Tuesday, October 7, 2008

I have two sessions to post results and play about. First one I played last night, and it lasted probably 1.5 hours. I felt good but found myself on a bad table with a LAG on my left. I'd decided to leave when I got dealt AKo and 3 bet squeezed from the button. Aggro 4 bet me, and I was a bit stuck for ideas. He could be value 4 betting, or he could think I've squeezed, maybe lightly. I decide it's very possibly the latter or a coin flip and shove. He tanks and calls with KQ, nice. OK, he hits. The interesting thing is he instantly laughs in the chat, and I say "very funny." I wasn't too tilted. But it was nice to see every other player at the table then berate him for laughing after sucking out. It felt good to ease the great run I have preflop lately.

The rest of the session went smoothly, and I had very few tough decisions, and all the ones I did have I had the best hand and hopefully made the right plays. Up 1.5 BI's.

Today my daughter is sick, so I looked after her in the morning, and played while she slept. I felt fine, but overall don't feel confident playing at night. It's like drinking in the morning, it just doesn't have the same feeling. I played OK I thought, but lost 2 BI's, which I'm disappointed about. However, it was coolerville. A couple of key pots. I had KK vs 86 on a 665dd board. I thought a 6 was a part of his range, but in this pot so was the flush draw, TT-QQ, even straight draws. I lost a full stack. AA saw a mid position isolator with a tight range. I considered flat calling his raise but decided he was strong and may just stack off pre. He didn't, but he flopped a set, and again I could see dozens of hands I was ahead of. AA vs KK pre, I won that, reverse cooler. Straight vs flush, not for a full pot, but 70BB's so still painful. Limped pot I got an OESD he flopped a flush, and played passively until the river. I'd turned a straight and wasn't really worried about the flush 100%, but when he raised the river I really didn't see him bluffing, but called. I'm not sure why, I knew he had it and wasn't playing a worse straight/two pair that way. Finally flopped set vs nothing, then runner runner flush. I raised the turn which he called and I wondered if it was a backdoor flush he was calling for, and it came and he bet fairly big, but I was ahead of so much I had to call and it was backdoor, and he did have it of course. AQ on QJ7 board, lost another stack to an aggro 50/4 with 77, very much just a cooler. Finally, I thought I'd coolered somebody, but had them beat on all streets and hit my two pair on the river to seal the deal, and he paid me off. Really quite an odd session where I seemed to get played back at only when I had a strong hand, and quite a sour result, meaning a lot more work yet before moving up.

Now, the important thing. How am I playing. I'm pretty certain better than ever. I'm hand ranging!!! Yes I'm putting villain on some sort of preflop range, and applying that to the board before making a decision. I've got preflop hands on quite a few players after datamining, but yet to know how to easily get their post flop tendancies. Still, I'm very happily making semi-informed decisions based on real examples of what villain calls with etc. It just fills you with confidence to know you have real data you are working from when making a raise/call. I just need to fix my HUD now and I'll really happy with my information level, then I'll be working on using it the most effectively.

I've been happy with all forms of progress in the last few weeks, and feel like my skills are definitely moving in the right direction. If I find mysefl BR'd for NL50 someday, I'll be sure to start looking up coaches to take my game to the next step officially.

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