It is what it is…confessions from a Live semi pro

Had the best session I had for a while last night.

I had the nut straight 3 times and the nut flush once. Also floped 3 sets.

Running very good.

In fact last night was the first time in a very long time (well at least since september last year) that in one night I got my money in behind more than once and sucked out.

The two hands were:
Hand 1:
I am bb with AQo.

EP limps.
EP has been a calling station. He called every raise pot and every flop for at least the last orbit. He has about 30BB left.

Mp makes his standard raise.
Mp is new player who has come to the table and has been very active. By my estimation he has raised more than 25% of all hands played. He has a full stack after hitting AQ vs KK allin on a Qxx flop.

LP calls.

EP calls out of turn.

I make it 32BB to go.

EP calls allin.

MP tanks and calls.

Flop Q6Q
I bet 50 BB MP folds showing AKo.

Hand 2:
I am SB with TT

6 limpers including EP and MP of pre hand.
BTN makes it 8BB to go.
BTN is a tight reg but with all the dead money I think I am still ahead of his range.

I make it 21BB to go.
Everyone folds to BTN who tanks a long time then ships for another 25BB.

At this stage I considered the following:
It is past midnight and villian wants to go home.
He is down for the night so he may be gambling a bit.
He does not have KK, AA because that would have been an instant ship.
He normally does not ship AK/AQ.

I say to BTN I have a pair. He tells me he also has a pair. I ask if he thinks his pair is bigger then main he says he does not know. At that stage I know he does not have QQ. Therefore I am up against JJ or 99.

I call he shows JJ.
Flop AT6

I suck out.

With the cards running as it did I stayed later than normal. At about 1h30 am I was+- 430BB up and decided to play untill UTG.

UTG i look down to AKs.

I make it 5BB to go.
The same player that has been calling every raise calls me.

Flop: A96 (rainbow)
I bet 12BB (psb) and he calls.

Turn: 2
I check. he checks.

River: blank (tbh I cant even rember)
I bet 12BB. He calls.

I show AK thinking I am good. He shows 92o for 2 pair.

I leave 400BB to the good.

Ok so we start counting again.

Had winning session 2 last night.

Small winning session last night. Nothing special.

Bigest hand (pot just over 120BB):

KQ is CO with 3 limpers. I make it 7 bb to go. BTN, SB, BB and 2 of the limpers call.

Flop:
Q62 with 2 spades.

BB leads out for about 10% of the pot. MP calls leaving about 40BB behind. I raise rather big. BB folds and MP calls allin showing Q3s!. I hold up.

funny for the night:

Regular (50BB deep) in CO open raises. I am SB with AA. I 3bet. He calls
Flop A69
I check. He checks.
Turn Q
I bet to put him all in. He tanks and says: " You got a set of Aces?". I say nothing. He calls. I say: "yes I do have set of Aces." The table cracks up.

lession for the night:

70% of all poker players believe they are better than 70% of all poker players. When they win they believe it is skill when they lose they believe they have been unlucky.

What we should do is believe that we can always play better.

Ok I know it is getting boring.

Played last night and the night before.

Both winning sessions with lastnight just more than 300BB profit.

really no need for much details. Getting to boring.

I would love to get bored like you ♦

Been playing a lot of poker.

Had 3 more sessions.

Session 1 was 200BB up. Got there with this hand:

Table is very passive and playing their cards very face up.

I am in CO and over limp with 9h7h.

Flop: J85 with 2 diamonds.

It is checked to MP who leads out for less than 25% of the pot. I had seen him do this earlyer with a flush draw and another time with bottum pair. I make 2/3 pot size raise hoping to get the button so I can check the turn. Button calls and MP calls.

Turn 4c (blank)

MP checks. With his b/c flop and check turn I have him on a flush draw. Button has weak made hand/ draw. So I lead out but just over 1/2 pot. Both Call.

River 2s (blank) -> I have 9 high!

MP looks at his cards. He looks for a "longish" time. (Rember what I said before this shows a weak hand). He checks. I bet 1/2 pot. Both fold.

I take down with my 3 street bluff.

I say to the table:
"I think I had the best hand" and I show my 9 high. The idea is to get them to call me lighter and I can get paid off.

After that I went card dead. Then picking up JJ and running into the same MP on a 7 4 2 2 Q board he had 44. I lost only 25 BB!.

Not getting cards and with a table image as the bluffer I decided to "rathole" and change table. I put my BI in my pocket and put my profit on new table.

Table is GAMBLE. I raise to 10BB with JJ and get 4 callers.
Flop Q - high and there are 2 players allin before it gets to me.

I raise with AJs and again get 4 callers. I miss the 357 (with 2 clubs) flop and again there are 2 players with most of their stacks in before it gets to me.

