Went deeper than ever yesterday

No, not in an MTT....in a golf round, under par, or at least I think so...to be honest I haven't kept track of it. But I'm pretty sure that yesterday was it. Through 12 holes, I was one under par, with 4 birdies and 3 bogeys. That's nice in and of itself, but what made it a little extra sweet is the fact that the previous round was so bad, the computer asked me if I was sure. One of the things I enjoy about golf and poker is overcoming the challenge of bouncing back strong after things don't go your way.

Unfortunately, I could not seal the deal over the last 6 holes. On the 13th hole, I sent a ball OB, and that's where something that may relate to poker comes in. My mindset changed on the 13th tee. Up until then, my primary swing thought had been on one particular move to address something that had been bothering me about my swing. Just focusing on that move and letting it rip. On the prior two holes, my tee shots had been a bit poor, going too far to the left. Not terrible, just not great. On the 13th, I got away from my preshot focus, and got very cautious and tight. My whole swing changed, and blocked the ball way out to the right (and the funny thing is that on the 13th hole, there's tons of room to the left, you almost can't hit it too far to the left to get into trouble).

In every sport I've played, a big key, like poker, is controlled aggression. Not forced, controlled. When you get away from that and play to not lose, things don't usually go well for you. There are certainly some reasonable times to change from an aggressive mode to a more "prevent" mode. To me, that's the "controlled" part of controlled aggression. The keys are knowing when to make that switch, the cost/benefit of making the switch, and the fact that you are choosing to do it because of some external factor rather than doing so as a result of being nervous or scared.

The same thing must apply to poker. If you go into a passive mode because you believe that's the best way to get the money in when you're good, by all means do it. But when you go passive because you stacked someone and are now up for the session, and you want to protect your win, I say recognize that and just quit. I've done just that before, where even in a pretty good game, I'm having a winning session after several losers in a row. For me, it is psychologically important to break a losing streak -- I know it shouldn't be, but it is what it is. Other people have other reasons for protecting a win, and that's cool....but don't keep playing if you are just playing in protect mode....it's not your A game.

This is certainly not the deepest insight into the game, and is probably obvious to everyone. But I enjoy linking other sports to poker. And I couldn't miss the chance to brag about a good round of golf :).

User experience for posting hands

It's been a while since I just posted some hands. A lot of good poker players post hands on their blogs, but as a reader, I've always found the forum interface more compelling. The best thing for me, from a learning standpoint, is getting into a running conversation about how a hand illustrates a concept or two. It seems like blogs aren't conducive to that as much as forums (or email, chats, etc.). But I have noticed that the act of typing out my thoughts is a good learning tool, regardless of how much conversation goes on, so I'm going to start grabbing some hands to post in the blog. If any seem really interesting, or I don't think I have a good answer for myself, I'll try to post more of those on one forum or another. I'll also try to post no more than 4 hands at a time, so in case a conversation does break out, it won't be going all over the place.

With that....

Full Tilt Poker, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $165.50
MP: $94.75
CO: $84.05
Hero (BTN): $118.30
SB: $99.70
BB: $118.85

Pre-Flop: Tc 7c dealt to Hero (BTN)
2 folds, CO calls $1, Hero raises to $5, 2 folds, CO calls $4
Villain is 47/5/4.5 over a pretty small sample, and no history. I've been trying to abuse the button position a little more, hence the raise. Not something I'm making a habit of yet, just trying some stuff out.

Flop: ($11.50) 7d 7h Qs (2 Players)
CO checks, Hero bets $7, CO raises to $21, Hero calls $14

Turn: ($53.50) 6s (2 Players)
CO bets $25, Hero raises to $92.30 and is All-In, CO folds

In a sweat session last week, Noel talked about allowing an aggressive opponent to keep bluffing. From a decent villain, when I make the 2nd call, I shouldn't be getting any more action from a hand less than trips. In that case push or call probably don't make much difference because he's likely to be check/folding the river. But just by this guy's stats, he's probably a poor player, and he's aggressive postflop to boot. So, the money is much more likely to go in with him betting on this board than by calling. Raising this turn is a significant error, IMO.

Full Tilt Poker, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $111.95
MP: $18
CO: $214.80
Hero (BTN): $102.15
SB: $98.45
BB: $103.55

Pre-Flop: Qh Ks dealt to Hero (BTN)
3 folds, Hero raises to $4, SB raises to $13, BB folds, Hero raises to $30, SB raises to $98.45 and is All-In, Hero folds

Another somewhat experimental hand, 4-betting light. Villain is 20/14, but only has a 1.1 postflop AF. We don't have a lot of table history, but he is really aggressive from the blinds when the pot is unraised. Interestingly (although I didn't know this at the time), his PFR from BB is significantly higher than any other position -- 25%, while only 15% from both BTN and CO. I had not been out of line on the table, but it was looking like with his stats, he would not be afraid to take a stand against a standard steal, and I thought a lot of his range would fold to a 4-bet. Admittedly, I haven't really thought about the pros and cons of 4-betting light in much detail, and such plays as this are probably much better served to wait until I have thought about this more.

Full Tilt Poker, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com Hand History Converter

BTN: $43.05
SB: $109.25
BB: $191.65
Hero (UTG): $100.05
MP: $148.40
CO: $104.25

Pre-Flop: Qh Qs dealt to Hero (UTG)
Hero raises to $4, MP raises to $14, 4 folds, Hero calls $10
Villain is 21/16/1.4, and somewhat positionally aware, but only over 109 hands, so I'm not sure about that. I think he's got a decent range for 3-betting me, but I'm afraid that 4-betting turns my hand into a bluff.

Flop: ($29.50) Ac 4c Ts (2 Players)
Hero checks, MP bets $22, Hero calls $22
He's not aggressive, so without an ace or better, I don't think he fires again. So, my thinking was that I can get to the river with one call, and my hand has some showdown value. Looking back at it, I'm only ahead of 88 (slight possibility any lower PP), 99, JJ, and maybe KQs. I'm behind a lot more, so this is probably a fold.

Turn: ($73.50) 9h (2 Players)
Hero checks, MP checks

River: ($73.50) Kh (2 Players)
Hero checks, MP checks

I can't really see the sense of putting any more money in the pot, but I included the streets just in case someone thinks I should bet. But again, I think it's an easy check/fold. And to be results-oriented, I did get a free showdown out of that flop call.

Full Tilt Poker, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com Hand History Converter

BB: $98.50
Hero (UTG): $129.80
MP: $95
CO: $83.40
BTN: $138.05
SB: $220

Pre-Flop: Th Tc dealt to Hero (UTG)
Hero raises to $4, MP folds, CO calls $4, 3 folds
Less than 20 hands on villain.

