For those who saw the hand I posted last week, the results were that I ended up calling the flop raise and call/allin the turn bet on a 5 turn. I lost to K4. I think given the responses and thinking about it more that it was played fine by me. I want to fold badly when he bets the turn but he may be repping too little or show up with some weird value too much to actually do it.

Today, I played this HU sng hand and afterwords I got berated hard core for it. I’m wondering what you guys think of this since its clearly a crazy play to make. Note I have zero reads on this guy. He’s likely a lower stakes hu sng reg or competent in some form of holdem given he is a supernova VIP status on PS.

PokerStars Game #43373590741: Tournament #267867597, $550+$20 USD Hold’em No Limit – Match Round I, Level I (10/20) – 2010/04/29 18:39:38 ET
Table ’267867597 1′ 2-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: heybude (1500 in chips)
Seat 2: joachimpowa (1500 in chips)
heybude: posts small blind 10
joachimpowa: posts big blind 20
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to heybude [Jh 3s]
heybude: raises 20 to 40
joachimpowa: calls 20
*** FLOP *** [7h 7d Ts]
joachimpowa: checks
heybude: bets 40
joachimpowa: calls 40
*** TURN *** [7h 7d Ts] [As]
joachimpowa: checks
heybude: bets 120

Everything is pretty standard up to this point. I bet this turn even though he had some aces and tens in his range. I felt like there were some king highs and gutters he would call the flop with or even total floats so I wanted to get him off those hands. It seemed plausible as well that he could give off some easy timing tell that he didn’t have a 7, which means I could do some extreme like overbet the river and expect him to fold.

joachimpowa: raises 260 to 380 (timing: relatively quickly)

heybude: calls 260

I won’t get into my reads too much, but I thought it was unlikely he would do anything like this without a 7x or 77, so he was probably bluffing. My issue was how do I win the hand. The size of my stack made a reraise awkward. I felt like it was more likely he had some sort of combo turned with a gutter and fd than pure air so I felt like it was like if I called the raise I could easily shove and win if he checked. But if he continued his bluff, I was screwed. Also, I felt like I couldn’t reraise because he could simply shove his draw and id have to fold. One factor that supported calling was his stack was actually going to be slightly under pot, which would make it possible for me to bluff shove a big river bet that wasnt all in.

*** RIVER *** [7h 7d Ts As] [3h]
joachimpowa: bets 1040 and is all-in (nearly instantly)

So I hit my 3 on the river and to my dismay he overshoved the pot, which makes my potential bluff here seem terrible. On the other hand, I hit my 3…

heybude: calls 1040 and is all-in

Is this a blunder with too many assumptions or bad analysis? Or did I make a genius call?

Exploitable. It’s a word thrown around by poker players all the time when talking about a hand. Usually, a player will cite this term as a reason not to make a certain play… or in hopes someone smart may agree with him or her so they can feel warm and fuzzy inside. It makes me cringe every time i hear this word used incorrectly.
Read the rest of this entry

I’ve been thinking about going for SNE a little more. From what i understand about vpp accumulation at 2/4-5/10, I’m going to have to play about 1.2 million hands of full ring supplemented with some HU SNG play to achieve it by the end of the year. If i 16-20 table, that means 120 9 hour work days, which is 10,000 hands a day, out of about 174 weekdays starting may 1st (keep in mind unlike most jobs i’m thinking as hard as i can for these 9 hours). Most people don’t think i can do it but we will see, I’m hoping to work enough that its not a race to the finish in December.

I’ve actually found that the transition from 6max to full ring isn’t as tough as i expected. I feel like I’m already a winner at 3/6 and frankly I’m surprised at how much i can dominate some of the regs, especially in late position when it’s more of a 6max game. My main problem right now is I tend to overvalue and overplay some of my hands, and i’m also pretty sure my bet sizes have been way too large in places where they don’t have to be and shouldn’t be. I have only been playing full ring for a few days though, so I hope i can overcome these leaks soon enough.

Wish me luck! It’s a long long road ahead.

In HU, I feel like one of my biggest strengths is my ability to make a big laydown. Because you do not know most of your opponents well in HU SNGs (You never play a lot of hands with anyone but regulars), folding a strong hand becomes a lot more difficult. Nonetheless, you can still find spots to make big folds. Here’s a hand from a 5k sng I played as an example.
Read the rest of this entry

VPPs: 255,635.07

Pace: About 300,000.

44,364.93 Behind!!

I have been less into HU SNGs recently which is basically the reason I have fell behind… that and I’m about to graduate, giving me less time to play. I’m not worried because when school is over I will be able to put in much more hours than I have been able to this year. But I need to take advantage of that free time. I’d like to get SNE before October is over, that way I will have two months towards the end of the year where I won’t have the poker playing requirements I have right now (Vacation possibilities!?).

Live long and prosper.

So i’ve decided to try and become Supernova Elite this year. If I do Danny and I will be the first brothers to attain Supernova Elite ever. And we may forever be the only identical twins ever to do it. I think that Stars new cash game buy in changes favor full ring play and i’m starting to grind it. I’m gonna take the rest of the month 12 tabling to learn the ropes of fullring, and then i’ll start 20-tabling in May. Given that my main focus was 6-max for the past 6 months i think that it won’t be a terribly hard transition. I also plan to play HU SNG’s on weekends.

