Sad Day

The UIGEA has teeth now.  The outlook is fairly bleak but there could be a few saving graces.  If poker seems to be going well enough for me to make a decent living at by this time next year I will find a way to continue to play.  Many of the players are absolutely sick about this.  I don’t blame them but I do have hope that Obama will repeal the UIGEA or a bill will be passed exempting poker as a skill based game.

Poker Legislation

The UIGEA might soon become a law with teeth.  I can’t say much that hasn’t already been said, but if you are a poker player or atleast support the rights of Internet poker players then get involved.  It will take you 5 minutes at most.  You can learn more about it here.

“Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.” – Albert Einstein

The Mental Game

Two plus Two puts out a weekly pokercast.  I dont listen to it every week because it usually has to do with the tournaments and tournament players.  This last week they had Leatherass and Jared Tendler as guests.  I listened to it to hear the interview with Leatherass.  He is a player whose dedication and drive I admire very much.  The interview with Jared Tendler turned out to be the true gem of the show.  He is a mental game coach from Stox.  I really enjoyed listening to him,  It is episode #46 for thos interested.  Here is a recent post of Jareds from 2p2 .

After listening to the pokercast I was fairly interested in a Stox membership.  I felt the video’s put out was worth the membership fee’s.  The a friend of mine showed me a website that you sign up through and if you get enough FTP’s a month you can get a free membership to Stox.  I figured I could swing this many points a month without much hassle and it became a no brainer.

I was right about the membership.  The mental coach has definitely changed the way I aproach the game and deal with tilt.  I am playing very well at the moment imo.  I might be playing a bit too nitty but that will change eventually.

I’ll post a few of the nicer hands of my last session.

Hand #1
Full Tilt Poker $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold’em – 6 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Whoop96 (CO): $136.90
Uber Esel (BTN): $208.05
Randizle707 (SB): $50.00
Hero (BB): $173.20
shark ethic (UTG): $50.75
JPcontender (MP): $19.35

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is BB with T T
Whoop96 says “spend thousands and win hundreds”, 2 folds, Whoop96 calls $0.50, Uber Esel calls $0.50, 1 fold, Hero raises to $2.75, Whoop96 raises to $5, 1 fold, Hero calls $2.25

Flop: ($10.75) Q J T (2 players)
Hero bets $8, Whoop96 raises to $16, Hero calls $8

Turn: ($42.75) Q (2 players)
Hero checks, Whoop96 bets $30, Hero raises to $152.20 all in, Whoop96 calls $85.90 all in

River: ($274.55) 8 (2 players – 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $274.55
Whoop96 shows A A (two pair, Aces and Queens)
Hero shows T T (a full house, Tens full of Queens)
Hero wins $271.55
(Rake: $3.00)

Hand #2
Full Tilt Poker $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold’em – 6 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Whoop96 (BTN): $318.45
Uber Esel (SB): $55.90
Randizle707 (BB): $50.00
Hero (UTG): $88.40
shark ethic (MP): $53.50
JPcontender (CO): $18.50

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is UTG with K A
Hero raises to $1.75, 2 folds, Whoop96 calls $1.75, Uber Esel calls $1.50, 1 fold

Flop: ($5.75) 4 2 K (3 players)
Uber Esel checks, Hero bets $3.75, Whoop96 raises to $13, Uber Esel folds, Hero raises to $22.25, Whoop96 raises to $316.70 all in, Hero calls $64.40 all in

Turn: ($179.05) 6 (2 players – 2 are all in)

River: ($179.05) Q (2 players – 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $179.05
Whoop96 shows 2 K (two pair, Kings and Twos)
Hero shows K A (a flush, Ace high)
Hero wins $176.05
(Rake: $3.00)

Rollercoaster.

Since the start of the month I can’t seem to start a day ahead.  I seem to be dropping a buy in over the first 100 hands or so.  It could be a leak or happenstance.  I’ll have to check into it today.

Two days ago I seemed to go down 3 buy ins in fairly short order.  I ended up fighting my way back to being up 5 buy ins in ~1.7k hands.  I was obviously extremely happy with this.  I really felt I improved.  About 6am that morning as I was finishing up a friend of mine came onto AIM and told me he needed to bail but there was a fish he was playing heads up.  The fish had already donated $200 to my friend so ofcourse I agreed.  I am terribad at HU though so I ended up giving a buy in back to him.  So for the day 4 buy ins, not too bad.

Yesterday was horrible for me.  I was filming a video for my coach to go over and I drop 4 buy ins.  I got all in with top two, an over pair, and a set, and I ran them into a set every time.  Some of the loss is to be expected, but some of my play could have been improved upon imo.  Atleast its on film and hopefully during my coaching session today we can pin point some mistakes I am making.

