God Love Cash Games

PokerStars Game #12335526254: Hold'em No Limit ($0.05/$0.10) - 2007/09/29 - 09:45:11 (ET)
Table 'Mauritia' 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: Loeffel71 ($3.40 in chips)
Seat 2: Captain Tom ($9.90 in chips)
Seat 3: Tiny Monkey ($13.15 in chips)
Seat 4: Knightsridge ($19.45 in chips)
Seat 5: bad boy win ($13.60 in chips)
Seat 6: jeremylin ($9.35 in chips)
Seat 7: brewzter ($4.70 in chips)
Seat 8: Mr Mitt ($12.45 in chips)
Seat 9: nicole1507 ($5.65 in chips)
Captain Tom: posts small blind $0.05
Tiny Monkey: posts big blind $0.10
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Knightsridge [2h 2s]
Knightsridge: calls $0.10
bad boy win: calls $0.10
jeremylin: folds
brewzter: folds
Mr Mitt: raises $0.30 to $0.40
nicole1507: calls $0.40
Loeffel71: calls $0.40
Captain Tom: folds
Tiny Monkey: raises $0.70 to $1.10
Knightsridge: calls $1
bad boy win: calls $1
Mr Mitt: calls $0.70
nicole1507: folds
Loeffel71: calls $0.70
*** FLOP *** [2d 6c Th]
Tiny Monkey: checks
Knightsridge: bets $3.60
bad boy win: folds
Mr Mitt: calls $3.60
Loeffel71: folds
Tiny Monkey said, "so much for protecting my hand agianst dumb luckers"
Tiny Monkey: folds
*** TURN *** [2d 6c Th] [7c]
Knightsridge: bets $14.75 and is all-in
Mr Mitt: calls $7.75 and is all-in
*** RIVER *** [2d 6c Th 7c] [Qc]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Knightsridge: shows [2h 2s] (three of a kind, Deuces)
Mr Mitt: shows [Qd Qs] (three of a kind, Queens)
Mr Mitt collected $27.25 from pot

Sigh...

Who wants 4th?

Started playing ring on Stars again. AA no good v KK all in pre for $20. JJ no good v 97 on a 762 flop. Get TT all in on a flop of 2TQ, up against QQ. So I quickly left the cash tables as I didnt have enough to keep losing like that. Ended up playing a bunch of $3 6 man turbos. Did well, made some money so I am going to keep playing them for now.

Been playing in freerolls on Will Hill the last few nights. Two tourneys each night, top 50 go through to final tourney next Saturday for a chance to win an EPT seat (10K euro). Last night there was 1345 runners, with a £1000 added prizepool. First place gets a laptop. So naturally I get 4th. urggggg. Still good for £60 and yes thats good when it cost me nothing to play, but still, I really wanted the laptop for the fiancee. 5 handed I went card dead. Pushed A6 into KK and became shortstacked, then pushed 24s into big blinds A8. No help. I did have some fold equity and without a hand he does not call ther so I am happy with the move. Just wished I could have pulled the trigger.

The fiancee goes home to Ireland this weekend and I am off school Friday and Monday for some weird UK holiday thing. Im cool with it. So lots of poker in the next few days.

I will try and keep this blog updated.

Update on Cash Games

I bought Poker Tracker and Poker Ace recently since I started playing cash games. They are both pretty good programs. I have played about 9000 hands of 5cent 10cent blinds and I am up about $110. I know it is a lot of hands for $110, but I have to start somewhere.

Something that is totally new to me is playing cash games within my roll lol! I am used to being euphoric or miserable after a session as the money involved was more than I could afford. This is much better. I had KK within 3 hands a few days ago and got stacked twice. Once against TT and TJ all in preflop. (yes 1 out) and the other was all in on a flop of 9h6h2h. I put him all in for his stack and he called with QcTh. Yes, he called with a 10 high flush draw. lol. I literally laughed and rebought. It didnt matter to me as I knew I played both hands well and I was unlucky. If I had lost $100 or $200 I would have been devastated.

I hope to update better in the future (I hope to jump to $25 NL as soon as I hit $500) but my school recently updated the internet restrictions and blogspot.com is no longer accessible. So that sucks, but I will make a better effort from home.

All in all. I am liking cash games.

Scotland!!!!

What a game.

Rakeback

So I signed up for rakeback through rakebreak.com for Full Tilt. Playing on Stars though fun, was not getting me any rakeback so I was losing out quite a bit.

That being said, last night I 6 tabled the 5cent 10cent tables and I got hammered. Twice I had set under set, I got it all in with KK v QQ on a 26Q flop, and I lost a big pot with AJ v J9 on a J82 flop. Not cool. I also fell in love with top pair on a Q high board and I kept calling. I dunno why. I was obviously behind a set of Q's

All in all, a loss of $28. And considering the new account I started had only $100 on it, I am not happy.

