Hand dissection #1
Date: Mon, Apr 21, 2008
Gonna dissect some hands I posted a while back, hopefully get some input on them.
Here's the first...
Turn double barrell?
Do you fancy firing $120 on the turn? Are we folding out enough? I'm putting villain on a middle pair type hand. I guess he could have A7 or a set too.
I think the flop raise is fine. SB has shown weakness by leading out superweak, he has some sort of draw like 90% of the time so I think he folds to my big bet like 80% of the time. I only have 1 other player left to act behind me and he's going to need a stronger than usual hand to call as my flop raise represents strength. I think the flop raise is +EV on it's own, but if it doesn't take it down I can fire at a non draw completing turn card and some scare cards and take it down a ton of the time. I've got 2 overs, a gutshot and a backdoor flush draw too so I've got some value to improve.
On the turn my hand has lost a ton of its value. I've got gutshot and pair outs but they could easily be counterfeited. So now I'm more inclined to bluff as it's likely to be the only way I'll win the pot. The A is a great card to bluff at, if he has a middle-pair or draw type hand without the A he's likely to fold it. Pretty unlikely he flopped a set or 2pr as he didn't try to protect it. I only need to bet $120 into $172 to bluff and I think he has a draw and folds to my double barrell about 50% of the time. So I think double-barrelling is most profitable here.
I guess the question is how often is the A in his range? (He's 16/10 over a tiny sample) Also does he ever play a set or 89 this way?
Ship it
Date: Thu, Apr 17, 2008
Yea this is a poker blog, but I've been working on this game for the past 3 years so it's a huge achievement for me. Now that it's done I should be able to play more poker for a bit too... that's the theory anyway however beer seems to be getting in the way pretty frequently.
GTA IV will be in the shops on the 29th of April. Go pre-order it, and stuff.
Also, check out the full UK 360 TV trailer here. Love the camera pan at the end to show the city skyline. I saw it on TV tonight but it was some gay cut down 30second version.
Irritating first half of the month...
Date: Wed, Apr 16, 2008
Boooooooooo.
Most of the brutality in the graph is due to variance at $3/6. Definately the most crazy half of a month I've ever had. Felt like I was cruising up $2.2k early on then getting slammed back down really hurt.
Last night I played a 1000 hand breakeven session, felt like I ran pretty bad, didn't make too many mistakes. Tonight I played another 1000+ hand session finishing down about $400. Towards the end of the session I lost a couple of big $3/6 pots where it's possible I made poor decisions, although they certainly weren't terrible.
I don't want to overthink things because it could just be that I'm not running too well at the moment it's only 5k hands. However I kind of feel like variance has fucked me up a bit. Since the -$1.5k day I've been pushing my play a little too much. Maybe subconciously trying to "win back" the money and get back up to where I was. I do feel irritated that I was $2.2k up for the month, and I'm now breakeven and I don't think that's a good attitude to take into sessions.
Another thing I feel at the moment is that I've kind of set a target in my head that I'd like to get my bankroll to $20k before leaving for Vegas. Giving me $10k cash, and $10k online. This is a nice idea, however I'm basically setting myself a monetary goal, and a tough one at that. I'm completely against $$$ goals, they've got no benefits and they fuck with your game a ton, adding anxiety, stress, etc.
So... before I move on to play my next session I need to do a few things
- Clear my head of any monetary goals.
- Do a PT review of the month so far, find out where any issues in play are.
- Lose any thoughts of trying to "win back" the money that I had earlier in the month.
- Assess if I should continue to play $3/6 or if the swings are a bit too much at the moment.
- Fully review all hands from the previous few sessions.
bleh
Date: Mon, Apr 14, 2008
I should really stop posting pictures of variance and work on my game and psychology. Seems that I've maybe lost focus a bit in that.
After looking over the biggest hands from tonight it's pretty clear that I was running bad, but that made me start playing bad also. Wasn't analysing ranges and hands enough, and was basically auto-pilotting the session... first time I've done that in ages. I'd say about 2/3 of the losses were variance, 1/3 were bad play... which I'm real annoyed about.
lol ru serious?
