Well it has certainly been a sporadic blog to update since the inception of the CRC, but there actually has been a good amount of pokering done by atleast myself, Micah, and Andy. I haven't spoken much with any of the other members in quite some time, but I'm eager and excited to possibly reform or possibly recreate this group with fresh and fully motivated individuals who aspire to climb the poker ranks.

The lack of activity by the group is largely in part to the heavy busy lives that we all lead. As an example, I have been studying hard for the CPA Exam, playing in golf tournaments, and doing some refurnishing/remodeling of my parents' house. The result has been a lack of time to really do any sweats with other group members or to conduct any meetings in a synchronized and regular time-manner.

With my pending move back down to Cincinnati and starting to work full-time, I expect the return of some normalcy in my hours and will hopefully rekindle the flame that drove our group towards greatness in the beginning.

A quick recap of some highlights/lowlights of how poker has been for me this summer:

I won a quick 50 ish buy ins playing some 6-max PLO, thought I was a world-beater so I continued. Lost a good chunk of it back and opted to recently ban myself from PLO Cash. It's worse than heroin.

Cashed in two of Stars VIP SnGs by outlasting Greg "Fossilman" Raymer in the same day twice! Finished 4th and 2nd respectively after having TT < A3 and A6 > AT both AIPF. Overall these two lost races cost me ateast $500 in real cash winnings, but I still managed to cash for $700 in these.

Won a $10 PLO8 tourney as well as FT two other NLHE Tourneys at the same time, after registering for the tournaments on a whim.

Playing exclusively HU NLHE cash right now and am up ~20 Buy Ins so far in the month of September. Anticipate winning atleast 50 buy ins by the end of September.

Other than that, I will try to post a bit more regularly.

Good luck,
Alex

P.S. - For those who haven't checked it out, you should really listen to my Podcast because it's sweet. They can be found at http://www.stoxpoker.com/podcasts

Gotta give my show a plug, especially if I'm taking the time to blog! Thanks for reading.

So back when CRC formed, i took a pretty big hit something around 8 buy ins. Tho I'll Admit that was months ago, i decided to fall back on my HU SNG background and through a huge week of running 30%-50% ROI on a daily basis($22 turbos), i no longer have a big hole in my BR. Im dabbling in cash, but as long as im crushing HU SNG's i think ill be like Icarus and see just how close to the Sun i can get. If i recall correctly the goal of the CRC was for us members to reach a BR to play 1-2 or 2-4 comfortably by the end of summer. I think i can do it. I think by the end of August, ill be there. Hopefully things work out.

On a side note i cant recall when the last time the CRC got together on Skype, but i look forward to the next time.


-Decoy#10

Comcast sucks and quit working so I was kinda forced to take a month off from poker in june, I have verizon now-so far so good. I also kinda freaked out a little when i heard that the FEDs seized some poker funds and checks were bouncing so I cashed out quite a bit, i guess there really was nothing to worry about so i have money online again now. Taking time off actually kinda helped my game a little. I spent the month reviewing HHs in HEM and also playing some live poker(which is so slow that you are forced to think about decisions). I came to the realization that most of my mistakes are not caused by misreading the board, making a mathmatical error, putting someone on the wrong range, or anything else like that. Instead, almost all of the big mistakes I made were caused by me leveling myself and convincing myself that someone is pulling some sick bluff OR getting all FPSy and trying to pull some sick bluff myself.

With this new realization I had my first tournament success since the very beginnning of my poker career. I took 4th in the sunday double deuce on FTP for 9k and the very next day i final tabled a summer poker open event at Borgata after being the shortest stack with 13 remaining, i am sure i left a bunch of money on the table because i suck at tournements but i am pretty happy none the less.

So far in july I haven't played that much 6max because Alex's last blog inspired me to give HU a try and it is going very well-stick with what works IMO. There really are a ton of good HU videos on CR and I am having fun with it. Hopefully it will help my 6max game as well.

