Ramble's Ramblings

Only 2 days into November and I've already played more games then I did in all of October. Also got some study in today - still looking at various ranges and tendencies of the good regs and how I can benefit from this knowledge. Nothing earth shattering so far, just minor edges.

Seeing 3-4 regs at each table and far too often 2-3 are left at the bubble - making it a pretty tough battle. I can't complain though - ROI sitting at +25.7% and bankroll is building nicely. ♦

I was going to join the Get Rich or Die Tryin' Bankroll Challenge - but the bronze accounts are excluded from winning anything so I decided it's not worth the distraction.

Had an interesting session this evening. I felt like I was playing very very solid for most of it - some of my best "A" game - just really zoned in. At the other end - I had about 4 hands that were absolute "C" game garbage - not big chip losses, but just silly plays. My bubbles were close calls upon review... so not too disappointed. ROI sitting at 30.8% so far this month... ♦ ♦ ♦

I thought this hand was interesting:
Poker Stars, $6.45 Buy-in (25/50 blinds) No Limit Hold'em Tournament, 9 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

SB: 1,430 (28.6 bb)
Hero (BB): 1,420 (28.4 bb)
UTG+1: 1,270 (25.4 bb)
UTG+2: 990 (19.8 bb)
MP1: 1,465 (29.3 bb)
MP2: 2,630 (52.6 bb)
MP3: 2,315 (46.3 bb)
CO: 1,215 (24.3 bb)
BTN: 765 (15.3 bb)

Preflop: Hero is BB with 8 2
5 folds, CO calls 50, BTN calls 50, SB folds, Hero checks

Flop: (175) 5 2 A (3 players)
Hero checks, CO checks, BTN checks

Turn: (175) 2 (3 players)
What line do you take here and why?

River: (425) 8 (2 players)
Bearing in mind this is a KO tourney (he has 590 left) - how much do you bet here? Is anyone not betting out here?

Results:

I lead out on turn as you did. What line would you take being villain in this spot?

River I think I shove here. I feel if he's calling 300 he's probably calling the lot?

Is he a reg? How does he see you? All important to consider.

I'd have played the same.

River: we want to get calls from weak aces (just not A2 ♦) As much as we'd like to shove the river, I think junky aces will be a big enough part of his range to try and capture them with our value bet. They will fold if we shove the river. If he's hit a flush, there's a good chance he'll shove back anyway.

After seeing the result: Wow! You'd think he'd shove back, but then you'd probably think he'd do a lot of things in his life differently ♦

Yes, on the river I was hoping he had an ace or made the flush. I thought about shovin but thought most hands but the flush (and even some very small flushes) might fold to an over bet. I thought about betting smaller like 200 to try to induce shove, but thought I'd be losing value. I figured the 300 bet would still get a call and hoped being half his stack he would just shove the rest in for me...

Thanks guys.

Hey everyone, it's my Birthday! This blog is one year old today!

Wish me a Happy Birthday and have a slice of cake!

Happy birthday Ramble!
Very cool occasion btw

Do you serve some beer for this event? If so 0.5l bottle for me please !

Originally posted by IvicaIliev77
Do you serve some beer for this event? If so 0.5l bottle for me please !

I'll have two of those tyvm

Happy birthday, have a nice one!

Happy Birthday!

Mine is in 3 days:)

Happy bday fellow Novemberist.

Happy Birthday Jim

21 this time right? ♦

Originally posted by Ramble
Hey everyone, it's my Birthday! This blog is one year old today!

Wish me a Happy Birthday and have a slice of cake!

Haha! Re-reading my post I see that I was completely not clear... It's not my birthday, it's my blog's birthday! ...and yes... some of my home-brewed beer for everyone!!!

Originally posted by Ramble

Originally posted by Ramble
Hey everyone, it's my Birthday! This blog is one year old today!

Wish me a Happy Birthday and have a slice of cake!

Haha! Re-reading my post I see that I was completely not clear... It's not my birthday, it's my blog's birthday! ...and yes... some of my home-brewed beer for everyone!!!

