Live Game £5 buy in vs. reckless villainby DhakhaR, January 08
Welcome LP'ers. Ive been lurking here for a little while after coming over from TL and decided to make my first blog post because of the live game i played on tuesday which i would like some input on.
Ok so every tuesday i go over to a friends house where between 5 and 10 of us play NLHE. Buy in is £5 for 3000 chips, 5/10 starting blinds, going up every 20mins to 10/20 15/30 20/40 40/80 50/100 150/300 200/400 300/600 etc.
One rebuy and One addon maximum is allowed in the first 2 hours, £5 for 1500 chips. Thats the basic setup. We also use 2 decks so that the small blind is shuffling and playing his hand and then the next hand can be dealt straight away.
Ok so the last game i played was 5 people. myself and a friend called Josh have the most experience and understanding of starting hands, pot odds, outs, draws, position, image etc. the least experienced player was Chris who has no real concept of starting hands or position. The other two players are somewhere inbetween.
Onto the game...
At 5/10 i like to make some small moves early to 'test the waters'. raising from the button to see who gives respect, showing pocket queens (my least favorite hand) when i raised preflop and everyone folded so that i culd earn some more respect etc.
however, chris starts betting like a mad man. limping or calling anything preflop and betting every pot. every preflop laydown was PAINFUL for him. And this wasnt well managed agression either, he called someones flop bet, turn bet and river all-in with just ace high, chased all his draws etc.
this pretty much shut down any attempts i could make to steal the blinds as i would always get called by him.
I concentrated on him as he was the big stack now from stealing so many pots. i was trying to get reads but like [vital]Myth mentioned in his live games guides, HE thought every hand was strong so i was reading strength when he had J4 and trash.
I figured at this point that i should go tight and wait for a big hand to go all-in preflop with as i was certain i would get action from him. 3 times i got my money in preflop with the best hand and got outdrawn/split pot.
I talked with Josh afterwards and he shared the same view as i did, and i am still clueless as to how to combat this reckless agression without some luck from the poker gods.
So can any of you poker gosus offer any advice/tips?
I went into the class today with a positive mind - thinking this could be a rather ok term. Well, it became a real bad beat!
My teacher tilted me so bad - it seemed like he couldnt speak with even the slightest entusiasm... He had the same tone in his voice all the time which is very annoying! I cant imagine how I will survive 5 months with him
My class seemed ok but none of the really bright people in the class came in my group. Whats worse, I happen to know most of them from before:
- cute girl who sometimes is ok but most of the time is pretty annoying. Guess she is quite the opposite of me so I guess she is ok deep inside.
- ok guy that has very determined thoughts - unfortunately they are not always that good. Not too brite but perhaps my escaperoute this year from going crazy.
- ugly girl that tilts me so bad just to see her. She has been in my group before so I know what to expect. She talkes so quietly and so slow that I kinda wish I could inject her with drugs so she becomes hyperactive (which would be like a normal person talking). When she walked into the classroom I wished with all my heart that she wouldnt be in my group but that didnt happen. She also lives outside Uppsala so she "decides" all the meetingtimes and now she is dragging me up 8:00 AM every morning to have the groupmeeting. Gahh!! She is also one of the few people in the whole education that I thought was going to quit because she is like one of the worst students ever.. I havnt heard like one good thought yet! WHY OH WHY?
- quiet girl that I dont know much about. Hope she is ok and if she is I can just ignore ugly girl and maybe get past the term without breaking all my stuff.
Not a good start of this year...
I guess most of you don't know me, I've posted on teamliquid for more than 5 years, but only recently got into poker. Maybe some of you saw me post this thread 2 months ago asking for help.
Anyway, now, 2 months into my poker career it seemed like a good idea to start a blog to gather my thoughts on how poker has been so far and to think about goals.
For those (which I guess is almost everyone lol) not interested in my poker life story, there's a graph below.
I started at NL2 full ring, buying in for 2$ like Grot suggested in his guide with a $20 bankroll, trying to be a winning player from the start. I went broke, deposited another 20, went broke again, deposited another 20 and went broke yet again.
Looking back I'm amazed at how badly I must've been playing to manage to lose 60$ on NL2, but luckily I seem to have overcome the uber newbie stage after losing those third 20$ and things have been going up ever since.
I think the one thing that made me a winning player at NL2 was starting to play 4 tables. I'd been 1 tabling before and spewing massively when I got bored or things weren't going my way. Getting your aces cracked when you're 20 tabling isn't that big a deal, but when you're a new player just playing one table, getting dealt aces like once every 2 hours, that puts you on major tilt.
