From last night's Donkament, don't think I've ever flopped the hammer boat, so that was fun & cool. Congrats to OhCaptain, as he took this bad boy down.
I played the 50/50 also, and somehow managed to cash, think i went out 50 - 70 ish. Did something that I have a knack for, namely running into aces.
Has gots to figure out how to not keep doing that!!!
On another note, Mr Julius Goat shipped me my new avatar, stemming from my victory in the BBMT! If you like to see me at the tables in my new BBMT jersey, feel free to get it here.
A few of my readers have asked about this, so I'll make a quick post about color coding players. The screen shots I post, indicate that I take a lot of notes on players. While the notes are important, for me the color codes carry an added benefit, especially since FullTilt started publishing them in the lobby.
As far as I'm concern, the #1 benefit this feature gives me, is the advance knowledge of knowing the player's skill level, and in the context of HU SNG's, this is very big. If I open up a HU SNG lobby, and see the player sitting there has a color code indicative to me that he's a shark, then I'm not going to play him. At the end of the day, it's about finding the 'edge' and winning money that counts. Sure I can sit, and take the challenge, but I'm not really interested in doing that, when there are plenty of poor players out there. In fact, for those that do play these games, you'll rarely see the 'shark's playing against each other. You'll see one waiting at one table, and another at a different table. I mean if they really wanted to play, they could play each other, right?
In the context of MTT's, having the color code is really helpfull. Obviously when a table first opens up, if you have no info on the players, you need to play for a while, before you start understanding who's who. Now imagine if when the tournament starts, all or most of the players at your table are color coded....thats a big advantage. You know who you want to take hands against, and who not mess with. You understand which players are capable of making plays, and which players don't have a clue, so as to not make plays against them. I can't tell you how invalueble having this is, especially when you play the 45 man SNG'.s At this point, I sit down in these, and have over half the field already color coded.
I've been tagging players now for quite some time, so one thing I recommend is that after every session, you save the notes files. I put it on a USB drive, and take that around the several computers I have, and that I play poker on. You'll find that file in the root of the Fulltilt program directory, and it's called 'yourFullTiltname.XML'. Just make sure the client is closed before copying the file.
I've been running a bit sour the last few days, nothing you can do about it, especially when your getting your money in good, and are getting outdrawn. It happens, and we all have to deal with it. Sucks when it does, thats for sure.
I did manage another 2nd in one of those 45 man SNG's last night, so that help minimize the damage:
Went deep in the 32K again last night....deja vu redux...blah blah blah
I was not really playing well last night, so I was even lucky to get this deep. On my bust out hand, it really showed:
I should have just shoved pre-flop, especially since I didn't give the UTG much credit. I already had him pegged as a pretty bad player, and he had opened early with questionable holdings before. He took his entire time bank to make the flop call, and I didn't get there.
After this hand it made him the overwhelming chip leader, 636K to 350K or so for the guy in 2nd. He finished 13th.
I'll keep plugging at this bad boy, you know...just like Underdog use to say....'If at first you fail your deed.....'
I' ve been play a few of these all month, peppered in between the regular nightly tournaments I like to play. I had been making a lot of final tables, but had not been winning.
My ROI in these is pretty good, I should try and play more of them.
I was going over the hands of last night's 32k, which I final tabled.
I played for 7 hrs, 483 hands, and only voluntary put $ in the pot 8%. Yet after investing all that time, showing incredible patience, making optimal decisions, it all just went to the crapper in one hand:
I'm still shaking my head today. You know, you can read all the poker books ever written, all the poker blogs and forums in cyberspace, and you won't fully get it, until you go through real life pain yourself. And you have to experience quite a few of these, you have to feel that pain many times. over and over...but after the pain subsides, you do come out a much improve player.
I know I'm not stating anything new, or groundbreaking...but I'm feeling better now that I have.
So I'm in the $24 Heads-up tourney yesterday, and for my second match I'm playing with this dude who takes a beat which gives me a 2:1 chip lead. We do some 'docile' trash talking, and next thing you know, the dude throws down a bet, namely that he can come back and win. So more friendly banter, and the bet is made....especially with both of us chiding each other about, whether the other will pay up.
