Grrrr

Stupid ghetto ass cab driver service can't drive down as far south as Johnson's Creek to pick me up at the bus stop there. "We can't leave Watertown." It's a 10 minute drive people. Luckily Camille was susceptible to bribery, and will be picking me up tomorrow. She thought she was picking me up at the airport at first, so after I told her "oh, no, I only need you to drive 10 minutes, not 90" she felt like she was getting a deal.

I didn't like asking her, particularly since Brian had said he didn't want me to (or more specifically, that he wasn't going to obligate her to do so, which I suppose makes a bit of a difference), but she was more than happy to, so I don't feel too bad. That is, after all, what friends do for one another.

Not much last night. Played some CoD-MW2, discovering that the Capture the Flag games are substantially more brutal than the Domination games - they require more teamwork, and are less forgiving of stupid deaths - and got spanked pretty good. Tricia's dad and mother-in-law announced a surprise visit roughly 16 hours in advance, which stressed the fuck out of Tricia. Lots of cleanup, vacuuming, etc. They're here now, and Trish is feigning enthusiasm with the best of them. I think they wanted to see Chris more than anything, and Chris is at school, with double dance recital afterward, meaning they'll likely get to see her for all of 20 minutes before she collapses tonight.

No poker today, probably gonna start a game of Civ 4, maybe log into FF, play some MW2 tonight after the girls have gone to bed. Jocelyn is showing off for the grandparents and is bouncing off the walls so she'll likely collapse early.

The good news is that this vacation has shifted my sleep schedule back a couple of hours, and I've been staying up pretty routinely until 3 in the morning, which is good because hopefully once I get back up to Wisconsin I can stay up after events and play some poker, where there are more fish at the tables than there are at my more regular 11 in the morning times.

Year's End

It was a bad year overall and I'm not going to go into much more detail. The final 6 months of the year were simply not great.

One of my goals for 2010 is to keep a more up-to-date record of how I'm spending my time as a whole, how I'm running, and various other things going on in my life. To that end this blog is doing a bit of a transformation from poker content only (or, to be realistic, no content, period) to more varied content including poker, and the other things which are consuming my time, which include but are not limited to other video games including my MMORPG of choice, Final Fantasy XI (which I put far more time into than is reproductively recommended) and the activities going on in the linkshell that I help to run.

I've been in Florida for the past 2+ weeks now, visiting with my brother and sister-in-law, playing with my nieces, and catching up with the parents, who came in for about an overlapping week of the same time period. I fly back on Wednesday, and need to figure out how I'm getting home from the airport as I had a friend drive me to the nearest bus stop (10 or so miles away) when the time came to fly out, and that same friend will be out of town on business this week. Given that there is only one other soul in that town that I actually know (said friend's wife) and she's taking care of 2 month old twins, I can't impose on her. I suppose I'll see if the local cab service can pick me up that far away. Either way it was more cost effective than trying to park for 18 days.

Did some crafting in FFXI, 26 elemental beads for a somewhat pathetic +0.2 to my goldsmithing, bringing me up to 84.7. Slowly but surely working my way up.

Been playing a lot of Modern Warfare 2 (the abbreviation MW2 will forever in my brain be Mech Warrior 2) on my brother's PS3, and had some good matches the other night, including one where I went 20-4 in a Domination game.

Been spending quite a bit of time with my oldest niece, Chris, who is 6 and thus actually of an age to remember these yearly visits of mine. She's a lot of fun but can be a little grating; she's a nonstop chatterbox (as my sister-in-law puts it, she simply has no understanding of the concept of an internal monologue), but so far above and beyond where any kid of that age has a right to be in the academic sense that you can't help but be impressed.

Poker on the vacation has been sporadic and uninteresting. I haven't had a losing session while on vacation, but most of that has been running significantly +EV and a few of those sessions were basically breakeven, sub-$10 wins. I think I'm up $400 or so on the trip, which pays for the trip and then a little bit but isn't setting the world on fire.

And that's about it.

