with a flush.
I really hate calling off large bets with draws, but I'll rarely be drawing dead in this spot so I think it is ok. But really I am mad about my betsizing on the flop.
Comments on turn play are welcomed.

cooler

Not much I can do here given the stack sizes.

looks spewy

But I had a read and played the hand accordingly. Basically this was shortly after the hand I played where I took down the 1.41k pot against the same player. In my opinion there was a decent chance he was tilting and so I didn't want to get raised on the flop and throw away the best hand. I figure he is capable of 3 barreling here given my flop check and he played the hand well. In future I'll be less inclined to think this player tilts bad as all his plays seemed reasonable after the pot, he was just berating me a ton in chat and generally fluking about NLHE players and that PLO has way more skill etc..
Hands like this make for interesting plays based on history though.

my friend jr

His pf call shows how little respect he gives me which surprises me, but is something that I can use to my advantage. Jr plays all the stakes from NL 200 to NL 3k from what I've seen so far.
From my perspective his river call was bad, which I can't go into too much detail on because I'd be giving away too much information, but I can understand the call from his perspective. I levelled myself in this hand, because Jr doesn't give my enough credit. I expect some interesting battles between Jr and myself in the future and I'll surely be reviewing his game to otpimize my play vs him.
I think I could have played this hand better by two to three barrelling him here. My line represents to narrow of a range and I think betting the turn generates more FE against his approximate range.

All in all I think 2/4 is still very beatable. It'll take more hands before I fully adjust to the stakes/regs, but I feel confident and am lucky enough to have had a good start so far.

Didn't play much today

Put in about 400 hands today. I converted my database today to SQL and that was taking ages to do, so I decided to hop into a NL 100 HU game. Played 100 hands against a fishy player untill my database was finished and then I went to play some 2/4 ring game. Ended up 50 in the hu match and another 150 in the ring game.
I know not many hands but the action was decent as I started off my ring game with a rush of cards.

The third hand I played

A pretty dry and coordinate board, but this guy was playing 60/30/3 datamined, plus showed some aggro tendencies. I think this is pretty standard with top two here. I actually don't mind losing a big pot early on when moving up as it helps me adjust to the stakes quicker and avoid playing scared.

Not scared for sure

Were deep in this hand, but this was against the same villain as in the hand above. He snapped the flop so I think his range is fairly wide in this spot. Later on he told me he had the nutflush draw.
If he had AKs this was a really nice result as getting it in on the turn is high varaince against 15 outs.

They try

I based this hand mainly on timing tells which I feel pretty confident in. I snapped the river he insta left the table what else can I say.

I'll be getting in some more hands tomorrow on 2/4 the games look pretty good on Absolute. Loose passive fish are the best obviously but the aggro donks are also great to play against and not as high variance as one may think since they call way way too much.

2/4 action

I'll be playing some 2/4 the next session. I feel confident in my game and I have the bankroll. So there is nothing holding me back.

Not feeling great

I just played a fairly bad session where I could have lost a fair amount. I was a bit unconcentrated not really thinking to indepth about my decisions. I need to get my sleeping pattern back to normal and also start working out again. Still ended up +800 on the session though, so I guess I was running hot.

2/4

I am almost there now. I don't need many more buy ins to move up. I've started mining the higher games and they look quite good on Absolute, ergo very beatable.
As long as I don't hit some bad negative variance I'll be up in no time.

Small Prop Bet

I made a small prop bet with my friend probability. We arranged that for every 1k hands in difference we'll pay the other 10$. So if I play 20k hands and he plays 30, I'll owe him 100$.
I doubt the gap will be that wide, but it's something that should keep as going as we both didn't reach our target hands last month.

edit: Whoever fails to reach 30k hands will also owe the other an extra 100$.

December

I think december will be a good month, I have a positive feeling about it. My goals are to move up to 2/4 for good :P, play enough hands (especially playing regularly), win Taylor's protege contest (a little optimistic I know).
Yesterday I installed Holdem Manager. For those of you who don't know it, it's an alternative to Poker Tracker that is faster and has more options you can find it here. I created a new database and I'll be using it to track and analyze my play for this month.
Poker Tracker has reacted already to this and is making PT 2 (see what opposition can do).

