You mean I can bet ANYTHING...?

So I always wanted a blog. And now I can have an operation AND a blog. That's too cool.

I've played a reasonable amount of limit... around 60,000 hands worth. All online, and mostly $1/$2. Did okay, not great. And realize I still don't know shit....

Now I want to learn NL. So I'm gonna start off easy. Learn the basics... get nice n' comfy. Sticking with UB $2 and $10 NL. I bounce back and forward a bit 'cause I read a new thing in Sklansky or somewhere else and want to try it without getting my ass kicked and hey, what's a few $2 buy-ins among friends. Then when I feel a little more comfortable with it, I take my new found knowledge and my Maalox and head back up to $10.

So the operation is just to get up $200. Reach that and I'll try something a little more fancy...

Oh... am currently about 4K hands in, running 19.8/5.7/2.6 and 11.5BB/100. It took me that long to figure out how to get this damn banner to work... ;)

Peace.

gl, that UB low-stakes game is so easy.

FR or 6max? good luck either way.

Thanks and FR. 6-Max makes me nervous... mainly 'cause I know I gotta play looser and more aggressively than FR. And one of my biggest challenges w/ NL in the first place is to stop being a nit and LAG it up a little. As you can see from the numbers, I'm nowhere near that yet..... :roll:

Today sucked... Dropped a little over 2 BIs over about 1K hands. Two big ones were AI KK v AA PF, and AI on the F w/ set vs. flush draw that hit on the River.

The more frustrating part was I struggled alot with AK against TAG opps. Would go something like this...

1. PFR 3-5x, usually limiting field to 1-3 ops
2. Miss the flop but a ragged board
3. 1/2 - 2/3 C-Bet that would be called
4. Miss the turn
5a. 1/2 Pot bet for the turn which is called or raised
5b. Check the turn to have a 1/2 - Pot sized bet pushed back at me
6a. Fold
6b. Call, miss the R and have the Op push

I must have had this happen at least 8-10 times and 70+% of the time I get AK. Feel like I spewed a bunch of BBs playing this game...

Posted a couple of hands from the session for comment. Sorry... cannot for the life of me seem to get either FTR or Good Vibes hand converters working with UB consistently. If someone wouldn't mind taking a look at a raw UB history file that is not converting and tell me what I'm doing wrong would be great!

http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...oker-58980.htm
This one's a classic AK example I mentioned above...

http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...oker-58981.htm
Got sandwiched and pot committed on a nut flush draw

http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...oker-58982.htm
I think I have big leak in VB the river as get creeped out by the board pretty easily, especially against calling stations that won't go away

Oh well... still up 6.5BB/100 so far so I guess that's the good news...

First off, thanks for the support in my blog and good luck making the switch to NL!! ;)

Secondly, you rly don't need to LAG it up at the low stakes. Just play a tight, solid game and in the long run you should be able to win a lot!

19.8/5.7 looks ok to me... the 5.7 is a little low compared to what I was running at FR but 19.8 is good for now! PFR % should is ok to be between 5-10% at low stakes FR.

As for your C-Bets... some days they just don't work too well. You really have to watch your opponents and know which ones are tight and will fold to C-bets. Sometimes when it is 3-way I check because of the texture of the board or the way my opponents are playing it. Or, I just want to change it up a lil and not c-bet EVERYtime.

Good luck again, and once you learn the game, I rly feel 6-max is the way to play... you rly dont need to loosen up (especially at the low stakes) and that is the mistake that a lot of the other players make. The avg. pot and players per flop is always much higher in the 6-max games, which just means that there is more money to be made there.

