A Review of my Vacation (Long Post)

I've been back for a few hours and I'm a little more rested, so I figured I'd go over what has happened in the last week.

I went to San Jose for business last weekend, then went to San Francisco for the remainder of the week to hang out with some friends and have a little vacation. I was able to play a lot of poker when my friends were unavailable due to things like work and sleep.


SUNDAY:

The first time I played was while hanging out in the lobby of my hotel in San Jose waiting to get a ride to San Francisco. Apparently the city of San Jose has free wifi provided by the city, for which I thank them. I won about $160 while playing for about 1/2 hour, most of which came from this hand:

PokerRoom No-Limit Hold'em, $2 BB (7 handed)
CO ($200.00)
Button ($425.60)
SB ($166.80)
Hero ($197.00)
UTG ($135.70)
MP1 ($146.90)
MP2 ($328.40)

Preflop: Hero is BB with 4c, 5d.
UTG calls $2, MP1 raises to $5, 1 fold, CO calls $3, 1 fold, SB calls $4, Hero calls $3, UTG calls $3.

Flop: ($25) 3c, 2h, 6d (5 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $12, UTG calls $12, MP1 calls $12, CO folds, SB folds.

Turn: ($61) Ac (3 players)
Hero bets $40, UTG calls $40, MP1 folds.

River: ($141) Qh (2 players)
Hero bets $80, UTG calls $78.70 (All-In).

Final Pot: $299.70

Results below:
Hero has 4c 5d (straight, six high).
UTG doesn't show.
Outcome: Hero wins $299.70.


We went out to some bars in the "Marina" area of San Fransisco that night, and I didn't play again until the next day while everyone was working.


MONDAY:

During the day I played about 550 hands and won $45 or so. A fun hand from this session:

PokerRoom No-Limit Hold'em, $2 BB (10 handed)
MP2 ($275.45)
MP3 ($485.50)
CO ($193.70)
Button ($258.00)
Hero ($163.40)
BB ($74.70)
UTG ($197.00)
UTG+1 ($83.20)
UTG+2 ($83.65)
MP1 ($54.20)

Preflop: Hero is SB with Qd, Qh.
1 fold, UTG+1 raises to $7, UTG+2 calls $7, 4 folds, Button calls $7, Hero raises to $30, 1 fold, UTG+1 folds, UTG+2 calls $23, Button folds.

Flop: ($76) 8h, 3s, Js (2 players)
Hero bets $54, UTG+2 calls $53.65 (All-In).

Turn: ($183.65) As (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: ($183.65) 7h (2 players, 1 all-in)

Final Pot: $183.65

Results below:
Hero has Qd Qh (one pair, queens).
UTG+2 has 4c Ac (one pair, aces).
Outcome: UTG+2 wins $183.30. Hero wins $0.34.


His flop call -- "wow" is about all you can say about that.

That evening after people got off work we ate some diner and watched American Psycho. Good film -- one of the guys I was staying with actually dressed up as Patrick Bateman (the main character in American Psycho) for halloween last night. After everyone went to bed I decided to stay up and play some more. I played about 500 hands and won another $65.

I lost a bunch during this session by having a few top pair vs. set/straight/2 pair hands. I also lost with 2 pair 4 times during this session. 3 of these times were against a better two pair and one was against a flush. So I got fairly cold-decked and still ended up with a win, which is a huge plus in my book.


TUESDAY:

I played again the following day while everyone was at work, winning about $500 over 330 hands. A lot of the profit was gained by winning a bunch of smallish pots, but about $300 of it came when I got all in with Ac8c vs. QQ vs. AA on an 25Q two club board and won with the flush. I actually played the hand kind of badly; it was bet and raise in front of me on the flop and I make a large check-raise on both of them instead of folding like I should have. Oh well, sometimes bad plays work out.


WEDNESDAY:

I played again on wednesday afternoon, winning $110 in about 250 hands and I don't really remember any hands from this session.

Then I played again that evening, where I ran up a huge stack in my $1/$2 game. All told from this night, I won $1777 in 350 hands. To re-cap in case you didn't read my eariler post about this game, I sat down to a game that had two extremely poor players in it, both of which had a bunch of money on the table. Here is my first hand at the table, where I fold the 2nd nuts to a very large overbet check/raise on the river:

PokerRoom No-Limit Hold'em, $2 BB (5 handed)
SB (Donkey1) ($420.75)
Hero ($200.00)
UTG ($175.90)
MP (Donkey2) ($701.70)
Button ($70.00)

Preflop: Hero is BB with Kh, Js.
1 fold, MP (Donkey2) raises to $5, 1 fold, SB (Donkey1) calls $4, Hero calls $3.

