Long overdue...

Wow, it feels like it's been forever since I last posted... well, almost a week so it's close. Work has been extremely busy still so no time to post anything meaningful... of course, that hasn't slowed down my poker playing at all... it just cuts into my sleep time. So let's see... in the past week, what happened?

Well, this past weekend, I got crushed. I mean it was a total bloodbath. These days, it seems that some people are sometimes watching me play or stalking me (like PouringReign) so I don't know if any of you got to witness the massacre of this past weekend. I won't go into the actual figures here since it might send my parents to cardiac arrest but it was brutal... what started as a couple of innocent bad beats apparently put me on megatilt and I started getting my stack in with very marginal holdings and next thing I knew, I was in a spiral of tilt and spewing money left and right.

I will say this. I actually learned a pretty valuable lesson. Not tilting is clearly one but I was starting to get overly aggressive... maybe to the point where I was getting a little blindly aggressive. I don't have any HHs with me right now but suffice to say that I was starting to defend my blind a little too much by 3 betting marginal holdings (like A3o), I was 4 betting with marginal holdings (AJs), etc... In other words, the tilt made me even more retardedly aggressive... so I decided to calm down, look back at some of the HHs from my past sessions and I noticed that my game was starting to become one dimensional. I was either raising or folding... Now, that might sound like a good thing except I was building pots a little too much with marginal holdings.

So, one adjustment I am starting to make, especially at deep cash tables is that if there are some limpers ahead of me and I have a hand like suited connectors and one gappers, I limp along from late position instead of raising. Of course, sometimes, I would raise as well. It's just a matter of varying my play. I think before, I was pretty much raising or folding... calling wasn't in my play book and even though I don't advocate calling often, there are places where it makes sense to do so. I also know that when I was 3 bet and I had a middle pocket pair, I have started to fold them sometimes. It really depends on the set mining odds and how often the opponent is 3 betting me and how often he would cbet postflop. The fact of the matter is, if you raise to $14 and then they repop you to $48, it's gonna cost you another $34 to call. Even if we both had a full buy in of $400, you now barely have enough set mining odds. Of course, you could say, well, it's $34 to call into a pot with $68 so you're getting 2:1 and if the guy who reraised started with $400, he has $350 remaining, you should have enough set mining odds. However, the fact of the matter is, you barely have enough. You're gonna flop a set once every 8 times. So, when you call, you want to make sure you are getting better odds than that. In other words, with above stack sizes, in order to make this a profitable move to call the reraise in the long run, every time you hit a set, you have to be able to stack the guy. If not, I can't see calling a reraise with a middle pocket pair being a profitable move in the long run.

I'll get back to posting more HHs soon as things at work should calm down.

On another note, I'm sure most of you know about the ridiculous week or two that lucko's been having with his live tournament win of 21k coupled with the two online tourney win in one night for a 14k+ score, etc. Meanwhile, the not as prominent blogger, but my personal favorite, Matt got his second biggest score of his life in the 28k so good job to him too. With the FTOPS starting over at Fulltilt and with a lot of the big scores, I am starting to get the tournament itch...

One last thing... this post is freakin bouncing around everywhere. The summer blogger gathering is set for the weekend of June 7-8 but I will be in Japan during that time... Isn't it also crazy that the weekend the blogger gathering is going on is the same weekend as the TOC? I was initially due to fly back from Japan on June 8th but that would actually mean that I would be on the plane when the TOC is going on... so, I did what any normal degenerate would do which is to push back my flight for a day. Well, then now, it appears that a lot of people will be hitting Vegas the week after, ie the weekend of June 14-15. Since I'll just be getting back from Japan a few days before, it would be tough for me to fly out that weekend to Vegas... but considering that some of the people I've never met before like Hoy and Cmitch are going out there that weekend, to say that I'm tempted is an understatement. We'll see. I'm fairly certain it will be a last minute decision.

God, that felt like a long and yet, pretty much a worthless post. I'm a little rusty, what can I say? I have a company happy hr tonight so I may not be able to make it to Riverchasers. I already registered so if I don't make it back, enjoy my $10.