I am really enjoying my time spent playing cash games. I feel like I am really improving my game evey day as I had a long hiatus from cash games when I was playing an absolute ton of tournaments. I want to let u guys in on some of my thinking on my hands so I will post a hand that I played and detail my thinking.


***** Hand History for Game 3551309072 *****
$600 NL Texas Hold'em - Tuesday, February 14, 00:19:00 EDT 2006
Table Table 68302 (6 max) (Real Money)
Seat 3 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: battman1219 ( $1420.90 )
Seat 2: ilikeaces86x ( $815 )
Seat 4: Tockken ( $1122.46 )
Seat 5: mjjrunit ( $245.68 )
Seat 6: txsfldm ( $119 )
Seat 3: uscgrad1991 ( $628.80 )
Tockken posts small blind [$3].
mjjrunit posts big blind [$6].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to ilikeaces86x [ Qc Qs ]

txsfldm folds.
battman1219 calls [$6].
ilikeaces86x raises [$25].
My standard raise is $20 and I usually add a BB($6) for ever limper.

uscgrad1991 calls [$25].
uscgrad1991 is a fairly tight player and I would say for him to call this raise he would have to have AJ+ 88+

Tockken folds.
mjjrunit folds
battman1219 folds.
** Dealing Flop ** [ 6d, Qd, 4s ]
Great flop for my hand as I flop the nuts! There are some cards that I don't want to see hit the turn tho because it is very possible for him to hold AdJD or a similar hand. I go ahead and bet 2/3 the pot to encourage the pot to build and also to define his hand.
ilikeaces86x bets [$45].
uscgrad1991 raises [$120].
This is great as I am fairly confident that he is fairly confident with his hand. At this time I put him on Ax of diamonds, AQ or a slowplayed KK or AA which is very possible at these stakes. I want to trap him into giving me his whole stack and if I 3 bet here he may be able to get away from a one pair hand. I decide the best move is to just flat call.

ilikeaces86x calls [$75].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 4c ]
I surve my options and decide that leading for somewhere around 1/2 the pot is the best option. A lot of times people will push this turn when u lead into them and they have AQ KK or AA.
ilikeaces86x bets [$150].
uscgrad1991 is all-In.
ilikeaces86x calls [$333.80].(I got him
** Dealing River ** [ Ts ]
ilikeaces86x shows [ Qc, Qs ] a full house, Queens full of fours.
uscgrad1991 doesn't show [ Ad, Qh ] two pairs, queens and fours.
ilikeaces86x wins $1269.60 from the main pot with a full house, Queens full of fours.

I was a little off with my read at the time. I was fairly confident that he slowplayed AA or KK but he ended up having Ad, Qh. Hope it was fun for you guys to walk thru a hand.

So I am sitting on a empty table on Bodog 5-10 NL waiting for some unsuspecting fish to sit. After a few moments I get my wish. This guy sits down with 1k and I have him covered. The very fish hand I am dealt J10 in the bb. He raises to 45 and I call. Flop is Q89 rainbow. He bets 80 I raise to 200 he raises to 360 I push for 640 more. He insta calls and shows k6os. He is drawing competely dead and I rake in a 2k pot. I then log off and get ready for bed thinking "Ain't poker easy." The truth is poker isnt usually this easy but it is sure as hell nice when it is. I have been playing a ton of NL cash games lately and doing vey well. I play anything form 2/4 to 5/10 NL. I will write a more deatailed update on this later. Anyways thought u might like the hand.

Enjoy!

-ilikeaces86

Well so far I have played 88 SNG's . My ITM is 42% and my ROI is 39%. I was talking to Gigabets brother (sevnfigures on PP) and he was talking some trash. For those of you who dont know he Gigabet has a older brother who taught him the game of poker. He said he was going to play 5000 SNG's this month! That is 150 a day, in other words 15 hours a day of play!
Im hoping that he is just talking smack and is not going to come anywhere close to that as I woudl have no chance if he did. I mean I go insane after 8 hours of play. He is just probably trying to psyche me out. As far as my plan goes I came up short of what I would kike to put in most days. I need to be putting in 100 games a day if I want to have a shot at this. Ill be up early tomorow to play as I have some other stuff I need to go to in the evening.

I'll keep u posted.

ilikeaces86

Hey guys sorry it has been so long since I have posted anything under this blog its just that with all the poker playing and working out and family stuff and....yadadadad.. I got really busy. So Im not usually the type of person to make new years resolutions but this year I figured I would get in the spirit. My new years resolution is to place in the top 5 on the Party Poker Monthly tournament leaderboard. To do this I will have to play about 2500 100+9 sit and Go's. I plan on playing 25 days out of the month so that is 100 sit and Go's per day. You guys can follow my progress by either watching me at the tables. My screen name is ilikeaces86x or by checking on my progress here in my blog.(I'll promise to try and keep it up to date) Gl at the tables.

