Change of Plans

You may have noticed that I haven't been updating this blog as much. After a pretty decent start in late December, I really cooled off at the beginning of January. I had a long talk with some fellow poker players and a couple of dealers and was quickly told that my game had changed...for the worst. I was told that I was playing "like a pussy", my aggression was gone!

I found myself locking up small wins so that I could post a "good session" on my blog. I wasn't pushing in spots that I normally would out of fear of losing a big pot. I was playing ultra-tight, etc.

In other words, having a winning session was becoming way more important than it should be. Instead of focusing on making the right decision, I was focusing on winning small pots, or more importantly not losing big ones. I had also fallen into a bunch of "fancy play syndromes".

After some analysis, and a re-reading of "The Poker Mindset"(a great book if you haven't read it). I decided that the way I was using this blog to track individual sessions was inherently flawed.

The blog was placing way to much focus on short term results and measuring them in dollars. This is silly, since my goal and mindset are focused on the long term!

Focusing on the short term was keeping me from playing my best game. In addition, every time I missed a monetary goal I would think of the session as a failure, when in fact sometimes they weren't. Making the correct decision and losing the pot isn't a bad thing. However, I would walk out the poker room in a really awful state of mind. Lastly, I could see what was coming up as January was coming to a close, I was getting a bit too over-concerned about my month "looking bad". How silly! I was chasing in spots w/o getting good pot or implied odds. I was pushing with marginal hands and a whole slew of other things.

So a change was in order...

I first had to decide if I wanted to keep the year-long challenge going at all. I quickly decided that I did, but it just needed to be tweaked a bit in order for really short term results(like individual sessions) not to affect my play. The bankroll management parts of the challenge I believe are solid, really solid. Tempted as I am to go back to playing full buy-in's at 2-5, or 1-2-5 I realize that any individual losing session at that stake would place my bankroll into a place that would have me playing scared(Remember I only gave myself 3K to start the challenge). Plus I like having a more conservative bankroll anyway. Although live play doesn't require as much of a BR as online play, my online BR is typically 30-40 buy-ins for the game i'm in. I'd rather be over-rolled than under-rolled, especially since I have the benefit of this not being my full-time job.

So the plan I'm working with now is just updating the blog less, maybe on a twice-a-month basis as it relates towards my progress thru the challenge and maybe mixing in some updates about some of the personalities that inhabit that place. Some of the regulars are real pieces of work!

That being said, look for my January end-of-month update shortly.

Session 32

Like I've said before, day sessions are very hit or miss. I got very lucky this time as the first table of the day was an action table. The table was filled with passive players, although some of them can be crafty(like JT in seat 1) none of them was I worried in the least bit about. The only player that had a game with any sort of creativity in it was Mark(in seat 6). Mark is a younger black guy, very amiable, laughs alot and is a pretty good player. I knew right away that this table was going to be about he and I winning pots and eventually clashing...

I decided quickly that I wanted to establish a maniac table image right away, with that sort of table image and this sort of lineup I would be able to extract maximum value for my big hands, and hopefully clog up some pots with limpers effectively limiting Mark's ability to play back at me because of the limpers b/w the 2 of us.

I open the first hand at the table to $10 in EP with Q9o and Mark makes a comment "Starting this shit already??". 4 people call. Flop comes 3,6,8 rainbow and I lead out for $35. Everyone folds and I table my hand face up. I glance I Mark and he's shaking his head...

The second hand of the table I re-raise 2 limpers to $20 with J10s. 1 person calls. The flop comes Ace high and I fire a standard CBet at it and he folds. I show the bluff again.

The 4th hand at the table I pick up QQ on the button and raise 3 limpers to $26. All 3 call. The flop is jack high and I shove for $300-ish. Two people call and both miss whatever they were holding. They both said they had AK but who knows.

For the next hour or so, Mark and I go back and forth winning pots. Actually he did more winning than I. I ran into a couple losses with TP over TP and lost a turned set to a flopped straight.

The session was short as the daily donkament started and the table dynamic changed back to the normal 'day game passivity'. I just racked and left.

Session 31

This was quite the interesting session, because I started so strongly, played very mediocre during the middle hours, and then played some of my best poker to date in the wee hours of the session.

