i had a 6.5 BI downswing yesterday after being up 4BIs but at least i'm beating the winners tilt that plagued me for so long... i definitely got too passive towards the end but i've gotten in 3500 hands 6tabling the last two days.. here are some big pots i've played and i'm not sure if i played them correctly


i'll try to give you my reads on each guy as well and you can give me your line and what you think whenever you have time:

villain was like 24/13 and folded 33% to cbet and raised 33% to cbets.... i have problems playing deep and am curious about bet sizing for this type of hand... when he flats the 3bet on the flop i really think he has some kind of draw... so should i be making this a PS reraise on the flop so that i can just have a PSB left on the turn. or is the bet sizing ok?

1) http://www.pokerhand.org/?3207980


we talked about this a little last night... this guy is super aggro PF... folds to 3bet about 34% and 4bets 23%... the other 47% he just flats... so the question here is this too light 133bbs and does that mean his 4betting range tightens or is this pretty standard in your eyes...

2) http://www.pokerhand.org/?3207993


player is 24/17 with fold to 3bet around 67%... i think he could be trying to iso the dead money in the pot but i'm sure he at least has some kind of hand... .this is a spot where i just flat a raise utg a lot. i don't want to ck a draw this big behind in position and i know i'm getting it in if he c/r's me. any contrasting thoughts?

3) http://www.pokerhand.org/?3208001


here we have a 21/17 player who's 3betting 13% from the sb and then cbetting about 55% in 3bet pots... his range is really wide imo pf... probably 88+, AK through AJs some SC's and maybe some other mixed broadway hands... when he c/c's the flop i feel he has something with SD value as he'd probably c/r a draw. river is a tough spot... 99-JJ is certainly in his range and tbh i probably ck back my entire range on the turn so he can't specifically put me on a FD. i think my call on the river is standard and just a cooler

4) http://www.pokerhand.org/?3208011


this guy is a 36/3/4.0 and he really monkeys around postflop... shoving all sorts of hands on the river... i think my mistake is not betting a little more on the turn.... i reallly thought he'd spaz shove a minraise here but i probably should have made it something like 22-24

5) http://www.pokerhand.org/?3208034


standard iso of a 43/14 player who has an agg. factor of 1... what do you do on the turn here? do you pitch this hand on the turn or do you think he shows up with a pair and a FD at some point... if the minraise was his stack it's an obvs call but 34ish bbs gets a little touchy. i do think i'd be missing value if i don't bet this turn.

6) http://www.pokerhand.org/?3208047


this hand was actually going on while i was playing hand 4 so i lost focus here and didn't realize the pot was multiway on the turn... i wouldn't have bet the turn in this case as almost always one of these guys has a FD based on the PF action... my question is two parts
1st: in this multiway situation and it gets ck'd to the button... button bets, sb calls do you call... obvs it's a fold if the sb raises... and if the sb folds what do you do?
2nd: HU would you bet this turn OOP

7) http://www.pokerhand.org/?3208052

player is 27/10 with a fold to cbet of 22%. when he bets this turn what do you think his range is and how would you proceed... would you call turn, call river.... or call turn, fold river?

8) http://www.pokerhand.org/?3208068

last hand... player is 22/17 and donk bets 21% of the time... i think his calling range here is PP's, some SC's and some high card combos... when he donks here i think he either has a hand like AQ, maybe top pair and a FD or a set. i don't know if flat calling is good here as my hand almost always looks like a FD if i peel the turn and then bet a spade. i think a raise here does fold out some hands i'm ahead of like QT, QJ and maybe he folds KQ. i know if i raise the turn i have to get it in. what's your line here?

