New Rule

I have come to the realization that I don't perform as well when I play longer sessions. I'm not exactly sure why this is, but whenever I play for more than an hour ( >400 hands) my results are a lot more inconsistent. I get into this state where I feel like I'm not even blinking because my eyes are so focused on the monitors, and I don't believe that's a good thing. So the new rule is:

I will not play any session longer than 1 hour or 400 hands unless the table is to good to leave. If this is the case, I must close all of the other tables and play only the good table. A break of at least 20 minutes must take place before the next session can start.

This was all inspired by my session last night. I played a 735 hand session and lost $190, which is my first loss in a while. I did notice though that I played much better in the first hour and my results were better, and that includes when I got stacked on a bad beat. A graph will illustrate it better:

I did have KK run into AA, as indicated by the steep drop later in the session, but I also lost a lot of medium sized pots. I think part of the reason this happens is that I sometimes tighten up too much and then I feel the need to make plays, when I really don't need to be doing that. This post isn't all bad news though. I did play 180 hands today and managed to make $150, so my total loss for Thursday and Friday is only $40. I am still debating about whether or not I am going to play the WCOOP ME. A cool million for first is very tempting...

Another good one

I played another short session of 414 hands today but I was still managed to win $250. I know this rate is obviously not sustainable but I really do feel like I am crush $100 max. I'm starting to pick on the regulars, who make it so obvious that they are trying to steal dead money, and thus letting me open my 3 betting range quite a bit. I also have been playing just a little bit more aggressive, somewhere around 19/17 or 18/16 and it seems to be working. I can't say that I am not running good, because I obviously am, but I can't remember sucking out this past week. I also haven't been racing with AK vs QQ or anything like that. It basically comes down to the fact that I am getting it in ahead and I am holding, and everything is great when poker goes like that.
Pretty graph:


Hands:
Confusing
I didn't know what to make of the minimum raise. It typically is a big pair so I figured I would 4 bet small enough to entice him to shove. When he just called, I thought he has QQ or JJ, so I didn't really like this flop at all. When he flat called the flop, I was leaning more toward QQ and the K was another bad card. It would either scare his QQ or he just hit his two outer with KK, but I didn't have much left and the pot was pretty large, so I shoved and he had AK (lol).

Nice LAG image
This past week has really shown my why it is so good to have a LAG image. I am getting a lot more action with my big pairs because I'm being so active, and I get action when I have hands like this one because they think I'm a loose, bluffing idiot. I didn't have any history on this guy or I would've shoved the river instead of just a 3/5 pot value bet.

Whenever I started out a session, I used to play pretty tight at the beginning until I figured out the players a bit and then I would make my adjustments. I now like to start playing LAG, because like life, poker is heavily influenced by first impressions. It used to work that I would play so tight that when I finally got my AA or KK I wouldn't get any action. Now, by raising liberally right from the start, I can slow down and start to play tighter, and I still get action on my big hands because all people remember is the low, suited cards I played in the beginning of the session. I am currently right around +$1,300 for the month, and my aim is for $1,500. I thought about making it $2,000 but I won't get to play much tomorrow and probably not at all Saturday, so unless I have a good Sunday Major, I should finish the month around +$1,000-$1,6000. Hopefully this good run will continue for awhile...

Still Rolling

Today was another good, short day of poker with some nice results. This post is going to have a lot of images, so brace yourselves. Here are my results for the day:

And the graph:

I love it when graphs look like this. Lately, I feel I have been making some really good decisions and its really been paying off. I have been winning a lot of medium sized pots by making good reads and really extracting value from one pair and other marginally made hands. I really attribute most of this to sticking to one or two games and not hopping around playing something different each day. Here is my updated September graph:

After that poor 2/4 decision (straight line down in graph), I have stuck to mainly $100 max with some 1/2 thrown in and I have really been focusing. As you can see, it has been almost straight uphill since then, and while I have been running decent, I think most of it is because of my new ability to concentrate fully while playing. I am up about $900 from cash games and $145 from tournaments, so I have reached my $1000 refined monthly goal. I didn't think $1500 was going to possible, but with the way things have been going, I definitely have a shot at getting there by the end of the month.