Flop: ($15) 7h, 4h, Qs (3 players)
Donkey1 checks, Hero checks, Donkey2 checks.

Turn: ($15) 9h (3 players)
Donkey1 checks, Hero checks, Donkey2 checks.

River: ($15) 8h (3 players)
Donkey1 checks, Hero bets $8, Donkey2 calls $8, Donkey1 raises to $100, Hero folds, Donkey2 folds.

Final Pot: $131

Results below:
Donkey1 doesn't show.
Outcome: Donkey1 wins $131.


A few things became quite apparent after just a few hands of watching and playing with Donkey1 and Donkey2. Donkey1 almost always went for a large check-raise on the river with a strong hand if he was out of position. This meant that I had to do less value-betting in these situations (I found this out the hard way by value betting KK on a 25Q9J board and getting c/r'ed by his 95o). Also, he tried to play very big pots with almost any hand that had value. I decided to just try to play solid against this guy and try to catch him with his pants down.

Also Donkey2 was willing to fire a lot of bullets on his bluffs, and in fact he did so regularly when people didn't appear to have big hands. This meant that the strategy for Donkey2 was to check/call the whole way with anything as strong as a mediocre top pair or something. My first big pots at this table came at the expense of Donkey2, where I implemented my "check call with top pair" strategy and let him bluff all his chips to me.


PokerRoom No-Limit Hold'em, $2 BB (4 handed)
SB ($196.30)
BB (Donkey1) ($647.20)
Hero ($219.20)
Button (Donkey2) ($705.75)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with 4s, As.
Hero calls $2, Button (Donkey2) raises to $10, 1 fold, BB (Donkey1) calls $8, Hero calls $8.

Flop: ($31) Qs, Ah, 9h (3 players)
Donkey1 checks, Hero checks, Donkey2 bets $25, Donkey1 folds, Hero calls $25.

Turn: ($81) 9d (2 players)
Hero checks, Donkey2 bets $35, Hero calls $35.

River: ($151) 8h (2 players)
Hero checks, Donkey2 bets $150, Hero calls $149.20 (All-In).

Final Pot: $450.20

Results below:
Hero has 4s As (two pair, aces and nines).
Donkey2 has 3h 5s (one pair, nines).
Outcome: Hero wins $449.40. Donkey2 wins $0.80.


PokerRoom No-Limit Hold'em, $4 BB (5 handed)
Button ($217.50)
SB (Donkey1) ($907.10)
Hero ($541.60)
UTG (Donkey2) ($209.35)
MP ($256.50)

Preflop: Hero is BB with Ks, Jh.
UTG (Donkey2) raises to $10, MP calls $10, 1 fold, SB (Donkey1) calls $9, Hero calls $8.

Flop: ($40) 4d, Kd, 6c (4 players)
Donkey1 checks, Hero checks, Donkey2 bets $15, MP folds, Donkey1 folds, Hero calls $15.

Turn: ($70) Qs (2 players)
Hero checks, Donkey2 bets $25, Hero calls $25.

River: ($120) Ts (2 players)
Hero checks, Donkey2 bets $159.35 (All-In), Hero calls $159.35.

Final Pot: $438.70

Results below:
Hero has Ks Jh (one pair, kings).
Donkey2 has 8h 7h (high card, king).
Outcome: Hero wins $438.70.


This ended Donkey2's short stay at the table, and I was appreciative to him for giving me the chips to be able to hurt Donkey1. Notice that over the course of these hands Donkey1's stack has been growing at an alarming rate. He had pretty much been overbetting every hand and showing up with the 2 pair that he flopped with whatever random cheese he happened to have in his hand. In other words, he was getting hit by the deck and getting paid off big time.

I ran my stack up even further to about $800 by playing smallish pots, where I was able to double my stack in the biggest pot I've ever played (look for the HH for this hand here).

