Biggest Score to date:



and for your comic pleasure:

i mostly forgot about this blog. I might start updating again regularly or i might not. but here's a fun hand

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4418129

edit: and this is awesome

I had a pretty entertaining weekend. Met up with 2 mates at the UTS bar where another of my mates works on Friday at like 5.30. I wasn't really planning on having a big one just a few beers and some pool for 2 hours or so, i am always wrong when i say this. We were there till about 10pm, and in that time had consumed about 8 jugs or beer between us plus the random free shots that my mate would make at the bar, we played pool, Daytona and we even found a deck of cards and played Shithead, just without the punishments.

By the time we decided to leave there we were all pretty buzzed, one of my mates suggested we go to Star City Casino and play some pokers there. Normally i dont like playing there cos the rake is stupidly big but i was drunk, and there is nothing like lolliveplayersareterrible to give us all some good entertainment, all three us us sat in at different tables of 1/2nl game with a $80 max/min buyin, so its virtually a 40bb crapshoot. So in reality not all that fun but pretty bearable, especially because we were not really caring about results but more having a good time at the table and drinking etc. Had a lot of fun talking random shit with the other players and the different dealers and in general having a good laugh.

Only one hand of note (or specifically one i can remember correctly) happened:

UTG+1 ($110) limps, MP limps, I raise to $13 in the CO with KhKs($150), SB ($100) calls, UTG+1 calls, MP folds.

Flop: Kd6d5d,

checks to me and i bet $25, SB shoves, UTG+1 calls and i obv fistpump call (saying pair the board obv), SB visibly whitens after i say this

Turn: 5h

River: 2d

SB turns over AcKc and looks around, i turned over my hand, SB mucks and UTG+1 flashes the Ad and mucks (obv saying something about how unlucky she was).

I also made my first successfull live triple barrell bluff, with 72o (i obv showed after), i was pretty drunk by this stage but i remember i had a good read ect. raked in a $120 pot with it too. Best part about it was that the player i did it against was talking crap like Phil Helmuth is awesome etc, and acting like the king shit of the table.

We kept playing and drinking till about 4.30am when we went up to the bar to grab some more drinks and because one of my mates was pretty smashed by this point (and had been pretty loud at his table) we were all refused service whcih blows. We clearly were not going to continue playing anymore if we couldnt drink so we cashed in our chips, grabbed a taxi and tried not to fall asleep on the way home. I made about $450, so did one of my other mates and one lost about $200, so it was a pretty good night.

Woke up late on Saturday, naturally hungover. Started to play a session but decided against it, instead i deposited money on cake and play some of the satalites to the Aussie Millions, as well as some Step SNG's on Stars to the AAPT Sydney Event. None of these went to well but meh.

On Saturday night had some friends round for a few drinks and we decided to have a Kevin Smith night, and went to blockbuster and got Clerks, Mall Rats and Chasing Amy. I haven't seen any of these for a few years and forgot how good they were.

On Sunday i went to JB Hi-Fi and picked up Gears of War 2, which i spent most of the day playing and is really really good. I also watched the first couple of episodes of teh show True Blood, and so far it is pretty interesting and definately worth checking out if you like vampire type stuff.

Thanks for reading,

Ben

Hey CR,

So the Americans seem to have a new president, i cant really voice an opinion on the subject either way, but it will at least be interesting to see what changes are going to happen, and how this will effect the rest of the world.

Anyway, played basketball last night and i was feeling really good about it. Last game i was a bit hesitant to be as aggressive in driving to the hole and feel like i settled too much for jumpers because of my knee. Last night i played and it turned out that i was completely disregarding my knee, which is great. It was overall a very frustrating game though, where each team plays a game of who can actually get a shot to drop........personally i think that i had the ball go more than halfway into the ring about 4 seperate occasions before either rolling or clattering out. This being said i think our team has found a good balance between running and gunning and actually setting up some half court offense. We ended up losing by 5 pts but overall we play OK. A big thing we have to work on is getting our fittness up as a whole.