This is definitely a pretty big commitment for me and its going to be tough to accomplish. I only have around 70k VPP’s right now and i do a lot of traveling so when i have the chance to play i’m going to have to play extremely long hours. I’ll need to play over a million hands of fullring to go along with my sng play to do it. I guess we’ll see! Wish me luck.

Source: Audiobooksonline.com

A few months ago, at the tail end of last semester, I was experiencing lax amount of school work. Unsure of what to worry about, I fixated on two less than important issues in my life I wanted to improve. The first is during my commute from and to school, I was bored as hell. I was sick of all my music, and the radio wasn’t doing it for me. The second, I had a book called Atlas Shrugged in my room that I desperately wanted to read but couldn’t stand the ultra small type and the near 1500 pages ahead of me.

The solution? Audiobooks. I managed to kill two birds with one stone.

I had seen people use audiobooks before, and I was intrigued by their ability to effortlessly cure forced boredom (ie, long road trips). I began looking on the internet for something that I could download on my Ipod, and that hopefully was not too expensive. I stumbled across a website called Audible.com. This website was perfect for me. Not only could I download the books to my Ipod, they also had a payment plan that fit my needs. I could purchase one of any book, every month, for under $10 a month. Given the amount of time I spent in my car, one book was more than enough to satsify my audiobooking needs.

So I first decided to buy Atlas Shrugged, an insane 52 hours long.  The audiobook engrossed me enough to make the time pass well, but not so much that I wasn’t able to pay attention to the road. Perfect. So far I’ve worked through a few classics. The aforementioned book, Crime and Punishment, and Catch-22. I also threw in some friends recommendations like Lunar Park,  Brave New World, and Sex, Drugs, and Coco Puffs.

Of course, the best thing about audiobooks: No reading. But the second best part, and often the worst part, is the sometimes amazing or terrible narrators. Sex, Drugs, and Coco Puffs by Chuck Klosterman was paticularly hilarious on audiobook, as Klosterman is the narrator, and sounds like the coolest pimply faced ginger you’ve met in your entire life. Brave New World is narrated by Michael York who’s crazy british accent makes me feel sophisticated and puzzled at times (i.e. What the F&%* are Carkeys? OH! YOU MEAN KHAKIS).

I’m almost done with Brave New World, so any suggestions for what to go for next? I want to read the classics but I’m not sure I’d actually like books like Ulysses or War and Peace.

If you didn’t know, I am a pretty well respected community member at Flopturnriver.com. It was the first site I found with good poker strategy when I started our 4 years ago. They just posted the interview I gave. I thought it ended up pretty good.  Hopefully, you guys will enjoy it.

http://www.flopturnriver.com/blogs/ftr-exclusive-interview-danny-steinberg-12406

Somewhat representative of my feelings right now

For those who didn’t know, I’m still in school. BUT on the bright side, I only have three weeks left of it, never to come back if I chose to.

I am not sure what most people feel when they graduate from school. I’ve asked people recently who have graduated from college: “How does it feel?” I haven’t yet gotten a response besides “It’s awesome.” But it only seems like someone spewing the socially accepted response. I don’t sense a free, released, or accomplished feeling emanating from them when they say it. Instead, I hear a contrived responses, something they feel they are supposed to say, when really they didn’t have much feelings about graduating, they don’t remember how it feels, or its not relevant to them.

And then I talk to people who know I’m about to graduate and they ask me: “How does it feel?” The truth is I don’t have any feelings yet. Don’t get me wrong, I am hating school right now. While doing college class work is something I have gotten the hang of over the past four years, its not something I really enjoy. I am ready to go out and accomplish something. It will start with being a poker professional, and generally relaxing, but it could diverge from that path in a number of ways. Maybe I’ll start a restaurant, maybe start building a real estate empire, and maybe I’ll even go back to school for a new found passion.

So I’ll say “It’s awesome.” And I know it is awesome, but those feelings accomplishment and freedom haven’t hit me yet. Right now, I’m ambivalent. It could be because I still have a massive load of work to get done, and when that is behind me, I’ll start feeling something more. But it could be because school is fun. I have great friends here, its not as much responsibility as any other option is, and I can bitch and moan about being in it. Everyone always says this is the best time of your life, and it certainly has been the biggest growing experience of my life.

I guess it will all pan out on May 8th when I actually am officially done with it all. And when someone asks me how it feels, I hope I’ll finally have an answer that truly resonates with me. Any of you nearing graduation have similar feelings?

Have you ever watched a High Stakes online match? If you have, you would see that when you watch two outstanding poker players like Durrr and Ivey duke it out, they make a lot of plays that make your head scratch. Getting it all in with T2s preflop. C/ring the flop so much that it makes your jaw drop. A lot of plays that seem right out of a 50 dollar buy-in game. Plays that just can’t possible be good in a tight game.

Or can they?
Read the rest of this entry