FAWK

Well, I lost everything I won yesterday, plus another $100 to boot. 66 ran into AJ on a AA6J board, KK vs 777 where he just called down on a 679 board, and the aforementioned big ass bluff gone horribly wrong against that incredible idiot, were the major hands. This is getting fucking ridiculous.

What the FUCK?!

Why do I always choose to bluff only the biggest fucking idiots in the whole fucking world?

Just WHAT THE FUCK

Good session

Kept it short tonight, with 1,000 hands at $0.50-$1.00; a nice solid gain of $218, largely due to a hand that was close to a flip. KKd on the button, open-raised to steal, and the BB, a very aggressive player, 3bet me to $14. I flat-called and the flop came an ugly 678 dd. BB bet big, I pushed, BB called with Td Qd. I wasn't surprised at all to see him show up that weak, but it was a monster flop for the hand and I was just barely a favorite (about 1.5:1). My hand held for a full $100 stack.

I still couldn't flop any goddamn sets today. Actually I flopped 2, not bad for the 33 pocket pairs I saw the flop with, and both dragged the pot with a CBet. Oh well.

Hopefully I can continue to drag my way out of the hole I've put myself in.

One hand from last night

Here's one hand from last night where I felt like I made a very advanced play that paid off. Although last night was generally frustrating and I made quite a few stinkers, here's one where I really felt on top of my game:

I open-raise from MP1 with Kh Qh up to $3.50, it's folded to the BB who repops the minimum to $6. Relative stacks are $92 total, and I have position with a decent giant killer so I call.

Flop comes 7h 9c 8c, not a great flop, I'm prepared to fold, but the BB checks. Strange move given his preflop min-repop, meaning he either has a monster (AA would qualify) or he's getting cold feet with a hand like AK. Either way I'm not convinced I can push him off anything, so I check back.

Turn is the 4h, a good card obviously. BB checks again. I think that means he probably has AK, but I also recognize my opponent as being somewhat overcreative and suspicious. After checking the flop I have a hard time betting here, as he is likely to suspect me to have nothing here and is quite capable of coming over the top with nothing. With the heart draw I find it more prudent to play cautious, so I check back.

River is the Ah, for a board of 7h 9c 8c 4h Ah. I'm holding the stone cold nuts and suddenly my opponent fires out a bet of $8.

Obviously with the nuts I have to raise. But how much? The pot is $20 now, and my opponent has $78 behind. I take my time to think it over.

Conventional wisdom would be to give a small raise, one I think he has a high percentage of calling. Standard practice with the nuts on the river. But this situation is special, because I'm 99% sure he has some variety of AK here, and given that I checked behind twice, including once on a board that should have scared the absolute crap out of any made hand, there's no way he makes me for a set, straight, or goofy two pair. In fact he's going to have a bear of a time putting me on anything but AK as well.

So I push. A $70 raise into a $27 pot, highly uncharacteristic for me, but a play that looks for all the world like I have AK, I'm putting him on AK, and I'm figuring worst-case scenario is a chopped pot while maximizing his fold equity. He knows that I know he can't possibly have better than AK here, so he knows that my own AK isn't going to be scared. Which makes this, for him, a much more enticing call than TPTK ordinarily is in those situations where someone overbets you.

It's very hard for him to put me on the flush here since it was the Ah that rivered, and it's rare for someone to get involved in a 3bet pot with something other than a pocket pair or a hand with an ace.

My opponent called and showed Ad Kd; I scooped the $180 pot with the nut flush.

Obviously my opponent wasn't the sharpest spoon in the drawer and made several mistakes, the first of which was the donkish min-reraise preflop. Min-reraising pre is a stupid move 100% of the time, I'm convinced, unless you're in some kind of weird funky aggro game where you can do it with a wide range and still have an edge over your opponent's hand. It tables your hand, revealing it as something very strong, but offers your opponent just ridiculous odds to call and play perfectly from then on out.

Obviously, after that flop, he should have thrown out a continuation bet, which IMO should be standard practice after you 3bet without a VERY enticing reason not to. Why give your drawing opponent 4 cards instead of 3? In any case, after he fails to bet the flop, betting the turn is problematic, and that puts him in a very strange spot after he pairs up on the river, which in turn allowed me to capitalize.

