It's Late and I Can't Think Of A Title

Since my previous blog entry I started to run downright terrible, eating a downswing of just under ~$2k, probably in the 12-15BI range. Thankfully I put together a pretty solid Friday session profiting just over $1.4k in 5.5k hands, while coming oh-so-close to being at AIEV for the day. Been quite some time since that happened, close but no cigar I guess. Somewhat disturbing that I only managed 5.5k hands today and it didn't feel like I was slacking that terribly. I used to crank out 10-12k hands on Fridays like clockwork, and while I am intending to be taking it easy this month (along with the remainder of the year), at least a little more volume wouldn't hurt. I suppose the low volume is partially because it was tough getting 24 tables open so much of my session was 12-18 tabling. Perhaps I should make a better effort to split volume to maximize hands per hour, I haven't been playing much on FTP at all recently. On the plus side, as my volume proportionally has been at higher stakes over the past months my VPPs/hand is quite a bit higher comparatively to when I was putting in 12k hand sessions in the past, so it'd perhaps only take 9k hands or so to end up with the same number of VPPs, which as every Stars player knows are what makes the world go round!

I have two hands from Friday to post. The first is simply an instance of a regular spazzing out. He's a pretty spewy reg who has been break even at best for the past year or more. I think his turn jam is pretty interesting because he obviously thinks I'm going to be folding AK along with KK+, which against a guy who spazzes postflop as much as he does probably isn't the case. Note that we're 5 handed, and the villain basically never ever has AK, he'd be 4b/calling preflop. He's repping JJ/TT/QJ/QT. I actually think his shove would be pretty good if he had a better image. Were I to jam in a similar spot against a good thinking regular I'd imagine everything but boats folds a lot, which come to think of it is awfully exploitable.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00 BB (5 handed)
UTG ($107.05)
MP ($58.50)
Button ($100)
Hero (SB) ($120)
BB ($101)

Preflop: Hero is SB with Q♥, Q♣
UTG bets $3, 2 folds, Hero raises to $12, 1 fold, UTG calls $9

Flop: ($25) Q♠, 10♦, Q♦ (2 players)
Hero checks, UTG checks

Turn: ($25) J♥ (2 players)
Hero bets $12.50, UTG raises to $95.05 (All-In), Hero calls $82.55

River: ($215.10) 9♣ (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $215.10 | Rake: $2

Results:
Hero had Q♥, Q♣ (four of a kind, Queens).
UTG mucked 5♠, 5♥ (two pair, Queens and fives).
Outcome: Hero won $213.10


The second hand was my largest pot of the day by far. The preflop opener was a maniac whale type, while the caller and eventual villain in the hand was a fish who while not being completely ridiculous preflop (I believe I had him running around 28/12 or so), absolutely loved to 3b and would spew stacks like crazy postflop. He also would never, ever, ever, fold to a 3b. Because the fish loved to 3b so much and was facing an open from the whale, it's next to certain that he can't have TT+ in his range as he would have 3b pre. Thus, I'm only worried about 8x and 7x on the turn, in addition to T9 and 66 on the river. As there's tons of combos of overcards/gutters/FDs/22-55 left in his range that I beat, it's actually not that heroic of a call, but I do still only have AK high so that has to count for something!

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (8 handed)
BB ($200)
UTG ($304)
UTG+1 ($337.45)
MP1 ($788)
MP2 ($182.60)
CO ($442)
Button ($400)
Hero (SB) ($400)

Preflop: Hero is SB with K♠, A♦
1 fold, UTG+1 bets $12, 2 folds, CO calls $12, 1 fold, Hero raises to $56, 2 folds, CO calls $44

Flop: ($128) 8♦, 7♦, 7♣ (2 players)
Hero bets $64, CO calls $64

Turn: ($256) 8♥ (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $72, Hero calls $72

River: ($400) 6♠ (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $250 (All-In), Hero calls $208 (All-In)

Total pot: $816 | Rake: $3

Results:
Hero had K♠, A♦ (two pair, eights and sevens).
CO had K♦, 10♦ (two pair, eights and sevens).
Outcome: Hero won $813

On the gaming front, I've started up a second playthrough of Persona 4. I recall it being a straight up great game that simply wasn't quite as good as Persona 3, and unfortunately also didn't finish terribly strong. Thus far it's been a whole lot of fun, which is refreshing about being let down a little by Valkyria and moreso by Atelier: Rorona. WoW also released the framework for Cataclysm recently, and I like the changes. As a tank you can definitely tell that after aiming to make content far more "easily accessible" in WotLK, the goal for Cataclysm is to put the challenge back some. Sure, it means you might not be able to use the dungeon finder and roll through content with randoms and zero coordination, but is that really so bad?

Hope the Flames don't let me down tomorrow against the Oilers after such a piss poor effort against Florida. I really want to get behind this team and have high hopes for the season, but they're making it tough!