Comeback

SWEET! Made all the money I lost back from yesterday...very pleased with myself and the cards.

The 2 major hands in question.

CO raises and I repot OTB w/QQ, blinds fold and the CO rerepots and I decide to pushin. I did this because people had been repotting me all night and I was folding. I felt this time he knew this and was using it against me and I felt it was time to take a stand. He ended up thinking for a LONG time which made me think he had AK. In the end he called with 55!!!! I held up :-)

My very last hand of the night I get AA UTG and raise to $40 and CO calls. Flop comes AJ4 w/2 hearts. I pause trying to suggest weakness and bet a somewhat weak amount of $65 into a $90ish pot. CO raises me to $175 and I decide to rereraise him to $400, he calls. Turn is a non heart low card and I push in my $650ish and he calls w/JJ. Nice to be on the upper end of set over set - which held.

Fantastic feeling to win back all your big losses from the previous night the very next night. Brings back all my confidence and makes me look forward to playing for the rest of the week. Unfortunately I wont be able to play too much but thats ok.

Knock wood, I want to hit 10 winning weeks in a row!!

Big Loss

I dont fault my play last night but I lost $2.4k, here are the hands...

I raise KK in CO, button calls and BB repots. I figure I am ahead and dont want to scare him off
so just call and button folds. Flop is QQ8 and he checks (makes me think AK) so I weak bet it $100, he calls. Then he leads out $250 on an 8 turn. I decide to stick with the thought I am ahead and min raise him and he pushes. He ends having AQo, one of the worst possible repop hands. I most definitely didnt didnt put him on that...ugh.

Next big one 4 handed UTG raises to $35, I repop w/QQ he calls. Flop is a very juicy AKQ, he checks I bet $150 and he raises to $450 and I push vs his KK...ugh again.

I dont think I misplayed either hand, it was just one of those things. On the KK hand I was looking for his stack or a nice raise of his cont. bet on flop, unfortunately it didnt work out like that...whatever. Lets see if I can make it back over the rest of the week.

9 Weeks

9th winner in a row and it was a doozy --> $4500 profit for the week....mmmm, yummy.

So this is my final week at my regular job, wow, so fucking awesome. I wonder if I will get stressed playing poker knowing its my only source of income shortly. I guess I will be fine until I have a bad stretch. To counter this would be to make sure you always have probably 6 months worth of living/bills/etc money saved for any terrible run you might have and if that is ever used up well then this poker thing aint for you!

It was my b'day this past Sunday and Alex, Mike, Bill and myself went and played golf and drank a lot while doing it. A great day. The plan then was to go home and get cleaned up, pick up the girls and go to dinner. But little did I know there was a surprise party waiting for me at Alex's house with some other friends as well. So needless to say a bit more drinking ensued.

I didnt play any poker on Sunday but played a few hours on Monday. I played one hand poorly to get busted as follows.

I raise to $35 in the CO (cutoff) w/QQ and the BB repots me to $120 and I call. Flop is something like 47J and he bets $140...it is at this point I made my biggest error. So what hands is the BB most likely to have --> TT-AA, AQ, AK. It is at this point in the hand I can raise and find out what he has. I think I should have min. raised him. He should fold AQ and AK and may or may not fold TT. JJ-AA he will either call or push with. Well unfortunately I decided to just call and assume he would check AQ, AK and TT for sure. Well the turn was a Ten and he bet $435 leaving himself about $275 (ie. he was pot committed). Now at this point I really am only ahead of a bluff. TT-JJ & KK-AA have me dominated. The correct and obvious decision at this point is to fold, so what did I do? Oh I pushed in and he called w/AA. UGH, terribly played by me.

The good news is I won it back on this hand. It was folded to me in the SB w/67o which I completed. The BB raised it to $35 total so I decided to take one off and hope to hit a nice flop. I hit that nice flop --> 985 w/2 spades. I checked and he bet $50 which I raised to $150, he called. Turn was a 5 which I dont suspect helped him and I'll pay off any boat at this point. I bet $275 into the $370 pot which he calls. River is a non spade blank two. A great card for me and I push in my remaining $650 which he calls holding QQ. Nice! Apparently I am not the only one who cant fold QQ, hehe.

The day ended up being a nice profit, just the way I like to start a week :-)

Nice river

So yesterday I was playing 5/10 and several times I had been the first raiser PF and was reraised to which I folded. Now we had a PRO playing at our table who was on my left and when I raised w/TT in the CO and he reraised me from the button I felt he was making a move on me. I called ready to decide what to do after the flop. Flop was 976 (goof flop for me), I checked and he bet approx $300 which I smooth called (may be a little weak as any overcard would scare me but I wanted to see what he did on the turn). The turn was a 2 or 3 (good blank card for me) so I checked to him and he bet approx $440. Now I didnt like that but pros LOVE to make moves so I pushed in an extra $250 over him figuring my TT is good and if it isnt I have 6 outs for trip tens or a straight. The PRO called and he had 9s7s for two pair. The good news, I was right about him making a move on me PF, the bad news was the flop hit him hard. Fortunately this gave me extra outs as I now had 12 outs to win the hand, so I was a 3 to 1 dog. The river was a beautiful Ten to give me the winner...yummy.

