Kyle "Folds" Poker Blog

He's back

2012-11-10T06:53:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to me I guess, not blogged for a while quite simply because I haven't been playing.
Since I heard about the FTP news I decided I would take a break from poker and focus on my training in MMA. This has been great and I feel much more invigorated which is good news for sure. With full tilt being back online I have transferred my bankroll across and am grinding away on Rush.

The injection of wealth into the Poker economy is fantastic, and the promotions offered by FTP at this time are fantastic:- Auto rake back, week long happy hours and some pretty nice items in the store. Add to this the player pools being bigger than Zoom and the games being softer (for now) and it makes for one happy gentleman [that's me]

I have a week off work, some of it will be spent with my friends in Nottingham, and a ridiculous amount will be gym time. However I am hoping to average 4 hours a day at the tables.

See you on the felt.

Kyle

Ongame.....yea

2012-08-05T11:02:00.001-07:00

Well its been a piss poor start to the month, running 5 BI below EV. Keep getting it in good and getting out binked. But hey thats poker right?..

On the plus side, I remembered you fishy ongames PLO was. Winning multi stacks there :-)

On the not so plus side the grind squadron is minus a man at the moment. With UKpro becoming UKnotsopro for a lil while. Here's hoping it's only a temporary set back and you are back in the game soon.

Mean while the Dr SirBoomtime is struggling to find traction in Zoom land, so it looks like Pokerstars has had it in for all of the grindsquad. Hopefully it's just a test, and that magical place "fantasy island" where you always win the 70/30s is just around the corner.

Time to get back on the grind

Ongame update

2012-07-29T15:17:00.000-07:00

So, I recently got an email offering me a bonus at Ongame network. Seeing as I have cleared my Stars bonus I figured it's free rakeback, why not? So stuck $100 on there to qualify for the max bonus and....well I think I done gone and done a nanonoko

This works out to be 45bb/100 or 30bb if adjusted for EV, however it is worth noting that since the Zoom patch, HEM2 has been displaying incorrect EV lines. Not to worry, seeing as last time I was playing Ongame I ran 24stack below EV. I figure I am due some run good.

I have tightened up my opening range compared to Zoom where I was playing position and being much more aggressive. I am essentially value farming, with my only bluffs being either c-bets or double barrels on good turn cards. I am like never bluffing with 3 barrels. My only tricky bluffs (F.P.S win) is when it's a reg that I have a lot of hands on from before and know he/she is capable of folding.

The rest of the grind squad have moved themselves over to Stars after I have been telling them it is the way to go. We all managed to dump $300+ off within the first week of depositing, god knows how. However 2/3 of us then went on to scoop over $1k in the first month after said run bad. So hopefully by the end of the month, grind squad member #3 will have done the same. I guess going from Ipoker, where we all used to play to Stars is a big jump in terms of opponents and your skill edge relative to the game. Factor in how different Zoom plays from ring games as well and you have a super steep learning curve. Hopefully the advice of the predecessors is heeded and all will go according to plan.

Super duper excited atm as we are in the planning stages of a business trip / vacation and have locked in August-October as our window of opportunity for Vegas, and just need to ensure that the full time members of the squad obtain Supernova before we leave. For us people with normal jobs.....well I just have to have been satisfied with the number of souls I have crushed and lives I have ruined. Which at 25NL is gonna be tough but hey, there are some fish out there.

So I will leave you with this pearl of wisdom that I heard the other day.

When you find yourself in a tough spot in life you must always remember.
Violence is never the answer...but the threat of it works wonders.

Run good.

Kyle

Settled in, cruising

2012-07-25T09:59:00.000-07:00

Hi folks, I realize its been a while, but moving house is a busy time. My usual blog time (weekends) has been packed full of awesome stuff. My mate joined the RAF so we had a going away party, one of my best mates turned 21, that was a good party. My other best mate turned 22 and we went drag racing, sunburn city.....worth it.

So poker, I have cashed out over £1k in the last 2 months, which considering I play part time whilst working 40hour weeks, is pretty nice. It pays for my holiday / business trip to Vegas next year. I also lost my biggest pot.....ever (in online land) playing 25NL I was 800bbs deep, as was the villain. I flatted a 3b from the BB with TT (I was in CO and fish on BTN had flatted my open) I flop top set on T62 BB bets 2/3 pot, I flat BTN (short stack moves in) BB reshoves [presumably thinking I have a fairly weak hand and wanting to ISO the BTN] Obv I snap call with the nuts. Up against 66 from BTN and JJ from BB (who has me covered somehow he is $280 deep). Turns is Jh and I weep. So anyways, I am taking a break from zoom. After that my heart was just not in the game.

So what next for the maker of keys? Well I got an email a few weeks ago for a $100 bonus at Ongame, so currently clearing that. Going to continue playing on Stars once I finish with it.

In the next 2-3 month I will be booking my Vegas trip, looking at staying at the MGM Grand, £800 for a week incl. flights. Which is pretty sweet, until then just gonna study a load and catch up with new releases on Deuces Cracked.

Until next time

Kyle

Moving on up.....no out. Im moving out.

2012-06-17T04:34:00.000-07:00

After much turmoil which has resulted in much stress and difficulty in my life I am moving out from my current abode. I still haven't heard back regarding my promotion yet which sucks, however I can't wait any longer as the people handling the receivership of the property are selling it, so all tenants RAUS!!!

Therefore on Monday, which some greatly appreciated help from my Father, I will be moving. I have done packing and am currently sat in Cafe Nero, once again, with a hazelnut latte and caramel waffles. Had a pretty decent upswing of late, managing to scoop myself 6 BI in 2 days, and recovered from my 4 stack losing session of Thursday, so all in all life is good. Not back at work until Friday, then got Saturday morning then Saturday afternoon/Sunday off. So life is looking pretty sweet for the near future. This should give me a good shot at retaining my Gold Star status on Pokerstars, which I was super worried about losing given that for 1/2 the month I have had no internet. However thanks to the magic of the cloud and my phones wireless hotspotting I have managed to accumulate 1040 VPPs so far this month. Which considering I can only 2 table Zoom on my netbook is pretty damn good. I need another 1.95k VPPs this month to hit Gold. 6 hours of 4 tabling Zoom for 3 days should easily be enough to satisfy this.

