I don't really have anything else to say in this blog post, but as soon as this hand happened I thought about how owned I got and how I should post it:

Full Tilt Poker, $10/$20 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

UTG: $2,556
MP: $3,768
Hero (CO): $4,461
BTN: $2,112
SB: $2,117
BB: $2,522.50

Pre-Flop: T J dealt to Hero (CO)
UTG folds, MP raises to $70, Hero calls $70, 3 folds

Flop: ($170) 5 J 4 (2 Players)
MP bets $130, Hero calls $130

Turn: ($430) 9 (2 Players)
MP checks, Hero bets $280, MP raises to $920, Hero calls $640

River: ($2,270) 9 (2 Players)
MP bets $2,648 and is All-In, Hero calls $2,648

Results: $7,566 Pot ($3 Rake)
MP showed Q J (two pairs, Jacks and Nines) and WON $7,563 (+$3,795 NET)
Hero showed T J (two pairs, Jacks and Nines) and LOST (-$3,768 NET)

Initiate "owned/pwnt" comments .

So I've been playing a BUNCH this month, and I have some really great stuff to talk about. My "experiment" ended by me concluding that playing 9 tables was too much, primarily because I had to play versus loads of different opponents by the end of it to maintain that high of a table number. So, I cut it down to 6, which isn't really that big of an issue. I'm trying to actively table select, which incidentally matters a ton.

Here is my month so far.



Not too much improvement past the last update (10kish 20kish hands, yikes!), but I've been trying out a bunch of things this month in general, and am able to make some interesting conclusions about my game in particular. I've been working on improving certain areas of my game that I felt were lacking, and this will most definitely help my results moving forward. I guess I can't really complain that I've been trying new things, having a bunch of "bad" results from a bunch of stuff, and still am up about 50k this month.

To share some of the things I'm thinking about, I think I need improvement in the following areas: Soul Read Checks and Reverse Pot Odds Bluffs. Basically, a Soul Read Check is where you have a hand that is a "standard" value bet, but you really feel a check raise coming from a hand that beats you, and so you check. I've had about 3 instances in the last week where I felt a check/raise coming, but convinced myself to bet anyway, and I got check/raised. There isn't too much science to the Soul Read Check, rather it comes from some semi-/un-conscious level that picks up check timing of game flow.

The second topic is the Reverse Pot Odds Bluff (RPOB). This is a bluff where you stick it in where it looks like your opponent is either pot committed, or is never folding. An example would be:

Poker Stars, $10/$20 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 2 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

Hero (SB): $2,267
BB: $1,990

Pre-Flop: J 3 dealt to Hero (SB)
Hero raises to $60, BB raises to $220, Hero calls $160

Flop: ($440) 7 A 5 (2 Players)
BB bets $300, Hero calls $300

Turn: ($1,040) 2 (2 Players)
BB bets $784, Hero raises to $1,747 and is All-In, BB folds

Results: $2,608 Pot ($1 Rake)
Hero mucked J 3 and WON $2,607 (+$1,303 NET)

Now, I do this sometimes, but my big leak has been calling when other people do it because apparently no one else does this! @@#@&$(*:

Poker Stars, $10/$20 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

BB: $2,000
UTG: $2,090
MP: $1,949.58
CO: $2,000
Hero (BTN): $3,087.83
SB: $1,970

Pre-Flop: 8 9 dealt to Hero (BTN)
2 folds, CO raises to $70, Hero calls $70, 2 folds

Flop: ($170) 8 2 3 (2 Players)
CO bets $130, Hero raises to $280, CO calls $150

Turn: ($730) 9 (2 Players)
CO checks, Hero bets $440, CO calls $440

River: ($1,610) T (2 Players)
CO checks, Hero bets $610, CO raises to $1,210 and is All-In, Hero calls $600

Results: $4,030 Pot ($3 Rake)
CO showed A K (a flush, Ace high) and WON $4,027 (+$2,027 NET)
Hero showed 8 9 (two pairs, Nines and Eights) and LOST (-$2,000 NET)

I will have to begin folding against 99% of opponents because they aren't capable of bluffing here, and I'm dumb enough to continue thinking they are. Well, I will keep calling against the people that read this blog .

