Unbelievable

Um, I'm almost speechless.

Today I took first place in the Party WSOP freeroll. I'm going to be playing in the $50k HORSE WSOP event.

More later... when I can be coherent....

WSOP satellite season..

So who's got WSOP fever? I do, for one.

All the major sites have finally kicked off their promotions for the 2006 WSOP. FTP and Party both look pretty serious about increasing the number of players they qualify this year, with Party literally giving away close to $2m in absolutely free seats (no real money play of any kind required). Stars, which is the behemoth in WSOP Main Event (herein now and forever referred to as ME) qualifiers, doesn't appear to be doing anything special so far, though they will still be the site to beat in terms of qualifying numbers.

The question for any semi-serious recreational player is: How much time and money should be invested in WSOP satellites?

From the purely professional, cold hard EV calculating mentality, it can be strongly argued that the time can be better spent in playing MTTs (or ring games) strictly for cash. If you have the desire, skill and bankroll to play in a WSOP event, then just buy in for cash. This seems to make a lot of sense, especially if you factor in potential issues like: discounting the value of the package based on some probability that you will not bee able to attend for unforseen reasons, the possibility of unintentionally qualifying for an event twice at two different online sites (this is not as ridiculous as it sounds if a great deal of effort is put in without a great deal of care), the fact that playing in a $10k MTT may be ridiculously outside of your bankroll (which is the case for virtually all players), etc...

What? You say that you really have your heart set on playing in the WSOP, and you don't care about all of the above. I completely understand. I'm a WSOP virgin myself, and I fully intend to change that this year even if I have to creep into one of the el-cheapo $1-$1.5k events at the end (Events 40-45) because even a small fry like me is bankrolled for these puppies. (In fact, I would even argue that the fields for some of these events might be on the soft side since such a large percentage of the playing pool will be pretty burned out from the preceeding 6 weeks)

So what should your game plan be? It all depends on your skill, bankroll, and time available.

I don't know what my plans are yet. I do know that I was not satisfied with my execution last year.

In 2005, I spent approximately $800 and < 25 net hours in failed qualification attempts. (I use the term "net" hours, because I would proportionally discount the time when I was multitabling some ring games into the mix). $-wise the efforts were spent on $30+3 nightly Stars rebuys, and disproportionately $-wise, but proportionally time-wise, the remainder of the efforts were through Party's qualifiers and subqualifiers (not the STEPS).

The Vanity-smurf side of me wants to qualify for the ME, though the Brainy-smurf side pipes in about how ridiculous this is. At this point, Vanity-smurf is speaking with the louder voice.

Focus on improvement

I've decided to make a focused and concentrated effort on improving my game.

In terms of online play, this will involve decreasing my multitabling and spending table time at higher limits than I have generally been playing. For now, this means my primary game will be 2-tabling $10/$20 6 max. When conditions are right (well rested, prime time), I will take shots at 2-tabling $15/$30 6 max.

Playing fewer tables has been quite fun so far with the ability now to actually pay attention to player tendencies instead of relying so heavily on just 3 PT statistics. It is easier to choose situations where inducing a bluff is more profitable, when to take a free card, when to take a shot at a pot that no one else wants, etc... Multitabling too heavily results in too much playing on autopilot. You often miss out on substantial temporary environmental conditions such as when a player goes on tilt.

The most fun so far has been 4 handed or shorter games. I will certainly be tempted to try strictly headsup games when/if I can get most of the leaks out of my short handed game.

So far (I have been at this for about 5 days to date), the most significant thing I have noticed is that I do have a lot of leaks. Through the first 1500 hands, I'm running at a little less than +1BB/100 and I have been leaking somewhere in the range of 3-4BB/100. (This means I have actually been running well, but stupidly leaving a lot of money on the table) The worst leak is probably calling down after a turn raise from a passive postflop player with a good but not great hand.
Another situation that troubles me is 3 bet/calling the cap on the river when my flopped monster (set, straight, flush) has been devalued by the river. I need to strike a good balance here because I don't want to be too passive on river situations when some runner runner scare cards come in, especially when the river is headsup. Paying attention to player tendencies is important. (An example of this is the player that will always raise/check-raise the turn when he/she picks up a draw.)

Finally, another important aspect of my time allocation will be to invest a reasonable amount of time reading and studying short handed play, reviewing hands in PT, discussing hands, etc.

Knowing your "outs"

There was an amusing hand from a live $20/$40 LHE game I played today. In order to set the context more fairly, I'll give a history of the immediately preceeding hand. (I was not involved in the hand as I was waiting to post having just arrived at the table)

hand #1
9 seated live $20/$40 LHE
- preflop: UTG folds, Donk (who I have never seen before this hand) calls, MP raises, fold, MP+2 cold calls, folded back to the Donk who calls (3 players to the flop, pot size 7.5 small bets)
- flop: AsTc5s, Donk checks, MP bets, MP+2 raises, Donk calls 2 cold, MP calls. (3 players to the turn, pot size 13.5 small bets)
- turn: AsJc5s6s, check, check, MP+2 bets, call, call (3 players to the river, pot size 9.5 big bets)
- river: AsJc5s6s9s, check, MP bets, call, call. MP shows AQo no spade, MP+2 shows AKo no spade, Donk shows 2s2c for the winner.

Here is the hand I was involved in. (By the way, I suck big time. I need to learn how to count my "outs")

hand #2
9 seated live $20/$40 LHE
- preflop: Donk calls UTG, UTG+1 calls, fold, call, call, Hero checks his Qh6h, CO calls, button calls, SB completes, BB checks (8 players to the flop, pot size 8 small bets)
- flop: Th3c4d, checked around (8 players to the turn, pot size 8 small bets)
- turn: Th3c4d5h, blinds check, Donk bets (tight player in the BB says "are you sure?"), fold, MP+1 calls, MP+2 calls, Hero raises, (BB and Donk cry out excitedly and BB says "see you should't bet here without the nuts..."), folded back to Donk who shrugs and calls, MP+1 folds, MP+2 calls. (3 players to the river, pot size 10 big bets)
- river: Th3c4d5h5c, Donk checks, MP+2 checks, Hero (aka Donk #2) surrenders like a frightened little child and checks behind.
Donk very reluctantly tables Kh8h (in fact he almost threw the hand directly in the muck), MP+2 mucks, Hero mucks. MP+1 exclaims he mucked a 5.

I raised on the turn because the pot was big and I wanted to buy my Q outs. (BTW, I did overhear BB say that he mucked his QJ on the turn). Shortsightedly, I imagined my outs were any 2,7 or Q or any heart. Little did I realize how mistaken I was in what my outs were for this hand.

I know that I am supposed to bet this river when I miss and it is checked to me, but I just didn't have the heart after watching the previous hand. Boo!

It is unethical, but I suppose I could have angle shot and started to pick up my chips to see if the 2 opponents would muck. This does happen fairly often in this game.

Traditions...

In my two years of playing poker, I've never outright won a multitable cash tournament; neither live nor online. I've chopped three ways in a midstakes live MTT, I've won a couple of WPT satellites, and I've final tabled at many different stakes both live and online. However, I just can't close the deal.

Last night, in keeping up with this tradition, I finished 2nd in the Party $100+9. I made an ugly mistake when we were down to 3 handed... when will I learn?

One of these days I'm going to put all the pieces together and get there....

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The ugly details:

- Going into 3 handed, I had 67% of the chips. Both opponents had equal stacks. There are about 68x bb in play; I have ~43x bb and they have ~12.5x bb each.
- On the 3rd hand of 3 handed play, the button folds, I find A4o in the SB. BB who has given me his blinds on 100% of my steals (there probably have been more than 15 orbits at the final table), and has otherwise only reraised me 2 times (both all in) on the button; both times showing JJ. He has just less than 12x bb, and I retardedly push all in. He insta calls with AKo and no suckout occurs.

There is absolutely no reason for me to raise anything more than 3x bb. BB has been playing completely predictably where he folds over 90% of his hands and reraises all in otherwise. 3x bb is the correct amount to raise regardless of if I have 72o or AA. BB's actions easily define my behavior, as he will only play a hand that has A4o crushed. Even with BB having a stack as low as 9xbb, my strategy should be the same. I risked ~9x bb (aka 13% of all chips) with absolutely nothing to gain.

This mistake cost a substantial portion of the $4k diff between 1st and 2nd as it stopped me from being able to continue to run over the table; time to add another entry in my "MTT Notes to self..."

Notes to self

MTT Rules to live by
1. When playing against a loose passive player
1a. value bet, value bet, value bet
1b. don't be concerned with overbetting as it really doesn't apply; be concerned about underbetting (in many cases betting the pot against said player could be considered an underbet)
2. If said loose passive player check raises you all in:
2a. think carefully with 2nd nuts
2b. think very carefully with 3rd nuts
2c. for each level of nuts beyond this, add another "very". If you've got a lot of "very"s in that line, send that hand into the muck. (Yes, 13th nuts is a lot of very's)
2d. if you have a borderline number of very's and are still thinking about calling, try to imagine that someone who you have mutual respect with has substantially staked you in this MTT. Consider if you can present a reasonable case for calling. (e.g. you have insufficient pot odds against Villain's range, but when folding your M is less than 1)
3. When raising to steal a tight player's blinds, raise no more than is necessary to make TP fold the majority of his/her hands.

