Live Grind: How to Fall Asleep at the Table (Without Getting Caught)

[Matt Vaughan]

Ah ok gotcha - wasn't sure if you meant vs. some kind of weirdly slowplayed value hand. Thanks for clarifying

Got my poker table today, and boy was that a bitch to get up the stairs in my apartment... But I think it's gonna be pretty sick. My setup isn't finalized yet, but right now I've got the "cage" at the far end. Then the table, with multiple small tables around to put plates and phones etc on.

Then at the other far end I've got a futon (but it's actually pretty nice/upscale) with mini fridge next to it. In between there's gonna be my laptop and my computer monitor, so people can play Netflix if they get knocked out of the SnG early or if there are more people than seats for the cash game. With two screens, players at the table can watch as well. Not a perfect setup, but I think to people who don't play in underground games, this will look pretty baller.

Will try to take some more pictures that show off the setup, but until then, your imaginations will have to suffice

 

[DunningKruger]

I'm imagining a 70" flatscreen, full service bar, and a bouncer. Hot? Cold? The TV is pretty common in these setups. Poker players are always sports fans. Like always always.

 

[Matt Vaughan]

I wish haha - very, very cold, unfortunately.

And I don't have cable But if they want sports they can attack youtube I guess. And tbh I wouldn't really classify anyone in this group as a poker player really. At best they are super casual. More casual than the guy who goes to the casino to play poker twice a month.

In other news, I probably hero too often, but sometimes the result is I look a lot better than I am:

UTG: 129 BB (VPIP: 53.64, PFR: 20.69, 3Bet Preflop: 5.00, hands: 531)
UTG+1: 178 BB (VPIP: 50.08, PFR: 7.20, 3Bet Preflop: 2.93, Hands: 684)
MP: 114 BB (VPIP: 59.91, PFR: 14.29, 3Bet Preflop: 12.10, Hands: 220)
MP+1: 71 BB (VPIP: 25.28, PFR: 10.98, 3Bet Preflop: 4.72, Hands: 268)
Hero (MP+2): 104.5 BB
CO: 100 BB (VPIP: 39.24, PFR: 19.49, 3Bet Preflop: 9.57, Hands: 239)
BTN: 593.5 BB (VPIP: 41.36, PFR: 24.62, 3Bet Preflop: 8.98, Hands: 1,121)
SB: 149 BB (VPIP: 21.61, PFR: 8.89, 3Bet Preflop: 2.72, Hands: 626)
BB: 104 BB (VPIP: 50.77, PFR: 32.31, 3Bet Preflop: 7.41, Hands: 65)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB, UTG posts penalty blind 1 BB, CO posts penalty blind 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 3.5 BB) Hero has A:spade: Q:club:

UTG checks, fold, MP calls 1 BB, fold, Hero raises to 8 BB, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, MP calls 7 BB

Flop: (19.5 BB, 2 players) 5:spade: 7:diamond: 4:diamond:
MP checks, Hero checks

Turn: (19.5 BB, 2 players) 2:heart:
MP bets 10 BB, Hero calls 10 BB

River: (39.5 BB, 2 players) T:diamond:
MP bets 20 BB, Hero calls 20 BB

MP shows A:heart: 9:heart: (High Card, Ace) (Pre 31%, Flop 17%, Turn 11%)
Hero shows A:spade: Q:club: (High Card, Ace) (Pre 69%, Flop 83%, Turn 89%)
Hero wins 76 BB

 

[Logan2]

AJ: i could lead flop, don't know villains Aggresion but Co looks really tight and will not cb often vs 2 unless he have it, BTN looks loose-fishy and could be passive expecting checking back a lot too so want to lead, i think they can call with KJ, JQ, TJ, 9T, 99, TT for both, and add any Jx or 8x for BTN, we also don't want to see a Q or K for free on turn. Turn and river looks fine.

AQ: turn looks ok, river depends heavily of in-game reads, nh.

 

[Matt Vaughan]

Thanks for commenting, Logan

AJ, that's an interesting point on the flop, although we only have 29 hands on him. (He's obv not an aggrotard though.) Leading actually did occur to me in-game but I ended up going with a more standard line. Partially because leading turns our range pretty ridiculously face up - but maybe this means I should be leading some air here since BTN won't be calling tons... I'll have to think about that.

AQ, I was kind of planning to fold river when I called turn, since I thought he'd fire and give up a lot, but I just felt his sizing was more indicative of air, and he actually was pretty aggressive on later streets (relative to this game). So I called. I think that may have been my larger win of the night lol.

 

[nygmen2007]

I like the idea of grinding live, because it allows me to play it safer and be more in control, rather than me being online and just being able to click whenever I wanted. It allows you to grind in a way to move up to different levels where the action and variance is different than that of lower limits. Good luck

 

[xdeucesx]

AJ looks good.

AQ probably too light, but you seem to already know that

 

[duggs]

sorry I'm late,

AJ looks great

AQ i think we run into flushes et al a decent chunk and just isn't going to be a spew nearly enough, i can also see limpers retard betting better hands and accidentally turning them into bluffs

 

[alaz3r]

villain clearly calls too many weak hands pre and only raises strong ones.

 

[Matt Vaughan]

I like the idea of grinding live, because it allows me to play it safer and be more in control, rather than me being online and just being able to click whenever I wanted. It allows you to grind in a way to move up to different levels where the action and variance is different than that of lower limits. Good luck

Huh. I've never seen someone with such a reasonable post-count making these types of posts.

villain clearly calls too many weak hands pre and only raises strong ones.

Yeah, like that ^

AJ looks good.

