The Starting Hands Composite Strategy Sheet is Done

It took eight months to do this "little project" and initially it was expected to be completed very quickly.  The King has been using Hilger's strategy sheet and it has been helpfull even tho it is for tight games.  To wrap things up, for this project, another short day will be spent compiling the acronyms and notes used for this strategy sheet.

The next project has to be split pot rules (and rules of what makes a winning hand) an area that needs attention.  Together with this project, another project to do would be to do a Lou Krieger style chart of the starting hands broken into 4 charts instead of 2.

Raking in the Pennies

Another great session at the penny tables and the King dominated them, to an extent.  The calling stations do not fold and the bluffers called their bluffs at opportune times - they set the course for the tables.  There were three river calls, that seemed hopeless and just a pay off, but they weren't.  In each case, the bettor had a terrible hand and because the pot was big enough the King resigned himself to paying them off.  Interesting reads, especially the section on bluffing, the book, "The Theory of Poker".

Good Score

The King scored seven pots in 80 hands. Again it is a time of good luck. The way it has been done is this: if the King made a score, he would devote some time for studying before the next playing session.  Sometimes, the good luck streak runs for weeks and the King accumulates a lot of study sessions.  The studying comes to a stop when he loses and keeps playing till he gets even - which can take hours.

Relieved

Session One was a little over an hour, just before work, so session time was set at an hour.  Playing three tables at once, getting crappy hands and winning just two pots was just terrible. The way people think is that if there are 10 players, they should win 10 pots per 100 hands or even more if they are aggressvie or bluff.  Winning one pot every 10 hands has been a disaster for the King.  But playing tighter for 118  hands and winning just two pots was just bad luck.

Without getting good, or even halfway decent hands, meant not even contesting the pot so it was mostly the blinds that chewed up his buy-in. The King's only possible mistake was not playing a pocket Kings hand more aggressively preflop.  Knocking out one or two players could have made the difference between winning and losing.

Session two after work was just a half an hour long and a big success. The pots the King won made up for the previous session's small loss and three other sessions that were long and not the norm in catching good cards. So in this session the King caught some good cards, played aggressively and won some big pots.  Worn out from the other sessions, the King stopped after just 30 minutes and rested.

Another long session of ring games is over.  DrCh@ch@ was a memorable character on one of the tables.  He was from Russia or Eastern Europe and was having a winning session. He played loose but folded quickly if things went wrong, and during an hour of play, his hole cards did not indicate that he played too loose.   

Another Exhausting Session

It was another tiring day at the tables, where hand after hand got cracked by loose player playing trash hands - calling stations.  Calling stations go all the way to the river and one of them, in each game, catches that miracle card that completes a big hand like a flush or straight. The King caught many big pairs and sets which are strong hands, but these just did not hold up much. It was like the other session, where like the western movie the white men, fighting the indiams, preservere until the cavalry comes. If all  the sessions were like today, it would not be worth it.

But there are days where luck smiles at the King, and he can do no wrong, and win pot after pot with no effort.  Even playing loose, he wins many pots and feels like he could walk on water.

Todays session, even if it ended with a small winnings, if it were always like this , would not be worth it. To lose an extraordinary amount of pots brings in doubt and depresses the soul.

Multi-Tabling

Multi-Tabling went better today and yesterday.  Putting the monitors at the same height and as close as possible helped a lot.  After doing these two things, a third window could be viewed in the middle with half of the window on one monitor and the other half on the other monitor. 

The third screen was the online poker site's lobby where all the stats for the present games were displayed.