Crushed the game at Eagle earlier for a much needed win after a grueling downswing of almost half my bankroll in my previous two sessions.
One of my Top 5 (City) Whales shows up. This guy doesn't look like he really has money, but he's got enough to keep short stacking himself into a game and more than enough crazy to frequently run a 1k stack on the regular. I don't know this guy's name, though the second result on my google search of famous whale names was the 1970 Exploding Whale incident, and considering that's right about his age range and what's going to happen to his chip stack we've got a clear winner!
Eagle 1-2 NLHE I'm in the cutoff sidelining this hand, UTG (very tight player, but deserves far more credit than he's ever really given) raises to 5 lunatic raises to 15, Exploding Whale calls 15, UTG raises to 75, lunatic insta-ships for 350~, EWhale calls with zero hesitation (having maybe 230 remaining behind), UTG takes a minute plus and lays down KK. EWhale's got AA vs the lunatic's TT, 4T4 brick brick GG on the no lose scenario. Second time I've seen this tight guy (UTG) fold KK pre, but the other time was in a AA vs KK vs QQ hand where he was in the SB vs good players, this has got to be the most impressive KK pre-fold I've ever seen.
Later on I've chipped up pretty decently, been picking up some big hands and holding. My stack's the better part of a thousand in front of me, EWhale's on my immediate right and he's got a little less than me. I haven't really started abusing him yet, but I've been looking forward to opportunities to for at least an hour.
CO a few people limp and EWhale raises to 5, I look at TT and lol minraise to 8 immediately looking at the guy on my left who appreciates my sense of humor to re-click to 11 so I can pop it to 14 if it does. He folds, SB calls, BB folds, UTG calls, +1 calls, EWhale JUST CALLS to my LOL WEAKNESS declaration.
K4Kss, check's round to me with nothing to raise my suspicion that I shouldn't continue here. I know pretty much everyone here and SB + UTG are set mining virtually all the time here. UTG is crazy but he's not checking trips, and probably not checking a strong flush draw. EWhale is almost always limping the 95% of his range that's pure shit right now. The pot's like $45-50 MAYBE, no problem I bet $65, fold-fold-fold-EWhale calls *ERK* he's the only one capable of reliably showing up with a King here, let's hope it's a good looking turn.
K4KT *MOTHERFUCKING-DING!!!!! FUCK YEAH!* EWhale checks, and in sizing him up I don't think he's at all upset with where he's standing. I bet $175, guy doesn't even sweat it and calls. I'm trying not to count his stack already since now I've bloated the pot up to $550~ and he's sitting on under $450. In my experience with this guy he's never capable of not paying me off for the rest of his stack unless he's got absolutely nothing in his hand.
K4KT4 rainbow Fuck-Me there's not much worse than that for river cards. EWhale seems upset too and checks, I try to come up with a reason to bet and immediately dismiss that notion, check. EWhale flips over AA WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? Wow he plays bad at nearly every opportunity to do so, shame about that river card. But it's a funny story at least.
Man it's a huge relief to pick up today's win after my last two sessions. Here's hoping I can play as good or better tonight and build some momentum!
Sunday, April 26, 2015
Saturday, April 25, 2015
I didn't play a lot during the first half of the week, planning on hitting things hard for the latter half and weekend. So far it's been a rough start, had a very rough session at Deerfoot two days ago, a lot of just rough variance scenarios. Tried to reset and put in a good showing today before wrapping up work for the week but the fish ate me again.
My roll is down to about half after these two sessions. Hopefully I can find some games over the next few days where I can just take it easy vs go head to head with lunatics for stacks.
I hit the Bad Beat the other day as well... With my opt-out button right out front. I've taken a little needling over it since then, although it was a small prize pool ($2750~ total) so it hasn't been too much grief. I haven't really been at all upset about being in that position, but I have been sweating the overall downswing.
Friday, April 17, 2015
I don't normally tilt...
I don't normally tilt our get especially emotionally volatile in a poker room, but when I do it's nearly exclusively because of room mismanagement.
Fail to protect players from other abusive players? TILT! Ask me to leave if I'm not willing to be part of a promotion? TILT! Refuse to spread a game you have more than enough interest & staffing for? TILT! At least playing following any of those scenarios.
I don't think that I've ever spent so much energy/time trying to play poker but ending up without a game as I have this week. It's frustrating when I'm in the midst of it, but pretty insignificant in the larger picture.
Thursday, April 9, 2015
High-Lo Gweilo
So it took a few weeks, but we finally got a planned PLO8 game off the ground at Deerfoot last night. I'm guessing only about a third of the fourteen players who added their names to the list were present, but they it got off the ground. We can always look to improve things moving forward.
I was a little apprehensive going into this game as I've only played 1-2 (granted with straddles and double straddles much of the time inflating it to 5-10 pre-flop), and this was 5-5 adjacent to the 5-5 PLO which is frequently playing as basically 10-20. My roll is still no where near suitable for this game but I wanted to take a shot, and I was selling off 50% of my action across several friends who thought I should play it.
When we got the game off the ground it was incredible. we must have had 5/9 players who had never even thought of playing a hand of this before. They were on the game because there wasn't a seat for them on the 5-5 PLO. Shortly thereafter (30-45 minutes maybe?) they did end up opening a new 5-5 PLO and virtually all of those players jumped ship leaving our game four handed. There was even some discussion amongst two of the players on our game of switching it to PLO in order to offer a seat to the two action players that walked in the room since there weren't seats open for them on PLO. I said that I did want to support this game running, but I wouldn't stand in the way of that decision if everyone agreed. The fourth player was decided on playing PLO8 though, and we just left it at that.
