Been busy for a bit

Haven't posted in awhile, I've been busy actually playing and posting on cardschat/discussing poker in the real world with friends. I've been working on moving up in stakes, and I'm making a good hourly at .05/.10 now. The next major target is $700 to start in on $25nl.

I've been working on my 6max game a bit, and I do like that better, but for some reason I'm not winning. I've been working really hard on being aggressive preflop, and for this last week I've had my PFR 100% of my vpip. Every hand I've played I've raised. Yet, I've maintained a 6bb/100 loss, which is sucky. I'm also running like hell. Here's my EV for this last week.





It's 3 AM though, so I'm going to sleep. Maybe I'll get some time to post this weekend.

Only $502,612.50 behind Durrrr (Not made up)

I know that sounds like a made up number, but it's not. I'm a tad behind Durrrr for winnings today. For fun I've compared our stats, and it's closer than I would've thought actually. I'm impressed with myself.










Here's our positional stats:












Interesting EV Graph he's got:













He got all that money from people folding....amazing. This is the guy that scares the hell out of the biggest cash game players in the world. I don't care if you want to say they aren't afraid of playing with him, they're folding to him and letting him not just play almost 50% of his hands, but do it to the tune of 56bb/100. Yeah, they're scared.

Rollercoaster Day

So far it's been crazy. I'm trying to emulate Durrrr pretty much, since he's one of the sickest players of all time. I get that at .05/.10 people aren't gonna lay me quite the same FE he gets, but still, why not try it right?

My PT Stats for the day:















And by position followed by EV:






















I'm going to go over a couple of the big hands that went down today.



I think this hand really highlights oponnents inability to make standard laydowns at these levels. Even if I was "bluffing" with the king, he's toasted. How can he call? Because pocket queens are pretty and you don't get them often.

****************************************

Building upon the last hand here I make a cardinal sin.



I try to use FE + my winning % to make a +EV play when truly I can't expect villains to fold. I need to just take the good odds they lay me and look to hit my nut flush for cheap.

****************************************

I was really happy with this play, I just knew this guy was light and I made a great call preflop here.



****************************************

Okay this was my biggest hand of the day, and it came near the end.



That hurt real bad. This villain had been getting quite annoyed with my aggression, and started playing back at me a few hands in a row. I picked up the ideal thing, a real hand instead of 98s, 79s, that I'd been pushing into him, and he flops a straight followed by me slamming top set, perfect, only hand that beats me is KJ, oh what's he have? Super!

******************************************

Then by some voodoo force I was given this gem, making most of my loss back.



Much needed after the beating I took. After this hand I was up a whole $0.10 for the day. I went on a mini tear after this, taking down a whole bunch of pots, and winning a couple other small ones to finish the day up the $10 even.

Gotta stick to business

All right, for some reason I keep jumping back down to smaller stakes cuz I know I can mash em for a high bb/100 and 16 table it. But I have to look at the bigger picture. I can beat .02/.05 for 50bb/100 16 tabling which puts that at $35 per hour, but that doesn't even match my results if I'm doing 5bb/100 4 tabling at $1/$2(that would be $48/hour by the way). Besides that's way easier on the brain, as 16 can get a little out of control at times. So in truth, my goal should'nt be making my highest hourly winrate I can right now, but what's going to get me beating higher levels sooner.

So, with that, I'm starting today, no longer allowed to play anything less .05/.10 unless my BR gets down to about 1/2. I'm starting right now with 29 buyins, GO GO GO!!!

Sunny Day

So I spent yesterday trying out Poker Ace HUD instead of HEM's hud. I hate it so much. I'm buying HEM cuz that's where it's at. Ace hud just doesn't hold a candle to HEM.

Other than that, my pokering took place at the Sun's $1/$2 NL tables. Same shortstack strategy, I bought in with $60. Ran really cold with the cards, doing a heck of a lot of folding, and it seemed the few times I had a hand "strong" enough to limp with the rest of the crowd somebody turned up with a real hand behind me and bumped it to the $15-$20 range, making me void my $2. I slowly trickled down about $15 from blinds and missed flops, I'd won a pot with AQ and one preflop that was straddled, so it was really more than the $15 I was down, but $15 total (I was running really card dead). At this point I got my first real hand of the night and here's how it went down.

The player to my right has been giving money away like a fiend. He'll play any pair if he flop it, but he hasn't gotten overly aggressive at all over the night. The player at the far end of the table has been fairly tight in general.



When the first guy bet I didn't give him credit at all for the flush, but I didn't want to raise just yet because doing so would definitely pot commit me, and if my read was off then I just forced him to take my money and I'm drawing dead. Calling here to see what develops on the turn seemed prudent. When the other guy raised, I was hoping for the first player to fold so I could shove. He's been very tight preflop, and it was extremely unlikely that he made the initial call with a couple of hearts. More likely was that he held 2 big cards one of which was either the K or Q of hearts.

Of course this all became moot as soon as the guy who opened the betting shoved another $100 on top of the guy's raise. I sat there a second or two, pondering if this was also a move with a FD, and then realized he's been calling a lot of bets with losers, not betting them. He was nice enough to show me the flush he flopped, amazing.

I eventually switched tables, as many of the table left and refilled, the table became much tigher, and more aggressive. When that was all said and done I was down $63 from the session in 3 hours of play. I found a great new table though. This was definitely a profitable spot, and I was looking to start building myself a stack to do some damage with.

Sadly, the cards kept at their terrible pace, combined with horrendous plays that unbeknowst to the players, saved them. Check out this little gem.



So the guy makes the amazing play of not checking his option with A3, but making a raise to $20!!! Then of course my deuece slams the flop. Superb, lol.

And then there was this hand that annoyed me. It's not like I had a great anything going on, but I mean, the guy bets 2x pot with ace high! And shuts me out on my gutty that completes, which at the time made me want to punch a baby. Would've felt great. When nothing's going right for you, hands like this actually seem like a loss.



So that was that. My buddy was done, and I told him this was my last orbit. I'd made back $22 of what I lost earlier, so hey I recouped a bit. My last hand of the night paid dividends though, check this out.



This really sucked. The guy had just been so passive all night long, and now he shoves this river? Could he really be doing this on a busted flush draw? I wanted to call so bad, I mean the pot was pretty big at this point, but I just didn't think there was any way I could win. I got him talking to me a bit. Convo went like this, and it wasn't forced or anything, natural.

