Some hands

Here´s another update update with some interesting hands against a fairly aggressive opponent I played yesterday.

First hand against him. He was really getting out of line by now and 3betting around 15%-20% from the blinds I guess. I'm still not sure of I made the right decision here on the river, but he's river bet was fairly instant so my guess is, that he had me beat.

***** Hand History for Game 4856828776 ***** (Everest)
$400.00 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Thursday, July 23, 09:43:27 ET 2009
Table Bamako0 (Real Money)
Seat 6 is the button
Seat 1: XXX ( $735.80 USD )
Seat 2: -OSFC- ( $517.40 USD )
Seat 3: tomazino91 ( $266.00 USD )
Seat 4: WitteCondor ( $404.80 USD )
Seat 5: p0kerf1st ( $400.00 USD )
Seat 6: BldZwtTrn ( $727.50 USD )
XXX posts small blind [$2.00 USD].
-OSFC- posts big blind [$4.00 USD].
Dealt to BldZwtTrn [ As Qd ]
** Dealing down cards **
tomazino91 folds
WitteCondor folds
BldZwtTrn raises [$10.00 USD]
XXX raises [$32.00 USD]
-OSFC- folds
BldZwtTrn calls [$24.00 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ Qs, 2d, Kd ]
XXX bets [$65.00 USD]
BldZwtTrn calls [$65.00 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 7d ]
XXX bets [$155.00 USD]
BldZwtTrn calls [$155.00 USD]
** Dealing River ** [ 4c ]
XXX bets [$481.80 USD]
BldZwtTrn folds
XXX wins $481.80 USD
XXX wins $510.00 USD from main pot

Second hand is another hand against this guy. Don´t think I can play it any different.

***** Hand History for Game 4856880480 ***** (Everest)
$400.00 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Thursday, July 23, 09:57:10 ET 2009
Table Bamako3 (Real Money)
Seat 3 is the button
Seat 1: Niwle ( $1272.90 USD )
Seat 2: YELLOP777 ( $495.00 USD )
Seat 3: XXX ( $398.00 USD )
Seat 4: p0kerf1st ( $396.00 USD )
Seat 5: BldZwtTrn ( $915.30 USD )
Seat 6: dreamer_ ( $68.00 USD )
p0kerf1st posts small blind [$2.00 USD].
BldZwtTrn posts big blind [$4.00 USD].
Dealt to BldZwtTrn [ As Jd ]
** Dealing down cards **
dreamer_ folds
YELLOP777 folds
XXX raises [$14.00 USD]
p0kerf1st folds
BldZwtTrn raises [$40.00 USD]
XXX calls [$30.00 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ 9d, 4c, 3s ]
BldZwtTrn bets [$56.00 USD]
XXX calls [$56.00 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ Js ]
BldZwtTrn bets [$125.00 USD]
XXX raises [$298.00 USD]
BldZwtTrn calls [$173.00 USD]
BldZwtTrn shows [As, Jd ]
XXX shows [9c, 8c ]
** Dealing River ** [ 7c ]
BldZwtTrn wins $796.00 USD from main pot

Third hand against him. He was really getting out of line with 3bets from the blinds by now (15%-20%). Not the best river, cause my thought on the turn was that het had complete air here, but this river could have helped him with some of his air hands, but his timing made me call this river.

***** Hand History for Game 4856997007 ***** (Everest)
$400.00 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Thursday, July 23, 10:30:51 ET 2009
Table Bamako0 (Real Money)
Seat 6 is the button
Seat 1: XXX ( $682.20 USD )
Seat 2: -OSFC- ( $724.80 USD )
Seat 3: tomazino91 ( $915.40 USD )
Seat 4: sirpaul ( $382.00 USD )
Seat 5: p0kerf1st ( $416.70 USD )
Seat 6: BldZwtTrn ( $511.40 USD )
XXX posts small blind [$2.00 USD].
-OSFC- posts big blind [$4.00 USD].
Dealt to BldZwtTrn [ 6c 6s ]
** Dealing down cards **
tomazino91 calls [$4.00 USD]
sirpaul folds
p0kerf1st folds
BldZwtTrn raises [$18.00 USD]
XXX raises [$48.00 USD]
-OSFC- folds
tomazino91 folds
BldZwtTrn calls [$32.00 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ 5s, 7s, 7c ]
XXX bets [$80.00 USD]
BldZwtTrn calls [$80.00 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 2d ]
XXX bets [$150.00 USD]
BldZwtTrn calls [$150.00 USD]
** Dealing River ** [ Kc ]
XXX bets [$402.20 USD]
BldZwtTrn calls [$231.40 USD]
XXX wins $170.80 USD
XXX shows [Tc, 9h ]
BldZwtTrn shows [6c, 6s ]
BldZwtTrn wins $1027.80 USD from main pot

