Puppy and CR

So last Saturday, my wife and I went and picked up our new puppy. We had gone to petsmart the weekend before to look at puppies because we were interested in saving a dog rather than purchasing one from a breeder. We found a dog there that we liked, but after some more looking my wife found one she liked even more. His name is Tucker Wynn, and he is a lab/retriever mix. He's quite the handful, but he is learning very quickly what is right and wrong.

As for poker, any of you who are CardRunners members may have seen on their website today that I will be one of their new instructors. I'm looking forward to it very much, as I enjoy coaching no matter if it's poker or golf. My first video will come out in a couple of weeks, when that happens I may move the blog over to the CR site but I'm not 100% sure yet. The only thing I know so far about the video is that it will be me 4 tabling 1/2 on FTP.

As far as actually playing poker this month, its pretty depressing despite being up $13k at 2/4. I'm down 12 buy ins at 3/6 and spewed 6 buy ins off at 5/10 on the 1st day of the month. Oh well, the 5/10 session was atrocious and I really just try to hard when I'm playing there. The 3/6 results... meh just not winning many hands. I've been playing quite well the last few days tho and I'll post some of the more fun/interesting hands.

No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (6 handed) - Hold'em Manager Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

UTG ($606.50)

MP ($530)

CO ($400)

Button ($144)

Hero (SB) ($551.50)

BB ($400)

Preflop: Hero is SB with K♠, K♣

1 fold, MP bets $12, 2 folds, Hero calls $10, BB raises $44, MP raises $96, Hero raises $539.50 (All-In), BB calls $352 (All-In), MP calls $422 (All-In)

Flop: ($1460) 4♦, 6♣, 10♠ (3 players, 3 all-in)

Turn: ($1460) 3♠ (3 players, 3 all-in)

River: ($1460) 9♣ (3 players, 3 all-in)

Total pot: $1460

Results:

Hero had K♠, K♣ (one pair, Kings).

BB had A♥, K♥ (high card, Ace).

MP had J♥, J♦ (one pair, Jacks).

Outcome: Hero won $1478.50

Why you never fold KK pre. But seriously. The opener is a TAG regular who probably isn't going to be playing back at me a lot, and probably not expecting me to play back at him super light. Since were 125bbs deep I decided to just flat, also the BB was squeeze happy from what I've seen from him so far so I decided to let him do his thing. He obliges and now the original opener 4 bets. His range here is probably JJ+/AK and with all the money in the middle I just decide to ship. I get called very quickly by both players and I'm pleasantly surprised to see I'm in the lead. Sick hold imo.

No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (4 handed) - Hold'em Manager Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB ($1457.15)

Hero (UTG) ($805.50)

Button ($421.15)

SB ($763.65)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with 4♣, 4♦

Hero bets $16, 2 folds, BB raises $60, Hero calls $48

Flop: ($130) 7♦, 8♠, 9♦ (2 players)

BB bets $66, Hero raises $160, BB calls $94

Turn: ($450) 4♠ (2 players)

BB checks, Hero bets $580.75, BB calls $580.75

River: ($1611.50) 8♣ (2 players)

Total pot: $1611.50

Results:

BB had K♠, 9♠ (two pair, nines and eights).

Hero had 4♣, 4♦ (full house, fours over eights).

Outcome: Hero won $1612.50

Bink! Villain in this hand likes to 3 bet a decent amount, I flat obviously with 44 because we are deep. The flop comes very connected and drawy. I decide to bluff raise here, my hand is not ideal for it but combine the fact that this guy 3 bets quite a bit, and the board is very scary it's going to be tough for him to continue with many hands because he will be oop on a scary board with a lot of money behind. I bink the turn obviously, and I just decide to overbet jam and rep a draw, he calls relatively quickly with K9 and I have him drawing dead in the 400bb pot. One thing of note is that I would probably give up bluffing the turn on bricks.

No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (6 handed) - Hold'em Manager Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

CO ($714.50)

Button ($394.30)

Hero (SB) ($839.30)

BB ($407.60)

UTG ($412.90)

MP ($630)

Preflop: Hero is SB with J♦, A♠

2 folds, CO bets $12, 1 fold, Hero calls $10, 1 fold

Flop: ($28) 5♠, 8♦, 10♠ (2 players)

Hero checks, CO bets $20, Hero raises $70, CO calls $50

Turn: ($168) J♣ (2 players)

Hero checks, CO bets $130, Hero calls $130

River: ($428) 7♠ (2 players)

Hero bets $627.30 (All-In), 1 fold

Total pot: $428

Results:

Hero had J♦, A♠ (one pair, Jacks).

Outcome: Hero won $1052.30

Ok this is probably the most interesting hand that I've played recently. Villain is a reg, who coolers me non-stop. I flat his open pre, don't really like 3 betting this hand because of how deep we are. The flop is pretty raggedy, he cbets and I decide to c/r with 2 over, the back door nutflush draw, and some back door straight draw. Villain flats. I turn a J, and I decide to c/c. The river comes the 7s, and I just decide to turn my hand into a bluff and shove. I'm trying to rep something like 8x, Jx of spades and I think it's going to be pretty tough for him to call me with hands like sets, two pairs, and overpairs. I don't think many villains are going to be putting me on a bluff when I take this line, and I think this is going to be more +EV than c/c'ing(puke) or c/f'ing.