I just moved into a new house and I am not completely done moving everything yet. Once I have everything set up I should be on skype a ton if anyone wants to books some sweat sessions.

Thats all for now, good luck at the tables,

-Greg

I just realized that this blog has been considerably neglected, so I will make an attempt to salvage our credibility and to fill this blog space with a plethora of poker content.

I am embarking on a challenge to myself. I'm going to play exclusively heads-up tables of any mixture of NLHE and PLO cash games. My ultimate goal is to maybe win 100 buy ins by summer's end, though this goal may be a bit ambitious given my lack of volume that I have been putting in at the tables. Either way, I will plan to chronicle my journey of this challenge here in this blog, and attempt to keep my nomo4life blog under more personal topics and rants and musings.

I'm not even sure what a good win rate at heads-up cash games are so I cannot set a reasonable expectation for the number of hands it would take me to get to 100 Buy-Ins.

Anyways, I'm currently down a little after a few cooler-ish hands. I've been overall quite impressed with the general opponents at NLHE and licking my lips at the opponents at the PLO tables. I have a few standards that I have set for myself for both stop-loss as well as quitting bad opponents, that I need to ensure I stick to in order to maximize my EV in the games. I also need to try and play at more optimal times and avoid suboptimal playing times (tend to be during the EST days).

Anyways, wish me luck!

Cheers,
Alex
nomo4life

I'm not really sure what to say. My hold 'em game is either off or I just plain suck at the game. And if I run bad I can't stop from playing bad. It's really frustrating and I'm at a crossroads with what I want to do. It may be that I just play stud, horse, or some combo of those and hold 'em, maybe full ring and maybe tourneys? I can't do the 6 max thing for some reason. I'm going to keep working at it, but I may stray away from 6 max for awhile. It's at the point where I need to ask myself why I play this game. Am I trying to move up the limits? Or am I just trying to make a steady side income. I don't know if it's possible to move up the limits without working at the game very hard...something I just don't have time for honestly. I'm looking for a career type job and I would rather spend the weekend with my girlfriend then grinding out a couple hundred bucks at the table.

I think I'll think about this more while I play some 2/4 stud and horse, games I enjoy and can play well and actually profit! When I come back to 6 max, I may drop down to 50nl and stick to 4 tables to really work on some things. But who knows when that'll be.

Andy "allreds26" Hasdal

In lieu of the lack of comments that we have been receiving in our blogs, I will try to make an effort to spur some discussion. Please include your logic behind the decisions as well as your choice of what you would do differently.

Scenario: You have been at the table for a small time. You have no history with the villain, no stats, and you won your first hand by busting a short stack. This is still the first orbit since you've sat.

1. The villain in this hand was 6 tabling and was playing 25.84/21.35/3.00. He also played this hand http://www.pokerhand.org/?4343585 right when I sat down at the table and it seemed like an important hand.

2. So about two hands after this hand goes down I run into 99 and I get 3bet again by the same guy. I wanted to see if anyone had any thoughts on what to do on the flop. I was thinking about leading out but that looks super strong and it doesn't get a Cbet if he's holding AK or something. Also I would like to see what people think about the check raise size and see if they think it is appropriate because it seemed a little bit small to me.

3. Hand #3 a few hands after hand #2 at a different table. The villain was 8 tabling and had a 27.55/19.39/.60 line. He seemed to be playing very straightforward to me. So the line seemed pretty strong. I was thinking either a set or a pair and draw. I had a hard time with this hand.
   
   

4. This pot was relatively small but it was just an awkward play. The villain was playing 66.67/4.76/6.0. At the time I didn't even realize that he showed his hand. I was thinking he had to have a huge hand. This seems to be a very common betting theme for short stackers. They will bet small to start and then once they think you have something they will be huge.

5. This hand just seemed like I played it very poorly. I'd like to hear a few suggestions. The villain was new to the table.

6. I think I could have played this hand better as well and I would like to see what other people would do. The villain was playing 21.60/16.05/1.33. He was 2 tabling and he seemed to be floating me on flops like this. I really couldn't see what he had here outside of a bluff good bluff set or a flush. He obviously didn't have a Jack or a marginal hand. I originally read him for a middle pair like 88.

