Play Life

New Blog!

2008-08-13T21:51:00.002+02:00

Ok guys, I've decided to make a new blog called Poker Lifestyle: http://pokerlifestyle.wordpress.com/
I've been getting very lazy about blogging, but I would like to continue blogging so I decided to move and continue blogging on a fresh new blog!

I know, I know

2008-07-19T12:34:00.001+02:00

I hardly ever blog lately and I have so much to tell :P. I don't know why, but for me it's pretty hard to find the motivation to blog on a regular basis, I'm thinking of joining a blog with one or two other people so I we can both keep each other motivated to blog.
I know I never ended up writing a trip report from Vegas and I won't right now, but it was tons of fun and I am definetly going back next year. There's still a lot of stuff I didn't do and I'd like to catch up on it. I was also in London for a couple of days and met up with a friend who is doing an IT-internship there. That was surely fun.
On monday I'll be on my way again, travelling to croatia to a friend's house and I think that will be fun too. It will also be a low-tech trip, because there is no TV or internet. That should be sweet and good for me to relax. I'll be taking "tipping point" and "theory of poker" and finally finishing those two books that I've been reading on a nd off for like a year or more. I really enjoy reading, but I feel like such a fast paced person that sometimes I just don't find the time to read an entire book (I start reading a book then another and another and I never finish, which I know is bad and something I wanna work on).
As far as poker is going, I had my first losing month in June. I lost like 3-4 buy ins on the month I guess, I don't know any exact numbers. This may however sound odd, but in a way I'm glad I had a losing month, it takes away the pressure from never having one and I think will aid me psychologically long term to just maximize my ev in spots where I might sometimes take a lower variance line to preserve a win.
Right now I need to go and grab some lunch with a friend. Whether's pretty good, but after Vegas I have trouble determing whether the weather outside is cold or warm, by local standards :P.
Later guys and gals.

2008-07-19T12:23:00.004+02:00

vegas excerpt

2008-07-04T18:46:00.002+02:00

This is a 5/10 hand I played at the Caesar's palace casino.

We are playing 9 handed. utg folds, utg+1 folds, mp1 raises to 40, I call in mp2 with KsTs, mp3 folds, co calls, btn folds, sb folds, bb folds.

mp1 is playing around 3k, I'm playing 2.3k and co is playing 1k.

I'm calling preflop, because I think my hand has impliead odds vs mp1 and I think he is good enough to laydown hands to me, when I represent a specific hand (I've heard him put people on hands given the board texture).

Flop (135$) is 8s6s3c, giving me the K high fd with two overs. Mp1 fires 120$, I smooth call with the intention of repping a 4, 5 or T on the turn if it hits. Co folds.

Turn (375$) 8s6s3c 4c, completing one of the straight draws with 75. mp1 bets 200$, I think for a little bit and make it 600$, at this point there is 1.5k left to go in on the river which is about a pot sized shove. Villain thinks for a little bit (1-2 minutes) and calls.

River (1575$) 8s6s3c 4c 3d, complete brick. At this point I put villain on weak made hands and possibly draws that missed and he didn't want to stick in on the turn. I figure I can follow through here and get a fold 50% of the time. I think for a little bit and fire 1.5k$, which is an effective all in. Random greek guy with balla watch: "I like your style."
mp1 snaps, I open muck saying nice hand, he shows 77 and rakes in the 4575$ pot with second pair to the board.

I left the table shortly after this hand to go and think about it. I came to the conclusion that his call was either pretty bad or pretty good. Thinking about it this way, if he thinks I raise all strong made hands on the flop then my turn range is skewed heavily towards semi bluffs and 75 and he actually has 77 then I really like his call down.

Now here's the added bonus, I accidentily string bet my 1.5k river shove and ended up getting 400$ back, giving me a 1.5k shove for 1.1k (he said he'd call 1.5k too, but the dealer wouldn't allow it).

That's my biggest po so far from playing live. I'm actually not trying to play a ton live, but that's kinda how it ended up going yesterday. Today is American Independece Day (yay) and there will be a ton of partying in Vegas. I'm actually a little annoyed that I'm slightly ill from the air conditioning in Vegas. This sounds pretty funny, but it's actually fairly cold in Vegas when your not outside.

I'll follow up with some pics in due time.

LGW

2008-06-29T10:31:00.002+02:00

I'm currently in Landon GatWick airport, waiting for my 15 hour 30 minute journey to Las Vegas NV to commence. Slept fairly well in the Hotel last night, I feel like I need to get a good bed at my place so I can sleep like that too, but I haz no space.
I managed to play 1.1k hands of Holdem in my room last night. I ended up losing about 280$, but I think I played pretty well and tbh I'm happy to get hands in. It's like I have trouble finding the time to play, but my new notebook should help with this. 6 tabling is pretty sweet, small, but sweet.

I'm such a fish when it comes to travelling to the US, they literally ask you like 40 questions and I couldn't answer all of them... For example I didn't know the place where I was staying (the exact address), which is obviously not a smart thing to do, but I've also never been asked something like that before at an airport.... well I guess they did in Dubai, but it's different, because they don't enter the information into a computer. I also didn't know the address in Dubai, but he could tell I was some random Euro on holidays so he didn't make too much of a fuss about it.
Anyway I managed to get a hold of Noel online and he gave me the address, so I'll be prepared for any further questions. Bring it US government!
A friend told me the other day that they've started randomly selecting people at airports with notebooks and copying their hard drives for pirate material. I didn't know they did this, anyway I'm clean so no worries.
I should geto going now, maybe I can get some duty free shopping in, but seems unlikely.
L8rs.

travelling

2008-06-28T19:35:00.002+02:00

I'm writing this from my hotel room in London. I have to spend the night here, because my connection flight to Vegas is tomorrow at 10 and I arrived in London at 11am. It doesn't really bother me too much, it's not much of a hassle for me.
I dropped by at Marks and Spencer's to pick some food, which I am eating right now. Practically everything they sell is super healthy, which is good for me. I really do not dislike healthy food, but I end up not eating so healthy most of the time, I believe mainly due to the fact that I'm too lazy to cook, but this will change soon I hope, when I get back to Innsbruck, I'll get myself a cook book and go shopping on a regular basis (I usually end up odering in, because I don't have anything in the house).
Anyway, I'm rambling a bit. I'm very excited about going to Las Vegas tomorrow and also meeting all the weird Americans. Seeing some of the Pros will be fun too.
Later.

Sup

2008-06-25T13:44:00.003+02:00

Sorry I haven't been posting much lately. I've been busy with some exams and haven't been doing too much.
Right now I'm getting ready for Vegas, just making sure I have enough clothes and cash to travel. My plan is also to stay in London for a bit on my way back from Vegas and meet with a friend who is doing an internship there, which I'm excited about, I haven't been to London properly in a while.
I'm gonna do a bit of shopping now and then hopefully get in some hands before the EURO 2008 semi-final between Germany and Turkey.

how things are goin'

2008-06-17T19:58:00.003+02:00

This month has been goin' pretty marginally so far. I dropped down to -3k pretty early due to my big hu session loss and running below expectation @ 3/6.
I've been up a little a bit aswell though, but right now I'd say I'm down about 400$.
I actually think I am playing well and my HU games is also really improving I feel.
I've also been working on my Omaha game, but mainly reading/watching vids (if you're a deuces cracked member, definetly check out the "Mad Potters" series on Omaha with Sensei and Riverboatking) and not so much playing.
I have an exam coming soon, so I'll be unable to put as much effort into my game as I would like to, but I'm fine with that.

no words

2008-06-12T16:16:00.001+02:00

good morning

2008-06-11T05:52:00.002+02:00

So it's 5:55am, which is pretty early, but the good news is that I didn't stay up till this time, but just woke up. I didn't want to wake up this early, because it means I'll be tired around 4pm-6pm, but it will help me get to bed early today so I can balance my sleeping.

I didn't actually get to see a football match yesterday in the EURO 2008, because of a missunderstanding. We're going to watch Sweden-Spain on Saturday and not Spain-Russia as I thought. Spain is on fire right now as they beat Russia 4-1 yesterday. Russia really wasn't bad from their overall game play, but Spain just had such deadly counter attacks, it was brutal.

The good thing about me being up early is that there is a decent chance my notebook is arriving today, so I won't be pulled out of any deep-sleeping.

Poker-wise I'm done with my Party rakeback days and I'm a bit dissapointed I wasn't able to play more hands, but I think my bad sleeping had a lot to do with it.
It's hard for me to filter out my exact results for Party (I don't know how to do it with HM), but I'd guess I ended up +1.6k from cash games with an extra 475$ cleared in bonusses and a wooping 1426.64$ rakeback in 5 days of play.
The plan for the rest of the month is to grind it out on iPoker 3/6, 2/4 6max and fullring and to maintain status before I go to Vegas. I'll also be playing some 2/4 hu on the side.

:S

2008-06-10T09:13:00.002+02:00

I'm super wasted right now. I just played 1333 hands straight and ended up winning 367$ over 1/2 and .5/1. I think I played some spots a bit too aggro, giving my opponents to much credit for being capable of folding hands when my perceived range beats them.
The rake is lousy at those stakes. I only made 140$ in RB. I guess if I make it to 3k hands (not looking very likely), it'd be 300$.
I'm gonna go to town as I'm falling asleep in my chair as I am writing this.

Bad sleeping

2008-06-10T06:05:00.003+02:00

Ok, it's time for me to admit, again, that my sleeping rhythm is completely off balance. I've decided to balance it by not sleeping today and trying to go to bed at around 9-10pm (note, right now it is 6:10am). Today is the last day I have 100% rakeback on Party Poker (which is soooo sweet), and I don't wanna waste it, so I've decided to multitable 8 FR 1/2 games and just "bonus-whore" basically.
Right now they're aren't enough 1/2 FR games running, so I'm playing .5/1 aswell ^^. I'll switch in as much 1/2 as possible, because I still think my edge is reasonable enough with little sleep and I get more rakeback there.
I'll post results of hand count and amount won (with and without rb) after I'm done.
I figure I won't be playing for too long as I have tickets for today's EURO 2008 game in Austria and Switzerland (maybe till like 4pm), Spain vs Russia.
This should be fun though.

It's party time

2008-06-05T15:18:00.003+02:00

Today my Party Poker VIP days begin and I'll have 100% rakeback for the next 5 days. I wanna be putting in more hands than I usually would and I hope I'll be able to do so.

Yesterday I finally decided which notebook to get for Vegas. I decided against a Macbook Pro, not because I don't like it, but because I just don't feel comfortable with paying literally twice as much as for any other notebook out there that can do the same or close to it. So I'm getting an Acer Aspire 6920g, which set me back 1350€ compared to the 2500€ for the MBP. It's a 16:9 multimedia notebook with a high res 1920*1080 (1080p), 4GB ram, Core 2 Duo T8300 and Nvidia 9500 GMs. I must admit I'm not all too familiar with these components, but the notebook did pretty well in tests from sites that I trust, so it should be good.

