The Barber's Chair

My online challenge is starting to heat up and when I say “heat up”, I mean like the wick on a bottle rocket has just been lit. Rake back helped me quite a bit 3 weeks ago my BR which started at .29ish cents (see earlier blogs for exact amount), has now grown to $7.68 which is 192 BBs for .02-.04 LHE. In a month or so, if I keep seeing good results, then I will start to move up to .10-.20 and go from there. I am currently on a 108 BB heater over my last 200 hands, but that would be impressive it I was playing 10-20 or 20-40 LHE. .02-.04 isn’t that high pressure. Once again, my overall goal is to rebuild my online poker bankroll, starting from basically nothing (to see how I got money online after Black Friday, see earlier blogs) and building up so that I can make the full transition to NLHE from LHE. I figure that I will need at least $80 to start at the lowest NLHE levels on Cake poker, but until then, I am playing the NANO poo-flinging tables.

On the other hand, I am still (fingers crossed) running good in live NLHE 1-2. I went for a trip to the local casino on Sunday and walked out +$161 after close to 4 hrs. Each trip I remind myself that this could be the one that goes south. This was my 5th session and I am up close to 4 buy-ins at $1-$2 NLHE after 18 hrs of play. Now, $44/hr is not sustainable, but I’d rather get out in front quick so that I can be padded for any negative variance that may come my way in the future.

I still feel as though I am at the beginning of my No-limit learning. There are many situations that come up in each session that give me pause. It’s as if my heart and my head don’t agree with each other. I had this hand come up, which at first, I was on the fence about, but after posting it in some Live NLHE forums, I feel as though I played poorly.

Villain is a quiet aggressive player who seems to be rather straightforward post flop. He c-bets after raising, he bets turns with TP, strong made hands, folds when facing aggression UI. His stack is getting short and he's been limping preflop quite a bit over the past 2 orbits.

BTN-He is in his late 80's/early 90's and calls draws and strong made hands. He has a little less than $200 in his stack. Once he called OTF, I was concerned that if he had a good made hand/draw that I could be in some trouble. Once he folds the turn, things are a little clearer for me. The 3 of hearts on the turn obviously adds some outs to my hand. WRT to stacks, the villain in this hand was the only one who was short stacked, while others were close to $200 or had me covered, so if I hit a big draw like this, then I could potentially see a big pot brew.

Villain-$89

BTN-$195

Hero-$205

HERO is in BB with 68

UTG folds, UTG+1 limps, Villain raises $7, 3 folds, BTN calls, SB calls, HERO calls, UTG+1 calls.

5 players (pot $35)

FLOP --945

HERO checks, UTG+1 checks, Villain bets $20, BTN calls, SB folds, Hero calls, UTG+1 folds.

3 players (pot $95)

Turn--3 

HERO checks, Villain bets all-in for $62, BTN folds, HERO...

note: I have a lot of outs on the flop, but with it being a multi way pot, I didn't want to go for a CR just yet. Had it been looking to be heads, up or UTG+1 caught in between on the flop action with no one else in the hand, I would have considered making a big raise with the intention of putting villain all-in.
Any thoughts?

In limit holdem, cold calling too much, especially when you are the first one to act after a preflop raiser, is a leak in most cases as is limping from EP with speculative starting hands. In no-limit, that is a concept that you will be using a good deal of the time. It starts to come down to very specific reads of how certain players act in a given situation. Sunday, I came across a bevy of young LAGish players who raised post flop rather liberally with ok draws on flops that had little to no fold equity against players who were rocks. Some of these young guys would get short stacked quick and then donk off the rest of their chips and rebuy, rather than adding on chips to get back to the 100 BB max buy-in. Once they were stacked, they’d complain about their run bad. Yes, It sucks when AJ loses to KJ, or some loose passive old guy calls a 5 BB raise with 78s, but it happens. Like a lot of players, some of these young agro guys who play live are a bit results oriented, not to say that I am a whole helluva a lot better.