What does your season hold for you? My early doors.

[Cyntaf]

Playing freeze out: $10
Blinds :              30/60
My stack :          1450
Average stack:    2200

Not much happening, play a few pots + win them, otherwise anted away and back down to 1450 chips from a 1500 start.
Been moved to this table, sat and watched for a couple of orbits. Also getting worried to fall too low below Average stacks, and lose power of stack.

Anyway, I'm BB for (60), and UTG calls, I have him pegged as very weak indeed. It folds around to One Donkey, and I mean DONKEY!!, he raises upto 240(x4). Straight away I put him on, (we'll say rubbish), but in his defence he is a late position raiser?? The guy next door calls, and I don't give him too much credit for a big hand, he is calling the Donk!  
Next up is me A-Q suited and in a flash I decided to go all in. UTG will fold, Donkey will call with ## and guy between us will fold. I will be miles ahead, and get above the average stack, with which to march on with. Should they all fold, I'm also happy to take it there and then and get to around the average stack size.

UTG does fold, never in question, Donkey calls, only question, do I have his range right? No Ak or Pair 8's or bigger, otherwise he shoves on first bet. Then guy between us mucks instantly. Donkey shows

qc  jd v My  ah qh, Yes 3-1 Fav, and pleased with my reds etc.

Question is, was my read of the table good, or could it be that I was just hoping that it would turn out that way? Can't remember too many times when things seemed so clear and cut. With three opponents in play, but I felt 100% sure of the outcome. Am I just deluded and got lucky? I think not, but with so many variables, it makes you wonder if it is just pure want. Btw, this seems to happen a lot easier and more often playing live. Any thoughts appreciated.


Oh the outcome, no improvements, that is until a  jc popped up on the turn and held up, I was out, but strangely happy with my game overall. Just didn't bring the bacon home.

I guess, having left the electronic pokerworld for a few months, my return seems a little sour, what with connection probs, only on Blue Square though. Then the numerous hurdles of  Donks etc which your all familiar. Get your money in ahead and hope to average a few wins??  Played 10 S'n' go's, won=2, 2nd=2, 1= third and 3 bubbles. Also won a seat to a final on Sunday, Just wondering....what kind of season is ahead? Riches? Or more Bad beats etc, that nobody really wants to know about.

So gl all, were back in the thick of it, gl for Sat ie UK Online Championship..

[ZeZeSputnik]

Well for the most, he obviously got lucky. Although maybe a UTG raiser who is then called immediately after should should of given you enough to lay down the hand. But still you got unlucky!

[duke3016]

UL Paul -- aggression FTW -- just unlucky (Although some might subcribe to the cautious approach that early in the comp)

[hi_am_chris]

u want the call, say nh and hope u get the chance to play with him in future

[Cyntaf]

Hey chris, that"s exactly what i typed in, nh and gl, obviously not the bit about meeting again...lol

Cheers duke, we were 45 mins into it, wasn"t too worried about leaders on 10k plus, but concerned about falling below averagestack size. Experience on blue square tells me generally below av stk gets raped too often. Also as i was trying to express, rarely has it seemed so clear as to what everyone was upto?? Hence the move, got unlucky and more proof of below av stk getting bummed.

Re UTG, he just flat called as he had been in any/every position, followed up by a swift exit to any bet pre flop or on the flop. So maybe (wrongly), as he can catch a hand. I disregarded him on this occasion.

Thanks for replies lads, anyone else any thoughts on reading table Live v on Net??

[TopPair2Pair]

I call this being "Bluesquared". Dog is never a dog on bs... at 3-1 I"m putting you pretty much at evens on Bluesquare.

Dont rly play this level on BS so cant comment of much further use but when i used to play the 4-5 freerolls a day there I used to shout "bluesquared" every time a dog suckedout and lets just say i used to cut and paste it instead of typing it out!

[Swinebag]

I call this being "Bluesquared". Dog is never a dog on bs... at 3-1 I"m putting you pretty much at evens on Bluesquare.

3 to 1 means it only happens 1 in 4 times which, considering we tend to forget the other 3 times that the best hand holds up, isn"t really anything we can put down to any one site/skin

[TopPair2Pair]

I call this being "Bluesquared". Dog is never a dog on bs... at 3-1 I"m putting you pretty much at evens on Bluesquare.