I haven't done a well presented hand review for a while and there was a super interesting hand that I played yesterday that I am fairly proud of, and that is super profitable in zoom. Most of you know that back-raising is super profitable, and with certain hands is an easy move. In spite of this it is hardly ever done in Zoom (At 25NL at least) and so when I found a spot where it was a viable option I thought it would make a good post and review, if for no other reason than to reinforce to myself how profitable it is to do this in Zoom land, and that when a spot such as this arises that back-raising should be done.

PokerStars Zoom No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (9 handed) - PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Button ($15)
Hero (SB) ($31.31)
BB ($13.30)
UTG ($25)
UTG+1 ($12.90)
MP1 ($25)
MP2 ($77.76)
MP3 ($28.01)
CO ($11.40)

Preflop: Hero is SB with 8, 8
4 folds, MP3 bets $0.75, 2 folds, Hero calls $0.65, BB raises to $2.50, 1 fold, Hero raises to $20, 1 fold

Total pot: $5.75 | Rake: $0

There are a few important factors to consider here, firstly how aggressively does the 3 bettor defend his blinds. In this case over 200 hands BB was 3b 19% and ofc 88 is crushing a 19% range. He often has 1 over, but can't often call off unless he has AJs or AQo+ and even then it's close. Also it's important to consider whether or not the 3b thinks you are capable of flatting oop with a monster. In 25NL there is very few regs thinking on this level and in this case villain definitely isn't. However he is going to be scared to get his stack in with a medium Ax or some suited broadways. We can assume given how aggro he is going to be 3b a merged range. This is because when a fish at low stakes 3b super aggro it is usually because they overvalue their hand. "I have KJs, I can't just call his steal" We know this is shit thinking, as it is too good to turn into a bluff and vs a standard 3b calling range it is usually dominated.

Given that his range is going to be merged a lot here we can jam and get him to fold down to the nuts. When we consider that a 19% range consists of very few hands that can call here we rate to collect a lot of dead equity (and avoid paying rake....win!!!) but most importantly we collect a lot of dead equity which is obv fantastic with a hand like 88.

Anyway my coffee is going cold. So until next time.

K3ym4k3r signing off.

AKo Misplayed?.....i think so

2012-06-16T07:06:00.000-07:00

Here is a HH from a session I played last week.

AKo in CO

Interesting spot with AKo

I have 300 hands on villain who is a 10/8 so he is fairly nitty pre he is in early mid position
and typically have a 14% open from there. It is worth noting that he rarely raises from the blinds
(sub 2%) and because of this his PFR may be skewed slightly. His flop cbet is 60% and turn barrel is 50%
so his double barrels are typically strong.

On AhThAs he cbets slightly over 1/2 pot, this is fairly standard on this type of board, and I believe he
makes this cbet with all of his KQ/KJ/QJhh as well as with any Ax TT-KK, I am crushing the majority of this range,
If I had the Kh I would be blocking his Str8/FD combos, with the Kh I will almost never raise the flop as there are
few - 0 hands that he can 3bet bluff the flop. Although it is unlikely this villain with bluff this kind of board.

Without the Kh I feel as though I can profitably raise the flop more often and get action from his combo draws KQhh KJhh.
However this is such a small part of his range that I figure it is not worth raising the flop. Turn is 9h, and he barrells again
for a similar just over 1/2 pot bet. Again this is unlikely to improve his range unless he binked a FH. Similarly
he also has a very low double barrell %, it is possible he double barrells KK/QQ for value. Again I opt to flat, as
when I raise I never get called by worse. River is as bricky as it gets. 6s

And he barrells again and he bets 2/3 pot. I was really torn here, for such a nitty player to triple barrell here it was really strong.
However given that he only had a 33% W%SD I figured he could well be value owning himself
with AJ/AQ, however there are only 8 combos between them and 3 combos of AK.

So I think that the river call was pretty bad. If he checked to me then a 1/2 pot B/F would be the post omptimal play as I can get crying calls from AJ/AQ/KK/QQ/JJ but thats aboot it.

thoughts?

Moan-athon

2012-06-15T06:06:00.000-07:00

This blog is going to be a bit of rant, and very little poker related content.

So this is your first, and final warning look away now.

Work is destroying my soul at the moment. I read a super Phil Galfond (pboh) article a while back I am 58.4% certain that I posted it in an earlier blog, however don’t take that as gospel, about the life/poker balance. In his scenario poker was work. For me it’s a little more complex I have the Work/life/poker balance, and I have a pretty jam packed day already. As most of you know I work 9-5 for the bank, this can be strenuous at the best of times, as of late it is beginning to stress me out in ways that work has never gotten to be before. We are short staffed in the extreme due to various reasons, but mainly long term sickness, we have no cover or temps to replaces said colleagues and as such the excess workload falls to the remaining staff. We are a small team to begin with and 25% of us are on long term sickness, add to this the holiday leave that people are entitled too and all of a sudden we are running at ½ strength. On days like today when certain tasks are required to be completed that require a set number of people to do it leaves a small number of us for customer interaction. In a customer facing business this leads to difficulties. Combine this with people demanding extra jobs get done and we still have the output of a fully staffed branch and you rapidly start to fatigue. On top of this due to us being short staffed we have fallen short of targets meaning I do not qualify for a 1/4ly bonus despite smashing my personal target by over 25%. To add insult to injury my 1/4ly review rating was “partially achieving” meaning that despite out preforming all my targets I am not doing my job to an acceptable level. The excuse for this… the branch isn’t meeting its target therefore we cannot give anyone an achieving rating. Almost a month later and I have managed to get this overturned and get a semi-fair rating but still no remuneration.

