short update

poker had been going good, then i lost about 10% of the roll in 24 hours in various sngs and mtts. cashed out $250 to buy an xbox leaving myself with about $230. Had an absolutely atrocious night at the sngs today but found myself running deep in a 3 dollar ko which started with 1100 ppl, sound familiar? Anyways, i finished 9th for 45 bucks. So dissapointing. Doesnt even pay for tonights losses across the board. First place was 640. I lost on a standard hand:

I am 8th in chips w/ 11bbs. Cutoff who has 25bbs open minraises and i jam over the top with AJo. He tanks and eventually flips AQo which holds.

An epic seven hands

As Im sure you all know, the more you play the more variance catches up with you and the more bizarre and crazy things you see. Sometimes, that variance is phenomenally helpful. This sng started innocently enough. I got to the final 3 in good chip position. I had ~5k vs ~5k vs ~3k. Heads up this hand occured:

Now, this hand deserves some explanation. First the line we took.

Preflop: Villain minraises, I call

Flop: I check villain bets 2.4k into 3.2k I jam for about 3k more villain tanks and eventually calls

Heads up i had been abusing this guy. Some hands ago I limp 3bet him from the button and scared the shit out of him. Ever since then he was respecting my limps and folding to minbets on the flop. Basically he was giving me a ton of respect. I decide to come along here thinking i can take this pot away easily on the flop. When the flop falls i actually make the decision to c/r this guy. He had been playing so scared I thought i could definitely rep the ace, and if he does call the jam i have a gutter and potentially one overcard, unless of course he has an ace....but i dont really think thats the case. Well...he ends up tanking forever and i think im going to take it down but then he makes a great call and im left with one small blind....

The next six hands shown were the next six hands dealt.

All in blind:

All in blind (for me) again:

All in pre (essentially blind):

He folds:

All in and he folds:

He limp/calls my jam pre and i fade 1.2million outs:

I folded once, then he folded then this (All in pre):

Talk about snatching victory out of the jaws of defeat.

Rebound

As Ive mentioned I have been playing a decent amount of sngs recently. Last night was no exception. One thing that I kind of like about the sngs, at least whats been happening recently, is that I will get sucked out on in one but then I might actually suck out on someone in another! ITs crazy to actually get a back and forth kind of variance. I think one reason for this is the fact that by playing sngs, especially turbos, im forced to play a much higher variance strategy because Im often faced with a very small M. Small m's cause me to get it in light which can actually put me in a position to suck out on someone which would be more rare in a cash.

Anyways last night I was playing some sngs to some success, i think i finished up about 15$ from them. The real story of the night, however, was a 3 dollar stud tournament I ran in the background. Ive always liked playing the non-holdem games, i enjoy them and would like to get better at them. I like firing a tourny like stud in the background because it, especially at low limits, is a very low maintenance and straightforward for the first hour or so: basically you just need to play tight, get value from big hands which is easy, and play lots of explorative hands like 1097sss to try to get a huge hand. Then as the tourny progresses they become very fun as you can open up your game, start bluffing, and getting a ton of chips from simply valuebetting your made hands.

Well long story short, last nights adventure turned out good:

As I mentioned the beginning of these tournies are all about getting value out of your made hands:

This hand is kind of a cooler but it was basically me just going bet bet bet on every street getting value from a bad starting hand who eventually became a good draw.

Heres another cooler, but its the same idea. Milk your good hands for all theyre worth:

Its obviously really important to be on the right side of a hand like this but, its kind of tough for villain to just call me down on every street. His hand is relatively face up as a pair of kings while mine is very disguised but obviously strong.

I started rolled up on this hand:

Here is a classic example of what ive been saying all along. I have the nuts on 4rd street. Just bet bet bet bet bet. I am honestly not sure what the other players were doing in this pot but it exemplifies why this tourny is so soft. This hand really seperated me from the pack, put me at like 3/40 or something and gave me enough breathing room to cruise to the late stages.

Heres the situation at the start of the final table which I managed to cruise into thanks to my healthy chipstack and constant awareness of not gifting away chips

After some back and forth, losing some chips and then chipping up this hand occurred to give me a nice stack:

I obviously got pretty lucky on this hand but most of the money, all the big bets, got in after I have the best hand and hes facing what appears to be 2pair at least. I had started the hand firing so Im repping either a 7 or a hand like TT7 which has him beat at this point.

Some missed bluffs and getting bet out of speculative hands brought me down to a meager chipstack but then this hand kept me in the race:

I started with 4T5 and it actually limped around all the way until the three of spades which gae me a flush draw and open ended straight draw which filled on 6th and I started extracting value.

I didnt play a huge roll in the elimination of players until I managed to KO the guy in 4th:

You can see the guy to my left has a commanding chiplead....this hand was crucial to keep it close:

This was the first hand of heads up, i had a lot of ground to make up:

Now, i am by no means a master at heads up stud...Ive very rarely, if ever played it. Be that as it may I was not worried about this joker. Throughout the final table he had proved to be a lucksack and a very bad stud player. I turned up the aggression and tried to take down as many uncontested pots as i could. I dont have a pic for it but at the final table i had started bluffing pretty often. The best spot to bluff is when the bring in is to your left and you hold a Ace King or Queen to their right. If it folds around to you, which is not rare with high blinds a completion representing a pair will easily win the pot and some valuable chips.

This hand was the first real dent i had made in his stack, until this point i had just been trying to win as many 5k-10k pots as possible, just snag the antes and a completion:

This hand is the start of me getting momentum...This hand was also another example of villain checking the best hand until 5th street when I peel a straight and then start the betting and raising action and crush him.

