Joined: Nov '09
Location: Canada
Age: 55 (M)
Posts: 2387
Well, felt pretty good after I finished work yesterday, and for once I didn’t have to be somewhere with the kids so my wife let me out of the house to go play live poker in our bar league. I was looking more to practice some stuff in preparation for the fall when I want to turn some of my focus to live cash play, but ended up winning the whole thing! Am now qualified for the monthly tournament, this after not playing live for about 2.5 months. Along the way I outbluffed a known bluffer, and faced off HU at the end against a very tough opponent. Slightly up today after being down again this morning, pretty tired from last night so that is it for me today!
Joined: Nov '09
Location: Canada
Age: 55 (M)
Posts: 2387
Well, leaving shortly to go camping for the weekend with the family, so poker for April is over for me. The Ugly: Black Friday The Bad: playing while sick and having trouble focusing crashed my roll The Good: started graphing my results again which is always a good motivator to not see dips! - rediscovered how profitable SNGs can be, and binked a number of good ones - several very profitable sessions at PLO HI cash - NL cash game is starting to get back on track - cashed in my player points on PartyPoker and started playing there again yesterday, with good preliminary results
Goals for May: grow that bankroll, work on strategy, continue working on live game, play only when focused and if not play for small stakes SNG.
So here is the graph for the last eleven days of April. GL everyone and have a great weekend!
Quite good blog Mahdrof I like that you are playing not only NLHE, but also trying different kinds of poker. I'm not very good at Omaha or other kinds of poker, but I like when someone isn't playing just cash games or just NLHE etc. For sure I'll keep an eye on your progress, best of luck in reaching your goal for May and have a great weekend too (well, mine will be great because I've 9 days off ).
Joined: Nov '09
Location: Canada
Age: 55 (M)
Posts: 2387
What an amazing weekend it was for camping. We were up in the Laurentian mountains, a little bit of ice and snow here and there, but gorgeous sunshine and 18 degrees during the day. We had several nice hikes past waterfalls and streams still swollen with melt water, a game of soccer with just t-shirts on, and a nice campfire at night when it got down to about -2.
So far so good in May, NLHE cash game is definitely back on track, SNGs still good to me so no complaints here. Tonight I participate in the monthly tournament of the bar league we have here in Quebec; I qualified last week by winning an event. Basically it costs $2 each time you play, and if you progress through 5 levels of tournaments you win your seat at a WSOP/WPT event. The farthest I have gotten is level 4, and tonight is level 2 so hoping to make it through to the next one. Tonight if I finish in the top four out of probably around thirty-seven players I will continue. Feeling good, if I feel this way tonight look out! GL all!
------------ Oh well. Busted out in sixth spot so better luck next time! I think the highlight of the night was at the final table when I pulled off a "stop and go" on the chip leader. Sitting in the big blind with 13,000 in my stack and 2,000 more in front of me for the bb, UTG chip leader min raised. I put him on AQ/AK, I had AJ and when everybody including the sb folded, I called hoping to see J. However when the cards flopped out and they were a jumble of small cards, I thought briefly and shoved my last 11,000 all-in with 9,000 in the pot. UTG thought about it a while, looked me over and then folded in disgust! GL all!
Joined: Nov '09
Location: Canada
Age: 55 (M)
Posts: 2387
Since that last post I really hit a downswing, so bad that it made me question how much more I want to play this game. Busting out the way I did in that live tournament really tilted me. Right now I am grinding microstakes and mulling the whole thing over. This morning I went for broke with my points, 4100 in the pot and I felt my odds were good for hitting at least one of the three prizes, and I hit two. Some much needed good news after the suckout BS I have seen, and bad decisions on my part. Still so much to learn and sometimes relearn. Anyways, have a good week all!
Joined: Nov '09
Location: Canada
Age: 55 (M)
Posts: 2387
Had an up and down week, but the past 48 hours have been very good. I have tightened up my game in general and with good results so looking to continue that trend.
