Ugly hands vol. 2….

Looking through a few hands from last week, and some are just disgusting. I really play like shit when downswinging….

—–

I just played this hand about half an hour ago and it was just disgusting. I think I played 3 streets terribly against a 40/15 fish. PT didn’t pick it up, so I’ll just write it.

10/20 Blind battle, running pretty bad against this fish when he minraises into my BB. I 3-bet pot with QQ. He calls.

Flop is K-T-4 rainbow. He checks, I check behind. I should c-bet here always I think.

Turn is Jd, bringing a flush draw. He checks, I bet 80%, he calls. I hate this bet so much. As soon as I made the bet, I expected a big c/r, and I’d have to dump my hand. His range and the board are in bed together.

River is 9d, bringing the possible flush. I’m so relieved that he didn’t c/r me on turn, and that I’ve hit my straight, I quickly put him in (pot sized bet) on river. He insta-calls with AQdd.

I don’t think I thought about this hand on any street. Just ugly. I’m completely out of sorts lately, I think if I flipped coins for options on every street, I’d run better.

—–

$10/$20 Blinds No Limit Hold’em
Table “Disgusting c-bet” (Real Money)
Seat 2 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 10: Hijack ( $338 )
Seat 2: Cutoff ( $2132 )
Seat 4: Hero Button ( $1963 )
Seat 6: SB ( $2000 )
Seat 8: BB ( $1254.08 )
Seat 9: UTG ( $753.5 )
SB posts [$10].
BB posts [$20].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Hero [ 9c 10c ]
UTG calls [$20].
Hijack folds.
Cuttoff raises [$90].
Hero raises [$317].
SB folds.
BB folds.
UTG folds.
Cutoff calls [$237].
** Dealing Flop ** [ Qs, 4d, 8c ]
Cutoff checks.
Hero bets [$421].
Cutoff raises [$1805].
Hero folds.
** Summary **
Cutoff collected [$2916].

This c-bet was just terrible. He’s pushing here a large % of the time. I have gutshot and r/r flush draws and should have taken the free card.

Just frustration at a 18/13 nit. Yuk.

—–

Texas Hold’em $5-$10 NL (real money)
Table “Paying Off Yet Again”

Seat 5: BB ($1,257.50 in chips)
Seat 8: Hero UTG [ 8S,9S ] ($1,066.00 in chips)
Seat 9: Button ($210.00 in chips)
Seat 10: SB ($447.50 in chips)
ANTES/BLINDS
SB posts ($5), BB posts ($10).

PRE-FLOP
Hero bets $35, Button folds, SB folds, BB calls $25.

FLOP [board cards 9H,4C,7H ]
BB checks, Hero bets $54, BB calls $54.

TURN [board cards 9H,4C,7H,8D ]
BB checks, Hero bets $142, BB bets $1,168.50 and is all-in, Hero calls $835 and is all-in.

RIVER [board cards 9H,4C,7H,8D,AC ]

SHOWDOWN
BB shows [ 5H,6H ]
Hero shows [ 8S,9S ]
BB wins $2,326.50.

This was a tricky one. BB is 29/11 and fairly tricky. I can’t put him on straight after flop action obviously unless he had a combo draw, which I thought he’d c/r with on the flop. Set is most obvious hand that beats me, but I thought he’d c/r with that on flop also, and I didn’t think he’d push like that with a set on the turn. Nothing really made sense to me, so I called. I dunno about this hand, it seems that every time I call one of these sick overbets, I’m beat. I rarely see people over-betting bluffs these days, its almost always the goods. Probably should have folded.

—–

$5/$10 Blinds No Limit Hold’em
Table “Sandwiched Yuk” (Real Money)
Seat 9 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 10: SB ( $159.49 )
Seat 2: BB1 ( $1177.5 )
Seat 4: Hero UTG ( $1868.4 )
Seat 5: Hijack ( $520.25 )
Seat 6: Cutoff ( $1323 )
Seat 9: Button ( $1657.56 )
SB posts [$5].
BB posts [$10].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Hero [ Qd Jd ]
Hero raises [$35].
Hijack folds.
Cutoff folds.
Button calls [$35].
SB folds.
BB calls [$25].
** Dealing Flop ** [ Qc, 8c, 6c ]
BB checks.
Hero bets [$78].
Button raises [$166].
BB calls [$166].
Hero calls [$88].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 10h ]
BB checks.
Hero checks.
Button checks.
** Dealing River ** [ 2h ]
BB checks.
Hero checks.
Button bets [$230].
BB calls [$230].
Hero calls [$230].
** Summary **
Button shows [ 7s Ks ].
BB shows [ 6h 6d ].
Hero mucks.
BB collected [$1294].

