Cash Games:

I just wrapped up my best month at the online cash tables since I began playing 6-max back in August. I wound up winning 17 buy ins for the month. I also crossed the 10,000 hand plateau for the first time in the 4 months I’ve been playing.

I feel good about November’s results primarily because I feel good about my game. I’m confident that my cash game is in a better place today than it was when I started writing this blog back in October. I’ve continued to examine both my game and myself during this time. Doing so has helped me identify a couple of leaks, both in game play and in what I’m bringing to the table. I believe both have made a difference in my bottom line.

One of my early concerns which I voiced in a prior writing of this blog was that the size of my winning days were being dwarfed when compared to the size of my losing days. I wrote that I felt strongly that it was an issue of variance. I had examined my hand histories and really saw no difference in my play when my stack began to grow at a table. When examining November’s results I’m pleased with what I see. I believe that my suspicions about variance being the culprit were correct. My daily’s came in at 19 wins and 7 losses. I booked 6 winning days for better than 2 buy ins vs. only 1 losing day of more than 2 buy ins. I’ll be sure to re-examine this again at the end of December.

Looking forward I can’t forecast what December will allow in terms of available time to devote to poker. My life remains chaotic and I may not be able to put in as much time next month as I did in November. My #1 goal will be to try to play my best whenever I sit down, hopefully good results will follow.


Tournaments:

My results have been overall to the positive since I began dabbling in tournaments back in late October after having taken several months off. Unlike my cash game, I am not happy with where I am regarding the online tournament experience. This isn’t actually a function of my game play but more so a factor of my current real life situation. Of late I’ve begun buying into tournaments when I really shouldn’t be due to time constraints and life responsibilities. My strong desire to play has been winning the battle much to my own detriment. What invariably has been happening is I wind up constantly distracted and I’m probably playing sub optimally and often times I’m not focused on playing at all. With cash games this is no problem whatsoever, you just click sit out or you cash out depending on what pops up in your life. With tournaments this is quite frankly terrible, and something which I must stop doing.

So my tournament goal for December will be to only play when I can give it proper focus and attention. It looks like I might be free and clear to play on Saturday the 1st of the month. Hopefully I can play a bunch of events throughout the day and just enjoy the experience, results be damned.


Live Play:

Last I played live was at the main event at the Borgata Summer Open. It’s been 6 long months since I’ve seen a real deck of cards, way too long. There are WSOP circuit events coming up at Harrah’s AC in December. The World Poker Tour comes to the Borgata in January. I am going to see if I can somehow find time to make it to Atlantic City to play at one or both of these venues. I much prefer Atlantic City in the warm weather but beggars can’t be choosers and I would really like to play live again sometime soon.


And Lastly, the Football Giants:

I’ve mentioned my favorite football team twice in my blog in anticipation of an upcoming game and both times they stunk out the joint. Watching last weeks debacle against the Vikings was painful to say the least. The last few seasons under the Manning/Coughlin regime have begun with such promise and ended with sloppy uninspired football. I hope the Giants show up and play their “A” game at Chicago this week. If they finish out their schedule without another historic collapse they should easily grab the 5 seed in the playoffs which could lead to a winnable 1st round road playoff game which would then likely set up the 3rd meeting of the year against the Cowboys who last night all but locked up the 1 seed with their win against Green Bay.

I choose not to play the online Sunday events so I can watch the NFL. I hope the Giants will reward that decision by playing some good inspired football as the season winds down. Last thought on this weeks game in the Windy City, please don’t kick the ball to Hester, he’s a total game breaking freak.


-Doyle-

Happy Thanksgiving

It’s been a week since my last update. As I mentioned last time I was facing an extremely busy week at work so poker had to take a back seat. In keeping with the theme of remaining consistent with this blog here we go:

Last we left off one of my friends was fighting for the chip lead at the Borgata 5K. Unfortunately he busted just before the money bubble. I really thought he was going to do some serious damage in this one but it wasn’t to be as day 3 was very unkind to him.

My Cash Game:

I ended last week ahead 3+ buy ins. This week I’m stuck a bit more than a buy in. There are so many hands that I want to post but I’ll limit it to a couple. I also want to be conscious not to post only bad beat hands so here goes. Here’s a loss first, I swear its hands like these that keep me from being a “successful” cash game player. If I could just learn to be successful against the donks I'd be dangerous. In this hand my top pair and true straight flush draw were no good. Have a good laugh and look at the results in white below.


PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $2 BB (5 handed) Poker Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: 2+2 Forums)

SB ($118.40)
BB ($200)
UTG ($279.55)
Hero ($229.45)
Button ($97.40)

Preflop: Hero is MP with 7, 6.
1 fold, Hero raises to $6, Button calls $6, SB calls $5, BB calls $4.

Flop: ($24) 5, 4, 6 (4 players)
SB bets $112.4 (All-In), BB folds, Hero calls $112.40, Button folds.

Turn: ($0) 4 (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: ($0) 5 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Final Pot: $248.80

Results in white below:
SB has 5s Td (full house, fives full of fours).
Hero has 7c 6c (two pair, sixes and fives).
Outcome: SB wins $248.80.

Now for a winner. I had a good read based on very limited info on my opponent. He had a pattern that I thought I saw developing pre flop. With big pairs he was flat calling and with 2 big broadway he was 3-betting. Ordinarily this would be spewy without a read.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $2 BB (6 handed) Poker Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: 2+2 Forums)

BB ($64.75)
UTG ($218.80)
Hero ($175.55)
CO ($216)
Button ($135.30)
SB ($195.30)

Preflop: Hero is MP with 7, 8.
1 fold, Hero raises to $6, 2 folds, SB raises to $18, 1 fold, Hero calls $12.

Flop: ($38) 3, 6, 7 (2 players)
SB bets $20, Hero calls $20.

Turn: ($78) 3 (2 players)
SB bets $66, Hero raises to $137.55, SB calls $71.55.

River: ($353.10) J (2 players)

Final Pot: $353.10

Results in white below:
SB has Kh Ac (one pair, threes).
Hero has 7s 8s (two pair, sevens and threes).
Outcome: Hero wins $353.10.

Monday Tournaments:

It had been exactly a week since I was able to play a tournament. Monday was a little tight for time but I decided to throw caution to the wind by juggling everything else going on in my life and load up an afternoon set. Afterall I was jonesing to play after a week off. I was definitely a bit distracted while playing as a bunch of business issues popped up during my session. It just wasn’t one of those days that I could turn off the phone and inbox.

I played 6 events and was really only competitive in 2 of them. The 15K guaranteed on Full Tilt was going really well with 2/3rds of the field gone until a lagtard who was the only player at the table that had me covered decided that 77 was good enough to get it in with for all the chips pre flop against my pocket 10’s. The 7 high flop sent me to the rail. Ho hum.

My only cash of the day came in the Stars $20 Rebuy. To be honest it began pretty sloppily and I was battling a short stack for what seemed like forever. I am really trying my best to not become discouraged when it looks like everything is going against me in a session. I remember checking my info tab with @ 100 players to go (paying 45) and I was dead last in the tournament. I just buckled down and continued to play super tough with the short stack. A few hours later I was at the final table with a nice stack, I came in 4 of 9. Here was the defining hand of the tournament. We’re down to 6 and I’m in 3rd place. If I win this hand I’ve got the chip lead.


PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t8000 (6 handed) Poker Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: 2+2 Forums)

Button (t52704)
SB (t173467)
Hero (t269994)
UTG (t182752)
MP (t330561)
CO (t444022)

Preflop: Hero is BB with T, T.
4 folds, SB completes, Hero raises to t28000, SB raises to t173467, Hero calls t144667.

Flop: (t349334) J, 8, 5 (2 players)

Turn: (t349334) 2 (2 players)

River: (t349334) 9 (2 players)

Final Pot: t349334

Results in white below:
SB has 9d 9s (three of a kind, nines).
Hero has Ts Td (one pair, tens).
Outcome: SB wins t349334.


After losing this hand I hung tough with the short stack again and battled back. I finished 3rd despite the big chip disadvantage that hand left me facing. The cash was good for $1800+. I walked away a bit disappointed as I felt that if my 10's held vs. the 9's I had a great shot at taking this one down. Oh well.

This day was a far cry from my prior few tournament sessions where I had been successful building a big stack in many of my events. To be a successful tournament player you need to be able to play well regardless of the circumstances. Short stack play is critical in tournaments and I’m happy that I didn’t throw in the towel on this one when I easily could have given up.

It doesn’t look like I’ll be able to play any more tournaments the rest of this week as I’ll be enjoying time with my family for the holiday. I want to wish everybody a Happy Thanksgiving, eat your hearts out guys, you only live once!

