Cash is King [EPT Barcelona update]

Hey a fellow Canuck! I'm from the east coast.

I will definitely be following your blog - good luck in your quest!

It has been a slow week by my standards.. Only played online on 4 days, therefore I am falling behind on my targets for January. Aiming for 10,000 VPPs on Stars and $1500 in rake on FTP and I only have 2500VPPs atm and just around $400 raked in on FTP.

Getting pretty lucky all week tho.. running about $1750 above EV!

My FTP results this week... LUCKBOXING

Here is Stars results.. a bit better but still not great

Took a shot at the Irish Open Satellite on iPoker today.. didn't really get far, but I plan on playing it every Sunday. I feel like it is a pretty soft tourney so hopefully I can bing it once before April.

Also played two sessions of $2/5 live at Fallsview casino, for a total of about 9 hours. End result was -$1k as I got onto the wrong end of a couple of coolers and didn't get into very many good spots. I have some interesting hands from my session that I will post another time.

On the bright side I got to go snowboarding for the first time this year and it was great fun. I am still a beginner but I really enjoy it and I already have my next trip planned for later this month. In the mean time I plan on putting some good volume online next week and posting here more often.

Cheers!

Forgot to add my partypoker results... on ipoker I only have 20 hands so I won't even bother pasting it..

Partypoker:

Solid week at the cash tables. Took Monday and Tuesday off for a short vacation with my gf but I have been playing quite a bit since Wednesday afternoon.

Been trying to play some of the TCOOPs as I find those quite fun and they don't take up a lot of attention so I can still grind out the cash games... Unfortunately I am at 0/11 in terms of cashes.. Brutal

Busted the $215 today 50 or so spots from the money... after a spewy guy called my shove super light and got there.. oh well.. at least I won my seat for the $700 ME through the VIP bash on Saturday so winning that would be redemption for all my bustouts.

At the cash tables I had a crazy session with this kid at $2.50/5.00 CAP on FTP. He agreed to 2 table me and got absolutely destroyed busting his entire $3k roll. Not all to me unfortunately as he played some other tables too, but I did take the lion share. That is considering I didn't even run hot in all in pots. If you look at the chart below at $2.50/5.00 I won $2170.80 with EV of $2787.27.. most of it came from him... good times!

Anyways hope to grow some balls and play some more $5/10 next week. Also hope to finally get a TCOOP cash!

Cheers

You Sir are a SICKO!

Keep up the crushing

When my session looks like this I probably need to do some reflection...

Long post coming up!

A reflection on a crazy day.. I played a bunch of random games from $1/2 to $3/6 for about 4 hours and I was down about $700-800 nothing terrible..

What would follow would be my first big match at $5/10 HU involving the biggest pots I have won/lost to date with the net result obviously not in my favour as stated in the post above.
This guy sat me at $5/10 HU on Stars with about a $900 stack. He seemed pretty decent at first, playing solid, maybe even a little nitty, nothing crazy.. He got down to $500 and then back up to $1000 and then the first crazy hand happened. At that point we were getting looser a little more 3betting and some 4betting going on:

Poker Stars, $5/$10 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 2 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

Hero (BB): $1,054.75 (105.5 bb)
SB: $1,299.75 (130 bb)

Preflop: Hero is BB with T J
SB raises to $20, Hero raises to $75, SB raises to $220, Hero calls $145

Flop: ($440) K 4 T (2 players)
Hero checks, SB bets $219.75, Hero calls $219.75

Turn: ($879.50) K (2 players)
Hero checks, SB checks

River: ($879.50) 8 (2 players)
Hero bets $615 and is all-in, SB calls $615

Results:

Definitely a poorly played hand by me.. No need to call the 4bet in the first place its just JTs but it is too pretty to fold so I decided to see a flop (MISTAKE!!). When he checks back turn, he almost never has a K, I just don't see him giving a free card there, I also don't think he has a flush draw.

On the river I made a mistake shoving. At the time I was just thinking about his range and not so much about what my range looks like. In a nutshell I thought he doesn't have a K, doesn't have a flush, his range is: JJ, QQ, AA or AQ, AJ, AT, QT, JT, or total air he gave up with. I did feel at the time that by shoving I should be able to fold out almost all of those hands and I definitely didn't feel very confident in my ten to check/call the river. A merge play that sort of doesn't look very good upon thinking some more about it. I do have KQ KJs and TT for value that is just about it. I don't really have any flush draws that I check/call flop with since I am OOP in a 4bet pot so I am just check/shoving the flop with a draw so that leaves me with Kx and I have no AK in this spot, as I am always shoving that pre... All in all pretty bad play on the river! Villain actually didn't even think about it for a second when I bet the river, him snap calling definitely says something about his style there as even though AA is a clear call upon going through this entire thought process, it isn't a snap call.

Moving on...

