I played a bunch of tournaments yesterday and some cash tables as well, including a substantial amout of 5/10 NL. I’ll get my tournament whining out of the way early. Most of what I played went badly, though I came close to winning a fourth WSOP seat. I was in … Read full post

I almost always fold to raises like this, because even though my hand is under-repped, I feel like these low- to mid-stakes players are almost universally incapable of taking advantage of that. From time to time, I talk myself into a call, though. The Villain in this hand was new … Read full post

Wowowow were there ever some donkeys out last night. I had a great session at 2/4 and 3/6 NL. I felt like I was doing quite a lot of things right: good table selection, applying a lot of pressure in position with deep stacks, building big pots against the fish, … Read full post

A few weeks ago, Logan IM’ed me to say that there was a giant fish playing a 15/30 NL deep stack table. I watched for a few orbits of three-handed play and agreed that the guy was awful. He wasn’t particularly deep, so I sat down with $3000 to take … Read full post

I mentioned a few days ago that I was happy with a recent trend in my river play, which is that I tend to be the aggressor. I’m much more likely to make a thin value bet or a bold bluff than a crying call or even a check to … Read full post

Edit: The converter screwed up the results on two of these, showing me as the winner when in fact I got stacked. I’m fixing this now, sorry for the confusion.

For whatever reason, I decided during last night’s session that I was going to believe people a lot less than … Read full post

I’m posting here every pot for a two-hour session yesterday in which I either lost or won more than $100 and in which I either bet or raised the river. I think it’s a good sign that even when I lose, I’m usually the river aggressor. This means I’m missing … Read full post

This isn’t really all that interesting of a hand, but I’m supposed to do one from every day I play, so this is from the $500 Sunday tournament that Full Tilt has quarterly or whatever.

We’re about two hours into the tournament, which has a very good structure. Blinds are … Read full post

One of my goals for the year was to put some time into improving my play in poker games besides No Limit Hold ‘Em. I bought Poker Tracker Stud and spent a good deal of time in January playing Stud games, but since then I haven’t done much towards this … Read full post

This hand came up fairly deep in the Poker Stars $20 rebuy. We were well into the money, and I had been playing very aggressively since assumulating a big stack. The player to my immediate left had expressed his frustration with me in the chat box and called or raised … Read full post

I played this hand early in a $650 WSOP satellite. My opponent seemed to quite loose, having already limped K9s pre-flop, overcalled a raise, and paid off two streets on an AKx board. I tried to take him to value town with a pretty sizeable river shove:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em … Read full post

Yesterday I made a spur of the moment decision (read: gamble) to buy in direct to a $1000 WSOP satellite on Poker Stars. The play was plenty weak, and in fact I doubled up on the first orbit with QQ versus AQ on a Q-high board. Unfortunately, within half an … Read full post

After reading Adam Junglen’s Monte Carlo trip report, I decided to set a little trap of my own with Ace-Jack. It was fairly early in a $50 freezeout on Poker Stars. The table chipleader had open limped from MP1, and then the action folded to me on the CO … Read full post

In my last post, I talked about playing a big draw and the importance of being the one who puts in the last bet. Today I’m going to look at a hand where I played a big draw in just the opposite way, betting the flop in a situation where … Read full post

Even though it’s not from a tournament, this hand that I played last night illustrates a key concept from my recent article, “The Last Bet“, which appears in the April issue of 2+2 Magazine. In this hand, I flop two overcards and a flush draw against a … Read full post

Getting fancy isn’t the only way to abuse the min-re-raisers.

About 3 hours into a $650 WSOP satellite on Stars. Blinds were 100/200 no ante. UTG+1 raises to 600, MP1 makes it 1400. I’ve seen him min-re-raise KK before. I had about 9000 and he covered. I folded QQ when … Read full post

Warning: shameless brag ahead.

It’s irrational, I know, but like a few others, I have a real hatred for the min-re-raise. I guess I should be more tolerant since it’s really an awful play, telling your opponents you have a monster hand while simultaneously giving them good direct + implied … Read full post

This hand comes from yesterday’s $300 6-max tournament on Full Tilt. This would be a great tournament if it got more runners, as 6-max tables make for deeper stacks and more opportunities to play pots. Anyway, I don’t remember exact stack sizes, but blinds were around 250/500, and we each … Read full post

I’ve been wanting to improve my trickiness/creativity on the river, and in particular I think I need to add more checkraise bluffing into the mix. I like being able to check-raise the river for value, just because there are situations where that’s the best option. However, if my river check-raises … Read full post

When checking out the 2/4 NL games on FTP today, I saw that Full Tilt pro Lynette Chan was playing on several of them. I didn’t really know anything about her, but with a few very important exceptions (Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius), FTP pros tend not to be particularly good … Read full post