Adding to this, is my landlord going bankrupt ( as all people in Northampton seem to) meaning I have to move to a new flat, this is just fantastic especially given that I just applied for a promotion which if successful would see me move to Derby. However throughout the rental market there is a 6month minimum on all contracts, meaning that I would be locked in for 6months when I could be relocating in 2. Fantastic. All of this is leading to a splitting headache and many sleepless nights. It’s times like this that I really want to just quit work and play poker. My sample size and results all indicate that I could crush the games more than a comfortable living. However I don’t have the required savings at present to go on a downswing, so sadly that option is out of the question. I would need to be cashing out £1k per month and that just isn’t possible playing $25nl with a roll just shy of $2k. So that leaves me with no choice but to work for the man.

-------

Friday - 15th
Well this blog never got posted due to my lack of internet so I am sat in Cafe Nero this morning using the free wifi to upload it, and I will piggy back some good new on the end. I have got a new place sorted. It's 1/3 of the price of my old place, only 3 people live there (myself included) and the lounge and kitchen are beautifully kept, best of all not a student in sight. I think I will be very happy there.

HH review

2012-06-11T11:23:00.000-07:00

Whilst I was on the train back from Derby, with a pasting hangover I wrote this, so please allow for any grammar/spelling errors. TY.

Hand history review QQ utg open, as an overpair OTR.

Effective stacks 92 BBs

Open UTG with QQ to 3x, flated by the BTN, Flop is 8c7c4d

Fairly standard Cbet, his PF flatting range otb contains a lot of

air, with Flush and str8 draws as well as some combo draws.

I elect to bed 2/3 pot here if there was no FD i would be betting

close to full pot here, but given there is a FD vs a fairly tagy btn

i want to dry and extract multiple streets from any hand that has SDV.

By barreling smaller I can get more value from his small overpairs 99-JJ

as well as getting some value from his combo draws 67/68/58/57/ etc

By keeping my bet sizing small here I am setting up multiple streets of value..

Also he has a low flop fold to C-bet which i think is quite important here. Whilst he

folds to cbets only 36% he raises them 14% which means that 50% of his flop range is calling IP

this is great for us as aforementioned it keeps his range uberwide.

The turn is 2d

This brings a backdoor FD and thats about it, i am not too worried about a gutter

improving to a dbl gutter, with a 15% pre flop range i dont think he ever has 5X in his

range so. Therefore the only hand that can bluff raise the turn would be top or middle pair with a FD.

Because this is such a small part of his range i think a turn barrell is profitable here. Again I want to

keep it small and elect for 3/5 psb. $2.50 into $4.35. I only have 2 hand where he has faced a dbl barrell and

as such can't make too many assumptions on his turn play however he is a 29/55 WTSD/W%SD and therefore I can

assume that his turn raises are going to be fairly strong.

He flats the turn, at this point his range is fairly well defined. I would most of the time put him on either

TPTK or an overpair, as vs a dbl barrel vs a UTG open villain is too nitty to be

flatting with air and so we can safely put him on the middle of his range.

The river is 10s,

Now I am never worried about a straight draw having got there, as I strongly believe that

96 is never in his btn calling range, it is possible that he has 9T or JT and picked up diamonds on the turn

and has now binked a pair, however I still think my read is right with him having a small overpair.

Therefore there are 6 combos of 99 and JJ and 3 combos of TT.

99 is most likely going to be taking SD and just check back if I check or fold to a bet on the river

TT is obv going to bet when checked to or raise when bet into. and JJ i would expect him to either call a bet or

bet when checked to. Therefore I elect to check, this is fairly weak and may well be a spot for thin value b/f

The main problem is that if I triple barrell here, this is a spot where I would be jamming the river as the villain.

This because even with an overpair, the UTG opener only has a bluff catcher, and the stack sizes are such that it would be a

[[pot sized shove OTR.

I think my river play here comes down to a lot of the time what level I believe my opponent thinks on.

If he has competent hand reading and believes that I am capable of folding to a shove, therefore making him more

likely to bluff the river then a check is fine. However if he is likely to check behind/flat then a bet is obv the most

optimal play.

Based on this and his fairly passive PF tendancies I think that a 1/3 -- 1/2 value bet OTR was the correct play.

No Internets = No Poker

2012-06-10T07:31:00.002-07:00

Warning: My hangover is bad, my spelling and grammar will suck.

As of last week my internet got turned off at home. This is due to the landlord going bankrupt and the house
going into recievereship. This really sucks as it means I have been given notice to leave and in that time
I can't get any interim internets as all the contracts are 12 months. Seeing as I am only there for 3 weeks
it's kind of pointless.

Went for some viewings this morning and the 2 places I looked at were very reasonable at £375 pcm, this is a
fair amount less than I am currently paying, however the problem I am having is that I recently applied for a
promotion that would require me to move to Derby, and until I hear back regarding interviews etc, I am reluctant to
enter into a 6month contract that is going to cost me £150 to apply for £375 deposit and £375 pcm for 6 months. It will
cost in total £2775. This is kind of a lot when I may be moving back to Derby in 4 weeks. As soon as I hear back regarding
my application for promotion then resolving the situation becomes a lot easier. Either way, one of the proposed places is
very reasonable with a fantastic kitchen/lounge. The bedroom is well sized and as such I would be happy to move to there,
especially given the reduced rent will give me more disposable income, which lets be honest, is always nice. I just need to
find out what on earth is going on.

So onto poker, a pretty shitty bank holiday tbh. The downswing continues, the number of times I have ran AK+/QQ+ into AA btn vs blind
is driving me insane. Then I had a similar spot in a 4 way pot whereby I flopped top set with JJ on J 5 2 got it in vs AA and ofc
turn was an A, still at least I am earning G-Bucks. So after losing 6 stacks I managed to pull 3 back and claim a 1 BI rakeback
reward from Stars VIP program.

My first deposit bonus runs out in 4 days, and last month I managed to get Gold star, however with the lack of internet meaining I can't
play atm, it is becoming impossible for me to maintain my VIP level, as well as losing at least $40 of clearable bonus in this week
alone. This is obviously becoming increasingly irritating, as the longer into the month I get without internet the harder it becomes
to maintain my VIP. I am playing some days in Costa Coffee, after work however my standard line is Gym, MMA, Ju Jitsu or Muay Thai
after work and by the time I finish training there is no coffee shop open. So I am only playing 1/2 sessions of 1-1.5k hands per week.
This is a far cry from the 15-20k I was playing per week last month.

