2006 Review And New Years Resolutions!

Well, where am I? Well I'm just being stagnant at 1/2 at the moment although I haven't played much over the last two weeks. This is frustrating as I'm feel like I'm not getting anywhere despite playing well. I'm sure this will change (Well I really hope it does!) and I'm annoyed at not reaching my goal of playing 2/4 by the end of the year. But I guess I have to be happy at the progress I have made since April when I joined CR and I suppose I'll take that.

My goals for 2007:-

To be winning at 5/10 by the end of the year. This should be attainable with decent progress and effort. I'm not far off playing 2/4 and I'd like to think I'd do well there.

Following on from this, playing 500k hands for the year. This is just >40k per month and there's no reason why I can't do that.

To play <10 tournaments live, and <5 online. They frustrate me big time, they waste my time and I usually don't enjoy them. I'll only play ones with mates such as small UK festivals or when I go to the poker club on a night out with my Dad occasionally.

Have a good balance in life. What I mean here is have a healthy balance between poker and other things so that I'm not getting totally immersed in the game.

A non-poker goal. To manage my phone bill well and stop getting obscene bills. My contract is up and I'm gonna negotiate a good deal which allows me a good amount of free cross network minutes. And when these are up, don't call people cross network for >1 minute. It's ridiculously expensive and not worth it. Over the last 3 years I've probably spent like a decent car on a phone bill which is just a joke. I also don't even know the number to call to find out how many minutes I have, which is sick.

That's about it, and hopefully I'll be able to manage all 5. I really hope so.

Happy new year to all!

Some Random Thoughts

Well I'm currently sitting in my living room in France watching Match of the Day and I've just been knocked out of the $100K MPP bash on crypto where I used my MPPs from months ago to enter.

I'll start with Christmas, which was pretty enjoyable, we went out for a nice meal and each table got entertained by an awesome magician, who played some sick card magic on me. He came over to the table and started doing random tricks on people and then came to me and got his pack of cards out immediately :-)

We went to France on the 27th and the journey was sick. Got to Gatwick Airport to find that the morons running it decided to sack 100 people just before Christmas and only had 2 people operating x-ray machines out of 10 possible ones. We queued for over 2 hours to get our bags xrayed and the plane was forced to wait until we were all done. Now I have a fucking severe backache because I carried my laptop bag which had some other stuff in too on my shoulder for 2 hours plus. I'm probably going to send my bill for physio to them, not that I expect even a letter back.

Got to France, house was so cold. Indoor temperature of 7 degrees. Got the fires on and it warmed up pretty quick. I haven't really done much here yet. My brother is ill so we haven't been out anywhere yet. I played a couple of sessions, standard running bad at the moment lol, dropped a couple of buyins, picked up one buyin, broke even. Can't hit and get walks with AA/KK etc...

I played 3 tournaments on FTP for a laugh last night which reminded me why I hate tournaments. AA<55 allin on 883 flop. AK < AJ all in preflop when he rivers a queen for his gutshot. QQ < AJ allin preflop when he rivers an ace. That was in the 11k guaranteed where if that hand wins I am in top 10 with 75 left. Instead I bubbled lol.

Me, my dad and my brother played a small money rebuy tournament today which I devised the structure for. It was pretty funny, we were actually in tears at some of the stuff, good times. My brother got beat up pretty bad and was in for like 6 rebuys. My Dad was sucking out on him left right and centre. The funniest hand was when my dad limp/shoved on my brother with A6o, my brother called with AQ and obviously got knocked out when the 6 came. I was heads up with my Dad who was chipped up and playing super aggro, I was showing my brother my hands and made some laydowns. Then my brother goes, you'll take a stand and he'll have a big hand like JJ. Sure enough I shoved with 66 with an M of 5 and he insta called with, yeah, JJ. So my dad won the £14 prize lol but we had a great time. Think we're gonna do it again tomorrow.

Tonight after dinner I played the $100K MPP bash on crypto. Came 500th or something. All in with QJ preflop v QT, obviously he rivers a king for his gutshot draw after I flopped a jack. Still in I get dealt AA and triple up. About 3 hands later I shove KK, called by QQ flop Qxx obviously. Dunno why I waste my time playing these luck fests. My brother is still in it I think in the top 200, and with a $20k first prize and the bubble starting with $100 for 110th place, he could get a decent payout. Would make up for his rebuys earlier...

