Need a Dell Charger ...

I'm at Atlantic Beach in North Carolina until Tuesday. My wife's best friend from childhood always comes up here with her family in September and this year we decided to come visit them. My internet access here is dialup so no poker for a couple of days. I don't mind - I will just do some writing when I have time.

One problem is that I forgot to bring my charger for my laptop. I'm currently writing on a friend's MacBook but really need my Dell. So ... do places like Radioshack sell chargers for laptops? What can I do about it? I could technically just use this MacBook, but I would rather use my computer if possible. Any advice would be really appreciated.

I've also been thinking about how much easier some decisions seem to be when you are coaching/sweating a person vs. actually playing. I think the main reason for this is that when sweating/coaching, the whole decision process is much more academic/objective rather than emotional. Thus, you're able to stay on your A-game pretty much 100% of the time. The sessions are shorter too, and you tend to be more focused. The same is true when you are making a video - you simply need to be on your A-game and thus tend to play close to optimal poker.

So - if you haven't do it yet, get in the habit of sweating your friends and having them sweat you. The experience is simply invaluable and bound to make both of you better. Talking about hands and keeping one another in check will expedite your learning process.

100NL FR results over 20K hands ...

For the time being I'm going to blog here as the CR blogs still have a lot of formatting issues which I'm very picky about, so ... I will give this a spin again.

For starters, here are my current FR numbers on Stars:

And here is my graph:

Now - there is a lot of variance there as at first I was pretty lost in a lot of situations. I'm just now starting to find my way around them. Some of the issues I had when transitioning from 6-max:

1. What type of hands should I open from what position?

2. What types of boards do I need to c-bet vs. what type of players?

3. How many tables should I play and how should I pick them?

4. When should I get away from hands?

And ... what I feel is the most challenging thing:

5. How do I play more than 12 tables effectively?

As of now, I find that I'm able to put in some long sessions at FR in ways that I never could at 6-max. While 6-max can definitely be more profitable than FR, it also often leaves me pretty mentally spent as I have to do a lot more thinking and I'm just not able to play that many tables. Since I want to get SuperNova on Stars by the end of the year, I figured I needed to do something which would be sustainable and that I could grind every day.

All that said, I'm excited about my start so far. I still have miles to go but I feel like my overall learning of FR is heading in the right direction. I hope to offer more insight into it in the upcoming days/weeks/months.

Updates on other blog ...

So most of my blogging is going to go on at my other blog created for my N = 10,000 challenge. Check it out for current updates.

http://10000hands.blogspot.com

Bad beat ...

So I had this great idea.

I would have one of my friends from abroad sign up for a Party Poker account and that I would play on it. I PM-ed Mark (Heineken23) and he set the whole thing up for me. I even got a kick-ass SN.

Everything was ready to go ... until I logged on and was informed that I can't play with real money. Now ... I KNOW that Party is closed to Americans, but I didn't realize that I cannot play Party in America. I sent support and e-mail and that's what they told me. I guess they can read my IP address and mark it as American.

Anyhow ... Mark played some and here is how the conversation went:

Me: Sucks about Party.
Mark: yeah big time
Me: I was all excited abotu the name and prospect.
Mark: u dont wanna hear this but thought i would give it a try....
Me: Give what a try?
Me: As in ... you will play Party?
Mark: 400 hands + $280 at $50nl :-)

And here is an example of a hand that played out:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1073621

Pay it Forward

Brian "Hookem148" Rue and I are working with three guys as part of Brian's Pay-It-Forward project.

I love the format that Brian has selected. It's well organized and well thought out. I have posted the links to the three players on the right side of this blog.

I feel very fortunate to be involved in the project.

A few hands from an MTT ...

How should I play these?

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1050731

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1050734

I also placed ITM in both tourneys. Wheeeee! That was my goal for the Daily Double. I still have a lot to learn about tourneys, but one step at a time. The Daily Double is a good (inexpensive) way to learn MTT strategy.

$0.75 hands ...

I had a lot of fun last night playing live poker at a friends house.

The stakes were very small - $0.10/$0.20 blinds with a max buy-in of $10. It was 4-handed and most of them are used to a really passive game with seeing a lot of flops. I decided to play like 80/50 or so - super aggro and super loose (TP = the nuts, all draws = the nuts, etc). I would play very aggressive OOP and control the pot in position. One of my friends who also plays on FTP was playing a style very similar to mine and the two of us were kind of running over the table.

So like an hour into it I have QhTh OTB and make it my standard $0.75 raise. A super loose/passive player calls from the SB and the flop comes Kh 5h 9c. He bets out $1.50 and I immediately put him all in (he didn't have much more - like $4.00 behind). He was visibly frustrated and called with A5o. 7h turns FTW.

I start laughing at him for leading out and calling my all in with A5 and he frustratingly responds:

"I just know you don't have $0.75 hands EVERY time!"

I found his statement very funny and it once again illustrated why LAG players get paid off nicely. LAG = fun :)

The tale of two AK hands.

AK vs. SmartLag SB/BB at 400NL: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1038662

AK in 4-bet pot at 25NL: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1038831

I guess if I have to lose one of them it might as well be the 2nd one ...

Rakeback > 2K for April

Ship it?