Monday 30 November 2009

November is finally over

Haven't posted in a while. I seem to post a lot less when I'm not winning, which has been the case the past couple of weeks. I've been basically breakeven after a very swingy second half of November.

I think it's a combination of bad sleeping habits and trying out new stuff, then trying to find my way back to fundamentals when something doesn't work out. That can lead to some frustration and trying to force things. I've also taken a couple of failed shots at 200nl FR and 100nl 6max in the past week so that has a lot to do with it as well.

Part 2 of my 25nl series is out now and Part 3 is on the way. If only I could keep running as hot as I do in my videos... lol... maybe I should just start recording all my sessions and talking through my thought process out loud.

Friday 20 November 2009

25nl Crushing the Quarter Part 1 Released!

The first installment of my series, Crushing the Quarter, on Best Free Poker Coaching has just been released. I hope you guys enjoy it. There's lots of room on the video page or in the forum over there if you have a questions or comments about anything in the video.

I ran pretty horrible this week. I'm going to say that it's probably mostly due to bad play even though I feel kind of under expectation, but my sleep schedule has been absolutely terrible and I don't think my thought processes this week were anywhere close to optimal wrt assessing my play or really anything at all. I'm sure the slightly under average run got to me and ended up with more than a bit of tilt.

I decided to put one more terrible night into it but I changed it up drastically. I moved up. I cut tables - lots of tables. 100nl 6max 4 tabling and taking extensive notes seems kind of gross when I think about it but is amazingly fun when I'm actually doing it. I'm writing this down so that I can refer back to it when I get the urge to mass table when I should be trying to improve.

I played a 45 minute session 4 tabling just trying to book a win. As a rule I don't agree with using stop-wins, but when you're downswinging over several days or weeks, I think getting that winning session in despite it really meaning nothing in terms of anything other than mental stability and confidence is important. My goal was 1 buyin. I ended up wiping out my losses for the week.

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 377387
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $113.90
MP: $122.20
CO: $103.00
Hero (BTN): $115.45
SB: $174.35
BB: $217.45

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BTN with A of hearts A of spades
UTG raises to $3, 2 folds, Hero calls $3, SB raises to $16, 1 fold, UTG raises to $38, Hero raises to $115.45 all in, SB raises to $174.35 all in, UTG calls $75.90 all in

Flop: ($345.80) 6 of hearts 5 of clubs 3 of clubs (3 players - 3 are all in)

Turn: ($345.80) 9 of hearts (3 players - 3 are all in)

River: ($345.80) 5 of spades (3 players - 3 are all in)

Final Pot: $345.80
UTG shows Q of spades Q of diamonds (two pair, Queens and Fives)
Hero shows A of hearts A of spades (two pair, Aces and Fives)
SB shows K of spades K of hearts (two pair, Kings and Fives)
Hero wins $3.10
Hero wins $339.70
(Rake: $3.00)

*This play was reads based. SB and BB were both squeeze happy regs running rather loose-ish.

It's all thanks to a cold deck of course but I'll take it. +1 more buyin when I get QQ in vs 44 BvB and hold.


 ** Side note: either I'm typing too fast or my keyboard isn't working properly but some of my esses are not always showing up. My grammar really isn't that terribad that I forget to pluralize where necessary =)

Sunday 15 November 2009

Omaha is kind of fun

Took a break from NLHE today and spent the day playing PLO50. Was quite a bit of fun and I'm understanding the equity side of things more and more. Seems to be a ton of 60/40 all-in situations which is why the variance is so high - set + FD vs wrap + FD type of stuff - and my standard deviation is 2x my NLHE standard deviation despite a winrate that's 5x larger.

Ended up winning a ton of flips today, probably 80% of them if I had to guesstimate. I have to say that the PLO fish population is worse than NLHE fish population. It's becoming rare to find a 60/5 type player in holdem at any level, but in PLO you get 4 cards so it's pretty standard to have 2 or 3 players running something like that trying to fullhouse mine and they're still willing to get it in with AAxx no draw postflop as if they're playing holdem. Super profitable. I'm not really sure at what point I should try moving up from PLO50 but I'm thinking the skill level for PLO100 might be somewhere around the level of 25nl-50nl. Maybe next weekend.

Put my stats on the graph. I have no idea if these are standard TAG or fishy or what but they're pretty close to my stats over my entire 12k hand sample. Super heater today.


Also, congrats to knn and tom on the Sunday Mil scores!

Thursday 12 November 2009

Feeling pretty good right now

Thought I'd do a quick update. Played a few amazing sessions today and playing my A+++ game. Getting a lot of max value in some thin spots (ty Joop) and playing way more effectively aggressive than I normally do.

I skipped a few days worth of playing already this month because I just didn't feel like playing. But the past few days, and especially today, I feel like I've had some aha moments wrt manipulating people's ranges and stuff recently and am now super motivated again. Playing face-up poker is just so much fun.

Obligatory brag graph:




I obviously enjoy photoshopping and was a little bored so.... yeah.

Continuing to put some big scores together more frequently. Hopefully I can keep this up. I'm also extremely excited about playing some tournaments in December as part of a potential uFR team. Someone has to hit it big.

Other than that, the first video of my series "25nl: Crushing the Quarter" is due out on Friday the 13th on Best Free Poker Coaching

Tuesday 3 November 2009

First 3 25nl videos almost complete

Well I've almost got the first few videos for my 25nl series on Best Free Poker Coaching finished and hope to have them up soon. I think I'd call it more of an intermediate level series. From my own experience this is about where most winning 25nl and even 50nl regs are at. They typically have a really good understanding of fundamentals which puts them ahead of the average losing/breakeven player but sometimes have a bit of a disconnect between applying some concepts correctly and meshing their overall strategy.


So I'm going to try to demonstrate how a lot of those standard concepts work together to help the 25nl reg get to that next level in their game with this series.

The first video is going to be about the 3 types of advantages we have in poker and how to use them to make decisions about whether to play a hand or not along with player categorization and tendencies and what kind of adjustments we can make according to that information.

The second video will build on that and look more at hand selection and ranges versus different types of players. Based on this we can look at playing different types of hands against different types of players and having a plan for those hands that meshes our preflop actions together with our postflop plan.

The third video is still a little up in the air as to what I want to look at. Right now I'm thinking of going more in depth with our postflop plan in terms of equity and aggression. I imagine this will look at finding more spots to maximize value and steal pots using our equity. Probably more focus on hands like suited connectors and suited broadways that give us those equity shares where we can remain aggressive rather than the more binary hit or miss hands.
So look for those to come out soon on Best Free Poker Coaching. By the way, I need a name for the series, so if you have any ideas for that or other concepts you'd like to see, let me know!