Eggpie's Poker Journal

Murraculous

2010-01-26T05:25:00.000-08:00

Well done to Andy Murray this morning. He fought toe to toe with Rafa Nadal for two and a bit sets and came out on top. Its a shame that Nadal had to retire, but watching how it was going i doubt Nadal would have lasted 5 sets. I'm a fan of Federer and in my opinion he is still favourite to life the Aussie Open, but hopefully Murray can take his chance this time. I would say that Murray played some excellent tennis to beat Nadal, but so did Federer to beat Hewitt - and he made it look like a stroll!.
Lets hope they both get to the final and its a good one, whoever wins.

Poker has gone pretty poorly in the last week in comparison to how it had gone in the previous two. I've ran pretty much break even, but cleared the $1500 January sale bonus. I had one pretty huge tilting session where i lost $700 in 10 minutes, but thankfully my image and some lucky flops meant i got $500 of that straight back. It was an unusual thing for me because i don't normally tilt and in the odd times i do i try to stop playing.

I've dropped off the pace on the PTR winners board, but am still there on the PL board. Its funny how i do much better at PL - I always have done - and i don't think its because i differ in my play. Maybe there are the opportunities to see cheaper flops or the fact that flops are multiway more. I do think some regulars avoid them and also some of the push/fold short stackers for obvious reasons. I don't go out of my way to sit at PL tables, but maybe i will start making a conscious effort to for the rest of the month and see what happens.

Steve

The good, the bad and the ugly

2010-01-16T00:13:00.000-08:00

I've been running well all month generally, so there would come a time when i ran poorly. That was yesterday. I played 10k hands altogether and thought i was playing well aside from a few blips near the start. However i ran $370 under expected, though i was up $160 regardless.

To do with running bad, its hard to actually spot proper 'run bad' as opposed to all in EV 'run bad'. A friend of mine is running reaaally bad, over months and months. Today i just lost a few more all ins than i was expecting. This first hand, had we got it in on the flop i would have ran really well according to all in EV, but since we got it in on the river my graph doesn't show how hot i ran.

Lol one outers

Anyway, i'm happy with how i'm playing and also how i'm adjusting to the regs. I'm also happy with my mentality and my abilty to grind. I'm not forcing myself to play, but i am aiming to play 10k hands a night. However, should i feel tired, tilted (hasn't happened yet) or just fancy a night off, i have no problem cutting my session short.

The good

SB: $51.15
BB: $51.45
UTG: $93.50
UTG+1: $24.50
UTG+2: $58.50
MP1: $79.55
MP2: $29.50
Hero (CO): $186.45
BTN: $132.30

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is CO with Th Ts
1 fold, UTG+1 calls $1, UTG+2 calls $1, 1 fold, MP2 calls $1, Hero raises to $7, 4 folds, UTG+2 calls $6, 1 fold

Flop: ($17.50) 8c Jc 8s (2 players)
UTG+2 checks, Hero bets $11, UTG+2 calls $11

Turn: ($39.50) 2c (2 players)
UTG+2 checks, Hero checks

River: ($39.50) Tc (2 players)
UTG+2 checks, Hero bets $16, UTG+2 raises to $32, Hero raises to $48, UTG+2 calls $8.50 all in

Final Pot: $120.50
UTG+2 shows 8h Td (a full house, Eights full of Tens)
Hero shows Th Ts (a full house, Tens full of Eights)
Hero wins $117.50
(Rake: $3.00)

The bad

MP2: $83.00
CO: $119.65
BTN: $100.00
SB: $116.20
Hero (BB): $100.00
UTG: $103.05
UTG+1: $105.65
MP1: $39.65

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BB with Ah Qs
5 folds, BTN raises to $3, 1 fold, Hero calls $2

Flop: ($6.50) Qd Jh Qh (2 players)
Hero bets $4, BTN raises to $12, Hero raises to $35, BTN raises to $64, Hero raises to $97 all in, BTN calls $33 all in