-ilikeaces86

Hey guys,
Hope you all had a great thanksgiving. I took the day off and really just enjoyed being with my family and friends. I ate over at my parents house with a lot of the extended family. They were all so curious as to how I was doing as a professional "gambler". It was kind of funny because there were all so interested yet so ignorant as to how you win at poker and even ingorant to the fact that poker is not the same as blackjack(lol). In the spirit of thanksgiving I took some time to think back on the last year and how blessed I have been. I have been playing poker seriously for about a year and have been incredibly blessed. It has allowed me to buy all the things I have ever wanted and not have to go to school at a time in my life that I dont feel that I am motivated to do well in school. Without my success at poker I would probably just be in the middle of my sophmore year in college hating every minute of class but not seeing and way to get out of it. I enjoy playing the game of poker(most the time ) and am glad my job can be something I enjoy. If there was one thing that I am thankfull for in the last year, I would have to say its Poker.

Ok so now for an update on actual poker-
I have been playing a lot of step tournaments on Party Poker. They are set up so you can win your way up from lower levels and eventually get to the final step where you can win some nice payouts. This allows players with smaller bankrolls to play for some serious cash. I have mostly just been buying into step 5 minis($400 buy in) and step 5 regulars(1K buy in ) I have been doing very well in them and making some nice cash. I did play in one step 4 higher($2150 buy in) I played very agressive when I could and ended up winning. The thing is I got so incredibly lucky to win it. After a major suckout in which my KJ snapped off rockets I ended being able to put myself in position to get heads up with Michael1123(a very good player and a FTR member) When we got heads up he had my outchipped 4:1 but I ended up luckboxing him several times and won it to take home 10k. I plan to play a lot of step tournaments in the near future and so if you guys ever want to check me out you can usually find me playing them in the evenings under the Party Poker screen name ilikeaces86x Give me a holla if you ever want too.

Peace out Playas,
ilikeaces86

Hey guys,
Sorry that is has been so long since I updated this blog. Ive been super busy with poker and everything else going on in my life. Ive mostly just been playing about 30-40 $109 sngs a day on PP. Since I made my new accounts on PP I have played 591 sngs with a 9% ROI. The amazing part of is it thru 210 sngs I was down around 500 bucks. I was just running terrible. I just kept playing my A game and am now out of the wooods of that downswing and winning again. One thing I have learned. When your on a downswing your never as bad as you think that you are. When your on a upswing your never as good as you are. You are somewhere in between. If you get all bent out of shape over the ups and downs of your poker career then your going to be in for a lot of hearteache. I used to piss and moan when my aces got cracked yet again all in pre vs some donkey but now I Just smile or laugh and move on to my next descision. One of the most important parts of being a professional poker player is your mental toughness. If you can't take the heat this game is going to tear you to shreds. Try this next time you get a bad beat. Just laugh, it does wonders.

Peace out Playas,
ilikeaces86

Well today was a pretty normal day. I woke up at around 1:00 P.M (Central Time) and played some sngs. I did 2 sets of 8 tabling the 109s. I then headed over to my girlfriends picked her up and went and got some new running shoes. If you guys didnt know I am a pretty avid runner. After I got my shoes we headed back to her house for dinner with her parents. I left there at about 7:30 to get back in time for super monday on PP and the 150+12 on Stars. I booted those two MTT's up along with 6sngs to fill the other spots on my 2 monitors. The stars 150 was pretty un-eventful as I blinded down to about 7xbb and pushed 77 utg and lost a flip to AK. The super monday on party started off very well. I got up to about 3700 by the end of the first break. I was at about 6k and the end of 3 hours and was just above avg. On PP the avg stack is more than large enough to still have plent of leverage b/c of the fact there are no antes. I went card dead for a while and was sitting on about 6k chips with the blinds 150/300. I was in MP with AKs and opened to 900 after a utg limp. A very active large stack (about 11k) made it 3k, UTG folded and I surveyed my options. Less than 1 hour outside the money and with a stack that was about avg I decided I needed to take my chances here if I wanted to build my stack so that I could do the things I am able to do with a big stack that I am not able to do with a small stack. I pushed he called and showed QQ flop came 10Q2 giving me a ray of hope but not much. turn and river were both blanks and he took down the 13k pot and I was eliminated. I then played 32 more 109 sngs and called it a night. I had a 10% roi over the 50 sngs I played today and I fealt like I was playing great. I was running pretty bad over my last 16 or so SNG's so Im pretty happy with my results considering how poorly I ran. I then headed out to the living room to chill and play a little Halo 2 on X-box live. Thats about it. Ill be at it again tomorow.

Peace out Playas,
ilikeaces86

Hi,
Welcome to my blog. The purpose of my blog is going to be to let you in on the daily nuances events of my life as a professional poker player. You can find me on most sites under the name ilikeaces86 or some close variant. My bread and butter are SNG's but I play tons of NL texas holdem tournaments on the various poker sites. I usually put in about 50 hours a weeek of actual "work" time. This blog will fill in anyone who is interested in my progresss as a player and mabye even offer some advice to people aspiring to get better at the infinitely complicated game of poker. Check in from time to time as I will hopefully update it routinely.

Peace out Playas,

ilikeaces86