I had no hands stay ahead throughout the session and I had TT, JJ, QQ, and KK about 15 times in the last 1/2 hour of the session and I received multiple callers each time (even when raising it ridiculous) and each time an ace flopped. It was uncanny. I also only had AA twice the entire session, both times winning the blinds.

Yuck. Definitely a session to forget.

I have yet to import the hands into poker tracker, but I am curious to see the results.

PS My new name on Full Tilt is Cabot Cove. A direct homage to that wonderful detective Jessica Fletcher in the timeless show, Murder She Wrote. Cabot Cove was where the show took place. And even though someone was murdered there every week, people still lived there.

Beautiful Girls

The movie I referenced yesterday, Beautiful Girls, was in fact a movie owned by Mike my roommate from college. I watched it one day at the end of 3rd year and loved it.

So credit must go to Mike as he saw it first.

Blog Changes

I just updated my blog with recent templates and such. I also figured out how to put a picture at the top of my blog which I wanted to do when I first started blogging my poker exploits.

The picture is of the cast from my favorite movie called Beautiful Girls. It is the same pic I have as my Stars avatar.

The movie is set in a place called Knightsridge, hence the name I chose for poker.

Knightsridge the Grinder

I just referred to myself in the first person. Fantastic. Yet another first for the blog.

I played again last night on the $10 max buyin on Stars. I played six tables, then tried eight, but went back to six. Eight was not too tough, but there was considerable overlap so I went back to six.

I made $28 in about two hours so 140 BB an hour. This is quite good as I was down about $14 at one point. (my KK v QQ all in on the flop of 57T, Q on turn)

By playing six tables for that amount of time I encountered some very interesting hands:

One hand I had KK and raised with one caller. I hit quads on the flop and checked. Turn is a Q check check. River a J he bets $.50, I make it $1.50 and he calls with AA. Strange strange hand. Cannot believe he had AA.

Another hand that I am still debating is I am UTG with KK and make it $.30 to play. The small blind then re-raises me, making it $.75 to go. The BB then calls. I should have re-raised but I didnt, and I called. Flop came QT7 which is just a massive board of draws and possible sets. The small blind leads out for $1.50 and the BB insta calls. I really didnt know where I stood. I was sure either AA or a set was lurking so I folded. The turn came a 4 and they both checked. DAMNIT. As soon as they both checked I knew I would have been in front. The river was a 6, making the board QT746 and the small blind went all in and the small blind insta called again. Their hands? The small blind who had re-raised an UTG raiser out of position had AQ of course and the insta caller BB, 88. That was a $20 pot which is a big pot for those stakes. I couldnt believe he had re-raised me with AQ. I gave him way too much credit. Would have bumped my profit big time if I had stayed in the hand. But to be fair I went with my read and I am cool with that.

I am trying to get used to playing cash games and some hands are played much differently than sngs. Small pocket pairs play very well with set mining big on my list. I flat call any pocket pair anywhere on the table for just the BB, but fold lower ones to a raise. (this may be wrong but I am still learning how the games go) I am also trying to see cheap flops with Ax suited. I hit a few flushes and was paid off on them. As far as bluffing goes, I do very little. I will do a continuation bet with AK but if it is called I shut down as players will call down with very little.

Odds and Ends:

I signed up for Full Tilt last night on a new account to get some rakeback. It is technically the fiancee's account which I am hoping she will play, but Im not too sure. I am getting rakeback on the account so I may start playing there instead of Stars. It could mean as much as $60-$100 a month which at those stakes, is massive. I am just waiting for confirmation from rakebreak.com to say the account is good to go.

I am going to buy pokertracker today. I need some software to track my stats and profits playing cash games (and most importantly the hands costing me the most money) just so I can plug some leaks.

I have given some thought as to when I should move up to $25 NL (10 cent - 25 cent blinds) and I figure 20 buyins should be ok. I would move back down if I went below 15 buyins. So 20 buyins of $25 is $500. (That is shocking as I was playing $50 and $100 with less than that and $200 NL with $600-$700 last year. Bankroll Management has never been my strong suit, but I am trying to change that)

I always thought Stars hand histories had to be emailed to me, which was not cool as it only gives you the most recent 200 hands. Which is quite useless after 6 tabling for two hours. This is not the case as today I found I can automatcally save my hand histories directly onto my computer the same as on Full Tilt.

My thoughts on cash were always quite bleak. I enjoyed the winning of sngs and always thought you cant 'win' cash games. Well I must say, when sitting at a table and you stack a player...it feels pretty damn good. Especially when they reload and go out of their way to play pots with me. This is quite funny though as I play only solid hands.

