Fantastic table that paid off

Didn't actually get too much time to play on the weekend, although did manage to get in almost 2 hours on Saturday. Turned out to be a pretty good couple hours though, as I managed to find two very fish tables.

Firstly on Cake I got on a table which had 4 players that i'd flagged as being reasonably fishy and one unknown. One player turned out to be a bit of a maniac, however, he had a style that i'd never seen before. He would limp into almost every pot, and then raise and sometimes reraise every flop, most turns and the occasional river as well no matter what 2 cards he actually held. It quickly became obvious to try to isolate him and then call down with any reasonable holding such as middle pair, and value bet constantly with any medium/strongish holding, such as top pair or better. He sucked out on a few guys early, and at the $3/6 level that gave him about a $200 stack.

I figured with his style it was only a matter of time before he went broke, so I may as well take as much as possible. Since he only limped preflop, I was getting to see heaps of flops cheaply, so every time one hit, I was able to win a decent amount, and every time I missed, he would win a smallish pot. I didn't have ideal position on the maniac, but since he didn't knock me out of hands preflop with raises it didn't matter as much as it normally would.

On one hand that he 3 bet the turn, raised the river and called my reraise he showed down 63o with no pair and no draw versus my set of jacks. This guy was almost like going to the ATM. By the time he quit and the table broke up I was up around 40BBs.

I also managed to find a nice fishy table on Bodog where there were 4 to 5 players to every flop. Although there was the odd suck out when I was betting strongly, a heap of my hands held up, including AA with 4 players still in the pot and calling my raises on the river. The other guys in the hand showed down bottom pair, or air going for backdoor draws. Made about 25BBs there in pretty quick time, and also made plenty of notes on players that I'd love to play against in future.

Sorry I dont have any hand histories from either cake or bodog, as I cant easily get them into pokertracker the only time I have hands is if i copy and paste them there and then from the active hand history. Generally I played my normal LAG/TAG style, although bluffed less and value bet some more marginal hands due to the calling station nature of my opponents and the specific maniac on Cake.

Current Bankroll: $10,550 (+360 Aug)

Clearing through the fish

Well, i've been off work, and put in about 8 hours in total over the last couple days, and it has been somewhat painful, although at least still in a positive direction. The first day I hit the $10k mark which I thought was a great result for me, as I still haven't been playing quite a year, and really havent taken too many risks along the way.

Had one huge fish on Bodog complain about me raising all the time, as he continued to limp into pot after pot only to get raised by me in position. Problem was, he managed to suck out way more than his fair share, which was really getting annoying. For some reason he thought that 22 was good in a raised pot in a flop of KJTr, where I was holding AK. 2 on the river though sunk me quick. Every time he had an A he would call down, and about three contests in a row where I was in front of him, he managed to pair his A on the river to take the pot. For example I had KQo on a board of K52 - obiously him with A7o is worth peeling for in this case. Turn of a 2, is still obviously worth calling a raise. River A ... sux. He also managed to hit a flush with Q5o v my KK where the board hit a 4th flush card on the river for his 5 to be good enough to beat me.

Fortunately towards the end of the session he was no longer sucking out quite so often, so for example when I bet every street with KJ on a board that read K99, turn 9, river 4 and he called me down with A2o I made a few BBs back.

At ongame I was on a table with 3 fish with stats around 60/2/0.3/60 ... and of those 60% going to showdown each of them was winning over 50%. The 3 other players on the table including me were just getting slaughtered. My actual winrate at Ongame where i'm clearing the mansion bonus (well have now cleared) was reading at a horrendous -8bb/100 over the first 1,000 hands. I've now got it back to more like -4bb/100 as the tables have remained pretty fishy, and the suckouts aren't coming all that often.

I did let fly a bit in the chat box, before deciding I was way better off keeping quiet and hoping he'd keep playing at the table. In hindsight though I think he was enjoying the banter.

I also played in one of the Cake gold card tournaments, and was actually doing okay in the top 40 of around 1,300 runners when I had to go see the doctor. Bit annoyed that I had to throw it away, although my stack was only a quarter the size of the largest stack, I was definitely still in it. Got about $30 or so from that, so I guess its better than nothing.

