When things start to go your way, my advice is to try and mine as much out of that vein of good luck as humanly possible. Work is still crazy, but even though the recent changes there weren't entirely to my liking, things are calming down and I'm getting some projects that I can sink my teeth into. Soccer was going so badly at one point that I was about ready to quit in frustration of my complete incompetence. But, I had three good efforts in a losing cause before this Friday, where I got a shutout and two very creditable 2-2 draws. Tonight, I went to my friend's house in Chelsea and won a tournament against six players...all of whom are strong except for one (but Conn knows this, though!).
I've talked here in this space before about how the first couple of hands will usually serve as a barometer for how my night is going to go (it works that way for me in soccer, too...if I don't stop the first couple of shots in the warm-up before we start, I usually get frustrated and play poorly). The reason I keep mentioning soccer is because it isn't all that different for me than poker, especially with the mental aspect of it. Last night at the soccer field, I just kind of let my instincts take over and the effects were amazing. My body did everything I asked it to...shit, I saved one shot that I didn't even consciously know was coming. My brain just basically told my left leg to shoot out, and sure enough a shot deflected off it harmlessly wide. I never saw it, but I let my muscle memory do its thing. Tonight, I pretty much just played my normal game, but I made some strong laydowns and stuck to my guns with my continuation bets. Everything fell into place tonight.
Right from the first hand, I picked up 10-10. A bunch of people all limped, but I raised it on up and the rest went right into the muck. From there, I was off and running. I don't remember most of the hands, but I was definitely the early chip leader. Conn went out first, and I was content to sit on my lead. I wasn't getting tons of good hands, and I was never so far ahead where I could start really swinging the Bully Stick. Between the blinds and some speculative limps with suited connectors and Ace or King-high flush draws, I found myself down towards the middle of the pack again. I kept at that level though pretty much on nothing but continuation bets...I made sure not to do it so much where people would start figuring me out, but it was enough to maintain the health of my chip stack.
Finally, our gracious host Morgan was blinded down, and had to go all-in. Greg (I think) called her, and with J-5 in my hand and my blind already in, I figured I'd speculate and call as well. I don't remember what she had (it was a legit hand though...maybe A-10 or something?), and I think Greg had K-Q or something like that. Anyway, a Jack came off on the river, and I fairly sheepishly took down the pot and sent Morgan to the rail.
From there, I kind of sat out again for a while...most of the entertainment at that stage was some fierce battles between Greg and his wife Tami. Tami eventually had to go all-in and Greg was the one to bust her, so now we were one away from the money. Greg had built up a huge chip lead at this time, and I believe it was Heath who was way down. My biggest laydown of the night came here, with Greg re-raising big. I had A-10 and the flop was 10-high, but I put Greg on a big hand (he played fairly tight all evening) and with Jon still to act, it was a pretty easy fold.
I don't remember the exact order, but Heath and Jon were both on life support at one time or another, but they kept doubling up against each other - then Heath rivered me on what I think was a 5-outer. After that, Heath was in great shape, and then doubled up again when Greg went all-in and his hand didn't get there. As for me, I still was winning pretty much on continuation bets, though I did make a set once with 5-5 (actually, I think that's why Tami was on life support), and I rivered a flush somewhere in there. That put Greg in the red zone, and Heath was the one to finish him off.
Long story short, we're in the money...yay! Heath then busted Jon, so he must have had a 7-to-1 or 8-to-1 chip lead on me going into heads-up play. By now, the blinds were 50/100, and there were only something like 2500 chips in play. In the past, I have been very passive in heads-up situations and have had an abysmal track record because of it. However, my good friend Action Al was dead-on when he pointed me in the direction of Harrington on Hold 'Em, and it really did the trick here. Any time I had paint in my hand, even just one card, I went all-in. Heath caught a run of abysmal cards (8-2, 9-4, etc) and couldn't really call me. Soon enough, I doubled up when I think it was K-10 that held up (King-high won, we both whiffed), and took the chip lead.
Maybe 8-10 hands later, I woke up with Q-Q in the BB. Heath called, and I checked. The flop was 7-x-x with two diamonds, so he went all-in. I called, and he showed 7-2, both diamonds (not sure of the exact suit, he had a pair and a flush draw). My hand held-up, and thus A WINNAR IS ME! I know this was just a friendly home game where my opponents were playing for fun and I was playing to win, but it was nice to actually play well and win the thing. I'll take any win where I can get it right now, and to beat a pretty good field to do it was satisfying.
Again, I don't know if I could have done this online. I had time to think, and I was able to exploit a tell to win a bunch of hands off of Jon (he's a friend, so I did tell him what he was doing afterwards - staring hard at a missed flop as if willing the cards to change denominations, suits or both). I'm almost at a point where I want to say "fuck you" to online poker until I can afford to play at higher limits...especially because what I do depends so much on having opponents who are actually willing to fold. We'll see. Anyway, a win is in the bank, $30 profit for 3 hours' worth, and now I'm off to hit up my DVR...Canadiens-Ducks, baby!
Showing posts with label good play. Show all posts
Showing posts with label good play. Show all posts
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Home Game Fun with 7-2
Last night was another fun home game session...it wasn't at the normal one in Queens - sometimes we host one here in the BKNY, too. It was a bit short-handed at 5 people, but to tell the truth, that fits my style a lot better. The four other guys are among the tighter players in our group, so I turned on the aggression big-time and turned $5 into $14.
First, at my roommate's suggestion, we played a few hours of Omaha to kick things off. Not that I'm the world's leading expert or anything, but I have at least played it a bit and read the chapter in Super System...meaning I had more experience with it than most of the rest of the group. I gave them a short tutorial about what kinds of starting hands they should be looking for and some basic concepts to know. With that, we spent about 3 hours or so at it. Oddly, it was a fairly tame Omaha session in terms of winning hands. What I mean is that there weren't any gross instances that I can remember of boat over boat or boat over flush, shit like that. I wasn't writing things down this time because honestly, it's a huge distraction to my play. I made much more of an effort last night to watch the other players at the table and try and pick up minor tells to help me out. Sorry guys, but I'm not saying shit about what I did or didn't see. I'll just say that I won one or two pots that I wouldn't have won had I not been paying attention, and I mucked one or two probable second-best hands that I may have lost more with.
After a dinner break, the guys wanted to move back to Hold 'Em. However, my roommate had another fun idea, which was to play out a tournament using our current chip stacks to make paying out a lot easier (we had two $10s and a $5, and breaking that up would have been a bitch). Joe (who you may remember from my last home game post as being quite the survivor) decided to try a new tack, which was to Hoover up any chips he could find. You ever play Hungry Hungry Hippos as a kid? You know how sometimes, for whatever reason, all the little marble things ended up with one kid for whatever reason, like the board was tilting that way or something? That's what playing against Joe was like last night!
Still, your dashing protagonist doubled up the $5 buy-in by finishing second. Joe had a monster chip lead, while Al (the other survivorman) uncharacteristically busted out first (we're taking advantage of his Omaha inexperience while we still can!). Brendan and I were on horrifically short stacks, so it became a battle of who can cling on the longest. Brendan ended up getting a hand that he was pretty much contractually obligated to go all-in with. I ended up using that time to take a leak, and by the time I came back, I found that I had made the money. Isn't that rad? It's like taking a piss at a restaurant and coming back to find that your food has arrived. Anyway, the heads-up battle ended up lasting all of one hand - I too got something had to go in with, and Joe I think had a better hand and it held up. Still, it was fun for a change to play some Omaha in a setting where I was comfortable and not up against much-more experienced players. I think I may try that against online competition later on, if Sportsbook has some micro tables.
Oh...now I remember a weird one from the Omaha portion. I had K-K-4-4, and raised it up. Only Joe called. I fired at every street, and Joe called every time. The board on the turn was 5-6-7-8, so I had the ignorant end of the straight. I figured it was good for some reason though, so I kept going (I had Joe on a set or two pair, with a small chance of him on a flush draw where my Kings would still be good - this was only five-handed after all). The river was a 9, and the board played. Incidentally, he had Q-Q-5-5.
Once it turned to hold 'em, I had a hot streak for quite a while. I turned into a total card rack...and while I didn't win any super-mega-monster pot that I can remember, the combination of winning with solid hands and a constant stream of continuation bets had me up at around $22 for a while ($10 buy-in). Unfortunately, I got a little too loosey-goosey at that point and ended up losing $8 of it. Of course, one has to be a little more relaxed with starting requirements five-handed, but it got to the point where my continuation bets were being called 100% of the time, and I wasn't catching anything where I could actually win the hands.
All in all, I'm happy with my play in both disciplines. One last thing - we always play the 7-2 game, and as it turned out, 7-2 cracked K-Q THREE TIMES, and I think it beat K-J once as well. I was the beneficiary once when I caught trip 2s against Rob KGB. But, it was only fair - he called a raise with 10-2, and caught two pair to beat my high pair (I forget what I had). So there.
First, at my roommate's suggestion, we played a few hours of Omaha to kick things off. Not that I'm the world's leading expert or anything, but I have at least played it a bit and read the chapter in Super System...meaning I had more experience with it than most of the rest of the group. I gave them a short tutorial about what kinds of starting hands they should be looking for and some basic concepts to know. With that, we spent about 3 hours or so at it. Oddly, it was a fairly tame Omaha session in terms of winning hands. What I mean is that there weren't any gross instances that I can remember of boat over boat or boat over flush, shit like that. I wasn't writing things down this time because honestly, it's a huge distraction to my play. I made much more of an effort last night to watch the other players at the table and try and pick up minor tells to help me out. Sorry guys, but I'm not saying shit about what I did or didn't see. I'll just say that I won one or two pots that I wouldn't have won had I not been paying attention, and I mucked one or two probable second-best hands that I may have lost more with.
After a dinner break, the guys wanted to move back to Hold 'Em. However, my roommate had another fun idea, which was to play out a tournament using our current chip stacks to make paying out a lot easier (we had two $10s and a $5, and breaking that up would have been a bitch). Joe (who you may remember from my last home game post as being quite the survivor) decided to try a new tack, which was to Hoover up any chips he could find. You ever play Hungry Hungry Hippos as a kid? You know how sometimes, for whatever reason, all the little marble things ended up with one kid for whatever reason, like the board was tilting that way or something? That's what playing against Joe was like last night!
Still, your dashing protagonist doubled up the $5 buy-in by finishing second. Joe had a monster chip lead, while Al (the other survivorman) uncharacteristically busted out first (we're taking advantage of his Omaha inexperience while we still can!). Brendan and I were on horrifically short stacks, so it became a battle of who can cling on the longest. Brendan ended up getting a hand that he was pretty much contractually obligated to go all-in with. I ended up using that time to take a leak, and by the time I came back, I found that I had made the money. Isn't that rad? It's like taking a piss at a restaurant and coming back to find that your food has arrived. Anyway, the heads-up battle ended up lasting all of one hand - I too got something had to go in with, and Joe I think had a better hand and it held up. Still, it was fun for a change to play some Omaha in a setting where I was comfortable and not up against much-more experienced players. I think I may try that against online competition later on, if Sportsbook has some micro tables.
Oh...now I remember a weird one from the Omaha portion. I had K-K-4-4, and raised it up. Only Joe called. I fired at every street, and Joe called every time. The board on the turn was 5-6-7-8, so I had the ignorant end of the straight. I figured it was good for some reason though, so I kept going (I had Joe on a set or two pair, with a small chance of him on a flush draw where my Kings would still be good - this was only five-handed after all). The river was a 9, and the board played. Incidentally, he had Q-Q-5-5.
Once it turned to hold 'em, I had a hot streak for quite a while. I turned into a total card rack...and while I didn't win any super-mega-monster pot that I can remember, the combination of winning with solid hands and a constant stream of continuation bets had me up at around $22 for a while ($10 buy-in). Unfortunately, I got a little too loosey-goosey at that point and ended up losing $8 of it. Of course, one has to be a little more relaxed with starting requirements five-handed, but it got to the point where my continuation bets were being called 100% of the time, and I wasn't catching anything where I could actually win the hands.
All in all, I'm happy with my play in both disciplines. One last thing - we always play the 7-2 game, and as it turned out, 7-2 cracked K-Q THREE TIMES, and I think it beat K-J once as well. I was the beneficiary once when I caught trip 2s against Rob KGB. But, it was only fair - he called a raise with 10-2, and caught two pair to beat my high pair (I forget what I had). So there.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Tuesday night's session
.02/.04 NL Hold 'Em - SB Played: 12-18 (67%) - BB Played 16-19 (84%) - Other Played 21-124 (17%) - Total Played 49-162 (30%) - Showdowns Won 5-8 (62%) - Other Wins 18 - Profit +$1.90
While I unfortunately have been too busy to play since then (including watching last night's never-in-danger win by the New York Football Giants), I logged a fairly long session on Tuesday, playing more than twice the hands I normally do in a single session. It had its ups and downs, but I finished with a decent profit in a situation where I very easily could have gone on tilt and donked off all my chips.
The thing is, it's a rookie mistake to correctly fold a hand, but then get upset when the junk you had would have ended up with two pair or trips. I like to think that for the most part, I can detach myself from that and remind myself that while it may have worked in the short term, it's definitely not a habit that one would want to get into. And, the worst thing that can happen when one plays poorly is to have temporary positive reinforcement accompany it. However, it's almost more than any sane person can take when this very thing happens, with no exaggeration, about 25-30 times in the span of 260 hands. That's just LUDICROUS. There was one hand, which I'll talk about in a bit, that was even worse. I had to fold a strong hand on the turn, and the river...well...you'll see.
Anyway, I had a strong start when I picked up A-K on the very first hand. I turned that into a .53 profit, which was good because I didn't see much for a while after that. I took a few shots with connecting cards, but whiffed on them all. Still, in the beginning (and for most of the session, actually), I did well enough on continuation bets to keep me afloat until the strong hands came. More accurately, I should say that in the beginning it was working a lot more than not. But, towards the middle of the session, I got my wrists slapped on more than one occasion. It got to the point where I had to close my eyes and keep firing off continuation bets even though each one was a bigger proportion of my stack than it was before. That's the thing...I feel like you have to do it even when you're down, or you just won't get the strong hands paid off well enough to put you at a profit for the overall session.
After a frustrating chop with A-10 (the other guy had the same hand), I picked up .91 with some very aggressive betting on a hand where I was almost surely beaten:
I picked up K-10 off-suit in the SB. With one limper, I raised up to 4X BB. Two called, the limper went away. Flop was Q-10-5 rainbow. I bet .56, right about pot-size. One customer stuck around to the turn, which was an Ace. With no flush possibilities (all four suits were on the board), I fired out another .60. I tried to make that bet big enough to have some heft to it, but still have that "please call me allure". I wanted that allure not because I actually wanted to get called (I think the guy probably had A-x or Q-x or something), but because I wanted to represent my straight getting there on the turn. The guy mucked pretty much instantly, and I took it down.
