I'm moving my blog back to my old blog page at:

jaywks.blogspot.com

Okay, this is my first blog post in a while. I basically took February off from poker, and played maybe like 2k hands. I just needed to get my head straight after I had that downswing, and work in school ramped up considerably.

I just had the sickest upswing and made just over 30k in two days. I got 7th place in the Sunday Million, good for a cool 23k and then I made about 9k in cash games the next day. I'll blog about my March results at the end of the month.

So, this is my first blog post in a while because I went home for Christmas and didn't really play much poker at home. But I got back to school two weeks ago, and started playing poker again. I hired a coach, MYNAMEIZGREG, he's over at leggopoker.com and is a 2p2er. I have to say he's a really good coach, and I can feel myself improving quite a bit even though we've only had 1 session so far. Well he has me just 4 tabling instead of my usual 8 tabling, and I think I'm getting a lot better. Well below are my results for poker for the first 29 days of January.

I felt that I was having a pretty decent January. I was having decent results in 5/10nl and I was quite happy with my overall play. I even chased a fish who I saw spewed off multiple buyins at 5/10nl go up to 10/20nl and decided to play there and was hoping to be the recipient of multiple buyins. Well, I didn't get to stack the fish. Funny thing is that my poker coach was on the table and ended up being the recipient of his 400bbs. The only problem I had with my play was that it just wasn't showing up in my 3/6nl results. Oh well, that's just variance. Haha, well, over the next couple days, I get introduced to some truly sick swings.

If I understand this correctly, I'm down about 27k in expectation in 3 DAYS! It's always kind of sucks when you're fostering a sort of aggressive image, and when you do pick up AA, or KK you get no action. Well, I got plenty of action with my hands, but I have to practice learning how to make them hold up.

Even though it sucks having another downswing, (this is sort of becoming to feel like a regular thing) what was gnawing at me the most about this downswing, was the timing of it. I wanted to start of this year on a goodnote with a positive January. I would have preferred that the downswing occur in February, so that I could post a positive January result! The more I thought about that, the more silly it sounded. Afterall, January is an artificial construct to what we name the first 31 days of the year. So, I guess I'll have to settle with having a good first 29 days of the year, but having a bad January.

Well, here's my red January.

Well, even though my 2/4nl hu sessions were for the most part disasters last month, I did have one very good session against a regular. We had a marathon HU session where we were playing on 3 tables. I did very well against him because I gave this player my undivided attention. Now, the game was playing very very aggressive. We played a total of 3k hands before he quit me, and we were playing very very deep.

It's sessions like these that cause HU to be very very fun. Ofcourse, part of the reason why it was fun is also because I took 2.5k off this opponent. I'm going to post the 3 biggest pots that I won against him, and the 3 biggest that I lost against him.

I'll start off with the hands that I won.

HAND 1. I think that this hand is quite interesting. When he called preflop I had a feeling that he had a big hand. If memory serves me correctly, I was just caught in a pretty big bluff on another table, so I knew that he might have thought that I could be tilting. Now when the flop came, I was actually sorta afraid of KK, but there was no way that I was folding this hand given our dynamics. So I cbet, ready to bet/call, as I was not folding this hand given how much of my stack I had invested. After he cold called, I was almost sure he didn't have KK, because KK would always reshove on that flop, if he had AhQh, gg me. So, on this turn, I shoved because I decided to take the bluffiest line possible and partially to protect my hand. I believe that a large part of his range on the flop may have been AhXx, and was looking to float me, hoping to hit. I was also hoping for a call from any AK, and I think that on this turn he may even call me with QhQx. Well, I was right, my hand holds, and I rake in a 700bb pot. This is probably the largest pot I've won in terms of bbs.

