Value Betting into the New Year

I played enough the last 3 days to make Platinum Star this month. I'm pretty confident i can get Supernova by summer time next year. I'm going to save up my FPP's so i can direct buy-in to the main event the following year. That would be pretty cool if I could actually persuade myself not to spend any of those FPP's.



The goal for next month might be a little bit modified. Looking at my schedule i don't know if I'm going to have the time to play as much as I would like. Either I'll postpone it till Feb or March, or make it a little smaller.

And to wisk everyone off into the New Year, I leave you with a nice hand I just played.

Dealt to trixter23 [Ac Ah]
tnhan: calls $1
JJJ's: raises $4 to $5
patmac611: folds
RBSurfer: folds
trixter23: raises $95 to $100 and is all-in
ccsboyz: folds
LS38: folds
gibbyholdem: folds
tnhan: calls $41.90 and is all-in
JJJ's: calls $95
*** FLOP *** [3s 8d 7d]
trixter23 said, "ROFL?"
*** TURN *** [3s 8d 7d] [Td]
*** RIVER *** [3s 8d 7d Td] [3h]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
JJJ's: shows [Qs Qc] (two pair, Queens and Threes)
trixter23: shows [Ac Ah] (two pair, Aces and Threes)
trixter23 collected $114.20 from side pot
tnhan: mucks hand
trixter23 collected $127.20 from main pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $244.40
Main pot $127.20.
Side pot $114.20. Rake $3
Board [3s 8d 7d Td 3h]
FlopSeat 2: tnhan mucked [Kd Kc]

Final Table in AC and a Ridiculous Call

I went down to AC tuesday to play in the daily tournaments over at the Showboat. I was very excited about the new structure that they have. That changed quickly when I saw how the structure changed very quickly. You do get 10k in chips like i said before, but the blinds increase entirely too rapidly. Each level lasts 20 minutes and the structure goes like this.

50-100
100-200
200-400
400-800
600-1200
800-1600
1200-2400
1500-3000
3000-6000
5000-10000
10000-20000

I played in the 11am tourney and busted like 34th or so. The structure was completely oblivious to me at the time and i had no chips on the jump from 400-800 to 600-1200 level. I hopped in the 2pm tourney and was just going to be super aggro. I was able to chip up fairly easily. I bludgeoned the final table bubble and went to the final table with the chip lead. There was this absolute psycho lady who was pulling shit out of her ass the whole tournament. I had the luxury of sitting next to her up until this time. I didn't get any hands the entire final table, and if i didnt get walks because of my stack i would have had to push with a shitty hand. We wound up in the money and went to break before the final 5 started play. At this time blinds were 10k-20k and i had only 37k. 2nd place had only 50k, and the crazy lady had about 80 percent of the chips in play. They wanted to chop, and when i think of chop im used to stars and their chip count chops. Well I was like theres no point for me to do one because im so short stacked i would want a premium. The one guy said no we could give her 700 and we do an even chop with us for 300. That was more than 3rd place money so i was happy about that.

Overall the play/structure sucks. I'll still play it when i go down, but I could venture from that in the future. One of the guys I was playing with was Brian O'Halloran. He was in Clerks. I thought that was pretty cool.

So i had come home from dinner at my aunts house and really didn't feel like playing entirely too much. So i hopped in a $15 MTT. I had a nice stack going, with a little under 7k going into the 200/400 level. Not in comfortable position, but not in dire need either.

The following hand came up and i had As Qd on the button. The important stacks are as follows. Antes are there i just didnt feel like pasting.

Seat 1: Telecommuter (8540 in chips)
Seat 6: StickyStaX (14980 in chips)
Seat 8: trixter23 (6829 in chips)
Seat 9: cakes75 (17728 in chips)
cakes75: posts small blind 200
Telecommuter: posts big blind 400

StickyStaX: raises 550 to 950 - I see this as an extremely weak raise about 80 percent of the time, and a strong raise about 20. It was this players first hand at this table and i thought he wanted to feel it out and see what he could get away with.

trixter23: raises 1849 to 2799 - So i bump it up 3x and make it 3k to go. I really don't want a call, just hoping to take the pot down now.

Telecommuter: calls 2399 - ???????? Ok, so the big blind cold calls my 3bet. I'm thinking/hoping if he had AA/KK he repops here all in. QQ maybe he calls for pot control??? I really don't know at this point. And i forgot to add, this guy insta called my re raise.

StickyStaX: folds - Original raiser folds, now we have position.

*** FLOP *** [Kc 6h Tc] - Ok this is a decent flop for me, i can represent AK here.

Telecommuter: checks
trixter23: bets 4005 and is all-in
Telecommuter: calls 4005 - I really don't have too much room to maneuver here so i just shove. There is a little over 10k in the pot and i WANT IT. He check/calls(EXCELLENT PLAY) here. I really thought he had Queens.