On Saturday Danielle came over and I cooked a dinner. I got a couple filet mignons and pan seared/oven baked them. It was an interesting experience because I have never cooked steaks on anything other than a grill, but they somehow managed to taste very well anyway. She made some corn, broccoli, and our appetizers, which consisted of mozzarella cheese wrapped in prosciutto, with some olive oil and pepper/salt draped on the top. Overall the meal was very good. Afterwards we relaxed and watched Drillbit Taylor, which was an ok movie. I should have a BBQ for Leggo-ers in the area . I don't really have much spare time, and have been working on my time management. It was a lot of fun to set aside an entire evening (!!!!) without work for once.

Saturday was also special because my cat, Cody, turned one year old! Cody is extremely cute (he is a chinchilla persian cat), and I will take some pictures and make sure to write a blog entry and post them.

On the poker front, I have been playing a bunch. I'm playing pretty much all the 10/20 tables across FTP/PS when I play, and it's going well. I'm getting in 791.95 hands per hour since starting this experiment, and I think one of the only reasons it's working is because I'm on a bunch of tables with the same guys. I think this would actually be worse at smaller stakes because you have to deal with making plays against a wider range of opponents. However, 'SEABEAST-style' as I will dub it, is going well. One final benefit is that I get to get in more hands against those great regulars at 10/20! .

I actually think I can pull off a 100k month even though I started lots of tables only about a week ago, but I will have to see how this goes. I will need to start running a lot better though, which has always been an issue for me . Here is a graph of my month so far, with the last 14.5k hands being in the last week.




I figure posting graphs will only reverse my fortune, so looks like I'll be running good for the rest of the month!

I'm pretty excited about Vegas this summer. Today I booked our house, and here are some pictures:











We will be there from the 15th of June until the 15th of July. I'm really looking forward to it because obviously we will get to meet a lot of Leggo guys, but also Danielle and my family will be out there for a little bit, and, of course, there is the WSOP. I'm looking forward to playing in some cash games actually because after my Canada experience I've gotten to see first hand how ridiculously soft they are.

I'm mad Memphis lost tonight because it marked the first big sports game that I incorrectly called the winner of in a long time. My superbowl picks date back to Tampa Bay vs. Oakland where I called a massive upset because I had used the Bucs in NFL Fever for XBOX, and I knew their defense was ridiculously underrated. I guess I called the Kimbo Slice/Tank Abbott fight incorrectly as well.

Baseball is heating up, and the New York Metropolitans are going to the World Series. Any team in the NL outside of the Mets, Braves, and Phillies are a joke. People keep telling me the Cubs will be good, but I guess that's until Kerry Wood gets injured. I realize he's a closer now but I'm pretty sure someone keeps count every time he sets foot into a ballpark, and eventually injures him, so it's inevitable.

Steroid prediction: A-Rod juiced, and hard. He went through such a physiological change that it's laughable. I've seen him live, upclose, and in person, and he hides his physique better than Bonds did with all those ridiculous long sleeve shirts. Either way, I think it's silly that so many people are outspoken about steroids in baseball or in sports in general. The public is so misinformed about short and long term effects of anabolics use. Hell, I would even expect the generically ignorant public to react some way to the effect of: "Yay fast pitches! Yay home runs! We like steroids!" Although, I suppose its current reaction/witchhunt is more ignorant. Hey guys, let's grab some 60-80 year old men and go launch an investigation! The ironic part is that I would be willing to bet a ton of people don't even realize steroids are illegal (without medical purpose) according to the law (in the USA), and even further don't know they are a class 3 classified drug (yup, with heroin). Standard.

Well, the Mets will win with or without Jose Lima!

