$1 a hand

I played about 4,000 hands today and won $4k in total. I played two more sessions after my $3k win I posted to my blog earlier in the day. One session I won about $2k and lost $1k in the final session of the day.

I even got coolered a few times of course. I got oversetted twice and ran KK into AA AIPF for the loss. Standard.

Pretty decent result for today. Hopefully tomorrow goes just as well.

Uh oh, it's Duckslayer

Hopefully, all my opponents will say this when I sit down and fear D2K. Thought what he said was pretty hilarious... he's a small donator in the game so he knows what's up.

Anyways, making a quick update. I played a short 2 hour session and finished up about $3k. So far, today looks to be going pretty well. I defintely ran good.

Putting this hand up on the blog due to a request by the villain who got stacked. Yes, I do get lucky every once in a while. He had been 3-betting me a lot and AQ soooted looked like a pretty hand to go ahead and make a stand vs him.

This hand, I lost like 2 minutes before I was going to quit. The villain is really weird, he runs like 50/30 and donk bets a ton. I guess he's actually a regular or something, but he's pretty bad. Anyways, he had taken this exact line vs me about 2 other times and I have the top of my range here so I decided to look him up. Too bad I couldn't have hit on the river, I would have got all his chips.

I'm going to play a few more sessions today, after I give my younger brother a poker lesson and get something to eat. He just moved up from $0.05/$0.10 NL 6 Max to $0.10/$0.24 NL 6 Max. Here's a pretty hilarious hand he showed me the other day.

Nose to the Grindstone

I finally got my sleeping cycle back to normal, as I had to stay up about 24 hours or so yesterday so I could get to bed at a normal time, around 10:00 PM. I had been going to sleep in the early morning, like 9-10 AM and waking up at around 5-6 PM the past few days. This mainly came from about a week ago, when my friend Bill came to town. He just graduated from the University of Minnesota and was in town to visit his relatives for Christmas. He is a good friend of mine; we played hockey together in middle school and we've kept in touch since he moved away from Grand Forks just before high school.

Anyways, he also plays poker so we had like a week-long poker marathon. I taught him how to play 6 max cash games and by the end of the week he was doing pretty well. He actually had $0 in his account on Stars because he cashed it all out a few months ago for school expenses. He had enough FPPs to play two of the 5,400 FPP satellites to the Sunday Million. He won them both, sold the seats, and never looked back. He built his account from $0 to $2,400 in less than 7 days, which is pretty cool since I helped him learn 6 max in just a few days.

We ended up staying up pretty late most days, until like 6 AM a lot, so that's how my sleeping pattern got messed up. I think that might have had something to do with the inconsistancy I've had lately... I might not have been rested enough during the days when I lost.

So I'm all recharged now, and I'm going to put my nose to the grindstone for the next 48 hours and try and finish off the last two days of the year strong and see if I can salvage a half decent month for December.

Doomsday once again

Man, I don't know what is going on. I played some more and lost $4k over a mixture of $5/10, $3/6, and $2/4 NL. I am just having terrible swings and today it was primarily due to running like crap in all-ins + a few sick coolers for deepstacks. I ran $2.7k below expectation in all ins.

This was like a carbon copy of the session in which I dumped $3.3k a few days ago.

I'm not going to post any hands, mainly because there isn't anything to learn from them. They are just me shipping it in as a favorite and losing or just losing a flip. Looking at these hands make me sick.

I'm going to go over HEM and look at the hands from the session a bit closer to see if I can figure out why I'm having such ridiculous swings. Hopefully I'll be able to figure out what's going on so I can adapt my play to book wins more consistently.

Just as soon as I thought I was out of my slump, BAM I lose back everything I won in the previous session. Unreal.

My Persistence Pays Off

Hope everyone had a good Christmas.

After my terrible loss the other day, I made the decision to just keep grinding and emphasize my focus on making the correct decisions at the table. I ended up playing a few sessions at $2/4 NL and finished up $4k. Poker is such a sick game. One day you can feel like you don't even want to get out of bed and play, and the next day you're wondering how you could have ever lost the day before... lol

I'm glad I was able to jump right back at it and got the cookies that I lost earlier back right away. I went into the two winning sessions just pretty much expecting to get sucked out/ coolered so I wasn't that mad when it inevitably happened. This allowed me to focus on making the correct decisions at the table and I played pretty well for the most part aside from one pre-flop mistake with AK.

