So I decided I'm going to label all my little progress journal entries with - [limit] just so it looks nice and sorted when I go through my blog posts. These will be about whatever random hand histories or poker theories that have been going through my mind. Take it all with a grain of salt though.
So I've played 3 sessions since my last blog post, and I'm going to try and space them out so I don't make too many NL25 blog posts before I move up to NL50 (unless I go busto lol).
Swongs! I'm probably going to have to get used to 5-10bi swings in short sessions if I'm going to play this loose. If it starts feeling massively -EV or too hard, I'll probably tighten up or cut down some tables to think a little better. For now I'm having a lot of fun though. Cliffs of the three sessions (starting with the -6bi):
First:
-Jammed for value into a lot of sets
-Jammed as a bluff into a lot of sets
-Got jammed on my bluffs a lot
-Did not backdoor random two pairs enough with my crap hands
-Didn't win any important all-ins
Second:
-More big pots shipped out than in
Third:
-Played 4 tables only and let my poker club sweat me.
-Almost all bluffs worked.
-Big pots went a bit in my favor.
-Happy that I didn't look like a donk and lose in front of everyone.
I posted two hands that I felt were somewhat educational/interesting:
PokerStars Game #58909970484: Holdem No Limit ($0.10/$0.25 USD) - 2011/03/09 8:15:40 ET
Table Summa IX 6-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: aavoron8311 ($18.29 in chips)
Seat 2: Filcei ($29.49 in chips)
Seat 3: FTPreg ($25 in chips)
Seat 4: Gleb Budakva ($22.18 in chips)
Seat 5: edzwoo ($25 in chips)
Seat 6: RiverBeavers ($28.37 in chips)
Filcei: posts small blind $0.10
FTPreg: posts big blind $0.25
Holecards(Odds) Dealt to edzwoo
Gleb Budakva: folds
Gleb Budakva leaves the table
edzwoo: raises $0.50 to $0.75
RiverBeavers: folds
aavoron8311: calls $0.75
Filcei: folds
FTPreg: folds
edzwoo: checks
aavoron8311: bets $12.04 and is all-in
edzwoo: calls $12.04
Showdown aavoron8311: shows (high card Jack)
edzwoo: shows (high card Ace)
edzwoo collected $35.12 from pot
Summary Total pot $36.93 | Rake $1.81
Board
Seat 1: aavoron8311 (button) showed and lost with high card Jack
Seat 2: Filcei (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 3: FTPreg (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 4: Gleb Budakva folded before Flop (didnt bet)
Seat 5: edzwoo showed and won ($35.12) with high card Ace
Seat 6: RiverBeavers folded before Flop (didnt bet)
Fun little hero call. I think a lot of people will just give up turn, but you won't have much FE on this type of board texture since everything is basically two overs. A good standard to go by is assume fish are going to flat your cbet with two overcards so you need to adjust by value betting extremely thin. You could call the turn bet a thin value bet and just to protect. River I check because I can't really vbet anymore, and call because I don't think villain would randomly do this with midpair or worse. His range to the river feels like it should have a LOT of air, so much that it overshadows the times he rivers a 9 or slowplays some type of hand. So I think a call is justified.
I was writing up a long blurb about betting weaker hands, but I think I wrote a little too much and got really off subject, so I'll save that in another entry.
So as some of you know, I used some FPPs to bink Sunday Million satellites, which I turned into cash and gave myself a shiny new $500 bankroll. I've been itching to play some limits where I would be able to have some stress free fun, so NL25 seemed somewhat of a good idea. There are some people in my club that are struggling around these limits as well, so I figured why not journal my progress and sessions? It'll help me think a little clearer when I'm trying to explain stuff to other people anyway.
I'm going with the approach of playing very loose and not really caring too much if some hands may be marginal or arguably -EV. I think this is extremely beneficial for me because I am forced to find more difficult bluff and vbetting spots. Ideally this is educational for others as well.
So anyway...
The stats are mixed with some 2-4 handed, so with 6 people I'm running somewhere around 35/25 8% 3bet. I was also trying to 12 table, but I kept timing out. There was also this one table where two people to my left were 3betting 25%, and I lost like 15bbs before I realized what was going on. So I cut it down to 10 and things got a lot better. If I wanted to play my super A+ game though, I'd probably need to drop it to 6 or so. If I do a video at some point, I'll probably have to do 4 since my thoughts are usually pretty scattered when I try and talk while playing. It does help that I'm running hot too .
I'll just go over 2 hands I thought were interesting, whether or not they were played well.
