Thursday, April 17, 2008

A couple of victories... and a slow grind

According to OPR, In April, I have played 38 mtt's, of 45 or more people. A few of those were mtt's, some 180's. My best results were in $4.40 180... I took two of em down this week, REALLY helping out my bankroll. My ROI for April is 114%, with winnings of $867 and a profit of $461. (those stats are a bit off, KYslim's $12 180 stake is in there as well, which I pwnd/took 2nd in)

I can't really describe at this point what I'm doing differently. I'm definitely putting more pressure on my opponents when I have position or a chip advantage. I got RIDICULOUSLY lucky in the 2nd $4.40 I won, but I feel that I played great at the FT (got lucky there too, AQ>AK..) and won a surprisingly difficult HU match. I might play the Neg-O's more often, fun tourneys, laid back, and a nice lil prize-pool to fight for while playing my other donkaments.

I'm also trying to improve my cash game play. For a while after my SM cash, I played a good amount of .5/1NL, and I feel that some of the moves/plays I picked up at $100max definitely still work well at $25max.

Playing at my live $10 game tonight... obviously going to cash for 3rd tourney in a row.


Current Bankroll: ~$610

Friday, April 11, 2008

Back in the game... kinda

So last sunday, I got a stake from Onlyme on FCP for the 100k. Thx bud! lol, didn't make him any money, but another member of FCP wanted to stake me but obviously I can't be staked twice into the same tourney. So I referred him to tim, (throwemaway) and he got the stake, and ended up cashing for ~$200. The stakee graciously gave me a $10 finders fee weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Anyway, I messed around w/ that for a second until I decided to sit down and try and grind out some micro sngs. Before I know it, I'm crushing the $3.40 18 mans and have about $80.

Then, the guy I've made mucho monies for on stakes (KYslim05 on pstars, Kentuckyslim on FCP) decideds that I need to make him more money. He stakes me in a $12 180, which I obv take 2nd in, ship 1/2 of $396. SO now, I have about $300 in my stars account, not bad for a week's work of grindin it out.

I'm on the Mars low orbit sng leaderboard... was 9th, but am not moved down to 12th. Honestly, I hate grinding out these sngs. It's so boring. Sure, they are definitely profitable in the long run, and if I can change my mindset about playing them I might be able to consistently book wins at this level and eventually move up. The people at these levels are just sooooo bad. Some tendencies I've noticed:

1. Pot odds. It's like a foreign language to about 80% of these players, especially on the bubble. I'm sorry, but if the sb pushes for 1200 at 300/600 and you have them covered by >3 bbs... you call w/ ATC honey. No, you don't fold your J3. You call.

2. Limp/calling is the name of the game. So many times I've had to fold A10-AK late-ish in tourneys because an EP limp/caller open pushes the flop. I suppose they're getting it done, but what they don't know is that if I call them, they're usually drawing stone cold mother fucking dead.

3. Calling stations. Oh boy, are there calling stations. This kind of relates to tendency #2, but deserves it's own listing. I swear, if you have AJ+ and flop an ace, you really need to play it like TPTK in these (granted, sometimes that's not the case, but usually is). People play A2-A9 like they have the nuts so often that I can gladly call off my stack w/ AJ on a A K 6 board.

4. Limping as a short stack. I never understood the play, and usually I exploit this like crazy late in the tourney. People love to limp w/ pairs, AQ+, I'm guessing in hopes that someone behind them pushes w/ a weaker hand. I find it funny when I bust someone's AK w/ 87os when I c/c their all in w/ mid pair... go read a poker book, donk.

There's definitely more, but my brain's a bit fried right now from looking back at how bad these players are. Obviously, at this level it's to be expected. To get to the high orbit of Mars sng leaderboard, I need to play another 70ish sngs by sunday... I usually 4-table while I play, and they take ~1 hour each... So we're looking at almost 15-16 hours of play left. Meh, Maybe I'll just 6-table. It's not like these things require a higher level thinking or anything of the sort.

oh, and here's my latest bad beat. I call it, "Why I'll never go deep in an MTT ever evarrrrrrr again":

PokerStars Game #16636326817: Tournament #84080563, $5.00+$0.50 Hold'em No Limit - Level IX (200/400) - 2008/04/10 - 20:38:46 (ET)
Table '84080563 110' 6-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 1: Thostyle (7783 in chips)
Seat 2: wmason708 (23166 in chips)
Seat 3: Franes23 (14115 in chips)
Seat 4: Beaverstyle (11815 in chips)
Seat 6: burnley442 (14038 in chips)
Thostyle: posts the ante 50
wmason708: posts the ante 50
Franes23: posts the ante 50
Beaverstyle: posts the ante 50
burnley442: posts the ante 50
Thostyle: posts small blind 200
wmason708: posts big blind 400
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Beaverstyle [Jh Qh]
Franes23: folds
stantin is connected
Beaverstyle: raises 650 to 1050
burnley442: raises 650 to 1700
Thostyle: folds
wmason708: calls 1300
Beaverstyle: calls 650
*** FLOP *** [Qd 7c Jc]
wmason708: bets 1200
Beaverstyle: raises 8865 to 10065 and is all-in
burnley442: raises 2223 to 12288 and is all-in
wmason708: calls 11088
*** TURN *** [Qd 7c Jc] [3s]
*** RIVER *** [Qd 7c Jc 3s] [Ah]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
wmason708: shows [Ad Qs] (two pair, Aces and Queens)
burnley442: shows [Kc Ks] (a pair of Kings)
Beaverstyle said, "OH CMON"
wmason708 collected 4446 from side pot
Beaverstyle: shows [Jh Qh] (two pair, Queens and Jacks)
Beaverstyle said, "JESUS CHRIST"
wmason708 collected 35745 from main pot

What's so sick is I KNEW burnley had KK because he Insta-overpushed... So I figure I have to dodge 5 outs, 8 going into river. Then wmason jumps in w/ TPTK, quite alright by me, only 3 more outs to dodge. But alas, I can't fade em. Such is poker, I suppose.

-Beaver