PokerStars Online Bloggers Freeroll

PokerStars has generously provided a nice $25k freeroll for bloggers:

I have registered to play in the
Online Poker Blogger Championship!

This event is powered by PokerStars.

Registration code: 7422795

But.... dammit, it is running at exactly the same time as the biggest live tourament I will have played so far this year that I'm already registered for. (Actually the freeroll starts 2 hours after the live tournament starts, so if I'm faced with an extremely tough all in decision at the 1.5 hour mark, I now have this tiny bit of all in equity to gamble...just kidding)

No (online) poker for a few days

Well, tomorrow is moving day. We are basically just moving across the street from one apartment to another. The reason for the move is that we decided we want to live on the top floor due the increasingly annoying noises of our upstairs neighbor.

Anyway, SBC tells me that our DSL isn't expected to be back up until Monday. Gasp! So does that mean no poker for a few days? Haha, yeah right!

I will have to make do with playing live poker this weekend. I'll probably play in 2 (~$125) rebuy tournaments and then mostly $20/$40 LHE besides that. For some variety, I may also try some $6/$12 Omaha for the first time. I probably won't even be able to remember my hole cards....

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25 more days until my next big live tourney...

45 more days until my trip to Foxwoods...

71 more days until . . . another trip to Vegas... (I started to write "next" trip to Vegas, but who knows, I might take an opportunity again to go before that...hehe)

Turn play when there are few hands you can beat

From my recent $5/$10 online limit games, I've often found myself in a headsup situation with a tight aggressive opponent on the turn when there are very few hands that I can beat. How should I be playing in these situations?

My opponent for these particular situations is a tight aggressive (not tight agg/agg, nor tight agg/passive, basically the player that gets the Eagle icon in PT). I have the most doubts againist this specific type of opponent for this situation.

The easiest to describe situation is one in which I have a hand like QQ or KK.

Let me use QQ as the example.
- Preflop I either 3 bet or raise/cap and see the flop headsup. (neither of us was in steal position; one of us opened in ~MP, and the other was in mid-late pos, in a 10 handed game)
- Flop comes something like J79 with a flush draw (I have one of that suit), 2 or 3 bets go in on the flop
- An A comes on the turn giving me 2nd nut flush draw.

Now what? My opponent has good starting hand selection. I guess that any tight agg player would play that way preflop with any PP 9 or higher, AK, or AQ (perhaps AJ, AT if he raised/called preflop). The only hand I can beat is TT for which he still has 6 outs. If I'm behind, I'm waaaaay behind.

Assume he called the last bet on the flop. There is 6-7BB in the pot.

If I'm first to act, what do I do?
If he is first and bets? if he checks?

How to measure progress?

I've created a lot of goals for myself over the last 9 months. A few I've met (mostly just bankroll); a fair number I've abandoned after further consideration (mostly live or online MTT related ones).

In terms of actually quantifying progress, I've really only been keeping my eye on a few metrics:
- online LHE, BB/100h: the sheer number of hands I play (not absolute compare to internet pros, but relative to other forms of poker I play) allows me to use this simple metric. For given playing limits, I am somewhat comfortable with gauging results after 25k hands. I know that many 2+2er's advocate a much larger sample set, and I probably would too if I played full time, but given my time bank I settle for 25k.
- live LHE, I make my best effort to determine and track the number of mistakes I make (measured in BB) per hour of table play. Things like missed value bets, incorrectly protecting my hand (e.g. if I incorrectly protected my hand on the turn in a 3 way pot giving another player with a 5:1 draw better odds to see the river, I would penalize myself 20% of the pot size on the turn even if I win the hand), paying off when certainly beaten, folding reasonable winning hand on river, etc... (The pace of live play is so slow that I can do substantial analysis of all interesting hands, whereas online I to put less work into reviewing individual hands. Typically, I only mentally review some online hands that occur towards the end of a session when I end up doing something very mindless, like driving somewhere, immediately after playing. I should invest a little more time in reviewing my online play.)
- online and live MTTs: ROI and avg hourly rate, my sample size is probably way too small

My current short term goal is related to online bankroll so this is easy to measure.

I guess my high level goal is something like this:
- To develop the capability and resources to have an expectation to earn $200/hour online and $100/hour live from poker

I am envious of those who have quickly and successfully made the climb to mid-high stakes level. My emphasis is on quickly. I do wonder about the duration and peak of this poker boom.

Some people, like Dr. Schonnmaker, are reminding players to be make the necessary plans to be successful regardless of how the environment changes.

Fickle, fickle

Well, I had a pleasant +60BB session tonight. I guess that is all it takes to cheer me up. Fickle, I guess....

Speed of progress?

I'm generally disappointed in my poker progress during this calender year.

The areas of development that I care about are, in no particular order:
- limit hold'em ring game skills (online and live)
- NL hold'em ring game skills (online and live)
- NL hold'em tournament skills (online and live)
- non-hold'em game skills (probably omaha, omaha hi-lo and triple draw are the games I care about. I think my memory is too poor to make the investment in playing stud. At some point, I will put effort into stud, but I think time invested in omaha or triple draw would be much better spent)
- bankroll size

Mostly from reading some other poker players' blogs, I'm feeling pretty inadequate about my rate of progress in the areas I care about. Naturally there could be a great deal of exaggeration in some people's blogs, but there are a number of players that I do suspect are being fairly honest and accurate with their status and the time period of their development.

I need to take some effort to analyze my overall strategy for pursuing my poker goals. Sometimes I feel like I just don't have enough time for my poker pursuits, but this may just be me lying to myself. I just don't know....

Are these other players just more talented? disciplined? focused? efficient? energetic?

Liking PokerAce more and more

Online $5/$10 games have been good this week. I've had a decent win rate for the last 3000 hands (3BB/100h), and I have taken a whole lotta bad beats over the last 1000 hands (and missed an above average number of chances to make 2, 3, 4 or 5 outers on the river when making good folds on the turn.... waah waah). No need to whine too much on the specifics by providing humorous bad beat examples, but anyways, it seems like any time I don't take any bad beats for a ~half hour period of time, my collective stack will grow 20-30BB without even winning any monster pots or having monster hands. The loose gamblers are really chasing and the maniacs and calling stations are doing their thing.

