Back to the Beginning

Maybe cutting down session times to include more breaks will help.

This has been playing on my mind a bit also. I think the worse thing with long sessions is that you start making decisions (especially pre-flop) on auto pilot. Personally hoping to play an hour - 15 minute break...repeat. Bummer is that you start losing your seats.

Thoughts on quads?

(vs unknown)

Personally I am raising his donklead on the flop.
You'v flopped a set and now it would suck not to get max value.
What does he donk lead here and then fold to a raise - I think only 8x hoping to steal. Qx calls a raise, and I would't be suprised if @NL5 so does J10 and 10,9.

Flop as played.
3x his raise, build the pot to a spot where shipping the river isnt overbetting the pot (which IME is only ever strength at micros.)

I know it sucks when you flop a set, villain donk leads the flop and then folds to a raise but I would still play it very fast so as to put yourself in the best position to win a big pot.

Interested to see what the judges say. Link?

MD

Ps - getting a mic Saturday

7 :diamond:6 hand.

Think I would play it exactly the same way you did (though im no expert.)

c/c flop; dont see the value in c/r as you just fold out Qx hands.

c/r Turn; you gain a bet and then defend vs 10 which is a pretty rubbish card for us.

More interesting,
what do you do if he 3bets your c/r on the Turn?

MD

Originally posted by MasochisticDesire
7 :diamond:6 hand.

Think I would play it exactly the same way you did (though im no expert.)

c/c flop; dont see the value in c/r as you just fold out Qx hands.

c/r Turn; you gain a bet and then defend vs 10 which is a pretty rubbish card for us.

More interesting,
what do you do if he 3bets your c/r on the Turn?

MD

I think the BTN would have 3-bet pre flop with TT or QQ at these limits, which are the only cards we are behind to.

Plus when that T hits on the turn, we know that there are only 3 combos of TT and 3 of QQ out there, giving only 6 combinations of hands we are behind.

Couple both those points, and I think we can be very confident we are ahead here almost all the time. So if he 3bets turn, if he is all in, I call, or if he is not all in, I shove.

Below is what Pleno said in his thread

And in the hand eval forums

NL5 67s

Originally posted by MasochisticDesire

Thoughts on quads?

(vs unknown)

Personally I am raising his donklead on the flop.
You'v flopped a set and now it would suck not to get max value.
What does he donk lead here and then fold to a raise - I think only 8x hoping to steal. Qx calls a raise, and I would't be suprised if @NL5 so does J10 and 10,9.

Flop as played.
3x his raise, build the pot to a spot where shipping the river isnt overbetting the pot (which IME is only ever strength at micros.)

I know it sucks when you flop a set, villain donk leads the flop and then folds to a raise but I would still play it very fast so as to put yourself in the best position to win a big pot.

Interested to see what the judges say. Link?

MD

Ps - getting a mic Saturday

I think the donk on the flop at these micro limits often signal a weakish made hand, so I think raising could force out quite a few PPs that didn't hit the set

Agree though that we do get Qx to call here, and 8x with the looser players. Maybe we even get some aggro guys to 3bet (semi-)bluff?

Really, the raise on the flop you suggest is almost required if we want decent bet sizing to get it all in on the river, so probably the raise on the flop is the better play.

As it is, even if we raise 3x on the turn, we're still having to make a pot sized bet on the river, I'd rather a bit smaller to get it all in :/

I guess the flop play really is key to get the max value here.

Here is the Hand Judge opinion, it's more about extracting good long run average value rather than one time max I feel, so maybe the better line in the long run

Originally posted by Kaitz20
Hi,

Since there are no flushdraw I would also call on the flop. I need to have reads against player to raise there- since I don´t need to protect my hand I would prefer keep in his bluffs. Turn min-raise is fine, but since he would likely call also 1$ bet then I would raise a little larger.

You can consider shoving river, but since 8 is also scary card for Qx, then betting 1.5$ would be a little better option

best regards,

Well well well.

Frustrating mini-session. EV would have you believe I was up 3BI after 250 hands, variance would show a loss of 1BI. 4BI under EV over 250 hands... can't say I've encountered that before.

I am pleased with the way I recovered from my final bad beat though. I shot through the roof temper wise for about three seconds, before coming back down and stacking a 50bb stack followed by another.

I actually seem to be dealing with tilt a lot better now than when I played before. I really feel like I accept that bad beats are just part of the game, rather than letting them ruin my game.

So I've been back and playing poker for a couple of weeks now, so I think its time to get my life a bit more in order.

I've been using The quick guide to skyrocketing your (poker) productivity to get my planning, goals and general schedule in order.

I've also bought the P90X fitness program after it got a lot of exposure when I was in the States. I did the first fitness test today to get an idea of my limits and to measure my progress. The test alone was tough, but I'm looking forward to a good scheduled regime.

