Mind Games

Many thanks.
The ebook available on his site does appear to be cheaper, but strangely the hardcopy from Amazon works out cheaper after the currency conversion.
I do have Odds Oracle, but I had a trial and it expired.

After losing 6 BI at NL 10 earlier in the day, I kept wanting to play, so I moved to GGPoker and played some NL 5
I got AA cracked by 44 after about 100 hands, then built back up,
Then I got this one...

Called on each street
OK, OK, I suppose it could be argued that these were value bets...

The question of the day is: What on earth was the card he was hoping for?

A while back, I used 888 "gold token" reward points (1000 of them) to purchase a bonus on 888
Last week I was 30 days away from the expiry date of the bonus, and by my calculations I had raked enough to clear the bonus.

Since the policy update on 2020-05-25 it appeared that when you had both bonus funds and cash in your account, that cash would be used first.
Furthermore, only wagers made with bonus funds would count toward clearing the bonus.

In essence, 888 was willing to sell me a bonus I could not use.

I've expressed my disappointment to their support, but I expect no favourable outcome, since even if I had been using bonus funds, I would have merely lost them, since I had a pretty bad run of luck one day.

I'll keep you posted...

Once you have the wheel in PLO8, you have the nut low, and a straight, which will often win you the entire pot -- unless...

Pacific Poker - $0.05 PL Hi/Lo - Omaha Hi/Lo - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

SB: 107.2 BB
BB: 94.4 BB
UTG: 38.6 BB
Hero (MP): 205.2 BB
CO: 40.8 BB
BTN: 99 BB

SB posts SB 0.4 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.4 BB) Hero has T♥:Q♠:A♠:3♥:

fold, Hero raises to 2 BB, CO calls 2 BB, BTN calls 2 BB, fold, BB calls 1 BB

Flop: (8.4 BB, 4 players) J♥:2♠:4♣:
BB checks, Hero bets 2.6 BB, fold, BTN calls 2.6 BB, BB calls 2.6 BB

Turn: (16.2 BB, 3 players) 5♣:
BB checks, Hero bets 5.2 BB, BTN calls 5.2 BB, BB calls 5.2 BB

River: (31.8 BB, 3 players) 9♦:
BB checks, Hero bets 20.8 BB, BTN raises to 89.2 BB and is all-in, fold, Hero calls 68.4 BB

Hero shows T♥:Q♠:A♠:3♥: (High: Straight, Five High, Low: 5432A)
(Pre 56%, Flop 56%, Turn 25%)
BTN shows 5♥:A♥:3♦:6♣: (High: Straight, Six High, Low: 5432A) the magic 6 gives him the higher straight and thus 3/4 of the pot
(Pre 44%, Flop 44%, Turn 75%)
BTN wins 100.2 BB
Rake paid 10.4 BB
BTN wins 49.8 BB
Hero wins 49.8 BB

My bankrolls on all sites have declined recently.
Not entirely sure why -- except that I might be overplaying my hands a bit ( a lot ).
On the other side of that coin, I might have overtightened a bit too much as well.

Deadly combination

Today is a stream day (19:05 UTC at http://bit.ly/maugr1s) so I'm going to use the opportunity to use the stream to review my hands.

OK,
How many times have I mentioned that the killer is passive play?
I just finished a tremendous session where I decided that I would enter each pot with a raise -- or just fold it.
Post draw (or post flop) bet/fold is preferred to check/call or check/fold.

Seemed to work today at least.

Let's keep an eye on this...

It amazes me that I can win reasonably consistently at 5-Card Draw, both limit and no-limit cash, but I have difficulty with 5-Card Draw tournaments.

Also, I don't seem to win nearly as consistently playing other cash games.

Why is that?
Well one reason is that I seem to get decent cards more often in 5-Card Draw, and secondly (and perhaps more importantly) I seem more capable of folding the drek in 5-Card Draw

I lost count of how many times today I got dealt trips playing NL 25 5-Card Draw.

Trips are like printing money in 5-Card Draw, but not nearly so good in PLO8, which might be one reason.

Several times I got it in vs a micropair holding two solid overcards.
Either I failed to pair up by the river or I paired up and villain had already hit their set. <sigh>

On the plus side, I finally achieved "Inbox 0" -- I had six months worth of crap in my email inbox that needed dealing with.
It took me two hours, but it's done.

Along the way, I found this picture of Comet McNaught from Jan 2007

Bonus:
Grouse Mtn Ski hill in North Vancouver

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
On the plus side, I finally achieved "Inbox 0" -- I had six months worth of crap in my email inbox that needed dealing with.
It took me two hours, but it's done.

I usually stay on top, but I was unable to receive any more emails for a while recently because my inbox was completely full.

But that's because I just didn't have the heart to delete those historic ones...
At least I managed to get over myself and delete a few PayPal receipts from nine years ago.

Originally posted by Harrier88

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
On the plus side, I finally achieved "Inbox 0" -- I had six months worth of crap in my email inbox that needed dealing with.
It took me two hours, but it's done.

I usually stay on top, but I was unable to receive any more emails for a while recently because my inbox was completely full.