I managed to get up to 100$ with NL2, then switched to NL5 where I think I ~12 tabled most of the time. NL5 doesn't seem to be much different from NL2, there might be less complete spewmonkeys that go AI preflop every second hand, but people are still as big calling stations as on NL2.
After working my way up to 200$, I played like 3k hands of NL10 (1 session of 10 tabling I think), then decided to take a 8 buyin shot at NL25. I 4-tabled NL25 for a bit and couldn't understand why I wasn't making big money like before. Finally I realized that poker might have something to do with actually thinking and that playing like a complete robot might not be a successful strategy anymore. I had a bb/100 of like 0.5 after like 7k hands on NL25, almost half the hands I played on that limit.
Things have been going pretty well since then, I went up to 500 and decided to take a 10 buyin shot at NL50 like a week ago. My bankroll's 720 right now and I'm probably going to stick to 25/50 until I'm at 2k.
I guess some of you will say I'm taking too big risks with my bankroll, but I feel like I can sustain the same winrate 2 tabling NL50 as 10 tabling NL25 and I've learnt a huge deal more about poker playing 2 tables than 10 tabling like a robot.
Apart from making like 3-4 completely tilty spews (on 2 of which I sucked out luckily) I'm very happy with how I've been playing NL50 so far, I opened my game and went from 15/11 to 25/20 in the last few days which is really helping as there are definitely less 60/0/1 guys than on NL25.
I think the thing that gives me an edge over most regulars on NL50 is that by only 2 tabling I'm able to identify my opponent types a lot better and I can watch and take notes on how they play any hand they show down. I happily stacked off with AT on a AKQxx board against a guy who I knew would call down with a lot worse for example. If I hadn't identified what kind of player he was beforehand (and his stats didn't really indicate that he was a huge calling station) I would never have done that.
From what I've learned so far, the most important aspects of poker seem to me to be logic, psychology and adaptation. I guess probability is also important, but that seems a lot easier than the other three. Few things seem to be absolute, you might take completely different lines in the exact same hand depending on what kind of player the villain is. By playing only two tables I think I'm learning a lot more and preparing myself better for when I move up and the games get tougher.
As for goals, I'm just going to continue investing quite a lot of time into poker and see where it takes me. I would love playing this game professionally while still continuing my studies at university
My lifetime graph so far: (the first 40$ or so that I lost aren't included)
I'm playing UB now, so I am selling my activation code for Pokertracker 3. I've uninstalled the program, so this is good for installation on two (2) computers. I'm looking for $40, thanks.
Since I've been updating too much.. uhh.. I figure I will continue doing so :D
FUCK YAH UPSWING I hope I can continue on the righteous path toward infinity and beyond. I think I am playing a lot better since sennpu railed me, AWESOME 911.
Once again ASSUMING I continue winning, I am just going to play nl20 until next month wherein I will move to nl50. That is unless I get my roll up to like some ridiculous $1500 or something.. Then I'll just start playing nl50 for a couple of buyins. If I even just break even the rest of the month I will be quite overrolled for nl50 anyways, but I'm really hoping I can just continue playing well and finish this month at 3BB+/100 at nl20. I am at 1.7BB/100 atm.
last night i came home drunk off my socks at around 1 AM and my parents were up and waiting for me. they've been on the edge for the past few months because for years i've been just fucking around with my life not taking anything seriously and it's been getting to them, especially after my college scholarship got cut off last semester. it's understandable because i graduated high school 3rd in my class and made near perfect scores on the SATs and had an excellent track record in high school (soccer team captain, president of the math organization, student government, all that jazz) but chose to not go out of state. i had applied to Harvard and that was the only school that i applied to. when i got waitlisted there, i had no choice but to apply late to the local state university and i got in with a full ride + yearly allowance of like ~5k.
anyways, i got seriously involved with this one girl and i absolutely did not put in ANY work in college. i coasted for a few semesters getting decent grades in all the elementary classes by just skipping all my classes except during exams, but after i broke up with that girl, went to korea and learned alcohol, shit just hit the fan and everything just came to an epic life downswing. i basically stopped going to all my classes and even stopped taking exams FFS. every finals week i drank a ton and took my exams drunk as shit.
so that was junior year. i failed multiple classes and failed to keep up with the 24 credit hour requirement, which resulted in my scholarships getting pulled. my parents pulled out for me though and they paid for tuition last semester, and my grades improved, since i played very little poker and actually did most of my assignments.
