Bad Session + 1 day til CWOF

I am absolutely ashamed of the session that I just played. I played < 200 hands and don't even know why I played. I was really just bored waiting for laundry to finish drying, so I fired up some tables and got insta-stacked in this pot:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3786564 - p/f is standard then I go for the gay flop bet and get flatted and then I decided to check the turn with no plan. If I was paying more attention, I would have realized that the effective stacks were like 95 bb's to start the pot, so my turn call would have left a pot size river bet which I didn't really think about. Anyways, I decided to c/call turn, c/call river as a bluff catcher. Didn't work. I play bad.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3786532 - then this hand happened which ended my sesh. I had already 3-bet this guy once and didn't know he would perceive another one as strength or whether I was just trying to run over him. Anyways, I got cute and flatted, and we saw this pretty flop. I opted to check the flop to disguise my hand, but once the button potted it, I was just saying in my head, please please don't flat because you have JJ. He flatted, and I wanted to puke but knew I was never going to hero fold, so I just flatted as well. Then when he fired the turn, I was like, maybe he has QQ or TT or something random. If I was playing my A game, I would find a fold on the turn or at least c/r flop so that his hand might be more transparent. Just playing bad bad poker

Overall I dropped 2.5 BI's so I am about even since I started playing the full ring games earlier this week. I am not all that upset and feel better now that I have diagnosed these hands and realize that I really butchered them. I guess I just shouldn't have played.

Oh well, tonight = the bars and tomorrow = start of CWOF (Crew Weekend of Fun). AFAIK, Peter, Paul, Bubs, and Nate will be arriving at different points tomorrow. Derek and Doms will either be arriving late tomorrow night or early Saturday and people are leaving at different times. Overall it will be a great weekend filled with an incredible amount of Chinese, Slo Pitch, binge drinking, and Peter (and the rest of the crew) getting kicked out of every drinking establishment we attend. It should be a blast.

Well I am going to go shower and start the weekend festivities alright...with a Bud Light Lime.

God Bless,

JG

Sesh Review

I am on quite a bit of tilt because Poker Tracker 2 is not functioning right and I cannot pull up hands from the session I just played. It went pretty well though. I put in ~500 hands 4-tabling the full ring 100NL games. I ended up a little over 2 BI's which makes up for yesterday's fiasco.

I felt that I played pretty well. I sort of had an epiphany during my session. Watching CR's vids, the main premise that every video has in common is the importance of position. I have always felt that I understood this idea but have just recently began to conceptualize the number of things that you can do postflop when in position. You can isolate limpers p/f, take pot control lines to get the optimal number of streets of value, barrel scare cards and maximize value.

CR pro David Benefield plays something like 50-60% of his button hands and 3-bets very liberally because of the advantage he feels that he has. Now a lot of this is not too applicable to 100NL full-ring games where there is invariably 2-3 limpers every hand and not too many people are raising light in middle-late position, but I decided to start trying raising like 50% of my buttons if there were limpers to me. I decided to raise most suited cards, any connectors 5-6+ and obviously any pair, A8+, KT+. Throughout the session, there were a lot of people who sat down for 2 rounds and left, so maybe people never realized what I was doing as I didn't get played back at too much, but I did start to realize how amazing it is to raise slightly over the pot p/f and get HU with a fish and take down a ridiculous amount of pots post flop.

Anyways, I have a busy few days ahead of me in trying to get things crossed off the list before this weekend. Oh ya, this weekend is Crew Weekend in Bellingham. I have already declared it Happy Weekend.

God Bless,

JG

Tilt

I got done with class today at 1pm and decided to go to the AIC building to 6-table some full ring 100NL games. Things started off okay until I got in with A7ss vs. 3s3h on a 7x 5s 4s for a 90bb pot and lost. I then iso'd a JTo limper with AKo and we got all in on a AKQ flop.

But the thing that capped it off was that I was trying to raise to $5 at another table but accidentally raised 65o UTG at another table. I got called twice and the flop came 9 6 5dd. I led 10 into 15 and was flatted by a decent reg behind. The turn was the Ac, and I led $25 into a $37ish pot, and he made it 65. Pretty marginal spot but I felt like he probably had nut fd enough, and I could easilly be repping the A with my whole range. I shoveled it in, and he called with AKdd, and the river was a 9. It was a 240bb pot which sucks.

