Fruitypro's Poker Blog

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Ship It

I played the weekend at 100NL, because I wanted to get back into it at a low stakes before I hit 400NL. I definitely think this was a good idea, even if I didn't make much due to ridiculous setups and beats. I was pretty pleased with how I played, although there was definitely room for improvement in some ways.

Yesterday I was tilting (non poker) because of a couple of things so decided it was best not to play. I did 4 hours of lessons today which was good, and after some dinner I loaded up 6 tables at 2/4. Things went pretty well. The game is definitely different there, much more aggro, players do have a raise/fold mentality although there were some fish on the tables too. I actually enjoyed it a lot and got a bit of a buzz (first time for ages in poker) playing higher stakes against generally better players. After about 20 minutes my brother came into the room and told me to watch the new episode of Prison Break, so as soon as he said that I had to log off and bank the $612 profit. I was pretty tired anyway. Here's two of the pots I won:-

With this hand, I made a standard 4x raise blind on blind after it was folded to me. BB called. It was a good flop for my hand, giving me a flush draw with a gutshot and an overcard which may or may not be live. I make a standard continuation bet and my opponent raises me 3x. I'm happy to play for stacks here so I make a value raise to about $200, basically committing myself to the hand. He calls (wtf?). I hit my money card on the turn and shoved, he called, and he was drawing dead having played KK appallingly.

No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $2/$4
6 players
Converter

Stack sizes:
UTG: $474
UTG+1: $660.55
CO: $400
Button: $406.20
Hero: $402
BB: $584.15

Pre-flop: (6 players) Hero is SB with J♣ K♣
4 folds, Hero raises to $16, BB calls.

Flop: 9♣ Q♥ 2♣ ($32, 2 players)
Hero bets $22, BB raises to $64, Hero raises to $200.4, BB calls.

Turn: 7♣ ($432.8, 2 players)
Hero is all-in $185.6, BB calls.

River: J♥ ($804, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $804)

Results:
Final pot: $804
Hero showed Jc Kc
BB mucks Kh Ks

Not much explanation here. Opponent buys in for 1/2 a buyin and posts out of position. He puts me all in on his first hand on the table when I have AA. Sweet.

No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $2/$4
6 players
Converter

Stack sizes:
UTG: $525.70
UTG+1: $200
Hero: $400
Button: $205.60
SB: $600
BB: $400

Pre-flop: (6 players) Hero is CO with A♦ A♠
UTG folds, UTG+1 raises to $16, Hero raises to $48, 3 folds, UTG+1 raises all-in $200, Hero calls.

Flop: Q♠ K♣ 9♦ ($406, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $406)

Turn: 5♥ ($406, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $406)

River: 6♥ ($406, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $406)

Results:Final pot: $406
UTG+1 showed Ac Jc
Hero showed Ad As

Gonna hit 2/4 up for most of the day tomorrow, looking forward to it. Good luck to everyone!

Friday, January 26, 2007

Getting Better Hopefully

I'm feeling quite a bit better this week which I'm obviously happy about, but I've still got to have a scan in about 10 days and haven't even had my xray results back yet either.

I've started playing, but I'm gonna play 5k hands at 100NL to get back into things before I start playing 2/4. I played 1600 hands yesterday, I thought the standard was appalling. There were two players in that time that I felt had even a decent grasp of preflop concepts (and I knew one of the two guys already!). I picked up $155, should have been about 6 buyins up but got slaughtered by the poker gods with AA losing to KK allin preflop, and also I lost like ridiculous setups to short stacks in 80BB pots such as T3 in a blind battle on an A23T board against his wheel, and AQ on a queen high 3 spade flop against the flopped flush. I also got stacked with AK v A8 after he stacked off with top pair 8 kicker and gutshot on the turn. He hit his gutshot, obv. He was about an 80/9, so I can't ever see myself folding there.

I've linked a ton more blogs on the right, hopefully I've remembered to include everyone that asked - if you'd like to be linked (or if I've forgotten to add you lol!) then please just let me know through the comments.

