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.

The poker gods reward me for returning to blogging?

Haha, obviously the poker gods could care less about me updating this blog but they did do me a bit of a favor yesterday. They gave me some of my EV back and quite a bit of run good resulting in me winning just over 12 buy ins at 2/4 yesterday in about 3k hands. I ran really really well for the first session in quite a while and it felt amazing. This month was going good before and is now going great. I feel much more focused when playing, thinking though decisions more thoroughly and definitely tailoring my game much more to the specific opponent that I am up against in a particular hand. This has led to some great results this month, winning 9.2bb/100 over a little more than 30k hands. I hope to put in at least another 30k hands as I'm trying to up the amount of hours I put in and hopefully I can keep my winrate above 8bb/100. That would be great.

As for other things, our new mattress and living room set was delivered to our condo today. I really dislike the fact that moving companies give such large windows for delivery time. Like our mattress delivery was scheduled for between 2 and 7 pm, and the living room was to be delivered between 1 and 5 pm. I wasn't looking forward to sitting in an apartment all day waiting for those deliveries. Luckily for me the mattress came earlier than expected, and then the living room came shortly after and I was only sitting there for an hour or 2. Not to bad. I cant wait to see what the condo will look like when it is fully furnished, and I will post pictures on here when that finally happens.

On the golf front things are really starting to come around. My swing looks night and day different from last summer and I finally got a copy of my swing so I can post that here in the next couple of days, showing you a before and after as well as detailing the things that we are working on.

On a more serious note, my fiance's grandfather is going to undergo open heart surgery on Thursday, so say a prayer or have him in your thoughts. Typically open heart surgery is a fairly trivial operation, with a risk rate of 1-2% but given that he is 88 years old the risk obviously increases with age, so we can only hope everything goes according to plan.

That's all for now, ill talk to you guys later.

Been a while....

It sure has been a while since I've updated here, mostly because January was a very frustrating month. There was a lot of up and down, and unfortunately the month ended on a down. Not a great start to the year. Since then things have been going alright. Ive been fairly busy getting the final details of my wedding finished up. I'm getting married on March 6th, and I'm really looking forward to it. After the wedding I'll also be moving to a new condo and then heading on a nice honeymoon in St. Lucia. I cant wait, should be a blast.

As far as poker is concerned, due to a crappy January and having to withdraw some money for taxes/wedding I've decided to play 2/4 until I make 50 buy ins. It's going pretty well so far, I've been putting in a decent amount of volume but I would really like to get to around 25-30 hours per week, I'm around 20 hours per week right now. I'm working with a new coach and I like where things are going with him, I look forward to seeing where the hard work I put into to stepping up my game will pay off.

So far this month I've played 26k hands and I'm up like $5500 at 2/4 for a decent win rate of 5.3bb/100. My goal for the stretch that it took me to win 50 buy ins was to have a winrate above 8bb/100 and currently my ev bb/100 is at 9.28 (im running like 10 buy ins below expectation) so hopefully I will be around 8bb/100 when its all said and done. I feel like I'm playing very well this month other than a blunder maybe a couple times per session. Im in a good mindset and I hope that maybe I can knock out these 50 buy'ins before my wedding.

That's all I got for now. I'll keep you guys updated on my progress. Talk to you later.