Villain actually got up to close to a $4k stack and I was down quite a bit and feeling pretty discouraged but I felt like I had an edge so I kept playing. At this point when we were 200ish bb deep he was 3betting about 50% and playing pretty wild post flop so I felt like I could win it back if I made some hands. Shortly later this hand happened:

Poker Stars, $5/$10 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 2 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

BB: $3,034.46 (303.4 bb)
Hero (SB): $1,804.75 (180.5 bb)

Preflop: Hero is SB with A T
Hero raises to $20, BB raises to $90, Hero raises to $215, BB calls $125

Flop: ($430) 5 A T (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $245, BB calls $245

Turn: ($920) K (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $625, BB raises to $2,574.46 and is all-in, Hero calls $719.75 and is all-in

River: ($3,609.50) K (2 players, 2 are all-in)

Results:

At that point villain was not folding to any 4bets so I started 4betting a lot wider for value. A standard cooler here with top 2 vs bottom 2, but he shouldn't have seen a flop with that hand in a 4bet pot anyways so I have no sympathy for him. This is the biggest hand I have ever won. He played it bad and got what he deserved. Not to mention that him check/shoving the turn is pretty horrendous given that there are a million hands that crush him there and he can only really get value from AJ or AQ, which I probably fold to his shove anyways.

Shortly after the guy went on complete tilt but got bailed out by the deck:

Poker Stars, $5/$10 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 2 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

BB: $870.71 (87.1 bb)
Hero (SB): $3,962 (396.2 bb)

Preflop: Hero is SB with 7 7
Hero raises to $20, BB raises to $80, Hero raises to $3,962 and is all-in, BB calls $790.71 and is all-in

Flop: ($1,741.42) A Q A (2 players, 2 are all-in)
Turn: ($1,741.42) K (2 players, 2 are all-in)
River: ($1,741.42) 9 (2 players, 2 are all-in)

Results:

Horrid to call off 87bb with A4o but I guess that's why I was playing him... from there he continued to play on tilt, betting pot on almost every flop with his entire range. There are a few other big hands that are not quite as interesting, and then came the biggest hand I have ever lost...

Poker Stars, $5/$10 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 2 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

BB: $2,672.97 (267.3 bb)
Hero (SB): $2,150.24 (215 bb)

Preflop: Hero is SB with K K
Hero raises to $20, BB raises to $80, Hero raises to $240, BB calls $160

Flop: ($480) 2 J 8 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $290, BB calls $290

Turn: ($1,060) T (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $645, BB raises to $2,142.97 and is all-in, Hero calls $975.24 and is all-in

River: ($4,300.48) 7 (2 players, 2 are all-in)

Results:

Preflop is very standard from me.. he has 100% of his 3betting range there when he calls my 4bet so that is pretty much anything and everything. Flop bet is standard, setting up stacks for 3 streets. Turn card kind of sucks but he has made so many moves that I thought about it for close to 30 seconds and I was conflicted between checking and betting but I felt really dirty about checking and giving a hand like 89, 9T a free card so I eventually decided to bet and by making that decision I was committed to calling off if he shoves cause I knew that was very likely to happen. Villain had a 10% turn check/raise but I know that was a lot higher in 3bet/4bet pots as he had done that more than a few times. All in all I got it in pretty good but the deck bailed him out yet again.

Sucks to be over $4000 below EV in this session but I am happy with most of my play with a few obvious exceptions. I would definitely play this guy again. Let me know what you think.

Cheers!

Just reading about these pots kinda made me do this...

Last hand super std, well played. Very nice blog. Keep it up!

Found a cool hand from earlier today to cheer myself up.. rebluff the bluffer! I am not one for too many fancy plays and I have no reads at all on this guy.. literally the third hand I played against him. However, he just never has anything when raising this river so I felt obligated to rebluff there. His range after checking back flop & just flatting turn is super capped and never strong enough to raise this river for value except with exactly 55 and as played it would be very strange if he got to the river with that hand.

Full Tilt, $2.50/$5 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 3 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

Hero (SB): $500 (100 bb)
BB: $500 (100 bb)
BTN: $509.50 (101.9 bb)

Preflop: Hero is SB with K T
BTN raises to $15, Hero calls $12.50, BB folds

Flop: ($35) 2 7 J (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN checks

Turn: ($35) Q (2 players)
Hero bets $25, BTN calls $25

River: ($85) 5 (2 players)
Hero bets $55, BTN raises to $145, Hero raises to $300, BTN folds

Results: $375 pot ($1 rake)
Final Board: 2 7 J Q 5
Hero mucked K T and won $374 ($189 net)
BTN mucked and lost (-$185 net)

@Ramble I think I did exactly that after losing the KK hand

January month end update:

In spite of having my worst session ever in January, I actually had a pretty good month overall. I have been playing a bit of 100 & 200 zoom just to learn and get used to the format. It is the only game where you can jump in right away and get lots of volume in, but it is haaaaard to beat! Anyways here is a table with my cash results for January:

I lost $2225 in January playing MTTs most of it in the TCOOP events and some live event satellites. I only got 2 TCOOP cashes in 18 events played and neither were very significant. I managed to bing a min cash in the main event today and also cashed for $258.75 in the $82 NL event on Friday. MTTs have been burning a hole in my pocket for years, but I love playing them and really hope I can get a big result soon. I guess every poker player says that but.. I am way overdue to hit one

In January I earned 9850 VPPs on Stars and maintained a 30 day average of 600 points on FTP so I am on track for SN and maintaining my Black Card. All in all I am happy with my volume even though I started the month very slow. Raked in a total of about $5000 for the month.