This is the 4th or 5th memorable spot in the last few months that I have misclicked then flopped the apparent nuts only to get stacked. It's like the UB gods are punishing my misclick by rigging the deck. Oh well, kinda sucks.

I made $300 playing the full ring games yesterday but lost $200 today. The full ring games are a ton different from the 6-max games. When I subscribed to CR's, I really wanted to get good at 6-max so those were the only vids that I watched. I have noticed however that the full ring 100NL games do not have the amount of regs that the 6-max games do. The thing that I don't like so much about them is that there are so many short stackers which makes it tricky to play and really handcuffs me in a lot of spots.

For example, today I had 87s in the BB and there was a MP raise who was 100bb's deep, a c/o call who was also deep and a button call who had like 35bb's. Without the button, this would be a pretty sweet spot to squeeze and collect some dead money. But I can't really do that very easily because the short stack is a fish and will probably be glad to get it in with an overlay.

That being said, the players just simply are that much worse. While I am currently underrolled to play those games with my online money, I think that the variance is low enough where I can make a steady stream of income 4-6 tabling these games.

I had a great weekend and I won't go into too many details, but Friday night we had a home game at our place which was a blast. Then Saturday we had a little party. It sucked cleaning up both days, but it was well worth it.

I got my first 397 test back today and got a 97% which is cool. I still haven't kicked things into gear quite yet but will do that soon.

5 days until the Crew comes and takes a shit on the city of Bellingham. I keep trying to come up with adjectives to describe this weekend but don't want to overuse the words epic and mayhem. It will be one for the ages.

I am going to go work out then go to Anthony's for dinner then 24!

God Bless,

JG

Nate on his way to 10k

So Nate has been on a tear as of late. After apparently drawing inspiration from my blog, he played in a freeroll and won something like $1 (maybe a little more, maybe a little less). He then proceeded to turn that into $50 then FT a couple tournies then win a couple tournies and I'm pretty sure he's close to or at $400. I am proud of him and hope that he can continue this and reach 10k within the next few months.

It is late, and I recently returned from the bars and now must get up at 8:30 to cram/study for an Econ test and then it's the weekend where I will undoubtedly FT a big tourney or something. Feeling goood.

7 days til Crew weekend in BHAM.

God Bless,

JG

Blah

I have had a very nice relaxing weekend. I just got back from the gym where I played two games of basketball and am extremely worn out. I hadn't played a pick up game since the start of the school year and it probably showed. I didn't really play that bad and didn't have many turnovers but just played below average defense and wasn't really a factor on offense. That being said, it is a really good workout and is much more fun than just running. I am going to try to go to the rec just to play basketball a couple times a week.

This weekend has been a bit of a blur, and if I tried really hard I could probably describe some of the things that we did, but it would be a bit difficult. Thursday night we went out and now have a pretty dece crew to go out with regularly, so it's pretty fun.

Friday night Grant and I weren't doing much so we decided to go to the Slo Pitch where we had a blast. The game was so good*. Grant ended up $4, and I ended up down around $15. But we consumed like 5 pitchers and took jaeger bombs and shots of tequila (yikes), so I would say it was a successful trip. After that we headed downtown to meet up with some people before going to the Royal and then heading home.

*this saying "the game is good" takes on a different meaning at the slo pitch. The games are always what would be considered "good" (aka easy to win in) but when I say good, I mean the people in the game are entertaining. We had Doug, Louie, Sang (this new Vietnamese guy who ironically sings), and others.

Saturday was really lazy. I played a couple MTT's with no cashes then Grant and I went to the SPU/Western basketball game which we lost by 2 which sucked. After that we came back and there wasn't much going on, so I decided to fire up some tables. I finally downloaded a patch for PokerAce HUD which is my heads up display which shows poker tracker stats on the screen. It caused everything to run extremely slow which immediately put me on tilt. That combined with the fact that I got insta-stuck did not make for a good combination. I ended up quitting about 45 minutes into the sesh because I was obv not playing my A game. More like my D- game.

Since Ultimate Bet merged with Absolute to create the Cereus poker network or whatever they call it (whenever I think of that, I think of Heath Ledger as the Joker saying, "Why so serious?"), I have had a ton of trouble data mining through PT and even more time with PokerAce. They have had to make like 4 new patches that I have had to look up and download by myself in order to get it to function properly. My next cashout, I will be purchasing Hold 'em Manager which simplifies things and makes it a lot better.