9) http://www.pokerhand.org/?3208075

i spent about 5hrs on skype and mikogo sweating people and helping someone with their first pro video. i didn't have any time to play for myself really lol. i've looked over both my PT3 and HEM stats to see where i was at for my last stretch of hands (36kish) and between 50NL and 100NL i'm at a 5ptbb winrate. i'm happy with that but i've also realized there's a lot of mistakes (some small, some bigger) in there as well. ppl who get too wrapped up in winrates often are missing the big picture. i've seen in threads and forums graphs and winrates posted and the players think they're crushing the game and become content or move up in stakes without looking for leaks. the fact is, there's always room for improvement and part of the beauty of online poker is the volume of hands you can get in. so a 1pt improvement over 10s of thousands of hands equals a lot of $ over the long haul.

if i can manage to pick up one more raised pot per 100 that is a 1.5ptbb/100 increase so i will look for spots where cbetting is probably wrong and spots where i might be able to take away pots from people who do cbet too much based on board texture and hand ranges. my redline has been just about breakeven which is a far cry from where it used to be when it slopes straight down. hopefully i can get in about 25k more hands at 100NL this month and have a good 100NL sample to evaluate. my goal is to be a winner at 200NL by the end of the year.

there will be no play today as i attend the Rutgers/UNC game and hopefully RU bounces back after a bad loss to Fresno State.... GL everyone

i have not been in the mood to play the last couple of days... i am a part of two study groups that meet on sundays and spent about 6 hrs in them. as i reviewed some of my HM and watched some players who are playing lower stakes something came to me. not that i haven't thought about it before but i think i'll write about it.

and it's this: adjustments
it applies to life just as much as poker. when you're at the table and you have a 58/2 on your left over 700 hands and he folds to cbets 22% of the time and you're in the CO, what do you do? do you continue to open Suited Connectors and cbet every flop OOP and then chastise the donkey on your left for not folding to the flop with broadway cards when he has bottom pair? who's fault is it really? you know what he's going to do and expect him to fold anyway? i see this a ton at 100NL and lower. even from regulars.

there's no one set style to play to win the most at poker. maybe an optimal style is to cbet around 70% of the time against normal, thinking opponents but in this case most of your cbets should be for value. if you can't make this adjustment, then the next best adjustment is probably to leave the table. the player who wins the most is the one who makes the best adjustments to their opponents. I think that's what makes players like AEjones and Greg so great at HU. Another example of adjustments is what Probability had to do in his last HU match. One of the big new fads is to have a positive redline and he has that for around the first 85% of his HU graph. Now the last player he played was super aggro, if Matt tried to win every pot w/oSD and tried to outaggress this donk he would have given up a large part of his edge. he wasn't stubborn trying to keep his redline up... he made correct adjustments and grinded the opponent down.

i've recently tried to apply this thinking to life as well. i've had a few rough things happen to me in the last 365 days. people who've read my other blog and who know me well have known what i've gone through. and instead of getting upset over the things i can't control, and holding grudges, etc., i've begun to let these things roll off my back. it's such a waste of energy to be mad about things you have no control of (i.e. running bad, parent did you wrong when you were a kid, girl you're into strings you along or dumps, you get a flat tire when driving, or whatever causes you to life tilt). i've tried to take steps in improving my perspective and making proper life and poker adjustments.

gl on and off the tables

i had my first losing session this month at 100NL last night... i talked over the big pot i lost with my coach and he and I both feel i played the hand well and just ran into the top of this guys range...

sunday's one of my favorite days now.... we have such a solid study group and now i have football to throw in the mix. it's very exciting times. hopefully i can keep up my solid run at 100NL and bounce back from the losing session.

also, if anyone could let me know how to post graphs i'd greatly appreciate that.

thanks,
elzino

Well it's 3pm est time and i really am just getting up. I went out to NYC yesterday for a cancer benefit and got smashed. I was definitely retarded drunk and only a short step away from blackout drunk. The ratio of girls to guys was amazing... probably at least 3-1 however the quality wasn't great. There weren't even many 7's but I was able to get the hottest girls number there fwiw. That being said I'm running well in poker, doing really well in my first 5k hands at my new limit. I've just been a lot happier in general and adjusting emotionally to some of the life beats i've taken in the last year.

