April - The Return of Rumpel-tilt-skin.
Hands: 10,500
Winnings: $260
BB/100: 2.77
Rake Paid: $221.80

Totally slack month. Travelling with work for a week of it so really only put in enough time to cover my Ironman commitments on FTP. Though definitely been my best month of putting in time when I feel like I've been playing well, and cutting sessions down to a minimum when I'm off (i.e. I feel like I'm running bad but generally not the case).

After a little soul-searching, and slightly more pokertracker searching I found I've been a little-reasonably unprofitable calling preflop with small pp's. Interesting in so far as I realised at this point I've been fairly blindly calling in all circumstances with these sorts of hands for set-mining purposes, but obviously this is not an optimal strategy long term. So I've been looking to adjust by playing way less small pp's, especially early-mid position. As well as being more picky about which villains to set-mine against and any squeeze happy fiends left to act, and making sure that if I am calling I have a plan for which boards I won't immediately be giving up on the hand.

Aiming for 50k hands over May which should be very doable with a bit of application but my previous best has been 30k months so we shall see. If I end up running well I might have a bit of a dip at 100NL and any associated run-bad that seems obligatory with any level jump!

Scratch

Ooo the rush...

Feb kicked off with a nice little ~15 BI downswing, over 14k hands. I certainly didn't feel like I was playing that badly but when you get stuck that far in one stretch it would be agrievous to discount a lot of donking on my part contributed. Of course it just doesn't help when you run into stuff like this...

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

UTG: $35.40
MP: $50.00
Hero (CO): $60.05
BTN: $70.10
SB: $46.70
BB: $70.55

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is CO with 7 7
2 folds, Hero raises to $1.50, 2 folds, BB raises to $4.50, Hero calls $3

Flop: ($9.25) 7 5 6 (2 players)
BB bets $6, Hero raises to $24, BB raises to $66.05 all in, Hero calls $31.55 all in

Turn: ($120.35) 5 (2 players - 2 are all in)

River: ($120.35) Q (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $120.35
Hero shows 7 7 (a full house, Sevens full of Fives)
BB shows 5 5 (four of a kind, Fives)
BB wins $117.35
(Rake: $3.00)

120 bbs deep effective, it was probably questionable whether flatting profitable here, but as it turns out villain can 3bet with 55 so I guess it is.

Despite having read about running into weird spots in rush when two very deep stacks bump heads it was definitely the one thing that really stood out to me in trying to adjust to the game (and may be in part responsible for my bad start) is being aware of the different stack sizes that do pop up every hand. Being aware of when opening pre becomes marginal or worse due to some shorter stacks having popped up, and vice versa playing with proper implied odds in mind when up against another deep stack I suspect makes a sizeable difference to winrate over the long run.

Anyhow managed to turn it around (also another clue that bad play was contributing, as I started to feel like I was playing better and thinking more clearly when the line started swinging up again) and thanks to some nice rakeback and full tilt bonus clearing I made it back in the black by the end of the month (some 20k hands later). (NB: I did get suckered in by rush and made my first deposit at FT, I wonder how much their numbers have gone up.)

The rush crush got me thinking. A: Just how deep would I be ok with getting KK arrr-in preflop? B: Would buying in for some sort of random amount between the minimum and the maximum give you any sort of edge against players who are making stupid stack size reads to work out if you are a solid player (although this is probably negated by the PT/HEM's picking up rush functionality, and of course the equity you lose not being able to stack someone for a full stack)?

Scratch.

Fresh starts and all that...

January - Small things come in big packages...or something like that.
Hands: 9,500
Winnings: $170
BB/100: 3.61
Rake paid: $123

First and foremost I'm starting this blog inspired by those degen grinders and bloggers out there that respectively crush tables and produce entertaining poker ramblings. But in addition to wanting to emulate these heros of poker, I've the slightly more selfish motive of hoping a public record of my poker wanderings will help me keep the proverbial nose to the grindstone.

After hitting a tiny score by running hot in a satelite-to-satelite-to-donkament back in the poker boom, I figured to have reached the pinnacle of my poker career and promptly cashed out and quit for a couple of years. I've spent the last couple of months getting back into the game and slowly coming to realisation that I really knew nothing back then.

And so here I am with a fresh pokerstars deposit and a hankering to cut my teeth on 25NL 6max, improve, move up...you know same old same. Despite not putting in a huge volume of hands for this first month, I'm happy with my first 10k. I figure to be suffering from 'scared money' syndrome as I'm not entirely confident about putting to use all the concepts and thinking that I've done over the past few months. That said it is a world of difference to how I used to roll, and I certainly rarely feel totally at a loss in the more sticky spots I've been running into.

I started the month running 4 tables but have since moved to 9 and feel like I've got the time to put in the necessary thought into the more complex decisions. I think it's also a reasonable sized number of tables to be running such that I'm not gonna be swinging too much more than 5 BI down in any given session (althought that has happened once this month already, so it's not a stretch to think I'm capable of much larger swings). I'm running pretty nitty at 16/14 but I that is mostly a function of being on the early slopes of the learning curve, and I'm doing my utmost to avoid spots that I feel are gonna get too sticky post flop, so I can just concentrate on my decision making in spots where the value margin is slightly more plump!

SOTM (Spew Of The Month):

Poker Stars $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

Hero (BB): $25.00
UTG: $36.50
MP: $33.20
CO: $22.75
BTN: $25.55
SB: $26.30

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is BB with J J
2 folds, CO raises to $0.75, 2 folds, Hero raises to $2.50, CO calls $1.75

Flop: ($5.10) 3 6 T (2 players)
Hero bets $3.50, CO calls $3.50

Turn: ($12.10) 3 (2 players)
Hero bets $7.50, CO raises to $16.75 all in, Hero calls $9.25

River: ($45.60) 7 (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $45.60
Hero shows J J (two pair, Jacks and Threes)
CO shows 7 7 (a full house, Sevens full of Threes)
CO wins $43.35
(Rake: $2.25)

I guess not really a spew since I got it in good, but pretty badly played nonetheless. Just like everyone else I hate jacks. Villain was running 19/11 over a pretty reasonable sample. The 3bet flat pre I (rightly or wrongly) believe to be pocket pairs up to QQ and AKo, AKs. I cbet for value on flushes and smaller pairs as he has a low fold to cbet %, and he peels one. I suspect he hasn't hit a set here as I think he probably raises there especially with two to the flush out. Which leaves for me in his range probably 55, 77, 88, 99, JJ, QQ and AcKc possibly AcKx, pretty narrow but it's my first 3bet in over 100 hands at the table so I don't suspect he thinks I'm light. Flush draw gets there on the turn, betting here I think is a mistake given the range I've put him on, he's just not going to call me with anything I beat. So of course he ships, and I make my second mistake of calling (despite results I suspect this is bluff raise an inconsequential amount of the time) paying ~$9 to win ~$36 which is obviously nowhere near good enough to be trying to hit my 4 outs.

I played it horrendously...villain sucked out horrendously...what a game...

Bring on Feb! Scratch