With the DOJ shutting down online poker, my poker activities have halted completely. I went to the WSOP again last June, but it was an unspectacular, card-dead bit of drudgery and nothing even vaguely encouraging came of it. So there is really no poker to speak of coming from me. I’ve had the urge to set some words to subjects that can’t really be explored on Facebook, so perhaps I will use this forum to expound on those thoughts. I hate to de-pokerify the place, but right now it’s not a big part of my life.

In theory this should post to Twitter and Facebook.

I set a goal of analyzing at least one hand every off day.  It’s getting late and I am tired, but in order to not fail on the first possible day, we are going to look over this hand that I played.  I won the hand, but I think I played it rather poorly.  I will let you decide for yourself:

[b]Full Tilt – $12+$1KO|300/600 NL – Holdem – 7 players[/b]
[i][url=http://www.pokertracker.com]Hand converted by PokerTracker 3[/url][/i]

MP: 27,207.00
CO: 21,656.00
BTN: 19,885.00
[b]Hero (SB): 22,448.00[/b]
BB: 10,713.00
UTG: 11,592.00
UTG+1: 17,910.00

MP posts ante 75.00, CO posts ante 75.00, BTN posts ante 75.00, [b]Hero[/b] posts ante 75.00, BB posts ante 75.00, UTG posts ante 75.00, UTG+1 posts ante 75.00, [b]Hero[/b] posts SB 300.00, BB posts BB 600.00

[b]Pre Flop:[/b] [i](1425.00)[/i] [b]Hero[/b] has  A:spade: A:heart:

[i]fold[/i], [i]fold[/i], [i]fold[/i], [i]fold[/i], [i]fold[/i], [color=red][b]Hero[/b] raises to 1,800.00[/color], BB calls 1,200.00

[b]Flop:[/b] [i](4125.00, 2 players)[/i]  8:club: A:diamond: 5:club:
[b]Hero[/b] checks, [color=red]BB bets 1,800.00[/color], [b]Hero[/b] calls 1,800.00

[b]Turn:[/b] [i](7725.00, 2 players)[/i]  2:spade:
[b]Hero[/b] checks, [color=red]BB bets 2,400.00[/color], [b]Hero[/b] calls 2,400.00

[b]River:[/b] [i](12525.00, 2 players)[/i]  6:heart:
[color=red][b]Hero[/b] bets 5,400.00[/color], [i]fold[/i]

[b]Hero[/b] wins 12,525.00

Obviously, I won the hand, but there is no magic in winning a hand with AA late in a tourney with high blinds and antes.  The question becomes, should I have checked the river?  Or should I have bet a different amount?  Should I have taken a different line all together?  Did I get the most possible value out of this hand? 

Unfortunately I can’t see what the HUD was telling me in the replay.  Perhaps I don’t have it configured right or it just isn’t possible, I’m not sure.  I believed at the time that checking was the only way to get him to put money into the pot.  I didn’t figure he had the case Ace, so I thought betting into him would result in an immediate fold.  The club flush draw was out there, but since the Ace of clubs was the case A, I didn’t think it was likely that he would be drawing to a club flush.  I thought the need to get more chips in the pot outweighed the need to protect against a somewhat unlikely draw.  The check/call line got him to put chips in the pot on 2 streets, but I felt that  he would just check behind on the river.  I bet into him thinking that if he had 2 pair or a set himself, he would definitely call that bet, but given the board, those hands are fairly unlikely.  In retrospect, I feel I should have checked and hoped he either fired a 3rd barrel bluff or had a holding that he felt warranted a small value bet.

I think in the future, I will simply check that river and hope that he is feeling froggy.

This is crossposted at CardPlayer.com

One of my biggest problems in poker (and life in general), is my lack of discipline.  I think this is true for the vast majority of poker players and in the current state of the game, the amount of discipline one has is what separates the break-even players from the highly profitable ones.  Let’s take a look at my failings thus far this year (we are only 27 days in, remember):

1) I’ve already stopped keeping tabs of my stats on CardPlayer.com.  I hate acknowledging losing sessions and I had a number of them.  When the wins came back around, my info was incomplete and I didn’t want to skew everything by just putting in the good stuff.  So that is pretty much screwed up now.  I need to figure out a way to fix it or just go back to it starting today.