Always look on the brighter side...

A good way to summarize my tournament yesterday was that I danced around for several hours and was only put to the test one time. I failed miserably.

While I was slouching around at home and feeling disgusted with myself, my wife asks me if I had fun. I felt a lot like a kid coming back from a loss in a little league game where the parent is telling the child that the most important thing is to have fun. However, I have to admit I really did have a great time. Albeit, it was a short run... less than 8 hours.

Here is a recap of my experience with Phil Ivey. (Note: I am not a poker star celebrity worshipper. I merely had the pleasure of getting involved in a number of hands with him. Originally when I saw my table draw with me sitting on his right, I expected to not get involved in any hands with him. The $5k bounty on his head definitely affected how I played with him)
- Phil showed up about 10 minutes late. He looked very sleepy and was a bit taken back when the dealer insisted on him showing his photo ID. He was seated in 5s; I was in 2s.
- He was only moderately aggressive perhaps getting involved in 15% of the pots in level 1, and 25% of the pots in level 2 (busting on the very last hand of level 2). He always opened for a raise if folded to him in CO+1 or later.
- I did not play a hand for the first 40 minutes; in the 2nd half of level 1 I raised preflop twice, once taking the blinds, and once being called by BB in 6s who folded to my continuation bet on a AKx flop.
- In the 2nd level I consciously became more frisky feeling comfortable with how the people at my table were playing.

Here are some hands that occured over a roughly 40 minute period. Most are not interesting, but I list them trying to set the context for how I may be perceived in the later hands. All of these hands occured in level 2 with 50/100 blinds (10k starting chips)
- I open raise 300 in CO+2 with 8s9s and take the blinds.
- Next hand, I open raise 300 in CO+1 with 66. Only Phil calls in the SB. Flop comes 762 with 2 diamonds; as Bill Rini would say, "Obviously I didn't have a diamond..." (7c6d2d). Phil check folds to my pot size bet.
- Phil opens UTG for 300, semi loose aggressive in 6s flat calls, folded to me in CO and I call with two black 7s, folded behind me. Flop comes something like 873 rainbow. It is checked to me. I consider checking behind. 6s I put on 2 big cards, but I am scared to give Phil a free card here since his opening range is very wide (although I would expect him to continuation bet with anything that connects with the flop or if he had an overpair). I bet 1/2 pot, both fold. This seems like a great opportunity to have slow played.
- I open raise 300 in CO+1 with ATo. Only Phil calls in the SB. Flop comes Kh7s5s. Phil checks, and as I had made a flop bet of some kind on ~every~ hand I had raised preflop so far (~5-6 by this point), I checked behind. Turn comes offsuit 8, I fold to Phil's 2/3 pot sized bet.
- Folded to a semi loose semi aggressive SB in the 1s who completes (He has a ~20k stack from successfully getting involved in a significant number of hands). I raise to 350 with AcJd. SB calls. Flop comes 2d5d4h, SB checks, for the 2nd consecutive time I elect to check behind on the flop. Turn comes 8d. SB bets 500, I raise to 2000, SB quickly calls. River comes 3c, SB check folds to my 3000 bet. (probably a zero value bet by me there....I think I was embarassed to show my hand and bet anyway.) SB tells me he had a PP...????
- I open raise 300 in CO+1 with TdTh, only Phil calls in SB (he has ~9k, I have ~14k). Flop comes 972 rainbow. Phil check raises my 1k bet to 4k. I think for about 20 seconds, but I just don't believe he check raises me here with a better hand. I decide the pot is big enough, so I reraise to 7k and he turbo mucks. (Isn't there a full tilt magazine ad with a hand like this? Something like You are dealt TT, Limp in or All in? Fun stuff living in a fantasy world...)
- Phil open raises 300 in MP, semi lag in MP+1 calls, folded to semi lag SB who calls, I call with Ad9c. Flop comes 973 rainbow. Blinds check, Phil bets 1200, MP+1 folds, SB calls. SB had flop check raised a few times so far, so I am confident I am ahead of him. Phil has less than 4k left so I check raise 4000 more. (is this getting too carried away?) Phil turbo mucks, SB thinks for more than 30 seconds before mucking saying he thinks he folded the best hand.
- Phil busts a couple of hands later making a move on the 10s.. I don't have the details as I had already run off to beat the rush to the restroom.

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Since I have nothing to prepare for tomorrow (i.e. Day 3), I've had plenty of time to think about my bustout hand from last night. Initially I focused all my attention on my awful all in call, but after further reflection I realize that there was a second category of major mistake in this hand; namely betting errors.

I was open raising in the CO with a very loose but mostly passive opponent in the BB. He had shown the ability to make preflop calls like an 8.5x bb call in the UTG+1 position with Ax (no idea what x was as the hand did not reach showdown, and yes there was some unconventional betting at this table). All of my bets were either under or substantially under the size of the pot.

Had I not made the betting mistakes in the hand, I would not had the opportunity to be check raised all in on the turn. The majority of the time, I would be pushing all in on the turn, and if I was playing very conservatively, I would have checked behind on the turn and then been faced with some kind of bet on the river.

I almost certainly would have chosen the former, and the result would have been the same.

If I had chosen the latter, given the way the BB had been playing he would have bet all in on the river at least 50% of the time. Assuming that I had raised 5xbb preflop and made a slightly larger than pot size bet on the flop (rounding up to the nearest 1000), the all in bet on the river would be 117% of the pot. This fold would theoretically have been easier since my only reason for checking behind on the draw heavy board would be the assumption that my opponent had outdrawn me on the turn. It would still not be an easy fold, but I'm saying I would have been in the mindset to consider cutting my losses.

To summarize, had I made no reasonable mistakes in this hand, I would still likely have gone broke; I would just have felt unlucky and not stupid.

I SUCK

There is no other way to describe it.

I made a ridiculous donk call to a turn check raise all in with top pair top kicker on a draw heavy board from a relatively passive player getting less than 3 to 1. The player was very rarely aggressive, and the absolute worst possible hand that was not a (semi)bluff he could have is the same hand as me. I can fold and still have 63% of average chips. Instead I call with a 3 outer, and bust 105th/250.

The only rationale I could have for putting my opponent on a semibluff is that I had started to get frisky in the last 2 orbits. I had actually been taunting my opponents after check raising them trying to act like a cocky little bastard. However, he was not a sophisticated player, and there was no solid grounds for possibly thinking he was making a move. The majority of the time I am drawing dead. For some insane reason I was able to convince myself that my taunting had worked and he was just fed up with me and pushed with his massive stack.

Missed the Phil Ivey death blow

Things are going okay at the moment. I have slightly over average chips at the dinner break. My M is slightly below 16. Things are going to start getting a little strained in a couple of levels if I can't get some more chips. Basically I have had the same stack for the last 4 hours...

At my starting table, I had Phil Ivey 3 to my left. Things went very well against him, as I managed to acquire about 6500 of his chips. I missed the death blow as seat 10 finished him off a couple of hands later. Damn! That $5k bounty would have been nice.

Interesting I have had only one showdown so far... when the SB slow played his AA to my button open raise and he almost lost a big one when I relatively cheaply got to see the river with an OESD.

Okay, gotta get back...

Big day

Day 1 of the Bay 101 Shooting Stars kicks off in a couple of hours. In my only other foray into a big buy in event, I failed to last 7 hours. Here hoping to monotonically improving performance....

A question of motivation

I know it is a ~really~ stupid way to operate, but the last few days I have been focusing more intently during my sessions simply because I am on a substantial multi-session win streak. Previous history should be irrelevant, but I feel more motivated not to make stupid mistakes. A disciplined mind should provide optimal decisions independent of results.

Okay, all I wanna do is go out and play some good poker...results don't matter, they don't matter.

Stay away you sick twisted freaks!

I took a look at the referring URLs to this blog from sitemeter.

With a blog entitled "donkey hunter", you can just imagine some of the google queries that end up here. One of these days I'm going to have to make a top ten list.

However, the donkey-related queries are not the ones that freak me out. The guy I worry about is the one who is searching for "poker bad beat stories". Can you really not get enough of these?

The wheels have fallen off the wagon

The last 5 poker days have been a moderate disaster, and my bankroll-safety-control-mechanism demands analysis of how this occured. My peak to trough in that period was ~$4,000, and my net loss for that period was ~$3,500.

