Nice Little Update

If I remember everything that went on the last few days, we're going to have a nice little long update here. Included in this update will be how cash is going, a couple of deep finishes in tournaments, football (obv), absolute poker scandal, and maybe some more football.

I'm over half way done with the 20k cash hand goal for the month. With the half way point in October coming up in the next few days, I'm happy where I am. What's been helping me get my hands in this month; has been the Iron Man program on FT. I haven't decided what is better to do yet, the Freeroll, or the medals--but for now I chose the medals. I'm on pace to get Gold status through 100 points a day.

One of the biggest losing plays for me has been playing the short stacks too much. I havent figured out a real good way to play hands like AK against them. Take this hand for instance...

Seat 3: Villain ($10.70)
Seat 1: trixter23 ($26.95)

Dealt to trixter23 [Ah Kh]

Villain raises to $0.85

Villain is in 2nd position here. He has less than a half stack. So whats your play with AK here?

trixter23 raises to $2.95

I decided to make a healthy 3 bet.

Villain calls $2.10

*** FLOP *** [Jd 6h Ts]

Ok well now what. We completely missed the flop, but have a gutshot, 2 overs, and backdoor flush draw. Are we going to miss value by not 3 betting pre flop? I think you are. If you cold call, check/fold the flop, I think thats just too weak. Back to the flop. We're in kind of a pickel. There is a chance we bet this flop and take it down there. What if we get raised all in? There is 6 bucks in the pot, combined with our c-bet; there will be too much money in the pot to fold. What do you do here?

trixter23 bets $3
Villain raises to $7.75, and is all-in
trixter23 calls $4.75

Villain shows [9s 9h]
trixter23 shows [Ah Kh]

So as you can see, we put the c-bet out there and had to call his all-in. Granted a competent player is probably folding 9's here, remember we're playing 25NL against someone who doesnt buy in for the max; less half a stack.

*** TURN *** [Jd 6h Ts] [Th]
*** RIVER *** [Jd 6h Ts Th] [5d]

As you can see, we had a substantial amount of outs and didnt hit. I'm a firm believer in aggression in poker, and I stick with it. I try not to be results oriented, but after this happens numerous times, you start to 2nd guess yourself. Especially considering when you look at my stats for AK. So far this month I've had AKs 28 times for a 60% win ratio and -$37.70 overall. I'm not sure whether this is a leak or what. I'm interested to see how others play these types of hands, not just AK.


While cash hasn't been going great this month, I've been able to stay afloat thanks to tournaments. I haven't been playing that many but have been getting some good results. I played the daily double on Saturday Night. In the A tournament I went out 263rd, with 216 cashing, but in the B tournament I made it deep for 15th and a $135 dollar cash. Today on PokerStars they had the WBCOOP(World Bloggers Championship of Online Poker). I decided to look at the structure expecting to see the standard $1500 chip 15 min level tournament. Surprisingly it was the Sunday Million structure with 10k in chips.




There were some really good prizes being offered. First being a PCA package worth $12k, 2nd being a 50" plasma tv and so on. You can see the other prizes through the link above. I was running pretty good while not getting dealt too much. My puff on PXF for the tourney was 26. It wasn't too tough to accumulate chips as players were playing with their cards face up for the most part. Here's a shot of me getting my squeeze on late in the tournament.




I misplayed a hand quite bad and found myself with 92k at 5k/10k level. It was our favorite time in the tournament, that being push/fold poker. I shoved KJ from the hijack and got insta called by AT and I didnt get there. The tournament paid out through the 81st spot and I did get paid. Unfortunately it was the worst payout. I'll be receiving the Elusive PokerStars duffle bag and Plastic Cards(Which I'm sure the home game nuts will be happy about). I couldn't hold off another 9 spots to get an Ipod though could I Lee?




College Football this week was of course another Upset Saturday. Both #1 and #2 teams losing for the first time in a while. I'd love to see everytime lose and leave us with about 10 teams all with 1 loss so the BCS fails miserably. In a clash of unbeatens in the NFL, New England stuck it to the Cowboys. The Patriots just play freakishly well. If they beat the Colts, I wouldnt be surprised if they 1) stayed healthy and 2) didnt rest people at the end of the season. The GGGGGGGGGGG-Men play tomorrow night in the Dirty Dirty aka Atlanta. I'm tired of people saying this is a trap game for the Giants. Ok, for one you have to be a good team to have trap games. While I believe we are a decent team, we aren't 5-1. Also you have to have a big game coming up. Considering we play the 49ers next week, we don't have that going for us. Now if we run the table and go 6-2 going into the bye week, we'll be in good shape.