AQ probably too light, but you seem to already know that

sorry I'm late,

AJ looks great

AQ i think we run into flushes et al a decent chunk and just isn't going to be a spew nearly enough, i can also see limpers retard betting better hands and accidentally turning them into bluffs

Yeah this was what I actually missed in-game but noticed when reviewing the hand - a lot of his stab/barrel range will actually be flushes here. Are you hero-ing "better" river cards tho, or do you still think it's too thin?

 

[duggs]

i think its way too thin, villain could literally have no bluff range

 

[Blobweird123]

The board obviously favors better players. Therefore I play better hands from the start. So playing live is just much easier to me.

 

[RamdeeBen]

Not seen you in forever Blob. Thought you quit, nice to see you're back!

 

[duggs]

That's ram btw

 

[Matt Vaughan]

i think its way too thin, villain could literally have no bluff range

Not so, imo. He definitely always has a bluff range here, I just don't know how big it is lol. Doesn't make my call right, obv.

I didn't even know what to make of this so I didn't include it as a read, but he tanked a relatively long time given how small the pot is. Do we think this leans more toward "oh, shit, I just made my flush - now what?!" or "oh, shit, he called - now what?!"

Lastly, not saying this applies to every player, but in this game and many other very soft games, I would often see players give away their hand by changing their sizing. You know when they improve because they will increase their sizing dramatically (half pot on turn, pot or close on river). Again, not every player, but it was something that contributed to my call.

The board obviously favors better players. Therefore I play better hands from the start. So playing live is just much easier to me.

lolwut

Not seen you in forever Blob. Thought you quit, nice to see you're back!

He's not back. He's just here to smell the roses and be on his merry way.

That's ram btw

lolwut

 

[duggs]

Ram changed his username and fooled me

 

[xdeucesx]

Ram changed his username and fooled me

omfg I couldn't figure that out either. Wow, wp ram, you had me fooled for awhile now.

 

[Blobweird123]

Yeah duggs seen that a few days ago and was confused haha. Confirmed not back. Just perusing from time to time. Haven't played a hand in about 4 months or so. Plan on adding to that streak lol. Been enjoying fantasy football betting as some here are already aware of. Doing quite well at it I might add

Besides, you guys kicked me out of the freeroll club

And scourrge, that was my interpretation of the fr club trolls

 

[Blobweird123]

Oh and if my roll in ff builds to a very respectable amount maybe ill punt 1k at poker hahahaha

 

[Matt Vaughan]

troloololololooooo

 

[Blobweird123]

Well im at 4.2k lol. Could be closer to six after this weekend. I'll vow that if I break 10k by seasons end ill do it haha. Degens gonna degen...

 

[Matt Vaughan]

doooooooo eeeeeeeeet

Home game was so-so. A lot of fun, but not much poker. We just played one $30 sng and people didn't want to do any more. Kind of disappointing. Fun, social night on the one hand, but on the other I'm going to need to find less risk-averse people if I want to get a regular cash game going. People were literally saying things like "yeah, it's tough to want to put $50 in play after just losing $30."

And keep in mind, these are all people making 4.5k+/month at their job. It's not like anyone there was broke.

It definitely reminded me how much I miss live poker though. I'm pretty frustrated that there's nothing that great near me. There's a casino that spreads poker a little over an hour away. So I could do the weekend warrior thing I guess, but I couldn't really do more than that. I'd need to be playing at least 6+ hours to justify 2 hours of driving. I really do miss the live grind.

There was something else I wanted to say in here but I kinda forgot what it was. Oh well. Next time!

 

[Logan2]

What?, all that time preparing and money spend on table and all for a S&G not even a cash game?, sound kind of disapointed.

All preparation was way more exciting than actually playing he?, pictures not even apealing now.

Yeah, kickout those guys and look for new ones

 

[Matt Vaughan]

What?, all that time preparing and money spend on table and all for a S&G not even a cash game?, sound kind of disapointed.

All preparation was way more exciting than actually playing he?, pictures not even apealing now.

Yeah, kickout those guys and look for new ones

Haha yeah, it was a little disappointing. There were a couple guys who seem like they'd be pretty interested in cash games, but I'll need to find more.

Anyway, today was another weird poker day... Found an $11 tourney ticket in my bovada account, so I played a 4k gtd. I was coasting from the very beginning, and ended up making the final table. Then a mega-fish who'd been throwing chips around like mad opened UTG 8-handed, and the BTN called. I was in the BB with AK and jammed for about 20bb.

He snapped, we went HU, and he ofc magically had AA this time around. I flopped a K and some backdoor chop equity but I couldn't get there. Naturally he had me covered, so just like that I went out in 8th for $155. Would have felt a lot better if there weren't $1k up top.

Then I went and checked out a casino that's a bit further from the one I've been to before (the one with electronic tables). It was nice to play with real chips, but I ran pretty shit, made a number of small errors, and one pretty inexcusable one. (Baluga's theorem applies to the river too, ldo.)

I estimate I made about $120 worth of avoidable mistakes, but I managed to dump $400. Not that that feels "good," but at least I know it wasn't all just me not remembering how to play poker.

Not sure when I'll go back next. My roll is still relatively decimated, so I'm not looking to play more than a couple times a week, but I might go back tomorrow just to see if I can get myself back into a better comfort zone.

Nothing else to report really, so I guess that's it. Because I ran pretty meh there weren't really and hands of interest from my live session aside from one. If I play tomorrow I'll try to remember to post some hands though.

 

[micromachine]

Ugh unlucky in the mtt, still a decent cash though You playing cash online still, or just live?