Button is 45/19 - total maniac fish. Has been showing down random air hands at showdown over and over again.

BB is 42/23 and passive.

On the flop, I’m miles ahead of button’s raising range, and I figure BB is drawing. I should have just let it go on flop - I’m not going anywhere with this hand. Was just tired of button raising me with air every hand and hitting random overcard 3-outers when I called him down.

On river, I still figured I’m ahead of button’s range, but once BB calls, I have to dump it. I was thinking he knew button was crazy also, and was calling him light after missing his draw but hitting a piece.

Just an ugly hand.

————

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june results…

June was a pretty weird month, it started insanely bad with lots of downswinging and pain. But I had an amazing last week, finishing the month 19k up in poker, so I’m not even sure if I ran bad or not overall for June. I think I ran pretty bad, but if I can make 20k a month along with rakeback and other things, I’ll take it.

Stats:
For 6max, I was 28/22 for the month, which is too lag. I really believe optimal is in the range of 20/15, so my goal for July is to get those stats down. My WTSD is 34 for June, which is also too high, so generally tighter all round is gonna be the goal. My river agg is 1 and all the other streets are 3, but I don’t really know how to fix that, or if its even a problem. I probably call off too much in bad spots.

I played 50k hands this month to smash my previous record (I am pretty lazy). I hope to do this for the rest of the year, except for July, cause I’m heading to WSOP for a hit-and-run mission on the main event and hopefully to find myself a sweet crack-hoe. Hope I don’t bump into The Wiz over there.

Online for the year, I’m now….

12bb/100 for 2/4

8bb/100 for 3/6

5bb/100 for 5/10

1bb/100 for 10/20

…and down about 20k or so for few k hands on 20/40, 25/50 and 50/1 (mostly shortstacking).

….and WAY down on sportsbetting and flips (freaking Turtle Race murdered me)

I also got burned pretty bad by a little foray back into Partygaming CFDs. We bought at 39p and the CEO sold at 39p and a few days later, our 34p stop was hit and we were busto.

I also got burned pretty bad by the freaking Australian Dollar, which just won’t freaking stop rising. I should be shorting the USD. AUD at 15 year high, Peso at 10 year high, and most my money in USD. Wonderful.

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pokerace hud pain for gain…

Gay Perry: “Look up the word ‘idiot’ in the dictionary and you know what you’ll find?”

Harry: “A picture of me?”

Gay Perry: “No, the definition of the word ‘idiot’, which is what you fucken are.”

—–

Inspired by my friend Colin (who only a few months ago was running bad at 2/4 and is now kicking ass at 10/20), I decided to fully embrace PokerAce HUD and start utilising more of the information PT gives me.

I spent most of the day starting to learn what all the various stats meant and their applicable ranges and uses. It felt like I was back at school, taking notes and doing my best to be a teacher’s pet to Colin so that he would continue to help me.

I spent most of the day rearranging Colin’s template layout of 16 overlaid stats to suit the site I play on. After a few hours, with the help of a few sneaky vodka tonics along with my never-say-die attitude, I was able to finally overlay the 16 stats on each of the 10 seats at the table. I then sat down to play, and discovered that the stats I had placed, although looking very pretty, were covering up the hole cards, bet amounts, button, etc…and therefore had to be ingeniously relaid.

I considered throwing the whole project in at this stage, but as I had invested so much emotion in the whole affair, and was by now marginally drunk, I decided to press on.

An hour or so later, I had succeeded in creating what even a cynic would admit was a magnificent feat of jigsaw puzzling. I then sat down to try out the fastastic new layout. Unfortunately, the entire table reminded me of a chaotic race riot and was very distracting, with 170 red, white and italic numbers scattered over each table, jostling each other rudely like hippies in a mosh pit. I decided to scrap the entire affair and admit defeat and resign myself to mediocrity whilst the Colin’s of the world shot on to stardom through their ability to interpret the language of HUD.

