I'm Playing Again
Ok, a lot of poker (for me) has happened since my last post. So let's get down to business.
The day after I officially took the break detailed in my previous post, I was bored so I decided against my better judgement to play some more $1/$2. Of course, it did not go well. I ended up going broke on Stars, getting the last $70 I had into the pot preflop with QQ vs. AKo and losing.
I then put $500 onto Party, which I lost in 215 hands. The hands I lost a bunch of money with were: A2 vs. 45 on an A23 flop, 88 vs. 82 on a 226 flop, and KK vs. 66 on a 246 flop. These all probably seem like fairly reasonable nhands to lose with, and maybe they are. But obviously things just weren't going right. I won exactly 1 pot that netted me more than $20. So after losing this $500 I decided to give it a rest, which lasted for about 3 days.
At the beginning of this new/actual break, I ordered 5 poker books. I bought a bunch of books on NLH because I realized that I didn't really have any books on that game in particular. The way I've learned NLH is by reading the NLH sections of Phil Hellmuth's book and Super System 1, by playing a lot, and by posting/reading on some poker forums. I actually received Super System 2 today, so hopefully I will get to read that over the next week or so. 4 more books are also coming (and at least 2 of them are purely on NLH), and I will post if I read anything of particular interest that I learn from them.
My break ended by me getting drunk with some friends on Friday night and seeing Snakes on a Plane, which by the way is one of the most entertaining movies I've seen in a very long time. After the movie we went to my house and drank some more, then everyone was in bed by about 2:00am. I decided to fire up the poker-box and play some $0.50/$1.00. I won a little less than $500 over the course of about 450 hands (2+ hours of 3-tabling). Let's just say that I flopped 4 sets and got paid handsomely on all of them, than hit a few other draws and otherwise played well to win the rest. Apparently, buttershots on the rocks + poker = $. This was a great night and I was very happy to be playing again.
I have since stuck to the $.5/$1 game and have played about 2800 hands over the last week, winning just short of $1500 in the process. Yes, I'm running good here. I also think I'm playing pretty well, and I'm not sure why it doesn't seem to be translating to the $1/$2 game. Maybe I'm doing something wrong or maybe it's just dumb luck. I'll figure it out eventually either way, but right now I see no reason to try to move up again since my PokerTracker stats tell me that I'm making about $44 an hour playing 2 tables of $.5/$1. I certainly don't claim this rate is sustainable, but I think (in disagreement with a friend of mine who is a 2+2'er) that one could maintain a rate of about 2/3 of that (something like 12.5 ptbbs/100). Again, this will get sorted out eventually.
Besides running good and winning money, I've been playing so much because I'm incredibly close to having enough frequent player points (FPPs) on Stars to get the 30Gb video ipod. In fact, as of this writing I have 19824 points and the ipod costs 20000 points. So I'm damn close. But I'm a little tired of poker right now, so the wife (the person who is receiving said ipod) might have to wait a few more days for me to finish up this quest.
I have also been playing some tournaments and have had nothing even remotely interesting happen, except for when I bubbled the $20 deep stack PLO tourney on Stars this week (a tournament that I won the last time I played it). I got all in for a monster pot on the flop with a set vs. a naked flush draw and he got there -- a little frustrating but nothing too exciting.
I have also played some live poker in the last week, 3 times in fact. I went to an Indian casino near my wife's parents' house in Santa Barbara and played a $1/$2 NLH game with a $50 (!!!) max buyin. Yes, 25 BBs was the max buyin. So it wasn't very much fun. I lost two buyins here. The first was with AQ vs. 46 on an A46 flop. I think it's pretty much impossible to get away from a hand like top pair when you only have 25BBs. A preflop raise and a flop bet/raise pretty much gets you all in. Then I rebought and lost about $35 by getting all in preflop with KK vs. 99 and losing to a flopped set. I decided that this structure was gay and that I wasn't going to put any more money into it, so I began to play the short stack. I got $16 in with JJ vs. AQo and doubled up. Fast forward, lose a few pots, then I get my last $24 in with AQo vs. QQ and lose. I then watched my wife and her mother win about $200 playing penny slots. Awesome. I played $40 on the slots and lost it all very quickly. I suck at slots.
