"I guess you're not ActionJeff"

And Bobby would be right about that. Once again I come up short in a 180-SNG on Stars and finish 2nd. I am not completely disappointed because I was out chipped nearly 3 to 1 and I played pretty perfect poker heads up (which lasted about 2 minutes). I also ran really lucky at the FT, coming in with 10k in chips when the average is 30k. My ugliest suckout is as follows:

I open in middle position with K10s. Next player pushes all in for about 2 times my raise. I am obviously pot committed and call. He has AA and flops top set on a board of AQ4. I simply type "J?" into the chat and Lee Jones puts one up on the turn and I complete my biggest suckout of the tournament. I give the guy alot of credit for not berating me in the chat box as most would have done. Obviously I cannot fold K10s when I'm getting nearly 3 to 1 and the rest is just luck.

Back to heads up summary. First hand I bluffed all my chips with 7-high and got it down to 2:1. 2nd hand I don't remember, but I think I raised, continuation bet, and took it down. Next hand I flopped top pair, he had a gutshot, flush draw and ace high after the turn when we got all in. Ace on the river and "GG KKush." I wish I could close out another win for June but it is looking somewhat unlikely considering my trip to North Carolina on Saturday. My June stats are my best looking ones yet and I can't wait to post them and brag about myself (sarcasm).

Other notes of recent: Almost done with the 20% reload bonus on Stars (I need 5 FPP's) but I recently discovered a 50% reload up to $300 on FullTilt. Due to a limited offering of tournaments that I enjoy (I really only play the $24+2's) and the large size of the bonus it will be impossible for me to work it off without playing cash games. So, with some slight modifications, my NL ring play is back on track. I basically plan on 3 tabling cash while I play 2 or 3 MTT's. This way I don't get bored with cash games and make stupid move; I can basically wait for monster hands and try to just play huge pots with huge advantages. I find that when I'm in my MTT mindset I play waaaaaaaay tighter in cash games as well, which I think is a great thing considering my past history of pushing small edges and semi-bluffing. I'll keep y'all posted.

If you haven't noticed I've linked some really good poker blogs to my blog over on the right side. Once again, I suggest you check them out.

Props, railing, and excuses

First, I have to thank my boy Tom for hooking me up with PokerTracker for free. I definitely think this software is 100% better than PokerOffice and the use of it will be +EV in everything I enter.

Second, I am currently railing GambleAB, JohnnyBax, and tnetter in the $1050 tourney on Stars. tnetter defeated me heads up in a 180-SNG this week and is drawing live to $262k as I write this. Apparently my heads up loss is not as embarrassing considering I lost to a guy that is tearing Stars up recently with some 10k+ scores. I think railing is a good way to catch glimpse of greatness from the world's best poker players (live or online!)

Finally, I need to apologize for my lack of posting lately. I haven't been playing much due to my bro's graduation party and some exciting social events including a visit from some of my best friends from North Carolina. I am currently sitting decent in the $11+R on Stars with like $15k for first and I'm nearing the bubble in a 180-SNG. If I cash/FT I'll update this post later.

Looking forward to a big week,
KKush

"Act like you've been there before"

My new number one online pet peeve is when people do something like this after they get knocked out of a tournament...

ANGRYDONK(observer): OMFG! HOW COULD YOU CALL THERE?!?! I MEAN I OPEN-PUSHED KJ AND YOU CALL WITH AT? LET'S PLAY HEADS UP FOR $5MIL! SERIOUSLY, YOU ARE SO BAD.

Bad beats piss me off, but typing out 5 lines of nonsense to some guy who is clueless does little to relieve that stress anyway. Even more important, it makes you look like a classless loser. Barry Sanders would run to the ref and hand him the ball instead of doing some ridiculous dance after scoring a touchdown. My grandpa called this "acting like he has been there before and will return again." Trust me, when AA loses on the FT bubble it isn't the first time it has lost nor will it be the last. I don't understand the value of making statements like "this site is rigged" or "PokerStars rewards morons." You got plain ole unlucky. Deal with it like a professional and shrug it off. It it really was luck, and not a bad play or poor understanding of situations, you will get back there again without problem.

On the tournament report of lately I have 1 FT and a lot of late action heartbreaks. I caught a QQ vs. KK five handed cooler at the FT but no way I can fold QQ preflop to a button raiser 5 handed. I don't think anyone could. I haven't played much lately because I'm spending a lot of time (and in retrospect $) getting my car repaired. I have decided to keep it but make some major upgrades to the appearance and performance. Hopefully one of these 4 tournaments I'm in now will work out and my next post will be more exciting.

