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).

December

December was meh in terms of reaching goals. Ended up being pretty busy. Played around 2500 hands of NL10, and won at about 10.5BB/100. Good winrate but crappy volume, the story of my life. Oh well.

November

As I predicted, November got very busy with my senior design project. I was only able to play about 500 hands of cash. I also played about 25 tourneys, 20 turbo $3 SNGs, 4 11.7 DSO's to the sunday million, and 1 other random tourney. I did the tourney playing because I wanted to try and satellite into the $2.5M guaranteed Sunday Million that Stars put on to celebrate giving out $250M in that tourney through its life. They got 18k runners so it would have been really sick to play in, but I didn't win a seat. I pretty profitable in the SNGs though so it's all good I guess (about 115% ROI through the tourney's combined).

December is looking to be pretty busy again. I have some finals, need to finish laying the bricks in my yard, and am going to NH for Christmas. So I think I'll have around 15 days to play poker, if I can convince myself to actually sit down and do it. I need 12k cash hands to meet my goal for the year volume wise (40k), and I think I can do it. I'll need to focus, and not be lazy, but it's definately possible.

October/November

October was a meh poker month. Played about 3.5k hands and finished up around $55 online. Also went to Vegas at the end of the month and played about 3 hours of 1/2NL at the Mirage. Things didn't go that well and I finished down a buyin. I played a bit too tight, but I didn't run particularly well either. And for what it's worth, the rake was pretty severe at 10% as well.

I'll get back to work on my game online so that my next trip will be more successful.

School is still interrupting my pokering, but I also slacked off quite a bit in October. So I'm going to lower my goals in November in an attempt to actually reach them.

10k+ hands
4k+ hands at NL25
5BB/100 overall winrate
6 table at least 1/3 of the time

A Tale of Two Limits

So August has come and gone, and for once I'm actually impressed with the progress my poker game has made. The results were poor overall, but I feel that my game has gotten significantly better throughout the month.

We'll start by looking at tournaments.

Number played: 56
Number of cashes: 9
Total Profit/(loss): (94.69)
ROI: (38.32)

Blah, run bad and I stopped caring at the middle of the month. Downswings in tournaments suck. I was playing very well in my opinion and just running bad at the wrong times.

So instead of playing tournaments in my newly acquired excess spare time, I started focusing more on cash games especially around mid-month. I had the highest volume month of my career in 6-max cash, which felt good. I actually moved up to NL25 for a fair bit, which is where the title of this post comes in. We'll start by looking at NL10 for the month.

Number of hands: 7,148
Profit/(loss): $163.15
BB/100: 11.41

I am very pleased with this result, and felt that my post flop game was doing very well this month. I still need work on my preflop game though, I'm just way too tight still. Opening up will make my long-term winrate better, and that is obviously a primary goal of mine.

With the positive out of the way, lets take a look at NL25.

Number of hands: 4,781
Profit/(loss): ($204.65)
BB/100: -8.56

Obviously my stint at NL25 didn't go as well as I'd hoped. I played just about the same as I do at NL10, but variance had it out for me, as the largest downswing I've ever encountered (8 BI) met me in my step up the limits. I've dissected many of the major hands pretty thoroughly, most with the help of 2p2, and the general concensus is that I've largely been running like shit. That said, I was displeased with some of my tilted play. I called down in a number of very poor spots. If I had played my A game throughout the downswing may have only been 6 BI. Oh well, it's over now, and it game me renewed vigor and focus.

The biggest area of concern in my game at the moment is my PF range. I have run 15-16/12-13 for as long as I can remember and that's simply way too nitty to be any good moving up. I will be making a concerted effort to get those numbers closer to 22/20 to 24/21. I have to work on post-flop as well, sure, but you don't get post-flop without having a sound pre-flop game, so it suits me to start there.

Also of note is that I made a pretty good run at getting silverstar status this month. I managed to collect over 900 of Pokerstars VIP Player Points where 1200 get's silverstar status (basically extra free stuff). I was collecting 2x FPP's all the time thanks to an online survey I filled out for Stars in July. So I was able to get a new book from the VIP store and still have nearly 2k FPPs for future use.

I'll be moving back to NL25 sometime in September. Since I lost ~200 dollars there, I'm planning on making that back in NL10 before trying again. So far I've knocked out about 70 in 2k hands since moving back down. I've been table selecting very well of late, it seems every table I'm on has at least one, usually two or more 40+/<5s. It's fantastic.