A little more on the HH I posted last time

So I've been doing a ton of thinking and number crunching since I saw Nick's comment on my last blog which made me itch my head a little bit. Here is the comment

Nick said...

As a side note, just because you only have 45% equity against his calling range doesn't mean shoving isn't the best option. If you have 26% equity against his shoving range if you check, shoving here will be better than c/f even if you're only ahead 33% when called.

Ok, so at first I was confused because I was pretty sure you needed to have more than 50% equity on the river for value betting to be correct. After doing some quick numbers it looked like Nick was correct but I was still very skeptical. I've been out running errands all day and every so often I would think about this at it was driving me pretty crazy, damn you Nick... ha just kidding, thanks for the comment that really made me think. Also thanks to TJ for your comment a definitely look back through your HH's every so often to look for spots like this.

After doing some more work, what I've realized is that Nick is correct in some scenarios where shoving is going to be better than c/f'ing even when we have less than 50% equity. But those situations come up when you are afraid of c/f'ing the best hand some of the time which I'm not really afraid of in this spot, although admittedly I'm not 100% sure what Padirk will do with the 6 combos of AK he gets to the river with if I check.

Anyway here is what I did. I basically broke down villains range for getting to the river. He gets to the river by my best estimation with 26 combos.

6 combos of AK

3 combos of KQs

3 combos of KK

6 combos of QQ

3 combos of JJ

3 combos of TT

and 2 combos of KJs.

So we are ahead of 15 of those combos and lose to 11 of them. Lets assume he calls with all the hands we beat except QQ. So then we get 6 combos of folds, 9 combos of called by worse, and 11 combos of called by better. This is assuming about as wide of a calling range as we can give him(probably too wide for this particular player)

EV= ((6/26)*570) + ((9/26)*570+397) + ((11/26)*-397) = $298

Ok, and then the EV of checking assuming that he checks back all worse(never bluffs/never value bets worse) is

EV= ((15/26)*570) = $329

This is about as simple as we can make this calculation, so as you can see c/f'ing is about $29 better than shoving. And both are way better than c/c'ing. If you are wondering what the EV of c/c'ing is with our above assumptions is

EV= ((15/26)*570) + ((11/26)*-397) = $161.

The really tricky part of all of this is figuring out what he's going to do realistically with those 26 combos on the river. My best guess is that he folds all of his QQ, KQs and maybe hero folds 2 of the 6 combos of AK. So now we are at 11 combos that fold to our shove, 4 that call and lose, and still the 11 that call and win.

EV= ((11/26)*570) + ((4/26)*570+397) + ((11/26)*-397) = $222

Now we have to guesstimate what he is going to do with AK when we check. This is the most important part of everything because this will decide whether to shove, c/f, or even (gasp!) c/c.

My best guess is that he shoves at most 1/2 or 3 of the AK combos he gets to the river with, and never turns a hand into a bluff. So now the EV of c/f'ing the river is

EV= ((12/26)*570) = $263

And even with him shoving 3 combos of AK that we beat c/c'ing the river is

EV= ((12/26)*570) + ((11/26)*-397) + ((3/26)*570 + 397) = $207.

So in general it appears that check/folding the river is always going to be the best play vs this player given the above tendencies. With all of my number crunching I don't think I ran into a scenario where shoving was the most + EV play however. So I'm still not sure what Nick is referring to. Maybe Nick you could post a scenario? My brain is a bit too fried to go through the scenario you described above with regards to the 26% and 33% equity.

The only scenario I've come up with where shoving is better than c/c'ing is when c/c'ing then becomes the best option. And that comes up when I think the player will hero fold 2 of his combos of AK when I shove into him, but valueshove the 6 of his combos of AK when checked too.

Those EV's look like this

Shove = ((11/26)*(570))+((4/26)*(570+397))+((11/26)*(-397)) = $222

C/F = ((9/26)*(570)) = $197

C/C = ((12/26)*570)+((11/26)*-397)+((4/26)*(570+397)) = $253

Ok. phewwwwwwwwwww that was a lot of work. I'm out. If anyone finds and discrepancies or problems leave a comment. Later.

Tax Season :(

So, I'm wrapping up my taxes and it is pretty depressing. Last year sucked because I didn't really anticipate the upcoming tax deadline, and this year is much the same even though I know I should have been preparing and setting aside money well in advance. Oh well. Hopefully I will learn this time.

Anyway, April is going pretty well considering I lost $6k on the first day spewing at 5/10. Since then I have played strictly 2/4 and 3/6 and also tried to cut down on the number of tables I'm playing. I think I would rather sacrifice a small %(if any) of my hourly for a slightly higher winrate(resulting generally in less variance which is always nice).

I'm going to try and keep my sessions to 6 tables and a maximum of 8 if the games are really good. I had been trying to play 8-10 at all times and that just doesn't work as well for me. With 6 I am very confident. It's when I get to 8 or 10 tables and something goes wrong when I generally get into trouble. What seems to happen a lot is something bad happens or I make a mistake, and then simultaneously I have another difficult decision/thin spot and what happened 3 seconds ago affects my decision making skills. With 6 tables this scenario is a bit less likely to happen and will probably result in less spew from me.

