I Did Ok in My First BIG MTT

Well I haven't played a whole bunch of poker lately. I think I'm a bit tilted on the down swing I've been having. I knew it was going to come, and I figured it would come hard. My winrate was super high and I new I couldn't keep something like that going for to much longer. I've been playing in some of the free rolls lately. I've missed a couple of the CC freerolls but hopefully I'll start making the time for them.

I played in on of the "Hubble's NL" freerolls. There are like 9000 guys to start with and only 72 get advanced to the next round. I was doing really good. I made a couple right plays and the biggest thing that set me up; I picked up AA when three other people pushed in.



That set me up really good. It gave me great opportunites to steal some blinds and just push people around. I made it all the way down to like 256 people. I though I was golden. I knew that this was going to be the toughest part of the freeroll, but I thought I was playing pretty damn good. I look down and see two cowboys sitting there. I was like great! I just need to not see and ace on the flop and I'm set. Here's the hand history for that hand:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, 0 Tournament, 600/1200 Blinds 100 Ante (9 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com



SB (t100272)

BB (t20885)

UTG (t5452)

UTG+1 (t34116)

MP1 (t48849)

MP2 (t103945)

Hero (MP3) (t105784)

CO (t13350)

Button (t32814)



Hero's M: 39.18



Preflop: Hero is MP3 with K, K

UTG calls t1200, 2 folds, MP2 calls t1200, Hero bets t5000, 2 folds, SB calls t4400, 1 fold, UTG raises to t5352 (All-In), MP2 calls t4152, Hero calls t352, SB calls t352



Flop: (t23508) 9, 3, Q (4 players, 1 all-in)

SB checks, MP2 bets t3600, Hero raises to t23000, 1 fold, MP2 calls t19400



Turn: (t69508) J (3 players, 1 all-in)

MP2 checks, Hero bets t77332 (All-In), MP2 calls t75493 (All-In)



River: (t220494) 4 (3 players, 3 all-in)



Total pot: t220494


Needless to say, I was extremely pissed. Part of it was my fault. The guy that pushed in with the AJo had to small of a stack to make a proper bet, so I couldn't reraise. If i would have noticed that (which I should have) I could have raised a little less so that some one could have reraised. If I could have shoved, the guy with Q9o wouldn't have called. Either way it is way passed my bedtime and I need to get some sleep tonight. Hopefully my luck will start to turn around a little bit and I can shake off some of these losses. Good luck at the tables.

More Good Luck With Technology

Well my fantastic luck with computers continues. After only a couple months of owning my new laptop, it decided to crap out. I need to take it in to gateway and see what they are going to do. I'm pretty sure I can salvage the hard drive, if nothing else. I hope so because I'm just about done with restarting my poker Databases.

Well any way, I started to play a bit of poker today and that did not go very well at all. I was expecting a bit of a downswing (I've been running at a winrate of about 35ptBB/100). I didn't think I could hold that winrate for too much longer. Well here is just an example of how I was running:

On the turn I was a 95% favorite to win this hand. As you can see, the river brought one of the two cards that he needed. I also ran into AK

I don't know if you noticed, but that is a Holdem Manager screen. While my other computer is down, I figured I'd go ahead and download the trial of HM. So far it's ok, It will take a bit of getting used to but I'll let you know how it was when my trial is up.

A Hilarious Youtube Video on How to Play Jacks

I was just dicking around on youtube today and found a hilarious video. Its some guy "teaching" people how to play Pocket Jacks. He pretty much sucks, but the video is very funny.

Sometimes Things Just go Right!

Do you ever have those days where it seems like everything is just going right? Well I've had a couple of those the last few days, on the felt and off. In the last couple days (I don't play to many hands a day) I've gotten aces about three times, and a ton of just great hands. Tonight in the span of 4 hands; I had aces once and AK twice. Here's one of those AK hands I got a screen shot of:

You can't really ask for a better flop than that with AK. With the pocket Aces I also stacked the guy off. He had a shit hand but was still more than happy to put it all-in against me. In the beginning of playing this time around, I ran into a few bad beats and it really dropped my win rate down. I've been climbing my way back out and have been doing pretty damn good (if I do say so myself). Here's a quick screen shot of my graph:

I know it's not a very big sample yet, but it's going pretty good. I'm sitting on $82.03. I don't remember the exact amount I started with (it's either $30 or $35). Either way, I've doubled my initial deposit. Once I finally make it up to $100 I can finally make my first jump in limits. I'll finally be playing 5nl, yay!!!! On another topic, here in a couple days, I finally get to join the CC freerolls again. That should/may help me build my BR up. At the start of next month, I'll go ahead and put up another month goal list. I hope I can do better on this upcoming one then I've done on my last ones.

