What a week end!

Saturday morning I went to Gatineau to spend the week end there with my girlfriend and meet a couple of very good friends.

Melissa was thrilled to hear about my results from friday. She kept asking me how it went, details about specific hands etc. Was pretty cool.

Having a few hours to kill on saturday I just roamed around Hull for a while and stumbled upon a poker item store! There I finally found the Copag EPOC cards I was trying to buy! These cards just look great!


Last night when I came back home I decided to go for a Sit & Go on pokerstars. Well as usual for me I managed to be on the short stack for a while! That said I doubled up and got right back into it and in the end I won it all! Went heads up with 6 times the chips of my opponent. I still have not reviewed the log but I can't wait to do it. Will post more after I do.

First live tournament... w00t!

Wow! Where to start... I went to my first live tournament tonight.

I had not been playing for a while so at first I was pretty nervous and anxious. This almost cost me my tourney life and the shame of being the first to bust.

Early on I got dealth Ac 5c in the small blind. Everybody fold except the button who limped. I decided to test the water and I made a standard raise of 3 times the big blind. Everyone folded except the button who called. Flop came A-6-5 rainbow. I bet about the size of the pot, button calls. Turn is a 6, if I remember correctly I bet again and got called. River was a blank. Turns out the button had AK and took the pot crippling me. I hang in there, taking small pots left and right and losing some too.

When we merged the 2 tables to one final table I was severely short stacked
, with about 6 big blinds left. Once again I hang in there, managed to double up a few times. I don't remember any particular hands, but when we came close to the bubble I had a decent stack and managed to take control of the table, stealing pots left and right with raises. That brought me eventually to heads up play.

The hand that got me out, I had about a third of the chips and the guy goes all in pre flop. I check and I have KQs so I call. His treys held up and that was it.

Well, pretty extatic right now, going to celebrate a bit, have to wake up early tomorrow to go out of town. I'll come back to this blog later on if more comes back to my mind.

Work work work work...

HORRIBLE week at work. Didn't leave me much time to play at all.

That said things should be quieter this week and already this week end I'm back playing. So far so good. I really feel like I'm playing really well lately. I might just be a bit overconfident and too cocky right now, but my feeling is that I can own our home games, I can make money regularly on the stakes I'm playing on and I even broke my psychological of making money in a sit & go!

On the subject of my SnG money finish. I reviewed the hand history and I really did not play my best in there. There is no doubt in my mind that I could have won this thing, but a night of insomnia the night before left me tired and at the end when we got heads up I just wanted it to be over so I could go to bed. Next time I'll take it all.

New goals : by my birthday I want my bankroll to be big enough to allow me to move on to the next stake.

Finally!

I finally managed to finish in the money in a sit & go!

Finished 2nd taking in 13,50$. I still have not reviewed the whole game log, but I was severly short stacked for a long time and still managed to survive elimination and build up a nice stack by outing the 4th and 3rd player.

I will post more about this once I've read the logs.

Overall my poker is going pretty well right now. I've started playing a bit again after a WoW-induced hiatus :)

Home game results

So, came out of our home game with 1 win at a sit & go. Plaid pretty well although I sucked out to bust the last player on the bubble.

One thing that comes to my mind and of which I am really proud is the way I played a particular bluff. I ended up heads up with early position against a player who is usually pretty tight. I made standard strong raises, going for about the size of the pot while having absolute rags. He folded to it and I showed him I had 10-2 offsuit. No big deal there, but later on, I turned a nut straight. My cards were the middle cards of the straight and I played strong all along. When the river came, I reached out, counted his chips and bet an amount that would put him all in. He thought about it for a while, looked at me and said something like "You bluffed me earlier so you might be doing it again." and called my bet. I flipped over my hand and he mucked his. That's the hand that gave me the chip lead and put me in a comfortable position for the rest of the game.

Next week end I might go play in a tourney in a poker room in Montreal. Really curious about that.

Btw, tonight was the superbowl, was really rooting for the Bears but oh well... Guess Manning deserved the ring with all the hard work he puts into this.

Live home game

On friday night we're having a live game at my place.

Pretty excited about it. Lots of good people I like a lot will be there. Most of them are not "serious" poker players but so far the few times we've done this have been really fun. Guess I'll post the results and a summary of how I play here after.