Looks like my persistence payed off over the past two sessions and I'll try and get in some more sessions like this over the next few days.

UB's Christmas Gifts

Today, I had one of the worst sessions I've ever had. UB gave me multiple Christmas Gifts, all of which involved me getting coolered or sucked out. I didn't like the presents UB gave me at all. They were generous enough to give me nearly every cooler, suckout, or set-up in the book.

I played about 4,000 hands and lost $3.3k all at $2/4 NL. Unbelieveable. I can't even begin to explain what happened. My friend Billy was playing along side of me and saw a lot of the hands. He couldn't believe what was happening to me either.

My three biggest losses accounted for -7 buyins. The biggest loser, which was for 3 buyins, was probably a bad river call by me and I should have been able to fold...

All the others, I don't think I could do a whole lot about. If you want to see what I went through, take a peek. If not, fine.

Hand #1: I had a very aggro image and villain was a LAG regular. My 2nd biggest loser on the day.

Hand #2: I could have played this one a bit better. I should have check-raised to a much larger amount, probably like to $280 or something. Of course, terrible turn but at that point the pot was so big and I had a pot-sized bet left and he can still have like AQ, AJ, other crap I just shoved.

Hand #3: No clue why this guy is 3-betting my UTG raises with KJ. I thought the only Jacks in his range would probably be JJ. Fk my life.

Hand #4: Same guy as in my previous KK vs AA hand. He took about $3k off me today.

Hand #5: Another pre-flop cooler.

Hand #6: I messed up here. Terrible river for me. I should have probably folded to his shove or just flatted his river donk as his range is probably weighted towards air/nuts. A small raise is ok too I guess as he might call with AJ or AQ.

Hand #7: Another bad turn in a 3-bet pot. This time I have re-draws and brick.

Hand #8: Set over set. Happened very early in session.

Hand #9: Against the guy who had been lucksacking me all day. So sick.

Hand #10: I suppose I could have played this one differently... I missed my flop check-raise and didn't feel comfortable about raising and getting it in on the turn since the FR33 guy could easily have JJ or QQ and he led into two people... he just cold called the raise and 3-bet pre-flop from the BB.

Hand #11: Standard suckout.

I got smoked this session. I definitely made a few errors but wow... nothing was going my way. Part of me wants to just take a break until January but I wanted to build my roll up towards the end of this month so I could start playing $5/10 NL full time in January. So I don't know if I'll take a break or not.

I'm pretty disappointed/ disgusted right now. One of the rare times where I actually don't like my job all that much. I got the wind knocked out of my sails a bit today.

Small Session = Small Win

Only played for a few hours today and ended up winning about $650. I actually stacked 4 different opponents but I lost a bunch of 50 big blind pots which resulted in me winning less overall.

I did run KK into AA all in pre-flop vs a reg's cold 4-bet from the blinds. He's a pretty big reg-fish and he's the same guy that set mined 77 vs me yesterday in a 3-bet pot and got there when I hit TPTK with AK. I wouldn't have minded getting coolered as long as I was giving my money to anyone but him. I dispise that person. We had a bit of a chat war today too, which I obviously won the chat war at least.

Anyways, other hands of interest would include me value owning myself here against a big fish who was supposed to have 8X.

Lost a flip vs a fish here.

The rest of the hands aren't too interesting.

OMG I won today

It's been a few days since I've booked a win but today I did it. I won about $2k over 2,600 hands at $2/4 NL. I played pretty well overall and didn't make any major errors.

I still had a few unfortunate hands occur however.

Here, a reg decides to set mine vs my MASSIVE 3-bet squeeze. Pretty much a cooler for me but I don't know how he justifies calling that much more pre-flop as he's not getting odds to set mine and I'm going to have a bigger pair than him a lot.