An interesting HH I played today....

No-Limit Hold'em, $6.00 BB (6 handed) - Hold'em Manager Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB ($2014.90)

UTG ($729)

MP ($679.05)

CO ($1386.15)

Button ($669.05)

Hero (SB) ($1310)

Preflop: Hero is SB with A♥, A♠

1 fold, MP bets $21, 2 folds, Hero raises $69, 1 fold, MP calls $51

Flop: ($150) K♣, 7♥, 5♦ (2 players)

Hero bets $70, MP calls $70

Turn: ($290) 10♥ (2 players)

Hero bets $140, MP calls $140

River: ($570) J♠ (2 players)

Hero checks, MP bets $397.05 (All-In), Hero folds

Total pot: $570

Ok so villain in this hand is a 22/14 reg who is a little tighter than most post flop. So he opens in MP and I 3 bet him from the blinds. The flop is very dry and I just make a standard cbet of about 1/2 ish pot. The turn is meh, and again I bet 1/2ish pot planning to shove most rivers. However the river is a J, which in my eyes is a pretty bad river for me. KJs and JJ both get there.

So now I'm like, crap. Here I that shoving was just not going to be +EV for me. If I were to give villain a range for getting to the river it would look something like, KK, QQ, TT, JJ, KJs, KQs, AK. Against that particular range(which we actually want to look at his calling range, so I think we can remove QQ from his calling range because he probably folds that a significant portion of the time) I have 45% equity which is not enough for me to profitably value bet the river, and this is assuming he calls me with every single combo of AK and KQ that he gets to the river with which I'm not even sure is the case because I think the J can act as a bit of a scare card for him as there are not a lot of hands that I'm shoving that he beats anymore.

Now some might be wondering well how come you don't c/c the river? In my opinion, if I check to the villain on this river he is going to play pretty straightforwardly and not turn a lot of hands into bluffs. I don't think he's going to shove KQ, or QQ and quite possibly not all of the combos of AK. So lets just say he only shoves AK 3/4ths of the time. The flop is also so dry, that is really really difficult for him to show up with air here.

Against his river shoving range of all the hands that beat us, and some of the AK combos we only have 31% equity. Now its $397 for us to call and the pot is $570 + his $397 all in. So $397/($570+397+397) = 29%. So we need 29% equity to make a break even call but we only have 26% equity against his range. Therefore I think c/f is the best play in this scenario. Obviously this would change if the flop texture was a little more conducive to him have possibly more hands that he could shove as a bluff.

Also just to show how big of a difference that river J has vs a blank, if you change the Js to the 3s and give him the same range of getting to the river I have like 75% equity. I also think if the river is a 3s it makes him a little bit more likely to call my shove with KQ, and maybe even QQ/JJ some of the time which would make it an easy shove. I think a lot of people would just shove it in here and hope for the best, but I think through some solid analysis and reasons to believe your opponent will play certain hands in their range a particular way you can avoid making these medium mistakes that will go a long way to improving your results.

Later.

Tiger Tiger Tiger

It's finally here. He's finally back. LETS GO TIGERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

My prediction.... gonna go bold

Tiger by 4 finishing at (EDITED Thursday morning) -8

As for poker, blah. I started off the month not playing that great, spewed 6 buy ins at 5/10 on the first of the month. Grinded hard all week to finally get in the green during my latest session. I waste all of my run good at 2/4.

Finally, a Desk! Pics and March Recap.

 

Well I finally got my desk today, which is exciting because I no longer have to 6 table on my laptop while sitting on my couch. I ordered it almost 3 weeks ago and after some problems, it was finally delivered today. Weeee.

Here’s a pic of my setup.

Now the cool thing about this desk is that I can raise and lower it at the touch of a button. I think its range is anywhere from 24” to 52” off the ground, which is awesome because sometimes I get tired of sitting so now I can stand and play poker if I’d like.

Sitting mode

Standing mode

Pretty awesome if you ask me. Now I was waiting for the desk so I could also put up pictures of the new condo my wife and I just moved into. Its a pretty spacious 1600 sq. ft, 2 bedroom, 2 bath. We bought all new furniture just before we got married and have been receiving bits and pieces of it every week since we got back from the honeymoon. The desk was the last piece of the puzzle, so here goes.

Right when you walk in, look to the left and you get the living room.

Living room, shot from kitchen. The left side of this picture is where you enter the condo.

To the right as you walk in is the master bedroom.

Master bedroom, different angle.

Master bath, there is a huge walk in closet behind that door.

Master bath, garden tub and walk in shower. Toilet is across from the shower behind a corner.

A look at the kitchen, which is just to the right of the living room as you walk in. Breakfast area to the left.

Kitchen again

My office

 

Guest bathroom

Guest bedroom, converted into golf room.

Obligatory Lil’ Wayne poster. Picture taken by my wife at a concert  we went to.

