Tysun

Lately it seems like the difference between whether or not one of my poker session ends up a winning or losing one can be traced back to a hand or two.  So far this year one of the biggest challenges for me has been keeping my tilt under control.  For the most part the first or second bad beat won’t really get to me, I’ll shrug it off and keep grinding because I know that while the odds were in my favor they are never 100% in my favor unless an opponent is drawing dead.  The problem usually arises after third or fourth beat say when a villian is calling all the way to the river and hits his inside straight when I flopped a set and I end up getting stacked.  A good example happened two nights ago on Full Tilt while playing $100 NL.  I was already running on the bad side when the following hand came up (going on memory, but details aren’t to important).

$100 NL 6-max full table

Key players

MP1 (120BB), stats: 100/25/3 (not sure on the PFR and aggr factor, but through 40 hands or so villain did not fold a single hand)

BTN (150BB), stats: 22/14/3 (again guessing)

Hero in SB (100BB), stats: 18/14/3 (roughly what I run at multi-tabling)

Preflop: MP1 calls $1, BTN raises to $4.5, Hero raises to $15 with A,Ko, MP1 and BTN call

Flop (~$45): Kd, Td, 6x Hero bets around $35, MP1 calls, BTN folds

Turn (~$110): 7x, Hero bets remaining stack, MP1 calls

River (+$200): blank

Outcome: Hero gets fucked in the ass after MP1 shows 77 for the turned set.  Villain leaves after a couple more hands.  Hero is official headed into tilt territory.

At this point I’m starting to tilt and would say that I am tilted for the next 10 to 15 minutes before I cooled off and was able to get hings under control.  Now I can’t say for sure what would have happened if another hand like this occurred shortly after this hand, but most of the time my tilt would continue and get worse and before I know it I would be down 3 to 5 buy-ins.  Luckily my tilt episode was on the short side and I was able to come out 1 buy-in up at $100 NL for the session after my head cleared.

Ok fast forward to last nights session on PlayersOnly.  I am playing 75% $100 NL and 25% $200 NL and between 8 to 10 tables.  I am already tilting at this point after what seems like 6-7 hands don’t end up going my way.  Here’s a hand breakdown (going on memory again)

Hero in CO (130BB) playing on the tight side

Villain in BB (150BB) playing a little looser than me

Preflop: Hero raises to $7 with AA, Villain calls

Flop (~15): Ax, Tx, Jx Villain donk bets half the pot (this is the point where my spider sense starts tingling, but as I am already in a state of tilt I ignore it), Hero raises to ~$25, Villain calls

Turn (~$65): 9x Villain checks, Hero bets ~$60 not wanting to see 8,Q,K on the river, Villain calls

River (~$185): 8x (AWESOME!), Villains instantly shoves remaining stack, Hero (who is ignoring that little voice inside his head) instantly calls

Outcome: Villain shows KQo for the flopped straight and Hero is ready to bash his head into wall for making the river call.

My tilt continues for an extended period before I somewhat turn it around and I end the session down 1.75 buy-ins at $100 NL.  If I had not made that river call I would have ended more or less breakeven for the night.  While I definitely think a call can be made in that situation against specific opponents when you have a good read on them, but this definitely was not one of those times in my opinion.

Well to wrap things up my tilting episodes are a major obstacle that is preventing me from making the profit and improvement in my game that I have been striving for this year.  While I 100% understand that bad beats and cold decks are part of the game and are unaviodable I tend to have a hard time getting over them when they seem to pile up on me.  During the rest of this month and into next month I am going to look at some solutions to this problem and see what works for me.  In some shape or form I believe it will involve me sitting out on my tables and removing myself from that environment for a short period of time.  Perhaps a short killing spree on GTA: IV will be in order to get some my aggresion released or maybe a trip to the bathroom to take a dump for a sense of relaxation, who knows?  The problem now is identifying the moment to remove myself when the tilting starts because once I get a couple minutes in it will usually run its course because I get to the point where I am too stubborn and hard-headed to quit or take a break.  Well I’ll end my rant here.  Tonight it’s back at the tables at Full Tilt.

Well my last goal for March isn’t going that well as this is will be my second post in March.  Hopefully I can get things back on track and start posting more.  I think the main problem is when I start to write a post I am usually playing catch up and I tend to write longer posts than I plan to.  So I am going to try and keep this post on the shorter side and then in the future update my blog more frequently with shorter posts.

