Barewire has a Blog

Coaching and Video Making

2010-10-14T14:59:00.000-07:00

Hey guys!

Just a short update for now. I recently made a couple of videos for husng.com and the owners over there were kind enough to give me my own coaching page! Check it out, as it has some updates on the coaching that I offer and also some slightly altered pricing. Don't worry, if you've already had coaching with me in the past I'm not increasing your rates, these are just for new students.

http://www.husng.com/content/coach-profile-barewire

I also might be moving my blog over there in the near future, so I'll let you guys know if or when that does happen.

Half way through October and I'm actually on a pretty good pace for my goals. I don't have any graphs on me at the moment but I'm up about $8k on the month and I've played almost 60 hours, both of which are almost exactly half of my monthly goals of $15k and 120 hours. I'm going to keep the pedal to the metal and hopefully pull off my best month in a while as a great start to my 2 year plan.

If you haven't heard, I just placed a down payment on my first car! I'm the proud owner of a black 2007 acura tsx, and I'll add some pictures at some point in the future if you guys are interested. It's awesome, and I'm driving home in it next month. That's all I've got for now, take care everyone.

Kevin

P.S. About 30 minutes after writing this post I found out that they set up my husng.com blog. From now on, you guys can follow me at http://www.husng.com/blogs/barewire

Plans for the future

2010-09-18T22:28:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone,

I know I haven't made a blog entry in a while, and I have a three hour flight to kill with no internet, so I'm going to type this up in text edit and post it later tonight. I apologize in advance because this is incredibly, incredibly long. I'm on my way to Chicago right now which means that I've lived in Vegas for three full months now. It's really flown by and I'm enjoying my job a lot, not to mention that living five minutes from the strip and having people come visit/live with me has been an absolute blast. I couldn't be happier right now with my decision to come out here for the summer.

Now that I've lived on my own and worked a legitimate job for a little while now I think I've sorted out a lot of things that I want to do in the future, or at least, how I want my life to be structured. Ever since I moved out here I've been waking up every weekday at 5:00 in the morning and going to work until 1:30, frequently going to the gym afterwards and getting home by 4:00. This, much like going to high school, sucks.

Some of you might be laughing right now because you know that my job isn't nearly as strict as your run of the mill office job, and I've definitely been able to stretch my hours at my own discretion. Frequently I can leave in the middle of the work day and take a nap, take lunch for two hours, or just simply call it a day. The reason being is that the majority of the action in the market is during the first two hours and the last hour--from 8:00-12:00 is mostly dead barring some unusual news. This certainly turns me off from the idea of working a 9-5 (or 8-4 in Chicago) trading job. I don't want to say I'm completely dismissing this, because of course I may not have a choice, but for the time being I see a lot of opportunities to set up a way to work from home. And not only that, but because of the way the market activity dies down during mid day, I'm confident that I can work as a trader and a professional poker player, and even schedule an active exercise routine during the day.

Let's lay out the blueprint for this. With my current trading firm (which at the moment I intend to stay with but I'm not sold on it) I can set up a remote account on my desktop at home, and have all the software and news feeds that I need to trade during the hours of 9:00a EST and 11:00a EST. I'm using eastern time for simplicity because I haven't decided by any means where I intend to live down the road. Around this time of morning there's not a lot of trading activity, so this is the time of day where I can put in a solid two hours of exercise. Under my current lifestyle this is going to be the most difficult part, but I'm also confident that I can turn this around once I'm satisfied with the other parts of my life. Presumably I can be done with my workout and eat some lunch by 2:30p, which is around the time I should start preparing for the market close. I'll continue trading until 4:00p and then log whatever stats for the day I need to.

Having spent four hours on the computer by this point in the day, I imagine that I'm not going to be psyched about diving into a long poker session. Ideally I can come up with something else to do around this time so that I don't resort to watching sports and taking naps. At the current moment my hope is that I'll play music for an hour or two, eat dinner, and then play a poker session during the higher traffic times of roughly 7:00-11:00p. During my dinner I'm going to try and do any bullshit internet browsing and chatting that I normally do during my poker sessions, because focus is a huge issue for me and I'm going to try and overhaul my attitude entirely with this respect. A very successful poker professional once said that you have to treat poker like a business...and I fully intend to.

Because of how much I enjoy doing all of the things I've scheduled above, I have no expectation of burning out from the tight hours. As long as I eat healthy, do that daily workout and sleep well on a daily basis, the rest should work itself out. I also have weekends to recharge and relax, and interact with society for once after that incredibly isolated week. The question now is, how do I get to this point, and when can I start? I think that for the two months I'll still be in Vegas I can test out this schedule on a smaller scale. I haven't gotten any interest for the most part with getting a roommate, so chances are I'm going to be living alone for the remainder of my stay and that means I'm going to be dishing out some extra rent money. That should be a good amount of motivation for me to earn good money (I've also heard rumors floating around that I'm buying a Lexus, but don't get carried away, they're just rumors). However, I think the biggest factor in succeeding at this is to make serious progress in my poker results, and earn the money that I want to get the proper living environment for this.

When I'm being completely honest with myself, I think I've done the absolute minimum while I've lived in Vegas, and that's extremely disappointing. I have made money in poker, yes, and I've definitely improved as a player. I've also been a tad unlucky, having lost close to $2,500 in buying tournament action by my last count, but the bottom line is that I could've done better. I think that I was doing a very good job in July putting in hours at the tables, but I'll admit I was somewhat distracted because I was living with friends and trying to enjoy myself. August was good because I ran well in live games, but that's not an excuse for putting in less time. I have a terrible habit of taking breaks and being complacent when I've made a lot of money recently, and it can really hurt me later when I'm not making as much. I need to fight against complacence in my poker playing and take it seriously, like a job from which I'll be fired if I don't sit down every day.

I will say I'm proud though, that I've been able to pay for my own living expenses through a variety of self employed sources of income and that is really, really exciting. I've also been able to eat at nice restaurants and stay on the strip for around seven total nights this summer without breaking the bank. I do think that I should be playing higher stakes by now, but I've experienced a lot of unique things in the last three months and I'm happy that I can still look forward to living this way for a long time.

I have some fairly big goals for the next few years but I think they're all well within reach and I'm going to write them down so that I can look back at this post once I've achieved them. I'm going to write them as my quarterly goals for the next year, and then my annual goals for the next year after that. I'll also start with October because I'll be in Chicago until September 25th, which is close enough.

Quarter One: October 2010 - December 2010

$50,000 from online poker
$15,000 from trading, and deposit this to restructure my deal
$10,000 from live poker

Summary: Yes, these are all monetary goals, but like I said in my post above I'm going to need to earn the money I need to progress towards what I want in the future, and I think by far the best use of my time for the next three months is focusing exclusively on earning money. I'm going to spend very little time going out, and I'm going to have to miss that two week trip to South America that I hadn't really told anyone I was considering (sorry Rob!). I'm setting my goals as realistically as I think I can without selling myself short. These are going to be extremely difficult to meet, especially because I'll still be working at the trading office for the first two months, but I'm definitely looking forward to the challenge. It's also going to be important for my success that I restructure my trading deal, because at the moment I have deposited no money, and as a result can only earn half of my P&L. By making this deposit I should be able to secure 100% of my P&L and allow for bigger earnings in the future.

Quarter Two: January 2011 - March 2011

Take my remaining four classes at UChicago and graduate.
$60,000 from online poker
$20,000 from trading
$5,000 from live poker
Take the first steps toward upgrading my setup

High Quality Desk Chair
Improve the lighting around my desk
Isolate my poker sessions within the 4br apartment

Summary: This is going to be significantly harder than the previous quarter. Taking four classes at UChicago is extremely difficult to begin with, and I'm not expecting the classes I'm taking to be easy either. I have, in my past quarters at UChicago, been able to balance poker and class fairly well. Usually my workout schedule suffers, especially during the winter. I'm going to do my best to fight that problem, and still meet these goals. Yes, my dollar goals are higher than the previous quarter despite having less time. This is because I'll have likely moved up in stakes, and will be looking to play in better spots for bigger money. If everything goes right, this should translate to a bigger quarter despite putting in less time. The same applies to trading. I'll have more money in the account and should be receiving a better cut, so I expect to earn more. I might even be selling myself short here, but I don't fully trust myself to wake up for every market open when I have so much else on my plate. I'm going to push for it though. The improves to my setup might sound silly, but this is a big step towards professionalism in poker. Being comfortable during my sessions is extremely important, not only for focus but also for the ability to play long hours without feeling drained.

Quarter Three: April 2011 - June 2011

Finish out my lease in Chicago, and enjoy the last taste of college
Make big improvements in my physical health
$80,000 from online poker
$40,000 from trading
$20,000 from live poker
Plan out my summer in detail
Begin my trip to Vegas (Early June)

Summary: This quarter is going to be the most enjoyable and the most relaxed of the four. I have big hopes because both I and my roommate David are planning to have graduated, yet still continue living at the apartment in Chicago. I'm going to have nothing but free time, entirely schedule my own day, and make seriously detailed plans towards my future. With a free schedule and the spring weather, I intend to make the biggest improvements in my health during this quarter. In addition to going to the gym I'll be able to play more sports, get outside more often in general, and this should be far enough in the future that any nagging knee problems I'm having now have completely passed. Again, with my increased bankroll I expect an increase in income, but I'm not going to predict a huge one because I do want to spend a lot of time with my friends. David and I also have travel plans for the summer that I want to work out in detail during this quarter. To clarify the monetary goals, I intend to trade and play a lot of online poker during April and May, while playing almost exclusively live poker in June. This is because it's going to be the first WSOP that I can participate in, so I want to put a lot of time into live poker, both cash games and series tournaments. I also want to live with a lot of good poker players during this month, which is the most exciting part of the trip for me. This means I am actually putting up pretty big goals for my earnings in April and May, but I'm confident that by this point I'll be able to. I didn't make a bullet point for it, but since I'll have free time I hope that by now, and with a good amount of online poker success, that I'll be able to launch a larger coaching platform, with a higher hourly rate.

