Long overdue post

I should have posted this along time ago, but I'm lazy. I just moved to Shanghai and I'm learning Chinese and playing poker on the side. Here are some pics that I've taken around Shanghai.

A strange globe thing attached to one of the many many malls near my apartment.

Night time pics of the Bund area.

A picture of Pudong.

Okay I'm Back

Alright, I'm back blogging on this blog again. Moving the blog to cardrunners just unmotivated me to blog. The software there is really annoying and it took so much time formatting for the blog to look alright that it was just way too much of a hassle.

So, after a disappointing January, and me taking February off, I had a monster March. Well, sort of. I'm mostly a cash player, but I did start off as a tourney player and had decent success. Well, I decided to try my hand in the Sunday Million on Stars, and I took 7th place for a whopping 23k! That was pretty insane. I also made about 12k in cash games, so, all in all I had an amazing month, even if I did have to cheat a bit by padding my results with a donkament.

Though, one thing that I'm very disappointed in is my 2/4 nl hu play. My HU play is still far far behind my 6max play, and I don't know why I can't seem to get over that hump. I'm going to have to really examine my play and try to change up my hu game.

Moving blogs

I'm moving my blog over to Cardrunners.com. It's now at this address.

An Obvious Leak of Mine

I just realized that I think I have one really big leak. I don't know how to win money without going to showdown. This means that I'm playing my own cards a bit too much and that I'm not applying enough pressure to move opponents off hands when they don't have anything.

I'm pretty disappointed about this. For some reason I thought it was standard, or it made sense to me that I lost money when hands don't go to showdown. However, I was scanning twoplustwo today, and most of the players there made money when hands didn't go to showdown. This actually makes more sense. The reason why I'm losing money is that when hands don't go to showdown, I'm folding much more than I'm making other people fold. Well, until I can figure this out, I'm going to hold back from moving up to $5/10 nl. Plus figuring this out I think will also significantly help out my win rate. Right now over 70k hands, I'm running at about 3.5ptbb/100 in $2/4, and over 25k hands 3ptbb/100 in 3/6nl. I really should have these in the 5-6ptbb/100 range before I decide to tackle $5/10nl.

I'm going to have to put in more work to figure out how I can incorporate this into my style. I think maybe that I should drop down to 4 tables for a little bit to readjust my game.


So just to illustrate this, here is my PokerEV graph. I know I'm running pretty good right now, but what's really disappointing me is the gap in between the red and the green. Until I learn to apply pressure in spots that I can profitably make opponents fold, I don't think I will ever be a "tough" player to play against. I think that the higher I move up, the more observant players will notice this and I think that I'll be very exploitable.

Good good day...

Well, I ran pretty damn hot today. My hands are finally holding up, I'm winning my share of coin flips and I even sucked out twice in big pots. Even though I sucked out in those big pots, I don't think I was playing bad poker, in fact I think I was playing pretty damn well. I started losing focus for a bit in the end and may have spewed a bit, but I was pretty happy overall.

I think I'll post some hands later. There were some pretty interesting situations that I was involved in.

Here's a graph of my day. Feels nice having a 5k day.

October Results, and it's Tha First of Tha Month

Okay, so last month didn't go so well. Well, I guess it could have gone worse, but I'm not happy with the way that I handled myself. After I had that initial downswing, I put in so much time and effort grinding to get myself out of that hole, and I'm very happy I did.

However, I then decided to take a shot at 5/10, didn't set myself a stop loss, and then proceeded to dump a bunch of money on it. I loss about 10k in a little over 36 hours. I think that the only thing I was thinking was the money and I was playing optimal poker. So if I wasn't stupid and didn't play 5/10NL, I would have had a pretty good month. Well, below are my results at Stars and FullTilt for the month. I also made about 3,500 on Cake Poker. So, I'm up about 5k for all of October.



