DeucesCracked Blog Entries

58,269 hands in and taking a Shot at 5nl

OGCN1904 — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 23:48:55 +0000

After taking a day off due to tilt, I got back to the tables a few days ago. I finally broke through my down swing at 2nl, and after a few winning sessions I really wanted to try and move up to 5nl. I spent a few days thinking about how to do it and ultimately I decided to open up a few tables of 5nl in my normal 2nl session.

Here are the results, total since I started two weeks ago:

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/ah9a2haF_RxRL9TKY9ZYmmKrfFXUS_TR3smcPYwvBYE?feat=directlink

The games at 5nl play pretty much the same as at 2nl it seems. I did have one person who was definitely playing back at me, which was a first. I also gave up a BI to a guy I had thought was playing back at me but it turned out he was just on a heater.

Anyway, I finally got up to Silver Star today. If I phase in more and more 5nl hopefully I will get to gold this month. The RB is so awful I can't even stand it. I've paid $82 in rake already, and got one $10 RB "reward." I'm lucky that unlike a lot of people I see and read online I really don't mind putting in volume and I actually really enjoy multi-tabling. I enjoy poker for the mental exercise and the more tables I open the more decisions I get to make. i actually really hate gambling, to be honest. I will never have a pit problem b/c I have no interest in pit games. Maybe this is the wrong crowd to say that in, but I never got the allure of watching dice roll around, wheels spin, or card just fall. The least fun I have in poker is when I'm AI and the cards are just falling. It honestly makes my stomach churn.

In unfortunate news, the outsourcing company I was doing freelance French translation for ran out of work for the project I was on so as of Thursday I'm out of a job. It shouldn't be too hard here to find something to do (my job now paid 10 bucks US equivalent an hour) but I got to work at home which was super amazing. They told me if they have anything up they would give me a call, I definitely wasn't fired. I'm going to be working extra hard to push out volume this month, b/c if I can get my hourly at 10 dollars an hour, I won't need to find another job for now.

I also went to my first legal career fair here in Israel. It is always depressing to go to those. The job market is better here but it's still not great. There is an internship process here which at least allows you to get your foot in the door though unlike in the USA. There I was pretty fucked b/c I didn't go to Harvard and didn't graduate with a 4.0, and the rest -- well, the rest no one gives a flying fuck about, no matter how much they lie to your face at these job interview things:

Them: Tell us your passion....

Me: It's not Harvard law school.

Them: Oh. Then gtfo.

Here in Israel with an American law degree/licence you are cheap labor as an intern, and if you get lucky and someone likes you they will keep you on. It's still depressing though. I didn't go to a Tier-1 US Law School to feel desperate for a job. I didn't take out 200K to do that either, but here I am. And people tell me that fucking poker is gambling. Yeah, ok.

Anyway, it's nice to feel like a winning poker player for first time in my life. I guess I sounded like every other losing player ever when I said that people I have studied and talked poker with for years have been amazed when I tell them I have never made money. It's really nice to finally be putting it all together and making what I think is a showing that I am a winning player of some kind, even if we never quite know our true win rate. Just winning anything feels like vindication.

Always hilarious when capoch sits at micro deuce

huntse — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 14:25:59 +0000

...everyone goes nutso, so you just wait until you have some sort of hand that you want to play for a cap on every street. I think this is my biggest ever pot in deuce (in terms of bets).

Not sure why it's not showing all the hands below, but capoch is the co and at showdown he has J8654. SB you see below had 87432 and the UTG had 85432.

Poker Stars $0.10/$0.20 Limit 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball - 6 players - View hand 2094805
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

Pre Draw: (1.5 SB) Hero is BTN with K 7 6 6 2
UTG calls, MP folds, CO raises, Hero calls, SB 3-bets, BB folds, UTG caps!, CO calls, Hero calls, SB calls

First Draw: (17 SB) (4 players)
SB draws 2, UTG draws 1, CO draws 2, Hero draws 2
Hand: Q 7 6 5 2
SB bets, UTG raises, CO 3-bets, Hero caps!, SB calls, UTG calls, CO calls

Second Draw: (16.5 BB) (4 players)
SB draws 1, UTG stands pat, CO draws 1, Hero draws 1
Hand: 7 6 5 3 2
SB bets, UTG raises, CO 3-bets, Hero caps!, SB calls, UTG calls, CO calls

Third Draw: (32.5 BB) (4 players)
SB draws 1, UTG stands pat, CO draws 1, Hero stands pat
Hand: 7 6 5 3 2
SB bets, UTG raises, CO 3-bets, Hero caps!, SB calls all in, UTG calls, CO calls

Final Pot: 47.75 BB
SB mucks 8 7 4 3 2
Hero shows 7 6 5 3 2 (Lo: 7,6,5,3,2)
Hero wins 2.25 BB
Hero wins 45 BB
(Rake: $0.10)

Fatherhood, lack of teh pokerz

corkeye — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 07:29:32 +0000

So I am now the proud owner of a little girl, Eleanor! She was born just before new year on 29/12.

