Been awhile

I haven't posted in some time, but I haven't really played much either. I've been very busy lately, and sadly poker had to take a back seat. I finally sat down for 45 minutes the other day when one of my friends was playing a $.10/$.25 game he told me I had to get in on. I sat and the table was full of fish. I got into a big hand and was an idiot trying to push someone off of a percieved weak top pair holding, which was actually nothing on the flop, flush draw on the turn, completed flush on river. So I gave away $25 there, and I wasn't happy about it. Hoped that maybe I'd get some metagame out of it, but it's doubtful, even at that level. Well I hit my own flush and won a nice pot back off the same player, then took the fish to my right with a big stack, doubling through him to put me up $25 for my 45 minutes. Not too shabby at all. It was AKd hit an ace on the flop after raising on the button against the fish limping from the cutoff. He checked, I bet pot he called. He led out the turn of a blank, and I raised pot, he thought and called. The river was another blank, and he checked, I only had another $8.50 behind and the pot was big, over $70, so I shoved, and he types in the chat box, "Ugh".



Music to my ears, I know he's beat and he's likely to call. He does call and mucks A7o. Nice win there.



On to today's play of the normal $.02/$.05.



I'm feeling lazy, so here's Poker Tracker for the day. Played 45 minutes today.










Got at a few tables with a player VeilSide, and man I have to play with him more. He's down $25 today, and is absolutely convinced that I limp with junk in early position and raise with junk on the button. The way he played against me, I believe it too. I hit top pair with AK on a flop of AQ4. Got Veily there all in for $5 and he had Q9, sadly spiking a 9 on the river for a two pair. Oh well though, I got the best of him today so that's fine. I wouldn't consider my stats loose though, lol.

After writing this, I had to check my position stats, so here they are in my defense.

Position
(# off the button) VP$IP
Button 14.29%
1 13.79%
2 11.32%
3 10.81%
BB 8.20%
SB 24.59%

So as I suspected, my play is positionally aware, albeit not that much so.

Day I'm mad about, but I ended up

Man, I was planning on getting a lot of time in, but it's 11:40 now and I'm tired and only got to play about 2 hours. First hour went right on pace, ended up about $10 for the hour.

2nd hour, wow. Tried to be amazing, but ended up sucking and costing me $3. Started off slow, not hitting many hands, people having better. I flopped a set of 6's and someone else flopped a set of jacks, which felt like a victory for me, cuz I didn't get stacked. The guy was afraid I had a bigger full house than he did cuz queens paired the board.

After I got my 12 tables up, it was my usual thing. Kicked a lot of ass, and from being $5 in the hole, tore it up all the way to $16.50, showing a profit on my hour of just $6.50, but it's something. I started closing the tables down, and lo and behold this hand came to me. The biggest pot of the day for me, and it was beautiful.

So the flop's nothing great, but I spike a straight on the turn and I know he doesn't ever see it. The way he played through the turn I put him on a set, and shoved it, very confident of a call which I got. The river paired the board and I was left praying for a big overpair, but he had the set that just was turned into a boat. Sweeeeet.

Minus $5




So now I've shut up shop, it blows that I'm only up $11.5, but at least I made a little bit for the hour. I only have one table left and in the sb versus the bb I have Q4 and flop 2 pair, he has AQ and pays me on every street for a nice little win, all right cool. Now I fold till the blinds hit me and call it a night. But something happened before those blinds came, and it was the only pot of the night larger than the previous one.



This flop came, and the pot was already sizeable, about $3. The remaining stacks against me were slightly under the pot, and slightly over so I just shoved it in, fine with taking it down, and definitely fine with someone coming for a ride into kingtown. I even goated the table a little by typing, "Go away!" into the chat box. The idiot totally calls with top pair ten kicker, ha ha ha ha hah. I type in after he calls, "KK" and he responds, "oh no". Oh yes suckka, oh yes! Then the super awesome river slams his 10 down, and hands him the $12 pot. Freaking awesome, I've now lost money for the hour, and only ended up $7 for the day.


My dad would love this one, because he'd get to tell me, "That's why it's called gambling." God I hate when he says that, but maybe that's what I should tell others, because I don't share bad beat stories with him anymore. So there's my bitching/psychiatry session.

Now for the good. I kicked ass, really did. I got unlucky at the end there, extremely so, but that's the thing about this game, it can kick you in the nuts when you're up, and sometimes it'll do you right when you're way behind. My aggression was good. I'm happy with it. I'm now running about 800 hands per hour, and here are my stats for today.

