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LHE with Friends!

November 12, 2017

I spent Thursday playing $8/$16 at Palace after catching a matinee of Jigsaw (review coming soon) and I don’t have a whole bunch to say about that session, but I did coax my friend Daniel into playing some LHE with me, which is notable because he’s a NLHE player and has been pretty open about his distaste for limit hold em poker. I even made a joke, tagging him on Facebook, saying that watching him play LHE was like seeing someone stuck in a Jigsaw trap.

Daniel basically stayed out of my way as I smashed flops most of the night, but we did play one very interesting – and oh so close to horribly devastating – pot together. In this hand, Daniel was a preflop raiser, there may have been another raise, there were lots of players, and I happily joined all that action with the JT of clubs from the small blind.

I got a very good flop of JT3 rainbow. Daniel lead out, a player or two called, I check-raised, Daniel called, now the latest position back-raises, I cap because this kind of play frequently checks back the turn, and we wind up getting all the bets in at least four ways.

Now here’s where things get interesting. The turn is a King, which is definitely one of my least favorite cards. Daniel could possibly have KK – although he got passive on the flop after leading initially – and he can certainly have AQ, and that hand makes a lot of sense given his line. Also, any of the flop callers can have Q9 or KJ or KT, plus AK and KQ aren’t far behind now. With all of this in mind, I think checking is my best play. So obviously I bet. Daniel immediately punishes me with a raise and now everyone else folds. His hand is so blatantly obviously AQ that I can hardly wait to fold my hand face up on the river if I miss to show how smart I am.

I call and the river does brick and before Daniel does anything, I turn my cards over. And then he turns QQ over in tempo and I can hardly believe the massive mistake I was so eager to make. I mean I’m still sick sitting here typing about it over three days later.

This is one of those massive errors that seems to revisit me every once in a while and you see so many “smart” players make over the years. They narrow someone down to one hand and then they act on that read and completely disregard the pot size. I’ve done it multiple times and I almost never do it now, but goodness was I ever ready to do it here. Thank you Daniel, for checking and saving me a lot of pain and heartache.

Now let’s talk about Daniel’s line. The thing I forgot is that Daniel basically never plays LHE, so narrowing his range down so thinly just can’t be wise – he might make plays that don’t make any sense to me. In NLHE, raising the turn here can make a lot of sense because he has QQ and is severely blocking the nut hand (AQ) and can easily represent it, with little fear that anyone else can have it. The problem in LHE is that, even though the blocker effect is still in play, you simply can’t apply the necessary pressure. All I have to do is call two big bets and I get to showdown in this massive pot. Plus, he’s underestimating the stickiness of the other Palace players – they just don’t fold.

I think if we were heads up, his turn raise makes more sense, because he can have straights and I really can’t, so I likely will never three bet and he can just showdown on the river when he misses and bet when he improves. The problem here is that we are still multiway on the turn and any of our other opponents can easily have hands like Q9, KJ, KT, KQ, etc. that are never folding.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think either of us played this turn well and I can’t believe how close I was to losing this whole pot out of sheer stupidity.

Another crazy pot happened later in the night when we had a round of button straddles going and I had K7 of hearts on the button and had to put in four bets before the flop.

I got a reasonable K96 with two spades flop and really liked my hand when everybody checked to me. The small blind (preflop 3-bettor) check-raised me, two others (including the preflop 4-bettor) cold called and I just called.

The turn was a pretty nice looking 7 and they all checked to me again. If I hadn’t improved, I might’ve checked here, but turning two pair made me a lot more confident about my hand. But then the small blind check-raised again, the next player called, and now the preflop 4-bettor wakes up with a check-three bet on the turn?!!? What?

I don’t often go into the tank in LHE but I was flabbergasted. My hand’s too strong to fold and I’m plenty confused, so I’m wasting time thinking, but sometimes I like to make sense of things before I proceed. The action seems pretty scary. I shouldn’t have the best hand.

But let’s think about that three bet. This player four bet before the flop. Then, second to last to act on the flop, he checked and cold called two bets after it was bet and raised back to him. Now, on the turn, it’s checked to him again and he risks giving another free card by checking to me. Okay, so he is putting in a cold three bet here – which is normally super strong – but I think it’s safe to assume this player does not have us beat.

The small blind could have us beat and the other player looks like he’s drawing but he could also be hanging on for dear life with a better two pair. But really, it actually looks like multiple players are going crazy with hands that are worse than mine.

So I call. Everyone else does too.

The river is the Jack of spades, completing the front door flush and improving QT and KJ as well. Everybody checks to me again. I’m pretty happy to show down at this point and somehow my hand is still good.

I wasn’t planning to write about this session so I didn’t keep any notes, but I do recall one other fun hand where I opened with AA and got raised on the turn on a Q74J board and then check-called the river when the J paired and they had… A5 offsuit. Gotta love that creativity!

All in all, a pretty sexy Thursday night session to the tune of +$1025.

I went to Fortune the next day for some $20/$40 and even though I didn’t write notes for this session either, I feel it’s important for me to mention how great the game was because the last two times I’ve posted about the Fortune $20/$40 it has been pretty negative. The game this Friday was amazing. One of the best I’ve ever played in. There were two fun, loose players at my starting table and then when I migrated to follow them later I found myself on the left of two guys that were playing every hand no matter what the action was to them. One of them played rather reasonably after the flop, but the other guy was recklessly aggressive, betting and raising when he had any piece of the board, no matter how little it was.

Here’s a typical example: they both limp in, I raise with JJ, the flop is A65 and the crazy guy bets, I call; the turn is a 7, he bets and I call; river is a blank, he bets and I call; he shows 73 offsuit.

I got off to a rough start and found myself in the game for $3500 pretty early in the day, but fortunately I was eventually able to take advantage of the favorable situation and had enough hands hold up (and I lost a bunch of sick ones all day!) that I was able to make a complete come all the way back and even booked a solid win of $1409. It really did feel like I was running bad most of the day, but the game was so good that when I did win the occasional pot, it was almost always massive. I also won $63 in NLHE waiting for my seat for a total win of $1472 for the day.

Pretty fortunate start to November so far!

Posted in poker | Tagged gambling, gambling for a living, limit hold em, no limit hold em, poker, poker strategy, professional gambling, professional poker, texas hold em | 1 Comment »

Marathon Monday: A 16 hour $8/$16 Session

November 7, 2017

Oh, how I forgot how fun it is to be a complete sicko degenerate. Back in the dark times when I had a day job, the marathon session was a much more common experience for me. When I was flooring at Palace from August 2015 to October 2016, my schedule was tailor-made for me to put in very long sessions on my “days off” and on Thursday, in particular, I would make it a point to try to play from noon to midnight.

Now that I don’t have to put in those pesky suit and tie hours, my pathological need to put in massive sessions to get my poker fix have all but disappeared. I typically just play around eight hours four or five days a week, and while a 10-12 hour session happens occasionally, it is never my intention anymore.

Enter the new Monday promotion at Palace: Starting at 8 AM on Monday morning and extending all the way until 8 AM on Tuesday, every jackpot at Palace is worth $499. In addition, with High Hands running most days of the week during peak hours, it’s also one of the rare times the massive Royal Flushes are available to pay out. They recently had a Royal pay out over $36,000 and right now the biggest one is around $15,000. Needless to say, this promotion packs the room and if you aren’t there by 2 PM, good luck getting a seat.

The promotion and the Royal Flush payouts are cool and hitting any of that stuff would be a nice bonus, but the main attraction of Mondays for me is all the action players it brings into the building. With three $8/$16 games typically running on Mondays, what is already typically the best $8/$16 game I’ve ever seen, is even better. Mondays used to be one of the days of the week I don’t play poker and now because of this promotion, I’m not only playing, I’m committing to serious overtime.

While I have played some previous Mondays, yesterday was my first time sitting down for a Marathon Monday with every intention of playing 12+ hours.

I got off to a brutal start. After 4.5 hours, I was down around $700. At my lowest point, I was down $800 and in the game for $1600. And it was still early. I was planning to play at least another 7 hours and I was already approaching my worst sessions of all-time territory.

For context, I just filtered all my data that goes back to August 2014 and I’ve played 350 sessions of $8/$16 LHE over that span. My all-time worst result was -$1847 – a glaring outlier. I’ve lost $1200+ two other times and I’ve lost $1000+ five times total – and the last time that happened was a year ago tomorrow. For contrast – in case anyone might accuse me of being a nit – I have won $1500+ five times and $1000+ twelve times in 2017 alone (Note: these are $8/$16 results only).

So yesterday was shaping up to be my worst session of the year and possibly one of my worst $8/$16 results ever.

I lost with AT to 86 on a A97Tx run out. My AK lost to two people with QJ on a KTxxA board. I defended K6 of clubs and turned the second nut flush only to run into AT of clubs. AA lost to KJ on QTxx9. It seemed like every hand I lost to was a hand that I was blocking from improving.

And then there were these two gems:

I raise with A6 of diamonds from MP and the cutoff, button, and both blinds call. The flop is K75 with two clubs and one diamond and I decide not to continuation bet a complete whiff against four opponents and it checks around. The turn is the 4 of diamonds and now the big blind leads out. I have an open-ended straight draw and a flush draw now and while there’s some merit to raising here, I think I will have to improve to win and I’d rather keep other players in. The cutoff folds and now the button raises and the big blind responds with a three bet. With 11 big bets in the pot, I’m getting 5.5 to 1 to call and I will make a straight or a flush about 30% of the time. Obviously I’m continuing here. The button calls and the river is a blank. I fold and the big blind wins with K7 over the button’s AK.

I’d like to focus on the ridiculousness of the button’s line here. First, they just cold call my raise instead of punishing me with a three bet and forcing the blinds out. Maybe the K7 folds? Certainly not a guarantee, but they are far more likely to fold to a three bet than for one raise. And how about that flop check? You have AK on a K75 flop and everybody checks to you and… you check? And then you wait to raise the big bet street when three medium connected cards are on board and the big blind leads out? And, of course, this insane flop check lets me see the best turn card in the deck for free and winds up costing me three big bets before whiffing when I could have just check-folded the flop! Thanks a lot!

My other favorite early hand was when a player to my right, who raises a wider range than most, raises from middle position and I three bet with 98 of clubs (a rare move from me) and the player to my left caps it, the button calls four cold, one of the blinds comes along, the limper doesn’t fold, the dealer calls, a crow caws, and we end up going to the flop six ways for a cap. Not really what I had in mind when I tried to isolate with 9 high. The flop comes down 973 with one club and it checks to me and since I have poor relative position I decide to donk into the preflop raiser in the hopes that he will raise and the rest of the field will have to call two bets cold. I don’t necessarily think I have the best hand, but I think this is the best way for me to limit the field. Unfortunately, he just calls, as do the button and the player to my right. On the bright side, the chances of me having the best hand have drastically increased. The turn card is the 7 of clubs, giving me a flush draw. I bet and everybody calls. The river is the Jack of clubs, I bet my flush, the PFR folds and now the button raises all in for 1.5 big bets total and shows me… Q5 of clubs. Well, you can’t fold that hand for four bets cold preflop!

I did start to make a comeback after five hours of torture. Someone limped in with AA and let me see the flop for one bet with A5 of hearts (which I would fold to an under the gun raise) and I wound up making a flush. Then I switched tables to an action game and picked up my own pair of Aces in a button straddle pot that went off five ways for five bets preflop and somehow held up on a 63325 run out.

