Happy Holidays

Hope those of you who celebrate Christmas had a good one.  I had 4 days off from just about everything...no work, no poker, hardly turned on a computer.  Just chilled with the family for the most part.  We've never done big gifts...lots of family to buy for and everyone likes to buy for everyone, so it's mostly pretty small, plus Jennifer and I set a small limit on what we get for each other.  So ended up with a couple nice golf shirts and golf glove (can never have too many), plus a few other little things.

I had a decent pair of headphones for my iPhone that I think dropped out of my coat pocket at my daughter's basketball practice (she grabbed my jacket from the bleachers and tossed it to me).  Didn't notice they were missing until I got home.  Went back to the gym, and they were nowhere to be found, and no one turned them in since.  I was a little pissed because they were only a couple weeks old and cost about $100.  Yesterday, I took the family to lunch and then to see Avatar.  Total for that was about $150, which kind of put the headphones into perspective.

Good news on the poker front:  I wasn't running as bad as it's possible to run in November.  Bad news:  December proved to me that it could be worse.  I've won 2 sessions the entire month, one of those for like a $20 profit.  I've had so many hands go against me that I've started to get surprised when I get the money in with a larger pocket pair than my opponents and my hand holds.  It's a very bad, dangerous mindset.  Some worse play is starting to creep in, and a few times I've felt like I'm kind of on the edge of a major spewfest.  Hopefully the time off has helped and the next session is calmer emotionally.  You can't do anything about the cards that fall, but you can control your emotions and focus on making correct decisions.

Went to a wedding Saturday for one of my wife's college roommates.  I didn't know that many people which was too bad, but it was still a nice time.  Was talking with the bride's brother, who lives in the town next to where I grew up.  He starts rattling off some of his buddies, and I knew every one of them.  Small world.

Oh, about Avatar.  Think it's definitely worth catching that one in the theater.  While I don't think it was good as the hype I've been hearing, I'm still glad I saw it on the big screen in 3-D.

Not much going on

Haven't blogged in a while because I've been playing decent but running like crap, and that doesn't make for anything I really wanted to write about.  That pattern has continued this month.  I've tightened up a bit postflop, and my Went to Showdown has dropped to 22%.  But my Won $ at Showdown is only at 31%.  Not going to show good results when you win less than a third of the time at showdown, no matter what the rest of your game is doing.

The rest of my stats look OK, except my aggression on the river is pretty low.  But I've looked through some of the river calls I've made, and I'm actually doing OK with them, both decision and results wise.  It's the stuff before the river that is dragging me down.

I've been getting money in pretty good, or else in cooler situations.  I've probably passed up a few spots where I think I could be basically flipping with some dead money in the pot.  It's not so much a matter of avoiding the variance even with a small positive EV, but more when I'm not running well, I don't want to rely on my best hand/villain reading judgment...at the edges, it may be off.  And all that has been going well as far as I can see from what villains are showing down.  But I've lost to more 2-outers and 3-outers than I "should," while not hitting my own draws.

On the flip side of that is that I seem to keep running into villains with hands, or in some cases perhaps decent players taking advantage of my aggression in spots where I can't stand the heat they bring.  I'm getting a chance to make some decent folds.  One problem in the pasts was thinking that people were more out of line than they were, so even if I'm bet/folding too much, I doubt it's a lot too much, and I'm happy that I have the discipline to be able to lay down some hands in those spots rather than making some stack-committing hero calls.  To know that I can do that, even while being frustrated, is a silver lining is this rough stretch.

Suck on it, November

Worst results in terms of money lost.  Fewest number of hands.  So, yeah, it was not exactly a fun month.  I didn't play great, but my mistakes were not much worse than normal, just ran bad.  While frustrating in the short term, I'd clearly rather be losing due to bad luck than bad play.  That's why we have a bankroll strategy, and I'm still in decent shape, mindset-wise.

Big picture, things are great.  Had a nice break for a few days for the extended weekend.  Turkey day is really busy and tiring for us.  Sunday afternoon was spent getting up lights, trimming trees, and cleaning gutters.  But in between those bookends was just a bunch of lazing around with the family which was really nice.  For all the folks who celebrate it, hope you had a nice Thanksgiving.

Another entry in the Senseless Tragedy department

The custodian at my kids' school was murdered a couple days ago, in front of his 13-year-old daughter, on their  way home from getting ice cream.  They were walking their dogs, and one of the dogs sniffed a stranger's leg.  That ultimately led to the murder.  I don't know any more details than what's in the local news:  http://www.ktvu.com/news/21724877/detail.html

By all accounts he was an awesome guy.  All the kids liked him.  My wife, who spends a lot of time at the school, says he always helped people with a variety of stuff, even if it meant he had to go out of his way.

Reaction to downswinging

I don't react as poorly as I used to, but I don't handle downswings correctly.  Things have been going pretty poorly this month...my red sessions outweigh my green sessions by a lot...both in number and severity.  Yesterday featured a negative 61-point something ptbb/100 run over a few hundred hands, capped by a cute play that I thought worked out well, but then got punished for being cute...18/14 guy opens from MP, major LAG 3-bets him, I flat with AA on the button hoping for action, raiser calls.  MP is half stacked, LAG is full stacked.  MP opens on a KQx two tone flop, LAG calls, I raise enough to put MP in, he calls, LAG folds.  MP flips over 77!  Of course, he dinks a 7 on the turn :(.

And I wasn't even surprised he hit.  Like I said, things have not been going well.

But what I do is try to play through it, rather than at the bare minimum sticking to my study routine.  So, I've been reviewing only about 25% of my hands, and have done zero reading, vids, or anything else.  And that's just not a recipe for success.  I'm playing OK for the most part, but I'm not good enough to neglect study for too long, especially trying to move up in stakes somewhat aggressively.

I should be using downswings as an excuse to rededicate myself to study.

1. There's more chance you're playing bad in a downswing than in an upswing...so even though I'm pretty sure I'm playing OK, I could be wrong there.  Better to go overboard with study than neglect it.
2. My mindset/confidence and image is worse when losing, so no point in maximizing the volume.  You should push the volume when you're at your sharpest and your image and control of the table is at its peak.

I will almost surely have my worst month ever in terms of money, although maybe not in terms of BBs.  But that's OK.  The month is just an arbitrary chunk of hands.

Hopefully, I'll follow through and get some study done.  I want to reread Exploiting Regulars and also get some other stuff on my reading list checked off.  There are  a couple vids I have in my "to watch" queue as well.  And hopefully will also revive some video or HH swaps, which in addition to being helpful in terms of focusing thought, may also reveal some stuff I'm doing poorly, but don't realize.

New digs

This week I moved my office across the street.  New location is in a  new building, finished about a month ago.  Nice to have everything brand new, and most of the kinks have been worked out.  Layout is really open, lots of cubes, glass walls on offices.  I like it, but it will probably cut down some of my poker study, unfortunately.  Even without the office change, I've been busy at work.  Even though it has not been the most interesting, it's fairly tolerable.

I've noticed a work/poker correlation.  As my poker results suffer, my enjoyment at work goes up, at least relatively speaking.  I don't think I'm good enough at poker for it to make financial sense to play for a living, even if my wife would go for it.  I figured that I would want to think my expectation is close to 2x my current salary, just from a financial standpoint.  That would allow for the following:

• Increased (family) medical coverage
• Increased risk
• Variable cash flow
• Ability to not be as good as I think I am, and still have some cushion :).

If I were to make the switch right now and just start playing out of my current poker roll, I'd be OK because I have at least 6 months of savings outside my roll.  But there are other, non-financial factors.  Namely, it would scare the sh*t out of my wife (whereas it would merely make me a little nervous).  But mostly, for me, I think that it would be tough to get back in at the same seniority level I've worked hard to attain, if I bailed for a while.

I may be "forced" someday to play professionally -- my field and company while doing well right now, is not growing, at least in the U.S.  I'm not in any imminent danger that I know of, but I also know several people who felt the same way shortly before they were laid off, so you never know.  During this current economic climate, it's been nice to know that if the worst did happen with my job and I couldn't find another, I'd have a backup plan with something between a prayer and full financial stability.

That is, if people would stop seemingly constantly going runner-runner on me to take pots!

Opportunity missed, opportunity gained

Rarity for me yesterday, I got to play two sessions, and one of them was pretty long, by my standards.  I play so many less hands than most of you guys (assuming I know who "you" are) that all my streaks/patterns/whatever are LOL sample size anyway.  But I was just shy of 900 hands across the two sessions.  And just about everything was going well in terms of finding the right seats, getting good situations to play, etc.  The only thing that didn't connect was villains' cards.  Which is pretty much the case for all sessions this month (again, LOL sample size).  I've yet to book a win, and in fact I'm losing over 21 PTBB/100 over that small sample.

You saw one of the hands last post, but there haven't been any other big pots where I didn't get most of the money in ahead or with 8-out-plus draws postflop.  The only other 200bb pot where the money went in with me behind I actually went runner-runner to win (flopped TP > turned trips > river top boat to beat his flopped bottom set -- like when does that ever happen to us?).

Just tons of medium size pots where villains seem to have better hands than I do, mixed in with a few suckouts.  Really, there's not a lot you can do when you get involved with looser players, waiting to make a hand and value bet them, except you never make a hand.  Make some c-bets on good boards, even some good barrel spots, but you have to be careful not to bluff those guys where they are likely to have a piece.  Good for aggression, not so good for bottom line.