We also played the home game this week, for which we only had 4 players. How hard is it to not schedule shit on Thursday night every week, people? Anyway, we played a 4-game rotation tournament consisting of Chicago (stud with high spade in the hole getting 1/2 the pot), limit hold'em, pot limit omaha, and no limit 2-7 triple draw lowball. We played 3 rounds of the rotation then we played NLH for the remainder of the tourney. I didn't fare too well during the rotation games due to Brian the luckbox (a very loose player who plays every week). He made an 85 low on his first hand of triple draw and a wheel (23457) on his 2nd. I think he won pretty much every pot in all 3 rounds of triple draw. He also played a ridiculous pot against me during the last round of Chicago where I had a full house on 5th street and the 8 of spades in the hole. He had a flush on 6th street and no spade in the hole. 4 bets went in on every street and he ended up catching the Ks on his last card to escape with 1/2 of a pot that contained about 42% of the chips on the table.
In the last round of limit holdem I was all in vs. Brian with JT vs. A4 on an AJ3 board and I hit a T on the turn to almost triple up. I then decided to tighten up big time until we got to NLH, since I now had a reasonable amount of chips and I felt like I had a huge advantage over the other guys at NLH. So that's what I did. When we started playing NLH there were 3 people left. I only had about 9BBs so I was in push-or-fold mode. I picked up a bunch of blinds by moving in with AJ, AQ, AJ, and AK during the first few minutes. I then moved in from the SB with 99 and was called from the BB by Brian's Ah4h. He flopped a flush draw but missed and I ended up doubling up and taking the chip lead. Brian then knocked out the other guy and I got Brian head up. I chipped away at him slowly, finally getting him all in with JT vs. J9 on a 893 board, rivering the 7 to finish him off.
Finally, I went to the local Indian casino with that 2+2 friend of mine to play in the $1/$3 NLH game. I had a few interesting hands here. Let me share them with you.
1) The guy directly to my left min-raises UTG for $6 and has about $15 left. All fold, SB calls, I call from the BB with J5o. The flop is KJ5, SB checks, I check, UTG moves in, SB folds, I call. He doesn't show his cards and I win.
2) About 1/2 hour into the game, I raise to $12 from the CO with AsQd, the button calls, the BB calls. The flop comes KsKc7s, BB checks, I bet $25, button calls. The turn comes the Ac, I check, SB (who had floated the flop and bet the turn on me a few times already -- the same guy from hand #1) bets $35, I move him in for about $120 more, he calls with KhJh, the BB says he folded AQ, and I hit the apparent case A to win the pot. I was a 43:1 dog there against his hand, which is pretty bad. But I was pretty sure he could have an A there too. Lucky me.
3) UTG limps, a few others limp, I limp from the CO with 8d7d, button limps, blinds limp. Flop comes Ks7c8c. Check to UTG, who bets $10, 1 caller, I make it $40, UTG moves in for about $210 more, caller folds, I think for about 10 seconds and call, UTG has AcKc for the monster draw, I luck out and he misses and I scoop another big pot.
At this point I have about $700 on the table, but this is also about the last time anything goes right for me.
4) I open-raise to $12 UTG with KK. I get 3 callers, including both blinds. The flop comes A46 rainbow, the SB moves in for about $40, SB folds, I fold, other guy folds, SB shows A6o. Yea... good hand to play for 1/5 of your chips preflop buddy. It was funny. I showed the KK when I was folding and I got several comments on how good of a laydown it was. Maybe I'm too tight, but I didn't even consider calling here when the guy moves in on 3 other people and I hold less than top pair on an almost draw-less board.