This morning was having a good session, and a lot of my more speculative drawing hands were hitting well and p*ssing off a few. Happy with the $ from my morning I was shutting down each of the tables I had open as my turn for the bb would come up when I hit this hand on my last table. Normally when I have decided to end a good winning session, I will only play monsters so as not to screw things up, but my donk hands were hitting sooooooo.... Super rock tight player UTG at NL30 raises 3.5bb, and knowing him like I do I knew it was KK or QQ. AA he would have raised more, TT or JJ a little less. Everybody folded, I had 7-4s and knew what he had so I called, and the flop came down 10-7-4! He bet, I raised with an overbet, he reraised to $10 and I shoved. To his credit he took the maximum amount of time to think about it and then called. BABAM! Out of respect for him I erased his name from the image I have attached - he is a good player and we used to be friends through online poker, but that seemed to come to an end a few years ago when we both took a stab at NL1000 and I beat him in some big pots. GL all!
Nice hand And I think it isn't such bad played hand. Let's think & do maths for a while. 74s against his QQ and KK range has about 20% equity. You'll lose 80% of hands, but when you lose you'll lose only $1.05 (I can't imagine playing this hand without hitting good hand or good draw, but I think he wouldn't give you odds to play with draw) and when you actually hit your hand you'll win his entire stack almost always, I think there is no way to fold KK on board like 74xxx, 356xx, 568xx. The only boards when I might consider folding would be 44xxx, 77xxx or some suited flop but also it wouldn't be a obvious fold. So when you'll play 100 hands like this you'll lose 80*1.05=84 and lets take 15*75=over 1k$ (I assume 5% of times he won't give you his whole stack, perhaps on some 47A board or 44x/77x) so you earn over $1k each 100 hands like this one, of course vs. range of QQ & KK when you're sure it's exactly that tight range So it was quite well played & very good read
Joined: Nov '10
Location: Serbia
Age: 37 (M)
Posts: 2087
Very nice hand my friend! Keep it up! Maybe you could give me few lessons in cash game poker I will come to rail you sometime Maybe I will learn something... GL mate and keep it up!!!
Joined: Nov '09
Location: Canada
Age: 55 (M)
Posts: 2387
Thank you for doing the math LooseKiddie! I called that hand for two reasons: 1. My poker instinct was running hot playing with less than premium cards, so even before UTG raised I was thinking of playing them. 2. As mentioned, UTG is super tight rock, I have played against him off and on for the past four years, so immediately I knew his hand, and most other regs at that table probably also knew his hand and folded. But if you know your opponent's hole cards, a reasonably cheap flop is definitely worth looking at because if you hit well you will destack your opponent. I definitely DO NOT recommend regularly playing 7-4s!
Posted by mahdrof: Thank you for doing the math LooseKiddie! I called that hand for two reasons: 1. My poker instinct was running hot playing with less than premium cards, so even before UTG raised I was thinking of playing them. 2. As mentioned, UTG is super tight rock, I have played against him off and on for the past four years, so immediately I knew his hand, and most other regs at that table probably also knew his hand and folded. But if you know your opponent's hole cards, a reasonably cheap flop is definitely worth looking at because if you hit well you will destack your opponent. I definitely DO NOT recommend regularly playing 7-4s!