Turn: ($200.50) Kc (2 players - 2 are all in)

River: ($200.50) Kd (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $200.50
BTN shows Ks Qc (a full house, Kings full of Queens)
Hero shows Ah Qs (a full house, Queens full of Kings)
BTN wins $197.50
(Rake: $3.00)

The ugly

UTG+1: $17.00
Hero (MP1): $116.75
MP2: $49.55
CO: $72.25
BTN: $120.35
SB: $120.35
BB: $20.00
UTG: $151.15

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is MP1 with 8c 8h
2 folds, Hero raises to $3, 1 fold, CO calls $3, BTN calls $3, 2 folds

Flop: ($10.50) 6s 3s 8s (3 players)
Hero bets $8, CO raises to $16, BTN folds, Hero raises to $113.75 all in, CO calls $53.25 all in

Turn: ($149.00) 5h (2 players - 2 are all in)

River: ($149.00) 9c (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $149.00
Hero shows 8c 8h (three of a kind, Eights)
CO shows Ad 7s (a straight, Five to Nine)
CO wins $146.00
(Rake: $3.00)

Running well

2010-01-13T19:49:00.000-08:00

I've been on fire this month so far. I'll post my graph at the month's end but i'm around $700 above my all in EV at the moment - just from January!

As can be seen from PTR's page on me, my Hot or Not rating is 100 which i assume is the highest possible.

One goal i would like to accomplish would be to stay on PTR's biggest winners for the year (at pokerstars 100NL) to date. At the moment i'm on there due to my hot streak. Hopefully i can up the volume and keep a similar winrate and maintain my place on that leaderboard.

Oh, and can you say 'cooler'?

CO: $100.00

BTN: $100.00

SB: $133.65

BB: $114.60

Hero (UTG): $155.95

UTG+1: $119.40

MP1: $65.35

MP2: $118.30

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is UTG with K K

Hero raises to $4, 4 folds, BTN calls $4, 2 folds

Flop: ($9.50) K K 3 (2 players)

Hero bets $5, BTN calls $5

Turn: ($19.50) 6 (2 players)

Hero checks, BTN bets $11, Hero calls $11

River: ($41.50) 2 (2 players)

Hero checks, BTN bets $33, Hero raises to $135.95 all in, BTN calls $47 all in

Final Pot: $201.50

BTN shows 3 3 (a full house, Threes full of Kings)

Hero shows K K (four of a kind, Kings)

Hero wins $198.50

(Rake: $3.00)

Many thanks to HappyPixel who told me how to convert the hand histories into something more pleasant to look at!

Steve

AKcc turns a flush

2010-01-10T13:23:00.000-08:00

This is a hand that came up a couple of days ago. I'd been having a good session so far and i think the turn is an interesting street on this hand.

My HUD is still faulty, and i've been doing well without it, but as a consequence i had no reads on this guy.

***** Hand History for Game 37861554559 ***** (Poker Stars)
$100.00 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Friday, January 08, 06:41:36 ET 2010
Table Tilia III (Real Money)
Seat 8 is the button
Seat 1: Beldar69 ( $89.05 USD )
Seat 2: Beatrism ( $134.05 USD )
Seat 3: rei1978 ( $116.15 USD )
Seat 4: ASMoney ( $120.30 USD )
Seat 5: Nanni2407 ( $23.00 USD )
Seat 6: Eggpie ( $109.50 USD )
Seat 7: Pawippy19 ( $14.80 USD )
Seat 8: BuSiNeSS21 ( $18.50 USD )
Seat 9: MaxDyak ( $19.00 USD )
MaxDyak posts small blind [$0.50 USD].
Beldar69 posts big blind [$1.00 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Eggpie [ Kc Ac ]
Beatrism calls [$1.00 USD]
rei1978 calls [$1.00 USD]
ASMoney folds
Nanni2407 folds
Eggpie raises [$6.00 USD]
Pawippy19 folds
BuSiNeSS21 folds
MaxDyak folds
Beldar69 folds
Beatrism calls [$5.00 USD]
rei1978 calls [$5.00 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ 5c, 7c, 9s ]
Beatrism checks
rei1978 checks
Eggpie bets [$15.00 USD]
Beatrism folds
rei1978 calls [$15.00 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 9c ]
rei1978 checks

The pot is $18 on the flop, and i have overs with the nut flush draw so naturally i cbet it in position.

