September Results and October Goals

So I ended up not playing any poker whatsoever in September. I was pretty busy with school and work so I didn't even really care about the lack of poker.

I did finally take my remaining cash off UB. Due to the cheating (out of principle, not because I was swindled, I don't play nearly high enough stakes) and the crappy software, I never played there anyway.

For October, my goals are to play a bit of whatever I want. Maybe 5-10 MTTs and some hands of cash. Just so I don't get too rusty for when I want to return to the game for some side income.

But starting October 28, I'm probably going to play significantly less poker, at least for a while. That is the day Fallout 3 comes out for xbox 360, and I've been looking forward to it for months. Hopefully it won't interfere too much with school and work... :)

Stuff

I haven't yet played a hand of poker in the month of September. My last session was on August 27th. I've had a lot more homework than I expected, the result of my Native American history class. We have three book reports and a research project to write for that class, in addition to whatever other assignments the professor decides to cook up.

The result of this homework is that my weekends have been devoted to homework, to the tune of 5 hours a day, leaving no time for poker. A somewhat surprising corollary is that I haven't missed it too much, at least not as much as I thought. Though I guess I should have known, the last 6 months or so I've looked at putting in time at the tables as more of a chore than a fun, money-making hobby. So meh, I may make this an extended break until the end of the month, but I may get back into it when I start to get a handle on the homework.

In other sad news, my grandmother passed away at the beginning of the month. She had been morbidly overweight for a number of years and had health problems as a result, so this was not totally unexpected. Nonetheless, it still hits you when hear the news. My dad flew back to take care of everything that was left over, and he seems to be taking it alright, but I can only imagine how hard it would be to lose your mother.

All in all, a fairly crappy month; hopefully things start to get better soon.

August Rap-Up and September Goals

In August I failed to hit my volume goals. This is fairly typical of me, because not only am I lazy, but I have a hard time doing more than two tabling. I have a hard time more than two tabling for two reasons. The first is that I suck at multitasking. The second is that it's hard to put much more than 4 tables up on my laptop screen and even harder to run 2 tables with pokertracker etc in the background. Just not enough juice in the computer.

Thankfully, the second part of the above is now remedied. My very awesome girlfriend just got me a brand new MacPro (not that she really has the money, but because I bought her an engagement ring). Anyway, the computer is spectacular and I couldn't be happier with it. I just have to wait about a week to get 64-bit windows in the mail, as they only put 32-bit in the box. Then you have to go to the vista website and order 64-bit with your product key that you got in the box, and they send 64-bit for an additional $10 for shipping.

Anyway, here's how August ended up for me:

MTT's:
Goal: 30 MTT's, no profit goal.
Result: 11 MTT's, at 391% ROI, profit of $207.

As you can see, I ran very well in tournaments for August. I still play way too tight in the mid-stages of tournaments, and it's something I need to remedy.

Cash:
Goal: 1k Hands, no profit goal.
Result: 800 Hands, at ~(-4BB/100), profit of -$15.75.

As well as I ran in tournaments, I ran almost equally bad in cash. I played poorly on a few occasions, but there were several days were I was playing very solid and just not catching well/getting paid. Oh well, not a big deal.

September goals will be as follows. Since school has started up this past week, I'm cutting back on the MTT goals, since I couldn't hit it even when it was summer vacation still.

MTT's:
Goal: 10 MTT's. No profit goal.

I'd say that I'd like to run at ~100% ROI, but thats very unreasonable given that I'll only be playing 10 tournaments as a goal. The amount of variance in such a small number of tournaments means that any ROI I have at the end will mean almost nothing anyway, so setting a goal is pointless.

Cash: 1k Hands, (+7BB/100)

Though 1k Hands is also a very insignificant sample size, this goal is more reasonable. Because of my school time constraints, I should have shorter opportunities to play that lend themselves more to cash games than tournaments. The only problem will be actually playing rather than just blowing it off and doing something else.

So that's that, thanks for reading, and thanks again to my wonderful fiancee, Courtney! You are the best, honey!