I'm seated in seat 10 which in my opinion is the worst seat at any poker table. The dealer is to your left 100% of the time and you can't see the players in the 1 & 2 seats very well, and since they are on your left as well, typically that is where your money is going. But anyway, the guy on my right is an idiot. I wish I knew his name but I don't, he's just an idiot, I run to his tables. After about 10 hands at the table I've already doubled up, a cooler hand KK vs QQ, but a double up none the less.

So I'm sitting with ~$400 in front of me, maybe a bit less. The idiot to my right opens for $7 in with 90-ish behind. I make a standard raise to $21 with AKs from the cutoff. Folds to the BB and she ships for $45. Idiot to my left 5 bet shoves his stack. Now typically in this position I'd think about just lying my hand down, but I call because the idiot never has a hand.

FML idiot tables AA, I don't improve and he scoops.

I slowly build my stack up again and i'm sitting around $400 again when I wake up in the SB with AA. UTG straddles to $6 and 6 ppl call, I pop it to $40 and the uber donk UTG+2 whom had just limped for 6 in EP insta-ships his stack. Folded back around to me with $106 more to call and I snap. He shows 88, and proceeds to flop a set.

Again, I went back to the grind didn't win many big pots, but I adjusted my bet sizes enough that I thought I was getting a bunch of extra value out of many of my hands(ie. better $22 rather than $20, or opening for $13 rather than $12). I was also value betting pretty then on a bunch of rivers and value-owned myself a time or two, but that I can live with.

On the table behind me, Brian "The Kid" Biagi was chatting it up with an older black gentleman who appeared to be feeding the table chips.

Soon I looked up and it was almost 4am, my table was the only table going in the room and it was running 4 handed. 3-handed play followed and soon after I was playing HU with the same gentleman that Brian had been punishing so handily hours earlier. This guy had NO IDEA how to play HU poker. His fold, fit or bluff-shove game was very easy to pick apart and I just continuously raised the button and folded 70-80% of my BB's so that all my hands played were in position. I eventually finished him off by raising the button with Ac4h to which he called(he always called). The flop came 5c,6c,3c and he insta-shoved for about $100, I snapped and he said good call and mucked his hand before the 7c turned giving me a flush anyway.

I chatted briefly with Nick and Jason and then headed back to the garage to brave the snow

Session 29 & 30

They say that you learn more from your losses than your wins. That's definitely true after this session, but the lesson that I learned from this session wasn't really about the ins-and-out's of poker strategy and much more about the importance of table image and table selection.

Table selection was always one of my strong points when playing online. There were times that I even elected not to play games because they were filled with regs. However, when playing live a big leak in my game is not occasionally getting up and looking around to see if there is a better game that I should be sitting in. 9 times out of 10 the table that I sit in when I arrive is the table that I'll be at hours and hours later, even if the game is 'the suck'. I think I put a little less emphasis on table selection when playing live because it sometimes tends to ruin a game. The few times that I did do it, the party-fun-time atmosphere of the table I was moving to would quickly turn to serious because a player with chips had elected to come there and ruin the fun. Now I understand that taking the risk and possibly killing the action at the 'party-fun-time' table is far better than me staying and playing a bad or even a very tough table.

Lesson learned...

Bart Hanson recently spoke extensively about table image at low stakes poker, but not in the classic way that many do. He contested that at low stakes poker your table image has less to do with your playing style(ie. Loose-aggressive, Loose-passive, Tight-aggressive, etc) and has much more to do with "A Winning player" or "A Losing player". I agree with this 100%.

If the players at the table you are at perceive you as a 'winning player', you are less likely to be called down light and less likely to be played back at w/o the nuts at these games. However, if your table perceives you as a losing player(or even a winning player having a losing night), then it's best to tighten up your range because nothing you do will get any credit.

And this is the situation I was in during session 29. The room was quite busy when I walked in and I was seated at table 7. There was nothing about table 7 that made the game any better or worse than any other table. There was one guy in the 9 seat that I didn't recognize that had a sizeable stack of chips, so my plan was to sit back for an orbit or two and see what was really going on at that table. However, before I knew it I found myself in a really tricky spot with Q10s OOP on a Q59J10 board, and soon after I was reaching in my pocket for another buy-in. Do I think I played the hand badly, probably not. Did losing a major portion of my stack that quickly after arriving at a table effect my table image, for sure. From that point forward, I really couldn't get anything going at the table. Even being card dead for a few orbits gave my bets no credit, I was being called down super light, drawn out on river after river, and just slowly sinking into a bad funk.