Flop: ($9.50) 7h Ks Qs (2 Players)
Hero bets $7, CO calls $7
I think the c-bet is fine, but I could see giving up. If he's got a suited hand and/or straight draw, I would like to protect. When he flat calls, I want to be cautious, even with the draws out there, since a K or Q is possible. A strong hand would probably raise due to board texture.

Turn: ($23.50) Qd (2 Players)
Hero checks, CO checks
I think my hand has some showdown value. I don't want to lead that turn, as no worse hands are very likely to call.

River: ($23.50) 3h (2 Players)
Hero checks, CO bets $12, Hero calls $12
After I show more weakness on the river, I think I'm OK to call that 1/2 pot bet. It could be a king scared of a c/r, but also none of the draws came in.

AK gets 4-bet

Had a lonnnng day at my customer conference. It's surprisingly tiring work. Most of the time is just spent talking with people, but I don't know, I'm always drained at the end of the day at these conferences. Was riding the train back home with a co-worker after grabbing a beer, and we were laughing at ourselves because we couldn't go a minute without one of us yawning. So, too tired for poker last night, but a hand in a video got me thinking about a somewhat typical situation.

Full stacks, nothing of note except you are up against a TAG. Villain opens 4xBB in MP and you 3-bet AK to 12BB from the button. Villain 4-bets to 36BB. Now what?

I've participated in some discussion threads that go over this situation, and have a default play. I forget all the equity calculations that went into the discussions, so I'm going to try doing them on my own again. For what it's worth, I've seen a number of decent posters weigh in with different opinions of what to do and why. The conclusion I came to is that there is not a clear cut correct answer. There are style and variance preferences that come into play as well.

Back to the problem...first, let's assume a range for the 4-bet: QQ+, AK. So, we either flip, chop, or get crushed. But there is also some dead money in the pot. I want to figure out how much equity we need to be profitable pushing, assuming villain calls. I'm pretty sure that the size of villain's 4-bet doesn't matter since we're playing for stacks. At this point, we are going to put in 88, and if villain calls, the pot will be 200. So, to break even, our equity in the final 200 pot would have to allow us to recoup at least 88. If we solve for equity=x,

200x=88, or x=88/200, or x=.44

well, against his range, we only have 39% equity, so we cannot profitably push if we believe he calls. But Verneer brought up an interesting point the other day about TAGs 4-betting, and it is that you can discount AA somewhat, since a lot of people will just smooth call your 3-bet and trap on the flop. If you discount AA (I'll give one instance of of aces rather than all 3), our equity goes up to 42%. Closer, but not quite enough to be profitable.

So, we probably don't want to push in this situation, but note that with a little bit more dead money in the pot, we might be able to. I've got to run, so I will leave for another time how much extra needs to be in the pot, and also talk through whether we can make a case for calling AK.

All work and no play

Just finished preparing for a customer conference that begins tomorrow. I put it off until the last minute, but since I need to hit the ground running first thing tomorrow morning, I couldn't wait any longer.

Saturday, my daughter finished up her soccer season with a tournament, and we barely beat the rain. That was all we beat, which is how the season went in general....we only won a single game. Took a nap when we got home, then had a nice family dinner and watched a movie. After the kids went to sleep, Jennifer and I got through a few shows we had sitting on the Tivo. Exciting stuff :).

Since it wasn't raining this morning, I got out for a round of golf, but it might as well have been raining. Birdied the first hole, but the rest of the day was terrible. For those that don't play much golf, if you belong to a golf association, you post your score after each round. The computer asked me if I was sure I had the right score. Great, it wasn't bad enough taking crap from my buddies as I paid off the bets, even the computer got in on the action.

From there, it was off to my sister-in-law's house. My niece and brother-in-law have birthdays last week and next week. It turns out that my wife's sister's husband's brother's wife (is there a name for that relation....my sister-in-law-in-law-in-law-in-law?) and her daughter and another niece all either had birthdays in October or November too, so we celebrated the whole gang's birthdays. Which was great fun, but it took a long time, and also about 90 minutes for my wife and her sister to say good-bye to everyone, so we didn't get back to the house until later than I thought/hoped we would.

All's good now, but no time for poker over the weekend, and probably none until Wednesday afternoon, when I think I'll be able to break free from customer meetings for a few hours. I hope to jump into a workshop Verneer started this weekend, but which I had to miss. I'm looking forward to the conference being over and getting back to just the normal level of insanity.

100 NL Update

Had a chance to play a little more than usual this week, including a few hours last night. Jennifer played in her monthly BUNCO game, and I stayed home with the kids. I don't know much about BUNCO -- she tried to explain it, but it seemed like it was a random way to pass $10 back and forth and really just serve as a structure to gossip and drink fuzzy navels or whatever. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Earlier in the week, Noel sweated me for a bit, which I appreciated a ton. I'm still feeling my way out on this level, but he's been there, done that, and where I am not making confident decisions, things are pretty easy for him. I played pretty well, and I think that's actually due to a good benefit of sweats. When you've got someone watching you play, you have more than usual incentive to maintain discipline and make solid decisions (not to mention you can bounce an idea off them before you act on it). I noticed and learned a few things.

I don't know how much of it was luck of the draw and how much of it was Noel's guidance, but I found myself in very few really tough spots in medium and large pots. In about 600 hands he watched, I had four that were greater than 80 BB in my favor, and my biggest loss was 41 BB. For the session, including a little before and after he sweated me, I was up $295 in 771 hands, so obviously things were going my way.

I booked another small win a couple days later. So, I was feeling pretty good for Friday night, but things for the most part didn't go my way....no action on big hands, but plenty of playing back at me with marginal hands, and I made some pretty dubious decisions.

Anyway, for the month so far, I'm still up, but my winrate has dwindled. The better news is that I feel pretty comfortable at 100NL. Here's what I've got so far (the top is 100NL, I couldn't fit everything into the screen shot):



I'll look through the last week in PT and hopefully find some interesting hands.

Easy come, easy go

100NL has been interesting, so far, if nothing else. I feel like I'm playing timid, but it may just be that everyone else is just playing more aggressive than I was used to at 25 and 50NL. I'm playing 18/14/4.3, which is reasonably close to my usual stats. Until the end of last night, my decisions have been pretty good, I think, if perhaps a little conservative/weak-tight (which I don't mind that much if it's just during familiarization).

My last two sessions seemed to have been a lot of uninteresting small pots -- some good, some bad -- punctuated by a few big hands. On Sunday, those hands went my way. The biggest was when CO raised 3x, button (who I thought was fishy, but I think he thought I was a donk) called, and I decided to cool call from the SB with pocket fives. I hit a set on a K65 suited flop. I decided to check to the preflop raiser. Unfortunately, he also checked, but button bet $10 into a $10 pot. I called, hoping that the preflop raiser had AK and was going for the checkraise, but he folded. On the turn, another king hit. I bet $20, button pushed, and I called. He had KT, and my turned full house held up, thanks very much. In the chat, he said he put me on K9 :).

