WSOP Schedule change

Harrahs today announced they are making schedule changes for the $50k HORSE event to facilitate television coverage. The event was changed from July 25-27 to July 12-14. The press release says the final schedule is on the WSOP web site, but naturally it hasn't been updated yet.

While it is all fine and dandy that the event will be getting TV coverage, the unfortunate thing for me is the logistical snafus this causes. Travel arrangements already made need to be changed (my dad already booked his flight down from Canada), vacation time from the day job needs to be rescheduled, and now multiple trips to Vegas are needed. Boo!

Ask me 6 months ago if I would have minded accomodating schedule changes before I had won any of these satellites, and I'm sure I would have heartily agreed. Funny thing about human nature in how people react differently if something they already have gets taken away or changed vs. if they never had the thing in the first place. (or maybe it is just me....)

I just hope this is the final schedule. I feel a bit foolish telling people the firm dates I had already detailed have changed, and would feel like a complete idiot if they change again....

The Main Event and the HORSE event were not being run concurrently (more like back to back), so I don't really understand why the schedule change was needed. :(

Playing the dead zone: another view

In the "The Zone System" section of Harrington on Hold'em II, the lowest level Action Dad describes is entitled "The Dead Zone" where (by accident) a player ends up with an M of less than 1.

In tonight's Party $2k added, I stumbled into this neighbourhood for the first time in quite a while. (Trapped another almost identical medium stack all in..... runner runner str flush....waah waah...) I was left with exactly 9/16 big blinds on the button, and the antes total 9/16 big blinds (9 handed; ante costs you over 10% of your stack each hand).

The decision to be made is when to get those chips in. It definitely needs to be soon, but you still want to consider your starting hand choices and the tendencies of your opponents. You have no fold equity. Frequently when you have a short stack you want to ~open~ push your stack in (and fold if any player has entered the pot in front of you). Harrington states that it is essential to be the first player in the pot, but I would argue with a stack roughly the size of the small blind, then under the right circumstances you would like a nice size raise in front of you to both protect your hand and give you even better pot odds.

Let's consider 3 possible scenarios:
1) Folded to Hero on the button who has 87o (0.5625bb). Small blind is a loose passive, Big blind is a tight passive, both with medium size stacks. This scenario provides you 3:1 pot odds, and the most likely scenario is that a flop will be seen three ways and will only drop to headsup if one opponent flops or turns a hand. 87o has no high card strength, and plugging into PokerStove shows the hand has ~30% pot equity vs 2 random hands. Expected value: 0.675 big blinds, likelihood of surviving 30%.

2) tight MP+2 player opens for 2x big blind (his standard raise), folded to Hero who has A2o in CO (0.50bb), loose player on button, tightish players in blinds (however, big blind has medium stack and can easily afford 1xbb to see the flop). This scenario again looks like close to 2 opponents seeing the flop. Assuming a hand range for MP+2 of any pair, ATs+, KQs, and one other opponent with a random hand, Hero's pot equity is ~23.5%. Expected value: 0.47 big blinds, likelihood of surviving 23.5%.

3) MP player with huge stack raises 3.5x bb. His open raising standards have included some speculative hands, which will be classified as any pair, any A better than A5s, A7o, any 2 broadways, and suited connectors down to 76s. Folded to hero in CO+1 who finds JTo (0.4375bb). One loose passive in CO, the remaining players are fairly tight. This scenario offers a better than average chance of a headsup pot with a hand that actually stands to be a coin flip or better to a substantial part of Villain's range. PokerStove computes a pot equity of 39% against Villain's range. Expected value: 0.85 big blinds, likelihood of surviving 39%.

As you can surely tell, I elected to get my chips in during scenario #3. I wish I could say I picked the best spot, quintupled up, and went on to take down the MTT. It would make a nice story, and it would really emphasize the importance of not giving up in an MTT and the importance of paying attention. Alas, Villain shows KQs, flops a K and no miracle happens.

Bah, hopefully there will be a better story to tell next time....

Misc stuff

Buckeroo

I have a $1 chip from every B&M poker room I have ever played in except for Aladdin in LV and the Holiday Inn in Aruba. I'm not sure when the Aladdin -> Planet Hollywood transformation will be complete, possibly before my next trip to LV in July. If any of you readers out there have a spare $1 chip from either of these cardrooms, please let me know....

