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Well, I guess I can mark one for the win column for november. I ran decently at NL100 and horrendously at NL200 including the hand from hell



Plus the equivilent of $1462.50 worth of bonus money brings me to nearly 4k this month. I'm okay with that but looking forward to a "good" month as I feel I'm playing better than 1.58 bb / 100.

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And it's always the big pots.








So frustrated right now. Think I might write a program to determine the odds on running this bad in all-in pots for a week and a half straight. It has to be pretty astronomical.

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I guess I've decided ~18 buyins is big enough of a downswing that I have to return to NL100. I really don't understand how it is possible for all of the setup coolers and sick beats to happen to me night after night. At what point does the probability of me spontaneously combusting overpass it?

Let's take a look at a few hands.

Beats:

- For the biggest one (2.5 buyins) see my last blog.
- 2:1 favorite is no good for me in a big pot.
- Obvious bluff from a spewtard. No problem hitting the 2 outer on the river.
- Yea, same as the above hand basically.
- This guy is one of the lightest 3 betters I've played against. 10s are a monster against his 3 bets (he has an overpair maybe 5% of the time). Owned by 9s anyways.
- INSTANT LIFE TILT every time I see this hand.



Coolers:

- Quite a few KK vs AA. Standard so won't bother posting. I had about 4x as many KK vs AA as the other way around. And the ones that were, were mostly against short stacks.

Here's a couple of hands against an 86% vpip aggro. First a little background information on how he was playing at the table nearly every hand. Here's a hand where I get bluffed out. Keep in mind that in most hands, king high is actually good against him:

With that in mind, the following two coolers take place:

- Set over Set
- Destroyed by 73o At least I cut my losses since I know 3 is in his range (along with complete air obviously).
- The number of times people flopped a set on me is UNREAL. 1 in 8 my ass.

Overpairs suck ass?



Maybe I'm overplaying a lot of those, but most were reraised pots, and I don't mess around when i reraise AA/KK. Usually 4x their raise. Pretty sure I'm not giving them odds to set mine on me, but obvious that doesnt stop them anyways.

Here's the graph. 20 buyins, 10k hands.



Fortunately bonuses still kept me afloat in NL200 and I'm still up $2300 on the month from NL 100 : But I'm really demoralized at running so bad. It's so frustrating losing in 5 days what I spent the previous 2 weeks building up.

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.. by a single hand.

Submitted by : ShaunR

POKERSTARS GAME #13333533087: HOLD'EM NO LIMIT ($1/$2) - 2007/11/19 - 05:38:49 (ET)
Table 'Egeria V' 6-max Seat #4 is the button
Seat 1: boul58 ($114 in chips)
Seat 2: kustoff ($202 in chips)
Seat 4: Hero ($567.45 in chips)
Seat 5: newstyle30 ($529.80 in chips)
Seat 6: herbs23 ($140.50 in chips)
newstyle30: posts small blind $1
herbs23: posts big blind $2

Holecards(Odds)
Dealt to Hero
boul58: folds
kustoff: folds
Hero : raises $64 to $66
Hero said, "whoops"
newstyle30: raises $144 to $210
herbs23: folds
Hero : raises $144 to $354
newstyle30: calls $144

Flop(Odds) (Pot : $710.00)

   
newstyle30: bets $175.80 and is all-in
Hero : calls $175.80

Turn(Odds) (Pot : $1,061.60)

   

River (Pot : $1,061.60)

   

Showdown
newstyle30: shows (a straight, Ten to Ace)
Hero : mucks hand
newstyle30 collected $1059.60 from pot
Hero said, "nice job"

Summary
Total pot $1061.60 | Rake $2
Board  
Seat 1: boul58 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: kustoff folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: Hero (button) mucked
Seat 5: newstyle30 (small blind) showed and won ($1059.60) with a straight, Ten to Ace
Seat 6: herbs23 (big blind) folded before Flop

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Last night I had a loooo...oooong 14k hand multitabling session where murphys law was in full effect. During my downswing of 11 buyins everything that could go wrong, did, and I got destroyed by more 3-4 outers in huge pots than I thought was possible. My all-in luck graph on PokerEV was -5 buyins alone, and that doesn't count the coolers.

Here are a couple hands which sum up the theme of the night.

Not one but TWO people all in with a sick gutshot straightdraw. This is so disgusting... and happened when I was stuck 10 buyins. I was soooooo demoralized after this.

This guy informed me that he knew I had AK, but he called 'cause he hates people who shove AI with AK pre flop

Like anyone else, I have 4-5+ buyin downswings constantly and they generally don't phase me. Unlike many people who will quit after losing X buyins, I never do that. I play longer, I try harder, and I want to get unstuck before I stop playing and usually I do. Generally I feel I actually play better when I'm stuck more than a few buyins. Last night I did manage to go from -11 buyins to -6 buyins until I finally had to go to sleep, heh. My theory is that as long as you have a cool head and know you're playing good poker, it is +ev to fight your way back from a downswing rather than quit playing and become 'not in the mood' to play poker for the next X amount of days.

