Thank You Sir, May I Have Another! [197 Hands / +$28.50] (50nl)

Posted by icemonkey9 on Sep 20, 2008 in General | 0 comments

Last night I had a really good chat with Zach and KMC that lifted my poker spirits, and on top of that my wife got me a giant King-Sized Ice Cream Cone from the gas station that put me in a great mood. Additionally I got a brilliant night's sleep (thank you Night Time TheraFlu) and woke up feeling great. So my wife went to a beach clean up this morning (I didn't want to go and be cleaning the beach and simultaneously littering it by blowing my nose into tons of aloe flavored kleenex) and I decided to do some poker studying.

I had finished up Ed Miller's Simple Aggression series from Stox Poker, and that was pretty interesting and helpful. Then on a recommendation on their forums I watched the Poker Made Simple series, actually just the first video plus the quiz. It's funny how the simple concepts can just blow your mind and put it all into place. After the video and the quiz I just felt it ya know? I really had a ton of confidence, and I remembered back to when I was pledging my fraternity when I faced adversity ... did I quit? Or did I come back and say "Thank you sir may I have another!" ... well as you can tell I am no quitter.

So I fired up 4 tables of 50nl 6max. I wasn't even nervous. I was making reads and playing ranges and really looking at the table in a whole new way. I really thought through what my bets would mean to my opponents, and think about how much value I should be getting. Monsters meant I bet a lot on every street ... weak hands meant I looked past where I was at in the hand to see where I wanted it to be by showdown. It just clicked today in a way that hand not before. I hope this zen like poker feeling sticks ... I imagine it will with a good mental mindset and solid play I can take pride in.

I am feeling happy about this bounce-back small session for a profit of half a buyin (only 30 minutes) but I will take my victories as they come.

So with that ... some hands ...

Zen Moment? Outplayed the Bad Player.

I am a straight out prick if I have the button. I feel sorry (not really) for the poor bastards that play with me when I am on the button because I will kick you in the nuts and then make fun of your hair. On my standard steal I get two callers from absolute fish ... both had nearly identical numbers of 64/9/0.6 (Chris) and 64/9/4 (Mush). Their ranges are much wider than mine! The flop is good for a cbet but not great and I expected one caller with some mid pair 6 or a flush/straight draw. The 5 isn't great and if he fired (stacked) at this I would of course lay it down, but I wanted to see what the river would bring and see how he reacted so I checked behind. Another A hits ... and he checks. So this is where I might have clammed up before and given up. But then I thought, "Wait a minute. If he had anything here, he would have had to bet to get value. He has NOTHING" so I put in a decent value bet and he runs away.

Streets o' Value

On this hand I have zero hands on the villain, he just sat down ... so I make my raise with QQ almost expecting a 3bet from the TAG button but he folds. The flop is damn near perfect for my hand ... a broadway undercard and some connection. This is an easy cbet but then a not so great 3 falls ... his check let me know he probably didn't have it and was on something like AJ or KJ or a flush draw. The 9 I recognized as a total brick for his range. I don't want to pot it because even a hand like AJ probably folds to a pot bet, so I make a half-pot value bet and get called by a guy that most likely knew he was already beat.