From earlier today. Once I 3bet this hand, I don’t think it can possibly play out any differently. While maybe some players wouldn’t play this hand this way and try turning their hand into a bluffcatcher on the river, I think that this is pretty obviously the right river line

Full Tilt Poker $25/$50 No Limit Hold’em - 2 players - View hand 565969
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BTN/SB: $11842.25
Hero (BB): $7070.50

Pre Flop: ($75.00) Hero is BB with 6 of clubs 6 of diamonds
BTN/SB raises to $150, Hero raises to $550, BTN/SB raises to $1200, Hero calls $650

Flop: ($2400.00) 9 of hearts 3 of diamonds 5 of hearts (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB bets $1050, Hero calls $1050

Turn: ($4500.00) 3 of hearts (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB checks

River: ($4500.00) 3 of spades (2 players)
Hero bets $4820.50 all in, BTN/SB requests TIME, BTN/SB calls $4820.50

Final Pot: $14141.00
BTN/SB mucks A of diamonds Q of hearts
Hero shows 6 of clubs 6 of diamonds (a full house, Threes full of Sixes)
Hero wins $14140.50
(Rake: $0.50)

Anyway, here’s all my hands from my main laptop last month. I played some on another computer and was up ~20k on there.

Group coaching’s been going well: I’m going to finish up my 2nd week before blogging my thoughts on it. It’s definitely been interesting

Life is good: I’m running hot at 25/50 and 10/20 with a bit of PLO mixed in. I’m up roughly 100k in 8k hands and am swoll on FTP. I’m trying to figure out whether to keep the money on FTP so I can play 50/100 or spread it out across Stars and UB so I can get more games. Tough decisions. I played tcorbin at 25/50 yesterday and lost about 25k. I played somewhat poorly but for the most part I feel like my timing was unlucky in some spots and I didn’t make too many hands, so I’m not really stressing it. He’s definitely a lot better than I expected him to be, but I’ll be playing him again soon

For now, I’m in NYC to celebrate my birthday with my college friends so I’m not going to be at the tables for the next few days

Another big day at 10/20. 6,000 hands and 35k so far. And just to prove that this isn’t luck at all and that my results are perfect indicators of my skill, here are a couple of hands that did not involve any luck whatsoever

Full Tilt Poker $10/$20 No Limit Hold’em $3 Ante - 6 players - View hand 546476
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

MP: $4102.00
CO: $5604.00
BTN: $6094.00
SB: $4522.50
BB: $4464.00
Hero (UTG): $6561.50

Pre Flop: ($48.00) Hero is UTG with K of spades A of diamonds
Hero raises to $80, 3 folds, SB calls $70, BB raises to $340, Hero requests TIME, Hero raises to $800, 1 fold, BB raises to $1420, Hero raises to $6558.50 all in, BB calls $3041 all in

Flop: ($9020.00) A of spades 5 of hearts 3 of hearts

Turn: ($9020.00) 7 of clubs

River: ($9020.00) 7 of hearts

Final Pot: $9020.00
BB shows Q of hearts Q of diamonds (two pair, Queens and Sevens)
Hero shows K of spades A of diamonds (two pair, Aces and Sevens)
Hero wins $9017.00
(Rake: $3.00)

Full Tilt Poker $10/$20 No Limit Hold’em $3 Ante - 6 players - View hand 546478
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $3842.00
MP: $4700.00
CO: $4017.00
BTN: $4561.50
SB: $3635.50
Hero (BB): $10059.00

Pre Flop: ($48.00) Hero is BB with 9 of diamonds 8 of diamonds
1 fold, MP raises to $65, 1 fold, BTN calls $65, 1 fold, Hero calls $45

Flop: ($223.00) T of diamonds 7 of spades 6 of clubs (3 players)
Hero checks, MP bets $150, BTN folds, Hero raises to $620, MP calls $470

Turn: ($1463.00) 6 of hearts (2 players)
Hero bets $1120, MP calls $1120

River: ($3703.00) A of spades (2 players)
Hero bets $8251 all in, MP calls $2892 all in

Final Pot: $9487.00
MP mucks K of hearts T of clubs
Hero shows 9 of diamonds 8 of diamonds (a straight, Ten high)
Hero wins $9484.00
(Rake: $3.00)

Full Tilt Poker $10/$20 No Limit Hold’em - 2 players - View hand 546480
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (BTN/SB): $7067.00
BB: $4089.00

Pre Flop: ($30.00) Hero is BTN/SB with K of hearts 7 of hearts
Hero raises to $40, BB raises to $160, Hero calls $120

Flop: ($320.00) A of hearts 5 of hearts 4 of clubs (2 players)
BB bets $260, Hero raises to $610, BB raises to $1180, Hero raises to $6907 all in, BB calls $2749 all in

Turn: ($8178.00) 9 of diamonds (2 players - 2 are all in)

River: ($8178.00) T of hearts (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $8178.00
Hero shows K of hearts 7 of hearts (a flush, Ace high)
BB shows 5 of diamonds 4 of diamonds (two pair, Fives and Fours)
Hero wins $8177.50
(Rake: $0.50)

That last one looks bad, but the amount of action this guy was giving I actually raised the flop to induce a 3bet so I could jam over the top. Instead he happened to have two pair: who’d have thought people actually make hands in HU?

