April in Review + May Goals (Plus special bonus: Graphs!)

Wow. I had the best poker month of my life.

I only played half the month, depositing on the 13th of April and playing most days during the month.

I had my two largest winning days ever one day for $482 and today for $486 (i obviously instaquit as soon as i realized where i was at and quit for the month. i'm superstitious that way.)

I feel super good about my game right now (obviously, since i ran super hot today) But more than that, i feel like i'm playing really well and working with Grant doing sweat sessions has been really helpful, as I feel like talking through spots with him has helped me gain some perspective on how to play hands and about some of the theory of the game.

I have made some minor tweaks to the theory of play that I take into a match and am really incorporating note taking to help me with reads. I played almost entirely 2/4 this month with a tiny bit of 3/6 (once chasing a fish and the other because i felt really good and took a shot) I am going to take a more concentrated shot at 3/6 in May. I have almost enough money to take a decent shot without having my bankroll crushed if i drop 100 bets.

For May I have fairly lofty, yet achievable goals. I dont like to make my goals monetary, but the first one requires that I win some money.

1) move up to 3/6 so that it can be my main game
2) continue to do sweat sessions with Grant and talk about the game
3)put in 10k hands, but only if i'm feeling good about playing
4)try to learn to quit aggro players more qujckly - I have no need to swing bets with guys who play decent.

Goals for life this month:
1) finish my book. this is the first month in a long time where i havent finished an entire book.
2) get outside and play tennis at least once a week with my friends (this is a new sport to me)
3) get settled in at my new full time job
4)don't allow poker or any of the first 3 life goals to interfere with spending time with Melissa.
5) turn 24 as unassumingly as i did 23

Here are the bonus graphs:

Today:




April with Red/Blue lines:
(Red line is won without showdown, Blue line is won with showdown)




Cheers to April.

LQ

Currently Listening: Les Savy Fav - Lets Stay Friends

What Wolves Would Do

I'm really really tired right now. I was up at 2am today to work for the city. That was awesome.

It didn't affect my poker game, as I played pretty well and ran decent. I took a shot at 3/6 and took one guy for 10 bets. It helped that I made top pair a bunch.

Last day of the month tomorrow. I'm hoping for the run hot one time. Maybe I can get a session in with Grant.

My sister is moving to Vancouver friday, so we're going to visit her before she leaves. It's exciting for her since this will be the first time in 2 years that she and her boyfriend will be in the same town.

I played some tennis tonight. We played doubles and my team lost 4-6 4-6, but we went multiple deuces on both set points... really fun match.

Sorry, this is a really scattered post.

I'm going to watch some Entourage and then to bed.

LQ

Currently Listening: The Rifles - The Great Escape

The Dryness & The Rain

I started a new job yesterday which is going to but into my poker grind. I'm disappointed about this, but obviously happy for the steady income.
I am working for the City at the Oliver Woods Community Center as a custodian. I had worked there like 3 days a year ago when it first opened, but I hadnt done anything there since. It's certainly not the most exciting job... and there isnt as much freedom of motion as my last City job, but I can hardly complain for the money and stability that it will offer me in the short term.

The guy who is the 'main' custodian is a really funny old fella who keeps a high standard of what the facility should look like, so I'm going to have to work to keep it looking decent. I have also worked for the manager before, and I've never had any troubles with her - she seems really nice and it sounds like she won't be at our complex very often, as she manages two different ones.

Anyway, after having my best poker day ever, I had a pretty bad downswing and lost all that I won in the last two days. oh poker.

I played one more session after work last night and ran into a guy who dropped 30 bets (of which i took 22 and the rake took 8). He played a very straight forward game and I didnt have to worry about him bluffing me very much. He took the absolute value of his hand too far sometimes which caused him to spew on occasion.. and he was tricky by limp reraising QQ once. But mostly he folded when i would bet to him if he missed, check back flops where he had K or A high... and often folded when bet into. The most difficult thing he did was donk with a somewhat wide range of hands...most of them value, but occasionally junk. He would give up with his junk after one street, so it was easy to take one card off kinda light and then bet and get him to fold.

I was happy that it worked out well that way.

I'm getting excited about the next season of DC. Apparently there is a Danzasmack/DeathDonkey series.. HULHE one time! The only series i've followed there this sesaon has been Five's A Crowd. Passing The Torth (the other limit holdem series) was much too basic for me to get anything out of. Adri's quesionts, while pertinent to her own development, are questions I feel have been talked about before, or that I know intuitively (mostly the former... I rarely know something intuitively).

That's all for now, I think. I hope to get a decent session in today, and I know Grant has today off and was looking to grind a bunch, so i'll have to check on him as well.

LQ

Currently Listening: Jimmy Eat World - Stay By My Side Tonight (EP)

The Modern Leper

I'll make this post pretty short, but I had the best day poker day of my life today winning $482 in like 500 hands.

I played a pretty long session against one fish who I had played some hands with before a couple days ago. He played super awful and was VERY exploitable. He never believed me and would call down constantly with Ace and King high. It made the game really easy to play. He also check raised like 6% (compared to a strong player who would be c/r 40%ish) on the flop. So after i took my one bullet on the flop, if i didnt like the turn or didnt have a hand, I could give up. Anytime he 3bet he would call down if i raised him on the flop when i hit a pair. Always.

Anyways. he bought in for $40 six times, and $20 three times and I busted him for 300 total. It made me feel really good.

But thats all. Pretty good stuff, imo.