I honestly didn't realize this until a friend I have that deals there asked if I had seen another table. "Another table?!" Oh how simple a solution!

Session 30

I move tables to a much better table! There are quite a few losing players that I recognize(and thus I know what they are and aren't capable of) and only 1 player that I would consider competent. He's an Ameristar regular named George. We typically have a good and friendly relationship and 9 times out of 10 just choose to stay out of each others way. Unfortunately, the table sort of dried up soon after I arrived. It was getting a bit late and a few of the bigger stacks decided to call it a night. I won a few big pots, and lost a few but I was much less concerned with my play or the money changing hands and much more excited about the lesson that I learned this night around table image and table selection

Session 26 - 28

Not all sessions are very eventful and the next 3 fall into this category. All 3 were rather short in duration(under 3 hours), played with relative unknowns and of the 3 I really only noted 1 hand and it's not even worth blogging about as it was a simple case of a donk stacking off with A10o OOP on an AK598 board(with me holding AKs).

So I'll just post the summaries and move on.

Session 25

Playing during the day is such a 'hit or miss' experience. Either you get a good table with a decent amount of action or you get an insanely slow & passive table with no action. There is no happy medium.



This session involves my stint at the latter. A very, very slow game in which getting stuck $100 is the end of the world. There is no climbing back out of that sort of hole seeing as the pots average $11.



Knowing this, knowing that the game plays EXTREMELY passive makes my play in the following hand even that much worse. This was basically my only notable hand of the day, and also the hand that I played the worst this session.



I wake up on the BB with KK and 7 limpers in front of me. (These daytimers have no idea how bad an idea open-limping is, so once one of them do it the over-limping begins and often times there are 50 limpers in each pot). I raise to $26. I'm pretty sure 2 of the old guys had mini-heart attacks because I put so much money into the pot. One guy makes a comment "Why so much?" as if I just threw my car keys on the table...



I get 2 callers. The 2 seat an unknown player that calls everything and plays "fit or fold" and the 7 seat, a regular daytime player that always puts me on nothing and loves to call me down with TPTK.



Flop: 8d, 4h, 4d



I bet out $65 into the ~$80 and get called by the 2 seat, the other guy folds. At this point, I should realize that I'm dead about 99.8% of the time against this villain.



Turn: 10c



It's at this point that I realize that he only has about $40 left. It was a pretty big mistake not to notice that preflop. I bet $40 on the turn and he snaps. The river is inconsequential and I know he has pocket 8's before he even tables them.



I beat myself up over playing this hand so badly for the next few minutes. I could have easily gotten away from this hand with $90 more dollars than I did. Oh wells...



The rest of the day was purely grinding and winning super small pots. I lost a cooler late in the session KK vs. AA but that'll happen.

Session 24

This is the first losing session I've had in awhile where there isn't much I would've changed about my play.
Two buyins at 100bb each go pretty fast when missing oe straight flush draws(x2) and running two pair into sets.



-Posted from iPhone

The Challenge so far...

Although it doesn't really feel like it because of some of the horrendous sessions I've had, I'm still above the bar for reaching my goal.

     

So overall, so far so good for the first 23 sessions. Nothing earth shattering and a bit below what I deem the 'crushing it' hourly rate of $22+.

There were a couple sessions of 'run incredibly bad' as well as a couple sessions of 'run good' in there. There were also 2 sessions that I was playing when I shouldn't have been either too tired or a bit tilty. I'll be working on improving that part of my game going forward. I also will be spending more time in the gym coming up, as I can definitely tell a difference in my overall game when I've been working out as opposed to when I haven't.

I'll be contributing a little more than $750 to my ROTH IRA as part of my Bankroll management guidelines. I'll still working out the details on where that money should go in my ROTH since I'll still want it relatively liquid in case I need it sometime soon.

Session 22 & 23

Of all the sessions thus far I was easily put to the most difficult decisions in this one.

I sat for quite a few hours before picking up something to play only to run into a set of 10's after flopping 2 pair and not being able to get away from it. Rebuy.

Card dead for a few more hours and hitting a string of 'second best' hands had me adding on another $100 a little later in the session. I wasn't necessarily running bad, I was just in the fog and couldn't get anything going.

