Updates about the pokerz

  It's been a while since I have posted an entry about poker, so here goes. I haven't had the chance to play much poker, although I have been thinking about it a great deal. As you may remember, I am in the process of writing a treatise on the hypocrisy of governmental policy towards online poker. What started out as a multiple blog entry has now morphed in to a blog paper on the subject. Since I am a stay at home father, I don't get much uninterrupted time to research and write, so I am far behind schedule which has been exacerbated by the fact that the more I research the more I need to research. I am about 45% complete and I hope that the 2nd half of the paper goes much faster as things come together. It's all part of the plan.


  To give everyone a little update on the poker challenge I started back in April, things have been moving at a snail's pace for the past 3 to 4 months. Real life has gotten so busy that I have little time for either online poker, or live poker. As yo may remember in a previous post back in October, I was focusing on my NLHE game online which fell off the proverbial cliff. I have slowly moved in a positive direction, thanks in large part to rakeback from Cake Poker. I am no where serious as to my development as I would like to be, but I just don't have the time to devote to my game in the way that I would like, so this is how it has to be until my 3 sons get a little older.


  The live poker has been a little bit better than my online results. I've only gotten 3 sessions in since the beginning of October, but am up $300 in 8 hours of play which was a nice recovery from the 3 buy in loss back in late August. I'm rather happy how I played in my last 3 sessions, not only because I am up, but I am taking more time to make decisions, consistently focused on the action, especially when I'm not in the hand, and applying that information when I am involved. I am still on the uber nitty side which helps my image and gives my bets a bit more respect, but I have time to learn the game and develop my gears. Right now I have 1st, 2nd, and reverse. All in all, I am +$634 for the year playing live NLHE over the course of about 44 hrs. This is obviously an incredibly small sample which doesn't mean much, but was important in giving me an idea of the concentration and patience I need to work on so that I can be on my "A" game whenever I play poker, especially if the time ever comes when I have the ability to put in 2-3 sessions per week. Anyways, thanks for reading, have fun, and I will hopefully start posting the fist 1/2 of my paper in the next 2-3 weeks.

Live poker update

Whenever my wife has some time off, I try to get an outing, or in this case, two to the casino about 45 minutes from where I live. There are a few closer casinos, but they don't offer the amount of poker tables that will allow me to get in a game soon after arriving. Last week while I got a chance to get out to the Hammond Horseshoe twice to play some NLHE $1-$2. The last time I had played any serious poker, let alone live, was in Las Vegas back in September when I joined a group of five other friends for a faux-bachelor party over a long weekend. I played poker a disappointing two times then which was basically nothing due to the fact that I was trying to be part of the group. I wish I had just gone to the pool and drank some Pina Coladas instead. Anyways!!!

  I made the trip out to the Horseshoe and quickly got into a 1-2 NLHE game. My first hand I picked up pocket Queens and raised a limper to $14. I got a drunken coldcall from a guy immediately to my left who ended up folding on the turn when I hit my set and bet $55 in to a $65 pot. NAILED IT!!
Next big win I had pocket Kings which took down a nice pot. Things evened out for a while until I hit a set of 6s which once again took down an nice sized pot to put me up almost $2oo in the first hour. Soon after that , I young reg joined the game who had fleeced me a 4 months earlier when he caught 2 pair on the turn vs my small flush only to hit a 4 flush on the river to beat me. I limped with pocket 3s and he iso raised me to $16. I called and hit quad 3s. He fired the flop and checked the blank turn. He folded to my large river bet even though the final board totally nailed his preflop raising range. I made it up to +$300 at one point and finished my 4 hour session at +$271.

  The next trip was a few days later which ended up being uneventful as I slowly lost $100 in the first 2 hours only to make it up in the last hour and cashed out exactly even for the shortened session. I was quite happy to have the positive results as well as feel the excitement for poker that has been waining, especially online due to the lack of games, post Black Friday. I am still working on the Part 1 of my magnum Opus which will ultimately have to do with online poker legislation. the first part is an extensive survey into the history of deregulation starting in the 1920's and then jumping to the modern era (circa 1980). I was hoping to have finished it before New Year's , but I feel as though I have to do more research in order feel comfortable with my facts. I hope to have it for you soon. Have fun!

