Transition to Live Poker

So it's been a fairly long while since my last post.  In that time, a number of things have happened:

- I started playing on FTP in mid-March of 2011.  I wanted to take advantage of RUSH poker since my time available for poker is typically limited.  RUSH allowed me to play ~700 hands/hour playing just two tables, and I did not have to table select.  Instead of setting up a session of 5-6 tables on Stars, which typically took 10-20 minutes depending on the time of day, I just fire up 2 tables of RUSH and go to town.  My winrate was a bit lower but the volume made up for it, I was on pace to clear 40k hands/month, which would have been my record by almost 2x (previous record was 23k hands in Jan of 2010).  I was hoping to use RUSH as a signifcant motivator in my poker development.  I had never had an avenue through which I could reliably get good volume in, and this seemed like a great way to do that.  It would have been great for me to get in so many hands, but unfortunately:

- Online sites shut down in US by DOJ in mid-April 2011.  Known as Black Friday in the online community, this obviously sucked for me.  Even though poker is not a main income source for me, I enjoyed having something that was intellectually challenging as a hobby that I could do in the comfort of my own home.  Unfortunately, the government does not agree that I should have that ability (before this gets any more political or I get comments from anyone saying "F big government", etc.; you should know that the banning of online poker is largerly to entirely due to the conservatives in congress in their desire to legislate morality and "protect families").  Sorry about the rant there, I'm still a little bitter.

- I started playing live $1/$2 NL at my local casino.  I ended up playing 2-3 times/month over the summer for 3-5 hours per session.  I felt myself getting much more comfortable at the tables throughout my time.  The casino was actually fairly nice, with a non-smoking poker room, and by all accounts the best room in the state.  I gave myself a starting bankroll of $1,100, which was roughly the amount I was able to withdraw from Stars after Black Friday (still no money from FTP).  Through a combination of 2 tournaments and 8 cash game sessions, I increased my bankroll to $1,718.  I ran above expectation in my opinion, though I don't think I played poorly.  I just think that for my current skill level (was a big winner at $10NL and small winner at $25NL online) a $21/hr winrate at $1/$2 live is probably unsustainable.  That type of winrate is reserved for pretty good players in fairly weak games.  If I'm being honest with myself, I'd like to think I could sustain a $10-$12/hr winrate at those games.

- I moved to the SF Bay area in August 2011.  I haven't played a live session yet, but I plan on playing mainly at the Bay101 casino in San Jose.  This is because it has the most tables and is the most renowned/well regarded in the area from what I have read (though regs at other places tend to like their place more, typically Bay101 is high on everyone's list).  Plus, Matt Savage works there, and it is widely known that he is one of the best tournament directors in the industry.  I'll keep my bankroll at $1,718, which will be a little tight because the smallest game spread at Bay 101 for no limit is $1/$2/$2 with $4 min bring in (no limping for $2).  So my risk of ruin is actually higher than I'd like, but I also would like to think that my potential upside is substantial.

In the coming months, I will be updating this blog after every live session with session length, winnings (losses), monthly totals, and current bankroll.  I haven't yet decided if I should deduct travel expenses out of my bankroll or out of my other life-roll accounts under the premise that they would be the same if I drove to any other hobby I might have (hockey, golf, etc).

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).

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.

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.

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

May

May turned out pretty well for me. Volume was pretty low because of the week of school and finals at the beginning of the month, as well as my week-long honeymoon to Hawaii at the end of the month (which was awesome).

I played a total of 13 tournaments, with a total buyin of $52.95. The good news is I obtained a 285.36% ROI over those tournaments. The bad news is that in order to do so I got another second place in a 4/180. For those keeping track, through 209 tournaments, I've gotten heads up a really strong 7 times. I've taken down just one of these though, so it's incredibly dissappointing. As a direct result of this fact, I have absolutely no confidence in my heads up game, but I'm having a hard time pinpointing my mistakes.

