Played quite alot again today. My results for today are pretty symbolic for how my results have been looking lately.
I think my 6-max game has gotten kinda fucked but im definitely not running like jesus either. Ive been playing HU and 6-max at the same time and its not really working out for me cause I tend to focus alot on the HU tables and none on the 6-max ones.
I have decided to play only HU for now, until I feel like playing 6-max again. Im just not enjoying it near enough as much as HU so until I do I will just stay away.
Reading cosmos blog makes me miss vegas, hopefully I will be able to squeeze in a trip for the world series and ball around with all the cool lPers again.
So easter was going to be awesome. All my childhood friends(and me) whom all have moved to diffrent cities for college/university was coming back to our home town and I was looking forward to getting drunk and having fun with them all since I havent seen em in a long time. Today I called around and every single one of those fuckers have gone away to diffrent random retard places. That sucks ass, Im very dissapointed. I guess ill have to wait for the summer or something. BLEH
I consoled myself by apesmashing retards at 2/4 instead and it worked out goodie:
HU is fun sometimes.
I guess my friends being away isnt all bad, I really need to study, have like 1k pages in boring books to read for an exam next thursday. I will also have plenty of time to play das poker and thats good.
Im starting to think a little about vegas this summer, hopefully I will be going and if anyone is setting up a house or something(anything but the jockey club plz) let me know.
I skipped school today to play some HU. I played two tables with the same guy I took about 4 buyins off yesterday. It was a pretty sickening match. He is the biggest station I have played so far and definitely the weakest of the players that play full stacked, rebuys and plays long sessions.
Let me give you guys a quick rundown on how he plays.
Hes basicly a station. Hes playing 44/29/1 calling alot oop but decently agressive preflop 3-betting somewhat frequently. He never ever ever folds to 3-bets. I think he folded like 1 out of 50 this session, which obviously makes my 3-betting range for value alot wider. Im basicly 3-betting any A any good Kx and Qx. He calls with 96s, Q4s etcetc. He rarely folds when getting a piece on the flop but he isnt completely retarded.
Heres and example from quite early in the match when I still was 3-betting speculative hands and not strictly for value:
I was planning on firing most brick rivers but pairing the board, bleh now I know he calls with any A so I dont think its good.
Now, after this and a couple of other hands I had his style pinned down quite well. Its just that he completely owned me. Like, he always called the flop, ALWAYS! The times we got to showdown (which was pretty often) he had a piece. Be it mid pair or top set. And playing a station whos constantly hitting flops is really really anoying. I dont know how many of my 2-barrel bluffs got snapcalled/snapshoved. The times I made a hand I got paid handsomely:
But I just failed to make hands and he just blead me to death with calling flop and checking it down showing the best hand. I also managed to lose alot when I made the second best hand:
He was calling all flops and not giving my second barrels all that much credit so I decided I needed to 3-barrel him in good spots just because the gap between the amount of soso hands and hands he wants to stack off with is soo huge. Well, that didnt work out all that well:
I like my play in that hand. I think he peels the turn with sooo many mid pairs/Qx that will fold the river so I think its goodie.
I ended up down 3k to him before he had to leave. He said we could play later though which is really sweet, I feel I have a huge edge on the fellow and I will be happy to play alot with him.
I think the misstakes I made in this match was playing to loose and too agressive. I was pounding on him alot in position and raising over 50% of my hands. Basicly, I think I was too eager to make a hand and value town him and that made me play too fast and too many hands.
I dont think its a terrible leak to play alot of hands against a station in position just because he will play his hand kinda face up to me, but never the less, I will on average have a worse hand than him postflop and playing worse hands against a guy who never ever folds is pretty bad.
So a lesson for me and for all you guys, when playing a bad station HU, this is what you should do:
1. Tighten up your raising requierments a bit. You will not need to to rely on picking up alot of blinds to profit of a guy who will pay you off always.
