More of the Same and Getting "The Call"

Wow, has it been 2 weeks since my last post. There have been many times where I wanted to post something; but just couldn't muster the energy. There are literally dozens of hands that I wanted to post to get some opinions. I am going to try to get better.

This month has continued to be a losing proposition. I can not gain any momentum. I'm definitely back to my roller coaster days and I need to start looking at hands a little more closely.

Here is a graph of the month.

So you can see the downward trend. Every once in a while I would make it back only to lose it again. I'm mostly still playing 100NL Full Ring on Full Tilt. I am down one buyin there and up a little over one buyin at AP. This loss is more or less is a 5 or 6 buy in downswing playing 50NL at PokerStarts one day. So, I'll finish up the month and then plan from there.

Nonpoker wise, the company that I work for is really struggling. We are a public, retail type company. Our stock sits around 14 cents so obviously times aren't so good. Anyway, last Friday I get a phone call and I can see it is the HR Vice President. Now, I'm not too naive to know what that means. Truthfully, it either means that he has an Excel question or I'm getting "The Call". I wasn't too surprised to find out that it was that dreaded call. The good news is that it wasn't an immediate lay off. I will still be working for 5 more weeks (4 more now). There will be a little bit more in the way of severance after that so suffice it to say, I'm on a little bit of life tilt. We'll see how it goes.

Have a nice weekend.

Missing Value

One of the leaks that I found when looking over some hand histories was that I was missing some value on some hands. Last night, a hand came up with a similar situation... or was it?

Our villain in this situation is a 35/4/1.4 over just 112 hands.

Here is the hand

Full Tilt Poker $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/35880
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: $70.30
UTG: $99.35
UTG+1: $100.00
UTG+2: $100.00
MP1: $78.80
MP2: $40.30
CO: $20.00
BTN: $58.15
Hero (SB): $132.25

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is SB with 7d Ah
6 folds, BTN calls $1, Hero raises to $4, 1 fold, BTN calls $3

Don't you love the button limpers. I'm raising any ace here for sure.

Flop: ($9.00) 2d Js 5h (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN checks

I'm not sure why I didn't cbet here. I typically cbet 3 out of 4 hands historically and this is a board that I would typically cbet. Out of position, I guess I chose the conservative line.

Turn: ($9.00) Ad (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $4, Hero calls $4

Option here was to check/raise, check call or just lead out. I chose to disguise my hand and continue with the weak hand game to make it look like I was just on a blatant steal preflop.
I chose check/call mostly for pot control reasons.

River: ($17.00) 7s (2 players)
Hero bets $12, BTN raises to $36, Hero requests TIME, Hero calls $24

Just an unusual line for me. I chose to donk bet here in hopes of inducing a raise. My line here is totally inconsistant and it looks like the button picked up on that. As you can see from above, I just called. Am I mising value here by not raising for his remaining $12? Truthfully, it doesn't seem like there is too many hands that beat me here.

Give me your thoughts.

For what it is worth, he was bluffing and probably would have folded; but that is really besides the point.

Final Pot: $89.00
BTN shows Qd 6d (Ace Queen high)
Hero shows 7d Ah (two pair, Aces and Sevens)
Hero wins $86.00
(Rake: $3.00)


Have a nice day!!!

Constructive Criticism

Just a short post today.

It is no secret that I have been struggling this year with poker. No matter what I am doing, it seems to be wrong. I do a few of things to try and help. I watch some training videos. I review my sessions somewhat. What I mean is that I try to mark hands where I had some sort of decision to make and try to analyse the hand. Unfortunately, what happens here is that it is hard to change your opinion on the hand. Of course, some misstakes are blatant and it is easy to figure out; but others not so much. If they were, you probably wouldn't have made the misstake in the first place.

Having said that, I tried something a little different. I opened myself up to a few blogger buddies (whose name I will keep secret to protect the innoncent) who are much better poker players and let them review these decisions. I didn't just send them hand histories which is somewhat useless because they wouldn't know any reads that you had on the hand. What I did was had them watch the hands on my machine while we were either hooked up with audio chat or normal IM. I have a program that can share my screen and they watched the hands on my HEM Hand Replayer which had stats on them and then I was also letting them know my reads on the hand.

Let me tell it was great and these guys let me have it, when needed; but in a constructive way. Beleive me when I tell you that I can take the criticism if warranted and in many cases, it was. Now has that help transformed me into winning sessions since then? Sadly no; but at least I'm not making those same misstakes... well hopefully, I'm not. Again, I am grateful for their opinions.

I hope to do this again soon. If there is anybody else who might be interested in something like this let me know. My program allows for a bunch of people to watch..

Have a nice day!!!

Goodbye January!!! and Disappointment

Let's start with the disappointment. The Super Bowl. You Pittsburgh fans should be thanking your lucky stars tonight as the best team LOST tonight. You were obviously gifted a touchdown at the end of the first half.

There was also one drive where Arizona gifted you with 3 personal fouls. Let's talk about those three.

1. I absolutely hate this rule. The rule where an offensive runner can face mask a player; but if you the defensive player also touches the face mask, he is the guy flagged. Absolutely horrible rule; but by the rule, the referees called it right.

2. Roughing the passer. Terrible call. What was it, one second after the throw? Ben never fakes a throw, does he? Hmmm. Oh yeah, he does it all the time. Lord know Warner was hit just as late during this game. or should I not say not late; but late according to precedent setting call on Big Ben.

3. Roughing the holder. I think this one was much closer than everybody made this out to be. I wonder why Wilson was off balance? Could it be because he was blocked into the holder? If you watch the replay closely, it looks like he was pushed. Of course, Arizona was somehow able to hold Pittsburgh to a field goal.

But, the final score showed that you won. So congrats on winning your sixth Super Bowl. That last drive was certainly impressive. I think if Arizona had to do it again, they would not blitz those couple of times. Tough call there.

One thing is for sure. I sure hope that there are no more nay sayers as to Kurt Warner's credentials for getting into the Hall of Fame. Hopefully, he comes back as they certainly have the makings of a team that could come back.

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Briefly, I will talk about the last hand I posted.

When a guy bets out on the river that much, it is a bluff a lot of the time. An agression factor of 7.0 is very high. His AF on other streets were much more normal in the 1.0 to 2.5 range. Anyway, was the call right? Yes and No as we chopped the pot with Big Slick.

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Let me be the first say goodbye to January. I will definitely not miss you. Not much more to say. The graph below will explain much better than I ever could.

I played tonight and had an impressive profit of $3. One terrible hero call and four people hitting sets to my over pair or top pair didn't help much. I did win a set over set which basically pulled me back even for the day.

Have a nice day!!!