 

As for poker. March started off sooooooooooo bad. I just look at this graph and laugh because for the first 30K+ hands I was breakeven in showdown winnings. Wow was I running bad. Coming back from the wedding/honeymoon break and being a bit rusty probably didn’t help either. It took about a week to knock off the rust and the runbad, and then I think around the 19th things just took off. All in all, can’t be to unhappy. I did eclipse the $10k mark if I include rakeback, and I’m proud of how I was able to bounce back during the last 1/3rd of the month.

Well that’s all I got for now. Run good at life everyone.

Links

Check out some of the links I added on the right of the blog.

Suited Aces Poker, a blog about 2 guys who play Mid-High Stakes NLHE on FTP and Stars.

DoubleFlyPoker. A midstakes FR player who I believe is making the transition back to 6 max.

Poker Playing Pitcher. A 6 max/FR reg who plays midstakes on FTP.

All of them seem to update their blogs pretty regularly and they all seem like good players/good guys in general.

Pretty Sick Pic

So we got a little preview of what are wedding pictures are going to look like because each of the photographers posted a few pictures on their blogs. Here are the links

http://www.carrietabbblog.com/

If you stop by Carrie's blog, please leave a comment because there could be some extra goodies for us if we get enough comments.

http://blog.davidshirkphotography.com/

As for poker, I finally hit the green for the month. It was a very rough start, especially the week following the honeymoon. Full Tilt just wasn't giving me any breaks and that definitely started to wear on me as I found myself playing a decent amount of my B and C game rather than my A game.

One thing I know that seems to help me when I'm running bad, is to not feel like I need to grind all my losses back as quickly as possible. That's when I get myself in trouble, sitting playing 5,000 hand sessions trying to eek out every ounce of value I can. What I will do is after I've been running bad for a bit I will have a few days where I just try to "book a win". Everyone has heard of a "stop-loss" but I like to impart a "stop-win" so that I quit playing once I've won X amount of money. For me I tend to stop after winning 2-3 buy ins. During a majority of my sessions there will be a time when I am up that amount, so whenever I reach that number I just quit, I don't care if I win a stack on each of the first 3 hands I played that day, I'm done. It helps me build up some confidence and after a few days I seem to have a lot of my confidence back and I'm ready to really start grinding again.

Things started to turn around last Wednesday and since then I've been on quite the heater, winning 12 buy-ins at 2/4 and 16 buy-ins at 3/6. Here are a few of the more interesting hands since last Wednesday.

No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (5 handed) - Hold'em Manager Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (UTG) ($839.25)

MP ($1418.90)

Button ($420.75)

SB ($803.50)

BB ($929.85)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with Q♥, Q♣

Hero bets $16, 3 folds, BB raises $56, Hero calls $44

Flop: ($122) 4♦, 8♠, 10♥ (2 players)

BB bets $88, Hero calls $88

Turn: ($298) J♠ (2 players)

BB bets $196, Hero calls $196

River: ($690) 3♥ (2 players)

BB bets $585.10, Hero calls $494.50

Total pot: $1679

Results:

BB had K♠, A♠ (high card, Ace).

Hero had Q♥, Q♣ (one pair, Queens).

Outcome: Hero won $1679.75

Alright, the villain in this hand is a pretty good 2/4-3/6 regular that I tangle with quite often. Preflop is obviously pretty standard, no reason for me to 4 bet here bc I'm not too happy to get in QQ from UTG vs a BB 3 bet 200bbs deep. So we see a flop, pretty good flop for me and he makes a cbet. I call and I get what I would say is a pretty decent turn card for me.

First off that card hits my range much harder than it hits his range. If I had to give villain a range for preflop, it would be AA-QQ, AK, and AQs for value and then a decent amount of suited connectors and whatnot. So as far as his range is concerned, he shouldn't be all that excited about the board texture, especially bc I have every set in my range, as well as some 2 pair combos, and pair+draws that aren't going to give up too easily.

So when that turn hits and he bets, my first thought is I'm winning this pot unless he hit something screwy like J8s, or a straight with 97s. I felt like this villain would probably bet the turn with AA/KK the majority of the time, and then he would c/f them on the river on enough cards for me to be able to turn my QQ into a bluff. I also didn't think this villain would be going for 3 streets of value with AA/KK because like I said he's pretty good/thinking and he's probably not expecting to be ahead of my river calling range with those hands so it doesn't make any sense to shove them.

The river comes a complete brick and now he shoves. Ok, I hit the time button and go back through my thought process. Would he value bet AA/KK here?... not with these positions and this board texture. Does he 3 bet 88-JJ in this spot pf?... not in my experience. The J is a pretty good card on the turn for him to continue with AK/AQ, or maybe a hand like 67s, 56s, 89s. So I get down to, his value range is razor thin, maybe J8s and 97s. I don't think this villain 3 bets JTs, or pocket 4s or something. I'm not even sure he would jam T8s if he did have it. So I make the call and he has AKs, for the turned FD + gutterball that bricked.

No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (2 handed) - Hold'em Manager Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (SB) ($800)

BB ($934.25)

Preflop: Hero is SB with A♣, A♠

Hero bets $8, BB calls $6

Flop: ($20) 4♥, J♠, Q♠ (2 players)

BB bets $16, Hero raises $42, BB calls $26

Turn: ($104) 6♣ (2 players)

BB bets $76, Hero raises $205, BB calls $129

River: ($514) J♦ (2 players)

BB checks, Hero bets $542.25, BB calls $542.25

Total pot: $1598.50

Results:

Hero had A♣, A♠ (two pair, Aces and Jacks).