And neither do I! But in some hands you just have to play it, as it's profitable. It takes a lot of experiance to choose those spots quickly, it took me few long minutes to think about this hand, count equity and other things, but some great players can do that within seconds
Joined: Nov '09
Location: Canada
Age: 55 (M)
Posts: 2387
A bit of a difficult week to get any quality poker time in, but I prefer now to play micros when I am too tired to bring my "A" game to the table. Finally got in a solid hour (!) of my "A" game last night, and this morning worked a bit on my roll at PartyPoker. I wasn't at the table very long when I noticed one player was being very aggro. Being aggro is fine, but too much and you become easy to play. So with AA on the button and him on sb, I figured this would be a good hand to destack him:
#Game No : 10480284320 ***** Hand History for Game 10480284320 ***** $25 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Thursday, May 19, 05:26:23 EDT 2011 Table Table 178757 (Real Money) Seat 7 is the button Total number of players : 9/9 Seat 3: FRITZL666 ( $25 USD ) Seat 4: Fenix149 ( $56.94 USD ) Seat 8: RenAAt777 ( $18.47 USD ) Seat 6: Romani99 ( $16.72 USD ) Seat 1: bankrooter ( $27.76 USD ) Seat 9: bucik84 ( $8.65 USD ) Seat 5: dreib ( $8.75 USD ) Seat 2: irek40pl ( $18.05 USD ) Seat 7: mahdrof49 ( $25.42 USD ) RenAAt777 posts small blind [$0.10 USD]. bucik84 posts big blind [$0.25 USD]. ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to mahdrof49 [ Ac As ] bankrooter folds irek40pl folds Fenix149 folds Romani99 folds mahdrof49 raises [$1 USD] RenAAt777 calls [$0.90 USD] bucik84 folds ** Dealing Flop ** [ 8h, 6c, Ah ] RenAAt777 checks mahdrof49 bets [$1.07 USD] RenAAt777 calls [$1.07 USD] ** Dealing Turn ** [ 3d ] RenAAt777 checks mahdrof49 bets [$4.18 USD] RenAAt777 raises [$8.36 USD] mahdrof49 is all-In [$19.17 USD] RenAAt777 is all-In [$8.04 USD] ** Dealing River ** [ Qs ] RenAAt777 shows [ 2h, Kd ]high card Ace. mahdrof49 shows [ Ac, As ]three of a kind, Aces. mahdrof49 wins $6.95 USD from the side pot 1 with three of a kind, Aces. mahdrof49 wins $35.34 USD from the main pot with three of a kind, Aces.
RenAAt777 has left the table.
mahdrof49: come back!
When I said that, he had obviously left, but a couple of hands later he retook his seat next to me!
RenAAt777 has joined the table.
#Game No : 10480288490 ***** Hand History for Game 10480288490 ***** $25 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Thursday, May 19, 05:29:22 EDT 2011 Table Table 178757 (Real Money) Seat 4 is the button Total number of players : 9/9 Seat 3: FRITZL666 ( $25 USD ) Seat 4: Fenix149 ( $56.94 USD ) Seat 8: RenAAt777 ( $14.04 USD ) Seat 6: Romani99 ( $16.72 USD ) Seat 1: bankrooter ( $27.66 USD ) Seat 9: bucik84 ( $8.75 USD ) Seat 5: dreib ( $9.35 USD ) Seat 2: irek40pl ( $17.20 USD ) Seat 7: mahdrof49 ( $42.29 USD ) dreib posts small blind [$0.10 USD]. mahdrof49 posts big blind [$0.25 USD]. RenAAt777 posts big blind [$0.25 USD]. ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to mahdrof49 [ Qc 9c ] Romani99 has left the table. RenAAt777 raises [$0.75 USD] bucik84 folds bankrooter folds irek40pl folds Fenix149 folds dreib folds euiau has joined the table. mahdrof49 calls [$0.75 USD]
At this point, I know he is on super-tilt, and with a decent drawing hand like Q9s and $0.25 already in, I called to see a flop.
mahdrof49 checks RenAAt777 bets [$5.32 USD] mahdrof49 is all-In [$39.54 USD] RenAAt777 is all-In [$5.97 USD] ** Dealing River ** [ 8h ] RenAAt777 shows [ Ah, 4h ]a pair of Eights. mahdrof49 shows [ Qc, 9c ]a straight, Six to Ten. mahdrof49 wins $28.25 USD from the side pot 1 with a straight, Six to Ten. mahdrof49 wins $26.78 USD from the main pot with a straight, Six to Ten.
Now, what do you say to a top notch aggro-tard after two hands like that?