I let him know I was in a tough spot, and said:
"Aw man this sucks, can you just show me if I fold, cuz this is just bad"
"Can't do that, I wanna see if I can get the rest of those chips you got there"
**Hold up my five chips, 25 chip, 2 $5's and 2 $1's** "This is all I've got though"
"Have you ever heard of pot committed?"
"Nope.....Sorry guys I'm in a tough spot. Is there any way I can beat you?"
**At this point I just don't see how I can be winning, he HAS to have a Jack**
"I hope not"
I give it a few more seconds thought and fold my J9 face up, and he shows me AQ for Queens over deuces, tough river for me. Got lots of equity, and lost $44. Boo-urns.

So that ended my night, and 2nd session took another $23 off my face, making my total for the night ($86) over 4.25 hours. ($20.23)/hour or (5.05BB)/hour

There's always tomorrow.

Mohegan Rocks!

Okay, so it's been awhile. I have to get some more info and stats for updating later on, cuz right now I'm on a lappy. Mike had some old lappys that we ripped apart and Frankensteined into a working deal. But we spent some time at Mohegan Sun, to check out the new room, and it was phenomenal. I'm done with Foxwoods unless I really get the urge to play some limit.

Playing poker for 3.5 hours yielded $108 profit, but it was late and I was tired, so that was the extent of my night. Rake vs Time is soooooooo needed for me. I only got involved in 3 pots, 2 fully raked at $4 and one for $1 total of $9 in rake. At Foxwoods, I would've paid $35, not cool.

No time to really blog right now, I'm finishing up formatting and getting the laptop usable. I'll get back when I have time and #'s.

Here's the 1st pot I got involved with. The player to my right has been raising a LOT. 4 times in the first orbit, and a few more since. My 10's are obviously way ahead of his range so I'm playing. I figured I'd be committed with any raise, so shove and maybe end it now, otherwise be ahead of his range and go with it.



This next hand took place at my 2nd table. I had been very tight and thought that my folding may allow me to take the hand down preflop, or at least after the flop. Things changed though when the flop came.



This last hand wasn't me, but my buddy. He got a big blind special here.



Pretty crazy there, although I can't agree with the shove on the end. We talked about it afterwards, and I think he learned a good deal from this pot.

Interesting Week

Well, some odd goings on this week. First of all, I ended up on 2p2 for the first time in ages. Started looking over some posts of people's stats, and realized that if I'm going to move up, I probably have to re-learn a solid TAG game, where I actually have good vpip v. PFR percentages, a decent aggression factor, all that jazz. So, I gave that a shot at some .02/.05 6max, with a new program that I'm thinking I may get instead of Poker Tracker, Hold'em Manager. The thing's pretty sweet, and it's only 1/2 the price of PT.

So I started with one table, running a HUD with standard info, and playing some actual poker for a change instead of set mining. I got to TAG it up, and did pretty well.

I ran:

VPIP: 24.2
PFR: 22.8
AF : 5.43
WTSD: 25.5
W$SD: 47.5

BB/100: 42.35

Not too shabby, not at all

So then I got to reading a bit from Pokey talking about how these people play very Loose/Passive preflop, then TAG postflop, playing serious poker and pretty much destroying. Since I feel like postflop is my stronger point anyway, this seemed like a great fit. I gave it a go, and the first day I ended up winning 43.5bb/100, plus I was 12 tabling, so the $/hour was much higher.

I tried it again for my first 2 hour session today, and it still seems to be going well. Here's the stats.












And by position:
















So I'm not entirely sure about HEM. I love the HUD, but I very VERY much dislike the big blinds per 100 instead of big bets/100 to which I'm accustomed. Maybe there's an option to change that somewhere. Also, it didn't actually keep my 2 databases seperate, so I had to purge yesterday's results because on a seperate database I was working with my buddy on his multi-tabling game, and his numbers severely affected my stats. Soooo, I don't know, we'll see. Oh yeah, that's the thing, can't use poker EV with HEM, but can't with PT3 either. So that kind of sucks, I like that program.

Another option is I guess just buying pokerace HUD, but for that money, why not get HEM? If all I even use it for is the hud, then the extras are just a bonus.

Here's my EV for the day, I'm guessing that I ran above expectation, cuz I won a lot of my all ins. Even though I was supposed to, I only took one bad beat the entire session, so it's likely that I was supposed to win less than I did.
















So that beat more than made up for the wins, I'm glad to see that. If I keep running my SB's higher, then that's profit for me. Can't be anything but happy with my winrate, that's for sure. And it actually seems to take less mental effort for me than playing very tight.

Here's another EV graph:














One last thing, for the first time ever, I'm making money on suited connectors. Not unsuited connectors, so maybe I'll start weaning those out, or at least only play them in position. I'll get back after my next few thousand hands.

Not too shabby

I don't know if I discovered or rediscovered this today, but 16 tabling is for me. Nice increase in number of hands per hour, and maintaining the same 18.5bb/100 winrate. I managed to get in just over 1300 hands in about 1.75 hours. So I'm pulling roughly 743 hands/hour. 16 does get a bit crazy, but I found a moment in there that was calm enough to get a screen cap.


















Some of the tables are much more hidden than usual, but it wasn't bad at all. At this point I really don't need to watch tables anyway, so when action's on me it pops up, and I quickly evaluate and make a decision, then go on to the next one.


So here's the tracker stats for the entire day. I got in just over a couple thousand hands, which was nice, but I need to get more in. I made solid progress towards my next bankroll target, netting 17.4% of my goal. I'm hoping that I can get there tomorrow or the next day, but I'm almost positive life's going to get in the way of that.

















As a note, I played extremely positionally aware today, significantly so. I don't know if my aggression level is too high, as I did press several nut hands very hard, blasting opponnents off their holdings. A review of these pots would be good to look for necessary adjustments in strategy.

A nice little histogram depicting the number of +EV and -EV bets I made for the session, sorted by bet size.

Here's the final EV graph for the day. I won more than EV said I should have!!! Feels like a victory even though it's not a great thing, lol. Nice to be on the lucky side for a day. Paradoxically, the reason for this outcome is that hands where I was a solid favorite held up more than average. I did have one suckout at the 1359th hand where I flopped middle set versus a made flush, getting it all in. The board paired and I won, EV (-$0.41) winnings +$1.24

However the beat I took was rather severe in comparison. Here I flopped bottom set and got all in on the flop versus middle pair plus a flush draw, which left them drawing only to a flush and the board couldn't pair. Here my EV was +$1.62 and winnings (-$4.83) a tough beat to say the least, but my only of the day.

The true nature of my above EV day lies in the hands where I was a solid favorite and won. At approximately the 1211th hand, the 1466th hand, and the 2025th, I got money in with AA v KK preflop, value bet bottom set versus top pair weak kicker through the river, and got in on the flop with a full house versus an overpair respectively, winning all those hands. These wins were enough to spike my money won over my EV for the day.

Here's the graph

Moving up???