EDIT: I finished 2nd in a 180-SNG on Stars, my best finish in one of these. I was decently stacked throughout the FT but was down 3:1 to tnetter who was at every FT I opened on Stars that night ($300+30, $5+R 25k Guar., etc) so I was up against it. I played horribly heads up but I'm more than happy to finally make a decent sized score after some $200-ish finishes lately. My bankroll needed a boost and this finish did the trick. I am considering playing ONLY 180-SNG's for a the first week of July to see how I do.

Feel better Bobby. Keep up the good work Thomp.

Unproductive couple of days

Well, I made two FT's in 2 days in the 180-man $22 SNG's on Stars. Unfortunately I played really well in both cases and didn't get rewarded. At the 2nd FT I played against MrSmokey1 and JayBizzle8. I had the distinct displeasure of sitting to their immediate right. That means I had to try to steal blinds from 2 of the best players on Stars and that I had to act before them in a majority of the hands. Needless to say, I didn't chip up very easily. I lost quite a few memorable races and finished 8th and 5th. Still FT's, but wins is what I'm really after.

The rest of my MTT saga lately has been quite disappointing. I cannot seem to dodge that one bad beat that cripples me for the rest of the tourney. I think my MTT game is probably at it's sharpest right now, but I can't seem to get over that disgusting suckout. Hopefully the stars will align soon enough.

On the SNG front I played 3 the same night as the 5th place finish. I won all three so that counteracted some FT disappointment.

Cash games. I know I said I'd take a break but Cardrunners videos seem to inspire me so I'm playing some 6-handed $1/$2 lately on Stars. The first session ended down about $100 but I felt like I adjusted to the style of play alittle bit too late. I was undoubtably too tight and that cost me some money in pots where I checked the river instead of value betting a hand like top pair.

And now for some fun hands from the last few sessions including the craziest bluff that I've ever made. I cannot justify this play except for I had a read and stuck to my guns that he couldn't call with the way I played the hand.

First big 1/2 hand for me.
Bluffing with the best hand.
Getting called by Q5 high rules.
Bluffing when he is pot commited and I'm playing the board.

OT: My white 1999 Mustang is for sale. If you are in or around the Saginaw area and want to take a look at it please get in touch with me. It has 96k miles and a crack in the hood from when I hit Bambi. It runs great and has new tires and brakes. I am selling it "as is" with the minor body damage (estimated around $1k in repairs). Get in touch with me about a price if you are interested.

Seriously Kush

Stick to what you're good at.
Stick to what makes you happy.

I'm tired of cash games not being fun and being highly unprofitable. I will be playing MTT's with the occasionaly SNG mixed in full time starting today.

I play on playing these tournaments on Stars: $22 180-person SNG's, $3+R, $5+R, $55 90-man SNG's, and other $22-$44 freezeouts.

I play on playing a majority of the $24+2/Token MTT's on FullTilt. I especially like the Double-Stack tourneys. I also plan on trying to win some $69+6 tokens via SNG's so I can play in some bigger tourneys with nice overlays.

I do like UB's structure, so I'll try to play the daily $22 6-handed, and then some of the $33 and $44 freezeout guarantees.

I might be alittle over my bankroll with $55 MTT's, but I've been cashing over 1/3rd of the time in June so I feel fairly comfortable playing alittle over my current online roll. Facing off against players like belowabove, MrSmokey1, and Premier should only help my game, if not my ROI. I feel like if I stick to the tight, "Kill Phil" (read the book) style you should be able to make it through some bigger fields with relative ease. I might start posting daily results, ala Bobby and Bill-Ivey but I have no numerical goal in mind for the summer.

I am also planning a 1 week vacation to Cancun and/or Cabo San Lucas in the coming weeks. It is going to be very cheap and very amazing. That week off poker will be well spent--also I'll be using some of May's profits to finance the trip. I'm quite excited to get in a foreign country and drink some beer in the sun for 7 days with two or three of my best friends.

Two biggest mistakes

I want to enlighten everyone to the 2 biggest mistakes you can ever make in poker.