Although it is still a little early to tell, I actually think that part of it is related to better game selection made possible by using PokerAce HUD. Basically, I've been quad tabling Eurobet at $5/$10 limit, 10 handed. I'm probably playing at a given table on average for ~25 minutes. I use my Party account to continually scout for good tables. How is this different from when I was using GameTime+? Well, when using GameTime+, I'm not fast enough to be frequently checking for good tables. The few extra clicks to add and remove tables in GameTime+ (and do timely force imports in PokerTracker to get that first hand history in) is just a bit more time than I can spare when quad tabling (even when it is 10 handed).

I can't quantify it, but I strongly suspect this has significant value. There are so many pro and semi pro players at $3/$6 and $5/$10 that if you are 3-4 minutes slower in discovering a good table, you'll be 15-20th in the waiting list instead of 4-5th. That really cuts down on the number of hands you play at really good tables because if you have to wait in line behind a dozen decent tight agg/agg players, the table is far less profitable by the time you take a seat.

I'd guesstimate that I can poll the status of 2-3 times as many tables using PokerAce than using GameTime+.

Now, these factors are naturally just about maximizing $ results from low limit multitabling. Again, I'm in this phase of learning next to nothing from playing poker. To keep my sanity, I'll continue to play in the weekly live NL tournament on Saturdays and the occasional live $20/$40. As I've said before, I hope to progress beyond this stage in about a month. (Even at that point, I think it will be more of the same monkey business at $10/$20, but I will probably increase the live/online playing time ratio slightly.)

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I decided to make more poker trips later this year. I've already made travel plans to go to Foxwoods in early November (to play in side game action during the World Poker Finals; thanks to UA for having a great seat sale rate) and Vegas again in early December for the next WPBT Winter Classic (which also corresponds to the same time as the championship event at the Bellagio World Poker Classic, so the side game action should be great that weekend).

Additionally, I will most likely make a weekend trip to LA to play some mid stakes limit games at Commerce.

Live for a change, and PokerAce

Well, it has been 3 weeks since the last time I played live (which corresponds to the last time I was in Vegas). The last 3 weeks I've been exclusively multitabling Party $3/$6 and starting $5/$10. My top priority is to build a $10k online bankroll. I'm hopeful to have adequate bankroll for $10/$20 in roughly 4 weeks (mostly depending on how many good hours I can put in). My online bankroll is currently about $6700, and my live bankroll is just sitting in the safe collecting dust.

I installed PokerAce HUD, and converted my poker tracker databases to PostgreSQL. I must say that I've very happy with PokerAce HUD compared to GameTime +. It is a better utility when multitabling because of 2 primary reasons - flashing losing hands on the showdown (saving the time of reading the hand history), automatically tracking a table when a new table is opened (instead of having to manually add the table in GameTime+ ~after~ a hand has been imported). The pop up info on users will likely be more useful against tricky opponents. I haven't encountered too many of those in the last few weeks of play. It is a substantially superior tool over GameTime+, for the same low price of $0. Get it here PokerAce HUD.

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This morning I went to the local poker room to play in a $100+$25 NL rebuy tourney. The $25 vig is expensive, but almost every player does a $60 add on, and there are always ~1.5x $60 rebuys per buyin at the end of the rebuy period. In some ways then, it is really a $220+$25 tourney, so the effective vig is more reasonable. Additionally the short 5 minute drive to the poker room from my home makes this tournament a very simple choice to enter.

One drawback to the tournament is that it is always sold out early. The registration starts 1.25 hours before it begins, and you need to be there ~1 hour before the tournament begins to ensure you are not an alternate (or worse, not get to play at all).

I was already awake, so I showed up about 2.75 hours before the tournament. I sat in a $6/$12 game for roughly 2 hours. Prior to the 3 week break from live, I had been playing live almost every day. After only multitabling online for 3 weeks, I had really forgotten the pace of live. It is really slow! It is even more noticible if your opponents are the type where you don't really need to pay that much attention to them. I think my first raise was 45 minutes after sitting down. I can't remember the last time I went 5 straight minutes online without raising. Well, I guess it was a nice change of pace. Again, I also forgot how loose this $6/$12 live game is. It was far looser than any $3/$6 online game I played in the last 3 weeks, and it was pretty passive too. I lost a 14BB pot in my last orbit (with flopped top two to runner runner T high flush) to finish the session up 5BB - barely enough to pay for an extra rebuy in the tournament. ;P

Okay, on to the tournament:

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150 entrants, prize pool mid $30k's, 20 minute levels, 10 places paid.

I did my standard rebuy on the first hand to start with $2k in chips. Nothing too interesting happened in the first hour, although I did get my chip stack up to $4500 after the 1st 3 levels. I took the $2k addon for $60 to enter level 4 with $6500.

The end of the 5th level and start of the 6th level were the ~10 pivotal minutes of the tournament for me. I got involved in 3 sizeable pots in the same orbit, winning the first two and losing the third. I don't have any doubts about the first two hands, but the last one I wonder if I misbet.

The lead up was important. On the immediate hand prior to the first, I had open stole with trash for 3BB successfully from middle position after a moderately long period of folding. On the next 6 hands I was dealt KJs, AKs, TT, AKs, TT, and 77 in that order. What a run of cards to get at in a tournament!

On the KJs hand, I raised a loose limper on my immediate right to 4.5xBB. Everyone folded to limper who called. I flopped an open ended straight flush draw on the QdTd4c board. Limper check called my 1/2 pot bet (My intention was to make a weak continuation bet to induce a check raise all in. In this tournament situation, I want us both to be all in on the flop). The limper pulled a stop N go all in when the turn came Ks for less than the pot. Without a preflop raise I didn't put him on a broadway, but felt he either had 2 pair or a bluff with my weighting at about 66% that he had 2 pair with the 2 pair more likely being KT instead of KQ (since he didn't raise preflop) or QT (since he didn't push on the flop), so I didn't hesitate to call. He was "semi bluffing" with Ad9c, and did not hit his 3 outer.

