Hey guys, I suppose this is my first real blog entry, how many will follow is anyones guess.
I arrived in Vegas on the 20th of June with Ket and Andy (mate from uk). We stayed at my house out there
with such heros as mezmerizeplz(clay) bigbobm, doomer + his lovely girlfriend,
timdawg, a former bodybuilding sicko called shane clays sister.
It was a good positive crowd of people.
Since my mates from the UK were only staying for a week I basically wrote off the first week poker wise and touristed it up.
We saw the Grand Canyon (definately take a hellicopter trip, It's worth paying a bit more for, which was absolutely breathtaking but also terrifying at times as I'm terrible with heights!
We went clubbing at Surrender, which could be my favourite club there now - it's bumping without being as overcrowded as XS. My mates did some shooting on the gun range, eating at Cut, Lotus of Siam,shopping yadda yadda.
Obv we had to hit the strip club on the last night, they werent going to escape that, and nor did they want to.
We got the other English guys along (unknown solja, Ben, Fionnmac, Asa, Ket, Supfoolio) as well some housemates, and 'Sapphos' was the place of choice this time round. We drank it up before hand and got our table,
enjoying the view, trying to see Vegas through fresh eyes as I had done all week.
A couple of strippers got lucky and had a dance, one blonde one fiesty columbian...the search continued.
I caught a glipse of a rather ridiculous looking asian girl with a big tattoo on her back and grind on her mind,
lets not beat around the bush here gentleman, this girl was a freak...and she had the sort of ass normally reserved for girls with names such as Ebony, Imani or Laquisha.
I gave her a try out and she was an excellent dancer so it was not a matter of if but when, I ended up spending some time in skybox which
is very private (though Kierans girl convinced me to share with them and go halves on the mandatory bottle).
A good time was had by all, but my wallet had lost so much volume it was starting to resemble a combination of the wrinkliness of a Shar Pei and the thickness of nanonokos left arm.
After the English lads returned home it quieted down a bit, and I had the 25k 6max tournament coming up.
I managed to sell around 60% of myself at 20-25% mark up. My starting table consisted of Sorel Mizzi(zangbezang), Scott Montfaggery, a Phil Galfond lookalike
('you think because you look like me you can play like me?'), a very tight but insanely aggressive french dude and 1 semi weak player...I was pretty happy given the buy in.
I lost a lot of pots that kinda played themselves and was down as low as 25k from a 75 start stack and was getting a bit disheartened but succeeded in
doubling up by raising qq and bet bet shoving on a 10 high board and being good against the french guys presumed Tx.
I managed to almost double vs Montfaggotry when he 3bet me in position and put in bets on flop and river
on a scary board, and I made the call with my bluffcatcher. I told him nice bet and he thought I was being a sarcastic,
I told him i was being sincere and he muttered something about 'well it sure sounded douchey' to which I responded 'well you
have the douche thing down pretty well so ill take your word on it'.
I then took great joy in doubling through him with 95dd on qx7d8d where I checked and put in a raise over a bet and a call, Montfaggery decided to shove his king hi flush draw with no fold equity and
was in amazing shape, but the river was an offsuit 9 .
Once I had dancing chips I moved my chips around well and my stack grew while taking little risk, I ended day 1 with just under 300k with the average prob being something under 200k.
Day 2 my table consisted of Nutsinho, Domcee, 2 live pros and a young German guy...everyone had a lot of chips. You guys should go to www.domcee.com for humour value. This guy seemed to play EVERY
running 2knl+ table and also some plo on maybe 10 sites. He is an ok player online but has some leaks, including way too many tables.
At this tourney he was dressed up in a jesters outfit, CONSTANTLY talking and folding just as constantly. It because clear that he wanted to fold his way deep into the tourney for exposure (he mentioned
that he had a couple of big live results and wanted to get his face out there). He literally played 3 hands in the first 2 hours. A couple of live pros started needling him about this (wtf idiots?). He raised and won the next 3 pots
some guy mentioned that he'd raised every pot since they said that, and he went back to foldstationing while drinking his triple Jack Daniels and coke.
My stack was around the same after the first 4 hours despite playing some excellent poker. The main pots responsible for me not chipping up are as summarised here:
KQ vs AQ in raised pot we get 2 bets in on qxxxx
I value cut myself with AJ vs nutsinho AQ after we both decepticon it up on an ace high flop
Worst of all I lose a 260k pot with 87ss vs qj on 9stxjx.