ROFL ♦ And yes please to the beer.

Oh and Many Happy Returns, Jim's Blog. May it be the first of many. ♠_thumbsup:

Originally posted by Ramble

Originally posted by Ramble
Hey everyone, it's my Birthday! This blog is one year old today!

Wish me a Happy Birthday and have a slice of cake!

Haha! Re-reading my post I see that I was completely not clear... It's not my birthday, it's my blog's birthday! ...and yes... some of my home-brewed beer for everyone!!!

rofl!!!!! well played sir! Happy Birthday Blog!!!!

Yes I was referring to the blog

:facepalm:

gg wp ♠_evil:

Only 5 days into the month at hit 100 games already - great feeling!

Games Played: 100
ROI: 24.0%
ITM: 43% (56% adjusted for bounties)

Despite the great ROI so far, I do feel that it should have been a bit higher as I did make a some mistakes 4-handed and ITM. I also feel that variance had the best of me on the bubble... but no big deal.

Having said that I had a pretty good distribution of cards this week - lots of pocket pairs and high Ax hands. For example, I had pocket Aces 34 times out of 5210 hands!!! (If I did the math right that's 10 hands more than expected.)

A couple of interesting things about the session today - I tried adding a couple more tables (so from 8 to 10) and it was pretty smooth, so will be continuing to 10-table. The other thing is that I'm within a buy-in of a major bankroll milestone. Being that close is kind of making me wish I joined the bankroll challenge, but I'm happy just celebrating here.

Have a great day guys!

Session
Small session today that was just south of break-even. Lots of bad beats but again dealt a crazy amount of pocket Aces... My overall play today was just ok, my concentration was good but I think I made a couple of looser shoves and calls than I should have.

10-Tabling
I'm happy with the 10-tabling though, really not finding it any more difficult than 8-tabling which is a bit surprising to me. If it continues to feel this way for a few more days, I may look at trying 12-tables. For that though, I think I might load groups of 4-tables about 10 minutes apart just so I don't have a lot of ITM play going on all at once. (like my optimism? ♦ )

ICMizer 2.0 Beta
It looks like ICMizer 2.0 is going to be released around mid-December. Q is promising that it is going to be quite the impressive update with some cool new features although he is being quite tight-lipped about what those features are for now. He has indicated that we can expect some teasers later this month.

He also offered for me to be a beta-tester for it and I am quite excited for that opportunity.

Bankroll Milestone

Originally posted by Ramble
The other thing is that I'm within a buy-in of a major bankroll milestone.

I'm going to remember never to make a comment like that again! As soon as I did I started a downswing and that milestone kept slipping further and further away. Luckily, I managed to crawl my way back a bit. Just enough that when I earned my VIP Stellar Reward tonight it put me a buy-in over the milestone!

12-Tabling
I started adding 2 more tables as of last night and it doesn't seem to be as difficult as I thought it would be (especially given that I added 2 tables just a few days ago - i.e. from 8-tables to 12 in just 4 or 5 days)... hmmm now that I write that I wonder if adding the tables had to do with my downswing... ♠_rolleyes: ... I don't think too much, but I better do a more in-depth session review tomorrow to see if I'm missing spots...

Originally posted by Ramble
... hmmm now that I write that I wonder if adding the tables had to do with my downswing... ♠_rolleyes: ... I don't think too much, but I better do a more in-depth session review tomorrow to see if I'm missing spots...

Took today off poker to help the in-laws with some work in the woods. Couldn't sleep tonight so decided to do some review. Sure enough I found some spots where I was making poor all-in decisions (mostly calling). For the most part they were not bad calls versus unknowns but a lot of these were against regs that I had good sample on. These should have been easily identifiable as bad calls if I looked at villains stats and the table dynamics - there was just no way I was beating villains range.

Lesson learned - when adding table-count, don't sacrifice good stats based information. I'm going to limit myself to 10-tables for now until I am confident I am making good decisions based on all the info available to me.