More music, less poker
Date: Mon, Aug 25, 2008
Got a bunch of stuff on at the moment that's taking priority over poker, so not much to report right now as I'm not playing. Still getting in some study, and almost finished setting up my bankroll across some new sites. At the end of the month I'll be setting new overall goals for poker, a $$$ target for the end of the year and monthly goals.
Went to a few gigs last week. Louis XIV, N*E*R*D, and Pendulum who were freaking amazing. Video at the top is their edit of an old Prodigy track.
Congrats to Dodgy who got made a LeggoPoker pro yesterday!
Booooooooo
Date: Sat, Aug 16, 2008
Been running well at $1/2 this month. My bankroll moved past the $12k mark so I've been taking some shots at $2/4 and $3/6 games when the lineups are soft. This has went pretty badly lol, month so far...
Since moving back over to iPoker I'm becoming really irritated by the lack of tables. Often I'll only have 2-3 decent $1/2 tables available which is a pain in the ass. Decided to move my FTP roll over to AP and play some on there. If anyone wants FTP$$$ for AP or Stars gimmi a shout, can do up to $6k.
Anyways, yea so the 2/4 and 3/6 has sucked ass and kind of put me in a bad fuckin mood because it feels like I've lost all my hard earned $1/2 winnings from this month! But that's really a stupid way to think about it. 1bi down at 600 and 3.5bi down at 400 is nothing. I guess I just forgot how the variance felt at the MSNL levels!
I feel like I'm kind of forcing my play at the moment. I've made a few bad calls and bad shoves without thinking about the plays too much at the time. The lack of time on the iPoker tables irritates me. So I'm gonna break for a wee bit, gonna go hang out watch a couple of movies tonight. Then gonna go snowboarding tomorrow, and just generally chill out and forget poker for a bit.
Went to see this comedian last night at the Edinburgh Festival... it's about the 6th/7th show I've been to in the past few weeks and he was by FAR the best! Was crying laughter tears for half the show! :) He's called Louis CK.
Know your math
Date: Wed, Aug 13, 2008
Cheers for the feedback on the last couple of hands. The 2nd one particularly fixed a leak in my deep game where I play strong draws with showdown value too aggressively.
Anyways, here's a link to an awesome quiz Bobbofitos made up around a year a go and recently re-posted on Leggo. It involves determining the most profitable plays with drawing hands. It's just 3 hands but teaches some pretty important stuff.
Quiz ... answers are halfway down.
FTP $1/2 review - Hand 2
Date: Fri, Aug 8, 2008
Have some BTimm certified Minus the Bear for this hand...
$1/$2 Deep at FTP
6 players
Stacks:
| UTG | ($397.00) | ||
| UTG+1 | ($661.15) | ||
| CO | ($764.20) | ||
| Hero | ($403.30) | ||
| SB | ($204.00) | ||
| BB | ($751.85) |
Pre-flop: ($3, 6 players) Hero is BTN
UTG raises to $8, 2 folds, Hero calls $8, 2 folds
Preflop call doesn't look great, but the BB is on monkey-tilt and is playing every hand hence the semi-loose BTN flat. Unfortunately he doesn't come along.
Flop:
($19, 2 players)UTG bets $15, Hero raises to $48, UTG raises to $162, $114 to Hero ($347.3)?
Flop he's gonna lead most of his range on that board. Raise here seems standard, but lets think about villain's range a little. He's playing 22/19 so is likely opening around the same as I do UTG. All pairs, AJ+, KQ and some pretty looking SCs like 98s, TJs. He's probably going to lead that flop with his whole range so not much info gained there.
Should I raise flop? Instant thought is yea, I have a pr and a FD, but this is 100BB thinking, because I'd be willing to go with the hand on the flop. Here if I end up with all of my 200BB in on the flop then I'm going to be behind.
One thing I'm not doing enough at the moment when playing is thinking "how would I react if villain raised me?", a lot of the time if the answer to this is "i'd have to fold a hand with strong value" then I shouldn't bet/raise. So maybe on this basis I shouldn't raise flop here, I'm not sure. I guess if he does raise it often won't price me out and force me to fold. I do get value from AJ/KQ/some lower FDs, so I think popping it up is ok, I make it 3x his raise and change, which I think is a pretty nice size, a little bigger would have been fine too I think.
He then comes over the top for $162 total. At this point 100bb deep I'm obviously just mashing the all-in button, but here we've got more to think about. His range is now REALLY polarised...
He now doesn't have a bare flush draw, as I have the Ah and he's not gonna make it $162 to go with any other FD. There's an outside chance he might have opened UTG pre with QhJh or JhTh, but it's not that big a factor so can pretty much be ignored I reckon.