Well that should do it for tonight. I think I may head back to the tables and put in a few more hands before I head off to bed. I wish you the best of luck.

Home, Sweet Home

Well that trip wasn't to bad at all. Wednesday We had the movers and the exterminator over. I didn't know that the exterminator was going to spray everywhere, and not just around corners and stuff, but he did. So we decided to leave that day. We left around 6:30 eastern time. I wasn't going to stop till I got out of Virginia. Around midnight, my wife decided it was time for something else for us to worry about and broke out in hives. She does that every once in a while when she gets stressed out, all the chemicals we'd be cleaning with didn't help either. I found some Walmart and ran in and bought about 10 things that could help for hives. Benadryl, hive relief, lotions, oh and one big ass machete (for the trip not the hives). I was about half way through Tennessee and stopped at about 3 in the morning at a rest stop. That was definitly our favorite state to drive through. The roads were great, the trees were beautiful, people were nice, and it was just all around a nice drive.

I slept for about four hours and was ready to go. When we got to Memphis we just had to try some Memphis style BBQ. We stopped at some place that was off I-40. It was called Tops BBQ. We got some BBQ sandwhiches, a bunch of sides, and a big old jug of tea. They were fantastic. Everything was great! The sandwhiches had a good mix of tender meat and nice crunchy ends. They were covered in Memphis BBQ sauce and some cold slaw. The Baked beans were good, they had some of that sauce in them and were a bit sweat.

After our tasty meal, we were ready to hit the road. I used to live in Van Buren, Ar when I was younger, and we drove right through it. I showed my wife the High School I went to for a year and a little bit of the town. We drove on through to Oklahome City. HOLY CRAP!!! That is was by far our least favorite state. I will never go through that place, EVER AGAIN. We stopped about 40 miles west of OKC in some Truck Stop at about 1 local time. I think it was a "Flying J".

I got back on the road again at about 5 and made sure I got out of Ok, as fast as possible. About half way through the Texas Pan Handle my contacts were starting to act up again so I had my wife drive for a while and took a little nap. She got us through to New Mexico and I was back at the wheel again. The East side of New Mexico is just about as boring as Ok., and Tx., were. But when we got a few miles out of Albaquerque, it started to get really pretty. Huge mesas, beautiful red rock, and more beautiful desert landscape. Oh, did I mention we were in a huge storm just about the whole trip till about right here? Yeah, we were rained on, no poured on, the whole trip till a few miles into New Mexico. The East side of Arizona was pretty boring too. Not much happened there, we just saw about 600000 signs for all things Indian related.

We got into Phoenix at about 5:30 local time. It was great finally being back home. My wife and I are staying with my parents for a little while, just till we can close on a house. Life is good, and I should be back to some poker here in no time. Till then, good luck on the felt.

Moving! Moving! Moving!

Well the last few days have been VERY busy. All weekend was spent packing things up, hauling them out the the garage and heading back in to do some more. We have some movers coming here to pack and move everything back to Az, but the navy didn't give me orders in time for the movers to come before the carpet cleaners. I had to move everything myself so that I could get the house all cleaned up before the move out inspection. After we humped everything out to the garage it was scrub down time. Gallons of bleach and sweat went into cleaning this place up. I also went through tons of boxes of "Magic Erasers". Those things are awesome! But were just about done with all that crap. One bathroom and the kitchen to go, and were done. The movers come tomorrow and the land lord the day after. We should be on the road by noon on Thursday.

