I am playing better poker than I think I have ever played. My thought process is working much better now thanks to some of the videos I have been watching... Something finally clicked and I see a hint of light at the end of the tunnel.

I changed my FTP avatar from the Devil Woman... to the Ninja... then to the Wizard... And I finally settled on the happy shark. I was watching a video and someone mentioned that any player using the cowboy or the shark was almost always terrible. I was sold that the Happy Shark was the avatar for me.



Its hard to be a happy shark when you are surrounded by short stacked donkeys all the time... Makes me think I am playing 10nl for some strange reason.

Dropped close to 25 BI's in a row at 50nl so I am back to 25nl. On the road to recovery will take some hands to get back to 50nl and give it another crack. Will post some data here soon as I am in transition to a new laptop and changing from PT3 to HEM.

Played in a stars tourney with Citizenwind, JoshuaDZL, Needlenose, Pipernga, and some others who may or may not be CR. Tourney was ruled by the MicroDonks who all play 50nl or lower... No wonder Moneymaker does this its so easy... Enter and count da money! Seriously tournaments require a lot of luck to cash.

Luckboxed my way into first place... Knocked Alvin, Otumas, Pipernga and finally NeedleNoze as I nitted my way to

I loaded my HH into the CR replayer if anyone who played wanted a peek... tinyurl.com/5j4qyv

Running better mostly playing better. I have decided that playing long sessions after working 8-10 hours is counter productive to my quest for improvement. From here forward I am going to attempt to limit my evening poker to 2 hours or less and go for quality sessions where I focus, focus, focus.

Got myself unstuck and it feels so good! Had pocket Aces twice at a table where a solid villian had KK. The first one we got it allin preflop. The second one he smoothed my 3bet and check raised my flop CBET big, I timed it down, thought about folding but decided our previous history had him itching to stack me so I jammed it allin good seeing that my AA once again had his KK dominated.

and finally a graph of my complete progress to date:

Stacked bigbadmatt111 with AA vs his KK twice... Not much skill there but I will take it to get unstuck...

I am #3 on the worst 50nl 6max players list from yesterday.... i think i had woodo75 beat at some point but made a small comeback.

Finally got a chance to put in some hands... Found some good tables with 1-2 fish at each table. Rather than reel in the fish I somehow managed to give away all my bait, my rod, and I think they may have eaten my boat...

DO NOT FEED THE FISH... Never could quite seem to stack any full stacks but I got stacked plenty of times by them.

Starting BR: $1125.60
NL50 Hands: 1507
Ending BR: $894.22

Played again today and was focusing on playing a more solid game leaving all my fancy moves in the bag of tricks to be used sparingly if at all...

Pretty standard session in my opinion broken up by a short movie break. Did not get in as many hands as I would have liked to.

Watched qqch13 play a short session which I think helped me see his thinking process which is very good... Thanks.

Sweated pipernga for a bit and discussed the differences in how we play AK.

I loaded the most interesting table from the session in the CR hand player pretty standard IMO, nothing spectacular.

tinyurl.com/634qm9

Most interesting hand in the session may be:
Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners

Seat 1: bert2eb ($96.50) -
Seat 2: elric ($135.10) -
Seat 3: rodrigo_buliga ($53.25) -
Seat 4: Doc_Troy ($98.40)
Seat 5: Eat777Sleep ($49.75)
Seat 6: MrPaulsen ($110.65)


PRE-FLOP:

elric posts small blind $0.25
rodrigo_buliga posts BIG blind $0.50
Dealt To: elric


FOLD Doc_Troy
CALL Eat777Sleep ($0.50)
FOLD MrPaulsen
FOLD bert2eb
RAISE elric ($2.50)
FOLD rodrigo_buliga
CALL Eat777Sleep ($2)


FLOP:

Pot: $5.5


BET elric ($4)
CALL Eat777Sleep ($4)


TURN:

Pot: $13.5


CHECK elric
BET Eat777Sleep ($8.50)
RAISE elric ($128.60)
UBER FAST SNAP CALL Eat777Sleep ($34.75) ..... DOH! I'm in trouble...
UNCALLED elric ($85.35)


RIVER:

Pot: $100




SHOWDOWN:
elric:

Eat777Sleep:


elric collected $97 from main pot with a flush, Ace high

SUMMARY:
Total pot: $100 Rake: $3

Final Board:


Seat 1: bert2eb button didnt bet folded - Net Gain/Loss: ($0)
Seat 2: elric small blind showed [Qh Kh] and won 97 with a flush, Ace high - Net Gain/Loss: ($47.25)
Seat 3: rodrigo_buliga big blind folded before the Flop - Net Gain/Loss: ($-0.5)
Seat 4: Doc_Troy didnt bet folded - Net Gain/Loss: ($0)
Seat 5: Eat777Sleep showed [3d 3s] and lost with three of a kind, Threes - Net Gain/Loss: ($-49.75)

Seat 6: MrPaulsen didnt bet folded - Net Gain/Loss: ($0)

WOW seems like he took a strange line to play with a set... tricky trappy I suppose. Fooled me and crushed my soul, lucky for me the suckout gods reward my getting it in bad. To balance my range I went for a check raise shove on the turn trying to get him off a weak Ace in case I whiff my flush draw... only 18% equity... geez I thought I was in way better shape than that.

http://twodimes.net/h/?z=5039284
pokenum -h qh kh - 3d 3s -- 3c qd ah 8h
Holdem Hi: 44 enumerated boards containing 3c Qd Ah 8h
cards win %win lose %lose tie %tie EV
Kh Qh 8 18.18 36 81.82 0 0.00 0.182
3s 3d 36 81.82 8 18.18 0 0.00 0.818

START BR: $999.40
NL 50 Hands: 375
END BR: $1125.60

Ok so I decided to start blogging my poker progress or lack thereof. With $1,000 in hand I am going to attack 50nl on FTP and for now use a 20 buy in rule to determine when I should move up. I will also employ a 5 buy in stop loss that will send me back down.

The plan is to 2-4 table depending on what I feel like doing to see how it goes.

I four tabled last night and played pretty solid except for one poorly played hand against a VPIP 50/ PFR 13 spewtard where I out spewed him... Very Nice. Below are my session stats:

Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners

Seat 1: MakinMaFlow ($20.45)
Seat 3: PUreRanDOm ($73.85)
Seat 4: elric ($50.50) -
Seat 5: ArtVandelay02 ($29.95) -
Seat 6: kkMartini ($117.80) -


PRE-FLOP:

ArtVandelay02 posts small blind $0.25
kkMartini posts BIG blind $0.50
Dealt To: elric


FOLD MakinMaFlow
RAISE PUreRanDOm ($1.50)
RAISE elric ($5.25)
CALL ArtVandelay02 ($5)
FOLD kkMartini
CALL PUreRanDOm ($3.75)


FLOP:

Pot: $16.25


CHECK ArtVandelay02
BET PUreRanDOm ($16.25)
RAISE elric ($32.50)
CALL ArtVandelay02 ($24.70)
RAISE PUreRanDOm ($48.75)
CALL elric ($12.75)
UNCALLED PUreRanDOm ($3.50)


TURN:

Pot: $131.45




RIVER:

Pot: $131.45




SHOWDOWN:
PUreRanDOm:

elric:

ArtVandelay02:


PUreRanDOm collected $41.1 from side pot 1 with three of a kind, EightsPUreRanDOm collected $87.35 from main pot with three of a kind, Eights

SUMMARY:
Total pot: $131Main pot: $90
Side pot: $41
Rake: $3

Final Board:


Seat 1: MakinMaFlow didnt bet folded - Net Gain/Loss: ($0)
Seat 3: PUreRanDOm showed [8c 8h] and won 128.45 with three of a kind, Eights - Net Gain/Loss: ($77.95)

Seat 4: elric button showed [Ts Tc] and lost with a pair of Tens - Net Gain/Loss: ($-50.5)
Seat 5: ArtVandelay02 small blind showed [Ac Ad] and lost with a pair of Aces - Net Gain/Loss: ($-29.95)

Seat 6: kkMartini big blind folded before the Flop - Net Gain/Loss: ($-0.5)


Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners

Pretty much put ArtVanderlay02 on Aces... No idea why I did not just shutdown and fold with my read. Instead I go spastic and out Spew PUreRanDOm who is the terrible fish I was trying to reel in at this table... Of course he insta quits and hits the heads up tables where he donates it all away to giant stacked heads up sharks where he fails to last 15 minutes with his donated $150. So my terrible play gets me ZERO meta game with him.

BR START: $1,000
50 NL HANDS: 629
BR END: $999.40