Welcome to my world

Welcome to my world. This is how my poker life has gone for the past 2 1/2 weeks. Over and over and over and over…….

Bayou Poker
Limit Holdem Ring game
Converter
Limit: $3/$6
10 players.

Pre-flop: (10 players) Hero is BB with 8♥ k♣
3 folds, MP1 calls, MP2 calls, MP3 folds, CO calls, 2 folds, Hero checks.

Flop: 8♠ k♦ k♠ (4.5SB, 4 players)
Hero checks, MP1 checks, MP2 checks, CO bets, Hero calls, MP1 calls, MP2 raises, CO folds, Hero 3-bets, MP1 calls, MP2 Caps, Hero calls, MP1 calls.

Turn: 6♣ (8.75BB, 3 players)
Hero bets, MP1 calls, MP2 raises, Hero 3-bets, MP1 calls, MP2 Caps, Hero calls, MP1 calls.

River: j♦ (20.75BB, 3 players)
Hero bets, MP1 raises, MP2 calls, Hero 3-bets, MP1 Caps, MP2 calls, Hero calls.

Results:
Final pot: 32.75BB
MP1 shows JH,KH

I’m 85% to win on the flop. Gotta love MP2 re-raising while drawing dead.

93% to win on the turn. Now, I am so confused as to why MP2 is still raising, I keep checking the board to make sure I didn’t misread it. I see I am correct and visions of me on a beach spending my hard earned winnings pop into my head.

Then I bet the river and MP1 raises me???? WTF!?!?! I know it was dumb to 3 bet that, but I had watched him play pretty bad for about an hour. A few hands before I saw him raise TP on a four flush board with three other people in the hand. I figured AK was a huge possibility. I was wrong.

I could probably make another 30 posts with examples like this. In a 20 minute time frame the other day I had four different people all river their gutshot draws on me. Ahh, forget it, things will turn around.

No mas

Today is the day I gave up bonus chasing. I think at this point in my poker career, it has become detrimental to my game to continue chasing bonus money. It has often made me play on sites I don’t want to be on, with little traffic, and in games I don’t want to play in.

I have been on the Poker Room network for what seems like ages. In reality it is about 2 months now. I was chasing a lot of big bonus money, but at what cost? I often found myself firing up the client and finding 1 table of $3/$6 and 1 table of $5/$10 going. Forget about table selection, I am lucky if I can even get a game going. I refused to play at the $2/$4 level because it does not clear the bonus as well. When I did get in a game, it was me and a bunch of rocks sitting around trading the blinds it seemed. Seen flop percents in the low 20’s was the norm. It’s not like I could just leave the table and find another one, because a lot of the times that was the only table. If there were multiple tables running, they also had seen flop percents in the 20’s.

I will say this, they had some awful players on that network. But when you hit a bad run, forget about it, you were toast. It’s hard to come back from being stuck when nobody comes with you on your premium hands.

So like the swallows returning to Capistrono, I have returned to Party Poker. The land of crazy players and no rakeback. Short term, this move will probably hurt me. I will miss bonus money and rakeback, no doubt. But in the end, I think the bad players and loose games will make up for it. It is 2:30 AM as I write this and Party has 23 full $5/$10 tables. Poker Room has 4, and it will quickly break up down to 2 in the next half hour or so. Table selection alone will be worth giving up bonus money.

I will still chase the occasional bonus of course. I like the Bet365 bonus and I will return to Poker Room for some good 7 or 9x chases, plus I still have some pending bonus money at HoldemPoker and Check N Raise that dont expire until February sometime. So I will be back, but it will be part time, hit and run stuff.

If you really want to see why I love playing at Party, observe this hand that I played tonight.

Hero picks up AA in MP3. Poster in MP2 checks, Hero raises. Button, SB, BB all call. Flop comes Ks4c2s. Check to hero who bets, SB raises, MP2 calls everyone else folds, hero 3 bets and SB caps and MP2 calls. Turn comes Kh. SB bets out. Great, I figure he now has 3 kings so I just call after MP2 folds. River is a blank, he bets out again. I just call. SB turns over 8h3h!!! What? I figured at least a busted flush draw and probably the 3 kings, but not that crap. That is why I like Party. It’s good to be home.

EDIT: Someone asked me on IM if I thought bonus chasing was stupid. No! In fact, I think it is a great thing. It is an essential part of a beginners game. Often, new playes are losing players as well. Bonus money can help keep them at break even, or even ahead of the game sometimes. I know plenty of players who play higher limits then I do who stil chase bonus money on a regular basis.