Surprisingly, I've been busy lately. Other than Leggo stuff (copious hours of [enjoyable] work a day ), I had two group sections running, and also I believe 7 or so students. This doesn't really leave to much time to truly be able to focus on grinding, so I have been enjoying playing some HU recently. I have played almost exclusively at 5/10 because the regs don't seem to be giving me any action (other than the 2-3 that I truly believe are very talented and don't have the desire to play), and no fish seems to sit at my table either.

Here are some graphs from my hands this month at 5/10HU, with probably 90% of them coming in the last week:






Needless to say, I feel very comfortable with me HU game at this point. However, I won't be playing 25/50 HU yet because I don't have enough money online to play it and not be mentally affected. Soon though .

EDIT: Also, one day I hope to not run $1-2 under EV per hand. Wish me luck!

Another quick update before we pack up and leave.

-Buffet was bad.
-Played a session at around 2 PM there because the 10/20 3k max ran. I didn't bring money (thank you Buffalo not having real banks) so I had to have my bank allow a 2k ATM withdrawal, and borrowed a grand from Craig. Roll on the tableaments.
-Craig sat to my direct left, and we essentially took turns raising. I would estimate, and Craig agreed, that I had a 30-35% VPIP full ring.
-Two people asked to be moved from my direct right during the session.
-We basically had about 20k between the two of us by the end of it, and I'm pretty sure no one else at the table won money.
-I ended up 9, and Craig I think about 3.
-Craig Boyd exercised the first ever live CiB bluff that I have seen or heard of.
-Everyone was pretty bad. I was three barreling in limped, multiway pots as much as I could so I could get called down cheaply, and continued to show things like 38o, 57o, 29ss, etc. Very manipulable opponents (psychologically), but it certainly seems that live is all about dynamic.
-I will post hands later.
-Actually, I have to talk about this hand. I am BB, Craig is UTG and dead straddles (it's effectively a blind min-raise UTG). 4 callers, and I make it 210 with KTo. Craig calls, UTG+1 calls, UTG+2 makes it 1200 with 2800 behind. Folds around to UTG+1 who shoves, and UTG+2 folds. LOL "straddles".
-At night we went to Boston Pizza again, and that was fun. This time we got over 1200 tickets between 7 people, and were able to get 20 army men, a triceratops, a pterodactyl, a stuffed animal bear, and another donkey.

I will post the rest of the hands as soon as I get the chance to. I enjoyed the trip and would definitely go again.

I am running out the door but here are some highlights from the night (in note form, to be made into a longer blog when I return)

-Staying at Hilton in the Fallsview Casino, 4 people total, 2 rooms
-Craig and Randy were belligerent before/at dinner
-Randy mysteriously disappeared for 25 minutes at the end of dinner
-Craig and Randy took a one hour nap after dinner
-At this time, Kyle and I were denied action at blackjack by the casino, and thusly went to the bar after a successful yet short-lived slots session.
-After waking Craig and Randy up, we went to some famous-y bar "Boston Pizza"
-Craig and Randy quit before 11 PM, citing being tired, so Greg and Kyle had to do work.
-2 big pitchers, 2 people
-Won lots of prizes in the arcade games, including 8 small plastic army men and a small stuffed animal donkey.
-Returned to the casino and played 5/5. I had the army men on every stack of chips and I heard someone comment that "some kid was walking around with a donkey in his back pocket"
-I remember challenging someone to HU because they commented on my army men, and was told today by Kyle he was shortstacking with $100.
-I played for 10 minutes, and busted in probably my 7th hand. I 3bet an iso-raise with KQ to 145, and bet/called (committed) a 22T flop. I was drawing dead to quads.
-Dragged myself back upstairs to bed, prohibiting me from losing somewhere in the 4 figure range from tilt.

Right now I am going to grab some food and then play a real session. There was a interest list for 10/20 3k max so hopefully that runs today!