I am using this opportunity to study however, having watched all the moving on up and escaping micromania series from Deuces Cracked
and I have a few more series still to watch. However Zoom poker experiences a very different game dynamic and so it will be interesting
to see how applicable this study is. On the flip side, if I were to move to Sun Poker or another Ipoker skin for bonus purposes it may
prove to be worthwhile. The games and VIP rewards are awesome on Pokerstars, but only if you are Supernova + and I am a long way from attaining
that level. Especially when I am working 48 hours a week.

So the conundrums I am left with after I find out my promotion are:-
1) Continue to play on Pokerstars or move to an Ipoker skin for First dep bonus + cashpoint promotion
2) Move up to 50NL permanantly, thus making Gold re-attainable this month and Plat the month after, or continue 25NL with a sustained WR.

Not sure what the answers are ATM, but there is certainly a lot of thinking for me to do.

Heres hoping I am less lost in life by the time I return.

Kyle

Summer cruising.

2012-05-27T12:50:00.000-07:00

Ok so it's like summer in the UK and life is good. Went for a run today after playing some Diablo and doing some weights and came back with a clear head so sat down to play some pokers. Well 50NL zoom is so short of players. <300 all the time and most of them are regs. Don't really want to be playing in those reg infested games especially on stars. I am arrogant in life.....ish. But not so arrogant to think that I can crush 50NL on stars for a higher $/ph than 25NL.

At the moment my winrate at 25nl zoom is awesome. 9.36 bb/100 over 25k hands. This is obv a massive heater, and is somewhat skewed by my last 2k hands where I was crushing for 60bb/100.

9bb /100 when I can comfortably play 1.2k hands per hour is $27p/h that is a pretty sick hourly rate for 25NL and a damn sight more than I earn at my day job.

So this is my 25NL graph at present.

For the first time in the last 12 months I am running above EV at a stake. This makes me so happy. Those of you that have been following me for a while will know that on Titan I was getting whacked all over the place. This is a nice change for me. If I combine this graph with my 5NL/10NL/50NL/100NL shots/grinds then I get an overall graph for Pokerstars that looks something like this.

As you can see I spent about 42k hands down at 5 and 10 NL just getting used to the software building up a database and generally getting a feel for the stars games. In this time I manged to clear about $50 of my First Deposit bonus and also get $20 of Stellar rewards.

At present I am sat on the fence between 25/50NL. My roll is sat at $1.75k which is nice considering I deposited $600 in April. Won a few stacks playing on P* mobile on my phone so my graph isn't perfectly aligned and I got a $50 rakeback with my VPP's.

So that's the story on *'s so far.

Shot taking at 50NL

2012-05-21T15:38:00.000-07:00

So, I am now taking shots at 50NL playing 2 tables of Zoom, with the intention of moving back down if I lose 2 stacks. The reason I am taking these shots is 1) My Showdown winnings are finally recovering so I am in a good frame of mind rather than making myself think they always have the nuts. 2) I have been watching a few good training videos from DC that have been focusing on 100NL on Stars and I think a lot of what is discussed in these videos is applicable to 50NL.

So whats the plan of attack. Atm through 20k hands at 25NL I am playing 13/11/2.5 (Which is super nitty) However I believe this is the best approach to Zoomatron. My only worry is my 3b is too low however I think this is because my 3b range is skewed towards nuts. Which lets be honest is fine at 25NL as there are plenty of fish and not so much need to balance. At 50NL however I will undoubtedly have to increase my 3b freq.

Anyway so a quick graphski of my 50NL exploits

As you can see it was only 1k hands, it was only 1 session and when it's later at night and I have been at work all day I try and stick to 1k hands at a time. Was really nice to scoop a big pot 2 hands after I was to slow to click "sit out next BB"

I noticed almost straight away that there is way more post flow shenanigans and a lot more floating IP compared to 25NL. Although this is a small sample I am fairly confident in this read.

So what am I gonna have to do in order to put a beat on 50NL.

Study more.....a lot more.
Balance my EP opens
3b a wider range from HJ or later
Stop opening small PP's especially vs good regs
Study some more
Do more hand/session reviews
Video some sessions and do some video reviews
Look into coaching

(Some crazy video error occured, gonna fix it and reupload tomorrow)

Ok so with that in mind lets review a hand from my shot that whilst I think my reasoning was sound, my sizing was not so good on the flop. Turn and River were fairly standard imo.

That's all I have time for as it is 11:15pm and I have to watch Game Of Thrones before I can go to bed.

So good luck at the tables, until next time.

Kyle

25 ===> 50NL its a long road

2012-05-17T16:59:00.000-07:00

Hi all, so I have been on a bit of a downswing of late, struggling to break out of 25NL. My shots have all been great when I play 50NL racked up 3 stacks from the 2k hands I played there. Problem is at 25NL I am currently running $300 below EV over the last 10k hands. Which kinda hurts. So I am sat here with the same $$ in my roll as I had 2 weeks ago. Which is really shit.

As you can see, my red line is sick. This isn't due to me getting to many folds with my value hands though. I strongly believe that fast fold poker is super exploitable vs the blinds. I have identified many regs who often 3b from the blinds only to c/f the flop and even when they continue they give up so easily and they never adjust. So I am getting so much F.E against these guys that my red line looks baller.

However as you can no doubt see my S.D winnings have taken an absolute hammering of late. This is not good......at all. The amount of times in the last 5 sessions I have got it in OTF vs a lag with KK+ on 446 225 358 and board like this in a 3b pot only for them to check raise the flop with a mid PP and then set up OTT. It is actually driving me mad. Anyway, now that rant is off my chest.

The good news is

DIABLO 3

So yea Diablo is awesome, playing lots and lots and lots of that. Finally went to see Avengers, that was awesome. Auto in the top 10 maybe top 5 films I have ever seen.

Pokerwise, not too much happening of late as most of you know there is a lot of state wide legislation being passed atm to allow online poker back into the US. With Illinois being the latest state to try and get it through. This is great as some really influencial senators are from Illinois, Mark Kirk and Richard Durbin. Durbin has been opposed online poker, and has often been siding with the scumbags trying to strip us of the juicy American player pool. However if Illinois is passing these bills to push online poker back into the US then somehow (who cares why) he is on our side now. This is good news for online poker as with the decline in traffic over the last 3 months we need something in order to keep the games going.

