Bad Beat / Good Beat / Dumb Beat. My Night

Drove up to UW85's for the monthly tournament. btw, it takes me 70 minutes to get there, and tonight was worse b/c of the torrential rain. that's cool b/c i play goot and normally make deep runs at it.

tonight i started out in the BB with 52k stack and 100/200 blinds. nothing big happens in the first round. then this happens the second time i'm in the bb. blinds are 200/400. i have about 49k and the villain has me well covered. he's loose/passive and tends to trap with a monster. btw, last month, after a minraise to 1000 and a jojo shove to 11k, the villain snap called on the button with QJs. so that's what i'm dealing with.

6handed, there are 4 limpers to me in the bb. i have Ah10c which is plenty good enough, and i plan to raise it. there's 1600 in the pot and i'm liable to be in bad position, so i make it 3k. i get called by loose villain in the co.

flop comes 8h 9h Jh. the pot is 7200. my hand is golden here, especially if i can get it in soon. i raise 4k, which i hope may look weak and induce a raise. last month i saw him flat call raises with 2 pair more than once, and figure him to only raise with hands like AJ, QQ, or maybe a set.

he raises to 12k. i have 'bout 41k behind and so i'm happy. this is basically teh perfect spot to get it in with some fold equity and a million outs.

he thinks for maybe 30 seconds and calls with QTo. i brick off and good night.

anyhow, whatever, it's not a bad beat (that's for the bad beat cops you know you're out there). but it's a cooooold one, b/c there's simply no way i do anything but shove there, and he has the worst possible hand for me. i'm 42% against top set, 55% against AJ, 53% against QQ, and blurg 35% against this hand.

so i'm insta-out, i get on the highway and it's the great flood on the highway. when i go over 55 my car threatens to hydroplane, so i'm kinda steaming and plotting my next move. a slight detour takes me to snoqualmie and the new card room there. i have $475 in me pocket (plan ahead yo!) to play the 300 buyin 2/5 game.

i come in utg +2 (b/c you don't need to post as a new player) and fold my way around to the button. there are 3 limpers to me and i limp with 5h 7h. flop comes 6h 4h 3c omg and w00t. better still the first guy to act (stack right at 300 with me) who has played 3/4 hands so far bets 20. a short stack with 100 calls. i make it $55 b/c i'm sneaky like that (omg the smaller raise is more likely to get action!). first to act shoves for $300 and i'm like omg. short stack puts in his hundred and i have my chips in like super fast yo.

first to act says "someone's got a draw and it aint me" which i don't like much when the board pairs. i ask if he's got a set and he shakes his head like i'm crazy. so booyah no flush comes (short stack shows ace-rag of hearts) and i rake the $650 pot.

Finally, my dumb beat. i literally fold every hand for an hour, then make it 20 to go utg with QQ. button calls. flop comes QQ5 with two hearts. i say to my self "self...w00t." but i keep it inside b/c i'm tricky like that. i check and call $30. maybe i shoulda just bet, but what can i get him to call with on more than one street? i dont' know this guy and prefer to see if i can get him to spazz off. btw, he's shortish with about $200. so the pot is $100 and effective stack is now 150.

turn is the :6h bringing the flush. again, now, i have to figure out how to get his stack. he obv doesn't have a Q. one pair hands no longer pay me off, i guess, with the scare card out there. he could have a boat which would be nice or the flush which would prolly stack off at this point. but most likely he has nothing much. i check again he bets $30 again which of course is superpolarizing. i think now he can't have anything but a flopped underboat or nothing at all. so what do i do? i raise him to $75 like a tard and he folds.

now, as if that wasn't dumb enough, i muck it. also, there's an hourly high hand payout of $200, only 3 tables are running and so quads are golden.

w/e in any event i cash out up $400, am over my uw85 tournytilt (sorta, till now when i think about it), and mosie on home. to type.

werd. also, i'm putting this on my blog b/c GD it why else have a freakin' blog? Read more!

WTF Am I Doing? New Years 09

I played a ton over the summer, had a rough September (bah didn't even lose much), and kinda gave up for a bit. I was much less able than i thought to grind hands at home with the baby (duh?), and didn't end up with the numbers I was after.

The result, I guess, has been a virtual retirement for October and November. I started playing again a bit in December, came up a couple days short of Silver status, and now need to figure out what i'm going to do. When last I made goals (Sept), they included 25k hands and 2ptbb/100. I'm going to seriously scale back and see what I can do this month.

So, yeah...that's something. It'll get me playing, in any event.
Goals for Jan:
NL 6max cash
15k hands
Silver status
1ptbb/100

Tournaments
3 days of at least a few big field online tournies (one down already a couple days ago) with ROI > 0.

Yes, starting small. But, that's something, eh? Read more!

