Woot! Won an ITH League Tourney!

Date: Sun, Mar 25, 2007

Never thought this would happen; my fellow ITH'ers are good tourney players and, to be fair, I got lucky on two hands when I needed the luck. One was just after the bubble, we were down to 5 players, blinds were 300/600 with a 50t ante and I found myself with Q Q in the SB. I was sitting in 2nd place with a stack of 8,746t. It was folded to the Button (westwick) who had the 4th largest stack, 7,195t. He raised 1,850t.

Westwick had been pretty active, I figured he'd raise quite a few hands here and there was decent chance he had at least an Ace or King, I decided best course of action was not let him take a cheap flop so I pushed all-in; BB folded and Westwick called with A K. Oops ... I didn't expect to see that good a hand; still, I was happy with a race, QQ is to good to fold short-handed to a possible blind steal. The flop came A 9 8. Well, there goes me, or so I thought only had 2 outs. Turn Q..Woot! River was 6 and I won.

Also got a lucky on my last hand. We were down to HU and I had a great stack 37,586t vs 6,114t held by Mere's Dad. I was in the BB with A 6 and Mere went all-in. He'd been doing this a fair bit and for the most part I'd been folding, not wanting to double him up and let him back in. The hand wasn't great but had some showdown value if he didn't hold a pair or a better Ace. I called, Mere turned over 7 7. Didn't like that my kicker was less than his pair but oh well.

Flop came 6 T 3. The 6 was nice, I could win now if another 6 came or an Ace and lucky me, the turn brought the A! I won the tourney with 2 pair! WOOT!

Turning point in the tourney, for me, was a hand I played against toro. We were down to 9 and he had the 2nd largest stack with 8,544t. I was sitting with 4,017t, blinds were 100/200 with 25t antes. I was in the CO with A Q. Toro was in MP2 and raised 1st in, making it 625t to go. I thought about it for awhile, the table had been playing pretty tight with most 1st in raises taking the blinds. AQ is not great at a full table, I didn't really want to risk my whole stack on it, on the other hand, he might just be trying to steal. I decided to raise and see how he'd respond. The Button and blinds folded, toro called.

The flop came 7 Q 7. This was a two-edged sword, on the one hand I had TPTK on the other, there was a flush draw and a pair. A7s or 87s wasn't out of the question. I thought about going all-in but also thought I'd like to get some chips if I am ahead. Decided to bet 2,000t. That left me with 1,017t which I hoped would confuse toro. It was too big a bet if I had a 7, was hoping he'd think I was semi-bluffing a flush draw or possibly just bluffing and being afraid to give up my whole stack. But I think I also priced it so calling with a 4FD would be a mistake (he needed to call 2,000t to win 4,525t which is 2.26:1, it was 2.77 even if he thought he'd get the rest of my stack if he hit a the flush draw) 'Course, I wasn't quite so sure of the bet size when I made it; just felt it was about the right amount to make him suspect a bluff or semi-bluff. Figured if he had the 7 I was screwed but if I checked behind and he bet the turn while I didn't improve I'd be in the same bind so might as well find out now, when I thought I was ahead.

Toro took some time and then raised to 4,000t, putting me all-in. I called and was surprised to see him turn over 6 5. I thought I was going to see an Ace or a weaker Queen. I was lucky he didn't have A7, 77 or 87. The turn and river came up 3 5 and my Queens won, doubling me up.

I'm still not sure if my logic was right or if it was the right spot to risk my tourney life; the blinds were only 200t. For some reason, at the time, I just had a sense that I was ahead in the hand and decided to risk it.

Actually, I think I'll post this hand on ITH and ask others for their 2 cents.

Edit: On 2nd thought, I think I would have played this hand the same way pre-flop given the way the table had been going and have done the same on the flop, if I was up against a 7 or an overpair, so be it. If I'm going to fold when I hit the Queen I might as well not play it at all.

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Life, Mafia and the Internet

Date: Tue, Mar 13, 2007

Spent part of last week playing the ITH Mafia Game #14. It was my third mafia game and this time I was a mafioso, which I discovered I really don't like being; I'm a lousy liar, I also hate confrontations and attacking people, all of which are necessary game strategies, even when you're innocent. The game, like poker itself, has forced me to re-evaluate the way I react in real life situations.

