Time for a break

I've been playing poker now for about 5,5 months non-stop (since February 13th).
During this period I maybe took 5 days off (besides the weekends offcourse) and played for over 700 hours of poker. In those 700 hours hours I played 420K hands. So it's not really strange that I'm looking forward to a poker break.

So on sunday we wil leave for two weeks to Iceland. We've rented a car there and the whole trip is planned by an iceland specialist, because I've no idea what's nice to see there, but from what I've heard it's a very special country.
One of the things we're planning on doing is whale whatching in Husavik, which claims to be the best place in Europe to whatch whales.

Pokerwise everthing is still going great although in July I noticed that I'm playing break-even on NL200 for 30K hands, which could be variance but it could also mean that I'm not playing my best game there anymore cause I'm just way overrolled for it and losing a buy-in doesn't hurt me at all.
At NL400 my winrate over the last 50K hands is a little bit more then 5.

The problem with NL400 is that during the times I play it's just not possible to find 8 tables running. Occasionally I play in the evening/night and then there are a lot more games runnig so maybe I should change my playing scheme a little after my vacation so that I can play NL400 and a little bit of NL1000 only.

July only:
Hands played : 60,822
$ Won in cashgames : $15,403
PTBB/100 : 3,40 (6,10 @ NL400 and 1.30 @ NL200)
MT ratio : 7,35
Hourly win rate: $176,55

Playing a lot again

Finally an update again. Im trying to play a lot of hands this month.
Games are really soft somehow the last month. Some new players are playing the 400 tables but some of them are really terrible, so that's nice for me and therefor I'm trying to play at least 80K hands this month and so far I'm about half way.

Then somebody asked me something about setvalue in the comments. I think this is a very interesting subject as a lot of players are using it incorrectly.
When you hold a PP like 22 the chance that you will make a set on the flop is roughly 12% (1 in 8). So a lot of the time you read that if it will cost you less then 10% of your stack you should call a raise with 22.

The problem is that IF you hit a set you should stack your opponent like 90% of the time and that's not gonna happen for sure. Especially with the very agressive pre-flop games nowadays, re-raising ranges are much wider then just AA/KK.
The paradox of this wider range is that, in my opinion your calling range (especially OOP) should be smaller.
On the other hand when I real tight player (for example a 20/3/2 player) re-raises you, it's basically good to call with any PP or SC (as long as the hand has implied odds), so muck KQ as fast as you can for example).

Another example is when your in the BB and an agressive TAG, who steals 32%, opens from the button. It's probably -EV to call here with 22-66 if your planning on check/folding any non-set flop. Instead u should raise or fold here. The problem is that 88% of the time you check/fold the flop and of those 12% that u do hit a lot of the time the button is playing junk like K8s and you pick up his c-bet only.

July only:
Hands played : 35,659
$ Won in cashgames : $10,679
PTBB/100 : 4,27 (8.20 @ NL400 and 1.99 @ NL200)
MT ratio : 7,51
Hourly win rate: $204,84

Swingy day

Today was one of the most swingy days in a while.
Finally I played a lot again (5400 hands), but I was running so bad again in the morning. I lost 3 set over sets in about 1,5 hour. In the end of the afternoon I was down 8 buy-ins on NL200.....Then in the evening I played NL400 only (games are so much easier then, playing 8 juicy NL400 is easily doable. So I won 5 buy-ins back in the evening and ended the day about $250 in the plus...SHIPPPP IT.

'worst' month since I turned pro

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June was a swingy month again. I started the month with 30K hands of breakeven and then had a massive upswing. The last days of the month I've been playing not so great poker. Paying off river bets when I know I'm beat etc, etc...
Overall I still managed to make about $15K in about 100 hours of play, so that's about average (looking to hourly rate).

I also want to point out an interesting post on Brian Townsend's blog, he points out the difference between a mediocre and a great player. The example below is a very good one to think about.

"An example of this would be if you were playing someone HU and raised preflop. The flop came down Kh Qh 2c you hold A8o and bet the pot and are called. The turn brings the 5 of clubs and your opponent checks and you check. The river brings another five and your opponent bets pot. Many players would say I have ace high I fold and if they held QJo instead they might say I have middle pair I call. But the best players realize that these two hands have the same value on the river as an opponent value betting a queen is unlikely. I feel mediocre players would be more likely to call with the queen and top players would call equally with both hands. This is one of the little things that I look for when I am up against a new opponent, and to be honest very very few players call with QJ as often at A8 in that scenario, probably myself included, but the truly great ones call equally with both hands."

I tried to find an example of a hand like this in my own database and think the hand below is also a good example of were lots of players probably call more times with a hand like A6/99 (myself included) then with A high, but they both have about the same showdown value (not completely true, cause villian could be 'bluffing' with 77), but villian often has air or close to the nuts (an 8 or 34) here, he is not value betting mediocre hands on a board like this.

So I'm not sure you should call equally with A9/99 here, as 99 has some values against worse bluffing hands (77), but I do think that the balance between a call with 99 and A9 is far out of line with most players.

EverestPoker Game #1741766955: Table Bamako-6 - $2.00/$4.00 - No Limit Hold'em - 16:44:58 - 2007/06/30
Seat 2: BldZwtTrn ($545.00)
Seat 3: merwin ($467.00)
Seat 4: marcko1983 ($400.00)
Seat 5: camaleones ($116.80)
merwin posts the small blind of $2.00
marcko1983 posts the big blind of $4.00
The button is in seat #2
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to BldZwtTrn[Ac 9c]
camaleones calls $4.00
BldZwtTrn raises to $18.00
merwin folds
marcko1983 folds
camaleones calls $14.00
*** FLOP *** [8d 6c 5h]
camaleones checks
BldZwtTrn checks
*** TURN *** [8d 6c 5h] [2d]
camaleones bets $28.00
BldZwtTrn calls $28.00
*** RIVER *** [8d 6c 5h 2d] [8h]
camaleones bets $70.80 and is all-in
BldZwtTrn calls $70.80
*** SHOW DOWN ***
camaleones shows [Tc Ks]
BldZwtTrn shows [Ac 9c]
*** SUMMARY ***
Board: [8d 6c 5h 2d 8h]
BldZwtTrn collects $237.60

June only:
Hands played : 64,050
$ Won in cashgames : $14,668
PTBB/100 : 4,01
MT ratio : 6,99
Hourly win rate: $143,80