Unable to find how to renege back to default settings, I uninstalled and reinstalled PokerAce only to find that, for reasons known only to Buddah and the PokerAce creators, it had now ceased to function. At this stage, I thought it appropriate to just sit there depressed and stare into nothingness, breaking my reverie with the odd curse at random Greek and other gods, but not Buddah (of course).

Time passed slowly as my anger at the gods abated somewhat. I decided, more through a lack of options than any real streak of genius, to uninstall and reinstall PokerAce again. Almost unbelievably, considering the profanities I had hurled at the gods only moments before, PokerAce Mark III worked like a dream.

Flushed with success, and with spirits high, I decided that, rather than admit complete failure and get angry and break things, I would save my peripherals and take one final shot at adding stats to the layout.

I was competely successful, and poker geeks will be interested to know that I settled on the following overlaid stats for each player:
VPIP
PFR
Overall Agg Factor
Total Hands
Folded BB to Steal
Att to Steal
C-bet %
Folds to C-bet %
Calls C-bet
Raises C-bet

Running very good at this stage, I had a crack at the dropdown menus, and settled on the following:
Net Won
BB/100 hands
Went to Showdown
Won $ at Showdown
Folded SB to Steal
Flop Agg
C/R flop
Fold to Flop Bet
Turn Agg
C/R Turn
Fold to Turn Bet
River Agg
C/R River
Fold to River Bet

I can’t wait to keep on losing, but in much better spots!~

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the long road back…

Swinging like crazy online. Win 7k day before yesterday, lose 7k last night, win 10k today thank buddah.

I think I’m playing ok - finding some soft games - have been running into a lot of sick situations that are making me nauseous like this one:

Texas Hold’em $5-$10 NL (real money), hand #429,021,019
Table “omg so ghey” HE, 7 Jun 2007 11:54 AM ET

Seat 2: BB ($517.40 in chips)
Seat 3: UTG ($1,091.30 in chips)
Seat 8: Hero Button [ 8C,6C ] ($1,014.85 in chips)
Seat 9: SB ($684.00 in chips)

PRE-FLOP
UTG calls $10, Hero calls $10, SB bets $50, BB calls $45, UTG calls $45, Hero calls $45.

FLOP [board cards 3C,7D,9C ]
SB checks, BB checks, UTG checks, Hero bets $149, SB folds, BB folds, UTG calls $149.

TURN [board cards 3C,7D,9C,AD ]
UTG checks, Hero bets $351, UTG calls $351.

RIVER [board cards 3C,7D,9C,AD,AH ]
UTG checks, Hero checks.

SHOWDOWN
UTG shows [ 10S,8D ]
Hero mucks cards [ 8C,6C ]
UTG wins $1,218.

—-

The UTG player here so bad. I shouldn’t have bet the turn, as his call stats were like 70% for turn, it was just a flat out mistake. He calls 90% of rivers, I wish I was tilted and I would have pushed, but I realised my turn mistake and checked behind on river, letting him win with T-high. This kind of stuff happening over and over lately - just nauseating.

Tonight, I got some confidence back for my biggest night in about 2 months or so. Ran pretty good all night and my PT stats on my new computer starting to look a bit less sick. I’ve been playing around 25/18 for the last few weeks and I tightened up to around 21/16 last couple nights and I think I’ll stay around there, as it’s a lot easier to play a bit tighter.

I’ve been check-raising way too many flops in the last few weeks and picking bad spots against the wrong type of players. I toned down the aggression a lot tonight and just played a lot more basic, and it was refreshing to just grind.

Link to above graph

Another 9 nights like tonight and I’ll be back to where I was end of March.

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my sucky hands Vol 1….

As I have bagged Wasicka today and plan on bagging more people in the future, I thought I’d post some recent hands that I either know I played badly or suspect I played badly with some comments. I read a lot of poker forum stuff each day, and usually don’t feel like posting much poker stuff here, but with the nature of my recent posts, my blog title is a little misleading.

I still make so many retarded plays, and my hand logic is often just bad - that’s the only word for it. In this series of hands, you’ll be able to judge for yourself.

—————–

Hand 1:

No HH as this was on Bodog and my Dogwatch is retarded and not working. So no stats on players either.