Ah, I already closed photoshop, and my computer isn't happy right now, so I will have to come back and insert that image. For now, here's the day:

Total Hands: 1,553

VP$IP: 8.95%
PF Raise: 5.02%

Folded SB to steal: 93.33%
Folded BB to steal: 88.89%
Att steal blinds: 8.65%

Amount Won: $7.30
BB/100 Hands: 4.70

Went to showdown: 27.16%
Won at SD: 59.09%

Flop AF: 5.17
Turn AF: 2.60
River AF: 2.00

Total AF: 3.52

So I've definitely established my tight-aggressive strategy, and it is working. People are still throwing money at me left and right, it's just very aggravating when the 2 biggest pots I get into I lose when I'm a giant favorite. That really annoys me, but I know in this case that is purely luck, and out of my control. Sometimes I'm worried I'm doing something wrong, but I got it in there as a huge favorite both times, so I am happy with that. If I continue to make good decisions, then the money will follow.

Gah, not fun!

This session just killed me. Haven't looked at results yet but it was bad. Off the bat I lost about a $5 pot, and I just couldn't seem to have my hands hold up. I got it in a few spots where I was a favorite for some sizeable pots, but most of them went the wrong way like this one.







It seems the more I get players to put in money bad, those are the hands I'm getting outdrawn on. I dont' know if I'm doing something wrong with the way I'm going about it or what, but that has to stop soon. I had several hands very similar to this with flush draws and 5 outers getting it all in and drawing out. That hurt.







Then this hand comes about, and I thought for sure all his money was mine. I'm guessing he just didn't have crap but felt like calling my cbet on the flop for no particular reason. Okay, time to check the damage, this probably isn't pretty. I'm guessing I lost about 50-60 big bets.







Here it is, lost 53.8 big bets. I guess I had a good feel for it. Ughh, here's numbers.

Dealt 585 hands and saw flop:
-56 of 113 in big blind (49%)
-12 of 114 in small blind(10%)
-24 of 358 in others (6%)
-Total of 92 of 585 (15%)

Pots won at showdown - 11 of 25 (44%)
Pots won without showdown: 55

BB/100: -9.20
BB/hour: -52.1

Going to play some $1.20 sng's to grab some FPP and blow off steam

Putting in some quality .02/.05 time

So I've decided my delving into .05/.10 has come to an abrupt halt. The play is worse than the .02/.05 in that there's much more bluffing and also calling with hands that shouldn't stay. I'm not sure if it's this extra aggression, but something is causing me to lose when I play at that level. I'm down a freaking ton. Total something like $50. Luckily, I have .02/.05 to make up for it.

Here's what happend at my .05/.10 play. Combining 2 session of data here.

Total Time Played: 60 minutes

Dealt 498 Hands and saw flop:

-40 of 91 times in big blind (44%)

-7 of 90 times in small blind(8%)

-30 of 317 in others (9%)

-Total of 77 of 498 hands (15%)

Pots won at showdown - 9 of 19 (47%)

Pots won without showdown: 32

BB/100: -9.99

$/100: -$2.00

$/hour: -$9.95

Just getting crushed. I'm losing at these tables as bad as I'm winning at .02/.05 and I don't know why. Instead of worrying about it, I'm just going to stick to .02/.05 for now.

Here's how .02/.05 went for the last few sessions:

Hands dealt: 2406

Hours played: 5.33

BB/100: 22.22

BB/Hour: 100.21

$/Hour: $10.02

So I'm going with the old, if it's not broke motto. Here's some hands that caught my attention today.

First hand of the day. Lost $5 with KQ to Q4. Pure awesomeness.

This hand I really expected to take it down preflop. When he called I figured I was toast, but ended up having 99. Crazy call on his part, but it worked for him. I only had ace high.

This was just amazing. for whatever reason I got a feeling that he really thought he was good on that river bet, so I just shoved it all in there with the stone cold nuts and he called with two pair. Huge pot, and just awesome.

Want to punch this session in the face

Okay, I haven't even looked at my stats yet. But that was so gross. I stuck to my usual plan, but had some just stupid stupid beats that really got me steaming. I had to stop playing after 45 minutes, because it really got to me. Here's a little sample of what I'm talking about.

