What's wrong with this picture?

I had what they call in the business "a disastrous session" giving back 5% of my roll to the tables to the tune of $10 after having dipped down as low as $12. My green line actually plunged past breakeven before recovering slightly above it. Not only that but I'm actually running a few bucks above my EV line. So what happened?

Biggest losing hand was aces full trumping my kings full. That one hand cost me about 1/4 of my losses for the day. Avoidable? Probably not but I had my fair share of warning that I was behind but I was purely going by hand strength and not considering what my opponent may have or how the hand had played out.

Guy flopped a set on my aces for a $1.78 loss. At least I slowed down and just paid a value bet on the end.

Villain flopped perfect on me and I didn't catch my runners to flush him.

Lost a couple of flips for a buck apiece.

And lost a hand where I was in 2:1.

Part of the problem was that I couldn't isolate. I'd open with a pot sized bet and get called too many ways to try to push things through. Though there are times to just keep the foot on the gas I need to learn when to throttle back. I know better than to bet full pot on the flop when half pot will do. Another part of it was bad luck on just getting outflopped where a bet on the flop would take it down if it missed villain.

So I think it would be prudent to go back to the penny tables for now and grind the roll back up. Though I think I could make the adjustments to avoid the problems with the session I had I think it better that I pay my penance by relegating myself to .01/.02 to help enforce the lesson.

HOTD: Hammer time

I pick AAJ3 rainbow UTG and open for a pot sized bet, call, re-raise, re-re-raise, and by the time the flop came we're in a four way all in. Despite my aces I'm actually pulling up the rear here since I'm up against AAJ4ss and get my money in shockingly bad with only 16% equity but the flop comes 425 and my flopped wheel vaults me into a 56% favorite position. Turn is Qc which puts the third club on the board which nobody has and I am up to 70% to nearly quadruple up. But the board pairs fives and the short stack donk that just had to push the action pre-flop with 2727ss (you'd figure he'd wait for 2727 rainbow at least) ends up boating to take the lion's share of the pot. I end up roughly breaking even for the side pot.

Climbing back out

Had a couple of short sessions to repair the crater that the nickel tables left in the bankroll. Actually dug myself deeper in by almost a couple bucks before turning it around and rolled it up and got a couple bucks on the good side for a healthy four dollar swing. Had a disheartening one outer when I got a conservative player to go bust with his set of queens to my set of aces but he rivered his case queen to leave me a buck shy of where I would have been. Still, came out on top by $2.75. Second session was only half an hour but I grabbed another buck back. After rakeback I'm about halfway out of the hole.

HOTD: Set over set over set

In the final push to get past two bills I ran into a rare hand. .01/.02 table and I pick up KTK6ss and just limp since I'm just set mining here. Four to the flop which comes Kc3hQd. SB checks. BB bets, then a raise, and with top set I'm jamming here. SB folds and everyone else gets it in on the flop. Being a rainbow flop I'm a little surprised at the action but I figure someone has a straight/wrap draw and someone else has two pair. Nope. The vaunted set over set over set. I'm 86% here and bottom set is actually ahead of middle set since he at least has runner runner straight outs. Ironically this is one of the rare times where you don't want to see the board pair with top set. Turn is Tc and I improve to 94%. River is the case queen and I get stacked by an unusual two outer.

What is the capital of Ireland?

Dublin...just like my bankroll. For the first time I've breached the double century mark. After 50,165 hands the current total is $200.02 including rakeback. I got within a couple bucks last night, gave back a few dimes, then decided to take a conservative approach this morning to just grind out some profit on the penny tables where I just put it in cruise control and coasted across the double up line. Disappointingly I have a better $/hour rate at .01/.02 than I do at .02/.05 but I still don't have a ton of data on my nickel game yet especially after changing up my AAxx strategy. I plan on staying the course through the end of March and see what I can build my roll up to by April 1. After that I'll see if I want to continue concentrating on Omaha or start in on something else.

The secret sauce?