Yesterday (Sunday) I woke up at 8am to go to church with Heather. She hadn't been to church in a long long time, and I had been meaning to take her for a while but it just has never really worked out. After that I went and got in a good workout and was back in time for the NFC Championship. It was not a normal weekend day.

I then watched the Cardinals hold on to beat the Eagles to advance to the Super Bowl which makes me somewhat bitter but w/e, it makes a good story blah blah blah. Grant and I then headed down to Bob's to watch the AFC Championship. We ordered a couple pitchers, but by the end of the first, I was lying down in the booth and was taking a brief nap lol. We ended up just staying in and watching What Happens in Vegas last night which gave me the itch to go back very very soon.

Congrats to Derek who has been on an absolute tear, crushing the 100NL full-ring games on UB. He finally had a couple losing days but was able to cash out a good amount and will probably start crushing as soon as he starts up again.

Well I am going to go shower then play in the 6k bounty then maybe the 6:20 tourney knowing that 24 is at 9pm and that if I am playing during 24 it means good things financially.

In 2 weekends, the Crew will once again grace the city of Bellingham with its presence in what will no doubt be an epic weekend. That is all I am going to say about that for now.

I have a basic stats quiz tomorrow that I need to study for also so add that to the evening agenda.

God Bless,

JG

2nd in mini UBOC # 6 (aka PLO8)

I got home today around 5:20 and decided to fire up some tables. At 5:32, I thought there might be a UBOC tourney going on, so I go into the tourney lobby and see that there is a PLO8 Doublestack Mini UBOC tourney accepting late registration. I mulled it over in my head and decided to sign up for the fun of it. 7 hours later, I was HU with nearly a 2:1 chiplead.

I didn't really know how to play that much and was actually watching CR videos on break. Luckily for me, Buff Man logged on and started railing, so we chatted the whole time and he gave some pretty good advice in a lot of tricky spots. Whereas the deck saved me numerous times, I probably wouldn't have taken 2nd without his help.

When we got HU, the 2nd or 3rd hand, I got AI against him with 2nd pair, a wrap, and a low draw against his TP/FD and missed everything. Buff Man looked it up, and I was a 42% to scoop vs. his like 20ish% and was 76% to win the low. Oh well, I can't complain too much as I got smacked in the face several times with the deck on numerous occasions.

I earned $960ish for my efforts which is pretty cool. Nothing too life-changing, but it will surely help with finances. I also made like $200 playing 100NL so it was a pretty good day.

I am planning on withdrawing like $1400 and either playing underrolled $100NL or grind out the 50NL for a little while. I am feeling good, and this was one of the funnest tournaments I can ever remember playing. I think I am def -EV vs. the field in that game, but I learned a lot and perhaps will dabble in some PLO or PLO8 in the future.

That being said, it's 2am and I just took a shot of NyQuil and will be passing out in T-minus 5 minutes.

God Bless,

JG

Quick Update

I'm going to try to make this quick as we have company coming over soon and need to clean, but since I last posted, I started classes and am quickly understanding that this is going to be a very tough quarter. I may not be able to get away with the typical Joel Graves don't do anything for 3 weeks until first round of midterms and then peak during dead week, lol.

This weekend has been a blast. On Thursday, we had a bunch of people over and watched Florida beat Oklahoma. I obv got the best of it against Derek and Grant with them giving me OK +6, but I couldn't hold and lost $35. After that, we took a couple of our recently-turned-21 friends out to the bars. After having about 5 or 6 beers during the game, we went to Jalapenos and ordered the obligatory Big Mama which is a margarita with like 5-6 shots of tequila in it. After this, I bought one of my friends a jaeger bomb which 3 of us consumed and then we headed out. We did some bar hopping, going to the Up and Up, the Royal (sketchy) and then to Uisce (pronounced ishka's). Grant got extremely drunk which was entertaining watching him at the Up just handing out pitchers of beer hehe.

Anyways, the next day, Bubs graced the city of Bellingham with his presence which was awesome. We started off playing some Chinese with Grant and Bubs which went pretty well for me and then we headed out to the Pitch. I started off playing pretty good, and Bubs hit quad 8's for $260 (split 3 ways hehe) but alcohol eventually got the best of me, and I specifically remember playing 80% of the hands for my last two rounds and ended up down $30 total. Oh, Derek also pulled off a clever slow roll that night and we headed back out to the Up and Up after the pitch. Probably the highlight of the night was when Derek bought a pepperoni pizza for us, and we were sitting there about to eat it. Bubs' wife Carla brought her friend Ellie there, and, for some reason, Derek assumed this girl was a vegetarian and offered a bet that she would not eat the pizza. He then offered it to her, and she politely refused saying she was, in fact, a vegetarian.