Oof

So here is my lifetime to date NL100 graph. Seeing as how the massive downswing that you see at the end coincides almost exactly with the massive downswing of NL200 I'm finding it harder and harder to believe that this is just a normal downswing within the variance of poker. It's a brutal game and all, but this has gone on for long enough that I'd better start warming myself up to the possibility that I've opened up some serious leaks in my game.

Mostly I think it's just been frustration setting in causing me to stack off in situations where I know I'm beat. Not even just in overpair vs. set situations, which has always been a leak of mine, but in situations where I have top pair and I know I'm up against an overpair, or I have a strong starting hand like KK or QQ with an overcard on the board.

Of course, having set stats like the following doesn't exactly help either:



That's for the past four days, encompassing some 6k hands. That, my friends, is running BAD, and since so much profit running a 13/10 style at NL100 comes from sets, it's no wonder I'm on a downswing. Also note that in this timespan I'm actually down money in both set vs. overpair situations (the one time I had this was up against a 35bb stack who hit a runner-runner flush) and AA vs. KK situations (I stacked a SS and was stacked by a fullstack that flopped a K). Also of note is that my lone KK vs. AA was actually against a fullstack where I managed to lose only $30. The guy rivered a full house with his AAA, but played it just about as badly as aces can be played.

None of this is independent of my playing bad, though, and I certainly need to fess up to myself, at least a little bit. I need to shore up my game and get back into my rhythm, rather than playing bored, distracted, and/or frustrated. I played 2700 hands tonight and managed to break even (I won $29.45, same difference) and just kept digging myself into holes that I had to get out of with stupid plays.

On the bright side, every big bluff that I tried actually managed to work today. It was a nice change of pace, and I specifically only allowed myself to do it vs. players I knew were capable of folding. One was a beautiful triple-barrel, another was a wonderful river raise. Things of beauty.

In any case, handling this downswing and pulling out of it is something I'm just going to have to deal with by playing better and keeping my focus.

The brutality continues

NL100 appears to have abandoned me for the time being, with me dropping just shy of 8 buyins over the last 4k hands. Last night was particularly brutal, not just because of the $450 I dropped over 3k hands (indeed the previous 1k was much worse), but because of the 124 times I managed to see the flop with a pocket pair, I managed to flop a ridiculously low 6 sets. And then, of those 6 sets, I actually managed to lose about $50 with them. Insane. TT turned into a set 3 times for me. Once it won me a nonconsequential pot, the second time it ran into AA on an ATx flop (I managed not to stack off, as I realized pretty quickly I was likely up against AA), and the third time it ran into a JJ that managed a runner-runner flush. Unreal.

I actually thought that my play was quite good last night and I managed to keep a level head; the cards just didn't cooperate, and sometimes they have to.

The bankroll has been slipping but I'm still in the $5k ballpark, well-bankrolled for NL100, so there's nothing to do but keep grinding and work my way out of the slump.

Successful Recovery

No, not at the tables. But, my Rock Band bass pedal managed to break a couple weeks back, and not in the way that it seems to usually be breaking for most people. Rather than the actual pedal snapping in half, which apparently happens from the torque that people place on it, my entire base snapped in half, in the junction between the main base of the pedal and the prox switch at the front end. It's funny because it's not an area that should ordinarily be subject to any stresses, but apparently the carpet floor I'm playing on is subject to some flexing, and that flexing gave the base just enough torque to snap it clean.

In any case, I didn't feel like sending my whole drum kit back for a replacment as the pads are actually nice and sensitive, and apart from the structural damage the pedal worked just fine. What I finally managed was so simple I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner: a pair of picture hangers to span the gap, as the only thing I really need is a tension force. You can see the original crack, and the fix, in the pic:



Interestingly, the screws on the bottom side are actually puncturing several mm into the prox switch itself, but I've dealt with enough prox switches to know that a hole in the side of the outer case isn't going to hurt anything.

The new pedal plays great. I've also added a Metal Billet to the pedal itself to prevent any further mishaps, and because it looks cool and, with the additional weight, feels a bit more realistic is a bit easier to play.

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So, no poker content. A little playing recently, and I just barely broke even for the month of February, not my best hour in that regard. But I'm just hanging out and having fun at the moment, so there's nothing wrong with that.