Ben's Poker

So I had to cash out the majority of my roll to buy a new TV (65" 1080p sweetness) and b/c I had a big live game loss right before the holidays and wanted to get my family some nice shit..

While I was broke online I decided I would just treat my online roll like a mutual fund, IE rather than depositing 200 or so into my savings account each month I would just put it onto Stars via eCheck and play low limits extremely rolled.

So I've just been happily playing NL10 FR. It was working out well for the first 15k hands but this graph shows what's happened the last few days. It seems like I just can't win a big hand. Sickening. Feels kind of nice to be super rolled though, I was at $570 before this downswing hit and I'm still super rolled. Going to follow a 40-50 BI rule, so I'll be at NL10 for a month or two more until I'm ~1k and move to NL25.

But yeah, sick life graph. Been having to fold ALOT in big hands when flush draws hit / worst turn-river cards possible come and opponents go nuts.



I have been going through all of my big losers and I really don't think I'm playing all that badly, I'm just not winning. There are some leaks I found and hopefully will have corrected for the next session I play, though.

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I thought y'all might enjoy this text I just got from my buddy:

"I am incensed right now. I clicked 'load all' on the official BOOB thread on LP.net while playing 3 tables. I got AA otb on one table and flopped a set in a RR pot against a deep donk on another. I timed out on BOTH of them."

Owned..

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So this is going to go down as one of the worst Christmas Days for me.

First, my girlfriend leaves town for like a week today.

Then, I have to go into work at 10am, and I woke up at 9:55am so I was late.

Got off work early-ish at 4pm and went home and wanted to get my BR above 4k today (I was at 3920).

Run AKs into AA, Top boat into quads, Set into Set, Flush into Flush, get outraced AA v 89s AIPF, and more

And all of this at HU so WTF is that Stars?

Here's my graph of HU over the last week or two on this computer.



Had to truncate myself before I went on monkey tilt. Moved up to 200NL which was a bad idea and promptly dropped 300. It was just ugly.

Hah oh well. Christmas this year was overall really good (xmas eve and etc) but today is just teh suck.

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So last week I got pulled over for having a LICENSE PLATE LIGHT OUT. Turns out my license was indeed suspended due to me skipping out on a previous court date, also my insurance card expired a week prior.

So I got owned by the police and left 4 miles from home at 1am (I was trying to get to in n out before they closed) with no car and no license and a huge ticket.

So I had to cash out from Stars to cover some of these ridiculous expenses..

Anyways I wanted to put 100$ back on so I bought a Visa Gift Card and they DONT WORK ANYMORE!

Sitting at home really bored I just wanted to play, loaded up Bodog of all things since I had like 10$ on there, played a 4,500$ guaranteed and demolished it. Just dominated throughout the whole thing and finished first for
$1125

And then this morning I got on and the 1/2 tables were full but tehre were 3 fish sitting at the 2/4 with ~100-180 each, so I sat down with 200 and ran it up to $850 before I left for work!

Hah, now I just have to figure out how to get this BR onto stars so I can start rolling .50/1

Anybody know of a way to do this? I don't have any way to really deposit on Stars, and I don't wanna pay the fees for ePassporte.

Also, anybody ever cashed out from bodog? I used to just have it put right into my account but they only have checks now and I've heard bad things.

But still, it was a good day or two of luckboxing

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First of all, thanks for all the GL's from the last post. Nice to know

Anyways, a buddy owed me 50$ and payed me back through PS so I hit 300 and decided to try 25NL today. Results were pretty good

Much better to be playing with deeper [effective] stacks (sometimes). There's still the retards with 5$ stacks, but much less than in 10NL, where 3$ seemed to be the avg. chipstack.

Haven't had time to wade through for individual hands, but here's the stats so far:



Will be here for a while, not planning to move up to 50NL until 1k BR.

PS if you notice anything about my stats that you think I could improve upon, let me know.