5) I open-raise to $12 in EP with AdQd, I get about a zillion callers. Flop comes Qs8s4s, check to me, I bet $40. Next guy to act calls, button (who is a tremendous donkey) calls all in, all fold. Turn is the 9c, check check. River is the Tc, check check. Me and the other guy have AdQd and AhQh, tremendous donkey (TD) has 9c9d (note the lack of flush draw) for the turned set. Ok, I 1-outered some guy then got 2-outered myself. I can live with the justice.
6) A few hands after hand #5, a zillion limpers limp to my BB and I check with 88. Flop comes 89T two diamonds. I bet $10, TD makes it $20, A6o guy from hand #4 cold-calls. I really can't see calling here, as there are too many turn cards that destroy my hand and I have little idea what the cold-caller or TD have. I make it $55, TD moves in for $90 more, cold-caller folds. Now I have a better idea of what TD has, and unfortunately for me I currently can't beat it. But I am getting the right price to suck out so I call. I miss my boat and TD's 67o takes all the money. TD leaves a few minutes later. This, by the way, is the only set I flopped in the 7 or so hours I was there.
7) An new but apparently aggressive player raises his 3rd pot in a row to $15 from MP. I call right behind him with 66, all fold. Flop comes AQT. He bets $10, a bet which totally reeked of weakness. I make it $40, he thinks for about 45 seconds and calls. Turn is a 9, he checks, I bet $60. He thinks for about a minute and folds, claiming he had AK. I'm not sure I beleive him (I would easily believe AJ or KK), but why would somebody say that they're laying down a stronger hand than they really are? Don't people usually do the opposite?
All said and done, I end up leaving ahead by about $375. 1/2 of this money was from some random drawing that I won when I first got there (for $180).
I played a little bit of .5/1 today and stacked some guy with 88 vs. JJ on a 89T flop. I'm a little tired of poker right now, so I might try to take the rest of the day off to drink and do some other foolishness like watch the Charger game tonight. I'm back to running well and it feels pretty good. I hope things go well for everyone else also.
The day after I officially took the break detailed in my previous post, I was bored so I decided against my better judgement to play some more $1/$2. Of course, it did not go well. I ended up going broke on Stars, getting the last $70 I had into the pot preflop with QQ vs. AKo and losing.
I then put $500 onto Party, which I lost in 215 hands. The hands I lost a bunch of money with were: A2 vs. 45 on an A23 flop, 88 vs. 82 on a 226 flop, and KK vs. 66 on a 246 flop. These all probably seem like fairly reasonable nhands to lose with, and maybe they are. But obviously things just weren't going right. I won exactly 1 pot that netted me more than $20. So after losing this $500 I decided to give it a rest, which lasted for about 3 days.
At the beginning of this new/actual break, I ordered 5 poker books. I bought a bunch of books on NLH because I realized that I didn't really have any books on that game in particular. The way I've learned NLH is by reading the NLH sections of Phil Hellmuth's book and Super System 1, by playing a lot, and by posting/reading on some poker forums. I actually received Super System 2 today, so hopefully I will get to read that over the next week or so. 4 more books are also coming (and at least 2 of them are purely on NLH), and I will post if I read anything of particular interest that I learn from them.
My break ended by me getting drunk with some friends on Friday night and seeing Snakes on a Plane, which by the way is one of the most entertaining movies I've seen in a very long time. After the movie we went to my house and drank some more, then everyone was in bed by about 2:00am. I decided to fire up the poker-box and play some $0.50/$1.00. I won a little less than $500 over the course of about 450 hands (2+ hours of 3-tabling). Let's just say that I flopped 4 sets and got paid handsomely on all of them, than hit a few other draws and otherwise played well to win the rest. Apparently, buttershots on the rocks + poker = $. This was a great night and I was very happy to be playing again.