I get AKs and there is a "standard" raise. I 3bet allin for my last 50BB. A player that limped UTG calls. The raiser folds. UTG (who has called every raise of mine so far) shows QJo.
Flop Q
River J
Thank you for playing.

I leave break - even.

Session 2:
Left 50BB up. It was a quite session and my profit really came from this hand:

I am BB with Qd9d. Almost the whole table calls.

Flop: 9s Jd 2d

I check and it is checked around to BTN who leads out. I decided to call. MP calls and we 3 players to turn.

Turn 4s
I check. MP checks. BTN bets again about 1/2 pot size. I ship for just over pot.
MP thinks for a while and calls. BTN folds showing top pair. MP shows 8d6d for and is drawing dead.

Yes I made the better hand fold and the player drawing dead called me.

Session 3:

Left 200BB up. Last night I got some hands and got to 200BB quickly. This time I was not sticking around and decided to get home early.

interesting hand of the night:

I am MP3. Losing Reg stradle. It is the same losing reg that I bloged long ago when I had floped set of Aces and he called down to river to get flush. There is an ongoing joke that I "always" raise when he stradle. So even before the cards are dealt I say: "well I see David is stradle. I know I am getting a hand". Him: "I dare you to raise. I dare you."

I look down at KQo. I min-raise. CO call. BTN call. SB Call. BB Call. Their chips were in even before I looked up. Stradle ships. He was short and I have to call 21 BB. I am getting just about 2:1 before rake. Me: "I actually have a hand" (said with the purpose of finding out how strong he is but also how strong the players behind me is). Him:" So lets race". I look at the players behind me and see that after these statements the players behind me are not very interested.

With the statement "lets race" I feel confident that I can exclude QQ+ from his range and so I am only dominated by AK, AQ and even then I am only making a small mistake given the potodds. So I call.

Him: "I dont know what I have I raised blind". He turns over 84o and I hold.

A small inquisitive question....

If I asked if you were a supporter of Christiano Ronaldo... would that give a clue as to your indentity?

Originally posted by SevenDeuceOff
A small inquisitive question....

If I asked if you were a supporter of Christiano Ronaldo... would that give a clue as to your indentity?

OMG! He's Alec Ferguson!!!

Explains a lot.

Originally posted by jbpatzer

OMG! He's Alec Ferguson!!!

Explains a lot.

More like Jose Mourinho....

Just think i might have been sitting to the right of referred to losing reg.

My identity is no secret.

Soccer?

I have a standing joke about my (lack) of soccer knowledge.

Gordon Igesund was a regular at our local game until he took up our National Soccer team. In fact in the hand where the losing regular mentioned above cracked my set of aces Gordon was the other player in the hand.

Well I often tell the story that I know so little about Soccer that Gordon, one day, told me that when a team score a goal by means of a header that it in fact counts as two points AND I BELIEVED HIM

need to brag a bit:

As I said I have been playing a lot of poker. Also online.

Was playing 10NL Zoom because I withdrew all my money from pokerstars last year. In January I deposited $100 to qualify for those tickets. So I decided to start @10Nl and work myself up. Problem was that many of the live players "buy" $ from me. Meaning that I would have to do player transfers from my account to theirs. This made my bankroll stay under $200 for the whole of last month.

Last week I decided that I had enough and just went up to $25NL zoom even though my bankroll was just about $130.

I ran hot as will be seen below. In fact I am running @ 15.5BB/100.

Below is my graph for the last month. Please remember that the first 3 weeks was 10NL

Really nice graph! Is that all 9max Zoom with 50bb buy-in?

and now for the kicker .... This is how I roll

Hand converted with online PokerStrategy.com hand converter:

Play hand

$0.1/$0.25 No-Limit Hold'em (8 handed)

Known players:
[tg]BU$22.04:///////;SB (Hero)$9.35:///////;BB$39.79:///////;UTG2$29.24:///////;MP1$15.61:///////;MP2$48.53:///////;MP3$77.25:///////;CO$12.75:///////;[/tg]

Preflop: Hero is SB with 3:c, 8:s.
4 folds, CO raises to $0.63, BU calls $0.63, Hero raises to $2.25, 2 folds, BU calls $1.62.

Flop: ($5.38) Q:d, 2:s, 3:d (2 players)
Hero checks, BU checks.

Turn: ($5.38) 3:s (2 players)
Hero bets $3.00, BU raises to $8.50, Hero calls $4.10.

River: ($20.98) 9:c (2 players)

Final Pot: $20.98.

Points of interest:
Pre -flop:
CO opens 40% and has 100% fold to 3 bet .... yum yum
BTN plays 9/7 BUT has 14% 3bet against CO so I dont believe he has a monster.
So I make a squeez with my power house hand
CO folds no suprise there.
BTN calls.