In days past, several losing sessions would have a bigger ripple effect on my future sessions than I hope it is having now.  I feel like I am making basically solid plays (we'll see, shipped a few hands for confirmation off to my coach).  So, I'm treating this as an opportunity to work on my emotional game, and to keep making the plays that I believe are right, even when they're not working out.  In that way, there's a silver lining, as long as my bankroll continues to be able to withstand some time off the run-good train.

Not as bad as I thought

Looked over the last few months of hands, and it looks like I don't get as married to my flopped TP hands as I thought.  Most of the time I ended up calling down, I had improved by the river, or either the turn or river bet was pretty small.  Interestingly, those times I improved and called down, I got show some pretty redic bluffs, but not sure whether those were from otherwise (by stats) solid players.

So, here's the hand that really bugged me and made me feel like a calling station because I knew when he fired that 3rd barrel he most likely had AK.  My question to you all is what factors would lead you to make a call here, short of actually seeing him triple barrel bluff as the preflop 3-bettor in the past?  If you'd use stats, what's the stat threshold for you between calling and folding (or raising earlier in the hand)?  If it's an observed read, what sort of read/note would you be looking for?

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - http://www.thehandconverter.com/hands/355120
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

MP: $492.20
CO: $933.25
Hero (BTN): $400.00
SB: $453.00
BB: $80.00
UTG: $110.00

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is BTN with Qd Ad
3 folds, Hero raises to $10, SB raises to $34, 1 fold, Hero calls $24

Flop: ($72.00) Ac 8h 8d (2 players)
SB bets $44, Hero calls $44

Turn: ($160.00) 6s (2 players)
SB bets $112, Hero calls $112

River: ($384.00) 4h (2 players)
SB bets $263 all in, Hero calls $210 all in

Too Call Happy

Played a short session and was not too happy with it.  Biggest hand was calling down AQ on an ace high flop.  I opened on the button, somewhat nitty TAG (5% 3-bet, 7% facing a steal) 3-bets, and I defend.  The thing is when he fires that 3rd barrel, I really need to fold.  He's not wild enough for me to stack off bluff catching, and he's probably not value betting thin enough to be value cutting himself there.

Need to run a filter where I either call 3 streets or call AI on any street with top pair against reasonable players.  I bet it won't be good.  I'll also have to look at how often I fold in those spots, because I think we probably forget a lot of the folds we make when facing heat...seems like a standard play, and also those pots don't stick in your mind because the overall pot size is smaller.

More on Exploiting Regulars

OK, I still have not finished going through the exam questions.  Partly, I am really taking my time and writing some fairly detailed answers before checking Tri's.  Partly because I've continued to stay quite busy with work and family, and poker across the board has had to take a bit of a backseat.

However, I wanted to get a review up because if I understand correctly, the price of the book is going to double in the next few days when pre-order is done.  Bottom line, if you play 200NL or higher, I would recommend you get the book.

The first reason I would draw the line there is simply what the book costs in relation to a BI and also the alternative you would get if you were to purchase coaching.  But that's not the main reason. 

If you are playing 100NL or lower, you should just avoid good regs, which I think you can do pretty easily if you either datamine or play in the games regularly yourself.  There are not enough really good regs to warrant staying at a table with them without at least a couple of other soft spots.  And if you are in such a spot, you should avoid confrontations with the good reg and focus on the better spots.  Even when you play well against a good reg, you're going to be better off going against the other spots at the table.

Beyond that, even a good, thinking reg will probably not play or adjust in a way that will make the book exactly applicable.  In fact, I think it's borderline at 1/2, where even most of the better regs still don't value bet wide enough or make tough folds.  But it does get closer at 1/2, and even closer at 2/4.  There's probably a reason why all the examples are from a 3/6 game :).  That said, beginning at 1/2, I think there are times when you will have 2 or 3 regs on a table with one, maybe two, soft spots.  And one of those regs are bound to be decent.  Also, the games start to feature a little more aggression (some misplaced, but still aggression).  The context of the book starts to hit home there, some of the time.

There are a couple spots in the book where I think you could just follow a straightforward outline and make a unique play or two, but for the most part,  you shouldn't get this book expecting a quick read and magic results.  It will take some work to get the most out of it, and the most valuable parts of the book for me (and there were several) covered the sorts of things to evaluate before deciding on a given play.

I don't agree 100% with everything Tri says, but there's nothing that I wildly disagree with.  And even though it's a short book, there were multiple things that I hadn't considered in the light that Tri presented them before.  I did provide him several suggestions, some of which were addressed in an updated draft he sent, some of which were not.  I am about to provide him a few more.  I don't feel it's fair to comment on them because this is not a published draft, but if anyone would like me to comment on them after the book is in general publication, let me know (assuming I can get an update from Tri to see whether my feedback was addressed).  Feedback was more about flow of the book, formatting of the exam, and some extra bits I thought he could pretty easily add to round out some discussion -- it was not over anything I considered bad, though.

Exploiting Regulars, so far

I'm going through a preview copy of an upcoming e-book called Exploiting Regulars by Tri Nguyen,  I reviewed his PLO book in the past, which I thought would be an awesome starting point to complement some PLO videos if/when I start getting into PLO.  But I couldn't be sure, not having played PLO.

Going through this NL workbook so far, though, is different because I can relate to a lot of what Tri covers.  I haven't even finished the meat of the book yet, which is a series of workbook problems, but I'm quite enjoying it.  Some of the concepts seem different from videos I've watched and posts I've read. 

But what's happening is that the book, with its focus on play against regs, is illustrating specific applications of some concepts. Regs in general have certain tendencies, which while more profitable than the tendencies of various fish in the population, can nevertheless be exploited.  The book is doing a great job illustrating that I don't do a good enough job adjusting to regs.

When I think about adjusting to regs, at a very high level, I would say that it boils down to value betting a little less thin and bluffing a little bit more.  Sounds obvious, right?  Maybe.  But the "why" of it, and the associated problems, help drive that home in some specific ways.  Ways that I know will increase my bottom line when I can get them applied correctly.

There are some things I'm not sure that I agree with, or would like to see more detail behind Tri's thought process.  I'll see if he'll respond to my questions after I finish everything.  After I get his thoughts, I'll write a more detailed and actual review, rather than this sort of non-review.  But I'm sure my impression of the book will be quite favorable.  It's already made me sit back and think pretty deeply about some standard spots.

I haven't read Let There Be Range, which is Tri's most well-known book, but assuming it's as good as the pre-release of Exploiting Regulars, I'm missing out on good stuff.  I just can't justify to myself that high of a price tag, with the volume I get in.  But based on Exploiting Regulars, I may reverse that decision.  If you've read it, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts, especially if you've also read Exploiting Regulars.

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho....

Warning:  This is tl;dr, with no poker content.

Work's been pretty meh the last few months.  I put in well over 40 hours/week, but I spread it out over a lot more time on the computer, mixing work and non-work tasks.  Not just poker, although that's easily the biggest non-work item.  I'm on the computer a ton, probably 12 hours/day during the week and several hours/weekend.  Not all work of course, but I definitely put in the hours and get my sh*t done.

But clearly, the lack of excitement is coming through.  My boss and his boss have both told me.  As part of our annual review process, my boss gathered a bunch of feedback from the team I manage and my peers.  Others have noticed the same lack of motivation.

Some of the biggest examples they cited were actually due to me not demonstrating more clearly what I've completed.  That said, compared to myself a few years ago, it's a fair observation.  I used to pretty much attack every problem.  Now, I get stuff done, but do very little more than the bare minimum required.  I've gotten good enough at my job that the minimum is enough to get my projects complete in better shape than most of my peers (confirmed by my boss).   Which is all well and good if I want to just keep doing what I am doing right now.  I don't think I do, but I'm not as sure as I was a few years ago.  Back then, I had a plan to become a high-level executive, and worked pretty hard at filling the gaps in my resume to get there.

I've got the hard tools to do that now, basically smarts and experience.  But I lack some of the softer skills, or more precisely the motivation to hone and use those skills.  See lack of demonstration/tooting my own horn, above.  And some of the stuff I'm good at and really should get done, I find really boring, and I let them slip.  This is the other part of negative perception, and also why it's a fair perception.  Bottom line, I'm good at what I do now, have the recognized potential to do more, but am acting (and feeling) somewhat disengaged. 

So, I totally understand that if a position would come up at the next level, why I wouldn't be at the top of the list for it.  I mean, I might, but I would get why I wouldn't be there.  Like poker, a good chunk of being at the top of the list is in my control.  If I choose to let things slip, and even for things that don't slip, give the impression that I'm not terribly motivated to dot all the I's and cross all the T's, it's my own damn fault if someone else gets the nod.

That said, even if I were completely on top of my game, which I was for a time, there needs to be some opportunity.  Going back to a poker parallel, life in the corporate world is a mix of work and luck, obviously in different contexts.  Luck in the corporate world includes being in the right place at the right time.  The work is about maximizing the chances that you will be, and that you'll be ready when the opportunity comes up.  Although the work does entitle you to the reward in a literal sense (a little different than poker), it does not mean you will actually realize any reward.  But there's a cost to continuously keeping yourself ready, of maximizing your chances.  A cost, and an opportunity cost.

In an environment where very, very few chances are likely to come up, you need to evaluate whether the cost is worth it.  On the one hand, the stakes are higher because you get so few chances.  Each chance better count.  On the other hand (and this was me), even if you're doing everything you can, that chance may never come.  So, I've gone from complete readiness to mostly complacency. 