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Health

I've been doing the daily cardio thing now for a little over 2 weeks, and I'm no longer feeling nauseous at the end. I haven't yet noticed any appreciable difference in mental alertness, but maybe this will just take some more time.

Better dietary and sleep habits have been rather hit or miss. Definite area for improvement.

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Online MTTs

I undershot my target of 60 $100+ buy in MTTs for April. Part of the reason, is that I frequently got home too late from the day job to play in the 9pm Party $2k added (the only $100+ MTT that I could play on a weekday). This is somewhat out of my control. However, I skipped a goodly number of Sunday tournaments that I was available to play in merely due to lack of discipline. BAD DAVE!

I feel very good about my MTT play of late, so optimistically it feels like I just need to get enough events in.

There is a moderate amount of time management balance required when playing MTTs. The reason is because, when I have enough available attention, I try and keep a modest number of ring games open simultaneously to maximize my hourly rate. Finding the optimal balance is an ongoing learning experience.

An important component in my MTT strategy is to increase my chance of having an above average stack when the field size has been cut by 75% but only taking a reasonable amount of risk and attention. I've been experimenting with starting to pay more attention to the action at roughly the 45 minute mark (and/or when the field has been cut by roughly 40%) when my and the average players' M still allows for a wider range of plays. Restealing, trapping and avoiding traps in deep stack situations require better reads (and hence require paying more attention).

Under a number of circumstances I would allocate more of my attention for ring games. These include: My M dropping early to a range of 10 or less, being moved from a broken table to a table which will break soon and I have little info on my opponents.
A case where I would focus an above average amount of attention to an MTT is if I am able to double up early at a loose table that has a lot of chips in play and that the table will break in roughly 15-45 minutes.

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Other MTT stuff

I've taken some notice of medium -> large field $300->$500 buy in online MTTs. The average quality of play seems not substantially different than $100->$200 buy in events, so I will no longer feel any trepidation into buying directly into these events. (this goes back to time management/hourly rate considerations)

I completely skipped the Grand Series of Poker on the Poker Room network mostly because I haven't spent the time to figure out why Poker Tracker is not working for me on those sites. This turned out to be quite foolish since many of those events ended up having very substantial overlays.

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Online ring games

Ring games for the later half of April were very swingy. Up 100BB one session, down 100BB the next session, repeat....

The main problem from the last few weeks was my tendency to play shorter sessions when I was winning and longer sessions when losing. Since it is very natural to play better when you are winning, my behavior should be the reverse. I've been better about this in the past and will make a more conscious effort to follow this mantra.

I'm currently undecided on if I should be spending time trying to become comfortable 4 tabling Party $10/$20 6max or 3 tabling $15/$30 6max or 2-3 tabling $400NL.

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Live ring games

In term of live ring games, almost all of my time was spent in the $20/$40 LHE game for the last couple of weeks. I've been running very good and playing well. I switched poker rooms to play in a place where $20/$40 is the largest stakes spread, and the game is even better than the great $20/$40 games at the old poker room.

To continue the learning process, I've incorporated more selective LAGgyness into my play. This serves 2 purposes: 1) to win more pots with the worst hand vs players that are capable of folding, 2) to get more action on my legit hands. The degree of LAGgyness requires some fine tuning, and I imagine I'm going to run so bad at some point that I'll be psychologically forced back into a TAGgy style of play. For now at least, it is a lot of fun.

Cause for alarm...

Today I approached the fine line that divides the recreational online poker player and the degenerate online poker player....and crossed over. Yes, I did in fact relieve myself in a empty bottle.

No need for elaborate excuses (although they are available); I never imagined this day would come, but I suppose my priorities have shifted somewhat. Disturbing, but interesting....

"Luck is when preparation meets opportunity"

Seneca

Roman dramatist, philosopher, & politician (5 BC - 65 AD)

The above is a pretty cheesy quote, however I am a big believer in preparation and training. Event #1 of the 2006 WSOP is a mere 69 days away. The Main Event kicks off in 101 days. The clock is ticking. . . . . .