The guy who limp called pre, just called then i hit my flush on the turn - but it paired the board. I have $85 behind, so naturally there will be some more betting. I thought about his range and i think i'm ahead of that {flushes, random pairs 88/1010 etc, sets which are now FHs, A7, A9 and random gunshots} - so i bet $40 to look like i was scared of a 4th club, and this happened:

Eggpie bets [$40.00 USD]
rei1978 raises [$95.15 USD]
Eggpie calls [$48.50 USD]
rei1978 wins $6.65 USD
** Dealing River ** [ Qd ]
rei1978 shows [7d, 7h ]
Eggpie shows [Kc, Ac ]
rei1978 wins $223.50 USD from main pot

If we go back to the turn, i should have thought about his CALLING range, not his range for getting to the turn. Aside from something like A7 hiting a 7 on the river, pretty much all that folds to a bet can't end up beating me anyway (or has at most 2 outs).

Assuming his calling range is:
Flushes
The odd trip 9
Sets - which are now full hosues

Its surely a WA/WB situation, with a slight tendancy to limit the amount of trip 9s and flushes he has because he might have led out with both of these if he was scared about letting me draw to a 4th club (note: if he had a flush, it will be Q high at best). So is my best play to check?
Within his calling range, sets make up a fair proportion so maybe i should check and call a river bet (or bet if checked to me).
The upside is that i may get value from his range that may not call the turn bet and also i don't get stacked when he has a FH.
The downside is that i now don't stack lower flushes and give him chance to boat up for free.

Initially i thought it was a clear bet/call in the heat of the moment, but after thinking about his calling range maybe its not so clear cut.

Thoughts appreciated please!

Steve

2010-01-09T20:03:00.000-08:00

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! Bloggers can register to play for free in the WBCOOP, if you don’t have a PokerStars account you can get your Free Poker Download at PokerStars

Registration code: 863533

Look at me go

2010-01-09T19:50:00.000-08:00

On the 3rd I started my years poker play, and acutally ended up having my most profitable day at cash games yet. I won around $950 altogether plus fpps and stellar awards.
My best ever day included my $1k+ tournament cash, and my best ever cash day in terms of buy ins was 13 1/2 at 50NL ($675) but this is my highest score in just cash games.

It actually got me onto PTR's daily leaderboard - you can see me in 6th place below.

Supernova Elite is the top tier i can get by playing at Pokerstars. I thought i may have an outside shot at it, but it doesn't look like i will be getting it this year. The new vpp structure has lowered the amount of vpps i can accrue at my current limit and means i would have to play closer to 4 million hands in a year than the 3 million+ i was expecting.
I've made a $100 bet with my brother that i can get to 300kvpps before he can get to 100k. Its not much money considering how much we will get by getting to our respective goals, but the pride of winning the bet will hopefully make me play more. Who knows, if i'm at 400k by June, i may consider moving up in limits to hit SNE.

I'm gonna start including interesting hands i played in this blog, but not in this post as its already quite long.

Steve

welcome 2010

2010-01-08T12:06:00.000-08:00

New year = renewed efforts to keep this blog going.

Above is the graph of my 24 hour session. I completed 22 1/2 hours, mainly 24 tabling, before my computer crashed. I took this as a sign to stop, though if it were a challenge or for money i am confident i would be able to complete it.
I'm pretty happy about being positive after the session as other people who have had a go haven't done as well. On the other side, if i went on a tilt inducing downswing i reckon i would have probably stopped, so i guess i ran well in that respect.

