Saturday, I visited with family, and by time all was said and done, I had no energy to play poker. So, I didn't.
Today, I played about 3 hours total and got in 614 hands.
+$127.95 --- 41.68 BB/100
I didn't really hit my hand volume, but I'm fine with that if I'm going to make 5 buy-ins in a short session. I ran pretty much right at $EV (123.66), so it's not like I won just because I ran hot.
I have really been getting into sitting HU at a FR table and playing the person heads-up for as long as possible, or until someone else shows up. When another player shows up, I don't leave if they are a fish, but playing short handed with a fish and a reg seems really +EV. Most regs just don't adjust well to short handed situations.
Also, it's really funny how fish seem to be magnets for other fish, and soon the table is full of me, another reg or two and 6-7 fish. Obviously, this is a good situation if at or above EV.
this was a fun hand from the session:
http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#36352081968
UhemPlayer ($40.55)
gremlyn557 ($25.45)
gremlyn557 posts (SB) $0.10
UhemPlayer posts (BB) $0.25
Dealt to UhemPlayer 4d 3d
gremlyn557 raises to $0.75
UhemPlayer calls $0.50
FLOP ($1.50) Ad 7d Jd
UhemPlayer bets $1.25
gremlyn557 calls $1.25
TURN ($4) Ad 7d Jd 2h
UhemPlayer bets $3.25
gremlyn557 calls $3.25
RIVER ($10.50) Ad 7d Jd 2h 6c
UhemPlayer bets $7
gremlyn557 calls $7
UhemPlayer shows 4d 3d
(Pre 40%, Flop 96.2%, Turn 100.0%)
gremlyn557 shows Qc Ah
(Pre 60%, Flop 3.8%, Turn 0.0%)
UhemPlayer wins $23.50
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Friday, December 4, 2009
December Goals
December Goals:
Play 40K hands.
run somewhere around 15/12 and 5BB/100
Move to 50nl.
I wasn't able to play the first 2 days of December because of work at Gov't TV going super late.
Although, during those days, I was able to do a good deal of reading and review, and that's important.
I talked to Greg from 2p2 and he gave me a couple of "test" questions that had to do with value betting and iso raises. It seems like I failed at the time, but I feel like a lot of that was because I was unable to effectively communicate what I was trying to say. I kept over thinking the situations.
The thing though, is that even though I "failed" the questions, the discussion got me thinking about some of the spots where I can extract just a little bit more value here and there. The great thing about poker is that a few extra big blinds every couple of orbits can dramatically increase one's win-rate, that's why Blind Stealing is such an important aspect in a winning players game.
During my session on 12-3 I was actively talking out my decisions out loud so that I could begin to start communicating my thought process to myself and others more easily when I talk about hands later.
December 3rd, 653 hands.
Play 40K hands.
run somewhere around 15/12 and 5BB/100
Move to 50nl.
I wasn't able to play the first 2 days of December because of work at Gov't TV going super late.
Although, during those days, I was able to do a good deal of reading and review, and that's important.
I talked to Greg from 2p2 and he gave me a couple of "test" questions that had to do with value betting and iso raises. It seems like I failed at the time, but I feel like a lot of that was because I was unable to effectively communicate what I was trying to say. I kept over thinking the situations.
The thing though, is that even though I "failed" the questions, the discussion got me thinking about some of the spots where I can extract just a little bit more value here and there. The great thing about poker is that a few extra big blinds every couple of orbits can dramatically increase one's win-rate, that's why Blind Stealing is such an important aspect in a winning players game.
During my session on 12-3 I was actively talking out my decisions out loud so that I could begin to start communicating my thought process to myself and others more easily when I talk about hands later.
December 3rd, 653 hands.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
the Switch to Cash Games
so, for a long time I didn't play any poker because I was unable to deposit money online.
sometime in the summer of '08, I decided to play some freerolls on pokerstars. I joined a site called railbirds and they offered all kinds of daily freerolls as long as you were an active member.
Railbirds is a site that wants to be like 2+2 but I found that the members that contributed frequently there were either purposefully giving bad advice, or simply did not have much knowledge about higher levels of poker theory. I'm sure that site has some very good players who are members, but maybe the draw of the freerolls brought a "lower quality" player. I know that I certainly wasn't someone who was at a high level at that time, so I don't want to make it seem like I knew more than them at the time, but I did know that something was lacking in the strategy department.