Recap on HU match

2008-06-04T14:22:00.002+02:00

Now that it's been a day I've had time to reflect on my match and get the tilt out of my system. I still stand by most of my decisions and I think I made correct adjustments to his playing style, but some key mistakes in deep pots. To my defence I haven't really played much 300 and 400bb deep, it's really very challenging and every decision can be for a lot of money. Tilting obviously becomes very expensive aswell as not focusing (some people would say it's the same thing).
I think part of why he was so tough to play against was that he must have had a pretty good card distribution to where it appeared to me that he was constantly making close to nut hands when he was betting. I must admit though that he played his style pretty well and made some good laydowns to me.
I'm definetly sure of my edge against this guy and I'd take some more shots at him given the chance, but I'm not sure I'll see him again too soon. He has some exploitable lines and he adjusts slowly to your change in play, so your chipping away at the small-mid sized pots. I think he plays large pots reasonably well though.
I'm sure a seasoned HU reg would've crushed him, but I can imagine other regs having troubles against him aswell. I don't think that some of the people berating me for being weak in deep pots not adjusting well etc, are being fair on me (and also not showing great comeradeship).
What I did take from this match was some valuable experience in both deep stacked and HU poker and some self-management aspects (possibly quitting him earlier, just to keep a clear mind. I feel that for me that this is especially true. I'm generally a very calm person, but I also absorb things a lot which is a) not healthy and b) will show it's side-effects, as my brain is processing these feelings additionally to the information at hand and rations between them as weird as that may sound. An example would be say you lost 3 pots and you're in a marginal spot again, the logical part will say maximize ev and the emotional will say I don't want to lose another pot. Obviously this has to be balanced with game flow dynamics (sometimes it can be correct to fold a marginally profitable hand to save momentum and push bigger edges later on).).

These are just my after-thoughts on my HU session. I took the day off today and I'll be playing a combination of party poker (100% rakeback for the next 6 days) ring games, ipoker ring games and FTP HU poker for the rest of the month. I also have a macroeconmics exam coming up at the end of the month, right before I go to vegas.
I've also decided to get a new notebook, a MacBook Pro. I'm gonna buy it in the US though, fully tuned it's a wooping 750€ (1100$) cheaper in the US than in the EU.

HU match

2008-06-04T02:36:00.004+02:00

I just played a guy for five and a half hours on iPoker. I ended up losing 6 buy ins on the session and probably 7 to him.
He was playing so poorly that I felt I had an edge on him. I got back a lot on him at one point, but then staked off pretty light.
I think I made some mistakes in big pots, but at the same time he was playing such a crazy predictable style that I felt I could grind it back which I did several times, but I just couldn't take down a big pot.
I've never seen somebody play the way he has before. He reraised from the blinds everytime he played a hand, he'd call say 5% of the time. He called about 85% of my 4bets. He would check/fold every time on the flop and if he bet he had a hand typically. I think he almost never bluffed, I only caught him bluffing right at the beginning of the match.
One thing I must say though was that he never made a bad call down which was party of why it was so difficult to get back up on him.
It's crazy, but it's almost like he was cheating. It just doesn't make sense for him to show a profit playing the way he does.

Here are some of my most frustrating pots:

1
2
3
4

I won't lie I played some pots poorly aswell, but the match just wasn't in my favour in general. I'm going to implement a 3 buy in quit rule for now, just to make sure I'm not tilting. I'm also going to look for another site to play hu on, most likely Full Tilt Poker because I think they have the best software to play HU on.

ECOOP # 10

2008-06-02T04:06:00.002+02:00

I just busted in the main event with AdKd against 4d9d, the guy was bullying the whole table and I was happy to look down at AK obviously, I couldn't hold however and busted in 78th out of 1277 after playing 8 hours straight. I ended up with 3k$ and overall winnings of 3550$ in the series which I can't complain about.

ECOOP # 9

2008-06-01T01:11:00.002+02:00

This was a 250$ buy in PLO event. With 530 entrants. I got pretty deep in this tourney and got a bit unlucky towards the end when I put in most of the money ahead, but failed to hold. I busted 38th and cashed for 750$.
Tomorrow is the main event for 1k which this has all been building up to. All in all I'm pretty happy to have cashed and it's funny that it was in an Omaha event.
The level of play is fairly poor in these events though, worse than in the Holdem events. I'm not sure I encoutered anybody that really impressed me.

ECOOP # 8

2008-05-30T23:32:00.003+02:00

I think I played this pretty well, I didn't invest any extra money in rebuys or add-ons and I busted 300th from 1570 entrants with 99 to a2o blind on blind. Bubble was at 200.
I'm down about 400$, I definetly wasn't playing my best today and I hope to just rest a bit today and come back focused into the game tomorrow. Then the month is pretty much over and I'll check results.

TURBO TABLES!

2008-05-30T15:10:00.003+02:00

THEY TILT ME! They take away so much from your edge as a thinking player when you only have a short period of time to make your decisions. I lost a stack today making hasty decisions in a 5 second spot and I feel that things like that are just really unnecessary and take away from my edge as a poker player, plus this is one of the few things that can tilt me in poker.

ECOOP #7

2008-05-30T08:22:00.002+02:00

The fact that I had to play a Limit Holdem MTT put me slightly on tilt at first, then it was interesting a bit and then it put me on tilt again. I don't know who would want to play these MTT's freely. Then again there were 508 entrants. People drop out really slowly at first untill everybody gets really short, like 5bb short and then the majority of spots you get in are like 60-40, 50-50, 65-35 spots with small stacks and good pot odds. I mean naturally I don't assume I play an optimal Limit MTT strat, but I felt like I wasted some of time on this tournament :P, but hey I need to take the freeroll right ^^.
Today's event, ECOOP #8, is a NL Holdem 100$ rebuy. This may sound funny, but I almost feel burnt out from playing MTT's and there is a party in town, so I'm not going to rebuy and add-on and push marginal plus ev spots early to either boost my stack or bust quick.
I'll take #9 (200$ PLO) and #10 (1k main event) more seriously after that.

ECOOP #6

2008-05-28T22:20:00.001+02:00

"Hi there guys, this should be simple for regs to answer, but I'm just dabbling in some tournaments so I'm still learning.
This was a hand from the ECOOP #6 NL Holdem 6max event.
Blinds are 150/300 it folds around to me on the button I look down at KQo with 18bb. The SB has a 13bb stack and the BB a 15bb stack.
I wouldn't perceive these players to be regs, they aren't playing in a crazy manner however there reshoving ranges won't be "optimal".
The bubble is at 150 players and there are currently 400 players left.
My question is what line you would take here given my reads.
Open shove, raise/call, raise fold... Thx" - My cr post

I shipped KQ, BB snapped KK, nh sir.

Tommorow is a Limidonkament XD.

ECOOP #5

2008-05-27T22:54:00.002+02:00

Busted 201st from 508 entrants. Down to 11bb I shoved AKs UTG and got called by a big stack holding 99. He wins the flip and I'm out.
I think I played well this tournament, avoided marginal situations, it just came down to winning the flip as so often in tournaments.
I ran pretty poor in all in situations the whole day however.
What was bad about the tournament is that it was a 750$ tournament and we had like 10 seconds to make all decisions. There was no time bank. This combined with no antes make Titan tournaments really bad for regs imo. I contacted support regarding the no time bank matter and they said they are looking into it.
Tomorrow is event #6, the game is NL Holdem 6 max, my specialty. I'm looking forward to this one. Buy in is 200, gurantee is 200k.

ECOOP II #4

2008-05-26T23:01:00.002+02:00

Omaha hi r/a 100$ buy in. Busted around 160th from 830 entrants and the bubble was at 100 players. I felt I played reasonably well.
I busted when a guy limped utg and I look down at As5sAd9c with a 20bb stack, I thought this was a good spot to put my money in. BB overcalls and UTG calls. The flop is 4j5r, BB checks, UTG leads. At this point the pot is 12k and I have 12k in my stack. I decide I am commited to this flop and get it in against a wrap draw and a pair. I think I must have been like a 35% dog to win the hand, but can't say for sure, because the table closed so quickly.
Tomorrow I will be playing the 750$ holdem event. Let's hope for the best :P.

5 minutes

2008-05-25T20:13:00.002+02:00

I just busted out of the 300$ event after 5 minutes. Blinds are 10/20 I look down at KK with a 3k stack. I open to 3x and get called by the co, the SB makes it 180. I decide that given the dynamics of these tournaments reraising will not get me any action from worse at this stage, so I decide to take a flop in position. Flop comes down KJT with a club draw. SB fires for about 70% pot and I raise it up, CO mucks, SB reships for his remaning stack, I obviously snap only to see the sickening AQo. I fail to suckout.

ECOOP II #3

2008-05-25T18:42:00.002+02:00

Today is the 300$ buy in event with a guarantee of 500k$. I'm excited to play in this event and I think I am focused and well rested.
I wasn't really bothered too much about the PLO 8 event yesterday as I mentioned and I didn't make any rebuys or add-ons. I busted out after 34 minutes when I pushed a pretty strong draw multiway and got called by two weaker draws.
I had the nut low draw plus the second nut hi draw. I actually think I got bad beat in that pot, which is kinda funny, because PLO 8 is by far my weakest game.
I believe tomorrow is the PLO hi rebuy event, even though I am not a very good PLO hi player yet, I feel confident enough to rebuy in this event (rebuys are 100$).

ECOOP II #2

2008-05-24T13:10:00.002+02:00

Today we are playing Plo Hi/Lo R/A. My initial plan was to study the game, but I was busy studying for exams and travelling so I kinda gave up on it.
I won't be rebuying, since I'm not very confident in my PLO 8 game. I understand the rules of the game and very very basic game concepts.
Should I cash it'll be pretty lucky.
Tomorrow's event is a 300$ NL Holdem event, which will be my next big shot at some moniez. I got feedback on my busting hand yesterday and I'm pretty sure my shove wasn't good now which is a shame, but I learnt from my mistake and hope to do better next time.

Busto

2008-05-23T23:46:00.002+02:00

Meh, I bustoed as 211th from 1291 entrants when the bubble was at 150 players.
I don't know what to think about my bust yet. I made a pretty loose steal with a short stack. Sucks to play so long and bust in a marginal spot like that. At least I ran well in cash today, so my happiness level isn't down the drain ;).
I posted the hand on CR for some feedback.

MTTs

2008-05-23T19:04:00.003+02:00

Poker has been treating me well this month so far. I'm up decently playing 2/4 and 3/6 cash. I don't know the exact results, but I've chosen not to check it, because it isn't really all too relevant as long as I am reviewing my sessions.
Today is the first event of the ECOOP II. It's a 200$ NL Holdem event with a 250k guarantee. I'm missing a garden party of a friend, which sucks, but at the same time I'm not gonna give up on an opportunity like this, plus if things don't go too well early on, I can still go to the party.
I'll report back on how it goes.

