Posts Tagged ‘pokerstars’

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Poker: September 2010 Results

September 13, 2010

This is a bit premature, but I self-excluded myself from playing online poker for the rest of the month, so it’s not going to change much. Here are the results:

Starting Bankroll: $109.75
Ending Bankroll: $0.04
Net Profit: -$100.71
Deposits: $25
Cash Outs: $100
Transfers: $0
Rake Back: $35.71 (through Sept. 10th)
Bonuses: $50
Tournaments: +$69.20
Cash Games: -$341.33

Notes:

-I went busto on September 2nd and had to deposit money for the first time in ages. I put in $25 and got about $20 in rake back and built that $45 up to a peak of $366 within a week.

-I only cashed in 3 of 23 online tournaments I played before banning myself, but all of them were final tables. My best showing was 1st of 135 for +$149.50.

-When my bankroll reached $366, I decided to do something rare: cash some out.

-After my cash out and a couple days basically treading water, I decided to take a shot at a $100 buy-in NL cash game. This was 10x higher than I was usually playing and it seems whenever I decide to take a shot, the Gods punish me for it. The pivotal hands:

—I have Tc8c in the BB and someone raises it to $5. I’m going to fold if it folds around to me, but the SB calls and I decide to take a flop. The board comes T83 with two hearts. SB checks and the opening raiser has about $42 left and my objective is to get as much of it as possible. I figure if he has an overpair, I’m stacking him no matter what. If he has unpaired high cards, he might not call if I bet, but he’ll likely make a continuation bet if it checks to him and maybe even price himself in. Since checking seems to make me more money, that’s what I do. He goes all-in. Yay! The small blind calls $42. Boo! Not what I was hoping for at all. What does this guy have? I go into the tank for a bit… It’s really unlikely that he has TT or 88 since I have two of those cards and two of them are on the board… 33 is certainly a possibility, but I convince myself that it’s probably a big heart draw. Since I’m playing way over my head, the safe play would be to fold, but if I end up folding the winning hand, I’m not going to forgive myself. Since I think my hand is good, calling is out of the question, and I go all-in for $108. The SB calls and shows AhKh and the 4h comes on the turn and I don’t fill up. $270 pot and roughly 40% of my bankroll gets shipped to him.

—After that last beat, I decide to call it a night, but I can’t sleep at all because I’m steaming so bad. So I get back online and sit down in the same game looking to make my money back quickly. After a few hands, I pick up KK and make it $3.50 to go. Someone re-raises me to $10.50. Ugh. Am I really going to be up against aces right now? The button calls him. It folds back to me… only one hand has me beat, but do I believe it? I decide to go Matt Damon in Rounders and just shove it all-in for $100+. The re-raiser folds, which is great, but the button calls, which is shocking. What does this guy have that he’d play that way? Amazingly, he shows 22 and before I can even get over the shock of seeing his hand, he spikes a set on the flop, and stacks 70% of my remaining bankroll. Unbelievable. I’m playing on a Rush table, so I don’t even get the satisfaction of being able to berate him for such a horrendous play.

—I’m down to like $45 and take it to same $100NL game and decide that I’m getting it all-in at the first sane opportunity. After a few spots where my opponents fold, I pick up AQ and get one caller with position on me. I bet the pot on an A high flop and he calls. I get it all-in on a blank turn and he shows a flopped set and I’m busto for the second time this month.

-I played live for the first time in a loooooooong while. I went into Bremerton Lanes to see if they had a tournament and it was super dead. There were about five people waiting around in a live game and I decided to sit down against my better judgement. I bought in for $100 to play $4-$8, to kill the hour before the tournament, and basically just dwindled. I won two pots and they were both small and I never picked up any big hands. Lost $66.

Highlights from the live tournament:

—blinds @ 50-100 on deep stacks. One person limps, I limp with 66, SB calls, BB raises to $600. First limper folds, and since we are on deep stacks and I know this player will dump if I spike a set, I call. SB folds and the flop comes 953. He checks to me and it looks like a bet, but I’ve played with this guy before and I don’t think he’d make that raise w/out a pair, so I check behind and take one off. Turn is a 2 and he bets $800. I’m still pretty sure he has an overpair, but his check on the flop leaves enough doubt that I speculate with a call, plus I should have six outs, position, and some other river cards I might be able to bluff with. River is gin: a four peels off. No flush on board, so I’m sure I have the nuts. He leads out for $1000, which looks like an ace. I doubt he’d make that bet with KK/QQ/JJ, so I expect to get paid off and raise it to $2700, hoping he might even re-raise. He just calls and I’m surprised when he tables 99 for top set. hahaha… sorry buddy! Nice pot for me. It’s a pretty odd river call for him, but sometimes I think people need to show how bad of a beat they took… and I appreciate it!

