So this month has definitely without a doubt been the most trying month I have ever experienced as a poker player. I’ve never hated poker so bad in my life and used the “why me, I always run so fucking bad” excuse more times than I can count. I also came really close to being like man wtf am I doing I should go get a real job, but we all know that ain’t gonna happen :). Like dodgy said in his comment that he left (thx by the way, lol shoutoutz) I am kinda glad this happened to me. It sounds kinda weird I know but the feeling you get of digging yourself out of a massive downswing is very reassuring and almost as rewarding as just padding your bank account with lots of $$ playing mindless poker(by almost I mean kinda btw). I can without a doubt say my game is much better now that it was just 30 days ago.
A couple things I’ve realized this month:
1. I can’t effectively play more than 4-5 tables very well. Once I get up to 8 I am just terrible. This is why I think I lost so much $$ this month at 2/4 because I was mostly 6-8 tabling there.
2. A lot of my edge at 3/6 comes from knowing my opponents very well. At 2/4 and 5/10 I think I ended up making very spewwy plays vs players I didn’t know were nits until after the hand or calldowns vs players that would never bluff there but I would know who the nits/spewy lags are alot better at 3/6.
3. Stick to what you are good at. I tried playing some FR this month and it didn’t go very well. While I think I could eventually become a good FR player, I get so bored playing 4 tables of it and when I add more I just lose. The majority of my profit has come from 3/6 6max and that’s where I’m going to be making most of my money in the near future.
4. 50k hands is not long term. I’m going to post my EV graph for the year next post and you’ll see that even over 65k hand stretches you can still run below expectation.
Below is an excerpt from Tommy Angelo’s book which is very good and I recommend to all serious poker players. I hope he doesn’t mind me posting it, I will be glad to remove it at his request.
“There is one particular anticipation mistake that takes the cake. It’s the simplet one, and the most common. In a headsup pot, when you bet or raise, your opponent can only fold, call, or raise. If he folds, your next betting decision is not until the next hand. If he calls, your next betting decision is not until the next street. If he raises — and only if he raises — you must act now. That is why, when you bet or raise, there is strategically nothing to anticipate except a raise, and therefore, if you have not anticipated a raise, you not only made a mistake, you made the only mistake possible.” (p66)
You can purchase his book at http://www.tommyangelo.com/
No vids or anything this time this post is already too long and I’ve got some friends from Ann Arbor coming in tonight to visit on their spring break so I got partying to do. Pz and good luck.
andr3w321
I’ve actually been winning money at poker the past couple of days which hasn’t happened for awhile. Right now I’m still stuck a little bit on the month but considering how horribly I have run this month I will be extremely happy to end the month +$1. Lately I’ve been reading Tommy Angelo’s book and that has been extremely helpful to me during these trying times. I’ll try to post one of my favorite excerpts from his book next post.
As far as my game goes I’ve definitely plugged a lot of leaks lately and whenever I sit down to play a session now I give myself one thing I want to improve on or do perfectly that session. This is something Tommy Angelo suggests in his book and I’ve really taken it to heart. I’d rather not say what I’ve changed in my game but if you’re a friend of mine and you see me on AIM or something I’d be happy to share with you.
Here’s some sweet hands I’ve played lately
this was the first hand at the table, and the most interesting hand I’ve played this month probably
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2180018
did he really think I was folding?
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2180008
just for fun
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2180004
I’ll leave you with some motivators
I’ve been on some bad runs in my life but I can honestly say this is the worst especially since I don’t have school or prospective job interviews to think about. Poker is all I do. I’ve tried dropping down and playing 400nl, I’ve tried taking breaks, I’m playing pretty poorly as a result of the bad luck as well. I really hope things turn around soon. I may start playing donkaments or something because at least if you run bad at those its not as big of a $$ loss. I really hate bitching on my blog & whatnot but it is really hard to lose a quarter of your networth and stay level headed.
I was super excited when it happened last night and I even took a screenshot. Yeah I know I’m like $100 short or whatever in the screenshot but I lost a medium sized pot as I was pulling it up. This has been a pretty big moment for me because it finally means I can move to 5/10 and start withdrawing some real $$ (I’m semi-busto in real life $$, like $800 in my checking account lol) Until now I have just withdrawn like $1k here and there to pay off my bills at the end of the month but for the foreseeable future I don’t really see myself moving above 5/10 for awhile so I’m going to keep $50k online and be withdrawing anything over that at the end of the week or so.