Leaving money on the table

My problems with value betting continue. I never had a problem with it before, I am a bit confused why it has come up all of a sudden. Is it the higher limits I am now playing? Possibly. I really can’t put a finger on it.

I would estimate I am leaving 2-5 BB’s on the table every day now. Well, that is assuming everyone would call, so maybe less then that, but still. I know I should be doing it too, thats the odd thing. As I am hitting the check button, I am thinking I should be betting this. Oh well.

I guess I am now a full time $5/$10 player. I haven’t played a hand of $3/$6 since I gave $5/$10 a shot the other night. That is not totally true I guess. I did play one table while trying to clear the second HoldemPoker reload the other day, only because I could only find one $5/$10 table.

I need to get away from the Poker Room skins. I love the bonus money they are tossing around, and they really do seem like good sites, but I don’t get good table selection at the limits I play at. Sometimes, you can only find one $3/$6 and one $5/$10 table going. At its peak, you are lucky to have 5 of each limit. I logged onto Party last night and they had over 20 $5/$10 full ring games going. Thats what I am talking about.

I really need to start playing Party again. I have no played one hand since the split. I just find it hard to do without A) A bonus to play for, or B) A rakeback deal. Maybe the fishy players at Party are enough to make up for the lost bonus/rakeback? I do have a $75 bonus offer there right now, maybe I will deposit tomorrow and see what I can do.

I would love to get rakeback at Party, but that seems out of the question. I don’t want to sign up with someone elses name. Then they would be responsible for the taxes and I don’t want to mess around with that. If anyone has any ideas, I would love to hear them.

I took a shot

I finally got around to sitting at a $5/$10 table. I logged onto HoldemPoker to clear yet another reload bonus and saw only 1 $3/$6 table going. That is really odd about the Poker Room network. You can always find enough $2/$4 and usually $5/$10 games, but a lot of times its a struggle to get more then 1 $3/$6 game going.

Anyway, since I would only be playing one table I figured I should take a shot at $5/$10. I only played 44 hands, but it was a good experience. I only got in on four hands though. That is fairly normal for me, as I am pretty tight. My normal VP$IP is ranges from 12-15%.

The first hand I played, I completed from the small blind with KhTd. Flop comes 9D,JH,QD. Sweet, flopped the nut straight. I check raise and get two callers. Turn is a 2C, I bet out and both call. Of course a diamond comes on the freaking river! I value bet anyway and get one caller and he called. I took the pot down but have no clue what he had because Poker Room doesnt write mucked cards to the hand history in PT. Won a cool $102 on that pot.

Few hands later I get AKo and raise it. Get one caller, flop comes JH,QH,9C. I bet, he calls. Turn comes Kc, I bet he calls. River comes 2h, I bet he folds. Take down $65.

Very next hand I get AKo again, raise it and get 4 callers. Flop comes 8D,9H,3S, I bet out and the guy on my immediate left raises. Two call, one folds, I call. Turn comes Ks and I bet out, flop raiser folds and the two callers call. River is 6c I bet, one folds, one calls. I take it down for $139.50.

So I made $159 for my 50 minutes of work, not bad. Look, I know I am probably not ready for $5/$10, but it was fun taking a shot. My bankroll is more then ready, but I am just not positive my game is ready for it. I might try it for the next few days and cut back to 2 tables and see how things go. I am not sure I could handle a downswing at that level. A 100BB downswing is nothing and that would cost me $1000, umm that would suck.

The transformation

Well, it has begun. For the past 11 months I have been a full ring limit player. I am not starting the move to limit 6-max. Starting today, one third of my playing time will be devoted to 6-max. I will continue to add to that time until I am only playing 6 max games.

Actually, I might not start just yet. I do have a ton of bonus money to clear still and I just can’t do it at 6-max. At full ring I can play $3/$6 and right now I am only willing to play $1/$2 short handed, so maybe I won’t devote one third of my time, but I will be working in more short handed games, thats for sure.

I saw some odd things at the tables the last few days. I saw an A high straight dealt on the board. 3 people left on the river, some guy bets out – there was no flush possibility – and of course everyone calls. Then they start to berate the guy for betting because all it did was increase the rake. I guess he was hoping someone wasn’t paying attention and would fold?