Chris has been working fantastically hard on a number of things, but the new blogs are ready to be released. February was a good month for so, as I was able to play over 30k hands. I got a new laptop though so I'm not sure how I will be able to import my old hands into PT3. I am sans a HUD right now, but PT2 seems so inferior... maybe I will wait it out a few more days. I'll post a graph from Feb when I get a chance, but for now just visualize 30k hands to the right, and 80k bucks on the left. Here is a picture of my new laptop, however. It's a Dell XPS M1530 (obv got Alpine White):



I have taken some time off from school. To be honest, I really haven't been able to put my mind towards school. I am currently working 8-10 hour days 6-7 days a week, and it's really difficult to balance that with school when I currently have 0 passion for it. When I return, I will do much better because I will be mentally in it.

Obviously the new guys we got at Leggo are awesome, and we made a ton of new great changes to the site both at the core and on the surface. Leggo is currently steamrolling ahead, and this will not change in the future. Does that mean we even have someone else new to bring to the team!?! Well... the only thing I will say is



Interesting - that last sentence seemed to have cut off . We have recorded two LeggoCast productions and they are probably one of the funnier things I can recently remember being part of. It was fun to co-host with Aaron, and we had some real fun interactions with our special guest Craig (and Chewy!).

I'm doing a lot of coaching and things with the stock market (and of course tons of stuff with Leggo), so this month I really don't anticipate having much time to play poker. Hopefully, I can have some sort of a schedule where I get up at around 9-10 AM, work until about 5-7 PM, and then maybe sometime at night play two hours of poker.

This week will be fun though. It's Spring Break, and I actually am not going to some sunny location. I went to Panama City Beach and Acapulco in the last two respective years, and this year I am taking a small break. I will be going to Niagara (Fallsview Casino) with Craig and some college friends, so that will be quite the experience I'm sure and I promise to take pictures!

Stay tuned for some pretty graphs when I get my PT gear back in action.

Although my writing style is generally long winded, today's blog entry will consist of a bunch of bulleted points, which is completely emotionally based (I have no idea why though )

I've been really busy working on a ton of things for the future Leggo over the past, well, since November 17, 2007 . However, a lot of the stuff has materialized, and will all come to focus on Leap Day (Feb 29). It's going to be nothing short of awesome.

We are introducing a secret number of coaches, and a bunch of other features. Chris has been working on a coaching section that will revolutionize online coaching (and hopefully will be too complex for the other sites to then copy!).

I have been neglecting my blog because I've been working on a ton of things for Leggo, and actually have been playing poker. The good news is that I will eclipse my 30,000 hand goal, and thusly avoid having to pay Aaron 5k.

Along those lines, Leggo pros (old and new) all seem to be having big months, so it would be interesting to see how much we collectively made over how many hands.

Right now I have a Cage going on in the forums, so if you haven't gotten a chance to check that out, feel free to do so. I am pretty open to answering questions, so it should be a good time.

I owe a blog entry to my family. We have experienced some humps in the road recently but they always are very supportive of me.

That's it for now, start yelling at me if I don't get another entry in the next few days!

Every now and then at 10/20 there is some random donkey playing two tables like a big silly goose, and the regulars play absolutely terribly against him. My guess it that they simply look at VPIP, PFR, and aggression stats and say, "oh, it's a donk," then proceed back to playing 8 tables.

Of course, the guy always runs sick hot, but it just boggles my mind how the regs pay him off in spots where he always has the nuts.

