Hello, old friend

Long time no see, Mr LifeType, how've you been?

I just finished playing a NL200 & satellite session. The first one in two months. First impressions? Either it's just today, or this limit got a LOT more aggressive lately...I had the impression of seeing NL400 with all those 3bets and squeezes...meh, details. The regs still suck, and I can still rob them blind =)

This session was awesome. I had totally forgotten how great poker was - the feeling I get when I make a perfect read, the need to think quickly and efficiently,.. but mostly, the feeling that I'm doing something I'm good at, yet constantly challenges me. 3 months of mind-numbing school work had almost made me forget that. Okay, there's the 3 hours coaching per week, but that's not the same thing. I play a more simple game, partly because I play on lower limits, and partly because I want the viewers to understand as much as possible what I'm doing. So it is very "theoretical" compared to my usual game.

So, about that session. I played 6 tables plus 1-2 satellites to the $2M tourney on sunday, for a total of 1171 (cash game) hands over 133 minutes. I played 25.7/21.6, 8.4% 3bet, 3.15AF and 22/51.4 wtsd/w$sd.

As you can see, having only 6 tables makes me play rather aggressively, as I rely heavily on reads to make my decisions. The rather aggressive tables also had an influence on my 3bet and 4bet frequency, which went up somewhat after I got tired of the bad lags squeezing me.

I may not be as profitable 6-tabling loose-ish as when I play 12 tables tag, but oh how fun it is =P I just love exploiting the regulars, especially those cocky, yet skill-less LAGs. I did make a few mistakes that really annoyed me -- for instance, I raised the BU, SB called and BB (33/27 iirc) squeezed yet again. I obviously 4bet, but I failed to check the middle player's stats. He played 72/0, and that was a 70$ mistake. Not good. Needless to say, I will remember to double-check all players before making a move. Anyway, despite these occasional mistakes, I feel pretty good about the session. I had quite a lot of fun hands, and I didn't mark them all, but here are one or two more or less interesting ones:

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $2 BB (5 handed) Hand History converter Courtesy of PokerZion.com

saw flop|saw showdown

UTG ($205)
Hero ($206.65)
Button ($228.13)
SB ($51.65)
BB ($556.70) -- 35/26/3.0 (121 hands)

Preflop: Hero is MP with Jc, Jd.
1 fold, Hero raises to $7, 2 folds, BB calls $5.

Flop: ($15) 4d, 2d, 8d (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $10, BB raises to $35, Hero calls $25.

Turn: ($85) As (2 players)
BB bets $54, Hero calls $164.65 (All-In), BB folds.

Final Pot: $303.65  

It was so easy to know what he was going to do from the flop on, it's not even funny. Well actually, yes it is, I was laughing my ass off when he did exactly what I thought he would (including the turn fold) ^^

Erm, I'm too tired to search for other fun hands,  but I'll try to post more whenever I get time to play again. Oh, by the way, I won one of those two satellites I played, so I'm taking part in the $2 Million gtd tourney on sunday. 600+40$ buy-in, they need 3334 players to meet the guarantee.. so far, there's ~1900 registered =P Anyone else playing?

Oh, and I'll also try to post more, so if I can't play much, I'll just write totally off-topic articles every now and then.  Here's a little teaser of the next one (well, not counting my tourney report on Sunday):