Quarter Four: July 2011 - September 2011

Finish trip in Vegas (Early-Mid July)
Start trip overseas, travel as many places as I can
$40,000 from online poker
$20,000 from trading
$10,000 from live poker

Summary: This is the summer of travel. Yes, I still have fairly large goals for my earnings but this will mostly be online from wherever I happen to be, and I don't think it will require a huge amount of hours. My primary goal during this quarter is to finally get the hell out of the United States, and see the world. I've done next to nothing in terms of traveling throughout my life, and the only time I've ever flown over a body of water was on a week long trip to Hawaii eleven years ago. David and I have plans to see Europe, and I expect to spend a lot of this summer in different parts of Europe. I want to see London because there's a fairly large trading floor in London and it's worth exploring the European markets for job opportunities. It's also a great place to live as a poker player, and something I want to see with my own eyes and explore places like this where I might live down the road. I'd like to travel mostly to places where I have people to visit (mostly poker players since they're the most international friends I have), so places on my short list are Manchester, Greece, France, Croatia, Australia/New Zealand, and parts of Asia (I've thought of Thailand and Macau so far). I don't intend to stay in any one place for a long time, and I expect this trip to be expensive, so I want to plan it all out very carefully during the spring so that I get the most out of it that I possibly can.

Year Two: October 2011 - October 2012

Choose a city that I like and live there for a year
Set up the best environment I can afford to trade and play poker
$350,000 from poker
$150,000 from trading
Officially file as a professional poker player

Summary: This looks huge to me. I really can't believe that in a year I want to achieve this but the more I think about it the more I believe I'm perfectly capable of it. I'm sure that sometime during this year I'll take short vacations so I won't be just camped out in Boston or San Francisco playing poker every day for a year, so it's pretty amazing to think that I want to make $500,000 in a year, just one year departed from pulling $10,000 months, if I'm actually putting in time. I'm going to have to take some steps to make sure I'm getting the best deal I can to have this kind of success in trading, with respect to commissions and my cut of P&L. Assuming I take care of that, I'm essentially claiming that I can earn in the ballpark of 60-75% of what my coworkers make having had years of experience. While that seems unrealistic at first glance, I know what I'm capable of and I know that I can improve quickly with hard work. If everything goes the way I expect it to, this is exactly where I'm going to be. Now I'm not certain where I want to live. Right now I'm partial to San Francisco, or perhaps the nearby places in California like San Diego or Irvine. The weather there is spectacular, the communities are awesome, I like the people there from the times I've been, and it's within reasonable distance of Vegas when I want to drive there for the live games (also within a reasonable distance of Commerce and other California games). I don't want to live in Vegas for a billion reasons that would take a while to describe, but that's really the only progress I've made towards choosing a place to live down the road. I'll do more research on this during the spring and summer.

My flights winding down and my battery is dying so I'm going to try and wrap up this post. I think this is an accurate idea of what I hope to achieve over the next two years. The travel plans and living conditions are close to exact on the timeline as far as I know, and the monetary goals will be the biggest uncertainty. I'm going to put an incredible amount of work now that I've written this out, and I've never felt better about my poker game so this might not be as big of a long shot as I'm making it out to be. The hardest thing for me will be to keep on schedule and to keep my diet and exercise in check, so hopefully by year two I can afford to have a chef and a personal trainer or something to keep me in check with respect to those things. I'm really hoping that I'll find someone to work through this with me because I think meeting big goals is easier when you have someone else around you doing the same. However I don't have anything in mind for the time being so we will see how that pans out as time goes on. I hope you guys enjoyed reading this and maybe it'll motivate you guys to think about this stuff too, because the future is gaining on us fast and we've got lives to live. Take care guys, and best of luck.

Kevin

Some thoughts on work ethic

2010-08-03T08:46:00.000-07:00

I'm copying this here so people who don't play poker can read it; I'm using this as my follow up to Pooh-Bah Post part 1 here: Also I'll link you guys to the actual thread if you want to view any comments or additional posts I might make: link

Translation: I spend too much time on poker forums and make long posts like this one to sound important to new members.

As inspired by this post in the SNG regs thread, and a special thanks to my roommate Henry and to Rob for always giving me shit about how few hands I play.

The above poster was complaining about a string of consecutive bad sessions, even when taking breaks between them to clear his head. He plays well in game, takes his bad beats as well as he thinks he can, but just can't get anything going for weeks. When I'm reading this at first my immediate reaction is to lol from my internet high horse and troll him for how weak he is (which I'm proud to say is my reaction to most things now on twoplustwo). But I couldn't help but notice how close this is to the mindset I've struggled with for a long, long time. Hopefully writing out my thoughts on it can finally put that leak behind me.

I used to have a huge issue putting in a solid day's work. Every session I'd play I would be hoping it was going to be that 'big' session. You know the feeling, that day where everything goes your way: you win every flip, you hit every flop, and you go to sleep satisfied with more money in the bank than ever. Well for about a year, this never happened for me. I've posted graphs of it in the past but basically, from the time that I was demolishing 100NL and the time that I took shots at 400NL (probably too short of a time, but either way) I made about $8,000 online. The shots at 400NL didn't go so well, and I humbly moved down to 200NL and pumped out money, until I was comfortable shot taking again, and repeated. Pretty standard for every player who's trying to make it big in poker I'd imagine. The thing that felt different for me, was that for 100,000 hands from the first time I tried 400NL, I didn't make a dime. I mean sure, I had rakeback, bonuses, the occasional super turbo MTT that i'd score some money in, but if you look at my HU cash graph from about hand 30,000 to hand 130,000, I didn't make a fucking dime.

Now sure, this is rough, but the variance isn't really unbelievable considering I was moving up and down between 100NL and 600NL throughout the whole thing but the huge majority was around 200 and 400. I was probably playing too many regs, not enough fish, and despite working pretty hard on my fundamentals in the forum, I wasn't playing with the right mindset. I was constantly wishing for that 'breakout' session at mid stakes. I wanted to win a fishreg's entire bankroll in one night. I was gambling. I'd have a few bad days in a row and i wouldn't be happy with any session unless i absolutely CRUSHED. And it just never happened, I never had that big day, I'd never win that key flip that would give me a ton of momentum against a reg and I'd either win 3 buyins or lose 8. Combine that with basically never running deep in an MTT despite joining a ton every sunday and you get a pretty brutal outlook about poker.

It was really disappointing and even though I was making a little money every month, I was spending it just as quickly. It took me a while to realize that I was putting in about as little volume as possible. I never once played more than 15k hands in a month (even in 2009) and that's really pathetic. Sure, I'm a full time student at a difficult university, but how much time to I spend in the library each week and how much time to I spend on the couch? Making excuses is really the worst thing I could do, and I'll be the first to say I was full of them. Maybe I didn't get a lot of sleep that day, so I'm not fit to play tonight. Or maybe I have a test coming up and I can't afford to waste a day thinking about hand histories. Maybe I lost 5 buyins yesterday and it's too frustrating to sit down again for another two days. Sure, people say you shouldn't play if you don't feel like playing but when you get to this point then how are you ever going to make money? I needed to play some god damn hands if I ever wanted to make it big.

What it's taking for me in the past few months is just sitting the fuck down every day and playing some poker. Anyone who talks to me regularly probably knows that I went on a pretty big heater at the start of the summer and obviously that helped. I'm really disappointed that it took that much of a kick to really make me want to play. Regardless, I ended up having the motivation to sit down every day, and I just posted my biggest month of cash profit in July because I also just posted my biggest volume of heads up hands. I'm not going to turn this thread into a brag about how much money I've made and given that I'm still losing in tournaments it's probably a weak brag anyways. The point is that a lot of people really don't understand how long the long run is, and they don't value effort or volume nearly enough. The best way to get out of a downswing is to stop bitching and play more (that is, if it really is a downswing, and not a reflection of how bad you are at poker). Don't be afraid to drop a few limits where you can get better action, because putting in that many more hands and stringing together some winning sessions can be incredible for your confidence, whether or not the money you make is a meaningful sum. Everyone knows this but nobody does it, and I'm guilty of it more than anyone (until now, I hope).

There's nothing I've learned more this year than that praying for that big break is not going to work out. The worst thing about poker is that every day of the week we get a public view of who just got rich. We get to sit down every day, open up the biggest tournament running and see that some random who's worth about $10 just made six figures for doing nothing. And we want that. We want it more than anything in the fucking world. But it's not going to fall in your lap, you're not going to win the lottery, nothing is going to hand wrap itself for you and walk right up to you say 'all your troubles are solved!' The people who get this luxury are some of the luckiest people in the world, whether they appreciate it or not. But living your life trying to be the one of those people isn't going to work out any better than structuring your poker game plan around making people fold their scary flush draws when you have aces. It's crucial to realize that luck is not controllable, and that motivation is. The absolute only way to succeed is to work your hardest at what you can control and to virtually separate yourself from everything you can't.

I hope the way I wrote this won't constrain its application to poker, because it's much more than that. Everything I wrote here applies to school work, getting up and going to your job in the morning, and accomplishing just about anything you want in life. Consider this a revision of my Pooh-Bah post, which was severely lacking and quite uninformative. I'd like to think this one will give me more success and I hope it does for you too. I wish all you guys the best of luck but I encourage you to work hard enough that you never need it.

short story x-post

2010-07-15T08:47:00.000-07:00

Found this on twoplustwo in the HU Cash Regs Thread, definitely worth reading.

Once there was an old man who lived in a tiny village. Although poor, he was envied by all, because he owned a beautiful white horse. People offered fabulous prices for the horse, but the old man always refused. “This horse is a friend, not a possession,” he would respond.

One morning the horse was not in the stable. All the villagers said, “You old fool. We told you someone would steal that beautiful horse. You could at least have gotten the money. Now the horse is gone, and you’ve been cursed with misfortune.”

The old man responded, “Perhaps. All I know is that my horse is gone; the rest I do not know. Whether it be a curse or a blessing, I can’t say.”

After fifteen days the horse returned. He hadn’t been stolen; he had run away into the forest. Not only had he returned, he had brought a dozen wild horses back with him. Once again the village people gathered around the old man and said, “You were right – what we thought was a curse was a blessing. Please forgive us.” The old man responded, “Perhaps. Once again you’ve gone too far. How do you know if this is a blessing or a curse? Unless you can see the whole story, how can you judge?” But the people could only see the obvious. The old man now had twelve additional horses that could be broken and sold for a great deal of money.

The old man had a son, an only son. He began to break the wild horses. Unfortunately, after just a few days, he fell from a horse and broke both his legs. Once again the villagers gathered around the old man and said, “You were right. The wild horses were not a blessing; they were a curse. Your only son has broken his legs and now in your old age you have no one to help you. You are poorer than ever.” But the old man said, “Perhaps. Don’t go so far. Say only that my son broke his legs. We have only a fragment of the whole story.”

It so happened that a few weeks later the country went to war with a neighboring country. All the young men of the village were required to join the army. Only the son of the old man was excluded, because he had two broken legs. Once again the people gathered around, crying because there was little chance their sons would return. “You were right, old man. Your son’s accident was a blessing. Our sons are gone forever.”

