April ended up being a great month for me. My best ever in fact with me winning ~$37k. HEM Graph below. Obviously most of my winnings came from the stud games, as I ran pretty poorly in the big bets.
I made some vast improvements in my O8 and stud8 games last month and am feeling good about these games going forward. I’ve been taking a look at my year to date results and I’m a winner in every single game now with the exception of stud hi. This is kind of perplexing because when I first started playing the stud games, stud hi was the only game I won at while losing at all the other stud games which means I either got worse from studying the game and watching other people play or my opponents got significantly better as I moved up in stakes. I imagine a little bit of both has happened to be honest and when I just played super tight when starting out because no one ever folds anything instead of doing all this math with pot odds calling down with the worst hand to hope to hit aces up or whatever has just made me worse. Regardless, it’s clear I have some work to do on this game moving forward.
Now you may be wondering why I’m feeling a bitter after coming off my best month ever. Well it’s for a lot of reasons. Most notably is that since April 1st I’m -$64k in EV and my year to date EV graph is below.
It’s been absolutely disgusting latley. I sit there and grind and grind away at the limit game rounds of the 7 game rotation slowly accumulating chips only to lose all them all literally every single time I get all in during the PLO or NL rounds where my opponent has any sort of equity. It’s to the point where I get a sick feeling in my stomach every time I play a big pot because I KNOW my opponent’s going to suck out on me.
To make matters worse the state of the ftp 7 games is pretty annoying. The bad beats don’t usually bother me too much as long as I get to keep playing afterwards but the games don’t run that often and if I’m playing someone headsup and they win one or two big pots off my they instasit out afterwards. Couldn’t help but save the screenshot below as I thought it was hilarious.
Yesterday I’m playing Richard Ashby headsup for maybe 60 hands (20 mins) and as soon as he’s done coolering me in a big pot for the second time he instasits out and leaves. Whenever I play someone headsup I always tell them “15 more mins” before I’m leaving and it seems no one else feels obliged to the same common courtesy. I also don’t understand why if you think you have an edge on me (if you don’t think this then why are you playing me headsup?) why you would stop playing after you won a big pot. The past pots you’ve won should have virtually no effect on your quitting decisions unless you think you will play worse after being up or down a lot.
Other players will buy in for like 20 big blinds and just open ship every hand preflop. One well known reg nadremark was doing this to me yesterday and I told him in chat “we can do flips if you want” because it’s basically what we were doing and he goes on a 10 minute tirade about how rude I am being and he can buy in for whatever he wants and how he has an edge with a shortstack blah blah blah. Um shutup? And it makes no sense to be playing the limit rounds with only 4 big bets on the table. I don’t get it.
The optimist in me says poker is just saving up all my run good for the world series which would be fine with me, but until then poker is becoming very frustrating. The other thing I’ve thought about is poker is trying to teach me a lesson that life isn’t fair and neither is poker. You can play good all you like and not be rewarded for it just how in life sometimes really terrible things happens to good people for no apparent reason other than bad luck. Anyways, enough bitterness talk I kind of hate myself for complaining here especially for all the chastising I do of other poker players for their complaining but I’m only human and it is somewhat cathartic to get off my chest.
In other news, my grandfather passed away a couple weeks ago. He was 95 years old and I flew back to Michigan for the funeral. It was all pretty sad, but he lived a good long life, had a big loving family and influenced a lot of people. It really puts things into perspective. For all the problems in your life you may be having at least you have your health. Things could be a lot worse and you should never forget that.
Since my last post I’ve read a couple of interesting books.
Fooled by Randomness
This book is all about how results oriented everybody is. We all look at successful people who took on a lot of risk and were rewarded for it like Bill Gates and say “how did you do it?” What we don’t look at is all the Bill Gates wannabes who tried just as hard as him, failed and ended up going broke because of it.
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
Micheal Lewis’ (author of the blind side and liar’s poker) most recent book about how a handful of people saw the housing crisis coming and made a bundle of money as a result.
Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections on and Off the Court
John Wooden (UCLA’s head basketball coach who won 10 national championships in 12 years) talks about his philosophy on life and method for motivating people. If you’re looking for a motivational book to help stop you from being so lazy and not working hard enough or going to the gym enough this book is really helpful.
Here’s a couple interesting hands from the past month or so.
I called him with Jack high! I know limit hold’em isn’t very sexy or exciting and I actually think this hand is pretty standard since he’s not taking this line with A or K high, but it still made me happy to call and win here.
Turning 3rd pair into a bluff I try not to bluff to much in the big bet games of 7 game because all the limit players are so showdown bound and never fold anything, but the villain in this hand was a well known nl pro who I thought could make some laydowns. I think most people would call or fold in this spot, but with his betsize I just really didn’t think he had a queen and it’s a tough call with anything less as I could take this same line with any 2, Q8, KQ, or AQ hand.
