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I had a pretty busy weekend, so I only played about 600 hands. Had a decent win rate – 13% – and capped off my weekend by taking out a serious LAG (Loose-Aggressive) player who was just donking chips off left and right. I lost a fairly big pot to her early in that session, maybe 20k, where I got my money in good with AQ vs A9 and she flopped two pair and turned a boat. Bad luck for me.

But I was patient, picked my spots, and eventually ran up a decent 90k stack. I limped pocket Kings (KK) knowing she would raise. She made it 2k and we got a couple callers before action returned to me. I raised the pot, making it about 10.5k to continue. She called and one other middle position player called putting him all in an me heads up with her. Flop came 10-7-2 so I led out, betting about 64% of the pot. She called. Turn came a five so I bet the pot, or about 40k. She raised me all in for 29k more and I happily called. She turned over Queen-Ten for top pair on the board, but I was way ahead with my pocket Kings. The river was another blank and I ended up winning about 190k in that hand alone. wooHOO! 🙂

Stats for the weekend are below for you data hounds:

Statistics for 600 Hands

Several people have been asking about the basic mathematics of poker. Here is a great video from James “SplitSuit” Sweeney at PokerBank that explains pot odds and how to use them. This is one of the most fundamental concerns when playing poker and, if you don’t use them already, should be added to your arsenal to improve your play immediately.

It’s been a challenging week. I’ve had to deal with the disappointing court news and I also began my climb up the new chip stack mountain at FullTiltPoker.NET.

After spending some time at the Limit tables, I decided to do something I’ve generally been against: spending real money for virtual items. The madness of the low stakes tables was removing all the fun and challenge of playing, so I spent ten dollars and bought 1.5 million play chips so I could play in better games. This gave me a big enough bankroll to comfortably play 100/200 No Limit stakes, where the max buy in for the table is 20k. Stepping up in stakes meant stepping up my game, as I quickly learned when I started losing – I started out overplaying some idiot range hands and was down about 80k after a few sessions. Time for a break and some studying.

I started out by watching all of Daniel Negraneau’s Poker Academy videos.
This is a great series of lessons from one of the world’s top players. It had been a while since I’d read a poker book or watched lessons, and my game needed help. Sometimes just a basic refresher is good. After the Poker Academy lessons, I started looking for more specific training on the math and probabilities involved in hands and I found an excellent teacher in James “SplitSuit” Sweeney’s Poker Bank series. SplitSuit delves deep into the math and other topics like, “Should I fear the flush?”, “Can I fold getting sick pot odds?”, “Value betting postflop” and the like.

After spending several hours studying the vids I returned to playing the 100/200 tables with much better results. I tightened up my range, listened to my instincts better, and put in hours at the tables grinding away. I didn’t go for big wins, generally opting to avoid getting involved in big pots, and did my best to take and maintain the lead (control) when I got involved in a pot. I stopped playing a lot of OOP (Out Of Position) hands and opened up my range when I had position. Over the course of the week I worked my way up from 1.42m to 1.68m chips, making back all that I lost initially and turning a net profit of about 160k. Not bad for a week’s worth of work. 🙂