Full Tilt Poker Pot-Limit , $6 BB (5 handed) Hand History converter Courtesy of PokerZion.com
Button ($819.45)
SB ($1382.40)
BB ($604.65)
Hero ($837)
MP ($813)
Preflop: Hero is UTG with Kh, Ac, Ah, 7d.
Hero raises to $21, MP calls $21, Button calls $21, 2 folds.
Flop: ($72) … Read full post
Here’s a series of hands I played with a pretty big fish in a recent 3/6 NL game on UB. By the end, we were both 500 BB’s deep, and I ran a huge bluff on him that culminated in a 250 BB river shove with 9-high. Enjoy!
It Begins… Read full post
It’s pretty rare that I’m folding 99 pre-flop when I have 15 BB’s, but here, there were a lot of danger signs:
1. The UTG Limper
It’s far from a guarantee, but at this stage of the game, there’s not a lot of open limping, especially not UTG. So I’m … Read full post
This was from the $200 FTP Sunday Mulligan:
Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold’em Tournament, 50/100 Blinds, 9 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter
SB: 6,320
BB: 4,715
UTG: 3,110
UTG+1: 5,250
UTG+2: 2,755
Hero (MP1): 8,290
MP2: 3,250
CO: 6,340
BTN: 3,555
Pre-Flop: (150) A
K
dealt to Hero (MP1)… Read full post
I lasted about 6 hours in the most recent Stars Sunday Million, mostly with a big stack, though I didn’t even end up making the money. But here was a key hand that came up a few hours in. Pay attention to the CO’s stack:
Poker Stars, $200 + $15 … Read full post
Full Tilt Poker
Pot Limit Omaha Ring game
Blinds: $3/$6
6 players
Converter
Stack sizes:
UTG: $676.15
UTG+1: $598.20
Hero: $658.70
Button: $535.30
SB: $110.95
BB: $251.10
Pre-flop: (6 players) Hero is CO with :td :as :qs :qd
UTG folds, UTG+1 raises to $21, Hero calls, Button … Read full post
When I’m not tilting, I tend to give these turn min-check-raises a lot of credit, maybe too much. Here, it just didn’t seem that plausible for him to have a set. TT is possible I guess, but he’s probably 3-betting QQ pre-flop, and 44 just got way less likely. Maybe … Read full post
This was my bust-out hand from yesterday’s $300 weekly on Poker Stars. This is a minor point, but there’s almost no downside to doing it, so it’s worth considering:
Poker Stars, $300 + $20 NL Hold’em Tournament, 300/600 Blinds, 9 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter
BTN: 9,634
SB: 30,900… Read full post
That guy who I quit abruptly yesterday came back today and dropped another three stacks or so to me. We played for a good three hours, and he was definitely playing a little better than yesterday, though he was still far from tough. Ironically, he was at his most challenging … Read full post
I saw The Mouth sitting with a full stack at a 25/50 NLHE table along with a guy from my buddy list. The waiting list was 7 deep, but I hopped on anyway. I’ve never played with Mike Matusow myself, but I know people who will join games they don’t … Read full post
Poker Stars, $300 + $20 NL Hold’em Tournament, 500/1,000 Blinds, 9 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter
MP2: 27,401
CO: 95,299
BTN: 29,780
Hero (SB): 28,070
BB: 25,954
UTG: 20,960
UTG+1: 15,156
UTG+2: 21,026
MP1: 46,580
Pre-Flop: (1,950) J J dealt to Hero (SB)
2 folds, UTG+2 calls 1,000, 3 … Read full post
Tournament players will probably be familiar with the “stop ‘n go” technique, named by none other than Greg Raymer back before he won the WSOP and was just a 2+2 poster called Fossilman. What he envisioned was a situation with the following conditions:
1. you are out of position, usually … Read full post
Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners
Seat 0: berg5528 ($2465) – 
Seat 1: maxEmus125 ($3546.50) – 
Seat 2: Lent53 ($5583.50) – 
Seat 3: _BeWater_ ($2660)
Seat 4: urbandb888 ($3215.70)
Seat 5: keep00 ($1929.50)
PRE-FLOP:
maxEmus125 posts small blind $10
Lent53 posts BIG blind $25
Dealt To: urbandb888
FOLD … Read full post
This was a $1000 tournament with a great structure, as the other UBOC events have had. It also got over 800 runners, which is more than twice what I predicted. We started with 500 BB stacks, but I managed to blow about half of mine early with a pretty thin … Read full post
Although I’m running pretty low on cash on Poker Stars of late, I did have some $W sitting around, and since I don’t actually have a conflict with the European Poker Tour Dortmund event at the end of January, I decided to play a satellite. We started off 250 BB’s … Read full post
I was looking forward to this $500 6-max event more than any other in the series. UB tournament players suck, they suck even more at 6-max, and most of them have no business spending $500 on a poker tournament. But apparently they can kick my butt anyway.
