Last Wednesday was the last ever session of the home game that my college roommate Logan has been hosting for the past three years. He and most of our fellow players are about to graduate from Harvard Law School and … Read more…
We took a break from out usual Wednesday home game to play a $1/$2 game with a $500 buy in at the home of another Harvard Law student named Josh. Only Logan, Darren, and I elected to play, so it … Read more…
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 … Read more…
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 … Read more…
I sat today in a 5/10 NL full ring game on Full Tilt. This is slightly higher than the stakes I usually play, but mostly it is odd for me because I almost never play full ring online. But FTP … Read more…
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 … Read more…
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 … Read more…
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 … Read more…
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 … Read more…
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 … Read more…
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 … Read more…
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 … Read more…
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 … Read more…
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 … Read more…
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 … Read more…
I’m very fortunate that Bond18 from 2+2, who had been dominating online tournaments lately as milwkid on Poker Stars and muckthenuts on most other sites, has chosen a hand history that I submitted to him as one of the ones … Read more…
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, … Read more…
I played a few tables of 2/4 NL last night while finishing off the last tournament of a block I started in the early afternoon. I ran into another player who was intent on playing mediocre hands out of position … Read more…
Got off to a good start in a bunch of stuff today but ended up cashing in nothing (well, I got my money back in the WSOP double shoot-out). I don’t even really remember any interesting hands, I guess this … Read more…
I found myself playing some 2/4 NL heads up games yesterday and really enjoying it. From time to time, I’ve gone through phases where I was really into heads up play. I think these are periods where I’m improving a … Read more…
I put in another session of 8-tabling 1/2 NL yesterday. An interesting situation came up where my lack of familiarity with the standard of play at these stakes may have hurt me. As a big of an introduction, I should … Read more…
On Thursday I final tabled both the $160 double shoot-out and the $30 rebuy WSOP satellites but couldn’t seal the deal, finisihing 5/81 in the shoot-out and 7/169 in the rebuy. These winner-take-all satellites are really brutal. Although theoretically they … Read more…
I was 8-tabling 1/2 NL on Wednesday, something I’ve decided to do for a while because I’ve been running kind of bad and it’s starting to stress me a bit and influence my decision making. Also, I’ve wanted to improve … Read more…