LQ

Knife Party

Yesterday was pretty cool for me in my poker life. I did a sweat session with GrantKropf from DeucesCracked. Basically we use a program called Teamviewer which lets us look at each others screen, and then use skype to talk.
This was a really unique and interesting experience for me for a number of reasons. First is that, while I have a number of poker friends that I see in real life on a regular basis, none of them take the game as seriously as I do and none of them play limit hold em, let alone HULHE. So discussions we have tend to be on no limit sng theory, as thats what we play most often when we get together.
With Grant it was quite different, because we are playing the same game and both take quite a bit of time to get better at the game. Grant is currently playing one limit higher than me at 3/6, while i am playing 2/4, but the game is still quite similar... the villains dont change much in these limits. When we make the jump to 5/10 some of the theory needs to be adjusted. So how this worked was we took turns playing villains and going over spots to decide what to do and why we are doing it. I believe i am quite a bit more showdown bound than Grant, so it was interesting to listen to his thought process about why he folds hands. I also like to see more flops than Grant, as I want to fold likie 7% of my hands, and he probably folds closer to 15%. Despite that, we had a super productive session and watching each other play and discussing our thought process was super valuable for my game.

Grant got a little lucky in the sweat session to run into a maniac that dropped a bunch of bets to him really quickly... I ran a little cooler, but still managed to turn a nice profit for the day.

The big thing that changed for me after doing the sweat is really paying attention to hands and making more notes. That's something that I've been really bad at in my game, and seeing Grant be able to make a call or fold because of previous information is definitely going to be beneficial for my winrate.

I played a shorter session so far today, and may play more, but its really nice outside so I'm going to take advantage and read my book out there for a bit.

Also, Shannon Shorr, who is my favourite tournament player to follow TV final tabled the WPT Championship... so thats pretty cool.
And I've been listening to the Justin Shronk tribute, which is really sad.. he was doing a good thing at Poker Road and i'll definitely miss what he added to that show.

LQ

Currently Listening: Deftones - Saturday Night Wrist
Currently Reading: East of Eden - John Steinbeck

Get Fighted

I had a pretty interesting session today at 2/4 HUHU I got in 450 hands and turned a pretty nice profit.

I played a couple guys who berated me pretty badly for my play. This has been written about before, but i really dont feel like im playing my best unless someone calls me a donkey at some point in the session.

Some players just dont get that when i make a play at them and then they 3bet me, i often have enough equity to continue now that i've bloated the pot. For example I had K3o on a QJ2 board with two of a suit giving me two backdoors. I decided to c/r since i could take down the pot right there. villain immediately 3bet me, giving me 9-1 on a call. I called and say a beautiful T roll off giving me enough equity in my hand to peel and the implied odds of knowing that i dont put more money in the pot untill i hit my hand.

I did hit my hand and he showed me a set of jacks and bemoaned how awful i am.
What he doesnt get is that im raising there for a bunch of reasons. One is so that I'm not always raising with a strong hand and that will force him to call me down with A high more often when i c/r him, which is going to be profitable for me since most of what i c/r with is a value hand.

Anyways, moral of that story is that there is often more than the face value of a play going on. Even though against his exact hand i was -EV to make that call on the flop, his total range, balancing, and implied odds more than make up for that exact situation.

I'm starting to feel better about my HU game, as i took a month off, which left me a little rusty. I'm starting to get in the groove and understand spots and i feel like im hand reading pretty well right now.

Hopefully that continues on.

Life update: We booked a caterer for our wedding today, which we are both really happy about. And im going to give a couple squash lessons right now, which will be alright.

LQ

Currently Reading: East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Currently Listening: Alexisonfire - Watch Out
Currently Watching: Entourage Season 2

New Blog

So i did it.

I started blogging again.

I'll quickly give some background on my previous blogging attempts and on me:

I hosted a blog in 2004 that I lovingly called The Blake Olsen Theory. I rocked that blog for many months and quite enjoyed the experience. I had a few other blogging friends and we enjoyed linking each other and all that fun stuff you do when you're new to the online publishing world.
I also hosted a blog on Cardrunners, which im sure is still there under Liquid_Quik if anyone is interested in checking it out.

About me in general and what makes me an authority worth reading in this saturated blogging world:

While this will be primarily a poker blog, I don't want it to be simply that. I actually would be really sad if that was all I wrote about. I am 23 and live in British Columbia Canada. I recently graduated with my History and Education degrees from Vancouver Island University, and am also a certified squash professional.

I also love poker. my game of choice these days is Heads Up Limit Holdem, and that is the game i feel most comfortable with right now. I have also logged a decent sample of sngs, micro fullring and 6max and MTTs. I know Omaha 8 or Better pretty well and i would argue that that is my second best game. I have played all the games in the HORSE rotation as well as a bit of Badugi and Triple Draw. I love learning all the different games.

I have been playing poker for 5-6 years, like everyone else, and I got my start with friends playing a quarter game and we played all the random poker variations before holdem got huge. When the holdem boom hit we played that pretty extensively and I loved the game for a long time.

My purpose with this blog, if I am to set a mandate for it, is to chronicle my life journey through poker and all the things that go along with it. I feel like that is my main focus, but not exclusively so.

wish me luck.

LQ

PS: current poker content - this has been commented on many times in the forums, but it makes me feel like im doing something really well when someone decides that its time to tell me that they hope my family dies in some horrible accident. This happened to me tonight at 2/4 on route to a dude dropping $120 in my lap. holla.