i'm on my way to a photography workshop in Amsterdam right now. Not much else to do then to read the papers and blog some. So here goes. it's called Rooms of Redbull and it's located right in the middle of the infamous/famous (depending who you're asking) Red Light District. http://www.roomsofredbull.nl/?page_id=2
Presumably i'm going to be instructed how to create a pinhole camera. That's a camera made out of any kind of box. Cardboard, Lunchbox, it doesn't matter. It's a very basic camera ofcourse, i hope we will produce some results and i can put something up.
here is a new band i found out about a few weeks ago. will put the song below. don't remember if i put it up or not. i think this song is v. cool.
oh and i've been reading a good graphic novel, called Watchmen (like the movie, haven't seen that though, is it any good?). if you are into this stuff. i recommend this one.
This is becoming a really bad weekend, pokerwise that is. Otherwise it's just great. So it's not a complete fail. This morning i was doing fine. Not really killing flops but taking down stacks here and there at a nice speed and then this fish i took a few buyins off a few days ago joined my table. In my opinion he is really really bad. BUT i think i must be honest with myself and admit that today he actually owned me really hard. I think in large part this was due to the fact that we were in reversed roles this time, right away. Last time i got up on him and he started spewing into me really really bad. I made a note that he is an erratic fish. He overbets with total air and sometimes even 3x barrels with overbets and all and like no equity given the board.
So last time my strategy was to make him spew and give him space, especially on dry boards, to spew off his stack to me. i wouldn't raise to protect my hand. even when overcards were rolling off. knowing that with his hand selection and all, it was very likely he was drawing dead. Also i had a little read on his betsizing and i was really in control of that match.
This time it was the other way around. I think the fact that i hardly connected with the boards played a role in it. But it was just impossible for me to win. I spewed off stacks here and there. Got it in with him all wrong. Which i think is partly my fault. His preflop hand selection is just awfull, he calls opens with like 70%, min or a little more 3bets like 37% and opens on the button with maybe 35% and limps a bunch maybe another 35%.
But when he is winning he doesn't stack off light. And that little piece of knowledge did not get into my brain today. I think i should have made some laydowns that i would never ever have made in our first matchup but i should have made now.
for example this hand i think in the 1st match he was bluffing here 80% of the time. but i think today maybe 30% or less and my calldown was spewy i regret it. http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/728074
don't mind this one so much. i tried to 3bet him on the flop because his range for these minraises is quite large and i wanted him to discourage from it in the future. i didn't bet the turn because i don't give him credit for laying down a draw on the turn. and that's exactly what i tried to fold out on the river. it's FPS though i think and this is absolutely not a line that's standard for me because i think against good players i will get destroyed on these flops, if i use this.
this is pretty ugly. he was min3betting me 37% and i was just calling a lot and playing pots in position but here i decided to mix in a 4bet bluff also to create some history and to give me the initiative back because it was really hard to get respect from him in pots and i needed it because i wasnt hitting obviously i didnt gain much respect. turncard seemed perfect to barrel.
very important example of a hand that would have been fine 1st session but i think now that he was winning it was my spew. regret it , it didnt help that a few hands earlier he took the exact same line when a second 9 laned on the turn and i held TP, that time i did fold like i should
: http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/728071
i think i can 4bet flops like this because we have a little bit of history and he can call with really low equity holdings, when he threw it in my face it really sucked but i think i have to call. didnt want to slowplay this because i think its too drawy.
this was quite early on against him. i think its fine because this is typical him. trying to represent something that you hardly ever hit on every street and then having air. but maybe thats not so much him today hehe. http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/728068
last hand of the match. i dont know. i think i regret this one. last week he could have shown up with A10 or 33 or something but now he was up so much. http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/728066
i'm typing all this up in the train to amsterdam. i'm going to a movie festival. a french movie i think. if it's an good i'll let you guys know. and its arriving right now. so i have to go. but later i will update with some hands against him i won. where you can maybe see why i call him down in such a stupid way. definetely not my default. and results of today tell me why
oh whatever i'm happy i analyzed this. i only took out some of the big pots but seeing how i played doesnt make me happy at all. maybe i should put a stoploss in. but i don't like stoplosses when i am playing huge fishes. so often i have taken back 3 or 4 buyins and finally stacked them. one time i think i came back from a 6 buyin loss. thinking about it.
