As per most Mondays I took a light day today, playing about 1000 hands and winding up +$581. Nice day, reinforcing that my play at NL200 has been pretty damn good and that I've been getting some pretty ugly luck. I was owning today, getting my money in good 90% of the time or so, bluffing when it was profitable and getting out of the way of most land mines.
I'm still a little pissed as I was up $970 at one point and could see my first $1,000 cash game day on my horizon. I dropped 2 buyins past that point (one of which was on a terrible suckout, my 33 vs opponent's QK on a 3QK flop; opponent hit a runner-runner flush).
Still a good day, and I can't complain too much about erasing yesterday's losses and then scoring a nice winning day on top of that.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Super Bowl Sunday
So, I started off on Sunday afternoon by losing a bunch of pots and going down $580 before stopping to watch the Super Bowl. The SB was tough to watch knowing I'd had such a bad day, but in the end the game was so damn spectacular so as to make me forget. I make a point of rooting for whoever is playing against the Patriots, and I've always liked the Giants. More than anything, though, it was just a spectacular game; people seem to like games with tons of offense, but this was a perfect, tense battle, staying 7-3 for most of the game before explosions in offense.
I also love that it was an imbecilic call by Belicheat that cost his team the game. I'd say that his decision to go for it on 4th and 13 would be second-guessed for a long time, except that there is no second-guessing whatsoever. It's first-guessing that tells me that that will go down as one of the dumbest calls in Super Bowl history. 4th and 13 on the 32 yard line in a low-scoring game where your offense hasn't been clicking AT ALL, you've been gifted good field position on a turnover, and you have a chance to make it a 7 point game, and you GO FOR IT? I don't think teams go for it enough on 4th down as a rule, but it's 4th and freaking 13 for Chrissake, you're in field goal range (albeit long field goal range), take the shot at 3 points and be happy.
But he went for it, and I think that will be seen for a long time as a moment where Belicheat's arrogance got the better of him, as though he honestly felt that his offense was so good that he had plays that would reliably gain him 13 yards. Instead Brady throws a duck to a covered receiver and has it sail out of bounds. That was the moment, I felt, when the Giants realized they could win, like the moment in "Searching for Bobby Fischer" where Ben Kingsley's character looks at the monitor out of the corner of his eye, perks up, and says "That was a mistake!"
And then, of course, there was that final drive, and that single play that will go down in Super Bowl history as one of the greats.
After the game, I was bereft of things to do and so eventually decided to hop back online and play a little more. I had a good session, winning about $300 back and, combined with a random $75 bonus, only losing $100 or so on the day. That's a manageable loss, although I'm a bit perturbed that I've been breaking more or less even at NL200. My play hasn't been particularly good, but at least most of my mistakes have been aggressive ones.
One of the best football games I've ever seen, followed by a decent recovery. Not a bad day.
I also love that it was an imbecilic call by Belicheat that cost his team the game. I'd say that his decision to go for it on 4th and 13 would be second-guessed for a long time, except that there is no second-guessing whatsoever. It's first-guessing that tells me that that will go down as one of the dumbest calls in Super Bowl history. 4th and 13 on the 32 yard line in a low-scoring game where your offense hasn't been clicking AT ALL, you've been gifted good field position on a turnover, and you have a chance to make it a 7 point game, and you GO FOR IT? I don't think teams go for it enough on 4th down as a rule, but it's 4th and freaking 13 for Chrissake, you're in field goal range (albeit long field goal range), take the shot at 3 points and be happy.
But he went for it, and I think that will be seen for a long time as a moment where Belicheat's arrogance got the better of him, as though he honestly felt that his offense was so good that he had plays that would reliably gain him 13 yards. Instead Brady throws a duck to a covered receiver and has it sail out of bounds. That was the moment, I felt, when the Giants realized they could win, like the moment in "Searching for Bobby Fischer" where Ben Kingsley's character looks at the monitor out of the corner of his eye, perks up, and says "That was a mistake!"
And then, of course, there was that final drive, and that single play that will go down in Super Bowl history as one of the greats.
After the game, I was bereft of things to do and so eventually decided to hop back online and play a little more. I had a good session, winning about $300 back and, combined with a random $75 bonus, only losing $100 or so on the day. That's a manageable loss, although I'm a bit perturbed that I've been breaking more or less even at NL200. My play hasn't been particularly good, but at least most of my mistakes have been aggressive ones.
One of the best football games I've ever seen, followed by a decent recovery. Not a bad day.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
The pain!
