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!

Last Night Was Fun, Today Was Not!

Last night was a blast.  I signed up for one of the step specials for 3 FPP, and ended up coming in third place.  It was a CRAZY tournament though.  You start with I think 500 chips, which I didn't realize at the time, and was hyper-turbo.  The blind inceased every three minutes, so it wasn't really poker at all just the lotto.  I got exreamly lucky, and caught some pretty good cards.  I only sucked out once and caught one of my three outs on the river to make my gut shot straight.  I was the chipleader or there abouts for well over half the tournament, which was totally I think less than 45 mins.  When I got down to the last three (top two get a ticket to step 1, and 3 gets a dollar).  I took a bad beat where my Aces lost to kings to the guy in second so he took a huge chiplead.  The third person was shorter than I was, and if I would have been smart I would have just kicked back and waited.  But as luck would have it my next hand was kings again.  I raised huge and got called by the leader.  I figured he was just pushing his stack around and didn't have much, so I was pretty much going to push whatever the flop was.  Two queens and a 4 come on the flop, and I pushed.  He turns over Q2o and I'm out, getting a dollar.  If you are ever in the mood for some lotto style fun, these can be pretty fun.

That however was last night.  I think I used all my luck in that little tournament.  Today I had three coolers pretty much one right after another.  The first one I was on the button with 44 just limped in after a couple people with pretty decent stacks.  I ended up hitting my set on a 4Q8 board,  BB went all in and I called.  He turned over two queens and I didn't get lucky on the turn or the river.  Next was just about as crappy.  UTG+1 raised about 4xBB, I was in the cutoff with KK and raised to about 15xBB.  He calls and the flop was KT6 two hearts.  I though awesome, can't get much better than that.  He raised the pot and I pushed all in.  Turn was an Ace and river was a blank.  He turns over AA for the win.  

Just to show you my luck here was a hand I folded (obviously I should have but it just shows my luck for today.)

Well that's all for now.  Off to cleaning and finishing up on my CC article.  

My first MTT

I signed up and played a freeroll MTT last night.  It was 10 FPP for a buy in with a $500 prize pool.  The action was extreamly fast all the way up to the bubble, being a Turbo MTT I figured the action would go that way but it was even more so than I figured.  I picked my spots and just waited for good cards to come.  I maintained my self far above the average chip stack most of the way through.  The spots that I picked to double up worked out very well, I even tripled up at one point.  However, I was a few spots off he bubble an caught KK.  Here's the history for that hand:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tournament, 500/1000 Blinds 100 Ante (8 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (BB) (t14900)
UTG (t13220)
UTG+1 (t16044)
MP1 (t20860)
MP2 (t7045)
CO (t2465)
Button (t34260)

Hero's M: 6.77

Preflop: Hero is BB with K, K
UTG+1 calls t1000, 4 folds, Hero bets t3000, 1 fold, UTG+1 calls t2000

Flop: (t7700) A, J, 4 (2 players)
Hero bets t11800 (All-In), UTG+1 calls t11800

Turn: (t31300) 7 (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: (t31300) 5 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: t31300

I don't know why I played that as bad as I did, I just "knew" he didn't have an ace.  That definitly came back to bit me in the ass, but I'll do better next time.  

I don't think I'll be able to make my goal of 600 FPP's, that's why I used up some of them on this MTT.   If I  can't make the FPP's up I figure I can get my bankroll up a bit more and hopefully hit my $100 mark.  I'll try another one of these tonight and hopefully I'll be a bit less unlucky, but we shall see.

Poker Can Sure Piss You Off!

I got off work early today so I figured I would put in a couple hours playing.  I did ok in the cash games.  I think I came out pretty close to even.  But the SNG's really kicked my ass.  I played a four of the $3 SNG's at stars.  One was a Turbo SNG with 10 people, and the other three were regular 9 man SNG's.  In the turbo, people were just going crazy and were super aggresive.  I made move at the wrong time and got sucked out on by someone with bottom pair who caught a set.  The others were similiar; Runner, runner kicked my ass.  The last one I played I was far ahead the chip leader and about the rest of the people pretty much had M's around 10.  People kept goin all in frequently, but no one else would call.  I caught a couple good hands in a row and called.  Within 5 hands I was knocked out.  A couple of them I called All in's preflop with pocket pairs around 10's and lost all of them.  I caught two pair on the flop with one and someone flopped a set.  I know alot of what happened was my fault, but getting beat when I'm far and away ahead of my opponent, both in chips and equity, pisses me off.

My bankroll took a bit of a hit today but I'm gunna make sure that I shrug it off and get back on to my A game.  I may play a bit more tonight, but right now I'm just gunna finish this beer and watch some HSP (High Stakes Poker).  Sometimes that's just the best thing you can do for your game, step away from the table and calm down a bit.  

Back from That Break

Well that was a good couple days off.  I had those days off of work too, so I had plenty of time to get some house cleaning done (something I don't to near enough).  I did a good bit of reading, hand reviewing, and posting.  I finished "Small Stakes Hold 'em:  Winning Big With Expert Play", while it was a limit book I found a lot of it helpful.  Here in the next few days, I'll write a review about the book and go over a bit about what I learned.  

I played a few SNG's today and didn't do very good at all.  I just couldn't get into the money at all.  Hopefully my luck will turn around in the next couple days.  I know mixing SNG's and cash games isn't really the best way to learn, but I really like playing both.  I feel that it mixes it up a bit for me and keeps it more interesting.  I don't do to bad in either one, so I don't think it is hurting my game to much.  It's just not letting me get as good at one as I could.  

Within some of my coming posts, I plan on writting a couple articles that get into poker a bit more than what I've had so far.  The posts will be both on here and on a thread at CC.

Well it's Time for My Scheduled Break

Every two weeks or so I am going to take a day or two off from playing poker.  Doing this will allow me to take a step back and evaluate my game.  During these days off I will do alot of hand reviews, forum posting, reading, watching videos, and just taking a break.  I've noticed that every time I've taken a break from playing, that I come back a better player then before.  I do alot of reading and studying anyway, but doing so when I'm not playing I think helps me alot.  Playing at the lowest level I can, influences my game in a bad way.  Seeing people get paid off with the horrible hands they do, gets me doing things I shouldn't.  Not even noticing I do it, I'll slowly open up more then I should and it hurts my game.  The suckouts I'm sure affect me a bit to and stepping back will put help me put them back in perspective.  

My May goals shouldn't be affected to much by the day or so of playing that I'll miss.  Infact it should help me with one.  I'll probably finish the book I'm reading right now.  I'll also use this time to finish my article for CC.