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More WTF Is This Crap?

Saturday, September 11th, 2010

I’ve decided to move my entire roll to Full Tilt since Pokerstars was annoying me, and I was missing the rakeback that was the only thing that kept my roll alive.

The wire transfer will take a couple of days, but the amount’s not such a big deal that I can’t just take it out of my current account. However when I opened up FT it wasn’t totally empty – a lonely $10 sat there (looks like my affiliate has switched from monthly Rakeback to weekly).

So I thought I’d have a go to see if I could build that $10 a little and just wait for the wire transfer to clear (unless I lose it in the next hour or so). Game chosen: $2 husngs.

So far lost only two, both of which were miracle 5% hits by the villains. $2 seems massively different from any other husngs – everyone calls everything!

One opponent decided to help me out;

Board was QK2QK, he’d checked turn & river so I put out a little thin value bet on the river with my Ace – he calls with his J and says ‘Obvious’. He then went on to call my flop cbets with hands that had no way of improving (you’re bluffing so I call?), and then after this hand where I thought it was worth a bluff on the river (despite having said what huge stations these guys are);

No Limit Holdem Tournament

2 Players

$2 + $0.15 Heads Up Sit & Go

Stacks:
Hero (2,425)
BB (575)

Blinds: 15/30

Pre-Flop: (45, 2 players) Hero is SB 10diamonds poker card 8hearts poker card
Hero raises to 60, BB calls 30

Flop: 6hearts poker card 9diamonds poker card Kdiamonds poker card (120, 2 players)
BB bets 30, Hero calls 30

Turn: 2diamonds poker card (180, 2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

River: 2spades poker card (180, 2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets 120

Villain has 15 seconds left to act
Villain: lol i checked fool

BB folds

Final Pot: 300

Hero wins 300 (net +90)

BB lost 90

Hero: I’m the fool?
Hero: or you?
Villain: u raise a check yes
Hero: but I had air & you folded, so all worked out?
Villain: u raised
Villain: i checked u raised?
Hero: at which point?
Hero: I’m lost – which bit do you mean?
Villain: why raise if i check
Hero: as a bluff
Hero: I had nothing
Hero: you checked on turn, which looked weak
Villain: no chit…..duh
Villain: bought it
Villain: get a grip dude
Hero: uh, but I won the hand?
Villain: didnt matter fool
Hero: yep, I would have folded if you had bet
Villain: who bets after a check?
Hero: someone who bluffs?
Hero: or someone who has a hand
Villain: that get dumb

and now I’m bothered that I get dumb. Don’t raise a check as it’s buying the pot which is bad? No idea…

July

Saturday, July 31st, 2010

Hmph, not great.

$140 lost, third month in a row of losses :-(

I’m tired now of saying that it’s this leak or that leak or it’s all tilt etc. What it’s really feeling like is that it’s all just luck. Some days I get cards, other days I don’t. It’s not suck-outs, bad beats, or river rats – it’s more like sometimes you hit your set when they hit TP, and sometimes you don’t.

My records go back exactly two years now (I’ve probably been playing for three years, but it was a while before I discovered pokertracker & hold’em manager). So I decided to do a lifetime audit;

I’ve played 180k hands (48k in tournaments).
The total winnings (tourney + cash) is -$152.
rackback + bonuses have come to $534.

Final total $381.

However my accounts are a lot less than that, as I had to cash out my entire roll last summer, plus I’ve just taken a share backing BWOP for some live tournaments (Newff had to pull out of his unfortunately). Not sure what to make of it really, other than it’s good to be +ve but somehow still depressing it’s not come from being any good at poker.

Still A Feeder

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

6max sessions not going so well. Lost a couple of buy-ins, and then tonight I was just bored and messing around (opened about 40% of my hands).

At the end of the session I’d lost 3 buy-ins due to 3 big hands going against me (one was a bad bluff, the other two were preflops flips that didn’t go my way). Without those 3 hands I still would have only broke even, despite my redline taking a full buy-in. I have a knack for being able to fold opponents out (I’m not just talking about that flop cbet obvious stuff, but manipulating them on turn & river), but I can’t make my value hands pay off (plus I occasionally get it in too light and can’t win a flip). I dunno, guess I still can’t play poker.