There's not enough data to go on yet but I believe that I've been underplaying my AAxx hands. Digging through the HEM database I am definitely EV+ for all the times I picked up AAxx and just kept my foot to the floor. Sure I get run down sometimes and occasionally I'm dumping in chips way bad but overall it is a winning strategy. After a terrible run when starting out at .02/.05 and having players flop perfect against me I got gun shy and played my big hands way weaker, essentially doing massage raises and set mining for an ace. Over the past couple thousand hands or so I've reversed my take on that and have gone back to driving AAxx hand all the way through again as long as I can get reasonable isolation pre-flop and can be pot committed on the flop. Since then my chart has ticked up and I've become more profitable at the nickel tables. Since I'm folding a lot of hands, not bluffing, and rarely taking cards off, I think the aggressive AAxx tactic compensates for the very tight play for other hands. Incidentally, KKxx is profitable as well but only about 1/3 as much due largely to the times that KKxx run into AAxx.

Rough day at the office

After getting my roll within a few cents of the $190 mark I had a disastrous day. Had a bad run at .02/.05 so I geared down to .01/.02 to grind my roll back up and that's where I had a string of three horrific beats against the same guy in short succession. I picked up premium starters and this guy was playing any four cards for stacks so I got my money in 2:1'ish three times and lost all of them. It happens, not the majority of the time but it happens.

I get a decent session of penny stakes in later and move back up to nickels where I endure the lethal combination of run bad/play bad. Looking at the hands later I can see that after having people catch their draws on me I started to revert to trying to push big hands through again and ended up getting my money in bad in some big hands. I failed miserably at some bluff attemptts. Had one player who was unable to fold his AAxx on a paired connected board. Another guy just had to chase his flush draw on a four liner to a straight. At the nadir of the day I was down $12 from my peak which was really disturbing since I try to keep my variance really small. Twelve bucks is still only about 6% of my roll and that was over many sessions and many tables but considering that I buy in for $1.75 max that represents a pretty bad run. My green line also came dangerously close to falling below even and I don't want that happening ever again.

The only bright spot today was that I ended up on an absolutely scorching heater as I was shutting down tables. Top set of Aces on the flop, falls behind to broadway on the turn, but I get stubborn and push it through to quad up on the river. Bad play, good results. Top two versus bottom two for fat stacks. Top two dodges a GSSFD and a separate flush draw to pull down a healthy three way pot. Top set of queens stacks KKQ8 who can't let go of top pair and an overpair to the board. All told I get about $5 back to end up a few cents to the good for the session.

I see some similarities in my chart to when I was getting my .01/.02 game turned around. 6000 hands in on the nickel stakes I have had some ups and a long protracted down (see below). Overall I'm still EV+ including rakeback but the next step is to get EV+ excluding rakeback just as I did with the penny tables. I'll feel better about the EV figure after I get at least 10K hands in at .02/.05. For now at least I'll keep grinding away at the penny tables for the bread and butter and take shots at nickel sessions.

...and falling off the track almost as quickly

Gave back almost $6 in the last session. One hand I had a wrap straight draw to the nuts and redraws to higher and a guy with top and bottom decides he's good (he was) and pounds the pot. I pay too much on the turn and then I price myself in to calling off my last big of change to see the river which misses me. I also get short stacked in a couple places and try to shove someone off of their made flush which just isn't going to happen for a few BBs. I was aware of my donking in the middle of the hand but didn't exercise the good enough sense to just dump the hand and move on to another one. Blech.

Getting back on track

I've quickly acted on the lessons learned from this afternoon and have gotten the ship turned around. I've been cutting down on tables and concentrating on each table more instead of just trying to churn through hands to pluck out big pairs. I've also stopped trying to push big pairs through which has been EV+ but also high variance. No more betting on the come for nut flush draws. If someone is betting big I give them credit for actually having a hand at the .02/.05 level. I've put in a couple of sessions, about 100 minutes, 250 hands with over $8.50 to show for it. The new mojo is working and I just need to keep the adjustments in place.

Best example of the change is the biggest hand of the day. I'm in the SB with Ad2dAhQh, aces double suited and both connect at different ends. I've rolled up my $1.75 buy in to $2.16 and min-raise to .10 just to let the BB know that I have a hand and that he can just politely fold or call the fold after I cbet on the flop. But instead he pots me back. I'm getting a feeling where this is going and I realize that I follow through this will be a high variance hand. Even just 24 hours ago I would have jammed and re-potted with AAxx but now I first take a measured look at this and decide that I have about as premium hand as I can get and proceed to re-pot until we get it all in pre-flop. He shows QcQs6d9d so I have his pair and his suits dominated. And as though the Omaha gods were rewarding me, the flop comes JT4 all diamonds. Not only do I flop the stone cold nuts but I have villain down to 1% requiring runners to win. Board pairs fours then I fade a queen to take down a substantial $4.52 pot. The upshot is that if I had just jammed with naked aces and not had a suited diamond villain's crappy diamonds would have taken down that pot instead of me. Lesson learned.

