Very good read, always lurked your blogs. Good luck with the $5k tourney.

Solid update

Agree solid update

Not so solid life decisions lolol (coming from someone who uses a Mac & Macbook)

Nvm, this is totally worth. Macbook coffee date sometime?

Great update, will be following. What tracking app do you use for live?

Sure thing Teddy I've given up the 2/5zooming pretty much too, Stars just too painful to give back to.

Thanks bro.

Poker Analytics 4 my man.

In

When's our hero going to play some DrawMaha though?

Or maybe a private home game of Svitten?

Drawmaha the devil.

Nope actually Svitten the devil.

Poker, Goals and CHALLENGES

This week I'll be putting the challenge part of this forum to good use as I embark on a heads up challenge. Now I've been flamed by close personal friends over the terms I've accepted and as a result have developed a thick skin over the matter so feel free to have at it and flame away.

I'll be playing a smart but rec mixed game player at 5card PLO live with these stipulations:

*

HU 5card PLO at £25/50

100bb Min Buy in

5k CAP

Session length 2 hours

No stop loss per session

10 sessions that have to be completed

35% loss rebate for my opponent after each session

Winner pays time charge after rebate settled

*

I think the consensus now seems to be that this is madness but I'm hungry and confident. It'll come down to a lot of luck but it's nice to be playing my best format of poker, HU and at reasonable stakes. Hopefully I can take him down!

Live and Online Since Past Update

I think I played one short session Live where the game didn't get up above £5/10 and basically broke even.

Online I was firing off some $50/100 HU 5card against lovable villain Deldar but we had to cut short as my computer was dying, I probably won very small.

The other night I lost $15-20k playing with a bad mindset vs not so lovable villain Grazvis and felt pretty bummed about it. Tilt dude to lose to and wasn't prepared properly for playing. Them the breaks though.

Tonight I'll be firing the $5k PLO on Stars for morale and hopefully there will be a few spots sneak through the gaps between all the bosses.

I will not be playing any Svitten or Drawmaha in the near future.....well actually, never say never.

How to dust $5200 in 43 Minutes

So the $5k 6max didn't really go according to plan.

Big hand 1: CO, random Russian donk opens, Canadian fish 3b's and I've got AT98ddcc in the BB. I decide to take a 4b line for a few reasons. The Button 3bettor had been in the mix to say the least, flatting 2245ss in SB vs EP opens etc and was on a decline and being quite aggro. CO range with button fish going to be wide enough and I think fish peels a ton of stuff that we absolutely crush. I mean it's high variance, undoubtedly and I suppose in a tournament, especially early this can be avoided but I think building big stacks early in these things really allow you to dominate later on and go very deep. Anyway he peels and flop comes QJ6 and we brick off vs KKQ5, despite a tease 7x turn. Left me short with 30bb.

Big Hand 2: I open AA62ddcc from the button and donk Russian defends BB. Flop K94ddx and I bet after a check and get faced with a pot and stick it in. He's got a fairly horribly played QJ93dd and we lose the 65/35 to bust. I think his hand is a check call on the flop as a much better play vs potting like he did which basically forces me to continue with minimum 60%+ on average and getting folds doesn't really achieve much for him.

So yeah, kind of a short and sweet way to torch $5.2k, perhaps given how soft my table was, which obviously is incredibly rare for an online $5k I perhaps regret the AT98ddcc hand. BlackFortuna said he thought both hands were standard though over skype and I think I agree.

Hunger Games Baby

I've been feeling a little off perfection lately in my approach to studying and spots, been a bit too much rofling and not enough accuracy. I'm feeling invigorated to be back in the lab and getting sharp on spots, playing a bunch of online beasts lately has reminded me how excellently accurate they are in specific spots and with regard to correct ranges and I don't want to be sat feeling like the fool.

Unfair Anonymity

I think I just need to air this slight pet peeve and see if anyone else agrees. I was playing some $10/20 PLO 5card HU yesterday and my opponent (who's location is UK) said that he knew who I was but then didn't want to say who he was. I mean I guess this is pretty standard but it's kind of annoying. I think in these spots it's a case of if you're declaring you know who I am then it's way cooler to just remove the mask. Perhaps this is just a personal preference and I guess this is the downside of running a blog and losing anonymity, curious to what others think?

I think the poker plan this week is to focus on live poker, try and log some big scores and focus on this upcoming HU match (which I know regret and kinda want to get out of). If I can get out of it I might try and pop over to Dublin as some friends out there have told me that the action is pretty sick right now.

Lifestyle

This morning I had one of those Bupa Health Peak assessments. It was pretty steep but it's definitely good for peace of mind and also to give you good goals to aim towards. Without going into too much detail all my stats and stuff looked pretty good and they said I should just be focusing on strength exercises heading forward as that's where I was lacking the most....get some gainz bro.

Private healthcare is the complete nuts and really makes the NHS look really terrible. I know this will be an unpopular comment but I really think if it's even remotely within you financial grasp you should basically always go private, even GP visits etc, just so much quicker and smoother and definitely more pleasant.

Right, back to the books and then hopefully back to some crushing results.

How much do you pay annually for private if you don't mind me asking? Feel free to not comment.
Do you not think sticking that £ into a (non-crypto) portfolio seems better for your retirement goal?

I do think that. Indeed.

Dat anxiety life though.

