CARDRUNNERS

I'll take a year off from school and try to travel as much as possible and will be playing poker for a living, so I guess that'll makes me a pro, huh? Sounds funny to me. Anyway, I can't wait to be school free for such a long period of time, it's gonna be so nice. Only 3 weeks to go!  I've realize that I had not posted many hands on my blog, I think the reason is that I don't often review sessions and it's definatly something I should do more. So here are a few hands from last couple of days:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4096461 Here against a fish I take a strange line, I make my cbet less than a third of the pot and I hope he raise or float with air. Also he's 80bbs deep so I can get all the money in by the river even with my small cbet. Turn & river is standard and he donates me his stack.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4096559 This is a bad call I think. I called thinking he could have 2 pair or a set but afterwords I think he would lead or checkraise with a set or 2pair on flop. On the turn, the way he plays it I think the only hand I beat is JT, i could see him play it this way. But more often he has T7 or QJ imo. So yea bad call.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4096584 This hand I really like the way I played it. I check flop because there's to decent TAG players whose range are a lot of suited connectors or small pocket pairs that hit the flop often. Turn call is meh, I could be ahead of str8 and flush draws or pair& a draw. River is interesting, I dont think he check a str8 so I decide to turn my hand into a bluff and make him fold his like T9 JT QT KT AT A8 and there's a small chance he calls me with worst but he calls with AT, I like my bet anyway.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4096616 QUAAAAAADS!!! always nice to get paid off by 9 high when you have quads lol

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4096621  QUAADS AGAIN. Here it's again a CardRunners member, really dont like the way he played the hand. I cbet the flop because I would do the same with AJ and stuff like this. I check turn because I soul read him :) River is great, I guess he put me on AQ but he end up valuetowning himself.

Wasnt very interesting hands but meh, thats a start, good luck at the tables,
Nic

I went trough a lot of things during march, as far as poker goes. I dont want to describe it all but here's a chronological list of what happened :

Beating 50NL - Taking a shot at 100NL(losing 300$) - Back to Crushing 50NL - Taking another shot at 100NL(losing again) + Tilt money off at 50NL - 2nd place finish in Tournament for 1350$ - Tilt money off at 50NL (losing 300$) - Manage to get my head straight, focus on improving my game (450$ for last 5K hands at 50NL)

I could talk about every event, but I dont think they are relevent all that much, except last one - focus on improving. I went from a 17/13 nit to a 23/19 in about 2-3 weeks. I'm also happy to have experienced massive tilt for first time since my return to the tables. At one point I smashed the remote control into the wall and it went into pieces lol. But I know I can get out of it in a matters of days, and I'm looking for the next tilt to see if I can handle it even better.

So this month I'll work toward improving my game and continue my transition to a Lagtard. Here' are the things I'll be working on, and they're also my biggest leaks i think:

3bet more and also playing better in 3bet pots
2 barreling more
having a more efficient cbetting game

Overall, i ended up +1816 $ in march, and running at 4ptbb/100 at 50NL, down about 200$ at 100NL.
Here's the graph:

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/6108/graphmarch.jpg

gl at the tables,
Nic

 

I've been working on my value bet sizing. Its only been a few days but I feel that I get better value on latter streets by adjusting my bet size according to villain's range. This is something I didnt cared much before and I was betting like 3/4 of the pot no matter what, most of the time.

Here's 2 hands from a session i've played today that relates to this.

 http://www.pokerhand.org/?4038921
 When gwyroski bets pot on the river, I'm like 95% sure he has a 7. Before I would have raised to 18$ or something like this, without really thinking but there I decide to shove for 42$ more because I think he's never folding a 7 in this spot. Also, if i had raised to 18$, there's no way he reraise me in my opinion. On this hand, adjusting my value bet size on river gave me about 20$ more than my usual play.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4038937
Here its the opposite, I value bet smaller on river because I think his hand is very weak. On river, I'm pretty sure he has a hand like a pair of 6, maybe 44-55-77-88 too. So I bet an amount (1/3pot) that I think he'll call. Before I would've bet like 11 on river but that bet size dont make much sens because the way he played the hand he never has a pair of K or trips which is the only hands that would call this 11$ bet.  So in this hand, adjusting my value bet made me 5.25$ more than I would've made before.

I'll continue working of this. I might also start working on my bluff sizing too. Meanwhile, I've changed my game dramatically this month. Results have suffered a bit but I dont mind, I think I'm a better player than at the start of the month. I'm now running at about 22/18 instead of the nitty 17/13 of last month. This is quite a big transtion to make in one month imo. I've also played a session like a super-aggro maniac (CTSvid#2) and it's a lot of fun and it totally changes the dynamics of the table. When you play like 17/13, there's no metagame issue and you dont get involve in too many non-standard spot. But when playing like 26/23 and 3betting more then 12%, people start to do crazy things and they adjust very poorly.
Here's an example:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4039059

good luck guys,
    Nic

So i've had the biggest cash day of my life with a 2nd place at the Ironman on FullTilt, netting me 1350$. Not so bad for a tourney I almost decided not to play and managed to make my way trough the final table doing like 6 other things besides playing. It was like 5-6 months since I've last played a donkaments so it defenatly feels good and my heart was racing on some spots during final table.... you dont get this feeling playing cash games I guess. Maybe I'll try to play more tourneys during summer, I dont know why but I have sick stats and good results in them lifetime.