Loss breakdown:
1) 42% $50+5 Party SNGs - 92 SNGs, 23% ITM, -32% ROI
2) 40% live $20/$40, -37.9BB, in roughly 6.5 session hours
3) 17% WPT Super ($200 rebuy)
4) 2% Small stakes online hold'em

Analysis:
1) The 92 SNGs consisted of 4 sets of 20 and 3 mini sets of 4.
Significant problem areas:
- very poor heads up play - 9 2nds vs 3 1sts.
More analysis needs to be done to see if I am pushing too much headsup instead of making smaller preflop raises (in the 300/600 and 400/800 levels)
- very poor bubble play - bubble boy 25/92 times
More in depth analysis needs to be done concerning 2 areas: i) am open I pushing too much on the bubble with no hand?, ii) am I calling too much on the bubble with very probable best hand, but when pusher has me covered?
2) The live $20/$40 sessions were very good games. There were numerous large pots that I lost on the turn or river (yes I know, waah waah). Objectively, I think I made 4, maximum 5 BB of mistakes that I could identify. While ~1BB/hr of mistakes is nothing to be proud of (naturally this can't include the number of undetected mistakes), I'd happily play in this environment every day. It would not surprise me if my long-term rate for those game conditions was +3BB/hr.
3) WPT super was a live $200+25, $200 multi-rebuy, $200 add on event. This is basically a $600+$25 event, so the vig is rather reasonable. There were 2 very good players at my starting table, 2 donks, and 6 relatively reasonable players (11 seated). Do I have enough of an edge to invest the time to go and play in something like this? It did not feel like it on this occasion.
4) The negative results from the small stakes online hold'em session is merely in the noise. Most of the negative results came during "additional" multitabling of SSHE while running the $50+5 SNG sets. Perhaps, I should focus exclusively on SNGs when playing SNGs, though the sample size is fairly small. The benefit of getting in those additional SSHE table hours is the efficiency in picking up Party points for the VIP promo. Is this tradeoff worth it?

Preliminary Conclusion:
Substantial additional study and investigation needs to be done on my SNG game.

Fun and exciting times in the land of Party

As everyone is probably aware, Party has released a major site upgrade today.

I am actually surprised how widespread and comprehensive the changes are. At the very least, they have UI changes, tournament structure changes (antes), new games and SNG levels (e.g. 6 max and NL jackpot, smaller stakes SNGs, timed and turbo SNGs), website changes, and Party store changes.

It is pretty surprising to see that Party would ambitiously simultaneously change so many things all at the same time. Not sure why they would choose to do them all simultaneously, but if they can pull it off then kudos, I guess. I hope the transition goes without too many headaches.

The timing of doing this on Thursday morning does make sense. All the hardcore grinders and pros can help to identify issues today, so that the platform will hopefully be stable for the weekend. I noticed this morning that their site status notice kept changing. The site will be up by 11am EST, then 12pm, then 1pm, then 2pm. The revenue loss that Party will take if they are not up during prime time hours is motivation enough for their deployment team. However, doing so many changes at the same time seems like a receipe for headaches. At the very least, their web servers are going to be taking ginormous load for the next few days.

I'm excited about going home tonight and checking out the new changes, assuming the site is up. Hopefully this affair doesn't turn out to be another one of those "what not to do" case studies....

Don't be a such smartass...don't be such a donk

This is a butchered hand that I need to record as a reminder both not to be too cocky and to remember the importance of immediately recovering mentally from a setback before more damage is done.

(The dealers in this poker room miss plenty of things, so I tend to rely more on my own observations than strictly on the info from the dealer....)

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Today I was sitting in a great loose passive live $20/$40 LHE game. It is the 4th table of a chained must move setup. I'm feeling great about my reads; I'm confident; I'm relaxed. Just prior to the hand of interest, I busted the player on my immediate left and 2 people were moved up to the 3rd table of the must move chain. A new player just posted between the button and the SB. I'm seated in seat #8 on the right of the dealer, the poster is on the dealer's immediate right, and the blinds are on the immediate left of the dealer. SB and BB have been playing very loose passive; poster is new to me.

hand #1
7 seated live $20/$40 LHE
- preflop: folded to hero on button (Hero thinks: These blinds are very loose, my min raising standard needs to be 2 suited broadways), Hero looks down and finds KhQh (hey, I got what I asked for! neat, I can win a decent pot with a hand like this), Hero raises, poster folds, SB calls, BB thinks for a couple seconds (hmmm, I see that BB has exactly 1 stack of chips (2.5BB) in his left hand next to his cards, I wonder if he is going to be one of those loose reraisers trying to get all in early...He's been playing very passively, but in this case I really wouldn't mind that much), BB calls (3 players to the flop, pot size: 7SB)
- flop: dealer exposes the flop, immediately SB bets, BB quickly calls, Hero looks to see the Kc3s4d flop ; (Hmmm, I've probably got SB outkicked, no idea what BB has but not a huge concern since he has only 1.5BB left), Hero raises, SB immediately calls (yup, K-rag) , BB immediately calls (still no idea). (3 players to the turn, pot size: 13SB)
- turn: Kc3s4d9c check, check, (easy bet, SB won't check raise me unless I am crushed, and I'm certain he will raise if I am behind), Hero bets, SB quickly calls, BB moves the last 8 chips in his left hand into the pot. (hmmm, okay, I think I like just about any broadway card now; a club won't be nice but it will have no impact on how I play against SB since BB is all in; geez neither SB nor the dealer bothered to call out the all in, but nothing gets past me!) (3 players to the river, pot size 9.5BB)
- river: Kc3s4d9cAh (great, I'm not going to miss my value bet here) SB checks, immediately Hero bets, SB immediately calls, BB announces raise (WTF is going on here!) and stacks up his assorted pile of $5 and $2 chips that were behind his right hand. (Crap crap crap Dave, nice assumption on the all in... okay, I can see SB ready to muck, I need to make the crying call here) BB doesn't have enough $5 chips to make the full raise, but does have enough $2 chips to complete the bet. He stacks them up and says it is a full bet. Hero calls, SB turbo mucks. BB tables his nut wheel. (final pot size 14.5BB)

I don't think BB was intentionally hiding his chips, he just happened to have a messy pile of chips out of my line of sight. I am just very upset with myself for losing my cool after making one mistake and then not considering all the information that was available to me before lighting $40 on fire.

Had I known BB still had chips behind, I would probably still reluctantly have made the value bet on the river (if both players had checked to me; not a given since BB might have bet if he thought I would check behind - I just bet before he had a chance to act and he took advantage), but I think I would be in a clear enough frame of mind to recognize that I'm beat here 100% of the time. To top off the clear signal from the betting pattern of the LP BB, there was the additional strong tell that BB made sure that he had the correct betting amount for a full raise. Despite the 13.5:1 odds, I think this is a correct fold. I'm not convinced I should follow the Chris Fargis mantra of never folding to a raise of a river value bet (at least in this type of game; In a tougher game I won't be faced with this decision since I'm checking behind close to 100% of the time like a little girl; on the very low chance that I did bet and was check raised by a tricky player there are plenty more reasons to make the crying call)

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The initial error I made in this hand reminds me of another mistake I made very early in my live cash game hold'em career. Playing a lot of online spoils you from having to avoid making these kinds of misteps...

Time management and game selection

Putting in table hours at the correct time and place are crucial factors in maximizing your hourly rate. This is old news, but I'm amazed how often I choose to forget this simple fact.

The past week has been close to my best-ever non-MTT/satellite-related week. It was achieved in a very simple fashion by multitabling Party's $3/$6BBJ, $10/$20LHE, and $50+$5 SNGs during the peak weeknight hours and live $8/$16 and $20/$40 during the early morning weekend hours with players who had been up all night. I did run better than average for most of the sessions, but my gut feeling is that something like 75% of the net winnings came from ludicrous bets/calls/raises in those great games. I wish I had kept some kind of running statistics to keep track. 1-2 extra BBs every few orbits on every table adds up very quickly (so long as you can keep the anti-tilt armor on tight...) I read some complaints on the 2+2 forums that the 3/6BBJ tables have become a rock garden since the kickoff of the Party VIP Acceler8tor program. This just didn't match what I saw during the times I played, although I can certainly believe it for off peak times. I was generally able to keep at least 6 great tables open at any given time.

In the SNG category, I had initially been worried by pokernerd's comments that the Stars $55+5 Stars Turbos are considerably softer than the Party $50+$5. I've run about 100 of these things at Party, and so far I haven't found that to be the case, at least during those very busy prime time hours when those SNGs are kicking off at a crazy rate. (3 or more bustouts in the first level appeared very frequently; contrastingly overly tight players on the bubble; etc..)

My very last SNG session was started way too late (around 12:30am PST), and the contrast was like night and day. Quite a few of my tables had players from the Tournament Leader Board (TLB). Several of the SNGs were running to the 5th level with 9 or more players still alive. A preflop or flop jam in the first three levels much more frequently means AA/KK and set, respectively (compared to say 66/AJo and any-top-pair/any-draw during prime time). Too frequently, the result of these SNGs came down to the result of just one or two coin flips. Why put in the table time under these conditions? Perhaps it will make you a better player, but, at least in the short term, it is not what is best for the bankroll.

It wasn't applicable this week, but had I been available to play online during the late morning/early afternoon timeframe (Pacific time) I would be putting in table hours at sites that have a higher percentage of the player base consisting European players, such as the Cryptos.