4 player 10/20 (all players are good, but I have a lot of history with one of them and I think I can exploit that as I’ve been playing v. tight against him lately multi-tabling 5/10 and I suspect he’s noticed - but I should have left this table nonetheless).

eff stacks 100bb

I am UTG with QQ and raise pot. The other 3 players all call and we see a family flop of J-5-3 (2 hearts).

Checked to me, I bet 180, button folds, SB folds, my nemesis in BB minraises me. I’m usually good enough to fold here, as the pot is already large, so the minraise is a setup for a turn push allin from him. As this player makes so many moves against me and because of the flush draw, I decided I’m going to take the hand to showdown, and decide he’s going to push turn whether he’s on a move or not, so I just call the minraise.

Turn is 8h and he insta-pushes. I have the Qh and feel pretty good about the call at the time. He has 55, I miss my heart/Q outs and he stacks me.

I think I played this hand pretty bad. In hindsight, I realised he probably knows my c-betting ratio into 4-way flops is not that high, so the spot is not that great for him to make a move. I fell into the trap of locking this player into the image I have of him (wild and tricky) and didn’t think about the spot. Hand rating for me: 2/10. Hand rating for him: 9/10.

—————–

Hand 2:

My opponent here was either new to the site or has a new name, but he was sitting on four 10/20 tables, a couple of them with large stacks so I assumed he was a pretty solid LAG.

$10/$20 Blinds No Limit Hold’em
Table “No Info Calldown - Feels Dirty but Hmmm…” (Real Money)
Seat 7 is the button
Total number of players : 5
Seat 4: BB ( $288 )
Seat 5: UTG ( $1998 )
Seat 6: Cutoff ( $2781 )
Seat 7: Button ( $2000 )
Seat 8: Hero SB ( $1986 )
Hero posts small blind [$10].
BB posts [$20].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Hero [ Kh Qc ]
UTG folds.
Cutoff raises [$80].
Button folds.
Hero calls [$70].
BB folds.
** Dealing Flop ** [ 6c, Qh, 9s ]
Hero checks.
Cutoff bets [$160].
Hero calls [$160].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 3s ]
Hero checks.
Cutoff bets [$420].
Hero calls [$420].
** Dealing River ** [ 3d ]
Hero checks.
Cutoff bets [$1120].
Hero calls [$1120].
** Summary **
Cutoff shows [ 9h Qd ].
Hero mucks.
Cutoff collected [$3576].

Ahhh this was a tough one. I dunno. I didn’t put him on Q9, set of 9’s or 6’s well within any 10/20 player’s range of course, but I didn’t think he’d be playing a set that strongly (what’s he protecting against, JT?) and I was sure he would check AQ for pot control on turn. The action suggested monster or air, and in my experience, this is usually air or a missed draw here far more often than monster.

In hindsight, my turn call here was pretty bad. The worst of all streets and the worst option of the 3 I had on the turn. I think I should fold>push>call here on the turn. God, that was a ghey call by me, because when I called that turn, I was committing to call most rivers, and the repeat 3 looked like a pretty good card for my hand.

Hand rating for me: 4/10. Hand rating for him: 7/10.

—————————–

Hand 3:

This hand made me feel super retarded after it played out, but when I was making the plays, I thought they were wonderful. I sucked really bad all day thinking I was making great plays that were terrible.

The BB here is 33/21/1.2
The Cutoff Fish is 41/26.2.6

$10/$20 Blinds No Limit Hold’em
Table “Isolating Fish Super Expensive” (Real Money)
Seat 4 is the button
Total number of players : 5
Seat 1: Cutoff SUPER MEGA FISH ( $730 )
Seat 4: Button ( $2183 )
Seat 5: Hero SB ( $2649 )
Seat 7: BB ( $2296 )
Seat 8: UTG ( $350 )
Hero posts small blind [$10].
BB posts [$20].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Hero [ As 9h ]
UTG folds.
Cutoff calls [$20].
Button folds.
Hero calls [$10]. This is where I should have raised to isolate.
BB checks.
** Dealing Flop ** [ 5h, Ac, 4h ]
Hero bets [$57].
BB calls [$57].

At this stage, I put him on a draw, probably flush

Cutoff raises [$174].

The fish had just lost 3/5th’s of his stack open-limping A3o and getting it all in on a AQ9 rainbow flop. I think I am WAY ahead of his range.

