Great Night

I played some virtual cards last night for the first time in a couple days and it worked out really well. I really wanted to upload some hands to this blog and talk about them but im still having trouble with importing hands into a replayer so that will have to be put on hold for now and ill just see what i can remember.

The night started off with a turbo 2r which i was in for like 8 bucks and a turbo 3r satt to the 50+5 50/50 tournament. In the sattellite i got my stack up to like 2.7k when i pick up aces. I 3bet a villain in position preflop and he calls. He leads out on a Q55 flop and i jam...he calls and tables AQ0 for top 2. Im in great position to chip up to over 5k and be a top 4 stack in the early stages of this ~100 man satt. Obviously having a stack early is no guarantee of success but it does make it far easier to abuse short stacks and pick up small pots in these rebuy satts. Having a 1k-2k stack really limits your ability to play poker as you are forced to try to get your money in good and look for double ups. As a big stack you get be more selective and win many small pots. Anyways another Q fell on the turn for the 2 outer and i couldnt 1 out him right back so im left with a stack of just over 300 chips.

At this point the blinds are about to become 40/80 and i decide that i d0nt want to double rebuy + addon again if i bust. Risking 15 dollars to win 55 is not what i want to do here. I manage to steal blinds twice with shoves and then tripple up to around 1130 chips. At this point we are 2 minutes away from the add on break so i decide to weigh my options. Right now i have 6 dollars invested and i can

a. add on bringing my stack to 3k and having 9 bucks invested-this is a silly plan. A 3k stack after add ons will not be many big blinds and is probably a waste of 3 dollars.

b. not add on and basically give up on the tournament as i will enter the break with ~10bbs and 60 people left with only 17 cashing.

c. Somehow stack down to 1k or less, rebuy adn then add on. This option risks an additional 6 dollars, bringing my total to 12 but will place me in ~40th place out of 60. It will give me a 5k stack which has a number of blinds at the break but will be a short-stack very soon.

After analyzing my position in the tournament and my options i settled on option c. I quickly minraised to 200 and folded leaving myself with just under 1k in chips, rebought and added on. I knew that i would have a lot or work ahead of me as i would become a short stack soon but i was ready.

Entering the latter stages of this satt i had a couple hands go my way. the first was a hand in which there was a real straightforward player on my right who had a couple of very big leaks in my opinion. This opponent limped preflop very often and with what i can only assume to be a very large range. Postflop he played his hand very obviously. If he flopped a good hand (top pair) he would bet no matter what action happened preflop. I did not notice him to get out of line at all postflop.

Well, he limps and i wake up with JJ in mid pos and raise it up to 750. Blinds were 150/300 iirc. he made the call and checked a KQ4r Flop to me. At this point the pot was 2.1k and i had 3.7k behind. The villain had me covered. When he checked this flop to me i immediately removed any and all kings from villains range. Perhaps this was a mistake, but my read of the player told me that he would never check top pair to me on a flop even if he had something like K4s. Eliminating all kings from his range leaves him with suited low aces, suited connecters, small pocket pairs, and various queens like QJ-Q9 and perhaps like Q8s. I made the decision that i am ahead of such a large portion of his range which includes many many hands, and maybe i might be able to push him off a better hand like a queen. Therefore i decided to shove and take the pot down right now. My reasoning was that if he has the part of his range which i beat, he is never putting a nother chip in the pot unless drastically improves his hand. With a small suited connecter i doubt he is putting any chips in the pot if he turns 3rd pair and with an ace/pocket pair if he improves his hand he is now ahead. Therefore i should bet to fold out these hands. After thinking about this hand and talking with some other players i still really like betting in this spot. Unfortunately i think shoving is just dumb. I could risk a small bet like 700-1k for the exact same result as a shove (he probably isnt c/ring me light as a bluff on this board) and if he does have a hand that continues i could fold and still have 10bbs. Luckily for me he was not slowplaying a king and did not have a queen so he folded and i won the relativly large pot to out me at around 6k.