The next hand, however, was the frustrating one I alluded to before:
With 8-8 in late position, I limp along with four others. The flop was 10-8-6, two spades. It's a little straighty for my tastes, but I do like my set so far. One guy bets .24, another calls, so I raise it up to $1. Both guys call. Well, shit. The turn is a horrific 7. One guy checks, the other bets $1.62. At this point, anyone with a 9 in their hand has a made straight, so my set is looking fairly awful. I fold, the other guy calls. The river, of course, was the case fucking 8. The turn-raiser goes all-in for his last $1.34, the other guy folds. So, I lost $1.04 on a hand where I would have had fucking quads...if I had stuck around, I'd have profited around $6.78. That's a swing of $7.82, which would have put me at $13.26 for the session at the time. Awful, awful, awful. The worst part is that looking at this now, I wonder if this is as much of an automatic fold as I thought. I assumed that someone had a made straight, but what if the guy called my $1 raise with 8-7? He'd have second pair and a gutshot at the time, which these donks would certainly chase with. On the turn he'd have two pair and a gutshot, and on the river he'd have a full house. It's certainly possible, isn't it? He was in the BB, so he could have had 10-8, 10-6 or 8-6 as well. In a live game, with time to think about it, I may have called and had his whole stack. Sigh.
It got worse 9 hands later. A new player had sat down and had already gone all-in pre-flop once. He did it again when I had A-K in the BB, and I went into the tank for just about the whole allotted time. I feared A-A or K-K, but then again, he had done this once already. I've seen people do it with nonsense hands, and Gus Hansen's words in Every Hand Revealed about over-bets came into my mind: "The first time, I give them credit. If they do it again, that's when I start asking questions." So, I called, and the other guy showed Q-Q. Two live cards at least, but the board showed 6-5-3-5-2. Well fuck you too, Sportsbook.
At this point, I was tilting a bit, but I kept it under control somewhat. My roommate was railbirding for most of the session, and I think that helped me focus and get back into it. A lot of my problem with online poker is staying focused on the job at hand, but analyzing my play in real time by answering my roommate's questions and whatnot goes a long way towards getting around the tilt factor and keeping things on track. Still, with A-K again a few hands later, I probably overplayed it by going all-in for $1.75 when a King came on the turn. Better that than someone outdrawing me on the river, I suppose.
Lost a tough one with 6-5 (splashing around a bit there) when the flop came 10-10-6. I figured the other guy had two high cards like A-Q or something, so I fired a shell there, and again when the turn was a 2. After both were called, I checked the Jack river, and so did he...he showed 10-8. Of fucking course...but why not bet the river and get me out of there, so I don't get to see your hand? Maybe he had me on A-10 or something?
I started on the road to recovery when I won a decent pot with A-J, but I could and should have won more. I raised it up to 3X BB, and got three customers. Flop was A-10-3 rainbow. I bet .36, two stuck around for the turn, which was a 4. I checked, which was terrible. I don't know what out there was scary enough to do so...I think it was just dejection about how some of the previous hands went. One guy post-oak bluffed for just .04, both of us called (why didn't I raise?). The river was a 7, and I checked again - this time with the intention of check-raising if the other guy showed weakness. Again, he made that stupid .04 bet, but I only raised it up to .16. He called, and showed A-6 off-suit. I profited $1.26 on the hand, but it should have been much more...that was unusually timid on my part, and I don't even have a good explanation for it. At the very least, J-J on the next hand got me back up over $4.
I dipped back into the red for the next few hands, but I played my Ah-5s in the BB pretty well and banked a bit. I checked my option with 4 customers, and was stoked to see a flop of 8-5-3, all hearts. I bet .24, one opponent came along. The turn was a glorious 10h, and I checked it. This time, it wasn't out of timidity, it was to disguise the fact that I had a flush to win more on the river. The river was 8s, and the other guy felt safe enough to bet .34. I raised to $1 (probably should have been more to make it look like I was over-betting to steal), and he calls. He showed Ac-Qh, for a Queen-high flush. Looks like he was trying to trap too, but man oh man, this is why I never draw to a flush unless I have at minimum a King. I only wish I knew he was that strong though!
I was only in one other "TV hand". The rest of the time, the pattern was I didn't play many hands...looking at the hand history, I only seemed to be involved when I was in the blinds. That went for long stretches...at least 5-6 orbits. When I did, it was usually with connectors or medium-high cards, and I whiffed on most of them. That was made up for a weirdly-high number of wins from the blinds when I bluffed with nothing and fired shells on the flop, and made people go away. In one of the last hands I played, I had 4d-3d in the BB, and limped along with 5 others. The flop was 6d-4h-3h. One person bet .12, everyone called. The turn was a 9d, and I figured now was the time to turn it on, to make it look like I only had a flush draw. I bet .60, and surprisingly only got one customer. The river was a 10h, and I stupidly checked it. If the other person had bet, I may have fallen victim to my old nemesis of assuming that someone has it whenever a flush draw is completed on the board. They checked too, and showed Qd-Qc. I profited $1.18, but I very well might have folded and lost .72. It may not look like a big difference, but it's a $1.90 swing. One or two of those decisions, if made incorrectly, can turn a profitable session into a disaster...and vice versa. I think that's a concept that many of us at micro-limits haven't really grasped yet, in terms of understanding how big of an impact it is. No one is going to get 100% of these key decisions correct, but you MUST get the majority correct in order to win at this game. That's the fucking secret.
While I unfortunately have been too busy to play since then (including watching last night's never-in-danger win by the New York Football Giants), I logged a fairly long session on Tuesday, playing more than twice the hands I normally do in a single session. It had its ups and downs, but I finished with a decent profit in a situation where I very easily could have gone on tilt and donked off all my chips.
The thing is, it's a rookie mistake to correctly fold a hand, but then get upset when the junk you had would have ended up with two pair or trips. I like to think that for the most part, I can detach myself from that and remind myself that while it may have worked in the short term, it's definitely not a habit that one would want to get into. And, the worst thing that can happen when one plays poorly is to have temporary positive reinforcement accompany it. However, it's almost more than any sane person can take when this very thing happens, with no exaggeration, about 25-30 times in the span of 260 hands. That's just LUDICROUS. There was one hand, which I'll talk about in a bit, that was even worse. I had to fold a strong hand on the turn, and the river...well...you'll see.
Anyway, I had a strong start when I picked up A-K on the very first hand. I turned that into a .53 profit, which was good because I didn't see much for a while after that. I took a few shots with connecting cards, but whiffed on them all. Still, in the beginning (and for most of the session, actually), I did well enough on continuation bets to keep me afloat until the strong hands came. More accurately, I should say that in the beginning it was working a lot more than not. But, towards the middle of the session, I got my wrists slapped on more than one occasion. It got to the point where I had to close my eyes and keep firing off continuation bets even though each one was a bigger proportion of my stack than it was before. That's the thing...I feel like you have to do it even when you're down, or you just won't get the strong hands paid off well enough to put you at a profit for the overall session.
After a frustrating chop with A-10 (the other guy had the same hand), I picked up .91 with some very aggressive betting on a hand where I was almost surely beaten:
I picked up K-10 off-suit in the SB. With one limper, I raised up to 4X BB. Two called, the limper went away. Flop was Q-10-5 rainbow. I bet .56, right about pot-size. One customer stuck around to the turn, which was an Ace. With no flush possibilities (all four suits were on the board), I fired out another .60. I tried to make that bet big enough to have some heft to it, but still have that "please call me allure". I wanted that allure not because I actually wanted to get called (I think the guy probably had A-x or Q-x or something), but because I wanted to represent my straight getting there on the turn. The guy mucked pretty much instantly, and I took it down.
The next hand, however, was the frustrating one I alluded to before:
With 8-8 in late position, I limp along with four others. The flop was 10-8-6, two spades. It's a little straighty for my tastes, but I do like my set so far. One guy bets .24, another calls, so I raise it up to $1. Both guys call. Well, shit. The turn is a horrific 7. One guy checks, the other bets $1.62. At this point, anyone with a 9 in their hand has a made straight, so my set is looking fairly awful. I fold, the other guy calls. The river, of course, was the case fucking 8. The turn-raiser goes all-in for his last $1.34, the other guy folds. So, I lost $1.04 on a hand where I would have had fucking quads...if I had stuck around, I'd have profited around $6.78. That's a swing of $7.82, which would have put me at $13.26 for the session at the time. Awful, awful, awful. The worst part is that looking at this now, I wonder if this is as much of an automatic fold as I thought. I assumed that someone had a made straight, but what if the guy called my $1 raise with 8-7? He'd have second pair and a gutshot at the time, which these donks would certainly chase with. On the turn he'd have two pair and a gutshot, and on the river he'd have a full house. It's certainly possible, isn't it? He was in the BB, so he could have had 10-8, 10-6 or 8-6 as well. In a live game, with time to think about it, I may have called and had his whole stack. Sigh.
It got worse 9 hands later. A new player had sat down and had already gone all-in pre-flop once. He did it again when I had A-K in the BB, and I went into the tank for just about the whole allotted time. I feared A-A or K-K, but then again, he had done this once already. I've seen people do it with nonsense hands, and Gus Hansen's words in Every Hand Revealed about over-bets came into my mind: "The first time, I give them credit. If they do it again, that's when I start asking questions." So, I called, and the other guy showed Q-Q. Two live cards at least, but the board showed 6-5-3-5-2. Well fuck you too, Sportsbook.
At this point, I was tilting a bit, but I kept it under control somewhat. My roommate was railbirding for most of the session, and I think that helped me focus and get back into it. A lot of my problem with online poker is staying focused on the job at hand, but analyzing my play in real time by answering my roommate's questions and whatnot goes a long way towards getting around the tilt factor and keeping things on track. Still, with A-K again a few hands later, I probably overplayed it by going all-in for $1.75 when a King came on the turn. Better that than someone outdrawing me on the river, I suppose.
Lost a tough one with 6-5 (splashing around a bit there) when the flop came 10-10-6. I figured the other guy had two high cards like A-Q or something, so I fired a shell there, and again when the turn was a 2. After both were called, I checked the Jack river, and so did he...he showed 10-8. Of fucking course...but why not bet the river and get me out of there, so I don't get to see your hand? Maybe he had me on A-10 or something?
I started on the road to recovery when I won a decent pot with A-J, but I could and should have won more. I raised it up to 3X BB, and got three customers. Flop was A-10-3 rainbow. I bet .36, two stuck around for the turn, which was a 4. I checked, which was terrible. I don't know what out there was scary enough to do so...I think it was just dejection about how some of the previous hands went. One guy post-oak bluffed for just .04, both of us called (why didn't I raise?). The river was a 7, and I checked again - this time with the intention of check-raising if the other guy showed weakness. Again, he made that stupid .04 bet, but I only raised it up to .16. He called, and showed A-6 off-suit. I profited $1.26 on the hand, but it should have been much more...that was unusually timid on my part, and I don't even have a good explanation for it. At the very least, J-J on the next hand got me back up over $4.
I dipped back into the red for the next few hands, but I played my Ah-5s in the BB pretty well and banked a bit. I checked my option with 4 customers, and was stoked to see a flop of 8-5-3, all hearts. I bet .24, one opponent came along. The turn was a glorious 10h, and I checked it. This time, it wasn't out of timidity, it was to disguise the fact that I had a flush to win more on the river. The river was 8s, and the other guy felt safe enough to bet .34. I raised to $1 (probably should have been more to make it look like I was over-betting to steal), and he calls. He showed Ac-Qh, for a Queen-high flush. Looks like he was trying to trap too, but man oh man, this is why I never draw to a flush unless I have at minimum a King. I only wish I knew he was that strong though!
I was only in one other "TV hand". The rest of the time, the pattern was I didn't play many hands...looking at the hand history, I only seemed to be involved when I was in the blinds. That went for long stretches...at least 5-6 orbits. When I did, it was usually with connectors or medium-high cards, and I whiffed on most of them. That was made up for a weirdly-high number of wins from the blinds when I bluffed with nothing and fired shells on the flop, and made people go away. In one of the last hands I played, I had 4d-3d in the BB, and limped along with 5 others. The flop was 6d-4h-3h. One person bet .12, everyone called. The turn was a 9d, and I figured now was the time to turn it on, to make it look like I only had a flush draw. I bet .60, and surprisingly only got one customer. The river was a 10h, and I stupidly checked it. If the other person had bet, I may have fallen victim to my old nemesis of assuming that someone has it whenever a flush draw is completed on the board. They checked too, and showed Qd-Qc. I profited $1.18, but I very well might have folded and lost .72. It may not look like a big difference, but it's a $1.90 swing. One or two of those decisions, if made incorrectly, can turn a profitable session into a disaster...and vice versa. I think that's a concept that many of us at micro-limits haven't really grasped yet, in terms of understanding how big of an impact it is. No one is going to get 100% of these key decisions correct, but you MUST get the majority correct in order to win at this game. That's the fucking secret.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Thursday's session - back on the winning track
.02/.04 NL Hold'Em - 103 Hands - SB Played: 9-12 (75%) - BB Played: 9-13(69%) - Other Played: 20-77 (26%) - Total Played: 38-103 (37%) - Showdowns Won: 4-9 (49%) - Other Wins: 17 - Profit: + $2.40
I have a mini-tournament to play at a friend's house later tonight, so I'll keep this brief.
After that A-A vs. 8-7s debacle of the other night, it was good to get back onto the horse and get a winning session under my belt. I was up a lot more than $2.40 at one point, but I think all in all it could have been a lot worse. This was a table where, especially in the beginning, continuation bets were not respected at all. I had to adjust to that and slow down a bit, until things loosened up when some new players came to the table. I think I did a pretty good job of switching gears during the session, which is something I've actively been trying to work on. With that said, some hand highlights:
Hand 20: With J-6 in the small blind, I call along with a bunch of limpers. I flop trips, and of course, no one wants to play when I fire a bet out. I had been playing fairly loose to start, and there were loose players at the table. The flop was 6-6-2 rainbow so it wouldn't have killed me to give a free card. But, given the situation, I was sure that I would have gotten a few callers. Oh well. I'm not totally unhappy with that play.
Hand 30: Got 9c-6s in the SB, and the flop came Qd-Qh-9d. I bet .12 into a .16 pot, got one caller. The turn was 4h - I bet .24, and was re-raised for the guy's last .73. I know it was only .49 more into a pot of 1.37 (2.79:1), but I was 100% sure the guy had a Queen. I don't know why, it was just a feeling. I've seen players do this before with flush draws, but more often than not it's with a made hand at this level. On the off-chance he bluffed me out with a draw, fair play to him...but I have a feeling I was dead to two outs. Shit, even if he had just paired his 9, then I was still just about dead anyway.
Hand 35: Anna Kournikova strikes again. At this point, I was starting to get frustrated as I was missing flops left, right and center with fairly decent hands.
Hand 37: Two hands later, I wasn't in it...but the flop came A-K-6. Eat a dick, Sportsbook.
Hand 41: Wasn't in this one either, but some donk-show called a 5X BB raise with Q-7 off. Flop was J-9-8 rainbow, raiser bet .35, Donkey calls. Turn was a Queen, .55 bet is called. The call with the gutshot was awful, and the pair + gutshot wasn't much better considering what he was probably up against. But, the worst was when a 9 came on the river, he called another bet for $1.11! Wow! Basically, the only hands he was beating were A-J, K-J or J-10...none of which are obvious candidates for a raise that big (I do it rarely as a variation play, but that's it). Unsurprisingly, the raiser showed A-A. HAHAHAHAHA....whoopsy-daisy.