I have since stuck to the $.5/$1 game and have played about 2800 hands over the last week, winning just short of $1500 in the process. Yes, I'm running good here. I also think I'm playing pretty well, and I'm not sure why it doesn't seem to be translating to the $1/$2 game. Maybe I'm doing something wrong or maybe it's just dumb luck. I'll figure it out eventually either way, but right now I see no reason to try to move up again since my PokerTracker stats tell me that I'm making about $44 an hour playing 2 tables of $.5/$1. I certainly don't claim this rate is sustainable, but I think (in disagreement with a friend of mine who is a 2+2'er) that one could maintain a rate of about 2/3 of that (something like 12.5 ptbbs/100). Again, this will get sorted out eventually.
Besides running good and winning money, I've been playing so much because I'm incredibly close to having enough frequent player points (FPPs) on Stars to get the 30Gb video ipod. In fact, as of this writing I have 19824 points and the ipod costs 20000 points. So I'm damn close. But I'm a little tired of poker right now, so the wife (the person who is receiving said ipod) might have to wait a few more days for me to finish up this quest.
I have also been playing some tournaments and have had nothing even remotely interesting happen, except for when I bubbled the $20 deep stack PLO tourney on Stars this week (a tournament that I won the last time I played it). I got all in for a monster pot on the flop with a set vs. a naked flush draw and he got there -- a little frustrating but nothing too exciting.
I have also played some live poker in the last week, 3 times in fact. I went to an Indian casino near my wife's parents' house in Santa Barbara and played a $1/$2 NLH game with a $50 (!!!) max buyin. Yes, 25 BBs was the max buyin. So it wasn't very much fun. I lost two buyins here. The first was with AQ vs. 46 on an A46 flop. I think it's pretty much impossible to get away from a hand like top pair when you only have 25BBs. A preflop raise and a flop bet/raise pretty much gets you all in. Then I rebought and lost about $35 by getting all in preflop with KK vs. 99 and losing to a flopped set. I decided that this structure was gay and that I wasn't going to put any more money into it, so I began to play the short stack. I got $16 in with JJ vs. AQo and doubled up. Fast forward, lose a few pots, then I get my last $24 in with AQo vs. QQ and lose. I then watched my wife and her mother win about $200 playing penny slots. Awesome. I played $40 on the slots and lost it all very quickly. I suck at slots.
We also played the home game this week, for which we only had 4 players. How hard is it to not schedule shit on Thursday night every week, people? Anyway, we played a 4-game rotation tournament consisting of Chicago (stud with high spade in the hole getting 1/2 the pot), limit hold'em, pot limit omaha, and no limit 2-7 triple draw lowball. We played 3 rounds of the rotation then we played NLH for the remainder of the tourney. I didn't fare too well during the rotation games due to Brian the luckbox (a very loose player who plays every week). He made an 85 low on his first hand of triple draw and a wheel (23457) on his 2nd. I think he won pretty much every pot in all 3 rounds of triple draw. He also played a ridiculous pot against me during the last round of Chicago where I had a full house on 5th street and the 8 of spades in the hole. He had a flush on 6th street and no spade in the hole. 4 bets went in on every street and he ended up catching the Ks on his last card to escape with 1/2 of a pot that contained about 42% of the chips on the table.
In the last round of limit holdem I was all in vs. Brian with JT vs. A4 on an AJ3 board and I hit a T on the turn to almost triple up. I then decided to tighten up big time until we got to NLH, since I now had a reasonable amount of chips and I felt like I had a huge advantage over the other guys at NLH. So that's what I did. When we started playing NLH there were 3 people left. I only had about 9BBs so I was in push-or-fold mode. I picked up a bunch of blinds by moving in with AJ, AQ, AJ, and AK during the first few minutes. I then moved in from the SB with 99 and was called from the BB by Brian's Ah4h. He flopped a flush draw but missed and I ended up doubling up and taking the chip lead. Brian then knocked out the other guy and I got Brian head up. I chipped away at him slowly, finally getting him all in with JT vs. J9 on a 893 board, rivering the 7 to finish him off.