the next interesting hand happened when the table folded around to my sb where i looked down at K7cc. This hand is obviously a favorite against a random hand and my villain in the bb had a paltry 2k stack at this point for 7 bbs. I reasoned that he if i jam here he is calling with any ace/any pair/and a good chunk of other hands too like suited kings and queens and perhaps even a hand like TJs. Sometimes people like to make light calls when they are running out of chips. And also, if villain folds i win his 300 chip blind and the antes. So i jammed. Villain woke up with JJ but i luckily 3 outed him on the flop and rivered a meaningless straight. Winning this hand put me at over 8k approaching the bubble.

AfI dont remember a ton of interesting hands fromt he very late stages of this tournament so i will jump right to the bubble play. With 19 people left (17 payed) i was in 15th place with ~4 bbs and facing the blinds. The big stacks were making life hell at my table as they kept opening my blinds and i was running out of chips. Also shorties on the other tbales were constantly doubling and surviving. Luckily for me my Toots was on my rail and helping me curse out short stacks who survived and keep an eye on where i was relative to the others in the tournament. Thanks for the rail man! After paying my blinds i was left with 2 bbs but other people had even less chips and to my joy two short stacks were eliminated (one was all in blind) to give me the 55 dollar seat. It felt great to win one of these things, especially considering the beat i took early and fighting back from 300 chips.

During the rest of the night i played 4 12 dollar sngs and manged to win one and come in 2nd in all of the others. I also got bad beated on a 6 dollar superturbo a couple times to bust. It was like back to back to back 3 outers. heh. I was just happy that the beats came in my lowest buy in tournament. All in all i ended the night +100 dollars in profit which is pretty amazing for me considering the run ive been having the last couple times i try to play poker. My roll is now comfortably above the 300 mark which makes me feel great and i am excited to continue playing sngs and i know that one of these days im going to hit a nice little mtt score. Im getting close :)

Now i just have to work until 2:30, do some dishes and errands and then i get to go back to sharon for the weekend. Couple pretty exciting things happening this weekend: My uncle is getting married which will be a fun time and im also excited to potentially enjoy some cannabis with a friend of mine who i never thought i would get the chance to partake in that activity with. Hope everyone has a great weekend and good luck at the tables!

weekend/movies

So for this summer i have been and will continue to be working in Worcester at Clark, where i go to school. I have been fortunate enough to locate an affordable living arrangement in worcester so i am not forced to commute an hour westward every morning. I only have to drive out once per week and then i get to come home once per week.

the only unfortunate part of this situation is that i want to spend weekends in worcester with my school friends and people out here but i also feel the urge to come home and spend time with family/highschool friends/my bed/home cooking. suffice it to say that this weekend was very fun. On Friday my buddy tootsy came over, got high, and played a ton of full tilt with me while we read wayyyy too many old 2+2 threads. He ended up making a small amount of money while running deep but petering out of a number of 10 dollar tournies. I continued my theme of being brutally sucked out on in most of the events which i participated in. For example, i managed to get K9 all in v K8 on a K45 all spades flop. He bet out big and i thought he had a big diamond and so i called. He ended up turn/rivering an 8 high straight. It was nice to experience this sitting next to tootsy so i could assure myself that i was not merely imagining these beats.

My night was extended until around 3:40am due to my final table of a horse mtt which had ~250 entrants. I wound up finishing a frustrating 7th for like 30 bucks which paid for all my buy ins that night. This finish got me to thinking about something that toots brought up on his excellent blog, shoving with air: there is no middle ground in tournament poker. This is a very true statement in my mind. When i enter a mtt with more that 150 people there is very little middle ground as far as prizes are concerned. When paying a 5 dollar buy in i tend to feel that anything under a 100 dollar prize is failure. I suppose that in a large field event with a 600 dollar first prize there might be some middle ground but in a tournament like this horse mtt first place got 300 and 4th got 100. I felt going into that final table, and still do that anything less than 4th palce is a failure while 4th or better is a success. Obviously i would much rather win than come in 4th but i think that in my perception it is easier for me to handle placing 4th as oppose to first rather than 7th as oppose to 1st. Does anyone have thoughts on this?