PokerStars Game #58837352210: Holdem No Limit ($0.10/$0.25 USD) - 2011/03/07 19:33:18 ET
Table Diadem IX 6-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 1: Graddoff ($24.50 in chips)
Seat 2: memfis77 ($16.84 in chips)
Seat 3: Koenj44 ($27.85 in chips)
Seat 5: edzwoo ($41.86 in chips)
Seat 6: HORDOC ($29.50 in chips)
Graddoff: posts small blind $0.10
memfis77: posts big blind $0.25
FountainWell: sits out
Holecards Dealt to edzwoo
Koenj44: raises $0.25 to $0.50
edzwoo: calls $0.50
HORDOC: folds
Graddoff: calls $0.40
memfis77: calls $0.25
Koenj44: bets $5.58
edzwoo: raises $24.17 to $29.75
Koenj44: folds
Uncalled bet ($24.17) returned to edzwoo
edzwoo collected $21.79 from pot
Summary Total pot $22.90 | Rake $1.11
Board
Seat 1: Graddoff (small blind) folded on the Flop
Seat 2: memfis77 (big blind) folded on the Flop
Seat 3: Koenj44 folded on the River
Seat 5: edzwoo collected ($21.79)
Seat 6: HORDOC (button) folded before Flop (didnt bet)
This is a spot that comes a lot, but to be honest I never really tried to do because I would be too scared. It should be rather standard for midstakes people to understand, but probably not something people at this limit would ever think about.
Villain is a relatively loose and bad Supernova player and raises UTG. I am flatting here extremely with things that don't even do well against a UTG range like QTo because both blinds are passive fish with 50+VPIP, and getting into pots with them should more than make up for being up against UTG's range.
Flop and turn is pretty simple. I have top pair. Maybe you can argue folding turn against nits, but I think on a KTx board you have to consider sometimes they might barrel gutshots.
River is funny. Villain bets 70% pot flop, 70% pot on turn, then tanks for a few seconds and bets under half pot on river. I'm just going to jam here because I think he's almost always betting here for value (in which case I don't beat him), but he probably bets like 7-8 if he actually had a flush. The second point is that I can rep a flush/straight pretty hard if I jam here since I'd take this same line with an FD.
One big flaw though, I honestly can't say I have a clear cut read on the guy other than his general weak playstyle, the line he took, and his sizing. Still, it felt good to me.
PokerStars Game #58837812987: Holdem No Limit ($0.10/$0.25 USD) - 2011/03/07 19:43:51 ET
Table Genoveva X 6-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: quicklamaniy ($25 in chips)
Seat 2: edzwoo ($44.65 in chips)
Seat 3: ExcelionB ($31.35 in chips)
Seat 4: Qikim ($20.87 in chips)
Seat 5: Greendizer74 ($26.79 in chips)
Seat 6: trenerok ($44.57 in chips)
edzwoo: posts small blind $0.10
ExcelionB: posts big blind $0.25
Holecards(Odds) Dealt to edzwoo
Qikim: folds
Greendizer74: folds
trenerok: folds
quicklamaniy: folds
edzwoo: raises $0.50 to $0.75
ExcelionB: calls $0.50
Flop and turn sizing was for value and protection on this texture. This was one of the villains that had 25% 3bet, but it dipped a bit to 16% (went to war with him twice, 4bet failed once and worked the second time) and his vpip/pfr evened out to around 19/12 or so. I made the mistake of thinking we were CO vs BTN here which imo affects this spot a lot.
Thought process at the time was he's probably 3betting KQ and better, and I figured my hand was good a lot, but I think he can have 8 combos of QJ and I don't want to lose to that. Also, if he does have something like KJ which peeled two streets, he's gonna be in a tough spot. Oddly enough I completely misread what his calling range was, and a big factor probably had to do with him assuming my range was really wide because it was SB vs BB. In a results oriented sense, I guess I played the hand perfectly since his calling range at this moment had every Ax and Tx, but I can't say I did it on purpose. It is kind of an enlightening thing though to realize your range can sometimes be perceived so differently.
Anyway, looking back I don't like how I played the hand with the reads I had. I'm already making a bit of an assumption that he can never have something like KQ here, and I honestly can't say he was going to fold QJ or KJ there, not to mention a flaw in my thinking is he probably has combos of KT. I didn't have much time to think it through and it was mostly narrow minded, "I'M GOOD A LOT BUT QJ MUST FOLD." I like my flop and turn play though.
There's a lot of other minor things I wasn't considering like possible slowplayed flushes and he might be raising QT on the flop, so it really doesn't make much sense to turn my hand into a bluff here.
Anyway, I'm getting pretty tired. Ideally I score a few more big wins and get to play some NL50 . Then I'll definitely beat Teng out of that prop bet.