But wow, it hurts so bad for the beats to come over and over and over and over and undo all the work you've done for the past week.


Down 9 buyins in equity over 14k hands...

Fortunately I bought and was clearing a platinum $650 bonus during this (cleared the entire thing) so my bank roll was actually up slightly at the end of the session.


For those who have been on the grind for a while, how often does this happen to you?
How likely is it to continue for 20k or 30k or 50k hands?

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Last night I continued my stab at NL100 with a bankroll of $2400. Things started out well and then started to go very bad and I'm down 3 or 4 buyins before I know it due to a combination of coolers and not being able to fold AA/KK when I got hit by a set.

This didn't phase me at all. I'm completely used to dropping 3 buyins and then making it back and then some within the same session. In fact that's probably my most common pattern - get down 3 buyins, end up +1 or +2 buyins.

It then continued to get worse and worse until I was down over 7 buyins. However I was positive I was playing well, and that mostly I was getting coolered and outdrawn a lot, so I continued and promised myself that if I dipped below 1500 (still 30 buyins for NL50) that I would drop back down.

Fortunately I was able to turn everything around and end up positive for the night:



I guess when I get stuck, I get more and more determined to keep playing longer and make my money back. I'm not sure whether this is a good trait to have or not, but I'm pretty confident I play just as well, if not better, when I'm losing.

Oh, and that last downward spike at the end of the graph was so disgusting. There was a 95% VPIP aggressive fish at one of the 6max tables. It was him, and before long 5 TAGs trying to get his money. Unfortunately for us he kept getting lucky as hell and ended up leaving the table with 6 buyins! It was so disgusting.

Here's a couple of hands where I tried to get some money from him but couldn't keep the best hand. This is so disgusting because he would basically call ANY bet that isn't all in preflop, and almost always on the flop as well. Plus he bluffed like crazy both pre and post flop.

QQ owned by deuce four offsuit. And he stop value betting, which is simply insulting
JJ good..until the turn.

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At first I wasn't very excited about checking out NL100 because of what I saw from the table selection list on pokerstars. While many of the NL50 tables had VPIP averages in the low 40s, almost all of the NL100 tables had them below 30. Basically I assumed the competition would be much tougher and tighter than the NL50 tables.

I only played about 500 hands, but from what I saw I was wrong. I had a 45% vpip guy who would limp/fold constantly just to my right, plus I had some people just throw their money at me in huge spews.

This hand was in my first orbit of my first NL100 table and I'm really glad my read was right since it gave me a lot of confidence.

No history or anything, villian just decided to go insane.

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Sunday I played for a few hours and finally learned what it feels like to run good after being up 12 buyins in a few hours.




I've looked over this hand a few times, but I just don't see where I can find a fold. Oh well!

Don't worry, I was never planning on folding it.

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Hey all, first blog post here so I guess I could start with some background information about myself.

I've been a long time reader of teamliquid.net, as I used to play starcraft quite a bit - so that's how I found this website a few months ago and have been reading it ever since.

In the past I've also been an avid MMORPG player with my guild, conquest. My nickname EQ / Camelot / WoW was/is Itzlegend in case any of you knew me there. There is another poster on this site (who has a blog) with the name "Itzlegend", but that is not me. I do not have any clue who they are, or why they are using my nick (I am pretty confident that it is unique enough to not be randomly copied at this site). As soon as I asked them about it they disapeared without a trace. Maybe after a while I'll ask a mod to nuke that username and give it to me.

I started playing poker about a year ago, but only very casually. I read books and trained myself on the play money tables. After I made a couple million play money chips on pokerstars I felt I was ready to give it a go with real cash, so I started with a 50$ bankroll.

I played a little bit of ring, then played $5 SNGs for a while. Things went OK and my bank roll lasted quite a while, but eventually I didnt move down when i hit a downswing and ended up busto. Well, almost busto. I had exactly 67 cents left in my account. About 4 months ago or so I happened to open up the pokerstars software and noticed I still had 67 cents. I have since turned that 67 cents into a $1300 bankroll which I'm currently using to play at $50NL. I ran pretty hot at the 2$ tables for a little while, but after that I climbed up each level using proper bankroll management (always 10+ buyins) and promptly dropped back down when needed.

And that brings us to October. So far I feel like I've been playing pretty solid TAG poker, unfortunately I've recently been a consistent loser when the money goes in and have not won nearly my share of equity in all in situations the past 2 weeks.





Despite being down over 7.5 buyins in all in equity, I'm still at 1.7 BB/100 for the month, so I'm pleased with my results.


-Itz

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