I've decided I'm almost certainly going to dedicate May entirely to tournaments as some sort of challenge. Hopefully it will turn out to be an interesting experiment, though I fear I will end up doing my brains. I've heard that Pokerstars may change the times of the SCOOP events to make them more friendly to the non-US market (makes sense obv) so that would be great too and make my life a bit easier as I won't have to have a completely ridiculous sleeping schedule (the current schedule includes some events that start at 1am GMT, though I probably wouldn't have played these ones).
Yesterday I played a £300+30 event at the marina casino in Brighton where not a lot happened except me winning small pots and losing big ones. I probably played too tight considering how nitty my first table was. The 1/2 cash game was much more interesting where I managed to turn my £300 into about £1k in the first 5 hands. On hand 3 I raised to £20 after a couple of limpers with a random hand and got a bit of an angry stare down from a guy in the big blind before he and everyone else folded. Next hand I picked up A8s and after one limper I raised to £10 and then same guy now in SB 3-bet to £25, everyone else folded and I called. He ended up 3-barreling a 689r24 board, shoving on the river. I didn't buy it and called and he showed J4o. He said it was a terrible call. I disagreed.
This hand was pretty cool because it was almost entirely based on body language reads. The way the board ran out and his bet sizing was pretty indicative of an overpair, and I'm sure he is capable of playing aces like this. But based on the previous hand where he wasn't happy with me squeezing, plus his uncomfortable manner as he made his bets made me decide to call. I think players from an internet background don't study opponents enough in general, and it's something I am going to concentrate more on in the future. It makes a lot of sense because when playing live against new opponents, you won't play long enough to gain a big enough sample size to judge how they play different types of hands so you need all the extra information you can get. Also, in big decisions such as all-in river bluffs, the live players range is going to be incredibly polorised and therefore so is their internal emotions. It's unlikely this massive polorisation isn't going to manifest itself outwardly to some extent. Most live players also don't actually attempt to keep their body language consistent each time they act.
Anyway, hand 5 I ended up getting in a 3-way all-in with JJ vs 44 vs 6To on J646 (lol!) to get me up to about £1k. Unfortunately after that I pretty much lost every pot. The funniest was when a guy raised blind utg and and other guy in mp called and I made it £30 with AQs in the co. Utg guy called and mp guy folded and we saw flop of Q47tt. He checks, I bet £40 and he calls. Turn came To and it went check check. River came Ko and he snap bet £100, I snap called and he showed K6o. This guy was splashing around, enjoying himself and making the game fun (and more profitable) so I didn't mind losing to him.
I ended the cash game session with £80 profit, wins a win I suppose.
Monday 25 April 2011
Wednesday 20 April 2011
21st April
Couldn't think of a blog title today so came up with that ^ riveting one. There's been a lot more interesting things going on in the poker world recently which I'm sure my loyal readers are aware of. It's really difficult to know what to think as noone really knows what is going to happen in the short and long term. My thoughts are that the long term future is bright if online poker becomes fully regulated in the US and in the short term all non-US poker players won't be too harmed by losing the US market. I feel a bit sorry for the american pros, though they really should have made contingencies for such events because the legal situation with online poker has been so tenuous there in recent years.
It definitely makes you think about what you would do if poker came to an ubrupt end like it has in the US. I certainly don't want it to happen, though it wouldn't worry me too much as I have a degree and money saved up. I also feel like I've learnt a lot of skills through poker that would be useful in other industries, not that you could put that on a CV of course.
Poker is still going pretty well though I'm not putting in a lot of volume. I'd quite like to get to 30k hands by the end of the month though this seems unlikely at my current rate. I'm thinking of doing a whole month in May of MTTs. I have thought about doing this for a while and May seems like a good month to try as I have two live tournaments lined up and there is the SCOOP on Stars. Though I expect my hourly to be significantly less that it would be in cash games I think it will be an interesting experiment, and there's always the chance that I could run hot and bink a massive score.
Check out this multi-talented dude....
It definitely makes you think about what you would do if poker came to an ubrupt end like it has in the US. I certainly don't want it to happen, though it wouldn't worry me too much as I have a degree and money saved up. I also feel like I've learnt a lot of skills through poker that would be useful in other industries, not that you could put that on a CV of course.