Farewell to Bankroll, and Political Gambling

So, there are times when bankroll management is a strength of mine (risk aversion, compartmentalization), and there are times like this month. I guess it started when the new ipod touch was rolled out. I had recently earned enough FPPs to purchase it via onecall.com gift certificates, but they never got them in stock. It's been nearly two months and they still don't. Eventually I think I may have lost my mind, and decided to pay cash for a 32g. I withdrew some money from p*, and reasoned that I'd just eventually do a cash bonus to make up for the $400.

Then I decided I'd take a shot at 3/5 at muckleshoot. And 2 hours later, my roll was down another $600 woo. I got a little unlucky ($300 flip, and then KK < AA), but mostly it's just what happens when you're underolled, okay. So I'm down $1000. Then I bought Guitar Hero World Tour ($200) b/c wifey was out of town for a week and I was a bit miserable. Down $1200.

My downturn could have gotten much worse when I took a pretty strong position on Obama winning the election. I ended up laying $600 to $200 across several bets. Of course I loved the price I was laying...by the week before he had to have been 10:1 or better, but obviously losing the $600 would have been much worse than winning the $200 would have been good. link to wiki article on utility

A couple of minor upticks along the way: I won the chiptalk QTOC, had small wins at 4/8 limit and online 50nl, cashed last night in the weekly CT. But in general I'm down, and may need to hunker back down at p*.

Anyhow, here's my update, which was apparently a requirement to get paid for the Obama bet by a certain Washington CT'er. Peace. Read more!

Yeah, that's right, I'm not posting.

You know why? B/c I'm a bitch and last month sucked. I'll post stats later, but I finished down a few buyins. Nothing catastrophic, but yeah it sucked.

Issues:
1) timing.
Seamus started kindergarten, so I stopped playing so much in the afternoon when the family is home (they were pissed at me about it), and started working on getting in all my hands noon-3 or so. These hours are packed at P*, but they suck. I mean...they suck. Usually 2 platinum grinders at every good table I find, and of course they have as many hands on me as I do on them, and blah blah blah. I long for the days of playing in the evening, but I'm gonna have to figure out how to start playing those hours again.

2) variance (?)
Who fuckin' knows? All I know is that I played 18k hands and had something like 6 swings of 7 buyins or more last month. I mean...really?

3) the fuckin economy
I'm discouraged about my chances to get in more than a year of real volume. With the way things have turned, we're seriously concerned about our prospects for a really good refinance deal in 2 years with only one income. Chances are I'll be teaching again in the fall, which means my days of even 10k+ hands/month will be over. Which turns what I'm doing now back into dabbling, fucking around. sigh...

Also, J-fuckin-M and my headup match, of course, got down to a shovefest in the 5th match of five. Of course I'm bitching now, and of course it's prolly an exaggeration, but he basically did what I figured he'd do, which is to call down in most big pots with any piece of the board. With a minute to go, I brick out the river, have 1300 behind, JM has 1000 behind, and there's 700 in the pot. I decide to bluff it so that I can run him over at 50/100, knowing there's a really good chance he'll call with a single pair on a scary'ish board. So yeah, he calls, I'm handcuffed with the big blinds, game over. blurg. I'll see if I can find some hands later. Read more!

Phil Hellmuth, Village Idiot

Original Video- More videos at TinyPic

thanks to dangerlion Read more!

Chiptalk HU Tourny

16 player field, run over the course of a few weeks, with matches scheduled on our own. The great news about this is that we can set them up at our discretion. In other words, we can play 2 out of 3, 3/5, 4/7, whatever floats our respective boats.

I played scottwire in my first match and beat him 2/3. Last night JM and I played 4 of our best of 5. He crushed me in the first, I had him down 2:1 in the second until A7s < 78s aipf. He went up 2-0, and I had to work hard to get even at the end of the night.

The rubber match is tonight at 9pm local. I'd like to comment and put up some hands, but I'm too paranoid about potential foes reading up. I'll do that after I take it down.

PS: Our quadrant of the draw was scottwire, JM, mrticsay and me. No offense to the rest of the field, but these are possibly the strongest 4 players of the 16, and I've already filed an official complaint to the appropriate regulatory body. Read more!

Why Do I Run So Good?

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.50(BB) Poker Stars Game#20789010612

fragio007 ($16.60)
winniwy ($12.10)
jayboy16 ($13.95)
Talon2000 ($12.30)
GJBRADLEY ($47.10)
thejojobinks ($51)

fragio007 posts (SB) $0.25
winniwy posts (BB) $0.50

Dealt to thejojobinks Jc Js
call, fold,
GJBRADLEY raises to $2
thejojobinks raises to $7.50
fold, fold, fold, call,

FLOP ($16.25) 6h 4c Jd
check,
thejojobinks bets $6.85
GJBRADLEY raises to $39.60
thejojobinks calls $32.75

TURN ($95.45) 6h 4c Jd 2c

RIVER ($95.45) 6h 4c Jd 2c Tc

GJBRADLEY shows Ac 7c
(Flop 5.9%, Turn 15.9%)

thejojobinks shows Jc Js
(Flop 94.1%, Turn 84.1%)

GJBRADLEY wins $92.45 Read more!