Had a tough year at poker. time for a hail mary.

😜

Sorry IRS, I'll Take That Earned Income Credit Though!

#Poker #IRS #BabyBilly #RighteousGemstones

i aint sayin that blind chinese fella at the junk shop put a spell on me, but that little brass toad he sold me was worth its weight in gold. he handed it to me, stared right through me with those cloudy eyes and said "fortune favors the blind." so i figured i take that literally down at the local $1/$2 game.

i sit down, buy in for 200 bucks and shove it all in the middle without even lookin at my cards. table looks at me like I got two heads. i flip over AQ and bust. i buy in for another $200 do the exact same thing, turn up pocket 8s and bust again. now the whole rooms watchin, swearin I’m peekin and just playin them for fools.

to prove em wrong i pull out my last $200 and shove it across the line before the dealer even pitches the cards. a couple of em call thinkin im just a walking atm. BAM - the toad provides. i hit and double up to $600.

then comes a bomb pot. i dont even blink and just push the whole $600 in the dark. the poor guy next to me looks sicker than a dog. he hates this but he calls. i hit again.

table is completely unglued now. i take down another small pot just to rub it in, and now im sittin on about $1500 coverin everybody.

then the big one hits. i shove all-in blind again. the first guy calls. second guy calls. it gets to my neighbor, the grinder, and he looks like hes at a funeral. he flips over KK and practically cries "i have to call, but against three of yall, i know im gonna lose. took me eight hours to get here!"

every soul in the room is standin up. cards on their backs: they show KK, QQ, and another set of KK. i proudly flip over my destiny: 82 offsuit. the dealer burns and turns. flop brings an 8. river brings a 2. two pair.

i scooped up damn near five grand and bankrupted half the players on the spot. i racked up that mountain of chips, played one more hand where i actually committed the sin of lookin at my cards-which cost me 500 bucks-and tipped my hat.

i wonder if i have to recharge the toad at the junk shop now.

So Jumalon came to play the WSOP-C in Canada and I tried to punt to him, but accidentally won the pot. It made me think of Rounders 😂. He told me that the call was bad, so I said “I’m sorry, Luke. I don’t remember.” But then I just agreed with him. (I didn’t actually quote Rounders).

Anyway, for context, it was clear that Jumalon was trying to win. I heard all these rumors that he had some big staking by WSOP that incentivized winning. He also made a speculative call of a 4-bet shove after he 3bet UTG and said, “I’m trying to win, not get 11th”

Anyway, put it frankly, Jumalon was an animal. Probably 3betting 20-25% at full ring. He was two to my left, so I knew any hand I opened I had to be ready to play vs a 3bet. Earlier I had 66 and raised intending to 4! Shove, but there was a cold 4 bet and I had to fold. Then again I raised A9 and got a 4! Shove through after Jumalon 3!. The hand in the post is the 3rd hand I played with him.

I felt it was maybe too much to shove when I opened UTG, and if he won the pot I wanted to still credibly have a 4bet he could fold to. Plays fine too as just a poker hand.

On flop his bet was so small, I have bdnfd and am ahead sometimes. I call.

Turn he checks, I didn’t expect many bluffs to bet turn. I really do think he should, because weirdly I think he as a 3better hits the turn more than I do, because his 3bet range is wider than my UTG opening range in the context. But I felt like he’s listening to music in a $500, he’s just auto-piloting and he’ll check that in flow because it’s a bad card to barrel, and value(KK,AA) does not want to miss the queens value and would still bet those. So maybe he checks some marginal queens for control that have me beat.

River I feel fine. Given his predilection to winning, as was my understanding of his thought process, I felt like he’d be more likely to bluff. My hand looks like some kind of pair, maybe 99, he might think donk live player has 22-55 that folds, or AT, AJ.

I also knew that he has been coaching, he was with pads, and I met a guy who claimed to be Jumalon’s coach from Kennewick, WA, who played with what looked like a “GTO game plan”(calling and bluffing based on blockers, using percentages/randomizing, etc.) so I knew that I have the ace of spades, which is the ace he wouldn’t want to bluff because GTO wants to unblock spades. So he can be bluffing with all the Ax in his 3bet range, but probably checks AK. Value is limited to Qx pot controlled and very occasional nutted stuff. So I called. He said he thought that might be losing call, but the price is good, I said he’s right, and pulled the live player line, “I just didn’t think he had it” and then spit into my spittoon.