Back when I was playing nosebleeds and 50/100 was my regular game, I would get bored at 25/50. 10/20 was way too small to concern me and, I’m ashamed to admit, my ego probably wouldn’t let me play so low. Now that I’m grinding my online roll, I’m realizing what a huge mistake I made: 10/20 NL is AWESOME. The competition is worse (not terrible, the games are definitely tough but there’s a big difference between 10/20 and 25/50) and the stakes are so small that it’s impossible to tilt or worry about how I’m doing; I never stress about decisions, I don’t check HEM during sessions ever, and I’m just playing poker without worrying about anything else. Of course, I’m also running well: 24k in 3300 hands so far. But by far the best thing about 10/20: there are always games. It’s like I was getting bored of poker because I could never get any action and the swings would affect my mood and the whole time the answer was right there; a constant supply of games to play that I could make a good amount of money playing. While I’m still looking to get enough money online to play 25/50 on every site, I like to think I’ve learned my lesson; from now on, I’ll play 10/20 whenever I feel like playing poker. It’s been a while since I’ve had this kind of enthusiasm about poker…

Recently, Krantz and I have been discussing the idea of doing group coaching; he’s had a fair amount of success with it and some other DC coaches have experimented with the concept, and everybody seems to like it. I’ve been coaching a lot lately and I’ve come to realize that a lot of the points I make or concepts I discuss keep coming up with each of my students. It seems that most winning regs have similar playing styles and leaks and that I cover the same ground over and over; so it seems that the benefits of coaching are scalable. People can learn by discussing poker even if they’re not the ones actually playing; given that there are a lot of people out there who may not be able to afford $650/hour for my coaching, I figure if I could provide coaching to 3 or 4 people at a time, charge them all a more affordable rate, and still ensure that they’re all benefiting from the coaching as much as if they had individualized sessions, then it would be a win/win scenario for everybody involved.

So, I’m going to start offering group coaching. The program would have the following features:
1) You and 3 other poker players would form a group that I work with for 2 hours every week. In between meetings, we would all have a group Skype chat open; any time I or a member of your group is grinding (or waiting for action) and you want to pick that person’s brain, you can feel free
2) The sessions would vary week-to-week, but the goal would be to have a program of study to make sure that people are constantly working on new aspects of their game. One week we would do a group sweat session where one of us plays and I give feedback and moderate a discussion of the play. Another week we would look at a recorded session that somebody played earlier on and breakdown the person’s play. Another week we would all bring hand histories we wanted to discuss to the meeting and I would moderate a real-time Dear FoxwoodsFiend-style hand history analysis. Eventually we’ll have classes on 3-betting and 4-betting, how to play in 3bet pots, and other common problems in poker that people may feel uncomfortable with

I think that, even though I’m charging less, the instruction per student will be even better than through individualized coaching; even if we’re not discussing how you play every session, every concept discussed and new trick learned is something you can incorporate into your game. And being able to learn from multiple fellow poker players and discussing issues you may not have thought of that your fellow students bring up can only help your poker game. I really do think learning poker will be a lot easier in a group setting and I’m very excited to start working on this. If you’re interested, email me at foxwoodsfiend@gmail.com, or PM me on 2plus2 or DeucesCracked (FoxwoodsFiend). And in case my 5 months off for law school have led you to forget how sick I am at poker, here’s some graphs of my results the last two years (keep in mind I exercised practically no game control and played way more world-class opponents than fish over the last year):

My stats last year:

My graph since January 2008:

Since last I posted, it’s been a bit quiet on the poker front: I’ve been doing pretty well at 10/20 HU over a very small sample size: some player whose name I recognized 4-tabled me and I took about 14k off of him; I was playing very good poker and running pretty well. This morning I saw a short-stack specialist I’ve played against in the past and played some 100/200 vs him; it didn’t go well, i lost 3 shortstacks (4k each), and was getting ready to call it a day when I got a new opponent at 10/20. I played, won 7k, and he left. That’s the cliff’s notes, but who cares about 10/20 results right? Instead, I’m going to show you a hand that I think illustrates very nicely the idea of working through an opponent’s range and perception of your range and how they relate to the board texture.

