Fuck micro stakes

So I had some liquid assets to jumpstart my poker career past the micro stakes. I diverted some of this towards live play and ended breakeven after 3 weeks before I got rattled from a series of losing sessions breaking my confidence. I havent played since, which really sucks because I am too competitive of a player to let something like that get to me. It was just the monetary loss. The money finally meant something to me at NL200 so losing $1000 in one night was like "holy fuck".

Then, out of nowhere, I suddenly got the urge to buy a new car. Why you ask? Well a little dealer hustling, plus a lot of greed. I went to have my car serviced and decided to look at some new rides for my wife. I drive an 07 Altima which I bought brand new from the lot back in 07, and while searching for a car for her, I suddenly fell in love with a fully loaded version of what I currently drive. I was able to trade in my current car for the fully loaded 2010 model without it changing my payments at all, other than restarting them.

So I just bought a brand new 2010 Nissan Altima 2.5SL with leather heated + power seats, wood trim finish, 7" GPS nav system with DVD playback, bluetooth phone and streaming mp3, xm satellite, and all the other good shit that comes with a new car. Of course I couldnt go to the dealership and buy myself a brand new car and leave my poor wife still struggling with her piece of shit 10 year old saturn with leaking sunroof, mildew stank interior, sunbaked paintjob, and blown out stereo speakers. That would just be wrong.

So I bought her one too. Not quite as good as mine. But I bought her a 2010 Nissan Sentra, which is basically like a mini version of the altima, which is perfect for her, as she would look kinda funny driving a car as big as mine. It's not fully loaded, but it's mostly there. Bluetooth phone/mp3, ipod docking station, sunroof, no gps or anything fancy like that. But the electronics are well equipped. Cant even remember if it has leather lol, but probably not. It's a nice little car. She always wanted one in Teal, but unfortunately all they had was greyish silver. Hope she likes it, she hasnt even seen it yet lol. But I know my wife, and she'll absolutely love it, save for the less than stellar car color, which AINT ALL THAT BAD. I mean fuck, I kinda like smoke grey myself, but it's just not that femmy.

I was kinda feeling guilty about utilizing such a large part of my funds to just play poker with, at least with the potential for failure. I'd never get over myself for sinking 8 grand into poker and having nothing to show for it, especially when my loved ones need things, like a new car.

So where does this leave me? Well, since I took poker money and "cashed it out", ala "imaginary cashout", I still have some left to play poker with. I'm going to contact f4zi and get some HU training, but I dont really want to discuss that in case I turn out to be a huge embarrassment and waste of his time. Yea thats right, I respect the man so much that I would feel like i wasted *his* time paying him money to coach a loser. We'll see though.

Pics coming soon.

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So I bought a new monitor today but found out I was out of milk so I smashed the mother fucker. Hah, j/k, but got you to read my blog.

In reality, I just went busto playing live..... sigh.. I dunno what happened. Lost a big hand after repopping a lagtard BTN raiser (they have these live? Whats the world coming to) with AJ and he calls my cbet on a JT3 board with A3.. turns trips but I turn nut flush draw, i c/r him allin and fail to connect. Some other loose passive but nitty postflop player decides he's going to squeeze a 5way raised pot with 98s in the CO and I get stuck in the middle with JJ. Fold flop, just bleeding chips is all. Later I try to bluff him off his gutshot but he rivers bottom pair for the win. And again when he floats flop with AK high. I had to call him out on that one since he was the initial raiser and I 3bet him. He said "I had to defend my hand", and I'm just like "wtf?" How do you defend by check-calling with air?

Nothing particularly spectacular though. Just a bunch of chip loss from missed draws and shit.

I'm glad this happened though. I thought I was going to have to dedicate myself to live play so I'd have an edge at the stakes I want to play instead of grinding it out at nonsense micro stakes. Since live is just as variance heavy as online, and since I apparently dont have any edge, I might as well go back to playing online. I'll just spend the rest of my poker career donking off at NL400 once a month until I run hot.

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Was playing around at NL5 to build my confidence to get back into online play. Playing live has been great, but I only get like 5 hours of sleep per night so I'm usually too exhausted to drive 30 minutes and put in the hours. I simply have to be able to play online as a full time poker player.

Anyway, the following happened vs a 70/40 monkey who I already had a note on that he just randomly bluff's stacks off for no apparent reason.