After returning from the dinner break I get moved to the feature table with Daniel Negreanu to my left with chips so high youd only know its him behind them due to his trade mark table talk. The rest of the table contains live pros like hoyt corkins and some others I perhaps ought to know.
I find AA my first hand and 3bet vs a DN raise and hoyt call, I get stared down but they both fold. After this DN 3bets me huge the next 3 times i enter the pot when i had holdings such as KT, QJ, KJ I
lay them down. He then informs me that 'my spies have told me you are tjbentham' (we've played a bunch at 100 200nl on stars).
I also get dealt a4s twice when its folded to me on the button and Corkins moves all in for over 30bb both times, so more chips I have to lose by raise folding. I pick up 44 and win a flip vs Corkins AK
s (I shove button with 20 or so bb).
My chipstack declines until I win ATo vs JJ all in pre and now have over 500k chips at 5k 10k. I 3bet A9o vs Abe Mosseri's utg open (he was at my table earlier and was raising tons from ep) he snap calls
and i bet small on a flop of 822 (67 into 150 i believe) and he makes a small raise to 150.
I consider all my options and end up folding and regreting sizing my bet so small. I bust at 6/12 when DN opens ep and i shove AQo for 2xx and DN makes the call with AJo and hits a pair.
Ket and the rest of the guys try to cheer me up, but I'm surprisingly upbeat - it was a great experience and hopefully I will become a better player on the back of it.
During my ultimately fruitless run in the 25k Clay and Shane had been making waves in the 2k venetian deepstack. They BOTH make the final table and we go down and rail. The venetian is a terrible place to
spectate as they have what can only be described as a reverse stadium, with the table way above the standing area. I get a 100$ freeroll from an easy going Aussie guy who is a sports psychologist/poker guru on deuces cracked.
He seems completely sure that I cant stand on the first of the steps leading up to the table for 10 seconds. I see that the security guy's back is turned and step up..1,2,3...so far so good...4, damn hes seen me.I look in the complete opposite direction but he comes over
so then i start focusing really hard at the table like theres something I have to see, I get to around 8 before he removes me, nice sweat anyway.
Clay had come into the day with 21% of the chips in play with 18 left, and Shane was somewhere in the middle of the pack. By the time it was final table time clay was still going strong but Shane had fallen short, I'll leave it here for now and post the rest soon.
Too many negative blogs latelyby PanoRaMa, July 15
Lost in the WSOP ME which makes me really sad but I've been rewarded with some online run good. Pretty shitty that this is how many hands I've put in this month so far but I ain't trippin. Here's a garph to counter balance with all the negative blogs people have been posting as of late - your heater is soon!
Following a dream I had last night about playing poker online...and I lost quad kings because the two kings on the board changed at the end so I lost to aces.
Anyway I would appreciate any help you could give me. I just started playing again and a few days ago I was up then was down 1BI. I looked on PT after to see what hands I'd been going wrong with and it seemed I had been playing too many seemingly good hands too aggressively and most likely not really taking in position.
So the next day I tightened up and played a bit more "solid" and huzzah profit. However this is going wrong.
I know that it's just to do with it being poker but I understand that I have many leaks despite trying to tighten up so any advice here is greatly appreciated.
I'm not entirely sure how to read this but I'll give it a go.
I think one of my leaks are the blinds. I'm really not sure how to play them.
Blinds and limping:
If I'm the small blind, I usually limp in with suited connectors or with T8/97 like that when there are other limpers. Is this a good idea? If there is a raised pot and a caller, should I be calling to see a flop with T9s/T8s etc?
I believe I should be 3betting from the SB with AK and obviously normal 3betting ranges. Should I include TT?
Let's say I 3b with AK and the guy calls. The flop is 67Q. Should I bet into them? If I do and they call and the board is 67Q2, what do I do? Do I check call or just barrel again? I'm not comfortable playing OOP.
As the Button I have started to try and steal the blinds a lot more. My range is any pocket pair to 98s and up. Should I raise with 56s, 34s? If I miss the flop, do I just cbet anyway and if they call and check again, do I barrel again? Is that mostly up to what the actual board looks like?
Defending:
I can see that my fold to steal is waaaay high. If the button raises to x3bb (15 cents usually) should I be calling and if so, what with?