I did give some back later in a hand I feel I played poorly. I raised UTG to $40 w/KQo and only the PRO called. Flop was Qh7c4c and I bet $60 into $90 and he raised to $160, I called. Turn was Jc and I checked and he bet $300...this is where I need to decide whether I am ahead or not right now and either push or fold IMHO. What I actually did was call as I had the Kc. River was a blank and I checked to him and he bet $350 leaving himself $135 into a $1k pot. He was basically giving me 4 to 1 on my call. You can look at it 2 ways. He is laying me far too good of odds to not call thus wants a call, or knows what it looks like so is an excellent bluff. I folded wishing I had more time to think about it. I think if I was going to fold I shouldve folded the turn and saved myself $300. This is another example of why position is sooooo important. Another way to play this hand is to check the flop and check call down on every street. If he had a set or the flush I would've still lost a bundle but its a great way to have someone bluff at you twice whereas if you lead out they fold on the flop.

Anyway, my session was still a winner and the week is looking great again. Barring a disaster I will add another winning week to the streak which would be a great b'day present as my b'day is this Sunday.

HAPPY B'DAY ME!!

8 in a row

Last week was my 8th winning week in a row. On another streak here and would like to see it hit 2 digits. Poker continues to go well and my game is pretty solid right now. Last week I won $2800 so no complaints from me. On Sunday through Tuesday Traci and I went on vacation to Catalina Island which is off the Los Angeles Coast. Not a lot to do there but relax and do the island and water tours - so thats what we did. I took my laptop with me as I figured there would be down times and I am glad I did. On Sunday night I played for 30 mins and won $350 and I Monday night I played for 5 mins and won $500 (I quit straight away). That was enough to cover the costs of our vacation, hehehe. Aaaahhh, poker is good when it comes through for ya.

I have tightened up my game in the last 10 days and am basically playing only solid dtarting hands in regard to 6 handed play. I am only opening up my requirements in the CO and on the button, otherwise I am very straight forward. I am doing this so I can get off to a solid start at 5/10 NL. SO far its working and I have been playing in little spurts to take a small profit here and there. I am 2 tabling it and will continue to do so hopefully forever. I am up 4 buyins so would need to have one of those horrendous bad runs to lose it all. As I have said before, if I can be remotely successful at 5/10 then my future is secure so this is very important to me.

Knock wood.

Donk week

I continued my Donkness last night and lost a sizeable amount. To also be fair the cards werent hitting me and every play I made ran into trouble. Of course if I hadnt tried to make those plays I wouldnt have gotten in trouble... Meh, sometimes it works sometimes it doesnt.

I was also in a fowl mood yesterday, not good reason why, just was. Still feel a little grumpy actually...time to pull finger and put a smile on my face.

Hey Mikey, you reading this? Drop me a note, tell me whats up in NZ.

HU

So I did end up having a great last week. Played HU all of last week and it really paid off. I played and ran well. It certainly encourages me to play HU more. One thing I did which I am positive helped me win was game selection. I avoided anyone who I considered a challenge...yup that simple. I waited for either a player I didnt know or a fish/weak player/shortstack. These weak players were a lot easier to take money from. And most of the shortstack players were also easy money. If they happened to double and didnt run I would eventually get it back. Considering I played 1/2 and 2/4 HU I made a lot of cash.

This week has started off interesting. Have played two days and both starts I was down $1k. Both days I started playing like a moron with some bad luck thrown in. But largely I played moronic. Both days once I got $1k down I mentally pulled my finger out and worked it back to even -- very proud of myself for that. It seems you always feel happier when you managed to get back to even from some big losses. Its very encouraging.

So hopefully I can stick to my "A" game for the rest of the week and made some money.

HU

Have been playing a bit of HU recently and its been going well and yesterday was a strong day. I only had the worst of it at one table where I lost a couple of buyins but I easily made up for it and then some at all my other tables. Was a very nice day. It was also nice that the cards fell for me a few times when I was behind, hehe. Its so rare that I really enjoy it when I come from behind :-)

Week is shaping up nice and I'd LOVE to have a big week...

Bad Saturday

As has been usual have been playing very little poker but living life more. Last week was going along ok until Sat. morning where in one session I lost $1100 due to some tough beats.

Example: I flop a flush w/67s and a guy bets $28 and I min raise which he then triples, so I push and he calls w/top two pair and boats on the turn.

Next one I raised and flopped top set with 2 calls 78T flop and I bet 3/4's pot and am raise $100 and I decided to flat call (if I had pushed I will say he would've folded??). Turn was an unattractive 9. He bets about 2/3's pot which is about 1/2 our remaining stack and I decide to just push and he insta calls w/QJo...DOH!

I know I lost two other large pots to similar brutal beats. Oh I do remember flopping Top and middle pair and betting the flop and turn, to have him push over me on the turn with just top pair but hitting his higher two pair on the river.

Anyway, that ruined my week but I did manage I small profit.

I am only playing 1/2 - 2/3 of what I used to so my opportunities to make significant cash arent there. Thankfully still making decent money and I just hope once this is full time I get into it big time. Doesnt help that I bought a computer game 2 weeks ago that is very addicting.