Hands of the Day

Hand #1
I think villain's range after he calls on the turn is largely 88-JJ so I overbet-ship the river trying to Zeebo-stack him. Not sure if this is better than potting it, betting 2/3 pot, or even check/shipping.

Hand #2
Not sure whether to bet river - I don't know how much of his turn bet/calling range will check/fold on this brickish river. Maybe I shouldn't even be running this bluff in the first place.

Hand #3
Not sure how much of villain's range on the river is Ax and how much is 9x and 4x. I have him as 45/23 over 22 hands. I don't think he can ever fold A2-AJ but he can have so many 9x and 4x. I stoved this and I'm just about flipping against {Ax, 97o+, 96s+, 44, 54o, 54s, 64s}.

Couple of Hands From Today

Hand #1
Really don't know about my line here. I think I get a lot of folds from Ax on the turn, but I don't know if anything that calls on the turn is going to fold to my bet on the river.

Hand #2
I've been experimenting with checking some strong hands on the flop in multi-way pots when out of position as pre-flop raiser. I think I feel more comfortable balancing my checking range with some strength than I would feel trying to balance my betting range by cbetting some missed overcards or underpairs into two people, but I'm really not sure. Anyway, regardless of the merits of that, I'm really unsure about my river call. I have villain as 8/4 over 102 hands. I don't think he ever bets TT, QJ, AJ, or QQ on the river. AK is a possibility but this villain sometimes 3bets pre with AK, does not always bet the flop with AK, and will probably sometimes check behind on the river with AK, so AK needs to be discounted at least somewhat from his range. He might have some 55-88 that he turned into a bluff, but I don't think this villain does that very often, and even if he does, I think he gives up on the river fairly often. And he can play all of his sets and sometimes KJ like this. It really comes down to how often he can have AK and how often he's bluffing, but he has to have a lot of AK and bluffs for the call to be okay. Even if we give him 12.5% of his AK (2 out of 16 combos) and 16.7% of his 55-88 (4 out of 24 combos), we still only have 23% equity against a range composed of those, sets, and KJs, so it's a fold getting 3:1.

What I Was Doing All That Time

As you can see, I basically stopped posted in May and I'm just now starting to post regularly again. This is because I essentially stopped playing poker. In June, I started my summer job at a law firm and was working full-time. My plan had been to grind pretty hard every night but I found myself feeling pretty tired after work every day, and honestly, I just wasn't really feeling it because I had just been struggling so hard to break even after my dramatic rise and fall early in the year. So I ended up basically never playing during the week, and on weekends, I would typically just one-table or two-table NL100. Things continued like this after my job ended and after I went back to Chicago for school and carried on this way until November. I ran fantastically good EV-wise during this period, though I averaged roughly 2500 hands per month during that stretch:

The flat stretch in the beginning was me trying to win at NL10, which proved a lot harder than I expected. The flat stretch at the end was me trying to learn PLO by playing PLO2 on Stars, which also proved a lot harder than I expected. I played these games because I was pursuing a poker goal of trying to make my PTRs on both Stars and FTP green for every stake I've ever played. This is still something I want to do eventually, but I put it on the backburner in November because of Rush Week.

As anyone who knows me can confirm, I'm a huge bonuswhore and couldn't pass up an opportunity like Rush Week, even though I still had residual feelings of resentment and hatred for Rush due to its role in my catastrophic downfall in the early part of this year. But I was able to put those feelings aside and grind out a $50 Rush Week bonus on two tables of full-ring NL50, and I actually did pretty well in the games.

Then came December and the Iron Man Year-End Bonus chase, during which I've played a mix of full-ring NL50 Rush and regular 6-max NL100. I've been so thoroughly demolished at NL100 that I've cut it out entirely. I have no idea whether I can actually beat NL100 and my struggles with it really epitomize the biggest problem I have in poker, which is not being able to tell whether I'm running bad or playing bad. There have been lots of coolerish spots that might not actually be coolers because villain might not be shipping with anything except exactly the nuts, but I don't know enough about villain or his tendencies to know for sure. I've been losing stack after stack in spots like these and it's left me feeling pretty lost.

So I think I'm just going to grind NL50 FR Rush for a while and see how that goes. I went on a nice little tear over about 15,000 hands of it where I was winning at 5.6 BB/100 with an amazingly smooth graph, but over the past 6,000 hands, I've been losing at -6.9 BB/100 with an equally smooth graph, so we'll see how it goes from here.

Worst Christmas Ever

I played 4,179 hands of NL50 full-ring rush on Christmas Day and lost $256.80. My all-in EV for the day was even worse, at -$360.68, which reflects winning a bunch of flips and KK > AA'ing some guy. Some highlights:

Hand #1
I slightly overbet the pot on the river for value against AK and AQ and I snapped it off when he shipped. Even if the call is okay, which I doubt, I think the snap is terrible. Looking back, I don't really know what happened. I guess this was a weird and horribly costly manifestation of tilt.

Hand #2
Not really sure how to play AKo against a cold 4bet from an 11/9 when sitting 150bb deep.

Hand #3
This is just really bad by me. I think this is a pretty clear fold when he checkraises the flop but I talked myself into calling because I have a backdoor flush draw and Q outs against AT and I had him as 27/27 over like 10 hands or something so I felt like he could be bluffing. Even if that isn't all nonsense, I think calling on the river is still awful because his semi-bluffing clubs got there and AT probably isn't shipping.

Hand #4
Villain is 55/36 over 11 hands so I don't know how I feel about ever folding, but it seems bad to pay him off.

I had been doing pretty well at NL50 full-ring rush until yesterday and I felt like I was finally starting to figure some of this shit out, but the past two days have made me feel pretty much totally clueless. I played another 1,012 hands today and lost another $137.55. Hands:

Hand #1
I have villain as 75/42 over 13 hands so I'm playing top pair for value. I'm very uncertain about my river bet, since JT and clubs got there. I still want to get value out of QJ, KJ, and whatever random garbage this kind of player can have, but I don't know whether a bet is profitable.

Hand #2
Similar spot. I'm betting the river for value against 88-TT and I think I might even get called by 66. A9 was not even a consideration in my mind and the fact that he had it makes me think that this spot is actually too thin to bet.

EV Update

According to HEM, my lifetime online poker winnings are $612.14 but my all-in EV-adjusted lifetime winnings are -$493.34. So I'm running a little over $1,100 better than I should be. If anyone has ever looked at their own graph and wondered where all that EV goes...me. It all goes to me.

This is over 233,906 hands.

December

I've been putting in reasonable volume again over the past couple of weeks and have run really good to break even. Standard.

Maybe

It's not impossible that I'll start updating this blog again.

Sunday MTT Report

This past Sunday, I played another round of tournaments. Obviously, for me, a "round of tournaments" on Sundays doesn't mean the Sunday Million and Warmup and the Second Chance and the 750 and the Brawl and the Mulligan - it means the $5.50 GSOP and the BBT Freeroll.

I ran extremely hot and won the GSOP, which was PLO8 this week. I know nearly nothing about PLO8 and basically just coolered the hell out of everyone the entire way. Ship the $48 and 2nd GSOP bracelet this season to noted MTT specialist and excellent poker player, me.

Then in the BBT freeroll, I again managed to catch every card in the deck and made the final table, though I ended up busting in 5th. By far the most interesting hand I played the entire time was already posted as a comment in my previous blog entry by one of the villains, and I feel like it deserves some deeper analysis.

The Hand
Villains are two red pros. I had Ali something like 17/14 going into this hand and Jeremiah something like 30/23. Both are obviously competent and appear to be playing seriously, and both have seen me playing nothing but very straightforward poker and luckboxing my way to a huge stack. Preflop, I strongly consider squeezing but I think I fold all worse hands except pairs and I think Ali might even lay down 88 to me here, so I ultimately decide to take a flop in position. This reasoning might be wrong and I might just want to ship for value here - I don't know, I know nothing about MTTs.

On this somewhat drawy low flop, I think Ali bets a lot of his missed overcards this way. I think he makes a larger bet if he actually has the overpair that I think he is trying to represent, so I think his range is pretty weak and I basically decide to float and steal the pot on the turn. But then Jeremiah calls. I feel kind of the same way about Jeremiah's range here - I think he usually raises with top pair or better on a flop like this, so I don't think he's very strong most of time, and I think there are a lot of floats in his range because he also thinks that Ali's range is weak. I call getting 3:1, figuring that sometimes I can make a pair and have basically the nuts and sometimes when I miss the turn I can make a move and take it down. The fact that I have the ace of diamonds will give me some flexibility going into the turn and also militates in favor of floating.

When the turn misses me and checks through, I stick with my plan and bet to take the pot away. I'm basically trying to rep to these two good players that I'm even more of a fish than I actually am and that I flatted the flop against two opponents with a strong made hand. I think I can make these two red pros buy that story a lot of the time, since I think they know that a lot of the players in this tournament will do what I'm repping I did. So I put in a bet that I think a fish with the nuts would make. Ali folds but then Jeremiah shoves over me, and when he does, I basically hate everything and want to die.

I'm confused as hell and I have no clue what he could possibly have when he takes this line. I'm not sure if he would play a big made hand like 66, 22, 77, 76, or possibly slyly-flatted JJ+ like this - I feel like he would have raised on the flop with those holdings, but this is a tournament and I know nothing about tournament play and I feel like maybe slowplaying hands like that for value is something people do. His bluffs include hands like 33, 44, 55, and hands like mine that he still has because he had a plan similar to my own on the flop going into the turn and is now following through. If he has missed overcards, I'm ahead of him, and if he has any sort of draw, I'm ahead of him, but the thing that ultimately pushed me toward folding was that fact that a decent portion his bluffs are underpairs that are actually ahead of me.