Well, according to the rules laid out by Mr Harrington, I'm supposed to be patient like and wait until I've accumulated a bankroll that is 50% larger at the next level than that which I started with at my current level before I move up and try the next game.

I started this level wayyyyyy short, only 6 buyins, so I'm not counting that as my number. Instead I'm going to go with 15. I feel like at this level, I should never be running so cold that 15 full buy ins won't last me. With this as my guideline, I need 23 buyins at .02/.05 before I give it a go. That comes to $230, which puts me about $100 away.

My winrate over about 10,000 hands is at 18bb/100 which = $0.72/100 hands
I'm going to need to play about 7200 more hands to reach the next level if my play and winrate hold. That doesn't sound bad, and I think I can be there by tomorrow, so I'm going to put in some serious game time. It's been going around 600 hands per hour, so in 12 hours of play, I should be there. Time to get on it.

Winnings finally = EV

Well I found a way to do it. I caught up my amount won with my expected value. I managed to download a trojan that was so bad, my entire hand history database was destroyed. So now, it's back to even. $0 won, $0 EV, lol. Actually as of this, I've already played one session, 800 some hands, and I'm about 20 bb's south of expectation, nothing major.


Been working on teaching one of my buddies. He's taking to it quickly, and put together a couple nice sessions. Unfortunately all his hands, about 2k, were also lost, so we'll rebuild that. Probably get a couple thousand in tomorrow. We just need to tweak his agression with single top pair type holdings, but other than that it's been solid.


I played in an unbelievable donkament today, and it just reinforced how I just don't get how to win tournys. I mean, how does this hand play out this way?























It wouldn't show my opponents hands in the converter, but at the point of my all in on the flop, MP (all in for 400ish) held Kh5d for king high. The guy who had me covered a bit held Ah6d for ace high. At this point the %'s were:





















Running diamonds come on the turn and river giving A6 the winning flush. So standard.....this makes me want to vomit. Why don't I win more tournaments? I don't know.

Will my winnings ever catch my EV again?

So I had a day off from cards, and was itching to get some time in today. So far I've had 2 sessions, each about 2 hours longs. Here's my tracker stats for the day.


















Pretty decent right? I mean a 14bb/100 winrate is definitely okay, but here's the thing. This was my worst running day yet. I'm stone cold, unreal, can't win with a massive % lead to save my chips. Here's my EV for the day.














My EV ended at +750bb for the day, and my actual was +326bb. I ended today 424bb short of where I was supposed to. These days keep going, but I've been fortunate enough to be still sticking some bank onto my roll at least. So for the week, I'm running 651bb cold for now. I'm gonna need some KK's to beat AA's and not the way it went today where my AA didn't hold, to make up for these shenanigans.

Not bad, my EV winrate for this week is 35.28bb/100. Pretty much what I ran today also. I'm definitely a fan of being a calling station here, cuz it's helping my bankroll pretty well. That's it for now. I plan on playing a few more hours later, and maybe I'll tear it up and actually win as well, that'd be sweet.

The newest play I use, and I still can't believe it works, is the jam pots with the nuts on the river and stack people. It's amazing, and this hand has got to be my favorite one yet. I absolutely just crammed my quad 10's right down this guy's throat and he took it like a champ!

For those of you wondering what he felt compelled to call the river bet with, he had AQ. Top pair top kicker. That's how easy it is to take their money, and I can't imagine how much I was leaving on the table by trying to peddle the nuts for bets that made sense in comparison to the pot. Let me repeat, this is not an uncommon way for this hand to play out at these tables. Insane!!!!!

One last thing, here's a snapshot of all my hands for the last couple months.

Back to the grind

So to start things off, here's today's PT stats. This was all 12 tabling, .01/.02 after finding out that I was more $EV playing .01/.02 than if I'd moved up to .02/.05, at least for now. Once I start building my roll up, I'm going to focus more on moving up levels, and maintaining any winrate. It will improve as I adapt to the current level, and once that sets in, I'm almost assured of a higher $/hour.

















Fairly standard tight play with a vpip of 18.6, but here's where things were a little different. I backed way off on the aggression. I felt like I was blowing people off their holdings too often, and that I stood to improve my winrate through smaller 1/2 1/3 pot type value bets. Further, my slower play would allow players to bluff at me where I could simply call them down with vulnerable one pair holdings and hands of that nature. This theory was either very good, or I just happend to run amazingly, because take a look at the winrate. Just under 43bb/100!!! The fact that I accomplished this through tight/passive play really is strange to me. But I saw it happening over and over. I'd have a hand like KQ and limp preflop along with 3 or 4 others. Flop comes K26 and I check, somebody in back bets smallish, or maybe even pot, I call. Check the turn, they bet I call. Check the river, they either check behind or bet and I call, and they muck something like K9, KT, K5 even! (It was suited) So maybe there's merit to this, but maybe not.

I did get aggressive at times, but only when I was holding the nuts or close to it. If I thought the other guy had a hand he would have trouble laying down, I wouldn't just value bet it either, I'd shove a stack in, even if the pot had $0.12 in it, I'm shoving $7.52 and stacking people!!!!

So when all was said and done, I decided to check out my EV play for the day, and was I in for a surprise. I knew I'd taken a few beats here and there, but I made some bad plays myself, since I was calling down weaker than normal, and I think I got stacked once or twice where I didn't have to be. Anyway, here's the EV graph.














So I was still below expectation for the day, and while it was nothing like yesterday's, this was still a fairly decent amount. About 45 big bets, which is just under one full buy in at most tables. Not horrible, but that's more than 10% of my total winnings for the day.













Here's my EV for the week. I'm running low, obviously from the last few posts, but what I care about is the red line. Look at how sharp the rise is at the end. That jump was today's play. My EV went through the freaking roof by becoming a passive player. I think I'm coming closer to optimal strategy against these tables. I can't forget my aggressive roots, and I'll definitely be 6maxing a bit to retain my ability to aggress, but this is pretty sweet. Nothing to do for now but get more hands in and keep being more winner.

+EV.....-$$$

One of those days, man I hate em though. Played my ass off this morning at 6max, and just couldn't get it right. I didn't play well, and was only slightly +EV after several hundred hands, so that loss I didn't mind, cuz I didn't deserve any bank.

Since I wasn't in the zone for 6max, I figured it'd be simple enough to pull my act together, screw down tightlike and 12 table it. And it was, I got Sklansky bucks at 28bb/100, however one big fly in the ointment here. I lost for the session, yeah I got pwned by some serious bad beats.

Good play, bad results... oh well that's what this game's about. Gotta remind yourself that when you have one of these days. I can't imagine what it's like to run this bad for a month or more, probably able to drive men insane.