Goals for September:
20k hands of 6-max.
8+ BB/100 at NL10
6+ BB/100 at NL25
Reach Silverstar Status

Notably there are no tournament goals this month. I'm basically fed up with them. Sure I'll play them again, but hopefully not until I buy into them with FPPs. : )
The Sunday Million costs 13,500 fpps, and that very well may be my next tournament, unless I play a few to warm up for it.

A Bad River Call

I haven't been posting enough humiliating hands in this blog. That was one of the blog's original purposes, so I will rectify that now. In the following hand I make a pretty terrible river call.

Villain in this hand is at 3 of my tables, and is running 17/12 IIRC. Seems pretty solid. About 3 orbits prior to this hand he lost a buyin when his 44 lost to AQ on a A42A board. River 2. I've 3 bet him a few times, but this is the first time he's 3-bet me. On to the hand:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.10 BB (6 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

saw flop | saw showdown

UTG ($10.15)
Hero (MP) ($25.55)
CO ($14.45)
Button ($25.40)
SB ($12.25)
BB ($10)

Preflop: Hero is MP with A, K
1 fold, Hero bets $0.30, 2 folds, SB raises to $1.30, 1 fold, Hero calls $1

Flop: ($2.70) A, 3, 8 (2 players)
SB bets $2, Hero calls $2

Turn: ($6.70) Q (2 players)
SB checks, Hero checks

River: ($6.70) 10 (2 players)
SB bets $5, Hero calls $5

Total pot: $16.70 | Rake: $0.80

Results:
SB had A, A (three of a kind, Aces).
Hero mucked A, K (one pair, Aces).
Outcome: SB won $15.90

The hand seems pretty standard until the river. Basically, since this is the first time I've seen him 3-bet through ~100 hands, I'm putting him on a pretty tight range. Something like TT+, AQs+, AKo sounds right. That is probably too loose for most at $10NL, but he seemed fairly decent, so I'll give some credit. Anyway, This is a WA/WB situation on the flop, significantly favoring the WA (1 combo of AA left, vs 3 of KK, 6 each of QQ-TT). So I'm comfortable just calling, since he's not putting in any more money unless he has the AA. He has at most 2 outs, and I might get another bet out of his pairs on the river. Turn and river are very bad cards for my hand, since it improves his range's equity against my hand. I was mentally prepared to call a bet of up to $3.5 on the river before the T came off.

IMO, he never makes this size of a bet with KK or JJ. So I'm essentially calling vs his river range of TT, QQ, AA, and maaaaybe AKs, AQs. I'm losing to all of these but the AK (and even with that hand I think he checks the river most of the time).

At the time, I had been making a number of hero calls at several tables that had all turned out right (for pretty siginificant financial gain), and so I guess I just wanted to keep it going. I thought about the call for nearly 30 seconds before making it, but clearly in retrospect its a terrible call given his range.

Otherwise the day turned out very well. I was able to run at +18 PTBB/100 over 540 hands. If I am able to fold this river, that turns into +23 PTBB/100. At least I know I won't be making the same mistake again soon.

It's Just Business

This month it's bad news and bad news. Poker went meh, as you'll see. In addition, however, I have been layed off from the internship I've held for two years. I won't go into too many details, as I'd like to keep potential options open at the company for future employment. But I will say this, it was not based on my performance, or lack thereof, "it's just business." Maybe things will have turned around by the time I graduate.

As for poker:

Tournaments:

# Played : 48
Avg Buyin : $4.88
Total Cashes : $151.37
ROI : -35.45%

Down about $80 in tournaments this month, nothing significant to say, other than it felt like I was playing pretty well. Standard tourney downswing, nothing to get excited over.


Cash Games:

Hands Played : 2,332
Profit/(Loss) : ($12.75)
PTBB/100 : (2.73)

This is the more concerning result, if over 2,332 hands you can get concerned about results. I was up over $30, had a 6.5 BI downswing, then recovered about $20 to get where I finished. Hard to say if I was playing very well. There were a couple standard cooler spots, but I think if I were on top of my game, fully focused and playing as well as I could have been, I may cut the downswing in half. On the flip side, I think I'm starting to get a bit better at making thin river calls:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.10 BB (5 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

saw flop saw showdown

SB ($22.65)
BB ($10)
Hero (UTG) ($12.40)
MP ($6.40)
Button ($13)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with K, K
Hero bets $0.30, 1 fold, Button calls $0.30, 1 fold, BB calls $0.20

Flop: ($0.95) 2, 9, 10 (3 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $0.80, Button calls $0.80, 1 fold

Turn: ($2.55) 8 (2 players)
Hero bets $1.50, Button raises to $4.30, Hero calls $2.80