On the first AKs hand, I opened for 3BB and stole the blinds again. On the first TT hand, I opened again for 3BB, the short stack to my immediate left came over the top for 5.5BB total and the SB pushed for 4.5BB. No brainer for me to call there. 1st short stack had A2s and the SB had AKo. My hand held up, and my stack was starting to get respectable (40+ BB with 95 players left, so less need to take risks).
On the 2nd AKs hand, I opened my standard raise 3BB, and was called only by the weak tight BB. I flopped nothing. 2 overs and a backdoor flush. He checked, and my half pot bet took the pot (his remaining stack was only the size of the pot). I'm 95% sure he had a smaller A, with AQo and AJs being the most likely, so I would not have minded a call.

Now the last hand is a bit of a bad beat hand, but given the immediately preceeding hands (I raised 5 straight times, and in the only postflop action I bet 1/2 pot both times) and the stage in the tournament (~90 people left, 10 places paid), there were a few different ways to play the hand preflop and on the flop. So I want to give the hand a bit of thought.
Villain has some modest preflop standards: probably calls pfr's with AQ, AJs, ATs, TT, 99, 88, any suited broadways)

hand #1
8 seated, $300/$600 blinds, hero has ~$18k, villain has ~$9k, UTG has ~$13k, no one else has more than $7k.
preflop: fold, fold, hero picks up TdTc and raises to $1900, fold, villain smooth calls in CO, everyone else folds. (2 players, $4700 in pot)
flop: Th8c4s, hero asks villain for a chip count, and then bets $1500. villain calls (2 players, $7700 pot)
turn: Th8c4s9d, hero bets $2000. villain pushes for ~$5500 total. hero calls. Villain has KsJs. (2 players, $18700 pot)
river: Th8c4s9dQh

I think preflop my three choices are fold, standard raise 3xBB, and moderately larger raise 4-5BB. I didn't mention but 2 of the players behind me (not counting the villian) are moderately loose. I really don't know which of the 3 choices I like best.

On the flop, my task is, of course, determining how to get all of my opponent's chips in. I can check or bet a callable amount; I don't think I should bet more than 2/3 of the pot even if I think I can convince my opponent I am bluffing.

What amount should I bet on the turn, given the pot size is $7700 and my opponent still has $5500, and given my opponent's range of hands? The probability that my opponent had a J was moderately high, so I think $2000 was too little. I'm not sure about scenarios where villain would try to bluff me out on the turn. Both the villain and I were seated at the same table since the start of the tournament, and I had only folded one hand that I had shown strength with. (I'm not sure how attentive the villain is).

I didn't slow down on the next hand with 77, and made a standard raise. I was called only by a small stack with 3BB who had AA. It held up. I lasted just over one level longer, busting out around 65th. My decisions could have been better, but I'm not too displeased with the way I played. Let's say it was no Aruba....

Back from vacation

I'm back from a weeklong vacation to Canada.

I didn't take a complete break from poker though. I managed to put in a few hours of $3/$6 limit ring games on an oldish PC with a smaller (than I am used to) 18" LCD monitor without Poker Tracker and GameTime+.

The max resolution of 1280x1024 made it harder to multitable - so I mostly stuck to 3 tabling instead of 4 tabling. By far the biggest handicap was playing without Poker Tracker/GameTime+. I'm pretty sure this cost in excess of 1BB/hour when 3 tabling. It did force me to try and pay closer attention to the habits of my opponents, so in some respects the games were more interesting than usual.

This makes me think back to how long I had been playing ring games without Poker Tracker/GameTime+ even after I had read rave reviews from places like the forums at 2+2. More recently, I've been hearing online pros sing the praises of PokerAce HUD. I've been too lazy to download and install this. However, this past week of playing without Poker Tracker at all has reminded me that I should be keeping pace with the tools that online pros are using.

Sometimes reminders come in unexpected ways.

Quick summary, part 2

One other thing I forgot to write about was the Bellagio tournament. I played one single table satellite for the Sunday $500+$40. It costs $130 to enter, and it pays the final two players a $540 entry plus $30 cash. The satellites have 15 minute levels (unless the satellite starts less than 1.5 hours before the start of the tournament, in which case the levels are 12 or 7 minutes depending on available time). I finished in level 5, a disappointing 6th.

My excuse is pretty much the oldest and lamest one that tournament players make - I didn't catch any cards. I played exactly 2 hands during the entire SNG. Even the hands that I mucked didn't hit any flops, so at least I didn't have any regrets. Yup, I can whine and bitch like the rest of them....

My best hand was during level 4 when I was dealt the monster ATo on the button when I had about 6x BB. MP+1, with an average stack, open pushed. It was folded to me. I had been folding so much that, SB (a big stack, and a reasonable player) called out of turn. This made my decision easy, and I mucked.

How about the hands that I did play?

1st hand: A complete maniac who had built his stack as large as 3x the starting chips in round 2, had dwindled to 3x BB at the start of level 4. He open pushed in MP. It was folded to me in the BB (I had 10x BB). I'm getting 2.25:1, so I announced that I would call him in the dark. He flips over the computer hand (Q7o). I flip over....63o. Nice. The 65% favorite holds up.

Last hand: It is finally folded to me preflop (first time in about 2 orbits) in MP+2 while I've got 3x BB, and I look down and find a beaut J3o. I immediately push. Folded to the button who is a reasonable player. He thinks for 3 seconds. When he starts to put chips in the pot, I'm at least relieved to see that he pushed all his chips in the pot (~18BB). That's got to be a mid pair. Everyone else folds. He shows 88, and I don't improve.

Yup, I spent an hour and 10 minutes of my time to play 63o and J3o. Very productive...

There were no more satellites running before the tournament, and I elected not to buy in directly.

The satellite I played was entertaining though. It is amusing to watch players who have absolutely no idea how much to bet. Open for $700 with $50 blinds. $100 into an $800 pot. I certainly would intend to play more of these on subsequent Vegas trips.

Actually, does anyone know what happens if you win more than one of these? Does the TD allow you to take $570 cash for a 2nd win?

Quick summary

No time to finish up a detailed trip report.

Work is quite busy, and at the end of the week, my wife and I are headed on a weeklong vacation to Canada. Lots to do between now and then, so I'll just summarize the things I want to remember.