Just like that, I was fast approaching even. But it wouldn’t last. After having a period of run good, I cooled off completely and found myself stuck $500 again. I picked up AA three more times during this stretch and lost with two of them, including this interesting hand:

I raise after one limper in early position and go five ways to the 882 rainbow flop. The early limper donks into me and I have three players to act behind me. This board is about as dry as it gets, so it creates an interesting spot. It seems better to try and let some players call behind with very little equity, rather than raising and likely getting it heads up. Plus, the flop bettor could always have an 8. And after I call on the turn and river, that is what he shows me. This wasn’t interesting because I lost the hand, but because the best line on the flop wasn’t clear to me.

From this point on, I was on fire. After falling back down to -$500, I hardly lost a pot the rest of the night. Unfortunately, I also stopped taking notes on my key hands. I do know that I had 80% of a Royal Flush twice with cards to come and did not hit the massive jackpots, but… I did win both hands.

Ultimately, I ended up finishing the day up $890 after being down $800 at one point – without the aid of any jackpots. It’s one of the best comebacks I’ve ever made and really illustrates how key it is to keep your cool when things are going miserably. I’m not sure I’ve ever turned a four rack loss into a four rack win. Five years ago I probably would have left this session four hours into it and booked a substantial loss. These days I’m significantly better at weathering the storm and staying composed as I get throttled, trying to appreciate the challenge of it and find the humor in the run bad. I really feel this ability to play my A-game during brutal stretches is one of my biggest edges today.

Posted in poker | Tagged gambling, gambling for a living, limit hold em, poker, poker strategy, professional gambling, professional poker, texas hold em | 1 Comment »

$20/$40 Session Report: November 3rd

November 5, 2017

Actually most of my interesting hands happened while I was playing in the $1/$3 No Limit game at Fortune while waiting for a $20/$40 seat. I almost never play $8/$16 at Fortune and I guess my theory is that I’d rather warm up in games I don’t get much playing time in, like NLHE or Limit Omaha.

The Accidental Min-Raise

My first fun hand happens early in the session. The $1/$3 game has a max buy in of $300, so I always sit down with four $25 chips, $180 in $5 chips, and $20 in $1 chips – plus $500 in my pocket to add on and reload as I dip below the table max.

The player to my direct right makes it $16 to go and I have 77 next to act. This is an annoyingly large open-raise but we are deep enough (barely!) that I can call and try to set mine or simply play a good hand in position. So I call… or I think I do. I mentioned my buy in method because instead of calling with three $5 red chips and a blue one, I accidentally throw in a green $25 chip and three blue $1 chips. Whoops. I am now committed to a minimum raise to $29 because I put in multiple chips and over half the raise size.

I reacted pretty genuinely to my mistake, but the no limit players have basically no history with me so I wouldn’t blame any of them for thinking I could be running an angle here (i.e. pretending like I accidentally raised when I have a hand like AA). However, if I were the original raiser I would give serious consideration to four-betting my entire range here and expecting to get a lot of folds. He just calls though, which I thought was kind of surprising.

The flop comes out 944 with two diamonds and he leads out $35 and I almost have to stifle a laugh. Oh, now you want to be aggressive? I think it’s safe to assume my hand is always good here and I’ve debated with a friend about the merits of raising on the flop in this spot because there are a number of turn cards that we won’t love and I’d like to deny equity to those hands. On the other hand, we are in a tough spot if he goes for the hammer with a flush draw and we don’t really mind him betting the worst hand either. So I call.

The turn is a 5 of spades, opening up a backdoor flush draw, and he bets $52 rather quickly and nonchalantly. Another easy call for me, but I make it look like I’m thinking about it.

The river bricks out and he checks and it’s hard to imagine what hands I would get value from by betting, so I check back and he shows AK of spades. I said earlier that I would consider four betting his entire range in his spot preflop, but trying to get all the money in with AK suited is a slam dunk! A honest mistake from me and a really weird line from my opponent here.

Another Profitable Mistake

By this time, I’ve come to realize that the villain in the previous hand is very aggressive preflop, probably opening or raising over 30% of his hands. That makes his flat call with the AK suited even stranger. Well, in this hand, he decides to open-limp on the button. I’ve seen him do some limping, which is atypical for him, but the button open-limp is a new one.

I call with J2 of diamonds from the small blind and the big blind checks his option. The flop is A92 with two spades and one diamond. There is basically no money in the pot and my hand is pretty piddly but I think a $5 bet should take the pot down very often here, so I toss a red chip out. The big blind folds and the button almost immediately makes it $17. I have basically zero respect for this raise, so I call and I’m probably going to try and win the pot unless a spade comes.

The turn is the 3 of diamonds, which gives me a flush draw in addition to my pair. I check it and he bets $25. I still think he is weak here and now I have a lot of equity so I check-raise to $70 and he thinks for quite some time before eventually folding AQ face up! I actually said “wow” in genuine shock because that was not a hand I was trying to get him to fold because I didn’t think it was possible he could be that strong.

I have to wonder why an overly aggressive player would choose to open-limp with AQ on the button. Isn’t it to set a trap? Well, I fell right into it and then he decided to just be like “naw, you have this one.” I guess he had no idea what I thought of his image.

I Get Stacked By A Shocking Hand

I open to $10 from early position with AJ of clubs and only the big blind defends. The flop comes 732 with two clubs and he checks it over to me. I think this is a good flop to consider checking with in order to balance my checking back range, but a) I’m a part-time player in this game, b) I don’t think this opponent is really thinking about ranges, and c) I want to build a pot against weak players. So I bet $10 and he check-raises me to $25. He started the hand with about $215 and you really have to wonder what kind of hands he would check-raise on this flop. The only hands I’m in bad shape against are the sets and he doesn’t appear strong at all to me. I decide that I am willing to play for all the money if he wants to, so I stick in a commitment raise to $85, which is roughly 40% of the remaining stacks. The only appropriate response to my raise is all in or fold, so obviously this guy calls. *face palm*

The turn is a brick, like an 8 or something, and he stuffs his remaining $121 in the pot and I snap call, annoyed. I’ll be even more irritated in a second, but first I want to look at the math here. I committed myself to getting all the chips in on the flop, but he thwarted that plan by just calling and letting a turn roll off with money behind. So after his all in and subtracting for the rake ($6), there is now $306 in the pot and it costs me $121 to call. I’m getting a little over 2.5 to 1 to call, so I need to win about 28.5% of the time to make calling profitable. I think it’s safe to assume all my flush outs are clean, but I’m going to make a flush less than 20% of the time on the river. If one of my overcards is live I’m still a little short, but if they are both live, I have an easy call. Plus there is some remote chance that I have the best hand. He could be doing this with a naked flush draw himself, or even a combo draw like 54 of clubs. With my perceived outs alone, it’s a pretty close call, but when you add in the chances of having the best hand, I just have to go with it.

Well, I do call. The river is a 2 and he shows…

AK offsuit.

Ouch.

Okay, so I didn’t exactly get stacked, but I doubled him up with most of my stack and I really have no idea how he got all the chips in after the flop but… maybe I should’ve balanced that checking range!

Image For The Max

This hand happens shortly after that last one and I try to isolate one limper by making it $10 to go on the button with 54 of spades. Both blinds and the limper call, which is not very ideal considering I have 5 high and I think my credibility is low at the moment.

What is ideal is a T55 flop. Everybody checks to me and I bet $15 and one of the blinds snap calls, practically salivating from the mouth at the thought of picking off my upcoming barrels.

The turn is a 2 and I bet $35 into $64 and again he calls quickly.

The river is a Q and he checks again. There is now $134 in the pot, I have $234 behind and he has me covered. I’m thinking long and hard about my bet size because I was going to size large on the river but I’m a little concerned that the Q might kill my action a little because it creates a lot of chops and brings an overcard to the obvious pair of tens my opponent has. However, while I’m thinking this over, he says “Oh come on, you know you can only bet if you have a 5” and I really felt like that was my cue to go for it all. I shove and he SNAP CALLS! Gotta love it. Bet almost 2x pot on the river and he gives it zero thought. Wow!

I finished my 82 minute $1/$3 session up $183 despite being down a full buy in at one point. I’ll take it!

$20/$40 Snooze Fest

Goodness the $20/$40 games at Fortune have been bad the last two times I’ve played. I have now logged 15.75 hours over my last two $20/$40 sessions and I would say I’ve been in a good game for less than two of those hours. Both times I’ve played I didn’t find my way to a good game until the very end of my session when I was practically ready to go.

On the plus side, I love to terrorize nits. If nobody wants to play hands, then I’m just going to play them all and they’re either going to let me win $30-$50 every hand or they’re going to have to get out of their comfort zones. Usually tables will get tired of this and I can back off as they start playing looser and fail to adjust to my change of pace.

But I have been in some seriously nitty lineups. Like, to the point where I was comfortably raising hands like K8 suited and QT offsuit from under the gun. In the later positions, I was frequently raising and betting until they made me look at my hands.

I admittedly ran very good when they did play back at me. I raised dark on the button and got called by the small blind and three bet by the big blind then flopped trip threes with A3 offsuit. I raised dark from the cutoff and the button three bet me and I flopped quads with K2 suited. I opened with 55 and both blinds raised me and I flopped a set of 5s! Pretty lucky… and it really makes the table feel handcuffed when you are steamrolling them and then flopping huge when they do fight back.

I ended up leaving that horrible game up about $800, which is no small accomplishment when no one is putting money in the pot.

Naturally, I started to run like crap when I got in a good game. The first hand I played, I turned the nuts with JT suited in a massive pot and lost to a rivered flush, a solid $700 swing in the wrong direction. I also got really card dead and then whiffed the flop whenever I did find a hand to play.

All in all, I finished up a disappointing $241 in the $20/$40 game and booked a $424 win for the day.

Posted in poker | Tagged gambling, gambling for a living, limit hold em, no limit hold em, poker, poker strategy, professional gambling, professional poker, texas hold em | Leave a Comment »

Three Crazy $20/$40 Hands

October 28, 2017

So my goal with these session blogs is to do a couple of week and last night I didn’t take any notes for my $20/$40 limit hold em session at Fortune, but there were three hands that I don’t need any help remembering and really feel the need to share:

Hand #1

Hi jack opens, a player I don’t have a ton of experience with but I imagine is quite good three bets on the button, the small blind calls and I have KK in the big blind. I decide to just flat. As I said, I don’t have much history with the button, but I know he’s astute and I feel like capping it here out of the big blind will really tip my hand strength.

The flop spoils my dastardly plans by bringing an Ace, as well as a 6 and a 2 and two spades. I check to the cutoff and he leads right out; the button calls, small blind calls and I call, holding the King of spades in my hand.

The turn pairs the Ace, which is a pretty good card for me, but I’m still playing defense and check it to the cutoff and he fires another bet and now the button springs to life with a raise.

The small blind folds and I go deep into the tank. I felt like I’m supposed to fold here. I really can’t imagine what hands the button is flatting, with two players behind him, on the flop that have me beat. Surely, he would be raising an Ace on the flop. The cutoff can definitely have an Ace, however.

I wanted to fold, but I could feel something telling me I would regret it and, in the past, when these “easy” folding spots have come up and something doesn’t feel right, my instincts have almost always been correct. Unfortunately, I have made about 5-6 folds in substantial pots that I would have won and I almost always had this feeling beforehand. Like, folding seems standard, but something is off. It’s my instincts telling me: “DON’T DO IT!”