BB didn't show

Outcome: Hero won $1599.50

Here is a fairly interesting HU hand. I'm starting a table with this villain, I haven't played a ton with him but I've seen him a round a bit. A few hands before this he donk/called KxJd on a J 8 9 dd flop 200bb's deep against me. So I knew he's capable of donking marginal hands and then not really wanting to fold them too much.

So here I raise AA, he flats and donks the flop. I decide to raise, if I get 3 bet here I'm not going to be loving life, but with the As I'm going to be calling and seeing what he does on the turn. Luckily for me he doesn't raise, and rather he just flats. So I put him on some sort of Qx hand.

The turn is a brick, and to my surprise the villain donks into me again. Now this is pretty weird, but I have the feeling that he has a very weak hand that he is not really looking to fold. He probably would have bet/3 bet 2 pair or better on the flop, so again I go for a value raise. I think I was raise/folding the turn because I didn't ever expect him to bet/3bet me on the turn as a bluff or semibluff, so if he did bet/3bet I would pretty comfortably give him JJ, 44, QJ and tell him well played as I fold. Again however he just calls.

The river is a J. Fine card for me as I would say that this villain absolutely never ever ever has a J considering how he has played the hand up to this point. We have about a pot sized bet left, so I just elect to jam. Villain times down for a bit and much to my surprise calls me down with 86s. His play is very strange, and definitely something that I took note of.

No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (6 handed) - Hold'em Manager Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB ($400)

UTG ($998.20)

MP ($809.75)

Hero (CO) ($977.95)

Button ($1143.25)

SB ($400)

Preflop: Hero is CO with 9♣, 9♦

UTG bets $8, 1 fold, Hero calls $8, Button calls $8, SB calls $6, 1 fold

Flop: ($36) 7♦, 9♠, 4♦ (4 players)

SB checks, UTG bets $12, Hero calls $12, Button raises $84, SB calls $84, 1 fold, Hero raises $223, Button raises $1050.50, 1 fold, Hero calls $734.20

Turn: ($2070.40) K♠ (2 players)

River: ($2070.40) 2♠ (2 players)

Total pot: $2070.40

Results:

Button had 7♣, 7♥ (three of a kind, sevens).

Hero had 9♣, 9♦ (three of a kind, nines).

Outcome: Hero won $2070.90

Here is the last hand that I'm going to post and the only thing to really talk about here is bet sizing. So I flop top set on a very dry board 4 handed with really bad relative position, which means that I act right after the pf aggressor and still have 2 other players to act behind me. I decide to flat the pfr's continuation bet, hoping that someone behind me would squeeze us with some sort of hand. I get even more than I hoped with the player directly behind me raising, and the last player to act flatting that raise! The pfr folds and its back to me. Now obviously flatting here is a pretty big mistake, because I will be out of position on the turn and there are a bajillion turn cards that I do not want to see. So now the question is how much to make it.

Well I'm super deep with the initial raiser. Starting the hand around 250bbs deep with him, however the player that flat called the raise only started the hand with 100bbs and has $307 left after calling the flop raise. So now we have another predicament, I don't want to raise to an amount where if the 3rd players goes all in it doesn't re-open the betting. Like if I make it $320 here, lets say the raiser calls, and then the 3rd player goes all in for $60 more or something. That would be a disaster for me because the raiser is going to be IP against me in a huge pot and is probably going to play just about perfectly against me. So I need to avoid that situation.

I decide to make it $235, or $151 more. That way if the player directly behind me calls, I don't think the 3rd player is ever going to flat, so when he shoves the betting is re-opened and I can trap the deep player in the middle.

However the way the hand played out, the player behind me ended up just shoving himself, the 3rd player somehow folded which I wasn't expecting at all, I get a ton of money in as a huge favorite, and fade the 1 outer for a big pot. Just something to think about when you are contemplating raise sizes.

*sorry holdem manager's HH's mess up the betsizing a little bit. Just to clarify the pfr bet $12. The raiser made it $84, and then I made it $235.

Well that's all I got for now poker wise. On the golf front, I'm really starting to make some progress and can't wait to get out and actually play some golf in the coming weeks. Yesterday I swung by the PGA Superstore and picked up some golf necessities to transform the extra bedroom in our condo into the "golf room". Here's a picture.

No more rainy days for me! Until next time. Run good everyone.

Some pictures

Hey whats up everyone, again its been awhile but I have more reasons than just running bad! I got married earlier this month, and that was one heck of a weekend followed by an awesome week in St. Lucia. A lot of people I hadn't seen in a while made the trip to Atlanta for the wedding, so we had a good crowd and a lot of fun people. Unfortunately I won't get any pictures from the wedding photographer for another couple of weeks, but I do have 1 or 2 as well as some pictures from the honeymoon.

Well lets get it started, disclaimer some of these pictures won't really be in order.

Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Adcock

Being introduced at the reception

Probably the best groom's cake ever

Our Beachfront Rondoval Suite

The private plunge pool and hot tub accompanying our suite

Now same picture as above except from the other direction

Looking over the fence

St. Lucia sunset

My new left hand accessories and wife's favorite picture

I got that watch 10 mins before the wedding ceremony as a gift from my wife to be. Here is a better picture of it.

Well that's all the pictures I got for now. I'm going to update with some pictures of our new condo in the next few days, just waiting for some final deliveries.

As for poker this month... blah. I think in the past few days I've actually gotten my showdown winnings into the green for the month. I know, pretty impressive huh? It's been pretty brutal, I'm calling the month "Turn Month" because I literally turn what seems to be the best card in the deck all of the time, when in fact it is actually the only card in the deck where I will get stacked. The run bad was the worst right when I got back from the honeymoon, as if coming back from my longest break from poker (9 days) in at least a few years and being a bit rusty wasn't enough for the poker gods they decided to just pile it on. I'm definitely not going to claim that I have been playing my A game since I got back, but running bad doesn't help ever.

The last few days have gone really well tho so I'm looking forward to turning this month around. My desk should be getting here in the next couple of days, so it will be nice to have an actual office set up rather than 6 tabling on my laptop while sitting on my couch.

Oh and one last thing....

(for those that don't know, the tradition at the Masters is for the previous years champion to help the winner put on the jacket. Thus Angel Cabrera will be helping Tiger with the jacket in a few weeks)

Also, 95% sure I'm going to be there on Thursday following Tiger in what is likely to be an epic comeback. So if you are going to be there let me know.

February Recap

Well February continued to go well and ended nicely. If this was the PGA Tour my comeback stat would have just increased. That stat tells you how often a tour players makes a birdie or better after scoring a bogey or worse on the previous hole. I considered January a bogey and February a birdie. So good job me I guess. It always sucks to start of the year on a bad note, but I feel like I've really gotten my act together and I'm looking forward to good things.

Here's my February graph and stats.

So a pretty solid month. Pretty happy that I was able to keep my winrate over 6bb/100 but I was really shooting for 8-10. I really felt like I ran somewhat poorly cooler wise towards the end of the month, but eh I'm not going to complain really.

As for March I'm not really exactly sure what I'm going to do. I told myself that I was going to make 50 buy ins at 2/4 before I moved back up to 3/6. So technically I need to make another 11 buy ins or so, but I only said 50 buy ins so that I would get my online bankroll up to 100 buy ins for 3/6(yea I'm a bit of a bankroll nit). So I'm going to count rakeback, but even then I'm like 5 buy ins short. And since I only have a few days to play in March before my wedding I'm just going to play 2/4 and relax before the big day next weekend. When I get back from the honeymoon I will begin to play 3/6 again and maybe even game select some 5/10. Well that's all I got for now. GL grinding, hope you guys had good Februarys and even better Marches to come.

Update

Hey, whats up everyone. Been grinding quite a bit recently, really trying to put in a solid amount of hours this month at 2/4. The last few days I have put in a TON of hands, and I have been running pretty horribly in a lot of cooler type situations and all in EV which doesn't help the results too much. I've been playing pretty well though in my opinion, especially when things start to go bad I've really kept my composure and made sure I think through ever decision thoroughly. Ive put in about 17k hands since Monday, at a pretty weak 4.2bb/100 but I'm running a little below expectation and I feel like I've been on the wrong end of a lot of coolers.

So far for the month I'm pretty happy with my volume. The first week I put in 18.5 hours running OK. The 2nd week I ran pretty good but only put in 17 hours. I seem to play shorter sessions when I'm winning big, should probably change that although it feels so good to book a nice solid win, I hate ruining them! The 3rd week I put in 19.5 hours and again ran pretty well. So far this week I've already put in 23 hours running pretty terribly. I'm going to try and put in a few hours tomorrow to get over 80 hours for the month which is pretty solid for a short month, and considering I hardly ever play on weekends. Hopefully I can win a little bit tomorrow and boost my winrate back over 6bb/100 since I've fallen to 5.94bb/100 over 57k hands for the month thus far.

One thing I really think I need to work on is taking a few more breaks during long sessions. From now on I'm going to try and limit myself to playing in 2 hour stretches, and then make a point to take a 30 minute break to read a book, watch TV, or play a video game. This should help me clear my mind a bit, and refocus for another good solid session. For example today I was playing a pretty long session, running pretty bad and really getting nowhere, just sort of swinging from up 2 buy ins to down 2 buy ins. Then I took a little break for lunch, came back and definitely felt a little more refreshed and was able to win the few buy ins that I lost towards the end of my first session back.

As for some actual poker talk, one thing I'd like to talk about briefly is pf 3 bet sizing. I constantly see people at 2/4 squeezing pf to literally anywhere from $60-$90 on a pretty regular basis. Like for example MP opens to 14, the BTN flats 14, and then the BB squeezes. I see people just mash the pot button in this scenario. In this hypothetical situation that would be a 3bet to like $60ish... I think, or imagine the SB had also flatted and now a pot sized 3 bet is like $72. I mean that is just overkill so often.

