I've been putting in the majority of my recent poker hours in the online setting, mostly multitabling, and this is not a great environment for me when it comes to spending time thinking about hands or situations (other than perhaps late SNG or mid-late MTT situations).
As a diversion and perhaps an educational kick-in-the-pants, I went to play some live $20/$40 LHE at a local poker room. I still have a fair number of Party points to accumulate by Friday for my VIP promotion, but I figure worst case is that I'll have multitable the BBJ tables for a few extra hours to get there.
The table was very beatable with a pretty high variance. Almost every hand saw a flop with between 3-5 players, about 25% of which were limped, 50% were raised, 20% were 3 bet, 5% capped (3 and 4 bets were very ineffective at cutting down the field). There were a decent number of 15+ BB pots, and a very large number of 8-10BB pots.
There were only 2 good players (from the combined point of view of hand selection, aggressiveness, hand reading, postflop play, etc) who happened to be seated on either side of me. Although none of the remaining players was terrible, each of them had some substantial problems with their game - mostly just too loose, although a couple were stupid over-agro and another couple made very poor slow play choices.
To a relatively high degree, almost all players were paying attention to the game as many hands were commented on at their conclusion. I had only played with 2 of the players at the table before, and this did not include the 2 good players as I just recognized them from playing bigger games and how they played the hands that I was able to observe. (Perhaps those judgements are made too loosely, but I feel comfortable with those characterizations)
About a quarter of the way through the session (and btw, I knew this was 1/4 of the way because I had a fixed time that I needed to leave), I was faced with a river decision that, given the number of observant opponents at that early stage of my session, I wonder whether or not I should have played differently for metagame reasons.
Button does not get out of line bluff raising, but he might bluff bet in last position if he senses weakness. BB often tries to make fancy plays.
Hand #1 - 9 seated $20/$40 live LHE
- preflop: folded to me in MP+2, I open raise with JhJs, folded to button who cold calls, SB folds, BB calls. (3 players, 6.5 small bets)
- flop: Jc9h4s, BB checks, I bet, button calls after a brief pause, BB folds (2 players, 8.5 small bets)
- turn: Jc9h4s8c, I bet, button calls, again after a brief pause (2 players, 6 big bets)
- river: Jc9h4s8c7s, a player not in the hand calls out "pocket tens is good", after a small pause, I bet/fold.
(i) Likely hands that check behind, but will call a bet: QJs (1 way), AJ (4), KJs (1); 6 total
(ii) Hands that will almost certainly raise: TT (6), JTs (1); 7 total
(I exclude QTs because button raises 100% on the turn with a straight, and no other sets or PP are likely given the action)
The problem that I have with checking the river is the relative ratio of (i) to (ii). I have no intention of check/folding, so at the time I thought that bet/folding was the best choice. However, the huge problem of making such folds in front of observant players is simply that others will start taking a shot at you on scary boards.
I believe that online, on average, fewer opponents are paying attention to the action, and secondly if I am concerned about opponents taking advantage of such things, a table change is just a click away. Hence, online I am pretty comfortable with check/fold.
Confronted with exactly the same live situation again, I would check/call. If this hand occured close to the end of my session, I would revert back to bet/fold.
(Should I consider bet/calling?)
Ironically, I believe that only 1 situation actually ended up occuring where someone took a shot at me. All I can say is, nice check raise, bad timing.
Hand #2 - 6 seated $20/$40 live LHE (a few of the players had stepped out for a smoke)
- preflop: Hero dealt Ah3h UTG; Hero raises, folded to button who calls, BB calls (same BB as from Hand #1). (3 players, 6.5 small bets)
- flop: Ac7h3d, BB checks, hero bets, button fold, BB calls (2 players, 8.5 small bets)
- turn: Ac7h3d8h, BB check/calls (2 players, 6 big bets)
- river: Ac7h3d8h9h, BB check raises, hero 3 bets, BB turbo mucks.
Given what BB has seen of me, I think he made a very reasonable check/raise bluff (although were I him, I would have bet as a bluff because I think it would be just as effective at half the cost). In very many scenarios, I will hate being check raised on the river with top pair crappy kicker (remember it was a 6 handed situation) on this board. Not that I fold here getting 9:1 but BB might think so given hand #1, and getting 6:1 I would be very unhappy calling (perhaps if I was really having a terrible session and mindset, I would be even more inclined to muck).
He will also often knock me off TT-KK in these situations if I am stupid enough to bet this river (which makes a straight bet by BB an even better play since I am very frequently checking behind on the river with better hands that might fold to a bet).
Anyway, getting back to the metagame, only 1 hand came up where someone took a shot at me, but I also believe this happened because I won a few decent pots in roughly the 3rd quarter of my session to have a very substantial stack of chips sitting in front of me (during the 2nd quarter I had also bought a second rack of chips since I dislike having few chips in my stack). Had I lost a couple of more hands in the middle of the session, I'm certain that my opponents would have been emboldened to put much more pressure on me. Metagame considerations do matter.
Monday, January 23, 2006
Tea for the Tillerman
For no particular reason, today I was browsing through the pokerstars tournament database and noticed Tillerman for the first time. Tillerman, a Brit by the name of Iain Girdwood, was one of the top Blizzard RTS pro-gamers in the world. He was also notable in the Blizzard RTS community because he also put out very good commentary on Warcraft III replays (content really is king in the entertainment industry...). During my WC3 days, a substantial amount of my learning in the middle tiers came from watching WC3 replays commentated by the likes of player/commentators like Tillerman.
He made the jump to poker about 2.5 years ago which he chronicled in this post. As an example of how he is not one to do things halfway, check out his poker library.
It is amusing, but completely understandable, to read his timeline of clearing $100k within the first 6 months when taken in context of the absolute pitance that world class pro-Blizzard-RTS-gamers make (even if they are willing to move to South Korea, lol). It wouldn't surprise me if the 95th percentile online poker player can outearn the 99.999th percentile Starcraft/WC3 player by an order of magnitude. Such are the cruel injustices of life; ya gotta be where the money is.
The top level RTS pro-gamers are amazing in many dimensions. An obvious carryover is the ability to micromanage very quickly and efficiently, which translates in online poker to extreme multitablers. They can rapidly execute a large number of actions without making any mistakes. Another very helpful skill the pro-gamers have is an incredible ability to quickly adapt efficient strategies and counterstrategies. Blizzard, the game creator, would frequently be tweaking the game; making "balance" changes that affected the huge number of variables involved in the game. The patches would be released pretty often, sometimes about once a month and sometimes more frequently. In short order, the top level players would grasp all of the complex effects of the interdependent changes to devise new optimal strategies and counterstrategies. I've always been in awe of this ability.
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Getting back to poker: Tillerman went almost exclusively through the NL ring game route, albeit very quickly. He wrote a simple post about earn rates in NL ring games, Tillerman's 5% (and 7%) rule.
The threads related to earn rates at the 2+2 forums define a range of between 7-10PT BB/100h (PT BBs == 2x the big blind) as a good-great range for the $100NL game, and somewhere between 5-7PT BB/100h for midstakes NL.
DoubleAs has been a long time successful NL ring game player (in relative main-stream poker blogger terms), and Eric has increasingly been talking about his refocusing on NL ring games.
In my spare time, I'm thinking of trying to work my way up a few levels at the NL ring games. I took a shot at 8-tabling $100NL and was able to sustain 7PT BB/100h for about 11k hands. I would like to get comfortable significantly multitabling the $200NL soon.
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Another thing that would be fun to try is the significant mulitabling of SNGs, a-la-pokernerd. I tried out 4-tabling, and it seems managable. Ideally, I would do this at Stars to level up in the VIP thing, but a substantial limitation is the inability to use autohotkey shortcuts due to the damn focus stealing.
I'll probably have to put in some substantial LHE hands this week at Party to hit my VIP promotion target (due to the puny number of VIP points I accumulated during my $100NL side experiment). I'm already seriously violating one of my resolutions for this year to decrease the quantity of play in favor of higher quality. At least, I have not been playing tired...
Why isn't there ever enough time???!!?
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Only played one MTT this weekend, the $500k guaranteed at Party. Busted ~1000/3300th when I pushed my shortish stack with JJ and ran into AAs.
Again, the structure of this tournament is so much more forgiving than the corresponding Stars event (which again increased this week to 4074 entrants!!). I won exactly 0 hands in the first 4 levels. I won 2 hands in level 5 - winning the blinds on one, and then having everyone fold into my BB in the other. In spite of this, when I made a stand to play my first major hand more than 90 minutes into the event, I still had something like 6x bb - still very short, but enough to get some breathing room after just one double up.
He made the jump to poker about 2.5 years ago which he chronicled in this post. As an example of how he is not one to do things halfway, check out his poker library.
It is amusing, but completely understandable, to read his timeline of clearing $100k within the first 6 months when taken in context of the absolute pitance that world class pro-Blizzard-RTS-gamers make (even if they are willing to move to South Korea, lol). It wouldn't surprise me if the 95th percentile online poker player can outearn the 99.999th percentile Starcraft/WC3 player by an order of magnitude. Such are the cruel injustices of life; ya gotta be where the money is.
The top level RTS pro-gamers are amazing in many dimensions. An obvious carryover is the ability to micromanage very quickly and efficiently, which translates in online poker to extreme multitablers. They can rapidly execute a large number of actions without making any mistakes. Another very helpful skill the pro-gamers have is an incredible ability to quickly adapt efficient strategies and counterstrategies. Blizzard, the game creator, would frequently be tweaking the game; making "balance" changes that affected the huge number of variables involved in the game. The patches would be released pretty often, sometimes about once a month and sometimes more frequently. In short order, the top level players would grasp all of the complex effects of the interdependent changes to devise new optimal strategies and counterstrategies. I've always been in awe of this ability.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Getting back to poker: Tillerman went almost exclusively through the NL ring game route, albeit very quickly. He wrote a simple post about earn rates in NL ring games, Tillerman's 5% (and 7%) rule.
The threads related to earn rates at the 2+2 forums define a range of between 7-10PT BB/100h (PT BBs == 2x the big blind) as a good-great range for the $100NL game, and somewhere between 5-7PT BB/100h for midstakes NL.
DoubleAs has been a long time successful NL ring game player (in relative main-stream poker blogger terms), and Eric has increasingly been talking about his refocusing on NL ring games.
In my spare time, I'm thinking of trying to work my way up a few levels at the NL ring games. I took a shot at 8-tabling $100NL and was able to sustain 7PT BB/100h for about 11k hands. I would like to get comfortable significantly multitabling the $200NL soon.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another thing that would be fun to try is the significant mulitabling of SNGs, a-la-pokernerd. I tried out 4-tabling, and it seems managable. Ideally, I would do this at Stars to level up in the VIP thing, but a substantial limitation is the inability to use autohotkey shortcuts due to the damn focus stealing.
I'll probably have to put in some substantial LHE hands this week at Party to hit my VIP promotion target (due to the puny number of VIP points I accumulated during my $100NL side experiment). I'm already seriously violating one of my resolutions for this year to decrease the quantity of play in favor of higher quality. At least, I have not been playing tired...
Why isn't there ever enough time???!!?
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Only played one MTT this weekend, the $500k guaranteed at Party. Busted ~1000/3300th when I pushed my shortish stack with JJ and ran into AAs.
Again, the structure of this tournament is so much more forgiving than the corresponding Stars event (which again increased this week to 4074 entrants!!). I won exactly 0 hands in the first 4 levels. I won 2 hands in level 5 - winning the blinds on one, and then having everyone fold into my BB in the other. In spite of this, when I made a stand to play my first major hand more than 90 minutes into the event, I still had something like 6x bb - still very short, but enough to get some breathing room after just one double up.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Helpful tools?
The following is a list of all programs that I use both in real-time and offline:
- Poker Tracker - an essential $55 data mining tool
- PokerACE HUD - a $25 real time display of data mining info
- Poker Stove - basically a free, but very fancy poker calculator
- Poker Patterns - a free graphing application for displaying your archived Poker Tracker results
- Autohotkey - a free automation/hotkey/scripting tool that I use to replace my mouse with keyboard only shortcuts when multitabling at sites ~that don't steal focus~!!!
- UltimateHistory - a free application that can be used to capture UltimateBet hands for import into Poker Tracker
- Excel - simple poker results spreadsheet
Some notable program/tools that I currently don't use are:
- Turbo Texas Hold'em , Poker Academy - poker simulators
- StatKing - a $30 tool for tracking poker results
- PokerCharts - a subscription based ($2/month, $20/year) web based tool for tracking poker results
- regular/automated data backup?? - Every few months I wake up in a cold sweat and remember to make a backup of my poker tracker data and my poker results spreadsheet. There has got to be a better way.... Maybe something really hi-tech like putting a post-it note on my monitor reminding me to do data backup biweekly.
Does anyone use any other tools/utilities for any aspect of their poker playing?
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I'm thinking of switching from using Excel to something like StatKing or PokerCharts that seem to be the premier 2 apps for tracking results.