peace.
ok back from the movie festival. the movie was pretty funny. it was about a bunch of women who lose their jobs at a factory because the bosses close it down and then they pool their severance pay to hire a hitmen, who is an utter failure. it was kind of a dark humour.
and though i think its fine he plays this hand for stacks, it shows you something about his defending range. http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/728063
here he makes a calldown that imo is really bad. the board is way too drawy too calldown this light? maybe it puts more semibluffs in my range but really.. i think its not good. i think he does this a lot but sometimes turns his hand somewhere in a bluff when he senses weakness or something.
i'm at Central station right now, waiting for my train to depart and i don't have any more hands on my laptop but i might look into this match more when i get home.
peace.
According to the toyshop; "Scarface is an unforgettable icon of money, power and extravagance, with Al Pacino's mesmerizing performance as Tony Montana—one of the most ruthless gangsters ever depicted on film."
Now a guy from MAKE magazine (love that shit) used Mezcotoys Al pacino doll's to make a snowglobe depicting Tony in the final scene of Scarface. Gunning down everything in sight in a blizzard of snooooooooooow. Here he explains how you can create this yourself. I think it's pretty cool.
here are the total results of yesterday's play, including the hour i played before heading out to barbecue at a friend's house. Food was really good and we had a few beers at his balcony. Which was all very relaxing.
Here a quick update. i was actually playing and getting some nice matches in. But because of what just happened i'm too tilted too continue right away. Firt the good news i'll post the results of yesterday, they were solid. And today started off really well, i was running good and just crushing bad opponents. Playing well but also winning flips. Theoretically it doesn't matter if you lose flips because you'll win his stack anyway in the long run but usually they are instantly gone and your reads and time invested into getting them are worthless.
Anyway how the hell did i just lose 10 buyins in 300 hands?? it was 2 tabling 2 different villains. 1 called 80% of my button opens OOP and proceded to either call down everytime i was barreling and folding most of the times i was vbetting or improving from bottom to two pair or to a straight or whatever, you know. hand after hand after hand. he quit me when i finally started running my stack up a little but he was up 3 buyins.
The other opponent was opening a decent amount like 75% with raises from the button. so far so good. he called too much of my opoens with 50% BUT what i would think :S is a big leak is that he called 100% of my 3bets. and i 3bet him ALOT only for value. i increased my value range a little bit and left out the hands i would sometimes bluff with and i think i was 3betting like 17%.
he owned me in every way possible. just outflopping, outvbetting, outdrawing, outluckboxing everything on me. i was trying to capitalize on the fact that my 17% range should beat his 75% range but this was not working at all.
when i finally start winning some back i have AQ, 3bet him. and afte 160 hands or so he 4bets me for the first time.. we are now 150bb deep and though i'm very happy trying out Krantz theory usually. This just didnt seem like a good spot. i was a little bit too shove happy, because i was getting crushed so hard. it was kind of deep. there was no 4 bet dynamic at all. he would just call every 3bet.. maybe he levelled me there. he must have known i was tilted so expecting some good action.
I quit him when i was like 6bi down. in retrospect there are like 3 hands i wish i would have played differently and also it really sucks because i think i have a huge edge on him definetely now i know how he actually plays in these 3 bet pots. while playing i was just guessing how he played calling 100% of 3bets, for example i assumed he would sometimes float air in 3bet bet pots but only thing he once floated was a weak A hi. Also he never raised me on the flop. not with draws/air/nuts.
i think 8 buyins are due to variance (i think a lot of it is created when so many 3bet pots are played) and maybe 2 i didn't need to lose but i wasn't thinking so clear anymore. i decided it was better to quit, take a shower and get prepared because i have a barbecue in an hour or so and i need to buy some beer! That will take my mind of the sickness and tomorrow there is another day.
big step back in my results so far , still feel confident again already after writing this down and going over the hands in my head. the setups, the mistakes. etc.