Once you go over a certain number, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $48-$52, people are no longer going to be flatting your 3 bet at all. They are going to be in 4 bet or fold mode for the most part, unless of course you are 3 betting a huge fish in which case BOMBS AWAY b/c there is no need for balance. So if people are playing 4 bet or fold once you get over $48-$52, then that should really be the highest you ever 3 bet.. You are actually costing yourself money when you want to squeeze in that spot with air, wouldn't you rather be able to 3 bet bluff to $48 rather than having to risk $60 each time?

Not to mention the fact that if you make it $60 or more preflop, you basically take away the ability for your opponents to 4 bet you small as a bluff. There are definitely hands that you squeeze with where a lot of its value comes from the fact that it looks like you are squeezing in an obvious spot, your opponent realizes this and then makes a small 4 bet. Hands like 99/AQ come to mind as hands where this is fairly important in a lot of scenarios. However if you make it so large that they are unable to 4bet/fold preflop you cut out a large percentage of their bluffing range which results in you getting it in worse because they aren't 4 bet/shoving as a bluff nearly as lightly as people are 4bet/folding as a bluff.

Anyway, just something to think about. Talk to you guys later.

How to have an Infinite return on investment

Ok, so this is one of the sickest things I've heard of in a while. My friend Kyle, who was my roomate in Vegas a few summers ago got invited to play in this freeroll, $250k gauranteed poker tournament at the Monte Carlo(? i think that was the casino). He was invited by their casino host because he like to play quite a bit of blackjack. When he told me about it, we both concluded that it was a pretty sick opportunity assuming that most of the people playing in the tournament would have very little knowledge about poker since they are mostly just huge table game whales.

The tournament was this past weekend, and although I'm not sure how many runners it got(maybe a few hundred at most would be my guess), Kyle ended up taking it down for $75k. Now that is a sick score. I haven't heard from him yet this morning, so hopefully he survived last night because God only knows what kind of trouble you can get into in Las Vegas with 75,000 newly acquired dollars. So shoutout to Tymo for an awesomely donkament, and for turning all of those -EV hours at the blackjack tables into a profitable proposition!

As for me, I just got home from Virginia Beach last night. Kim and I went home because my mom and some of her friends threw her a bridal shower. The weekend was a lot of fun, and now we are on the homestretch, sprinting towards the wedding that is now 12 days away.

Poker wise, I played a little bit on Friday before I went to pick Kim up for work and head to the airport. I managed to make $500ish then. I played a little bit on Saturday afternoon and made about $600. And today, I just got done with a very short session, netting about $800. I had to quit the session tho because my internet is acting very weird. I don't know what is wrong but it is painfully slow. Hopefully Comcast fixes the problem in the next couple of hours so that I can get a few more hours of poker in today. Talk to you guys later.

My golf swing, a work in progress

Alright, as promised in one of my recent posts, I'm going to go over what I've been working on golf wise to start off this year. I have some fairly ambitious golf goals for the year, and I'm really trying to work very hard to accomplish them. I do however need the weather in Atlanta to start cooperating a bit more so that I can actually get outside and put in some serious practice sessions.

Here is a short video of the software that we use to analyze my golf swing. This is just me showing you my swing from the front and behind view, as well as showing you how we can move and zoom all over the room to see my swing from every angle imaginable. (Sorry the video is a little choppy, i guess camtasia isn't able to capture my movements quickly enough. You get the drift of the software anyway)

Anyway, the things that I'm working on right now are stabilizing my lower body throughout the entire swing so that I have a much better foundation. As you will see later my swing from last June has much more movement in the lower body, which really makes my upper body work way too hard to get the club into the right position to hit good, solid golf shots. By stabilizing my lower body I'm able to make a much more complete turn to the top of the backswing, and my body stays centered over my legs as opposed to getting too far on my backside.

June Swing

Current Swing

Having a stable lower body enables me to start my downswing a little more efficiently. When my weight sways to my backside too much, my hips tend to slide to start the downswing and try to get back into proper position. This results in me laying off the club far too much and keeping my weight too far on my right side throughout the remainder of the swing. As you can see in the pictures above, nowadays I have a much better shoulder turn on my backswing, and its somewhat tough to see but in the swing on the left you can sort of see my weight starting to creep to the outside of my back foot. That is a big no no for me and really causes me problems as I start my downswing.

June Swing

Current Swing

So as you can see, the difference between these two positions is fairly drastic. In my old swing my hips are sliding forward, and my leading hip is quickly getting out ahead of my front foot. In my current swing my weight is again much more centered over my more stable lower body, and my hips are doing a better job of rotating which in turn gives me more clubhead speed. I think the difference between these 2 swings is about 5 MPH which is a fairly huge difference.

June Swing

Current Swing

Here is where you will see another pretty big difference. Nowadays I'm much more "stacked up" on top of the ball, using a lot more leverage than I was last June. In the June swing again you see that front hip much more forward than we would like, and I'm not posting up on my front leg as much as I should be. My upper body is also hanging back to far which leads to losing a lot of leverage, more simply put as power or club head speed. The current swing is just so much better and will enable me to hit consistently better, longer golf shots.

June Swing

Current Swing

These two images just reiterate how much better my lower body is working and staying stable in my current swing as opposed to last summer. The lead leg is going a much better job of posting up, and my head is not nearly as far behind the ball as it used to be.