I had a good new year and xmas. Spent New Year's eve in a pool hall i frequent in York. It was all you can drink fro the night for £40 - you just helped yourself behind the bar. Saw a lot of former uni mates which is always a laugh.

Will update you on more of my exploits soon. I'm gonna aim to update this more, but keep the posts a bit smaller so its more of a 5 minute job rather than 15!.

Steve

24h session? I must be mad

2009-11-11T14:42:00.000-08:00

I've read a post by CMAR on 2+2 that says you should try and have a hobby or something constructive to do whilst you are not playing. It was a decent point, and excluding bridge and pool, i often spent a lot of time during my non-playing sessions drifting on the internet or sleeping. I decided to get a couple of jigsaws and here is the first one completed. Took me a few days and got pretty hard when i only had the white bits left, but am pleased with the outcome. I'm going to get a frame and put it up on the wall because it looks pretty good.

Its one of M.C. Escher's impossible drawings, called 'ascending and descending'

Having read this post on 2+2 i've decided to give my own attempt on playing poker for 24 hours. It won't be easy and i will have to sort out food, drink and red bull in advance, but it'll put me back on target for my milestone bonus to be hit by the end of this month.

As I write this one person is 18.5 hours into his challenge, the other guy has dropped out. He's run pretty BE (Break Even) but he will have earned a fair amount of fpps for doing so. If i 24 tabled for the 24 hours, i would earn about 5400 vpps, which translates as 18900 fpps or $300 ish in cash. I doubt (severely!) that i will be able to maintain 24 tabling for that long so will probably cut to 9 or 12 after about 10k hands.

I won't be saying when i'm doing it, but it will likely be before the end of this month. I just don't want regulars picking on me at hour 16 onwards!

Steve

October ends :)

2009-11-02T09:11:00.000-08:00

Hey y'all.

I see why some others don't update their blog that often now! It just slips out of my mind to be honest, but here i am with a summary of my last few weeks.

The graph above is from the 50NL i played after my poor start to october. It took me a few days to get going, but finally had some decent grinding after the downswings i was having at 100NL. I didn't play nearly as many hands as i was panning on doing which was due to three things. 1) bridge 2) Some pretty bad insomnia 3) Laziness

I think i have finally got my sleeping pattern back on track (he says after waking up at 4:30 am) but i have been trying not to take 2-3 hour naps as much. I've never really had a problem with my sleeping pattern before, so it probably has something to do with the fact i haven't had a schedule for months. I'm going to try to stick to a schedule as well as increasing the amount of exercise i do and improving my diet.

I've been playing a lot of bridge at the moment, but for half of October i was playing pretty poorly. I went to Birmingham for a weekend on the 23rd to play in the Autumn congress. I didn't play great, partly due to the lack of sleep i got and partly due to the system we were playing. We were playing an unusual system, designed by my partner, which enables us to enter the bidding on more hands and is also quite fun! However, I think the strain of remembering, alerting and explaining things to the opponents caused a lack of concentration on my part. The good news is that since i returned, i've played pretty well. We won our NICKO match (national Knockout) and also the latest intercity match VS York - my old team.

The system we played in Birmingham has caused a controversial topic on the governing body's website (here) but you'll only really understand it if you actually play bridge.

I'm aiming to get the 200k milestone bonus on Pokerstars this month, which at 5k hands a day should take me about 2-3 weeks. I've got a pool weekend this weekend at Blue Dolphin and I'm playing Bridge for Yorkshire on the last weekend of the month, but aside from that i should have enough time to get the $2000. I'm going to stick to 50NL for the rest of this month and do some hardcore grinding, and then reduce tables and work on my game at 50 and 100NL next month.