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Seat 1: Villain 1 ($1,390) - -
Seat 2: Hero ($2,136.25) -


PRE-FLOP:

Villain 1 posts small blind $2
Hero posts BIG blind $4
Dealt To: Hero


RAISE Villain 1 ($12)
RAISE Hero ($36)
RAISE Villain 1 ($108)
RAISE Hero ($252)
CALL Villain 1 ($144)


FLOP:

Pot: $504


BET Hero ($328)
CALL Villain 1 ($328)


TURN:

Pot: $1160


BET Hero ($1556.25)
CALL Villain 1 ($810)
UNCALLED Hero ($746.25)


RIVER:

Pot: $2780




SHOWDOWN:
Hero:

Villain 1:


Hero collected $2779.5 from main pot with two pair, Aces and Sixes

SUMMARY:
Total pot: $2 Rake: $0.50

Final Board:


Seat 1: Villain 1 small blind showed [Ah Ks] and lost with two pair, Kings and Sixes - Net Gain/Loss: ($-1392)

Seat 2: Hero big blind showed [As Ac] and won 2,779.50 with two pair, Aces and Sixes - Net Gain/Loss: ($1385.5)


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HAND 2. Now, I think that he really misplayed this hand on the river. I guess I had caught him in a couple river bluff raises, so maybe he thought I would call him light here, but this is such a bad spot to be bluffing. Believe it or not I actually thought about folding here, but I just couldn't see how he got to the river with T9, and I called expecting to be chopping.

Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners

Seat 1: Hero ($1,141.50) -
Seat 2: Villain 1 ($2,760.05) - -


PRE-FLOP:

Villain 1 posts small blind $2
Hero posts BIG blind $4
Dealt To: Hero


RAISE Villain 1 ($12)
RAISE Hero ($36)
CALL Villain 1 ($24)


FLOP:

Pot: $72


BET Hero ($55)
CALL Villain 1 ($55)


TURN:

Pot: $182


CHECK Hero
BET Villain 1 ($124)
CALL Hero ($124)


RIVER:

Pot: $430


BET Hero ($300)
RAISE Villain 1 ($1330)
CALL Hero ($626.50)
UNCALLED Villain 1 ($403.50)


SHOWDOWN:
Villain 1:

Hero:


Hero collected $2282.5 from main pot with a straight, Nine high

SUMMARY:
Total pot: $2 Rake: $0.50

Final Board:


Seat 1: Hero big blind showed [9d 9h] and won 2,282.50 with a straight, Nine high - Net Gain/Loss: ($1141)
Seat 2: Villain 1 small blind showed [4d Ah] and lost with a straight, Eight high - Net Gain/Loss: ($-1141.5)



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HAND 3. Here, all I had was a bluff catcher. Given his line, on the river I put him on a really polarized range, containing of mostly the nuts or nothing. I didn't even put that many 5 high straights in his range, maybe 4s5s, 5s7s, and A5. I didn't think that it was possible for him to value shove a bigger Ace, so I called.

Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners

Seat 1: Villain 1 ($1,171.50) - -
Seat 2: Hero ($844) -


PRE-FLOP:

Villain 1 posts small blind $2
Hero posts BIG blind $4
Dealt To: Hero


RAISE Villain 1 ($12)
RAISE Hero ($36)
CALL Villain 1 ($24)


FLOP:

Pot: $72


BET Hero ($56)
RAISE Villain 1 ($112)
CALL Hero ($56)


TURN:

Pot: $296


CHECK Hero
BET Villain 1 ($204)
CALL Hero ($204)


RIVER:

Pot: $704


CHECK Hero
BET Villain 1 ($819.50)
CALL Hero ($492)
UNCALLED Villain 1 ($327.50)


SHOWDOWN:
Villain 1:

Hero:


Hero collected $1687.5 from main pot with a pair of Aces

SUMMARY:
Total pot: $1 Rake: $0.50

Final Board:


Seat 1: Villain 1 small blind showed [Jc 9s] and lost with a pair of Jacks - Net Gain/Loss: ($-844)

Seat 2: Hero big blind showed [Td Ad] and won 1,687.50 with a pair of Aces - Net Gain/Loss: ($843.5)


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Next are the hands that I lost.

HAND 1. I think I really misplayed this hand. I thought that he was tilting, and he's seen me make moves in reraised pots when the flop is just low cards. Basically I was hoping that he would put me on a bluff and that he would go nuts with AK. However, even AK has a ton of equity on me. I should have just called to reevaluate the turn.

