May Results and Rare Tournament Hand

Been sitting on my May results for a few days. Uneventful and boring, so I was lazy about getting them up...

The chart:


The numbers:

Rakeback: $51.36

NLHE (online): -$21.31

NLHE (live): +$127

PLO: +$108

I really don't have anything to say about the numbers. It's obviously frustrating to register a losing month at online NLHE, but there's obviously some pretty serious leaks and issues in my game, given how long I've been stalled out, making minimal progress.

The plan for this month is to play a lot more PLO. I've already started, and I should have some posts about PLO observations coming down the pipe. Then at the end of the month, I'll be in Vegas, staying at the Rio and playing juicy cash games for a long weekend. So, leading up to that trip, I'll switch back over to NLHE an get warmed up in that game.

One hand I wanted to mention, because it's the rare case of me making a hero call and getting it right. And it's also the rare case of me playing in a tournament. This was a live $40 buy-in ordeal, with rebuys and add-ons. The hand occurs shortly after the rebuy period has ended. There are around 21 or so players (started with 24), and payouts to the top 4.

Stacks: Me - 14000, Villain - 7700
Blinds: 200-400
Position: UTG
Hand: 99
Action: I limp for 400, having just raised my last hand, and wanting to avoid an awkward pot size with this hand from OOP. MP villain raises to 1200, it folds around, and I call. Pot is 3000.

Flop: Q-Q-4
Action: I check. This is a spot where I could easily bet, since I rank to be ahead a lot of the time and could end up in a weird spot if I check-call and another overcard peels off. But I figure I can tell a lot about villain's holding by his action here. Villain, as it turns out, is left holding ~6500 in chips, with one yellow chip denominating 5000 in chips. He looks down at his pile, hesitates for a moment, and then throws in the yellow chip, overbetting 5000 into a 3000 pot.

Now I should say that I don't give this player a ton of credit for knowing what he is doing, so I'm not giving him credit for any real 2nd or 3rd level strategizing. In other words, I can't envision him making this play to extract suspicion and get value from a hand that crushes my 99. There's really no way he makes this move with a Q, since it is the absolute worst way to extract value and double through me.

That leaves some unpaired overcard hands, like AJ/AK/KJ, and a lot of pairs, ranging from 55-JJ. AA/KK is also possible, but he is less likely to make a "protection" bet, which is what the 5K bet looks like to me. The only problem is that a few of the pair hands, namely TT/JJ, have me crushed. Those are the hands that I fear. But given that I can make this call, most likely be in quite good position, and have 6K in chips even if I lose, I made the hero-ish push for the villain's last 1500.

I asked if he had a big pair and he said "No, a little one", and tabled 66. I showed by 99, the board ran out 8-9, giving me an unnecessary boat on the river, and I jumped up to one of the biggest stacks. I went on to chop at the final table for a profit of $220.