$10 NL

I've decided I can't beat it. These examples should serve as proof. I was three tabling at the time, these examples are from a 5-minute span.



Poker Stars, $0.05/$0.10 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 5 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter
BB: $10.70
Hero (UTG): $14.05
CO: $6.10
BTN: $18.80
SB: $10
Pre-Flop: J J dealt to Hero (UTG)
Hero raises to $0.40, CO calls $0.40, BTN folds, SB calls $0.35, BB raises to $2, 2 folds, SB calls $1.60

Flop: ($4.80) 4 K 2 (2 Players)
SB checks, BB bets $2.50, SB folds

Results: $4.80 Pot ($0.20 Rake)
BB mucked and WON $4.60 (+$2.60 NET)


Poker Stars, $0.05/$0.10 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter
UTG: $8.90
MP: $5.05
CO: $8.40
BTN: $11.15
Hero (SB): $9.80
BB: $8.90
Pre-Flop: A K dealt to Hero (SB)
2 folds, CO calls $0.10, BTN folds, Hero raises to $0.50, BB calls $0.40, CO calls $0.40

Flop: ($1.50) 7 2 6 (3 Players)
Hero checks, BB checks, CO bets $0.70, Hero calls $0.70, BB calls $0.70

Turn: ($3.60) Q (3 Players)
Hero checks, BB bets $1.20, 2 folds

Results: $3.60 Pot ($0.15 Rake)
BB mucked and WON $3.45 (+$2.25 NET)


Poker Stars, $0.05/$0.10 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter
MP: $9.10
CO: $7.40
Hero (BTN): $11.70
SB: $10.15
BB: $3.40
UTG: $6.40
Pre-Flop: K A dealt to Hero (BTN) UTG raises to $0.30, MP calls $0.30, CO calls $0.30, Hero raises to $1.50, 2 folds, UTG calls $1.20, MP calls $1.20, CO folds

Flop: ($4.95) 7 T Q (3 Players)
UTG checks, MP bets $0.20, Hero calls $0.20, UTG calls $0.20

Turn: ($5.55) 9 (3 Players)
UTG checks, MP bets $0.80, Hero folds, UTG raises to $2.40, MP calls $1.60

River: ($10.35) J (2 Players)
UTG bets $0.70, MP calls $0.70

Results: $11.75 Pot ($0.55 Rake)
MP showed 5 8 (a straight, Eight to Queen) and WON $11.20 (+$6.40 NET)
UTG showed 9 9 (three of a kind, Nines) and LOST (-$4.80 NET)


The first one is actually a pretty good fold IMO. His range is QQ+, AK, and IMO its definately weighted towards the pairs, because three-betting is so incredibly uncommon at these stakes.

The second one is the only one I think I played questionably. I probably should have led this flop, but having two callers was disconcerting. The BB insta-called my pre-flop raise, and the limp caller hit some of his range on the flop ( he was playing 60/10/2 through 50 hands). Nevertheless, once the BB flats behind me on the flop, I'm done with the hand unless I improve, which doesn't happen.

Third hand tilted the shit out of me. WTF is going on. After getting called by two players, there is basically no way I'm ever good on that flop, but I call because he bet 0.20 into the pot which makes no fucking sense. Whatever. When he leads the turn tiny again, I decide to let it go, since drawing the the three offsuit jacks seems pointless since I'm not closing the action. Sucks that I would have hit it, but WHAT THE FUCK was he doing there with 85s.

I was seriously outplayed by these players, especially the guy with the 85s. I can't beat $10 NL. I am so outclassed. This being toward the end of a 330 hand session (my longest in months) I still managed to finish up $2. Woo. $2. That's not pointless. I'm so glad I took the time out of my day to play $10 NL.

A Fun Hand

I didn't play this hand very well (I should have raised more PF and I'm not sure about flop play against three villains), but it was interesting to see what they all called with pre.

