I love Saturday night poker!!

Good session both performance-wise and also results wise.

Here are a few hands:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1460329
I hate playing KQ OOP. I don’t like my play preflop here in fact. I should either fold or raise it up IMO. Anyone as played, I think I played it pretty well. Maybe I could have raised it a bit more on the flop, but after that I didn’t put any more money in, so I got my money in good.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1460338

More than 1 player before the flop and I would have reraised this from the blinds, but the villain was quite a TAG and so I thought I’d just see a cheap flop and disguise my hand a bit. The flop, I was happy checking so as not to fold out a weaker Ace or a worse hand. After that, I was just happy to call down. I think the 3rd spade on the turn scared the villain and helped keep the pot small. No point in raising this river as the King clearly didn’t scare him too much, but I had to call obv.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1460351

Really weird play by villain here. I can’t believe he thought his A7 was good here…..

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1460361
Similar stuff! Previously, I would have probably raised my TPTK here, but I think just flat-calling is definitely more profitable, keeping worse hands in and keeping the pot small. Comments ?

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1460387
I am very pleased with how I played this hand on all streets, but particularly the flop, which was the most critical street here. was obviously going to raise this, but in the past, I have made mistakes in the amount I have raised behind previous bets to cut the villains’ pot odds. My standard (ie without thinking) raise in this sort of situation has been 3x whatever the previous bet has been. Obviously when there’s already a big pot, and lots of people still it, this is nowhere near enough.  So here I took the time to work out what the total pot was and then I added the .30 that the villains had already put to which meant I was laying them 2-1 odds, not enough for their draws and it would have been a mistake for them to call. Turn card was  perfect obviously

Session stats:

Number of hands: 309
Net profit/loss: +$22.80
Winrate: +36.89 ptBB/100
Bankroll: $369.95

Quick session

Hmm, I’m still not happy with my play. I have a real problem with calling down with 1 pair and paying off sets. I just seem to get married to my big pairs and not stop and think before clicking.

This is my only major leak. My preflop play is very good IMO and so is my value betting on my big hands, and the way I play my draws.

Tonight’s main hands:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1456788
Villain was a total donkey calling station

Yuck. This is what I SHOULD have been thinking about: Villain just calls before flop and on the flop bets out on a dry board, and then fires a double barrel on an equally dry turn. He’s not on a draw, he has a made hand. The villain is very aggressive pf and so would have 3-bet any overpair before the flop. He has to have a set. I’m only beating JJ or AT here, I SHOULD FOLD

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1456799
Same villain as earlier hand (see what I mean about being a calling staion? – he calls an 8 BB raise with A7o OOP…)

I think I played this pretty well and lost the minimum here. Absolutely no point in c-betting here.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1456818
Standard play here vs a shortstack. No way I’m folding to his all-in on the flop. I just called because I wanted to see what the bigstack behind was going to do. If he came over the top, I was folding.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1456832
It is hands like this that make it so difficult to fold overpairs in other spots. I mean the villain calls a near pot-sized bet with bottom pair and a backdoor flush draw! Unbelievable
Session stats:

Number of hands: 161
Net profit/loss: +$2.80
Winrate: +  8.70 ptBB/100

Bankroll: $346.15

Ship the $0.65 !

Just had quite a solid, but unfortunately break-even session (well up about 8BB)
There were a lot of positives to come from this session, particularly with my value betting. I think I have been giving villains too much credit in the past with what they will call on the end.
Here are a few hands:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1452914
Huge suckout by villain. Notice the way he calls on the flop with absolutely nothing and then thinks he is good on the turn despite a check raise…..

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1452941
Ridiculous minbet on the flop from short-stack here. I decided he didn’t have a 6 and went with it only because of his shortstack. No way I was stacking off here otherwise.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1452959
I absolutely butchered this hand postflop. My reasoning behind my check on the flop was not to slow play it, but to allow the villain to catch up as I was ahead. The awful play was my calling his block bet on the turn. I should have raised it up big time at that point. And as played, wtf was I doing raising the river ?!  Don’t try this at home, kids…

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1452989
Shortstacker slowplays his pocket Kings. Unlucky sir !

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1452989
Villain was very aggressive preflop so I knew I was way ahead of his range and didn’t fancy playing OOP, hence the reraise. By calling he was pot-committed on the flop so I knew he was going to call my trip Kings   This is one of the best ways to beat shortstackers IMO. – Reraise them aggressively with your strong hands preflop and be prepared to call a reraise either preflop or on the flop (stop and go)

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1453015
This is the new me for my one pair hands. Pot control, no raising unless I am sure I am ahead, like when I hit my 2 pair on the river…. I won the maximum and would have lost the minimum otherwise.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1453032
Villain here was very aggressive, both pre and postflop. In hindsight I should have just called his c-bet as he had been c-betting a lot and I was way ahead of him, I think he would have carried on digging a hole for himself. Oh well, I’ll take it.
Session stats:
Number of hands: 400

Net profit/loss: +$0.65

Winrate: + 0.88  ptBB/100
Bankroll: $343.35

Plugging the leaks

Ok just a post to let you know I’m still alive and playing poker.I played a ton of hands this weekend and suffered another 3 buy-in downswing and decided enough was enough. That kind of downswing 2-tabling cannot just be due to variance so I decided to open up PokerTracker and do some serious analysis of my recent play. I listed all the hands played in August and sorted them by Net loss. I then took the top 20 and categorized them by how I lost the money.

Here are the results (this isn’t pretty lol):

The total loss for these 20 hands was $173.40 and the breakdown was as follows:

Standard (hands like set vs set, big pairs vs bigger pairs etc): 4 hands – $33.15

Bad beats: 5 hands – $42.70

Overplaying one pair: 11 hands – a whopping $97.55 !!

So over 50% of my biggest losses came from overplaying a single pair. This is obviously a huge leak and needs to be plugged asap if I’m going to be a winning cash player. What I find difficult is knowing when your one pair is good and taking the villain to value town, and knowing when to slow down and control the pot size.

Here are 2 hands that took place within a few minutes of each other which proves the difficulty of the problem:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1445329

I just “knew” he was weak and was on a draw, but I can’t explain how I knew. I just made the decision on the flop and went with it.

Then this hand came up:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1445342

I think the villain’s ridiculous call of the .10 bet threw me a bit on this hand. By the turn, the pot was huge and if you notice, he sized his bets pretty well 50/50 to commit me to the pot slowly, and I just got sucked in……

So in the space of a few minutes and very similar hands, I won a huge pot and lost another.

I decided to ask some other players for advice on how to stop stacking off with a single pair. I got this piece of advice, which I think is excellent:

“Simplistically, I look at one pair hands as ‘flop’ hands. I try to win on the flop then try for cheap showdowns. Position will play a factor in my play, but generally I look at full ring one pair hands as a liability.”

I think this sums up the situation very well. One pair (even AA) is only one pair and that is a small hand. Small hands should be played in small pots. I think the reason for me overplaying these hands comes from my SNG background. In an SNG, where stacks are small and play rarely goes beyond the flop, TPTK is often the nuts and should be felted without a specific read. This is definitely NOT the case in cash games !!

Anyway I have been trying to put this advice into practice in my last few sessions. I am perhaps missing a bit of value with checks on the turn and just calling reasonable bets on the river, but at least I’m not putting all my stack at risk. The results have been promising and I have won some of my weekend losses back.

If I can keep up the discipline on this and finally plug this leak, I think my winrate will increase significantly

Bankroll: $342.80