That reversal of direction raises the high water mark to $184.28.

Hitting the wall

Over the past couple days my chart has hit the wall. The unrelenting climb from last weekend has slowed down, stopped, and even reversed course as seen in the chart below.

This is largely due to moving to .02/.05 stakes and a bad run at stack roulette. Ironically I am still EV+ for the nickel tables, barely via green line but better including rakeback.

Still the issue is that I need to adjust for .02/.05 to get my efficiency up. After a particularly brutal eye-opening session I am now getting a better understanding of how to play Omaha effectively. Basically, more emphasis needs to be placed on pre-flop hand selection. While it is important to play strong hands it is even more important to have all four cards working together regardless of their rank. In the same way that suited connectors or small pairs can upend a premium pair in Hold'em, any four cards in Omaha can be played against big hands like marked aces but the trick is to have them highly coordinated to increase the chances winning. I've been stacked before when I flop top set of aces only to have that come in second to a flopped wheel. The saying about any Omaha hand only being 51/49 against any other hand is, while an exaggeration, based on a kernel of truth. There is now more method to the madness of calling big raises pre-flop instead of folding since the the winning hand depends so highly on the community cards. In retrospect this concept is totally obvious and has been stated before but seeing it in action taking my chips has been the wake up call I needed to adjust my game. I already realized that naked aces are very vulnerable and benefit greatly from being suited and connected to the other two cards in the hand but I have even more appreciation for how all four cards need to coordinate to boost those critical extra percentage points.

Think I'm going to go back to .01/.02 for a little while to repair my roll and apply new concepts before working .02/.05 tables into the mix again.

Not very good at stack roulette

The session started off with a bang and didn't let up for a while.

First hand I play I'm all in pre with 52% equity against two other players and lose to a crappy flush.

Then my AAK2ss can't fend off a guy who went with bottom pair and a gutter on the flop.

KKJ4ss runs into AAxx though I still have 25% equity in a four way all in pre-flop.

Lose a coin flip with QQJ4ss to AKxxds.

My AAJ8ss is 2:1 against KJT5ss until he rivers two pair.

My KKxx has JJxx dominated until he flops a set.

I can't get away from bottom set of ducks against a guy who came in on the button with 9995 and caught the case 9.

My AQT2 is behind against AAxxds but aces hold up when they are in villain's hand apparently.

Then it was up and down for a while and I fill in some of the crater in my bankroll that stack roulette has left. I can almost get even when I get a guy trying to give me his chips with KKJ4 in diamonds and clubs against my AAQ7 and I have his clubs covered. He flops a diamond draw and gets there on the river and $3.50 goes the wrong way across the felt.

One of the only highlights is getting paid in full when a guy stacks off to me after he turns a king high straight against my flopped quad jacks.

Overall just 318 hands of brutality and I feel "lucky" to walk away only being down $3.47 after rake after being down $6.20 at one point. Rakeback patches about another buck on that to cut my deficit down to about $2.50 instead. Stack roulette is high variance and I'm satisfied that I'm getting my money in with sufficient overlay against the range of donks. Would have been nice to pull down at least one of them but I'll have to take solace in my accumulation of Sklansky bucks.

What am I doing in this hand?

At the nickel table and I get TQ89ss UTG. What are my options? In order from best to worst they would be fold, raise, then call. So what do I do? Call. Five to the flop which comes. 7Q4 two diamonds while I'm suited in spades. A min bet of .05 into a pot of .25 comes from the SB, BB folds to me and I have top pair, no kicker, and no draw. Worst thing to do here? Call, which I promptly do. Two more calls behind me. .45 in the pot now. 8 peels on the turn. Hey, top two pair now. SB now bets pot. Maybe he has two pair too? Well my two pair is better than his or maybe he had a set on the flop and was just waiting for a non diamond to peel. Once again I choose call. Why? Because if I'm going to butcher this hand I might as well go all the way with it. Player behind me then min-raises to .90. Hmmm. Fold then a flat call from the SB. .45 to me into a pot of $2.70? Sure why not? I'm sure I'm beating something out there. River is 8d which completes the flush and pairs the board. SB checks to me. Oh look, I have a boat now. And unless someone played top set even worse than I played my hand then I'm golden. I throw in my last .79 into the $3.15 pot. Player behind me calls his last .77 and SB overcalls. They both had 65xx for the turned nut straight and paid me off on a paired flushed board. Epic. And that my friends is how you donk your way into a $5.50 pot. Well done.