Hand 46: My biggest one-hand loss of the session came here. With Kh-Qh, I raised 3X BB in early position and got two customers. The flop was 10h-3d-2h, so I bet .20 at it. The SB folded, but the other guy popped it up to .50. I was getting 3.66:1 to call on a 4.1:1 shot, so I really should have folded right there. I didn't, however. The turn was a 5d, so I checked...no sense throwing good money after bad, and I wasn't bluffing anyone out with that card. He bet .70, and I went away. At the time, I thought it was a good fold on the turn at least, since I didn't have anything close to the correct odds to draw for the flush. Now that I look at it again though, this looks to me like he either had A-10/K-10/Q-10/J-10, or 10-10. If it were the latter, then only the flush would have been good. But, what if it were the former? I'd have 6 more outs, and all of a sudden the post-flop call was 2.06:1. Even with the .70 bet on the turn, it was a 2:1 call for 2:1 odds. In retrospect, I think this might have been an overly-tight fold.
Hand 48: This was just annoying more than anything else. I had 7-7 in the BB, and called a 2X BB raise. The flop was checked around, and I bailed on the turn when someone bet big into a board of Q-10-6-5. As it turns out, the guy who won the hand had 6-6, and you want to know why I didn't have a chance to hit a set? Because the prick who saw it down to the river had the other two!!! Are you KIDDING me?!
Hand 49: This was less annoying, and more grounds to commit justifiable homicide in a fair world. With Q-J in the SB, I raise to 4X BB...the BB calls. The flop was 9-6-4 with two clubs. I bet .20, he calls. The turn was the 7c, and it went check-check. In retrospect, a bet here probably would have won me the hand as I'd be representing a flush. The river was a 3 - I bet .36, and the guy calls. He shows A-6 and wins the hand. Unreal. The post-flop call wasn't the worst ever, and I guess me checking the river in some respect justifies his river call. But, how the fuck do you call that big of a raise with A-6?
Hand 52: Had to fold K-J pre-flop to a .32 raise from a tight player. Said tight player immediately checked to a K-8-2 flop, and then folded on the turn (10) to a .32 raise. Ugh.
Hand 54: Had As-3s and was forced to fold to a .18 raise (I mention this and the last hand because other than these, there was more limping going on than at a sports rehab clinic). Of cunting course, the third spade came out on the turn...and the guy who won the hand had A-A.
Hand 70: Had 3-2 in late position, and limped in with it. Flopped two pair, and re-raised the first guy 3X. Both guys call. A third club came out on the turn, and it was checked down the rest of the way. I do this ALL THE TIME...when a third flush card comes out, I immediately assume someone has it. Instead, some fuckstick with J-4 off-suit rivered his gut-shot straight.
Hand 76: I made up for a lot of these hands though where I had 9-2 in the BB, caught the 9 on the flop, and the 2 on the turn. I probably over-bet here though...a smaller bet than .36 may have kept someone in for the river. Oh well...still a .32 win, though.
Hand 77: Caught two pair with Kh-10h, and won an even bigger pot...around .80 this time.
Hand 79: I have Q-Q, and no one wants to play. Awwww...
Hands 81-84: I love these rushes where you win 3, 4 or 5 hands in a row. There are few other things in life that make you feel as much of a Golden God...perhaps the only thing that beats it is sleeping with a girl that is WAAAAAAAAY out of your league (and I've only managed that once, so this is usually more attainable). The biggest win of the lot was a .99 profit when I caught a set with 7-7. After I took down the next hand, I was at my high-water mark for the session at $6.96.
Hand 95: I lost a decent amount with A-Q when I fired off two continuation bets at the biggest calling station at the table. Man, I know better than that, too...but I get so ingrained into the "must...always...continuation...bet..." mode sometimes that I can't stop myself.
Hand 102: As usual, I lose a decent amount (.30 or so) right at the end of my session. I always do the honorable thing and play around through my blinds one last time instead of doing the cunty thing that most of these assholes do, and bounce right before the BB comes their way. I got 6c-4c in the SB, paired the 6, and lost .24 continuation-betting at it.
Sorry for the bare-bones post this time, but I had to get this out or there wouldn't have been a post. There'll be a better one next time...
I have a mini-tournament to play at a friend's house later tonight, so I'll keep this brief.
After that A-A vs. 8-7s debacle of the other night, it was good to get back onto the horse and get a winning session under my belt. I was up a lot more than $2.40 at one point, but I think all in all it could have been a lot worse. This was a table where, especially in the beginning, continuation bets were not respected at all. I had to adjust to that and slow down a bit, until things loosened up when some new players came to the table. I think I did a pretty good job of switching gears during the session, which is something I've actively been trying to work on. With that said, some hand highlights:
Hand 20: With J-6 in the small blind, I call along with a bunch of limpers. I flop trips, and of course, no one wants to play when I fire a bet out. I had been playing fairly loose to start, and there were loose players at the table. The flop was 6-6-2 rainbow so it wouldn't have killed me to give a free card. But, given the situation, I was sure that I would have gotten a few callers. Oh well. I'm not totally unhappy with that play.
Hand 30: Got 9c-6s in the SB, and the flop came Qd-Qh-9d. I bet .12 into a .16 pot, got one caller. The turn was 4h - I bet .24, and was re-raised for the guy's last .73. I know it was only .49 more into a pot of 1.37 (2.79:1), but I was 100% sure the guy had a Queen. I don't know why, it was just a feeling. I've seen players do this before with flush draws, but more often than not it's with a made hand at this level. On the off-chance he bluffed me out with a draw, fair play to him...but I have a feeling I was dead to two outs. Shit, even if he had just paired his 9, then I was still just about dead anyway.
Hand 35: Anna Kournikova strikes again. At this point, I was starting to get frustrated as I was missing flops left, right and center with fairly decent hands.
Hand 37: Two hands later, I wasn't in it...but the flop came A-K-6. Eat a dick, Sportsbook.
Hand 41: Wasn't in this one either, but some donk-show called a 5X BB raise with Q-7 off. Flop was J-9-8 rainbow, raiser bet .35, Donkey calls. Turn was a Queen, .55 bet is called. The call with the gutshot was awful, and the pair + gutshot wasn't much better considering what he was probably up against. But, the worst was when a 9 came on the river, he called another bet for $1.11! Wow! Basically, the only hands he was beating were A-J, K-J or J-10...none of which are obvious candidates for a raise that big (I do it rarely as a variation play, but that's it). Unsurprisingly, the raiser showed A-A. HAHAHAHAHA....whoopsy-daisy.
Hand 46: My biggest one-hand loss of the session came here. With Kh-Qh, I raised 3X BB in early position and got two customers. The flop was 10h-3d-2h, so I bet .20 at it. The SB folded, but the other guy popped it up to .50. I was getting 3.66:1 to call on a 4.1:1 shot, so I really should have folded right there. I didn't, however. The turn was a 5d, so I checked...no sense throwing good money after bad, and I wasn't bluffing anyone out with that card. He bet .70, and I went away. At the time, I thought it was a good fold on the turn at least, since I didn't have anything close to the correct odds to draw for the flush. Now that I look at it again though, this looks to me like he either had A-10/K-10/Q-10/J-10, or 10-10. If it were the latter, then only the flush would have been good. But, what if it were the former? I'd have 6 more outs, and all of a sudden the post-flop call was 2.06:1. Even with the .70 bet on the turn, it was a 2:1 call for 2:1 odds. In retrospect, I think this might have been an overly-tight fold.
Hand 48: This was just annoying more than anything else. I had 7-7 in the BB, and called a 2X BB raise. The flop was checked around, and I bailed on the turn when someone bet big into a board of Q-10-6-5. As it turns out, the guy who won the hand had 6-6, and you want to know why I didn't have a chance to hit a set? Because the prick who saw it down to the river had the other two!!! Are you KIDDING me?!
Hand 49: This was less annoying, and more grounds to commit justifiable homicide in a fair world. With Q-J in the SB, I raise to 4X BB...the BB calls. The flop was 9-6-4 with two clubs. I bet .20, he calls. The turn was the 7c, and it went check-check. In retrospect, a bet here probably would have won me the hand as I'd be representing a flush. The river was a 3 - I bet .36, and the guy calls. He shows A-6 and wins the hand. Unreal. The post-flop call wasn't the worst ever, and I guess me checking the river in some respect justifies his river call. But, how the fuck do you call that big of a raise with A-6?
Hand 52: Had to fold K-J pre-flop to a .32 raise from a tight player. Said tight player immediately checked to a K-8-2 flop, and then folded on the turn (10) to a .32 raise. Ugh.
Hand 54: Had As-3s and was forced to fold to a .18 raise (I mention this and the last hand because other than these, there was more limping going on than at a sports rehab clinic). Of cunting course, the third spade came out on the turn...and the guy who won the hand had A-A.
Hand 70: Had 3-2 in late position, and limped in with it. Flopped two pair, and re-raised the first guy 3X. Both guys call. A third club came out on the turn, and it was checked down the rest of the way. I do this ALL THE TIME...when a third flush card comes out, I immediately assume someone has it. Instead, some fuckstick with J-4 off-suit rivered his gut-shot straight.
Hand 76: I made up for a lot of these hands though where I had 9-2 in the BB, caught the 9 on the flop, and the 2 on the turn. I probably over-bet here though...a smaller bet than .36 may have kept someone in for the river. Oh well...still a .32 win, though.
Hand 77: Caught two pair with Kh-10h, and won an even bigger pot...around .80 this time.
Hand 79: I have Q-Q, and no one wants to play. Awwww...
Hands 81-84: I love these rushes where you win 3, 4 or 5 hands in a row. There are few other things in life that make you feel as much of a Golden God...perhaps the only thing that beats it is sleeping with a girl that is WAAAAAAAAY out of your league (and I've only managed that once, so this is usually more attainable). The biggest win of the lot was a .99 profit when I caught a set with 7-7. After I took down the next hand, I was at my high-water mark for the session at $6.96.
Hand 95: I lost a decent amount with A-Q when I fired off two continuation bets at the biggest calling station at the table. Man, I know better than that, too...but I get so ingrained into the "must...always...continuation...bet..." mode sometimes that I can't stop myself.
Hand 102: As usual, I lose a decent amount (.30 or so) right at the end of my session. I always do the honorable thing and play around through my blinds one last time instead of doing the cunty thing that most of these assholes do, and bounce right before the BB comes their way. I got 6c-4c in the SB, paired the 6, and lost .24 continuation-betting at it.
Sorry for the bare-bones post this time, but I had to get this out or there wouldn't have been a post. There'll be a better one next time...
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Nice session at .02/.04 last night
Last night I had a nice little session at .02/.04 - I took the advice of those who told me to play at a level more appropriate for my bankroll, and it worked. I felt a lot more comfortable and despite some large up-and-down swings, finished with more than double my buy-in.
SB Played: 13-15 (80%) - BB Played: 11-16 (69%) - Other Played: 30-100 (30%) - Total: 54-131 (41%) - SD Won: 6-14 (43%) - Other Wins: 16 - Profit: $5.02
As mentioned, I brought a lot more of my home-game aggression into this session, and played about 10-15% more hands than I normally do online. At this level, I had always followed the Sklansky advice for low-limit online tables - play tighter and just try to show down better hands. The problem with that is because these people play such a large range of hands, and there's more bodies seeing the flop than normal, those bigger hands (K-J with the Jack paired, for example) don't seem to hold up as often as they should. This particular table had a lot of limpers with almost no standards for what to limp with. My game plan once I noticed that was to limp along with lots of marginal hands and then try to out-play them after the flop. Needless to say, I also tried to mix that in with raises...sometimes limping with big hands, sometimes raising with nothing. I fired lots of continuation bets - sometimes they went away, sometimes they hung around. Although I probably lost as much as I won on those occasions, I think it gave me a nice and loose table image that got me a few big scores when I ended up with Hammer of God-type hands.
Remember when I said I always do well when I get a nice pot early? On the first hand, I saw 7-3o, and paired the 7 on the Q-8-7 flop. I called a minimum bet, then called a raise for another .04. My roommate was railbirding for a second and questioned why - I was just explaining how I had the right odds to call when a 3 came on the turn. I probably fired too much at it with .80 - I had such a disguised hand, but with two diamonds and some straight possibilities out there, I guess I just wanted to know where I stood. Anyway, .52 to kick things off isn't bad!
After losing a couple with marginal high hands (my on-going nemesis), the 10th hand gave me As-Jd in early position. My 3X BB raise had two customers, flop was J-6-5 (all spades). With TPTK and the nut flush draw, $1.12 was immediately fired in. One guy hung around (all he had was 8c-5c...once again, thank goodness for the stupid). The turn was the 7d, and I checked as a kind of information check, I suppose. I was curious to see how much he liked what was out there, and he checked as well. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have let him see a free card, but I also didn't want to be re-raised out either if he had a made King-high flush. The river was a beautiful 9s, and I sent $1.16 out there. I wish I can say I did so in case his straight got there, but I didn't think of that at the time. He raised, putting me all in. I gleefully called, and took down $3.39 in profit.
One hand I hated - Q-9 from the big blind, I paired on the flop with A-Q-10. My .12 bet was called by two guys, and then I checked it down the whole way. I had one guy check in front of me on the harmless 3c turn, so I should have bet again to be sure of where I was with one other guy to act. Instead, the 8 on the flop gave the other guy a straight, and I called his .52 bet for a reason that I can't remember now. Let's just call it temporary stupidity and move on...
...to another monster hand won by yours truly on the very next deal. I did seem to luck out and win big pots right after losing big ones, so I didn't ever have any confidence dips. 10-10 in the SB, and my 3X BB gets two callers. The flop came A-J-10 rainbow, and it was full speed ahead from me. I guess because this was such a loose table, I just figured that if someone had K-Q or J-J, good luck to them. My .32 raise didn't knock out either guy, and a 6 came on the turn. I bet $1.38, one fold, one all-in for .56 more. No way I'm folding to that, and I was happy to see J-6 as his holding. No help on the river, thank you for your $2.63 donation...please come again.
I lost a tough one around 15 hands later or so. Ad-Jd on the button, 4X BB raise gets one caller. I had been pushing this guy around for a while, and he had started to push back. The flop was A-7-6, no diamonds. I bet .20, he raises to .40, and I call. I figured that could just have been a probe raise to see if I was stealing once again. Earlier in the session, he had re-raised me on the flop when I had nothing, and was kind enough to show his A-A when I mucked. The turn was a 3, and he fired in $1.18. Now, I had to think a bit. What did he have? He was a pretty good player at this level, so I don't think he had 7-6 or A-7 or anything. I had settled on A-10 or A-Q, but I went against my read and called. If I had more time than online gave me, I'd like to think I'd have included 7-7 and 6-6 in his range as well...I do now. The river was a Queen, and he immediately went all-in. At that point, I knew I was beat and quietly mucked my hand. If he had A-10 or A-J, well, he outplayed me...all there is to it.
Around hands 40-57, I was starting to lose more than I won with the aggression, and was down to $5.91. I got Kh-Qh and called a raise and a re-raise up to $1.20 (dumb, dumb, dumb, Sean...you know better than that). The flop was 6-5-5 with one heart, and a fairly loose player went all-in for $4.23. Maybe it was a bluff, maybe it was A-A, but I wasn't sticking around to find out - another guy did though with his A-Q, and he lucked out on Big Raiser Guy when he rivered his Ace against the other guy's J-J. That put me below $5 for the first time in ages, but I was back up to $5.21 on the next hand thanks to Anna Kournikova. Maybe she DOES win sometimes, after all!
