We Stand As The Giants Make Way

I got up at 9:30, being tired as fuck. I went through my daily routine (shower, breakfast, brush teeth). I browsed around on the internets and read some blogs. J-Mac’s blog here on DC made me lol irl, which is pretty awesome as it is something I read on the internets. Plan for the day was to go visit my cousins. They’re like 10, 7 and 5 years old respectively, and I’m sort of their hero, I guess. They all love me, and I love them, so it’s a win-win situation. I decided to play a session before I left, and it went fairly well. I made some money, and played some hands. Ran below EV, as usual. AK owned by 87s AIPF, AA owned by AQo AIPF, I like to whine. Then, I pack my bags and leave.

I got on the bus to Stavanger at about 12. I planned to take the boat to my cousins at 13:30, but I got to the pier a bit earlier, and there was a boat there already, so I got on that one. I didn’t have any time to stop by an ATM, so all I had was some spare change. You don’t have to pay cash on the boat, but I prefer to. The price to take the boat was 40, and I had tons of change. I had like a ton of 1s and 0.50s, and paid with those. I’m really happy to finally have gotten rid of all that small change now, but my wallet feels kind of empty. On the boat, I did some EV calculations and goofed around on Pokerazor to check out some frequencies while watching one of BalugaWhale’s videos in the background. I really, really love his videos. He’s really going in-depth, and I think I’m going to get coaching from him some time in the future. I also found out something pretty interesting about full ring poker and common full ring players while sitting on the boat.

It’s pretty obvious that people who fold a lot to 3bets will be positive EV to 3bet against. You can 3bet anyone who folds more than 66 % to 3bets and show an instant profit. However, I was looking at frequencies when facing 3bets. When someone who opens 10 % UTG, and folds 80 % to 3bets, his 3bet calling range is generally AKs, and JJ and better. 10 % of hands UTG is pretty tight, but given the nature of full ring poker and the nature of nits, 3betting “nits” is actually very profitable. In my opinion, the definition of nit is something like a passive 17/14 player or so. No matter how you twist and turn these numbers and ranges, small stakes full ring poker probably should be played by being very positionally aware, and loose aggressive game preflop, and a tight aggressive game preflop. By loose aggressive, I’m not talking about playing 50 % of hands or whatever, but more playing like a 6max game. I’m not a full ring expert by no means, and I have no idea on how the games play on PokerStars or FullTilt, but I certainly think that what I said about full ring applies on the games on iPoker.

Anyways, when I got to my uncle, aunt and cousin’s place, I hung out and played FIFA 10 with the oldest boy. They’re 2 boys and 1 girl. After playing FIFA for a bit, we went out to play football and we played for quite a while. It was good fun, and a bit exhausting for a fat ass like myself. When we got home, I decided to just chill and passively watch the new Never Tell Me The Odds episode while being slightly asleep. After about one hour, I decided to get up and play some poker. I played on PokerStars, and played a couple of hands at NL100 and won something like a buy-in.

During the session, I was talking to Bart (Grindcore), who told me he was going to take shots at 10/20. I railed him, and the games were definitely good. I’m pretty sure I’d be +EV in those games, so that was a pretty big motivator. I’m definitely looking forward to getting out of this bad stretch I’m going through now, because I think I’m capable of getting all the way up to high stakes. I feel pretty good about my game, and I think my HEM graph and stats are lies made to knock on my self-confidence. Grindcore ran like God too, and made pretty good money at the beginning of the session. He was up 7k at most, but the session ended up a loser for him. I don’t know the details on how he lost after I stopped railing, but while I was watching, I would have to say he was definitely very +EV.

At the time of writing this, I am laying in bed with malfunctioning internet, watching an old video by Foucault (who, by the way, probably is underrated) and writing this blog post. I’m going to post it when I get access to the internets, which I hope I’ll have tomorrow morning.

Anyways, I guess that’s it. I’m not looking forward to tomorrow, because the kids are having some other kids over for a christmas workshop. It’s going to be hell, so I’m kind of wondering how it’ll turn out. But there’ll be a lot of noise, but I guess I’ll manage. Maybe I’ll get to spend some quality time with my uncle, which could be cool.

Until next time,
Stian