Gonna prob play a bit of cash online tomorrow and hopefully I'll do well. I feel I am playing very well but not getting the breaks. That can't continue for the long term.

I'll post again tomorrow with a kind of yearly review and my goals for 2007.

Good luck everyone.

It's Almost Christmas!

Just a short post because for the first time really this year, I feel Christmas is close!

I can remember how excited I was when I was little about Christmas and how it was my favourite time of the year. I think over the years I've become more cynical about things like Christmas and life in general and I don't think this too good. I've become indifferent to a lot of things and I want to stop that. It's about time I started looking forward to stuff, which I often don't any more. I think of a lot of stuff as an obligation when really I should be looking at it as a time of doing something I don't any more.

As far as my Christmas plans are concerned, I went into town today and did all my shopping. I couldn't honestly handle going in more than once because it was SOOOO busy! So what I usually do is try to work out what I'm going to buy in advance before I go so that I can go round and get the stuff. It usually works pretty well. Gonna wrap up the presents in a little while too, which I actually do enjoy!

On Christmas Day, we are all going out to a restaurant for lunch which will be good, whilst on Boxing Day it is Spurs v Aston Villa (lol). If Spurs can have a good Christmas, I can see us breaking into the top 5. We are certainly playing very well at the moment.

To all the poker players reading this, how many of you have this feeling of indifference and obligation to many things? I think this has developed for me over the last few years and is something I'm trying to erradicate from my mindset.

Just over 2 days in advance, Happy Christmas to all!

Back Into The Groove

Well - since my last update I'd played pretty much zero hands up until yesterday. Had a situation to sort out away from the poker tables which hopefully should be done now.

I played a fair bit yesterday (win one big pot, lose another one etc...) and just finished a session today. It seems the games are kinda more aggressive on FTP in terms of preflop aggression - tons of 3 bets which I was happy to get involved in too...

Now I've got this other issue out of the way I'm gonna hit the tables hard this week up until Friday at least. Not sure how much I'll be able to play over the Christmas break (but my mate told me last year the games were awesome) and I'm also going on holiday to our house in France until 6th January. But I will have broadband over there which my dad kindly organised for the family all to play poker :-) - my dad plays MTTs about 5 hours a day too! So I'll be able to hit the tables over there (there's not that much else to do apart from eat at restaurants every evening!).

I started my coaching last week and it's gone really well. I've done 7 sessions now and I've enjoyed doing it. I've got some more sessions planned this week too.

Finally, here's some hands I've played over the last 2 days:-

This hand was pretty funny. I pretty much knew he had QT with his flop minraise but I thought I'd call with it being relatively cheap. As soon as the turn came, I knew what a great card it was. Check out the chat, I told him I had AQ after the hand...:-)

http://www.pokerhand.org/?677920

Kinda sick hand. Didn't ever really know where I was in it.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?677924

If there's ever a hand to fold KK preflop, I think this was it. But I still didnt. Nice river:-)

http://www.pokerhand.org/?677926

Nice overbet shove by my 1/2 buyin opponent.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?677928

Kinda sick hand for him, but why didn't he get his last $20 in on the river?

http://www.pokerhand.org/?677931

C-bet with air turns into a backdoor flush.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?677934

Finally get paid with a set.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?677936

Brutal game sometimes.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?677937

Overpair v fish. I had him on KT/AT here, and I knew he couldn't fold it. When he called river, I was very sure my hand was good. But he decided to CALL with a boat. Someone asked him why he called, he said he put me on a bigger boat. Crazy stuff.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?677940

Overpair v fish. Thankfully he wasn't deep.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?677945

Some pretty interesting hands there. I'll try to post some more throughout the week, where I'm aiming for 10k hands Monday-Friday.

Wish me luck!

What's New?

Well, I've been pretty busy over the weekend.

I did excellent on the tables Friday. On Saturday, I went to Spurs v Charlton, we won 5-1 which was awesome. Charlton were terrible, esp their defence and Carson in goal who made 3 bad mistakes I'd be embarrased about on a Sunday morning. I messed about playing some low stakes $50 PLO and picked up a couple of buyins in the evening, I've watched a couple of Andrew's videos on CardRunners and I'm interested in learning the game.

