Weekend update..

Well, I took it easy over the weekend for the most part and laid off some online gaming I was hoping to cram. I did make a good attempt at the $200 satellite into the BCPC main event held this past Saturday at the RiverRock. Didn’t make it but thought it was a good try overall. I think there was a spot where I overplayed it a little bit.. maybe was too aggressive and pushing too hard. I mean, the hyper turbo structure of the tournament lands itself to being a little more aggressive early on lest you allow your stack to be eaten up by the galloping blinds. Next time should work better..

I’d also lost $400 (two buyins) in the post tournament cash games. My first $200 was lost when my AA was cracked by 67o on a J6327 board, 3 way all in on the flop vs 67o and AJ for a nice $560 pot. Sucks the donkey with 67 had to win the race.. (just a flimsy 5 outer). With my next reload, I proceeded to loose my K6 on a 667 board to a river st8 (again, headsup all in on the flop and again, I was HUGE favourite). Lost some with my AK on a KQ8 board to an opponent holding KQ (I lost the minimum there however). The remaining $55 was lost when I correctly isolated a loose / aggressive (shell I say hopelessly clueless) chinese kid and shoved vs his $15 preflop raise with my 66 to his KTo. The board came 292TK. Cooler.

Suffering through atrocious variance…

Just had a quick session of about 12 tourneys.. not a single cash.  Judging by the surreal amount of bad beats and unfortunate bust outs, I must be playing correctly. Of the 12 tourneys I got busted by hands I had either dominated or only some 4% to loose, in this order: AK vs AJ, 666 vs JJJ (riv), KK vs A5, KQ vs KQ, and so forth.

Since I was multitabling 8 at a time, I did make a few mistakes (and some misclicks) but those are to be expected. I just need to win with my strong hands and correct moves.. and hope the bad run of cards stops at some point.

I just want to forwarn and caution any of you aspiring poker pros out there.. poker is a TOUGH TOUGH grind, ESPECIALLY when no matter your best play and intentions things just go the wrong way. Once the chips are down, there’s very little you can do but hope the cards to come don’t fuck your fortunes up.

To conclude, here’s my SNG graph for the past 700 or so games (up measly $90.. but down significantly from a peak of $1100)

Just heading out to play live cash games with a poker buddy. Those should be fun and profitable. Heading out to a doc’s appointment tomorrow. Fun Fun.

Good live sess..

I played at Riv this Sunday. Had a solid session and left with $800 profit. That offsets $260 loss the day prior at the Starlight.. both times played at the top of my game, it’s just that sometimes you can’t will a win even if your life depended on it. I think I’ll make live cash games a regular occurrence as I feel I clearly have an edge.  $1/$2 tables are incredibly easy to beat on most nights.. especially if you allow for a long enough session 10hrs and up.

I also think that my SNG game is improving and I’m coming out of a mini variance dump. Still busted out of some key tournaments today vs hands I had dominated preflop (AK vs KJ, AA vs JJ etc) but didn’t allow that to tilt me, finishing in the money in a few deep SNGs for an overall profitable session (meager $80 but still..).

Here’s one hand I wanted to share with you.. SNG being all about balancing your survival needs with winning key hands, I think I played my KK in this spot as optimally as possible. I elected not to reshove an all in for my entire stack but to make a considerate reraise and see a flop in case I got a caller. I basically knew that I’d have to muck my KK on an A high flop. Key is, I win the pot on a huge % of flops but would have to abandon it on rare A high flops for sake of still having a chance to win it (with some 20BB behind).

KK in SB vs an early position all in and aggro BB

MTT sng grind

I’m doing so much better at these lately. I’ve spent the past bunch of weeks really studying the game, reading up on it, buying hand histories off known pros.. and finally see a payoff. From $3 just a week ago, I’ve grinded to $114 on Stars. I’ve also made steady gains on FTP.

It’s a little hard playing really quality poker with work as I often come tired from the office and need a down time before I can go on a long session. I have to set up some kind of a routine to make this work for me. Definitely long field tourneys are out of the question on work days.. as they would often go very late into the night robbing me of much needed sleep. This only leaves cash games and MTT SNGs as often the sessions could be only as long as you want them to be. Basically a usual day of a poker semi-pro:

- get up at close to 8am.
- office @ roughly 9am (a short drive)
- back home ~5:30pm
- quick energy snack
- 1hr nap
- poker time at 7:30pm till 11:30pm

This will give me about 5hrs/day for poker grind. Enough to learn, get better and make a dime while at it.

Interesting hand..

An interesting discussion of a hand play here..

http://chipmeup.pokernews.com/topics/16012?forum_id=1&page=1#posts-104713

my reply at the end.

What are your thoughts? To me it looked like a ridiculous misplay of one’s QQ in that spot against an EP nit raise and reshove. The first time I watched the hand replay I immediately basically realized that QQ had to have been beat in the spot. Pitty the player still thinking like it was such a great call but just a standard cooler situation.