Currently, I track all my play, both live and online, in an Excel spreadsheet. I always log the game type, stakes, result, date, and session duration. I have a seperate worksheet for each site that I play at plus a worksheet for live play. I don't have any good reason for having a seperate worksheet per site; originally I just thought it might be easier for me to reconcile the results that I tracked with my actual account balance at each site to check for mistakes (either mine or theirs)
It is a very low tech approach, but historically I prefer to look at raw data. I also generally don't mind occasionally doing some semi-manual sorts of the data to do various types of queries.
As I have increased the number of sites that I play at, types of games, and stakes, it is becoming increasingly unwieldy and inefficiently do offline data analysis of results.
The cost difference between StatKing and PokerCharts is neglible. PokerCharts seems to be more feature rich, but I'm not sure how I feel about loading my own personal information onto their site. (One of their arguments is that their site is more secure than an individual's PC connected to the internet. However, I have a seperate PC that is not connected to any network on which I keep all of my personal data)
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(edit)
TripJax's post today discussed another free alternative - Poker Dominator's session tracker
(edit 2/7/06)
Pokernerd (and many others) rave about SNG Power Tools created by eastbay.
- Poker Tracker - an essential $55 data mining tool
- PokerACE HUD - a $25 real time display of data mining info
- Poker Stove - basically a free, but very fancy poker calculator
- Poker Patterns - a free graphing application for displaying your archived Poker Tracker results
- Autohotkey - a free automation/hotkey/scripting tool that I use to replace my mouse with keyboard only shortcuts when multitabling at sites ~that don't steal focus~!!!
- UltimateHistory - a free application that can be used to capture UltimateBet hands for import into Poker Tracker
- Excel - simple poker results spreadsheet
Some notable program/tools that I currently don't use are:
- Turbo Texas Hold'em , Poker Academy - poker simulators
- StatKing - a $30 tool for tracking poker results
- PokerCharts - a subscription based ($2/month, $20/year) web based tool for tracking poker results
- regular/automated data backup?? - Every few months I wake up in a cold sweat and remember to make a backup of my poker tracker data and my poker results spreadsheet. There has got to be a better way.... Maybe something really hi-tech like putting a post-it note on my monitor reminding me to do data backup biweekly.
Does anyone use any other tools/utilities for any aspect of their poker playing?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm thinking of switching from using Excel to something like StatKing or PokerCharts that seem to be the premier 2 apps for tracking results.
Currently, I track all my play, both live and online, in an Excel spreadsheet. I always log the game type, stakes, result, date, and session duration. I have a seperate worksheet for each site that I play at plus a worksheet for live play. I don't have any good reason for having a seperate worksheet per site; originally I just thought it might be easier for me to reconcile the results that I tracked with my actual account balance at each site to check for mistakes (either mine or theirs)
It is a very low tech approach, but historically I prefer to look at raw data. I also generally don't mind occasionally doing some semi-manual sorts of the data to do various types of queries.
As I have increased the number of sites that I play at, types of games, and stakes, it is becoming increasingly unwieldy and inefficiently do offline data analysis of results.
The cost difference between StatKing and PokerCharts is neglible. PokerCharts seems to be more feature rich, but I'm not sure how I feel about loading my own personal information onto their site. (One of their arguments is that their site is more secure than an individual's PC connected to the internet. However, I have a seperate PC that is not connected to any network on which I keep all of my personal data)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
(edit)
TripJax's post today discussed another free alternative - Poker Dominator's session tracker
(edit 2/7/06)
Pokernerd (and many others) rave about SNG Power Tools created by eastbay.
Monday, January 16, 2006
Weekend update
Weekend poker consisted a very large number of small stakes LHE hands at Party, Stars, and Cryptos to work off various bonuses and/or level up in VIP status. No live play this weekend as I can't justify the time expenditure given the current online promotions. Instead, for some variety, I squeezed in exactly 1 MTT, the $500k guaranteed at Stars.
There were just shy of 4k entrants today! Who says that the poker boom has peaked? I cashed, but unfortunately in the absolute bottom tier.
I was pretty disappointed because I had average chips for a decent portion of the 3rd hour, but couldn't get any further (primarily due to losing 4 preflop coin flip or better situations to short stacks). I probably played too conservatively with between 500 down to 400 players remaining with a ~10x bb stack.
I didn't actually count, but I'm pretty sure I broke my record today for the most number of table changes in a single MTT - fairly annoying.
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There was one somewhat interesting small stakes LHE hand that I want to give more thought to. The basic premise is what to do when you have a decent hand plus a good draw, but are caught between a clearly better hand and a maniac who keeps pushing with likely the worst hand?
(edit: after writing out my thoughts on this hand, it is not very interesting after all, but I since I already spent the time, I will leave it in the post anyways...)
hand #1
Party $3/$6 10 seated, BB is a very tight, solid straightforward player who only raises with big hands, button is somewhat of a maniac who severely overplays his hands.
- preflop: fold, fold, UTG+2 calls, folded to button who calls, I complete in the SB w KhJh, BB checks. (4 players, 4 small bets)
- flop: KcQhTh: I check, BB checks, UTG+2 bets, button raises, I flat call, BB 3 bets cold, UTG+2 folds, button and I call. (3 players, 14 small bets)
- turn: KcQhThKs: I check, BB bets, button raises, I flat call, BB 3 bets, button caps (and has only $7 behind), both call. (3 players, 19 big bets)
- river: KcQhThKs8c: I check, BB bets, button raises all in for $7, both call. (final pot: 22.5 big bets)
I know, I know...I played this hand extremely passively. When the action came back to me on the flop, I was very conflicted on whether or not to 3 bet. In almost any other circumstance I will 3 bet here, however because of button's tendency to overplay his hands, I decided to "gamble" and get a certain chance to check raise the turn.
I believe the majority of the time the button has a weak K, but he may also raise with a flush draw (but he does not have the nut flush draw because he would have raised preflop 100% of the time on the button with a suited A), 2 pair (the only 2 pair hand he could have is QT as he will raise any big K on the button) or an OESD. I'm 100% sure that if no one bets the turn, he will bet (he never takes his free card).
Is it a mistake for me not to 3 bet the flop when I should feel confident that my pot equity is high? A blank on the turn will drop my perceived pot equity, so it seems safer for me to try and get more money in on the flop (prior to BB's action defining his hand).
Given that the BB was so tight, I assumed BB was not a factor, and that the large majority of the time I am ahead of both UTG+2 and button and that between them they have a max of 8 outs, but probably less because of my flush draw. During the actual hand, I forgot to consider than UTG+2 might have the nut flush draw - a pretty big oversight on my part. (I think the reason for this oversight is that I had too much of my attention focused on button's play - and also perhaps because I was 8 tabling at the time)
When BB 3 bets cold, I am almost 100% sure he has a straight (the only other small possibility now that I think about it is a set of Ts), and understand that I must improve.
On the turn, I'm caught between a certainly better hand and a maniac who is likely overplaying his hand.
How do I count my outs on the turn? A number of my outs are likely to result in a chop (An A often has me chopping with BB, and a Q or T often has me chopping with button). Absolute worst case is when BB has Tens full likely giving me 5 outs to win (3 for pairing my kicker, and 2 for the straight/royal flush) and 3 outs to chop.
How should I have played this hand?
Anyway, what were the results?:
BB had AJo (broadway straight) with no hearts, and button had that monster hand K2o.
There were just shy of 4k entrants today! Who says that the poker boom has peaked? I cashed, but unfortunately in the absolute bottom tier.
I was pretty disappointed because I had average chips for a decent portion of the 3rd hour, but couldn't get any further (primarily due to losing 4 preflop coin flip or better situations to short stacks). I probably played too conservatively with between 500 down to 400 players remaining with a ~10x bb stack.
I didn't actually count, but I'm pretty sure I broke my record today for the most number of table changes in a single MTT - fairly annoying.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
There was one somewhat interesting small stakes LHE hand that I want to give more thought to. The basic premise is what to do when you have a decent hand plus a good draw, but are caught between a clearly better hand and a maniac who keeps pushing with likely the worst hand?
(edit: after writing out my thoughts on this hand, it is not very interesting after all, but I since I already spent the time, I will leave it in the post anyways...)
hand #1
Party $3/$6 10 seated, BB is a very tight, solid straightforward player who only raises with big hands, button is somewhat of a maniac who severely overplays his hands.
- preflop: fold, fold, UTG+2 calls, folded to button who calls, I complete in the SB w KhJh, BB checks. (4 players, 4 small bets)
- flop: KcQhTh: I check, BB checks, UTG+2 bets, button raises, I flat call, BB 3 bets cold, UTG+2 folds, button and I call. (3 players, 14 small bets)
- turn: KcQhThKs: I check, BB bets, button raises, I flat call, BB 3 bets, button caps (and has only $7 behind), both call. (3 players, 19 big bets)
- river: KcQhThKs8c: I check, BB bets, button raises all in for $7, both call. (final pot: 22.5 big bets)
I know, I know...I played this hand extremely passively. When the action came back to me on the flop, I was very conflicted on whether or not to 3 bet. In almost any other circumstance I will 3 bet here, however because of button's tendency to overplay his hands, I decided to "gamble" and get a certain chance to check raise the turn.
I believe the majority of the time the button has a weak K, but he may also raise with a flush draw (but he does not have the nut flush draw because he would have raised preflop 100% of the time on the button with a suited A), 2 pair (the only 2 pair hand he could have is QT as he will raise any big K on the button) or an OESD. I'm 100% sure that if no one bets the turn, he will bet (he never takes his free card).
Is it a mistake for me not to 3 bet the flop when I should feel confident that my pot equity is high? A blank on the turn will drop my perceived pot equity, so it seems safer for me to try and get more money in on the flop (prior to BB's action defining his hand).
Given that the BB was so tight, I assumed BB was not a factor, and that the large majority of the time I am ahead of both UTG+2 and button and that between them they have a max of 8 outs, but probably less because of my flush draw. During the actual hand, I forgot to consider than UTG+2 might have the nut flush draw - a pretty big oversight on my part. (I think the reason for this oversight is that I had too much of my attention focused on button's play - and also perhaps because I was 8 tabling at the time)
When BB 3 bets cold, I am almost 100% sure he has a straight (the only other small possibility now that I think about it is a set of Ts), and understand that I must improve.
On the turn, I'm caught between a certainly better hand and a maniac who is likely overplaying his hand.
How do I count my outs on the turn? A number of my outs are likely to result in a chop (An A often has me chopping with BB, and a Q or T often has me chopping with button). Absolute worst case is when BB has Tens full likely giving me 5 outs to win (3 for pairing my kicker, and 2 for the straight/royal flush) and 3 outs to chop.
How should I have played this hand?
Anyway, what were the results?:
BB had AJo (broadway straight) with no hearts, and button had that monster hand K2o.
Friday, January 13, 2006
nothing of interest
I've played about 10k hands of limit hold'em this week (combined online and live, naturally heavily skewed towards online), and there was not one interesting hand or situation that came up. BORING!! The only reason I am making this post is because of superstition. Very frequently after I write a post about how things are going one way, things immediately deviate. Here's hoping to keeping up the tradition.... "May you live in interesting times..."
Yes, yes, I know it is bad luck to be superstitious...
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According to the forums at 2+2, Elky has just reached SuperNova status at Pokerstars. What a maniac!! 100,000 VPPs in less than 13 days! Elky is a 23 year old professional gamer (a native of France who moved to Korea a few years ago to play Starcraft professionally). He is positively inhuman.
Yes, yes, I know it is bad luck to be superstitious...
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According to the forums at 2+2, Elky has just reached SuperNova status at Pokerstars. What a maniac!! 100,000 VPPs in less than 13 days! Elky is a 23 year old professional gamer (a native of France who moved to Korea a few years ago to play Starcraft professionally). He is positively inhuman.
Monday, January 09, 2006
Balancing those resolutions
My main poker resolutions for the short term are:
1) focusing on shorthanded games
---1a) improve shorthanded play
---1b) put in substantial hours in shorthanded games
2) favor quality over quantity
During the WPBT trip last month, it was repeatedly and unequivocally bashed into my head that I should spend the vast majority of my online ring game time in short handed games. During the remainder of December, I proceeded to put in no more than a couple of hours in short handed games. How's that for being a good listener?
Since it is that time of year for following up on resolutions, I will make a more concerted effort to follow up on this. However, while I want to maximize my BB/100h, I want to make sure that I take reasonable advantage of site promotions/rewards/incentives.
Thus I intend to only play short handed on sites where I receive rakeback, or more generally speaking get rewarded based on my MGR (monthly gross revenue). Currently, the only site I am registered at that fits this requirement is Sun Poker. I may be a little slow initially at increasing the number of tables I play at that site due to the inability to data mine observed hands, and at least initially, I don't intend to play any higher than $5/$10.
