It's actually pretty fun playing these tournaments. Since online poker is dead in the US, it's nice to get any chance to play. And maybe I can win something! :-)
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Online Golden Nugget tournament
It's actually pretty fun playing these tournaments. Since online poker is dead in the US, it's nice to get any chance to play. And maybe I can win something! :-)
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
A new approach
Last Monday I went to Red Rock and played some 1/2. I thought I played OK, but I did get into some very questionable situations. For example check out this gem of a hand:
A-Q in the small blind. I call a small raise. Flop is J-7-7. I think "that's a good board texture to c-bet" and call a $6 c-bet from the preflop raiser. Turn is a jack. I think "that board doesn't hit the preflop raiser very often". I check, he bets $25. I say to myself "I'm going to raise him off of his hand, he doesn't have a jack very often here". So I raise to $60, he calls, I check-fold the river, he shows A-J.
Then just a couple annoying hands - guy raises to 12. I reraise to 30 with A-K. Flop misses me, like 9-6-4. He checks, I bet 50, he raises me all-in for $100 more, I fold. Then someone raises to like 7, I make it 20 with A-Q, he calls, I miss the flop, it goes check-check, he bets the turn, I fold.
I also just got into some spots where I was confused about what to do post-flop. Like after listening to these podcasts and they're talking about ranges and this and that, I flop an ace with ace-rag suited and I'm like, I'm going to peel and see what he does, and of course the guy bets again and I have to fold, etc. I just ended up playing like shit.
And then, that puts me on tilt. Making moves that don't work, putting money in the pot when it just feels wrong, etc. It annoys me.
Then I was listening to some more podcasts, the "Deuce Plays" ones, and sometimes they'll have people on that play the live 5/10 games at Commerce. And a common theme is, these guys aren't paying attention to what you're doing, nobody ever folds anything, nobody is ever bluff raising you. And you can value bet pretty thin because nobody ever folds, etc.
I lost $270 at Red Rock last Monday and it was really frustrating. I didn't play the rest of the week and I was just like "fuck this" overall.
So yesterday I said something I have said in the past, although maybe more to the extreme this time. I came up with a new plan. Over the next 100 hours of live poker, I'm going to play this way:
- Never ever bluff.
- Never even semi-bluff, even with huge semi-bluffing hands.
- Never c-bet unless I hit the flop.
- Pretty much never reraise preflop except with huge hands.
- Pretty much only raise preflop with huge hands, limp with everything else, and check/fold unless I really have a monster.
- Bet big with my big hands.
- Play 100% straightforward.
- Basically play like the biggest nit ever.
So I did this yesterday at Red Rock for 3 hours. It was an interesting experiment because I played some hands in ways I would not usually play them. Some examples:
I have K-4 suited in the blind. Check. Flop comes 10-7-4 with 2 of my suit. Sick flop. Check, lol. Turn, check, river, miss, check/fold.
In blind with 6-5. Check. Flop is 2-2-5. Checks around. Turn, 8. Checks around. River, 9. Guy bets 10. I raise to 30, he calls with 9-8.
Open-limp with Q-10 suited (I dont think that was a good idea, but whatever). Flop A-x-x with 2 of my suit. Checks to me, check. Turn, blank. Checks around. River, miss, someone bets, I fold.
I had some big hands too. Reraised this guy Kenny that plays crazy preflop with AA. He raised to 10, 2 callers, I think this is awesome because it looks like I'm trying to steal, I make it 45, he calls. Flop I kinda spaz out and he checks, and I check. I sort of didn't know what to do. Flop was 6-5-4, just not the best flop. Turn, jack. He bets 60, I insta-call because I know this guy can do some weird stuff. River, 5. He checks. I check. Should have bet though because I think he would never check a big hand there, so that was a mistake.
Call 8 with A-Q. 5 way. Flop A-Q-5. Preflop raiser bets 20, I call, heads up. Turn, 9. He checks, I bet 60, he calls. River, 5. He checks, I go all-in, he folds.
Just couple others:
Bunch of people limp. I have K-K on button, make it 15. 3 callers. Flop ace high, 2 hearts. Checks to me, check. Turn, check around. River, check around. Guy made two pair with running jack and 9. Could have won this pot with a c-bet obviously, but whatever. This is my new nit strategy.