#1 The minimum raise
Under no circumstances is this a profitable play in my opinion. If you min-reraise it is a 100% tell of a HUGE hand. If you min. raise anything less you are giving everyone odds to call. I don't care if I have 72o in the BB and you min raise the button, I'm calling! This move preflop is just as bad as making it post flop. Seriously, make your preflop raise 3x or your reraise pot sized and make your post flop raises meaningful as well. NEVER minimum raise, cash game or tournament. Also, don't limp and then reraise. My dog, Sadie, knows enough to know you have AA/KK.

#2 The "control" bet
For lack of a better term I call this play the "control bet". It occurs when a player is out of position vs. the preflop raiser. They'll make some pathetic bet of less than 1/2 the pot. I tried to figure out the psychology behind this play and I decided they are trying to control the size of the pot with a mediocre hand. I love seeing this play when I am the preflop raiser because it gives me the green light to raise with ANY holding. If they want to control the size of the pot I want to make them play a big pot. In my thousands of hands recently I have not once seen this play be anything more than a probe bet--it never is a sucker bet or a bluff. Here are some examples of this play and how I played back against them.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?370239
http://www.pokerhand.org/?362737

Weekend in review
Awesome Saturday session of cash games followed by Sunday being the day full of coolers and bad beats. I won't bore you with any details of $ amounts but I did make it deep twice on Sunday, finishing on the FT bubble both times. I also had a nice stack in the FullTilt $19K Guarantee and I managed to make the worst playing the history of tournament poker. That being said, I got the big mistake out of my system. I'll close the deal again soon. I'll finish this off with a few cool hands from the last few days...

http://www.pokerhand.org/?368754
http://www.pokerhand.org/?370283
http://www.pokerhand.org/?370288 -playing to win on the bubble.

Still no cell phone so I am a social outcast. Therefore, serious poker being played tomorrow afternoon. Look for KKush/Killerbeefan at some FT's.

Stars steps up and some discussion

PokerStars has always been my favorite site--it was my first site I played on seriously and their software, tourney structure, and volume of players make them the leaders in my opinion. Well, they've upheld this reputation by adding resizeable tables and customizeable themes. Download the beta from their website. I like the "hyper-simple" theme with 4 color deck (like what GP uses on Party). I am 4 tabling cash games on Stars right now just because I love the new look.

While I play I usually think of things to write in my blog about but usually never get around to it. Well, today I'm going to just make a few quick notes on various issues. Hopefully this is somewhat coherent.

Session Length
Even though I am playing poker "professionally" I still have a hard time sitting at the computer for more than a few hours at a time. I've been known to play for 15+ hours at the casino but boredom gets the best of me at home. I find myself on pocketfives.com or talking on AIM and eventually I just close out the tables and go do something else. I am trying to work on this because I feel like I'm cheating myself by not playing more hours/week. The only time I can run long sessions is with MTT's when I'm deep in the $$ and looking at the excitement of a final table.

Weekends
Believe it or not, drunk people are not good card players. This means the best times to make money is on Friday and Saturday night. KB wrote recently that he thought a Fri/Sat night was worth $200+ and I tend to agree. If you could only play 2 nights a week, you'd be a fool not to make them on the weekend. That being said, I don't play that many weekends because of other, more exciting activities, but I am commiting myself to play tonight and make a big score hopefully.

LAG
If you are unfamiliar with that acronym it means "Loose-aggressive" in terms of a poker player. I think I've changed my style to play more pots with a wider range of hands. GP mentions "putting your nose in a lot of pots" so when you have a monster it isn't odd that you are raising or reraising. I think this is a really good point. If you are good enough to know when to lay down a losing hand I think it is OK to play 20%+ of hands to the flop. I am not advocating playing 30%+, but I think 25% of flops seen is a comfortable number. I think I was too tight before and that resulted in my raises being rare-occurances that sent up red-flags.

Thinking ahead
This is probably the topic that I think has helped me the most recently. When I act on a hand I do so knowing what I plan on doing given my opponent's action. I might check and say, "I'll call a pot sized bet" or I might bet thinking, "I'll call an all-in". By doing this I think you have the best shot at maximizing equity. Rarely does something happen where I am confused or in a tough spot. I basically set out my course of action before the hand progresses and I get lost. This also allows you to be 100% focused on a hand. Having a set game plan for every individual pot is really key to playing winning poker.

Finally I want to post a few interesting hands from recent play...

Finally giving out a cooler.
My favorite hand pays off.

