The Daily Grind

Why check down?

2008-06-13T21:42:00.000-07:00

As I cover some of the events here at the WSOP, I see a lot of interesting plays and strategies. I'd love to be able to ask certain players why they made the play they did and what was going through their mind, but I am responsible for acting professionally and staying 'behind the scenes'. I don't want to interfere with or bug the players. In one of the early $1,500 NLHE events, I witnessed some players involved in multi-way pots where one person was all in. These instances I'm talking about are not in the money, or on the bubble, or deep at the final table. They are in the early stages of a tournament when we have tons of players left in the field.

The scenario occurs when the other players in the hand check it down until the river to try and eliminate the all-in opponent. When someone bets and then ends up doubling up the short stack, the others players that were in the hand and folded seem to be upset with the player that bet them out. Claiming "I would have won." or "Way to bet us out and then double him up." and so on. What I don't think these players understand is that when there are so many players remaining in the field, it is more advantageous to allow yourself a better chance of winning the hand than eliminating the all-in player. If you can bet out to get heads up with the all in player, you only have to best his hand. Whereas when you keep everyone in, you are slimming your chances of winning the entire pot, even if it is just checked down. So with a small bet, you can almost always thin the field and increase your odds in the hand. If everyone folds and you still lose to the all-in player, you only lost what you would have lost if you kept everyone in the hand and had checked it down.

If you do chose to bet and everyone folds and you lose, you'll often hear the comments start to fly at you. "Why'd you bet?" or "Why didn't you just check it down?" Even, "What a dumb bet that was?" This usually comes from people that want that player eliminated when it really doesn't matter at all. 2,000 players left compared to 2,001 isn't a big deal and shouldn't make a difference, but a lot of players swear that checking down is the only play that you should make. They say you should only bet with the nuts, or damn near close to it. I don't agree and I have been talking to some people around the WSOP and in Vegas that agree with my thoughts and believe those that check it down just don't get it. But I must stress that this is a completely different scenario than when you are on the bubble, in the money and approaching a pay jump, or at the final table. In all of these cases, eliminating one person often has great advantages.

Ladies NLHE Final Table Recap

2008-06-13T18:12:00.000-07:00

All I have to say is wow. Wow this final table was just so slow. The play was as tight as all hell. We rarely saw flops and then if we did take a flop, a bet would take down the pot. The women just played so amazingly tight trying to money-up that it was unreal. Svetlana Gromenkova, the woman that eventually would go on to win, was my heavy favorite. She was just worlds above the other players in skill and also had a big stack. She controlled the table from the get go and just worked really well the chip away at people.

Sue Porter was the first to go out and she just played awful. She would call raises for half her stack and then dump the hand on the flop. She was playing way too many hands and was eliminated shortly after the start of the final table. She was the only person keeping the table lively and when she went out, things just locked up completely. People were folding big broadway cards and small to middle pairs like they were 2-4 off. It was quite ridiculous the amount of passiveness at the table. I really believe that this gave Gromenkova a huge advantage. She is a pro and knew just how to run over the field.

When we got to heads up, Gromenkova got all in with her opponent Anh Le and had Le drawing to three outs. Le seemed to be getting her money in all day with the worst of it and coming out on top. This time was no different as Le pulled her three-outer to capture the pot and the chip lead. Gromenkova looked like she was going to just break down and cry. She was so close to the win and then to have it snatched from her when it was within reach seemed like it'd be too much for her. With the help and encouragement from her railbirds, she buckled down and began to chip away again at Le. She soon regained the chip lead with solid, solid poker. And then, another misstep from Le and that was all she wrote. Le took her A6 up against Gromenkova's pocket kings. The kings prevailed and Gromenkova was crowned champion.

Update to come...

2008-06-12T15:18:00.000-07:00

I know I haven't posted anything in a few days. I'm been busy working and then when I get off, I've been trying to pay as much as possible. I hope to get some stuff up later on when we get break or when this final table ends. I'm covering the $2,000 LHE final table today. Daniel Negreanu is the only really big name there.

Posts to come:

Women's final table recap
Checking down strategy
Session analysis
2-7 gambling event
Limit final table

WSOP Day 6: $10,000 Mixed Championship, Final Table

2008-06-07T17:32:00.000-07:00

So I found it quite annoying that this final table wasn't going to be televised and in the No-Limit Lounge for ESPN to film it while fans crowded the bleachers to watch. The field has all the big names in it and the final table included high profile stars such as Eli Elezra, Sam Farha, Jeff Madsen, and Tom "durrrr" Dwan. Michael DeMichele also made the final table and some might know him from his great showing in the US Poker Championship a couple years back. I felt this would be a much better final table to air than another NLHE event that got the spot instead. They say that the poker buzz is dying out and I think people are just getting tired of seeing the same types of things over and over again. So why not air this event. It includes some crazy games that may just intrigue more fans to watch and want to try them out. it also included PLO and NLHE so it wasn't barren of those games. In fact, throughout the tournament the biggest pots seemed to be played in 2-7 triple draw.

As much expected, Dwan blew up at the final table. We started off playing PLO to Elezra's and Farha's delight. Amnon Filippi came by to check out the action and the three were seen talking about how they expect Dwan to blow up. Well, in the first few hands, Dwan doubled up Elezra twice and then a few of the other short stacks as well. When we hit 2-7 triple draw after, he was able to get a lot of his chips back. We all know that game has a lot of gamble involved in it and Dwan has a ton of gamble. He would just jam every 2-7 hand knowing he could toss all his cards away if he wanted. This wasn't that bad of a strategy and it helped his stack out a lot when he needed it. You could tell during the HORSE games that Dwan's opponents were getting the best of him. He's pretty much dominated PLO and NLHE online to the maximum and I'm sure he'll be dabbling in these others game after this event to further improve his game.

After it was all said and done, Anthony Rivera took the crown. He really played well throughout the event and was a silent force at the final table. He didn't do too much gambling or mixing it up with the others, but when he did enter a pot he usually won it. This guy's only 22 and a high stakes mixed game player from California. What I found a little fishy was after Matt Glantz busted in third place, it took only one hand of heads up play. Both Rivera and second place finisher James Mackey are 22 and went to the University of Missouri. I'm not sure if they know each other, but it seems like the only reason this would happen would be because of a deal that could have been made. Mackey already has a bracelet so we'll never know. Harrah's and the WSOP doesn't allow for official deals to be made, so any deal cut is to be done so without the knowledge of Harrah's or the WSOP. Maybe if I see one of them around, I'll ask them and see if I can get an answer.

I'm covering the $1,000 Ladies No-Limit Hold'em next. I know it says ladies, but it's not ladies only. Discrimination laws prevent the tournament from being a ladies-only event, so I'm sure we'll get a few male participants in there. We might even get some bigger name males because of the the prop betting going on to win a bracelet. We may even have a few dressed in drag as accustomed to many 'female' tournaments on the circuit.

As always, live updates will be on PokerNews.com.

WSOP Day 5: $10,000 Mixed Championship

2008-06-06T13:57:00.000-07:00

Well, well, well, yesterday's action was long and boring at times, but we made it to the final eight players. Here are the players, seats, and chip counts going into the final table.

Seat 1: James Mackey (Columbia, Missouri) 742,000
Seat 2: Matt Glantz (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) 1,150,000
Seat 3: Sam Farha (Houston, Texas) 374,500
Seat 4: Michael DeMichele (Las Vegas, Nevada) 434,000
Seat 5: Tom Dwan (Edison, New Jersey) 642,000
Seat 6: Eli Elezra (Henderson, Nevada) 76,000
Seat 7: Anthony Rivera (Henderson, Nevada) 274,000
Seat 8: Jeff Madsen (Los Angeles, California) 149,000

Madsen was down to only a few thousand chips on the bubble and was able to battle it back to make it to the final table. He did really well in most games and it's good to see the young players doing well with the mixed games. Dwan, or better known as "durrrr" is just a nutball. This guy raises and reraises with almost any two cards and was really the laugh of the tournament from the other players, particularly Gus Hansen. After a crazy hand in PLO on day one of the event, Gus just can't seem to think that Dwan is anything but a luckbox. Here's how that hand went down:

EP raised 3.5x preflop
Gus called from MP
Dwan then shoved all in from the BB
EP called
Gus called

Flop: 4 5 6, rainbow.
EP checked
Gus bet and ended up getting it all in with the EP player

Dwan: T-8-7-5
EP: A-A-x-x
Gus: K-K-7-6

On the turn, a 3 hit and ended up giving Gus a straight to the seven for the side pot. Dwan more than triple with the nut straight. Dwan was then bashed and laughed at by a few players at the table.

Gus: "Durrrr, I know you're the world's best PLO player but... honestly, what is the point of pushing there?"

Dwan: "Because I know you're not folding now, but you'll fold most flops and he (the other player) will shove most flops."

Gus: "Let me tell you, this guy has no fold option whatsoever."

EPr: "What the heck were you doing?"

Dwan: "I think my equity is good there."

Gus: "Really?!?! You call that equity?"

Dwan: "Yeah, I think I even shove there online. If it's a PLO tournament online I shove."

Gus and the rest of the table looked confused as Dwan stacked his chips.

Dwan: "There's also only 16 minutes left in the day. That was a factor also. I don't want to come back tomorrow with only 7,000 chips."

I guess he has a point, but I really don't understand the play here. Dwan is saying that if he shoves here, he knows both the EP player and Gus will call, building a big pot for him to try and triple up and more. And then he felt he knew that the EP would bet most flops and Gus would fold, leaving Dwan heads up. Now, this strategy seems fine and a good plan, but with T-8-7-5? It wasn't even double suited. It really confused me.

Going into the second day, this hand was still bugging Gus, as he talked about it to just about everyone that would listen. What was even more funny seemed to be Dwan's play on this day as well. There were multiple players referring to Dwan as the person that invented PLO and NLHE... as a joke of course. They were laughing at some of his plays and at one point, Gus was sitting right next to Dwan and said, "I can't wait until PLO." and then sat back in his chair so Dwan couldn't see him and began licking his lips. It was quite enjoyable to hear all the banter at the table. There were also a couple more hands that really made people question whether or not Dwan had a fold option in his mind.

Mackey, Glantz, and DeMichele are all playing really solid poker. I'll also include Dwan in my possible picks for the the winners. Out of those four players, I'll go with this prediction:

1. Michael DeMichele
2. Matt Glantz
3. Tom "durrrr" Dwan

If Sammy Farha can get some chips, I have a feeling Dwan and him are really going to battle it out. The same for Eli Elezra as the big cash game pros don't seem to have much respect for Dwan's game. I have a feeling Dwan may shape up to be the next Andy Beal type character for the pros to feast on.

I'll have some good topics to talk about later. The final table will begin at 4pm PDT and I believe it's on WSOP Live, but don't mark my words.

WSOP Day 4: $2,000 No Limit Hold'em and $10,000 Mixed

2008-06-05T11:39:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I started off working the $2,000 NLHE event at 12pm. The field got to 1,592 players and only a handful of them were well known. Most of the big players were still playing the $1,000 rebuy event, the $5,000 mixed hold'em event, the $1,500 omaha-8 event, or they were waiting until 5pm to play the big $10,000 mixed event. I worked the event until dinner break and I hate to say it, but the field reporters really got on my nerves. Some of them were doing really well, but some just sucked, plain and simple. I had hands I couldn't blog, players I couldn't track, and the communication sucked. I was so glad to make it to the dinner break and had hopes that after we all met with our boss, things would get better after the break.

During dinner, I got a call from my boss and he wanted to switch me over to the $10,000 mixed event. I happily jumped to the opportunity. The field was stacked and the games were different, I really was looking forward to covering this event.

We pushed through day one pretty quickly. There are 94 players left out of 192 that entered. And let me tell you, this is the who's who of poker. Every table (playing 8-handed) held at least six well known players. All the big stars and all the top cash game players came out for this event. It really drew the players that thought they'd have an edge in the game, and of course your other rich folk that could handle it. We start day two later on at 3pm and will play down to the final eight. It might be a long day, but I'm pretty excited for it as it is a stacked field.

Now, I want to talk about some hands next from Jan von Halle, Katja Thater's husband. Earlier in the WSOP, during the $10,000 PLHE event that I covered von Halle had the action checked to him on the river. he then checked behind so we would have a showdown. To everyone's bedazzlement, von Halle turned over the stone cold nuts... A ROYAL FLUSH! The floor came over and repremanded him for possible collusion and the other players at the table were stunned. Word spread and the buzz began. I guess people make mistakes in poker sometimes, which is understandable.

But then... he messed up again, big time. This time playing 2-7 triple draw in the $10,000 mixed event yesterday. After the second draw, von Halle turned over his hand as he didn't realize there was still another drawing and betting round. When he turned his hand over, he showed 3-4-5-6-7. Johnny Chan was the other player in the hand and saw von Halle's hand and then bet to put him all in. Von Halle called and then the pot was pushed the Chan and von Halle was eliminated. Those of you who know 2-7 triple draw will see that von Halle held a straight and straights count against you, so Chan's eight or nine low won the hand. Another big mistake on the world's biggest stage for von Halle. This time it cost him his tournament.

I'm not really sure what he was doing on either hand and either was anyone else. it's only the 8th event at the series this year and he's already had two big mistakes. I wonder if there will be more to come.

My favorite player Marcel Luske is still in the field and I am rooting for him to take it down. I'm also hoping Tony G does very well as he is basically the head of PokerNews. Good luck to both these players and everyone else in the field. Phil Ivey is also left and a big favorite of mine.

Changed events.

2008-06-04T22:07:00.000-07:00

So I was scheduled today to work Event #7, $2,000 NLHE. I began the day working this event and it was really a shitshow. Not really any big names and a huge field of 1,952 players. It was really quite hectic up until the dinner break with all the players. I went to eat at the Carnival World Buffet because I had a free meal ticket. This was the second time I have eaten there and I enjoyed it once again. During dinner break I got some good news...

My boss called me and notified me that he needed to switch me over to the $10,000 Mixed Event. This event is absolutely stacked! We're on a short 30-minute dinner break right now, but you can check out the chip count page at PokerNews.com to see that all of these players are big name players. It's so nuts seeing all the best in the world battle it out. I am loving the fact that I am five feet from the people I hope to be like one day (as lame as that sounds, whatever). The event consists of eight different games:

1) Deuce-to-seven triple draw;
2) Fixed-limit hold'em;
3) Omaha-8 (hi/lo split);
4) Razz;
5) Seven-card stud;
6) Seven-card stud (hi/lo split, 8 or better);
7) No-limit hold'em;
8) Pot-limit Omaha.

So I definitely am kept busy and this is a test of how well I know each game. It's a good thing I play most of these games often or else I'd be pretty lost blogging things. Make sure to keep updated on PokerNews.com and give me a shout. I'll be back later to tell everyone all about it.

My personal favorite is in the game, Marcel Luske, and I wish him all the best of luck and hope he does really well!

Session at the Monte Carlo.

2008-06-03T21:57:00.000-07:00

After the final table ended the other night, I traveled over to the Monte Carlo to play some $1-2 NL. I bought in for $200 (max) and felt the table out for a few rotations. Didn't seem like there was anyone I needed to really be worried about. There was also two players that were really fishy that I knew I could catch. The other players seemed to be your recreational poker players that played with their hands face up. After having my first two sessions go south and profiting the third session by a small amount, I was ready to really get this grind going. Here's my session analysis.

First key hand:

I raised from the cutoff to $10 with QQ after a MP limp
BB called
MP called

Flop: J 7 4, rainbow
BB bet out $30
MP folded
I raised to $60
BB called

Turn: Q
BB checks
I bet $75
BB called

River: 8
BB checked
I moved in for my remaining $43
BB called and mucked his hand

This was one of the fish at the table. I had him on a jack the entire time and loved seeing the queen on the turn, hoping he had QJ. The min-raise on the flop was because I wanted to keep him along and a min-raise to $60 was still a sizable amount for him to call. I also wanted a call on the turn for sure so I bet only $75. A lot of people will either check here or move in, as I only had $43 behind after the bet. I didn't want to check, I wanted to build the pot. The pot was $151 at this point so I could have just moved in, but I wanted to make sure he came along.

Second key hand:

LP raised to $10
I called from the SB with KQo
BB folded

Flop: Jd 9c 4d
I checked
LP bet $15
I called

Turn: 6d
I led for $25
LP folded

The LP player seemed like a fairly decent player. He was also aggressive. He used position to his advantage and that's why I decided to take a card off here. I knew if I got a scare card to come off I could take this pot away. This play was solely read-based and it worked out just like I had planned.

Third key hand:

UTG limped
MP1 limped
MP2 limped
Button limped
I completed from the SB with 5h5c
BB checked

Flop: Qd 9d 5d
I checked
BB checked
UTG bet $20
MP1, MP2, and button folded
I called
BB folded

Turn: Jc
I checked
UTG bet $35
I called

River: 8s
I checked
UTG bet $80
I called

UTG showed Ad3d

So this guy was really aggressive post flop, that is why I decided to check-call him down on all streets. I knew he'd be firing with a wide range of hands here and if he happened to have a flush, then I was going to pay him off. I saw him check-raise people on the flop with 72o for absolute air and he tended to fire away if he thougth he had a good hand. As long as a diamond didn't fall, I was pretty sure I held the best hand. His range included a pair with a flush draw, two pair, and straight draw and flush draw (straight got there). He could also have had a flush, but I really thought he would have check-raised someone on the flop. I was wrong and lost the hand.

Fourth key hand:

UTG raises to $15
I reraise to $40 with KK from the SB
BB folds
SB moves in
I called

Flop: 2 Q 7
Turn: T
River: 2

UTG showed QQ

Not much I can do there, just got unlucky. I reloaded and felt I had an edge on the table still. This next hand happened three hands after the KK versus QQ hand.

Fifth key hand:

I raised to $10 from MP with JJ
SB folded
BB called

Flop: 9 7 2, rainbow
BB led into me for $20
I raised to put him all in for $85 total
He called

Turn: 8
River: K

BB tabled AK

Once again, not much I can do there. Got my money in as more than a 3:1 favorite and was drawn out, no biggie. I'm happy with my play here. Next hand, the following hand came up.

Sixth key hand:

I raised from MP to $10 with 88
SB called (same guy from last hand)

Flop: 5c 6 7c
SB bet out $20
I moved in for $105
SB called

Turn: 3
River: Tc

SB tabled K9cc.

I held the 8c, but I was only about 55-45 in the hand. I had a feeling the SB could have had a flush draw or straight draw and I wanted to move in to try and push him off the hand. I also had the straight draw myself. Just another unlucky spot here and I decided to pack it up as it wasn't going my way. Finished the night down $400.

I'm always open to opinions, comments, and criticism on my play, so feel free to shoot me anything you got.

I'll be working event #7 tomorrow, the $2,000 NLHE event. be sure to check the updates on PokerNews.

WSOP Day 3: $10,000 World Championship PLHE, Final Table

2008-06-02T14:53:00.000-07:00

We kicked off the final table today around 3pm, probably a little past after all of the production setup and introductions were made. I'm hoping everyone was keeping up with the updates over at PokerNews as I'm not going to get into who was there or the chip counts of everything. I will tell you that once we began play, the fireworks started. We had some big hands early on involving Phil Laak, Patrik Antonius, and Nenad Medic. On the very first hand of the tournament, Laak ran his JJ into Antonius' KK. Despite flopping a J, Antonius rivered a K to double through. Just a few hands later, Laak ran JJ into Medic's AA. This time, he was eliminated. What a cold deck for Laak. That is just unreal to run JJ into bigger pairs twice within the first fives hand of a final table. But then again, it could have been karma.

Laak was seen juggling three stacks of cash that was on display next to the final table before the start of the tournament as his girlfriend, Jennifer Tilly, snapped some photos. Laak didn't want to jinx himself of making the final table when he refused to fill out the media consent form with 10 players left. He'll be left to ponder if he jinxed himself this time by playing with the blocks of cash before the final table began.

And then a few hands later, Antonius and Kathy Liebert got it all in KK versus AA. Liebert's aces held and she doubled. The final table was off to a bull rush of a start and I was left thinking that this was going to be just like the New Orleans final table. Now, I'm not sure what the heck Mike Sowers was doing when he was eliminated a few hands later. Yes, we were only 15 hands into the final table and all of this action had happened.

To begin the hand, Sowers had a little over 700,000 chips and Mike Sexton had around 945,000. Here's how the hand played out:

Medic had the button in Seat 8.
Sexton raised to 110,000.
Sowers raised the pot to 390,000 from the big blind.
Sexton moved all in.
Sowers called instantly.

Sexton: QhQd
Sowers: 9h4s

When Sowers made the pot-sized reraise to 390,000, he left himself with around 325,000 behind. The pot was about 1,125,000, so Sowers was getting almost 3.5:1 with over 50% of his stack in the middle. The blinds were 20/40k with no ante, so he'd have a little over 8 BBs left if he folded. Sexton had been playing solid and tight for the entire tournament. Sowers was at his table all last night when we were 10-handed so he should have had a pretty solid read on him. Not to mention, it's Mike Sexton and no reason why he'd be committing his stack without a good hand. If Sexton has two overs, Sowers is a 2:1 dog. If Sexton has a pair 55-88, Sowers is behind 2.3:1. And if Sexton has an overpair, Sowers is around a 6.5:1 dog. it just doesn't make sense that Sowers had to shove. I guess what got me is that he insta-called and didn't even think about it. Just makes no sense to me because I don't see Sexton having anything in this spot but an overpair.

The short stacks went next, Antonius followed by Chris Bell (a North Carolina native). Amit Makhija did well to chip up, but busted in 5th place when his A3 ran into Andy Bloch's A7. Bloch had a pretty commanding chip lead the entire final table. Shortly after Makhija's elimination, Bloch was at nearly 5,000,000, while no one else at the table had over 1,000,000. Then Bloch started doubling people up. First Medic, then Sexton, then Liebert twice. Bloch slowly began to lose chips and Medic looked to be climbing strong.

When Sexton was eliminated, Liebert checked two pair on the flop and snap-called Sexton's all in. She really outplayed played him on this hand. A few hands later, the following hand came up. In my opinion, it was one of the sickest value bets I have seen on the river and Medic is just a sicko for making it. It really seemed to turn the tides for Medic and ignited his big push.

Liebert had the button in Seat 9
Liebert raised to 240,000
Medic made the call
Flop: 9s 6s 6d
Medic checked
Liebert bet 225,000
Medic called
Turn: 8h
Medic checked
Liebert checked behind
River: 6c
Medic bet 375,000
Liebert called

Medic showed 4-4 for sixes full of fours
Liebert mucked

Now that is just a sick, sick value bet on the end. After that, the biggest hand of the final table came up a few hands later involving all three players all in preflop.

Medic had the button in Seat 8
Medic raised to 300,000
Liebert moved all in for 850,000
Bloch re-potted to 2,800,000

This was a really tough spot here for Medic I feel. He jumped from his chair with surprise before sitting back down to think things through. A couple minutes went by as he thought...

Medic called all in
Bloch had both Liebert and Medic covered

Bloch: 9s 9h
Medic: Qc Qh
Liebert: 6s 6d

Medic flopped a set of queens and went on to win the hand. He eliminated Liebert and took over the chip lead 5:2. After that, it was pretty much smooth sailing for him as he took down the bracelet. What I don't get is why Bloch was smooth calling preflop bets with under one million chips towards the end. He'd call a bet of 300,000 and commit almost a third of his stack to the pot, and then fold. He did this three or four times and I feel it really hurt his game.

Medic took home nearly $800,000 for his win and the coveted fold bracelet. And yes, I did pick Medic to come out on top with Bloch in second in my last post. Third was thought to be Sowers, but he had a little falling out. Anyway, it was a great final table to watch and I hope a sign of the awesome poker to follow.

As for the tournament reporting grind, it's been long. I am enjoying it though so I can't really complain. The second day of this event lasted from 2pm until almost 5am local time; almost 15 hours of play! That is a really long day. I've had the past two days off and saw that last night was the longest day so far. The $1,500 NLHE event was supposed to play down to the final nine, but it only made it to 18. They started at 2pm and decided to cut the play at 5:20am to let the players sleep and continue in the morning. No big deal, but I do feel this is an advantage for this entire field.

Why do the PLHE World Championship players have to play to the final table and these players don't? I heard that a lot of the remaining players were complaining about the length of the tournament, but I never heard one complaint in the $10,000 PLHE event. You know the schedule of a tournament when you sign up and if you don't have the stamina to make it, then don't play in my opinion. The best poker players will come out on top in the end. Not that poker is a huge physical sport, but the long hours are very, very tiring at times. As a poker player, you should be taking care of your body so that you can in fact endure these long hours of play if it happens. I would personally be pissed if someone wanted to stop early and remove my advantage of having greater stamina. Just seems unfair to those that have prepared accordingly.

But yes, the reporting grind is long and can be very monotonous and boring at times as the play seems to crawl along, but I'm watching the best players in the world play poker all day... I can't really complain.

WSOP Day 2: $10,000 World Championship PLHE

2008-06-01T12:33:00.001-07:00

We began play today with 70 players remaining in the field. It was a pretty stacked event all around as I discussed yesterday. The pros did really well all around, young and old, online and live. Eli Elezra held the chip lead for most of the day, but was eliminated in 19th position after what looked to be a very, very deep run in the making. The play was long and tiresome last night. We began at 2pm local time and didn't finish until 4:45am, almost a solid 15 hours. The players must have been beat.

The final table of the first event at the 2008 WSOP is going to be absolutely amazing. 7 out of the 9 seats at the table are big names, while the other two players are just as big in the online world. Here's the final table seating arrangements and chip counts.

Seat 1: Mike "SowersUNCC" Sowers 675,000
Seat 2: Chris Bell 455,000
Seat 3: Amit "amak316" Makhija 525,000
Seat 4: Patrik Antonius 230,000
Seat 5: Andy Bloch 2,115,000
Seat 6: Mike Sexton 1,130,000
Seat 7: Phil Laak 425,000
Seat 8: Nenad Medic 1,200,000
Seat 9: Kathy Liebert 285,000

I earlier picked Antonius and Medic to go deep in the tournament along with Vivek "Psyduck" Rajkumar. Vivek didn't make it, but Antonius and Medic are both at the final table. If this isn't an amazing final table than I don't know what is. All of these players have been playing really, really well and should continue to provide us with a great game to watch come final table time. Out of all the skill and ability at the final table, only Sexton and Liebert currently hold bracelets. Laak and Medic do have WPT titles under their belts. 1st place is also almost $800,000! This should be for great competition.

During play last night, Gavin Smith and Todd Brunson showed up from the bars. Both seemed pretty drunk, especially Gavin. He clowned with the final table of 10 players and also threw some ice at Bloch. It was quite fun and I'm sure he'll be there tomorrow to rail. He was most interested in how Chris Bell was doing.

My top 3 are:

1 - Nenad Medic
2 - Andy Bloch
3 - Mike Sowers

All updates will be on Poker News, every hand. Be sure to check that out and give us a shout!

WSOP Day 1: $10,000 World Championship PLHE

2008-05-31T11:50:00.000-07:00

Made it to the Rio today a little late. My boss was on my ass to make sure I was on time, but I didn't expect the cab ride to take more than 30 minutes. Just seems pretty ridiculous that it took that long. Maybe it's because we had to take an alternate route or maybe because we hit every red light in the area, who knows. Either way, not a good impression Donnie. But moving on from that, we had the World Championship PLHE event to cover. Last year, this event was only a $5,000 buy in, whereas this year they've bumped it to $10,000. The buzz around the WSOP was that only 200-250 or so players would come out for this event, but it was said that this event will be full of big name pros. Who else would play a $10,000 PLHE event?

