This Is Your Brain Exploding

Sorry for the lack of updates guys. Med school has proven to be... hard. Odd.

I miss poker to death and plan on playing as much as possible over winter break, so hopefully by then I'll be able to learn some new things about that.

HUDs Up Seven Up

I was convinced that I'd made a blog post about my HUD set up, but apparently I haven't. It must just have been on +1 or something. Anyways, Big Bobo wanted a little info on my HUD, so I'll go through that now.

For fun, let's look at traheho.




The 23.8 on the left is his VPIP.
The 18.9 is his preflop raise.
The 3.17/54 is his postflop aggression factor and postflop aggression frequency. I just switched today to make this "combined stats" instead of two different onces, just to make it look a little cleaner.
The 629 on the right is the total # of hands I have on this player in my PT Database.
The 35.65 on the bottom left is his attempt to steal blinds %.
The -2.08 at the bottom is his BB/100 won or lost.
The 30.34 is his went to showdown %.
The 29.63 is his won $ at showdown %.
The 56.76 at the top left is his cbet %.
The 85% below that is the % that he cbets again on the turn.
Next to those, the icon is my pokertracker icon. For traheho, the smiley face means "showdown muppet" but I don't use the icon anymore, because all of the other information I have available is much more telling.
On the top right, the 0.00 is his raise someone else's cbet %. The 50 next to that is the % that he calls someone's cbet, and the one below is the % that he folds.

At first, all of these numbers appear really intimidating, but you get used to it really quickly. It probably takes less than an hour until it becomes basically second nature. I was playing 9 SNGs at once today without much problem at all besides a million screens beeping at once.

If anyone wants to use my HUD set up, just let me know and I can email it to you. I have them set up for FTP 9 handed, 6 handed and HU, Absolute 6 handed, and Pokerstars 9 handed.

Fun Day

Vacation Part II

Going to PA today w/ my family and everyone on my dad's side. It'll probably be a solid combination of not going on hikes, being bored, and drinking too much.

It's like not being on vacation, but without A/C.

I plan on reading a lot there. I'll finally finish the FTP Tourney book, finish The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, and am also bringing along a book about the MIT blackjack players (Busting Vegas I think it's called), and a couple of my textbooks that I bought yesterday.

I know nothing about the human body. I'm going to be a wretched doctor.

See you in a week.

"I collect a little thing called money; perhaps you've heard of it?"

I just got back from the beach with Arielle and her family. I haven't been in a couple years, and it was a blast. I got to go jet skiing and sailing for the first time, kayaking in the ocean, and maybe more than anything else, the opportunity to get away from everything and just hang out with her for a while.

I did some reading/audiobook listening, and finally picked up the Godfather again and finished it. I found a line in there that I really liked: "Nothing was more calming, more conducive to pure reason, than the atmosphere of money." And so, everything just comes back to cards.

Right now, I'm listening to the audiobook of Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point. For those of you who have read Blink, it's by the same guy, and like that book, can also be somewhat applied to poker, in indirect terms.

The book is about how certain trends become epidemics; how one small change can spark humongous ones somewhere in the future.

In poker terms, what this means is that it's possible that there is one minor change one could make in their game, that could turn a losing player into a winning one, a winning player into a pro-level player, and a surviving pro into a juggernaut.

When you think about it, it kind of makes sense. Look at how quickly people like sbrugby and CTS climbed through the low limit cash games to become two of the best NL cash game players in the world-- both before reaching the age of 25 (in CTS's case, I'm pretty sure he's not even 21 yet...)

An online tournament player who might demonstrate a poker "tipping point" would be SCTrojans-- the triple triple crown (not a typo) winner. In a recent pocketfives podcast, SCTrojans stated that, in his opinion, there are likely many low limit players who could probably play the game as fundamentally well as many of the "big name" online pros. They just don't have the mindset, patience, or heart, to succeed and fly up the ranks.

I feel like I've studied the fundamentals of the game far more than the average player. When I play my A game, I know that at the limits that I play, I can't be beaten unless I get unlucky.