3 to 1 means it only happens 1 in 4 times which, considering we tend to forget the other 3 times that the best hand holds up, isn"t really anything we can put down to any one site/skin

Thanks for putting some common sense back into thread that i rudely disrupted!!! just wanted to share my "Bluesquared" legacey that i"d like to think i can leave behind me one day.....*hands head in shame*

[Cyntaf]

Thanks again for the replies, points taken re: cut and paste/time saver and the point regards winning the other three Rob.

Thought it was time i should get posting, something poker related, it"s got me thinking as i hope others. Not as thought provoking as noble and such posters, but a start.

Probably a bit of a mix and match, as  the title is slightly misleading, and my main probe was supposed to be about reads, not so much the beat. I can take these daily, all part of the game. Just the clarity of the situation, isn"t normally this good for me on the net. A lot better Live, with more info available. Looking back a large portion relates to the hand, but i was trying to get over the feel that i had. To see how others felt. Do they get good reads on line a lot, or playing more a numbers game? etc.

It wasn"t meant, and i certainly didn"t want it to come across as. Wow I"m good. If anything the opposite as i said, very rare on line do i find things crystal clear.

I then decided well i better mention some poker I have played early door(season) as per title.

[TopPair2Pair]

I think you can make gd reads online... and when you do make them they are very rewarding!

I"ve been placing a lot of emphasis on timing tells at the $2/$1 sng level recently felt I made some progress and positive decisions especially tonight. So I am rly in the mood to make a serious post... as aposed to my usual muck.

At first I thought i"d post the hand histories but that wont really achieve much in terms of tackling this subject and assisting with your question as I didn"t base 100% of decisioning purely on the betting but more on the betting+opponent reaction time+general skill of the player.

At this level imo a slower reation then the player usually has with an unusual check or small bet normally results in them hitting the flop quite hard. Whereas a large instant bet is pretty weak.

Say your playing heads up, short stacked and 13k in play and you have about 3.5k, villian is raising every single hand we are playing and we are occasionally shoving back and his folding. Then all of a sudden you notice a miniscule pause from him and he just calls from SB when usually its a standard raise with atc... at this stage I am thinking dont raise just check and unless i flop the nuts there"s no reason for me to get involved, it looks to me like something villian is very happy with and wants action with a monsterous AK, QQ+.

And over time I"ve learnt that this is generally opponent thinking "right how can i extract as much as pos from this hand, i"ve got to trick him, i"ll just call cos that wont look unsual..." obv it doesn"t work and we correctly put the brakes on.

I am still trying to work out how much of a % I personally want to factor on this information but slowly its 1 part of my game that seems to be coming together lately and at $1/2 it seems to be paying off. Still making mistakes but its work in progress.

Short stacks shoving with 1~3 callers are a great opportunity to skillup on these sort of online reads, obv you want the short stack to have no more then 15% of your stack and sometimes you can only be playing for the side pot. But if you need to get away you can and still get to see the cards you were up against which is handy.

Picking 1 player at the table that you have a good feel for and solely putting yourself up against them is also a good way to go about working on this.

The other thing I was doing was calling down when i knew i was behind. I would say to myself right he has X. "I fold" and check/call it down just to see if i was behind or if i read something incorrectly and then replay it and work out what it was that went wrong and more importantly why?

I dont know how much of this is relvaent to the $10 BS games but hope its thought provocating anyhow!

[Cyntaf]

Thanks tops, I"m a litle guilty of the chk/=ing to rvr myslf during a learning curve, so long as it"s not TOO expensive. Still speculate to accumulate etc.

The timing thing is good, agreed particularly @ 1/2. Added to this another level, is the guy watching etc, and throw a curve ball re timing for him to grab a hold of kind of reverse tell type thingy... obviously no good if he"s simply just playing his cards. So there are a lot of similarities to playing live, and you have be careful how to use the info, and don"t forget to concentrate on the guts of the game itself. Great reply m8 and has got my brain juice boiling again

[TopPair2Pair]

RE the curve ball I"ve found heads up sngs the best to experiment with for this. You can tell quite early on when your playing against a good player who "watching" you and throw some curve balls, one of which i like is a delayed bet with air. Then take those plays on to the FR sngs looking for gd spots to crack them out.

(And experimenting is a great way to look like a complete donkend.... then switch to normal play ya value bets called very lightly!!!)

I love "small sizing" these bets into strong $1/2 players (if you can call them that), its scares the crap out of them, even more so when your short stacked, it looks soo trappy they cant get away quick enough.