Here I get a free flop from the big blind and hit two pair. I'm happy with that, and hoping someone has a jack and will pay me off. I get one customer and we to to the turn. I bet about the pot, confident that any jack will call me. He's a good fishy and the river pairs the turn, so now the hand I want him to have is beating me, super. He leads out for 1/6 of the pot, and of course I'm calling that every time just in case something crazy happend, but he shows QQ and a now better 2 pair. That sucked, but bottom 2 is a tricky hand to play, and I did well with it.

This one stung a bit more, but again I saw it coming a mile away, and my opponent's nature to slow play big hands saved me any extra money, but god is this frustrating. I limp with 6's utg and flop a boat. But even better than that, 2 aces hit the board. In these games aces almost always will take a flop, so I'm confident that somebody just hit trips and is looking to hand their stack to me. Once again, the turn and river come the same card, only this time Q,Q, and now that ace that I'm sure is out there has a bigger boat. Luckily the guy wasn't good enough to value bet his hand, he figured since I fired twice, I'd be sure to bet again and then he'd spring his amazing check-raise all in trap on me. This is the one that really got me cooking, gahhhr.

Here's the numbers from my playing.

Dealt 340 hands and saw flop:

-41 of 62 times in big blind (66%)

-5 of 63 times in small blind(7%)

-11 of 215 in others (5%)

Total of 57 out of 340 (16%)

Pots won at showdown: 7 of 11 (63%)

Pots won without showdown: 23

I'm about to see how much I made for that session. I wanted to write this before knowing, so that my results didn't get in the way of what I was feeling about how I just played. I really think I'm going to have won a bit, but I'm not sure how much. I'm going to guess about 40 big bets for the session. Time to find out.

I actually did quite a bit better, 57.7 big bets. Almost a full 50% more than my estimate. I really did think I was doing all right, but I was so frustrated from those counterfeited hands, that I needed a break. So I still averaged 76.9 big bets per hour for that session. That's great news for me really. I wish I had poker tracker numbers on these sessions, because I'm doing great.

In 100 minutes today, I've bumped my bankroll up 239.1 big bets. I'm salivating at the thought of .10/.25 being this easy to play, lol.

Through my first 1500 hands and 3.5 hours of play at .02/.05 I'm making:

23bb/100 and 99.6bb/hour which translates to $2.30/100 and $9.96/hour.

Even if my numbers were halved when moving up to .10/.25, I'd be doing

12.5bb/100 and 49.8bb/hour which would be $6.25/100 and $24.90/hour. Those are some nice looking numbers right now, especially being that those limits are only the next tier up. A little excited about that.

Starting to understand NL

I haven't played too much today, as I've been feeling tired and have had much of my time devoted to other things lately. I needed to play a bit though, so I got on for just under an hour, 55 minutes to be exact. I feel that I've really begun to refine my new style, and the results are beyond anything I hoped for. I'm cutting loose from most of my marginal hands, top pair decent kicker, etc, and minimizing losses, probably giving up multiple pots that I'm ahead in. But in the process, I'm cleaning people out when I have a strong hand. It seems counterintuitive, however I don't believe many at these levels are paying much attention, if any at all to opponnents.

I ended up making 181.40 big bets in 55 minutes, which averages to $19.79 an hour, and it wasn't like I never lost. I layed down several hands that I'd invested over $1 in, and lost a few pots at showdown, although my overall win % at showdown is far greater than it formerly was. I didn't take note of many hands throughout the session because I'm at 8 tables for most of it, and when a game is bad I'm focusing on closing that one and looking for the next.

I do know that I won 2 large pots quickly on with sets, one with JJ as an overpair versus a flush draw, and another with T6 in the big blind. Flop came 779 Turn [K] River [8] and my opponent had A7. Big ones I lost I don't know, because I really won almost all of them, lol. Let's take a look at the numbers and I'll see if anything comes to mind.

Dealt 430 hands and saw flop:
-43 of 81 times in big blind (53%)
-7 of 83 times in small blind(8%)
-14 of 266 in others (5%)

Total of 64 out of 430 (14%)

Pots won at showdown: 9 of 12 (75%)
Pots won without showdown: 32

BB/100: 42.19
BB/hour: 197.9

Yeah, I don't remember the ones I lost at all, which is fine with me. I didn't have any set versus set or anything like that, so nothing too memorable. Very happy with this session, and hopefully when I get back on a little later, I'll reproduce these type of results.