Flop bottum pair.
BTN has fold to c-bet of 0/3 and a WTSD of 50. So I decide not to even try. It seems clear that after he calls the squeez he is never folding.

Turn GIN!
I bet for value with the idea of shipping any river. The raise is unexpected and I did worry for about 1 sec about QQ but I was commited.

and after the hand I think someone somewhere in the world was Tilting really bad.

ps. Villian showed KsJs

Not been posting much but been playing a lot

Had 1 or 2 badish days online but have recovered well. Playing about 1K - 2K hands per day and trying to avg $30 profit @25NL. If all goes to plan I will move back to 50NL next week.

Live been playing about every second day. Had one losing session. One brake even the rest winning.

Played tonight but game broke early. Very quite!? At least had 25BB profit to show for my 1.5hour session.

Not sure what the readers want to hear.

So I am waiting on requests

It is an old poker saying that if after some time you don’t know who the donkey at the poker table is then it is you. Many poker players live by this rule. This forces them to, within 5 mins of play, identify the donkey and by doing so immediately improving their own play.

The reason I mention this is that I just saw a session review where the narrator justified almost half his moves by saying : “well this guy is such a fish I am going to stack off with ….”. In fact at least twice he got it in behind then sucked out and then proceeded telling us how bad the villain is for getting it in with whatever villain had. ♠_evil:

The whole thing reminded me of something that happened about a year or two ago.

At that stage my local casino hosted, every 3 or 4 months, a big SNG. The normal buy in was about R50K + R5K ( ZAR). Normally a number of the high stakes players would fly in from around the country to play. The raison d’etre for the SNG was two guys who, how can I put it, did not mind paying a lot of money for the opportunity to play against all these pros.

Well on this particular night I arrived about 15 min before the start of play just to find the most peculiar sight. What had happened was that the two guys mentioned above had cancelled at the last min leaving all the pros standing about. Naturally they had no intention of playing without these two players. So they asked the casino if they could play cash. The pit boss said yes but, because of lack of dealers, they could not be accommodated on a separate table and they were forced to play on the only available table at the time. It also happened to be the lowest stake table offered. The pit boss declined to raise the blinds.

So when I came there I found 6 of the best known high stakes players in the country all sitting on the lowest stake table in the casino.

I took the only seat on the table.

I found directly to my right: http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=101433 ♠_cool:

Then me.

Then a man still known as the Godfarther of poker in south Africa.

Then some guy I had never seen before of since.

Then http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Rahme ♠_cool:

Long story short Greg does his stack to the unknown player with OESD + FD vs TPGK. Rebuys and does his stack over pair vs set. He gets up and leaves clearly unhappy. IMHO mostly because of the SNG that never was because he lost about only 4K on the cash which was less than 10% of the SNG buy in.

Here comes the kicker. As he leaves, in fact I believe he was still in earshot, this unknown player turns to uncle Ray and says to him: “you can see that guy is not a winning player.”

I very hastily yet diplomatically tried to explain to this guy that the combined poker earnings of the person he was talking to and the person he was talking about exceeded $6M (US).

We have never seen that guy again.

Originally posted by mineriva

The reason I mention this is that I just saw a session review where the narrator justified almost half his moves by saying : “well this guy is such a fish I am going to stack off with ….”. In fact at least twice he got it in behind then sucked out and then proceeded telling us how bad the villain is for getting it in with whatever villain had.

This

Originally posted by MisClick

Originally posted by mineriva

The reason I mention this is that I just saw a session review where the narrator justified almost half his moves by saying : “well this guy is such a fish I am going to stack off with ….”. In fact at least twice he got it in behind then sucked out and then proceeded telling us how bad the villain is for getting it in with whatever villain had.

This

I think 'well this guy is such a fish that I had to fold' is the phrase he was looking for.

message from Mineriva...

To anyone reading my blog and wandering what had happend to me:

Anyway when I have my account again I shall come back with my boring stories.

message from Mineriva...

Disregard the previous post. I have been exposed as an evil hacker who has persistently been trying to bring down the PS website, and have therefore been banned. Any messages from me in the future will be fakes. Believe nothing.

It doesn't surprise me. I can't believe anybody can play that much live poker and remain without mental scars. It's so slow. At least he lives somewhere warm. That must be some consolation for him.

Ok I am back and still going strong.

Thanx Gentari for fowarding my message to all the good readers and to JB.

On that score bring it on JB... bring it on I am ready for you. (Misclick could you please hold my glasses and cane)

Originally posted by mineriva
Ok I am back and still going strong.

Thanx Gentari for fowarding my message to all the good readers and to JB.

On that score bring it on JB... bring it on I am ready for you. (Misclick could you please hold my glasses and cane)

Bring what on? You don't seriously expect me to believe that you're the real mineriva do you? So fake.