Despite the skeptics, the field ran over 350, with the final amount of entries 352. Amnon Filippi took a brave prop bet in which he bet the over on 350. He made it just a few minutes before late registration was over, after sitting right at 350 for most of the second level. He pocketed $1,000 for the bet. There were plenty of other big names, both poker pros and not, in the field. Here's some of them:

Eli Elezra
TJ Cloutier
Shannon Elizabeth
Chris Ferguson
Erik Seidel
Ted Lawson
Phil Ivey
Todd Brunson
Doyle Brunson
Phil Laak
Antonio Esfandiari
Patrik Antonius
David Benyamine
Clonie Gowen
Jennifer Harman
Jennifer Tilly
Marco Traniello
Tuan Le
Kenny Tran
Bill Edler
Paul Galfond
Tom Dwan
Max Pescatori
Dario Minieri
David Singer
Daniel Negreanu

All right, you get the point. The list goes on and on. There had to be 3-5 big names at every table, it was a pretty superior field. There was some good play and some bad play. I don't really understand why when it comes to PLHE, people always want to bet the pot. This wasn't the case of the pros, but of the more unexperienced players. They always wanted to jam the pot and bet max amounts, I'm not sure why. Maybe it's just easier to say "pot" than to size out your bet accordingly, who knows. But as I was logging hands on the live reporting page, you can definitely see why the pros are pros. A lot of the pros were picking up smaller pots here and there and letting their less experienced opponents hang themselves in the big pots. You rarely saw a pro racing off for a big amount of chips early on. You also saw them playing their bigger pairs slower than the inexperienced players. You know what they say, even aces are just one pair.

After the day was said and done, here are some of the big names left in the field of 70 runners:

Chris Ferguson
Andy Bloch
Anna Wroblewski
Humberto Brenes
Lyle Berman
Nenad Medic
Rolf Slotboom
Phil Laak
David Benyamine
Beth Shak
Patrik Antonius
Allen Kessler
Hasan Habib
Chris Bell
Jennifer Harman
Bill Chen
Ted Lawson
Tuan Le
Mark Newhouse
Eli Elezra (chip leader after day 1)
Kathy Liebert

There are also some fairly well known online players left in the field. I myself am a big advocate for the online game and believe that the online players are right up there with the live players in terms of ability, if not ahead of them. The philosophies, strategies and tactics, and hand experience is very abundant in the online poker world and it's only a matter of time before online players begin capturing the majority of the events played today.

Play for day 2 will begin at 2pm and play down until the final table. It should take a few hours and the money is set at 36 players. I'm thinking that the final table will consist of about 50% big name pros and 50% online players, they just both seem to have this event down. I am personally picking Nenad Medic and Patrik Antonius to go really deep in this event, along with online star Vivek "Psyduck" Rajkumar.

Be sure to check the event updates in the live reporting section at PokerNews.com.

Phoenixaments get big!

2008-05-28T21:41:00.000-07:00

I hosted my weekly tournament on Full Tilt tonight at 9pm EST. It's a 6-handed rebuy plus add-on tournament that costs $1+1 to enter. All rebuy tournaments created on FTP have a mandatory entry fee of $1 so there's no getting around that. I choose 6-handed tables because I figured it would increase the action and I love to play 6 max. There's a lot more 'play' on these tables and you can really open up your game.

The real reason I am bringing this up is because it became a complete nut-fest from the get go. I had a table that was really ready to gamble. I was one of 3 people in my table in for over 25 rebuys. The other two players were in for about 10 a piece. We had a total of 16 entrants to the tournament and one FTOPS event winner, who just happened to be at my table gambling like all hell. When the hour rebuy period was all said and done, 13 players remained and 12 of them added on. In total, we had 16 entries, 306 rebuys, and 12 add-ons. The pot was a massive $324 to be paid out to the top 3 places. With all my rebuy craziness, I did manage to gather a big stack for after the break and sat 4/13 in chips. I ran a big draw into a bigger draw and was busted in 8th place. I did manage to make a few bucks because I had a good piece of phoenix1333 who came in 2nd place. Here's a screen shot of the tournament lobby.

For those of you who want to get in on the action, the information is in the right sidebar of this page. I invite anyone who reads the blog to jump in and play in it with us. It's a hell of a time, but you better be sure to bring your gamble. Heck, going into the second hour of play, the average stack was over 225 BBs deep! Hope to see you signed up next week!

Vegas!

2008-05-28T01:57:00.000-07:00

I made it out to Vegas the other night. I just got done jamming in some old posts from New Orleans so be sure to read them all. I'm living out here in a sick house thanks to Poker News and will be covering the WSOP for them. I've been here one night and already had a blast, played some poker, and met some really cool people.

Be sure to check back as I'll update with trip reports and poker. I hope to get in a ton of playing while I am out here.

A couple hands from the N.O. session.

2008-05-27T23:24:00.000-07:00

HAND #1:

MP was all over the place. Raising with a very wide range of hands PF and calling with almost ATC. He also chased a lot of hands until the river and would make extremely weak calls on every street. Played anything suited, raises with suited connectors, also likes to see the flop with almost all connectors and most one/two-gappers. Would raise his option out of the big blind with a wide range and with anything marginal to good. Loved to min-raise on the flop to steal when he thought you weren't strong.

CO was LAG. He liked to raise and re-raise PF but seemed to have it somewhat under control. He'd raise or re-raise with pairs PF and was super aggressive oF if he sensed any weakness. Played draws heavy and built up a stack from 200 to 800+ rather quickly using this aggressive style and just running people over.

Hero (UTG+1) $190
MP $85
CO $850

Hero KJcc raises to $10.
MP calls.
CO re-raises to $25.
Hero calls. {This call might be marginal, but I know MP is calling and that I have a pretty solid hand against the range of CO. Not to mention a big connection will net me a big pot.}
MP calls.
Flop 3s 6c 2c.

Hero checks {I thought before checking here and decided to see how the PF raiser acted.}
MP checks
CO bets $75 {Immediately bet upon his action.}

Hero has $165 remaining
MP has $60 remaining
Hero's play?

With his immediate bet, I have CO on an overpair. Against 88-TT I have 15 outs if he has no clubs and 14 outs if he has one club, so I'm pretty much a favorite here with my flush draw and two overs. If he has JJ, I have 12 outs as I hold the Jc. In this situation, I'm a slight dog, but basically flipping here. With QQ, the odds go slightly down because he has the chance of having the Qc to take away an out from me. If he has KK or AA, I'm looking at simply flush outs which will make me about a 2-1 dog in the hand.

I'm getting just over 2-1 on a call and I know I'm not getting any fold equity against this player. I also have to factor in that MP is still in the hand and could easily hold some of my outs or even clubs. I'm almost certain he's not going to fold his hand even with simply two overcards, he just can't get away from it here. In fact, he had the chips in his hand ready to be put in. This will raise my pot odds slightly, but decrease my odds in the hand. Even if he does win the hand and I can win the side pot from CO, I'll break even, so he is my main concern.

Against the range I have CO on, I'm almost certain that shoving is the best. Even though I don't believe I have any fold equity against him, there might be a slight amount, like 5-10%.

With all that said, what's everyone's take on the optimum play here? I say shove for the long run of things. A friend of mine claimed that calling is the worst play, and I do agree there. He also claimed that folding isn't a bad play, in fact, he mentioned it's somewhat 50/50 with folding and shoving. I strongly disagree with that and believe this hand can't be folded unless you put him on a set or AXcc for a better draw. Please, chime in with your opinions.

HAND #2:

MP is the same from before that was in the CO and the SB is relatively new to the table. He seems like a pretty standard 1/2 live NL player, calling a lot of pots PF and then proceeding with standard play.

Hero (BB) $175
MP $850
SB $200

Multiple players limped to Hero in the BB with AKhh.
Hero raises to $17.
MP calls.
SB calls.

Flop 9 T K, rainbow.
SB checks.
Hero bets $35.
MP calls.
SB calls.

Turn 7.
SB checks.
Hero checks. {I checked here because as I began to think about my action, the MP player grabbed a stack of chips of about $75 and was ready to fire. I didn't really buy this action by him and though I'd check it to him and see if he did fire. This could also induce a call from the SB to trap him in as well.}
MP bets $100. {He grabbed more chips and fired out.}
SB folds.
Hero raises all in for $123 total, $23 more.
MP actually took time to think and then reluctantly made the call and I knew I had him.

I tabled AKhh and TPTK after the river and he mucked.

New Orleans Day 4: Final table and a late night session.

2008-05-27T22:38:00.001-07:00

The final table setup was really cool. It was going to be aired on a 1-hour delay at worldseriesofpoker.com as well as on Bluff's website. When the final table finally began, the fireworks weren't delayed for a second.

Miles raised it up on the first hand, which I expected him to do anyway with the chip lead. Ed Jatho re-raised behind Miles, something I also expected. Jatho was a solid player that liked to whack off the younger kids when he felt that they were getting out of hand. He probably just figured Miles was getting out of line and would re-raise here with a pretty wide range of decent hands, I'd say 6s or better and AJ+. But then Marc Fratter thought and smooth called behind Jatho. Now, this just wreaks of a huge hand from Fratter, I'd say KK or AA, more likely AA. Action folded back to Miles (all three of these players in the hand were seated right next to one another) and he thought for a while before announcing re-raise. Now, Miles is smart enough here to know that the flat call behind by Fratter is really strong so in order for him to re-raise, I can only see him having AA or KK as well. But because it's more likely that Fratter would be flatting with AA, Miles re-raise to me looked like he had AA. Could two players really have AA on the first hand of the final table? With a player trapper between?

Jatho didn't give it much thought and moved all in, this seemed to be a mistake in my opinion. I just don't think he really thought that hand out. Fratter made the same mistake and went all in behind Jatho rather quickly. Miles quickly made the call after a short hesitation. I know the feeling that Miles had, 'Is this really happening?!?!?' Miles showed AA, Jatho JJ, and Fratter QQ. Wow! The first hand of the final table and we have some big hands all in preflop.

Miles ended up winning the hand and amassed an enormous chip lead over everyone else. This is when I said this tournament is over. There's just no way anyone will be able to take him down now. The feeling around the rest of the room was mutual and you could see the heads of the other players at the table sag as if they knew Miles was going to just run them over.

The other player I thought would have a great showing, Jeff Tims, did well until he got unlucky in a hand. He got it all in PF with the best of it, but went down and was on the short stack. He did manage to cash for over $70k, so he made a pretty solid showing this entire trip; up over $120k. Lou Esposito did well also and cashed pretty good. He was on the short stack for most of the final table and couldn't really get much going. He final tabled the final 3 events of this circuit, which is pretty damn good.

I believe it took under 60 hands to get down to heads-up play. That was pretty amazing. When we got to heads up, the players were both so deep that it seemed like this could go for a long time. Miles made it along with Nick Ceci. Both these players had such contrasting styles. Miles was an excellent post flop player and liked to play small-pot poker, chipping away at his opponents' stacks. he never really seemed to get involved in huge pots. If he did, he either had the best hand or was putting a ton of pressure on the other player. Ceci on the other hand was betting like a madman. I don't really know if he had a method to his madness, but some of his play was absurd. He'd fire out bets of two and three times the pot size often, it was so weird. PF he would raise to 5-6 times the BB from the button and generally called any raise that Miles made from the SB. I remember Miles making a few comments about Ceci not wanting to play small pots. I believe Miles was just going to wait him out and wait for a mistake from Ceci with such large bets.

When the final big hand came up, I believe Miles thought just that. Ceci made some insane overbet of the pot and Miles thought he had the best hand and knew Ceci wouldn't fold once putting that much money in so he fired all in. Ceci actually had a better hand than Miles here and there's not much Miles could have done. I do think that Miles may have gotten a little impatient with Ceci's playing style. This hand didn't knock Miles out, but it pretty much ruined his chances. He was down 2.3 million to just his 150k. It would be a huge mountain to climb to get that back. In the end it was Ceci coming out on top, despite being the far inferior player in my opinion.

Congrats to all players and winners. It was such a sick tournament and I can't even imagine what the WSOP is going to be like.

After that, we wrapped up and headed back to the hotel to get changed. We then headed back over to the casino and I sat in for a $1/2 NL session. Let me tell you, these players were horrendous. I had two guys at my table that brought their hole cards up to their face with both hands every time. I kid you not, they really did this. Some of the plays people were making were just atrocious and I was almost drooling at one point. I put in a 4-hour session and finished up $175. I'll be posting some of my key hands later on.

New Orleans Day 3: Main event day 2

2008-05-23T13:40:00.001-07:00

Timothy "T.K." Miles has a huge stack going into day 2 of the tournament and he is just playing amazingly. I mentioned that I had picked him and Jeff Tims to take the event down, and both these players are looking poised to do so. I am not at liberty to give me opinion on play over at Poker News, but I am wide open here. Some of the players were just making horrible plays. It was just unbelievable that they even made it this far. As play got closer and closer to the money bubble, I also liked how Daryl Fish was doing. He began raising a lot of pots, sometimes 3 or 4 in a row. He could tell when there were spots that people were looking to just fold into the money and he attacked. I didn't really pay much attention to Fish earlier than around the money bubble because he was playing fairly tight, solid poker, winning the occasional pot. As the bubbled approached, the kid just started taking over and increasing his stack a lot from the blinds and antes. I liked his chances the longer the day went on.

Miles did the same, raising a lot of pots and following through with aggressive post flop play. I'd have to say that Miles is easily one of the best players I have ever witnessed, the guy just reads the game so well. Just a little note to anyone if you ever find yourself at a table with him: if and when Miles talks to you in a hand, don't respond! This guy is a sicko with his live reads and people just kept giving him information to use against them. Not once did he act quickly or stumble during today's play, it was pretty much flawless. I'm also pretty sure that Miles could see every flop possible and then outplay anyone post flop, he's really that good.

Tims was another animal. While Miles and Fish were raising a lot of pots preflop and attacking the action, Tims seemed to just sit back and let things come to him. Tims didn't raise a lot of pots, but if someone raised on his table, there was a pretty damn good chance he'd be coming over the top of you. What scared a lot of players off is that Tims was showing down excellent hands all day. Players didn't really want to get involved in pots with him without a strong hand after they were 3-bet. In one hand, Tims made a sickening call on the with AT, for ace high. HIs opponent showed ace high as well, but was outkicked by Tims' 10 to his 9. It was just a sick call of the player's all in. The guy had shoved 26,000 into a pot of just over 40,000. I'd have to say it was one of the best calls I have ever seen. This play sent a real message to the field that Tims wasn't messing around and that his win of event #12 was no joke.

The day ended with Tims and Miles both making the final table. Miles was killing it with a decent chip lead and I can't see him going down tomorrow. Tims is in the upper half and is easily a force. Fish didn't make the final table, as he got caught shoving to pick up the blinds and antes and was dominated big time. I forgot to mention that Lou Esposito also made the final table. He won December's version of this event and is a really solid player. New Orleans is pretty good him I guess, as he's made 3 final tables of this WSOP-Circuit.

After the play, we decided to head out to Bourbon Street. The final table wasn't set to begin until 2p CST on Wednesday, so why not go out for a few drinks. By a few drinks, I mean 2-for-1 beers and a few shots. I was feeling pretty good all night long and Bourbon St. is a lot of fun. It did smell pretty bad, but the people were pretty cool and pretty drunk as well. It was only a Tuesday night, so I can see why not too many people were out. I had planned on playing, but the others wanted to head out so I obliged. I can always just play tomorrow and I did have a blast.

New Orleans Day 2: Tournament action begins.

2008-05-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

We got to Harrah's around 10a CST to get set up and ready for the tournament. Players began piling into the room right around start time of the tournament at 12 noon. Here's a list of a few notable names that made it to the event:

TJ Cloutier
Gavin Smith
Josh Arieh
Alan 'BodogAri' Engel
Jimmy Tran
Steve Dannenmann
Young Phan
Doug 'Rico' Carli
Lou Esposito
Bill Edler
Kimberly Lansing
Ted Lawson
Jonathan Little
Chris Bell

I was doing both field reporting and blogging for the tournament throughout the day so I was able to witness a lot of the action. I was really impressed by the play of Jeff Tims (upper picture) and Timothy 'TK' Miles (lower picture). Both of them accumulated a good amount of chips early on and played really well throughout the day. Miles played a lot of pots, but played them so well that his opponent just couldn't seem to ever slow him down.

Tims made some really solid, strong plays in key pots to get a good stack. Tims won an earlier preliminary event here at Harrah's, the $500 NLHE for over $58,000. I did witness him getting lucky in a key hand when he ran AK into AQ on a board of AQx. The money went in on the flop, but when the turn spiked a K Tims took back the lead and ended up winning the hand.

Lou Esposito won December's version of this event and was down to 5,000 chips late in the day. He ended the day tied for the chip lead and looks poised to make another big splash here at Harrah's. If I had to pick, one of these three players is going to take this event down. Miles is just playing so well in every hand and making amazing decision that I can't really see him missing the final table.

I hope everyone can follow along on PokerNews.com and stay up with the action.

Don't forget to give me a shout on the live updates page.

New Orleans Day 1: Arrival in the durty.

2008-05-18T21:58:00.000-07:00

So like I said earlier, I arrived in New Orleans around 1:15p CT. Once we got off the plane, the events just seemed to begin.

Upon getting down to the baggage claim, there was a jazz band just jamming out of about 6 or 7 guys. They went to whichever carousel was running and played for the crowd of people. You could definitely tell who the locals were, as they began dancing to the music right there in the airport. It was such an awesome site to see! The music was so good and I do love jazz music, especially when it's upbeat.

After grabbing our bags, we headed to grab a taxi. Now, I've been on many cab rides in my day, but this one was quite the trip. First off, I don't think the guy spoke one word of English. This isn't that bad, as I can usually understand some Spanish when they break it down, but even his Spanish didn't sound like anything. It's was some sort of crazy Cajun Spanglish that just baffled us. We ended up driving down the freeway while he yelled at us. All this while he was beeped at by 3 different people for crossing into their lanes. I looked over at my roommate as he was doing the sign of the cross for his own good. I just laughed and tried to enjoy the ride we were on. After we got down to the French Quarter, we drove up and down side streets looking for the hotel. We finally found it after the third or so street. As he began to slow down and park, I realized he didn't even have the meter running the entire time. Great! Not only had we had a crazy ride, but who knows what he is going to charge us for this escapade. As he came around to get our bags out of the back, he said it's be $35. It seemed a little high for what couldn't be more that a8 8 or 9 minute cab ride, but who knows. He just paid it, tipped the guy for the near death experiences and went on our way.

As we checked in, they informed us that our room wasn't even ready yet. No big deal, we dropped off our bags for them to hold for us and went off on into the city. We wandered around for a little while and then decided to head to Harrah's and check it out. After all, it was the place where we'd be spending the majority of the rest of our trip, so why not get acquainted.

We browsed the casino some before finding a spot in the bar for a few drinks and to watch the Celtics take on the Cavaliers. I am a huge Celtics fan and am hoping we can pull of some big things this year! We watched the game and had a few drinks before heading back to the hotel for a meeting with the entire crew from Poker News.

After the meeting was over with, we headed back to the casino to hit up the buffet. It was amazing, but pretty pricey at $30 or so. It's a good thing it was free! They had a ton of local food including all kinds of seafood and crawfish. I had to try out the crawfish and they were decent. They had a very salty taste to them. And after dinner we browsed the casino some more, mostly the tournament room and then I watched my roommate for a while as he played some $1/2 NL. While I was watching, I realized how bad these players were and how much I need to make sure to put in a few sessions while I'm here.

We start the tournament tomorrow and I'll be blogging and updating on Poker News, so be sure to check it out. They even have a new feature where you can give me a shout under my posts, so be sure to let me know how I'm doing!

Harrah's New Orleans.

2008-05-18T16:08:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a while since I've posted last, but I'll deal with all of that jazz later. I arrived in New Orleans today to cover the WSOP Circuit event at Harrah's New Orleans with Poker News. I'm really excited for my opportunity and can't wait until the event gets started tomorrow! We're heading over to a meeting and then to the casino now. I'll be posting daily updates at the end of the night and you should also be able to catch my live blogging over at PokerNews.com under the 'Live Reporting' section.

In the spirit of New Orleans... stay big 'n easy!

Days off.

2008-05-02T21:30:00.000-07:00

As everyone can tell, I haven't been playing for a while now. I normally push through bad runs, but this time I'm trying something different. I am taking some time off. I haven't played much recently, but I plan to start back up this weekend. I'll take more time tomorrow to recap the month, the challenge, and talk about my latest sessions.

As most of you have probably heard, the WSOP main event final table has been rescheduled for November. The tournament will play down to the final table and then be put on hold for a few months. The play leading up until the final table will be aired up until November 10th, when the final table will take place. Then, on November 11th, the final table show will air for 2 hours. This is an attempt to make watching the final table as live as possible. I understand both the pros and cons about this decision, but I'm not sure I like it as a player.

Personally, if I played the tournament and made it to the final table, I would want to continue with the normal schedule of things. Waiting months would only increase the quality of play of my opponents and allow any advantages I would possibly have. If I was a pro, I would be especially irritated because of the amount of amateurs and weaker players that play in this tournament, it's inevitable that some of them will reach the final table. I understand that this may do big things for poker in general, but with that much money on the line, I'd rather play it in the moment. Advantages, momentum, and skill will all be compromised to a degree. You can read more about this HERE.

Trapped...

2008-04-21T05:43:00.000-07:00

Live MTT, 10k chips to begin with, 30 minute levels, 6-handed.

Blinds 75/150.

VILLAIN (UTG+1) (12,000)
HERO (CO) (12,675)
SB (8,400)
BB (10,250)

UTG folds.
VILLAIN raises to 500.
HERO calls 500 with KdKs. {I flatted here in position hoping to trap an maybe induce a squeeze out of one of the blinds. I had a solid table image, but was involved in a fair amount of pots, all with good hands at the showdown.}
BUTTON folds.
SB calls.
BB calls.

Pot (2,000)
Flop Qs 9d 7s

SB checks.
BB checks.
UTG+1 bets 1,375.
HERO raises to 4,000.
SB folds.
BB folds.
UTG+1 calls 2,625. {Villain tanked for a while here. He's a fairly tight player, but knows how to loosen up a little for a 6-handed game. After a lot of thought, he just smooth called.}

Pot (10,000)
Turn Qs 9d 7s, 7h

VILLAIN checks.
HERO shoves for 7,500.
VILLAIN calls 6,825 and is all in.

VILLAIN shows AcAs.
HERO shows KdKs.

Villain is a good friend of mine that I am currently staking online and he is doing really well. We've talked about a lot of poker strategy and he's become a really solid player... maybe too solid. Nice hand Rich.

Challenge days #19 and 20.

2008-04-20T21:27:00.000-07:00

DAILY SUMMARY:
Saturday: +12.20
790 hands NLHE

Sunday: +50.55
743 hands NLHE

Net: 62.75
Total hands: 1533
FPPs earned: 0
FTPs earned: 218

OVERALL SUMMARY:
Days played: 20
Hands played: 19140
Net +/-: +190.30
Winning days: 12
Losing days: 8
Highest winning day: Day 10, +75.05
Lowest winning day: Day 18, -42.90

GAME BREAKDOWN:
NLHE hands: 11745
NLHE winnings: +183.45

PLHE hands: 208
PLHE winnings: +3.15

Limit HE hands: 167
Limit HE winnings: -11.35

Stud hands: 6627
Stud winnings: +7.40

Razz hands: 182
Razz winnings: +3.90

PLO hands: 211
PLO winnings: +3.75

HORSE hands: 0
HORSE winnings: 0

I'd also like to throw out a Happy Birthday to my little brother. Happy Birthday bro!

"Killer Poker Online" book review.

2008-04-19T10:24:00.000-07:00

I finished reading some chapters from Killer Poker Online by John Vorhaus a few days ago. When I browsed the book before reading it, I only wanted to invest my time in a few chapters. Many of the other chapters would be a good read for beginning players, but not to someone who understands the game at a higher level.

The Data Management chapter outlines some good guidelines for how to manage your play data, statistics, and notes on opponents. I am an avid stat and note keeper, but this chapter really reinforced the guidelines someone should go by when diving into online poker.

The other four chapters that I read were Winning Tactics for Online Play, Online Tells, and Found Objects, and Tips. All of these chapters provide a nice, solid foundation of strategy and hints that will help to elevate your online game. A lot of the information here was repetitive to me, but as I have been going through a bad run, it was good to go back over some basic ideas and strategies.

The book was more of a general outline to some concepts and practices that one should stick to for online poker, but it lacked a lot of in depth tactics and strategy. There wasn't really any hand analysis I ran across. There wasn't any talk about how to play certain opponents or situations either. This is where I believe the book was really lacking and something that I believe any good poker book should have.

Overall rating: 2/5

Challenge days #16, 17, 18.

2008-04-19T09:29:00.000-07:00

DAILY SUMMARY:
Wednesday: +53.15
1089 hands NLHE

Thursday: -19.20
427 hands NLHE

Friday: -42.90
400 hands NLHE

Net: -8.95
Total hands: 1916
FPPs earned: 0
FTPs earned: 375.35

OVERALL SUMMARY:
Days played: 18
Hands played: 17607
Net +/-: +127.55
Winning days: 10
Losing days: 8
Highest winning day: Day 10, +75.05
Lowest winning day: Day 18, -42.90

GAME BREAKDOWN:
NLHE hands: 10212
NLHE winnings: +120.70

PLHE hands: 208
PLHE winnings: +3.15

Limit HE hands: 167
Limit HE winnings: -11.35

Stud hands: 6627
Stud winnings: +7.40

Razz hands: 182
Razz winnings: +3.90

PLO hands: 211
PLO winnings: +3.75

HORSE hands: 0
HORSE winnings: 0

Challenge days #10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.

2008-04-16T00:22:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't been updating the challenge stats and stuff lately, I've been pretty busy with some school work and playing a lot so I just haven't found time to blog about things. I'm going to couple together the stats from the past few days. I had a terrible run over the weekend and into this week... it just sucked. Here's how things are looking thus far:

DAILY SUMMARY:
Thursday: +75.05
111 hands NLHE
208 hands PLHE
418 hands Stud

Friday: +1.95
282 hands Stud
1073 hands NLHE

Saturday: -40.35
1394 hands NLHE
143 hands Stud

Sunday: -26.60
242 hands Stud
197 hands NLHE

Monday: -37.70
990 hands Stud
947 hands NLHE

Tuesday: +32.05
1008 hands NLHE

Net: +4.40
Total hands: 7013
FPPs earned: 0
FTPs earned: 1047.40

OVERALL SUMMARY:
Days played: 15
Hands played: 15691
Net +/-: +136.50
Winning days: 9
Losing days: 6
Highest winning day: Day 10, +75.05
Lowest winning day: Day 8, -41.45

GAME BREAKDOWN:
NLHE hands: 8296
NLHE winnings: +129.65

PLHE hands: 208
PLHE winnings: +3.15

Limit HE hands: 167
Limit HE winnings: -11.35

Stud hands: 6627
Stud winnings: +7.40

Razz hands: 182
Razz winnings: +3.90

PLO hands: 211
PLO winnings: +3.75

HORSE hands: 0
HORSE winnings: 0

They've been running a double points promotion this week on FTP during certain hours so you can most likely find me multi-tabling during those sessions.

Challenge day #9.

