skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Another last hand of the night- box already checked to sit out the next hand (where I move into the big blind). I've had a rough night, down a buy-in. Playing well, but getting outflopped. I'm almost disappointed to see pocket kings here, I'm ready to just take my lumps call it a night.
Merge, $0.05/$0.10 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 8 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.
MP2: $11.01 (110.1 bb)
MP3: $5.08 (50.8 bb)
CO: $10.66 (106.6 bb)
BTN: $8.74 (87.4 bb)
SB: $10.59 (105.9 bb)
BB: $11.58 (115.8 bb)
Hero (UTG+2): $10 (100 bb)
MP1: $8.64 (86.4 bb)
Preflop: Hero is UTG+2 with K
K
Hero raises to $0.35, 4 folds, BTN calls $0.35, 2 folds
BTN is a 35/30 after 65 hands, with a 5.0 aggression factor. Greaaaat.
Flop: ($0.85) T 8
9 (2 players)
Hero bets $0.20, BTN calls $0.20
What a crap board. My .20 bet is a misclick. It's official, I'm tilting.
Turn: ($1.25) 4 (2 players)
Hero bets $0.83, BTN raises to $2.08, Hero calls $1.25
And now we have a flush and a straight on the board, with an aggro opponent raising me. Well, I've got the flush redraw, right...
River: ($5.41) 5 (2 players)
When the river bricks, I take a quick peek at his stats again. Looking for a reason to call the bet I know is coming. His river aggression factor is low (most of his aggro tendencies are on the flop). I can't find a reason to call it. I'm screwed.
Hero checks, BTN bets $6.11 and is all-in, Hero calls $6.11
I call anyway.
Results: $17.63 pot ($0.88 rake)
Final Board: T 8 9 4 5
BTN showed A J
and lost (-$8.74 net)
Hero showed K K and won $16.75 ($8.01 net)
Monthly neighborhood tournament - 48 players paying $50 each for some Friday night no-limit fun. We're down to the final 9. There's still some limping at the table, and we get a limped pot with me in the big blind. I've got a little 89, suited in hearts. I take my free flop.
It's a strong one for me - a black three, and then 6 and seven of hearts. Draw-heaven. I've got about 11 big blinds, and my best play sounds like a checkraise - especially if I can get someone to lead and then a caller. I'm willing to stick all my money in with 15 outs with no qualms here.
I check, as does everyone else in the hand. Plan thwarted!
The turn brings the king of diamonds. Much more likely to hit these wishy-washy limpers, but my odds are also chopped in half now. A king-ten might not be smart enough to fold. I check again. This time, one player does lead out and the table folds around to me. What to do? I take an extra second and think about my opponent - a fairly decent player, one who would be raising with ace-king or king-queen (not a great player, though, he did limp into this hand during a final table). Maybe he hit his king but doesn't like his kicker. Maybe he's got pocket fours and he's just betting because of all the checks.
Of course, in this limped pot, I can have anything at all, so I don't have to worry too much about what I'm representing. I can have any two cards. I decide to carry through with my plan and check-raise all in. My opponent folds instantly, and I win a nice little pot to boost my stack up.
I decide to show my hand. I have a reason for this - I want people to see I can push with a draw. Hopefully, when I push in the future with a real hand, I'll get a lighter call.
A solid, observant player sees what was going on right away. "You were going to check raise that flop, huh?" He asks me. I confirm. "I sure was, but I got no customers".
Fast forward to two orbits later. The blinds have gone up and I haven't had a hand yet. I'm down to 7 big blinds. Once again, I get a few limpers into my big. I will shove with a wide range here to pick up dead money, but my hand is not the correct type for shoving - 56 suited (this time clubs). Taking a flop is better.
Once again, I get a decent flop for my hand - 345 rainbow. Top pair with an open-ended straight draw. Easily enough to go broke with at this desperate stage. This time around, though, I don't have enough for a checkraise - it would get auto-called due to pot odds, so I just open-shove my 7 blinds into the middle.
Mr. solid, observant asks for a count, and then calls. He asks "you don't have two pair, do you?" as he stands up.
"No sir, pair and a draw", I answer, revealing my hand.
"Yup, that's about where I had you", he flips over his pocket sevens.
I don't improve, and exit the tourney in eighth place, two out of the money.
A meh session of holdem tonight, down 60BB. Checking my stats shows a real problem, though, a very fishy 22/14 for the session. Gotta tighten that VPIP up. My first guess is that I'm flatting in late position trying to hit some hands, which is ok some of the time, but I'm probably taking it to an extreme.
Comes with being out of practice, I guess. I will study, identify, and plug.
Edit: Very last hand of the night, have already turned off my auto-blind, AA under the gun. A fishy player 3bets: I saw him 3bet the hand before and then fold on a king high board. Chance for tilt is high. I 4bet. He thinks and flats.
Board is 67T, two hearts. No backdoor draws for me. I'm going with the hand - 4.45 in the pot, 7.60 effective stack. SPR 1.7. No folding aces now. If he spiked on me (or draws out), I have still played the hand correctly.
I bet 3.33, hoping to look bluffy, fishy, somehow wrong. He shoves and I'm up against pocket fours and apparent spazzo monkey tilt. He doesn't improve. My 60BB loss for the night flips to a win.