Oh and of course a Giants win on Sunday would move them to 8-3 so lets go Big Blue!

-Doyle-

I have plenty to talk about today. Also I want to thank you guys for your comments, keep them coming.

Borgata Deep Stack 5K

One of my two friends busted very early on a day 2 cooler when his trips ran into the same trips but lost to a bigger kicker. My other friend, Eric Bankoff, had a fine Day 2 ending the session with a big 325K stack. They begin the day with 49 players left. 18 places pay. Keepin’ my fingers crossed……….

Quick Cash Update

Sunday was good for a 3 buy in positive gain. I was wrapping up my early Monday morning session with a profit in tow when I flat called a raise from a tight UTG on the button w 76s. Sorry I’m typing this out, can’t seem to locate the hand in my files to use the converter. The BB who is a bluffing LAG type completes and we see a suited flop of J76. BB cks, UTG bets out and I raise. BB reraises and UTG folds. I’ve seen the BB spew so much $ in the last half hour I decide I’m not folding so we see a harmless turn card. BB leads out & I call. River is also harmless so if he was chasing the flush w the Ace he missed. He leads out again and I call, he flips K2 suited and turns my session into a ½ buy in loss for the day. Meh.

Will I ever fill up when I’m behind? Sorry this has been a recurring theme over the last few weeks. People are filling up against my straights and flushes and I’m continually losing with 2-pair and sets in all sorts of funky ways, both in tournaments and cash games. Ok enough with the rant, it’s all in good fun.

Monday Tournaments

Found time to squeeze in a session that I started at 4:30PM. I loaded the Full Tilt $30 Rebuy & $120 Knockout as well as the Poker Stars 25K Guaranteed & the $50 Rebuy. There was a recurring theme to my day, my table positioning was horrific. I had Jurollo to my left in 3 of the 4 tournaments I played in yesterday. When he wasn’t there I had Scott Clements or allinstevie on my direct left and all of them always had plenty of chips. Made for an interesting and challenging day.

25K Guaranteed – 1st hour I’m cruising along when I flop a set of 5’s – presto. Villain turns a gutshot straight and the river bricks and I’m down to 70 chips. Hello……. pair the board 1 time dealer, one time?!? Blah. I short stack my way back to 570 chips but bust when my A10s runs into AQ and KK.

$30 Rebuy – chip up 1st hour, nothing special. Have a really good 2nd hour which vaults me into the top 10 in chips. I then slowplay AA and lose a pretty significant pot to Q10 that flopped 2 pair (he would of course go on to win the tournament). Now with 32 left, 18 spots pay I’ve slipped back to the pack a bit when I picked up this hand. UTG +1 is Scott Clements (directly to my left):

Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold'em Tournament, $9,500 Guarantee (Rebuy), 300/600 Blinds, 75 Ante, 9 Players
LeggoPoker Hand History Converter

UTG+2: 28,149
MP1: 34,758
MP2: 8,610
CO: 24,117
BTN: 22,275
SB: 21,091
BB: 13,080
Hero (UTG): 14,745
UTG+1: 31,210

Pre-Flop: (1,575) A K dealt to Hero (UTG)
Hero raises to 1,670, UTG+1 calls 1,670, CO raises to 5,000, Hero raises to 14,670 and is All-In, UTG+1 calls 13,000, CO raises to 24,042 and is All-In, UTG+1 calls 9,372

Flop: (64,329) 3 A J (3 Players - 1 is All-In)

Turn: (64,329) 6 (3 Players - 1 is All-In)

River: (64,329) 8 (3 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: 64,329 Pot
CO showed K K (a pair of Kings) and LOST (-24,117 NET)
Hero showed A K (a pair of Aces) and LOST (-14,745 NET)
UTG+1 showed A A (three of a kind, Aces) and WON 64,329 (+40,212 NET)


Kudos to Scott on this hand, very well played sir. It’s easy to see why you’re making a run at Card Player Magazine’s Player of the Year Standings. My thoughts on this hand were fairly simple. Scott could be flatting me with a wide range here and c/o could easily be making a move with position. I started the hand with 25 BB’s and was destined to go broke no matter how it played out as the case Ace flopped. I’m just not laying down AK here.


