No I'm Not

Let me start off by saying this isn't for you, it's for me. Should you happen to learn something or be entertained then that's great and all, but this is a purely selfish endeavor. For someone who calls himself a grinder, I completely lack discipline. I mean I put in a few hours a day and have been doing pretty well at it and all, but there are some things I could do, obvious things, that would step up my game and probably be reflected in my ROI. I need to focus when I'm playing and take more time away from the tables to study hands in order to try to pick up on tendencies of opponents and plug some leaks in my own game. That's what this blog is for. It's a way of forcing myself to put in some time to look at hands. Ideally, I will be posting every day that I play. Realistically, that won't happen. I'll be happy if I pop one out a week. Like I said, lack of discipline. 

So, about me. My name is Raif and I'm currently living in Portland, Oregon. I play primarily on Full Tilt as zegota and on Stars as porcelaingod. I recently re-discovered how truly bad players are on Ultimate Bet and have been playing a little over there as well recently, also as zegota. I play mostly tournaments in the $20-50 range but also play quite a few $12 Stars 180s and FT Rush tourneys. Those two sit and go's are kind of my bread and butter. I'm trying to play more cash games but they make me so frickin nervous. Even limit games that I'm well-bankrolled for. I have been playing a few of those recently because I'm kinda putting myself in training for a casino trip within the next few weeks. It was originally going to be Vegas, but a losing week or two made me scale down my expectations and now it's going to be beautiful Pendleton, Oregon. Not quite Vegas, but I've been there before and it was a lot of fun. I fully expect to have a huge skill edge on the field in their tourneys, but also to bust out uneventfully. I'm just hoping I can make my money back at the cash games. 

I also go back and forth on this whole poker thing. I kinda see it as a way to avoid the real world for a little while longer now that school is over. I also kinda think I could make it work if I really apply myself. Once I got out of school, I was all gung ho about getting a job and studying for the CPA exams, now all that stuff has been back burnered while I make one more run at poker. But I tell ya, even a coupla bad weeks and I could go right back to my half-assed job search. 

Anyways, like I said, the meat of this blog is going to be me looking at some poker hands that I run into during the day. Hopefully it won't just be brags and bad beats, but some actual analysis. So let's get into it, shall we? Today was ok, I finished up about $200. I only had three real cashes: 6th in a 180, 4th in a $26 rush, and 3rd in a $26 45. The 45 player actually went pretty well, but I didn't really like my play once it got down to three of us. The guy to my left was way tight, to the point that I did this:

Full Tilt - $24+$2|600/1200 NL - Holdem - 3 players

Hero (BB): 36,280.00
BTN: 11,640.00
SB: 19,580.00

SB posts SB 600.00, Hero posts BB 1,200.00

Pre Flop: (1800.00) Hero has Qc Ks

BTN raises to 4,800.00, fold, fold

BTN wins 3,000.00

Why? Well, I'm pretty sure I was behind and I was pretty much robbing them both blind with any two cards so I figure why race when I can just wither him away. Unfortunately, the plan backfired after I lost a flip to the other guy and then I did something stupid:

Full Tilt - $24+$2|600/1200 NL - Holdem - 3 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3: http://www.pokertracker.com

Hero (BB): 18,350.00
BTN: 9,240.00
SB: 39,910.00

SB posts SB 600.00, Hero posts BB 1,200.00

Pre Flop: (1800.00) Hero has Ts Qs

fold, SB raises to 2,850.00, Hero raises to 18,350.00 and is all-in, SB calls 15,500.00


Flop: (36700.00, 2 players) 5d As 3c

Turn: (36700.00, 2 players) 9d

River: (36700.00, 2 players) Kh

Hero shows Ts Qs (High Card, Ace) (PreFlop 33%, Flop 18%, Turn 7%)
SB shows Jd Js (One Pair, Jacks) (PreFlop 67%, Flop 82%, Turn 93%)
SB wins 36,700.00

Normally, fine, whatever. But this one just smelled funny. He raise folded to my BB shove the last orbit and I just felt like he wasn't going to do it again. For whatever reason though I decided to do it. Makes it even stupider with how short the button was. I'm sure if I plug in the SB's ranges into Pokerstove and do the ICM calcs, there is no way this was a good shove unless I'm getting a fold like 75% of the time, which I just didn't see happening. Oh well. 

Did I mention I am loving UB these days? I've only played like 7 or so tourneys over there and only cashed in one, which I ended up winning. But god, the players are bad. So exploitably, wonderfully bad. Normally they're bad in the uber tight way, but this guy was pure maniac. I almost got it all in with him a few hands earlier when he 3 bet me pre-flop and I had pocket 7s on a 5 high board but decided against it because even though he was running insane numbers I decided I didn't have enough hands on him for a definitive read. However, a couple orbits later, with him still running numbers like 50/40 with a 3 bet of 75 we come to this hand:

Cereus Network - 150/300 NL - Holdem - 8 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3: http://www.pokertracker.com

SB: 5,475.00
Hero (BB): 10,093.00
UTG: 9,930.00
UTG+1: 5,714.00
MP: 4,230.00
MP+1: 16,190.00
CO: 7,871.00
BTN: 3,920.00

SB posts ante 25.00, Hero posts ante 25.00, UTG posts ante 25.00, UTG+1 posts ante 25.00, MP posts ante 25.00, MP+1 posts ante 25.00, CO posts ante 25.00, BTN posts ante 25.00, SB posts SB 150.00, Hero posts BB 300.00

Pre Flop: (650.00) Hero has Ks Js

fold, fold, fold, MP+1 raises to 775.00, fold, fold, fold, Hero calls 475.00

Flop: (1900.00, 2 players) 5c 2c Jd
Hero checks, MP+1 bets 1,200.00, Hero raises to 2,940.00, MP+1 raises to 13,200.00, Hero calls 6,353.00

Turn: (20486.00, 2 players) Ac

River: (20486.00, 2 players) 7c

Hero shows Ks Js (One Pair, Jacks) (PreFlop 36%, Flop 75%, Turn 11%)
MP+1 shows Qs As (One Pair, Aces) (PreFlop 64%, Flop 25%, Turn 89%)
MP+1 wins 20,486.00

Obviously, this isn't my normal line. I'm not sure what my normal line is here because I'm not calling with this hand out of the blinds too often precisely because you usually don't know where you are and you're out of position. But I knew against this player all I had to do was hit. Sure enough, he got it in there with no pair, no draw. Oh well. NH, GG. So much for this not being a bad beats blog. Obviously if anyone should be happening to read this, your feedback on the hands or on the blog as a whole are welcome.