*** TURN *** [Kc 6h Tc] [2s]
*** RIVER *** [Kc 6h Tc 2s] [7h]
trixter23 said, "sigh"
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Telecommuter: shows [8s 8c] (a pair of Eights)
trixter23: shows [Qd As] (high card Ace)
trixter23 said, "8s"
Telecommuter collected 14983 from pot

So as you see he had 88. I know i didn't play the hand optimily, but he played it just downright awful.

I need about 1400 points for Platinum Star, for the VIP Club on stars this month. I will get it to set myself up for a nice starting run in January. I want to get supernova this year, which is very achievable.

Nightly Progress

I'm taking a little break right now, and there are some hands that I want to get down while its fresh in my head. Heres what the stats are lookin like tonight so far. I have been 4 tabling $200NL and playing 2 $100NL tables.




http://www.pokerhand.org/?686429 - This hand there is nothing much i can do. I really wanted to take this down pre flop, but got no respect and they both cold called. My image up to this point was a tight solid game, but no one had looked me up yet, so I thought it was a nice time to make a little squeeze play. When i flop my set there are 2 hands im worried about. QQ and AK. Axera was a pretty weak player, so i thought if he had aces he would have 4 bet pre flop. I wasn't sure exactly what westmore had. I made the push because i didn't want to second guess myself. And of course he calls with TPTK and hits his miracle card.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?686437 - So this hand was just nuts. There were 2 limpers and i made a position raise with 9T of spades. Sort of again wanting to take it down there. I could have bet a little more here possibly 10 or 11 dollars which would have been pot. We got a surprise when 2 people called to come along for the ride. Including the sb. This is a flop thats rarely going to hit anyone so i elect not to continuation bet. Which possibly could have been a mistake. I wanted the free card in case i was against 10s or jacks or something of that nature. The turn hits and its not something that would help anyone unless they have 4s. When snowdin makes the $12 bet into a $31 dollar pot you can read it as 1 of 2 things. It's either a probing bet to see where hes at, hes extremely weak, or maybe he has a made hand and lookin for someone to raise him. I'm always suspicious of those small bets and i read them as weakness. The problem here though is that he doesnt have much money left behind him. So if he does in fact push, im committed to the hand and i have to call. I make the raise and he pushes. And like usual we miss our 15 outer. I know i played the hand a little bad, but that guy has absolutely no reason to be in the hand at all. Calling a raise in the sb with QJ then 4 betting with COMPLETE air is ridiculous. Did he really think I was going to fold?

Here's a couple of standard plays I make.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?686456
http://www.pokerhand.org/?686458
http://www.pokerhand.org/?686459
http://www.pokerhand.org/?686462

I'm going to get back to playing and if anything interesting happens i'll be sure to post

Rocky 6 and the plan for January

I went to go see Rocky 6 tonight and i was very pleased. I really expected it to be much worse than it really was. This movie really should have been the last movie of the Rocky series instead of number 5 where he trains tommy gunn. I wont give away from any of the movie, but I do have 2 opinions. For being a "dopey" boxer, balboa does give some great speeches. He is a better motivator than anything else. In this last movie, he gives a couple more of those speeches which really is an inspiration. The second being, there should have been more of him training. You'll see in the movie why they didn't show AS much as say in the previous movies. But they could have done it a bit differently.

Overall, I thought it was a great way to close one of the great series' of all time. Again I don't want to give it all away, but in a couple weeks I'll post my full thoughts.

The second topic I wanted to discuss are my plans for January. I'm not too happy with the way I've been playing as a whole this month or how much I've been playing. I'm betting off lots of chips with just TPTK in unraised pots, etc etc. So to get back on my A game, I'll be setting a goal for January. I haven't done this in the past, but it's a good way to start getting on track.

When doing this though, I have to make a realistic goal. There's no point in saying, "I'm going to make 100k in 100 days", I'll leave that to bill ivey and those boys. For the stakes I play, I think a realistic amount of money is $5,000. My first month playing cash games in November, i made $2400 while only playing roughly 10k hands.

I'm very excited about this and I hope the readers(if any) of this blog will like it also. I'll be posting every day with up to the minute tally's of my dollar amount, hands, and other weird things.

Oh and the last thing, I'll be heading down to AC next week to play in a couple tournaments. It's going to be great with all those people going down with their xmas money and giving it back to the players. My favorite tourney over at the showboat just got 100x better. For $53+12 you start with 10k in chips now. Blinds start at 50/100 instead of 25/50 but i'd rather take the extra 5k in chips. Their weekend tourney is 105+15 i believe and you start with 15k. Maybe if i dont hit my goal for january ill punish myself. Maybe I'll only be able to play LIVE. Actually that would only make my BR bigger considering im awesome live. We'll see lol.