Promotions like Stars VIP don't differentiate based on MGR, and this strongly discourages me from playing shorthanded there. (Several bloggers seem fairly comfortable multitabling the $50->$200 SNGs for healthly ROIs and fairly rapid accumulation of VPPs, however that is a seperate analysis) For my skill set, the $3/$6 and $5/$10 9 max limit games seem optimal from the point of view of rewards from the VIP program.
Another resolution that I intend to follow is primarily to play better, instead of more poker. Due to my recent sickness, I have been sleeping close to 100% more than usual, and I definitely feel a noticable improvement in my mental clarity. I will not play tired in 2006. The side effect of this is that I expect to have far more days in which I play 0 hands of poker than have been the case in 2005.
Ironically, if Party's VIP department introduces another Cruise promotion similar to the one held over Christmas, I'm going to be essentially throwing out all of these resolutions during the promo period. The value of that promotion is so overwhelming large that it cannot be ignored, and timing is absolutely of the essence. I have done extensive analysis of strategies for this promotion, and all necessary preparations are in place if a similar promotion is repeated.
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Go stevejpa!!
Steve is a student from my alma mater, University of Waterloo. He has made the TV table at the PCA, and is 2nd in chips. Go Steve!!
1) focusing on shorthanded games
---1a) improve shorthanded play
---1b) put in substantial hours in shorthanded games
2) favor quality over quantity
During the WPBT trip last month, it was repeatedly and unequivocally bashed into my head that I should spend the vast majority of my online ring game time in short handed games. During the remainder of December, I proceeded to put in no more than a couple of hours in short handed games. How's that for being a good listener?
Since it is that time of year for following up on resolutions, I will make a more concerted effort to follow up on this. However, while I want to maximize my BB/100h, I want to make sure that I take reasonable advantage of site promotions/rewards/incentives.
Thus I intend to only play short handed on sites where I receive rakeback, or more generally speaking get rewarded based on my MGR (monthly gross revenue). Currently, the only site I am registered at that fits this requirement is Sun Poker. I may be a little slow initially at increasing the number of tables I play at that site due to the inability to data mine observed hands, and at least initially, I don't intend to play any higher than $5/$10.
Promotions like Stars VIP don't differentiate based on MGR, and this strongly discourages me from playing shorthanded there. (Several bloggers seem fairly comfortable multitabling the $50->$200 SNGs for healthly ROIs and fairly rapid accumulation of VPPs, however that is a seperate analysis) For my skill set, the $3/$6 and $5/$10 9 max limit games seem optimal from the point of view of rewards from the VIP program.
Another resolution that I intend to follow is primarily to play better, instead of more poker. Due to my recent sickness, I have been sleeping close to 100% more than usual, and I definitely feel a noticable improvement in my mental clarity. I will not play tired in 2006. The side effect of this is that I expect to have far more days in which I play 0 hands of poker than have been the case in 2005.
Ironically, if Party's VIP department introduces another Cruise promotion similar to the one held over Christmas, I'm going to be essentially throwing out all of these resolutions during the promo period. The value of that promotion is so overwhelming large that it cannot be ignored, and timing is absolutely of the essence. I have done extensive analysis of strategies for this promotion, and all necessary preparations are in place if a similar promotion is repeated.
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Go stevejpa!!
Steve is a student from my alma mater, University of Waterloo. He has made the TV table at the PCA, and is 2nd in chips. Go Steve!!
Friday, January 06, 2006
Still alive
This has been no 24 hour flu bug, but I think I am now really on the road to recovery. :) Tired though...
I realized that these last few days have represented the longest stretch of time that I have not played a single hand of poker since I started playing almost two years ago. I've had to live vicariously through others - particularly those bloggers down in the PCA.
I realized that these last few days have represented the longest stretch of time that I have not played a single hand of poker since I started playing almost two years ago. I've had to live vicariously through others - particularly those bloggers down in the PCA.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
2006 Kickoff
2005 was a moderately good year, with plenty of squandered opportunities. Here's to making the best of 2006!
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Blogging
Mucho thanks to Scurvy for his shoutout of this blog in his Review of Poker Blogs. I'm quite honored (actually honoured, as I'm Canadian) since Scurvy is quite simply one of the best poker bloggers on the net. He consistently puts out high quality, informative content, and I wish him success in his upcoming forays into the world of full-time poker playing.
It is really stretching it to call this a poker strategy blog, because it is simply a journal of my experiences. Occasionally, I'll encounter an interesting situation that I'll need to write out in its entirety to get closure on the subject. While I think these are the most helpful things for me to write about, they just don't happen that often. More often than not, when I go back and read my old postings I have a strong desire to just delete them.
Prior to this shoutout, I'd say that my personal highlight from writing this blog was receiving an unsolicted comment from ChrisF regarding a $20/$40 hand I played. Naturally his comment was pointing out what a donkey I am, but that's besides the point. This is Chris F'in Fargis.
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Holiday play
Early on in the holiday week I took a rough case of the unmentionable deep in a $500 buy in event finishing just short of the bubble having started the last hand with a decent sized stack. This disturbed me much more than it should have. For those Top-Gun fans, "I'm hangin on too tight... I've lost the edge".
For most of the remaining week, I took a vacation from Poker stress, and played the easiest hold'em game on the net (from the combined difficulty/variance/hourly-rate POV): $100NL on Party. 8-tabling those games is less stressful than 2-tabling $10/$20 6-max. Another motivator for sticking to those games is for rake-minimization. I'm honestly, but stupidly, not getting the (other) unmentionable, and in the absence of any reasonable promotions, it seemed just as well to "take a break". (the only other thing I considered was taking advantage of the Stars double FPP points promo for the last week of December which essentially works out to $0.032/raked hand, however my rationale is that shortly after the Stars VIP kicks off, I will never be earning less than double FPPs ever again. Might as well save the play for VPP accumulation)
speaking of which...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stars VIP
The Stars VIP program is semi-reasonable in lieu of the unmentionable, at least at moderately low limit - 9 seated tables. Assuming a significant number of hands played (and you accept things like a freeroll into a $200+$15 event at face value), the VIP program works out to roughly $0.016/raked hand at BronzeStar, $0.024/rh at SilverStar, $0.032/rh at GoldStar, $0.04/rh at PlatinumStar, and $0.056/rh at SuperNova. Converting these numbers into BB/100h at stakes such as $2/$4 and $3/$6 LHE works out to generous returns since the average-rake/rh at those levels is only slightly above $1. Coupled with 9-max games, this can provide barely break-even grinders a profitable, but unsatisfying existence.
...
Anyhow, New year's comes around, and I make a concerted effort to level up ASAP. Funny enough, I somehow decided to kick off the first hour playing $0.50/$1.00NL. After 4-tabling for an hour, I had a whopping 46 VPPs, so that was enough of that. I then fire up 7-tables of $3/$6 9-max (granted starting with 1 table, adding each additional table after 5 or more minutes, since I have been so spoiled by the ability on Party to datamine 16 billion hands before sitting down for the first time, and pretty much require having ~some~ hand history before multitabling.) My goal was to make Gold Star by the end of the second day and PlatinumStar by the time my wife returns home from her trip next week. Again, nice goals, but can I follow through?
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Pain
I work my way up to about 1300VPPs (1500 needed to Silver, and 4k needed for Gold) when I decide it is time to take a break, head on down to the gym and get a nice New Year's workout. I didn't mention that the night before I had sneezed a couple of times, and that I had a ticklish nose when I woke up on New Years Day. Anyway, shortly after I got back from my workout, an impending case of the flu hit me square in the head.
I haven't had anything worse than a mild cold so far this decade, and this felt like my head was stuck in a vice. I was soon in no condition to be walking around, let alone trying to go out and drive around trying to find a pharmacy that was open on New Year's Day. For the next 18 hours, I tried on and off to sleep through an achy, sweaty miserable night. The next morning, when I was reasonably sure that the nearby Safeway would be open, I made the trip out and picked up whatever I could find that provided maximum relief for Sinus pain.
After doping up, I was actually able to get a few hours of real sleep, and then wake up in the mood to rack up some more VPPs. I worked my way up to about 2k points before realizing it was quite premature to call an end to my flu bug. However, during that session I had the pleasure of sitting at one table with Dr. Pauly. I believe we only faced off 2 hands - the first of which Dr. Pauly called my river bluff when we both missed our flush draw, and the other hand he paid me off all the way with top pair worse kicker. I'm content to have an even-Steven situation with a fellow blogger. I'm pretty sure he didn't know who I was anyway.
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Grand Larceny of focus
One pretty disappointing thing about multitabling at Stars is the fact that whenever you are prompted for an action at a table, the Stars GUI client sets the focus to that table. This makes it EXTREMELY dangerous to use keyboard shortcuts a-la-autohotkey. It was actually roughly 45 minutes of multitabling before I realized this behavior. Initially I was just thinking that I was making a heck of a lot of misclicks.
This sets me back to using the mouse only to multitable at Stars. As I said earlier, my possible RSI condition is discouraging me from overusing the mouse, but from the days of Starcraft/Zerg, I've often been in the house of thought that "why click just once, when 3 or 4 times will get the job done with even more certainty?". I've been unlearning this behavior, but at any rate, this is discouraging from the point of view of attempting to get to SuperNova status without wrecking my hand.
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It is not looking like I'm going to come anywhere near my original timeline for leveling up through the Stars VIP program. Based on some 2+2 threads, it sounds like some maniacs made it to PlatinumStar in the first 24 hours. At any rate, I've been running very good in all these low limit games for the last week or so, and this kind of positive reinforcement has been good for my psyche regardless of other progress.
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Blogging
Mucho thanks to Scurvy for his shoutout of this blog in his Review of Poker Blogs. I'm quite honored (actually honoured, as I'm Canadian) since Scurvy is quite simply one of the best poker bloggers on the net. He consistently puts out high quality, informative content, and I wish him success in his upcoming forays into the world of full-time poker playing.
It is really stretching it to call this a poker strategy blog, because it is simply a journal of my experiences. Occasionally, I'll encounter an interesting situation that I'll need to write out in its entirety to get closure on the subject. While I think these are the most helpful things for me to write about, they just don't happen that often. More often than not, when I go back and read my old postings I have a strong desire to just delete them.
Prior to this shoutout, I'd say that my personal highlight from writing this blog was receiving an unsolicted comment from ChrisF regarding a $20/$40 hand I played. Naturally his comment was pointing out what a donkey I am, but that's besides the point. This is Chris F'in Fargis.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Holiday play
Early on in the holiday week I took a rough case of the unmentionable deep in a $500 buy in event finishing just short of the bubble having started the last hand with a decent sized stack. This disturbed me much more than it should have. For those Top-Gun fans, "I'm hangin on too tight... I've lost the edge".
For most of the remaining week, I took a vacation from Poker stress, and played the easiest hold'em game on the net (from the combined difficulty/variance/hourly-rate POV): $100NL on Party. 8-tabling those games is less stressful than 2-tabling $10/$20 6-max. Another motivator for sticking to those games is for rake-minimization. I'm honestly, but stupidly, not getting the (other) unmentionable, and in the absence of any reasonable promotions, it seemed just as well to "take a break". (the only other thing I considered was taking advantage of the Stars double FPP points promo for the last week of December which essentially works out to $0.032/raked hand, however my rationale is that shortly after the Stars VIP kicks off, I will never be earning less than double FPPs ever again. Might as well save the play for VPP accumulation)
speaking of which...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stars VIP
The Stars VIP program is semi-reasonable in lieu of the unmentionable, at least at moderately low limit - 9 seated tables. Assuming a significant number of hands played (and you accept things like a freeroll into a $200+$15 event at face value), the VIP program works out to roughly $0.016/raked hand at BronzeStar, $0.024/rh at SilverStar, $0.032/rh at GoldStar, $0.04/rh at PlatinumStar, and $0.056/rh at SuperNova. Converting these numbers into BB/100h at stakes such as $2/$4 and $3/$6 LHE works out to generous returns since the average-rake/rh at those levels is only slightly above $1. Coupled with 9-max games, this can provide barely break-even grinders a profitable, but unsatisfying existence.
...
Anyhow, New year's comes around, and I make a concerted effort to level up ASAP. Funny enough, I somehow decided to kick off the first hour playing $0.50/$1.00NL. After 4-tabling for an hour, I had a whopping 46 VPPs, so that was enough of that. I then fire up 7-tables of $3/$6 9-max (granted starting with 1 table, adding each additional table after 5 or more minutes, since I have been so spoiled by the ability on Party to datamine 16 billion hands before sitting down for the first time, and pretty much require having ~some~ hand history before multitabling.) My goal was to make Gold Star by the end of the second day and PlatinumStar by the time my wife returns home from her trip next week. Again, nice goals, but can I follow through?
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Pain
I work my way up to about 1300VPPs (1500 needed to Silver, and 4k needed for Gold) when I decide it is time to take a break, head on down to the gym and get a nice New Year's workout. I didn't mention that the night before I had sneezed a couple of times, and that I had a ticklish nose when I woke up on New Years Day. Anyway, shortly after I got back from my workout, an impending case of the flu hit me square in the head.
