Recreational Gambler Plays Donkaments

Not much planned for this month, aside from some donkaments.

I will prob play the weekly 100, 50, 250 from a venue just a short walk from my place. These games happen from Thursday to Saturday. On Sundays I will probably play live cash, but if something special comes up I might play that. I will prob play some PLO MTTs on Iggy over the week. But again, it depends on my mood what I play 😀

So this week, we played 8 donkaments with an average ABI of around 120. Had two rebuys for a total of ten entries and one min cash :(

Some of these tournies have overlay or goofy pay structures (e.g. 1st = 57% of PP) and forced ICM chop at venue closing times

Obv most of these are hyper turbo (<8bb average for FT) and I max late rego a bunch of these but its def good value to play

I will prob play alot less next few weeks tho, cuz I need to shift focus on other stuff. But this week I will definitely play some from Wednesday to Saturday

Other things I will focus on this week would be minimising food spending, doing a NY clean up of the house, and make some progress on my other projects

It seems only fair that the first HHs of this thread be rather goofy, enjoy:

We played 8 donkaments, managed to play 5 over the weekend. Had two tiny cashes and got abit under 1k for another one. Im pretty sure I max late rego-ed most of these games and it gets hyper turbo-y as usual. I don’t have too many interesting hands.

Can remember any goofy hand during the week except for maybe one:

Played just 5 tournaments this week, mostly late rego flipping. Had two FTs, blasted off in one. Got to play live HUNL somehow and won abit there. It’s a format I’ve invested alot of time into and always nice to get some chances to play it.

In the upcoming week, I got some bigger MTTs with some proper six figure prize pools, so I’m looking forward to some proper action.

Here are some fun spots, first one we got to run a triple check, and second one was some ICM blast off

So this is gonna be a long post as it’s been a crazy week, played cash and also a big series. Saw a fight in person on the poker table for the first time and it end up costing me money.

Starting off at Monday, we make it to FT with a big stack on a game that had big overlay, but the whole day was filled with trouble. Firstly there were complaints of organisers not being transparent about the guarantee in the promotion text message sent to players (there was a condition that reduced the guarantee under a certain amount of players that wasn’t explained in the text). An argument ensures and a woman ended up getting kicked out of the tournament. Safe to say the tournament organisers were being very unprofessional.

When we reached the FT, two guys went at it and ended up throwing fists and tackling each other when one busted the other guy out of the tournament. The tables were destroyed and chips went everywhere. The organisers forced an even chop even though there were cameras to verify our chip stacks at the venue. Me and my friend’s (the other big stack) complains fell on deaf ears but we did mention to get a ticket to their main event on top as consolation. I probably won’t play any of their events again outside of the main event ticket that I will use. I ended up going to a cash game afterwards and won a bunch in a short session, making up for abit of amount I got screwed out of in the tournament from the even chop.

Tuesday was nothing that interesting, max late rego at a local game followed by a swift bust-out.

The next few days, I would be playing a big series in the city. I played a couple of $350 buy ins, $600 and a $1.5k.

Wednesday was the first day of the series that I played. It was a six max tournament and while I started well and ran up a stack, I soon got coolered KK v AA and it was downhill from there. I busted the rebuy bullet too.

Thursday continued the trend of run bad I quickly busted my bullet in the freezeout. The dealer made multiple mistakes including pushing pots to wrong people, not taking river bets, short changing people. He was known to make mistakes like that I’m surprised he still had a job. He cost me some chips with some of his mistakes but its partially my fault, I should’ve paid more attention.

This was my bust out hand:

I ended up rego-ing the PLO tournament later and busting out after flopping top set.

On Friday, I played the 1.5k buy in and got a whale heavy table right off the bat with people straddling and going crazy, only end up moving to a “reg” filled table. There were some interesting hands on day 1, one of the more interesting was one where I turned top pair into a bluff raise

We end up bagging a decent stack by the end of day 1 (around 3.5x starting) after 8 hours of play

We came back for day 2 and had some grimy spots. Our stack went up and down but we could never really gained traction and had to end up sneaking into the money with quite a small stack. It was disappointing to go card dead on one of the whale-ist tables in that tournament that would’ve been a really good spot to chip up and make a big run.

