November Successes
After a couple days off from poker following the absolutely disastrous Vegas trip, I started playing again online to immediate success. After approximately one week of play, I am up over $1800.
Yes, that's a much higher than normal win rate for me online (especially since I play primarily 3/6, although it's four tables at a time for six or more hours a day). However, looking over my records, it seems as though online has been the steadiest winner for me over the last few months (all figures approximate):
June: $1000
July: $2000
August: $2000
September: $300
October: $1500
November: $1800 and counting
Whereas live play has resulted in wins everywhere from up $4000 to down $1600. I guess that's to be expected since I can easily play over three or four days online all the hands that I would play live for the month and so the random fluctuations flatten out over a month long span a lot more in online play.
At the very least this has convinced me that overall I'm a winning player. Let's hope it continues. I only have one casino trip planned for this month, and it's only going to be for one night. Over Thanksgiving, I'll be visiting my sister in St. Paul and so will get a chance, for one night and one night only, to play at the nearby Canterbury Park casino.
Otherwise, my live play this month will be restricted to games around Austin. I generally eschew such games because any of the limits of any consequence are generally populated with better than average players. I often sit down at a table where, with at most one or two exceptions, every player there would easily be one of the better players at a casino 10/20 game. I'm still a winner at those games, but the situation lends itself to much smaller wins, and so often I'm faced with the reality that, as much as I prefer playing live, I can make much more money simply by playing online.
No-Limit
That didn't stop me from trying out a live no-limit game last night, however. Playing live NL is somewhat unusual for me because I play primarily limit Texas Hold 'em cash games, while I only dabble in NL cash games, NL tournaments, and limit and PL Omaha (with very, very slight dabbling in seven card stud, stud hi/lo and razz). I estimate I've probably played over 150,000 limit hold 'em hands in my lifetime, including online, while the number of hands I've played at NL hold 'em, Omaha and Stud combined have probably been fewer than 10,000. I can't really estimate the number of tournament hands but to say that it's probably my second most frequent game played, although it would still be far, far fewer hands than limit hold 'em, probably on the order of my other games combined.
And, besides little $20 buy-in games with buddies or some hands at the $25 and $50 buy-in tables online, my only real NL experience was for a few hours at a $100 buy-in game in Vegas--a game at which I lost $200.
So needless to say, playing NL against a bunch of local NL fanatics was a bit unnerving. It was $1/$2 blinds with no max buy-in, although $200 seemed typical. I bought in for $200 and only had a few hands of note.
My second or third hand, I have A4o in the BB. There is one LP limper and the SB completes. The flop comes ATT. BB checks, and I bet $10 into the $6 pot, with the thinking that either I'm ahead and I win it right there, or I'm behind and I get called (or raised). LP calls immediately, and I instantly think he has a T. BB also calls, and I figure he must have an A which means that he almost definitely has me outkicked. Barring another A on the turn, I'm done putting money into the pot. Turn is a blank, and the action goes BB: Check, Me: check, LP: bet $25, BB: raise, Me: FOLD, LP: all-in, BB: call. LP had T5s, BB had AQ, and so T5 takes down a nice pot.
I felt good about this hand because I had an instant read, a read that ended up being correct, and I acted on it confidently. I think playing in a game that I'm a little unsure about leaves me more alert and wary, which has the effect of having me play better.
A few orbits later, I've played next to nothing and pick up 9h6h in the BB. Five handed, the flop comes 8h5c2h, so I have a gut-shot and a flush draw. Checked to me and I bet out $5 thinking that doing so will keep my draw cheap--I'd rather have someone calling my $5 bet than having me call his $10+ bet and appropriately putting me on a draw. Everyone calls. The turn is the 7d, hitting me right in the gut. I now check, and it checks to a guy in LP who bets $25 into the $35 pot. The button calls. With five people in and an immediate call on a fairly big bet, I'm pretty worried about a bigger flush draw than mine. I think for a minute and push all-in, $170 or so on an $85 pot. The move was probably more of a bet than I needed, but at this game people tended to call regardless of odds, so my thinking was that if someone were going to make a mistake I wanted it to be as big of a mistake as possible. As it turns out, Ah5h ended up folding. LP thinks for a minute and asks, "What do you have 6-9 of hearts?" and finally ends up calling with $120 of it. The button thinks for a bit and folds. LP shows 64o for the ig'nant end of the straight, and the river--Kd--lets me take down the $300+ pot.
Whew! Perhaps by making a somewhat smaller bet I would have had two additional callers (Ah5h from MP and whatever the button had) but who knows. I was happy with the result nonetheless.
A few orbits later I pick up AdKd in LP. There are two limpers and I make it $10 to go. Both blinds fold, and both limpers call. The flop comes KQ2 rainbow. EP checks, but MP now bets $15 into the $30 pot. I think for a minute. MP is a fairly tight player, and so I'm a bit worried. KQ? 22? He did show down stuff like KJ, KT and he was the guy who had T5 on that one hand. I raise it to $45. EP calls instantly. MP also calls. $165 in the pot.
At this point I'm thinking. What could EP possibly have? KQ? KJ? 22? The most likely hand I felt for someone willing to call instantly was JT, which in fact I knew was EP's favorite hand, meaning he definitely would have played it from early position even for a raise. Correctly or not, I determine that an A coming on the turn would not help me.
The turn, of course, is an A. It checks to me again, and I'm stuck in a quandary. The draw I convinced myself EP was on got there. I had top-two, on an AKQ2 board and there were a lot of hands that EP and MP might have that I could beat--KQ, KJ, AJ, AT. However, I was drawing mighty thin against JT or 22, with only four outs. I could check it through, but then I would give infinite odds to anyone having a J or a T to hit broadway.
I therefore do the dumbest thing I could have done. I bet, but not a significant amount in relation to the pot--merely $30. My logic was that I wanted to bet a significant enough amount that if I were raised, I could fold confidently. I just failed in the "significant" part.
EP starts yapping, "Wait, you're doing DOWN? It was $45 on the flop and now it's only $30? Are you setting a trap, trying to draw us in?"
He shuffles his chips for fifteen or twenty seconds and then throws out a handful of chips.
"Raise!"
$90 total. I should have expected that. I should have either checked or bet $60 or so.
I look over at him. He's certainly acting like he has the hand I put him on, JT, with the checkraise into the player who showed lots of strength preflop and on the flop and for whom the board looks mighty juicy with AKQ out there. But then, he's also a player who will attack weakness and who might very well have AJ, AT, KQ, hell K2. But, ultimately, 1 ) he's a player who respects me and my bets, so him check-raising me typically has real meaning, 2) he has me covered and 3) he is very aggressive, he's not shy at all about putting it all in. If I'm in for the $60 more and I want to see a showdown, I'd better be prepared to call an all-in on the river for the rest of my stack, which would be $320 total.
I think for a bit, and finally tell him, "The hand I put you on just got there." I muck.
Was that weak-tight? I don't know. I do know that my reads tend to be quite accurate, and my initial read on him was JT. At the time I thought it was a good fold, and my buddy at the table pretty much agreed with me, telling me that EP "looked like he wanted to be called." As time passes, however, I find myself second-guessing myself more and more.
So who knows. I'll just have to get more NL experience to get a feel for such situations. I did finish the session up $99. Not bad for two hours of work.
So overall poker is going great again. Let's hope it continues.
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