Well he lost, and frankly, I never thought I see this:
Don't know what the extra penny was for...maybe a tip? and yes, before you ask, had 'the impossible' have happened (Big Grin),and lost, I most certainly would have paid.
I played a bunch of the Sunday tournies, which I was happy to do given my satelliting into most of them. I played the Sunday Brawl, The Double Deuce, The Sunday Milion, The Mulligan, and the usual 40K and 32K. That's quite the lineup.
The Sunday Brawl was over as soon as it started for me. First I was out of the house, and when I got home the tournament had already started. I thought it started at 1:30, but actually started at 1. For that, I punished myself by instantly having a 'tilt seizure'. The same 'tilty' feeling an all, but it last a very short time. Unfortunately I busted during that short time. It was folded to me on the button, I raised Q9, get reraise by some FT pro in the BB, and I flat called. Hit my top pair, lead out, got raised, and being in that 'tilty' moment, decided that no dang FT pro was going to push me around, and I stupdily shoved, and was promptly shown two red kings.
I lasted into the 2nd break in the Million, and busted on this hand:
The UTG dude had limp from early with small pairs 3 other times, and had raised all his big hands. So I thought reasonably he had another small pair, which is why I shoved. I will tell you he took his entire 90 seconds to make the call, which of course you can't tell from the replayer. Oh well, nh.
The only other significant run I had was in the Double Deuce. This is a freaking Tri-atholon, and to get this far, and not getting it done, is extremely dissapointing:
One hand that help me get deep was one where the chat banter was priceless....the theme being 'how lucky' I got to 'suckout':
I also managed a 3rd place cash in those 45-man $75 SNG's, so that and the $ from the DD, I somehow manage to make a small profit, plus rakeback.
As always, good luck to all on the virtual felt....
Here are a few interesting hands from last night's 40K. I had managed to chip up, when this crazy hand came up:
Set over Set over Set......I must confess that I felt I was behind after 'the crabs' check raised. The overshove certainly scream to me that this guy had either a set, and was now trying to protect his hand, or maybe the flush draw, with the former being more likely. Then of course the call by the 99's, certainly told me I was behind. I got lucky of course, but I made a bad call here, and forgetting about the results, am dissapointed, as one of the things I'm trying to improve on, is to fold in situations where I know I am beat.
Well this obviously put me in good shape, and having a big stack, I went into big stack poker mode, open many pots, and pretty much chipped up to 40K+ stack without much risk to my chips.
Here I layed down QQ preflop:
Luis Velador is a red pro, and as tempting as it was to call, this was an easy lay down.
As I reviewed the hands, I noticed I was very lucky in my flips. I pretty much won the majority, and as everyone knows, if your going to go deep, you have to win the flips:
Another thing that helps, is when you catch a hand when an opponent is making a stand. I had been raising this guys BB mercilessly, and he finally decided to make a stand. However, two issues worked against him. First, I had a hand, and second, it was on the bubble:
Here's a hand that I really don't like the way I played it......but it worked out:
I folded for a while going card dead, and limped to the final table as a short stack. First hand of the final table, I make a move with KJ, and got there against QQ:
That gave me a little breathing room. Unfortunately, didn't get any cards, and dwindled back down to under 80K, but finally did doubled up in the BB:
I realize that sometimes you have to shove with any two, and I think this is still a problem I have to deal with, as I still don't like doing it with absolute garbage. I do feel this is an adjustment I have to make.
Something when haywire with my hand histories after this point, as I remember a hand where I made mistake, and flatted with AQ against the Big Stack. Had to fold that hand, and it cost me a good chunk of my stack.
At any rate, I do have the bust out hand, as I ran into Jacks:
Always great to get paid when flopping quads! This was in last night 40k.....sadly, same story as always, finished 33rd out of 700+, ironically on a brain fart holding these very ducks.
I made a withdrawal about 4 weeks ago, and pretty much as usual, expected it would take a while, given there never-ending issues with their payment processor's. However, this time, they actually threw me a bone....shipped me a Benji!
Previous post 'brag' on DQB's has come back to bite me. I've been DQB'd at least 3 times this past weekend, and in this hand, the ultimate 'insult to injury', losing with DQB!!!
I played a whole bunch of evening tournaments this weekend, and mainly didn't do much. The only tourny I went deep in was the 50/50 on Saturday night:
Fellow blogger CMitch also had a deep run as you can see, finishing 12th.
