Got in 4000 hands today and glad to be positive. Ran really nasty with sets/flushes/boats in the first 2k hands I made a nice comeback. I probably spewed like 1 buy in away (which isn’t that bad) and then FPS really cost me some stacks when I get coolered.
Number of hands to go to meet my goal: 4800
Should be easy as pie!
Boom! In the 2500 hands I put in at 100 NL it looks like I have gotten my groove back, as well as getting paid off on a lot of my hands. My red line today was pretty much perfect, positive without showdown including several nice river value raises I might not have pulled off.
That said, I still spewed at least 1 buyin in my first 1500 hands and missed another 1/2 buyin in value; in the last 1000 hands I spewed less than 50 BB and missed little value. The second half though I posted some huge wins and found myself up 7 buy ins overall on the day.
Overall:
1) Get in more volume
2) Keep up the video watching
3) Hire a Coach
Preflop:
1) Work on open raising only 3x in my game instead of 4x. All the higher stakes pros and videos i’ve seen have opened to 3x for some in the Full Ring setting. It helps deal with 3bets and 4bets and becomes less exploitable.
2) I’ve got a real good polarized 3betting range right now, but its almost too polar. Given that a lot of players play bad in 3bet pots I need to 3bet more spots, and in position too. This isn’t that prevalent for playing at 100 NL, but it is necessary for 200+ and 100 NL is a good place for practice. I think reraise/folding AK is still +EV against the correct players but its about figuring out who the players that are only going to shove all in with big pairs.
3) Work on some 4betting of my own. Its not +EV at the 100 NL game but certainly will be at 200+ and I need the practice. Figuring out good 4bet bluff raise sizes then merging that with my monsters is something I should definitely work on.
Postflop:
4) Work on stealing more pots postflop. This is for a) calling OOP in blinds, and b) calling an original PFRer. This is going to be pretty general but I need to bluff raise baby pairs IP after cold calling preflop and check/raise missed hands OOP on good boards.
5) I really need to work on leading into the preflop raiser OOP, both for bluff and for value. This is something completely missing from my game and I don’t have much of a clue on how to distinguish when I want to do it as a bluff and for value.
6) Bet sizing. I’m not taking advantage of my villain’s willingness to call one street but fold the next, and I need to make my bet sizes appropriate so I can manipulate my equity vs their range. I was doing this pretty well at 400 but I find myself getting lazy at 100 and 200.
7) Continuation betting. This involves situations when I hit and when I miss, when I want to do it for value and as a bluff with a made hand as well as without one. This will go in cooperation with #6 but I feel it deserves its on topic.
I think the best thing to do on these 6 topics above is to create a video 4 tabling and solely work on one subject at a time, then hire a coach to talk about things I’m having trouble with. Maybe not each topic but I feel like I can combine 2-3 of these in each video and then go on there. IMO, #3 and #5 are the least important on my list where 1, 2, 6 and 7 are the most important.
After not watching any episodes of Burn Notice for nearly a month, it took me one marathon night to catch up. And I’m not disappointed.
I just love watching a show where every single aspect is perfect and I have no complaints. In fact, I have no idea how I would have improved it or would have wanted to improve it because its just so good right now.
The only other action/drama where I can remember feeling this way over such a long period would have been 24, but not every season. After that would be Heroes Season 1 and that’s the only other show that I can remember where I don’t have any comments.
Next up on my list is Psych, I’m a good 4-5 episodes behind on that too but I’m getting around to it.
Played the $530 on absolute as my only action, got 19th and ran pretty sick bad. Lost 4 straight all ins with good equity to bust me out, 5th if you count the short stack who won his all in on the same hand-for-hand as me so as to stay in the tourney.
The all-ins were: 88 vs KJs vs 75s (40% chance to win), JTs vs A6o (49% chance to win), AQo vs QQ (30% chance to win) and finally KTo vs A5o (43% chance to win). The chance of me losing all of those hands was (.6*.49*.70*.57) or just under 12%. Likewise if I win all of those then I’m on my way to win the tournament and a massive chip lead. So, I guess today wasn’t my day.
Today was a fight, that’s for sure. My first 2000 hands I played like complete ass, going from +200 to -300 in that timespan. I was able to finish that session only down 150 and decided to take a good break to come back. In that time I looked over my old hands as well as my conversations with Renton from a couple months ago in order to get my magic back.
A couple interesting things I noticed: I was 0-20 in hands in which I cold called preflop, with 2 hands going to showdown. I interrupted this as me giving up too easily and or putting myself in easily bluffable situations. My red line was still pretty nasty as I’m spewing postflop. So I made some adjustments:
1) Reraising AQ and AQs again esp. vs LP raisers. I did this a long time ago and for some reason I started to cold call when they play real easy if I’m ever 4bet.