2008-04-10T16:15:00.000-07:00

DAILY SUMMARY:
$.25/.50 Razz, 0.5 hours
Hands: 182
Winnings: +3.90

$.25/.50 Stud, 1 hour
Hands: 336
Winnings: -19.95

$.05/.10 NLHE, 1 hour
Hands: 208
Winnings: +6.65

Net: -9.40
Total hands: 726
FPPs earned: 6
FTPs earned: 100.10

OVERALL SUMMARY:
Days played: 9
Hands played: 8678
Net +/-: +136.00
Winning days: 6
Losing days: 3
Highest winning day: Day 4, +70.20
Lowest winning day: Day 8, -41.45

GAME BREAKDOWN:
NLHE hands: 3566
NLHE winnings: +103.55

Limit HE hands: 167
Limit HE winnings: -11.35

Stud hands: 4552
Stud winnings: +36.15

Razz hands: 182
Razz winnings: +3.90

PLO hands: 211
PLO winnings: 3.75

HORSE hands: 0
HORSE winnings: 0

Challenge day #8.

2008-04-09T14:21:00.000-07:00

Another setback with this day of the challenge as I had another losing session yesterday. I'm feeling all right though about my play and things should turn around. I got involved in a big pot with AA and here's how it went down...

Seat 1: donpeters ($20.15)
Seat 2: RepGrowsBigga ($20.15)
Seat 3: Linkstarr ($12.30)
Seat 4: Mutton Stew ($38.30)
Seat 5: SchakDaddy ($13.10)
Seat 6: Shanmank ($29.05)
Seat 7: bullshark32 ($22.30)
Seat 8: Saturnalia ($20)
RepGrowsBigga posts the small blind of $0.05
Mutton Stew posts the big blind of $0.10
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [As Ad]
SchakDaddy folds
Shanmank folds
Linkstarr stands up
bullshark32 raises to $0.30
iHATEftp adds $10
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters raises to $1.50 {Bullshark was playing pretty all over the place and would call raises after he had limped. He raised this time and I felt he would call a decent size re-raise with almost anything really so I popped it a little more than I normally would.}
RepGrowsBigga folds
Mutton Stew calls $1.40 {Umm, this really surprised me and I don't think it is an optimal play.}
bullshark32 calls $1.20
*** FLOP *** [4s Ah Th] {Lovely.}
Mutton Stew checks
bullshark32 checks
donpeters bets $3
Mutton Stew folds
bullshark32 raises to $6
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act {His range is pretty wide here. I felt he either had the case A or a flush draw. He min-raised me pretty quick which makes me think he's doing this just because I CB the flop after it was checked to me. I thought about flatting behind, but figured he'd stick it in here with any A or a flush draw and maybe I got lucky he flopped a lower set.}
donpeters raises to $18.65, and is all in
bullshark32 calls $12.65
donpeters shows [As Ad]
bullshark32 shows [6h 4h]
*** TURN *** [4s Ah Th] [3s]
*** RIVER *** [4s Ah Th 3s] [7h]
donpeters shows three of a kind, Aces
bullshark32 shows a flush, Ace high

Now, I did have the nuts on the flop and was a 70/30 favorite, but that's not why I want to talk about this hand. I know plenty of people that will claim this hand as a terrible beat, but it really wasn't at all. I don't like villain's play PF really. I don't mind the raise, but I'm not a fan of calling this re-raise OOP. But then again, with the overcall from the BB, I can see an argument for it as we were effectively 200BBs deep. Moving on to the flop, I don't really mind this play either. If I were in villain's spot on the flop, I'd probably CR as well. He has a pair and a flush draw and given my range, I think a CR is a solid play here. I don't think a min CR is good, but a CR to somewhere between $8-10 would have been better. With my line in the hand, I could easily have KK, QQ, JJ and simply be firing a CB on the flop, so a bigger CR would have some fold equity. He'd also have good equity against AK, AQ, AJ if I were to show up with those hands here. He's only really a dog against AA and TT, other than that it's basically a flip. Given his CR on the flop, I think he's almost got to call when I shove and did right in doing so. It sucks for him that I turned up with one of the two hands he is really behind, but he got there and pulled out the hand.

I'm not upset about my play or with his play at all. This is just one of those hands where I'm going to win it the majority of the time. It's also good to look back on some hands that you may consider a beat and find out if they really were or not. Of course, I don't know for sure if villain thought this out as I did and maybe I'm giving him too much credit. Either way, here are the stats for the day.

DAILY SUMMARY:
$.05/.10 NLHE, 1.5 hours
Hands: 97
Winnings: -46.85

$.25/.50 Stud, 1 hours
Hands: 246
Winnings: -0.40

$.05/.10 NLHE, 2 hours
Hands: 502
Winnings: +5.80

Net: -41.45
Total hands: 845
FPPs earned: 0
FTPs earned: 157.30

OVERALL SUMMARY:
Days played: 8
Hands played: 7952
Net +/-: +145.40
Winning days: 6
Losing days: 2
Highest winning day: Day 4, +70.20
Lowest winning day: Day 8, -41.45

GAME BREAKDOWN:
NLHE hands: 3358
NLHE winnings: +96.90

Limit HE hands: 167
Limit HE winnings: -11.35

Stud hands: 4216
Stud winnings: +56.10

PLO hands: 211
PLO winnings: 3.75

HORSE hands: 0
HORSE winnings: 0

Aggression pays off (Pt. 1).

2008-04-07T21:33:00.000-07:00

Seat 1: JoeIngram1 ($8.95 in chips)
Seat 2: rycereader ($58.05 in chips)
Seat 3: Bigro73 ($25 in chips)
Seat 4: 18butler ($23.90 in chips)
Seat 5: donpeters ($23.80 in chips)
Seat 6: NihilObstat ($24.65 in chips)
Bigro73: posts small blind $0.10
18butler: posts big blind $0.25
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [As Qs]
donpeters: raises $0.75 to $1
NihilObstat: folds
JoeIngram1: folds
rycereader: calls $1
Bigro73: folds
18butler: folds
*** FLOP *** [Ts 4s 3h]
donpeters: bets $1.75 {Two overs and the nuts flush draw. Thought about a check raise, but wasn't sure villain would bet here.}
rycereader: calls $1.75
*** TURN *** [Ts 4s 3h] [4h]
donpeters: bets $3.75 {Betting here to stay aggressive and keep the lead on the hand. If he raises, I'm probably folding.}
rycereader: calls $3.75
*** RIVER *** [Ts 4s 3h 4h] [7s]
donpeters: bets $9
rycereader: calls $9

Challenge day #7 and some big things going down!

2008-04-07T21:22:00.000-07:00

Well, I got some great news today. I began pursuing some sort of job/internship covering poker. I graduate in May and would love to try and get something set up for the summer. Today, I got the call back and was offered a position with PokerNews.com covering the 2008 WSOP! I am so pumped up for this opportunity and can't wait. I'll be out in Vegas at the end of May and throughout the entirety of the WSOP. I don't know how much playing I'll be able to be doing, but I will certainly be blogging as much as I can about my experiences out there.

On another good note, I was able to recoup a lot of what I lost on Sunday and book another winning session.

DAILY SUMMARY:
$.10/.25 NLHE, 0.5 hours
Hands: 55
Winnings: +12.25

$.05/.10 NLHE, 2.75 hours
Hands: 191
Winnings: +26.40

Net: +38.65
Total hands: 246
FPPs earned: 8
FTPs earned: 59.10

OVERALL SUMMARY:
Days played: 7
Hands played: 7107
Net +/-: +186.85
Winning days: 6
Losing days: 1
Highest winning day: Day 4, +70.20
Lowest winning day: Day 6, -35.55

GAME BREAKDOWN:
NLHE hands: 2759
NLHE winnings: +137.95

Limit HE hands: 167
Limit HE winnings: -11.35

Stud hands: 3970
Stud winnings: +56.50

PLO hands: 211
PLO winnings: 3.75

HORSE hands: 0
HORSE winnings: 0

Challenge day #6.

2008-04-07T09:38:00.000-07:00

Well, I had my first losing day of April yesterday. I played a good amount of stud for the majority of the day and just wasn't running well. I felt I was making good decisions, but I did have some bad ones that I regret making. With every bad decision though, there can be some good. I like to learn when I make a mistake and see where I went wrong, so it helps. It also helps to look at the positive side of things. I started the day off with a few good sessions, but then went south. Here's the session summary and stats and I'm already on my way recovering my losses.

DAILY SUMMARY:
$.50/1.00 7-card stud, 3 hours
Hands: 607
Winnings: +14.60

$.05/.10 NLHE, 1.5 hours
Hands: 459
Winnings: +13.45

$.25/.50 7-card stud, 1 hour
Hands: 379
Winnings: -0.70

$1.00/2.00 7-card stud, 1.5 hours
Hands: 400
Winnings: -55.50

$.05/.10 NLHE, 1.25 hours
Hands: 92
Winnings: -7.40

Net: -35.55
Total hands: 1937
FPPs earned: 0
FTPs earned: 423.20

OVERALL SUMMARY:
Days played: 6
Hands played: 6861
Net +/-: +148.20
Winning days: 5
Losing days: 1
Highest winning day: Day 4, +70.20
Lowest winning day: Day 6, -35.55

GAME BREAKDOWN:
NLHE hands: 2513
NLHE winnings: +99.30

Limit HE hands: 167
Limit HE winnings: -11.35

Stud hands: 3970
Stud winnings: +56.50

PLO hands: 211
PLO winnings: 3.75

HORSE hands: 0
HORSE winnings: 0

Challenge day #5.

2008-04-06T15:13:00.000-07:00

I'm somewhat annoyed with FTP. My sessions were cut off halfway through the day due to "unscheduled maintenance" going on over at FTP. I wasn't able to play as much as I would've liked to and I also wasn't able to earn the points I was going for. Hopefully FTP makes good and credits me with the points so I don't lose any traction in the Iron Man race. Here are the session stats.

DAILY SUMMARY:
$.05/.10 NLHE, 2 hours
Hands: 641
Winnings: +3.20

$1.00/2.00 HU 7-card stud, 0.5 hours
Hands: 107
Winnings: +11.25

$.05/.10 PLO, 1 hour
Hands: 211
Winnings: +3.75

Net: +18.20
Total hands: 959
FPPs earned: 6
FTPs earned: 139.9

OVERALL SUMMARY:
Days played: 5
Hands played: 4924
Net +/-: +183.75
Winning days: 5
Losing days: 0
Highest winning day: Day 4, +70.20
Lowest winning day: n/a

GAME BREAKDOWN:
NLHE hands: 1962
NLHE winnings: +93.25

Limit HE hands: 167
Limit HE winnings: -11.35

Stud hands: 2584
Stud winnings: +98.10

PLO hands: 211
PLO winnings: 3.75

HORSE hands: 0
HORSE winnings: 0

I've been listening to a lot of poker radio on iTunes via podcasts lately while I play. It's a good relaxer and always great entertainment. if you ever have time, you should definitely check them out. My favorites are the 2+2 podcast from twoplustwo.com and all of the ones over at PokerRoad.com.

In the most recent 2+2 podcast, they talk with Eric "Sheets" Haber. I was really interested in the part where he talked about staking.

"Investing in the stock market is the same thing as investing in horse racing or investing in poker players or investing in anything. So when I think about staking a poker player, I just think of it as another place to yield a positive return."

"It's very hard and in today's day and age, where everybody can play a little bit, to rely on results is very, very dangerous. I could tell you some results of some of the people we've staked that have made a lot of money that were atrocious if you just look at their [results]. And I could tell you people who came to us with incredible [results], but what I always do is I look at all of their hands... so that I can get a full dynamic look at how they play and I rely on my own subjective opinion on the way they play certain situations. I can don't care what their results are, I think a person can either play or they can't, and that's it."

These are excellent points by Haber. I've always been a fan of taking or giving some action. I believe it is a great way to invest your money. With solid judgment and good research, staking can be a very profitable practice.

If you have time, check out these radio shows and others out there. Or if you're like me, just listen to them while you play.

Challenge day #4.

2008-04-04T22:41:00.000-07:00

DAILY SUMMARY:
$.05/.10 NLHE, 1 hour
Hands: 118
Winnings: +15.35

$.25/.50 7-card stud, 2 hours
Hands: 236
Winnings: -5.00

$.50/1.00 7-card stud, 2 hours
Hands: 259
Winnings: +24.10

$1.00/2.00 7-card stud, 0.5 hours
Hands: 118
Winnings: +35.75

Net: +70.20
Total hands: 731
FPPs earned: 8
FTPs earned: 128.7

OVERALL SUMMARY:
Days played: 4
Hands played: 3965
Net +/-: +165.55
Winning days: 4
Losing days: 0
Highest winning day: Day 4, +70.20
Lowest winning day: n/a

GAME BREAKDOWN:
NLHE hands: 1321
NLHE winnings: +90.05

Limit HE hands: 167
Limit HE winnings: -11.35

Stud hands: 2477
Stud winnings: +86.85

PLO hands: 0
PLO winnings: 0

HORSE hands: 0
HORSE winnings: 0

Challenge day #3.

2008-04-03T20:20:00.000-07:00

I'd like to start off by giving a shout out to KakaFC22. I'm sure some of you recall me talking about some of his bigger cashes a few times. Well, he's back at it. Kaka took second place in the $17k guarantee tournament on FTP two nights ago. Kaka found himself deep in the tournament, but very tired. He actually fell asleep for about 30 minutes at one point. When ho woke up, he saw that he had KK and AA, but both times would have gotten them cracked by sets. Recomposed, Kaka grinded his way to a second place finish and more than $2,700! That's not all though... Kaka went deep the next night in a $69+6 on FTP. He came in 19th place out of 553 entrants for $172 and then followed that up with a 4th place finish in the $12k guaranteed RB+AO tournament today. That finish netted him $1,200! Congratulations to KakaFC22 and I hope he keeps on killing it.

It's my third day of the challenge and seems to be going well. Here are the stats through three days:

DAILY SUMMARY:
$.05/.10 NLHE, 2.5 hours
Hands: 680
Winnings: +19.20

$.50/1.00 7-card stud, 2.5 hours
Hands: 685
Winnings: -7.80

Net: +11.40
Total hands: 1365
FPPs earned: 0
FTPs earned: 205.75

OVERALL SUMMARY:
Days played: 3
Hands played: 3234
Net +/-: +95.35
Winning days: 3
Losing days: 0
Highest winning day: Day 1, +50.00
Lowest winning day: n/a

GAME BREAKDOWN:
NLHE hands: 1203
NLHE winnings: +74.7

Limit HE hands: 167
Limit HE winnings: -11.35

Stud hands: 1864
Stud winnings: +32.00

PLO hands: 0
PLO winnings: 0

HORSE hands: 0
HORSE winnings: 0

Some hands from X.

2008-04-03T13:06:00.000-07:00

Here are some hands from a recent session at the micro-deep table on FTP, commonly known to the regulars as "X".

Seat 1: Mutton Stew ($22)
Seat 2: pokerded777 ($17.35)
Seat 3: mrdrew73 ($19.90)
Seat 4: DonKoRnHoLio ($20.65)
Seat 5: NATD600 ($60.10)
Seat 6: donpeters ($21.75)
Seat 8: stinki84 ($19.60)
NATD600 posts the small blind of $0.05
donpeters posts the big blind of $0.10
The button is in seat #3
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Ks Kh] {Here ya go Mutton, this is what I had.}
stinki84 folds
Mutton Stew calls $0.10
pokerded777 folds
mrdrew73 raises to $0.45
NATD600 calls $0.40
donpeters raises to $2.50 {Raised pretty big here for a few reasons: I am OOP after the flop, a player has limped UTG and I do not want to let him in for cheap given his range, there has already been a raise and a call by two players that I know at least one will call me and I'd say 75% of the time both of them will call me.}
Mutton Stew folds
Mutton Stew: damn you don
mrdrew73 calls $2.05
*** FLOP *** [7s Tc 4c]
donpeters bets $4.25
mrdrew73 has 15 seconds left to act
mrdrew73 calls $4.25
*** TURN *** [7s Tc 4c] [Qd]
donpeters bets $14.05
mrdrew73 has 15 seconds left to act
mrdrew73: ok, i can make one disciplined fold
mrdrew73 folds {Pretty sure he had JJ.}
Uncalled bet of $14.05 returned to donpeters
donpeters mucks
Mutton Stew: OMG, i have the winning hand in the muck

Seat 1: Mutton Stew ($21.80)
Seat 2: pokerded777 ($17.35)
Seat 3: mrdrew73 ($20)
Seat 4: DonKoRnHoLio ($20.65)
Seat 5: NATD600 ($59.25)
Seat 6: donpeters ($27.60)
Seat 7: spaderraider ($20.50)
Seat 8: stinki84 ($19.60)
spaderraider posts the small blind of $0.05
stinki84 posts the big blind of $0.10
The button is in seat #6
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [5h Ah]
Mutton Stew folds
pokerded777 folds
mrdrew73 folds
NATD600 calls $0.10
donpeters raises to $0.50 {OTB after a loose player has limped from the CO I decide to pop it up here.}
spaderraider calls $0.45
stinki84 folds
NATD600 folds
*** FLOP *** [Ac 4h 2h] {Holy mother of flops Batman!}
spaderraider bets $1.20
donpeters raises to $4
spaderraider calls $2.80
*** TURN *** [Ac 4h 2h] [7s]
spaderraider bets $9.20
donpeters raises to $23.10, and is all in
spaderraider calls $6.80, and is all in
donpeters shows [5h Ah]
spaderraider shows [Qh Ad] {Kinda what I figured when he fired out so hard on the turn. I have 14 outs, no big deal deal.}
Uncalled bet of $7.10 returned to donpeters
*** RIVER *** [Ac 4h 2h 7s] [Js] {Damn brick.}

I definitely took the aggressive line here. The turn is the key point in the hand I believe. It's either fold or shove here IMO because he only has another $6+ left, I'm not going to just call here. I ran the numbers and I'm 51% to win, with about 4% to chop, so pretty much a flip here. On the turn, it's 68/32 and I'm on the on the other side this time. I know that with his bet I don't have any fold equity unless he's a moron. The pot was $18.40 and I'm getting 2:1 with 2.125:1 on the hand on the turn. It's pushing it and it's probably not one of my best decisions, but I decided to gamble and try and ride my rush from the previous hand. I bricked out and it was no big deal. This might have opened up my range with the rest of the table and advertised a little bit. Seems like it did four hands later...

Seat 1: Mutton Stew ($20.45)
Seat 2: Sun Phish ($10.60)
Seat 3: mrdrew73 ($19.75)
Seat 4: TheFishTrap77 ($15.20)
Seat 5: NATD600 ($57.35)
Seat 6: donpeters ($22.50)
Seat 7: spaderraider ($38.25)
Seat 8: stinki84 ($23.65), is sitting out
mrdrew73 posts the small blind of $0.05
TheFishTrap77 posts the big blind of $0.10
The button is in seat #2
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Kc Kd]
stinki84 has returned
NATD600 folds
donpeters raises to $0.40
spaderraider calls $0.40
Mutton Stew folds
Sun Phish calls $0.40
mrdrew73 folds
TheFishTrap77 folds
*** FLOP *** [6h Ks 2s]
donpeters bets $0.75
spaderraider raises to $1.50 {Beautiful.}
Sun Phish folds
donpeters raises to $8
spaderraider calls $6.50 {Oh really?}
*** TURN *** [6h Ks 2s] [7c]
donpeters bets $14.10, and is all in {He's not folding. Not this guy, not after the hand we just played.}
spaderraider calls $14.10
donpeters shows [Kc Kd]
spaderraider shows [Js Qs] {At least I had top pair with my flush draw, along with a straight draw. I think he should have shoved the flop if anything.}
*** RIVER *** [6h Ks 2s 7c] [Jd] {Another brick to add to my house.}

I think this last hand had a lot to do with the hand we played a few hands earlier. He probably didn't think I was as strong as I was and was just firing away like I had done previously.

Seat 1: Mutton Stew ($20.35)
Seat 2: Sun Phish ($10.60)
Seat 3: DonKoRnHoLio ($20.50)
Seat 4: TheFishTrap77 ($14.65)
Seat 5: NATD600 ($56.80)
Seat 6: donpeters ($43.40)
Seat 7: spaderraider ($15.65)
Seat 8: stinki84 ($24.65)
NATD600 posts the small blind of $0.05
donpeters posts the big blind of $0.10
The button is in seat #4
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [4h 4d]
stinki84 calls $0.10
Mutton Stew calls $0.10
Sun Phish calls $0.10
DonKoRnHoLio folds
NATD600 calls $0.05
donpeters checks
*** FLOP *** [Ad Ac Kh]
NATD600 checks
donpeters checks
stinki84 checks
Mutton Stew checks
Sun Phish bets $0.10
NATD600 calls $0.10
donpeters folds
stinki84 calls $0.10
Mutton Stew calls $0.10
*** TURN *** [Ad Ac Kh] [Tc]
NATD600 checks
stinki84 checks
Mutton Stew bets $0.70 {I like the bet here Mutton.}
Sun Phish folds
NATD600 calls $0.70
stinki84 calls $0.70
*** RIVER *** [Ad Ac Kh Tc] [6d]
NATD600 bets $3
stinki84 raises to $23.75, and is all in
Mutton Stew has 15 seconds left to act
Mutton Stew has requested TIME {All I'm thinking is "don't call Mutton, I know you either have an A or QJ and you gotta be beat."}
Mutton Stew calls $19.45, and is all in
NATD600 has 15 seconds left to act
NATD600 calls $20.75

Challenge day #2.

2008-04-03T00:12:00.000-07:00

Finished off my second day strong and I'll be posting some hands tomorrow. Here are the stats for now.

DAILY SUMMARY:
$.05/.10 NLHE, 2.5 hours
Hands: 155
Winnings: +14.95

$.25/.50 7-card stud, 1.75 hours
Hands: 360
Winnings: +11.45

$.50/1.00 7-card stud, 1 hours
Hands: 331
Winnings: +18.90

$.05/.10 Limit HE, 1 hours
Hands: 167
Winnings: -11.35

Net: +33.95
Total hands: 1013
FPPs earned: 63
FTPs earned: 94.40

OVERALL SUMMARY:
Days played: 2
Hands played: 1869
Net +/-: +83.95
Winning days: 2
Losing days: 0
Highest winning day: Day 1, +50.00
Lowest winning day: n/a

GAME BREAKDOWN:
NLHE hands: 523
NLHE winnings: +55.50

Limit HE hands: 167
Limit HE winnings: -11.35

Stud hands: 1179
Stud winnings: +39.80

PLO hands: 0
PLO winnings: 0

HORSE hands: 0
HORSE winnings: 0

Challenge day #1.

2008-04-01T20:54:00.000-07:00

The first sessions of my challenge today went really well and I was really on my game. I played two sessions; one of stud and then one of NL. No interesting hands really came up. Just stuck to fundamental ABC poker and my hands held up. I did get a few guys to stack off to me with really weak hands.

DAILY SUMMARY:
$.05/.10 NLHE, 1.5 hours
Hands: 368
Winnings: +40.55

$.25/.50 7-card stud, 2 hours
Hands: 488
Winnings: +9.45

Net: +50.00
Total hands: 856
FPPs earned: 20
FTPs earned: 67.7

OVERALL SUMMARY:
Days played: 1
Hands played: 856
Net +/-: +50.00
Winning days: 1
Losing days: 0
Highest winning day: Day 1, +50.00
Lowest winning day: n/a

GAME BREAKDOWN:
NLHE hands: 368
NLHE winnings: +40.55

Limit HE hands: 0
Limit HE winnings: 0

Stud hands: 488
Stud winnings: +9.45

PLO hands: 0
PLO winnings: 0

HORSE hands: 0
HORSE winnings: 0

March and April...

2008-03-31T15:55:00.000-07:00

Today is the last day of the month. I'm not thrilled with everything when I look back on March, but I'm not too upset either. I am happy that I improved my 7-card stud game in the past few weeks, but feel I've fallen off in my NLHE game. I'm going to keep on trying to improve at stud and play a little more than I have been. I'm also going to revert back to some fundamentals in NLHE and try and get back on top of that area of my game. I was able to achieve another Iron Man Bronze status this month. It's my 3rd month in a row getting an Iron Man and I plan to keep it up. I was gunning for Silver or Gold status, but never got there. I also didn't make the One-a-Day freeroll. I am happy that I eclipsed 17,000 FTPs today to finish off the month.

Looking ahead to April, here are my goals:

Reach Gold Iron Man status on Full Tilt
Qualify for the One-a-Day freeroll
Reach SilverStar status on PokerStars
Clear my deposit bonus over at Bodog
Move up in limits

I really wish I had enough of a bankroll to dive into the Battle of the Bloggers tournaments on FTP. Only in due time will I be able to jump to these and for now I must keep grinding.

I am really going to stick firm to discipline and fundamentals. I'll also be looking to plug up some holes in my game.

I actually stumbled across an old blog today about a guy who made over $40k in 30 days. He set a challenge for himself to make $40k in 30 days and chronicled his progress. It took place a few years ago and I'm not sure I believe it to be true. On a side note, I read a ton of poker blogs and I see a lot of them where people NEVER lose, it just baffles me. Either some people just run ridiculously good or they are lying to themselves and their readers. Anyway, this blog gave me an idea to start my own challenge. I'm not going to gun for something ridiculous like I feel he did, but rather something small and manageable. As you can see in my goals above, I'm going to be playing a fair amount and might as well make it more fun and competitive by making it an official challenge. I'll be posting daily updates that will be in this format somewhat:

SUMMARY:
Days played: 0
Hands played: 0
Net +/-: 0
Winning days: 0
Losing days: 0
Highest winning day: n/a
Lowest winning day: n/a

GAME BREAKDOWN:
NLHE hands: 0
NLHE winnings: 0

Limit HE hands: 0
Limit HE winnings: 0

Stud hands: 0
Stud winnings: 0

PLO hands: 0
PLO winnings: 0

HORSE hands: 0
HORSE winnings: 0

I made not include all the games shown and I may add other ones, but whatever I record hands for will be there. This will be strictly ring game play.

My challenge will be to have a net profit of $1,000.00 at the end of April. It comes out to be $33.33/day for the month of April, but there's going to be days when I win more or less than that, or lose money. I also have some bonuses to clear that will aid me in reaching my goal.

I'd also like to thank the original blogger for putting his challenge up for all to see and giving me this idea. You can read about his past challenge over at http://www.zbasic.com/40kchallenge.html. Definitely check it out.

Foxwoods session, part II.

2008-03-27T12:44:00.000-07:00

I moved to a table where I had to wait 4 hands in order for the BB to hit me rather than post. In these 4 hands, the pot was over $400 each time! I was already liking my chances here and felt I'd be able to get paid off really well. Of course, upon posting there was a straddle put on in my BB. The table seemed a lot looser than before and more willing to come into pots. Seemed like a very profitable situation lining up for my tight-aggressive style.

HAND #1:

About a rotation and a half in at the new table I was dealt AJo in the hijack.
UTG+1 raises to $12, MP calls, I call, button calls, BB calls.
Flop comes K T 2 rainbow.
BB checks, UTG+1 bets $12.
MP calls, I call.

{I decided to call here because the pot was $85 and only $12 for me to call. I was pretty sure either the button of the BB would also come in and increase my pot odds. I also knew that with the way this table was playing big pots with very marginal holdings, if I did peel off a Q on the turn, I was going to win a lot of money. I also thought there may be a chance my A was good if I hit, but nothing to go crazy over. I was in this for a Q and my pot odds were good and my implied odds even better.}

Button calls, BB calls.
Turn comes a K and the pot stands at $121.

{This is where things get really weird.}

BB comes out betting $3... yes, $3.
UTG+1 folds. {Really????}
MP calls, I call, button calls.