Date: Mon, Apr 14, 2008
Kind of follows on from my previous post...
brb, going to set fire to things. :)
Chillin'
Date: Sat, Apr 12, 2008
Not too much grinding been going on since my last post, just lots of chilling and drinking which has been wicked. Had a quiet one today though so put some hands in from midnight-2am, prime Saturday night time for soft games. Ran really well and had my most profitable single session to date. Ship ship!
In the final stages of sorting out the house now, picked a place and finalised the other 3 guys that I'm staying with. I'm really happy with the house... It's a spacious 4-bed place with a lot of cool extras and really good surroudings, about 8 miles from the Strip. Will post a bunch more info on the place over the next few days once I finalise the booking. Suuuuuper excited about Vegas and the WSOP, 2 of the guys staying in the house have already won Main Event seats, I'm gonna set aside some of my roll to play sats on Stars.
Cheers for the comments on the previous hands (Marc), always appreciated. I'll be reviewing them over the next few days.
Some hands
Date: Wed, Apr 9, 2008
Not really blogged any hands over the last month... here are a few of the toughest spots I've got into recently. Comments please!
Turn double barrell?
Do you fancy firing $140 on the turn? Are we folding out enough? I'm putting villain on a middle pair type hand. I guess he could have A7 or a set too.
Another double barrell turn Ace vs good player
Good spot to against a 21/17 reg?
Minraise then weak turn bet
Bleh, what does this mean? I don't get it, I mean a weak lead here would probably mean like 87/89 something like that. But he could just check behind here, I guess he's more likely to have a strong hand now? What do u reckon?
QQ preflop line check
TAG 3-bets me, shortie 4-bet shoves. 5-bet over the deep TAG here to isolate against the shortie? Can I fold if the TAG 6-bet shoves me this deep?
Check/fold, his 22/33 is good?
Guy is like 11/7 so I think this is a pretty easy muck given his line.
Here's some Down for BTimm, the gig was awesome!
Better post something I guess...
Date: Mon, Apr 7, 2008
Well... not played too much so far this month. Seem to have a lot going on despite not being at work that much. Spent pretty much all of last weekend hanging out with friends and drinking so missed out on getting hands in then.
Out at a gig in Glasgow tomorrow night, then taking the next couple of days off work as my bro is coming over to hang out. Gonna get out and play a bunch of sports and get into the studio to do some jamming with some guys from work which should be fun.
Vegas House
Been doing more work on the Vegas house, I would post some pics and links but I don't want anyone nicking the houses I'm after. ;) Moving towards having a house booked for the end of the month. Some of the places are reeeeally sweet!! Got to find a place that's close to the strip, affordable and that everyone's happy with though. Should still probably have room for another person, so if anyone's interested in staying with a bunch of poker players (we're aged 22-25) over the series, give me a shout!
I don't want to jump on the CR bashing wagon... I'd still recommend people starting out with a training site join CR. The main reason for this being that the community is fantastic and you'll be motivated by a lot of smart and dedicated people. Their SSNL videos are good too, the Brymstar vids are a great place to start.
However... I've been a member at Leggopoker for a month now and I'm really happy with my it. The frequency and quality of the MSNL videos is WAY ahead of CR. The videos are much more fun to watch and I just feel like I'm getting a lot more out of them. How much you learn is really going to come down to the ability of the teacher to articulate his thoughts in the video and the Leggo coaches do this REALLY well. Finished watching all of aejones videos which were fantastic, he touches on concepts I've never even really heard being talked about before. The SEABEAST videos are awesome too, he's just such a good teacher, I'd definately pay this guy the $300/hr for coaching if I was playing 3/6. Overall, I'd happily pay $200/month for this site, It's f***in amazing. If you play 1/2+ get a membership now!
