The Vegas plan

Las Vegas 3/4/07-3/8/07
I plan to play the $200 buy in NL tournament at the 2007 Binions Poker Classic on the 5th.
I will be focusing 90% of my cash game play on the 4-8 limit game at Bellagio but also mixing in some 4-8 at other random poker rooms and I may dabble with a bit of 1-2 NL if I'm running hot/stuck and trying to chase my losses.
I had planned to play either the $330 or $540 NL at the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza but I have decided that a better bankroll decision would be to force myself to win my buy in for those tourneys through satellites or cash game winnings.

Should be an interesting mix of a few very good players, a few terrible players, and a whole lot of the in between in town for these tourneys as well as WSOP. I'm looking forward to checking out that whole scene and stalking MIKE MATUSOW if I see him. Here's to coming back with a MUCH larger bankroll and then getting things headed in the right direction online.

some thoughts on the continuation bet

I have been thinking alot lately about what initially seems like a very small and uninteresting move in NL poker, the continuation bet. The deeper I think about it the more complex it becomes(what about this game doesn't though, right?). I remember after reading Harrington for the first time I immediately began continuation betting every hand that I had taken the lead with a pre flop raise. This would usually lead to me laying down in a fetal position to every re-raise i faced when I wasn't holding nuts. Obviously this isn't the way to win tournaments.
I have begun to make some interesting changes in my game and one of the biggest changes I have made has to do with my continuation bets. Not only the frequency of the bets but also the size of the continuations I do make. I remember immediately post Harrington it would always be just as he outlined, 1/3 or 1/2 pot. I played as if these amounts were the only way to bet and anything else was just not "good" poker. I have started to vary the amounts of my continuation bets and have found that a good amount is around the size of my pre flop raise. For example: blinds 100-200, I make a late position raise to somewhere between 500-600, BB calls making a pot of about 1300 going to the flop. My cont. bet in this spot would probably be about 500-600 on a non threatening board. If the flop comes very draw heavy I have found myself making a larger continuation bet obv. to give worse odds to the potential draw chaser. By making my cont. bets about 100-200 less than I would previously I can save alot of chips when I am re-raised over the course of a tournament which is very important especially in the early to mid stages.
I have also become alot more selective about the spots where I make a continuation bet. I would guess that in the past my percentage of hands that I cont. bet was probably 80% or more. Now it has become ALOT less. I have finally realized that not every spot calls for me to bet post flop. If it is checked to me and I have a nice flopped draw I will more likely take the free card on the turn than I used to. Also I have stopped my cont. bets when I flop air in a multi way pot to damn near 0% of the time, its way too likely someone hit enough that they will at least call if not pull off the always popular check raise. I guess a good summary is that my aggression has become more selective and thought out, which cant be a bad thing.

Where to go from here

So now I have to decide what to do with the winnings from last week. Two choices: go to vegas for cash games and tournaments then come back with around a $1500 bankroll to use between playing online under current playing conditions and also play live cash games, or buy laptop and become a member at cardrunners and pokerxfactor and start playing online limit cash games and nl tournaments online starting with a $2000 bankroll, with a focus and intensity like never before.

Just some follow up

Just wanted to touch a lil bit on the win sunday night. I think overall I played very well, Maybe the best all around tournament I have ever played. I definitely ran well, which you have to do to win one of these, but running hot without playing solid will get you nowhere. The only point in the tournament where I felt outclassed was 3 handed and heads up. As heads up started I was out chipped about 430k to 240k and had almost convinced myself that second place wasn't that bad and still worth over $2000. Maybe fifteen hands into heads up I took the lead unfortunately I can't remember the hand. Well as is typical for me once I get a lead heads up I make bad calls and double my opponent up. He eventually had me to around 150k and fighting for my life. Not to sound too dramatic but I remember actually thinking "well its either time to give up and start shoving or actually make one last stand to come back and win this thing". I didn't catch any miracle hands to make my comeback, instead I just slowly chipped back up to about even then the hand came up which won me the tournament. My hand was xd4d, the flop came out two diamonds and paired my 4. We eventually both got all our chips in and he was on a gut straight draw. I didn't even realize when the 5d came on the turn that he was dead and I had that moment of terror when the river 8 made his straight but the frown quickly turned upside down and he was left with like 5k chips and a few hands later it was over. I used a new style of small ball in this tournament and I think it helped alot. Small ball poker makes it easier to get paid when you have a huge hand and easier to get away from your not so great hands.

VINDICATION!!!!!!!

PokerStars Tournament #50008496, No Limit Hold'emBuy-In: $30.00/$3.00
447 playersTotal Prize Pool: $13410.00
Tournament started - 2007/05/20 - 23:00:00 (ET)
Dear kaiserblad,
You finished the tournament in 1st place. A $3,352.50 award has been credited to your Real Money account. You earned 524.48 tournament leader points in this tournament.

Making it count

Reading a book or a post on 2+2 is not worth anything if it is just words on a monitor that i read through and then move onto something else. I need to work on making these tools mean more to me. I need to work on absorbing and internalizing all of these things so that i can use them to my advantage when I am at the table.

I dont need a statue...

Its taken me awhile but now I realize i don't need recognition. The poker player equals rock star thing is not why this game is played. The good thing about the "poker boom" is that its brought in plenty of dead money for the real players to pay the rent. That's what I have been missing this whole time, I should play this game to pay the rent, not to be on a magazine cover!
It is time for a cleansing of my poker brain. The best thing I can do at this point is to start over. I am going to forgot 90% of what I think I know about this game because that is about how much I'm wrong about. I have a good foundation to start from and that is what I am going to do, start over.
This blog will be used for me to express some thoughts I have about the game along the way to myself as well as keep track of my play. Eventually someone else may find that there is something to be gained from reading this and that is fine but this is first and foremost for me. I need to change the way I think about poker and realize that the winner is the guy with the most money, not the guy who is ranked #1 on pocketfives.com or the guy who wins the bracelet or the guy on the cover of Bluff magazine.