I picked up … Read full post
This $200 NLHE tournament was over in like 20 minutes. I 3-bet a CO raise with AhKs in the SB, guy called. Flop Js 3 4h, I bet, he calls. Turn 9h, I pot it cuz that’s what they always do when they have an overpair and a third flush … Read full post
After two days off, I came back to the UBOC with a bang last night, final tabling the $200 PLO8 event. There were nearly 400 runners, which surprised me, because in general even UB’s NLHE events don’t get that many runners. Predictably, only about 10% of them had much idea … Read full post
It’s not a pure whine, cuz I think the river bet is maybe a little interesting and worth discussing, but jeebus. This is with about 80 left in the FTP Sunday Mulligan, and my current stack good for top fifth of the remaining field.
Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold’em Tournament, … Read full post
These took the place of the usual $200 and $500 tournaments on UB yesterday. I never got off the ground in the first one, just lost a ton of medium-sized pots, then the blinds got big and one of my shoves got snapped off.
In the $500, I doubled up … Read full post
I haven’t set up Poker Tracker Omaha to record UB HH’s, so this is from memory. But it was a PLO tournament, and while I’ve been doing well in 6-max PLO cash games, I don’t have a lot of full ring experience. I still think I was playing pretty well, … Read full post
This was an amazingly deep tournament, and I’m really disappointed not to have gone further in it. It was a $100 rebuy where $100 buys 2500 chips, and with blinds starting at 5/10, were sometimes 500BB+ deep when we started. Of course many players didn’t rebuy, but a few did. … Read full post
The Ultimate Bet Online Championship commenced last night with a $200 6-max tournament. The great structure and the 6-max format meant there was a lot of room for post-flop maneuvering, and I felt I played very well for most of the tournament. We started with a little over 600 players, … Read full post
I make a lot of continuation bets in PLO, but other than that, it can be tricky to pull off a bluff. The biggest mistake most players make is overvaluing hands that are strong in Hold ‘Em but marginal in Omaha, so once they call one street, they usually don’t … Read full post
I played this for a few hours last night, thinking the games would be softer than usual because of the current Five Diamond series they are running. Wrong. Almost everyone in the game was a regular, and although I was still one of the best players at the table, there … Read full post
Sorry I don’t have an exact hand history, as this came from a heads up match on UB, which doesn’t write HH files to your hard drive, and on a computer without Poker Tracker. I was playing against an aggressive but not great player, and we had a history of … Read full post
Man I hate live poker tournaments. Only the biggest buy-in events have a reasonable structure, such that even when you’re playing for thousands of dollars, you don’t get a lot of room to play poker. But every now and again I tempted by them, because the atrocious play does kind … Read full post
Poker Stars
Pot Limit Omaha Ring game
Blinds: $2/$4
5 players
Converter
Stack sizes:
CO: $784.95
Button: $146.10
SB: $662.20
Foucault: $702.30
UTG: $397.40
Pre-flop: (5 players) Foucault is BB with :4s :2d :3s :5d
UTG raises to $12, CO calls, Button folds, SB calls Foucault calls.… Read full post
The $500 NLHE Main Event was yet another in a long series “close but no cigar” FTOPS finishes for me. We started with quite deep stacks, and so I came out of the gate swinging:
Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold’em Tournament, 15/30 Blinds, 9 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter… Read full post
Full Tilt Poker, $10/$20 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 9 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter
UTG+1: $1,960
UTG+2: $2,468
MP1: $2,114
Hero (MP2): $6,516
CO: $336
BTN: $1,092.70
SB: $2,411
BB: $2,543
UTG: $2,484
Pre-Flop: J
T dealt to Hero (MP2)
UTG raises to $70, 3 folds, Hero calls … Read full post
These hands were both against an absolutely atrocious player. The first one is pretty straightforward and solidified for me just how wide is range is going to be when he makes these stupid little 4-bets pre-flop:
Full Tilt Poker, $4/$8 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 5 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History … Read full post
I almost didn’t play the $500 HORSE FTOPS event last night because I was pretty tired, but generally the quality of play in these things is so bad, and the opportunity to play large-field, mixed-game tournaments so rare, that I didn’t want to pass it up. I had also forgotten … Read full post
Last night was the $300 rebuy with 6-handed tables, which is the FTOPS event in which I felt my edge would be largest. Though my finish wasn’t anything spectacular, I was quite happy with how I played. Here’s one kind of interesting hand:
Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold’em Tournament, 80/160 … Read full post
This was a $200 PLO8 tournament, and needless to say there was some extraordinarily bad play to be seen. I ended up bubbling it, but you don’t care about that. Let’s look at some hands.
