Poker Blog – icemonkey9 on PokerStars

It’s been 2 months of 0BB/100 poker with the year starting off bad (-4BB/100 bad) and although I am studying and getting coaching, I’m just not happy with the game.  The funny thing I have learned is that your EV graph is hardly a good way of seeing if you are running good or not.  Right now I am a tad above expected EV but the goofiest weirdest things keep happening.  I got some encouragement when I sent hands from a recent session and both Taylor and Brian (two 200nl+ players I am friends with) told me on all the hands I sent they would both have played it exactly the same.  That made me feel a TON better, because the worst thing that happens to me is feeling like coaching and studying is wasting everyone’s time and my game isn’t getting better.  Maybe without the coaching and stuff things would be a lot worst than just being down a few buy-ins now to start January.

Here’s some hands … feel free to comment. If you plan on writing a “you just got to put in the hands and play through it” comment, please don’t, I’ve heard it and I totally understand.  If you have some sort of magic phrase or want to send me a leprechaun’s dick for good luck, then I’ll accept that.

———————–

Full Tilt Poker $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold’em – 5 players

Hero (BB): $106.40

UTG: $259.45

CO: $106.10

BTN: $100.00

SB: $19.80

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BB with Q K

2 folds, BTN (22/18/3) raises to $3, 1 fold, Hero calls $2

Flop: ($6.50) Q T Q (2 players)

Hero checks, BTN bets $4, Hero calls $4

Turn: ($14.50) 9 (2 players)

Hero checks, BTN bets $11, Hero raises to $33, BTN calls $22

River: ($80.50) A (2 players)

Hero bets $66.40 all in, BTN requests TIME, BTN calls $60 all in

Final Pot: $200.50

Hero shows Q K (three of a kind, Queens)

BTN shows J 8 (a straight, Queen high)

BTN wins $197.50

———————–

Full Tilt Poker $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold’em – 6 players

SB: $120.50

BB: $100.00

UTG: $85.25 (24/10, folds to 3bets 0% over 120 hands)

Hero (MP): $148.30

CO: $20.00

BTN: $26.75

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is MP with A K

UTG raises to $5, Hero raises to $15, 4 folds, UTG calls $10

Flop: ($31.50) 5 6 3 (2 players)

UTG checks, Hero bets $30, UTG raises to $70.25 all in, Hero calls $40.25

Turn: ($172.00) 7 (2 players – 1 is all in)

River: ($172.00) 7 (2 players – 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $172.00

UTG shows Q A (a flush, Ace high)

Hero shows A K (a flush, King high)

UTG wins $169.00

———————–

Goofing around at 25nl FR to “have some fun” …

Poker Stars $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold’em – 9 players

CO: $24.65

BTN: $29.55

SB: $12.85

BB: $26.00

UTG: $25.90

UTG+1: $25.25

UTG+2: $13.05

Hero (MP1): $27.00

MP2: $22.60

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is MP1 with K J

1 fold, UTG+1 calls $0.25, 1 fold, Hero raises to $1.10, 2 folds, BTN calls $1.10, 2 folds, UTG+1 calls $0.85

Flop: ($3.65) 3 J J (3 players)

UTG+1 checks, Hero bets $2, BTN calls $2, UTG+1 folds

Turn: ($7.65) 6 (2 players)

Hero bets $4.50, BTN raises to $9, Hero calls $4.50

River: ($25.65) 5 (2 players)

Hero bets $14.90 all in, BTN calls $14.90

Final Pot: $55.45

BTN shows 3 3 (a full house, Threes full of Jacks)

Hero shows K J (three of a kind, Jacks)

BTN wins $52.75

(Rake: $2.70)

———————–

Full Tilt Poker $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold’em – 6 players

BTN: $100.00

SB: $275.95

BB: $184.00

UTG: $100.00 (16/13, folds to cbet 50%, folds to turn cbet 0% over 270 hands)