What type of preparation can and should be done in those days?

A very obvious area that needs substantial hours of work is limit mixed games (for the HORSE event). The danger though is that this could become a big black hole of time since there is just so much to learn. The law of diminishing returns will take effect at some point, but it is hard to predict if this happens after 50 hours, 100 hours, 200 hours....
i) studying the poker literature, with a particular focus on "7 card stud for Advanced Players" (no more reading fiction novels!)
ii) practice remembering other player's hands for stud games (both online and live; online for the convenience, but plenty of live practice is needed because of the additional need to remember your own hole cards)
iii) become very adept at calculating pot equity based on my outs vs. the number of exposed cards (an additional habit completely unnecessary in games with community cards, like hold'em)
iv) plenty of ring game experience with postgame analysis done on interesting hands (a Vegas trip might need to be thrown in to get some actual live experience in these types of games at non-trivial stakes)

Two other major areas related to stamina that will receive substantial time investment are: v) physical fitness training/healthly lifestyle and vi) practice concentrating for longer periods of time.

v) daily exercise (particularly cardio), better sleep habits (sufficient sleep at regular times), better diet (less fat and salt, more fruits and veggies), drinking more water, ginko biloba? (So long free radicals!)
vi) partake in lengthy (10-12 hour) live game sessions

I think (vi) is important because I've actually had very very little experience in playing live for prolonged periods of time, and the times that I have were plagued with plenty of terrible decisions in the later hours (e.g. both of my WPT events). Probably (v) will actually have a bigger effect, but somehow I think it will be good to practice (vi). (vi) could be started in a few weeks time to allow the benefits of (v) to kick in.

vii) more practice in deep stack NL tournaments, such as the Stars Deep stack tournaments. (this was an area that I talked about earlier in the year, but never followed through on) Additionally, I will continue to play supers for $10k events like FTP's Winners Choice or Interpoker's LOQ, with the intention of using the entry for WPT Mirage or WPT Mandalay Bay.
Another outlet for practice might be the $30 NLHE rebuys on Party. The number of chips in play becomes quite substantial due to the crazy first hour play, but also because of the rebuy bug abuse.

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On a slightly different note, I've been reflecting a bit on how crazy things have been lately.

The last month or so has been quite a thrill ride in MTT/supers. For example, at some point in each event I have had at least $5k in real tournament equity in 6 different MTTs/supers and double this number with at least $1k of equity. This implies I was involved in a fair number of hands that had close to a 5 figure outcome. That is just sick. I don't know if I want to be able to become desensitized to such things, but I do know that I am very affected by these swings. I suppose I will either get used to it, or else become prematurally grey or bald or both.

In limit ring games, my swings were in the +/- 200BB ranges at some of the higher stakes I have played at ($10/$20->$15/$30 online and $20/$40->$40/$80 live). The difference was that these swings came over a longer period of time; hours or days, not seconds.

HEEHAW!!

I mean, YEEHAW. I took down the $1000+$50 WSOP super today at Interpoker for their $15k WSOP ME package. It is an awesome relief to "get this out of the way".

Here's hoping to paying mucho mucho taxes in 2006....

Bad Limit Hold'em decisions

In my last live $20/$40 LHE session, I made the worst possible mistake that can be made in Limit Hold'em....twice in the same orbit. I'll list them both here because I need a reminder to stop being such a weak-tight-passive retard. My preflop decisions are debatable, but the substantially dominating factor in both hands is that the cost of seeing the showdown is well defined.

First I should try to define my mental state prior to these two hands. In the only 3 hands I had been involved in during the previous 30 minutes I missed a very good opportunity to bluff at a 4.5 big bet pot on the river in a 3 way hand (Hero was in 1st pos, pfr was on my left: protected pot) and was outdrawn twice in ~5BB pots by the Donk on my immediate right. My confidence level was somewhat deflated at the start of these hands, and significantly impacted after hand #1.