I allowed myself to slip into complacency; I take accountability.  But it has opened other opportunities.  Without most every waking hour going into work, I've spent more time with my family, coached my kids' sports, studied poker fairly seriously, and other stuff, not to mention getting a decent night's sleep on a regular basis.  So I don't feel all woe-is-me, at least not too much ;).  I'm just feeling more introspective than usual, trying to figure out whether I've struck the right balance, or where I need to tweak things, especially work-wise.

When you don't hit your set

Full stacks at $1/$2.  A TAG with solid stats (let's say 24/19/3.5, if you want) raises to $7 UTG.  You only have a stats read on him.  You flat with 88 from the BTN, and the blinds fold.  He bets $11 - $13 into $17.  Does your flop play (and tentative plan for the hand) change for the following flops?  And what is the play/plan?

Flop 1:  K93 rainbow.
Flop 2: K73 rainbow.

Bonus question:  Same basic preflop scenario, except we've opened from UTG with 88, and the TAG flat-called from the BTN.  What's your plan for the two different flops?

We probably each have a default way we play these situations, which might make for an interesting discussion.  I'm more interested in whether you all change your plan based on that subtle difference in board texture.

Preflop

For a long time, I've put more emphasis on postflop study than preflop. This was with the assumption that it's much easier to get to a decent preflop game than a postflop game, and that more of the money is won/lost postflop. I think that's still basically true, but I also think that preflop play may be relatively more important now than it has been.

Aside from the obvious, which is that preflop mistakes set up even bigger postlop bad situations, a lot more money exchanges hands preflop than in the past. There's more preflop 3-betting and 4-betting in general. I'm also significantly looser and more aggressive, which changes the way people play back. And overall, there are more regs in the games I play than in the past -- not sure whether that's true overall, or mainly because I've moved up in stakes.

Even though I've paid even more attention to seat selection now than I used to, I've gone from a 19/16 guy playing on a table with 2-3 fish and 1-2 regs to a 27/22 guy on a table with 2-3 regs and 1-2 fish. I'm raising more, and playing against guys who know they should 3-bet me fairly wide. I 3-bet 7% myself now, and didn't even pay much attention to it in the past. Not all that long ago, the closest I came to a 4-bet bluff was watching it in a video. Now, if I'm not careful, I would be 4-bet-bluffing every other orbit :P.

So, the point is that it certainly pays to pay more attention to preflop. The question is whether there's a ton more for me to learn there. I don't think I know all, just saying that I know I have more to learn postflop, and I'm guessing I always will. Whereas I think preflop will be more subtle tweaks than anything else for the most part.

Whoops, it's been a while

Been playing short sessions somewhat often, but really not much time for teh pokerz in terms of sheer number of hours.  At work, we're wrapping up a 3-year product release, and while there's no longer any coding and testing to be done, there's a crapload of little details I need to attend to for packaging and documenting everything.  It's very busy, but actually very boring.  Times like this that I think how cool it would be to be doing something else.  Thankfully, we're talking about a few weeks for, like I said, a 3-year development cycle, where it's really bad. 

This is coinciding with annual review time, which I really don't look forward to.  One of the things I really like about my job is coaching the people who want to be coached on my team.  There are several of them, and I think that by and large, I do pretty well by them.  I've also learned how to not give unwanted advice to the people who are happy with the way things are and are doing a good job.  I used to assume that everyone was looking for bigger challenges and to get better at everything, but that just isn't true.  Leaving the people alone who want to be left alone, and can handle being left alone, is a surprisingly hard and valuable thing to do as a manager, in my opinion anyway.

Anyway, as much as I enjoy the whole feedback process for those who look forward to it, I hate the formality of the annual reviews.  I feel too conscientious to just blow it off with a shoddy written review, though, so I agonize over just the perfect way to communicate for the people who really take it seriously.  It's worth it for their benefit and their reaction/appreciation, but it's a pain.  I much prefer more informal conversations.  Even though I never cover new ground in the annual review any longer -- my folks know I've got an open door throughout the year, plus if something's on my mind for them, I'm not exactly shy about bringing it up -- there's something a lot different about writing things down in an official form.

So, all that activity has been keeping me busy during and after working hours, unless I steal 45 minutes here and there for cards.  Add to that my dad was in town the last couple weekends, from Maine.  We don't see him much, so when we could, we spent time with him.

For the cards that I have played, overall I've been pleased, in a qualified way.  I'm not really in a good groove, so I'm making a fair number of mistakes.  But my hand analysis seems to be quite a bit easier (assuming it is correct).  I've spot checked a few things with Jared, confirming my analysis. 

Given I'm a really low-volume player, plus not relying on poker for living expenses, I'd rather play below potential but understand the game well, compared to playing closer to potential, but having that potential be lower.  In other words, on some imaginary proficiency scale, I'd rather play at 70 with a potential to play at 100 than play at 80 with a potential to play at 85.  Or something like that.

Tom's Funeral

Got to the church about 15 minutes early, and there were only a couple rows of seats left...by the time the mass started, they'd seated people in the choir seats, and people were standing 2 or 3 rows deep in the back and around the sides.  Figured I would get choked up at some point, and it happened right away, on the way in.  The front of the program was a picture of Tom sometime fairly far into the disease (emaciated, tired, no hair), sitting on a bench in his backyard, smiling at us, two thumbs up.  As if to say, "Hey, don't worry too much about me, I'll be OK."  I'm choked up a little now, thinking about it.

The priest's parts of the service were neither here nor there for me, although Jennifer thought he gave a pretty good homily.  I thought he mainly tried to conduct the mass, but otherwise stay out of the way and let people eulogize Tom, which seemed about right.  I'm not Catholic, and not really religious in any event, so I wouldn't take as much out of that part as some other people would. 

Common themes throughout the eulogy were a wicked sense of humor, hard-headedness, and devotion to friends and family.  There were a couple snippets I found funniest.  His sister told us about the time when Tom was in preschool and had been practicing some recital songs for a few weeks. Had them down cold, but the night of the recital, he never opened his mouth.  Never one to shy away from attention, the family wondered how he could have gotten stage fright.  When they got home, his mom asked him what was wrong, and Tom opened his mouth to show the broccoli he'd been forced to eat at dinner before the recital.  I don't know, that one might not be funny to those of you who haven't battled with their kids over stuff like that.

The other one I liked was Tom's best friend, met in high school, grown up together.  He said that even though he was a couple months older than Tom, it was Tom who did a lot of the teaching.  "I learned a lot from Tom...(blah blah blah)...and I learned that it's OK to pee outdoors.  Especially if you're in the City and you've been drinking a lot.  Yeah, he taught me that one over and over."

The tear jerker of the day was not from Tom's family or friends.  It was from one of the girls he coached before he got sick, I guess on Tom's team for a few seasons.  I think she's 10 or 11.  As she read a poem she wrote for him, her voice getting more and more tremulous, you could see everyone's shoulders shaking, and hear noses blown and the occasional sob from the mourners.

We had planned to not stay, or not stay for long, at the reception.  But after the funeral, it was really nice to just sort of shoot the shit with our friends, whether remembering Tom or just about life in general.  I am struck that although it was sad, it was not depressing.  I don't think I've got the words for it.

OK, I do believe that in the last week I've used up my quota of emo posts for quite a while.  Thanks for bearing with me!

Bleah

I really need to learn how to fold to the Friday night donkeys.  I have not yet decided whether I played or ran worse tonight.  If you saw how bad I ran and I can't decide whether it was worse than my play...well, let's just say that I could have played tons better.  The silver lining is that my hand reading was excellent.  I just need to trust it!

I tried to salvage something via chat...but even that didn't go well :P.

Soccer opening day is tomorrow, and at least I'll be well rested for it.

Bye Tom

A friend of mine passed away in the wee hours this morning, after a nearly 3-year battle with leukemia.  That was about 2.75 years longer than he was expected to live, given the type of leukemia he had and that the bone marrow he got from his brother did not cure him.  He was not a close friend (although he was to a few of my good friends, and they will be taking this a lot harder than I), but enough that I had a chance to be inspired with the grace and toughness he and his family fought his illness. 

I last saw him a couple months ago, and even though he was clearly not doing well, he not only didn't want to talk about it, but he was trying to crack jokes and keep the conversation on anything but him.  I was at our mutual friend's house, who lives next door to Tom.  They also worked in the same field.  Our friend was bitching about some pretty mundane office stuff -- like I'm sure we've all done, whether an actual office or the bad beat/run bad stories -- and Tom seemed to truly empathize with our friend about all this little crap.

I'm sure I'll have a little better perspective my next  poker session or two.  I'll close with Tom's admonishment to all of us in his emails and journal entries:  "Get busy living."

Using Notes

Played a pretty standard hand recently where I checked K2 in the BB and flopped top and bottom pair on a K72 2-tone flop.  SB folds, I bet just under pot, limper folds, second limper calls.  He's a 17/14 multitabler.  Turn and river bricked off, and both of those streets went I bet, he called, and he flips over 22 for flopped bottom set.  Standard play for me, and I took a note of his play.

On review, I started to think about how that note would affect my play against him.  I came to the basic conclusion that it wouldn't change much when I have initiative.  He's still tight (folds to steals 80%, folds to c-bets 72%), so I'm not going to miss any chances to steal or c-bet against him, regardless of that note.  So, if there was a change in how I play against him, it would have to be when he has the lead.  I was spending a little time trying to come up with hypothetical situations where that note would change my line against him, and I failed to find a satisfying one (and rather than keep at it, I figured I would write this).

In general, I started thinking about how often a note I've taken has changed the way I've played a hand, especially when I've got lots of hands on someone.  I go through good and lazy note-taking phases, but even when I have notes on someone, I'm not sure that I actually use them very well.  I fall back to stats most of the time when I adjust my play from a readless line.

