sevens

*Split* and I concluded our stake last week.  It went for about a year (11 months actually I think) and was a great success.  To recap - I began with $400, paid that off in the first month or two with grinding 25nl, ended up taking multiple shots at 50nl before finally sticking here in May/June 2009, and now really feel like 50nl is a “home” for me, not in the sense that I wanna stay here for a while, but in the sense that I know I can always come back and beat this level now.  At the end of the stake, I had run $400 up to nearly $6k, which I’m quit proud of.

But all that doesn’t mean much if I don’t give HUGE credit to *Split*.  He’s a great coach and if it weren’t for him, I’d still be pulling my hair out trying to figure out why I can’t beat 50nl and why it’s so swingy.  If you have not had a chance to talk hands with him or look into coaching with him and mpethybridge’s leak finder service, it’s HIGHLY worth the money.  What I paid him for the last year of staking….well let’s just say that I feel like I got a GREAT deal, considering what I got out of it.  I’ve still got a ways to go, but I feel confident that I can move up past 50nl and on to 100 and 200nl.

Anyways, I’m on pace for another great month, hopefully passing last month, for a new best month.  That’s about all I suppose, I’ll be gone for most of next week, as I’m taking a road trip across the country with my g/f.  Should be good times.  =)

I vi

It’s been a while since I updated…nothing all that exciting to be honest.  Just lots of grinding.

So I’m involved in this micro full ring challenge where we get a bunch of players together, pick teams, and then see which team can come up with the highest total winrate at the end of the month.  Since I signed up for 50nl, I decided to set my goal at playing 20k hands at 50nl, 20k hands at 100nl.  So tonight I played like 3k hands or so, made it to 21k hands, and called it good.  Over that sample, I’m 9.8 bb/100, or 4.9 PTBB/100, which I’m totally happy with.  But it could be better.

See, I have this bad habit.  Whenever I’m facing a river bet and I have a decent hand, I always want to call.  It’s like my fold button just disappears and I’m left with “call” or “raise” as my only two options.  I even spew called a river bet with KQ high tonight. =/ Like…..I know everything is situational and sometimes calling with KQ high is the right play.  But I was playing against a regular whos like 20x better than me.  Here’s the thing - your edge against solid regs is going to be very minimal if at all.  We make money in poker by playing against bad players - fish, BAD regs, loose passives, etc etc - and not by trying to out-level solid regs.  If I could stop doing that stuff and fold more on the river, my winrate would be much higher.

On that note, I have a semi brag that I accomplished tonight.  I played some poker at work (silly front desk job at my college) and decided my goal for the night after getting home was that I would grind until I hit $5k in my bankroll, no matter how long it took.  I needed to grind out like 5 BIs.  2 and a half hours later, after playing pretty solid and stacking some really bad players (starting tables FTW!), I hit my goal.  So I’m halfway to the big number, the 5 figure roll, and it’d be great to hit that in the next 3 or 4 months, as I’m moving up to 100nl and hopefully 200nl by the end of the summer.

So anyways, that’s about it, things have been going pretty good, a little swingy, but overall pretty damned good.

I vi

As per my 30 BI guideline, I was ready to take my second shot at 100nl last night.  I moved up through 50nl fairly quickly, but this was my third time at that level, I had made some adjustments to my game, and I was also rolled pretty well for the level to begin with.  That, and shipping a nice 1kbb pot vs a fish does pretty awesome things to your bankroll. =) 

So I sat and played 8 tables, played my normal game, and ran hotter than the sun.  I hit at least two set over sets, flush vs straight, flush vs set, and disregarding the fact that poker is ez when you’re running well, I think I played pretty good.  The big noticeable differences between 100nl and 50nl were a lot less limping PF and a lot more 3b’ing PF.  I can’t totally confirm this either, but IIRC people’s bet sizing seemed to be a little better too.  Anyways, I ended up +4 BIs on the session, would have been more but I lost KK < A8s after this 3/4 stack called 90% of his stack pre and flopped a FD > made flush on the turn.  Ah well.  Everything else seemed pretty normal, and I hope to stay at 100nl for a bit and maybe shot take 200nl by the end of the summer.  