So why haven't I moved up?

I'm still looking for my tipping point. I will go through weeks, or even months, where I feel like I'm unstoppable. And then just as suddenly, nothing will go right for me, and my play will deteriorate.

I will have days where I will sit down and dread the possibility of having to play a big pot, regardless of my hand. I will flop strong hands and not play them fast enough in fear of getting raised. I won't make the thin river value bet, out of fear of being check-raised. I can luck out and manage to pull winner, slightly, and then tighten up trying to ensure myself a small victory.

These days are rare, but they still exist. My "tipping point" will come sometime when I can stop playing on these days. Sometimes I can sit with confidence that I'm going to play great, but also know that sometimes shit'll happen and I'll drop a few buy-ins. I need days like that to come every time I sit down to play.

I'm not sure how to make that happen. I don't think anyone can know-- it will vary from person to person, and if there was a definite, tangible answer, someone would've found it by now, and we'd all be high stakes players. This isn't possible, nor should it be.

Consciously, I can make the decision to not play when I'm not fully prepared to play my best, and be ready to lose. I've been getting better at quitting after losing a big pot in order to keep from tilting off a buy-in or four. Are these the changes that it'll take to make me a better player? Maybe. I'm not sure, but hopefully they'll help.

Grrr

Had my biggest losing day today in a while. In general I feel like I've been playing pretty well, but nothing went right today at all. I'm gonna look over my hands some more tomorrow, but I think aside from a couple specific hands, my play was pretty standard.

I was gonna post about pot-sized river bets and talk about it in depth, but I don't really feel up to it right now, so I'll just cover it briefly.

In MOP, they talk about alpha (don't have greek letters on here) which is the optimal betting frequency for the bettor, and the folding frequency for the defender. In NL games, alpha = s/(1+s) where 1 is the pot-size, and s is the fraction of the pot bet. So, if someone makes a pot-sized bet on the river, alpha is 1/2. This means that for any pot-sized bet one makes on the river, they should be bluffing half of the time. Conversely, the defender should fold 1/2 of their hands, and call (or raise, but for the sake of simplicity, assume just call) the other half.

A leak I've noticed in my game-- and pretty much everyone's game at the lower limits-- is that a PSB on the river is rarely a bluff. I still think, though, that I've been folding too much of these. I am definitely not bluffing enough of the time on the river, so I have started to try to attempt more big bluffs on the river in spots where doing so isn't unreasonable. (This is part of the reason why today went so poorly-- I got called by second pair in one hand that sticks out specifically in which I thought there was no way I was getting called).

Say the following occurs:

.5/1 game and I raise UTG to 3. The SB calls and BB folds so there is 7 in the pot. The flop comes KdQh2d, he check-calls a bet of 6.50, making the pot 20. The turn is the 5c and he again check-calls 15, making the pot $50. The river is the 7h and he bets the pot into me. What should I call with?

Say (hypothetically, of course) my range is AK,AQ,KQ,QQ+,22,55,JTs,KJs, KTs and a couple bluffs-- we'll say 89s and 79s.

This is: 12 AK's, 12 AQ's, 9KQs, 6 AA's, 3 KK's, 3 QQ's, 3 22's, 3 55's, 4 JTs's, 3 KJ's, 3 KT's, 4 89s, and 4 79s.

Now assume my opponent knows my range and is trying to bluff ~optimally (it gets more confusing, and I'll do my best to explain later).

My range consists of 69 separate hands. Therefore, I should be calling with about 35 hands.

So, we work downwards.

KK = 3
QQ = 6
55 = 9
22 = 12
KQ = 21
AA = 27
KJs = 30
KTs = 33
And some AQ hands = 35

The first part of this range is incredibly obvious-- we're never folding a set in this spot, nor top two. But as you go farther down the list, you see a lot of hands that most people wouldn't ever call with-- such as AQ or KT. Top pair with a marginal kicker or second pair top kicker-- against a typical opponent-- is only going to beat a bluff in this spot. Are people really bluffing their missed draws this often?