With respect to bonuses, I cleared the Mansion bonus, so that should be around $100. Will find out in a couple days. Hopefully also have some decent rakeback/cashback from bodog and cake as well. I think i'm also about 1/3 of the way through my GNUF bonus as well, although i'm having a bit of trouble putting some more $ on that site at the moment.

Current Bankroll: $10,100

$10,000 - a new milestone for me!

Just a quick post. Played a good 4 hours today on tables ranging from $1/2 to $4/8. Only problem was that Aussie daytime is generally rubbish for peak poker times, so there was lots of starting on tables then the table disappearing and having to find a new one.

Bodog went down for maintenance just when tables were looking good which was also disappointing.

However, I have finally hit the $10,000 milestone. I also signed up to gnuf through PSO to get some more bonus $, and i'm part way to another $120 there.

Nothing else to exciting in play today. I must admit, I hadn't actually considered that I'd ever make this much in my first year. I worked out that my first deposit was on the 26th of July 2007, so I am very happy with my results thus far.

Current Bankroll: $10,000 (+360 Aug)

Current strategy

Thought i'd better share my overall plan of attack, and then at least I can come back to it and check if i'm doing as planned.

First and foremost, my goal is to have a good rakeback or equivalent cashback VIP deal on all major networks. (and i'm always looking for a potentially better deal on each one.

So far I have a rakeback or cashback VIP deal on the following networks:

• Fulltilt
• Ipoker
• Microgaming/Prima
• Cryptologic
• Cake
• Bodog

If I have a good deal already on a network or the network is too small for me to bother with then I dont mind just hitting up a poker site with a sign up bonus such as through PSO (refer the link on the right).

I've done the pure bonus on:

• Pokerstars
• Ongame (hollywood & pokerroom .. hmm i should try to find a VIP deal at ongame ...)

I'm still looking for rakeback deals with higher returns on each network, but if I can't find one i'll simply pick a new sign up bonus offer. Given that i've signed up for a fair few sites now, often I receive a deposit reload bonus offer, which generally boosts the rakeback return quite substantially. It seems pretty rare these days that I don't have a site to play on with a significant overall return of rake paid (sometimes in excess of 100%).

Anyways thats it really...short and simple strategy.

So for the moment i'm playing Bodog for cashback and the first deposit bonus, william hill for the 5 hours played monthly bonus and Cake for rakeback and a reload bonus. Playing a bit of fulltilt for rakeback when there are no juicy tables on the other networks.

As far as actual play goes, I only had about 20 minutes to play, and couldnt' find any decent tables above $1/2 so ended up playing a bit of William Hill for the monthly 5 hour bonus, and a bit of bodog $1/2 where the fish bit me hard when I had two gutshots hit against me as well as a flopped flush with my opponent showing down 82s which he cold called a raise with. Given I didnt have long to play though I didn't really lose much.

Current Bankroll: $9,900 (+360 Aug)

The importance of taking notes

I have occasionally taken notes on tables where poker tracker works, but really haven’t made anywhere near enough so I am probably missing some player weaknesses that I should be exploiting. My main experience in note taking is on cake poker, where pokertracker is not really supported, so I need to rely on my own reads of my opponents rather than the automated heads up display. Interestingly enough, I probably have my highest win rate on Cake, so I guess taking notes really is worthwhile.

Now that I’m also playing on Bodog, where I don’t have the software to import statistics into pokertracker, I’m finding that it is extremely useful to take notes on my opponents. Problem is though, since I’m not used to it, I can only really have one table open to concentrate on the game and take notes as well. I figure over time I should be able to increase my table numbers, but for now I’m just getting used to the note taking side, and watching and remembering all plays by my opponents.

At the moment a players note might read something like:

ol utg 73s, ol button
callr 64o BB
cb F, no cb T
cd 3rd pair F

which would translate to:

open limped under the gun with 73s. open limped on the button
Called raise with 64o in the BB
Continuation bet the flop, but gave up on the turn.
Called to river with 3rd pair on flop

So this would be a reasonably loose and passive opponent (possibly a calling station), that I would love to have position on. I’d be interested to know if anyone out there has some other shorthand they use for note taking, or if there is any kind of standard out there for representing the various plays.

How did the weekend’s play go? Well I managed to get in a little under 2 hours of play in total. Played on a super loose and maniacal $3/6 table on Cake and had a terrible, terrible run of cards.