Wow, it's been a while

Poker's been rough the past couple of months, pretty much ever since my tourney win I've been struggling to break even. I've changed over to non-deep tables for the time being because the deep tables were more and more becoming littered with regs, which is even worse than the shortstacks I have to deal with at the 100bb max tables.

Anyway, it's been working so far, and last night I hit a fun hand that gave me most of my profit:

I'm ~200bb deep in MP and pick up pocket jacks. A tight, 13/9 player that I don't have any other real read on opens from UTG+1 and I flat call, so as to not eliminate all but the top end of his range. A new player (0/0 over 3 hands, 100bb deep) calls 2 seats to my left and the big blind calls as well. We see the flop 4-handed.

Flop is 8TJ rainbow, giving me top set on an otherwise scary coordinated board. BB checks, original raiser pots it for nearly $15, I make a mandatory raise up to $49.

Usually when there's a cbet and a raise in a multiway pot, the other players can't possibly wait to get rid of their hands, but the late position player goes into the tank, really using up his timebank. Eventually he shoves for his 100bb!

BB folds and it gets back to the opener, and he shoves over the top for his remaining nearly 200bb!

I have to double-check that I did, in fact, flop top set.

Now, I think it pretty much impossible that the original raiser flopped a straight, and is instead likely spazzing with AA or has an underset. I thought the late position guy probably had 79 or even 9Qs, for sure, but it's still an obvious call since I'm basically freerolling here so long as the opener didn't flop a very unlikely set.

So I instacall.

Opener turns over AA, and the guy who overshoved my raise turns over AQo!

Um, thanks for the 300bb I guess! My top set holds against the double gutshot and overpair, and I remark that you almost never see postflop play that bad even at the deep tables. I think I'll force myself to deal with the shorties for a time.

Besides, I play better shortstacked poker than the vast majority of them do anyway.

I are teh champion!

Finally played in the last match of the SSNLFR HU tournament at 2+2. Somehow I managed to bumble my way to the finals (the semis were over in just over 60 hands) and was matched up against a very strong player by the name of AlexB182s. He played a very different style than anyone else I'd been matched up with, running 54/47/6.4 for the match but playing largely a small-ball style, not 3betting a gratuitous amount, not cbetting much (I think he ran 55% for the match), and generally playing a very smart, very controlling game where he constantly put me to gross decisions (though mostly in small-to-medium size pots).

We hit a gross hand early. He raised the button and I defended with 3h 3c. Flop comes 8A3 rainbow, just about perfect. This was early in the match and I hadn't really set up anything, but he had already shown he wasn't robotic in his cbetting so I decided to donk out, betting 50 into 60.

He calls. Turn is the 8d, boating me up. I continue, betting 120 into 160, and he calls again. Now I'm putting him on a hand around AT, maybe as low as A2ish, or something 99-KK.

River is the Js, which seems like a brick. I bet 290 into 400 and he snap raises to 775.

Oh, holy crap. I mean, I have a boat, but that river raise is so goddamn strong. I tank, trying to figure out what he could have if he's telling the truth, and I focus right to JJ, a slow-played AA, possibly a slow-played A8, 8J, and maybe AJ. Of those I only beat AJ, and it's very possible he can let that go. He could also be bluffing, of course, or making a huge mistake with a hand like AK, so I can't bring myself to fold, but I had dismissed shoving early. I called, and he showed 8J for the better boat. Sick. I was 98% on the flop.

At the other table, a smallish pot developed that set up a very interesting dynamic.

He raises his button to 30, I defend with 5h 7h. Flop comes Kh Ks Qh. I check he checks. Turn is the Th, giving me a flush. I bet 40 into 60, he calls. River bricks (2c), I bet 120 into 140, he calls. He shows As Kd for flopped trips, my flush takes down a 380 pot

That pot caught my eye because he didn't bet the flop, where most people would, which was actually a very nice spot to do it. Then a groan-inducing flush card comes for him, which he respects, and quickly snaps off two bets with trips top kicker. Very nicely played on his part imo, even though I won a medium-sized pot.