Yesterday, the hands didn't go my way, although the biggest one was a somewhat retarded 3 street bluff. It was retarded mostly for the fact that I was, for the first time in a while, probably somewhat tilty. It was only somewhat, though, because I was acting on a read (it may not have been a good read, but my point is that I went with my read), the board was OK for it, and my image should have been spectacular for it if he was paying attention.

The tilt was from another table where I lost a little over a buy-in over back-to-back hands. I didn't feel angry actually, but was a little bemused, and not really focused 100% yet on the hand I was trying to bluff. One hand on the other table was when I raised AK from the button against a guy with a little more than half a stack. He called, checkraised a K96 suited flop, and checked a blank turn. I had intended to get it in, but thought he would fold if I pushed the flop. I maybe should have checked the turn behind, but I bet less than pot to put him in. He called with AA, and I had no outs. The very next hand in a blind battle from SB, my 2nd nut flush lost to a flopped full house...villain called my preflop raise with J6s, and the flop was JJ6. I was lucky he didn't take more off me than he did.

OK, back to the bluff in hand. I gave the context above because I was thinking about how I was going to get my money back from the guy who called with J6s, rather than just letting the hand go and focusing on the current hand. I usually just let the good hands and the bad hands drop. On the bluff hand, villain is 31/28/2.9. I had seen him lead an underpair all 3 streets into a preflop raiser on a 2-broadway flop. He was called down. I only have 54 hands on him. He goes to showdown a fair amount (26%, but over a short sample he'd also folded to river bets 71% of the time). I was running pretty well on the table, selectively playing back against a LAG to my immediate right but pretty tightly, and showing down good hands.

Full Tilt Poker, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 4 Players
LeggoPoker.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $197.80
Hero (BTN): $127.70
SB: $78.05
BB: $87.70

Pre-Flop: Qc 9s dealt to Hero (BTN)
UTG folds, Hero raises to $3, SB folds, BB calls $2

Flop: ($6.50) Ac Td Ah (2 Players)
BB bets $4, Hero calls $4

Turn: ($14.50) 8d (2 Players)
BB bets $8.75, Hero calls $8.75

River: ($32) 7s (2 Players)
BB bets $23, Hero raises to $111.95 and is All-In, BB calls $48.95 and is All-In

My thinking is that first of all, he likely does not have a big ace or a big pair. If I did have a big ace, I would probably play the flop like I did, and perhaps the turn as well. On the river, his hand has turned into a bluff catcher, and I thought that a lot of his range folds....any pocket pair, and even some weak aces. Given that I'm anything but a wild bluffer in general, I think looking back on it this morning that it's probably not that great, but not horrible. I'm more upset that I just did it without being fully focused on the hand than the way the bluff went down in general.

I may post this one up on the forums, but if anything I need to find a few more spots to bluff, not a few less, and it's not something I do frequently in any event. Usually when I float it's with a marginal made hand, and when I bluff it's a semibluff.

Anyway, on the last 5 minutes of my session, I lost 2 buy-ins. It was late and I was thinking about stopping anyway, and this sealed the deal. Overall, I'm up a little more than a BI over 2700 hands at 100NL, and feeling a little more comfortable each session, despite the bad ending last night.

First impressions of NL100

Got a couple short sessions in at 100NL. I came out ahead, but it was swingy, and I could easily have been down. You can see by the graph that I did in fact spend a lot of time in the red -- thanks in large part to my flopped set losing to a gutshot that came in. I drew out myself a couple times for less, though, and felt like I ran OK.



The sample size is still pretty small, but I think that this is the most dramatic level difference in terms of game texture that I've gone through. What strikes me compared to 50NL and lower is that there is more aggression in general, and the aggression is not just wild spew most of the time. This comes from both the fewer number of pots unraised, as well as people playing back at me. Not only did I get 3-bet more over the last 1,000 hands than before, which I somewhat expected, but there was significantly more aggression postflop. People still folded to continuation bets, but the ones that played played for raises more.

Aside from the aggression, it was noticeably harder to find a good table. They were there, and I only play 4 tables, so I never had to stay on a really bad table. But it took longer to get on an acceptable table, and they were noticeably less juicy than the 50NL tables.

The final difference I saw were that the LAGs are better on the whole. I've only been datamining for a few days at 100NL, so my samples are small, but a good number of 35/15 or 35/20 players are winning in my database and just looking at a few random hands, they seem OK. At 50NL, guys with stats like that were likely to spew. And that may be true at 100NL, like I said, I just haven't had a chance to really dig into the players.

It felt to me like I was making some pretty passive plays, calling down, but with the increased aggression, some judicious calling down is fine. And my stats have remained pretty much the same garden variety TAG they have been: 19/15/5.8. In fact, rather than being too much of a station, I might just be too weak/tight. My WtSD is only 15%. So, I'm betting hard postflop and either getting people to fold or folding myself. Could be worse at the beginning of a new level, though.

All things considered, I think I should be able to beat the level. I played pretty tentatively, but hopefully the fact that I actually booked a small win in both sessions will help me get confidence quickly as I adjust. It does reinforce the fact that I could benefit by some coaching, and I'm still holding out hope that comes together quickly. I'm excited that this level has started out on the plus side, too, since I was expecting it to be a bit harder.

One step closer

I'm ready to move up to 100NL. That puts me one step closer. In fact, I think that it probably only puts me one step away, but I'm not sure. I'm trying to reach a place that my wife starts to care about poker. And she'll care about it when it starts paying for stuff.

So far, I haven't really cashed anything out of my roll. Back in my Limit days, my plan was to plow money back into my roll until I was playing 10/20, and I shared my online roll with my B&M roll. After the U.S. legislation, I cashed about everything out online, leaving me with a dedicated B&M roll of several thousand. I still hit the card rooms once or twice a month, so it's good to know that it's there. I make small withdrawals from there for things like golf or taking the family into San Francisco for a day, but by and large it stays in its high interest savings account.

I left a couple hundred online, and have just been plowing profit back into my roll to move up the stakes aggressively. It's at $1900 now, and I'll start 100NL as soon as I've got a free evening (maybe tonight, not sure yet). But I still don't want to cash out. 100NL seems like a significant jump in terms of difficulty, and I want to grind through it until 200NL. I think at 200NL, even with a modest winrate, my hourly will be enough so that I can take my time getting up to 400NL and be able to use some profit to do some extra family fun or buy something nice for the house for which we wouldn't otherwise have the budget. I'm not sure whether that will happen at 200NL or some future level -- I guess a lot depends how successful I am.