June Swing

Current Swing

The only other thing we are working on is my club position here, which is midway through my downswing. I had tendinitis in my left wrist in high school, and ever since then I've had a lot of trouble trying to get the club in a really good position coming down. Ideally you would like the shaft of the club to lie in between your forearms from this angle, but we are really just trying to get it to go over my right forearm because that is manageable. As you can see the club is in a much better position in my current swing as opposed to my old swing, and even though were only talking about a few inches of difference, that is quite a bit when you are talking about the golf swing.

Overall I'm very happy with the progress that I've made. I think working out a lot during the winter months is really going to help me play some better golf this year. I can't wait till the weather turns around and I can get out and play some. If you have any questions, or want any golf tips/advice don't hesitate to leave a message, I love talking golf.

As for poker updates, I played about 3 hours this morning and made like $1200. Not too bad, might play a little bit later tonight but right now I'm headed to the hospital to check on Kim's grandfather. Talk to you guys later.

Long grind today, and something that irritates me

Just got done with a pretty long day of pokering, all in all I played around 4800 hands and finished up about $800. Pretty happy with how I played except for a few miscues during the middle stretch of my day, in which I went from +$1500 to -$2k. I stayed composed and focused though and grinded my way back into the green for the day, which is always nice.

Not too many interesting hands have come up recently to talk about so I will talk about something that irritates me a lot when I'm playing. It is when someone makes a very terrible play but I have a cooler hand that no matter how badly they butcher the hand they are going to get my entire stack anyway. Here is an example of what I am talking about.

No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (5 handed) - Hold'em ManagerConverter Tool fromFlopTurnRiver.com

BB ($400)
UTG ($391.10)
Hero (MP) ($610.60)
Button ($756.50)
SB ($400)

Preflop: Hero is MP with Q, A
1 fold, Hero bets $12, 1 fold, SB raises $42, 1 fold, Hero calls $32

Flop: ($92) A, Q, 4 (2 players)
SB bets $56, Hero calls $56

Turn: ($204) 2 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $75, SB raises $300 (All-In), Hero calls $225

River: ($804) 3 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $804

Results:
SB had A, A (three of a kind, Aces).
Hero had Q, A (two pair, Aces and Queens).
Outcome: SB won $801

Its just like why can't I have like KT, JT, KJ or even AJ/AT rather than having a cooler hand where this retarded c/shove on the turn gets rewarded. I mean, what is going though the villain's head(a regular in these games as far as I know) when he c/shoves the turn. He has the deck annihilated, and he even has the Ah so no need to worry about me having Axhh. The overwhelming majority of the time on the turn i have 0-20% equity yet this villain is check/shoving and cutting off any hope of me possibly bluffing the river with who knows what. Arg.

Here is another perfect example of what I am talking about from last month.

No-Limit Hold'em, $6.00 BB (2 handed) - Hold'em ManagerConverter Tool fromFlopTurnRiver.com

BB ($1333.60)
Hero (SB) ($1294)

Preflop: Hero is SB with 3, 3
Hero bets $12, BB raises $54, Hero calls $45

Flop: ($120) 5, A, 3 (2 players)
BB bets $70, Hero raises $165, BB raises $215, Hero calls $120

Turn: ($690) 9 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $225, BB raises $988.60 (All-In), Hero calls $724 (All-In)

River: ($2588) 7 (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $2588

Results:
Hero had 3, 3 (three of a kind, threes).
BB had A, A (three of a kind, Aces).
Outcome: BB won $2627.10

I mean, lets think about this for a second. Why in the world would he ever want to c/shove the turn. Actually lets pause this discussion for a second and go back to the flop. ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? This is one of the worst boards in the world(apart from maybe A 2 2 r) to bet/3bet top set in a 3 bet pot. What in the world is he expecting me to call him with? He has all the Aces, so he must be expecting me to float him a large % of the time(?) Which seems very optimistic at best. Ok so lets just assume he is expecting me to float him a ton, so then he checks the turn to me expecting me to bet all of my floats, but then he somehow c/shoves the turn? Going back to his expectation of me floating a lot of flops(????) that would make my turn range consist of a lot of floats, and very very few value hands, just about all of which I am going to bet the river with if he c/c's the turn. So the only thing c/r'ing the turn accomplishes is again shutting me out from possibly bluffing the river and isolating himself against the range that he has coolered and was going to win money from anyway. Doesn't make much sense does it?

Anyway, that was just something that I find frustrating and then it turned into a pretty long post. But it is definitely something that you should look at in your game, and really hits on a very fundamental aspect of poker which is to always have a reason for making a certain play. Obviously the villains in the previous 2 hands had no real reasons for c/shoving the turn, they just have a very very very strong hand and want to get the money in as fast as possible not taking into account what hands that I could possibly have and trying to maximize value from them. Luckily enough for them I have a cooler hand each time and their play is rewarded but so is life. When you are analyzing and reviewing your plays, or you are at the table playing, always ask yourself "why am I doing this?" "is this the most profitable way for me to play this hand, this street?". Asking yourself these questions and being able to provide solid reasoning behind all of the plays you make will be a huge help in improving yourself as a player.

Well thats all for now, I'm off to bed. Later. Gl grinding.