I took an early exit from this tournament on a coin flip:
Full Tilt Pot-Limit Omaha Hi/Lo Tournament, 20/40 Blinds (8 handed) – Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com
Hero (MP1) (t4925)
MP2 (t5142)
CO (t5938)
Button (t4775)
SB (t8994)
BB (t5025)
UTG (t5146)
UTG+1 (t5070)
Hero’s M: 82.08
Preflop… Read full post
This guy was decent in some ways but pretty insanely loose and aggressive. I don’t think he ever folded to a 3-bet pre-flop (I probably should have made my raise size bigger), and there was a lot of 4-betting going on. For the most part, I just hung back, made … Read full post
I pretty much never open limp, with the occasional exception of being in very early position, usually UTG, at a full ring table. This is particularly true in tournaments, because there is so much value in stealing the pot pre-flop and stacks aren’t generally deep enough to play a wide … Read full post
I like this line a lot in this spot, but not against the table fish:
Full Tilt No-Limit Hold’em, $20.00 BB (6 handed) – Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com
MP ($2000)
CO ($1850)
Button ($1329)
SB ($8366)
Hero (BB) ($2197)
UTG ($2274)
Preflop: Hero is BB with Q
, … Read full post
A few days ago I posted a hand where we were very deep and I feared I may have overplayed a small set/full house. Once again I was deep here against a pretty good player. Were I to fire a third barrel, I’d be showing a ton of strength, so … Read full post
Both of these hands are against a real 3-betting fiend. He’s ridiculously loose and aggressive pre-flop, especially when he has position. Even though I think he’s taken it to the point of exploitability, it’s still a tough and high-variance playstyle to combat. There are a lot of adjustments you need … Read full post
This is a pretty specific situation nearly 400 BB’s deep against a phenomenal player (CardRunner’s instructor/FTP red pro Eric “P3achy_Keen” Liu
Full Tilt No-Limit Hold’em, $10.00 BB (9 handed) – Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com
BB ($1945)
UTG ($1015)
UTG+1 ($4483)
MP1 ($991.45)
MP2 ($3100)
MP3 ($1609.25)
Hero (CO) ($3782.50)… Read full post
PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, $10.00 BB (9 handed) – Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com
MP2 ($723.55)
MP3 ($1002)
CO ($928)
Button ($995)
SB ($1000)
BB ($1717.50)
UTG ($585)
Hero (UTG+1) ($1015)
MP1 ($1239)
Preflop: Hero is UTG+1 with A
, A
1 fold, Hero raises to $30, 6 … Read full post
At least I wish I did…
PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, $20.00 BB (6 handed) – Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com
MP ($2292)
CO ($2000)
Button ($2000)
SB ($828.85)
BB ($2773)
Hero (UTG) ($1904)
Preflop: Hero is UTG with A, A
Hero raises to $60, MP raises to $200… Read full post
Having already posted an analysis of last year’s resolutions (One, Two, and Three), I’ll turn now to some year-end miscellany:
Largest Pot Won
Though I played as high as 50/100 last year, my biggest win was in a recent 10/20 heads up game. It’s … Read full post
It never ceases to amuse me when my mistakes make me money. Here I meant to bet $99 on the river and accidentally bet $9. The result was inducing a huge check-raise bluff from a hand that almost certainly would have folded to my intended bet:
Full Tilt Poker, $3/$6 … Read full post
Absolutely murdered this guy at 10/20 heads up this afternoon. He was decent but overly loose and aggressive and did not adapt well to playing super-deep. As you’ll see, we had a very aggressive pre-flop dynamic going on, but it occurred almost exclusively on my button. The deeper we got, … Read full post
I play FTP’s 200 BB deep stack games almost exclusively. That’s in part because I prefer deeper stacked play but also because the higher stakes regular games are infested with people who buy in for the minimum of 20 BB (the minimum on the deep tables is 50BB). There are … Read full post
Gah how does this not value bet the river?!?!
Full Tilt Poker, $10/$20 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter
BB: $3,800
Hero (UTG): $4,340
MP: $4,151
CO: $2,000
BTN: $4,026
SB: $3,853
Pre-Flop: A
8 dealt to Hero (UTG)
Hero raises to $70, 2 … Read full post
This was an interesting one:
Full Tilt Poker, $5/$10 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 4 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter
Hero (BB): $1,050
UTG: $2,182
BTN: $1,186
SB: $1,018.90
Pre-Flop: T A
dealt to Hero (BB)
UTG folds, BTN raises to $20, SB folds, Hero raises to $75, … Read full post
The frustrating thing about monster hands like Quads is that they rarely get paid off, since it’s so hard for your opponents to make second best hands. But I managed to win two stacks with quads tonight:
Full Tilt Poker, $10/$20 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 5 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand … Read full post
Full Tilt Poker, $5/$10 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 4 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter
BB: $1,154
Hero (UTG): $2,707
BTN: $1,072
SB: $5,637.50
Pre-Flop: 2 2 dealt to Hero (UTG)
Hero raises to $35, BTN folds, SB calls $30, BB folds
Flop: ($80) 5 8
Q
(2 Players)… Read full post
In light of my recent article on Creative Bet Sizing, here are two river check-raise overbets I made against the same player. The situations are similar: I have an unlikely monster hand and my opponent has a well-defined strong-but-not-too-strong hand. By “well-defined”, I mean that he probably realizes that … Read full post
I hope all the Americans and anyone else who celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday had a nice time. I’d like to express my gratitude to everyone who reads and/or comments here at thinkingpoker. It’s enormously gratifying to know that there are people out there interested in what I have to say about … Read full post
Eugene asked a great question about my recent post, A Random Call, which reminded me that I’d meant to post this hand as well. It happened not long after I snapped off a 2x pot river bluff with top pair, weak kicker. This was against the same opponent but … Read full post
I am a strong advocate of exploitive poker strategy. That is, I believe that you ought to tailor your play to exploit specific mistakes that you believe your opponents will make, even if this means that you are yourself open to exploitation. By definition, the more skillful player will do … Read full post
Thought I’m not playing the FTOPS events as compulsively as I have in the past, I am playing my favorites. So far, though, it hasn’t been too interesting and I decided to spare you the litany of bad beats. Last night I had my first … Read full post
I put in one of my longest online poker sessions ever yesterday, starting at 2PM to play the $256 FTOPS 6-max knockout event (ran like ass but as you’ll see I’ve got no room to complain), then making a deep run in the Stars Sunday Million that kept me up … Read full post
I was feeling so on top of my game the other day. I was just really alert and creative, picking up on a ton of spots where I could steal pots if I applied enough pressure in the right way. This was the best one. Unless they have exactly Khxh, … Read full post
I spent the better part of last week in Sedona, Arizona, which is a beautiful part of the American Southwest featuring tremendous red rock structures. Unfortunately, someone decided that these red rock formations have somehow created spiritual vortexes (and yes that is the correct pluralization, not vortices, I checked):
… Read full post“In
Sorry at the airport on laptop so no easy access to HH but playing 10/20 HU guy opens for 60 on the button, I make it 211 with AKo, he makes it 533, I shove for a little over 2K, he CALLS with 42s. Naturally I am drawing dead when … Read full post
OK I paired the river but 8-high would have been good anyway:
Full Tilt Poker, $3/$6 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter
MP: $600
CO: $1,712.40
Hero (BTN): $1,495
SB: $1,992.90
BB: $318
UTG: $1,206
Pre-Flop: 7 8 dealt to Hero (BTN)
UTG folds, MP … Read full post
Had a decent morning at the tables but the real brag is for the Boston Debate League, which was awarded today a $50,000 grant from the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Foundation. The grant will support the BDL’s work with debate programs in the Boston Public Schools over the next … Read full post
A triple barrel bluff will by definition involve at least three bets. Especially when dealing with a player who can read hands well, sizing these bets will often be the difference between success and failure.
As I discussed in a previous post, your objective on early streets may actually … Read full post
Sorry for the lack of updates, I was at a BDL tournament on Friday then a wedding reception in New York yesterday. The good news I’m staying in New York with a friend from the old Harvard Law School game I used to play in, so we got in some … Read full post
Villain was decent but way too aggressive. His strategy would have been decent for a 100BB game but we were playing 200+BB stacks and he was stacking off too light and risking too much on his bluffs.
Full Tilt Poker, $5/$10 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 2 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand … Read full post
This one was against a not-very-good player:
Full Tilt Poker, $3/$6 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter
Hero (UTG): $1,454.70
MP: $1,323.15
CO: $546.65
BTN: $318
SB: $621.75
BB: $590.95
Pre-Flop: A T dealt to Hero (UTG)
Hero raises to $21, 4 folds, BB … Read full post
I’ve only played this high once before, but it went very well that time. The game tonight wasn’t nearly as soft, but for a 50/100 game it wasn’t too tough. As usual, it was built around an FTP pro, in this case winner of the WSOP PLHE championship Nenad … Read full post
Generally when we think of manipulating pot size, we think of playing pot control when we have a hand that we want to showdown cheaply or trying to inflate the pot when we have a monster. But there are times when you might want to build the pot in anticipation … Read full post
Such a classic clip. The look on Ivy’s face is priceless. “I thought you had pocket Kings.”
This should give you a sense of how I was running today (not the result but the fact that I was so gun shy):
Full Tilt Poker: Table Fro (deep 6) – $5/$10
Yesterday was a long day. It was the first tournament of the BDL’s fifth season, and though I’m no longer the director, I still very much wanted and needed to be there. So I woke up around 6AM, spent the next twelve hours on my feet helping to run a … Read full post
Here are two fun hands played in pretty close succession. Although I finished down over all, I feel like I owned Villain pretty hard in both:
Full Tilt Poker, $10/$20 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter
MP: $2,391
CO: $7,159.50
BTN: $3,358
SB: $2,000
Hero … Read full post
Here’s a fun hand against a smart and very aggressive player who was playing pretty strangely tonight:
Full Tilt Poker, $5/$10 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter
SB: $1,643
BB: $1,399
UTG: $2,084.75
Hero (MP): $2,363
CO: $2,040
BTN: $1,000
Pre-Flop: 7 A dealt to … Read full post
The structure on this actually wasn’t quite as deep as I expected in the early-going, but I imagine it gave a lot of play in the later stages while still keeping things moving along at a good clip. It’s a tough balancing act to run a really well-structured tournament for … Read full post
Whining about every WCOOP I play is getting old, so I’ll just say that this was a pretty standard limit tournament in that I played for hours and didn’t come close to winning anything. At least it was fun and interesting though because it was Stud/8, which is one of … Read full post
Terrible starting tables have been the theme of my WCOOP thus far. Today was no exception, with no fewer than three successful 5/10+ NL players, soon to be joined by a fourth (in addition to yours truly, so I guess it sucked that much more for the other guys at … Read full post
God what a grind this thing was. There were a little over 2000 runners, and after five and a half hours of playing, I was eliminated in 665th. It took five hours to get through two-thirds of the field. That’s what happens when you play a very well-structure limit tournament … Read full post
I’ve been working on my heads up game lately and was looking forward to this event. My first round opponent was just terrible. We started 200 BBs deep and I was thinking that with this structure it would be pretty much impossible for me to lose. But I was playing … Read full post
PLO8 is one of my favorite poker games, and it’s also one of the toughest to find played for meaningful stakes, so I was pretty stoked for this event. I did in fact have a good time, even though it ended in disappointment. Early on I was pretty tight passive, … Read full post
I encountered a few straight-up terrible opponents who were doing stuff like limp-calling with a T in the door, but honestly there was less of this than I expected. At least at my table, most people were playing reasonably well. I didn’t make any spectacular bluffs or call downs or … Read full post
This was an interesting tournament format, with only four players per table. My starting table actually had only three, and the other two were of course terrible. I doubled up fairly early on when a guy called my raise with 73s, flopped trip 7’s, then shoved the river after I … Read full post
I played a one hour heads up session at 5/10 NL today and had occasion to execute two triple barrel bluffs (against different opponents). I’m not on my main computer, so I don’t have the hand histories, but I’ll recreate them as best I can. The first one was against … Read full post
This was a fun hand. It was against this guy who kinda irks me. He’s a full ring grinder, meaning that he plays 9-handed NLHE games exclusively for his income. Needless to say, he’s a pretty uncreative nit with a bit of an inflated ego because he can make the … Read full post
Two kind of interesting spots from a recent PLO session. They don’t have much in common other than the fact that both involve AAxx hands.
Full Tilt Poker
Pot Limit Omaha Ring game
Blinds: $2/$4
6 players
Converter
Stack sizes:
UTG: $616.70
UTG+1: $236
CO: $345
Button: $806.40
Hero: $1024.30… Read full post
…but this one is kind of special. I shove flop cuz with these stacks on this board a short-stacker is check-raising any decent hand. Air is definitely the majority of his betting range here, and even when he does randomly call with top pair I have two overs and some … Read full post
I was really rolling in this for a few hours. There was a giant over-aggressive donkey at my starting table, and I was lucky enough to get more than a few hands against him early on to get up a nice stack.
Then I lost a good sized pot by … Read full post
It’s so rare to find a tournament with a structure as good as this one. Level increases were gradual and staggered every thirty minutes, and stacks started deep. There were a couple of good tournament players at my table, most notably SCTrojans and mattyv (AKA Plattsburgh). They both probably play … Read full post
This one was over quick. I 3-bet AT on the button against a pretty loose bad player in the CO whom I’d 3-bet several times before. He called. The flop came T-high with a flush draw. He checked and called. The turn was a 9, making the board something like … Read full post
My first table was pretty unremarkable except for Erick Lindgren a few seats to my right. He was playing a kind of loose and passive style, but he was making it work for him. After I got myself knocked out in 4th (at that first table), he had more than … Read full post
Once again I had some rough table draws, ending up with a lot of high-stakes cash players. As I previously explained, this is bad in an FTOPS tournament for a number of reasons. One of them took me to valuetown on the first hand of the tournament:
Full Tilt Poker, … Read full post
I wanted to make this post about how bad people are at Stud/8, because they are. Split pot games will rip clueless players to shreds. O/8 is a pretty easy game to get, so you don’t see quite as many huge mistakes. Plus there are fewer betting streets and it’s … Read full post
I knew Monday night’s FTOPS was a 1K NLHE, but I was pleasantly surprised when I was “seated” to find only five other players at my table. I had no idea it was a 6-max! I was less pleasantly surprised to find two other regulars in the FTP 10/20 games … Read full post
This event replaced the usual $200 FTP $750K Guarantee and had an appropriately weak field. I didn’t do anything special to chip up, aside from occasionally abusing the fish on my right. I did find check-folding Aces on the turn at one point:
Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold’em Tournament, 80/160 … Read full post
I went pretty deep in the $500 heads up matches, finishing in the top 64. Here’s a blow-by-blow:
Round 1
My first two opponents were ridiculously soft. I polished the first off in minutes, then waited over an hour for round two.
Round 2
I was so busy playing other … Read full post
This was a $200 6-max tournament with a $40 bounty on each player. I lasted a few hours but only won one bounty. Because it was 6-max, I was able to accumulate chips without a lot of big hands. Eventually JCarver got moved to my left, which cramped my style. … Read full post
Event 7 was the $100 rebuy. On the first hand I raised AQ on the button, called a shove for half a stack (ie the guy didn’t double rebuy), and got shown AA. I reloaded $100 more and that’s all I was in for. It’s practically the only hand I … Read full post
I’m not great at PLO, but I played the $500 PLO 6-max FTOPS event because I want to get better and I was sure there would be plenty of worse players. There were. Unfortunately, they ran good:
Full Tilt Poker
Pot Limit Omaha Ring game
Blinds: $20/$40
6 players
Converter… Read full post
The ninth Full Tilt Online Poker Series commenced on Wednesday with a $200 NLHE freezeout. I lasted only about two hours, and this was the closest thing to an interesting hand I could find:
Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold’em Tournament, 100/200 Blinds, 9 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter
MP2: … Read full post
Here are two pretty interesting hands from a small PLO8 tournament that I final tabled on Saturday ($100 buy-in, like 135 players, I finished 8th, not a big deal). It’s pretty rare that you would slowplay in PLO8 because a single card can easily make even huge hands an underdog. … Read full post
Full Tilt Poker
Pot Limit Omaha Ring game
Blinds: $2/$4
5 players
Converter
Pre-flop: (5 players) Hero is SB with :9d :9s :8c :8h
UTG calls, CO raises to $11, Button calls, Hero calls, BB calls, UTG calls.
Flop: :6d :ks :9c ($55, 5 players)… Read full post
This was against some random in the weekly FTP 100 rebuy. I felt like although he probably was dumb enough to shove pocket pairs here, he’d raise most of them pre-flop. I felt like random diamonds, often with a dominated Ace, or just Ace-high would be his most likely holding. … Read full post