I can't get over the fact that Donkey1 put in 38BBs on the flop in a heads up limped pot with 2nd pair no kicker on a dry board. This hand built my stack to about $1600. By this time a couple of other seemingly solid players had gotten into the game and had built up reasonable stacks as well. The last big hand at this table (a hand actually not involving either of the named "Donkey" players) happens when I pull a limp/raise with AA and run into a guy who overextends himself with AQs. We get all in preflop and I stack him for about $500.

This hand gets my stack to around $2100, which is about where it's at when I leave the table for the night.


THURSDAY:

I played golf during the day on thursday then played some tournaments during the evening. I ended up winning a very small $10 PLO8 tourney that paid me $152. It's cool to win something, but such a small amount of money doesn't really seem to matter when compared to the amount I've been winning the rest of the week.


FRIDAY:

I don't play any during the day. At night we make it out to some bars and go all out. I got home at around 3am and played about 950 hands while very intoxicated, winning about $1000 in the process. Most of this was due to running REALLY good. Set over set, overpair vs. overpair, flopped str8 vs. flopped set, etc. I was also in a good state for snapping off bluffs, which I did rather liberally and with a good amount of success. I end up getting to bed at about 9am.


SATURDAY:

I wake up at about 1pm and decide to play the $10-rebuy on Stars that starts at 1:30pm. I played well and got fairly lucky in a couple of spots during this tourney and made the final table (9th/1700 for $975). I'm still a little disgusted with how this went -- I lost 2 races against the same guy, either of which would have put me in great position for a huge score. I really can't seem to get the one or two more breaks I think I need to win one of these large-ish tournaments. I guess I just need to be patient, as it will happen eventually if I keep playing well.

After the tournament was over we got dressed up in our halloween costumes (I was a football coach) and went to some house parties from about 9:30pm to 12:30am. After this we went out to some bars, then headed over to an old college freind's house for some post-bar drinking. I had an incredibly good time there, and we ended up leaving at about 4:30am so that I could pack for my 9:30am flight leaving from San Jose.


SUNDAY:

When I got home I showered, packed, etc, finishing up at about 6:00. Since we weren't planning on leaving for the San Jose airport (which is about an hour from where we were) until about 7:00 and everyone else had gone to sleep, I again decided to play a bit of poker to keep myself entertained. There weren't really any meaningful hands here, but I won about $100 over the course of 120 hands or so.

I was able to get some sleep on the 1.5 hour flight from San Jose to San Diego, then I slept for another 3 hours when I got home.


SUMMARY:

So this week I played 2976 hands at $1/$2 and won $3701.25, which is a totally insane win rate. I also final-tabled the $10rebuy on Stars for $975 and won a small PLO8 tourney on Pokespoker for $150. All said and done I'm up about $4700 for the week -- not bad for playing $1/$2 cash games and $10 buyin tourneys.

I also don't think I'm going to move up to $2/$4 yet, mostly because I haven't yet meet my goal of winning $4,000 at $1/$2 (I lost $500 over my first 10,000 hands at this level!). Even when I hit $4,000 I doubt I'll be moving up to $2/$4 immediately. I'd imagine I will hit this number soon since I am rather close to it, but I'm just starting to feel really comfortable in the $1/$2 games. I might wait till I hit $6,000 or something, but it really will depend on how I feel at the time.

I also have a lot of work to catch up on this week so I probably won't be playing much poker. I'll probably try to get to the casino this weekend and I'll definitely have the home game on Thursday, so I probably won't update this blog again until at least then.

Still Running Good (Kind Of)

Last night I went out and got totally shit-canned. I came home and played poker, starting at about 2am (I think). I don't remember much, but I do remember looking at the clock and seeing that it was about 6:45. At that point I was up about $1300 and I as feeling good; I quit ahead this much.

Then today I woke up at about 1 and decided to play the 10+R on Stars that started at 1:30. It started with 1703 people, and i ended up holding up a bunch of poeople from going out by making the final table of this tournament. I was, as always, the chip leader from about 400 to about the last 20. Of course I never found any good spots and went to the final table somewhat short-stacked. I doubled on the 3rd hand of the final table by getting my 7BBs in with KK vs. A8o. A few hands later I lost what I thought was a pretty ridiculous race. Here was the action:

9-handed. UTG+1, who was the table short stack, limps for 60k. A fairly aggressive player raises to 180K, I make it ~900K all in with TT. All fold, UTG+1 jams, MP player thinks for a while and folds, UTG+1 has QJo, and I lose the race for most of my chips. UTG+1 actually got 2nd in the 1,000,000 Gtd on stars some time in the last month, which is surprising because he plays very badly (at least his play on this paritcular hand was very bad I think, and I really wasn't impressed by his overall play either). I was left with about 3BBs, which I got in quickly with AKo a few hands later to triple me up. About 5 hands later I got in against this same guy (UTG+1 from the previously described hand) with QQ vs. AKo for 10BBs. Again, I lost a key race at the final table to put me out in 9th for $975.