Coming Through the Back Door
Full Tilt Poker
Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo Ring game
Blinds: … Read full post
These hands were all against StorkDelaMork. He’s a regular in the mid- to high stakes on FTP, pretty tight but also smart and capable of tricky play.
I Don’t Fold Sets
Full Tilt Poker, $10/$20 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker Hand History Converter
Hero (BB): $3,374.50
UTG: $3,160.50… Read full post
Full Tilt Poker, $10/$20 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 5 Players
LeggoPoker Hand History Converter
Hero (BTN): $3,400.50
SB: $2,154
BB: $2,077
UTG: $3,869.50
CO: $3,701
Pre-Flop: A T dealt to Hero (BTN)
UTG folds, CO calls $20, Hero raises to $90, SB calls $80, BB calls $70, CO folds… Read full post
Since I was away over the weekend, this was only the second FTOPS event I played. It was a $1000 NLHE tournament, and although I lasted about three hours, I really didn’t have any interesting hands come up. I ended up busting to this psychotic mouth-breather:
Full Tilt Poker, NL … Read full post
I’m in New York this weekend visiting my old friend and roommate Logan, and since two other players from the home game Logan ran for three years in Cambridge are also in NYC now, we were able to get a game going last night. We started out playing with $.50/$1 … Read full post
Sorry I don’t have the exact HH for this, but it was from early in a nightly $129 bounty tournament on Ultimate Bet. Effective stacks were about 3000, with blinds 15/30.
The UTG player opened with a pot-sized raise to 105. The action folded to me in the BB, and … Read full post
During the early stages of my Sunday tournaments, I was also playing a few cash tables, and ended up getting into a very interesting heads up match. The other guy was a decent player, reasonably aggressive, and in it for the long haul. In many circumstances, I’d actually prefer to … Read full post
After more than a year of playing all of the big Sunday internet poker tournaments, I finally won one of the @#$% things. There were 815 entrants in Ultimate Bet’s weekly $215 tournament, but they guarantee a $200K prizepool, so there was an overlay of about 20%. After just over … Read full post
Full Tilt Poker
Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo Ring game
Blinds: $3/$6
7 players
Converter
Stack sizes:
UTG: $588
UTG+1: $1034.10
Hero: $531
CO: $276.10
Button: $405
SB: $193.50
BB: $770.30
Pre-flop: (7 players) Hero is MP1 with :ad :7s :4s :jd
UTG folds, UTG+1 calls, Hero calls $6 … Read full post
Wednesday is the only weekday when I play tournaments anymore. I like the $300 weekly on Poker Stars with 20-minute blind levels, and because I’ve found that tournaments and cash games don’t mix well, I play some of the other big nightly tournaments to round it out. I can’t really … Read full post
For those who don’t know, LAGtard refers to a player who is loose and aggressive to a fault. He’s often a reasonably smart and tricky opponent who just gets too fancy and ends up making some fundamental mistakes such as playing too many pots out of position or calling too … Read full post
This kind of thing happens in Stud/8 sometimes: the pot goes multiway, and the players leading for each half of the pot keep jamming small edges but everyone else is priced in to keep calling along. The guy showing the Q is nuts to 3-bet 3rd with a K calling … Read full post
Full Tilt Poker, $5/$10 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 4 Players
LegoPoker Hand History Converter
Hero (BB): $1,142
UTG: $1,241
BTN: $3,029.05
SB: $1,411
Pre-Flop: A Q dealt to Hero (BB)
UTG folds, BTN raises to $30, SB folds, Hero raises to $102, BTN calls $72
Flop: ($209) 2… Read full post
Here’s the hand that prompted this line of thinking:
Full Tilt Poker, $3/$6 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 6 Players
LegoPoker Hand History Converter
SB: $704.60
BB: $791
UTG: $1,075.05
MP: $537.70
Hero (CO): $1,817.85
BTN: $731.65
Pre-Flop: T J dealt to Hero (CO)
2 folds, Hero raises to $21, … Read full post
Villain is a decent LAG but he does have trouble getting away from kinda strong hands when he should. I’ve got a pretty wild pre-flop image but have only shown down big hands when I play big pots. The guy in the middle is new to the table, don’t know … Read full post
3-betting pre-flop has become very popular in the mid-stakes FTP cash games, in part because it’s tough to counteract with 100BB stacks. Recently, though (and I am part of this trend), people have started making smallish 4-bets leaving themselves room to fold to an all in. Particularly when you are … Read full post
This hand is from a while ago, but I just bought Poker Tracker Omaha and so have been looking through old hand histories:
Full Tilt Poker
Pot Limit Omaha Ring game
Blinds: $2/$4
6 players
Converter
Stack sizes:
UTG: $179
UTG+1: $56.70
CO: $208.50
Button: $1029.90
Hero: $620.30
BB: $572.50… Read full post
On Thursday, I won this little $100 PLHE tournament with 6-person tables that Poker Stars runs every afternoon. For some reason most NLHE players don’t play PLHE tournaments, so this always has small fields. There were 18 runners in this particular tournament, and 16 of them were awful. That’s par … Read full post
Heads up against a decent player. He’s not great by any means, but generally when I’m playing heads up I look for softer competition.