Cheers!

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Well I hadn't played online poker for a while, with a great live scene going and good profits there I didn't have time for online.

However, now most of the regulars in the home games have turned 21 and are crushing the local casinos, so home games are sparse.

So a week or two ago I bought a 100$ visa and put it on stars.. Decided I'd try out this "bankroll management" concept. 9tabled .02/.05 up to 150$ and then started on .05/.10.. I've just been decimating these stakes. I had a bit of trouble adjusting to the play to start but I pretty much just have to play ABC poker and exploit their loose/passive styles ( raise 6-7x BB on average, 3bet with AT+ and 77+, outplay on flop ); Been playing really really LAG and doing well.

Account is up to 230$ now after a few suckouts but generally a smooth profit margin. Probably going to hit 300$ by next week; Then I'm going to move up to .10/.25;

I'm planning to play .10/.25 up to 1k then follow 20bi rule on up through!

I used to be very bored with the micro stakes online since I play 2/4 live usually and the quality of play is night and day between the two, but I've really been enjoying playing online, it's almost RELAXING playing these small stakes.

And believe it or not, I think it's improved my live game a little, opening up my 3bet range has helped tremendously.

Cheerse

2 votes

Comments (8)

So I decided to cash out from bodog and leave only about 50$ to play around with on 10$NL (the lowest stakes there).

I'll open this invitation right now; if anyone can help me put money on stars, i'd paypal you the money + extra.

I've been playing live quite a bit and doing well.

I got into a fight with the girlfriend friday night so I spent most of the weekend playing poker.

I went to the 100$ WSOP satellite on saturday morning but was EXTREMELY tired, as I'd been up with the girlfriend until 5:30am and I had to leave my house at 9am to make the tourney.

So I got by some donk who called my 5x BB raise with 47. I don't wanna talk about it. I was a little mad at that hand, esp. because it was 100$ buyin I expected better play.


After that debacle, I went over to a buddies house and played some .50/1$. I was playing very good poker there, I felt like all of my reads were correct, and I acted on them and came up from 60$ to cash wtih 280$ after only a few hours, putting me up 120$ for the day despite the 100$ spew.

The next day I played a 25$ tournament at noon where I got absolutely cold-decked and just lost.

However, after the tourney I made 80$ playing the .25/.50 until the next tournament at 5pm, which was a 50$ buyin.

I also tanked that one (and I think I'm a tournament player, wtf ).

However, afterwards I played hte .50/1$ for a while, playing fairly solid and trying out some new tweaks to my game. I ended that day about 100$ up as well.

The next night (monday) I played some more .50/1$ (we have many cash games going on all the time over here, real good poker scene). I ended that night up only 50$, making some bad plays towards the night's end.

Last night I had about the luckiest live session of my life. Playing more .50/1$, I was dealt pocket aces FIVE (5) times over a 4 hour session! That's amazing, as I haven't seen aces in about a month!

Unfortunately my hands were extremely dry besides that. I ended the session up to 310$ from 70$ buyin, but it's hard to lsoe money when you're dealt aces 5 times

Overall I've been playing very very well live; I think I've only had 2 losing sessions so far this year, and I'm easily up 2,000$ since the start of the year just from live games.

Tomorrow I'm going to play a tourney during the day, and some .50/1 into the night; however, I've made nice with the girlfriend so we're going to go see 23 later on. I'll end up missing the later tournaments (theres a 50$ and a 40$ that I'm missing! ahh in the naaaame of loveeeeee).

Cheers!!

1 votes

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So Monday night, I was texted about another .50/1$ cash game, and went over.

It was a full 9-person game as usual;
I bought in with only 60$, as I had to loan a friend 60$. I lost a few hands to some bad plays and some bad luck; but made a few good laydowns. I busted down to 10$, rebought with anothe 60$ from a buddy, and built that up to about 180$ before the following:

I was in MP, an opponent in EP bumped to 5$ to go, I re-raised to 15$ with . This opponent had been raising to 5$ very often and I figured I was the favorite. The button ended up calling the 15$, as did the opponent in EP.