hand #1
8 seated $20/$40 LHE
Villain #1: very large preflop limping range, plays draws very aggressively on the flop, very often slow plays the flop with hands like a set even on coordinated boards
Villain #2: fairly aggressive postflop, but slows down in the face of extreme aggression even with hands as good as bottom set
- preflop: Hero limps UTG w AcJs, fold, fold, Villain #1 calls, Villain #2 calls in CO, button calls, SB completes, BB checks (6 players, 6 small bets)
- flop: 2c5cJd, blinds check, Hero bets, V#1 raises, V#2 3-bets, folded back to Hero, Hero calls, V#1 caps, both call. (3 players, 18 small bets)
- turn: 2c5cJd6s, Hero checks, V#1 bets, V#2 quickly calls, Hero calls (3 players, 12 big bets)
- river: 2c5cJd6s3d, Hero checks, V#1 bets, V#2 very reluctantly calls, Hero mucks (final pot 14 big bets) V#1 shows QJo, V#2 takes the pot with KJo

hand #2
9 seated $20/$40 LHE (4 hands after hand #1)
Villain #3: appears to be a LAG, but I have yet to seen him get too out of line
Villain #4: has a very large preflop calling range, but generally has a good sense of where he stands in the hand postflop. Capable of tricky plays, but may be on a mild case of tilt from a couple of bad beats
- preflop: fold, fold, V#3 raises, fold, big Donk calls in the hi-jack, Hero 3 bets in CO w AsJs, button and SB fold, V#4 calls in BB, V#3 and Donk just call. (4 players, 12.5 small bets)
- flop: 3c9dJd, check, V#3 bets, Donk folds, Hero raises, V#4 calls, V#3 calls (3 players, 18.5 small bets)
- turn:3c9dJd7s, V#4 bets (and has 0.75BB remaining), V#3 raises (both V#3 and Hero are very deep), Hero mucks, V#4 calls all in. (2 players, 12.5 big bets)
- river: 3c9dJd7s? (brick). V#4 shows QJo, V#3 mucks.

The first hand wouldn't have been so bad if I had mucked on the turn (although I'd still be pretty sick). The player on my left is taking the lead, so probably 80+% of the time I will only need to call 1 bet on the river closing the action to showdown in a big pot. Additionally, I've played enough with Villain #2 to know that he calls much faster on the river with any hand that beats me.

I honestly think that given the information available at the time it was possible to deduce that a very significant % of the time I am at worst chopping the pot with one or both Villains.

To make matters worse, I foolishly admitted to mucking the best hand, yet another -EV decision. A terrible, terrible metagame slip up.

The second hand is slightly less bad than the first, although still incredibly weak. I was too flustered to comprehend the reasoning of Villain #4's turn bet. My current thoughts are that he had a hand like JT and was conscious that he had less than 2 big bets remaining that were going to put in the pot no matter what, and he bet on the possibility that I raised the flop on a flush draw.
At any rate, it is very straightforward that I will be paying exactly 3 big bets to see the showdown on a 12.5+1=13.5 big bet pot. Given the uncertainty of Villain #2's range and the pot odds, this is a simple calldown.

JTs

Interesting hand from my last live session. It is a classic small stakes hold'em hand. I am unfamilar with all players except for the BB (LAGgy) and the player on my right (Loose passive) (MP+2). Button appears to me to play very "tight and solid" (not a compliment). This was a $20/$40 game, as the $40/$80 looked tough, and I'm practicing good game selection. :P

Any comments or criticisms are welcome.

hand #1
Live $20/$40 LHE 9 seated
- preflop: 2 folds, MP+1 limps, MP+2 limps, Hero calls with JhTh, CO calls, Button raises, 4 calls, Hero re-raises, call, Button caps its, blinds calls, MP+1 folds, everyone else calls. (6 players, 26 small bets)
- flop: 8h8s9h, checked to Hero who bets, all call back to MP+2 who check raises, all call (6 players, 38 small bets)
- turn: 8h8s9h9s, SB bets, BB mucks, MP+2 calls, Hero calls, CO mucks, Button calls (4 players, 23 big bets)
- river: 8h8s9h9sKc, checked around, SB shows 9dTd, MP+2 shows Ac8c, muck, muck.

Preflop is standard with my average pot equity in what is likely to be a 7 handed flop. I can easily get away from my hand if I miss, and won't get too married to my hand with something like top pair. Button I put on KK+ preflop, but based on some later comments after the hand was over, I believe the range was actually JJ+, with JJ being the most likely hand.