River: ($11.15) 10 (2 players)

Hero checks, Button bets $7.60 (All-In), Hero calls $7 (All-In)

Total pot: $25.15 Rake: $1.20

Results:
Button had Q, 9 (two pair, tens and nines).
Hero had K, K (two pair, Kings and tens).
Outcome: Hero won $23.95

Villain was running 46/0/2.2 over 40 hands to this point. The overall read I had developed in this time was that he was hyper-trappy/passive with big hands. Example is that he checked down 99 OOP on a 94667 board, after the turn put a 3 flush on the board. He didn't try to get one street of straight value. In other hands he was playing pretty aggressively postflop, considering he had never opened pre.

At the time of the call I was very unsure about the hand, and contemplated posting it on 2+2. I think now that this is a pretty good call down based on my read and the following reasoning:

First, his flop call means little. His turn raise, on the other hand, tells me he is repping the flush or maybe a straight with a flush draw (QJo , but certainly not 67o). Unless he has a weak flush that calls the flop bet, a raise here does not fit what I've seen of his playing style with made hands. Further, no straight and flush draw gets there on this specific turn other than QJs and 67s. He may be raising the 67s, but again, based on what I've seen of his playing style he's flatting here with the Q high flush.

Two thoughts enter my head on seeing this raise: 1) I've not yet seen him raise with the nuts before the river. 2) There are few other hands that make sense for him to have, outside of QJ, and maybe 67s.

River pairs the top pair on the board, making the board even scarier. He shoves his remaining stack in after I check. First thought in my head: God playing OOP sucks. Then I start thinking; he's not doing this with bare trip tens, my call on the turn would have scared him too much with three hearts out, and he has significant equity in the pot without turning his hand into a bluff. He could be doing this with any made flush, and any full house, but his turn play would still be suspect based on my reads of him at the time. At this point, my hand is a bluff catcher, since I beat none of his value shoving range. But getting a little over 2.5:1, I only need to be good about 29% of the time for this to show a profit (call 7 to win ~18 before rake). In this spot, based on my read from previous hands, I estimate his bluffing frequency to be near 40%, if not higher. So I called, and was right this time.

In the past, I'd fold this hand on the turn or river. I'm not sure if that means I'm getting better as a player, or if it means I'm rationalizing a bad call that turned out correctly this time. In any case, there were other questionable hands this month, but I think this was the most interesting.

Until next time.

June WrapUp

June went fairly well. I ended up playing the most $10 NL 6-max cash I've played in any month so far this year. Here are the results of that:

3006 total hands
10.25 hours played, averaging 3 tables at a time, and 293 hands/hour.
$15.30 profit, or 2.54 PTBB/100.

Overall not terrible, but definately not as good as it could be. Ideally, total hands would be 10k+ and profit would be above 8 PTBB/100. That said, at that rate I wouldn't be playing $10 NL for much longer.

This month was eye-opening for me though, as it exposed a number of leaks I need to work on. This is very good news, as I've never actually identified individual leaks in my play before, I generally just got better by experience and reading 2p2. We'll see how much I improve now going forward.

Tournaments turned out significantly better:

35 tournaments played
$154.75 in total buyins
$309.88 in total cashes
$155.13 in profit, with an ROI of 100%

A 100% ROI is quite good, though given my skill level probably unsustainable. Career I've averaged around 90%, which means I'm probably running above expectation. However, I did play very well in tournaments this month for the most part, and I think that I can start increasing my average buyin soon.

That's all for now, looking forward to a July that includes more cash game profits and hopefully some more good tourney scores.

The Streak is Over

My 2nd place streak in $4/180 mans is now over at 5. About damn time. I sucked out pretty hard a couple times in this one, the most significant time when I isolated a short stacks open ship with 6's, got called by the BB who covered with T's. Short stack had JJ, I win both side and main pot by flopping a set, and getting to 50k.

After that I played pretty conservatively but with points of aggression. I never dropped below 40k after that hand. Got HU with 77k to villain's 193, but got paid off a couple times pretty big when I flopped the nut straight and 2 pair and he just called down both times. Here is the final hand, after about 30-40 hands of HU. Finally win a flip. Felt nice.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00+$0.40 Tournament, 1000/2000 Blinds 200 Ante (2 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

SB (t41688)
Hero (Button) (t228312)

Hero's M: 67.15

Preflop: Hero is Button with 7, 7
Hero bets t4000, SB raises to t41488 (All-In), Hero calls t37488

Flop: (t83376) 7, K, J (2 players, 1 all-in)

Turn: (t83376) 6 (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: (t83376) 5 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: t83376

Results:
Hero had 7, 7 (three of a kind, sevens).
SB had 8, A (high card, Ace).
Outcome: Hero won t83376

Bad Session

I really need to work on folding. I really suck at it right now and it's costing me a ton of money in the long run. In this session it really felt like I was running bad, but I was compounding it by paying people off where I shouldn't.