This time I decided to make the tough call and slid the $80 cold into the pot. I believe the cutoff folded and then the river bricked out and the action went check-check and I won the pot.

Hand #2

This is an insane hand. It’s especially crazy because I had logged a total of less than one hour lifetime with the villain in question to this point. I also rarely consciously use physical tells to make my poker decisions. Every once in a while they may factor in, but most of that is so subconscious that I’m not even aware of it. But I had noticed something about this player that I couldn’t help but inventory. He was a confident dude, to the point where I felt like he was bordering on cocky, but more importantly, he practically dripped with hubris when he was betting the best hand.

So when he raised my big blind and I defended with the K3 of diamonds heads up, I checked it over to him on the 752 rainbow flop and I couldn’t help but notice that when he bet, that glaring cockiness was missing.

Time to execute: I check-raised.

He called and I led into him on the 9 of hearts turn, which opened up a backdoor heart draw. My read was really being challenged when he decided to raise me. Again, his strength wasn’t convincing, but I had King high with literally no draw. I felt like I should probably just fold and give it up, but what’s the point of picking up these tells if you aren’t going to utilize the information? I really believed what I detected was true, so I went ahead and three bet him. He called pretty quickly. Shit.

The river was a 2 of hearts, completing the backdoor flush and pairing the board. There was a chance that he rivered a flush and I felt like he would never ever fold a better hand than me at this point, so I just checked it over to him. Would I call a bet here? Absolutely. Sure, it may feel like a torch, but I’ve come too far now. I didn’t have to call though because he checked behind.

I announced, “King high.”

He waited me out, so I said, “is it good?”

He asked, “King high flush?”

I said, “no. King high.”

I tabled it and…

…he mucked!

Don’t try this at home, kids.

Hand #3

I have moved back to the third $20/$40 game at this point and I am playing four-handed near the end of my session when this hand comes up.

The button opens, a really bad player in in the small blind calls, and I defend with A7 offsuit.

The flop comes 752 with two hearts (I have the Ace of hearts) and the small blind leads out. Obviously, I have an easy raise here, but I also have a massive amount of intel on the small blind at this point.

In the past, I’ve seen him donk the flop with top pair hands and quality draws – this will be important later.

So I raise and now the button three bets it and we both call.

The turn card is a beautiful Ace of spades and we check to the button; he bets, the small blind calls, I check-raise, and they both call.

The river is a 6 and now the small blind leads out. Okay, now I’m officially perplexed. My first instinct is to call. When I’ve seen the small blind lead out on the big bet streets he has been pretty nutted, so flatting and trying to get an overcall from the button made a lot of sense to me – it may save me a bet or two when I’m no good and it will probably win me the same amount when I have the best hand.

But then I really started thinking about it and realized that his most likely drawing hand was 43 and that hand made a straight on the turn and all he did was call twice then.

So I raised. I didn’t think about it long enough.

The button folded and then the small blind three bet me. I mean, this is basically a fold now. I think if I thought longer about the river and realized that this player can actually show up with a hand as bad as 66 here or that he may have started with 98 of hearts, I would have determined that calling was my best line.

He didn’t have either of those hands. I reluctantly made the call and he showed 98 offsuit. Ouch.

I had never seen him bet the flop with a draw that weak, so I wasn’t even considering the 98, but for whatever reason I overlooked the fact that he could have 98 of hearts and because of that I cost myself an extra $80.

On the bright side, it was a pretty amazing session for me considering I spent about 8 of my 9.5 hours in very bad, super nitty lineups. I ran pretty good in one of the worst $20/$40 games I’ve ever played in – so bad, I would probably play something else if I didn’t get off to such a hot start. Plus, for whatever reason, I have a tendency to get unwarranted action even from normally tight players. All in all, I was pretty happy to book a +$1445 win under these conditions.

Posted in poker | Tagged gambling, gambling for a living, limit hold em, poker, poker strategy, professional gambling, professional poker, texas hold em | Leave a Comment »

PLO Wednesday!

October 27, 2017

Wednesdays are Pot Limit Omaha day at Palace in Lakewood, but the game doesn’t start until 6 PM and I had to be up early the next day, so I tried to be at the casino by 4 PM so I could leave around midnight and still get about eight hours of play in.

This meant I was going to do some game-hopping. I was like 4th or 5th up for $8/$16 limit Hold Em but $6/$12 limit O8 had a seat open, so I started with some split pot four card poker. The game was unreal – one of the best O8 games I’ve ever seen. There was only one other player folding before the flop and she limped with 9883 in a kill pot, so who knows what kind of hands she’s not playing. That’s a lot of dead money in every pot. I did win about $70 but I ran far below average in the few hours I was playing, considering how much overlay there was in every hand.

There were a number of pots I got unlucky on – specifically my premium suited A2 hands were coming up with no pieces – but this was probably my favorite hand of the session: everybody is in for one bet, I call 9932 single suited on the button. The flop comes A85 rainbow and it checks to me and I bet my nut low. One of the blinds calls, a limper raises and both of us call. The turn pairs the Ace, the middle player bets, I call, and now the other guy check-raises. We both call. The river is another Ace and it is a bet and call to me. I actually say out loud: “can you ever have 88 here?” before calling and to my pleasant surprise the bettor has 55xx with no low and the other guy has the nut low, so the fives full are counterfeit and I win the high with Aces full of nines and split the low. The player with the 55 verbally expresses his pain and misfortune and all I can think is “wtf are you doing on the river, buddy?”

$1/$3 PLO starts at 6 PM and the lineup is amazing, but I get off to a terrible start by making a loose flop call that ends up costing me around $400 when the turn greatly improves me to an expensive second best hand. It’s one of those spots I look back at and realize I’m still not very good at this game. “Small” mistakes can lead to huge losses in big bet games.

Very next hand, after reloading, I 3-bet an AA hand to $50, bet $120 into $150 on the 963 rainbow flop in a three way pot and then stack off when the blind check-pots it. I dunno… maybe this is a fold? At best, I’m against a random two pair hand, but I’m more likely against a set or something like 9876. I might have to look at this spot closer because when I bet the $120, I thought I was committing myself and maybe that’s not exactly true. Anyways, I’ve been playing less than 30 minutes and I’m already down $800and that’s a bad spot to be in a game where lots of players love to hit and run and the game tends to not have very long legs; a four hour spread is not uncommon.

Next interesting spot I try to isolate a fun player with KK52 with hearts and both blinds call, as does the limper. The flop is an amazing AK9hh, giving me middle set and the nut flush draw and I bet $40 into $80 when they check and only the limper calls. The turn is a black ten – one of the few cards I hate – and he checks but doesn’t seem strong, so I confidently bet $85 and he calls again. The river is a black 8, which doesn’t really change anything, and I bet $125 and he folds.

I call a min-raise from the big blind with K5ssJJ and bet $20 into $50 when I flop the nut flush on AT4. A middle position player calls and so does the small blind and then we all check when the Ace pairs on the turn, an absolutely terrible card for me. The river is a 9, the SB checks and I check for pot control and to throw the action player some rope because he bluffs a lot. He bets $75 and the SB calls and now I’m perplexed. The river bettor can easily be bluffing, but can the SB ever be check-calling a full house? It seems unlikely, and I doubt he’s folding flush to this particularly gut, so I don’t see how I can fold the nut flush in this spot. I call and they both show full houses. The river bettor has A9 after flopping a Jack high flush and the small blind has 99 after flopping a nine high flush. Pretty sick run out and super unfortunate because the player with A9 is the type that will pay off for the max with a Jack high flush.

I then got AA97 all in preflop for about $500 effective and was pretty fortunate when his AAxx hand flopped a flush draw and bricked out for a chop. I later stacked this same player when I had T766 in the big blind and got him all in on a Q96 flop vs his 987x hand.

My last key PLO pot was perhaps a missed opportunity. I limped behind with AK73 doubled suited on the button and one of the blinds made it $15 to go. Four of us saw a flop of KK4 with two clubs and they all checked to me. I bet $20 and only the preflop raiser called. The turn was a ten, I bet $60 and he called again. I thought he had naked Aces or maybe a hand like QQJx, so when the river came an Ace, I can’t say I was overly excited about it. Granted, I’m blocking AA, but just because you’re blocking a hand doesn’t mean they can never have it. Still, it would be ludicrous to check my hand behind, so I bet $100 and I wasn’t exactly thrilled when he check-raised me to $300. I then did what no respectable player should ever do: hemmed and hawed about my misfortune before calling with the second nuts and winning the pot (he had JTT9). My antics are deplorable here, but really, no reasonable player would check-raise the river with his hand so while my fear of losing to AA here might be valid in a normal game, this one is full of all sorts of wonderful surprises.

I won solid pots on the last two hands I described and chipped away at my early deficit and managed to book a small profit of $101 when the game broke at 10 PM.

I was considering calling it a night since I was planning to leave around midnight and I loathe playing short sessions. Plus, I had a doctor’s appointment early in the morning, but my wife was still wanting to play and the $8/$16 game looked pretty good with some unfamiliar faces. “Allow me to reintroduce myself – my name is…”.

The game had some empty chairs and one of the first pots I played, I opened with K9 of clubs and barreled all the way when I flopped a flush draw and rivered a club. I didn’t show my hand, but I couldn’t help but notice one of the players (not in the hand) staring daggers at me the whole time. I don’t consider myself cocky, but I’ve been doing extremely well at limit Hold Em for many years so I carry myself with a lot of confidence at the table. I think this sometimes puts a target on my back and I’m perfectly okay with that. When people try to go out of their way to beat me or show me up, it’s usually pretty advantageous to my bottom line. Anyway, I could sense I was about to enter into an ego battle with this guy. I’d like to think I don’t play with ego, but I am aware of when other people are and I try to adjust accordingly.

The first hand I play against this guy, I open from the hi jack with 98 of spades and only the two blinds call, including him. The flop is 772 with one spade and they both check-call my continuation bet, which is not surprising as this board doesn’t induce many folds – people will literally call with any two cards. Because of this dynamic, I will typically double barrel my bluffs on the turn even when I miss completely – and I don’t have a lot of bricks. Any J, T, 9, 8, 6, 5 or spade give me a pair or a draw, and cards like Aces, Kings, or Queens are good bluffing cards. Needless to say, I’m betting a lot of turns when I’m not sensing any strength from my opponents. A Queen hits the turn, I bet, and I’m now heads up with my man. The river is an Ace and he quite mindlessly leads out. I already know the guy is going to try to outplay me and he looks blatantly weak, so I feel this is an easy bluff-raise spot, something that basically never comes up on the river in limit Hold Em. I raise, he folds, and I can’t resist the urge to show him the 9 high. Sometimes you gotta give them what they want.

One of the downsides to showing a hand like that is that it raises the stakes of the ego battle a little. Rather than looking for a spot or two to show me up, this dude is now 100% gunning for me and has moved two seats to my left. We definitely prefer to have him on our right under these circumstances.