For February I plan on keeping away from the MTTs and play more cash. Get more volume in at $5/10 and some £/€3/6 on ipoker. Will keep updating here regularly.

Cheers!

Good read, fav'd. If you want I'll teach you how to beat zoom

Keep up the good work brother!

Are you in anyway intrested in GTO play? In that case me and 2 friends have a skype group where we try to discuss alot of spots etc. and we are looking for a non swedish player ( the 3 of us are mostly playing on a swedish network). from nl60$ up to nl 600$ .
Hit me up here if you would like to be in

And btw, keep up with the updates! cheers

@woodmo yea I will get in touch soon I just need to free up some time I got a lot of other stuff besides poker to take care of in the next few days.

Nice blog.
I think I will follow along

Originally posted by klimbo
@woodmo yea I will get in touch soon I just need to free up some time I got a lot of other stuff besides poker to take care of in the next few days.

Yea awesome, just say the words

Weekly Review: Feb 2-Feb-08

Hey all! It has been a good first week in February. I took Monday and Wednesday off from poker because those are the two days my gf has off work and I want to start doing that every week from now on (unless she is off on a Sunday.. I can't take that off). Went for a nice relaxing massage on Wednesday, went skating, got some great Thai food, overall enjoyed the time off.

Did well playing cash this week. I had a lot of action at the $3/6 HU cap tables on Stars. That rarely happens but I will take it, it was fun, just didn't run too hot. Had almost no $5/10 action, games on FTP have been kind of dead. I got addicted to the new Knockout promo on FTP so now I am just trying to bust everyone I can, which has lead to some pretty poor play I would say.
Week's results:

I only played two MTTs and they were both EPT Malta satellites. I played the €215 today and tried to satellite into the €530 via the €82 but couldn't do it. Both got massive fields today I think this will be a huge event next month. Gonna keep trying to qualify. Congrats to my countryman Ogi Dimov for winning EPT Deauville (I am originally born in Bulgaria) awesome play, I streamed most of the final table and he sure played quite good from what I saw.

Got an interesting hand from the €215 satellite I played today. It was against Steven Chidwick:
Poker Stars, $200 Buy-in (25/50 blinds) No Limit Hold'em Tournament, 8 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

Hero (SB): 2,930 (58.6 bb)
BB: 3,413 (68.3 bb)
UTG+2: 3,287 (65.7 bb)
MP1: 3,140 (62.8 bb)
MP2: 2,432 (48.6 bb)
MP3: 2,366 (47.3 bb)
CO: 2,725 (54.5 bb)
BTN: 983 (19.7 bb)

Preflop: Hero is SB with 8 Q
6 folds, Hero raises to 125, BB calls 75

Flop: (250) A J 3 (2 players)
Hero bets 150, BB calls 150

Turn: (550) T (2 players)
Hero bets 300, BB calls 300

River: (1,150) 8 (2 players)
Hero bets 675, BB calls 675

Results:

His stats were super tight over a small sample of 54 hands, playing 12/8/ 4.8 3bet/ 0.2 aggression.. I would fold Q8o from the SB vs very aggro opponents but based on his stats I decided to open the hand. Standard flop cbet with my entire range there. Standard turn bet with a double gutter. River really depends on the opponent... I think its a bet if I think my opponent will fold A2-A7, if not then its probably better to give up. Yes he has QT, KT, QJ, KJ that he would pretty much always fold on the river, but I feel like I really need to make ace rag fold otherwise its not profitable to bluff here (don't feel like number crunching right now to find out exactly). I also thought that since it was early stages of the tourney and given that he definitely has an edge on the field he wouldn't make a marginal river call against an unknown. What do you guys think?

Next week, taking Monday and Wednesday off again. It is Winterlicious in Toronto so I am trying out as many cool restaurants as I can find time for. Tomorrow we are hitting Momofuku, Tuesday night America in the Trump tower and Wednesday my gf and I are going snowboarding. Should be a good week!

Btw can't believe Real Madrid got trashed so hard by Athleti on Saturday.. So tilting, they ain't winning La Liga with that kind of play..

Good luck!

Great results man!

Do you mind going more into what kind of MTTs you are playing, how often and your long term goal with them?
I personally don't like playing them as they have massive variance that goes with them. Have to be pretty lucky and run good to bink some sick amount that can put you at ease to grind them.
Very curious how somebody who plays and crush higher limits approach MTTs.

Appreciate it!