Its also time to start recording all my goals, which should give this blog a more structured feel.

Still need to work out some of the intricacies out, like when to post my weekly round up and setting out of the next week's goals. Probably will happen Sunday night or Monday morning. So watch this space!

And why didn't I know about this blog, hmmmm? Ridiculous! Subscribed and added to favs, easy game.

Just a thought, never be afraid to dream, or angry because you dared to...never...never.

Best regards,

Mal.

Apologies all for going completely silent for two weeks!

So I haven't played poker since I last posted here. Something shit happened in my personal life and ever since then I've not had the frame of mind for it. I'm slowly getting over it, but I have a lot of accumulated emotion right now, causing me to almost insta-tilt even when something tiny happens.

A lot of my friends were also hit by the hurricane over in the USA earlier in the week, and trying to contact them all has been pretty stressful! Lots are without power or cell phone signal...
My girl was pretty lucky, she lives up high in hoboken and her block was the only one in the city left with power and not affected by flooding. Almost half the town were trapped in their apartments for days!

Finally, I managed to get a new job pretty quickly. Went along for an interview and got it a matter of hours later, which doesn't really happen in my industry, so that was pretty sweet!

But all the above has meant my poker has been pushed aside for the time being until I'm settled and know how much I can expect to play!

Well since FTP came back up, I've been playing quite a bit of rush poker, it was a bit swingy, but overall not bad at NL10. Was playing pretty solid.

Having a nice session today where I was up a couple of BI, all turned around in about a hundred horrible hands

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

QQ < AK
AK < QQ x3
AA < AJ

ended up down 3BI which suuuuuuucked

I shall post something more informative tonight

So i haven't provided a proper update in a long time really.

This week I've put in about 4k hands on FTP. That's four-thousand ridiculously swingy hands. More on that later.

Now I'm working from about 0830 until 1700 with an hour commute each way, it's harder to fit in everything that I want to do, but mans gotta get paid, ennit bruv.

I've also picked up an exercise routine, based around extreme home fitness called P90X, it's a great series of workouts, and you have a 90 day programme which you follow every day. The workouts tend to range from an hour to about 90 minutes. And there are a few guys around the forums doing it... Insanity / P90X fitness challenge (apologies for giraffe's half naked pics on the front page!)

I think if I wasn't living at home at the moment, the scheduling would be a lot easier, but trying to fit the workouts and poker time around family meals is quite challenging!

My current routine looks a bit like this:

- Work
- Get home around 6/6.30pm
- Work out
- Dinner
- Poker
- Bed

Trying to fit in everything and still get a healthy 8 hours recovery from the fitness regime is pretty challenging, there is no real space for down time!

Poker

So now on to the poker. Poker is a mixed bag for me at the moment. I'd been really happy with the way I'd played for the last couple of days, after a bit of a poor start back at FTP. I'd been playing too much OOP and stacking myself a lot of the time with stupid plays or over committing and not folding when I knew I was beat.

So now I've started a little regime before sessions to help try to keep me in check.

Basically I've set up a notepad doc, which I update before and after every session a little like this

<date>

[] <Goal One>
[] <Goal Two>
[] <Goal Three>

Before the session, I look at my previous days goals, and what I did and didn't accomplish, I then make sure to focus on these areas in the day's play. It actually was working quite well for me. I went from down 3BI, to up 2BI in a few thousand hands.

I then.... well I don't know what the fuck I did really. I had my goals, had my plans, and was playing solid poker for NL10. I was being selectively aggressive, trying not to play hands with initiative, and especially not OOP without initiative. I was folding when I knew I was beat, I wasn't spewing away chips. Then something switched in my head. I think it was caused by me accidentally clicking fold when someone had gone AI PF and I had AA. I just started stacking off ridiculously light. Then I would play solid to get myself back in it, and spew off another stack. Refocus, get back in it, spew off another stack. I started calling AIs with AQ and AK, even though every time I got dealt them i said to myself "Joe, you 3bet, or 4bet and if you get shoved against, fold" but every damn times I called the shove or shoved... EVERY. DAMN. TIME

I just couldn't stop myself. It wasn't anger tilt, I have no idea what it was. I just couldn't stop myself. I wasn't even angry, just spewing...

So now I from up 2BI to down 5BIs... in a little over 1k hands.... like what?

Anyway, I took a break for the rest of the day, and I will start again tomorrow if I have time. Another day another dollar!

If I can just stick to my gameplan, I should slowly claw it back. Although it will take some time!

Other Stuff

Not sure how much time I will have to play this week though, outside of my fitness shiz, my girlfriend is coming to visit from the USA next weekend for the week. I can't wait. I haven't seen her since late August, so it'll be almost three months! We've got a hotel in Chelsea, then off to Paris for a few days. It should be a great time, but obviously no poker will get played... more important things to be doing!