The old man spoke again. “You people are always quick to jump to conclusions. Only God knows the final story.”

Hi

2010-07-11T23:48:00.001-07:00

Lying in bed about 2 hours past when I should be asleep, figure I'll sum up what's been going down here in Vegas.

Weekdays:

1. Wake up at 5am

2. Rub eyes for 15 minutes

3. Maybe eat breakfast

4. Catch a ride to work

I'll elaborate a bit at this more interesting part. I'm living in a complex where one of my coworkers Tom was already staying, so most mornings I'm going to work with him. We leave around 5:40am to get us to work by 5:50, 40 minutes before the NYSE opens at 9:30 eastern time. In that 40 minutes I usually grab some coffee and bring up our software where we plan our trades for the opening bell. This is probably the most active part of the work day, because most good trades are available at the opening bell given all the overnight activity that can dramatically effect the price of stocks between yesterday's close and today's open. I won't go into too much detail but it's a good time to trade, usually the most profitable part of the day for us.

After the open there's a good amount of down time. Some of the traders go to the gym for an early run, some go home to nap because of the absurd hours. Personally I just stay at my desk, usually I'll read up on today's news or some new poker stuff on the forums. I'm also going to be keeping track of a few different mid-day trading strategies involving either pairs trading or momentum signals. I'm not actually trading either one of these strategies (yet) so this doesn't require a ton of attention, but it's something to keep me busy and learning about the work I'll be doing soon enough. If it's a real slow day, I'll open up my laptop and play some poker. I run really well at work btw, I think I'm up like 5k playing there =D

I eat lunch at like 10:00am which makes me feel like a doofus but oh well. A lot of days I'll go to starbucks because they have awesome food and delicious iced tea. I don't buy coffee there anymore because of the large abundance of free office coffee. If I woke up decently early then I made myself lunch and I eat this instead of dishing out $6 for a breakfast sandwich. I also recently discovered a nice frozen yogurt joint that I'll probably go to more often, especially sine the amount I ordered last time only cost $3

Around 12:45pm we begin planning our closing trades. I'm not really great at the close and for the most part I'm just logging the things I notice but I do 100 shares here and there for practice. I've been lucky enough not to lose yet. The strategies on the close are decently complicated so I won't really explain them here, but they revolve around the imbalance between buys on the close and sells on the close, and the fact that the specialist on the NYSE is forced to correct this imbalance by buying or selling extra shares himself (which will inevitably shift the price).

5. Leave Work

6. Go to the gym (50% of the time)

I'm signing up for a membership with Gold's Gym out here, just finished a week long trial and they have really nice facilities, it's convenient, etc. I might do a conditioning class that's geared towards MMA type stuff but it's at a pretty inconvenient time of day so I don't really expect to make it all that often. A few of my coworkers work out here anyways so we can pretty much do our own thing and it's motivating enough where I'm not really dying to join any classes. Either way this is a good step for me because playing poker and ordering delivery all day isn't great for your health, if you didn't know.

7. Get back to the condo

8. Make dinner

9. Play poker

10. Sleep

Pretty much my weekdays rarely shift from this. There's not a lot of time in the day when you get home from the gym at 4pm and you've already been awake 11 hours. It's pretty hard for me to even play poker at this point and a lot of times I just end up napping =\ but I'm getting used to it. A few times I've done differently, such as going to the driving range earlier this week and also going to see Cirque du Soleil tomorrow night. Thinking about going to an NBA summer league game later this week also but I haven't bought tickets yet because I'm unsure of how fun it is. I do want to see John Wall though...

As far as poker I've been putting in some effort to coach and also learn PLO. It's obviously difficult with this schedule but I feel like I can learn PLO pretty quickly and coaching revolves around my own schedule of course. I'll only be able to do 2-3 hours a week but there's nothing wrong with making some variance free money when losing $2k is a fairly average day in the office. I've been doing well this month in heads up but I haven't played a lot of hands, action is pretty scarce and I'm taking what I can get. I've been playing regs more often and actually booked a few decent winning sessions against them so I'm happy about that. I've played a small sample of husngs this month also and I'm up a few buyins so overall things are going well. I figured this was a good time to withdraw to cover my expenses and after I buy some cash off my roommate I'll be set for at least two months or so, probably more if I can find some new roommates soon.

With my free time I've been posting more on twoplustwo again and to be honest it's getting worse and worse as I read and post there. Yes there are a few very good posters but for the most part nobody good is going to elaborate on their reasoning and almost everyone who does elaborate is wrong about many things. It's not unusual for the forums to evolve in that manner but at the same time it's disappointing. I'll probably end up writing the second part to my Pooh-Bah post in the near future, but most likely not until after my 21st birthday passes and I've made a good amount more money. Hopefully I can shed some light on the important takeaways from a forum like twoplustwo and also the proper way to move on from it and succeed in whatever your goal might be with poker. If you haven't seen my crosspost on facebook there was a great thread posted by Bond18 a few days ago in an MTT forum that everyone should read, discussing the rewards from hard work and the proper way to apply that work to the poker world:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=20034710&postcount=1

Well I've got work in about 5.5 hours and I'm still not tired so I'll wrap up this post around now. I'm really enjoying vegas and I'm glad I got to meet a good amount of 2p2ers so far (including icarusjam, xscwx, et al tonight) but it's disappointing that my job/age is stopping me from getting to spend any real time with them all. Hopefully some people will come out after my birthday (August 7th!) and we can enjoy Vegas but for the time being I've got grind on the mind. Hope everyone's running well, especially my horses in the main event :)

Kevin

Some Relief

2010-05-31T11:44:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone,

So I haven't played poker in a while but I'll give some minor life-updates since I like writing about myself. I banned myself from 2p2 for two weeks to get some serious studying done for the Series 7 and to finish up my History of Statistics paper. During the past two weeks I've gotten a lot done although less than I'd have hoped, and as a result I decided to move my test date back to June 16th. I've been getting around the pass/fail cutoff point on my latest practice exams and even though I think I'm locking in a lot of the information from questions I got wrong, I didn't want to rush into the exam just for the sake of being done when there was a legitimate chance I wouldn't pass. Either way, this gives me an extra day to write my paper (which is 8 pages in now, and looking pretty solid), and also the entire day today to do my last problem set of the quarter and maybe even watch the Hawks in game 2 tonight.

Despite banning myself from 2p2 I'm still lurking around reading some threads and I'm really just getting tilted at every strategy thread. Chances are when I return I'm just gonna be using the regs/LC threads from now on unless some really interesting strat threads emerge. I need to put in some serious grind throughout this summer if I want to live up to my goals. Anyways, since I can't login to post in the may/june goals threads, I'll take care of that here to close my post:

May Goals:

[x] remove wisdom teeth (still got holes in my gums but feeling pretty good)
[x] go to cubs game (ship it in 11 innings, walk-off homer by a-ram)
[x] crush twice as hard as April (almost, don't have HEM with me but I won $3/hand at 2/4 for a little under 5k hands so I'm pretty sure I made at least 150% as much as April)
[x] prep series 7 (test day June 16!)
[/] recover fully from knee injure, be active by end of month (knee is feeling great and I'm gonna get outside a lot more now, just been slacking a bit with the studying. i did run the other morning though!)
[ ] ship a SCOOP and buy car w winnings (oh well i wasn't expeting it)

June Goals:

[ ] survive finals

[ ] finish and review every practice exam before June 14th

[ ] pass Series 7 (June 16)

[ ] play a bunch of poker

[ ] play a bunch of sports

[ ] VEGAS

[ ] meet 2p2ers, play volleyball at the HUNL house at least once

[ ] win 1% of Bryan's first place in every WSOP event he entered

That is all for now, I'll try to post more especially once I get to vegas and include pics, etc. Run good everyone

Kevin

Proper Recap

2010-05-13T08:42:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys,

It's been a while since I did a proper blog entry so I'm gonna give that shot here.

First, I got my wisdom teeth out about a week ago. I'm still kinda recovering from that in the sense that my energy is less than 100% and physical activity makes my mouth sore. It takes me around 3x as long as usual to eat dinner now, so I'm starting to get how Stan felt for the better part of year ripping apart Bartlett cheeseburgers (hoping that this shoutout gets me a full trip report of Texas de Brazil Express...)

The week before that was midterms and I think I did pretty well considering the time I put in. Metrics is a lot easier than I expected it to be, although mostly just because it's curved and my stat electives covered a lot of this material that other econ majors haven't seen before. I'm also going to write my stat final about the history of statistics in poker, which I'm pretty excited about since it's going to write itself once I find the research. I'm obviously more comfortable writing about poker than probably anything else in the world so it's great that I had this option. Maybe I'll cross post it here once I'm done with it if anyone's interested.

Also for anyone in Chicago, a friend of mine is organizing a student run poker event on May 29th on my campus, and there's going to be a friendly $10 tournament (expecting 100+ runners) with a variety of prizes (I don't think it pays out cash because of university regulation, but I may be wrong). Prior to the tournament he's asked me to help out do a poker presentation of some sort, which I'm hoping to get video taped. I'm not gonna post that publicly I don't think, but ask me if you want to see it cause it should be entertaining. I'm planning to play a poker session on a big screen monitor and answer panel questions with the help of the guy organizing the event.

In other news...my Series 7 is just 3 weeks away and I'm just starting to start seriously taking practice exams, so that's going to be a cram. Hopefully I don't have much in terms of school work over the next few weeks because I'm going to try to take 1-2 exams per day until I'm really comfortable with the material. Also, to avoid dying of lameness, I'm going to the Cubs game Monday which will be awesome and I'm seeing Iron Man 2 Saturday in IMAX.

So this is already a pretty long post but I want to talk about poker a bit and post some HHs too. I've played about 300 HU SnGs now and you guys saw my results, I'm doing fine but not winning much yet. I've been doing the MSN thing and improving my short game a lot, I'm also open sitting CAP NL now to get more practice at 30bb and I think it's gonna be a great addition to my game. I'm also gonna work with Primo for at least an hour or two reviewing my 30bb game to see where I have some obvious leaks.

I'm in the process of moving my AP roll over to Cake, basically because AP has proved it sucks royally in terms of integrity, and if they don't have plans of securing their servers and rolling in RSA tokens there's no fucking way I'm gonna let money accumulate through them. Fortunately I can withdraw and deposit onto Cake so I get a bonus (yay) which I'm in the process of unlocking already. Action on Cake is actually pretty good because the sng regs I've played at 110-220 are pretty meh and there's not a huge clutter in the cash lobby either. In a day or two I'll have my roll pretty well spread between FTP/Stars/Cake which is exactly what I've wanted for a while now and I'm glad it's finally getting done with.