The Flop came:



I had flopped the nuts!

The opponent in EP thought about it for a while, and then pushed for 84$!

This is where I fucked up. I called his all-in almost instantly. I completely discounted the person on the button, assuming he'd get out of the way with two callers.

He looks at me and flips over .. He thought about it for a good 5 minutes and folded, deciding that I either hit a stronger set or AQ.

The player in EP was trying to steal with , and no help came for him, so I took down the pot, but I was upset with myself!

If I hadn't gotten excited; completely disregarded the button and insta-called, I would have gotten at LEAST another 84$ more from the button. I put him on a weak hand because he had thought for a long time about calling the initial raise, and was just coming off of a big hand. He usually played loose for a while after big hand victories, I put him on a hand like 66, 78s, or 89s. He had about 200$ behind him, I could very easily have double up from him and taken down a 400$+ pot.

STUPID STUPID STUPID!

But, you learn something new every day. On the plus side, I've picked up some good reads on alot of the regulars, and was able to put that to good use by making some good folds nad good bluffs. I cashed with a little more than 300$, so it was still a good amount of profit, althought I was upset with myself on my blunders.

******************************************

Online, I decided to enter a 5,000$ guaranteed, and got 7th out of 500 or so players, netting me 180$ (woohoo); I would have liked to win it, but my A9 paired on the flop and ran into AK.

Then I played a 6,000$ guaranteed rebuy right afterwards, and rode that to I think 16th or so w/o rebuying or adding on, for about 76$ or so.

So my bodog account grew up pretty well and now I can sit and play 10$ max tourneys, and a few 10$ 5k guaranteeds without any worries, and hopefully grow that pretty well.

Cheers!

1 votes

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First off thanks for the bankroll management advice on my last post. I'm aware that it's atrocious but until recently I really used online poker more as a "hey, let's put 100$ on and have something to do when I get bored," rather than "lets make money." I'm well aware of the concept of money management as I have been demo-trading forex for about 6 months and money management is HUGE in that market.

[ALL SUITS // HANDS APPROXIMATE]

Anyways, Saturday afternoon after lunch with my girlfriend my buddy called me up for a cash game. It was with these guys from Vegas that I have only played with once before. I have not had success with them before. They are somewhat loose, and love to reraise. We were playing .50/1$, but if you raised anything less than 6$ odds were someone would bump it up 10$ to try and steal. We had a full 9-person table with 2 waiting, and I just could NOT hit a card to save my life. I saw pocket 3's a bunch, and knocked out a shorter stack when I was holding(**all suits approximate**) the flop came . He was holding , but I sucked out with a on the turn.

From that point on I just proceeded to bleed chips continously. There was an Arab guy sitting to my left that just called EVERYTHING that I was betting at him, and drew out on me all the time. I lost a big hand when my hit a flop, turned the , but the other player had . Not a whole lot I could do in that situation, I bet 15$ on the turn and he reraised all-in for 25$ more into a 75$ pot (I had led off with a bet on the flop, there was a raise to 5 or 6$ pre-flop which I called in SB after 4 or 5 people called as well).

Finally my pocket 9's (the best hand I'd seen all night) busted to AK for my last 30$. UTG had raised to 6$ and 3 other people had called, I pushed on the button and AKs in the SB pushed on top of me and everyone else folded.

..

So I ended that game down 200$. Not terrible but a definite dent.

..

Later that night at a party I was talking to a few friends and we decided to get a small house game going the next afternoon. I brought 20$. So we played a 7-way 10$ tournament, which I won, but I ended up giving 2nd place 30$ of the pot since he was poor and it was a friendly game (and I knew I would crush him headsup).

