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.

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.

Another Blah Month

School ate a huge chunk of my time in the last week or two of November. But in the middle of the month I was able to get in some decent volume, at least for my standards.

I ended up playing ~12 tournaments, cashing only once for a -85% ROI. No big deal I suppose. I am mostly confident in my play lately though, so that's good. If there's one thing I would change, it would be that I loosen up a bit. I'm basically still a nit.

I also got in just under 400 hands of NL $10. Just two one hour sessions, but it's more cash than I've played in the last three months combined. I was up ~$17 at like 22PTBB/100, so that was good. For some reason though, it felt more because I was running pretty hot than playing really well. I'm still too tight in the 6-max format. I think I was running around 14/10 or so. I want to be 18/14 or 18/16 at these levels, possibly going as high as 22/19. Whatever, it's just one more thing I have to work on.

That's all for now. Happy Holidays and whatnot.

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.