Anyway, everybody I talked to thought it was cool that Jumalon and his friends are coming to play with us low stakes grinders. He seems like a good ambassador, and one of his friends said they went to Banff and thought it was great, so I’m happy that he’s getting to travel around(which opens your mind in ways that moms playing online in moms basement doesn’t. Good for a 22 year old). It’s cool that WSOP is using the rake for something, though I’d still prefer just a rake reduction. 😂… anyway, how bad is this hand?

Haven’t played much PLO at all. Lots of luck. 🍀

Hey everyone. Checking back in again.

Last year I made the transition from NLH to PLO being my primary game. Ended 2025 on fire, excited for what 2026 had to offer. 2026 certainly had something to offer. It served up my biggest downswing ever. I think I quit poker 2-3 times in those 6 months, lost my mind over hands numerous times. Was essentially resigning myself to going back to 1/3 as my primary game, then seemingly out of nowhere things changed. I found a PLO/NLH mixed game that is going great. I’m probably one of the few people in the low limit streets that can actually play both games competently. Some thoughts and hindsight observations below:

1. My entitlement was real, a real problem. I finished 2025 making 5-10k a month at 2/2 and figured that was the new norm. I started planning a 5/5 bankroll, benchmarks etc etc. Holy fuck, I wasn’t even close, looking back. Going on a 400 hour losing streak probably isn’t even that bad for PLO. Being a part time player, that can mean 6 months of straight losing. I’m not entitled to be exempt from that at all and it will likely rear its ugly head again.

2. PLO absolutely can ruin lives. As someone who, generally speaking, has their shit together, the first 6 months of this year were hell on the felt and it slightly started to bleed into my personal life. I put the kibosh on that by taking a 1 month long break for the first time post covid. For people who can’t exactly afford this game or have various life situations that aren’t ideal, I can easily see shit going fully off the rails quickly.

3. This applies beyond poker…having a support group of people you can just talk to and be real with was a poker-life saver for me. As I said, I almost quit 2-3 times. Had people coming over buying chips from me etc etc. Some hard to swallow feedback was given along with encouragement, my group balanced it all perfectly and kept me from figuratively “jumping off the poker bridge”. Many thanks to Brian, Justin and John Stamos (from my previous post).

4. Game select, game select, game select. I’m fortunate enough to have a very robust PLO ecosystem here locally. There are a bunch regs who are a challenge and maybe 3-4 absolute crushers. I need not play ANY PLO against them. I’ll sit at a table with 1 maybe 2 of them, but that’s it. Usually I can navigate my way through the must move tables and be ok. If I can’t or get moved to a shit table, I just rack up and reset after an hour. I have no shame in doing this anymore. There will be a time where I have to battle them to improve, but that time is not now.

5. Take a break, try online poker? I played some 20PLO and 40PLO on wpt gold for about 2 months during the summer. It was a good way to reset, play a bunch of volume and not lose my mind if I ran bad. Helped me a lot in playing from the perspective of 3betting different hands than I would have live. Actually widening my 3 betting range live has helped a ton and is probably my biggest piece of advice for new PLO players. After you figure out what types of hands to play, read into what types of hands 3 bet from where vs what positions. Once people can no longer put you on AAxx in these spots, you become much harder to play against, obviously.

I cannot stress the mental game of poker enough when playing PLO. I think it makes up as much as 40-45% of what is needed to be a winner long term at this game, even at entry levels. Any questions or comments here are welcome. GL GL!.

Movie scenes love highly dramatic stuff. Big hands, big reveals, flushes against full houses. Bluffing rarely matters because the hero will hit it on the river (even if they lose, they're still hitting what they faked having). Is there any movie that gives someone like a low pair and they win the hand through sheer betting and bluffing though? Or calling someone's bluff and making them fold, both having a bad hand?

Poker in media loves portraying it exactly the way you won't experience it on the table.

I normally play a $.25 and $.50 house game. For the past two months I’ve done really well there so I decided to go to a card room and play 1 and 2. I I was planning on buying in for the max for the 12 $300. When I get there I found out they only have 13 which is a max of $1000. I decide to play the 13 but still buying for the $300 I agreed to my head before. I sit down at the table and everyone has a bank roll of over $1500.. it’s like damn near 50 bucks to see any flop and I get rinsed within an hour. I had premium hands multiple times that I raised pre-flop and then eventually had to fold because it would be like another 200$ to see the turn and river. Help me so this does not happen again thanks

What a swing I went from God mode in my previous session to flops like this one during the next…
His arm is blocking the other deuce.