Im not really sure if i explained that as well as i wanted to. I may revisit it in a post or two and try to do a better job.

In other news i saw a phenomenal movie last week which i really enjoyed. It is called Sleepers and came out in 1996. It stars Brad Pitt, Dustin Hoffman, Robert DeNiro, Kevin Bacon, and Demi Moore. Talk about a star studded cast. The movie (which is claimed to be a true story) is about four boys who spend time at a reformatory (jail) in new york and get abused by the guards there (kevin Bacon) and how this impacts their life and future goals and aspirations. This film is gripping, chilling but entertaining, and is one of those movies where i was sad when it ended because i wanted it to continue. All the actors and actresses in this film did great but by far my favorite was DeNiro. He performs his role excellently. In fact watching this film made me want to watch other deniro movies and so i stumbled upon Righteous Kill w/ al pachino which was not worth my time. Do not watch that movie. But do watch sleepers!

Swings

The past couple of days have been very swingy for me regarding the poker front. I have managed to play the 2r, both the full ring and six handed variety, about 5 times in the past couple of days. In all of those tournaments i have managed to build a stack of ~7-9k durring the rebuy period which promptly gets 2 or occasionally three outed as i attempt to double through another big stack with a large pocket pair or AK/AQ. I would love to be able to have a giant stack durring the rebuy period for the sole reason that chips are flying around furiously. With competitors shoving it in light big stacks are ripe with opportunity to simply absorb smaller stacks and increase.

I have still been playing sngs to some success. yesterday i began the day being stuck 50 bucks, 20% of my roll after failing to cash the 2r, other mtts, and 3 sngs. I proceeded to earn all my money back and ended the day only three dollars in the red. So far today i have played some sngs. I managed to lose 3 races in a row and have my qq busted by ak but managed to run like a kenyan in the last table and place second to secure a modest loss of ~10 bucks on the session. Hopefully i will play some more victoriously this evening and win some money.

Deep Runs

Just finished 14 out of ~225 in a 2r that took me about 5 hours to play. Damn its frustrating to win all of 15 bucks when first place takes home 300. On a positive note it is nice to see that i have had back to back days with deep tourny runs. Hopefully my next big score will be right around the corner. 

Im gonna go play some more sngs right now and if i feel up for it i might load up some mtts later on this evening. Hopefully i can bring my bankroll on the plus side of 300 by the end of the day

Recap

I wanted to try and recap my win in the 3 dollar turbo from yesterday but cardrunners doesnt seem to be working too well. The video replayer isnt displaying bets or villains cards. I tried to fidget with it for a while and i even tried to use a new site called pokerreplayers or something which seemed to be working fine and then just died on me. Well, im frustrated and tired of trying to import the same text files over and over again so i guess there will be no recap/tourny report :(

Maybe ill try again later on or in a couple days.

Anyone know any other painless replayer tools?

Nice Score

Well my little sng experiment has been going pretty poorly. Over 52 sngs im up just 4 bucks. I keep feeling like if i just started to run a lil better i would be seeing better results. Im not sure yet. I definitely want to keep chugging away at the sngs and see if i cant get a nice steady climb up one of these days. 

In other news i won a 3 dollar 126 man turbo mtt today for 105 dollars.

This little victory shoots my roll all the way up to 260. 

Now that my roll is on the positive side of 240 i have decided that its high enough  to start playing 12 dollar sngs. Obviously i wish that this profit had come from me beating the 6.50s because as of now i might be rolled for the 12s  but i havent proven that i can beat the lower stakes. I dont anticipate a problem with the 12s being much harder than the 6.50s and they will provide the possibility for immediate changes to my bankroll. Winning one sng will now be worth just under 50 dollars.