Last night i played a short session after basketball.



I enjoyed owning thisnitty reg here. He tanked for about 30 seconds after my river bet untill i said "lol AJ?" then he instacalled.

Here i take a rather wierd line, i have been mixing in donking in spots where i hand that i can be double barrelled off of easily. I think if i c/c flop and get double barrelled i have to c/f turn and my hand is pretty face up. As long as i do a decent job of balancing my range for donking its a pretty nice trick to have. On the turn i obviously hit my gin card. My thoughts about the half pot bet on the turn is that i want him to continue with his floats of A high, 7x, 99-JJ and maybe his underpairs. Also the bet looks very weak, so it can induce some bluff raises. On the river the A hits, and i want to try and make my line look the bluffiest, so i elect to overbet by about half the pot. Obviously all of his Ax hand that he somehow got to the river with are going to call now, and also due to my line i am pretty confiedent that his TT/JJ type hands might even hero call. Throughout the hand i think he views my range as 45, 7x, 88-TT, air and maybe 6x, with air being a pretty big part of my range as 7x/air. Obviosly the turn card really was my gin card and i get paid.

Bethere is a 400nl-600nl reg so i am not sure what he is doing down at these stakes. This spot is pretty standard on my part, i think he got it in a bit light vs me tbh, at this point we only played abour 30 hands together across about 4 different tables, and i suppose i had been playing fairly aggressively.

I think this hand i played fine, by the river when he bets, i dont think he is bluffing at all and never value bets worse.

Thanks for reading,

Ben

Hey Guys,

Today is the Melbourne Cup, it literally stops the nation. It should really be a public holiday in all states (not just Victoria) as nothing gets doen today at all. But moving on

October ended up being a pretty gross month for me and my worst month since i started playing seriously. Alot of it was due to running bad, getting sucked out on alot and also being coolered a ton, and some due to period of poor weak passive play due to running bad etc. But all in all its to be expected when we play this tragically beautiful game. I went through my first 20BI downswing (surely not my last) and then managed to dig myself out of it , which is a very nice feeling.








So obviously i ran bad in October, but also after an extensive review of hand histories over the month, i discovered that the running bad (it was a constant mental state) was leading me to be extremely tight passive in so so many different spots and i was making -EV plays and leaving money on the table because of it. At about hand 22K, was when i realised this, and as you can see, aside from a little downswong results vastly improved.

Anyway onto November Goals:

Play at least 20K hands of 200nl this month.

Play 40K hands total, mixing HU and 6max at 100nl and 200nl.

So far November is going ok.




My weekend went pretty well. I played Basketball after work on Friday night and my knee once again held up fine, i took anti-inflammatories before and wore the strap, but didnt manage to ice it and it was only marginally sore on Saturday. I can remember if i played any poker before i went to work on Saturday but after work i arrived at a friends play at around midnight. They had just set up Rock Band and we decided to play the "Endless Setlist" which is all 84 songs played in a row, with out a break. There were 6 of us there, the drums and the vocals were both set on medium and both guitars set on hard. The 2 left over people substitiuted in and out with everyone else and we all switch instruments quite frequently. 7.5 hours of straight play + drinking = fuck you Visions (the second last song), the only song we failed and we failed it like 4 times, but eventually we did it and the last song to finally finish the setlist, so satisfying. Then immediately depressing to walk out side and it be light and 8AM. Was a good drunk walk home with help from some Burker King breakfast though.

Home all of your weekends were good.

Cheers,
Ben

Hi Guys,




Put in a quick session after getting back from basketball last night. Idk what was going on but all the regs were going insane vs eachother lastnight. They were all literaly going bat shit insane, shipping it in light with 4bets and 5bets and making ridiculously spewy double and triple barrels. It was pretty amazing that i ended up down actually, but i got my money in ahead as substancial favourites in 3 different pots for stacks, but the villains got there, meh it happens. I think my ev adjusted was like +250 or something, but i have mostly stopped caring about this statistic, its just fun to look at sometimes.