To close, i would like to say congrats to lucko on taking down the 109r the other day. It's the toughest tournament on the internet and to win it OUTRIGHT with NO CHOP, is a great accomplishment. I don't remember exactly how i started talking to him about hands and such but im glad i did. For aspiring poker players, hes a good mentor to have around. Head over to his blog at http://pokercash.blogspot.com to learn a few things.

Till next time, good luck at the tables!

PS - Here is a hint on why I haven't been playing as many MTT's the last 2 months. GG that guy

http://www.pokerhand.org/?684846

Early Morning Cash Game Session

A problem that i have is staying up way too late. If i don't keep a set schedule I'll just keep staying up later and later every night. That's where i found myself this morning when i logged on my computer at 6:30 am. The REAL problem with that is that I haven't gone to bed yet and I am supposed to get up at 8:45 to go play basketball at 10 o'clock. I'm definitely still going to play, but it's gonna be tough on absolutely no sleep.

I wanted to play some poker, but i really didn't feel like thinking too much. So i went down a couple of levels to .25/.50 and fired up 8 tables. Let me tell you, there is no reason why someone cant grind it out down here for a very nice profit. To show you what i mean, let me provide you with some screen shots.



This is my pokergrapher that i use in conjunction with PokerTracker and PAHUD. On the left is Net $ Won, and on the bottom is the amount of hands i played. I got in a solid 1 hour 20 minute session and was up $178 dollars at .25/.50. I think thats pretty decent dont ya think? I haven't played this low in a long time. I believe I'm gonna have to start playin there again. I was pounding on people left and right. Take a look at my tables and my stack sizes. Some may add up to more than 178, because i rebuy to the max everytime i dip below it.



Maybe later on today ill post some hands and some typical mistakes i see. I've been really meaning to do that, but i just havent had the time. Here is a shot of my session in pokertracker.

VIP SNG with Greg Raymer

My SNG with Greg Raymer was today. I took 2nd and a nice cash of $500. Raymer obv got the victory. It was kind of anti-climatic. Greg got practically handed chips the whole tournament. I can't complain either because the same thing happened to me. It would have been fun to play Greg heads up with even stacks but the guy who placed 3rd was in autofold mode, so i decided to take the extra 200 bucks instead of buck heads and only get 300. Lets get to the sit and go.

My feelings were mixed as far as my table position. I liked that marcus85 and omfi were right next to Greg, because it looked like they were my biggest competitors according to sharkscope.com. The problem was, if i wanted to steal or play pots in position, Greg would most likely be in the pot.

The First significant hand of the SNG was between Raymer and Marcus85. I don't particularly like Marcus' play here but you can judge for yourself.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?662229

Next, this hand came up http://www.pokerhand.org/?662232 I like my play here, but I'm not sure of my bet. I made it clear that I had a hand, but i believe its too much. With an utg limper. Then 5 callers I was surprised I didn't get more resistence. The blinds can be coming in with any 2 for pot odds and can easily have 34 k3 or k4. Even 3s or 4s could be likely. After that hand it put me 2nd in chips.

Probably the biggest hand of the tournament for me was next. I was in the button with KJ, and i wanted to start hitting the blinds. The flop couldn't have been better. He very well could have had a AJ here but sometimes it just hits ya, that you have the best hand sometimes. This was one of them. http://www.pokerhand.org/?662266

After that people just kept giving Greg Chips. I don't think he lost 1 race all day. That includes when he was behing with AQ vs AK. We got 4 handed and it was SUPER tough to get chips. Neither Sugerfoot nor the other guy wanted to play a pot so i was forced to try and get chips from Greg. Considering this was the only guy that could bust me i wasnt happy. It didn't help that i wasn't getting dealt. I wouldn't mind playing small pots with him, but i couldn't even do that. This is how it looked going 4 handed. I threw a GGGGGGG-Men in the chat because they were up 10-0 at the time.

As i said before, the other 2 weren't interested in playing. So i had to get my chips from somewhere. I decided to try and make a play on Fossil, but that didn't work out too well. No one really challenged him in a hand all day. I didn't think he hit the flop at all, but apparently he did hahaha. http://www.pokerhand.org/?662321

We got heads up with him having a 13-1 chip advantage, and it was over in a good 4 hands. I thought i played well with my holdings and got a nice payday of $500. For those who have a PXF Membership here is the link http://www.pokerxfactor.com/servlet/pxf?a=mv&t=myhand2&handid=35362 Those who would like the .txt file of my hand history can leave your email in the comment and ill send it to you.