Full Tilt Poker $10/$20 No Limit Hold’em - 2 players - View hand 536784
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (BTN/SB): $11048.00
BB: $2080.00

Pre Flop: ($30.00) Hero is BTN/SB with 9 of diamonds 9 of spades
Hero raises to $40, BB raises to $140, Hero raises to $380, BB calls $240

Flop: ($760.00) K of spades 7 of spades 6 of hearts (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $320, BB calls $320

Turn: ($1400.00) 7 of hearts (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

River: ($1400.00) K of hearts (2 players)
BB bets $1380 all in, Hero requests TIME, Hero calls $1380

Final Pot: $4160.00
Hero shows 9 of diamonds 9 of spades (two pair, Kings and Nines)
BB shows 8 of diamonds T of diamonds (two pair, Kings and Sevens)
Hero wins $4159.50
(Rake: $0.50)

Now this is not an easy river call; my opponent is likely jamming every better hand for value and there are a lot of combinations of full house and flushes he could have, so I had to think to myself what my hand looked like to him and what his range was. My range here was very wide: I’d been 4betting a lot because my opponent had a 32% 3-bet percentage and did not often 5-bet bluff. Because of this, I would 4bet him very wide for value with hands that are very playable postflop that make good top-pairs such as JQ and TJ as well as pocket pairs that I thought dominated a lot of his mid-suited connectors such as 88 and 99.

Now, as a result of my wide 4-betting range, I thought that he would bluff the turn a lot of the time and when I just call, my hand sure looks like it’s got some showdown value. A hand like 99 or AJo (which I would definitely call the turn with against this opponent). So I wasn’t quite sure what level villain was on; would he try bluffing me off a marginal made hand? The river made his value range significantly wider; while it made combinations of Kx less likely by putting another K up, it also made the backdoor flush so now any hearts he may have would be jamming: yes, it’s a double paired board but that second K actually reduces the combos of Kx I can have, so if he has a flush he should jam because I may call with a hand like 99 and very rarely have him beat (especially if he assumes, which he should, that I would jam a 7 but may call with a rag K on the turn since the 7 is less likely to be drawing dead vs his value bet/call range than a hand like KJ would).

So the river seemed to make him more likely to bluff because he could rep a flush as well as a full house, but it also increased the chance he had a better hand than mine. So I had to start thinking about what his range was. His 3bet percentage was 33.3 and his fold to 4-bet was only 30.8, so that means he had 60.2% of the top 33.3% of hands in his range for continuing against a 4-bet; that means about 20% of hands. But since he jams most of his big hands, we can discount those. Now it so happens that he 3bet/called with suited connectors on a few occasions and I hadn’t seen him 3bet random Ax hands, so his 20% of hands range was more skewed towards middling cards and suited Ax than just Ax. This is important because it vastly increases his bluffing cards; if he had A9 (non-spades and non-hearts) he probably wouldn’t lead the turn because he’s got showdown value and few outs if called whereas people semibluff more when they have outs. So the drawy nature of the board combined with the fact he could have TONS of draws that he’s leading with made me think he was bluffing.

When the river made the flush, I figured he could easily have me beat, but I didn’t think he would play spades any different from hearts; he would probably go for the check/raise on the flop and then double barrel me. Since there are more combos of spades than hearts (there are 3 hearts out and only 2 spades), I figured that even if I gave him a 7 or K for a full house from time to time all those spades combos would neutralize his hearts combos. And since if he can have a 7 it would have to be a suited connector and he would thus be able to have hands like 45, 58, 9T, 8T, etc., there were just too many combinations of possible bluffs for me to fold getting better than 2:1. So, I called and won. Yea!

EDIT: One last point; in analyzing this hand, I misread the hand history and thought I had checked the flop. This confused me because I remember at the time thinking that I could rule out a K because he’d have check/raised the flop with it (I’d seen him c/r JQ on Jxx after calling a 4bet so assumed he would do the same with a K), so at the time I played the hand I (obviously) realized I’d bet the flop but when analyzing it I just had a brainfart. I think everything in my original post is still true except for the part “I probably have a hand with some showdown value but not enough to bet the flop.” Thanks to Andy for catching that

I’ve put up a post on the Rap Genius blog which uses an analysis of “Renegade” as a starting point for a general comparison of Jay-Z and Eminem . It’s been getting great reviews from everybody who’s read it (which I think probably stems from the fact that I think only my friends have read it so far), and I think it’s one of my better-written blog posts. Here are the first few paragraphs to give you a little taste:

Jay-Z’s album The Blueprint was a baller achievement; XXL Magazine gave it a perfect XXL rating, The Source gave it 5 mics (also perfect), it sold 426,000 albums in its first week. But…funny thing; the album was released on the same day as this:

BLAM

Needless to say, people weren’t talking about Jay’s album as much as they would have under normal circumstances. 9/11 changed everything (kind of a big deal). But as if Jay’s shine weren’t already being clouded, the song most people were talking about was “Renegade” and, when people talked about it, all they could talk about was how good Eminem’s rap was. Granted, Jay-Z’s verses were great as well, but the consensus is that – as Nas pointed out on “Ether” – “Eminem killed [Jay] on [his] own shit.”