In this hand i am 200BB's deep with a nitty reg who runs about 14/12 and folds to 3bets about 55%. I know that the turn is a traditionally bad double barrell card, but at the same time he should know this and fold his TT-JJ type hands. By the river i have around a psb left and figure he had at best AQ and tanked for about 7 seconds debating whether to shove, but i pussied out. I am still not sure whether ashove is +ev in this spot but i am thinking about it.

You have to tarp tarp tarp and pop em on the river. Expert imo.

LOL reg on reg violence, this is the only particular example of regs going crazy vs me. I did 5bet shove a couple of times and got folds though. But some of the hands shown down between the other regs were just crazy. Wait found another one, i had just squeezed, then folded to his 4bet on another table literally a second before i 3bet him here, his play isnt that bad once he 4bets, but seriously i have like 30 hands lifetime with this guy and he insta ships TT, meh.

This villain is somewhat nitty. When he bets the river i really struggle to put him on a hand that gets to the river in this fashion and then bets, but also i think he is never bluffing and also never betting a hand worse than mine.

Basketball went well in reference to my knee last night. I took some anti-inflammatories, wore the brace thing and iced it immediately afterwards. That said the game was pretty attrocious. I have been a little sick recently and it really affected me on the court. Any time that i got my energy up to a good level, it was suddenly stripped away. As a team we played pretty poorly as well but thats what will happen after a break. We will come back and be better than we were before.

Thanks for reading,

Ben

Hey CR,


Was pretty tired last night when i got home but had about an hour and a half to kill before i went out to dinner with my Dad. I opened up 4 tables at 100NL HU waiting for action. NO ONE SAT DOWN AT ANY TABLES FOR 15MINS. This might have been for varying reasons, it was like 4am Stars time so it was a little dead, i was sitting at only the 50bb min tables or the fact that i was on 4 tables.

Whatever the reason was i was annoying so i shut down Stars and started playing Max Payne 2. As a side note, i have had this game for ages but have never really played it, not for any reason in particular, i really enjoyed the first game, but i just couldn't be bothered at the time. Since seeing the movie i have been playing it a little here and there, and let me tell you that game is dangerously addicting and fun.


After having delicious steak in mushroom sauce and a beer or 2 with my Dad i got home and felt like playing, but not hardcore grinding. I saw the $11 rebuy 30K guarenteed tourney was about to start and jumped in that. i also registered into 4 $12 45 man turbo SnG's and opened up 2 HU 100NL tables. Back when i was building a bankroll i mainly played the $6.50 45 man SnG and i forgot how easy these tourneys are. i busted pretty early in 2 and came 4th and 7 in the other 2. In the rebuy touney i was only in for 2 rebuys, so $30 but unfortunately busted about three hours in with 35bb stack KK<<

After starting my session i quickly realised that i was too tired to have 2 HU tables plus all the tourneys going at once. I shut downone of the HU tables and played the one guy untill i deemed that i was too tired to keep playing even one table of HU. It was a very good quit imo.





I love these types of hands:

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 2 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

BTN/SB: $122.40
Hero (BB): $121.90

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BB with T T
BTN/SB raises to $3, Hero raises to $11, BTN/SB calls $8

Flop: ($22.00) 3 9 9(2 players)
Hero bets $14, BTN/SB raises to $34, Hero calls $20

Turn: ($90.00) 7(2 players)
Hero bets $36, BTN/SB raises to $77.40 all in, Hero calls $40.90 all in

River: ($243.80) Q(2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $243.80
BTN/SB mucks 3 A
Hero shows T T (two pair, Tens and Nines)
Hero wins $243.30
(Rake: $0.50)


In other news i am really looking forward to my basketball game tonight. I will really take care of my knee and hope that it will handle the stress that is naturally put on it when playing, hopefully with the anti-inflammatories and the icing it wont even be too sore.