She's delightful and it kills me leaving her every morning when I go to work. Being a dad is great I do cherish every day. It's true what people say the time flies though.

Here she is, I one day got her to pose for the camera, no idea how.

Poker has been practically non existent apart for the occasional micro cash for 30 mins. I am attending a home game tomorrow which should be fun

May play the Dusk till dawn Grand Prix next month. Looks terrific value.

Determination

rocketragz — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 04:00:30 +0000

I've been one of those bad stretches of variance the past month in a half that tries to hard to wear you down. I consider myself to be quite mentally strong and optimistic. I'm one of those people who will use a bad situation to motivate and become better. I've achieved a lot in my life because of this. In just trying to stay motivated and improve, rather than pout, and saw this picture the other day and i couldn't help but relate it to poker.

Here's another nugget. An article by balugawhale. Surfing and Tilt. I remember being on a bad run a few years and seeing this article and loving it. I always try to think back to this, but hadn't read it in a while, and never a better time than now to dig it up.

https://www.deucescracked.com/forums/9-Articles/13205-BalugaWhale-Surfing-and-T

BalugaWhale : Surfing and Tilt

published about 4 years ago

What’s up guys, I’m here in beautiful Troncones, Mexico, chilling on the beach after an afternoon of surfing in the sun.

Actually, while I was surfing it wasn’t going all that well. The past few days, every time I’ve surfed I’ve hit a ton of waves and it’s felt great. I felt like a king. Today, for whatever reason, I was out of position on a ton of waves and I kept wiping out. Pretty hard actually, I scraped up my knee on one of them.

My initial reaction was to get frustrated. I adjusted my surfing style as best as I could (a little forward on the board, a little more back on the board, pop up earlier in the wave, pop up later in the wave, etc.), but nothing worked. I was tempted to get more and more frustrated.

However, every time I wiped out, I would stand back up and see a beautiful, isolated, pure-white beach with palm trees. The clear water, warm from the hot sun. Fish swimming around my feet. And then I didn’t feel frustrated at all– just ready to get back out and try to surf another wave.

And then, when I walked out of the water to sit on my porch and enjoy the view, I realized how similar surfing is to poker. You have to be aware of the big picture.

In poker, the majority of the game is outside of your control. You get to know two of the cards and you get to make your own decisions. You don’t get to know A) other people’s cards or B) other people’s decisions. You also have no control over luck. So, at the end of the day, there’s only so much you can do.

Many players get caught up in things they can’t control. There’s a feeling of entitlement involved– “I got AA in and he had TT, so I deserved to win a stack”. Nobody deserves anything in poker. Just because I take my surf board out and do my best doesn’t mean I deserve to have a great session. Many of those things are beyond my control.

So, when you get AA in and he spikes a set with TT, keep your eye on the big picture. That literally means NOTHING. ZERO. It has NO significance. In any way. NONE. Just like wiping out on a wave, there are infinitely more waves to come. What matters is that you A) do your best at what you can control, and B) keep your eye on the big picture. Poker has a pretty beautiful landscape too if you can look past the trees and see the forest. Alright, now I’m mixing up my metaphors haha.

Also, a quick word on ego. Ego limits most poker players. If you want proof, look at 90% of 5/10 games running online. Ask yourself who’s actually making money in THOSE games. Ask yourself why there’s 3 games of 10/20 and 15 games of 5/10, yet the 10/20 players make more money. Wiping out on a wave isn’t an affront to my ego– it happens. Getting stacked 20 straight times isn’t an affront to your ego either–it happens. Deal with it appropriately and keep your eye on the bigger picture.

My good friend Leon, known to many of you old schoolers as yvesaint, described poker as this:

“Every day, you play chess for a dollar, then you flip a coin for 10 dollars. In a month you can be up or down a lot of money, but in a year, it’s whoever’s better at chess”.

When you get AA in against KK preflop, congrats. The hand is over. Seriously. Who cares what happens? Seriously, why do you care? No, seriously go ask yourself this right now, why do you care?