MP: $108.80

Hero (CO): $102.90

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is CO with A A

UTG raises to $3.50, 1 fold, Hero raises to $11, 3 folds, UTG calls $7.50

Flop: ($23.50) 9 9 J (2 players)

UTG checks, Hero bets $14, UTG calls $14

Turn: ($51.50) 9 (2 players)

UTG checks, Hero bets $25, UTG raises to $50, Hero raises to $75, UTG calls $25 all in

River: ($201.50) 3 (2 players – 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $201.50

UTG shows 9 T (four of a kind, Nines)

Hero shows A A (a full house, Nines full of Aces)

UTG wins $198.50

Well, it was inevitable that a return to the tables would mean a return to my usual state of wondering why I bother playing.  I played about 600 hands today and dropped a decent amount of coin unfortunately.  Here’s the lowlights:

Flop a Boat, Lose a Stack!

What more can you really say? I mean, nothing I could do here.

Aces in a 3bet Pot = Garbage

I guess the flop shove was stupid. He’s calling my PF read of AK there or really any Kx hand, or even QQ or JJ thinking my shove might be blind bluff aggression. Didn’t really work out for me did it?

Kings ain’t better with no 6max love

Put in a session at 50nl 6max … that didn’t go well. This guy hits a 2 outer on the river. Hip hip hooray.

Well, I don’t know if you could really classify this as a session, but for the first time in two weeks I actually logged in and played poker for 45 minutes.  Unfortunately, I have a real bad taste in my mouth after playing thanks to some 3rd party software glitches and accidentally taking the tram to coolerville. I played some micro-stakes tables fortunately (50nl) so the damage wasn’t horrible, but it was a “whole experience” kind of thing that just left me wondering why I enjoy playing at all.

The first issue I had was with TableNinjaFT and how it slows down the tables and games.  I have a custom table mod installed from TiltBuster, so it’s not super random and it should be supported.  What happens is that when TableNinjaFT does its auto-calculation for bets on each street it somehow refreshes the calculation two or three times and everything else stops.  It makes EVERYTHING drag and the entire experience just feels slow, lame, boring and frustrating.

The second issue I had was with Lady Luck, who decided to welcome me back at the table by taking a big fat schat on my face.  There was some standard stuff I really don’t mind like shoving AKo against a shorstacker with 99 who won the flip. That’s cool.  It was the QQ vs JJ all in at the 5-4-2 rainbow flop for 110 big blinds that saw him hit the river 2-outer that sucked.  Shortly after I stacked QQ preflop against an unknown and whoops he showed up with KK. Might have made a bad shove there, but still, it’s my right to vent about how sucky that all was  

So, yes, I’m left wondering “Gee, uh, I used to do that for FUN!?” and question just what the hell I am doing with my time when it comes to playing poker. Considering I have better things to focus on like making a steady income that actually is in proportion to my professional experience and education, it’s really hard to justify to myself that playing poker is a worthwhile thing outside of occasional recreational activity.

Of course, if I had WON 2-3 buy-ins thanks to smart play and heaters, I’d probably be singing a different tune!

Warning: This is, yet again, another “I run bad” post. The hands you are about to see are not for those with heart conditions or those subjected to motion sickness.

Let’s just say it.  Bad start to the month but it’s just the first few days so I’m not writing off poker and the month just yet.  Anyways I’ve run into some crazy non-standard coolers (well 1 standard) that you should enjoy.

This first hand … this guy has a fold to cbet on the flop and turn of 0%, so he never folds:

Holy hell right? He posts out of turn, calls my big raise with KJo and hits quads against my boat. Crazy.

This player is a 19/8/inf … I guess this is standard? Ha.

So it’s been not even 1,200 hands and I’ve had two boats lose to quads. Kinda crazy eh? Not sure how to deal with that lol.

This next hand was against someone I had no reads on at all and given his stack at the table I read as a huge fish.

That’s the one standard cooler. Gotta love starting out a month that way! Weee.