I haven't had anything worse than a mild cold so far this decade, and this felt like my head was stuck in a vice. I was soon in no condition to be walking around, let alone trying to go out and drive around trying to find a pharmacy that was open on New Year's Day. For the next 18 hours, I tried on and off to sleep through an achy, sweaty miserable night. The next morning, when I was reasonably sure that the nearby Safeway would be open, I made the trip out and picked up whatever I could find that provided maximum relief for Sinus pain.
After doping up, I was actually able to get a few hours of real sleep, and then wake up in the mood to rack up some more VPPs. I worked my way up to about 2k points before realizing it was quite premature to call an end to my flu bug. However, during that session I had the pleasure of sitting at one table with Dr. Pauly. I believe we only faced off 2 hands - the first of which Dr. Pauly called my river bluff when we both missed our flush draw, and the other hand he paid me off all the way with top pair worse kicker. I'm content to have an even-Steven situation with a fellow blogger. I'm pretty sure he didn't know who I was anyway.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Grand Larceny of focus
One pretty disappointing thing about multitabling at Stars is the fact that whenever you are prompted for an action at a table, the Stars GUI client sets the focus to that table. This makes it EXTREMELY dangerous to use keyboard shortcuts a-la-autohotkey. It was actually roughly 45 minutes of multitabling before I realized this behavior. Initially I was just thinking that I was making a heck of a lot of misclicks.
This sets me back to using the mouse only to multitable at Stars. As I said earlier, my possible RSI condition is discouraging me from overusing the mouse, but from the days of Starcraft/Zerg, I've often been in the house of thought that "why click just once, when 3 or 4 times will get the job done with even more certainty?". I've been unlearning this behavior, but at any rate, this is discouraging from the point of view of attempting to get to SuperNova status without wrecking my hand.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is not looking like I'm going to come anywhere near my original timeline for leveling up through the Stars VIP program. Based on some 2+2 threads, it sounds like some maniacs made it to PlatinumStar in the first 24 hours. At any rate, I've been running very good in all these low limit games for the last week or so, and this kind of positive reinforcement has been good for my psyche regardless of other progress.
Friday, December 30, 2005
Bad beat stories
"9 out of 10 people don't care, and the 10th wishes you had lost more". Enough said...
(This quote was made by a law school student who is half heartedly finishing his degree while successful grinding up the online hold'em tables)
(This quote was made by a law school student who is half heartedly finishing his degree while successful grinding up the online hold'em tables)
Monday, December 26, 2005
temporary RSI relief
Recently I have been having discomfort in my hand when using the mouse. I may be developing something like Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, and I have been stupidly procrastinating from going to see the doctor.
In the interim, I installed and modified an autohotkey script from onlinepokerfaq.com. This is a very welcome relief to my mouse hand. I modified the sample scripts they provided to use the F1-F12 keys. (F1-F4 for betting actions, F5-F12 for 8 tabling). I didn't like using any of the numeric keys or arrow keys because of the necessity to type numbers when playing no limit and the occasional need for arrow keys when typing comments. Multitabling is substantially easier with this new setup.
Speaking of multitabling....
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I didn't succumb to the lure of attempting to win a Party Cruise package this weekend from the monthly VIP promo (1st 30 VIPs to earn 25k Party Points are awarded a $12k package), but I was pretty intrigued reading the exploits of MicroBob's and TheMetetron's attempts. I have to say that TheMet is truly sick.... with all the vigor and enthusiam of youth...
Reading that kind of a post really makes me wary of attempting such a marathon. Clearly it is essential to have Gold Status, and the most obvious effective tactic is to use a team. I'd rather attempt the marathon (from the probability-of-success point of view) with a team having a razor-thin $3/$6 bankroll (BBJ) than solo with no bankroll limitations.
In the interim, I installed and modified an autohotkey script from onlinepokerfaq.com. This is a very welcome relief to my mouse hand. I modified the sample scripts they provided to use the F1-F12 keys. (F1-F4 for betting actions, F5-F12 for 8 tabling). I didn't like using any of the numeric keys or arrow keys because of the necessity to type numbers when playing no limit and the occasional need for arrow keys when typing comments. Multitabling is substantially easier with this new setup.
Speaking of multitabling....
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I didn't succumb to the lure of attempting to win a Party Cruise package this weekend from the monthly VIP promo (1st 30 VIPs to earn 25k Party Points are awarded a $12k package), but I was pretty intrigued reading the exploits of MicroBob's and TheMetetron's attempts. I have to say that TheMet is truly sick.... with all the vigor and enthusiam of youth...
Reading that kind of a post really makes me wary of attempting such a marathon. Clearly it is essential to have Gold Status, and the most obvious effective tactic is to use a team. I'd rather attempt the marathon (from the probability-of-success point of view) with a team having a razor-thin $3/$6 bankroll (BBJ) than solo with no bankroll limitations.
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Party till u cruise
Well it seems that Party has kicked off the promos to give out cruise packages for the Party PPM V for playing a ridiculous amount of hands in a very short period of time.
The current promo is for the first 30 VIP members who accumulate 25000 regular party points starting from midnight December 24. I strongly suspect that 30 people will hit this goal by Wednesday at the latest.
I'm not going to take a shot at this promotion simply because my status at Party is BLUE. I will have GOLD status on January 1st, and the GOLD level status of accumulating regular party points at double the normal rate is an absolute must for this kind of promotion. I would be shocked if any BLUE level member was able to obtain a seat from this promo.
Unfortunately, there are likely to be a substantial number of online pros that will also transition from BLUE to GOLD status on Jan 1.
The timing for this current promo would have been perfect for me as my wife is away visiting her family this week. I'm kicking myself for not bothering to at least have put my status to SILVER in the last quarter. On the other hand, if I had SILVER status I would probably squander time trying to accumulate enough points in a wasted effort. Oh well, I guess I can keep the MTT thing going.
It seems prudent to be ready for this type of promotion to be repeated fairly soon, and the preparations are probably:
1) keep at least 25k party points in your account
2) keep a sufficient bankroll available in your party account/neteller to safely 8 table $10/$20 6 max (600BB??)
3) pay attention since a promotion could start at any time (Party is absolutely terrible about making these annoucements widely known in a timely fashion)
The current promo is for the first 30 VIP members who accumulate 25000 regular party points starting from midnight December 24. I strongly suspect that 30 people will hit this goal by Wednesday at the latest.
I'm not going to take a shot at this promotion simply because my status at Party is BLUE. I will have GOLD status on January 1st, and the GOLD level status of accumulating regular party points at double the normal rate is an absolute must for this kind of promotion. I would be shocked if any BLUE level member was able to obtain a seat from this promo.
Unfortunately, there are likely to be a substantial number of online pros that will also transition from BLUE to GOLD status on Jan 1.
The timing for this current promo would have been perfect for me as my wife is away visiting her family this week. I'm kicking myself for not bothering to at least have put my status to SILVER in the last quarter. On the other hand, if I had SILVER status I would probably squander time trying to accumulate enough points in a wasted effort. Oh well, I guess I can keep the MTT thing going.
It seems prudent to be ready for this type of promotion to be repeated fairly soon, and the preparations are probably:
1) keep at least 25k party points in your account
2) keep a sufficient bankroll available in your party account/neteller to safely 8 table $10/$20 6 max (600BB??)
3) pay attention since a promotion could start at any time (Party is absolutely terrible about making these annoucements widely known in a timely fashion)
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Get it while you can...
Party is one of the few sites that provides for automated access to observed hand histories. The ability to have 10 simultaneously open tables provides access for a massive amount of data mining. I data mine from Party 24/7, and although I only started doing this seriously relatively recently, I have imported well over a million hands in the last few months.
There are some indications that in the very near future Party will be dropping support for observed hand histories.
The short-term implication for me is that I will give more thought to the types of games that I am spending my data mining time on. I think my database is light in the $15/$30 and $2/$4 games, very light in the $20/$40 and $30/$60, and somewhat light in the MTTs and $10/$20 6max. So I need to carefully consider which games are most important for me to mine before Party closes the door.
There are some indications that in the very near future Party will be dropping support for observed hand histories.
The short-term implication for me is that I will give more thought to the types of games that I am spending my data mining time on. I think my database is light in the $15/$30 and $2/$4 games, very light in the $20/$40 and $30/$60, and somewhat light in the MTTs and $10/$20 6max. So I need to carefully consider which games are most important for me to mine before Party closes the door.
Monday, December 19, 2005
Sleepless in San Jose
I didn't sleep well this weekend mostly due to disappointing poker results. That is not a good sign. I am not good at clearing my mood - good or bad - after finishing any late night session. I ended up needing to watch the boob tube or to read a novel to wind down. Quite a time waster.
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Anyways, how about the poker?
My weekend poker exploits primarily consisted of 7 online MTTs and a very small amount of $10/$20 6 max - essentially another MTT weekend.
MTT results
Net $ results: -$1195
Events entered: 7
Total entry fees: $1195, plus 20k Party points for the $100k freeroll
In the money (ITM) finishes: 0
ITM %: 0%
Return on investment: -100%
Avg buy-in per event: $170.71
Total time consumed: 10.5 hours
Hourly rate: -$113.81
Ring game results $10/$20 6 max
Net $ results: -$48.76 (2.4BB)
Total time consumed: 1 hour
Hourly rate: -$48.76
I'm not unhappy about the ring game results. There were only 2 short sessions, and towards the end of the second session I lost a huge pot when I flopped a smaller boat. My opponent was fairly solid, so I probably lost 2BB more than I should of, perhaps 1BB.
The only good thing I can say about the MTTs was that I did follow through on the high level plan of attempting to go deep. I absolutely did not play to make it into the money. In 4 of the 7 events, I busted with less than 20% of the field remaining. In 2 of the 5 events, I had an above average stack at the start of my final hand.
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My last hand of the $600+$40 Party Million Guaranteed event, level 9 $200/$400 blinds, ~530/1735 players remaining, 180 players paid, avg chips ~T$4900:
- preflop: Hero is dealt TT UTG with a $10600 stack (2x avg , ~26.5x bb). Hero raises 3.5x bb, folded to MP who flat calls with ~$14600 behind (~36.5x bb) , everyone else folds. (2 players, pot size 8.5x bb)
- flop: 832 rainbow, hero bets 8x bb, immediately MP pushes for 36.5x bb.
I used up my time bank on this one though I obviously called since it was my last hand. I had not seen this player get caught out of line. He had come over the top of an opponent twice in the last 3 orbits where the opponent mucked (once preflop and once on the flop), though his raises were not all in.
At the time, I put him on one of 4 hands: 77, 99, TT, JJ. I don't know if this is a reasonable estimation of his range. I'm offered 2.6:1 odds, and my lame assessment says my hand is good over 60% of the time, so I call. Villain has JJ, turn and river are bricks, I throw my stress ball across the living room and am thankful that my wife is out doing Christmas shopping.
Again the primary thing about this hand is whether or not I understand MP's range of hands. When the JJ was turned up, I felt like the donk of the day. I think I need a better model for calcuating my opponent's range of hands.
The way I thought about it at the time was:
- he has 6 ways of being dealt 77, 99 and JJ and 1 way of being dealt TT; so I'm ahead 12/19 times, tied 1/19 times, and behind 6/19 of the rest.
A simple but probably effective way to define the situation is consider what the probability is that MP would push with a worse hand than TT on this dry board at this stage of the tournament when MP has close to a 3x avg chip stack vs. an opponent who has 2/3 of his chip stack and has already fired 2 bullets. (preflop there was 1 bigger stack than MP in CO)
Given infinite time, I think I should have modelled it more like this:
- for each hand possibility, estimate the probability that the opponent would have played the hand in the manner he did, and then factor in the number of ways that hand could be dealt, and then factor in my EV against each hand and then sum them all up:
- My EV for folding is 0. If I call, I get +39.5x bb for winning, -15xbb for losing, and +12.25xbb for chopping.
- AA, KK: 20%, 12 ways
- QQ: 10%, 6 ways
- JJ: 50%, 6 ways
- TT: 50%, 1 way
- 99, 77: 50%, 12 ways
- 88: 10%, 3 ways
- AKo, AQs, AJs, KQs: 10%, 28 ways
Using poker stove and excel, I come up with a EV of +13.7xbb for calling (the weighted avg gives me the best hand 56% of the time). The dominating effect is made from the inclusion of the 77 possibility. If I completely drop the 77 hand, the EV drops to +8.7xbb. What EV should I call with given I can muck and have still have an above avg chip stack?
Naturally, the assumptions can be way off. If I changed AA, KK to 25%, QQ to 20%, JJ to 75%, drop 77, KQs, AJs from the picture, the EV drops to +3.7xbb. It doesn't take much more tweaking of assumptions to make it a -EV call. Clearly this is a garbage in garbage out type model.