—blinds @ 200-400. UTG goes all-in for about 1900 and I’m UTG+1 with AA and about $12K. I decide to just call because some players behind me have been raise happy. Everyone folds except the small blind, who calls also. The flop comes AT9 with two hearts. SB checks to me and even though I have top set, a bet is in order because that board is super draw-friendly. I bet out $1500 and the small blind becomes exasperated. I’m all for the cooperation play in a lot of spots, but this is not one of them. After throwing a mini-fit, he says “Fine, I’ll all-in” and raises about $7500 more. Hahahahhahaha. I call and flip over my aces and he tables QQ and walks away sonned.

—blinds @ 300-600. I pick up AA and raise to 1500. I have over $20K at this point and a player behind me has even more chips. We are easily the chip leaders at the table. He’s been really raise happy and doesn’t disappoint when he makes it $5500 to go. It folds around back to me and I go into acting mode. I count my chips, see how much I’d have left if I call and fold later, basically trying to sell AK or some other hand… After a minute or so, I go all-in and he instacalls and shows JJ. I hold and I have an enormous chip lead. I got chastised by a couple players after this hand, including my opponent. Some of the comments: “he had to think about that one” — “yeah, he must’ve been worried I had a set” etc. Uhhh… okay noobs. If I shove all-in without thinking about it, my hand range can be narrowed down pretty easily. I know if I had JJ in his spot, I would fold it. Hell, I wouldn’t have re-raised in the first place. Maybe my acting job didn’t play a role at all and he would have spewed with JJ regardless, but there’s certainly no rule that says if you have aces you must reraise as soon as possible.

—Per usual, when I get a huge chip lead, I get card dead for a long time and eventually dwindle down to an average stack. I make the final table with a good amount of chips, but all my opening raises get shoved on and I have to fold my attempts to steal the blinds.

—Busto hand: blinds are 2000-4000 and I have about $21K. Two people limp in, SB calls, and I have AT in the BB. I have enough chips left behind that the limpers can’t call me without fear and the limps indicate there isn’t a lot of strength out there, so I shove and take my chances. First person folds, but the second hesitates for a bit, sighs, and decides to call. She tables 99 and flops a set. GG. 7th place for money back. Laaaaaaaaaaaame.

Another shitty month… but on the bright side, I cashed out more money than I put into gambling this month, so my wallet actually saw a profit. I keep saying that playing above my bankroll is one of my biggest leaks, but I don’t think it’s wrong to take shots. I don’t want to grind it out for nickels and dimes and no one makes it big by playing it safe. It would just be nice if one time I took a shot something ridiculous didn’t happen. Sigh. Until next month….

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Royal Flush Online

March 14, 2010

This is my 10th career Royal Flush… all of them online and none of them in a B&M where I could win a ton of money from a jackpot. I run so gross! Click image to view the full size.

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Poker 101: 101 Poker Tournaments In A Single Day

February 16, 2010

I’m not really sure what inspired me to do it, but one night, I was laying in bed and thought, I’m going to play 101 poker tournaments in a single day and blog about the experience. Why 101? Well, the real goal was 100 1-table online Sit & Go tournaments, but since I knew I was going to play a live event at Bremerton Lanes in the morning, 101 was the number… plus it’s like I’m taking you cats to school anyways, so it’s fitting. Ya dig?

My morning started off with a really uneventful showing in the Bremerton Lanes tournament. Maybe even my worst showing to date. I feel a little ashamed of my performance in that tournament so far. Considering how I raved about the structure and how it was much more tailored to my playing style and rewarding skill instead of luck, the fact that I’ve had one minor cash in eight appearances is below my standard. In a field that typically ranges between 30-40 people and usually pays the top 5, I really feel I should be cashing around 20-25% of the time, especially since I’m playing these people face-to-face… my advantage is that good and yet I have nothing to show for it. Thankfully, one big cash will have me at least even and possibly even showing a profit… but it needs to be soon. Today?

I can’t even really remember any hands from the tournament, but I do know I blew about half my stack early on a hand I felt embarrassed about… so yeah, not my best showing. Then I missed the board after calling a raise and lost a race as a small favorite to bust out. I’m not sure I even won a pot.

After that, I came home around 1 P.M. and began my mission to complete 100 online Sit & Go tournaments. In retrospect, I wish I would have done things a bit differently. I estimate that I have a bigger edge in the regular Sit & Goes, so I decided not to play turbo tournaments, even though I probably would’ve completed the task in half the time. Also, since I had to cash out a substantial portion of my bankroll last week I was playing with less money than I would prefer and went with a smaller buy in tournament and if I could maintain the same win rate, I wish I would’ve risked playing higher. I started off playing 12 tournaments at a time, but when I got short-handed, it became a hassle (since I only use one monitor), so I ended up playing 9 tournaments at a time the rest of the way. I took about a 45 minute break to get some food and completed my task around 2 A.M… well, sort of. For some ridiculous reason, Poker Stars stopped registering new No Limit Sit & Go tournaments after I was in my 95th tournament and majorly cock-blocked me. It’s pretty annoying to get that close and not really live up to my promise… but never-the-less, I pretty much did what I said I was going to do.

