Heehaw

I've got 3 sizable live hold'em tournaments in the next few weeks (prize pools between $100k-$200k). My Foxwoods trip is in 36 days, and my Vegas trip is in 63 more days.

Lots to look forward to. :)

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The last week of poker has been more stimulating than recent weeks. I've played a slightly different variety of games; however anything is more variety since I've generally been sticking to one limit and one game.

My ring games so far this week have been live $6/$12 LHE, $9/$18 LHE, $20/$40 LHE, $1/$1/$2 NL, online $100NL quad tabling, $3/$6 LHE 6 tabling. My ratio of live vs. online was very close to 1:1.

The slight adjustments that I should make between each game actually are making for less playing on autopilot since I've generally been sticking to one game/limit for less than 2 hours at a time.

It has been the better part of a year since I last played online $100NL, and I am rusty. Previously, when this was my main game, in my last 500 table hours, I averaged +12.5BB per table hour with ~extremely~ low variance. I was typically quad tabling, and I think it would have been hard to find blocks of 12 table hours where I was not very close to +12.5BB per table hour. This week I put in about 24 table hours with a ~+8.0BB per table hour rate.
I believe my most notable "mistake" I was making this week was slow playing monsters on the flop heads up with an opponent that possibly had a very good 2nd best hand, and in which the turn or river card killed the action. Bummer...
Boy it is amazing how much more rake I need to pay for low stakes LH vs low stakes NLH (per $ won)

In the $3/$6 LHE arena, I'm trying to play through a larger pool of hands to get a higher degree of confidence in my true win rate. To speed things up a bit, I increased from 4 tables to 6 tables. This will still take quite a while, since I think I will continue to play more variety of games.

I was involved in an amusing live $20/$40 LHE hand today. I was a bit of donk on the flop, but I love playing with a mix of "smart" and predictable players. It is by far my most enjoyable type of ring game situation because it creates more distinct situations to analyze given exactly the same cards dealt. This is one of the benefits of playing in a game with a lot of regulars.

hand #1
9 seated live $20/$40 LHE. Button is loose preflop, but a thinking player who is capable of making "good laydowns". MP+1 is a semi loose player who becomes a very passive caller on scary boards. I have played a lot with MP+1, only a little with Button (but enough to know he makes "good laydowns")
- preflop: MP+2 posts, I post in the CO (both of us just sat down). Folded to MP+1 who raises, MP+2 folds, I call getting 5.5:1 with 6c4h, button calls, SB folds, BB calls. (4 players, 9.5 small bets)
- flop: Ad6d2d; BB checks, MP+1 checks, I bet, button calls, BB folds, MP+1 calls. (3 players, 12.5 small bets)
- turn: Ad6d2d8s, checked around. (3 players, 6.25 big bets)
- river: Ad6d2d8s4d. MP+1 checks, I bet, button grimaces and mucks, MP+1 agonizes and calls showing AhKc.

After I tabled my hand, the button cursed saying there is no way he could call with a player behind him. There is no better feeling in limit hold'em to win a hand on the river when you make the best hand fold and worse hands call.

I'm comfortable with my preflop call because all players behind me are not the type to 3 bet with anything less than KK. I despise my flop bet, and would have folded to any raise (with this set of opponents). My interpretation at the time when I got called in two places was: MP+1 either had any combination of JJ, QQ or KK or a big A with no diamond, and button had an A with a J or T of diamonds.

On the river, the only better hand that MP+1 checks is JdJx. Button claimed to have mucked a diamond, but he didn't say which one and I didn't want to ask since he was quite pissed off. Maybe I should have badgered him to get him really on tilt. Anyway, this kind of "squeeze" play is more often likely to succeed in a No Limit situation, but it occasionally works in Limit as well. (Am I being to results oriented here? Was I just a lucky donkey that I wasn't betting into someone holding the nuts or 2nd nuts? I was planning on bet/folding the river here.)

I made sure that I tightened up considerably for the remainder of the session, and I got good value for my strong hands at this table.