Thats all for now

Steve

Tournie time

2009-10-15T08:02:00.000-07:00

Tournaments are sooo frustrating. I'm planning to spend one day playing tournaments per week, and that day was last night. Entered about 15 tournaments all in all, some $4/180s and the rest larger Mtts. I cashed in a few, played pretty well in most of them too - i was happy with my play anyway.

I played in the $3 re-buy and came 17th. It took over 8 hours, so the hourly is pretty poor :P, but i played pretty near perfect poker for most of it. I got from 30k in chips to 1.3 million over the course of a few hours. At no point did i have all my chips in without having the other guy drawing dead. With 19 left i ran my QQ into a guy's AA, he'd been three betting a lot and i was to his left so 4bet him from the BB when he'd 3bet the button. Sucks, because the tournament is so top heavy in the payout structure.

Never mind, I'm sure i'll make another large final table soon.

Cash is on the up slightly. I've changed the times i play to early mornings and i've found a different player base to the one i've usually played against. I'm still down over $800 in all in EV, but i know its not going to suddenly close the gap. Unfortunately I'm going to be away this sunday and then all of the weekend after, so that will reduce the profitable time that i have to play in for the rest of the month. Thankfully though, I'm now up for the month across the two sites with tournies included, and am soon going to be able to buy the $800 SN bonus.

Steve

Running good? I think not

2009-10-06T08:34:00.000-07:00

Here are the first 6 days of my month. Not a happy picture, the big downswing was mostly just one day's worth of play. I've moved back down to 50NL to just grind away. I'll probably stay there for a week, and hopefully have caught back all the difference.

As a side point, i'm playing on Mansion poker at the same time. Its a with a staking consortium called Bank Roll Supply. They stake me to play cash games on mansion up to 100NL at the moment. I'm using it to try out 6max and also hopefully shots at 200NL if i can show them i'm a winning player at Mansion. Its not that i can't bankroll myself across two sites but the three benifits i think it gives me are
1) They are all UK based players who will be having monthly, or so, meetups. It will give me a chance to join a group of players if i ever move into live play seriously.
2) It will give me chance to take shots at 200NL and also at 6 max without being as nitty as i usually am.
3) They give coaching session to their players (me!), so i get free coaching which i've not really had much of.
Added in to the fact that i'm a high volume player, so they've offered me rakeback which they wouldn't normally do. I'll keep you posted on how this goes, but i've been doing it fo just over a month now. The requirements are that i have to play 3k hands a week, which i can do in a few hours if i need to.

So aside from my bad start on stars, i'm up $200 ish on Mansion, and also $70 ish from donkaments. Donkaments are something i'm going to try my hand at again, maybe one day a week, as an effort to break up the grind. I came 4th in a $5 freezeout at the end of last month for $1019 which has sparked my interest again.

Finally my rough plans for going to America at the end of Novemeber to play in the nationals (bridge) at San Diego have fallen through, due to a clash with a County bridge tournament that i've got to play in over here. I will look to go abroad soon though, maybe for either the PCA (poker) or the spring nationals (bridge). Failing that i will almost certainly go during the 2010 WSOP.

Steve

A blog? Why not.....

2009-09-19T10:47:00.000-07:00

First things first, my name is Steve and I'm about to start playing online poker full time.

I've been playing poker online for coming up to five years now. I started out playing small stakes sit n goes and tournaments. I moved into cash games about three years ago as they are a steadier way to win money and the fact that i like the ability to leave when i feel like it.

This blog will just be a way for people to keep up with my progress, not just in poker but in other things in my life too. Please feel free to leave comments, but if you aren't going to say anything useful please don't bother to speak at all :). I hope to update it roughly once a week - but please don't hold me to that!

I'm currently playing 100NL cash (50c/$1 blinds) mainly on Pokerstars. I'm aiming to play about 100k hands a month from here until xmas and then in January i will set some realistic yearly targets for myself.

In my spare time i play Bridge and Pool, as well as various racket sports to keep fit. It will be mainly a poker blog, but occasionally i will post interesting things from my other activities.

Steve