Afterwards, Jeremiah claimed to have 54 and in the hand history he posted on the last entry of this blog, he has 5s4s. The possibility that he could have been semibluffing with a draw was a pretty remote consideration in my head during the hand. I think this is because I personally like to raise on the flop with strong draws to balance my value raising range, and I feel like this is a pretty standard policy and I expect a lot of other players to do this. I also feel like there are so many bad turn cards that can ruin the value of a draw on the flop that flatting with a draw is really dangerous. I guess I'm not really sold on the whole idea of semibluffing the turn, even though I've seen it advocated by a lot of people including Barry Greenstein, just because I feel like even with a strong draw, there's only one card coming so your equity when called can't be that fantastic. But I guess if I was willing to consider the possibility that he does this with a set, I should have been willing to consider that he would do it with a draw to balance.

Even if I had weighted his draws heavily, I still I think I probably would have folded, partially because of fear of the top of his range and partially because of MTT dynamics and fear of busting leading to reluctance to make extremely thin high-variance herocalls.

Finally, I briefly considered the possibility that I was being leveled, but quickly dismissed it because I didn't think I'd given Jeremiah any reason to think that I would be capable of thinking deeply enough to be leveled.

Hands like this basically make me feel like I'm hopeless at poker. I guess this is why Jeremiah is a pro and I'm just some random scrub-a-dub blogger.

Battle of the Bloggers Tournament

You may notice that in the sidebar of this blog, there is a little Battle of the Bloggers badge. This is because I have been playing in the BBT for the past few weeks. This blog got noticed by someone at Full Tilt and I got an invite to play in this series of freerolls, and, being the degenerate edgemonger that I am and salivating over the prospect of like $7 of equity, I've been playing in them almost every week. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to play tournaments and I haven't cashed a single one of them. But hopefully I can luckbox at least a few free dollars out of this before it's over, and maybe get some new readers for my blog.

However, I did manage to bink the $5.50 NLHE tournament in the Goon Series of Poker a couple of weeks ago - ship the $40. I ran really good at every crucial stage of the tournament and don't at all feel like I ever outplayed anyone the entire way and was generally clueless like I am in every tournament. Sometimes a monumental run of cards is all it takes.

I've given some serious consideration to switching from cash games to tournaments, largely based on the reasoning that tournaments attract more fish and are better propositions for a strong player in the long run even though they are much higher variance. I still have a few hundred Gold Chips and some Gold Cards left on Cake and I've been thinking about using them to play satellites and freerolls to learn tournaments. But I think that, at least for the time being, I am going to keep my primary focus on cash games. I feel like there are still a lot of things that I want to prove to myself in the cash game arena before tackling MTTs.

Back in the Saddle

I just wrapped up my first session in about a week and a half and came out nicely ahead. Most of my big winning hands were just people doing retarded things and me running really good. As always, my losing hands were much more interesting.

Hand #1
Cutoff is a 17/16 and small blind is a 32/8. I pretty much hate my life when the fish 3bets, since his range is basically QQ+ and AK. Just folding pre occurs to me and I'm still not convinced that isn't the best play. When the flop comes ragged and he leads, I'm not even sure if AK is still in his range. Folding again occurs to me but I dubiously include some worse pairs and AK in his range and talk myself into getting it in. Thoughts?

Hand #2
I strongly considered folding on the turn here, but I didn't because I was still including some draws in his range; unfortunately, there are so many ways for him to be ahead of me that folding might still be best. But then he instapotted the river, which to me could either mean that he rivered the nuts (88, Kc6c, 57) or he's bluffing. It occurred to me that some of his bluffs could actually be ahead of me if he has something like Ad3d that he thinks is no good after I call two streets and decides to turn it into a bluff. That pushed me a little toward folding, but I felt like there were so few ways for him to have the nuts and so many ways for him to be bluffing and his sizing made me level myself and I called. Unfortunately he showed up with a sick range-merging top two pair that he instapotted on the river with a paired 3-flush board. I struggle in these spots because I am still really bad at assigning accurate ranges to nonstandard things like the 1/3-pot donk.

Hand #3
I suspect it might have been best to raise on the flop and try to get it in against his draws and pairs. I flatted because I wanted to try to get more value out of him on later streets, but I think most of his pairs are shutting down after I flat and I don't know if I can avoid paying off his draws when they hit, as one did.

NL50 Progress
$405.80 / $500.00 after 24,555 hands

I haven't been back to the Horseshoe, but I got a coupon in the mail for a free $20 bet at a table game so I'm going to try head back some time soon and put it all on black.

Horseshoe Progress
-$646 / $2,000.00 after 54 hours

Update

My blog entries have become pretty sparse recently, and this is largely because I just haven't been playing much poker. I'm not sure why this has been, but I suspect it's a function of my brain realizing that the rest of my life is so desperately out of order that it's on the brink of becoming a disaster, and diverting all resources away from secondary concerns like poker and toward trying to get my shit together for a last-ditch push into the end of the semester, exams, and trying to find some sort of job this summer.

A few nights ago, I went back to the Horseshoe for the first time in a couple of weeks, with a college friend. Two hands stand out in my memory.

Hand #1

I open from the cutoff with Js9d and get called by the button, a 30ish guy who seems like a pretty typical TAGfish, and big blind, who is a pretty typical loose-weak player who sees a lot of flops and folds on nearly all of them. The flop comes 6d7dTd. Big blind checks and I cbet $22 into $30. Button shoves for $104 all day, making it $82 to me to win a $156 pot (well, $154 after rake). Big blinds folds, I think for a while and call. The turn comes Jd and the river bricks off and the button shows 4d5d and starts berating me with standard shit like "I guess I was wrong, you are a donk after all!" and "how can you possibly call?" His friends at the table join in and for the rest of the night they refer to me as "the donk." He briefly succeeds in semi-tilting me and I respond with "okay, next time I'll fold - is that what you'd prefer?" and he tanks for a second and says "YES!"

A couple of hours later, Alex and Micah from Cardrunners show up and briefly rail me while waiting for their seats. Villain from this hand starts telling them "your friend is a donk" so I tell them the story of this hand. From time to time villain interjects something like "and he didn't even have a pair!" and everyone involved laughs - but we're not laughing WITH him, we're laughing AT him.

Hand #2

UTG, a meek East Asian woman who was at the table with her South Asian husband and has been playing pretty tight, opens for $10 and it folds around to me in the small blind and I look down at AA and 3bet to $35. UTG calls and the flop comes Qxx. I bet $40 into $64 and she calls without much hesitation. Turn bricks off and I shove for about 3/4 pot and she again calls without much hesitation...and tables AJ, drawing dead into the river. She didn't seem like the kind of player who would do something like this and I have no clue what she was thinking here but I'll take it.

Yesterday I played an online session for the first time in a couple of weeks because Goodeh offered to sweat me for a few minutes.

Hand #1

(After I check/call the turn and the river comes off and I check again:)

[16:13] <Secret_Asian_Man> prob folding to a shoefv here...
[16:13] <Goodeh`laptop> i call

(I call and lose.)

[16:13] <Secret_Asian_Man> lol oops
[16:13] <Secret_Asian_Man> look at me, listening to goodeh and losing a bi
[16:14] <Goodeh`laptop> lol

I deviate from the standard jam-jam-jam line with a big overpair here because I'm experimenting with seeing turns and rivers postflop with big pairs and trying to learn how to play them correctly on later streets, and also because we're 140bb deep. Goodeh seemed to advocate just trying to get it in on the flop and that might be the best course of action.

Hand #2

Similar situation, we're 140bb deep and I have a big pair and I flat with it to try to play postflop poker. Again, I feel like this may have been Fancy Play syndrome and just jamming might have been optimal.

Hand #3

Villain is a 60/15 fish. His river range is either Qx or air and I call hoping to pick off a bluff but he had it. But I'm not sure if calling is right against this type of villain because I'm not sure how often he's bluffing.

Hand #4

[16:26] <Goodeh`laptop> dont hate turning kj into a bluff here
[16:26] <Goodeh`laptop> dont feel that good about my hand
[16:27] <Secret_Asian_Man> yeah i was considering it
[16:27] <Secret_Asian_Man> i was considering foldin gturn tbh
[16:28] <Secret_Asian_Man> and that river would have been rgeat to bluff...

After Goodeh left, I started running good again and clawed my way back up to -$30 for the session from a low of about -$150.

NL50 Progress

$336.40 / $500.00 after 23,661 hands

I feel the need to track my progress at the Horseshoe as well as my online progress, so I'm setting myself a goal of winning ten buyins at 1/2 there and then taking a three-buyin shot at 2/5. Unfortunately I'm still stuck a bunch so that may take a while.

Horseshoe Progress

-$646 / $2,000.00 after 54 hours

I'm Back

I haven't been able to blog for the past couple of weeks because I haven't had Internet access in my apartment. I have an arrangement where I pay my neighbors for access to their wifi, and recently something went wrong with their connection while they were both out of town for spring break and it wasn't fixed until today. For the same reason, I haven't been able to play online at all for the past two weeks.

However, I have logged another 25 hours or so at the Horseshoe playing 1/2 and grinding out free buffets. Ridiculously, I'm now stuck $834 over 50 hours of play. This translates to about -4bi over about 2,000 hands, which I think is within the range of results that could be characterized as standard, but still makes me feel pretty shitty because I feel like my edge at live 1/2 should be massive enough to make this kind of result highly improbable.

The unfortunately reality, though, is that I've been making lots of pretty serious mistakes and losing sizable pots for stupid reasons like not looking at villain stack sizes before barreling and having to fold to a shove getting like 7:1 because I have no pair and no draw. And the times I actually do have a pair, I get raised on the turn and don't know what to do and end up folding and having to wonder, or, worse, getting shown a worse pair by some smug fat old guy. And worst of all, nearly all of my big wins that I can recall have come from sucking out and coolering people. I feel like I've been getting more than my fair share of good luck overall and yet I'm still stuck almost a grand at a game that I feel like I should be annihilating.