If it's blind on blind and the SB raises into me, again to x3bb, should I just call and see a flop? I can see the advantage in that they have no idea what I'm calling with and I also have position.
If I'm the SB, should I be raising into the BB and if so, how open is my range? If they call, how do I play after?
Raising:
I have started to raise to x4 when utg with AA-TT/AK. With AQ I'm kind of mixed. Should I raise AQs and not AQ or just fold them both? With pocket pairs such as 22-66, should I be raising them as well from utg?
If I'm on the CO with KJ, do I call a raise from say utg/utg+1? I usually don't like to play KJ but I may call if it's suited. The reason of course is if I do hit the J I could be up against AJ and if I hit the K, could be vs AK/KQ.
At the CO once more, should I be confident in raising KJ/AT unsuited?
Where does ATs fit in the lines? Should I ever be raising that from outside the button?
Calling:
I call raises with AK/AQ/AJs and any pocket pair. If I have position with a pocket pair such as 55 and the board is something like 482, do I simply call a possible cbet or do I reraise if I believe they missed the flop with Ax? If I'm OOP on this same hand and again believe they have missed, do I bet into the and try to take the pot there, or do I check raise or check call?
What happens if I raise with 22-TT and someone 3bets me? Do I call and try to hit a set on the flop or just fold?
Table Selecting:
I'm aware of this but not entirely sure how to execute this right.
When I go to tables I usually go by the hands/flop percentage thing, usually with the highest average pot. Should I be going with the pot size instead? After around twenty hands you can usually tell what the players are at these stakes and a lot of the more solid players I know as they are still kicking it from the last time I saw them late last year. Are two players with VPs of over 25% good enough? On tight tables where players are something like 10-20/5-20pfr do I just leave and find another table, because that's generally what I do if they aren't giving me aciton
I know a lot of these will depend on the players, I usually 3 table which gives me time to look at every finished hand and make notes on what people are doing, however I was 4 tabling yesterday and I do like that it's more autopilot, it keeps me out of trouble from playing lesser hands but information on players may go missed.
Am I folding too much on the flop/turn/river?
If I have AK/AQ and the board is dry and my opponent raises, what do I do? Do I call and see if I hit? If I call flop and miss turn, is it worth calling again? Do I shoot AK/AQ all the way to the river?
I'm sure there is a lot more information of my leaks from that above image that I don't understand how to extract so any additional help on that would be cool.
Here's my graph so far for the few days of July that I have been playing:
Some guy I used to play a bit before gave me some HU action today. Funny thing was that he said he was sure I wasn't me. Well, when I first started playing him 2 years ago he was a 5/10 and 10/20 reg and I was just starting to take shots at NL1k. Considering how I'm the reg who plays NL1k and NL2k now and he's mostly playing lower, I'd say that I've probably change my play a little bit, yes.
As far as this month goes I'm breakevenish after 40k hands and about 25k€ under equity. If I keep putting in this volume I'll get like 10k in rakeback though so that's something. Might just start grinding mid stakes for a while for some sure profit since I'd feel a little bit stupid if I'd put in 80k hands a month and still lose money, heh.
I do love rake races. They makes me actually play as much as I should. This time I grind to get a UO-package for Prague, which will be sick fun. I had a blast last year and I assume it'll be as fun this year.
Other then that I've turned my days around. I sleep during the days and work out/play poker/read/etc during the nights. It's too warm for me to function during the day. I think my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother might've been unfaithful with a polar bear because I really can't stand heat.
I didn't play very well today and I feel really shitty about it. Felt confused a lot in spots I thought I had an overall grasp on. Meh, I'm sure I do still, I just wasn't making good decisions today. Played like 1hr and dumped $350 which is a ton for me(played some nl100, badly I might add). Should really only play nl50 until next month.
Meh just a vent. Gonna have to pull this shit together :O
Need Doylesroom money [again]by AznFisherman, July 14
Last guy didn't get back to me, looking for a little bit of money on doylesroom, anyone wanna help me out?
Probably a # less than $25 there's an easy rakerace there :D
1st real money final table everby K40Cheddar, July 13
made my first final table last night. Funny thing was, it was in limit razz. LOL. $1 buy in placed 4th for $42.12. Couldn't keep the discipline after 5 hours .
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