In November of '08, I had a few real dollars in my Stars account because of the freerolls. It was at this time that I started lurking in the micro cash game forum on 2p2 and saw that people were making at decent amount of money regularly at limits of like 25nl. Thinking that I was better than I was, I figured it would take no time at all to move up to those levels and above, so I sat down at the 2nl tables and started grinding.
Looking back at some of the posts I made at the time, I can't believe how much I didn't know. But, I did win slowly but surely enough to move up to 5nl. I had a lot of patience at the time, I guess.
Sometime during 5nl, I finally admitted to myself that I really did suck at cash game play. I started reading every single piece of strategy advice I could find. Stuff by Pokey was killer, of course, but there was a lot of good stuff out there. The mods at the micro forum instituted a Concept of the Week Series... COTW for short. This was about the time that I realized how many nuances there were to cash game poker. Every week, some reg would make a post about a certain subject, such as "How to play AK" "3-bettting" 'Table Selecting" and others.
For a full list... concept-week-schedule
I began to look forward to these and would read them at least once every other day during the week. I would also go back and re-read about concepts that I hadn't fully grasped.
My biggest break-through came when I met a friend through a sweat session. (a sweat session is an online meeting where someone watches you play while seeing your hole cards and then comments about what he/she thinks you did correctly or incorrectly during the session... they are not there to tell you what to do while you're playing, for what it's worth).
Anyways, through that session, my friend told me that I needed to stop thinking that everyone was always "messing" with me. I would often think that every raise was a bluff and that I needed to shove all-in against every perceived bluff situation.
At this moment, about a year after the beginning of my cash game journey, I am firmly a "25nl Reg." I play consistent, solid poker at 25nl and I am a 2.7BB/100 winner over the 55k hands I've played there. This month, November of 2009, I played 15k hands and am finally running over 5BB/100. My volume isn't exactly where I want it to be, but I had about 10 days this month were I did not play at all.
Also, I did get some coaching from Mpeth and SplitSuit of 2p2 and it helped greatly. If you ever are looking for a good coach, both of these guys do a great leak finder service that will help you re-tool your game.
splitsuit.com/leakfinder
I am currently rolled for 50nl and sometime in the next week or two I will be taking shots and looking to move up to the next level of play.
sometime in the summer of '08, I decided to play some freerolls on pokerstars. I joined a site called railbirds and they offered all kinds of daily freerolls as long as you were an active member.
Railbirds is a site that wants to be like 2+2 but I found that the members that contributed frequently there were either purposefully giving bad advice, or simply did not have much knowledge about higher levels of poker theory. I'm sure that site has some very good players who are members, but maybe the draw of the freerolls brought a "lower quality" player. I know that I certainly wasn't someone who was at a high level at that time, so I don't want to make it seem like I knew more than them at the time, but I did know that something was lacking in the strategy department.
In November of '08, I had a few real dollars in my Stars account because of the freerolls. It was at this time that I started lurking in the micro cash game forum on 2p2 and saw that people were making at decent amount of money regularly at limits of like 25nl. Thinking that I was better than I was, I figured it would take no time at all to move up to those levels and above, so I sat down at the 2nl tables and started grinding.
Looking back at some of the posts I made at the time, I can't believe how much I didn't know. But, I did win slowly but surely enough to move up to 5nl. I had a lot of patience at the time, I guess.
Sometime during 5nl, I finally admitted to myself that I really did suck at cash game play. I started reading every single piece of strategy advice I could find. Stuff by Pokey was killer, of course, but there was a lot of good stuff out there. The mods at the micro forum instituted a Concept of the Week Series... COTW for short. This was about the time that I realized how many nuances there were to cash game poker. Every week, some reg would make a post about a certain subject, such as "How to play AK" "3-bettting" 'Table Selecting" and others.
For a full list... concept-week-schedule
I began to look forward to these and would read them at least once every other day during the week. I would also go back and re-read about concepts that I hadn't fully grasped.