In this hand, an early position player raises, another cold calls, and I have 88 on the button. I can definitely three bet here, but I feel like the under the gun player is tighter with his aggression and decide to just flat. The small blind calls, as does our new buddy in the big blind. The flop comes down T63 rainbow and everybody checks to me. This is an obvious bet. The SB calls, our friend check-raises and both players in between cold call. Well, I wasn’t expecting that. I call and the five of us see the Jack of hearts on the turn, putting two hearts on board. Everybody checks to me again. At this point, I don’t really know what’s going on. Someone could definitely have a T or a J, so I check back. The river is the Ten of hearts, completing the backdoor flush and I get checked to again. This is a super thin spot, but when you really think about it, it seems apparent that I have the best hand. The problem is, can I get called by worse? I certainly think so. I doubt anyone would check trip tens on the river even though the backdoor flush came in and it seems pretty obvious that the two early position players have nothing, so I’m targeting the blinds with a value bet here. I’m almost certain the big blind has a weak pair here and that he will pay it off, so I bet. He does call and so does the preflop raiser, but I confidently table my hand and win the pot.

I’m not done with this guy quite yet. It folds to me on the button and I raise with 98o and he three bets from the small blind. I call and he checks to me on the 854 with two diamonds flop. He checks and is holding his chips across the betting line waiting to call like he is never folding. I bet, he calls. Turn is the 3 of diamonds and he does the same thing. I bet, he calls. River is the 9 of diamonds, putting four diamonds on board and giving me top two pair. He does the same thing he’s done on the flop and turn and waits for me to act, but I have no diamond so I check behind. And then he bets. I look at the dealer like WTF and I can see that he wasn’t watching the river action and now the big blind is yelling at me for saying he checked when he didn’t do anything. Yeah, okay buddy. I’m new here, I have no idea what’s going on. The floor gets called over and since I’m not sharing my side of the story I know it’s going to be ruled a bet because the dealer wasn’t paying attention, so I just put the call out there expecting to pick off a bluff the majority of the time anyway and that’s exactly what it is and I win the pot. Then I have to listen to his yammering about saying he checked when he didn’t do anything, even though after my initial objection I haven’t said anything about it.

I play one more hand with this dude before he physically threatens me. I have the QT of spades and call his raise from the big blind in a multiway pot. The flop basically bricks me completely except for the Jack of spades and I get trapped for a cap on the flop on the off chances that I can hit a backdoor Royal Flush for $35,000. Yes, that’s a real number. The Spade Royal Flush is over $35,000 right now at the Palace in Lakewood. I’m not going to be the dude that folded a $35k Royal because I didn’t want to make loose calls on the flop with only backdoor potential. Anyways, as I’m getting owned for the four bets on the flop, I tell the player capping it on my right “this could be ugly” – an advance quasi-apology in case I end up winning this pot with a hand I would almost always fold.

I missed the turn and did not continue, but after the hand, the dude I’ve been battling with says something to his friend in their language and then says things like “I don’t like that shit” and “that’s why I moved over here” in English. I can’t help but feel like he’s talking about me and because of my comment to the other player during the last hand, I kind of feel like he’s insinuating that we are cheating in some way and attacks against my integrity are about the only thing I won’t put up with while playing poker.

So I say, “wait, why’d you move over here?”

He responds aggressively with “am I talking to you?”

“No. I just wanna know why you moved over here.”

This goes on for a little bit and he doesn’t share what he said to his friend, but continues to talk loudly to me and say things like “I’m the wrong one to mess with.” I dunno. I’m never looking to fight anyone, but if someone is accusing me of cheating we are going to have a conversation about it because I pride myself in playing a very fair poker game.

The floor comes over due to the commotion and now the guy is telling me I’ve been playing “straight up” and acting like he wasn’t talking about it. Eh. Whatever.

He ends up leaving soon after and that’s too bad because he probably would have enjoyed watching me get massacred from that point on.

First, my AQ loses to TT on a AJ5TJ run out where the TT player has to put three bets in on the flop before spiking his set.

Then I get four bets in on the turn with J8 vs 87 on 8328 against a guy that has no clue what his hand value is and he gets bailed out by a 3 on the river for a split pot.

Finally, a hand so unbelievable it will seem like I have to be making it up – but I have witnesses!

We are playing 5-handed now so I have little respect for a cut off open and I three bet with KT offsuit. Both blinds come along and the cutoff also calls. The flop is QTT and I bet when it checks to me, the SB calls, the cutoff raises, I three bet and both players call. The turn is a 6 of spades, putting two spades on board, and the cutoff donk again. I raise, the SB calls two bets cold and the cutoff now folds. Lol. The river is the 7s, completing the backdoor flush and the small blind leads out. I kind of thought he had a ten and the only missing ten was the spade so it seemed pretty likely his trips backdoored a flush and I just called.

He shows the 93 of spades.

To recap: he called three bets cold from the small blind before the flop; he pays three bets on the QTT one spade flop to see the turn; and he calls two bets cold on the turn when he finally has a prayer.

God bless him. Poker is far from dead.

I ended the $8/$16 session down $85 and called it a night with a meager win of slightly less than +$100.

Posted in poker | Tagged gambling for a living, PLO, poker, poker strategy, professional gambling, professional poker, texas hold em | Leave a Comment »

$8/$16 LHE @ Palace: I’m Blessed!

October 23, 2017

Or least that’s what I’ve been told recently. But I’ll get to that later.

First, I’ve decided to continue with my idea to write about my sessions. I enjoy writing about poker, probably more than anything, plus I think taking notes during my sessions helps keep me accountable.

Secondly, I think I finally figured out how to rate music on my blog. I will be unveiling my new method this weekend.

Thirdly, I have a lot of T.V. shows I’ve watched recently that I haven’t talked about yet. I will try to do that this week.

Lastly, I didn’t write any notes while I was in Reno for the Run It Up series, but hopefully I’ll post a trip report sooner rather than later.

Okay, so on to my $8/$16 session at the Palace today. I mean, it started off innocently enough. Actually it started off in $6/$12 Omaha 8/B, but I didn’t stay there too long and quickly took my $29 profit to the $8/$16 game. I actually really enjoy playing Omaha and it’s a nice change of pace, but it’s hard to justify playing in a split pot game at lower stakes when the all the quads on the PSJ board are $499, the Spade Royal is over $33,000 and two other Royals are $6000. It’s not like I play for jackpots, but at those numbers, I just have to play in the Hold Em game.

Like I said, my session didn’t start off well and after an hour I was down about $200 overall and it was mostly because of this hand:

Button straddles, I three bet TT from the small blind, everybody folds and I’m heads up with the button. The flop comes down 752 rainbow and I check because the button likes to bluff and will probably put me on overcards. He does bet and I check-call, planning to raise the turn. The turn is a Jack and I execute my plan and the button just calls my check-raise. The river is a blank and I go for some thin value because I expect him to be a little confused and pay off light and he raises me? Now I’m confused – and I don’t fold when I’m confused, so I call and he shows me a set of Jacks!

I continued to trend down when I opened the AJ off from early position and got called by a somewhat tight and passive player on the KK5 flop. The turn was a 3 and we both checked and I paired my Ace on the river. I don’t think betting is wrong here – he has a small pair or medium pair often enough to justify a value bet, but bet-calling the river was a mistake and he showed me KQ after I paid his raise off. This is definitely a player I can reliably bet-fold the river to.

Next, I opened with AA and got three callers and was check-raised by the big blind on the JJ2 flop. I know this player is capable of trying to run me off an ace high hand and he’s also capable of having a Jack here, so I decided to turn my hand into a bluff catcher and just call down, like I would with AK. The turn was a blank and I called another bet. I would bet the river if he checked to me, but it paired the 2 and he fired again. I called and he showed AQ high.

At this point, I was trending back up and I was talking to the dealer in the box about how my buddy said I’m “blessed” while we were down in Reno, indicating that I really have nothing to complain about when it comes to poker. I hate losing, especially in tournaments, and it’s natural to feel bummed out when you bust events, but looking at what I’ve done over the past couple years it was hard to argue with him. Variance has really been on my side lately. I’ve been cruising at an ROI of 331% since November 2015 in live tournaments. That’s insane!

So as we were talking about being “blessed”, the dealer (a friend of mine) was saying how it’s true and that I never seem to miss a flop in limit Hold Em either. On cue, I’m dealt the TT in the big blind, raise five limpers, and get the T32 with two spades flop. As if that’s not sexy enough, I’m heads up on the turn with a player that has an Overs button (Overs buttons increase the betting to $12/$24 when those players are heads up) and he raises when the 8 of diamonds hits. I three bet and he calls. This is a pretty tight player, so when he raises the turn and a brick hits the river, I think there’s some merit to trying to check-raise again. We know where 75% of the tens are and I would expect him to have at least two pair when he raises me on the turn, so he seems heavily weighted towards sets of 2s, 3s, or 8s. So if the river bricks out, it’s really hard to imagine him checking those hands behind. But the river was a 6 of spades and I thought he would check that card back a lot, even when he had sets, so I bet and got paid off.

I was up $60 overall after a couple hours, but the run good was activated now. I raised the small blind with QJ of diamonds, bet the AJ5 one diamond flop, check-called the 5d turn and check-raised the Kd river. Then I limped along on the button with 98hh and stabbed at the A63 one heart flop, got one straggler, fired the 3h turn, and then raised the river when he led on the Jh. That one got him talking to himself!

Then I started flopping sets all over the place. I flopped sets of 8s and 6s for massive pots. I flopped a set of fours that won a good pot. I had 44 on an A52x3 run out. All in pots that were raised before the flop. I triple barreled with AdQc on the J42dd8dQ board and my rivered pair was good. Then I got the AAxA board with AQ and this was actually a weird one. I had raised before the flop and then I bet the flop and turn and my opponent raised me on the turn and then folded when I three bet? I mean, that is just comedy. What hand is he trying to represent? What is he trying to get me to fold? I guess he’s bluffing there, but what a crazy board to try and bluff a preflop raiser on.

All in all, it was a great session that started off slowly before I started running so hot half the table was mumbling to themselves. Normally, I’d never leave when I’m running this good and playing well on top of it, but I haven’t seen my wife in ten days and wanted to make sure I was home before she got off work, so we could at least spend a little time together before she went to bed. So I booked a hefty $1120 win for the day and called it an early night.

Welcome back to Gotham, TDK!

Posted in poker | Tagged gambling for a living, limit hold em, omaha 8, poker, poker sessions, professional gambling, professional poker, texas hold em | 1 Comment »

$1/$3 PLO Session @ Palace

October 12, 2017

I always have blog ideas running through my head and I don’t always execute them, but my poker blogs are almost always my most popular ones and I’ve been thinking of ways to write about poker that is interesting to read and isn’t too time-consuming for myself. Sometimes I will write about a whole tournament series I play and it takes me like a week to write it and I imagine it can be exhausting to read. So I had the idea of writing about my day-to-day sessions and just noting the biggest and most interesting pots I played. I don’t know if this will be a continuing trend or not – or if it’s even going to be entertaining – but I’m curious to see what kind of response it gets.

So yesterday I went to the Palace in Lakewood without much of a plan of what I was going to play. When I got in the shower around 3:30 PM there was a full $6/$12 Omaha 8 or better game with 6 people on the list and that looked promising enough. This a new game to the Palace spread and I hadn’t played it yet, so I was pretty happy to see that it was going strong and that I was going to be able to get some playing time in.