{I was confused by the $3 bet, but thought it was either a weak K or a T and he wanted to get to the river for cheap. Then I also thought he was on some kind of straight draw and wanted to see the river for cheap.}

River comes a 2 and double-pairs the board, K T 2 K 2.
BB checks, MP checks, I check.
Button thinks for a few seconds and fires out $31.
BB folds, MP folds.

{Okay, when I checked I thought there was a decent chance that my A-high might take this or chop it with someone else that was holding A-high as well. I went into the tank here. I was playing the two pair on board with my A kicker. I came to these conclusions about the hands I was worried about: K10 he raises the flop. Kx he raises the turn, maybe raises the flop. TT still think he raises the flop or turn here. AT, or Tx, I think he either raises the turn or checks the river. 2x, why would he have a 2 here? QQ, JJ, 99, 88, 77 or smaller, don't think he'd bet the river. I then thought about hands like QJ, AQ, AJ, Q9, J9, which were all busted straight draws. Taking his line, I thought it was more like he held one of these hands and was trying to steal the pot for cheap in the river maybe even thinking his A-high with AQ or AJ was good. The pot was $164 and $31 for me to call, so a little over 5-1. I was pretty sure that my A-high is good here 1 out of 6 times, or 16.7% of the time. I figured I'd be good here 25% of the time.}

I call, he shows KQ for a full house.

I lost the hand, but I still think my play was the correct decision and will make me money in the long run. I also think I'll hit my hand a few of those times to make up for the way he played his hand as well. After the turn paired the board, I was still looking for my Q, but didn't plan on playing a big pot with a paired board on the river.

After sitting for about another 2 hours and seeing absolutely the worst hands ever, I was getting out of the zone and upset with my luck of starting hands. I tried raising up two pots PF followed by a CB to take it down, but it failed both times. The table was loose and I resorted to just waiting for my spot. Well, my spot never came. I knew I was out of it and decided to leave the table and get some food to clear my mind (Foxwoods has a great noodle bar and the duck on rice hits the spot every time!).

After dinner, came back and sat at a new table. I didn't recognize anyone and no one seemed to be really crushing the table.

HAND #2:

UTG+1 limps, MP limps, button limps.
I raise from the SB to $15 with QQ.
BB folds, UTG+1 folds.
MP calls, button calls.

Flop is T 8 2 rainbow and I lead for $30.
Both players fold.

{Standard here, wanted action and only got a little. Both players were really weak and pretty much dead money. I could have maybe punished them for more PF because I was pretty sure they would call my raise after limping.}

HAND #3:

UTG+1 limps, folds around to me OTB.
I raise to $12 with 99.
UTG+1 calls.

Flop Q J 3.
UTG+1 checks.
I bet $20, UTG+1 folds.

{Standard here as well. Raised PF and then CB on the flop to take it down.}

This hand happened the very next hand.

HAND #4:

MP limps, hijack limps.
I raise from the CO with QJo to $12.

{Now, I have a reason for this. I don't normally come in for a raise with QJo, but I am in position on the MP player and the hijack player and they have been limping a ton. When they limp, they will call PF raises and put extra money in before the flop. Both players were pretty weak and bad and I wanted to isolate against the dead money they provided.}

BB thinks and then calls.
MP calls, hijack calls.
Flop comes Q 3 6.
BB bets out $15, both other players fold.
I call.

{I thought about a raise here, but I have good showdown value and am in position so I elected to take another card off and exercise some pot control in the hand. I also don't think a raise gets called by too many weaker hands.}

Turn pairs the board with a 3.
BB bets $20, I call.

{Once again, don't really want to get too crazy with my hand here.}

River brings an A, no flush draw out there.
BB checks.

{Okay, now I am thinking, "what could he have?" I run through some hands and feel like he called PF, bet the flop and turn, and checked the river when the A came, so I'm thinking he has a Q. Something like KQ, QJ, QT, Q9 all make sense to me. I also think that he wants to check it down and show his hand and just get the split with the A out there, but may be worried that I hit the A. If I were him, I might have bet the river. I decide this is a good spot to turn my hand into a bluff. If I bet here, he may think I have hit the A and fold. If he calls, I still think we're splitting.}

I bet $45 into the $89 pot.

{I think this bet looks like a decent value bet and will get him to fold out a Q a good amount of the time. But then...}

BB announces raise and makes it $90, min-raising me.

{Like what the hell. Now I am just pissed because I feel like I have to call. I don't have to call, but I am so pissed off that he is going to table AQ and got me with a sneaky play on the river that I make the crying call. Pot is also $224 and $45 for me to call.}

I call, BB shows AQ.

After this happened, I only played a few more hands and then left the tables. I was upset with my play (particularly this hand) and my results. Looking back on this, I feel he's going to miss value more often than not there with his check/raise on the river whereas I'll profit by turning my hand into a bluff because I'll fold out some Qs the majority of the time. I don't think anyone that hits an A there will check on the end after betting the entire way, so I still like my play.

I left Foxwoods down $292, which is just about 1 total buy-in. Not bad with the way things went IMO. I did walk away when I felt I was getting a little too tilted to play and am happy with myself in that respect. Minus the AK hand early on in the night, I am happy with my plays.

Foxwoods session, part I.

2008-03-27T01:15:00.000-07:00

I went down to Foxwoods tonight with a friend of mine. I've had a lot of experience at this place over the past few years. I've also had a lot of good sessions there. I played for about 6 hours tonight, $1/2 NL and finished down $300. This was one of those times though where I felt I was playing good and things just weren't working out. So I wouldn't say it was a "bad" session, but it was a losing one.

I brought $500 with me to play and sat for $250 at my first table. The max is $300, but the rest of the table was rather short and I figured this is still deeper than the normal 100 BB stacks that I'm normally buying in with. I sat tight for a little while and started to feel out the table. There wasn't much action going on, especially with me. I believe 2 or 3 rotations went by before I played a hand.

I'm going to go over my key hands and would really love feedback on them. I don't care if people bash my play, but at least have some reasoning behind it. There is usually never one right way to play a poker and I am open to all avenues.

HAND #1:

Effective stacks $250.
I limp from MP with K10cc, there was a $4 straddle on this hand.
Folds around, BB completes, straddler checks.

{I limped because it was still early and I wasn't sure of the straddler's play yet, as he was new to the table a few hands ago. I could have raised here, but I believe that I am a much better post flop player than most people.}

Flop is T 6 2 with 2 spades.
Both players check to me and I bet out $12.
BB folds, straddler calls.
Turn is the 3c. Straddler checks to me, I check.

{I checked behind here because my opponent is an unknown to me and I figure I can play some pot control by checking behind and keeping the pot small. I only have one pair and don't want to play a big pot with this hand. I believe my check behind here would do 2 things: keep the pot small with pot control and induce a bluff on the end from my opponent.}

River comes the 8h.
Straddler immediately bets out $50, I call.
Straddler mucks.

{I called pretty quick here. An overbet plus an immediate bet just smelled like a bluff to me. I figured he was firing no matter what on the river after I checked the turn and he did.}

HAND #2:

Effective stacks $250.
Two MP players limp, SB completes, I check from the BB with 67o.

Flop comes 6 5 2 with 2 hearts.
SB checks, I bet out $6.
Both MP players fold, SB calls quickly.

{SB player was a middle aged man that commented on the fact that he was waiting for his $20/40 seat to open up. I read into this that he was a fast player that would gamble it up. I figured he'd be playing just like he would in limit (looser and faster) and not caring about the money he lost here because he "plays in a bigger game."}

Turn comes Kc and he checks again.
I fire out $15, he quickly calls.

{I figure him for some sort of straight draw or a flush draw. The only hand I don't want him to have is Kxhh or K6.}

River is the 2c and he checks again.

{Now I know he missed his draw.}

I bet $15 again and he calls with AThh and I scoop the pot.

I folded for a while and didn't see any hands worth playing. Probably an hour or so passed before I played this next hand.

HAND #3:

I raise UTG+1 with KQdd to $10.
The CO calls, BB calls.

Flop comes 8 6 2 with 2 diamonds.
BB checks and I lead for $20.

{Pretty standard CB here; two overs plus a flush draw.}

CO thinks for a little while and then calls. BB folds.

{I was a little iffy on this call here. He was playing pretty tight and looked like he wanted to raise, then fold, then raise, but then just called. I also wasn't a fan of playing OOP.}

Turn blanks and I check, trying to see a free card here.
CO bets $25.

{Pot is $96 and I'm getting just under 4-1 on a call here and we both had about $200 behind. I figure if he has a set I can get all his chips with a diamond that doesn't pair. I also had him on a hand like A8, 78, 89, or maybe a pair of 9s, 10s, or Js. With those, I have my flush outs, plus 2 overs so I liked my chances here.}

I call, river blanks, and I check fold.

This next hand came up a few hands later.

HAND #4:

MP limps, hijack raises to $15.
I call in the CO with AKo.

{I thought about raising here, but decided not to to disguise my hand a little in position. I had a decent read on the hijack and he is a solid player, so disguising would work here.}

Everyone else folds.
Flop comes 7 9 T, rainbow.
Flop goes check, check.

Turn comes an 8.
He checks, I check.

{I was going to bet here but now I don't feel comfortable betting with that card.}

River Q and it goes check, check.
He tables 67ss for a straight.

{I really believe I screwed this hand up from the get go when I look back at it. I should have raised him PF. He most likely would have called and I could have taken it down with a CB most of the time. Either way, by raising PF, I think I take it down PF or on the flop the majority of the time and that is the correct play.}

After sitting around for another hour and a half, I realized this table was a little too nitty for me. The players weren't giving up much action and I'd rather find a looser game where I can apply a tight-aggressive style profitably. It just didn't seem like this table was going to pay me off when I had a good hand, so I opted to switch tables.

This is all for part I of my session. I don't want to flood my readers too much, so I'll continue it later on with a part II. Suggestions, comments, and feedback are all welcome.

Oh and Jib, if you're reading I'd really enjoy some feedback from you. I think you'd have a lot to offer.

Some MTT results.

2008-03-25T13:25:00.001-07:00

It's been a while since my last post. Midterms took up most of my time last week. I tried to work really hard studying for my exams and I believe it paid off. I was pretty sleep deprived the entire week and couldn't wait until Thursday evening rolled around. I flew home Thursday night and am now enjoying my break and catching up on some sleep. College can be rough at times.

I've been playing a lot of stud lately, and I do mean a lot. I think it is definitely my best game and I do enjoy playing it the best. I also believe that I am better than most of my opponents by a greater margin simply because not that many people are good at stud. Sure, they may understand the basics, but beyond that they don't really have a clue. I see way too many people continuing when they should be folding and not paying attention to their opponents hands. If it ever pays to play tight, patient poker, this is the game. I've played a few stud tournaments and done well in them also. I took down a $3+.30, 56 person stud MTT for $62.00 on FTP and came in 2nd on a 96 person stud MTT with an entry fee of $5+.50 for $96.00. I kind of screwed up the heads up part in which I played one hand really bad and handed the guy over 50% of my stack. Still a solid showing and some good profits.

Two days ago I had some decent runs as well. I monied the Sunday Hundred Grand and the Daily Fifteen Grand MTTs on Stars as well as cashing in a $3+.30 MTT. I also tookwon another token and played some Tier Two SNGs. I came in 6th in one which was good for the $57.00 cash, but not the $75 token. The cash isn't bad.

Yesterday was my big chance though. I fired up the $2,500 guarantee RB+AO tournament on FTP. I had a solid RB period and came out with around 10,000 chips. I built my stack up big when I was able to pick up AA, KK, and then AA again within a span of 20 minutes. We got down to the money bubble and I took advantage of it big time. When the bubble burst, I found myself fourth in chips with 45 players remaining. First place sat at just under $1,200 and I was gunning for it and feeling good. We got down to the final three tables and I was playing really well. I folded some hands in key spots where I probably could have easily gone broke had I not been disciplined enough to know I didn't need to get involved. There are times when you're ahead, but need to play things safe and get away from some hands. I find that it is a great objective misconception by a lot of players when they feel that they must get the money in if they're ahead. Poker is very situational and just because you're ahead doesn't mean the right play is to get your chips in. I found myself in this spot three different times and opted out each one. Each time I did so, I lost a few chips but was able to maintain my game and build right back up. I am also confident that I could easily be beaten at the time or simply a very slight favorite. I was still in the top five and didn't need to do any gambling just yet. The blinds were low and the stacks fairly deep.

We got down to the final two tables and I was feeling really good still. A player UTG whom I felt was very inexperienced had limped and then called my raise. I held 88 and bet a 9 high flop after she had checked to me. She shoved in and I felt I was good and was getting a good price as well. She turned over KK and it just amazed me. I still don't really think she knew what she was doing as I saw he limp/call from early positions the majority of the time. She just never raised and I ran into one of her big hands. It took about half my stack, but I was still right in the middle of the field.

I had a very solid player to my immediate left. I checked his OPR stats and they were really, really good. There was a few times when he made some awesome plays to take down pots and I could tell he knew what he was doing. Because he was experienced, I knew he was able to pull off the squeeze play. I watched him do it twice and thought he was overusing it. I will squeeze myself, but only about once a tournament. This guy did it multiple times and got caught twice, but got lucky and won the hand. It folded to me on the button and I popped it with AKo. The strong player in the SB shoved in and the BB folded. I felt he'd be shoving here with a lot of hands if I raised on the button and I knew I was going to have to call a shove. I did so and he showed A7dd. He flopped a 7 and I failed to improve. I was bounced in 15th out of 470 entrants for $43.00. It was a good showing, but I am disappointed that I couldn't pull through to the final table and get a big score. That $1k payout still eludes me!

I'd like to congratulate ChampagneAces on another deep run. He parlayed $1 into a $26 token and then came in 12th out of 723 players in the $11,500 KO tournament on FTP. He earned $174.00 after getting a cooler of a hand. ChampagneAces flopped two pair with T9 on a AT9 flop, but his opponent showed AA when the money went in. Unlucky, but still a great showing and a good payout.

Flirting with a deep run...

2008-03-15T21:35:00.000-07:00

I played a little bit today in between working on a paper for school. I hopped in a $3+.30 6-handed limit hold 'em MTT and also the 6-handed $7,000 guarantee $5+.50 RB+AO tournament. I started off doing pretty well in both of them.

I flopped a set early in the RB and doubled my stack to 6,000 after I initially re-bought at the beginning for the extra 1,500 chips. A few hands later I took down a sizable pot with a flush and was up to just under 8,000. I was able to sit tight for the remainder of the first hour and then added on during the break. I headed into the second hour with slightly under 10,000 chips and was feeling good.

I tend to play RBs a little looser than other MTTs. I gamble in the first hour and try to accumulate a good stack going into the second hour. Many players do this, but I can't tell you how many times I see people playing timid in the first hour. You shouldn't buy in to a RB+AO tournament if you can't afford to gamble a little. I'm not saying to go nuts like some people do, but loosen up a little from your normal first hour standards and you should be able to pick up some chips to move on to the next hour: where the real tournament begins. Another reason why I enjoy RB+AO tournaments so much is that you get to play deep-stacked after the rebuy period is over.

A few years ago I heard a weird take on rebuy tournaments from a top online pro. I can't remember who it was, but he was justifying gambling in the first hour. He simply stated that he is either going to accumulate a lot of chips or he is going to give up a lot of chips to the other players at his table. The reason why he didn't find the latter to be so bad was because he knew that he'd be able to get those chips back later on in the tournament because he felt he was better than most the field. Most people don't know how to manage a big stack and they will soon give their chips away and you'll get them back. I can see what he was saying.

I flirted with a deep run in the RB+AO tourney. I was short when we were approaching the bubble and started loosening up a lot to try and gather some chips and attack the tightness that is the bubble. I was able to double my stack in the process. When we hit the money I hit the jackpot. First hand into the money, things started looking promising.

Seat 1: donpeters (22,906)
Seat 2: StoliMan (8,039)
Seat 3: pretending (35,960)
Seat 4: harpin (9,922)
Seat 5: 2hi_327 (76,556)
Seat 6: HERTZZ (40,292)
donpeters antes 200
StoliMan antes 200
pretending antes 200
harpin antes 200
2hi_327 antes 200
HERTZZ antes 200
donpeters posts the small blind of 800
StoliMan posts the big blind of 1,600
The button is in seat #6
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [8h 8d] {Perfect timing!}
pretending folds
harpin raises to 9,722, and is all in {He was stalling and playing so tight on the bubble I knew he would shove in once we hit the money.}
2hi_327 folds
HERTZZ folds
donpeters raises to 22,706, and is all in
StoliMan calls 6,239, and is all in
donpeters shows [8h 8d]
StoliMan shows [4s Ad]
harpin shows [Ah Tc]
Uncalled bet of 12,984 returned to donpeters
*** FLOP *** [5c 9s 7s]
*** TURN *** [5c 9s 7s] [9h]
*** RIVER *** [5c 9s 7s 9h] [3c]
donpeters shows two pair, Nines and Eights
harpin shows a pair of Nines
donpeters wins the side pot (3,766) with two pair, Nines and Eights
StoliMan shows a pair of Nines
donpeters wins the main pot (24,717) with two pair, Nines and Eights

I was looking good now and feeling good. I got involved in another big hand that moved I think I made a good fold.

Seat 1: donpeters (34,467)
Seat 3: Poseidon N (12,794)
Seat 4: cabreton (77,556)
Seat 5: anthoscarface (130,053)
Seat 6: snakeeeeyessss (68,536)
donpeters antes 200
Poseidon N antes 200
cabreton antes 200
anthoscarface antes 200
snakeeeeyessss antes 200
boccakill sits down
boccakill adds 72,148
Poseidon N posts the small blind of 800
cabreton posts the big blind of 1,600
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Ts Qs]
anthoscarface folds
snakeeeeyessss folds
donpeters raises to 4,000
Poseidon N folds
cabreton has 15 seconds left to act
cabreton calls 2,400
*** FLOP *** [Th Qh Ks]
cabreton checks
donpeters bets 7,500
cabreton has 15 seconds left to act
cabreton calls 7,500
*** TURN *** [Th Qh Ks] [5h]
cabreton has 15 seconds left to act
cabreton bets 48,000 {I just didn't think he could shove me in here without the confidence of knowing he has me beat.}
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters has requested TIME
donpeters folds
Uncalled bet of 48,000 returned to cabreton
cabreton mucks
cabreton wins the pot (24,800)

I felt I had plenty of chips to play with and double up if I need to soon. I wasn't too worried about my stack size when I folded, I knew I could get it back at the table I was currently at. I did just that and chipped up by taking down the blinds and antes a few times before I hit a rush of three hands in a row that moved me into the top five chip leaders.

Seat 1: donpeters (28,517)
Seat 2: boccakill (52,339)
Seat 3: stokerjohn (45,950)
Seat 4: TheFrendo (40,618)
Seat 5: anthoscarface (218,553)
Seat 6: snakeeeeyessss (76,086)
donpeters antes 250
boccakill antes 250
stokerjohn antes 250
TheFrendo antes 250
anthoscarface antes 250
snakeeeeyessss antes 250
boccakill posts the small blind of 1,000
stokerjohn posts the big blind of 2,000
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Ad Qh]
TheFrendo folds
anthoscarface raises to 6,000 {One of the chip leaders, raising 2-3 per rotation and getting pretty aggressive with his stack. It was only a matter of time before I caught him.}
snakeeeeyessss folds
donpeters raises to 28,267, and is all in
boccakill folds
stokerjohn folds
anthoscarface calls 22,267
donpeters shows [Ad Qh]
anthoscarface shows [Tc Td] {Oops, he actually has a hand here, but I am still racing so I'm not in too bad of shape. I don't think I can just call here or fold with the blind sizes.}
*** FLOP *** [8d Ac 4s]
*** TURN *** [8d Ac 4s] [4h]
*** RIVER *** [8d Ac 4s 4h] [3c]
boccakill: donkeymoves ftw
donpeters shows two pair, Aces and Fours
anthoscarface shows two pair, Tens and Fours
PeterCr (Observer): ik zie het
donpeters wins the pot (61,034) with two pair, Aces and Fours

Seat 1: donpeters (61,034)
Seat 2: boccakill (51,089)
Seat 3: stokerjohn (43,700)
Seat 4: TheFrendo (40,368)
Seat 5: anthoscarface (190,036)
Seat 6: snakeeeeyessss (75,836)
donpeters antes 250
boccakill antes 250
stokerjohn antes 250
TheFrendo antes 250
anthoscarface antes 250
snakeeeeyessss antes 250
stokerjohn posts the small blind of 1,000
TheFrendo posts the big blind of 2,000
The button is in seat #2
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Ac As]
anthoscarface folds
snakeeeeyessss folds
donpeters raises to 5,000
boccakill folds
stokerjohn folds
TheFrendo folds
Uncalled bet of 3,000 returned to donpeters
donpeters mucks
donpeters wins the pot (6,500)

Seat 1: donpeters (65,284)
Seat 2: boccakill (50,839)
Seat 3: stokerjohn (42,450)
Seat 4: TheFrendo (38,118)
Seat 5: anthoscarface (189,786)
Seat 6: snakeeeeyessss (75,586)
donpeters antes 250
boccakill antes 250
stokerjohn antes 250
TheFrendo antes 250
anthoscarface antes 250
snakeeeeyessss antes 250
TheFrendo posts the small blind of 1,000
anthoscarface posts the big blind of 2,000
The button is in seat #3
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Ks Ac]
snakeeeeyessss folds
donpeters raises to 5,000
boccakill raises to 19,500 {Definitely felt he thought I was getting out of line here with my third raise in a row.}
stokerjohn folds
TheFrendo folds
anthoscarface folds
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters has requested TIME
donpeters raises to 65,034, and is all in
boccakill calls 31,089, and is all in
donpeters shows [Ks Ac]
boccakill shows [Ad Ts]
Uncalled bet of 14,445 returned to donpeters
*** FLOP *** [4h 4c 7h]
*** TURN *** [4h 4c 7h] [Kh]
*** RIVER *** [4h 4c 7h Kh] [As]
donpeters shows two pair, Aces and Kings
boccakill shows two pair, Aces and Fours
donpeters wins the pot (105,678) with two pair, Aces and Kings

Here's the hand that was going to make a break the tournament. The aggressive player had raised it up and a medium stack shoved in. I had QQ and reshoved.

Seat 1: donpeters (98,223)
Seat 2: skafulator (92,388)
Seat 3: stokerjohn (51,400)
Seat 4: TheFrendo (51,168)
Seat 5: anthoscarface (202,586)
Seat 6: snakeeeeyessss (59,986)
donpeters antes 400
skafulator antes 400
stokerjohn antes 400
TheFrendo antes 400
anthoscarface antes 400
snakeeeeyessss antes 400
donpeters posts the small blind of 1,500
skafulator posts the big blind of 3,000
The button is in seat #6
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Qh Qc]
stokerjohn folds
TheFrendo folds
anthoscarface raises to 9,999 {Once again he is getting funky.}
snakeeeeyessss raises to 59,586, and is all in
donpeters raises to 97,823, and is all in
skafulator folds
anthoscarface has 15 seconds left to act {I'm praying he calls!}
anthoscarface folds
donpeters shows [Qh Qc]
snakeeeeyessss shows [Kd Ah]
Uncalled bet of 38,237 returned to donpeters
*** FLOP *** [5d Tc Kh]
*** TURN *** [5d Tc Kh] [Ts]
*** RIVER *** [5d Tc Kh Ts] [7c]
donpeters shows two pair, Queens and Tens
snakeeeeyessss shows two pair, Kings and Tens
snakeeeeyessss wins the pot (134,571) with two pair, Kings and Tens

Lost your standard flip late. I win this pot and I have over 170,000 chips and am second in the tournament. Too bad it didn't work out, but at least I'm not out and have chips I can double with. No worries.

I did well to make some moves in order to steal the blinds and antes against certain stacks I knew wouldn't call me. Timing worked out where no one picked up a hand they could afford to call me with and I gained some chips. Here's how I went out.

Seat 1: donpeters (43,437)
Seat 2: skafulator (93,288)
Seat 3: stokerjohn (67,900)
Seat 4: TheFrendo (46,668)
Seat 5: anthoscarface (141,687)
Seat 6: snakeeeeyessss (162,771)
donpeters antes 500
skafulator antes 500
stokerjohn antes 500
TheFrendo antes 500
anthoscarface antes 500
snakeeeeyessss antes 500
snakeeeeyessss posts the small blind of 2,000
donpeters posts the big blind of 4,000
The button is in seat #5
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Ks Ad] {I'm feeling a double here.}
skafulator folds
stokerjohn folds
TheFrendo folds
anthoscarface raises to 141,187, and is all in {Oh I am feeling a double!}
snakeeeeyessss folds
donpeters calls 38,937, and is all in
anthoscarface shows [9d Kc]
donpeters shows [Ks Ad]
Uncalled bet of 98,250 returned to anthoscarface
*** FLOP *** [5c 6h 2c]
*** TURN *** [5c 6h 2c] [7d]
*** RIVER *** [5c 6h 2c 7d] [8h] {That's just wrong in so many ways.}
anthoscarface shows a straight, Nine high
donpeters shows Ace King high
anthoscarface wins the pot (90,874) with a straight, Nine high

I ended up coming in 33rd out of 584 entrants. I was only in for $15.50 and won $41.40. Wasn't too bad, but I'm left thinking what could have been if I took down that QQ hand or that AK hand. Didn't have too much time to dwell on it as I found myself at the final table of the $3+.30 limit tournament. I was short in chips and needed to get something going.

I picked up KK and raised it up with two callers from the SB and BB. The flop was all spades and I didn't have a spade. It was checked to me and I fired. Both players called and checked to me again on a blank turn. I fired again, only the SB called again. I figured him for the As. If he flopped the flush, oh well. I'll take my chances of him chasing a flush or having a pair versus him flopping the flush and try and get my chips in. I did just that and it turns out he flopped the nut flush. I might have played the hand differently if I had more chips, but I don't think there was much I could do. I wasn't out, but was very short, with only 5-6 BBs left in my stack. I got it in with 77 to two overs and lost my race to finish in 4th place out of 62 entrants. I came away with a prize of $20.46.

Overall, I am happy with my play in both tournaments. I paid a total of $18+.80 in entries and won $61.86, giving me a profit of $43.06. A pretty good start to the day.

I played some more after writing some more of my paper. I entered some Tier 1, 6-handed SNGs for tokens. I came away with two $26 tokens and one second place finish for $10.00. I ended up making some money on these SNGs and coming away with some cheap tokens. I might try and save up 10 tokens and then just have a day where I play all $24+2 tournaments or try and turn them into $75 tokens.

I also played some heads up with a guy that I will play anytime, at any stake. I finished up $65 to him and here are some photos of how it went down.

Some thoughts on stud.

2008-03-15T00:08:00.001-07:00

I played some 7-stud tonight for a few hands. I 3-tabled some $0.50/1.00 for a little over 500 hands. I was down early do to some of my hands not holding up quite as well as I'd have liked, but I was able to get some good cards and end up profiting over $50.00 on the session. I love stud and I find myself to be a very proficient stud player. I'd like to think of stud as my best game, if not tied with NLHE for sure. I just don't find too much time to play it as the games aren't always as juicy as the NLHE ones.

I generally find that people will chase, chase, chase anything in stud. I think the combination of limit betting and the fact that you get seven cards just draws people in, no pun intended. I love to sit nice and tight and capitalize on the chasers and punish them for their draws. Tonight I did just that. And although they hit some of their draws early on, I exhibited a lot of discipline to be able to get away from some tricky hands when I felt I was beat. It all turned around later on when I was nailing flushes and full houses to the chasers' lesser hands. It felt good to have a good session and I hope to be able to keep it going.

