Baking soda is overrated

Yeah, you heard me. It's time people found out the truth about keeping a box of baking soda in the fridge to make it smell good: baking soda can't hold a candle to leftover Margherita pizza when it comes to making your fridge smell awesome. Plus, you can eat the pizza when you get hungry, whereas baking soda is totally disgusting. Try to tell me I'm wrong here.

Poker-wise, I'm having a good month so far. I've been running about average of late, and I'm trying to put in a bunch of hands early in the month since I'll be traveling during the latter half of December. Since leaving Accenture, I've been trying to play about 2hrs every day, even if it's at lower stakes than 5/10. The games are so much easier at 3/6 and 2/4 that I've preferred playing a bunch of tables at those stakes as of late instead of grinding it out with a table full of regulars at 5/10 all day. I still feel like I have an edge on most of the regulars at 5/10, but I just don't enjoy it as much unless the games are good. I'm pretty sure I have one of the highest winrates at 5/10 over the past few months (just over 7.1ptbb/100 in my last ~40k hands), however I think it's more important for me to play games that I enjoy instead of simply playing the highest stakes I can consistently beat.

A few interesting hands I haven't blogged about yet:
Ace high is the nuts -- whitelime is a very good, aggressive player and I wasn't about to fold this monster to him. This was from the CR / "Bad Beat on Cancer" Foundation freeroll SNG that I won in November. I donated the $200 I won from this SNG to charity. :)
I got owned pretty hard here, even though this guy's play is atrocious. I was pretty sure this guy was a donkey, but WTF?!
Just because I check behind doesn't mean I don't have a hand -- this guy cursed me in the chat, then proceeded to tilt off his stack by cold 4-shoving JTo from the button for ~50bb the very next hand. :(
I sucked out pretty bad here. It felt nice to finally dish out a horrendous beat. :)


I did a sweat session with Derric last night while he 12-tabled 2/4NL full ring, and holy crap he's such a nit. Maybe you just have to be to play full ring, but I was constantly surprised at how tight he was playing. So he returned the favor this afternoon by watching me play 3/6 & 5/10 on FTP for about two hours. Unfortunately I ran like absolute dogshit the entire time and was down about $4k at one point, finishing down about $1600 overall. I really enjoy having other good players sweat me and discuss hands while I'm playing; this process is how I learn best.

My plans for the night fell through, so after a few hours' break I headed back to the tables. Here are the interesting/big hands:
Derric didn't like this shove, but I was pretty sure my opponent didn't have anything.
Sigh, I still run bad against donks. Luckily things turned around later in the sesh :)
Kids at home: this is why you don't slowplay. This guy was a pretty big donkey though, and he snap-called my river shove. This hand was important to in allowing me to take a good amount of his stack later on (see next hand).
My turn shove really was for value, I swear. It's obviously pretty thin, but this guy was a huge donk (although he was quite aggressive) who led very big OOP (often for full pot) on the next street every time you 3-bet or raised him. There were a ton of hands he could have here, and I really didn't think an ace made up much of his range, so luckily I got him to put most of the money in on his own (donkish) accord.
There are few things in life I hate more than shortstackers. These rat-holers ruin the game, and I hate them with a passion.
Could this guy have played his hand any worse? I guess check/calling every street constitutes a slow-play...
My first "misclick" -- damn keyboard added an extra digit cost me $700 :(
Slow-playing is contagious (but it's still a really bad idea)
Dunno if shoving here is correct, but he could totally have a worse jack right?
Tough fold here, but I think I'm drawing dead pretty often here against this villain. He was a total nit (~12/9 or so), and I'm definitely behind when he shoves. I was extremely close to checking this behind because: 1) my hand can't stand a raise from a player like this, and 2) I got a bad feeling about the way he checked on the turn.
Yes, I do 4-shove AA and KK. Some people only 4-shove their bluffs (Ace-X), AK, and sometimes QQ, but I think it's important to 4-shove with aces & kings too if you 4-shove at all.
Ugh, so sick. Seeing that T on the turn always makes you cringe.
I get coolered for a big pot against an aggressive player. Nothing I can do here; I was obv planning to take the pot away on lots of flops that I missed.
I don't like this guy's call w/QQ at all. I was quite sure of a few things in this hand before I called before the flop: 1) here2win had an overpair, but was reasonably solid; 2) rattlenbite was a donkey and could have just about anything; and 3) I could use these two pieces of information to my advantage to take lots of pots away post-flop. When ratt donk led, I was pretty sure I had good FE against him (and obviously plenty of equity against his calling range too), and I honestly expected to take the pot down on the flop without going to showdown. here2win's call on the flop is quite bad without a very specific read on me -- which I'm pretty sure he didn't have since I'd been playing pretty solid thus far. Against my range here, he's going to be about a coinflip at best most of the time and a huge underdog a lot of the time.
Donks like to bluff when you check to them. It's a well-documented impulse that they often cannot control.
This was a snap-call preflop. Too bad 99 couldn't hold up; villain here was super LAG-spewy, so 99 is the nuts here.
No idea wtf this guy was thinking
The plan here was to bet/3-bet allin against this super-LAG jokester, but that plan went to hell when s/he straight-up shoved. Too bad I didn't have an ace to snap-call with :(
Flop the nuts, lose a big pot. I really wanted to fold the river here, and I might have if Doomer and Derric weren't screaming at me to call on vent :(
Bluffing nits is not a good idea. Had to try it once though.
Smooth called the flop here to give an aggro player behind me the chance to make a big mistake. I wasn't worried about either draw out there to hit the donkish villain in this hand, but he proved me wrong.
Tough call for me here -- villain was pretty standard/TAG and I could definitely fold this against a lot of players, but my gut said to call here and I did.
Lots of players value-bet the river here, but I prefer check/calling for exactly this reason.
Run good one time! Open-ended straight flush draws are always fun, and I got lucky to win our little coinflip this time.
I raise floaters, and they're everywhere nowdays :(
River bet FTW! Villain in this hand was pretty donkish, and I was almost certain he had a draw that missed. I think betting the river in spots like these when a bad player checks to you is absolutely imperative with any two cards, especially when you don't have showdown value. If I had the A-high flush draw I think my hand might have been best anyway (but I still would have made the bet). Derric didn't like this bet at the time, but he agreed with me once I explained my reasoning (and after the guy folded obv!).

The rest of these hands happened during a 4-hour session I had against a very deepstacked donk who could be pretty aggressive:
I found myself a big donk sitting extremely deep on PS. He hated folding -- I'm 100% sure that he still would have called me even if the river didn't pair the king.
He's an aggressive donkey -- I love how when you flop the nut straight sitting deep against an aggro donkey the turn and river are always the two worst cards in the deck for your hand. Thank God he didn't have anything. (Note the similarity to this hand posted above; guess I just run bad when flopping straights)
He really likes to bluff -- am I playing this too passively?
This guy doesn't fold, so idk why I even tried to bluff him
Note to self: DO NOT BLUFF THIS GUY! He loved doing stuff like this.
Pretty sure my pair outs were good here too
You knew it was coming -- thankfully I won the massive pot that you knew was inevitable. The table broke shortly thereafter for obvious reasons, but I truly enjoyed the 4hrs I spent at the table playing against this guy.

Whew, that was a lot of hands. I played nearly 3500 hands today, which is very high for me in a single day, netting me about $4500 on the day. Needless to say, my second session today was much better than the first. I plan to start doing daily (or at least semi-weekly) posts like these as part of my session reviews, so keep checking back for more hot poker action. In the meantime, I've got a Margherita pizza calling my name from the fridge...