CARDRUNNERS

I haven't been posting any hands really so I'm gonna try to start doing that more often. It's always nice to get feedback on my play so that's what I'm going for here. Some went my ways, others didn't, so this isn't a brag or whine post, just for some enjoyment or constructive criticism.

1. Hand vs. CR member
I wasn't that proud of this hand. I probably should have slowed down on the turn since he/she isn't calling me without an Ace or better. Guess I was too over-aggro.

2. Cooler
Anyone not reraise the river here? I overbet and he minraises. I have 2nd nuts, no way I can put him on the hand he has.

3. Another vs. CR member
I don't know how I should've played this one differently. I think I should have led at turn and folded to a raise. If he calls, what do I do on river? Tough situation, I should have kept the pot smaller.

4. Fold Preflop?
I don't think people are 4-betting light at these stakes so I think I should fold here. It's tight, but it would have been the correct play. However I suck out a nice flop. I think I was semi-tilting here.

5. Bad shove?
I think he cannot put me on this hand and he has to have a pretty decent hand here. I don't think he folds 2 pair but I may have scared him off a decent ace. Maybe a value bet was more in store. He had $150 left at that point. Probably value bet would be better here.

6. Wtf was I thinking?
I mean, it was the correct call, but I don't know how I made that turn call. I guess I just felt like he didn't have much.

7. I swear my reads are so dead on
I wanted to fold this river soooooo bad but couldn't do it. People just make it so obvious when they have huge hands. I love how they tend to raise 3x when they have MONSTERS. 3x is the new minraise.

8. Everytime?
I wanted to reraise this flop, but I put him on a big pair and didn't want to get blown out. On turn I hit my diamond and decide to flat call and raise a blank river...which obviously doesn't come. I call out of frustration, his high pair with one diamond wins. In my head I keep saying, no diamond, no diamond...then it hits. This is the stuff that frustrates me, not the players. or his weak-ass bets that are half blocking half value.

9. I <3 suited connectors
Obvious this guy has an overpair? Lol. And yes, i did the 3x raise. see what I mean?

10. lollerskates
LOL at roywing flatcalling my raise. Like...uhh...obvious you have a 9. I probably should raise this turn and look to get it all in. I switch it up sometimes. I was a little concerned about a boat, but once he checks river I know he has just trips and I proceed to maximize value. (roywing, sorry if you're a CR member).

11. Good value?
I suckout nicely and get good value out of my hand. Again, obvious he has the overpair. He can only blame himself for letting KQ beat his KK.

12. I can run hot sometimes
I think I played this hand beautifully. A little risky how I played it giving him the chance to check behind on river but I felt like he had a hand worthy of a value bet. Luckily he mashes pot button to commit himself. This was during my 17 min. $500 profit run.

13. I played this like a puss...seemingly
Ok, I should have bet that turn for sure. I have a tendency to slowdown on hands that I am ahead of. I try to let them think I have nothing so they can bluff or value bet a worse hand. I really am disappointed how I misplayed this.

14. tyvm
I think he was bluffing...


I have more to post but will do that tomorrow or tuesday. I want to start doing this more to work on my game. I'm trying to set a goal for May-August. With a full time internship it'll be hard to make a decent amount at poker, but we'll see. I'm gonna aim for 30k for the summer probably. That's about 20-25k purely from poker. I'm also restarting the abs diet I think. I want to keep working on getting in shape.

I played better tonight, really solid, finished up a couple of buyins. Would have finished up more if not for this huge hand toward the end. I raise QJo UTG 5 handed. sb calls. Flop is 5810 2 diamonds. He bets $12 into the $16 pot. I call. Turn: 9c. He bets $36, i raise him to $130, he thinks and pushes I insta call and he hits a diamond on the riv with his KJdd.

I seriously get sick of these huge suckouts in huge pots. Especially when I get it all in on the flop with J10cc on a K98 2 club flop and can't hit. People may think I exaggerate but I know for almost certain I've maybe hit 1 for every 3 i miss of those. And I'm the favorite on the flop. I really hate getting it in with combo draws even though I know it's +ev. It can be demoralizing (right word?) when you can't hit that and guys hit their miracles on the river. Then the guy proceeds to call me a fish, lol. Not sure if it was because of some other plays I made...but it's so redic. Then I lost all in on a 7 high flop with JJ vs. an uber donk who went crazy with AA...i should've folded the flop cuz it was just too likely he had a higher pair. I just have a sense for this. It pisses me off seeing guys like this who play 80% of their hands, even with raises, and get lucky and win. So I left the table cuz i felt the steam coming. I'll take the $400 win for today.



Anyway, I have a presentation tomorrow which I'm excited to give. Not anything outstanding but I enjoyed these projects I worked on. Then time to party at isu this weekend.