That part really doesn’t matter. Maybe you wipe out. Maybe you wipe out wayyy too much, more than you think is fair. So get back up and go ride another wave. Whether this wave is good or bad, at the end of the day, the whole thing feels great.

GL guys

Andrew

Riding the Heater

Azurehaze — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 03:09:16 +0000

The Music of the 180s

BaseMetal — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 02:30:32 +0000

Here is the 180s Ev Adjusted allin pre-turn graph for the current year so far, it is quite weird really. As you can see I have been nearly exactly even for the ‘luck’ but the odd thing is that over the whole time I have been very consistently losing flips except for about 10 hands of HU. It is very important to get some run-good in HU, it might even be the most important time for it but having a constant drip of bad luck over the period has been hard to take. Without these 10 hands the green would be running something like 45 degrees below the red and that’s quite bad over such a large sample. So there you are, I’ve run very nearly perfectly even EV wise but I can still find ways of complaining!

Last week I also showed a graph of 180s treated as though they were cash games, winner-take-all fashion. Playing around with data can often make useful incites possible and since last week I’ve been struck by the shape of this (reversed) ‘saw-tooth’ graph. As I have some background in Physics I realize that graphs of any shape can exactly be reproduced by combining various frequency sine waves. When I say ‘I’ I mean a clever guy called Fourier realised this way back before internet poker was even born. In musical instruments a saw-tooth wave is often used to model the Violin family of bowed instruments. I guess 180s are something of a cello, 9s a violin, and monster MTTs must sound like a double bass.

I thought I would see how this would 'sound' if I put all my 180s hands through a sound generator and played them as a tune. Well as you would expect it doesn't sound nice so instead I got hold of all of OMGClayDol's - now he can really play these 180s and here is what his sound like OMGResultsPlayedAsMusic.

MTT grind

aggrosquid — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 22:55:27 +0000

Was hyped for a big session! Decided to put a decent session in!

Ended up playing hot 16.50

16.50 6max

big 11

hot 11

11 dollar turbo

10.50 super ko

2 10.20 hu hyper tourneys

bigger 8.80

2 turbo 5.50s

and 3 5.10 hypers

was super deep in a hyper and needed 10th to save my day, was 3rd in chips, cruising then this happened.

Poker Stars $5.00+$0.10 No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t10000/t20000 Blinds + t4000 - 8 players - View hand 2093574
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

SB: t157640 M = 2.54
BB: t79751 M = 1.29
UTG: t126656 M = 2.04
UTG+1: t394855 M = 6.37
MP1: t185520 M = 2.99
MP2: t20567 M = 0.33
Hero (CO): t251804 M = 4.06
BTN: t267996 M = 4.32

Pre Flop: (t62000) Hero is CO with A A
2 folds, MP1 raises to t40000, 1 fold, Hero raises to t247804 all in, 3 folds, MP1 calls t141520 all in

Flop: (t425040) 7 J 9(2 players - 2 are all in)

Turn: (t425040) 8(2 players - 2 are all in)

River: (t425040) K(2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: t425040
MP1 shows K K (three of a kind, Kings)
Hero shows A A (a pair of Aces)
MP1 wins t425040

Him catching the 1 out on the river put me out in 33rd next hand and summed up my day really.

Kind of tilting but hey it happens.

so my first $1k+ day is followed by a -ve $100 plus day. All rather tilting.

Might grind tomorrow, if not play the sundays then back to hu hypers, you stay classy san diego!

Lady luck serves me well

aggrosquid — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 17:21:56 +0000

My luck has changed, or positive variance if you will!

On tuesday I FT'd the hot 16.50 (turbo), and came 7th for 1.3k! Obviously happy with the result, but felt I was unfortunate not to enter the final table as chip leader when I shoved my 8bb from the sb (at the time 3rd in chips, 12 remaining, shovefest!) into BB with 4bb behind, and he woke up with A9 and won the flip. Other than that, I entered the FT in 9th and laddered to 7th where my 4BB stacked A7o was no good against the 5BB of another opponent with 33.

My love for the grind has been reborn! Thanks variance haha!

In other news, i've been quiet due to me learning a new game, HUSNG hyper turbos! I have a roll for $15 games now and i'll keep you all posted!

#Grindon

@Aggrosquid on twitter folks!

Squid

First HU match since the beginning of the challenge

PoKKerholic — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:52:18 +0000

Hye everyone just played my first HU match against a player. I took a shot at 0,25c/0,50c.

