Finally got in a decent amount of hands yesterday

A lot of hands for me anyways. Played for a few hours last night while doing Christmas Cards. Got in just under 500 hands over at Betuspoker (Tribeca Site). Since I was doing other things too, I played just two tables at once. Mostly at 100NL, but about 100 or so hands were at 200NL.

Check out the graph from last night. Up and down and up and down. Uggg. All that, and I only won $55.



I ran across quite a few bad players. Unfortunately, they usually got the best of me right away. But I stuck with it, and eventually they busted out, like most players do when they play 80% of their hands. One of these guys was up to $450 at a 100NL table, and 100 hands later, they had zippo.

The big drop around hand 360 were from back-to-back hands at one of the tables. I had AK and raised it up on the button. One of the PF limpers called, and I hit TPTK. He checked, I bet, and he called. The same thing happened on the turn. On the River, another blank came, and he checked again. I should have just checked behind, even with TPTK, but I threw out a value bet of about 2/3 pot. He then min-check-raises me. Ugg, I wonder if he has a set? You usually don't see too many check-raises on the river. Usually they will bet because they want to guarantee themselves getting some extra money. They are too afraid of the player with position checking behind and losing some value.

Then the next hand, I get AQ and again make a standard raise after a few limpers. This time the big donk calls my bet. I ended up wiffing on the flop and turn, and he called both my bets on the flop AND turn with T2o after pairing his 2 on the flop. Yessir, he called me down with bottom pair.

Oh well, even though I didn't win much, it was the first time in a long time that I actually had some fun while playing poker. I felt like I was playing pretty good and got into a groove. Too bad the variance at a crazy site like Tribeca is super high.

Cheers!

Not much poker this last week

I've only played 475 hands since last Friday. But I'm up a good $430 though, so I'm happy about that. It would be $220 higher if I didn't run my Kings into Aces All-in PF. Oh well. I have a hard time folding Kings PF at the 6 max games. I was on the button with Kings, and there was a raise in front of me. I re-raised and then the BB went all-in. I had to call.

I've been playing over at Eurolinx and a new Tribeca site. I am halfway done with the $250 bonus at Eurolinx, but I don't know if I am going to be able to finish it up in time. I have until the end of the month. The problem is that the games at the Tain network just aren't that great. Not many tables get above 40% in the VP$IP stat. And then it is even more rare to find a table that also has a average pot greater than $10 (at 100NL). I'm thinking there are just a lot of tight bonus whores playing there.

But I was lucky enough to find another $500 bonus at Tribeca, the home of the crazy players. I love this site. Hopefully the impending merge of Tribeca with another network doesn't happen anytime soon. I have until the end of February to finish this one, so I should complete it.

Here is an example of a hand that I played the other day. I have no idea what this dude had.

I'm on the button with Pocket 3's. I have about $150. Villain is UTG and has me covered. Villain limps in, MP folds, and then the CO raises to $4. I re-raise with my threes to $13. Both blinds fold. UTG flat calls, and the CO raiser folds, so it is heads up with $31.50 in the pot. Flop is Q, 6, 4 rainbow. He checks, and I bet out $20, hoping to take it down here. I'm representing a big hand with my re-raise, so I felt I had a good chance to take the pot down here.

He ends up calling. Uggg. Pot is now at $71.50. But the turn is a beautiful three, which also completes the rainbow, so there are no flush draws out there (though 75 and 52 just completed their straight). He checks the turn, and I bet out again for $40. Again, he just flat calls. Now I am really worried about him having a higher set.

The river is an 8. He checks again, and I push the rest of my $70 in. The hands that beat me are: 52, 75, QQ, 88, 66, 44. He ended up calling my river bet, and I dragged the pot and he mucked. Tribeca doesn't show mucked hands, so I still have no idea what he had.

What do you think? Should I have just checked the river and induced a worse hand to bluff? Obviously the result of the hand is good, but I am not sure if I played it optimally. And he obviously played it bad, no matter what he had. Did he put me on AK and called with QJ? Tens maybe? But if the villain was a good player, I think that my river bet wasn't good, because I just don't see a good player calling with anything that I beat. They are only going to call with a hand that beats me. Opinions?

I'm back

Anyone missed reading me? It looks like I am still getting a few hits according to statcounter. Sorry for not updating much lately. I've been taking a nice little break from the poker. I've only played twice in the last two weeks. Lost $120 one day last weekend, then I played a little this morning and actually won $140.

I can attribute my break to two things:

First, I am getting sick of the bad luck I have been getting lately. It is quite unbelievable. I won't bore you with any bad beat stories, but there have been many. But what is more amazing is that there is just plain old more bad luck than bad beats. Running into the nuts, flopping a few monsters but not getting paid off, getting my fair share of pocket pairs, but the two at the bottom of the list being Aces then Kings, set over setted, etc...

When ever someone complains about results or cards, everyone always says, "Ya, but that is short term results. Look at your stats after 10,000 hands, and that will give you a better idea of your play". Well, I took at a look at my last month and a half stats, and I had about 8,927 hands. 8,927 hands is quite a bit, so I should be able to look at my results and see that I get a pocket pair every 17 hands and that I get a set for every 8 pocket pairs, etc...

In 8,927 hands, I have gotten 520 pocket pairs. I am getting statistically the correct number of pocket pairs (8927 / 17 = 525). Unfortunately, I am not getting Aces and Kings as often as I should (27 for Aces, 28 for Kings). I should be seeing about 40 of each pocket pair. It kinda sucks that the two bottom ones on my list have to be the two best starting hands. The top four? Pocket 5's, then 9's, 4's, and finally 7's. Hooray.

I have seen the flop on 391 of those Pocket Pairs. I have flopped 36 sets (two of those where actually flopped quads). One should flop a set 12% of the time. Out of 391 flops seen, I should have seen 47 sets. I'm a good eleven below average. Argg! Yuck, 36 sets in 8927 hands.

On average, I am winning 26.2 BBs per set. That seams kind of low to me. Of those 36 sets, I have won more than 100BBs four times.

Lets assume for a moment, that I did flop 47 sets. That would be 11 more sets. Of those 11, lets say 7 were at 100NL, and 4 at 200NL. That would be an extra $183+$210=$393. That's a pretty significant improvement to ones PTBB/100, dontcha think?

And the 2nd thing I can attribute my break too is the game Company of Heroes. It was on sale at Best Buy a few weeks back, and right now, that game is much more fun than poker right now. Maybe I'll start playing a little bit more poker, especially if this mornings results are any indicator to my luck. I got lucky in that I was playing four tables, and I un-clicked the auto-post blind button and was about to finish up. The very last hand I played this morning, I get 7's UTG and make a standard raise. Only the BB calls. The flop came out A72 rainbow. The most perfect flop. Hopefully the BB has an ace. Well, he ended up having AK, and I stacked him. nh me!

Thanks for reading! Now go click the comments button right below here, and say Hi, just so I know that you are still checking out this here poker blog. I promise to start posting more! (maybe some Company of Heroes stories??? :) )