Exhibit A:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.10 BB (5 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

MP ($10.05)
Button ($11.35)
Hero (SB) ($10)
BB ($2)
UTG ($6.40)

Preflop: Hero is SB with Q, Q
2 folds, Button bets $0.30, Hero raises to $1, 1 fold, Button calls $0.70


Flop: ($2.10) 6, 9, 7 (2 players)

Hero bets $1.40, Button calls $1.40

Turn: ($4.90) 10 (2 players)

Hero bets $3.30, Button raises to $8.95 (All-In), Hero calls $4.30 (All-In)

River: ($20.10) 2 (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $20.10 | Rake: $0.95
Results:
Button had 8, A (straight, ten high).
Hero had Q, Q (one pair, Queens).
Outcome: Button won $19.15


I think this needs to be a check fold on the turn. Yeah it feels weak, but one of the conceivable draws gets there. My thinking at the time was there is a decently low chance he calls a 3-bet with an 8 unless he has exactly 88, so I was betting to protect against the flush draw.

Maybe the bet is pretty close, but when he raised, I knew he had the 8. He should essentially never have a bluff here since it's pretty obvious I like my hand and have committed myself to the pot. But I couldn't refuse the 4:1 odds for some reason... I need to work on this, because there is no way I have 20% equity in the hand, which is needed in order to call here. Against any 8 or set, his most likely holdings given the action, I have less than 3% equity (combined). This needs to be a fold after his raise for sure, if not a check/fold.


Exhibit B:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.10 BB (4 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Button ($23.25)
SB ($9.50)
Hero (BB) ($10.10)
UTG ($9.35)

Preflop: Hero is BB with K, Q
2 folds, SB calls $0.05, Hero checks

Flop: ($0.20) 4, 5, Q (2 players)
SB bets $0.20, Hero calls $0.20

Turn: ($0.60) 9 (2 players)
SB bets $0.20, Hero raises to $0.90, SB calls $0.70

River: ($2.40) J (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $1.20, SB raises to $2.40, Hero calls $1.20

Total pot: $7.20 | Rake: $0.35

Results:
SB had J, 4 (two pair, Jacks and fours).
Hero mucked K, Q (one pair, Queens).
Outcome: SB won $6.85

I'm not sure how I feel about the action before the river... I should probably raise pre to $.40. By probably I mean should, I was just gunshy by this point of the session. Anyway, on the flop, I flat his bet because I don't want to raise/get it in against a combo draw on the flop. I know that's not necessarily what he has, but I've recently been too worried about flop spots against or with combo draws, specifically that the draw maximizes their equity in the hand by getting all the money in on the flop. Know this, I've been trying to punish draws that miss on the turn by keeping the pot manageable on the flop and then betting 3/4+ pot on the turn.

However, in retrospect I don't think this strategy is warranted on this flop. First, he is probably going to just flat a combo draw to any raise. Even if he 3bets, he won't be getting enough in the pot for me to justify not raising this flop. Anyway, the draw misses and I raise turn when he shows some weakness by betting the same amount. He calls, and this makes me think that he is in fact on a draw. River is a blank, so I value bet after being checked to. Here is where I make my mistake, after he CR's, I know he has one pair beat. People at $10 NL DO NOT check raise river without beating top pair, ever. Maybe some of the best players do, but this was certainly not one of those players. I gave him a range of stuff that hit the river, mostly two-pair type hands, but perhaps KT, 99, 55, or 44 also get here in this fashion if he is quite bad. It is inexcusable that I pay off this river CR, even with the odds I'm getting. I don't think he's doing this with less than KQ more than 5% of the time (it's significantly closer to 0, and may in fact be zero, but I must account somewhat for spaz factor). I need him to be doing it closer to 18% of the time.

All in all, the session had me tilted less than 100 hands in, and I stopped after just 1/2 hour and 156 hands down $22.2. Solid. I was running pretty damn bad, (I won 5 total hands through this time), but by playing how I know I should I can shave that number in half. Good players not only need to maximize their wins, but minimize their losses. The latter is something I dreadfully need help with. Luckily, it's something I know how to fix.