Bad Day

So right after 2 huge sessions and being up $100, I am down a mighty $61.60 today.

742 hands

-$61.60

$318.30

Now I am $81.70 away from my goal for this month. It’s been a rollercoaster ride this poker thing. Maybe i don’t play enough hands to breakeven faster, but it seems like losing 1-2 buyins a day comes more often than i think it would. Sure i made bad calls when i had the 2nd best hand all day, but i feel like i am being outdrawn a lot today. AK vs AA on a K high board. JJ vs set of Tens on a 7T382 board. He call flop, raise 3x on turn. I really couldn’t beat anything by now except a flush draw semi bluff, which is unlikely since he’s a 12/0 player AF only 2. I called raise on turn. Check river, he bet $9 into $16 pot. I think for longest time, and actually think he might be bluffing with a busted draw, called and he obviously has TT for the set. I shouldn’t think so much when against tight players, they basically play really standard, i shoulda just fold turn.

I am increasing frustrated by putting people on a range, especially on a 4straight/4flush kinda board. It’s just so many cards they can call you down with, you have no idea what they actually have, and I don’t know when to stop barreling on such boards. I feel like my poker is plateauing at the moment, meaning I haven’t learned anything new this week. I can’t seem to be able to think about poker away from the game. I guess playing and losing helps in the motivation to study the game more.

Live Cash Game

Played a cash game yesterday. Basically plan to play exactly like i do online. Meaning bet premium hands for value. Since live is always loose and call-y. A very loose player limped and i raised like 8x with A9s, which is slightly on the bigger side of a raise but in this game, bound to get a caller still. One guy called. Loose player who limped announced he is all-in for 75x. I thought for a while, and since a limp shove range is at best a weak ace, KQ KJ and low pockets 22-88 type hands, i definitely thought i was ahead most of the time with A9s to call. That plus the fact this player has shown that he is capable of shoving preflop with almost atc – 56o etc. Well i didn’t factor in the fact that he thinks I am tight player, and yet willing to shove over my raise. That means he probably has a better hand this time. I called his shove for the first time in like many times, shockingly another guy called behind. We are all-in. Loose player shows AQo, I am very shocked to say the least, never expect him to limp such a strong hand. Guy behind showed A8o, which is so bad a call. I got A8o guy covered, but loose player got me covered. In my shock i forgot that I was dealer for that hand (I had position that is why i raised with A9s in the first place). I opened the 5 cards, and i got myself a diamond flush for the bad beat. I felt so bad to loose player coz it was obviously a wrong move on my part to call. But given a limp shove and super loose image, the decision to call was right. Loose player began to tilt after this bad beat and lost like another 3/4 buy-ins.

I didn’t enjoy myself though, i thought i wasn’t thinking like half way into the session. I didn’t get any reasonable holdings. In fact i only had 3/4 premiums all night. Nevermind, managed to steal some pots with huge cbets in position. Always a great strategy against loose limpers. I donked off some money trying to play position with A5o against a huge raise. Then donked off some more in i forgot what. But i was sitting with a nice 250-300BB stack after that 3-way suckout. I donked off like 50BB. And decided to play tight like online. Got a run of bad cards. I can’t believe it 38 4T Q2s keep getting dealt these type of shit cards. I prolly could be more “pro-active” like my friend W who was playing well and on a sick run. He was raising 56o and all sorts of junk from any position. I think his PFR is something like 40-50%. But whatever, his 3.5x raise always still gets 4-5 callers every round. But i really don’t think there is any fold equity against loose players, that is why i don’t try his strategy, but W begs to differ and maintains it is a very effective strategy coz he would get paid of when he actually has his premiums. I don’t know, i think these people just call with like 30% of theirs hand all the way up to a 25BB raise preflop. Which is kinda crazy but not uncommon in live cash games.

Also i would like to add that one thing about live cash games is that people smoke. And i have to breathe in the 2nd hand smoke, and my whole body smells of smoke too. I may be over blaming things for my bad sessions, but i think that inhaling smoke makes it harder for me to think. Whether this is true or not, i don’t like playing in a smoke filled area.

Oh ya so much for complaing I had no hands. The 2nd last hand of the night I was dealt red Queens. Shipped it and got called by KJs. Flop came Q, then board paired so I had the nuts. Happy. That is how patience pays. The last hand of the day, everyone posted 2.5bb ante. Pot was around 30BB to start. I looked down and found… red Queens again! wow.. what are the chances. I thought that my tightness was really getting rewarded finally right at the end of the session. People limped of course it was a friendly last round, everyone wants a piece of it. I had to spoil it by raising huge, 15BB. Super loose guy to my left shoves. I don’t really think about his range now, although he did showdown some crazy hands like K8s or something earlier. A girl who is a big winner in the 2 cash games we played so far shoved too. I call of course. Flop came KTxxK. Girl rejoiced and showed King six -.- Guy showed Q8. Awesome way to lose to a 3 outer. Wasn’t so affected, coz i was up 3 buyins by then, and i only lost a buy-in this pot.