I'll add some hands from the weekend session over the weekend.

Dan.

Friday, January 19, 2007

No Poker

I haven't played since last week as I'm not feeling that well at the moment. I've got something which is causing pain in my stomach and back and the doctor's don't know what's wrong. I've been for some tests which came back ok but I'm waiting for my xray results and I'm getting a scan done too. It's annoying because it's not getting any better and also because if they knew what was wrong they could treat it which would also give me more piece of mind too.

Obviously I haven't felt in the right state to play poker online, which sucks seeing as I was going to give $2/4 a good go. But I think it's important to play when you feel good, and obviously this isn't that time.

If I'm not feeling too tired, I might try to play the £10 rebuy donkfest at the BigSlick with my Dad tonight but I'll see how I feel. If I do go, I'll need to sleep before. Another side problem is that I'm always very tired, which I'm not sure if it's either down to whatever I have, or because I'm not sleeping too well.

Good luck to everyone, and I'll update again soon.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Some Hands

No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $1/$2
6 players
Converter

Stack sizes:
UTG: $77.10
UTG+1: $103.95
Hero: $386.70
Button: $228.85
SB: $123.15
BB: $452.40

Pre-flop: (6 players) Hero is CO with T♠ A♠

2 folds, Hero raises to $8, 2 folds, BB calls.

Flop: 5♠ Q♠ 9♠ ($17, 2 players)

BB bets $12, Hero raises to $42, BB raises to $134, Hero raises all-in $378.7, BB calls.

Turn: 8♦ ($774.4, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $774.4)

River: A♣ ($774.4, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $774.4)

Results:Final pot: $774.4

Hero showed Ts As
BB showed 8s Ks

Was very suprised at villains' hand, he has <20% vpip!

Villain in this hand was like 54/6 - kinda sick.

No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $1/$2
5 players
Converter

Stack sizes:
UTG: $187.70
CO: $202.80
Button: $348.35
SB: $234.50
Hero: $259.30

Pre-flop: (5 players) Hero is BB with A♦ A♥

UTG folds, CO raises to $8, Button folds, SB raises to $14, Hero raises to $40, CO folds, SB calls.

Flop: 3♠ Q♣ J♣ ($88, 2 players)

SB bets $44, Hero raises to $130, SB raises all-in $194.5, Hero calls.

Turn: 3♣ ($477, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $477)
River: J♥ ($477, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $477)

SB showed Qd Qs
Hero mucks Ad Ah

This hand I was pretty annoyed about. Villain was over aggro donk obviously, and was ridiculously aggro after this suckout:-

No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $1/$2
5 players
Converter

Stack sizes:

UTG: $137.35
Hero: $284.20
Button: $246.70
SB: $279.70
BB: $114.50

Pre-flop: (5 players) Hero is CO with K♦ K♠

UTG calls, Hero raises to $10, 3 folds, UTG calls.

Flop: 5♣ 4♥ J♠ ($23, 2 players)UTG bets $124, Hero raises all-in $274.2, UTG calls all-in $3.35.
Uncalled bets: $146.85 returned to Hero.

Turn: A♠ ($277.7, 0 player + 2 all-in - Main pot: $277.7)
River: J♣ ($277.7, 0 player + 2 all-in - Main pot: $277.7)

Results:Final pot: $277.7

UTG showed Qh Jd
Hero mucks Kd Ks

Not much other news, although I did have a chuckle when catching up with the soccer news the other day. Whilst Spurs were busy tying up their young stars Tom Huddlestone and Aaron Lennon to long term contracts, our 'rivals' West Ham were busy buying 'relegation specialist' Nigel Quashie for £1.75m.

Some Questions about this -

Why does every manager of the bottom 5 Premiership teams try to buy Nigel Quashie every transfer window?
Does Quashie ever get pissed off getting relegated every season?
Who has been relegated more, Quashie or MK Dons?

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Back To The Grind

Well I got back last night from France and I have to admit, the holiday was very relaxing and I definitely benefited from that. Feel totally de stressed now which is awesome.