Last month I said I'd play 5k hands HU, I don't think I quite managed that, but unexpected occurences made it difficult for me to achieve this task. I'll get back to HU once I move up to 2/4, that will be my main focus for now. It's difficult to move up and focus on learning a new game at the same time.

Today I'll be playing in the Absolute Turkey Bowl freeroll which I qualified for. It's a 5k freeroll and I think i have a reasonable chance of cashing (notice the uber self-confidence).

As far as the other areas of my life are going, I can't complain I guess. I have finished the majority of my uni work and it has gone well.
I guess what did suck is that I haven't been working out for almost 2 weeks now. I just didn't find the time which is really bad. I want to go now, but I arranged to go shopping with a friend for furniture and stuff, plus in the evening is the freeroll. I need to balance this.
Right now I'm gonna do my usual saturday cleaning (bachelor appartments typically aren't very tidy ;)). Out.

It's over

I'm done with my session and these are the final standings:

Hands: 4,926
Profit: +37.90$
Points: 10,016.89

I was up more but lost about 500 in the last 100 hands with the flopped nut straight vs the straight/flush draw and with top two vs a set. That's variance I guess. Atleast I managed to come back. Towards the end I was mixing up bet sizes a bit and called with 99 on AAJJ2 cause I thought my pair was good.
Time to relax I guess. Not sure I'll review this session. There were 1 or 2 interesting hands, but it's tough to go through 5k hands to find them.
Next session will be on UB, I am really interested in how the games are. L8r.

almost there

Vip points. 9,418.58
Hands 3,817
-140$

I am getting there, in all 3 points.

lunch

Was down 1.1k at one point. Right now I recoverd to -660. Got 2.5k hands in so far and its time for a lunch brake. I am very confident now that I'll earn enough vip points to maintain my status now.
Ttyl.

not running well

I made some poker theoretical errors in some hands, where I basically created too big pots and folded after putting in a lot with strong, but not great hans. Lost a stack with qq v kk which I think is fairly standard given that it was a stealing scenario. I also got some suck outs when I was ahead.
I don't know how much I am down so far, probably in the range of 3-4 stacks. PT is taking ages to important my hands, I guess I'll just take a short break.

marathon poker 2

1/2, 2/4...

5000 hands...

13 hours...

"This is madness" - Leonidas

The plan is to get enough points to maintain my VIP status. I'll play some good 2/4 tables to fill up the tables.
I'll be shooting for 6 tables, but I may have to play 8 if it starts getting close.
Wish me luck.

stuff

My Norton Anti Virus was messing around so it had to go. NAV is well known for it's drainage of system performance, but I thought I would give it a chance since it had been a while.
I may install it some time again since I still have 200 days left on my current product.
For the meanwhile I will be using Zone Alarm and Avast Antivir.

Yesterday night I stayed up till 8 in the morning from 3 in the afternoon, because I had to finish a paper for uni. Since then I have only slept 1.5 hours. I hadn't really felt tired up till then, but right now I am feeling it a bit.

As usual friends have asked me to go outside and do stuff with them. I am not quite sure I'll be going out anymore tonight though. I need to play about 5k hands tomorrow to maintain my abs status as VIP Elite, which sucks, but the week where I had no internet really hurt me.
Maybe it's not quite as much as that, but it will be a tedious task.
I have to do it though as dropping down in status could cost me potentially 1k$ in bonusses(maybe even more).

big session review

Just played a 2.4k hand session on Absolute. I think I played pretty well. I dodged some bullets and was able to get in some thin value bets.
Although my Acehud is working again I've decided to play a bit with my new HUD. Here is a picture of what it looks like:RTH
I changed the font and the color ranges a bit. 3B stands for 3bet% and it's an interesting new stat which is the main reason why I am using real time hud. It also uses less system resources than PAHUD though which is a huge plus.
On to my session...

poker is high variance

Villain is a fish, but not an uber donk. I think I played the hand well. I wasn't quite sure what a 6bb pf raise meant, but from my experiences today the fishier players are making these larger raises with premium hands which is a bet sizing tell.
He can't fold tptk for 200bb, but I run g00t and hit my draw.

hyper aggro donk

I didn't know much about this player, but given his line and his timing I was pretty sure he had AA or KK. I guess I was wrong...

am i on tilt?