Poker Stars, $3 + $0.30 NL Hold'em Tournament, 10/20 Blinds, 8 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter
BB: 1,500
UTG: 1,820
UTG+1: 1,690
MP1: 1,470
MP2: 1,490
Hero (CO): 1,540
BTN: 1,100
SB: 1,400
Pre-Flop: (30) Q Q dealt to Hero (CO)
Observer folds, UTG raises to 60, UTG+1 folds, MP1 calls 60, MP2 calls 60, Hero raises to 240, 3 folds, UTG calls 180, MP1 calls 180, MP2 calls 180

Flop: (990) 3 8 5 (4 Players)
UTG checks, MP1 checks, MP2 bets 320, Hero raises to 1,300 and is All-In, UTG raises to 1,580 and is All-In, MP1 calls 1,230 and is All-In, MP2 calls 930 and is All-In

Turn: (6,070) A (4 Players - 1 is All-In)

River: (6,070) 3 (4 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: 6,070 Pot
UTG showed 9 T (a flush, Ten high) and WON 100 (-1,440 NET)
MP1 showed A 4 (a flush, Ace high) and WON 5,910 (+4,440 NET)
MP2 showed K J (a flush, King high) and WON 60 (-1,430 NET)
Hero showed Q Q (two pair, Queens and Threes) and LOST (-1,540 NET)

Poker?

I have some real trouble getting in volume. Didn't play at all Monday-Friday. On Saturday, I played two tournaments and was out of both in ~1 hour. Today, I played just two Sit and Goes, won one and bubbled the other (frustrating as hell), for +$11.50. $5 SNGs can be frustrating as hell.

But, as a testament to their profitability, two players in the tournament I bubbled were profitable at around a 20% ROI at the $5 level. They both cashed ahead of me, but not through any skill advantage. In fact, I thought they were both pretty bad. One ran 18/4, and the other ran 22/5. We played 150 hands, and were 5 handed for over 70 of those, so these stats show how passively they played. I was amazed that players that play that passively can still be profitable, but it just shows that if you have any sort of brain post flop you can make tons of money at low limit online games.

After my big weekend last week, this weekend was fairly uneventful and finished +$3.

That's all for now.

Sunday

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday I was incredibly frustrated by poker. Today, I'm relatively satisfied. I say relatively because though I am up ~$150 on the day, second place is never fun. I played two tournaments, a $4/180 and a $2 6-max. In the 6-max, I busted 35th after playing a fairly tag game throughout and profited just over $11. There were no significant interesting hands that I remember, everything seemed pretty standard.

In my opinion, I ran pretty good, but I was also playing pretty damn well in both tournaments. Anyway, skipping to 3 handed in the $4/180, I was the mid-stack with ~80k after getting solid value from my mid-strength hands. CL had ~140k, and the shorty had ~50k. The CL raised or called raises on ~70% of hands played aggressively enough post flop to take a lot of them down. Anyway, cut to me calling the short stacks 10 BB shove at 1k/2k/200 with JJ and holding over his ATo to put the final two stacks at 120k and 150k, respectively. I fold the first hand in the heads up dual from the SB, and then the following hand comes up.

Poker Stars, $4 + $0.40 NL Hold'em Tournament, 1,000/2,000 Blinds, 2 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

SB: 148,854
Hero (BB): 121,146
Pre-Flop: (3,400) T T dealt to Hero (BB)
SB raises to 6,000, Hero raises to 19,000, SB calls 13,000

Flop: (38,400) K 4 3 (2 Players)
Hero bets 27,000, SB raises to 129,654 and is All-In, Hero calls 74,946 and is All-In

Turn: (242,292) 9 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

River: (242,292) 9 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: 242,292 Pot
SB showed Q 5 (a flush, King high) and WON 242,292 (+121,146 NET)
Hero showed T T (two pair, Tens and Nines) and LOST (-121,146 NET)


And just like that, second place it is. IMO, his pf call is pretty bad unless I always pay off when he hits the queen or a flush. When he has a draw it's still a coinflip, so the pf call doesn't work in his favor in that case. However, I think calling the 3-bet with Q5s gets him in too much trouble post flop to be worth playing. This time though, it worked out in his favor. Meh, that's how it works sometimes.