My biggest break-through came when I met a friend through a sweat session. (a sweat session is an online meeting where someone watches you play while seeing your hole cards and then comments about what he/she thinks you did correctly or incorrectly during the session... they are not there to tell you what to do while you're playing, for what it's worth).
Anyways, through that session, my friend told me that I needed to stop thinking that everyone was always "messing" with me. I would often think that every raise was a bluff and that I needed to shove all-in against every perceived bluff situation.
At this moment, about a year after the beginning of my cash game journey, I am firmly a "25nl Reg." I play consistent, solid poker at 25nl and I am a 2.7BB/100 winner over the 55k hands I've played there. This month, November of 2009, I played 15k hands and am finally running over 5BB/100. My volume isn't exactly where I want it to be, but I had about 10 days this month were I did not play at all.
Also, I did get some coaching from Mpeth and SplitSuit of 2p2 and it helped greatly. If you ever are looking for a good coach, both of these guys do a great leak finder service that will help you re-tool your game.
splitsuit.com/leakfinder
I am currently rolled for 50nl and sometime in the next week or two I will be taking shots and looking to move up to the next level of play.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Why another poker blog?
First off, I'll say that these poker blogs that you see out there in cyber land are mostly for the person posting and those reading or following along are secondary. I don't mean that in a negative way, but there is a level of narcissism involved in something like this.
That said, perhaps there is a level of inspiration or some kind of motivation that can be passed along because of the experiences with my journey.
Poker has been a long road so far for me. It looks like my first deposit for "Real Money" play online was in September of 2005 for $100. Prior to that I played in a few home games and had various experiences with poker here and there while growing up, but there was never a time where I was realized that poker was more than a gambling game of luck.
I actually got interested in the strategy of poker because of the card game Hearts. I was fairly good at counting cards in hearts and being able to outplay them because I knew what cards they had available to play. Something clicked, and I realized that if I could do that in poker, it would be easier to beat opponents. Sure, hand reading is a basic foundation of poker, but I wasn't sure how to go about it. In hearts you begin the hand with 13 exposed cards and the information increases every time someone lays down a card, but it's not that easy in poker.
I read a few books and started to really get into researching the different strategies involved with poker. Like many people of the era that followed Moneymaker's win at the World Series of Poker, I thought that I should be playing for the "big" money by focusing on multi-table tournaments (MTT's) and 1 table sit-and-goes (SNG). One thing that I didn't realize at the time about MTT's was the amount of luck needed to get deep enough into a tournament to make a decent sized cash in comparison to your buy in. I had enough good results with minimum cashes to sustain my initial investment, and at the time, I was pretty happy that I could have this little hobby where I have the chance to make some extra money when all was said and done.
Like I said, I also played SNG's and had much better results with them, but I had absolutely no concept of bankroll management. I played $5 SNGs and looking over my history, I cashed out a couple times in that first six months. That means I was playing with less than 20 buy ins, which is probably marginal, but I was playing 1 SNG at a time and taking it very slow. The biggest issue with this is that I never progressed past the $5 SNG's, thus destroying my chance to make any "real" money.
My biggest cash at the time was at a point where I had about $70 left in my account. I was a freelance video editor in NYC, but there was a serious lull in the jobs that were out there, and after 3 months of no steady work, I was pretty broke. I remember it was a Saturday morning and rent was due the following Wednesday or Thursday. I decided that there wasn't much I could do until Monday, so why not play in this satellite tournament. I hadn't played in many prior to this because it didn't pay you cash, it paid you in an entry into a bigger event. Long story short, I won that satellite and got into the $50 Sunday tournament on Titan Poker where I took 4th place out of about 200 entrants.
4th place payed $750 dollars, and my rent was $725... I had the funds transferred to Neteller (the good 'ol days) and then to my bank account and payed my rent that month on time.
That was a great feeling at the time and a big financial relief, but I knew that there was a better way to make serious money in poker. Unfortunately, I was completely under-rolled and vastly mistaken about my skills as a poker player and I continued to muddle around with SNG's for a long time. There was also a year or so, where Neteller collapsed as a viable option for online poker in the U.S. and I was basically unable to play online for money. I will say that I was fortunate enough to remove my money from Neteller just before the huge debacle in December of '06 that locked up a lot of folks money for a long time. I had about $400 at Full Tilt and had taken it out for X-mas presents and such and thought I'd just reload $500 or so in a couple months time.