Buehrle threw a no hitter tonight and I missed all but the 9th inning cuz of class....laaaaaaaaaaaame. Still sweet though. I also like seeing the cubs in last in their division...i laugh so much at all the people who said it was the cubs' year. Seriously...like Lou is the miracle worker...or they can buy a championship. I'd probably put money on them having a worse record than last year AGAIN! I made that bet in 2005 and it held true as they had a nice 66-96 last year. I don't mean to knock them too much, it's just funny. People don't understand it takes time to build a championship caliber team. Not only that, they have posters around chicago up that say "PLAY LIKE THERE'S NO TOMORROW." Um, excuse me but that sounds awfully familiar to the sox's '05 run "win or die trying." lol.

what's also getting funnier/annoying is the bernie mac lotto commercials here in Illinois. Seriously. It's hilarious with the texas hold 'em tickets. I've noticed that the media creates this image of hold 'em for the american public where you get AA a lot or go 'ALL IN!!!'. It's hilarious.

Announcer: "What will the Mac man do versus Chi-town Cheryl?"
Bernie: (looks down at AA.) "I'M ALLLLLLLLLL IN"

lol, like that's such a tough decision. i know it's for commercial sake...but i find it annoyingly hilarious...if that makes sense.

I had probably the sickest comeback i've ever had and man does it feel good. I started playing 4 tables of 200nl around 1030-11 or so and in about an hour and a half i was down 7 buyins. I probably was down to $1500 or $1600 down before things turned around. FINALLY, things started going my way but it wasn't easy. Lots of difficult situations and some sweats, nothing that easy. I made some nice plays too and overall played mediocre-good. I ended up even about. Maybe up or down a buyin, but I don't really know. I'll check this weekend. Want to focus on my game more.

Seriously, that was such a sick downswing. I can't wait for the day where all my hands go well for me. I had AA cracked a few times...even managed to not lose my whole stack in one situation. I'm getting pretty good at reading hands, just got to follow through.

I'm not sure how much people are bluffing. I want to think it's a lot, but I'm not quite sure. Maybe in the range of 30% of the time. I have no clue really.


Man this lifestyle can be rough. I think if I play tomorrow night or thurs im gonna step down to 100nl and work on some things where it's not so swingy. I loved when things turned around when I was playing some ultra-donks. Man that was nice. jeez, 4 hours to get even. I know it's bad too to play when running poor, but I knew if I could get even it would feel good. Right now my game has some leaks but I think I can play better too.




Anyways, in other news, I'm probably accepting a full time internship for the summer which means less poker. It sucks, but I really wanted this one and this is paid as opposed to the part time one. Bout time I focused on my future some. Over the summer I'm looking to play when i get back from work or at night for 1-2 hours a day. Hopefully things dont go like they did tonight, lol. So sick. Some hands were tough to handle. But I think I did well at calming myself down. I think that's one thing everyone can always work on. If you can keep your cool you're golden.


I need to make a post that's not about poker...maybe this weekend, lol. Gave one presentation today in a class...went well. We had to design a part of UIC's campus where it's open land and a parking lot right now. I really like my design and future ideas. My other presentation is thursday afternoon. I have to work on it some tomorrow but it won't be too bad. After that I'm going to isu for the weekend...i need to relax.

I had an amazing time at Spring Fling at Penn. The concert with Third Eye Blind and Ben Folds was a little weak because the sound quality was so poor, but Ben did impress me. I hadn't started listening to him until recently, but I've been totally digging his music and listen to it a lot when I play online to calm me down.

I think I've playing pretty solidly lately. If anyone plays against me on a regular basis, let me know. For whatever reason, I seem to be a very marginal winner in 6 max games these days. I'm not sure if there's new element of the games that I'm missing...some level of aggression that I'm not meeting, or if I my reads are just terrible at 6max, but I am a pretty smallish winner (1-2bb/100 between 2/4 and 5/10). I'm actually like a 4bb/100 wnner at 5/10 but my sample lately is too small.

That said, I am crushing heads up games. Even after losing 4 buyins in 20 minutes tonight playing heads up, I managed to break even for the night about 2 hours later. I'm gonna post some hands and explain my thought process. Hopefully you guys don't think I'm too much of a donk...

Hand 1: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1002864

I'm really proud of this hand and I think it represents some fairly high level thinking. In this hand, my opponent is fairly aggressive but also extremly intelligent in my opinion. He took half a buyin off me earlier when I slowplayed QQ to his flop lead, and he turned 2 pair. I have seen him fire double barrells, and he knows that I think he's capable of firing three barrells and making moves.

In this hand, I decide to just call A8s pre. I think this is pretty standard. I may 3-bet sometimes, but call is my default. Obviously I hit a great flop. But what I do here is to really confuse him. He knows that I know how aggro he is. So I decide to check/raise the flop with trips, because I know he'll never think that I have an ace. Afterall, if I had an ace, wouldn't I slowplay and let him bluff off his stack? The same holds true for him. When he 3-bets me on the flop, I'm 90% sure he doesn't have an ace. After all, if he puts me on air, why would he 3-bet my flop check/raise? I think his most likely holdings are flush draw (but unlikely b/c he would prob just call my check/raise and not risk me pushing) and total air.