During my live play, I made the mistake of moving from an extremely loose passive $8/$16 LHE to a slightly tighter, slightly more aggressive $20/$40 game. I enjoyed the poker aspects of the $20 game (winning a big 5 way pot on the turn with 2nd nut low has got to be one of the best feelings you can experience in a LHE game) and it still was a pretty good game, but the $8/$16 game almost certainly had a better hourly rate. The table banter environment at the $8/$16 game was also more enjoyable. Don't mess with a good thing unless you have very good reasons to do so.

Scheduling your poker time to play during peak times is good for your bankroll, and picking the right table to play at is just as important as knowing how to get away from a losing hand.

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MTTs

I sat out from MTTs this weekend, including that incredible 5500+ player field in the Sunday Stars $200+$15, as I had planned to take my wife out for an early Valentine's dinner last night.

Can you believe the size of that field? I just noticed the $11 double shootouts to the $200+$15. Are these new? Perhaps this contributed to the huge bump in the size of the field this week.

The only MTTs I did get in early in the week were for the Party Cabin fever freeroll. Did anyone follow this? Party made another ridiculous customer service debacle from this thing. The promotion was supposed to run from Sunday - Saturday, but by Thursday they had "run out of cabins". Friday's freeroll remained on with a cash substitute, though cheaply they gave the winners an uncompensated forced "downgrade" to $2300 cash. Saturday's freeroll was outright cancelled. Whining and complaining got some people modest compensation, but still. Just amazing.

The only real work I put into MTTs this week was to start re-reading Harrington on Hold'em part 2. Good stuff, good stuff. Highly recommended.

I've got cabin fever...

Cabin fever

I've been really out of it for the last few days. I had a procedure at the hospital today, and since I basically had an unavoidable sick day, I was able to take a second shot at Party's Cabin fever promo and this time I won! (I busted in the 40s on Sunday on the hand immediately after my wife asked "When are we having dinner?" :P That A9o suddenly looked like an absolute monster, and I decided the chip leader was just being a bully....)

I was barely able to stay awake to play for the first few hours today. I hadn't eaten anything in over 36 hours, was not able to keep any food down, and was still recovering from anesthesia. I had to prop myself up on a couple of pillows and sleep between hands. (Again, my wife was not impressed with how well I've been taking care of myself, particularly as she has no interest in the game... Scurvy is the man.)

Now that I have a free cruise, I need to figure out if I can go. (The cart ALWAYS goes before the horse in my world). I'm in the VIP thing, so I guess the worst case is that I get the $500 VIP bonus. I guess it is really just a question of motivation. If I had won a PPM V package instead of just the cruise package, I'd have booked my plane ticket already. My wife almost certainly can't get the time off, so perhaps I could take one of my parents.

The fields in these Cabin Fever freerolls are reasonably soft. Less all-in donkeys than a typical Party MTT (though they are still around), but that is substantially compensated for by the overly tight grinders (who would have played 1000 rh and signed up for a freeroll, but don't seem to have much MTT, NL, and/or SNG experience) who you can steal from in the middle of the MTT (that you can identify from having data mined 10 tables from the start) A good 10-15% of the registered field doesn't show up for the event.
I'd recommend anyone that can meet these criteria to take a shot:
1) capable of putting in the 1000 raked hands in a day (multitabling small stakes NL games is a safe low variance way to get the hands in cheaply)
2) available to play in the freeroll on the following day at 7pm EST. Even starting at 8-8:30pm is quite reasonable because you won't be blinded down much. Party is using the 20 min levels for this event.
3) you have any reasonable likelihood of being able to make it to the cruise
4) even better if you are a Party VIP, because you will also get $500 cash
Party caps the entries at 300 per freeroll. Sunday's had something close to 190, and today's had less than 250. Even at 300, 5% of the entrants are getting a cabin. There are not many "cheap" supers that pay out such a large % of the field. For a non-VIP, a freeroll entry has a minimum overlay value of $125 ($2500x15/300), and for a VIP the min overlay is $150.

The freerolls are running daily up until this Saturday.

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Shoutout

Thanks to rikkidee for the tip on how to adjust the formatting of the text in this blog. Canadians are such nice folk....

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Deep Stack, Deep time investment

Still haven't put much effort into preparing for the Shooting Stars. The Stars Deep Stack events sound like a good idea. But boy do they take a long time to run. I can really appreciate Jodi's list of other accomplishments.

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Party VIP Acceler-8-tor

Someone complained that I often discuss topics without providing any background info to the uninformed. So for those who don't already know: The Party VIP club is a program designed to reward high volume players with a variety of incentives for their play. It is labelled an "invitation-only" system. However, the only requirement for qualifying is to have an MGR (monthly gross revenue) in excess of $1k, and players can just email the vip department asking to be added if they have not already been "invited" and would qualify.

The latest program from the VIP department is a promotion that is actually starting to make some good sense for both sides, Party and the high volume pro or semi-pro (high volume donkeys, as described in Scurvy's post, are still not being properly taken care of). It is of reasonable length duration which really does benefit Party since they end up with a fairly decent idea of the play volume to expect over a moderate period of time (a pretty good idea for any publicly trading multi-billion dollar company)

Anyways, I am happy with the playing targets they issued me because it works out to somewhere close to $2k per month in bonuses with me spending only 50% of my nominal monthly playing time in Party ring games. I'm not being sarcastic with the word only. I had been worried it would be over 100%.

I have often complained about Party, but with my mouse-RSI problems, Party is really the only site that I can comfortably put in the hours. I still have the freedom to allocate the other 50% of my poker time in a wide variety of ways.

As a nice little bonus, Party gave me a $55 compensation because I emailed them after receiving the pop-up on Friday well prior to the start of the promotion. It is one of those rare occasions when Party delivers more than they promise. (of course, this occurs after they retardedly put up information before they should; another example: trialing their new Party Points store in the middle of the night on a live site... Yup, the laughable actions of a publicly traded billion dollar company)

Takin out the trash...

Didn't have a chance to post for the last few days, so here is a dump of some of my goings-on

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Ya gotta play like your money don't mean nothin...

Funny little thing happened tonight, although granted the tale might come out as a thinly veiled bad-beat story. Plus I'm always long winded, so it takes some reading to get to the point.

The first of the month kicks off for me like it does every month - at 9pm on the last night of the previous month... (I live in the Pacific time zone).

9:01pm, so I decided to grind away some VIP points at Stars. I've been trying to pick up Turbo SNGs a-la-pokernerd. I've still got a lot to learn about SNGs, so what I settled on was 6-tabling a mix of $55+5s and $25+2s and 4-tabling $3/$6 LHE. (Probably not a good mix; ideally I would like to 8 table the $55+5s, but I am worried that I might not have a sufficient ROI. Since the VPPs are so low at the $25+2s, I add in the LHE tables for a slight points boost)

It is a bit of a madhouse at times. For example, sometimes when I click to register for a replacement SNG, the table will have already filled so I get a "Registration failed" popup instead of a "Registration successful" message. However, occasionally I will just click the okay button without even noticing the difference. Only after a couple of minutes when a new table does not pop up on my screen will I realize that I must have failed to register.

Nothing too interesting happens in the first couple hours, but I'm getting a little tired at that point from madly clicking away. I start my last SNG in the pipeline, and decide to play down from the 10 tables until I'm down to 4 (my LHE ring games) and then call it a night.

By the time I'm down to 6 tables, I've finally got some breathing room, and take a gander at the cashier. I'm stunned to see my balance looks several hundred dollars below what I expect it to be. My eyes start racing around at chips stacks of my cash games, and I can't understand what happened. I'm still occupied enough that I decided to wait until the end of the session before doing any further investigation.

I get down to the last SNG, and we're on the bubble. I'm 2nd in chips with the chip leader on my immediate right. He is only marginally active, so I get to steal steal steal an above average number of times considering I am only 2nd chip leader. The guy on my left finally busts. The former chip leader gets crippled when his JJ get cracked when the 2nd opponent make a very boneheaded preflop all in rereraise with A5o. Former chip leader had been playing so tight, I cannot see how Mr. A5o can even think he has as good as a coinflip when he had not at all been significantly tied to the pot (It was still only level 7 100/200/25). But whatever, standard bonehead $25+2 player, right? Anyway, A hits the board and the former chip leader is busted a couple of hands later.

Headsup ran about one and a half more levels (to the 300/600/50? stage) to the point where I had just under a 75/25 chip advantage, and the action quickly climaxed in 2 hands. I pushed with A7s; and he insta called with K3; pair of 3s beats A high. Next hand he pushes with JTo; I insta call w ATs; board comes JJxxx, and we're done. No big deal, $45 diff between 1st and 2nd, and I can finally dash off to the bathroom.

When I get back, I open up the cashier again, and to my surprise, my balance looks almost $1k higher than I expect. WTF? I close the SNG table and view the SNG Tournament lobby window, and if it is not already obvious enough, I had accidentally registered for a $525+$30 turbo sng.

Those two back to back hands didn't cost me $45, it was actually $945. Damn.

To be fair, although I have played in tournaments before with a larger buy-in, had I known the stakes I was playing at, I'm quite doubtful I would have been able to play aggressively enough to have finished ITM. I'm thankful for my ignorance (and inefficiency in early detection of the buyin error).

