Adams Rants

I must say that I’m adopting a very unorthodox method of reviewing my weekly sessions. Most peoples week starts on a Monday, or Sunday but I’m opting for Wednesday to be the beginning of my week for the purpose of these reviews? Why, I hear you ask. Well put simply, I moved over to a new skin last Wednesday, so decided that I may as well just start reviewing my sessions from then, instead of waiting for another few days :).

I started by lodging a $850 bankroll which I hoped would keep me out of trouble at $50NL. I had previously taken 4 and 5 buyin shots at $50NL and found it to be beatable but 5 buyins isn’t enough to sustain the negative variance in poker and despite running well for the first thousand or so hands each time, the doomswitch would soon be flicked and I’d find myself missing all my big draws, constantly getting outdrawn on and consequently found myself stacking off the rest of bankroll on 3-barrel 6 high bluffs! This time I swore it would be different!

The usual trend soon began to appear with me running well for the first few sessions (being up $83) before it all went wrong. I finished my first day on the new skin down a buyin. Day 2 started off as the first finished with me once again dropping a buyin on a KK vs AA hand. Maniac had the aces obviously :(. I dropped another buyin to him shortly after when I foolishly called his river overbet with TPTK. He had rivered a set :(. By the end of Day 2 I was down 3 and a half buyins, a small downswing some might say, but it wasn’t just a case of running bad - I was playing badly too. I was raising too lightly in middle position and found myself calling 3bets OOP with very vulnerable hands. I also found myself approaching the shortstacks in far too aggressive a manner. I set about tightening up in early and mid position and tackle the shortstacks in a more cautious but ultimately more effective way (I have to thank the 2+2 forums for a lot of the advice on that shortstackers).

So I began a process of rebuilding. I was very fortunate to hit a gutshot in the following hand to earn back a buyin.

Absolute Life Poker 0.25/0.50, hand converted by the iPoker Converter at Talking-Poker

saw flop | saw showdown

Button rakatam ($22.05)
SB GuardianSaint ($58.50)
BB PeppeT78 ($15.00)
UTG cesena ($22.80)
UTG+1 cannacaz ($12.90)
MP Tuomasso ($56.05)
CO-1 Hero ($65.55)
BB HUGOSPEWGO ($50.00)

Preflop: Hero is in the CO-1 with T 9
3 folds, Hero raises to 2.00, HUGOSPEWGO calls 1.50, 3 folds.

Flop (4.75) 2 K J
Hero bets 3.00, HUGOSPEWGO calls 3.00.

Turn (10.75) Q
Hero bets 7.00, HUGOSPEWGO calls 7.00.

River (24.75) A
Hero checks, HUGOSPEWGO moves all-in for 38.00, Hero calls 38.00

Hero shows T 9
HUGOSPEWGO shows K A

Hero wins 100.75 with A straight, Ace high.

I soon lost it though with Q8 on the button when I stacked off when my middle pair was no good against a turned house on a 55QK board :S. Horrible play! The next thousand or so hands were all steady going. I didn’t lose to much and constantly plugged away at the blinds while also picking up a few nice pots with some fortuitous flopped sets.

It wasn’t until today that I finally got back into the green, starting the day flopping a flush in the first hand I played on the button when I raised with 89c and the flop came J47c and he called my bets all the way with KJ with all the money going in when the K hit the river! I picked up another buyin when I hit bottom set with 33 and called the villains cbet on a rainbow flop. He hit his ace on the turn and stacked off with his A5!

So here are my stats for the end of the week:

Hands: 2539
VP$IP: 17.57%
PFR: 13.4%
AF: 2.91 (6.13/3.05/1.59)
Att. To Steal: 37.12%
W$WSF: 41.52%
Total Won/Lost: $103.37 (4.09 ptbb/100)
Cashback and Bonus: Approx $40

Net Profit/Loss: $143.37

Well I missed my usual date for reporting my progress last week because I was too busy getting my Leaving Certificate results and binge drinking for the entire day! For those that are interested, I got 365 points which is statistically an above average leaving cert but when I compare the points I got to the amount of effort I put in then I can safely say that my return on effort was exceptionally high! How does this affect my life? Well come October I’ll be studying Marketing in the local “university level” Institute of Technology for the next four years. The main advantage of this regarding my poker playing is that I’ll be living at home and will therefore still have access to the Internet and be able to play.

