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