Great hand I need to share from this morning.

Party Poker 2/4 Hold'em (7 handed)

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with , .
2 folds, Hero raises, 3 folds, BB calls.

Flop: (4.50 SB) , , (2 players)
BB bets, Hero raises, BB calls.

Turn: (4.25 BB) (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets, BB calls.

River: (6.25 BB) (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets, BB calls.

Final Pot: 8.25 BB

Results in white below:
BB has 3h 3c (three of a kind, threes).
Hero has Qc Qs (one pair, queens).
Outcome: BB wins 8.25 BB.

How great is this hand? The board is full of low cards and this guy calls down bets to the river with a set of 3's. I naturally thought my hand was best and was a little shocked when I saw what he flopped. I thanked him after the hand for not exracting another couple bets out of me.

First off, I wouldn't play KQ after a raise or in EP. Therefore, I am often calling with it in lp if there is a limper or two or raising to me if its folds to me or only 1 limper in EP. As for AJ, I almost always drop this hand for a raise as there are so many hands you don't want to be up against (JJ, QQ, KK, AA, AK, AQ or even AJ if he has position). As piers has pointing out, he drops hands like AT and such in the blinds to someone that could be stealing because its easily dominated while he will play 97, 86 or any old crap to defend.

About your VP$IP, could you just be on a run of cold cards? Are you including pots played from the blinds in that number? My flops seen is normally betwen 15-18 including blinds.

Today was not a good day. AA and KK only worked 4 of 10 times. One of the times I had AA me and a guy bet until he was out of money. He luckily turned and rivered a 4 and a 5 to give him two pair. That basically summarizes my day at the tables. A lot of lucky outdraws and three outer got the best of me.

Earlier in the day I was up $80, but by the end of the night I finished down $54.75. I know I took a couple bad outdraws and in the long run I will win those pots, but I am still frustrated.

Today's stats
726 hands played

10.47 VP$ip
5.23 pfr

4.07 flop
2.07 turn
0.93 river
2.33 Agression Factor

3.2 hours played
-1.89 bb/100
$-54.75 Amount won
$-17.11 per hour

Summary
5/1/05 3.49 hrs $75.24
5/2/05 4.92 hrs $-111.33
5/3/05 4.62 hrs $193.40
5/4/05 1.4hrs $125.00
5/5/05 3.2 hrs $-54.75


Total
17.95 hours played
$289.06 won
$16.10 per hour
1.69 bb/100

I wanted to put in a long session on Saturday but it wasn't meant to be. I ended up helping my parents move some stuff into a house they're working on. Then my brother brought his computer over to my place and we tried hooking them up through a router. For some reason Greg's computer is a little screwey and we couldn't do it. After all was said and done we ended up hooking my gf's computer to the router in order to get two seperate internes.

Hooking up the computers and the helping of the parents took all day, so by the end of Saturday I only managed 45 minutes of play. It was pretty bad for me too, I was down on every table. I took two fifty dollar swings and major suckouts and never really recovered.

5/7/05 stats
164 hands played

14.02 VP$ip
5.49 pfr

1.75 flop
1.67 turn
0.50 river
1.27 Agression Factor

0.8hours played
-14.63 bb/100
$-96.00 Amount won
$-120.00 per hour

As you can imagine I didn't play a lot yesterday due to mothers day. Instead I spent the day watching Noah and hanging out with my mom. At night most our family went to dinner, so it was another night of coming home late.

Yesterday was the first day having two seperate computers running at the same time. It was sort of interesting the amount of hands you can get through in an hour. But as I said I didn't get a lot of play in.

It was antother one of those days that I would like to forget. There was more than a fair share of draw outs yesterday. For instance, I was A7 in the BB and flopped two pair. A guy called down and hit a gut shot straight. Same thing happened later, I had AA and a guy called down with jacks until he hit a set. It was very frustrating, but today is a new day.

5/8/05 stats
662 hands played

10.12 VP$ip
4.83 pfr

1.46 flop
1.64 turn
0.83 river
1.35 Agression Factor

1.48 hours played
-3.74 bb/100
$-99.15 Amount won
$-66.84 per hour

Summary
5/1/05 3.49 hrs $75.24
5/2/05 4.92 hrs $-111.33
5/3/05 4.62 hrs $193.40
5/4/05 1.4hrs $125.00
5/5/05 3.2 hrs $-54.75
5/6/05 0.75 hrs $-28.50
5/7/05 0.8 hrs $-96.00
5/8/05 1.48 hrs $-99.15

Total
20.98 hours played
$65.41 won
$3.12 per hour
0.31 bb/100

Update

Things went bad since my last entry about a month ago. I found myself playing incredibly tight and basically getting blinded out of the games. My bankroll dropped under $200 for the first time in a long time. After that I finally did some reading up on SSHE by Skalansky and CO and it really helped turn my game around.

