New quest

Nothing interesting to report. Havent played in a week since I've lost all passion for this game. I know now I'll never be a success. I'm just hoping now I might be able to become moderately OK at NL25 or something to help supplement my income a little. Being back to the penny stakes feels like watching paint dry. There are no reads, there are no plays, theres nothing to this at all. This is not poker. It's just probabilities and statistics. Raise AA, hope it holds. Thats it. Had 3 winning sessions where my hands held. And then 1 losing session nullifying all profits, where my hands got sucked out on.

This is what I hate about NL2. You grind grind grind your way up blind by blind, spending hours just working your way up to +1 buyin, then BAM, you get sucked out on for your whole stack and have to start the entire process over. You never just lose 20BB's or something innocent. Because the only time you are putting money in the pot is when you have a good hand. Some fish always manages to suck out on you and youre right back where you started. It's totally imbalanced. The ratio of time spent to earn to time spent to lose is completely off the chart. If you were to graph earnings by the hour you would have a nice steady upward slope and then a huge downward spike. Your graph would look like a fuckin seismograph. This game SHOULD consist of moderate up's and downs. A nice graceful hilly graph, where you win some, then lose some. Not win a little, then lose a LOT.

How am I ever going to get through this fuckin limit.

Nothing special to update here since there is nothing fascinating about my play, still just grindin. I put in a few early sessions at FullRing but I was just playing too loose for my hands to hold as strong as they need to to win at FR. So I went back to 6max, and have been doin pretty well ever since. I've about tripled my bankroll which is something to be proud of, not like I havent done it before though. This time it just feels different since I actually intend to adhere to proper BR management. It feels better to be honest.

As far as HOW I'm playing, well I'm currently running 70BB/100 @ 2500 hands playing at 25/15/3.5 game. Basically, I raise all the good stuff, 77+ against limpers, and 67s+ if I'm first to act. If there are limpers, then I'm either folding or limping 22-66 and 56s-JTs. I pretty much pay absolutely no attention to flop texture and cbet almost 100% of my hands. It just really doesnt seem to matter, they're either calling or folding regardless, and their range is so wide they can pretty much hit any kind of flop, so theres nothing to put them on.

Now here comes the interesting part, I have been cbetting near 100% of turns as well, just double barreling my ass off, and with astounding success. I have absolutely no idea what this means and what theyre calling the flop with that they fold the turn with. Even if a draw complets I still cbet the turn, i just do it blindly. Occasionally I may chicken out, or something about villain stats puts me off, but most of the time I'm doing it and getting lots of folds. I've ran into a few players floating the flop with any ace, so I'm thinkin that may be part of it. They value ace rag sooooo much that they actually feel floating the flop with it is as good as peeling with a hand like AKs. Maybe theyre just tryin to see if I'll even bet the turn or not, to decide if I was bluffing. Obviously cbetting the turn can have great impact when you get lucky and spike your set/2pair to their top pair, so I suppose theres suckout value in it like that. So, unless the turn brings an ace, I'm double barreling all day. At least at NL2. As I recall, this tactic worked well through NL10, but failed miserably at NL25, which was the last limit I ever successfully played at with proper BR (before moving to FTP and getting flat out robbed by 1 outers and losing my entire roll on that rigged ass site).

When I hit NL25 I think I will have some major adjustments to make. For one, at NL2 my betting line consists of pot pot shove when I have "the nuts". Im pretty sure at NL25 I will definitely need to recalculate my bet sizes and do more of the 3/4pot line. I'll probably cbet a LOT less, and wont double barrel ever. I think this will be necessary for one of 2 reasons. Either the fish will be less fishy and actually show up with some hands, or the fish are just more aggro and willing to call down lighter and play back at you. It's tough to remember what I ran into back then, guess I should probably deep-analyze my HH's at that limit to see where I went wrong.

Lastly I'm finally getting a grasp on tilt. I have serious anger issues and have broken lots of shit, scare the crap out of my girlfriend, etc etc. I have actually recently considered legitimate anger management classes. I just get so pent up with rage that when i TRY not to vent, and just hold it inside, i get even crazier. I've come up with a few techniques to deal with this, and am working on it. I took a whole week off from poker due to suckout paranoia and life tilt, and now I've been kind of forcing myself to get back into it. I used to never play unless I felt good about playing, thinking that I need to be in a good mood to play. Now Im forcing myself to play just to get myself out there, and learning to control my emotions so I can grind when necessary rather than having some kooky schedule that ALLOWS me to play.