I wish I had something insightful to say about the presidential election.  I suppose there are thousands of bloggers out there that are more qualified to post about it anyway.  For the next 70 days America and the world can hope.  At that point we will all find out if Obama is going to be a president for the new millenium or just another politician.

World of Goo

I normally try not to promote many products in this blog.  I certainly feel the American culture is based far more than most would like to admit around consumerism.  This part of the culture annoys me, but this isn’t a rant on why we buy too many frivolous things with money we don’t have.

This is actually a nod to a game that has caught my interest.  Since I started playing poker I really don’t get wrapped up in video games like I used to.  When I am in the middle of a video game all I can think about is that I should be spending this time improving my poker game.  With poker on the mind all of my favorite genre’s of games has slowly fallen off of my shopping list.  Most games are just too time consuming for me to get involved in.

The problem I had is that we all need time away from poker at one time or another.  I don’t like to watch the television so when I am on some sort of tilt and need a break from thinking about poker I need an engaging way to spend an hour or so.  I recently picked up an indie game entitled World of Goo.

World of Goo is a 2D puzzle game reminiscent of the old Lemmings games.  It is a well produced little puzzle game that seems to do the job of getting my mind off of poker for an hour or so.  Here is a video review I found on youtube if anyone is interested.

Literally

I went to dinner tonight with a few friends.  A guy that came along used the word “literally” in every other sentence.  I couldn’t pay attention to any of the conversation because of how annoying it was.  Other than this minor annoyance dinner was nice.  We found an Irish Bar/Grill that is fairly close to us, and we filled up on Sam Adams and shepherds pie.

After dinner I messed around on the blog for a bit.  I added a new section under “Pages” on the right hand bar.  It will eventually have links to a bunch of info.  At the moment it only has links to a few websites and some wells from 2+2.  I would suggest checking out the wells.  I enjoyed reading through them quite a bit.

Eventually I got down to some poker.  Because I got started a bit late there weren’t a ton of good 50nl tables so I played a mix of 25 and 50nl.  I ended up playing 307 hands of 50nl for 18.38pt/100 making $56.45 and 244 hands of 25nl at 0.9pt/100 making $1.46.  It was fairly uneventful.  I felt I played 98% of my hands fairly well, but that 2% I felt I played poorly cost me some money.  It did feel nice to book a win.

I really tried to stay off of autopilot, I felt I did a fairly good job.  I would zone out but snap out of it fairly soon.  I still have trouble following every hand I’m not involved in at the tables.  With practice I should get better at it.  I’m really trying to train my mind to think about all possibilities while playing.

I am also practicing some of the breathing exercises in Tommy Angelo’s book The Elements of Poker.  They are calming but actually fairly difficult especially for someone with a short attention span.  Try breathing slowly and deeply, and count every breath.  It sounds easy but unless you’re some sort of Zen master your mind will soon wonder.

I’ll post a quick hand.

Villain is 22/13/2.6 (581) w/ a 3bet of 3.3

Full Tilt Poker $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold’em – 6 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (BTN): $101.90
La_Guvulin (SB): $53.35
iconnect (BB): $57.65
Capri14 (UTG): $58.65
Uber Esel (MP): $79.90
1NEVAK6 (CO): $27.20

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is BTN with T 9
Capri14 raises to $1, Uber Esel raises to $2.75, 1 fold, Hero calls $2.75, 2 folds, Capri14 calls $1.75

Flop: ($9.00) A A 7 (3 players)
Capri14 checks, Uber Esel checks, Hero checks

Turn: ($9.00) T (3 players)
Capri14 checks, Uber Esel checks, Hero bets $6, Capri14 folds, Uber Esel requests TIME, Uber Esel raises to $21.75

The action isn’t terribly interesting if I had it to do over I think a check behind would be the correct turn play. If we tweak the hand a bit it can be a bit thought provoking.

So we can put Villain on flopped trips or a boat fairly easily.  No brainer fold at 50nl without history imo.

What if villain was doing this with a strong draw?  I really like this line with a draw.

What if we have trips?  What is the lowest kicker you stack off with here?  Remember we are deep. I think I stack off w/ AQ here but I dont like it.

If you were villain and flopped trips or a boat how do you extract the most money? Trips I bet flop and turn.  With a boat its a check on the flop for me but I don’t think I can bring myself to check the turn.

Rusty

I got in about 800 hands today.  I dropped 5 buy ins in about the first 500 hands. My all in EV had me down about 3.5 buy ins so I didn’t run great, but in the same respect I didn’t play great either.