Horrendous coolers all around…

I am on the WORST run in my entire poker history these past few days.. I can’t win with any strong hand, hit 0 flops, just coolers all over. Routinely run AK/KK into AA and so forth. Just busted out of a lowly $5r+r (lower stakes entry to book a cheapo win and boost confidence) when I shoved 16BB from SB with my AKs against 12398471239847 limpers. Got a caller and he busted me. LoLz. I swear when this horrible luck turns around they better watch out!

In mean time, grinding at SNGs with mixed results. Same story. Playing great but not really showing any huge profits this week. I’ve acquired the SNG Wizard program to help me iron out any holes in my game.. This is a great tool by the way as it allows you to evaluate your SNG game based on a perfect mathematical ICM model. I would often review my completed SNG hand histories against it to verify if mistakes had been made in my play etc. It also has this quiz feature where it generates various poker scenarios and evaluates your feedback. Scored perfect 30/30 on a quiz today, feeling tremendously good.

Now just to get my shitty luck out of the way…

SNG Wiz

News first.. I busted out of the main event like an absolute donk by misplaying my AK. I should have let it go figuring my opponent lucked out and tripped up with his low pair.  I must have felt disgusted letting the pot go that pushed me to make the bad call. Anyway, one actual mistake in a while that I could kick myself about endlessly and learn from.

Focusing on SNGs these days.. as that’s the bread and butter of every poker grinder. I just downloaded and evaluated this SNG Wizard tool. Thinking of investing $100 to buy it. Should be a worthwhile investment IMO.

Used the tool to review a couple of my SNGs today. One that I lost and another that I came in 1st at. Interestingly the one that I lost I hadn’t had any mistakes.. basically the hands that I had to push with I did and otherwise folded or saw the cheap occasional flop with the rest.  But the one that I DID take down, I had made two key mistakes in. I did have this feeling in the back of my mind that the plays I’d made might not have been exactly +EV.. but it’s nice to have the tool confirm this and ‘explain’ from a purely mathematical / equity point of view. Here’s one interesting situation where based on the program analysis,  I should have folded my 55 in SB but chose to limp in instead.  I’m not sure if simply calling with my stack was that big of a mistake as the difference between FOLD and PUSH EV is only 0.36%. Maybe my call was ‘OK’.. in the sense that I felt the raiser had to have had AT+ hand and not necessarily an OP (55+), therefore giving me an option of seeing and acting on all low flop, for example. The logic was, the flop comes all low, I shove and check/fold otherwise.

Good start, very unlucky mid and ending

I’m not gonna go into much detail about the various bad beats I endured today.. virtually every tourney I busted out of was at the hands of a bad play by another player and a miracle river/turn card. This is pretty standard in poker though and I think with time I’ll be able to just see past it. In the end, I feel much better when I know I’ve played the best, regardless of the immediate results. Yet, posting these two hands as I think I played them exceptionally well.. but still lost in the end:

Good read with my 66

Had some history with the guy.. I felt he would try to reshove on a big draw to try to take away a pot from me. He didn’t show much strength through the hand.. was basically floating me on successive streets. When he shoved there on the river, I immediately thought “ok.. now u got your flush draw..” I didn’t quite put him on such a disaster of a hand though.. My 66, with the open ended st8 draw on board looked like a monster.

KK trap

This one came right after the 66 hand I’d lost so disastrously. At this point, I decided to trap the guy HU or convince him that I’m on a tilt/bluff. When the Q high flop came and he bet out 1/3 the pot, it clicked that he must have hit that Q. Connecting the dots.. if now I reshoved, I figured he’d put me on a tilt steal and call off with any Q. Worked perfectly.. until the turn…

My final hand of the session.. busted from my 6th tourney today with AK. I raise entire POT preflop. Dude calls me with 32. Flop comes 3K2.. I bet hard, he raises, I shove as I’m already only 8bb behind anyway. Didn’t improve and busted out. How sick eh?

Won satellite into MiniFTOPS Main Event

Beat out 64 other players to get the entry for free.. nothing can beat that

Unbelievable!!!!!!!!!!!!

It is now second day I work the damnest to get to the final table.. playing absolutely beyond myself only to get busted early by a donk!!!  I’m sitting with 22BB and QQ on the button. A mega stack makes a HUGE 4.5BB raise mid position. This DONK comes out and shoves all in for 18BB or so. I obv. knowing that he’s full of it and in no way put him on KK, especially no AA (he’d just float it.. I know). So I go ahead and repop with my QQ. The mega stack folds! The donk shows ATo and of course the flop nails A to the table right away for the donk to win. What hurts most is that the mega stack dude later told me he’d folded AJ.  So pissed actually.. at least the final place paid $300 profit for me. Far short of my goal of 1st and $3000! Geeez……………

On the brighter side, I’m getting to final table with greater frequency now.. about 1 in ever 5 deep field tournament. That’s a good thing. I should be able to final table every day and if poker luck doesn’t screw me in the behind once again, I should pull a four digit prize one of these days.