When I arrived at the Palace around 4:15 however, the $6/$12 O8 game was 5-handed and within seven minutes of me sitting down two players busted and another one left and then the game broke when one of the three remaining players took a $4/$8 hold em seat. I don’t know if the earlier list was misleading or not – or if my timeline is a bit off – but the game went from 9 seated players with 6 waiting to dead in roughly an hour. I played about two short-handed orbits and lost $2 before having to move on to other things.

When I arrived I had put my name up for the $1/$3 PLO game starting at 6 PM and for $8/$16 hold em, which is my main game. I got a seat in the second $8/$16 game around 4:50 PM and kept my name up for PLO, not really sure if I was going to play or not. There were like 20 players on the list and I wasn’t one of the first 9, so I would be making my decision based on who was playing and how long I had to wait to get in.

I’ve been reading Tommy Angelo’s Painless Poker the last few days and in an effort to refocus myself at the table, I set some new goals for my session. First off, I set a timer to take a break every hour. It’s seriously important to get up from the table at least once every two hours or so and walk around a little bit and take your mind off the game – even if it’s just for a few minutes. I chose 60 minutes because of my second goal for the night: to not be distracted by my phone while I was playing. Set timer, put phone away, and don’t look at it again until the timer went off. It was obviously easier to remember hands for one hour than it would be to remember them for two hours. And my last goal for the session was to look left for playing and folding tells on the opponents with immediate position on me. This is such an underrated observation and I can admit I don’t use it often enough. Last night I got crystal clear tells on the two players to my left and I always knew if they were going to play or not based on what they did after they looked at their cards. This is pretty important when you’re thinking about limping behind with a marginal hand from the hi jack or cut off or isolating a weak limper by raising when you’re not the button. For instance, a weak player with a wide limping range called from middle position and I was in the hi jack seat. I saw that the button was planning to play his hand and I looked down at AJ offsuit. This is a clear raise, regardless, but had I looked down at sometime like QT off, I would have elected to just fold. The button ended up 3-betting me and I check-folded when I bricked the flop.

I only played $8/$16 for about 90 minutes, so I didn’t have a lot of interesting hands, but these were my key pots for the session:

-Several limpers, I raise A9 of clubs from the small blind. Flop comes King high with two clubs and I have a clear lead for value with my nut flush draw and I get three callers. The turn bricks me and I elect to check-call now since I feel I don’t think I’m getting many folds and there is not enough players to bet my draw for value. The river is a 4 of clubs and I lead out, the turn bettor calls, and last position raises. I make it three bets and get paid off by the last player and win my first sizable pot of the night.

-I complete 95dd from the SB after a few limpers and check-raise the 975 flop. Heads up to the 2 on the turn, I bet and he calls. The river is an 8, which isn’t ideal, but I feel confident that he has a 9 with a decent kicker and while he could have 98, he will never raise the river with it. It’s possible that he could have 76 suited or JT, but this is a player that I can snap-fold the river to if I get raised and his body language and timing is in total pay off mode, so this is an easy value bet and my hand is good.

-After taking a break, I post in late position and get the 93 offsuit, a player limps, a good player raises, and I’m never folding for one more bet after posting in the cutoff, so I call and four or five of us see the 954 flop. The player from the previous hand donks out, the good player just flats (which is never a made hand), and I call. The flop bettor is very straight forward, so I feel my hand is never good here, but the pot is too big to fold just yet. The turn card is a 7, which may give me additional straight outs and I call a bet after the preflop raiser folds. The river is a 3, giving me two pair, and he bets again. This is kind of an interesting spot and I took some time thinking about it. This player doesn’t strike me as the kind that will bet the river when the one card straight gets there, if he doesn’t have it, so I didn’t think I could raise. At the same time, I couldn’t really come up with any hands he would take this line with that have a six in them. Confused, I decided to just call and I won the pot after he showed 54 suited. And of course, I look like a maniac because by the time the hand ends no one remembers that I posted, but they will remember that I called a raise with 93 offsuit and I’m okay with that.

I finished my $8/$16 session up $261 and moved on to PLO around 6:10 PM after a number of people didn’t show and I got a spot in the starting lineup, which looked irresistibly juicy to me.

I actually created this game. Well, sort of. I really felt like the entire Seattle and Tacoma area was missing out by not spreading a PLO game anywhere. I think they spread it in Tulalip and maybe at Snoqualmie, but those are two casinos that I never go to and I think the PLO games there play big. So an entry level PLO game was entirely missing from the greater Seattle area. My idea was to spread a $1/$2 game with a $300 max buy in. It seemed like it would be very popular and stakes people could stomach while trying to learn the game. Well, I got the Palace to spread PLO, but they made it a $1/$3 blind game with a $5 bring in and $500 max buy in. So the blinds were in the realm of what I was going for, but because of the $5 bring in, the game was going to play about 2.5x bigger than what I had in mind. In other words, this is no entry level game and it probably wasn’t going to attract any $4/$8 hold em players. And honestly, it’s bigger than I’m comfortable playing. If it attracted mostly solid players with more experience than me, I probably would never play it, but fortunately it tends to be pretty soft and even some of the more experienced players seem to make what appear to me to be clear, massive errors.

As I’ve said, I’m no PLO expert. I have less than 15 sessions of live play lifetime, so I will make mistakes in the hands I share. I’m still in the early stages of learning and I tend to play a very passive, low variance game. For instance, I’m not apt to 3-bet many hands, especially when I’m out of position, because the players in this game just don’t fold. That may seem like a good argument for 3-betting very good hands, but since I lack experience, I’d rather navigate smaller pots with a bigger edge after the flop than bloating them preflop when I’m not a huge favorite against a wide range of holdings.

-My first key pot was entirely exploitive. A very loose and active player opened to $10, there were some callers, and I called with 9764 single suited on the button – a very marginal holding, but my goal is to play as many pots in position against this player as I can. I got a very sexy 532 rainbow flop and I ended up stacking the preflop raiser for about $400 when he slow played his flopped wheel and check-raised me on the turn.

-My next interesting hand came up when I limped the small blind in a 6-way pot with AKT6 with the AK of hearts. The flop was QTT with two clubs and a heart and I led out for $15, which was about half pot. One player called and the button made it $40 to go. I don’t love this spot because he should have QT a lot, but it’s way too early to consider a fold yet and I have nut kickers with my ten, so I call. The turn brought the Jack of hearts, giving me a straight and a Royal Flush draw and I check-called a bet of $100. The river was a K and I decided to lead out for $175 fearing he might check back and got snap-called by… AT42, no clubs! Yes, this game is pretty soft, folks!

-I got another cheap flop from the blinds with K754 and led out for $15 on the K77 with two hearts flop. I got called in a couple spots and decided to turn my hand into a bluff catcher when the Ah hit the turn. I check-called $75 on the turn – heads up now – and then $100 on a blank river and lost to AK7X. Pretty unfortunate situation, but I felt like I lost the minimum, especially with his river sizing.

-Here’s a bad play that worked out well. I decided to limp in with the ATss62dd, which is not only a weak hand, but doubly bad considering I had two active and aggressive players to my left. Of course I got punished by a $20 raise and ended up seeing the flop 6-handed. The board came out K72 with two spades and I decided this was a good board to lead out on with my pair plus nut flush draw. With the King of spades on board I didn’t think I was likely to get popped unless someone had a set of Kings or sevens and I suspected I had plenty of fold equity. In an effort to keep my opponents’ ranges wider, I have been making smaller bets than everyone else in the game and led out for $65 into $120 here. I picked up one caller and had position for the 7 on the turn, which felt like a good card to barrel for $110 and I picked up the pot.

-I open to $15 from late position with AKQ2 with a nut suit. Both blinds call and I bet $20 on the JTX with two clubs flop. The big blind check-raises to $60 and while I like my wrap, I don’t have a flush draw, so I just flat his raise. The turn is a 9 and he leads out and seems flabbergasted when I jam on him for about $320 effective. He calls and my straight holds up.

-I raise a series of limpers to $20 with QJ98 with two clubs on the button. Five players call and we see a very sexy flop of T92 with two clubs, giving me a pair with a 17-card straight draw and a flush draw – an absolute monster. I bet $75 when it is checked to me and I’m willing to get all the chips in if I have to, but instead I just get three callers. The turn is an ugly 6 of diamonds and one of the callers leads out for $300 (which is a max bet). A player in between folds and now it is on me. The turn bettor has about $225 behind and the other player in the hand looks like he’s going to fold. It’s pretty obvious that my opponent has 87 and since it seems like the other player is going to fold, it doesn’t make sense to put in the remaining $225 before hitting my hand, so I just call and then fold when the river comes a 2. He ended up showing the 87 and while I don’t know what his other two cards were, the chances of me losing this pot to an 87 are insanely small!

-I make another loose call with the KTT7 with two spades on the button when the LAG (loose-aggressive) player opens to $15. The flop comes K72 with one spade and I raise his flop bet of $40 with a caller in between to $130. He calls, the other player folds, and I bet $300 on the 3 of spades turn. He calls again and then folds when the river bricks out and I bet $200. I actually didn’t think he had much of a hand to call with, which is why I sized down, but maybe this would have been a good spot to experiment with a funky bet size like, say, $50 and see if I could get the LAG to spazz out.

-I raise one limper to $20 with AKJJ with a nut suit and get multiple callers to see the J62 rainbow flop. There was either $100 or $120 in the pot and this board was super dry, so I sized very small at $30 hoping to sell a weak hand and possibly induce some unwarranted aggression. I got my wish when the most experienced (and who I think is the best) player in the game popped me to $90. Everyone else folded and with my only concern being the gut shots around the 62, I felt like protecting my hand wasn’t a priority and instead decided to sell a weak made hand like AA that he could push me off later by simply calling his raise. I also felt like this player would know I was nutted if I 3-bet the flop and would fold a lot of his range. The turn card was a ten of clubs, opening up straight draws and a back door flush draw, and I checked again and then put him all in after he bet $200. He unhappily called and I stacked him when the river paired the board.

-I open the button with KK42 double suited to $15, the small blind calls, and the big blind reraises to $50. I just call and so does the small blind. The flop comes down AKX with two hearts, giving me middle set and the nut flush draw. I actually saw a player at the final table of one of the WSOP PLO tourneys fold KK in this spot earlier this year, but the big blind is overly aggressive and doesn’t necessarily have to have AA when he 3-bets here. However, when he leads out for $40 on the flop, the only reasonable play for me is to simply call. I don’t want to get all in against a set of aces here and if he doesn’t have AA, then I have him annihilated and might as well let him continue spewing money into the pot. In real time, however, I didn’t think this through and decided to raise to $130 and ended up getting two folds, immediately realizing my mistake.

-As I said, I don’t always play good when I play PLO, so I’ll include my absolute worst hand of the night and one of the worst hands I’ve ever played in live PLO. I limp in early position with J976 single suited, which would be marginal even on the button, but is specifically terrible here as I have two active and aggressive players on my direct left. Fortunately they both limp along, but the big blind punishes everyone by making it $30. Seeing as how I’ve already made a mistake by playing in the first place, it would be smart to just give up the $5 and let this go, knowing I’ll be playing out of position against three players with a bad hand, but… I call? The flop comes K75 giving me a pair, a gut shot, and a backdoor flush draw and the PFR (preflop raiser) leads out for $120. We are both super deep here and I should be in decentb shape against his range, so I call, which would be fine if this were a heads up pot… but it’s not. One of the players behind me goes all in for $390, another short stack goes all in for ~$120, and the PFR folds. So now I’m looking at a pot of ~$900 and it’s $270 for me to call. Considering my hand, this is an easy fold… but I’m not done making huge mistakes yet! I’m not sure what I’m hoping my two opponents have, but I somehow talk myself into thinking I have some sort of reasonable equity here and make an atrocious call. The board bricks out for me and the bigger all in player wins with his 55. Just an all around horrifyingly bad hand by me and I got exactly what I deserved – a hand I should have folded turned into a $400+ loss.