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Seat 1: Hero ($1,929.50) - -
Seat 2: Villain 1 ($651) -


PRE-FLOP:

Hero posts small blind $2
Villain 1 posts BIG blind $4
Dealt To: Hero


RAISE Hero ($12)
RAISE Villain 1 ($46)
CALL Hero ($34)


FLOP:

Pot: $92


BET Villain 1 ($68)
RAISE Hero ($188)
RAISE Villain 1 ($605)
CALL Hero ($417)


TURN:

Pot: $1302




RIVER:

Pot: $1302




SHOWDOWN:
Villain 1:

Hero:


Villain 1 collected $1301.5 from main pot with two pair, Queens and Threes

SUMMARY:
Total pot: $1 Rake: $0.50

Final Board:


Seat 1: Hero small blind showed [6c 7d] and lost with two pair, Sevens and Sixes - Net Gain/Loss: ($-651)
Seat 2: Villain 1 big blind showed [Qd Qs] and won 1,301.50 with two pair, Queens and Threes - Net Gain/Loss: ($650.5)



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HAND 2. I actually wasn't quite sure what he had here. And when i called, I think I called just because I didn't know what he was representing. But looking back at this, I think that the river should be a clear fold. There are just so many hands that he could have that gets there on the river, and this is a very scary board to be bluff shoving OOP. He could have had QJ,T9,98,67, even 45.

Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners

Seat 1: Hero ($845) - -
Seat 2: Villain 1 ($612) -


PRE-FLOP:

Hero posts small blind $2
Villain 1 posts BIG blind $4
Dealt To: Hero


RAISE Hero ($12)
CALL Villain 1 ($8)


FLOP:

Pot: $24


CHECK Villain 1
BET Hero ($16)
RAISE Villain 1 ($52)
CALL Hero ($36)


TURN:

Pot: $128


BET Villain 1 ($88)
CALL Hero ($88)


RIVER:

Pot: $304


BET Villain 1 ($460)
CALL Hero ($460)


SHOWDOWN:
Villain 1:

MUCK Hero

Villain 1 collected $1223.5 from main pot with a straight, Jack high

SUMMARY:
Total pot: $1 Rake: $0.50

Final Board:


Seat 1: Hero small blind mucked [Jc Td] - a pair of Tens - Net Gain/Loss: ($-612)
Seat 2: Villain 1 big blind showed [Jd 7d] and won 1,223.50 with a straight, Jack high - Net Gain/Loss: ($611.5)



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HAND 3. I called this hand because I really put him on a busted flush draw, and maybe even a busted oesd like 67. However, a 5 could also have been in his range, and obviously any over pairs. I don't know if he value shoves a T here, maybe, but 9T is also possible. However, if he were bluffing, the T isn't really a scare card to bluff on. I'm not sure about this call, but if it is a mistake, I don't think that it's that big of a mistake, especially when compared to the other two hands.

Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners

Seat 1: Hero ($605.50) -
Seat 2: Villain 1 ($1,688.30) - -


PRE-FLOP:

Villain 1 posts small blind $2
Hero posts BIG blind $4
Dealt To: Hero


RAISE Villain 1 ($12)
CALL Hero ($8)


FLOP:

Pot: $24


BET Hero ($20)
RAISE Villain 1 ($68)
CALL Hero ($48)


TURN:

Pot: $160


CHECK Hero
BET Villain 1 ($116)
CALL Hero ($116)


RIVER:

Pot: $392


CHECK Hero
BET Villain 1 ($1492.30)
CALL Hero ($409.50)
UNCALLED Villain 1 ($1082.80)


SHOWDOWN:
Villain 1:

MUCK Hero

Villain 1 collected $1210.5 from main pot with two pair, Queens and Fives

SUMMARY:
Total pot: $1 Rake: $0.50

Final Board:


Seat 1: Hero big blind mucked [Jc 9c] - two pair, Nines and Fives - Net Gain/Loss: ($-605.5)
Seat 2: Villain 1 small blind showed [Qc Qs] and won 1,210.50 with two pair, Queens and Fives - Net Gain/Loss: ($605)



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I played a ton of poker today, and I ended up down 1k overall. Since I've been in this downswing, I've really been examining my play and just making sure that I'm not getting out of line. Well, I just went through all of the biggest pots that I've played today, and they almost all seem like a cooler, I get sucked out on, or I make a really really strong play, and they have a monster. (Which is sort of a cooler).

By the way this isn't a bad beat post. I'm actually glad that I am losing my money like this because that means that I'm not playing bad, hopefully. Well, if anybody thinks any of these hands are super spew, let me know.

Reraised pot. Pretty sure this is a standard cooler for 130bbs.

Here I make a move, but I feel so little of his range can stand that much heat on this board. Plus I have outs.

