Just practicing using the HH converter. First hand villain is a donktastic 68/12


Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $0.10(BB) Replayer
SB ($10)
Hero ($19.52)
UTG ($4.10)
CO ($18.75)
BTN ($10)

Dealt to Hero Q Q

UTG calls $0.10, fold, BTN calls $0.10, fold, Hero raises to $0.70, UTG calls $0.60, BTN calls $0.60

FLOP ($2.15) 7 K 7

Hero bets $1.50, UTG calls $1.50, BTN folds

TURN ($5.15) 7 K 7 Q

Hero bets $17.32 (AI), UTG calls $1.90 (AI)

RIVER ($8.95) 7 K 7 Q Q

UTG shows K K
(Pre 82%, Flop 99.8%, Turn 97.7%)

Hero shows Q Q
(Pre 18%, Flop 0.2%, Turn 2.3%)

Hero wins $8.36



In this next hand, villain is 85/31

Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $0.10(BB) Replayer
SB ($10.16)
BB ($29.55)
Hero ($12.31)

Dealt to Hero K T

Hero raises to $0.30, fold, BB calls $0.20

FLOP ($0.65) K 6 T

BB bets $0.65, Hero raises to $2.60, BB calls $1.95

TURN ($5.85) K 6 T 2

BB checks, Hero bets $5.60, BB raises to $11.20, Hero calls $3.81 (AI)

RIVER ($24.67) K 6 T 2 6

Hero shows K T
(Pre 71%, Flop 91.8%, Turn 95.5%)

BB shows 6 T
(Pre 29%, Flop 8.2%, Turn 4.5%)

BB wins $23.67

That's all for now...

I have been playing very well, but running bad when all in (like 5 BI in the last 5k hands). I also seem to screw one hand up every session really bad, and I think that the two are connected as surely as a J9T flop is connected.

I sweat LingDog today and it was interesting to see some 100nl play. I am sure I can beat it, but not yet, I have some work to do on thinking hands through and being really solid in my mental game. I will be playing a lot on Thursday while my car is getting its windshield replaced, and then I will head on over to Probability's place for some more poker.

Play well. Do good work. Keep in touch.

PFJ

Shipped my daughter off to Kindergarten today. I cannot believe how big she is getting. She went and saw her teacher on Friday, and see her classroom. She is in D-1 and her class mascot is the Bunny Rabbits. She got to pick out a stuffed bunny on Friday, and after she picked one (a small pink bunny) her teacher says to her, "I am glad you picked that bunny, I have been a little worried about it. I think when you come to school on Monday, your bunny is going to need a big hug because she will miss you over the weekend." This morning she was very excited to go to school, and, upon entering the classroom, she went over to her desk and gave the bunny a big hug. Smart teacher FTW.

Had a lesson with Probability last night. He said he liked how I was thinking, and we talked a little bit about how I needed to be thinking in the future. I am putting people on ranges and evaluating what I want to get value out of, but I need to start looking at their entire range and thinking about the best way to get the most value out of it. I also need to start looking at their actions over the course of the hand from beginning to end and refining their range. I tend to compartmentalize my decisions street by street. Matt really stepped back and let me explain what I was doing, and that helped. I am feeling very confident even though I know I have a long way to go.

After that I dealt with Comcast about billing, and that was dreary. Then, even though I was a little tired, I thought I needed to play a while and cement some of the things I learned in my head. I probably should have just gone to bed. I dropped a few BI, and I think it was a mistake to play. I will be smarter about it next time. I have been losing a lot with AK all in preflop, running into AA and KK frequently enough to make me think that it isn't a winning strategy at 10nl. It is probably too soon to tell, though.

Play well. Do good work. Keep in touch.

PFJ

Is the way I decided to go. Why keep it all to myself on the blog? So I posted five and got great, well reasoned responses, and I am very happy about that. Yesterday I played very solid poker, imo, and was rewarded with 6 BI for my effort. And it was hard to play that well for me. In the morning I booked 2 BI without ever stacking anyone. Just a lot of small to medium pots and not getting into any trouble spots. It was a revelation, tbh, and a good illustration how not spewing and playing aggressively vs. your opponents range can add up on the bottom line.

Today I worked all day at the restaurants that employ me and had no time for any poker related activities. I think tomorrow I will post some more in the forums and watch a vid before playing some more 10nl.

Play well. Do good work. Keep in touch.

PFJ

I just got back from a short (2 day) vacation with my family to a cabin near Santa Cruz that has been in my family for around 100 years. It was pretty rustic. No hot water, no shower or bath. We had a good time, though, and it was nice seeing my kids playing in the same places I played in when I was a little boy.

I played some poker today and will post some hands when I blog tonight.

Play well. Do good work. Keep in touch.