If it turns out that the 12s are much harder than i anticipate or i continue to skid i will be cutting myself off and moving back down as soon as i hit 200. This gives me ~5 buy ins of wiggle room to navigate before i cut myself off and move down. Hopefully i will never see the underside of 200 again.

Gl at the tables

Guess Who's Back, Back Again...

Well, its been a while. I guess this is the part where im supposed to give a bunch of semi-legit reasons why i stopped gracing the internet with my literary prowess. well...im not going to. sorry. lets just say that i promise to post religiously and it wont happen again.

actually, lets not say that, because i cant promise that and i dont want to lie.

Ill post as much as i can, and if i feel like posting alot i will. Hopefully, this will mean that i will post religiously.

So, where have i been the past couple months?

I finished my second year at school, Im a junior now! and in just about 3 months i will be living in london. I got a job for the summer to try to make some money. unfortunately being a rake even poker player will not pay for the luxurious life of a college student trying to go abroad. 

As far as pokers going?

I guess right as i stopped posting i started going on a downswing again. Somewhere in there i started playing 10nl and that went well, until it didnt and i went on a multiple thousand hand downsing. i managed to not nuke my bankroll but it never really got much higher either. 

what im getting at is that while one of  the points of this blog was to document my play and create a sort of accountability for my play it didnt really do a good job of that. I guess i didnt really want to write about me losing. Thats no fun to write about, or think about. Its much more fun to just bitch at whomever is on AIM. 

Well back to now, my friend toots just created a blog in which he writes a novel about how he lost a chunk of his roll one night so i saw that it can be done. And deep down ive always known that i should be thinking and writing about my losing so its time to man up and do it. Im going to make a full hearted attempt to write in here, be it about poker or not, as much as i can. promise. 

Ok crib notes on my poker for the past couple weeks.

got back into cash for a little while and started losing. Played some tournies and kept losing. Lost at everything in sight. Then my buddies Jeff and Toots, aka the fucking men, decided to play some sngs with me and stake me for half my profit. Well, i went on a heater and cashed like 7 straight 12 dollar turbo sngs makeing us all a tidy sum. I proceeded to destroy 5nl Deep tables and then 10nl deep tables making ~70bucks in a couple days. I catapaulted my roll from a depressing low of 30 all the way back up to 200. For the past few days ive been playing 10nl deep which i have found that i enjoy much more than regular 10nl for various reasons i may or may not delve into later but ive been grinding. The rolls been pretty stagnant and i was getting kind of bored. 

Today while talking to my roomate OES we started talking about grinding 6.5 sngs. hes been doing this for a while to pretty high success and i felt like i might give it a try. A couple things excited me here:

1. sngs are exciting. they contain the most exciting, and heartbreaking, part of poker -the bubble. and you have to confront this period more times than anywhere else. 

2. this one is kind of nerdy but i really liked the idea of being able to carefully track my progress. I developed a chart on excel which allows me to keep track of exactly how i am doing in terms of average finish, profit, expected value, after each session (set of 4 sngs) It is really exciting to me to be able to fill out this chart at the end of every session and see just how well or poorly i am doing. This is the same sort of thing that attracted me to poker copilot at first, nothing is more fun than watching yourself perform better and better all the time. the true test is to still be excited about such charting systems when performing poorly. 

Well anyways, this is getting kind of epic so i think i will wrap it up.

Today i played a total of 28 sngs. I cashed a measly 1sng in the first 12 and was stuck close to half my roll but then went on a tear cashing 8/the final 16 to end the day down only 5 bucks. Ive definitely learned some things, and ive become excited about playing again which is a plus. It is definitely -ev to sit down and grind cash if you are not excited about it so i think i will play these sngs for a while, or until i want to kill myself due to bubble frustration.

Good luck at the tables, and ill see you in sooner than 3 months!