Raise to 10 with Q-Q, 2 callers. Flop 7-5-2 with 2 diamonds. I bet 25, guy calls. Turn, 4 of diamonds. I check, he bets 45 right away, I just fold. Old guy, probably a great fold there. But good fold or not, I'm just going to fold there 100% of the time.
Anyway I ended up winning $224. Really good session, I was super happy with the results. As far as the play, I feel like its super weak and exploitable, but maybe these guys are right... at these limits (and maybe even 1 or 2 levels up), nobody is going to be good enough to exploit me, so whatever. I can play super predictable and just rake in the money from all the terrible players out there. And maybe one day when I'm playing high enough that there are not as many bad players around, I can adapt.
For now, I'm going to stick to this strategy for 100 hours of live play and re-evaluate. I like doing this in big blocks of time so I can ignore the short-term and just focus on the long-term results. And not think about moving up in stakes or changing my strategy for a long time, just ride it out and see what happens. If it's profitable, maybe I'll sign up for another 100 hours.
More poker tonight I think!
A-Q in the small blind. I call a small raise. Flop is J-7-7. I think "that's a good board texture to c-bet" and call a $6 c-bet from the preflop raiser. Turn is a jack. I think "that board doesn't hit the preflop raiser very often". I check, he bets $25. I say to myself "I'm going to raise him off of his hand, he doesn't have a jack very often here". So I raise to $60, he calls, I check-fold the river, he shows A-J.
Then just a couple annoying hands - guy raises to 12. I reraise to 30 with A-K. Flop misses me, like 9-6-4. He checks, I bet 50, he raises me all-in for $100 more, I fold. Then someone raises to like 7, I make it 20 with A-Q, he calls, I miss the flop, it goes check-check, he bets the turn, I fold.
I also just got into some spots where I was confused about what to do post-flop. Like after listening to these podcasts and they're talking about ranges and this and that, I flop an ace with ace-rag suited and I'm like, I'm going to peel and see what he does, and of course the guy bets again and I have to fold, etc. I just ended up playing like shit.
And then, that puts me on tilt. Making moves that don't work, putting money in the pot when it just feels wrong, etc. It annoys me.
Then I was listening to some more podcasts, the "Deuce Plays" ones, and sometimes they'll have people on that play the live 5/10 games at Commerce. And a common theme is, these guys aren't paying attention to what you're doing, nobody ever folds anything, nobody is ever bluff raising you. And you can value bet pretty thin because nobody ever folds, etc.
I lost $270 at Red Rock last Monday and it was really frustrating. I didn't play the rest of the week and I was just like "fuck this" overall.
So yesterday I said something I have said in the past, although maybe more to the extreme this time. I came up with a new plan. Over the next 100 hours of live poker, I'm going to play this way:
- Never ever bluff.
- Never even semi-bluff, even with huge semi-bluffing hands.
- Never c-bet unless I hit the flop.
- Pretty much never reraise preflop except with huge hands.
- Pretty much only raise preflop with huge hands, limp with everything else, and check/fold unless I really have a monster.
- Bet big with my big hands.
- Play 100% straightforward.
- Basically play like the biggest nit ever.
So I did this yesterday at Red Rock for 3 hours. It was an interesting experiment because I played some hands in ways I would not usually play them. Some examples:
I have K-4 suited in the blind. Check. Flop comes 10-7-4 with 2 of my suit. Sick flop. Check, lol. Turn, check, river, miss, check/fold.
In blind with 6-5. Check. Flop is 2-2-5. Checks around. Turn, 8. Checks around. River, 9. Guy bets 10. I raise to 30, he calls with 9-8.
Open-limp with Q-10 suited (I dont think that was a good idea, but whatever). Flop A-x-x with 2 of my suit. Checks to me, check. Turn, blank. Checks around. River, miss, someone bets, I fold.
I had some big hands too. Reraised this guy Kenny that plays crazy preflop with AA. He raised to 10, 2 callers, I think this is awesome because it looks like I'm trying to steal, I make it 45, he calls. Flop I kinda spaz out and he checks, and I check. I sort of didn't know what to do. Flop was 6-5-4, just not the best flop. Turn, jack. He bets 60, I insta-call because I know this guy can do some weird stuff. River, 5. He checks. I check. Should have bet though because I think he would never check a big hand there, so that was a mistake.
Call 8 with A-Q. 5 way. Flop A-Q-5. Preflop raiser bets 20, I call, heads up. Turn, 9. He checks, I bet 60, he calls. River, 5. He checks, I go all-in, he folds.