-My final big pot of the night ended up being one of the craziest PLO hands I’ve ever played. I raised to $20 after a limper with As8sKcQc and bet $20 after seeing a flop of K94 with a club and a spade heads up in position. My opponent check-raised me to $75 and since 99 was the only hand I was in terrible shape against, I decided to see a turn with a good amount of back door equity. The turn brought the Ten of clubs and my opponent checked to me. I could see K9 checking this turn, or even a set of 9s, and maybe I should frequently represent the nut straight here, especially since I have a king high flush draw and a couple of gut shots to the nuts. It’s unlikely I will get check-raised very often, so I think betting has plenty of merit, but I decided to take my free card and got a very pleasant Jack of clubs on the river, giving me a King high straight flush. My opponent led out for $90 in what was a $190 pot. I made it $325 and due to some miracle from the poker gods, he decided to reraise me to $525. After going into the tank for a little bit and thinking about his bet sizing, I realized he didn’t even make a legal raise (he raised me $200 after I raised his initial bet $235) and made him put in another $35 before I made it $860 total. At this point, he started berating himself for misreading the situation. He had the A of clubs and the 8 of clubs in his hand and thought that he was blocking the 87 of clubs and Q8 of clubs for the only straight flushes and now realized that KQ of clubs also made a straight flush and that it was the only thing I could possibly have. He was right. I could never have anything else. I would never turn the naked Q of clubs into a bluff here when my opponent had already put $560 in on the river with at least an Ace high flush (he could have 87 of clubs himself) when I can only make it $300 more. It seemed like he wanted some mercy and really took a lot of time to call that last $300 to the point where multiple people at the table were complaining about it. But he did call and I won a sick $1800+ heads up pot.

I ended up finishing the PLO session up $1900 even though I made plenty of mistakes. I thought this blog idea would be fun, but here I am sitting at 3500+ words and a couple hours wasted and thinking maybe this isn’t a great concept. My goal was to spend 10-15 minutes writing about my session and I have far exceeded that. So… enjoy this post! It will probably be the last of its kind!

Posted in poker | Tagged card games, gambling for a living, limit hold em, omaha, poker, pot limit omaha, professional gambling, professional poker, texas hold em | Leave a Comment »

Muckleshoot Summer Classic 2017 – Poker Blog

September 19, 2017

I always look forward to Muckleshoot’s big poker series that happens twice a year, but I have to say my results in that casino have been pretty poor. I’ve cashed the $750 Main Event three times, but I’ve never final tabled an event in this series. My plan is usually to play all the events, but if I whiff the first three events I skip the $500 tournament if I don’t have any points for Player of the Series. I just don’t think it’s very good value for a $500 buy in and I’d rather take the day off and relax before the Main Event so I’m as fresh as I can possibly be for the best tournament Washington state has to offer.

Event #1: $250 No Limit Hold Em Shootout

The first event was the $250 NL Shootout – a tournament I have never cashed. I have probably only been a regular in this series since maybe 2015, so when I say I’ve never cashed it, I’m like 0-4 or 0-5, which sucks, but isn’t too crazy considering my fair share of cashes is 10%. I could win two of my next four tries and be running way above average overall. Small samples! For those that don’t know, a Shootout format plays like a one table tournament. You start with 10 players and play down to 1 winner and there is no balancing amongst other tables. All tables play down to one winner and those winners all cash and advance to the next round, which in this case combines all 17 winners and plays out like a normal tournament the rest of the way.

I was at a very favorable table, but it’s hard to accumulate chips when your good hands don’t win. Before the first break I had lost with 99 twice, TT, and AJ. I stole the blinds with QQ in the first level. I was sitting at 6600 after starting with an 8000 stack and I hadn’t won any notable hands.

I didn’t write specific notes about this hand but I’m going to do my best to remember it because it was an important one. I believe the blinds were 100-200 with a 25 ante and I had AJ and probably made it 450 or 500 and I got one caller. The flop was 222 and I bet 500, which was probably about 40% of the pot. My opponent made it 1500. This is really weird. I have his range capped somewhere around 99, meaning I think he three bets TT+ preflop most of the time. I think he raises smaller pairs some of the time also, but I think it’s pretty clear that his hand is a small-to-medium pair the vast majority of the time here. After betting 500, I have somewhere around 7k left in my stack, so if I jam it would be 5500 more for him to call in a pot that will be about 9500. I don’t think he should be folding in that spot, which is why his flop raise doesn’t make any sense to me. When I have an overpair he just doubles me up over 90% of the time. Not only do I think raising the flop with his hand is a mistake, I also think he might be capable of folding to a jam. I gave some serious thought to stuffing it. When people make plays that don’t make much sense, they are usually capable of compounding their errors. Part of me thought he made this flop raise because he thought/hoped I had unpaired big cards, but if I go all in, I am now telling him I have a big pair and I really thought he might let it go. I wasn’t certain though and it wouldn’t surprise me if he called it off, so I didn’t pull the trigger. Instead, I flatted. There was now about 3400 in the pot and it cost me 1000 to continue. I thought if I called he was very likely to check back the turn so I figured myself for six outs twice, which makes this play borderline okay as I pick up a Jack or an Ace about 24% of the time. Obviously, in order to make this play profitable, I’m going to have to jam if a King or Queen hits as well. This gives me ~14 scare cards, one of which will appear by the river over half the time, and makes this flop peel very reasonable. Unfortunately, the board came out clean for him and he was able to table his 44 for the win. But he did check back the turn and river so I think my flop call is plenty defensible. This was a pretty frustrating hand because I realized that if I had an overpair he was just going to punt his stack to me so often and it felt like such a wasted opportunity.

That hand left me with 17 big blinds, which I 3-bet jammed over an open with AQ shortly afterwards and lost a flip to TT. Good game.

Bonus Event: $200 Limit Omaha 8 or Better

I didn’t keep any notes for this tournament and my first update on Facebook was 4.5 hours in saying I had five bigs with 22 players left and 10 of us cashing. While I can’t recall any notable hands up to this point, my ride from here was pretty wild and included an all-time great bad beat. Limit formats can create some interesting spots that don’t come up in No Limit tournaments. For instance, I was left with less than two big blinds TWICE. In NL, you just get all the chips in and if you lose you’re out; but in limit, especially in a split pot game, you don’t have to get all the chips in and you frequently get portions of the pot back. I tried to get all in on the flop in one hand, but my opponent just flatted my raise and when I picked up no additional equity on the turn, I checked back, and ended up saving my last bet instead of busting because I was “priced in.” So they had me down to less than two big blinds, not once but twice, and I managed to run that up to a 10 big blind stack when this catastrophe happened:

I opened to 12000 at 3000/6000 with A753 plus a suited ace and only the big blind defended. The flop came down a beautiful AQ2 rainbow, giving me top pair, a wheel draw, and a back door nut flush draw. My opponent check-called and then led into me when a 4 hit on the turn. What a dream spot! I had the mortal nuts. I started the hand with 45000 and after raising the turn here, I had managed to get 42,000 of it in the pot holding the nut high and the nut low. My opponent called and then disaster struck: the river was a 3. This is a terrible card because now he’s chopping the pot with me if he has A5, 25, and 45, giving him a wheel he didn’t have before. I wish that’s what he had. What he actually had was 654X, giving him a wheel AND a six high straight and 75% of the pot. I went from scooping a 90K pot to losing half my stack instead. There were 14 players left in the tournament at this point and scooping that hand would have put me second in chips. First place was $3500. Needless to say, that one hurt a little. I ended up folding my big blind and got my last 3 or 4 bigs in from the small blind and I was out of miracles and out of the tournament in 14th place.

It was 1 AM and I had been playing poker since noon with nothing to show for it and I was reeling from that brutal pot. Even though I was already bought in for the next day, I realized I absolutely did not want to come back and play at noon. I sold my seat and took the next day off.

Event #3: $300 No Limit Hold Em

I wrote some scattered notes for this tournament so I’ll do my best to piece it together. I had 20k from 12k starting after the first three levels and I was loving my table. I was controlling the action pretty well and didn’t have any massive confrontations early. Here are some notable hands from the first few levels (they may or may not take place in sequence):

I open AQ and button and big blind call. Flop is A32 all clubs and I have no club. I size a little larger than normal since I’m out of position against one player and my hand is very vulnerable. Only the big blind calls. The turn is a ten that is not a club. My opponent check-calls again. When the dealer is bringing the river I am watching my opponent and not the board so I am quite displeased when I see him reaching for chips and tossing a 3200 bet out. The river is not a club though and pairs the 3, so I am quite perplexed. His bet is pretty polarizing: he either has a flush or a full house or he’s bluffing his missed draws. I don’t know this player very well, but I would guess he’s probably not bluffing often enough here. Still, since I don’t have any great reads at this point, folding is pretty weak and I pay off his king high flush.

I completed 76 from the small blind and saw a flop of T76 in a 3-way pot. My hand is pretty vulnerable to free cards here but the pot is small, so I decide to check and the limper bets 600. I make it 1650 to go and he snap calls. The turn is an Ace and I lead 2000 and he folds, exposing a ten.

This hand takes place in level six and by this point the action at my table has slowed substantially and I’ve gone card dead, so I get frisky – hoping to exploit the current trend of tight play and my nitty image – by opening Q8hh from UTG+1 and make it 900 at 200/400 with a 50 ante. Only the big blind defends and then he leads out a hefty 1600 on the 984 flop with two spades and one heart. This is the same player that check-called twice with the nut flush earlier, so I think it’s reasonable to rule out very strong holdings from his range. I don’t love calling this bet size but considering I have a pair and a back door flush draw, as well as knowing his history of slow playing strong hands, I have to continue. The turn is a 5 and he bets 3200. The only draw that completed was 76 and I think it’s very unlikely that he will fire another bullet with 9x on the river, so my plan is to call again and probably fold the river if I don’t improve and he bombs it. The river was a 6 and now he checked it to me. I was never considering the possibility of turning my hand into a bluff, but now the opportunity was presenting itself. He had a little less than 6000 behind and there was around 12k in the middle. I obviously have a hand with plenty of showdown value, so checking back is reasonable, but what I really want to do is fold out his 9x hands. He’s never calling with his missed draws and I already ruled out his stronger holdings (sets), but I think he can fold his 9x and possibly his two pair hands here. Granted, I don’t have many 7x hands in my range (97s, 87s, 76s, A7ss, 77) and I probably wouldn’t try bluffing here against a better player, but I think he’s scared of the four card straight more than he’s thinking about my actual range and I only need this bluff to get through 33% of the time to break even, so it’s a pretty easy shove for me. He folds.