So my other roommate, Teng (Acckerman) quit poker a while ago as well. He's just been focused on school, but of course poker is one of those things that pulls you back into it. As I mentioned before, I was kinda getting in the mood myself to just grind some micros out of boredom. Probably has to do with a bunch of other guys talking about poker, as well as watching my other friend (koreanfather) randomly donk around at NL2 or SNGs/MTTs.
I had FPPs sitting in my Stars account which I intended to hold on to for other reasons, but I decided to forget it and just play some Sunday Million satellites. Binked two so now I have $500 sitting my account. Teng decided he'd deposit $500 into his FTP account to match my roll.
So now we're having a silly little propbet. My $150 to his $100, whoever has HEM to say +$1500 first. No real rules besides grinding the "right way" (no flipping to go up, no random degen shots). It's mostly just pride on the line and to have a little fun.
See you guys at the NL25 6max tables! I'll blog my progress and maybe make some videos or something (unless I suck now).
As usual, I'm still mulling around these forums and talking to people on MSN about hands and what not. I'm kind of in the mood to play again, but at the same time I'm not.
In my spare time when I'm not hauling in 985 pounds of airsoft guns (not fun), I've just been browsing the internet for something to keep me entertained. I picked up playing a mod of Diablo 2 with my roommates which was fun a good month or so, but now I'm back to being bored. With LP as my home page and poker people on MSN, it seems like it won't be too long before I get back into it.
About a month ago, I made a blog post asking to buy 100k playchips. The reason is because my friends and I were all bored one weekend, and I brought up the idea that we play heads up on Stars playchips. Stars actually has 1/2 playchip HU, so why not just assign a monetary value and have a little gambling fun against each other? We all only had the default 1k chips, so we were having a bit of trouble setting up multiple tables and being able to reload.
I always wanted to work on my heads up game, but it's almost impossible to get a game running for an extended period of time. One of my buddies named Sam absolutely loved the idea of playing me heads up, so we 4 tabled some 1c/2c HU with no rake (at the end we'd pay each other in cash). I know to some it might seem stupid, but once you start playing you actually take it really seriously. Because there was no pressure to make money and only to make the best moves, I felt I made quick adjustments, picked up reads, and acted upon them much better than I ever have. I also felt like I improved as a poker player at a much faster rate than when I played FR or 6max. Sam is a recreational player, but I quickly realized it doesn't matter who you play against when it comes to learning. I might be able to beat him just by making better folds and bigger value bets, but in order to maximize my EV I still needed to pick apart his game. Most of all, I had a lot of fun
Side note, if any of you low stakes grinders out there are interested in playing me in some 1c/2c HU, let me know. I'm not trying to hustle you guys or anything; I'd imagine I have an edge. But I think it would be a good learning experience for both of us.
Anyway, back when I was playing NL100/NL200, I think I forgot on how to improve as a poker player. I think I got caught up in this trap of trying to outplay regs, doing things like betting smaller to make them call, spending way too much time thinking about hands that occur once every 10k hands and would have no effect on my winrate. Yet you just look at someone like TalentedTom who crushes people, and he's just super blunt and straightforward most of the time. He's obviously smart, but he also seems to approach the game with a really simple mindset. Also, he doesn't bet 2/3rd pot.
I think my mindset about poker has completely changed since I've been thinking about this and played that HU match with Sam.
Meanwhile, when I was playing that Diablo 2 mod, I ran a character up to level 60 with my roommates. When they weren't playing with me, I would run a random new character up to level 20, quit, then do it again. I did it like 5 times because I was actually having quite a lot of fun doing it; I guess it had something to do with the game being really easy in the beginning. Similarly, when I played SC2 I think I had the most fun playing my placement matches.
All that being said, I'm kinda in the mood to play some poker again. Another thing that's pushing me in that direction is LP's own rockman255 coming back into the scene. He's kind of on the same boat and we've been talking a lot about poker.
I think I just want to have some fun and bash fish, because winning itself is just fun. So MAYBE this week I'll take that $25 I have on Absolute and grind some NL2 6max and see how far I can get. Maybe I'll just run that up, but if I'm having fun and feeling good, I'll probably deposit and play some higher limits.
Anyway, just felt like posting something in my blog and write out random thoughts, so sorry if none of this really flows together .
So I don't have time to grind poker anymore, but I had like $100 sitting in my account. It feels like too little to cash out, so instead I'm going to try and make an epic run with it.
Only heads up.
BR management is:
<$500 NL50 Min-buyin (no rat holing, stay until opponent leaves)
$500<$1000 NL50 full stack, maybe NL100 min-buyin? Drop down if below $300.
>$1000 NL50 full, NL100 full, NL200 min-buyin?
(high card Jack)
.
