First Post: About Yesterday

NOTE: In this poker blog, I will be attempting to keep track of my wins & losses, important hands, and discuss different strategies for everything from SnGs to MTTs to PLO Cash Games. I consider myself to be pretty bad at NLHE cash games, so I probably won't try to offer to much strategy there.

So yesterday was an amazing day for me poker-wise. From the moment I woke up, I knew it was going to be a good day. I woke up to discover that FTP had deposited $27.99 into my account. (This was from last Thurs. when I double cashed and then the site went down. I guess Full Tilt decided that I should still get my money for double cashing even though I got my buiy-in back. I think part of the reason for this was because I emailed them and told them that I pretty much had given up hope on getting my double cash money, but that I just wanted it to count as a double cash for the stats on the FTP website. I want to get on that leaderboard!!!!) So anyways, I thought I had my english final at 2PM, but when I checked my email, I realized it wasn't until thurs. SCORE! So being the degen that I am, I decided I'd commit the day to poker. First I looked around for some large field MTTs to get into, but considering it was like 11AM on a Tues., I didn't have much to choose from. I finally decided that I would play some PLO Cash games, since I've been experimenting with the capped PLO tables on FTP. I decided to go a little above my bankroll and play 50MAX/20CAP PLO. This turned out to be a great idea, as I hit a bunch of hands and pretty much all of them held up. Quickly the $220 or so in my account was around $280. At this point I decided that I was going to take a shot at some higher buy-in tourneys later that evening, when I got home from my night final. I went onto the TalkingPoker forum to try to find someone to help me transfer $50 over from FTP to Stars, so that I could play the 50k guarantee that night at 9:30 PM. Fildy was nice enough to help me out, and then I went back to the PLO tables on FTP for another round.

Round 2 went just as nicely and I quickly won a couple more pots for $25-$40 each. Here's one critical hand that was pretty interesting. Quite a cooler for the other 2 players.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1830270

After making another $60 or so, I decided to try to get another $50 onto Stars, to make sure that my playing a $50 tourney later that evening wouldn't hurt my bankroll to bad. Fildy was again nice enough to help me out. (Thanks Fildy!)

At this point I took a break from the action to go to my last robotics class. The class was pretty cool, we got to use VEX Robotics kits (http://www.vexlabs.com) to design robots for a competition. We had to push a cart of golf balls like 20 feet and then had to pick the balls up and put them in certain containers for different point values. The competition was last week and my team won. Our robot had one of those kids claw toy thingys modified to run by remote control. It was pretty nerdy but really cool and a lot of fun to play with. Yeah, that's right folks, I'm getting college credit for this, pretty sweet, huh? The video of the competition will probably be up on youtube soon, so I will probably post a link on here when it goes up.

We got out of class with plenty of time for me to get home for the 9PM Daily Doubles. I got home and registered for those, and then had second thoughts about whether to play in the 50k guarantee or not. Eventually I decided to flip a coin, which resulted in me registering. The Daily Doubles went pretty badly for me. In DDA, after doubling up on the 5th hand , I ran my AA into KK only to see a K on the flop. So much for doubling up early. In DDB, pretty much the same thing happened when I ran my JJ into QQ to bubble 8 people out of the money. Oh well.

At this point I was about 2 hours into the 50k guarantee, and I was really struggling to get anything going. For the first hour or so, I was pretty card dead, but I managed to pick up a few crucial pots right before the second break to get a 12k stack(12k was the average at the time).

Here was the two crucial hands to get me up to 12k:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1830323
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1830332

I was hovering around 13k in chips with the blinds at 400/800 when I got moved to a new table. Across the table was the first name I recognized from all of the tables I'd been to so far, Zugwat. This player is one of the top ranked online, and I knew he would probably cause me trouble, since he had just taken over the chiplead shortly before I moved to the table.
Shortly after, I was able to pick up this pot and double up to around 20k.
I ran cardless for awhile, while observing Zugwat play very aggressively, raising a large percentage of pots. I picked up TT against him, and decided to push 17k more over his 2k raise preflop, he quickly folded. In retrospect, I probably shouldve only raised about 6k more, but I think Zugwat wouldve realized I was commiting myself either way. Who knows how the hand wouldve played out had I played it differently. I guess I was just a little scared to get into a post-flop situation with a player that I know is much better than me. ( those interested, here is that hand: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1830356

Shortly after this, I saw Zugwat show down A2s against AQo. He managed to river a 2 to pick up the pot, but it got me thinking that if I could pick up some sort of hand, I could have a nice shot to double through him. My only hope was that I didn't already blow that chance when I had the TT.

In my bustout hand, I was in the BB for 1200 with 55. Zugwat came in for a raise from middle position to 3125, and I went all in for 15k more. Zugwat snap called with AQd and flopped an A. gg, cashed for $108 but a disappointing finish nonetheless. Here is that hand for those interested: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1830385 . I'm curious to see if people agree with my push. I basically figured there was about a 60% chance that he would've folded, since I knew he was raising a pretty wide range. When he called it wasn't all bad since we were slightly ahead at 52%/48%. At this point in a tournament, I feel like this isn't a bad place to try to double up, especially when there is a big stack at your table calling off fairly lightly. At this point, I've made $100 or so (50 profit but whatever), and I need to make the top 27 top make at least $300. Of course my goal is to make the Final Table and eventually win the tourney. When you look at it this way, it becomes clear that I need to take a few gambles to try to get up into that top 27 and eventually top 9, where all the money is. Had I waited a little longer, I wouldv'e probably gotten blinded down to around 15k or so before getting into an all-in situation. Had I won that, I still would only be around 30k, just slightly ahead of where I am now. If I win this double up, however, I will be around 40k and around 50th place in the tourney. In my opinion, at this point in the tourney, that 10k in chips makes a big difference.


After busting out of that tourney, I decided to play a little more PLO cash before going to bed. The Capped tables were no longer active, so I decided to sit at the regular 50max PLO game.

Here's my biggest PLO hand of the day to wrap up this blog post: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1830435

So yea, that was yesterday. I ended up making around $200 or so I think, though I'm not exactly sure of a number since I was sending money here and there and playing this and that. Something I need to do more in the future is keep track of my exact wins and losses, so hopefullt this blog will help me with that.

That's a lot of words. I'm pretty certain my average blog post will be much shorter, but yesterday was an interesting day, and there was a lot to write about.

Anyways, thanks for reading!