My vegas trip was pretty sick fun. I didn’t go with degen poker players, just busto college buds of mine but it was still just as fun playing $5 craps, roullette and BJ etc. Pokerwise I lost the first couple of times I playedlive out there, but finally made some adjustments and stopped running bad to end the weekend down only like $150 pokerwise which is pretty good considering I played 2/5 one session $150 is like nothing. I didn’t end up making it to any shows or any of that jazz like I would have liked but I did eat a lot of new places and drank quite a bit. The most blackout night I had we went to vegas’ hofbrau house and each got two liters of beer and a shot and then continued drinking and gambling after that. I’ve been to the real Hofbrau house in Munich, and I gotta say I was disappointed the vegas one didn’t bother importing their dunkel weisse which is IMO their best one, but other than that I had an awesome time. Our waiter even gave me a free ass spankin with her paddle after we got our shots which was hilarious for them.
I’ve started playing a little 5/10 lately and its been very up and down. I’m definitely making some mistakes and not running very great. I’m going to try to get another lesson from nutedawg as soon as possible mostly to help my confidence and get me rolling at 5/10 so I can start crushing already.
As for me not bloggin much lately I’ve been busy with real life things like just hanging out with friends and my gf a lot lately and just haven’t had time. Until today I also had only played like 700 hands/day for the past week or so, so I’m definitely looking to put in some major hands in the coming days and I might even blog a bit more who knows! GL at the tables.
andr3w321
awesome japanese human tetris vid
So I know I haven’t posted in awhile because I haven’t been playing. I decided to take some time off after I dropped significant amount of $$ from my all time high and the poker gods have smiled upon me for doing so. I’ve currently only played about 3k hands this month but I think they are the most profitable 3k hands I have ever played in my life. I am on a pretty sick heater as of late and I hope it continues. I have a bunch of random things I’d like to mention so I’m just going to do it bullet style.
-Tomorrow I’m leaving for vegas with a few of my friends still in school back in Ann Arbor. I’ll be there all weekend, so if you’d like to meet up and you’re out there or whatever give me a holler at arennhack@gmail.com with your phone # or something so we can meet up.
-I’m super close to 5/10 now, any day I should reach my goal and be able to move up barring any doomswitch
-Superbowl result was A+. I’m so happy New England lost. I’m by no means a Giants fan but I’ve pretty much hated the Pats ever since they beat the Panthers in the superbowl a couple years back. Now there’s talk that Bellicheck may be suspended for a year if it comes out that they taped the Rams Superbowl walkthrough a couple years back. That would make me happy. I hate how cocky all the New England players are and their general demeanor and way they present themselves makes me despise them and their cheating selves.
-If anyone has experience with webprogramming/sql and would like to make some extra $$ I will pay you to help me develop a website for me. I’m having trouble finding someone who knows their stuff and has time to work with me.
-Can’t wait for the Duke vs Unc game tonight @ 9pm EST. It’s gonna be sick. Go Heels!
February Goals (late, i know)
play 30k hands (gonna be out of town a decent amt this month)
be playing 5/10 regularly by end of the month
May the poker gods smile upon you as they have me recently!
-andr3w321
crazy parkour soccer vid. my fav is when the guy kicks the ball while the other guy is holding it on his head. that is what you call trust.
This month I played 81 hours for an hourly rate of $159. I fell short of my 40k hand goal but at the end of the month it felt like every time I opened up some tables I either won like ~$500 or lost ~$2000 so my motivation to play was like nonexistent. I can’t help but feel a little unsatisfied on the month but I’m currently taking some time off and reflecting and I’ve realized how truly lucky I am. If I had gotten a job working as an engineer right out of school I would probably have made 4-5k and worked at least twice as many hours. The reason for me including my allin luck graph again on this post is not to bitch or anything but because I’m going to do it at the end of every month now and see what I end up with at the end of the year over 500k hands or so to see if it does indeed all even out in the longterm.
Dramatic Lemur Vid(Come on, how could my month end vid not be of a monkey?)
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1799458/
So it’s pretty rare that I go on tilt but today it was pretty unavoidable I think. Probably only lost 1.5 buyins or so due to direct tilt but omg I cannot remember the last time I’ve won an all in. Really poor luck inevitably leads to poor play for most players IMO. I guess I should be thankful that I am up how much I am this month, but I can’t help but think what could have been. I was really looking forward to playing 5/10 at the beginning of next month, but now I don’t think I’m going to make it seeing how I’m 10k short of the 50k I need in my roll.
I was thinking today about the different scenarios you can have when you play a session and it kind of made me realize why poker players are always complaining about how bad they run, unlucky they are, how unsatisfied with their results they are etc. The way I see it you can
Play well & run well
Play well & run bad
Play poorly & run well
Play poorly & run bad
Now obviously there are some in between states that you could add like “play okay & run okay” or whatever but for my purposes I’m just going to stick with these four. Now in my opinion to really have a good session and make a decent amount of money you are only going to do it when you both play and run well. In all of the other three scenarios you are going to be upset with yourself and either berate yourself for playing poorly or blame luck for running badly. The worst part is you aren’t even really going to realize that you are running particularly well you are just going to think you got what was coming to you because honestly when you get it in as like a 60% favorite you EXPECT to win when in reality you are only really going to win 3/5 times. Now when that session comes along that you win 4-5 60/40s and don’t get bad beat in any of them you are just going to say you got what was coming to you when in reality you were both playing well(by getting it in good) and running well(by actually winning more than you were supposed to equitywise). Without good play & run good I think you will either have a marginally winning or marginally losing session except for when the doomswitch comes on and you start running really bad which inevitably leads to poor play.