I'm ready now to make 2007 a big year for me. I'm going to be playing a lot from today, and I'm hoping to move up to 2/4 within the next week or so. I did well on holiday at the tables and really feel that I've improved a ton over the last month through study and deep thought about playing certain hands in certain situations. I know I'm by far a better player than when I started playing 1/2.

I was considering writing some more strategy articles, but I'm a bit stuck on ideas to write about. If you wanted me to write about something, please feel free to add a comment about it and I'll do my best to write my thoughts on it.

I've also added some new blogs on here. They are mostly CR members. Several of them are from members who have had lessons with me (Jeff218 - Cap Anson's Poker Blog and Olliepower - My Poker Journey). Other ones which you may find interesting are H5N1Strain's blog - he is a fellow coach on Cardrunners who is running an Omaha Challenge for 2007 and also another one from a UK player which I found linked from another blog called 88% Concentration by a guy called Blue Scouse. The guy's swings are sick, but you have to admire his heart for a gamble. It's a great read. Another CR member, Syntec, has also started a blog which has a lot of hands from his 1/2 sessions which players of that limit may find interesting. If you want me to link your blog, please add a comment and I'll be happy to do that.

What I thought would also be interesting would be a bit about my favourite things each week, like my most played CD's and books I'm reading.

Here's the last week in that respect:-

CD - Clubland 10. It's a pretty good modern dance compilation.
Favourite Track - Time To Turn Around By Denis The Menace.
Most Recent Book I Read - Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
Books I'm gonna read - Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, and the Second Life Guide.
Computer Games - Football Manager 2007 on PSP and Canis Canem Edit/Pro Evolution Soccer6 on PS2.

Good luck at the tables,

Dan.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

A Small Update

I haven't played since my decent session yesterday as I'm still enjoying my holiday mainly. We played Scrabble last night which I won :-) and today we went to Bordeaux for the day which was nice. We had a great meal at lunch for a totally ridiculous 20 Euros (3 courses) which I am amazed that they could make money from. In England it would probably be £40 plus. We went around the town for a while and then headed back. Just chilled this evening and I watched Andrew's new 2/4 video on CR.

I found this to be a pretty solid video which gave me a couple of good line checks so I definitely got something out of it. In fact I don't think I've watched enough videos in the last 3 months. I pretty much stopped watching them and I don't think that's a coincidence that since I've watched a couple of GP vid's and a couple of Stingers, as well as a really good 1/2 one by Lucky Chewy, that my results have picked up again. I'm going to add a 6th new years resolution to watch every NLHE video added by CR onto their site this year. Even if I just pick up one thing from each video it will be worth watching. I've been lazy and just been involved with the forums when I should still be watching the videos as well.

I'm probably going to play a bit tomorrow, before we go out for another meal in the evening, should be good. Gonna have to go on a health kick when I get back to UK, too much good food over here...

Good luck everyone, and I'll update again over the weekend.

Dan.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Hand Of The Month

It's the 3rd of January, and if an opponent can play a hand worse for the rest of the month, I'll be shocked.

No Limit Holdem Ring gameBlinds: $1/$2
6 players
Converter

Stack sizes:
UTG: $127.45
Hero: $320.30
CO: $227.70
Button: $208.65
SB: $169.75
BB: $198

Pre-flop: (6 players) Hero is UTG+1 with A♣ A♠
UTG folds, Hero raises to $8, 2 folds, SB calls, BB raises to $24, Hero raises to $71, SB folds, BB calls.

Flop: T♦ 6♠ 6♥ ($150, 2 players)
BB checks, Hero is all-in $249.3, BB calls all-in $127.Uncalled bets: $122.3 returned to Hero.

Turn: 9♣ ($404, 0 player + 2 all-in - Main pot: $404)
River: 2♦ ($404, 0 player + 2 all-in - Main pot: $404)

Results:Final pot: $404
BB showed Kh Ah
Hero showed Ac As