Here I made a small error with my bet sizing. I think I should have bet a bit more on the flop... closer to around $100 or so. However, I have no clue how this guy even gets to the turn with AJ here. I actually shoved turn for value because I thought he could have a hand like 67, 89, 99 as well as possibly random overcards. It was hilarious though that he nearly timed out and folded when I shoved the turn... he called with like 1 second to spare.

Pretty hilarious this reg doesn't get all my chips here. I think I played this pretty well even though I lost the pot.

I had just 3-bet this reg twice over the last 5 minutes and he takes a stand here.

I'm going to look to continue the winning trend and play solid tomorrow as well.

Falling...

Top of building = my high for this month. I'm nearly on the pavement right now.

I lost again today. Lost $1.4k over 2,400 hands.

Here's why.

I lost flip.

I flop boat and lose.

Tried to iso the 2nd player in by 3-bet squeezing here since he was a huge fish but once I got jammed on I pretty much have to go with it. The guy had a large 4-bet %.

Also made a few bad calls on the river when villains check-raised me to a medium amount. It's rarely a bluff from a player who isn't a regular/ solid player.

Add that to the fact that I never really got paid on my sets and I lost a bunch more medium pots and my downward drop for this month continues.

Another terrible day

Spew

I've had a pretty bad string of sessions lately. Today I dumped $3.1k over 2.4k hands. It was a mixture of spew, terrible calls, terrible value bets, terrible suckouts, and terrible coolers.

The run-bad started right off the bat. This one was pretty standard I guess, but this like identical hand has happened at least 3 times over the past 3 days.

This one was just ridiculous.

Actually think I probably should have considered folding the turn, as I think he has a flush here like almost always. There aren't many worse flushes really. I beat a 4 high, 5 high, 6 high, and 7 high flush and lose to a Ten high, Jack high, and Queen high. Also I guess there's a chance he could be spazzing with something like AxQh but I think he probably just c/c turn. I don't know. I just insta-called when he shoved but it probably deserved a bit of thought.

Bad turn here. I'm pretty sure I have to follow through though as he has AJ, KJ, QJ, just as much as JT or 9T probably.

Check/folding here just seems ultra- weak.... but I don't know if a CRAI is the best line. Maybe I should have c/c then c/c all in on turn or possibly even c/f turn. Kind of weird stack sizes.

I had another maniac on one of my tables who's style was bet pot on flop, bet pot on turn, and pot river. I didn't pick up a single hand vs him over like 2 hours of playing at his table.

One good thing that happened today was that I ordered my new computer, so I should get it in a few weeks. I really need to turn this month around to finish the year strong. I had a good 2nd week or so of the month but over the last 10,000 hands I've had a downswing of like $8k which is ridiculous. I shouldn't have this much variance... I'm simply not playing the best I can.

Losing day

I played about 800 hands today and finished down $2.2k. Much of the loss came from $5/10 NL where I lost a pretty big coin flip vs a 3-bet monkey. The guy's 3-betting stats were just off the charts. I had 1,100 hands on him and his 3-bet stat is 11%. His 3-bet stat from the BB is 20% so here AQsooted is at the very top of his range. I played my hand perfectly and it's definitely profitable to be felting JJ vs this villain, even 130 bbs deep.

My other big loser was another cooler. I lost with AA in a 4-bet pot. I 4-bet to a normal size instead of shoving to keep the BB who was a huge fish in the pot. I had a pot-sized bet left on the flop with my overpair and got outflopped.

Nothing else of note really happened. I don't think I played all that bad, as $1,800 of my $2.2k loss was from those two hands alone. I don't know if I'm going to be playing $5/10 NL much more this month. I want to make sure that I end the year on a winning note and I don't really want to take a high variance route to finish the month. I'm definitely a favorite in the games but I want to build my roll a bit on the site I'm playing on primarily now, so I have more buyins for $5/10 NL. If you add up my roll over all the sites, I'm actually over-rolled even for $5/10 NL but there's just something about having enough buyins on one particular site that makes me play a bit better I think.