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Anyways, this is excessive analysis for 1 stinkin stupid hand. There were 2 other hands (1 in level 3 and 1 in level 4) that I did not get maximum value for my medium strength hand against a bad player. At the time, I was only a little upset with myself. On further reflection, I think that in the long run, these kinds of mistakes are just as bad as my play in the TT hand.
Overall, given an average distribution of hands, I suspect I am not playing well enough to build an above average chip stack. I am going to continue to try and adjust for this.
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I'm 0/11 in the last week and a half of online MTTs, but I will continue to keep at it.
I've been favoring playing Party MTTs lately because I have a substantial amount of data mined from the larger Party MTTs. Also, my most frequently played event, the $100+9 9pm event, has a $2k overlay.
The structure for larger buy-in Party events is actually quite reasonable. In the Million Dollar guaranteed event I actually dropped below the initial buy-in level on hand #1 and did not climb above this mark again until after the 90 minute mark (late in level 5). There is a lot of room to play, and if I can improve my game, I think I may eventually have some good finishes.
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I have a new hero.
Congrats to lordhutty for closing the deal on the $200k guaranteed on Saturday. I see lordhutty in every $100+ NLHE MTT on Party. He is frequently among the top leaders on the Party TLB (In the Monthly Party TLB in 2005, he was in the top 10 3x, top20 2x, and in the top 100 2x). Mixing quantity with quality pays off.
"I'll have whatever that guy is having"
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Party's BBJ is in the $300k range again. I've decided my new cut-off point for playing the BBJ tables will be $538k. I'm basing this number on my estimate that at this size the Jackpot EV for playing $2/$4 BBJ tables is $0.10 per hand (all hands, not raked hands). I'm not a good enough player to pass on that kind of EV/hand.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anyways, how about the poker?
My weekend poker exploits primarily consisted of 7 online MTTs and a very small amount of $10/$20 6 max - essentially another MTT weekend.
MTT results
Net $ results: -$1195
Events entered: 7
Total entry fees: $1195, plus 20k Party points for the $100k freeroll
In the money (ITM) finishes: 0
ITM %: 0%
Return on investment: -100%
Avg buy-in per event: $170.71
Total time consumed: 10.5 hours
Hourly rate: -$113.81
Ring game results $10/$20 6 max
Net $ results: -$48.76 (2.4BB)
Total time consumed: 1 hour
Hourly rate: -$48.76
I'm not unhappy about the ring game results. There were only 2 short sessions, and towards the end of the second session I lost a huge pot when I flopped a smaller boat. My opponent was fairly solid, so I probably lost 2BB more than I should of, perhaps 1BB.
The only good thing I can say about the MTTs was that I did follow through on the high level plan of attempting to go deep. I absolutely did not play to make it into the money. In 4 of the 7 events, I busted with less than 20% of the field remaining. In 2 of the 5 events, I had an above average stack at the start of my final hand.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
My last hand of the $600+$40 Party Million Guaranteed event, level 9 $200/$400 blinds, ~530/1735 players remaining, 180 players paid, avg chips ~T$4900:
- preflop: Hero is dealt TT UTG with a $10600 stack (2x avg , ~26.5x bb). Hero raises 3.5x bb, folded to MP who flat calls with ~$14600 behind (~36.5x bb) , everyone else folds. (2 players, pot size 8.5x bb)
- flop: 832 rainbow, hero bets 8x bb, immediately MP pushes for 36.5x bb.
I used up my time bank on this one though I obviously called since it was my last hand. I had not seen this player get caught out of line. He had come over the top of an opponent twice in the last 3 orbits where the opponent mucked (once preflop and once on the flop), though his raises were not all in.
At the time, I put him on one of 4 hands: 77, 99, TT, JJ. I don't know if this is a reasonable estimation of his range. I'm offered 2.6:1 odds, and my lame assessment says my hand is good over 60% of the time, so I call. Villain has JJ, turn and river are bricks, I throw my stress ball across the living room and am thankful that my wife is out doing Christmas shopping.
Again the primary thing about this hand is whether or not I understand MP's range of hands. When the JJ was turned up, I felt like the donk of the day. I think I need a better model for calcuating my opponent's range of hands.
The way I thought about it at the time was:
- he has 6 ways of being dealt 77, 99 and JJ and 1 way of being dealt TT; so I'm ahead 12/19 times, tied 1/19 times, and behind 6/19 of the rest.
A simple but probably effective way to define the situation is consider what the probability is that MP would push with a worse hand than TT on this dry board at this stage of the tournament when MP has close to a 3x avg chip stack vs. an opponent who has 2/3 of his chip stack and has already fired 2 bullets. (preflop there was 1 bigger stack than MP in CO)
Given infinite time, I think I should have modelled it more like this:
- for each hand possibility, estimate the probability that the opponent would have played the hand in the manner he did, and then factor in the number of ways that hand could be dealt, and then factor in my EV against each hand and then sum them all up:
- My EV for folding is 0. If I call, I get +39.5x bb for winning, -15xbb for losing, and +12.25xbb for chopping.
- AA, KK: 20%, 12 ways
- QQ: 10%, 6 ways
- JJ: 50%, 6 ways
- TT: 50%, 1 way
- 99, 77: 50%, 12 ways
- 88: 10%, 3 ways
- AKo, AQs, AJs, KQs: 10%, 28 ways
Using poker stove and excel, I come up with a EV of +13.7xbb for calling (the weighted avg gives me the best hand 56% of the time). The dominating effect is made from the inclusion of the 77 possibility. If I completely drop the 77 hand, the EV drops to +8.7xbb. What EV should I call with given I can muck and have still have an above avg chip stack?
Naturally, the assumptions can be way off. If I changed AA, KK to 25%, QQ to 20%, JJ to 75%, drop 77, KQs, AJs from the picture, the EV drops to +3.7xbb. It doesn't take much more tweaking of assumptions to make it a -EV call. Clearly this is a garbage in garbage out type model.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anyways, this is excessive analysis for 1 stinkin stupid hand. There were 2 other hands (1 in level 3 and 1 in level 4) that I did not get maximum value for my medium strength hand against a bad player. At the time, I was only a little upset with myself. On further reflection, I think that in the long run, these kinds of mistakes are just as bad as my play in the TT hand.
Overall, given an average distribution of hands, I suspect I am not playing well enough to build an above average chip stack. I am going to continue to try and adjust for this.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm 0/11 in the last week and a half of online MTTs, but I will continue to keep at it.
I've been favoring playing Party MTTs lately because I have a substantial amount of data mined from the larger Party MTTs. Also, my most frequently played event, the $100+9 9pm event, has a $2k overlay.
The structure for larger buy-in Party events is actually quite reasonable. In the Million Dollar guaranteed event I actually dropped below the initial buy-in level on hand #1 and did not climb above this mark again until after the 90 minute mark (late in level 5). There is a lot of room to play, and if I can improve my game, I think I may eventually have some good finishes.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I have a new hero.
Congrats to lordhutty for closing the deal on the $200k guaranteed on Saturday. I see lordhutty in every $100+ NLHE MTT on Party. He is frequently among the top leaders on the Party TLB (In the Monthly Party TLB in 2005, he was in the top 10 3x, top20 2x, and in the top 100 2x). Mixing quantity with quality pays off.
"I'll have whatever that guy is having"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Party's BBJ is in the $300k range again. I've decided my new cut-off point for playing the BBJ tables will be $538k. I'm basing this number on my estimate that at this size the Jackpot EV for playing $2/$4 BBJ tables is $0.10 per hand (all hands, not raked hands). I'm not a good enough player to pass on that kind of EV/hand.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Playing environment
Another common theme that was drilled into my head during the weekend in my conversations with online pros was the subject of concentration while playing online.
My playing environment is rife with distractions. In the background, I'm listening to music and/or the TV and/or chatting with my wife, reading/writing email, IMing, reading blogs, 2+2, news, scanning the web for deals and promotions, tweaking my data mining, running back and forth doing household chores, the list goes on and on.
Again this is something I know better than to do, but these bad habits have just slipped back in gradually and subtly over the last few months. The difference between good results and great results in LHE is 1 lousy BB/100h. How retarded am I to play with so many distractions!!?!!
Some thoughts on combating this issue:
- One thing that I suspect may actually help is to play less. Like a true addict, recently I have been filling up ALL available free time (and more) with table time. This practically forces me to multitask.
- I'm also considering buying a pair of noise cancelling headphones. The $ cost/benefit tradeoff in terms of improved concentration may not be justified, but I've wanted to get a pair for a while now anyways. Kind of silly, since I just bought a new pair of Sony MDR-V600's a few weeks ago, but I can find another use for those...
- When we last switched apartments a couple of months ago, we debated on moving up from a 1 bedroom to a 2 bedroom, but in the end decided to save a few hundred $ a month and stay in a 1 bedroom. The extra space would almost certainly have provided a better environment for focused playing. While I'm not willing to make any changes during this lease, I do regret not more strongly considering taking the 2 bedroom. Every decision is easier in retrospect.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After getting a few decent nights of sleep, I'm starting to feel human again. Still degenerate, yes, but human none-the-less.
In my typical "non-professional" mannerism, after my big wins this weekend, I've been taking it very easy these last few days, and put in very little table time - electing only to play in 1 online MTT and no ring games.
Status from the previous week of online MTTs
Net $ results: -$436
Events entered: 4
Total entry fees: $436
In the money (ITM) finishes: 0
ITM %: 0%
Return on investment: -100%
Avg buy-in per event: $109
Total time consumed: 4.2 hours
Hourly rate: $-103.81
I barely cracked the first hour in any of these last 4 MTTs. I've had no strategy changes, but the way the events played out I basically got substantially involved in exactly one hand in each of the MTTs after allowing myself to shrink to a short stack (8x bb or less). These hands were just push situations that resulted in coin flip scenarios.
Despite the poor showing in these last 4 MTTs, I'm still liking the $100+9 9pm Party event. The field is very soft. I'd rate the typical field to be 30% bad, 30% very bad, 30% avg, 10% good or very good. I constantly see players call (and overcall, and over-overcall) substantial all in over bets or raises in scenarios where they have a moderate chance of being in a coin flip situation, but a large chance of being dominated or drawing dead.
I would also like to play more $150->$200 buy in events where there will be more satellite qualifiers. Unfortunately my day-job schedule prevents me from playing in events like the Super Weekdays or Friday special.
I'm on the fence on whether or not to be mixing in cheap $3-$10 satellites to the weekend ~$200 events in my multitabling. In the past I have found I make questionable decisions when I have more than 2 different types of games running at a time. (This assumes that I'm playing a few LHE ring games and a $100 MTT. If I was just playing a couple of LHE ring games, then simultaneously playing a couple of $3 supers should be fine). The ROI for playing in these types of sats is very high, but I am sufficiently bankrolled for $100-$300 MTTs, so my hourly rate considerations may favor direct buyins.
I think I am going to make a slight increase on the number of hands I limp in on during the first two rounds. The reasoning is simply to increase my oppontunities to double up from scenarios where I flop a made hand.
I've also been doing more data mining from $100+ Party MTTs, so hopefully this data will occasionally help me to make better decisions.
I know that a lot of very successful players swear by sticking to the ring games. Perhaps after a few more weeks of playing MTTs I may raise the white flag, but for now, I'm going to keep at them.
My playing environment is rife with distractions. In the background, I'm listening to music and/or the TV and/or chatting with my wife, reading/writing email, IMing, reading blogs, 2+2, news, scanning the web for deals and promotions, tweaking my data mining, running back and forth doing household chores, the list goes on and on.
Again this is something I know better than to do, but these bad habits have just slipped back in gradually and subtly over the last few months. The difference between good results and great results in LHE is 1 lousy BB/100h. How retarded am I to play with so many distractions!!?!!
Some thoughts on combating this issue:
- One thing that I suspect may actually help is to play less. Like a true addict, recently I have been filling up ALL available free time (and more) with table time. This practically forces me to multitask.
- I'm also considering buying a pair of noise cancelling headphones. The $ cost/benefit tradeoff in terms of improved concentration may not be justified, but I've wanted to get a pair for a while now anyways. Kind of silly, since I just bought a new pair of Sony MDR-V600's a few weeks ago, but I can find another use for those...
- When we last switched apartments a couple of months ago, we debated on moving up from a 1 bedroom to a 2 bedroom, but in the end decided to save a few hundred $ a month and stay in a 1 bedroom. The extra space would almost certainly have provided a better environment for focused playing. While I'm not willing to make any changes during this lease, I do regret not more strongly considering taking the 2 bedroom. Every decision is easier in retrospect.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After getting a few decent nights of sleep, I'm starting to feel human again. Still degenerate, yes, but human none-the-less.
In my typical "non-professional" mannerism, after my big wins this weekend, I've been taking it very easy these last few days, and put in very little table time - electing only to play in 1 online MTT and no ring games.