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Shooting Stars

The Bay 101 WPT Shooting Stars main event kicks off on February 27th, and I will be starting in the first flight, Day 1 (I won my seat a few months back on a Dise satellite). The format of this event is rather unique compared to the typical $10k buyin event because the structure of the event includes additional ways to cash from the event other than making it past the money bubble.

50 of the players in the tournament (1 at each starting table) have a $5k bounty on their heads. Additionally, the chip leader at the end of the first day (for each of the 2 flights) will receive $10k. These payouts "only" consume ~6% of the total prizepool, and with me being such dead money for a $10k event, it is pretty nice to have these additional cashing opportunities. I would only dislike the structure if I thought I had any chance of making the TV table.

This will only be my 2nd big buy in event. (The first one being the UB Aruba event in 2004... a pretty darn long time ago...)

I'm not sure yet how I will allocate time to prepare for this event. Some time will inevitably go into playing some live small buy in tournaments, although the fast structure make these things a push fest after just a few levels. It can't hurt to spend more time in live play, since my ratio of live/online play has been inverted for the last couple of months.

On the other hand, I'm also thinking about running some of the Stars Deep Stack tournaments. The $5k chip stack, half hour levels should give a much better representation of the structure of a big buyin event.

Reviewing Harrington on Hold'em, particularly volume 2, seems prudent as well. Any other tips or suggestions are appreciated.

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Martinspoker client

I put in an hour of time at Martinspoker the other day, and I can't say that I am a big fan of their client GUI. It seems like a receipe for a convulsive seisure. Despite the respectable per-€0.31-raked-hand bonus, I might not be able to go the distance.

About 6 months ago, I decided that I had enough of tired and exhausted eyes, and I replaced all monitors that I use on a daily basis, including the one at my day-job (at my own expense, but a worthwhile investment since I want my eyes to be well rested or at least not already burned out when starting any nightly sessions) with LCD monitors. The Martinspoker client GUI flickers between hands (the window clears grey and then repaints entirely), and with multible tables running I am distinctly reminded of trying to use a CRT monitor that is on its last legs. Perhaps this is a bit of an exaggeration, but it is certainly not comfortable to endure.

Additionally, none of the client gui windows seem to be able to paint correctly when I move those windows onto my second monitor. The windows just are completely grey. Perhaps there is some setting or parameter I could adjust, however, this is the only application I have ever run on my system that did not display correctly on the 2nd monitor, so I'm not going to spend any time investigating. Besides, it is not like I'm going to be 8-tabling this bad-boy any time soon.

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Driving in a straight line?

On a completely un-poker-related note, I've had a couple of hair raising driving experiences in the last week. I just have a ton of respect for my fellow drivers on the road.

On Wednesday night, I was driving on the freeway to pick up a takeout order that I had just called in. The restaurant is a very busy one, and I was quite sure my order would take a while to be completed. Hence, I drove at a leisurely pace (relative to my usual). I was going 65 in a 65, but more importantly, in my relaxed frame of mind, I made no effort to consider the spatial arrangement of cars around me nor anticipate the actions of other drivers.

I reached a point on the freeway where, due to a long term construction project, the h/w has an abnormal rightwards bend in the road. The bend in the road is not too substantial (maybe 5-6 degrees), although at night drivers who are either unfamiliar with that stretch of highway or !!!not paying attention!!! will be taken by surprise.

I was driving in the middle lane, and a soccer mom driving a large, clean, and shiny SUV was passing me on the right going roughly 80. She had at least two kids in the car, one of which was watching a DVD in the backseat. The point that she passed me was just at the bend in the road where she proceeded to continue in a straight line without turning. At 80, it took only a fraction of a second to completely have crossed over into my lane.

She was less than 1/2 of a car length ahead of me at the start of the bend, and even with me hitting the brakes, had I remained strictly in my lane, her SUV would have impacted the front 1/5th or 1/4 of my car. Given the impact inertia of her large vehicle I would certainly have been spun out on a 65 mile an hour free way with cars behind me.

I was VERY fortunate that both the car behind me and the nearest car in the left hand lane were both more than 3 car lengths back and ~paying attention~. I had slowed to close to less than 50 and halfway into the leftmost lane before it was safe enough to return to my lane and h/w speed. (I did see those relatively close headlights of cars in both the left and center lanes...)

Given that the SUV did cut me off in that location, and the number of cars on the freeway at the time, there was probably a 5-10% chance that a car would have been in the right place in either my lane or the leftmost lane to create an unavoidable SERIOUS accident.

Now, I just hate those odds. How many times a night do you get rivered by the small set or gutshot? I count myself very lucky and am scolding myself for not paying more attention to my surroundings.


The second incident happened yesterday at a traffic light intersection. I was sitting at a red light waiting to make a left hand turn off of a freeway exit ramp. There were two left turn lanes, and I was in the right hand one. The lane I was in was also permitted to proceed straight (onto a freeway on ramp). The left hand land was a must turn lane.

When the light turned green, I attempted to make my left turn through the intersection. The car in the left hand lane accelerated in an attempt to go straight through the intersection. The lady driving the Nissan Maxima hit the side of my car just behind the driver side door.

I don't know what the impact speed was, but it probably wasn't that high. The Maxima had already started slowing down (though didn't attempt to turn to avoid hitting me) when the driver noticed me in her path. Perhaps it was because the ground was wet, but my car just spun like a top across the intersection.

No injuries to anyone, but mucho inconvenience.

Grinding away.... and my SNG Pipeline

I've finally cleared my Party VIP and Cryptos bonuses for January. I am specifically not playing more at Party after clearing the current target because I don't want to be issued an even bigger target next month. The only other bonus I still particularly want to get cracking on is the Martinspoker one mentioned by Scurvy, which I have not yet started. I'm planning on going the €100NL route there, and with 3000 points to accumulate, I'm hoping that 60% of the pots at those tables are sufficiently raked (min pot size requirement appears to be €7.50) so that it won't take more than 5000 hands to clear.

I barely have 3k VPPs at Stars for January as this promo has by far been the least lucrative of the bunch (and additionally the flu bug knocked me out of commission during the whole first week of the month). I'm debating on whether or not it is worth the effort to complete the next 1k VPPs to reach Gold status (and Platinum is out of the question given the deadline). Hmmmm, assuming that I planned to accumulate at least 4k VPPs in February, then not reaching Gold level in January will "cost" 2000FPPs worth ~$32. My VPP accumulation rate is roughly 1000VPPs/3 hours for an approximate $10/hour in toppings. Ahhh, the petty thoughts of a low limit grinder.

Yes, it is clear that I was very much a low limit grinder this month, representing over 80% of my poker time. This is not how I intended to spend this month. At this stage, I let learning take a back seat to bonus whoring? Apparently the tail wags the dog in my world... (i.e. this month's promotions highly favoring playing full-table low limit ring games dictated my playing)

On the other hand, it looks like this month will be my 6th best month in earnings, but more significantly it was certainly the least stressful month of poker in at least a year. I don't think that the relative ease of the month should be overlooked. I feel that I played virtually tilt-free poker during this time, and that is something to be pleased about.

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SNG's via a dual-pipelined 4-stage processor?

There seems to be some resemblance between the managing of SNG's and the managing of CPU instructions in a multipipeline, multistage microprocessor. (My educational background is in Computer Engineering) These are my current thoughts:

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With players like Elky or Pokernerd tearing up the online world with their SNG's exploits, I've been considering how I would go about playing a lot of SNG's. I am certainly no expert at SNG's, and my experimentations have been down at the $20+2 Party SNG's. (Party SNG's play a fixed number of hands, 10, per blind level)

First off, for some perspective, what is the theoretical maximum earn rate of 8-tabling $20+2 SNG's? Experts say that a good ROI for multitabling $20+2 SNG's is 20% or $4.40 per SNG. Assuming it takes an average of 40 minutes to complete a single SNG, then (in steady state) 12 SNG's could be run through per hour for an hourly rate of $52.80.

It is a very simple to say that, for a winning SNG player, the more SNG's played, the more money you make. However, there are "scheduling" issues that make it difficult to achieve this simple ($ROI-per-SNG * #-tables / #-hours-per-SNG) rate while maintaining a high level of play in all of the SNG's played.

There is more table management activity done in multitabling SNG's than multitabling ring games. With ring games, so long as all of your current tables are good (and no substantially better tables are discovered), there is no other table management activity. SNG's, on the other hand, transition through early-mid-late phases with (on average) increasing amount of attention required as progressing through these phases. You need to get the maximum number of SNG's running without having too many of them simultaneously in the high-attention-required late phases. (Perhaps in higher stakes SNG's there is a more even distribution of attention-requirements between the various phases, but I will ignore this; in a $20 Party SNG there is absolutely no need to get involved with marginal hands in the first couple of levels)

The obvious thing to even out the collective amount of attention needed for all tables is to stagger the starting times of your SNG's so that you have them somewhat equally distributed amongst the various phases.

Initially, start 2 SNG's. When both SNG's have moved halfway through level 2, launch 2 more SNG's, and repeat this process until 8 SNG's are running. Everything is nice and evenly spaced out.