As for life matters, Lauren and I have to decided to take a long weekend to Baltimore on October 18-21. I can't remember if I traveled there when I was younger or not, but either way, I am really excited. They have one of the largest aquariums in the country I believe (I love sea life, especially behind 6-inch glass), plus some great crab. For those of you that don't know me, crab is definitely my favorite crustacean and I haven't had any in a long time. It will be nice to get away and just enjoy a city with Lauren so I will definitely post a trip report when it's done...

Lauren is better than me at Poker

Every Sunday, I play the Sunday Majors, watch football, and Lauren usually comes over and cooks me a fantastic meal. That's why Sunday is usually my favorite day of the week for now. Last week, Lauren decided to play a $2 bounty tournament on UB while I played my tournaments. I helped her along, and she ended up getting down to 2 or 3 tables and cashing for something like $3.5, and she got $1 as a bounty for taking a player out. This time she decided to play a $10 tournament, and she did amazingly well, taking the whole thing down! I did help a lot because she is still new to tournaments, but she did a lot on her own and was always asking me to explain why I wanted her to do this or that. She took down $321 for her effort and now probably has a better pokerdb record than me. I couldn't be more proud of her, and I know she was excited to win. Just watch out for some of the WSOP events in the upcoming years, as she will be a major force when I'm done training her.

As for my Sunday, I played really well and managed to get a 100k stack in the $1k WCOOP event with about 400 people left until the money. Things just went downhill from there as I kept bleeding chips with tough hands like JJ, and then I 3 bet in position preflop with AQhh and the original raiser called. The flop came 445 rainbow and he led into me for about 2/3 pot. I knew his hand was something like 99/TT so I decided to shove for about 50k more because it would be really hard for him to call that type of hand, and if he does call, I am only 3:1 to suckout. He time banked for a long time and then called and I bricked about 150 from the money. I like my play but I wish I had done it differently. I should've taken more time to make the play because I think I shoved just a little bit too quickly. I also would go back and just 3x his bet, even though it would leave me with only 10k left. Doing it this way seems much stronger to me, because he knows I can't fold if he puts me in, and it looks like I really want a call but don't want any scare cards to come for his/my hand (e.g. an Ace or King on turn). So you live and you learn.

I played some $100 max today and made $205 over 500 hands, so I was very pleased. Here's a graph:

This brings my monthly total to just under $800, so I should be able to hit 4 digits for the month but $1500 is unlikely. I might not reach the hands goal because I haven't played a lot lately, but if I really try and grind, I can most likely do it...

I hate hangovers

There were a couple of people up at PSU last night so I ended up going out. For some reason, I got pumped to really drink a lot and ended up drinking way too much. I threw up for the first time in about a year and woke with a pretty bad hangover. It is now almost 8 p.m. as I write this, and I can still feel some slight effects from it. Nausea is in my top three for worst feelings in the world, and I especially hate when your head spins. I most likely won't be drinking anything more than one or two pleasant tasting imported beers when it comes to alcohol and going out in the next month or so.

As for a poker update, I played about 750 hands on Wednesday and about 200 today with the following results:

Wednesday:


Friday:


I don't feel like posting any hands at the moment so the graphs will have to do. As for life matters, basically all of my friends have gone somewhere for the weekend, so I will have a lot of down time and will probably be spending most of it with Lauren. I am actually looking forward to this, especially after last night. I just cleaned the kitchen and it's really comforting knowing that it won't be a mess again tomorrow since my roommates are gone. Lauren and I are also in the works of planning a long weekend vacation in the near future. At the moment, Baltimore seems the most likely destination, but nothing is set in stone yet. I love having my class schedule because it gives me the freedom to do things I love doing like traveling and seeing new places. Plus, Baltimore is suppose to have some good crab, and there aren't many things I love more than crab...

