Maintenance

My talented and charming girlfriend got me a new monitor some time back, a 24 incher. This means that I can now fit 9 tables fairly comfortably on the one screen, more if I want to spread them out onto my other monitor. Before I used to 8-table at the maximum, and that would take the better part of my mental capacity.

But I realized something after getting this monitor. On my old one, at 8 tables, they would overlap, so the table would pop to the front when the action came to you. This meant that if you were dealt 7 2-off in the CO, you couldn't just click the "fold to any" button ahead of time, because you probably couldn't see that table until the action was actually on you.

24 inches of Apple glory changed all that(the cut off picture is clickable):



Being able to see all the tables at once makes it more manageable. Now I won't lie, playing 9 tables still takes the better part of my attention, but I can actually IM with Chuck or check an email with no issues.

Here are some hands I saved out:

Tricky Value Line

On this one I am not 100% sure that I took the best line here, but I think I like it. Villain was not nitty, gave some action and I figured might try to take me off my hand on the turn. Also, I thought that checking here might get a river call out of a bad diamond since my line looks very much like I have given up on the turn, but changed my mind on the river after he checked back the turn. Being ROTTY, it worked fine. What hands do you put villain on and what can call the turn? Can I get all in if I hammer this turn very often? Highlight below to see villains hand:

Q9 with no diamonds (!)

Eye Arr In

This is a place where I played the hand differently than I normally would, but with a good result. I was fairly new to this table, and was playing on lots of tables at this time. I raised all in from the BB vs. a player that was raising basically all of his buttons since I sat down. I had also seen him show down a weak starting hand, and he seemed like a station. I didn't envision him folding too many "good" starting hands, most of which my hand plays well against. Also, the table limped, he raised full pot, and I viewed it as a very possible steal attempt. I don't mind picking up that pot preflop with no resistance, and if I don't I am likely in a good spot. So I ship. The button folds however, which wasn't a big surprise, but the CO calls, which was. Oops. This is usually AA-JJ in my experience, where the player got tricky pre and now just snaps me off.. OR, this guy picked up QJo and was like EYE ARR IN. It might have been that too ;) DNR baby.

Hangin' Tough

This is a hand that looks silly on paper but in actuality is probably pretty correct. I will keep this one simple, people just never play an overpair hand like this. I am value betting the flop and turn here which is pretty obvious. But when he jams the river, it is hard to figure out a situation where he does this and where we are beaten. If I have literally no read on this guy, then I would expand this to include a random bottom pair call on the flop and turn. But this guy had been playing fairly straight up. I expected to see more of a missed clubs type hand here, but this works too. The key here, is that this guy virtually never shows up with AT, KT or QT here. So much for keeping it short.

I am still finding my rhythm at these stakes. My VPIP etc. stats have been changing quite a bit since the beginning of the challenge. I will get it figured out properly, but frankly I don't have it all sorted quite yet.

Things I am however happy about are that I have taken some pretty harsh downswings but recovered just fine. I have been able to put in a fair amount of hands, trying to max out on rakeback to get me to the next level that much faster. I am really just trying to brute force my way out of the bottom tier, as I think the money really gets better about 2 levels up. I have to get to $200.00 before I can go up, and even then, I might have to drop back down in between.

Grind on the mind as they say...