The trip should be a blast. I got my 'tard of a dog that we have to take with us but he shouldn't be to bad. If you've seen the show "Dinners, Drive-ins, and Dives", we're gunna hit up like five of those places along the way home. I plan to take a bunch of pictures and drink a bunch of Monsters, but it should be good times.

I haven't had much time for poker with all this crap going on but I'll get back to the tables as soon as I get back home to Az.

Dakota-xx's 20k Post Tournament

Well I just got back from a great dinner at a nice little restaurant here in Norfolk, Va. It's called the 501 Bistro. They have and amazing breakfast selection there and we decide to hit it up for dinner too. I had the Meatloaf with garlic mashed potatoes, fried onions, and broccoli. My wife got the prime rib dinner with gouda mashed potatoes and a Margaretta. They both were pretty fantastic.

At the top of the hour I'm going to play in one of the Card Chat tournaments. They have them every once in a while. Some for special occasions and some just for the hell of it. Tonight one of the members is having it for reaching her 20k post on the forum (that's one hell of a lot of posts!!). It's a $3.30 tournament and she has thrown in a couple extra bonuses. The person who knocks her out tonight gets an extra $20 and if you win a hand with 10-2 you get a buck. It should be fun. I'm going to make a video of it and try and post it up here if anyone wants to watch. Hopefully its a long video and I make it all the way to the top. Once I finally get done with it, I'll see what I have to do to put it up on here. I'd like to see if I can do it embedded (Like youtube or something) if not I'll just have to have it downloadable. Well wish me luck.


Update:
Well I held my own for a little while. I had a couple 10-2 hands, so the tournament is only gunna cost me $1.30. I got knocked down pretty low with this hand:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, 3.3 Tournament, 200/400 Blinds 25 Ante (7 handed) - Poker-StarsConverter Tool fromFlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (MP1) (t3899)
MP2 (t5947)
CO (t11576)
Button (t2052)
SB (t2680)
BB (t6670)
UTG (t5267)

Hero's M: 5.03

Preflop: Hero is MP1 with 7, 8
1 fold, Hero bets t1200, 3 folds, SB raises to t2655 (All-In), 1 fold, Hero calls t1455

Flop: (t5885) 3, 10, Q (2 players, 1 all-in)

Turn: (t5885) 4 (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: (t5885) Q (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: t5885


Then made some chips back with an A10. I tried to make a move with pocket fours and this happened:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, 3.3 Tournament, 200/400 Blinds 25 Ante (5 handed) - Poker-StarsConverter Tool fromFlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (MP) (t2638)
Button (t4497)
SB (t11801)
BB (t6501)
UTG (t10652)

Hero's M: 3.64

Preflop: Hero is MP with 4, 4
1 fold, Hero bets t1200, Button calls t1200, 2 folds

Flop: (t3125) 8, 8, 6 (2 players)
Hero bets t1413 (All-In), Button calls t1413

Turn: (t5951) A (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: (t5951) 2 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: t5951

I ended up going out in 11th. 9th place was the cut off so I got pretty close, but just couldn't make it. It was a lot of fun though and I'm gunna try and do more of those CC paid tournaments. It's fun playing against good people.

Oh I don't think I'll be able to post a video of it at all, it's giving me some crazy error. I"m gunna open up ubuntu and see if I can get it going over there. Good night everyone.

I Just Couldn't Stay Away

After trying frivolously to get a decent poker tracker with Ubuntu, I've decide to just dual boot. What that means is, I have both Ubuntu installed and XP installed on the same hard drive. Everything is up and running in XP, except for the sound driver. I can't get that going at all, and haven't been able to with this laptop in XP. No worries though, I just use windows for poker and such.

My internet situation has been pretty interesting the last week or so. I canceled Cox, due to my move, and have been using my PPC to get on the net. I haven't had any problems with it at all so far, and have been pretty happy with it. I was scarred at first to play poker with that. I didn't know how reliable that little sucker would be, but I've been pleasantly surprised.

I guess I just couldn't stay away from the cash games. I was playing a few SNG's every day and was doing ok. I couldn't get rid of that urge to jump back to the good old cash games though. I just think they are a lot more fun then SNG's, and have a lot more potential to help me build up my ever elusive large bank roll. I'm still sitting at around $70 bucks, which isn't to bad considering I started with $35. When I finally make it up to $100, I plan on finally making my first jump. I'll be jumping all the way up to.......... Dun dun dun 5nl. Such a huge leap. It may not be a huge leap, but to me it is a pretty huge accomplishment and everyone has to start somewhere.