A bit later, on that same table.

I raise JJ from the button, he defends. Flop is Ac Ks 7h. He checks I check. Turn is 9c, he bets 35 into 60 (he favored that sort of small bet), I called. River is 2c. He bets 55 into 130, I call. He shows Js Kh. Analysis: he pwned me hard. Very nice thin value.

Then a bizarre hand happened.

Same table. I raise my btn with 6s 9s, he defends. Flop is Ts Kh 4h. He checks, I bet 40 into 60, and he raises to 115. His flop CR rate was something like 60% at this point so I decided to make a stand, got fancy and called. Turn was 7d, a brick, and he bet out 165 into 290. I raised to 430, he thought for a few seconds and called. River is the Qd. He checks, and I pussy out and check behind with 9 high. He shows Jh 8h for Jack high, with the missed flush draw. FUUUUUCCCCKKKKKK!!!!!! I could have bet 100 into that pot and blown him off of that hand. But it felt like he just had something like KQ and was giving me enough rope to hang myself. I had a decent enough idea, and then lost my nerve. Awful.

Luckily at that same table I caught back up. He had a 2500/1500 lead at both tables going into this hand and I evened one of the tables out. Basically I raised K5s, flop came K53, and I got 3 streets of value against KT. Pretty standard hand, put us back to even on that table.

I felt good about the next one.

I raise my button with 5s 9s (feeling a bit frisky, he'd been folding a lot preflop). He defends, flop comes 8s 7d Jd, giving me an almost-impossible-to-read double gutshot. He checks, I bet 20 into 60 (hoping to throw him off his usual CR pattern). He raises to 44, barely more than a minraise, and I call (metagame psychology I presume). Turn is Ks, giving me spades in addition to my FD. He bets 125 into 148, I tank and call. River pairs the J, and he bets 175 into 398. His hand felt a lot more like diamonds or like A8, 99, TT, or a complete airball than anything, which led to me raising to 480. He snap folded. I felt like I had a hand like JQ repped quite nicely and could have easily pushed him off a weak K, if he had something like K9 of diamonds.

At the other table, the one where I ran 33388 into 888JJ, we got all in preflop with my QQ against his JJ and I held, doubling up to 1434, making that a more competitive match. 50 hands later we saw our next flop (not really, but there was a LOT of preflop sparring going on in very small pots).

He raised his button and I defended with As 8d. Flop came Td 4d 5c. I check, he checks back. Turn is 7c. I check, he bets 35 into 60. I call. River is the 2s, I check, he bets 85 into 130, and I called him with Ace high. Once again he pwned me for great thin value with Kh 7h. Wow. I felt like he'd picked up clubs on the turn and that I had a lot of equity.

Still, in a HU match it can be nice to establish that you're willing to call down a couple streets with Ace high on the right board, and I felt pretty good about that hand.

At the table where I was ahead, he raised his button and I defended with Th Qs. The flop came 3h 4c Qd, giving me top pair with an OK kicker. I check/called 35, the turn came the Kh. I check/called 85 as I felt like he would recognize that as a superb barreling card. River came As and I check/called 125, as it was once again a superb barreling card and he offered me very attractive odds. He showed Jd 8h for the pure bluff start to finish, and I raked in a nice pot.

We chatted about that pot in AIM for a bit, and I was able to play a nice little metagame head game by pointing out that I knew that he knew that those were good barreling cards, at which point he confessed that he wouldn't know if those were good barreling cards in the future.

In the next 75 or so hands the preflop dynamics seemed to adjust significantly. He started 3betting more, and it felt like he was injecting a little amperage into his game overall. This led to the following hand.

He's down to 1400 chips (starting stack 2000). I raise 7d 8d from the button and he 3bets to 105. With a nice spec hand I can always flop something, but my primary plan is to find a likely flop to take down a big pot without a showdown. I call.

