Adams Rants

So I decided to play for about an hour before I go to work (as in my actual job). At the end of the session, I’m down 5 buyins. Don’t really think I could have played the hands differently, running bottom two pair (QJ) into a set of aces (in a standard 2bet pot) which then became quads. Then I ran my flopped set of jacks into a flopped straight on a A-J-K two tone board. I lost another buyin when I turned top two pair against a terrible player who hit a flush and got paid from me. I think the best of all was a relatively short player (50BB’s) calling my overbet on a flop of TTT with A2 of diamonds and hitting runner runner for a flush, kicking my AK to the curb! Oh and on the last hand I squeezed from the BB with 9T of spades after UTG raised and got 3 callers. Only the button called and we got it all in on a flop of 9T5. He had 55.

I perhaps could have managed to pry myself away from one or two of the hands, but literally every big hand I was dealt, I lost, although I did manage to flop a set of deuces from the BB in a BvB pot. He paid off my half pot-sized bets until I boated up on the river and he check folded to my value bet.

It seems that during the day iPoker is full of complete nits. I think I’m pretty well acclimatised to exploiting nits given that I spent a year playing at the full ring tables and today was just cooler after cooler which is pretty hard to take, especially given my positive outlook last night! I must admit that it’s growing ever more difficult to just take them on the chin and move on…

Today was another intensive day of “grinding” (read “losing my bollocks”), putting in 3998 hands. I posted a while back that I was playing up to 8 tables to try and get myself into as many awkward and unique situations as possible. I now realise that this is far from the optimal approach as I haven’t been able to apply me thought process to as many hands as I wanted to. This resulted in a) not being able to extract value from my big hands due to taking a standard bet-bet-bet line more suited to full ring and b) not paying enough attention to spot set miners, hence some of my biggest losing hands have been AA-KK-QQ and I found myself constantly calling turn check raise all-ins versus nits on dry boards. Also I’d like to add that having 8 tables open isn’t ideal when you’re prone to tilting and I’m certainly guilty of injecting the $20NL economy with some easy cash! Anyway, I’ve decided to drop to 4 tables as I feel I concentrate better there. I may not get in as many hands leading to decreased amounts of rakeback but at least I’ll have a positive winrate which is far better than being a break even/losing multi-tabler.

Today’s session started at 11am and the very first hand saw me being dealt QQ and getting it all in on a ten high, two tone flop vs a 52/49/8 maniac who felted KT. A King on the turn led me to think that this was going to be another one of those days! I wasn’t far off, suffering some fairly horrendous beats (try getting 55 all-in against AQ on a 5QJ board only for iPoker to rustle up a runner runner Ace combo!). I also ran my boats into quads twice which never ceases to be frustrating! At one point I was down $197 which is just shy of 10 buyins… a considerable amount given that it was around lunchtime!

I then began my comeback, hitting a nice run of cards which even allowed me to get my money in bad on occasion and come out trumps which is proof that I don’t always run like Christy Brown down a flight of stairs! During this upswing my set % jumped from 4%, all the way up to 11%, still slightly below expectation but an improvement nonetheless. During this time I flopped quad sixes AND quad Kings and almost got paid both times! However, just as I broke even, I lost a few buyins in quick succession and once again found myself chasing for the day! Things went from bad to worse, dropping another 8 buyins before taking a break for dinner!

When I got back, I just loaded up 4 tables and found myself playing much better. I was running well, flopping two-pair on more than one occasion in 3bet pots. When I wasn’t able to flop monsters, I was able to read my opponents well, extracting value from my hands as well as being able to getaway from hands when I was beat. Something that I find myself being able to apply much better when only 4 tabling is interpreting “timing tells”. It’s more than difficult to do when the first time I observe an opponents action is when I’m about to time out myself!

So, how did I end my day? Slightly down I’m afraid, but that’s excluding rakeback so I’m up about $8 for the day which isn’t bad considering I was down 10buyins at one stage! You could argue that my time could be spent doing better things, but today I learnt that I’m capable of bringing back 10buyin swings in the one session when I put my mind to it. So in the coming days that’s exactly what I’m going to focus on doing – putting my mind to it! Coupled with dropping down to 4 tables, I hope to be able to crush the games in the coming days!

Before I go, I’ll leave you with my graph for the day! Oh and if anybody wants to exchange blog links, leave your address as a comment!

Never before have I felt like crying after playing poker, but today saw me took beat after beat, routinely being one-outed, running set into set and missing every combo draw imaginable! It really was tough mentally as I played over 5000 hands today, playing between 6 and 8 tables at all times. There’s no doubt about it that the high number of tables affect my ability to read the table dynamic properly and make correct decisions but I have definitely improved in this regard and I actually felt on top of my game today taking in as much information as I could in what little idle time I had between hands I was involved in!

My day got off to a good start until I checked K8 in the BB after the button flat called. The flop came 886 and I checked and called his small bet. The turn brought a flush draw and I check/raised him. He called. The river was the K of hearts completing the flush but giving me a full house. I value bet it, hoping to be raised which I am, I push over the top and he calls with KK to have rivered the nuts thanks to a one outer!

After that I just couldn’t get paid off with my big hands no matter how I tried to play them. I had to laugh when I was in the BB with pocket aces only to have it folded into me, not once but twice in a matter of minutes and that was on a maniac table where chips were flying into pots every other hand! The “highlight” of the day had to be when I lost 5 buyins within a minute! I was dealt AA on three tables simultaneously and pocket pairs on another three! I hit sets with all my pocket pairs and the chips went flying in only to run into over sets on two tables and into a flopped straight on the other! Sick! As for my aces, well I got all three allin preflop only to run into a flush and straight respectively. I did manage to bust a shortstack for $4 though!

From there on in it was a struggle to keep playing but I grinded it out and eventually managed to manoeuvre my way back up to being roundabout breakeven if I include my rakeback! Either way, 5000 hands to breakeven at a level I should be crushing is just soul destroying!