PFJ

...according to my coworkers. They didn't put it like that, of course, but that was the general gist of it when my managers called me in early to work yesterday and sat me down to talk about it. There were a lot of incidents that they brought up, some of them pretty minor, some pretty major, and I have to say that I didn't come off looking too good. I think, actually, that I have been acting like a dick for the most part. And believe me, I can say that pretty confidently since I have been reflecting upon our conversation a lot in the past 24 hours. I have been short tempered, blunt-spoken, and more than a little selfish with my coworkers. I blame poker, of course.

Well, no, not really. That isn't really fair to poker (there smarting off again). But it makes me more than a little suspicious of the timing of the whole thing. I think I have been this way ever since being "serious" about poker at the beginning of 2009. In a declining economy with opportunities to pick up extra work becoming more and more rare, I turned to poker to ease some of the economic heat I was facing as the provider for my family. I knew it would take hard work. I knew it would be long and fraught with difficulty. I didn't care. I thought the benefits of extra money and eventually, God willing, self-employment, and eventually, Dionysus willing, some semblance of an acting career with the freedom of earning a living on the schedule that works for me, I would undertake this journey. I was stoked. I was imagining my life and how it would be and how much money I would be making at various winrates at various buy ins. And I have to say, I got a little carried away with that fantasy. It was really clear in my head, and I was frustrated by 10nl, sometimes beating it shamelessly, sometimes donking off BI in ways that puzzled even myself. The longer I was breakeven, the more out of accordance my life was with this image I had of my life in the future, the harder it was to play well. I had an impending move to LA, which didn't happen thanks to the economy, and I will confess to being in somewhat of a bind with a house we bought 5 years ago that is worth under one third of what we paid for it. All of it seemed to be going wrong.

I really think I started treating people somewhat disposably. It is the only explanation I have because the image that was painted for me yesterday by my managers is not one that I see a lot of who I believe I am in. And yet, there seemed to be overwhelming evidence from a good cross section of the staff, some of who wouldn't come forward for fear of retribution (I am puzzled by that, but that is how they feel evidently). I can only fit it all together in my head by seeing it in the sense that I was already gone, in my own mind, and so the people in my immediate vicinity became less than people existing in front of me. I was in LA, I was an actor, I was beating 400nl, my blog was widely read and discussed, my kids were in a good school, we had a big kitchen and ate vegetables from our garden. Pure escapism, my drug of choice for the last year or so.

Luckily I was a head of the curve in recognizing this. Barely. A few days ago in my blog (on another poker training site) I wrote about how I had started meditating and my game had suffered horribly. Actually, my game was really suffering and I started meditating because I felt very muddled in my mind and couldn't make sense of what was happening. I started working on becoming a better player and day dreamed a lot less. Then a day later my mentor, Probability, told me I had my priorities wrong and was thinking about making money too much. I should just concentrate on becoming a better player. I asked him if he had read my blog, he hadn't. It was strange. The real wake up call came yesterday. I am on a 90 day action plan. At the end I agreed I had a lot of work to do, and I thanked my managers for being so matter of fact and not making that extremely difficult conversation worse than it was. They were remarkably cool and factual. I think me thanking them took them a little by surprise. I am not sure if they were expecting me to be really upset.

I know I have the people skills to make this work out. They did point out that I was the best employee in the restaurant when it came to building relationships with guests. I just have to put those skills to work in another direction.

The reason why I am writing about it in this blog, ostensibly a poker blog, is that I think poker and many training sites in general market themselves in ways that really lead people to delude themselves. I really think that, absent the people in my life who care about me, I could have spiraled down into this hole of self-delusion and fantasy. Okay maybe I am selling my powers of self-analysis short, and maybe I wouldn't have ruined my life with imaginary futures I would never find the work ethic to make come to fruition. But it is a possibility, and I am sure that I am not the only one out in the internet poker world that is going through this. I have been thinking a lot about nature as of late, and reading a lot of poetry with nature themes. I really just needed to because I need to set some time aside in my life where I am not thinking about money and could recognize the beauty and importance of other things in life. (The opening monologue from My Dinner with Andre by Wallace Shawn has a real funny line about how when he was young he thought about beauty and art and love, and now that he was out of school he just thought about money all of the time...) Anyway, you have to dig down in the earth a little bit before planting a seed. The farmer that spends his winter and spring daydreaming about his crop next season doesn't yield much in the summer and fall. You have to know what work there is to do and apply yourself to the task at hand. And the hard work of digging definitely comes way before the harvest.

Next week, more chronicles of my digging.

Play well. Do good work. Keep in touch.

PFJ

Hello Leggo,

This is my first blog entry. You can find out all about me by reading my previous blog entries on Cardrunners (preflopjitters) if you want, but I am trying to put a lot of that experience behind me and start anew with Leggo.

Talk to you soon.

Play well. Do good work. Keep in touch.

PFJ