So far this month I had been playing exclusively at Full Tilt, but I decided to change things up last night.  Since I already reached my points requirements for my free months at Cardrunners and Stoxpoker at Full Tilt and I had not played on the Cake Network yet this month I decided to play last night.  So far this year the only site I have played on the Cake Network is PlayersOnly, besides the random gold chip/card satellite.  While I have read a few things regarding problems with withdrawals by check I have not heard of any problems when withdrawing to UseMyWallet/Quicktender which I used to deposit because I already had an account step up through playing at Cake.  The fact that they allow rakeback in addition to having a rakeback account on Cake, plus the added benefit of a rake race which I have qualified for in January and February pretty much sealed the deal.  Unfortunately since the beginning of the year I am down there quite a bit at cash games so I had not played there in awhile.  So do I ease back into it nice and slow?  Hell no.  I fire up 10 $100 NLHE 6-max tables and play for roughly 70 minutes.  This is a shorter session for me, but I am glad I kept it short because I ended up over 4 buy-ins.  Being quite a bit before I usually go to bed I decided to fire up PokerStars.  Lately my game of choice on PokerStars has been low stakes turbo STTs and DONs.  I have played a little NLHE 6-max in order to help clear the lastest bonus and I have also played a little PL Omaha/8 6-max with no success.  I thought about playing some NLHE 6-max, but quickly ditched that idea to play some $25 PL Omaha HI 6-max.  I figured I would mess around a little bit on 4 tables and at the same time watch a Stoxpoker video on low stakes PL Omaha HI 6-max.  Overall the video was pretty informative and I downloaded a couple more to watch at a later time.  Once the video ended I added 2 more tables and after an hour and a half session I ended up roughly 3 buy-ins.  So overall a good night. I’ll wrap it up here as this post is getting a little long and I would like to discuss a couple of the topics in this post in greater detail hopefully in posts later this week.  Tonight back to the grind at Full Tilt.

Here’s a quick run down of how my February goals went.

1.) Play a ton of hands.

Not as much as January, but still quite a bit.  I’ll count it as accomplished.

2.) Make $2000 for the month.

Fell a little short of my goal, but overall I did better than January.  Total comes to $1780 when added up.  I am happy with that number because the only reason I made my goal for this month higher is to make up for January.  Goal not accomplished, but I’ll take it.

3.) Renew poker instructional site access.

Achieved free months at Cardrunners and Stox Poker for March.  Goal accomplished.

4.) Don’t suck and take a long hard look at my game.

I think accomplished the not sucking part for the most part, but there were still times when I played kind of bad because of tilting.  Did not really get to take a long hard look at my game, but I have started to make minor adjustments and I think they are having a positive effect.  Overall goal was partially accomplished.

March 2009 Goals

1.) Play a ton of hands.

Follows my goal for the entire year.

2.) Make $2000 for the month.

This was going to be $1500 the first couple months of the year, but I still need to make up for a bad January so I am upping it again this month.

3.) Renew poker instructional site access.

Will be achieved by earning so many points on Full Tilt this month.  Currently working on my free months at Cardrunners and StoxPoker.

4.) Continue making improvements to my game.

Pretty self explanatory.  Better player equals more profit which when it comes down to it is the bottom line.

5.) Update the blog more frequently.

I have started to lose focus when it comes to posting so I am making it one of my goals to post more often this month.

Well again I have been letting this blog go without any entries in the past two weeks.  Most times I start a post at work and usually finish it sometime before the end of the day.  Lately though it’s been pretty busy at and I just have not found the time to write while at work which means no posts get started.  I have been taking a few more nights off this month than last, but I still have played quite a bit of hands.  Don’t know exact numbers, but I am definitely positive for the month so far.  I don’t think I’ll hit my monetary goal for the month unless I play a crap load between now and the end of the month and go on a big hot streak.  The final dollar amount will probably look something like last month unless something very good or bad happens between now and the end of the week.  Lately I have been playing at Full Tilt $50 NL with a little bit of success roughly up 8 buy-ins.  I have cleared my Cardrunners membership for next month and am working on finishing up my Stox Poker membership currently.

