Solid Night

Rikidee (watch out as he is buying gay video games which are no longer cool according to some sports figures!) made a whole post out of a couple sentences from a CR video on overbetting that I missed when I watched it the first time. I heard something about it but certainly didn't take as much notice of it as he did.... so I watched it again and it looks like an interesting idea when you find a calling station. When watching these guys play 10/20 NL I am amazed at some of the crazy ass calls you see so it is a good tool to use on a rare occasion.

The one point that was nailed home for me was that for the majority of our time at the tables we should be playing ABC poker. I think for some reason that we often try to outplay everyone on each hand and that isn't the goal. In the end we want more cash than we started with and if we are patient and aggressive our opponents will give us their cash.

So last night refocused on playing solid poker I attacked a couple NL100 tables. Then I run into a guy who overbet every hand he was in and he did it twice against me. First hand I am dealt QQ in the BB. Villian raises to $3 and I reraise him to $12. Flop is K24r and I lead out for $20 and he insta reraises it to $65. I let it go.... but I like my bet with that type of flop because the texture was good and I think that I take that down way more often than I am reraised. It is a hand that I will post this evening on CR to see if I played it in a manner that is optimal vs. other ways to play it to take the hand down. A few hands later against the same Villian I call his raise with 22 and flop is Q high. He bets 1/2 pot and I reraise it and he insta pushes. Again I liked how I used position to take an aggressive stance on the hand when I thought he could be cbetting with Ax. About an orbit later after winning a couple small hands against him when I cbet he left the table.

What I like best about the CR style is that you piss off everyone at the table with the constant pressure. There is no way to play a LAG style when not playing your A game without bleeding chips everywhere. People by the end of the night were letting me walk because to complete from the SB meant you would probably face a raise. If you raised with trash could it stand up to a very possible reraise?!! Limping from EP's wasn't possible without facing a 5x bb raise. Now I wasn't just raising with junk but was using position to my advantage to take down lots of small pots and when someone fought back I usually had a hand.

Overall I only ended up about a buyin but the feeling of running over a table and getting guys to do what I wanted was a welcome change. The few suckouts by a shortstack who was playing 90/8 over 100 hands hurt a bit since he lost it all to another solid player at the table. But those are the types of players that I want at my table anytime.

I did donk out of the Hoy last night but I was trying to read what Hoy and Iak had when I called them. They of course were pushing with the goods again and my hands were dominated both times. The good part of the evening was coming back from 250 chips to 1200 before donating to Iak. Get em next week.