Just couple others:
Bunch of people limp. I have K-K on button, make it 15. 3 callers. Flop ace high, 2 hearts. Checks to me, check. Turn, check around. River, check around. Guy made two pair with running jack and 9. Could have won this pot with a c-bet obviously, but whatever. This is my new nit strategy.
Raise to 10 with Q-Q, 2 callers. Flop 7-5-2 with 2 diamonds. I bet 25, guy calls. Turn, 4 of diamonds. I check, he bets 45 right away, I just fold. Old guy, probably a great fold there. But good fold or not, I'm just going to fold there 100% of the time.
Anyway I ended up winning $224. Really good session, I was super happy with the results. As far as the play, I feel like its super weak and exploitable, but maybe these guys are right... at these limits (and maybe even 1 or 2 levels up), nobody is going to be good enough to exploit me, so whatever. I can play super predictable and just rake in the money from all the terrible players out there. And maybe one day when I'm playing high enough that there are not as many bad players around, I can adapt.
For now, I'm going to stick to this strategy for 100 hours of live play and re-evaluate. I like doing this in big blocks of time so I can ignore the short-term and just focus on the long-term results. And not think about moving up in stakes or changing my strategy for a long time, just ride it out and see what happens. If it's profitable, maybe I'll sign up for another 100 hours.
More poker tonight I think!
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
$0.50/$1 NL home cash game
Last night we went to a cash game someone was hosting at a local house. 50c/$1 NL. I should look out for these kind of games more often really, as I think they are going to be much better than casino games. The game last night had a couple people that were somewhat competent, my wife who I think is decent, and a bunch of others that were just bad.
I ran really good and ended up winning $120. I had a bunch of huge hands. Flopped a set twice, including one where I got all in against the nut flush and rivered a boat. In that hand, I had K-K in the small blind. A bunch of people limped, and I raised to $8.50. Really big raise in that game. 2 callers, so the pot was relatively huge. Flop K-x-x with all 3 diamonds. I bet $15, guy goes all-in, I call. I probably should have paid more attention to how much he had because it might not have necessarily been a insta-call, although I did call. Thinking about it now, I think he could do that with:
AK with the ace of diamonds.
Flush with a suited ace, although what suited aces is he calling 7.5x more with? ATs+ I think, at most.
Flush with a suited connector. Although again, what suited connectors is he going to have? T9s+, and since I have a king that takes away a lot of combos. So only T9, JT, QJ, let's add in 89 too, why not.
Lower set.
Against all of those, let's run it in PokerStove and see how my equity works out.
Whoa, sick! I don't remember the exact board cards, but assuming it was K-6-4 and he could have the hands I mentioned, I'm a big favorite! Then I took out the non-flush AK combos, and it only changed it a very small amount which I find confusing. I thought I might have had to factor the pot size in to determine if I was right, but no - I'm just straight up a huge favorite against that range. Probably because I'm crushing the lower sets, and even against the flushes I have decent equity. I'm actually really surprised that this is a no-brainer call regardless of pot size.
Yeah, sometimes he might be calling with a lower suited connector too, or lower suited aces. But overall I think especially with the huge size of my raise, and the fact that nobody else had called yet, my range estimations really aren't that bad here.
OK - PokerStove is the bomb! I can't believe I've never used this tool before, because I've heard people talk about it so much. But now after watching just a couple videos and watching how they do the range calculations, I'm starting to figure it out.
Another one I wanted to look at was this one. I had AKo and raised to $3. Lady next to me, pretty tight old lady, reraised to $13. She only had $10 more, so she was essentially all-in.
I was thinking OK - this lady's range is incredibly tight here. I think she would probably do that with aces, kings, queens, and maybe AK/JJ. If everyone else folded and I got all-in with her, I would have to put in another $20 to win $47.
Against that range, I'm not quite as bad off as I thought. 60/40 dog.
I ran really good and ended up winning $120. I had a bunch of huge hands. Flopped a set twice, including one where I got all in against the nut flush and rivered a boat. In that hand, I had K-K in the small blind. A bunch of people limped, and I raised to $8.50. Really big raise in that game. 2 callers, so the pot was relatively huge. Flop K-x-x with all 3 diamonds. I bet $15, guy goes all-in, I call. I probably should have paid more attention to how much he had because it might not have necessarily been a insta-call, although I did call. Thinking about it now, I think he could do that with:
AK with the ace of diamonds.