Will most likely be my last fix of poker for the week end, going to help a friend move. Hopefully it gets a bit warmer by the week end!+

Dream hand

Ok I've got to post this. I sit down at a table, not a single player I know, first hand I'm dealt is 10-10. UTG raises seven times the big blind, making it 0.14 to go. I decide to go see the flop with my pocket tens since I have position on the guy. I call as does the small blind. Sweet, now I have a decent hand AND position on everyone involved.

Flop comes Ts 6h 4c giving me a top set. Small Blind checks, UTG raises about a third of the pot, I re-raise him the size of the pot since I have the nuts and I figure this guy has an overpair or is just trying to buy the pot. Small Blind folds and UTG calls.

Turn card comes 4d so now I have a nice full house! Even better. UTG checks to me and I decide to bet about half the pot figuring I will most likely go all in on the river and I want to keep him in as long as possible. He calls.

River comes 3d, UTG checks to me... I figure he's gone but I decide to push all in, hoping he thinks I'm trying to buy this pot. He calls! I win a huge pot.

PokerStars has this weird thing where if you go to the showdown, you can see the other player's hand even if he mucks it. I hate it, but I still went and checked, he had pocket cowboys...

Bursting the bubble

Well lots of things happening this week. I've been playing pretty good, probably the best I've played overall since I started taking this stuff more seriously.

I decided to make a second deposit, not because I really needed it, but more to give me more options to play on different stakes and do sit & go tourneys.

I've always felt that my style of play was well suited to tournament, probably more than to cash games actually. So I did quite a few sit & go tournaments lately. Overall I am pretty happy with the way I've been playing in these, I feel the way I've played has given me good chances to make money finishes. That said, for some reason I always fall a bit short and seem to always be the one bursting the bubble! One such occurance that happened and can't get out of my mind is this hand.

We're playing 4 handed, blinds are at 100/200 and everyone is sitting between 3000 and 3500 chips. I have a slight chip lead with 3525.
I'm in the small blind, UTG calls the blind, button folds the action to me and I'm sitting on Qh-Jh. I decide to raise 3 times the big blind to make it 800 cause, well, I feel QJ suited is pretty decent and I don't want to let the big blind see the flop for free. Big blind folds to my bet and UTG calls.

Flop comes 6c Qd Jd. GREAT flop for me, I was guessing at that point that UTG must be having pocket cowboys, pocket aces or a big slick. I bet 1000, about half the pot, hoping he has KK or AA and calls. As a matter of fact he does call. Right there the only hand that beat me are either pocket Queens or pocket Jacks. I really doubt he would have called my raise pre-flop with pocket sixes. There are 2 diamonds on the board so I figure that after the turn it's either I go all in, making drawing to a flush pretty expensive, or I get careful if a third diamond comes.

Turn comes 7h. I make my move and go all in for 1725 more. that means he's got to put all his chips in to see the river. Now that's about 1400 more chips to see a 6500 pot. He calls. We both show our cards and he has Kd-7d. So basically right now any diamond or any King kicks me out of that tourney, that means he basically has 12 outs, so the odds for him to call were actually good.

And then of course the river came Kc and I was left with about 350 chips, a prayer and a story. Threw it all in on the next hand and then went home.

A few things about that hands :
1) I think I overplayed it a bit pre-flop considering my position. Just limping in might have been better.
2) If I was to play that hand aggressively I might has well go all in right after the flop. If he had KK or AA he would most likely have called anyway but his pot odds to draw to his flush (which was what he was basically trying to do) would not have been as good.

Overall though I don't think I played it that bad but I realise the few small mistakes that cost me my tournament life in that hand now that I go through it again. Guess that's all part of the learning process!

On a good sidenote I am playing really well in cash games lately and have been making a profit, so who knows... maybe I'll be back for more sit&go action soon enough!

Back on the felt

Last night I went to a party for one of my friend's birthday. Pretty much ended up talking poker a big part of the night. So here I am today, letting WoW aside for a short while and playing poker. So far so good, I feel like the few days away from the table really helped. I'm playing better than I have in a while. Everything just seems to click. Hopefully I can stay on that good track.