- Played a total of about 5 hours combined at $30/$60 and $40/$80. The games are good, particularly the $30/$60. In both $30/$60 sessions I played, there were 2-3 complete donks (where do these guys get the money to play in the $30 game? They seemed to have endless wads of $100 bills coming out of their pockets. It was almost painful to watch one particular guy - he kept calling bet after bet when he was behind and then won the absolute tiniest pots when he had a hand. Even the most unobservant players could tell when he had a hand.), and a mixture of LAGs (small number), loose passives and weak tights. I played 1 afternoon session and 2 late night sessions. The afternoon session was just as good as the late night sessions.
- The sickest hand I witnessed during these sessions was when a 4 way pot got capped preflop by a LAG. The board came in this order: 76K rainbow, A, 5 no flush possible. The hole cards were: QQ, KK, AA and yes, the LAG had 34o. It's not just online poker that rigged.... The very ironic thing is that LAG did not play this hand too poorly. He 3 bet preflop againist a raiser who was capable of laying down a hand postflop, and I would argue that on a relative scale his cap was not the worst decision made in the hand - given the way preflop action developed, it was vastly apparent that none of his opponents had cards anywhere near his 34. By far, QQ played this hand the worst.
- I played well in my afternoon 30/60 session finishing down 6BB. During the late night 30/60 session, I did not play well, but got hit in the face with the deck (including my royal flush) finishing up close to 30BB in one hour, plus I probably made 4-5BB worth of mistakes. During my brief 40/80 session (from what I can vaguely remember about it), I played pretty awful finishing down 1/2 BB.
Sleep....sleep is important.

- I was very undisciplined with my time management. I slept for less than 3 hours of my 43 hours, I should have allocated more like 7-8. I played poker for less than 7 hours. Considering this was supposed to be a poker trip, this is ridiculous.

- I miscounted my results during the trip. I wasn't able to reconcile things correctly until I got home. It gets confusing when I don't write down the results after each session. The first night when I got back to the hotel room I had 6-7 different wads of cash, and I ended up getting mixed up between a craps session and a poker session.

- I had only 1 uncomped meal during the whole trip. However, this was at a nicer steakhouse with lots of wine being ordered by the alcy's. Being a non-drinker, this sucked. I don't think all the comped meals made up for it. Oh well...

- I spent almost 50% of my hours at table games. Quite embarassingly, I hit very hard at these games. Mathematically, I estimate my strategy should result in a ~$20/hour loss at these games. Well, the standard deviation is pretty large in craps. I think in the future, I'm not going to make poker trips to Vegas when I will be meeting up with friends who like to play table games. Poker trips will be poker trips first and foremost, and gambling trips will be primarily gambling trips.

I guess these are the only notable points.

My poker plans after my vacation are to rebalance my online vs live time allocation. For the last few months, it has been somewhere around 20:80 (online:live). I would like to reverse that for a couple of months. The primary reason is that I moved a large portion of my online funds into a live-only fund. I have a policy that (after making my initial online deposit last year) I will never deposit any more money online, only withdraw. It is a big waste of time (from many standpoints) to have an online bankroll that can only play at low limits.

I intend to rebuild my online bankroll while simultaneously moving back up in limits. I'll see if I can build up the funds in the Party accounts within 2 months to play $15/$30. I currently have an online bankroll spread out across all sites to play $10/$20, while the funds I have in the Party skins is only enough for $3/$6. To lighten up the monotony of online limit ring games, I will use money at non-Party sites to play in medium stakes $30-$200 tournaments and SNGs (mostly at Stars). I'm not sure how practical it will be to do this because I find it very difficult to multitable limit ring games with no-limit tournament games, since the thinking is very different. I will probably multitable limit ring games together only, and then multitable no-limit tournament/SNG games seperately. (perhaps, most nights playing ring games, and occasionally dedicating nights for tournaments/SNGs) Another alternative is to start taking a shot at no limit ring games, but that is not the current plan.

Vegas Trip report - August

This was again a short but eventful trip. From the time I got off the plane until the time I boarded the return flight, I was in the city of Las Vegas for a grand total of 43 hours.

Disappointingly, I think the theme of the weekend can be sumed up in 3 words - lack of discipline.

This was supposed to be an educational poker trip with a few small breaks mixed in with catching up with old friends and getting to know some new ones. I would give myself a grade of C- on all three categories.

Hmmm, now this has started off as probably the most boring trip report ever. Didn't I just say that this was an eventful trip?? Let's see if I can remember some of the good stuff....

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How can I start off with mentioning anything other than that once-in-a-poker-lifetime event? Yes, I'm talking about that 19,600:1 miracle, the mother of all hands - flopping a Royal Flush in a live game (when dealt suited broadways). This coinicided with, at the time, the highest limit stakes I have ever played, namely $30/$60.

Here's how it went down (and yes, I did enter this hand like a big fat donkey)

hand #1
I'm in an 8 seated live $30/$60 limit hold'em game at the Bellagio having joined the table ~30 minutes earlier. The game has been loose and relatively passive. There was quite a bit of junk being shown down on the river. Only one player (currently in the CO seat) has been showing a high degree of aggression - mostly in 2 or 3 way situations. Most hands so far have been 4-5 ways to the flop with about 2/3 of them without a raise. I'm currently UTG. I believe there were 3 locals seated on my immediate left, though none of them bothered me. The first two had been playing loose semi-passive and the third was weak passive. I hadn't seen too much from the button player, but he had cold called at least a couple of pfr's. The blinds were friends and both very extremely loose and would call all the way to the river with any pair and chase all the way with any draw or overcards. I'm not 100% certain, but this may be the first hand that I have voluntarily entered.
- preflop: I find KhJh UTG and I limp with absolutely no plan, I guess out of boredom. Surprisingly everyone folds to the blinds. SB completes. BB raises. I suddenly become worried about a possible collusion situation, and I call expecting and getting 5:1 (3 players, 6 small bets)
- flop: AhQhTh - bingo bingo. Both blinds ~instantly~ check their hole cards. Sorry boys, neither of you have a big heart. SB bets, BB raises. Woo hoo! Please, please be colluding!!! I elect to call. SB slows down and only calls. Damn! (3 players, 12 small bets)
At this point, I'm praying for the board to pair or at least for no more hearts to come. I think that any broadway card will be very good for me, and there should be at least 11 more of those.
- turn: AhQhTh9c - SB checks, BB bets, I decide to be "conservative" and raise here. I mean conservative because I know that both players will call me all the way given the strength of the hands that both have represented, and I was concerned that SB will only call the turn. I believe that my thinking was that a heart on the river would kill the action, but that if either opponent did improve there was a decent chance for there to be 2 or more bets going in on the end anyway. (3 players, 12 big bets)
- river: I don't remember, but the river card was a brick. Both blinds quickly checked and then quickly called my last bet. I flip over the royal. BB flips over his AJ. SB just stares at his hand for a pretty long time before mucking. At the time, I somehow thought he might have 2 pair, but the more I think about it, he probably just had something like top pair with a medium heart.
Eric was sitting at the next $30/$60 table, so I called him over to be the "official" witness. His first word was "Wow!", and he second thing he said was "So you play KJ UTG, huh?". :) Yes, yes, I play bad.