So his range is now almost exclusively AK and sets. Does he ever do this with AQ? I doubt it, he's just gonna flat AQ there.
So now we know he's got a set or AK. We also know he's never ever ever folding now. So shoving my draw has no fold equity. Given that my hand is a 2/1 dog to his range shoving is not an option. So do I have odds to call?
At the time I miscalculated my outs, I put him on a looser range and thought the 2 As left were at least partial outs and the 4s maybe had some out value too. Turns out none of these are outs against his range. So all I have is a 9 out flush draw - 20% to hit my flush on the turn. None of my outs are counterfeitted by pairing the board (but it could runner-runner pair).
I have to assume he's shoving the turn regardless of the card. We're playing with an effective $227 behind. It's costing me $114 to call into a pot that will be $343. So I've only got an immediate 33% equity. But factoring in that i'll get the rest of his stack if I hit I actually have exactly 20% equity.
So it's a breakeven spot. Probably a slightly -EV spot due to the chance of being runner-runner counterfeitted or the very slim chance that he could muck AK on the turn if a flush card hits.
Obviously at the time I thought I had odds, called and fistpump stacked him with a beautiful 6h on the turn. FWIW he had KK.
Hud!
Date: Thu, Aug 7, 2008
I couldn't find any decent iPoker 6-max miniview huds for Holdem Manager so made one tonight. Took fucking ages, miniview is such a tight setup, there's hardly any space to put the stats! Colours setup on all variables, mucked cards in correct places, etc.
Stats go:
Hands Played.....VPIP%....Steal%
Name...............PFR%.....3bet%
......................Aggfctr...BetRiver%
A lot of the other stats I like to use while playing, like cbet, aggression by streets, fold to 3bet%, 4bet%, etc. Are all on the cool popup menus that HM has. Might get around to customised these at some stage but this will do for now.
Anyways, feel free to pillage.
Download link - extract these files to HoldemManager/Config/
FTP $1/2 review - Hand 1
Date: Thu, Aug 7, 2008
Finished playing at FTP now, reviewing some of the interesting hands. Over the next week or so I'll post them on here with my analysis. It'd be cool if you guys can give some input and hopefully can get some strategy talk 'goin.
$1/$2 at FTP
4 players
Stacks:
| Hero | ($238.00) | ||
| BTN | ($203.00) | ||
| SB | ($331.55) | ||
| BB | ($97.50) |
Pre-flop: ($3, 4 players) Hero is CO
Hero raises to $7, 1 fold, SB raises to $26, 1 fold, Hero calls $19
I flat his 3bet here because I don't think he'll ever 5betshove any hands I beat. I'll either be flipping or against AK. I'll play the hand with position postflop and try to figure out what he has.
I put his 3betting range on like TT+/AK kind of thing, maybe even JJ+. It's pretty tight.
Flop:
($54, 2 players)SB bets $34, Hero calls $34
Turn:
($122, 2 players)SB checks, Hero ($178)?
When he checks turn I take it as weakness and bet, which I now think was a big mistake. If he is indeed weak and has AK, he just mucks it here, there's not much value in betting and I don't really need to protect my hand all that much from a 6-out draw. If he has JJ (or sometimes TT) I'll probably get his stack in, but the times he has KK/AA and is smart enough to turn/checkraise me I'm going to lose my stack. It's a spot where there just isn't really any value in betting.
I think checking behind turn is the best play here. Pretty interesting how this hand figures out after analysing it taking his tight 3b range into account.
Recently discovered Flight of the Conchords. So. Awesome.
Evolution
Date: Sun, Aug 3, 2008
I recently discovered this Evolution of a Poker Player article by aejones. It's an awesome article, check it out. Over the past month Milestone #2 clicked with me, although I didn't notice it as a milestone at the time.
I think through my entire poker career I've always been trying to find more complex or 'smart' ways to play hands. I really just wanted to pwn people in lots of complicated ways. I'd watch instructional videos thinking, wow that's cool this guy plays 30/27, fires three streets and check-raises rivers... I should play like him. Over the last month it's been reinforced to me that you don't need to play like this to beat 3/6, 5/10, etc. It's absolutely fine to play more straight-forwards, but play straight-forwards REALLY WELL with a sound knowledge of more advanced key concepts.
This kind of hit me a lot of the time when chatting over hands with the guys in Vegas and getting advice from some people after I got back home. So cheers to IAmSnow, DTheater and Dodgyken who made this click for me, probably without noticing. I feel like this realisation is going to make a big difference to my game and I can concentrate on learning the key concepts that I've previously been ignoring, because they're not as fun as playing like a spewmonkey.