Now that March is over and the free buffet promo is dead, I'm undecided about whether or not I'll be going back to the Horseshoe to try to get unstuck. About a week ago, I ran into some Cardrunners employees at my table - a guy named Micah who does graphic design and video intros and also Alex Huang, who is the brand manager for Stoxpoker. I told them I was a TFPT member and hung out with them for a while and they ended up giving me a ride home so I wouldn't have to take the degen bus. We spent the entire ride home talking poker and I gave them my contact info and they told me they would let me know the next time they went and possibly bring other Cardrunners people, so I think I'm just going to sit tight and only go with those guys instead of going back regularly and aggressively trying to get unstuck. Hope they were serious!

In other news, I finally got a new computer. It's an MSI U230 that I got on the recommendation of the Netbook thread in SH/SC on the Something Awful forums. I'm pretty happy with it overall - it's light and handles streaming video well, which it should since it has a dedicated graphics processor in addition to a dual core CPU. It should be sufficient to handle Mikogo streams so I can finally cash in on offers from #smallstakes to sweat me and help me figure out why I'm barely staying afloat at NL50.

NL50 Progress

$367.25 / $500.00 after 22,898 hands

Horseshoe Update; Redline Thoughts

I've been playing a lot of 1/2 at the Horseshoe over the past week and overall I'm stuck $361 over maybe 25 hours of play, which, hilariously, probably works out to less than 1,000 hands. I initially lost almost 6 buyins through a combination of bad luck and horrific play, but I booked a huge win last night to recover a good deal of it. At one point last night, I was sitting with a $1,000+ stack and couldn't stop giggling every time I looked at it.

Online, I think my play recently has been just okay. I've able to avoid making too many huge mistakes recently but I feel like I'm still barely staying afloat and not crushing the games like I feel like I should be able to crush them. Troublingly, I've developed a massively negative redline deficit, the telltale sign of a TAGfish. This is really frustrating and embarassing because I thought I had solved this problem a months ago, since I kept a nice breakeven and even frequently positive redline when I was playing NL100 and 1/2. Now that I've moved back down to NL50 and my redline looks like a fucking waterslide again, I'm no longer sure why this was the case. Was I doing something different during that stretch to play more monstrously that I've now somehow forgotten how to do? Or was it just because I was getting really good cards and the regs at those stakes were good enough to fold their pairs to my third barrels instead of paying me off?

One hypothesis I've been considering is that I've adjusted suboptimally to villains at NL50. I know that the average bad player at NL50 is more stationy. What I've been doing so far in response to this is one-barreling lots of hands against them. My rationale for doing this is twofold: first, the flop cbet is just so good at getting people to fold and works so often even against players who have a general tendency to be calling stations that it's probably still profitable, and second, checking the flop as the preflop raiser just seems so pathetically weak and basically like begging your opponent to take the pot away from you. As a consequence, my flop cbet% hovers around 80-90%.

But it definitely seems possible that there are flaws in one or both of these components of my reasoning. I've been considering that there may be certain types of loose-passive villains against whom one-barreling does show a profit, but against whom a polarized strategy of either checking or committing to multiple barrels would be more profitable. And there may also be villains - possibly the same villains - who will still play weakly and won't stab at the pot even after the preflop raiser shows weakness by checking the flop. It seems possible that at least part of my enormous redline deficit has come from one-barreling against these types of players, which could be a significant leak. This is something I will try to keep in mind at the tables.

NL50 Progress

$336.60 / $500.00 after 22,365 hands

Paddy's Day

Hi Guys,

This month has been pretty good life wise. Work is really cool, I'm settling in, making friends and enjoying the top secret stuff I'm doing. I've had some trouble finding a place to live, checking out a few different places. I've found a place I'd really like to live so I'm waiting on the current occupants to make up their minds and reject me as an awesome flat mate. Work has been kind enough to extend my stay at the temporary apartments by one entire week, so I am not homeless as of next Saturday.

Today is St. Patrick's Day which if you didn't know is kind of a big deal in Ireland. I get the day off work and I went to be last night determined to get out into town and see the parade. I woke up at 9AM with a runny nose, a fever and a splitting headache so that was the end of that.

Poker has been pretty brutal to me this month. I feel I'm playing well but obviously there was some degree of tilt when I lost 7 buyins in 30 minutes playing NLHE. I get to use the runbad excuse (see graph below) but the truth is that I shrugged off losing 1.5k and went off with some friends to see Alice in Wonderland. Poker just simply isn't that important to me anymore in the grand scheme of life happiness; winning or losing.



One of the things I found when I had poker as the main focus in my life was that to a large degree it defined me. Have a bad day at the tables and suddenly your entire night/week/month is ruined. The highs of winning were no match for the lows of losing 2 buyins. In that respect I think my poker game has come a long way and I feel that if I do decide to continue playing any kind of volume in the future that will help a ton.

This will probably be my last month at pokerstars. I'm 2500VPP through a 7.5k target over halfway through the month. I missed the supernova amount by about 400 vpp last month and will lose supernova this month. I've concierged an impulse buy laptop (which I then returned, Dell decided to be cunts so we'll see if it arrives at my door in 3 months time...) so my FPP balance is only around 8k. I'm sure I can blow through it playing sats.

I'll probably end up taking my play to Full Tilt Poker now that I have rakeback and that whole shabang. So look out for Britneygirl121 rocking up a table near you.

Peace out guys, sorry for the lack of updates, I simply don't care enough anymore.

Good luck at the tables.

Trip Report: Horseshoe Hammond

I've been watching this season of High Stakes Poker and just watching people play live has gotten me interested in playing live again, but my regular home game has pretty much stopped running because the host's wife has gotten sick of it. I heard about a promotion at the Horseshoe Hammond that offers a free buffet for four hours of poker play, and spring break just started for me, so yesterday I hopped onboard the 8:15am Chinatown degen bus to take advantage of it. I love how the Horseshoe knows that Chinatown is degen central and offers these free shuttles to funnel the sickos into the pit.

My sleep schedule recently has been fucked and this time I can trace it back to one particular reason that probably deserves its own post, but for now just know that I woke up at around 9pm, so I had been awake for about 12 hours before heading out.

Sitting aboard the bus with basically the dregs of society and inhaling the fumes emanating from the smoke-soaked seats, I realized that I actually love the dirtiness of the whole casino experience. Being surrounded by smelly, grumpy people who I'm pretty sure can't afford to be churning away their income at the nickel slots is kind of depressing but also weirdly serene. Compared to sprawling palaces like Foxwoods and Mohegan, the Horseshoe Hammond is a pretty dingy, gross little boat and it's full of dingy, gross little people and I love it in a dingy, gross little way. As the shuttle departs, I call the poker room and have them put my name on the list for 1/2.

Within about ten minutes of arriving, I'm seated a table full of people who seem to have been playing all night. One of my first hands is against a portly mustachioed middle-aged regular where I raise his limp with KQ and he calls. Flop comes AQ5 and he check/calls my cbet and, when fiddling around with his cards like a lot of these live players like to do, angles them in a way that allows me to see that he's holding a face card. I don't think he plays AK or AQ this way so I'm pretty confident I'm ahead at this point, but I make a mistake by betting about 2/3 pot on the turn, which ends being too much for him to call and blows him off his hand. Oops, misplayed that semi-superuser info.

Next big hand was KK in middle position. I 6x it and obviously get five callers. Flop comes Q32 and the big blind, a very drunk Greek dude who's pulled an all-nighter, donks out for about halfpot. I flat for value against worse pairs and it's heads up into the turn, which is a 6. He bets out again and I shove and get snapped off by his Q3, but I river another 6 to counterfeit. Nice life.

Shortly thereafter, a greasy long-haired guy with a short stack shoves about 20bb over my KQ open and I call getting 3:1. He has AK but the flop comes KQx and the turn and river blank off and I try to keep a straight face through his "what the fucking fuck" tirade. Nice life.

I then proceeded to do a bunch of retarded livenoob things like inadvertently 15x'ing it because I incorrectly thought there was a raise in front of me because a bunch of people called with $5 chips and then check/folding AK after getting called on a ragged flop and JJ after getting called on an AKx flop. Oops.

A few hours in, it folds around to a short black dude in the small blind who's been pretty tight and he completes and I pick up AA in the big blind and 5x it and he calls. Flop comes J96 and he check/minraises. This, of course, always means the nuts but I know nothing about these games or this guy and I have AA so I 3bet planning to fold to a shove. He shoves and somehow my plan goes down the shitter and I end up tanking and calling and praying he somehow has AJ or QT but obviously it's 99 and I double him up. Terrible. This same dude went on to flop a set against someone else's AA later in the day and talking to his friends about how he's going to try to find someone to "sponsor" him.

I horribly stacked off again about an hour later. I limped 7s8s in early position and we were 4-handed going into a flop of 6s5s3d. I lead for about the pot and everyone calls. Turn comes 2c and I bet out again and get called by two people and the third shoves, laying me a little better than 2:1 on my stack. I'm not sure if it's right for me to call here because I think my flush draw is frequently dominated by at least one of these fuckers but I'm a huge fish and can't fold all my equity so I call. One of the old guys folds 84 face-up and the guy who shoved shows A4 and dodges my 11 remaining outs and suddenly I'm down to my last bullet.

At this point I've grinded out my four hours and can claim my buffet trip and go home, but I'm stuck and I'm playing to get unstuck even though I'm starting to get tired. Also, I ate four or five bowls of cereal before leaving since the one pot that I have for cooking real food was dirty and I didn't want to wash it, and that volume of milk working its way through my digestive tract was now creating substantial abdominal discomfort. I should probably also just stop and eat and go home at this point because it's been a while since I've put anything into my stomach and getting regular food intake and adequate sleep is important not just for my general health but also so I can start making gains again in the hundredpushups workouts I've been trying and failing for months now (maybe this deserves its own post too).

I got a call from FedEx around this time too and they told me that they had tried to deliver a parcel to my address but nobody was there to sign for it. This parcel is obviously the second installment of my Cake cashout, a check for about $2,500. They offered to let me pick it up and I told them I would, but I eventually decided that I wanted to keep playing. In retrospect it's pretty clear that I was just generally not making great decisions at this point. Life was basically throwing me excuse after excuse to get out of there and I tossed them all away and just sat there stewing.

In spite of this generalized malaise that had gripped me by this point, I played pretty solidly for a while and rebuilt my stack to about $400 just by taking down lots of pots with cbets until some time midafternoon when they started playing back at me on scary turns where I ended up bet/folding pairs a few times in a row (QQ on JT26sss, AQ on A625sss, 33 on KK8T).

Toward the end of my session, an old lady who has actually been seemingly playing a pretty solid TAG game limps in middle position and I raise my button with KQ and get called by the big blind and her. Flop comes AKQ and it checks around to me. I bet, big blind calls, and old lady shoves, laying me a little better than 2:1. I'm pretty confused and tank for a while before calling, expecting to see either JT or a bluff, but she shows up with AK. GG, old lady.

Last hand, I'm down to about half a stack when I pick up AJ on the button and a shortstack in the blinds shoves over my raise. This guy has been pretty nitty and this should probably be a fold but I'm pretty tired and possibly vaguely tilted and I just watched a Stoxpoker video about light 4-betting and 5-betting against LAGs and completely inappropriately misapplied it to this utterly different situation to which it was totally inapposite and called. He had KK but I rivered an ace to stack him and he spat some insults at me and the dealer before storming off into the darkness. I suppressed my laughter long enough to pick up my chips and leave, down about $300 over an 8-hour session.

I got my free buffet ticket at the podium and cashed out at the cage and went upstairs to enjoy my free buffet that only cost me $300. My horrible series of misplays continued at the buffet, where I tiltingly loaded a plate with pasta dishes at the Italian station because I didn't survey the entire selection and thus didn't see that there was prime rib at the carving station. After I was done eating, I wandered around the pit for a while until the degen bus came back to pick me up. I got home at about 8:30pm and insta-fell-asleep, but woke up around 2:30am (actually I guess 3:30am, gg daylight savings) feeling this vague restlessness so I got up and wrote this post.

Overall I played pretty badly and ran pretty hot. Ending the session down less than two buyins is pretty great considering how awful some of my decisions were. I'm still confident that I have a pretty massive edge in these games and my biggest leaks are just lapses in discipline and self-control. Actually, part of me thinks the previous sentence is true for pretty much every poker game I've ever played - my psychological game has been undergoing very rapid evolution recently and maybe this deserves it own separate post. Additionally, the circumstance surrounding this trip were less than ideal (not much sleep, hunger/indigestion) and in a lot of ways, I put myself in a position not to be playing my A game. There's a lot of money to be made at the Horseshoe and with spring break upon me, I plan on making a serious effort at claiming my share of it over the next couple of weeks.

What Goes Up...

Just wrapped up a big losing session. I lost of lot of big hands that I'm not sure I played well. Help:

Hand #1

Villain is 49/11 and I don't really know how to weight his range here. I think he gets it in on the flop with most of his sets but I can easily see him flatting them too. I think he holds onto most of his pairs but I can easily see him folding them too. My turn shove is hoping to get it in against a pair that he can't release and still have 10 outs against his sets but it turns out that I actually have 16. Obviously he dodges them. But I have no idea whether or not my play was correct because I don't know enough about villain's tendencies.

Hand #2

Same villain. I'm calling his stupid min3bet hoping for basically this exact flop. When he flats my checkraise I have the same problem as in the previous hand, where I think his range is mostly weak pairs but maybe some sets and I don't know how to weight them. When the super-scary turn falls, I bite down and shove for twice the pot, reasoning that his pairs really have to think twice about calling and even if they do I have 15 outs against them going into the river. I've been watching some Ed Miller videos on Stoxpoker and I've been trying out plays like shove overbet semibluffs against weak players, hoping that they get confused and make mistakes. He tank-calls and it turns out that I have way fewer outs than I thought. This is admittedly a high-variance play, but I'm not sure that it works out often enough to be worth making, since a lot of the hands that fold might just check that turn and give me a free card, and a lot of the hands that call are going to have a higher club and I won't have any flush outs.

Hand #3

Same villain again. My first big mistake in this hand is not 3betting enough to cover the short opener. In doing so, I trap myself into this ridiculous situation where I'm forced to flat when he shoves because of that stupid rule that doesn't let you shove over a shove. I feel like there was a time when I understood the rationale behind that rule but I've forgotten it and if anyone wants to refresh my memory, I'm all ears. Anyway, I cbet the dry flop and villain shoves and I make the second big mistake of the hand - stupidly instafolding because I'm scared of the absolute size of the shove while ignoring effective stacks and the fact that I'm actually getting almost 3:1 on this call with two overcards and a backdoor flush draw. This stupidity ended up working out for me because villain had A9, but even looking backwards, I have no idea whether or not a call would have been right because again, I have no idea how to range this villain. I think he has TT or JJ a lot there but obviously he showed up with A9, and he could conceivably have all sorts of hands. Help...

Hand #4

Similar to Hand #3, I need to decide whether or not to stack off getting 3:1 with two overcards and a backdoor flush draw. Here at least I gave myself the chance to make a reasoned decision, but I decide to make the call and got shown a set. I thought I was against mostly pairs and I really didn't think that 88 was even in his range after he min3bet and called my 4bet. I'm not sure if I should have considered possible sets or slowplayed KK+, or weighted them heavily enough to shift the analysis toward a fold.

I'd been feeling so good about poker recently but this session brought back a lot of old the feelings of confusion and disorientation and uncertainty that I had been starting to clear from my head. It also undid a lot of the progress I had been making toward my 10-buyin goal. Hopefully this is just a blip and I can get back on track and crush my way up to that goal soon.

NL50 Progress

$85.05 / $500.00 after 16,586 hands

Running Good!

Over the past few days, I've run really good and made a lot of thin high-variance plays that have worked and made a lot of money. I'm happy with my play overall and it's been easy for me to identify a lot of mistakes that I've made. I've been able to avoid Fancy Play Syndrome and I haven't been outleveling myself too much. Best of all, I'm feeling confident in my ability to beat these games. Watching some videos on CardRunners and Stoxpoker has been helpful. Listening to a proven winning player talk through a hand or a session is really helpful to me. Most of the time the commentary will echo my own thoughts about the situation and this is reassuring, and even when it doesn't, I still gain some insight into different lines to take in given situations and the reasoning behind them, which is tremendously helpful.

NL50 Progress

$208.10 / $500.00 after 13,902 hands

Still Recovering!

Played a little session tonight and caught every card in the deck and won a bunch of money. Feels good, man.

NL50 Progress

-$93.15 / $500.00 after 11,565 hands

Recovering

I've played some more over the past few days and have more or less broken even. There have been a few hands that I've really butchered horribly, but I still feel like most of my losses are coming from getting coolered.

I'm still in the red for this go at NL50, which sucks, but at least I'm starting to feel a lot more confident in my ability to tell the difference between runbad and playbad. A big part of the misery of this downswing has been in not knowing whether I'm making good decisions but just running bad or whether I'm playing horribly, but since moving down to NL50 and especially over the past day or so, that feeling has started to subside somewhat. The frequency of difficult and confusing spots has decreased. I don't know if this is a function of NL50 just being that much easier or if it's just a function of the cards I happen to have been getting recently, but either way, it's definitely more comfortable than feeling totally lost and helpless. Whatever the cause of this phenomenon is, I hope it continues and allows me to build some confidence and achieve some peace of mind.

NL50 Progress

-$233.60 / $500.00 after 9,117 hands

NL50 Update

I played a bunch more and lost a bunch more. I feel like it was mostly coolers but I feel like I'm reaching the point where I can't even take those in stride.

Losing is getting more and more painful the farther I fall. I still feel like I should be able to crush these stakes even though reality is suggesting that I'm not really that much better than the rest of the pack of busto clowns who are splashing around at NL50.

I've also fallen into a mindset where every dollar I lose has become so painful because all I can think about is how even if everything goes well from this point on, it's going to take so fucking long to grind back up to where I was and the thought of just sitting here desperately for months before I can make a mere $500 at this stake is just so soul-crushing to me right now. I reread an old citizenwind blog entry from CardRunners that used to motivate me, but now I just find it incredibly discouraging. He basically just decided to wade into NL50 and effortlessly demolished it for $1,000 in about 12,000 hands with his biggest downswing the entire time being about $150. I've lost almost twice that in half the hands. And he found his performance disappointing over this interval and is convinced that someone focused on beating the game could do much better than he did. This used to inspire me but now it just tilts the shit out of me because the message seems to be "there's no such thing as variance if you are a good player."

I'm too mentally and psychologically exhausted to post any hands right now and I don't think I ran into any interesting ones, but maybe I'll go over my most recent sessions and fine a few to post later. I'm kind of reluctant to do so because I don't want to become one of those players who only ever posts thinly-veiled beats under the pretext of getting feedback.

NL50 Progress

-$261.30 / $500.00 after 7,347 hands

February Results

February was the worst month of my poker life thus far, by a huge margin.

By stakes:

As I'm sure is evident from my posts for the past month, it's been pretty miserable for me. I was really hopeful a month ago that I'd be writing some amazing brag right now about how dropping out of law school to play poker was coming into focus as a realistic option but in light of reality, going pro seems like a pipe dream.