This game, #14, wasn't much fun, had to really work at it. It was also tainted by the knowledge that PizzaByNight and Cybrarian were dealing with family crises. While I have never met either of them personally after 2 years on ITH I do consider them (and many others) as friends; the knowledge that a friend is going through a rough time is enough to put a damper on online hijinks.

I have been playing some poker, managed to get 400 hands of $1/$2 6-max in yesterday; makes me laugh, I'm so proud of myself for getting that many in, BugsBunny has a target of 2,500 hands a day! I'm lucky to do that in a month. My focus just doesn't hold that long and two-tabling is the most I can handle given the size of my laptop screen and the state of my eyes.

Also found three interesting articles on 2+2: The Bet-Bet Line by Stoxtrader and Zobags, and Winners make Good Tradeoffs, Part 1 and Winners are More Motivated and Controlled by Alan Schoonmaker. Alan's article is especially useful in highlighting ways you can sabotage yourself. After going through his motivation check list realized I was motivated approximately

60% due to a Sense of accomplishment from winning
30% due to Skills Development, and only
10% by Making money

If I have a losing session I'm not happy with myself, not because I lost money but because I feel I've played lousy. Admittedly, there are always hands I make mistakes on but variance is often a factor as well; I tend to dwell on the mistakes and beat myself up over them. If I want to really improve I'll have to get over this.

On a positive note, I think I've managed to stabilize my internet connection; did some tinkering and it has been much more reliable over the last few days. Now if only I could feel confident that the move date the condo has given us is reliable. Dropped by the place on Sunday after picking up my older daughter and heading out to St Catherines to visit my number 2 noy. The front doors were accessible but still no sign that anyone has moved in; apparently they are waiting for a fire safety inspection which is supposed to happen on Wednesday. Keeping my fingers crossed they pass it and people actually start moving in; for every week it's delayed our date gets pushed out one week.

Lunch with the girls was fun, two of Shannon's friends came along as well so there was alot of teasing and ragging going on. Especially when Verity informed them I got a speeding ticket on the way to her place and then managed to get myself twisted around after leaving the condo site. Who knew you couldn't get to the QEW from the 427 when you get on the 427 at Dundas? Ended up in Sherway Gardens parking lot which only had access to the Gardiner East ... wrong direction ... we were supposed to be going west...lol. Ah well, we did eventually get there and had a good day. Always great to spend time with my two beauties, god knows why but it does seem we got them right; as they often remind me, I'm one lucky mother :)

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The move, internet woes and SnG's

Date: Sat, Mar 3, 2007

Well, we've moved, into a rented condo, until our new place is ready. Was woken up at 6:15 am the second morning by the fire alarm ... and a real fire! We're on the 17th floor, looked over the balcony and smoke was pouring out of the place way below; never got dressed so fast in my life. We grabbed the dog and raced down 17 flights, hit smoke on the 3rd and 2nd but luckily it was not thick enough to block us. Then we discovered pets are not allowed in the building (we were originally told it wouldn't be a problem), lovely run-in with the property management people. And now we've been told our occupancy date for the new place is no longer March 11th but mid-April. Sigh. I want my own little corner of the world back, lived in the same sub-division for 30 years and now I feel homeless. Told my hubby that once we're in the new place he'll need an atom bomb to move me.

To top it off, the internet connection here is not the greatest. We use a cable company with the whole package: net, cable and phone. They had to put my phone on the same line as my net since this building won't allow anyone but Bell to touch the phone lines. As a result I get intermittent drops. Could also be because I'm in a building and there are more users. I had a dedicated line in the house; rarely had problems.

Also feel strange as I basically have nothing to do. For the last two years I've been sorting through stuff, cleaning and packing. Now suddenly there's very little I really have to do other than daily meals and weekly laundry. I'm also house bound; afraid to leave the dog on his own as he'll bark sure as hell and cause a disturbance which might give the building the right to come in and remove him. Poor little thing, he's 12 years old, 13 in October and has a mild heart condition. The last month has been hard on him, people coming and going, being thrown into a strange place. Odd thing is he's calmed down considerably, mostly because one of us is always with him. He's quite happy to snuggle between us on the couch in the evening. Doesn't have to go from room to room, floor to floor looking for us. Quite funny actually; we're wired and he's content. Go figure.