Poker is still going pretty well though I'm not putting in a lot of volume. I'd quite like to get to 30k hands by the end of the month though this seems unlikely at my current rate. I'm thinking of doing a whole month in May of MTTs. I have thought about doing this for a while and May seems like a good month to try as I have two live tournaments lined up and there is the SCOOP on Stars. Though I expect my hourly to be significantly less that it would be in cash games I think it will be an interesting experiment, and there's always the chance that I could run hot and bink a massive score.
Check out this multi-talented dude....
Monday 11 April 2011
Robustooooo
So I felt at the end of March I was playing quite badly as I was suffering from some winners tilt and I had a feeling I was due some run bad after running above expectation in February and March. This duly arrived at the start of April where I had some bad nl and plo sessions. I'm not sure of my expectation in the plo games but I ran quite a lot below all in ev so that sucked. No limit wasn't going that bad until a day where I managed to lose 13 buyins at $2/4 and a decent chuck at $5/10 which obviously ended in a pretty crappy day. I wasn't too bothered by this loss because the big hands were mostly standard (losing waaay too many all ins and coolers) except for a couple of bad decisions I made towards the end of the session where wasn't playing my best, which I can excuse myself for. Here was my exit hand for the session was is quite interesting...
CHECK CO
BET Button, $817,66
CALL CO, $717,00
SHOWS Button
Button wins the pot of $100,66
CO wins the pot of $1 886,00
I decided to flat the button with aces because it's something I generally mix in with 3-betting anyway, but also because the pf raiser was unlikely to call a 3-bet oop light and iirc, the blinds were quite squeeze happy at this point. The CO villain could 4-bet light, though obviously he would fold all his bluffs to my 5-bet shove and I was feeling greedy and wanted to win more than that. Anyway, the flop came somewhere in between wet and dry and he checked. This was odd because the flop is one where he can bet his air and get a lot of folds, as well as hit a lot of good bluff cards on the turn or river that can get me to fold my marginal holdings. By checking, he's giving me the initiative if he does have some sort of weak hand with some showdown value (what on earth could that be?) and is possibly going to have to call three barrels on a board that's only going to get more scary. It's possible that he could slowplay something big like 5x or 44 but that's an odd line that I didn't expect him to take.
I think I could check here, as I really didn't understand what he could c/c with that I have beat (and could get future streets of value from) but I was already a bit confused and just decided to bet, to not let the hand get any more weird. He calls. By this time I was more confused so really won't try to attempt to think of ranges of hands he could take this line with. I just decided my hand was good a very large % of the time and I'm not repping a lot so the villain may decide to call down light.
I decided to overbet the river as I had done it quite recently vs the same villain and he folded so he might get curious this time, as well as the fact that the I'm repping very little and the hand has being played strangely, which will add to his curiosity level. He ends up calling with the 62s ftw. Not going to attempt to analyse his play except to say I think he played the river extremely well. Pf, flop and turn are up for debate though.
Luckily the downswing didn't last that long as I played a pkr reg the next day on three tables of $5/10 and managed to win 11 buyins and put me back in profit for the month. Obviously I ran very well to win so much in what was a two hour match, but I think this reg made a few mistakes which helped me a lot. He understandably wasn't too happy after the match and decided to berate me in any way he could in the chat box which was a shame. When I met this person (albeit briefly) in real life he seemed like a nice enough fella, so it's a testament to the potential of internet poker to infuriate people that it can turn someone like him into an angry, swear-heavy insult machine . I guess it will be awkward if we meet again.
I ran hot again today so here's my robusto graph for April.....
I managed to ship my PKR Live seat last week too in a satellite so will definitely be playing that. The last one was a lot of fun so looking forward to it.
In terms of non-poker stuff a few things have been going on. Had my birthday recently which was okay I guess, spurs losing 4-0 certainly didn't add to the fun factor of the evening! Oh well, just have to win 5-0 at White Hart Lane.
I also decided to invest some of the money I had in a crappy savings account into something that will hopefully give me better returns. I have to trust the financial adviser I consulted with to a certain extent, because they are supposed to be experts but I'm happy with the decisions I made because they allow me to access my money with relative ease and without heavy penalties if I need it in the near future. This is useful in case I want to invest in property or something.
The Brighton marathon was on this Sunday. No, I did not run but my Mum and some other people I know entered. Mum managed to run it in 3 hours 51 minutes which is really good, especially considering it was a hot day. I never got the running bug. I didn't enjoy it at school so had no desire to pursue it after. I understand the health benefits of it, as well as the great feeling you must get of completing something like a marathon, but I just don't see how the punishment and boredom of the seemingly endless training is worth it. It's easy for people like my mum because she actually enjoys the training. I think this is the case anyway, or maybe she hates the feeling of not training....?