One last thing, that's pretty exciting... today my friend Bill made it into town and we talked a lot about posibilites for making myself a new website. Also, we looked over some computers online and I think I have one picked out (Dell XPS 730x H2C). I'm going to call Dell in the morning to see if I can get Windows XP put on it and then probably order it. It's definitely an expensive one and it's going to be pretty damn sick. I'll be getting two 30'' Dell monitors for it as well.

Blah day

I played two separate sessions today and ended up down about $600. The first session of the day went really well, as I was up $1.3k in less than two hours. I decided to play again later on at night but then the pre-flop run-bad kicked in.

This was the worst of them.

Lost a flip AK vs QQ and I made a mistake 4-bet shoving really light vs a reg who was 3-betting me nearly every other time I raised it seemed like.

That pretty much accounts for the whole loss on the second session. I spewed a bit in medium pots but nothing too terrible. I also had people just fold when I had high pocket pairs like AA or KK countless times. So I didn't win many big pots the second session and I lost about $1.9k on that session to finish down $600 on the day.

Kind of a crappy day but a lot of the loss was out of my hands. I was a bit tired when I played my second session so I wasn't playing my "A" game either... I wasn't playing quite aggressively enough.

One of my friends, Billy, who moved out of town after middle school is going to be in town for the next week or so. We're probably going to play a lot of poker and I'll try and teach him how to play 6 max cash. He's a full-ring player. We also are going to look into making a website for myself. Something like a more advanced and organized version of Duckblog. Not sure how difficult it will be but he's the computer whiz so we'll see what we can do.

Discovered my biggest leak

Today, I would have been up a TON if I had made the right decisions on the river. I really messed up. Deepstacked $5/10 NL is tough. I absolutely CRUSH it 100 big blinds deep and that's what I normally buy in for. However, I normally win a bunch obviously and get 200bbs deep +. Then the sick spots start occurring.

One river situation was really costly. I am pretty sure I misplayed it but I posted in the CardRunners forums here to see what other think. The more I think about it the more I realize I should just check behind here because there isn't much that can call me that I beat anyways.

I also had another hand where I had top two pair and was put to a decision for my stack. CR link here.

This hand sucked. I have Ace high but I'm a favorite on the flop and lose. I don't know what he thinks he's ahead of here with QJ... obviously he's a fish.

This hand was pretty hilarious. The villain who ended up winning the pot here was a MASSIVE fish. I just stacked him about 10 minutes ago but I talked to him in the chat and convinced him to reload. Told him he was unlucky. So he reloads and felts my ass. lol. Payback's a bitch.

I also played some $10/20 NL today and won a bit on there. I also played the Sunday Million on Stars today and got 382/7549 for about $750.

I had an OK day but it could have been a lot better if I had timed out/folded on the river a few times. Darn. Maybe I'll learn from my mistakes and it won't happen again. If that's true, then I guess it's worth losing a few buyins to figure that out.

Expensive lesson, but I just hope that I will use what I've learned to my advantage in the future. I'm pretty sure that if I fix this problem I have I'll be nearly unstoppable.

More swongs and more $5/10 NL

I played a ton of hands today and I'm not really happy about how the day went. The major thing that disgusted me was that I was playing 5 tables for a lot of the time and during the second session of the day I had one of my old, classic, "marathon" sessions. I really need to follow my plan closer. I've been doing a good job about taking breaks until today. It's just tough to leave $5/10 NL tables when there are big fish because the big idiots are harder to come by than at $2/4 NL.

A few of my errors I'm sure stemmed from not taking breaks. I obviously wasn't thinking clearly on two river spots. I totally butchered them and there's really no excuse, because today I had just given one of my students a lesson on river play. If I would have followed my own advice that I gave her earlier today I would have avoided those two huge mistakes. I pretty much chose the worst line possible in both hands and my mistakes were costly. Those two terrible river calls alone probably cost me nearly $1.4k.

I finished up an OK amount but I actually should have finished up about 2xs or 3xs more than I did. I lost two buyins due to pure spew. I spazzed out in a 4-bet pot with 99 vs a monkeyish regular who just flatted my 4-bet. He had AA obviously. Then I tried pulling a bluff on a pretty terrible board which didn't work out because I got hero called by 2nd pair.