2. Dont c-bet too much. This goes without saying but you should definitely not c-bet too less either. Basicly, you need to pick good spots to c-bet. Not only just dry K72r type flops but also flop where your hand should have good equity. Against a guy who will flat with his entire playable range you need to asess how your hand is doing against his range, not just a couple of likely holdings.
Lets say I raise preflop and villian calls. Flop is 4s5s10d Im holding AsQx.When I bet the flop a stations calling range is going to be huge here. He will call with all sorts of 4x, 5x, 10x obv, flushdraws 66-99 and so on.
I still dont mind betting here. Simply because my hand still has great equity. I have two overs that will almost always make me the best hand.
I also have a bd flushdraws and a K or J gives me a gutshot. Basicly, there are tons of spots where I can fire a credible second barrel as a semi bluff and I have outs to make the best hand.
Now If Im sitting on like 33 here I will never c-bet. when called I have to shut down, my hand has two outs to improve and his calling range fucks me big time.
This is probably pretty obv to most ppl but I figured id write it up anyways. The key is, always try to estimate your hands equity against a possible calling range, dont just bet thinking "well, he only hits the flop 30% of the time"
3. Value town like a madman. Again, try and estimate a calling range and compare your hands equity against that hand. Sometimes you need to be betting second pair top kicker for 3 streets of value. Dont do this mindlessly though, thiiiiink! If you want to bet close to pot for value on the river, try to estimate if you beat 50% of his calling range. If you can think of enough random hands to make his calling range consist of 50% or more of hands you beat. BET FFS! Showdown is for pussys, also theres nothing as gratifying as getting thin value from a retard.
Now obviously Im not sitting calculating exactly what his calling range consists of, it kinda is a feel thing that comes automaticly with experience. It can really help to play around a little with maths though. If you are unsure if you should value bet in a certain spot, save the handhistory for after the session. Then do some math with ranges, calculate how much garbage he needs to call with to make a v-bet profitable, play around in pokerstove etc.
4. Be prepared to let go of hands. Now this is the hardest one, atleast for me. When you know someone is weak and you have no showdown value you just instinctively(if you are a solid player that is) want to bluff. Against thinking players its good off course. Against a guy who will call even though he is weak you will be bleeding money.
Patience is everything against a guy like this. Learn how to check/fold. Its a grind, but its hella profitable. This is what I will have to work on the most, I still find it very difficult not to bluff when my opponent obv has like 3rd pair.
Now I ended up doing a write up on how to beat the easiest opponent in poker but heh, hopefully someone will find this useful.
Im doing a radio show with a couple of friends each wednesday and we usually go out and get hammered afterwards so I doubt I will be able to play this guy again tonight and that sucks. Ahwell, there will be other days and there is plenty of fish in the sea.
Oh, and for any swedes that wanna listen tonight you can do it over webradio here:
After my hu deep stacked nightmare mentioned in my last post I have only been playing 6-max, with poor results. I just really cant get shit going for me even though most opponents are pretty bad. I guess thats just the way it is sometimes, I have also played when I havent been entierly focused so that could have an impact on my result.
I also think almost only playing HU for like 2-3 weeks might have fucked with my 6-max game a bit. Im to loose and call down too light/bluff too much etc. Gonna have to change that. Im probably gonna play a 4 tabling session later on and try to find my way back to a solid game.
Anyways, today I decided it was time for my HU comeback. It went really well. I think I played really good and made a couple of solid reads. Plus most of my opponents where very weak in a low variance kind of way, loose/passive/bad. It gives you such a rush when you are winning, feeling great and just play really good. There was maybe one or two hands I was uncertain of other than that I like how I played the hands today.
God, its so emabarresing that I still manage to tilt once in a while. HU is sooo swingy and sometimes its so hard to keep your cool. Today I sat down with a pretty bad player, in 50 hands I was up 2k on him mostly heater stuff but he was playing bad. We continued playing and got really really deepstacked. Like 350bb+. I love playing deep as hell against bad players just because, well, I guess everyone realises why that owns.