Poor Jay-Z: he only had one guest featured on the entire album, and, when people weren’t talking about 9/11, they were mainly talking about the two verses on the album that weren’t his.

In 5000 hands, I’m down about 80k. It’s somewhat frustrating because when you’re playing poker all the time, you’re used to the swings and it doesn’t really bother you too much, but when you’ve been out of the game it’s a bit easier to let the swings affect your mood. I’ve been playing a fair amount of 40/80 deep NL and 25/50 HU, so 80k isn’t too much considering how aggressive and big these games play. While I’ve sucked out on people and they’ve sucked out on me so it’s not particularly illuminating to just select random hands and show them, this last hand was particularly tilting: my opponent had been running god mode on me, and had just 2 minutes prior apologized for running so hot. So naturally, this would happen:

Full Tilt Poker $40/$80 No Limit Hold’em - 2 players - View hand 510259
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (BB): $18953.00
BTN/SB: $23274.00

Pre Flop: ($120.00) Hero is BB with A of diamonds A of clubs
BTN/SB raises to $200, Hero raises to $880, BTN/SB calls $680

Flop: ($1760.00) 9 of hearts 2 of clubs 3 of clubs (2 players)
Hero bets $1180, BTN/SB raises to $2560, Hero raises to $4840, BTN/SB calls $2280

Turn: ($11440.00) 5 of spades (2 players)
Hero bets $13233 all in, BTN/SB calls $13233

River: ($37906.00) J of diamonds (2 players - 1 is all in)

River: ($37906.00) 6 of clubs (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $37906.00
Hero shows A of diamonds A of clubs (a pair of Aces)
BTN/SB shows A of spades 4 of spades (a straight, Six high)
BTN/SB wins $18952.50
BTN/SB wins $18952.50
(Rake: $1.00)

And with that hand, I decided that losing 60k in half an hour was probably as good a stopping point as any and picked up. I’m really low online right now so I’m going to start getting more money on. In the meantime, I’m going to stick to coaching and playing 10/20, so it’s looking like I won’t be having much new poker content for the next week or so. Just coaching, working on Rap Genius, and maybe getting lunch with friends from time to time.

Oh yeah, and standard “I’m venting about a downswing caveat”: I’m still insanely lucky to be as well off as I am and complaining about a downswing in the middle of a huge recession without being mindful of that would be insane, this happens all the time and I always bounce back it’s just all in the game, I’m just in a bad mood, and I believe in blogging my losses as well as my wins and my bad moods as well as my good ones, etc. etc. yada yada

A friend recently informed me that my blog is the first result when you google “one vile task” (for this post ). Ahead of any references to Deadwood.

I just want to say thank you to all my readers who helped make this possible. I remember one day I told my brother “I’m going to make a Deadwood line more famous on the internet than Deadwood made it” and he said to me “Please, how you goin’ make some line famous when you ain’t even got a blog.” Well, we ain’t gotta dream no more. We did it.

Full Tilt Poker $25/$50 No Limit Hold’em - 5 players - View hand 502632
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

CO: $5283.75
BTN: $5000.00
Hero (SB): $10670.00
BB: $5000.00
UTG: $10912.50

Pre Flop: ($75.00) Hero is SB with 2 of diamonds 2 of hearts
1 fold, CO raises to $150, 1 fold, Hero calls $125, 1 fold

Flop: ($350.00) 2 of clubs 5 of hearts 5 of spades (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $200, Hero raises to $500, CO raises to $900, Hero raises to $1650, CO raises to $5133.75 all in, Hero calls $3483.75

Turn: ($10617.50) K of clubs (2 players - 1 is all in)

River: ($10617.50) T of hearts (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $10617.50
CO shows K of spades A of diamonds (two pair, Kings and Fives)
Hero shows 2 of diamonds 2 of hearts (a full house, Twos full of Fives)
Hero wins $10614.50
(Rake: $3.00)

I’ve played maybe 500 hands since coming back to poker. I’m up roughly 15k at 25/50. It’s been pretty whatever: I still have trouble getting action and I’m working on getting money online so I don’t even have money on FTP to play 50/100 against the random regs who do want a match from time to time.

However, I have been keeping busy: I’ve been coaching a few hours a day lately and it’s been good to get back in the swing of things. My students have been having good sessions, although I am always amazed at how much tougher the mid-stakes games are getting. BTW, if you’re interested in receiving coaching, PM me on 2p2 or DeucesCracked (FoxwoodsFiend on both)