Standard suckout. I knew he was looking to make a move on a dry flop.

Another suckout

Sick cooler

Suckout

Another crazy cooler

Questionable play by me. I actually put him on JJ, a T or a 9. I tried to represent AK. I should have fired the turn if I was going to bluff. I thought about it on the turn, but decided that if I was really playing AK, I would check behind the turn and fire the river. But he doesn't know that.

So those are my biggest pots of the night. There are still more, but I'm too lazy to post them. LOL. Looking at the next three, the actually are bad plays by me. Oh well, no need to post them. Pretty crazy that in all of these, I ran into sets, a bigger boat or QUADS. Though, there will be nights when I'm on the other end of these coolers.

Haha, but seriously, I'm glad that those are the biggest pots that I lost tonight in order of size of the pot. If I didn't run into just the absolute absolute top of their range, I could have had a monster night tonight.

Meh, I already blogged about this before, but I guess here's the table. So here are my dismal HU results. My 6max results are decent. I'm happy with my results in 3/6nl, but for some reason I didn't have good results in 2/4nl 6max, it's not displayed on this table, but I played about 20k hands for a total profit of $300.

But yea, I've also played a ton of hands. I do this whenever I go into a downswing. For some reason, I just prefer doing volume to pull me out of the downswing. When I play 6max, putting in a ton of hands always helps me out of the downswing because for the most part, I'm playing pretty decently. But I actually think it was detrimental to my results this month because I was grinding HU for a while. So when I was getting these bad results, I was reasoning to myself that I was in a downswing and tried to play through it. Instead I just kept on losing more.

I was studying and catching up on some work earlier, but just had this itch to play some poker. So after doing a couple hours of school work, I decided that I was going to let myself play for an hour. So I fired up some 2/4nl tables.

Even though I played pretty well, I ran insanely hot. I ran the hottest I have ever run in my life. I think that any retard could have made money with the cards and action that I was getting. I made 4k in just under two hours. Pretty sick. Normally I would play longer when I'm running this good, but I already broke my initial promise to myself of only playing an hour. It's nice to have a session like this when I have had such a horrible month.

I just checked my PokerEV stats, and I only ran $300 above expectation for hands that went to showdown. It's nice that I didn't suckout for most of my winnings.

Well, I just wanted to say that I'm in the middle of a 12k downswing. This was all mainly because I attempted to "grind" HU. I'm not cut out to be able to play 4 tables of HU against different opponents. I feel pretty shitty realizing that I'm not a very good HU player - it's no where near as polished as my 6max game. I know I could have stopped playing HU a lot earlier, but in the heat of the moment, and due to my competitive drive and TILT, I reasoned that I was running bad. Oh well, another expensive lesson. It seems as if I'm getting a lot of these lately.

I'm going to go back to 6max and just grind for the foreseeable future to just make money, but I will continue to work on my HU game. I don't know if I'll be playing much poker for the next two weeks because I have a lot of school work and TA work to get done before the end of the year. I'll post some results as soon as I get more play in.

I guess this will be my first blog post on cardrunners. I have been maintaining a blog on jaywks.blogspot.com but it seems to be all the rage to start up a blog on cardrunners. So, I guess I'll follow suit. Plus, I didn't get any views on my old blog, so, it doesn't seem like a big deal.

I guess I'll start off with just some basic info about myself. I started playing poker in the fall semester of my sophomore year in college, it was around August 2004. I had torn my ACL and had just had surgery on it and I was pretty much immobile for two to three months. I was pretty bored during this time, so I watched a lot of TV. After watching ESPN and the WSOP a bunch, I decided that playing poker on the internet was the most optimal use of my time. Found out I loved it, and I played $5 SNGS and small MTTs for a real long time. I didn't switch over to cash games till December of last year. Little did I know that this was a real beat because this was when Party Poker pulled out. I had some success in MTTs, but I was still pretty bad in poker. So, I started off in .5/1 nl games. I realized that I didn't actually know that much about poker, and really started studying earlier this year. I almost didn't graduate because I was playing so much poker. But I did end up graduating, and I'm currently going to UVA, and I'm in my first year of getting my PhD in Systems Engineering.