He kept making really bad calldowns that turned out to be good and shit like that. He also coolered me in a spot I think I could have gotten away from but im not really sure. Not going to go though it but I river a one card K high straight in a reraised pot and he c/shoves me with the rivered back door flush. All in all I have to say he was pretty lucky thoruhgout the match and yet he missed sooo many value bets.
Eventually I stacked off in a spot where I definitely shouldnt have stacked off.
Im to crushed to find the hand but i raise he 3-bet i call with K9s. Flop comes 9x8d4d he leads I call. turn is 5x he leads big(this is really standard with all sorts of junk, he 2barrels anything when i smoothcall on drawy flops) I call and river comes bleh I dont remember. I think it was an over but not all that scary. Villian shoves. Now, we have done this a couple of times and I think the last two times river has gone check/check and Ive raked in the pot. A few times he has shoved and I have folded every single time being pretty damn sure he was huge. Now, in my semitiltness I convince myself hes frustrated and shoving his entire range. I call and he showes 67 for the turned straight.
I really hate myself for being frustrated enough to call that. Villian was bad, I could have taken his money in so many other spots and I definitely dont think hes bluffing enough there. BAH!. By now hes break even and the momentum has definitely shifted in his favour. I stay for a while thinking I have an edge, momentum or not. Eventually he managed to stack me like 3 times. Two where probably pretty standard and one 300bb pot was really bad. He 4-bet me for the first time in like 20 min. I call with 99 and call off my stack to his AA on a bad flop. Bleh
After being up 2k on him I ended down 1,6k and he leaves. Swings like this are not impossible when you play a guy superdeep who doesnt mind playing huge pots with marginal hands but I could definitely have avoided some of the spots where I tilted away aloot and it fucking sucks assfuck. Im so pissed at myself right now you cant believe it.
I think what I need to do is play shorter HU matches. I know this doesnt make sense when playing someone I know I have an edge against and I hate myself for saying this but its true. When I was up 2k and lost the first all in(putting me at 2k and he at $800) I should have left. Why? Because momentum shifts a bit and in this perticular match, when I have won 2k in 50 hands, I will not be playing my best. The sick heater will cloud my judgement and I will more or less be desperate to win back up to 2,4k thinking im invincible. In a sense I will be chasing losses even though Im up 1,6k. Not playing your best and getting into a deep Hu match is horrible. I probably wouldnt leave against a reg i respect since its so bad manner but this guy has done shit like that to me before, playing 50 hands winning a buyin and leaving.
Fuck it Im done rambling. I have learned a lesson and I will stay away from HU for a couple of days just to maintain my sanity. Ill just grind the 6-max tables since they are very soft especially on the weekends.
Wow this day was insane. I started out hug over as fuck pwning some 6-max and a little HU. Build up like 3k profit and ended the session. I sit in later to play some HU and get good action on two tables.
First, Im playing this guy whom I know I have played on FTP on the same name. He is spewy and in general a pretty weak player so I was happy to play him. I have to say he ran pretty hot. All in all I think I played well but I couldnt get things going. I dont really remember any hands but this one was the biggest loser:
Given how the match was playing I dont think I can find a fold there. My hand is super underepped and hes definitely bluffing here from time to time + value betting a ton of worse hands.
On the other table I was playing this random fish who sat in with like $375.45 or something. This guy ran like god himself. Im not joking. He was really like dumb agressive always overbetting and making overbet shoves etc. Problem was, I couldnt get a hand to save my life. Its really hard to play back at a guy like this without anything playable. All I can say is that the way he ran he should have been up way way way more than he eventually was. Given how he ran and how he played he completely steamrolled me for a long time. Eventually this hand comes up:
God I was getting frustrated. By this time the guy on my other table had left being up like 2k on me. I tilted a little I think, calling to many 3-bets etc but I figured I had a big edge on this guy even if I was a little tilted. + calling tons of 3-bets against this guy being as deep as we where is never really horrible. He kept pounding on me and on top of that berating me in chat. In the beginning of the match he said something about us being equal in skill(yes I loled) but when he was up like 2,6k he started getting really cocky telling me to leave because "im killing you dude" "youre rubbish" blablabla. I was really pissed but I said to myself. Fuck this. Im going to keep playing good and take all his money.