From there, I hovered between the $5-$5.80 range...the pattern seemed to be that I lost .20-.60 with medium-high hands, and won about the same with absolute garbage thanks to aggressive betting. On Hand 98 though, I flopped a straight with 9-8 from middle position. It was the ignorant end of the straight mind you, but nothing pre-flop screamed out A-K from anyone. If they had that exact hand, good luck to them. The turn paired the Queen, and that should have made me more nervous than it did. Now, Q-10 and Q-J were ahead of me as well, and I could see people limping with that at this table. Instead, I just called a .13 bet (when a re-raise would have given me the info I needed). A harmless little 6 on the river, and someone bet .32. I doubled the raise, one fold, the original raiser called and showed Q-5o. Thank goodness for the stupid.
Four hands later, I was back up in the high-rent district. I had Ks-3s in the big blind, 3 limpers followed me into a flop of J-J-J. One guy checked, I bet .16, two folded. The checker called me for some reason. Now, he may have had a low pocket pair or maybe two high cards...I'm just not putting anyone on quads. A King appeared on the turn, and my only thought there was how to extract the money from this guy. I figured that at worst, we were chopping unless an Ace came off or something. He solves my problem by going all-in for $2.04, and I insta-call. Mr. Genius is drawing dead with Q-8o, and I accept the $2.12 donation graciously.
I reached my high point at $9.18 when my Q-Q held up against a short stack's 5d-2d (her open-ender didn't get there), then reached another at $9.40 with Q-10o when my continuation bet scared everyone off. I got up to $9.60 with K-Q when my King paired and no one wanted to play, but then I lost a series of small-to-medium pots over the next two orbits to finish at $9.02. All in all, I used this as an experiment in a more aggressive online style, and it obviously paid off for me. I know of course that doing this will result in larger swings, but I have 20 buy-ins at this level so I think I should be able to handle it mentally. I did all right in handling the ups and downs within this session, though I did also hit my cards more often than I didn't.
We'll see how this goes - I think I'm going to grind it out down here for a while until I have 20 buy-ins at .5/.10 ($200, and I'm at $80 or so now).
SB Played: 13-15 (80%) - BB Played: 11-16 (69%) - Other Played: 30-100 (30%) - Total: 54-131 (41%) - SD Won: 6-14 (43%) - Other Wins: 16 - Profit: $5.02
As mentioned, I brought a lot more of my home-game aggression into this session, and played about 10-15% more hands than I normally do online. At this level, I had always followed the Sklansky advice for low-limit online tables - play tighter and just try to show down better hands. The problem with that is because these people play such a large range of hands, and there's more bodies seeing the flop than normal, those bigger hands (K-J with the Jack paired, for example) don't seem to hold up as often as they should. This particular table had a lot of limpers with almost no standards for what to limp with. My game plan once I noticed that was to limp along with lots of marginal hands and then try to out-play them after the flop. Needless to say, I also tried to mix that in with raises...sometimes limping with big hands, sometimes raising with nothing. I fired lots of continuation bets - sometimes they went away, sometimes they hung around. Although I probably lost as much as I won on those occasions, I think it gave me a nice and loose table image that got me a few big scores when I ended up with Hammer of God-type hands.
Remember when I said I always do well when I get a nice pot early? On the first hand, I saw 7-3o, and paired the 7 on the Q-8-7 flop. I called a minimum bet, then called a raise for another .04. My roommate was railbirding for a second and questioned why - I was just explaining how I had the right odds to call when a 3 came on the turn. I probably fired too much at it with .80 - I had such a disguised hand, but with two diamonds and some straight possibilities out there, I guess I just wanted to know where I stood. Anyway, .52 to kick things off isn't bad!
After losing a couple with marginal high hands (my on-going nemesis), the 10th hand gave me As-Jd in early position. My 3X BB raise had two customers, flop was J-6-5 (all spades). With TPTK and the nut flush draw, $1.12 was immediately fired in. One guy hung around (all he had was 8c-5c...once again, thank goodness for the stupid). The turn was the 7d, and I checked as a kind of information check, I suppose. I was curious to see how much he liked what was out there, and he checked as well. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have let him see a free card, but I also didn't want to be re-raised out either if he had a made King-high flush. The river was a beautiful 9s, and I sent $1.16 out there. I wish I can say I did so in case his straight got there, but I didn't think of that at the time. He raised, putting me all in. I gleefully called, and took down $3.39 in profit.
One hand I hated - Q-9 from the big blind, I paired on the flop with A-Q-10. My .12 bet was called by two guys, and then I checked it down the whole way. I had one guy check in front of me on the harmless 3c turn, so I should have bet again to be sure of where I was with one other guy to act. Instead, the 8 on the flop gave the other guy a straight, and I called his .52 bet for a reason that I can't remember now. Let's just call it temporary stupidity and move on...
...to another monster hand won by yours truly on the very next deal. I did seem to luck out and win big pots right after losing big ones, so I didn't ever have any confidence dips. 10-10 in the SB, and my 3X BB gets two callers. The flop came A-J-10 rainbow, and it was full speed ahead from me. I guess because this was such a loose table, I just figured that if someone had K-Q or J-J, good luck to them. My .32 raise didn't knock out either guy, and a 6 came on the turn. I bet $1.38, one fold, one all-in for .56 more. No way I'm folding to that, and I was happy to see J-6 as his holding. No help on the river, thank you for your $2.63 donation...please come again.
I lost a tough one around 15 hands later or so. Ad-Jd on the button, 4X BB raise gets one caller. I had been pushing this guy around for a while, and he had started to push back. The flop was A-7-6, no diamonds. I bet .20, he raises to .40, and I call. I figured that could just have been a probe raise to see if I was stealing once again. Earlier in the session, he had re-raised me on the flop when I had nothing, and was kind enough to show his A-A when I mucked. The turn was a 3, and he fired in $1.18. Now, I had to think a bit. What did he have? He was a pretty good player at this level, so I don't think he had 7-6 or A-7 or anything. I had settled on A-10 or A-Q, but I went against my read and called. If I had more time than online gave me, I'd like to think I'd have included 7-7 and 6-6 in his range as well...I do now. The river was a Queen, and he immediately went all-in. At that point, I knew I was beat and quietly mucked my hand. If he had A-10 or A-J, well, he outplayed me...all there is to it.
Around hands 40-57, I was starting to lose more than I won with the aggression, and was down to $5.91. I got Kh-Qh and called a raise and a re-raise up to $1.20 (dumb, dumb, dumb, Sean...you know better than that). The flop was 6-5-5 with one heart, and a fairly loose player went all-in for $4.23. Maybe it was a bluff, maybe it was A-A, but I wasn't sticking around to find out - another guy did though with his A-Q, and he lucked out on Big Raiser Guy when he rivered his Ace against the other guy's J-J. That put me below $5 for the first time in ages, but I was back up to $5.21 on the next hand thanks to Anna Kournikova. Maybe she DOES win sometimes, after all!
From there, I hovered between the $5-$5.80 range...the pattern seemed to be that I lost .20-.60 with medium-high hands, and won about the same with absolute garbage thanks to aggressive betting. On Hand 98 though, I flopped a straight with 9-8 from middle position. It was the ignorant end of the straight mind you, but nothing pre-flop screamed out A-K from anyone. If they had that exact hand, good luck to them. The turn paired the Queen, and that should have made me more nervous than it did. Now, Q-10 and Q-J were ahead of me as well, and I could see people limping with that at this table. Instead, I just called a .13 bet (when a re-raise would have given me the info I needed). A harmless little 6 on the river, and someone bet .32. I doubled the raise, one fold, the original raiser called and showed Q-5o. Thank goodness for the stupid.
Four hands later, I was back up in the high-rent district. I had Ks-3s in the big blind, 3 limpers followed me into a flop of J-J-J. One guy checked, I bet .16, two folded. The checker called me for some reason. Now, he may have had a low pocket pair or maybe two high cards...I'm just not putting anyone on quads. A King appeared on the turn, and my only thought there was how to extract the money from this guy. I figured that at worst, we were chopping unless an Ace came off or something. He solves my problem by going all-in for $2.04, and I insta-call. Mr. Genius is drawing dead with Q-8o, and I accept the $2.12 donation graciously.
I reached my high point at $9.18 when my Q-Q held up against a short stack's 5d-2d (her open-ender didn't get there), then reached another at $9.40 with Q-10o when my continuation bet scared everyone off. I got up to $9.60 with K-Q when my King paired and no one wanted to play, but then I lost a series of small-to-medium pots over the next two orbits to finish at $9.02. All in all, I used this as an experiment in a more aggressive online style, and it obviously paid off for me. I know of course that doing this will result in larger swings, but I have 20 buy-ins at this level so I think I should be able to handle it mentally. I did all right in handling the ups and downs within this session, though I did also hit my cards more often than I didn't.
We'll see how this goes - I think I'm going to grind it out down here for a while until I have 20 buy-ins at .5/.10 ($200, and I'm at $80 or so now).
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
$1 SNG with some friends – WE OWN IT, BABY!
My first inclination after last night’s success was to get right back on the .10/.20 horse and hope for some good hands to really get myself paid off. However, I got a text from my friend Joe right as I was about to sign on, so off to Sit-N-Go land I went. Honestly, I am a mediocre tournament player, as I mentioned yesterday. I’m not terribly comfortable with ever-escalating blinds, and most of my strategy is based on how I handle playing against a full table. I have ventured into SNGs before, and the best I’ve ever done is 3rd. Today, I went one better, but was absolutely clowned heads-up against my other friend, Josh.
Oh, and as you’ll see, I ended up being a total card rack tonight, and a run of cards like this in a ring game would have been like printing money in all likelihood. At the end of the day, though, this is supposed to be fun. And, I’d rather have some fun with friends if the opportunity is there…I think I’d be a rather sad excuse for a person if I didn’t.
On to some crucial hands:
Hand 3: Two off the button, guess what I wake up with? I haven’t held the weapons of mass destruction in ages, but here I am with Ac-Ad. The player in front of me raises to $140, and I am loving life. I call, everyone else folds, and we see a 7c-4d-3s flop. I knew right away I probably wouldn’t get donked out on with 6-5 or 7-4 or something…not with that pre-flop raise. Full speed ahead, captain! Mr. Aggressive bets $310, I call. Normally I don’t slow-play monsters, but there is absolutely nothing scary about that board. The turn is 6c, so now with two clubs out there, I’m resolved to get all the chips in. If he’s donking out on me, he’s going to pay for it. He saves me the trouble though, and bets $930. Interesting…why not all-in if that much? Typically, I consider that to be a sign of weakness as they want to at least have something if things don’t go their way. I had him on a lower pair or A-K here, so I put him all-in. He calls, and shows Qc-Qs. Awesome! He’s dead to two outs, and the 6s sends him home. On one hand, unless he put me on K-K or A-A, there was little for him to be afraid of out there. Then again, what did he think I called $310 with? I think the trouble is that a lot of donks do the all-in thing with A-A hoping that someone has a hand they like. It’s just that hand, really…any other monster is usually cause for check-calling all the way. So, I double-up nice and early...up to $3010!
Hand 5: The guy to my left, “skimwater”, calls my 60-cent raise (I had 8-8), as does Josh. Flop is A-Q-4, Josh bet $60 and skim raised to $120 on each street thereafter, with Josh calling each. My homie shows A-K, skim showed A-9. Wow. What do you think he was calling you with, bro? I pretty much had my read on this guy right there, and as I’ll explain later, he became quite the irritating little lunatic.
Hands 8-11: Skim goes nuts, betting and raising with ludicrously-high turn bets on all these hands. He’s up to $1953 for hand 11. I fold my awesome J-2, four callers to a 10s-9s-9c flop. Early-position guy pops it up to $150, skim calls, everyone else flees. The turn is 6d, the original bettor puts in $225, skim goes all-in, other guy calls. The original bettor shows 4c-4d, skim shows 10h 7c. The river is As, and the first guy is gone. I have no words…how did he not put him on A-10, K-10, Q-10 or J-10? He liked his 7 kicker that much? Really? Anyway, Skim won hand 12 as well, so he was at $3430 at that point to my $2840.
Hand 14: I didn’t win as much with them this time, but I see Ac-Ad in early position. I raise to $60, with visions of Skim raising all-in in my head. He folds, and Joe is my only customer in the BB. Let me just say that he and my friend Al are almost incapable of being trapped. Al has dodged bullets on quite a few occasions in my presence, and Joe is a survivor…his instincts (and Al’s) are almost always spot-on (especially in comparison to the author). The flop comes 5s-2s-2d. I have no idea what Joe has, as he checks. I don’t want him catching anything with random spades, so I bet $60 to see what happens. He goes away, leaving me with just a $75 profit. Every time I get a monster against those guys, I feel like a vaudeville villain trying to tie them to the railroad tracks. Curses, foiled again.
Hand 15: OK, this is almost not fair. Under the gun, I get Ah-Ks. I raise up to $90, and a previously-quiet player calls a few seats ahead of me. Everyone else bids adieu. The flop comes Jh-3s-2s. With two overcards and the potential for a runner-runner second-nut flush, against one caller, the continuation bet is automatic. Quiet Man calls. The turn is an absolutely beautiful Ad. I bet $360, he calls. What the hell is he calling me with? I have no idea, but I’m confident in my standing in the hand. The river is the Qs. I admit that I was a little cavalier here and wasn’t really thinking too much about what he had…if he had A-J, Q-J or J-J, I was just going to have to pay him off. In retrospect, I’m amazed that I wasn’t a little more frightened of the flush draw that was completed on the river…you can see how I overplay the shit out of top pair-top kicker sometimes. I bet $240 (OK, guess I was at least a little nervous), he calls and shows 5s5c. Man, thank fucking goodness for the stupid. On the next hand, the Skim All-In Special sent him to the rail when his 9-6 beat Quiet Man’s K-9 when the 6 came on the flop.
Hand 21: The guy directly to my right is knocked out by, well, Guess Who. He held J-J, the flop came J-7-2. The other guy ended up having A-J, so the result was inevitable. When another 7 hit on the turn, Skim’s ridiculous over-bet was called and that was that. That’s great, but what about the other 90% of the time when the other guy quietly deposits his hand in the muck? He and I are the big stacks, he leads $5,670 to $3,710.
Hand 22: My 10c-10s is good enough for a $150 raise (25/50 blinds), which Skim calls. The flop is Jh-8h-7s. I bet $325, he raises $650, and I insta-call. Honestly, I didn’t believe he had much other than maybe a flush draw or perhaps second or third pair. The turn comes Js, and he immediately throws in $1,625. Well, that made my decision easy, didn’t it? If he had put out a teaser bet, I almost certainly would have called (with two Jacks out there, there was less chance he had the third), and I maybe even would have raised. Instead, this was an easy fold…I’m at least tournament-savvy enough to wait for a better spot when I’m safely in second chip position with 74 BBs. I show my 10-10 to let him know I’m capable of folding it, and he was kind enough to show his J-2. Yes, he called a 3x BB raise with J-2 off-suit. No, I don’t know why either. At this point, our boy Skim is starting to royally get on my tits. It’s $6,495-$2,910 now, but I’m still in decent shape.
Hand 24: Skim raises to $100 pre-flop, Random Anonymous Guy 2 is his only customer. The flop is 9-4-4, RAG2 checks, and Skim goes all-in for $6,295. Err, OK. What exactly was he going to call you with? The inevitable fold is met with a showing of Ks-Qs. Cheers, thanks for the free information.
Hand 27: Skim wins the next two (I have to give it to him, in a crazed sort of way he’s playing his big stack pretty well), and he raises this one to $100. I re-raise to $250 with Kc-Qd, he calls. Flop is 6s-5d-3h, and he checks. Huh, that’s odd. I throw out $575, and he goes away. Well, that was uncharacteristic. At this point, I was beginning to think that he had a deliberate game plan and as much as I hate to admit it, it was working. It was hard as hell to put him on anything, that’s for sure. It’s not how I’d play because all it takes is someone waking up with a monster hand to send you packing, but he was accumulating chips like mad. The smart thing to do at that point would probably be to change gears and slow it down for a few orbits before picking up speed again. He wasn’t that smart, though.
Hand 28: Speaking of changing gears, Josh starts to pick up speed, and wins a nice pot off of Random Anonymous Guy 1. With that, he overtakes me for second place.
Hand 29: My lucky number is 29, it was my hockey number in high school, it’s my soccer number now. It also was the hand where RAG2 proved to be…a bird? A plane? No, it’s SUPERDONK! I find Qs-Qc in the BB. RAG2 calls, Joe raises to $150, I pop it up to $600 (I really, really don’t want A-x beating me). RAG2 calls, Joe (having possession of a brain) goes away. The flop comes 6c-5h-3s. While you do have to spare a thought for what this guy is calling with, this is a tournament and you do have to accumulate chips sometime. I still had $1,220 if all the chips went in, so I figured this was a good spot to go on the attack. I bet $500, and he goes all-in for $1,140. I go into the tank for just about the whole 15 seconds, and I considered using my extra time. However, at the end of the day, I was still 24.5 BBs to the good if I guessed wrong, so I couldn’t justify a fold. Good thing too, because Mr. Genius shows 2c-2h. Now, if a 4 had come off, I wouldn’t be writing this right now as I would have probably had a stress-induced heart attack. Instead, the turn and river were 9s and As, leaving me with a clean bill of health and an extremely healthy chip stack. Down to 5 players, I was second again - $6,470 to $4,775.
Hand 33: Joe was down to his last $495, but Skim doubled him up when his A-Q unluckily got beat by 10-7 when the 7 paired. Seriously, you can’t kill this guy.
Hand 34: Chip leader, baby! Still at 25/50, I get 5c-4c in the BB. Skim calls out of the SB, everyone else bolts. The flop comes Kc-7c-6c. Wunderbar! However, who the hell knows what this maniac next to me has, so let’s not start sucking each other’s dicks yet. I bet $100, he raises to $400. I was slightly concerned, but also fairly certain that he was capable of re-raising with total squadoosh. The turn was 10h, Skim bets $450 and I call. I suppose at this point, I made the decision that he didn’t have a higher flush. The river was 3s, and he bet $900. Normally sequentially-increasing bets are a fairly reliable indicator of strength, but I just didn’t buy it for some reason. I trusted my read and called (notice I didn’t re-raise, hedging against the possibility that I was being roped in). He showed Kh-7d for two pair, so my flush was good. I took down a monster pot, and now led $6,625-$4,175.
Hands 35-41: Josh changed gears brilliantly once it became four-handed, and he basically traded these with Skim. I ask him via this very public forum whether he’s also a disciple of the Harrington school, as he seems to advocate the “tight early, loose late” strategy. Skim had $4,375, but Josh was knocking on the door with $3,360. Joe was on life support with $640.
Hand 42: Speaking of Joe, he went all-in (it’s now 50/100). I had Ad-8d, and figured it was probably ahead of Random Desperate Short-Stack Hand. Well, not exactly. He had Ac-8c, and not surprisingly we chopped it. Apparently, you have to shoot the creature directly in the head, or else it keeps on shambling towards you in its quest for delicious brains.
Hand 44: Joe raises again in hand 43, and my J-2 isn’t worth a call. This time, Josh calls his all-in raise, and it was the classic race: Josh with 8-8, Joe with Q-J off-suit. A Queen hit on the flop, and Joe doubled up once again. This hand has been brought to you by the Umbrella Corporation.
Hand 47: Josh closes the gap on me with a timely all-in bet. I got 10-10 in the BB, and he raises to $300 from the SB. No one else plays, so we’re off to the flop which comes K-8-5 rainbow. I check (I don’t know why, that’s almost always continuation-bet time from me), he bets $300, and I call. I don’t know why that was worth a call if it wasn’t worth a bet in the first place. The turn is a 7 – I bet $700, and he goes all-in with his last $2,195. I’d still have $3,005 if I called and lost, but it didn’t seem like a great spot to risk relinquishing the chip lead. If I remember correctly, I figured there was a 25-30% chance he was on a total bluff, and a 70-75% chance he had 5-5, 8-8 or any King-Other Picture Card hand. Risking $2,195 into a pot of $1,900 when I could very easily be dead to two outs (or drawing dead if he had K-K, a reasonable holding in this scenario) is not something I generally look for in a hand. I gracefully made my exit, and he took over second place with over $4,000 in chips for the first time. If that was a bluff, I take my hat off to you…it was a great one. And, because it’s not every other hand like SOME people in this tourney, I’m much less likely to call if you were bluffing. Well done.
Hand 49: Josh raises first to $300, Skim calls. Flop is K-5-3 with two clubs. Skim bets $650, Josh re-raises to $1,500. I was shocked, but Skim went away. As much as I was picking on him before, I think he was really a pretty good player, and we were just all irritated by the success of his style. He smartly folded here, and Josh was now less than $500 behind me.
Hand 50: One of Josh’s few mistakes – he called a re-raise from Skim on a Q-10-10 board. Interestingly, Skim checked it down the rest of the way, and showed J-10. Josh showed 3-3, which I think were slightly over-played after the flop. That worked for me, though…I was $1,000 ahead again.
Hand 52: With 8-8 on the button, only Joe calls my $300 raise. I hit my set on the flop with a Q-8-6 rainbow board, and it went check-check. The turn was a 7, and with two hearts out there I picked up a little speed (I think I pick up too much speed on the turn in this situation…maybe?). Joe bet $400, and my re-raise to $1,200 chased him away. That would have set him all-in, and I suppose it would be hard to expect him to have A-Q or K-Q when he checked the turn.
Hand 53: With K-10 off-suit under the gun, I raise to $300. Joe goes all-in for $980, and I fold. In retrospect, that’s probably virgin-cheerleader tight before the flop. Skim calls with K-3 off-suit, and Joe’s A-J off-suit holds up when all five cards miss them both. Joe is now past normal zombie status and now resembles that fucking thing from Resident Evil 2 (or is it 3?) that shows up more often than Jason Vorhees and mumbles “Staaaaaaaaaaaars”. Ugh. Moving on…
Hand 54: I get K-10 again in the BB now, and fold it again to Joe’s $400 raise. Josh calls, but can’t stand the heat of Joe’s continuation bet (flop was J-7-3 with two spades). Don’t look now, but Joe’s in third!
Me: $5,550 – Josh: $3,695 – Joe: $2,910 – Skim: $2,845
Hand 55-57: Skim re-awakens, and wins all three hands with some solid continuation bets and re-raises. He goes from 4th to 2nd just that quick.
Hand 58: I call people donkeys pretty often here, but as much as I can dish it out, I can take it too. The name of this blog is what it is because at different points in my poker career (hell, even in one session), I feel I have been all three of those. This time, I was a lucky, lucky donkey, and the shamrock-covered horseshoe up my ass sent Skim to the rail.
I found Qs-9d in the BB, and called Skim’s raise from the SB up to $300. The flop was Ah-Qc-7d. He checks, I make the $300 information bet, and he goes all-in for his last $4,645. Now, I’d like to say that I went into the tank for ages and came up with some brilliant thought process to justify my call. As it turns out, I just felt like he had done this too often for my liking in the second quarter of hands that were played, and he had shown in the past that he was capable of doing so with bluffing. I also felt he was capable of doing so with third pair, or a tiny pocket pair. This was a hand where the math went out the window, and I went entirely on my gut about the player. As it turns out, I was dead wrong...I called damn near instantly and my heart sank when I saw his Ac-3h. With no flush or straight possibilities, I was dead to 5 outs, meaning he was an 82% favorite to win the hand. Well, for fucking once, I got to donk out on someone else for a change, as the miracle 9 spiked on the turn, and the river was a blank. I would have been down…I DESERVED to be down to my last $155, but instead Skim was out and I rejoiced in the fact that not only did I definitely cash, all three friends had survived into the money. Nice.
Hand 67: I sat on my giganto-stack for a while, resolving not to play unless I had a strong hand. Joe and Josh traded some wins, until Joe re-raised Josh’s $450 pre-flop bet (75/150 now) all-in for his last $1,860. Josh called, and showed Kc-7c against Joe’s Jd-10s. Two Kings came out on the flop, and just to add insult to injury, the last two streets both were fives to fill up Josh’s boat. Joe went to the rail, as Hogie finally found the rocket launcher to slay the zombie-demon-beast-awful metaphor-beast.
Hand 68: I won a heads-up hand! I really, really did it! All by myself, with no one else’s help! Sadly, this was the last one. I raised to $450 pre-flop with Qd-6h, Josh folds.
Hand 69: I have Jd-5c in the BB. Josh raises to $450, I decide not to be pushed around and call. The flop is A-4-4 rainbow, and I decide to check-fold and wait for a better spot. I probably should have looked into that strategy in the next hand as well.
Hand 70: I have Qh-2d in the SB. He raises to $450, I call. The flop is 10-8-5 with two clubs. He makes the $450 continuation bet, and at this point, I kind of lost my mind and decided that OMG MUST MAKE STAND. I re-raise to $1,350, and at the very least he went into the tank for a bit. Unfortunately, when he came out, he re-raised to $2,750. Dammit shit fuck motherfuck shit shit shit. I can’t take the heat, and fold. He now leads $8,855-$6,145.
Hand 71: I have 4c-3h in the BB. He raises to $450, and I muck quickly. I am getting frustrated now.
Hand 72: I call with Ac-2h in the SB. He actually does not raise, so the flop comes Qh-5c-2s. He checks, and that won him the tournament right there. I bet $150 as a kind of teaser type bet because heads-up, it’s so hard to hit flops that I was sure I was ahead (especially with no pre-flop raise and the post-flop check, I at that point eliminated any Queen holdings). Josh re-raises to $450, and I immediately double it to $900. I imagine Josh knew right here that I was hooked on the line, and not going anywhere. Yes kids, I decided to go to war with third pair despite the maxim “Never go broke with a Queen in your hand”. Don’t look at me, I never make it to heads-up so I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here! Josh re-re-raises to $3,000, and I call. Yep, at this point, I’m pot-committed. The turn is a 5h. At this point, I eliminate any holding Josh might have that has a 5, just going by the odds. Again, I was convinced he didn’t have a Queen for the reasons already stated. Josh set me all-in, and really, at this point I should have changed my mind about the Queen, mucked this piece of shit hand, and set about trying to grind my way back into it. Instead, I called, and took it on the chin when he showed Qd-4c. Just as a big, giant middle finger to your fearless correspondent, the river was another Queen. Well fuck you too, Sportsbook.
Honestly, Josh played an almost flawless tournament and deserved to win it. I remember him posting some hands he played to the message board we all post at last year, and thinking he had a loooooooooooong way to go. Fast-forward a year, and here he is teaching me a lesson in heads-up tournament poker. I think I’m getting better at this version of the game, but I feel like a UFC fighter that has the tools but doesn’t know how to finish fights. Josh seems to be a fairly deadly finisher, and that was about as one-sided of a heads-up match as you’ll get. It had some shades of Fedor vs. Sylvia, really. Heh.
Anyway, I profited almost as much with this as I did in my 90-minute session at .10/.20 last night, so it’s not all bad. Until next time!
Oh, and as you’ll see, I ended up being a total card rack tonight, and a run of cards like this in a ring game would have been like printing money in all likelihood. At the end of the day, though, this is supposed to be fun. And, I’d rather have some fun with friends if the opportunity is there…I think I’d be a rather sad excuse for a person if I didn’t.
On to some crucial hands:
Hand 3: Two off the button, guess what I wake up with? I haven’t held the weapons of mass destruction in ages, but here I am with Ac-Ad. The player in front of me raises to $140, and I am loving life. I call, everyone else folds, and we see a 7c-4d-3s flop. I knew right away I probably wouldn’t get donked out on with 6-5 or 7-4 or something…not with that pre-flop raise. Full speed ahead, captain! Mr. Aggressive bets $310, I call. Normally I don’t slow-play monsters, but there is absolutely nothing scary about that board. The turn is 6c, so now with two clubs out there, I’m resolved to get all the chips in. If he’s donking out on me, he’s going to pay for it. He saves me the trouble though, and bets $930. Interesting…why not all-in if that much? Typically, I consider that to be a sign of weakness as they want to at least have something if things don’t go their way. I had him on a lower pair or A-K here, so I put him all-in. He calls, and shows Qc-Qs. Awesome! He’s dead to two outs, and the 6s sends him home. On one hand, unless he put me on K-K or A-A, there was little for him to be afraid of out there. Then again, what did he think I called $310 with? I think the trouble is that a lot of donks do the all-in thing with A-A hoping that someone has a hand they like. It’s just that hand, really…any other monster is usually cause for check-calling all the way. So, I double-up nice and early...up to $3010!
Hand 5: The guy to my left, “skimwater”, calls my 60-cent raise (I had 8-8), as does Josh. Flop is A-Q-4, Josh bet $60 and skim raised to $120 on each street thereafter, with Josh calling each. My homie shows A-K, skim showed A-9. Wow. What do you think he was calling you with, bro? I pretty much had my read on this guy right there, and as I’ll explain later, he became quite the irritating little lunatic.
Hands 8-11: Skim goes nuts, betting and raising with ludicrously-high turn bets on all these hands. He’s up to $1953 for hand 11. I fold my awesome J-2, four callers to a 10s-9s-9c flop. Early-position guy pops it up to $150, skim calls, everyone else flees. The turn is 6d, the original bettor puts in $225, skim goes all-in, other guy calls. The original bettor shows 4c-4d, skim shows 10h 7c. The river is As, and the first guy is gone. I have no words…how did he not put him on A-10, K-10, Q-10 or J-10? He liked his 7 kicker that much? Really? Anyway, Skim won hand 12 as well, so he was at $3430 at that point to my $2840.
Hand 14: I didn’t win as much with them this time, but I see Ac-Ad in early position. I raise to $60, with visions of Skim raising all-in in my head. He folds, and Joe is my only customer in the BB. Let me just say that he and my friend Al are almost incapable of being trapped. Al has dodged bullets on quite a few occasions in my presence, and Joe is a survivor…his instincts (and Al’s) are almost always spot-on (especially in comparison to the author). The flop comes 5s-2s-2d. I have no idea what Joe has, as he checks. I don’t want him catching anything with random spades, so I bet $60 to see what happens. He goes away, leaving me with just a $75 profit. Every time I get a monster against those guys, I feel like a vaudeville villain trying to tie them to the railroad tracks. Curses, foiled again.
Hand 15: OK, this is almost not fair. Under the gun, I get Ah-Ks. I raise up to $90, and a previously-quiet player calls a few seats ahead of me. Everyone else bids adieu. The flop comes Jh-3s-2s. With two overcards and the potential for a runner-runner second-nut flush, against one caller, the continuation bet is automatic. Quiet Man calls. The turn is an absolutely beautiful Ad. I bet $360, he calls. What the hell is he calling me with? I have no idea, but I’m confident in my standing in the hand. The river is the Qs. I admit that I was a little cavalier here and wasn’t really thinking too much about what he had…if he had A-J, Q-J or J-J, I was just going to have to pay him off. In retrospect, I’m amazed that I wasn’t a little more frightened of the flush draw that was completed on the river…you can see how I overplay the shit out of top pair-top kicker sometimes. I bet $240 (OK, guess I was at least a little nervous), he calls and shows 5s5c. Man, thank fucking goodness for the stupid. On the next hand, the Skim All-In Special sent him to the rail when his 9-6 beat Quiet Man’s K-9 when the 6 came on the flop.
Hand 21: The guy directly to my right is knocked out by, well, Guess Who. He held J-J, the flop came J-7-2. The other guy ended up having A-J, so the result was inevitable. When another 7 hit on the turn, Skim’s ridiculous over-bet was called and that was that. That’s great, but what about the other 90% of the time when the other guy quietly deposits his hand in the muck? He and I are the big stacks, he leads $5,670 to $3,710.
Hand 22: My 10c-10s is good enough for a $150 raise (25/50 blinds), which Skim calls. The flop is Jh-8h-7s. I bet $325, he raises $650, and I insta-call. Honestly, I didn’t believe he had much other than maybe a flush draw or perhaps second or third pair. The turn comes Js, and he immediately throws in $1,625. Well, that made my decision easy, didn’t it? If he had put out a teaser bet, I almost certainly would have called (with two Jacks out there, there was less chance he had the third), and I maybe even would have raised. Instead, this was an easy fold…I’m at least tournament-savvy enough to wait for a better spot when I’m safely in second chip position with 74 BBs. I show my 10-10 to let him know I’m capable of folding it, and he was kind enough to show his J-2. Yes, he called a 3x BB raise with J-2 off-suit. No, I don’t know why either. At this point, our boy Skim is starting to royally get on my tits. It’s $6,495-$2,910 now, but I’m still in decent shape.
Hand 24: Skim raises to $100 pre-flop, Random Anonymous Guy 2 is his only customer. The flop is 9-4-4, RAG2 checks, and Skim goes all-in for $6,295. Err, OK. What exactly was he going to call you with? The inevitable fold is met with a showing of Ks-Qs. Cheers, thanks for the free information.
Hand 27: Skim wins the next two (I have to give it to him, in a crazed sort of way he’s playing his big stack pretty well), and he raises this one to $100. I re-raise to $250 with Kc-Qd, he calls. Flop is 6s-5d-3h, and he checks. Huh, that’s odd. I throw out $575, and he goes away. Well, that was uncharacteristic. At this point, I was beginning to think that he had a deliberate game plan and as much as I hate to admit it, it was working. It was hard as hell to put him on anything, that’s for sure. It’s not how I’d play because all it takes is someone waking up with a monster hand to send you packing, but he was accumulating chips like mad. The smart thing to do at that point would probably be to change gears and slow it down for a few orbits before picking up speed again. He wasn’t that smart, though.
Hand 28: Speaking of changing gears, Josh starts to pick up speed, and wins a nice pot off of Random Anonymous Guy 1. With that, he overtakes me for second place.
Hand 29: My lucky number is 29, it was my hockey number in high school, it’s my soccer number now. It also was the hand where RAG2 proved to be…a bird? A plane? No, it’s SUPERDONK! I find Qs-Qc in the BB. RAG2 calls, Joe raises to $150, I pop it up to $600 (I really, really don’t want A-x beating me). RAG2 calls, Joe (having possession of a brain) goes away. The flop comes 6c-5h-3s. While you do have to spare a thought for what this guy is calling with, this is a tournament and you do have to accumulate chips sometime. I still had $1,220 if all the chips went in, so I figured this was a good spot to go on the attack. I bet $500, and he goes all-in for $1,140. I go into the tank for just about the whole 15 seconds, and I considered using my extra time. However, at the end of the day, I was still 24.5 BBs to the good if I guessed wrong, so I couldn’t justify a fold. Good thing too, because Mr. Genius shows 2c-2h. Now, if a 4 had come off, I wouldn’t be writing this right now as I would have probably had a stress-induced heart attack. Instead, the turn and river were 9s and As, leaving me with a clean bill of health and an extremely healthy chip stack. Down to 5 players, I was second again - $6,470 to $4,775.
Hand 33: Joe was down to his last $495, but Skim doubled him up when his A-Q unluckily got beat by 10-7 when the 7 paired. Seriously, you can’t kill this guy.
Hand 34: Chip leader, baby! Still at 25/50, I get 5c-4c in the BB. Skim calls out of the SB, everyone else bolts. The flop comes Kc-7c-6c. Wunderbar! However, who the hell knows what this maniac next to me has, so let’s not start sucking each other’s dicks yet. I bet $100, he raises to $400. I was slightly concerned, but also fairly certain that he was capable of re-raising with total squadoosh. The turn was 10h, Skim bets $450 and I call. I suppose at this point, I made the decision that he didn’t have a higher flush. The river was 3s, and he bet $900. Normally sequentially-increasing bets are a fairly reliable indicator of strength, but I just didn’t buy it for some reason. I trusted my read and called (notice I didn’t re-raise, hedging against the possibility that I was being roped in). He showed Kh-7d for two pair, so my flush was good. I took down a monster pot, and now led $6,625-$4,175.
Hands 35-41: Josh changed gears brilliantly once it became four-handed, and he basically traded these with Skim. I ask him via this very public forum whether he’s also a disciple of the Harrington school, as he seems to advocate the “tight early, loose late” strategy. Skim had $4,375, but Josh was knocking on the door with $3,360. Joe was on life support with $640.
Hand 42: Speaking of Joe, he went all-in (it’s now 50/100). I had Ad-8d, and figured it was probably ahead of Random Desperate Short-Stack Hand. Well, not exactly. He had Ac-8c, and not surprisingly we chopped it. Apparently, you have to shoot the creature directly in the head, or else it keeps on shambling towards you in its quest for delicious brains.
Hand 44: Joe raises again in hand 43, and my J-2 isn’t worth a call. This time, Josh calls his all-in raise, and it was the classic race: Josh with 8-8, Joe with Q-J off-suit. A Queen hit on the flop, and Joe doubled up once again. This hand has been brought to you by the Umbrella Corporation.
Hand 47: Josh closes the gap on me with a timely all-in bet. I got 10-10 in the BB, and he raises to $300 from the SB. No one else plays, so we’re off to the flop which comes K-8-5 rainbow. I check (I don’t know why, that’s almost always continuation-bet time from me), he bets $300, and I call. I don’t know why that was worth a call if it wasn’t worth a bet in the first place. The turn is a 7 – I bet $700, and he goes all-in with his last $2,195. I’d still have $3,005 if I called and lost, but it didn’t seem like a great spot to risk relinquishing the chip lead. If I remember correctly, I figured there was a 25-30% chance he was on a total bluff, and a 70-75% chance he had 5-5, 8-8 or any King-Other Picture Card hand. Risking $2,195 into a pot of $1,900 when I could very easily be dead to two outs (or drawing dead if he had K-K, a reasonable holding in this scenario) is not something I generally look for in a hand. I gracefully made my exit, and he took over second place with over $4,000 in chips for the first time. If that was a bluff, I take my hat off to you…it was a great one. And, because it’s not every other hand like SOME people in this tourney, I’m much less likely to call if you were bluffing. Well done.
Hand 49: Josh raises first to $300, Skim calls. Flop is K-5-3 with two clubs. Skim bets $650, Josh re-raises to $1,500. I was shocked, but Skim went away. As much as I was picking on him before, I think he was really a pretty good player, and we were just all irritated by the success of his style. He smartly folded here, and Josh was now less than $500 behind me.
Hand 50: One of Josh’s few mistakes – he called a re-raise from Skim on a Q-10-10 board. Interestingly, Skim checked it down the rest of the way, and showed J-10. Josh showed 3-3, which I think were slightly over-played after the flop. That worked for me, though…I was $1,000 ahead again.
Hand 52: With 8-8 on the button, only Joe calls my $300 raise. I hit my set on the flop with a Q-8-6 rainbow board, and it went check-check. The turn was a 7, and with two hearts out there I picked up a little speed (I think I pick up too much speed on the turn in this situation…maybe?). Joe bet $400, and my re-raise to $1,200 chased him away. That would have set him all-in, and I suppose it would be hard to expect him to have A-Q or K-Q when he checked the turn.
Hand 53: With K-10 off-suit under the gun, I raise to $300. Joe goes all-in for $980, and I fold. In retrospect, that’s probably virgin-cheerleader tight before the flop. Skim calls with K-3 off-suit, and Joe’s A-J off-suit holds up when all five cards miss them both. Joe is now past normal zombie status and now resembles that fucking thing from Resident Evil 2 (or is it 3?) that shows up more often than Jason Vorhees and mumbles “Staaaaaaaaaaaars”. Ugh. Moving on…
Hand 54: I get K-10 again in the BB now, and fold it again to Joe’s $400 raise. Josh calls, but can’t stand the heat of Joe’s continuation bet (flop was J-7-3 with two spades). Don’t look now, but Joe’s in third!
Me: $5,550 – Josh: $3,695 – Joe: $2,910 – Skim: $2,845
Hand 55-57: Skim re-awakens, and wins all three hands with some solid continuation bets and re-raises. He goes from 4th to 2nd just that quick.
Hand 58: I call people donkeys pretty often here, but as much as I can dish it out, I can take it too. The name of this blog is what it is because at different points in my poker career (hell, even in one session), I feel I have been all three of those. This time, I was a lucky, lucky donkey, and the shamrock-covered horseshoe up my ass sent Skim to the rail.
I found Qs-9d in the BB, and called Skim’s raise from the SB up to $300. The flop was Ah-Qc-7d. He checks, I make the $300 information bet, and he goes all-in for his last $4,645. Now, I’d like to say that I went into the tank for ages and came up with some brilliant thought process to justify my call. As it turns out, I just felt like he had done this too often for my liking in the second quarter of hands that were played, and he had shown in the past that he was capable of doing so with bluffing. I also felt he was capable of doing so with third pair, or a tiny pocket pair. This was a hand where the math went out the window, and I went entirely on my gut about the player. As it turns out, I was dead wrong...I called damn near instantly and my heart sank when I saw his Ac-3h. With no flush or straight possibilities, I was dead to 5 outs, meaning he was an 82% favorite to win the hand. Well, for fucking once, I got to donk out on someone else for a change, as the miracle 9 spiked on the turn, and the river was a blank. I would have been down…I DESERVED to be down to my last $155, but instead Skim was out and I rejoiced in the fact that not only did I definitely cash, all three friends had survived into the money. Nice.
Hand 67: I sat on my giganto-stack for a while, resolving not to play unless I had a strong hand. Joe and Josh traded some wins, until Joe re-raised Josh’s $450 pre-flop bet (75/150 now) all-in for his last $1,860. Josh called, and showed Kc-7c against Joe’s Jd-10s. Two Kings came out on the flop, and just to add insult to injury, the last two streets both were fives to fill up Josh’s boat. Joe went to the rail, as Hogie finally found the rocket launcher to slay the zombie-demon-beast-awful metaphor-beast.
Hand 68: I won a heads-up hand! I really, really did it! All by myself, with no one else’s help! Sadly, this was the last one. I raised to $450 pre-flop with Qd-6h, Josh folds.
Hand 69: I have Jd-5c in the BB. Josh raises to $450, I decide not to be pushed around and call. The flop is A-4-4 rainbow, and I decide to check-fold and wait for a better spot. I probably should have looked into that strategy in the next hand as well.
Hand 70: I have Qh-2d in the SB. He raises to $450, I call. The flop is 10-8-5 with two clubs. He makes the $450 continuation bet, and at this point, I kind of lost my mind and decided that OMG MUST MAKE STAND. I re-raise to $1,350, and at the very least he went into the tank for a bit. Unfortunately, when he came out, he re-raised to $2,750. Dammit shit fuck motherfuck shit shit shit. I can’t take the heat, and fold. He now leads $8,855-$6,145.
Hand 71: I have 4c-3h in the BB. He raises to $450, and I muck quickly. I am getting frustrated now.
Hand 72: I call with Ac-2h in the SB. He actually does not raise, so the flop comes Qh-5c-2s. He checks, and that won him the tournament right there. I bet $150 as a kind of teaser type bet because heads-up, it’s so hard to hit flops that I was sure I was ahead (especially with no pre-flop raise and the post-flop check, I at that point eliminated any Queen holdings). Josh re-raises to $450, and I immediately double it to $900. I imagine Josh knew right here that I was hooked on the line, and not going anywhere. Yes kids, I decided to go to war with third pair despite the maxim “Never go broke with a Queen in your hand”. Don’t look at me, I never make it to heads-up so I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here! Josh re-re-raises to $3,000, and I call. Yep, at this point, I’m pot-committed. The turn is a 5h. At this point, I eliminate any holding Josh might have that has a 5, just going by the odds. Again, I was convinced he didn’t have a Queen for the reasons already stated. Josh set me all-in, and really, at this point I should have changed my mind about the Queen, mucked this piece of shit hand, and set about trying to grind my way back into it. Instead, I called, and took it on the chin when he showed Qd-4c. Just as a big, giant middle finger to your fearless correspondent, the river was another Queen. Well fuck you too, Sportsbook.
Honestly, Josh played an almost flawless tournament and deserved to win it. I remember him posting some hands he played to the message board we all post at last year, and thinking he had a loooooooooooong way to go. Fast-forward a year, and here he is teaching me a lesson in heads-up tournament poker. I think I’m getting better at this version of the game, but I feel like a UFC fighter that has the tools but doesn’t know how to finish fights. Josh seems to be a fairly deadly finisher, and that was about as one-sided of a heads-up match as you’ll get. It had some shades of Fedor vs. Sylvia, really. Heh.
Anyway, I profited almost as much with this as I did in my 90-minute session at .10/.20 last night, so it’s not all bad. Until next time!
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Great session last night! (Warning - this is long)
After this weekend’s debacle, I actually had a good session on a .10/.20 table at Sportsbook today. I struggled with the starting hands I got, with almost no pairs and no premium hands at all other than an A-Q I had to fold after an awful flop. But, I played very smart – I got away as cheaply as possible from bad hands, I stole when I could, and I correctly folded hands like Q-J and A-x suited in poor positions. The 30-cent wins I got almost entirely from continuation bets allowed me to hang around long enough to hit a miracle flop right at the end of my session (I had a hard stop of 10:30 today, which sucks…after I hit that hand I could have run this table over for a while afterwards and perhaps profited even more).
The thing is, you have to pick the right table to suit your style. The stats they show on the lobby page should be of utmost interest to the serious micro-stakes player…if you like to steal and make continuation bets, you need a table with a low percentage of players seeing the flop and a low average pot size (like this one was). If you like to see a lot of flops with suited connectors and the like and are sure that you get away from hands when someone’s donked out on you, you want the high flop-percentage tables with the large average pot sizes.
The stats didn’t lie with this table – there was more checking going on than in a Charlestown Chiefs game. I’m not kidding – I got *five* walks in this one session alone! The play was so passive as to defy belief, which is exceedingly strange at the micro level. Not only that, but the table was comprised of mainly Chinese players for most of the time I was there, so I wonder if there was some kind of communal respect thing going on or something. Actually, I have to admit at first that I was afraid of collusion because there were two groups of three people all from the same town, but in the end it didn’t seem to go down that way. Despite the fact that the table did at times spasm into a frenzy of raises and re-raises, it would quickly go back to normal. My continuation-bet strategy worked like a charm considering the crappy hands I was getting stuck with, and it was quite a nice break that when I finally did hit that miracle flop, it was against a player who had shown some loose-aggressive tendencies during the session (it’s so important to watch the action as much as you can and not get distracted with other stuff).
All of that said, here are some of the notable hands from the session. Not all will include me, but I’ve condensed the hand histories into short summaries to keep this at a readable length.
- Here’s one example of the check-calling nonsense (albeit with a crazy river) that I was talking about in previous posts. I had Qh-3h in the small blind, and I called along with five other people. Flop was Jd-8s-6s, no help to me with my hearts. One guy bets .20, he gets three callers while my cards go to the muck. Turn was 3c, three check, but one bets .65 (not the person who bet on the flop). One caller survives to see the Ah river. The guy who hadn’t raised once goes all in for $18.95, the .65 raiser calls for his last $3.40. Umm, OK. Turns out crazy river man had 8h 6c and had flopped two pair, but his stupid check-call routine allowed the other guy to catch the Ace on the river and win with his As-Js. Nice shootin’, Tex…especially because you could have lost with any spade on the river, too. So, you gave someone with a 2.28:1 shot to win two free cards to beat you. Awesome. Meanwhile, I have to say I like the .65 turn bet from that one guy. He could have taken it down right there if everyone had whiffed, and he had outs if someone hadn’t.
- I wonder if this was too tight a fold on my part. I had Qc-Js in middle position, and it’s folded around to me. I open for my standard raise to .60, one guy folds, another person in middle position (this is the crazy person who would eventually succumb to my full house, but she hadn’t exhibited those tendencies yet) raised to $1 total. I call, everyone else folds. The flop is Kh-Kd-8c. I check, she bets .20, and I fold. She hadn’t raised a whole lot previous to that, so I had A-A, A-K, A-Q and even A-10 in her range of holdings. All of those would beat me, along with the rare case that she had a King. It just smelled like a string-along bet to me, although there is to me a 50% chance that it was a post-oak bluff. While the usual donk move is to check-call all the way down, the second-most common ploy is these tiny little bets in the hope that you catch something and then bet big at it. I decided discretion was the better part of valor here, though I can’t help but wonder if a tiny re-raise to .40 or so wouldn’t have given me the information needed to be sure.
- Here’s a bit of aggression that should be a part of any serious player’s repertoire. I’m in the big blind with Kd-Js. There’s one caller, so I raise it up to .60. They call, and the flop comes 4s-4c-4h. I immediately bet .40 at it (not a crazy amount, I’ve learned from the situations I’ve mentioned in previous posts). The caller immediately folds. See, there’s almost no risk here – if they call or raise, you know you’re beat and it’s an immediate check-fold situation from there. But, if they don’t have a pocket pair or the case card, then you’ll take it down a lot more often than not…even at this donk level.
- I wasn’t in this hand, but here’s another example of how timid this table was. Pre-flop, there’s one caller and the BB checks (the SB folded, which is horrible…for half a bet, you should call with almost any two cards). Flop is Kh-Js-6s. Both guys check. Turn is Ah, both guys check. River is 7s, both guys check. The caller shows Qh-Jh to win, the BB shows Qs-7h. Wow…no one had the balls to bet on this at all? Not once? Not even with all those checks? With only one overcard to your hand, I think you have to bet on that flop with your Jack paired. This guy is a ridiculously-tight player (I recognize him from other sessions), but that is just insane…it’s like virgin-cheerleader tight. I mean, what if the BB has A-x, and the free card you allowed him to see ends up beating you? Awful, awful, awful.
- Here’s another episode of Donkerpiece Theater in a hand I wasn’t in. There’s one caller, SB folds (super-tight guy from the last hand), and Crazy Girl in the BB checks. Flop comes 6s-3s-2d. Crazy Girl checks, caller bets .20, Crazy Girl calls. The same pattern happens on the turn and river, which are 6h and Jd. Crazy Girl shows As-2h, the caller shows 10h-3h. Isn’t this amazing on about 37 different levels? First of all, you have someone calling with 10-3 (“…but it’s SOOTED!”). Next, you have someone who tenuously hits a flop but only pussy-raises at it the rest of the way. Meanwhile, you have Donk McDonkerson just smooth-calling with middle pair, which happens to be THREES. What a clusterfuck of bad play this was, eh? One raise…ONE RAISE would have won this hand either way. Wow. Moving on…
- And the hits just keep on coming! Four callers to the flop (Crazy Girl folds the SB), flop comes Jh-7s-3h. Everyone checks. Turn is 9d, everyone checks. River is Qh, one guy bets .20, one person calls, the others go away. One shows Kd-Qc, the other Ks-Qs. Considering both people hit their Queen with a nice kicker on the turn, how the holy jumping fuck was there no action on either that street or on 5th? Nimrod A and Nimrod B chop a pot that either of them at least had a chance of winning with a raise or re-raise to at least represent that they had A-Q or something. Outstanding.
- Now I’m back in a hand. While I’m not complaining, what are you calling with if a continuation bet makes you go away on this flop? I’m 3 off the button and get Qc-9c. I hadn’t played a hand in two orbits I think, so I pop it up to .40 to try and steal the blinds. I also do this at times because if I get a good hand soon after, I’ll get some action on it. I get one customer, and the flop comes As-5d-4d. I bet .60, and the caller goes away. Hmm. So, you didn’t have an Ace, or you’d check-call me all the way down. You didn’t have any kind of draw, didn’t think to represent one, and probably didn’t have any picture cards at all. What do you guys reckon they had? I’m going to go with 9-8 off-suit.
- Another one I’m in caused a bit of a conundrum for me. I think he had his flush, but what do you all think? Was he stealing? Why so much? Is it a normal donk over-betting move, expecting me to likewise donk away chips because I have a pair?
I’m in the BB with Ks-9d. Three callers come along with me (the SB folded AGAIN) for a flop of Js-7h-4s. It’s checked around for a turn of Kh. Despite my mediocre kicker, you all know me…full speed ahead with a .60 bet. Two go away, but one guy calls. The river is the 5s. I fire .60 at it again, and the guy raises all the way up to $5.50. There was only $2.60 in the pot, so doesn’t that seem strange? However, with just top pair and a middling kicker, I sure as hell wasn’t going to pay him off to find out. I think he had the absolute nuts with an Ace-high flush, but maybe he was trying to protect an A-K holding or something? Either way, I will defend this fold as the right way to go.
- Here, was it proper to draw to the flush here to begin with? At the very least, I realized the danger and got the hell out of there.
I get Kd-Jd on the button, and bump it up to .60. I get four customers to a flop of 7d-3d-3h. Nothing is scaring me there and I have the second-nut flush draw. The BB checks, one guy bets .20, the third folds, and the fourth raises to $1.90. This seems highly suspicious to me, and the BB folding means I had a tough pot-odds decision to make in 15 seconds. Specifically, I had to call $1.90 into a pot of $5.10. That’s 2.68:1, but keep in mind that you have to put the Ace-high flush draw among his holdings there. On top of that, there was still one person left to act. I ended up calling, and the other guy did as well. The turn was 2s. The non-raiser checked, and the raiser bumped it up to $2.20. Now, it’s $2.20 into a $7.30 pot, or 3.31:1. But, I know it’s 4:1 to catch your flush with one card to go, and I still felt like the guy doing the raising was on the Ace-high draw. Admittedly, I wasn’t even considering what the other guy had. However, I heard alarm bells ringing and slipped quietly out the back door with a fold. The second guy called for his last $1.90. The raiser ended up having 10h-10s, and for my money did a great job of protecting his hand against the flush draw. There were no overcards, so he played it perfectly. The guy who called ended up having Ad-10d, and lost when the river came 5c. Believe me, I felt great at having folded when I did once I saw what the other guys had!
I actually had put the guy with 10s on the A-high flush draw, but either way, I saved myself a lot of money here. This was played well by me and by the guy who won it…but was it proper for the other guy to donk off the rest of his stack?
- This was one of the few real mistakes I made. I got 3h-3d under the gun, and made the call. The SB called, the BB checked. Flop was 4s-5c-5d. Both blinds checked, so I fired a continuation bet of .60 at it (this wasn’t the mistake, though .40 would have gotten the same information). SB folds, BB calls. The turn is 10d, and it goes check-check. Should I have bet there? Honestly, I don’t think so…he called the more-than-pot-sized bet on the flop, so he had something he liked. I was a bit worried about the check-call routine, so I’ll argue that checking was the correct option. The river came 2h, he bets .90, and I called.
Here’s the thing. What could I possibly have beaten there? If he has any pocket pair other than 2-2, I’m toast. If he hit anything on the flop or turn, I’m beat. Essentially, the only thing I was ahead of was a busted diamond draw, a busted straight draw or unpaired high cards. If it was any of those, the usual donk move is to make a post-oak bluff of .20 and hope to hell that the other guy folds. In that case, I may even have raised. However, he not only ended up betting out at it (which is strange enough for these people and usually an indicator of a monster). but it was the 1/2-pot button on top of that (which we all know is another tell of strength). Calling this was poor on my part, and I deserved to lose as much as I did.
- I wonder how tight of a fold this was. I got Kd-Js in the SB, one guy calls. I raise to .60, the BB folds, and the one caller doubles my raise up to $1.20. I thought about it for 5-10 seconds, and elected to let it go. A couple of things played on my mind here. First, this was one of the lesser players at the table, and I don’t think he was capable of a re-raise without a rocket launcher of a hand. Second, my self-analysis had conclusively proven that I have a giant problem with overplaying marginal hands such as this. Third, I have a sinking feeling that the main difference between Fold and Call here was the fact that my cards weren’t SOOTED…if they were, I think I may have made the call…bad or not.
- So, I’m down to $13.40 in chips, and I get 9s-8d one off the button. This is a hand that I’d always call with in this position if it’s suited, and sometimes I’ll do it in this case when it isn’t. I kind of thought about it, but I folded it pretty quickly. What was the flop? Of fucking COURSE, it was 9c-9d-8h. If you saw my face at that moment, you wouldn’t be able to tell if I was playing poker or watching the first 15 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. It turns out one guy had Ah-Qd, the other 7c-6s. I *definitely* would have gotten action on this one, too.
- Know how I have been talking about Crazy Girl for this whole post? This was the exact hand when I determined that she was insane, and that I could extract a lot of money from her if I happened upon the right situation. I’m on the button with Ac-9d, and since I hadn’t played a hand really in 2-3 orbits, I popped it up to .60. I was just trying to steal the blinds, really. Crazy Girl calls in the BB. The flop comes 10s-3h-3c. She checks, so I am legally bound by my possession of two testicles to make the continuation bet…so, .60 goes into the pot. She takes about 2.1 nanoseconds to muck her hand. OK, so riddle me this, Batman - what could you have that you’re willing to call 6X the BB pre-flop, only to shot-put your cards into the muck the second a 10-3-3 flop comes out? I don’t even know…did she put me on A-10? A rag hand with a 3 in it? Admittedly, I did a pretty good job of raising with enough different hands to exactly .60 so that maybe there was some confusion there, but I had also been stealing blinds from the button and the BB all night. I’m pretty much mystified with this one.
- Here’s a quick one that I hope shows that I’m starting to learn about marginal high hands. I get Ad-10d two off the button, but a tight player opens for $1.10 three seats before me. Everyone, including me, mucks their hand. Sorry, I’m not calling that much for probably just my 25% or whatever chance of hitting my flush.
- Finally, the hand that finished off my night on the positive side of the ledger! My roommate was watching me play for a good portion of the session to get a sense of what .10/.20 was like, and he ended up ensuring that I didn’t do something stupid at the end.
I got Ac-4c in the BB, Crazy Girl calls, the SB folds and the BB checks. The flop comes 4s-4d-3d. To quote Vince Van Patten, “Showtunes are going off in his head, Mike! He can’t believe his luck”. I check the flop, something I had pretty much only done when my intention was to check-fold the rest of the way. I figured that would get Crazy Girl out of her shell even if she had nothing, which actually wasn’t the case (even better!). She fires out .40, and I pretend to think for about 10 seconds before calling. The turn is a Js, and I check again. Normally I wouldn’t slowplay a monster, but there is little here that I was afraid of so far. If she had J-J, I was just going to pay her off. She bets $2.10, and I fire an immediate re-raise to $4.20 using the auto-button. I hope to hell she hadn’t read that it’s usually a sign of strength, and I guess she hadn’t because she insta-called. The turn was As, and I audibly groaned and said “shit, she probably has a flush!” I guess I’m so conditioned to losing at times that I let it get into my head…I probably would have noticed in a second anyway, but I was grateful to him for pointing out that I had actually just been gifted with the absolute stone-cold nuts. Let this be a lesson to all of you – don’t get so mentally down that you just assume you’re going to lose all the time…because that shit will QUICKLY become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Anyway, what would you do now in this case? You have an unassailable position, and a lunatic in front of you who obviously has something she likes? At that moment, I had about $8.75 left, she had about $14.75 left. The way I see it, the choices are pretty much:
- Check it down, and hope she fires out a bet: No, no, no, no, no. While you could re-raise her all-in if she does bet out, there’s always the chance that she’ll check behind you and cost you the chance to extract more chips. It may have been possible that doing so would make her put me on a busted diamond or straight draw, but I don’t recall re-raising anyone once during the entire session. I put her on putting me on a big hand, so this option is out the window.
- Go all-in myself: I thought about it, but I figured that there was too much of a chance that even the Mad Hatter inside her brain would recognize that the tea party was over, and that there was no way she had me beat. For me, the only argument for this would be that a) she’s a loony and b) she had me covered. Still, I had a feeling she would fold if I went down this route.
- Bet out, and hope to get re-raised: This is what I opted for, given the above. Now, it was a lightning-quick decision about how much to bet. The intention here is obviously to entice a re-raise, and at worst to at least have her call whatever I put out there. The three sub-choices at this point are:
- Bet a very small amount relative to the pot, like $2: Enticing, but she had to have sensed just enough danger to be more than happy to show it down for such a reduced price. A re-raise was unlikely given the player and the situation. If it were me in her shoes, it would work a good amount of the time.
- Bet just a shade under all-in, like $6: Also enticing, but I feared that would be too much, and she’d maybe get just suspicious enough to muck her hand.
- Bet something in the middle: This is what I opted for, and there wasn’t much science to it. I dragged the slider over to a little past the midpoint of the bar, and hit “Bet”. It ended up being $4.80, and she called and showed down her Kd-Kh.
Again, I have to stress that all of the above only relates to how I approached this one player on this one hand, so don’t get any ideas if you happen to find yourself against me on the felt some day! Even I know enough to know that you have to approach each hand as a completely different situation and adjust your game and your patterns accordingly. Anyway, this was a great session in the end, and even though I only profited because of that one monster at the end, I think I played much better than I had in the recent past, and that I’ll make even more money if I keep it up.
The thing is, you have to pick the right table to suit your style. The stats they show on the lobby page should be of utmost interest to the serious micro-stakes player…if you like to steal and make continuation bets, you need a table with a low percentage of players seeing the flop and a low average pot size (like this one was). If you like to see a lot of flops with suited connectors and the like and are sure that you get away from hands when someone’s donked out on you, you want the high flop-percentage tables with the large average pot sizes.