Taking a shot

I played two sessions today, a 570 hand one at $100 max and 230 hand one at 1/2. Here are the results:

And here is a graph:

The $100 max session I played decently but I ran pretty bad. People kept rivering two pair in pots where I played for pot control, but I like that style with marginal made hands. Then I had one sort of cooler with AK on an AsJs5x board where the under the gun raiser had 55. If not for that hand, I still would have made money at .5/1. I had a test at 8:15 tonight and then hung out at Lauren's for a little before I came back and played my second session. I decided to give 1/2 a shot because my bankroll now has 20 buy-ins for that level, games are typically softer at night, and I know I'm good enough to play at that level. I used to play only 1/2 on Stars (and sometimes 2/4 until I reached my pain threshold) and I was beating the game pretty good, and I am confident Full Tilt is a little bit softer. The game plan is to now keep playing these days of mixed levels to phase myself into 1/2 where I hopefully can make some nice money and prepare for 2/4. I played really well at 1/2 today so that goes a long way for the confidence. Here are some hands:

Hand from above
This hand is actually kind of interesting and I'm really not sure if I played it correctly. If I had a deeper stack, it is a clear fold, but with my stack and now getting 2:1 with his shove, I didn't think I could fold. I figured hands that would do this were set, AJ, AQ, AK,KsQs, QsTs, and maybe a suited connector flush draw but that is unlikely because he has to know he doesn't really have fold equity. I don't like squeezing with AK against UTG raisers and callers because when you miss, you are out of position and often get floated/shoved on dry flops. Flat calling does disguise my hand and may get a guy to stack of with AQ or AJ on an Ace high board.

Discipline Fold
My river bet here is bad but it was a nice discipline fold, which I have gotten a lot better at lately. A bet on the river is bad here because my hand is sort of transparent when I bet the river because there is no way I have a boat with with that scary flop and I definitely would've bet a King or Queen on the flop. It's also bad because I don't get any value from an Ace as we will chop and he certainly isn't laying down an Ace for only $25. I really think he had TJ, but if he didn't, then it was a nice bluff by him.

Nice read
I was almost positive this guy was squeezing based on my reads of the table, and I'm glad I actually had the nerve to follow my read and pull the trigger. Next time though, I think making a pot committing bet like $110 looks stronger whereas the all in bet looks a lot like AK.


Another Nice Read
I liked this hand a lot. I normally wouldn't play as big of pot in most situations, but this guy was a major donk. I had seen him make a few big raises with weak made hands or draws, so I had no intention of folding on this under flop unless some really bad cards came. He hesitated calling my turn check raise, and him not shoving made me put him on a draw. This guy's stats were something like 60/25, and he was the type that would raise any pair as he raised a lot and limped with suited cards, so I wasn't too worried about a set. The river was perfect and put me ahead of a hand like 86 suited and I snap called pretty confidently. His hand was right around what I thought, so that was a nice pat on the back along with the 260bb pot.

This post is running kind of long, but I haven't posted in awhile so I feel the need to make up for it. My friend just started a blog and I must admit, it is one of the most intelligently written piece of writing that I have read in a long time. He certainly has a gift for writing and I truly believe he should pursue something in that field (he does intend to). What really caught my eye was the level of reflection involved. Reflection of oneself is something I have done before and something I plan to do more of in the near future. It is one of the best ways to analyze yourself and assess how you truly are feeling at a certain period of time, and it often leads to eye opening revelations. Reflection is very dandy indeed, but for it to truly be effective, you have to go somewhere with those realizations and take the proper actions to maximize your benefit from them. I have a very wonderful and happy life right now, so my reflections may be more focused on smaller things, but I really need to work on following through on those reflections...