This one is simply beyond the valley of comprehension. The guy is a 43/14/inf who donk bets 100% (4/4).

I sat at a few non-deep tables, I try to sit at them if the game looks juicy and there’s no shortstackers in my blinds. Doesn’t matter, they always find their way to the table and always manage to run like this:

Just wow. Icing on the cake eh?

Enough of that!

I hate when I post coolers. It means I’m losing, running bad and somewhat tilted. Fortunately I am not uber-upset and slamming fists into things. I’m just a little disheartened. I plan to go do some chores, clean up a bit and see if I feel up for another session. It’d be nice to run okay and have a good time. Hard to do when you play two sessions and the above happens!

Anyways, hope all the readers have a much better start than I am having, just remember it’s not where we start but how we end up that counts!!

The last week has been spent grinding PLO. I know. All this study and labor into 6max NLHE and here I am playing a gambler’s game that’s swingy as hell. Well, after tilting off four Benjamins I needed a change, and PLO has always been my “break game” and this time I am taking it seriously after finding out how much some of my friends that play microstakes are winning. Will it stick? Who knows. Am I having fun? Yes!

The game is definitely one that will induce swings in the bankroll. For example, I was winning at a 15BB/100 clip for about 3,000 hands to start things off. Needless to say I was very happy. Thoughts of moving up PLO stakes and playing this game danced in my head. Then it happened! Naturally, not only did I not win flips but the inevitable “Lost a 75/25″ and “Lost a 86/24″ and “Had the 2nd Nuts for a Boat to lose to River Quads” stuff happened (twice in one case). That suddenly beaming 15BB/100 has plummeted to 3BB/100. But then I figured it was just a few bad sessions and moved on … so then yesterday I went over to my friend’s Flag Day party where we watched our hometown Lakers beat the crap out of the Magic. After the game, we played a $.10-$0.25 cash game there at her house with the 7 of us. What happened is that for about 1.5 hours I raised pre-flop 3 times total (the game was going SO SLOW because of noobs ugh!) and two of those times hit TPTK, only to have my HU villain have a set. How the heck!?

So I came home, ran bad again playing PLO. Sucked! Played a $2RB into the WSOP ME … got my pocket pair cracked by two unders. So I stopped playing, did some work and watched some poker training videos. It was time well spent and then headed to the baseball field as I am in an adult league. The previous game was the first of the season and I went 4-6 with a double, 4 runs scored and an RBI. First three at-bats of the game the ball is FLYING off of my bat … right into the gloves of the outfielders who were playing me deep FOR NO GOOD REASON (I suck). Trying to hustle I ended up straining my quads terribly … the pain was significant. I sat on the bench and the thought, WOW, when I run bad, it seems like it is always a one way street. I don’t just run bad at one thing and then run good at another and it all evens out. It’s either all good or all not good it seems!

I know a lot of people say that it’s the opposite for them, that when they are running good in poker they are running bad in some real life thing. For me though, it’s all one way baby!

To wrap up this post I also thought, hey I got one more at-bat how about we put a good ending on this game to give some hope for the blog! So I get up there, strained quads and all and then hit a GORGEOUS line drive base hit to center field!! WOO! At least I got a hit, and that was something to be very happy about when I got home. Something to build on. Something to say, hey, I’m turning this thing around!

Walking in brimming with confidence I am greeted by Duke (my pug) and Sampson (my cat). The cat had barfed all over the laundry room, and Duke decided it was a good time to lay a HUGE crap by the screen door and piss under the table.

FML

You guessed by the title of this entry that today ain’t going to well for me. It started great, then the damn floor dropped out from under me. Here’s the worst hand of the day… villain is a 21/14/3 who folds to 3bets 55%.

You’ve got to be kidding me right? He calls a 3bet to $13 with 44 oop? AND HITS a set while I hit TPTK. Unreal. Anyways ya, have to admit that tilted me.