The table above cuts off a lot of my stats for the other limits that I was playing. One thing that I was really proud of was that I actually played $3/6nl pretty well in my first month. I even pulled out of an initial downswing at that limit to get those results. I think one of the problems when I initially move up is that I think that people are bluffing me more, and for some reason, I play less aggressive and become more of a calling station. I'm just obsessed with keeping the pot small with pot control, hence I'm afraid to put in a raise, and I just call. I find that I was doing this at $5/10 as well.

So since the table cuts off with $2/4nl results, I'll just show you my results in a graph.


I'm in a sick breakeven stretch. But over 30k hands, I have made about $807.80 for a winrate of 0.33 ptbb/100. I have a feeling that it's going to turn around pretty soon. I was running about -7k according to PokerEV for the entire month. But other than that, I didn't play too much poker near the end of the month.

I did play some, but I felt mentally exhausted. I mean having two huge downswings in one month really drains it out of you. And I was feeling it at the end of this month. Couple this with the fact that I was cramming for midterm exams and wasn't sleeping that much, I was just beat near the end of the month. So, after my exams, I didn't really play poker for about two days. And I think those two days mentally refreshed me. I got plenty of sleep and I'm ready for November.

If you've ever heard Bone Thugs N' Harmony's "Tha First of Tha Month", I think that's a great song. But I have a feeling that November is going to be a great month for poker and life in general. I'm going to really play well this month, and I'm going to put in a ton of hands at $3/6nl and also I'm not going to tilt, and really implement a stop loss when I play at $5/10nl.

But today on Cake Poker, I decided to sit at a couple $5/10nl HU tables. This at first didn't start so well, I was down about $1,200 pretty quick. But then I buckled down and started digging myself out of the hole. I was also playing a really soft 5/10nl 6max game on the site. And I was pretty confident that I was playing very well. All of a sudden, this huge fish decides to sit against me in a $5/10nl HU table. I think I stacked him pretty fast. He was playing horribly. He asks if I wanted to open another table. I quickly agree. I'm outplaying him on the other table as well, and pretty soon, he wants to open a third table against me. I was extremely happy. Well, after about an hour of play, I was up about $4,500 or so against him. I'm not sure exactly since Cake doesn't allow Poker Tracker, but I think I probably bought about a buyin more worth of chips on the tables. After he quit me on tables, I realized that including the 6max tables and taking into account my initial loss, I was up about $5k in an hour and a half. Now, I need to have more of these types of days. I decided to take a snap shot of me sitting on three HU tables with all of the fishes' money.


What's nice about Cake is that they allow you to change you name about once a week. I might have to change my name pretty soon if this fish doesn't want to play me anymore.

A Hand I'm Particularly Proud Of

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1639525
This may be spew, or not, but I felt awesome after pulling it off. Just to tell you how the hand went down, I never reraise somebody UTG with 88. I might do this with air from time to time, but not with hand like 88. Now that's spew, but somehow in my multitabling frenzy, I misclick, and bet pot PF. Now, after I did that and BB min 3 bet, I had to put him on a huge PP. AK never does this, so initially I put him on AA,KK, and maybe half his QQs. He wasn't the strongest of players, and he was laying me such a sick sick price, that I called to set mine. I knew that I could stack him on the right flop. However, once an A flops, and he bet so small into the pot, I immediately think that he has KK. I discount AA partially because an A in on the flop, but also because against him, I didn't think that he would be the type of player that would put a blocking bet out. I think he would either check it, looking to c/rai or just bet it. So I called, because I really think this bet is a scared bet. He has to view my range as heavily weighted towards AK, so if he showed weakness again on the turn, I decided that I would rep AK and take it away from him. After I bet the turn, he instafolded.

This is a play that I never do. There are so many non-standard things that lead up to my sick fancy play. First of all, my 3bet, then his min 4bet, then his weak blocker cbet. Somehow, I had this amazing read for just this one play. Immediately after that, I wish that I didn't have auto-muck on so that I could show the guy this sick bluff, but I couldn't. Instead, I'm blogging about it.