On a side note, I did some reading and watched Poker After Dark (PAD) tonight. Gavin Smith has been playing all week and he ended up getting down to heads up with Phil Ivey. It was pretty funny watching Gavin play so drunk. I am a fan of Gavin, but I would like to point out that I don't think it's a good way to play as inebriated as he was: fumbling chips, misreading his hands, slurring his speech, etc. Ivey seemed to be getting annoyed at times when he couldn't put the drunk away and come out with his third PAD title. It's never a good way to play when you're drunk and I try myself to not do it at all. I will make occasional exceptions, but never when I am playing seriously. Small games with friends for the social aspect never hurt anyone. You can certainly see how Ivey was so focused on the match whereas Gavin was all over the place. It just gave me a outside view of what I must be like when I have played drunk in the past. Doesn't seem like it would make for a profitable outcome.

I'm going to be playing some late night tournaments tonight on FTP. Stop in and say hello if you're on.

Some OPR statistics.

2008-03-12T17:16:00.001-07:00

I was just browsing some Official Poker Rankings (OPR) stats earlier and I had some mixed feelings towards what I found. I play the most under the alias donpeters on FTP, PS, and Bodog. It's too bad OPR doesn't cover Bodog because I have had a lot of success in MTTs there that won't be shown.

I'm not happy that my ROI is only 1%. I guess I can look at it like it's positive and I'm not losing money, but I'm not really winning any either. I have had my running-bad streaks in MTTs and I know that I used to play a lot of MTTs as recreation when I was first starting out in poker. Of course, I can't eliminate those results as I have to look at the entire picture. I am happy with the fact that when I cash, which is 22% of the time, I win the tournament roughly 10% of the time. So for every 10 times I make it to the money, I should win one of those times. I would like to get this up to around 15-20% if possible. I am able to come in the top three places just under 27% of the time. I like this number because top three is usually where the money is at in tournaments. This number is skewed somewhat due to playing 18-man SNGs. Even though they generally pay out the top four players, it's really only worth it to come in the top three.

Another good stat that I feel good about is the fact that when I finish in the money, I make the final table around 55% of the time. In bigger tournaments, you can get a solid payday if you make it to the final table, but as always, the big money is in the top three. I also like that when I make the final table, I tend to win the tournament just under 18% of the time.

I'm not sure as to whether or not these stats are good, average, or bad. I am going to try and do some searching around later tonight and in the next few days to see what a good measure for these stats would be. If anyone has any input, that'd be great. For right now, I'm feeling pretty good about these numbers, but I want to improve on them as always.

Good luck in AC to Brad!

2008-03-12T05:44:00.000-07:00

I feel like it's been a while since I last posted, but in reality it's only been a few days. I haven't been playing too much. I have just been finding myself more and more irritated at the end of the day. Not with my play, but more or less my results. I have always preached that it's not about results, it's about decisions. As long as you're making the right decisions, the results will come. Well, I feel I have been making the right decisions and things just aren't working out. I've decided to back down on my play this week and take some time away from the tables. Everyone could use a break right? It's also good that I take a break because I have a ton of school work to attend to. Midterms are coming up, and well, I hate midterms. They are definitely one of the most stressful times of the semester. I generally find that midterms are more stressful that finals.

for those of you that read the B_Log, BJU18 has gone up to AC to play in some of the circuit events up there. I'm sure he's going to have some updates on his blog, and I'll try and keep everyone posted from what I hear myself. He's a solid player and is due to breakout in one of these smaller events sooner or later. I hope he sticks to his guns and trusts his reads as reading is probably the strongest part of his game. Good luck to Bradley!

On a side note, I was playing a ton of poker last week, but mostly MTTs. I kept running good and able to push into the top 25% and then cash a good amount of times. I just wasn't able to seal the deal. I don't really think it was my play. I kept getting it in good late in tournaments, but couldn't pull out a winner on the hands I should have one. Here's an interesting decision I had deep in a Poker Stars $2+.20 MTT. Bear with me as I don't have the hand history.

Blinds 400/800/50.
Folds to me in the SB, I raise to 2,400 with QQ.
BB shoves on me for 51,000, putting me all-in.

I have around 30,000 chips remaining and am in 18th chip position out of the remaining 86 players, 198 cashed. The BB player has been playing a good amount of hands and I have seen him shove like this on players raising his blind before. He only showed AJo one of those times, the other times his opponent was on a clear steal and he took the pot. I took my time and thought he would be shoving here with any two broadway cards, any pair 55 and above. I normally raise to 2.5x the BB, but because I knew I was going to be playing OOP had he just called, I wanted to make it a little more. I don't like to vary my raise sizes based on my hands, but more so based on my position.

Another factor that came into mind was that I was pretty much in control of the table. I was able to chip up rather nicely here and there and improve my stack a lot each round from picking up the blinds and antes along with other uncontested pots. Looking back on the hand, I don't think I should have called here. I know I have the third best hand PF in HE, but I don't want to be up against three hands AA, KK, and AK. I'm not sure if this is the right thinking, but because I was able to be in control of the table so much is why I should have folded. I would have had plenty of chips and been able to continue to control things the way I wanted to I believe. The more I thought about it, the more I decided that he's shoving here with too wide a range for me to not have him crushed: AQ, KQ, AJ, A10, 55-JJ, and maybe even some other suited/connected hands. I decided that I was going to play for the win and try and grab hold of the chip lead if I won this hand. Turns out he had AK and I was racing. I lost the race, but it leaves me wondering what if? What if I would have folded, left myself with a good stack and continued to chip up and play on? I'd really like some opinions on situations like this. I feel I would have rather stuck it in here if had didn't have such a good stack and as much control of the table. I'm not unhappy about my play or my results, but I am always open to suggestions.

Sticking to my guns.

2008-03-05T22:03:00.000-08:00

Positive thinking leads to positive results...

My school held a poker tournament tonight. They do it once or twice every semester as the Student Union Board tries to raise some money and promote a fun experience. In the past the tournament structures have been absolutely horrendous. The fields are usually very soft and we always like to get some side bets going between the core group of guys here (last longers, first one out, etc.). This time around, one of the members of our crew implemented the structure that we use in our tournaments and it allowed for a ton of play. 10,000 in starting chips with the blinds at 25/50 and going up rather slow in 20 minute levels. It was great. I found it quite amusing that most of the players were complaining about starting with so many chips! Like whhhaaaaaa??? I knew I was in for a good time and the play is going to be something I can chuckle about on the inside.

Despite a normally big turnout for the event, there were only 18 players that showed up, and only one of these players regularly plays with me so it was a great spot to be in for either one of us. The buy-in was a mere $5 to cover food and the prizes were for the top three, $25, $50, and $100 gift cards to Best buy. Normally these tournaments are just straight donkaments, for all you 2+2ers out there, but this time the structure would enable me to actually have a chance without it being a luckfest.

I have been running very badly online as of late so I thought this was going to be a good change. Some live play always makes me feel better, as I do consider myself to be a much better live player and I prefer it much more. I finished up with class around 5:00p and had about an hour to get ready for the tournament. I got a salad and some yogurt and sat in the lounge to relax and clear my head. I really wanted to have a good showing in this tournament and play my best. I felt I needed to do well in order to get my ass out of this funk I have been in. I closed my eyes for a little after eating for a little while and got myself mentally prepared. I knew the structure, I knew how I wanted to play, I knew I needed a good showing to get my spirits back up. I went in there feeling great as play began a little late, around 6:20p.

Of course, the play was terrible. 6-handed at 3 tables, for a total of 18 players. I loved it. Even though there is usually upwards of 50 players, there was a very small field this time and the fact that we were short handed made me feel great. I knew I could exercise a lot of advantages short handed that I had on the rest of the group. About 15 minutes into the tournament, UTG min-raised to 100. MP reraised to 300 and I looked down on the button to find AA. I raised it up t 1,000 and then out of the blue the SB behind me shoved all-in for 10,000 chips. UTG called after a few seconds of thought and then MP thought for a good amount of time and he called, too! I was in heaven and happily stuck my chips in. Everyone had at least 9,500 chips and I had them all covered. I was up against the SB's QJss, UTG's A10dd, MP's KK and I held up, scooping a cool 40,000 chips only 15 minutes into the tournament. I told you the play was soft! Players were allowed one rebuy and they all did so.

A few hands later in the next level I picked up JJ in the CO. UTG min-raised to 200, MP called, I made it 1,000 to go, both UTG and MP called. The flop came Q J 3 rainbow. UTG bet out, MP called, I raised, UTG stuck it in, MP called, I called. Another huge pot worth 25,000 and I was up against AQ and KQ and held up to scoop another huge pot. The friend of mine, also known as JOBtheNUTS to those who have read about some of his big tournament wins here, was in awe. I was wrecking the rest of the field in chip size and it was unbelievable. I proceeded to spike another set of jacks in a 3-way for some good action and before the end at the end of the first hour I was sitting with just over 100,000 in chips, blinds were 100/200 and the next closest player had just under 20,000.

From there on out I just took over. I was reading so well and winning the hands I should win. I picked spots well to take pots and got away from two big hands that could have really hurt me. I folded a flush to a full house and a lower full house to a higher one. I didn't show, but they did and it made me feel really good about how I was playing. I did manage to run my KK into AA, but it was only for about 1/10th of stack it didn't hurt too much. I was in the zone and grinded down until we got to the final 5 players. I started to really open up and attack the loose/passive play that was going on. I chipped up a good amount and I think I took every uncontested pot out there. The blinds got really big compared to my opponents' stacks when we got to 4-handed and after the bubble burst, I had so many chips it was ridiculous. I raised from the button at one point with A5ss and the BB, who already had invested 3,000 of his chips for the blind, folded to me after he had only 1,100 left in his stack. Heads up I just raised every pot because my opponent was so short and I took about 5-6 of them before he finally had to call. He showed a Q5o and I held a K6o. I hit a 6 on the flop and it held, giving me the win. I walked away with a great showing, a $100 Best Buy gift card, and a lot of confidence in how I played. Granted it was a really, really weak field, I am happy with how well I was able to read people and narrow their range down with great accuracy.

As for the gift card, I plan on putting it towards a new monitor. I am looking for something in the $150-250 range in order to be able to run a dual monitor setup with my laptop. This will definitely help when multi-tabling and also assist at other times when I would love a bigger screen to work with.

I also want to mention that I cashed pretty deep in a $2+.25 MTT late last night on FTP. Granted, I only made $15 after coming in 12/280 players, that wasn't the big story. In the first level, I had a complete nut at my table shoving all-in almost every hand and I picked up AKcc and raised it up from OTB. He shoved like he had been doing and I called. He showed K8o and spiked an 8 on the flop and I got knocked all the way down to 50 chips. Yes, 50 chips and the blinds were 15/30. I was in the CO next hand and knew I had to find something in the next few hands to go with. I picked up Q10ss two hands later and tripled up. I doubled once again and then won another pot to get back to 800 chips. I sat for a while, just waiting for a good spot and a good hand. I picked up 1010 and got it in again with the crazy guy who held A6o. I held there too and was back in business. I was able to build my stack back up to be one of the top 10 chip leaders with 50 players left.

We broke the money bubble at 27 and I was right in the middle of the pack, but then someone turned a straight with their OESD to my 2-pair and I was at the bottom again. I double twice more and then was bounced in 12th place. This just goes to show you that you can never give up in a tournament. Just because I took a beat early, didn't mean I needed to shove all-in next hand with ATC and give up. I knew I had a long way to go and needed to get lucky more than normal, but I did and it worked out quite well. You're never out of a tournament until you have no chips left, remember that. A chip and a chair, along with some luck can go a long way.

Terrible week so far, but looking ahead.

2008-03-05T09:40:00.000-08:00

Well, I just can't seem to make anything happen. I don't know what's going on, or maybe I do... I'm losing. I'm not only losing, I'm losing bad. I've played 10 sessions this week so far and came out a loser in 7 of them! That is just horrendous. I could look at the bright side and say that I've had 3 winning sessions, but in those I barely won. I don't know what's going on, but I really need to get a hold of things on the felt. I just feel like I'm running all my big hands into bigger hands and losing all the hands I should win. I can't get lucky to suck out on someone, even just once, and I am also finding luck is against me when the odds are in my favor. Variance is an absolute pain in the ass and I can't stand it right now. I've dropped down to the lowest limits in order to try and recoup some of the feel for winnings, but I am running into more and more people that are just cleaning me out. It's not their good play, but just ungodly amounts of stupid plays that seem to be holding up.

As always, I will look at this like a test. A test of my will and fortitude to stay in the midst of the battle and pull through. There are good times and bad times in poker. I had a heck of a good time last week just dominating people, and now they are all banging me up this week. I've been through runs like this before and it sucks going through it. Hopefully I can manage my way and keep my head up. I try not to get discouraged, but it's hard when you keep tallying up negative scores at the end of the day. I'm not going to back down or take a break. I don't really believe that will help. A bad streak is a bad streak and the only thing I think will get me out of it to to play through it and keep smiling when I know I have made the correct decision. It's been pretty hard not to go on tilt. I'm usually pretty immune to losing hands because I've been playing for so long and it's just part of the game that I have built up a tolerance for it. Sometimes though, when it just keeps coming and coming in waves, you're left wondering if the seas are ever going to be calm again.

I have gotten back into reading some of the poker books on my shelf. Whenever I go through a bad run, I usually resort to studying the game even more. Looking for ways I have to plug the leaks in my game or insights on different strategies or philosophies. I went to the shelf the other day and found:

This book is decent. I'm not going to engage in reading through the entirety of it, but I am certainly going to pick out some chapters that I feel I should be getting in to. I didn't buy this book, it was given to me by a friend so I'm not as inclined to have read it cover to cover right when I first got it. It's been sitting in my room for a while and I'm going to see what is has to offer. I started off towards the middle-to-end of the book with the chapter entitled Data Management. I also plan on reading the chapters Winning Tactics for Online Play, Online Tells, Found Objects, and Tips, giving me five chapters in all to read through. So far the reading has been fairly straight forward and quick.

One thing I enjoy about poker books is they will always get you thinking. I know a lot of experienced players will read a few books when they first start off, but then give up on reading book when they become a better player and play often. I don't think one should do so. Even if a book doesn't have much insight on the game or new tactics that you have never heard of, it's always a good idea to refresh on some basic strategies and ideas. I like to go into reading a poker book with the mindset that no matter what, good or bad, I'll get something out of it. If the book is bad and offers me nothing, it'll show me how not to play or what not to do. On the other side of things, I can gain extra knowledge and new ideas from books that I would deem "good".

On the topic of poker books, are there any anyone out there suggests I read? Here are some of the books I recommend:

The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky
No Limit Texas Hold'em by Brad Daugherty and Tom McEvoy
The Psychology of Poker by Alan Schoonmaker
7 Card Stud by Roy West
Super System 1 and Super System 2 by Doyle Brunson
Caro's Book of Tells by Mike Caro

All of these books have provided me with great insight about poker and they are definitely some of my favorites. I plan on reading a bunch more poker books in the future because you can never study too much of something you want to be the best at. I'll be sure to post my reviews and thoughts on each book after I read it.

I am also hoping that reading some and studying a little more will keep my head in the right place even if I am running poorly right now. I need to keep myself looking ahead and focus on the positives while trying to fix the negatives. Even though the light at the end of the tunnel is dim sometimes and there's bumps in the road, there is still another hand, another game, another day. I'm sure I'll be out of this funk in no time!

Proud to be a PPA member!

2008-03-04T08:26:00.000-08:00

The Poker Players Alliance is a nonprofit organization that consists of poker players and poker enthusiasts who have joined together in order to promote the game, ensure its integrity, and protect the rights of poker players... and I'm a proud member! I joined the PPA a little over a year ago and it's really growing. The Alliance is now boasting over 930,000 members and still climbing in hopes of reaching 1,000,000 members. If you're a poker player or just have a thing for the game, please sign up. You can do so for free, but there are other levels of membership to help donate to the cause.

When the UIGEA was put into play, but PPA vowed to fight against it in order to right things. In 2005, the PPA spent nearly $260,000 and in 2006, they spent $540,000 lobbying against the bill. This past year it was $940,000 spent in lobbying efforts to help retract the UIGEA and get things back on the upside for the poker players. I am proud to have dedicated some time and some of my money to this cause and I really feel everyone should do the same. Even if you don't have any extra cash to spare, you can sign up for free and send a letter to your Congressman in order to help push the cause. The more people we have behind us, the better the lobbying will go.

I highly encourage everyone to get on this and help the push on Washington to get the UIGEA removed. Join now!

Just some thoughts.

2008-03-03T23:27:00.000-08:00

I had another terrible, terrible day on the tables Monday. I played a ton, over 1,500 hands, but just couldn't get anything going or anything to work out. I lost a lot of hands I should have won and I ran all of my big hands into even bigger ones. I am going to stay positive and remember that it's a long grind for a cash game player.

I took a break from the action and read some articles over at Card Player. I came across an interview by Lizzy Harrison with Kenny Tran. Kenny is a very well respected professional and I admire he grinder mentality so much. Here is a quote from the interview when Tran was asked what characteristics great cash game players share that stood out to me:

"Guts. Great cash-game players are fearless. They just have to be really gutsy. Experience is also important. And I have to say that they must be able to play under pressure. The players who handle the pressure best take all of the money in the end. Also, a great cash-game player will never second-guess his reads or his instincts. He must be willing to go broke at all times."

I am working really hard at poker and trying to get as good as possible. I know I am only playing the micro-stakes, but you have to start somewhere. I have played enough poker that I completely understand what Tran is talking about when he mentions that great cash game players will trust their instincts. I will always trust my instincts, even when I may be scared or tend to back off. It's something that everyone should really try and work on, especially when starting off. The more you trust yourself, the better you will be. If you can learn to trust yourself and your instincts early on, you're reads will improve over time with experience and you will progress steadily.

Sometimes when you're finding it hard on the felt, you just have to get some inspiration elsewhere.

A bad start for me, but a good one for the fellas.

2008-03-03T07:05:00.000-08:00

I thought I was getting off to a good start to the month, but then it all went south. I fired up my first few cash sessions for March and did well. I score some good wins and was moving along just like I thought I should be. Then, all of a sudden I made a couple bad decisions and it was a spiral downfall after that. The bad plays weren't all that bad, I just made some weak calls when I should have folded (or maybe raised). But after that, I fixed things and got my mind back to thinking un-donkey like. It's too bad luck wasn't on my side after that because I had my AA cracked four times in the remainder of the session, and my hands repeatedly went down to worse hands that caught up. Sometimes it just doesn't work out your way. I didn't tilt and figured it was just a matter of time before my luck turned in the session and I'd get it back back. I built some of it back up and was halfway back to even for the day when I took some more beats and got knocked right back down to where I was. After a few minutes of contemplating the session and hands, I realized that despite my bad play early on, it was wasn't my luck today.

I truly believe poker is a game of skill, but you do run bad at times. It happens to me, it happens to everyone, it's just the game. I also believe that anyone serious about the game should look at poker in the long run of things, rather than the short run. Yes, I had a bad session and could keep battling to get it all back, or I could go home and lick my wounds for to be back for battle another day. I choose the latter. The games will still be there, the fish will still be spewing money. I'll take my session loss and move on, just a few bumps in the road.

That's the bad news of things. I always preferred the bad news first. I'd rather be broken down and then lifted up as opposed to the other way around. Think about it this way... would you rather start a session off losing and then win, or start off winning and then lose?

The poker crew at my school has been a pretty good group of guys for the past few years. We started off playing cash games and tournaments a while back and have continued it ever since. Players have come and gone, but the core group is in tact and is as solid as ever. And, we're playing so good right now, all of us, especially online.

KakaFC22 was found at the final table of a $10+1 KO tournament on FTP last night. He went into the final nine in the middle of the pack, only to emerge victorious! He bested 849 other entrants to take down first place. I'd gladly have no problem backing this guy in almost any tournament. He also cashed in the Sunday $750k major. What a way for KakaFC22 to start off the month with a score of over $1,800!

JOBtheNUTS also scored big this weekend. I got a call Saturday night from him to get on the rail of his tournament. When I pulled it up, he was down to the final two tables of the Daily Double B on FTP sitting in fourth chip position. I watched the tournament from here on out and I have to say, the play was quite bad. Raises were anywhere from 4x-8x BBs PF and there was no reraising, just shoving. The blinds weren't even that high and I feel there could have been a lot more play in the tournament. I tend to see people getting anxious and crazy when the blinds get big and they are deep in a tournament. But you have to remember, the blinds need to be big in relation to your stack before you start going nuts. JOBtheNUTS seemed to understand this and sat pretty tight, picking off a few people on his way to the final table. When he got there, the play was just crazy, people firing everywhere. JOBtheNUTS stayed out of the way for the most part and picked his spots very wisely. He found himself heads up, but dominated by a 5-1 chip disadvantage. He did manage to get it in with AKo versus A3o, but a 3 hit the board and JOBtheNUTS finished in 2nd place for just under $1,700! Very well deserved.

Clopis87, another member of our group also had a good weekend and start to the month. He began by taking down a $10+1 90-man KO tournament for $230. After a night off, Clopis87 got back on the tables and went deep in a few more tournaments. He placed 2nd and 5th in two more $10+1 90-man KO tournaments and also finished 4th in a $10+1 MTT for a total of $370 in winnings. But wait, he wasn't done there. Last night, Clopis87 made his way into the money in both Daily Doubles for a double cash and went deep in the Daily Double A, coming in 10th place. He managed to run AJo into AKo all-in PF and busted on the final table bubble. He earned a nice $168 for his effort and brought his total over the weekend to over $750!

These guys all did an awesome job and I hope they keep it up because they are just on fire right now. I also hope they don't start playing over their heads, I know how a few wins can make you feel invincible at times. They are all solid players and it's just amazing that we're all peaking at the same time. If you ever find any one of us deep in a tournament, you'll surely see most of the crew on the rail watching all the action. Congratulations fellas on some great finishes and stellar starts to the month of March!

I'd also like to mention that BJU_18 is heading to AC this weekend with KakaFC22 to dabble in some live action. BJU_18 is a solid live player and hopefully hits some big scores in the WSOP Circuit events he will be playing this weekend. He has the ability to go deep and take one of these down and I really hope he does. He finished on the bubble, and I do mean ON THE BUBBLE of a WPT event at the Borgata last year. It was such a killer to him and he just needs to realize that shit happens. We've all been out on the bubble, but you gotta play to win. I'm confident he'll be right back on his game come this weekend. The trip report and updates will be over at The B_LOG, so definitely check them out to see how he's doing. I'll also try and post some stuff here as well.

The past week and looking ahead.

2008-03-01T09:52:00.000-08:00

It's been a few days since I've posted, but only because I've been playing my ass off lately. I'm truly grinding online as hard as I've ever been this week. FTP was offering up double points and I was going to take full advantage of it. I've netted over 8,000 hands this week alone. I'm still sticking to my schedule of weekly cash game play coupled with weekend tournament play and it's working. I'm feeling really, really good about my game over the past few weeks and hope I can keep it up.

It's about time that FTP finally updated their software and improved upon some things. I really like the site and I love the players their, haha. I am going to make a couple deposits on some other sites either this month or next month. I'm thinking about putting money back on Stars and Bodog, along with maybe starting up at Cake Poker. Cake seems to have some cool gimmick ideas going on over there that I might want to try out and they also have a bonus where I can score a free year's subscription to Poker Savvy. That's right up my alley.

Phil Ivey took down the LAPC this past week. He's just a poker machine, but I'm going to have to throw my congratulations elsewhere. My good friend who plays under JOBtheNUTS on FTP came in second place last night in the Daily Double B for a cool $1,600. He did really well going into the final two tables and was able to maneuver his way down to the last 4 or 5 when he picked up KK and was called all-in by A9o. As we seem to want to complain about so often, the ace flopped, but the river brought a K to give it back to my boy. He got down to heads up, but was dominated with only 18 BBs to the other guy's 50+ BB stack. A few hands into heads up, JOBtheNUTS got it in with AK versus A3 and a 3 spiked to take him out in second. It happens and that's poker. So much congratulations go out to him for a good score and I hope he can keep it rolling in MTTs.

Like I said before, I've been playing a ton this week. I have really been slacking on producing some hand histories here, but it's only because I've really been multitabling hard and haven't been saving them. Don't get me wrong, I have been reviewing key hands, I just feel the need to sleep when I'm not playing or doing something school related. Here are my spreadsheet and graph for the week.

My graph this week is a lot more steady and flowing up. I said I wanted to get my BB/100h up around 4-5 from last week when it was at 2.5. This week I was over 19 BB/100h, which is an amazing rate. You should always have a good sample size when analyzing these numbers, and I played over 8,000 hands. That is pretty good in my opinion and I am very proud of my play and my results. I hope I can keep this up and be able to move up limits sometime in the near future.

I dabbled some in some $.25/.50 games as you can see in my session spreadsheet, and I didn't fair to well money wise. The big losing session, I was up and then took two consecutive beats on some big hands that caused a big swing in my stack. I battled to get some of it back, but still finished the session down a good amount. I'm sure with some more honing of my game, I'll be ready to move up in due time. Before I move up though, I do want to make sure I can get 30 buy-ins for the game I'm going to be playing. I am a pretty big bankroll nit, even though I spew sometimes. Lately I've been doing really well with my money management and I vow to keep it up! I also want to have three consecutive winning sessions under my belt before moving up to the next limit. So once I hit 30 buy-ins, I'll be looking to score three winning sessions before I start playing the bigger limit regularly.

In other news, I qualified for Silver Iron Man $15,000 freeroll this past month and also the One-A-Day $2,000 freeroll. Hopefully I can go deep in both of these and pad the BR with some big scores. Both of these freerolls have plenty of participants that either don't realize they qualified, don't care to play in it, or just simply blind out. Which makes it for a seemingly easy field to get down to the money. In the Bronze freeroll last month, a friend of mine didn't even play and he cashed.

My goals for the month of March will be to continue to play good and increase my BR. I hope to be able to qualify for Gold Iron Man status, maybe Iron if I really push it. I am going to try and score some bonus Iron Man medals this month, too. I think I can definitely get at least 10 of them by earning 500 FTPs in a day, which will give me two bonus medals each time I do so. Look for me to make some big moves in March, I'll be doing my best and grinding my ass off once again!

Video from The Colbert Report.

2008-02-26T14:27:00.000-08:00

I am working to head up the GPSTS chapter at my school and I came across this video on their website. It is a great video that speaks of how poker can and should be used as a strategic learning tool. Check out the video at www.gpsts.org.

Weekend MTTs and a great cash session.

2008-02-26T13:39:00.000-08:00

I am sticking by my schedule and played some MTTs this weekend. I was able to go deep in a few, but couldn't quite seem to come away with that big score. Here are the tournaments I played in and my results.