Here’s a hand against a 38/0/2 over a good amount of hands. That turn bet is just ridiculous … I mean really, he has 67 or 44 there.

Anyways when the game starts to speed up and I start to not think through plays I recognize I’m tilted and fortunately I just quit while only down about $112 which absolutely sucks but that’s life. June has been real rough at the tables and I’m hoping it turns around soon.

Abbreviated post … I just want to see if this will work from weaktight.com :

$0.1/$0.25 Pot Limit Omaha Hi
6 players
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:

Pre-flop: ($0.35, 6 players) Hero is CO

trforgy1 calls $0.25, 1 fold, Hero raises to $1.10, VietDo goes all-in $2.35, 1 fold, maloletkov calls $2.10, trforgy1 calls $2.10, Hero raises to $11.85, maloletkov goes all-in $25, trforgy1 folds, Hero goes all-in $13.15

Flop: ($54.80, 3 players)

Turn: ($54.80, 3 players)

River: ($54.80, 3 players)
maloletkov says “nh“

Final Pot: $54.80
maloletkov shows:
Hero shows:
VietDo shows:

Hero wins $52.10 ( won +$27.10 )
maloletkov lost -$25
trforgy1 lost -$2.35
VietDo lost -$2.35

This blog is definitely getting doom and gloomy. Kind of depressing, sorry about that. I do like to write about non-results type of stuff, but for those of you that remember, one of the purposes of this blog is to allow me to vent. Maybe you feel like commiserating and that’s fine too. Anyways another long day at the tables. Three hideous coolers and one botched hand played horribly. It’s been a while since I’ve played a hand that badly, so I can’t feel too horrible but it is a wake up call.

Let’s Get the Bad One Out of the Way … Ugh …

Good grief, this is easily the worst hand I’ve played in 4 months. No question … just brutal. The villain is an idiot who plays a tight passive 13/4/2 style. I had just suffered two coolers where people flopped sets on me in 3bet pots so I am definitely seeing tilt play it’s part in my thinking process. I remember at the time I put him on KK or AK and figured to test his raise one time by calling his flop raise and re-evaluating. The Q on the turn puts me way ahead of AK or KK so I did the dumbass thing and decide to stack off. Holy cow what a bad decision … folding that flop is the 100% best move and I just refused to believe that a third person in a 100 hand stretch hit a set against me.

3bet Pot against a 22/17/4 Loose Aggressive Player

Against a player like this that’s kinda loose and definitely aggressive (he folds to a 3bet only 20%) that I have plenty of hands on, getting it in on the flop with TPTK after I 3bet squeezed preflop is the right move. He just hits a set and got it in way ahead.

Getting Limp-3bet from a 36/11/2 Fish and I have QQ

Every time I play I see the donks all do some manuever. Last week was all about donk betting flops. This time I see the donks limp-3betting hands. They’ve done with with ATs, AK, KK, AA … but mainly has been with the big hands. So I have QQ in this situation and he’s a half stack so I get it in, and he shows KK.

AK Suited vs a 30/17/3 Maniac (700+ hands!) hits TPTK

I first pull off the mother of all squeeze bets, and get the one caller from the one maniac at the table. He plays a 30/17/3 style over 700+ hands so this guy really could have anything because his range is so wide. I hit TPTK in this 3bet pot, and of course I’m stacking off. Wow he shows AA and I lose another stack.

Hit a River Boat against a 36/0/8 Fish

The pure definition of a cooler card right there in the form of the river 9 giving me the 3rd nuts with the 99988 full house. He shows up with JJ for the second nuts. Another stack gone … another small piece of my heart died.