Then we played a 5$ tournament on a game we made up called blackjack hold'em. Basically (as you can guess) it's texas hold'em with one of your hole cards flipped up on the deal. It's a very fun game when it's at least 4way, but smaller than that it's just kind of dumb (headsup when your opponent has top pair showing . I also won this.

So I had turned that 20$ into 80$, and 3 of us took off to play a .50/1$ game with another group of players that we have played with the last few weeks or so. These players I have been very successful against. I've played with them about 4 or 5 times and I'm probably up about 800$-1k$.

The game was 9-handed, with one or two people waiting at a time usually.

I bought in for 80$, lost about 20$ when someoen sucked out on me with an ace on the river (he was chasing flush draw) and started out doubling up when I had and the flop came ; one of the guys who had bought in for $160 (everyone else had bought in for 80-100) was trying to bully me PF and bet the flop hard for about 25$, I pushed on him and he called me with KJ, I turned a and he was drawing dead.

I was playing very good poker, making good laydowns, bluffing at appropriate times, valuebetting, and actually HITTING CARDS. I felted two people when there was a live straddle to 2$, 4 called and I raised to 7$ with on the button. FIVE people called to see the flop, which came ; SB bet 12$, folded around to shortstack in MP, who pushed in for 10$ more; and I raised to 45$ more, putting the SB all-in. SB was holding KJ, MP was holding KT; Their gutshots didn't hit and I took down the huge pot.

After about 4 hours, I was up nearly 300$

So in all, it was a good weekend, turning 20$ to 300+ on sunday was a good feeling after blowing 200$ on saturday.

Im only working until 9pm weekdays now, so I will be able to play much more live games. We've got a great scene going on here, there is a good full cash game every night of the week pretty much, with tournaments every wednesday, staurday, sunday, and scattered throughout with turnouts of anywehre from 8 to 40+.

I'm facing online as just a challenge to grow the account now, I was only able to play for about an hour online this weekend, but grew the acc up to 45$, so I'm much safer now that I'm not risking 100% of my BR on the table. Not that having 45$ is that much better, but it's an improvement.

It's marvelous how much time I have to type while running HDD diags at work

Cheers!

1 votes

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I've decided to start one of these blogs to log my poker playing, and try and keep myself on track..

A little bit of history:
I have played on bodog about the last 6 months, and have come out just about even. I would always build my stack up, gamble at higher limits, and go broke down to 10$ and then start again.

Last weekend I blew my whole stack on the high limit table when I hit a flush with AKs, only to have a set turn into a boat on the river to bust me. So I deposited 20$, quickly blew that to 6$ on SnGs, and decided I might need some discipline.

I grew that 6$ to 16$ last night and decided to enter in the nightly 500$ freeroll, the 3$ NL tourney, and the 12$ 2k$ guaranteed.

I placed about 80th out of 2000 on the freeroll, and 16th out of 90-something in the 3$, as well as 16th out of ~200 on the 2kguaranteed. The only cash was the 2k guaranteed, but it was 25$ so I guess i profited.

I'm going to keep grinding out profits in the .05/.10 blinds, but I definitely have the most fun playing MTT's. Seeing as I went very deep in all 3 tourneys last night, I'd rather put 100$ in and useit to just play MTT's (buyin under 30$) and see how that goes.. We'll have eto see how big my check from work is tonight.

Tonight will be the obligatory night spent at my gf's house, so no poker will be played, although I will be playing in a live game tomorrow afternoon.

I am also entering a World Series Satellite run by a guy that hosts monthly 40$ tournaments that I am a regular at. he's having 3 tournaments with a 100$ buyin, and we are expecting about 40 people for each one. If you get top 5 in any of the 3 preliminary tournaments, you are placed in the final tournament. The final 15 players will play in the final tournament, and 1st place will get 10k, second place 1k, and i think 3rd gets 200 or something; whatever it works out to be. I'm really excited because I think I have a good shot at this and 10k would be REALLLY nice.

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