Embarrasing River Call

I butchered this hand.

Preflop is obviously fine. I think flop is ok too, I can't raise and fold to a 3-bet, and when he just calls a raise I am probably not doing that great against his range. Folding is not an option, so calling is fine.

On the turn though, I need to bet 100% when he checks this blank. I don't want to give a free card to draws, and I want to get value from worse Ax and 9x hands. I knew this was a mistake as I was checking behind.

When he overbets river, he polarizes his range to flushes/air. He's not doing this with 2pr because my range includes FD's as well, imo he'd most likely make a standard size bet with anything that a flush beats. I doubt anyone at NL10 is overbet bluffing nearly often enough to make a call correct here, he would need to be bluffing upwards of 37% of the time, which is just incredibly unlikely, especially on this board. I need to fold here always, and I knew that while the hand was unfolding. I make bad bad calls way too often. It really needs to stop if I want to be any good at this game.

Poker Stars $0.05/$0.10 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 569152
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

CO: $9.45
BTN: $7.45
SB: $15.25
BB: $11.80
UTG: $14.70
Hero (MP): $10.15

Pre Flop: ($0.15) Hero is MP with A Q
1 fold, Hero raises to $0.30, 2 folds, SB calls $0.25, 1 fold

Flop: ($0.70) 9 A 2 (2 players)
SB bets $0.40, Hero calls $0.40

Turn: ($1.50) 4 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero checks

River: ($1.50) 8 (2 players)
SB bets $2, Hero calls $2

Final Pot: $5.50
SB shows 7 6 (a flush, Ace high)
Hero mucks A Q
SB wins $5.25
(Rake: $0.25)

February

February was a pretty bad month poker wise. Didn't play much, but played a larger than expected number of tournaments, with the following results:


And here are the cash results:


Basically the whole month I felt like I was running bad, and I got tilted way too easily and stopped playing. So the volume is absolutely terrible. Woops. March will be better.

As far as progress on my yearly goals:

Goal 1: Structure my daily routine
A) job-search 60 min per day
B) Play 16 table hours per day
or do tons of push ups/situps.

Result: LOL so far. None of the three have been accomplished. I'm way way way off track. Time to get some focus back. I'm averaging less than 4 table hours per day (in cash) and even less than that in tournaments. Unfortunately in HEM I don't really know how to find multi-tabling ratio, so I'm really just basing the table hours on the fact that I've played a total of 100 hours of poker so far this year.

Goal 2: 400k Hands of 6-max cash.

Result: About 45k behind pace right now as I've only played 19k and should be averaging ~33k per month to reach this goal. No real excuse, reason for my lack of hands is a direct result of being short on goal 1.

Goal 3: Play the SM >2x (or equiv.)

Result: Already played one, the 2.5M guaranteed special (which was 2 weeks before the 4 mil guaranteed special, blah). Played like scared money. Kinda disappointed that I didn't play like I know I can. Next time should be easier. Also planning on playing quite a large number of the low buyin SCOOP events that will be in early May, though these don't exactly count as equivalent tourneys.

Goal 4: Achieve and maintain Silverstar + status.

Result: Got it in Jan, but lost it back after Feb. I just didn't have any motivation in Feb due to my poor mental state. Already feel much more focused in March and am more than 10% of the way to silverstar again, so this should be back on track within a few weeks.

wtf January

Started out super hot in January, finished up meh.

Cash results:
12,041 NL 10 hands
866 NL 25 hands
$228.6 profit
8.63 BB/100

Pretty good, except I'd like more volume in February. I had only 3 days with more than 1k hands, and my new years resolution basically had me doing 1.6k daily. So I've completely failed in that regard. Time for some will power.

Tournament results:
32 played
$324 in buy-ins
$1039 in cashes
220% ROI

This is pretty awesome, though I would have like to do better in the Sunday Million Special Edition I played today. I was basically scared money and played a bit too nitty, though I didn't have very many playable hands. Next time I play this I expect it to be much different (but that probably won't be for a good 3-4 months).

Managed to make Silverstar this month, just barely. Got a nice little $10 bonus for doing so. Now I need to focus, play lots more hands and move up to $25NL so I can get tons of FPPs while crushing souls.

BOOM!

2010 is off to a great start thanks to playing some tournaments on Saturday. I tend to not play well on weekends in cash games, so I decided that to get my requisite 16 table hours on weekend days I would rather focus on tournaments. I ended up winning a $1 6-max with 4900+ runners for $762, which also just so happens to be my largest career tourney score.

I also played 300 hands of 10NL and won like $1.50, so all in all it was a great start to the year. Unfortunately, I didn't complete my full hour of job searching, and I've done neither job searching nor poker today, so I owe 600 pushups and situps, which I think I'll do 200 per day until I'm strong enough to do the 300 (so far 100 is killing my wrists/elbows).

2009 Results

I'm going to look back at my goals for 2009 and compare them to how things actually turned out. Overall, things didn't go exactly as well as I'd hoped.

Tournament goal: 200+ tourneys, avg buyin > $5, ROI >90%.

I only met the first of these. Here are the results:

Tournaments played - 320 (though not all of these were MTT's, which the original goal assumed).
Average Buying - $3.96
ROI - 11.64
Total Profit - $147.56

lol donkaments. I have a much higher expected ROI than this, but I doubt it is as high as the 90% I put in my goal. I think I can sustain a 50-60% ROI in most low to mid tourneys.


Cash game goal: 40k hands, 9+ BB/100 winrate, reach NL25.

I didn't meet any of these, but I still felt some progress as a cash game player which I hope to translate to better results this year.

Total Hands - 30,319
NL10 Hands - 23,466
NL10 Winrate - 7.79 BB/100
NL25 Hands - 6,801
NL25 Winrate - (6.72) BB/100
Total Profit - $136.15

I now know that a 9 BB/100 winrate is basically unsustainable over a large sample size at any limit over 5NL. That was probably an unreasonable goal, and I am very happy with my winrate at 10NL, even if it is over a small sample.

I took a failed shot at NL25 in August, but I don't think I played as bad as the results indicate. I posted quite a number of the hands and the general consensus was that I was running pretty awful. I know that I wasn't playing great, but I think that in August my true winrate at NL25 was probably greater than zero. I have made a lot of progress since then, changing my game from a 16/13 nit to a ~21/18 tag, and I have more work to do. I took most of my roll off of Stars for some bills and to focus myself with a lower $ amount to work with. I'll start off the year at NL10, but I am hoping to move to NL25 soon and stay there.

As far as reaching my goals, 2009 sucked, but I think I set the bar a tad too high. The winrates I had set for myself were about what I had achieved in the past, but I realize now that I was both running hot and the games were softer back then. Such high goals are mostly unattainable with the games today. So in 2010 I hope to have more realistic goals that I can attain, and feel good about my progress as a player.