The tables changed about an hour before I left the game. I picked up QJh on the BB. Utg + 3 raised to $12, he was pretty tight player, and a couple more ppl called. Flop came QJ9, and I checked. This isn't my normal line on that type of board but I was willing to gamble it up a bit in this spot and pray that my instincts on UTG+3 betting and getting called was right. He did bet, $50 and got called by the button. I CR'd to $150. UTG+3 tanked for a bit, a good sign for me, and finally moved all in for another $25. The button did a song and dance and called as well.

UTG+3: KK

Button: J10o

They both missed and I scooped a sizeable pot.

A few orbits later a friend of mine joined our table that I really respect. His game is exceptionally good live and online and he has the ability to play almost any 2 cards from most positions. I wasn't looking to stay away from him, but I wasn't looking to mix it up with him with marginal holdings either.

The hand in question has alot of metagame involved in it, and I don't really want to discuss that sort of thing in this blog but lets just say I had been raising alot of buttons, like 90% of them. The big blind picked up on this as she was putting her BB out and made an allusion to "Are you going to raise my BB again" to which I answered "Probably".

The cards were dealt. My friend raised from EP to $12. Folded to me on the button I look down at AdKc. Like I said, I had been raising almost every button and with a hand like this there was no reason to stop here. I raised to $35. The SB, an indian guy that I didn't know that joined from a broken game and had about the same amount in front of him as I did(450-ish), called.

3 saw a flop of, 3c, Kd, 10c.

The indian guy and my friend in EP, checked and I led out for $75 into $105. The indian guy called very quickly so I was pretty sure where he was. My friend then min-raised to $150 all-in and I tanked for at least 1 minute. Again, I'll refrain from this point at blogging about what exactly was going thru my head because it involves past pots I've seen him play and a physical read, but I called with TPTK and wasn't too sure it was the right play. As soon as I said "I call", the indian guy moved all-in behind me which is one of the things I feared in my 'tank'. I had already decided that if he did that I was going to call him as well, so I did and he showed Ac8c for the nut flush draw. The turn brought another K giving me trips and the river blanked. My friend mucked and I scooped a $1000 pot.

I still need to poker stove the hand, I'm not sure how bad the call was there, but I'm pretty sure it may have been.

Again, I hit my stop-win and left when the BB reached me

I headed over to Ameristar to witness the worst players in the poker universe. It took me awhile to pick up a hand, only to get sucked out on for half my stack. I picked up another hand and got sucked out on again. The game was so bad I wasn't even upset about getting rivered twice. I won a few hands here and there by just letting idiots hang themselves and left up when the table broke quickly after.

  

Session 21

Happy New Year!

I headed up to put some work in shortly after the new years text messages were responded to and requisite phone calls were made. The atmosphere of the place was just as I had expected alot of drunk kids out having a good time. I slid into an established game at table 1. There was a 1-2-5 game going(they are going quite regularly now and it's killing me not being able to participate but I'm trying to stick to my BRM) on table 7 and a few of the players on that table came over to ask why I wasn't playing in it. I love when they do that, for some reason it gives me a little extra cred in the minds of the 1-2 players that aren't reg's and they then tend to play a bit more passively. Strange...

Anyway, the table I sat at was pretty well established. Seeing as it was table 1 it had probably been going since the morning before. I didn't want to waste my free advertising right away, so I sat back for quite a few hands before I got involved. The first thing I noticed was a huge tell on the player immediately to my left in the 4 seat. He did a certain something when he cared strongly about a hand, and a certain something else when he didn't. I would use this information, and soon.

The game proceeded normally with me winning a few pots here and there and slowly building my stack. I think I had about $300 in front of me when I pick up 42s on the button. Normally, this isn't the type of hand I want to get involved with but the 'strong hand' tell I mentioned noticing earlier was shown by the small blind. So I limped in. Just as expected the SB raised my limp, along with 4 other limpers to $12. 1 folded, 3 called(including me), I basically was looking for a small board. I was pretty sure the SB had big broadway cards or AA-QQ. When the flop came out 2-2-9, I knew he wouldn't be able to get away from a big pocket pair. I was right and doubled up. He tabled AA

An hour or so later, I saw the same tell from the same guy. This time however, I had a more legit hand in AJs. This time however, I raised from the button $10. He called along with another guy. He donk bet $12 into a $30 pot after I flopped a four flush. Everyone called. I turned the nuts when a 10d hit the turn, he moved in and I called doubling up again. He again tabled AA.

I played a few more hands but left when the BB hit me as my BRM guidelines dictated this behavior when I hit my stop win of 20% of my BR.