It's been roughly a week since I've done any updates, so I felt like I better give all 3 of my readers something to chew on ;-)

Let's see, a few new things have happened since last week. First, I didn't get any hands in this past weekend because I was in St. Louis at Mardi Gras with my girlfriend, uncle, and his girlfriend. It was fun seeing Jason and Heather but the actual Mardi Gras festivities left something to be desired... it was too cold, and the beer was almost painful to drink because of the chilling effects. We ate some good food though and had a good time nonetheless. We did manage to make a swing through the President's Casino in downtown STL. The main game was 4-8 limit hold 'em with $1-$2 blinds. Hold me back. While we were there we witnessed your typical group of small stakes monkeys with a splash of retardo floorman. If you have an opportunity to make it over to the President's casino...don't.

Also in big news, you're either not into online poker or you've been in a coma if you haven't heard of the whole JJProdigy and ZeeJustin Multi-table Tournament scandals. JJProd had roughly 140k confiscated because of multi-tabling accounts in the same tournament. ZeeJustin claims to have had 100k taken from him on Party. He had a much smaller amount seized on Stars, which is disappointing because who knows how rampant his cheating was. I used to really enjoy reading posts by ZJ, but it's all sort of tainted now that he was caught.

Last week on wed and thurs I played a few thousand hands. On Wed I was down about $650 and thursday I bounced back around $900. Oh the swings. I played a bit last night and netted double digit win (woo-hoo ?) and tonight I've played a few hundred hands breaking even. I'll get back to playing some more tonight with hopefully better results.

If I get the courage, I may take a shot at the $400 6max NL game on Party tonight. We'll see. I need to start making a move up the limits. I've been in $200NL for far too long... it's been my comfort zone for months, even though I'm plenty bankrolled for the $400 game. I haven't been on Martin's much lately. Everytime I log in there the games are dead. I need to get back to playing there though, so I can rack up those VIP points and get my 600 euro bonus.

Ok since I'm too lazy to post the hand here, I'll hyperlink two hands that I posted on 2+2 for you to check out. I thought they were semi interesting.

Hand 1 Villain ended up with AJo in this hand (forgot to post results on 2+2)
Hand 2

In other news, Phil Ivey totally owns a texas billionaire at the Wynn for millions. He's got so much natural talent, I could never make it to his level, but damn, I feel like I'm 12 years old again looking up to my dad's college football players who made it to the NFL. The difference is, this guy is only like 3 years older than me.

If I take a shot at the $400 games I'll try to post about it tomorrow sometime. As the kids today say:

"HOLLA!"

So if you're into online poker you undoubtedly know that PartyPoker went through a software redesign and put their new stuff live this past week. I've read a lot about people having problems, both with the software itself and other 3rd party applications that were written with the old version in mind (playerview, poker tracker, etc). The biggest change that has affected the most people is the lack of observed hand histories. You can now get the history for a hand iff you're sitting at the table and have been dealt cards. This means datamining is dead.

My uncle and I were talking briefly in passing about the possibility of creating a screen scraper to essentially "rebuild" the hand histories by having an application actual "watch" the action. At first I kind of rejected the idea thinking it was too cumbersome to track the action through screen scraping code (have zero experience with scrapers). Then later this weekend the thought crossed my mind "hey, what about the chat option Dealer: Everything". This chat option displays every bet, check, raise, etc that happens. It would be much easier to write a scraper that parsed the text. So I decide to fire up Party Poker and watch a few hands with this setting...only to find out that Dealer: Everything has been removed. Foiled again! I'm still a bit intrigued with the idea of a scraper. I really have no idea how tough it would be to create, and how hard it is to write code that takes an image and decides values (such as $100 and a pile of chips) into string values.

So since party poker is still working out some kinks (random crashes, etc that i have no desire to deal with) I decided to try a new site. I had read some stuff on 2+2 that there was a decent european network called "B2B" that had a site called Martin's Poker. This place has an unheardof 100% up to $600 initial bonus, that appears to be fairly easy to clear. I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to convert US dollars to Euros through the site without any extra conversion fee. I played roughly 1500 hands this weekend at martin's, at the NL100, NL200, and NL400 all 6max. I ended up down about 100 Euros or so. I took some horrendous beats and made some bluffs (haven't made up my mind whether they were good or not) that got called, and otherwise played my normal game.

Here's a few interesting hands:

I have 55 on the button against a maniac who raises every hand preflop and raises postflop at the slight hint of weakness. Effective stacks ~200 Euros. (1/2 euro NL)

UTG minraises to $4, 1 fold, I call, SB folds, Villain in BB raises to $17 straight. UTG folds, I call the $13 more.

Flop ($39) J 6 5

Villain leads for $30. I call. No reason to raise here as 78, 34, 74 are the only draws out there, and further action from villain won't be a problem if he's got a big pair.

Turn ($99) 4

Villain checks, I bet $33. I figure his range is so wide he's nearly always got nothing in this spot, so I bet small to either get a loose call from him or induce a raise from my display of "weakness". He checkraises all in for another $120 for me to me. I instacall of course.

River ($400) 3

Villain shows 62o for the rivered gutshot. I puke on my keyboard.

Pretty awesome to induce Villain to stick $150 in on the turn with 9% pot equity. Of course the result leaves something to be desired.

Here's another hand I was happy with my spot. Effective stacks $200. I have Q T on the button. LAG UTG opens for $7, TAGish guy in the CO calls. I call on the button expecting at least one of the blinds to come. Neither do.

Flop ($24) 7 J K

UTG leads for $15, CO pushes all in for about $200. Weird. What the hell hand could he have here. Likely KJ or a set or OESD. Flush draw seems remote as he would have to have A X where X less than T . I call, so does UTG. I put in 33% of the money in on the flop with 46% equity against JJ (50%) and 77 (4%), so I'm feeling good. Too bad for me the turn and river blanks and JJ scoops the 600 euro pot.

Here's another hand: I had Q J. On the turn it's A 4 4 Q . I semi bluff checkraise all in and he calls with K 4 that he raised with PF. Doh.

On another, I have 33 in the button. Flop comes 3 6 7 rainbow. Villain has 66, I lose my 300 euro stack.

Another where I have AA no spade on T9 4 board. I get it all in against Mr 62o from the earlier hand. His 8 8 takes it when the 3 hits the turn. In hindsight, I should have considered calling the flop and getting it in on a non-spade turn where my equity is much higher against him. My thinking at the time was that if he's got a non-spade hand, I'll be losing money by playing it safe on the flop the spade comes and it kills my action or he makes me fold the best hand. My flop call is still +EV as i'm 55/45 favorite on the flop, however, if I could induce him to get it in on a turn blank, my equity shoots up to 75%. This guy is crazy enough that he could get it in on a non-spade turn with 88 in this spot... so I probably would maximized my EV by passing on a slightly +EV proposition on the flop to potentially exploit a massively +EV situation on a the turn. Of course this has to offset the times I get outplayed when we both have no spade.

Poker is fun! :-) Even when you made a +EV play, it isn't always the correct thing to do.

I must say the players on Martin's are much different than party. Aside from a few of the maniacs I discussed above, most of the players there are of the loose passive variety. They love to call... I love to value bet them. It works out nicely. I think I'll stick around on this site for a while... certainly long enough to clear my 600 euro bonus...

Ok so in part to make good on my post a few days ago and also because I can always use more practice at these calculations, I'd like to go ahead and calculate some different amounts of money I make with a big draw when taking into consideration different fold equity percentages.

If you recall, the hand in question was my 9 8 vs. villain's A J on a J T 3 board. The effective stacks will be considered a standard buyin ($200). Previously we examined the fold equity needed to simply break even on the turn. We found we only need him to fold about 30% of the time, just to break even. Today, we'll look at the our EV at various fold percentages.

On the flop, there was $19 in the pot and I lead for $18, so there's $37 in the pot when action is on Villain. Let's assume that he'd like to "protect his hand" with pot sized raise, $73 (19 + 18 + 18 + 18). Had Villain done this in the actual hand, I would have insta-pushed my stack ($176), or, $103 more for him to call. With a pot equity of 56% I'm feeling very good about my spot.

What's my EV if villain folds 0% of the time? 25% ? 50%? 75%? Let's find out. (Note: See the Feb 9th posting for an explanation of the formula used below).

Villain folds 0%:

EV = 110(0) + (1)(.56 * [110 + 103] - [.44 * 176])
EV = 0 + (119.28 - 77.44)
EV = $41.84

Villain folds 25%:

EV = $110(.25) + (.75)(.56 * [110 + 103] - [.44 * 176])
EV = 27.5 + (.75)(119.28 - 77.44)
EV = 27.5 + 31.38
EV = $58.88

Villain folds 50%:

EV = $110(.50) + (.50)(.56 * [110 + 103] - [.44 * 176])
EV = $55 + $20.92
EV = $75.92

Villain folds 75%:

EV = $110(.75) + (.25)(.56 * [110 + 103] - [.44 * 176])
EV = $82.5 + $10.46
EV = 92.96

So there you have it. It's pretty clear that the more he folds the better, but even if he calls 100% of the time, we're still making $41.84.

I played about 1300 hands of $200 NL 6max on Tuesday and had some more swings. I ended up down a little more than a buyin. I didn't get any hands in tonight though.

If you're interested, check out an article on my pop. He just took the Defensive Line position at Southern Miss University.

Well if you've been reading, it's been a couple days since I've updated. I went on a pretty nice run friday-monday in the NL200 games...winning about 7 buyins in that stretch. I had some pretty sick rivers in my favor. Most of catches were before the money went in, or when the large percentage of the money went in it after I hit my hand. It does feel good catching a nice card here or there, considering it often feels like my opponents are constantly catching on me. The next time I get snagged by a gutshot on the river, I'll think back to this post.

I had been holding off on posting because I wanted to do more EV calculations. Unfortunately because of increased work responsibilities, I had a bunch of time earmarked for work and I didn't get around to any number crunching. Perhaps tomorrow.

Some of you may or may not know that I'm in Wichita, KS for the next few weeks. It's my first gig doing work with Cognos products. Cognos is kind of a hot item right now and I really need the experience, unfortunately I pretty much suck at it right now. There will be some growing pains I'm sure. Hopefully the client will understand.
So here was a sort of interesting hand with a river decision that comes up once in a while. Sometimes I make the error of not maximizing the river when I'm pretty sure my opponent either has a big hand or nothing. An argument could be made for checkraising all in on the turn, however, I think my line looks a bit more suspicious to a weak player. In all honestly, it probably doesn't matter on this hand, as Villain is going broke close to 100% in this spot (turn or river).

Effective Stacks: $167
Villain is 44/12.

I pick up 4 4 in the SB. Villain limps UTG. CO poster checks, Button raises to $10. I call. BB folds, Villain calls. Poster folds. 3 to the flop:

Flop ($34) 4 J 2

I lead for $22 to try to build a pot and trap the loose villain in between me and the preflop raiser. Villain calls. PFR folds.

Turn ($78) J

I check, because the only real draw out there on the flop was 35, unlikely but possible for Villain. His range is weighted heavier towards TP type hands, or possibly something like 88-TT. I figure the J is a good card for him to bluff at if he's weak and obviously a good card for him to "value bet" with as a hand he thinks is best. Essentially he bets many more hands with than he calls in this spot.
Villain bets for $22. A disappointing bet for me. Had he bet closer to pot size, or even 3/4 the pot, he would have been committed and I would have just pushed all in right there. Since he's got $112 left in his stack after his $22 bet, I felt a checkraise all in would allow him to get away from his hand too easily (in hindsight, this guy probably isn't folding... but the principle is true in general against better players) so I figure I'll slowplay and just call...with the plan of pushing nearly all rivers.

River ($122) T

Kind of a scary card since JT is a big possibility for him, however, at this point I've dug my grave with my turn action if he really hit a 4 outer on me. I decide that in this spot he's either got a hand that is calling a push (primarily a Jack) or he's got nothing. Doubtful he'll try to bluff me again on the river since I called his turn bet. So at this point I'll push and pray he's got something to call with... if I check, he's certainly checking behind all his marginal hands... maybe even a weakish J. If I push, perhaps it looks suspicious enough for him to call. I push for $112 (effectively). He calls with KJo, I scoop.

Some of my logic might sound circular in the above paragraphs, and it probably is. I think my line is good against a more solid-ish player. Against this guy I'm probably getting his stack no matter what. I think it's easier for people to convince themselves into a call a big river lead bet with trips than it is to call a turn checkraise...

Ok so last time I posted about an OESFD and how I semi-bluffed pushed the turn with 98 against a LAG. Today, I'd like to take that hand and describe some of the mathematics behind it.

To figure the math, let's give Villain a hand such as AJ, giving him top pair on the flop. I feel it's pretty generous to give him this "big" of a hand considering his 3xBB raising range on the button is enormous. (Recall, he's a 57VPIP/33PFR loose cannon). Also to be exact, our effective stacks were $198.25.

To rehash, I've got 9 outs to the flush and 6 outs to the straight, giving me 15 clean outs and about 56% pot equity. On the flop, I lead for $18 in a $19 pot, and he calls. Now we're on the turn with a board of J T 3 2 and $55 in the pot. I check, he bets $22. So for our purposes now there's $77 in the pot and the action is on me. I push all in for $174.25 (effectively), which is $152.25 more for him to call, which is about 3:2 on his money ($229.25 : $152.25). We know I'm a dog on the turn (35%) so how often must he fold for this play to be neutral EV (break even play)?

Let's figure it out. First let's state in English what our mathematics must prove. There are two results that can happen on the turn, either Villain calls, or Villain folds. When Villain folds, we'll profit $77 (what's currently in the pot) . When he calls, we'll suck out 35% of the time and win the entire pot and 65% of the time we'll lose our investment.

x = % of time Villain folds
(1-x) = % of time Villain calls
currentPot = Amount currently in the pot before we push, or, what we'll win if he folds.
hInvestment = Amount hero risks in order to win currentPot
vInvestment = Amount villain risks in order to win (currentPot + hInvestment)
hEquity = Percentage of the pot hero "owns" over the long haul (our odds of winning).
vEquity = Percentage of the pot villain "owns" over the long haul (his odds of winning).

Ok so we can see our Expected Value will result in:

EV = currentPot * x + (1-x)(hEquity * [currentPot + vInvestment] - [vEquity * hInvestment])

So let's plug in our numbers and figure out how often Villain needs to fold to be EV = 0.

EV = $77x + (1-x)(.35 * [77+152.25] - .65 * $174.25)
0 = 77x + (1-x)(80.24 - 113.26)
0 = 77x + (1-x)(-33.02)
0 = 77x - 33.02 + 33.02x
33.02 = 110.02x
x = 30%

So as we can see, if Villain folds this turn 30% of the time, we break even. Any more than that, and it's money in our pockets. With the given preflop, flop, and turn actions, we've stated that Villain's hand range is extremely wide, and will very rarely have a hand that can stand this much heat.

Let's also take a second to see how some of the different actions could have led to a different outcome of x. Notice if he bets more on the turn, say a pot bet, it will add more dead money to currentPot, and therefore it will cause Villain to have to fold less often for us to profit (23% by my count) than with a weakish bet. However, it is certainly true that his weak bet was what lead me to believe my fold equity (x) was high enough to make this a profitable play.

In the next installment, we'll see what might have happened had we got the money in on the flop. We'll see how our increased equity makes it even better if Villain folds, and how much money we can win by playing our big draws aggressively.

(Note: Special thanks goes out to 2+2's Fimbulwinter (for making the EV calc posts linked below) and also Tom1975 for checking my math).

So I've kinda made it my standing goal (as of this blog starting) to play about 3500 hands each week at minimum. Mostly it's going to be at the 6max tables because as most of you know, there's a much wider selection of short handed games at the upper limit, so if that's where I want to be with the best chances of success, I better learn how to play it decently.

Throughout my poker career up until last fall, I played almost exclusively full ring (10 handed) games. I kept reading 2+2 posts talking about everyone missing the boat that isn't playing 6max. I dabbled a bit last Oct/Nov/Dec playing some 100NL 6max just to get used to it. It wasn't until recently where I've been feeling a bit more comfortable. I think I'm starting to get the feel down a bit... My winrate through the first 8500 hands at $200NL 6max isn't steller, but I'm in the green at least. The thing I've noticed most about 6max no limit is the swings can be brutal.

Since my last post I've made about 3-4 buyins back, but in a given session (usually play between 500-1000 hands per session, 2-4 tables) I've experienced many multi-buyin up and down swings.

For instance, tonight I played 1185 hands total in two different sessions. I was moving between TAG and LAG (tight/loose aggressive) style. After the first ~300 hands I was +$500 or so, then the next ~500 hands I was at -$300 from where I started... that's an $800 swing, or 4 buyins. Yikes. Thankfully I'm way overbankrolled for this game. I ended up the night about +$200 after all that madness.

So why is the game so much more swingy? The level of aggression is much higher than a 10 person table. Poker, at it's roots, is a battle for the antes (blinds) and on most hands someone is coming in for a raise to try to take them.

I've been trying to create +EV situations for myself by pushing hard with big draws (straight + flush draws, pair + flush draws, etc) and I've had some good short term results. Here's a hand from this weekend where I was lagging it up.

Hero is in the BB with 9 8. Effective stacks, $200.

Villain loosey goosey and aggro (57/33) and is on the button. UTG limps, Villain makes a small raise to $6 (basically any two cards, this guy raises more hands than I play total...), SB folds, I make the $4 call in the BB, so does UTG.

Flop ($19) J T 3

Excellent! This is one of the most fun flops possible. I've got an open end straight flush draw. Huge, huge draw. Usually Villain has trash in this spot, but even if he manages to have AA or similar, I'm a favorite to win (55%). Add to that the fold equity of making a big move, and I'm making a nicely +EV play.

I go ahead and leave for about a pot bet, $18, hoping to get raised so I can push. Villain does not oblige and simply calls.

At this point, I figure Villain has a weakish hand, maybe J with a weak kicker, maybe something like KT, could be as little as A high. Villain would also play a big hand like a set slowly, but his range is super broad in this spot.

Turn ($55) 2

I missed all my draws, dang. Even if villain's got a hand like AJ, I'm still not in terrible shape as I've still got about 35% pot equity. I decide to check, and either take a free card he'll give me, or try to read his bet.

Villain bets $22... a weakish bet. I decide this is a bet that doesn't really want to be called but he doesn't want to give a free card either. I think this bet says weak J or medium-strong 10. I decide it's time to push in and try to take the pot right here. As mentioned, if he calls I'm still 35% to win, but mostly with this action, Villain has a hand that cannot stand the heat.

Hero pushes all in for $187. ($155 to call).

In my next entry, I'll show the math of this play, for both trying to get it in on the flop and getting it in on the turn. I'll attempt to show you how often Villain needs to fold in this situation to make it neutral EV. In order to prepare for this, I'm going to go back and re-read Fimbulwinter's posts on calculating EV on 2+2.com. Here's part 1 and here's part 2.

I spent some time with a pen and paper working some of this out, but I'd like to polish it a bit as to not embarass myself in front of all 3 people who read this blog :-)

So I played about 900 hands of $200 NL 6max and I ended up losing 2 buyins. Pretty crap-tacular but nothing out of the scope of normal variance (with some mistakes). Wow did I encounter some pretty crappy rivers tonight. I'll save you the details as I'm pretty sure this post might turn into a bitch session pretty quick but I had more than a few 4 outers ruin my hands tonight.

I'm running a bit cold during my first 5,000 hands of 6max NL200, but I'm sure I've got some leaks to plug. I made a 1 bad river bet tonight that was similar to the hand posted yesterday, as well as another river bet with TPTK that might have been a bit thin...when the calling station check/minraised me I obviously had to toss it knowing I was fully beat, but I did have the option for a free showdown.

I payed off a flush with aces against a maniac tonight. He was giving me a damn good price though. Here's the hand:

I'm in the SB with A A. Villain is on the button a 62/25 bad LAG. Effective stacks $192.

3 limps to me, I make it $15 to go, 2 limpers fold, Villain calls $13 more.

Flop ($34) 2 2 K

I lead for $22, standard continuation bet. Villain calls.

Turn ($78) T

I lead for $44, planning to fold to a raise. Villain smooth calls again. Here I'm pretty sure that Villain either has a 2 and slowplays way too much or he's got a flush and slowplays too much. Either way if he wants my stack he needs to raise here because a lot of people in this game might pay off with hands he beats here. The only thing he's really behind here is an unlikely A Q or KK or TT.

River ($166) J

I check, planning to fold to any reasonable bet (which is pretty much all in, as villain has $111 left in his stack). Instead, he gets cute and bets $40. I'm pretty sure I'm behind here, but the question isn't "Do I have the best hand?" but "How often do I have the best hand here?"

He's making me call $40 to win $206, so which is 5:1. So that means I need to win 1 of 6 showdowns, or about 16% of the time to make this call break even. Against most players I'd turbo muck this, but I felt he was donk-enough to pay off, even though it might be a very, very thin call. At the time, I thought it was curious that he bet $40 and left $70 in his stack... so he's either poorly bluffing or screaming please call. With this guy it could be either pretty easily.

I had another interesting hand that I won't spell out completely, but it involved another megadonk (they were out in full force) who managed to call me down with AK high, no pair, and it was good when I tried to put a move on him. The hand went down like this:

Villain is a 62/37 bad lag with calling station tendencies...unfortunately I didn't really realize these tendencies included no pair. He made a comment earlier at the table that I only played pairs so he was staying out of my way. I showed down two strong hands, and then started taking shots at him. The only dubious hand I showed was a preflop re-raise with K9s where I flopped 2pair and managed to get him to pay me on 3 streets with middle pair. From then on he pretty much thought I was Full of shit (FOS) but I didn't realize how badly.

I'm in the BB with A2s with $535 in my stack, and Villain covers. A couple limps, he raises to $9 on the button (this means any two cards) I call in the BB hoping to get multiway action. If not, I'm happy with investing about 1.5% of my stack with a suited ace against this guy to win a big pot. The limpers fold so it's heads up to the flop.

Flop comes J 9 4 rainbow. I check, mostly planning to give up. He checks behind. I've seen him do this before usually when he has no hand. if he gets any piece or a draw, he'll usually fire.

Turn ($21) comes 6 completing the rainbow. I check, he bets $10 into $21, which I read as real weak, so I checkraise to $35 on a steal (and possibly the best hand). He calls. I put him now on some sort of middle pair like 77 or 88 that didn't want to bet the flop with 2 overs or a hand like 78. It took him a long time to call, with this guy usually means he thinks people are making a move, but he's gotta call anyway. I felt that was my cue to nudge him a bit harder.

River $91 blanks with a 3. I lead for 2/3 the pot, $66. He CALLS with AK high, no pair no draw. So essentially he called the turn and had to hope I had no pair and then called a river bet. Truly amazing.

I guess I'm the real donk thinking Villain is capable of folding 3rd or 4th pair or no pair at all. I should have just been value betting the shit out of this guy, and I did after this hand. I guess it was a wake up call but perhaps good players won't need to have the donk call him with AK high in order for them to wake up.

Ok so if you've been following, until now it's been primarily background info and what I expect to get out of this site. Now let's start making good on the goals I've laid out.

First off, I know some of you reading might not be 'hip' to the internet poker lingo that I'll often be using. I'd like to direct you to a couple links you can use as reference when I start spouting some acronyms you're unfamiliar with:

Common acronyms
Older acronyms

Ok onto the hands. I went through my Poker Tracker database of the hands I've played in the last couple weeks in order to figure out what I did good (or more likely) bad.

Here's an example of overplaying my hand out of position and making a river very poor river play that cost me 17.5BB. Sure I didn't lose my stack on this hand, but these types of leaks can really bring down a player's winrate. I basically misplayed every street.
Villain is a NL200 6max regular and plays a very similar style as me. His stats are 25/8.5 (VPIP/PFR) which are nearly identical to mine. Watch how I make a fool of myself in this medium pot.

I pick up A 4 in the CO. Villain is on the button. Effective stacks $175. Folds to me, I open limp in the CO. (first mistake, if I'm going to play this hand in this spot with no one else in front of me, I've got to come in for a raise.). CO raises to $7, SB folds, BB folds, I call $5. (should have probably just mucked here, but I've got a suited A, and Villain's button raising range is pretty wide in that spot. It's going to cost me about 3% of my stack to try to bust him)

Flop ($16) A 7 7

I check, he bets $8, I call.

My thinking here is that he's going to continuation bet nearly 100% in this spot, I've got TPNK and either way ahead or way behind.

Turn ($32) 8

I lead for $22, he calls.

Here I wanted to deny his positional advantage by leading and not allowing him to take a free card when behind. The 8 adds some more draws to the board, and his PF range contains lots of suited connector type cards. His call should have let me know that I was in trouble. This might be the only street I'm ok with my play on.

River ($74) 2

Total brick river. No draws got there. I'm still WA/WB. I decide to lead for $35. This is pretty bad. He's not calling a 2/3 pot bet on the turn with a draw, unless it's a big one like OESD + flush draw-- which in that case he's probably going to semi bluff raise me. My river bet here is a classic mistake in that all worse hands fold, and only better hands call. When he calls my turn stop-n-go, I should have realized he's got a made hand. If I really thought he was on a draw after calling the turn, then the correct river play when the draws missed is check/call, because some of the time he will bluff his busted draw, but he's obviously never calling my bet with those hands. Truly abysmal play on my part.

Needless to say, he calls my 1/2 pot river bet with AQ and scoops the pot.

Plugging these types of leaks is essential if I want to move up.

So now that you know the purpose of this blog, I figure it's time to tell you a bit about myself.

My name is Aaron and I live in Overland Park, a suburb of Kansas City. I'm 27 years old and I've been playing poker semi-seriously for about 4 years. Like many, I first caught the bug by watching the endless reruns of the 2003 WSOP on ESPN and I was introduced to a micro stakes home game from a coworker of mine. I was instantly hooked. Having the obsessive personality that I do, I immediately went out to Barnes and Noble to take a look at their selection of poker books. I ended up purchasing my first book: Ken Warren Teaches Texas Hold'em. My oh my how ignorant I was. This book is truly awful, but it was all I knew and it taught me how to play weak-tight. This, at least, kept me from massively leaking chips by playing too many hands, but I was missing out on tons of value.

So after a couple weeks of playing weaker and tighter than my home game competition and generally not winning much, my friend decided it was time for us to hit the casino. Enter the $3-$6 kill game at Ameristar KC. This was my first real experience with a casino and I had no idea what to do, but at least my buddy was at my table. About 1/2 hour into folding most hands, the table erupted. People were cheering and giving high fives. A guy across from us pulled out his cell phone and told his wife he just won $500. I was confused... I only saw a few stacks of white chips in front of him. What happened? You may have guessed...we hit the bad beat jackpot. Everyone at the table got paid $550. Instant bankroll for the poker n00b. With about $13 in profit from the $3-$6 game, I netted a cool $563 in "poker profit" my first night. There was no turning back.

I managed to use that bankroll to buy a couple more books and play a lot more $3-$6. Somewhere around the 9 month mark after reading 3-4 other poker books, I discovered 2+2. After hours of reading posts and figuring out the terminology, I vastly improved my game. I bought many of the 2+2 titles including HEPFAP, Theory of Poker, The Psychology of Poker, Inside the Poker Mind, and Small Stakes Hold'em. I basically read everything I could get my hands on. I started playing online, losing at first, and then starting pulling down some decent wins. Variance was on my side and over the course of my first year I made about $5k from poker.

About 3 years ago, I began dabbling in No Limit. I started at Party Poker $25NL tables, and began working my way up as well as playing live $200 buyin games. When I started this blog in Jan 06, I was playing $1/$2nl full ring with a total online/live bankroll of about 20k. Since then I've increased my bankroll over 10 fold and I'm currently playing 4-6 tables of 5/10nl and 10/20nl 6max. Since January '06 I created this blog and really focused on making poker a real priority, I've experienced a lot of growth in my game. During the spring of 06 I enlisted KRANTZ's coaching services which was instrumental in my progress as a player.

When I created this blog there were many out there absolutely killing these online games for serious money...I wanted to be one of these people. I had made a few beans, but that's over the course of a couple years learning. My goal was to be a big winner in games such as $5/$10nl and $10/$20nl and maybe even "go pro".

As 2006 progressed I kept coaching with KRANTZ and built up a real solid network of poker buddies to discuss hands with. We all moved up through the ranks more or less at the same time. I was still working as a Java programmer/consultant through '06 but towards the end of the year I made a solid move up to $5/$10nl and with a 100buyin bankroll and a programming contract that was ending, I decided Jan 1, 2007 would be my first day as a professional poker player. With the support of my then-fiance Missy, I took the plunge.

2007 was an interesting year as a poker player. I grew a lot as a person and as a player. There were times where I moved up to $10/$20nl and felt good and other times where I moved back down to $2/$4nl to keep my sanity. I survived an extremely long 225,000 hand break even stretch that really tested my will as a person and a poker player, but I got through it and I'm certain I'm a better player because of it. 2007 also marked my first year of going to Vegas during the WSOP.

During the fall of 2007 I started developing an interest to teach others to play poker. With a long history of KRANTZ's teachings and the better part of a year as a professional player myself, I joined up with then 3-bet.net (now DeucesCracked.com) and took my first students. I really enjoy helping people bridge the gap from small stakes to medium and high stakes. It's an awesome challenge and very rewarding to enlighten people to all the things they aren't considering during a poker hand. The feeling I get when I tell them to make a bet or raise they wouldn't normally have done and hearing their "Wow" reaction when the money is shipped their way is one of the best feelings in poker.

Now at the time of this writing (Jan 08) I've coached roughly 20 people and I'm embarking on my second year as a professional poker player and coach. I've also become an Executive Producer for DeucesCracked.com, where I've started making poker videos. My first videos are comprised of an 8 part series on the Mathematics of NL Hold'em. I'm very excited to expand my experience in poker education to video creation and open the doors to more students who want personalized poker training.

If you'd like to learn more about me and my coaching, see my Coaching Profile at DeucesCracked.com

So as of now I'm still planning to play, teach, and coach poker for a living. I'm still playing primarily $5/$10nl but I hope to make $10/$20nl my "main" game at some point this year, maybe even taking shots at $25/50nl.

I hope you follow my journey by reading my blog and/or contacting me via email!

Updated: 1/25/2008