I have been watching quite a bit of videos lately while I play usually dropping down from 8-10 tables to 6-7 tables in order to fit the video on the screen.  I have started experminting with opening up my game a lot more because I am way too tight pre and a little on the weak side post flop.  Now this is more or less a product of multi-tabling 8+ tables when playing.  Overall it’s a lot harder to follow the action because your attention is usually on a different table.  So table dynamics are usually lost in the shuffle and you miss a lot of information because your not in a hand and it’s hard to review hands without sacfricing paying attention to hands your currently involved in.  Taking notes is pretty noexistent, however I have been trying my best to try and take a few notes here and there especially on people I see quite a bit.  Things I have been looking at are 3-betting more preflop and in turn folding to 3-bets or 4-betting.  I think I have become quite obvious in the way I play preflop so it’s pretty easy to play against me preflop.  Playing hands in position also seems to be a bit of a problem as well.  Too much limping from early and middle positions and calling to much out of the blinds are my main problems.  My goal is shrink the distance between my VPIP and PFR as much as possible because right now my VPIP is about double my PFR and that’s too much of a gap.  Postflop I am pretty weak sauce as I usually shut down after the flop if I have a hand that does not improve such as AQ or 44.  I have started double barrelling a little more here and there against certain opponents and ocassionally adding a triple barrel with an unimproved hand when I have shown aggression preflop.  Raising more on the flop and turn when strong and as a bluff is a step I need to take.  I tend to slow play too many hands postflop so my raising and betting frequency needs to go up on all streets.  To sum up I am taking a closer look at my game and seeing where I can make some changes that will make me a better player in the long run.  I think playing at $50NL is a good place to start where I can work out some of the variance that comes when making a change in your game.

Well my next post should be sometime in the next week that covers my goals for February and lists my goals for March.  Good luck at the tables.

Well I’ll keep it quick because basically January sucked and I want to look forward to the rest of the year.

1.) Play as many hands as possible.

Done.

2.) Make at least $1500 for the month.

Well I finally added up the numbers and I was a bit surprised.  I figured I would maybe at best be a couple hundred over at best.  The final number is roughly +$1,095.  Thank god for bonuses and rakeback.  I am expecting big things for the month of February.

3.) Sign up at a poker instructional site.

Done.  Signed up at Cardrunners and earned free months at Cardrunners and Stoxpoker for the month of February.

Next post sometime this week.

Well I have been pretty lazy lately and haven’t updated the blog in the last two weeks.  January was a very depressing month poker wise and it was not the way I expected to start the new year.  I’ll get a January results post up by the end of the week, but today I will be looking ahead to my February goals.

February 2009 Goals

1.) Play a ton of hands.

Follows my goal for the entire year.

2.) Make $2000 for the month.

This was going to be $1500 the first couple months of the year, but I need a strong bounce back month after January so I upped it this month.

3.) Renew poker instructional site access.

Will be achieved by earning so many points on Full Tilt this month.  Currently working on my free months at Cardrunners and StoxPoker.

4.) Don’t suck and take a long hard look at my game.

January definitely has me doubting my game quite a bit so a long hard look is in order.  Along these lines watching as many instructional videos will definitely be on the to do list.

Well back to work and tonight the grind.

Well since my last post things have not gone well at Full Tilt.  For the month I am down roughly 21 buy-ins at $50NL.  My adjusted EV for the month has me down 1 buy-in, which at this point would be great if that was worth anything, but unfortunately it’s not.  I definitely should be doing better, but when the deck is currently slapping you around like a red-headed step child you tend to tilt money away.  To me it just seems like everyone chasing their draw no matter how remote seems to be able to catch the card they need on the turn or river.  Or it’s flopping a full house only to have a donkey catch up and make a bigger full house on the turn or river.  It’s just gotten to the point where I don’t feel I can win on Full Tilt.  So this pretty much means that I will be giving up on the 4.) Achieve Iron status each month on Full Tilt goal.  I have not given up playing on Full Tilt altogether because I will need to earn a certain amount of points each month on there in order to keep my membership at Cardrunners current.  A rough breakdown of where I have played this month would look something like this:

$50NL (Full Tilt) ~ 80% ~ -$1050 (not including rakeback or bonuses)

$100NL (FT, Bodog, Carbon, Absolute, Cake) ~ 20% ~ +$1750 (not including rakeback or bonuses)

So while I am technically up for the month it definitely does not feel like it at this point.  As of right now it does not look like I will be playing on Full Tilt until mid February or so.  I need a couple weeks away to clear my head and review some of the hands I have played there the past 3 weeks.  For the most part I have been playing non-stop just about every night each week so far this year and I think it’s starting to catch up to me.  I think for the next couple weeks I will be scaling back quite a bit to avoid getting burned out and run down.  The majority of my play will probably shift to Cake for the next couple weeks.  Here’s a quick update on my January goals about two-thirds of the way through.