I currently play 2/4nl and 3/6nl, and I am a winner at those stakes. However, I have dabbled in $5/10nl a bit, and I'm not ashamed to say that I'm a $5/10nl fish. I'm glad that I am a vital part of the poker economy that funnels money up the poker pyrammid. I'll start off this blog by two things I enjoy most when reading a poker blog, a graph of my November results so far, and probably the most interesting hand I've ever played.

So, I'm up about 9k or so for the month. I'm up 5k on other sites which can't use Poker Tracker, so you'll just have to take my word for it. I'm semi dissapointed at myself that I have already lost 4k at 5/10nl this month. Although I did experience a suckout and was coolered in two big pots, I'm definitely not ready for that stake. I play pretty bad, and even though I'm more than adequately rolled for that game, I'm sad to say that I think I'm scared money. I don't trust my reads enough to do the right moves. So, even though I have a semi-decent AF of 3.5, I feel that I'm a complete calling station. Also, I know that 18k hands is pretty insane for just 1 week's worth of play, but I do 8 table, and I really have not felt like doing any homework this week, so to procrastinate, I play poker. On the graph below, you can also clearly see when I decide to take my shot at 5/10nl - between 15k and 17k hands. The good thing though is that each time that I have a losing session at $5/10nl I feel that I do learn and I just view it as an expensive $4k lesson in poker. Though, I'm going to try and really stay away from the $5/10nl games until I feel that I'm confident enough to not lose my cool. I had a really crappy October because of a tilty, spewfest 36 hours at $5/10nl. You can look at my old blog if you want to read about it.

Okay, now onto the hand that may be the culmination of my poker career.

Okay, so the villain here is a solid 2p2er. I know he's very tricky and is capable of a lot of moves. I'm pretty sure he views me as a TAG/NIT, that multitables and isn't capable of a lot of moves.

But there's a small back story to this hand which makes it especially proud for me. The day before this, I was reading one of CTS' blog entries where he tagged a Jman post on 2p2, where Jman bets the river against PA to induce a bluff raise. I've read this post before and the first time round it was all over my head. I wasn't a good enogh player to realize how you induce a person to bluff raise you. Think about it, it's pretty insane to think that you can manipulate a person such that they will raise the river on a bluff. Although this time round, I understood the theory behind it, you could say that this hand is where it all "clicked" for me. Basically, when we got to the river, I had one of those crystal clear moments, and I knew that my villain probably did not have anything, and I just had a feeling that if I bet, he was going to bluff raise me. So I snap called his raise. Maybe it was spew or maybe I got lucky, but I felt pretty damn proud after this hand. Looking at his hand though, I don't know why he bluff raised. If he thought I was bluffing, why the hell did he raise that river? Maybe he thought that I turned an overpair into a bluff? I don't know.

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Seat 1: Villain 1 ($546) -
Seat 2: Villain 2 ($958.90) -
Seat 3: Villain 3 ($431)
Seat 4: Villain 4 ($747)
Seat 5: Hero ($909.80)
Seat 6: Villain 5 ($610.20) -


PRE-FLOP:

Villain 1 posts small blind $3
Villain 2 posts BIG blind $6
Dealt To: Hero


FOLD Villain 3
FOLD Villain 4
RAISE Hero ($18)
CALL Villain 5 ($18)
FOLD Villain 1
FOLD Villain 2


FLOP:

Pot: $45


BET Hero ($30)
CALL Villain 5 ($30)


TURN:

Pot: $105


BET Hero ($72)
CALL Villain 5 ($72)


RIVER:

Pot: $249


BET Hero ($150)
RAISE Villain 5 ($490.20)
CALL Hero ($340.20)


SHOWDOWN:
Villain 5:

Hero:


Hero collected $1226.4 from main pot

SUMMARY:
Total pot: $1229 Rake: $3

Final Board:


Seat 1: Villain 1 small blind folded before Flop - Net Gain/Loss: ($-3)
Seat 2: Villain 2 big blind folded before Flop - Net Gain/Loss: ($-6)
Seat 3: Villain 3 folded before Flop didnt bet - Net Gain/Loss: ($0)
Seat 4: Villain 4 folded before Flop didnt bet - Net Gain/Loss: ($0)
Seat 5: Hero showed [Kd Tc] and won 1226.40 with two pair, Tens and Sixes - Net Gain/Loss: ($616.2)
Seat 6: Villain 5 button showed [Ts 8s] and lost with two pair, Tens and Sixes - Net Gain/Loss: ($-610.2)



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