Consider that when 8-tabling you have 8*60=480 table minutes per hour (with each table minute being worth $0.11 given the $52.80 hourly rate). Let's assume that the first 1.5 SNG levels take 12 minutes. Given the above approach, you have already lost 144 table minutes (or $15.84) while "filling the pipeline"! The same problem is going to occur at the end of your session when you "drain the pipeline". There is no way around this, but it does suggest that you would tend to only choose SNG play when your available session time is substantial, say more than 2 hours.

Now, staggering the starts of the SNG's is all well and good if hands finished at the same rate at each table and you complete each SNG in the same amount of time, but this is not the reality. Some tables will run faster than others, and you will naturally complete any given SNG at a somewhat random time. This has 2 implications:
i) despite the best scheduling efforts you will still run into situations where you have perhaps 2-3 tables down to 2-3 players, 2-3 tables down to 4-5 players with large blinds, and remaining tables in the early levels. Even when completely ignoring the tables in the early levels (as you should), the quality of the decisions you make at the late stage level tables will suffer.
ii) you may have to insert some dead time before kicking off a new SNG to retain the staggering of start times, and this again is lost table minutes. You also need to spend the effort to periodically check if it is time to launch the new SNG(s).

Depending on the session duration, the lost minutes from filling and draining the pipeline may represent the majority of the lost table time, however, at least these are predictable. You can integrate other activities into this: reading/writing email, reading news/blogs/etc, doing any nearby things that can be worked on in 30 second spurts, and even temporarily jumping in some ring game(s) for which you have sufficient data mining info available.

Everything I have mentioned is very simple and obvious. The main point is just that table maintenance becomes a considerably larger factor when multitabling SNG's compared to ring games. The table maintenance is essentially another layer of decisions and actions in online poker playing.

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For sessions of any significant duration, I am already close to maxed-out when 8-tabling ring games, so I may be incapable of effectively 8-tabling SNG's. (e.g. my win rate for 8-tabling may be the same or worse than 6-tabling)

So far, I have been running well in the $20s over a very small sample size, 74 SNG's. My ITM is 44.5%, and ROI 43.73%.

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In terms of screen setup, I have 2 20" LCD monitors. My tables are organized on the 2 monitors like this:

7-5........3-1
8-6........4-2

To help me more quickly recall the state of the SNG's, the tables are organized such that the right most tables are always the SNGs at the highest level. As SNG's finish, the tables in each row will be moved from left to right.

9-7........5-3
10-8........6-4

However, I attempt to keep SNG's of approximately the same level in the same column, so sometimes there will be periods of time when there will be less than 8 active tables organized like:

7-5........3-1
8-6........ -2

or (more unfortunately from the point of view of lost table minutes)

7-5........3-1
8-6........

MTT selection

In my rambling searches today, I found a nice blog entry/article about MTT selection by rizen, an online MTT'er who is currently ranked 49th in the pocketfives online tournament player rankings.

The article touches on the psychological importance of keeping a reasonable ratio of medium size fields/large size fields in your MTT play.

Rizen's blog started fairly recently, and it seems like a pretty good one for online MTT strategy.

Some misc live stats

After reviewing my notes, I estimate that in my last 136 hours of live play I've made -105BB worth of mistakes. I am disgusted.

Mistakes breakdown:
- 19% paying off on river when definitely beaten
- 12% calling on turn when very likely beaten
- 11.5% missed value bets
- 11% incorrectly protecting my hand
- 9% paying off on river when very likely beaten
- 6% folded reasonable winning hand on river
- 4% bet into an obviously better hand
- 27% other

Another interesting stat is +29BB winning with the 2nd best hand on the river.

Meta game considerations

I've been putting in the majority of my recent poker hours in the online setting, mostly multitabling, and this is not a great environment for me when it comes to spending time thinking about hands or situations (other than perhaps late SNG or mid-late MTT situations).

As a diversion and perhaps an educational kick-in-the-pants, I went to play some live $20/$40 LHE at a local poker room. I still have a fair number of Party points to accumulate by Friday for my VIP promotion, but I figure worst case is that I'll have multitable the BBJ tables for a few extra hours to get there.

The table was very beatable with a pretty high variance. Almost every hand saw a flop with between 3-5 players, about 25% of which were limped, 50% were raised, 20% were 3 bet, 5% capped (3 and 4 bets were very ineffective at cutting down the field). There were a decent number of 15+ BB pots, and a very large number of 8-10BB pots.

There were only 2 good players (from the combined point of view of hand selection, aggressiveness, hand reading, postflop play, etc) who happened to be seated on either side of me. Although none of the remaining players was terrible, each of them had some substantial problems with their game - mostly just too loose, although a couple were stupid over-agro and another couple made very poor slow play choices.

To a relatively high degree, almost all players were paying attention to the game as many hands were commented on at their conclusion. I had only played with 2 of the players at the table before, and this did not include the 2 good players as I just recognized them from playing bigger games and how they played the hands that I was able to observe. (Perhaps those judgements are made too loosely, but I feel comfortable with those characterizations)

About a quarter of the way through the session (and btw, I knew this was 1/4 of the way because I had a fixed time that I needed to leave), I was faced with a river decision that, given the number of observant opponents at that early stage of my session, I wonder whether or not I should have played differently for metagame reasons.

Button does not get out of line bluff raising, but he might bluff bet in last position if he senses weakness. BB often tries to make fancy plays.

Hand #1 - 9 seated $20/$40 live LHE
- preflop: folded to me in MP+2, I open raise with JhJs, folded to button who cold calls, SB folds, BB calls. (3 players, 6.5 small bets)
- flop: Jc9h4s, BB checks, I bet, button calls after a brief pause, BB folds (2 players, 8.5 small bets)
- turn: Jc9h4s8c, I bet, button calls, again after a brief pause (2 players, 6 big bets)
- river: Jc9h4s8c7s, a player not in the hand calls out "pocket tens is good", after a small pause, I bet/fold.

(i) Likely hands that check behind, but will call a bet: QJs (1 way), AJ (4), KJs (1); 6 total
(ii) Hands that will almost certainly raise: TT (6), JTs (1); 7 total
(I exclude QTs because button raises 100% on the turn with a straight, and no other sets or PP are likely given the action)

The problem that I have with checking the river is the relative ratio of (i) to (ii). I have no intention of check/folding, so at the time I thought that bet/folding was the best choice. However, the huge problem of making such folds in front of observant players is simply that others will start taking a shot at you on scary boards.

I believe that online, on average, fewer opponents are paying attention to the action, and secondly if I am concerned about opponents taking advantage of such things, a table change is just a click away. Hence, online I am pretty comfortable with check/fold.

Confronted with exactly the same live situation again, I would check/call. If this hand occured close to the end of my session, I would revert back to bet/fold.

(Should I consider bet/calling?)

Ironically, I believe that only 1 situation actually ended up occuring where someone took a shot at me. All I can say is, nice check raise, bad timing.

Hand #2 - 6 seated $20/$40 live LHE (a few of the players had stepped out for a smoke)
- preflop: Hero dealt Ah3h UTG; Hero raises, folded to button who calls, BB calls (same BB as from Hand #1). (3 players, 6.5 small bets)
- flop: Ac7h3d, BB checks, hero bets, button fold, BB calls (2 players, 8.5 small bets)
- turn: Ac7h3d8h, BB check/calls (2 players, 6 big bets)
- river: Ac7h3d8h9h, BB check raises, hero 3 bets, BB turbo mucks.

Given what BB has seen of me, I think he made a very reasonable check/raise bluff (although were I him, I would have bet as a bluff because I think it would be just as effective at half the cost). In very many scenarios, I will hate being check raised on the river with top pair crappy kicker (remember it was a 6 handed situation) on this board. Not that I fold here getting 9:1 but BB might think so given hand #1, and getting 6:1 I would be very unhappy calling (perhaps if I was really having a terrible session and mindset, I would be even more inclined to muck).
He will also often knock me off TT-KK in these situations if I am stupid enough to bet this river (which makes a straight bet by BB an even better play since I am very frequently checking behind on the river with better hands that might fold to a bet).

Anyway, getting back to the metagame, only 1 hand came up where someone took a shot at me, but I also believe this happened because I won a few decent pots in roughly the 3rd quarter of my session to have a very substantial stack of chips sitting in front of me (during the 2nd quarter I had also bought a second rack of chips since I dislike having few chips in my stack). Had I lost a couple of more hands in the middle of the session, I'm certain that my opponents would have been emboldened to put much more pressure on me. Metagame considerations do matter.

Tea for the Tillerman

For no particular reason, today I was browsing through the pokerstars tournament database and noticed Tillerman for the first time. Tillerman, a Brit by the name of Iain Girdwood, was one of the top Blizzard RTS pro-gamers in the world. He was also notable in the Blizzard RTS community because he also put out very good commentary on Warcraft III replays (content really is king in the entertainment industry...). During my WC3 days, a substantial amount of my learning in the middle tiers came from watching WC3 replays commentated by the likes of player/commentators like Tillerman.