This hand was immedeately after I lost my 1k pot, villain was very hesitant and passive in this hand, but for 100bb after I lost that huge pot it's a very easy felt in my opinion.

there is a reason why i play an absolute

It fascinates me the way these guys always call down to hope you stop betting and to see if no bad cards come. If the flush hits and I push it wouldn't suprise me to see a "so you hit your flush, qq" in the chat.

more value town

Again I had a feeling that I could be up against AA or KK here. Villain played the hand so poorly. I was contemplating value shoving the river given my read, but it seemed like too much of an overbet, plus raising might intice villain to hero call with weaker hands if he wasn't holding AA,KK.

kk 150bb

KK plays really awkward for 150bb. Again I was worried about the mr v my utg open and decided to play the hand wa/wb. I hesitated on the river, given his pf minraise and bet/bet/bet line, but my hand is too underrepped to fold here. I was surprised this villain was value betting QQ here (seems reasonable).

i should bet more on the river

I probably should have bet more on this river. For some reason I was worried about a boat (it's possible I was mixing up the preflop action given that I was 6 tabling) in retrospect I should have just made it 110ish on the river. He's never folding his hand there.

i call

I can't see myself ever really folding this hand postlfop. I probably should have made a slightly larger raise pf though to cut down on his implied and to make my postflop decision easier.

cooler

This hand is self-explicatory.

hmm

I think this hand is ok, but not great. One shouldn't be folding to minraises preflop in general (although the minraises on Absolute are not minraises, but 2x raises). This is one of the better flops for my hand. But villains flop bet is very large, he is basically comitting himself to the hand. Assuming that he hasn't always hit the flop though my equity is decent.
If I run my hand against a rough estimate of his range my play is about break even:

Board: Kd Ah Jd

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 42.681% 41.77% 00.91% 31430 683.50 { Td6d }
Hand 1: 57.319% 56.41% 00.91% 42443 683.50 { 88+, AJs+, KQs, 87s, AJo+, KQo }


170*0.42-120*0.58=+1.8

I added 87s to represent the times he will have a rdm hand. Obivously this calculation is just an estimation. I won't be getting it all in against all of that range and sometimes he might fold.
Assuming that he never folds after potting, folding to his bet is best though.
In retrospect I like folding and waiting for a better spot to get it in vs this weak player.

sometimes...

... thin value betting back fires. Villain snapped the flop and the turn so I felt inclined to try and get some value on the river unluckily he was peeling with a better a high.

deep stack poker

I felt this was a difficult hand to play well. I flop bottom set on a very ugly board and I think I can get away from this hand on the flop.
I think I have no other choice but to raise this flop, calling seems very weak. I am also not commited to the deeper stacks. My raise is almost like a raise for information.

overpair v nit

This opponent was fairly tight and I think his range is pretty polarized towards sets here. Given his small flop raise and timing I don't see how I can fold the flop.
The turn is a spot where I think a fold is reasonable given reads. The only reads I had though were from my HUD plus the river wouldn't give me any tough decisions since I think I can safely fold to any further bets or take a free showdown if checked to and see what villain is doing this with.

i figured...

...I was beat here. Nothing too special imo, but again I was able to make an easy fold based mainly on timing tells and villains line. He can't really represent a flush here since a flush would cbet. I was suspecting that I was beat on the turn, but I can hardly laydown my hand to the minraise.
If villain had cbet here he would have made more money. I think I'd always bet my quads here, I'd only make an exception against a very aggresive donk.

i make a good laydown

Interesting line here by Maverick. I've been playing with Mav since NL 100 on Absolute and we have tangeled quite a bit. I am very sure I have an edge on him as he appears to be a recreational type player, but he is difficult to extract money from since he plays fairly tight postflop. I'd say he is a small winner in these games simply because they are so good.
I am getting great odds to call the flop, but I think I am beat and I have learnt the hard way that reverse implied odds are very painful in nl (playing live deepstacked poker in Vienna).
I am happy at the way the hand turned out. I actually thought mav had a set or a straight though.