It was only a matter of time…

This summer is really flying by so far. My wife reminded me that next weekend is the 4^th of July and I haven’t even put the air conditioners in yet. At least we’re saving money on the electric bill. My online challenge is moving ahead rather nicely. If you recall, I was moving in the wrong direction due to the fact that I took a few shots playing NLHE on a very small BR compared to what was required. I decided to stick to LHE until I have built up enough of an online BR to make the final and complete transition to NLHE from LHE. Perhaps I should think twice about that as I had my first losing session at live NLHE last night. I ended up down $300 which is 1 ½ buy-ins at $1-$2. In hindsight, I think I played rather poorly. There were so many things that I should’ve adjusted to better, but I decided not to. It wasn’t for not realizing, but I felt as though I needed to be in a sub-optimal situation and deal with it. Now this isn’t how I intend on playing in the future if I have anything to do with it, but I think I needed to feel uncomfortable and thicken my skin a bit. My previous 5 sessions were a bit too easy and things were just going my way.

One adjustment was seat selection. I had 2 intelligent LAGs on my right side (not directly) a bad LAG on my immediate left and some tighter players on the left side of the table. I would have liked to been to the immediate left of the bad LAG because he was straddling every orbit when I was in the BB and raising a very wide range of hands in limped pots because he wanted to gamble and get lucky. Time after time, I limped or call the straddle from the BB, the bad LAG to my left would raise with some hand like Q9s or A8o. I should have tighten up a bit with marginal hands and looked for a better spot. He was a bit of a showdown monkey, so I didn’t like the idea of 3! with a speculative hand.

Another aspect to my session that I felt I managed poorly was how I played preflop. The table was a bit LAGgy with a lot of limpers, cold callers and small raises. I became a bit frustrated with how things were going and started alter my preflop approach. I open raised some weaker Ax hands, cold called a few 3! preflop that I should have folded, and calling larger than normal raises after limping. I plan on rereading the NLHE: Theory & practice sections on preflop strategy again as well as going over the postflop sections too.

The other aspect to my game that I need to focus is playing scared when I have a big starting hand. On one occasion, I raised to $20 after 3 limpers when holding pocket Aces on the button. That was too much even though the table had been rather loose up to that point. Another example is when I raised $12 holding pocket Queens with one limper. I flopped top set on a flush draw board and made a pot sized bet which took down a smallish pot. Lastly, I raised pocket 10s from the button in a straddled pot and got one called. Once again I flopped top set on a flush draw board and made pot sized bet. I have a virtual strangle hold on the hand and should have bet less. My opponent in this last hand hemmed and hawed a bit before folding. Earlier he had cold called pocket Queens in the BB to my $20 preflop raise ( I had AKo with 4 limpers), so I was really hoping he had JJ-QQ and would either call or reraise me all-in. He didn’t. I feel as though playing with this fear/anxiety polarizes my holdings and basically gives away the strength of my hand. This helps my opponents to play perfectly against me which may be some of the reasons why I attempted to mix up my play which had some less than positive results.

One last thing that threw me for a loop was the overall bad LAGGy play which put me in spots that were quite uncomfortable and left me wondering if I had made the right decisions. 2 hands stick out in my mind, both of which were near the end of my session. Some new players had come to the table as we got shorthanded. I was in EP with AJo and I limp. WRONG!!! Normally I would either raise this or fold it with the latter being what I do the most. AJ is a very tenuous hand to play from EP. I thought that I had read in NLHE T&P that you should limp AJ from EP. I misremembered. Anyways, I limp and there are 5 of us to the flop.

The flop comes A 6 8 cc flush draw. The Small blind who is new to the table bets $40 into a $10 pot. I sit in complete confusion as to why he would do this. Does he have an Ace and a flush draw? Does he have 2 pair or a set? What hand would call that bet unless it has him beat? This was not a good spot so I folded. It serves me right as I shouldn’t have been in the pot to begin with. The small blind flips over A3o for Top pair bad kicker. Pretty soon he busts after raising mediocre holdings postflop 6 hands later and leaves. Thanks for giving my chips to someone else.

The other hand was, of course, the last hand of my session. I limp 67 suited diamonds in EP . My opponent in this hand, flopped top pair and a flush draw, turned 2 pair and a flush draw and decided to reraise all in on the turn. I called and he hit his 4^th diamond that wasn’t a 5 to give him the winning hand and send me broke. I am still feeling the sting from this today as I hate losing hands like that even though the true reply is, “standard”. Like the title says, it was only a matter of time. Any comments on this blog entry or the hands involved are completely welcome, even if it’s critical. Talk to you soon.