Oh silly stack roulette, why do you hate me so?

I dive into a mini-session with about 50/50 penny and nickel tables. On one nickel table I have almost a full buy, $1.68, and pick up AA27ss in the CO and just limp in. Button pops from .05 to .20 and everyone else, as in all four other players at the table flat call. I decide there is now enough money in the middle and I want to snap this thing off now that a pot sized bet is significant enough so I pot it up to $1.40 to get people out of my pot. Original raiser now makes it $5 to go, good, let's iso these donks out of here...nope. Three more players call off their stacks. Only one player has the sense to not get involved. Board runs out and gives the AK99ss original raiser his flush and I miss my $9 pot. Dangit. As it turns out I was not in the lead even, nor did I even have overlay there. AAxx not strong enough by itself. Even though we were both single suited, I had his ace dead and pair dominated but the K connector must have been enough of a factor to swing the percentages in his favor. I need to do more research on hand strengths.

Even though I missed out on the lotto I ended up $2.07 for the session thanks to minimizing my losses to that one $1.68 hand and taking down eleven pots, not bad for a session of only 64 hands.

* Follow up, I am actually heavily favored over his hand heads up but the percentages from HEM showed my odds after factoring in other players' cards.

Speed heater

Decide to sit down and grind my way back at the penny tables as penance for diving in too deep earlier. That will help enforce the idea that I should transition in to higher stakes instead of going whole hog.

I open up a few tables and at my first table I get AKKT in the BB. UTG makes it .06 to go. It folds to me and I am going all the way with this premium hand so I pot it back to him. He wants to dance so we get it all in and I'm 60/40 against his less than premium JT95ds. He flops a flush but it includes a king in it so I knocked back to a 33/67 dog. But just reigns as the board pairs queens to boat me up and leave him drawing dead. Then I get the case king for my third quad kings of the day just to throw it back in his face that much more. The very next hand he's in the BB and there is a pot and a call in front of me and I want to see a flop with KTTJss so I call as well. Same guy to my left pots it to .20 leaving himself .09 behind in what looks like a steam raise. Two calls behind and come along as well. Flop is 5QK suits irrelevant giving me top pair and open ender so I pot it, mostly because I want to stack this guy who actually folds to save his last nine cents. Then I get a re-pot and call-in behind me so I toss in my last .16. I'm up against a flopped three pair and some guy who didn't want to isolate with his AAT8ss pre-flop. Aces makes his set but fills my straight. River is a blank and I pull down a $2.11 pot after two hands starting with a .40 buy in before I even get to any other tables. I've done the hit(s), now it's time to run. See ya.

Next key hand I see a flop with KKJ6ss and the flop comes 7Q9 in my suit giving me a gutter and a flush draw to go with an overpair which brings two set outs. If I'm behind, as it turns out I was to bottom set, then I certainly can draw out. I turn my straight then river my flush. Sorry, didn't catch my set but I do rake the pot. I take down a few smaller hands after that and in ten minutes and 32 hands I roll up $3.92. If I could only maintain that $24/hour win rate! I had my sprint of run good and decide to punch out of my tables and bank my win for now.

In short order I repaired my divot that the higher stakes left me so once again I skate out of trouble and learn my lesson without being dinged for it.

If only all sessions could look like this:

Pump up the variance

Now that I'm mixing in .02/.05 I'm starting to get larger swings per hand. I have played .01/.02 with .40 or .70 buy-ins depending on the table. Now that I'm moving up I am getting in for either $1 or $1.75. So early in the session I have mostly penny tables with a couple of nickels and I flop trip fives. I bet, get raised, think it over and eventually stack off to a flopped boat though I did have higher boat outs which didn't materialize. Bye bye buy in. Against my better judgment I then started replacing penny tables with nickel tables until I eventually had all nickel tables on my screen. Hello swinginess. I rationalized it to myself by recognizing that I am actually over-rolled for just playing penny tables. Even when I have all of my screen full I have less than 5% of my roll in play at one time across all the tables combined. Well no time like the present to dive in and see how the nickel players live. Much different game than just one level below. When people bet they have it, surprise. Seems like position is used more effectively as well.

