Live session: thoughts on a hand.

I think it is very important for me to avoid getting burnt out on poker in order for me to stay sharp and play my best. I used to play for a month or so straight and then go on a mini-vacation somewhere for a few days or a week to help me recuperate. Lately I have been playing tons of online poker with no vacations, live poker, or really any days off mixed in. Not surprisingly my results have been really stagnant for a while now and I am starting to realize that I may be a little burnt out. Being burned out makes it soooo much easier to play auto-pilot style poker which is really just a mild form of tilt that is very hard to self-diagnose. It is so hard to diagnose that you usually don't realize you aren't or weren't playing your A-game until after you have taken your break and it has fixed itself. Also, I used to use live poker as a tool to keep myself fresh for online poker. Just mixing it up by doing anything other than the same grind everyday can be beneficial.

Anyway, today I decided to take the the day off from online poker and decided I was going to go to the Rio to sign up for the first $1k WSOP event. It seemed like I went about this early last year and they were open for registration already. However, I went tonight and all the doors to the registration were locked up with no one around. Ironically, these locked doors were directly under banners that read "Tournament Registration is open 24 hours a day". I guess this 24 hour openness doesn't start until tomorrow. Since I was near the strip already and I hadn't played online today I decided I would go play some live poker at the Bellagio.

Sometimes, you will play a hand that will totally crush your spirits and send your game/confidence in a downward spiral and it can take a while to recover from these types of hands. However, there can also be hands that can have opposite effect. I am hoping I played one of those hands tonight. Here is the self made hand history and then I will explain some of my thoughts on it.

5/10 NL Bellagio

I have 2h 2d utg
I limp,
utg plus 1 raise to 40
Call 40
Call 40
I call

Flop 2s Ah 9s
I Check
Bet 80
Call 80
Fold
I call 80

Turn 5d
I check
Bet 220
Raise to 580
I cold call 580
Bettor folds

River 4c
I check
Bet 1200
I have about 1250 in my stack left, but he thinks I have more than that behind.

..........???

I took quite a long time to think on both the turn and river (which I almost never do), no one called the clock (I can't ever remember having the clock called on me) and I eventually folded the river and showed my set of twos. I usually wouldn't show, but because I took so long to make my decision I wanted to at least show people I had a legitimate decision and I thought I might increase my chances of the guy saying or showing what he had. I realize not everyone is going to tell the truth in these situations, but I had a very strong feeling the guy was being genuine/honest when he told me "nice hand" and confessed that he had a set of nines.

I am not crazy about my turn play, but truthfully, I just didn't know what to do in this spot. Something just told me I didn't have the best hand on the flop, but it seems crazy, super nitty, and very exploitable to be folding bottom set on the turn here. In fact, it is pretty darn nitty to fold on the river in this spot.

I am not big on physical tells really, but this guy was VERY comfortable with his bet on both the turn and the river and I was certain he wasn't bluffing. I don't think he is value betting top two pair for this much money in this spot, because it is pretty much impossible for him to get called by anything he could beat. Also, when the original bettor folded on the turn he said "well, I can't beat both of them" before he folded which led me to believe he was folding some kind of big ace....if true that decreased the chances that the raiser had an ace in his hand. The hands I could beat on the flop/turn were top two pair or a pair of aces with a flush draw. I don't think this guy is capable of turning either of these hands into a bluff on the river after I have shown so much strength (or that I have a draw that would have missed and wouldn't be calling his value bet anyway or need to be bluffed out of the hand for him to win). It also crossed my mind that he could have had a 34 of spades (A4s and A3s are also possible) type hand and turned a gut shot making him a wheel. These hands would fit with all of his actions in the hand.


Basically, I am pretty sure and proud that I made the correct fold and it kind of boosted my confidence since I have had some trouble folding pretty much any kind of hand when I play live poker for quite a while now. It also helped my confidence when I picked up AA vs. another player's KK and doubled up about 5 hands later, haha. I felt like I had been immediately rewarded for my solid fold.