Dubai Trip Report

2008-05-20T15:48:00.005+02:00

Hi guys and gals. I came back from Dubai on Saturday and I had a really great time. Dubai is a really interesting place to visit. Naturally it's a different culture, because it's a state in the UAE (United Arab Emirates), but at the same time there are a lot of Europeans and Americans there, in the heart of the city that work in Dubai.
Petrol is really cheap in Dubai, I believe we paid about 30 euro cents per litre. Which is nothing compared to the 1.50€ we pay in central Europe.
Most of the people there are very wealthy and I saw a very high rate of upper class vehicles. I'd see atleast a dozen Porsche's each day and then the occasional Enzo, Gallardo etc..
The only "poor" people are the workers, which consist mainly of Pakistanis and Indians. There are also some Asian immigrants.
There are no taxes in Dubai which naturally makes everything a bit cheaper, but you have to be carefull where you shop, because some places have high prices relative to the fact that they don't pay taxes.
Driving in Dubai is like madness, 50% of the cars are Jeep size or bigger and we were driving around in our rental Ford Focus Limousine so we didn't have maximum road respect. Sometimes people will just try to push you away by cutting into you.
There are speed limits now, but people will still drive very fast in areas that are known not to be controlled. Up to 2 years ago there were no speed limits.
I'm lucky to have had an appartment available to me from my friend whom we were visiting and who works in Dubai.
All together with shopping, flight, food and everything I'd guesstimate I paid about 1k euros which I think is very reasonable considering where I was.
These were just some random impressions with no specific chronological order. I really have so much to say about Dubai that I'm not going to bother writing a whole blog entry about this matter :P. If you have any questions AIM me or something.
Below are some pictures I selected from my stay. The guy im sitting next to with the hookah is the guy I was staying with. I may add some more pics at a later point.

Survivors

2008-05-08T14:31:00.002+02:00

The higher I've moved up in my poker career the more stressful poker has become for me.
I think a lot of people will agree with me when I say that having the perfect poker mindset isn't realistic, but I definetly think an approximation of it is possible.
Maybe I should summarize briefly what I mean by the "perfect poker mindset".
What I think about when I say this, is a poker player that is emotionally unattatched to the money he is dealing with and will at all times be able to make the decision that maximizes his expectation in the long run.It would be great to be able to play like this. We wouldn't have to worry about emotional tilt ever and could just keep on playing in good games assuming we are not ill or tired.

I'm sure a lot of you are aware that Phil Ivey once said that he thinks all players play worse when they're losing. I never used to believe in this, but I was also playing lower at the time and as I said it was less stressful and ergo easier to manage emotions. I certainly think that this now holds truth for myself. My game does deteriorate slightly when I'm losing. It is harder for me to keep the pressure on when I'm down 11 buy ins as the line between tilt and good aggressive play becomes thinner and harder to determine. The result of this is that I subconciously protect myself by playing on passive tilt.
As the word says it's tilt, but it's passive the best kind of tilt some say. It is however tilt after all and I think it is best for me to just take a break after I think I could be tilting passively and then come back in an hour two.
I think that the way people deal with there emotions in poker will vary from player to player and shoudl vary. Not all people are the same and knowing your own limits is vital to being a successful poker player. If you have problems with this, maybe you should try getting a friend to sweat you and tell you when he thinks you are doing something unheard of.

Now to the title of my post, survivors. I chose this title, because I think the best and most succesful poker players in the long run are suvivors. Imagine the best player in the world who beats the game for 10ptbb/100, but has know sense of tilt control what so ever. A small downswing of say 7 buy-ins could destroy him and eradicate his existence off the poker network he was playing on if he were uncapable of managing tilt and would monkey tilt off the rest of his bank roll.
In contrast to this take a 14/12/3 rock who plays 8 tables and beats them at 1.5ptbb/100 and never tilts.
Who will be more succesful in the long run? I am by no means trying to encourage people to be rocks, but I think you get the drift.

These were just kinda random thoughts I had floatin through my head and I thought somebody might find them valuable.
Dodgyken sent me this really cool link of an interview with Samoleus, punkety on Poker Stars, the other day. You should check it out it's pretty good imo.

boomswitch some?

2008-05-06T18:37:00.002+02:00

I guess I don't only run bad on Party Poker...

Party oh party

2008-05-02T22:02:00.003+02:00

I don't know why, but it seems as though I can't run well on Party Poker. I feel like I could even be down dollar wise on Party overall, but it's hard for me to tell, because I've had several PCs since I started playing there.

Here are my KK v AA hands for today:

KKvAA1

KKvAA2

Some QQ v KK:

QQvKK

This guy was a loose fish. I wasn't sure what to make of his minraise preflop. I decided to take a flop in position and play postflop as I think I can extract more value from weaker hands as opposed to putting in a lot of money preflop when he likely only gives me much action here from KK, AA.
The way he played the hand I was pretty sure I was ahead on the river, I guess not.

top set no good

This kind of cooler is standard for PP. I don't mind these I guess, because they won't be profitable for villain. It just adds to my can't win on Party run.

Pain

2008-05-02T01:57:00.002+02:00

I'm in a lot of pain right now. I have some initial muscle tears along the back of my upper-thigh. I hurt myself playing football by myself whilst sprinting. No pain killers. Agony.
Can't do sport for up to 6 weeks. Have to give myself an injection tomorrow and I hate those things. The injection is against trombosis so no pain killing.

It's a wrap

2008-04-30T17:53:00.003+02:00

It's a wrap people. I just finished I think my worst month ever, I am however still in the green for the month due to 1/2 hu and one 3/6 session. I think I also made about 1kish off of bonusses.
I think I went through periods of suboptimal play and I noticed at times that the down got to me and made me play weaker in some spots.
However it's time like these that challenge your game and challenge you to think harder about it.
When I decided to start playing professionally I knew that a month like this could happen and so I was pre-prepared mentally.
I should add that I also won 3420$ in tournament buy-ins as I posted in an earlier entry which adds to the positives.
I'm gonna go post a couple of hands from my last session now and then probably go and watch the champions league semi-final Chelsea v Liverpool.

Omaha and studies

2008-04-30T14:05:00.002+02:00

I've been studying a lot lately, because I have a lot of important exams. I had one yesterday which I think went ok for the time invested, but by far from great.
I started learning too late for it and that hurt my results.
Now I have to study for accounting one of my least favourite subjects for sure, but what can you do. I won't be specializing in it so it's just a basic course that needs to be done.

Poker has been ok over the last couple of sessions. I have been winning again and I think I'm break even at 2/4 and up on the month, because I'm up on 3/6.
Party Poker released a not so satisfying update to their VIP system yesterday.
I think it has some merits, but it is very volume-binding and I don't like this idea.
It's almost like your working a real job with 50% weekly goals that need to be achieved and so on.

I recently purchased a pretty good Omaha book called Pot-limit Omaha Poker, by Jeff Hwang. Here is the link to it:
This guy has also written articles for Motley Fool, the online investing guide and seems to be competent. I definetly find the book informative and it's just at the right level of difficulty for a NL player transitioning to PLO (ie not too simple, but not too advanced either).
Def worth checking out imo.

I've been having some problems with booking my flight to Vegas, I'm trying to reach the agency I booked over and see if everything has been processed and I hope it has been otherwise I may have to deal with extra costs.
I'm actually flying over London for about 600€, because the flights from Austria/Munich were 1.2k+ which I thought was ludacris. Yes, for you americans thats like 1.8k dollars. Anyway pretty sick.

Month is almost over and I think I'll post a summary of how things have been going down tomorrow.

TexasTournamentKing

2008-04-26T00:42:00.002+02:00

I guess I just run good in crap shoot donkaments. I just qualified for the ECOOP II (European Championships of Online Poker II) through my titan VIP status and a special tournament. I won about 3400$ in tournament buy ins for the ECOOP II. There are some pretty sweet guarantees and I'm pretty excited to be freerolling on them.
Here is the entire listing for the series: http://titanpoker.com/ecoop_may_2008.html .

As for cash, things still aren't going my way and I'm now break even over 22k hands, but there are others I know that are running worse this month which is comforting (not because they are running worse, but because I know they are good players too so tough times just come and go).

RoR

2008-04-21T17:51:00.002+02:00

For all of you that don't know what RoR means, it stands for risk of ruin. I've been thinking about bankroll management and this as of late. Now many people have a lot of different opinons on this and I agree that it is totally dependant on your situation, how conservative you plan to be with your bankroll or not.
As an economics student that plays for a living, I need to take several factors into consideration. For one if you play with a 40-50 buy-in bankroll, how will you deal with larger downswings, financially and mentally? I feel really complacent with my lifestyle right now and even though I'm in a pretty good position, it's not pleasant to have a month where I lose say 25% of my bankroll. I also think the fact that we lost x amount of our bankroll can impact our game, but more importantly our every day life.
Something interesting Raptor said about this in his blog was that being a poker player at higher stakes isn't healthy and that with a lot of the dollar swings comes a lot of stress, even if you are capable of dealing with it well, it has an impact on your life expectation.
Some things I should add are that I don't think you should have 100 buy ins actually online in your poker account, but say 50% of that in a high earning savings account, which is easily accesible, ie you could quickly wire more money from it to an online account and the other 50% online across say NT, MB, FTP, PTY etc.
Also I'm not gonna strictly not take shots at higher games when I have between 50 and 100 buy-ins, but I won't consider myself a regular at those stakes untill I have reached the 100 buy in or close to it mark.
Just my 2 cents on managing your bankroll as a professional player.

cntgetmedown

Down

2008-04-20T22:36:00.003+02:00

I just hit another big downswing. 10 buy ins. Today I took some time off went running ate some good food and them came back to play again and that really helped with focus and tilt, but I'm still not winning. I've been going over my big losing pots and I think 90% of them are very standard spots.
I don't think a reg has showed me anything else than AK, AA or KK over my last 7k hands in a preflop allin or postflop rr pot.
All I can do is focus review hands and play it cool till variance swings around again.
I'm up only slightly on the month due to a successful shot @ 3/6 and some 1/2 hu winnings. But I will definetly grind it out on 2/4 for now and hope to hit some more 3/6 at the beginning of next month.

I'm a grinder

2008-04-20T01:41:00.002+02:00

I just played 4k hands on Party Poker, because I was clearing a promotion where you get 5 rake free days plus the chance to win even more in a VIP freeroll.
I think I played pretty well with one questionable spot that Vbizzle was kind enough to point out, where I had JJ utg and got reraised by a tight player without history.
I called pf and felted a low flop. He proceeded to show me the rockets.
It's an awkward spot without any specific reads or dynamics.
Besides that I had a ridiculous amount of splits vs regs pf with hands like KK, AA and AK. They kept on showing up with the same hand and at the same time owning my QQ with KK and AA.
I'm really glad I got into some good spots vs some of the fish. Some of the hands are pretty crazy. Here are a few.

Multiway action

Here my bet sizing could have been slighlty too small. The original raiser was very loose and aggressive preflop so this was for sure a value raise with a ton of dead money.

Partyments

The funny thing was that when I saw the Q and the K I actually thought I could still be ahead here. Yes UTG called off 430$ with 98o.

busto

2008-04-18T22:25:00.001+02:00

Busto in 26th place, shame. I went on a bad run where I lost AK v a5s, AK v 99 and 22 v KTs. What can you do, I still came pretty far though so I can't complain.

update

2008-04-18T22:09:00.000+02:00

36 left, i have 8.7k blinds are 400/800.

ECPT Madrid qualifier

2008-04-18T21:23:00.002+02:00

I'm currently playing this qualifier for the ECPT Madrid, which I qualified for through Titan Poker. 211 registered, 117 left. I have 4650 in chips with 100/200 blinds.
Top 10 players get a 3,000$ package to the ECPT which would be really sweat if I could go, cause I love Spain as you may have noticed :P.