He made the jump to poker about 2.5 years ago which he chronicled in this post. As an example of how he is not one to do things halfway, check out his poker library.
It is amusing, but completely understandable, to read his timeline of clearing $100k within the first 6 months when taken in context of the absolute pitance that world class pro-Blizzard-RTS-gamers make (even if they are willing to move to South Korea, lol). It wouldn't surprise me if the 95th percentile online poker player can outearn the 99.999th percentile Starcraft/WC3 player by an order of magnitude. Such are the cruel injustices of life; ya gotta be where the money is.

The top level RTS pro-gamers are amazing in many dimensions. An obvious carryover is the ability to micromanage very quickly and efficiently, which translates in online poker to extreme multitablers. They can rapidly execute a large number of actions without making any mistakes. Another very helpful skill the pro-gamers have is an incredible ability to quickly adapt efficient strategies and counterstrategies. Blizzard, the game creator, would frequently be tweaking the game; making "balance" changes that affected the huge number of variables involved in the game. The patches would be released pretty often, sometimes about once a month and sometimes more frequently. In short order, the top level players would grasp all of the complex effects of the interdependent changes to devise new optimal strategies and counterstrategies. I've always been in awe of this ability.

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Getting back to poker: Tillerman went almost exclusively through the NL ring game route, albeit very quickly. He wrote a simple post about earn rates in NL ring games, Tillerman's 5% (and 7%) rule.

The threads related to earn rates at the 2+2 forums define a range of between 7-10PT BB/100h (PT BBs == 2x the big blind) as a good-great range for the $100NL game, and somewhere between 5-7PT BB/100h for midstakes NL.

DoubleAs has been a long time successful NL ring game player (in relative main-stream poker blogger terms), and Eric has increasingly been talking about his refocusing on NL ring games.

In my spare time, I'm thinking of trying to work my way up a few levels at the NL ring games. I took a shot at 8-tabling $100NL and was able to sustain 7PT BB/100h for about 11k hands. I would like to get comfortable significantly multitabling the $200NL soon.

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Another thing that would be fun to try is the significant mulitabling of SNGs, a-la-pokernerd. I tried out 4-tabling, and it seems managable. Ideally, I would do this at Stars to level up in the VIP thing, but a substantial limitation is the inability to use autohotkey shortcuts due to the damn focus stealing.

I'll probably have to put in some substantial LHE hands this week at Party to hit my VIP promotion target (due to the puny number of VIP points I accumulated during my $100NL side experiment). I'm already seriously violating one of my resolutions for this year to decrease the quantity of play in favor of higher quality. At least, I have not been playing tired...

Why isn't there ever enough time???!!?

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Only played one MTT this weekend, the $500k guaranteed at Party. Busted ~1000/3300th when I pushed my shortish stack with JJ and ran into AAs.

Again, the structure of this tournament is so much more forgiving than the corresponding Stars event (which again increased this week to 4074 entrants!!). I won exactly 0 hands in the first 4 levels. I won 2 hands in level 5 - winning the blinds on one, and then having everyone fold into my BB in the other. In spite of this, when I made a stand to play my first major hand more than 90 minutes into the event, I still had something like 6x bb - still very short, but enough to get some breathing room after just one double up.

Helpful tools?

The following is a list of all programs that I use both in real-time and offline:
- Poker Tracker - an essential $55 data mining tool
- PokerACE HUD - a $25 real time display of data mining info
- Poker Stove - basically a free, but very fancy poker calculator
- Poker Patterns - a free graphing application for displaying your archived Poker Tracker results
- Autohotkey - a free automation/hotkey/scripting tool that I use to replace my mouse with keyboard only shortcuts when multitabling at sites ~that don't steal focus~!!!
- UltimateHistory - a free application that can be used to capture UltimateBet hands for import into Poker Tracker
- Excel - simple poker results spreadsheet

Some notable program/tools that I currently don't use are:
- Turbo Texas Hold'em , Poker Academy - poker simulators
- StatKing - a $30 tool for tracking poker results
- PokerCharts - a subscription based ($2/month, $20/year) web based tool for tracking poker results
- regular/automated data backup?? - Every few months I wake up in a cold sweat and remember to make a backup of my poker tracker data and my poker results spreadsheet. There has got to be a better way.... Maybe something really hi-tech like putting a post-it note on my monitor reminding me to do data backup biweekly.

Does anyone use any other tools/utilities for any aspect of their poker playing?

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I'm thinking of switching from using Excel to something like StatKing or PokerCharts that seem to be the premier 2 apps for tracking results.

Currently, I track all my play, both live and online, in an Excel spreadsheet. I always log the game type, stakes, result, date, and session duration. I have a seperate worksheet for each site that I play at plus a worksheet for live play. I don't have any good reason for having a seperate worksheet per site; originally I just thought it might be easier for me to reconcile the results that I tracked with my actual account balance at each site to check for mistakes (either mine or theirs)
It is a very low tech approach, but historically I prefer to look at raw data. I also generally don't mind occasionally doing some semi-manual sorts of the data to do various types of queries.

As I have increased the number of sites that I play at, types of games, and stakes, it is becoming increasingly unwieldy and inefficiently do offline data analysis of results.

The cost difference between StatKing and PokerCharts is neglible. PokerCharts seems to be more feature rich, but I'm not sure how I feel about loading my own personal information onto their site. (One of their arguments is that their site is more secure than an individual's PC connected to the internet. However, I have a seperate PC that is not connected to any network on which I keep all of my personal data)

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(edit)
TripJax's post today discussed another free alternative - Poker Dominator's session tracker

(edit 2/7/06)
Pokernerd (and many others) rave about SNG Power Tools created by eastbay.

Weekend update

Weekend poker consisted a very large number of small stakes LHE hands at Party, Stars, and Cryptos to work off various bonuses and/or level up in VIP status. No live play this weekend as I can't justify the time expenditure given the current online promotions. Instead, for some variety, I squeezed in exactly 1 MTT, the $500k guaranteed at Stars.

There were just shy of 4k entrants today! Who says that the poker boom has peaked? I cashed, but unfortunately in the absolute bottom tier.

I was pretty disappointed because I had average chips for a decent portion of the 3rd hour, but couldn't get any further (primarily due to losing 4 preflop coin flip or better situations to short stacks). I probably played too conservatively with between 500 down to 400 players remaining with a ~10x bb stack.

I didn't actually count, but I'm pretty sure I broke my record today for the most number of table changes in a single MTT - fairly annoying.

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There was one somewhat interesting small stakes LHE hand that I want to give more thought to. The basic premise is what to do when you have a decent hand plus a good draw, but are caught between a clearly better hand and a maniac who keeps pushing with likely the worst hand?

(edit: after writing out my thoughts on this hand, it is not very interesting after all, but I since I already spent the time, I will leave it in the post anyways...)

hand #1
Party $3/$6 10 seated, BB is a very tight, solid straightforward player who only raises with big hands, button is somewhat of a maniac who severely overplays his hands.
- preflop: fold, fold, UTG+2 calls, folded to button who calls, I complete in the SB w KhJh, BB checks. (4 players, 4 small bets)
- flop: KcQhTh: I check, BB checks, UTG+2 bets, button raises, I flat call, BB 3 bets cold, UTG+2 folds, button and I call. (3 players, 14 small bets)
- turn: KcQhThKs: I check, BB bets, button raises, I flat call, BB 3 bets, button caps (and has only $7 behind), both call. (3 players, 19 big bets)
- river: KcQhThKs8c: I check, BB bets, button raises all in for $7, both call. (final pot: 22.5 big bets)

I know, I know...I played this hand extremely passively. When the action came back to me on the flop, I was very conflicted on whether or not to 3 bet. In almost any other circumstance I will 3 bet here, however because of button's tendency to overplay his hands, I decided to "gamble" and get a certain chance to check raise the turn.

I believe the majority of the time the button has a weak K, but he may also raise with a flush draw (but he does not have the nut flush draw because he would have raised preflop 100% of the time on the button with a suited A), 2 pair (the only 2 pair hand he could have is QT as he will raise any big K on the button) or an OESD. I'm 100% sure that if no one bets the turn, he will bet (he never takes his free card).

Is it a mistake for me not to 3 bet the flop when I should feel confident that my pot equity is high? A blank on the turn will drop my perceived pot equity, so it seems safer for me to try and get more money in on the flop (prior to BB's action defining his hand).

Given that the BB was so tight, I assumed BB was not a factor, and that the large majority of the time I am ahead of both UTG+2 and button and that between them they have a max of 8 outs, but probably less because of my flush draw. During the actual hand, I forgot to consider than UTG+2 might have the nut flush draw - a pretty big oversight on my part. (I think the reason for this oversight is that I had too much of my attention focused on button's play - and also perhaps because I was 8 tabling at the time)

When BB 3 bets cold, I am almost 100% sure he has a straight (the only other small possibility now that I think about it is a set of Ts), and understand that I must improve.

On the turn, I'm caught between a certainly better hand and a maniac who is likely overplaying his hand.

How do I count my outs on the turn? A number of my outs are likely to result in a chop (An A often has me chopping with BB, and a Q or T often has me chopping with button). Absolute worst case is when BB has Tens full likely giving me 5 outs to win (3 for pairing my kicker, and 2 for the straight/royal flush) and 3 outs to chop.