A few good things did happen though, to allow me to finish ahead. This hand was my biggest winner of the day.

I need to be more diciplined and really focus on the things that I outlined in my December plan. I'm straying from it a bit and my results are showing that.

I also went to a UND Fighting Sioux DI college hockey game tonight with my brother. It was a pretty good game and the Sioux ended up beating St. Cloud 7-4. I went last night as well and they won then too. Here are some pics from the game.

Center Ice Faceoff

Near the Sioux Bench

Sioux Victory

Good day

This is going to be a short post because it's late and I have to wake up a little earlier than normal to give a lesson, so here it goes.

I crushed today. I played some $2/4 NL and $5/10 NL and did really well. I didn't make any big mistakes for stacks all day. I only got felted once and that was with two overs and the nut flush draw in a blind vs blind situation... it was pretty much a cooler due to how aggressive the villain was. He had flopped the straight.

I'm playing really well now, so I'm going to work on being consistent and try not to experiment and change my play much since I'm winning.

The Comeback

Today, I had one of the biggest swings that I've ever had in a single day.

I had a terrible first half of the day, going from +$800 at my high point to being down $3.2k. I swung 10 buyins down over a span of 900 hands. I then just got off my computer and took an hour break. I was demoralized by losing so much over so few hands.

I decided that I'd play one final session of the day so I put on my rally cap...


... and I battled back to recover everything I had lost and actually finished up $91.86 for the day, over a total of 3,635 hands.


Wow. Talk about swongs.

This was the hand that started the downward spiral. The villain is a fish who I had on my buddy list.

Then, I got blindsided here by another fish with a VPIP of 50.

Then I started losing the all-in pre-flop hands. I got in TT vs KK when an aggro regular squeezed me. He was definitely squeeze happy and I know my 4-bet jam is profitable vs him in the long run. He just had me this time.

Another hand I got it all in pre-flop with AK vs another squeeze monkey who's JJ ended up winning the hand.

Then I got owned by a fish again. I was just saying to myself, please don't have KJ, please don't have KJ, please don't have KJ... have AJ, QJ, 67, 45, a flushdraw, etc. ANYTHING but KJ! What did he have? KJ !!!!!

I then got raped in countless medium pots which cost me 50 big blinds or so at least 10 times or so. Most were suckous. Some were cooleres. A few I value owned myself.

I'll post the winning hand that helped me begin my comeback. I think I played this one really well, as I got maxium value from it obviously. I was a bit worried about giving the reg a free card essentially for the flush but I didn't want to scare the major fish out of the pot with a re-raise. Pretty sure this is the biggest pot I've ever won at $2/4 NL online. I scoop a $2.6k pot.

Although it sucks to play that long and essentially break even, getting back to even was a huge accomplishment. I'm pretty proud of the fact that I was able to come back and play my "A" game despite being stuck nearly 8 buyins. That shows a lot about my will to win and determination.

I'm pleased with my effort today, but I'm going to look through my big losers again tomorrow to see if I could have prevented some of the losses.

Back on track

Today I put in two winning sessions, each with a $500 profit. So I finished the day up about $1k. I think I'm definitely back on track for the month and I'm nearly back to even. I just figured out that I was simply trying to do too much. Making too many moves pre-flop and post-flop. Bluffing too much. Value betting too thinly. Not playing standard and solid enough.

I was playing really well towards the end of my play today. I would have been up a lot more but I had some unfortunate hands occur.

This one really sucked, but it's just a cooler. I got oversetted.

This one was against a huge fish. I knew he had a 7 and I was getting his stack on almost all rivers except this one. So frustrating.

A few other standard bad beats/ suckouts/ preflop coolers that aren't really worth posting.

The downward spiral continues...

This picture sums up how my sessions went today...


It's so weird how in poker one day you can feel like you're on the top of the world, on your way to high stakes, etc. and then a few days later you feel like you can't even put in a winning session. At the end of last month, my confidence was at an all time high. Now, after a few bad sessions and about a $7k loss over a few days, I feel like I'm clueless.