2/23
$6+.50 Token Frenzy 158/235
$1 MTT 185/1176
$0+.10 $1k guarantee $.50 RB 800/3463
$2+.25 180-man SNG 12/180 for $5.40
$2+.25 180-man SNG 11/180 for $5.40
$2+.25 180-man SNG 71/180
$2+.25 18-man SNG 16/18
$2+.25 18-man SNG 9/18
$3+.30 turbo MTT 383/501
$2+.25 18-man SNG 4/18 for $3.60
$2+.25 180-man SNG 24/180

2/24
$1 "The Ferguson" 234/1618 for $1.29 {5th in chips, AA cracked by the chip leader who held Q10... killer!}
Freeroll 51/12,000 for a seat into round 2
Freeroll $50k guarantee satellite 1075/10,000
$1+.25 90-man SNG DS 42/90
$2+.25 180-man SNG 20/180
$2+.25 RB 10/169 for $17.61
$1 6-max MTT 224/883
Freeroll round 2 3191/6680

In total I paid $35.40 for entries and came out with $33.30 of winnings along with a seat into round 2 of the freeroll. I can't help but feel that maybe my tournament game needs some work and I have since been reviewing some online videos from Card Player Pro. I highly recommend these videos to anyone who really wants to supplement their game. They have a free 7-day trial and then you can cancel or keep going with your subscription. I also didn't like that when I did go deep, the tournament seemed to always be snatched out of my hands. I either took a beat to knock me out or cripple me, or I just had some bad timing when I picked up a big hand and someone had a slightly bigger hand. The AA hand in "The Ferguson" would have made me chip leader by 3x second place and it just sucked to go down. I got the chips in as a huge favorite though, so I can't complain.

FTP has a promotion this week that you can earn double the Full Tilt Points during certain time slots. It's going on Monday-Friday and is for ring games only, which I think is my best area of poker. I'll definitely be getting on as many of these time slots as possible. I played a late slot last night from 1am-3am and had an amazing session. I finished up around $60.00 for the session and it was a great feeling. The 6-max videos by Dani Stern, also known as "Ansky451" or "supernova9", are just awesome and have definitely helped me a whole ton. I can't wait to watch more videos from him and see what he has to offer. During the session, the tables were just filled with nuts, fish, calling stations, you name it. All the bad players seemed to be out and all of my hands were holding up. With that combination, it meant I was going to have a good session and I did. I hope it can carry over for the rest of the week and a while to come.

I am disappointed that I got caught up doing some work for school and missed one of my days I needed in order to get Gold Iron Man on FTP. I did qualify for Silver though, so I'm not too upset. It was just a goal I was going for. I do put some blame on FTP because the past two weeks have just been terrible for connection on their site. I did increase my status from last month, and next month I will definitely be shooting for Gold.

Weekly analysis.

2008-02-23T10:14:00.000-08:00

I played a total of 20 cash sessions since last Sunday. Some sessions are significantly longer than others due to time constraints, but that's a great thing to love about online poker. You can hop in and find a game anytime and play for as little or as long as you want to. I netted over 5,000 hands in a little over 26 hours this week. I was able to show a good profit of 145 BBs overall. I'm also earning around 2.78 BBs/100h. I'd like to get this number up to around 3-4, and I would also like a larger sample size of around 10,000-15,000 hands. I am hoping to be able to reach those goals within the next 2-3 weeks.

Here's my spreadsheet and graph from this past week's sessions.

As you can see by looking at my spreadsheet, I have been having a good amount of swings. I had a few sessions where I took some hard hits due to some bad beats. I know a lot of players tend to blame all their losing sessions on bad beats, but I try not to. I did have one losing session on February 20 where I lost $8.60 that was directly due to me making 3 really bad calls. I was up at the time and in one 15 minute period, made some terrible plays. One was a desperation call on the river, while the other two were just calls when I should have and could have easily folded. After those hands went down, I got up from the tables because I knew I was making some really bad decisions. I wasn't going to sit there and let myself continue to play bad while trying to get unstuck. Poker is a game for the long run and when I'm playing bad I'll take a break. There will always be the next session where I can have a clear state of mind and play much better.

Looking at my graph, my profits seem to be because of a few big winning sessions. I would definitely like to have the graph more linear with somewhat of a constant slope. I'm a physics and math major and might take a look at fitting some curves to the graph and doing some analysis on that, but we'll see how much time I have over the weekend.

I plan on applying to Card Player Magazine for an internship to cover the '08 WSOP. I feel I'd be a great addition to help them out and I love the game. I'll let everyone know whether or not I am able to get the internship, so please keep your fingers crossed!

The past few days.

2008-02-22T12:46:00.000-08:00

I've been playing a good amount this week. It's still a tough time juggling time for studying and time for playing. I get in my sessions here and there as much as I can. I've started keeping better records lately and it's really helping me to see the overall picture of my play and how I am doing. I can also point out key factors in the stats that help me to determine why I had a good or bad and winning or losing session.

I started playing the $.10/.25 6-max CAP NL tables on FTP this week and let me tell you, they are gold. I've had some really good sessions here and only 2 significant losing sessions. My two biggest losing sessions occurred when I had some really bad luck in 3-4 big hands that changed the outcome of my net gain by a lot. In the end though, I am definitely happen with the decisions I am making and how I am playing on these tables. They are full of some terrible players and it should help for me to build really well in the next few weeks and months. I started really keeping hardcore records on Sunday and I think I'll be doing a weekly post about how I did during the week. Full of some stats, charts, and graphs for everyone to enjoy. This will be cash game play only as during the week I am sticking to cash games. I'll do a weekend post Sunday night when I am done with the weekend of MTTs and SNGs. Stay tuned for those, I'll be getting this past week's stuff up tomorrow.

Here are some hands that I thought were interesting. The first hand was from a 6-max $.10/.25 NL table, with no cap.

Seat 1: birdboot ($48.20)
Seat 2: MidgetB ($25.90)
Seat 3: TheNarts ($24.15)
Seat 4: pkt_diamonds ($26.60)
Seat 5: donpeters ($22.50)
Seat 6: Kstuff681 ($23.55)
MidgetB posts the small blind of $0.10
TheNarts posts the big blind of $0.25
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Th 9h]
pkt_diamonds folds
donpeters raises to $0.75 {I had a good image at the table and was opening my range when it was folded to me PF.}
Kstuff681 folds
birdboot calls $0.75
MidgetB folds
TheNarts folds
*** FLOP *** [7s 2h 4d]
donpeters bets $1.50 {Standard continuation bet. Board was low and didn't seem like anything that he would have hit.}
birdboot raises to $3 {This bet happened pretty quickly and there were two hands a few rotations back where I had CB the flop and the same guy min-raised me and I folded both times. I really felt he was doing the same again.}
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters raises to $8
birdboot has 15 seconds left to act {No insta call or shove is good!}
birdboot has requested TIME
birdboot folds
Uncalled bet of $5 returned to donpeters
donpeters mucks
donpeters wins the pot ($7.50)

This was a key hand in that it showed this player that I will use force back at him. For the remainder of the session, there was not one time where he came over the top of me for a min-raise and I pretty sure he stayed somewhat clear of me except for one or two hands in the next couple hours. This is also a good example of what paying attention to your opponent's tendencies. Twice before the same situation occurred ad I deferred away from it, but this time I was almost positive this play and those previous plays were seen as a bluff because he thought each time I was just on a CB. On this hand, I did put him on air and just a bluff. I thought about just calling and CR'ing the turn to get some more money out of him. But I had no hand myself and would rather take it down right here. Against a more sophisticated opponent, I'd be more apt to make that type of play.

Seat 2: sr voj-tek ($18.05)
Seat 3: empty_syzygy ($25.75)
Seat 4: pkt_diamonds ($35.85)
Seat 5: donpeters ($15.65)
Seat 6: ssuuper6 ($10)
donpeters posts the small blind of $0.10
ssuuper6 posts the big blind of $0.25
The button is in seat #4
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Js Jd]
sr voj-tek folds
empty_syzygy folds
pkt_diamonds folds
donpeters raises to $0.75
ssuuper6 calls $0.50 {Good, a nut can come along for the ride. He had been sending money all around the table except to me.}
*** FLOP *** [8c Ts Tc]
donpeters bets $1
ssuuper6 calls $1
*** TURN *** [8c Ts Tc] [9h]
donpeters bets $3
ssuuper6 raises to $8.25, and is all in {I wasn't too worried here and I put him on a hand like J9, 89, 78, 79, 2 clubs with a J. I was pretty sure he wouldn't make this play with a 10 or a made straight, he slowplayed all those hands and generally checked them on the river, too.}
donpeters calls $5.25
ssuuper6 shows [Qh 9d]
donpeters shows [Js Jd]
*** RIVER *** [8c Ts Tc 9h] [Qd]
ssuuper6 shows two pair, Queens and Tens
donpeters shows a straight, Queen high
donpeters wins the pot ($19) with a straight, Queen high
ssuuper6 is sitting out

Seat 1: EFritz ($44.90)
Seat 2: ChampagneAces ($36.35)
Seat 3: pgold999 ($34)
Seat 4: Symba 308 ($13.95)
Seat 5: rubbshouse ($48.75)
Seat 6: TremelR ($6.65), is sitting out
EFritz posts the small blind of $0.10
ChampagneAces posts the big blind of $0.25
The button is in seat #5
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to ChampagneAces [Ac 5s]
pgold999 folds
rubbshouse stands up
Symba 308 calls $0.25
rubbshouse folds
EFritz calls $0.15
ChampagneAces checks
*** FLOP *** [Jd 5d Ad]
EFritz checks
ChampagneAces bets $0.75
Symba 308 raises to $3
EFritz folds
ChampagneAces has 15 seconds left to act
ChampagneAces has requested TIME
MadSwan sits down
MadSwan adds $15
ChampagneAces calls $2.25
*** TURN *** [Jd 5d Ad] [6s]
ChampagneAces has 15 seconds left to act
ChampagneAces has requested TIME
ChampagneAces bets $4.25, and is capped
Symba 308 has 15 seconds left to act
Symba 308: trying to play me burt I am in anyway
Symba 308 calls $4.25, and is capped
ChampagneAces shows [Ac 5s]
Symba 308 shows [8d 7d]
*** RIVER *** [Jd 5d Ad 6s] [Jc]
ChampagneAces shows two pair, Aces and Jacks
Symba 308 shows a flush, Ace high
Symba 308 wins the pot ($14.50) with a flush, Ace high

This hand didn't work out. I think I might have played it too aggressively and I definitely should have slowed down. I'm either WA/WB here and I just went into hyper-aggressive mode and bet it all the way. I did almost get him to fold though, which is a good thing, but now that I think about it, he's not going to get away from this hand. Aggression is good and works very well especially in short handed games, but sometimes the
texture of the board will require you to slow down in a hand. I thought about slowing down here, but put him on a hand like an Axd with just top pair and a diamond draw. Even then, I'm not a huge favorite. Although I do have boat redraws, I'd rather be jamming here with a set and chasing a boat rather than 2 pair. This was a mistake that I think was due to the fact that I was playing so aggressively at the table, I just kept it up in this hand. You have to know when to slow it down, and well, I didn't and got a nice whack for doing so.

I've been staking a friend lately online and well, he had a disgusting run yesterday, doubling the money I staked him with. I believe he played 6-7 $2+.25 18-man SNGs and at one point, he took down 3 in a row, followed by a second place finish and a third place finish. He knew he was running hot and playing well so took a shot in a tier one 18-man $6+.50 SNG for a $26 token. He got the token and then signed up for the $28,000 guarantee tournament on FTP. He did very well and won a couple big hands with AA turning a full house and 44 flopping a set to someone's TPTK. He grinded all the way into the money and had to keep his head above water most of the time while in the money. He plays under ChampagneAces and with around 150 players left, he sat around 100th in chips. He was able to grind it all the way into the top 60 when he won a key hand. He was short with less and 10 BBs in his stack and in need of some help. OTB, he had good fold equity against the size of the BB's stack so he shoved when it was folded to him. The BB picked up AA and called to ChampagneAces's K2o. But luck was with my friend as the turn brought a 2 and the river a K for two pair and the best hand. It was still a rough going, but he was able to grind it up until the top 30 spots. The big stack UTG+1 raises it up and ChampagneAces shoved from the BB with A8o. The big stack was getting a good price and had a ton of chips, so he called with 78h. The flop came 10 J K, and the turn a dreaded 9. The river blanked and my friend finished in 28th position out of 1486 entrants. This was good for $125 off of the original $6+.50 investment. Well done ChampagneAces and keep up the good work!

FTP down and Phil Ivey's priceless reaction.

2008-02-20T15:44:00.001-08:00

Well, lately Full Tilt Poker (FTP) has been acting up. The site has been constantly freezing up and disconnecting. This has been annoying many people including myself. I'm trying to reach some Iron Man goals on the site and it's just getting harder and harder with the way this is going. There are some articles out there that I have been reading about why this may be happening and it comes down to DDOS hacking. Some of the articles are linked below.

http://www.shadowserver.org/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Calendar.20080218
http://www.poker-king.com/poker-king-articles.php?article=378
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack

I've since emailed them with my concerns and I'll let everyone know what they say. In browsing the forums, I've seen many people complaining and worrying about this issue. I am positive that despite this minor set back and maintenance that is occurring, play should resume once FTP fixes the issues they are having. I also hope other sites are strengthening their software so that this type of thing does not happening to them.

In brighter news, or not so brighter news as you will see, I was tuned into 2+2's latest podcast when they ran a clip from a hand that went down on FTP's Poker After Dark between Patrik Antonious and Jennifer Tilly. This hand is quite uneventful yet very ridiculous and Phil Ivey's face is one of the best reactions I have ever seen. Check out the clip below.

And on another side note, I was watching Ivey play the other day and saw him destroy some people heads up on FTP's Ivey Deathmatch table. It was absolutely absurd to watch him play with anywhere from 600k-800k on the table. If you ever want to kill some time and happen to see Ivey playing heads up, it's a great thing to watch, minus the chatbox whoring that is done by all the railbirds.

Poker Tournament Series #8

2008-02-17T21:18:00.000-08:00

Not sure if I have mentioned it before, but I participate in a poker tournament series at my school. I am co-founder of the series and we have been running it all school year. Every other weekend we hold a tournament that pays cash to the winners, awards points for the tournament leader board, and accumulates money for an end-of-the-year prize pool. You can find out more information about the tournament HERE. The tournament has a great structure that allows for a great amount of play.

I started off late in today's match and was blinded down a little bit. The structure is good enough that I didn't lose a lot of chips and I was in perfect condition when I got to the table. The first two hands dealt to me were KK and KK, not too shabby of a start. I then sat quietly for a few levels while other players made some moves, but there was no real action. When the blinds got into the 300/600 level, I found myself with just over 12,000 chips. I limped in MP with J10h after UTG and UTG+1 limped. The SB completed and the BB checked. The flop came J 8 6, rainbow and it was checked to me. I bet out, but the dealer didn't realize I was still in the hand and turned the next card. It was a 9, but we had to fix the situation and after we did, we ran it again after the SB called. The new turn was the same card and the SB lead into me. I was fearful of two pair or maybe some sort of straight that he just picked up, so I just called. The river blanked and he checked to me and I checked behind. Low and behold, he held 57 for a straight. Guess I lost a minimum on that one.

After a few blinds hit my stack and people stealing from me, I couldn't really get anything going and found myself with right around 6500 in chips. I was in the SB for 400 when UTG limped, MP limped, and the button limped. I didn't bother to look at my hand and sensed a lot of weak limps out there so I just moved in to pick up the money in the pot. Everyone folded and I checked my hole cards for a whopping 23o. Fold equity and timing can be a great thing in poker when you need some chips. I had just added 3200 to my stack fairly easily.

This next hand came up and was just a killer for me:

UTG (weak player, passive) limped for 1000
SB (solid, tight player with respect for my play) completed for 1000
I was in the BB with 13,000, holding A7o.

Once again I sensed weakness and raised to pot to 3500 to pick up the blinds. UTG thought and called, rather weakly, SB folded. Flop came K 6 3 with two clubs. I fired another bet of 4500 and UTG called and left himself with 3000 chips or so. I was irritated right now and couldn't manage to fire on the turn when a blank 9 came out and UTG moved all-in. Stating he had QQ, but who really knows. I really had him on a flush draw but couldn't figure out if it was the Axc and he had me beat. I folded and left myself with a short stack. The very next hand it folded to me in the SB and I shoved to steal the blinds against a tight, passive player who went into a long deliberation and then called with A10o. I had 95o, and at least I was live. I didn't get lucky and was out in 8th place out of 12 players. Not really a big deal. I felt I trusted my reads most of the day, but they just didn't work out in the end. I've also been playing so much online poker lately that I wonder if my live skills have suffered from such. I'll be thinking about my play tonight and some tomorrow and getting ready for the next match in two weeks. As of right now, I stand in 5th or 6th on the leader board and need to move up into the top 4 if I want to play for the money at the end of the year.

The all important 'D' word!

2008-02-15T17:22:00.000-08:00

Dis-ci-pline noun 1. a system of rules governing conduct 2. behavior in accord with rules of conduct; behavior and order maintained by training and control.

I'm not happy. I'm not happy with my play lately or my decision making. I haven't been managing my bankroll as well as I would like to and I've just been all over the place lately when it comes to game selection. I'll jump from SNGs to MTTs to cash tables one after an other and I need to get back to the shear grinding of it all. This has only really been happening in the past week or two and it's really irritating me. I just can't seem to break the bad habit. Not only is it hurting my play, but it's hurting my bankroll. I just need to settle back into a regimen that I can adhere to. I really would like to move up in limits in my cash play, but without having a good system to follow, I don't see myself doing so anytime soon. I'm going to try my best to follow the following regimen or schedule from here on out.

Monday-Friday cash tables only. No tournaments unless they are scheduled ones that I won into for nothing and have to play.
Saturday-Sunday will be my SNG and MTT days.

By breaking it down like this, I won't be jumping back and forth from hour to hour with what type of game I'm getting into. Hopefully I'll show a profit over each week, so that the buy-ins to the MTTs and SNGs won't hinder my bankroll too much. If I can hit a few decent scores on the weekends, it'll assist padding to my bankroll for the next week. I also like how this schedule of sorts will allow me to focus on that goal at hand; either cash game play or tournament play, without both going on at the same time.

I am also not impressed with the way I have been keeping records lately. I have been recording my stats, don't get me wrong, but there's really no order to them. I understand where I'm at and how I'm doing, but I need to be more systematical with my record keeping. I'll also be trying to pin that down starting now. I hope to post results and graphs of each week of cash game play and each weekend of tournament play so everyone can follow how I'm doing and what exactly it means to stay DISCIPLINED!

We're just over halfway through the month of February and I'm well on my way to getting Full Tilt's Gold Iron Man status this month. I really hope I can hammer out another 10,000 ring game hands in the remaining days this month and show a good profit. I'm also hoping to go deep in a few MTTs. Wish me luck as I do all of you, except when you're in a hand with me.

I make my own satellites.

2008-02-14T08:21:00.000-08:00

So I was getting a little bored yesterday from the monotonous grind, so I decided to try and win into the 50-50 tournament on Full Tilt. I wanted to play the $8+.80 and $14+1 turbo satellites to get in. If I win two seats, I get $55 cash, so I definitely wanted to get in on these and give it a shot. I decided to make my own satellite for this occasion, starting with $4.30. I would play 2 $2+.15 heads up SNGs to begin. If I won one of them, I'd play 2 more. I won the first, lost the second, played 2 more and won the third and fourth ones. 4 $2+.15 heads up SNGs played, $8.60 paid in entries, $12.00 in winnings, net profit of $3.40. Adding that to my original $4, I now bought into a $6+.25 turbo heads up SNG and won that for $12.00, $5.75 in profit. I was now up $9.15 from the SNGs and adding my original $4, I sat at a heads up $.25/.50 NL cash table and made $15.50. I now bought into the 2 satellites I wanted to play, and I did all of this within an hour or so, allowing myself only $4.30 to start with. If I lost that, that would be my shot. I was bounced from the $8+.80 satellite, but won a seat in the $14+1 satellite. Onto the 50-50!

Sat down in the 50-50 with Huck Seed across from me. Not that it matters a whole lot, but you do get a bounty for knocking a pro out of a tournament, so I was thinking chance may come into play here and I might get to KO him for $50. I played tight earlier on and then gave away the majority of my chips on this hand. I hate the way I played it looking back and am upset with myself.

Seat 1: HuckleberrySeed (2,460)
Seat 2: GV pAp1 (2,005)
Seat 3: pdiddyshowno (4,560)
Seat 4: KORNFAN1 (4,305)
Seat 5: donpeters (2,060)
Seat 6: asexpected (4,205)
Seat 8: Epic Monolith (2,530)
Seat 9: saladfinger (2,615)
Epic Monolith posts the small blind of 25
saladfinger posts the big blind of 50
The button is in seat #6
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Td Ts]
HuckleberrySeed folds
eb2007 sits down
eb2007 adds 2,785
GV pAp1 has 15 seconds left to act
GV pAp1 folds
pdiddyshowno calls 50
KORNFAN1 folds
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters raises to 200
asexpected folds
Epic Monolith folds
saladfinger folds
pdiddyshowno calls 150
*** FLOP *** [2s 4d Kd]
pdiddyshowno checks {Limp/call, then checks, seems weak to me.}
donpeters bets 300 {I'd say a CB will take this down the majority of the time here.}
pdiddyshowno calls 300
*** TURN *** [2s 4d Kd] [5s]
pdiddyshowno checks
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters bets 700 {Check/call, check again? I choose to fire another bet and try and take it down right here.}
pdiddyshowno raises to 3,175 {Uhhhh... yeah.}
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters has requested TIME
donpeters folds

Well, looking back on the hand, I think I should have done one of two things to fix this hand. I'm fine with my play up until the turn. When he checks to me on the turn, I should decide to fire a bet more like 90-100% of the pot, rather than 70-75%. This bet will look stronger because I will be committing myself to the hand. It will also commit myself where I don't have to think about a call or fold if he reraises me, I've already basically put myself in by committing so many chips. Or I could have checked behind and then reevaluated on the river where I might be able to call a bet depending on size or fold, but I'd save myself the chips that I bet on the turn. I think I should have played the hand on the turn with an all or nothing attitude. I'm either going to go for it here and commit myself, or back off and relinquish the hand if so.

Let me know about this hand, because I'm dying for some good analysis on what to do here. I busted a little while later with top pair, king kicker to middle set.

I am always creeping around the the Cardplayer.com forums and I usually post a lot of my hands on there for further analysis. I posted my hand from the 50-50 and also the hand by Mikerizz33. Here are the links, you should check them out.

Mikerizz33 hand
50-50 hand

Other than that, I started a challenge with myself to play 100 $5+.40 heads up SNG shootouts. These consist of 4 people, 2 rounds, tournament style. You beat the first guy, you play heads up for the money. I'm about a third of the way to completing the 100 and then I'll post the stats on them and evaluate how I'm doing.

Check out this hand from Mikerizz33.

2008-02-11T15:26:00.000-08:00

Two of my friends Mikerizz33 and KakaFC22 have been doing really well in tournaments as of late. They have managed to play in a few FTOPS events by winning their win in via satellites. Mikerizz33 was able to win 4 extra seats to event #1 and 2 extra seats to event #9. Awesome job on that and it definitely helps pad the bankroll. He's played in events 1, 8, and 9 with no cashes. Nothing seems to be working out when he hits the big stage. Here's a hand summary he asked me to put up that I think is worth talking about.

Mikerizz33 raises UTG+1 with AQ to 3x the BB to 360. Two middle position players called and then the BB moved all-in for 1400 total. The action got back to Mikerizz33 and he was faced with a decision. It was 1040 more to call and he had 2700 chips left after his raise. It was decision time:

(a) Call the extra 1040 and commit about 40% his remaining stack to this hand and be left with just under 14 BBs
(b) Fold and leave himself with 22.5 BBs
(c) Reraise all-in for an additional 1660 chips on top of the BB's all-in

What do you guys think the best play would be?

My analysis:
I'm not sure of any of the opponent's tendencies or the table dynamics, but I think I'd be more apt to choose option (b) here. I don't like cold calling and feeling committed to the hand. Also, calling will allow the players behind to also call with increased pot odds if they have they have a hand to do so with. With that said, I don't think I'm calling ever. So that leaves me with the final two options, fold or shove all-in. With folding, there would still be a good amount of play left in my stack with 22.5 BBs. I only have AQ and would be thinking that I'm either dominated by the BB's hand or that I'm racing with him. With the structure of the event and the slowness of it, I think I'd be more than content with folding here. If I didn't fold though, I would choose to shove all-in. This would help to give me isolation against the BB alone if I thought I had him beat and unless one of the callers behind me is just smooth calling my original raise with a monster, I'm thinking I'm ahead of them or that I have enough fold equity on them. Not to mention my reshove would show a lot of strength on my part. I probably break down my plays something like this: call 5%, fold 60%, raise all-in 35%.

It turns out Mikerizz33 choose option (c) and moved in trying to isolate against the BB, a perfectly fine play in my opinion. What he couldn't understand is how one of the middle position players called holding 66 for around 75% of his or her remaining chips. Well, I don't have an answer for that either. Maybe they wanted to race or just get lucky, who knows. All we know is that obviously Mikerizz33's shove didn't work in isolating the BB. I think this is a bad call by the middle position player, unless they choose to gamble if they put the two all-ins on completely bogus hands. Even then, why risk it? I think in the end though, if Mikerizz33 chooses to shove and isolate there, he might invite weak calls like this, even if someone does have a slightly better hand. He's already committing a good amount of his chips and the extra call behind is only adding chips to the pot for him to win. I say because if he chooses to reshove with AQ and is willing to accept a race with the BB, why not accept another person in there to race with also?

Just another day of the grind.

2008-02-10T01:17:00.000-08:00

Had a good time partying last night at my place, so I woke up kind of late this morning. I was up in time for the Bronze $10,000 Iron Man freeroll on Full Tilt that I qualified for last month. It was a good tournament and really easy to make it into the money. I'd have to say about 25% of the field didn't even show up and was blinded off. I know a friend of mine that didn't play one hand, yet made it to the money to collect $15.00. Out of the 1015 entrants, I was able to work my way into the money and come in 152nd place, good for $17.50. I didn't see much of anything in the tournament and just maneuvered my way around things. Next month I am shooting for the Gold $20,000 freeroll. Heck, it's free money, and it'd a huge win if I could final table one of these.

I was kind of all over the place today between tournaments, sit-n-gos, and cash games. Here's how things finished off at the end of the day:

Cash games:
5 hours, 35 minutes total
790 hands
18 % flops
23/42 showdowns {Still need to work on this!}
+9.95

Tournaments:
Bronze $10k freeroll - 152/1015 for $17.50
$3+.30 KO double stack turbo - 23/90 but won $7.50 because I had 10% of my friend who took it down
$2+.25 turbo RB satellite to the fifty-fifty - 65/172
$5+.50 KO MTT - 55/557 with 4 KOs for $4.00 {Bubble boy!!}
$1 "The Ferguson" - 256/1433
$5+.50 6-handed KO MTT - 211/511
$2+.25 turbo RB super satellite to FTOPS event #9 - 1/53 for a $50+5 satellite seat

Total: $29.80 paid in entry fees
Net: +$29.00 and a $50+5 satellite seat

SNGs:
$10+1 - 6/9
$6.50+.40 Heads Up - 2/4
$2+.25 18 man - 13/18
$2+.25 18 man - 10/18
$2+.25 18 man - 6/18
$2+.25 18 man - 4/18 for $3.60
$2+.25 18 man - 5/18
$2+.25 18 man - 12/18
$2+.25 18 man - 6/18
$2+.25 18 man - 5/18

Total: $35.90 paid in entry fees
Net: -$32.30

Overall: +$6.65 and a $50+5 satellite seat

I was able to come out in the positive, but I'm not happy at all with how the day went. I don't know what I have to do to change things around. I feel as though I'm playing good and making the right moves, but nothing seems to be going my way. I am constantly getting it in with the best hand and nothing is working out. I'm not talking about the little things, but when it matters most I just can't see to pull the pot my way, I'm mostly talking about the tournaments and SNGs.