$50 Rebuy – I doubled up early in the Rebuy period and then at the 100 level lost half my stack when the BB defended against my hijack raise w A6o. I had A10s and flopped the nut draw. Villain check called my c-bet on a J63 flop. Villain then led when another 3 came on the turn, I didn’t put him on a strong hand and definitely not a 3 so I smooth called to look at the river. The Ace on the river sealed the deal, villain jammed - I called and was back to where I started, his 2 pair were good. I proceeded to build back up and found myself top 10 in chips again. After a cooler I found myself sitting 15th – 20th in chips as we approached the final 2 tables with 18 spots paying. I kept myself in contention and then found AJs in early position. I open raised and Jurollo who was sitting on my direct left shipped it in. Our stacks were about the same, I had him slightly covered and I called expecting a flip. Jurollo turned over 88 and I won the race when a J hit the on the flop to vault me back into the top 10. Payback would be a bitch, stay tuned..... We played short handed forever on the money bubble. I was pretty card dead but kept my stack about the same with aggression. We finally made the money, the blinds were up considerably due to the long bubble and having not seen a big starting hand in like forever I jammed 99 with the button over a raise and busted to his AA to go out 15th.

$120 Knockout – Built a big stack early and ranged between top 2 or 3 to top 10 in chips for hours. Made it to the final 2 tables with a 5th or 6th place stack. Having Jurollo with the chip lead to my direct left didn’t help matters especially considering that I went completely card dead. I made it to the Final Table bubble and was playing 5 handed with a 5th or 6th place chip stack and a nice cushion between my stack and 7th place on down. There weren’t many good spots for me and I was doing all I could to keep afloat for what seemed like forever. Then I picked up K8s in the sb and limped to Jurollo’s bb hoping to catch a flop and take advantage of his aggression. Yup, I took advantage of it right to the rail, busting on the Final Table Bubble at Full Tilt for the 2nd time in a week.


Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold'em Tournament, $14,000 KO Guarantee, 1,200/2,400 Blinds, 300 Ante, 5 Players
LeggoPoker Hand History Converter

BB: 106,426
UTG: 82,200
CO: 80,485
BTN: 33,222
Hero (SB): 51,018

Pre-Flop: (5,100) 8 K dealt to Hero (SB)
3 folds, Hero calls 1,200, BB checks

Flop: (6,300) 5 2 8 (2 Players)
Hero checks, BB bets 5,000, Hero raises to 14,400, BB raises to 103,726 and is All-In, Hero calls 33,918 and is All-In

Turn: (102,936) 9 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

River: (102,936) 3 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: 102,936 Pot
BB showed 5 8 (two pair, Eights and Fives) and WON 102,936 (+51,918 NET)
Hero showed 8 K (a pair of Eights) and LOST (-51,018 NET)


As Jurollo said right after the hand was over I just got unlucky here, really nothing I could do about it. Payback was a bitch.

I knocked out 5 players in this event so that was good for an extra hundy in knockout bonuses. I made some money yesterday but finished the day knowing that I played really well and came up a bit short again. And so it goes in tournament poker. Can’t wait until I have a chance to do it all over again!

-Doyle-

Just wrapped up an early morning cash session in what was likely an end to the week for me. The last 3 days totaled to a loss of ¾ of a buy in. My week ending cash total was + 5 ½ buy ins which is just fine considering the small volume I put in.

On the tournament front just as I had done on Wednesday, I took Friday afternoon off and began loading up tournaments on both Stars and Tilt. I played 7 events in all and somehow managed to whiff despite having a chip lead or top 2-3 stack in 3 of the 7 tournaments, including the Stars 50K and the Stars $50 Rebuy. Everything felt great while I was playing. I’ve been experimenting with some new tournament ideas and I’m pleased with the early results.

Over time I’ve become much better, albeit not perfect at ignoring the day to day results in MTT’s. I’m of the belief that if I play well and make good decisions the good results I’m looking for will eventually follow. However there’s just no getting around the fact that I am much more emotionally in tuned to my MTT’s than to my cash games. When I wrap up a session of cash I normally record my results and if necessary look over some of my hand histories. When I close the books on a cash session I don’t think about it ever again, literally. The next time I think about cash is when I begin my next session the following day.

MTT’s are a completely different story. The tournaments I last played don’t seem to leave my brain until I begin another tournament session. There’s a lot of good that comes from this as I’m constantly evaluating my game but past experience has taught me that the negative impact it has is that it often wears me down mentally over time. As I wrote early on, a major reason for writing this blog is to hold myself accountable when I identify problems where it concerns poker. This is one that I know I have to improve upon. I’m going to try to work on limiting the amount of space I allow MTT’s to rent in my head while I’m away from the tables. Wish me luck, this has always proved difficult for me.