Pz - 

sevens

Ok!  So this month has been a little crazy.  I feel really good about my 50nl game finally and I think I’ve gotten it to a point where my graph will stop looking like a EKG graph.  I’ve been able to make some adjustments to my range in certain spots and I think it’s been helping.  Definitely thanks to *Split*, who without his help and advice I’d probably be stuck in 50nl land forever, and to the feltpoker.com forums, because you guys get some sense into my head all the time.  With that said, I am -4 BIs with KK this month and in general running like garbage in big pots.  

And then the session of my life.  I spent the night hanging out with my girlfriend and got home around midnight.  I was itching to play a session, so I got on Stars and started grinding.  Nothing too exciting, but I noticed this mega fish at one of my tables.  In a small sample, he was running 85/35 and 3-betting like it was his job.  And going ape-shit postflop and basically running everyone over.  And then it happens.  On one hand, I pick up JJ in the SB.  Fish minraises to $1 from LP, I 3b to $5 and go for value on a low flop where he rivers a straight and stacks me.  A few hands later, I flop TPTK with AK and bet bet shove.  He hits a runner runner flush with J6s (no pair no draw on the flop).  I’m super tilted at this point and the fish has nearly a 6 BI stack.  And the people just start doing stupid things against him, putting stacks in super light.  Anyways….

…I manage to get my money in good against him a few times and have built up my stack to over $300.  Fish has slightly less than me, and now a few regulars are sitting and everyone’s just waiting to stack the fish.  I’m playing nearly ATC against him, just because I can get so much value with any pair.  And then this hand happens.

I’d say that makes up for how I’ve been running in big pots. :) 

I finished May with a sweat session from Berge20, a winning 100nl regular.  We got to talk about a few interesting hands, and he had some good things to say about my game.  Also I ran like Jesus, hitting lots of hands, only losing one big pot to an oddly played JJ (3b pot, I had two overs + NFD).  That session put me over the top, my first month profiting $1k from poker!  

So I’m pretty close to 20 BIs at 100nl, but I’m going to do the same thing I did at 50nl.  That is, play until I’m over rolled for the next limit.  Also want to play 50 for just a bit b/c I only played like 6k hands there this month and I want to get a better feel for whether or not I can beat it (6k hands can easily be a heater, but I do feel I’m playing well).  The time spent at 25nl this month really helped me solidify some important things, like pot control and value betting multiple streets.  And playing a limit when you have 30 BI+ is really good for your mental game, because losing a couple full stacks in one session doesn’t really affect you.  So that’s what I’m gonna do as a pre-game to 100nl.  I have full confidence I can beat 50nl, I just have to put the hands in, avoid tilt, and play smart like I know I can.  

Oh yeah, I also will be having my first major reward from poker delivered in 4 to 6 weeks.  Instead of holding out to buy a cash bonus with FPPs, I said “screw it,” and used 35k FPPs to buy an xbox 360 elite!  I’m really excited for it, because I haven’t bought a *new* gaming system since nintendo 64.  Sure I have my old PS2, but that was bought used.  

This is gonna be an awesome summer, imo.  

Boy I’ve been pretty lazy about updating my blog, eh?  Well it’s time to update I think.  I started May with the goal of playing 25nl until I had 30 BIs for 50nl, and then taking a 4 to 5 buy in shot.  Last time I played 50nl, the thought of losing $200+ when my bankroll was just $1k was a little much to bear.  So I’ve been playing 25nl all this month, or what I’ve recently heard it referred to, “value-bet-NL”.  I theorized earlier this month that these lower levels could be destroyed if I learned to get max value for my big hands, rather than trying to learn to aggro-bluff people off hands.  Boy I was right!  I played 12 tables for most of May, but recently I’ve scaled back to 8. It’s because I feel like I have more time to make solid decisions and can value bet more effectively vs villain’s range.  I haven’t checked to verify this or not, but I’m pretty sure my winrate playing 8 tables is way higher than playing my automatic style 12 tabling.  Just checked HEM - after 20k hands this month, I’m beating 25nl for 11 bb/100.