Ha ha, wow, the whole reason this post started is that I took a break for a bit. Came back focused and ready to continue on doing what I was doing. I then realized why am I still sitting at .01/.02? And opened up 9 .02/.05 tables. It'd been awhile and the stakes actually seemed big! HA what a joke that is. I used to play $2/$4 NL and didn't think that was anything, now .02/.05 is big!!! Anyway, wasn't sure if I was doing something wrong, being too passive, afraid of the bet sizes, because results = not good. It sure felt like I was letting people run me over too much, but I got the news. I wasn't playing great, 8.78bb/100 EV, but I actually made 0.54bb/100!!! Go ME! Running sick cold today, MLB2k8 it is. Here's the EV graph of so far today, .01/.02 and .02/.05 statistics combined.






























So this is today's PT info so far. As you can see, I played limited amounts of 6max and .02/.05. The latter I felt like I was getting run over so I decided to quit and possibly go back down to .01/.02, but instead I'm just going to take a short break here, then jump back on the .02/.05 tables in a bit. I'm doing fine, just not winning. An interesting side note, I made more EVbb/100 at the .01/.02 than I did at .02/.05 today, so in reality I should still definitely play the .01/.02. I had an EV of 27.5bb/100 which = $1.10/100 hands, while only $0.878/100 at .02/.05. Perhaps I'll stay at .01/.02 a bit longer.....

My oh my

If I had gotten more sleep last night, I'd still be playing now, but I for some reason was really tempted to call a $1.60 all in bet at a pot totaling $2.50 on an oesd. I'm attributing that to tiredness, and immediately took off auto post blinds.

So what I found was this. I was playing last night on full tilt, and for some reason thought it'd be fun to go to play chip. So I did, 1000/2000 nl and I'd find short tables, heads up to 3 opponnents. I was destroying, obviously it's play chip so it's different right? No, this table was honestly really good. Lots of aggression and solid plays, I knew this was better than the play at .01/.02 for sure. I was playing LAG and killing, just killing. I figured, why not try this for real?
LAG is wayyyyy more my style. Tight aggressive leaves me feeling cramped, and I'd much rather be using the logic of, I'm going to raise with 57s in the hijack cuz it's folded to me, instead of "I'll fold because 57s isn't that good." I like to play, and I like to not care about the cards.


So I sat at a couple 6max tables, .01/.02, to focus on players, and do what I do. Agress a whole bunch, and try to rip pots. Here's how it went:




















So sick, loving it. I love playing this way even more cuz of my buddy. He plays on FTP as beerconnoisseur and any time anybody has a high vpip or pfr, that guy's instantly a donkey, and will be marked as such. I can't imagine the notes he'd have on me if we played against each other and I had a username he didn't know.

We've talked about varying vpips and stuff before and my feeling is that if your vpip and pfr are both high, you're good to go, LAG it up, but he just doesn't seem to see it that way. He's a TAGger all the way.

If you look at the top players in the biggest games today, OMGClayAiken, durrr, Peter Jepsen, DaEvils, spiked, they all employ high vpips, yet yield results in the very top of the largest games around, which in itself speaks volumes for the LAG style.Gotta rest up, then put some time and hands in.

Hit my roll, sort of

Well I surpassed the $100 mark today, meaning I have 20 full buy ins for $5, and just enough to be considered an actual bankroll for the smallest of games. In celebration, I'm going to destroy these limits, as well as move up to .02/.05 again as long as there's enough games going to 9 table.



I made a solid breakthrough and I think a lot of it came from having a sort of sweat session. What I realized is this: You must treat top pair top kicker like a red-headed step child, it's not something you really want to get involved in, and you shouldn't really care about it. Pouring over my stats in PokerEV, I found a disturbing thing. With pairs I'm a winner, and a solid one, however the pairs I really profit with are overpairs, top pair weak kicker, and middle/weak pairs. That's right, I'm +EV with all single pairs that AREN'T top pair top kicker. I'm falling victim to playing a single pair wayyyyyyyyyy too aggressively and my buddy saw into why. I see these idiots playing Ax and Kx so I want to extract value from them with my tptk, but what ends up happening is I trap myself in a big pot because I'm trying to squeeze value out of a spot where there really isn't any.



Watching some of the top pros play, they're very delicate with one pair holdings, and I took this "newfound" (Quotes cuz I used to know this but a layoff kinda killed me) knowledge to the tables, feeling like a new player. Here's what happened for a short session.

















So I did very well at 46.45bb/100, but I should've been better. I had one hand, ONE HAND that I played -EV, and I should've gotten away. And wouldn't you know, Top Pair Top Kicker was it. AK raised it up got one caller behind me. Flop comes [Ac Qh 8c] Now I know I don't want to play these one pair hands for big pots so I check, and villain checks behind, so far so good.

Turn [Ac Qh 8c] [7d]


Okay, club didn't hit, likely to be ahead and only one card to come so I'll put a bet in, if I'm called I'm going to check the river and call a reasonable sized bet. I bet about 1/3 of the pot, and get min-raised! These usually scare me, and I instantly was like, is this AQ? No he probably would've bet the flop, did he hit a set and slowplay? Did he really hit the 7? I wasn't sure at this point, and I think a fold would've been okay. Instead I called, hoping that we might check the river through and see who wins.


River [Ac Qh 8c] [7d] [2s]


Well that doesn't change anything. Let's check and hope he checks behind. I check, and he bets 3/4 pot. After a min-raise followed by a solid bet, I have to know that one pair isn't gonna do it, but for some reason I make the call anyway and throw away some money, maybe just to see it I don't know. Anyway he shows A7 for a turned 2 pair. I don't mind most of the play up untill the calling on the river, I don't know what I was thinking there really. Horrible play. If I hadn't made that call, I would've been up 51.7bb/100 a difference of 5bb/100!!!! That difference is what many consider a solid winrate, so I simply can't be making these plays anymore.

I'm planning on an intense night tonight. It's Friday, I'm going to rest up, and in a couple of hours I'm going to be logging some serious time. I can smell the .10/.25 and I want to take it down.

In the Berkshires

So I came up to the Berkshires to help my girlfriend move apartments. I don't really like playing in different places, cuz I'm out of my correct poker mindset. Instead I think I'm going to play some tournaments today, since that's different anyway it'll hopefully interfere less with my current play.

I ended up spending yesterday in Barnes and Noble for almost 9 hours. I got a lot of reading in, which was cool, but they somehow don't have and cannot order the Military Flight Aptitude Guide I need, so I guess I have to go with Amazon. Just ordered that now, should be here soonish, but I need it ASAP.

So, I read a lot of books yesterday. I started with poker, checking out Daniel Negraneu's new Power Hold'em or something like that. It seemed all right, but a lot of extra unnecessary things. Really, the only section I cared about was the final one written by Daniel on smallball. He seemed quite thorough in his explanation, and I would suspect one could go from never playing that style to having a pretty good feel for it quickly after reading this book.

