The Beginning

Hey so, whats up guys, this is like the intro to my blog changing from LP to FTR. I guess it’s not really a beginning in the sense that I’m just continuing from what I had previously and doing it from a different medium.  Here’s a link to the previous blog where I left off from….

HTTP://Marshall28.liquidpoker.net

Any of the articles that are titled “Entry #x” are going to be decent, the rest is just random stuff I went through.  Anyways, on to the business at hand….

About me, basically, I call it like I see it. I say what I think and I don’t sugarcoat anything. I think one of the most important things to becoming a good player is to be brutally honest with yourself. This is something I’m learning more and more as I’ve just come off of a huge 100k hand heater that topped out at like 74k over the course of four months to going pretty much almost completely busto a month and a half later.

You might think, how could I let that happen, right? … I developed a huge ego because of the amounts of money I was winning, thought I owned poker and it was easy. Then I started taking some bad beats, but kept thinking .. “I own this, it’s easy … things will turn around for sure”. They didnt. I refused to move down in stakes, and now I’m here. I was grinding 25nl earlier today. It’s a good thing I had a 2 hour coaching session scheduled so I made 200 bucks and could move up to 50nl.

What I’m going to try to do in this blog is document my (attempted) ascent from 25/50nl back up to 600nl. I have long term aspirations to play much higher, but obviously this is something that needs to be done step by step, and I’m basically re-starting at the bottom rung. I’ve done it before starting w/ less, so there’s no reason I can’t do it again.

As far as the little 25nl that I have played in the last week or two, there were a few common themes that I encountered. Basically it’s what I would call backwards poker. Everyone check/calls their draws, and only make big bets with big hands. Stacking off against most players preflop with AK is in general a huge mistake at 25nl, and you can’t really ever expect to get three streets of value w/ a strong hand.

Okay so here are a few of the things that I ended up doing in order to eek out a bigger profit….

1. If I had a marginal hand like middle pair or tpwk/tpnk or bottom pr and a gutshot or even just two random overcards or anything like that, and there was a 2 flush on board. I will check/call or just flat call a flop and a turn bet to try to hit my 2 pr or trips, but if a 3rd flush card would come … I’d bluff it like 90% of the time I bet like 2/3 to 3/4 pot and they fold so fast. Players are petrified of flush draws at these limits, and I’m sure they will fold sets to a single bet if you call one street and a 3 flush hits. Here’s an example….

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2143992

2. Play all of your draws fast. If you have an open ended straight draw or a flush draw and are bet into, RAISE!!! Most of these players assume that a raise of their bet means you have 2pr or better soooooo often because in general those are the only hands that other players will raise against them. They will fold TPTK very quickly to a single raise on a flop, I’m sure of it.

3. Medium strength made hands, hands like TPTK, TPGK on non-drawy boards (like KQ on a Q73r board), I would mostly bet the flop, check behind the turn, then call any bet on the river or bet the river myself if checked to again. Like I said above, you can’t expect to get three streets of value out of these hands. With these types of hands on draw heavy boards, what I like to do is bet the flop and the turn as long as the obvious draw they are calling with doesn’t come in, I will check to them on the river if oop because they will bluff their missed draw like 80% of the time it’s ridiculously funny. Even when in position, they check/call two streets, a flush draw misses, then they fire pot on the river into me, I snap call w/ like top pair. If you see it coming, it’s very transparent …just look for it.

4. Monster hands (2pr, sets, flopped flushes/flopped straights)… No real good way to play these. You obviously want to maximize your value, but you can’t get more than 3 streets in most cases, and if you raise them on the flop or turn, they will fold all but their best hands. I guess the best way is to try to slowplay them and hope that the other player isn’t so passive that he will hang himself. It’s not easy to do, but can happen.

I think that mostly if you are struggling to beat 25nl, you really just need to tighten up, play like a 19/16 game, real nitty, and try to follow the guidelines above as much as possible. And keep these things in mind … When someone is shoving into you, they have a big hand, it’s like NEVER a draw … I’ve called too many of these overbets in the last few days to learn that it’s always at least top pair, so don’t fall for it like me. I’m an idiot, lol. When someone is raising you on the flop they aren’t doing it with a draw, even if they have an open ended straight flush draw, they just check call. Give flop raises credit. And for the most part, just fold when you don’t have a moderately strong hand and villain is betting into you. These guys just don’t bluff the flop enough, and are constantly betting top pair. In a bigger game, I’d frequently call c-bets w/ hands like 77 on a J65 board … but it just doesn’t seem to be very profitable here, a lot of times I’m just going to let it go. It’s too hard to get any money out of them since their bluffing frequencies are so low on the flop, and so high on the river.

So earlier today I grinded about 1k hands of 25nl and profited 80 bucks, here are a few of the biggest winners and losers of the day….

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2144095

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2144118

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2144127

And the losers…

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2144133

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2144136

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2144143

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2144196

Nothing real special in any of these really. Just a lot of straightforward play.

After the coaching session I played about 700 hands of 50nl, came up about 2 1/4 buy ins .. I’ll just post some of the hands and get a little bit more into how I’m approaching it differently from how I approach 25nl in my next post.

Big winners…

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2144100

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2144104

I was sure the guy had an 8 on this 2nd one and would fold it on the turn … but who knows what he was thinking showing up w/ 44.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2144158

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2144168

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2144178

and the inevitable losers….

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2144182

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2144183

If you guys have any comments/criticisms/questions please ask I appreciate any and all feedback. Or if there’s something in particular I could address that’s cool too. Anyways, thanks for reading and hopefully I’ll be through this 50nl in no time.

Current Bankroll: $708

GL,

Marshall

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 7:58 pm and is filed under Poker Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.