Until that time, though, me playing poker is way far down on my wife's priority. She doesn't care in theory that I play, she's not against gambling or anything like that. And she's all for me having whatever outlet I want, within reason. She thinks it's pretty silly that I've got a couple poker books on the nightstand and that I spend time doing stuff like posting on forums, blogs, and whatnot. But whatever floats my boat. However, it's all within its place, and I understand where she's coming from.

Wow, I just deleted a freaking novella detailing how awesome my children are and where all my time goes after realizing that I can't do it justice to myself, and there isn't a single person who would read this who would give a shit anyway. The bottom line is that when work is done, our kids come first to me and my wife, and after they go to bed, we've got 1-2 hours to ourselves before she is going to crash.

I've got a standing tennis match one night a week. I can count on having to do something work-related at least once a week as well, for various chunks of the evening. So, we just plain run out of time to be with each other. The nights that she's finishing some household task, getting something ready for school the next day, or just going through her own email, I can opportunistically log some hands for an hour or two. But I usually stop when she stops, and I'm OK with it. There's also a night or two a week that I stay up later than she does, and most of the time I'll play some then. But going to bed separately all the time is not what marriage is about ;). And unfortunately, you can't just (at least too often) play poker right up until you go to bed together. So, a lot of evenings, the computer just sits datamining and that's the extent of poker. A lot of other nights, I get in an hour or so. And a few nights, I'll play for several hours. It all adds up to less poker than I'd like, but what I feel is an appropriate amount (maybe even pushing it), given only one of us in the household holds a passion for poker. But as the stakes go up and the money gets more meaningful, my hope is that even if she never develops a passion for it, she at least encourages me to play more.

As an aside, I think that if I were really serious about poker before we met, it would be fair to expect that I could continue. I play golf with a couple guys whom I'm amazed play as much golf as they do...we're talking 150+ rounds a year -- just about every Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I ask them how they pull that one off, and they say that their wives knew what they were getting into when they got married. Fair enough. Also, their kids are grown (although they still played a lot when their kids were young, and one guy has two boys whose combined indexes are less than 1.0, so they played as a family.) Also, my index is lower than both of these guys. That's not really relevant to my point, but whatever....it's still cool.

To reiterate, I'm pretty happy with the balance and priorities in my life. My family is awesome. I wish there were more time for poker without sacrificing anything else. We'll see when that will come, but all in all, it's pretty minor. And even from a poker standpoint, it's not all bad. My work/life balance forces me to do more study relative to play. I have a chance to really learn and think about the game, and I think that has paid off, making me a stronger player compared to number of hands actually played, than a lot of people. It doesn't mean I'm a top notch player by any means, but it does mean that my progression will not stagnate due to all play and no study, as I believe happens to many good players.

Well, this has been another post that has kind of come in fits and starts throughout the day. I feel like I've got some more to say here, but for now will end and get home to the family!

For the time being, I'll double post on Blogger and CR. Good luck out there.

Please don't let it end

Here's a wrap up for October and a look forward to November. The only bad thing about October is that I was out of commission for 10 days. I played pretty well and ran better, but didn't have the days to put in the hands. I wouldn't say that I put many bad beats on people, but I won my share of flips and had my hands hold up well. Looking back to the worst month I've had -- August -- the most significant thing that I've done is tighten up from early position. I was actually more passive postflop this month than in the past.

Here are the pretty pictures. The sample size this month is too small, but it is what it is, and since it's the end of the month, I'll put up what I have.







It looks like I still need to loosen up in LP. I'm a little surprised that my turn and river aggression is as low as it is...I'll have to make sure that I'm not letting people off the hook, and that I'm not just calling down too much. Reviewing my hands, I don't see too much of it, and there were a couple times I remember in big pots letting people bet hands for me. Like I said, the sample is pretty small (although not that small for things like VPIP, PFR, and AF). The results are good, so hopefully, the postflop stats are from making the correct adjustments and picking my spots.

October Goals Review

1. 7,000 hands. Didn't quite make it. I had a little less time than I thought. My MT ratio was 3.16, which is a bit lower than normal. I have been paying a little more attention to table quality, so perhaps that is it.
2. Active community participation. Did OK here, especially towards the end of the month after I got caught up at work. Over the last week, I've tried to participate better on the CR forums, as well as the blog rotation for the study crew. I could do better on both counts, though.
3. Review hands. I reviewed 89% of the hands I played. It's fun to review when you see yourself dragging big pots, but I'm nervous about the fact that I didn't really identify any new systemic problems (leaks). Usually I've got 2 or 3 things to really focus on, and for now it's just the same things.
4. Review CR videos. It doesn't count if I just watched, I need to actively watch, which means pausing on decision points to see how close I come to what the pros do, and where different, note it and try to figure out why we're different if the pro doesn't provide an explanation. I did that with only 6 videos. I watched several more, but I'm not giving myself credit for them.
5. Play tight UTG. My button VPIP was 3x my UTG VPIP.
6. Practice hand reading. Not going to give myself credit for this one since I didn't devote enough time to reviewing PT hands that went to showdown. I think that in general I did a good job in my own play and in my own hand review, and even watching videos, but that was not the criteria I set for this goal.
7. Study sessions. I'm neutral on this one. I did two, one of which I was the subject (target ;)) of the review. I missed one while on vacation, and another week (this week) my schedule did not match up with the group....tried to get something going for today as a makeup, but it looks like we're missing each other.

November Goals

The goals have been working, so they'll remain for the most part.

1. Play 8,000 hands. I know I'll be out of commission for at least a few days around the Thanksgiving holiday, so let's call the goal 2,000 hands/week. I will be moving up to 100NL, so may be playing less tables as well, for a bit anyway.
2. Active community participation. I had set a number of posts (with content) before, but it's too painful to keep track, so this one will just be a judgment call.
3. Review 75% of my hands.
4. Active study of 8 CR videos.
5. Review showdown hands in PT. All showdown hands in a 1,000 hand block, whether or not I'm involved in the hand.
6. Study group participation.

For the time being, I'm going to cross-post between blogger and CR.

New blog at CR

I've started a Cardrunners blog: My CR Blog. Since I'm only really using this for poker, I figure I'll stick my blog with a bunch of other poker blogs.

So far, though, I like Blogger better:

• RSS feeds. Zimba has said this is coming at CR.
• Comments emailed to me (don't know what happens on CR, since no one has commented ;).
• Can upload images directly to the post. At CR, I think you need to use an image hosting service like image shack.

One thing I really don't like about Blogger, which I don't know if CR will have, is the ability to get comments at the same time you get a post in an RSS feed. I know Wordpress has that, and since I use a feed aggregator, I would really like it.

For all of you in the study crew, do you care which software we use?