Then I checked out Killer Poker Online (weak) and I love those KP books, so that's saying a lot. I did get some laughs though, and now wish I had chosen a different screen name. Don't get me wrong, IBK_Suckout is sweet and all, but what about something like DonkeyFlopper, or HandiCAPEable, or TruffleShuffle124, something like that. I did kind of give away the fact I consider myself a good player through straight reverse psychology implying I suckout, which I feel I hardly ever do, due to the fact that I'm good. So there was some fun to be had.

On to Killer Poker Online 2 hoping for salvation, but it's basically dedicated to tournament play (I'll stick to HoH v 1-3 thanks).

Read em and Reap, a book I'd heard contained some nuggets, was by an FBI agent and is supposed to be his attempt at being Crazy Mike Caro, and writing a new "Book of Tells". Well let me tell you something, this isn't new, and it's not that great. If you don't know anything about tells or haven't played a lot of live poker, well then okay this might actually be something you consider useful, perhaps even amazing. But to me, it's old news and someone just wants to bet paid for printing it again.

According to Doyle, another book by the great one himself, somehow left me not really feeling it. I'm starting to think I've read too much about poker, when these guys can't hold my interest. Believe me, anything Doyle says, it's something to listen to, because he's one of the greats all time. But like the previous book, it's all been said before, or most of it anyway. And actually it was said by the author himself in various works over the years, which I have copies of already.

I started glimpsing at Play Poker Like the Pros by Phil Hellmuth Jr. then realized what I was doing, and put the thing down. Don't get me wrong, Phil's a great tournament hold'em player, but that's not me. I'm a cash games guy, and Phil, for all those bracelets, just isn't very good at cash. I'm sure he's still a winner, but not like some of the guys with books available like Doyle, or Barry Greenstein. I will still read this book sometime, because I'm always eager to understand a new perspective on the game, but something else caught my eye.

Every Hand Revealed, by Gus Hansen. Gus has long been a favorite of mine on the tournament scene, and I "watched" him go deep in this year's main event courtesy of http://www.pokerpages.com/ Sad I was when he didn't make the final table. Anyway, I sat down, and read this thing from cover to cover. I thought this was one of the best things I've read in a long time for poker. His mindset and mine are actually very similar, although he definitely at some very critical points made plays I would be unable to, which must occur otherwise I would be as well known as he. This book laid out every hand Gus played, how the hand played out, and his thoughts about why he acted the way he did, including those hands I'm saying I couldn't work my way through to the proper call with ace high facing a 387,000 All in at a 120,000 pot when calling is going to take about 75% of your stack. Well Gus did it, and he'll tell you why. I would recommend this one to anyone looking to improve his or her tournament game, or anyone who is looking for something new to pique their poker related interest. This made up for those other books I'd checked out.

Took a few hours to read, as there were I think, 385 hands Gus participated in, and I'm also deciding on my actions prior to reading what he himself played, then comparing notes. This I feel is the only way to read such a book, ie any Dan Harrington Book. By the time I finished I was dying to play a tournament, and still had a lot of time to kill. I couldn't read any more poker for the moment, but I found Backgammon for Winners by lo and behold, Bill Robertie, coauthor of the Harrington poker books. I knew Bill played backgammon, what I failed to realize was that at least at the time his book was written, he was considered the greatest backgammon player in existence, and was also the only person to win the Mone Carlo World Championship more than once. Not a bad resume for a professional games player.

So anyway, I'm going to try and play some tournys. I say try because I currently have my girlfriend's African Grey parrot out, and he loves to find things baby parrots shouldn't have, like cell phones, remotes, knives. Yeah he'll find anything and destroy it, or destroy things with it. He's jabbering away, but the little guy is only one and a half, so he doesn't say too many things that make sense yet. He'll always say, "Come on" or "Come Here" but he doesn't really mean it. He says "Hello" and means that, so that's pretty cool, and earlier today he told me he loves me then threw up a peanut for me, so he might mean that too, lol. Oh man, he's getting into trouble, I'm gonna watch sportscenter for a bit, then try the poker after he's back in his cage.

I forgot, I love online poker

Wow, I haven't played online in so long, and I don't know why. I was back to my 12 tabling ways, figured I'd stay cheap at the $.01/.02 for now, since the bankroll's pretty hurt still. Here's what I'm looking at for a few thousand hands a day.

Hopefully I can start getting more hours in, but here's what I've got for now.

Not too awful, I'll definitely take the bb/100, but I just have to get more hands in. I played for something like 3 hours. As long as I keep up this rate, I'll be moving up again to either .05/.10 or .02/.05. Again, I'll likely first go to .02/.05, since I experienced great success there previously, and going from buying in for 300 bb to just 100 could be a tough transition. The plan for online is when I have enough for 20 buyins at .02/.05, I'm going to start going at it there. Once I get my bankroll high enough for 30 buyins at the .10/.25, then that's where I'm heading. I'm convinced I can sustain a solid winrate at .10/.25. If I can 12 table those limits with an 8bb/100 winrate, just one half of what I'm currently playing at, the numbers are pretty staggering.

I'm 12 tabling, and generally a table gets 55-60 hands per hour. That's 660-720 hands per hour. At 8bb/100, that's 53bb-58bb per hour winrate, which ends up being $26.50-$29 per hour, not too bad. Especially since that's only 2 levels away.

Okay, so enough of that stuff, it's always fun to analyze numbers when winning's going on, so I'm gonna throw up a graph of my EV. Turns out Sklansky owes me some bucks, which is cool, since I'm always game for a higher winrate. Here it is:

So I'm actually 150bb cold right now, not a bad deal. Can't write anymore now, hurts to lean on elbow/shoulder.

Pokahhhhhhh

Well well well....it's been awhile eh? Quite awhile at that. The online poker's been slow, and honestly, it's just cuz grinding out 9-12 tables to make between $6-$10 an hour kind of sucks. I found a nice solution to that, although it makes the blogging more difficult.

I've been logging live hours at Foxwoods. Been doing pretty sick too, so far I'm averaging 4.5 big bets per hour at $2/$4, so making decent loot. Just need to get more hours racked up. Mohegan Sun's poker room opens soon, less than a month, and I'm excited about that. First of all, they're sticking to more traditional limits, and $3/$6 will be their lowest limit. That instantly translates to an extra $9 an hour, not a bad raise, for just a slight increase in blinds.

In semi-unrelated to poker things, my computer's been through hell, and that doesn't help. Some of my awesome programs, like adobe photoshop, corel draw, and pokertracker are toast and that sucks. I have tracker back, but my entire database is gone, and without that what good's the program? Guess I just have to start rebuilding.