Starting BR - $25
Current BR - $60

gl but your strategy isn't very good my friend I hope you can figure out your anger issues for RL and poker

Bah, briefly tried a little SNG experiment, after reading about this Boku78 guy and his $10-$10k challenge. I ended up +1 buyin at the 3.40's lol. I dont think im particularly good at sng's so I dont know what makes me think I can crush them. If anything I think my late game strategy is pretty solid, simply because I know how to push and abuse shorter stacks, and they probably just dont know what to do as they havent read any strategies on this yet. My early game strat sucks though because I raise shit like AK 3xBB at level 1 and get 10 callers. I just spew too much playing the early levels because I hit TPTK type hands that wont hold. I dont really know what to do about this. If I shove every big hand preflop, well maybe some stupid fuck will call with AJo or 99, but my goal should usually be to make sensible bets and extract value, not just flip for it every time. Then again, if I can get a whole stack for value, maybe shoving is a good value bet afterall lol.

But I'll probably go back to grinding the pennies since I would have made way more today doing that instead. Plus I dont have to worry about tilting when someone calls with 9To out of desperation b/c theyre shortstacked and they think I'm stealing with 72o (or whatever the fuck goes through their minds when they call in an SNG)

So a whole week has gone by and I'm now playing NL10. It feels good to say the least, to see a steady increase. So far my worst downswings have been 4 BI's over 2 days. To me this kills, but to the poker community at large, this aint shit! I definitely need to let stuff like that just blow off my chest b/c losing 4 BI's shouldnt bother me as much as it does. I'd say its 50/50 between my own tilting and just good ole fashion 1 outer runner runner suckouts.

Now on to the interesting part (for me at least). I have still been playing pretty much the exact same style as I started with at NL2, just pounding away with big 5xBB+1 raises and full pot cbets and turn cbets and huge 4x raises against opponents who donk out (i rarely do THAT unless I'm pretty comfortable with my hand). And my success rate has been a little swingy. So I decided to go leak hunting, and I think right now my biggest leak is probably playing too many suited connectors. SC's have always been the bain of my existence, and I know the proper way to play them is to see cheap multi-way flops IP, but damn 9Ts looks so sexy UTG against a bunch of idiots playing 6max. I just kinda go for the donk cbet line to take it down, or on occasion flop massive. I think this is a leak though, and Im in far too many marginal situations to be profitable like this, and should really just stick to playing them in unraised pots in LP.

Finally, the last kicker to beating these bitches at MSNL is just pure hearty aggression. Goddamn these people call with suuuuuuch traaaaaaash it boggles the mind. I started tonights session playing 17/16/1.8 or so, because I just started giving up a lot of flops, and caught them raising preflop with J5s, and calling a 3bet!! Or other fuck nuts calling 3bets then donking out for .10 on the flop and turn. FUCK THAT SHIT. I knew my old style was pretty good, just too much spewing with SC's, so I literally said out loud to myself "time to turn up the gas" and started blasting away at these fuckers. Not bluffing, just giving them absolutely 0 credit for a hand, and making sure I still had a lot of EQ with mine, such as at least TPGK type stuff. My aggression quickly shot up to about 3.5 and I took in 2 BI's in like 80 hands. Mother fuckers, minraise me, GTFO! I know the existential minraise has certain meaning under certain circumstances, I just felt I was picking these bitches off at the right time.

Now I did get a couple of asshole mother fuckers check-raise shove on me with air and totally bombed my hand with a ludicrous runner runner flush and straight. So my session results ended with something like $2 profit and $14 EV, faggots.