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Hmmm, I'm pooped. I'll finish this trip report off some other time. Time to get some much needed sleep.

Upcoming weekend

My next trip to Vegas is this weekend. Woohoo!

I've put some thought into how I will allocate my time.

My first thoughts had been that the best games should be in the midnight to 6am time frame. However, even if this is the case, given my immediate circumstances, this still may not be the best time for me to play.

Based on reviewing my live results for the last few months in terms of the time-of-day, my results from best to worst are: mid day, morning, mid afternoon, early evening, late night. I actually don't have a lot of data for the evening/late night sessions. Even for the other time periods, my sample sizes are not large. Results may not be meaningful. I also track "known mistakes", and the only clear thing that seems to pop out is that I make very few mistakes during mid day and mid afternoon sessions.

My internal clock seems to be having a significant influence. I've tried resting before late night sessions, but my mind is still not very sharp. Short term memory is not as good. My attention wanders.

I see that pro players that can shift back their clocks effectively by 6-12 hours have a tremendous advantage since they can play at a time they are at their best and their avg opponent is at his worst.

I do not know quite what to expect for day games. During my late July trip, the day time games were packed with locals.

I've decided that I will play 30/60 or 40/80 at the Bellagio or Mirage on Saturday afternoon (depending on wait lists, game quality, time constraints - like where and when we are meeting up for dinner; for these reasons I may end up playing in 15/30 or 20/40 games). After dinner, I think my friends will want to play craps before heading to the various types of clubs, and since this is the only chance I'll have to join them, table games it will be then. After this, I think I will head to Mirage to play 20/40 for a few more hours.

Unless I am quite wrong about the number of locals playing in the daytime games, Sunday I plan on playing in the daily $500+40 NL tourney at the Bellagio. I really don't know if I should bother with playing a satellite, however my default plan will be to do so. The reason is that I am feeling quite good about my single table SNG skills at the moment. The tourney starts at 2pm, and if I last a very long time, I'm likely only going to play 8/16 or 10/20 for a few hours after dinner. If I make a very quick exit, I will give 30/60 another shot.

I had better get good rest for the next couple of nights. During my last Vegas trip, my sleep schedule was totally messed up. I don't want to go through that again.

Bubble Boy

I just got knocked out of a 2 table $50+5 Party SNG right on the bubble. Smallish stakes I know, but an interesting hand came up about 5 minutes before I got knocked out. Now for today's edition of "How would ~you~ play it?"

5 players remaining, avg stack 4000, blinds are 100/200, 10 minute levels, 3-4 minutes left in this level. "Phil give us a chip count."
UTG: 2700 chips
CO: 5100 chips
Hero on button: 6100 chips
SB: 2900 chips
BB: 3200 chips

hand #1
- preflop: UTG folds, CO limps, Hero looks down and finds QcQh.

What do you do?

SB has truly been playing survival poker; I have come over the top of his raises before while on the bubble as chip leader and he insta folded. BB is playing about average, but not going out of his way to survive - he would probably call an all in w JJ or better and AK, AQs.
CO is fairly loose. He is also a "trapper". He could limp reraise big with any pocket pair as low as 77, any A down to a T, and probably A9s. He will also call a lot of raises if he already limped with a wide range of hands including the above plus any big K, smaller As, QJs, etc.

The cardinal sin when chip leader is to get involved with 2nd chip leader in marginal situations. What is the best way to avoid that here?

He has a huge range of hands that I'm a big favorite over. I really don't want him to call a sizeable raise with an A, K or a suited connector. An A or K is going to flop more between 33-41% of the time (depending on if he has zero, one or both), and some kind of draw is going to flop the majority of the time (not that the draw connects with his hand, but it will worry me - since it will be very hard for me to get away from the hand with an overpair).

In the actual hand, I decided to push all in strongly preferring not to see a flop (and naturally hoping CO hadn't been trapping with AA or KK, although his hand range is so large, I would argue this is a very minor risk. Even if the blinds wake up with AA or KK, I won't be hurt too much)

The blinds insta folded, and CO insta called with AKo. 3 blanks come on the flop, but the dreaded A comes on the turn. I'm crippled.

I'm thinking this is a moderate-deep stack NL situation, and I severely misplayed the hand. CO still has 24.5 bb behind. I think I should have raised to something like 1500 (enough to let the blinds know they are being pot committed), and then pushed on a safe flop.

However, in practice, I think the result of the hand would have been the same. If I raise to 1500, I believe CO comes over the top all in anyways with a "monster" like AKo. However, if CO had a hand like AJ or ATs, he would have flat called and I can push him out on the flop.

Party pays out these 2 table SNGs in a 40%, 30%, 20%, 10% format.

Any different thoughts on how to play this hand?

I can just hear him thinking, "~Finally~, AK holds up!"

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In yesterday's $100+$25 rebuy live tourney, I finished 20th out of 150 where the top 10 were paid. I liked the way I was playing until there were about 30 remaining. During those first 3 hours, my best starting hand was 44, but I believe I chose my spots well, and I never let myself get too short stacked.

When we got to 30 I was an average stack, but I believe I didn't put enough pressure on those who were trying to survive and importantly had a smaller chip stack. I should have stuck with what had been working so well.