Student application

I've been toying with the idea of hiring a coach for a while. The main reasons I have not yet done so stem from my stakes and my schedule. Well, the stakes are hopefully about to be at the level I had thought to be reasonable. Borrowing heavily from a post by Verneer on Cardrunners, here is my background, what I'll bring to the table, and my hopes/expectations of the coach and the coaching process. If anyone who is being coached or any coach has some feedback on how reasonable any of this is, please let me know.

Background
If you really want details, the first couple posts in this blog have more than you want -- maybe this post alone will have more than you want! Bottom line is that I started to take poker seriously in early 2005 as a recreational player, grinding up 6 max limit from .50/1 to $5/$10 until UIGEA. I was a consistent, if unspectacular winner over that time....just over 3 BB/100. (I think that would be decent now for LHE, but back then the games were great, and that winrate included all stakes I played.)

After the US legislation fallout, I cashed out almost all my roll and played only live for a few months. Sometime this year, I decided to take the couple hundred I still had on Full Tilt to learn NL and donkaments from the ground up. Quickly decided that I much preferred cash games, and here we are. My game has subtly changed over the last few months, as I've digested more NL content and started up a blog/study crew. So, here are results since 9/1.

Disclaimer: the results for August were the sux. You can see those from a previous entry. You can also see that my game has changed since then as well, though. The sample I've shown I've run hotter than heck. For the year, I am 3.6 PTBB/100 over 70k hands across 10NL, 25NL, and 50NL, most at 25NL. Not shabby, but certainly room for improvement.

[Update Nov. 1: Crossed my bankroll threshold last night, so even though the stats shown are for NL 25 and NL 50, I am now moving up to 100 NL with 19 BI, prepared to move back down to 50 NL at 15 BI.]





What I Bring

I take poker study seriously, and have for about 3 years. So, I am going to treat any coaching with a high amount of dedication. I have a very (too much at times) competitive nature, to the point that I actually enjoy being told what I am doing wrong, especially when I can get an explanation of why it's wrong and what I can do differently so that I don't make the same mistake in the future. No one has to worry about hurting my feelings.

On the other hand, I don't need or want to have every last detail spelled out for me. I won't be afraid to push back on a coach's suggestion if I feel that I can support a counterpoint, but mostly, I'm looking for someone to just point out where I need to think about differently, rather than spoon feeding everything. I think this works well in poker conversations because a lot of actions depend on your assumptions. So, as long as you are thinking about the correct set of pros and cons for a situation, you are going to be in good shape. If a coach wants to teach someone to fish rather than just giving someone a fish, I'll work well with them.

I mentioned earlier that one thing holding me back from getting a coach is my schedule. I've got a busy job and a relatively hectic life besides poker. I've been logging 2000-2500 hands per week, four tabling, which I know is not much. I do use downtime at work for surfing poker sites, watching videos, and chatting with my review crew, which gives me some decent amount of study time, but time is definitely a precious commodity. I've blogged about some monthly goals the last couple months, so you can get in idea of what I try to do.

Hopes and expectations

The biggest goal I have now is recognizing when and how to change gears. My game doesn't really change that much. It's a decent game to beat the lower levels, but a decent player who adjusts to TAGs well could feast on me. Also, some specific situations I'd like help with are 3-bet pots, playing against floaters, and playing top pair/overpair hands. On the last, I've got value betting down (good), but feel like I probably pound too indiscriminately and probably don't get away from quite enough hands (bad).

Having coached and been coached in other areas, I assume that the main benefit will be uncovering problems that I'm not aware of, or not fully aware anyway. In general, you get knowledge through reviewing yourself, from posting on forums, and from working with friends on your game, but I don't think there is a substitute for individualized attention an expert gives you.

Assuming I start with a coach about the same time I start 100NL, I would want to work with someone to figure out how much and what type of coaching is best for me. Going into it, I think it would be to either sweat me or review PT with me, in order to identify some systemic deficiency, and then of course talk about correcting it. But really, I'm not sure at all the best way to approach, and would be open to hearing a coach's ideas. There's also the matter of quantity. For the amount of hands and level I play, is it better to have 2 sessions a month with a very high quality coach providing extremely tailored coaching, or 4 sessions a month with someone not quite as proficient and who has a more cookie cutter approach (but who is still a good player and has a strong approach)?

Something Verneer mentioned is that his students could/would sweat other lessons he gives, or at least that others would be sweating your sessions. I think that's a great idea, and although I hadn't thought of it before, the ability to form a serious crew is great. I kickstarted one made up of other low limit CR members, and those sessions have been fantastic, regardless of whether I'm the one being reviewed or I'm part of the review crew. I would look for a coach's own student crew to be an extension of that, with one more expert leader (the coach). In general, I would hope that a coach would be somewhat available beyond just the lesson times (email, AIM, forum, review my blog periodically, whatever) for quick questions, as long as it wasn't overwhelming.

Speaking of overwhelming, I am going to end this post now. It started -- several hours and interruptions earlier -- as a quick post with a tiny bit of background and a few other thoughts. It's certainly grown beyond that, but at least for any coach who I send this post to, if you can get through it, then you certainly have some review stamina ;).

I don't suspect anyone will come across this without me initiating the contact, but if you have and you'd like to speak with me about your coaching or if you're looking for a coach yourself and want to discuss it, feel free to leave a reply here or PM me on either Cardrunners or 2+2. My name on both boards is Disconnected.

Back from a little break

I just got back in town and trying to get unburied at work, plus I caught a little sore throat, unfortunately. With no computer, it was a total break from both work and poker, which was nice and relaxing. I didn't take along a poker book, so it really was a break, for a little over a week. I wish the timing had been a little different, as there have been much better times for me to take a break. The last few weeks, I've been running pretty well, and I liked the group sessions we started.

I'll probably use today to get caught up on work, then try to catch up on the blogs and maybe watch a video or review some old hands to get ready for playing, but I might not play until Wednesday or Thursday....I'm pretty tired, and also distracted by all the things that can pile up in a week.

Plus, I'm running out of space on my DVR and need to watch/clear some shows out! One thing I'm much better about these days is not playing with the TV on something I care much about. I don't mind it if the wife has something on while I play, but if it's something I want to watch, I stop my session. I used to drop a table or two, but I think it's better to just stop altogether.

All the goals I set for myself seem pretty out of reach with half the month over, but maybe I'll make up some ground as I clear the other stuff off my plate and focus again on poker the last part of the month.

What other blogs do you read?

Outside my CR crew, I don't read poker blogs any longer. A few that I used to read regularly have diminished. Ed Miller has a good one: http://www.notedpokerauthority.com

There are some good ones on Cardrunners, but I'm so used to getting RSS feeds that I doubt I'll really follow the CR ones until they enable RSS feeds.