So I don't think I'll bother posting any HHs from my SnG play because none of it is all that interesting but I have some fun stuff from cash

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold'em - 2 players - View hand 692239
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (BB): $1482.50
BTN/SB: $878.50

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is BB with 5 6
BTN/SB raises to $12, Hero raises to $40, BTN/SB calls $28

Flop: ($80.00) K 7 4 (2 players)
Hero bets $56, BTN/SB calls $56

Turn: ($192.00) 8 (2 players)
Hero bets $162, BTN/SB calls $162

River: ($516.00) 4 (2 players)
Hero bets $1224.50 all in, BTN/SB requests TIME, BTN/SB calls $620.50 all in

Final Pot: $1757.00

Hero shows 5 6 (a straight, Eight high)
BTN/SB mucks 5 5

Hero wins $1756.50
(Rake: $0.50)

This guy was one of the biggest stations I've ever played, had a really nice session against him because of it. Preflop is obviously kinda meh but I was running well and being a little splashy at the time, and I think it can still be good to 3bet a guy like this because I give myself initiative and an easy way to get 200bb+ into the pot when I want to, I can just easily c/f when I don't hit a big hand, and he's gonna let me get to showdown with the best hand when i hit random one pair hands too.

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold'em - 2 players - View hand 692324
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (BTN/SB): $2308.00
BB: $863.50

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is BTN/SB with Q K
Hero raises to $12, BB raises to $42, Hero raises to $96, BB calls $54

Flop: ($192.00) Q 7 Q (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $108, BB raises to $256, Hero calls $148

Turn: ($704.00) A (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

River: ($704.00) 9 (2 players)
BB bets $511.50 all in, Hero calls $511.50

Final Pot: $1727.00

Hero shows Q K (three of a kind, Queens)
BB shows A 2 (two pair, Aces and Queens)

Hero wins $1726.50
(Rake: $0.50)

This is the same guy...he was 3betting extremely light at this point and flatting all 4bets, seems like a great hand to build the pot with for when I flop top pair but then BOOM. I was surprised by his c/r but I don't think there's any merit to doing something besides calling, and when he gave up on the turn I just wanted to give him the chance to fire a desperation river bluff, I'm obviously not worried because any draws have 4 or fewer outs to improve and also I'm going to stack an ace no matter what (which is what happened thankfully)

Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em - 2 players - View hand 692336
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (BB): $447.50
BTN/SB: $577.50

Pre Flop: ($3.00) Hero is BB with T 5
BTN/SB raises to $6, Hero raises to $18, BTN/SB calls $12

Flop: ($36.00) K Q 2 (2 players)
Hero bets $22, BTN/SB calls $22

Turn: ($80.00) A (2 players)
Hero bets $120, BTN/SB requests TIME, BTN/SB calls $120

River: ($320.00) 9 (2 players)
Hero bets $287.50 all in, BTN/SB calls $287.50

Final Pot: $895.00

Hero shows T 5 (Ace King high)
BTN/SB shows A Q (two pair, Aces and Queens)

BTN/SB wins $894.50
(Rake: $0.50)

This was a hand I played against Nathan when we set up a 1/2 match a little while back. This was pretty early on and I remember Nathan being somewhat of a station in general so obviously its not always great to run 3 barrels against him. Anyways we were playing deep and eventually deeper and I wanted to be able to run this line (where I overbet turn on a drawy board to set up stacks) more often in the future. I also think that he's going to peel to this point with hands like AT/AJ and possibly KJ on the turn nearly 100% of the time, which will probably fold on this river. Any diamond is obviously a good card for me but I was planning to jam on some blanks, because I think my range is so damn nutted here (basically all combos of QQ+/AQ/AK/JTs) that he might fold some pretty good hands on a perceived bad bluff card. I also don't think I had a history of 3betting wide in our past matches, so I'm probably perceived to have it a lot. Anyways, we run into basically the best hand I expect him to have ever (and FWIW I know he used to 4bet AQ pre here so I didn't expect him to even be capable of having it at the time) so I'm not disappointed.

Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em - 2 players - View hand 692342
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (BB): $569.00
BTN/SB: $615.50

Pre Flop: ($3.00) Hero is BB with Q Q
BTN/SB raises to $6, Hero raises to $18, BTN/SB raises to $40, Hero calls $22

Flop: ($80.00) 5 5 3 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB bets $48, Hero calls $48

Turn: ($176.00) 6 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB bets $124, Hero requests TIME, Hero raises to $481 all in, BTN/SB calls $357

River: ($1138.00) 3 (2 players - 1 is all in)

River: ($1138.00) Q (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $1138.00

Hero shows Q Q (a full house, Queens full of Fives)
BTN/SB shows J J (two pair, Jacks and Fives)

Hero wins $568.50
Hero wins $568.50
(Rake: $1.00)

Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em - 2 players - View hand 692343
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (BB): $432.00
BTN/SB: $1325.25

Pre Flop: ($3.00) Hero is BB with 4 3
BTN/SB raises to $6, Hero raises to $18, BTN/SB raises to $40, Hero calls $22

Flop: ($80.00) 2 K 9 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB checks

Turn: ($80.00) 6 (2 players)
Hero bets $56, BTN/SB calls $56

River: ($192.00) A (2 players)
Hero bets $144, BTN/SB requests TIME, BTN/SB raises to $1229.25 all in, Hero calls $192 all in

Final Pot: $864.00

Hero shows 4 3 (a flush, Ace high)
BTN/SB shows T T (a pair of Tens)

Hero wins $863.50
(Rake: $0.50)

Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em - 2 players - View hand 692345
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (BTN/SB): $1071.50
BB: $748.75

Pre Flop: ($3.00) Hero is BTN/SB with 8 A
Hero raises to $6, BB raises to $21, Hero raises to $58, BB calls $37

Flop: ($116.00) 5 4 2 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $66, BB calls $66

Turn: ($248.00) 6 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

River: ($248.00) 7 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero requests TIME, Hero bets $216, BB requests TIME, BB raises to $624.75 all in, Hero calls $408.75

Final Pot: $1497.50

Hero shows 8 A (a straight, Eight high)
BB shows 9 9 (a pair of Nines)

Hero wins $1497.00
(Rake: $0.50)

Nathan is kinda sick for being able to get it in this often at 300bb+...but I run better :)

Finally, here's a cash game graph of my profits since I took my loan from Arya...guess when I stopped playing 6max?

That's all for now, run good at life everyone

First 250 SnGs

2010-05-11T14:42:00.000-07:00

So I've been playing HU SnGs the past few weeks and managed to make some rakeback (yay) but nothing else. I expect to play a lot more because my shortstacked game is improving quickly and the opponents are eh...bad. I'll try to dig up some interesting hands in the next day or so, but I have to get some studying done before LOST so I'll leave you all with a graph, edited for the 100-300 turbos on FTP (I've played some superturbos as well as some sngs on Cake with small profit I believe):

Today was a good day

2010-04-24T17:07:00.001-07:00

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold'em - 2 players - View hand 658519
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (BB): $3426.50
BTN/SB: $1547.50

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is BB with 4 A
BTN/SB raises to $12, Hero calls $8

Flop: ($24.00) K 7 2 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB bets $16, Hero raises to $62, BTN/SB calls $46

Turn: ($148.00) 7 (2 players)
Hero bets $116, BTN/SB raises to $308, Hero calls $192

River: ($764.00) 3 (2 players)
Hero bets $524, BTN/SB raises to $1165.50 all in, Hero calls $641.50

Final Pot: $3095.00

Hero shows 4 A (a flush, Ace high)
BTN/SB shows Q A (a pair of Sevens)

Hero wins $3094.50
(Rake: $0.50)

Hello SNGs

2010-04-23T22:34:00.001-07:00

I'd like to inform everyone that I'll be invading the husngs on ftp and stars for a while. Deal with that. I'll come back with a TR at the end of April. Good luck.

Downswinging

2010-04-19T21:56:00.001-07:00

Hey all,

I know it's been a while and I promised to update weekly but I've been getting owned so all I want to do is play when I have free time. I'm really tired now so I'll try to give an update. First, the life stuff. I'm taking my Series 7 on June 2nd. I'm really excited about it and I'm almost done reading through the study materials for the first pass through, which means next week I'll start taking practice exams for about a month straight. I'm gonna take 13 tests twice in 5 weeks. Other news, my blackberry is now awesome because it has new twitter and skype apps, as well as this kickass MLB app where I can listen to every single radio broadcast streaming and it's really clear quality. I've been studying while listening to the cubs and it's amazing.

So...poker. As you may know I've been playing a lot of 2/4 6max since I got a loan from my friend but it's been going pretty poorly. So far this month I'm down 15 buyins in 11.5k hands at 6max, and up a little bit at HU over about 8k hands. It's hard for me to say where I'm losing my money...I'm around 1.2k below EV so that's a little bit of it, but outside of that it just seems like every hand is running out poorly, I'm not getting good spots to bluff, and I'm running into the top portion of people's ranges quite often. If I had to pinpoint one thing that is holding back my results I'd say it's playing too many tables--having not played much 6max in the past year or so before the past 3 months I think playing 9+ tables is really thinning my focus and making me lose my edge in some pretty key spots where I'm not thinking so clearly on autopilot.

I've been spreading HU tables on AP, Stars and FTP the past few days and I feel a little more comfortable than I have most of the month. To be honest though I'm not sure that's really the issue because I always feel good at the start of my 6max sessions and I usually table select pretty well so I think I can chalk up a lot of this month so far to variance. It's coming at an awful time though, because in exactly 2 months I leave for Vegas and I need to pay for the whole trip on my poker winnings. Since I really need to pull my act together, I expect to just play HU for the rest of the month and only open up some 6max if I'm not getting enough action. I'm probably also gonna play a few of the FTOPS events since the schedule is pretty attractive, but I won't be selling action, just gonna play the smaller events that I can afford. Anyways, as promised, here are some HHs:

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players - View hand 649322
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: $834.30
UTG: $404.20
CO: $319.00
Hero (BTN): $799.50
SB: $402.00

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is BTN with T 7
2 folds, Hero raises to $10, 1 fold, BB calls $6

Flop: ($22.00) 8 9 J (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $16, BB raises to $64, Hero requests TIME, Hero raises to $192, BB requests TIME, BB raises to $824.30 all in, Hero calls $597.50 all in

Turn: ($1601.00) 4 (2 players - 2 are all in)

River: ($1601.00) 9 (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $1601.00

BB shows Q T (a straight, Queen high)
Hero shows T 7 (a straight, Jack high)

BB wins $1598.00
(Rake: $3.00)

That hand was a fun start to me sitting 2/4 deep....

