Big hit

I played for a while last night (not particularly well either...)

I did get very unlucky in a couple of pots against the same guy for two full 200bb buy-ins.

In the first pot, I flopped a set and he called my check-raise and turned a bigger set. End of story.

In the second, I flopped top pair and turned top two against the same guy who had squeezed from the small blind with 99. I had QsJs, flop Jx9x4x, turn Q and we get all the money in after he checks it to me. Booo. Overall:

•-$1259.25

• +$8319.94 on the year (41% to the goal, well behind schedule).

Not the post I thought

Hey guys,

I know I said I would update the blog last Friday. I lied... This is a quick update. I bought Small Stakes No-Limit Hold'Em by Ed Miller, Sunny Mehta, and Matt Flynn. I have liked their previous books a lot, so I thought I would give this one a try. So far it seems interesting, although it focuses on beating the $1-$2 games online, which I am already doing very handily, so I'm not sure how much I will learn. In any case, it will probably be useful in cementing concepts already forming in my head.

I promise I'll write an update about my Vegas trip at some point. It was definitely fun, although next time I want to stay for longer in order to do some other things besides poker...

My biggest pot to date

Played a little bit today and had great results. I played well and ran well too:

•+$1113.30

•+$9317.94 on the year (46.5% of the way to my goal, pulling ahead of schedule)

This will be a quick update (longer update to follow tomorrow while I'm bored at WWDC), but I'll just say that I played my biggest hand so far tonight (and won!)

The villain's line makes almost no sense from start to finish. The river check-raise is just beautiful, laying me 10-1 odds on my call. What was he trying to represent? Jacks that had rivered a full house and then checked (???) with the betting lead and only 1/2 pot left to play? Sevens full? A2 suited? None of these hands would ever check the river given the way the hand was played and I find it hard to believe that any of these hands would re-raise before the flop so small when out of position and deep-stacked against an almost UTG raiser...

In any case, my opponent gifted me $550 for no reason. After the hand, he called me a donk and left the table. He must have subconsciously been saying that to himself. I think I played the hand perfectly to induce spew. I just wish I had snapped off his check-raise instantly rather than thinking about it...

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $2.00 BB (6 handed) - Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB ($604.80)
UTG ($106)
Hero (MP) ($553.50)
CO ($200)
Button ($398.70)
SB ($410.35)

Preflop: Hero is MP with K, K
1 fold, Hero bets $6, 3 folds, BB raises to $16, Hero raises to $49, BB calls $33

Flop: ($99) 2, 2, 7 (2 players)
BB bets $62, Hero calls $62

Turn: ($223) 6 (2 players)
BB bets $160, Hero calls $160

River: ($543) J (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $180, BB raises to $333.80 (All-In), Hero calls $102.50 (All-In)

Total pot: $1108 | Rake: $3

Results:
BB had A, K (one pair, twos).
Hero had K, K (two pair, Kings and twos).
Outcome: Hero won $1105

Grrr, stupid google

Well, I just had a relatively detailed description of how I almost died tonight, but wouldn't you know it, Google done gone lost it. Dammit Google, you owe me a blog post. Here is a somewhat shorter and less enthusiastic version:

I was driving down South 101, minding my own business and being awesome. Sir Meow was in the car as well. He was also being awesome, as he has a reputation of doing. As I was coming up on my exit, I noticed what looked like a police blockade. Not wanting to plow through it with my relatively new car and cat and somewhat less new but more valuable head, I slowed down and pulled over towards the right lane of the highway.

The big-rig truck that I had been tailing was apparently not as observant and noticed the upcoming obstruction significantly after I did. No slow deceleration for him, no sir. Lots of burnt rubber and fishtailing instead. Thankfully, I was far enough behind the truck that all I had to deal with was the fumes (they were probably full of carcinogens) and the vague awareness that this could have been much, much worse.

As I followed the truck past the obstacle, I could see that it was in fact a wreck that was blocking the three left lanes of the highway. I saw what looked like the remains of a Honda Civic and whatever else it had kissed at 75 miles an hour, along with a collection of people who did not seem to realize that lights are often helpful in indicating obstructions to oncoming traffic at 2 AM in the morning...

I'm just glad my brains are not splattered all over 101 right about now...

Oh, on a side note:

• +$333.30

• +$8428.09 on the year (very slightly ahead of schedule!)

Nite nite.

