A while back I wrote about my disdain for blogs and how theres not much of a reason for them. I'd like to reneg that statement because after reading all of my previous blog posts I've realized that it is very interesting to read about your past self. I feel that it was beneficial to me to read my past thoughts and compare them with my thoughts now and see how i've come along. Maybe blogs arent so bad after all.

i finally got this thing called pokertracker. i should have had it a long time ago. It makes me want to play so many more hands than i used to because it keeps such good records so i can really analyze my play. dumb me for holdin out for so long...wow

Finally have made it back to .50/1 things have been going well untill today. lack of discipline really showed. i am very dissappointed in myself. dropped 475 over the course of 4 sessions lasting a total of 3.5 hours. I gave the last BI away on complete tilt. I havent tilted like that in a looooooonnnnggg time. Im talkin about calling off a 4 bet shove with kqo tilt lol. I had been taking losses extremely well up untill this session.

This was my first losing day at .50/1 since i moved back up. I guess I was not mentally ready for a loss since it is double the money of a loss at .25/.50 . I had no one to whine to so i figure i would cry to my CR blog. I am probably helping a lot of people feel better about themselves because so many people on here like to here about other people losing. This is a big setback but it is not the end of the world. I should have quit sooner. Next time I will...What a shit start to the month.

Cheers to anybody who caught the Rush Hour reference in the title.

I think i should stop blogging about my play. I never like having the standard "I won this, I lost that , I run bad look at my ev graph " blog. I dont need a blog to do that I can review my sessions on my own. Maybe ill just blog to post my thoughts on poker in general. Things like trends i see or problems that are commonly faced.

Which leads me to thinking about the purpose of blogs. I always thought that blogs are supposed to be for your thoughts on various things. It seems that most of the blogs on CR have become a bit of an ego stroke thing. You often see things like "look what i did today or look at how much money ive made". If your blog is all about yourself and how well/bad you are doing people will start to root for you to fail (IversonXX3). I started my own blog mainly to post all my results. Then i realized how self centered that is. Why do you need to post your results to tell everybody how you are doing? You know how much you made and lost. The only reason to post results is so you get recognition from other people. As long as you are honest with yourself about that, you should be ok.

Some people may be thinking that I am saying this because I am losing but that is FAR from true. It doesnt matter either way though. I think that my poker mind is maturing a little bit. I guess to sum up what I'm saying: Poker blogs these days are mostly brag posts or whine posts. Is that what we all really want?

p.s. I am not talking about people that post interesting and nonstandard hands beacuse they usually have thoughts attached to them and can be fun to discuss.

just got dominated HU. I do not feel like i played well. I am having a lot of trouble playing against passive call stations because i can not put them on a hand. Plus i think i try to bluff them too much. What do you do when you raise and he consistently defends hands like 34o and such. I think the answer is to massively tighten up my button raise range therefore my hands will simply fare much better against random junk that he is defending with.

Still playing very well hit a tiny blip in variance but i am not mad at all. I am a little disappointed because i really need the money right now. But i know that you can not win every session period. All you can do is play well.

I am very proud of how i played this - the turn bet was to induce a shove with a low pp he might think is good or a bluff. and i got it.

I also like this one - there are arguments that i should have shoved the turn and i was close to doing it. however this player was bluffy and this is a spot where it seemed like he would bluff a "scary" river like a K or A so i thought i could get more out of him if i just called. I also figured that if he had J9 (which would be the only semibluff that would make sense) he was drawing slimmer than he thought because a queen would fill me up. I think id play it the same most of the time that situation comes up since the board is so dry. Really it is a very bad spot for him to bluff turn.