My SnG play is going nicely. Still just playing Stars $1 2-tables, I've only got 37 games in but so far I've had 6 wins, 5 seconds and 3 fourths for an ROI of 72.84% and an ITM of 37%. Much better than I've ever done before. Trying to focus on situations vs cards. Will need to play some more 6-max though as I haven't cleared by bonus yet; it will take ages to clear playing $1 SnG's :)

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Moving and SnG's

Date: Sun, Feb 18, 2007

This last month has been super busy, packing and dumping over 20 years worth of build up; amazing the stuff you can accumulate without even trying :(

In between packing I try to get in a SnG or two. Only playing $1 buy-in's on Stars but so far Snyder's PTF is making a huge difference. Previously I had a negative ROI on these things, today, it's sitting +70%. Only 28 games but trend is definitely going in the right direction: 3 1sts, 4 2nds, 4 4ths. The key difference is my stack sizes; often I'm sitting in the top three for most of the session. This is sooo nice; not knowing how to build a stack has been my biggest problem with SnG's and tourney's. Still alot of room for improvement; my HU is awful but over all I'm pretty pleased with my game.

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Woot! Back in

Date: Fri, Feb 9, 2007

Matthew suggested I try ithpoker.com and for some reason it worked; I can now access ITH through both addresses. I have no idea what happened or even if it was due to my visting the pokerwonk site but it certainly drove me wonky!

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Still can't get to ITH

Date: Thu, Feb 8, 2007

Ok, this is driving me nuts. I signed onto IRC and everyone (TP, KT, toro, woody, etc) tells me that ITH is not down so it's something on my system but for the life of me I can't figure out what's going on.

I was browsing the forum yesterday morning between 9-10am. There was a post by suited about www.pokerwonks.com; I visited the site, did a whois and discovered it is owned by Matthew, went to post a reply to suited to point this out and when I hit preview I lost ITH. I have not been able to access it since.

I've cleared all my browser cache, cookies, etc. Tried ipconfig /flushdns, I've even tried some dnscache registry resets but still no luck. The weird thing is I can't access it using my hubby's machine either so something must have messed up on my router but what?????? Either that or my ISP has done something but it's so weird, I can access everything else, same as usual. It's just ITH that I can't get. I've never run into this before and I'm stumped :(

When I run ipconfig /displaydns I get

ns1.internettexasholdem.com
----------------------------------------
Record Name . . . . . : ns1.internettexasholdem.com
Record Type . . . . . : 1
Time To Live . . . . : 12061
Data Length . . . . . : 4
Section . . . . . . . : Answer
A (Host) Record . . . : 72.9.244.216

ns2.internettexasholdem.com
----------------------------------------
Record Name . . . . . : ns2.internettexasholdem.com
Record Type . . . . . : 1
Time To Live . . . . : 12061
Data Length . . . . . : 4
Section . . . . . . . : Answer
A (Host) Record . . . : 72.9.244.217

www.internettexasholdem.com
----------------------------------------
Record Name . . . . . : www.internettexasholdem.com
Record Type . . . . . : 5
Time To Live . . . . : 12061
Data Length . . . . . : 4
Section . . . . . . . : Answer
CNAME Record . . . . : internettexasholdem.com


Would appreciate it if anyone would check there connection and see if they get the same thing. Maybe it's a DNS thing with my router.

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ITH down?

Date: Wed, Feb 7, 2007

Haven't been able to access ITH since 9-10am EST. There are a few other things I haven't been able to get to either. I know there were some internet attacks yesterday, anyone know if they continued on today? or is it just an ITH problem??

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Won my first tourney using PTF tactics

Date: Thu, Jan 25, 2007

I don't have all the PTF tactics down pat but I'm getting bored playing the Poker Academy bots so I decided to try some live play on Stars. Played two tourneys tonight and won the 2nd one! A $1 + .10 2 table NL Sit'n'go. Woot :)

I made two pre-flop mistakes early and got lucky; went All-in from SB with AJo when UTG raised 3xBB. He had just lost 1/2 his stack and I thought he might have been on tilt, but even so, I had a competitive stack and should not have risked it. He turned over QQ and I lucked out when 4 clubs hit the board, I had J, he had none.

Did something similar later on when a crazy LAG raised 1st in from the CO, went all in from the Button with 44 (was actually hoping he would fold, in retrospect I should have known he'd call with anything). He turned over AQo. Luckily my pair held.

I was happy with my position plays, made a number of them that kept my stack competitive. When we got down to 7 players everyone tightened up considerably so I changed gears and did quite a bit of stealing. By the time they started to fight back they were very short stacked. Found the best time to be aggro was right after the blinds increased. I was also cautious not to start calling any all-in bet just because I had the big stack, so was able to preserve and grow it.