I can't complain because I've been running very good lately and I won a ton of races to get to the final table. But it still pisses me off that I can't get the one or two breaks I need to win one of these damn tourneys. Oh well, I won $5,000 this week which is pretty unimaginable for playing $1/$2 and $10 buyin tourneys. Good for me.

I'm leaving to go back to San Diego in about an hour and a half and I'll post some of the hands from the last week when I get back.

Good night to all.

A Tiny Tourney Win

Today I went golfing then meet up with some people for drinks during the evening. When I got home I decided to get pokered out and play a few tournaments. Here's how these went.

1) $10+1 PLO8 on pokespoker. This had 38 people in it and I won it for $152. Yeeee-haw! I don't even know how to play this game, but the way these people were playing couldn't have been right. They were doing stuff like calling all-in checkraises with top pair, or calling pot bets on the turn drawing to the 2nd nuts on one side with nothing on the other side. Bad. I abused these suckas when we were shorthanded by doing a ton of raising and check/raising (admittedly I was probably running pretty hot and catching a bunch of hands). I don't even really remember how I won. My heads up opponent potted the river and I had the nut low with two crappy pair on the high and I scooped.

2) $20+2 Stud8 on Stars. This had 135 people and I ended up getting 90th or so. The big hand I lost was where I hit trip Ts with the (TT)9T on 4th street (limped pot and I was to the right of the bring in), bet the whole way, then got beat by a keenly played pair of aces who hit trips on 7th street.

3) $10+R NLH on Stars. This had 500 people or so and I finished something like 70th, which was out of the money. I was pretty medium stacked the whole time. Then I doubled up with 5d7d vs. KcJc on a 3d5sKd flop. The guy open-limped preflop then called a c/r for most of his stack on the flop then complained about receiving a "bad beat." So apparently losing when you're a 49/51 dog is a bad beat now. I later got all my chips in with 9h9c vs. 8d7d on a 6s7h8h flop, where I took an "extremely bad beat" by losing as a 51/49 favorite. If I won this flip I woulda been in the top few in chips with about 70 left, but it wasn't meant to be.


Finally I played a few hands of 1/2 while I was finishing up the last tourney and lost about $45. Nothing interesting here -- most of it was lost when I flopped an A with ATo, bet the whole way, then folded to a river raise on a fairly dry board.

Vacation is good, Poker is good

I've been in the bay area on business for the past few days and have been playing a good amount of poker. Oh yes, and I've been running very good.

Last week sometime I had $180 in my pokespoker account (I think I mention this is my previous blog entry). My account currently has $4109 in it. I've been running pretty hot in the shorthanded 1/2 games. I don't seem to be hitting tons of sets or anything, just getting paid off at the right times and hitting draws and such. About half of this came today at the hands of two particular donkeys. When I sat down, they had about $900 and $750 a peice. I managed to win a ton off these guys and by the time I left the table I had $2066 sitting there with me (after buying in for about $285).


The guy who started with $750 loved to bluff. So I doubed through him twice for most of his money by check-calling him wire to wire with top pair. This got me a little over $1050, of which I lost about $250 back to the other guy with top pair vs. overpair. Then I played the biggest pot of my life, which amounted to about $1620. I was a little worried about the guy having a set here, but he was such a donkey that there was no way i could let go of top 2 pair.