Hmha

2008-04-15T00:03:00.003+02:00

I just had a session that frustrated me for the most part, but somehow I came out ontop 4 buy ins @ 2/4 on party. The last couple of sessions have been frustrating me and it's odd, I don't quite understand it, especially running ok. I guess spots where I'm not absolutely sure about my play frustrate me regardless of the results.
I actually left a table because I just felt completely off of my game on that specific table.
Here are some weird hands:

dude

This guy had the stats of a reg and so no specific reads him besides that. I feel that I have to call down a reg here, because his line is very fishy for a monster, but may make sense if he thinks I'm always stabbing the ace and he can fold me out easily. Not saying I like his play by any means, but if that were the case there could be some value in playing draws like this. Now on the river all the draws miss and he makes this weird small bet. Against a fish I think I'd be beat fairly often, but he can also have a lot of missed draws. So I think in retrospect that it's a call, but I mucked given that I couldn't make up my mind fast enough and it's just spots like that that frustrate me. I have a strict fold when you don't know what to do policy, but I think I can make a case for a crying call here. He can also have weaker aces here that he wants to take down the turn with so more merit to calling the river, just meh imo.

nits

I usually don't fold AK pre with these stacks, but I do have 3 bet stats and this guy was an extremely nitty 3-better over 1kish hands. I only had 30 invested and would've had to commit 400 more against a guy with very tight reraising stats. Despite his tightness I'd still give myself around 35-40% against his calling range, but off the top of my head I figured this shove was -ev.
Let's do the quick maths with 37% equity:
(38+433)*0.37-403*0.63=174.27-253.89=-79.62
So I guess I'm pleased with my fold here given my analysis of his range.

All in all my fold when I have no clue policy has served me pretty well and sometimes I make weird folds, but I'd rather make a neutral ev fold than a guessing call. I think it also helps psycholigically.

:/

2008-04-10T23:16:00.002+02:00

I just finished a 3/6 - 2/4 session up 1.4k and am actually a bit annoyed at how it went. I think the frustration comes from playing a bit tired and making small mistakes that I normally wouldn't. I also got in tricky spots where I felt beat, but ended up sucking out on villains, which is also annoying as it is not winning poker.
To my defence I also ran a straight into a higher straight. I decided to play today despite feeling a bit tired, but this session could've easily gone another way I feel.
I guess from a broader perspective you could say I got lucky. Lucky, because I ran well when not playing optimally, but in the future I won't make the same mistake again.
I guess my only options are to play lower when feeling tired or not play at all. I think it's silly to lose money when you know you shouldn't have been playing in the first place.

Dubai

2008-04-08T12:29:00.002+02:00

Hi all. A friend of mine is currently working in Dubai and he invited me over to stay in his flat. I think this is a great opportunity to get to see the city and I accepted. I just booked the flight with another friend of mine who is also coming along for the ride.

poker things

2008-04-03T10:24:00.002+02:00

Grinding out hands last month was a good experience for me. It was almost like I had forgotten what it was like to put in hands at a limit. I think me running well over small sample sizes kept me from striving to play more, but it is really vital for me to put in more hands if I want to reach my financial goal for 08 and improve as a player.
I'm thinking about putting some money on Bodog and playing in some of the 3/6 games that run there for no specific reason really. Table selection is low so I have no clue how good or bad those guys are, but it's nice to mix things up. If anybody knows anything about the 3/6 games , I'd be glad to here some input on it.

What a month

2008-03-31T01:40:00.005+02:00

This month has been very swingy for me, it started off well, but then I went on a 12 buy-in dowswing. I was slowly recovering, playing some NL 200 on party where I then hit a 9 buy-in dowswing. I put in a ton of hands after my trip to Spain though and things started to go my way again eventually finishing the month @ roughly +8k.
To top it off, today I played the 50k freeroll from the Winter League and won. This netted me a profit of 13k. Combined with coaching and bonusses this ends my month @ well over 20k.
I still have to play a little bit more on iPoker to ensure my VIP status for months to come though. I think I might do that now @ 200 as I don't really feel like playing, but I just need to put in the hands for the points and I'd like to take the day off tomorrow.
I also finished 11th in the rake race which is fair enough. I get 150$ bonus for achieving that.
I think I'm gonna go and 8 table NL 200 and 400 full ring for the remaining amount of points I need for my Diamond status.

Out of energy

2008-03-30T10:48:00.002+02:00

Today is the last day of the VIP loyalty race. I'm pretty exhasted and as I suspected the top 5 are virtually untouchable for me. Right now I'm in 11th place and I think I have a decent shot @ making the top 10. The good thing about this race is that I'll probably make the highest VIP status in the process, which will net me more RB in future months.
Today I'm also playing the 50k freeroll from the Winter League, I've told my friends already that if I cash for a decent amount I'm getting a new TV plus a Nintendo Wii.
As far as the month is going in general I really can't complain as I've made a huge recovery from a difficult start to the month. Tonight I'll post my results from the month with my graph where you can see a 12 buy in and a 9 buy in downswing.

Loyalty Race

2008-03-28T23:17:00.002+01:00

Been grinding it out the last couple of days for the loyalty race @ titan poker. I'm currnetly 13th in the list. My goal for today is to make it to the top 10. The only really financially interesting spots are the top 4, which I think will be too difficult to reach for me, but I will use this promotion to motivate me to put in a lot of hands. So far I've played 1.6k hands, I'm gonna shoot for 2.5k.
I usually wouldn't have this much time to grind 4 days in a row, but I'm still a bit ill from the last day of my holidays so I'll try and use my time well.

Spain

2008-03-25T18:19:00.014+01:00

Ok so here I go with my blog entry on Spain. I'm gonna try to give a brief summary about my time there. Basically I have some friends in Valencia that I met in the summer when I went there for a language course. They still study there and told me about this festival, so I decided to drop down and have a look at things. The festival is called "Fallas" and a Falla is like a statue that I will show you in some of the pics below. I don't exactly understand all the details of the festival yet, but over a period of 5 days the 300+ fallas are setup all over town and you can go and look at them. They have huge fallas and smal ones for children. All but one of them are burnt to ashes at the end of the festival and that one that is not burnt is put in a fallas museum. K, here I go with the pics.

Some friends of mine from England.

Some Friends of mine from Germany and Austria. The one on the far right is a guy I met in the summer, the other girls we met there. They went to the same language school as I did in the summer.

A pic with some more friends from the summer. The guy in the middle is an old flat mate of mine, he studies mathematics in Valencia. He does some crazy things when he has been drinking...but super fun to hang out with.

This was the "Virgen" aka virigin. They put flowers on here by hand by throwing them up. The end result is a dress of flowers. I think it took them like 12 hours to complete it.

These are two pics of the biggest fallas they made. The first one is uncontested, because it was some special one of the city, the latter was place 3, both got burned.

Here is a burning falla. Those things get pretty hot, it's crazy a lot of people were running away from it after being too close.

Here are some fireworks. They had a lot of fireworks. Everyday was a big one like this and over the course of 5 days. We guesstimated one to cost something like 200k.

Yesterday I purchased Poker Tracker Omaha and have decided to dedicate 3k of my bankroll to playing PLO 50. Should be a fun experience and a nice change of pace. Not sure how many hands I will be getting in a month, but NLH will obviously still be my main focus.

comeback

2008-03-23T23:35:00.002+01:00

It was a tough start to the month, but I took some time off and since I came back I've been running well again for the majority. I think I played pretty well in general though this month.
I think it's too far fetched to say I didn't tilt a bit, but anybody who knows me, knows that my definition of tilt for myself is very mild.
I've also started coaching a bit and I think I might look for more students. I'll probably not coach more than 2-3 people at a time though. My motivation to coach isn't mainly finanacially, but more on the basis of thinking about the game and by explaining my thoughts to others, further improving it.
My next post will be about my trip to Spain, I just need to get my pics from my digicam to my notebook and then start uploading.

quick update

2008-03-23T07:04:00.002+01:00

Hi there! Back from Spain again. I'm gonna be lazy and make a post without a pic here, but I think it's better than not blogging at all :P.
Played some more of the Winter League today and came first in one of the tournaments and 5th in the other. But I hardly won anything, due to the small player pools. Probably paid like 40$ in buy ins and won 85$. Anyway I just wanted to secure my place in the 50k freeroll and I also won a spot in a 10k freeroll on the way.
6 max has been going steady for me so far. I think I should be able to make the green for this month, assuming I can put in enough hands. I've started playing some Party Poker. It's funny playing again on the site where I first started playing poker. I withdrew the rest of the money I had on ABS poker and I usually have two sites with money so I picked Party as my second site to play on.
When I get all my pics loaded up on my notebook, I'll post some more from my trip to Spain.

madness

2008-03-15T13:58:00.006+01:00

Yesterday I was travelling from 7am till 3am. It started off with my flight being delayed 1 hour and me consequently missing my train, which happend to be the last one for the day. Then having to wait 3 hours for a bus, then riding the bus for 4:30 hours. Arriving in Valencia and finding out that there is some kinda strike and little taxis and no busses, but I finally made it. Here are some pics from yesterday...Sounds like I'm in a war zone here, but it's just crazy people partying.

Barcelona Airpoirt

I took this pic so you can see that they speak Catalan in Barcelona the bottom lanugage is Castelan (Spanish) the top is Catalan. Catalan is similar to Spanish, but some words are different and definetly confusing for foreigners who only speak Spanish.

Wasted me after travelling all day.

I took this pic whilst waiting for a taxi, this was close the heart of the town in Valencia.

on the road

2008-03-14T11:34:00.002+01:00

I'm at the Munich airport right now. This is a pic from the inside of the airport. My next flight is to Barcelona and from there I'm taking some trains to get to Valencia. It's a bit complicated, but I didn't realize that now is our Easter break and thus the direct flight prices to Valencia are bizarre. The average flight was 700 € and to Barcelona I am paying 150 €. However I don't really mind travelling through Barcelona, as I haven't been there before. I think on my way back I might try and leave a day early from Valencia and stay in a hotel in Barcelona for some sight seeing.

relaxing

2008-03-11T16:09:00.002+01:00

Been winning again over the last couple of sessions. And yesterday I fired up some low buy in donkaments just to mix things up. Came second in a 10+1 winter poker league event from Titan Poker, but the entrants were low so it only netted me 150$. However it's always nice to final table a tournament. It was a shame I didn't take it down with a 3-1 chip lead hu, but the stack sizes were so small that it was not possible for me to push my edge in the match.
Anyway the good thing about my placing was that it netted me a top 200 place in the league's leaderboard. So I get an entry to a 50k freeroll which is nice.

I will be in Spain for a couple of days at the end of the week and I decided to fly last so I need to go and get that sorted out now. Uni has also started again so I'll only be gone for a couple of days. I'll try and take some pics and upload some to my blog. I will be taking my notebook with me, but probably won't be able to play any poker, due to lack of secure connections (they have some WLAN connections that I can receive in my appartment, but it's not worth the risk in my opinion).

swingy

2008-03-05T20:38:00.002+01:00

As planned I put in some more hands today. Right off the bat I lost 3 stacks:

1

This guy was a maniac, definetly a cooler to run into set over set against somebody playing very aggro and too many hands.

2

mixing it up vs a fairly tight early postion raiser. I don't like reraising it here and getting it in preflop that is why I opted to call and raise a good flop. My play worked out besides the part of running into KK.