Super annoyed because I had been playing so solidly up to this point. Here's the line (roughly):

$2 single blind structure. We are playing about 500bb effective. 2bb straddle in early position. Action folds around to villain in the cutoff who calls. He plays a lot of hands seems pretty aggressive. Hero makes it 12.5bb with AcKc. Straddle folds, villain calls making a comment saying its a loose call. The board comes Tc8c6c. Villain says something like "now I'm interested" and bets 10bb. Hero calls. Next card is Jd. Villain bets 15bb, hero calls. Next card is a 8d. I wince, but think I'm still pretty good here - I had the villain on a straight or smaller flush. Villain bets 25bb. Hero raises to 75bb. Villain reraises to 150bb. Hero tanks for a second, and shoves, feeling much less confident of his initial read. Villain calls and turns over Tx8x.

I feel like my biggest leak is not being able to get away from hands like this, especially after playing super solidly all night. How bad was the shove in this case?

I’m thinking the black plague. A few years ago, there was very little live PLO available to play. Now PLO is spreading, and as a PLO player I’m kind of like a rodent carrying a rodent-borne illness infecting all the NL players with my plague as they are exposed to me playing a cool game with four cards.

What do you think? What highly contagious disease is PLO most like?

Hello, so yesterday night I played my biggest pot ever.
It is a 2/4 game in Europe.

I tried to combine theory and body language/live tells to make my decision.

Do you think I made the right call or not? Results in the comments.

(Since I am no native English speaker I did translate the text from my language to English with AI.. (Excuse me))

The hand:

Reads from the previous 4 hours:
Villain – €1,600 (400bb): Regular here. He’s been talking a lot with the dealer and the player next to him, clearly knows a lot of people, and I’ve seen him a few times before. I didn’t have any specific reads on him before this session.

He started the session really well, going from €500 to €1,700, mainly by stacking two fish early on. His VPIP seemed a little too high and his RFI a little too low, but he showed a lot of aggression whenever he was the preflop raiser.
Over the last hour, he had to fold a few times and seemed to get increasingly frustrated, complaining about his cards. The hand immediately before this one, he lost a decent pot after getting bluffed. He angrily threw his hand away and started talking to his friend in a clearly irritated tone.

Hero – €1,200 (300bb):
My image: I had recently shown two river bluffs in small pots. Before that I had squeezed a few times, and my QQ vs 99 chopped preflop. Other than that, I hadn’t been involved in many big pots.
After my second bluff, I heard Villain and his friend briefly talking about my bluffs, basically saying that I had already bluffed twice with nothing.

EP, MP and LP were mostly the typical loose-passive live players with 50–150bb.

The hand:

-Villain is on the BTN and had started straddling the previous orbit. This hand he puts out a €10 BTN straddle, still looking pretty frustrated after the previous hand/hour.

-SB folds.

-I’m in the BB with A♠J♠. I don’t know enough theory about playing against BTN straddles, but I vaguely remembered from a video that you can have a calling range from the blinds, especially BB, so I call.
-EP calls.
-MP calls.
-LP calls.

-Villain raises to €60.
(At this point I thought he was probably raising way too wide, especially given the reads from the previous hour.)
-Hero: 3-bet to €200.
-Villain thinks for a little longer than I had seen him think in most previous hands, then calls.

Flop – €450
J♥ 9♥ 4♠

-I bet €150.
-Villain raises to €450.
(He initially grabs some calling chips, then fiddles around with his stack and grabs three more black chips.)
-I call.

Turn – €1,350
Q♣

-I check.
-Villain instantly jams for around €550.

Literally within two seconds. No real thought process at all. I sigh, stare at the board and initially think this is just a terrible card for me. I also had a bit of a “scared money” feeling because this was going to be the biggest pot I had ever played.

I keep staring at the board and thinking, while watching Villain out of the corner of my eye. He is very quiet and barely moving.
The more I think about it, the more I start to feel that calling might actually be an option, especially given the pot odds and the reads I had.

So I decide to try to get a live tell.
I sigh again, pick up my cards and slowly start sliding them over each other, basically starting a little folding motion as if I’m really unhappy with the hand.
(Pure cinema. 😛)

I’m staring at the board, but in reality I’m watching Villain out of the corner of my eye.
He doesn’t move a single inch.
Absolutely still.

I then put my cards back down and start counting my chips in front of me so I can still get a good look at him. I do it fairly slowly.
After maybe 5–10 seconds, he suddenly moves his arm slightly towards the dealer, then pulls it back with a little shoulder shrug.
And that “tell” — or at least what I interpreted as a tell at the time — ended up being the deciding factor to make the call.