Quite a bit of hands here. But I like sharing my thoughts with the readers of my blog and it's a good change to just looking at every hand in PT by myself. I hope they were interesting and feedback is welcomed. Pls forgive any typos.

Ps.: I ended up about 300 on this session.

500bb pot, 94% equity...

nh sir

HUD is working again

I don't know how this could have happend, but somehow my time changed and I didn't realise it.
I fixed it now and HUD is up and working again.

HUD problems

For some reason my HUD is unable to connect to the Acesoftware server to validate that it is actually registered, so it simply isn't working for now. I have contacted the support, but it looks as though it could take a while for it to start working again.
A friend of mine, Matt, told me about Realtimehud, which is a free HUD program which you can find here.
I am actually pretty satisfied with it so far, especially since it's freeware. The graphics are reasonable and one can use it with HoldemManager which isn't supported by AceHud yet.
The biggest plus about RealTimeHud is the fact that it shows you peoples pf 3 bet %. It'll be interesting to play with that stat.
As far as poker is going, I can't really complain. I am not really keeping track of how much I am up this month so far and it isn't really important, because I simply just need to get more hands in and not worry too much about moving up to 2/4.
If by the end of the month I have 16k after cash outs I'll probably give a shot at 2/4 next month.

getting back on track

My internet is up and running again now and i am trying to get back on track and play more hands.
I've been playing some deep stacked poker on Absolute on 1/2 and I'll probably be playing a bit on UB on the new software once I get enough VIP Elite points on Absolute to maintain my status.
I've been busy with uni lately, but I don't think I have any more exams till christmas just papers that are due.
Right now I feel a bit tired from everything and I may have slight infection. I feel a bit lazy and everything seems so tiring. I should probably go to the doctor to get a check up.
I'll report back when I have interesting news.

Life's a bitch

I talked to my ISP today and they claim that I exceeded my limit by 5 gb = 500€/700$. Which is a sick rate, but I was aware of that.
Tbh I think it's really difficult for me to have achieved 20gb of data transfer, but I have to admit that I can't completely exclude the possibility that it was my fault. There reasoning behind why they didn't warn me earlier was that I was able to check it online (which I hadn't yet used, because I haven't signed up for the service yet). I've decided to just pay the bill for the meanwhile so that I have internet again and then take a closer look at the bill and possibly contest it if I think it's unrealistic.
This is a pretty tough beat for me cause I have to take that extra money out of my br and I was just about to move up to 2/4 and this will delay me even further.
For the meanwhile untill my internet is unlocked again I bought a friend of mine a router so I can log into his internet. I'll be grinding a bit at his place till my inet is up again.
All in all it's a pretty tough spot, but nothing I can really do right now but wait and pay the bill.

Real life Variance

Still no response from my ISP, this is getting pretty ridiculous imo. I guess in a way it's not that bad, because I should be studying now more anway, but either way it's definetly a "meh" spot to me.
Otherwise I can't really complain about life, got a job offer today from some wine company and I'll be checking it out at the end of next week. Even though I can't earn nearly as much there as I could playing poker, it's definetly something that I'm interested in as an economics student, because job praxis is so important.

I walked into uni today planning on studying, but I saw that everest poker was running a students tournament, I obviously couldn't resist and registered (late registration wasn't a prob, because I have an everest account).
The modus is kinda weird with three rounds to start off with. It's kinda like a 6max shootout tournament with three rounds. You get points for every rank you make on your table and that *3.
The highest ranking players make the final table. My chances are pretty slim right now as I busted out last in the first round with my AK losing to 99 and my short stack k7s losing to t5o. Not much I can do there I guess. I need to run really hot now to make the final table, but I guess I'll give it a shot. If I reach the final table I get to play online for a place in the EPT Baden which would be really nice (I think it's a 1k buy in tournament).
Got to go back and play the next round, I'll update later.

small update

Nothing has really happend so far on my internet. I phoned them up today and they are still processing the case. I feel poorly treated and doubt I'll get any compensation for this.
There is also not much point in complaining to anyone just yet, but they are costing me money.