I ran kings into aces. Didn't get paid on my monster hands like flopping quad kings. I was on the button and picked up kings and was going to pop it against a limped table but just realized that I would get a waterfall so I just limped and then I flop quads. At least I had position and extracted probably the maximum I could after a guy finally rivers the nut flush on a KKQQx board. I told myself I'm going to have to start pumping up the pots that I enter since my range is so small I need to get compensation for paying blinds and folding. Later in the session I pick up kings again, do I follow my advice? Nope. What's the flop hold? Two more kings again. Slow learner I guess.

Overall I had a much wilder ride. At one point being down $7.42 until bringing it back to being down $2.56 and almost even with rakeback. Good experience though and I'm getting way more comfortable with the nickel stakes. All told a pretty cheap lesson relatively speaking. The other nice thing about the session is that results tracked EV pretty closely. In general I won when I was ahead and lost when I was behind.

It's never easy. It would have been uber-convenient if the play was exactly the same at the nickel tables and I could just increase my earn rate by 2 1/2 times but it doesn't work that way evidently. The immersion in the .02/.05 world was enough to tell me that I'm going to have to make more adjustments, betting in position when I don't have "it" is one of the things. But I successfully tweaked my game for .01/.02 so it's just a matter of analyzing what I need to do.

Chart of the swings below.

Useless session

Nice day, go to the coffee shop and get some breakfast and juice. Play poker and pretty much just screw around. Toss my chips in a few rounds of stack roulette, didn't catch. Vastly overplay my naked high pairs and flush draws. Meh. Kinda like going to work and just dawdling at the water cooler. Spending time but not getting anything done. If I'm going to sit down I need to at least not waste my time. Even if I don't bring my A game I should be doing C average work at a minimum so that I preserve my capital while generating some rakeback so can show something for the session. Next time the D game shows up I'm going to have to slap myself around.

345 hand in an hour. $1.42 in losses with about half of that coming back after RB. Blech.

Footnote: Just got $1.03 of it back. Mostly from a four way all in for me where I flopped top set of kings which held up. I also got paid by some donk who just couldn't let go of top two pair when I shoved with AA69ss and rivered a 7 for a gutterball straight. That's what premium hands do for you. So I'm up including rakeback. Still doesn't excuse the D game though. Note to self: No D game!

Sometimes when you chase you catch what you're after

The session was kind of a blur. Started off reasonably enough just like other sessions. Nothing out of the ordinary. But somewhere along the way it got ugly. Part of the problem came when I accidently called a raise with JJ23 on the .02/.05 table, a hand I wouldn't normally call with on the .01/.02 table. Ooops. Flop comes 435 rainbow. OK, well this might work out anyway. After the original raiser leads out for .10 into a .37 pot I raise him. Flat call. Turn is an ace, hah! He probably thinks his pair is good now. Maybe he even caught his set. He checks I fire, he raises enough to cover my last bit of change. Then he turns over the bad news that he flopped the nut joint with A765ds. That was a buck down the drain. Then I proceeded to run kings into aces twice, once on the big table. Before I know it I'm $4.45 in the hole.

I am running seven or eight tables while trying to figure out if I'm getting coolered or donking chips. Trouble is that I'm getting a lot of playable hands on the tables which is sapping my concentration and perhaps my judgment. So what is the best thing to do when you're stuck? Chase of course. Hello .02/.05 table number two. Having two nickel tables up is a new thing for me and I position them on screen so that I can keep better track of which ones are the expensive ones.

Cue the heater. The cards warm up for me and the board cooperates. I get a chunk back then give some back then I catch kings with a spade draw on the nickel table which I try to push through on an ace high flop. Uncharacteristic. I eventually get all in and am relieved to see that villain only has paired the T from the flop and has a worse spade draw. My hand holds and I climb part way out of the hole. Then on the penny table I pot pre with KK and fire at a low flop. Get called all the way with QQ and my hand holds. The very next hand on the same table I catch AAK7 and do the same thing to the same guy who has AKJJ this time and he doubles me up again to $1.60 which is enough for me to skip out on the table. Then finally I drive my KKxx up against QQxx at the nickel table which is enough for a $3.80 pot which completely digs me out of the pit and leaves a bit on top. I net out .50 from the session plus a bucket of rakeback with the ups and downs that I had. Even though my earn rate was pathetic it feels like a huge victory to get back even after falling so far.