Well, maybe. Maybe not. But they should be. And so we should usually call much more liberally.

If you go further into the problem, consider what happens when he bets only $25 on the river. Now our alpha is 0.5 / (1 + 0.5) = 1/3. So our folding frequency is 1/3, which means (1 - alpha) our calling frequency is 2/3. This is 46 hands that we should call a half-PSB on the river with. That means we should call optimally with all of our AQs and even one of the JTs in our range. Of course, this is still going under the assumption that our opponent knows what our range is-- and in this spot, it's incredibly strong.

The problem with this is talked about in Chapter 14 of MOP, but it's too late/complicated for me to go into right now (and I'm not sure if I'm fully grasping it, anyway).

MOTHERFUCKER!?!>#^RF 4QOWRIEGDNV AWESD

Ugh. Sucko lost a 100k chip race last night. He's still average, but damn that woulda been nice.

On a personal note, I'm in the midst of a 300(+...? hope not)BB downswing. I played decently the other day to lose. I could've played better and got caught bluffing both times I attempted decent sized bluffs. Whatever.

I was playing great today. Fucking awesomely, really. I was reading hands well, picking spots and getting paid off. Then I played a hand so awfully that not only am I wondering if I have any clue how to play this game, but I'm wondering if I should even bother doing anything anymore. And not just poker, but watching T.V., eating, reading, that stuff. It was that fucking bad.

Probably won't play for a few days. I'm pissed. Hopefully sucko and Shawn will brazillion-tuple up and brighten my poker spirits.

Also, another beat: I was gonna ask Shawn if he was still selling percentages of himself for the Main Event, and I forgot. Again. Uuuuuuguhghghghghaohf selkjf ridfljg vawijdf

WSOP

If you've read this and not Suckos blog, you're being silly. Check it out, him and sprstoner and kicking ass in the WSOP so far!

My Aim Is True

Don't really want to disclose what it is, but by bankroll has eclipsed a high water mark that I've flirted with before, but never been able to attain.

I've only played about 6.5k hands of cash this month, but I've been playing well at beating the $200 buy in game on Absolute for a pretty good rate. If I can keep playing this well, I'm going to take a shot at the $400 game soon.

I also found out that I somehow-- most likely from when I moved money from UB-- got $250 in bonus money on Full Tilt. So I have almost $600 in bonuses that is waiting to be unlocked. Unfortunately, the Full Tilt bonus expires sometime in August, so I'm going to have to start playing there more often. Not that that's a problem, per se, but I've been doing so well in the Absolute games that I'd prefer to not move if I don't have to.

This Charming Man (He Knows So Much About These Things)

I haven't played too much recently. This past week I've played less than 500 hands, which is rare for me. My game's been decent, but I find myself occasionally making big mistakes, realizing it, but following through with them anyway.

I've been four-tabling the $200 buy-in games on Absolute the past couple weeks, and it's a pretty good game. I'm definitely not beating it at a solid enough clip to be copacetic, but it's definitely been profitable.

I've found both my aggression factor and my preflop raise %'s decrease slightly after switching my site-of-choice from UB and FTP to Absolute. This is mainly a function of three very specific things-- 1) people are limping a lot more, which allows me to limp in behind with position more often (obviously, I'm raising behind a lot too) which is also helped by the stacks being twice as deep, 2) people seem to donk bet much more often, and specifically, they will make smaller bets throughout the hand. I raise these a lot too, but I'm calling more than I would on another site. Third, people min-raise a lot more so I'm calling much more loosely from the blinds.