Still not happy with my stats, though.
A wise poker coach once said: "Fish gonna fish", you better get their money before someone else does. That might include some non-conventional play.
Merge, $0.05/$0.10 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 7 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.
BB: $10.73 (107.3 bb)
MP1: $7.51 (75.1 bb)
MP2: $8.45 (84.5 bb)
MP3: $11.93 (119.3 bb)
Hero (CO): $10 (100 bb)
BTN: $10 (100 bb)
SB: $10 (100 bb)
MP1 has been at the table for 13 hands, his VPIP is 100%. Meaning he's played every pot so far - raise, no raise, whatever. I'm wondering to myself if there's any raise amount he won't call preflop, when I get dealt ace-king. I decide see if I can find the limit.
Preflop: Hero is CO with A K
MP1 calls $0.10, 2 folds, Hero raises to $1.20, 3 folds, MP1 calls $1.10
A 12x preflop raise, he calls anyway. Yikes.
Flop: ($2.55) Q 4 4 (2 players)
MP1 checks, Hero bets $1.27, MP1 calls $1.27
Well, that's a big whiff. Too bad, so said. I'll try one half pot cbet to get him off the hand - this has a high probability of working with a player holding any two cards on a paired board. But he calls. I put him on any queen, any 4, clubs, or a non-believer with a pair between 4s and queens.
Turn: ($5.09) A (2 players)
MP1 checks, Hero bets $5.09, MP1 calls $5.04 and is all-in
Nice turn for me. I have caught everything but his trips. There's a pot sized bet left in his stack (thanks to my preflop bloating), and if he has a 4 he's doubling up. The queens and clubs make up more combinations than 4s, and he's probably not folding any of them.
River: ($15.17) 9 (2 players, 1 is all-in)
Results: $15.17 pot ($0.75 rake)
Final Board: Q 4 4 A 9
MP1 showed Q T and lost (-$7.51 net)
Hero showed A K and won $14.42 ($6.91 net)
He probably cursed his "bad luck" as he left the table.
Let the Omaha alone today and went back to 6max Holdem, 10NL. I played well but lost a buy-in on 3 coolers and 1 suckout. Should have been worse.
It was nice having my HUD again, and targeting players. I had a great sequence of squeezing with QJs and winning a big pot, and then 4 betting someone light (KTs) on my left just as soon as I felt he was playing back at my 45% steals. He folded.
My nemesis all night was a 51%er on my left, who 3bet almost 20% of the time. He cracked me 2 or three times, but I finally got my revenge with kings against his nines, which stayed an overpair to the flop. I check-shoved on him and he couldn't find a fold. (and this was the few times my hand held up).
I'm trying to get more Omaha into the weekly cash game, but some players aren't thrilled with the idea. So this week, I halved the stakes down to .50/.50 blinds in an attempt to let the less experienced play around with smaller dollar amounts. We got a nice full table alternating orbits of Omaha and Holdem.
I didn't play particularly well. I flopped middle set and then call/call/called to the river, letting a guy with a monster wrap hit his straight. I don't think a raise anywhere would have gotten this hand to fold, so the calls on flop and turn were ok, but the river call was weak, and I paid off an obviously better hand.
Later in the night, I made a bad fold with the nut flush, on a paired board. My opponent was talking up a storm and happy and making speeches - I thought he had the boat. He proudly showed complete air.
I was up 40 blinds or so on the last hand of the night - an Omaha hand. I followed a couple limpers with a mediocre Ten-Eight-Eight-Seven - not a hand to write home about, but our collective Omaha game is usually weak-tight (myself included) and I figured I would see a flop.
Tony was having none of it. He raised the pot up to $15 - a ridiculous overbet into a $2.50 pot (we were officially playing NO limit Omaha, mostly out of laziness of not wanting to keep count of the pot). Everyone folded back to me. I took an extra second to think things through. Tony was stuck on the night and tends to change his play based on his status on the evening. He also makes 2 or 3 aggressive plays every night without regard to opponent or cards, maintaining just enough of an image to keep people guessing.
I was guessing here. I felt like this was a move. I checked his stack - he was losing on the evening as I mentioned, and had only $27 behind after his $15 bet. Would a limp-reraise-all-in get him to fold some of the time? Or would he decide to gamble it up?
"I'll put you all in" I declared. Tony called before I could put the period on the sentence, and flipped over ace-ace-ten-three.
Alllll-righty then.
He outplayed me on this one. My reasoning was pretty good, but he was guiding my reasoning with a perfect, well-timed, out-leveling play. Sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you.
And sometimes, the bear gets you but you suck out with an eight on the flop and win anyway.
I have come a long way with my emotional state in live play - at least in my own home game. I was irritated about being outplayed (the true long-term outcome of the hand), and not really pleased in any way about sucking out and winning the hand. The suckouts will happen, both for and against me. (if I'm a good player, I should get sucked on far more often than the other way around, because I should be getting my money in good more often). Emotional state is an even more important facet of Omaha - a game with bigger pots, bigger swings, more frequent swaps from nuts to garbage with a turn of a card. The rollercoaster never stops.