I think this is quite bad.  While it's nice that I understand how to use stats to adjust my lines, a consistent theme among top tier players is that a note-based read is far more important than stats.  But it doesn't do any good to take a note, even a great note, if you can't use it.  If I can't pretty easily come up with a situation where I play it one way without the note and another way with the note, then I'm not doing it right.  I'm not talking about the super stupid things people do, rather exploiting villains' more subtle and frequent leaks.

Life stuff

Went into San Francisco on Saturday to visit with my mom and hash out some stuff that we've needed to talk about for a while.  Took the train, and she was going to pick me up, then we were going to go have lunch.  After waiting for 10 or 15 minutes, my wife called to say that my mom had been in an accident with a bicyclist.  Everyone was OK, but they were headed to a bike shop about a 10 minute walk from where I was.  On the way there, I was talking with my stepfather, who said the cyclist was a bike messenger.  He didn't know the exact details of what was going on, but he said that the bike messenger said he was going to sue my mom, and that he had $1800 rims on his bike and wanted a bunch of cash for them, blah blah blah.  I guess he shut up about that when my mom suggested she call the police and they could take an accident report :).

From what my mom said, it's not clear to me who was at fault.  She was partway into an intersection making a right turn, but was waiting for a pedestrian to get onto the sidewalk.  It sounds like she then completed her turn just as the light was going from yellow to red, and hit the guy just as she was going from a standstill (which is why he didn't get hurt at all).  The guy had run his light, but my mom had hit him.  It's probably the guy's fault, but it was $175 out the door for the bike to be fixed (so much for $1800 rims, lol), and my mom just paid it and they signed something that said nothing further was required, so she just wants to be done with it.

Yesterday, on my way to play golf, my wife called to let me know that in the middle of the night, my niece went into labor at 4:30 AM, or thereabout.  A little over 22 hours later, she gave birth to her daughter.  So, I'm now a great-uncle, crap!

I would try to rationalize to you guys that my sister-in-law is older than I am, and that she had her daughter young, and in turn that her daughter (my niece) is having kids early, but what's the point?  I'm a bunch older than most of you guys anyway, so who cares?

Anyway, golf is coming around a little bit, finally.  2nd round in a row I was in single digits over par (7 over, yesterday), and put several swings in a row together that felt good, although there were definitely some real clunkers in there, too.

We went to the beach after that, which we don't do that often, even though it only takes about an hour.  Well, on a nice day like yesterday, it usually takes a bit longer than that because of traffic, but still.  Usually it's too cold for me to want to get in the water, but it was over 80, so even though the Pacific this far north is pretty chilly, I got in with the kids and body surfed with them.  I went out a bit far to try getting some bigger waves -- I can't go too far without freaking out my wife and daughter -- and for a bit was probably 20 or so yards away from a group of pelicans fishing, and I even saw a couple seals, which was pretty cool.  Then it occurred to me that I don't really know how aggressive seals are when they're fishing, or if there were any seal pups nearby.  But it didn't matter, because the whole procession were following the fish and moved away pretty quickly.

Still low volume

Work and life continue to get in the way, and my volume has been low, even for my standards.  I am lucky to have been doing well, as I have been doing the bare minimum of studying/thinking about the game.  That said, I do feel like I'm in a decently solid mindset when I do play and study, so the hard work over the months leading up to this plateau have been helpful.  I should be able to at least start cranking up the study volume again soon.

Wife and kids went to see my nephew compete in a livestock show at the county fair, plus go to the fair, plus hang out with her brother and his family, plus my in-laws.  So, I thought I would play a couple sessions after work.  Bailed on the 2nd session, though because the first one was a combination of lots of coolers and several poor hands by me, including an ultra-spewy multi-street bluff followed up by a pretty bad river call.  The latter wasn't for a huge amount, but felt like it was a bad sign to continue.  I was running bad, plus fairly close to each other, I made a too-aggressive, and a too-passive play, so there was no reason to think I was going to be sharp in the second session, even though I was not that tired or anything.  I won't even say it was a good quit, since to me it was pretty obvious.

So, instead, I spent the rest of the night clearing some old shows from the DVR and researching some replacement IEMs for my iPhone.  Man, what an exciting night!  Hope all is going well with everyone.

Amusement Park

Yesterday started off pretty good...we got 3 free tickets to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom thanks to the kids' school, plus I played some live poker Friday, did well, and so had plenty of cash for my ticket and whatever we wanted to do at the park.  The one ride my son really wanted to do was a roller coaster called Kong, and he evidently is exactly 52 inches tall...dead even with the ruler.  So, we were all thrilled he could go (whole family likes roller coasters, but none more than my son, and obviously this was the first time he could ride this one).

From there, the day got worse.  As we were walking to the next coaster, Jennifer stopped in her tracks and said, "Crap! I don't have my phone!"  Up until 2 weeks ago, for the past 4 years or so, she'd used the same crappy free flip phone, and never had any issues.  But she finally caved in to iPhone envy after watching me use mine all the time, so I bought her one. 

Somewhere on one of the loops or corkscrews of Kong, I guess her new phone slipped out of her pocket and launched itself into the air.  To make a long story short, we stuck around for 90 minutes after the park closed until they brought the phone back to us at the front gate.  It looked unscathed, but the display shattered inside.  So much for a cheapish day at the park; best we can tell, to fix it via Apple will be at least $250.

Speaking of expensive days at the park, Jennifer and I were marveling at how many people who just looked like money might be tight for them (obviously, knowing nothing about them, just the way things looked) spent a crapload of cash at the park.  I mean, even when times are tough, you need to have some fun once in a while, but it seems to me that an amusement park can be one of the most expensive ways to have a fun day with the family.

Falling behind again

Several months ago, a bunch of stuff required my attention at the same time, both in and out of work.  I finally broke down and started using a to-do list again, and even started listening to the Getting Things Done audiobook (finishing it is still on my to-do list, lol).  One of the premises behind organizing your tasks effectively, beyond completing them in the best order for you, is that you can actually stop thinking about them.  I was a bit skeptical, but I did notice that I didn't dwell on them as much when I finally got them into an organized system that I was checking daily.  And I did get myself into better shape in terms of things looming over me.

I would say I'm still in great shape for a bunch of stuff, but on the poker front, I really have gotten lazy about using my time effectively.  I'm not sure how related it is, but I'm also not thinking about the game very well at the moment.  Away from the tables, I'm spending too much time refreshing the software forum in 2p2 to see what's up with developments dealing with the new FT client.  And, I'm over-tweaking all the graphics stuff myself.  It's bad for a couple main reasons:

1. I'm doing a crap job focusing on strategy.  I have not completed watching a video this month.  I have not read any strategy posts or made any progress in Small Stakes NLHE in the entire month.  Hell, I recorded my last lesson, which was on 7/10, and it took me over a week to get it converted so I could re-watch it, and I'm still not done with it.  (Brian, I still intend to review your latest video and see if I agree with the comments being posted, but I must get through my own recording first!)
   
2. I'm playing sessions without being as mentally prepared as I'd like.  When I'm spending my time in good poker discussions or doing quality poker learning away from the table, I feel like I come to the table with a lot more focus.  That's missing.  At least, it seems to me that I'm playing like an absolute douche.  On said lesson, in the first 40 minutes, I asked some questions and took a line that I'd be embarrassed to have a newb hear/see.  In fact, I had to stop the video just now, which is why I'm writing this.  A couple times in recent sessions, I've found myself taking actions without knowing why, and not in spots where it should happen.

The FT Update Blues

I have been completely non-productive as far as poker is concerned, for a week or so.  When Full Tilt pushed out their update, I found out just how dependent on 3rd party programs I am :P.  While it didn't take all that long to find an acceptable table mod, it did take me a bit to figure out how to apply it.  And I was playing with a pretty crappy deck for a bit, when I was playing.  By now, I actually think I have a better looking setup than before (I'll try to remember to screen shot it).

But for several days, I was back to only using the tools that the poker client provides in order to play, and I sucked at that!  I thought it would be inconvenient to play without my AHK scripts, but it was more than that.  Even playing 3-4 tables, I was timing out all over the place for a bit.  When I stopped timing out, I was still paying so much attention to the time bank that I missed some pretty big details about the hands, and also kind of went on auto-pilot.  I had a lesson with Jared last Friday that was pretty laughable in terms of what I was missing.

Add to that, I had not been able to pull myself away from some of the trainwreck threads in the Zoo, plus refreshing every 30 minutes in the software forum to read about the latest updates.  So, I didn't play at all until yesterday, and even that was just on 2 tables of 50NL to test out the first betas of Poker Shortcuts and SpadeEye-post update.  Poker Shortcuts worked some, but it was doing all kinds of crazy stuff with calculating bets and what-not.   The good news is that I made over 2 BI in like 150 hands :).  Way to run hot when playing lower.

Tonight, I will disable some of the functions in Poker Shortcuts, but it still has the ability to click on the time bank and let me fold with the keyboard, both of which will put me back in my comfort zone.  Seat selection may be a bit of a different story.  SpadeEye went a lot slower.  It also reported finding a lot less players than I'm used to.  Finally, table scoring doesn't work yet.  I'd devised a pretty intricate table scoring system that I think worked better than just looking at average VPIP or # of buddies, or whatever.  Still, it's better than what I had right after the update, and I'm looking forward to getting back into playing.

I think I'll also re-watch my last lesson and Josh's reviews before playing a ton more.  Hopefully between finding some sort of software equilibrium and doing some more in-depth thinking, I'll quickly get back to where I was mentally just before the update.