We limped along short handed for awhile, which was nice since I've never been in that situation before and perhaps largely due to receiving a decent run of playable hands I was finding a lot of spots where I could play comfortably. Lots of limped pots, lots of open raise call-call-call, though it was rare for us to end up in three-bet pre-flop hands. I was min-raising out of position when I liked the playability of my hand, and while I recall seeing a limited amount of min-raises pre from other players I don't think they were approaching that from the same perspective I was.
Looking back on of the field of players I saw on this table from when it began until it died, the very small amount of research I've done into this game has put me considerably ahead of the learning curve on this game. A friend of mine saw me playing some and they said that I seemed super confidant while I was playing. I know that I definitely felt like the big bad wolf, and while I've felt like the Alpha on a table before that's generally because there just aren't any other good/great competitors there.
Everyone's going to feel like the King/Queen of poker when they're catching cards and have built up a stack. This is in a game I feel like I'm just learning how to jog... and from what I can see most players aren't even interested in trying to crawl in it.
I was a little apprehensive going into this game as I've only played 1-2 (granted with straddles and double straddles much of the time inflating it to 5-10 pre-flop), and this was 5-5 adjacent to the 5-5 PLO which is frequently playing as basically 10-20. My roll is still no where near suitable for this game but I wanted to take a shot, and I was selling off 50% of my action across several friends who thought I should play it.
When we got the game off the ground it was incredible. we must have had 5/9 players who had never even thought of playing a hand of this before. They were on the game because there wasn't a seat for them on the 5-5 PLO. Shortly thereafter (30-45 minutes maybe?) they did end up opening a new 5-5 PLO and virtually all of those players jumped ship leaving our game four handed. There was even some discussion amongst two of the players on our game of switching it to PLO in order to offer a seat to the two action players that walked in the room since there weren't seats open for them on PLO. I said that I did want to support this game running, but I wouldn't stand in the way of that decision if everyone agreed. The fourth player was decided on playing PLO8 though, and we just left it at that.
We limped along short handed for awhile, which was nice since I've never been in that situation before and perhaps largely due to receiving a decent run of playable hands I was finding a lot of spots where I could play comfortably. Lots of limped pots, lots of open raise call-call-call, though it was rare for us to end up in three-bet pre-flop hands. I was min-raising out of position when I liked the playability of my hand, and while I recall seeing a limited amount of min-raises pre from other players I don't think they were approaching that from the same perspective I was.
Looking back on of the field of players I saw on this table from when it began until it died, the very small amount of research I've done into this game has put me considerably ahead of the learning curve on this game. A friend of mine saw me playing some and they said that I seemed super confidant while I was playing. I know that I definitely felt like the big bad wolf, and while I've felt like the Alpha on a table before that's generally because there just aren't any other good/great competitors there.
Everyone's going to feel like the King/Queen of poker when they're catching cards and have built up a stack. This is in a game I feel like I'm just learning how to jog... and from what I can see most players aren't even interested in trying to crawl in it.
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
"I've never been as good a player as I am today"
Getting in deep into games is nothing new for me. I'd like to think that overall I've improved a lot when it comes to playing appropriately based on my (concerningly small) bankroll, but this past weekend is evidence that I'm both still prone to getting in deep early, and stable enough of a player to persevere contrary to the numbers reflected in these sessions.
Saturday overnight into Sunday I played a 15 hour session where I ended up with >40% of my roll invested. Monday morning/day I played a 12 hour session with >60% of my roll invested. Solid play on both occasions, and while I endured a lot of 2nd best scenarios and a few scenarios where I couldn't max out my value I was never playing bad poker.
I refused to accept "Some times it's just not your day" as an answer. I'm not settling for writing off time I'm free to play just because I'm on the unfortunate side of how the cards ran out. My head was on straight, I was playing well and the game was too good to give up playing. "Today I'm in for more than I've ever been in before, but I've never been a better poker player than I am today." I'm not playing to chase even, I'm making good decisions. not playing a great game means I'm losing money.
During the final hours of my afternoon session yesterday I had some breakeven-ish players leaving my table because they couldn't handle me overwhelming them most of the hands I was entering.
"What the hell you always hit right away after you raise?"
"YES! That's 100% accurate! :D"
When the game slowed down and I started to fatigue I cashed out and took a nap. Booked it up north for a few hours and finished the day up $45. I may have spent more than that on gas & food over the 17 hours of play today, but being able to see the redemption turnaround in such a brief window of play means more than the XX hundreds of dollars I swung back and forth. It means I'm right to believe in myself. And tomorrow I'm going to do my best to be better.
Saturday overnight into Sunday I played a 15 hour session where I ended up with >40% of my roll invested. Monday morning/day I played a 12 hour session with >60% of my roll invested. Solid play on both occasions, and while I endured a lot of 2nd best scenarios and a few scenarios where I couldn't max out my value I was never playing bad poker.
I refused to accept "Some times it's just not your day" as an answer. I'm not settling for writing off time I'm free to play just because I'm on the unfortunate side of how the cards ran out. My head was on straight, I was playing well and the game was too good to give up playing. "Today I'm in for more than I've ever been in before, but I've never been a better poker player than I am today." I'm not playing to chase even, I'm making good decisions. not playing a great game means I'm losing money.
During the final hours of my afternoon session yesterday I had some breakeven-ish players leaving my table because they couldn't handle me overwhelming them most of the hands I was entering.
"What the hell you always hit right away after you raise?"
"YES! That's 100% accurate! :D"
When the game slowed down and I started to fatigue I cashed out and took a nap. Booked it up north for a few hours and finished the day up $45. I may have spent more than that on gas & food over the 17 hours of play today, but being able to see the redemption turnaround in such a brief window of play means more than the XX hundreds of dollars I swung back and forth. It means I'm right to believe in myself. And tomorrow I'm going to do my best to be better.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)