So stuff I’ve figured out this month -

• No such thing as a table being “good enough.”  I’ve been switching tables quite frequently, I will do so just as soon as they dry up, even if that’s only after 30 hands, and I’m constantly rechecking my tables.
• Vs some opponents, you can get three streets of value with top pair.
• Opponents raise when they have top pair beat.  Keep value betting these hands until they give you a reason not too (that means no checking!)
• You can value bet underpairs and second pair on board with lots of draws; just because the flop is K67 with two hearts doesn’t mean their calling range is only Kx, value bet QQ vs most opponents (though vs some, the best line will be bet/bet/check, vs others it might be check/bet/bet).  
• Overcards are scare cards, sure, but think in terms of ranges that people can call with, not in terms of “oh crap he probably hit that ace, damnit I have to fold KK again wtf poker is so rigged.” 
• No such thing as a “standard hand.”  
• Let the table conditions and your opponents determine your style, not some mantra you read online about what style is best (sometimes it’s ok to play super nitty, sometimes you get to run people over). 
• Position pots rule!  You’re missing tons of free money if you’re not playing most of your hands from the button/cutoff (both with raising/ISO raising and with flat calling).  

That’s about it.  I’m 2 BIs (or one buy in at 50nl) short of my goal, so I’m anticipating being back at 50nl sometime in the next day or two.  25nl is now my safety net; I know I can always come back here and outplay most people there.  

I’m in my last two weeks of school, and I anticipate being like 100x as busy. On the bill:

- Finish my long form piece by Thursday at the latest so I can have the weekend to do mixing. I need to have 10 - 12 minutes of material, and I’m around 9 right now.
- Write a backing part for “Echoes,” my jazz piece, by Wednesday’s rehearsal.
- Write a 3:30 long piece by next week for Intro to MIDI. This one’s actually fun, because we can only use the 10 samples provided.
- Orchestrate 24 bars or so of “Castles Half and Half” by next week, a piece which I’ve never heard or found videos on youtube of, I only have sheet music.
- Write a 10 page minimum paper on Debussy’s La Mer. I plan to do most of this over the weekend. Procrastination FTW.
- Reharmonize/Re-groove “Some Day My Prince Will Come,” a Disney song remade into a jazz waltz, by next week. This shouldn’t take too long since I already have a basic idea.
- Practice the hell out of my piece for Conducting, it’s 10 minutes long and I plan to do most of this starting Thursday some time.

And also work 24 hours/wk on top of that. It’s really not that bad, I’m having a great time this semester. I’ll return to poker soon, I swear!

Two last things. One - my latest trick in Ableton Live is to take a large audio clip (maybe a melody or chords or maybe just a long ambient track), and select a very tiny portion of it. Then, I time stretch it or transpose it so that it resembles a pitch. It’s most fun when I can use something that’s not really a pitch to begin with, such as a car engine or the “room tone” of the city. Then, I duplicate this “note” several times and transpose each so that I have a melody. A melody made from pitches generated from a non-pitched sound. Pretty fun.

Two - I one-upped my jazz piece experience with a new experience in composition this past saturday. For my Film Scoring class, we had to write a ~ 1 minute long piece for 4 strings (Violin, Viola, Cello, and Bass.) We had to create sheet music and an audio mock up (I made mine with Ableton Live). On saturday, we brought in 4 string players to record our pieces in the studio. We got to conduct, direct, guide, etc during the recording. The players were all really solid and easy to work with, and they made my piece sound awesome! It’s such a different experience to conduct your own work and to do it with live players.

If you don’t know the name “Dosh” then check this out. This guy does live looping and writes beautiful stuff. He also plays with Andrew Bird.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvW3ubCZAU4

Peace.

It’s time for an update. I originally wanted to keep this strictly a poker blog, but since I’m basically taking April off, I figured I should change that to include some life updates as well. Also I had some requests. =)

So let’s start with the biggest news first. I am now dating and in love with the girl I’ve been waiting my whole life to meet. Crystal is seriously awesome, and I’m having such a good time with her. She’s the kind of person I’d want to hang out with all the time even if we weren’t dating. She’s hilarious, cute, really outgoing, and a vocal major at my college. And she really digs me. =) I’ve known her for about a month or two and we’ve been dating for just a couple of weeks. But when you know, you know. Y’know?