Week off when I didn't want it

Thanks to a family vacation (which was a lot of fun), I took a week off from poker, for the most part -- see exceptions below.  Things had been going pretty well pokerwise before the break, so it wasn't the right time for one, but what can you do?

Played a short session after a week, and definitely noticed the break, just in terms of anticipating what players would do, and how quickly I was making decisions.  I definitely didn't feel sharp.  I'll have to review the session later, but I think I ended up playing OK with a couple notable exceptions that were pretty spewy, although only one bad hand for a decent sized pot.  I think the big hand I played the worst on, I got lucky to be AI with the nut flush draw against a guy who had a flush draw with a gutter to a straight flush, but he ended up hitting his gutter.  He had 8 outs against me on the flop when all the money went in (well, not quite, because I had some re-draws, I guess), so it's not like a horrible beat or anything.  There were some other hands where I just ran bad, plus didn't get value from good hands, so all in all a bitch-slap of a welcome back.

The only pokering on vacation was at Harvey's in Lake Tahoe, and as usual, live poker results in some pretty LOL plays.  I was completely card-dead, so those plays didn't involve me...I'm just saying.  I think that I VPIP'ed maybe 6 hands in 2 hours, it was seriously pathetic (and boring) how cold I was.  The table was actually filled with supposed regulars -- everyone but myself and two other guys (the second guy took the first guy's seat) knew the floor and dealer, and were chatting with each other. 

I stayed at the table because they didn't seem that good, it was the only 3/5 table -- the others were 2/2/3, and the other non-regular besides me played every hand, usually as the preflop raiser.  He was pretty funny.  Young guy who I probably caught a contact high from, 3 seats away.  Came in on his skateboard, lost 2 of his BI (not sure how much) pretty quick, then just pulverized the table, especially the guy just to his right.  For several hands in a row, he agonized every time the guy on his right bet, then ended up either raising or calling, no matter what kind of piece he had of the board, and won every hand.

I won exactly 3 hands, 2 on the flop, 1 on the turn, but actually profited in the 2-hour session, thanks to a ton of preflop callers on 2 of those hands.  At least one of the cocktail waitresses was pretty good looking.

Not much going on

Usually when I'm not blogging much, one of two things is going on:  I'm not playing and am busy with other stuff, or things are going well poker-wise.  Lately, both have been true, I guess, but mostly busy.  June will end up a low-volume month, as I'm busy with a lot of family stuff.

On the poker side, I'm reasonably happy with how things are going.  I still see spots where I'm making mistakes, and there is plenty of work to do.  But a few of the things I've been focusing on improving have improved.  Mostly, getting back to focusing on opponents' ranges, especially when betting.  The second thing is making sure to make bigger value bets, especially against looser opponents.

One thing I have been blowing chunks on is detailed session reviews, calling out trouble hands for Jared.  I've played very few hands, but it's also been a while since I shipped him any hands.  We do have a lesson coming up, and I may take some of that lesson time to let him pick through PT and see what he sees.  After today, I should be able to get back to getting through my hands/sessions.

Inconsistent betting patterns

Although I haven't been finding a ton of time for poker, I've been pretty diligent reviewing the sessions that I so play.  I've noticed that I still have a tendency to under-size my bets, especially on the later streets.  Betting too little can be just as bad as calling too loosely; either way, your bottom line suffers.  The insidious part about betting too little is that it's a little more hidden.  Your stats don't get affected enough to notice, so you really have to dig through hands to figure out that you bet too little, or have someone review you.

The strange thing is that as I'm reviewing sessions, most of the time, my bet sizes seem pretty good, but then for no apparent reason, I'll have some small bets scattered in the session.  I'm trying to figure out what makes me inconsistent, as well as what just makes me bet small in the first place. 

My gut reaction is that I'm playing with a little too much fear.  I'm rolled well and table select well enough to feel like I have an edge when I sit, so it's not those things that would be scaring me.  It might be that I'm afraid to make a big mistake.  Not that I like it, but I don't really mind terribly getting stacked when it's a clear cooler or beat, but I hate the thought that I could be making a big mistake.  I want to be good enough to not make big mistakes. 

For instance, I played a hand recently where I ended up stacking off KK.  I raised UTG and TAG calls in SB.  Flop was Q22dd that he c/c.  Turn was an offsuit 9 that he c/r.  He shoved river which was an offsuit 4. 

Of course he could have a boat, but if he's at  all capable of overplaying AQ or bluffing JdTd, then it's going to be close one way or the other.  The feeling I had when he showed QQ was quite disproportionate to the mistake I made.

Hopefully, writing about it will reinforce my focus on making more confident bets and realizing more value.

Stars not aligned

I was probably too tired to play last night, but I went ahead and did it because I just have not been able to get the hands in.  For me, it's one of the perils of being a very part-time player:  when the opportunity presents itself to play, I'm probably going to play, even if I know it will be hard to play an A game.  Kind of like when it's raining out and I go play golf anyway, or skiing in a blizzard, I guess.  I just don't have enough time where taking a pass is better than playing under sub-optimal conditions.  I know from a strictly monetary standpoint, I'd be better off to play way lower, or instead of playing to watch a video or analyze a regular, or something.  But since I still actually enjoy playing, I get in the game when my edge, if it's there at all, is small.  I don't make that choice all the time, but at least now when I do, it's with awareness.

As my VPIP and PFR have climbed from the 19/16 to the 25/21 range, I notice that I'm getting more action, although I'm not sure how well I'm reacting to it.  A TAG 3-bet my CO open from the SB with K5s, which I definitely wouldn't put in a TAG's range..but if he sees I'm stealing very wide, I suppose it's reasonable.  I also got a lot of action from another TAG-bordering-on-nit who had 99 on a K85 flop in a raised pot who obviously didn't give me credit for having a king.

Unfortunately, neither of those went my way, although I made the 2nd hand significantly worse than it should have been on the river when he spiked and led.  I also lost 4 AIPF flips, but those hands kind of play themselves, I just got unlucky with them.  It wasn't enough to stem the tide, but on the one big pot I won, I did have another TAG willing to get AIPF with me for 160bb when he had AK (my AA held).

The only other big hand that I lost and felt really bad about was when a TAG who had position on me but had not really tangled with me yet 3-bet my HJ open from CO.  He only had a 5% 3-bet over a large sample, but from a stats and winrate view was very solid.  I just called the 3-bet with JJ, looking for a non A/K flop, which I got, something like 964 two-tone.  The thing is that unless shown otherwise, I should not think he is going to play for stacks with a worse hand than mine, but instead I way-overplayed my hand checkraising him AI on a blank turn.  There's no way he calls with a worse hand.

The big problem for me being tired is that the flips, coolers, and beats I had taken earlier in the session get to me way more than usual.  If I'm not tired, those things don't bug me nearly as much as they used to.  And I'm sure that I was steaming nice and hot before and during that hand.  But that hand also kind of bitch-slapped me back to the moment, and I bore down, dropped a table, and played OK from then on out, for the most part, even when again some bad luck came my way.  After I convinced myself that I'd kind of righted my emotional ship, I shut it down, and watched an episode of 24 before calling it a night.  But that allowed me to take a couple silver linings from an otherwise brutal session:

• I was able to control myself eventually, even under what were for me challenging conditions.  I think that's an important life-skill, not just limited to poker.  The goal is to not even have the one big slip-up, but like I said, I was looking for silver linings ;).
• Results-wise, after throwing out the flips and beats, I did quite well, which is nice to see as I would like to be able to continue applying increased aggression.  I have a long way to go there, but I don't want to over-adjust myself into spewville, a place I've certainly visited enough already.

Slow going

Life-wise things are going great.  Poker, it's been going fine, except I'm just getting in so few hands.  In the last few weeks, in addition to work and little league which have been busy, I've had:  wife's birthday, son's birthday, niece's birthday, anniversary, Mother's Day, school fundraiser (helping and attending), which have been great, but also have pretty much consumed nights and weekends.

In the few hands I have played, I've really been focusing on turn aggression, to the point that I'm maybe overdoing it (Turn AF is 4.50 in my last few thousand hands, which is significantly higher than it had been).  I'm not too worried about it because it's short term, and in reviewing hands, I'm not really spewing.  The mistakes I'm making, when I'm making them, are betting with the likely best hand but when I should probably be checking for pot control and extraction, and also making some overly tight folds.  Neither of those are good, but they won't get me in a ton of trouble.  And over that stretch, I'm getting to showdown 26% of the time, so it's not like I'm going overboard blowing people off hands or folding myself.

I did finally have a chance to play a decent session yesterday, about 850 hands, and I could tell that I was a bit rusty for sessions of any length, as my focus was not too good.  Had really good seats on a few tables or I probably would/should have quit, but instead, I just sort of backed down from confrontations with TAGs after a couple poor plays (where I slipped back into some passive play) and focused on the weaker players.  I had to really bear down to concentrate the last 30 minutes of the session, but I feel I did a decent job.  I'm going to take a detailed look later to confirm that, though.

Bizarro

Poker is really strange for me in that sometimes I do exactly the opposite I should do, but in both directions.  Like sometimes on the turn with a made hand, I'll make a totally weak/tight fold, yet other times with a made hand I'll make a totally spewy call or raise all in.  I'm picking the turn specifically because I'm trying to do a lot of thinking about my turn play.  Most of the hands I "get wrong" when I send them to Jared are mostly misplayed on the turn.  In a recent video swap with Josh, he also found some instances of pretty poor turn play.  Not saying I have the other streets down, but I do think that the turn is where I make my biggest mistakes.  But the whole idea of making opposite mistakes in both directions applies throughout my poker game.