Hand info:
| Date: | Thursday, April 07, 10:10:22 ET 2011 | |
| Type: | Cash Games | |
| Game: | Hold'em NL | |
| Table: | Paris | |
| Blinds: | $5,00/10,00 |
Table info:
Seat 1: UTG ($1 311,80)
Seat 2: UTG+1 ($1 000,00)
Seat 3: CO ($937,00)
Seat 4: Button ($1 037,66)
Seat 5: SB ($2 012,00)
Seat 6: BB ($1 938,66)
Seat 2: UTG+1 ($1 000,00)
Seat 3: CO ($937,00)
| Dealer |
| Posts small blind $5,00 |
| Posts big blind $10,00 |
Dealt to Button
River: (Pot: $455,00)
CHECK CO
BET Button, $817,66
CALL CO, $717,00
Showdown:
SHOWS CO SHOWS Button
Button wins the pot of $100,66
CO wins the pot of $1 886,00
I decided to flat the button with aces because it's something I generally mix in with 3-betting anyway, but also because the pf raiser was unlikely to call a 3-bet oop light and iirc, the blinds were quite squeeze happy at this point. The CO villain could 4-bet light, though obviously he would fold all his bluffs to my 5-bet shove and I was feeling greedy and wanted to win more than that. Anyway, the flop came somewhere in between wet and dry and he checked. This was odd because the flop is one where he can bet his air and get a lot of folds, as well as hit a lot of good bluff cards on the turn or river that can get me to fold my marginal holdings. By checking, he's giving me the initiative if he does have some sort of weak hand with some showdown value (what on earth could that be?) and is possibly going to have to call three barrels on a board that's only going to get more scary. It's possible that he could slowplay something big like 5x or 44 but that's an odd line that I didn't expect him to take.
I think I could check here, as I really didn't understand what he could c/c with that I have beat (and could get future streets of value from) but I was already a bit confused and just decided to bet, to not let the hand get any more weird. He calls. By this time I was more confused so really won't try to attempt to think of ranges of hands he could take this line with. I just decided my hand was good a very large % of the time and I'm not repping a lot so the villain may decide to call down light.
I decided to overbet the river as I had done it quite recently vs the same villain and he folded so he might get curious this time, as well as the fact that the I'm repping very little and the hand has being played strangely, which will add to his curiosity level. He ends up calling with the 62s ftw. Not going to attempt to analyse his play except to say I think he played the river extremely well. Pf, flop and turn are up for debate though.
Luckily the downswing didn't last that long as I played a pkr reg the next day on three tables of $5/10 and managed to win 11 buyins and put me back in profit for the month. Obviously I ran very well to win so much in what was a two hour match, but I think this reg made a few mistakes which helped me a lot. He understandably wasn't too happy after the match and decided to berate me in any way he could in the chat box which was a shame. When I met this person (albeit briefly) in real life he seemed like a nice enough fella, so it's a testament to the potential of internet poker to infuriate people that it can turn someone like him into an angry, swear-heavy insult machine . I guess it will be awkward if we meet again.
I ran hot again today so here's my robusto graph for April.....
I managed to ship my PKR Live seat last week too in a satellite so will definitely be playing that. The last one was a lot of fun so looking forward to it.
In terms of non-poker stuff a few things have been going on. Had my birthday recently which was okay I guess, spurs losing 4-0 certainly didn't add to the fun factor of the evening! Oh well, just have to win 5-0 at White Hart Lane.
I also decided to invest some of the money I had in a crappy savings account into something that will hopefully give me better returns. I have to trust the financial adviser I consulted with to a certain extent, because they are supposed to be experts but I'm happy with the decisions I made because they allow me to access my money with relative ease and without heavy penalties if I need it in the near future. This is useful in case I want to invest in property or something.
The Brighton marathon was on this Sunday. No, I did not run but my Mum and some other people I know entered. Mum managed to run it in 3 hours 51 minutes which is really good, especially considering it was a hot day. I never got the running bug. I didn't enjoy it at school so had no desire to pursue it after. I understand the health benefits of it, as well as the great feeling you must get of completing something like a marathon, but I just don't see how the punishment and boredom of the seemingly endless training is worth it. It's easy for people like my mum because she actually enjoys the training. I think this is the case anyway, or maybe she hates the feeling of not training....?
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