Cracked 700.00

Finally made it through the 600.00 barrier and onto 700.00. I had an interesting week. I felt like I was slumping or maybe just bored at the cash games so I decided to try some tournaments. There are turbo SNG's on Cake that are 6 person tournaments with escalated blind structures. They are insane, but I am good at them. Top 2 pay out so you have to be there at the end to get any money at all, but they are really soft I think. One thing to note, is that on my graph above, the entries are not necessarily in chronological order, so the sudden sharp spike upwards isn't indicative of how I have been running, but rather how I entered it on my spreadsheet.

I also had an astonishing session this week; I had a full 4 table session where I didn't get sucked out on at all. It was insane, I got my money in good, and it just held up every time. No nasty 3 outers to dominated hands, no flush draws got there versus sets, my overpairs held up when I decided to get my money in with them. It was glorious. Then next session it was back to business as usual.

Here are some interesting/horrible hands:

Joe's notes on this guy: "lagtard". Funny, I was thinking the EXACT same thing after watching him for about 30 min. Then I noticed that I had notes on him at all, looked, and confirmed what I was thinking ahah. He was running very hot, and I ran into him for half of my stack on a previous hand.
So on this one, I decided to take a flop with him, because I knew he would go busto if he hit almost anything and I had began to see quite a few flops with him. YAHTZEE on the flop, but then it was downhill as I realized I might actually be beaten..

This hand was hilarious, not because of the action, but because of the stack sizes. I pick up KQo and bring it in for .70, with one short stack caller. After his call on the flop, he has 5.10 left. We check-check the whiffed flop, but when I hit the K on the turn, I lead out for the full pot. He raises to 5.00 straight, and I just ship it. He has .10 left in his stack, and decides to...

This sucked, but is nothing exciting. I am not going to fold here very often, if ever.

But this makes one feel MUCH better! This fucking retard called 1.00 preflop with 10 5, flopped a boat, did really well to get a bunch of my money before I caught up with my 2 outer, and then bitched in the chatbox that his 10 5 didn't "hold up". Boo fucking hoo.

So overall, I am hoping to continue the trend here and keep moving up, but I am very aware of slipping back down..

Back up to 600!

Not to get too excited here, but I am back up to 600.00! I have been floating around for quite a while, and have decided to try some tweaking and tonight it worked out well. I will continue with the tweaks as I continue.

The tweaks:
Tighten up starting hand range slightly. I have felt lately like I have been seeing a few too many flops, so I am going to slightly narrow my starting range down.

Try to be sure I have the best hand when I get a significant amount of money in the pot. Seems simple, but I think I have been calling a bit too often with the 2nd best hand lately. I try to push smallish edges a bit too far I think, and should really be simplifying my game and just getting a lot in there when I have it and backing down when I don't. It's hard for me to do, because I want to just ram and jam at every opportunity, but I think it's in my bankrolls best interest to do it this way.

Thats about it, but it does feel good to be back at 600. I didn't get to to go FNP tonight, but this will have to do.

Now I have to figure a way to actually stay above the 600 mark..stay tuned.

Treading water.

I haven't gotten to play too much lately because of the holiday's but more importantly because Cake's connection has been horrific this week. I don't know what is going on with them, but they need to address these technical issues. At the .10-.20 tables, six handed, they were averaging 25 hands per hour. This is below how many hands you would get in a full ring game at a brick and mortar casino... and it's just mind boggling to sit at the table and have the software run so poorly.

It's like dial up, but worse. Just not really playable, and it will also frequently disconnect in the middle of a hand.

I was told that some tables were running fine, and saw evidence of that. I also decided to play a 5.00 SNG since those seemed to be running a bit faster. The play was predictably horrific, and I busted in 3rd when I got my money in with 3rd pair, a gutter, and an over against a donk with K4. I bricked but took home 10 bucks for my efforts. I want to play more SNG's, but I feel like I would have to gear up and play tons of them at once to make a big dent. I will probably just stick to cash games. I will however throw in a few bucks on the random MTT, as taking one of those down can have a huge effect on your roll..

I am sitting at 530.00 right now and still just waiting to break through and beyond the elusive 600.00...

Hell of a Night

I haven't had time to update the spreadsheet since the weekend, but I do have all of my many entries written down. The weekend was insane. I posted some of the hands over at That's Not Poker. It was a very up and down weekend, and it ended with me being down. I finished at about 560.00, which was actually quite good considering the roller coaster I was on.

FF to last night, 12-10. I played my normal 4 tables, and was doing fine. Did lose a hand with JJ vs AA, and then had a set of 7's cracked by a Royal Flush. But I was grinding it out and ended about even for the session I think. Then a guy sits down at my table that changed the whole night.

He gets into some action on his first hand but ends up folding. On the next hand, I pick up AA in EP, and bring it in for a normal raise. He ships for almost a full buy in. Folds to me and I call. He has Q9, a eventually makes a straight, cracking my AA. Pretty damn lucky, but it happens. So I reload and start play again. It's apparent immediately that he is going to be shipping a lot. He has an INSANE run, where he cracks AA a total of 3 times within 45 min, with Q9, Q8, and Q5. He runs his stack from 20.00 to 220.00 in less than one hour, and ~100.00 of it was from me. I got my money in pretty damn good against him 3 times and he sucked out each time, and I got it in when I was way behind once too.

Now I was pretty tilty but one think I know about these guys is that they never just pick up and leave, they always give it all back. So I resisted the urge to mix it up with him too much, and just picked my spots against him. I eventually worked my stack up to 150.00, and when he finally gave away the last of his stack, I was at 129.00, showing a slight profit. Very stressful and crazy situation.

One note, is that I broke a Ferguson Rule by having (way) more than 10% of my roll on the table at one time. I have no regret in this though, as I had snugged WAY up and wasn't going to get my money in unless I was a substantial favorite. If I had a hand that I thought was the best hand, I would just check call him all the way. I got him like this with 2 pair twice. Nice sized pots and I didn't have to put my whole stack at risk. I picked up JJ once and brought in in, he RR me pre, and I flat called just wanting to see a flop. Flop was QQ3. This is an uber safe flop IMO for JJ, and I led at the pot. He came over the top for a pot sized bet, which was pretty big at this point, and it was pretty obvious that he was going to the felt with his hand regardless of anything else. If I had had one buy in on that table, I am going with him, but since I didn't want to jeopardize over 5 buy ins at once, I folded. Not exactly optimal poker, but all I needed was a nut hand to get his money.

I played 10 10 and flopped top set but he actually folded when I pot bet the turn OOP.

Crazy run on a crazy night. I will try to grab some of the highlight hands when I can. Crazy shit dogggg.

Following the trend

Well I have been saving so many hands from the cake challenge etc, and I have been feeling like I don't have anywhere to post them. SO, I will follow Ryan's lead and dump them in a blog separate from That's Not Poker. This blog will be exclusive to the Cake Challenge, it's not some personal spin-off or anything like that. I probably won't have as much detail as Ryan does, but I will throw up my interesting or puzzling hands and mainly my thoughts/rants etc on here.