Couple Hands

I had quite a few interesting hands i wanted to go over that happened during my session last night. I've been 8 tabling .50/1 lately because of my struggles. There were some hands i got lucky, but my opponent shouldnt have been in the hand anyway. Then there were some hands where i got guys to give me chips with air. I'll talk about why i made each move also.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00 BB (8 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: HTML)

MP2 ($67.05)
CO ($151.10)
Button ($98.50)
SB ($22.95)
BB ($100)
trixter23 ($215.10)
UTG+1 ($94.45)
MP1 ($178.30)

Preflop: trixter23 is UTG with Ks, Kd.
trixter23 calls $1, 3 folds, CO calls $1, 1 fold, SB completes, BB checks.

Here this is pretty standard. Probably about 75% of the time i limp with aces and kings when I am in early position. I look for a raiser so I can 3 bet and hopefully take the pot down there. Aces and Kings are super hands in tournaments, but in cash games they are completely overplayed most of the time. Unfortunately we don't get that raiser, so we have to be aggressive, but proceed with caution.

Flop: ($4) Jh, 4h, 6h (4 players)
SB checks, BB checks, trixter23 bets $3, CO calls $3, SB folds, BB folds.

Probably the worst flop i can get. I dont have a redraw, so I want to control the pot size so it doesnt get too large. I throw a $3 feeler bet out there and i get a insanely quick instacall. This means 1 of 2 things. He already has the nuts and im drawing pretty dead, or he is most likely on a draw with either the Kh or Ah.

Turn: ($10) Kc (2 players)
trixter23 bets $6, CO calls $6.

Pretty nice card for me, but I could still be in trouble and this card will hinder me from getting off the hand so easily. Again i got the quick insta call. I think by now if he had his flush, he would have raised here.

River: ($22) 3c (2 players)
trixter23 checks, CO bets $12, trixter23 calls $12.

Now this is a play I LOVE making. I'm about 90% sure I'm ahead here and i check. You do this because if your opponent was on a flush draw and you bet out again, hes not gonna call. Let your opponent make a mistake by trying to bluff and committ more money in the hand. So i let him bet 12 dollars and i call.

Final Pot: $46
Alchemy1600: shows [Ah Tc] (high card Ace)
trixter23: shows [Ks Kd] (three of a kind, Kings)

And just as we suspected, he shows high card ace with the ace of hearts and we take down a nice pot. Now next time when im in EP i will raise with AA or KK and next time maybe i have a suited connector or small pp ill limp in EP. You always have to mix up your play to keep everyone guessing.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00 BB (9 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: HTML)

UTG ($87.05)
UTG+1 ($117)
MP1 ($149.35)
MP2 ($100)
MP3 ($24)
CO ($99.50)
trixter23 ($107.40)
SB ($94.25)
BB ($189.30)

Preflop: trixter23 is Button with 9c, Ac.
1 fold, UTG+1 calls $1, 4 folds, Button raises to $4, 2 folds, UTG+1 calls $3.

This hand I was basically playing position with an Ace on the button. We do have to note tho that there was an EP limper.

Flop: ($9.50) 5c, Qc, Tc (2 players)
UTG+1 checks, Button bets $4, UTG+1 raises to $8, trixter23 calls $4.

Well, it's always fun to flop the nuts. I have been making continuation bets the entire time so I still do it. I get a nice little surprise from our opponent, when i get insta mini raised. I really didn't know what he had at this point. Either he had the Kc, maybe he hit a set, I just don't know. I don't want to scare him away so i just flat call. Plus if he does have his set I don't want to throw a HUGE raise out there and be faced with a tough decision on the turn. Now remember, we always thought mini raise meant monster from our previous posts. But basically theres no reason to raise this at all.

Turn: ($25.50) 6h (2 players)
UTG+1 bets $15, Button raises to $40, UTG+1 calls $25.

When the turn bricks like this, now we have to pounce. The immediate bet out made me think he flopped a flush to. The odds of that are pretty slim tho. If he does have a set, hes gonna have to pay for it now. So we make a nice little 2.5x raise from his bet, and we get called.

River: ($105.50) 8h (2 players)
UTG+1 bets $35, Button raises to $55.4, UTG+1 calls $20.40.

Ok so we still have the nuts, and hes STILL betting into us, beautiful. This hand should be nominated for worst hand ever played on stars.

Final Pot: $216.30

trixter23: shows [9c Ac] (a flush, Ace high)

AZPatientMan: mucks hand

trixter23 collected $213.30 from pot

AZPatientMan leaves the table - yes u should leave the table

Seat 2: AZPatientMan mucked [Js 9h]

The only mistake i made during this hand was not getting to his name and putting in a note that said GIANT DONKEY quick enough before he left.