I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!
This PokerStars tournament is a No Limit Texas Hold’em event exclusive to Bloggers.
Registration code: 587129
I signed up for some pokerstars blogger freeroll, but they never sent me the registration codes. Kinda sucks because they are giving away a lot of free shit. Why else would I blog if it wasn’t for the perks? Hehe, j/k actually a friend of mine recently told me to blog more… so this is for you Dave.
I haven’t posted a lot of poker stuff this month, cause I was trying to just put in hands and not focus on results, and I don’t have a lot going on right now outside of poker. That said, the first week or so I kicked ass and was averaging over 1,000 hands/day, but as usual I have kinda fallen off pace.
Today was LOL. Mostly dude to 2 very bad opponents. I’m gonna post a bunch of hands here, because there was a lot of interesting ones. I’ll mix in some bad beats/coolers too just for fun.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3587247 – this can go into the bad beat folded. This was about the tenth hand of the match, which ended up lasting just shy of 600 hands. It would have made things easier to bust him here.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3587289 – This is a just a gross spot 200bb’s deep. I know my hand looks nice, but I am really only beating a bluff here when he 2x pot shoves the river.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3587414 – So he 100% busts this hand if he doesn’t hit another 2 outter, these pots just don’t feel good to lose.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3587572 – This hand is just proof about how bad this guy was and how badly he was owning me. Is he over bet value betting that river? nh sir.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3587677 – So he started to 3bet and limp/raise a lot. In all of these pots he cbet 99% unless he flopped the nuts and then would sometimes slow play it. I set this up specifically to bluff the river. I had particularly good timing the whole match.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3587824 – other huge hand that is just not fun to lose.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3587885 – somehow I won this pot. FUCK YOU turn. Thank you river.
Shortly after this hand, I had to go make dinner for Kristen (she had been waiting patiently), so I quit him with him still up a bit, but I had gotten back about 4 buyins from him thankfully. Then later on in the evening a HUGE donk that I had played before sat down and willingly donated a bunch of money. These were some of his finer moments:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3588539 – He SNAP called that river.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3588557 – I would be interested in hearing his thought process in this hand. LOL.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3588589 – I had him notched.
Overall my night looked like this:
I guess just more poker for the next few days, and then we are going down south to Kristen’s parents on the 22nd for about a week. They don’t have internet and I don’t know how they are able to live.
Heh, ok so much for being lazy.
So I wouldn’t really call November a success. It was actually going ok for the lack of hands I got in, but a -3.5k day on the 30th kinda spoiled things. That is my 3rd worse day of my career, but I think I handled it very well.
I know I always say that I am gonna play more hands every month, but December is going be a real grinid month. In fact, I have already put in almost half the hands I played all November 4 days in. Though I will be gone a good week for the holidays without internet, I still should be able to at least get 25k hands. Things have started well. One kinda fun change I made, is I won’t be playing looking at my combined results or graphs for the whole month. From day to day I’ll check stuff out (cause I always wanna know how I ran, heh) but at any time I won’t really know where I am overall.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3542368 –Mostly a funny hand, I think there are some real strategic things to think about here, and I really don’t know the optimal move. But it doesn’t really matter cause I’ll probably never find myself in this spot again for the rest of my poker career.
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I just finished a couple of really good books and I highly recommend both of them. The first of which was Catch-22. I have been trying to read all the classic ‘must read’ books, and well, for the most part they have all been real good. Catch-22 on the other hand was phenomenal. Basically a satire about WWII, but it didn’t even matter what the story/plot was about. Joseph Heller’s writing was brilliant and probably the best book I’ve read since 1984 (the book). I’ll definitely pick up more of his stuff.
The other book was Predictably Irrational. A very interesting read about the research of behavioral economics. Much in the line of Blink (though I thought this was much better), the author does a great job of explaining scientifically why humans act differently than we were taught to assume. It was a pretty easy read and every enjoyable the whole way through.
Read these books.
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Sharks don’t lose anymore, that is a very good thing.
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I am also looking for other things to add to our Netflix. We started watching Dexter, and while I had heard good things and want to like it, the writing is really bad and I find myself saying outloud, “yeah right” about 6 times an episode. I’m still gonna give it a little bit more time, hopefully it picks up.
Somebody leave me a comment telling me to update my blog, I promise I’ll start posting again.
Humm… been a little while since I made a blog post. I guess we got some catching up to do.
Getting a little back into the grove of playing. Nothing really special about this month to date. Here’s a graph of all 6,000 of my hands. sw. Woulda been nicer if I didn’t start off today by quickly dropping $1k.
I just got PT3 up and working, still semi figuring the program out; so far it has not been much of an improvement over PT2 for the things I use.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3454591 – LOL hand of the month.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3416197 –Runner up.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3450620 – Miss Congeniality
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3454979 – And for something a little more serious. I guess this should a shove on the river, but I’m not convinced that is correct.
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Outside of playing poker, I’ve been doing a lot of coaching. Aaron is coming along. I am not really sure where he is, as he needs to put in a lot more hands to get a better idea. But I think he should at least have the skills right now, with good game selection, not to lose money. I do know that beating the rake at $50nl HU could be tough though.
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Our little vacation up north (Weaverville, CA) was nice. To be honest, it wasn’t quite the relaxing trip we had image (because of the kids), but it was beautiful up in the mountains. I’ll post some pics.
Most of these pictures are me just messing around with my new camera.
The actual house is behind the barn.