How should I have played this hand?

Anyway, what were the results?:
BB had AJo (broadway straight) with no hearts, and button had that monster hand K2o.

nothing of interest

I've played about 10k hands of limit hold'em this week (combined online and live, naturally heavily skewed towards online), and there was not one interesting hand or situation that came up. BORING!! The only reason I am making this post is because of superstition. Very frequently after I write a post about how things are going one way, things immediately deviate. Here's hoping to keeping up the tradition.... "May you live in interesting times..."

Yes, yes, I know it is bad luck to be superstitious...

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According to the forums at 2+2, Elky has just reached SuperNova status at Pokerstars. What a maniac!! 100,000 VPPs in less than 13 days! Elky is a 23 year old professional gamer (a native of France who moved to Korea a few years ago to play Starcraft professionally). He is positively inhuman.

Balancing those resolutions

My main poker resolutions for the short term are:
1) focusing on shorthanded games
---1a) improve shorthanded play
---1b) put in substantial hours in shorthanded games
2) favor quality over quantity

During the WPBT trip last month, it was repeatedly and unequivocally bashed into my head that I should spend the vast majority of my online ring game time in short handed games. During the remainder of December, I proceeded to put in no more than a couple of hours in short handed games. How's that for being a good listener?

Since it is that time of year for following up on resolutions, I will make a more concerted effort to follow up on this. However, while I want to maximize my BB/100h, I want to make sure that I take reasonable advantage of site promotions/rewards/incentives.

Thus I intend to only play short handed on sites where I receive rakeback, or more generally speaking get rewarded based on my MGR (monthly gross revenue). Currently, the only site I am registered at that fits this requirement is Sun Poker. I may be a little slow initially at increasing the number of tables I play at that site due to the inability to data mine observed hands, and at least initially, I don't intend to play any higher than $5/$10.

Promotions like Stars VIP don't differentiate based on MGR, and this strongly discourages me from playing shorthanded there. (Several bloggers seem fairly comfortable multitabling the $50->$200 SNGs for healthly ROIs and fairly rapid accumulation of VPPs, however that is a seperate analysis) For my skill set, the $3/$6 and $5/$10 9 max limit games seem optimal from the point of view of rewards from the VIP program.

Another resolution that I intend to follow is primarily to play better, instead of more poker. Due to my recent sickness, I have been sleeping close to 100% more than usual, and I definitely feel a noticable improvement in my mental clarity. I will not play tired in 2006. The side effect of this is that I expect to have far more days in which I play 0 hands of poker than have been the case in 2005.

Ironically, if Party's VIP department introduces another Cruise promotion similar to the one held over Christmas, I'm going to be essentially throwing out all of these resolutions during the promo period. The value of that promotion is so overwhelming large that it cannot be ignored, and timing is absolutely of the essence. I have done extensive analysis of strategies for this promotion, and all necessary preparations are in place if a similar promotion is repeated.

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Go stevejpa!!

Steve is a student from my alma mater, University of Waterloo. He has made the TV table at the PCA, and is 2nd in chips. Go Steve!!

Still alive

This has been no 24 hour flu bug, but I think I am now really on the road to recovery. :) Tired though...

I realized that these last few days have represented the longest stretch of time that I have not played a single hand of poker since I started playing almost two years ago. I've had to live vicariously through others - particularly those bloggers down in the PCA.

2006 Kickoff

2005 was a moderately good year, with plenty of squandered opportunities. Here's to making the best of 2006!

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Blogging

Mucho thanks to Scurvy for his shoutout of this blog in his Review of Poker Blogs. I'm quite honored (actually honoured, as I'm Canadian) since Scurvy is quite simply one of the best poker bloggers on the net. He consistently puts out high quality, informative content, and I wish him success in his upcoming forays into the world of full-time poker playing.

It is really stretching it to call this a poker strategy blog, because it is simply a journal of my experiences. Occasionally, I'll encounter an interesting situation that I'll need to write out in its entirety to get closure on the subject. While I think these are the most helpful things for me to write about, they just don't happen that often. More often than not, when I go back and read my old postings I have a strong desire to just delete them.

Prior to this shoutout, I'd say that my personal highlight from writing this blog was receiving an unsolicted comment from ChrisF regarding a $20/$40 hand I played. Naturally his comment was pointing out what a donkey I am, but that's besides the point. This is Chris F'in Fargis.

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Holiday play

Early on in the holiday week I took a rough case of the unmentionable deep in a $500 buy in event finishing just short of the bubble having started the last hand with a decent sized stack. This disturbed me much more than it should have. For those Top-Gun fans, "I'm hangin on too tight... I've lost the edge".

For most of the remaining week, I took a vacation from Poker stress, and played the easiest hold'em game on the net (from the combined difficulty/variance/hourly-rate POV): $100NL on Party. 8-tabling those games is less stressful than 2-tabling $10/$20 6-max. Another motivator for sticking to those games is for rake-minimization. I'm honestly, but stupidly, not getting the (other) unmentionable, and in the absence of any reasonable promotions, it seemed just as well to "take a break". (the only other thing I considered was taking advantage of the Stars double FPP points promo for the last week of December which essentially works out to $0.032/raked hand, however my rationale is that shortly after the Stars VIP kicks off, I will never be earning less than double FPPs ever again. Might as well save the play for VPP accumulation)

speaking of which...
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Stars VIP

The Stars VIP program is semi-reasonable in lieu of the unmentionable, at least at moderately low limit - 9 seated tables. Assuming a significant number of hands played (and you accept things like a freeroll into a $200+$15 event at face value), the VIP program works out to roughly $0.016/raked hand at BronzeStar, $0.024/rh at SilverStar, $0.032/rh at GoldStar, $0.04/rh at PlatinumStar, and $0.056/rh at SuperNova. Converting these numbers into BB/100h at stakes such as $2/$4 and $3/$6 LHE works out to generous returns since the average-rake/rh at those levels is only slightly above $1. Coupled with 9-max games, this can provide barely break-even grinders a profitable, but unsatisfying existence.

...

Anyhow, New year's comes around, and I make a concerted effort to level up ASAP. Funny enough, I somehow decided to kick off the first hour playing $0.50/$1.00NL. After 4-tabling for an hour, I had a whopping 46 VPPs, so that was enough of that. I then fire up 7-tables of $3/$6 9-max (granted starting with 1 table, adding each additional table after 5 or more minutes, since I have been so spoiled by the ability on Party to datamine 16 billion hands before sitting down for the first time, and pretty much require having ~some~ hand history before multitabling.) My goal was to make Gold Star by the end of the second day and PlatinumStar by the time my wife returns home from her trip next week. Again, nice goals, but can I follow through?

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Pain

I work my way up to about 1300VPPs (1500 needed to Silver, and 4k needed for Gold) when I decide it is time to take a break, head on down to the gym and get a nice New Year's workout. I didn't mention that the night before I had sneezed a couple of times, and that I had a ticklish nose when I woke up on New Years Day. Anyway, shortly after I got back from my workout, an impending case of the flu hit me square in the head.

I haven't had anything worse than a mild cold so far this decade, and this felt like my head was stuck in a vice. I was soon in no condition to be walking around, let alone trying to go out and drive around trying to find a pharmacy that was open on New Year's Day. For the next 18 hours, I tried on and off to sleep through an achy, sweaty miserable night. The next morning, when I was reasonably sure that the nearby Safeway would be open, I made the trip out and picked up whatever I could find that provided maximum relief for Sinus pain.

After doping up, I was actually able to get a few hours of real sleep, and then wake up in the mood to rack up some more VPPs. I worked my way up to about 2k points before realizing it was quite premature to call an end to my flu bug. However, during that session I had the pleasure of sitting at one table with Dr. Pauly. I believe we only faced off 2 hands - the first of which Dr. Pauly called my river bluff when we both missed our flush draw, and the other hand he paid me off all the way with top pair worse kicker. I'm content to have an even-Steven situation with a fellow blogger. I'm pretty sure he didn't know who I was anyway.

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Grand Larceny of focus

One pretty disappointing thing about multitabling at Stars is the fact that whenever you are prompted for an action at a table, the Stars GUI client sets the focus to that table. This makes it EXTREMELY dangerous to use keyboard shortcuts a-la-autohotkey. It was actually roughly 45 minutes of multitabling before I realized this behavior. Initially I was just thinking that I was making a heck of a lot of misclicks.

This sets me back to using the mouse only to multitable at Stars. As I said earlier, my possible RSI condition is discouraging me from overusing the mouse, but from the days of Starcraft/Zerg, I've often been in the house of thought that "why click just once, when 3 or 4 times will get the job done with even more certainty?". I've been unlearning this behavior, but at any rate, this is discouraging from the point of view of attempting to get to SuperNova status without wrecking my hand.

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It is not looking like I'm going to come anywhere near my original timeline for leveling up through the Stars VIP program. Based on some 2+2 threads, it sounds like some maniacs made it to PlatinumStar in the first 24 hours. At any rate, I've been running very good in all these low limit games for the last week or so, and this kind of positive reinforcement has been good for my psyche regardless of other progress.