But this is all well, because I learned just how important it is to stay mother fucking AGGRESSIVE.. My stats have always shown me to be aggressive, but I did it blindly before. In my last blog I mention i didnt even know what people were folding. Well now I have a better idea. They are folding AIR for one, and a lot of shit fuckin draws/bottom pair hands. I still think potting every street is getting the best value though. I temporarily set my preflop raise amt to 3BB's and postflop bettting to 75% of pot, and I did alright, got a few more showdowns than I cared for, but I can get so much more value with bigger raises because these mother fuckers call just the same. It also makes it a lot harder for villains to bluff me, since I'm making the pots so huge they kinda realize they have to have a hand to be check-raising me or 4betting me for example. In fact, a villain's 4bet on the flop with my raise amounts is basically allin, so I can clearly fold if I was just pushing AK or something. Basically it puts too much pressure on players to fuck around. Failing to raise 5BB's and betting 100% of pot is a total loss in value at these limits. Now I see a lot of forum talk about "you cant 3bet that hand if you intend to fold on the flop" or whatever. Every time I have just gone ahead and stuck my money in with QQ on a J85 flop I'm crushed every time. To me it seems obvious, villain is shoving, I think he has a made hand here, I'm screwed, yet LP.net logic states that I've already committed 50BB's, therefore I must commit the rest. Well I'm not advanced enough to pull these calculations in my head, so I'm going to be donking off a lot of money I suppose when I fold after such preflop/flop aggression, but it's all I can do to avoid getting stacked, when I am obviously behind at that point.

Anyway, with SC's being removed from my EP repertoire, my stats are now a much more healthy 20/19/2.55-3, which I think will probably yield much better results from here on out. Hell, this may even work well for NL50 and beyond.

Oh, other note I forgot to mention: When fish check-raise allin, it is ALWAYS total trash. Either stone cold bluff, no draw, nothin whatsoever, they saw gus hansen do it on tv or something, or they just spaz out with some total shit pair and they dont know what to do. For instance, you put a weird line on them, and they get confused calling with their pathetic bullshit, and they hit bottom pair with like K5o. For some reason they suddenly freak out, dont know how to play the hand anymore, see they have a pair, probably think youre bluffing or something and are going to school you hardcore by shoving and then telling themselves coyly "I knew it, he doesnt have anything". I wonder if there is a way to exploit this idiocy, because they actually do it A LOT. I just havent quite figured out the exact circumstances that lead to them check-raising allin. Ultimately it's probably unnecessary to induce these kinds of bluffs out of fish since it requires too much thinking, and you can just as easily win a few BI's valuetowning them all day anyway. Why wait for one spectacular bluff catch, when in 20 hands you can just bleed them raising your standard line and cbetting anyway.

And donk betting the same smallish bet regardless of pot size. When some fish limps calls your raise OOP, and flops a random pair, a lot of times they will lead out for a minbet or 2BB minish-bet. They ALWAYS have a random pair here. For instance, fish limps A7s, you raise, and flops comes 3T7. They will fire out very weak, and the bet is entirely indicative of their hand strength. Thing is, they will NEVER fold it either, so if you had 89s or KQs or something, your best bet is to just take the cheap draw to hit your overcard and call. If you raise them, they will call pretty quickly, and then make the SAME EXACT bet on the turn again! Thats when their hand goes faceup. Another 2BB donkbet on the turn, even if it means 1/16 of the pot size, they dont look at that. In their minds their thought process is "well I kinda sorta like this hand, I could be beat, but how often does he have JJ+? I cant just check my pair, the law of poker says you MUST bet if you have something, but I dont want to get too invested, so here, I'll make a 2x sized minbet..... oh wow I got reraised, I wonder what that means, CALL.... well I still have my pair of 7's on the turn, but the pot could get even bigger now, so lets keep it cheap and 2x minbet again"....

Sigh...

lol. I enjoyed reading the rant. So much is so true

AT NL10, you should be betting close to pot all day, because fish will call with a shit pair or a draw, fold, or raise with top pair. If you fire out another cbet on turn, most fish will fold like a cheap wendyhouse. Also a fast minraise usually means bullshit, and they just fed up with you cbetting pot bets all day, that they think they can bullshit u with their minraise cuz they saw it on TV. I will nearly always re raise a min raise (quite heavily, not another min raise!) and they usually fold like pussys. Of course its advisable to actually have something here