For me, that makes it significantly harder to attack my own leaks.  Dunno if that's the case for everyone.  So what I do is keep iterating on a number of different things, continue probably making the same sorts of mistakes but to lesser and lesser degrees, until eventually I come out of a bad habit, at least for a while.  I keep thinking/hoping there's a more efficient way to improve -- especially with limited time and energy to dedicate to my game -- but I've yet to find it.  The good news is that I think I do continue to improve, and I continue to turn a profit.  I know that it's actually a good thing that poker is, if not hard, at least not simple.  But I keep thinking I'm just missing a magic bullet or two that would accelerate improvement.

A couple related things I really suck at relative to you guys:  player-specific adjustments, and bet/raise interpretation.  Unless I'm really focused, and it's not even so good then, I tend to play against everyone as if I'm playing against a TAG, or more accurately against myself.  I see what they do, and I think what it would mean if I did it, and go from there.  I know that's wrong, believe me, but even being aware of it, I find myself struggling to put villains' actions in the context of the player type they are, and to exploit specific weaknesses beyond the simplest ones (like isolating the loose passives, c-betting as a bluff against the guys who fold to c-bet a lot, etc.).  And even against TAGs, I totally mis-interpret their bets and raises sometimes.  I guess that's why I find myself making bizarro decisions sometimes, actually.

In case this post comes off as being too whiny, I will say that I believe there are a lot more things going right with my game than are going wrong with it.  Just that there are always weak points no matter how good you are, and that's what I'm thinking about in terms of the weak points in my game.

Oh (and this is whiny :P ), I continue to run like shit in lessons!  I dropped over a BI in not that many hands, and that was even with winning a few medium pots.  But lost a BI on a flip, and even more frustrating was a fairly big fish who kept redistributing my money...he called any piece down against everyone, but against my good second and top pair hands, he had just a barely better hand like four times.  So, he would get my money, then call down ace high and bottom pairs to the rest of the table.  Grrr.  That said, I picked a couple things up from the lesson that were new and should help, plus reinforced some of the good things I'm doing.

Back, almost ready for some action

Vacation was great, took Mark's advice and pretty much disconnected (truth be told, it was due a lot to not having ready internet access :) ).  Pretty much only looked through blog posts from my phone, and did a little bit of cleanup from raw notes I've taken.  Only bad part is that I got seriously sick for a couple days.  Somehow, I stay in pretty good health for someone who gets too little sleep, too much food, and has a couple kids in the petri dishes otherwise known as elementary school.  It's been a few years since I had anything stronger than a mild fever, cold, or sore throat.  But something sure knocked me out last week for a couple days -- I'll spare you the details, suffice to say they are not pretty.  No fever and pretty much ate the same stuff as everyone else at the in-laws' house.  Best guess everyone had is that I got very dehydrated.  Anyway, it's over and done with, and I feel fine now.

I did play a short session on the weekend when we got back.  I was worried about not being sharp after a week with no play and little/no study, but it went well.  I played OK and ran well, and only played 2-4 tables at a time.  I also started reviewing a review of my play from before I left, which I'll finish up in the next day or two, then hopefully be back in full swing.  I do have to get unburied at work, plus it's my son's birthday this week, which we have some stuff lined up for.  So, in reality, it may be next week before I hit the ground running for real.

I see that while I was gone, the latest What Would Joe Tall Do video came up, and Jared was the guest coach.  I don't know exactly what my score was, but I know I missed some, based on the answer key Joe posted.  That's kind of discouraging...I've been taking lessons with Jared long enough that I should have aced his episode :(.

Little bit of a lull

Not too much time for poker this last week or next week.  I'm on vacation next week which means I had a shitload of stuff to wrap up at work this week, plus my wife's birthday was yesterday, so we went out last night (and are going out tonight). 

I did force myself to play one session this week long enough to get some hands in for a video review, and the timing was horrible...answering homework questions, phone calls, played tired, etc.  I knew going into the session it was not ideal, and that actually helped me play a little better (more focused than I would have been).  I've actually been pretty disciplined about not doing that, but really wanted to get a video recorded, given it was then or wait at least a week and a half.  I probably made more mistakes than normal, but nothing horrible (I don't think...we'll see what the video review uncovers :P).  And I ran goot, so results were good.

Other than that, it's been 30 minutes here, 40 minutes there for the whole month so far, and not even many of those.  I've got a whopping 2,000 hands in for the month...less than some of you guys do in a day.  I will probably be able to play when we get back tonight, because it takes me all of 10 minutes to pack for vacation, but Jennifer takes a couple hours,  plus she has some other stuff she has to get done before we leave tomorrow AM.  So, it will just be a matter of what state I'm in when we get home.

We're going to my in-laws in Palm Desert (basically Palm Springs).  They have a condo there, where they spend the winter.  Kids are out of school next week, so we're heading down to spend Easter with them, plus I think two of my nieces.  I'm lucky that I like my in-laws, so a visit with them is pretty easy.  Plus, I'm going to play at least 3 rounds of golf on some great courses, for a bonus. 

The beat is that they have a dial-up ISP, and the computer is located in their bedroom anyway, so the only way for me to get online is to hope that one of their neighbors has an open WiFi connection.  Anyway, I won't have that much time unless everyone goes to sleep early.  Got a few vids loaded up on my iPhone, so I'll have something to review in any event, and can at least get emails and what-not.

Buh-bye, March, don't let the door hit you on the way out

Started off continuing a hot streak where I felt I was playing well, running well, and really enjoying poker.  But most of the month was a train wreck, results-wise.  My play has been so-so.  For the most part not atrocious, but certainly not inspired.  I guess my B or B- game.  Until today, I actually hadn't played much because too many other things were going on, and I was really tired.  From that perspective, my discipline was really good.

The layoff didn't do me any good today, though, as I punted another 2+ BI, to cap off the month.  Overall, it was a negative 9 BI month, but the downswing I'm on is more like 17 BI (can't see the exact #s right now).  A lot of beats and coolers in big pots, some repeated mistakes in medium pots.  Mostly getting too passive (or maybe fancy).  So, I get one less street of value with winners and pay off one extra street with losers a lot of the time.

Still fairly well rolled for 200NL if I decide to stay, although I do need to pull out of the slump soon or I'll be tempting BR fate.  But as usual for me, my confidence at the tables is a bit shot, even if upon review that's not warranted.  I guess as long as I can find decent seats, my attitude going in to the session is good, I avoid any overt tilt at the tables, and my post-session reviews don't reveal anything hideous, I'll keep plugging away at 200NL.

Josh was talking about some video swaps.  I'd also mentioned it to Brian, but never took action.  I'd like to start some video sweats with the Ninjas (and ex-Ninja) periodically.  Video sweats work better for me than live sweats because I have more time to do them.  I think they work well in small groups, too, because you can pause the action to delve into a point, in a way that you cannot do in a live session. 

I'll be out of town/away from the computer for the week after Easter (visiting the in-laws in Palm Springs, playing some golf on great courses, and more fun).  But other than that, I should have some time during the day, as we just hit a huge project milestone at work, and things should be pretty quiet for 3-4 weeks until we ramp up again.  Not that it will translate into more poker, thanks to little league season!  Anyway, let me know if you're interested in some video sweats.

OK, bring on April!

New PLO Book

I received an early draft of an upcoming PLO e-book written by Tri "Slow Habit" Nguyen.  He's already written an e-book on NLHE with cts which I heard great things about, but which is currently out of my price range.  So, even though I've never played PLO or even watched a video on it, I was pretty interested in reading through the book.

It struck me as I was reading it that I used to read an awful lot of poker books. I've got books that I've read scattered throughout the house and garage, and stopped counting my old poker books at 19, but there were probably a few more.  And actually, just about all of them were pretty good (never bought a poker book before discovering 2+2, so between their decent quality and book forum, I was able to do decent research before buying).  I've got several on theory/math, a bunch on limit hold'em, a few on NL, and a few on other games, but none on PLO.  I know there are some PLO books out there, but not many, and since using Cardrunners and other video sites, I stopped reading as much anyway.

So, I don't know how to compare this one to other PLO material, but I can pretty well compare it to other poker literature in general, IMO.  The most immediate thing is that there is very little preamble, which is great.  I don't need another book to review pot odds and other basic ideas.  That means that this is not a book someone who saw a few episodes of High Stakes Poker and wants to get a poker book should get.  But that's fine, since I doubt that's Tri's target audience anyway.

Anyway, he jumps right into preflop play.  Although there are some hand charts, he actually spends most of the preflop section talking about a couple things that are way more important than what hands to play:  why you should play (and avoid) certain types of hands; and how equity analysis in PLO works (somewhat differently than NL).  Although the preflop section deals with some postflop content, obviously the meat of the book comes after preflop.  Like any other game with decent stack sizes, postflop is where the money is made and lost in PLO.

I like the way Tri organized the postflop section.  He didn't just go from preflop to flop to turn to river in the book.  The postflop section actually starts out talking about some general concepts and common mistakes, that to me at least, framed the postflop street by street content.  One of the things that would have helped me personally going through it the first time is more of using both the similarities and contrasts to NL in order to explain PLO concepts.  However, upon reflection, I think that may be because I have a decent amount of NLHE experience and zero PLO experience.  After getting some PLO under my belt and coming back to the book, perhaps I won't really care about the contrasts.