Been trying to get a lot of hands in, do a lot of study, did some sweating with Ian/Brian too which was pretty helpful. Put 1.8k hands in yesterday and unlocked the m'fkin robe from FTP, YESsssss. Still don't have Holdem Manager yet, which sucks, still waiting on my key from Leggo.
July Review
Date: Thu, Jul 31, 2008
After Vegas I started back with a $8,000 bankroll. With the remaining 2 weeks of July I ran that up to $10,700. So July (post-Vegas) was +$2,700.
Tiny sample, only played for like 6-7 hours - but fuckit - it feels good to book a win :)
August goals:
- Move back over to iPoker
- Set up Holdem Manager
- Play at least 10k hands, aiming for 15k ideally
- Coaching session with Hookem148
- Sweat session with another MSNL player
- Watch at least 4 Leggo videos
- Tons of postflop hand analysis
Winning money? At poker?!
Date: Mon, Jul 28, 2008
Made a return to the tables this weekend… I’m determined to earn enough Full Tilt points for the ridiculously pimp velour bathrobe before I move back over to playing at iPoker next month. It should only take a few thousand more hands.
I've played around 6-7 hours of $200nl since returning from Vegas. I'm up around $2.5k... which is nice.
Been doing a lot of thinking about my game recently and realised a couple of things:
When I was in Vegas there were a lot of distractions for me to play badly... beer, people around, playing from the swimming pool lol. I've also got to try to 4-6 table on the laptop screen rather than the 24", which sucks. Another factor might be the pressure to perform in a short period of time, could cause me to force more hands than I should, removing myself from the flow of the table.
So for whatever reason when away from home I don't play all that well. It definately affects my game, now I'm back I feel a lot more calm and comfortable with my play.
To quote BTimm...
GL at the tables
Break from poker for a bit
Date: Sat, Jul 19, 2008
Bit of a lull poker-wise just now, I'm taking a break from poker for a little while post-LV. It's real nice to have a week or two away from the tables. Will get back to poker once I've sorted a bunch of stuff out.
Bankroll is now $8k, down from $13k pre-Vegas. So I'll be grinding $200nl upon return.
Been thinking about playing styles a bit too, listened to a really good interview with Leatherass on a Cash Plays podcast. He talks about being deceptive with postflop play, rather than being deceptive by playing loose preflop. I think playing a tighter (more 20/17) kind of style would suit me more preflop and allow me to play more tables and get more volume in.
I'll book a session with Brian in a week or two and work on the new style, then start really focussing on getting a lot of hands in, and working on my postflop play.
But now, it's off out to enjoy the sun. :)
P.S. Cheers to everyone who read and commented on the Vegas posts and stuff, glad some people found it interesting. Was a lot of fun.
Vegas #9
Date: Fri, Jul 11, 2008
My flight back is tomorrow morning so this is my last post from Las Vegas.
Spent the last few days being extremely lazy, eating unheathly (but awesome) american fast food, drinking and hanging out at the house. Speaking of which here are some pics of our pad...
Had a couple of Pete's friends around last night and collectively drunk all of the beer that remained in the house. We got thunder/lightening at about 2am which was pretty bizzare as it was the only time it's ever rained since I've been here. Played a bunch of chinese, pool, blackjack and hung out in the pool. Actually I've probably played chinese more than poker in the last few days, it's completely addictive.
Went out for a meal tonight with some of Dan's family, did some tourism, went up Stratosphere. Although the taxi ride to and from Stratosphere was probably more frightening than the rides I went on at the top! Initially I thought it was pretty cool that the taxi was a Ford Mustang, until he took off breakneck down the strip randomly swerving between busy lanes, frightening stuff. Stratosphere rocked, choppers flew around it at the top which was pretty wierd and I saw some lightening in the distance which was cool also. Oh, and a plane flew over which had an illuminated message on the underside congratulating Dario Mineri for winning his first bracelet!
Not really sure if I'm looking forward to heading home, but I am looking forward to leaving Vegas. Ideally I'd really like to head somewhere else, like California or NY or something. Still, looking forward to getting back and seeing family & friends.
To summarise how poker's went here, one word will do. Shiiiiiiiiiiiiite. I've played poker seriously for around 2-3 years now and I hadn't clocked a losing month until Vegas. I ran terribly live, both in tourneys and cash. Online I was doing pretty well until the last few days where I dropped around $2k. Had a session last night where I lost 5 buy-ins in 45 mins taking cooler after cooler. I misplayed one hand, but other than that played fine. Just ran terrrribly here.
