Took a Break

I normally wouldn't post something if I took the night off, but since I've been so bad at keeping this blog up, I thought I would just to keep me in the habit of posting. Things at work have been a little hectic recently and I ended up not playing at all last night. On a side note, The Usual Suspects is a great movie.

Right read, wrong results

I took a night off on Tuesday to go and hang out with some friends, but played a shorter session last night that was going well, but ended up in a loss. I played just under two hours with some pretty big swings along the way. I was up for most of the session except for a hand that I should have folded and one where I made the right choice but ended up on the short end of the stick. I'm pretty sure I could have gotten on the positive side, but decided to quit and play another day when I wasn't so tired.

Here's the first hand. Overplayed the aces and probably should have just dropped it on the turn, but the call was only $7 more into a $30 pot. The guy was mixing it up and had shown down both extremely strong hands as well as a few busted hands, playing about 25/18/3. He was willing to bet his draws and I had seen him get stacked trying to make a move. Maybe the better play was making a probe bet on the turn and letting it go, but I don't think that extracts full value if the person had been playing KK, the other AA (unlikely), the flush draw or straight draws. I would be way behind the Q, 66, & 33, but I made the call.

I just ran a Pokerstove calculation. Based on this guy's preflop range, I show as having 81% equity on the turn.



I was able to climb back a little, but the hand that made me decide to just call it a night was this one.



Anyway, overall stats for the night:

110 minutes
379 hands
-12.95

daily update

I should have just added this to the last post, but the spreadsheet file didn't get through until just a little while ago. It was a normal session but a really volatile one. Started down about a total of a buy-in across two tables, but started to catch some hands and was up. Ended up losing a $30 pot with QQ against some guy who thought calling a raise with 5-8 off was a good play. Got it in on a dry flop where the guy flopped a five. The eight fell on the river. What are you going to do. I watched him play like a maniac for the next 40 minutes, but could never catch a hand against him.

I'll post a few other hands where I made some questionable calls which added to the roller coaster ride that I played. Luckily, I ended up with a small winning session for the night.

Date	Minutes	Hands	$
8/26/2008 0:00	195.7	920	$16.95

been really bad with updating this

Well, it's been over a week since I've updated this blog. I've been playing, but haven't been updating. The days have been up and down. More down than up. I know that I've been making some bad decisions, but looking at the totals, over the past nine days I'm down just over 4 buy ins which is really not much, but I still feel like I'm getting killed. A lot of times, I'm down $12 or $13 without even knowing it just playing a few hands. Anyway, I e-mailed myself my daily session stats for the past nine days so I'll be posting that here and updating my stats.

Start Time of Session	Minutes	Hands	$
8/15/2008 3:34	207.1	849	$80.05
8/16/2008 3:48	241.3	1218	($39.05)
8/17/2008 2:25	249.7	1179	($80.65)
8/17/2008 16:58	67.8	208	($29.85)
8/18/2008 2:22	181.3	1108	$24.60
8/19/2008 3:47	185.9	1119	$39.15
8/20/2008 3:42	136.2	624	($10.15)
8/22/2008 3:24	86.1	355	($47.10)
8/23/2008 0:06	233.4	838	($71.25)
8/23/2008 18:27	300.8	1345	$23.80
8/25/2008 3:13	215.8	893	($5.50)
Totals Through 8/25/08	2105.4	9736	-115.95

Tuesday & Wednesday

Played just under 3 hours on Tuesday night. All in all, it went pretty well until I made some fairly bad decisions where I was pretty sure I was beat. I pushed over the top with top and bottom pair plus a flush draw against what ended up being top two, and I lost another big pot with an overpair to a flopped set. Although I was happy with my play for the most part, by the end of it, I had turned what should have been a small winning session into a $29.00 loss. I've been playing tighter over the past several sessions and it's kept me out of a ton of marginal spots.

175 minutes
573 hands
-29.00

Last night I felt that I was finally able to gain some traction, gaining 4 buy-ins for the day. Cards came when I needed them & I was lucky enough to have some huge starting hands against a couple of guys who were willing to push their short stacks with ace-rag. My kings and queens held up both times and I was able to walk away with my first positive night in a long time.

I really need to work on tilt control and following my instincts. Starting off this exercise winning the majority of the time put me in a bad mindset where I felt I could just play aggressive all the time and end up ahead. I really have to keep my mind on the basics of positional awareness and only selected aggression. I run in to all kinds of problems when I'm just freewheeling. Anyway, here are the stats for the two sessions I played last night.

40 mins
54 hands
+20.80


207 mins
849 hands
+80.05

uneventful night

Things started out bad last night dropping a buy-in and a half in about 30 minuted. I decided to take a break for dinner. I really wasn't sure if I was going to play another session or not. I was able to win back the buy-in and end only down 4.35 for the day. A loss, but definitely not what I've been seeing of the past week or so.

I'm happy with the way I played and most of the decisions I made other than when I pushed over the top with KK into AA.

255 mins
564 hands
-4.35

Time to rethink things

I've kind of been putting this off as I've been thinking about whether or not I should even be playing. The continued downswing just keeps getting worse. Bad thing is that I know that I've been tilting when I start losing and when I'm getting frustrated. That being said, here we go. My weekend total is -140.45. My stats are where they have normally been, but I've been making some really bad decisions.

I'm really kind of sick about things. I'll be more diligent about posting here. Oh, and my effective bankroll is a little smaller than the $80 someodd that's posted. I played a $6 turbo sit n go as well as a $10 tournament this weekend as well. Needless to say I didn't cash in either.

4631 hands
-140.45