Anyway, Good Luck all,


Ben

I am not sure why but recently in the night time of week days, the internet at my apartment sucks. Between 7:30pm and 10:30pm the net will randomly cut out and then turn on again anyehre from 5-25 minutes later. This is not really conducive to grinding and annoys me more than any random bad beat could. Seeing as how i mainly play cash, this isn't really a big deal in my profitability unless it cuts out when i am involved in a big pot, my flat mate however is a SNG grinder.


This, as you could imagine is quite detrimental to him, having 18 games open at once and having the internet cut out for 20mins to find that the majority he had been blinded away to like 4bb's (turbo SNG's) and some having been blinded away completely. He is pretty prone to random tilt and degeneracy but after this shit happens to him i can comfortably say that i have never seen him so angry.


I am not really sure what i can do to fix the net as i think while my ISP is normally fast and is also relatively cheap, their service kinda sucks and as such seems to be going down during the peak usage time. Not good imo.


This led me to put in only a short session last night, probably around 300ish hands, i didnt check the cashier or HEM but i think i ended up around $110ish. Its pretty annoying that at 5am Stars time (usually the time i start my night time sessions) that the games are so dead. Last night i sat at 4 empty 50bb tables, as there were no free tables open in the lobby, waiting for randoms to fill the game in (while i was on waiting list for different tables obv) and only 2 of those filled up in about 20mins. I eventually found like 6 good tables (that didnt have wait lists 4 ppl deep) so it wasn't too bad, but i was constantly scanning the lobby for 2 more tables to 8 table like i normally do. Eventually on 2 of my tables the random fish left the tables and were instantly replaced by regs (who had been on the waitlist ldo) i sat out on the 2 tables and as i was looking for new ones the internet cut out, so i just quit for the day.


On a different note i found out that i have Patellar Tendonitis in my left knee. Yes i know, normally an old person problem but w/e, its also known as jumpers knee. It has been painfull over the past couple of months and i thought w/e its just sore, it will go away. Apparently not.


To treat / prevent this from getting worse i have chosen to take the folling action. I purchased one of these knee straps, which were recommened by variuous people that i have talked to. I will wear this during the game, take some anti-inflammatories just before the game and then ice my knee immediately after the game. I have my first game since finding out i have this condition tomorrow night, so i'll see how this system works.



Take care guys,

Ben

Put in a big session on Sunday and had some very pleasing results, which (this month anyway) is a change. I needed a bit of a confidence boost. I now think that remember at least a little of how to play the pokers. As the blog title would suggest i am out of my downswong (hopefully).





Two obligatory "games are dead" hands.


Vs a 14/12 reg nit fish who really doesnt like to fold in 3bet pots, hence the tiny 4bet, and the bluffy looking shove on the flop. Post-flop is pretty standard, but lolcalling4betsOOPwithKQsuitedaments is really really really bad.


Vs a random 75/30 donk who i had the jesus seat on and pretty much raped for 3 BI in about 15mins. By the time the fish quit the waiting list was like 7 ppl long.


Figured out what my 2 favourite driving songs are on the weekend. Those songs you pump out driving fast with your windows down.

Under my Umbrella - Incubus (Don't know if this is the actual music video)

I was a bit drunk and played this hand in particular pretty terribad, I opened the CO with QJo, WCGrider who had been really really active especially IP flats OTB. Flop comes K25r i think, good board to cbet, good board to raise a cbet, I do and he does. Folding>>3bet>>calling. Obviously in my intoxicated state i call and go for the crai on the turn. As bad as this play is, WCGrider is bluffing a ton here, he will 3bet AK, KQ, possibly KJ pre so as i wasn't in the mood to be folding, i should have 3bet the flop small imo. Anyway, pretty humerous to watch myself get owned.


Anyway last night i played 1800ish hand of only HU and managed to book a win of 240 which is also nice.


Thanks for reading,

Ben