3

Maybe I am not fully adopted to more aggressive play yet, but I think this is a bit spewy against my first 4bet. I guess some people expect you to 4bet light the first time, so maybe he was just levelling himself here. I don't think his play is necessarily horrible, but I don't think he will turn a profit in this specific spot.

As you can see though my luck soonly turned around. My downswing peaked at -12 buy ins, which I think is a new record, but not a total shocker as I've been on three 9 buy in downswings before. I basically ended up winning some bigger pots and then chipping it up to turn a profit of 650ish.
Here are some of my winning pots.

a

Villain did think befor felting this here. Imo if he is reraising he should be snapping. I don't mind his play here, he can't really fold preflop and cold calling can get him into some icky spots. So I think 4bet felt is reasonable.

b

Villain was a reg here. I think his play is pretty poor. My range is crushing him. He is calling to hope for a flip at best. I'll never have worse aces here except an Adxd.
4 way he needs to look for other alternatives than his line.

c

As you can see people don't give me much respect preflop. I guess one of the advantages of havign a LAG image.

d

Still no credit.

e

Villain in this hand was loose and aggressive (bad). Thus my reasoning for completing 43o against him. His timing was pretty bad so I felt very confident in check calling this river as opposed to betting. He was very aggressive so I expected him to bluff a missed draw practically 100% of the time. Sometimes I get owned here by some backdoor draw. I'm however not concerned about boats, if he has a back door draw it is likely a hand like xc5c or xc8c and that's about it.

Arsenal took Milan for 2-0 yesterday which I am very pleased about. Arsenal play a fun style of football and it's always a pleasure watching them. Wenger does a really great job there and I am sad already for when he decides to leave. I hope Arsenal can go far this year and hopefully win it. I think Wenger and the team def deserve it.

As expected Heroes is pretty good and addictive. I'm up to episode 17 so far of season 1. The story line is pretty decent. My fav character so far is the Japanes Kid, he just amuses me somehow. I'm also fond of Japanes culture though, so I'm probably biased.

I like

2008-03-04T19:50:00.002+01:00

Sup folk! I'm still feeling pretty good about my play yesterday, I don't think I played any hands tilty. Tomorrow I feel good about getting back into the games. What I'm gonna try and do is play 5-6 tables instead of 7-8, because a lot of my edge comes from thinking through spots well as I don't play an ABC style.
Right now I'm going to watch Arsenal v Milan in the Champion's League. Arsenal is my team and I will be rooting for them. I think they have a decent shot at beating any team and many would consider them to be under the top 3 clubs in Europe, including myself.

Time off

2008-03-04T04:06:00.002+01:00

I decided to take a day off, clear my head, watch the first season of Heroes and then try and get back on track again.

9 buy ins down

2008-03-04T00:41:00.002+01:00

Just had a pretty big downswing session. 3788$ over 2k hands. I think I played well though, I'll go over my hands here as a form of review.

big pot

A somewhat standard spot. I reraise light vs an aggresive opener and get cold called from the BB. I decide to cbet to try and get him off over overcards and small PPs. This is the only marginal spot I can find in this hand. I bet 74$ to win 114$ meaning that he should fold the flop: x*114+(1-x)*(-74)=0
114x-74+74x=0
188x=74;x=0.39
39% of the time for the play to be break even, so I don't mind it. I think the turn bet could be a bit bigger so I can get the money in more easily on the river. Evaluating his play, I think his hand can be tricky to play and I don't mind his cold call given our stack sizes and his position. The river is a very close spot, but I don't think I am valuebetting worse here given our dynamics.

reg on reg

Another standard hand I think. Villain plays it straightforward and avoids tough decisions which I think is a fine play here.

good table

Needless to say I think villains play is terrible, but I am not complaining.

flopped the nuts

I don't like the way villain played his hand. I don't think he will show a profit here very often by check calling me out of position with a 7 high flush draw. It's really hard to get paid off with flushes when you are not the one leading the betting action. I am not sure if he would have also checked had he not picked up extra outs, his standard line may be to lead the turn here unimproved. I guess he made the most of it by check raising the turn to get me off of marginal hands that I would be betting to protect but would fold to a raise. Good spot for me to be in anyways.

awkward

This hand was a bit awkward to play. Villain is pretty solid. I don't like 4betting him here given the stack sizes, because I think it forces him to reraise with a tighter range, so I opted to call and checkraise a low flop. Since the board was really dry. I made a small checkraise to about 2.25 and he just called. On the turn I decided to represent air, but in retrospect I think I should just shove it for value from 99,TT,JJ the river is a really awkward spot, because it is hard to valuebet QQ here in my opinion. There is a small chance I am behind here to AA and KK and now also to TT. I think 99 will fold and I am only getting value from JJ. I don't know how I would have reacted to a bet, because I don't think he will be betting JJ here often enough for my call to be good. I really think I cost myself a lot of value by not betting the turn.

amusing

Another fish I found, I find it amusing that he tries to bluff me off of a hand on the river with a 75$ bet into a 314$ pot.

the biggest station I've seen so far

This guy was just completely bonkers. He was raising roughly 65% of his hands and I was cold calling a lot with decent hands in position hoping to get value from this guy. I decided to bluff raise him once on a very dry board, he snapped and insta-overbet-donk-shoved the turn for 600 into a 150 pot.

light call down

This guy was fishy and seemed to have some bluff in him. I know that some fish lead with their top pair hands here, but not all of them. I decided to call down here getting good odds with all the draws missing and he showed me air. I think it's important to note that a lot of these guys have a lot of randomness in them so one shouldn't try to delve too deep into their minds to avoid self-levelling.

If you've come this far you may wonder how I managed to lose 9 buy ins...here we go.

dude

Can't really complain about this spot. We were 120 big blinds deep, but when you move up in stakes it is important to realize that hand values go up in stealing spots so I'm commiting myself pf by reraising. I think villain definetly overplayed TT here and I don't like his reraising size as he is commiting himself with a lot of bluff hands without necessarily knowing it.

move

This villain was reraising light a lot so I decided to put a move on him on a good board. This happend to be one of them, sadly enough villain had the nuts here. Definetly a high variance spot though. I did the maths on this situation today and I'm pretty sure it's plus ev given the right dynamics.

set theorem anyone?

I think the Beluga Theorem commands me to muck my hand on this turn, but I didn't know villain that well at this point and a lot of logical sets were unlikely plus I had top two and the turn card only completed a gutshot straight draw. I decided to commit to my hand on the turn and villain showed me the unlikely 66.

marginal

This is definetly the most questionable play of mine today. Villain was 26/22/4 and calling my bets light. It really doesn't make much sense for him to lead with anything decent here. I decided I had fe and outs so I shoved. He snapped with the second nuts. I guess he levelled me in this hand and I have to give him credit.

big draw

I flop the straight and flush draw and just stick it in. Bit of an overbet in retrospect, but I was playing a couple of tables and just stuck it in. It's good in a way, because it gives higher flushes bad odds to draw. Villains call is horrendous, because my range is crushing him. I have a feeling a reraise may have gotten him to fold, but you never know with these guys.

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 55.051% 54.14% 00.91% 536 9.00 { 6h5h }
Hand 1: 44.949% 44.04% 00.91% 436 9.00 { Kc6d }

read play

My read on this guy was that he leads weak and is capable of firing multiple barrels. My read was correct, but he backdoored me. I interpreted the river as a good card in this context, because it made it less likely he actually had a hand.

oops

I must admit that I thought he lead into me multitabling (I might play less tables next session) but the way the hand actually played out my play wasn't terrible. I see him cbetting here often enough for my semi-bluff to show a profit.

AA

Villain takes a very fishy line and folding here is out of the question, especially with the backdoor nfd. He happens to show up with a hand and I miss, but this will definetly be a high ev spot for me long term.

Ok

I think my play here is ok, I think the flop and turn play is fairly standard. On the river I check to induce bluffs from missed draws and if you check to induce you need to pay off the bet. I'm not sure his stats actually converged with my assumption that he'd bluff a missed draw, but I was putting him on a missed draw and played accordingly. Again my read was correct, but villain hit an out to beat me.

Turned second set

I actually considered folding this river, because this villain was very very nitty. His hand looked alot like QQ and AJ to me, but I wasn't sure if he was capable of raising KQ and QT for value here so I decide not to make a hero fold. I think the way my games play I'm fine with calling here as the edges I am pushing are not as tiny as they may get at higher stakes, I just couldn't find the time to fold here, but definetly not a nice spot to be in.

More sets

Very standard cooler, with my equity against their ranges I need to snap call and hope to hold up.

Sucked in

Is what I got in this hand. I feel his insta min flop bet can be air a draw or a J. I just couldn't find a fold with all the draws and the fact that I had position, but it could have been the better play. As played I think the turn call is fine and the river was more of a potodds/keephimhonest/figureouthowheisplaying call.

I will try not to post my entire session. These were the biggest pots I played for the day I feel confident with my play in the majority of those hands, but I think I'll post one or two in a forum to get some second opinions. I'll take a break now for the rest of the day and try and come back refreshed tomorrow. As it stands I'm down about 2k for the month, nothing too tragic.
I'll be back!

Feb results

2008-03-01T02:02:00.004+01:00

Obviously I'm lame, because I didn't play as many hands as I should have been playing :/, but I am working on it. I need to really try and put in the hours to reach my yearly goal for 08. Since this is HM bb = big blinds and not big bets, I ran at about 7.3ptbb/100 which is nice. From what I could tell though I was still running above my expectation slightly, but not by too much, since I did run into some coolers @ 3/6 and had good table selection @ 2/4.

I've also started coaching a bit this month which is an interesting experience. Right now I only have one student and I'll see how it works out. I think it will be a nice learning experience for both of us.

My plans are to go to Spain for 1 week in March, but since I won't have too much uni for starters I think I should be able to put in some hands early in the month. I hope to be hitting the 3/6 tables again soon aswell.

dollar, dollar bill y'all?

2008-02-29T12:49:00.002+01:00

I just realized after cashing out 1k the other day that the dollar course has been really bad lately. I'm glad I have some of my bankroll offline in euro accounts and some of it online in euro accounts. I'd estimate that I have about 40% still in dollars though. It sucks to cash out larger amounts when the course is like this, but I don't have much of a choice. I think I'll try and split it up 50/50 with my euro accounts and dollar accounts to decrease losses and hope for the course to get better sometime soon.