I figured yesterday wasn't that big of a deal. I took a shot at $5/10 NL, played a lot of hands there that day, and it didn't work out. Oh well, it happens. So I figured I'd just rebuild and play some $2/4 NL to get on a winning track. Well, I wasn't able to book a win there either and proceeded to lose $1.8k today.

I need to figure out a way to stop looking at my cashier. I put it in my December plan, but I've been terrible at following that rule. I check it all the time still. It doesn't do much good.

Anyways, I think the past few days have been a combination of me playing my B or C game paired with me getting sucked out on/coolered a decent amount on top of just simply not getting paid when I have a set or other similar monster. Here were a few examples of some hands from today...

Here, I set up this reg by 3-betting him left and right for the previous half hour. Finally he snapped and 4-bet shoved a suited Ace but he gets there against my AK.

Even though we're 5 handed I think it's a bit thin for him to be shipping 99 on me here, I mean honestly, does he actually thing I'm going to felt a small pair in this spot pre-flop? We hadn't had really aggro dynamic going either. I just don't get it.

I did a 5-bet bluffshove myself that failed because I ran into AA. My timing is always way off whenever I pull one of these. It isn't too common for me to do, but I felt that the situation was just perfect for it. I had been 3-betting him a decent amount so I felt he was getting ready to go ahead and 4-bet me. Well, I was right he certainly did but he had my suited Ace drawing dead.

Weeeee, cooler vs medium stack.

I think I'm going to just switch sites for a day or something, just to get a change. There's a rake race that I'm trying to do well in but at this point making money is just more important. It's probably mostly psychological but I don't feel like I have a prayer right now when I log onto the site I've currently been playing a lot. Also, I've decided that I'm going to play strictly $2/4 NL until the end of the year. I don't want to finish the year on a losing note and I want to ensure that I'm profitable this month to add to my yearly total profits.

I've dug myself a $2.2k hole to get out of, but last month I was able to have numerous daily sessions at $2/4 NL that suprpassed that sum. So hopefully I can string a few of those type of good days in a row to get rolling for the month.

Bad day

Didn't go well today. I went against my December plan and had to peek at my $ stat in HEM and the cashier to see how badly I got crushed. Finished down $4.2k. Most of the loss was from losing 5 buyins at $5/10 NL. I didn't table select well enough. The tables I was at, most of time, weren't really worth sitting at. There wasn't a huge fish at the table all the time, like there had been in my previous $5/10 NL sessions. Most of the players were regs, with a few mediocre ones, a few bad regs, and one ridiculously good reg.

The ridiculously good reg gave me a shit ton of trouble. He has an insane style where he pretty much plays 26/20, c-bets a ton, nearly auto-double barrels, never folds to 3-bets, and doesn't ever fold if you try to bluff him. It's an impossible style to play against if you never hit any flops or get any hands, like what was happening to me vs him. I checked him out on tableratings.com and he's up $200k over 100,000 hands. I lost a stack to him on a dumb pure bluff I pulled against him before I knew he didn't have a fold button and lost way to many medium pots to him.

I just wasn't on the top of my game today. I made far too many mistakes and wasted a stack or two that I didn't have to. I value owned myself for a stack when I had an overpair and a fish took a weird line with turned trips.

I also got coolered like my 2nd hand of the session AA vs QQ AIPF, he spiked a Queen. That didn't start things out well at all. I find that I really struggle if I have a poor start... I think maybe my confidence gets shot down a bit and I don't play as aggressively as I should.

Back to even for the month... I am going to do my best to not look at the cashier from here on out.

I played like a n00b today.

Hopping around $2/4 to $5/10 NL

I think I'm going to spend the rest of the month just playing anywhere from $2/4 NL to $5/10 NL. That's kind of what I've been doing over the first five days of the month and I think it's an OK plan. I don't want to be playing $5/10 NL just for the sake of playing it... I want to make sure the games are good enough.

I played a mixture of limits today and ended up about 3 buyins at $5/10 NL and even at the other stakes. I had some rough hands though and got sucked out pretty hardcore in a big $5/10 NL pot. I guess it was going to be a cooler pre-flop but he played it in a way that allowed me to get the money in way good. Here's the hand.