Hopefully I will get some more playing in tonight.

Weekend Poker

I played quite a bit this weekend.

On Saturday I played 45 heads up games. Yes I know, a lot of them. The fiancee's sister and friend were over this weekend so they were off shopping, talking about our upcoming wedding and the details that are endless (dress, food, hymns in the church, who is/isnt going) all of which is important, but I personally could not care less about. I would get married in a barn wearing a garbage bag while some dog barks in the distance, but it makes the fiancee happy so its cool with me. So of the 45 I won 27, which is a 60% success rate. The rake hurts over that many games, but I did ok.

On Sunday I went over to the 'house of poker' where a few guys a know live. I had beent here before but with scheduling and my laziness I had not been back. Anyways, I walk in and I see three guys all playing poker in various positions in the room on reclining leather couches wacthing the Villa Chelsea game on a massive tv. So after some careful planning and thought, I am moving in there tomorrow. Kidding. Anyways, I lug out my laptop and open some games. I played a 5$ Stars tourney where QQ ran into KK and I also played a £12 sat to the 40K on Will Hill. The sat went well. I had my hands hold and I didnt do anything stupid. From 120 people with 12 getting a seat, I coasted in with no real drama. So now I had a seat into a tourney that costs £110, while in my account I had $105. Yes, this tourney was over twice what I had in my account. So I tried to unregister for the 40K but for some reason Will Hill does not allow sat winners to unregister. I called Will Hill customer service and they said that poker support was not in and that I should call back Monday morning when they are in. I then informed her that the tournament started in 15 minutes and by that time a refund would be impossible. Her response? 'Yes that is correct sir'. Ok then, thanks for nothing.

So I end up playing the 40K and as tournaments go, this one was highly uneventful. The best hand I played was the first of the tourney. AdQd on the button, it was raised with three callers. I call. Flop comes T high with 2 diamonds. Raiser bets same amount as his preflop raise. Two callers. I pump it up 3/4 of the pot, all fold. Yes, it was downhill from there. TT raised, called on a Q high board. Check raised I fold. AQ raised, KJ3 flop. Raise and a reraise in front of me, I fold. Then I go card dead for two levels before I get AK. With 1400 behind and 600 in the pot I push and lose a race to TT. Ho hum, as I said, uneneventful. Mark and George were still alive though and George had a nice stack. I had to leave at 10:30 as I needed to be up for work in the morning and I didnt want to bother with a cab at midnight so I called the fiancee and she came and picked me up.

I got home and fired up Will Hill to see how George and Mark were getting on and then debated over what to play. I didnt want to play a HU game as I was kind of tired and I wasnt in the mood to be involved in a long drawn out game. So based on Mark's and George's success on cash I decided to play some myself. My history in cash games is not exactly a merry one. I have consistently played in games above my head (sometimes way above my head) and I always get my fingers burnt. I know I am capable of playing a solid cash game, but because the figures involved usually represent a high % of my roll, I can never remove emotion from my thinking. AKA I feel terrible about losses and inevitably end up chasing lost money. It is a bad habit and one I have never removed from my cash game play. So I decided to swallow my pride and begin at the bottom rung of the ladder. I started playing 5cent 10 cent tables. I promised myself I would play tight and not get fancy with plays people at that level would never fold to. And because I intended on playing tight, I knew I would be playing few hands, so I sat down at 6 tables. Yes, 6. It was actually a lot of fun. I ended up only winning $25, but that is 250 BB in 1.5 hours so I was ok with that. (It would have been a lot more but I had to fold two sets when the flush came and two people were betting and raising into a sizeable pot for those stakes. I also lost a $20 pot when I flopped two pair with 73o in the BB. The money went in after genuis slow played his aces preflop only to hit his set on the river.) If either board pairs when the flush came, or that A does not come on the river, my profit would have been around $40-$60 which would have been pretty good.

I must say that I enjoyed playing cash quite a bit, and knowing the amount of money I had on the table was a small % of my roll, bad beats and bad cards rolled off me. (except that 73 hand, that pissed me off). I am going to continue playing cash and attempt to slowly move up the ladder. After thinking a lot of where my game is and where I would like it to go, I think cash is the logical area. Though my past is quite jaded in cash games, I think if I build from the ground levels up, I can do well.

PS I was watching Mark and George play until there was about 15 left or so in the 40K. George I think finished 14th or so but Mark had a big stack and was definitely in a good position to do some damage. Hope you took it down Mark.

PPS Mark, you are going to have to show me how to use Poker Tracker. I tried this morning and it confused the hell out of me.