Back after 5 months!

I am finally back to blogging! (online at least).  I’ve been keeping an offline blog, but they are more topic-centered. Like how i used to use this blog as a poker blog. Actually the reason i haven’t blogged here is because I have stopped playing poker, aside from the occasional facebook poker games. So i decided, that i should keep my investing diary offline. But certain things are not bloggable in the investing diary, and i often go into philosophy and psychology in my posts, so i thought i might as well come back to this blog, where i can discuss everything and have them put into the different categories. Also I have the feeling that if i write them here, they “won’t be lost forever”.

Here I will sum up all that has happened in the last 4 months (to make up for lost time) ( i may have forgotten some but these should be the main ones):

15th of July, I missed my flight

This was the first time ever i missed a flight. And it was due to an unexpected jam on the airport toll. We could have anticipated the jam, as it was at 5pm, but i don’t think we could have anticipated the severity of the jam. It was terrible… 6 lanes of jammed cars, on the only highway that leads to the airport! I can’t imagine how many people missed their flights too due to this.

Run like God in a live cash game

Might sounds like a blasphemous statement but the session itself, how good i ran, it really felt like God or a force was playing through me. Everything just went so well. I told W that I’ll never run this good again in my lifetime lol. How do you get up 8 buy-ins in a 3 hour cash game? Was dealt a fair lot of premium hands (AA twice KK JJ TT) but mostly importantly, every time i played for a big pot, i get lucky. Whether with premium hands like AA or speculative like 35s, i seem to hit the board hard, but more importantly someone else also hit the board, but only for the 2nd best hand. For example, I flopped flush on the turn over this guy’s set of aces on the flop, the two times I got aces I manage to get it in pre-flop and hold, then things like flopping straight over two pair, flopping two pair against a high pocket pair. Very unreal, and was definitely a great feeling. Although it seems like a lot in Indonesian money, I only won SGD$200. But it could last me a month or two here. Before the session i was focusing my mind on relaxing, and not thinking of anything at all, i think this state really helped a lot. I tried to maintain it throughout the session.

Finally investing the money

Father gave me some capital to trade, which is quite a huge sum to me, but i was too scared to put the money to use as i think i haven’t learned enough to invest properly yet. Then after some pressure from my dad, i finally picked a day when the market was red, and put 50% of my portfolio into 4 stocks – TLKM BBRI UNTR and BBKP. I believe these companies are safe yet might produce more than medium returns. I used two indicators, first Earnings growth, and second strong analyst recommendations. These stocks produce solid growth in earnings and are recovering well from the crisis. Their P/E are low 13-15. So this combined made the  ’margin of safety’ i was looking for if i was to enter into stocks. Although this was in no way a detailed analysis, at least i felt i did a good job in minimizing risk. I just didn’t want to lose any money, that is the number one key.

Thanks to my ‘guts’ the market rallied from that day onwards, BBRI and UNTR has seen 10-15% increases, reaching the initial price targets i set on them (which i never expected will come so quick). The less volatile stocks like TLKM and BBKP has seen a fair share of increases from 3-8%. I have seen taken profit on UNTR for 15% (it’s since moved higher….). BBRI i should have taken profit at 15% too but i didn’t because i thought BBRI has a little more to go. But i was wrong.. it’s gone down 10% from then, and my paper profits for BBRI today is only 6%, TLKM 3% and BBKP 1%. I’m thinking of putting another 1/3 of the money into the market again today, seeing 2 days of big drops upon no real news. We’ll see how.

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That’s the end of the summary. I’m constantly distracted throughout this blog post but hope i didn’t write too bad. More frequent blogs posts (mostly about investing) from today onwards.

Quads and some Cash Game

Caught 2 quads in SNGs today. Quad Kings and quad Tens. And what are the odds of this, the last time i caught quads, was like 1 month ago, and it was also quad kings quad tens in the same day.

 

Major suckout! Went all in PF.

 

Then this happened to me…

 

Sick hand happened last week. No action until the river everyone shoves. Quads over my J high flush over ace high flush.

 

I just know the value of fishes in cash games. You are not going to make as much money as when a fish decides to dump you money. I mean i lost 2 big pots yesterday, both from calling even though i know i’m beat. One was QK on Q98 board, check i bet, he check raise. and shove turn. I should’ve known it’s a set/two pair but i keep thinking donks might have QJ QT and doing the same. But i was wrong… I could have layed this down, maybe save 85 cents.

