Tilt Mania

So with my title, I mean Full Tilt, not that I'm tilting. I put it because I have been going a little crazy with Full Tilt lately, neglecting just about all of the other sites. I have continued to make a steady rise in my NL2 full ring game. And I have logged a lot of hands with it. Still can't believe how many people will make moves at these stakes with 1 and 2 outs, but as long as I'm making very few advanced plays(which is hard for me because that is the play that I'm used to), and stick to ABC poker, then I am winning. I imagine that it will be like this for the next couple stake levels, so I will probably just have to get used to it. I also played my first CardsChat tourney in about a month and a half last night and we ended up making a deal with 5 people left and I was in 3rd, so I came out with $24, which was just $1 under 1/5 of the remaining prize pool, so it was split pretty evenly.

I am also going to attempt to play in the World Blogger Championship Of Online Poker (WBCOOP) on PokerStars, but they picked terrible times for Central Standard Time. Everyday they made it either when I will still be at work, or when I will be on my drive home. The first night, the NL tourney, I got home and I was out in 577th place out of ~1600. Last night I took the train into the city and there were 900 people left in the PLO tourney out of about ~1500 and I had 1200 of my starting stack left at 25/50 blinds, but the 3 active guys at my table had 15,000 plus chips, so I really didn't have much room to work with. I waited for my first good hand which ended up coming about 4 hands in, AAKJ double suited and pushed my stack and was called and his hand hit a BS fullhouse, and I was out. But because of their stacks, I am assuming there are a lot of people that are unable to play and the ones who are playing are just scooping the blinds constantly. Oh well, maybe I will get lucky tonight, but I won't get home until it has been running for at least a half hour.

Last point...I updated all of my bankrolls on the right, so they are all correct now(for today at least). Take it easy guys.

Found My Groove

So after pouring over hand histories through Holdem Manager for hours I found a couple leaks in my game that I thought would completely turn my cash game around, and boy have they this month so far. One big thing was that I was playing about 5-8% more hands than I would have liked to have been playing, and another being that I didn't feel like I wasn't aggressive preflop as I think I should have been. So I narrowed my range down a bit and upped the preflop raising a bit and voila...up 8 full buyins so far in January! I have only played about 2000 hands, but I have been playing a lot more so far this month than I had in the past couple, and it's showing. Another thing that I have started to try and do more is keep a better book on my opponents(taking notes on their tendencies and weaknesses that I notice), and that has sure helped here and there as well. The only problem that I have been having with that is that I play on 3 different computers, and the notes are kept locally on your computer, so as soon as I switch computers, my notes are gone as well. I thought about possibly writing a program that I can keep on my flash drive that will keep all of my notes stored there, because I always have my flash drive, but I don't know if I want to dive into something like that right now. We'll see.

Also, I got 4th in a $8.80 tournament and took down $85 for that, and the next day I was just into the money and took $15 for another, so up another $84 on Bodog. I don't have access to all of my poker rooms right now, so I will update my monetary totals later today and get some current values up there. But I better get back to work. Until next time, good luck at the tables.

A Little Live

Welcome to 2010, hope everyone's New Years was exciting, I know mine was. We had a party at my friend Sam's house and at the end of the night, 2 other guys and I played a little poker. $10 buyin with one rebuy available if wanted. I was the first to rebuy when I pushed with AKs into a four to the flush on the flop against my buddy's pair of 10's that held up. To be completely honest, that is the only hand I really remember though, as there was obviously a lot of drinking before that to ring the New Year in. In the end though, I won the whole thing winning $60 total for a profit of $40 on the night.

The next night we went over to another friend's house to play a little bigger game. 8 people wanting to play this time and it was $20 with on rebuy available. I wasn't drinking as much this night, so I remember more key hands. We started out playing that the payout would be 120-40-20 and the winner would get all of the rebuys(top heavy, right?), but once it got down to 4 and everyone who was playing had rebought, we all agreed that 2nd and 3rd would both get $40 to break even and the rest was 1st.

So the first hand I'm going to talk about was the one that I ended up busting out the first time with. 5 players left in the game and I had just over my starting stack left. I'm in the big blind with A7s. First two players fold, button(my friend Joey) calls, small blind(my friend Matt) completes. Now Joey, the chipleader, is the type of player who will call just about anything(he LOVES chasing draws), but will many times try to raise you off of the pot, he's the definition of a LAG player. Matt is the complete opposite; he won't bet unless he has a real hand and I knew he wouldn't call a big raise here. My point was to get Joey in hoping to be able to extract value from him if I hit something. I raised about 3xBB and Joey called, Matt folded as expected. Flop comes K38 rainbow, no help to me, so I fumbled my chips around and then just raised about half the pot, Joey thought about it then called. Turn comes a 7. I quickly checked, so did Joey. The river brought the A, giving me two pair. I bet half the pot again, thinking that Joey would try to raise me off the hand like he had been doing on the river a couple times earlier in the night taking advantage of his large stack. He comes over the top for about 3 times the pot, I then pushed all in and he thought about it and called. I turn over two pair, Aces and 7's, he turned over two pair Aces and 8's, the first time I have ever seen him slowplay...

Another big hand that was about 4 orbits into the game, I was again in the big blind and Matt was sitting to my right in the small blind and it folded around to him and he just completed. I looked down at 72o and I wanted to make a play with it. Up until this point in the game I had been played very tight, mainly because I really hadnt' gotten any big hands so I just had to pick my spots to steal blinds, so I had a good image to steal. I raised it kind of big to 4xBB. Matt thought about it and then called. Flop was 10-6-3 all clubs. Matt bet half the pot but looked really uneasy about it, so I popped it up to 3 times the pot. He was very uneasy with the call, saying at one point that he knew I had the flush, but eventually did. The turn came the Q of diamonds. He checked again, I bet pot and this time he raised me just 2x original pot. So I knew he had the Q, but I also knew that he thought I had a flush. I tanked for about 2 minutes on this, thinking that if I pushed allin, he should most definitely fold. Although I ended up folding just because I haven't played enough with him to know that he would fold top pair in this situation. He ended up turning over AQo. I asked if he would have folded if I would have pushed all in, and he said he would have for sure(he also isn't the type that would be lying here) so I learned something for later on that one.

All in all, that night I ended up rebuying with 4 people left thinking that I could at least squeeze into the money(blinds were kind of high compared to chips, but the low stack had already rebought and was back to being very low, lower than my rebuy actually). I ended up doubling up on the first hand after rebuying. Then I took two hard hits, the second one knocking me out in 4th. The first I was all-in with AKs vs QQ that held up. The second, I was short stacked to about 3/4 the starting stack and got 77, so I pushed and got called by KK that held up. So I lost $40 on the night there. So for the weekend live, after two little SNGs I am even money, without any rake even taken out.