Two rounds later, I’m sitting on about a 22 big blind stack when it folds to me on the button and I look down at AJ. The small blind has me covered and the big blind has about 19 bigs to start the hand. I believe the player in the big blind is a thinking player and will realize I’m opening wide on the button and possibly try to exploit that by playing back at me with less than premium holdings. The small blind appears to be straight forward. Blinds are 400/800 and my plan is to open to 2000 and fold to a 3-bet from the small blind but get it in against the big blind. The small blind folds and the big blind does raise me, to about 7500, which is odd considering she has a reshove stack. Still, I didn’t waste time thinking about her sizing and got it in quickly and she snap-called with AK and I found myself crippled after the hand. I’ve been thinking about this one, wondering if she’s really ever 3-betting me light. I think it’s pretty standard to get it in with the AJ here, but I might be able to make exploitive folds against this player. While I’m sure she knows I’m capable of raising light on the button here, I’m not convinced she’s willing to exploit me by jamming hands like A8 or 33. I’m okay with the play, but I may be overestimating her capabilities here.

I doubled my remaining three bigs by winning with 44 vs KQ and then my 8 bigs jam with AQ lost to AK even though I turned plenty of equity with the nut flush draw and chop outs to a straight.

Event #5: $750 No Limit Hold Em Main Event

I kept some solid notes for this one and I actually felt like I played very well and had a strong read on all my opponents, but things did not go my way at all.

With the blinds at 25/50, there was a limper or two and the player to my right made it 250 to go. I had pocket tens. This is a hand that I like to flat this early in the tournament, but I do need to 3-bet it some of the time in order to keep my reraising range balanced. I think this is actually a good spot to make the raise, but in this instance I elected to call and six players ended up seeing the flop. On an 873 rainbow flop it checks to the preflop raiser who bets 500 into a 1500 pot, which is actually a pretty weak bet in this situation. With four players left to speak behind me though, I think calling and seeing what happens is best here. Five of us end up seeing the turn, which is a Jack. Now the preflop aggressor bets 1700 into a pot of 4000. I could have the best hand here and calling is probably standard, but since no one showed any real strength on the flop and because I had two tens in my hand, I decided to represent the T9 straight and made it 4100 to go. It’s really hard for anyone else to have the nuts and I thought there was some chance that my opponent would fold an overpair and if he called, I could make some decisions on the river, whether I wanted to continue the bluff or just show my hand down. While the other four players did fold, I was rather shocked when the aggressor reraised me to 9500. That is something I did not expect. Holding two blockers to the nuts, I felt pretty confident that if he did continue, it would be with a call. Instead, I ended up having to fold and he made a classy comment of “nice try.”

With the blinds still at 25/50 the cutoff opened to 250 and I defended 99 from the big blind. This is another potential 3-bet hand, but facing this raise size (which is huge), I went with a call. The flop was J43 and my opponent quickly checked behind. I lead out 350 when I turned a set and he called. The river was an 8 and I had already established my opponent as a calling station so even though it seemed like he was on the weaker side of his range, I decided to bet 1500 into 1225, as I thought he wouldn’t fold any pair and could very well call me with ace high. He did not oblige – he made it 3500 instead. This is not a fist pump and call situation. In fact, it very well might be a fold. Still, there is some chance he rivered a set of 8s and it’s not like I have so much history with this player that I can reliably start folding sets to him. So after giving it the “wow, how unlucky am I” head nod for about 10 seconds, I realized I’m never folding this hand and should stop wasting everyone’s time. Plus, the longer I wait, the more of an asshole I’m going to look like when my set of 9s are good. So I called and lost to his QT straight.

For some reason, our table was really limpy at the 75/150 level and I found myself limping along with 77 in a 5-way pot and getting the 764 with two spades flop. Everyone checked to me and I bet 500 into 750 and only one of the blinds called. The turn gave me quads and I bet 850 into 1750 and was called again. The river was a Ten and my opponent checked again. As I was thinking about my bet sizing with 3450 in the pot, I saw that she was shuffling her cards around in front of her and generally looking like she was going to fold. But this isn’t a player that I think is unaware of her body language, so I actually thought this meant she was trying to induce a bluff and was very likely to call, so I sized up at 2200 and she didn’t take very long to put the call out.

In the very next hand, I was able to limp along again with 66 and flopped another set on a very similar board, this time the 765 with two clubs. One of the limpers led out 350 into 750 and was called by another limper. I elected to make it 1450 on such a draw heavy board and both those players called. The turn was an 8 and I was pretty sad to see a 16.5k shove and a 21k shove before the action got to me. Obviously, I no longer have the best hand, but we were still in the re-entry period and it’s worth taking some time to try and figure out the math of the situation. I had around 20k behind and it was going to cost me all of it to see the river. So with 41.6K in the pot, I had to call 20K and I had ~10 outs once, or roughly 20%. So I had to put up 33% of the pot and I’m only going to get there 20% of the time. Mathematically, it’s a clear fold, especially since I still had a starting stack behind. I think if this was a smaller tournament still in the re-entry period, I would gamble with the worst of it for a chance to have a 60k stack in level 3, but I didn’t love the idea of busting out 80% of the time and paying another $750 for the stack I had sitting in front of me already. So I folded and the A9cc missed its freeroll versus the 96hh when a Jack hit the river.

My next critical hand at the 75/150 level saw someone opening from early position to 350 and I picked up AA and made it 1125. She called that raise and we saw a flop of QJ8 with two clubs and one spade. This is a poor flop for my hand – especially since both my aces were red – and it smacks her calling range pretty hard, so when she checked to me, I decided to check it back and let a card roll off. The turn was an ugly 9 of spades and she led out 1500. I’m losing to a lot of hands. The better question is, what hands would she raise/call with preflop that I’m still beating? AK, KQ, AQ? Maybe AJ suited? With two aces in my hand, I’m blocking the hands I want her to have pretty hard, plus AQ and KQ aren’t really hands it makes sense for her to bet here. At this point, it’s a pretty trivial fold, but it feels a bit bizarre to put zero chips in the pot after the flop heads up holding AA in position. I think it’s reasonable to bet the flop here, but I hate it if I get check-raised and even if she just calls there are going to be a lot of bad run outs for my hand. This is not the kind of board I want to play a big pot with. I think I get the best value out of my hand by checking back the flop and betting good turn cards when checked to or calling if she bets and then deciding on the river. She later told me she had TT and while I’m not saying that’s the gospel truth it’s certainly a hand that makes sense.

Here’s another hand I thought I botched. With the blinds at 100/200 and a 25 ante two players with wide ranges limped in from mid and late position and I made it 700 to go with K8 of clubs on the button. I think this play picks up the pot a decent portion of the time preflop and when I get called, I’m positive they fold often enough on the flop to make this play profitable – and that’s ignoring the times I actually make the best hand. They did both call, as did one of the blinds – not my dream scenario – and we ended up seeing a flop of AK2 rainbow, but with the 2 of clubs. Everyone checked to me and while this is a great hand to check behind, I think betting is perfectly reasonable. I’m not really worried about either of the limpers having an ace when they decide to call from later positions, so I frequently have the best hand and I should just bet it for value and try to win this pot right now. A check would make a lot more sense in a heads up pot, but I went with a check here. The turn card brought the 3 of spades, which opened up a spade draw and it checked to the player to my right and he bet 1000. Easy call for me and everyone else folded. The river was a ten and now he bet 2200 into what was about a 5100 pot. I actually hated this bet sizing because it screamed value. I had seen this player bluff the river and get picked off a couple of times now and I was really picking up the vibe that he had a hand this time. I even said “I don’t think you’re bluffing this time” aloud, but I was having a hard time coming up with hands that made sense because I didn’t think he had an ace and I didn’t think it made much sense to bet any other one pair hand, so his value range is super narrow – sets and straights, that’s about it. I went against my instincts and called and he showed me a hand that made perfect sense: the QJ of spades. Going back to my flop line on this hand, I’m not saying I made a mistake because of how the hand turned out, but in retrospect, I think a bet is my best play there. With about 2800 in the pot and a good flop for my range that isn’t susceptible to many draws, I would have sized small, probably 1200 at most, and the player with the QJ of spades would have almost certainly peeled the turn and I would have lost anyway… but still, I like to make the right plays, regardless of results.

At this point, I had lost with pocket aces and two sets and was having a really hard time accumulating any chips. I seemed to be losing most of the pots I played and I had ran my 20k starting stack down to 6k, so when the under the gun player made it 800 with the blinds at 150-300 and I looked down at AK in the big blind, I had a very easy reshove and she snapped with JJ and I lost the race.

I’m not going to lie, it’s pretty frustrating how I haven’t been able to have any breakthrough success at Muckleshoot. The data on my phone goes back to August of 2014 and I’ve lost more money at Muckleshoot than ANY casino and it’s one of only two casinos that I’ve played 70+ hours at during that span and have not won money overall. Granted, I don’t grind cash games there (53 hours in 3+ years) but I’ve played 30 tournaments and only cashed 4 of them (13.3%) and I have zero final tables. It’s still a pretty small sample size and I’m confident things will turn around eventually – especially if I increase my volume – but I have to say I’m tired of this stigma I have with Muckleshoot Casino!

Posted in poker | Tagged limit omaha 8, muckleshoot, muckleshoot summer classic, no limit hold em, no limit hold em tournaments, playing poker for a living, poker, Poker Tournaments, professional poker | Leave a Comment »

I Am A Professional Poker Player Now

October 9, 2016

Goodness that sounds ridiculous, but it’s the truth. October 4th was my last day of work and the plan going forward is to make my living now entirely from playing poker. It’s a good plan. I have a huge sample size of success and – thanks to WSOP 2016 – a large enough bankroll cushion to make my dream of playing poker full time a reality with very little fear of ever going bust at the stakes I want to play.

People have been wishing me good luck and saying they hope it works out for me the last couple of weeks now and it really makes you pause. Wait. Could I possibly turn into a losing player overnight just because I quit my day job? “Good luck.” It seems like a weird thing to say to someone making a significant life change. It’s almost offensive. Would people say that if we announced we were having a baby? The phrase has an implication that not only is failure a very realistic possibility, but that one will probably have to get lucky to avoid it. Now, I’m not suggesting there’s no luck involved in poker. Of course there is. But I put in enough volume that my skill edge comes to fruition quite frequently by the end of a single session and almost always by the end of a single month. I tend to have two or three losing months a year and I haven’t had a losing year since I started tracking 100% of my gambling activities at the start of 2011. It’s not like I’m someone that suddenly wants to open a restaurant with no prior experience. I’ve been playing poker at a high rate of success for over half a decade now. I can’t imagine that’s going to stop now. My bankroll is large enough that I can withstand substantial downswings at the highest limit I’ll play and still be able to pay our bills. I realize people are genuinely wishing me well most of the time when they say “good luck,” I just find it kind of amusing.

Still, it is kind of scary. I’m not really worried about the bottom falling out, but I would be lying if I said there were absolutely no nerves involved with my situation. I want to travel around the United States and play poker tournaments and those expenses will add up, as will the buy ins if I go through a cold stretch. Traveling and whiffing events is an easy way to turn a good month of cash games into a break even one and a decent month into an unprofitable one. Even though my tournament results have dramatically improved – to the point of surreal – in the past year or so, I know how easy it is to go long stretches without significant cashes. Also, even though I have proven beyond a doubt that I am a winning player at the $8/$16 level and the amount of money I could make in that game is livable, I have no intentions of being a professional $8/$16 limit hold em player. My goals are much larger. Currently, I want to play $20/$40 regularly and, quite frankly, I don’t have the data that confirms I can beat that level long term. I have about 90 hours under my belt and I’ve managed a 0.77 BB/HR win rate – which is fine – but that kind of sample size might as well be crumpled up and thrown in the trash; that’s how worthless that information is. What isn’t worthless is my success at the lower levels, my overall card sense, and the fact that my game never plateaus – I’m always looking for ways to improve and adapt. So while there’s no mathematical proof that I can make a living at the $20/$40 level, I feel like I will not only beat the game in the long run, but that I will also make the necessary adjustments to do extremely well. The biggest downswing I’ve taken at the $8/$16 level is -375 big bets (or -$6000) so one has to accept that a similar downswing will likely happen at the $20/$40 level. -375 big bets at $20/$40 is -$15,000! I can sustain that kind of bad luck financially, but man, that’s an intimidating number. Better get used to it though – it WILL happen. Hopefully later rather than sooner.