Anyways, its 1am and I have work in the morning, so until next time.

Kyle

Back from LEJOG and on the grind

2012-05-13T12:43:00.000-07:00

Since my charity bike ride which I returned from last week I haven't played very much. Mainly watching videos preparing my for 50NL which is a notoriously difficult jump on Pokerstars. I have almost 50 BI for 25NL so I am fast approaching 50NL shot taking territory. Had a pretty sick heater whilst in Scotland and then a 7 BI downswing upon my return. However nothing to serious.I am hoping to post some HH's soon (as i keep saying) however I am really struggling to spare the time to do a detailed analysis of hands based on the fact I have to put nearly 2 stone (28lbs) of weight back on. So I am spending more time training than usual. Now that my knee has returned to being fully functional I will be getting back to Ju Jitsu tomorrow night whoop. To try and enable me to play enough hands I am trying to get to the gym in the morning. However getting up at 6am is......difficult to say the least.

I have found 1line to be super profitable of late vs the regs on stars. Mainly vs the Gold star+ regs. On A x x / K x x boards with a FD checking back the turn IP with top pair and then potting/overbetting the river seems to be getting paid of a lot atm. This is super interesting as it can be hard to get 2 streets of value from TT-KK when we value bet the turn on say Ah 9s 5s 8d and if we do they have to be such small bets that it is proving more profitable for me to over bet the river and rep a busted FD. Maybe it's just invisi-luck/variance but I am finding that it is getting paid off a lot by the TAGs with a 25-40% GTSD. Which is obv uber good.

That's all for now I guess.

Kyle

No news for a while.....sorry about that

2012-05-02T12:49:00.001-07:00

As some of you may know, I have been off doing Land's End to John O'Groats a nice little......no that's a lie. It's been pretty tough and I have been struggling on a few days. It can be mentally exhausting, but I have been doing well. I have also been playing on wifi's occasionally, and got my roll upto almost $1k after starting a month ago on $600. Not been doing not so much playing and training. I have been doing all this cycling and not a lot else. No time for training and no time to review hands and such, I did some session reviews and spotted a few leaks such as mid PP's and that was really good. I am hoping to have plugged these leaks but when I get back to Northampton I will find out when I this gets put to the test.

If you want to find more about my charity bike ride which is coming to an end tomorrow there is details on my other blog.

http://k3ym4k3r1989.blogspot.co.uk/

and donations can be made at

www.justgiving.com/kyle-foulds

many thanks

kyle

Long time no post

2012-04-11T09:14:00.000-07:00

Hi, guys I haven't posted in some time. Apologies for that, but I have a great excuse. ZOOM

So since the start of April I moved my roll onto Stars and started playing zoom. I have my silver star and am 1/2 way to my Gold star. Grinding like hell and I have played over 35k hands in 10 days. Considering I work full time, that's a lot.

Plenty of fish to play against and my personal brag, some SNEs are playing 10NL zoom (yes I know I am over rolled but it's super swingy and fast so I want at least 60 BI before I play 25NL) My brag is this. I am crushing one of the SNEs that frequents zoom for 2 stacks atm. I am fairly sure as I am new to Stars and he doesn't have that many hands on me that he just assumes I am another 10NL reg-fish/fish and therefore will give my uber strong lines lots of credit. This is good news for me.

So anyway, I got the $600 bonus on Stars + the VIP program which is nice. Ran a little bad to start with but am turning it around. Seems like I have to overcome a nice downswing on every new client. So glad I got the hands out of the way quickly here.

Not much to report besides that. I had a new tattoo yesterday it is super awesome

This wasnt quite finished, there was some more shading to be done but I don't want to post the finished pic atm until my skin has calmed down as there is a lot of red and it's starting to scab. In a week I will post a picture.

My birthday is on Saturday and I have friends coming round from tomorrow, so not going to play too much. Then I am cycling from Land's End to John O Groats. This is about 960miles on the route I have planned. This is all being done for charity so if you are feeling generous then you can donate at www.justgiving.com/kyle-foulds
Just giving are a site that auto pays the charities that you list and so I do not come into contact with any of the money donated through the site. It's super safe and super appreciated if you donate.

That's about it for this month. Hope to do a video session and perhaps a V-log in the upcoming months after I come back from my bike ride.

Until then

Kyle

ZZZZZZZOOOOOOOOOOM

2012-03-28T10:12:00.000-07:00

Hi folks, Pokerstars have released the Zoom Beta and after being a Rush junky (albeit a fishy one) back in the FT days I couldn't resist having a punt. I am not withdrawing my BR from Ipoker just yet as I am close to a juicy bonus scoop and need to keep playing to generate another 2k Titan points. So I had a spare $50 and decided to just throw it on Stars and play. So 6k hands later and I have $110 and a juicy winrate at 5NL zoom. The software is amazingly similar to FT's and the player pool is equally good..../bad don't know how to describe it. Good to play against, bad standard of play, either way is awesome sauce for me. So yea, after a dramstically (dramatic + drastically) good first session I degened my way to 1k hands per 44minutes (baller?) and am showing a fairly solid 10bb/100 win rate. Obv this is a small sample size and may not be sustainable or as high at 10/25NL but never the less is encouraging.

What this means is that I am now flipping over whether to move my roll from Titan/Ipoker and stop bonus whoring and start grinding for Platinum Star. Supernova is out of reach for this year as a (insert what you call a solid reg that has a 9-5 job working for the man) can't get sufficient volume. However I am hopeful that I can get a sick enough volume for platinum.

Platinum = 7.5k VPP's pcm
I am making approx 60 VPP's per 1000 hands

7.5k/60 = 125 = 125k pcm for Platinum, assuming I stay at 5NL (flawed assumption)

So this means that I have to find time to play 93.75 hours per month (see above 44mins [3/4 hour] per 1k hands) I believe that this is difficult but with weekends is defo something I can manage.