Texas Hold'em $2-$2 NL (Real Money), #1,182,199,844

Table Fair Oaks, 26 Oct 2006 1:04 AM ET

Seat 2: SuperDonkey ($1,816.90 in chips)

Seat 3: Hero ($810.75 in chips)

Seat 6: UTG ($66.50 in chips)

Seat 8: UTG+1 ($321.40 in chips)

Seat 9: Button ($199.20 in chips)

ANTES/BLINDS SuperDonkey posts blind ($1), Hero posts blind ($2). PRE-FLOP UTG folds, UTG+1 folds, Button folds, SuperDonkey calls $1, Hero checks. FLOP [board cards JS,9H,3S ] SuperDonkey bets $15, Hero bets $75, SuperDonkey calls $60. TURN [board cards JS,9H,3S,6C ] SuperDonkey bets $200, Hero bets $500, SuperDonkey bets $1,539.90 and is all-in, Hero calls $233.75 and is all-in. RIVER [board cards JS,9H,3S,6C,7H ] SHOWDOWN SuperDonkey shows [ 9D,6H ] Hero shows [ 9S,JD ] SuperDonkey wins $1,006.15, Hero wins $1,618.50.

SUMMARY Pot: $2,627.65, (including rake: $3) SuperDonkey, bets $1,816.90, collects $1,006.15, net -$810.75 Hero, bets $810.75, collects $1,618.50, net $807.75

This guy was just getting hit in the face with the deck tonight and still ended up leaving the table with $950 despite how poorly he played.

After this I ended up getting a monster pot together by getting all in with AA vs. AQs for about an $850 pot and winning it (another player claimed to have QQ in this hand and he helped build the pot a little too).

There were plenty of other semi-interesting hands, like the one where i check-called a guy with 22 when he potted the flop/turn/river and won a bunch. I don't have pokertracker on this computer so I don't have easy access to all the hands, therefore I won't be posting them at the current moment.

I also might be moving up to 2/4 NL soon. Again I have to look at my pokertracker stuff when I get home to see if I've meet my goal of winning $4000 at 1/2 NL. I'll hopefully be able to post more about my good run when I get back to San Diego. I hope everyone else is doing as well as I am.

A Fun Evening of Poker

I haven't played a terribly large amount of poker in the past week due to being busy with a bunch of school stuff. I did manage to play the home game last week and some online cash games today and did pretty well overall.

In the home game I didn't play too many interesting hands. We had 7 players and I ended up winning the whole shebang. There was nothing special that happened -- my 2p2 robot buddy did his usual thing and ran over most of the players while I hung back a little bit and picked my spots to get chips (picking up AA 4 times during the tourney didn't hurt either). We ended up getting heads up and I was outchipped about 55K to 85K with the blinds at 800/1600 and I ended up winning the thing in 5 hands. Here's how that happened:

Hand 1) I fold the SB with 93o
Hand 2) He raises to 4200, I make it 10,000 with AA, he moves in, I call and beat his 24o.
Hand 3) I raise to 4800 with QdTd, he folds.
Hand 4) He folds the SB
Hand 5) I make it 4800 with As8s, he moves in for about 35,000. I call after about 30 seconds and beat his Kh7h.

This guy really needs to learn to take the pedal off the metal every once in a while.


I also played about 450 hands of $1/$2 online this evening. It went pretty well and I finished up ahead a little over $500. There were some uber-donkeys on the tables tonight and it was a lot of fun. I had only $150 on pokerroom to start the evening, which I lost by running JJ into AA in a 3-handed $1/$2 game. I actually probably could have gotten away with about 1/2 my chips but I was stupid and lazy about it and didn't really think it through.

I then remembered that I had gotten $180 in rakeback on pokespoker last month so I tranferred this amount from my cashier account to my poker account and I was off to play again. Since I only had $180 I put $40 on a full table to do the min buyin challenge and $140 on a shorthanded table.

First of all let me explain what the min buyin challenge is. It's actually kinda simple; you put 20BBs on the table in some game then move up to the next level as soon as you have 20BBs for the next level on your current table. For example, I was going to put $40 on a $1/$2 table and move whatever money I gathered to a $2/$4 table as soon as I had $80 or more on the table. Then I would move to $3/$6 as soon as I had $120 on the table, etc. I've done this before by starting at smaller levels and running it up to $2/$4 before either quitting or busting. It's actally kind of fun and I would recommend it for anyone looking for a little change of pace.

Anyway, at a certain point I decided to just stay at the $1/$2 table because the game was pretty good. I built my stack from $40 to about $320 on this table by beating AA with 89s on an 4699J board and by beating AJ with 46 on a A35K2 board.

I also played a fairly interesting hand while at the table. Let's take a look at that.