Another solid hour

All right, that was exactly what I was hoping for. I got in 45 more minutes of play, but more importantly took a pretty bad beat in the process for an $11 (110 big bet) pot. Here's how that hand played out.

















So he did end up with 9 outs and a 4:1 shot with one card to come, but did he really have to hit that after I'm sure all he thought was, "I have top pair......Call"? Lol. So, with the beat factored in, the session panned out this way.


Dealt 348 Hands and Saw Flop:

-26 of 64 times in big blind (40%)
-2 of 67 times in small blind(2%)
-12 of 217 in other positions (5%)
-Total of 40 of 348 (11%)


Pots won at showdown
-4 of 8 (50%)


Pots won without showdown
-25


I took 40 flops and won 29 of them. That's 72.5% of pots played I'm winning either by taking it down or winning the showdown. That's pretty good, and I wish I had a few more numbers in regards to what happend after I was the preflop aggressor.

So back to the point, I won 13.59BB/100 which translated to 63.1BB/hour after that big pot was taken away. So it seems as long as I only make 1 donk play or get 1 suckout per hour, I'll maintain my winrate. Of course this is only over 800 hands, but it's looking good so far. Probably not playing today, but sunday I'm going to be logging some hours.

Wow, just checking out the post right now, I realized that he had so many outs with that hand. After calling the flop with top pair that turn card gave him a double belly buster, not a single gutshot. So he was running 13 outs and was down to a 2.5:1 shot, so 28.5% of the time he'll fill it. Still a little worse than A4 beating AK all in preflop, so I'm going to say I'm justified in defining this hand as a bad beat even given his massive number of outs.

Looks like it's .02/.05

Moved up to the $.02/$.05 tables with the same super tight strategy, and it paid. Would have paid more but I didn't let go of top pair with guess what? KQo, lol. I got minraised on the flop, and put the guy on a set. He didn't bet it hard, but extracted from me every street, and took about $2.50 extra, with a flopped set of 6's. I was mad at myself for doing that, especially since I'd just won a nice pot by flopping top 2 pair with AQ.

I won another nice pot as I was closing games out with a flopped set of 8's. Here's what the session ended up looking like.

Dealt 402 hands
Saw flop:
-42 of 74 times in big blind (56%)
-7 of 74 times in small blind (9%)
-19 of 254 times in other (7%)

Total of 68 of 402 times (16%)

Pots won at showdown - 7 of 15 (46%)
Pots won w/out showdown - 36

I played for one hour, making 62.20 big bets, and 15.47 big bets per 100 hands. I'm definitely happy with that, and .02/.05 is going to be my home for awhile. I'm sticking to this extreme nit style at least for now. I don't see any need to expand upon it if I'm beating the game for 15.5BB/100. If I hadn't donked off on that one hand, which I easily should have avoided, I would have been at 21.7BB/100, that's not too bad. If I kept that kind of winning up, which seems very very very possible, I'd even say likely, than my bankroll could be about to experience some serious growth.

Sticking at 15.5BB/100 would get my roll up $311 a week if I could make 50 hours a week. Of course I haven't gotten a streak of beats today, but I truly think the beats aren't going to come as often with this style, due mainly to the nature of style itself. I'm not taking many flops to begin with. Pocket pairs, suited aces, and AK/AQ. Even if I hit top pair, I'm not getting tangled in pots too much. I got caught once, but I won't be doing that in the future. I'm generally cbetting when I raised preflop, which is AK/AQ and pp's 88+ and then leading out/checking to trap when I hit sets. I'm not getting into too many marginal situations, again because I'm playing solid cards.

Anyway, I'm eager to see how this plays out over a more longterm time. I want to get a few thousand hands into poker tracker with this nittyness, and see how it's doing. In all, a very encouraging start to the first changes implemented due to poker tracker analysis.

Call me Mr. Nit

Trying an experiment today. After going through my poker tracker numbers, I've made more than all the money I've won while playing pocket pairs and AK. Actually twice the amount that I've won. The reason I only half half of that, is I've lost 1/2 of all the money I won with pocket pairs by playing suited connectors.

It only seems logical to see what happens by not playing any suited connectors. I am going to play the nittiest poker I am capable of today. Only playing pocket pairs and AK, and maybe limping with some suited aces or broadway cards which I'll probably lose money with like usual, lol. I'm going to try and really stick to just pocket pairs and AK, with AQs also, but I'll probably end up taking some flops with Axs, and maybe KQs or KJs. KQo is not being played once except for big blind specials, same for KJo and worse obviously.