Those hands in the MTT seem standard.

re anonymity, I think there's obviously some value. I stop blogging partially for that reason. That said I think there's a lot to be gained from journalling. Not everything is EV!

Hope to rail some or read some big hands from the HU!

There's nothing wrong with favoring private when you can afford it, it's just recognising that many people absolutely cannot afford it, and having the NHS is life saving, and private being much better doesn't really change how life saving it is for those people. If anything it feels like an argument that the NHS should have more funding so it's better. I have a 6 month + waitlist just to get medication if I go via NHS

'Table Talk - When it's in and out of line?

One of my greatest assets as a live player is my ability to intimidate and be investigative with my table talk. A few weeks ago I posted a fairly crazy call down with AKTT on a board where I had no interest being there and a lot of the river decision making came down to me talking to my opponent on the river and gaining a lot of information. Now I'm someone who finds the majority of the stuff Charlie Carrel posts quite laughable or nauseating but I do believe that he was someone who touched on this areas of poker and to give him his due he was amazingly successful on the back of it, I always like that Charlie was a talker at the tables, it creates for better live games in my opinion, it makes them more interesting and creates a bit of theatre.

What I've been thinking about though, is where the line is and do I cross it at all? Let's take a hand yesterday because it involved celebrity poster and all round good guy 'Sol Reader'. Me and Sol are mates off the table and discuss poker quite a lot, I consider him one of the nicer guys in poker and we share a similar approach to studying the game (disclaimer).

Hand in question:

Few limps including Sol in an average 5/10 game and I decide to bump up the button with the 8844ddss. I think we go 5 way to the flop and it comes down 962ddd. Checks through. Turn comes 3x. Checks through. Now at this point I obviously want to just get to showdown and hope my flush will be good enough to win this inflated pre flop pot. Sol seems like he wants to stab turn so I decide on river I might decide to partake in a little verbals. River comes a 2x. So we're left with 962ddd3x2x. Checks round to Sol and now I start goading him to have a poke, something along the lines of him being a hero, or that it was now his chance to pounce and make the superstar play. Sol responds by potting the river for 400 or so and I call. We go to showdown and Sol announces '2 pair' and I win with my medium flush.

After the hand I wondered whether this sort of table talk is acceptable? I guess perhaps I was questioning it because there were other factors, was I taking advantage of Sol's and mine knowledge of each other, what spots we can coerce each other into going after. Was this simple gamesmanship? If it was should that be tolerated at the table or is it tips toeing along the border of what's fair and not? Should speech play only be allowed in HU pots etc?

Does 'Table Talk' lead to too much strategy discussed at the table?

There's no denying it. The live games have been taking a battering lately and the fields are tougher and less action than ever before. Yesterday our regular 5/10 game broke very early and Sol actually sent me a picture depicting current times. It was me, mafews and flong sat mid discussion at an empty table, no one to play with. Most of the 5/10 guys in our game had filtered down in a 2/5 game and unsurprisingly that 2/5 game looked pretty shoddy as a result. The discussion on that table was that us 3 were prime villains in discussing advanced strategies at the tables on occasion and that this had a) made the games tougher as a whole, probably improving regs subconsciously etc and b) had scared off recreationals who were worried by the jargon and studious approach to the game we seem to take.

I think it's fairly without question discussing any strategy at the table is a recipe for a disaster and it can only hurt the games in general. I think it's true however that table talk and a talkative table will eventually lead to hands being discussed and stuff and it's a double edged sword as strategy is bad but talk in general is good. I think moving forward I'll be trying to be as careful as possible about discussing any hand at the table.

Flakey Flakerson

Today I was meant to embark on this £25/50 HU 5 card challenge with the mystery mix game player. In short, I've decided to FLAKE. When my man Moseley tells me he thinks its an awful spot I have to stand to attention and take it seriously, no man in British gambling is an expert on the art of edge as that man.

Unsurprisingly my opponent has rubbed it in a bit and is basking in the drop out but there is no buy out enforced and I'm happy to look the fool a bit in order to not be in a heavily -EV spot. It's a shame because these challenges are good for poker I think in general and having some higher stakes action on display usually fuels some life to the live games. Perhaps we can arrange something in the future with fairer terms for both players.

Not a lot to report results wise. I won £700 or some playing PLO last night. Played good, solid and didn't get into many tough pots. Then won £600 playing 5/10NL in a really good game where I got lucky cracking QJo on QJ3 with my KK. Its damn hard to get it in good in Hold'em - right?

innnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

Speech there seems absolutely fine to me. Technically the size of the pot doesn’t matter, but it’s a matter of nobody else in the pot would mind, and the fact that you’re mind gaming when you speech play to some degree is not some big secret.

I was going to pot my hand no matter what though, I’ll have you know. Quit trying to get credit for it!! ��

I mean, Sol's got two pair after 3 checks, pretty easy valuebet, no?

Three pair even. Get off your high horse OP jeez

while Im not exactly an expert on live HU challenges, I still think that this bet wasnt that terrible for you. Live recs, even those who seem kinda competent in ring games, tend to be absolutely atrocious HU (since it's esentially never played live), so your edge might be bigger than you think. Unless you meant that he seemed to be a competent-ish HU player, in which case this is obviously a disaster

oh, it was definitely terrible, pretty much every term listed in initial prop summary is hugely favourable to the other guy. BigA, how have you been a successful live player for quite a while and not yet learned that you never prop bet vs mix game specialists?