Derek and I apparently walked home together, and Derek peed on the side of the road before giving away our full pepperoni pizza. When we got back, I decided to play some drunken HU and continued with my 2nd straight winning drunk session (not good!). Derek then sat on me and I heard a crack on my computer chair and looked down to see a wheel had broken off. Derek, I love you, but you are nutzzz when you are drunk!

Yesterday (Saturday), I woke up and fired up some tables. I busted in the 2nd mini UBOC tourney running KK into AA early, and nothing else went very well. I didn't really feel comfortable playing tournies, and have found the transition from 6-max cash games to 9-max tournies a little bit difficult. I can't help but think that, I can run at 7-8 bb/100 at 100NL which is a much larger winrate than MTT's. But it is just too tempting to look at the FT payouts and imagine myself winning one. Oh well.

I decided to play in the $50 UBOC #3 HU tourney just for fun knowing that my HU game was not very good. I got a bye on the first round and then got got pitted against a pretty good, aggresive player named pkrpimp I think. It was a very good match, and I ended up coolering him pretty bad with 55 against his 94cc on a Q53ccc3x2x.

The next match was against a SLAP player which was a pretty good draw. He all of a sudden started 3-betting like 50% of the time from the BB, and I folded like the first 8 times that he did it. I then decided to 4-bet 65dd from the button, and, to my surprise, he flat called. The flop came a gross Jc Ts 4c. He checked, and, with 4500 behind and 4600 in the pot, I decided to check and hope for a fun card to come off. The turn was the Qs, and he checked again. I opted to try and rep AK and bet 1600. He then started typing and folded what he said was AJ. I went on to bust him when we got AIPF in a 5-bet pot with AQs vs. his AT.

In the 4th round, we started with 16k in chips at 40/80. I made a couple moves early and was seemingly instantly down to 12k. I then raised the button with AsKc, and he potted, and I 4-bet and he called then potted a Ts 4s 3s flop. I obv knew we were getting it in, and I shipped and he called with KTdd and I bricked.

I did in fact cash for $130 which was okay, as I never really expected to do well. I've said it a lot, but my HU game really isn't that good. I feel like it would be pretty easy to game select at lower stakes and consistently profit, but I just haven't done it too much. Maybe this tourney will inspire me to get better.

Anyways, after all that Grant, Heather, my friend Rachel, and I watched the Office and it was fun to take a night "off".

Today I struggled out of bed at 11:20 and signed up for the UBOC #4 $50 DS tourney. I survived until 150/300 (25) before re-shipping TT for 3300 and running into JJ.

While playing in that, I finally got my PokerAce HUD to work and was excited, so I fired up a few 50NL tables. The play was atrocious and boring, so I decided to exit those and get in 3 more 100NL tables. I ran very well and ended up $380 through ~600 hands. Pretty much all of the hands were pretty standard, but I want to touch on a couple:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3701571 - I usually 3-bet in this spot but opted to just flat because I felt like under-repping my hand. On the flop, I typically prefer just folding to the pot bet as I find that these types of players like to mash the pot button 3 times with a large part of their range. Anyways, I just decided to call to see what happens, and when he pots the turn, I was somewhat confused. This was at a turbo table, so I had to make up my mind fast. I decided to turn my hand into a bluff knowing that it would be v tough for him to call with an overpair, and I wasn't sure he would pot AJ here. Worked out though.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3701606 - This one was weird. My flop and turn bets are fine, and when he min-raises I think he has QT or 44 a large percentage of the time. I don't really know why I called the turn if I was going to fold to his smallish river bet, but his line is so strong that I just felt like maybe we had the same hand, but idk. I just don't like it.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3701625 - this hand played itself but was fun.

Overall it was a pretty good sesh. Idk what I'm gonna do for the rest of the day. I might play the 4pm, 5pm, 6:20, but might just take it easy and play cash later. I have no desire to do homework right now, so I will continue to put that off.

24 premiere is tonight which has me excited.

This blog turned out longer than anticipated.

God Bless,

JG