Wow we really suck at this whole blogging responsibility. It's been a week since the last one so I thought I'd keep the content fresh and post a couple hands that I played in my brief and miserable session earlier today.

As mentioned in my previous blogs, I have been taking a leave-of-absence so to speak from NLHE. I think it is essential to play other games in order to stay sharp and focused and to avoid the auto-pilot tendencies that many of us fall into. As a result I have been playing a good deal of PLO as well as a good mix of 2-7 draw and HORSE. Good results and I am up in all the games, though they are of absolutely no relevant sample size.

Today I decided to celebrate my last week of college by firing up a bunch of NLHE tables. Little did I know that my session would be short-lived, for the sake of tilt.

At first PS teased me with this nice little hand.

www.pokerhand.org/?4334525

I thought things were going to be awesome and I would possibly ship a 4 figure day at .25/.50! Hopes were soon dashed. I took a quick break to go return something at TARGET only to return and try to continue with the great progress I had made.

www.pokerhand.org/?4334550

Nothing too much that I can do.

www.pokerhand.org/?4334551

16 seconds later - I still had no reads on any of the players at my tables as these were just the start of my session. I like this play against the unknown. So many draws and many people over play AK here or something with the little gutter wheel draw. FML.

www.pokerhand.org/?4334552

This guy had some pretty super active stats. I'm not sure about my river line. There are a few things that I might change if I played this hand a bit differently, but I had been isolating preflop a ton so I was getting little respect. Give the dynamics I elected to play AQ as if it were the nuts. . ups. I think checking the river can be a little weak given my image, QJ, QT ,KQ calls me down. Interested to hear people's thoughts about this hand.

Good luck,

Alex

To lead off this blog, I want to say that I am probably done with 100 NL atleast for maybe the entire month of June. It's pretty unbelievable how bad my results have been at those stakes. It's incredibly frustrating and I'm certain it's variance, but it just isn't time yet for me. Things just don't seem to go my way at those stakes.

As an example of how I feel I'm running so bad... in today's failed shot I was playing something around 28/26. Four times I 3 bet in position with AA and never once got a call. Now I know that this is a very small sample and totally an unmerited argument, but for the sake of my sanity I think I'll stay with 50 NL for the month. I can probably grind out some good income at those stakes if I make the effort to get in hands, so I should just stick to it for now.

So I wanted to discuss a few hands related to bluffing. Leave me your thoughts on the hands and rate the bluffs. Be as cruel as you want.

Villain is 46/12.5/.5 over 56 hands. I had been three betting him on a pretty frequent basis in position. No showdowns between us two thus far.

www.pokerhand.org/?4309080

Villain is 22/13/1 over 70 hands. He had been limping a ton and I think those stats are a little skewed from the stats that I had when this hand went down. He tightened up considerably after this hand and the ones I gave are post-session.

www.pokerhand.org/?4309079

I will post my opinions on these bluffs after I read some comments. I hope it can spur some good discussion though.

Good luck,

Alex

Nomo4life

P.S. - I know this is primarily for NLHE but I have a PLO hand that I want opinions on. If people don't want Omaha hands, I'll stop after this one.

What's your play here?

www.pokerhand.org/?4309188

What motivates you to play the game? Is it the money? Trying to get better? The satisfaction of beating other opponents?

Lately I have found myself to be less motivated than I was 2 weeks ago...and I don't like it. When I have a bad session, I play longer to recoup those losses and then I worry about my next session: Will I play bad or run bad again? Lose motivation. Or what if I have a great sessions, winning 3+ buyins. I may quit even if the games are good and then I may be a bit gunshy to play again because I fear losing those profits. In the grand scheme of things, I should not worry about winning or losing in the short term. I should focus more on the monthly profit/loss.

So what is your motivation. I need some desperately. I want to be making good money.

-Andy
allreds26