I also saw two people have AA in the same hand 3 times. One time, they were both cracked by a guys set. He then went on to say it was very difficult to crack two people that held AA. How exactly that is harder then cracking one guy with AA is beyond me, but he was pretty proud of himself.

tomorrow I will hopefully find time to play in the Bet365 VIP freeroll. Wish me luck.

I have a problem

I have a big problem with my poker game right now. No, I am not playing too loose, I am not chasing with bottom pair or middle pair, low kicker. I am not too weak, passive, aggressive, or any of those things. I have emotional problems.

Whenever I hit a downswing I start believing I am the worst player on earth. Anytime I hit a 50-100 BB downswing, I think the sky is falling. I pour over my Poker Tracker stats trying to find the weak point in my game that is causing this downswing. More times then not, I don’t find one. Sure I have little problems here and there, but nothing to suggest I am a losing player.

Even though I know that the best of the best have the exact same downswings, even though the week before and after the downswing are usually winning weeks, I still think I am the worst player on earth during the swing.

When I start to lose I start doubting myself and my ability as a poker player. Worse yet, I start to play my hands differently then I normally would, that is my big concern. I play a fairly aggressive attacking style, when I start losing I lose some of my aggressiveness and that is costing me even more money in the long run.

Yesterday I two very good sessions at $2/$4. Up over 50 BB’s for both sessions. But, because I had been losing, I wasn’t being aggressive as usual. Just off the top of my head I can think of at least five (which means more probably) spots where I did not value bet the river. I won all five hands, so that was at least $20 left on the table. Every hand was a hand where I took the lead on the flop and bet through to the river, a scare card came on the river and I checked behind.

This is something I need to work on to improve my game. I need to play the exact same way no matter if I am up 300 BB’s or down 300 BB’s.

Gotta love that Casino chase!

Well, no posts in a long time. I have been busy chasing poker bonus money. OK, so I have been busy getting my teeth kicked in while playing poker. I am on a pretty bad run right now, but there is good news!

I was over at Bulls Blog and I read his post about his casino bonus chase. I have never done one of those before and I figured I could use a change of pace after getting smacked in the mouth playing cards all day. So I download the Littlewoods casino software and sit down to play blackjack.

I start out slow, just making £1 bets for three hands at a time. I get a little more frisky after winning a little bit and start to make £5 bets on three hands each time. First time I do that I hit a blackjack on two of the hands and win the third. Not bad huh? It gets better. I ran my total up to around £120 and still had a ways to go on my bonus. Then the bottom dropped out. I started losing and losing some more. It wasn’t a big shock to me considering how my poker has been going. Then things changed around.

I went on a big rush, and I finished the bonus up £248 or about $430!! Sweet man!!! I tell you what, I needed that after how my poker has been going. Nice little shot for the bankroll and will cover my poker losses. Can’t wait till next months chase

Let the chase begin

December is the month to be chasing the bonus money in poker it seems. Currently, I have $1540 in bonus money waiting to be cleared and that does not even count the $600 Eurobet bonus I will get when I sign up with them. So including that one, I am over $2000 for the month.

No way can I clear all of that, but I will give it a good go. I have until February to clear Eurobet, HoldemPoker, Poker Room, and Check N Raise so those might go on hold for a bit till I finish up some of the more time sensitive ones.

I am about 100 hands away from clearing the Bet365 monthly bonus. That will be $300 in bonus money from them just in the past week alone, not bad. It has become a pretty nice little site for me. I can clear the bonus in about 3-4 hours, depending on how many tables I want to play.

The Check N Raise and Eurobet ones are the two I really want to clear. That is $1200 in bonus money just waiting for me. Plus, the play at Poker Room skins is pretty awful.

All of this bonus chasing has made me a bit sad. I cant seem to get back to my favorite site, Poker Stars. With their bonus money never expiring, I simply have no incentive to get back there and play. I have 3 bonuses stacked at Stars right now, just waiting to be cleared, but they will probably have to wait well into the new year to be finished.

I have decided that come January I will attempt to play some $5/$10 limit full ring. I have the bankroll for it now, but I have heard that you really start to notice a big change in players skill at that level, so I want to make sure I am ready for it. I will try to hammer out 10,000 hands at $3/$6 this month and evaluate whether or not I should move up. Chances are I will just start to take shots at it now and then and see how I do. Imagine that, me playing $5/$10. Not bad considering I didn’t start playing poker until February of this year.