Diary of an online comeback...?

[Pizzicato]

Ok time for a play update I suppose...

As you can probably tell from my opening sentence I have been really looking forward to this lol

The last week or so I have felt like I have been going backwards. This is probably partially true as I have made alot more mistakes than I would usually and honestly some of them were pretty basic. The feeling has been compounded by the times where I have run deep in a tournament or built a stack one of the seemingly inevitable bad beats or coolers have hit me and snuffed out my best hopes for the session.

I did make a final table early on Wednesday morning ($55 500 cap @ 11:15pm GMT) which was a refreshing change. Its very rare I play the tournament in question as it starts after I usually finish registering non turbo tournaments and it has a fairly small field (usually 200 - 250) and has a higher proportion of regs. I got there as a shortstack but had the perfect table position on the direct left of a hyper aggro player with a monster stack and most of the better players had busted in the last 3 tables. It was a very enjoyable final table to play and I had several interesting spots and I believe I played very well and didnt really make many mistakes.

The hand which signalled my downfall in the tournament is this...



holy h3ll is a regular tournament player and is a fairly standard aggressivish player. For those who understand HEM he runs around 25/21 with a 12% 3bet. Its possible I could have 4bet but given the stack sizes of everyone on the table I think this would be a mistake as I would essentially be pricing myself in to get it in and in this situation I am not massively ahead of his get it in range. My hand however is definately too strong to fold preflop so I elected to call and play a pot in position.

Not the greatest flop in the world by any means but hh does cbet a good percentage of the time and I can still expect to be ahead a reasonable portion of the time. Raising his cbet would be an option but I wasn't keen to do that as its fairly obvious from my line preflop that I don't have AK and the only likely holding I could have that would do that would be KQ or a scared pocket pair. I decided to float and reevaluate on the turn...

Love the turn card and the fact that its checked to me. At this point I decide to go into pot control mode and check behind. At this point I still expect to have most of hh's range in the hand and expect to be ahead a significant portion of the time though the K is still a little bit of a worry...

River river! This was a very interesting river because it reduced the chance that hh could have a king but also brought in the flush draw which would hit my range the way I played the hand. When hh leads at the pot its actually a fairly tough decision because I think he shouldn't be bluffing here half as often as he should bluff a brick. In hindsight I think I should have folded as the bet was a little on the thick end and he definately won the maximum...

For the record I ended up taking 4th place to allow me a break even day after reshipping A8 to a hh open and for the second hand in a row he had KK lol

Overall I have definately picked up on several things I need to work on over the last few days and I am planning on taking a few days away from the grind to do some extra work on my game and to allow for some R&R. It will be nice to become a sociable being again, even if only for a few days

[Pizzicato]

Brief update as regards to my Valentines day coup...

Weee it arrived!!!







There was supposed to be a message but unfortunately it didn't seem to make it on...

Pretty happy all the same though

Now we just got to work out how to cut a slice lol

[StGilmore]

That is some amazing tower of valentine confectionary there! (hope your missues says the same to you with double meanings attached )
_________________
"I find it's best to start the day with no composure and then you've got nothing to lose." B. Boatman

http://midlifepoker.blogspot.com/
http://outthescammers.blogspot.com/

[X]

Really good read Piizi - please keep posting!
_________________
PS: Ulysses1975
GP: THMFXX

I, Ulysses - Blog
Playing Razz Poker

'I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.' Edgar Allan Poe

[Wodge]

Regarding the headaches have you considered your diet. I am being serious actually, nothing to do with the lovely looking cake.
Just while I have never had migraines I used to get headaches when I shouldn't of. Can be a number of things, caffeine, sugar, wheat etc. I played around with what I was eating and drinking and now pretty much only get headaches I deserve.

[Pizzicato]

[Pizzicato]

Ok so its monday 'morning' and the washing up awaits me from Sunday dinner so it seems like a perfect time to procrastinate and do a diary update with the weekends play...

I am not a particularly suspicious person. In fact I almost go out of the way not to be superstitious which almost does make me superstitious in a weird kind of way. I have however changed my avatar on Stars (back to my original avatar) for a few reasons of which one of them may be a little superstitious as the last time I changed it was pretty much when I stopped winning. Not saying I think there is a coincidence but at this point I will take all the help I can get...

The other thing I did was to change which skin I use on the stars tables... Previously I have been using hyper simple. While its rare I use table ninja there are only limited skins it works on and hyper is kind of the best of a bad lot as far as that goes. I realised that my thinking on the matter is kinda flawed as if I intend to use TN I can just switch skins and I havn't used it in months. Also the new final table skin on hyper simple just does not work as well on that skin as it does many others and quite frankly looks kinda mangled. With all that in mind I have switched over to a skin (Nova Blue) I havn't used previously which I am finding alot easier on the eyes at least in the short term though there is slightly less space for HEM stats etc...

So feeling refreshed and hoping I can acheive a better level of focus on the tables I started my Saturday grind at 9am sharp. Registered through to The Big 55 with a few turbos after. Bit of a mixed bag day really and in all honesty I can't remember too too many details about it though I do plan to go over my hh's tomorrow to see what mistakes were made and what went well...