As for poker, I made an account on Pacific the other day and started playing. They have 1/2 and 2/4 games and even some 3/6, 5/10. I played 200 hands and lost about 150$ nothing spectacular. The play was bad as suspected, but I missed every draw and the regs were just never folding to me (they prob thought I was a fish as my stats were very laggy over a small sample size).

I really enjoy flicking through the pokersitescout.com site listings. It's interesting to see the impact of UB's new software on the amount of players they have. They have moved up past Absolute and into the top 10.
Concerning Absolute, they released a new statement today saying that our money is safe and tha they have updated all security measures and that they are also updated regularly.
I guess even though they handled previous occurences pretty badly, you have to give them credit, for trying to make things better. It's all kinda funny though, because I remember when I first found Absolute (which was when the software was still god awfull) they were always talking about how good their security was and ironically thats exactly what got them into so much trouble.

That's all for now, I hope that tomorrow I'll be able to give you an update that my internet is back on track again. Tbh I am not really concerned about them sending me a bill, because I am very content that I am of no fault what so ever. If they happen to insist on me paying I guess I'll have to contact my lawyer, but I don't think it'll get that far. Seems to be some system error of theirs.

Laters.

real life beat

As some of you may have noticed, my internet disconnected yesterday. I decide to have an early night and today I tried reconnecting, it still wasn't working.
I decide to phone my ISP support hotline and they tell me that my internet has been locked, because my bill is already too high (my rate is 24€ a month with 15gb limit).
I ask them how high and they say 500€ (roughly 700$). At this point I am in a wtf mood, but I am not even really pissed, because it's such a ridiculous statement on their behalf.
She says they'll only unlock it if I pay the 500€ cash! I try to figure out why my bill could possibly be so high and she tells me that she can not tell me that yet, she has to wait for the details on the bill.
I've just been to the store to talk to somebody in person (whilst on the phone to support I asked for somebody in charge, but she said nobody could review this at this time).
The guy at the store seemed reasonable, agreeing that it's virtually impossible for me to have such a high bill.
I really have no idea how this could have happend and it is really annoying. I'll update when I have news on this.
ffs...

not doing well hu

I believe I dropped another 3 buy ins today playing .5/1 hu. I wish I could say it was just variance, but I am not sure I played entirely well. I don't have the HHs, because I forgot to click the save HHs option on FTP. I emailed FTP though and hope they can send them to me.
It's possible I was a bit tired today during my game and I probably shouldn't have played given that, I just felt like playing.
I am also down 1.5 buy ins on nl200, but I think I played well 6 max. Hu I was outkicked every time I showed down a made hand and alot of my bluffs werer getting called. For example I flopped a gutshot with 67s in a 3 bet pot on 34Ar and after villain cbets and I make it 3.5x his bet he calls oop and shows down 99. Later on in a 3 bet pot I reraise him with ajs. The flop comes down 252, but I still decide to cbet, figuring I can fold out a lot of overcards. He calls and the turn is q. I two barrel and villain shoves. That's kinda how all the session went. After I stacked off with AJs 3 bet on AK7 rainbow vs 77 I called it a session.
I guess the variance is higher hu, I am on a 6bi downswing so far and I think I am like down 3 bis overall hu for the month. The variance seems standard, but I am not confident enough in my game yet to leave it at that. I'll continue to play the 5k hands challenge though and I hope I can comeback from my poor run. I am pretty sure I have an edge on the opponents I am playing.
Interestingly enough, two people quit me today saying that I was playing too tight. It doesn't feel as though I am folding too many hands. I guess I have to agree with them though when they say I wasn't playing many at the time.

It had to go

Vista simply had to go. Slows down my comp like hell and I don't really know why, because my notebook is vista based. Virtually no poker application works without a problem.
It just has to go. Reinstalling now.