On the flop, I bet with the intention of 3 betting the button's overpair. MP+2 loves to play Axs, and I was almost certain he was playing A8s when he revealed his strength (I would have a hard time paying off if an Ah hit on the river since there will almost certainly be people behind me given our positions and the pot size; I'd probably call a bet from MP+2 and fold to a raise from button). I did not put MP+2 on a boat or better since he would have waited for the turn. It was a mistake to not 3 bet the flop (assuming that the majority of the field would continue in the hand given the huge pot size). According to PokerStove, my pot equity is in the high 30s+ regardless of whether the button has KK+, QQ+, or JJ+ (ironically the looser the hand range for the button, the lower my pot equity since Qs represent a decent portion of my "outs").
At the time, I did not 3 bet because I did not have a clear enough picture on which PP button had with me out of position. The button's smooth call of my bet confused me. I wasn't sure if it meant the button had JJ/QQ and was worried about my potential overpair, or if the button had KK/AA and was waiting until the turn to make the field face 2 big bets.

On the turn, I'm down to 2 outs, but have an easy call. (although I hollywooded for 20 seconds to disguise my hand if a 7h hit on the river)

On the river, it sucks when you can't beat the board.

Spinning my wheels, but swinging for the fence

Weekend

I currently have no juicy online promotions influencing me to play online limit ring games . As a change of pace, the last few days have been devoted primarily to live play and online MTTs and supers. The live limit ring games continue to go well, and to balance things out nicely the MTTs and supers ran for a big goose egg. The grand total for the last 3 days of work is an uninspiring -$50. (Net investments in securing a WSOP ME seat now exceed -$850)

The $216 FTP WSOP super last night was kind of fun. During the course of the MTT, I was seated with Andy Bloch, savemyskin (Chris Fargis), TheDonator (a highly ranked online MTT player), and a goodly number of loose passives and weak tights. I busted in the low teens and TheDonator bubbled in 3rd (the 2 seat guarantee was exactly met with 120 entrants). This was the 2nd time I have run this event, and the field was very soft on both occasions. I'll continue to play this event if I don't win a seat elsewhere.

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Game choices for the short term

I've made some decisions on my game play for the next few months that deviate from recent strategy. In a nutshell, I plan to de-emphasize steady bankroll growth and variance minimization. My tolerance for going broke is increased. To quantify this, I would say that a tolerable risk of ruin in the next 12 months is 30%.

Over the last 4 months, I've entered an average of ~15 $100+ buyin MTTs or Supers per month. Until the WSOP, I plan to increase my entry rate into these class of events substantially. The schedule will be designed such that I will enter 60/month with the expectation that the actual number will be considerably less (40-50) either due to making it very deep in some events (and not wanting to start any additional events simultaneously) or missing some scheduled events due to busyness in my non-poker life. Satellites to big buy in events will represent a good 20-25% of the MTTs.

The ratio of live/online play will be maintained (to sustain/improve live play skills), and as such, time allocated for exclusively multitabling online ring games will be substantially reduced. I will still be playing 1 or 2 tables of 6max limit games during the early stages of MTTs, but I imagine the total number of online LHE ring game hands played per month will decrease by half.

Additionally, I intend to move up sooner than planned from playing $10/$20 6max to $15/$30 6max. My understanding is that the quality of play is comparable at both levels, so the difference (after adjusting for the 2/3 SB structure) is just in the stakes.

I intend to follow this plan, but will reevaluate if my results hit a combination equivalent to -50 MTT buyins and -300BB ring game loses.

Much of the motivation for making a strategic change is related to an increasing likelihood of staying at my day job for the forseeable future.

Thinking for myself...

is not one of my strongest fortes.

On the subject of the current and future state of poker, I really don't know what to think. Being unknowledgable about the majority of the concrete facts related to the health of the poker industry, I am restricted to guessing about the medium term future of poker through ancedotal information and the opinions of others.

My descriptions of even just the current state of poker would be like the tale of the 6 blind men describing an elephant taken to an extreme. Additionally, the poker world is a gradual but ever changing beast.

Mike May's latest blog about the state of the poker industry sounds reasonable and is something I would like to believe.

As usual, I just can't think for myself.