Continuing on the tournament theme, I'm enjoying playing in the afternoons/early evenings. The mix of games are nice. The Rebuys I'm playing range from $20 to $50 & the freezeouts range from $50 to $120 acrosss both Stars and Full Tilt. There's a constant flow of them so I'm never withouut a full screen of events. I'm going to try to adjust my work schedule to allow me a couple or three afternoons a week off when possible. I already know that next week is an extremely busy one at work so I may not be able to play at all.

Lastly, the Borgata Deep Stack 5K event is getting underway tomorrow and as I thought I'm definitely going to miss it. A couple of my friends are playing it so I'll be rooting hard for them to do well.

One final thought, Go Big Blue! The Giants host the Cowboys tomorrow for 1st place in the NFC East. I'm a lifelong Giants fan so you know I'll be glued to my set.

I got what I wanted in more ways than one………

Last I wrote I had identified a couple of “leaks” in my game for lack of a better term, when looking back at my 3 months of data while playing 6-Max cash. One of the problems I identified had to do with variance, or so I still believe. Most of my sessions are typically an hour or less due to time constraints, there is nothing I can do about those and for the most part they have been pretty consistent with either a small win or a small loss as would be expected. The sessions where I was able to extend beyond that in length had a similar disturbing pattern. Either they would go bad early on and a big loss would ensue, or, I would be ahead a couple or three buy ins and would wind up giving much of it back instead of compounding a win. After careful analysis of my hand histories I had determined that my game play was fine (I can assure you that I wasn’t playing scared) and I had just been running badly when I would get ahead some decent money.

I wrote that I needed to have some faith and patience in the hopes that this would correct itself, believing fully that it was a variance issue. I didn’t have to wait long. The very next day I played a lengthy session and booked a nice win. Here are my results thus far this week.

Sunday + 4 ½ buy ins
Monday even
Tuesday + 2 ½ buy ins
Wednesday – ¾ buy in

At the end of October I wrote about how I missed the pain. This referred to my desire to get back to tournaments and the strong emotions (both good and bad) that result from playing them. On Tuesday I found time to squeeze 1 event in which I wasn’t long for. On Wednesday I took the afternoon off and loaded up 4 tournaments. I felt ALIVE!

3 of the 4 ended with me approaching the bubble. I got my money in good to really good 7 different times over the course of those 3 events and won only twice, LOL. I was also pretty bad at racing, not a formula for success. Despite all of the bad luck I was still in contention which is a sign that I was playing well.

The fourth event was the $20 Rebuy on Full Tilt. I was able to build a decent stack in the rebuy period and then continued to chip up for the next couple of hours. I was pretty consistently a top 10 stack and I flirted with the chip lead a couple of times. I lost a momentum killing race with QQ to AK around the bubble and things really never got back on track for me. Circumstances went awry as we got into the money, my raises and c-bets just weren’t working, it was one of those days. I battled to just hang onto my 7th to 10th place chip stack while I waited for a good spot to double up.

We were on the final table bubble playing 5 handed when the good spot appeared:

Full Tilt Poker
No Limit Holdem Tournament
Blinds: t1200/t2400
(Ante: t300)
5 players
Converter

Stack sizes:
Doylestown: t30000
CO: t32077
Button: t134036
SB: t52626
BB: t101312

Pre-flop: (5 players) Doylestown is UTG with Q Q
Doylestown raises to t5400, 2 folds, SB calls t4200 (pot was t10500), BB calls t3000 (pot was t14700).

Flop: 5 8 4 (t17700, 3 players)
SB checks, BB checks, Doylestown is all-in t24300, SB folds, BB calls t24300 (pot was t42000).

Turn: 8 (t66300, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: t66300)


River: 5 (t66300, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: t66300)


Results:
Final pot: t66300
BB showed 5d 3d
Doylestown showed Qd Qc


This flop over bet is something I rarely do. I believed in this situation that the timing was perfect for it. I represented a whiff with a big Ace and I was rewarded ( I got what I wanted) with the villain making a call as a big underdog. The turn card left him drawing to 2 outs and then boom the river punch to the gut came out of nowhere and just like that my afternoon was concluded.

Yesterday I didn’t have to miss the pain. I finally got to live it again. As I recently wrote, one of my poker goals was to find time to squeeze tournaments back into my life. It felt great to be playing them again, results be damned.