I took a break watched a video and some TV and hit the gym.  I decided to get in some more hands around 1AM.  I really felt good while playing this last 300 hand session.  I went from 5 buy ins down to 1.8 buy ins down.  It is always nice to recoup some losses.  In hind sight it would have been much smarter to drop down to 25nl for the first 1k hands or so.  It took a bit but I feel my game is close to where it was at when I left, and my mental state is much better.

I suppose I should explain my absence.  I went through a vicious down swing, and I couldn’t shake it.  I expected to win so the days I did win I felt a slight rush in emotions, but overall it was fairly normal.  On losing days it was effecting my personal life.  I would be pissed off and thought about it way too much.  I decided to take a week break and then it just turned into a month and a half.  Eventually it is my hope through experience I learn how to lose.

In my time away I did start a gym membership.  I am enjoying it so far.  I figure exercise will lead to better physical and mental health which will lead to better poker sessions so the Gym should be +ev.  I need to change my diet as well, but haven’t really felt like fucking much with it except to try and order a touch healthier.

I’m Back

Well my couple day break turned into a month, but I am back and ready to get back into poker.  I’m going to take it slow till I get back in the groove, but I don’t think it will take too terribly long.

I don’t know why my break lasted so long.  I didn’t even check my email in that time period.

Will post more when I actually get in some hands.

Break Time

I am going to have stop playing for a few days I guess.  I log on fire up spade eye and proceed to get fucking wrecked.  KK < QQ AI preflop, Set of Jacks < backdoor flush draw AI on the flop, and a monster straight/flush with 2 overs AI on the flop didn’t get there.  I am back to ~ break even for the month, and I got there playing some of the best poker I have played on some of the softest tables on the net.  All today.  The difference in my profit and my all in equity is 8 fucking buy ins for the day, and the equity difference doesn’t even really tell the whole story.  The few times I did get my money in bad I had their range so completely crushed it was crazy.  Like getting a set of jacks raped by a 2 gapper and the exact same with a set of aces.

My Bank Roll isn’t too fucked thankfully, but it just means I get to grind 50nl that much longer.  I’ll turn it around, but in the mean time I am going to spend the next 24 hours drinking beer, playing video games, and wishing herpes on every donk villain I played today.

My day of poker felt something like this.

Good and Tilted.

Today was one of those days.  I maintained my composure until the very end of my session, but I am tilted as hell now.  I think I played extremely well today.  My head was in the right place I was putting people on fairly accurate ranges.  Playing well can get you owned every once in awhile though.

I was reading in a blog not long ago (I believe it was foxwoodfiends blog).  He was saying that it is silly that some players wont push their edges.  He was saying that with any kind of BR management skills you should be able to profitably ride the variance trains that come with more and more marginal situations.  As my skill edge increases on players I find myself getting into more of these situations, but I believe that’s a good thing.  You can beat 50nl playing ABC fairly bad poker, but like my coach asked “do you want to beat 50nl or do you want to beat much higher stakes?”  Grinding 50nl shouldn’t be any players goal.

I don’t want to dwell on my results but I hit 1 set today in 1k hands, and it was when I had pocket aces and I still got stacked.  My all in equity is 4 buy ins above my actual winnings, which is a lot when the sample is 1k hands.

I also took a shot at a sweet table at 100nl today.  I need to speak with my coach but I think I may start datamining 100nl and take shots at the good tables.  So I played my first 24 hands of 100nl and the following is basically the results.

Full Tilt Poker $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold’em – 5 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

ZarDolph (BTN): $99.50
Bazooka_Joe1 (SB): $148.25
JDnguyen (BB): $179.35
Hero (UTG): $100.50
Departed06 (CO): $104.00

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is UTG with K K
Hero raises to $3.50, 3 folds, JDnguyen raises to $6, Hero raises to $18.50, JDnguyen raises to $31, Hero raises to $100.50 all in, JDnguyen calls $69.50

Flop: ($201.50) T 9 6

Turn: ($201.50) 7

River: ($201.50) 8

Final Pot: $201.50
JDnguyen shows J J (a straight, Jack high)
Hero shows K K (a straight, Ten high)
JDnguyen wins $198.50
(Rake: $3.00)

The guy that stacked me was the entire reason I was there.  I was fine after being stacked.  It was early in my session and I was playing well.  What did sort of irritate me was ofcourse the guy left the table.  So with no reason to sit at the table.  I packed up and left.

So my BR took a smallish hit today.  I know it wont be long before I recoup that unrealized equity though.  Overall I am happy with the way I played minus a few hands.  Tomorrow is another day.