This was a particular annoying spot where we had to fold:

I went to a 5/T cash game afterwards and it was pretty degen after midnight. The entire table were whales primarily of the middle eastern and oriental variety. The pot of note is when we had AK and the money somehow went in four ways preflop against KQ, QJ and TT. We did not win the hand :(

Uni terms start in two weeks and I’m pretty burnt out from all that poker after the week so I will probably play less this week. At least that’s what I’m going to tell myself for now xD

Had a decent week. Quickly busted on Monday. Then on Thursday, I had FT stack with a few tables left and embarrassing did not FT. Blinds got turbo and a gross cooler happened.

On Friday, we ran up a massive chip lead on a smaller game and ended coming out with the dub. Don’t think there were any particularly interesting hands.

On the weekend, max late regoed a monthly game with a really whaley field, but was out in one hand after 3bet calling off JJ 37.5bb pre against a 4bet shove BB vs CO, was up against AJ, and they ended up Barry Greensteining the Ace on the river. My friend who I have action of would end up winning the tournament for abit under 8k and I would have a little piece of that.

Would end up going to cash game, and had a funny hand where I misread my hand and thought I was jamming river as a bluff but actually I had rivered trips.

On Sunday, I wake up late in the afternoon, only to get up and uber straight to a game to max max late rego (I had to get blinded out abit before sitting :P) and also bust in the first hand for the second time in the week after getting it in with KK v 55 pre and 5 on the river. Immediately ubered and max late regoed another game and would cash for 1k on the FT. Headed to a cash game and met with some friends and played a couple of hours more.

My school term hasn’t started yet, and I was thinking of taking a week off and just focusing on dieting and not spending money on food to lose some weight for some upcoming sport events. I plan to be frugal with my food spending in the coming week and play minimal poker but who knows if I stick to that plan.

Enjoy these posts as I imagine many other members of the community do. Also like how you take some contrarian lines that are definitely +eV in these live settings (something a lot of strong theoretical players who play mostly online sometimes struggle with). I am curious on your K9o 11bb button spot above where you opened and got coolered versus JT. Thoughts on just taking the easy jam preflop here? Are you open/folding habitually in live games off these stacks and finding success because it's one I've typically erred towards jamming but perhaps there's something there.

Keep up the good work,

Grayson

Thanks for the reply man 😀 I appreciate the engagement.

With that K9 spot, i think i specified in the HH that blinds were 10k/20k hence I didn’t show an ante amount because the tournament was non ante, the cut off as per Snap Shove was KTo+ no ante, but i assume with ICM (30-25% field remaining) it can def be a +EV shove too.

That being said, I also think min raising also has merit regardless, especially if field isnt reshoving enough Kx, Qxs, suited connectors (and even Ax!), we get a more efficient steal attempt which bet/fold pre and play winning spots vs fit or fold players post flop at 2+ SPR.

If it was ante, i assume then we are way more incentivised to just shove (don’t wanna bet/fold), but I have seen some limping getting into the mix with cEV charts around even 12bb region (but jamming prob alot better and way easier to play).

Pretty uneventful week, busted a satty on Monday, busted two bullets on a Tuesday game.

Then i followed it up with some late regos and busto outs on Thurs and Fri. Played like around an hour of cash on Sunday.

Even though I played five days this week, it was mostly uneventful. Also didn’t meet my weight loss goals for the week, ate and spend abit too much and didn’t follow my diet goals. I ate out the entire week, from skewers to hot pot to North African food to Italian to Jap BBQ to Chinese restaurant. I did the exact opposite of dieting and gained 2-3kg instead xD I basically plan to starve next week in order to redeem myself :P

School term is starting so I will try to improve things.

I don’t expect to play too much poker during the week, mainly focused on a series opener which is a two day event with several flights.