2)  In my previous post (which was 22 days ago and probably deserves a number itself.  Okay, .5) Stopped blogging already), I made these statements: 

I will specialize for the time being in $2.20 180 player turbo SnGs. …I am going to pound away at that game until I have mastered it.  When I have won enough to move up, I’m simply going to the higher stakes in the same style tournament.  If I can’t conquer this one game, I probably can’t conquer any of them.

Well, that came and went pretty fast.  I cashed in one or 2 of them, but for the most part kept getting sucked out on or letting myself get into questionable situations and pretty much just lost, lost, lost.  That and $2 just isn’t enough to worry about.  I have a certain fixation for the Ferguson rules about never buying in for more than 5% of your bankroll.  The trouble is, I get massively bored playing for piddling amounts of money.  Mike Caro, on the other hand, says protecting a bankroll that you can easily replace is not worth it.  He suggests trying to play high enough stakes that winning puts you in a position that you need to protect your bankroll, in which case the Ferguson rules become sensible.  My $200 bankroll (at the time) could be replaced fairly easily, so playing super micro-stakes to protect it is silly.  A $700 to $1000 bankroll would take a bit of time for me to replace, so at that point I should play within the 5% rules.  Right now my Full Tilt BR is about $325 so I will be playing stakes that mean something to me (~$10-$15 for SnGs, $25 buy-ins cash).

3) Playing just one thing is BORING.  I need to mix it up when I’m online.  Boredom is a huge enemy of mine, and I am still finding ways to combat it while playing at the computer.  Surprisingly, even at the much slower pace, I don’t feel that way live.  Maybe because there are people to watch, I’m not sure.  The boredom makes my discipline drop and I play questionable hands just to have something to do.  Not good.  Not profitable.  I need to tighten that up.

4)  I have yet to review any of the hands I marked for review.  I need to make time for working on the fundamentals and I’m just not doing that.  I would rather play than study stats.  So I play, when studying the stats (and sharing them with y’all) is probably the more profitable thing to do.  I am going to start setting aside a certain time of day to review and write up at least one hand on my off days.  An hour won’t kill me and as I do it and get better at it, it will probably go faster and faster.

Those are some of my failings (I’m sure there are more, they just aren’t leaping out right now).  Some things I have been strengthening involve the balance in my life of household duties and poker.  As a husband and a father, there are certain demands on my time and I believe I have been doing a much better job of balancing the two lately.  I’m sure as I continue to improve on that, I will improve on everything.  My main goal right now is to focus on what I’m doing when I’m doing it.

Crossposted on CardPlayer.com

I have been looking long and hard at my game and I have reached some conclusions about my current state of play.  I was reading the latest issue of CardPlayer and they had a section on CardPlayer Classics.  These were some older articles that had been published previously.  One that really caught my attention was entitled, “Seven No-Limit Hold’em Sins” by Bob Ciaffone.  Let’s see how I have been doing on that:

1. Calling preflop raises with inadequate values:  Yeah, I’ve been doing that.

2. Building drawing hands in early position: Not alot, but yeah, sometimes.

3. Underbetting premium hands:  Most definitely.  I have been getting impatient when my AA or KK  just gets the blinds so I’ve been playing them “tricky”, which is a sure fire way to let someone “get there” on you and then take your stack when the betting escalates.

4. Not betting decisively enough on the turn after betting the flop:  Not really one of my problems.  If anything, I overbet.  Which gets me in trouble on the next one.

5. Failing to realize when the opponent has a strong hand:  I have started thinking everyone is 3betting me light.  I don’t know when this crept into my game, but it has been doing massive damage and something I need to get a grip on.

6. Putting an opponent on a particular hand when having insufficient evidence:  Not really.  I really need to think about ranges more and use them in my decision making process.

7.  Playing too tight when the table is shorthanded:  Not one of my problems.

So 4 out of the 7 have crept into my game in the last year or so.  I’m working on plugging these leaks amd I think to do so I need to limit the variables.  In my very first post commenter SawItOff said, “Find one thing and stick to it!”  I agreed with him and yet have failed to actually follow the advice.  So I am going to spend my time working on my game at the micro-stakes on PokerStars for now.  I will specialize for the time being in $2.20 180 player turbo SnGs.  I picked that particular game for several reasons.  First, I have plenty of buy-ins for it (80+).  Second,  I can see enough hands to develop my game. Third, it won’t take forever and I can play 10 or 12 of them in 3 to 4 hours.  That’s usually a comfortable time frame for me before I need a break.

I am going to pound away at that game until I have mastered it.  When I have won enough to move up, I’m simply going to the higher stakes in the same style tournament.  If I can’t conquer this one game, I probably can’t conquer any of them.  I think I can conquer it and I think I will.