I've concurrently experienced a pretty bad month in my non-poker life, wherein I've missed a ton of class, done close to nothing for school, alienated my classmates and professors, and continued to ruin my academic and professional reputation and life.

The Monthly Goals format seems like a bad fit for this blog because I post so often that it would just be trying rehashing a month's worth of posts, so I think I'll just continue posting results graphs and tables at the beginning of every month but not set month-specific goals beyond my micro-climbing progress goals.

Hope March goes better than February did.

Cake Cashout Update

My Cake check finally arrived yesterday. Obviously it was short $35 so I emailed them and they admitted that they fucked up and charged me a check fee because their system counted my first check request earlier this month as my one free check for the month. They gave me my $35 back and everything is cool.

This entire process has been a massive pain in the ass and huge source of stress, but given the stories I constantly hear about how much trouble people have with check requests on FTP and Stars, I think it could have been a lot worse.

But yeah, ship the $2,965.14 right into my bank account.

Two Pair

Played a little session last night in which I ran into the same troublesome spot three times. Well, two times, but I thought three.

Hand #1

World Series of Poker Champion Leo Wolpert would probably advocating squeezing preflop here, which probably has merit, but I think flatting is fine. I donk out on the flop here because I think I have the best hand but it's very vulnerable and I don't want to risk the button checking behind and a J, Q, or K falling. The button flats me and I think this range for doing so is mostly worse pairs and maybe some overcards he can't release. The turn is pretty great for me and I fire again for value against pairs and get called again. River doesn't seem terrible - it will kill my action against QT and JT but will get me paid against KT. I fire and villain shoves. I don't think he's bluff-shoving the river very often if at all and his range at this point looks to me basically like flopped sets, AK, and KT, with maaaybe some backdoored flushes or QJ. I'm not sure if he slowplays a set like this on a two-tone board and I am so suspicious that he might be doing this with something like AQ or AJ but his line seems pretty monstrous and I eventually apply the Goodeh theorem and fold. Thoughts?

Hand #2

I pretty much butchered this one start to finish but it is still sort of a degenerate case of the same broadly defined situation of making two pair on a river that weakens two pair. I didn't even realize during the hand that the river was just a total blank that gave me three pair, but even if I had read my hand correctly I probably still would have leveled myself into fucking it up. I should probably bet the flop but I stupidly don't because I'm afraid of folding out the shortstack instead of stacking him. So I just let him get there and I think I just made two pair on the river but even though I think improved I'm not sure I want to play with him anymore because the spade draw got there. In retrospect, I think this is a fold because villain's range includes a ton more hands that are ahead of me - any two spades, any T. But I call, reasoning that villain is shortstacked so he's going to be more volatile and his range is going to be wider in the other direction as well. Terrible.

Hand #3

I don't think I ever fold my two high cards facing a minraise in position preflop and when it's checked to me on the flop I'm betting here pretty much always. Turn is a relative blank so I fire again for value against worse pairs and diamond draws. The river gives me top two pair but fills the diamond draw and villain donkshoves into me for 1.3x pot and I tank-fold. I don't think there's much in his range that's worse than me. All of his Jx hands probably check/call and I don't think he makes it to the river with hands like AK or KQ. He could easily be holding diamonds or a 5. I don't think he's bluff-shoving often. I'm really suspicious that he might be enough of a sicko to turn something like JT or J9 into a bluff on this river and part of me wants to call it off with top two pair but instead I apply the Goodeh Theorem and fold. Thoughts?

NL50 Progress

$150.80 / $500.00 after 4,075 hands

Back on Track?

Just wrapped up another nice little session 339-hand, $224.80 session of NL50 while half-listening to my Estates and Trusts professor crow in amazement over how easy it is to buy life insurance using Intelliquote. Again, I enjoyed a very easy session where really no nontrivial decisions came up at all and I won flips and coolered people. It's great to be winning again and I hope this means I'm back on track. I'm feeling refreshed and revitalized and ready to charge back upward and win all the money on Full Tilt.

NL50 Progress

$210.65 / $500.00 after 2,315 hands

S H I P

Just booked a $200+ win over 400 hands of NL50. Didn't really run into any tough spots, just won flips and coolered people. Even though my cards basically played themselves, I'm pretty elated to finally book a solid winning session, and I hope I can sustain this momentum.

NL50 Progress

-$14.15 / $500.00 after 1,976 hands

NL50 Update (Still Losing)

Just lost another $40 in 651 hands of NL50.

Hand #1

Calling pre to setmine, betting the flop in position hoping to take down dead money. I barrel this turn basically always because it's just so good for my preflop call and flop bet range against his preflop call and flop check/call range - I don't think there are many kings in his range and there are plenty in mine. When he calls and the J falls and he checks it to me again, I fire again for basically the same reason, hoping to fold out some of his weak queens and worse pairs that he might have had trouble folding. Are there enough hands that he's not folding to a third barrel left in his range so that I should just check behind? There are a lot of two pair combinations in there. When he check/shoves over me I'm pretty sure he has something like QT or JT or a set so it's a clear fold but should I bet the river at all?

Hand #2

Again, not really sure how to play this river. Villain is a pretty loose 40/10 Russian and I think I'm betting for three streets of value against his draws, worse pairs, and even A-highs. Is check/calling better on the river so as not to give him a chance to shove over me with air? Should I maybe even bet/call against this villain on this board? I don't know how often he shoves with air here.

Hand #3

Floating to steal on the turn but he calls and I follow through on a scary turn card. Again, not sure whether I should bluff at this river or just give up and check behind. Villain tanked briefly before calling with JJ so maybe the problem is that my bet was too small, but I think I would bet this same size if I actually had a flush and were trying to get value. I think the fact that he check/called the turn was confusing and I just sort of defaulted to aggression on a vaguely scary-looking river, but now that I think about it, this river is probably not that scary of a card for his range. I think that a reasonable range for him going into the river is 22-99 and Ax and Kx of spades, and all I'm folding out of that range is 77 and 99 and I'm valuecutting myself against the rest of it. Now that I think about it, checking behind is probably best. Villain shows up with JJ which is very strange - his line seems just to make it difficult for him to play.

Hand #4

I'm so suspicious that he has 88-JJ here but I apply the Goodeh Theorem and fold. Thoughts?

NL 50 "Progress"

-$230.45 / $500.00 after 1,574 hands

No More Rush

Talking to Goodeh and others in #smallstakes recently has convinced me that playing Rush is probably a bad idea for me right now. The difficulty of building strong and thorough reads, and impossibility of finding and exploiting particular fish is probably a bad thing overall for me and cuts into my winrate, amplifying the impact of variance. I still think that I have an edge on the Rush field but I acknowledge that the edge is thin and playing regular tables is probably better for me at this point in my poker career.

So I sat down just now and 3-tabled some regular NL50 and it turns out that I can lose even faster there than I can on Rush! I lost $134 in 387 hands.

Hand #1

This is pretty awful by me and basically happened because this villain had been hammering me constantly with 3bets, which is a situation that I find pretty hard to handle. I call preflop basically to setmine but on the flop I totally lose sight of this plan and decide to float and steal on the turn because I suspect that he has air a lot. The 3flushing A is probably a bad card for this because now his Ax are all ahead of me and he's probably never folding any of them getting 3:1 and some of his flush draws are probably also calling. Unfortunately, I don't really see a clearly better way to play this. Folding to his 3bet pre and just letting him continue to run me over four hands in a row seems bad, open-folding 55 pre seems bad, calling pre and folding to his cbet on the flop seems worse than just folding to his 3bet pre, and calling on the flop and checking behind on the turn seems like it's just begging him to shove any river. Thoughts?

Hand #2

Villain here is 39/24 and I'm willing to play ATs out of position against him so I call pre from the big blind. With one overcard, a gutshot, and a backdoor nut flush draw, I think I have enough equity to float him on the flop, even out of position, since I think he's basically auto-cbetting and I can also bluff any diamond turn or river. I make the nuts on the turn and checkraise for value. Should I perhaps raise more, or even shove on this turn? I didn't want to scare off his one pair hands that he might be willing to take all the way but I had stupidly neglected the need to deny odds to his flush draws. And how should I play this river? I don't know if I get value out of anything by shoving here, since the flushing A scares away a lot of the hands that I was trying to get value out of on the turn. Should I check and call a shove? That seems to allow him to play perfectly against me, checking behind with anything worse and getting maximum value out of his flushes. Should I check and fold to a shove getting almost 3:1? Help...

Hand #3

Stealing pre; never folding to his stupid min3bet getting better than 3:1. Flop seems perfect for me - little do I know that I'm drawing dead. I happily take the free turn card and happily pay what seems like a good price for the river, where I make my flush. He bets out a little less than halfpot. I think his range is pretty wide here but I don't know if raising is good here. I'm hoping to get value out of some worse flushes, possibly some weirdly played trips, but mostly things like AJ and AK/AQ that he can't lay down. I just don't know if he's the kind of player who will pay me off with those hands. When he reraises I think his range is flushes and boats, and the fact that he min3bet me preflop makes me strongly suspect he may be bad enough to reraise me with worse flushes. I call getting better than 3:1 but should I fold?

NL50 Progress

-$187.15 / $500.00 after 906 hands

Thoughts on Downswinging and NL50

Most poker players, including myself until pretty recently, severely underestimate the role that variance plays in determining results even over large sample sizes. Everyone has read the 2p2 posts where people have done simulations based on winrates and standard deviations and found that it's possible to have a relatively enormous edge (3+ BB/100) and still be a significant loser over a fairly large sample (100,000+ hands). Everyone understands on a sort of abstract intellectual level that this is within the broad range of possible outcomes for a poker player. But I don't think anyone actually believes that it will happen to him until it actually does.