Factor in that if I move my roll from Titan at the start of May and I believe that I have it locked in.

I am hoping to blog again tonite/tomorrow morning so I will include some HH's from tonight in there.

Take it easy

K3ym4k3r

Bonus Whoring

2012-03-23T10:18:00.000-07:00

Hi folks, my Titan first deposit bonus has now expired. So I think now is an omptimal time to consolidate my bonus/rakeback for the month and then cash out on Titan. Redeposit on another ipoker skin and bonus farm some more. This should give me a big edge as the reg's will still be in my database but I will be an unknown vs them. I would expect this to positively effect my winrate for some time. As well as the added advantage of a 200% bonus that is equivalent to 22% bonus back. This is just too good to pass up.

So as of next month I shall be choosing between Poker770 and Winner as my skin of choice.

Sadly next month I will miss out on 2 weeks of play due to my charity bike ride (see my other blog for details or visit http://www.justgiving.com/kyle-foulds)

I will be going from lands end to john o groats (bottom of UK to top) this is about 960 miles so this may take some time on a push bike. Hence lack of play time.

The + side is I will be taking my laptop and watching training videos most nights so my game should be improving by the mile. I will also stock up on podcasts for whilst I am cycling wheeeee.

Onto poker. This month I have had a bit of an upswing which is nice. Moved upto 20NL and I have consolidated my roll there so now I can stick around. Hoping to be playing 50NL by August. This is achievable so long as I stay focussed on playing less Xbox and more Poker after work :P

Over the last 25k hands I have been managing 4.7bb/100 which is pretty good. This has been exclusively at 20NL. I have been running surprisingly close to EV as well, only 0.5 stacks below. Which made me uber happy compared to my 24 stacks below at 10NL.

So anyway, long story short I have been playing good. Running alright, and hovering up all the monies.

So not posted any hands for a while, and thought this one was pretty interesting.

This particular hand highlights turning a made hand into a bluff vs a specific opponent when you can assign them a narrow range and have a good idea of how they play vs a specific line.

In this hand villain is 10/8/3.9 with 8% PFR from EP flop cbet of 64% and turn cbet of 60%
Goes to showdown 24% and wins at showdown 62% so he is a good tag. I have 2k hands and have played a lot with him this session. Seen him fold what I believe were overpairs on more than 1 occasion this session. So Effective stacks are 100bbs.

IPoker, $0.10/$0.20 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 8 Players
LeggoPoker.com Hand History Converter

CO: $6.48
BTN: $36.88
Hero (SB): $19.80
BB: $22.24
UTG: $12.33
UTG+1: $43.72
MP1: $19.80
MP2: $46.55

Pre-Flop: Ad Jd dealt to Hero (SB)
UTG folds, UTG+1 raises to $0.80, 3 folds, BTN calls $0.80, Hero calls $0.70, BB folds

Flop: ($2.60) Jc Ts 6h (3 Players)
Hero checks, UTG+1 bets $2, BTN folds, Hero raises to $5, UTG+1 calls $3

Turn: ($12.60) 5d (2 Players)
Hero bets $5.50, UTG+1 folds

This is not a great flop for him to barrel multi way as my perceived range in BB contains lots of PPs and SC's. I assume Villain has a HuD as he is playing 9 tables. My current preflop stats for this session are 16/12/5.8. As we are going multi way to the flop AJs can flop well multiway and it's fairly easy to get away from if I don't flop huge. However in this case once the BTN folds I believe I can turn my hand into a bluff fairly easily and vs this kind of reg can easily get him off an overpair. If we consider his C-betting range OTF. It largely contains AA KK QQ and AK perhaps AQs. When he flats a weight his range heavily towards overpairs.

Given that we are clearly repping TT/JJ here 5d is a great barreling card for us. I beileve this is because if he was peeling with AKs/AQs it completes the rainbow so he can't have picked up any backdoor FDs and thus can't have improved his equity. My plan was obv fold to a shove or if called shut down OTR unimproved.

I do however think that I should of sized the flop a bit larger. $7.50 would be optimal I belive as this would allow for an almost pot sized shove OTT and I believe this would of maximized my fold equity. Its worth noting that this is not a play I would EVER make unless I am 100% sure this is a reg capable of folding overpairs. Given his nitty EP opening range and that he is barreling the flop into someone he will hopefully see as a competent reg then his range is generally pretty strong here. This is not a move I would make if the flop had come say Kx Tx 4x or Qd Jd 7 as it is more probably I am doing it with a draw and given my play style he can quite possibly come back over the top or just call down with his overpair. Given how dry this board was coupled with Villains play style I believe it makes turning this made hand into a bluff a viable option.

Here endeth the wall of text. However I hope we can see from this how turning made hands into bluff to fold out the strong part of a villains range can be uber profitable so long as you are targeting the correct opponent.

Alas HM you have abandoned me

2012-03-17T15:34:00.000-07:00

So as most regular grinders will know Titan poker went 9handed recently and this screwed HM in the ass. I have been restricted to 6 tables of 20NL as my HuD requires constant maintainance, HM dev team have been working on things and released a patch this week......which didn't fix any of it. They were focusing on rake calculations instead. Thanks guys, but I would rather have a working HuD.

Anyways, as such I am 3k Titan Points off making gold member (some of you will find this uber amusing) this month. The problem being that if I am downgraded then I lose 20% juice on my player points and this hits my rakeback hard. Hopefully since I recently moved upto 20NL this will offset my 2 weeks of not playing. However with the weighted contribution method inforce this is unlikely.

On the plus side by double dip downswing has been cast aside and I am on something of a heater of late. Gone deep in a few MTTs and have been running semi good at cash. Still running 16 stacks below EV but at least my SD winnings have seen steady improvement.

Lets leave poker for a few minutes and just take this time to reflect on a good friend of mine.
Mr Alford aka Profboomtime is currently spending precious weekend fish catching time attending the ballet. It is worth noting at this time that he is missing a Y chromosone.

On that note I shall leave you as I gotta play my evening session.

Hopefully post some HH after my gym session tomorrow morning.

