I've resumed playing ring games, which means it's time to revive this blog.

For a while I played exclusively SNGs. Unfortunately I didn't make any progress. At times I moved from $16 to $27, and I didn't even win a single one of them when all's set and done. I even played two $55+5 and finished 3rd in one of them. Multi-table SNGs were a lost cause for me. I tried my luck with $3 and $6.5 Omaha hi/lo SNGs and had my moments.

But eventually I conclude that NLHE end ring games were more appealing.

For two weeks or so I moved two steps up to NL100, back onto the less aggressive/volatile 9-player tables, and enjoyed very modest success. But I decided that the stakes were a bit too high.

So I spent the last week doing two things. 1) Finish reading "No-limit Holdem -- theory and practice", and 2) playing 50NL 6-max

NLTAP is a fine book. It deals mostly with full-ring cash games, and it presents a few refreshing concepts, such as toning down aggression, and things to pay attention to when playing one-pair hands. One suggestion from the book that I am taking to heart is to not raise too much with AK. I could win some moderate pots by hitting outkicking TP hands, so why drive hands like KJ or AT away? Why put in a raise that only pocket pairs would call?

The past week I incurred most of the losses when I stacked off with 3 big pairs running into bigger pairs, and stacking off with AA/KK against smaller pair flopped sets. So these are the weaknesses that I'm working on. Otherwise I have been doing well. Especially the last few days when I made like $500 combined. I had good hands -- I hit quads 6 or 7 times the past 2 days, some of them getting fully paid off. There were two overflushes that were fully paid. When I push my combo draws, either my opponents folded their overpairs, or I was called but hit anyways. I also got away from some crap -- like bluffing only to get called with worse hands, or hitting 2 or 5 outers a couple of times when a lot of money were already in the pot. And I didn't get outdrawn or sucked out on much.

I still need to work on my extraction. Sometimes I flopped big on a fairly benign board, such as 33 on a 973 rainbow board, and I blew away my opponent by bet-3-bet AI on the flop -- according to NLTAP this is a sign of a weak-tight player.

My preflop numbers were 27/12, which are not stellar. But according to NLTAP preflop numbers don't matter much as long as I play well postflop in big pots.

I'll post some hands once I get home and look them up on pokertracker.