My bankroll began at $170.00 on January 4, 2008. I built it up to around $300.00, but had a big downswing and am now sitting at $214.00. I netted about 15,000 hands in January and am almost at 5,000 for February so far. Since January 4th, I've played 19,965 hands at the $.05/.10 NL cash tables.

For February, I've set a few goals for myself:

Qualify for the one-a-day $2,000 freeroll on Full Tilt
Qualify for the same Iron Man level or better and play in the freeroll (on pace for Gold right now)
Take down or final table a couple MTTs for a good profit

I've had a good friend of mine become somewhat of an understudy to me lately. He's been playing mainly the $.05/.10 NL cash tables and dabbles in some micro buy-in tournaments now and then. Him and I played a $3+.30 KO SNG with 90 entrants today and he was able to pull off the win. I watched him and he did really well and we then went over some hands after the fact. But for the most part, he did an awesome job to pull off the win. I had 10% of him in the tournament, so he was able to make me a few dollars as well. Congratulations to Tarr6!

Maybe I should just stick to grinding it out in the cash games for now. I referred a friend of mine, so I'll be working to clear that bonus, which should help the bankroll out. Hopefully this FTOPS satellite works out tomorrow and then I can make something happen in the event. I know if the cards hold, I'll be a force to reckon with. I'm confident in my game and as long as I feel I'm making the correct decisions, I just have to wait for the results to come around. Wish me luck in the satellite tomorrow, I'll be trying to do it big for the FTOPS!

A decent cash session with a bad mistake in between.

2008-02-09T09:55:00.000-08:00

After taking a day off, I returned to the tables Friday morning and afternoon and got a good session in. Throughout the day I played 3 different session with some breaks in between for class and food. For each session, I'm just going to post one key hand, good or bad.

Session 1:
100 hands
1 hour, 25 minutes
34% flops
5/7 showdowns
+12.70

I opted to just play one table to begin with an did well on it. I more than doubled my stack with some key hands. I don't normally see such a high percentage of flops, but the table dropped to 3-4 players at one point and I opened things up during that time. I did play a little looser than I normally do preflop. I wanted to try it out and see if it worked for me, but I made this decision after the table seemed full of players I could really hone in on and get some good information.

Seat 1: philtheshowkill ($7.85)
Seat 2: donpeters ($9.85)
Seat 4: njpokerhoney ($20.15)
Seat 5: Zocki Hook ($19.90)
Seat 7: newnewnew ($19.80)
Seat 8: catmann40 ($21.10)
philtheshowkill posts the small blind of $0.05
donpeters posts the big blind of $0.10
The button is in seat #8
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [8h 9h]
zicke3 sits down
njpokerhoney folds
Zocki Hook folds
newnewnew raises to $0.20 {This guy min-raised a lot}
catmann40 calls $0.20
zicke3 stands up
philtheshowkill calls $0.15
donpeters calls $0.10 {Already in the BB and I have a very playable hand in this situation.}
*** FLOP *** [8c Kd 8d]
philtheshowkill checks
donpeters bets $0.70 {Flops like this with players behind me, I like to come out betting.}
newnewnew calls $0.70
catmann40 folds
philtheshowkill folds
*** TURN *** [8c Kd 8d] [7h]
donpeters bets $2 {Keep betting, no need to get tricky or too worried, play it straight forward.}
newnewnew calls $2
*** RIVER *** [8c Kd 8d 7h] [Qh]
donpeters bets $6.95, and is all in {Still feel I have the best hand so I'm just gonna try and max my value here.}
newnewnew calls $6.95
*** SHOW DOWN ***
donpeters shows [8h 9h] three of a kind, Eights
newnewnew mucks
donpeters wins the pot ($18.10) with three of a kind, Eights

Session 2:
422 hands
3 hours, 16 minutes
22% flops
14/27 showdowns
+12.65

Another decent session money wise, but I'm not impressed at all with the percentage of showdowns I won. There was one or two times when I went to a showdown from one of the blinds and it was checked around, other than that, I want to get this up and win as many showdowns as possible. This following hand was a weird one for me. As you'll see, I made the call but I'm not to sure if it was a good call. While in the hand and faced with a big bet on the turn, I had a pair and was open-ended, but I have notes on my opponent and he is just a loose cannon that will fire a lot when scare cards come. I went with my gut and just didn't feel he had it, and I was able to use my notes on him to back up my reasoning.

Seat 1: Al Stubbino ($19.85)
Seat 2: Legomli ($1.70)
Seat 3: PredatorsBall ($9)
Seat 4: walterburle8 ($0.85)
Seat 6: Priv8te ($7.55)
Seat 7: Jimbo412 ($12.05)
Seat 8: markmccoy ($4.15)
Seat 9: donpeters ($15.80)
Priv8te has 5 seconds left to act
Priv8te posts the small blind of $0.05
Jimbo412 posts the big blind of $0.10
The button is in seat #4
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Qs Qc]
markmccoy folds
donpeters raises to $0.40
Al Stubbino folds
Legomli folds
PredatorsBall calls $0.40
walterburle8 folds
Priv8te folds
Jimbo412 folds
*** FLOP *** [7h Jc Td]
donpeters bets $0.95
PredatorsBall calls $0.95
*** TURN *** [7h Jc Td] [9d]
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters bets $2
PredatorsBall raises to $7.65, and is all in {Does he really have an 8 in this spot? 2 pair?}
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters has requested TIME
donpeters calls $5.65
PredatorsBall shows [7s As]
donpeters shows [Qs Qc]
*** RIVER *** [7h Jc Td 9d] [5h]
PredatorsBall shows a pair of Sevens
donpeters shows a pair of Queens
donpeters wins the pot ($16.35) with a pair of Queens
PredatorsBall adds $10

The pot at the time was $6.85 and I was forced with calling another $5.65 to win a total of $12.50, so I was getting 2.2:1 on my money here. If he flopped two pair or turned two pair, I'm around a 1.75:1 dog with 1 to come. Knowing this opponent, here's what ran through my mind. On the flop, he likes to jam and raise with draws, so I'd rule out the open-ended straight draws KQ and Q9. He could have any J here, J10, J9, maybe J8 but I know him to push hands that are paired up with draws hard, so I'd rule that one out, too. My best guess was a hand like QJ, KJ, AJ, but leaning more towards QJ because he would have picked up the open-ended draw on the turn and is now firing away on me. He likes to gamble and I'd also say that 20% of the time here he could be running a total bluff. I broke it down somewhat like this, 20% bluff, 60% pair plus a draw, 20% two pair. Worse case scenario with the pair plus a draw is QJd where he is around 12% to split with me and 25% to win. All that said, I decided this was a good spot to call and it turns out he was using the scare card to his advantage (another thing I have in my notes of him).

Session 3:
150 hands
1 hour
30% flops
7/14 showdowns
-7.85

Once again, my showdowns won percentage is terrible, but at one point I was playing heads up and checked it to the end. Still, I need to get this up. Here's the main reason why I finished the session down, the following hand.

Seat 1: ppcflyer ($17.65)
Seat 2: o2befubar ($25.85)
Seat 3: coachgw3201 ($5.70), is sitting out
Seat 4: Fishmeister1 ($18.85)
Seat 5: soarsoar ($19.70) {Very solid player that I know his tendencies well.}
Seat 6: ObliWan ($5.70)
Seat 7: walterburle8 ($8.50)
Seat 8: donpeters ($8.95)
ppcflyer posts the small blind of $0.05
o2befubar has 5 seconds left to act
o2befubar posts the big blind of $0.10
The button is in seat #8
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Js Jd]
Fishmeister1 folds
soarsoar calls $0.10
ObliWan calls $0.10
walterburle8 folds
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters raises to $0.60
ppcflyer has 15 seconds left to act
ppcflyer folds
o2befubar calls $0.50
soarsoar calls $0.50
ObliWan folds
*** FLOP *** [Ts 9c 3d]
o2befubar checks
soarsoar checks
donpeters bets $1.75
o2befubar folds
soarsoar calls $1.75 {He's gotta have something to call here. He's a tight player.}
*** TURN *** [Ts 9c 3d] [5s]
soarsoar checks
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters bets $3 {I thought about checking behind, I almost did and knew I should, but then for some dumbass reason, I didn't.}
soarsoar raises to $6 {Now I know he has hit a set, I just know it.}
donpeters raises to $6.60, and is all in {I know he has a set, yet I shove in? Yeah, I am an idiot and stacked off here like a complete moron when I shouldn't have.}
soarsoar calls $0.60
donpeters shows [Js Jd]
soarsoar shows [Th Tc] {Yeah, I knew it. This is where I hit myself in the head with my mouse and yell.}
*** RIVER *** [Ts 9c 3d 5s] [Qd]
donpeters shows a pair of Jacks
soarsoar shows three of a kind, Tens
soarsoar wins the pot ($16.80) with three of a kind, Tens

I don't know what I was thinking. Actually, I do. When he limp/called preflop I know I can narrow him down to two big suited cards, but not too big like QJ, KJ, J10 and also medium pairs. I know this player well enough and how solid he is. When he calls my flop bet I know he connected and my feeling is he flopped a set and he'll come at me on the turn. Knowing this, I know I should check behind on the turn, I just know it... yet for some stupid reason I decide right before I hit check to bet. Yeah, I'm an idiot. Right when he check-raises me I know I'm done for, but wait... I still call. I think I might have told myself, "he might have 2 pair and I can draw to a better one, or maybe he has A10s and picked up a flush draw now." I told myself this so I could talk myself into calling when I had already decided folding was the best play here. This is after I talked myself into betting after I decided checking behind on the turn was the best play. This is me being a moron and leaving the session a few hands later because I was tilting at how bad a play I just made.

That does lead me to something though. I know tilt is a big issue with players and you have to do your best to control it at all times, even when nothing seems to be going right you have to try and stay on top of your game or you're just going to bleed money away. When I first started out I would tilt, curse, yell, tell people how bad they are, etc. whenever I was hit with a beat or just got unlucky in a hand. I soon learned I needed to control my emotions and have worked really hard to always keep them in check. If I feel emotionally skewed by a hand due to luck in some way, I take a breath and just move on to the next hand, no worries there. But if it's one thing that gets to me more than anything else, it's when I make a bad play. When I know I should have done something differently, but talked myself into doing the 'wrong' thing, it just puts me over the edge. Afterwards I'm always just left to tell myself, "you just learned the hard way." I've gotten better at not learning the hard way and have become more able to trust my instincts with confidence at the tables. Sometimes though, I make a terribly bad decision and I just don't know what I was thinking when I look back on it. I talk myself into these bad plays when I have already decided the right or better play to make. I tilt myself and I should do a better job next time of knowing that if I do talk myself out of a decision, it's probably not going to be for the good.

A big final table for a friend.

2008-02-07T21:39:00.000-08:00

One of my good friends and avid poker player has been on a hot streak lately. He's been cashing left and right in tournaments and doing really well. He's the one that I mentioned I had 10% of in the first FTOPS event. Tonight he played FTP's $25,000 guarantee tournament. With around 35 people left, KakaFC22 grabbed the chip lead and held onto it for a while. He made it down to the final table and was able to play steady and solid poker and grab 4th place for just over $3,500.

I had a side bet going with a railbird of FergonKKron. He put his money on him and I had my money on KakaFC22, we also had bounties thrown on each other if one knocked out the other. FergonKKron did go on to win, but got extremely lucky on a preflop all-in when he had QQ dominating his 44. He pulled out quads and went sailing on to victory and I was out $10.

The next hand is KakaFC22's final hand. The button raised it up to 2.5x the BB and KakaFC22 was on the short stack and shoved in from the SB with AQ and was insta-called by A10. He held up until the river and instead of doubling up to a healthier stack, was bounced out in 4th position. Still an excellent showing and it's just unlucky it didn't work out. Congratulations to KakaFC22 on his big score!

Paul Darden with a win...

2008-02-07T11:27:00.000-08:00

I've played a Foxwoods a ton in the past few years and love it there. I know Paul Darden came up playing there and did very well before hitting it big and getting his name out there. I saw he took down event #12 at the L.A. Poker Classic recently, the $1,000 buy-in Omaha 8ob tournament. I had the opportunity of meeting Paul at Foxwoods a couple years back after I ran a crazy bluff on his friend playing $1/2 NL. I've watched Paul play a bunch of times, especially the $75/150 and $150/300 stud games at the Woods, and I really respect his play and think he is an excellent player. He's had some TV success and it's good to see him score this win. You can check the brief article out over on Cardplayer.com here.

Yesterday's cash session and a day off!

2008-02-07T08:13:00.000-08:00

I sessioned last night at the $.05/.10 deep table Xperiment on FTP. There's a group of about 7-8 players that regularly play on this table that I have a lot of respect for as a poker player. They play patient and solid and we all seem to do fairly well there. Then of course there is the good old 7-8 players that just donate to the game all the time. Gotta love those players. I'm cutting out the hand histories for the day, but if you'd like them just ask. Here are some screen shots of the showdowns.

I'll be taking a much needed day off today from playing. I've been going through a bad run the past week and playing a ton of poker. I just need to have my head clear for the day and not stress about what's going on on the felt. I have some work to get done for school that I'll be staying occupied with all day and I'll also been posting on some forums and watching some videos to study up some. I might also rail the normal games I play on FTP to get some information on some common opponents.

I finishes yesterday's session after playing for 3 hours, 40 minutes up $17.65. I played 302 hands and saw 19-20% of flops. I also played a $2+.25 18 man SNG and a $2+.25 180 man SNG. I came in 15/18 and 103/180 respectively after some of my hands didn't hold up. No worries, I'll get 'em next time.

The dream lives on...

2008-02-06T21:50:00.000-08:00

I had the opportunity to play in FTOPS event #1 a $200+16 NL tournament with a $750,000 guarantee tonight. The tournament brought a huge field of 5,319 entrants, paying 738 places. With a double stack and longer levels, I liked my chances. Here are some of my hands throughout.

Seat 1: Kin Corn Karn (3,000)
Seat 2: pokealong (2,380)
Seat 3: O0Brian0O (3,045)
Seat 4: 101011002 (2,215)
Seat 5: Black_BartA8 (2,235)
Seat 6: donpeters (2,970)
Seat 7: pigarco (4,310)
Seat 8: Belladdie (3,925)
Seat 9: c1 future pro (2,920)
101011002 posts the small blind of 15
Black_BartA8 posts the big blind of 30
The button is in seat #3
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [As Ad]
donpeters raises to 90
pigarco calls 90
Belladdie calls 90
c1 future pro folds
Kin Corn Karn folds
pokealong folds
O0Brian0O calls 90
101011002 calls 75
Black_BartA8 calls 60
*** FLOP *** [9d 6d Jh]
101011002 checks
Black_BartA8 checks
donpeters bets 375
pigarco folds
Belladdie folds
O0Brian0O folds
101011002 folds
Black_BartA8 folds
Uncalled bet of 375 returned to donpeters
donpeters mucks
donpeters wins the pot (540)

Wasn't really digging the 5 callers I had. I'd rather play my AA against 1-2 opponents. Still was able to scoop a decent pot early.

Seat 1: Kin Corn Karn (3,080)
Seat 2: pokealong (2,700)
Seat 3: O0Brian0O (2,340)
Seat 4: 101011002 (1,780)
Seat 5: Black_BartA8 (4,135)
Seat 6: donpeters (3,315)
Seat 7: pigarco (4,725)
Seat 8: Belladdie (2,245)
Seat 9: c1 future pro (2,680)
c1 future pro posts the small blind of 20
Kin Corn Karn posts the big blind of 40
The button is in seat #8
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Jc Jh]
pokealong raises to 80 {Min-raise UTG, but he has been playing fairly loose and kind of all over the place with limps and min-raises.}
O0Brian0O has 15 seconds left to act
O0Brian0O folds
101011002 folds
Black_BartA8 has 15 seconds left to act
Black_BartA8 folds
donpeters raises to 240
pigarco folds
Belladdie folds
c1 future pro folds
Kin Corn Karn folds
pokealong has 15 seconds left to act
pokealong calls 160
*** FLOP *** [Kh Td 8h]
pokealong has 15 seconds left to act
pokealong checks
donpeters checks {Could have bet here. Wanted to keep the pot small and I had position, so I opted to check behind. Opinions?}
*** TURN *** [Kh Td 8h] [Ah]
pokealong has 15 seconds left to act
pokealong bets 200
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters calls 200 {Wasn't a fan of the A, but with the Jh and a straight draw, also a pair that I thought had a decent chance of being good, I could call this. Thought about raising, but this early I decided not to get myself into unwanted trouble.}
*** RIVER *** [Kh Td 8h Ah] [Qc]
pokealong has 15 seconds left to act
pokealong checks
donpeters bets 400
pokealong has 15 seconds left to act
pokealong is sitting out
pokealong has timed out
pokealong folds
Uncalled bet of 400 returned to donpeters
pokealong has returned
donpeters mucks
donpeters wins the pot (940)

Another decent pot to add to my stack. Early on in tournaments, I'm looking for sure ways to increase my stack. I'm not here to donk it up and go balls to the wall when the blinds are low. I'll pick and choose my spots to slowly work my way up the ranks. When the blinds and antes get bigger, I'll be more willing to make some moves.

Seat 1: Kin Corn Karn (5,400)
Seat 2: Pwnataur (2,720)
Seat 3: O0Brian0O (2,180)
Seat 4: 101011002 (2,850)
Seat 5: Black_BartA8 (3,230)
Seat 6: donpeters (3,550)
Seat 7: pigarco (4,685)
Seat 8: Belladdie (3,352)
Seat 9: c1 future pro (1,913)
Pwnataur posts the small blind of 30
O0Brian0O posts the big blind of 60
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Qd Qh]
101011002 folds
Black_BartA8 folds
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters raises to 180
pigarco folds
Belladdie folds
c1 future pro calls 180
Kin Corn Karn has 15 seconds left to act
Kin Corn Karn calls 180
Pwnataur has 15 seconds left to act
Pwnataur is sitting out
Pwnataur has timed out
Pwnataur folds
O0Brian0O calls 120
*** FLOP *** [4c Ts Tc]
O0Brian0O checks
donpeters checks {This is where I went wrong. I didn't want to commit to a hand I wasn't sure on although in hindsight I should have bet the flop here I think.}
c1 future pro checks
Kin Corn Karn bets 350
O0Brian0O folds
Pwnataur has been disconnected
donpeters calls 350
c1 future pro folds
*** TURN *** [4c Ts Tc] [Kc]
donpeters checks
Kin Corn Karn bets 700
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters has requested TIME
donpeters folds
Uncalled bet of 700 returned to Kin Corn Karn
Kin Corn Karn mucks
Kin Corn Karn wins the pot (1,450)

The QQ hand is my biggest concern looking back on things. Kin Corn Karn showed me soon after that maybe I should have played this hand against him instead of conceding. He was shoving, raising, and calling with some crazy hands soon after which leads me to believe I was good.

Seat 1: Kin Corn Karn (4,652)
Seat 2: taylortreble (6,623)
Seat 3: O0Brian0O (1,300)
Seat 4: 101011002 (4,320)
Seat 5: kops123 (4,650)
Seat 6: donpeters (2,980)
Seat 7: pigarco (4,225)
Seat 8: Belladdie (5,312)
Seat 9: c1 future pro (7,391)
kops123 posts the small blind of 60
donpeters posts the big blind of 120
The button is in seat #4
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Ad 6h]
pigarco folds
Belladdie folds
c1 future pro folds
Kin Corn Karn calls 120
taylortreble folds
O0Brian0O folds
101011002 folds
kops123 calls 60
donpeters checks
*** FLOP *** [4c 7h Ah]
kops123 has 15 seconds left to act
kops123 bets 240
donpeters calls 240
Kin Corn Karn folds
*** TURN *** [4c 7h Ah] [4d]
kops123 bets 560
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters calls 560
*** RIVER *** [4c 7h Ah 4d] [4h]
kops123 checks
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters bets 1,000
kops123 calls 1,000
*** SHOW DOWN ***
donpeters shows [Ad 6h] a full house, Fours full of Aces
kops123 mucks
donpeters wins the pot (3,960) with a full house, Fours full of Aces

Another good pot, this one really helped to boost me up there. When he checked the river, I was pretty positive I was good and decided on a value bet to get some extra chips out of him.

Seat 1: Kin Corn Karn (4,532)
Seat 2: taylortreble (6,623)
Seat 3: O0Brian0O (1,300)
Seat 4: 101011002 (4,320)
Seat 5: kops123 (2,730)
Seat 6: donpeters (5,020)
Seat 7: pigarco (4,225)
Seat 8: Belladdie (5,312)
Seat 9: c1 future pro (7,391)
donpeters posts the small blind of 60
pigarco posts the big blind of 120
The button is in seat #5
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Jh Jc]
Belladdie folds
c1 future pro has 15 seconds left to act
c1 future pro raises to 350
Kin Corn Karn folds
taylortreble folds
O0Brian0O folds
101011002 folds
kops123 folds
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters raises to 850
pigarco folds
c1 future pro has 15 seconds left to act
c1 future pro calls 500
*** FLOP *** [8s 4s Kh]
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters checks
c1 future pro has 15 seconds left to act
c1 future pro checks
*** TURN *** [8s 4s Kh] [8c]
donpeters bets 900
c1 future pro has 15 seconds left to act
c1 future pro has requested TIME
c1 future pro folds
Uncalled bet of 900 returned to donpeters
donpeters mucks
donpeters wins the pot (1,820)

I made it through the second break and was doing all right. Looking back on things, maybe I could have gotten a little bit more aggressive. I was very card dead going into the second break and coming out of it. The blinds got up to 250/500 with an ante a 50. After going through the blinds, I had just over 3100 in chips left and shoved on the button when it folded around to me with A7. The SB went into the tank and called, so did the BB. The flop blanked me, I picked up a spade draw on the turn, but blanked the river, too. I did beat out the SB's hand of QJ with my ace-high, but was outkicked by the BB's AJ. I was out in 1170th place, just over 400 out of the money. Solid run I suppose, just couldn't get my bigger hands to give me a ton of action. I held AA a few times, QQ a few times, JJ and AK a few times as well but couldn't get the table to give me the bigger action I wanted. The table I was at for most of these hands was pretty loose and aggressive with a lot of raising and reraising going on preflop. Too bad none of this happened when I picked up my top hands.

I was able to profit off the tournament though. I was able to originally invest $3 to win into this tournament and a friend of mine and myself swapped 10% of each other. KakaFC22 is his name and he has been doing very, very well online lately in the tournaments he plays. He came in 522nd for just under $330 and shipped me my 10%. He also won in via satellite for $24+2, so it was a good showing for him. Congrats Kaka and keep it up!

Until my next big chance... the dream lives on.

Session analysis and the FTOPS!

2008-02-06T06:22:00.000-08:00

After dropping some more of my bankroll in the past two days, I hopped back on the tables last night for another session. I played the $.05/.10 deep table (min. $10, max. $20) on FTP and came away with a very solid session. I was happy with both my play and my results. Here's a few hands from the session.

Seat 1: ponzied ($20.35)
Seat 2: marrco2006 ($15.80)
Seat 3: donpeters ($9.65)
Seat 4: deep444 ($10.85)
Seat 5: urnieburn77 ($20.60)
Seat 6: Tarr6 ($4.70)
Seat 7: cryp88 ($18.65)
Seat 8: 4ever_leebug ($19.90)
urnieburn77 posts the small blind of $0.05
Tarr6 posts the big blind of $0.10
The button is in seat #4
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Ac Qh]
cryp88 folds
4ever_leebug folds
ponzied folds
marrco2006 raises to $0.20 {Been playing loose, somewhat of a maniac.}
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters raises to $0.75 {His range is too wide for me to just call and let him see a cheap flop.}
deep444 folds
urnieburn77 folds
Tarr6 folds
marrco2006 raises to $1.30 {I hate when people do this.}
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters calls $0.55
*** FLOP *** [Kc 8c Ad]
marrco2006 bets $2.75
donpeters raises to $8.35, and is all in
marrco2006 calls $5.60
donpeters shows [Ac Qh]
marrco2006 shows [Jd Qc] {Umm... no 10 por favor.}
*** TURN *** [Kc 8c Ad] [6h]
*** RIVER *** [Kc 8c Ad 6h] [2c]
donpeters shows a pair of Aces
marrco2006 shows Ace King high
donpeters wins the pot ($17.55) with a pair of Aces

After the flop, I was pretty sure he held 1010, JJ, QQ, A10, AJ. He's the type of loose player that slow played his big hands and played his weaker ones aggressively. When he came out firing the pot, I smiled, threw up a fist pump, and moved all-in.

Seat 1: One Red Ace ($22.15)
Seat 2: marrco2006 ($4.70)
Seat 3: donpeters ($17.15) {In for $10, so I'm doing all right so far.}
Seat 4: deep444 ($11.90)
Seat 5: urnieburn77 ($18.75)
Seat 6: Tarr6 ($4.20)
Seat 7: Doctor Ray ($22.90)
Seat 8: AAndroid ($20.05)
donpeters posts the small blind of $0.05
deep444 posts the big blind of $0.10
The button is in seat #2
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Ks Kc]
urnieburn77 raises to $0.30 {UTG, been playing fairly tight, this should get interesting.}
Tarr6 folds
Doctor Ray has 15 seconds left to act
Doctor Ray calls $0.30
AAndroid folds
One Red Ace calls $0.30
marrco2006 folds
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters raises to $2 {Debated between making my raise between $1.50 and $2.00. Settled on the latter because I still had a loose player behind me in the BB and I was out of position on each subsequent street.}
deep444 has 15 seconds left to act
deep444 folds
urnieburn77 folds
Doctor Ray has 15 seconds left to act
Doctor Ray folds
One Red Ace folds
Uncalled bet of $1.70 returned to donpeters
donpeters mucks
donpeters wins the pot ($1.30) {Uneventful, but I'll take it.}

Seat 1: One Red Ace ($20)
Seat 2: soarsoar ($19.65)
Seat 3: donpeters ($18.25)
Seat 4: deep444 ($9.50)
Seat 5: CaptJab ($39.55)
Seat 6: Tarr6 ($10.20)
Seat 7: Doctor Ray ($13.45)
Seat 8: AAndroid ($32.50)
CaptJab posts the small blind of $0.05
Tarr6 posts the big blind of $0.10
The button is in seat #4
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Jh Jd]
Doctor Ray calls $0.10
AAndroid has 15 seconds left to act
AAndroid calls $0.10
One Red Ace folds
soarsoar folds
donpeters raises to $0.60
deep444 calls $0.60
CaptJab calls $0.55 {Super maniac and I'm happy he called.}
Tarr6 folds
Doctor Ray calls $0.50
AAndroid calls $0.50
*** FLOP *** [3c Ad Js] {Bingo!}
CaptJab checks
Doctor Ray bets $1.60 {Bango!}
AAndroid folds
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters calls $1.60
deep444 folds
CaptJab folds
*** TURN *** [3c Ad Js] [8d]
Doctor Ray bets $11.25, and is all in {Bongo!}
donpeters calls $11.25
Doctor Ray shows [Ac 2c]
donpeters shows [Jh Jd]
*** RIVER *** [3c Ad Js 8d] [8c]
Doctor Ray shows two pair, Aces and Eights
donpeters shows a full house, Jacks full of Eights
donpeters wins the pot ($26.80) with a full house, Jacks full of Eights
Doctor Ray is sitting out

I opted to just call the flop bet, hoping to trap CaptJab in for a loose call on a fairly dry board. Didn't work out the way I had planned, but still got the original flop bettor to stack off to me on the turn.

The following hand I had a plan, but it didn't work out. Looking back on it, I could have and maybe should have taken a different route, but opted not to because my opponent had been playing the last few hands like a complete nut.