My VPIP was 8% over about 90 hands. I just received nothing at all preflop, and the few times I did get something, I won about 50% of the time. All in all dropped about 20BBs in about half an hour. I even had one guy three betting me with 64o and bluffing to the river v my AA flopping a set, but since I was rarely playing a hand, the blinds were gradually eating me alive.

Bodog however turned it around after a very slow start where the $1/2 fish took me for 25BBs when I could not hit a flop. I then found some players on the $4/8 table that I had some good notes on, and took some more notes. There were at least 3 fish on the table, and it was just a case of value betting my made hands, and folding when I missed. My opponents were calling me down constantly with dominated hands, or hands where I had flopped the nuts or near to it. I did suck out a couple, however, they were hands like where I had QQ preflop, but villain had 44. Flop came JT4 all clubs which matched my Qc. The flop was bet into me which I raised. Turn was a blank which got bet into me and I raised again, but got reraised. Made a crying call and a club hit on the river. His set of 4s was no good and I took down a big pot.

Another hand of note when I had QQ again, I was up against 2 runners who called my preflop bet. Flop was T98r so I’ve obviously bet out and got called again by both. Turn was a J. I bet out and get called. River an A so again I bet out hoping not to see KQ. My opponents showed 77 for the bottom end of the straight and AJo for top pair, giving me another nice pot.

Of course there were a few suckouts along the way, but I took down over 50BBs all up for the sessions.

Current Bankroll: $9,900 (+360 Aug)

The fish do the hunting

Found some fantastic $4/8 tables in a half hour session yesterday. Unfortunately it resulted in me quickly dropping 40BBs before recovering 15BBs by sessions end.

The tables were great, with 3-5 players seeing most flops, and often just limping in. Plus I had perfect position on one of them sitting on the left of a massive fish. That being said I managed to get caned by:

• having 5 flush draws on the flop and missing all but one, where the one was a rare hand with only 2 runners and the 2nd runner folded on the turn
• opponents hitting flush draws v my 2 pair having cold called raises with 92s and 85s
• my 2 pair hitting on the turn which hit someone's gutshot with 56o
• my AK raised preflop and flopping a K not holding up against the call from the big blind holding 62o
• Running KK into AA from a limping fish

The few hands I seemed to win were when I had someone dominated and flopped top pair. AJ held up against J7o and KQ held up against K8o. At the same time my JT managed to lose to T9 on a flop of T98 when the turn produced another 9, and my AK also lost to AT when the flop was AT3r.

I know these tables should be very profitable, so I will continue to seek them out.

Overall a supremely disappointing session though, apart from recovering a bit towards the end. Surely the card will run better next time. I know I played well and didnt tilt at all so I am still confident of tearing them apart next time.

Current Bankroll: $9,650 (+360 Aug)

Viruses :(

Well .. was hoping to get in a good hour on the tables last night, but instead scored myself a pop up virus that I had to try to get rid of before I could do anything. Two hours later and I thought it was clean, but turning on my machine this morning and its come back ... ARGH

I first did a virus scan, which only picked up a heap of tracking cookies which it deleted. Still infected. I then downloaded spybot, ran that, and that detected a few problems which it fixed. Still infected. Downloaded a malware remover, which did do some fixing, however, was being blocked by spybot which was actually protecting the virus. However, I thought it was clean, and the pop ups seemed to be gone. Played a bit of poker, then fast forward to this morning and the popups are back. Time to run a deep malware scan, which I will get the results on later.

For my 20 minute poker session, I managed to actually run okay. Found some super fishy tables on bodog, as well as one on cake and made around 12bbs mostly on $1/2 but a few on $4/8. I've also finished my 24poker $1,000 sign up bonus with my last $50 being credited, so i'm now on the VIP deal there instead.

I do actually need to find another bonus to clear now, as i'm finding often with Bodog there aren't enough tables running that suit me (ie full 6max tables and fishy). That, and the fact you can only open 3 tables at a time means that I want to multitable another site at the same time.

Anyways, hopefully my virus is gone by tonight. Will do some more rebooting and scanning before I play again to make sure its properly fixed.

Current bankroll: $9,850 (+360 Aug)