I will most likely split my time be splitting my time more evenly between WoW and poker this week. I will try to do a few SnG this week too.

By the way I have to admit to being kind of curious to know if anybody reads this... not that it really matters, I do it more for myself. But if anyone is reading this please post a comment, just to satisfy my curiosity ;)

That didn't go so well

Oh well. Tried playing on 2 tables at once. Didn't work out too well. Lost a bit of money there, then went back to playing on 1 table at a time. Spent some time on 0.02/0.05 and 0.01/0.02 tables trying to grind back up what I lost earlier this evening.

I am not at about 10$ in my bankroll. I will most likely take a few days off with the release of Burning Crusade. Most likely I will still play poker a bit but just not as much. I think it will be good and will help me refocus a bit.

I've watched the first episode of the second season of Rome. Seems like the 2nd season will be as good as the first!

Busy week end

Well played a bit tonight, made a small bit of profit again on 0.01/0.02 tables. Now up to around 15.95$. Not much more really but hey, 10 big blinds is 10 big blinds.

I won't have much time to play this week end so I guess reaching 20$ will have to wait for next week. I think I'll sign up for a sit & go as soon as I reach 25.50$. I have a feeling my style of play works well in sit & go so this might be a nice formula for me.

Twin Peaks

Another non-poker related post. I finished watching the first season of Twin Peaks last night. Wow, is that really a season finale? Good thing I don't have to wait 6 months for season 2 or I'd flip.

Still a pretty good show. The characters are so funny with all their quirks.

The tides are turning

Finally decided to spend the whole night on 0.01/0.02 tables. I feel I'm heading back in the right direction.

Started the evening with about 9$ left in my bankroll, now I'm up to $15.84. I know these are not good gains but it's still better than the losses I was having in the last few days. I ended up being a bit short of my "dream" goal of tonight which would have been to double up my 9 or even better get to 20$... but it's still a nice evening of poker.

I don't have any hands that pop in my memory or stand out particularly tonight, but I have to say that so far I seem to be winning a lot whenever I get pocket queens.

Oh yeah now come to think of it there is one hand that I remember. I was in the big blind and get Ah 9s. 3 people limp before me, I decide to just check it. Now the flop comes 8h Th 3h. Hmmm, nut flush draw. The small blind folds before anyone raises so now it gets to me. I decide to bet pretty strong since I figure people are going to be afraid of the flush anyway so I decide to raise the size of the pot (0.08$ at that point). To my surprise both players call, pot is now at 0.32$... not a bad pot on a 0.01/0.02 table. Now the turn comes, Jh and I hit my nut flush. Now I'm pretty happy because I figure there's a good chance someone else has hit the flush, I hope they did with the Kh. I decide to start slowplaying a bit, so I raise about 0.10, a third of the pot, hoping to trap whoever follows me later on. First player folds, second calls.
Turn card comes... 6h!!! So there's now a flush on the board. I make my move and go all in, hoping the guy thinks I want to scare him away to avoid sharing the pot. To my great joy he calls, all in, at 3.25$. I win the 6.73$ pot with my nut flush while he throws away Kh 8c.

Not in good shape

So I finished last night with just above 9$ in my bankroll... not in great shape.

Decided to make a few adjustments to my style of play. Came to the conclusion that I might have to reload too. I'm ok with that. Part of the learning I guess.

So far I find that my style of play seems to work better in tournaments and Sit & Gos than cash games. Hopefully the few adjustments I'm making will help fix that.

I am also most likely going to buy pokertracker to help me figure out what is "wrong" with my play.

I'll let you know how it goes. Will most likely play on 0.01/0.02 and some 0.02/0.05 games tonight. Trying to grind my bankroll up a bit. No more sit & go's until I get up to at least a 50$ bankroll.

On a non-poker note I've been watching the first season of Twin Peaks lately. Love it so far. I think I have one episode left to watch. Will give it a look if I hit a streak of cold cards or get on tilt... I also have the 2nd season here and the prequel for later on.

So...

I finally decided what I will do with that blog. I will post the ups & downs of my new "poker career".

Finally decided to make the big jump a few days ago and started playing for real cash online.

Not much success so far on cash tables. Finished just out of money in 2 sit & gos...