Was a very nice morning. Okay, so last night I watched a bunch of the videos on this site, and BigSpenda's twice 'cause they were closer to the limits I play. This morning I changed my play as follows:

1) I talked to myself the entire time I was playing. Made my dog nuts, but WTF, he don't pay rent.
2) Put a picture of a hot chick as the wallpaper on my monitor. It was either that or change my FTR avatar to one. But I can't give up Biggie, so wallpaper it was.
3) Tightened up considerably.
4) Only played non-premium hands from late position (unless I could limp an Axs or SC early)
5) Made bigger bets all round so if they called or raised me I'd actually know something. 4-6BB raises PF, 2/3- Pot flop bets, 1/2-2/3 turn bets...) And then was much more willing to fold if they played back at me. I know I'll probably have to unlearn a bit of the "fold if played back at" when I make it to higher limits, but for right now, I'll consider this a "basic".
6) No C-bets into MW pot if OOP and missed the flop (esp. w/ AKo, which killed me 8 out of 10 times yesterday)

The results? (Yeah, I know I'm basically talking to myself, but I can still get all rhetorical...)

Played 100 hands single tabling 10NL (could force myself to focus on trying to get better reads). Ran 16/8/3. And finished up $12. Only two hands that made me go "hmmm..."

1. Fought my urge to fold AA to this AI. But villain was 40/12.2/2 and I got to get away from seeing sets everywhere. Plus a bunch of people wiser than me have suggested here that it's usually okay to go AI HU on the Flop with AA & KK overpairs. So that's what I did...

No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.05./$0.10.
10 players
Converter

Pre-flop: (10 players) Hero is UTG+1 with A :diamond: A :spade:
UTG raises to $0.35, Hero raises to $0.7, 3 folds, MP3 calls, 2 folds, SB calls, BB folds, UTG calls.

Flop: T :diamond: 7 :heart: 4 :diamond: ($2.9, 4 players)
SB checks, UTG checks, Hero bets $2.9, MP3 folds, SB raises all-in $10.48, UTG folds, Hero calls all-in $9.67.
Uncalled bets: $12.57 returned to Hero.

Turn: 7 :club: ($13.38, 0 player + 2 all-in - Main pot: $23.86)


River: 9 :spade: ($13.38, 0 player + 2 all-in - Main pot: $23.86)


Results:
Final pot: $13.38

2. Only questionable moment on this one was the shortstack push raise on my F bet. But I was getting decent money with TPTK, I thought was basically a snap call. So I called. And then I snapped. Hope someone will tell me if this was spew...

No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.05./$0.10.
9 players
Converter

Pre-flop: (9 players) Hero is MP1 with Q :diamond: A :heart:
2 folds, Hero raises to $0.5, MP2 calls, 3 folds, SB calls, BB folds.

Flop: A :spade: 7 :club: 2 :heart: ($1.6, 3 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $1.6, MP2 folds, SB raises all-in $2.76, Hero calls.

Turn: 9 :diamond: ($7.12, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $7.12)


River: J :heart: ($7.12, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $7.12)


Results:
Final pot: $7.12

Now I gotta work some more... The $2.13 I'm averaging an hour playing poker just ain't gonna cover the rent.

So over the last couple of days I had good news and bad news...

so much so that after the last couple of days, I'm pretty much back exactly where I was before the last couple of days.

Day 1: Killing a bunch of time at the airport. Two tabled and just kicked some "I'm playing at the airport" ass. Probably got in around 300 hands and was up about $18 by the time I left for Phoenix...

Well, not really Phoenix but for some reason I got Glen Campbell in my head (don't ask...)...

Day 2: In the first 15 minutes lost 3 big hands ... AA, KK and QQ. Down $18. I'm getting better at WTF I can ride this out. Just kept on truckin' some good (well, good for me...) poker. Bumped it to four tabling - a first for me - which forced me to nit it up a bit.

And then right around hand 285... bam bam BAM m-fin bizzzz-AM. Within the scope of 20 hands swung to +$18. Played another 150 hands or so and closed out the night +$14 and very happy.

Lesson learned: I think "i don't have to go on tilt when i lose a comparative fuck-load of money", I think "i don't... aww hell... I'm not typing all THAT again....

Day 3: The poker table giveth....

and the poker table will taketh away.

Here's the post from this sh!tty day...

http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...oker-59245.htm

After about 180 hands, losing 3 buy-ins, I said f-it and went and watched Tivo.

