Chris Halverson’s Blog

Damn, I almost forgot about this until BG mentioned it. I cracked AA with my QQ the other night. Here is the required hand history:

Party Poker 1/2 Hold’em (10 handed) converter

Preflop: Hero is MP3 with Q♦, Q♣.
UTG folds, UTG+1 folds, UTG+2 folds, MP1 calls, MP2 folds, Hero raises, CO 3-bets, Button folds, SB folds, BB folds, MP1 folds, Hero calls.

Flop: (8.50 SB) Q♠, 4♠, 6♦ (2 players)
Hero bets, CO raises, Hero calls.

Turn: (6.25 BB) J♠ (2 players)
Hero bets, CO raises, Hero 3-bets, CO caps, Hero calls.

River: (14.25 BB) K♦ (2 players)
Hero bets, CO calls.

Final Pot: 16.25 BB
Main Pot: 16.25 BB, between Hero and CO. > Pot won by Hero (16.25 BB).

Results in white below:
Hero shows Qd Qc (three of a kind, queens).
CO shows Ad As (one pair, aces).
Outcome: Hero wins 16.25 BB.

Oh yeah!

So, do I get the original Pauly art? That would rock! Oh oh, looks like I may have missed it…We’ll see…

Update: Damn, looks like Badblood beat me. We’ll see if I can get some consolation prize or something, although maybe he’ll ding me since I didn’t cap pre-flop or the flop.

Session 2 of 2/4 was going well tonight. I was up 5 BB on one table when I inexplicably hung. The table was good, lots of calling stations with only a couple people who would raise much. I suddenly could not do anything on the table. I tried everything including exiting Party. When I logged back in it tried to take me back to the table to no avail. Damn. OK, there’s other tables, let’s just get on another one.

Was doing OK on the new one, down a bit, but overall up for the night. That is, until I lost to a rivered straight flush to my A high flush. Unreal. The board was a K high flush and I thought he may be trying to steal it by representing the A or Q, surely not a suited two gapper in MP. Opps, I guess he was and got lucky. Lost 6BB on that one alone. That caused the night to be down, again, but things went well again. I didn’t feel out of my league, I just got nailed on a couple second best hands. Unfortunately, the higher limit makes the loses bigger dollar wise. I was doing OK on the second table, down 5BB until that hand. 5BB can easily be made up in one hand, especially as loose as some of these tables are so I wasn’t concerned.

I’m feeling good about my play though. Still probably seeing too many flops but 2/4 is fairly loose, moreso than 1/2 I think. I have tightened up my starting hand requirements a bit though, so that means that I’ve been getting semi-decent starting hands, but just not hitting a flop. I’m not seeing much more aggression here, sure there’s usually one person who is strong, but that’s OK. The rest tend to be callers who will stay in to see the flop with any A and virtually any two suited cards. It’s similar in some ways to 50/1, not quite as crazy, but not as tight as 1/2. This is causing me to change my game up a bit, again. I was expecting that, so it’s not a problem, I just hate paying for that experience every time

Not to be results oriented, but I played some tonight and ended up down 10BB. You know what though? I feel pretty good about it.

Why should I feel good about losing? It’s because I tried out 2/4 tonight and I didn’t get blown away. In fact, for the most part I held my own and then some. Sure, I ended up down, but I’ve had worse nights at 1/2 BB wise. Granted, moving up means that the actual dollar amounts are bigger, but I felt good about my game.

I feel I only really messed up a couple of times. I’ll have to go back and review of course, but for the most part I did OK. I got totally outplayed on one hand when a guy flopped quads and I got the nut flush on the turn, but he played it great, check raising me on the river and everything and he deserved to win it. That hand alone took a big chunk of the 10BB due to a couple other players that were in the multi-raised pot along the way. I know there were a couple of hands that I stayed in too long with, but on the whole I feel good. I definitely did not feel outplayed by the people there.

Yeah, I hate to lose like everybody else, but I don’t feel too badly for my first crack at a new level. It appears that I may have played a bit too loose, especially when I said to myself that I was going to play extra tight this time. The Party stats window said I saw 30% of the flops, but that “seems” high, but it probably knows better than I do. I’ll have to reconfirm that in PokerTracker.

Needless to say, this didn’t shake my confidence or anything, in fact, it may have bolstered it a bit. One night is obviously not anywhere close to enough to make any sort of long term decisions, but I do feel good about how I played. Hopefully next time it’ll result in a +10BB situation.

Not sure if you’ve noticed yet, but Absolute Poker will be running a set of rake free tables. Basically, they’re going to setup x number of 6/12 tables rake free, based on the number of pre-signups, this Sunday. They will stay rake free until all are broke, where broke is where a table is HU for 30 minutes. 250 people have registered so far.

Info here.

I played some poker last night for the first time in about 3 weeks. Between school, casino whoring and vacation, I just didn’t have time to play actual poker. Well last night I fired up good ‘ol Party and sat down at a couple of tables and played.

Ahh…It felt good

During the time off I didn’t even really think about poker. I had my laptop which has my Poker Tracker info, but I never pulled it up once. I just took some time off. Not sure if that was the “right” thing to do, but in some ways it felt good.

That being said, my game last night was kind of rusty. I was a bit more passive than normal though. I wasn’t getting the best cards, but I was more tight than normal. That’s probably good for the first time back though. While rusty, things came back quickly and I got into the flow. I only played an hour but was up 10BB, so it wasn’t all bad I’m going to play a couple more sessions at 1/2 and then put the casino whoring money to work and give 2/4 a shot in hopes of getting to 3/6 by Labor Day (thanks to Pauly for the goal). If I don’t, so be it, but I’m going to give it a shot.

Ahh…it’s good to be back, now if I just had some reload bonuses or something to take advantage of I’d be set!