But that's because I just didn't have the heart to delete those historic ones...
At least I managed to get over myself and delete a few PayPal receipts from nine years ago.

My inbox is also almost always empty -- anything I want to keep I move to a folder.
I have rules that move most emails to their destination automatically, and usually anything left in my inbox is deletable -- not spam, since they are notifications, promos and what-have-you from people I deal with. For those, I scan the headers, and then read the (very) few I might want to read, then bulk delete them.
Then I delete the spam folder
Then I read all the mail that has been archived to it's "forever" folder.

What trips me up is that I'll get several emails that I want to create rules for, then never create them for 6 months, then it takes 2 hours to clean up the mess.

You can to 10 small jobs in the same time it takes to do 1 large one.

That reminds me, I need to clean the cat's litter boxes...

Over $15 in profit from 4 tournaments, thanks to a 3rd place in the $3.30 NL 2-7 Single Draw PKO

It has bee a while since I've had two profitable stream days in a row.

Adding aggression seems to be helping...

Well, at least in tournaments... I got waxed playing 5-Card Draw today

Made FT in the $1.10 8-Game which was enough to do it.

I spent 3 hours today watching PLO8 videos
I learned:
 I fold in the wrong spots 🐔 If I have a draw that can improve to the nuts on either end in 1 card, I should peel 1 street
 I raise in the wrong spots If the best I can get is half the pot, and we're heads up, there is nothing to be gained by raising (unless there is a reasonable chance of getting a fold)
 I flat call in the wrong spots ♠_confused: This applies especially when short stacked: We don't want to be playing flops OOP vs aggro, so get as much of the stack in as possible pre-flop with our best (or reasonably good) hands

One video had a tight guy and a loose guy doing a hand review.
Listening to the two of them argue for a) folding and b) raising was quite instructive.

Oh, and on the side I was playing a single table of NL 5 on GGPoker for the lulz -- and won 3BI

Extremely hot day here today.
It is currently showing as 34 outside, but down here in the basement it is only 22
No we don't have air conditioning -- at night we open all the windows in the house, so it cools down inside.
In the morning, we close them all up again.

It works well until we get such a long hot spell that the house doesn't cool off at night.

We're already more than half-way through August and this is the first major heat wave we've had.

I finished the 3 hours worth of PLO8 videos I had set aside for studying this week.
I put the knowledge to work playing PLO8 5 cash and did fairly well, but got outdrawn in a couple of critical spots.

We'll see what happens when playing the PLO8 tournaments on stream next week.

Not Monday though -- I have amassed a whack and a half of PokerStars tournament tickets we'll play instead

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
Oh, and on the side I was playing a single table of NL 5 on GGPoker for the lulz -- and won 3BI

And lost 'em today in the first 10 hands.
<sigh>

Edit:
Then got 'em all back -- helped in part by this one:
(This hand is brought to you by the "when in doubt punt" department)

Inspiring! After a three day winning streak not neglecting studying. I'm sure it will pay off in the tournaments.

Originally posted by Rhodriguez
Inspiring! After a three day winning streak not neglecting studying. I'm sure it will pay off in the tournaments.

Thanks!
Now 4 consecutive days on stream in profit.
What was really weird is that most of the profit came from No Limit Hold'em

I had a bunch (8) stars reward tickets -- the ones you get in chests -- as well as several twitch tickets that you get randomly when watching PokerStars sponsored streamers.
Of the 8 stars reward tickets, I won a $2.00 and a $3.00 and won 4 WCOOP "fast track tickets" so 1st place in 5 of 8
Of the 4 WCOOP "fast track tickets" I came first in one of them, and picked up an $11 2nd round ticket
I came 3rd in the $11 and picked up $8.34

Add to that a Double-or-Nothing PLO8 win on 888, and a 2nd place in the daily PLO8 on Playnow.com and the total was enough to put me in profit $11 or so overall.

The 3 hours of study over the weekend really helped.

Cash PLO8 not so good. I was in the right hands, but failed to fold a few times, and got outdrawn a few more.

But really enjoyed the day.

Except that it hit 24C in my computer room.

Cheers,
VS

I need hearing aids.

I've ordered them, and have an appointment for the fitting in September.
These aren't your Grandma's hearing aids -- they're bluetooth enabled, have rechargeable batteries, and come in a wide variety of colours.
The bluetooth isn't for streaming audio from my phone, but rather so that I can use my phone to control volume, bass, treble and so on.

I'm even able to turn them off completely, but I'm led to believe this in inadvisable when one is married

I played a bunch of NL 10 today, since there was very little PLO8 action on 888 today, and I need (rather want) to keep the volume up so that I can achieve a certain # of reward points per day.

If you haven't been following the 888 bankroll challenge you can do that here: https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?threadid=450673&goto=firstnew
tl;dr -- I took a hit late last month, so we're grinding it back up...

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
These aren't your Grandma's hearing aids -- they're bluetooth enabled, have rechargeable batteries, and come in a wide variety of colours.

Awww, none of those?

The one I had in mind was
Considerably less expensive, but surprisingly effective than these...

At least I think that is the correct one.