I might have made a questionable play on my last hand.

I had 5x the big bind UTG at a 6 seated table when overall avg stack size is ~8.5bb. BB has only 2 bb total. I find KdJd and I push. CO has ~18 bb stack and very little respect for my raises. In this case, even that doesn't matter too much because he finds AKo and pushes all in behind me. I don't suck out.

I would say my defense for making this play was it was my first opportunity in 2 orbits to play a hand (someone had pushed in front of me or I'd have somelike like 24o), and I am playing to finish very high in the money, not just squeek into 10th. I don't want to go into my blind with only 4.5BB when I've picked up a reasonable starting hand. I have played often with BB, and I believe that even with 1/2 his stack already in the pot, he won't call an UTG push without a PP, any A, a K with 7 or better kicker, 2 broadways or 2 suited semi-connected cards higher than 7. I believe both button and SB's standards are substantially higher than this - 99 or better, AK or AQ.

However, I did know that CO would quickly call with any reasonable hand with his 18bb chip stack. We had some history. At about the 1.5 hour mark, I was down to only 5.5 bb when I was moved to his full table. 3 hands later, I open pushed w 58s in MP (yes quite loose aggressive, I know), and the CO (same guy, coincidentally in the same relative position) called after about 30 seconds with AJo. I flop a 5 and it holds up. First they have to call ya, then they have to beat ya. He has never see me play before. Personally, I don't like his call, but that's just me... everyone else at the table was praising him for his "great read". He was seriously upset about that "unbelievable beat". Uh huh, 60:40, what a suckout!

Unfortunate color change

I've had three straight losing sessions at $20/$40 live. The last session has the dubious honor of changing my net results for the last month and a half of $20/$40 from black to red. I'm down exactly 1.2 big bets from my last 70 session hours; that's -$48 for those of you who aren't math majors.

The true test of poker players is not how they play when running well, but how they handle things when running poorly.

Again I am having doubts on whether or not I am paying off too much on the river.

There are 3 hands from my last session that I've at least had some second thoughts about whether or not I should have called the last bet on the river. A simpler way for me to have handled these hands would not to have gotten involved at all, but how the heck am I going to learn anything if I never put myself in questionable situations?

Perhaps paying off on the river is not the main issue. Perhaps, I am just not paying enough attention to my opponents' tells. I'm allowing myself to get check raised far too often on the turn when I have just fallen behind on the last card. I could sure save a lot of money if I could spot tells of strength more often.

All of the following hands are 9 handed live $20/$40 limit hold'em. They are all very simple hands that occured within the span of 25 minutes with at most 1 new player at the table during that time.

hand #1
MP is an average player, MP+1, and the blinds are loose passive. MP+2 is aggressive when he has a legit hand, but is otherwise loose passive while drawing
- preflop: fold, fold, MP raises, MP+1 cold calls, MP+2 cold calls, I cold call in the CO w QhJh, button folds, blinds both call. (6 players, 12 small bets)
- flop: KhTc6d MP bets, MP+1 calls, MP+2 calls, I raise, all fold to MP+2 who calls (2 players, 18 small bets)
- turn: KhTc6dJd, MP+2 checks, I bet, MP+2 check raises, I call (2 players, 13 big bets)
- river: KhTc6dJc2s, MP+2 bets, I call, MP+2 shows Qd9d.

Preflop, I know that QJ is a frequently dominated hand, but as I'm sure you could tell from my frequent posts about wanting to fold, I won't get too married to top pair (or even 2 pair) if there is a lot of raising and reraising postflop. I expect multiway action for just 2 bets, and that is what I get.

Originally, I had only raised the flop to get a free card on the turn. However, I was able to get heads up. MP+2 plays some real trash hands and is quite the chaser. 78, 79, 89 suited and unsuited are well within the range. AT or in fact ~any~ A is quite possible. I didn't notice any tell from him, so I keep firing on the turn.

I know I am behind when he check raises the turn, and when I don't improve on the river, I don't have much choice but to pay him off. The pot is too big.

hand #2
button and BB are loose preflop, and chase reasonable draws post flop.
- preflop: fold, fold, MP (villian from previous hand) calls, I raise with KsQs, fold, fold, button calls, SB folds, BB and MP call (4 players, 8.5 small bets)
- flop: Kh7sTd, checked to me, I bet, everyone calls (4 players, 12.5 small bets)
- turn: Kh7sTd8d, checked to me, I bet, button and BB fold, MP check raises, I call (2 players, 10 big bets)
- river: Kh7sTd8dJd, MP bets, I call, MP shows 8s7d

This looks like another ABC hand to me. Does anyone play it any differently? (with the same information, i.e. I, yet again, have no tells on my opponent(s))

Okay, come to think of it, I don't have any doubts about whether or not to call on the river for these first 2 hands. In both hands I hesitated for 3-5 seconds before calling. Given the way these hands played, could I have saved a bet on this hand which happened only a few minutes later?

hand #3
MP, MP+1, BB are loose, passive with med str hands and draws, raises have always been with legit hands, no semibluffs yet; button is a solid player
- preflop: fold, fold, MP calls, MP+1 calls, MP+2 calls (villian from previous 2 hands), I call in CO w Kh9h, button raises, SB folds, everyone else calls (6 players, 12.5 small bets)
- flop: Ks6c8h, checked to button who bets, BB folds, MP, MP+1, MP+2 call, I check raise to see where I am at, button folds, MP and MP+1 call, MP+2 folds. (3 players, 20.5 small bets)
- turn: Ks6c8h7c, checked to me, I bet, MP folds, MP+1 check raises, I call (2 players, 14 big bets)
- river: Ks6c8h7cAh, MP+1 bets, I call, MP+1 shows Kd7d.

MP+1 is a loose player, but he does pay attention to the action since he loves to talk about hands later. I've played with him for well over 15 session hours. I have no doubt in my mind that he had remembered that I had been paying off on the river 100% of the time thus far. Even getting 15:1, I think I can fold here, but I pay him off anyway.

I didn't see him doing the "looking quickly at his chips" tell or the "looking away from the action" tell. I was looking right at him when the turn card was dealt, but I extracted nada from it. Gosh, it is really frustrating that I'm not learning to read opponents better.