Hero raises [$234].

I thought a min-raise here would serve 2 functions, drive out BB’s draw as he HAS to know the fish will push if he calls, and to entice the fish to push on me with his short-stack.

BB calls [$234].

Plan failed, but I think he has just made a tactical error and still has a draw. I decide I am a genius and that he has a bad flush draw and possibly a gutshot, and doesn’t want to play it aggressively because he knows the fish will call. This was probably really bad logic in hindsight.

Cutoff raises [$536].
Hero raises [$838].

This is where I go super-crazy, as I’m almost certain I’ve got the fish beat, and I think there is still a really good chance the BB is on a draw. I decide my 2nd minraise of the betting round is super crafty, as it represents “real strength”.

BB raises [$1985].

Shit.

Hero folds.
** Dealing Turn ** [ Kh ]
** Dealing River ** [ Jh ]
** Summary **
Cutoff shows [ 5s Ah ].
BB shows [ 5c Ad ].
Cutoff collected [$2186].
BB collected [$1985].

Ironically, I only lose a couple hundred more in this hand than if I’d played it perfectly, as there is no way Cutoff fish is folding if I raise pre, and no way I’m folding once I hit against him with his stack.

——————

Any comments welcome, positive or negative. You have to register first in a quick, painless process before posting as my blog got hit with hundreds of sex spams a day awhile back.

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loving manila and running good…

Still a little bit down after hearing the news the love of my life is shacking up with Orlando Bloom, who is basically a…

I’m loving Manila so far despite a couple downers like incredible non-stop bad traffic and occasional confusingly bad service (spent a few painful hours trying to post my old mobile phone + simcard back home to my little sister - pure frustration dealing with various courier shops all morning) - but overall the city is awesome and I really love it here.

Signed the lease for my new apartment in Makati today (I think great location but don’t fully know my way around yet - but its one block from Greenbelt Park, which I’m told is the centre of Makati). It’s a cute little 1 bedroom on the 18th floor of a very new building, which looks a lot like a hotel when you enter the lobby. The facilities are amazing, with a awesome function area, games room, KTV (kareoke) rooms, pool and a cool gym. The apartment is for sale for around 100k so I might buy it after a couple months if I like it. Real estate is so cheap here compared to Australia, and I was resigned to maybe never owning property in Australia so its an exciting feeling to maybe be close to owning my first ever place. I was looking at awesome funky 2bdm loft-style new apartments the other day that were just incredibly cute and awesome going for around 220k in Makati. The same apartment in Sydney would cost something close to 800k I’m guessing and maybe easily 550k or so in Brisbane.

Here is a photo of what I’m talking about:

I’m really lucky there is some great guys living here who I can hang with: Franco of course, one of the biggest legends ever, Jethro and Marcus from Aust, and a Canadian guy named Mischa who is awesome and very amusing (and a sick good squeeze bacc player). I’m getting Franco’s little sister to do the interior design for my new place in the next couple weeks, and I’ve never done anything like that before, so that will be fun and interesting.

I’ve been a tiny bit sick in the last few days so started playing again online a bit, and have been super lucky running so good. I’m paranoid this upswing will end anytime now, as I’ve been running way too good for almost 2 months now, but just trying to enjoy it while it lasts. Lately its seems like the mid-limits have been much softer than they were in Dec/Jan across all the sites I play, and it seems everyone I know is winning again, which is awesome, after almost everyone I know lost big in Jan along with me. Not sure if the soft games are just an illusion or perhaps (fingers crossed) a permanent thing, but it definitely seems like the games have received a new influx of loose players (at least this is definitely the case on the few sites I play at).

I’m looking forward to playing some decent live games here as I suck at live poker as I hardly ever play it, but looking forward to playing some soft mid/high-limit live games with the rich Koreans that I hear about (who come in on bacc junkets and don’t mind the odd game of NL). If poker ever breaks into places like Macau and Singapore, the games are going to be insanely awesome for big stakes for awhile, so here’s to poker in Asia and possible glory days.

My last 3k hands over last few days (mostly 5/10, some 10/20):

Anyway, Manila is amazing and I hope I still love it in a year’s time as much as I do now - if I do, I doubt I will ever leave. Put it on your schedule for your next holiday destination - you won’t be disappointed.

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