Speaking of blogs, my number one complaint about Blogger is that you can't download comments for each post, but rather have to subscribe to each post's comments individually. That seems just ridiculous. If anyone knows how to get at comments without subscribing to them specifically, I would love to know.

Goals for the month

I failed most of my September goals, although it wasn't utter failure. I think that the work I did towards my goals helped quite a bit, so I'll keep the goals pretty much the same for October, although I'll maybe change the targets.

First, a target to actual comparison in September:

1. 10,000 hands. This one I met, pretty much right on the nose (10,403). Didn't think I was going to make it, but I had an unexpected chunk of time the last week of the month to push me over the hump.
2. 100 posts across forums, blogs, chats. I tried to keep a tally on a spreadsheet, just to see how much I was really participating in various communities, and only counted posts and chats with some content to them (so, like all the posts saying nothing more than good luck, nice job, I agree, etc. don't count). With that in mind, I counted 28 posts. So, well short, even if I missed a few.
3. Review 75% of the hands I play. I used a comment in PT sessions to indicate whether I reviewed them, and I counted 5,562 reviewed hands, so a little under 50%. I got some good insights from these self reviews, and I won't do a review unless I'm concentrating on it pretty hard, so I'd rather review 50% of the hands this way as opposed to rushing through 75% or more. I just need to make the time to review more.
4. Actively study 10 CR videos. I watched quite a few, but I'll judge this one based on how many videos I took more than a couple notes on (where they differ from what I would do, or a key concept one of the pros discussed. Based on that higher threshold, I only actively studied 6 videos. 3 full pages of typed notes, though, so I did study those 6 well.
5. Tighten up in early position. My UTG VPIP was 9.78 and my button VPIP was 24.16, or 147% higher. Note that I was not exactly super loose on the button, but I was way tighter UTG, so I'll consider it a success.
6. Practice hand-reading. Absolute failure from a PT review standpoint, but I did have some success while actually playing....there were a couple big hands where I paused before acting to review my opponents' ranges, and a couple times changed my action for the better as it turned out. Nevertheless, I still think I should go through some PT hands, not at game speed, and try to put people on ranges. Thinking about it during the hand is good, but not enough. With the replayer available, and the ability to filter only for hands that go to showdown, this is too easy to avoid, unless I think I'm already an expert hand reader (I don't).

Like I said, I think that for the most part, these are the right sorts of measurable goals. There are some you can't objectively measure like don't tilt, play your "A" game all the time, and others. But for October, I am going to keep them measurable, and let the rest take care of itself. Same 6 goals but with different targets outlined below, as well as a new one.

1. Play 7,000 hands. I'm reducing this over a normal month for 2 reasons. I'll be on vacation (without computer) for 8-10 days. I'm starting play at a new level, and rather than 4 tables will play 2 or 3 as I ease into the games, and build up my database.
2. 50 community contributions. Again, this is content-filled posts, blogs, chats, etc. Fluff does not count. I'm lowering this from last month both because I'm away as well as that I fell so short last month, maybe I was too unrealistic.
3. Review 75% of the hands I play. I fell short of this, but ideally I'd like to review all sessions, and I think this is a crucial part of study.
4. Review 8 CR videos. Again, this goes beyond just watching a video. It extends to taking copious notes and paying full attention to the video. I thought this would be easy since I watch a lot of them, but it's actually pretty difficult to give 100% attention and note down everything important in them. At least it's difficult for me (I get too easily distracted).
5. Maintain tight UTG stats. Same as last month: UTG VPIP should be half that of button.
6. Practice hand reading. Let's make it easier than last month. How about just all the showdown hands in a 1,000 chunk of hands.
7. Participate in group session reviews. I'm excited about this one. A bunch of us had our first review today, and I think it went really well. My goal for this one is to participate in at least one per week that I am in town.
   

A better month

Just a quick post for September results. I don't have a lot of time right now, so how I did vs. my goals will have to wait (I didn't do so well meeting them, though). However, my results were a lot better than last month, although certainly not crushing the games by any stretch.


I wanted to be tighter in general, especially from early position, and I succeeded (see next picture for position stats). One area to focus on in putting money in from the SB, I'm pretty happy with my blind play in general. The results have been good.

My steal attempts are low by a couple percentage points compared to how I usually run. Partly, that is just generally tightening up in borderline situations, but I'm not really trying to tighten up from CO and BTN. I have stopped stealing so much with ace-rag, especially from the SB and CO spots. I keep a wide range when my image is tight, but if I feel at all like I have been active, I'm passing on ace-rag for now.

My showdown percentage seems a little on the low side, but not horrible, but on the other hand, I'm not winning enough showdowns that I see. So, probably, I need to be looking at spots where I'm either too aggressive with good hands and push people off their second-best hands, or I am calling down inappropriately.


I like my position numbers in general, especially the differential between UTG and BTN. The sample sizes here get pretty small with just 10k hands, though. Not sure about the couple apparent open-limps....could be misclicks I guess, as it's not part of my game. Anyway, I'm raising just about all the pots I enter from UTG and MP, so I don't think I've got a problem there.

As I said above, my VPIP from SB looks a little suspicious, especially since I'm not coming in with a raise a lot. However, my results from the blinds have been phenomenal, especially defending. Again sample sizes are pretty small, and in all likelihood, I probably hit a couple big hands when defending, or I 3-bet a premium pair and got played back at, or something. 20% from the SB seems high, though, so I'll look in more on that.


Well, this is a pleasant graph. Looks like I ran a bit better than expected when the money went in. I do remember one hand where I got in with 2nd set vs. top set and then hit my one-outer for quads. Perhaps that's where the blue line shot up over the red line? Anyway, if I'm reading this graph correctly, I ran quite well for a bit, and then continued to run about as expected for the rest of the month.


September seemed to start about where August left off, but I had a couple nice runs during the month. Here's hoping it continues in October!

We don't have a game with you

If you've played any amount of golf, you've probably laid some money on the line. I'm part of a group of 18 guys who play together every weekend. It's pretty cool, we have 3 standing tee times every weekend morning, and we just make up teams amongst whomever shows up, and we play a small stakes team match. $2 for front, $2 for back, $2 for overall, 50 cents for closest to the pin on the par 3's, and a $1 in the middle for the 2 best low net scores.

Every Saturday. Every Sunday. The group (not me) has been doing this for a little over 20 years, members coming and going. The stakes are tiny, but the competition is fierce. It's a little comical to see a bunch of guys with 6-figure incomes (and I bet at least a couple guys are closer to 7 figures than 5 figures) gloat over quarters at the end of the round.

Today, 8 of us went to a new local course to check it out. The email said we'll play 3 (meaning we had to count 3 guys' scores each hole out of our foursome). Fine.