Just lost 3 stacks hu

I guess I was running poorly, but I also had a very tricky hand and I am not sure what to make of it yet, I'll definetly try and post it up somewhere and get some feedback on it. Feel free to comment on it here aswell.

the tricky hand

Reraised pot, if he raises the flop, I'm not folding, but he smooth calls and I make two pair. I decide bet calling will only get me in behind a large percentage of the time, but I figure he could semi-bluff a lot of hands if I check to him so after contemplating what to do I check raise him and he shows me top set ughh. Pretty unlucky spot for me to make two pair vs his set, but check folding seems really weak here.
I believe this was our first 3 bet pot that had action in it so I can't make any ready here based on villains previous actions.
Obviously he quit me after this hand...

valuetown...

...maybe not, but I do think I am betting this turn for value. It amazes me how much people weak lead with tp. I think hu is a valuable tool to get into the heads of weaker players, because you play so many hands with them.

ez hand

Pretty standard cooler.

I make a good call down

This guy was fairly reasonable, but I don't think I like his bet sizing on the river. Made my decision a lot easier. He quit me after this hand, which I think shows strength. Cause this handed would have probably shifted the momentum in my favour.

I think 3 BI's will be my stop-loss for nl hu for the meanwhile. I started to feel a bit tilted after the third stack and I didn't really want to quit, because I was playing against such weak opponents, but I think it's mandatory to be able to stand up and leave when your a hu player.
My stats seem tighter (probably due to short stackers) than the last time I played and although my pfr is high, it doesn't feel as though I am raising so much pf when it is limped to me.

played some absolute

Played a bit on Absolute today, games are so soft, it's not really compairable to FTP. FTP games just play so more sofisticated. Even a lot of the regs on Absolute are bad/passive.
I am not claiming that the FTP games aren't profitable, but you need to adapt to the style of play first or you'll get run over by the overaggro regs.
I don't need much more to be rolled for 2/4. I am getting there guys...

First HU session

Did pretty well for my first HU session. I also ran well for the most part except for 1 or 2 coolers, but everyone knows HU is high variance.
I decided to drop down a stake untill I feel more confident in my HU game. I think I am +ev in the 200 hu games, but I'll stick to 100 for my first 5k hands.
Games were pretty soft. From what I saw it looks as though all the regs are already sitting at tables, so I just opened up new tables myself.


I think he weak

In retrospect this guy was playing pretty weak tight, I just couldn't put him on his hand after he insta mashed the pot. I had outs I guess.

Similar spot

I think my line is +ev, but I figured out quickly that this was the kinda player you bluff less and valuebet more. I am not sure what to think of his call. I think his call his bad, cause he is kinda comitting himself to a blank river, but I am not sure he calls one.

Just a cooler

I guess you could say it's a bad beat, but from my perspective there is nothing I can do here, but get it in.

Don't tilt hu

I guess I must have tilted this guy HU for him to call me down here. My plan was to crai on the flop and represent a draw. I am not scared to give him a free card as I can easily go with my hand here.

Interesting Line

His line looks kinda strong to me, but my hand is too strong here. This was also the second time he used this line against me and I wasn't quite sure which hands he'd play that way so this was my chance to see what he was doing it with.

Mansion Poker

I was browsing the raketherake main page and I noticed that they listed Mansion Poker as a member of the Ongame Network. I didn't know they joined Ongame, last time I played on their site they were still indipendent.
I have a rakeback deal with them through raketherake.com. I think somewhere in the range of 35%. From what I know they don't offer rakeback anymore, so I might check this out (my deal is still valid). I believe the Ongame Network is the 5th largest Poker Network out there and I've never played on it before, so I might give it a shot.