March recap

During March, my primary online game transitioned to $10/$20 LHE 6max, and my primary live game became $40/$80 LHE full. The most noticible impact of these changes was that the number of sessions with a swing in excess of $1k was almost three times higher than any month to date. My desensitization process for swings of this magnitude is still underway and it may take a couple more months to get past this.

I am very happy with my progress in the $10/$20 6max game over the last 2 weeks. I am getting very comfortable with 3 tabling, and can manage 4 if I am well rested. The two most significant areas of improvement have been:
1) decreased tendency to tilt
2) speed of recognition that I am tilting, and immediately decreasing the number of tables played (in some cases to 0) until my mental state has recovered

#2 is undoubtably the most important "good" habit I have picked up this year.

Other less important improvements have come from:
3) improved preflop hand selection based on position and opponent types
4) slightly improved discipline in game selection (my buddy list at Party is getting very very long...)

With my new "skills" at $10/$20 6max, I have only a small amount of data (less than 5k hands). My hope is that my winrate is above +2BB/100h when 3 tabling and ~+2BB/100h when 4 tabling. Time will tell.

The other significant area that kicked off in March was the 2006 WSOP qualifiers. To date, my net investments in WSOP ME supers is ~$600 (when taking into account booby prizes when reaching the money but not getting a seat). I final tabled 3 times without winning a seat. Those 3 final tables awarded a combined total of 13 ME seats! Just sickening, but I take it as a sign that my chances are decent for winning an ME seat.

I was able to luckbox my way into a $50,000 HORSE seat in a Party freeroll earlier in the month. Assuming I can obtain a ME seat, I am considering taking 3 weeks off from my day job, and entering up to 10 events.
10 events sounds like a lot, but it includes all those el-cheapo $1k and $1.5k events after the ME starts. Basically, I would need to get knocked out of each event quickly enough to enter the following day's event.

In the end, I'll probably end up playing in only 1 event, but it is nice to dream.

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(addendum)
One tool that I have found very helpful in doing efficient postgame analysis, is the autoreplay of hands in Poker Tracker. I usually set the playback speed fairly high, and interrupt and rewind for any interesting hands.

In regards to 10/20 6max statistics, my Fold BB to Steal is a tad high. ~65%. I'll need to do more research on blind defense to get that down a few points. That will basically work out to defending my BB about 2-3 additional times per hour when 3 tabling, so it shouldn't be a significant adjustment.

Virgin Stud

I played my absolutely first session of live 7 Card Stud (Hi) today. The only game running was a $4/$8 limit game with $1 ante and $1 bring in.

Probably no one will be interested to read this hand, but I'm posting it for myself so that I can come back and read my thoughts after gaining more experience. As this is a new game for me, I expect that there will be a large percentage of hands that will require postgame analysis. However, I don't even know how to write a hand history for Stud!

This hand occured fairly early in the session, and I had yet to see 4th street. In the meantime I had been asking the dealer quite a number of Stud rules questions. 3s has already busted twice and each time had done a short buy of $40. I had a very large stack of chips that I had brought over from an Omaha8 game and not bothered to cash out. 7s has a large number of stacks in front of him and seems like a decent player. 5s also seemed like a decent player.

hand #1
8 handed 7CS (Hi only), Hero is in the 8s.
- 3rd st:
1s: XX-2h
2s: XX-Th
3s: XX-Qc
4s: XX-Jh
5s: XX-Kd
6s: XX-Jd
7s: XX-3h
Hero is dealt 4s6s-2d, and brings it in for $1, muck, muck, 3s completes, call, call, muck, call, Hero calls (5 players, 7 small bets)
- 4th st:
3s: XX-Qc7h
4s: XX-Jh2c
5s: XX-Kd9c
7s: XX-3h5d
Hero: 4s6s-2d5s, and it is checked around (5 players, 7 small bets)
- 5th st:
3s: XX-Qc4hTd
4s: XX-Jh2cTc
5s: XX-Kd9c?
7s: XX-3h5d5c
Hero: 4s6s-2d5s7c
7s bets, (3s starts to call), Hero raises, all fold. (final pot 6.5 big bets)

After I raised, 3s went in the tank and eventually commented that I was raising with 257 offsuit? I replied that I have no idea what I'm doing and my plan was to get everyone to fold. After thinking another 30 seconds, 3s mucked and everyone else turbo mucked behind him.