The last thing I wanted to speak about is the supposed Absolute Poker Scandal that is being talked about on Pocket 5's and 2+2. To save yourselves some time. For a while it was thought that a certain group of players could see everyone's hole cards. TheWacoKidd(Jared Hamby) got a hold of the HH from the tournament which AP gave him. It was a full excell file with ip's and ALL whole cards exposed. Some pretty solid and concrete evidence has been brought forth proving what everyone has thought all along. I strongly urge everyone to read one of those threads and immediately withdraw all your funds from there.

I think thats about it for now, see ya at the tables.

WBCOOP

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 2824834

Couple of Things

This month so far is going pretty crappy. I've logged a little over 5600 hands at 25NL and 400'ish at 50NL. While I'm roughly 35% done with the goal of 20k hands for the month, I'm down $22 dollars so far, which is god awful. I'm actually playing way better at 50NL than 25NL. Granted I did tilt off a few buy ins at 25NL one night, I still shouldn't be in the hole.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1571140
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1571141

Those are 2 hands that I played today. The 1st one is a no brainer, the 2nd one I actually put him on AK, the pre flop call was EXTREMELY close, as I think I was right where I needed to be for odds purposes. The board just kept getting better and better for him, what can ya do?

I took all the money I had on Absolute off a couple weeks ago. I was changing my password and noticed my rakeback got put into my account. For some reason I decided to play the $1 rebuy at 3am. What a friggin mistake that was. I made my 2nd final table out of 4 tourneys and took 3rd. I went out after I got it all in on a flop of TT9 with 77 and the guy called with K5 after he cold called my pf raise. lol donkaments.



It was such a waste of time though. I didn't get to bed till around 7:30am, and I only made $50. God only knows what I was thinking entering this thing.

The GGGGGGGG-Men reeled off another victory against the Jets this past Sunday. It's the 3rd in a row for the Giants, and everything is on the up and up going into Atlanta on Monday Night Football. Antonio Pierce did an amazing job getting the defense set up in gaps and positioning players around the field. I don't know how many times he knew exactly where the ball was going. I was wondering why rookie Aaron Ross wasn't starting, but it was later said he was on a 1 half suspension by coach Tom Coughlin. He sure made his presence known in the 2nd half though.

*photo courtesy of giants.com

Probably the game of the year so far was played in Buffalo Monday Night. No matter how hard the Cowboys tried giving the Bills the win, they just let it slip away. I put the entire blame on Dick Jauron and the Defensive Coordinator. There is 13 seconds left, and they have 0 timeouts, where do you think they are going with the ball? I mean, I would have put a wall up on each sideline and kept a few in the middle. They wont have enough time to get the fg team in. Instead they give the wr's an 8 yard cushion and let them run a 6 yard out. Well those 6 yards cost you the game fellas. It's gettin late, I'll get ya another update some time this week.

Lets Go Giants!!!

I didn't mean to turn this into a football blog, but that's kind of what happened. I've been playing quite a bit and haven't really had too much time to post. Hopefully I'll start up again this week. Hey G-Men, can we make it 3 in a row?

GGGGGGGGG-Men!

My oh my. What a dominating defensive performance last night by the Giants. Forget Strahan, Forget Osi, the player of the game was Filfadelphia's left tackle Winston Justice. He was getting totally blown off the ball every play. I mean it was to the point where Osi was off the ball and past him before he even got out of his stance! And if it's one thing you know about the NFL this year...is you just dont know anything. Bears 1-3. Chargers 1-3. Lions, dare I say, 3-1???? After the first quarter of the season, it looks like we're going to have a fun one. Here's a pic of the tailgate just after we got it setup. We had 2 off the camera, and about 6 stragglers who got there late.



Goal for this month will be 20k cash hands played maintaining a 5 PTBB/100. This should be possible. I'm not really a heavy volume player. I will be starting training for a new job at the end of the month so I need to get them in early. Hopefully I will update and keep on this goal, unlike all the ones in the past.