work ethic.

poker's often compared to sports. the reason for this is simple, advertisement. i personally disagree, it's nothing like sports but there are two aspects that if we were to run with the analogy, are of paramount importance to poker success; competitiveness and work ethic. competitiveness, and I've often described myself as un-attractively competitive, is a benefit in poker only if you're enabled to use it in the right way (study hands, search for equity overlays and the expected value of decisions, understand fundamental poker theorems and strategy, etc.) and you're equipped with a strong and internally driven work ethic.

some superusers have god mode permanently switched on, but if you're not one of them, chances are, you're grinding out a very small edge and calculation is simple, you want to increase your earn, increase the amount of hands you apply that edge to.

long story short, i just finished up a day that saw me play almost 6500 no limit hold'em hands and almost 1500 PLO/PLO8 hands. I had finished with a solid win but lost over the NLHE hands. I finished up when my AA got run down by 77 playing 2-4 6max. There was a raise to $12 utg, i made it $47 on the puck, the SB called my 3bet with $280 in his stack.... you know the rest. Thought that'd be a good times to stop today's session. PokerEV has me running pretty cold (-$1000+ in all-in equity) in NLHE but I think I played a lot worse than I should have.

Anyways, a few highlight hands.

This was a sick hand only cause he thought he could 4bet squeeze my squeeze with KQo... i suspected such a strange play so I lost the flip...this is indicative of the extremely aggressive nature of 6max now, 4bet squeezing with KQo.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2651895

Um, I ran poorly today, river spike for this dude. I liked the way he played it I guess, what doesn't make sense is from an EV standpoint, if he flatted me with JJ preflop, then wants to get it in on a low board, suggesting he can beat my hand (if he didn't want to flip against AQ or AK) than what does he think I'm laying down here, QQ, KK, AA? He got married to JJ and turned the deceptive play of flatting mid-table into a -EV spot.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2651897

Ok, big pot for the good guy this time. Top two in a deep stack situation blind vs. blind up against my nut straight... we had been battling a lot and I had been taking weird lines with him so I guess he just let anger takeover and didn't want to pitch two pair. What probably factored in the most in his decision was that I 4 betted him earlier with 88 and flipped for 3/4 stacks so he probably thought my loose play was going to continue. No matter his thought process, this was a nice pot for me.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2651902

Onto PLO.
I've really changed my style up in PLO. I've tried to think on different lines and switch up some of my tactics...the main one is how I am manipulating pot size... good example here against an aggressive player who took control of the hand preflop, check call the flop, check jam the river. A major leak in the PLO games is aggressive players not knowing when to pull back on the reigns. Here he stacks off with at the most 4 outs.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2651906

This is a massive pot. Three way all in for full stacks in 2-4 6max PLO. I think I'm roughly 35% to win this hand... maybe a tad less. Looking back on the hand I don't really like that I got it in preflop but it wasn't really -EV, it was just a pure gamble stack off. What it did do was get me paid off a whole lot as the game progressed, which I guess is well worth taking a break even equity coin flip for $1200.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2651919

Lastly, the example how my gamble on the last hand I put up, paid me back. Here, against the same player, I raised preflop, checked the flop, made trips with the top card TEN on the turn, potted it, representing a full house, got called by the same guy, then the board double paired and I made a bluffing continuation bet on the river, hoping he'd be convinced and throw his hand away for the $150 pot sized bet I threw out. I hoped he would fold because three tens are like NEVER good in this spot (if I had to guess, less than 10% of the time) but I was shocked, he called and they shipped it quick, this guy's way. I guess it does pay to flip for stacks sometimes:)
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2651927

That's it, sorry for all the hand replays but it was a long and action-filled session. Word on the WSOP is that my friend's Derek, Andrew and Wes, whom I'm staying with, all arrive on the 4th approx. and that's when we get the house. I'll be staying in the hotels until then as I'm looking to get there on the 1st. The first event I have my eye on is the $1500 Omaha8/b event. I cashed shallowly in it last year, hope to improve. There's a fantastic mixed event on Wed. June 3rd but it's 10k... way too high for me right now. Guess my work ethic needed to be better during the year.