I definitely subscribe to the "Survival of the Luckiest" theory of the beginning stages of poker. This theory has been the topic of some discussion on 2p2 and elsewhere, and I think there is a lot of merit to it. Basically, I think that most successful poker players ran really good during crucial periods of their careers, especially in the important early formative stages, and became acclimated to winning. Because their first experiences with poker were so successful, they came to think that crushing the games for statistically aberrant winrates was the norm. So when a successful player's luck begins to normalize, his unrealistic expectations amplify the psychological impact of the downswing that, while the biggest of his career and completely outside the realm of his psychological expectation, is so well within the realm of statistical expectation that it would in fact be an unusual result for it not to occur over a large sample.

Poker communities like 2p2 are infested with people who are still in the initial rungood stage of their poker careers and think their good results qualify them to speak authoritatively on poker and variance and how it doesn't exist and how only donks can ever lose 20 buyins, but who in reality don't have even a rudimentary understanding of the awesome power that variance really has in determining results. If you post a thread on 2p2 on this subject, the two or three voices of experienced veteran poker players who have seen and felt the effects of variance will be drowned out by the shrill cacophony of idiots who have never experienced a real downswing in their lives.

The piece of constructive criticism that I most frequently receive is that I lack confidence. I have long suspected that in reality, I have an appropriate level of self-skepticism and everyone else is irrationally overconfident. I think that there is almost a sort of selection bias that causes the most vocal posters on 2p2 to be overconfident, for the same Survival of the Luckiest reasons I previously discussed.

One of the things that I find most repugnant about the overconfident poker mindset is that it forecloses the possibility of improvement. People who just shrug off every loss as "meh, variance" are ignoring the very real possibility - certainty, I should say - that there are leaks in their games and these losses provide an opportunity to identify and plug them. I guess I'm just not really sure where confidence ends and self-delusion begins, and I'm terrified of inadvertently crossing that line and accepting shot-term peace of mind to the long-term detriment of my game.

This attitude is good insofar as it leads me to search vigorously for leaks in my game and examine lines that I take in a critical light. I think my problem is that I have taken it too far, past the point where it's helpful in this way and up to the point where it's convinced me that I'm an irremediably incompetent poker player. I need to get this idea out of my head and find the appropriate amount of healthy skepticism without turning it into crushing hyperbolic self-doubt. I need to find some way to balance my range so that my "wow, that was so donkish of me" thoughts are mixed in with a decent amount of "meh, variance." I need to accept the unfortunate reality that, in poker as in all walks of life, bad things happen to good people. It's the very nature of the game that it's possible to do everything right and still lose.

I am reminding myself to be a student of the game. This is difficult after having gone off for $3,000 at stakes four times what I'm contemplating playing now - after a heater like that, after demonstrating to myself that I'm capable of doing that, I've found myself sliding into the dangerous mindset that I've already learned all the lessons there are to learn at lower stakes, that I've already solved those games. I am making a conscious effort to avoid that kind of thinking and to try to see every hand as a new lesson to be learned that will strengthen my game in preparation for my next shot at higher stakes.

In that spirit, I am also trying to take this 31-buyin downswing in stride, as a learning experience. In a way, I feel almost like this experience is a badge of honor that demonstrates that I've played enough volume to have started to experience what variance is really like. It's almost as if I've graduated into a higher rank of poker experience.

In addition to all of this, a few other factors are weighing pretty heavily in favor of taking my chances at NL50 rather than quitting poker altogether. One of these is the fact that I still have $260 of bonus to clear and I have until June to clear it. Another is the comforting fact that, in spite of all the shit that I feel like I've gone through over the past month, I'm still a little bit ahead of where I had envisioned myself. When I claimed my deposit bonus on Cake in mid-November, I thought I was barely going to be able to clear it in time grinding six tables of NL50 for two hours a day. I'm back at NL50 now, but at least I spent some time at higher stakes, gained some valuable experience, and earned some valuable rakeback and bonus at a much faster rate.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I feel like the first major downswing is almost a sort of crucible in which the composition of a poker player's spirit meets its first true test. I've fallen so very very far and been beaten down so badly and I've come now to a point where I am face to face with utter failure, staring it straight in its ignominious eye. Will I quail under its demon gaze? With my back to the wall, having lost so much ground, will I fall to my weary knees, despondent, and surrender before the final battle is even fought? Will I give up on myself? Is that the person I am? Is that who I want to be?

No. I know that I am teetering on the precipice of losing everything I've put into this game. I know that failure is possible - perhaps even likely. I know that the remainder of my poker career could amount to nothing more than the final tortured thrashings of a terminal case. But I will rot in a special hell if I let that knowledge intimidate me. I won't submit. I won't acquiesce. I'll fight it - I'll fight it down to the last grubby penny of my meager bankroll. I know that I may end up busto after all. But if that's to be my fate, at least I'll go down swinging. Downswinging. Heh.

So there. I know what I have to do - ten buyins at NL50 and then another shot at NL100. I just played a Happy Hour session of NL50 Rush and I'm down a buyin already, but fuck it. I'm not going anywhere until you see me post the NL2 hand in which I literally lose my last penny.

NL50 Progress

-$52.75 / $500.00 after 519 hands

Fuck

Just played another Happy Hour session of NL100 Rush and lost $356, plummeting through my stoploss for NL100. I'm now 30 buyins down from my peak. Over the next few days I'm going to need to figure out whether to move down to NL50 or just quit poker altogether and save what little is left of my bankroll.

I'm too stunned to talk about hands right now but here are a few so that others can look, if anyone cares.

Hand #1

Hand #2

Hand #3

Hand #4

Envy the Dead

Just played another Happy Hour session and lost another $440. I'm now 3 buyins away from my stoploss at NL100, after which I'll have to make a decision either to move down to NL50 or to quit poker.

After the psychological turmoil and tiltrage that I've been going through recently, I'm strangely untilted by this past session even though it was my biggest losing session in terms of buyins in the past couple weeks. I think this is because most of my big losing hands were just coolers.

Hand #1

I don't think I'm ever folding to his flop checkraise - the question is whether to call or shove. I think shoving is better because I think he takes this line a lot with AK and I don't think he can get away from it so I think I get value there. When he shows up with KK I think it's just a cooler. Calling and never folding seems okay too because there's a small chance that my shove will scare away his AK and it potentially saves me some money if he somehow doesn't manage to get it all in with his KK. I'm not sure which is better but either way I don't think I can avoid losing a lot of money with AA against KK sitting 188bb deep when a K flops so I'm not tearing my hair over this; I'd be thrilled to hear the perspective of anyone who wants to voice a reasoned disagreement.

Hand #2

Oversetted 171bb deep. I thought about whether or not I could ever find a fold here but against a range that includes sets, AJ, KQ, AcKc, and AcQc, I have 43% equity and I'm getting almost 2:1 to call off my stack. Interestingly, against two players with that range, my equity plummets to 18%, but I don't think the short stack's range is that narrow. If I include A2+ in the short stack's range, my equity rises to 34% again. Pretty sure this is just a cooler or at worst a close decision where I erred on the side of not folding a set, but again, I'd love to hear reasoned disagreement.

Hand #3

Oversetted 100bb deep. A lot of people advocate limping small pairs in early position so I've been experimenting with it a little bit recently. I don't think I like it because it's difficult to limp in early position with a balanced range and it's hard to build a big pot for when I do hit my sets. It also creates the weird situation observed in this hand. I think villain's range is mostly Kx and the point of my line is to get as much value out of a mostly-Kx range as possible. Arguably, I misplayed the river and should just flatcall, because most of his Kx aren't going to lead that strongly on that river and his range starts to looking more like two pairs, sets, and straights. But arguably, I get value out of his two pairs enough to make shoving worth it. Thoughts, anyone?

Hand #4

This is a close and kind of confusing spot for me on the river. Should I check/call to get value out of his missed flush draws? Should I bet smaller out of fear that I'm behind, since a lot of his flop calling range has improved to two pair or possibly even a running straight on this turn and river?

Hand #5

As the pre-flop raiser, villain here check/calls the flop and then leads for less than half the pot on the turn. In my limited experience, I have found that this weird and confusing line usually means nuts or air but I have decent equity against the nuts so I call thinking I'm getting a decent price with okay implied odds to get value if I hit my draw. Little do I realize that I'm drawing dead against what he actually has. My bluff at the river is thin at best and might be flat-out terrible. I'm trying to represent a set or a straight made with 55 or As5s, which is seldom a good range to be trying to represent. Checking behind just seems so bad against his air, though. Is this perhaps a good spot to bet out a third of the pot and fold to a raise?

Hand #6

Arguably, I should fold on the turn here even with my overpair and nut flush draw. I'm getting 3.5:1 on my call and my equity against a range including boats, flushes, and trips is 16%. I don't know if the good implied odds I'm getting against his worse flushes and trips make up for the reverse implied odds I'm getting against his boats. I think the river is a fold when I miss because I'm basically bluffcatching and I don't think he's bluffing often enough to make calling profitable.

NL100 Progress

-$939.89 / $1,000.00 after 7,654 hands

NL100 Update; Introducing Goodeh

It is my distinct honor and pleasure to introduce my new co-blogger, Goodeh. He probably will not post as often as I do, since, as he said, he has a sick job and life that will probably keep him pretty busy, whereas I am one of the least employed people I know.

Goodeh began taking poker seriously a bit before I did and has gotten very good very quickly and is basically pretty sick at poker and life. These days he mostly prefers to play pot-limit Omaha but his analytical poker skills obviously apply to no-limit hold 'em as well.

But enough about people other than me. I just played another Happy Hour session of NL100 Rush and lost a bunch of money again. However, I was mostly psychologically and emotionally under control and I think I played decently overall.