This hand was pretty fun. I guess the villain in the hand is a CR pro, as I learned later on from Nute.

Some $5/10 NL action

I played some $5/10 NL today and won about 3 buyins on there, but lost a buyin or so at $3/6 NL. I had a few interesting hands of note.

This one was pretty cool, as it's interesting to see what this regular decided to flat my 4-bet with.

This one was pretty standard, but it felt good to rake in a nice pot.

It's pretty late so I'm not going to post any more hands.

One good thing that happened today, was that I got a new student. Noel aka Peten2toms from my poker group, Destined2pwn, decided to start taking lessons from me. He's going to be a lot of fun to work with and I'm sure that I can help him improve significantly. He's playing $1/2 NL now and had a long break-even stretch, so I'll be looking forward to helping him get rolling.

Did not run that well today...

I played around 2,000 hands and didn't run that well at all today. I think I played quite well for the most part, but I felt like I went into auto-pilot a bit at the very end of my sessions. My biggest losers were coolers/ bad beats. I did make one pretty marginal river call when I a set... I paid of a pretty obvious flush which cost me $100.

I got stacked at $3/6 for a buy-in with pocket Jacks vs. a regular who 3-bets like a monkey from the button. He had AA obviously.

This hand was just a bad beat vs a pretty massive fish. This was my second biggest loss on the day.

Got 2 outed here.

Shipped the money in good pre-flop but couldn't hold up to have the best hand.

This one was also pretty frustrating.


Despite all these pretty unlucky hands I was able to keep my cool quite well and continue playing my "A" game throughout the session. I'm happy I was able to do that, as that was one of the things I wanted to work on in December.

Hopefully this weekend goes better so I can get on a roll and start crushing again.

December Plan

I've decided to make a monthly plan from now on. I used to have monthly goals but they didn't seem to be worth much or seem to do any good. I believe that is mostly because some goals would be arbitrary monetary goals. These goals aren't worth much because you can't control how well you run or how much you make in a particular month. You can control some factors, such as playing well, but can't control other things... for example you can't control how well you run in all-ins.

So after a few months of having no goals or no specific plan, I decided to try and develop a monthly plan that could help me in many different ways. I think this will allow me to manage my time better, as well as allow me to focus on improving my play at the tables. I'm going to detail many different things that I want to work on and get better at, in this plan. It's going to be really long, so if you don't feel like reading all of it you can just skim through it and look at the main points (in bold).

1.) Play to the best of my ability.

• Minimize stupid mistakes
• Don't make huge bluffs vs fish
• Don't bluff solid regulars in situations where it isn't believable (bad board textures for bluffing)
• Avoid FPS (Fancy Play Syndrome)
• Pay closer attention to statistics, specifically, pre-flop stats. Don't ship in "contingent stackoff " hands pre-flop unless there is an aggressive dynamic between myself and my opponent or unless there is some other reason to.
• Take more time on big river decisions.

2.) Rock-solid session structure

• Only play 4 tables maximum. To ensure that I do this the entire month, I will not even open more than 4 tables at the beginning of my session like I normally do to table select. I will pick the four best tables I can find and just sit and play. This will allow me to start working on a dynamic or image right off the bat instead of auto-piloting 6-8 tables for 15-20 minutes until I drop tables and keep the best 4. Of course, If I'm playing at a table and realize that I'm playing with 5 other regulars, a bunch of nits, or a table with no fish, I will close the table and look for another one. I will 3-table until a 4th table is found. This process will be repeated, if necessary, until the session is completed. I will not search for even jucier tables while playing as long as all 4 of my tables are satisfactory and have a fish on them. Ideally, I will be able to play at the same 4 tables for the duration of the session.
• Session length will be 2 hours in duration, exactly. No more. No less. Upon completion of a 2 hour session, I will take at least a 30 minute, away-from-computer, break. Generally, I've found that watching a period of a hockey game on my TV works best as a break. Of course, I can use my break to get out of the house to go eat, run errands, play hockey, or do other stuff. It doesn't matter if a fish is throwing his money away or not, if the two hours are up then I'm done. This policy may change in the future, however, I want to strictly adhere to it this month so I can play my absolute best at all times. I will set an alarm on my Google calendar before I begin each session so I will be reminded when to quit playing.

