I reached my goal.....

....and then I fell back below it. To start the day I was $1,470 short of reaching my goal and I still had 3 days to do it. At the peak of my session today I was up $1988 Then, I lost a few races against short stacks and lost another huge pot when someone turned a higher flush than I did. I ended up winning $1,090 in 2,131 hands which is still a pretty good days work since I only played 3.5 hours.

Since I struggled to get motivated to play on Wednesday I decided to take yesterday off. I am very weary about burning myself out on poker. I ended up playing a couple of tournaments late last night just because I was bored, but I didn't play any cash games. Of course I didn't cash in either one of them and lost $184 playing in those stupid things. I hate tournaments more and more every time I play in them. It is really amazing I still ever fool around with them. Today, I felt much better about playing and was really playing well using some increased aggression in some spots that I felt other players were weak.

One thing I have been trying to improve on is my play on the river. One play I have been trying to incorporate more and more is to play really aggressively against people that make weak value and/or blocking bets vs. me on the river. Matt was actually the one that got me thinking about this type of play and I believe he said he read about it in Barry Greenstein's book. There are several reasons why this play works well.

1. You can win a decent pot when you steal what was already in the pot + however much their "value" bet was.
2. It will keep people from value betting thin OR bluffing against you in the future and you will get to show down some hands that you might otherwise be paying them off with or at times when you could be folding the winning hand to their bluff.
3. If people start to adjust to your aggressive river play they will eventually start calling you down lite and you will be getting paid off with your big hands on the river when they would ordinarily be folding.

I really enjoy making this play as it is very satisfying when it works out. Here is the end of a hand history from my session today where it worked out. I had raised PF with Kc Qc and bet the flop and the turn before this action took place on the river:

There was $198 in the pot at this point.
*** RIVER *** [7h 4c 8c 3d] [Ah]
Bestcuf bets $50
thakilla raises to $225
Bestcuf folds

I am sure he folded the best hand and that is an extra $248 that I normally wouldn't have won.

So with two more days left to play I am up $4,936 and I need to win $564 to get to my goal. My other goal while I was home was to average 1,200 hands played each day. I have already played 15,354 hands in only 6 days of playing in 8 days time (I took two days off). I had 10 days to complete my goal so if I didn't play anymore I would already have an average of over 1500/day. I am really proud of how hard I have worked since I have been back in Vegas.