Submitted by : NewbSaibot

Full Tilt Poker Game #19117450711: Table Zoom (6 max) - $0.02/$0.05 - No Limit Hold'em - 21:27:29 ET - 2010/03/09
Seat 1: BigSteveGCAZ ($14.35)
Seat 2: SASSY 216 ($19.72)
Seat 3: dr carega ($1.49)
Seat 4: StreetKore ($2.30)
Seat 5: Hero ($12.69)
Seat 6: 10Messi10 ($4.13)
dr carega posts the small blind of $0.02
StreetKore posts the big blind of $0.05
The button is in seat #2

Holecards(Odds)
Dealt to Hero
Hero raises to $0.17
10Messi10 folds
BigSteveGCAZ calls $0.17
SASSY 216 folds
dr carega folds
StreetKore folds

Flop(Odds) (Pot : $0.41)

   
Hero has 15 seconds left to act
Hero checks
BigSteveGCAZ bets $0.41
Hero raises to $1.20
BigSteveGCAZ calls $0.79

Turn(Odds) (Pot : $2.81)

   
Hero bets $2.81
BigSteveGCAZ calls $2.81

River (Pot : $8.43)

   
Hero checks
BigSteveGCAZ bets $8.43
Hero raises to $8.51, and is all in
BigSteveGCAZ calls $0.08

Showdown
Hero shows a flush, Ace high
BigSteveGCAZ shows a flush, Ace high
BigSteveGCAZ wins the pot ($23.76) with a flush, Ace high

Summary
Total pot $25.45 | Rake $1.69
Board:
Seat 1: BigSteveGCAZ showed and won ($23.76) with a flush, Ace high
Seat 2: SASSY 216 (button) didn't bet (folded)
Seat 3: dr carega (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 4: StreetKore (big blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 5: Hero showed and lost with a flush, Ace high
Seat 6: 10Messi10 didn't bet (folded)

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Deposited $50 on FTP to practice NL2 & improve my live play, snap tilt from all the minraising and min 10-betting preflop, and immediately give up. Play some NL10 rush, run up to $100, go to cashout, and pull a neilly and dive into NL50 HU. Boom lost everything.

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You know they say it takes insanity or downs syndrome or some shit to do the same thing twice and expect different results.

I caught myself last night doing the same dumb shit I always do that costs me money. So I adjusted. I tried something different, to get different results. YAY IM NOT WETARDED! Tonight was night 2 of "pummel the fish with real hands" night. Since I dont know how to make graphs of live play I'll do my best to photoshop one.



This is roughly 4 hours of play, at an estimated 40 hands per hour dealt. I let myself slip twice unfortunately. I tried to bluff a donk off my missed draw and use table talk to assist, which resulted in him calling me with ace high. Props to him. And I got sloppy during my last 30 minutes knowing I was out the door, and started repopping and showing a few mercy calls with like 86o OOP and shit just to hit a flop and get some last minute action. Didnt work. I curse myself for degen'ing for even a second. IT WILL NOT HAPPEN AGAIN. These guys can beg me to stay as long as they want, I wont let their bullshit friendly comments try to bait me into gambling with them.

Taking weekend off with the wife, monday is next. I almost have a legit roll for live NL200 play now. All from 3 BI's. Knew I could fuckin do it.

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Comments (9)

in the ass and call me a bitch. I did it AGAIN. I played super loose aggro vs a bunch of fucktard fish at NL200 live. Why oh why do I keep doing this! I look back at my own blog and talk about pulling my head out of my ass and quit trying to FPS and outplay everyone at the table just because I see them limping in with trash. Yet I saw a guy limp UTG and call a raise with J3o. The raiser had 94s and was just fucking with him and they checked it down, which is how I saw what they had. At that point I silently said to myself "it's on now bitches".

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I dropped almost 3 buyins in like an hour. I dont even remember how exactly. Basically I just NEVER connected with anything whatsoever, and think I ended up check/folding a lot of turns and shit.

Then something amazing happened... I remembered the advice given on LP. I remember reading Myth's articles about how to beat live. I remembered all the posts and all the hands posted.. I tightened the fuck up, said to hell with worrying about a nitty image, and just waited for the big ones. I still saw cheap flops calling the blinds with misc suited hands, 22-99, if it was raised UTG and someone called I insta-mucked KQo pre, etc etc etc. And in about 2 hours I made it all back plus a cherry on top (bout $80) before I decided to call it a night.