The course was good, but pretty difficult, and the new greens were rock-hard. As a team, we hit both par 3's on the front, but neither one was really close. As we were going up the seventh fairway, our opponents were coming down the sixth, and we asked them how many greenies they got. Their response: "One. But we don't have a game with you. We didn't agree before we teed off."

That came from the captain of the other team (our captains are just the guys with the lowest handicaps). He's a nice guy, but if he played poker, he would definitely be an angle shooter. There's certainly room to be an angle shooter in golf, especially in match play, and he's done it time and again. It's actually a running joke among the rest of the crew. Off the course, he's got to be one of the nicest guys I've ever met, and would give anyone the shirt off his back. But something in him changes when he gets in competition mode.

I'm writing about this because I've been annoyed about it all day, just on principle. Among our foursome, after the obligatory "nice shot" when one of us hit it well, the next most popular word the rest of the day was "chickenshit."

But I'm also writing about this because I've been thinking about some of the ways competition changes me. Although I wouldn't pull a stunt like this, I've got other things I really need to work on when things don't work out. And they apply not only to sports, but to poker as well. Even though I know better, my big problem in any sort of competition is getting way too pissed off, both at myself and even worse at my teammates and opponents sometimes.

Anything I do on an even semi-regular basis, I put in a lot of effort to do well. And when that effort isn't immediately gratified, I lose patience and get frustrated at least. I envy and admire those of you who take hardships in stride. It must make things so much more enjoyable. So, I think that's something to shoot for as well as all the other goals. In addition to making my favorite activities more enjoyable for me, it will make me a more pleasant guy to be around, a nice little win/win life lesson.

There haven't been a lot of hands because I haven't been playing much, but over a few thousand this month, I'm running a little better than expected on my all-ins, which is a welcome change from the recent past. I'm up for the month, and 4 buy-ins away from moving up a level on Full Tilt to equal the level I'm at on Stars, as I'm keeping my rolls for each site separate for now.

I'm still having trouble in re-raised pots, especially when I'm not the aggressor. Knowing I lack the confidence to play them, I'm being more inclined to fold. More on that later.

Group review almost ready to start

Grinder, Losbert, and I are waiting for a fourth so we can get started with the study group idea from my last post. pkr_brat was first to comment, but I haven't heard back. mongoose is up for the idea.

pkr_brat and mongoose: post a comment with your email address (or email me at pokerrow at gmail with your addresses).

Anyone who missed it the first time and is interested, see my last post and leave a comment or send an email. I think groups of 4 would be ideal, but depending on the interest, we can probably adapt. I'm excited about the idea, and I think it will complement live sweat sessions nicely. We'll see.

Speaking of live sweat sessions, I hooked up with michaeyk in between his world travels, and had a nice extended sweat session with him....thanks again Mike! He identified a couple bad plays on my part, especially one where I double-barreled in a bad spot (which is most of the time at the micros), something that can get expensive. Looking forward to continuing when you get back.

Perhaps it was the lucky charm of a sweat session, but I had a rare cooler transformed into suckout that went my way:

Full Tilt Poker - No Limit Hold'em Cash Game - $0.10/$0.25 Blinds - 6 Players - (http://www.legopoker.com http://www.legopoker.com/hh)

SB: $24.75
BB: $25.80
UTG: $17.05
MP: $31.15
CO: $25.00
Hero (BTN): $24.90

Preflop: Hero is dealt 7c 7h (6 Players)
UTG raises to $0.85, MP folds, CO calls $0.85, Hero calls $0.85, SB folds, BB calls $0.60

Flop: ($3.50) Ah 2h 7d (4 Players)
BB checks, UTG checks, CO checks, Hero bets $2.65, BB folds, UTG raises all-in to $16.20, CO folds, Hero calls $13.55

Turn: ($35.90) Ah 2h 7d 8c (2 Players - 1 All-In)

River: ($35.90) Ah 2h 7d 8c 7s (2 Players - 1 All-In)

Pot Size: $35.90 ($1.75 Rake)

UTG had As Ad (a full house, Aces full of Sevens) and LOST (-$17.05)
Hero had 7c 7h (four of a kind, Sevens) and WON (+$17.10)

My idea for group review

I'd like to get a regular group of 3-4 folks for a group session review. Due to my schedule, I'm pretty limited and unpredictable in my ability to log on to a poker site (mostly due to work throughout the day), but I can make some time for chat, Skype, blogs, etc. So my proposal is the following:

1. Rotate the reviewee. In other words, only one person will be the subject at a time.
2. The reviewee will have a session for review. My idea here is to play your normal session (if you usually play 8 tables, do it for this exercise, if you usually only 2-table, that's OK, too).
3. Commit to a session you'll use before you play. In other words, don't select the session afterwards when you see how well you did, etc. We'll do enough of these that the good and bad should come out over time.
4. Email the first 200 hands of the session (I can help people get the hands out of PokerTracker if needed). We probably won't have time to go through all 200 hands.
5. Schedule an hour where we can all be available....AIM, Skype, Telephone, whatever.
6. We will go through hands in the order played...most of them will go quickly as they will be routine preflop folds. But in doing reviews before, you never know when something you think is routine, someone else will have a comment about. If anyone can figure out how to do this using remote desktop viewing, that would be cool, but otherwise, we should all be able to follow along.

If this sounds interesting to anyone reading, leave a comment with what times work (these are times to meet). I personally don't care what stakes people play -- when I played minbet, I got pretty good insight working with people from stakes above and pretty far below -- but perhaps others care.

As for me, I would be available generally from 9AM to 5PM U.S. Pacific time on weekdays, since I can schedule an hour at work more easily than I can schedule an hour at home :). I play 25NL on Full Tilt and 50 NL on PokerStars.

Some hands

Haven't posted any hands in a while, so here are 3. They're large pot hands, catching up on some August backlog.

Hand 1: Villain is 39/26/2.2.
Full Tilt Poker - No Limit Hold'em Cash Game - $0.10/$0.25 Blinds - 6 Players - (http://www.legopoker.com http://www.legopoker.com/hh)

Hero (SB): $25.00
BB: $25.00
UTG: $4.55
MP: $34.10
CO: $43.90
BTN: $46.55

Preflop: Hero is dealt Kc Kh (6 Players)
2 folds, CO raises to $0.85, BTN folds, Hero raises to $2.80, BB folds, CO calls $1.95

Flop: ($5.85) 4s Jd 9c (2 Players)
Hero bets $4.05, CO raises to $8.10, Hero calls $4.05

Turn: ($22.05) 4s Jd 9c Ad (2 Players)
Hero bets $10.55, CO raises all-in to $33.00, Hero calls all-in for $3.55
Uncalled bet of $18.90 returned to CO

Don't like the turn play much. If I'm calling the flop, it's to CRAI on the turn, and betting the ace isn't the way, and that bet size is terrible since I have so little behind. Plus, once that ace comes out, I need to play for a smaller pot, not a larger one. I think it's fine to continue with the hand, since he's not likely raising with just an ace on the flop -- of course he could have AJ. But most of the time when stacks go in here, I'm in bad shape, I think, so my plan to CRAI should probably be to check/call, and lead the river if he checks behind the turn.