I boat up on the turn, but that doesn't really matter. I figure I was ahead from the start. I check to him, and he fires a really weird bet of $55. Most players in my position make a mistake here and just decide to stick it in, figuring that he'll only call with an ace. What they fail to realize is what our opponent is trying to do here. If he does have an ace here (which I feel is super super unlucky) if we just call this $55, we'll still stack him on the river, because he's never checking behind 3 aces. But if he doesn't have an ace here, he's just given us the flush draw test. If we merely call this bet, then he knows we got a little aggro with our flush draw on the flop and have not found ourselves in a predicament. By leaving $200 back, he leaves enough money to fire the river and move off us a missed flush draw which managed to pick up a random pair.

I decide to do just that and feign having a flush draw on the turn. Again, we never lose value from an ace here, but also gain the opportunity to extract more value from his bluffs. I really like the way I played this hand and it felt great to stack him.

Hand 2: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1002892

This is another very interesting hand. My opponent in this hand is very good, but again quite aggressive. I assume he is capable of bluffing, but I don't know much more than that. I recently rivered a 4 card gutter 4567, he potted into me, I raised and he insta mucked. But I would say he has been running me over overall picking up lots of small pots and firing multiple streets.

In this hand, I call out of position with A7o. I watch my roommate Gaucho play heads up a lot, and I feel that he folds hands like this too much oop. I don't like 3-betting this hand prelfop. That said, vs most heads up opponents, A7 is ahead of their range.

In this flop, I catch a pretty decent flop for ace high. J99, which isn't likely to have hit his hand. I check planning to check/call most bets and re-evaluate on the turn.

The turn brings the Ace of spades. This is a great scare card for him, and in a sense it's made my hand (as good as it's gonna get, lol). It's likely I would have raised trip 9s or even a flush draw on a bare flop like that, so my likely hands are somethign like QT or a mid pair like 66, 55. I check the turn, and he makes a sizeable bet of about 2/3 pot. I am still pretty sure I'm ahead here. I figure he would check a jack, bet trip 9s, bet a flush, but I also think he would check an ace here not wanting to scare me away from my jack or midpair and looking to get value on the river.

The river is a total blank, and I again check. He has to assume that I would bet trip 9s or a flush on the end here for value. By checking, I am confirming to him that my hand is not nutted. He makes a very, very interesting bet which is slightly overpot. Now as anyone who's been playing online poker for a while knows, an overbet from a good player is almost always the nuts. That said, I distinctly remember a Taylor video from early 2006 (or late 2005) where he said he sometimes likes to make river overbet bluffs vs thinking players when he knows they don't have the nuts, just because such a bet looks so incredibly strong. I really didn't see how he could have a boat here, or why he'd overbet a flush (after I had made my hand appear to be quite weak) so I called. My only concern was that he was making a phenomenal bet with an AJ or AK type hand, but I like my thought process and I was rewarded with the pot.

I was gonna post 2 more hands, but it's 245am and I'm really tired. If people like what I had to say about my thought processes, I'll post up a couple more in the near future. Now I just have to hope you all don't sit at my tables and outplay me...

Ezra

3 weeks of school left and I have big projects coming up in 3/4 classes. This weekend I'm staying home and pretty much working on them the whole time. It sucks, but I have 2 presentations next week and a quiz. I enjoy the work I'm doing for them, but i hate having to do nothing other than work on them. I had time to work on them before this...but I actually didn't know one of them was coming up as soon as next thursday. So that pretty much killed my weekend, lol.

I really would like to play more poker but I just can't. I played for about an hour or so last night. This little gem was nice:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?993564

He had been 3-betting a decent amount preflop, this was only after a few hands at the table. The hand before he 3-bet me and i ended up winning that one. So I didn't think he was 3-betting light here. After the turn I put him on AA and decided to slowplay it the whole way, why not right? LOL.

Had a few other decent hands, won a little at .50/1 PLO then played some HORSE. I feel like I'm a well rounded poker player compared to most at my stakes. I know how to play most games with a decent amount of strategy. I even made a nice checkraise on 7th in Razz with something like a 7543A. His board made it really hard for him to have a better hand and I put him on an 8 low, er however you explain the hands. Good read me. I played some .50/1 and was winning but these donks didn't know what they were doing and I ended up dropping $20 there, then i was playing a donk at 1/2 and he wanted to move up to 2/4 which I'm fine with. I ended up winning $50 or so there so that was nice.

All in all I ended up $240 or so for the hour which I'm happy with. Not a huge amount for me, but since I can't play much, I'll take it. I should aim for about 4-5k on the month. I'm not sure how much I'm up right now but I think it's close to 1k or maybe a little more.

I'm also really considering going out to vegas over the main event in addition to when I'm going with friends from june 2-7. It'll be hard if i have a 40hr./week internship, but I really want to go for the CR partying that will happen. If I have a 20hr/week internship or none at all I'm definitely going. We'll see.