Paying off on the river

Table image matters in a live mid stakes game. There seems to be a fine line between calling on the river too much when a scare card comes, and calling often enough to discourage observant players to bluff when a scare card hits. In regards to this dimension, I don't know where I stand with this hand.

I certainly played this hand incorrectly on the river.

hand #1
Live 9 seated $20/$40 limit hold'em game. UTG+1 is an unknown middle age man.
- preflop: fold, UTG+1 raises, folded to hero in the BB with AcQs. BB calls. (2 players, 4.5 small bets)
- flop: QcJs6c, hero checks, UTG+1 bets, hero check raises, UTG+1 calls (2 players, 8.5 small bets)
- turn: QcJs6cQh, hero bets, UTG+1 calls (2 players, 6 big bets)
- river: QcJs6cQhTc, hero checks, UTG+1 bets, hero calls. UTG+1 shows ThTd and wins a 8 big bet pot.

My river play was truly awful. I don't mind check folding the river. However, if I was going to call on the river, I should have bet instead and folded to a raise. The gentleman did not strike me as one who would raise on the river without a hand that had me crushed. However, I do believe he would have paid me off on the river with any pocket pair (although the only pocket pair he could reasonably have on the river that I could beat is 99, maybe 88. There are a small number of players who might have played the flop the same way w KK or AA, but not many). This range of hands is too small for me to value bet.
The way the hand played, I actually thought he had hit a gutshot with big slick, so in retrospect I made the call merely for advertising value to discourage others from bluffing me on the river. It's like taking $40 and lighting it on fire..... With the Ac in my hand, I'd at least know that he wasn't bluffing with a four flush with the Ac in his hand.
I'm actually really lucky I did not have AcJc because I would have a really hard time believing he had JJ,QQ or QJ since he didn't raise the turn, and an equally hard time believing he called all the way with TT. I think I would have at least called a 4 bet on the river with an A high flush here. Geez, I play bad.

Grinding away

I'm continuing to split my focus between improving my live game play and also building up the bankroll. Most days I play 2 sessions, a short live session and a slightly longer online session. (The day job really gets in the way!!! :P)

My net results from yesterday were my 2nd best ever for ring games. The live game was very average but I was fortunate to win a couple of sizable pots where my big hands held up, but just as importantly get in quite a few value bets on the marginal hands. The big pots really stand out in people's minds, but those marginal hands where you win (or save) 2-3 extra big bets per hour make a gigantic difference. The online session was the standard donk-fest. My Euro account still only has around $2k, so I'm still quad tabling at $3/$6. My online funds are spread out among too many accounts, and I should repatriate a decent amount at least to neteller so that I can at least feel comfortable playing $5/$10 6 max at Euro.

Today, I gave back about a third of yesterday's wins. The $20/$40 live game today was truly amazing. There was one player who cold called 2 or 3 bets cold preflop > 25 times in one hour. Even if this was not enough action, he then proceeded to go on tilt when he got 14 outed on the turn after flopping middle pair headsup. He simply was furious that some "horrible" player could suck out on him "like that". He is probably the 4th worse player I have ever seen play at $20/$40, but he was at the same table as 2 more in the top ten. This made for quite a game.

I ended up finishing the session down 11BB after roughly 75 hands, but that doesn't change the fact that this was a great game.

There were at least 2 occasions where I had top pair top kicker or better on the flop 3 way where I bet and was raised and 3 bet cold by 2 worse hands. I have to remember when I'm in games like this not to slow down when getting this kind of action from wild players.
It has been quite some time since I have been in a live game like this. Actually because of my scheduling, I'm often playing in moderately tough games with 1-3 props and 1-3 winning pros. This is a completely different beast. It is actually a lot more interesting, though I'd have to say my personal favorite is when there is a big diversity in skills and playing styles at the table.

At this point in my poker playing lifetime it is a bit of a toss up. The really good, or even moderately good games are usually not that mentally interesting. The tough but educational games have extremely poor financial returns.

Anyway, in the near future I will try to schedule my time better so that I can play in some more action based live games.

Good times, part deux

Well, today I took yet another shot at the small buy in ($100+$25) live no limit tournament at the local poker room. It was identical in structure and organization to last week's tourney. The prize pool (after rebuy's and addon's) was virtually identical to last week, roughly $36k. They paid the top 10 finishers (out of 150 entrants), with the top 4 finishers additionally getting an entry into a $1500+$80 tournament in October.

Again I employed a very aggressive strategy when we started getting close to the bubble. I stole repeatedly from players trying to make it to the money. I've got a much better feeling for how much of my focus should be on identifying weak players or players who are just trying to survive. Some very weak players will fold in the blinds to as little as a miniraise from a late position raiser, and it is critical to not miss these golden opportunities (small risk for decent reward..) in such a fast structure tournament. Basically, it is important to identify what is the minimum amount you need to raise to steal someone's blinds.

I believe I was the one who was all in on only 3 occasions. Once with QQ preflop with 16 players remaining and got called by both blinds (they both checked it down but the board was all rags), second with 5 players remaining with KTo when I open pushed from the SB with 5x BB when BB woke up with QQ (the door card was Q, but the flop also contained AJ, yowza!), and third when I pushed on the flop with 2 overcards and a flush draw with 4 players remaining.

I faced a tough decision when there were roughly 20 players remaining, and 2 very desperate short stacks (of roughly the same size) went all in preflop and it came to me in the big blind where I was getting 4:1 to call with T6o. So long as neither opponent had a pocket pair bigger than Ts, I believe I was getting the right price to call. Neither opponent looked comfortable with their hand. I made the call, facing pretty much the best situation I could hope for - one opponent had an underpair 55, and the other had 1 overcard K8o. I did not win this hand, but I do not regret this call. (I ran the numbers at home, and I had a 33% pot equity)
I think the risk reward was worth it, although my immediate neighbours were shocked with the call. Again, an additional benefit is that no one tried to steal my blind without a strong hand after this.
Come to think of it, the T6o hand was the only hand in the entire tournament that I called any one's all in. Even more generally, it was the only raise I called. Hmmm... Fold equity is pretty darn significant.

