Running well

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

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

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

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

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

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 :)

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