But I know I got lucky. I played recklessly when I was stuck and it worked out this time but it very easily could have drilled me even deeper. I'll consider this a dodged bullet and work on ways to prevent the scenario from happening in the future.

Roller coaster ride illustrated below.

Yogurt with sugar

Quick breakfast session. Lemon yogurt and microstakes Omaha. Tasty. 67 hands and 15 minutes later I'm up $2.55 in raw bankroll. Been a good day so far and I feel like I'm getting centered again after my brief foray into getting drunk with .02/.05 power.

Picked up KKJ4 in the BB with a pot and two callers before my action. I repot for about half my stack figuring to take it down there but get called in two places. Flop is AT3, perfect for kings. Checks to me and I fire the rest of my stack in there as I have already mentally committed to this hand. One fold and a call from the original checker who shows KQT2 for ummm...second pair and a gutter? I figured I was in bad shape with the ace out there but I'm actually 2:1. Turn a king to trip me up and that holds for a $1.84 pot.

Did the same thing with KJQQ. Threw in the rest of my chips after an A high flop gets check to me but get called by an A plus open ender. 14% until I turn a queen which puts me in the driver's seat all the way to the finish line.

A couple big hands put me up for the session. My yogurt is done so I take my free hands and close down tables when the blinds hit me. Green line is now at a healthier +$1.89 which gives me some margin to stay above the zero point. Really want to not get below that point anymore and set new milestones for the bare minimum that my green line falls to. $46.79 with rakeback and I want to reel in the $50 plateau in short order.

Respect the game!

After my session of learning, chatting, and playing with the pro Kenny Tran, I've returned to my old ways and respected the game. I TAG'ed it up and folded all but premium hands. I'd raise with good stuff then have no compunction at all about dumping it when the flop completely misses me. A short and sweet session where I got in, did my damage, then took off. Once again I had a prototypical good session where I only got my money in real good and only lost minimal amounts on my losing hands. The session's three biggest wins netted 1.01, .80 and .59 whereas the three biggest losses cost me .08 apiece. The .02/.05 tables are getting more and more comfortable to the point where I am basically playing them the same as the little tables though I am still very conscious of when I am in a hand at the higher stakes. Plus $2.23 for the session which repairs most of the damage from donking off chips last night and brings my green line within .65 of break even. Having my green line dip below zero was a wake up call and I really want to play well enough that I can get the green line to show some growth which boosts my blue line even more.

Higher stakes do funny things to your thinking

Dove back in for another session. The good news is that I'm less intimidated by the higher stakes. I'm more comfortable now after playing some hands. Overall the play seems better. Half pot bets are more the norm instead of blasting away at maximum chippage. There are also more disciplined players as evidenced by a min-raise taking down the blinds pre-flop whereas the .01/.02 tables will get a cascade of calls for the same bet. The bad news is that I feel all growed up now and scoff at the paltry .01/.02 level that I left behind in the dust even though a full buy at .01/.02 is .70 and a short buy in .02/.05 is 1.00. I let my play degrade on the "little" tables. I paid off hands where I knew I was beat. I was getting too aggressive with mediocre holdings. I knew better too but somehow the cursor kept on clicking the bet and call buttons. Then I got sort of chase-ish when I opened up a second .02/.05 table. I didn't do too much damage but I was telling myself "Don't dig yourself in deeper!" yet I went ahead and took the risk. Overall I was down about $3 which is painful but manageable. I need to keep in mind how much work it took to grind out that money to get myself out of the cellar instead of throwing away chips in the kiddie pool.

Badly misplayed a hand on the .02/.05 table. Flopped TPTK and nut flush draw in a huge multiway pot. I turned the other nut flush draw so now I had a gutter to broadway, two nut flush draws, and two pair. So instead of shoving on the turn I just flat called. Blank on the river and it checks through to the button who shoves. It looked innocuous enough of a card so I ended up calling of the chips that I should have jammed in on the turn only to find out that the river made him his lower straight. Terrible play in what ended up being a $4.20 pot.