Crossposted at CardPlayer.com

Wow.  I mean, wow.  I took a beating and a half yesterday.  I lost 60% of my bankroll in one day which tells me something very significant.  I’m either under-rolled (under rolled, underrolled, what is the correct way to write that?) for the stakes I’m trying to play or I’m playing at stakes that are too high for the bankroll I am willing to commit.  I’m going to take a couple of days and decide, but by next week I need to figure out where I am going to invest the next $600 I have to put into this venture.  The temptation is to put all my eggs into the Full Tilt basket seeing as how much I enjoy that site and it’s software.  But is enjoying the GUI enough?  I once owned a Land Rover that was a great vehicle, but I now drive a Honda Civic Hybrid because it makes much better economical sense.  I might have to sacrifice some of the luxuries that FTP supplies in favor of more money on Doyle’s Room.  I tend to do really well on UB, but I distrust them so much after their cheating scandals that I can’t quite pull the trigger on investing much there.  Everybody plays PokerStars and to ever make a big splash I will need a presence on there.

All that was to say that until I decide where to put my additional roll, I will be playing smaller stakes simply so I can’t take these massive swings.  Right now, I need to be concentrating on the play itself and not the money.  Well played poker will show a profit over the long run.  “In the long run there’s no luck in poker, but the short run is longer than most people know.” – Rick Bennet.

After a day like yesterday, a breath needs to be taken and a hard look needs to commence.  Now, did I lose all that because of short term run bad, or was I making bad decisions?  This is the part of my poker repetoire most in need of improving, my play analysis.  So maybe this is a blessing in disguise.  I will spend the day analyzing the key hands from yesterday and figuring out where my mistakes were made and let you know tomorrow what I found out.

And a big shout out to my brother, who is taking a journey of his own.  See you at the tables, boudreaux.

Crossposted on CardPlayer.com

Last night about midnight I was excitedly telling my wife about how great everything was going at the poker tables.  I texted my brother about it and was basically bouncing off the walls.  Just a few days ago I had a mere $100 in my Full Tilt account and was trying to bring it up before I started publishing it for the world to see.  I’m a microstakes player, sure, but my bankroll doesn’t have to be pitiful.  Last night I had hit $500 exactly.  I was stoked and on fire and any other word you can use to describe excited.  Being all pumped up, I couldn’t sleep and decided to head back to the tables to add to my growing bankroll.

Not too long into the session I ended up in a QQ vs KK vs AA hand and I had the QQ. A flop of 89T gave me a glimmer of hope but neither the J nor the Q showed up to bail me out.  So that was $50 gone (from the bankroll, $70 off the table) and I decided to call it a night.

This morning I got up and played some with an audience.  My daughter (an 8 year-old who is a decent player herself) watched over my shoulder as I played and I hope what she learned is that good hands don’t always win.  I got into a hand with an aggressive opponent who had bet on every street I had ever played with him.  I had AK and the board came out 3AJA5.  I got it all in on the turn with this hyper-aggressive opponent and he had a 33 for the full house.  I don’t feel particularly bad about it because he would’ve played any A the exact same way and most mid pocket pairs.  So that was another $50 down.

I did, however, get some bonus money from Full Tilt, which is a very small consolation.  My bankroll is now exactly $380.

Crossposted at CardPlayer.com

My FullTilt bankroll at 2:22 pm is $323.85

Crossposted on CardPlayer.com

If this plugin is workly correctly, my blog posts should be feeeding my Twitter account.

I’m about to reset my Sharkscope.com stats but I wanted to write them down for posterity’s sake.

JASlusher (FullTilt):

 KunoHofman (Cereus):

 IPlayYou (Cake):

KunoHofman (PokerStars):

So according to Sharkscope I’m down about $736.  I don’t think that is right, but again, I’ve never kept good enough stats to know.  I have transferred well over $1000 to other players on various sites.  And the sites I’m showing a profit on, I have no balance on.  So it is a mess.  I’m just writing this down so I have some reference should I need the info in the future, but for most situations, I think it is useless.  Now that I have it written down, I’m going to go reset all those stats.

Okay I’ve reset my stats.  I am going to track myself on botht he CardPlayer.com stats tracker and SharkScope and see what discrepancies there might be.  I started using the CardPlayer stats tracker yesterday, so for a time there will be a difference, but it should wash over the long run.

Crossposted at Cardplayer.com