Poker: Trials and Tribulations

Uncomfortable hand

2006-03-17T03:54:00.002-05:00

Part test, part analysis. Button was relatively new to the table, no reads at all on him. Didn't want to have to lay this down, but felt like I could have been beaten, so I went into complete c/c mode.

Ultimate Bet 0.25/0.50 Hold'em (10 handed) converter

Preflop: Hero is UTG+1 with J, K.

Hero calls, 5 folds, Button raises, 1 fold, BB calls, Hero calls.

Flop: (6.40 SB) 2, K, 7 (4 players)

BB checks, Hero checks, Button bets, BB folds, Hero calls.

Turn: (4.20 BB) Q (3 players)

Hero checks, Button bets, Hero calls.

River: (6.20 BB) T (3 players)

Hero checks, Button checks.

Final Pot: 6.20 BB

Results in white below:

Button has Qh Js (one pair, queens).

UTG doesn't show.

Hero has Jd Kd (one pair, kings).

Outcome: Hero wins 6.20 BB.

Uncomfortable hand

2006-03-17T03:54:00.001-05:00

Uncomfortable hand

2006-03-17T03:54:00.000-05:00

Part test, part analysis. Button was relatively new to the table, no reads at all on him. Didn't want to have to lay this down, but felt like I could have been beaten, so I went into complete c/c mode.

Ultimate Bet 0.25/0.50 Hold'em (10 handed) converter

Preflop: Hero is UTG+1 with J, K.

Hero calls, 5 folds, Button raises, 1 fold, BB calls, Hero calls.

Flop: (6.40 SB) 2, K, 7 (4 players)

BB checks, Hero checks, Button bets, BB folds, Hero calls.

Turn: (4.20 BB) Q (3 players)

Hero checks, Button bets, Hero calls.

River: (6.20 BB) T (3 players)

Hero checks, Button checks.

Final Pot: 6.20 BB

Results in white below:

Button has Q J (one pair, queens).

UTG doesn't show.

Hero has J K (one pair, kings).

Outcome: Hero wins 6.20 BB.

Donkification

2006-03-11T04:04:00.000-05:00

It really bothers me how these lower limit games (and especially the SnGs) have practically little to no thought process in any of the moves made out there. Any hand consists of either everyone in the world calling and raising in terms of the minimum, or simply abusing the "bet pot" and "all-in" aspects.

Ugh.

In the middle of this SnG, I get dealt 55 in MP. I smooth call, hoping to see it free, and it does call around. Flop comes out A85, rainbow. I know I have the best hand here, so I put in a small bet to encourage callers, and got 1 more caller of the 4 left in the pot. Turn brings around another club, putting two on the board. I bet out $180 into a pot of $445, laying the guy I put on a flush draw with just slightly less than 3.5-1 pot odds, and the whore calls and catches the flush with 9c6c. It's sickening.

Gonna go back and see if I can somehow sift through this sea of fish and get some money out of this.

Did I play this right?

2006-03-03T04:00:00.000-05:00

Or maybe I should have titled this post "Did my villian have the pot odds to call that bet?" This wasn't a huge hit in the tourney (Which winded up with me losing as the second tourney in a row where I flop TPTK and someone else flopped a set.), but it really bothered me. Comments appreciated.

Ultimate Bet No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is $60 (6 handed) converter

UTG ($2995)
MP ($1695)
Hero ($1475)
Button (Villian) ($1880)
SB ($3915)
BB ($3040)

I knew that I was the short stack coming into this hand, and while I didn't have great starting cards, I was CO and they were decent. I decided to test the waters and see what would happen.

Preflop: Hero is CO with Td, 8d.
2 folds, Hero raises to $150, Villian calls $150, 2 folds.

With the other 2 players folding in front of me, I was hoping for one of two things: Either I could pick up the $90 in the blinds, or I would get called only by the button. He had been playing crazy all tournament, so I figured him for playing almost any two cards on the button. Choice B happened.

Flop: ($390) Kh, Js, Jh (2 players)
Hero checks, Villian checks.