When I get home there are going to be a couple more things I plan on doing to help me build my roll a good bit more. I plan on depositing on a couple other sites and try and bonus whore and get some rack back. Doing that should give me a nice little jump in my bank roll. I also I'm going to get back into the Cardschat free rolls and hopefully catch a couple bucks off of those. I know a lot of people consider the total amount on all there sites to be what they have to play with, I'm not going to. What ever is on each site, will be my BR for that site. Doing it that way will/may help with some swings, and will give me more experience. I'm in now hurry to jump up in limits and will take as much practice as I can get.

Trying to get Tracking Software for Linux

I've had some decent luck at the tables the last little while. I cashed in a 5000 man MTT. That was the first real large tournament that I've played. It was pretty interesting. I'll definitely have to throw my hat in the ring on a couple more of those.

My main issue lately has been trying to find a program that will track all my hands in linux. Some people have said they've gotten poker tracker to work under wine (link: http://www.liquidpoker.net/poker-forum/710030/PokerTracker3_with_Linux.html). I would really like to get something that runs native in linux. I've found fpdb (link: http://fpdb.sourceforge.net/), which is a tracker written in python. It took some work, and a little bit of tinkering but I finally got it up and running. I haven't developed much appreciation for it yet. Not all of it is completed yet, so it is missing some functions that I would really like to have. I think I'll just have to break down and get poker tracker running again. Well It's off to bed for me. Good luck on the felt.

Trying my hand at just SNG's

Well I'm back to playing poker, not a lot but I'm playing every day again. This time I'm going to focus just on SNG's. I have played a couple the last few days. I just got done with one a minute ago, but that did not go very well at all. I made a wrong move (maybe a good one, but I don't think so) at the wrong time. I had the button and picked up pocket sixes. The guy UTG+1 called, and it folded around to me. I threw out a x4 raise and he called. He had been bullying people around a good bit and showed down some pretty crappy hands so I figured I was ahead. The flop was AA4, so I figured he missed pretty good. He through out, what seemed to be his standard C-Bet, and I raised him. He called this bet which seemed a bit weird to me, flop was a blank. He checked and I pushed all-in. He insta-called and turned over AK. So that really sucked. Like I said, I'm pretty sure that was just a bad move. But you live and you learn.

Well that was just this one SNG. I plan on putting in a good bit of time and getting a good grasp on these. So far I'm doing ok, but now that I'm on Ubuntu I need to try and find an alternative to Poker Tracker. I haven't seen much in the way of poker anything for linux, but I'm going to keep looking.

Well lets try this again

As you can tell from the huge lack of any posts, I haven't had much time to play poker lately. It's been pretty busy and I haven't had much luck with my computers. My last one crashed, so I bought a new one. It is a nice little laptop, but comes pre-installed with Vista. I HATE VISTA. I had it installed for a little while and had all my hands and everything saved and just couldn't take it anymore. So I went ahead and installed ubuntu on it and have loved it. I didn't want to install wine (a program that lets you run windows programs in linux) so I didn't play much poker. I had an itch the other day so I had to break down and get things going again. I played a quick 9-man SNG. I came in second place. The guy caught some crazy runner runner to make his straigh, but i still cashed so I was happy. I'm not going to play a ton of poker, because I'm moving back home to arizona here soon. I'm just going to study up a good bit and try and improve my game that way. Hopefully my game will get better and I can get Poker Tracker going here on linux, we shall see.

Gotta Love Technology

Well as you can see, it has been a good while since I've posted anything. It's also been a long while since I've played much poker. I had a Acer Aspire One, while not the greatest for poker it works great as a netbook. The dc input jack on the mother board went out on it so I haven't had a computer for about a month now. A couple days ago, I broke down and went out and bough a brand new gateway NV52. It's a great laptop and has a much larger screen. That makes multi-tabling SOOO much easier. All my old hand histories were on that computer, so untill I break down and take the harddrive out of it, I'll be starting my DB for PT all over again.

