Plans for next few months
Date: Sat, Apr 26, 2008
Ughhh, feel horrible today. Heavy one last night with folk from work, mixing drinks for the loss. Stomach says Guinness and champayne don't go too well...
Spending today just completely lazing about watching the snooker and relaxing to mark the start of my holidays. I'm basically off work for the next 3 months, except for a week I have to go back in for before leaving for the US. So I don't fully return to work until mid-july at the end of the WSOP. Preeetty sweet! :D
Played about 9k hands this month, been pretty swingy... my last session was -$1.4k. Up for the month, but not by much. So anyways, there's a ton of stuff going on and will be going on over the next few months. I should be blogging a lot more, certainly when I'm in Vegas I'll be blogging a lot about what's going on.
Finished picking people and the house, so that's booked now. Should be a blast, I'm sharing the house with Dan from LA, Pete from NJ, and Roman from Sydney. Couple of the guys are pros, and everyone plays MSNL cash games along with live tourneys. All seem to have pretty similar interests, the house has a plasma HDTV so Pete's bringing his 360/wii guitar heroes, etc which is ace.
Super fucking excited about the wsop! Really looking forward to meeting people and hanging out, there are a ton of people I'd like to meet. That said, definately ship me a mail or something if you're gonna be at the WSOP and want to grab a beer or come over and hang out. Will definately need to get some parties on the go.
Oh yea, here's the house... lagoon style spa, pool table, fitness room, and glass office ftw. Costing us $1k each for the month which I think rocks.
Been thinking about what I'd like to play when I'm across there and reckon I'll mainly play 2-5nl, some sats to the ME, and a bunch of tourneys. I'll be making a post about staking for the tourneys closer to the time, but I probably want to play a couple of $1.5k wsop events, some $330 and $550 venitian deepstacks, and a bunch of other stuff. Looking at around $5-6k worth of buyins, hoping to get 50% staked... it'll definately be a +++++EV investment for anyone staking as these fields are so soft, and it's a lot of fun to rail on cardplayer if you're not in Vegas. Will do a proper post on staking next month.
Here's what I've planned so far... Gimmi a shout if any of this stuff fits with things u might be doing, it's always cool to meet people and hang out when travelling. Looking forward to meeting Marc and BTimm, would be great to hang out with other folk too.
April
29th - GTA IV release
30th - Launch party
May
3rd to 5th - Irish masters in Dublin?
10th to 11th - Blonde bash 6 at Dusk 'til Dawn Nottingham
12th to 19th - Olympic open in Riga, Latvia?
24th to 31st - Week as a professional poker player?
Or maybe like Amsterdam/Copenhagen/Prague or something if people can be assed
June
2nd to 9th - Back to work for a week
10th - Fly out to San Fransisco
12th to 15th - Drive down the west coast to LA?
15th - Catch a lift from Dan into Vegas and check in to WSOP house
July
7th - My birthday, wheeeeee
13th - Fly out of Vegas, back to Edinburgh
New coach
Date: Sat, Apr 26, 2008
I'm real happy to be starting work with Brian 'hookem148' Rue! My objective for the coaching is to plug all of my leaks at 2/4 & 3/6 and make the move up to high stakes. Brian moved through MSNL up to high stakes while being mentored by Taylor Caby and is now a guest pro for CardRunners.com. Brian has previously coached Verneer and SirNeb, really excited about starting work with him. I'll be taking advantage of a lot of coaching over the next few months, will be taking longer coaching sessions lasting 2hours.
I'll be playing the first session with Brian tonight, him railing my play, all 1/2 to start with.
Learn from the pros
Date: Thu, Apr 24, 2008
It’s not a bad plan… however unfortunately I’ve had to part ways with my coach, Messiah. He’s got a new job working long hours so he’s not going to have enough time to maintain a bunch of poker students. It’s a pity to lose him as a coach, I learned a lot and still felt we had a way to go. Congrats on the new job Dave, best of luck and hopefully catch u in Vegas.
So with a few things changing it’s really time for me to re-evaluate my current poker learning process…
I’ve got a subscription to LeggoPoker which I really like, the quality of content in the videos is very high. Been looking at DC quite a bit recently too and it looks great and a lot of fun, similar to Leggo. Think I’ll definitely be signing up there soon. Keeping my eye on Stox too, some of the mathematical work TheBryce is doing is pretty incredible.
After the coaching went so well with Messiah I definitely feel that I’d like to continue along that route. It just accelerates the learning so much faster as coaches are able to pick up on your specific weaknesses and offer fixes immediately. It’s the next level above video training sites. So I’m currently looking for a new coach with the immediate objective of improving my 2/4 and 3/6 game, then making the move to high stakes. If you can recommend anyone please shoot me a mail or a comment.
In addition to this I’d like to increase the network of poker players I know – particularly guys who are playing mid or high stakes. It’s always good to have people to chat over hands with, particularly guys that are thinking at a higher level. Should be a fun learning experience in Vegas this summer too, with a bunch of strong players staying under the one roof. That said, if you want to chat any poker feel free to add me on any of the IM softwares, I’m ‘bazclef’ or ‘bazclef@gmail.com’… always up for chatting over hands, etc.
Cheers for the comments on the previous hand by the way... more to come.
Hand dissection #2
Date: Tue, Apr 22, 2008
On to the next hand... I think this spot is really tricky, be interested to see what line people would take here.
Shortie shove gets in the way of 4bet spot
I guess we can just ignore the fishy short-stacks shove here and it's more of a question of whether we want to 4-bet the true villain, SB. I think we basically 4bet here every time but should I bet an amount that will let me get away from the hand if he shoves, or should I just go ahead and play for stacks here?
My preferred play is to raise to $110 total, meaning villain would have to call $86 into what will be a $262 pot. It'll leave us an effective $260 behind, should I be thinking about folding if he 5bet shoves? Or is there a better way to play this akward spot preflop?
Cheers dudes
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.