Since reading the book and recieving advice from other limit players my VP$ip is up to 16.03 and my pfr is at 8.11. I have also taken my aggression factor over 4.

It's not only the numbers that have changed, but s everything from not cold calling so much to betting out flush draws and playing everything by the odds. I also picked up tiltblocker which is great because it helps me focus on my game and not the amount of money I've lost.

Anyway, to get to the point I have my account over a grand again, which is definitley good considering I almost gave up on limit.

The limit experience failed. Well, maybe not failed, but I got tired of playing limit and switched back to NL. I got my bankroll back to where it started but that was about as high as it got before it started spiraling back down.

Eventually it became routine for me to hit up to the Party NL tables in order to make back what I lost in limit, so I took it as a sign that limit wasn't really my game. Thinking back it seems sort of dumb for me to switch in the first place.

First of all I didn't really realize what a big bet was before I started playing limit. Well, I sort of knew what it was but I basically didn't pay any attention to it. Looking through PT now I see that I was holding a steady 15bb/100 in nl25 and 12bb/100 in nl50.

Secondly, NL has big swings but they are fast and hurt for the moment, but limit has variance which is slow and painful. I'll take the swings from NL over limit any day. If you don't remember, the swings were what made me want to switch in the first place.

Lastly, I can't walk away from limit saying it hasn't been helpful because it has. The game taught me a lot about poker. I think this past month and a half has been more useful for my knowledge of the game than the previous year. I have only now learned how important implied odds are and how they differ from pot odds. ....well there was more I wanted to say, but I have to leave now.

First full week back at NL

My first week back at NL was pretty interesting. The first day I played in a mix of 50nl (6max), 25nl (6max) and regular old 25nl. Day two I decided to stick with 25nl until my bankroll gets over 2k, so that's where I have been the past week.

I finally have rakeback setup, so it's nice to know that I will get back 25% of my rake even though the rake is really small at 25nl. Since rakeback wasn't offered at Party, I switched to Eurobet, which is one of it's affiliates. My other rakeback account is through Ultimate Bet, where the competition seems much tougher so the rake is even smaller. Anyway, onto the weekly stats.

50nl (6max)
147 hands
38.10 VP$ip
12.24 pfr
1.68 af
18.7 bb/100
$27.49 profit

25nl (6max)
314 hands
36.94 VP$ip
14.33 pfr
2.7 af
3.66 bb/100
$5.74 profit

25NL
9,240 hands
17.72 VP$ip
5.75 pfr
2.05 af
15.67 bb/100
$723.59 profit

Total
9,701 hands
18.65 VP$ip
6.12 pfr
2.07 af
15.33 bb/100
$757.12 profit

The most interesting part about this is that I actually put the hours in for the week. In the end it was a grand total of 41.23 with an $18.56 hourly win rate. That's not bad for 25nl, and it's more money than I ever made playing limit. On top of everything else I played in 17 sit'n'goes, but that only accounted for another $50.50.

As I said I am waiting until I have a 2k bankroll to jump up to $50nl, and I am in no hurry. I cashed out $200 this week and still have $1,500 to play with. $214 of it is in Neteller and I am contimplating whether or not to cash it out. Well, enough of this, it's time for me to get back to the tables.

June 24, 2005

This week wasn't nearly as good as last week. On Tuesday I had a massive falling out with my cards. I lost on a flopped boat to flopped quads, lost with KK twice to AA and had flush over flush a few times. By the end of the day I was down $209, so it was a little hard to motivate myself to play the next day.

Since then I climbed out of my hole and put together a couple days worth of decent sessions. By weeks end I was up $281.66, but my BB/100 was a measly 5.99. I also left UB because I was sick of playing 8 shortstacks at a time.

Weekly Stats
7,634 hands
18.09% vp$ip
4.86% pfr
1.7 pfa
$281.66 profit

Lastly, my bankroll is $1,850 which includes me cashing out $100 at the end of last week. The other $170ish not accounted for is from sit'n'goes, which I have been playing a lot lately. Anyway, I am hoping my BR should be over 2k by next week. I also plan on cashing out another $100.