Boring one this time

I don't really feel like rambling on for very long, so here are my numbers for the last few days:

•+$1567.39

• +$8094.97 on the year (40% of the way to the goal, slightly behind schedule)

I would say that I played OK over the last few days. There were several hands (all against the same player) that were absolutely atrocious and cost me $600 or so. The most embarrassing one was when I misread my hand so that I thought I had a full house when I in fact had just a pair of 3's. That was stupid, to say the least and cost me $230 or so.

I did hit some lucky hands overall though, so the stupid play on those hands didn't hurt too much. I have found that people at these stakes try to 3-bet squeeze rather more than they should, so I have been slowplaying a lot of big pairs in position to induce spazzy moves from people behind me. This has been working really well. I think I'll keep doing it on a fairly regular basis.

That's it for now. Meow says hi.

Long time no post

Hey guys,

Summary of recent results for those who don't want to read my incomprehensible ramblings:

+$6833.29 on the year: 34% of the way way to my goal for the year (slightly behind schedule....)

I'm running at 6ptbb/100 over ~25K hands at $1/$2, which is pretty good considering some of my crappy play in the preceding weeks.

Long time no post. The main reason for this is just that I haven't been playing much online poker for the last 1.5 months or so. In addition, the majority of the sessions that I played during that time were losing ones, which didn't really make me very motivated to blog about them. ("I lost $800 in four hours! Wheee!")

However, over the last few days, I have come roaring back and am up ~$1.5K in the last week. Last night, rather than being smart and going to sleep, I played until ~1:30AM and had a great session. I ran well, and despite losing a $800 pot with top set against a straight, I ended up more than $1k over the course of a few hours. I would describe the big pots of the session, but they were not super interesting. In the biggest pot that I won, I got into a coinflip with 7d4d against a guy's somewhat maniacally played KK:

To start the hand, I am 200BB+ deep, as is everybody else in the hand. Villain raises in EP to 3bb, guy flats in late position, I call from the BB with 7d4d. Flop comes perfect for my hand: Td5d4h, so I flop a pair and a flush draw. I check to the villain, who makes a normal cbet. The other player in the hand flats. I checkraise and the villain shoves for a bigger than pot sized raise. The other player gets out of the way and I end up calling getting significantly more than 1.5-1 on my money. This call is pretty standard. Worst case scenario I am up against a set and am 30% to win. I think I can discount the villain playing a set like this somewhat since I have a 4 in my hand which reduces the number of sets of 4's he has. Furthermore, in my experience, people tend not to overbet jam sets in spots like that. Against pretty much any other hand, I am a slight favorite or flipping. Thankfully, the Jd rolled off on the river and I scooped the pot.

I was playing with a Full Tilt Red pro called Steve Yea on a number of tables. I pretty much just owned him at every opportunity. I am not impressed with his play at all. According to tableratings.com, he barely breaks even before rakeback so he's pretty much just a low-mid stakes grinder who plays a boring, mechanical, ABC game and is profitable only because he gets 100% of his rake back due to being a Red Pro. I beat up on him pretty mercilessly and exploited him left and right.

One thing that I thought I did especially well over the course of the evening was pick up the small and medium sized pots without contest. I also made some good call downs and some nice thin value bets (i.e. value betting TT on AJ95x board and getting paid off by 88, calling a 3bet PF out of position with 44 and then calling a suspicious turn stab with 3 overs on the board.) I also managed to control potsize well in dangerous spots. I checked behind top pair and an open-ended straight draw on the turn and value bet top two (and got paid off) on the river when the villain had flopped top two pair on the flop and decided slowplaying was the way to go for some reason. (final board of x TJQK rainbow, I had KQ, he had JT).

To go along with call downs and value bets, I also was able to identify good bluffing spots. In one case, I raised a guy off his double barrel turn bet when I had a gutshot + overs. Furthermore, since so many of my opponents are playing robotically at 10 tables, I was able to pick up a lot of pots before the flop when I thought they were trying to pick on loose limpers. Never once did that backfire. Finally, I also chose good spots to 4-bet bluff when I thought others at the table were getting fed up with me and were trying to squeeze me out of pots.

I feel like a significant part of my recent downswing was not being in the right mindset to play (which is also part of the reason that I played so infrequently). However, with my recent results, I think that I am back on my game and playing sharp poker. Onward and upward!

And now what you have all been waiting for, the obligatory Sir Meow picture.

Lookit him, such a pimp!

Quick update

I played a somewhat short session today and made a decent profit:

• +$495.95

• Total for the year so far: +$5962.25 (29.8% of the way to my goal)!

Gogogo!