Was a really tough 4 hours session with a lot of ups and downs. The downs came mostly from my bad play. Lost 2 buyins at the beginning and was tilting a bit.

So decided to take a break and think about my game instead of surfing on the internet.

I was taking the wrong strategy. I was playing ultra agressiv against an aggro player. He was raising me almost every flop. and betting till showdown.

So i took the completely opposite way and starting just call his raises out of pos and let him bluff all the time.

And only Raising pre with good hands. but rather then minraising i started to raise 3x times the BB.

And it worked right away really well.

I won every $ from him that he had for today.

So after having my Bankroll yesterday down to 813$ my new Bankroll is 991$!!! YES

I HATE POKER

PoKKerholic — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:44:53 +0000

BS!!!!!! just lost 70$ in 3 hours!!!!! i hate poker right now!!!!!

The Bad beat

PoKKerholic — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:44:14 +0000

The bad beat of the evening :-)

$10 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Sunday,February 3, 00:29:30 CET 2013
( Real Money )
Seat 2 is the button
Total number of players : 6/6
seat 1: seat1 ( $12.04 USD )
seat 2: seat2 ( $2.31 USD )
seat 3: seat3 ( $10 USD )
seat 4: seat4 ( $16.24 USD )
seat 5: HERO ( $19.49 USD )
seat 6: seat6 ( $10 USD )
seat4 posts small blind [$0.05 USD].
HERO posts big blind [$0.10 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to HERO [ K, A ]
seat2 folds
seat3 raises [ $0.35 USD ]
seat4 calls [ $0.30 USD ]
HERO raises [ $1.35 USD ]
seat3 folds
seat4 calls [ $1.10 USD ]
** Dealing Flop ** [ K, A, 4 ]
seat4 checks
HERO bets [ $2 USD ]
seat4 calls [ $2 USD ]
** Dealing Turn ** [ J ]
seat4 checks
HERO bets [ $4 USD ]
seat4 raises [ $8 USD ]
HERO raises [ $11.44 USD ]
seat4 is all-In [ $4.79 USD ]
** Dealing River ** [ 4 ]
HERO shows [ K, A ]two pairs, Aces and Kings.
seat4 shows [ Q, T ]a straight, Ten to Ace.
HERO wins USD 2,65 $ from the side pot 1 with two pairs, Aces and Kings.
seat4 wins USD 31,83 $ from the main pot with a straight, Ten to Ace.

30 january BR

PoKKerholic — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:43:30 +0000

Quick update before going to sleep BR: 895$!!!

I'm almost there!!!!! 5$ little dollars and i can finally open a 10c/25c table :-D

28 january BR

PoKKerholic — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:41:46 +0000

So a little refresh and my session yesterday.

After losing 5 (50$) buy ins in 30 minutes, ( was playing like an idiot calling to light and autopiloting) took a break because i felt i was beginning to tilt. Took a shower and watched a movie with my girl. After that i decided to give it another shot with a fresh mind and it went great. Whon my 5 buy ins back and builded my BR to 852$! Was very happy and ended the session.

BR: 852$

1st tournament in a while

PoKKerholic — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:40:12 +0000

just finished a 10$ buy in tournament in 106 place no money.... :-(
I'm in bb with K6s 13bb left. 3 callers

Flop comes 6:hearts:K2:heart:

I check

next player min bets, two callers.

I Raise all in and the last player insta calls with 4:heart:8 for 50% of his stack with FD and hits River :-D

I LOVE POKER

First Graph

PoKKerholic — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:39:19 +0000

I was finally able to dowmlod the graph of my run since the start.

http://i1039.photobucket.com/albums/a478/ZM4000/BR_zps31629856.png

Had a bad session the other day and lost almost 4 buy ins.
Was able yesterday to lose two more buy ins at the beginning of the session but after a little break and a good old BALUGAWHALE video, won everything back and builded it to 804$. :-) thx baluga!!!

PRogram for this weekend: WIN MORE!!! Sounds good :-)

BR: 804$

Presentation

PoKKerholic — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:37:20 +0000

Hye everyone. I thought that it would be interesting for me and you to share my experiences in trying the Chris Ferguson challenge for myself.