On Sunday, I went out for a few hours with my mum and brother to see my grandma, and then had a family meal. After this, I felt pretty tired so I decided not to play my usual game. I decided to make a $50NL video 4-tabling on Stars, which was pretty interesting. I wasn't exactly impressed with the standard on there, very passive on the whole, which is interesting because I've played a fair bit at $50NL on FTP experimenting and the game is somewhat more aggro and higher standard on there.

Last night, Cardrunners added the capability to get coached privately on their site. I've put myself forward to coach up to 100NL. I did very well at these lower stakes games when I was playing them, and in my opinion my style of play (tight/aggressive/position orientated) is perfect to beat these games. If anyone reading this is interested in coaching, please contact me through email (dw25jp@yahoo.co.uk or vampitup25@hotmail.co.uk), or through PM at Cardrunners. I'm probably going to charge in the region of $40-$60 per hour. If you are a Cardrunners member, you can read my bio on the private coaching forum to find out more about me, and what I propose to do to help my students. If you aren't a Cardrunners member, please email me and I'll be happy to provide you with some more information about what I propose to do.

Finally, I'm now going to add a ton of blogs to the links on the right hand side of the screen. They are either UK based players or Cardrunners members generally. I won't single any out apart from CTS's blog, which if you don't read it, should be mandatory reading for any inspiring poker player.

Good luck everyone,

Dan.

Time For A Change Of Fortune

Yes, things are going better now. I finished playing a session on Full Tilt earlier and made good profit. I was really pleased with how I played, although I stacked off (whilst winning when most of the money went in) with KK in like the first 2 minutes.

Here's some hands:

AA v overaggro TAG. We were both very active on several tables and I knew we'd clash in the end. Maths wise the flop was pretty even, I held which was nice.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?657561

KK v fish, who lucked out on river. I was pretty certain I was winning on the turn, but he'd bet, so I check raised him. Does anyone like a c/r shove here?

http://www.pokerhand.org/?657562

AQ v shortstack fish. I like calling the other shorties raise preflop rather than 3-betting in this spot. Guy who i stacked should have shoved the flop.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?657564

A2 which held v draw. Nice for these hands to hold for a few times. Preflop is questionable for him IMO.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?657566

There were a few other interesting hands I played but I've added them to the CR forum today so I don't want to post how they went.

That's all folks, good luck!

Waiting For A Break

For the vast majority of the time since Friday, I've been in a bit of a transitional period. I've been in a longish breakeven patch, but I'm hoping today has seen me finish that.

Despite all this, I really feel I've taken my game to a new level. I don't want to elaborate hugely on that, as I'm playing on FTP again as well as my new site (the games aren't always great on the other site), but I'm really happy with some adjustments I've made.

I've been playing pretty well recently but haven't had the breaks, but today things went a lot better. I messed about at 50NL trying some stuff which worked awesome, crushed the game and picked up 5 buyins in about 1 1/2 hours. I then played some 1/2 tonight and won 1.5 buyins in an hour, despite a lot of things going against me. I haven't had time to play any more today as I've had some other stuff to do, but I'm going to get a LOT of hands in in the rest of the week.

I went to Spurs v Middlesborough last night, a well deserved win for Spurs. Huddlestone and Zokora controlled the midfield, Huddlestone will be an awesome player, mark my words. He has the potential to be the next Glenn Hoddle. The game was pretty entertaining in the second half with good goals from Berbatov who is now looking a class act, and a typical quick-thinking goal from Robbie Keane. The fight at the end was pretty amusing, and Boro should have been down to 8 men by the end but the ref bottled showing reds after a kick off the ball and an elbow.

To all Cardrunners members - There's a topic on the NL Mid/High Stakes Forum I highly recommend reading. I started the threat called 'Continuation Bets In Reraised Pots - Spew Or a Profitable Play?', and in my opinion, the discussion is excellent and I really learned a lot, and got a lot more confidence after hearing what others had to say.

That's about it for now, good luck everyone.

An Update, And Some Thoughts

Well - how has it been going?

The answer so far, is very unspectacular. I've played 5000 ish hands in December so far and have dropped 2 buyins. This, believe it or not, is a huge result IMO. The amount of setup hands that I've ran into has been unbelievable. QQQ was no match for a fish's boat when I have notes on him saying he can't fold basically anything, nut flush in a reraised pot lost against flopped quads (luckily he slow played it lol so I didn't get stacked), you catch my drift.