On this hand I started with 345 so while it might seem like a sick cooler going into 7th street i had 8 clubs to win and going into 7th i had 7 clubs and 2 3s and 24s for the win.

After this hand I worked him to about 150k to 50k. Then i disconnected and he stole a lot of blinds. It is very easy to steal bring ins and antes in a heads up stud match. The values are quite high and you pay alot every hand. Plus you can work extremely fast. He managed to get the stacks all the way up to about 120k (me)to 80k by the time i got back. This pissed me off but i managed to stay on track and not tilt myself.

This is the perfect example of how much of a donk this guy is. On 6th street here he is boardlocked. The only way he wins is if he catches a queen or jack. I had both of them so that is extremely unlikely. I thought i had him beat the whole way because I didnt put him on a queen, cuz i had one, and for the same reason a jack is so unlikely. Nevertheless he managed to get 2 big bets in there drawing to 2 outs and i take the big pot.

This hand was a a dagger, not really sure what hes doing going crazy with 99 there:

And a nail in the coffin:

and finally:

VICTORY.

Now did I get lucky in a number of spots, yes. I did. Did I cooler people in crucial moments? Yea, i did that too. These are things that happen in big tournaments. I also played very good stud, imo and managed to get much of my money in good. It was a very fun tournament and im really glad to book a big win that almost erases my prop bet disaster. Im sorry that this post was a. so long and b. not much strategy....but I dont really want to delve too deep into stud strategy/im not really sure about it beyond like basic ideas. Perhaps I can voice my opinions in a future post.

Finally, I just want to say thank you very much for the rail OES, and to tootsy, thanks for the love and keep up the killing of cap!

be back in MA in 5 days, hope everyones doing well!

Poker/Life Update

So I finally gave up the propbet. I simply couldnt take the losing any more. I played some sngs the other day and theyve actually been going really well. In my first 7 I cashed 4 for a 30 dollar profit and then lst night I played some more and made bak about 30 bucks i had given away in mtts.

In other news I will be flying back to the states in 6 days. I cannot believe that I have been here for 3.5months already. Its crazy. I kind of have mixed feelings about this too. As much as I want to go home, which is quite a lot, Im going to miss it here. Its been a fun semester. I mean, if nothing else this is definitely the last time Im going to get to travel at a clip like this. In 3.5 months I saw:

Wales

Amsterdam

Scotland

Morocco

all of which were amazing trips. Living in the center of Europe has been nuts. Except for the whole exchange rate part...hehe.

Thats all for now. Im just gonna take this last week to write one more paper, relax, catch up on british things i want to do, and enjoy getting legally trashed for the last time in about 5 months.

Cheers!

10 Minutes

I had 10 minutes to spare today.

Can I catch a break?

no.

Howbout now?

still no.

The worst part is i knew he had aces. I was saying he had aces. then i convinced myself maybe he was repping the flush or some shit i dont know. I debated between getting it in on the flop and decided to just wait til the turn and get it in. So i couldnt fold.

I wont even be embarrassed if i dont finish this anymore. I would like to have some kind of bankroll to try to build up back at school. Im so done with this shit. I just want to have some money to get high and play mtts with. Or at least grind back up at school. Maybe just try to grind some mtts or sngs or something....i dont even know,

If it wasnt for this prop bet...

Id be done with poker for a long time.

I decided to 4 table the deep ante tables today. I wanted to try and put a dent in my losses from this prop bet. The poker gods did not agree.

In 800 hands i lost 60 bucks.

I am now stuck 150 since the start of this bet. My roll is at 310. The lowest its been in a while. I havent booked a win in at least 4 sessions. At least I finally won a 150bb hand.

The night started off reasonably well. I was running very well and flopped a couple of straights. Unfortunately i didnt get paid on any of them. After a while I called a raise in position with 75cc and flopped trips on a 559 rainbow board. I flatted the flop and turn setting up for a nice river jam given the stacks. After the flop i put him on a overpair. Only problem is the turn and river were both spades. I blockerbet/bluffed the river and he woke up with jack of spades.

A Little after that this hand occurs:

After this hand im starting to laugh. This is how its been for the last 2k hands at this point. They call with no pair no draw. Whatever.

Finally i get some luck to bring me back to even on the session:

(Yes, its very lucky to hold a hand when I get the money in good. I cant win pots bigger than 150bbs remember?)

There are countless hands that i could put up here but I dont want to waste the space. I will however bore you with three that just exemplify not only tonight but my past few weeks.

First the cooler:

Part 2:

This is the worst and its happened 3 or 4 times recently....River the "ideal" card:

To be honest this is a bad example becuase i misplayed the hand. I thought the guy was strong on the flop...maybe overpair maybe top pair but i called anyways. On the river I thought for sure I was good. Problem was I didnt realize that I dont even beat aces. And QQ probly isnt calling me, so i think i should have just flatted. Still wicked gross though.

And finally, the ridiculous. This was the proverbial straw that broke the camals back:

Overall tonight I got aces 4 times. I stole the blinds each time. KK happened once and I won 1 dollar. QQ appeared 4 times losing me 7 dollars. I got AK 8 times, 4 times I stole the blinds, and ended up losing about 8 bucks. AQ was a winner for me. Brutal fucking night.

Overall I have just under 3k hands to win 160 dollars. Is this doable? Sure. If it wasnt for a time commitment I can guarantee I would not be playing though. I usually take a lot of time when im in slumps and try to wait them out. Unfortunately I have 3 weeks to play these last 3k hands.

Ugh. Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

In other news Morocco was amazing. Monkeys, goats, and snakes oh my! It deserves a full blog post but im not going to try and do it now.

Go to Amsterdam for Rd 2 on Thursday. Try to play some cards when I get back. Maybe my luck will change.