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 649324
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $1129.45
MP: $432.00
CO: $536.00
BTN: $498.50
Hero (SB): $494.00
BB: $400.00

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is SB with J J
UTG raises to $12, 1 fold, CO calls $12, 1 fold, Hero raises to $52, 2 folds, CO calls $40

Flop: ($120.00) 6 6 T (2 players)
Hero bets $52, CO calls $52

Turn: ($224.00) 3 (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $118, Hero requests TIME, Hero raises to $390 all in, CO calls $272

River: ($1004.00) 9 (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $1004.00

CO shows T T (a full house, Tens full of Sixes)
Hero shows J J (two pair, Jacks and Sixes)

CO wins $1001.00
(Rake: $3.00)

This hand is an example of the kind of errors I make when I'm playing too many tables...I think I probably chose one of the worst options on the turn here with JJ. Villain isn't crazy or anything, just a standardish reg i think 24/20 preflop. On the turn here there's probably some value to get from ATs/T9s/9s9x/8s8x/AsQx/etc so I could definitely go for a half pot bet and fold to a jam. If I do check, I think I should probably peel here with a reasonable bet left in my stack since I have a pretty strong bluffcatcher here against his ace highs and gutters like 89s. Either way, there's probably like 2 combos that he bet/calls that are losing to JJ so this was just awful.

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold'em $0.75 Ante - 5 players - View hand 649331
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

CO: $717.35
BTN: $564.05
SB: $822.50
Hero (BB): $431.40
UTG: $825.05

Pre Flop: ($9.75) Hero is BB with Q Q
2 folds, BTN raises to $16, 1 fold, Hero raises to $48, BTN calls $32

Flop: ($101.75) 4 2 6 (2 players)
Hero bets $52, BTN calls $52

Turn: ($205.75) T (2 players)
Hero bets $105, BTN raises to $210, Hero requests TIME, Hero raises to $330.65 all in, BTN calls $120.65

River: ($867.05) 7 (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $867.05

BTN shows 2 2 (three of a kind, Twos)
Hero shows Q Q (a pair of Queens)

BTN wins $864.05
(Rake: $3.00)

Here's just another example of what I do when I'm playign too many tables and not paying attention. Villain's a fish, 46/21 or something like that, his turn minraising range is nutted as hell so I dunno wtf I'm doing shipping another $225 into this pot. Just fold the turn bro.

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 649337
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

SB: $400.00
BB: $400.00
UTG: $957.60
Hero (MP): $650.90
CO: $923.00
BTN: $388.10

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is MP with K K
1 fold, Hero raises to $14, CO calls $14, 3 folds

Flop: ($34.00) 7 5 5 (2 players)
Hero bets $25, CO calls $25

Turn: ($84.00) A (2 players)
Hero bets $60, CO raises to $160, Hero requests TIME, Hero calls $100

River: ($404.00) 7 (2 players)
Hero checks, CO requests TIME, CO bets $246, Hero calls $246

Final Pot: $896.00

Hero shows K K (two pair, Kings and Sevens)
CO shows J Q (two pair, Sevens and Fives)

Hero wins $893.00
(Rake: $3.00)

I felt bad after seeing all the hands I played bad so I had to pull up something like this. Villain is some reg, we don't have much history. His turn range is 100% FOS and 0% value, so gg him.

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 649338
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: $459.00
UTG: $716.20
MP: $454.00
CO: $480.00
BTN: $491.40
Hero (SB): $408.00

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is SB with 7 7
3 folds, BTN raises to $12, Hero calls $10, BB calls $8

Flop: ($36.00) 4 7 Q (3 players)
Hero checks, BB checks, BTN checks

Turn: ($36.00) 5 (3 players)
Hero bets $26, BB folds, BTN raises to $52, Hero raises to $144, BTN calls $92

River: ($324.00) K (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN requests TIME, BTN bets $335.40 all in, Hero calls $252 all in

Final Pot: $828.00

BTN shows 5 5 (three of a kind, Fives)
Hero shows 7 7 (three of a kind, Sevens)

Hero wins $825.00
(Rake: $3.00)

This was another hand I thought I played well. His turn minraise is really fucking strong and I see no reason to flat and check/raise the river, so I go for a 3bet to a size that I think he might create some flatting range with draws and sets/two pairs. On a blank river, I figure that when I check he'll be stupid enough to "value" shove something like Q5s or 555 since it doesn't look like I have him beat, and on top of that I get to give him a chance to bluff jam something like A5cc or whatever the shit he takes this line with. I'm not necessarily convinced this line is better than shoving myself since he might check back 75s but I think it at least illustrates my point that he doesn't have the self control to check back a set or something of similar absolute strength.

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 649340
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: $400.00
UTG: $308.60
MP: $938.40
CO: $400.00
BTN: $721.50
Hero (SB): $402.00

CO posts a big blind ($4)

Pre Flop: ($10.00) Hero is SB with A K
2 folds, CO checks, BTN calls $4, Hero raises to $20, 1 fold, CO calls $16, 1 fold

Flop: ($48.00) 6 Q Q (2 players)
Hero bets $28, CO raises to $56, Hero calls $28

Turn: ($160.00) 3 (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $100, Hero requests TIME, Hero calls $100

River: ($360.00) A (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $224 all in, Hero calls $224

Final Pot: $808.00

CO shows 8 7 (a pair of Queens)
Hero shows A K (two pair, Aces and Queens)

Hero wins $805.00
(Rake: $3.00)

Too bad I had to hit the ace on the river or else this would've looked cooler when I called anyways. This was his first hand at the table, so no reads, obv 8 high I knew it =D.

Absolute Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold'em - 2 players - View hand 649341
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: $1012.91
Hero (BTN/SB): $1208.00

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is BTN/SB with 4 Q
Hero raises to $12, BB raises to $36, Hero raises to $84, BB calls $48

Flop: ($168.00) 5 A 2 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $80, BB calls $80

Turn: ($328.00) 8 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $244, BB calls $244

River: ($816.00) 2 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $800 all in, BB calls $604.91 all in

Final Pot: $2025.82

BB mucks A 7
Hero shows 4 Q (Flush, ace high)

Hero wins $2025.32
(Rake: $0.50)

And to end my long string of HHs, I won my biggest pot ever today against a huuuuuge fish cake. I just looked up our session stats and for 200 hands he was 3betting 44.1% and I had a 4bet range of 17.6% (I was 4betting 40.7% of his 3bets) and he only 5bet me twice, every single other time he took a flop and was playing fit/fold so that was pretty epic. Once we got 250bb deep I was 4betting everything he 3bet and I could call, and he never figured out how to adjust before I binked a flush =D.

Anyways good night guys, hope you're running better than me

Long Awaited Return

2010-04-06T09:12:00.001-07:00

Hey Everyone,

I know it's been a while since my last detailed update so I'm gonna make this a post without HHs and hopefully get back into the poker related posting within a week or two. A lot of things have happened in the past month or so and it's gonna take a little while to get through all of it, so here goes.

Unfortunately I have to start on a bad note, but one of the biggest updates for anyone who hasn't found out already is that my girlfriend and I broke up a few weeks ago. We'd been dating since our Junior year in high school so it wasn't easy for us to decide to end things, but she's in graduate school now and I'm putting a lot more time into working (more on this soon!) and playing poker, so we both sort of lost touch over the last few months. Thankfully we're still on good terms, and I expect to stay very good friends, which is awesome because although we both needed to get out of our relationship for the time being, it's never easy to end such a good thing after four years. I'm happy that it went as smoothly as it did, and seems to continue to be working out.

Moving forward from that, I'm going to be keeping myself busy studying for the Series 7, because upon passing I officially have a job with a prop trading firm starting at the end of this school year. I'm going out to Las Vegas (I know, it's awesome) on June 19th, and my first day in the office will be June 21st (I assume). I've already reserved a condo a few miles from the strip, and I'm staying there until the end of November. But what about school?!?!??? Don't worry, I'm not dropping out. I already had plans to graduate as early as December, but with this job opportunity, and the chance to live in Las Vegas among traders and poker players galore, I decided to take a leave of absence for fall quarter and finish classes in the winter. After this year I only have four more courses to complete, so I still might even graduate ahead of schedule.

So what all of this means is that the new two months are going to be the hardest of my life, most likely. First of all I have a bet with my roommate that I can wake up before him every day ($1 per day to the person who wakes up first) to keep my on schedule. Secondly, my jaw has been killing me because I need to get my wisdom teeth out (they're impacted, so it's basically like something is pushing all my teeth inwards from every side). Once that's taken care of (hopefully this week or next) I have to keep up on my classes (like econometrics...sigh), study daily for the Series 7, and still put in a ton of poker hands because I need to pay for my time in Vegas without any help from the parents. Thanks to a small loan from a good friend of mine who has to study for the MCATs I'm gonna be back to playing MSNL for at least the next few months, so I expect to make enough but I'm also expecting quite a grind. Now I know it doesn't sound like a hassle to put in time playing poker, but if I want to ensure that variance won't crush my hopes of Vegas, I need to put in a pretty significant amount of time the next two months playing and keeping sharp. For those of you who don't play poker much, I read a very good post the other day on twoplustwo.com that describes the difficulty of a poker lifestyle and I'd recommend taking some time to read it (it's not that long):

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=17984972&postcount=1

I think I've mentioned it on here before, but I'd like to post again that if anyone is planning on coming out to Vegas, I need roommates anytime from mid July through November. I think I've got a full house (or probably will) during the first month that I'm there because of the WSOP and all, but please get in touch with me if you're looking to make a trip to Vegas because I have a pretty nice place for a reasonable price, but it won't be so reasonable if I have to pay for the whole thing myself =\ Also, as most of you might know, I'm turning 21 in August and I'd love for anyone and everyone to come visit me in Vegas to celebrate. I think my high school buddies are coming out the weekend after my birthday (Aug 13-15) so anyone interested can plan accordingly.

I'm pretty sure that's all and I know it's written like a giant run-on sentence but I didn't plan this post out and it's a ton of stuff so I hope it's at least comprehensible. I'm off to study some more but I promise to come on here more often and give you guys some life updates and interesting HHs. Take care and gl.

Kevin

Spring Break

2010-02-19T23:07:00.000-08:00

Sorry guys, still no long update cause I've been busy and I'm not doing so hot at poker. I do have some braggy hands to display later, some failed bluffs that i still think are sexy, and a bunch of coolers. I'll post within a week or so.