In the last episode of futility, I got heads up with a 2-1 chip lead. We were roughhly even through about 40 hands, and he kept open shoving or three-bet shoving about 15-20% of hands, and I just never had anything during those times. I took down a majority of the other pots (roughly 60-70% of total pots). Our first major pot was when he limped his button and I checked my option in the BB with T7s. I proceeded to flop a flush draw and open-ender, and triple barreled, whiffed, and he called down with j5o, for a flopped middle pair (4th pair on the river). I kept my cool even though I had just missed 21 outs twice, which is a positive change from my past. However, this gave him the advantage in chips. From there, the blinds starting going up and he kept shoving, now with a slightly higher percentage of hands. I never seemed to have a solid hand, but I finally raise/call A2s, only to be shown A7o. I flop a flush draw on a paird board, but we end up chopping. A few hands later, I raise/call A6s, he shows A7s, I flop a 6, he turns a 7, and we're done. He just never seemed to have anything when I did and always had me kicked when I was ready to show down. Whatever, I wasn't too upset with my play, though 1 for 7 is starting to really annoy me. I'll have to keep playing these, getting HU, and working on my game. I could also play some HU SNGs, but those never were very fun for me, so we'll see what I decide.

As far as cash games go, I ended up playing 519 hands of $10 NL 6-max, with $24.50 of profit, for a BB/100 of 23.6. Very strong, but not sustainable. I played really well, but also got pretty lucky.

So far in June I've played another 761 hands of the same cash games, and have only made $5.95, for a BB/100 of just 3.91. This is definately sustainable for me, but is on the low side of where I want to be for this limit. I think 8+ is readily achievable. I think I'm still playing much better than in the past, I've loosened up to be around 19/16, which is still pretty tight, but not as bad as I was (16/12). I still have a ways to go, but for this limit those stats aren't too bad, and they should be very profitable.

I'm also planning to start 6-tabling the cash soon, as I currently only 3 or 4 table. That should help my $/hr but might hurt my BB/100 slightly. We'll see how it works out, but I'd definately like to keep it above 7 (for the year I'm at 7.28 through 2.25k hands). I posted on facebook that I wanted to get 40k hands combined in tournaments and cash this summer, and I've fallen well behind the pace thanks to my vacation. I think if I start 6-tabling successfully this goal will not be too tough to attain, so I'm looking forward to putting in some time at the tables. I haven't felt this good about my game in general (other than heads up) essentially since I was ignorant of how bad I actually was.

As a parting note to show that the games are still good (and to gripe that I run bad), here is a hand from earlier this week.

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

saw flop | saw showdown

Button ($6.75)
Hero (SB) ($12.70)
BB ($5.25)
UTG ($5.80)
MP ($6.95)

Preflop: Hero is SB with K, K
1 fold, MP calls $0.10, 1 fold, Hero bets $0.50, 1 fold, MP raises to $0.90, Hero raises to $9.60, MP calls $6.05 (All-In)

Flop: ($14) A, 10, 2 (2 players, 1 all-in)


Turn: ($14) J (2 players, 1 all-in)


River: ($14) 7 (2 players, 1 all-in)


Total pot: $14 | Rake: $0.70


Results:

Hero had K, K (one pair, Kings).
MP had A, 2 (two pair, Aces and twos).
Outcome: MP won $13.30


For the record, that is a limp/min-3-bet/insta-call with A2s. I was so happy when I saw his hand. I used to get pissed off at this result, but this time I was just so happy that he just gave me equity preflop like that. Once this hand occured, and I thought about how I felt, I knew I had turned a corner in my poker career. I'm finally starting to distance myself emotionally from the results, which will no doubt be extremely crucial in my continued developement as a player.

Summatime

School is finally over for the semester. The time has come to start grinding poker. I have never been very dedicated to volume, but I think if I want this to start being a significant side income I need to put in a ton of hands over the summer.

As far as my progress on New Years Goals, I think it's safe to say I'm falling short at the moment.

Goal 1) 200 or more tournaments at a $5 or higher average buyin and with a 90% ROI or better.

Progress: 114 tournaments played, average buyin of $3.93, ROI of just 10.12%.

Good volume, thanks mostly to January, but a low average buyin and a low ROI. At least it is profit.


Goal 2) 40,000 hands of 6-max cash at 9BB/100.