Since I've gotten this computer back, I've played one SNG and won. I've also played a couple hundred hands of 2nl. So far I'm up a few bucks. Here in the next couple days I'm gunna go ahead and update my goals list from a couple months ago, and write up a new one for July. Hopefully I'll do a bit better on that list then I did on my first one.

Well time to head off to bed. I'll make sure I keep this blog update now that I'm back to the poker world. See you on the felt.

Would Have Had my First Royal Flush

I was playing in a SNG today.  I was delt 10c2s in the SB.  I of course folded it to me but take a look at how it would have played out:

I know pay attention to that at all is being results oriented, but trust me I'm not about to play 102o any time soon.  Hopefully some day I'll be able to see one of those that I'm actually in.  The closest I've got so far has been a straight flush.  It was pretty great.  I got no action on it though so it wasn't that great, but was still pretty crazy seeing that.

A Few Good Hands, a Few Bad Hands

Well over the last few days I've had some bad down swings, and just today I had a great up swing.  For the most part my down swings were bad beats or where hands that I was ahead of their range and they just happened to have the very top of it.  A perfect example of the hands is this one:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.02 BB (8 handed) - Poker-StarsConverter Tool fromFlopTurnRiver.com

UTG ($3.31)
UTG+1 ($4.70)
Hero (MP1) ($5)
MP2 ($9.73)
CO ($1.17)
Button ($4.89)
SB ($5.23)
BB ($5.81)

Preflop: Hero is MP1 with J, J
UTG calls $0.02, 1 fold, Hero bets $0.10, MP2 calls $0.10, 4 folds, UTG calls $0.08

Flop: ($0.33) J, A, 8 (3 players)
UTG checks, Hero bets $0.25, MP2 calls $0.25, 1 fold

Turn: ($0.83) 9 (2 players)
Hero bets $1, MP2 calls $1

River: ($2.83) 3 (2 players)
Hero bets $3, MP2 raises to $6, Hero calls $0.65 (All-In)

Stratman1308: shows [4 7] (a flush, Jack high)

distrex: mucks [J, J]

Stratman1308 collected $9.63 from pot

Total pot: $10.13 | Rake: $0.50

I figured him for a weak Ace.  By the river I figured maybe two pair but still thought he just had a weak ace.  He had played this way with much worse in the hands that I'd seen him play.  But that's how things go sometimes.

I had some great hands today.  Here's one of the craziest I've seen in a while:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.02 BB (9 handed) - Poker-StarsConverter Tool fromFlopTurnRiver.com

UTG ($2.03)
UTG+1 ($0.98)
MP1 ($4.89)
MP2 ($0.88)
MP3 ($0.95)
CO ($5.17)
Button ($1.23)
Hero (SB) ($5.88)
BB ($1.43)

Preflop: Hero is SB with A, A
UTG calls $0.02, 2 folds, MP2 bets $0.04, 1 fold, CO raises to $0.18, Button calls $0.18, Hero raises to $0.50, BB calls $0.48, 2 folds, CO raises to $5.17 (All-In), Button calls $1.05 (All-In), Hero raises to $5.88 (All-In), BB calls $0.93 (All-In)

Flop: ($13.06) 4, Q, 8 (4 players, 4 all-in)

Turn: ($13.06) 2 (4 players, 4 all-in)

River: ($13.06) 7 (4 players, 4 all-in)

Total pot: $13.06 | Rake: $0.65

Results:
Button mucked J, 10 (high card, Queen).
Hero had A, A (one pair, Aces).
BB mucked Q, A (one pair, Queens).
CO mucked K, K (one pair, Kings).
Outcome: Hero won $12.41

In this four way pot, I had an equity of 61.7%.  That is just crazy.  I'm so glad I won.  I definitly would have been pissed off if I would have lost.

Aside from all of that, I hit 5000 hands!!  My winrate dropped down below 10, but It's up back where it was before so I'm gunna go ahead and count that as a win for my May goals.  I'll go back over my goals once the month is officially over, but here is my graph so far.

Well that's all for today.  Good luck and play smart!