It's just fantastic how light these players get it in with. And while I still cant help but think my A9o is good like 90% of the time preflop, these fucking hands just always fail to connect. You really need the AK's and JJ's and shit to be able to properly value town. I even raised AA pre, flop comes A45r, I cbet, get called 3 way, I check turn OOP desperately hoping some tool to bet since there was a lot of that going on, then value bet river and get 1 caller. He mucked but um, wtf did he have? Didnt matter that I raised UTG and a big fat ace hits the flop, somehow his hand was worth about 40 BB's.

So I set a new challenge for myself. Since I'm still addicted to lag play, I'm going to force myself to adapt to being nitty by taking a shot at NL2 FR, since thats how these NL200 games play. I did this a long time ago, starting with play money. I actually had a real roll, but I decided to try play money to get myself used to being a nit, since theres just no other way to play these guys. It worked, and I graduated to NL2 and won like 50 BI's just proving to myself I could do it. It was the first and only time I ever looked at winnings in terms of results and not $$$, since clearly the money is peanuts. These NL200 games are so fucking juicy I simply must start raping them. It's worth it to retrain myself at NL2 so I can play live, because now the $$$ is actually meaningful.

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Just went 40:0 K/D streak, plus 22 heads as demoman, on a 16v16 full server . Gotta be some sort of record. I was running laps around their home base, nothing they could do.

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Comments (9)

So I've migrated entirely to live poker with a small 5 BI bankroll to take a shot at the NL200 scene. So far so good. Up 1.5 BI's, still making necessary adjustments for live, how not to spew, calling wide w/implied odds, bet sizing, etc etc. I have a few curious hands, but no way to post them properly so Ill just try to run it down.

I've really ramped up the aggression the last few sessions, just punishing players looseness, at least after I see that first hand they take to showdown limping K5o UTG. As soon as I see that shit, it's on. Of course I'm getting to know the players too, so that helps. You can assume so much about someone based off one single hand they play.

So I've targeted this one fishcake who's +1 to my right. He hates me already, even called me stupid for jamming and making him fold his top pair when I had 2nd pair + OESD + FD. He's already commented how he's taking the seat to my left as soon as this other guy leaves. So I guess he's mildly positionally aware, but thats about it. I raise MP with KQs, and he snaps. Flop comes QT7r. Theres 90% chance he has something of course, as fish always do, even if it's a gutshot. I bet pot and he snaps. So now I know he's completely weak and drawing for a gutshot at best. Turn is 8 giving me a flush draw, I value bet pretty hard, a good 3/4 pot, and he snaps again. River is 9, missed my draw. So the board is now 789TQ, and I check. I mean, what choice do I have? Besides the fact I put him on a draw, he could also have luckboxed his way into a random 2 pair, and I mean fuck all I have is TP now. I check, he thinks for about 5-10 seconds, and then just grabs a wad of chips and slides them in the middle lol. Dealer has to count it, and it's about 60BB's worth. I muck and he shows me A5o. Well played sir.

I've run into this a few times lately. I've had a few players loud me out at the table as a "raising machine" and I can tell they just dont like my style of play. These guys are used to limping everything but QQ+. The scenario is usually a station fish snap calls me 2 streets, or snap raises me on the flop, and then bets the river like they have the nuts and trapped me the whole time, but the board is usually not good enough to warrant such a sick value bet, so it seems pretty clear they are looking for a fold rather than a call. I hero called once with a pair of 5's and scooped the pot vs a stone cold bluff, but so far I've been letting the other hands go out of fear. I dont really want to get into a variance fest, not with such a small starting bankroll at least, but maybe I should just start going with it. I mean, fish are so dumb I can easily see them betting pot with an obvious straight on the river, b/c in their minds they think "lol i has a straight! BET LARGE!"

Position is the key element to discouraging this, and perhaps even more aggressive betting to just make it too painful for them to try. As far as I'm concerned they're welcome to keep bluffing me, because it's not like im playing rags, and basically it's their funeral when I do ultimately catch them.

Other than that, the only other live leak I've yet to plug is just not pussying out with hands that for some reason I play like the nuts online. For example, this one loosey goosey 50 year old lady limps in UTG. She's a huge station, but mainly with just top pair and gutshot type hands. She'll stack off with bottom straight on the river when someone obviously has the high straight and woefully tell the table "I HAVE TO CALL! I HAVE A STRAIGHT!!"

Anyway, she limps UTG and gets 6 callers to me on the button, so I call with K4s. Flop KJ4r, nice. She leads and everyone folds, I repop her 4x. She snap calls, turn is a Queen. She checks, I bet and she snaps. River bricks and she checks. Board is now KJ4Q5. I opt to just check b/c I've seen the bitch slowplay all the way through the river, and KJ/KQ are in her range. She shows K9s and I win. If this hand were online I'd be betting all 3 streets.

I think part of my passivity live has simply come from a few mega bad beats and my experiences at NL2. I just get so paranoid sometimes that they have sucked out on me yet again, or that every time I raise AK and get 1 caller and the board comes 763, they always call and somehow always have a pair. Then I stop cbetting and etc etc etc. Every time I raise, 3bet, and play my draws fairly aggressively it tends to work out for the best, and these people just keep showing up with such trash it boggles the mind. The funny thing is, the more aggressive I play, the less I worry about suckouts. Dunno how that works, but I just get an instant feel for their hands once they start moaning and debating the call. You'd think people would try to conceal that shit but they cant. They are genuinely scared shitless with their crappy fuckin hands that I breathe a sigh of relief knowing I got these fools when I hit.

I had intended on playing every night this week, but my g/f starting bitching and you know what, I actually started to miss her too. We live together and I feel really bad leaving her alone. Sometimes she'll call a friend over or go to her sisters or something like that, but I still end up missing her. Guess I'm just a big sap, so I decided to spend the weekend with her instead lol. We'll see how long before I go into poker withdrawal. I'm already making deals with her that I'll go out when she goes to bed, since these games run until 6am in the morning. At the very least she's cool with me playing Monday-Thursday, so that should still give me some good exposure and opportunities to build my roll.

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So I finally got mo money to invest in this crazy poker scheme I have of going pro. I took a quick 5 BI shot at NL50 HU for no other reason than just to see if I could. Well I cant, so enough of that story. Before I juice the poker economy any further I decided to sit down and watch some poker sessions via the HEM replayer. Not just partial sessions, entire sessions from start to finish, every single hand. It's basically like watching a video of yourself really. So I'm watching my pwning sessions, and my losing one's too, to try and see whats happening with me.

I must say doing this is pretty interesting, I can feel the game flow and dynamic evolving as the session progresses, and can almost read my thoughts at the time from sessions as old as a year ago. One of the first things I'm noticing though which I dont remember doing at all is spewing off like a fucking loon during my losing sessions. Not from tilt, but goddamn fancy play. And I'm pretty sure I know why, because I start to get that creeping feeling possessing me to do it as I watch.

For instance, I'll have some shit like A6o in MP, notice that the CO and BTN are both 16/15 TAG's, and say "well they're not going to do anything fancy if I raise here, so if they fold I can steal the blinds from MP! If they call, well then I'll either shutdown or just cbet any flop queen or higher. If they raise or 3bet I just shut down completely, EZ PEAZY!" This is just so recklessly out of control I'm at a loss for words. I'll even do this UNDER THE GUN, with the same logic that b/c everyone is so tight I'll get a free pass, and they'll tell me if I'm beat, because my hands are so junk I dont have to worry about any difficult decisions.... That is until I flop top pair and wonder if it's good or not, then pick up a concealed open ender on the turn that doesnt complete, all the while getting value towned as my hand improves every so slightly. I'll even raise 86o in the CO, get 3bet by the SB, and call because we're 100BB deep and be like "he aint ever gonna see this shit comin if I hit". THAT IS SO FUCKING FISHY OMG. That is exactly what fish probably tell themselves every time they enter a pot with what they know must be junk "never know what the flop will bring! Imma stack aces with T7o!"

I'm still playing pretty loose in my pwning sessions, but it's more of a controlled aggression. A lot more willingness to fold to 3bets, mostly saving my air range for the BTN instead of CO, no fucking around from UTG or MP, minus the 1/100 times I raise like 9To just for table image, and just taking very light controlled shots at the pot on the flop. See, I keep outleveling myself. I'll think some shit like "well he knows I'm capable of floating the flop or c/r'ing on a bluff, so I have to follow through on the turn too otherwise I'll become an easy target". Well, that might be true vs the best players in the world, but vs tag grinders at NL200 it's just not necessary. I mean I may even be losing some pots to good level X thinkers on the turn or whatever, but thats not important. It wont hurt my winrate to let that slide, and I'm better off just being a loose bitch preflop and on the flop and not much more beyond that. And truth be told, it's probably not happening as much as I think it is anyway! And the real beauty in playing loose is to sneak in there with hands and cooler people to death, rather than looking sketchy with a WTSD of 2% and AF of 5.