The sick thing is, I'm playing against people who are basically desperate to give their money away. It's crazy shit, honestly. If I could hit some hands I couldn't help to get paid. I think when this stuff happens, you have to try to minimise your losses and not let them affect you. I haven't always done this - whereas some people tilt off money I tend to get too passive and see monsters and this isn't ideal either, and hence I'm folding the best hand a lot, and also my lines are inducing river 'bluffs' which are tough to call.

Speaking of river bluffs, this is quite an interesting concept. I'm facing them left, right and centre and it's something I'm gonna take a quick look at. If you raise preflop from position, get called by the BB, he check/calls your flop c-bet, and you check behind him on the turn, you are almost going to get bet at on the river, regardless of what your opponent holds. Any hand worthy of his flop call (air/draw/pair/set/completed draw) will bet at you. If you take this line on the turn, you have to be a good judge of whether the guy is bluffing or not. One thing I have done is added to my HUD their river bet %. This is pretty useful, for obvious reasons. I'm much more prone to calling with a hand like second pair, obviously, if a draw hasn't hit. It's wierd, because I never really encountered this much at the low stakes but at 200NL it's very widely used by many of the 'less decent' players.

An illustration of this, is a hand I played yesterday. I open raised A8c from position. BB called. He check called my c-bet on a 28Q flop. Turn was a 4, where he checked and so did I. River was another Q, he bet pot. I called. He showed J9.

Depending on your hand and the board, you could '2nd barrel' the turn with a hand such as top pair or perhaps even second pair top kicker. This play will sort the men out from the boys, so to speak, and establish whether your hand is good. If this gets called, then I'm probably going to check behind on the river unless I improve. I like this play because it makes draws pay, they are making a mathematical mistake by calling, and saves a tough river decision. When I was crushing the game, I used to make a lot of 'information' plays, and plays which generally keep me out of tough spots. I think I've over complicated my decision making lately and this is something I want to address. I know 'information raises' get frowned on by some people, but honestly, I think this does help me a lot, especially as I'm prone to getting bet off a semi-strong hand on a latter street by an aggressive player.

However, on the other hand, you could try to induce a bluff with a check. I've probably done this too much lately, and not always for that reason. I've played too passively on the whole and this needs to be addressed too. My turn and particularly my river AF have dropped somewhat lately and this isn't good. I need to get back to the tough, aggressive player that I was when I was smashing this game for 9ptbb/100 over a good sample at 200NL.

Feeling sorry for myself, I was going to go through PT and list how many times I haven't even seen a flop with AA/KK (honestly, the amount of times I've got walks or everyone has folded is so sick), or how many times I've flopped a set (surely <10/5000 hands) but having got my thoughts down onto 'paper' has really helped and I'm feeling much better already. I need to adopt this frame of mind on the tables and I'll be the better player for it. I think running bad = playing bad to a certain degree, and it's certainly true that it induces passivity and fear of monsters.

After writing this, I feel much more positive already.

One final thing I want to add is this. When watching Green Plastic videos, I never really paid attention to when he talked about timing tells. However, I was reading his 'The Well' thread on 2+2 recently (He should do one on CR too IMO), and one of the things he mentioned was that an instant minimum flop checkraise is a feeler bet, and not a huge hand. I've been paying a lot more attention to things like this over the last couple of days, and this is definitely the case a huge amount of the time.

One hand which illustrates this was one I played yesterday. I had 88 and raised in position. The flop came 2 4 5 rainbow. I bet $12, and I got instantly minimum checkraised to $24. I made it $65 to go. He folded. Now - whilst I fully understand that I'm not getting better hands to fold, this raise is basically all I'm putting in with the hand unimproved. It simplifies my decision making and informs me where I stand. If I call, and he pots the turn (or even a 3/4 pot bet to $48ish), it's going to be tough to call him down possibly two streets (although he may slow down on the river). For me, in any case, simple decision making is something I like.

I said in an earlier post that for those people who haven't read them yet, I highly recommend the strategy posts on the 2+2 SSNL sticky thread. There's some excellent stuff on there.

May I wish everyone good luck at the tables, and no matter what happens, to stay positive and aggressive.