Update
Before the weeks end there are a couple things I need to update. I cashed out $100, so my bankroll dropped back to $1,750. The good news it that I played some more last night and won another 90ish. Only about 50 of it came from ring games, while the other $40 came from sit'n'goes. That bumped my weekly profit up to about $540, which makes for a pretty good week and leaves my bankroll at $1,840.

Time to update. June results

total stats for 25 50 and 100 nl.

vp$ip 18.41
pfr 5.41
pfa 1.84 (this has actually gone up because i almost always bet the flop now)
hours played 99.15
win rate $11.89/hr ( its like a bad job, but I enjoy it)
ptbb/100 10.07
total gain $1,178.94 (best month ive had since i started taking poker seriously)

Current bankroll, $2000.05, which would be about $700 higher if I did not have to pay any bills. I also need to start keeping track of my sit n go wins, because I make decent money in those. I am currently playig 10 and 20 dollar sngs and making the money about 60% of the time. Im also playing mtts but the time that it takes to play them is an issue for me, because I start to lose focus and make stupid plays.

For all of you tournament players I would like to tell you about the mtt that I play in about 3 times a week; Its a 20+2 on Empire at 11:00pm PT with a $1,000 guarentee prize pool. There are usually between 60 and 90 players and it's fish infested. I would say that at the final table there are usually 2 people playing over 50% of there hands that like to bet T200 into T2000 pots. You can pretty much play like a rock and wait for your double up hands and coast to the final table. My ROI in this tourney is insane, but I dont track my tourneys so I cant give an exact number.

I am now playing 50 nl full time after slaughtering the 25 nl, not that it was tough, and I am seeing that the 50 nl is a bit harder. I lost money at the 50nl tables in June but that was because I ran KK into AA 3 times preflop in the 1000 or so hands I played at that level. All three of them were all in preflop HU. After that I have been doing much better. So far in July I have played just under 3k hands ad I am averaging 6.16 ptbb/100.

Keep reading. By Christmas I expect to be playing 200 nl and posting some real numbers.

I had a great day yesterday untill I started playing my drinking game, the emire $1000 gaurentee 20+2 i talked about, which I took sixth in. Needless to say it was not the tourney that made my day suck. While I was in the tourney I was playing 3 50nl games and cleaning up. I made about $55 in an hour, so I decided to go test the waters in 100nl. Just one table for a few orbits. It is amazing what great cards can do to your cash when they are not hitting. I lost $93.75 in 18 hands. I first lost $20 following up a pfr with a pot sized bet only to get c/r, then on the very next hand I get KK in late position. I wanted to kill the guy that took my stack, I even thought about what I would do to him if it were a live game .


Here is the hand. Im not posting because it was a bad beat. Im just posting it because it seems like no matter where you play you run into somone like this.

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $ BB (10 handed)

UTG+1 ($115.5)
UTG+2 ($198.1)
MP1 ($68.15)
MP2 ($146.75)
Hero ($70.4)
CO ($100)
Button ($65.65)
SB ($94.8)
BB ($100.45)
UTG ($241.55)

Preflop: Hero is MP3 with , . CO posts a blind of $1. SB posts a blind of $0.5.
3 folds, MP1 calls $1, 1 fold, Hero raises to $4, 1 fold, Button calls $4, 2 folds, MP1 calls $3.

Flop: ($14.50) , , (3 players)
MP1 checks, Hero bets $13, Button calls $61.65 (All-In), MP1 folds, Hero calls $48.65.

Turn: ($137.80) (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: ($137.80) (2 players, 1 all-in)

Final Pot: $137.80

Results in white below:
Hero has Kh Kd (two pair, kings and tens).
Button has 9h 8h (flush, ace high).
Outcome: Button wins $137.80.

All the while I am telling myself he is either very good and made a boat and he is overbetting to **** me, or he is a complete fool and he was on a bluff. The screwball bet twice the pot on a paired board with a flush draw. Oh well, it's poker and that is part of the game. I just have to keep reminding myself that without players like this I would never make money.

After that $140 swing my bankroll has dropped to $1990.56. Only ten dollars, and that is why I love that late night mtt so much. It is almost guarenteed money, so no matter how drunk I am while playing it I can still make the money.

Stealth