Also been doing a great job with the stuff Alex has been teaching me. He's an excellent coach and i'm really starting to put the pieces together. I still have a problem with getting passive in some spots. I guess I feel like people are adjusting and aren't going to give me credit anymore. It's like I'm afraid of stuff that's going to happen before it does. And i believe it was Greg that said there's a big difference between what people "should do" in a spot vs. what they "actually do." So it's still something to work on.

i have been a victim in the past of winners tilt. i have a nice session and the mental EV of losing a little of it back vs winning a little more is a wide gap. i've only played about 1800 hands over the last two days so i'm about 1200 hands under where i want to be for the week so far. i have picked up almost 6BI's at 100NL so that makes me happy but I need to play more. my game has been pretty good overall and my hand reading keeps improving. i picked a few more good spots to be aggressive at this level and my passiveness is starting to waver as i get more comfortable. so... i'm doing well... i have plans to head out to NYC tomorrow for a cancer fundraiser so i'll have to play a little earlier in the day and really want to grind out friday, saturday and sunday.

i've watched the first two parts of the video that greg and matt (probability) did together and i'm very impressed. leggo is a great community to be a part of and i'm going to try to become more active in the forums. i'm a little too tired to watch the 3rd part right now but am looking forward to watching it.

i'm definitely getting more comfortable 6 tabling and the 100NL limit. the first half of my day, i played way too passive, but my second session i was extremely happy with my play.

i think b/c my expenses have been so low and i've been spending some of my BR on coaching it hasn't grown to the level i had hoped. that being said i didn't have a plan for withdrawals or things of that nature. i think my plan will be to take out 10BI's once i reach 60. and after i get back up to 60BI's i will take a shot at the higher level.

also, what i've read in probability's blog is that he's going to take on some HU play. i think it's important to work in some HU and i really believe it will help hand reading and my 6max game. so next month i might pick one day a week to play HU. i like the plans and goals i've set and just will work to accomplish them.

side bar:
i'm enjoying the forums, i think it's a tool that i really need to utilize more.

so i just got back from a pretty good weekend on the jersey shore...
went out friday night in belmar with a bunch of buddies and had an awesome time out... left the bar at like 2 am, came back, did some drunk grilling, and then played some games.

saturday was pretty chill hanging out in the pool, drinking and then saw some family that i hadn't seen since my father's funeral last september so that was nice.

sunday i was going to head down to the parker house but some plans got changed and i ended up staying in b/c i was getting up at like 9am for the Rutgers tailgate which was yesterday. it was so fun until the game actually started... RU **** the bed and played like ass.


onto to today and the rest of the year:

i've recently moved back up to 100NL: put a lot of time into studying the game, working with coaches and doing sweats with friends. i feel like i have a lot of great parts, i just need to put the machine together. and the only way to do that is play hands.

goal 1) avg 1500 solid hands a day (mostly 6 tabling) for 24 days this month. now every time i set hand goals, sometimes i autopilot through and don't make all of my sessions quality and play less than my A game

goal 2) get back to the gym at least 6 days a week. this shouldn't be hard. i had some injuries last month and i think my body was a bit burnt out on the gym and i should be able to get back on track

goal 3) eat healthier... stop eating garbage out of convenience, make more trips to the grocery store and get good stuff

goal 4) spend more time studying HH's, sweating others (if you'd like me to sweat you at all send me a msg), and committing to becoming the best 6max player i can be.

hey everyone... just wanted to say "what up". i'm currently a 50NL grinder who's about to step up to 100NL. i work a ton on my game and have had some great minds help me with my game. Zaitsev is currently my coach and has been an amazing help to my game and i'd recommend him strongly if you're looking for help.

i really do love the site here and the videos have been pretty solid as well. i'm thinking i'll make this blog my new home as it seems like the network of people here is awesome and a lot of people (including the pros) seem involved. just wanted to wish everyone luck and i'm happy to be here.

elzino