The results:

95 tournaments
39 cashes (41%)

19 1sts (20%)
12 2nds (12.6%)
8 3rds (8.4%)
7 4ths
14 5ths
17 6ths
9 7ths
6 8ths
4 9ths

Some notes about the results:

-I finished in the top 2 in nearly 33% of the tournaments.
-I won 61.3% of my heads up battles.
-I finished 1st more often than any other finish.
-I cashed 85% of the time I made the top 4, so my bubble play was pretty solid.
-All of my 9th place finishes were the result of some sort of horrible beat or sick cooler (i.e. KK vs AA early, set under set, etc.)
-I increased my bankroll by 31%.

Some notes about my strategy:

-I see a lot of flops in the early rounds of the tournaments. This not only means I play a lot of hands, but I also play some bigger hands much more conservatively. For instance, I’ll limp in with JJ and TT, sometimes after people have already limped in front of me. I’m also prone to simply calling with hands like QQ and AK if someone has raised in front of me. The reason I do this is because so many people are willing to ship all their chips in the first two rounds with hands like 88, AK, AJ, etc. and I think it’s stupid to risk going broke early on in a coin flip. I also like to limp in with unsuited AK and AQ in early position for the same reason. Simply put, I like to see the board before I get heavily invested in a pot, unless my hand is AA or KK. My ability to play much better than my opponents after the flop is too big of an advantage to give them the option of re-raising or shoving all-in preflop against me. With big suited cards, I like to raise the pot since I don’t really mind multi-way action.

-I respect position. I play pretty conservatively when I’m out of position and get called on the flop even with a hand like AK on an A high board. This rule isn’t set in stone as some situations require a bet on 4th street, but generally speaking, I like to keep the pot kind of small when I only have one pair, no matter how good it is. While this strategy might prevent me from acquiring some needed chips, it also keeps me from going broke early in a tournament with one pair hands. I also check behind on the turn sometimes, in position, with the same type of hands… or even on the flop…. for the same reason… but also to add a layer of deception to my game and make me harder to read. Most of the time, I’ll have a very clear idea of what’s going on by the time the river action hits.

-I start raising more hands when the blinds hit the 25-50 level as people tend to tighten up around this stage of the tournament.

-When the blinds hit 50-100 and beyond, I find that simply raising the minimum is enough to get people to fold mediocre hands. I have never adopted this strategy before, but in playing nearly 100 tournaments yesterday, I found it to be a very effective tactic. Of course, stack size alters this strategy and the less chips you have, the more reasonable it is to simply shove all of them in for either maximum fold equity or profit, whichever you prefer for your hand.

-Raising on the button 100% of the time in heads up play is probably the right move. I find that when someone does this to me, I find it very difficult to play against… so I started doing it myself. The reason? You make the pot bigger when you have position on your opponent and force them to do all the guessing. Eventually, they are going to have to start making plays at the pot in mediocre situations… or check-raising you with bottom pair or a draw or a bluff, just to stay afloat. If you get your opponent jamming the pot out of position with weak hands, you have pretty much won the war… just wait for the right moment. Either that, or they just fold, fold, fold and you win, win win. I really haven’t found a good way to counter this strategy when it’s used against me, so I might as well use it myself.

That’s all! I’ll never do that again and playing Sit & Goes for a living is not in my future. That shit is mind-numbingly boring. Now it’s off to Bremerton Lanes to finally take this bitch down. LET’S GO!!!!

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Good Online Poker Tournament Week

February 6, 2010

Just started trying to build up an online bankroll again a couple weeks ago and I’ve had a pretty good start. This past week I had these finishes:

-4th of 85 in NL Hold Em Tournament for 8 Buy-In profit
-2nd of 180 in NL Hold Em Tournament for 32BI profit.
-457th of 6230 in NL Hold Em Tournament for 2BI profit. I think this is only worth noting because it’s the equivalent of cashing in a WSOP main event sized field.
-4th of 88 in NL Omaha Hi-Lo Split Tournament for 9BI profit.
-6th of 360 in Pot Limit Omaha Tournament for 14BI profit.

I consider that a pretty great week… four final tables in fields of at least 85 entrants, 3 top 5 finishes, and cashes in three different forms of poker. Your boy’s got skills.

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