Anyway, here are 2 hands I got back in HandHistory, there were some other I wanted to post but my HM is fucking with tournaments.

Jumped of my chair on the turn:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3982197

Here is a cool move imo, I was 100% sure he was folding so I ship it in quickly but he timed for like 40 secs so at some point I was thinking that I would get bust because of a bluff w/o any draws but he ended up folding :)
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3982188

I dedicate this 2nd place for Gabe Kaplan. Speeking of which, ep2 of HSP was sick, if anybody didnt saw it, you've got to watch it, durrr kills everybody and managed to make a sick sick sick move on last hand. Here's for Gabe :

February was nice. Started the month at 25NL and quickly went on to crush 50NL. Here are my stats for the month :



The Graph : http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/6306/graphb.jpg

So obviously I'm done with 25 NL(12 676 Hands, 13.36bb/100 for 423.25$)
My transition to 50NL went really well, at some point I had 18winning sessions in a row. From my experience, the difference with both limits is that there are some decent lags at 50NL which you almost dont see at 25NL. For the rest, there's still a ton of donks. Standard abc poker and it's piece o cake. But last few days I've been working on loosening up my game (swings on graph). I think it decreases my winrate at first, but I've got to do that if I want to becomme better at da pokerz.

Goals of february:
Put in at least 12K hands
- I managed to put in 14.5K hands which is nice but it's still not alot, I think 17K would be nice for march
Become a regular at 50NL
- Piece o cake, +20BI so far
Be comfortable 6 tabling
- I was 5-6 tabling most of the month but I think I missed some important informations/reads on players so because of that + the fact that I want to loosen up my game, 4 table is my comfort zone for now.
Get the Silver Iron Man status

sbrugby's style
on an other note, I tought about what kind of bankroll management/movin up style was best for me and I think the one from Brian Townsend will suit me perfectly. I think that working on my game and staying at the limit I am for like 40-50 buyins is not for me because I get bored and basically stop improving/playing. Instead, I'l try to move up as fast as possible, with some bankroll requierement, like btownsend did. Mine will be pretty much like his was : Move up to a certain limit when I have 20BI for it and give me a 5BI shot, if I fail, I come back to my previous limit. As simple as that. For me, movin up will go along with improving my game, if I fail a certain limit, I'll work harder to find ways to win I come back stronger. This means I'm going for 100NL soon :)

March goals:
Put in at least 17K hands
Become a regular at 100NL
Watch 2 CR vidz per week
Be more active in CR forums

This is it for now, hope I'll have some interesting hands from 100NL to post soon.

thx for reading, good luck at the tables,
nic
 

Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners

Seat 1: Villain 1 ($55.15)
Seat 2: Villain 2 ($52.65) -
Seat 3: Villain 3 ($51.30) -
Seat 4: Hero ($50) -
Seat 5: Villain 4 ($52.25)
Seat 6: Villain 5 ($50) Sitting Out


PRE-FLOP:

Villain 3 posts small blind $0.25
Hero posts BIG blind $0.50
Dealt To: Hero


FOLD Villain 4
FOLD Villain 1
RAISE Villain 2 ($1.75)
CALL Villain 3 ($1.50)
RAISE Hero ($7.50)
RAISE Villain 2 ($16)
FOLD Villain 3
RAISE Hero ($50)
CALL Villain 2 ($34)


FLOP:

Pot: $101.75
   



TURN:

Pot: $101.75
     



RIVER:

Pot: $101.75
      



SHOWDOWN:
Hero:

Villain 2:


Hero collected $98.75 from main pot with a pair of Twos

SUMMARY:
Total pot: $101 Rake: $3

Final Board:
     

Seat 1: Villain 1 didnt bet folded - Net Gain/Loss: ($0)
Seat 2: Villain 2 button showed [7d Qd] and lost with a pair of Twos - Net Gain/Loss: ($-50)
  
Seat 3: Villain 3 small blind folded before the Flop - Net Gain/Loss: ($-1.75)
Seat 4: Hero big blind showed [Js Ad] and won 98.75 with a pair of Twos - Net Gain/Loss: ($48.25)
Seat 5: Villain 4 didnt bet folded - Net Gain/Loss: ($0)
Seat 6: Villain 5 is sitting out - Net Gain/Loss: ($0)


Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners


So this hand is pretty cool imo. I remember in a vid Raptor saying : ''It's a good time to 5bet bluff'' and then taking the pot down from the villain. Well for me that time came yesterday :)
First villain is a good TAG with moves imo and small blind is a fish. The situation is obviously perfect for a squeeze... almost too perfect, like I'm never missing this spot to squeeze. So when he 4bets, again he's a good thinking player imo, i'm thinking : well he knows that i know that its a good spot to 3bet blabla.... So when he 4bets I strongly think that he does it with a good part from his buttonraising range so I decide to 5bet shove, looking to take the pot down.... he tanks for a while and made the call with Q7s, which made my 5bet a value shove w AJ?
Anyway, I'm still working on becoming less of a nit,
good luck at the tables!