Finally my patience payed of and I started making a couple of hands:
Finally he left ending up down 1,4k to me. Im really proud how I aproached the situation calm and non tilted and just fucked the cocky bastard. Definitely a good day, Im fucking exausted right now.
RAH!
edit: Figured a graph for today would look pretty sick:
As of today Im break even for the month. I have been doing well but I just finished a short session where I got completely stomped at 3/6 hu. All in all I think I played well. The opponent was very weak and I took down sooo many small pots. He was just folding way to much so I was raising every btn and c-betting almost any flop.
Basicly the match went: He stacks me, i grind back up to like 800, I lose a big pot in a flip/suckout. I stack him and grind my way up to 1k, he wins a huge all in with a suckout/cooler. and so on and so forth. I ended up down 3k to him which kinda sucks but stuff like this will happen. I did play a couple of hands questionably but all in all I played well and I didnt tilt or anything.
This is the final hand of the evil cycle of doom we had going on:
As usual Im really anoyed with ppl refusing to play me all the time. I actually have a question about HU etiquette. Some dude is sitting at a bunch of HU tables. I sit down at two of them and we play for a while. After 120 hands he is up $150 and sits out and says: "sry I dont want to play you please leave." So basicly, hes trying to hit and run me, but he wants ME to leave the tables. Am I supposed to oblige him? He was a huge fish and I was down money and pissed off so I refused to leave and stayed trying to get him to play me. He starts whining and talking about how hes going to call support and that he has done it before etcetc. I tell him to go ahead and call support w/e. Eventually he leaves. Am I wrong here?
Im going to continue grinding mainly 2/4 hu and chasing fishes on 3/6 once in a while. Wish me luck.
March is starting out great. I have spent most of my sunday being incredibly hung over but I have managed to get some hands in anyways. For the next couple of weeks I will only have to be in school like 2 days a week which is awesome. I will have alot of time to work out and play poker and Im really looking forward to it. Im way to lazy to fix my computer yet so Im still playing on my laptop. I think its good though, I only play 4 tables of 6-max and it helps getting reads and stuff. Usually I try to play one or two HU tables and given that the tables are pretty slow I can play a couple of 6-max games at the same time.
So far Im still tearing up the HU tables pretty bad. Im really interested to see what kind of winrate I will land on over a large sample of hands.
I managed to break my glasses last week and that really sucks. I usually wear contacts but after staring at the screen for a couple of hours my vision gets blurry and shit and eventually I have to stop.
Turned out to be a good month. I dropped some money at the end of the month but thats just to be expected after my sick heater. I still havent played one player I dont have a significant edge on HU imo.
I think my biggest leak in HU is starting out spewy. I dont really know how much of a leak it is but I usually start out a HU match losing money. I play agressively make some bluffs and maybe herocall in some spots. This just helps me build a retard image and formulate good reads against the players. Once I have played like 100-200 hands with a player I usually have a good idea on how to take all his money. The problem is, alot of players leave way to soon. They double up, bleed like 20bbs and realise I own them so they leave while they are still up. I dont think I have ended down in one HU match that has lasted longer than an hour but I lose a buyin here and there to ppl who double up and leave.
Also, there is not one regular who will play me HU anymore. I have a really hard time to find good action and I usually end up playing some retard shortstack with 15bbs playing push/fold. BLEH!
Im going to have to start playing some 6-max again because its just really hard to get a good HU grind going. I dont mind it all to much though, the 6-max games are really soft and alot less stressful to grind. I will try to get in alot of hands in March, both HU and 6-max.
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