Flop comes 6c Th Jc. This strikes me as a somewhat marginal flop, as most of his range hit something, but I do have a gutshot and I don't think he's going to be in a mood to commit the majority of his stack on an unimproved turn with his AK-AQ strength hands that have gutshots+overpairs on the turn. My plan was to float steal, and indeed he cbet out 125 into 210. In that spot I actually have decent implied odds to chase my gutshot by itself, but mostly I was looking to take the pot away. I call.

The turn changes my plan by spanking me with the 9d. He tanks for 10s or so and checks, I bet 280, and he shoves. I instacall and he shows QQ, a hand he was never letting go of, and against which I got insanely lucky. River misses his 7 out sweat by giving me an ace, and I win match 1.

We start up a third table and continue dual-tabling our match.

On the other table, the one where I was still behind, I defended w/A9o and check/called turn and river bets on a JA768 board, taking a decent pot from QQ, and establishing that I was balancing my check/call range from OOP with weak bluffcatchers and hands that were taking advantage of his propensity for taking thin value.

He raised the button on our new table and I defended w/Ad Jh. I checked, he bet 35 on a K32r board. I called. Turn is a J, I check he checks. River pairs the 3, I try my own hand at thin value betting 60 into 130 and promptly get spanked when he raises to 199, repping a pretty thin range of strong kings, random 3's, and bluffs. I tank and fold.

Weird hand. At our new table again, he raises his button and I defend with Kc Jh. Flop comes 4c 5h 8c, we check check. Turn is the Tc, giving me the backdoor 2nd nut FD, I bet 40 he calls. River bricks with the Qh, I check, he bets 45 into 140, and I decide to make a random river CR, making it 260. He folds, and we laugh about how neither one of us had crap, and that he really should have 3bet bluffed me.

We hit a very long stretch of hands - about 100 or so - where nothing happens, and our biggest pot is 65 chips. 1st place in the tournament is $1500 and 2nd is $900, so we're both willing to be patient.

At our new table, where I've crawled back into the lead with several small pots, I raise my button with 77 and he 3bets to 105. I call. Flop comes 4c 5d Qd and he CBets out 125. I call. River bricks, the 2c, he bets 275 into 460 and I call again. River is the 5c, he checks, I check, he shows 8d Kd for the missed diamonds. I take down a nice big 1000 chip pot (I put him on exactly what he had, missed diamonds).

Finally, at the new table again, I'd ground him down to 1360 in chips, and raised my button with QKo. He 3bet, I called, and the flop came 36K with diamonds. He bet 115 and I called, the turn came the Jd. He checked, I bet 280, and he CR'd me all-in, which made me want to puke, but had TP2K with nearly 2:1 outs against an aggressive opponent that could have just picked up a ton of draws, so I called. He had Ad Ts for 32% equity, a ton of outs, and the river bricked off the Jh for my win.

So, that's $1500, and a substantial amount of pride for having bested a field of 32 very strong regulars in a format intended to maximize the skill factor moreso than almost any other tournament you'll find (with no blind increases, playing 200bb deep against a good player HU is EXHAUSTING).

Although I joke about my Jamie-Gold-esque heater on the forums, I'm proud of how I played and feel that I was a substantial favorite in most of my matches (probably 3/5 I felt very good about). This one I felt was just about even, and perhaps even weighted against me skill-wise. It's impossible to navigate this field without some luck bouncing your way, and I was very fortunate, but also very happy with my game. HU NL is a sick game, very tough, where adjustments are everything and the psychology factor is massive. GG to all that were involved.

I think I'll go buy a new computer.

Some NL100

I had a good start to the month, but some of the EV karma I've been cashing in on so far this year (in February I was pretty significantly above my AIE) has been catching up to me, and I plummeted down to almost even for the month. Because I needed to withdraw $2500 to cover upcoming moving expenses, leaving my bankroll well below where I'd like it, I decided to step down and play some NL100.

It was like whiffleball, and I had a nice 3BI win for +$100/hr. Running hot I guess, but some of the more fun hands:

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EP player limps, I iso to 4.5bb with Ad Qh, folds to him, he calls. Villain is a 24/10 who thinks postflop but overvalues hands, calls down light, and generally has FPS. Probably read a couple of poker books, but definitely not a great player at all. Were 200bb deep.