Just got back from my workout (yes Juan everyday!). I kept it kind of short since i've been working out a lot lately and have been feeling tired. Today i have been benchpressing and doing some fly's, shoulders and ofcourse finished up with the mandatory abs. Unfortunately my gym is doing some redecorating and as a result they have no proteine shakes available.. now how am i supposed to become a monster of muscle?
so i went to pick up some proteíne rich food at the supermarket when my eye caught something in the newsstand. a very well respected magazine - their circulation is mostly compromised of doctors and dentists, so highly educated people you know - said KIRSTEN DUNST ON DRUGS! now how shocking is that?? how shocking.. my heroíne. i mean you must love her in Spiderman.. She was what i loved most about the whole movie.
first Kurt Kobain then Michael Jackson and now this..
just want to put it out there: KIRSTEN I LOVE YOU EVEN ON ALL THE DRUGS IN THE WORLD
what has come off the world? Peace! i'm out, i'ts about time for my daily dosis of gamble.
ps if you have better pics feel free to link us up.
In the good bloggers tradition i'll update you from time to time with some results. Here are the results of whatever Holdemmanager calls "yesterday". it appears to me that it supposes i play from the USA or that axis of time. No problem, i'll just put yesterday's results up here as there is always another session to be played "today".
i'm not too concerned with results. i don't really care about them too much. Other then that i am an utter chagrin if they are bad and in a good mood when they are good. i never check but somehow you just know how you are doing.. i am supplying this update to give you some context to my blog. You can see whether i'm working toward my goals and whether there is hope for this fighter.
first results aren't too good. i have to start somewhere. BUT the day ended on a good note and i think i played really well in most matches. i was simply running really bad, especially aipf. i could project the +Ev line on there and it would be very close to 0 but i think it's kind of a bullshit line anyway and it will confuse any readers that aren't pokersavies.
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i was very happy with how i played this hand. will update some more hands from a fun match tomorrow. maybe it looks to FPS but i think all the conditions i could think off were right. and i just had that feeling. you know. i just felt it. he got nothing. i know it.
and then i pulled the trigger like like a trained sniper; accurate and deadly PEEEEEEEEEEW! what a
a classic example of fish watching highstakes HU vids (by Krantz, deucescracked videomaker) and i guess misinterpreting the information and as a result stacking himself in the wrong spots instead of the right spots occurred when i started the last HU match of the evening.
villain immediately appeared very aggressive. taking the first 3 or 4 small pots down with a lot of force. i don't mind this at all but he immediately made me think he was a reg. no limping or any other fishy behaviour. now 19 hands in or so i 3bet him, for the second time or so, with KJo, he proceeds to 4bet.
KRANTZ TOLD ME: 1st 4bet is ALWAYS A BLUFF!!!!!
so i instashove my monster " that does well against his 4 bet call range: pairs and maybe suited aces but mostly because he has to fold. 1st 4bet!
ofcourse its not suprising at all that the nl100 reg instacalled with AKo en has me destroyed but what made the incident worthy of a blogpost was what villain said in chat immediately afterward:
"1st 4bet always a bluff "
i got SOOOOOOOOO levelled sick.
also today i experimented for the first time with flatcalling AA pf. i've literally never ever done this in my life before. but lately i have been using the tactics of 3betting trash and calling with good hands vs opponents who fold like 80% to 3bets and it was working out well.
i already knew about this but i heard Krantz :king remind me of the trick of flatting AA and what power this gives you postflop. i do c/r a LOT of flops with imo(plz tell me if im wrong and you happen to know this) a merged range and being able to include overpairs here sometimes is very valuable.
so whatever let's try it.