On the PockerTracker front, I finally upgraded the built in Access DB to SQL. I was pushing 300k hands, and it was running dog slow. It did take the better part of the day, but I am happy I did it. Now I'll probably upgrade to version 3, I think it's now in a more stable state, I plan to read up on current forum discussions to validate that. I don't like to get software when it first releases, I'll leave the UAT to the BETa users who don't mind the flaws.
For those of you who don't use PockerTracker, I certainly recommend you get on that boat. The stats are very telling as to what kind of player you are. In reviewing my 2008 stats, I found that my most profitable dollars come from the $55 SNG's. I played the $69's (also profitable, but not as much as the $55's),$110's, $220's, and was a losing player at those stakes. My ego would have a very hard time debating this, so one adjustment I've made so far this year, is to exclusively play the $55's. It's paying off in a big way so far. After all, I need something to fuel the huge freaking variances which go hand in hand with MTT's, which unfortunately/fortunately is what I like to play the most.
I certainly had missed a boat of mine own, but it looks like Al is bringing the BBT back, which would be the 4th of the series.
That will certainly bring the crowds back, and I'm sure, will be fun and competetive as always. I've been lucky enough to have won a BBT tournament, in each of the first 3 installments. We'll see if I can keep that streak going, although I think surely it will be tougher to do.
Thats all for now, and as always, goold luck on the virtual felt to all of you!
This has been pretty sick, mind you, there have been at least 3 others which I don't have shots of, due to playing on a different system....all were dealt in last 2 days:
I hope that switch stays on for a while! (Big Grin)
I also got my year end bonus from Iron man last night:
So that was cool to get done early, this time around I made by playing 3 sets of the $55 SNG's, which are by far my most profitable tourny's. I noticed I was up in the top 100 on the Fulltilt leaderboard, so it got me thinking that if I was to put in a higher volume, I could probably make a run at the prizes. The guys you see at the top are pretty sick, as they do the max games per set. Not sure what that is, maybe around 20, but that is crazy. There are SNG tools out there which help with the management of play, and I'm sure alot of these guys use it, but I don't think I can, given the number of distractions I have. Still, pretty darn impressive, and if you look at their profits, most of these guys are doing quite well. If your interested, this weekend Fulltilt will do another SNG madness, which if you can put the volume in, and of course are good at SNG's, you can make some good bucks.
Many thanks to Mr Julius Goat for hosting this fine tournament, of which I had the pleasure of winning tonight. It was fun, and I enjoyed the deepstacks.
I also had another deep run...this time in the 40K.
I made a few bone headed plays at the very end, in particular with AQ sooted, which I should know better. I then ran QQ into AA and that was that.
Am also grinding the 55's SNG's, to collect points to claim my year end iron man bonus. Happy to say, I'm more than halfway there, and will easily make it before the end of the month.
Now that the holiday time off is over, it's back to the real life.......argh!
We as poker players, face coin flips all the time. We accept it as part of the game, and understand the luck factor. If we lose it, we just move on to the next tourney, SNG, etc.
But for the 'poor' Indy Colts, losing the coin flip last night giving the Chargers the ball to start the Overtime period, prove to be the end of their season. The Chargers scored on that opening OT drive, and the just announced MVP watched it all unfold from the sideline. What a helpless feeling.
I certainly think the NFL should re-consider how the OT period is played. I think going to a format somewhat like baseball, where the visitors get the ball first, if they score, the home team would then get a crack on offense as well. This would make it pretty interesting too, as if the visitors kicked a FG, then the home team could win with a TD. Or if the visitors scored a TD with a PAT, then the home team could go for a 2pt after TD....etc.
Tonight, Mr Julius Goat is hosting the Bad Bankroll management tournament:
It should be fun, and with a $50 buy-in, should make for some nice payouts if we get more of you guys to play.
2008 was an ok poker year. I still have not won the 'big one', so that will continue to be my target in 2009. Namely, win a tournament with a buy-in > $150....with an added focus on the Sunday majors. I only really play on Fulltilt, so I may venture to Stars somewhat more this year, but I still hate I can't get rakeback there. Doesn't seem that the players there care much about that, given the # of active players they have.
Wish you all the best in 2009, on the poker front and life.
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