1.) Play as many hands as possible.

Done, I would not have to play one more hand this month and I would count this goal as being achieved.

2.) Make at least $1500 for the month.

With rakeback and bonuses included I am probably somewhere in the $1200-$1300 range at this point.  As long as my bad luck and play don’t transfer over to another site I should hit my goal for the month quite easily and if I play enough I might be able to hit the $2000 mark.

3.) Sign up at a poker instructional site.

Done, signed up at Cardrunners.  Hopefully the final third of the month will give me a chance to watch a bunch of videos.

Look for an another update on my switch from Full Tilt to Cake later this week and maybe another one this weekend regarding reviewing hand histories from Full Tilt if I can find the time.  Good luck at the tables.

Well since my last post my fortunes at Full Tilt have improved a little.  I have played two sessions, the first I ended up 6 buy-ins the second down two buy-ins.  So overall I made up 4 buy-ins, however I am still roughly down 8 buy-ins for the month.  I still plan on reevaluating my play at the end of the week, but more than likely if I have a positive week at Full Tilt then I will continue playing there as planned.  Have not had a chance to dissect my adjusted EV stats yet in Holdem Manager, but I’ll probably get to it sometime this weekend.

I accomplished one of my goals for the month already.  3.) Sign up at a poker instructional site. I signed up for a one month membership at Cardrunners earlier in the week.  I have only watched a couple videos so far, but from what I have seen I can only see this helping me in the long term.  Hope to watch a bunch this weekend.

Well I played my last session at Bodog on Tuesday.  Ended up around 2.5 buy-ins in less than an hour.  That session along with trading in my points for cash put me above the $3K mark which is the max amount you can withdraw by check.  Instead of splitting it up into two checks I’ll just leave around $30 on there to make the occasional sports bet.  After a rough start on Bodog which saw my bankroll on there go as low as $800-$900 I was able to work it up to $3K.  I don’t have exact figures on me, but I would say I made around $1K playing on Bodog which includes bonuses and rakeback.  The overall experience playing there was good and I would probably consider keeping money on there if they had more withdrawal options and their future was a little less cloudy so at this point I am happy getting my money off now.  I’ll give an update on the withdrawal process by check.

Well other than what has already been said there is not much to report.  I hope to continue playing quite a lot and the only problem I have is figuring out what to do with a $3K check.  Life is hard sometimes.

It’s only 12 days into the new year and I already want to throw one of my 2009 goals out the window.  The goal I am referring to is 4.) Achieve Iron status each month on Full Tilt. The problem with this point is that it is affecting my monetary goals for the month and the year.  Here is a breakdown of my win/loss stats for the year with a rough estimate on the amount played and sites played in parentheses.

$50NL

-$597.80 @ ~70%-75% (Full Tilt)

$100NL

$946.37 @ ~25%-30% (Full Tilt, Cake, Carbon, Absolute and Bodog)

You don’t have to be a math major to see that continuing to play at the same rate for the rest of the month would be really really stupid.  Unfortunately for me one of my unofficial goals for the month was to build up my bankroll on Full Tilt playing $50NL so that I could play $100NL without a problem.  As you can see it’s not exactly going as planned.  But there is another underlying problem with the hands I have played at $50NL which is that I feel like I am running extremely bad and have been very unlucky.  I have started to chronicle this in this thread on the Felt Poker Forum.  Going by my stats in Holdem Manager for the month so far at $50NL my adjusted win/loss with EV All-ins would be $301.12.  That comes out to a difference of $898.92 or essentially 18 buy-ins at $50NL over a roughly 22K hand sample.  Now the real question is what do I make of all this.  To be honest I am not quite sure as I would like to investigate this stat a little more and see if there are other factors which can affect it.  Also I think a night of reviewing hands is definitely in order.