Usually I wait longer before posting but had an interesting hand at a deep stack cash game, so I decided to post it now:

Pretty sure I ICM punted…

5 left, 4 ITM

Payouts are 4.5x, 6.5x, 10x, 15x

We have 3 similar big stacks on 30bb+, and maybe a 18bb and a 13bb stack

Non Ante Tournament

We have around 32bb effective, around 2nd in chips

Unhinged chip leader with around 35bb opens 2x from CO, we are on the SB with AKo and BB defends his blind out of turn and the extra BB is forced to be in even though he wanted to fold to take the blind back

So the spot now becomes CO v BB, big blind ante 32bb effective on the bubble (because of the 2.5bb in the blinds)

Pretty sure with ICM, we supposed to just open rip as min cash is quite big actually, but the guy is such a spazz, I just think hes an ego spazz will yeet in alot of suited Ax and random hands like AT+ because of the “dead money steal dynamic” from the guy calling out of turn and folding, dramatically raising our equity v 4bj range

Hand Result

While hes the kind of guy to likely snap off what he had to a 30bb+ jam on the bubble anyway, but our non all in/call off was probably still a mistake

Our play is winning cEV, but i definitely overestimated the future game aspect of the spot even tho first is 40% of the prizepool because min cash is still quite significant

I will HRC the spot later to check at what point does my assumptions on how wide his jamming range with regards to the Ax and rando spazzes would make AKo prefer to NAI/call off > jamming. Furthermore I gotta also inputs my assumptions for his call vs jam range if I’m going to compare EV of jam vs EV of NAI

I might post the results of the sim if I have time

lets fkn gooooo

Played some MTT and cash during the week

Was HU in one of small field MTTs earlier in the week, but K2s v 44 for sub 9bb stacks and got nit rolled.

Bubbled on Thursday in a spot I already went over with the AK, had some very interesting results on HARCS, might do a more detailed post on that later, turns out AK can flat in that configuration which is pretty crazy.

Played the series opener (2 day event) and had some interesting hands.

Here's a hand against a guy that drove a Mclaren, so naturally I node locked river for Mclaren-adjusted frequencies.

I was running up a decent stack, but someone open jammed A9o from EP for 29bb, QQ called and we woke up with KK. Safe to say we didn’t hold. We covered the other players but the dealer took our whole stack and there was a whole commotion with getting things recounted. We end up crippled and busting later with ironically A9 v KK.

End of the week, we woke up to max late rego onto a FT of a game that got quite a big overlay, just like a week ago, we lasted one hand (this time with AQ for like around 10 bigs) then proceed to bust another tournament before we went to a cash game and ran up 8 buy ins playing alot of 3 handed and HU.

Bubbled a FT in a thursday game. Lost a crucial AK v KT. Got a main event to play tmmr and some other stuff if I bust. I think the week after, I will try to play much more cash instead…

I played five different games today from around 6:30pm all the way to 5am the next day.

To start the day played a big main event flight today, first probably gets close to 100k. Immediately upon sitting, I notice the entire table were whales. Soon the table straddling and there were some blind all ins and action given with unsuited junk. Some of the players already bagged in an earlier flight with decent stacks but they still decided to give it another go. I knew it was going to be a chip leading stack for Day 2 or an early bust out.

I quickly lose half my stack just on squeeze spots with hands like AQ and ATs and what not and getting peeled by random hands. Sh*t happens. I ended up getting move to a less juicy but still soft table and this hand happens

We then chased another smaller hyper turbo game that usually gets alot of overlay that was only two stations away. We max late rego that and quickly busted with a flush draw at 1SPR.

Next, we then max late rego another game on the other side of the road and made the FT but had to jam 88 short stacked and ran into KK.

Then we ubered to yet another game that had a max late rego at around midnight. It also seemed to have a massive overlay. In that game we made the FT and came fourth to get some rebate on our earlier losses of the day.

After sitting on a couch in the middle of street at like 3am and talking for an hour or so on the phone, some crackheads were bumming around getting agitated and I decide its best that I go home.

Except instead of going home, we ubered to a cash game was about to close up, but we quickly lit up three and a half stacks or so on fire, first with top pair and a flush draw, then with losing with QQ v Q♠9♠ all in preflop, then one more with KK and finally losing a 3bet pot with pair vs combo draw all in on the flop.

Now I’m typing all this on my way home. Pretty burnt out, Idk if I should play on the weekend or just take it easy to catch up on some of my assignments.