Probably a mistake here by me, a bet may have showed enough strength to win the pot right out. However, him checking told me that he didn't have either of those cards, or a hand that could draw to them. I thought that he would be holding Ax or possibly a middle pair, which he would have to dump if the next card didn't look too good.

Turn: ($390) 5c (2 players)
Hero bets $325, Villian calls $325.

Thinking this was my oppurtunity, I throw a bunch of money into the pot, roughly 4/5 of the pot. I was trying to win this pot outright because I knew my hand was beat, but was trying to kill the pot odds against him and force a fold. His call worried me however, thinking that either he was holding 55 and thus is sitting there with a boat, or that he may have been slowplaying a J or even a K.

River: ($1040) As (2 players)
Hero checks, Villian checks.

I check through with the intention of folding as I know, no matter what he has, I'm completely beaten. Imagine my surprise when he shows this. (Here's a fun game, guess what he had!)

Final Pot: $1040

Results in white below:
Hero has Td 8d (one pair, jacks).
Villian has 4d 4s (two pair, jacks and fours).
Outcome: Villian wins $1040.

Unless I'm doing this wrong, when he had the call on his plate, there was $715 in the pot ($390 from pre-flop and $325 from my bet). This made his pot odds 715-325, or exactly 2.2-to-1. With my large bet, one would assume that I'm either holding a large drawing hand such as ThQh, or more likely, I have a J and was waiting to see if he had a king. Assuming I am put on a J, our Villian was facing two pair, Kings and Jacks. Thus, the only thing that would have saved him was another 4 for the set.With the 4 community cards and the 2 in his hand, he figures to have a 46/2 shot at making the set, or a 23-to-1 underdog.

This is a two-parter that I want a comment on. Firstly, is my pot odd math correct there? Secondly, did I make any wrong plays in this hand? He was a slightly aggressive player, but his chipstack, as you can see, was just as volatile as mine was.

2006-03-01T03:02:00.000-05:00

It's been quite a while since my last post, and I've had a lot going on recently. The two major things that I've had on my mind a lot lately are MTTs and other various of poker.

Multi-Table Tournaments
This past weekend I was in Atlantic City as a marshall for the Philadelphia Mummers Show of Shows at Boardwalk Hall. After we had finished that, I decided that I wanted to try my hand at a tournament. So I made the bitter walk on 45 minutes sleep over to the Showboat's House of Blues poker room and registered into the $60+$15 tournament starting at 7pm. Sitting at a table, looking around and seeing 79 other people in the same tournament was rather nerve-racking. Couple that with getting 5k in chips spread over about 15 chips kinda threw me for a loop. I decided, since my B&M play is severely limited, I would focus on premium hands much more than I would on playing my opponents. In fact, the first hand that I pushed hard I wound up putting someone else all in while almost getting myself in at the same time, and when he showed his QQ, i quietly flipped my AA and won a nice pot. (This was a good 45-60 minutes in).

From there, I kept myself extremely conservative, slowly raising up my chipstack while shifting through tables. Around 25 or so left (top 10 paid out) I found myself short stacked again (average was around 16000 and I was sitting with roughly 7-8k. I find AKs and push all-in to get called by AJo. I doubled up through that guy (who had quite a few chips under his belt). Next hand I get AKo, and decide to put a modest raise in pre-flop. The board hit Kxx rainbow, and I push all-in against the same guy, and he calls with KQs. Once again, I double up, sitting with a rather decent stack now.

The rest of the tournament had me coasting through, getting suckered in to the allure of prize money more than trying to increase my chip stack, and I didn't win another hand after them that was worth anything. However, I did finishin 5th place and raked in $336. I would like to see myself be able to play a little more aggressively and mix up my play a little bit rather than try to just hold on to the game, but I was pleased with my efforts.

