uh, I'm back, I guess

I run bad.

Fortunately (or not, I guess) I'm currently running bad at life. Poker is going okay.

I stopped blogging a while ago because I got fairly proficient at self-analyzing my hands, and was talking to a friend of mine about the ones that give me trouble.

Then Shads was like "hey I'm restarting my blog" and I'm all "oh I guess it's the cool thing to do" (Note: Shads is much, much smarter than I am. Go read his stuff. I mean, go, do it now.)

So here we are.

I switched to Full Tilt when Doyles booted Americans. I ran really hot, then played bad and ran bad, then broke even for 10k hands playing bad and running worse. I got a bit discouraged and stopped playing for a while. (Midterms also had something to do with this.) I wasn't playing particularly well, I wasn't running particularly well, and I wasn't really enjoying poker. If I was making decent cash, I could live with grinding away, but I wasn't. Took a break, re-oriented, started playing again. Now, I've been busy with academia for this, too, but I've had a couple breakeven sessions and just finished a pretty awesome one.

I've come to a few conclusions.

I can be vulnerable to fancy play syndrome and giving my opponents too much credit. This leads to spewy calls or bets. I don't do it often, but like, donking off half a stack still sucks. I can float, but I'm not identifying the best situations for it. I'm getting better at double barreling, but basically being OOP sucks and I'm still not super good at it. I'm not inducing bluffs as often as I can be, and I'm not maximising value because I'm giving people too much credit for call range.

Observe:

(savage, I apparently ended up three buyins on my last session. side note: I don't track that stuff during a session, and I try not to keep track out of them, either. PT just tells me the total when I go through recent hands for pokerhand histories, though, so eh.)

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1080464

Villain has a four here never. Thus, valuetown. (yeah he can have 76, maybe 65, but I think he plays both differently on the flop and he's UTG etc) See? People call with the most damnfool things. I thought that ace was wrecking my action from stuff like jacks but now felting AQ. Is nice when they felt second pair.

I also have a hand somewhere where the board is like AKxQQ where it was twoflush on the flop and the flush got there on the river. I had KQ. I don't remember preflop action, but I know I bet the flop and turn and the pot was like $30 on the river. I shoved for $40 because the guy was a passive calling station and I was pretty sure he had a FD and would pay me off. He calls, shows A5 no draw.

Stop doing fancy multistreet bluffs. They're not necessary. And people call. Like, really, even floating is really sketch at some points.

Yeah, Sklansky's all about not betting when no worse hand will call. "worse hand" is subjective for different people. If in doubt, betting probably isn't significantly worse than checking, and is usually better.

Inducing bluffs:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1080476

This one's actually really thin but I got to look really masterful so here we are. He has a missed flush draw a lot here, but that's kind of a problem because the NFD is top pair no kicker and he might check the turn behind if he's a little girl or trying to get me to bet the river (the bet-check-bet line gets looked up awful light, I've found) so this is a problem. However, he limp-called...he doesn't have a set but he could have 88-TT for sure, or the missed FD, and I'm getting 3:1...sure.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1080481

His range is a lot wider than a king. It's kind of a problem because higher pocket pairs are a portion of that, but I can see him c/c turn block river with those. He might have a flush draw, but if I raise he's probably going to call and be right so that's not good. Still, like, Ax, diamond draw, etc. I fold a diamond turn for sure.

Being bluffed, OOP in general, etc:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1080496

I hate when this happens. This looks like a peel from a jack or a set a lot, but he can bluff pretty wide here too. Still, there's the river, and yeah.

Random thoughts:

I never know what to do when I get checkminraised on the flop with two overcards. I usually call, miss the turn, then fold. (I don't really have a hand to illustrate this, but yeah.)

I don't checkraise bluff terribly often. I actually had some situations come up today where I was pretty sure someone was bluffing and I thought I could fold them out with a shove but didn't have the balls to pull the trigger.

I fold people out too often. I should probably start slowing down with sets and TPTK a little bit. (like, if I have a set and they have TPTK they'll get it in for me unless they're a nit, so let's cover the fringe cases.)

I'm still kinda working on threebetting, particularly out of position.

Being aggressive with draws is :D.

Weird as this may seem, I don't take particularly good notes because I focus too much on watching for big pots instead of tendencies wrt second barreling, how draws are played, checkraises, and so on. Knowing set and overpair lines are good, but still.

I think I had more of these but my train of thought derailed.

Oh.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1080508

Finally, some other poor bastard got counterfeited. (no comment on turn line. normally I bet/fold that.)

I dunno how often I'll update this. Probably not more than a few times a week, probably not less than once a fortnight. Also kinda depends on like, life activities.