Anyways, here's the lame amount I've played so far this month :) I'm running bad at 1/2, and hot at 2/4... which is nice. 2k hands? :S
March Results
Date: Mon, Mar 31, 2008
Proud to announce my biggest earning month in poker since I started playing... finished up around $3,800 including loyalties (bankroll now $11.4k). Ship it!
It's great to see some big results as I think I've been working pretty hard and my game has moved on a ton. I know I've still got a lot of work to do and that this is over a relatively small sample (10k hands) but I'm still really happy with the result... I really feel like I broke into MSNL this month. I don't really have any outgoings this month either as I didn't receive any training, and I stopped my CR membership. Just $25 out to Leggo.
It's pretty clear I am progressively more nitty the higher limit I'm playing. ;) This is fine as I'm trying to stay out of the way of regs, and just play pots with the big fish that are at my table. It's also a lot more low variance.
Big period of negative variance at shot-taking in the start of the month was pretty tough to take, particularly losing over $1k in an hour in 2/4 and 3/6 games. However I understand this is just variance and after a days break was in the correct mindset again to continue playing optimally.
Overall I ran pretty bad at 2/4 despite playing well, big 3/6 win was really due to table selection. I only played on tables with at least one superfish and not too aggro players to my left. Very comfortable at 1/2 now, just need a few preflop tweaks and maybe tone down my aggression a bit postflop.
I'm pretty much 30x rolled for $400nl now, however I want to be a bit deeper before moving up fully. There are also a bunch of areas of my game I'd like to tweak so I'm going to continue with the bulk of my play at 1/2 but play a larger amount of 2/4 and 3/6 than last month.
With work now much quieter I can get more poker in, yeeeey! Will be able to play 20k hands this month, so hopefully it'll be a big one.
EDIT: 100 blogs posts!
Life is good
Date: Sat, Mar 29, 2008
Been busy with a lot of non-poker related stuff over the last couple of weeks, and also sorting the Vegas trip out. Here's what's been going on...
Cash
Only got 10k hands in this month due to all of the other stuff going on, but they've been a quality 10k. It's been a rollercoaster month due to the 2/4 and 3/6 shottaking but it's ended up real good. March is in fact my best ever month in poker, will post the results in a couple of days. :)
Work
3 years of work on are finally coming to an end and GTAIV is due for release in a months time. It's awesome times at work at the moment and everyone is chilling out and looking forward to the launch party and a ton of time off. Can't wait for the game to hit the shops, really looking forward to seeing what my family and friends think of it. New trailer out, i'll stick it at the bottom of this post.
Got a ton of stuff coming up...
Blonde Bash
This is next month at Dusk Til Dawn in Nottingham. It'll be the first Blonde Bash I've been to, there are loads of players going down from Scotland so it'll be great to get to meet people. Managed to get in Geo's Scottish team for the football tourney too, lookin forward to that!
Got 5 weeks off work, including the whole of May. This was a nice surprise, still not figured out what to do with it yet, tempted to hire a car and roadtrip europe. Anything interesting going on anywhere in May? I'm eying up the Irish masters in Dublin, and probably the Olympic open in Riga. Tempted to go to NY for a few days with some friends from work too, and I'd like to spend a couple of weeks as a full-time poker pro to see what it's like.
Another 4-5 weeks off of work from mid-june to mid-july for Vegas. Couldn't manage to get in any Vegas houses so I've decided to set one up. Should be 5-6 guys, all msnl/tourney players around my age, really looking forward to it. Will be finalising things and booking the house next week.
Overtime > poker
Date: Mon, Mar 17, 2008
As expected had to focus on work last week so didn't get many hands in. Good news is that I should have a lot more time for poker 'til the end of the month!
5.5k hands in so far, still aiming for that 15k target although it's going to be tough as 4-5 tabling slows me down a lot. Definately won't be adding more tables though, I really think I'm optimal at around 4 tables.
Crushing 1/2 at the moment, game selecting really well and running well too.