anyways, last night, i came home piss drunk and ended up having to talk to my parents drunk. the thing is, my dad is a minister at a local church and i've been raised up in a very religious background all my life (asian upbringing + christian background - you can imagine what it's like). he asked me whether or not i remembered the scripture that we read a few nights back during our family discussion: "Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18).
i told him yes.
he then asked me whether i was rebelling or something.
i nodded.
and then he pointed out how i wasn't just rebelling against my parents, but how i was rebelling against God.
i thought for a little while, and then i nodded in agreement.
he didn't say much afterwards. he simply told me to pack my things and leave. he also told me to return the tuition for this upcoming semester and do whatever i'd like with my life.
a lot of this religious stuff is probably over your head because i know most of the people here are really cynical or skeptical about religion, but it's something that' i've grown up with most of my life and it's an issue i've been struggling with for a while. i've done my share of spiritual searching but i have yet to find some sort of conclusion about God. at one point, i even fasted for 7 days for this very reason.
basically, i'm fed up with keeping up with this half-assed religious facade. i've only been pretending to be a good pastor's kid while the rest of me lived in hypocrisy, equivocation, and doubt.
my mother and my brother, as well as i, agreed that this was something that was absolutely necessary in turning things around in my life. i'm staying at my friend's dormitory for a little while. my brother offered to help me with tuition so i can finish my last semester of college. in the meantime, i'll be filling my schedule with uninhibited grinding (which was never before possible due to the circumstances of living at home) and studying for the CFA.
my car was totalled last week, so my friend is taking me down to New Orleans where i can play some live poker and build up some funds with which i can live for the next few weeks. my girlfriend lives there and i haven't seen her in 15 days. i got her an iphone for christmas and i'll finally get to deliver that to her tomorrow.
oh, and in other news, i made six buyins at NL50 playing 32/28 over 1k hands last night. donking flops worked wonders. it opens up so many possibilities through which you can manipulate the hand. you set yourself up for multibarrel bluffs, cheap semibluffs, and it gives your opponents the opportunity to spazz out eventually when they realize you're donking a pretty big range... they all of a sudden want to play a lot of big pots with me lol.
and i just got back from an amazing trip in Canada. snowboarding is FUN AS SHIT and i hit up the black diamond slopes by the end of the first day and had the TIME OF MY FUCKING LIFE brusing bones and internally bleeding on my way down LOL. i hope to return as soon as i can.
anyways, this is an exciting new stage in my life and i hope to update you all with more interesting news in subsequent posts.
Omg, I can't describe how good running hot feels after a solid 20 buy-in downswing. I'm obviously not recovered yet but I am doing alright my last couple of sessions and hope I can keep myself on the road to recovery and get back to at least 25NL and maybe some 50NL end this month/start of February.
I'll post some hands of how insanely hot I ran on my last two sessions and I obviously hope I can continue this way but we'll see for another session tomorrow.
This is the only hand I doubt my own play because of the passiveness (hope that's not too result oriented) of 10NL but it's probably never a huge mistake since some people get it in with JJ/AK preflop here as well so. Was the very first hand on the table so no stats what so ever:
This guy was just plain retarded. He played normally for the first orbit he sat in and then all of a sudden started shoving every single hand preflop. He had been doing it for about 1.5 orbit once I got to this hand and I decided it was good enough since he had shoved 9 consecutive hands. Hope this is a solid call here under these conditions and I didn't just luckbox in a lower part of his range:
This guy was so freaking aggresive. Didn't have a lot of hands on him but he was playing around 80/50 with 40% 3-bet or whatever and a 70+ AFq over 2 orbits or so. Isn't it lovely to play in position and be able to extract the maximum value ?!:
No stats on this guy either. Funny thing is, I did the exact same thing against him 1 orbit later when I had 99 on a 987cc board in a blind battle and c/minraised me (reloaded to 6$) but he didn't bite then:
I doubted a little about this one before calling but his bet just didn't make any sense and he was faily aggresive and not into folding much for the little sample that I did have on him. I decided to call after some thought (probably nitty, probably an insta-call) since it didn't make any sense and the bet-sizing looked extremely bluffy:
Meh, got to hate this flop but this guy was extremely aggro and had been 3-betting everyone on the table, including me, a lot preflop for about 3-4 orbits. I guess the flop is pretty thin against his range because any heart has solid drawing equity against me obviously but I didn't think I could fold. Not planning folding after that bet obviously. I know about the fancy looking 4-bet but since he'd be so aggro I thought he would see it as a weak/tight playing back at him and overshove as a bluff more often but I probably out-leveled myself there:
This guy was a pretty big aggrotard. Thought the flop was solid to c-bet although he didn't have a very high fold to flop c-bet over 5 orbits or whatever, something like 55-60% but I got a little equity to go with it and am in position. Massive LOL @ his slow-playing:
Ok, this was probably not a good call preflop because Trigo was short and that cuts down on the implied odds and since I'll have to play OOP all the way, this may as well be a fold preflop. That being said, I made the call at the time and when I saw this flop I was thinking it's gamble time. Gimme that damn coinflip yow !!!:
These guys were both almost never folding to flop c-bets so might as well check through. On the turn I obviously luckbox my gin card and made the flat because the Barro guy was pretty aggresive overall and wasn't that afraid of a lot of hands except for a flushdraw mostly which I thought he'd c/r enough here to flat it. They were both 50+ VPIP over 4-5 orbits so too much shit I am folding out by raising imo because he can fold anything < top pair hands.