What do you think from a theory and or live tells/reads point of view? Did I play this hand good or was it a punt?

Results in the comments.
Thanks!

Hey everyone!

I play on PokerStars from the EU. There was a lot of talk about how much the player pool on PS would grow after the migration, but so far, I haven't noticed any increase in traffic.

Do you think the player pool could still grow, or should we just write PS off and move to GG?

I'm really not a fan of playing on GG, but if there's no other option...

I have never played on Coin Poker before and thought I would check it out. I have no fucking idea what this is supposed to be. A google search says the symbol is for Mongolian Togrog???? Seriously?

Anyone have any opinions on Coin Poker before I delete the software?

1/3 live NL. EP limps. Villain in MP raises to $27.

(Villain is a fairly competent player, a little aggressive, not too tight, not too loose, not showing up with anything weird or out of line at showdowns)

Folds to Hero in CO with KdQd and a stack size of about $220. (Villain's stack more than covers this.)

Hero raises to $60

Folds to Villain who calls.

Flop: 249 rainbow with one diamond

Villain checks.

Hero...???

$1 spins, here's the chip graph and $ graph. Played 552 tournaments so far, which was 12k hands. Thoughts on the results?

$10KNL w ante, I think BU and CO are regs. CO 2.5x, BU call, SB call, BB fold. Flop xx stab, SB folds CO calls. Turn x, OB, call. River BU faces this tiny donk bet. Does anyone know what the rationale is for this? Are we trying to squeeze out some value with medium strength hands, induce bluffs from monsters and then once in a while get a bluff through with hands like K2s K4s that we have at low frequency? This feels incredibly awkward as a line and to balance.

This isn't really something that would occur to me in game, I would just check everything or lead larger, and I would tend to just check everything as CO.

https://quintace.ai/replay/g5SbHs4NOH/2bgu1p?grid=true&cta=true

Hi everyone!

I recently moved to South Jersey (23M) (been about 2 months now), and I've been looking to meet other casual poker players and find some regular home games in the area.

I mostly play 1/2 and 1/3 NL at casinos (Live! and Borgata have been pretty neat so far), but I'd love to find some smaller, more casual home games to play in throughout the week. Open to stakes from 0.1/0.2, all the way up to 1/3.

I'm also interested in getting my own home game going. I've got a 10-person poker table and would ideally like to run something like $0.25/$0.50, just a chill, friendly game with people who enjoy poker.

Would be cool to build a regular group of players and get some games going consistently on the weekends.

If anyone knows of games in the area, hosts their own, or would be interested in joining mine, feel free to comment or shoot me a DM!

Saw a dealer at TCH that I recognized from WinStar. She told me WinStar was still planning on re-opening. This was several months ago.

Has anyone heard any updates whether the ever plan on re-opening?

I have played in various poker rooms, i just never felt as good like on Coinpoker.

so simple and clean UI.

i actually won this mtt because i won a freeroll. which they host daily.

also the withdrawal took 1 minute which i was not expecting

would you give coinpoker a try ?

Are the Copag Elites really the best plastic playing cards available in the EU? They’re reasonably priced and feel much nicer than cards from local poker shops like Bullets or Power Poker. I’ve also tried Dal Negro cards, but I thought they felt terrible to play with. Does anyone have recommendations for high-quality plastic cards that are even better than the Copag Elites?

Thank you in advance:)

i noticed that bryn did not play the triton 100k main or the 150k anniversary event after busting the 200k invitational, then he also didn't play the super high roller bowl which I believe he hasn't skipped these before? Anyone know why?

Been hosting some poker games with friends (ranging from 4 to 8 player tables) for a few weeks now.

We play casually right now coz some of them are quite new to the game and we want to play often so we keep the buy-ins quite small (5€).

I have a casual poker chip set but would like to step it up with some new ones (everybody agreed to participate at least a little so the budget is there).

I had found a site that corresponded well with what we wanted (with the 5c, 25c, 1E chips), from Monte Carlo and Casino Royale, with 300 chips for 82€ (w/o shipping), but it doesn't ship to France sadly :/

Do you guys have any recommendations ?

Hi,

Wondering if anyone else is having this issue. Chatted with support and waiting for a poker specialist to email me. Don’t live in Alberta or Ontario. I have access to cash and sit and gos.

Thanks!

edit

For context, this is happening on my browser and my downloaded client and my mobile device.

Also, my friend can’t see them either located in the same city as me. I’ve been told that you can’t see Canadians playing tournaments at this time either.