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)

This is lol bad

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (6 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

saw flop | saw showdown

MP ($25)
Hero (CO) ($25.25)
Button ($12.70)
SB ($24.15)
BB ($51.40)
UTG ($25)

Preflop: Hero is CO with K, K
UTG bets $1, 1 fold, Hero raises to $3.50, 3 folds, UTG calls $2.50

Flop: ($7.35) 2, 2, A (2 players)
UTG checks, Hero checks

Turn: ($7.35) 5 (2 players)
UTG bets $3.80, Hero calls $3.80

River: ($14.95) J (2 players)
UTG bets $7.60, Hero calls $7.60

Total pot: $30.15 | Rake: $1.45

Results:
UTG had A, K (two pair, Aces and twos).
Hero mucked K, K (two pair, Kings and twos).
Outcome: UTG won $28.70

Meh, flop line is standard. Turn call is close, but for some reason I thought I had some implied odds. I obviously don't, because if a fourth heart comes out villain is shutting down unless he has Qh or a boat. There is some chance he's betting worse to fold out my fairly obvious TT+, so I don't completely hate the turn call even with small implied odds.

The river call, on the other hand, is lol bad. Villain is not betting again to try to get me off of TT+ like ever in this spot, I don't think. I somehow convinced myself he was bluffing, though that is clearly an unlikely possibility. I knew before I called that I shouldn't, and I did it anyway. That puts me at the same level as a standard donk. Good players make good decisions. I make good decisions usually, but I tilt too easily and make bad decisions when I have a hand that is extremely good preflop but is clearly not good post-flop.

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.