I'm gonna have to do a little research about my timeline, but off the top of my head, I don't think I got back into playing poker for money online until about September of '08, about a year and a half after withdrawing.
That is pretty much my beginning story of playing MTT's and SNG's so that I could be the next "Moneymaker."
These days I'm playing primarily Full Ring Cash Games, which I discovered about December of '08. I'll speak to that ongoing experience in my next post, but it's vastly more interesting than my n00b-ish beginnings.
That said, perhaps there is a level of inspiration or some kind of motivation that can be passed along because of the experiences with my journey.
Poker has been a long road so far for me. It looks like my first deposit for "Real Money" play online was in September of 2005 for $100. Prior to that I played in a few home games and had various experiences with poker here and there while growing up, but there was never a time where I was realized that poker was more than a gambling game of luck.
I actually got interested in the strategy of poker because of the card game Hearts. I was fairly good at counting cards in hearts and being able to outplay them because I knew what cards they had available to play. Something clicked, and I realized that if I could do that in poker, it would be easier to beat opponents. Sure, hand reading is a basic foundation of poker, but I wasn't sure how to go about it. In hearts you begin the hand with 13 exposed cards and the information increases every time someone lays down a card, but it's not that easy in poker.
I read a few books and started to really get into researching the different strategies involved with poker. Like many people of the era that followed Moneymaker's win at the World Series of Poker, I thought that I should be playing for the "big" money by focusing on multi-table tournaments (MTT's) and 1 table sit-and-goes (SNG). One thing that I didn't realize at the time about MTT's was the amount of luck needed to get deep enough into a tournament to make a decent sized cash in comparison to your buy in. I had enough good results with minimum cashes to sustain my initial investment, and at the time, I was pretty happy that I could have this little hobby where I have the chance to make some extra money when all was said and done.
Like I said, I also played SNG's and had much better results with them, but I had absolutely no concept of bankroll management. I played $5 SNGs and looking over my history, I cashed out a couple times in that first six months. That means I was playing with less than 20 buy ins, which is probably marginal, but I was playing 1 SNG at a time and taking it very slow. The biggest issue with this is that I never progressed past the $5 SNG's, thus destroying my chance to make any "real" money.
My biggest cash at the time was at a point where I had about $70 left in my account. I was a freelance video editor in NYC, but there was a serious lull in the jobs that were out there, and after 3 months of no steady work, I was pretty broke. I remember it was a Saturday morning and rent was due the following Wednesday or Thursday. I decided that there wasn't much I could do until Monday, so why not play in this satellite tournament. I hadn't played in many prior to this because it didn't pay you cash, it paid you in an entry into a bigger event. Long story short, I won that satellite and got into the $50 Sunday tournament on Titan Poker where I took 4th place out of about 200 entrants.
4th place payed $750 dollars, and my rent was $725... I had the funds transferred to Neteller (the good 'ol days) and then to my bank account and payed my rent that month on time.
That was a great feeling at the time and a big financial relief, but I knew that there was a better way to make serious money in poker. Unfortunately, I was completely under-rolled and vastly mistaken about my skills as a poker player and I continued to muddle around with SNG's for a long time. There was also a year or so, where Neteller collapsed as a viable option for online poker in the U.S. and I was basically unable to play online for money. I will say that I was fortunate enough to remove my money from Neteller just before the huge debacle in December of '06 that locked up a lot of folks money for a long time. I had about $400 at Full Tilt and had taken it out for X-mas presents and such and thought I'd just reload $500 or so in a couple months time.
I'm gonna have to do a little research about my timeline, but off the top of my head, I don't think I got back into playing poker for money online until about September of '08, about a year and a half after withdrawing.
That is pretty much my beginning story of playing MTT's and SNG's so that I could be the next "Moneymaker."
These days I'm playing primarily Full Ring Cash Games, which I discovered about December of '08. I'll speak to that ongoing experience in my next post, but it's vastly more interesting than my n00b-ish beginnings.
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