The past couple days I haven't been playing a lot of poker, but instead I have been watching soo many poker videos. I closely studied both seasons of high stakes poker. Both seasons are available for free on youtube.com, it's freaking awesome, it's like an unlimited resource of poker video.

I learned so much about deepstack NL in the past few days, I didn't really understand where a lot of my mistakes were coming from, but now I feel I have picked up a lot of the small nuances about the game. My main problem was that I was playing hands in cash games too much like I would in a tournament.

As you may remember I have recently started a quest to turn a free 17$ into a real working bankroll on Poker Stars. I am doing this instead of buying in with a real bankroll for a couple of reasons. Online I've been going downhill recently. This has been a combination of bad luck and some tilty play, a large-ish swing of variance. So instead of putting more cash on pokerstars and playing a bigger game right away I'm going to work my way up. Right now I'm not even bankrolled for the 3$ sit'n'gos, but between that and penny-stakes I'm setting my goal for $50 before I move up a little bit in limits.

The poker stars penny-stakes are pretty interesting, it's super deep-stacked the max buy-in is $5 in a .01/.02 instead of $2 which seems to be standard elsewhere. It's a great thing however, playing very deepstacked allows for lots of interesting plays. Despite the fact that penny-stakes players are horrible. Here's some interesting hands:

PokerStars Game #7464622555:
Hold'em No Limit ($0.01/$0.02) - 2006/12/16 - 05:08:37 (ET)Table 'Epeios' 6-max
Seat #2 is the buttonSeat
1: astrodg ($1.68 in chips)
Seat 2: KingAndy007 ($1.37 in chips)
Seat 3: suuus ($1.30 in chips)
Seat 4: pounette13 ($2.02 in chips)
Seat 5: garrymdp ($7.68 in chips)
Seat 6: natedawg2 ($2.07 in chips)
suuus: posts small blind $0.01pounette13:
posts big blind $0.02

*** HOLE CARDS ***Dealt to astrodg [7d 7s]
garrymdp: folds
natedawg2: folds
astrodg: raises $0.04 to $0.06
KingAndy007: folds
suuus: calls $0.05
pounette13: calls $0.04
*** FLOP *** [2h 7h 5d]
suuus: checks
pounette13: bets $0.14
astrodg: raises $0.14 to $0.28
suuus: folds
pounette13: calls $0.14
*** TURN ***
[2h 7h 5d] [2c]
pounette13: checks
astrodg: bets $0.20
pounette13: calls $0.20
*** RIVER *** [2h 7h 5d 2c] [2d]
pounette13: checks
astrodg: bets $0.40
pounette13: raises $0.58 to $0.98
astrodg: raises $0.16 to $1.14 and is all-in
pounette13: folds
astrodg collected $2.95 from pot
astrodg: shows [7d 7s] (a full house, Sevens full of Deuces)
*** SUMMARY ***Total pot $3.10 | Rake $0.15 Board [2h 7h 5d 2c 2d]
Seat 1: astrodg collected ($2.95)

Seat 1: astrodg ($2.05 in chips)
Seat 2: Bluffa Des ($1.89 in chips)
Seat 3: adq19 ($1.80 in chips)
Seat 4: MT.Hammers ($1.33 in chips)
Seat 5: garrymdp ($8.32 in chips)
Seat 6: wacky69 ($4.04 in chips)
adq19: posts small blind $0.01
MT.Hammers: posts big blind $0.02
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to astrodg [6c 5s]
garrymdp: calls $0.02
wacky69: folds
astrodg: calls $0.02
Bluffa Des: folds
adq19: calls $0.01
MT.Hammers: checks
*** FLOP *** [3s 5c 7h]
adq19: checks
MT.Hammers: checks
garrymdp: checks
astrodg: bets $0.10
adq19: folds
MT.Hammers: calls $0.10
garrymdp: folds
*** TURN *** [3s 5c 7h] [Ad]
MT.Hammers: bets $0.14
astrodg: calls $0.14
*** RIVER *** [3s 5c 7h Ad] [2s]
MT.Hammers: checks
astrodg: checks
*** SHOW DOWN ***
MT.Hammers: shows [Qc Jd] (high card Ace)
astrodg: shows [6c 5s] (a pair of Fives)
astrodg collected $0.56 from pot

This last hand was pretty strange, this player and I had a slight rivalry and I had been very aggressive against him, representing on the flop very often. When he bet on the turn I really wasn't sure if I should fold, raise or call. This player had some trouble pulling the trigger on the river when he was bluffing, so I decided that since I at least had a gut-shot draw, i definitely had a bunch of outs to make the best hand. I called b/c I wanted to see if he could pull the trigger. After he checked the river, I decided that he was either completely bluffing or he was trying to induce a bluff, so instead of trying to steal on the river I checked, hoping that I probably had the best hand. What do you think of how I played this?


There were some other good hands but I'm having trouble navigatig through Poker Stars hand histories. Anyways the Stars roll is up to about 25$.

Other people who are just starting out at online who have recently had a big swing of variance, I really do recomend playing at min-stakes, kinda brings me back to the basics, it's very deepstacked so you can get creative, making interesting calls and interesting raises. The next 3-4 weeks of this will be amuzing. Although I'm still itching to be playing for real money. I'm gonna do it right this time.