Flop comes Qs 9h Qd. Villain checks, I fire out 8bb, he calls. Turn: Kc. He checks and I make my biggest mistake of the night by betting 16bb. He c/r's to 42bb and I call. River he insta-bets 85bb and I turbo muck. He asked me what I called him with, says he'll tell if I do. I say no need to tell, you had TJ, he says no, I said 99 then, he goes wow how'd you guess.

The turn card sucked in that hand since pretty much every hand except QJ/QT that I'm beating just caught up. Should have checked behind to induce and then called river, instead I get trapped for a raise that I feel I have to call because I can stack him very often when I boat up. A lot of players would say to fold to the turn CR, but that's still a hand where most players lose a lot more.

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UTG+1 pot raise from a decent-enough-seeming 17/13, I call on his left with 8d 8s. A 45/21 donkey to my left calls and we see the flop 3-handed. Raiser is 108bb deep, I am 240bb, donkey has us both covered.

Flop comes Th 6s 5h, raiser checks and I bet 9.5bb into 12. Donkey calls, opener folds. Turn: 6c. I bet 19.5bb into 31, donkey calls. River 7s, I check, donkey checks and shows Ah 8h. So many people miss that turn value bet. I was calling anything he put in on the river.

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Nit opens for 3.5bb in EP, button calls, I call from the SB with Ts Th. Button is someone who picked up the "be aggressive" advice from someone somewhere and is a garden variety overaggro monkey. Flop comes 6h 7s Qh. I check, opener checks, btn bets 8bb. I call, the opener folds. Turn bricks, the 6c, I check, monkey bets 22bb, I minraise to 44bb, he turbomucks.

Nonstandard line but not without advantages. I don't think this guy has a hand; his betting reflex seems pronounced and he seems to be of the "keep betting until they fold" mentality. I certainly don't think he has a PP JJ+, he could have a set, a draw, or air. The raise was for value, gaining the max out of draws while making the air easier to play against than playing the check/guessing game on the river. A river bet is going to be another 50bb minimum and am I really calling and letting him own me with whatever QJ bs he's overvaluing? Better to end the hand here imo, rep the 77 or 56 or even the AQo while still getting money in as a favorite against hearts and 89.

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UTG raiser from a guy who's 31/13 over 40ish hands. We're 115bb deep. I call on the button with 8c 8h. BB calls also. Flop comes 2s 8h Kc. I don't know about you but that's just about the most beautiful set of 8's I've ever seen in my life. It's impossible to get a dryer board.

Villain insta-pots 11bb and I call (BB folds). Turn: 4d. Villain pumps 24bb more in. I call. River Ks, villain pops his last 77bb into 81, I call, villain shows A9o for the pure start-to-finish bluff. Oops.

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Unimaginative 12/9 nit opens from MP and the FPS dude from hand #1 calls. I call from the CO with 5h 7h. Button also calls, 4-way to a Qd 6d 3c flop.

Opener bets 10bb into 15.5 and FPS man floats. He floated like it was his job; over 500 hands (exactly) on him his fold-to-cbet rate is only 36%. Ideal spot here IMO even though I've just got a gutshot. I raise to $40 and everyone turbomucks.

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54/4 whale open-limps in MP, I iso from the btn to 4.5 with 3s 3d. He calls. Flop 6h Kh 5h, he checks, I bet 8bb just to end the hand if he has absolutely nothing, because even this guy will fold on this board with air. He calls. Turn is 4d, giving me an up-and-down I don't particularly care about, he checks, I bet 18bb into 26.5, he calls. River Jc, he checks, I bet 35bb into 62.5 and he turbo-mucked.

The play a lot of people miss there is the turn bet. Because villain could have ATC it's tempting just to see the hand to showdown with a weak-ass pair that has some value. That's not wrong, but I think it's better to build the pot, because most of the time the villain will have some weak-ass one-heart hand and is constitutionally incapable of folding anything they perceive as a draw for a "reasonable" bet. The downside is that it commits us to turning our hand into a bluff on the river to get rid of all the bullshit 5xXh, 6xXh, and mid-pp's-with-a-heart hands that have us beat but that he's unlikely to call that last street with. The turn bet makes the hand.