Of note, I have been playing a little bit online lately. And I must say I've been experiencing consistent success, basically playing straight out of Supersystem. My roll was vaporized, only $37 in it, so I took to the $.01/.02 NL tables. Basically playing very LAGy, if the pot's unopened to me, opening with basically any suited connectors, big broadways, or pairs. Then firing a pot-sized bet on the flop, and adjusting my decision to double barrel or back off on the turn based on various factors, generally how draw heavy the board was and if that draw hit. If no, fire another pot sized bet on fourth street. I'd say probably cbetting right now around 90-95% of the time. It may honestly be 100%. I've been going in overdrive, but it really seems to work. I start with a big raise preflop, no 3x bb BS from me, I make it 5x bb minimum, more for limpers, probably 7.5-8bb for one limper and 10-18bb with 2 limpers.

And here's the thing, I'm managing to play like this on 9 tables at once. It's honestly hard to play that aggressive at that many tables. But it's fun. It's more active than set mining, and I'm doing well, bringing up the online roll anyway. $52 right now.

I think it's time to try and build it more since I'm not at Foxwoods. Come to think of it, why am I not at Foxwoods? I may be heading there now. Later

Stars rewards aggression

Interesting day at the tables. Beer and I got a one day pass to cardrunners, and after watching all sorts of videos about TAG ABC play for low limits, I decided to get on and do it up. Sat at the $.01/$.02 tables, and just LOSTTTTTT. Couldn't stop. It was horrendous. It got to the point where I was down $18, almost 4 full buyins. Horrendous beats, truly gut-wrenching, and these made me decide to leave .01/.02 behind and go back to .02/.05 where I left off awhile ago.

Once there, I immediately got off to a good start. Just kept grinding chips off the table, taking down pots preflop, winning small pots on the flop, and avoiding any big pots really. I didn't get great cards, but I was up $8 with almost no resistance. Then this guy named "TheTableCpt" happend. Un-freakin-real player. This guy sucked like a vacuum, yet he sucked up money like one too. He slammed inside straights, backdoor flushes, two-outers, and I'm pretty sure at least one zero-outer, to just decimate the table. Very erratic play, and I still don't know what he was doing, but he won a lot this time. So he ended up cutting my profits down to a measly $0.25 for .02/.05.

So I took a break, then came back to the .05/.10 tables, still a $10nl limit. I squeezed out $6.50 over 60 quick hands there, and decided I was done with that level, as I for some reason have been killed at it in the past.

Still down a bit for the day, I wanted another go at the .01/.02 and I decided to do it my favorite way. LAG just one or two tables, use my reading, and just run the damn table over. All I can say is mission accomplished. In true LAG form I made people's eyes bleed, and they didn't know what I was doing ever. I got in 61 hands, and that's all I needed to decimate 3 seperate tables. Over those hands I had:

vpip: 60.5%, pfr: 51.2%, af: 9.00
went to sd: 50%
won at sd: 50%

Made back $9 in those hands, plus enough from other .01/.02 play to end the day down $1.32 there, which felt great after being down so far. With my other levels factored in, I actually made $5.50 which isn't bad. Added another buyin to the br.

Not quite what I expected

So I posted my last post on 2p2, to see what the general consensus was. The first poster actually had a link to an old post that was exactly the same thing I was proposing, that you could play only 22+ and AQ+ at uNL and win a good amount. Here's that post.

http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=microplnl&Number=12907966&page=4&fpart=1

And here are some responses to it, the op is Gelford.

"Gelford, I [heart] you."

"Great post Gelford."

"nh Gelford. people like to moan about 'recipe' type ideas here, but i wouldn't mind betting that they are the most popular posts and that this will help lots of beginners find their feet while they start learning to think about poker. this feels like the new tien 'raise that [censored] up'."

"What you described is not real poker, lol."

So there were some nay-sayers, but the others in the post flamed them pretty good and told the to literally, F off doouchebags, lol. Here's what people had to say about mine though.

"why would you do this?"

"With stacks of 250bb you can play way more hands than with 100bb. Also, over my last 5000 hands, I have lost money with every pocket pair except QQ and 66. Pocket pairs are not as good as you think"

"It is so far from optimal it isn't funny"

"What you describe here isn't even poker...."

Hey at least I got one response like the ubernit thread, maybe I'll get some in support as well. :)

"its poker lol, it may be bad poker but its still poker."

Okay, so maybe I won't be getting any pats on the back. The closest I came was this guy who kinda defended me sort of somewhat.

"So someone comes in and says ... I'm not very good at handreading, but if I play only 22+ and AQ+ I seem to make a very nice profit ... and the entire forum goes: ZOMG exploitable, bad poker, move to bbv .. etc.If it shows a profit over a large enough sample, then it is good ... if not then it's notEthical or moral considerations about what type of poker is correct do not exist."

I guess they liked the idea more when it was new. Based on my social-psychology I'm also pretty sure that because the first response in Gelford's was that they love him for posting it, and my first responses were, 1)Someone has done this before and 2) Why would you do this? we got very different feedback. I still think I could come up with the basic foundations of a bot that shows a profit at uNL. Oh my god, I have to go now, it's 9:20 and it's the final day of my girlfriend's swimming championships. They start in 40 minutes, I'm out!

Keith uNL Game Theory

The Beginning

This all began with a pokertracker self-check session. I came to a shocking realization that I was playing really horrendously with every type of holding but one, pocket pairs. I don't remember what the $$$ amounts were exactly, but I had won twice as much with pocket pairs as all the money I'd won total. What I mean is if I'd won $400 with pocket pairs, I was only up $200 overall. This meant I was losing with other holdings enough to cut my winnings in more than half. Turns out I suck with suited connectors. I just couldn't play them at all. Most likely due to my extreme agression. I have difficulty with middle gears, I'm generally either at 0 or 100, no middle ground.

So I begain playing nothing but pocket pairs, and threw in AK and AQ because they really are quite strong holdings. Admittedly I would still at time play things like AJ suited in late position with limpers, or raise it from late if folded to me. I did quite well for myself and at the .05/.10 game I was 12-tabling averaging about $10 an hour. I had the lifebeat though, and now I'm playing .01/.02 and things don't seem to work quite as well.

The first thing is people don't respect bets period. Preflop raises are taking down the pot preflop only about 1/3 of the time! Further, cbets on the flop seem to be even less respected with the same result of pulling down the pot about 1 in 3 times. I started crunching numbers to get an idea about the equity of playing this tight style at the lowest of low limits, and got, well here's what I got....