2) Fix my PFR amount. I was reraising way too much and inconsistently for some reason. I’m keeping it at 3x IP and 3.5x OOP which should be fairly standard.
3) My button play has been negative now 2 days in a row, or for 7k total hands. I’m not doing something right and I need to find out what it is, considering that’s supposed to be my most profitable position.
4) trying to manipulate bet sizing so it works in my favor. i had a couple moments of brilliance today but not enough.
5) opening too many pots then finding myself OOP against players who don’t like to fold to a bet. I either need to 1) open less, 2) barrel more or 3) combination of them. I’m still working on this.
I came back and got in another 1200 hands to break even on the day with a lot more stuff to work on.
In what was the largest volume I put in this year, I put in 4200 hands today in 7 hours 12 tabling. I don’t feel like I ran all that great but to be honest my losses can be found in non-showdown type hands.
I’m going to work on not isolating players that I’m not willing to continuation bet into, as well as working triple barrels into my play vs regulars who will fold to the aggression. The former will be my #1 focus while the latter just something I’ll have on my mind. I did do 2 three barrels today, one worked and the other the guy was slowplaying because he shipped the river on me.
Another thing I need to work on is some postflop bet sizing, that will allow me to value bet thinner on the turn, with hands such as middle pair instead of just top pair.
Marlyn and I went into DC last night onto Dupont Circle to grab some dinner. Metro has been cutting back on expenses so it seems like they have turned off the air conditioning to save energy. Needless to say I was quite uncomfortable for the entire 40 minute Metro ride into the city.
Luckily for us it was a really nice night outside, it wasn’t muggy at all and we couldn’t ask for better weather. This will be our 3rd restaurant that we’ve eaten at in the Circle, with previous restaurants including some French (good) and Ethiopian (bad).
The menu looked pretty good online at the Moroccan Restaurant (I forget the name) and I’m usually up for trying new kinds of food. I ordered a couple kabobs, one with grilled lamb and veggies and the other with grilled chicken and veggies. You wont hear me say this often but: The veggies were much better tasting than the meat. The lamb and chicken were both over cooked and quite dry, and pretty much flavorless too. Had I closed my eyes I couldn’t tell you what meat I was eating because they cooked all the flavor out of the meat.
Marlyn also ordered some lamb, but in a couscous dish; it had some powdered sugar on it but from what I heard she wasn’t impressed either. Probably the best thing on the evening was the Tea that I drank at the end of the meal. It was quite delicious as it was brewed with fresh mint leaves/flowers and it smelled awesome too.
There was something with the combination of food that I ate yesterday that didn’t sit well in my stomach, as I felt sick for the next few hours until I went to bed. Marlyn headed for Chicago early this morning so I would have liked to spend more time with here but I just didn’t feel well.
I’m hoping to have a pretty busy weekend poker wise, I’m going to have to inorder catch up to my required number of hands by months end.
I took a dive into making my own salsa this morning, as I bought some Tomatillos at the grocery store this weekend. I have been wanting to make some for a long time and I figured what the hell.
I have been wanting to re-create the salsa I had out in Vegas–very thin but also very tangy (and green). I figured this was Tomatillo Salsa at its best but, after figuring out what a Tomatillo actually tastes like now I’m not so sure. Granted, my own salsa is somewhat tangy but just not to the extent that I want and I have no idea how to make it even more tangy.
I used the following in making my salsa:
- 6 to 7 Tomatillos
- 2 whole Jalapeno Peppers
- 1/2 Red Bell Pepper
- 3/4 Cup of Water
- 2 Tablespoons of Lime Juice
- 2 Pinches of Salt
The only ingredient I didn’t use that looking back on I could have was half an onion, but that wouldn’t increase the tangyiness, it would just change the integrity of the flavor. In all, I like the way it tastes and there is certainly enough heat to it, I just wished it had more tang to it.
I was able to fit the entire amount into an empty salsa container so that’s a plus. Maybe unripened green tomatoes would give me the amount of tang? We’ll see.
Yesterday’s tournaments certainly didn’t go well, but I think I played my best I just didn’t win any key hands. I got close to the bubble in several tournaments, that had I won just that one important all in I’d have at least cashed one.
I got in about 1700 hands total yesterday, almost double the hands from last Sunday and it is because I started playing some side tournaments. I figured if I’m going to be at my computer for 10 hours straight I might as well play some other massively +EV tournaments on Sunday too. I did cash the midday $10 rebuy so I only dropped about $100 or so yesterday in small tournament buy ins.
The FTOPS is complete and I cashed 2 tournaments out of the 5 or 6 I played, which is pretty good I just didn’t go as deep as I’d like.