This was the most interesting hand. I've been thinking a lot recently about how to play against the squeeze and whether or not setmining is profitable in a 3-way 3bet pot and I'm not sure about this but I think mid pocket pairs are not terrible hands to experiment with in a situation like this where there's a squeeze and a call by the original raiser. I think midpairs have decent equity in a 3way pot against a squeezer and a preflop raiser who flats the squeeze. So I experimentally call in position. Squeezer is a Russian who is 38/30 over 55 hands.

The squeezer fire fullpot with less than pot behind on the flop but I suspect he's the kind of fucker who does this with his AK and his failed squeeze air hands and his failed squeeze hands that might have caught a weak piece of that flop, like 64 or 75 or like Kc8c, so I shove over for value against those hands and as a thin bluff on the off chance that he's good enough to fold TT or JJ. He obviously isn't, and all the money goes in with me as a 9:1 dog. Not sure if I interpreted the available information correctly in formulating my read here and not sure if my play is any good even if I did.

NL100 Progress

-$506.94 / $1,000.00 after 6,744 hands

Live from Ireland

Hello!

I should probably go into my poker history or something but this is not the time for it. I have just moved from home of 19 years in London to a temporary flat in Dublin, Ireland to start my new career. My employer is a poker company.

At this stage I'm not going to divulge what I am doing or who my employer is but I am pretty hyped, I start tomorrow.

Sorry for the brief and concise nature of this blog, but right now I really don't feel like writing a long post.

An actual poker related post will follow shortly

Good Session

Just played a nice little 384-hand happy hour session where I felt like I was in a really good rhythm and a lot of things went my way - I hit a lot of flops and even when I didn't people folded to my cbets. Psychologically I felt well-centered and stable and capable of folding when likely behind. I didn't win much money but the psychological boost of having things go well is really very nice.

I have a long way to go, but if I can somehow sustain this momentum and keep this mental state, the long journey will be much more pleasant.

NL100 Progress

-$479.44 / $1,000.00 after 6,048 hands

Nope

Just played again and lost another $350. Here are some hands.

Hand #1

Same old story, flop top pair and get raised on a two-tone flop. Never have any clue what to do. I switch to check/call and I think the turn and river are pretty good cards for me given that this is my plan but obviously he rivers a set.

Hand #2

This is just terrible by me. After I get called on the flop I should pretty much be shutting down since I'm only ever getting called by better pairs. After this hand it was like I woke up from some hypnotic state with only a vague memory of what happened and no memory of my thought process past the flop. Maybe this is the way I tilt and I was tilting after Hand #1.

Hand #3

Not sure if I should be 3betting here but folding JTs to a button open seems bad and flatting and playing it out of position also seems bad. I got really excited on the flop because I flopped two pair but in retrospect it's fairly obvious that this is a terrible flop for me because a lot of his preflop raise and call 3bet range either has a set (TT-QQ) or a straight (AK). The turn is terrible for me too because his AQ, KK, and AA are now also ahead of me. I should probably be shutting down on this turn as well but I was irrationally exuberant with my two pair and I fire on overcard turns in non-3bet pots out of habit so I looked at stack sizes and shrugged and shoved. He showed up with QJ which means he's almost as retarded as I am but just a tiny bet less retarded and that tiny bit is enough to win.

I'm playing really badly and feeling lost and out-of-control. I'm beginning to feel physically sick and violent as I lose this big hands. I feel like it would be a shame if I'm actually a good player and I end up quitting because of a downswing but it would also be a shame if I went broke playing online poker and I'm not sure which is more likely any more.

NL100 Progress

-$531.49 / $1,000.00 after 5,664 hands

Tentative Fistpump

In a bizarre twist, I ran really good at Rush. I'm cautiously optimistic that this signals that I've finished atoning for whatever sins I committed against the universe to deserve the past couple of weeks and things can go back to the way they were.

NL100 Progress

-$172.34 / $1,000.00 after 5,346 hands

Cleared Cake's Retarded $25 Bonus

Unfortunately, I lost $170 doing it. Now I'm going to 3-table NL100 Rush and try to grind out Iron Man for the day. Wish me luck...

NL100 Progress

-$379.24 / $1,000.00 after 4,845 hands

More of the Same

Some new horrible shit happened to me. After going through the trouble of scanning in all my shit and sending it to Cake so their "processor" could cut my my goddamn check, I got an email back from them saying that they transferred my entire cashout amount back into my account without any explanation. I emailed them back immediately asking what the fuck they were doing and I got this reply:

Thank you for your email. Apologies but our third party check processor recently changed his policy and so it is not possible anymore to cash out via check over an amount of $3000. As the policy was unexpectedly changed and the check processor was not willing to process a requested cash out over $3000 it had to be canceled. Your are free to request the other full amount of a maximum $3000 per check. Otherwise you can cash out through eWalletxpress or Quicktender/UseMyWallet. In relation to the experienced inconvenience and for you as a valuable customer we have now credited $25 in the pending bonus section of your Poker account.

Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.

Kind Regards

Sara

CakePoker Support

Back when I titled my first post about this situation "Beat: Cake is scamming me," I was more joking than not, but now I'm really starting to wonder if I'm actually being made the victim of fraud.

Of course, being the degenerate edgemonger that I am, right after I requested my $3,000 check I sat at a few NL100 tables on Cake to try to start clearing the $25 of bonus they gave me. Obviously, this happened immediately. Villain donking out into my top pair/open ended straight draw leads me to raise because people do this all the time with garbage that they fold to a raise, and when he shoves over I think there are a lot of draws in his range so I call getting almost 3:1 with my top pair/open ended straight draw. Obviously villain shows up with a made straight.

NL100 Progress

-$210.55 / $1,000.00 after 2,940 hands

The Usual

Played a few hundred hands just now and lost another $150ish. I guess I will post a couple of the many hands I probably horribly misplayed.

Hand #1

I have been talking to Leo recently and he advocates squeezing with hands like AJ and KQ to take down dead money and avoid having to take a flop out of position with them. Well, I squeezed here and totally whiffed the flop. Betting seems like the least bad of several bad options here so I fire and villain tank-calls. Turn gives me flush outs in addition to my A outs so I shove trying to fold his weak pairs but obviously he flopped a set. Seeya later, $112.

Ways I could could have played this differently:

1. Flat pre?
2. Fold pre?
3. Bet smaller on the flop, which then allows me to bet/fold a non-spade non-ace turn and bet/shove a spade or ace turn?
4. Check/fold flop?
5. Check/fold turn?
6. Bet/call turn?
7. Bet/fold turn getting like 5:1?
8. Quit poker forever?

I think I like #3 though #8 is a strong candidate.

Hand #2

This is just the most recent manifestation of a problem that's plagued me basically my entire poker life - not knowing what to do when I flop top pair and lead out and get raised. Back in old days I would just get it in but people always had a set. Then I switched to folding and people would always show that their flush draws and laugh in my face and needle me in chat. Then I switched to calling and never folding and people would always either have sets or get there with their draws. So here I try reraising and folding to a shove. But this also seems bad because it lets him shove with a balanced range of draws and stronger-than-top-pair made hands. Especially since this is blind vs. blind, he could easily have any two diamonds or AT or T8 or J9 or TT or 88. I have no idea how to weight these in his range or how to play optimally here.

NL100 Progress

-$77.65 / $1,000.00 after 2,892 hands

In which our intrepid hero is frozen in his tracks by a nonstandard preflop line...

Okay, so I just played this hand. Villain is pretty nitty, something like 13/11 over the few hands I've seen him play so far, but I don't think that's really helpful at all. What the fuck am I supposed to make of this min3bet and then flatcall of my 4bet? The fact that villain is even capable of playing this weird min3bet/call line preflop makes me question the usefulness of logic and reason in trying to formulate the best play against him. Does he do this with AK and AQ often enough in addition to his 99-QQ to justify openshoving AK for less than pot on any flop? As usual, I have no idea. I have no idea if I played this right, I have no idea if ranged villain correctly, I have no idea how villain plays various parts of his range, and I have no idea how even to begin to figure out any of these things.

NL100 Progress

$49.45 / $1,000.00

NL100 Update

Made a few big hands and got paid off and also blundered a few times and paid other people off but the former happened a little more often than the latter and I'm up to $169.00 at NL100. I'm running pretty good but not really even enjoying it because I feel like I'm just luckboxing my wins and getting outplayed in my losses and these are fucking kiddie stakes anyway.

I'm still feeling really psychologically unstable and reacting really strongly and emotionally to every lost pot, which is really out of character for me. For example, as this was happening, my inner monologue was something like "okay, late position open and flat, I can probably squeeze here. Great, the original raiser folded, I'm definitely taking this down...wait, what the fuck is the guy who flatted on the button doing calling? Ugh whatever, this clown folds to my cbet on any flop almost always...WHAT THE FUCK is he doing calling me on this flop? His line makes no fucking sense. What the fuck is this? I have ace high, I have to check/fold but GOD I wish I there was some way I could fucking punish this fucker. Fucking dammit, what the fuck could he possibly have there? A set? Two pair? A fucking straight? Does he have an underpair that I can make him fold by firing again on the turn? Is he exploiting the shit out of me with pure air? What the fuck is this? I have no fucking clue what's going on here. What the fuck? No idea what's in his range here but my equity against is probably pretty bad so I guess have to fucking fold here. What the fuck? Fuck! FUCK!"

This is really out of character for me. I used to pride myself on my zen-like ability to absorb beats and just grind away with a placid aplomb. But recently I've been experiencing really powerful frustration and aggravation seemingly ever session. And, in a perverse negative-feedback-loop kind of way, the fact that I'm tilting is further tilting me because it makes me feel worse about myself because I've lost the ability not to tilt.