Peace

It's been a while....yea I've been grinding

2012-03-08T00:25:00.000-08:00

So it's been almost a week since my last post, feel as though I have been slacking a bit on the blogging / networking side of things. Which is ok cos I have been busy running like god....kinda.

Played a few comps X-booking with some mates and I did all the legwork making 2 final tables out of 3 comps(sick brag) didn't managed to get better than 5th in either of them (beat) Titan MTT land fears me (variance)

So yea not gonna go to much into the HH side of the comps as I think they were all pretty standard spots. Coolered my way out of 1 with KK on Q94 by running into Q9 (Retarded face) after getting 1/3 of the stacks in pre.

Anyway

So I've been studying....like a lot. Deuces cracked gets a huge shout out for their poker with your pants on Series, this is one of the best poker resources I have read/watched in a long time. Granted I never used to watch training videos before I decided that at some point I would like to have the option of playing professionally, however now that I believe in the near/mid-near future that it is at least a possibility then I feel I need to be prepared for such an eventuality + it's always nice to have an even bigger edge over the regs.

As I was saying, this series is just mind blowing. The concepts mentioned run at $5/10 and $10/20 live and all I keep thinking is I want to go play live now...... This series has a recorded session at Commerce and wow, the analysis provided by the author is outstanding, some of his reasoning is just eye opening and I hope I can transfer some of what I have learnt to online land.

In other news, Titan have gone to 9-max (FTW) this finally means liquidity has ROCKETED upto $20NL. I am not so sure about $50/$100 NL as I don't yet play these stakes, but I have seen a noticeable liquidity gain. The downside is that they have introduced weighted rake BOOOOO!!!!!!

However it is now much easier to get a full 12 tabling session started as the lists are shorted and there are more tables to choose from so I am loving it. Factor in that I have a long weekend off work Friday-Monday and we have a winning combo.

Hoping to do a session review tomorrow afternoon with some hand reviews (assuming I get into some interesting spots)

Until then, run good and see you at the tables.

Thursday nite run good

2012-03-02T04:24:00.000-08:00

So last nite the grind squad played a $4k gtd where 2 of us got small cashes and a $2.5k first deposit freeroll. with 60 players left i was down to an M of 4 picked up AT and got a double up then got Jj vs TT to dbl up again. with a healthy stack the table fish limped i found A6 and iso'd him. flop a pair improve to trips and dbl again. del through him again when i make a straight bvb and im chip leader with 240k avg is 85k. anyway pretty straight forward make it to the final with 300k. Some Lucknow fish has 600k 5players left after losing 2flips im on 160k blinds are 5k/10k he completes the sb so i ship. ofc a fish with vpip of 43% limp AJ to catch me J8 doesn't improve and im out for $125.

Pretty good session with $140 in tourney winningsnd 3.5 bi in cash games.

So this brings me to the new titanic promo. logged 50its which is 1/5th of my daily target sadly i had to focus on the comes when i was deep. the sick beat is it only logged 47 of them b4 midnight. so i am 1 day behind no grind lord here lol. gonna be blasting it tonight and hoping tl move back up to 20nl by the end of the month.

Run good, play better

Kyle

Holiday Grind

2012-02-23T10:25:00.000-08:00

Hi folks, had 3 days off work this week and by god did I make the most of it. Played 6k hands so far, with the main grind session on Thursday evening still to go. This is ample good as it means I should bink 8k hands in 3 days. This is awesome for a 9-5 working man.

So Titan poker......what can I say, awesome promos. They just announced lord of the grind. This should rate to net me $10 a month cash and $140 bonus each month. This is on top of my cashback from TPs and is obv awesome news. All I have to do is accrue 250pts for 10 days a month to get $10+$90 bonus or 20days for $10+$140. This will replace my first deposit bonus in March and is just fantastic.

So the last couple of days have been intermingled with winning and losing sessions. Overall am winning 6 BI which is always good news. Rebuilt my roll after doomswitch time and am currently sat on 25BI which whilst being bad news is better news than before. Was dangerously close to having to move down.

So a few hands that were super interesting IMO.

Villain is 17/11/4.8 with a 9% EP open, 85% cbet, 22 W%SD, 44 W%$SD , after a few tag regs flat I decide not to 3bet with JJ as they are capable of 4betting mid PPs and AQ here as a bluff and don't really want to be put to a tough decision + I have position so don't mind seeing a flop multiway.

So otf when I am checked to it is an obv bet for value, wanting AX and suited broadways to surrender their equity whilst getting value from smaller PPs and JT AT as well as some open enders/gutter balls.

OTT top pair pairs and he checks again, at this point I am fairly sure he has a mid PP 66 77 or 99 although he could be taking a weird line with QQ. One of my grinding group thinks checking back the turn was a mistake, I was wanting to control the size of the pot + get another street of value from his mid PPs but at the same time a bet here would make it super hard for an over pair to barrel the river and I could even turn JJ into a bluff and rep Tx to get him off QQ+ OTR.

The river I think is a fairly standard call, not super happy about it but it's pretty hard for him to have Tx except for AT which is only 8 Combo's and he has plenty of mid-PPs. Thoughts?

NB. Sizing OTF, I was tempted to go a little bigger. Like 13bbs but didn't want to bloat the pot so opted for a slightly smaller sizing.

IPoker, $0.05/$0.10 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 9 Players
LeggoPoker.com Hand History Converter

MP1: $9.20
MP2: $10.71
CO: $19.43
Hero (BTN): $15.54
SB: $4
BB: $4.45
UTG: $11.22
UTG+1: $11.41
UTG+2: $15.87

Pre-Flop: Jc Jh dealt to Hero (BTN)
UTG raises to $0.35, UTG+1 calls $0.35, UTG+2 calls $0.35, 3 folds, Hero calls $0.35, SB calls $0.30, BB folds

Flop: ($1.85) 5h Ts 8d (5 Players)
SB checks, UTG checks, UTG+1 checks, UTG+2 checks, Hero bets $1, SB folds, UTG calls $1, 2 folds

Turn: ($3.85) Th (2 Players)
UTG checks, Hero checks

River: ($3.85) 4h (2 Players)
UTG bets $2, Hero calls $2

My first royal

2012-02-19T15:19:00.000-08:00

Yep, after 45k hands on Ipoker I made my first royal on Ipoker today. Was only a flip, got it in pre with AQ vs KJ for 30bbs with an aggro SS'r but still was a nice little somethin somethin.