Full Tilt Poker, $5/$10 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 2 Players
LegoPoker Hand History Converter
BB: $1,000
Hero (SB): $1,517.50
Pre-Flop: A A dealt to Hero (SB)… Read full post
I played a longer heads up session recently against the same opponent I mentioned in my recent post entitled, “Pwned :-(“. I ended up dropping about three buyins to him, which from what I’ve heard is fairly trivial for an aggressive heads up game. I definitely started to get a … Read full post
An important part of any fixed limit game, where multiway pots are more common, is maximizing your equity by driving out other players. This is particularly true in split pot games, where you can dramatically increase your equity if you becomethe only player with a shot at one half of … Read full post
I was in the mood for some heads up poker yesterday, but when I started my own table, everyone who sat down kept buying in for less than half the maximum. This isn’t really a problem, because these guys tend to be terrible and usually just hand you $100 or … Read full post
Yesterday was a great day. My routine these days is usually to play for an hour or two most afternoons, and then if the games are good and I’m in a good mindset, I’ll keep playing for as long as I can. I put in about 8 hours yesterday, because … Read full post
When last we left him, our hero had gotten off to a great start in the $300 WCOOP Second Chance Stud/8 event, only to blow most of his chips on an ill-conceived bluff. When we pick up with him again, he is down to 2000 chips, and the stakes have … Read full post
My latest poker article, How to Bluff a Calling Station, has just been published in the October 2007 issue of 2+2 Internet Magazine.
Neither of these was against a calling station, but I wanted to post these two bluffs from Sunday tournaments, and this seems an appropriate place … Read full post
Although it still ended in frustration, yesterday I was very happy, in general, with my play. I felt I was more focused than usual and making some good reads in situations where I often just give up. Here’s one tough call down from the $500 WCOOP 2nd Chance:
PokerStars No-Limit … Read full post
I finished 38th out of more than 3700 in the weekly $215 on Full Tilt, which was good but not good enough. I was 11th with 77 to go, then I raised 33 on the button, called a shove from the BB, and lost the flip with QTo for half … Read full post
Out in 1189th. I was on a roller coaster the whole time, doubled up with set versus top pair that turned a flush draw, then lost half my stack when I raise AQ from middle position and BB calls. Flop was KhQh9d, we both check. Turn 7d, he checks, I … Read full post
Today is the third annual World Championship of Online Poker on Poker Stars. We’re just shy of 3000 runners, and the $7.5 million prize pool makes it the largest internet tournament history.
The first hour was a roller coaster for me. I lost 2/3 of my stack 20 minutes in … Read full post
I made a nice run in the FTP $322 6-max yesterday only to have my dreams crushed on the bubble. With 25 players left, I was in 5th place. Everyone at my table was shorter than I and had been playing pretty straight-forward except for Imperium, who was sitting directly … Read full post
As many of you know already, I final tabled the WCOOP Stud/8 Second Chance event. This isn’t really that impressive, since there were only 64 entrants, but I haven’t made a final table in a while and was really looking forward to this event. I’m going to post as many … Read full post
From the $530 WCOOP:
7 Card Stud High-Low ($40/$80), Ante $8
50outs (Seat 1): $2,650
sunrise100 (Seat 2): $2,395
foucault82 (Seat 3): $3,426
BabyGrand (Seat 4): $3,605
lock (Seat 5): $1,333
Siren (Seat 6): $3,538
bjbwc (Seat 7): $3,972
Islandrob1 (Seat 8): $2,991
3rd Street – (1.60 SB)
50outs: xx … Read full post
From the $530 WCOOP event:
7 Card Stud High-Low ($20/$40), Ante $4
50outs (Seat 1): $2,782
sunrise100 (Seat 2): $2,611
foucault82 (Seat 3): $3,260
BabyGrand (Seat 4): $3,078
lock (Seat 5): $2,624
Siren (Seat 6): $2,884
bjbwc (Seat 7): $4,041
Islandrob1 (Seat 8): $2,630
3rd Street – (1.60 SB)
50outs: … Read full post