1st time
i flat AA
flop J 9 3 (rainbow)
villy bets, i raise, v raise, i shove
J9 obvio
so no big deal i felt good about it because i had been c/r this villain already a few times, so thought it was ok getting it in against his range.
not happy with the result though a few villains later(same pf characteristic of high folding to 3bets) i try the same trick
i flat AA
flop Q 9 6 (2 hearts or something, villain did play Ahi fd for stacks earlier)
i raise bla bla allin Q 9
this time i didn't feel so good about it afterward. but i was a little bit shellshocked from some punishment i had been getting but actually villain might have been too passive and generally nitty to get it in here so enthusiastically. so maybe my mistake.
i guess with experience i'll be able to judge better when i should fold aces postflop in a single raised pot.
so today i've had some bad experiences with the new tricks i'm trying to work into my game. but i think in the long run i will become the better player for it.
thanks for reading.
peace.
ps. so far kept to max 2 tables. except if some 20bb ss joined my open tables, i may have left the tables open for a little while cause they are so easy and standard to play. and i 3 tabled against a regular for a little while (but this was all the same villain and thats a lot easier to 3 or 4 table then 2 different villains.) i only played the reg because no one was joining my tables and there were like 60 tables with regs sitting and waiting. thought i might as well find out which ones are any good. he was pretty good but i was lucky and quit him when the momentum changed after he won a 260bb pot and was clearly refinding a lot of confidence (aka hit and running).
first i'll provide you with some background what i've been doing that i need rebuilding. after that i'll by outlining the gameplan!
ok so earlier this year i took some time off and left the Netherlands to spend some time in the great city of Buenos Aires. i picked up some Castellano over there and it was a good experience. Studying the language however took loads of time and the rest was spent meeting new people, that were also travelling and ofcourse the obvious partying.
However time spent on the tables was really cut down, money spent however not . More so then i expected before leaving so on my return i'm facing the problem of rebuilding.
and damn its frustrating
kind of have myself to blame because i think playing below the level i was used to is so boring that i tried rebuilding by learning other games. Think Limit HU (awesome, that is so much fun! try it), PLO HU (equally awesome) and SH Limit (also very awesome but sometimes you have to hold the monkey agression back a little bit)
ofcourse this results in either spewing or being a rakeback player :S since for some reason my NL skills don't instantly translate... so unfair!
but learing other game's is so much fun, i really wish i was less tempted.
other reasons it's not working out as well as i hoped are:
* impatience - playing too many tables to achieve my BR goals faster, resulting in less bb/100 and more variance or... SPEW!
* summer - i love the dutch summer. this is such an awesome country when the sun is shining. stay away octobre-march music festival etc.
* faded skills - in some ways i feel i'm a better player then ever. i picked up so much knowledge, not in the last place in the live events i've been playing; Mar del Plata in Argentina and some local event in the Netherlands.
But some of my HU experience has to come back a little bit. Being at the tables everyday and watching the latest video's makes you a lot more in tune i guess. i think this is coming back fast now though.
how dissapointing are my results? last year i was really crushing the HU games at 100nl and beating the 200nl games for a good amount. maybe 100nl for as much as 15bb/100. i did game select well though.
now i'm beating 100nl for 3bb/100 that's over 70k hands :S (sucks so much! if this doesn't go up it's not worth playing, and i love it )
i also got quite some sample of 50nl and i'm beating that for 15bb in 30k hands. so my data suggest i should be playing 50nl. it would make me more money/hour :S
BIG MISTAKES:
-playing too many tables, sometimes 4 diff HU opponents mixing 100nl and 50nl.
-playing too agressive. something i tend to forget when too busy running everyone over (right) is that it's a lot of the time better at least against some opponents to give them the room to bluff. i think it should be a big part of your EV at these levels. Part of the opposition is really capable of making horrendous bluffs. and missing out on these because you are cutting them off left and right is probably not compensated for by the extra pots i pick up driving them away.
GOAL
-making 10bb/100 at 100nl
ADJUSTMENTS
-max 2 tabling
so never did this before. kind of just thrown my struggles out there. hope it sounds familiar or you learn something from my mistakes.
ps and mon more posting aonl liquiadpoapoker whielafe playing
waiting for action at the HU so i'll put up some music i discovered.
this guys were playing at a music festival around here. awesome. if they play near wherever your at and you are somewhat into this song. def go. cause live they were even more entertaining. not in the least because of the entertaining base player and the cute girl at the drums.
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i regret it. 
obviously i didnt gain much respect. turncard seemed perfect to barrel. 
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that does well against his 4 bet call range: pairs and maybe suited aces but mostly because he has to fold. 1st 4bet! 
but what made the incident worthy of a blogpost was what villain said in chat immediately afterward:
(aka hit and running). 