Status from the previous week of online MTTs
Net $ results: -$436
Events entered: 4
Total entry fees: $436
In the money (ITM) finishes: 0
ITM %: 0%
Return on investment: -100%
Avg buy-in per event: $109
Total time consumed: 4.2 hours
Hourly rate: $-103.81
I barely cracked the first hour in any of these last 4 MTTs. I've had no strategy changes, but the way the events played out I basically got substantially involved in exactly one hand in each of the MTTs after allowing myself to shrink to a short stack (8x bb or less). These hands were just push situations that resulted in coin flip scenarios.
Despite the poor showing in these last 4 MTTs, I'm still liking the $100+9 9pm Party event. The field is very soft. I'd rate the typical field to be 30% bad, 30% very bad, 30% avg, 10% good or very good. I constantly see players call (and overcall, and over-overcall) substantial all in over bets or raises in scenarios where they have a moderate chance of being in a coin flip situation, but a large chance of being dominated or drawing dead.
I would also like to play more $150->$200 buy in events where there will be more satellite qualifiers. Unfortunately my day-job schedule prevents me from playing in events like the Super Weekdays or Friday special.
I'm on the fence on whether or not to be mixing in cheap $3-$10 satellites to the weekend ~$200 events in my multitabling. In the past I have found I make questionable decisions when I have more than 2 different types of games running at a time. (This assumes that I'm playing a few LHE ring games and a $100 MTT. If I was just playing a couple of LHE ring games, then simultaneously playing a couple of $3 supers should be fine). The ROI for playing in these types of sats is very high, but I am sufficiently bankrolled for $100-$300 MTTs, so my hourly rate considerations may favor direct buyins.
I think I am going to make a slight increase on the number of hands I limp in on during the first two rounds. The reasoning is simply to increase my oppontunities to double up from scenarios where I flop a made hand.
I've also been doing more data mining from $100+ Party MTTs, so hopefully this data will occasionally help me to make better decisions.
I know that a lot of very successful players swear by sticking to the ring games. Perhaps after a few more weeks of playing MTTs I may raise the white flag, but for now, I'm going to keep at them.
Monday, December 12, 2005
Vegas trip summary
Initially, I was going to entitle this post "Vegas trip report", but after further reflection I don't feel comfortable writing much detail in this forum. This was my 5th trip to Vegas this year, and, like the others, the experience unfolded in unexpected ways. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Hence, I'm just going to post a few summary details.
- resultswise, this was my 2nd best weekend this year and my 3rd best weekend ever
- put in a decent amount of table hours at $15/$30 -> $30/$60 LHE at Bellagio, but unfortunately spent 0 hours in any type of mixed game anywhere. No MTTs (except for the WPBT thing), SNGs or Supers on this trip.
- finished 7th/107 in the bloggers tournament. Built up an above average stack during the middle 3rd of the tournament, but made a couple of decisions with roughly 30 people left that left me with a below average stack. From there I played a very unimaginative short stack game until I was busted by the Aussie. Ironically, I had to muck ~80% of my very best hands in the last hour and ~80% of my actual pushing hands were complete crap.
- by far, the most fruitful experiences of the trip (from the long term perspective) were the conversations I had. I spoke at length with some very successful midstakes pros, a couple of NY Times best selling poker book authors, and a couple of TV pros. These discussions mainly just reiterated things that I already know, but sometimes I just need a little reminder to set me on the right path.
Mistakes/Areas-for-improvement
- sleep management before and during road trips
- never, never forget to ask for a comp! I had more comps than I could use on this trip such that my out-of-pocket costs were simply transportation and tips. However, as I have so often done in the past, there were several occasions that I did not remember to ask for some kind of comp when I was likely to get one. Poker players are supposed to have a good memory, and the only excuse I can come up with is mental fatigue due to the previous point. (weak! weak!)
- maximize learning opportunities - I was much better in this area than I have been on past trips, but missing out on mixed games was a notable hole.
- drink more water in Vegas
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thankfully someone hit the Party BBJ early this morning, so my plans for the week are going to be $3/$6->$10/$20 SH LHE online and $100->$200 MTTs online. It is quite coincidental that some bloggers have been recently writing about SH play, but suffice it to say that pursuing the SH game is something that was very much beat into my head this weekend.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Luke Kim is getting to be one of my favorite poker bloggers. He had a funny post today about Parking Meter analysis.
- resultswise, this was my 2nd best weekend this year and my 3rd best weekend ever
- put in a decent amount of table hours at $15/$30 -> $30/$60 LHE at Bellagio, but unfortunately spent 0 hours in any type of mixed game anywhere. No MTTs (except for the WPBT thing), SNGs or Supers on this trip.
- finished 7th/107 in the bloggers tournament. Built up an above average stack during the middle 3rd of the tournament, but made a couple of decisions with roughly 30 people left that left me with a below average stack. From there I played a very unimaginative short stack game until I was busted by the Aussie. Ironically, I had to muck ~80% of my very best hands in the last hour and ~80% of my actual pushing hands were complete crap.
- by far, the most fruitful experiences of the trip (from the long term perspective) were the conversations I had. I spoke at length with some very successful midstakes pros, a couple of NY Times best selling poker book authors, and a couple of TV pros. These discussions mainly just reiterated things that I already know, but sometimes I just need a little reminder to set me on the right path.
Mistakes/Areas-for-improvement
- sleep management before and during road trips
- never, never forget to ask for a comp! I had more comps than I could use on this trip such that my out-of-pocket costs were simply transportation and tips. However, as I have so often done in the past, there were several occasions that I did not remember to ask for some kind of comp when I was likely to get one. Poker players are supposed to have a good memory, and the only excuse I can come up with is mental fatigue due to the previous point. (weak! weak!)
- maximize learning opportunities - I was much better in this area than I have been on past trips, but missing out on mixed games was a notable hole.
- drink more water in Vegas
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thankfully someone hit the Party BBJ early this morning, so my plans for the week are going to be $3/$6->$10/$20 SH LHE online and $100->$200 MTTs online. It is quite coincidental that some bloggers have been recently writing about SH play, but suffice it to say that pursuing the SH game is something that was very much beat into my head this weekend.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Luke Kim is getting to be one of my favorite poker bloggers. He had a funny post today about Parking Meter analysis.
Friday, December 09, 2005
time management
I've been reviewing my results for the last few weeks, and overall I've been pretty stagnant. I could probably group my play into 5 categories:
i) live mid stakes LHE ($20/$40 -> $40/$80)
ii) live small stakes NLHE MTTs ($100 rebuy MTTs)
iii) online small stakes LHE ($2/$4 and $3/$6 Jackpot tables - speaking of which, the Party BBJ has crossed into that +EV range again so if it is not hit by the time I get back from Vegas, it will be BBJ madness again...)
iv) online mid stakes LHE (currently $10/$20)
v) online medium stakes NLHE MTTs ($100->$200 non-rebuy MTTs)
Gains and losses in one category are just being offset by gains and losses in other categories. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I would have had a down month in November had it not been for bonuses.
These are just the games that can have any substantial bankroll influences. I didn't include the very small stakes Omaha 8, 2-7 TD, Stud, and Razz games that I want to pick up. (both the table time and the reading time)
Do I have a lack of focus? By spreading my poker time over a large number of categories, it takes even more calender time to reach the "long term" in any particular area. I don't know if I'm been an honest evaluator of my poker skills, so long term results are something I am very anxious to see.
The main benefit of the diversity is to keep the games interesting. It is definitely a trade off though.
The only thing I can say for sure at this point is, there just aren't enough hours in the day for my poker hobby.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Just another 22 hours before I'm sipping a Strawberry Julius in the Bellagio poker room. Woo hoo!
i) live mid stakes LHE ($20/$40 -> $40/$80)
ii) live small stakes NLHE MTTs ($100 rebuy MTTs)
iii) online small stakes LHE ($2/$4 and $3/$6 Jackpot tables - speaking of which, the Party BBJ has crossed into that +EV range again so if it is not hit by the time I get back from Vegas, it will be BBJ madness again...)
iv) online mid stakes LHE (currently $10/$20)
v) online medium stakes NLHE MTTs ($100->$200 non-rebuy MTTs)
Gains and losses in one category are just being offset by gains and losses in other categories. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I would have had a down month in November had it not been for bonuses.
These are just the games that can have any substantial bankroll influences. I didn't include the very small stakes Omaha 8, 2-7 TD, Stud, and Razz games that I want to pick up. (both the table time and the reading time)
Do I have a lack of focus? By spreading my poker time over a large number of categories, it takes even more calender time to reach the "long term" in any particular area. I don't know if I'm been an honest evaluator of my poker skills, so long term results are something I am very anxious to see.
The main benefit of the diversity is to keep the games interesting. It is definitely a trade off though.
The only thing I can say for sure at this point is, there just aren't enough hours in the day for my poker hobby.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Just another 22 hours before I'm sipping a Strawberry Julius in the Bellagio poker room. Woo hoo!
Monday, December 05, 2005
MTT weekend report
Executive summary
Net $ results: +$976.11
Events entered: 16
Total entry fees: $902.30
In the money (ITM) finishes: 4 (0/12 in first 12, 4/4 in final 4)
ITM %: 25%
Return on investment: 108%
Avg buy-in per event: $56.39
Total time consumed: 12 hours
Hourly rate: $81.34
High point of the weekend: simultaneously finishing in the 70s (out of 3545 entrants) in the Stars $500k guaranteed and in the 220s (out of 3155) in the Party $500k
Low point of the weekend: simultaneously finishing in the 70s (out of 3545 entrants) in the Stars $500k guaranteed and in the 220s (out of 3155) in the Party $500k (outlasting 6400+ entrants but not cashing for any significant $)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Friday
"No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy"
It turned out to be a bad joke that I was planning on playing a "massive" number of online MTTs this weekend. I started suspecting from the first set that I am not well suited to be playing in multiple simultaneous MTTs. The first set of MTTs was intended to be 4, but it quickly became six since the first 2 MTTs lasted a grand total of 5 hands:
1st MTT, 1st hand: folded to MP who raises 4x bb, fold, hero raises to 12x bb w KK, folded back to MP who reraises to 20x bb, hero jams for 75bb, MP thinks until clock has 2 seconds remaining and calls w 88. 8 on the flop. wait, it gets better...
2nd MTT, 4th hand: UTG raises 3x bb, fold, UTG+2 flat calls, hero in MP who reraises 16x BB in MP w QQ, folded through BB, UTG and UTG+2 call. Flop comes KQ2 with 2 suited cards. check, check, hero pushes for ~50x bb, UTG calls, UTG+2 folds. turn comes 4, river comes 4, UTG shows 44.
No, neither MTT was a rebuy tournament.
In the remaining 4 MTTs, I made some bad decisions:
1) called pot size all in bet on turn when 3rd flush card came and I had an overpair.
2) blinded out in turbo satellite (I should ~never~ just blind out in any MTT. I'd rather go down in flames jamming 4x bb with any two cards).
3) called ~1.8x pot size all in bet on turn w K high flush draw and bottom pair against an opponent that I had not seen get out of line. He, of course, had a set and I missed my 7 outer.
4) called all in on river getting 3:1 with 2nd pair
One thing that I repeatedly slipped up on mentally was forgetting which buy-in stakes applied to which table. The hand ranges of typical opponents varies immensely when playing in a $3 rebuy satellite compared to a $100 non-rebuy.
The way I had my windows organized was to have the 4 tournament tables open across the bottom of 2 screens, and the corresponding tournament lobby windows above them. Thus, I would only need to glance up at the tourney window to recall which tourney was which. There were still several occasions when I made a decision at a table not realizing the buy in level.
I had the windows such that they were opened chronologically from left to right with the leftmost being the most newly started tournament. In retrospect, this is a stupid ordering. I should have them ordered by buy-in stakes to aid in the "context recall" speed.
So I was batting 0.000 from my first 6 MTTs. At the time, I was partially blaming my poor multitabling MTT skills but also blaming myself for playing tired. I resolved to start another set when I was well rested. In a testament to discipline, I then proceeded to play 6 hours of 2-4 tabling $10/$20 9 and 10 max. By the time I hit the sack, the sun was already shining.
----------------------------------------------------
Saturday
The "next day" I ran errands for a couple of hours and played a 1 hour session of $10/$20. It was fitting since my planned theme of the weekend was MTTs.
I managed to start my second batch of MTTs early on Saturday evening but was not terribly comfortable multitabling this batch either. I don't recall the specifics of these events too well, but I see from my notes how I finished in a few of the events:
i) got remaining 2/3 of my stack in postflop w AA after my lone opponent flopped trip 2s.
ii) got all in preflop w QQ vs JJ when JJ proceeded to make a straight on the river
iii) flopped set ~under~ set, got all in on the flop.
I have no notes on the next 2.
At that point, I was down to 2 MTTs, and had decided to stop entering any subsequent ones and concentrate on these last 2 (and also not start any ring games). I finished pretty close to the bubble in one event and cashed about half way through the money place finishers in the second. While there is definitely a huge amount of short term luck involved in any given MTT, I felt that I made much better decisions when it came down to just 2 simultaneous MTTs.