Variations
Thanks to Mr Huggins, I have been trying to learn some of the other forms of poker that frequent. He has been playing a lot of Omaha 8/b lately, and I dabbled a bit in there. It's a bit fun and a nice change of pace, but I've been on this kick of desperately wanting to learn how to play good Stud. The game itself is completely different from anything that I usually play, and it's even a bit confusing at first with the changing betting positions and antes, but I'm loving the learning process. The biggest problem that I'm having is getting into games and getting something contructive out of it. PokerStars, which is great for the microlimit varieties, offers paltry selection in play money games (which I want to start with until I completely grasp the basic concepts of it). I tried to do a tournament, but PokerStars play money tournaments are a complete waste of my time. For example, I did a PM Omaha H/L tournament, and was left heads-up with another player before the first blind increase. Sad.` I hope once I move into the money games that I can have people that aren't complete donkeys to face.

Monsters

2006-02-03T00:59:00.000-05:00

So, it's been over a month since my last post. Primarily, there went a long stretch of about three weeks where I had no stable internet connection. As such, I was not able to get into poker at all.

Coming back, it shows. A lot.

The most noticable thing that I've been noticing about my play is twofold: I'm making a lot of stupid moves and not being able to realize that I'm beat and should back off, and as a result, I seem to be more on tilt that I ever was before. And sadly, it's because I'm more angry with myself than a bad beat or anything of the sort. Definately something I need to work on.

Anger moment of the night
There is an unwritten rule among poker players that if you go all-in in a tournament setting, expect everyone to do everything in their power to take you out of the game. This would ensure that the remaining players are one step closer to a payout. Unfortunately, people are too stupid to realize this sometimes. In a move that would have guaranteed an extra $5 for the both of us (since it would have dropped the field down to 2 had I stayed in), the moron pushed all-in after the turn with a high card. People really need to learn sometimes.

Observations: Overbets

2005-12-21T11:26:00.000-05:00

I've noticed in all of the ring games since the last time I posted that a lot of players in the microlimit games ($0.01/$0.02) have a tendency to go all-in pre-flop when they see a high pocket pair. I don't really see the payoff in a move like that, especially when the table folds around and you're left with the blinds amounting to a whopping three cents.

However, where it gets me is the exact opposite. When I have KK or QQ (I will not count AK here, because I never win with the hand) I have this large tendency to call instead of the proper play of raising. I think I'm just too timid of raising and completely missing the flop when an ace comes out, or going against a fish ho sucks it out on the river.

Just something to focus on for the future.

Prologue

2005-12-20T01:55:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to do this for quite some time now. For years, poker has been a hobby among me and my friends. We'd play cheap tournaments at my house or at the club in Philly, or pop online and mess around with a tournament or two. But lately, the poker bug has hit me hard. Spending all my free time in a game, usually on UltimateBet.com, scrutinizing every play and hand that I come across. Over the past few months, I have become a much tighter player, both from experience at how luck is something that cannot be relied on, as well as the absorbed knowledge from books, with two of my favorites being Play Poker Like the Pros by Phil Hellmuth Jr. and The Tao of Poker by Larry Phillips.

I've started to track my progress in terms of chip counts, both in play money and real money, in an Excel workbook. I will work on getting that online and shall link it for easy access. As my friend has done, there are goals I have for myself, though the timetable is most likely elongated.

Place in a SnG in Atlantic City. While winning is always nice, everything must come in stages. At this point all I've done is ring games in AC, so before I set a lofty goal such as winning, I would merely like to place and make a profit off a MTT.
Have an average daily winnings of $10 or more by the end of January. I know that there will be good days and bad days. What I feel should be my focus is longevity and avoiding tilt as much as possible. Playing better poker will always reflect in the long run rather than the short.
Develop a stronger sense of spirituality. Personal problems have been a lot of my life over the past 5 years, and never once have I been able to escape all of that and not be totally alone. I've tried to get into various religions, searching for something that could comfort me in dark times, but have yet to settle for many reasons. A better sense of mind would greatly improve my play

As it stands, these are the goals that I have set for myself. In no way do I expect to wake up tomorrow as one of the greatest poker players alive. But what I do expect is for my game to continually improve the more I play and work on it.

This poker blog will contain various snippets and reports on my poker play. Tournament overviews, bat beats, player types, and anything else that I may come across during my play that I feel is important enough to get down in words. A reference for myself and anyone else who may come across this.