Fishing was fun, but we caught more rocks then actual fish.
Me being hairy… I have since shaved/cut my hair.
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Alrighty, gonna go make some dinner then watch the UFC fights. I am stoked about the Lesnar/Couture match. Have fun.
Heading up to a friends for a few days. Should be a funny little get away. It will be the farthest north I’ve ever been, but probably cold, rainy, and possibly snowy. Not too much poker stuff going on as I have spent all my free time working with Aaron (my stakee).
Bye!
Just finished a session. Had a couple pretty interesting hands. I quit down just a little bit and feel fine about it. I ran about 500 under EV for the day though. Happens.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3403520 – complete set-up but fun to win these every once in awhile.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3403616 – Such a sick spot. Villains’ 3bet range was really small. Hands I like he plays like this are AA/QQ/88/AK-AJ???
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3403674 – Same guy, this time a gross river, but worked out. I wasn’t sure if I liked b/c, c/c, or c/f.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3403844 – LOL @ these A88 flops. Another spot where I felt like I was chopping or beat. These are the sickest spots in NLHE.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3404196 - WFT hand of the day. Tytyty.
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Tomorrow is Election Day and I am pretty excited. In fact, so excited that we are actually having a party here tomorrow night to view the results. It should be fun cause I have friends coming that are both liberal and conservative (but mostly liberal) so hopeful we get some good prop bets going or something. My guess is at some point we’ll stop careing and just BBQ and watch the Sharks game. OH!
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I got a new TV. Well, even more. 52” Sharp 1080p LCD HDTV, Yamaha Surround Sound System, and a blueray player. Also, got HD challenge and a DVR from Comcast. Took me a day and a half to get it all set up, but it is awesome. The only thing I need to ‘fix’ is the remote which I managed to break. I was trying to program it for the new TV, but accidentally reset it and it doesn’t work for anything anymore, not even the cable box. Gonna try to get it replaced tomorrow.
October. We need more months like October.
Overall I have nothing to complain about. Like always I didn’t put in as many hands as I would have liked, but still had a 5 digit month and that’s what counts, right? Even though I broke about even EV-wise, I obviously ran well in cooler situations. Here’s what my month looked like on paper:
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In other news, I started working with a new student yesterday, who is a friend of mine. He is completely raw to the game, so he has a long way to go, but he seems very motivated. I think we are both pretty excited and hopefully it will be a profitable venture for both of us.
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Things I plan on buying in the near future:
· New car for Kristen
· 56” HDTV for living room
· 32” HDTV for bedroom
· Surround sound system for living room
· Treadmill
· Bookshelves for office
The last few days have been pretty smooth grinding. Enough so that I had nothing really interesting to blog about. Today started out like that too. I won about $600 in 350 hands, and then went to the movies with Kristen. At dinner I was joking around when the waiter came over to check if everything was ok with a pretty sarcastic response that came outta nowhere, and Kristen said I was mean, so I left a really good tip. =)
Anyways, I came home, and because nothing was going on decided to put in another little session. Oops. I played a reg that is historically really bad and just got crushed. Not that he was good.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3353087 – sigh. I think I can get away from any other turn in the deck.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3353085 – me being stupid. I can’t bluff this guy and have no fold equity. However, my shove was supposed to be for value. I REALLY thought he had the flush draw here. I was sorta right. If I made any mistakes in the match it was here. Otherwise I think I played pretty solid.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3353093 – gross in a 4bet pot, but at least I lost the min.
I ground some back, and won some from a couple other donks, but after I got around 200bb’s deep the guy really started to nit it up and it was impossible to get money in the pot. Eventually I just quit him, cause I didn’t think we were gonna play a big pot without a cooler.
Donno what else to say right now. I am gonna go read a bit and then reflect on my match or just put it outta my mind forever. One thing I was really happy with was emotionally I stayed really calm and played well.
I had some things that I wanted to blog about, but for some reason they have now slipped my mind. Hopefully I’ll remember before I finish typing.
I have played a bit in the last few days. I’ll just start out with a graph of the month and my stats:
Not too shabby. I’ll take 18ptbb/100 any day (or month of that matter). I had a couple long frustrating matches with lots of WTF hands, but instead of posting with a dozen hands, I am just gonna pick out a couple of the really interesting ones.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3315044 – Tough spot. Early in the match, so no real reads but pretty sure villain is a donk. Ok, so I am pretty sure check/call here is really bad, because the villains range is pretty polarized here with either a strong made hand like set/two pair/or at least AJ that is never turning their hand into a bluff, but can’t bet the river for value OR he has the flush draw, which is always betting. So the question is should I shove for value assuming he can’t fold 2 pair/AJ or should I just check/fold. Kinda leaning towards c/f, but that might be results oriented. I donno.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3323840 – This one is more interesting because of the opponent. We had been playing a long match where he has been running quite good. He was SUPER passive, and I don’t think ever bluffed in about 300 hands and just about never put in a raise. We are also almost 200bb’s deep. I was really surprised by his raise on the turn, and just felt like it had to be the flush. I honestly considered folding the river. That said… should I be putting in a raise somewhere here? Or just gotta go with reads? I was pretty surprised when he flipped up only Q9o.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3320952 – Lastly just a hand for fun. God this was so great, if you look at stack sizes, the villain only had $11 behind on the flop. But I guess 25-1 is no good against my range. Loooooooooool. Tyty.
Hmmm, can’t remember what I wanted to say, so I guess it’ll have to wait till next time.