I was playing some serious Rock Band yesterday before poker, and managed, after a few days of working on it, to beat the Drum solo tour on expert for the AN-I-MAL achievement. Ho, le, shit. What a royal pain in the ass that was! Beating the final tour was a workout and a half - I was literally drenched in sweat, and treated it as my cardio for the day. I could barely walk; after "Next To You" I thought my leg was going to fall the hell off.
Amazingly I sight-read passed several of the final tier songs, including "Next To You", "Tom Sawyer", and "Flirtin' With Disaster". "Won't Get Fooled Again" required 4 tries, "Run to the Hills" required 2 (I roxorz!)
By far the most problematic song for me was "(Don't Fear) The Reaper"; it took me FOREVER to get that roll down combined with the ending. Tough damn song!
Amazingly I sight-read passed several of the final tier songs, including "Next To You", "Tom Sawyer", and "Flirtin' With Disaster". "Won't Get Fooled Again" required 4 tries, "Run to the Hills" required 2 (I roxorz!)
By far the most problematic song for me was "(Don't Fear) The Reaper"; it took me FOREVER to get that roll down combined with the ending. Tough damn song!
Rough Friday session
Wasn't playing well last night, and got overly cute in several spots, turning what should have been a substantial win into a ~$200 loss. One of the more nerve-racking sessions I've ever played, with two recoveries from $300 downswings, only to drop back down $500 and recover back to $200. Not a complete disaster but definitely not the result I was looking for from a soft Friday night.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
January Results
So, while I fell short of my original goal of my goal of $5k in profits for the month, I had a somewhat successful month of poker, covering my bills and leaving me with a bit leftover.
NL100: 39,712 hands for $2454.50 profit, a winrate of 3.09PTBB/100
NL200: 3,241 hands for $414.80 profit, a winrate of 3.20PTBB/100
Total: 42,953 hands for $2869.30 profit, a winrate of 3.10PTBB/100
Combined with about $200 in tournament winnings, I broke just north of $3k, not bad at all considering my extremely lackluster start to the month.
I attribute some of my results at the start of the month to bad play, on account of my being pretty sick, my being very tired (and thus playing a few sessions I should not have) and bad luck (at one point I was running around -$650 in all-in expectation, although I finished the month at +$60, which is damn near breakeven).
I can tell now that NL200 is quite beatable and I hope to attack it with a vengeance. No plans to move up any higher for the time being, as I know that NL200 is a level where I can quite certainly make a comfortable living.
NL100: 39,712 hands for $2454.50 profit, a winrate of 3.09PTBB/100
NL200: 3,241 hands for $414.80 profit, a winrate of 3.20PTBB/100
Total: 42,953 hands for $2869.30 profit, a winrate of 3.10PTBB/100
Combined with about $200 in tournament winnings, I broke just north of $3k, not bad at all considering my extremely lackluster start to the month.
I attribute some of my results at the start of the month to bad play, on account of my being pretty sick, my being very tired (and thus playing a few sessions I should not have) and bad luck (at one point I was running around -$650 in all-in expectation, although I finished the month at +$60, which is damn near breakeven).
I can tell now that NL200 is quite beatable and I hope to attack it with a vengeance. No plans to move up any higher for the time being, as I know that NL200 is a level where I can quite certainly make a comfortable living.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
3k hands of NL200
So, I decided, why not? I had the roll for NL200 (in fact I had more than enough, as my roll is now over 5k) and I decided to give it a go. Here's what it's looked like so far.
Quite a few coolers in there as well, including JJ vs QK on a 9TJ board (all-in on flop, I reraised preflop, donkey opponent cold-called twice and flopped the nuts) and A5 vs 56 on a 55xx6 board (valuetown on flop and turn, bet on river with a crying call of his small all-in raise).
I did deliver one whopper, facing an UTG min-raise, the button called, and I called from the BB with 3h 5h. The flop came A26 rainbow, and it went check/check/check. I turned my 4, bet, was instaraised big by the original preflop raiser, and realized pretty quickly that I was probably up against AA. I shoved, instacall, sure enough, there's AA. The river was a harmless 9 and I won a $400+ pot.
I can't blame the guy for the check on the flop, but the min-raise preflop was just stupid. People need to stop worrying about "only" buying the blinds when they pick up AA, particularly from EP. You're maximizing the odds that you'll be facing a set of hands that you REALLY don't want to face with your one pair, and you'll be facing them from OOP in many cases. AA is only the nuts preflop.