I know, I know. I’m about to play in my biggest tournament of my life on Saturday and here I am posting that tournaments suck. Obviously, I haven’t been running well in them and am not used to walking away a loser in 5 straight events. I have been playing tournaments the last few days as a warm up of sorts and basically have seen the same formula in every single tournament:

- I’ll double up early against a donk
- Table Luckbox goes into Godmode
- I go card dead
- I win some hands after finally getting some cards
- I then get seriously coolered to exit

After 6 tournaments and no ITMs, I’m once again stepping back from this form of poker mainly because I am not used to the mindset of “No Cashes then 1 BIG cash” that playing to win requires. Although I don’t expect the level of competition to be any good at the $5-$15 buyin range, I am just tired of losing with the best hand.

Brilliant Tard in the $15k Guarantee

That hand really sucked. I was about half way through the field with an average stack and thought this double up would seriously give me some momentum. I had just suffered a loss shoving QQ into AK earlier against someone so … yeah … balls.

Lose a Coinflip to die in the $70k Guarantee Rebuy

This one was a coinflip through the hand until he spiked his flush at the turn. Pretty standard but to exit after 2.5 hours of play and walk away -$33 kinda sucked. I just really hate putting my life on the line (albeit the right play) on a flip. But that’s poker!

Did That Just Happen – The $10k Guarantee

I’m really in a pinch here with a woeful stack that’s almost exactly at 10 big blinds and considering the antes it was definitely time to shove. Again, a cooler.

Final MTT Thoughts
Although I’m a little bitter at tournament play I am really surprised how soft the fields are out there in the sub-$20 tournament world. I really have zero respect now for anyone that regularly cashes in these things … it seems like the theory for success is to make a deep cash 1 out of 6-10 times and the rest is just you eating crap via coolers. Is this how people make money? I don’t think I could handle it, and I’m heading back to the cash tables to grind out some money hopefully.

Today was Super Donkfest Sunday and featured two of the largest online poker tournaments ever (I did not participate), and the most traffic I have ever seen on Stars (at one point 250k). I also enjoyed a FullTilt Poker flashback when Stars crumbled underneath the weight of the traffic and the ring games got shut down basically (nobody could sit down at a table once someone left).

Once that all got taken care of and before and after the Chargers decimating the Broncos, I got in 2,132 hands and also had another coaching session. This time my coach brought along another one of his students, Jesse, who is a pretty smart guy and a good player. During the session, Jesse said the sentence I hate to hear the most (no offence against him, he dind’t know):

“You run horrible” – direct quote (twice during session)

It’s well documented that my coolers are definitely from the twilight zone but today definitely takes the cake for “top 5 all year WTF hands” … and somehow I ended up in the positive. The good thing is that my coach was very impressed that I didn’t tilt at all during the session. Yay for me.

You would like to see some of these hands? Okay. First I have a pretty section just for KK!

Standard KK Cooler Part 1

Standard KK Cooler Part 2 “Revenge of the Shortstacker”

Standard KK Cooler Part 3 “Cardrack 76/26/2 player hits”

That one really bit but she had been hitting EVERYTHING within the last 30 minutes there which is why I slowed down. Can’t believe her PF play with AT off. Unreal.

KK … OMG WTF ARE YOU SERIOUS?!

Again, I can’t believe the preflop play of the villain here. The stats just don’t matter but I take pride in getting it in way ahead here. Just a bad cooler.

So that is it in terms of just KK coolers, but I got a 1 more that you’ll love…

Worst Cooler IMO of my entire career

Yep. I was being sweated during this hand too and all of us just said “NO F’ING WAY” all at the same time. I think we were even in harmony when we said it. Pretty unreal to have a boat and lose to the straight flush.

Anyways I imagine after all that negativity you’d like to see one or two hands where I win. Sure, no problem!

Huge Win for KK

Yes yes yes, turns out I can win ONE hand with KK afterall. Yay.

AA Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

I liked this one, I can watch it over and over again.

So after all those ups and downs I ended up a winner today. Kinda amazing! The good news personally is that I somehow managed to retain goldstar for the month. I really wanted to keep goldstar, the FPPs are definitely worth something (right!?) and who knows what promotions are in the works at Stars that I might benefit from.

Anyways, that’s today and the crazy up and down day I had. Hooray!