A little bit about myself: I'm 26 years old and live in the little country that nobody know's LUXEMBOURG. I started playing poker 6-7 years ago and like many else started by playing with friends and very quickly moved to online poker. Made my first deposit on PARTY for 50$ and thx to horrible bankroll management was able to double up my bankroll within 2 days. I remember thinking to myself that this was going to be easy for me. Well 3 days later my account was empty and had lost it all :-)

When FTP opend i deposited 50$ on FTP and as always i thought nobody needs bankroll management so i played way to high for my br and the swings were just huge every session i had. Luckily enough i builded it up to +/- 350$ and once again entered a tournament way to high for my br.
It was a 24+2 buyin NL tournament and look there I WON!!!!! :-)

http://pokerprolabs.com/pokkerholic/fulltiltpoker

6.339$ was huge for me!! simply unbelievable :-)

After that my problem wasn't solved: BANKROLL MANAGEMENT!!!!

So i played 200$ buy in sitngos LOL.

Was able to win some and some 100$ sitngos.

Had my account filled with 10.000 juicy dollars :-)

But as always after a big heater the downswing was knocking on my door.

At that time i was playing 2 tables of 5$/10$ and the games were simply very tough and my opponents destroyed me slowly but surely. I lost it all till i had 5$ left on my account.... that was by the end of 2009

After that i took the decision to stop playing poker. and i stopped for almost 3 years.

BUT NOW IM BACK :-)

and this time i will do a lot of things differently!!

BANKROLL MANAGEMENT!!!!

and i'm gonna follow 1 by 1 the chris ferguson challenge.

i started playing again the 16/11/2012 with 5$ and now i have 793$ on my account thx to correct br management. I'm going to try to find a way to show you my excel graph etc.

So i think this is enough for my first post and will be very happy to share the ups and downs and answer ALL THE QUESTIONS that you have for me. I will share videos thoughts hand histories and will be very happy to listen to your critics and reviews.

In hope to see u soon on the tables.

1st decent cash in MTT

LemonSftl — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 13:24:21 +0000

I just finished 3rd/750 in $11 6man turbo so my bankroll is now quite solid for 45mans as I'm not cashing anything out. Time for volume.

Bankroll building

LemonSftl — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 16:55:16 +0000

I tried some cash games online before on and off over some time, but didn't want to/didn't have the spare funds for coaching and didn't work on my game. Now I have seen the series on bankroll building I hope to use 45man games as an intro to MTTs and also a way to build a BR and funds for coaching. I quite like the excitement of MTTs but not the huge field games where only the final table is interesting. I like the 500 or 1000 cap tournaments for this reason.

Anyway for now my goal is to get some volume in on the $7- 45-mans. I have picked up some idea of shoving ranges from the 180man video series but often I am unsure of what to shove and uncomfortable on the final table and especially heads up. I need to work on that with sngwiz and mixing in HUSNG would help a lot imo.

Check raising big draws on the flop

conor316 — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 13:58:24 +0000

On all the hu training videos why do people suggest check raising big draws? i dont understand why that is of benefit- if they flat and you miss your draw your gonna have to 3 barrell alot of the time and may get called down by top pair or top 2 and if they 4bet you you'd usually have to call fold if you miss or just fold if the odds arent compelling.

Example;

If I have QJ and call a raise from the button, Flop K 10 4, He raises and I 3 bet which he flats. From this point surely he's representing a king with good kicker or a strong k10 k4 44 hand. If the turn comes a blank what is the best move? Am i expected to barrell again in the hope he flats the flop with air?

Tilt Control

OGCN1904 — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 09:57:42 +0000

I guess this was inevitable.

Well, just had my first buy in loss due to tilt. I had done really well too, not getting on tilt at all, too. I'm on a 10K hand break even stretch with lots of run-bad and when I got Rivered one time too many, I shipped my overpair on the next hand in a much looser play than I would normally do, and got called by a bigger over pair, instantly losing 2 BI to the same guy in 10 seconds. I then started cursing furiously and felt this insane desire to just start shipping every pot.

I really want to move up to 5nl and this 10K break even stretch blows especially after my heater from the 10K before where I made about 25BI. It also does not help that if you aren't a Supernova the RB on PS is so atrocious as to be laughable. I've won 160 dollars at 2nl this last week, and I've been allowed to keep 95. Disgusting.

Anyway, after that spazz out I insta quit and self-excluded myself for the next 24 hours. I may increase that, depending on how I feel tomorrow. I think I need some time away anyway, as I've put in about 50K hands in the last 7 days anyway. My fiancé says she hates how poker consumes me when I do it, but its hard when you are trying to grind a roll up from 40 dollars. 50K hands is like a whole year of playing live.

Going to go read or something.

Frustration.