30 March 2007

Villain Fills Up

I've been trying to find a good hand converter. So lets see how this looks.


Full Tilt Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.25/$0.50
6 players
Converter


Stack sizes:
UTG: $8.10
UTG+1: $27.05
CO: $35.35
Button: $30.40
SB: $47.25
J3: $47.75


Pre-flop: (6 players) J3 is BB with :ac :9d
4 folds, SB calls $0.25 (pot was $0.75), J3 raises to $1.5, SB calls $1 (pot was $1.5).


Flop: :ah :3c :as ($3, 2 players)
SB checks, J3 checks.

(I am really thinking this is a good opportunity to trap. I have position on the villain, The flop comes rainbow and a straight draw seems very unlikely.)

Turn: :kc ($3, 2 players)
SB bets $2, J3 raises to $4, SB calls $2 (pot was $9).

(Now the King of Clubs gives reasonable straight draw and a flush draw so I raise. I believe my raise was too small here. )


River: :8c ($11, 2 players)
SB checks, J3 bets $6, SB raises to $15, J3 calls $9 (pot was $32).

(Here is where I make my biggest mistake. I didn't spend anytime putting my opponent on a hand after the river. I resorted to simple 1 level thinking. There are many hands that beat me. Any 2 clubs, a better A, or I could have been slowplayed with a flopped boat.)


Results:
Final pot: $41

I have also added a screen shot below showing the villain catching the 2 outer on the river.




I am not sure of how I can make this same situation profitable. Can it be profitable with calling the river here? I still believe this is a good opportunity for a trap. This was a battle of the blinds where I was in position.

My real problem with this hand was my thinking on the river. I think maybe some time with this hand on PokerStove will give me an idea of what range of hands I can have my opponent on and still profit with a river call.

23 March 2007

Good call or desperate donk call?

Well, it has been an experience trying to find the hands I wanted to talk about from Wednesday's Daily Double. I had written myself some comments while I was playing so I could review my play at a later time. I need to figure out how to identify these hands better or this will continue to take me forever.

Any case I was able to find one hand. It was a very questionable play on my part that worked out well. As you can see here, I raised from mid pos. with 8-9 off. I was really hoping for a steal of the blinds, but was called by the SB. I caught second pair on the flop with a backdoor straight draw. When the SB bet the pot (which was 64% of his stack) I though long and hard. I felt he was weak by betting so much so I finally made the call.

Do you think this was a good call?

Unfortunately I lasted only 25 more hands, but did cash almost enough to pay for both tournies.

21 March 2007

More Backround

I need to give everyone reading some background in my poker playing.

I have been playing online for about 18 months. I had played some before that for playchips on ESPN poker. I also took a break for a few months during the last 18 months because I had lost my bankroll and the holiday season was tighting up my wallet.

The very first week I played I deposited $50 to Party Poker and $100 to Full Tilt. I don't recall how long my $ lasted at Party Poker, but I really liked FT more. That may have to do with the fact that the very first MTT I played was a $20 +$10 Hurricane Katrina benifit tourny. I finished in the money and knocked out 'pro' Aaron Bartley and got a bounty worth the $20 entry fee (I also got a T-shirt in the mail).

For the first year or so I didn't keep track of any of my results, but had both some good periods and some bad. I wasn't until about (3) months ago that I started being more serious about improving my game. I starting using the Check Your Bets website to track my results. I have also discovered a plethera of sites like sharkscope and thepokerdb that track all kinds of MTT and SNG results. You can use these sites to lookup other players results. I have also recently discovered the Official Poker Player Rankings website. I owe most of these discoveries to the forum at Card Player.

Enough background for now. I will talk about some hands from the Daily double at Full Tilt that I played last night in my next post.

19 March 2007

Introduction

This is my first post in what may be many. I have never done this sort of thing before, but hope it will be helpful in becoming a more successful poker player.

I hope that writing about my poker thought and experiences will give me the ablility to see situations differently.

I have yet to be even moderately successful in my time playing poker. That is not to say that I have not had profitable periods, but overall I am still a losing player. This fact really bothers me. I know I am a very intelligent individual. Math especially comes easy to me.

Whether anyone else will ever read this I look fowards to finding out. I also hope that I can somehow earn some affiliate cash through this blog.