I just hope that I dont hit a big string in the immediate future. I want to be at 100NL very soon and I have been down at .25 .50 for a while now and would like to make more substantial money. As a matter of fact, I NEED to make more substantial money.

there seems to be a trend in heads up play on .25 .50 where if you 3bet a player and they fold they will often 3 bet you right back in the next hand or the one after that. Ive also found that they will be stubborn on most hands if you 4bet them so i think the best play here is just to wait for a better spot. Its seems as if people take getting 3bet as an insult so they are gonna be a tough guy and hit you right back.

i just watched masterLJ's hu video where he talked about 4bet bluffing and how it was starting to get him into trouble. I was playing heads up with a guy was 3 betting quite frequently (8 out of 74 hands) and the first time i 4bet after ive been playing pretty snug this happens. i am seeing that masterLJ is right about 4 bets getting no respect it and that it is quite annoying.
still picked up a nice win off of him regardless.

played a mini session of about 40 minutes and won 1.5 BI. there were 3 big hands. the last one bothered me a bit so i quit right after it.

bink - standard. he was three betting frequently and this is the first time i defended. nice to see such a flop.

"set mine" - hadnt been getting out of line so i expected my 3bet to get a lot of respect. I think he misplayed the hand greatly. he could have 4bet there and won a small pot. I think just calling my 3 bet is perfectly fine, but once the flop came down i think that is a clear raise for him. In this instance he would have lost his stack anyway but it is a much better play. Now once the second 10 hits he doesnt really know where he is at. then he decided to make a reraise in a spot that will get him called when he is beat way more often then not and hands that beat him will get folded. Clear case of FPS

This is the hand that bothered me - I think against a player as loose as this one i should have made a bigger 4 bet. however i like to make my 4bet size the same size whether its with AA or AK so players who assume that a 4 bet means AK will get themselves into trouble. With that being said i did my standard pot sized 4 bet giving him enough behind to think he had fold equity. once he cold called the 4 bet i was not sure what to put him on. Usually at the .25 .50 level when people are 4bet out of position they like to call then move in on a flop that they think i missed. so once he cold called i expected him to move on just about any flop. once he checked i figure that it was very likely that i had the best hand. i thought that a set was unlikely because he probably would shove preflop. I think considering tall that and he fact that he checked to me meant that he didnt like his hand very much. I felt that if i was behind that i definitely had outs and that i was likely to take the pot down on the flop. I think checking the flop would be giving the pot up as he would be likely to move in on plenty of turns. I wasnt ready to give the pot up because i could not think of a strong hand that beat me given the way he was playing. Turned out that we were flipping as he made a speculative 4bet call to say the least. Just so happens that he out-binked me.

it seems that i can make way more money playing one third the amount of tables playing heads up. i used to 3 table 6max but just playing one table of HU I am having a significantly better win rate. I think it is because I would get impatient at 6 max because i wanted to make money faster so i would make a lot of idiot moves. I still make some idiot moves in hu but the fact that I am playing so many more hands makes up for that (usually playing them better than my opponents at this level).

this river i defintely shoulda folded - its screams value bet and even if he had a 10 the kicker would most likely take the pot down for him

bink

he was very annoyed by my aggression - sometimes you can just feel when a player will make a crazy play. once the ace hit the river i really felt he would shove as he thought it was a scare card. I think the only hands that would have me beat here are A2 or an unlikely AK.

this and this means that AJ is the nuts...even though i lost the hand i would make that call again and again vs a player who has open shoved over my last 2 raises

if i fire this turn i think i should turn the river into a bluff - his most likely holdings at this point are a decent jack or a decent 10. All of with are ahead of me. so i should be checking the turn here or following through on the river

good time for a double barrel

here i tried a bit of a deceptive line that almost worked - i was going for a checkraise on the turn however once he checked behind i figure that he has some mid pair type hand that i would extract value out of. i felt that the Q on the river was a very good card for me because if he thought he was ahead on the flop he most likely will still think he is ahead. Therefore i went for a big value bet on the river so it would look like im tryin to plow through with AK or trash. he timed down but still made the fold. i really think that if he had a hand like 99 1010 he would call. he probably had worse and was thinking about making a superhero call

thats it for now. i didnt win much at all today (1/2 buyin) but i am so much happier with my play. thanks for reading if you made it this far