Monday, March 19, 2007

Cash game heater continues

As does the tournament losing streak. I made the money in exactly zero tournaments today, which basically sucked. However, I also made 13K playing cash games before I got too many tournament windows going. I've never run anywhere close to this good for any kind of extended period before in my 2 and a half or so years playing poker. I've already easily surpassed my success from last year in 2 months. I know eventually this will have to stop and I'm trying to stay as level headed as possible because at these stakes when I eventually go on a losing streak, especially after getting used to winning big, it's going be really hard on me. I'm definitely enjoying the rush for now though. I guess I'll post some more of the biggest pots or something.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?917879 - Flop the monster draw and catch the perfect turn card. He decides to make the big semibluff checkraise since he picked up a flush draw.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?917884 - I played this kind of weird. The guy seemed bad but we hadn't been playing long so I really didn't know how bad. On the river I was just thinking how can he possibly call with a worse hand here in an unraised pot? It seemed quite possible he could have exactly KJ or a weird slowplayed set or something. Also, he might have a busted draw of some sort like J9 or a spade draw that could bluff so I went for a check planning to just call a reasonable sized bet. As it turns out against this guy I should have just bombed the river. When he made the ridiculously small river bet it seemed pretty unlikely he had me beat, along with my impression that he seemed bad was enough to convince me to just shove the rest in. My line is confusing and people always talk to themselves into calling anyways there because it looks like I just think his small bet is weak and I am making a move.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?917890 - A big hand I lost against the infamous stevesbets. A lot of people think this guy is a fish even though he plays nosebleed stakes because he makes some really bizarre plays. He used to play the 5K HU matches all the time and I heard of some people who would play him all the time thinking he's terrible, but I don't think anyone ever really beat him consistently. From what I saw today his preflop play is horrendous, but he's actually quite good postflop which really confuses people. Still, I can't see him beating the toughest online games if he doesn't clean up his preflop play some. He was killing this table though including this hand where he stacks me. I go ahead and squeeze preflop because stevesbets basically can have almost anything and the other guy also has a pretty huge range. I didn't have a good idea how he played yet so I decided to just check behind the flop. I really had no idea how loose he would call my reraise preflop at this point, and in general his call of my big reraise looks awfully scary. The turn was a nice card for me and he checked again. I figured I prboably have the best hand and made a smallish bet for value. When he just called I was pretty sure I had the best hand. The river is the 4 and he instashoved. His line basically just looks like a bluff now. It certainly doesn't look like he flopped a set or has AA/KK given the turn action, and obviously I didn't think he could have a 4 so I quickly called.

Mike

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just out curiousity.
How does pokerhands.org know what cards people mucked if they chose not to show them?

Shouldn't that be not possible?

Mike said...

Players at the table see mucked hands in their version of the hand history (at all the major sites anyways), I just cut/paste the hands in. I believe it was originally in the software as a measure against collusion, similar to how you can ask to see mucked hands live. There's definitely a good argument to be made to remove this feature, but as it is looking at mucked hands is very standard practice online as opposed to live where it's generally considered poor etiquette to ask to see a mucked hand even though the rules technically allow it.