So final totals...
Live cash -$315
Online cash -$800
Live tourneys -$3000
Overall -$4,115
Pretty frustrating to come out here and not book a win, but I don't really mind. Online/live cash is just variance, I'm a large favourite in the games I'm playing. Live tourneys I took shots at and they didn't come off this time despite being big favourites in those spots too. Not much more to say really, I came here to take shots and didn't get lucky this time.
I think my poker bankroll sat at around $13,000 when I left for Vegas. I'll likely revise that when I get home to around $8,000 and move down to $200nl. Will sort all of that out later.
Some random thoughts before I leave...
- Spending money in Vegas is infinitely easy and incredibly fun
- In Vegas it's always 1 hour later than you think it is
- The heat in Vegas isn't as unbearable, I really like it
- The food and fine dining here is fantastic, particularly steak and seafood/sushi
- Blue Moon beer is awesome, and Mountain Dew is the best soft drink ever created
- There are a huge amount of stunningly attractive women in Vegas
- People find the Scottish accent and british phrases amusing to no end
- Overweight people DO actually ride around on motorised karts
- Professional poker stars are either small or big, none of them are medium sized
- Live poker is rigged
So for now it's goodbye to the holiday type Vegas updates and back to the poker theory, hand analysis, etc. Less sunny pics and more graphs! Last one... ;)
Vegas #8
Date: Wed, Jul 9, 2008
It was my Bday yesterday, I'm 25... don't feel old yet!
The night before we went out to see Cirque Du Soleil "O" at the Bellagio. It was fantastic, far and away the best circus/theatre type show I've ever seen. I guess the best description of it is a modern stylish circus/theatre production with a huge stage which transformed between water and land as thhe show was taking place. The acts themselves were top class, the fire and diving stunts were really breathtaking. I'd definately go see more of the Cirque Du Soleil shows.
Checked out Bobbys Room at the Bellagio where all of the high stakes games take place. Minimum buy-in within the room is $50,000, there have been known to be cash games taking place with $2,000/$4,000 blinds! The Bellagio card room was much smaller and congested that I expected it to be, and Bobbys Room itself is actually really small. You can walk up to it and look in through the windows. Spotted a bunch of big players including Sammy Farha, Greenstein, Devilfish, Phil Galfond, Urindangers, etc.
On my bday we went out with a bunch of the guys from Martin/Steve's house to The Gun Store to shoot some guns. We went for a deal where got to fire off a clip with 4 different machine guns, then did a competition at the end. We went for the MP5, Uzi, Grease Gun and Swedish-K machine guns, then 2 shots each with the Desert Eagle.
Pick a gun!
Hostage targets, mexican Ron Jeremy with child ftw
Signed a sheet of paper, they had a quick look at our drivers lisences, a couple of minutes of instruction and it's shooting time. Tried some burst firing at first, then with the last couple of guns opted for unload the whole clip in one burst rambo style. Uzi seemed incredibly difficult to control... it was everywhere! Swedish-K was probably my fav to shoot, it had a slower rate than the others and felt more punchy. It was a bit easier to fight against the kickback and drill a bunch of holes in the target.
Desert Eagle challenge was insane. We took 2 shots each one by one, apparently it would be difficult to shoot more than 2 shots as the kickback put so much pressure on your wrist. The kick was huge and really difficult to control, was pretty nerve-wracking before pulling the trigger for the first time! Martin took down the challenge, pretty unbelievably sticking 2 bullets right in the center of his target, pics on Martin's blog. Wear the hat while checking in for the flight home imo.
My only regret was forgetting to fire the RPG, which was only $35 lol. Need to go back.
The Desert Eagle
Tons of gun store pics as this place was sick. MP5 we shot
Shotguns :P
You can just buy an RPG?!
Sick $5,000 Halo style sniper rifles
Headed out for dinner at N9ne at the Palms. I'd been told beforehand that they served some of the best steaks out there and the steak I had was definately the best I'd ever eaten, delicious. The waiter informed us that they were also serving Kobe steak priced at $32/oz! Vegas wins at eating out. N9ne raised the level on hot hostesses (again) too. Also, David Blaine was sat at a table next to us with a bunch of his friends. Food, service, restaurant all 10/10.
Afterwards we headed to the Stars party at at Rain nightclub. We had VIP tickets so could access all areas of the party and all of the free bars. There were loads of poker faces there, and some random celebrities too, think we got a pic with Chuck Liddell. They put on a few different shows in the club, all burlesque style, stripping/dancing/acrobatics/etc, they were sweet and a lot of them were performed above the dancefloor.