At one point one of the .02/.05 tables started playing poker roulette with multiway shoves pre-flop. Instead of stepping away from the variance machine I ended up not only sticking around but getting my chips in with KKQQ rainbow figuring that I was way good against their ranges. I was 29% in a four way pot so I was getting overlay on my money but the board missed me and I watch the $4 pot go in the wrong direction.

On the up side, I did get to play against Kenny Tran for a while. I noticed in the table listings that one of the tables had a red background making it stand out. I opened up the table and sure enough Kenny Tran was seated. I got on the waiting list in the #4 spot and eventually hopped on. Nothing too much to note in terms of hands except that he probably squeezed as much value out of his hands as possible getting others to call down light when he was good. The thing that really stood out to me though was that he was playing very disciplined. More disciplined than I was at .01/.02 after I graduated up to the big tables. Even though he plays stakes that I can't even fathom he sat down and still played a solid game at the smallest of microstakes. He easily could have donked off chips and just gone aggro on the whole table but he didn't and I need to learn the same level of control. Bring your A game regardless of stakes.

Done "taking my shot" for now

I feel I'm playing adequately. Not super sharp but well enough. I tried another go at the nosebleed stakes of .02/.05 and missed out on a couple of "monster" pots. In one hand I picked up AAKK rainbow and I'm just to the right of the maniac who has been raising almost every time. He of course limps in this time and my pot sized bet doesn't carry the same impact as a repot would. I get called in two places, shove the flop, get one fold and a call from the maniac who rivers his gutterball. Other hand I get it in with KK22ds and get called two ways by marginal hands. Flop is T44 which is good since I have two pair draws pre-counterfeited. But a T falls on the river to trip up one of the callers and I miss out on another $2+ pot.

I decide to head back down to the kiddie pool and try to repair the hole that the .02/.05 buy ins left. I'm playing a bit aggro and trying to push my big pairs through more than I should. Some come through but others are run down and I didn't need to be pushing so hard due to the chip frenzy that occurs. I log in another 500 hands and get back some of the losses at the .02/.05 table.

Moving up to .02/.05

It's weird. I feel like all of a sudden I'm in over my head moving from .01/.02 to .02/.05. Kinda like the first day in high school. Unfamiliar surroundings and new people. I observed a couple of tables first to do some recon. One table looked like it had maniacs at it. Turns out it was just one maniac and the table captain. Once the maniac left it was a pretty normal looking table so I took a seat. Folded everything for a while. Even though I found a short buy in table that one dollar on the line felt like scared money. I even have a healthy surplus above the $25 run up that I had originally planned to have as a cushion before starting .02/.05. I limped in with AAxx then folded to a bet when I didn't hit my set.

I picked up JhKhQd4d which I would normally fold but for some reason I ended up limping in with it...UTG. Sure enough the table captain behind me pots it to .22, gets one caller and I feel I'm adequately priced in to pay the remaining .17 to cap the action. Flop is 9d4hTd which is about a good a miss as you can get with a three card wrap above the 9T and four to the flush. I decide to go with it and shove the remaining .52 of my stack in the middle. Snap called by the table captain and the third player. Turn pairs the 9 and table captain bets, other guy folds. Captain shows KsJdKc3h for, well basically nothing but an overpair and a gutshot straight. Kinda thin but I suppose I can't really push him off with just a 2/3 pot bet. I actually was getting the correct 33% to call pre-flop and was 2:1 after the flop so my shove was right as well with straight, flush, and two pair draws to trump his hand. Alas, nothing hit and I see MY $2.14 pot go his way. In retrospect the original limp is suspect. Normally I have many more tables running and it's easier to dump less than premium hands especially at my new stakes but I was feeling overwhelmed and closed down tables until I got to just four. When there are fewer options flying by on the screen then marginal hands start looking real good and I think that's what happened here. After I made the first mistake I think the rest of my play was fine. Just didn't work out.

I eventually warmed up and raised with AAxx which elicited folds from the field. I also bet at a pot with top two pair on a run of three straight cards and two to the flush. Risky on such a draw heavy board but it worked out. Ended down $1.22 in my first foray into the next tier of microstakes. Overall for the session I was only down .58 thanks to the concurrent .01/.02 tables. Mixing in just one higher stakes table into a bunch of lower stakes tables helped to mitigate the higher variance just like it is supposed to.

Time to regroup.