Not much occurring really. Just a weekend of getting it in in some fairly standard spots. Squeezed with KK pre flopped top set vs top and bottom on K 3 2 vs a fish for 100bbs Got it in vs a Tagfish with QQ vs J on 8 5 3 and a cpl of other similar spots for 50-80bbs a time. The only difference being this time I didn't lose every time.

From a strategy point of view, I have plugged a few leaks. Mainly set mining OOP, this was killing my winrate esp when the flop was favourable for my hand but vs their range I was still pretty crushed. Like I have 44 on 3 5 7. The big problem I used to have was XR this board vs the wrong type of villain. At 10NL it just isn't worth making these moves in 3b pots as they just don't know what I'm repping.

So yea, I call less 3b OOP with PPs and SCs which is good.

I am also pretty proud of getting more of the middle of my range to showdown. Over the last 5k hand I have really seen an improvement in my W$SD which is encouraging. It has cut my red line a little, but the extra street of value is waaaaaaaaaaay worth it.

So with the new grind pad set up and all things looking pretty sweet now I am fairly confident it is going to be a good cpl of weeks. I should bink Gold VIP status by Tuesday for that sweet 50% multiplier at the end of the month.

Good News!!!

Back on the grind

2012-02-18T17:37:00.000-08:00

So, you have all maybe noticed I have been quiet of late, this is due to a change of scenery on my part. This is because I am now renting a flat in the basement of a converted town house. I was previously in a single room in a HMO (House of multiple occupants) Being the only person with any sort of life knowledge and handimanablilty I was doing ridic amounts of odd jobs, as well as invariably being the one to vent my fury on the letting agents when the shit hit the fan. This led to me effectively having 3 jobs + playing an obscene amount of poker. (Job 1) My actual job @ with Cooperative Banking Group, Job 2 training my ass off, Job 3 playing house Daddy to a bunch of invalids.

Yea sure I was/am friends with all of my ex-housemates, they are all lovely people, being the house genius can get tiresome though.

So anyway, my new pad is BALLER!!!! I have my poker office set up, and am finding it much easier to grind without constant distractions.

So played a bit of breakeven PLO today, and as promised am back to playing some NLHE. I actually ran to EV today, which has never happened....ever. Ok i exaggerate, but not for a long time. Even then it was only because I got it in OTT and OTR everytime with the nuts :P

Kind of interesting hand came up today with JJ ofc, as it happened I flopped the toppest of sets and had some guy with K high jam for me, however it was an interesting spot that I was 60/40 with 3 betting from the BB.

My questions here are: -
1) What % of the time are you 3 betting here.
2) What size is your 3b
3) Given that you flat pre are you looking to donk, X/R the flop or C/C given stack sizes and ability to be playing for stacks OTR.

Opener is a 14/11/3.7 ABC reg cbets 82% flatter on BTN I have no reads on. Original limper is a fish 64/11/0 over 95 hands. I figure a 3b from me will most likely get called by fish, therefore MP2 will most likely come along with any PP and SCs which is gonna make my hand really hard to play OOP.
Pre I guess my other options are boomtime 3b. However this is losing out on a ton of value and tbh if MP2 4bets I am in a super sick spot.

IPoker, $0.05/$0.10 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 10 Players
LeggoPoker.com Hand History Converter

: $3.41
: $9.08
: $9.53
Hero (): $12.71
: $11.44
: $5.01
: $12.97
: $3
: $5.80
: $18.81

Pre-Flop: Js Jc dealt to Hero ()
3 folds, MP 1 calls $0.10, folds, HJ raises to $0.50, folds, BTN calls $0.50, folds, Hero calls $0.40, calls $0.40

Flop: ($2.05) 2c 3h Jd (4 Players)
Hero checks, bets $2.50 and is All-In, 2 folds, Hero calls $2.50

So anyways, as it happens, it worked out all good. However I am not 100% sure on my pre flop play.

PLO Wizard

2012-02-15T12:45:00.000-08:00

Ok so in between my Hold em study I have been sprinkling in some PLO theory. Thanks mainly to Phil Galfond (PBOH). Due to this I plan on playing a little bit of PLO over the coming weeks. Mainly this is due to PLO >> Hold em in rake generation. This will therefore make it much much easier for me to get my status levels up and clear my bonus faster, at present playing Hold em I will forgo between $500-$650 of bonus. This is outrageous and must not be allowed to happen. So I turn to PLO. HeM is no good as I don't have the PLO version. However Vs $0.05/$0.10 PLO I don't think a HuD is that important. I will be back to Hold Em as soon as this bonus is terminated. So it wont be an uber long vacation.

A week off

2012-02-13T01:52:00.000-08:00

So I took a weekend off work and went to Derby to visit some old friends this weekend. Armed with a repaired laptop and my newly synced database of HHs I was optimistic that the train journey would prove to be profitable. However a group of scoundrels from East London proved me wrong and decided to blare music out of an Ipad, those of you that know me personally will not be surprised by my reaction. As the music was engaged the mouthiest of the group decided it would be a good idea to play said music because "Who the fuck is gonna say anything to me?" ......Hi mate, my names Kyle, pleased to meet you, now turn that shit off before you find it rammed up your arse.

Anyway suffice to say high blood pressure, plus pokerz is not good so that train journey was wasted. Got a phone call on Sunday morning telling me the water pipes in my house had burst......more life tilt ensued. As well as rapid catching of the next train home. Managed to get the power on in the house in certain rooms, (water through the ceiling = no lights) This meant that Sunday night was salvageable and managed to pocket 2 stacks.

Which brings me to now. Sat in my bedroom, with no hot water or heating waiting for the plumber to arrive. My landlord assured me he would be here "first thing in the morning" well it's nearly 10am and I see no sign. For all you potential renters out there, steer the frak clear of millenia property unless Anal violation is high on your to do list. Seriously these guys are the sickest beat available.