Confidence is key.

I've been eight tabling NL600 up until recently. Danny started playing NL600 6-max, saying he was going to play 200k hands at this level before moving up. I decided to join him so we could learn from stuff together. The kid's good at poker and I think he has ideas that could help my game. I also think I have some things I could teach him (I've had a ton of experience at NL600 6-max). I feel like my game's gotten a little stagnant from not having someone to actively discuss ideas and review play.

This has been going pretty good, and I'd been playing on auto pilot for maybe 3000 or 4000 hands holding at about 5PTBB/100. I get in about 500 hands an hour eight tabling.

Anyways, after a brief lag required to get used to playing so many tables again, I'd developed an easy foolproof no-thinking way of playing. It's not very creative, but it's winning at NL600 and it's easy to do. But it's really really boring. I force my opponents to respond to me so I'm sacrificing some value in making my decisions easier. And intellectually, there's not a whole lot of substance.

So I moved up stakes and was eight tabling NL1000. This is a little scary -- I don't recall ever really doing this (I'd 4 tabled before, not 8). But after another cautious step I got into the groove. Played reasonable, had one or two bluffs that turned out badly. More on bad bluffs and feeling shitty about bad bluffs in a subsequent post.

Brag time!

Today's tables were insanely aggressive. Helps in these scenarios to have Good Hands:

***** Hand History for Game 3875619205 *****
$1000 NL Texas Hold'em - Sunday, April 02, 21:37:43 ET 2006
Table Constantia (Real Money)
Seat 6 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: ex_Noose ( $1802.52 )
Seat 2: RiverBt ( $2811.52 )
Seat 3: BooostedJ ( $1305.50 )
Seat 4: wolfdog2121 ( $1783.55 )
Seat 6: parangsae ( $266 )
Seat 5: me ( $1072 )
ex_Noose posts small blind [$5].
RiverBt posts big blind [$10].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to me [ Qh Qc ]
BooostedJ raises [$35].
wolfdog2121 folds.
me raises [$125].
parangsae folds.
ex_Noose folds.
RiverBt calls [$115].
BooostedJ calls [$90].
** Dealing Flop ** [ Js, Jh, Qs ]
RiverBt bets [$150].
BooostedJ calls [$150].
me calls [$150].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 8d ]
RiverBt bets [$500].
BooostedJ is all-In [$1030.50]
me is all-In [$797]
RiverBt folds.
** Dealing River ** [ 4c ]
BooostedJ shows [ Ac, Jc ] three of a kind, jacks.
me shows [ Qh, Qc ] a full house, Queens full of jacks.
BooostedJ wins $233.50 from side pot #1 with three of a kind, jacks.
me wins $2921 from the main pot with a full house, Queens full of jacks.

It took every nerve in my body not to raise that flop. I was terrified of an Ace or King or Ten of spades coming down and already scared of quad jacks. But the river made me feel good, and I chuckled when I saw AJc.

I couldn't play more than 500 hands this session. The aggressiveness of the tables makes thinking hard. Lots of tough decisions. Getting reraised and having to bluff and stuff. Stressful :(

But hey, +$4.4k day and I even got to go to the Russian/Turkish Bathhouse in New York AND eat Chipotles. Chipotles!. It was sunny, I had BBQ Ribs for lunch. Damn it was a good day. Too bad freaking Daylight savings robbed me of an hour of this awesome day.