Dallying in December

Posted by Prateek Bhartia on 2012-12-07 at 12:00 AM

Its something about the month of December that makes me lazy as hell. Maybe its the holidays that are coming up, but I just dont feel like doing anything, except playing video games. Not been playing poker as much as I planned to. Like I said in my last blog, its very important that I play more specially when there are world class players to guide me. So anyway, After 6 weeks of PGMP 2.0, I would like to tell you guys how it has changed certain parts of my game.

Till now we have just had preflop lessons, learning how to manage 10-100BB stacks preflop. Its amazing how your ranges become completely different with change in stack size. Certain hands, that we are reshoving with a 20BB stack, but not even flatting with a 60BB stack. IT just goes to show how the cards hardly matter, and its the spot, stacks and dynamics that make all the difference.
I had several leaks with regards to my 3bet range, flatting range with with 30-50BB stacks, and I just could not accept reshoving T9o with 20BBs. But, since I started following ranges taught in PGMP, I can considerably feel a difference in my short-midstack game. I have noticed how I chip up quickly with these stacks with a lot of non-showdown pots, and how I am able to control spews with a Mid stacks (which was one of my biggest leaks). With these mid stacks, its important to play solid TAG poker, pick up spots to get chips without showdown etc. So, I am getting more familiar with resteal/3bet light spots, and sometimes I am able to pick them up with great accuracy, where I KNOW opponent will fold (of course there is a 5% chance that I run into top of his range, but still have more than 30% equity :p). A good example of this, is a hand I would like to share.It was a hand I played at the bubble of the Bigger11 last Sunday :

Poker Stars $10+$1 No Limit Hold’em Tournament – t350/t700 Blinds + t85 – 9 players – [url=http://www.handconverter.com/hands/2024522]View hand 2024522[/url]
[url=http://www.deucescracked.com/?referrer=converter_phpbb]DeucesCracked Poker Videos[/url] [url=http://www.handconverter.com]Hand History Converter[/url]

SB: t19641 M = 10.82
BB: t8653 M = 4.77
UTG: t32912 M = 18.13
UTG+1: t3922 M = 2.16
UTG+2: t18017 M = 9.93
MP1: t25633 M = 14.12
[b]Hero (MP2): t17090 M = 9.42[/b]
CO: t3505 M = 1.93
BTN: t19183 M = 10.57

[b]Pre Flop:[/b] (t1815) Hero is MP2 with 8[img]http://static.deucescracked.com/images/heart.gif[/img] 9[img]http://static.deucescracked.com/images/diamond.gif[/img]
[i]4 folds[/i], [color=red]Hero raises to t1400[/color], [i]2 folds[/i], [color=red]SB raises to t3255[/color], [i]1 fold[/i], [color=red]Hero raises to t17005 all in[/color], [i]1 fold[/i]

[b]Final Pot:[/b] t7975
Hero mucks 8[img]http://static.deucescracked.com/images/heart.gif[/img] 9[img]http://static.deucescracked.com/images/diamond.gif[/img]
Hero wins t7975

This is the result of having a great mentor and a Hud :p. I had seen villain 3b from SB earlier, and his 3bet stats were ~14%. So with my hand that is not dominated by anything and the massive FE, which is magnified by the bubble factor, makes him fold everything but the nutted part of his range. THese are literally free chips (also notice how it adds 25% to my stack) and you can use a mid stack to do things like this, cause we usually have a lot of FE. Again, if I was not doing it for the right reasons, this hand could have been equally spewy. So its great things like this that I have picked up from the program, and has helped my game immensely.

Speaking of Sundays, I was able to sell my first ever Sunday package Last weekend. Intially I Was not so optimistic about selling out the whole thing, but knew PGMP gang had a knack for making good investments ;), so thought I would try it out. It just so happened that I managed to sell more than I originally intended to :p … Thanks to everyone that bought a piece, helped me boost confidence and lower the Sunday assault on my BR.

Here’s a link to the stake thread : [url]https://pokerguru.in/forum/showthread.php?1970-Sunday-Package-No-Mark-up[/url]
And a link to the rail thread :[url]https://pokerguru.in/forum/showthread.php?1971-12-2-2012-Sunday-Package-rail-thread-for-pb106[/url]

Last PGMP session was a little more special than usual, as adi’s friend, James Collopy aka Mr_bigqueso decided to take a guest session for us. He is a well accomplished player and plays a lot of live Events events. P5s has him at more than 2M online winnings!! It was great to get another POV, since queso plays a bit differently from adi, and considers himself more TAG compared to adi.
We had a chance to fire questions at Queso, and he very patiently, and in a Detailed manner explained everyone’s queries. He also spoke a bit about live events, and factors he considers to change gears on the table. I was **mind blown** … Its just a whole different level of thinking I must say, and it has opened up my mind in un-explainable ways. Hope adi can Keep him around long enough for a couple more sessions 😀

This turned out to be much longer than I intended, so a good time as any to wrap up this blog post (rant ?) by mentioning that PGT starts the next week, and I think they are gonna have some awesome numbers. Def gonna be a bummer missing this PGT because of the sheer value in playing them (rake free FTW), and worst of all, there is a PGMP meet-and-greet that I will be missing. Adi, queso, samohhh, and other mentors are going to be there along with members of batch 1 and 2. Feeling so bad I am going to miss this, but already have planned for PGT in Jan 😀

If its your thing, I present to you the King of Electro Swing :
[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twqM56f_cVo&list=PLrTg9v6ShgxmmYiHxMVFeLDnJJt2sDXIJ&index=1[/url]
(11 hours of blissful grind music)

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Prateek Bhartia

Top Online Poker Rooms

Top
PokerGuru