Seat 1: One Red Ace ($27.50)
Seat 2: soarsoar ($19.45)
Seat 3: donpeters ($30.25)
Seat 4: deep444 ($1.55), is sitting out
Seat 5: CaptJab ($47.45)
Seat 6: Jiboy1337 ($19.90)
Seat 7: centja1 ($23.10)
Seat 8: AAndroid ($24.80)
Jiboy1337 has 5 seconds left to act
Jiboy1337 posts the small blind of $0.05
centja1 posts the big blind of $0.10
The button is in seat #5
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Jh Th]
AAndroid has 15 seconds left to act
AAndroid is sitting out
AAndroid has timed out
AAndroid folds
One Red Ace calls $0.10
soarsoar calls $0.10
AAndroid has returned
donpeters calls $0.10
CaptJab has 15 seconds left to act
CaptJab raises to $0.65 {Has been raising and playing each of the last 10-12 hands.}
Jiboy1337 folds
centja1 folds
One Red Ace has 15 seconds left to act
One Red Ace folds
soarsoar folds
donpeters calls $0.55
*** FLOP *** [6h Qh 2h] {Beautiful flop.}
donpeters checks
CaptJab bets $0.90
donpeters raises to $2.70 {Questionable, but if he hit any of this flop he's coming back over the top.}
CaptJab has 15 seconds left to act
CaptJab folds
Uncalled bet of $1.80 returned to donpeters
donpeters mucks
donpeters wins the pot ($3.15)

So looking back on the hand, I should have just called the flop and then threw my check-raise in on the turn. I check-raised, hoping my opponent would come back over the top of me based on how he had been playing the past few hands. As soon as he folded, I knew I probably should have just called and trapped him for more. They always say that not losing money in poker is a win, but is not winning money a loss?

Seat 1: One Red Ace ($30.70)
Seat 2: MoMoney2305 ($18.60)
Seat 3: donpeters ($30.65)
Seat 4: Poonet ($17)
Seat 5: Mutton Stew ($20.75), is sitting out
Seat 6: Jiboy1337 ($19.70)
Seat 7: centja1 ($25.90)
Seat 8: AAndroid ($32.25), is sitting out
donpeters posts the small blind of $0.05
Poonet posts the big blind of $0.10
The button is in seat #2
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [2h 2s]
Jiboy1337 folds
centja1 folds
One Red Ace calls $0.10
MoMoney2305 folds
donpeters calls $0.05
Poonet checks
*** FLOP *** [5d 4h 2c] {Whoohoo!}
donpeters bets $0.30 {No slow-playing here.}
Poonet raises to $0.90 {Perfect. Not that strong of a player here}
One Red Ace folds
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters raises to $3 {Like I said, no slow-playing here.}
Poonet has 15 seconds left to act
Poonet adds $4
Poonet folds
Uncalled bet of $2.10 returned to donpeters
donpeters mucks
donpeters wins the pot ($1.90)

Seat 1: One Red Ace ($30.75)
Seat 2: MoMoney2305 ($17.10)
Seat 3: donpeters ($30.40)
Seat 4: Poonet ($21.20)
Seat 5: Mutton Stew ($20.75), is sitting out
Seat 6: Jiboy1337 ($20)
Seat 7: centja1 ($28.15)
Seat 8: AAndroid ($32.25), is sitting out
Poonet posts the small blind of $0.05
Jiboy1337 posts the big blind of $0.10
The button is in seat #3
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Qh Kh]
centja1 raises to $0.40
One Red Ace folds
MoMoney2305 calls $0.40
donpeters calls $0.40
Poonet calls $0.35
Jiboy1337 folds
*** FLOP *** [Th 9c Qc]
Poonet checks
centja1 checks
MoMoney2305 checks
donpeters bets $1.40 {If no one wants the pot, I'll take a stab here in position.}
Mutton Stew has returned
Poonet calls $1.40 {Pretty big check, call.}
centja1 folds
MoMoney2305 folds
*** TURN *** [Th 9c Qc] [2c]
Poonet checks
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters bets $3 {The flush draw hit, but I opted to fire and see where I'm at. He could have a Jx, a weaker Q, etc. and I want to keep control of the action.}
Poonet has 15 seconds left to act
Poonet raises to $8 {Not how I wanted to keep control of the action. Now I'm thinking 2 pair, flush, flopped straight.}
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters folds
Uncalled bet of $5 returned to Poonet
Poonet mucks
Poonet wins the pot ($9.45)

I opted to not play a big pot with just my top pair and gutshot with KQ on a fairly connected board. I can pick much better spots than this to get my money in.

At the end of the 3 hour, 26 minute session, I saw 223 hands and netted a win for $15.60. I also cleared a $7.50 chunk of bonus money, so that puts me at +$23.10 for this session. Not bad for playing $.05/.10 NL. I have been running bad as of late, so I played even tighter than I normally do for this session and it seems to have worked. Out of the 223 hands I saw, I only saw the flop a mere 11% and took down 2 hands preflop. At these limits I feel patience is such a key factor. There are so many weak and loose players out there in the micros that just sitting tight and playing straight forward poker works the best for me.

While playing the cash table, I was also playing my $50+5 FTOPS satellite. I won in for $3 a few weeks back and tonight was the night I was up to win my seat. They have us a deeper stack than normal and just under 25% won seats... I liked my chances. I had a key hand early on that gave me a nice, comfy double up.

Seat 1: Dahladino (1,980)
Seat 2: marinersjj (2,030)
Seat 3: Aron F Jenks (1,970)
Seat 4: OlyDaJew (1,960)
Seat 5: kyriasialiolios (2,000)
Seat 6: robert99999ft (3,005)
Seat 7: spike800 (1,780)
Seat 8: donpeters (1,980)
Seat 9: timjim_1 (1,295)
donpeters posts the small blind of 10
timjim_1 posts the big blind of 20
The button is in seat #7
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [8d Td]
Dahladino folds
marinersjj folds
Aron F Jenks calls 20
OlyDaJew calls 20
kyriasialiolios calls 20
robert99999ft calls 20
spike800 folds
donpeters calls 10
timjim_1 checks
*** FLOP *** [8h Ad Ts]
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters bets 100 {Don't like to get too tricky in a satellite, just come out betting. And this is really early.}
timjim_1 folds
Aron F Jenks folds
OlyDaJew folds
kyriasialiolios raises to 300
robert99999ft folds
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters has requested TIME
donpeters raises to 700
kyriasialiolios calls 400 {Snap call! I put him on Ax and was leaning towards an AJ.}
*** TURN *** [8h Ad Ts] [Kc]
donpeters bets 1,260, and is all in
kyriasialiolios has 15 seconds left to act
kyriasialiolios has requested TIME {Now I'm praying for a call, I know I have him.}
kyriasialiolios calls 1,260
donpeters shows [8d Td]
kyriasialiolios shows [Ah 7c] {Awesome, sweet, thanks.}
*** RIVER *** [8h Ad Ts Kc] [6h]
donpeters shows two pair, Tens and Eights
kyriasialiolios shows a pair of Aces
donpeters wins the pot (4,040) with two pair, Tens and Eights

Seat 1: BocceBob (5,395)
Seat 2: donpeters (3,610)
Seat 3: JoeytheLips (825), is sitting out
Seat 4: RedDogg101 (660)
Seat 5: ronzki (1,005), is sitting out
Seat 6: druster (7,235)
Seat 7: 2DogsHumpin (3,340)
Seat 8: dodger368 (5,985)
Seat 9: urdadio (855), is sitting out
RedDogg101 posts the small blind of 60
ronzki posts the big blind of 120
The button is in seat #3
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Jc Js]
druster folds
2DogsHumpin folds
dodger368 folds
urdadio folds
BocceBob raises to 240 {I still don't really get the min-raise from MP.}
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters raises to 650
JoeytheLips folds
RedDogg101 folds
ronzki folds
BocceBob has 15 seconds left to act
BocceBob folds
Uncalled bet of 410 returned to donpeters
donpeters mucks
donpeters wins the pot (660) {Decent pot, I'll take it.}

Seat 1: BocceBob (6,415)
Seat 2: donpeters (4,170)
Seat 3: JoeytheLips (585), is sitting out
Seat 4: DeepBlueSea (1,125)
Seat 5: ronzki (585), is sitting out
Seat 6: druster (7,515)
Seat 7: 2DogsHumpin (3,700)
Seat 8: dodger368 (5,505)
Seat 9: urdadio (435), is sitting out
donpeters posts the small blind of 80
JoeytheLips posts the big blind of 160
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [9h 9s]
DeepBlueSea folds
ronzki folds
druster folds
2DogsHumpin folds
dodger368 raises to 480
urdadio folds
BocceBob calls 480
donpeters calls 400
JoeytheLips folds
*** FLOP *** [4d Js 4s]
donpeters checks
dodger368 checks
BocceBob checks
*** TURN *** [4d Js 4s] [As]
donpeters checks
dodger368 checks
BocceBob bets 160
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters calls 160 {Cheap enough for a chance to win a big pot if the river bet stays small.}
dodger368 calls 160 {Something smells here, I just had that feeling.}
*** RIVER *** [4d Js 4s As] [7h]
donpeters checks
dodger368 bets 800
BocceBob raises to 1,600
donpeters folds
dodger368 raises to 4,865, and is all in {That feeling was reassured big time!}
BocceBob calls 3,265
*** SHOW DOWN ***
dodger368 shows [Jh Jd] a full house, Jacks full of Fours
BocceBob mucks
dodger368 wins the pot (11,810) with a full house, Jacks full of Fours

This hand actually gave me a ton of confidence. I had a feeling the way it played out that dodger held JJ the entire time. When my suspicions were confirmed and I was right, I was very happy with myself and my read and felt I had a lot of confidence from here on out. You don't always have to be a big player in a hand to get a huge emotional and mental lift!

Seat 1: FLoWerGirl19 (4,410)
Seat 2: KBBPOKER (9,860)
Seat 3: Flowkid1 (4,084)
Seat 4: timjim_1 (2,070)
Seat 5: jwood71 (7,140)
Seat 6: arigold13 (9,551)
Seat 7: donpeters (3,555)
Seat 8: cosjoel (7,620)
Seat 9: acesindixie (5,065)
FLoWerGirl19 antes 25
KBBPOKER antes 25
Flowkid1 antes 25
timjim_1 antes 25
jwood71 antes 25
arigold13 antes 25
donpeters antes 25
cosjoel antes 25
acesindixie antes 25
Flowkid1 posts the small blind of 120
timjim_1 posts the big blind of 240
The button is in seat #2
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Js Ah]
jwood71 folds
arigold13 folds
donpeters raises to 600
cosjoel folds
acesindixie folds
FLoWerGirl19 folds
KBBPOKER folds
Flowkid1 folds
timjim_1 has 15 seconds left to act
timjim_1 calls 360
*** FLOP *** [Th 3h 4c]
timjim_1 checks
donpeters bets 950 {A nice continuation bet always did the trick.}
timjim_1 folds
Uncalled bet of 950 returned to donpeters
donpeters mucks
donpeters wins the pot (1,545)

Seat 1: KurMur (5,748)
Seat 2: rvdh51 (4,513)
Seat 3: Jorge Q (6,036)
Seat 4: donpeters (3,090)
Seat 6: DONKYcDONKYdu (7,064)
Seat 7: clarktheshrk (5,618)
Seat 8: bud85 (10,710)
Seat 9: dolfan89 (3,164)
KurMur antes 50
rvdh51 antes 50
Jorge Q antes 50
donpeters antes 50
DONKYcDONKYdu antes 50
clarktheshrk antes 50
bud85 antes 50
dolfan89 antes 50
Jorge Q posts the small blind of 200
donpeters posts the big blind of 400
The button is in seat #2
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Th Qd]
AmbulanceChaser sits down
AmbulanceChaser adds 8,828
DONKYcDONKYdu folds
clarktheshrk folds
bud85 folds
dolfan89 has 15 seconds left to act
dolfan89 is sitting out
dolfan89 has timed out
dolfan89 folds
KurMur folds
dolfan89 has returned
rvdh51 has 15 seconds left to act
rvdh51 folds
Jorge Q has 15 seconds left to act
Jorge Q raises to 800 {Folds to the SB and he min-raises, hmm.}
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters has requested TIME
donpeters folds
Uncalled bet of 400 returned to Jorge Q
Jorge Q mucks
Jorge Q wins the pot (1,200)

I debated for a good time on what to do here. In the end I folded, but I'm still questioning my play here. It folded around to the SB who proceeded to min-raise my BB. I think in a normal tournament I'd shove here, putting him on a weak attempt to steal the blinds and antes, but because this is a satellite and my main goal is lasting and conserving chips, I opted for folding. A friend of mine was rail-birding and said he would have just called. I felt with my stack size, I couldn't just call another 400 chips here.

After this, things got a little worrisome. I had to shove with A7, KQ, and A9 in some good spots to pick up the blinds and antes to keep myself out of harms way. In the end, I was able to grind it out and making it into the top 156 out of 687 and qualify for FTOPS Event #1. The event is a $750,000 guarantee taking place tonight. Blind levels are increased an extra 2 minutes and we start with a double stack of 3000, so I'm happy. Wish me luck.

Let the bad beats roll...

2008-02-05T14:20:00.000-08:00

I don't like to blog about beats I am given, but I have to get some of this off my chest. This week has been nothing short of catastrophic for me on the felt. I've been getting beaten down in every way, shape, and form. I've tried MTTs, cash tables, dropping limits, switching games... I'm just getting killed.

Seat 1: Mclrn11 ($19.15)
Seat 2: Eagle1959 ($15.65)
Seat 3: 007_Lalli ($22.05)
Seat 4: mckdaddy23 ($38.90)
Seat 5: JoeSnak ($19.85)
Seat 6: Athos000 ($9.50)
Seat 7: smellytuna ($16.15)
Seat 8: donpeters ($20.75)
Athos000 posts the small blind of $0.05
smellytuna posts the big blind of $0.10
The button is in seat #5
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Ts As]
donpeters raises to $0.40
Mclrn11 folds
Eagle1959 folds
007_Lalli folds
mckdaddy23 calls $0.40
JoeSnak folds
Athos000 calls $0.35
smellytuna checks
*** FLOP *** [Ad Qs 3c]
Athos000 checks
smellytuna checks
donpeters bets $1.00
mckdaddy23 calls $1.00
Athos000 folds
Smellytuna folds
*** TURN *** [Ad Qs 3c] [3s]
donpeters bets $2.40
mckdaddy23 calls $2.40
*** RIVER *** [Ad Qs 3c 3s] [3d]
donpeters bets $3.20
mckdaddy23 has 15 seconds left to act
mckdaddy23 raises to $37.50, and is all in
donpeters has 15 seconds left to act
donpeters has requested TIME
donpeters calls $19.05, and is all in
Uncalled bet of $18.15 returned to mckdaddy23
*** SHOW DOWN ***
mckdaddy23 shows [3h 5h] four of a kind, Threes
donpeters mucks

Maybe I should have or could have folded on the end, but I'm not putting this guy on a 3 in this spot. Another A was what I thought, but I guess I was fooled.

Early on in the Early Double B on FTP, I found myself raising UTG with QQ. The button shoved with a short stack of about 1000 chips and I called. He showed K9 and spiked a K and I was down from 2300 to just over 1200. A few hands later, a player in middle position raised. The blinds were up to 80/160 and I felt I had decent fold equity on the raiser with my remaining 1200 chips. He held only 2000 and I decided my 88 was good enough to make a play here. When the action got back to him, he made an instant call and showed 94s and the flop came 4Q9, turn 9 and I was out. Good, sweet, thanks.

I was still in the Early Double A when I limped from late position with 89c in a multiway pot. The flop came 567 and I was smiling. First to act bet out and second to act shoved, I called and so did the originally bettor. J5 was shown along with KK (weird limping after UTG limps). Turn came a 9, river an 8 and we chopped 3 ways

Full Tilt Poker Game #5134880112: Early Double - A (38301607), Table 102 - 80/160 - No Limit Hold'em - 17:34:15 ET - 2008/02/05
Seat 1: roly_3208 (9,740)
Seat 2: SHUGNDELLY (5,093)
Seat 3: Longthrow (1,225)
Seat 4: CraftyCal (1,345)
Seat 5: donpeters (2,365)
Seat 6: thekofi (1,672)
Seat 7: spidersigmar (3,555)
Seat 8: ElGrando81 (4,350)
Seat 9: Santoca (3,640)
donpeters posts the small blind of 80
thekofi posts the big blind of 160
The button is in seat #4
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to donpeters [Qc Qd]
spidersigmar folds
ElGrando81 folds
Santoca calls 160
roly_3208 raises to 640 {Big chips, plays a good amount of hands, I'm positive he'll call me here with a wide range.}
SHUGNDELLY folds
Longthrow has 15 seconds left to act
Longthrow calls 640 {Been playing almost anything PF, leaves himself with 585?}
CraftyCal folds
donpeters raises to 2,365, and is all in {Please help this to hold!}
thekofi has 15 seconds left to act
thekofi calls 1,512, and is all in
Santoca has 15 seconds left to act
Santoca folds
roly_3208 calls 1,725
Longthrow calls 585, and is all in
donpeters shows [Qc Qd]
thekofi shows [Jd Kd] {Gotta gamble to win, right? ... right?!!?!}
roly_3208 shows [Qs Qh] {Awesome!}
Longthrow shows [7d 8d] {First thought, WTF? Second thought, he'll win.}
*** FLOP *** [6h Kc 9s]
*** TURN *** [6h Kc 9s] [Ad]
*** RIVER *** [6h Kc 9s Ad] [4h]
donpeters shows a pair of Queens
roly_3208 shows a pair of Queens
donpeters ties for side pot #2 (693) with a pair of Queens
roly_3208 ties for side pot #2 (693) with a pair of Queens
thekofi shows a pair of Kings
thekofi wins side pot #1 (1,341) with a pair of Kings
Longthrow shows Ace King high
thekofi wins the main pot (5,060) with a pair of Kings
Longthrow stands up
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 7,787 Main pot 5,060. Side pot 1 1,341. Side pot 2 1,386. Rake 0
Board: [6h Kc 9s Ad 4h]
Seat 1: roly_3208 showed [Qs Qh] and won (693) with a pair of Queens
Seat 2: SHUGNDELLY didn't bet (folded)
Seat 3: Longthrow showed [7d 8d] and lost with Ace King high
Seat 4: CraftyCal (button) didn't bet (folded)
Seat 5: donpeters (small blind) showed [Qc Qd] and won (693) with a pair of Queens
Seat 6: thekofi (big blind) showed [Jd Kd] and won (6,401) with a pair of Kings
Seat 7: spidersigmar didn't bet (folded)
Seat 8: ElGrando81 didn't bet (folded)
Seat 9: Santoca folded before the Flop

Still my great luck right now while I run bad. Just needed to do some venting. I'm still going to keep playing and do my best to play my A-game. I have an FTOPS satellite tonight for $50+5 that I won into a week or so back for $3, so wish me luck.

The blog is back.

2008-02-04T13:11:00.000-08:00

This isn't an "I'm back" post, but more to announce the blog coming back. I've been playing a ton of poker lately online, mostly over at Full Tilt and doing fairly well. I deposited $175 at the beginning of January and since worked it up to over $400 playing mostly the $.05/.10 NL tables and with the help of some bonuses. I'll be keeping track of my bankroll on the blog and post session stats and analysis.

As of right now, I plan on sticking with Full Tilt. I like the play there and I've worked myself into some nice games where I have a decent edge on the field. The past month of January I was able to record just under 20,000 hands and successfully qualify for Bronze Iron Man status. Goals for next month include qualifying for the one-a-day $2,000 freeroll and achieving at least Silver Iron Man status.

I also post some results that some of my friends in the poker world have. I attend Elon University and we have a very solid group of about 6-7 players here. We are constantly helping each other out and testing the skills of one another. There's 4 or 5 of us that have accounts at Full Tilt and we have all been doing fairly well as of late. A few of us have qualified for some FTOPS events and others have gone really deep into tournaments, often taking down first prize. There will be plenty updates on these types of things as well as the Elon Poker Tournament Series we have set up.

I don't plan on setting any monetary goals for each months only because I know the variance that poker brings. It can be rough roads sometimes and your bankroll can flucuate a lot. I hope to combine solid play with good bankroll management in hopes of building as high as possible.

Start: 175
Current: 433.03

February goals:
1. Qualify for Silver Iron Man Status on Full Tilt
2. Qualify for the one-a-day freeroll on Full Tilt
3. Play well in the Elon Poker Tournament Series
4. Organize GPSTS chapter at Elon

And for all of you interested in learning about the Elon Poker Tournament Series, check out http://www.elonpoker.s5.com/. Also check out the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society at http://www.gpsts.org/.

Upset with PokerStars!

2007-04-07T10:03:00.000-07:00

Recently, a friend of mine logged into his PokerStars account and found that he had a balance of $0.00. He didn't understand what had happened, so after contacting PS he was informed that his account had been hacked. He didn't understand how this could happen and after some emailing back and forth, the PS security team gave him this explanation:

"Hello xxxxxxx,

Thank you for your email. I am disappointed to tell you that your account does appear to have been hacked by the two players that I mentioned. I noticed earlier today when I sent the email to you that your account was sharing the computer owned by 'brunopkr' and 'Mankera' that were responsible for the hack on another player. This is why I wanted to know how you are related. Unfortunately, it appears that you have fallen prey to another hack by these players.

I have tried to trace how this may have happened, and you are correct that your password is hard to guess. I do fear that you may have spyware installed upon your main computer (The one that you did use yesterday). I strongly recommend that you run spyware and virus finding software. I also recommend that you do this as soon as possible and have your computer checked thoroughly. I also recommend using a computer that you know is secure, to check and change all the password that you have for your account information as you may have more information at risk than just your PokerStars account information.

A keylogger is the favourite method of these two individuals.

Regards,
Jason
PokerStars Security Team"

In latter emails, the PS security team told my friend his account would not be able to be refunded. I think that is fine, but I don't understand how PS cannot go after these two individuals if they know who they are. It also says in the email that these players were responsible for a hack on another player. Why was this not put to a stop in the first place and why were these players not punished? I just don't understand how PS can let this happen and not protect its customers and the integrity of the game. After some more emails, PS stated that they are pretty much done with the matter and no longer are going to look into it.

My friend and a bunch of us can understand how PS can't get the money back, but how can they not punish these players and even make an attempt to resolve the issue? Just doesn't make any sense to me and makes me rather furious when I know that PS isn't trying or going to do anything about it.

Wow, it's been a while.

2007-04-05T07:02:00.000-07:00

For blogging, not playing... of course.

I've been busy with school and trying to stay on top of my studies this semester and it's cut into my free time a lot. I haven't been able to keep up with the blog, but I have been playing when I get the time. My last blog was back at the end of December with a bankroll just under $300. I've played a lot since then and have been able to build up to right around $2,500. I am currently playing the $.25/.50 and $.50/1.00 NL games comfortably. When I multitable, I like to play the $.25/.50 NL tables, running 3-4 at one time. Whereas the $.50/1.00 NL game has some better players, so I only play 1 or 2 tables at a time at that level. I have heard from others that I could play higher given by bankroll, but I like to have a good comfort zone when I am playing and these levels allow for just that. I also just started playing the $.15/.30 NL deep stack tables on Full Tilt. You can buy in for 200x the BB rather than 100x and allows for more play. Lately, these are the tables I have been playing a lot. I am liking them more and more.

Here and there I'll dabble in some MTTs, but for now I'm concentrating on the cash games. I haven't lost sight of my $5,000 goal by June 1, 2007 and hope that I can achieve it. I hope to be able to achieve this goal and then go back to playing $1/2 NL at Foxwoods come summer. We'll see how it goes. I just wanted to do a quick update and let everyone know I'll be back blogging starting this week. Hope all is well on the tables.

Extra money and some SNGs.

2006-12-30T14:11:00.000-08:00

Turned in some Bodog points for money today and bumped the bankroll up $30 so that is some good news.

I've also been playing some SNGs on Bodog lately. When I first started played online poker, all I played was SNGs and I did fairly well in them and built up a good roll, but then once I found the cash games I switched to those. I've played some SNgs along the way, but I have played a lot today and done well in them. These are 'beginner' SNGs, where the buy-in is $4+.40 and they payout the top five places ($12, 10, 8, 6, 4). I've cashed in the majority of them and it is a good way to build money. Although the building is slow, I can pad some extra money to my bankroll this way and then play some regular SNGs. Just like the turtoise right? Slowly but surely.

Session:
SNGs: 26
Paid: 114.4
Payouts: 142
ROI: 24%
Net: +27.6

Overall:
Cash game hours: 36.47
Net: -10.26
Hourly Rate: -0.28 per hour

Tournament hours: 3.9
Net: -4.00
Hourly Rate: -0.98 per hour

SNGs: 26
Paid: 114.4
Payouts: 142
ROI: 24%
Net: +27.6

Bonuses: 30

BANKROLL BALANCE: $298.38

In the holiday spirit.

2006-12-30T09:24:00.000-08:00

I'm going to combine a few sessions I've had over the past few days as I'm pretty busy with all the holiday business going on. I played some more small NL cash games online and I'm pretty sure the bad run is ending. Fitting that it ends right around Christmas time... thanks Santa.

There's one key hand I'll talk about from the past few sessions. I had KK in the BB, UTG player limps and so does a MP player. It then folds around to be and I bump it up. Both players call. The flop comes Q 7 2 rainbow, a flop I like very much. I check in hopes the other two players hit the queen. I know the MP player is aggressive once the flop comes, and with his position, he will bet if checked to him more often than not. It checks to him and he does bet about half the pot and I then raised three or four times what he bet. The other player folds and the bettor calls. The turn is a K and I come out betting. He min-raises me and I then move all-in and he calls. He called quickly and I was thinking he had a king, maybe even KQ, but I was wrong and he held AA and I took down a big pot of about $18. I'm not sure as to why people slowplay aces all the time, it just doesn't seem like it works at the smaller limits. Sure, when you are playing good players you have to mix the game up, but I'd rather just player ABC poker and bet your good hands. I do consider myself a good player though and maybe he was mixing it up with me, but you also have to realize that if a good player is going to put his chips in against you, he probably has a good hand. Even if you have aces, you need to think about what happened throughout the hand and sometimes lay them down.

Anyways, I also played one MTT for $1 with 313 entrants and placed 93rd. I was doing well and doubled early and then doubled quickly again, both times getting all-in preflop with AA. My stack was crippled when I held KQ in the cutoff and limped into a 5-way pot. The flop came K J 10 and I got all-in with another player. I made the all-in move and he called me down with K10, so I was in good shape with outs to a higher two pair and an open-ended straight draw. Nothing came and my stack was hurt badly. I hung around for a little while longer and gained a little back before moving in with 66 against an opponent with AJ and lost the race. No big deal. I opt to play tight early until the blinds hit 50/100 and then I loosen up a bit. I usually always make it to the first break and then either bust quickly or go deep. I'd rather bust quickly trying to accumulate chips than to go deep and bubble out or finish just inside the money. I am playing to win these tournaments, not cash in as many as possible.

In summary, I've had winning sessions my past 6 or 7 times playing and it feels good to not be running terrible again.

Session:
Limit: .05/.10 NL
Tables: 2
Time: 10.91 hrs
Outcome: +69.91

Overall:
Cash game hours: 36.47
Net: -10.26
Hourly Rate: -0.28 per hour

Tournament hours: 3.9
Net: -4.00
Hourly Rate: -0.98 per hour

BANKROLL BALANCE: $240.78