1-0 3/6 v Danny

2008-02-27T18:00:00.004+01:00

Getting owned a bit, but playing well for the most part. I didn't expect to maintain 10ptbb/100 over the entire month anyways. The good thing about me losing again is that it gives me more motivation to do better and play more. I'm down about 1.8k @ 3/6 for this month which nothing really, but I decided to play some pure 2/4 till I reach 9k again and then take some more stabs.
Cheers to Dodgy for taking the time to look at some of my tougher 3/6 hands.
I've figured out a way how to post hands from iPoker using Holdem Manager, you have to copy all the xml files to a text file and then upload it as a sinlge session on weaktight and you get an output of the hands you want. Here are some of my 2/4 hands:

preying on weakness

This hand is a pretty standard spot, a weak and fishy player leads out on a dry board. This was the third time he did this to me. The first hand I raised him and he folded. The second time I raised him he called, I hit my hand on the turn, small lead/raise/call, and followed through on the river and he folded. I decided that I'd just keep on applying the pressure but when he calls again, even though I pick up outs I decided it was better to try and hit getting ridiculous odds.

questionable

I think this hand was questionable, villain was opening a lot of hands from late position and I figured I could get him to fold out a lot of over cards that were in his range. I felt obliged to follow through on this turn since he can be calling with a lot of one pair hands and small pps and maybe even some a high hands, because of the wheel draw. Given the way he snap shoved this turn I feel he flopped big.

muppet # 1

Not much to say about this guy, I was commited to the pot so I tried to get the money in. Not a super +ev spot I thought at first, untill I saw his hand.

meh

This guy was a big fish and a big station. I think I need to check and fold this river. There is a small chance villain might play a hand like T8 this way, but I think his range his heavily weighted towards flushes here. Especially against weaker players I can find a lot better spots.
Just kinda frustrating when you have AA against a big fish and he hits, but it won't be profitable for him and that's why I think it's important to muck here.

Hmm

This was an awkward spot against this reg. His lead doesn't really make any sense as a bluff, because this flop hits my perceived UTG range pretty hard. It's pretty unlikely he has a set here, JJ at best and I think a check raise extracts more value here with JJ. I am in pretty bad shape if he has Ahxh here, drawing close to dead, but I didn't think it made a lot of sense given his pf play. AQ is a possible hand he can have here too I guess aswell as aggro played TT. I think if I raise here I should raise slightly bigger to lay myslef better odds to call a shove. All in all not a great spot, but I ran well in the hand and I think villains preflop call is pretty bad. I don't really like calling on this flop , because I don't think villains range is strong enough to give me value on later streets and I raise a lot of my strong hands here so it's hard to rep a strong range by calling and floating. A fold seems weak here, I'm open for input on this hand.

standard

Somewhat I guess, if he is reraising JJ here he shouldn't be folding imo. It's also an awkward spot for him to be in with JJ, but I don't think he can fold this against my image preflop and I don't like calling pf. I know some regs smooth call here, but I don't see too much value in doing so.

awkward

I decide to smooth call my AJ vs a wide openers btn range. I don't like reraising here with the stacks and I think you should either fold or call pf. Postflop I am in a weird spot as I do not want to build the pot so this is a spot where I think pot control>hand protection. Unluckily I get an overcaller who at this point I put on quads or a flush draw. On the turn I think I am ahead against the villain betting small almost always so I call again, but we get reraised and I find an easy fold.

very thin

I contemplated for a long time whether I should bet here or not. I knew if I bet it I'd have to fold to a raise, I almost think I need to check it down here, because it is unlikely he can call me with much here the way the hand played out. I kinda felt obliged to put in a bet here, I am not sure about my play.

just bet

I think it is the best play here unless against a weak player that will bet his entire range here when checked to. My check doesn't make too much sense here as I think I am betting almost all the time on the flop and it will get checked back a lot from a villain that has air as he will think I am up to something. My reasoning for checking at the time was that I am trying to put in the last bet with drawing hands to maximize the profitability of playing them. Anyway he checked back I pick up a lot of outs on the turn so I go ahead and rep a slowplayed strong hand. Villain calls and on the river I think I need to follow through as his line doesn't include a lot of strong made hands and I think I can fold out a lot of middle pair type hands or missed draws maybe. I also picked up some timing tells, my read was right villain was weak on the flop and turn, but he hit.

messed up hand

This hand played out weird. UTG was very tight and SB didn't reraise much for the most part. The timing, the small reraise seemed so suspicious to me that I decided to call which I think is reasonable given my read. The flop gets a bit icky. Typically this is a reraise to allin without much thought, but I was still very worried about this hand. I felt I could make a correct tight fold on a later street so I called. Villain didn't really think long before shoving the turn and I really thought I was behind here, I don't see him shoving air or JJ, 99.

dude

Well this was an interesting spot. Out of position this is a fold, but I had position and I was getting 3-1 to call on a rainbow board. The downside was that I had a one card striaght draw and the implied odds are low as we all know. I decide to call hoping to get value from set hands and maybe a two pair hand. After he check calls the turn I am putting him on a set that he is not capable of folding. He thought a while before calling the river and I was very very surprised about seeing AA. This player even seemed fairly reasonable. I don't know what he put me on that he thought he was ahead of. His turn and river play is very poor and I also think if he is limping AA to balance his open limping range he should be reraising with air and monsters instead of limp calling.

i like

These are the kinda guys you want to have sitting at your table. Slowplays JJ pf (can be reasonable at times obv), check and minraises drawy boards, gives you freecards, leads weak on the river and doesn't fold to a raise.

some 3/6 action

2008-02-25T02:01:00.002+01:00

I decided to do a MS Paint for this blog. This is me vs 3/6. I'm ready to take on the limit. Still haven't played much yet though, because I just came back from partying in Munich. Although I probably shouldn't have been playing I fired up 3 tables of 3/6 and made a buy in. I wanted to post some hands from Holdem Manager, but I couldn't work it out how to get the naked HHs. I'll ask a friend and then update with some hands.
My biggest pot was vs a very tight ABC reg that seems to be beating the limits for a decent amount, I basically hit trips with my AK vs his JJ and nearly got his entire stack. I'll update with some analysis later once I figure out what the problem is and also with some pics from my weekend when I get them uploaded on my Notebook.

Meh

2008-02-23T03:06:00.005+01:00

Didn't get round to playing 3/6, because a friend of mine had a birthday party. The games weren't good anyway when I checked, but they are pretty juicy right now. I will however have to pass, because I cam back from drinking. Tomorrow I'll be going shopping and partying in Munich. The pictures here are from the club we are going to, looks pretty nice.

Some poker stuff

2008-02-22T15:36:00.002+01:00

It's been a while since I've posted any results, but I think you'll find this interesting. The green line is my actual winnings for this month so far. The blue line represents money I've won @ showdown, the red represents what I won with hands I didn't showdown. I used Holdem Manager to make this graph, which I purchased the other day. It's a pretty neat tool and definetly faster than the current PT version, but I think they could improve the hand replayer. I'd really like to see some database stats in there and an odds calculator.
I think you can tell that I am running hot for this month so far. I'm not losing much @ showdown. I can't complain really. I have enough bankroll to move up to 3/6, so I'll be contemplating doing that soon. It's just a bit odd, because I haven't really played many hands @ 2/4. I don't really think the difference should be too big though. I'll just datamine it and jump into some juicy games for starters.
I'll go to town now and datamine some 3/6 then try and get some hands in, I'll update how it went.

More pictures

2008-02-18T15:52:00.004+01:00

The activity in my blog has been sagging, so as my own marketing director I have decided to employ more pictures to my posts. This is from a show that I have been watching lately. I think it's really interesting, it's about a "good" serial killer that only kills other serial killers. He is traumatized from when he was a little boy and that is why he became the way he is. I think it's worth checking out. It's based in Miami and you can watch all of it on sidereel.com.

life

2008-02-17T11:09:00.002+01:00

Hi guys! Haven't been blogging in a while, mainly due to uni stuff. Just thought I'd give a short update of what has been going on.

Poker is still going steady and I am very glad with my results for this month so far. I think I'm at about 10k hands for this month and up 7k. If everything goes according by plan I'll be taking some stabs @ 3/6 soon. Unluckily I haven't been playing much HU so far, but I haven been getting in some FR hands. Full ring is a nice change of pace, but most of the games that have been running lately haven't been anything special. Somehow I've still managed to get into big pots with the fish and hold up. I'm surprised @ the high amount of FR nits that just seem to be waiting for the big cards.
I've been doing more maths behind the game lately, I think it really hepls with deepening your feel for the game without playing a ridiculous amount of hands. After I am done reading Elements Of Poker, I'll definetly pick up my copy of Mathematics of Poker and start reading it.

Non-poker wise, I went snowboarding yesterday for the first time this season. I had some friends friends that I know from Spain come down and they were motivated to hit the mountains, so that's what we did. It was actually quite fun and I'm glad I dug out all my stuff to go. It was fun meeting some New Yorkers and I think I'm psyched to go to New York sometime soon and check out the city. They say it's very Europe-like anyway.

The other day I got a call from UB and the lady on the phone informed me about the new bonus system @ ub, which seems promising and encourages long term play like all the other sites, however when she ended the call she ended it with "Thanks for your time honey.", which made me laugh :P.

When I have some more time I'll post some hands that I've been playing.

l8r

xdsl

2008-02-07T08:21:00.000+01:00

I've got my xdsl all setup now with a router and all and it's really nice. It's very fast and it's a flat rate.

I'm a little bit behind in the hands I should be playing, but this is not entirely my fault. I have been very busy running around and trying to organize things for uni, plus one day I didn't have any internet, because my ISP was down and another I wasn't feeling well. Basically I'm trying to catch up now, by playing more than 1k hands when I can. We'll see how that turns out. Poker in itself is running very well though, my results are good and I think I am playing well, but not great. I'm also sure now that I'm running above expecation, because I'm getting it in with a lot of coolers for my opponents.
I'm not playing on iPoker right now due to their VIP system. Basically I will be playing there soon again when the reloads come back for February. I'm trying to maintain my Absolute VIP level for the meanwhile. I still get a lot of rakeback there, although I guess it's around 10-20% less than when I first joined. I contacted support and they claimed it was a little bit too much rakeback they were offering. It's however still decent for a VIP elite player. I think it's in the range of 60%, maybe I'll do the maths sometime.

As far as non poker related topics go, I'm training right now to get accepted into sports management. I'd consider myself to be an athletic person and I'm interested in how the human body works etc.. It'll be good for me, because I need something to aim for, to keep me motivated when I train. The trickiest part is 200m freestyle. We have to do it in 3:50 which isn't ridiculous by any means, but since I rarely ever swim I still need to train for it. I hope that turns out well.
Even though I am on holidays I'm still running around all the time doing stuff for uni etc :/.

I'm also reading the book Elements of Poker from Tommy Angelo. It's an interesting book as it gives you some insight of a lot of other aspects of poker that are rarely covered, but are very important. I'd say it's a mandatory read for any serious poker player.

Kinda...

2008-02-03T08:12:00.000+01:00

...messed up...my sleeping rhythm. It's 8am on Sunday now. I slept from like 2pm-9pm on Saturday and then went to a friend's girlfriend's birthday party. Came home around 2am and slept till 6am, got up. Played 400 hands of iPoker 2/4 and now I'm sitting here writing this. I made 140$ in those 400 hands and was definelty running above expectation and playing ok I guess. I was hitting all kinda lame suckouts though. 2c3cts, effective stack to pot ratio was like 5 against a fishy guy. I have 88, opened from co he smooths in the sb. Flop goes check, cbet, allin and I call figuring that he'll have a draw here a lot and my hand just felt good here. I don't think he plays 99 that way and he won't have a higher overpair too often, JJ at best. So I figured I was up against a T or some kinda draw and sometimes a set (I think you have to discount sets here from a weak players range, cause they like to slowplay). Anyway I semi-snap and he shows qt and I hit the 8 :P. I ended up stopping though because it's a euro site and there were hardly any games running and I didn't have to play. I also played some more FR and the table seemed pretty good. There usually aren't many FR games running, but I always sit in on the ones that are. It's a nice change of pace and the games look very beatable.
I was thinking of playing some HU now, but I am not sure I should :P. I'm gonna grab some food and then go from there. My aim is to not fall asleep before 9pm so that I can convert to a normal sleeping rhythm, which I'll need to find the energy to work out, study and play poker.