As it is, the BR is looking really bad now. Going busto is starting to look on the cards unless I have an epiphany soon…

May

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

Monthly review time, and it’s not pretty. In fact, in terms of $$$ loss this is easily the worst month I’ve ever had (although that was only possible because the prior months were the best I’ve ever had);

Despite stopping the hemorrhaging I haven’t been able to turn it around yet – my decision to grind out 500 $10 games is taking longer than I’d hoped, and being a grind is definitely the right way of describing it. Since it’s not turned into a winning run means it’s not time yet to move back – my BR is still ok for $20 games (or $30s really), but there’s no point burning more money than I need to. The grind has also slowed in the last week or so because of the frustration and having a few camping weekends, so it’s not been easy lately.

Showing how it stands for 2010 as a whole puts it into perspective – how to have a heater and then give it back;

Remember I’m Still Learning

Friday, May 21st, 2010

I’ve not played as much poker as I’d have liked this week – the weather’s nice so playing tennis in the evenings, plus on Wednesday I’ve started a Spanish night class (learnt the numbers the other night, whoo!).

Despite the lack of play though I’ve been really piling on the learning & evaluation side of things though – that downswing might have been the best thing to happen to me as I’d stopped learning and assumed I’d got the ABC side of poker down pat and was either winning or losing (50/50!). Since I was previously winning it all seemed great, but now I think it was just lucky really (as I’m not a complete idiot it was luck biased towards winning, but obviously that’s very precarious still).

Moving back down to $10s to concentrate on how I was playing (rather than printing money) was feeling a bit pathetic, but then Yegor reminded me I was still learning, and wasn’t going to be rich tomorrow. So very true, I need to keep telling myself this until I’m ready to return. This was reinforced today when I found a three year old post on 2p2 saying exactly the same thing. Cwar was saying when 20 buy-ins isn’t enough – most of the reasons were to do with tilt & poor mental state, but the final one was;

-You are learning, no need to move up faster than your knowledge will allow you, going from the $10s to $220s quickly is not going to happen without you needing to learn and adjust. If you breeze through a couple limits fast I would recommend slowing down a bit just to see how you adjust to the better play at higher limits.

The same point twice really, but it rams it home nicely. Adding on top of that the fact that the learning I’m currently doing is really opening my eyes to a lot of new things means it all feels constructive, and I’m not wasting my time, even if I’m not moving up (despite the BR telling me to).

Giving Up Gambling

Friday, May 14th, 2010

My downswing continued painfully, moving past the -$300 point. That’s a third of my bankroll in just under two weeks, so it was starting to look desperate.

I know what my problem is, and have really known it all along TBH. I run good, get confident, and then start to embrace the fun side of poker – the gambling!

So I chase draws, make big cock swinging hero calls, thin value bets when I have no value, and generally discard the fold button. All with the obvious consequences.

At the weekend I buckled down and started to squash these urges, and I managed to stall the downswing. It’s not turned round, but the latter half of this month has been breakeven which is better than before.

I’ve been reading 2p2 intensely, going over my HH, having other people go over my HHs, talking strat on AIM, and generally becoming an obsessive poker bore. It’s feeling good too.

After a long discussion last night with Yegor (ok, most of it was laughing about roseeker’s downfall) I decided to drop right down to $10 games and set a strong volume goal. I’ve currently 240 games at $10 with a ROI of 13%. I’m going to play another 260 to bring it to 500 games and see if I can nail my game down to a cold impassionate cyborg crushing of these $10 morons. No more hero calls :-D

So far so good, although I’d forgotten how bizarre $10 games can be. For $20 and $30 games the players have become far more rational about their lines, and betsizing is at least in relation to the pot size. $10s it’s still kinda crazy. For example I had 72o in a limped pot. The flop had been checked back so it was a $40 pot on a TJQK board. Villain fires out a bet of $200. Somewhat obvious what to do.

I’m still squishing some gambool tendencies though – same villain 3bet me pre while I had KJo. Against him I felt a call would be ok, but something in me said that he was just going to jam the flop with his A rags if I did. So I 4bet, which KJo isn’t really good enough for, and he shoved. So I thought ‘whatever’ and called to see that he did indeed have A6o. Here was the difficulty of $10 – he had no idea that a 4bet looks really strong and he was supposed to fold A6o. But that’s what we all say in these positions – ‘how could he shove with that!’. Ultimately these are mistakes which make us money. Anyway, neither of us improved, I went down to $900 and then had to fight another 10 minutes in order to finally win.

Movin’ On Up!

Monday, April 26th, 2010

Played my first $50 husng today, and won it! Ridiculously stupid game, my opponent was a massive calling station who hit every time. I was up and then down, then really down, and finally climbed back to win. Nice introduction to new limits…

Then I lost the next two. Well, there you go :-) No problem, just getting my toes wet. I might need to mix in some $20s & $30s still so I don’t get too scared, but it’s all good!


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