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Friday, August 14, 2009

Rock bottom for Mr. POW

That's right: I'm a Pay Off Wizard.
I raise AKo, get called, get raised on a dry board, call the turn, call the river and donate a buyin.

I'm now down 8 buyins at 10NL in under 15k hands.
VPIP, PFR, PFA, WWSF, WTSD, W$SD: all decent to good. In fact my stats could serve as guideline for any 10NL player, but still I'm stuck and I'm stuck well.
Why? Stacking off to others often and have others stack off to me rarely.

My graph is like: up, up, up, up, up, bang all the way down, up, up, up, bang all the way down (repeat at will).

I'm going camping for a week with family and friends next week, which probably is a good thing for my bankroll...

After that I'm gonna hang a sticky on my monitor:

DO NOT MULTITABLE !!!
BIG POTS ARE FOR BIG HANDS!!!
DO NOT BLUFF !!!
(with anything less than a big draw, and even then).

Goddamn POW.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Frustrating session

Yesterday's session kinda pissed me off. Early on, I got rivered a couple of times, and a few hands later, I folded the best hand against two opponents. Now, I wasn't tilting in a way where I would start raising every hand or pot but I started calling light. Too light, which costed me some BB's, and at that time I was down 150BB's.

Anyway, I decided to take a deep breath and try to play my best game and then this hand occurs:
On the button, I raise a limper in the cutoff (he was playing 85/0!) to 4x with A9o.
The SB and limper both call, so there is $1.30 in the pot.

The flop comes AQJ with two clubs and the limper it gets checked to me.
I figure my hand is good often enough to cbet this flop, so I bet $1.
Now the SB reraises to $2 and then the limper shoves his remaining $2.70.

At this point I'm thinking there is no way I'm good here. I could be up against a flopped straight, two pair, even a set (since the limper never raises and I had seen him limp with AA). Now the SB could be on a FD, but surely the limper must have a big hand 3betting this flop. So, I fold...

The SB calls and I get to see their cards: the SB has A2o and the limper has A6o...
And I am pissed again...

A couple of hands later, I flop top pair with a 9 kicker.
I'm up against a fish, so I decide to valuebet: 2/3pot on the flop, 1/2 pot on the blank turn and on the river I decide to check it down. My opponent had been calling my bets with third pair and obviously hits two pair on the river...

I made some awful mistakes too though. Well, I grind it back up to break-even, but I end the session almost $4 down. It's hard for me to believe maybe I'm just no better player than my competition at these micro-tables. I'm playing somthing like 22/17/2.5 with about 4% 3betting. And most of the time I'm the only one with stats like these. Most players are like 50/4/2 or 60/10/1 or even 80/0/1.5 (fish), some are 10/9/3 or 12/6/1 or even 4/4/2 (rocks) and occasionally there is a 30/20/4 or a 60/30/3 or 30/25/7 (aggro's). So, I'm thinking my pre-flop play is better right? Obviously, my post-flop game is the problem, and even more: the few tilt session that usually trash my winrate. I'm back in the no-confidence zone either way.

Some good news though, I finally gor a resonse from Simbapoker about my refund. It seems there were some delays, but they are still in the process of refunding their players, so it's just a matter of time. So, maybe that $100 eventually will find it's way back to me.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Back from vacation

After three weeks in France with the family it's back to work and back to the tables for me. We went to the Montagne Noir, near the city of Carcassonne (which has an awesome castle site) and then to the Provence on a nice camping site where we had a spot 5 metres from a little river, the Sorgue. Great weather, a nice swimming pool, lots of stuff to visit and the kids having great fun... Also, I didn't smoke a single sigarette the entire three weeks!

Even though I haven't given poker and work much thought, I couldn't resist checking out who were the November nine. Can you believe Phil Ivey, with 2 bracelets and a final nine spot in the main event is not the undisputed wsop player of the year? Surely, their scoring system could use a few adjustments.

Pokerwise July was a disaster as I have dropped 10 buyins at the 10NL tables just before I left for France. On top of that, Simbapoker decided to call it quits, and even though they guaranteed every player would get their money refunded, I'm still waiting for my $100. I tried emailing then the minute I got back from vacation but I haven't got any response so I fear that $100 is lost. Big time bummer if your roll is just $500.