Looking through all these hands makes me realize... I play a lot with aggrotards. Almost every single description has something ''LOL, random aggrotard, he has no fold button, board hits me in the face, lollerskates he can't fold''. Anyways, as long as I make hands and these guys keep paying me off, I'm feeling great.
Anyways, I hope this doesn't fuck my karma and makes me go on another 20+ buy-in downswing immediatly starting tomorrow *knock on wood*.
Yeha i have been to MMA training again for teh first time after my fight which is almost 2 month ago
That was some good fun !
My stamina wasnt really enable to go 100% ^^ but nevertheless i really enjoyed it soo much
damn i was missing that in my life.
Surprisingly few people showed up at the training today though ( were were about 10 people only)
However thats cool , too since the trainers can look closer at each of us
maybe the cold weather at germany atm - 15C makes people lazy and stay at home ^^
Concerning Poker
I e-mailed the FT support and they were very friendly and deleted my playmoney account and reopend my former closed real money account
weeee I had been surprised if the didnt ^^
I also think my LP rakeback account shoudl still work
I also signed up with Deuces Cracked and i am happy so far with it.
I had a 7 month leggopoker subscription ( 6month + 1 free month they gave out) and i learned 85% of my 6max game and 80% of my HU play from them.
Leggo poker is really good site for HU videos and they explain the important concepts and how to react and stuff.
However i noticed its still very different from Deuces Cracked so far.
Ive only watched Alcohol4life ( former winning Nl 1000 Hu reg) and InternetPokerz ( one of the biggest winners at online poker NL2K -> Nl20K) Episode 1-4 on how to play HU + i watched a Pyranniard HU video.
Looks liek DC is idiot save ^^
They really explain everything in such a clear detailed way thats its hard to missunderstand them ^^
Like on Leggopoker they said :
"Open 70-85% of your button , depending on the 3 bet frequency of your opponent. "
" 3 bet pf oop with a Value range and a bluff/range -> make sure your range is not counterd by villian 3 bet calling range."
well thats nice information and everybody with some 6max background and okay poker knowledge could easily figure out why that is and what they mean by this. ( they dont really explain it in the videos , but with this information u could understand it yourself easily)
On DC however they make preflop hand charts and exactly show ! which hands u should play vs which ranges and why ...
Its liek u dont have to figure out anything yourself anymore
Another update, i did not go to my girlfriend, what i normally do on wednesday. She went to holiday on ice. Thats a kind of dinner show they have here which involves a lot of skating on ice (obvious )
No stats on the guy, that is why i called. I felt he could also easily have AQ/AJ etc. I thought it was a minraise but now i see he just raised small. Smelled like a set though
I am ok with my play today, didnt had too much coolers and there were a lot of fish at my tables. Hope to play some tomorrow but i dont think this is going to happen. Really need to get laid, so i am also going to make that happen tomorrow !!
I am going to view my new house tomorrow, it is not ready yet but the kitchen merchant needs to measure some things so we need to be there.
I got about 25k hands in December. I wasted a lot of time bouncing around between NL and FL and I have arrived to the fact that NL is the way to go. I'm kind of angry at myself for wasting the time but at least now I know I'll stick to NL.