Crazy 1/2 session

Just finished a 1k hand session on FTP. I ran pretty bad, but seemingly solid opponents were making really crazy plays on me.

hand 1

This guy had solid stats of 26/21, he was 3 betting me a ton, so I decided to 4bet light here, even though I raised from UTG. The flop seemed like an easy check call and it worked out for me, just that I couldn't dodge his 2 outs.

hand 2

These minraises are often big pps from weak players. Flop is super standard for me, he can't fold his overpair, but again I can't dodge the 2 outs.

hand 3

This guy was quite aggresive, so I decided crai was the best play. River card is scary, but I think this is a clear value bet (I think he bets flush draws on the turn and I wasn't really worried about the gutshot for the straight...).

hand 4

I dunno what to think about this hand, my time was running down fast so I decided to fold. After putting in so much money preflop I felt almost commited to the hand. His pf line is so strong and I think I see aces here a lot, but why lead out with top set aces? Does he call AK pf too? Is this a scared bet with KK? Will he fold KK to a shove here? Just a weird spot overall. This guy was 20/18/4 over 1k hands.

All in all, despite running into some coolers, I managed to turn a profit of 17$. I think I played well for the most part and am generally happy with my game as of late.

November goals

October is over and it has been one of my weaker months this year. I still can't really complain though. Towards the end it felt like I was running bad and good at the same time, so I wasn't too frustrated.
For this month I want to really try and focus and my game and put in the hands to finally move up to 2/4. I think I need to make about 20 buy ins on 1/2 and then I'll be sufficiently rolled for 2/4. I might take a stab for 2k though once I reach 10 buy ins.
I also want to try and get in 5k hands of heads up play.
Besides that I want to really try and focus on uni aswell which will be tricky, but I have to try and balance things.

The Session

I didn't quite manage to go for 3k hands, but I managed to get in 2.6k hand. I was definetly running below expectation, but at the same time I was getting paid off with my big hands frequently. The crazy thing about today was that I made more money off the regs than the fish and the spots weren't even cooler spots, a lot of it was weak play on behalf of the regs or them being overly aggressive. Here are some of the biggest losing and winning hands from today:

hand 1

This guy was a huge fish and kept on reloading, he must have left 5 buyins on the table before he left. I was unable to get the best of him though and ended up about down 300 to him.

hand 2

The board is scary here, but against this guy it is unfoldable.

hand 3

This was my most questionable hand of the day. I decided to shove, because villain semeed fishy and I thought my line may look as though I was stealing the pot from him, I got slow rolled though.

And some winning hands:

hand 4

I think some people are scared to valuebet this river here, but my read was that he wouldnt lead the flop flushed and I was right, interestingly enough villain hero called.

hand 5

This is an example that regs give me zero credit and again they contributed a ton to me not being down today.

hand 6

Some more reg action, I've got loads of these.

hand 7

This was easily the craziest reg stack off to me I've seen in a while. He snap called the river.

Marathon Poker

Yesterday I played 2.7k hands of poker. Ended down a bit, but I think I played well and was running below expectation. I have been experimenting with a tricky tag style of 20/18 and I really like that style, it's lower variance obviously and takes less concentration to play well.
The only side effect to it is that I feel like a nit :P.
Today I am gonna try and get in some more hands, I am gonna shoot for 3k and then go from there.

Time is of the essence

Haven't been playing much lately, because I haven't had much time. I've been partyin most of the weekend and getting stuff in my appartment ready.
My XP installation was messing up so I decided to reinstall Windows yesterday. Switched back to Vista for the meanwhile. There definetly still are some compatibility problems, but overall it is the safer OS and they are working on improving it.
Today I'll try and get some more hands in for the month. I can't say it has been a bad month, haven't been running great, but I'm not on a huge down or anything. It's just one of those months where I wish I would have put some more time in.

Time Management

I've been thinking about this lately as I always have a lot of things to do. This is kinda funny, because it is atypical of a student not to have much time. Basically my day consits of studying (poker and uni), training every other day (for now I am doing some work out, thinking about getting back into club football (soccer)) and socializing (very important for a poker player imo). I'd really like to find more time to read books, but it's tricky. I really think could time management is essential to become successful in life.
I don't want to sound as though I were planned out 24/7. I am still very spontaneous about things, which I also think is essential. It's all about balance.

