Friday, 30 November 2007

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.

Thursday, 29 November 2007

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).

Tuesday, 27 November 2007

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.

Thursday, 22 November 2007

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.

Monday, 19 November 2007

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.

Friday, 16 November 2007

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.

Thursday, 15 November 2007

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.

Wednesday, 14 November 2007

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...

Monday, 12 November 2007

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.

Saturday, 10 November 2007

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.

Friday, 9 November 2007

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.

Wednesday, 7 November 2007

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...

Monday, 5 November 2007

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.

Sunday, 4 November 2007

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.

Friday, 2 November 2007

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.