NL100 Progress

$169.00 / $1,000.00

Welcome Back to NL100

I found some amazing fish this morning and stacked him and ended up $160ish in the black - 16% of the way there, hell yes, let's go. But just now I sat at a couple of Rush tables for happy hour and this happened and then this happened and it made me feel pretty bad. But whatever, just coolers. I think I played them fine.

I've been noticing that recently I've been teetering on the precipice of doing something that I almost never do, which is tilt at the tables to such an extent that it affects my play. I think of myself as being pretty solid when it comes to keeping my feelings of despondency from interfering with my play, but after those two hands happened, right as I was beginning to feel some hope that maybe I was going to be able to string together a few winning sessions after the downswing of my life, I actually felt a physical sensation, a sort of smoldering discomfort in my upper abdomen, and I came pretty close to falling apart.

Even when (I think) I'm playing well, I just can't manage to win. I understand intellectually that the nature of poker is that frequently you can do everything right and still lose, but I've just been losing for so long and I feel so dejected and hopeless that I can't use that intellectual understand to salve the frustration of cooler after cooler. I feel like a little kid being punished for doing something that nobody explained to him was wrong.

NL100 Progress

$5.25 / $1000.00

Strategic Retreat

Well, I crashed through my stoploss for 1/2 and, like a good little boy, I've moved down to NL100 to lick my wounds. After I make 10 buyins at this level, I'll try to move back up. It's pretty miserable to look back and see that at the beginning of the year, I was up $3,000, and that in the intervening time I've somehow managed to bleed it all back, then go on another hot streak and win another $2,000 and then lose that all back too.

Moving down sucks a fat smegma-encrusted dick for the following reasons:

1. My reward for stacking someone is only $100, half as much as it is at 1/2.
2. The standard preflop raise sizes and pot sizes are tiny compared to what I'm used to at 1/2, making me feel like I'm playing kiddy stakes.
3. Rakeback accumulates and bonus clears at half the rate it did at 1/2. (Incidentally, Full Tilt finally credited my account with the rest of my deposit bonus and I've started working on clearing it.) Additionally, Iron Man is twice as hard to clear every day.
4. Even if I run good, it's going to take for fucking ever to dig myself out of this hole with my upside potential cut in half and I feel like it's going to be a fucking eternity before I claw back up to the stakes where I feel I belong.

I don't know how different NL100 and 1/2 really are. I'm terrified that they aren't really that different at all and all of the things that I'm doing that caused me to lose at 1/2 will cause me to continue to lose at NL100. On the other hand, I'm also kind of terrified that they are different and that I'm only good enough to beat NL100 and I'm going to be stuck here taking unsuccessful shots for the rest of my pathetic poker career.

I've been feeling pretty lost when I've been trying to think about poker recently. I feel like I have all of the analytical tools and a solid framework within which to analyze situations, but somehow lack the experience or mental acuity to be able to make this analytical framework useful in practice. I know that if I can just examine villain's actions thus far and put him on a range of hands and figure my showdown and fold equity against his range and act to maximize my total expectation, I should win in the long run. But when I'm actually sitting at a table and I 3bet from the blinds and get flatted and cbet with missed overcards on a T84 flop and get flatted again, I have no idea what percent of villains range consists of 88, 99, TT, JJ, QQ, KK, AA, AK, AQ, J9, 97, 65, AT, A8, T8, 77, 66, 55, 44, etc. etc. etc. I don't know how many times he opens and flats a 3bet when he's holding these. Furthermore, I have no idea how often he folds any of these to a 2nd barrel or how often he shoves over with any of this when I fire more than half my stack on a blank turn.

Even when I'm sitting down after a session is over and looking at a hand and stoving ranges, I don't know how many hand combinations to include. And even when I eventually decide on some reasonable-seeming range, the equity result is totally nonobvious. I have no idea how I'm supposed to estimate these things with any degree of confidence in the 25 seconds I have at the table. I don't consider myself particularly bad at math, but I feel like I'm miles away from being able to do this. Is this something that comes with experience? Are some people just able to do it naturally? I have no idea how anyone does this, unless they're some sort of Phil Galfond-like savant. The seeming impossibility of doing this makes me think there must be some heuristic tricks or shortcuts to simplify this analysis, but what are they?

I feel like all good poker players are in on some sort of secret to which I'm not privy, and it might not even have anything to do with whatever arcane secrets Cole South uses to deduce villains ranges accurately and compute equities in his head. I wish I knew what good players know that I don't. I wish I knew even how to find out what they know and I don't.

I constantly hear stories about people who deposited $200 on PokerStars and ran it up to $20,000 in six months. Moving down right now is especially psychologically crushing because I feel like I was so close to achieving that sick dream. I went on a $3,000 tear right as I took a shot at 1/2 and I feel like I was on the cusp of achieving critical mass and going on a nuclear explosion for five figs and becoming the next rags-to-riches Poker Idol hero all-star. But I just can't seem to put it together - I just don't seem to have whatever it is those amazing players have. Hope I can find it at NL100!!! Fuck this whore earth.

I just played another 1,681-hand session and lost $573.15. Poker is going badly. The rest of my life is also a fucking mess. I hate everything and want to die.

Getting Owned All Over

Just played a two-hour session and played four hands that have me reeling in disgust and vicious self-doubt.

Hand #1

After villain bet and called my checkraise on the flop, I had him on exactly 99-QQ. So when the A falls on the turn I think it's perfect for me to shove for a little more than pot. Welp, villain shows up with the nuts. Seeya later, $316.

I have a lot of trouble playing the flop out of position in 3bet pots where I hold missed overcards. The fact that we are 150bb deep here makes it even harder to range villain accurately, and it turned out that he was indeed smart enough to widen his range to include implied odds hands like 6h4h. Since I thought his call preflop and bet/call on the flop meant a weak overpair, my thought was to use the deep stacks to my advantage to put a lot of pressure on him on the turn since I'd shown nothing but extreme strength in the entire hand up until that point. Unfortunately I neglected to take into account the possibility that he had some sort of implied odds hand that made the nuts.

Actually, in retrospect I don't think it's likely he has a set, since I think he tries to get it in on the flop with his sets because the board is suited and connected and my range potentially includes hands that have decent equity against a set. But even so, I think there's a pretty good chance that my line is just awful anyway. Basically, when I take my line, I'm counting on him (1) holding 99-QQ, (2) being willing to put me on a higher overpair or AK, and (3) being willing to fold to a shove when the A falls on the turn. I don't think all of these things conditions are satisfied very often. But honestly, I have no fucking clue. I feel like I know nothing about poker right now.

Hand #2

Again, this is a situation where I'm out of position in a huge pot with missed overcards on the flop. When villain 3bets and calls my 4bet, I have him on 99-QQ and AK, and I feel like I can make him fold by shoving for a little more than pot on this flop and representing KK+. Of course he doesn't believe me and snaps me off with JJ. Seeya later, $219.

No idea what to do here. Check/fold? Bet half pot and fold to a shove getting 5:1? Massively overshove pre? How the hell am I supposed to play this?

Hand #3

Here I call pre because I think I'm getting good implied odds against an UTG raiser. I flop a 15-outer and I raise on the flop because I like to build a big pot to win when I hit and also lay claim to fold equity, both immediately and for later streets. I brick the turn but still have decent equity so I bet enough to let me shove on the river. Of course I brick the river too but my plan was to shove so I follow through and shove. Villain tanks and calls with 2 seconds left in his time bank and obviously he has AA. Seeya later, $203.

Again, I vastly overestimate my fold equity on this board. My range when I shove the river looks like a set or a missed draw and nobody will ever believe that I have a set. (And yet, somehow, it seems like nobody ever pays me off when I actually do have one either. Selective memory, I guess.)

No idea what I'm supposed to do here. Checking behind might be okay if I don't think I have any fold equity at all, which could easily be the case, but it gives him a free showdown and surrenders a big pot to his weak pairs that he could have kept. I could maybe make some tiny bet of 1/4 pot to fold out any missed draws that he might have and possibly scare off some of his weak pairs. That seems easily exploited by anyone good enough to see what it means and shove over it, but will people do that? I don't even know, and that's such a crippling problem. I have no idea how I'm supposed to play this hand and all of my analytical methods are coming up short because I don't know how villains play certain parts of their ranges or even what their ranges include.

Hand #4

Unlike the other hands, this is one where I at least have some idea of what my errors might be. On the flop, my options should be either flatting to keep the pot small with my medium-strength hand or raising more to deny odds to draws. On the turn, there is a very strong argument to be made for a fold. Bet/call on the flop and check/raise on the turn is just such a bizarre line and I'm so confused about what to do, but it seems like in general people only ever do shit like this with the nuts. But it's just so weird and I have no idea what it means and I have omg top pair so I call. I make two pair on the river and I justify calling again to myself by telling myself that I'm ahead of K3 and possibly some AK he would play like this and all of his bluffs. Obviously he shows up with 33 that he held onto on the flop and filled on the turn. Seeya later, $198.

Calling my raise on the flop with 33 seems terrible in general, but against me, it might not be bad overall because my inability to fold against his weird out-of-nowhere aggressive line on the turn and river after he gets there is laying him sick implied odds. Is he bluffing rarely enough that I should fold on the turn getting 3.5:1 or on the river with top two pair getting nearly 3:1?

I feel like I've just played so many massive pots recently without having any idea if I'm playing them right. I was up $2,000 at one point this month and now I've lost it all and I'm barely even for the month. I've crept back within four buyins of my 1/2 stoploss. I'm also massively stressed out over my situation trying to cash out out Cake and not knowing whether or not $6,600 has been stolen from me. My sleep schedule has been fucked recently and I've missed tons of class and my academic life is falling apart like it does every semester. And I just spent my 23rd consecutive Valentine's Day alone. I wish life would stop owning me.