Assumptions

First we're going to make some assumptions that can significantly alter actual results. It is assumed that:
1) We play only {AA-22, AK-AQ}
2) We raise all these hands preflop
3) We will be 3bet 1/5 of the time we raise preflop
*This may be a higher % than it actually occurs.
4) If we flop a set when 3bet preflop, we will stack our opponent.
5) If our cbet is called, we cannot win the hand without turning a set.
*I feel this point needs the most improvement. There
*should be more equations regarding showing down.
6) When we cbet, we will be raised 1/5 of the time.
7) If we are raised on the flop and have a set, we will stack our opponent.
8) I have not included hands in which we have AA-KK and after being
3bet preflop, we may shove for value against bad players calling {AK-AJ, QQ-99}.
9) Our opponent has a full stack to win (250 big blinds)

That covers our assumptions. There's probably more, but I can't think of them right now. On to the equations.

First is the likelyhood to be dealt one of our hands. There are 6 ways to be dealt a pocket pair, and 13 pairs for 78 total combinations. AK and AQ can be dealt to a player 16 ways each for 32 more combinations, a total of 110 combinations which comprises 8.75% of all possible dealings. This equates to about 1/11.5 hands. Round this to an even 1/12 which works nicely for a 6max table, where we will be dealt a playable hand about once every 2 orbits. In those 2 orbits we will pay 3bb (bb in this essay stands for big blinds NOT big bets), so we must subtract 3bb from whatever our equity equation totals.

Preflop Equity

Our raise will fold the blinds to us 1/3 of all hands played

(1/3)(1.5bb) = 0.50bb

One-fifth of the remaining 2/3 hands will be 3bet preflop. Of these, we will hold AQ 14.6% of the time and fold. We will call the 3bet with the other 85.4% of hands, flopping a set and winning our opponent's stack 11% of those hands, and missing the flop and folding 89%.

(1/5)(2/3)(.146)(-4bb) = -0.08bb
(1/5)(2/3)(.854)(.11)(250bb) = 3.13bb
(1/5)(2/3)(.854)(.89)(-12bb) = -1.22bb

Postflop Equity

The remaining situations comprise 4/5 of 2/3 of all outcomes. First our cbet of 1/2 the pot will win the pot 1/3 of the time.

(1/3)(4/5)(2/3)(11bb) = 1.96bb

Our cbet will be raised 1/5 of the time. If we have flopped a set (11%) we will stack our opponnent, but if we have not (89%), we will fold even with overpairs.

(1/5)(2/3)(4/5)(2/3)(.11)(250bb) = 1.96bb
(1/5)(2/3)(4/5)(2/3)(.89)(-9bb) = -0.57bb

Our cbet will be called 4/5 of the time. I have just noticed an error leading to too small an equity in my equations. I have not satisfied the scenario in which our cbet is called, but we have flopped a set. In lieu of this I will continue with my original equations as completed, and work out an updated version correctly expressing this parameter. Therefore in this equity equation if our cbet is flat-called we CANNOT have a flopped set. This is obviously not true, and therefore our equity shall in truth be larger. Without a set we will complete one on the turn 4% of the time, and win 1/2 our opponnent's stack on average, and will miss the turn 96% of the time, at which point we cannot win the hand, again a fallacy as we will win with our pair in the hole at showdown some % of the time.

(4/5)(2/3)(4/5)(2/3)(.04)(125bb) = 1.42bb
(4/5)(2/3)(4/5)(2/3)(.96)(-9bb) = -2.46bb

Analysis

The summation of the equities yields a result of 4.64 big blinds. Again, this gain is after paying 3 big blinds, so our net gain is 1.64 big blinds/12 hands, or 13.7 big blinds/100 hands, which in regular poker terms comes to 6.8 Big Bets/100 hands before rake.

As stated in this essay, the mathematics are not completely accurate, and the data is skewed to a lower winrate than what should be actually attained through employing this strategy. I would like to gather additional data in order to more accurately express the likelyhoods of opponent's folding, calling, and raising in various situations. Despite these shortcomings, I feel I have sufficiently supported my hypothesis that playing only {AA-22, AK, AQ} at uNL tables with stacks of 250bb is a very profitable strategy.

It's time to get serious about heads up play

Got through a few things today, and it's pretty awesome. First I worked out the numbers for an equity equation of playing only pocket pairs and AK-AQ at the uNL tables. I'm going to make a post after this one with the finalized numbers, which still need some more refining, but are all right for a rough draft.

2nd I checked some numbers for heads up play. My current winning percentage is 77%. If I can maintain that winrate while 6 tabling, then an 8 hour day would get in 96 games, winning on average, 73.8 of them for a gain of $295.20 and paying $211.20 in entry fees for a profit of $84 a day, or $420 a week. That's not super, but making just under $22k to play $2.20 heads up matches isn't an awful thought. And likely my winrate will suffer multitabling. In fact I wouldn't be surprised to see it fall to 63% or so, in which case I'm only winning 60.48 games a day for $241.92 - $211.20 = $30.72/day * 5 days * 52 weeks = $7987/year. Now it's a really crappy number that won't pay for anything. Big difference.

Here's where it gets good. If I'm playing the $5.25 matches, I can cut it to 3 matches at a time. That should lead to about 48 matches a day, and if my winrate holds, I'm winning 36.9/day for $369 - $252 in fees = $117/day or $30.4k/year and that's only at the lowest levels of play.

I'm not really thinking of this as a career at the moment, I just want to build my bankroll, but it's intriguing to see what my current results could yield in the long term. Allright, I'm ending this post and delving into my mathematics behind my new theory, have fun with this next one, I did.

Few Heads up Matches

So I had to play a few more, and I made them count. This one gave me a spot of trouble though. Really bad player, who I pretty much dominated from the beginning. After 21 hands, I'd taken 1/3 of his stack, winning 17 of the 21 or 81%. All little pots, just taking his blinds, maybe a small raise and then a cbet taking it down on the flop. I kept whittling away at him and took his 950 down to 770, and had this hand occur.

















Would've thought my putting him all in on the flop would discourage 9 high from calling, but I guess not. Things just got interesting, he's actually got the chip lead. Just 6 hands later I'd regained the lead slightly and this finished it off.













Scary board, but my AK held and netted me another victory. Good stuff.

Game Theory 101

[Disclaimer: This may make your head spin]

So I've been playing with game theory a bit and found some interesting results. Here's an example of a game theory strategy for NL.

Basic Concepts:
1) Get in pot cheaply
2) Massively overbet with some premium draws
3) Massively overbet with the nuts or the best hand

That's pretty much the idea, but it's not as easy to do as it sounds. You have to know what you're doing, cuz you play this the wrong way, and you're spewing chips like there's no tomorrow.

Example:

2 Players get to the flop and the pot is $500
Both players have $5,000 in their stacks
Player 2 on button has Ac Kd

Flop [Ah 7s 6s]

Game theory player moves all in.