School is getting pretty busy, which is why I’m taking April off from poker. I’ll get to that later. I have some really awesome projects I’m working towards finishing in the next couple of weeks, and the first thing I’m going to do once the semester is over and I actually have some time is put all my shit up on a website for people to check out. I have this jazz piece that I wrote for a 9-piece group, the school’s jazz ensemble will be playing it at the next concert and it will be recorded. That’s EASILY the coolest experience I’ve had in composition. It’s amazing to hear live what I wrote digitally and created sheet music for, and the only role I have in the actual sound (other than being the composer) is I get to count off during rehearsals and give basic direction on how I want the piece to go. I wrote a happy techno piece a week ago. I did a few short exercises with unique features; one featured semi-tonal (non-Western scales) scales, one was in a language I made up, and one described a city skyline and I sang the lyrics in French because the city was Montreal.

I wrote a song about my recent trip to Switzerland, and it was about the girl I went to visit. Only, it was not a typical “song about a girl.” This one basically said, “Hey we used to be best friends, but when I came to visit, it was like you didn’t want me there. What the fuck??” And I think it’s my best “song” song I’ve written so far.

I’m also currently working a long-form piece. It’s projected to be between 12 and 15 minutes long when it’s all done, traveling through 3 distinct sections. I’m using Abelton Live almost exclusively to write it, and I’m using samples, MIDI instruments, and some live instruments. That will probably be my best work to date. It’s coming along really nicely, and I can’t wait to show it off.

I’m listening to a ton of Steve Reich. For most of you who probably don’t recognize the name, he is an American minimalist composer, who pioneered the concept of looping and phase shifting back in the 60s when it wasn’t so easy to do. His work is amazing, and I’ve been recommending it to everyone I can. I really want to study his style more this summer and write some pieces like that.

I’ve also scored a few short scenes, which I also may put up, maybe on youtube or something, so I can link the video. I guess I’ll probably have to check out legal issues I may run into though. I want to start scoring some student films this summer as well, both for experience and to get my name out.

I’m getting about $700 back from taxes this year, and I’ve decided to take that and about $500 from my Full Tilt account and buy Ableton Live 8, the Akai APC 40 controller (a MIDI controller designed specifically for Ableton), and a decent set of headphones. I’ll have my own composition studio in my apartment then! I will truly be a laptop composer. The whole set of what I plan to buy should come in around $1,100 or $1,200. Totally worth it.

To wrap up, I’m not really playing poker this month. I occasionally sit down for a few hundred hands of full ring, but mostly if I’m playing this month, it’s going to be 6-max. I just don’t have the time to sit and wait for hands for 3 or 4 hours, and when I sit down, I want to actually play poker. I’ve been enjoying what time I have been playing this month, and 6-max has been a new experience. I’m basically breaking even at 25nl, but if I can learn to stop showing down second pair type hands, I’m going to soul crush the hell out of it. My NSD$ is pretty awesome. I’m just not playing scared there and I’m putting stacks in if I think I have an edge (either with the best hand or bluffing equity).

Anyways, thanks for reading (all 3 of you who might be actually reading) and sorry for such a long overdue post.

Peace =)

suuuuuuxxxxxxxx

that is all

I 8-tabled for a long session last night, putting in roughly 2k hands, and I really wanted to work on playing each hand to exploit that individual opponent, instead of just playing my hand value and relying on showdown value. I was sick of playing a weak nit game, getting run over, giving up pots all the time because I missed and they have second pair or a draw, and relying on not being coolered in order to win. Which obviously was not working so well. I think I probably used to be more aggro than I have been lately; the downswing had a lot to do with that I think. I gradually played tighter and more nitty postflop, always fearing the nuts. Last night, I had enough.

The biggest pot I won all night was 50bbs, and I got stacked for more than 100bb when I got flush over flushed. Yet I still ended up 1.5 BIs. I didn’t play my usual 11/8 nit game; I played closer to 15/13, running 30/26 or so on the BTN and CO. I was being aggro in good spots, double barreling, light 3b’ing, and making effective bet sizes. Instead of betting 1/2 pot and giving up if I get a call, I was betting more like 3/4 pot and people were (omfg) folding more. My redline was awesome, and I wasn’t relying on making hands to profit. The one cooler I had honestly didn’t really phase me too badly, and even with losing that pot, I was still up at the end of the night. It really was a breakthrough night, and I do realize that I am taking the natural progression of swinging between playing too loose, then too tight, then too loose aggro, then too tight nit, then too loose again, hoping to find a happy medium…but I think I just took a huge step in the right direction.