River: ($50.25) 4s Jd 9c Ad 9d (2 Players - 2 All-In)

Pot Size: $50.25 ($2.50 Rake)

Results:
CO had 9s 8s (three of a kind, Nines) and WON (+$22.75)
Hero had Kc Kh (two pair, Kings and Nines) and LOST (-$25.00)
LOL....he played the hand worse than I did, but he got there :(.

Hand 2: Villain is 42/14/1.8.
Full Tilt Poker - No Limit Hold'em Cash Game - $0.10/$0.25 Blinds - 5 Players - (http://www.legopoker.com http://www.legopoker.com/hh)

Hero (SB): $25.00
BB: $21.95
UTG: $14.20
CO: $15.60
BTN: $24.50

Preflop: Hero is dealt 8c Jc (5 Players)
3 folds, Hero raises to $0.90, BB calls $0.65

A note on the raise size...I use a program called Full Tilt Shortcuts to automate bets, and it shorts the preflop raise size by the amount of the SB when you are actually in the SB, and sometimes I forget to increment it by that SB. Don't think it really matters, since it's still a little more than a pot-sized raise.

Flop: ($1.80) 9c 7c Jd (2 Players)
Hero bets $1.80, BB calls $1.80

Turn: ($5.40) 9c 7c Jd 3s (2 Players)
Hero bets $4.05, BB raises to $15.75, Hero raises all-in to $22.30, BB calls all-in for $3.50
Uncalled bet of $3.05 returned to Hero

If he (effectively) pushed on the flop, I would have called instantly, and I still think that this call is OK, but I'm not nearly as sure. It still seems like it is a semibluff a lot of times here, and if I'm behind, I would have a ton of outs. Plus, it's a blind battle, so I would need to call lighter than normal. OK?

River: ($43.90) 9c 7c Jd 3s Ah (2 Players - 2 All-In)

Pot Size: $43.90 ($2.15 Rake)

Results:
BB had 7d 9s (two pair, Nines and Sevens) and WON (+$19.80)
Hero had 8c Jc (a pair of Jacks) and LOST (-$21.95)


Hand 3: Villain is 43/0, so I'm pretty comfortable isolating him with a weak suited ace.
Full Tilt Poker - No Limit Hold'em Cash Game - $0.10/$0.25 Blinds - 6 Players - (http://www.legopoker.com http://www.legopoker.com/hh)

SB: $9.75
BB: $10.65
UTG: $21.25
MP: $16.35
CO: $25.50
Hero (BTN): $35.55

Preflop: Hero is dealt Ac 6c (6 Players)
UTG folds, MP calls $0.25, CO folds, Hero raises to $1.25, 2 folds, MP calls $1.00

Flop: ($2.85) 3h 5c 4h (2 Players)
MP checks, Hero bets $3.45, MP calls $3.45

Normally, my c-bets are from 75% to 100% of the pot, but sometimes, I will overbet the pot with both made and drawing hands.

Turn: ($9.75) 3h 5c 4h 2s (2 Players)
MP checks, Hero bets $4.45, MP raises all-in to $11.65, Hero calls $7.20

Seems standard.

River: ($33.05) 3h 5c 4h 2s Jh (2 Players - 1 All-In)

Pot Size: $33.05 ($1.65 Rake)

Results:
MP had 8h 7h (a flush, Jack high) and WON (+$15.05)
Hero had Ac 6c (a straight, Six high) and LOST (-$16.35)

I'm going through my backlog of big hands in order, whether I won or lost, played it poorly or well, just to make sure I'm not biasing anything with my selection. If the money gets in preflop and I've got KK or AA, I don't think that I'll post it because win or lose, it's not going to be controversial, and if my worst problem is ever that I get it all in with KK, then I'll have a great career :).

If a lot of money goes in postflop, I want to post it, even if I think I got a bad beat or got coolered, I may be looking at it incorrectly. Dodgyken correctly says that he hates it when someone just says they're running badly. I think that one reason people say that so much (there are certainly others) is because they don't recognize that bad play on their parts in the big pots. They just chalk it up to bad luck, when they shouldn't.

September Goals

Labor Day weekend was fun. I played golf twice (rare for me on the weekends) and shot well both days, so I judge it a success. Other than that, lots of swimming and partying with friends and neighbors. I played a little bit Friday evening and last night, and things seem to be going as before, but the few days off at least left me refreshed. And gave me some time to think about goals.

1. 10,000 hands. I won't force this one, as it really depends on what time is left over after work and family, and how tired I am. 10k makes a good target for me, though. 4 tables at a time max.
   
2. Participate in poker communities. In order to make it objective, I'll say 100 meaningful posts across forums and blogs. That's not a lot for many of you, but for us full-time-jobbers, it seems reasonable. I'll have to remember to keep track of it, so I can measure it.
3. Review my own play. I try to review every session -- mostly looking at hands I got significantly involved with. To make this goal more easy to achieve (but still valuable), I'll set a 75% of hands played threshold. In other words, if I play 10,000 hands, I need to review 7,500 of them.
4. Actively study 10 CR videos. Many times I will watch, and maybe not even pay full attention. Again, many of you who play full time will view way more than 10, but for me, I need to make sure that I'm also devoting time to other study.
5. Tighten up UTG relative to Button VPIP. In general, I've gotten feedback on this blog and elsewhere that perhaps I need to play more straightforward, and there is some merit to that thought. I feel like I think well enough to play OK against decent players, but I probably get too fancy against and overestimate a lot of the micro opponents I face. I can't control their cards, but part of playing more straightforwardly is to get tight UTG. So, I want my UTG VPIP to be half my button VPIP this month. No more raising suited connectors and one-gappers to balance my preflop raising from UTG this month ;).
6. Practice hand-reading. I'm trying to pay attention to hands I'm not involved with at the tables, but that is hard to measure at the end of the month, so I will do something extra. As part of my session reviews, I will filter for hands that go to showdown, and will put players on ranges, and will make a guess of their hands before PT shows me the cards. For now, I will go through the exercise for 2,500 hands. The important part is to put them on a range, but that is difficult, so I'll just keep track of how many times I make the correct guess by showdown. Hopefully just going through the exercise will help me get better, but that will be pretty subjective.

OK, that's probably enough goals for the month.