After checking on the schedule of the major $200 events, I decided that I would focus on just 2 events for Sunday, the Party $500k and the Stars $500k which both started at the same time on Sunday afternoon.
----------------------------------------------------
Sunday
I woke up a couple of hours before the start of the $500k events and instead of jumping into some ring games, I used the time to reorganize and clean up our apartment. (I hope my wife likes it) I also hooked up the massage chair, that we had not used since we moved a couple of months ago. During the last half hour before the MTTs began, I sat through a nice relaxing massage to start the tournaments fresh.
Well, it turns out that watching the early parts of 2 MTTs is unbelievably boring. So after about 5 tedius minutes, I tried searching for some of the popular bloggers and also the leaders of the PocketFives tournament leader board (savemyskin, jacksup, shumoney, zeejustin, johnnybax, samenole, etc...). Turns out I would have done quite well in a last longer pool with this gang since the majority of them busted out of both events fairly early. SamEnole was good to watch. He got fairly lucky a couple of times, but I admired all the decisions that he made (from what I could see).
In an MTT, there are frequently times that you'll be discarding hands like TT or JJ preflop with a medium size stack seeing too much action in front of you, but then call all in bets from the BB from very short stacks for a non-trivial amount of your own chip stack with a hand like 94o. Such are the paradoxes of MTTs.
----------------------------------------------------
Notable things from the $500k events
- The Party tables play MUCH faster than the Stars tables (at least for the first few hours). I averaged 1.5 hands per minute at Party, and 1.0 hpm at Stars.
- Structure for the Stars tournament is brutal. I've read people complaining about this in the past, but I never really appreciated it until I sat down and played the Party and Stars events side by side. The much faster structure just mows down the field at Stars. There was a ~10% larger field at Stars, but the money bubble was burst well more than half an hour faster at Stars.
- the stalling isn't too bad at Stars, and it was not too noticable at Party compared to the regular Party $100+$9 (9pm PST) that I have been playing. At Stars they only institute hand for hand at 1 player before each bubble level.
- fold equity is unbelivably critical at the short-stack-all-in-post-bubble stage.
- during 3rd hour of both MTTs, I had 3x avg chip stack, but was unable to "close the deal". BOO!!!
- Blind and ante stealing near the bubble and even after then bubble burst was noticibly more successful at the Stars $200 event than I am used to. I only have this 1 sample to make this observation from, but at any rate I stole an unreal number of times. During the 3rd hour I managed to get a very large stack (somewhere in top 30 overall chip leaders) by winning a coin flip with the chip leader at my table with 539 players remaining (money bubble was 378). From between 500 players remaining well through 300 players remaining (particularly at the ~400 mark) I was attempting to steal the blinds on average ~2 times per orbit with a success rate that felt like close to 95% (this has to be a short term aberation). Note that this actually worked out to close to 50% of the time that it was folded to me. It was quite strange because each time I had to convince myself to try to steal again. It felt so much like Doyle Brunson's comments on No Limit Hold'em aggression in Super System when he said that he stole so frequently that he thought there is ~no way~ they would fold this time, but still forced himself to be aggressive.
Anyway, this was extremely convenient because it corresponded to the period of time in the tournament that I picked up very few legitimate hands. I was electing to open for 3x bb. I'm not sure if this is the ideal number. The blinds and ante's totalled ~2x bb, so the steal has to work 67% of the time to be profitable.
- I was happy with virtually every decision I made in both MTTs, including one that turned out to be actually wrong, but theoretically correct:
hand #1
- preflop: folded to hero in MP who looks down and finds KQs, hero raises 3x bb (with more than 20x bb behind), folded to CO who jams for 10x bb, everyone else folds. CO is neither very loose nor very tight. Hero calls getting 2:1, CO has AKs and it holds up.
I believe that CO's range is 77+, AK, AQs which Poker Stove tells me that I have 37% pot equity against. I would be happy with myself if I make these kind of decisions every time.
----------------------------------------------------
A first for me
In Sunday's 9pm Party $100+$9, there was an interesting hand right on the money bubble. It was a first for me.
hand #2
- preflop: folded to hero in CO who looks down and finds TT, hero pushes for 6x bb, folded to BB who has 5.5x bb. BB sits and thinks and thinks and with 1 second remaining BB calls with AA.
- flop: comes T high, and BB does not improve.
BB is the bubble boy.
Net $ results: +$976.11
Events entered: 16
Total entry fees: $902.30
In the money (ITM) finishes: 4 (0/12 in first 12, 4/4 in final 4)
ITM %: 25%
Return on investment: 108%
Avg buy-in per event: $56.39
Total time consumed: 12 hours
Hourly rate: $81.34
High point of the weekend: simultaneously finishing in the 70s (out of 3545 entrants) in the Stars $500k guaranteed and in the 220s (out of 3155) in the Party $500k
Low point of the weekend: simultaneously finishing in the 70s (out of 3545 entrants) in the Stars $500k guaranteed and in the 220s (out of 3155) in the Party $500k (outlasting 6400+ entrants but not cashing for any significant $)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Friday
"No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy"
It turned out to be a bad joke that I was planning on playing a "massive" number of online MTTs this weekend. I started suspecting from the first set that I am not well suited to be playing in multiple simultaneous MTTs. The first set of MTTs was intended to be 4, but it quickly became six since the first 2 MTTs lasted a grand total of 5 hands:
1st MTT, 1st hand: folded to MP who raises 4x bb, fold, hero raises to 12x bb w KK, folded back to MP who reraises to 20x bb, hero jams for 75bb, MP thinks until clock has 2 seconds remaining and calls w 88. 8 on the flop. wait, it gets better...
2nd MTT, 4th hand: UTG raises 3x bb, fold, UTG+2 flat calls, hero in MP who reraises 16x BB in MP w QQ, folded through BB, UTG and UTG+2 call. Flop comes KQ2 with 2 suited cards. check, check, hero pushes for ~50x bb, UTG calls, UTG+2 folds. turn comes 4, river comes 4, UTG shows 44.
No, neither MTT was a rebuy tournament.
In the remaining 4 MTTs, I made some bad decisions:
1) called pot size all in bet on turn when 3rd flush card came and I had an overpair.
2) blinded out in turbo satellite (I should ~never~ just blind out in any MTT. I'd rather go down in flames jamming 4x bb with any two cards).
3) called ~1.8x pot size all in bet on turn w K high flush draw and bottom pair against an opponent that I had not seen get out of line. He, of course, had a set and I missed my 7 outer.
4) called all in on river getting 3:1 with 2nd pair
One thing that I repeatedly slipped up on mentally was forgetting which buy-in stakes applied to which table. The hand ranges of typical opponents varies immensely when playing in a $3 rebuy satellite compared to a $100 non-rebuy.
The way I had my windows organized was to have the 4 tournament tables open across the bottom of 2 screens, and the corresponding tournament lobby windows above them. Thus, I would only need to glance up at the tourney window to recall which tourney was which. There were still several occasions when I made a decision at a table not realizing the buy in level.
I had the windows such that they were opened chronologically from left to right with the leftmost being the most newly started tournament. In retrospect, this is a stupid ordering. I should have them ordered by buy-in stakes to aid in the "context recall" speed.
So I was batting 0.000 from my first 6 MTTs. At the time, I was partially blaming my poor multitabling MTT skills but also blaming myself for playing tired. I resolved to start another set when I was well rested. In a testament to discipline, I then proceeded to play 6 hours of 2-4 tabling $10/$20 9 and 10 max. By the time I hit the sack, the sun was already shining.
----------------------------------------------------
Saturday
The "next day" I ran errands for a couple of hours and played a 1 hour session of $10/$20. It was fitting since my planned theme of the weekend was MTTs.
I managed to start my second batch of MTTs early on Saturday evening but was not terribly comfortable multitabling this batch either. I don't recall the specifics of these events too well, but I see from my notes how I finished in a few of the events:
i) got remaining 2/3 of my stack in postflop w AA after my lone opponent flopped trip 2s.
ii) got all in preflop w QQ vs JJ when JJ proceeded to make a straight on the river
iii) flopped set ~under~ set, got all in on the flop.
I have no notes on the next 2.
At that point, I was down to 2 MTTs, and had decided to stop entering any subsequent ones and concentrate on these last 2 (and also not start any ring games). I finished pretty close to the bubble in one event and cashed about half way through the money place finishers in the second. While there is definitely a huge amount of short term luck involved in any given MTT, I felt that I made much better decisions when it came down to just 2 simultaneous MTTs.
After checking on the schedule of the major $200 events, I decided that I would focus on just 2 events for Sunday, the Party $500k and the Stars $500k which both started at the same time on Sunday afternoon.
----------------------------------------------------
Sunday
I woke up a couple of hours before the start of the $500k events and instead of jumping into some ring games, I used the time to reorganize and clean up our apartment. (I hope my wife likes it) I also hooked up the massage chair, that we had not used since we moved a couple of months ago. During the last half hour before the MTTs began, I sat through a nice relaxing massage to start the tournaments fresh.
Well, it turns out that watching the early parts of 2 MTTs is unbelievably boring. So after about 5 tedius minutes, I tried searching for some of the popular bloggers and also the leaders of the PocketFives tournament leader board (savemyskin, jacksup, shumoney, zeejustin, johnnybax, samenole, etc...). Turns out I would have done quite well in a last longer pool with this gang since the majority of them busted out of both events fairly early. SamEnole was good to watch. He got fairly lucky a couple of times, but I admired all the decisions that he made (from what I could see).
In an MTT, there are frequently times that you'll be discarding hands like TT or JJ preflop with a medium size stack seeing too much action in front of you, but then call all in bets from the BB from very short stacks for a non-trivial amount of your own chip stack with a hand like 94o. Such are the paradoxes of MTTs.
----------------------------------------------------
Notable things from the $500k events
- The Party tables play MUCH faster than the Stars tables (at least for the first few hours). I averaged 1.5 hands per minute at Party, and 1.0 hpm at Stars.
- Structure for the Stars tournament is brutal. I've read people complaining about this in the past, but I never really appreciated it until I sat down and played the Party and Stars events side by side. The much faster structure just mows down the field at Stars. There was a ~10% larger field at Stars, but the money bubble was burst well more than half an hour faster at Stars.
- the stalling isn't too bad at Stars, and it was not too noticable at Party compared to the regular Party $100+$9 (9pm PST) that I have been playing. At Stars they only institute hand for hand at 1 player before each bubble level.
- fold equity is unbelivably critical at the short-stack-all-in-post-bubble stage.
- during 3rd hour of both MTTs, I had 3x avg chip stack, but was unable to "close the deal". BOO!!!
- Blind and ante stealing near the bubble and even after then bubble burst was noticibly more successful at the Stars $200 event than I am used to. I only have this 1 sample to make this observation from, but at any rate I stole an unreal number of times. During the 3rd hour I managed to get a very large stack (somewhere in top 30 overall chip leaders) by winning a coin flip with the chip leader at my table with 539 players remaining (money bubble was 378). From between 500 players remaining well through 300 players remaining (particularly at the ~400 mark) I was attempting to steal the blinds on average ~2 times per orbit with a success rate that felt like close to 95% (this has to be a short term aberation). Note that this actually worked out to close to 50% of the time that it was folded to me. It was quite strange because each time I had to convince myself to try to steal again. It felt so much like Doyle Brunson's comments on No Limit Hold'em aggression in Super System when he said that he stole so frequently that he thought there is ~no way~ they would fold this time, but still forced himself to be aggressive.
Anyway, this was extremely convenient because it corresponded to the period of time in the tournament that I picked up very few legitimate hands. I was electing to open for 3x bb. I'm not sure if this is the ideal number. The blinds and ante's totalled ~2x bb, so the steal has to work 67% of the time to be profitable.
- I was happy with virtually every decision I made in both MTTs, including one that turned out to be actually wrong, but theoretically correct:
hand #1
- preflop: folded to hero in MP who looks down and finds KQs, hero raises 3x bb (with more than 20x bb behind), folded to CO who jams for 10x bb, everyone else folds. CO is neither very loose nor very tight. Hero calls getting 2:1, CO has AKs and it holds up.
I believe that CO's range is 77+, AK, AQs which Poker Stove tells me that I have 37% pot equity against. I would be happy with myself if I make these kind of decisions every time.
----------------------------------------------------
A first for me
In Sunday's 9pm Party $100+$9, there was an interesting hand right on the money bubble. It was a first for me.
hand #2
- preflop: folded to hero in CO who looks down and finds TT, hero pushes for 6x bb, folded to BB who has 5.5x bb. BB sits and thinks and thinks and with 1 second remaining BB calls with AA.
- flop: comes T high, and BB does not improve.
BB is the bubble boy.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Weekend challenge
My wife is going to be out of town this weekend, so I'm looking at a nice block of completely uninterupted time to partake in degenerate poker activity.
I've been brooding for most of the day in my cube (by the way, PokerSweetHome wrote a great post on the life of a full-time-corporate-worker-part-time-poker-player) about how best to utilize this opportunity, and I'm considering 2 primary choices.