Nice blog, be stopping by from time to time. Not sure who posted this earlier, but they're right; never EVER be afraid to dream or angry at yourself for dreaming. Best of luck at the tables and enjoy Paris

Very nice news about the job, cool stuff, but I think I'll pass on that fitness stuff as always.

Have a great time in Paris.

Well I'm back!

It was a great week. Did some really cool stuff.

It was the GF's first time to London, so I took her around all the stuff tourists always wanna see, including a trip on the London eye and a Thames River cruise which were both pretty cool, and stuff you don't really do when you live here

We also went to 'Afternoon Tea' at Fortnum & Mason's which was a hilarious afternoon. It was so posh, funny to see how some people live... The snacks were good though!

Then we went off to Paris for a few days, I'd never been before, so we did a lot of exploring and discovering. Went up the Eiffel Tower, which was way bigger than I imagined. Quite a strange feeling to be so high up on something which was built as a temporary structure over 100 years ago!

We also had a french cooking lesson, which was awesome, especially the eating bit!

The next day we went for a wine and cheese tasting lunch, followed by a champagne cruise through Paris in the evening, then went to a wine bar after... It's safe to say I was pretty drunk by the end of the night.

Back in London we hit up Hyde Park's Winter Wonderland on opening night, which was awesome fun, and much mulled wine and great food was consumed.

All in all a great week, sucks that I have to go back to work tomorrow!

Oh and no poker was played. The end

Well it's been a long time since I updated.

It's safe to say, life has not been going the way I wanted lately, and I've been the complete opposite of happy, so not much poker has been played.

However I have played a few sessions lately, which has been fun, and I've put in a bit of volume. TBH though, I've really not worked on my game, and it's been more playing for fun.

It is pretty hard to come home and learn new material after a day at work, I'm in awe of people that do it!

But while I try to get my life back on track, I'm going to bring back this blog and start to update it at least weekly.

I've got a few things planned and that I really need to get started on before I think about really studying poker, one of them being time management! (I will be using SF's productivity guide for this)

But really I'm just tired of being depressed, tired of feeling sorry for myself, and tired of letting people I thought meant a lot to me walk all over me, so it's time for a change.

I guess you could say I'm going back to the beginning with respect to life!

Hope you guys like to follow the blog, and I hope I can use it to keep up my motivation to turn this shit storm around

Originally posted by bennisboy

Now I'm working from about 0830 until 1700 with an hour commute each way, it's harder to fit in everything that I want to do, but mans gotta get paid, ennit bruv.

Welcome to the real world. Make the most of this golden period of your life before you acquire a wife and kids too.

^ old man syndrome.

Marry your GF, go back to USA.. Simplies.

Originally posted by Spungeh
^ old man syndrome.

Marry your GF, go back to USA.. Simplies.

Only you could interpret 'have some fun before you get married and have kids' as 'get married and have kids'.

Originally posted by jbpatzer

Originally posted by Spungeh
^ old man syndrome.

Marry your GF, go back to USA.. Simplies.

Only you could interpret 'have some fun before you get married and have kids' as 'get married and have kids'.

why pussy foot around it.. if you're getting married, its normally because you are going to have golden times with them anyway.. ♦

Originally posted by Spungeh

Originally posted by jbpatzer

Originally posted by Spungeh
^ old man syndrome.

Marry your GF, go back to USA.. Simplies.

Only you could interpret 'have some fun before you get married and have kids' as 'get married and have kids'.

why pussy foot around it.. if you're getting married, its normally because you are going to have golden times with them anyway.. ♦

Yeah... One of the shit things is we broke up cos of the distance :-\

Anyway, I shall post a bigger update before I go to bed tonight!

Well I didn't post an update last night because i promptly fell asleep, such is life!

I've actually played quite a lot of poker (for me) in the last two weeks. Just over 5k hands. Yeah some of you will say that's not a lot, but I only really play at weekends, and my screen is only big enough for two tables (13" laptop ftw). I've played pretty much rush exclusively on ipoker at NL10.

I've been quite enjoying it and just trying to keep it simple.

I find that my edge really isn't in marginal spots, so I'm sticking to trying to save myself money by not investing in marginal situations, and sticking to getting my dollar in when I know I'm likely to be ahead. I think the phrase is "avoiding high variance plays"

It serves me well when I stick to it. Unfortunately I don't always stick to it, and I've thrown away more than a few buyins by not sticking to it. This usually happens when I'm a bit tired/tilty.

anyway, here's a graph

I've also been trying to take lots of notes and label players so I can start to figure them out while playing the fast fold variant. Has helped me out in a few spots, and I make sure to try to isolate the guys I have down as fish as often as I can.