What I do want to say in this post is that I'm going to Las Vegas during spring break. Long story short is that I've gotten a semi-legitimate offer from a trading firm down there to work during this summer contingent on me passing a series 7 licensing exam. They're mailing me some study materials, splitting my flight to vegas during break, and paying for my exam in June before I start work. If all goes well, this is going to be a great summer. Also, if anyone's going to be in Vegas either from March 20-25 or anytime this summer, shoot me a message and we'll meet up. I turn 21 in August though...so sorry if you like bars or casinos or 99% of the things Vegas has.

GL everyone, hope you're running well.

Kevin

Upgrade

2010-01-30T10:17:00.000-08:00

Hey guys,

So a few new things about me and my coaching. First of all, I've stopped making monthly videos and I'm gonna work on getting out the rest of the 3-betting series that some of you guys have seen part of in the past two months. I'm hoping for it to be an 8-video series once I'm done with it, and I'll probably sell it as a package, like $40 added to anyone who has the first 3 videos already, or $80 total, something like that. I haven't really decided pricing but basically I want to focus on a specific topic rather than just pumping out subpar videos once per week when I don't even play HU that much anymore.

That brings me to my second point. I've played a lot of 6max in the past month, and gotten some great coaching from nxtwrldchamp. I know that a few of my students are starting to play 6max and they've come to me with a lot of questions about the game and HHs for discussion. Since I've felt quite comfortable with all of their questions, I'm going to add 6max to my available coaching, also at 200nl and lower. I don't really know what a competitive price for new students might be, so come to me privately to discuss a price based on how many hours, how much is 6max, how much is HU, stakes, etc etc.

In order to advertise this awesome new coaching of mine, I have a brand new sample HU video of me playing a friend of mine at 2 tables. It's a bit long, but the ending is the best part, so it's worth the watch: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=UJ9JV1GR

On to the life upgrades. I've been slacking like a huge asshole for the first part of this quarter, getting basically zero work done, playing a bunch of fifa, etc. I've been applying to a bunch of summer jobs which is going well and all but I need to pull my act together. Here's a list of improvements that I will be making starting today, guaranteed:

1. Complete some form of studying or homework every day. This could be one chapter of reading, one problem set, practice problems, etc. I just can't afford to keep skipping days and expecting to be prepared for all my exams.

2. Daily trip to the gym, even though it's completely miserable outside. Getting some exercise really helps motivate me and it might even be best for me to start doing this in the morning rather than at night for that reason.

3. Play 1-3 hours of poker per day, no more, no less. I need to get on a regular schedule for this as well, but playing more than 3 hours is simply going to interfere with the rest of my day.

4. Check daily for new job opportunities online.

5. No more fifa, unless I've done all of the above in a given day.

That doesn't seem too hard having written it out. Alright everyone, this finishes probably my longest blog post ever (not counting HHs) so I'm gonna get to work. Have a great weekend.

Kevin

Uuuugggghhhhh

2010-01-27T01:02:00.001-08:00

1. FTP is the worst. 2 days and counting without access to my account.

2. Cake is the worst. Only other place I had any money and so I go for robusto and now am busto. No HH's from there afaik but basically

I sit 3/6 HU with someone who appears to be a weak reg. He folds a bunch while i 3bet the shit out of him, I get in JJ v. TT pre and hes super duper pumped about it, hits a gutter on the river for my stack. My remaining balance is less than a full buyin, so lets hit up 2/4...

Now I sit 2/4 HU for like half a buyin cause that's what's left...I get a shitty reg again (okay maybe Cake isn't the worst). I double up A9s>A7s preflop for like 30bbs cause he's opening to 3x for some reason and then calls it off with A7s. Good for him. I proceed to get owned a bit cause he's kinda 3bet happy for a while, back at 50bbs. I get AKo in the bb, 3bet to 8bbs, he calls. Flop 755r i cbet 1/2 pot he calls. turn 7 and there's a psb left, i c/c my ace high thinking he'll have floats, gutters, etc and never vbet worse than a boat, but he ships it with 99 and gg me. =(

GL to me getting a job, since I currently have no access to any poker sites after donating the last of my Stars $$. Hurry the heck up FTP.

Kevin

Good Day

2010-01-21T20:39:00.000-08:00

No HHs this time guys, just a few brief trip reports.

1. Rush Poker

This is the best thing ever. I got in 1,300 hands in less than two hours, playing an amount of tables that I'm fairly sure I could do more of. I was timing out a few times because of Skyping everyone I know about how awesome Rush Poker is, but regardless, I could probably handle 6 tables of this (or at least, 4 tables of 100nl Rush which is the cap and 2 tables of HU or 2 tables of 400nl 6m or something). This is going to become a habit, especially with earning 1k FTP points during that session. Oh, and running at 33ptbb/100 is probably also making me like it.

2. Justice Cafe

Just a small UChicago event that I just got back from, which was pretty sick. It was a fundraiser for justice in Gaza (and also for Haiti) and the majority of performances were from Palestinean background. There was spoken word poetry from college students and a few songs. I've never been to a poetry reading or even a rap concert and it was a cool experience to say the least. All the performers were amateur to some extent so it felt a little less intimidating for them and the crowd in my opinion. The last two guys who went had three short poems that overlapped with each other that were out of this world, I'll try to see if they go up on youtube and post it here later because they were really impressive and they're students here so I have to represent anything cool that UChicago is able to produce.

I'm gonna continue applying to summer internships but I hope everyone's doing well and if you haven't tried out Rush Poker yet I highly recommend it because I'm pretty certain that 98.3% of fish are currently playing that instead of any other game.

Kevin

Back Home

2010-01-19T23:28:00.000-08:00

Hey Guys,

Sorry about the delays. I decided to drive up (down?) to Georgia for the weekend to visit my friend from high school. It was awesome and basically the best weekend ever but I came back swamped with shit to do and just got through most of it today. I was up till 5am last night doing problem sets and almost missed my 9:00 class to even turn in the damn thing but I managed to get there before class was over.

After a nap and a three hour accounting lecture, I decided to get nxtwrldchamp to sweat me at 2/4 since I haven't played in a week and I've been meaning to get at least one live sweat at 2/4. It seems from our discussion that I was playing well, but somehow amongst my opponents raising every single turn bet I made I lost $2k. Some sample hands from this abominations of a session:

Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em $0.30 Ante - 6 players - View hand 487349
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (MP): $377.50
CO: $1469.50
BTN: $490.50
SB: $282.45
BB: $400.90
UTG: $420.50

Pre Flop: ($4.80) Hero is MP with A K
1 fold, Hero raises to $7, 2 folds, SB calls $6, BB calls $5

Flop: ($22.80) 8 5 A (3 players)
SB bets $16, BB calls $16, Hero raises to $52, SB requests TIME, SB raises to $275.15 all in, BB folds, Hero calls $223.15

Turn: ($589.10) 7 (2 players - 1 is all in)

River: ($589.10) T (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $589.10
Hero shows A K (a pair of Aces)
SB shows 8 A (two pair, Aces and Eights)

SB wins $586.10
(Rake: $3.00)

Nothing really to say here, obviously I could flat the flop but given how huge my equity is on the flop and also the fact that SB was a fish who might not stack off on some scary turns makes me think raising is slightly better.

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold'em - 4 players - View hand 487352
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

SB: $394.00
BB: $400.00
CO: $491.00
Hero (BTN): $400.00

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is BTN with A A
1 fold, Hero raises to $10, 1 fold, BB raises to $42, Hero calls $32

Flop: ($86.00) J Q 2 (2 players)
BB bets $65, Hero calls $65

Turn: ($216.00) K (2 players)
BB bets $122, Hero raises to $293 all in, BB calls $171 all in

River: ($802.00) 6 (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $802.00
BB shows K K (three of a kind, Kings)
Hero shows A A (a pair of Aces)

BB wins $800.00
(Rake: $2.00)

Here i decide to slowplay my aces against a spewy reg but the turn doesn't work out so hot. I'm pretty sure it's still a push given how often ppl bet the king simply because it's a king, and also that nobody ever folds AK and they always play it this way. Meh.

Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em $0.30 Ante - 5 players - View hand 487354
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

CO: $238.40
BTN: $407.70
SB: $475.30
Hero (BB): $402.40
UTG: $663.25

Pre Flop: ($4.50) Hero is BB with Q J
3 folds, SB raises to $8, Hero calls $6

Flop: ($17.50) T 8 K (2 players)
SB bets $12, Hero raises to $46, SB calls $34

Turn: ($109.50) 6 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $78, SB requests TIME, SB raises to $421 all in, Hero folds

Final Pot: $265.50
SB wins $262.50

(Rake: $3.00)

When it came down to it stuff like this is what was hurting me most (and running KK into AA to end the session ldo), I just couldn't pull off a bluff without someone repopping me on the turn.

So...I'm down 5 buyins and this day sucks so what do I do? I go get a sandwich and come back to play another two hours at 1/2. Obviously crushed it. Here goes:

Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em $0.30 Ante - 6 players - View hand 487356
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: $263.95
UTG: $341.85
Hero (MP): $405.15
CO: $277.10
BTN: $262.45
SB: $412.80

Pre Flop: ($4.80) Hero is MP with K K
UTG raises to $8.80, Hero raises to $26, 4 folds, UTG calls $17.20

Flop: ($56.80) Q 5 K (2 players)
UTG checks, Hero bets $28, UTG calls $28

Turn: ($112.80) Q (2 players)
UTG bets $60, Hero calls $60

River: ($232.80) K (2 players)
UTG bets $200, Hero raises to $290.85 all in, UTG calls $27.55 all in

Final Pot: $687.90
UTG mucks A J
Hero shows K K (four of a kind, Kings)

Hero wins $684.90
(Rake: $3.00)

Villain is a known fish...I wonder why?

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold'em $0.75 Ante - 2 players - View hand 487358
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: $1011.75
Hero (BTN/SB): $405.25

Pre Flop: ($7.50) Hero is BTN/SB with Q Q
Hero raises to $12, BB calls $8

Flop: ($25.50) 6 8 6 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $16, BB calls $16

Turn: ($57.50) 6 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $44, BB calls $44

River: ($145.50) 5 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $116, BB calls $116

Final Pot: $377.50
BB mucks A 3
Hero shows Q Q (a full house, Sixes full of Queens)

Hero wins $377.00
(Rake: $0.50)

Looks to me like the 6max reg got confused about how to play HU...

Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em - 2 players - View hand 487362
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: $720.20
Hero (BTN/SB): $205.50

Pre Flop: ($3.00) Hero is BTN/SB with K K
Hero raises to $4, BB calls $2

Flop: ($8.00) 9 6 3 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $5, BB calls $5

Turn: ($18.00) 5 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $13, BB calls $13

River: ($44.00) 6 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $54, BB calls $54

Final Pot: $152.00
BB mucks J 3
Hero shows K K (two pair, Kings and Sixes)

Hero wins $151.50
(Rake: $0.50)

His call took about 0.023 seconds in this one. These are actually v. TeejayorTJ if anyone knows him from 2p2 or whatever, seems like he was pretty bad. One more hand of his before bed...

Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em - 2 players - View hand 487364
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: $682.45
Hero (BTN/SB): $249.25

Pre Flop: ($3.00) Hero is BTN/SB with A A
Hero raises to $4, BB raises to $16, Hero raises to $44, BB calls $28

Flop: ($88.00) 5 J 8 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $36, BB raises to $638.45 all in, Hero calls $169.25 all in

Turn: ($498.50) J (2 players - 2 are all in)

River: ($498.50) 4 (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $498.50
BB shows 9 9 (two pair, Jacks and Nines)
Hero shows A A (two pair, Aces and Jacks)

Hero wins $498.00
(Rake: $0.50)

.....yeah

Goodnight guys

Kevin

Traveling a bit

2010-01-14T13:44:00.001-08:00

Hey everyone,

I won't be around for a few days because I'm road tripping to visit a friend of mine in Georgia. I'll update with some fun hands when I get back, I played a bit of 3/6 and 5/10 on Cake the last two days because I felt stupid for leaving so little money there and not using it. Also, I met with my advisor today and I'm successfully gonna graduate a quarter early! Hope everyone has a good long weekend

Kevin

Not exactly playing at 100%

2010-01-11T00:29:00.000-08:00

Hey Guys,

Late night post after a late night session. I was at the library a bunch earlier but I finished my Finance so I let myself play a few hours. I feel like I'm doing alright at 2/4 and I might just be a little anxious about winning pots but I think overall I could be playing better. I'll post a few hands here and I probably need some feedback but since I left 2p2 I'll leave it up to the 4 people (including myself) who frequent here. Hope these spots are actually interesting because they felt really iffy in game and I think I'm just making too many assumptions without further reads.

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 467836
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $436.55
MP: $1295.40
CO: $553.00
BTN: $702.00
Hero (SB): $400.60
BB: $394.00

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is SB with K 9
UTG calls $4, 3 folds, Hero raises to $20, 1 fold, UTG calls $16

Flop: ($44.00) T A A (2 players)
Hero bets $24, UTG calls $24

Turn: ($92.00) T (2 players)
Hero checks, UTG bets $92, Hero calls $92

River: ($276.00) 2 (2 players)
Hero checks, UTG bets $276, Hero calls $264.60 all in

Final Pot: $805.20

UTG shows 7 A (a full house, Aces full of Tens)
Hero mucks K 9

UTG wins $802.20
(Rake: $3.00)

Here I was sitting against a known fish but I'm not yet sure if he's the nitty live player fish or the stupid cocky fish. Either way I've seen him overbet once already in the past 20 hands or so and I just kinda decided to hero it up since my hand feels like the nuts against a variety of possible gutters and three-pair hands that I beat. That combined with the pot/pot line made me think he was FOS but oh well I guess, maybe it's not bad.

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 467838
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: $776.15
UTG: $1353.20
MP: $553.00
CO: $800.00
Hero (BTN): $400.00
SB: $447.00

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is BTN with 6 4
1 fold, MP raises to $12, 1 fold, Hero raises to $40, SB calls $38, 2 folds

Flop: ($96.00) T 4 7 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero checks

Turn: ($96.00) A (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $62, SB calls $62

River: ($220.00) 3 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $298 all in, SB calls $298

Final Pot: $816.00

Hero shows 6 4 (a pair of Fours)
SB shows K A (a pair of Aces)

SB wins $813.00
(Rake: $3.00)

Here I get my 3bet cold called by a guy who's running some pretty nitty stats (16/5 or whereabouts). I don't see much reason to cbet the flop, but once we get to the turn I think I take a hand that has some pretty marginal showdown value and turn it into a bluff against a range I felt included a lot of 88/99/JJ type hands. In game I thought this type of player would usually lead an ace or a set on the turn if he actually had it, but I'm obviously at least somewhat wrong there. I think my bluff works basically 100% of the time he has the hands I expected him to, but I made some bad assumptions preflop about his ranges because I discounted AJ-AK too much.

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold'em $0.75 Ante - 6 players - View hand 467840
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

MP: $984.15
CO: $348.20
BTN: $1188.25
SB: $729.45
Hero (BB): $519.60
UTG: $830.75

Pre Flop: ($10.50) Hero is BB with T K
2 folds, CO raises to $12, BTN calls $12, 1 fold, Hero calls $8

Flop: ($42.50) 4 K 2 (3 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $24, BTN calls $24, Hero calls $24

Turn: ($114.50) A (3 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $52, BTN folds, Hero requests TIME, Hero calls $52

River: ($218.50) 3 (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $96, Hero requests TIME, Hero calls $96

Final Pot: $410.50

CO shows 9 A (a pair of Aces)
Hero mucks T K

CO wins $407.50
(Rake: $3.00)

Here I just make a really bad calldown against a regfish, this river bet size is like never ever a bluff but I talked myself into it for sure.

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players - View hand 467841
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BTN: $963.25
SB: $1092.70
Hero (BB): $406.00
UTG: $899.80
CO: $800.00

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is BB with K J
UTG raises to $12, 3 folds, Hero calls $8

Flop: ($26.00) J 8 8 (2 players)
Hero checks, UTG bets $16, Hero calls $16

Turn: ($58.00) 5 (2 players)
Hero checks, UTG checks

River: ($58.00) 3 (2 players)
Hero bets $40, UTG raises to $111, Hero requests TIME, Hero calls $71

Final Pot: $280.00

Hero mucks K J
UTG shows K 8 (three of a kind, Eights)

UTG wins $277.00
(Rake: $3.00)

My river call here is awful, that is all. There were two more hands where I ran a bet/check/bet line on perfect river bluff cards and got snappped off by 3rd pair in both cases. Good job picking the right people to bluff imo.

Hope everyone's playing better than me, but somehow I won $150 today so it's all good. Goodnight guys

Kevin

Hotter than fifty suns

2010-01-09T15:19:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone,

Apparently the poker world has rewarded me for leaving 2p2, because in three days of 6max I ran at 16.5BB/100 for around 5k hands and am now transition into the 400nl games because of it. I'm feeling great about my game despite one or two slightly misplayed hands from today, which I'll post on here in a bit.

First I'd like to mention that I'm a huge bum and haven't finished any work at all this week. Second i'd like to mention that i skipped Taking the Next Step (alumni event downtown) because I'm a huge bum who hasn't finished any work all week. Despite this, I was able to write a cover letter today for my first internship application (Aon Insurance) and I finished my poker videos for December. I'm now planning to stop making my monthly videos and start to focus on release a series of videos every month or two. Right now I'm working on my series of HU 3betting strategy, covering preflop, postflop and a few common player types in quite some detail. I'm excited about finishing this and I'm probably going to sell it in conjunction with coaching of some kind in the future.

Having quit 2p2 I'm going to have a huge void of time that i expect to be filled with job applications, and on top of that I'm not coaching nearly as much as I used to. Now if I end up not getting a job despite making this transition, I might have to say screw the system and move to Europe. Either way, I'll be happy in the end, right? Okay then, time for some hands in my fancy new format thanks to Aero's help.

Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em $0.30 Ante - 6 players - View hand 465568
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BTN: $480.25
SB: $222.60
BB: $200.00
UTG: $701.10
Hero (MP): $500.30
CO: $510.10

Pre Flop: ($4.80) Hero is MP with Q K
1 fold, Hero raises to $7, CO calls $7, 2 folds, BB calls $5

Flop: ($23.80) 2 6 J (3 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $13, CO calls $13, BB folds

Turn: ($49.80) Q (2 players)
Hero bets $33, CO calls $33

River: ($115.80) K (2 players)
Hero bets $86, CO raises to $456.80 all in, Hero calls $361 all in

Final Pot: $1009.80

Hero mucks Q K
CO shows 4 6 (a flush, King high)
CO wins $1006.80
(Rake: $3.00)

I found this hand interesting simply because I had been pounding on this table for my first 15-20 hands and I had no idea how this guy would react to it. Literally two hands ago he folded to my second barrel and since these are like perfect turn/river bluff cards I leveled myself into a call here since he can only have 6dXd, JdXd, Tc9c or AcTc basically which I think based on his preflop stats is like 10 total combos, whereas I thought he'd get to the river reasonably wide but I think having reviewed this a few times I made a mistake here and should've folded the river.

Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em $0.30 Ante - 5 players - View hand 465571
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (CO): $402.00
BTN: $391.90
SB: $348.30
BB: $460.75
UTG: $400.00

Pre Flop: ($4.50) Hero is CO with Q K
1 fold, Hero raises to $6, 1 fold, SB raises to $24, 1 fold, Hero calls $18

Flop: ($51.50) K 7 2 (2 players)
SB bets $26, Hero calls $26

Turn: ($103.50) 6 (2 players)
SB bets $100, Hero requests TIME, Hero calls $100

River: ($303.50) 4 (2 players)
SB bets $198 all in, Hero calls $198

Final Pot: $699.50

Hero mucks Q K
SB shows A A (a pair of Aces)

SB wins $696.50
(Rake: $3.00)

This hand was with someone who I view as slightly spastic, because of a hand we've played together earlier where he 4bet bluffed me and then bet the river for some weird reason with like 4th pair. I don't think we have any particular dynamic, I just don't think he's very good. I think I make a mistake here by calling the turn, he's obviously polarized between nuts and draws but I think I gave him credit for having too many draws here given that his 3bet% is only 6 or so. So yeah, not particularly proud of the way I played this hand.

Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em $0.30 Ante - 5 players - View hand 465575
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

SB: $284.10
BB: $528.60
Hero (UTG): $389.20
CO: $947.25
BTN: $412.85

Pre Flop: ($4.50) Hero is UTG with Q T
Hero raises to $7, 2 folds, SB calls $6, BB calls $5

Flop: ($22.50) J J 3 (3 players)
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets $11, SB folds, BB calls $11

Turn: ($44.50) 9 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $28, BB calls $28

River: ($100.50) 3 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $124, BB calls $124

Final Pot: $348.50

BB shows J Q (a full house, Jacks full of Threes)
Hero shows Q T (two pair, Jacks and Threes)

BB wins $345.50
(Rake: $3.00)

This hand I thought was sexy but this dude plays trips reasonably well which i didn't expect at all here so nice hand to him.

Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 465582
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $200.00
MP: $84.15
CO: $202.45
Hero (BTN): $200.00
SB: $348.00
BB: $152.00

Pre Flop: ($3.00) Hero is BTN with 5 5
3 folds, Hero raises to $5, 1 fold, BB raises to $16, Hero calls $11

Flop: ($33.00) 2 9 7 (2 players)
BB bets $18, Hero calls $18

Turn: ($69.00) 2 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $32, BB raises to $118 all in, Hero calls $86

River: ($305.00) Q (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $305.00

Hero shows 5 5 (two pair, Fives and Twos)
BB shows A 4 (a pair of Twos)

Hero wins $302.00
(Rake: $3.00)

You guys didn't think I was gonna lose every hand, did you?

Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 465584
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

CO: $400.00
BTN: $210.35
SB: $514.50
BB: $227.85
UTG: $410.00
Hero (MP): $400.00

Pre Flop: ($3.00) Hero is MP with A A
1 fold, Hero raises to $7, CO calls $7, 1 fold, SB raises to $30, 1 fold, Hero raises to $66, 1 fold, SB calls $36

Flop: ($141.00) Q 3 8 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $56, SB calls $56

Turn: ($253.00) 5 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $75, SB requests TIME, SB raises to $392.50 all in, Hero calls $203 all in

River: ($809.00) 2 (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $809.00

SB shows T J (Queen Jack high)
Hero shows A A (a pair of Aces)

Hero wins $806.00
(Rake: $3.00)

word.

Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em $0.30 Ante - 6 players - View hand 465589
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: $400.00
UTG: $894.80
Hero (MP): $467.05
CO: $358.85
BTN: $206.90
SB: $387.80

Pre Flop: ($4.80) Hero is MP with 5 5

1 fold, Hero raises to $7, CO calls $7, 2 folds, BB raises to $32, Hero calls $25, 1 fold

Flop: ($73.80) 5 5 9 (2 players)
BB bets $46, Hero calls $46

Turn: ($165.80) J (2 players)
BB bets $132, Hero raises to $388.75 all in, BB calls $189.70 all in

River: ($809.20) 2 (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $809.20

BB shows 4 A (a pair of Fives)
Hero shows 5 5 (four of a kind, Fives)

Hero wins $806.20
(Rake: $3.00)

aaand quadzilla. gl guys

Kevin

No More 2p2

2010-01-07T22:35:00.000-08:00

So I officially decided to stop regular posting on twoplustwo and made a nice self-fulfilling post about it here: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/58/heads-up-nl/lc-poohbah-post-growing-up-part-1-a-679115/

It's late and I have some reading to do so I'll update tomorrow but I had a horrendously long session that netted me around $450 and I have a few fun hands to share. I also got some good advice on how to make this blog a bit more visually appealing so I'll be implementing that tomorrow. Good night everyone

Kevin

Winter Quarter has begun...

2010-01-04T14:51:00.000-08:00

Hey Everyone,

I'm back at my apartment and getting ready to start class tomorrow. 6 hours of class at 9am tomorrow so obviously I had to play plenty of cards today. I had a pretty good session playing 4 tables of 6max and 2 tables of HU for around 1,200 hands. I haven't hit the gym yet today but I plan to right after some coaching that starts in a few minutes. We also broke out our new crock pot (giant slow cooker that could fit like 3 whole turkeys inside of it) and have dinner cooking as I blog.

Also, we get our Peapod delivery in an hour or so, and if anyone lives on their own and doesn't use Peapod, I suggest you reconsider your life. Peapod is the best thing ever and delivery is free for like your first 3 months and after that it's only $6.95 or something for orders of $100 or more. They basically have everything. Check it out.

Lastly, I found my old game of Funny Farm today. http://tinyurl.com/ydf2z8y if anyone wants to go to that link and tell me more answers, I'm dying to finish this thing, it's like the most addicting puzzle in the universe and it's hard as shit. Drop me a comment if you solve any new words. Also, happy birthday shoutout to my mom. Here's a few hands from today's swongy session:

Party, $1/$2 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 4 Players

LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

Hero (SB): $407.40

BB: $320.75

UTG: $258.15

BTN: $204.45

Pre-Flop: 8 J dealt to Hero (SB)

UTG raises to $6, BTN folds, Hero raises to $22, BB calls $20, UTG folds

Flop: ($50) Q T 9 (2 Players)

Hero bets $36, BB raises to $72, Hero raises to $108, BB calls $36

Turn: ($266) T (2 Players)

Hero bets $200, BB calls $190.75 and is All-In

River: ($647.50) Q (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: $647.50 Pot

Hero showed 8 J and WON $9.25 (-$310.50 NET)

BB showed A Q and WON $645.50 (+$326.75 NET)

Flop was a misclick, but whatever, screw him.

Party, $1/$2 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players

LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

Hero (BTN): $424.70

SB: $72.60

BB: $675.35

UTG: $202

MP: $289.35

CO: $200

Pre-Flop: A Q dealt to Hero (BTN)

3 folds, Hero raises to $5, SB calls $4, BB raises to $20, Hero calls $15, SB calls $15

Flop: ($60) Q 2 9 (3 Players)

SB checks, BB bets $130, Hero raises to $404.70 and is All-In, SB folds, BB calls $274.70

Turn: ($869.40) 7 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

River: ($869.40) A (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: $869.40 Pot ($3 Rake)

Hero showed A Q and WON $866.40 (+$441.70 NET)

BB showed K K and LOST (-$422.70 NET)

tagged him back (same villain). =P

Party, $1/$2 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 5 Players

LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

Hero (CO): $938.45

BTN: $267.15

SB: $144.45

BB: $203

UTG: $303

Pre-Flop: Q Q dealt to Hero (CO)

UTG folds, Hero raises to $6, BTN raises to $20, SB calls $19, BB folds, Hero raises to $54, BTN folds, SB calls $34

Flop: ($130) 7 3 6 (2 Players)

SB bets $90.45 and is All-In, Hero calls $90.45

Turn: ($310.90) 9 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

River: ($310.90) 8 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: $310.90 Pot ($3 Rake)

Hero showed Q Q and WON $307.90 (+$163.45 NET)

SB showed Q A and LOST (-$143.45 NET)

...and then I busted his BR. all the same guy. I feel kinda bad cause he mentioned in the chat that he *almost* turned $24 into a $1050 mortgage payment. My suckout stopped that. He was probably a hit n runner though, so it's all good. Have a good night guys

Kevin

Happy New Year!

2010-01-02T13:04:00.000-08:00

Hey guys,

Hope everyone had a good start to 2010. Since I have a lot of ambitious goals to take care of this year, I decided to keep up on a blog so that I can't fail at my goals without all the judgmental internet folk knowing about it.

I apologize to anyone who might read this and isn't interested in poker, because chances are I'm going to talk a lot about it. Also, I'll probably discuss college basketball and baseball as long as I keep up. Maybe movies, maybe The Wire if I get around to it, and almost definitely LOST's final season.

I started off the year playing some heads up because I'm at home so no shot at playing 6max. I had a nice juicy fish at 2 tables of 200nl who gave me some nice donations at first but then decided to dunk his balls in a pool of 4-leaf clovers and win $1,200 back. Some fun hands from the match:

Full Tilt, $1/$2 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 2 Players

LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

Hero (BB): $235.50

BTN: $205.50

Pre-Flop: Q 9 dealt to Hero (BB)

BTN raises to $6, Hero calls $4

Flop: ($12) 6 5 K (2 Players)

Hero checks, BTN checks

Turn: ($12) 7 (2 Players)

Hero bets $10, BTN calls $10

River: ($32) Q (2 Players)

Hero bets $17, BTN raises to $44, Hero raises to $219.50 and is All-In, BTN calls $145.50 and is All-In

Results: $411 Pot ($0.50 Rake)

Hero showed Q 9 and LOST (-$203.50 NET)

BTN showed Q Q and WON $410.50 (+$206 NET)

That one was before I knew he was a fish, but either way the jerk had the one combo in existence that calls my river 3bet so screw him.

Full Tilt, $1/$2 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 2 Players

LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

Hero (BTN): $673.60

BB: $202

Pre-Flop: T T dealt to Hero (BTN)

Hero raises to $4, BB raises to $14, Hero raises to $40, BB raises to $200 and is All-In, Hero calls $161

Flop: ($404) 2 J 2 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Turn: ($404) 7 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

River: ($404) 4 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: $404 Pot ($0.50 Rake)

Hero showed T T and WON $403.50 (+$202.50 NET)

BB showed 4 8 and LOST (-$200 NET)

Seems like someone found the best way to combat wide 4betting...

Full Tilt, $1/$2 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 2 Players

LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

Hero (BTN): $649.20

BB: $418.10

Pre-Flop: Q J dealt to Hero (BTN)

Hero raises to $4, BB raises to $14, Hero calls $10

Flop: ($28) T 8 K (2 Players)

BB bets $17, Hero calls $17

Turn: ($62) 9 (2 Players)

BB bets $45, Hero raises to $132, BB calls $87

River: ($326) 6 (2 Players)

BB checks, Hero bets $486.20 and is All-In, BB calls $255.10 and is All-In

Results: $836.20 Pot ($0.50 Rake)

Hero showed Q J and LOST (-$417.10 NET)

BB showed J A and WON $835.70 (+$419.60 NET)

=(

Full Tilt, $1/$2 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 2 Players

LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

Hero (BTN): $200

BB: $1,120

Pre-Flop: 9 9 dealt to Hero (BTN)

Hero raises to $4, BB calls $2

Flop: ($8) 8 4 6 (2 Players)

BB bets $6, Hero raises to $24, BB raises to $42, Hero calls $18

Turn: ($92) T (2 Players)

BB bets $154, Hero calls $154 and is All-In

River: ($400) K (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: $400 Pot ($0.50 Rake)

Hero showed 9 9 and LOST (-$199 NET)

BB showed T 8 and WON $399.50 (+$201.50 NET)

That one was directly after 3 straight raises of his donkbet... sigh

So yeah I won a bit back after that but still had a shitty session overall. Went out to Buffalo Wild Wings after that and split 100 wings 5 ways, then won 2 games of nba2k10. Good finish imo.

Anyways I'm gonna take a break for now and maybe play again tonight. I'll be back at my apartment tomorrow to get ready for the new quarter (yay). Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their holiday.

Kevin