My place is a mess, I need to get some more cupboards or something... All in all I'm pretty pleased and excited about life now. Sometimes we don't realize how good we have it. We have so many open doors, health, wealth (even if you don't have much money and you live in a first world country, you are still pretty wealthy compared to the rest of the world) and easy access to information...Some random blurts of thoughts there for you, lol.

February

2008-02-01T06:09:00.000+01:00

I had a nice start to February as you can see. I think I played well, but also ran well. I'm disapointed with myself about January as I didn't play much at all. I had the right intentions as I was trying to focus on my studies, but I didn't study enough to justify the amount I played.
January ended at roughly 10k hands +5k.
My plan for this month is to play more regularly (I'm going for 1k hands a day). I'll also be further working on my hu game on NL 100 untill I make enough to move up to 200. I'll aim for 300-500 hu hands a day. Sometimes you end up playing longer, because you're in a good match with a weak and or tilting player and you don't want to quit him, but I'll also not play if I don't feel like I'm playing my A-game. So I'm aiming for about 30k hands in Feb.
I'll be playing almost entirely on Titan Poker (iPoker) for this month with some hu on Prima (Battlefield skin). I also played some Full Ring today and ended up +800 there. I don't feel like it's too different from 6max, but definetly profitable. I guess it comes down to table selection. If there are no good 6 max games, I can go play FR or HU and I think that table selection will add to my winrate and flexibilty.

Good Day

2008-01-30T02:49:00.000+01:00

I made $125 at the 2/4 cash tables today and 3 buy ins heads up on .50/1.
My plan was to play some HU on UB, but I couldn't find any NL games only PL, so I had to withdraw and depost on Prima, which is where I played my HU for today. It's actually a good place for me to play HU, because the rake is high HU on NL 100 and I get a lot of rakeback on Prima.
Tomorrow I'll be playing some more 6max 2/4 and then hopefully some HU hands aswell later on. Once I reach +10 BIs on .50/1 I'll move up to 1/2 HU and repeat that there.

Time to play

2008-01-29T06:18:00.000+01:00

I've finished the first half of my exams now and I'll be trying to play a lot of poker in the upcoming week. I'll still be working on my HU game and grinding it out on the 6 max tables 2/4.

I run g00t.........

2008-01-21T01:05:00.000+01:00

...NAT!

Ok just finished a 400 hand session of NL 100 HU. I think I played pretty well and I definetly had weak opposition. What I've noticed so far is that a lot of the fish slow play a lot (atleast @ NL 100) and are generally loose passive, which is the easiest opponent to beat in NLHE.

He just sat down

And open shoved his first hand. Easy call, standard cooler.

Mixing it up

My flopped flush didn't hold up, not much I can do here. I won't be reraising this type of player too light, but hu has a different dynamics as to 6max or 9max to the degree where you can not just sit back and wait for big hands all the time. I basically considered this a play to balance my image and to get more value from when I do reraise for value.

Valuebetting a station

Stations hu can be a bit frustrating to play against, because it's difficult to make hands hu. You need to adjust by valuebetting hard when you have a good hand, but also when you have a mediocre hand that is likely best. I don't think this is too thin here as a lot of players can have hands here that I am ahead of, but checking would've been too weak in this spot.

Shoving bottom pair for value

I think my hand fairs pretty well against his leading range here. He'll have a lot of draws that I'm ahead of and likely fold a second or third pair hand.

As you can see most of these guys play 50-100bb stacks, they just buy in for whatever, but they are weak enough to make up for this even with the high rake.
I'm not entirely sure yet if I'll move up after these 5k hands, because I would like to end NL100 as a winner :/, I guess I'll decide that when I reach the 5k mark and I'm also positive I am a winner at these stakes, so I can still turn it around.

Learning...

2008-01-19T18:28:00.000+01:00

Hi guys! I just played another session of HU. Ended down 1.5 buy-ins, but I feel I learnt something whilst playing. I was actually down 270bb to one guy, but I crushed all the other fish I played so it evened out to -150bb.
The guy who I was playing whom I dropped 270bb to seemed fairly competent and aggressive and I think I way overadjusted to him. I still need to get fully calibrated for HU, but in retrospect I don't think he was playing as aggro as it seemed. He easily could have been just making a lot of hands. I basically ran top pair into top two and TT into QQ pf, which I think was a bit spewy, because I don't think he was 4betting light. I think I still have about 2.5k hands on my HU nl 100 challenge and I'll definetly enjoy them, despite HU being high variance. I think I'm down about 3 stacks so far. With adjusted EV I'd guestimate I'm about break evenish.
I'll try and post some more hands when I get back to playing some more.
Right now I'm gonna go and have a bday meal at a local chinese restaurant (I like chinese food :D).
L8r.

21

2008-01-17T18:37:00.000+01:00

Hi there. It was my 21st birthday yesterday. Quite a big number, but I haven't been able to make any celebrations yet.
I wrote a final examen for Spanish on my birthday and it didn't go well. I don't have any results yet, I just hope it's not too bad. That kinda spoilt my birthday for me cause it bugged me the whole day, but I kinda semi-recovered.
As far as poker, I haven't really been playing. Just the couple of hu sessions that I posted.
For the immediate future however I'll be really trying to focus on my studies, but I will be playing some smaller session in the evenings.
I got a lot of new stuff this january, including my new poker setup, which I already posted about, but here is a picture of my setup.
I haven't played poker on it yet, but I'm pretty satisfied. I've never really had a computer that I was completely satisfied with, so this is kinda like a milestone for me in my career.
I picked up NFSCarbon and Call of Duty 4 to test the system and it hasn't dissapointed me.
I doubt PT+PAHUD+Multitabling will be a problem, but I'll update when I have some info on that.

short hu session

2008-01-14T23:47:00.000+01:00

Just played a 300 hand HU session on nl100 on Absolute and was able to book a reasonable win of +124$. I had an ok reg on one table and a fish on the other. I think I took more off of the reg when my KT held up vs his QT 200bb deep in a reraised pot on TsJsJc4sKc. He fired three streets and I am not sure if it was for value, very awkward hand, but the kid was scandinavian and they are super aggro so I figure he's definetly able of firing the river as a bluff here.

Hu is definetly fun to play and I still have a lot of adjusting to make, because the dynamics can be very different to a ring game. I think it will pay off in the long run to have a good hu game though, there's nothing better than playing high stakes hu vs a fish.
If I am up over these 5000 hands of HU, I'll definetly move up to nl200 due to the rake. I don't really think the competition is much tougher. I assume the regs will be better, but I'm not trying to play regs HU so it doesn't really matter much.

I recently purchased a digital-cam Kodak EasyShare M883, because I wanted a camera that I could take snap shots with when doing stuff with friends etc.. So the camera cost me 200
€, but is definetly not worth the money. The picture quality is average at best and it is not quick at taking pictures either. These are all things I told the salesman that were important to me and he somehow still managed to sell me a poor product, I checked this with online reviews.
I usually don't buy in shops, unless I know what I want exactly and I thought this time I might get someone to help me out, but I was dissapointed once again. I'm giving back the camera and I've already ordered the Canon Ixus 70 (Powershot SD1000 in US) which is cheaper and has far far better reviews. I hope it gets here soon.

frustrating hu session

2008-01-13T22:48:00.000+01:00

Just played this fish HU for a pretty long time and lost 3.5 stacks to him (we paid 50bb rake wtf).
I'm pretty sure I had an edge on him.

First stack

I lost to this kid, I think you get my drift on why I think he was bad. Basically I'm never folding that turn when I pick up 15 outs and he leads weakly like that.

Cooler

On that flop there is not really much I can do tbh. He has weaker As and draws here that I'm ahead of plus he calls reraises very lightly.

Coinflip

Meh was a coinflip and I guess a beat if he calls my 4bets with t6s.

I basically kept on grinding up my stack and then losing some medium sized pot. I also value owned myself twice, I need to beware of that, I could be betting too thinly versus some of these guys.

Hu is a lot of variance so I basically need to put in some more hands to let the big numbers kick in. It is also very player dependant and requires a lot of adjusting to situations, which I like, because this is where you can really gain an edge vs a weaker player.

Busy

2008-01-13T14:17:00.000+01:00

Hi y'all. Haven't posted in a while, but I haven't really been playing at all. I'm trying to focus on my final exams right now. I probably won't be playing NL 400 cash to the end of the month, but I've decided to continue with my NL 100 5k hands HU challenge. Put in about 450 hands yesterday and managed to end up +77$. I played 4 different people. First opponent was whitewash, we played a bit then got into a coinflip w/ak v 99 which I lost. I ended up valueowning myself with a thin valuebet and then he hit and run me ;) so I ended up down about 140 to him. Next opponent was a 5 tabling reg. Even though I knew he was a reg, I thought it'd be + EV to play a guy 5 tabling HU at these stakes, which I think is pretty difficult, so I turned up the aggression factor against him and managed to take 50bb off of him before he quit me. Next was a guy who was probably somewhat reasonable. I ended up losing a big pot with top two vs his straight and soon after he said he had to leave so that cost me a stack aswell. My final opponent was a guy who I'd classify as a fish, but whom I was also running well against. I was winning a lot of pots off of him, even my Q high always seemed to be good when we checked it down. I was definetly running well, but this guy was also definetly weak. He'd checkraise bottom pair and shove the turn inimproved and at the same time he'd check if he had a hand which is naturally very exploitable. After this guy was down about 3.5 stacks he declared the table was rigged and left. It's a shame cause I feel I had the moment, plus he was likely tilting so I could have taken him for even more, good for him if he can set himself a stop loss though.

I went to the cinemas the other day to watch the film I am Legend. After the film I immedeately thought it was good, but it took me about a day to actually truely process the film and now I like it even more. It's definetly worth checking out. I've found most of Smith's recent films have been good, so they're always a solid tip.

My computer will be arriving at the beginning of next week so it won't be long and I'll have my entire setup ready. My plan is to go into marathon mode for the last two days of the month to balance out the fact that I haven't been able to play.

Gotta go and continue with Spanish, talk to you later.

Still going steady

2008-01-06T22:31:00.000+01:00

Put in some more hands today. Just 750, but I need to focus on my exams right now, so when I play I'll try and keep it at the 750 hand range.
In this post I'll post some of my hands just to let you in on some of the action.

Ace on the river

This hand just illustrates the power of AK. I'm only a 65% favourite pf. Hand is a standard cooler.

This guy likes t3h gamb00l, but he has the goods this time. Pokerhand just crashed so you'll have to endure the low graphic version of the HHs, I'll convert to plain text so they'll still be pretty readable.:

Absolute Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $4 BB (2 handed) Absolute Poker Converter Tool from http://www.flopturnriver.comFlopTurnRiver.com (Format: Plain Text)

BB ($225.30)
Hero ($690.50)

Preflop: Hero is Button with Tc, Th.
Hero raises to $12, BB raises to $225.3, Hero calls $213.30.

Flop: ($450.60) As, 4h, 5h (2 players)

Turn: ($450.60) 9s (2 players)

River: ($450.60) Kc (2 players)

Final Pot: $450.60

Results below:
BB has Qd Qc (one pair, queens).
Hero has Tc Th (one pair, tens).
Outcome: BB wins $450.60.

I guess I got outplayed here. Was going for 3 streets of value, but the river came down pretty ugly. Tbh I felt pretty beat here given villains timing, fishiness and bet sizing. Also the river card was pretty bad, because he'd play a flush and possibly a boat the same way. It's interesting that he peels the flop w/a gutshot though, improves to 1 pair on the turn and turns his hand into a bluff on the river. The lines these guys take...:

Absolute Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $4 BB (6 handed) Absolute Poker Converter Tool from http://www.flopturnriver.comFlopTurnRiver.com (Format: Plain Text)

MP ($861)
CO ($494)
Hero ($400.50)
SB ($1045.70)
BB ($578.40)
UTG ($465.60)

Preflop: Hero is Button with 9h, 7d.
3 folds, Hero raises to $16, SB calls $14, 1 fold.

Flop: ($36) Ts, 3c, 8c (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $28, SB calls $28.

Turn: ($92) Jc (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $64, SB calls $64.

River: ($220) Tc (2 players)
SB bets $110, Hero folds.

Final Pot: $220

Results below:
SB has Jh Qs (two pair, jacks and tens).
Outcome: SB wins $220.

All I can say about the next hand is that I am happy to play with guys like this:

Absolute Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $4 BB (4 handed) Absolute Poker Converter Tool from http://www.flopturnriver.comFlopTurnRiver.com (Format: Plain Text)

Button ($454.20)
Hero ($487.50)
BB ($611.50)
UTG ($784.65)

Preflop: Hero is SB with Qs, Qc.
UTG raises to $8, 1 fold, Hero raises to $38, 1 fold, UTG calls $30.

Flop: ($80) 7h, 6s, 2s (2 players)
Hero bets $64, UTG calls $64.

Turn: ($208) 3c (2 players)
Hero checks, UTG bets $136, Hero raises to $385.5, UTG calls $249.50.

River: ($979) 4d (2 players)

Final Pot: $979

Results below:
UTG has 7c 8c (one pair, sevens).
Hero has Qs Qc (one pair, queens).
Outcome: Hero wins $979.

The next hand is my sickest pot for today. This is against the same guy whom I lost my TT to his QQ to for 50bb. This was a pretty close decision and villain was going through phases of shoving a lot and then slowing down. Given his timing (he didn't think long before putting his money in the middle, I figure if he'd have AA,KK,QQ he'd stop to think about how he can make the most money off of me) and the fact that he showed down QQ to me last hand (I know he's shoving light, but he may think I'm scared money against him, because he showed me a decent hand the last time plus I had been folding to his all-in raises. This is a very minor thing, because I could be levelling myself by giving villain to much credit, but it's the small things that added up for me in this hand). I was talking to whitewash as this hand was happening and he figured it was close. I felt I needed to call given his range, but that I should be prepaired to be behind here some percentage of the time:

Absolute Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $4 BB (5 handed) Absolute Poker Converter Tool from http://www.flopturnriver.comFlopTurnRiver.com (Format: Plain Text)

BB ($156)
UTG ($322.80)
MP ($388.40)
Button ($414)
Hero ($537.80)

Preflop: Hero is SB with 9h, 9s.
1 fold, MP raises to $12, 1 fold, Hero raises to $44, 1 fold, MP raises to $388.4, Hero calls $344.40.

Flop: ($780.80) 6c, 7h, Ks (2 players)

Turn: ($780.80) Tc (2 players)

River: ($780.80) 2d (2 players)

Final Pot: $780.80

Results below:
Hero has 9h 9s (one pair, nines).
MP has 8c 8h (one pair, eights).
Outcome: Hero wins $780.80.

Here villain is a fish and it's pretty obvious my hand is good here. Given that these guys never fold this is a standard value raise, I could have even made it slightly bigger, but it worked out well:

Absolute Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $4 BB (4 handed) Absolute Poker Converter Tool from http://www.flopturnriver.comFlopTurnRiver.com (Format: Plain Text)

BB ($937.35)
Hero ($449)
Button ($306)
SB ($994.30)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with Ks, Kc.
Hero raises to $16, 2 folds, BB calls $12.

Flop: ($34) 5h, Ts, 8h (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $28, BB calls $28.

Turn: ($90) 5s (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $64, BB calls $64.

River: ($218) 4c (2 players)
BB bets $55, Hero raises to $200, BB calls $145.

Final Pot: $618

Results below:
BB has Ac 8s (two pair, eights and fives).
Hero has Ks Kc (two pair, kings and fives).
Outcome: Hero wins $618.

My Computer hasn't arrived yet and I can't wait for it to get here. I don't really have any lag on ipoker with HUD running, but my computer doesn't like ABS+Hud or FTP+Hud.

Tomorrow I'll be back to uni and I am kinda happy to do that and get my exams over with, I just hope I can balance everything well, but I'm slowly getting back a decent sleeping rhythm.

l8rs

Nice short session

2008-01-04T22:31:00.000+01:00

I had a pretty nice "short" (in comparison to sessions I have played in the past) session today.
They're weren't really many tough spots and I was able to dodge suckouts from the fish.
I've also modded ipoker now and I am alot more pleased with the way it looks. I purchased a program called ibolide, which is basically a program that is capable of modding ipoker skins (for some reason you can just edit the exisiting files). The software was 22$, and I think it's slightly overpriced, but if I can have a stress free session it is worth the extra couple dollars I guess.
I'll probably be getting eyepoker (spadeit's ipoker scan+mining tool) soon too.
Right now I'm gonna go and checkout GP's latest high stakes vid and then probably wait for my VIP freeroll on Absolute to begin and play that. I'll be playing some 2/4 on the side too.
I'll post some more interesting hands when they come up.

iPoker

2008-01-03T02:47:00.000+01:00

I've been grinding it out a bit on 2/4 on iPoker. Ipoker is a EU site that is pretty big. You can check it out here www.pokerscout.com, it's the fith biggest and not far behind Party Poker. Games look pretty soft and they definetly are aswell. Most of the regs are weak/tight from what I've seen so no real competition there.
I made 1.1k the other day on Absolute 1/2+2/4, but managed to lose back 900 today on iPoker 2/4. I'm actually satsified with that result as at one point I was done 2.6k and I was close to moving down to 1/2 again, but then I managed to win some pots and recover.
I definetly think I am playing well though and the confidence I gained from moving down to 1/2 definetly helped.
I'll try and log some more hands tomorrow.

2008 is here!

2008-01-01T13:57:00.000+01:00

2008 has arrived and I hope we all had a smooth transition ;).

For starters I went out w/some friends to a Mexican restaurant for dinner, after that we proceeded to watch the fireworks in the center of town. Innsbruck has some pretty good fireworks that they spend a lot of money on and have advertisement for in the north of Italy. Anyways when we got there they had locked the utter most center of the town from where you could actually see the fireworks properly, so we ended up seeing just about 1/3 of it all, which sucked a bit, but what can you do.
When the fireworks were over we went to some private parties. The first one sucked big time, but we quickly proceeded to the next where there were a lot of cool people my age group so that was fun.

I'll be upgrading my PC this month infact I have already purchased the core upgrades. I ordered xdsl internet which I don't know how long will take for them to get everything setup. It's 35€ a month, flatrate and pretty fast (I think 1024kbit dload and 768kbit upload).
I've also ordered a second Samsung 204b 20" screen and a desktop PC (AMD X2 6000+, 2gb RAM, Nvidia 8800 GT 512 RAM). This should erase any lag I had whilst playing.

Ofcourse I have a new years resolution. In 08 I have a financial goal of 200k or more, I believe I can do that. I'd also like to further improve my Spanish so I feel at ease speaking to any native.
I'd like to complete any uni course I start and work out on a regular basis. I started out well w/working out, but I lacked the discipline/motivation at times. I'd also like to maintain a healthy sleeping pattern over the most of 08.
I'll write down my goals for myself later on so that I don't forget them over the year and I may add one or two more.

Looking at 07 I can't really complain. A lot happend for me in 07 and it definetly changed me, I'm glad to say mostly for the better. I hope 08 will be even better though! One big appointment I have already made will be me staying in Vegas for 3-4weeks w/poker friends (jwayks, shadybreakfast, jethro87 and I think Haupt will show up there some time). That should get interesting, otherwise I will definetly be visiting Spain again (maybe even as soon as March).

Got to go and get some food now. Talk to y'all later.

sick heater

2007-12-27T01:56:00.001+01:00

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

2007-12-26T14:51:00.000+01:00

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

2007-12-24T05:11:00.000+01:00

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

2007-12-23T19:08:00.001+01:00

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

2007-12-23T04:23:00.000+01:00

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

2007-12-21T17:17:00.000+01:00

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

2007-12-20T00:16:00.001+01:00

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

2007-12-19T15:59:00.000+01:00

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

2007-12-17T11:28:00.000+01:00

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

2007-12-14T12:03:00.000+01:00

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

2007-12-12T13:07:00.001+01:00

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

2007-12-12T00:40:00.000+01:00

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

2007-12-10T01:03:00.000+01:00

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

2007-12-08T02:03:00.000+01:00

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

2007-12-07T00:51:00.000+01:00

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

2007-12-05T18:21:00.000+01:00

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

2007-12-05T12:03:00.000+01:00

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.

Slightly Tilted

2007-12-03T02:58:00.000+01:00

About this hand:

bsolute Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $2 BB (5 handed) Absolute Poker Converter Tool from http://www.flopturnriver.comFlopTurnRiver.com (Format: Plain Text)

Button ($327.05)
SB ($368.76)
BB ($229.60)
Hero ($623.20)
MP ($265.65)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with Kh, Kd.
Hero raises to $8, 2 folds, SB calls $7, BB calls $6.

Flop: ($24) 2h, 4h, Qc (3 players)
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets $18, SB raises to $39, BB folds, Hero calls $22.

Turn: ($103) 4s (2 players)
SB bets $42, Hero calls $42.

River: ($187) 2c (2 players)
SB bets 278.76

Here is my analasys from the cr boards:

"
I had no HUD stats running at this point, but I have a good idea of how villain was playing. He is a loose player that is passive preflop, but aggressive postflop. From this hand: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1762537 I know that villain is capable of overbetting light. This hand occured one orbit before this hand. I also have a read that he makes small bets with very strong hands. I've seen villain craise to this amount with AA in one hand, but again after he turned top set he slowed way down by checking the turn and making a small river bet.
I am pretty sure villain is not capable of value betting thinly with aces here.I'd give villain creit to raise hearts on the flop and play it like this.
QQ some rdm 2 or 4 are all in his range, but given my history with villain he prefers to value bet very small with huge hands and I don't think he valuebets a 2 here like this.The same goes for quads hands, he likes to get calls. What makes this tricky for me is the fact that I caught villain a couple of hands ago overbet bluffing. I don't know how much credit I can give villain for recognizing that and shoving with his big hands instead of making a small bet."

Basically I am saying that I should call here. I was too indecisive at the time and given I only had 10 seconds I folded, but in retrospect I think I should call.