Well hopefully I can wrap my head around the situation some this week.  If something doesn’t break my way by this weekend then definitely a change in priorities will be warranted.  Unfortunately at the moment this bad streak is really starting to cause a mental strain to the point where I am frequently thinking about it and some nights I am losing sleep over it.  The problem at this point is my pride is definitely getting in the way and I would hate to admit defeat and leave $50NL at Full Tilt a losing player for the month or year when it is quite possible the percentages show that I should be a winning player.  Well time to wrap this post up.  Feel free to check my thread linked above to see how I am running on Full Tilt this week.  Hoping for another post either this weekend or the beginning of next week.  Wish me luck because apparently I need it.

Well I meant to write this post over the weekend, but I never got around to it.  Can’t say I was too busy because I actually got to play quite a bit of poker over the weekend.  The purpose of this post is to outline my long term goals for the year and my short goals for the month of January.

2009 Goals

1.) Play as many hands as possible.

I’m not going to set an overall number or set a number each month.  My goal is just to play play play as much as possible.

2.) Make at least $20,000 for the year including rakeback and bonuses.

This comes out to $1600 to $1700 each month.  The first couple months I will shoot for $1500 per month as I prepare myself for the grind.

3.) Move up to $200NL full time and be able to show a profit.

Currently I am playing $100NL on all of the sites except Full Tilt where I am trying to grind $50NL to build my bankroll on there.  I have played a little $200NL at Carbon and Cake in the past 6 months or so, but nothing full time to see where I stand at that level.  Currently my online bankroll is around $12,500 which will be cut to around $10,000 when I withdraw the money I have on Bodog.  That is probably enough to take a shot at $200NL, but the problem is all of that money is spread out between seven different poker site accounts at the moment.  I could potentially combine the money I have on Carbon, Cake, and Absolute to have about 40 buy-ins at $200 NL, but right now I like having the flexibility of playing on a couple different sites.

4.) Achieve Iron status each month on Full Tilt.

I think this will be more of a dream than a goal.  If I get 9 months out 12 at Iron status I would be happy because I know there will be months where I won’t be able to play as much as others.  Thru yesterday I have met the point requirements 4 out of 5 days, so if I keep that pace this month shouldn’t be a problem.

5.) Work on improving my SNG and Omaha game.

This will serve more as a distraction from the grind of NL Hold’em than anything else.  However, I do very much enjoy playing both and would like to improve so that I can show a profit when playing these rather than breaking even or losing when I decide to take some time off from Hold’em.

6.) Make the final table in a MTT with a buy-in greater than $50.

I don’t play in MTTs very often maybe 1 or 2 times a month in the past year, but I would like to try and double that number for this year.  My goal is to satellite in whenever possible.  I already won a gold chip satellite on Cake this past weekend to play in the $162 tournament this coming Sunday.  My goal is to try and play in these whenever my schedule allows and hopefully I’ll get luck in one and make it to the final table.  I’ll also try some satellites on PokerStars as well.

January 2009 Goals

1.) Play as many hands as possible.

Same as above.  Thru the first 5 days of January I have probably played around 20,000 hands with most being played at Full Tilt.  New Years Day included three sessions plus I have played every night since.  If I continue this pace I am looking at over a million hands for the year.  Granted I definitely won’t be able to continue on this pace the whole year, but it’s a sick amount of hands already regardless.  I won’t know my exact totals because I can’t track the hands I play on Cake, Carbon, or Bodog in HEM so I’ll only have concrete data for Full Tilt and Absolute.

2.) Make at least $1500 for the month.

Well at this point given the amount of hands I have put in I am definitely behind where I thought I would be.  Here’s the breakdown on the sites I have played so far this year with a rough playing time percentage in parentheses:

Full Tilt: -$461 (75%)

Bodog: $204 (7%)

Carbon: $334 (7%)

Absolute: $83 (11%)

Total: $160

With rakeback and bonuses totalling roughly $300 at this point I am definitely on pace to hit $1500 for the month thru the first five days, but I can say it is definitely a disappoint at this point to be where I am at with the amount of hands I have put in already.

3.) Sign up at a poker instructional site.

More then likely I will be signing up at Cardrunners sometime this month.  I might also try Stox or Leggo, but for now I will probably just stick to just one to see how I like it.

Well time to wrap this up.  I hate to say it, but I am going back to the Full Tilt tonight and will be grinding the $50NL tables.  Hopefully my luck will turn around after the one day break I took.