On the Scottwire

I have an overpair or top pair top kicker.

I get check raised.

I somehow call the guy down or reshove.

Every fucking time the guy has flopped a set.

I did this not once, not twice, but three times this morning.

In other news, I lost $30 with QQ against a donk who called my $8 3 bet with K3 and flopped a king. He was a nut and just shoved the flop after calling out of position. It was a pot sized bet so I called and byebye money.

Last night I lost a buy in when I had JJ on 873 flop with 2 callers. I bet $5 into $7 pot, one caller. turn is a 5, I bet $12, donk calls. River is a king. Pot is like $36, he has $24 left. I check figuring I'll only get called by a better hand so I might as well let the guy bluff. He shoves, I call...he shows me AKo :(

I'm now up $10 for the month in cash games after losing $230 the last two days. I keep making stupid mistakes. ARGH

Before we look at the stats please note the following:

The first set of stats I was mostly 1 or 2 tabling. After my aggression increase, I started playing 3 or 4 tables and sometimes even 5. So you will see my BB/100 go down, but my hourly rate go up.

My BB/100 has gone down because of the multitabling, partly because I have sometimes gotten a little too aggressive and picked some bad spots to bluff. Some of it is variance as well (like AA losing to KK), but I can think of 3 or 4 buy ins that I lost because of overplaying my hand.

The stats:



So I've basically gone from 20/10 to 21/14.5

My aggression factor has gone from 1.65 to 3.5

I still think there is room to play more hands preflop. I have been on a few tables with some nuts or really loose players on my left that I didn't want to open up as much on the CO. I'm slowly adding more hands and hoping to play around 22/18ish. One place I can add hands a little perhaps is from the blinds. I've gotten overly tight in the blinds so that I am not playing out of position as much.

I have been 3 betting more instead of cold calling depending on position and type of opponent.

My went to showdown has gone down a little as I've been winning more pots preflop and my won money at showdown has gone down as well as I've tried bluffing (poorly) or semi-bluffing more. Two of my big river bluffs that I lost I still think may work enough of the time to show a profit but unfortunately that's high variance.

As I've been playing more hands, I've gotten into more marginal post flop situations so I think there is still a lot of improvement to be made in figuring out when to hit the breaks. I can think of a number of times where I figured a guy's most likely hand and I still tried to push him off it but alas it was not to be.

In general my biggest mistakes seem to come when I just don't believe people when they check raise or limp reraise. I inevitably seem to always have TT, JJ or QQ and I lose to a slightly higher overpair or set. Some of this is just acting too fast and overplaying hands.

This is all a great learning experience and it even got me to play a little more aggressively in the Thursday night chiptalk.net tourney which I managed to win this week! Not an easy victory though. I was chip leader on the bubble with 4 left, took a nice beat with QQ vs JTo to drop me to last, then managed to win a race with AJ vs 99 and crippling the other short stack (sorry Ten!) and finally get into the money. Went up and down, got the chip lead back with AK vs A2 and managed to hit a set heads up to cripple Links_Slayer. Woo!

Ok back to the tables...

oh and I got my Ipod Touch from P* FPP! wheeeeeeeeeee

So the 2+2 thread here really reminded me of how key aggression is.

When I started playing NL again a few days ago, I slipped back into my old passive ways. I was calling with marginal hands out of the BB to defend and then check folding. I was calling a lot of hands in position trying outplay people post flop but not really pushing people out of hands. And i was definitely not opening enough pots from the CO and button.

And as the graph below shows, I have really been losing a lot when not getting to showdown. This says I wasn't buying enough pots, firing second barrels, raising people off medium weak hands and definitely not 3 betting enough.



Now maybe its just variance but I the graph makes it looks like I've learned how to stop the bleeding. Hand 2911 is the first hand of the session where I got my aggression back on.

It was another swingy day though. i was up $70 after a few hundred hands. I lost a buyin back after getting all in on the flop with over pair vs flush draw and then I played 3 hands really really horribly. the first two made me lose $100. I got too aggressive and lost $50 when i got check raised on a QT9 flop when holding AJ. for some reason I needed to shove and get called by QT. Need to reanalyze that hand.

The second big loss there was a badly played AQ I guess. I raised out of the BB to 7 after a button raise to 2. flop came A74. I led out and he min raised me. I shoved and of course he calls with AK.

The third hand I played really really horribly was my luckbox hand of the day after being on tilt from those other 2 hands. This all happened in a 5 minutes span by the way.

I raise from the BB to 3 after 2 limpers with AhQs. flop comes J63 all hearts. I bet 7 and they both call. Turn is 6s. Over $30 in the pot so I say "well I still have outs and fold equity." I shove and get called by both. One has me covered, the other only had $10 left. BOOM ACE ON THE RIVER. One guy had KcKs, other guy has 2s2h? So I won $70 back there and that got me focused again. I guess continuing to bet is a lot better than calling off there at least. So maybe this has better EV than I think it does. Will analyze this as well.

Now I paid more attention to what I was doing and made sure everything I did was done for a reason. It paid off and I ended up winning 137 for the day. Nice comeback.

I'm feeling good again about how I'm playing. I just need to keep focused and not let frustration overpower reason.