The stats didn’t lie with this table – there was more checking going on than in a Charlestown Chiefs game. I’m not kidding – I got *five* walks in this one session alone! The play was so passive as to defy belief, which is exceedingly strange at the micro level. Not only that, but the table was comprised of mainly Chinese players for most of the time I was there, so I wonder if there was some kind of communal respect thing going on or something. Actually, I have to admit at first that I was afraid of collusion because there were two groups of three people all from the same town, but in the end it didn’t seem to go down that way. Despite the fact that the table did at times spasm into a frenzy of raises and re-raises, it would quickly go back to normal. My continuation-bet strategy worked like a charm considering the crappy hands I was getting stuck with, and it was quite a nice break that when I finally did hit that miracle flop, it was against a player who had shown some loose-aggressive tendencies during the session (it’s so important to watch the action as much as you can and not get distracted with other stuff).
All of that said, here are some of the notable hands from the session. Not all will include me, but I’ve condensed the hand histories into short summaries to keep this at a readable length.
- Here’s one example of the check-calling nonsense (albeit with a crazy river) that I was talking about in previous posts. I had Qh-3h in the small blind, and I called along with five other people. Flop was Jd-8s-6s, no help to me with my hearts. One guy bets .20, he gets three callers while my cards go to the muck. Turn was 3c, three check, but one bets .65 (not the person who bet on the flop). One caller survives to see the Ah river. The guy who hadn’t raised once goes all in for $18.95, the .65 raiser calls for his last $3.40. Umm, OK. Turns out crazy river man had 8h 6c and had flopped two pair, but his stupid check-call routine allowed the other guy to catch the Ace on the river and win with his As-Js. Nice shootin’, Tex…especially because you could have lost with any spade on the river, too. So, you gave someone with a 2.28:1 shot to win two free cards to beat you. Awesome. Meanwhile, I have to say I like the .65 turn bet from that one guy. He could have taken it down right there if everyone had whiffed, and he had outs if someone hadn’t.
- I wonder if this was too tight a fold on my part. I had Qc-Js in middle position, and it’s folded around to me. I open for my standard raise to .60, one guy folds, another person in middle position (this is the crazy person who would eventually succumb to my full house, but she hadn’t exhibited those tendencies yet) raised to $1 total. I call, everyone else folds. The flop is Kh-Kd-8c. I check, she bets .20, and I fold. She hadn’t raised a whole lot previous to that, so I had A-A, A-K, A-Q and even A-10 in her range of holdings. All of those would beat me, along with the rare case that she had a King. It just smelled like a string-along bet to me, although there is to me a 50% chance that it was a post-oak bluff. While the usual donk move is to check-call all the way down, the second-most common ploy is these tiny little bets in the hope that you catch something and then bet big at it. I decided discretion was the better part of valor here, though I can’t help but wonder if a tiny re-raise to .40 or so wouldn’t have given me the information needed to be sure.
- Here’s a bit of aggression that should be a part of any serious player’s repertoire. I’m in the big blind with Kd-Js. There’s one caller, so I raise it up to .60. They call, and the flop comes 4s-4c-4h. I immediately bet .40 at it (not a crazy amount, I’ve learned from the situations I’ve mentioned in previous posts). The caller immediately folds. See, there’s almost no risk here – if they call or raise, you know you’re beat and it’s an immediate check-fold situation from there. But, if they don’t have a pocket pair or the case card, then you’ll take it down a lot more often than not…even at this donk level.
- I wasn’t in this hand, but here’s another example of how timid this table was. Pre-flop, there’s one caller and the BB checks (the SB folded, which is horrible…for half a bet, you should call with almost any two cards). Flop is Kh-Js-6s. Both guys check. Turn is Ah, both guys check. River is 7s, both guys check. The caller shows Qh-Jh to win, the BB shows Qs-7h. Wow…no one had the balls to bet on this at all? Not once? Not even with all those checks? With only one overcard to your hand, I think you have to bet on that flop with your Jack paired. This guy is a ridiculously-tight player (I recognize him from other sessions), but that is just insane…it’s like virgin-cheerleader tight. I mean, what if the BB has A-x, and the free card you allowed him to see ends up beating you? Awful, awful, awful.
- Here’s another episode of Donkerpiece Theater in a hand I wasn’t in. There’s one caller, SB folds (super-tight guy from the last hand), and Crazy Girl in the BB checks. Flop comes 6s-3s-2d. Crazy Girl checks, caller bets .20, Crazy Girl calls. The same pattern happens on the turn and river, which are 6h and Jd. Crazy Girl shows As-2h, the caller shows 10h-3h. Isn’t this amazing on about 37 different levels? First of all, you have someone calling with 10-3 (“…but it’s SOOTED!”). Next, you have someone who tenuously hits a flop but only pussy-raises at it the rest of the way. Meanwhile, you have Donk McDonkerson just smooth-calling with middle pair, which happens to be THREES. What a clusterfuck of bad play this was, eh? One raise…ONE RAISE would have won this hand either way. Wow. Moving on…
- And the hits just keep on coming! Four callers to the flop (Crazy Girl folds the SB), flop comes Jh-7s-3h. Everyone checks. Turn is 9d, everyone checks. River is Qh, one guy bets .20, one person calls, the others go away. One shows Kd-Qc, the other Ks-Qs. Considering both people hit their Queen with a nice kicker on the turn, how the holy jumping fuck was there no action on either that street or on 5th? Nimrod A and Nimrod B chop a pot that either of them at least had a chance of winning with a raise or re-raise to at least represent that they had A-Q or something. Outstanding.
- Now I’m back in a hand. While I’m not complaining, what are you calling with if a continuation bet makes you go away on this flop? I’m 3 off the button and get Qc-9c. I hadn’t played a hand in two orbits I think, so I pop it up to .40 to try and steal the blinds. I also do this at times because if I get a good hand soon after, I’ll get some action on it. I get one customer, and the flop comes As-5d-4d. I bet .60, and the caller goes away. Hmm. So, you didn’t have an Ace, or you’d check-call me all the way down. You didn’t have any kind of draw, didn’t think to represent one, and probably didn’t have any picture cards at all. What do you guys reckon they had? I’m going to go with 9-8 off-suit.
- Another one I’m in caused a bit of a conundrum for me. I think he had his flush, but what do you all think? Was he stealing? Why so much? Is it a normal donk over-betting move, expecting me to likewise donk away chips because I have a pair?
I’m in the BB with Ks-9d. Three callers come along with me (the SB folded AGAIN) for a flop of Js-7h-4s. It’s checked around for a turn of Kh. Despite my mediocre kicker, you all know me…full speed ahead with a .60 bet. Two go away, but one guy calls. The river is the 5s. I fire .60 at it again, and the guy raises all the way up to $5.50. There was only $2.60 in the pot, so doesn’t that seem strange? However, with just top pair and a middling kicker, I sure as hell wasn’t going to pay him off to find out. I think he had the absolute nuts with an Ace-high flush, but maybe he was trying to protect an A-K holding or something? Either way, I will defend this fold as the right way to go.
- Here, was it proper to draw to the flush here to begin with? At the very least, I realized the danger and got the hell out of there.
I get Kd-Jd on the button, and bump it up to .60. I get four customers to a flop of 7d-3d-3h. Nothing is scaring me there and I have the second-nut flush draw. The BB checks, one guy bets .20, the third folds, and the fourth raises to $1.90. This seems highly suspicious to me, and the BB folding means I had a tough pot-odds decision to make in 15 seconds. Specifically, I had to call $1.90 into a pot of $5.10. That’s 2.68:1, but keep in mind that you have to put the Ace-high flush draw among his holdings there. On top of that, there was still one person left to act. I ended up calling, and the other guy did as well. The turn was 2s. The non-raiser checked, and the raiser bumped it up to $2.20. Now, it’s $2.20 into a $7.30 pot, or 3.31:1. But, I know it’s 4:1 to catch your flush with one card to go, and I still felt like the guy doing the raising was on the Ace-high draw. Admittedly, I wasn’t even considering what the other guy had. However, I heard alarm bells ringing and slipped quietly out the back door with a fold. The second guy called for his last $1.90. The raiser ended up having 10h-10s, and for my money did a great job of protecting his hand against the flush draw. There were no overcards, so he played it perfectly. The guy who called ended up having Ad-10d, and lost when the river came 5c. Believe me, I felt great at having folded when I did once I saw what the other guys had!
I actually had put the guy with 10s on the A-high flush draw, but either way, I saved myself a lot of money here. This was played well by me and by the guy who won it…but was it proper for the other guy to donk off the rest of his stack?
- This was one of the few real mistakes I made. I got 3h-3d under the gun, and made the call. The SB called, the BB checked. Flop was 4s-5c-5d. Both blinds checked, so I fired a continuation bet of .60 at it (this wasn’t the mistake, though .40 would have gotten the same information). SB folds, BB calls. The turn is 10d, and it goes check-check. Should I have bet there? Honestly, I don’t think so…he called the more-than-pot-sized bet on the flop, so he had something he liked. I was a bit worried about the check-call routine, so I’ll argue that checking was the correct option. The river came 2h, he bets .90, and I called.
Here’s the thing. What could I possibly have beaten there? If he has any pocket pair other than 2-2, I’m toast. If he hit anything on the flop or turn, I’m beat. Essentially, the only thing I was ahead of was a busted diamond draw, a busted straight draw or unpaired high cards. If it was any of those, the usual donk move is to make a post-oak bluff of .20 and hope to hell that the other guy folds. In that case, I may even have raised. However, he not only ended up betting out at it (which is strange enough for these people and usually an indicator of a monster). but it was the 1/2-pot button on top of that (which we all know is another tell of strength). Calling this was poor on my part, and I deserved to lose as much as I did.
- I wonder how tight of a fold this was. I got Kd-Js in the SB, one guy calls. I raise to .60, the BB folds, and the one caller doubles my raise up to $1.20. I thought about it for 5-10 seconds, and elected to let it go. A couple of things played on my mind here. First, this was one of the lesser players at the table, and I don’t think he was capable of a re-raise without a rocket launcher of a hand. Second, my self-analysis had conclusively proven that I have a giant problem with overplaying marginal hands such as this. Third, I have a sinking feeling that the main difference between Fold and Call here was the fact that my cards weren’t SOOTED…if they were, I think I may have made the call…bad or not.
- So, I’m down to $13.40 in chips, and I get 9s-8d one off the button. This is a hand that I’d always call with in this position if it’s suited, and sometimes I’ll do it in this case when it isn’t. I kind of thought about it, but I folded it pretty quickly. What was the flop? Of fucking COURSE, it was 9c-9d-8h. If you saw my face at that moment, you wouldn’t be able to tell if I was playing poker or watching the first 15 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. It turns out one guy had Ah-Qd, the other 7c-6s. I *definitely* would have gotten action on this one, too.
- Know how I have been talking about Crazy Girl for this whole post? This was the exact hand when I determined that she was insane, and that I could extract a lot of money from her if I happened upon the right situation. I’m on the button with Ac-9d, and since I hadn’t played a hand really in 2-3 orbits, I popped it up to .60. I was just trying to steal the blinds, really. Crazy Girl calls in the BB. The flop comes 10s-3h-3c. She checks, so I am legally bound by my possession of two testicles to make the continuation bet…so, .60 goes into the pot. She takes about 2.1 nanoseconds to muck her hand. OK, so riddle me this, Batman - what could you have that you’re willing to call 6X the BB pre-flop, only to shot-put your cards into the muck the second a 10-3-3 flop comes out? I don’t even know…did she put me on A-10? A rag hand with a 3 in it? Admittedly, I did a pretty good job of raising with enough different hands to exactly .60 so that maybe there was some confusion there, but I had also been stealing blinds from the button and the BB all night. I’m pretty much mystified with this one.
- Here’s a quick one that I hope shows that I’m starting to learn about marginal high hands. I get Ad-10d two off the button, but a tight player opens for $1.10 three seats before me. Everyone, including me, mucks their hand. Sorry, I’m not calling that much for probably just my 25% or whatever chance of hitting my flush.
- Finally, the hand that finished off my night on the positive side of the ledger! My roommate was watching me play for a good portion of the session to get a sense of what .10/.20 was like, and he ended up ensuring that I didn’t do something stupid at the end.
I got Ac-4c in the BB, Crazy Girl calls, the SB folds and the BB checks. The flop comes 4s-4d-3d. To quote Vince Van Patten, “Showtunes are going off in his head, Mike! He can’t believe his luck”. I check the flop, something I had pretty much only done when my intention was to check-fold the rest of the way. I figured that would get Crazy Girl out of her shell even if she had nothing, which actually wasn’t the case (even better!). She fires out .40, and I pretend to think for about 10 seconds before calling. The turn is a Js, and I check again. Normally I wouldn’t slowplay a monster, but there is little here that I was afraid of so far. If she had J-J, I was just going to pay her off. She bets $2.10, and I fire an immediate re-raise to $4.20 using the auto-button. I hope to hell she hadn’t read that it’s usually a sign of strength, and I guess she hadn’t because she insta-called. The turn was As, and I audibly groaned and said “shit, she probably has a flush!” I guess I’m so conditioned to losing at times that I let it get into my head…I probably would have noticed in a second anyway, but I was grateful to him for pointing out that I had actually just been gifted with the absolute stone-cold nuts. Let this be a lesson to all of you – don’t get so mentally down that you just assume you’re going to lose all the time…because that shit will QUICKLY become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Anyway, what would you do now in this case? You have an unassailable position, and a lunatic in front of you who obviously has something she likes? At that moment, I had about $8.75 left, she had about $14.75 left. The way I see it, the choices are pretty much:
- Check it down, and hope she fires out a bet: No, no, no, no, no. While you could re-raise her all-in if she does bet out, there’s always the chance that she’ll check behind you and cost you the chance to extract more chips. It may have been possible that doing so would make her put me on a busted diamond or straight draw, but I don’t recall re-raising anyone once during the entire session. I put her on putting me on a big hand, so this option is out the window.
- Go all-in myself: I thought about it, but I figured that there was too much of a chance that even the Mad Hatter inside her brain would recognize that the tea party was over, and that there was no way she had me beat. For me, the only argument for this would be that a) she’s a loony and b) she had me covered. Still, I had a feeling she would fold if I went down this route.
- Bet out, and hope to get re-raised: This is what I opted for, given the above. Now, it was a lightning-quick decision about how much to bet. The intention here is obviously to entice a re-raise, and at worst to at least have her call whatever I put out there. The three sub-choices at this point are:
- Bet a very small amount relative to the pot, like $2: Enticing, but she had to have sensed just enough danger to be more than happy to show it down for such a reduced price. A re-raise was unlikely given the player and the situation. If it were me in her shoes, it would work a good amount of the time.
- Bet just a shade under all-in, like $6: Also enticing, but I feared that would be too much, and she’d maybe get just suspicious enough to muck her hand.
- Bet something in the middle: This is what I opted for, and there wasn’t much science to it. I dragged the slider over to a little past the midpoint of the bar, and hit “Bet”. It ended up being $4.80, and she called and showed down her Kd-Kh.
Again, I have to stress that all of the above only relates to how I approached this one player on this one hand, so don’t get any ideas if you happen to find yourself against me on the felt some day! Even I know enough to know that you have to approach each hand as a completely different situation and adjust your game and your patterns accordingly. Anyway, this was a great session in the end, and even though I only profited because of that one monster at the end, I think I played much better than I had in the recent past, and that I’ll make even more money if I keep it up.
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