To implement this strategy, I'm going to run about 9 tables, because even with that, I'm going to be folding quite a bit. Generally you receive a pocket pair once every 17-18 hands, so if I'm 9 tabling, I'll get to play one every other deal. Let's see how this goes....

Okay, just got done playing just over 200 hands. Made 110.5 big bets, for 52.87 big bets per 100 hands. About to go try the same strategy on the .02/.05 tables.

Moving on up! (To the east side)

Tonight was exciting, because it finally happend. I've moved up and am now playing .05/.10. Blinds just increased 400% and I'm loving it. I actually started playing before reaching my initial set goal of $200, because I found a game that seemed really good. I was very close, 97% and really, that wasn't going to make a difference. I was ready, so I moved up.



Now I haven't played many hands at the level yet, but that's because I broke the guy I sat down to play against almost instantly. I was feeling a little tired, and decided that was enough for the day. So these numbers aren't very significant, but it's nice to see these, so here they are.









Played differently today after watching TuffFish's videos of internet play. Loosened up a bit, and also played more passively preflop. Limping with a lot of small pp's if someone else limped already, where before I'd raise. I went back to being very weary of KJ and AJ, still donking it up with KQo. My play at .05/.10 was a tad aggressive, lol. Infinity aggression on the flop and turn, zero aggression on the river, so of course a total aggression of infinity.

But to the numbers for the larger sample, and $0.01/$0.02 blinds:

VP$IP : 30.38%
PFR : 13.50%
TA : 2.88

Here's an interesting thing. I played 15 hands and was credited for $0.50 of rake. At that rate, I'd make 1 FPP after 15 hands, and then 1 more every 120 hands after that. If I was logging 1,500 hands a day, that's about 12 FPP per day, getting me closer to making my bonus without needing $1.20 sng's. Going to see how that works out over a full day tomorrow.

Gotta get myself some rest, tommorrow the battle for $.10/$.25 NL begins.

Sng's bringing me toward $50

Today was pretty good overall, even though it ended on a lower note. I got in 19 sit & go tournaments for the day, boosting my FPP over 90. I started on fire, racking up three 3rds and a win in my first 4 tournaments. But playing micro stakes is of course loaded with land mines. I hit a few and just was handed some terrible beats. I'm of the opinion that talking about bad beats is about as interesting as talking about the weather, so I'm not going to get into it, but that's what happend. Multiple times. In my last four of the day, I was running strong in all, and ended up being handed my final two brutal beats of the night, both to make me the bubble, and then ended by racking up my 3rd win of the day. Not a bad way to go, but three losses and one victory earns a net of -$0.30.

For cash games, I didn't play much today, only 220 hands. It was a winning one, all due to one hand. I got KK preflop in the big blind and my first hand at the table. Utg raises to 6x the big blind and all in. The next player raises to 12 big blinds, and the button folds. The small blind then raises to 93 big blinds all in. I re-raise to 125 big blinds and all in, and the player who raised to 12, then calls my raise. Crazy preflop action, and four of us are all in leaving nothing but the board to be dealt, with a pot of 333 big blinds for me to win.

The flop comes [3h Jd 6c]

Turn [Ks]

River[8d]

I show my set of kings, and the rest muck, with me picking up the whole pot. Now here's the part of the story that gets a little hairy. Of course, the other big stack in this hand had AA, and I sucked out my 20% shot of winning. Now, when holding kings, another player at a full table will have aces about 1 out of 20 times. This is shorthanded, cutting the hands nearly in half, and I think I've kicked the odds in the nuts even for a full table.

Okay, just checked my info. I've gotten pocket kings 28 times. Of those, 3 times another player had aces, roughly twice the normal %, and at short tables on top of that! Also, of those 3 times, I've won 2 of them, which is just silly. Quads on one, and this hand here with the set. Both for very large pots.

So here's how I ended up running for the short day.

Another nice winning day, and another day of huge aggression. Not just a little, a ton. My flop aggression was 24, and total 8.40. Anyone with tracking software should be calling any bet I make, lol. The funny thing is that I felt I loosened up today, but ended up with a VPIP of 23%, and PFR of 10.9%. So I didn't really loosen up much if at all. It's disturbing that the only reason I'm ahead today is because of a suckout, but after a couple of the days I had, I think I had it coming to me. Chaulk it up for a win, and about ready to take on the next level. Going to scope those games out tonight.