A few of us headed to the Rhino afterwards, place is just awesome, must be one of the best strip clubs in the world if not the best. There must have been 80+ girls, and one of them told us that they had over 2,000 on their roster! 2,000 strippers! I managed to leave (at 5am) spending more money than I took with me which was pretty impressive, but also completely standard for the Rhino.
Overall a great Bday!
Today I slept 'til about 5pm through most of the hangover which was sweet and spent the day just hanging out at the house revering really. Played a bunch of chinese poker tonight and some pool, etc.
Dan's still in the WSOP Main Event, he plays his 2nd day tomorrow and is pretty short with 12k chips. Pete drew the TV table on his first day and was sat next to Mike "The Mouth" Matusow. We headed over to rail him, drinking beers and making a ton of noise whenever he took down a pot. He ended up getting busted (by Matusow) shortly before the end of the day.
Nothing planned for the rest of the week. So will need to plan some stuff to do. Only 4 days left in Vegas. Pretty much stopped playing live poker now so goodbye to the $$$ tracker that was at the left hand side of the page. I'll recap on the $$$ final totals before I leave. Playing a bit online, up around $1k over the last few days.
Vegas #7
Date: Fri, Jul 4, 2008
Kind of been a bit lazy lately in updating with stuff that's going on, it's 3am and I can't sleep so here's a megapost of what's been happening for the past week.
Had a few hours free at The Wynn so went to the Fashion Show Mall across the street, ended up buying a ton of stuff. I don't like clothes shopping but the clothes here are fantastic and really cheap compared to back home. Sweet Levi jeans were like $36, got a Quiksilver hoody for $10, some cool stuff from the Lucky Brand shop, some shorts, and about 7-8 T-shirts. Will probably need to wear it all on the flight back home, it wont fit in my luggage!
Had a -$1100 session at the Rio the night before the $1.5k. Ran really cold the whole time and lost 2 big (over $1k) pots, one set over set and one AK vs set on an ATx flop against an aggro player. Frustrating, but unavoidable. Spotted Shannon Elizabeth playing in a $2-5 PLO game, bet the waiting list on that was big!
After busting the $1.5k event and being on a bit of a downer the obvious thing to do was get drunk. Two of Pete's buddies are staying with us right now, Jared and Scott (McLovin and AngleShooter). We had drinks and ate at Hooters - exactly as trashy and awesome as I expected. Played beer pong at O'Sheas 'til late went through 15 pitchers of beer, bet cash monies on all of the games and got lots of random people to play. Fun times. Wandered around on the strip messing about for a while ended up at Bellagio, I think MGM, and other random places.
Yesterday was Pete's Bday, 6 of us went to Benihana at the LV Hilton for dinner, actually the first Hibachi place I've been to. Started out with Japanese beer, warm sake, soup, salad and sushi... then the Hibachi chef came to the table and started cooking up the main courses, fried rice, lobster, swordfish, chicken, shrimp, etc. I went for a steak and we got shrimp, fried vegetables, rice and other stuff too. All of the food was prepared in front of us with the chef performing lots of cool tricks, awesome to watch and supremely delicious.
Then went to the Rio to see Penn and Teller who were really good. They messed with the audience a lot which was cool. I really liked the cold-reading, sawing woman in half, nailgun, and handgun segments. Some of the sleight of hand stuff was amazing too, good show overall.
Went out on the strip after and pretty much just got wasted drinking these crazy 46oz alcoholic slush drinks. Went to the bar in New York New York famous for it's duelling pianists. They kicked ass and played loads of covers including The Proclaimers, wooo!
Today went to see Rancid play at the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay. They had a wicked ska band supporting called The Aquabats. Led by The MC Bat Commader they were basically 5 middle-aged dudes in superhero costumes rocking out and messing about on stage. Rancid punk-rocked it up hard and played like 20 songs, the crowd were insane, really good gig. Mandalay Bay is real nice, some cool clubs and live music, had some food there after.
No real urge to play poker just now. I'm probably about breakeven for the trip at live cash, down over $3k on stt/mtts, and up a bit online. Played a ton live but I've ran really badly, not a lot I can do about it! As a result of that I don't really feel like playing at the moment, it's a good opportunity to relax, see the sights, party and holiday it up.
It's the 4th of July tomorrow, the US independance day so we might do some sort of BBQ and probably head into the strip to check out the firework shows. It's my Bday on the 7th... wheeeee, currently planning some sweet stuff to do then.
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