So here's the deal... My big losses in the past 1,000 hands were from AA, KK, QQx3 and TT. All big pockets and all bitch-slapped out by something biggerer and less pocketier... Got the money in PF or with strong over-pair and (mostly) an uncoordinated board. And then got spanked back to Poughkeepsie by something funky.

That's it. If I could get half the money lost on those back I'd be nicely in the black. Which for me says my loss is a little more "shitty luck" than "shitty play."

And that (for me) is still the making of a good day....

Several "first"s today...

1) See I got this 21" monitor. Sweeeeeeet. Plugged it in and everything was bigger. The same amount of everything. Not so sweet. So ordered a video card. It showed up and was the wrong one. Called to return it and ordered a replacement. Then discovered that I could get my current video card to give me the resolution I needed. Saved $150.

Extra sweeeeet....

So what the f- does this have to do with poker? I four tabled $10NL at UB for the first time. Before this, I could barely manage 3 tabling because they overlapped so much and was like playing a retarded game of "Whack 'a Mole" every time I had to do something. Now I see four tables in one place all the time. And it is good....

2) Mostly because of #1, I played my first "1K hand day". :shock: For me that's a sh!t load of poker. But kept it taggie and found tight, aggressive betting actually keeps me out of most situations at this level where I really gotta get tricky. Which is good since I'm no good at tricky.

So, that all aside, finished the day with 1K hands and 18/5.8/1.9. I also ended up exactly two BIs... which gets me half-way back to where I was before yesterday.

Only got a couple of tough spots... both two pair dealios detailed here. This was posted half way through the day when I was actually almost down a BI...

http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...oker-59288.htm

Dinner's cooking. Dog's peed. Got Damages and Rescue Me to watch. Not a bad day all considered...

Haven't posted anything here for a bit...

I'm sure you've all missed it greatly...

Okay, so for the last couple of weeks of August I sucked out loud. Dropped down to $987. Got pissed off. Tried 9-tabling $2NL. Got woozy. Posted a bunch of sh!t. Read a bunch of posts. Went and took a sh!t. Re-read the posts.

Watched some vids. Watched the vids again. (Yeah... hang tight, I am getting somewhere with all this...) And started playing again. Went to $10NL 'cause I was getting irritated by the completely erratic behavior on the $2NL tables and figured I was prolly picking up some bad habits along the way. Would have prefered a $5NL pit-stop, but UB don't got one...

...so I made my own! I basically just buy-in on a $10NL table for $5. Yeah, I know that's not the same as $5NL, but work with me here... Oh, and I also leave the table once my stack hits $10 and start a new table at $5. This is to minimize the impact of my occassional dumb-@ss all-in that I don't recognize as being dumb-@ss until my $10 gets smoked. It's a bunch of extra work, but on these occassions (which are happening less...) only $5 usually gets smoked.

Okay...

So with all this in mind, since I last posted have played 9,945 hands $10NL FR. Have run 14.21/8.39/6.27 over all. PFR is actually higher for the games over the last couple of weeks as I've been getting better.

And the best part is, have run at 5.08BB/100. I recovered what I'd lost and am now closing in on 50% of my op at +$91.

So that's the money shot. A lot of blah blah blah to get there. I drank way too much scotch last night and I'm tired and I'm going to sleep. But I finally feel like I'm getting my arms around this thing!

Haven't posted anything for a while... as can see from OP banner, $10NL at UB is going well. Just shy of wrapping this one up.

I did jump to FT for a bit to check it out. Bought in for almost the full bonus. Played $10NL and hated the tables... nitty as f- and not much fun. So I'm using the BR to transition to $25NL and start getting used to playing bigger pots. Has been a bit rocky so far... down about 4 buy-ins ... but the good news is it's to PF AI stuff like AA v KKK, AA v 777 and AA v 83s (yeah... that one ended up as 88KJ3) :roll:

On top of that, not getting much of anything to play. Using same PF criteria as at $10NL, and have run 7% VPIP over the last 2K hands...

...but I guess this too will pass...

Oh... and this is my 200th post...... Wheeeeeeeeeeee! :shock: