Played some pool last night

Yet another day off. Decided to go and hit some balls at Brian's with my friend Jensen so I have no update for poker.

I would however like to talk about how things at the pool hall have gone downhill since I used to hang out there a couple of years ago. I grabbed a table, but when I got there, I realized that half the table lights were out which made the table really dark near the foot of the table. I went to the front desk to let them know about the problem and to ask them if they could take a look at the lights.

After about 20 minutes, a couple of the security guards went to another table with some new lights. I went to ask them if they could look at our table first since we were actually playing on the table. They said they would be right over, but an hour later, no one had come to look at the lights. We eventually moved tables, but no one ever went to look at the lights on our original table and that just irritated me.

I guess I was upset because this was a perfect example of how the pool hall has gone downhill over the past few years. It's a pool hall dammit, the lighting on the table makes a huge difference. Maintenance of the equipment should be a top priority, but instead, I felt like everyone I talked to didn't understand what I was talking about or why I thought it was such a big deal. Them acting like they didn't care pissed me off even more.

Something like this would never have happened with previous management. They understood that making sure that the tables were in good shape was a top priority. I guess I'm just not used to seeing the pool hall in the kind of shape that it's in now. It makes me sad that it seems like no one cares. I used to spend a lot of time at the pool hall in the past and I hate to see it going to crap.

Night Off

Was planning to put in a 4 table session last night, but decided to take the night off from playing. I'm pretty sure I will be putting time in tonight unless we decide to go an play pool or something.

6-max

Was down about a buy in two tabling full ring earlier, so I 2ecided to 3 table short handed. I guess part of the reason I chose to switch to short handed is that my HUD looks so jacked up when I play full ring. Maybe I'll post a picture of it in the near future.

It was a fairly long session. I started up down a buy-in, but cards cooperated when I needed them to and it looks like i'm going to end up winning a little if I don't do something monumentally stupid in the next couple of hands.

I bought a hell of a lot of $.35 pots tonight. While it does kill action, I think the important thing is getting the lead in the hand the times when you do have a caller. Crappy thing is that like Jensen said, 85% of the time, everyone folds.

284 minutes
1119 hands
+9.25

Short Handed Play

Decided to change things up a bit and played short handed yesterday afternoon. Nothing really exciting happened, but the dynamics of the game were faster than I was used to.

I've generally been apprehensive playing shorthanded. I really think that the way I used to play was really not good for it. Well, it wasn't a good way to play in general. My discomfort in changing my game to be more aggressive was magnified by playing short handed.

I actually think that my game right now is a bit too aggressive with my session AF hitting 4 or greater at times which just begs for people to slow play me. I also know that I'm still looking at too many hands in and out of position which are getting me into trouble when I catch a part of the flop with a less than marginal hand and I'm too stubborn to let it go when there's action.

196 minutes
519 hands
23.43 bb/100
+$30.40
9.30/hr

Saturday Update

Played only a short session on Friday that ended up 1.25.

Played two sessions yesterday, morning and evening, at a net loss, but still nothing major. I still think that I played alright, and again, I'm happy that I didn't end up tilting one or two stacks away after what I felt were one or two brutal beats.

I don't have th stats for Friday, but here are yesterdays

352 mins
1046 hands
-$12.30
-2.10/hr

Adding the third

Decided to try something different tonight and added a third table. It was a pretty interesting experience. Was up on one table while being down on the other two, then took a hit on that table but looks like I'll end up being positive on the other two.

No really interesting hands to talk about. I had a pretty even distribution of cards. All three tables were kind of tight and I couldn't get callers when I had big starting hands. I used to limp a lot with big starting hands to try to trap, but I've tried to stop doing that since my opponents always seem to hit their hands when I'm not making them pay to see the flop.

I'm just going to play a few more hands before I call it a night. Will post results in a bit.

252 minutes
947 hands
+41.00
17.32 bb/100

Grinding it out

I haven't looked at the stats yet, but that was one really long session. Started out down almost a full buy-in thanks to a combination of coolers and my own stupidity. I've held in, and it looks like I'm going to squeak a small winning session. I'll update the numbers just as soon as I log off.

Ok, just posted the numbers and that was a damn long session. I'm proud of myself for not imploding when I was down in the first hour or so. I think what helped was playing topped off when I was down 20bb. My overall stats for the session weren't the greatest. Played more like a nit tonight, but sometimes you just have to find a way to make it work, especially when the cards aren't cooperating.

Not having rakeback sucks. I paid more in rake tonight than I ended up winning.

-kk

264 mins
702 hands
+9.25
5.27 bb/100

Let the roller coaster begin

It had to start at some point. I played a really short session today but managed to stack off twice in a little over an hour. Playing a 6-max and full ring table at the same time is probably not a really good idea. In either event, these were the two largest hands of the night that sent me packing.

I stacked off with ATx when I made the nut flush on the turn to some guy who slow played KK and had turned a boat when the board paired with the same card that gave me the nut flush. It's my fault for checking my flush hoping to check raise. If I had bet out, I would have been raised, but I'm really not sure that I would have ever thought that the guy was that strong. Then again, the guy was 10/3 so I should have thought that he probably wouldn't have called the pre-flop raise without some type of hand.



I stacked off on the short handed table with QQ to some guy who was playing 76s and hit three of a kind when the flop came 664. All in all, it was a pretty uneventful night. I need to ask FT grinder what he's using for that hand replayer.

Session Stats:

72 min
139 hands
-$54.25

Running well

I've actually been running pretty well the past couple of days or so. I've been hitting a lot of hands and I've been coming up on the winning side of my flips. The adjustment to a slightly more aggressive playing style has seemed to work as well. FT Grinder and I were talking about it, and while this style may work, it's probably going to lead to fairly high variance. Not as much as playing like a LAG, but I guess only time will tell.

I'm just about done with my current session so I'll be updating the info in my stats section.

Day's results:
231 mins
342 hands
$13.85/hr
+53.50

Nothing spectacular here, but I'll take it.

Downward Spiral?

I've been inspired to put this together after talking with a friend about keeping an online log of our poker playing. I agree it's a good way to keep track of my progress. I've never been good sticking to a particular level or trying to exercise any degree of proper bankroll management. Maybe keeping this blog will help. My main goal right now is to rework my game and to keep a true picture of what is going on while I'm making the changes.

I will be playing .10/.25 nlhe for the moment with a starting bankroll of just under $250. It's going to take a while to move up, being that I'm under-rolled to even be playing 25nl, but here's to hoping that I'll keep running good for a while and the changes I'm making improve my game for the better.

Then again, this whole exercise could just prove that I shouldn't be playing in the first place. lol.

I thought I would try this for a while...

I thought I would give blogging a try since one of my friends has been keeping a blog of his recent poker adventure. A couple of my other friends have regular and semi-regular blogs here as well. I'm not too sure what type of blog this will end up being, but I'm sure that it will contain a fair amount about poker and probably a few other things that have been going on recently.

With that in mind, let's start with the other since I still have to pull some numbers for the poker side of things and I'm trying to figure out what my challenge to myself is going to be. I just got back from a weekend in Maui with friends. We headed out there for the First Annual Four Skins Golf Trip. We played Wailea Gold and Kapalua Plantation. There are a number of good players in our group. I am definitely not one of them, so it was a long two days over on Maui.

Ok, that's it for now.