I'm not dead

This is probably one of the longest time periods I have gone without updating the blog. I just wasn't really in the mood for blogging because poker has been frustrating for me this month and I've made a lot of foolish errors. My biggest mistakes have been bankroll management and not fully comprehending variance. I was doing nicely in the 6 handed $100 max at the beginning of the month but then I hit a spell where basically nothing went right for a couple of sessions. This led to me getting frustrated, even though something like this is clearly within the boundaries of negative variance, and caused me to want a change of scenery. I moved to heads up, where things really kicked off nicely and even led me to think I would play it solely or the rest of the month. Once again, variance kicked in and I took a few beats and tilted some. I then saw a guy who looked pretty weak at 2/4 HU table, so I decided to play him. I ran pretty awful and ended up dropping close to two buy-ins to him, which was around 25% of my FTP bankroll. After that horrific day (ended around -$1100 that day!), I have since been grinding $100 max again and have regained most of those losses. I think I am down only $150 for the month thus far, so I'm setting a new goal of $1000 for September. I do think I will reach the 15k hand mark so that's at least one goal achieved.

My big thing right now is working on not getting frustrated and changing things up all of the time. I've also been playing pretty well since my blowup day, and I'm happy about that, but I'm still not giving as much credit as I should be and still not laying down some big hands when I need to. I just started datamining 1/2 since I might be moving up in around a month, so hopefully the extra stats and preparation will help. I'm on my laptop now so I can't post any graphs or stats, so I will do that next time...

Heads Up Pt. 2

I wanted to play a session during the night time hours to see if they are any softer, and I think they are, but not overly. I played 360 hands of $100 max on two tables and made another $88, bringing my total for the day to about $265. It feels good to finally get some traction this month, and I am can really contribute it to heads up. This session was a lot more volatile, mainly because of this hand: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1454158. This one for some reason really tilted me, and I actually dropped another buy-in to him on a stupid bluff, but I ended up taking it all back from him, so that was extremely sweet. Here's the roller coaster graph:


I am really enjoying this heads up stuff because it feels a lot more like a competition than 6 max. It's also really fun trying to adjust to your opponent and then seeing that adjustment work. Hopefully, I can keep this good run at heads up going and put up some decent numbers this month. This weekend is the Notre Dame game and there are a ton of people coming up to visit, so I'm not sure if I will get to play much, but it should definitely be a good weekend...

Very Quick Session

I was in between classes and decided to play some $100 max HU. I played two tables, one against a short stack and another against a guy with a full buy-in. Oddly enough, I killed the full stack guy and I lost about $15 to the shorter stack.

I was shocked to find out I only played 40 hands, so 20 per person. It was amazing that I was able to stack the full buy-in guy twice within 20 hands! I had three decent hands against him.

Very Nice
I was looking back on this hand, and the more I study it, the more I like it. Preflop 3 bet calling ranges are much larger heads up, so this was a good flop for me. When he smooth called I was pretty sure he didn't have a ten, as he would have to raise since so many scare cards can come, so that basically left a smaller pair, a draw, or a complete float with overcards. I really felt it was a float with an AJ/AQ type of hand because there is so much floating on these types of boards. The turn was a perfect blank, and I checked to induce, and he obliged. I shoved the turn with no fold equity because I was pretty sure my hand was best, and I got it in as a 90% favorite.

Baby Flush
I love betting my flush draws in HU pots as it really disguises your hand and allows you to get value on the next street as well, rather than trying to trap. Once again, the smooth call showed me he didn't have a king, but the ten was a great card to complete straight draws and maybe some two pairs. When he raised me, it was a no brainer shove because I can't afford to let another spade fall and kill my action or crush my hand.

Setting up a check call
This is a good example of the check call principle. After his turn check, I knew my Ace was good and his hand was weak. Any hand of strength would have to try and extract value from the many draws the turn made viable, so knowing this, I knew there was no value in betting the river because there aren't any hands that are going to call me that I have beat. He had to bet if he wanted to win the hand, and I was there to pick it off.

Hopefully I can keep it going well with these heads up matches. I'm going to really try to practice good game selection because it really makes a world of a difference...