I’m currently running along very smoothly and I’m pleased to say that last week saw me make my first every final table in a MTT - a $1500 Value Guarantee Tournament - which I went on to win! I earned $300 for that which is a massive return considering the tournament cost $1 to enter, I didn’t need to rebuy and purchased my addon at the end of the rebuy period bringing my total investment to $2!

Going into the first tournament break, I was only slightly above the average chip amount but I was patient, played my cards and picked my spots and found myself to be one of the chipleaders going into the second break! It nearly all fell apart in the mid-late stage of the tournament when I found AA for the first time in the tournament and induced an all-in bet preflop from a villain who turned over KK and hit his King on the flop taking around 70% of my stack with it! I had, up to this point, been playing tight and picked up the blinds whenever I sensed weakness but now with the relatively short stack I found myself having to take risks and on several occasions found myself at the wrong side of 70-30 situations which I somehow wiggled my way out of! Once I built up my stack again and as play approached the bubble, I found myself being able to steal blinds at will and soar onto the final table with a healthy chip lead. I knocked out 6 (I think) of the final table to go heads-up against a relatively short stacked opponent. I soon became the shortstack as I ran into AK and AA in consecutive hands but recovered through aggressive play and finally knocked the villain out for my biggest poker win yet when my ATs topped his A9o!

At the end of the week I decided to revert back to cash play but played very poorly and was down $30 (~150 buyins) within an hour and concluded that I should stick to Sit N Go’s and MTTs if as I had found them to be both great value for money and great fun to play. I may opt to go back to cash table play in the future, in fact I may have to by necessity as Cash play is very popular in the card rooms here, but for now I feel that as long as I’m making money playing tournaments then I shouldn’t change a thing!

Today I played my first bit of poker since Friday. I opted for 2 $5 dollar 6-Max Sit N Go’s as I find that there are a lot of soft players who are willing to gamble at the early stages who make it much easier to reach the money. I don’t mind letting one gambler double-up at the expense of another in the early stages as I feel that I can play better poker than them in the long run and overcome their chip dominance and topple them when playing heads-up. I won both the Sit N Go’s, netting $21 from each! I had been having mixed success in the Sit N Go’s last week when I started playing them but I now believe that I have adapted my game to counter the trends and styles of play that I’m encountering on the tables which is ultimately turning me into a more profitable player!

Following my two Sit N Go victories, I decided to enter into the $1500 Value Guarantee Tournament on VCPoker which had a $3 buyin with unlimited rebuys within the first hour, an optional addon at the first break and a field of 80 players. The first few levels were very hectic as players were going all-in with almost ATC. I read that the logic behind this is that you are pumping the table full of chips which (as the supposedly better poker player) you intend on winning back after the rebuy period has lapsed. While I’m sure that this strategy does work from time to time, I believe that winning the chips from the rebuying players through tight play is a sounder and more profitable way of playing (well, certainly at this level it is). Once again I was playing tight poker and was picking my spots to steal the blinds. I was very happy that I brought the best hand to the showdown in 100% of my shown hands within the first two breaks. I was the chip leader going into the 3rd hour of play but suffered a few bad beats and made a few bad calls which probably affected my table image resulting in me being unable to steal as many blinds as I would have liked. I still controlled over 15% of the chips at the bubble and was placed 4th until I called an all-in bet by the short stack with my pocket tens only to have another shortstack reraise all-in with QJ. He hit his Queen on the flop and a forth club on the river gave him his flush.

This meant that I was in less than satisfactory shape going onto the final table. I was 7th in chips with 28,000 bu the blinds were 5k/10k and when play started at the final table I found myself UTG+1 meaning the blinds were going to nip me in the arse and decimate my remaining stack within 3 hands. I folded my first hand, a hand that resulted in a player being knocked out, but decided to push all-in with Ts7s UTG while I still had the ability to push people off hands. I figured that if I could pick up the blinds here, I would be able to survive another orbit, giving me a chance to pick up some playable hands or result in some of the other shortstacks being eliminated. Needless to say, my push was folded all the way round to the chip leader on the button who called with pocket kings. The flop gave him a set, the turn gave me a gutshot draw but the river was a blank, and so I finished up in 9th place for $45!

So overall it’s been a very successful fortnight for me. Unfortunately iPoker doesn’t provide any tournament summaries so it’s nigh on impossible for me to calculate how much I have won/lost using any method other than: adding my current NETeller balance (€344.05) and my current poker account balance (€27.03). When I do this, I get €371.08!. So after three weeks, I am over a third of the way to completing my goal and as college looms I’m starting to realise that the €1k could very well come in handy in the very near future!