I have no idea how bad or how good my 5th street play is, but my understanding is that aggression is important in limit poker.
- At the time, my goal was to win the hand without a showdown. If I get headsup with 7s, I will bet all the way unless 7s visibly improves on 6th st (and I do not). I will have position on 7s the vast majority of the time for the remainder of the hand.
- What is the value of my hand here? My 3 flush is completely live (but it is 5th st already), only 1 of my OESD cards is out. A 6 or 7 might improve me to best hand.
- What hands could my opponents think I am representing? I assume I am representing 2 pair or a set.
- The pot size seems to be right at that marginal size that it is big enough to semibluff, and yet not so big that I'd get too many callers
- What should I do if 7s (re)raises me on 5th or 6th street?
--- On a 5th street 3 bet, I would 4 bet and take a free card unimproved on 6th street. If 7s bet out on 6th street, I would muck.
--- If 7s called on 5th street and CR'd 6th street, I would muck.

Keep It Simple Stupid

I started writing a summary of my poker happenings for the last week, but it just came out as a long drawn out version of a "results" post that appears on so many other blogs. Instead a summary:

online MTTs and Supers: I feel the need to puke
online ring games: I play goot
bonus whoring: meh
live play: nada

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Completed my Party VIP bonus this week with ~plenty~ of time to spare. There is a whole 9 hours before the next (and finally last!!) week of the current promo, so this means I have some time to actually play some live Hold'em. Who knows, there might even be some interesting hands played. One can only hope. $40/$80 here I come!

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(addendum)
Back from the live session. Playing 10 handed full ring is like watching paint dry. However, there was one fun hand.
I raised UTG with 2 black kings, and it is capped coming back to me. Flop comes KKQ rainbow. The dealer wasn't helpful enough to put an A or J or another Q out there, but it was still a nice pot anyways. When you are running goot you wish you were playing in bigger games...

Busy

Been really busy the last few days due to the day job, so no time to post. There were a couple of comments on my last post that I didn't have a chance to respond to. Sorry!

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I managed to make a decent comeback from my downswing of late last week, although I am still substantially stuck for ring games this month.

On a new note, I am starting to learn how to play Stud 8. It is really quite interesting learning how to play a new game, and I am starting at the lowest limits - $0.50/$1.00 (reading Ray Zee's Hi Lo split poker book during hands that I muck) and will try to work my way up.

When I play limit hold'em, I might finish a session up or down a couple of thousand $, and all I can think about is 2 or 3 BB that I left on the table. My mentality is substantially different when playing a new game. I was tickled pink with my first +$30 session. God know how many mistakes I made, but 30BB wow! It has been a long time since I had that kind of thrill.
Stud 8 is quite a swingy game, and it is just so much fun jamming on 6th and 7th streets when you've got a lock on one side and quite possibly the best hand for the other side.

On the other hand, the rate of hands dealt for Stud 8 is dreadfully slow. At some points, I am thinking this has to be the slowest table on the site; yet when I go to the lobby and check the hands/hr, the table turns out to be the fastest one.....

An interlude for results-oriented thinking...

I'm on day 3 of a notable multi-day downstreak. The mix of play has primarily consisted of $10/$20 online LHE 6max and $40/$80 live LHE full. There was also been some BP5/BP10 online LHE 6max and $20/$40 live LHE full thrown in there . The hit is in excess of -225BB.

This is the only time I am going to allow myself to dwell on results. After I click on the "Publish" button, those thoughts will leave my mind.

I'm even....right now.....

Off to the races

Earlier today, I started on a more introspective post but never got around to finishing it.

Anyway, I got a couple of good night's sleep in a row, so tonight I'm off to the local poker room to play some $40/$80 LHE. Hope the donks are out tonight. If not, I'll drop into a surely good $20/$40 game.

Great WSOP stories...

I'm going to start off a post that will contain links to my favorite stories from the WSOP (any year). I'll update it from time to time whenever I come across a worthy one.