1. Travel to Commerce, CA to play for 48 hours in the biggest poker room in the world.
2. Play in a massive number of online MTTs at home in my underwear.
I initially was heavily in favor of option #1, but the more and more I think about it, option #2 is actually more of a unique opportunity for me.
I'm going to budget a maximum of $2500 to play a continuous stream of between 4-6 simultaneous NLHE MTTs. I intend to play in all the $200 Sunday events at the major sites, and pretty much any NLHE events between the $3 - $50 range (including plenty of satellites) such that I can be continuously in 4-6 events. If I have trouble staying in the targetted number of events, I will fill the gap with $10/$20 LHE at Party.
I really have no feel for how much of the $2500 I am likely to blow through since I've never tried anything like this before.
I also don't have any particular goals. However, my theme as it always is in MTTs is that I will play to finish deep and not to finish in the money. I will bear no shame in being the bubble boy. Okay, okay my exception is going to be if I am a very short stacked on the bubble which I will roughly define as having all of the following conditions:
- my chip stack is less than 25% of average chips and less than 10x bb
- my chip ranking is slightly better than 'n' where 'n' is the number of places being paid
- the # remaining players is less than 105% of 'n'.
No sense throwing money away if I'm not in decent chip shape anyways.
Given my typical tendency to bury my head in a hole when things aren't going my way or to brag brag brag if things are going well, I will either post a mid-weekend update or wait until Monday morning to post the results of all the damage.
I've been brooding for most of the day in my cube (by the way, PokerSweetHome wrote a great post on the life of a full-time-corporate-worker-part-time-poker-player) about how best to utilize this opportunity, and I'm considering 2 primary choices.
1. Travel to Commerce, CA to play for 48 hours in the biggest poker room in the world.
2. Play in a massive number of online MTTs at home in my underwear.
I initially was heavily in favor of option #1, but the more and more I think about it, option #2 is actually more of a unique opportunity for me.
I'm going to budget a maximum of $2500 to play a continuous stream of between 4-6 simultaneous NLHE MTTs. I intend to play in all the $200 Sunday events at the major sites, and pretty much any NLHE events between the $3 - $50 range (including plenty of satellites) such that I can be continuously in 4-6 events. If I have trouble staying in the targetted number of events, I will fill the gap with $10/$20 LHE at Party.
I really have no feel for how much of the $2500 I am likely to blow through since I've never tried anything like this before.
I also don't have any particular goals. However, my theme as it always is in MTTs is that I will play to finish deep and not to finish in the money. I will bear no shame in being the bubble boy. Okay, okay my exception is going to be if I am a very short stacked on the bubble which I will roughly define as having all of the following conditions:
- my chip stack is less than 25% of average chips and less than 10x bb
- my chip ranking is slightly better than 'n' where 'n' is the number of places being paid
- the # remaining players is less than 105% of 'n'.
No sense throwing money away if I'm not in decent chip shape anyways.
Given my typical tendency to bury my head in a hole when things aren't going my way or to brag brag brag if things are going well, I will either post a mid-weekend update or wait until Monday morning to post the results of all the damage.
Yo yo
Today was a down and up day. I dropped another 20BB in the live $20/$40 game. The game conditions were good but worse than yesterday. I was involved in only 2 large pots which I both lost.
I had a couple of short but decent $10/$20 sessions at Party which bounced me back a fair amount for the day.
I noticed that Party has been adding $2000 to the $100+$9 9pm (PST) NLHE MTT, so I signed up tonight. With over 500 entrants, the overlay turned out to be worth less than $4 (way to find that value Dave!). I was able to cash in the mid 30's. No coin flip situations, no bad beats given or taken. Amazing.
Anyway, I have yet to make it very deep in this event. However, the field is so much softer than comparable MTTs at Stars, so I would like to continue playing more of these $109 9pm weekday events.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I finally got around to updating my spreadsheet. I finished in the black for the month of November only due to bonuses. Yuck.
Summary for satellite entries (since 10/29):
$ spent: $627 out of max $3000
$ returned to general poker bankroll: $2150
Net W$ or $T: W$29 (spent W$621 on $33 PCA supers)
Other: $10k Bay 101 WPT seat
I really didn't put in the time I intended for online supers in the later half of the month. I finished a few times in the low 20s in the $33 PCA supers, but with only 1 seat being typically awarded, I've got to do a better job of building a stack in the early - mid parts of the tournament.
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UB is having a silly promotion where they are giving away 7 50" Plasma TVs to players for accumulating Ultimate Points. I say it is silly because of their implementation. They are basing the promotion on the % increase in play in December compared to November. It required a minimum of 50 points being earned in the month of November.
I can see the strategy that UB has which is to essentially target the player who has only been giving a small amount of business to the site. However, it provides no incentive to high volume players.
Hence, players who had slightly over 50 points earned are at a huge advantage over players who put in a lot of table time. It is so much easier to have a 1000% increase in points when starting from such a low number.
I myself earned 65 points in November, and this is pretty darn lucky considering the way they structure the promotion. However, I really don't know how interested I am in the prize. In theory, if you win such a prize, you are required to report the value of the item on your tax return. Hence, this will effectively mean that if I win a TV, I will actually be buying the TV for about 60% off MSRP. By searching for a deal online you will likely be able find a decent deal without having to take a specific model (that 50" is way too large for our apartment). Anyway, I'll worry about that if and when I'm on the leader board. :P
I had a couple of short but decent $10/$20 sessions at Party which bounced me back a fair amount for the day.
I noticed that Party has been adding $2000 to the $100+$9 9pm (PST) NLHE MTT, so I signed up tonight. With over 500 entrants, the overlay turned out to be worth less than $4 (way to find that value Dave!). I was able to cash in the mid 30's. No coin flip situations, no bad beats given or taken. Amazing.
Anyway, I have yet to make it very deep in this event. However, the field is so much softer than comparable MTTs at Stars, so I would like to continue playing more of these $109 9pm weekday events.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I finally got around to updating my spreadsheet. I finished in the black for the month of November only due to bonuses. Yuck.
Summary for satellite entries (since 10/29):
$ spent: $627 out of max $3000
$ returned to general poker bankroll: $2150
Net W$ or $T: W$29 (spent W$621 on $33 PCA supers)
Other: $10k Bay 101 WPT seat
I really didn't put in the time I intended for online supers in the later half of the month. I finished a few times in the low 20s in the $33 PCA supers, but with only 1 seat being typically awarded, I've got to do a better job of building a stack in the early - mid parts of the tournament.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UB is having a silly promotion where they are giving away 7 50" Plasma TVs to players for accumulating Ultimate Points. I say it is silly because of their implementation. They are basing the promotion on the % increase in play in December compared to November. It required a minimum of 50 points being earned in the month of November.
I can see the strategy that UB has which is to essentially target the player who has only been giving a small amount of business to the site. However, it provides no incentive to high volume players.
Hence, players who had slightly over 50 points earned are at a huge advantage over players who put in a lot of table time. It is so much easier to have a 1000% increase in points when starting from such a low number.
I myself earned 65 points in November, and this is pretty darn lucky considering the way they structure the promotion. However, I really don't know how interested I am in the prize. In theory, if you win such a prize, you are required to report the value of the item on your tax return. Hence, this will effectively mean that if I win a TV, I will actually be buying the TV for about 60% off MSRP. By searching for a deal online you will likely be able find a decent deal without having to take a specific model (that 50" is way too large for our apartment). Anyway, I'll worry about that if and when I'm on the leader board. :P
Thursday, December 01, 2005
craptacular
Yesterday I had my first down day in excess of $1k in quite some time. This came from 1.5 hours of live $20/$40 LHE and 5 hours of 2-3 tabling $10/$20 LHE at Party. I am mostly pleased with the way I played, though naturally not with the actual results. I will not whine about the bad beats other than to say that I put in a lot of table hours in some very good games.
I am happy because I felt like I missed very few value bets, paid off far fewer hands on the river (and these are the problems I felt I have been having the most lately), and didn't change my playing style or standards after taking bad beats. The first item is relatively easy to validate, while the second is much trickier because there can be the tendency to fold too much.
My most common mistake in yesterday's sessions (though not necessarily the biggest) was folding too often to flop or turn check raises from frequent bluffers in the blinds (when I was the pre-flop raiser) on ragged or paired boards in the online $10/$20 games. I was probably check raised on the flop or turn in these possible situations on the order of 20 times, and I suspect I laid down the best hand between 20-50% of the time. At one particular table, I had mucked after being check raised so many times that I felt comfortable calling down a flop check raiser with AT high. In general, I need to pay closer attention to identify the players and situations that I am most likely to get pure bluffed check raised (given the history of the session) and also to a lesser extent semibluffed check raised. (I say a lesser extent because this situations are easier to identify and handle).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The only interesting hand for me from the whole day is this one. I made a bad laydown. Am I too weak?
hand #1
Party $10/$20 LHE, 9 seated
- preflop: fold, wild man (55/18/1.8) UTG+1 raises, folded to hero in CO with QQ, hero reraises, button folds, tight agg passive (11/7/1) in SB caps, BB folds, wild man and hero call. (3 players, 13 small bets)
- flop: flop comes A high rainbow with 2 junk cards, SB bets, wild man raises, hero mucks, SB calls. (2 players, 17 small bets)
- turn: K making 1 flush draw. check, check. (2 players, 8.5 big bets)
- river: blank, check, check. SB shows JJ, wild man shows 88.
At the time, I only considered 2 possibilities on the flop, raise or fold. I absolutely did not consider calling. (mistake? since I'm either way ahead or way behind) Wild man had been making absolutely ridiculous flop raises all night long (his PT stats don't reflect the degree to which he was lagging it up in the actual session). His range was any 2 cards, but for the sake of argument I will give him an A 20% of the time. My main concern is the TAP SB. I think that SB's range is (AA-JJ). That puts him ahead only 9/16 56% of the time.
I hate situations where I don't know how much it is going to cost me to see the river. How do I compute my pot equity on the flop if I'm modelling that wild man is ahead of me 20% of the time and SB is ahead 56% of the time? How should I model how many bets it will take to see the river?
I have position here, so should I invest the 3 small bets on the flop (with 16 small bets already in the pot) to test out the waters (with the intention to call a flop cap, and folding unimproved on turn)? Anyway, it seems like if I do continue in the hand my primary goal is to make it to the showdown as cheaply as possible.
I am happy because I felt like I missed very few value bets, paid off far fewer hands on the river (and these are the problems I felt I have been having the most lately), and didn't change my playing style or standards after taking bad beats. The first item is relatively easy to validate, while the second is much trickier because there can be the tendency to fold too much.
My most common mistake in yesterday's sessions (though not necessarily the biggest) was folding too often to flop or turn check raises from frequent bluffers in the blinds (when I was the pre-flop raiser) on ragged or paired boards in the online $10/$20 games. I was probably check raised on the flop or turn in these possible situations on the order of 20 times, and I suspect I laid down the best hand between 20-50% of the time. At one particular table, I had mucked after being check raised so many times that I felt comfortable calling down a flop check raiser with AT high. In general, I need to pay closer attention to identify the players and situations that I am most likely to get pure bluffed check raised (given the history of the session) and also to a lesser extent semibluffed check raised. (I say a lesser extent because this situations are easier to identify and handle).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The only interesting hand for me from the whole day is this one. I made a bad laydown. Am I too weak?
hand #1
Party $10/$20 LHE, 9 seated
- preflop: fold, wild man (55/18/1.8) UTG+1 raises, folded to hero in CO with QQ, hero reraises, button folds, tight agg passive (11/7/1) in SB caps, BB folds, wild man and hero call. (3 players, 13 small bets)
- flop: flop comes A high rainbow with 2 junk cards, SB bets, wild man raises, hero mucks, SB calls. (2 players, 17 small bets)
- turn: K making 1 flush draw. check, check. (2 players, 8.5 big bets)
- river: blank, check, check. SB shows JJ, wild man shows 88.
At the time, I only considered 2 possibilities on the flop, raise or fold. I absolutely did not consider calling. (mistake? since I'm either way ahead or way behind) Wild man had been making absolutely ridiculous flop raises all night long (his PT stats don't reflect the degree to which he was lagging it up in the actual session). His range was any 2 cards, but for the sake of argument I will give him an A 20% of the time. My main concern is the TAP SB. I think that SB's range is (AA-JJ). That puts him ahead only 9/16 56% of the time.
I hate situations where I don't know how much it is going to cost me to see the river. How do I compute my pot equity on the flop if I'm modelling that wild man is ahead of me 20% of the time and SB is ahead 56% of the time? How should I model how many bets it will take to see the river?
I have position here, so should I invest the 3 small bets on the flop (with 16 small bets already in the pot) to test out the waters (with the intention to call a flop cap, and folding unimproved on turn)? Anyway, it seems like if I do continue in the hand my primary goal is to make it to the showdown as cheaply as possible.
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