Just one more note to further emphasize the fishy check-raise allin on flop move I've been running into a lot lately. I decided to tilt call a couple of douche bags doing this with hands like A8s/AKo etc. And now the read is rock solid, the check-raise allin on flop by these 50vpip fish is just as I described earlier, except I can tweak it a little bit. It actually seems to be just a rag pair. For instance faggot calls with K6o in the BB, board comes T65 rainbow, he checks, you cbet, he shoves his entire stack in, even if it's 100BB's. I "sucked out" once on one of these fags making the call with ace high, although Im not even sure it counts as a suckout b/c as far as im concerned, these fish can go fuck themselves making plays like that. Im still not quite sure what theyre reasoning is. For all intents and purposes it must be a bluff, because anything that calls has them crushed. But they really only do it with some kind of bottom pair, so it seems like a bluff with a little bit of insurance maybe? Like they think they might get lucky and hit 2 pair and the result in their mind is some gay ass semi-bluff? I guess the ultimate question is, should I be calling these bitches without a made hand? From now on any mid PP or above is getting a call from these fags, just not sure if big overcards warrant the call or not.

Conversely, when fish shove later streets, then it usually means some kind of hand. For instance faggot limp calls 8xBB raise with 79o, flops middle pair. He calls your cbet naturally and turns 2 pair, then donk shoves allin. He hit 2 pair every time. But this is exceedingly rare so the biggest worry is just these idiots check-raising their entire stacks on the flop.

edit: rage over

i enjoy your blog, keep it up :D

MORE NOTES: Villains with high check-raise percentages arent doing it as a bluff, theyre doing it because it's their signature move. Any time they have a big hand they're going for the check-raise. You will see this often of players in around the 25-35% CR ratio. ESPECIALLY when they are check-raising a strong amount. The fishy min-checkraise is also usually the nuts, but sometimes a bizarre draw. Regardless you're priced in to calling this every time if you have outs to improve. However the value check-raise is basically AA/KK/set on any flop.

Now I havent had a chance to test this theory, at least I cant remember if I have, but converse to this check-raise tell, is the villain who has like 0% CR ratio. I suspect this is usually a semi-bluff combo draw. Mainly because I cant really imagine what a proper villain would be doing this with if not the nuts. But I just cant remember if I've been 3betting these people or not, so this is still up for investigation. However I believe this to be the case because if a villain quite simply never check-raises, then checkraising is probably not in his repertoire. It's just not something he ever does. If he has a draw he'll either lead into it and check turn, or c/c to hit.

Ok correction, villains who never check-raise are probably employing it on a case by case condition. Likely against aggro villains who they are trying to level into tilt shoving or worse, spew calling. I dunno actually but for now I am not going to fuck with anyone check-raising me. I say this because I had a few good opportunities to checkraise today, and I never really CR. I did it against some aggro 64/47 players and while it certainly shut them down nicely, the point is I never CR, and I did it there, and I did it with the best hand, and I only chose to do it against these certain players. So that is likely the case of most others who do it too.

Took another shot at NL25, got sucked out on for 2 buyins. Dumb 65% vpip fish limping ace rag, flopping bottom pair, and stacking off to my overpairs, hitting an ace on the river. I just love how I can raise them in the SB on the flop, they RE-FUCKING-RAISE me like on a JQ4 board with their fucking pair of 4's, then i SHOVE ALL FUCKING IN, and they fucking CALLLL?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?! Are you fucking kidding me?

So I drop back to NL10, and had 2 more fucking opportunities to further prove my point that when underolled fish who buy-in for random amounts check-raise you allin, they have ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY NOTHING. NOOOOOOOTHING. Fucking AIIIRRRR BALLLL bluff attempts. I dont know why the fuck they do this. I guess it makes them feel like a baller to bluff so much. Of course each of these faggot cocksucking cunts sucked out on me either catching gutshot straights, runner runner straights/flushes, or just some bullshit faggoty rivered pair to beat my PP that I raised with in the first place.

Note: when anybody, TAG, LAG, donk or otherwise, checks down to the river then makes some silly overbet like $2.25 into a $1 pot, they are trying to recoup lost value from a failed attempt at slowplaying. They were looking to c/r but nobody took the bait, so it is a last ditch effort to collect on all the value they missed trying to slowplay.