Here is the first one:

1. hand for hand

Tired

In some ways I could consider the last few weeks to be a miniview into what it would be like to be a professional small stakes grinder. The main driving influence into this mindset has been the Party VIP Acceler-8-tor promotion.

Comparatively speaking, the VIP promotion I received was a decent one for my play level. Assuming aggressive bonus clearing rates, I can clear my bonus obligations by consuming 1/2 of my "normal" poker time each week. The bonus is structed in a way that the I am heavily encouraged to hit a weekly target for 8 consecutive weeks. A significant portion of the bonus decreases exponentially for each week that the target is not met.

My original and current intention is to hit the target for all 8 weeks to max out the bonus.

The first week, I had no schedule conflicts or other distractions, and I was able to hit the weekly target by the 4th day.

The second week, the target was artificially reduced by Party due to the outages that occured during the major software upgrade of their site. Hence, I easily hit the weekly target by roughly the 4th day again.

During the third week, there were a number of other distractions - I played in the Bay 101 Shooting Stars, I went deep in an online MTT, as well as some other distractions in my personal life. As a result, I staggered to the finish late on the 7th night just barely making the cut.

This week, the 4th week, for various reasons I am again cutting it very close to the deadline. Additionally, I do feel rather weary about the prospect of putting in these hours. However, due to the bonus structure, my "bonus-only hourly rate" is approximately $300/hr and that is sufficient motivation to get the job done.

Baring any unexpected day-job or personal life emergencies, I'll get those table hours in, although I'm not particularly happy or excited about it.

Dead money Inc.

In typical Party fashion, when the play in the WSOP freeroll got close to the bubble (20 spots get some kind of WSOP seat; 20->11 get a $2k seat, 10-2 get a $10k seat, 1st gets a $50k seat), several remaining players start asking what the prizes are. One player believed this was a satellite for a big online tournament. Another asked where the WSOP is. Others get into an argument about whether or not hotel expenses are included with any of the prizes (they are not). Pretty funny stuff considering it was more or less bubble time.

I was fortunate to be in good chip stack shape from 30 on down to the final table, so it was not that stressful because there were so many shorter stacks that were letting themselves get blinded off. Inside the bubble, someone at the other table convinced a player that expenses were included in the $2k prize, but not the $10k prizes, so that he deliberedly busted early. Good stuff.

There really did seem to be a considerable percentage of the players that were very concerned about the expense of attending the WSOP. Understandable I guess, particularly as some players were from outside the US.

When the final table was reached, the undecided question in my mind was whether or not to play for the $50k seat. I hadn't given the topic enough thought in advance because before the start of the freeroll it seemed like too ridiculous a subject to spend time thinking about. During the first half of the MTT, I was preoccupied with 2 tabling $10/$20 6 max, and during the later half I was giving my full attention to the play at the table. (okay, this is a lie. I was frequently punching numbers into a spreadsheet calculating things like my tournament equity; bad habit, I know...)

At least 3 of the final tablers (and perhaps 4), did decide that they absolutely did not want the $50k seat as they pushed early and often with absolute trash. When we were down to 6, it did seem like everyone else was playing for 1st. As I hadn't made any decision, I was purely in small stakes SNG autopilot mode. Somewhere along the way, I settled on the argument that with 4.5 months left, I would probably have more chances at a ME seat, but pretty unlikely to have another chance at a HORSE seat. At that moment I remember having 20% of the chips, so my "decision" didn't really mean that much because any edge that I might have had probably didn't mean I had any more than a 25% chance of taking first.
Anyway, long story short, I eke out the victory to claim the $50k HORSE seat.

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In retrospect, dumping off for the $10k ME seat was the better thing to do from the $EV POV. Despite the 1/5 size of the buyin, I'm almost certainly more than 5x more likely to cash in a NLHE MTT than a high skill required HORSE event (granted my chances of cashing in the ME are also pretty slim).

From a poker/lifetime experience point of view, it will be quite a thrill to likely be playing at a table filled with poker greats. Talk about Dead Money. In the ME, you'd expect (and hope for) lots of table time with donk internet qualifiers.

From a logistics standpoint, it will be easier for me to schedule time off work to play in the 3 day HORSE event.

Which would you choose - ME or HORSE? and why?

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.