I feel much more at home at this level now, a lot more comfortable and now able to beat up on a lot of the regulars. My game seems to have naturally progressed to more 23/20/5 kinda style which I'm happy with. I do a lot more 3 and 4-betting preflop now and I pick my spots really accurately, credit to the aejones videos on Leggo and lots of hand discussion with Dave. This month I'm focussing on improving my double-barrelling. Trying out making moves in a lot of spots, so far they've been fairly unsuccessful. :)
Setups, suckouts and coolers galore while shottaking.
It's pretty frustrating but the variance isn't surprising and has to be accepted over such a small sample. I'm still very comfortable jumping in soft 2/4 and super soft 3/6 games if the chance arises. Been playing quite a lot of 2/4 recently which I'm happy with. I'll basically play 2/4 so long as the tables are the same quality that I'm playing at 1/2.
Variance
Will post some hands in a couple of days...
Update, and $1,249 pot
Date: Sat, Mar 8, 2008
Whoosh!
Don't think my skillset is really there for $3/6 yet. I'm getting pretty good at flopping the nuts, but I need to do some work on having it hold up. Wasn't really a beat, any hand that's gonna be getting it in with me on that flop is gonna have around 40% equity.
Work is sick busy at the moment as expected, so not much time for play. Here's the month so far...
...so shot-taking is going well... lol. Obv the $3/6 hit is due to the pot above. The $2/4 hit is due to this hand which I'm happy with the way I played. So just running bad at shot taking at the moment really, obviously the variance is really high over such a small sample.
$1/2 is going well over the ickle sample. I feel MUCH more comfortable there now than I did last month. Feeling really confident in my game, playing only 4-5 tables at a time is really helping too. Helps a lot for putting opponents on ranges as I'm usually free to give big hands all of my focus.
So overall the month is going well so far. Obviously running over $1k under all-in expectation doesn't help but that's just short term variance. I'm game selecting really well and really making strides forward with discipline. Taking loads of breaks, quitting well, and never playing tired.
GBPT winner update
This tourney ended up being chopped 3-way for £20k each. Blonde article.
Life is gooooood.
Vegas Baby!
Date: Wed, Mar 5, 2008
I'm looking to stay in Vegas for 2-4 weeks during the WSOP. I don't fancy hotels at all, would be much more fun renting a house with a bunch of grinders. I've been looking for a house to stay in for the last couple of weeks, but can't seem to nail anything down. I don't mind sorting out renting a place if I can get a bunch of people together. If anyone on here is interested in joining forces to stay in a sweet house during the WSOP, or has a room free for a couple of weeks... give me a shout.
My rough criteria is:
House during the series for between 2-4 weeks.
4+ people staying there.
Would need to have air-con, mostly en-suites, high speed internet with space to grind, good tv for xbox/wii'age, quiet location but close to the strip.
Would like to have a poker table, pool table, pool & jacuzzi. :)
Type of people I'm looking to stay with are preferably MSNL grinders around my age (24) but obv would consider any folk.
Considering going to California on the way and road-tripping it into Vegas, maybe through LA. Then maybe NY on the way back. If anyone UK wants to do a similar thing gimmi a shout.
Cheers
February roundup
Date: Sun, Mar 2, 2008
All bonuses and expences accounted for I finished my first month at $1/2 up around $1,200 (bankroll now $7,866). Here's how it broke down...
- My 2nd in the OfficePoker tourney paid for my GBPT stake with $100 left over to put in the roll.
- I made $733 from online cash games.
- RB/loyalties made me enough to cover my $500 coaching/DC/Leggo bills with money left over. I like the idea of spending the RB on education each month and keeping the true $$$ made to pad the roll.
- I'm going to have some additional $$$ each month from affiliates which I think I'll withdraw and keep in a seperate account for tourney buy-ins, trips, etc.
Next month:
- 15k hands is fine, not gonna get as many in due to work being busy.
- Play 4-6 tables (instead of 6-8) and focus on analysis and study.
- Crush.
Also really need to get my ass in gear and sort out a WSOP trip in July, thinking about going for the first couple of weeks. Maybe going via CA, and back via NY. Any recommendations for anything?
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