Not really sure if any of that made sense at all but here’s some monkey vids to cheer you up/unconfuse you hopefully.
http://videos.howstuffworks.com/reuters/3626-monkey-mind-control-video.htm
So I turned 22 today. Didn’t do very much, just had a pretty relaxing day which was fine with me. I went and saw Into the Wild in the theaters which was actually very good but not one of those mainstream movies that gets a lot of advertising $$$ and has 10 showings per day. In fact the one I went to see was the only showing for the whole day! lol I also watched the season premiere of “The Moment of Truth” on Fox which I was super excited about. Basically ppl are hooked up to a lie detector and asked all these awkward questions like “would you cheat on your wife if you knew you would get away with it?” while their wife is sitting right next to them. It was kinda anticlimactic because all the questions are asked in advance, and then just re-asked live on tv or whatever. I’ll probably continue watching the show in the future but I predict it will be canceled in about 1/2 season’s time.
Pokerwise I’ve managed to win everything back that I lost on my -5 buyin day and I’ve been playing very well. Here was the most interesting hand of the day imo.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1987572
Villain was kinda erratic and I basically decided I had the best hand and wasn’t folding on the flop even tho the turn is like the worst card in the deck for me. Here is a hand that occurred like two hands previously against the same villain that caused me to make the call.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1987578
In case you haven’t seen it already, some good old Obama vs Hillary bashing on live tv. The look that Hillary gives Obama is so priceless. It’s that “I hate you soooooo much” look. Make sure you watch the last 20 secs.
So I played super, super well today but ended down a little less than $3k. I guess this is kinda payback for playing poorly over the weekend but still winning :). I’m sure I will bounce back real soon like I always do because lately I feel I’ve just been playing my A+ game. My vegas house has been booked and I’ll be there from June 12th-July 14 or thereabouts with Jethro87, whitewash, dodgeyken, and cntgetmedown. I’m super pumped for that. Be sure to give me shout if you’d like to come by/chill during that time
We’re actually looking for someone to come out for ~2 weeks or so and split with some of the others who won’t be out there the full-time so if you’re interested shoot one of us a comment or something.
Sunday’s football games were kind of a bummer I was really rooting for the Pats to go down and was pulling for Bret Favre too, but he kinda choked and deserved to lose. The giants pretty much stand no chance in the superbowl and if I were a betting man I would put $$ on them in the superbowl but I don’t want to ruin my game watching experience cuz I’ll definitely be pulling for the upset. I once read that like 90% of the time the winning team covers the spread in the superbowl so if you know the winner its +EV to bet even with the spread.
I’ve been learning a few more card tricks from this guy recently
Hilarious vid I found on digg…internet party
Apparently I have a pretty good image on stars lol. Unfortunately the hand didn’t work out like it was supposed to but I earned a bunch of sklansky $$$$!
POKERSTARS GAME #14659034134: HOLD’EM NO LIMIT ($3/$6) – 2008/01/18 – 23:24:15 (ET)
Table ‘Triton II’ 6-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 1: Sangster101 ($145.05 in chips)
Seat 2: madh_18 ($310.20 in chips)
Seat 3: orionhigh ($591 in chips)
Seat 4: andr3w321 ($1324 in chips)
Seat 5: AillemKall ($690.05 in chips)
Seat 6: Blazed187 ($1071 in chips)
Sangster101: posts small blind $3
madh_18: posts big blind $6
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to andr3w321 [Ac Kh]
orionhigh: folds
andr3w321: raises $15 to $21
AillemKall: raises $39 to $60
Blazed187: folds
Sangster101: folds
madh_18: folds
andr3w321: raises $91 to $151
AillemKall: raises $539.05 to $690.05 and is all-in
andr3w321: calls $539.05
*** FLOP *** [3h 8c Jc]
*** TURN *** [3h 8c Jc] [2d]
*** RIVER *** [3h 8c Jc 2d] [Qh]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
andr3w321: shows [Ac Kh] (high card Ace)
AillemKall: shows [Qd Ks] (a pair of Queens)
AillemKall collected $1386.10 from pot
andr3w321: sigh
AillemKall: sorry
AillemKall: ur reputation proceeds u
andr3w321: ?
AillemKall: u have 4 bet me 2 diff times with T high
andr3w321: lol
AillemKall: ya,i mean, with that range…