Well done According to second hand - when someone is posting "dead" blind then he should be your target no matter what . It's pretty simple - posting "dead" blind is just a limp with any two, so when you know you can get to heads up with him then you should shove almost any two. All decent hands have equity vs. any two, so that's pretty simple & obvious move
Joined: Nov '09
Location: Canada
Age: 55 (M)
Posts: 2387
Posted by LooseKiddie: Well done According to second hand - when someone is posting "dead" blind then he should be your target no matter what . It's pretty simple - posting "dead" blind is just a limp with any two, so when you know you can get to heads up with him then you should shove almost any two. All decent hands have equity vs. any two, so that's pretty simple & obvious move
True, but don't forget he did immediately raise UTG, and everybody at this full ring table folded down to me. Neither of us hit the board so if I didn't get straight he took the hand, and being aggro as he was, especially against the guy who just de-stacked him, he was going to the river no matter what.
It doesn't matter if he raises or just checks. It's like this situation with 74s that you had earlier. Of course he can get AA, KK or other monster, but in the long run you'll benefit from this. if you'll play like 40-50% of hands then you have over 60% equity against any two. It's possible that he will post dead blind just once in 1k hands or so, then it's less profitable, but there are players posting dead blinds every single time they join the table and you should have an eye of them, because it could be easy boost for bankroll
And in this situation you had it's also obvious he was on tilt, so it's even better spot to win some easy money
Joined: Nov '09
Location: Canada
Age: 55 (M)
Posts: 2387
Posted by LooseKiddie: there are players posting dead blinds every single time they join the table and you should have an eye of them, because it could be easy boost for bankroll
Exactly! Keep an eye out for these players, often times they are easy targets. My favourite is when they show up at say a NL100 table with some odd amount of cash like $37.84, so most likely that is their entire bankroll. They are two positions away from posting the bb but post right away, and when it is their turn they immediately raise. YUM-YUM!
Joined: Nov '09
Location: Canada
Age: 55 (M)
Posts: 2387
Well, the week was pretty good for me overall as I rebuilt my bankroll and started hitting higher blinds again. By Wednesday I was back at NL50, Friday NL100 and today I had a NL200 table going along with tables at NL50 and NL100. I have been trying to only bring my "A" game to the table, and have tightened up when my draws weren`t hitting, and with generally good results. NL200 was very gratifying as I twice destacked a very aggressive player who is feared by many. First set over set, and then half an hour later set vs. top pair top kicker (AQ). I think on the second hand he was tilted at me for stacking him once, oh well!
Joined: Nov '09
Location: Canada
Age: 55 (M)
Posts: 2387
Decent week overall, had a little more time to grind in the evenings and played mostly NL30, 50 and 100. Did well at the beginning of the week, but the last four days have been very difficult. Each day I start off by dropping like a stone, and every day I come back and post a gain ranging from small to half-decent. Working very hard to bring my best game to the table, but sets are losing to runner-runner flush or straight, and other times I know I have the best hand, push and get called and opponent catches a miracle river. I think in June I will start graphing results again. GL!
Joined: Apr '09
Location: Portugal
Age: 44 (M)
Posts: 4827
I always find what i like about poker in BRM, but reading one more blog wont make me any bad, so i think i will pass by there sometimes to see whats going on in your blog. btw, your other blogs, you were trying to win money with them, passing NDB's? Or i just didnt understood what you meant with them?
Joined: Nov '09
Location: Canada
Age: 55 (M)
Posts: 2387
Posted by Fakiry: btw, your other blogs, you were trying to win money with them, passing NDB's? Or i just didnt understood what you meant with them?
Hi Fakiry! The other blogs dealt with trying to build a bankroll from freeroll money, but unfortunately both tanked. This one just deals with my week to week results, or any interesting hands that I may come across. Once in a while I might also post something which I find interesting or amusing.
Well, I know it happens, but I've also had a disaster results with very strong made hands or monster starting hands. As you may know from my blog I've lost aces twice vs. runner runner flush (AKs) and once... vs. 45s and trips of fives on the river. Then yesterday I've had almost no action with monster hands, collecting like 2,5-10bbs, but I think I've made progress with my mindset. It's still hard to belive when you lose 97%-3% hand, but well... we must deal with this, it's poker
).
I will come to rail you sometime 