Anyway, I'm encouraged by the number of idiots I still run into at the NL200 level. How they manage to play this high I have no idea, but there are still the usual 45/5's that just get carved to pieces. The regs are better and there's more floating, stealing, semibluffing, and adjusting in general, but my standard game still feels like it's working. The first 3k hands have shown a decent winrate, and I have no reason to believe that something similar to that isn't sustainable.
Quite a few coolers in there as well, including JJ vs QK on a 9TJ board (all-in on flop, I reraised preflop, donkey opponent cold-called twice and flopped the nuts) and A5 vs 56 on a 55xx6 board (valuetown on flop and turn, bet on river with a crying call of his small all-in raise).
I did deliver one whopper, facing an UTG min-raise, the button called, and I called from the BB with 3h 5h. The flop came A26 rainbow, and it went check/check/check. I turned my 4, bet, was instaraised big by the original preflop raiser, and realized pretty quickly that I was probably up against AA. I shoved, instacall, sure enough, there's AA. The river was a harmless 9 and I won a $400+ pot.
I can't blame the guy for the check on the flop, but the min-raise preflop was just stupid. People need to stop worrying about "only" buying the blinds when they pick up AA, particularly from EP. You're maximizing the odds that you'll be facing a set of hands that you REALLY don't want to face with your one pair, and you'll be facing them from OOP in many cases. AA is only the nuts preflop.
Anyway, I'm encouraged by the number of idiots I still run into at the NL200 level. How they manage to play this high I have no idea, but there are still the usual 45/5's that just get carved to pieces. The regs are better and there's more floating, stealing, semibluffing, and adjusting in general, but my standard game still feels like it's working. The first 3k hands have shown a decent winrate, and I have no reason to believe that something similar to that isn't sustainable.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Poker!
Monday, I wasn't really feeling it and quickly dropped a buyin with QQ in a spot I should have totally gotten away from. I played enough to get my 200 FPP points at Full Tilt (for Iron Man status for the month) and spent the rest of the day playing Forza 2, Rock Band, and Guitar Hero 3 (incidentally scoring top 10 scores on a few Rock Band songs, expert guitar).
Tuesday I decided to take the day off, and spent it playing video games and watching movies. I caught up on a few movies I'd wanted to see (Harry Potter 5, Superbad, Mean Girls, Waitress) and went to bed early, getting like 12 hours of sleep (seriously).
Wednesday I attacked in full force, playing just over 3k hands of NL100 and scoring over $600 in profit (woohoo!). I then decided to make an impromptu run to Best Buy, picking up Call of Duty 4 and the Superbad DVD (because the movie was funny enough to buy the next day). Spent the rest of the night playing CoD4 and getting nearly all the way through it. Holy hell is that AC-130 mission so much fucking fun.
Today I wasn't planning on a big poker day, but fired up the tables and just kept playing, until the next thing I noticed it was 6 hours and 3000 hands later. I did okay, running down for most of the day before going on a nice rush 2,000 hands in. I finished the day up $250, losing $50 on my final hand of the day.
Here's my graph for the week.
Incidentally, ever since Dobieatwar put a "hex" on me last Monday, I've been running at 5.14PTBB/100 and am about $2k up. Dobie has also apparently been running pretty poorly. Thanks dobie! Karma's a bitch, n'est-ce que pas?
Tuesday I decided to take the day off, and spent it playing video games and watching movies. I caught up on a few movies I'd wanted to see (Harry Potter 5, Superbad, Mean Girls, Waitress) and went to bed early, getting like 12 hours of sleep (seriously).
Wednesday I attacked in full force, playing just over 3k hands of NL100 and scoring over $600 in profit (woohoo!). I then decided to make an impromptu run to Best Buy, picking up Call of Duty 4 and the Superbad DVD (because the movie was funny enough to buy the next day). Spent the rest of the night playing CoD4 and getting nearly all the way through it. Holy hell is that AC-130 mission so much fucking fun.
Today I wasn't planning on a big poker day, but fired up the tables and just kept playing, until the next thing I noticed it was 6 hours and 3000 hands later. I did okay, running down for most of the day before going on a nice rush 2,000 hands in. I finished the day up $250, losing $50 on my final hand of the day.
Here's my graph for the week.
Incidentally, ever since Dobieatwar put a "hex" on me last Monday, I've been running at 5.14PTBB/100 and am about $2k up. Dobie has also apparently been running pretty poorly. Thanks dobie! Karma's a bitch, n'est-ce que pas?
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