I am hoping this hand and a small break from poker will get my confidence going and I can put an end to this brutal break even stretch.

I will be playing event #3 of the WSOP, a $1K buyin, starting on Saturday May 29th, but probably not much poker until then.

Sorry this was so long, but it kinda felt good to get some actual poker content written down.

Another May goals update....

1. Play 120 hours of online cash games.
I have played 66 hours so far so I am a little behind pace here. However, I got some super virus on my computer which caused me to miss a few days of playing. I ended up having to pay someone on the internet $85 to remotely access my computer and cure my computer of this virus. It is almost all better, but he still needs to fix a few things he wasn't sure how to fix the first couple of times he tried. He emailed me telling me he talked to one of his nerd friend/colleagues and he is confident he can fix the rest of the issues.

2. Play 50,000+ hands
I have played 32,017 hands so I am slightly ahead of pace to reach this goal.

3. Review/analyze at least 10 regular players games to help me improve and exploit them.
I suck. I have still done zero. Having to admit this sucks, but I could definitely be working on my game away from the tables much harder than I currently am. (Note to self....really do this!)

4. Make $12,000+.
I am up $1422 in cash games for the month so I am definitely behind pace for this goal, not to mention I am down about $2,000 in tournaments this month :( To make this even more frown worthy, I am actually running way above expectation for the month!

5. I will not play 10/20 or higher.
I have actually played a little bit of 10/20 (368 hands), but only because there were super big fish in the games. I am up about $1400 in 10/20 so it has worked out so far, but it really bugs me when I don't play the same in these games, because of the monetary difference.

Its not very much fun to update about NOT achieving the goals I set, but it wouldn't be very cool of me to only report goals being met. Anyway, there is still time in the month to turn things around.

May Goals update....

1. Play 120 hours of online cash games.
I have played 28.5 hours so far and I missed the first couple of days of the month so I am on pace to meet this goal.

2. Play 50,000+ hands
I have played 13,610 so I am also on pace to reach this goal.

3. Review/analyze at least 10 regular players games to help me improve and exploit them.
I have reviewed about half of one player so far, while I was also playing a session so this goal has been a big fail up until this point.

4. Make $12,000+.
I am down $446 so I am certainly not on pace to reach this goal. However, I do have a 2.47bb/100 win rate this month I am just getting crushed at 5/10. If the variance evens out at the different limits I still have a shot at this goal.

5. I will not play 10/20 or higher.
I failed this one today, because there were TWO huge fish in the games (both lost at around 15BB/100 over a decent sample size). But I won so who cares!!!

I have had two solid winning days in a row so hopefully this is the start of my epic run I predicted a couple of blogs ago.

May Goals...

I have been reading a pretty cool book, recommended by my buddy Blake, about psychological influences on people in all kinds of different situations. It confirmed some stuff about goals that I have known for a while, but gotten away from as of late. Basically, goals have a much higher probability of happening if you declare your goals and especially if you write them down. I used to always use this blog to write down goals and then use it to monitor my success. I had very good success doing this in the past and I am going to try to get back to doing that this month.

Goals for May:

1. Play 120 hours of online cash games.
2. Play 50,000+ hands
3. Review/analyze at least 10 regular players games to help me improve and exploit them.
4. Make $12,000+ (I don't really like monetary goals since they are out of your control a lot of times, but I am pretty good about it not affecting my focus/play. However, it will still feel good once I achieve it).
5. I will not play 10/20 or higher. Its not that I can't afford to play in these games, but I can't play my best in them and the losses affect me more than they should. 10/20 killed me last month and I don't need to play that high to win the amount of money I am trying to win. I feel stupid having to write this down, but hopefully it will help me to not play in those games.

Thats all for now, I hope to keep up with progress reports at least a couple times per week.

So far (after one session):
1. 3 hours
2. 1687 hands
3. 0 players analyzed
4. -$536