bizarre cosmic industries

It's beeing a very bad month. I'm going bad in every possible way. Those who know about my preflop play, I'm playing a quite tight game, I raise less than other players, reraise less and go all-in way too less. But when we look at the hands I went all-in with, I'm losing money. people are pushing my 4-bets with 67s, 44, QK or every other stupid hand but I am still losing money with the hands I went all-in preflop even though I don't reraise with AK's or JJ's if I don't want to go all-in. The point is, I'm losing a real big amount by folding these aggro pre-flop reraises and when I show some strenght with premium hands, I'm losing with them...

The problem is not only with pre-flop all-ins. My overpairs held only %75 of the time (which means I lost a big pot with the rest) , my sets only held %85 of the time, my two pairs held only %77 of the time.

I suppose I'm having a big downswing since last month and when luck evens out during next months I'll be in a good shape. I'm happy I didn't loose anything this two months.

I'll share you the hands I lost since yesterday. (last 48 hours)

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4275575
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4275583
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4275585
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4275587
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4275590
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4275597
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4275604
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4275609 (I had a read on this one, but it didn't work)
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4275612 (would you bet the river here?)
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4275623 (yippee I got the nuts)
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4275637 (classic)
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4275647 (this one is a bit strange, I thought he would fold I was wrong)
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4275670
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4275694
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4275699 (at least I didn't loose this one)


the number of badbeats may seem a bit too much for untrained eyes, but you should know that the essential damage was done by the coinflips I lost and other pre flop set ups...

patience is the key

Life," said Marvin dolefully, "loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it"

It's been around 2 months that I'm running quite bad. I have been always proud about how stable my game was. So it still may be like that. I still haven't got any losing month since the April of 2008. But the last part of March I lost, I couldn't win anything (ended with 0) during April and I'm losing this month. So I should better name it a downswing.

When I'm losing what tilts me is not the amount I loose but the impossibility of playing another 100 k hands in a very short time. The longer that time is the more I become on tilt. This is because I have a huge confidence in my game and I know for sure that in the long term I will win . But as it has been during these past 2 months I've always had some other business to keep me away from playing 10 hours a day. Going out with girlfriend is standard 2 evenings in a week, visiting parents once a week, birthday of a friend, party at a friends' house, the visit of a friend living abroad, the farewell of a friend going abroad etc. etc..

What I need really is to sit down for 3-4 days and thinking only about poker, polishing some flaws in my game, studying opponents and win some bucks for god's sake...

This is giving me a lot of stress and the cure is simple but I can't do anything about it

I hope next time I'll write something in a better mood.

a midsummer night's nightmare

If you have enough monkeys banging randomly on typewriters, they will eventually type all the works of William Shakespeare.

This is the idea behind the following hands, check them out, or don't. it's up to you.


http://www.pokerhand.org/?4019261 (don't forget the name of this guy, we will see him again)
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4019287 believe me, you can't fold this to him
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4019294 the first but not the last of this genre
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4019300 the fish strikes back
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4019307 lovely
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4019319 tiny but sweet isn't it
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4019350 I love this one, only 3 outs to split the pot on the turn, 125 bb
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4019375 well yeah, I never expected to win that one..
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4019378 I gotta learn to fold these
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4019391 I'm gambling here any rational player would fold this one
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4019419 this one's a good observer, he noticed I can't win all ins
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4019577 great I didn't lose this one.. I feel lucky!
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4019626 phew, that J almost hit the board



so yeah, I had an interesting day

achille's agony and ecstasy

Today I'm not going to bother you with my downswings and badbeats nor I'm going to tell how ingeniously I played a given hand. I'm going to discuss what should be the ideal time spent for poker.

Our class today is "labor economics". We define the economic rent as:

The economic rent = total compensation - the opportunity cost

The total compensation includes the money earned, the pleasure received or some other benefits of the given activity.

The oppurtunity cost is "the value of the next best alternative foregone as the result of making a decision"

We can deduct that we have to do something if its economic rent is positive and not do if the economic rent is negative.

The economic rent of playing poker for a given time is the expected amount we would earn - our oppurtunity cost. So going out for a movie which would take 4 hours of our working time has an economic rent of "the utility we would recieve from going out for a movie - the cost of the movie - 4 x our hourly winrate"

If the marginal utility of the money (for our total wealth) is bigger than the utility recieved from the alternative action we would choose playing poker.

I assume that I will start playing less as my bankroll grows and I will be spending more time doing other things because of the decreasing economic rent of playing poker which will increase the quality of my life.