Small Prima update

I haven't gotten round to play much lately, but I've managed to log slightly over 1k hands on Prima since I've started mining the games. At first I thought it'd be a nit fest from what I saw, but with table selection I was able to find some pretty decent tables. It appears as though prima has more weak tight type players in comparison to the FTP-aggro-cr-2+2-regs, which decreases my variance and allows me to isolate the fish more. Don't take me wrong there are still some good regs, but I think the majority of strong players are on FTP.
I think I am up about 800 so far, obviously running above average, but also playing well and not really getting into any tough spots. I've played a few hands of nl 300 there too (which I have the br for by my br management) and that went ok.
I hope I'll get round to playing some more hands. I've also only been 4 tabling, trying to focus on my game and get ready for nl 400. I am confident I'll hit it soon, I just need to be tight with my br management as it is important for me. I do by no means want to become complacent at 1/2.

Some pics of my new place

Here are some pics of my new place:

living room

kitchen

bathroom

It's small, but it's nice and it's my first own place.

Daniell

Prima

I've had some technical problems with UB. It crashed on me twice, so I won't be playing there untill I get a reply from technical support. For the meanwhile I am branching out. Played some hands on Party yesterday as you can tell by my last post ^^.
I have a high RB account with Battlefield (contact me if you want me to set you up with something) and I'll probably be trying that out on the weekend. Prima (or the Microgaming Network as it is called) has been decreasing in terms of players lately, but if the games are soft it is still worth giving it a shot. I only 4-5 table so I should have enough tables. I'll report from how it's going once I get a chance to play there.

Running Hot

Just made 1.5k on Party Poker which is nice after a tough month so far.
Here are the biggest hands for the evening.

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $2 BB (6 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from http://www.flopturnriver.comFlopTurnRiver.com (Format: Plain Text)

SB ($632.30)
BB ($209.15)
UTG ($278.45)
MP ($94)
Hero ($353.05)
Button ($452)

Preflop: Hero is CO with Qs, As.
UTG calls $2, 1 fold, Hero raises to $10, Button calls $10, SB calls $9, BB calls $8, UTG raises to $18, Hero calls $8, Button calls $8, SB calls $8, BB calls $8.

Flop: ($90) 8d, 7s, 5s (5 players)
SB checks, BB checks, UTG checks, Hero checks, Button checks.

Turn: ($90) Ts (5 players)
SB bets $50, BB folds, UTG calls $50, Hero calls $50, Button folds.

River: ($240) 2c (3 players)
SB bets $100, UTG calls $100, Hero calls $353.05 (All-In), SB folds, UTG calls $278.45 (All-In).

Final Pot: $1046.10

Results below:
UTG has Qh Qc (one pair, queens).
Hero has Qs As (flush, ace high).
Outcome: Hero wins $1046.10. UTG wins $25.40.

The guy leading the turn was a very loose and crazy player, even though his pt stats showed him to be passive he was bluffing alot which I picked up on. Here I decide to just call down and let him bluff, giving me an extra 100$ of value on the river. I also have the nut flush so a 4th spade doesn't hurt me too much.

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $2 BB (6 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from http://www.flopturnriver.comFlopTurnRiver.com (Format: Plain Text)

UTG ($451.90)
MP ($235.50)
CO ($227.95)
Button ($200)
Hero ($735.50)
BB ($667.70)

Preflop: Hero is SB with Kh, Ks.
UTG raises to $10, 3 folds, Hero raises to $36, 1 fold, UTG calls $26.

Flop: ($74) 7h, Kc, 2s (2 players)
Hero bets $38, UTG calls $451.90 (All-In), Hero calls $377.90.

Turn: ($905.80) Qc (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: ($905.80) 8d (2 players, 1 all-in)

Final Pot: $905.80

Results below:
Hero has Kh Ks (three of a kind, kings).
UTG has 8h Ad (one pair, eights).
Outcome: Hero wins $941.80.

After the showdown he claimed that he misclicked, I told him he should work on his aim. To me this just illustrates how valuable table selection can be. Getting it in for 225bb with a villain drawing dead is a good way to decrease your variance and bump your winrate.

Welcome!

My name is Daniell. I am 20 years old. This will be my new poker blog. I have blogged before, but in German and I would like to have an english blog so that I can share it with all my friends. Enjoy.

Daniell