PokerRoom No-Limit Hold'em, $2 BB (9 handed)
Hero ($311.80)
UTG ($105.20)
UTG+1 ($162.60)
MP1 ($106.80)
MP2 ($90.50)
MP3 ($187.40)
CO ($190.00)
Button ($270.10)
SB ($31.00)

Preflop: Hero is BB with Td, Th.
1 fold, UTG+1 raises to $7, 4 folds, Button calls $7, SB calls $6, Hero calls $5.

Sometimes I call here and sometimes I reraise. I opted to call here because I didn't really want to play a gigantic pot out of position with a marginal hand, where if my reraise gets called preflop I'll have to commit a ton of chips after the flop to find out if my hand is any good. Besides, TT is a fine hand for multiway action that can win a medium pot as an overpair or a big pot with a set. So I called...

Flop: ($28) 5h, 5d, 8h (4 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $24, UTG+1 folds, Button calls $24, SB folds.

Here I think betting is obvious as a free card would pretty much be a disaster. I'm fine with this play.

Turn: ($76) Ac (2 players)
Hero bets $45, Button calls $45.

This is the part I'm unsure of. This guy was fairly decent and his range is probably {88-QQ, AhXh, A5s, any other heart draw he might have}. I think he'll fold the parts of his range that aren't at least aces up to my turn bet. Let's figure out whether I should bet here after we look at the rest of this hand.

River: ($166) 5s (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $194.1 (All-In), Hero folds.

Here I can't really beat anything that he's betting for value. Pretty much every hand he would have called with on the turn (except 6h7h) has me beat so I fold.

Final Pot: $360.10
Results below:
Button doesn't show.
Outcome: Button wins $360.10.

Ok, so let's figure out whether I should bet on the turn (I think it was the right thing to do). This guy seemed like he was pretty tight and a straight shooter. Let's assume that his calling range on the flop is {55-QQ, AhXh, 6h7h, 9hJh-9hKh, A5s} and that he will fold 66-77, 99-QQ and all flush draws that aren't AhXh or 7h6h on the turn if I bet. We also need to assume some things about the river action so let's just assume that I will break even there.

These assumptions have him folding 65% of the time to my turn bet. If I break even on the river, this bet will net me $76 62.5% of the time and lose me $45 37.5% of the time for a profit of (76)(.625)-(45)(.375) = 47.50-16.88 = $30.62. In fact he'd only need to fold only 37% of time for this bet to show an immediate profit. That's pretty sick; I thought it was closer to being a check on the turn. If he shows up with fewer flush draws (i.e., he is tighter preflop) or won't fold his larger pairs and flush draws on the turn (i.e., he is a calling station) then this might not be an obvious bet but as it looks now I think it was right to bet. Cool, now let's move on.


As I was playing this game, I was also playing in a shorthanded game on Pokerroom also. I sat down in this game with $140, dropping it to as low as about $22, then building this back up to $525!! Ok, let's look at some of these hands. This hand got me busted down to 20-something dollars had me remembering why I hate poker so much.

No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $1/$2
5 players

Stack sizes:
UTG: $141.00
Hero: $164.10
Button: $19.75
SB: $58.40
BB: $274.40

Pre-flop: (5 players) Hero is CO with Ad Qd
UTG calls, Hero raises to $10, 3 folds, UTG calls.

Flop: Qh 3h Jc ($23, 2 players)
UTG bets $10, Hero raises to $25, UTG raises all-in $121, Hero calls.

Turn: 2d ($265, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $265)

River: 4c ($265, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $265)

Results:
Final pot: $265
UTG shows 5D AH
Hero shows AD QD

I can only guess as to why this guy thought 3 betting on the QJ3 flop with A5 was a good idea. This guy proceeded to stack off for the rest of my chips to another decent player by limping UTG with KK (this was 5-handed by the way) and losing to the decent player's Q6 (in the big blind) on a QQx flop. He was actually complaining about the "bad beats" and "rigged software" and such. Fortunately for everyone he reloaded and ended up giving me more than he took. Let's look at some of those hands.

In this one, he gets pretty deeply involved with 95 against my AA when he flops a 5.

UTG ($52.75)
MP ($62.40)
Button ($271.40)
SB (Complaining Donkey) ($196.00)
Hero ($81.10)

Preflop: Hero is BB with Ac, As.
3 folds, SB (Complaining Donkey) completes, Hero raises to $6, SB (Complaining Donkey) calls $4.