Lately I've been grinding the $6.50 SnGs on FTP. I have played a couple hundred so far and am at 11% ROI. I know I can get that up. I think I like SnGs more than cash. I seem to tilt a lot less since once you lose your SnG you're done, that's it. You just open up a new one and so on and so forth. I plan to grind this till around $1000 and then move to the $10s. I think I'm going to move from FTP to PS eventually though because PS has $15+1s. I get RB on FTP but it's really not all that much and I think PS has a better all around SnG selection.
As far as life goes I was busy with work but I just started a 9 day vacation. I'm leaving to go to New York tomorrow to visit friends and family. It's a pretty -EV move to go visit there right now because here in San Diego it's like 75 degrees today and in NY it's going to be like 15-25. I'm almost debating cancelling my flight. lol Since it's cold as fuck there right now I need to go shopping and get some "warmer" clothing. Living in SD the past couple years I own like nothing but shorts, polos, dres shirts, and a few pairs of jeans.
I'm gonna go to one of the largest malls around here called Fashion Valley and hopefully all of the winter season clothing isn't gone yet or else I'm fawked. When I get back I'll try to get in another 20-30 SnGs and then my flight leaves at 6AM tomorrow. Luckily when I come back from NY I have a couple more days of vacation left to just kick it here in SD and relax.
I hope everyones New Years is going well so far and good luck at the tables all.
So whats new with me, well I hit the 400k milestone by dec 1 so I was happy as well, and clearing that now. Had a fantastic year, so no complaints there. Plan to play at 200nl 6max on fulltilt in Feb. Also this semester in nusring we were studying community health so they placed me in an all girls high school and %80 of the girls have learning disabilities, but if you saw them physically in person you would not be able to see it. They all look normal but have the reasoning capacity of a grade 3 student so this should be a unique apportunity to learn how to assist their needs. Passed all the nursing courses last semester and hope to do the same for this coming one. Went sking over the winter break with my gf and she gave me a MR. TOWLIE KEY CHAIN for christmas!!
Heres some pics I took of christmas with my gf and Tom.
I am not sure how this blog will turn out but I figured I would jump on the band wagon and report my own career since I enjoy viewing other's. So just to try this out (I just bought PT3 last night) here is a graph.
Everyone else seems to be selling theirs here, so I will too. $50 and you send first over pokerstars or paypal please. I can send first, but only if you seem trustworthy, thanks.
Also, I don't check my LP very often so if I don't respond to a PM just add me on msn: KeeperRichard@hotmail.com
Thanks.
So Im just over a 1/4 of the way there to my challange of making $250. Today Ive already grinded out 1k hands becasue. I got up at like 5am this morning because last night I Was feeling pretty shitty and managed to pass out at 7 lol. Got a bit of a cold right now but hopefully I can beat it by the weekend so I can go out and check out this new citys night life lol.
Im on a little bit of a heater you could say lol. Not really though the play at this level is just so bad its rediculous. Im gonna work really hard to put in the hands so I can clear my bonus and move back up and start making some better money. Gotta stay discipline though that is the most important thing. Im not going to be taking any shots until I atleast have 400+BB for that level.
Im playing in a donkament right now so hopefully I can atleast make the money. Theres 5000 people in it... so its going to be a long day but really I got nothing better to do right now. My buddy won 1k playing a tourney last night which is pretty sweet. Good for him. HopefullyI can ge ta nice socre sometime soon. He loves tourneys though and plays them all the time. Im not much of a tourney guy... I think there is just to much luck in them and I cant stand playing for 3+hrs and not making any money. I guess thats why I play cashgames. I think I might try and play 1 tourney a day... we shall see lol.
My new class for this semester looks really weird, with the exception of a dear friend of mine, some girl Pinball made out with and some old chick that's still hawt there's like no people I recognize and like half of them has really funny-sounding names. I think a lot of them are like middle eastish, but not in the normal "Mohammed"/"Achmed"-way but rather in a "ok, let's just arrange a lot of letters randomly to make sure that no infidels could ever pronounce it!"-way.
Excessive facebook stalking leads me to believe that most people either are to old/boring/weird/non-internet-personish to have facebook or not-so-impressive. I even found a clear case of commuie-hippie-left-wing-random-girl and a case of "OMG there's just no way I'll ever like that person".
CHLWR-Girl looked a bit like my social science teacher. That's nice.
I'm so happy I'm taking a break after this semester. Just gotta figure out what I can study on the side while I'm busy making shitloads of money of poker. Suggestions?
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I had been surprised if the didnt ^^ 
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