Change of Pace

The six handed $100 max game hasn't been going as smoothly as I would like these past few days. I am still up almost 2 buy-ins for this month, but that isn't too special when you have played 3500 hands at that level. I'm not sure if it's a pride thing or not, but I know for sure I have developed some bad habits. I think one of my main problems is that I am trying to play way too LAG. This is a style I am still not the best at, but I really do want to be good at it. I just don't think that style is optimal for this level, where the players aren't as conscious about ranges, and are more or less calling stations. I have been a little too recklessly aggressive and I haven't been giving people credit. Also, lately, I just can't seem to lay down a hand even when I know I'm beat. Today, after playing a frustrating 6 handed $100 max session, I switched to heads up poker. I think I might be addicted. The player disparity is so much easier to spot in heads up than in 6 max. You can almost label anyone who doesn't buy-in for a full stack heads up as a weak player. I really think I played well today heads up, and I did have some mistakes, but I'm still learning. Here are my results:


And a graph:


I started the heads up stuff a little before hand 600 and as you can see, it took me a little bit to adjust. Also, I really felt good about this hand (http://www.pokerhand.org/?1449866)
as I knew exactly where he was strength wise. He was giving off some timing tells like he wasn't comfortable, and I thought this guy was decent, which is a main reason I ran this bluff. It's just a shame because about 80% of the time I will have him crushed here, and leaving him feeling stupid. Once I started to get the hang of things and stopped playing the good players, the graph looks very nice.

I think I'm going to keep playing this mix of 6 max and HU for now, but I'm going to try and lean more towards heads up. This one site I bought videos from has some great heads up videos, so I plan on watching them all again and getting really good at this stuff...

Much needed update

I haven't updated in a few days, mainly because I didn't really know where one session ended and another began. I started my September this Sunday by making $180 in cash games over 200 hands and the cashing in the Sunday Million for a profit of $145. Then I played a bunch of hands on labor day, 1744 to be exact. I had been grinding out $100 max and I just couldn't get things going. I had stayed down about a buy-in for around 1100 hands and decided to take a break. When I came back, I played 1/2 instead, and that was a total train wreck. I lost over 2 buy-ins in 85 hands! My AA lost to 89 and QQ lost to AK and so I was forced to take another break. I was now down about $550, which is a lot for my Full Tilt account at the moment. I came back and started to grind $100 max and was doing well and had reduced my losses to only about -$400 when this happened: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1447697. This was a big momentum killer, but I hung in there and managed to finish the day down only $350. So now I was only down like $30 for the month, and I played another 1000 hand session on Tuesday and made $120, which puts me in the green about 1 buy-in for the month. I always have one of these crazy days every month so hopefully this is my only one and the rest will be a lot smoother. Here's a graph of the craziness, and it doesn't include my tourney cash:


As for personal stuff, Lauren and I did our annual hike of Mt. Nittany on Labor day this year. I love doing this hike as there are a lot of great views and it's an amazing workout. The path we took was the long, six mile one, and about 1/4 of it is straight uphill over rocky terrain. Needless to say, I definitely slowed Lauren down during this part as I had to stop a few times for rest. Lauren and I are also watching the Prison Break dvds and we are loving it. I have already seen them, but even watching them a second time makes me want to do a massive marathon of them. It is seriously the best show on television and I watch a lot of these types of shows. Go buy Prison Break and I promise you won't be disappointed...

August Results, September Goals

This is the first monthly results post I've made, and I'm doing it on my school computer so I can't get a monthly graph. I have calculated overall profit, number of sessions, etc. and can post those.

Results
Net Profit: $1426
Days Played: 17
Winning Days: 14
Losing Days: 3
Largest Winning Day: $470
Largest Losing Day: -$1065


September Goals
Hands: 15,000
Profit:$3,000
-> Start with $100 max for at least half of the month, then move up to 1/2.
-> Try to incorporate at more loose, aggressive style


This result was a good one for the amount of days and hands that I actually played. Also, if I take into account the -$1000 day I had at 2/4, it could've been a much better month.

I am climbing Mt. Nittany for the third time with Lauren tomorrow. It's always fun to do that as it's a great workout, has some nice views, plus allows me to spend a lot time with my wonderful girlfriend!