Flop: ($12) 3d, Ts, 5d (2 players)
Complaining Donkey checks, Hero bets $8, Complaining Donkey calls $8.

Turn: ($28) Qs (2 players)
Complaining Donkey checks, Hero bets $14, Complaining Donkey calls $14.

River: ($56) Ad (2 players)
Complaining Donkey bets $25, Hero calls $25.

Final Pot: $106
Results below:
Complaining Donkey has 5s 9s (one pair, fives).
Hero has Ac As (three of a kind, aces).
Outcome: Hero wins $106.


Then I waited around for a pretty long time trying to pick off this guy's entire stack. This happened on the following hand. Ok, the hand history converter I use is not working right now. Let me just remember it.

4-handed, I have $202, donkey has $326. I make it $8 UTG with TT, all fold to donkey's BB, he calls. Flop comes 26J rainbow. Donkey check/calls $10. Turn comes a magnificent offsuit T giving me the set. Donkey check/calls $25. At this point I'm pretty sure he has top pair. The river comes another J, he checks, I bet $100, he raises the $60 more that I have and I call and beat his AJ.


Then a few hands later he was shortstacked and I finished him off on the following hand (he was clearly on uber-tilt so I wanted to let him hang himself).

4-handed, I have $410, Donkey has $115. I make it $10 UTG with JJ, all fold to donkey's BB, he makes it $27, I call. Flop comes 398 rainbow, he jams, I call and beat his 28o.


What a fun evening of poker.


Anyway, this has gotten long enough and I'm getting tired now. So it's bed time for me. I'm going to be going to San Jose on "business" next week which might afford me some time to play poker during some of the downtime that I'll have (which I expect to be extensive). I'll post anything notable or interesting that happens.

Calling All In preflop with AKs, QQ

I witnessed a semi-interesting hand (to me anyway) hand last week that I wanted to look at. Here was how it went down:

UTG just lost a big pot and is likely tilting (he had K3 against my KQ on a AxKKT board and goes on hyper-tilt when these kinds of things happen). The stacks are UTG:10K, Button:20K, BB:20K. With the blinds at 75/150, UTG makes it 500. Folds to the button who is the tightest player in the universe; he makes it 1500. The BB makes it 3500, UTG moves in for about 10K and the button calls.

The question is this -- should we move in here with QQ or AKs? I say neither hand is playable, and that they are both about as bad. A freind of mine who shall remain nameless maintains that he would play QQ but not AKs in this spot. Remember that the main 3-way pot is 30K and the side pot with the button is 20K. Also note that we have the same amount of fold equity with QQ or AKs in this spot so showing which hand has more "showdown value" in the pot is sufficient to show that the hand is "more playable" in this pot. Now we need to assign ranges to UTG and button. UTG has a fairly large but not totally ridiculous range here, maybe {TT+, AKs, AK}. Button has a pretty small range for calling UTG's all in, but this range is largely irrelevant (excpet for one fact that I'll mention later) since I'm only interested in whether it's better to take AKs or QQ in this spot. Button's calling range if we jam is very small, probably {KK+}.

First let's pokerstove some shit. There are 4 matchups that we care about for this analysis. I'll just show the equity in case

main pot:
{QQ} vs. {KK+} vs. {TT+, AKs, AK} -- 16.94%
{AKs} vs. {KK+} vs. {TT+, AKs, AK} -- 17.65%

side pot:
{QQ} vs. {KK+} -- 18.26%
{AKs} vs. {KK+} -- 23.12%

We have more equity in both pots with AKs than QQ! For some reason I was actually surprised to see AKs do better than QQ against the range {KK+}. There is another final reason that AKs is better than QQ here. If the button's calling range is only AA and KK, you'd rather have AKs than QQ because having AKs makes it less likely that your opponent has one of those two hands.

I thought it would be closer to equal with QQ being better by a little, but it's not even close. Of course, I think folding both hands is pretty obvious here.


In other news, I've played a small amount over the last couple weeks and won a little. My wife also asked me today to teach her how to play poker. So I'm going to try to teach her a little bit about limit hold'em when I'm not doing school/work stuff or disproving the wacky poker ideas of the people I hang out with (see above). Maybe she'll end up being the poker player in the family!

That's all I have in me tonight -- Goodnight everyone.