Now he's on a draw a good 75% of the time. Here are hands covering the spectrum.

GT Hand, Bet/Call, GT Chances, GT Equity, Player Chances, Player Equity

1) Ts 8s $5,000 47.80% $5,019 52.20% $5,481
2) 8s 5h $5,000 37.00% $3,885 63.00% $6,615
3) 7h 7d $5,000 98.40% $10,332 1.60% $ 168
4) 5h 9s $5,000 23.70% $2,488 76.30% $8,012

Game Theory Equity: $21,724 Player Equity: $20,276

Now even knowing he's on a draw 75% of the time, that 25% costs so much that you cannot call profitably. In fact if you called his "stupid" overbet with tptk, he's going to win $1,448 every four hands played this way, or $362 a hand.

On top of this, when the game theory player shoves and is called by a better hand which gets drawn out on, that player may go on severe tilt, and blow off a ton more chips in the hands following the beat.

Finally, this player is going to pick up SO MANY chips from uncalled pots. It's very tough to have a hand you want to call that $5,000 bet with. This super pressure allows the GT player to win chips he never could from his hand's strength alone.

The biggest downside is going to be variance. Playing this hyper-aggressive style is going to yield some wild swings both for good and bad. If he shoves in ten times in a row with a 35% chance to win, 1.5% of the time he will miss all ten shoves. That's going to cost him $50,000. But make no mistake about it, the reward of this style is much higher than the risk when employed correctly.

Now that I touched on some basic game theory, my next post is my first attempt at creating my own game theory for uNL.

Heads up? Hell yes!

So I've got some good posting to do. Turns out theres' something on Stars that I never saw before. Insert Beer (best name ever) was kind enough to bring it to my attention that there are heads up tournaments on stars for micro stakes. And not only that, he was killing them, winning all six he played. Now I consider myself a pretty decent player, and I've really been working on my "Killer Poker" mentality, classifying opponnents and adjusting my game to take advantage of their style's specific weaknesses. I also consider myself wicked f***ing aggressive and figured I could run over the heads up games, basically leave people crying.

My bank wasn't very big at all, $25 or so. Right in that ballpark. So I sat myself at a heads up $2.00 + $0.20 hu sng. Winner gets $4 for a net gain of $1.80. Well I got sucked out on, and was feeling pretty damn unfulfilled. So I sat in another one...I won this time, and that was fun. I like winning money, but even better is to beat the guy. I beat you, I'm better than you, I'm awesome, you're not, blah blah blah, cuz I live for that. Speaking of, this isn't poker related, buttt my girlfriend kicked basically everyone's ass today at New Englad Collegiate Championships for swimming. She finished 5th in New England for the 100 Butterfly, and got the 2nd fastest time for the 100 Freestyle, but it was during a medly relay, so it doesn't count for that, but her team did get 6th overall which is cool.

But I digress....so I won the 2nd one, but that still left me negative, spending $4.40 on buyins and winning $4, so down $0.40. That meant I needed to play another, so I did, and I won. Then something happend. I just kept winning. I won the next 9 matches in a row in fact. Took a shot at the $5 + $0.25 heads up and lost the first, then won the next two. Then I stopped, cuz the roll still can't handle variance at that level, but I wanted to see how different it was. Answer: Not very.

When all the heads up to this point is tallied, I've played 3 $5.00 + $0.25 hu s&g's for a net profit of $4.25. I've also played 13 hus&g's for $2.00 + $0.20 for a net profit of $15.40. My record right now in heads up play is 13 wins and 3 losses. Not too shabby.

P.S. These are also earning me 1 FPP every time just like the 9 person sng's did, except they're faster and earning me wayyyyy more $$$.

I miss poker :(

It's been a long time since my last blog, and I'm sad about that. I've been very busy lately including the startup of my 3rd business. While I didn't need money for funding those startup costs, there were other "life-beats" that came about, and I was forced to be a mature adult, blah blah blah, (still NOT happy about this!) and cash out my entire bankroll to pay for things that aren't fun in life ($400 eyeglasses are on this list...as an aside not having insurance sucks when you have to pay for things, but I'm pretty sure I'm still very +EV for not having it).

So, my awesome progess, my 12-tabling, working towards an actual career playing cards, has all come to a ridiculously quick screeching halt. I managed to retain $30 on my epassporte after paying bills, so I've shoved it back onto stars, and going to start grinding the $.01/$.02 NL and $1.20 sngs to try and make a rush at finishing my FPP $50 bonus, giving me enough room to safely (in my opinion of my own personal play and results) 4-6 table $.02/$.05 and try to rebuild my roll.

This is the 2nd most I've ever wanted something, right after wanting to become a professional athlete. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this a reality, even if it's just playing 8 hours a week for a little extra something, if I'm grinding out 5BB/100 and my usual 700ish per hour, I'd be pulling down an extra $140 at $.10/$.25 all the way to $560 a week at $.50/$1.

As of late, I've been active on 2p2 more reading and talking with my favorite pokerstar, insert beer. Strategerizing is fun and all, but it's time for this junkie to get back to the felt. I hope I'm typing again sooner than later, and with good news. No more lifebeats, and who knows? Maybe even a life-suckout :)

P.S.

I'm resetting my Tracking Meter for my bankroll. I'm very sad about this, but I don't think it's right to freeze it. Instead I'm making a note for myself that before my lifebeat, I had 56% of my required roll for $.10/$.25.

Killer Lesson

Today I began experimenting with some very LAGgy play. Talk about a good time. I'm playing tons of hands. And when I'm playing, I'm raising, betting, 3betting, all that good stuff. Talk about being involved. Also I get to basically dictate the pace of the game, get a feel for how my opponnents are playing/reacting, while they start to steam and itch to look me up with a "solid" hand like TPTK.


This hand is one I felt I played very well. Had a good read on this opponnent who was playing similar to myself. Lots of raising, mostly in position. I read him as weak, but his call on the flop suprised me, and I thought maybe he held a small pp ahead of my 5's which slowed me down. Also I'd seen him bet small with top pair earlier.

Wow, I'm just taking down pot after pot. This style is definitely not without it's merits. However the expense to me is I'm currently only playing one table. I can just completely be an aggro rock, 12 table and grind out a decent BB/100. We'll see what one table like this does. Right now I've won 9 of the last 16 pots, and 18 out of 36 total. I've actually won 50% of all pots played! That's about how it's been going. I have an exceptionally tight table right now it seems, and they're letting me walk all over them.


Okay, so now that the session's over, I ended up making ~128BB/100. That's really good, lol. I'd have to be averaging 10.8BB/100 per table while 12 tabling to pull that off. Methinks I might be trying this out. More to come.