I did make a final table ($8 1r1a) which is always nice, especially as for a complete change of pace making the top few spots would actually allow me a profit for the day instead of fighting to break even as is often the case. I came in as chipleader and promptly started losing cooler races which couldnt really be avoided and lo and behold I busted in 6th place meaning I got to break even for the day (maybe $200 up but meh). I did run deep in a bunch of other stuff as well which while some people may find dissappointing (ie 20th in Big 22, 17th in Eurbo etc) but makes me feel really positive about the day overall.

As we all know, or if you dont and continue reading this thread you will find out, being an MTT grinder can be pretty heartbreaking alot of the time so its important to look past results to find things that continue to give you motivation. That kind of day is a perfect example because alot of people would look at the day and think 'what if' or 'why cant I ever get accross the line' etc etc. While its important to check to see if you made any mistakes and so on, a day like that is actually a very positive thing for me because while I didn't make much in the way of profit, I did generate alot of equity in the tournaments I played and I got in good volume at a good concentration level which over a 15+ hour session isn't always as easy as all that...


Moving on to Sunday...

I had a great sunday dinner with the (kind of) brother in law, his wife and 2 of their kids which also meant that I got to slack off and have a shorter Sunday session I have done in ages... Dinner was all done by about 4pm to allow me to get on the lappy but instead I decided to go and have a doze as I was getting that full and tired feeling which is never a good idea to start a big session on. I got a couple of hours sleep and woke up feeling pretty refreshed and ready to go and also without that slight feeling of dread of an upcoming monster session with stupidly high Sunday variance...

I am very happy with how I played overall and while again I couldn't convert any of my hope I considered it a very good equity session. I had several deep runs and nicely enough my deep runs were at the higher end of my buyin range for a change... I was weilding a large stack in the Milly (1) for a very long time and ended up busting in 103rd and also managed 15th in the $55 $50K Gtd. I also had a good run in the $22 1r1a which is pretty monster on a Sunday and a solid run in The Bigger 109.

My bust hand from the bigger 109 was actually a pretty solid mistake and was a slight case of a moment of autopilot biting me in the ass... A very good player TAG type player opened utg +1 and I 3bet JJ from the BB. I got into a world of hurt on a Q3456 board where my stack was threatened (and lost) fairly needlessly and just underlines the importance of focusing properly and taking the extra second to take in all the information available as opposed to realising the mistake seconds after its been made and trying to work a way out of it (which will fail more often than not).

Anyway.. I should probably go and get the chores done so I can rinse/repeat today but with more winning and less losing

[pvas]

Nice read and good analysis of that hand.

Do you always bet that amount preflop? I would think that making it 7700 at 1500/3000 is a little big? Even 2.5x seems to be more than what I tend to see these days, especially the shorter handed you get the more often you should be opening and therefore the smaller your bet should be don't you think but that's more of a personal preference I guess? Also, I take it your stats are for a 9handed table and you are being 3bet here with worse than yours a lot when short handed. I agree with your analysis but think that river is a fold and turn you can bet third of the pot or something small. It will fold out all non K or Q hands and keep the draws in, meaning you know the sort of rivers to fold (kings or hearts). He doesn't have AK as played a lot, although he could be a bit worried what you are flatting with because KQ seems likely (no AK, some KJ but rarely worse kings) and then you could have medium pairs. When you call flop and then check the turn it looks like you have a medium pair 77-10s sort of thing so he is only really value betting on that river or it looks like exactly what you have (a floating hand turned in to a hand with showdown value) so it is the perfect card for him to get value on and an awful card for him to bluff.

I don't often write any hand analysis but thought I would since I like this forum on the whole, so maybe it is helpful. I look forward to reading more of this comeback and maybe it will encourage me to increase my volume too.

[Pizzicato]

Some very good questions there pvas...

My usual default size at that blind level would actually be 6666 but unfortunately I had put in that size on the first hand I had played in that blind level and I am a great believer in once making an open at a blind level that the rest of the opens should be the same amount. I could have perhaps changed it over but it can feel awkward changing raise sizes part way through a level, especially when you are picking up the stronger part of your opening range as you don't want to give off sizing tells when you want action

The reason I didn't bet the turn was a fairly greedy one... I was wanting to get value from the times that he has the mid PP, A5, QJ, JT etc which he may well choose to stab the river at, especially when the flush misses. I do agree that I should have folded the river (as I said in the analysis) and overall I think my line in the hand was pretty below par, especially when taking into account the ICM considerations vs the other stacks on the table...

I am hoping that I don't make this mistake again and rehashing it on here a couple of times and being asked questions like yours do help it sink in more solidly than the standard 'mental note'

[evelyn]

[The Dean]

Keep up the good work Pizzi.......these posts look about as much of a slog as the grinding

Loving the read mate
_________________
Poker columnist at www.poker.co.uk

[The Dean]

Wtf is that cake supposed to be anyway.......looks like Frankensteins head with a pair of lips on the top
_________________
Poker columnist at www.poker.co.uk

[Bogus]

[SeanFoley]

[X]