The position moves really made the difference. Can't wait to play some more tomorrow.

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PTF

Date: Thu, Jan 25, 2007

I'm getting bored with limit, even the 6-max has tightened up and money just seems to keep going around the table as people exchange blinds. Based on the posts I've been seeing on ITH the money seems to be in NL Full Ring but it doesn't appeal to me all that much. Tourney's and sats are another option but I've never been much good at NL, I can be patient but all it usually does is get me close to the bubble and even if I manage to make it past the bubble I rarely get far as I'm always short stacked.

The other day a post by Jeffnc on Arnold Snyder's The Poker Tournament Formula tweaked my interest so I picked it up (amazingly Chapters carried it!). Have to say, this book is very different from the standard stuff I learned on POS and from reading Kreiger, Sklansky, Harrington, etc. Haven't tried his methods in real money play yet but I have been practicing his basic position strategy using Poker Academy. You basically ignore your cards (and by this I mean play totally in the dark) and make your moves based on your position and what's happened before you. Gives you a very different perspective on the game after you do it for awhile. Since you're playing in the dark you are forced to pay more attention to your opponents, the betting so far and the board.

Today I added in his card strategy. Originally I thought my VP$IP would go through the roof but it's been hovering around 25%, gets up near 30% if my cards are running good. Still have to get over some major weaknesses in my post-flop play so my plan is to get a few more sessions in on Poker Academy and then try it out on the Stars multi-table $1+.20 sats.

Tell you one thing, it's a hellu'va lot more fun than playing squeaky tight. If it pays it will be even more fun :)

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Stars 6-max

Date: Fri, Jan 5, 2007

Back at Stars to work off the reload bonus; the full ring tables had long wait lists so decided to give 6-max another try, which, so far, is working out nicely.

The play is much worse than I remember, very loose with a lot of bluffing, I've run into more than one player who will bluff raise/re-raise the flop and turn and then bet the river unimproved. Hope it continues :)

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Still grinding at $1/$2

Date: Fri, Dec 29, 2006

Just finished my December bonus chase at InterPoker; usually do quite well there but this month ended up down $25. I've finally convinced myself that the reason I'm break even is because of the dumb things I do when I get bored; I cost myself more bets by sticking with a second best hand than I care to admit :( Ah well, hopefully I'll be able to discipline myself better although this isn't the first time I've realized I'm my own worst enemy.

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Still break-even at $1/$2

Date: Mon, Dec 4, 2006

Haven't played much lately as very busy with work and other things. Did manage to get some hands in this week and clear my Stars bonus. I'm still break-even at $1/$2 but am up money because of the bonuses.

I've played 12,511 hands, earning $899.07 in bonus (and rakeback from WPEX). The chases cost me $89.40 (big killers were Paradise and CD Poker where I lost more than the bonus, $144.75 and $118.97 respectively). Nice being ahead $$ wise, just wish my game results were more postive.

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In Remembrance

Date: Sun, Nov 12, 2006

I've been lucky enough to have never experienced war, my Dad did though; he spent two years on the front in Korea. My Mum said she picked shrapnel out of him for over a year after he came home; little bits of metal would blister up on his arms, legs, face, torso and she would pick them out.

He never spoke about it much; I know he did sniper duty and hated it, especially as snipers were shot on sight. He was lost behind the lines two or three times but always managed to find his way; he'd grown up in the Ottawa Valley and knew his way around in the bush. He said chlorine pills were standard issue, in case you were forced to drink the water in the rice paddies. He hated the night, the North Koreans and Chinese would bang on pots, pans and anything else that made noise; they'd keep it up all night. He laced his boots up like the N. Koreans and slept with his feet where his head would normally go as they had a nasty habit of sneaking into the camp at night to chop off people's heads.

Every few years he'd receive reunion letters, read them and toss 'em in the garbage. One year I asked him why he never went; he said there was nothing about Korea, or war, that he wanted to remember.

But I want to remember you Dad, and all the young men, in all the wars who were not able to come home. I hope that, wherever they are, it is, finally, a place without wars.

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It's all about attitude

Date: Wed, Nov 8, 2006

While browsing Clipmarks I came across 5 great quotes that it wouldn't hurt me to remember everyday; especially in connection with downswings:

"Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid." - John Keats

"Be gentle with yourself, learn to love yourself, to forgive yourself" - Wilfred Peterson

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