That aside, what struck me about the postflop play is that there was a good balance between the theory/reasoning and the practical application of that theory with both practical lines and actual hands.  I think for me why I emphasized books less as I got into video training and coaching is that the latter was able to provide a lot more case studies, and I had already built some sort of theory foundation.  With PLO, although I've got some general poker foundation and a good amount of hold'em foundation specifically, I needed the foundation as well as the case studies.  So, the balance in the e-book was great.

Here's where my thoughts on the book will be least satisfying to anyone reading this:  I have no way to verify right now that this is a correct approach to PLO.  For that, we would have to trust Tri :).  In all the other books I've read, I either knew enough to work out what made sense and what did not in the books, or there was already enough positive opinion about the books that I took it on faith that the authors were correct (for instance, my first two books where "Small Stakes Hold'em" by Ed Miller and "Theory of Poker" by David Sklansky).

Assuming that Tri knows his stuff in PLO -- and I would think he does (and it wouldn't take long for PLO experts to contradict him if he's wrong) -- his e-book seems like it will give a nice blueprint to the game, at least for a while.  The timing for me reading the book is pretty good.  I've been thinking about giving PLO a try, Hold'em Manager has a public beta of an Omaha tracker coming out soon, and it seems like there is a fantastic PLO series combined between Deuces Cracked and Blue Fire Poker out as well.  The only thing that makes me nervous is that I hate running bad at NL, and it seems that with PLO, you're more subject to variance.  One of the ways that I keep myself level-headed while running bad at NL is being able to know pretty much when it was played well and unlucky, and I won't have that luxury in PLO.  However, with Tri's book, I'll at least have a concise reference guide to measure my play against, and that will help a ton.

OK, I'd intended to keep this post shorter, so I'll stop now.  By the way, Tri's site, where you can see a full table of contents and an excerpt, is http://www.dailyvariance.com/

This douchetard fails at life (no poker)

Disclaimer:  this is a post pretty much for pure venting.  It's not poker related, but if you're not interested in a rant, stop now, catch you next time :).

Every once in a while you come across something that strikes you as so over-the-top obnoxious that you wonder if you're actually being leveled.  My wife is president of our school's parent faculty club (PFC, another name for a PTA).  She received a note yesterday in the PFC suggestion box. 

If you have kids in school or good friends with kids in school, you might know how hard some parent volunteers work for the benefit of all the kids, not just their own.  I would say Jennifer puts in about 20 hours per week volunteering for our kids' school, between all the stuff the PFC does, plus all the volunteer work she does directly in the classrooms.  The PFC organizes two fundraisers:  a Fall carnival for kids and the families, and a Spring dinner/dance for parents.  The note below was written on a dinner/dance announcement:

==============
PFC:
Let me see if I understand this correctly...you want me to give PFC more money?  Let's see...the last time I wrote a check to PFC was for a sweatshirt that someone dropped off at my son's kindergarten class and expected a 5 year old to carry it through EDCC and home.  As you already are aware from emails to/from my wife, it never arrived (surprise, surprise!).  Now, you want me to write another check?  You **must** be kidding.  Let me see if I can make this very clear to you -- **NO**.  Please take us off of your solicitation list.  If you would like to discuss this in detail, please phone me at the number listed.  If not, *do not* send any more requests home with my child.  **No exceptions!**
===============

Little background:  immediately after being contacted by this guy's wife (the emails he was talking about), the lady who coordinated ordering and distributing the sweatshirts wrote back and said that she dropped off the sweatshirt with the kid's teacher who said she would put it in the kid's backpack to take home.  Then she followed up twice in the next 3 days to confirm that the parents talked to the teacher and got their precious sweatshirt.  The parents never responded back.

I'm sure that I'm biased because I have a firsthand look at how much a relatively few number of parents do for all the kids at the school, both volunteering and donating money.  And it's my wife that the guy is addressing his note to.  And now she has to deal with both this asshole and the school principal to straighten everything out. 

Obviously, this guy has not done shit for the school.  And that's fine, I guess.  It is a public school, and I know that not everyone is in a position to give money and don't care to give time.  But in California, our school systems are woefully underfunded (we now rank dead last in education spending, and are headed for even more school budget cuts next year), so if everyone took this guy's attitude, the schools would be a whole lot worse.  It takes a crap-ton of extra support from the parent community for our kids' schools to be better.  So for him to fire off a nice note like that to the very people who benefit his kid basically out of the goodness of their hearts obviously touches a nerve.

If you've made it to the end, thanks for bearing with my venting!

Back to normal

Actually, not sure what is normal for me lately, but after a couple days rest, I did playa  quick session that was nicely uneventful and I could book a win.  Consciously tried to not push hard on any hand, folded a little more than I normally would overall, was extra careful to pitch OOP hands, let guys have small and medium pots if it was at all close.  Basically, sacrificed some small, high-variance edges.  And it went according to plan.  Only hand close to 100bb was this one:

Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

SB: $241.65
BB: $274.15
UTG: $175.25
MP: $34.70
Hero (CO): $200.00
BTN: $200.00

Pre Flop: ($3.00) Hero is CO with Js Jh
2 folds, Hero raises to $7, BTN raises to $20, 2 folds, Hero calls $13

Flop: ($43.00) Ks Kc 5c (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $26, Hero calls $26

Turn: ($95.00) Jc (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $48, Hero calls $48

River: ($191.00) 8c (2 players)
Hero bets $106 all in, BTN calls $106 all in

Final Pot: $403.00
Hero shows Js Jh (a full house, Jacks full of Kings)
BTN mucks Ac 3c
Hero wins $400.00
(Rake: $3.00)

I'm not sure of the best line to get all the money in on the turn.  It looked to me like he was maybe giving himself room to fold, so I didn't want to checkraise him, but calling seems kind of strong, too, and any hand I'd be counting on him to bet the river, he'd call my raise.  I'd decided to lead any river, and just hope that it would help him somehow, in case he was on the fence about calling off.

Outside of poker, I finally started this season of 24...I've got a lot queued on the DVR...all episodes this season for 24, Lost, and Battlestar Gallactica.  The wife won't watch any of those shows, can't watch them when the kids are around, and when I've got some time to myself, I'd rather play poker :P.  Good thing I set up an external terrabyte of storage for my DirecTV receiver.

Haven't played golf in a while, but did make it to the driving range.  Might play Friday morning before going into work, but if not, it will be the first month in which I've recorded no rounds in I don't know how long :(.  Hopefully, I'll make up for it in April.  Besides any weekend play I'll get in, the family is going to Palm Springs for the kids' week off school after Easter.  I should get in 2-3 rounds there.  Got a range finder for the iPhone that looks pretty cool, which will be nice for the unfamiliar courses, especially the ones in the desert where a lot of times you really need to hit all your shots to a good yardage, instead of just bombs away.

Puking in my mouth

Lost 5.5 BI in 916 hands, continuing to run like death.  Not that my play was stellar.  I haven't reviewed the whole session, but I lost 5 stacks in 4 hands.  2 of them were when I turned a set 3-way and made a really poor payoff when a backdoor flush got there and a TAG checkraised me...I knew I was in trouble, but made a terrible, undisciplined frustration call.  I thought villain was good, but he played the flop and turn pretty bad -- unless he was counting on me to pay off big on the river, which I did, so who knows, maybe he played it pretty well.  2 of the other stacks were trying to push people off hands, which I've been trying to do too much.  I'm glad I'm working some of that into my game, but it should be rare and opportunistic, rather than forcing it, which I think I'm doing.

Lost one more stack set over set where the guy made an awful call on the flop with 66 on a J54 board.  But I had him read for calling anything, so I shouldn't be surprised...I raised his c-bet big on a J54 flop and he called with 66.  Oh well.  Next biggest pot was 60bb lost when my trips lost to a straight.  I won 3 pots more than 100bb, so I had a decent amount of big pots go my way.

Kids' sports and other family activities will probably keep me away from the tables for a few days, unless I really try to squeeze in a session, which I won't do, in all likelihood.  I walked away from this session disappointed, but not feeling totally tilted.  However, it was the 4th loser in a row, and if my personal history is any guide, I could use a cooling off period.

In better news, my son's baseball team, which I coach, had opening day today, and the kids looked pretty good.  We definitely need to work on some stuff, but we've already come a long way since we started practicing a month ago.

Volatile

For about 3 weeks, I was running really well for the most part (couple blips here and there), and playing pretty well, although a little robotic.  Then as good as things were, they turned that bad for the last week or so.  One of malfaire's recent posts talked about not ascribing too much to your clearly unsustainable results, and continuing to work hard on your game even when winning.  He's right about how important that is, and I'm happy to say that I didn't change my routine much when running well, although that's not saying a lot for me...I probably spend too little time seriously studying/thinking.  I'm really good with session reviews and picking out hands for Jared to review, but pretty bad with videos, sweats, forums, etc.  Realistically, though, between job and family, I already have so little time to play, it is what it is.  But I digress.

One of the difficult things about running super hot and super cold is that it's tougher than usual to attribute your results to your play, at least it is for me.  One of the reasons the games can stay good is that bad play gets rewarded a decent amount of the time.  Conversely, you can play pretty well and still lose, right?  The effects are worse for me (as they are for you, most likely) when losing, because at some level, your confidence is undermined.  In both hot and cold you lose some objectivity, but at least when you're winning, you tend to play more relaxed and confidently.  Now, I'm not shaken over a poor week -- and for me that's only a few thousand hands at most -- but I did a sweat with Jared for my lesson last night, losing 2.5 BI in 350 hands...and that was after starting the lesson with a preflop all-in flip that went my way (JJ > AKs, I think). 