A side note that is somewhat frustrating, I've now played 125 career $4/180s. I've only won one, and finished 2nd three times and 3rd 4 times. Pretty frustrating, but considering I'm still way up thanks to this tourney, I don't think I can complain too much. I just need to work on being more aggressive when short-handed in tournaments, even more so than in cash games, because the stacks are so much shorter with respect to the blinds. I used to play way too tight late, and would enter 5 handed play with 10-15 BBs way too frequently. I think I played pretty well short-handed today, but maybe a little too much on the tight side. Hopefully I can continue to improve on my mid and late-game play by going deep more often. If that happens, August may turn out to be an OK month.

Frustration

Another thing I need to work on is my emotional stability during play. I was playing some cash games and was up ~$6 through 50 or so hands when the following three hands tilted the hell out of me to the point that I stopped playing after 65 hands down $2.65.

Poker Stars, $0.05/$0.10 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 5 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

CO: $11.25
BTN: $9.55
SB: $4.55
Hero (BB): $15.85
UTG: $3.40
Pre-Flop: K K dealt to Hero (BB)
3 folds, SB calls $0.05, Hero raises to $0.40, SB calls $0.30

Flop: ($0.80) 7 5 2 (2 Players)
SB checks, Hero bets $0.60, SB calls $0.60

Turn: ($2) T (2 Players)
SB checks, Hero bets $1.40, SB calls $1.40

River: ($4.80) 6 (2 Players)
SB bets $2.15 and is All-In, Hero calls $2.15

Results: $9.10 Pot ($0.40 Rake)
SB showed 3 4 (a straight, Three to Seven) and WON $8.70 (+$4.15 NET)
Hero mucked K K and LOST (-$4.55 NET)


Good pf and turn calls sir... (The flop call I actually don't have that much of a problem with as he probably gets paid when he hits).

Then, against the same guy, who has been determined to be pretty fishy in the meantime, I raise to isolate...

Poker Stars, $0.05/$0.10 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

SB: $11.20
BB: $9.55
UTG: $8.70
Hero (MP): $11.25
CO: $4.80
BTN: $3.60
Pre-Flop: 3 3 dealt to Hero (MP)
UTG calls $0.10, Hero raises to $0.50, 4 folds, UTG calls $0.40

Flop: ($1.15) 5 3 4 (2 Players)
UTG checks, Hero bets $1, UTG calls $1

Turn: ($3.15) 2 (2 Players)
UTG checks, Hero checks

River: ($3.15) 6 (2 Players)
UTG bets $7.20 and is All-In, Hero folds

Results: $3.15 Pot ($0.15 Rake)
UTG mucked and WON $3 (+$1.50 NET)


Blegh. Hit a fairly good flop, bet hard for value. Check behind turn because I hate getting CR'd off of this with 10 outs. River six gives me a tie, I thought, but then his shove looked like a flush trying to get value, so I folded. If a flush is 30% of his range here, then I chop 70%, but $7.20 to chop a $3 pot even 70% of the time is not nearly enough, so I fold, but I was really pissed about it.

Then, at the other table.

Poker Stars, $0.05/$0.10 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 5 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

SB: $1.75
BB: $1.60
UTG: $9.95
Hero (CO): $10
BTN: $11.20
Pre-Flop: K A dealt to Hero (CO)
UTG raises to $0.40, Hero raises to $1.40, 3 folds, UTG raises to $2.40, Hero calls $1

Flop: ($4.95) 6 2 J (2 Players)
UTG bets $3.80, Hero folds

Results: $4.95 Pot ($0.20 Rake)
UTG mucked and WON $4.75 (+$2.35 NET)


And there you have it. 5 handed I have AKs and 3-bet. However, whenever I three bet I get min-4-bet because I always run into KK+ EVERY FUCKING TIME I THREE-BET. And this proceeds to finish of my tilt. Yay. Whatever. At least I only lost a total of $5 on the day. One day I'd like to run ok. That'd be nice.