Flush with a suited ace, although what suited aces is he calling 7.5x more with? ATs+ I think, at most.
Flush with a suited connector. Although again, what suited connectors is he going to have? T9s+, and since I have a king that takes away a lot of combos. So only T9, JT, QJ, let's add in 89 too, why not.
Lower set.
Against all of those, let's run it in PokerStove and see how my equity works out.
Whoa, sick! I don't remember the exact board cards, but assuming it was K-6-4 and he could have the hands I mentioned, I'm a big favorite! Then I took out the non-flush AK combos, and it only changed it a very small amount which I find confusing. I thought I might have had to factor the pot size in to determine if I was right, but no - I'm just straight up a huge favorite against that range. Probably because I'm crushing the lower sets, and even against the flushes I have decent equity. I'm actually really surprised that this is a no-brainer call regardless of pot size.
Yeah, sometimes he might be calling with a lower suited connector too, or lower suited aces. But overall I think especially with the huge size of my raise, and the fact that nobody else had called yet, my range estimations really aren't that bad here.
OK - PokerStove is the bomb! I can't believe I've never used this tool before, because I've heard people talk about it so much. But now after watching just a couple videos and watching how they do the range calculations, I'm starting to figure it out.
Another one I wanted to look at was this one. I had AKo and raised to $3. Lady next to me, pretty tight old lady, reraised to $13. She only had $10 more, so she was essentially all-in.
I was thinking OK - this lady's range is incredibly tight here. I think she would probably do that with aces, kings, queens, and maybe AK/JJ. If everyone else folded and I got all-in with her, I would have to put in another $20 to win $47.
Against that range, I'm not quite as bad off as I thought. 60/40 dog.
So even without anyone else calling, here is my expected value in that pot:
($47 * .397) + (-$20 * .602) = $6.62
So even if everyone folds, it's way +EV to call there. So I guess the analysis really ends here. But I was actually going to fold if nothing else interesting happened. As it turned out, this other TERRIBLE player called $13 cold. I put her on basically any pair, and probably not a huge one. And maybe like AK/AQ. She had about $60 or so more, so I just reraised all-in to push her out and go heads up with the dead money in there. I reraised all-in, the lady with $10 left obviously called, the other lady folded. We both had AK (although hers was suited), nobody got a flush, and we chopped it up.
I played pretty well overall I thought. I also did some things like not c-bet into a bunch of people. For example in one hand I raised with KQs, got 3 callers. Flop came T-6-7 with the 10 of my suit. I'd generally c-bet here, but I just thought the board was pretty drawy and there was no real purpose to betting. So I checked. Not a very interesting story I know but in the past I probably would have bet that a high percentage of the time even with a bunch of people in.
I also did some things that were looser closer to the button. Like I raised with K-7 suited in the HJ. Got 2 callers and I had to check-fold the flop, but not the worst move I think. And then later on the button or one off the button I raised with Q-9 suited. Again lost the pot (got reraised to $13 from the big blind, folded, she showed QQ) but I think those are reasonable moves.
I'm just really looking forward to playing some more poker and trying to really think about ranges, board textures, etc. Should be fun!
Sunday, November 11, 2012
I'm back bitches
Poker career reboot - version 12 or so.
I'm back fuckers. Last time I did the best I ever have done since I quit. Got my $1500 or so bankroll up to about $8k, was playing 2/5 NL for the first time in forever, it was awesome. I thought I was playing pretty well for a while there. Then I did the usual - went on a big downswing, got frustrated, and quit. Donated the bankroll back into the checking account and said fuck this.
 |
| The Bankroll |
Well I'm back. $1000 in the new bankroll and I'm going to start out by playing some 1/2 NL. Play tight, pay attention, hopefully get lucky, and kickstart the poker career again.
I'm also going to try some new things, specifically watching some poker tutorial videos online at someplace like Deuces Cracked. A lot of it might not apply directly to what I'm doing, but I can at least figure out how to think about hands differently. I tried a free trial at Bluefire Poker and it was OK, the video quality was a little sketchy but I downloaded a few and have been watching them. Just watched one so far about reading people at pretty low stakes NL online. Some interesting tips about putting people on ranges, which I have heard of but haven't really done before. Not in that exact way anyway - of course you're thinking about what people might have, but not "putting people on ranges".
That's all for now. Not playing today, but soon.
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