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AJo in UTG+1, but because of new players in LP seats we're 7-handed. I open to 3.5, 53/27 whale calls, everyone else gets out of the way. We're 94bb deep. Flop is J55 rainbow, I bet 6.5bb into 8.5, he calls. Turn: 4h. I bet 15 into 21.5, he calls. River 2s, I bet 40 into 51.5 (he has 66bb left), he hems and haws before finally making his "hero fold" stating that he has pocket 7's. Heh.

Super standard hand and any experienced player reading this will wonder why the hell I included it, but I see so many people butchering their hands in these spots that it's worth a mention. People have advice drilled into their heads so much saying "don't go broke with top pair, it's not a premium hand!" that they forget that there are plenty of spots where they should absolutely be going broke with TPTK, particularly when oop against an idiot calling station on a super dry board. Such maxims are totally worthless imo. You put someone on a hand based on your read and their behavior in the hand, and you act appropriately given what you think their reaction to your actions will be. Here my hand is almost always going to be good, I knew it, and so I went for three streets of value. EZ game.

200bb pots

I'm running amazingly badly in $800 pots so far this month. I've only had two; one was discussed in my last entry (lost to a 4-outer on the river with a set of 4's), and one from yesterday afternoon, where a maniac shows up at the table and within 15 hands I've seen him all-in preflop four times. The two times he was called he showed up with KQo both times.

So I pick up pocket queens in MP and raise. He 3bets from the SB, I 4bet to $85, he shoves, I instacall. He has As Ts and wouldn't you know it, there's an ace in the door. I fail to improve and the monkey ratholes with his profit. Thanks Martingale.

Thankfully, in part due to an overset for 100bb (omg that makes 2 in a row without an underset somewhere in between!) I still managed to churn out a $275 profit for the day.

The good news is that the same dude showed up at another one of my tables a little later and I was able to extract at least some partial revenge, particularly when I overbet $125 into $69 with 8d 9d on a 6h 5d 8h Kd 7d board (he called with Kh Qh) and on a hand where I 3bet an EP opener with QQ and he min-4bet out of the SB. I elected just to call this time and he insta-potted $84 on a 3s Tc 8c board. I called, the turn was the 9h, and he check-folded to my $131 bet (into $252).

I also managed to win in round 2 of the SSFR HU tourney, defeating Jason in an epic 2-1 come-from-behind that was peppered with suckouts from start to finish. Jason was either playing like a genius, was catching incredible cards, or had impeccable timing, or any combination available choosing from 2-3 of the above, because he was playing like an aggromonkey from hell but every last time I looked him up he had some kind of monster. Thankfully I sucked out on him for almost all of his chips with a straight draw + one over vs. his JJ overpair and eventually finished him off. One more win and I'm in the money baybee!

Emotional victory?

So I was cruising around at even last night when, at a deep table, I raise from EP with 44 and am 3bet small by a tight MP player. Relative stacks are 200bb and this guy's seemed very active, so I call. Flop comes 45J. I lead out for something like $42, he snapcalls. Turn is a Q, which I didn't like, but I lead out for $100 or so and snapcall when he insta-shoves. He shows AKs and the river spikes his ten. He said later that he put me on AJ and was just trying to push me off of it. Terrible play.

At the same time I catch 22 on a 237 flop as the preflop aggressor and bet into a guy from oop on the flop and turn, before the river makes the board 23457 with a possible flush. I desperately try to block for $88 or so and fold to an insta minraise.

With some other natural variance I'm down $800 very early.

Over the next 3 hours, I manage to build my way up, step by step, to the point where I'm only losing $160. Finally exhausted there, I call a halt to the night and felt good about it.

I think most people, even many experienced poker players, have no idea how much money gets passed back and forth in non-skill pots.