Revenge of the Icemonkey9

Posted by icemonkey9 on Jul 25, 2008 in General | 1 comment

I used to have an avatar that was me wearing sunglasses and my hands in a prayer position together next to my face. It looked cool. Unfortunately, when I uploaded it to Pokerstars it looked (at least a little bit) dubious, and at the very least a lightning rod for abuse. "Hey icemonkey is that a big d**k in your mouth!?" and I would say "No, those are my hands clasped together in prayer" and then "No it's a D**K!" etc etc. It got real old, real quick. And what was worse was that I was not allowed to change my avatar since I had done so already once. I emailed PokerStars support and literally within 15 minutes they let me reset my avatar picture. Kudos to "Owen" and the rest of the PS support team, another reason I am very happy I switched over.

OK - so ... as the title suggested I was able to get my head together, and thanks to a kick in the balls from WVHillBilly (who has great constructive criticsm by the way) I got myself together at the tables and actually got back all the money I lost earlier today. I'll post 2 "bad" hands and two "interesting" hands where my play wasn't spot-on but resulted positively.

Session: 25nl / Pokerstars / 6 tables (yes 6 but it was on and off)
Duration: 56 minutes
Hands: 232
End Result: + $40.90

Did I play every hand perfectly? No. Is my name Johnny Chan? No. So I can excuse that. But the good news is I didn't horrifically misplay any hands. Lets look...

Took a Shot, Knew When I was Beat (Losing Hand 1)

His bet felt like an absolute cbet, and it probably was. Only problem is that he definitely felt like he had something that had me beat (ace high), so I let it go rather than going nuts here. Okay, I can breathe.

Villain Who Doesn't Like Money (Losing Hand 2)

What a weird hand. I get in there with a suited-one-gapper. I get a free look at the turn which gives me crap pair. But I figure here that any 7, 5, or diamond probably gives me the best hand. I'm not getting perfect odds here to call but it's worth it to take a shot (in my head at this point). One of my "outs" hits ... my plan was a healthy check-raise. I raise it up 3x his bet ... and he flat calls ... WITH A BOAT. Not sure what on Earth he was thinking flat calling me there. No clue.

Setmining (Boat Mining) Works Wonders for the Bankroll (winner)

Funny thing is that when I saw this hand preflop I thought "I misplayed my last 99 set horribly, I won't this time" and it worked out well for me. I bet 50% on the flop as a donk bet. I don't quite know donk-bet-betting strategies (if there are any) but I was getting money in the pot. He raises really weak so I actually miscalculate here to another raise to $6 (not a huge problem). He flat calls and with the Q on the turn I just plop it in fully expecting a call with an Ax type of hand. His KK was a bit of a surprise and I guess he figured me for something like 9x or TT or JJ. Still, hard to reason why he called my turn-shove with KK on an AA9Q board (guess he had whatever was going in my head from this morning).

Very Nice Little Winning Hand Here with Big Slick

Preflop I thought about 3betting, but don't because its 25nl ... I know I know, WVHillBilly would in a heartbeat because it's the right play. I admonished myself as soon as I hit that call button. The flop ain't great but it ain't bad either, I was thinking this had to be a situation where if a A, K, or Q showed up and wasn't a spade I was most likely way ahead. This made the flop call easy. With the nut Q turning for me, my goal was to just get em both to shove. Looking back I should have just bet $14 here instead of 7, and the minimum raise there should have been about $9. Something to remember for next time when trying to stack two opponents (which honestly I haven't tried to do very often). Realizing that I should have just put Sunir all in before, I just stack him off, and he folds. I win a nice pot, the end.