Progress: This started out really well, I was up two buyins in under 250 hands. This was followed by a 3.5 buying drop, at which point I essentially stopped playing, due to both sucking and school. At the current rate of play, I'll need about 20 years to get to 40,000 hands. Here's to hoping it doesn't take quite that long.
Hands played: 959
Amount won: $2.15
BB/100: +1.12

That's all for now. I might be posting a bit more often now that I don't have the added joy of homework for three months. We'll see how it goes.

Updating

The school/work combo is kicking my ass. It allows no free time for anything, including poker. My February volume is less than a tenth of my January volume (I think, I haven't actually checked, but it feels that way). But the monetary results are better. Stupid variance.

Not much to talk about, didn't play many interesting hands, but lost after getting heads up again in a 4/180. That's now 1 for 6 in those after getting heads up. At first I just thought I was running bad heads up, but now I'm pretty sure I'm just not very good at heads up. So I need to work on my heads up game, probably either through HU SNGs or regular 1 table SNGs.

We'll see if I actually get around to that... I also just can't seem to put in volume in cash games. I feel like I want to when I'm doing random daily shit, but when I sit down at my computer I never seem to want to open up tables. So I put in only about 500 hands this month, and I'm now at ~850 for the year... Well below the ~7k I should have to be on pace for the yearly 40k goal.

December and 2008 --> 2009

I put in my highest monthly volume ever in December, playing 55 tournaments. This sounds like a lot, but is actually pretty modest in the online world. The results have been confirming my suspicion that I'm actually not horrible at poker and just need to remain focused over the course of a tournament/session and not make any boneheaded plays.

For the most part I played well in December, with a few minor exceptions, and here are the results:

Tourneys - 55
Cashes - 11
Buyins - $260
Winnings - $605
ROI - ~130%

NL $10 Hands - 439
Profit - $24.10
BB/100 - 27.45

Obviously running a bit hot in both tourneys and cash. I think I can sustain an ROI of ~90 in tourneys and a BB/100 of ~12 in these micro cash games.

For all of 2008, this month finally puts me in the black.

Total profit for 2008 - $350.

Not exactly where I wanted to be when 2008 started out. My 2007 numbers were insane, and I was hoping to repeat that in '08, but I highly doubt it would have been sustainable. Nonetheless, I didn't play as high in limits as I anticipated and I played significantly less volume as well. So my 2009 goals look a lot like my 2008 goal. I'm making them a bit more realistic and also more in terms of volume, since that has been my problem.

2009 Goals:

200+ tournaments
Avg Buyin - $5+
ROI - 90%+

40k+ hands cash
9+ BB/100
Start playing NL25 and possibly NL50

Considering my December volume, I think this is attainable if I really care at all about progressing as a player. However, school and internship may get in the way. Hopefully poker can turn into a very lucritive side income for me, but I really do need to work at it much more than I did in '08.

Happy New Year to all! Good luck on the tables and off.

Final Table Blues

This seems to always happen to me after getting heads up. Whatever.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00+$0.40 Tournament, 800/1600 Blinds 150 Ante (2 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (SB) (t214230)

Button (t55770)
Hero's M: 79.34

Preflop: Hero is SB with K, A

Button raises to t55620 (All-In), Hero calls t54020
Flop: (t111540) 8, 10, 6 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Turn: (t111540) 5 (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: (t111540) 3 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: t111540

Results:

Button had J, 10 (one pair, tens).

Hero had K, A (high card, Ace).

Outcome: Button won t111540


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

Hero (SB) (t154010)

Button (t115990)

Hero's M: 45.30
Preflop: Hero is SB with K, A

Button raises to t6000, Hero raises to t20400, Button raises to t34800, Hero raises to t153810 (All-In), Button calls t80990 (All-In)

Flop: (t231980) A, 5, 5 (2 players, 2 all-in)

Turn: (t231980) 6 (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: (t231980) 3 (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: t231980

Results:

Button had 6, 6 (full house, sixes over fives).

Hero had K, A (two pair, Aces and fives).
Outcome: Button won t231980


The second hand isn't so bad for the odds, I was a dog going in, but the manner in which it played out. It was brutal. Oh well... I battled for a while after this but ended up getting ~50k in pre with 3's and ran into his jacks, to get second. Again.