I told you all of these because currently I'm suffering of being an associal playing 8 hours of poker a day and spending the rest of the day thinking about how can I improve my game. Adding this to having an inverted day time (sleeping at 4-5 am and working when everyone gets out of their jobs) and the general disrespect against preofessional players, playing a lot of poker makes you feel like an alien.

I may add something related to this issue in the future.

Homework: make an effort to improve your time management.

Good Luck!

something worth talking about

It feels really bad to see all month's effort melting away in 24 hours. I just received my worst run in 24 hours = -18k since my last bankroll peak last night. I admit I couldn't play my A game all the time but I really can't see any tiltplay when I check the hands I played. Just some desperate reactions against poor opponents taking weird lines all the time (every time it turns out that they catched their gutshot or set on the turn or river)

Below are the hands that tilted me a bit and of course I lost many other coinflips or tough beats like overpair vs overpair type. Reading the hands below is just a waste of time but if you are running bad and you are in need of seeing that some other guy is running bad as well just check them out

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3902256
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3902261
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3902275
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3902280
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3902287
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3902289
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3902296
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3902315
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3902320
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3902331
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3902349
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3902353


I will play a lot until Saturday to earn something at least. As I'm kind of a tilt-free guy I play more during losing streaks and less during winning ones.

yours is no disgrace

The title is what I said to myself after todays session. I was up 4k and suddenly I started to recieve very standard set ups and lost 8k. But I'm not whinning about it cause this has been my first losing session since my last entry and I was the benefactor of these standard set ups during that time.

Nevertheless, I know that my game improved a lot lately. I'm doing less big mistakes but still I'm doing some small ones. On top of that my awareness on player styles has improved. I change gears a lot during the game to push my opponents into deception and when I notice they make adjustments I change gears again. I don't mean becoming lag or tag by changing gears I mean I can change my preflop raise range, my calling range, I can increase or decrease my aggression, I choose between playing solid like a rock or playing like a maniac/making -EV calls or raises for deception and to push them on tilt.

I also think that during that change in my game my image in the tables changed as well. I've been known as a solid tag for the past months but now people are not so sure about how to react against me. I feel that they usually don't know if I'm going to make that call or not or they can't make a clear guess about what am I holding. Bluffing me becomes more and more difficult consequently.

During evenings I play and during the day I usually analyze my game and my regular opponent's. I will suggest you a very helpfull study. Try to find new bluff lines against your regular opponents. Don't raise too big to commit yourself into the pot for example, raise smaller and let them know that this can be a bluff regardless of you are actually bluffing or not. Don't let any of your moves mean something. Try to eliminate from your game moves that shout "I got a big hand". If you are in need of slowplaying some big hands that usually means that you are not pushing your opponents enough with bluffs.

Get better or quit.

Untill next time.

divine intervention

What superpower you would like to have? running with the speed of light? flying? invulnerability? mine would be to pull out the luck factor out of the equation and leaving people naked with their equity, how does it sound? My name would be "The Neutralizer" with a big "N" on my chest and I would dedicate my life to victims of bad luck.

I started this month 7k down in 6k hands. I played good, I was going to own the tables, but something was wrong. My two pre-flop all-ins with AK vanished against two mighty AQ, one in the hands of a donk the other in the hands of Stewie the spewy. Later cortstr hit his bottom set to my top two pairs when he was 10 tabling. Seconds later I made the same to rexmundi and we went all in on the flop but I forgot that he doesn't lose a hand if he has outs so he made full with his top two, my bad..

Apart from recieving some tough beats like JJ vs AA, QQ vs KK, I lost every coinflip I was involved. The donks tought this was not enough so they decided to give some badbeats to my AA with 99, to my KK with 67, and to my AQ with KQ... my charity foundation aims turning shortstacks into fullstacks. I will always support them.

Adding the number of 3 outers found on the river against my top pairs and overpairs I earned the right of whinning all night.

It seems like I will spend the rest of the month for recovery, well at least I am not on a tilt..

The end of January I played some live poker in Cyprus. I saw the biggest donks/regular ratio on 5-10 and 10-20 tables in my life and the regulars were from 0.5/0.10 cent tables from the Internet (at least it seemed like that) Whereas it was boring like hell to wait for a hand during hours, chatting with people and feeling like a poker god amongst insects eased my burden a little.

When I go there again, I would be more than happy to take one serious player with me as a company, so think about that guys.

Oh there is he! The Neutralizer! our saver!

Be good untill next time