Anyway, I'm gonna play some NL200 live this week just because I can, and because it's like NL2, which I expect to be able to beat. Then I'll probably take a stab at NL200 online again and see if I can recreate the rhythm I had back in the day after observing myself play and finding the magic again. In fact, watching my losing sessions might be all I really need, because they are just filled with FAIL and "things not to do".

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Ok, so I deposited $50 today to half-stack NL10 rush on FTP. That's 10 buyins, seemed adequate for one-tabling anyway, already tried full stacking it for fewer buyins but the variance at me up. So what I sacrifice in value I make up for in surviving.

Here's an at-a-glance look at my play today:






The list goes on, and ultimately im busto, again... A lot of the rags in there are just tilt after some monkey limp calls my iso raise and gets it allin with bottom pair on an AK9 flop and stuff.

So where do I go from here? Well everyone says you want loose fish calling you with rags. Since I cant handle this online as I get too impatient/tilted, I'm gonna take another shot at live. Since the lowest limit offered in my city is NL200, I cant afford it right now. With my wife currently job seeking and all the bills falling on me I'm just stuck in a rut poker wise. Too broke to play higher limits, too tilted to play lower limits.

Once the money starts rolling in though I hope to be able to take a few lucky shots at live and build a roll from there. I cant beat fish at NL2 because I get too tilted at the shit they stack me with. But the good thing about live is that it forces you to keep your composure (at least for me), since I'm not gonna act like a jackass in front of 30 people. Combined with the calming effect of the social atmosphere, alcohol, and fewer hands = fewer bad beats, I never get spewy. There's still variance, so it might take me awhile before my 2 BI shots turn into a real bankroll, as I fully expect to bust the first few times. Or maybe ill get lucky and just run good the first night and walk out with 5+ BI's.

Whichever happens, I'll have to wait a long good while before deciding when to reload online again. The only limit I can take seriously is NL200 and up, but I certainly need a bankroll there since I'm outclassed by the player pool. So unless I absolutely demolish live tables for 2-3 months straight, I'll probably never have enough funds available to use from my live roll to play online with again, since I just refuse to play anything less than NL100 anymore.

On a side note; Rush poker has been an interesting experience. I learned to play poker from an AI simulator, and the cool thing about that was it had a "next hand" button to just fast forward your way through the crap and find good spots to play in. This is exactly how rush feels, so I thought I might pwn at it since I'm used to playing with blinders on and just quickfolding my way to position with some kind of playable hand. Unfortunately rush changes things a bit. The simulator continues to act like a normal ring game, but rush players are making all sorts of adjustments which make it a little more complicated. The fish are still there jamming and calling off their stacks with garbage, which even the simulator never did, but the light 3betting is something I still havent quite figured out how best to play vs. Since I'm no good at 4betting I opt to just call most of what I suspect are light 3 bets, take a flop, and try to play from there. I figure if they're bluffing they'll lead the flop and I can just raise and rep something that calls a 3bet with, or I can even cbet if they just check it to me, or delay my bet for the turn to look a little more defensive but believable etc etc. But I just couldnt get enough hand volume in to figure it all out. From what I recall light 4betting really does seem to be the best answer, but I just wasnt willing to run into 5bet shoves and folding hands like 98s and KJo, where I could probably either win a large or small pot with once the flop chills everyone the fuck out.

Beyond that I dont really have much else to say about rush, other than I officially take the side of ring game players saying normal poker is more +EV compared to rush, no matter how you play it.

Oh, and about moving to vegas, well the idea was just a long shot, with my wife being unemployed for so long and my job future going nowhere, we thought we might just start looking for employment in las vegas (doing normal white collar shit), which would give me the opportunity to calmly play live in a legal environment without all the ghetto'ness of playing in my city at peoples houses and shit. We're fascinated by the Vegas landscape and culture and think we might actually enjoy living there regardless of playing poker. But it would be a huge undertaking to acquire a new job out of state like that to secure our futures if we ever really decided to move.

THE END

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