Finally, I went to the local Indian casino with that 2+2 friend of mine to play in the $1/$3 NLH game. I had a few interesting hands here. Let me share them with you.
1) The guy directly to my left min-raises UTG for $6 and has about $15 left. All fold, SB calls, I call from the BB with J5o. The flop is KJ5, SB checks, I check, UTG moves in, SB folds, I call. He doesn't show his cards and I win.
2) About 1/2 hour into the game, I raise to $12 from the CO with AsQd, the button calls, the BB calls. The flop comes KsKc7s, BB checks, I bet $25, button calls. The turn comes the Ac, I check, SB (who had floated the flop and bet the turn on me a few times already -- the same guy from hand #1) bets $35, I move him in for about $120 more, he calls with KhJh, the BB says he folded AQ, and I hit the apparent case A to win the pot. I was a 43:1 dog there against his hand, which is pretty bad. But I was pretty sure he could have an A there too. Lucky me.
3) UTG limps, a few others limp, I limp from the CO with 8d7d, button limps, blinds limp. Flop comes Ks7c8c. Check to UTG, who bets $10, 1 caller, I make it $40, UTG moves in for about $210 more, caller folds, I think for about 10 seconds and call, UTG has AcKc for the monster draw, I luck out and he misses and I scoop another big pot.
At this point I have about $700 on the table, but this is also about the last time anything goes right for me.
4) I open-raise to $12 UTG with KK. I get 3 callers, including both blinds. The flop comes A46 rainbow, the SB moves in for about $40, SB folds, I fold, other guy folds, SB shows A6o. Yea... good hand to play for 1/5 of your chips preflop buddy. It was funny. I showed the KK when I was folding and I got several comments on how good of a laydown it was. Maybe I'm too tight, but I didn't even consider calling here when the guy moves in on 3 other people and I hold less than top pair on an almost draw-less board.
5) I open-raise to $12 in EP with AdQd, I get about a zillion callers. Flop comes Qs8s4s, check to me, I bet $40. Next guy to act calls, button (who is a tremendous donkey) calls all in, all fold. Turn is the 9c, check check. River is the Tc, check check. Me and the other guy have AdQd and AhQh, tremendous donkey (TD) has 9c9d (note the lack of flush draw) for the turned set. Ok, I 1-outered some guy then got 2-outered myself. I can live with the justice.
6) A few hands after hand #5, a zillion limpers limp to my BB and I check with 88. Flop comes 89T two diamonds. I bet $10, TD makes it $20, A6o guy from hand #4 cold-calls. I really can't see calling here, as there are too many turn cards that destroy my hand and I have little idea what the cold-caller or TD have. I make it $55, TD moves in for $90 more, cold-caller folds. Now I have a better idea of what TD has, and unfortunately for me I currently can't beat it. But I am getting the right price to suck out so I call. I miss my boat and TD's 67o takes all the money. TD leaves a few minutes later. This, by the way, is the only set I flopped in the 7 or so hours I was there.
7) An new but apparently aggressive player raises his 3rd pot in a row to $15 from MP. I call right behind him with 66, all fold. Flop comes AQT. He bets $10, a bet which totally reeked of weakness. I make it $40, he thinks for about 45 seconds and calls. Turn is a 9, he checks, I bet $60. He thinks for about a minute and folds, claiming he had AK. I'm not sure I beleive him (I would easily believe AJ or KK), but why would somebody say that they're laying down a stronger hand than they really are? Don't people usually do the opposite?
All said and done, I end up leaving ahead by about $375. 1/2 of this money was from some random drawing that I won when I first got there (for $180).
I played a little bit of .5/1 today and stacked some guy with 88 vs. JJ on a 89T flop. I'm a little tired of poker right now, so I might try to take the rest of the day off to drink and do some other foolishness like watch the Charger game tonight. I'm back to running well and it feels pretty good. I hope things go well for everyone else also.
posted by the_real_zano at 2:12 PM
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