So...yeah. I decided this might be worth creating my second-ever blog (the first was just a temporary thing about Rymarov LANcraft Spring 2009). Time for some pokeraments!
This is the first time I really got somewhere deeper than usual in a weekly donkament, and with my non-existant poker skill I thought it was at least somewhat brag-worthy (even though the grand prize of ~140 dollahz is like lunch money for the lot of you)
The best thing in the whole run is that I only sucked out once (10-9s > A9o thank you), won / lost flips equally (despite being really short somewhere), and lost some hands where I was dominating the opponent. I wasn't even THAT lucky.
Bust-out hand because it's obligatory:
Submitted by :
FML, another dominating hand sucked out on
GL at the tables LP! I really learned a lot as a poker player browsing this site.
hmm, june 1st 2008 i took alot of pills and drove to work very irresponsibly only to have a seizure over concrete floor and nearly break my back/neck, land in the hospital for a week and recuperate for several months. my shoulders are both very screwed up still
but i do acknowledge that it would be really stupid, irresponsible, disrespectful to just go and get myself killed or whatever. boy i'm dumb :X
DON'T GO AND HURT YOURSELVES MKAY?
i only wish i can continue to have success at poker because its pretty clear to me i was really not acheiving anything for about the months of june until march of this year =/
i really think if i hadn't found lp i would never have come anywhere close to as far as i have so far with poker and i hope it can continue this way and i try to give back to this community as much as i can because.. i'd be nowhere without it.
this is a graph of the last 365 days. cheers guys.
If you go flying back through time and you see somebody else flying forward into the future, it's probably best to avoid eye contact--
And now on to some other deep thoughts,
So a week ago I decided that I would force myself to finally break through the penny stakes barrier by simply putting in a massive volume of hands, relying on +EV moves to make up for all the bad beats and let long term statistics prove me the victor. But gosh darnit I just kept getting so tilted at all the bullshit that I finally said fuck it, I refuse to play with people who do not care about money. I need my opponents to give a damn about losing 20 bucks, it's the only way I can play. So I decided on the lowest limit this would be found at, which I feel is NL25. Oh there are still people who flat out dont give a shit, but for the most part these guys dont consider a $25 stack to be play money. Or least the majority of the table doesnt, which means I'm not facing 5 morons who just go "lol awww in!" with random bluffs and shit b/c they enjoy the thrill.
So I continue to embark upon my one-table strategy of making intimate reads and very player dependent bets in every single round, even hands Im not in I continue to observe and think about what they have. One good thing about playing LAG at one-table is that the pace of my learning seems to be 10x greater than that of multi-tabling where I cant really focus and have to see the same thing happen 50x before it finally sticks in my head. Each day I continue to fine tune my game, and learn something new.
So far of all the major player archetypes, the only one left that is giving me real problems are the calling stations and maniac fish. I find there are 3 levels of fish out there.
1) Loose passive - this is the easiest type. Usually runs around 25/5 game. Limps mostly, occasionally calling preflop raises, but for whatever reason is very timid on the flop, possibly even when hitting pairs. Cbetting works fantastic against them.
2) Calling station - this fish is of medium difficulty. They call so many cbets and random flops its really hard to put them on a range. Sometimes it's with a random pair or PP and they just "dont believe you", and will shutdown on the turn. Sometimes it's a draw, sometimes it's pure float. I havent quite figured out yet if these players can be played that aggressively against or not. You can certainly do well against them playing tight, but I dont want to have to completely change my table play based upon one player.
3) Loose maniac - mind you, this is not the typical raising maniac who is on tilt or gambling. This is the guy who literally calls preflop raises of ANY size with ANY TWO CARDS no matter what. You would believe it is their first time playing and that they dont even understand hand ranking. They do not fold any pair, they often dont fold ace high, king high, even ten high. They are usually playing at least 80% vpip. Some of them mix up a lot of preflop minraising in their game giving them a maniacal looking 85/55 stat, but in reality the minraises dont suggest they are a true maniac who is going banana's with JTo etc. These guys are still minraising the same trash they call with preflop, T5o, 23o, anything. This has been my nemesis for the past few months. These are the guys I blog about when I try to raise hands that are higher on the ole starting hand chart, albeit not that much higher.
I have severe tilt issues that only recently I have finally began learning how to control, the biggest of which is adapting to table conditions. Since playing lag pretty much puts you at the top giving you the freedom to do what you want, taking it down a notch and tightening up has always been hard for me, especially when i know how someone else is playing. So for the first time lately, I finally chilled out, met the #3 fish, and did the only thing I havent done yet in my trials, and that is just play straight up tag. Fold fold fold everything, make standard value raises with my good hands, if AK misses then it misses, and pot 3 streets when I hit. While I do potentially miss out on opportunities, and someone else may stack him before me, i have found it to be the only thing possible to do against a 80vpip person. This is a breakthrough for me. No outplaying, no FPS, no iso-raising and 4betting, just play ABC. This is the only player I play ABC against, and it may be necessary to employ vs level 2 fish as well, we will have to see what I can get away with there.
Regardless, I have been violently swinging my NL25 bankroll up and down, but mostly just fine tuning imo. I feel very proud of my play, and my only losses this week have come purely from the level 3 fish. Now that I think I finally have some control of the situation, which means either leaving the table completely or adapting, I hope to see my swings level out, and hope to push it up to NL50 at some point in june. NL2? Done with it. NL5? Done with that too. NL10 you can actually make some pocket change with if you are content cashing out 50 bucks every few days. But I want more. I need to reach a point where I can cover my g/f's portion of the rent, protect myself from getting laid off from work, and reach the point where I can tell my faggot boss to fuck off and live off poker for good.
yea..about 9k hands at 100nl (at the beginning of the month) then the rest of the month at 50nl. didnt meet any of my goals for last month (become 100nl reg, regain confidence in my game, $1k month). but i think things are starting to look up. im feeling a bit better recently and with summer starting i intend to put in a lot more hours. i need to do more video watching this month too..ive been slacking off on that. at least i ended may in the green, but this is the worst month ive had since i started. cant complain too much though i guess.
I didn't really make any "goals" at the start of the month so this will probably be a rambling
Actually my only real goal for the month was to unlock silverstar
Started the month with about $550 in a slump at PLO10. Got out of the slump and moved up to PLO25 at around $750. Broke the $1k milestone about 2 weeks ago. Went on a $600 rush over 3 days immediately after that. Kind of bobbled around $1600 for the last 2 weeks. Hit silverstar and became more aware of the bonsues for pokerstars VIP and decided I could go for gold star to get into the end of the month freeroll as well as get the FPP for the $1M Porsche tournament. Ended up cashing in both for $208 and $180 respectively, which I am completely satisfied with since I don't even play hold'em and I've never played a MTT tourney that has had cash prizes.
I finished the month with $2k+, learned to 6table PLO with success, took some shots at PLO50, played at a live card room for the first time and won for a total of $160 live poker winnings on the month. Overall a pretty solid month.
Next month I will try for Platinum star, to move up to PLO50, 2 x bankroll, and maybe try out FTP.
so it looks like im going to take the job at health canada for resume padding purposes though the hourly is 26$ due to some sick connects cuz canadian gov't jobs for uni students is standardized at like 18$ for 3rd years.
i dont even think i can put in 4-5 hrs/week for poker starting june because for 7-3 job and im getting back into badminton and want to train for the toronto marathon. Anyone in Ottawa (kanata)/downtown toronto wanna play/train?
may was alright pokerwise, I crushed NL25 for 6ptbb the first 15k hands of this graph, and the NL50 swings just annoy me endlessly. Although it makes me kinda happy when edzwoo sweated me for the last 1k hands and said im not completely retarded lol http://www.liquidpoker.net/user_pictures/e05edc16176a2b31af40eb0c3d1e2e22.jpg
for alot of my NL50 hands i've been playing in the mornings eastern time and i think esp the 50bb min tables, its a huge nit/reg fest
Tonight i played for like the first time in the evening and the tables were so ridiculously loose i thought i was playing on another site. What times are good for FR on stars?
mmm did pretty well. Feel confident in my game, spewing less, tilting less, playing better, adjusting better, game selecting better.
Got my friend to ship me his NL50 6max database so I'll have notes and stats on the regs and know who to avoid and who's a fish.
Placed 8300th~ in the Turbo Takedown for $40, not bad. Looking forward to continue NL50 and then if I run really hot I'll hit up NL100. Also looking to hit Platinum Star this month (currently Silver), if not then at least Gold which I should easily hit.
PokerStars June Bonuses are already out, so remember to buy them! They also added $2400 for 150,000 FPPs I believe.
Also got a job working as a waiter at a Chinese buffet my mom owns, so I don't have to see poker as "OMG I need to win!" where now its just "I want to play to the best of my ability" and the burden of feeling like I needed to win for some small amount of income is gone.
BR is a little less than 4K atm. ran decently well last half of may, and was able to grow my br from 2k to about double that.
still have a long way to go as far as learning this game goes, but i'm excited and hope i'll have a great june. I've noticed i did the bestno days where i got a shitload of exercise, and was able to "clear" my head before every sesh.
i don't find nl100 any harder than nl50, rather i find it easier in a way that everyone plays like a mindless CR drone. still a tonne of idiots.
Also, i'm kind of looking for a NL200+ FR coach who is a good winner over a large sample size. Let me know what your rates are. I prefer a coach who is more familiar playing fairly lagish~!
Thanks to a few LP'ers and the LP community in general my game has finally reached NL50!! To you higher stake players its probably like "you have a long way to go mate" but I'm happy I finally made it this far (took my bloody time -_-)...Anyway I started this month on NL25 and was taking like my 6 or 7th shot at NL50...failed once or two more times...then middle of the month I took my 8th shot...and yeah it went well I guess...It's still over a small sample of hands but I think I have this time around haha...8th time lucky!...well considering I was running like $800 something bad over 20-30k hand sample is pretty disgusting imo but yeah this month I ran a bit above EV about $150 on NL50 and my BR sky rocketed...by the last couple of days of the month I was taking a shot at NL100...which I'm extremely happy about...I've only played for a very small sample...so it will really depend on how well I do next 2-3 months...
I didnt make an update for quite some time, so here it goes.
April
April wasnt a great month in poker for me. I didnt really played much and when I did, I didnt play great and ran bad. All in all, I lost a bit of money, nothing big, in total -$6,470.
May
In May I returned back to Unibet after a couple months because I wanted to stay in the Unibet CZ/SK team, which required some activity on my part. I also wanted a change, because I wasnt quite winning for some time, so about halfway through the month, I deciced to do a lot of midstakes multitable grinding (8-9 tables), which really isnt my style, but I needed a change. Sadly, the results kept being poor no matter what ever change I did. Partly I ran bad, but partly of course I wasnt playing my best game all the time and there were about 2-3 sessions in which I definately should have quit way sooner and save myself a couple thousand.
Last thing why this month ended up to be the worst month of my poker careeer so far was my shot at NL 50/100 Heads-up against an Italian semiregular, against whom I was clearly +EV, but sadly the one big hand of the match up ended up to be a huge suckout against me, where I lost a 19k euro pot with KK overpair + 2nd nfd against just a str8 draw allin on turn )(http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/690722). NL 50/100 is way above my normal limits, so this was quite a hit for me, but yea, I took the risk voluntarily and fully aware of it, so no problems, wasnt even too angry. What I was angry about was the fact that he didnt want to give me more action soon after that.
It is in euros, so it is over $20k lost online in May, but at least I ran decently in small live tournaments in a local casino, so I made a bit of money playing live. My final score for May is -$20,345. It is by far my worst monthly score ever.
June plans
For June, I have got some poker travelling planned. First, I am flying to Vegas, coming June 2, but staying only till June 19. We have a house rented with a couple of friends from Czech Republic. My plan is to play about 4-5 smaller WSOP tournaments, prolly the 6-max tourneys, then a 2k freeze or 2 and then maybe 1 plo event, dunno yet. Other than poker, I also want to party a bit and maybe meet up with some of u LiquidPokerians and simply have a good time. I am definately looking forward to Vegas time. Only 2 days left till my arrival
After coming back from Vegas, I intend to go to Barcelona for the WPT Barcelona tournament (5k euro freezeout). I have never played poker in Spain before, so I am quite curious how tough the fields will be there. Tbh I expect quite a lot of weaker players there, but really I dunno. After the tournament is over, I probably want to stay a few days in Spain on the seaside somewhere at Costa Brava, just relaxing etc. I have been there last year and its pretty nice there, so I am looking forward to coming there again.
Thats probably about it for now. Maybe one last thing - I will probably be looking to sell some pieces of me in at least some of the tournaments I have planned, definately in WPT Barcelona (5k euro is quite a lot for me, would like to sell like 40% of my action). So if any of you are interested, leave me a message in comments or pm me.
So I start with my daily reports today. Every day I want to write short thread about what I was doing and how I played. My two month long session is going to start tomorrow. I start at NL50(6max)and today I have installed software at I will play - Betfair. At the beginning I want to pay more attention on theory and watching instructional videos. My main sources are CardRunners and PokerStrategy.com.
Today my account on moneybookers.com wasn't working so I couldn't transfer my bankroll of 1000 USD on new account at Betfair. I will do it tomorrow. Today I have also watched first video of Brystmar's five part series on CardRunners and tomorrow I want to continue. I also want to read some strategy articles on PokerStrategy. I'm doing this because of I had exams in school and some other stuff to do and I almost couldn't play on-line. This way I want to refresh some basic theories and again play good and continue improving my game. Tomorrow I want to watch video from CR about Holdem Manager and after that set HM up.
That's all for my introduction and tomorrow it will begin.
Is friggin awesome. I was having a hard time in nl25 and today i played some nl50 HU.
Maybe its cause its sunday and theres lots of fishez but i guess i did pretty well:
PokerStars Game #28835278380: Holdem No Limit ($0.25/$0.50) - 2009/05/31 15:41:59 ET
Table Etamin II 2-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: rubilnik278 ($54.75 in chips)
Seat 2: Hero ($201.75 in chips)
rubilnik278: posts small blind $0.25
Hero: posts big blind $0.50
Holecards(Odds) Dealt to Hero
rubilnik278: raises $1 to $1.50
Hero: calls $1
Hero: checks
rubilnik278: bets $17.50
Hero: raises $180.75 to $198.25 and is all-in
rubilnik278: calls $33.75 and is all-in
Uncalled bet ($147) returned to Hero
Showdown Hero: shows (four of a kind, Kings)
rubilnik278: mucks hand
Hero collected $109 from pot
Summary Total pot $109.50 | Rake $0.50
Board
Seat 1: rubilnik278 (button) (small blind) mucked
Seat 2: Hero (big blind) showed and won ($109) with four of a kind, Kings
PokerStars Game #28840217929: Holdem No Limit ($0.25/$0.50) - 2009/05/31 17:40:29 ET
Table Virgo III 2-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: Hero ($212.75 in chips)
Seat 2: NateZettle ($60.75 in chips)
Hero: posts small blind $0.25
NateZettle: posts big blind $0.50
Holecards(Odds) Dealt to Hero
Hero: raises $0.50 to $1
NateZettle: raises $4 to $5
Hero: calls $4
Showdown NateZettle: shows (a pair of Kings)
Hero: shows (a pair of Kings - Ace kicker)
Hero collected $121 from pot
Summary Total pot $121.50 | Rake $0.50
Board
Seat 1: Hero (button) (small blind) showed and won ($121) with a pair of Kings
Seat 2: NateZettle (big blind) showed and lost with a pair of Kings
PokerStars Game #28841330957: Holdem No Limit ($0.25/$0.50) - 2009/05/31 18:08:29 ET
Table Dolon 2-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: Berlinrisk ($99 in chips)
Seat 2: Hero ($143.70 in chips)
Berlinrisk: posts small blind $0.25
Hero: posts big blind $0.50
Holecards(Odds) Dealt to Hero
Berlinrisk: calls $0.25
Hero: raises $0.50 to $1
Berlinrisk: calls $0.50
Hero: bets $16
Berlinrisk: raises $73 to $89 and is all-in
Hero: calls $73
River (Pot : $198.00)
Showdown Hero: shows (three of a kind, Eights)
Berlinrisk: mucks hand
Hero collected $197.50 from pot
Summary Total pot $198 | Rake $0.50
Board
Seat 1: Berlinrisk (button) (small blind) mucked
Seat 2: Hero (big blind) showed and won ($197.50) with three of a kind, Eights
-$6600 profits
-35k hands
-Completely nl200 now, 1/3 of my hands this month were nl100 though
-Moved into my new house
-Didnt get laid
-Gained 6lbs somehow wtf, i literally eat nothing hardly and stuff. I need to quit drinking
I'm playing in the $250+18 monthly on cake, first is 50k, one time baby!
Lots of tilting obv but i feel like my style is opening up a lot and ive tried so many different things. Some worked some dint. When i was tilting i kept calling with like QTsuit at bb or like 78suit or 3bet... then i gained my sanity again and started folding again. I highly reccomend using PTR.com a lot to determine your play vs people. http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/6219/may2009.png
oh heres a hand i think villain played really well and i think my call was really off but when ur on tilt ur on tilt + Show Spoiler +
Submitted by : flounder44
Full Tilt Poker Game #12488685999: Table Calm (heads up) - $0.50/$1 - No Limit Hold'em - 18:48:54 ET - 2009/05/28
Seat 1: BROGSKi ($174.90)
Seat 2: flounder44 ($110.50)
BROGSKi posts the small blind of $0.50
flounder44 posts the big blind of $1
The button is in seat #1
Holecards Dealt to flounder44
BROGSKi raises to $3
flounder44 raises to $11
BROGSKi calls $8
Flop (Pot : $22.00)
flounder44 bets $12
BROGSKi calls $12
Turn (Pot : $46.00)
flounder44 has 15 seconds left to act
flounder44 bets $25
BROGSKi calls $25
River (Pot : $96.00)
flounder44 has 15 seconds left to act
flounder44 checks
BROGSKi bets $126.90, and is all in
flounder44 has 15 seconds left to act
flounder44 calls $62.50, and is all in
Uncalled bet of $64.40 returned to BROGSKi
Showdown BROGSKi shows Ace King high
flounder44 shows a pair of Nines
flounder44 wins the pot ($220.50) with a pair of Nines
BROGSKi adds $35.60
Summary Total pot $221 | Rake $0.50
Board:
Seat 1: BROGSKi (small blind) showed and lost with Ace King high
Seat 2: flounder44 (big blind) showed and won ($220.50) with a pair of Nines
Contact Users: 1405 Active, 0 Logged in - Time: 09:37
(a pair of Kings)
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