some good hands

check raising river with the nuts
shoving the turn for value with top 2

17k hands check

this is my graph for my last 17k hands. (if you click on it it should come up bigger) i run at 3.84ptbb/100, decent but not brilliant. which i guess it's not bad - considering i ran like dirt for a large part of it and at times felt like throwing my laptop against the wall. as you can see i start off on a total heater and then take a massive downswing at about 7k to 9k. there were days i just couldnt win no matter how i played. i do feel like i have got over it now, i had a lovely session today where i played well i think and won 4 buy ins.

i guess i am happy enough to be winning over that many hands. there were a few tilt sessions in there as well where i lost 3 or 4 buy ins in one session. there is a really obvious one at 16k when i just tilt of $150 in 5 minutes. it's always easy to regret that afterwards and think, 'well, if i hadnt done that then my win rate would be so much higher...' but they all count. tilt is less of a problem than it used to be for me but it still raises its ugly head every now and again.

gettin it in with AK preflop

this is an interesting hand - the preflop action here is the key: i cannot just flat call amseul's call of the smallish 4 bet here - it is very unlikely he is slowplaying AA or KK here given that we are so deep. therefore it is better to get the money in while we have an edge - and hopefully lots of fold equity. at no point was i particularly worried about KWLOMPARAS. he was a spewy donk.
massive 5 bet with AK preflop
maybe this wasnt the right move all the time but at the time it felt like the right play. of course, if he pushes i have to fold. he later claimed he folded QQ and said he had to put me on KK or AA.

feel free to leave comments on this one. i'm interested to hear what other people think and how they would play it.

from 1 table to 6

when i first started playing no limit online, 1 table was all i could manage. then i started playing 2. 2 was a bit of a struggle at times, especially when i was playing a hand at both tables. anyway, i started adding another, then another, but i could never really play more than 4 for a long time.

this week i have been playing 20nl and playing 6 tables. it was tough at first but i think i have the hang of it now. i think you definately lose an edge doing this - there is no doubt you miss stuff at the tables but the upside is hopefully the varience is less and more tables mean a greater hourly rate. also, if i happen to lose my stack on one table it bothers me less and so tilt becomes less likely. Anyhow, I'm gonna stick at 20nl for a while longer while 6 tabling - i think you need to be totally used to it before moving up..

anyhow i run at 15ptbb/100 over 2.2k hands so its pretty good so far :-) and i even ran bad...

KK vs AA

havent really been too excited about poker this week, hence the lack of entries on the blog. just one of those weeks where you win a bit, lose a bit, win a bit, lose a bit, then get a bit tilty and lose a bit more.

went to the fortune rooms last night and played the friday night tourney. got KK early on and ran into a guy playing about 60% of his hands with AA so after a raise and reraise i reraised all in and that was me pretty much bust. 2 weeks in a row now i have seen a cold deck. kind of sucks because you cant really do much about it.

one tournament. two hands.

hardly played any poker over the weekend. ran bad towards the end of last week and was really busy so the break was good.

entered a tourney at the fortune rooms on friday night. after about 5 minutes got dealt pocket kings and pushed on a low flop and got called by a set. 5 minutes after that got dealt pocket queens and pushed on a low flop again and got called by a flush draw. i've come to realise though that tourneys are not about surviving - they're about winning, and if you can build a big stack at the beginning then you have a massive advantage in the later stages.

anyhow, that was the end of my night - apart from a couple of fun sitngos a few of us played afterwards. no luck there either!

on the plus side i heard of a wee private 6 max tourney that a guy is organising in the university area of belfast on monday nights. seemed like a good lad. might check that out tonight.

if i ever meet sklansky i am going to ask him for a cheque

this is my poker ev graph for my last 2,200 hands. I am actually down 4 buy-ins but i run bad to the tune of 7 buy-ins. that means i get my money in good over those hands to the value of 7 buy ins and i get sucked out on. that is some serious bad beats. these things happen in poker though i guess - just have to keep playing well and hopefull the luck will change.