Well, I encountered a specific player like that last night. The regs/FTP kept giving him free money, and then I attempted to take it away. Then, well, it was interesting to say the least . Just to clarify, he was on one 9max table and one 6max table (hence the differences in hand histories)

Here is his climb to greatness:

(OK, so UTG was a fish here too)

Full Tilt Poker, $10/$20 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

CO: $4,479.65
Hero (BTN): $2,150
SB: $524
BB: $3,741.50
UTG: $1,600
MP: $2,051

Pre-Flop: 4 6 dealt to Hero (BTN)
UTG raises to $70, MP calls $70, 4 folds

Flop: ($170) 3 J 8 (2 Players)
UTG checks, MP checks

Turn: ($170) J (2 Players)
UTG bets $170, MP calls $170

River: ($510) 4 (2 Players)
UTG checks, MP bets $500, UTG raises to $1,000, MP raises to $1,811 and is All-In, UTG calls $360 and is All-In

Results: $3,230 Pot ($3 Rake)
UTG mucked Q K (a pair of Jacks) and LOST (-$1,600 NET)
MP showed J A (three of a kind, Jacks) and WON $3,227 (+$1,627 NET)

Full Tilt Poker, $10/$20 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

CO: $4,591.15
Hero (BTN): $3,987
SB: $1,980
BB: $2,000
UTG: $1,910
MP: $4,578

Pre-Flop: 8 7 dealt to Hero (BTN)
UTG raises to $70, MP calls $70, 2 folds, SB calls $60, BB folds

Flop: ($230) A 2 5 (3 Players)
SB checks, UTG checks, MP bets $180, SB calls $180, UTG folds

Turn: ($590) 4 (2 Players)
SB checks, MP checks

River: ($590) 3 (2 Players)
SB bets $520, MP calls $520

Results: $1,630 Pot ($3 Rake)
SB showed T A (a straight, Five high) and LOST (-$770 NET)
MP showed 7 6 (a straight, Seven high) and WON $1,627 (+$857 NET)

Full Tilt Poker, $10/$20 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 5 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

UTG: $4,571.15
Hero (CO): $3,917
BTN: $2,017.50
SB: $1,950
BB: $5,562

Pre-Flop: 6 Q dealt to Hero (CO)
UTG folds, Hero raises to $70, BTN folds, SB calls $60, BB calls $50

Flop: ($210) K Q 5 (3 Players)
SB checks, BB bets $111, Hero raises to $333, SB folds, BB calls $222

Turn: ($876) K (2 Players)
BB checks, Hero checks

River: ($876) K (2 Players)
BB checks, Hero bets $580, BB raises to $5,159 and is All-In, Hero folds

Results: $2,036 Pot ($3 Rake)
BB mucked and WON $2,033 (+$1,050 NET)


I'm pretty sure at this point my notes on him became: splashes around preflop but doesn't put in money postflop loosely.

And, in line with my note:

Full Tilt Poker, $10/$20 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 9 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

SB: $1,588
BB: $2,636
UTG: $8,965
UTG+1: $2,185.50
UTG+2: $2,000
Hero (MP1): $3,140
MP2: $1,690
CO: $2,135.50
BTN: $749.50

Pre-Flop: Q 4 dealt to Hero (MP1)
UTG folds, UTG+1 raises to $70, 6 folds, BB raises to $290, UTG+1 calls $220

Flop: ($590) J Q 2 (2 Players)
BB bets $400, UTG+1 raises to $1,895.50 and is All-In, BB calls $1,495.50

Turn: ($4,381) 6 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

River: ($4,381) K (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: $4,381 Pot ($3 Rake)
BB showed A A (a pair of Aces) and LOST (-$2,185.50 NET)
UTG+1 showed Q J (two pair, Queens and Jacks) and WON $4,378 (+$2,192.50 NET)

Probably the best hand ever. My note changed to splashes around postflop in 3bet pots, but not in raised pots.

Full Tilt Poker, $10/$20 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 9 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

MP2: $2,000
CO: $1,990
BTN: $8,935
SB: $4,108
BB: $2,277
Hero (UTG): $3,140
UTG+1: $1,620
UTG+2: $2,135.50
MP1: $679.50

Pre-Flop: 6 8 dealt to Hero (UTG)
3 folds, MP1 calls $20, MP2 raises to $75, CO folds, BTN calls $75, SB calls $65, BB raises to $395, 3 folds, SB calls $320

Flop: ($960) 4...