In the fourth hand, my initial thought/read was good, but I should have changed that read when he instant raised the river. This guy had what u call a huge timing tell, because he always thought about bluffs and made valuebets/raises instant....
But I was stupid to stick with my plan and snapcalled his river raise.....big mistake.

***** Hand History for Game 4857057693 ***** (Everest)
$400.00 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Thursday, July 23, 10:50:37 ET 2009
Table Bamako3 (Real Money)
Seat 1 is the button
Seat 1: Niwle ( $883.40 USD )
Seat 2: FuckMountain ( $396.00 USD )
Seat 3: tobestar11 ( $408.90 USD )
Seat 4: p0kerf1st ( $592.00 USD )
Seat 5: BldZwtTrn ( $966.60 USD )
Seat 6: XXX ( $947.60 USD )
FuckMountain posts small blind [$2.00 USD].
tobestar11 posts big blind [$4.00 USD].
Dealt to BldZwtTrn [ Ac Jc ]
** Dealing down cards **
p0kerf1st folds
BldZwtTrn raises [$14.00 USD]
XXX calls [$14.00 USD]
Niwle folds
FuckMountain folds
tobestar11 folds
** Dealing Flop ** [ Js, 6c, 4s ]
BldZwtTrn bets [$24.00 USD]
XXX raises [$88.00 USD]
BldZwtTrn calls [$64.00 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ Qd ]
BldZwtTrn checks
XXX checks
** Dealing River ** [ 6h ]
BldZwtTrn bets [$40.00 USD]
XXX raises [$300.00 USD]
BldZwtTrn calls [$260.00 USD]
XXX shows [6s, 5s ]
BldZwtTrn doesn't show [Ac, Jc ]
XXX wins $807.00 USD from main pot


Other EVP players who want to know his name, just PM me, as far as I know he's not dutch (hungarian it says in his profile...)

Cruel game

It's been a while since I updated this blog. Yesterday after another unfortunate session I noticed that my latest blog update was about a huge upswing I had during the end of 2008.
Usually I'm not that superstitious, but by posting all those beats I gave away I probably triggered some sort of doomswith.
So hopefully this post will turn it around again :-)

As you can understand I'm going through a very though stretch of hands. During those 2,5 years I played poker I always had periods of weeks (50k-70K hands) where I run bad, just as I had periods where I run superhot.
The last 3,5 months though are the worst I ever had. I'm playing around break-even now for around 200K hands, which is far more then I ever thought was possible in the games I play.

People always ask the reason behind this long stretch. Is it the financial crisis that is affecting the poker games? Has my luck run out? Are other players adjusting better to my game? Am I playing worse? Or is it just bad luck.....

It's difficult to answer those questions because it's obviously very easy to blame it all to badluck, but it's probably a mix from a lot of things.
Games are tougher then a year ago thats for sure, but especially the last 6 weeks I had tons of very good tables and lots of fish.
One problem is that there are just less (good) games running above NL600 and so you see a lot of good players moving down in stakes.
It's not that players have become so much better, it's more that there are more of them in comparison with the bad players.

Offcourse when I'm running this bad for so long, I'm not always playing my best game anymore, but I think I'm doing quite ok here, at least not tilting buy-ins away, but just some not so good calls and some missed value bets, but nothing spectacular.
Where I had a period of like 30 winning days in a row at the end of 2008, I now haven't won more then 3 days in a row for like 4 months.

Even though I played so much hands already I still underestimated how big variance can be in poker, so I'm quite happy I always had a very strict bankroll management, because I don't have to worry about going broke or having to move down in stakes.

I'm not going to post any hands or graphs, because it speaks for itselfs.

All I want to say is, don't ever underestimate how bad u can run, because it can always get worse.

See ya at the tables!