Then there’s this hand where i flop bottom set on a 2AK board. I thought this was gona be fun, turns out not. And i was against a fish who was nice enough to check behind the nuts on the river lol.

https://www.pokertableratings.com/replayer/index.php?site=fulltilt&id=12580267215&hash=1565273751

confused the hell out of me. when he check i thought i was good. then i was like okay… wait wtf.

This major fish accumulated to like $14.00 in chips at one point. 140 BBs.

But i didn’t catch any premium in 100 hands, except JJ which i folded preflop to a 4-bet (i raise 3x in ep, 2 calls, he reraised to 16x) by quite tight player. And wrongly thought he had QQ KK AA. He showed TT which almost made me puke. Also i would’ve flopped set Jacks on the flop which would have raked in all the money!

By this time i was down to about $3.50 ($10 buyin)

Then i four-outered someone. hit a gutshot on the river. doubled up.

https://www.pokertableratings.com/replayer/index.php?site=fulltilt&id=12581453210&hash=1565690599

Then this hand happened.. unbelievable what he shows

https://www.pokertableratings.com/replayer/index.php?site=fulltilt&id=12581490244&hash=1565727465

call 2 streets pot bets with mid pair (shyt kicker)

it’s great to have poker table ratings coz you can smell out the fishes really quick, and not think they are some expert LAG player.

Tried to play cash game after listening to Pokercast with Phil Galfond. He said one thing which is really true. No where else can you play such multi-street action which your only focus will be on maximising EV. Not like in tourneys where you have to think of your stack and your position in the tournament, which leads to a lot of scared playing?? I’ll try to play a few hundred hands again tonight. But oh no im staying over at Mg Besar so i prolly can’t, internet is shit there.

Cruise Poker

I don’t know why i find it bad tasted to tell other people about our winnings. Like, it’s so bad tasted. But i can’t stop doing it, or feel like doing it. I don’t know what good can come out of telling people about our successes. You tell a person, “I won this this this!!!” and that guy will either go “oh ok” or like reluctantly congratulate you, or worse they will feel uncomfortable and ignore you. That’s why it’s better to keep successes as ’silent incentives’ as Carlos Slim said. The trip was good and i got to see Singapore’s best player on the cruise! Which is shocking at first..

There was only one NLHE table. Blinds was 3/5! Kinda scary to hear at first, but less so when you start playing. Bought in $300 ($250 + free $50 bonus), won $97 at one point, but slowly dwindled down to $65. Key hands was Jh10h flop trip Jacks on the turn, KQ flop King pair and got called by Will who had Jack pair lol He didn’t believe me cos i check the TPTK on the flop. After midnight we played again, like the 2nd hand i got 99. Guy UTG raised to $20 4xBB i called. 3 other players called? I thought of re-raising here due to the many people after who might just limp-in, decreasing my chances after the flop. Anyway i was too afraid to make a big re-raise with like my first hand, i sat down for barely minutes. The flop came 9d 8s 2d. Guy UTG first raiser preflop made it $50, pot was $100 or $80. I was right after him, made it $50, and $100 more to go. Guys after folded. This guy don’t even think long and said “You’re committed right” commenting how i just put in $20, and $150 into the pot now, so i only had $130 left. He said “so i’ll put you all-in”. I was kinda afraid now because he appeared so calm like he had a big hand. I had to call, so there i was first hand i played and got put all-in. But i had the nuts so i’m not afraid. I was hoping he reveal the AA or KK, which i’ll be a fav against. All the chips are in he asked “What’d you have? set?” “Yeah set of 9s” “I have nut flush draw” Then the people on the table were like woah woah, definitely fun to see a made hand against a huge draw. Turn came A (not diamond), and river came Ace of hearts (not diamond). Then everyone just went ‘OHHHH’. I also thought i had lost at that moment. At least the table thought i had lost due to an unfortunate case of runner runner. Even the dealer took in our cards and pushed the chips to the guy. Thankfully for my friend W, who was also sitting beside, who shouted saying “(He has) Full House! Full house!” As in the set of 9s, although runner runner aced, would have made full house 999AA over the AAA. Then everyone began to realize and all the chips was pushed to me. I just kept quiet, even though i knew i made the full house, everyones reaction and the situation just made me so nervous, my heart was beating so quick. Of course it’s the biggest pot i have ever won, but i didn’t see it like that since the stakes are so high, and there were a few $1000+ pots that night.

W and I went home tomorrow, both profiting almost the same amount $250 or so. That felt so good, i don’t know how to explain. It’s good to be able to win enough money on the table to cover the cruise, room, food and still have some felt. It felt like we were free-loading off the cruise which was definitely a good feeling :)