In the end, I finished in the top 3. At that point, we agreed on an even chop. I'm pretty happy with the deal because I think I was the short stack with somewhere around 25-27% of the chips. The chip leader had roughly low 40's% of the total chips. I believe I am a moderately better no limit tournament player than the chip leader (who is quite the gambler), however with avg chips being 210k and blinds at 10k/15k and rising in a 2 minutes, I was more than content with making an even three way split.

Since I already won a seat in last week's tournament, I was able to take the cash value of the seat. Good times...

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Some uncomfortable situations came up immediately following the tournament. A complete stranger came up to me out of the blue and asked me for a small "loan". I hadn't even counted my prize money yet. There had been a moderate number of railbirds - perhaps 3 dozen, watching the final action, so it was no secret how much money each person won.

I politely refused, and got the hell out of there. Just as I was getting in my car, yet another person did the same thing. Again I politely told him no, and immediately drove off. I felt so uncomfortable that I kept my eyes open on the drive home to see if anyone followed me. I admit this is excessively paranoid, but I didn't like that situation at all.

I can only imagine how much of this kind of thing the big tournament winners go through.

Playing sets in big pots

I'm feeling rather unconfident about how to play bottom set in a "big" pot against a mixed group of opponents. I'll post a hand history, and I would appreciate any comments or suggestions.

hand #1
Live $20/$40 9 seated limit hold'em game. Players:
UTG - solid player
MP+1 - loose player, usually passive, generally only aggressive with monsters. very very freq cold caller preflop
MP+2 - fairly aggressive player, neither tight nor loose - somewhere in between
CO - aggressive but fairly intelligent player, makes "nice" laydowns
SB - hero
BB - loose chaser
- preflop: UTG open raises, fold, fold, MP+1 cold calls, MP+2 cold calls, CO cold calls, fold, SB calls with 4d4s, BB calls. (6 players, 12 small bets)
- flop: Jc7d4h, checked to MP+2 who bets, everyone calls. (6 players, 18 small bets)
- turn: Jc7d4h9c, checked to MP+2 who bets, CO calls, SB check raises, BB calls, UTG folds, MP+1 3 bets cold, MP+2 folds, CO folds, SB calls, BB calls. (3 players, 20 big bets)
- river: Jc7d4h9c5c, BB bets out, MP+1 calls in a very agitated state, SB folds. BB shows Qc7c, MP+1 frustratingly shows Ts8h. (BB wins 22 big bet pot)

I'm going to start off by saying that no matter how I play this hand, given which actual opponents had drawing hands, I will not make it to the river with the best hand. However, that is irrelevant. I just want to understand how I should optimally play this hand.

The 2+2 books preach that when a pot is big, you must do whatever it takes to maximize your chance of winning the pot. This 12 small bet pot on the flop fits their description of a big pot.

At what point in the hand should I reveal my strength? On the flop, the board is a rainbow and I generally suspect that players that called with suited connectors would tend to have hands that are higher than 7, so I'm much less worried about the 2 gapper between the 7c and the 4h. There is a 3 gapper between the Jd and 7c so in terms of draws there are only gutshots and overpairs drawing to a set. (unless I am already way behind in set over set) 2 pair is not a likely possibility on this board except for BB. Actually, since BB can have any 2 cards, he may also have the low straight draw on the flop.

With 5 opponents on the flop, I have 2 choices: i) check raise to try and knock out the runner runner draws, ii) slow play the flop hoping for a good turn card - the best cards obviously giving me quads or a full house (7 cards), but I also like a 2, Q, K, A (especially when they don't put a flush draw on board). 3 or 5 are somewhat okay, but I will be somewhat conservative if someone shows a lot of strength when they hit.

Given what I actually did on the flop, I'm comfortable with how I played the turn. The only thing I reconsidered was whether or not to cap it after MP+1 3 bets cold. The only reason to do this is to make BB pay more for his obvious draw - but he will always call 2 more here. Capping can't be right on the turn given my read on MP+1's style - I don't believe he makes this move without a better hand than mine.

Once again, my primary question is when do I show strength in this hand?

If there were 7 or 8 opponents in the hand, how does this affect my decision? I think I would be more inclined to check raise the flop since there are likely to be more runner runner draws.
At what number (and types) of opponents is it safe to slow play this flop?

Good intentions, but bad behavior?

I've got another Vegas trip coming up in about 2 weeks, and I feel the need to pad up my bankroll a little more. A substantial percentage of my poker time lately has been focused on live play, and while that is interesting/enlightening/fun/educational/etc.., it is very inefficient timewise at making money from a risk/reward point of view.

I decided to multitable $3/$6 at Party and Euro simultaneously to clear the latest Party bonus and also get more rakeback in my Euro account. This is so much more efficient and reliable than playing live $20/$40. I actually have very little money in my online accounts, so it would actually be unwise to play multitable $5/$10, let alone $10/$20 or $15/$30.

My online bankroll is very borderline now. If I can put in a few good sessions at $3/$6 this week, I'll have a reasonable online bankroll for $5/$10 for next week. I'd like to set a goal for earning $1800 from online ring games before going to Vegas. That will give my overall poker bankroll another 30 big bets of cushion to play $30/$60 at the Bellagio.

Results-wise, tonight's $3/$6 session was reasonable. 3 hours with +5BB/100 hands, plus the bonus and rakeback.

However, my big mistake was to start this session while not well rested/mentally prepared. When multitabling to that degree, you take a lot of ridiculous beats. Without thinking, I started getting upset. Over time I started muttering and swearing under my breath. My wife was in the same room working on her laptop, and this is just the kind of thing that really disheartens her to see.

There was absolutely no reason for me to get upset while playing online limit ring games. It serves no useful purpose. Whenever this kind of thing happens, I always apologize to my wife later. However, I'm sure from her point of view, my bad behavior just seems to happen over and over and over again. I say I'm sorry, but practically the next time she sees me playing online, I'm back at it again - groaning, moaning, tsking, shaking my head...

My wife grants me a wide degree of freedom to pursue my poker hobby, and I simply must do better. I owe that much to the both of us.

Driving to the bricks and mortar poker room gives me a few minutes to get into the right mindset. I have to make it a habit to spend a minute or two getting ready before jumping into any online session.....