Another thing that’s come up in the past week is people wanting to talk to me about my career choice… at the poker table. And I absolutely loathe talking about poker at the poker table. I never talk about hands that just happened. I never talk about my results. When people ask me about Vegas I just say “I did okay” and try to deflect the conversation. When they ask me what I’m going to do since I quit my job at the casino, I say “I’ll figure something out.” I honestly have no interest in spouting off my successes at a table full of recreational players. Most people don’t want to hear someone talk about their poker resume and I’ve always found it kind of douchey when someone else does it… so I don’t want to be that guy. I don’t mind talking about poker one on one, but something about a crowd just makes me want to clam up. I’m not trying to be rude, I just think it’s the wrong time and place for it.

It’s an odd thing being a writer sometimes. Here I am sharing my poker life in detail, but I have little interest in actually talking about this stuff in person… partially because I’m an introvert, but mainly because the topic usually comes up in casinos… at poker tables. Ugh.

I had a whole bunch of stuff I wanted to say about tipping dealers – and I’ve written it out multiple times and deleted it – but it feels uncomfortable and kind of unnecessary. Poker is my only source of income now. I will be tipping a $1 a pot the vast majority of the time. It’s nothing personal. I tip over $10,000 a year. You guys are going to be okay.

Finally, the fact that I no longer will be working a day job 30 hours a week – which really wiped me out for three entire days – will allow me a lot of extra time to make blog posts. I will actually have real days off now and I’ll be able watch more movies and post reviews immediately and regularly. Also, thanks to Apple Music, I have immediate access to all the new music and I plan to keep an up-to-date playlist with miniature reviews and more in depth reviews of select albums once every few weeks or so. Please feel free to click the follow button below because I will be posting much more frequently now!

As far as poker goes, I haven’t really got into the groove of playing full time because we are working on our new house. I only played 20 hours in my first week. We should be done ripping up floors tonight, so this week should give me a taste of what’s to come. I’ll likely be putting in two $20/$40 sessions, two $8/$16 sessions and a $3/$5 spread session. I will be leaving on a road trip in about a week and a half that will have stops in L.A. and Vegas before landing in Reno for the full schedule of Jason Sommerville’s exciting Run It Up Series at the Peppermill Casino. The buy ins there will be relatively small and there are a lot of mix game events, which actually give me a bigger edge than usual. Either way, it should be a blast!

Posted in poker | Tagged gambling for a living, jason sommerville, limit hold em, poker, professional gambling, professional poker, run it up, run it up reno | Leave a Comment »

2016 Poker Update – January through April

May 6, 2016

I’ve been struggling to update my blog regularly lately, so a week into May I’m somehow just now writing my first blog about my 2016 poker results.

Well, my year started off amazing… like so good, it was feeling surreal. For the first three months of the year, I was trending at $33.53 an hour in all forms of poker and was well on my way to having what could be my best year ever. By far. In fact, March 2016 was the best month of gambling I’ve had since June of 2005, when I turned a $150 deposit on Poker Room into a $25,000 bankroll. Some of you might not know how that story ended. Less than a year later, I had -$900 in my bank account, I was unemployed and homeless – I had to move back in with my parents – and I was starting to lose my battle with alcoholism. It would take half a decade before I returned to sustained success at the poker table. So even though I had an amazing run in the summer of 2005, it was merely a run of good variance that I rode all the way up to the $20/$40 level on Party Poker. Back then, I didn’t understand anything about variance or bankroll management, so it’s no surprise I eventually went broke – and I would do so again many times over the next several years. So when I think about my poker career, I really consider 2011 the start of it… and May 2016 was my best month since then.

And then April 2016 was my worst month. I posted zero wins in my first eight $8/$16 sessions and I wasn’t just posting losses, I was getting trounced. During that stretch, a -$406 session was my second best result. At my worst, I was down over 250 big bets at the $8/$16 level for the month. I managed to shave about half of that off before it was all said and done, so while things could have been worse, it still resulted in my worst month since January 2011.

Here’s a look at how my goals are shaping up:

Play 1250 hours

Through the end of April, I had played 573 hours of poker which puts me on a pace that would exceed 1700 hours of live play. That’s even more hours than I played last year and honestly, a week into May, I’m exhausted. I’m averaging over 140 hours a month of poker play – and I work 30 hours a week at my day job. That’s over 260 hours of work a month so far. Needless to say, it’s drastically decreased my quality of life away from the casino. I’ve posted very little on my blog; I’ve seen three movies in theaters this year and I still haven’t seen a number of the more important films from 2015 (The Big Short, Spotlight, The Martian, Creed); and, most importantly, I can feel the strain it’s putting on my marriage. Lastly, I just never relax and taking some time off to just do nothing is probably an underrated factor in my long term success. Certainly it would behoove me to spend more time working on my game away from the tables that I don’t learning curve doesn’t become stagnant. So, going forward, I will be taking more time off poker so I can maintain a semblance of balance in my life.

Play 150 hours of Omaha 8 or better and maintain a 1 BB/HR win rate

So far I’ve played 10 sessions of Omaha, totaling 33 hours, for a net loss of -$6 (and actually I got killed in a $10/$20 session on May 4th that I’m not including those results). Of course, these results are basically worthless, but one thing I can make note of is that my average session has been less than 4 hours each. In fact, I’ve only played one session that reached 8 hours in length. Of course, part of the issue is that five of these sessions have either been warm ups for other games or just killing time. It’s probably unlikely that I will achieve my goal of playing 150 hours of O8, especially since the game at Clearwater is a good 90 minutes away now and the game in Renton is on Mondays when I work my day job. So the majority of my O8 play will probably happen when I take poker trips to play big tournament series like the WSOP next month.

Play 100 hours of no limit cash games

Eek. Through 4 months I’ve played one NL cash game session for just over one hour and a profit of $39. With Super Sundays at Muckleshoot falling on Sundays when I work, I just haven’t made getting into NL cash games a priority. It’s pretty difficult to justify making the trip to Auburn when I am mashing an $8/$16 game ten minutes away from home.

Do the Advanced Poker Training weekly challenge every week and spend at least an hour a week playing hands on APT

I’ve done a number of the APT weekly challenges, but certainly not all of them. Maybe not even half. I did simulate a bunch of MTTs leading up to the Muckleshoot Spring Classic with settings mirrored to match those of the events I planned to play. While there are aspects of the software that I find laughable at times, a one time payment for a lifetime membership has already been justified. Still, I could spend more time on the website improving my game away from the table.

Play 3-5 WSOP events

I’m just now starting to sell action for the 2016 WSOP. I’ve already booked a flight to Vegas on May 31st to play the $565 NLHE Casino Employee Event the next day, the $565 NLHE Colossus later that week, and the $1500 H.O.R.S.E. on June 7th. My wife and I are also both playing the $1500 Omaha 8 or Better event in mid June. Finally, I am planning to play the $1500 NLHE Monster Stack the last week of June, but I have not booked a flight for that trip yet. I’m looking to sell up to 60% of my action for the $1500 events and I’ve already capped my sold pieces at 30% for the smaller events. Let’s get it!

Cash a WSOP event

I actually accomplished this goal already, unexpectedly. In late February I made the trip to Vegas to play the WSOP Circuit stop at Ballys and while I didn’t cash either of the events I went to play – the $250 H.O.R.S.E. and the $330 Monster Stack – I final tabled a $330 NLHE event that I only decided to play last minute. I came back on the second day of the tournament with a short stack and I decided to take a different approach to short stack tournament poker and it paid off handsomely. Rather than getting my chips in the middle every time I had a +EV push, I passed up on some marginally profitable jamming situations with the intentions of hanging around and laddering up. I’m not going to debate the merits of this approach here, but so far I am happy with the results it has produced. I ended up final tabling with quite a few notable WSOPc grinders, including current Card Player 2016 Player Of The Year front-runner Ari Engel. I eventually found a super sexy spot where I was able to jam 17 bigs over an open and a flat with AK, but wound up losing the race when the flatter found a call with 77. But I managed to score my first WSOP cash, a final table no less, and binked my second $5000 score in less than five months. Still, while a WSOPc cash will show up on my WSOP resume, it will even more legitimate when I get it done at the Rio this summer. With 5 events lined up, I like my chances, especially with how well I’ve been doing in tournaments lately.

Read through Jared Tendler’s The Mental Game Of Poker vols. 1 & 2 and do ALL the work

Here’s where my poker game has suffered the most. When you’re running pure and nothing feels challenging, it’s easy to get complacent about the mental game. I’ve literally spent next to zero time working on my mental game away from the table in 2016. I was crushing it, so why bother? So when things finally got brutal in April, I was ill prepared. I said I was done for the month after multiple sessions… but then the mental game work I’ve put in the past few years kicked in and I told myself not to be a wimp and get in there and play. And I wound up cutting my losses for the month nearly in half. So while my mental game probably hasn’t progressed much this year, it’s refreshing to know that I’ve built up enough skill that I can battle through the darkest of times and that the accumulated tilt doesn’t last nearly as long as it used to. The extra time off going forward will open up more time for me to continue developing my mental muscle.

Maintain a 1.25 BB/HR win rate at the $8-$16 level

For the first three months of the year, I was running pure, trending at 1.74 BB/HR over 315 hours of play through the end of March. Looking at a graph of my results, I had very little negative variance, with my biggest valleys being about -60 big bets and my plateaus lasting maybe a week before I’d go back to crushing. As noted earlier, I finally experienced some extended negative variance in April and my win rate sat at exactly 1 BB/HR entering May 2016.

Reach a $30,000 bankroll

Here’s where things get really disappointing. Despite being on pace for what would be my best year of poker ever, my bankroll is actually less now than when the year started. There are a number of reasons why this has happened – some of which I won’t go into detail here – but it’s incredibly frustrating. Still, even with basically no forward progress, I think I will manage this goal before the year is over.

That sums up my progress towards my 2016 poker goals. It’s bittersweet. My results have been borderline fantastic – on top of my WSOPc final table, I also made multiple deep runs in the Muckleshoot Spring Classic (two cashes) and another deep run in the Spring Round Up in Pendleton, Oregon. All told, I’ve cashed 5 of 11 major events I’ve played so far this year for an ROI of 83% and I’ve been a hand or two going the other way from cashing for tens of thousands of dollars. So the results have been good, but I’ve been running myself into the ground and I haven’t put enough time into my game away from the tables as I should. So here’s to hoping for a more relaxing, but even more profitable summer in the upcoming months!

Posted in poker | Tagged gambling, gambling for a living, poker, poker strategy, poker tournament strategy, Poker Tournaments, professional poker | Leave a Comment »

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