The summer continues

Well, for the first time ever I went to a final table of a big tournament and actually had the chiplead. I played the $6K Guaranteed, $24+2, Double Stack on FullTilt. You start with 3000 chips ("double stacked") and there were 284 entries. I played tight as usual for pretty much the whole tournament. I got some great situations late in the tournament such as AA after a raise and reraise all in and my opponents both had AK. I got to the FT 2nd in chips but I was within 1 big blind of the chipleader who was to my immediate left. Then the craziest hand of the tournament occured.

I make my standard opening raise of 3xBB with AKs from the cutoff seat. The chipleader on the button is the only caller. The flop is 962 rainbow. I make a pot sized bet and get called. Now the pot is almost the same size as my remaining stack. I don't think he has a monster hand nor do I think he is calling unless the turn hits him big. The turn is a 4, completing the rainbow and I move all in. He insta-calls and I think "Wow, donked all my chips with AK high". Then I saw his hand.

AJo.

He called me with AJ high. My hand holds up and I have double the stack of anyone else at the table.

Play gets to 3 handed pretty fast and then we hit a wall. Just like in the UB tournament I won 3-handed play was pretty intense. I hit a lot of big hands but my raises never got called. I stole a lot of blinds but I knew that it was going to come down to 1 big showdown. Unfortunately for me I twice had AJ vs. A-rag and split the pots. Had I won I would have knocked the player out and went to heads up with a big chiplead. Instead I lost a few key pots on semi-bluffs and finsihed 3rd on a stole-cold bluff. $854.

So the sreak of 5 FT's in 5 days was the highlight of my summer so far. I plan to continue to play MTT's and cash games for awhile. UB keeps giving me more in bonus dollars--they must not want Killerbeefan to leave! Therefore I'll be playing mainly cash on UB and MTT's on Stars, UB, and FullTilt.


Off Topic: I dropped my cell phone in a bonfire (don't ask). Therefore, I not only don't have a phone for a few days, but I lost everyone's numbers. Please do me a huge favor and IM me your cell number and call my house phone if you need to get ahold of me.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

Disclaimer: This post is nothing short of me being extremely happy right now and wanting to boast alittle.

One number sums up the last 24 hours: 1314%. That is my ROI for the 3 tournaments I've entered in that time period. I finished 3rd last night in the PokerShare $2525 Guaranteed and 8th today in the $3333 Guaranteed on the same site. Both exits were somewhat ugly as I got sucked out on in both tourneys to send me to the rail. I would probably be really pissed had this not happened in between...

Finally got that big score I was looking for to jump-start my MTT career. I think I will be playing a lot more MTT's in the future and hope to make a few more FT's this upcoming week. I cannot begin to explain how happy I am right now. I might go lift my car or run a marathon.

On a side note, congrats to Tom, aka WolverineBlither, for his first MTT win. Read about it in his blog. I'll probably write a summary of some key hands from my win after I calm down alittle.

Hope everyone's weekend is going as well as mine. Good luck at the tables.

Few examples

Never posted any hand histories (HH's) before so I figure this is a good time to do so. These hands all come from UB .5/1 NLHE ring games over the last few days. I'll include some of my thought process from each hand...

http://www.pokerhand.org/?358250
This hand I say to myself on the turn "I really hope he has AK and not AA or AK." This is an example of a sick beat and being happy he didn't have a deeper stack.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?358927
I call a standard raise from the BB with 89s. I flop the bottom end of the straight. I have no reason to believe I'm beat and I'm really hoping to trap JJ or better here. The turn gives me a flush draw so I'm done "giving people free chances to beat me" (except I'm not ahead). I make my flush on the river and crack the flopped nut straight. This is a classic example of not slowplaying your hand. I probably can't get away on the turn, but he definetely needs to protect his hand on every street because AK can go down easily there.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?358924
I limp and call a raise with KQoff in position. Obviously I'm lucky to flop the nuts but my play isn't what I want to highlight. This is a terrible board for AA. I raise the pot and he still calls on the flop and pushes on the turn. You need to be able to lay down big pairs, especially on a connected/suited board like this.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?358937
Just to prove I can lay down KK. Here is a pretty clear case of AA in my opinion. The guy said "nice laydown :)" so I may have missed my mark but I still feel 100% comfortable with the fold. I think I saved myself $91 more.

Might start playing on PokerShare soon for 100% up to $300 bonus and some rakeback. Bobby needs to start posting in his blog more.

--KKush