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