So, the loss was really more extreme than that.  We had several big coolers, and I don't think any horrendous beats or anything.  Not that you ever want to have sessions like these, but you do, and sometimes they happen for an extended time.  If you are going to have them, it can be nice to have a coach or other good player/trusted advisor watching.  I didn't think I did anything wrong, but it was reassuring to have Jared agree. 

The only thing I didn't do well is table select -- a couple tables were total shit, but it was a conscious decision to play against tougher regs with Jared sweating me.  The funny thing is that an 85/10 guy completely owned me, and I lost a few pots to a couple other lesser fish.  My results would have been a lot better -- maybe all the way up to break even -- if I would have just stuck to playing against the solid TAG regs :P.

Friday nights are weird

I think I probably trade more stacks on Friday night than all other nights put together. 

Tonight I think I was checkraised more than the rest of the hands this month put together.  Sick thing was I only played about 450 hands. 

On one table, the guy on my left was like 40/2 over a few thousand hands and had not 3-bet a single time.  He 3-bet me once from MP when I opened UTG, and once on the button when I opened CO.

After the first 100 hands or so, nothing seemed to be going right for me...I mean I think I played OK (though probably not great), but mainly only got action on the hands I didn't want it.  It's still early for me...I might venture back onto the tables later.  But for now, I think I'm going to make a little dent in the shows sitting on my DVR :).  Have a good weekend.

WWJTD

There's a series in progress at Deuces Cracked called What Would Joe Tall Do.  Joe takes some NL hands he's played, supplies some reads, then creates a running quiz using surveys, asking what the correct action is at various points in the hands.  After the survey closes down, Joe records a hand replayer video with another NL coach/video producer.  In the video, they reveal the the best option and talk about why that option is indeed the best one.

There are a number of cool aspects to this series.  To start with, you can obviously just watch the video without having taken the accompanying quiz.  There are other hand replayer videos discussing interesting hands, which are quite effective.  If you don't have the interest in going through the quizzes, you can still benefit from watching the videos.

But there are extra rewards for going through the quizzes.  First, the top performing DC members get rewarded for that performance.  Having missed one quiz and tanked another (relatively speaking), I doubt that I'll be able to make enough of a comeback for the cool prizes :P. 

However, the real value for going through the quizzes is that it engages you deeper in the learning process.  How many times have you watched videos somewhat passively?  I mean, you can still pick up stuff from them, but a lot slips by because you think you know it, or maybe it makes sense to you when you're watching the video, but really you have not internalized.  If you take the quiz ahead of time, though, you will find out what you know and what you don't know.  You can confirm what's right, and can really focus in on what's wrong. 

What I personally do (although it makes taking the quiz kind of a pain in the ass), is to keep a spreadsheet with the questions, my answers, and the reasons I picked those answers.  I leave columns for the coach's answers and their explanations.  I then follow along with that spreadsheet as the answers are being revealed in the video, along with the explanations, entering the coach's ideas.  For a follow-up, I highlight the ones I missed (whether I missed the answer altogether, or I had the right answer but for the wrong reason).  Later, I intend to hide my answer and the coach's answer for the ones I missed, and see if I've learned anything in the time since I initially took the quiz.  Kind of like self-coaching.

A couple more cool things.  First, although Joe is a fantastic limit player (all sorts of games), he relatively inexperienced at NL.  By that, I mean, he makes some of the same mistakes I do.  So, he gets himself into trouble spots on the turn and river by mistakes he makes on the earlier streets...in some cases, the same sorts of spots I find myself on occasion.  Watching a more traditional video where the producer is a lot better than I am, you never get to see how to limit the damage you cause yourself earlier in the hand.

Finally, the DC executive producers also take the quizzes and publish their results.  While none of them tank, they're not all at the top, either.  I think what that shows is that there are a number of different ways to reasonably play a hand...depending on your general style and your interpretation of villain reads.  That underscores the importance of having the correct rationale for your plays, rather than just having a bag of tricks.

Back to the grind

Dropped Dad off at the airport last night and back to work today.  He moved to the East Coast when he retired, so we don't get to see much of each other any more, which sucks.  We went on our yearly ski trip.  It was raining the first day, except at the very top of mountain, but it turned into snow, and kept going for the next 36 hours or so...more than 80 inches total for the storm.  The first day, the powder was about thigh-deep, and the second day was waist-deep and more, basically bottomless.  The snow in the Sierras is pretty heavy, at least compared to places like Colorado and Utah, but it was still very nice!  Also, props to my dad, who is now old enough to ski for free at Squaw Valley, but still going down the black diamonds.

Almost no internet access last week, thanks to the storm (knocked out the WiFi, evidently) and no cell coverage in Truckee, at least where we were staying (the front desk said only Verizon gets coverage there).  So, I am hopelessly behind everyone's blogs, played hardly any hands, and of course have a mountain of stuff to catch up at work.  But, I don't think it will happen today...it's my daughter's birthday, so I'm going to cut out early and go out to a birthday dinner.

I did play a couple short sessions that were totally opposite.  In one I played bad and ran worse.  In the other, I played well and ran better.  Next week, my wife is going on a trip of her own -- with her sister, meeting her folks in Palm Springs -- so I should have some time to get in some hands, then.  I think that the bad session was more due to being stupid about forcing a session in because I haven't played much...I was exhausted and in a distracting environment.  I made a couple plays where I really knew better.

Looking forward to our next review session, too...the first one was great.  Hope to get caught up with everyone's blogs tonight and tomorrow...see you guys.

Vacation

Been a whirlwind at work the last couple weeks between wrapping up a big project and a meeting this week where I got to demo our product to a couple thousand people.  It all went well :).  Plus I've been trying to get things in order before heading up to Lake Tahoe with my dad to do some skiing.  He lives across the country, so we don't get a chance to see each other too often...looking forward to some good skiing and getting to catch up.  I don't know how much time I'll spend online over the next week or so, though.  If the weather is good for skiing, probably not too much.  I do at least have some videos loaded up on my iPhone.  See you in a bit.

Overbet shoves

Have there been some recent videos advocating overbet shoves, either as a bluff or for value?  I swear I'm seeing a ton more of them than I'm used to on pretty dry boards, since moving to 200NL.  Could be coincidence (we're not talking a crapload of hands), or it could be that it's just something you see a bit more of at 200NL than at 100NL. 

I have not been calling with my hands, even when my hands are somewhat stronger than a bluff catcher, for the most part.  My assumption is that for the most part, people are not overbet shoving without the goods or a really strong draw that has tons of equity against a top pair sort of hand.  However, if there's some video out advocating this, that would change my thinking entirely, as there are some spots where it would be pretty bad to do it without a strong hand, and misapplying something from a video would explain a lot.

I'm not talking about spots where it's reraised preflop and getting in on favorable flops for it, but more where there is some postflop action, but the final result on the turn or river is an overbet shove.

Finally did a video review

Had been meaning to try a video review out for a while with Jared, but I kept putting off installing Camtasia.  I recorded a session last weekend in which I felt totally unconfident while playing.  I started the recording just after stacking off KK  in a pretty reasonable spot, although it was like 4 hands into the session, and I hate when they start like that.   Then, right at the beginning of the video I made two mistakes, one pretty minor and one kind of bad, and I was thinking about Jared seeing those hands.  It was weird, knowing that someone would be watching the vid, I was actually a little nervous, even though Jared has definitely seen me play at my worst.

I broke even during the video (about an hour), and like I said, I felt a little lost, so I thought it would be pretty instructive, and we would maybe not even have time to finish it, as we would have to stop and dissect.  But as it turns out, I played better than I thought.  Not to say perfect, but pretty well.  I did particularly well, in his opinion anyway, varying my bet sizes well postflop (although not so much preflop).  That was good, because it's something we've been working on.  The biggest mistakes I made after the beginning both happened with AK.  In one hand, I got all in vs a TAG who was in early position.  I forget the action, but AK isn't going to fare that well against a TAG's UTG range.  This time he also had AK and we split.   Another time, I cold-called in the CO vs a 15/12's UTG open, and the flop was Kxx.  He bet, I called.  Turn was a 7.  He bet, I called.  So far, so good.  River was another middle card and it put 4 to a straight on there.  He bet, I called.  This is the mistake of the hand.  When a nit 3-barrels on a scary board, he's going to have TP beat.

Not too much free time today.  Wife is decorating a birthday present for our niece, then it'll be lunch and off to sports.  First I'm heading down to the baseball diamond to pick up equipment for this year's little league team and for the president of the league to give all the managers and coaches a pep talk/thank you for coaching, etc.  Then it's off to the gym to coach a couple basketball games.  The fun never stops :).

Quote from the conference call I'm listening to

This should show up on Dilbert.  Senior executive talking about recent product launches and initiatives in progress....

"Now we've shown that we can come in through the front and through the back.  Moving forward, we're going to build on that...these things will allow us to penetrate even deeper."

If he's telling the truth, I like our chances, even in this economy :).

C-Betting Question

I forget the reads on villains in this hand, but I'm pretty sure both of them were loose -- just can't remember if they were loose/passive or loose/aggressive. 

The fact that we're 3-way makes the hand interesting, IMO.  If you bet, what's your plan if you get called by the BTN and are OOP on the turn?  If you check, what's your plan if BTN bets?

Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 $60 No Limit Hold'em - 4 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

SB: $145.90
Hero (BB): $265.00
CO: $114.20
BTN: $81.15

Pre Flop: ($3.00) Hero is BB with Td Ad
1 fold, BTN calls $2, SB calls $1, Hero raises to $8, BTN calls $6, SB calls $6

Flop: ($24.00) 5s Kd Tc (3 players)
SB checks, Hero?