Yucky session, sir

I had a really rough session today. Lost $1800 over 500 hands. It was basically just 4 all-in pots, in which it was a really standard hand. That's poker, though it really sucks to lose 4.5 buy-ins when it's not even in my control.

Not to toot my own horn, but I definitely complain less than 95% of poker players. I've spent the past 2+ years listening to most other players bitch about bad beats, coolers, etc and it's made me realize I never want to sound like them. If I'm going to actually play poker for the long haul, I'm going to have to take the losing times like a man. At the end of today's session, I reviewed the session with an open mind. I asked people about a few hands where I felt I played it fine, but wanted to make sure unbiased sources agreed with me. You have to keep an open mind, and always be looking for lessons to learn from your hands.

I got my hardest mid-term coming up on Monday, which sucks because I'm finally in the mood to grind right now. Oh well, time to hit the books.

UPSWONGS LOL

I am on an upswing the past week or so, and October is shaping up to be a good month now. As long as I table select, I feel very confident playing 2/4 NL on Full Tilt. The only thing that could hold me back from having a very strong end to 2007 is laziness. I do need to branch out to other sites, though. Full Tilt has, bar none, the toughest cash games online. It is stupid of me to not want to play vs easier competition. My friend Pete plays 3/6 and 5/10 NL on a smaller site, and admits the competition he faces is much easier than I do at 2/4 NL on Full Tilt.

Pokertracker has been acting up for me for the past several days, and it's very aggravating. Luckily, the PT support is very quick and helpful, so hopefully this will get fixed soon. I've been data mining a LOT at 2/4 NL on Full Tilt lately, which has bloated the size of my database. That is likely the reason behind the errors I am getting lately.

Side note: I never get tired of watching poker on TV (High Stakes Poker in particular). I have amazing recall of hands televised. It's fun to see how bad some of the "TV pros" play on the show. I truly respect only a few of the players on HSP. Antonio Esfandiari is perhaps the only top NL player who is on every season. If you want to see some great TV, watch Season 2 when Antonio, Phil Laak, Sammy, Negreanu, drunk Jen Harman, and Minh Ly are on. Some of the best television, period.

Well, that was easy

Last night, I went to log a session 4 tabling. At a 1/2 NL table, a spewy fish was sitting with a big stack. He was running about 52/27 on the session, and had $800 in front of him when I first sat. He talked trash in the chat box after winning/losing a big hand, which combined with his lagtard play was aggravating me. I decided to challenge him to heads-up in the same "test of manhood" that I seem to do every week. I loaded up a 2/4 NL heads up table, and surprisingly he bought in for full.

I then went on to give him a pretty bad beating. He was willing to stack very lightly, and I could see that it would be very easy to outplay him. He was not content on letting me win any big pots. He called every reraise preflop, and called or raised every c-bet in RRed pots. I knew I'd have to gamble in this match.

The main pots:
-Close your eyes and call. He loved to both bluff the river, and value bet very thinly. He would have raised the turn with an ace most of the time, so I felt this was an easy call vs him.
-Sadly, this is a cooler. By this point in the match, I thought my hand was a monster. Even when he 3 bet the flop, I felt great about the situation. It was unfortunate, but comes with the territory of playing a very aggressive HU match.
-The final hand. This is my 2nd biggest pot ever. I'm fortunate to get in a spot like this, but it's still amazing he stacks off 2 buy-ins with bottom two.

One hour later, I was $1400 richer.

"Jesus christ, 4 bet him!"

Last night I played a session at the library where I won $800. I have done well taking my laptop to the library and grinding in the past, probably because I have zero distractions there. My friend Pete, who goes to Pitt and plays 3/6 NL online, watched over me this session. It was pretty funny because he would yell at me about some of my plays right in the middle of the library. I'm sure people were upset with us, since most people were trying to study.

2/4 games have been really shitty lately (all aggro regulars, few non-regulars). I'm trying to actually practice some basic form of table selection. I played two tables of 1/2 NL and two of 2/4 NL last night to compensate for the shitty games, and it worked out well. Even though I am trying to move completely to 2/4 NL right now, I do feel that playing lower when the games are bad is a smart decision. I'd rather get more hands in, and play against soft competition, than play versus a bunch of good 2/4 NL regulars where I have little edge.

I have mid-terms over the course of the next 2 weeks, but I am going to try to grind. I have played about 4.5K hands through 8 days in October, which is embarrassing. I have very poor time management sometimes. I'm gonna make the promise right now to play 7K hands over the next 6 days. Please hold me accountable, and yell at me if I'm ever online but not grinding.

October rulz

...okay, not really. I'm down 5 buy-ins at 2/4 NL 6 max. It hasn't hurt me psychologically, but it still makes me less enthusiastic to grind a lot. I've made various errors, and run badly as well.

I went home this weekend to relax and get a break from the city. It was pretty refreshing. I had planned to get some sessions in while home, but only got one HU session in this morning. I found a loose-passive fish sitting with a deep stack at 1/2 NL and took 2 buy-ins off him. He then left with $350 still in front of him. I would have postponed by drive back to Pittsburgh if he sat long enough. I felt that my edge was that large.

In other news, plans are coming together already for next summer. I'm organizing plans to rent a house in Las Vegas. It will be me and 4-5 other online players who I'm friends with. I found a 5 bedroom place very close to the strip that I'm very interested in, and I've already contacted the owner. The idea behind the house is that we will all be mid-stakes NL grinders, so we'll all have a bond that should make for a lot of fun over the course of a month.