Graphic Perspective

Sometimes you just don't want the reminder.

Looking at this graph:


Is a whole lot easier than looking at this graph:


'Nuff said.
M

Rough day but still in the green

Great hole cards, few good flops, lots of bad rivers. Gave my fold button plenty of exercise and fought my way back to even--three times...

Cheers!

M

It's April Fools Day but the joke's on them

I finally have a nemesis. He plays LHE 6-max rush, .25/.50 and 1/2 and he put a bunch of beats on me tonight. AQs vs A6o, board runs out ATxx6. JJ vs A4, flop AKT, I call his donk bet on flop & turn and fold river, finally convinced. QQ vs A2, flop looks good but he spikes the A on the turn and I let it go. Saved 2 bets on a cooler. KK vs AA. I raise from BTN and the BB 3bets and I flat. Flop 227. I raise his flop bet and he calls. Turn A and I check behind. River comes another 2 and I call his value bet which I expect him to make with plenty of worse hands, but this time he has the nuts. Oh, well. Starting off April at 7BB/100. Wouldn't it be nice if I end the month with this average? Oh, baby...



Cheers!

M

It's raining Full Tilt poker chips

So I went online and caught a bunch!

Okay, I know I said I was going to wait a week, but I decided to take a shot. I fired up 8 tables of 10c/20c and 4 tables of 25c/50c LHE. My win rate was 3.xx for 10/20 and 5.xx for 25/50. Feels so good to have hands hold up for a change. Check out my green line:


Hope everyone catches some of those chips before the rain stops.
M

The Poker life is a good life

Still looking for answers from my last blog entry...please take a minute to comment if you have ideas.

After taking off the 25th and 26th to analyze my databse, I got back to playing the game. Finally have some results showing up in green. I moved down in stakes and have won 8 BI's total since the switch. At this rate, I'll move back up in a week.

March 27:

M

Saturday poker sucks; Sunday, not so much

Gamblers a-plenty, but the deck runs even on Sunday.

25c/50c LHE 6-MAX RUSH on FT



Here are the adjustments I made:
1) No naked bluffs.
2) Play passively with draws. No 3-betting big draws, raise big draws only in position heads-up.
3) 3-bet preflop only with QQ+, AKs.
4) Rather than jam monsters from the get-go, trap. No capping preflop. Raise the turn with overpairs+.
5) Fold 3rd pair or worse to donk turn/river bets.
6) Fold overcards on the turn if all I have is pair outs.
7) It's okay to limp small/medium pairs and suited connectors 56-QJ from EP, raise them from MP & LP, but see #1 for postflop play.

Had fewer sticky river situations as a result. I'm not advocating the above for these games all the time. Generally a more aggressive game is ideal for tighter fields. One cannot describe the weekend RUSH player pool as tight. Far from it. So with multiway pots as the norm, you have to adjust.

M

Weekend poker sucks

Yeah, I said it. I can't seem to make a hand or buy a pot on Saturday or Sunday. I'm matched up against a table full of fish and just can't hit or hold up or both. It's not worth iso-raising AK because 4 callers is routine. Open-raise, yes. Iso-raise, no. And forget bluffing. You can't bluff players who'll call the river with a pair of twos, or, for that matter, eight-high.

Yep, you read that right. Playing FT 6-max RUSH LHE 25c/50c, in a blind vs blind hand tonight the SB open limped and I raised with 5 6 and the SB called. I had this player flagged as a weak player, with seven different notes on him. He chases to the river with any draws (including gutshots) regardless of pot odds, and folds if he misses, except for a couple times when he had ace-high . He tends to raise the flop or turn with made hands as weak as second pair. The flop came down 2 3 A. The SB checked, I bet my gutshot straight-flush draw, and he called. The turn was the Q. The SB checked, I again bet my draw, and the SB called again. The river was the K. The SB checks again. At this point, I have to bet. No question. There's no hand I can beat at showdown and he is known to fold rivers where he's missed. I bet. He tanks for a full ten seconds and calls. He has 78 and wins the pot. I could not believe my eyes.

I quit once I hit my stop loss of 50BB. It always hurts when I play well and the deck just bends me over. And it's really, really hard to quit when I know I'm playing well but just not hitting my fair share of the time. But the truth is if you can't bluff, and you can't hit, you simply can't win.

The bad news:


Hope the deck is being kinder to the rest of you.
M

Back to Winning

Okay, I know I said I was going to take the day off. But at the end of the day I put in a couple hours anyway. I don't normally play late at night (10pm to midnight), but anyways...

And then I did something I should be doing more often. I spent four hours going through the hand replayer and making notes on every hand, identifying weak players and the mistakes they're making. For some reason, maybe because it was a "holiday", there were tons of players at my tables I'd either never seen before or had no notes on them for whatever other reason. I usually review my session the next day, in the cold light of objectivity. But I also have the bad habit of reviewing only those hands where I lost big pots. It's helpful, but it doesn't tell the whole story. Last night I reviewed EVERY hand. There were quite a few where I didn't get full value out of my hand. Others where I called down even though it was painfully obvious I was beat and should have saved two bets.

Until I get a system that can run a HUD (and even after, regardless), I think it's extremely important that I review every hand in my sessions, as much as time allows anyway (it takes twice to three as long to review a session as it does to play it), and identify weak players and what mistakes they make so I can exploit them in the future.

All that being said, I crushed the tables for 7.5BB/100 last night.

Full Tilt RUSH LHE 25c/50c


Hope your next session goes this good!
M

Happy St. Patty's Day!

Still playing my style (stats for the month unchanged), but running a little better. I'm still comfortable with my play, knowing the swings will be a bit bigger than straightforward ABC but in the long run I'll make a larger profit. Yesterday was another up and down day but ended on a high note.

March 16:


Taking the day off today for other business.

Happy green beer drinking!
M