7 2 BLUFF...Diary of a poker player

Travelled to Apsers for the Thursday afternoon £40 entry £1,000 Gtd with £5 bounty. First hand with blinds at 50/25 we get a raise UTG of 100 and UTG+1 re-raises to 200 and a caller from the SB. I put in an extra 150 with 87o from the BB and UTG completes and we go 4 way to the flop 9 10 J 2 hearts, SB checks and I bet 500 into the 800 pot, UTG folds and UTG makes it 1,200, I re-raise to 2,900 and UTG folds, UTG+1 tanks and finally calls. I thought he may be Hollywooding but was still surprised that he called. The turn was a blank as as we started with 8K stacks I put him all in hoping he’d flopped a set or had an overpair or the flush draw with AK. He called “Do you have King Queen?” I asked “Yeah…” 160 BB in one hand not good poker.

I re-entered and called what I took to be a button squeeze only to run into pocket aces I then raised to 425 with A9o from mid-position and go called from button and the big blind. I checked a flop of A Q 10 only for the button to raise to 1,000 I had 2,000 left and stuck it in to be shown AJ, it was a simple fold I would have had 10BB to play on with. £80 down in 50 minutes I got a pizza in Franco Manca and went home to play cash on-line which was the right decision as I was definitely on tilt.

So I was playing the 25NL game and flatted a 50 cent raise only to get a raise behind to $2.5 and a caller initial raiser folded and I shipped $25 with my disguised Queens. Initial re-raiser called and showed down pocket aces to take the pot. So how bad was my play and how many BB should you get all in with Queens pre-flop.

So if you re-raiser is tight by card distribution if he is playing KK+ and AK then he has AK 57% of the time and Aces or Kings 43% .

Here I should have flatted and taken a flop, for Jacks I put a maximum of 20-30 BB in pre-flop, with Queens 100BB deep you need to take a flop.

Came 81st out of 224 runners in the Friday £60 buy-in at Aspers played well and finished at midnight so not a bad night out. I cashed the previous Sunday winning  £110 net in the £40 bounty where one regular called me an “annoying c**t” for banging my chip stacks down, cutting them and re-stacking, repeatedly. I think he was on tilt as I’d slow played a monster and he’d bluffed the river big with a busted draw. I busted him shortly afterwards when he open shoved his pocket 4s into my big blind holding pocket 7s  for 15BB.  I spoke to the card room manager and made it clear that his behaviour was unacceptable although he didn’t get a penalty. He did get spoken to about it, but it is not what you want to hear on a Sunday afternoon. Cash has been up and down playing $25NL, I was up to £130 then down to £20 now back to £235. It seems key to not bluff all-in at these levels and I had one disastrous hand where I lost $70 on a complete airball shove into turned trip aces. I also played 2 x $11 satellites for 5 x $55 gtd tickets to the $220 DTD monthly tournaments and was successful both times. I played one $55 entry and came 7th when 5 x $220 tickets were guaranteed, I was counterfeited on the river by AK when the board double paired. Not sure if it was the right move shoving pockets 5s into 5 with 17BB with ICM on a flat structure with 7 left paying 5. I’ve bought some books to read on mixed games and three books of poker essays, I’ll update once I have made more progress with them. Booked Las Vegas 15th June for 6 nights at the Bellagio, flying Virgin Premium Economy direct for a great rate of £1, 574 per person for Resort Queen with two beds with Expedia. I’m looking to play the WSOP 3 day Senior’s event for $1,000 with my brother.    

I played 0.10/0.25 $25NL and quit with a $30 profit, also played a $5.50 satellite but got locked out and it cost me as the internet is flaky here. Played a $109 satellite ticket I had that was due to expire for the Millions on PartyPoker. I shoved a 40BB stack over a loose opener’s min raise and got called by pocket fives, unfortunately he hit trips on the flop and sent me to the rail. Not so bad, I want to transition to live cash before Vegas in the Summer so I can comfortably play the $1/$2 uncapped at the Golden Nugget, it seems a wild game.

I’ve joined Audible and am currently listening to Verbal Poker Tells by Zachary Elwood, I’ll give you a review later but for now this is an interesting video discussing the topic.

Played poker for the first time in almost 3 weeks bought in for $25 at the cash table on PartyPoker and ran it up to $66 in under an hour. I flopped a straight and got it all in by the river on a paired board for $25, I experimented with some 3-betting from the button which went well, check followed by my c-bet on the flop dragged a few pots.

This guy owned it for millions and left the party in 2013 mainly on line but $4.7 Million live too.

I’ve read this book, I must re-read it now I’m a better player and I know what it costs! Seemed pretty good but as it is from 2008 these concepts are available in $35 books you can now buy by Moorman and Little.

I like Doug Polk, he gives great analysis makes interesting videos and plays great poker. His Hendonmob profile shows a healthy $5,068,368 of tournament winnings and $577,266 at high stakes on line with Pokerstars where pots range from $20K to $100K.

Key point is how big is your edge online when six years of winnings can be wiped out in 5 hands? He was up $1.09M in Nov 2013  and is down $513K in just over the 3 years all of which are losing ones with PokerStars.

2014 down $161K

2015 down $57K

2016 down 94K

Good news for Doug on FullTilt he’s a winner up $1.58M for a combined total of $2.15Million. (See graphs below)

2014 up $1.08M

2015  up $48K

2016 no results

Read this review from HighStakesdb for Romain Arnaud and then check his graph. The press and players highlight wins not losses, only 5% win at poker the same percentage for winners in all aspects of life. Those that win do it through hard work not the Motzart myth.

Part of the new wave of highly aggressive and highly successful French pro’s Romain “moirhums” Arnaud plays regularly at PokerStars in the highstakes PLO and NLHE games. Adept at both ring games and heads up play moirhums began playing poker in early 2007 playing NL10. He quickly realised that he had a talent at the game and by mid 2007 had built a roll in excess of $10,000 and took a shot at NL1000. Since then he has never looked back and can be seen regularly playing stakes as high as $100/$200 PLO against the best in the world.

See graph here