• Turn off my phone completely or adjust settings to silent mode at the beginning of each session. Phone will remain disabled until completion of the session. This policy is in place to prevent me from getting distracted from playing. Talking to people on my cell phone or on AIM/Skype while playing has cost me thousands of dollars over my career. I just can't focus 100% on my games when talkin to someone else and I make big mistakes sometimes. Also, it feels like I'm being rude to whomever I'm talking to sometimes, as I may zone them out while in a hand. Already this month, I made a big mistake on the river when someone called me when I was playing poker. I have to remember to turn my damn phone off.

3.) Re-read the "Poker Mindset" book and follow its teachings.

• There are 7 different primary aspects of the poker mindset and there is something that I can work on for each of them.

1. Understand and Accept the Realities of Poker

• Realize that I'm going to lose 18% of the time when I get AA all in pre-flop vs KK and don't get frustrated when I lose.
  
• Focus my mental energy after big hands to determine whether or not I played the hand correctly.... not on putting the hand into pokerhand.org to see what % chance i had to win when the money got in and how unlikely it was that he sucked out on me on the river. Thinking about stuff like that is wasted mental energy.

2. Play for the Long Term

• Make the most +EV decisions possible.
• Continue to make plays that I intuitively know to be profitable in certain situations, even if the play hasn't worked out well the last few times I recently tried it.
• If I am having a rough streak or getting unlucky do NOT open up more tables to try and get even. This HURTS me in the long run and I must avoid it.

3. Emphasize Correct Decisions over Making Money

• Don't be disappointed if a play that I deem to be good and solid doesn't work out.
• Focus on making the correct decisions while playing. My attention and brain power needs to be focused solely on the hand I'm playing. This will give me the best chance to make the right play given the information that is available to me.
• If I get the money in good then I've done my job.

4. Desensitize Yourself to Money

• Don't worry about getting sucked out on, no matter how large the pot is. I have good bankroll management so I don't have to worry about things like that.
• Remove $ won and BB/100 stat from HEM for the ENTIRE month !!! Do not peek or check the cashier either. This will be very difficult for me to do, as I peeked a bunch of times last time I tried this. I must pull this off, however. I fell like constantly checking my account balances is one of the biggest obstacles that's holding me back from just absolutely destroying the games.

5. Leave Your Ego at the Door

• Normally, I don't have much of a problem with this one... but lately some regulars have done some really dumb shit that has worked out for them and resulted in them stacking me. This has caused me to talk shit in the chat to them. This does no good. I don't want to create enemies with them because many of those players I play with day in and day out. I don't want them focusing extra hard on hands they play vs. me just because they want to "get back" at me or whatever. Also, talking shit in the chat places my focus and attention on the wrong things while playing. I need to be nice in the chat box.

6. Remove All Emotion from Decisions

• Don't get upset when I get coolered or sucked out on.
• Don't swear at the top of my lungs.
• Don't smash my computer desk with my fist.
• Don't spam random letters rapidly in the chat box.
• Don't let previous hands adversly affect my decisions in future hands.
• Don't worry about if I'm up or down for the session. Don't let the fact that I may be ahead or behind in the session monetarily, affect any of my decision making.

7. Dedicate Yourself to a Continuous Cycle of Analysis and Improvement

• Perform at least 2 Reg CRUSHER sessions per week.
• Re-watch my lessons I took with Nutedawg. Watch two per week. Mondays and Thursdays.
• Watch Nutedawg's two newest CR vids.
• Post one hand on the CardRunners forum per day.
• Re-watch all of Raptor's CR vids. Watch 2 per week. Wednesdays and Fridays.
• Develop and follow a weekly schedule.

That concludes my strategic plan for December. I am going to follow it to the best of my ability and hopefully it proves to be effective.

November Results

Had my best month ever. I made $39k in total poker profits. Great result for me obviously. It feels really good to finally see all of my hard work and effort pay off big time.

Ship the cookies.