Speaking of acting behind limpers, Andy Bloch's section in the new Full Tilt book brought up something that I hadn't considered much before-- he says that when you have position and people limp in front of you, you should be more apt to limp behind than to raise. His reason is that by raising, you're punishing them, but eventually they realize they shouldn't be limping and adjust to a raise-or-fold mentality, which is obviously bad for us because it's a more correct way to play. This is contradictory to the way I see a lot of the higher stakes pros play, especially in Cardrunners videos (Taylor and Brian especially). During this month, my limp with previous callers WR and my WR for any hands I VP$IP are nearly identical. My "any raise" WR is double this rate, but there are obvious differences between these things. I haven't been able to filter out raising limpers, so if anyone knows how to do it, let me know.

It's definitely an interesting problem. In a vacuum, I would nearly always prefer raising over limping, especially if we're 200+BB deep. Since we aren't, however, it would be nice to figure out a way to be able to play aggressively and take the lead in hands, while at the same time not deter people from playing weakly preflop.

In other news, I'm quitting my job at Coleman. Tuesday night is my last night. One of the reasons I haven't played much lately is because I've been working for my dad more, which has more regular hours, similar pay and a shorter drive than Coleman. Of course, I have to get up early in the morning and can't manage to go to sleep until late, so I've been too tired to want to play cards too much, especially if I'm already making small mistakes.

I also got an apartment in Ravenna. I'll probably put up some pics once I get some. I'm moving in on July 15th. In the meantime, this is as good as I've got:



This pic is actually an inversion of what the place looks like, but whatever. It's smallish, but it's nice and close to school. I can't wait to move in.

Best/Worst Hands from TV

I thought I'd try something new and post the top three best and top three worst hands I've seen played on TV. Unfortunately, I couldn't find all of them on youtube, so bear with me on the other three.

The Best:

1) Ivey Puts in the 5th bet with no pair, no draw.

This hand will probably go down as the sickest hand ever played. When I first saw this, I just laughed. I will never be that good, and can't analyze the hand because there's no way I can comprehend how the hell Ivey managed to pull this off.

2) DiMichele four-bets all in with king high.

I think this one I can attempt to analyze. The preflop action by DiMichele is standard. The 68s call behind is questionable-- I don't really play this way, but some people do and are successful with it (in spite of themselves, in my opinion). The flop check is difficult to analyze without knowing how he plays, but it's possible and likely that on such a static board, DiMichelle didn't want to continuation bet and set himself up for being bluff-raised, as a flop like 229r hits very little of his range.



Personally, I think Crane should've bet the flop.

On the turn, he checks again. Crane semibluffs his draw and gets checkraised. Given DiMichelle's likely range of hands (he's probably unlikely to have checked twice with TT+) he is probably sitting with an absolute monster or garbage. In my opinion, Crane realized that the only non-bluff hands that such a line makes sense with is 55,99 and A2. Also, because of his check on the flop, Crane knows (again, speculation) that DiMichelle knows that this bet is very often weak, so if he's unwilling to play back, DiMichelle's raise isn't a bad one. Sensing weakness and knowing his own range of hands is very bluff-heavy, he opts to raise again. It's difficult to say with the numbers (although Norman Chad said he was nearly all-in at that point) but I think if Crane believes DiMichelle is full of it, he should just jam instead of 3-betting with the intention of folding.

What makes this hand sick is that DiMichelle then shoves in, into a pot that sounds like it's large enough that any reasonable hand is calling. However, Crane opts to fold. Essentially, DiMichelle's read here has to be that even though his opponent has played his hand in a way that may indicate a monster (flop check, bet/3bet), he put him on nothing and went with it.

It'd be interesting to know the actual stack depths, because it's possible Crane should've called even if he thought he was only drawing to a gutshot, even if he's potentially drawing dead.

3) Negreanu bluffs Deeb.
I don't have the video, and I feel like this hand has been written about ad nauseum.

The Worst:

1) Jennifer Tilly Fears Quads

Conversely to the Ivey hand, I can't even speak to this. I just don't understand. Antonius is a sicko for sure, but jesus. The look on the other players' faces are priceless. I also love Antonius' reaction: "Full house?..... I can't beat that."

2) Tommy Reed Folds A Set
Don't remember how the action took place exactly, but if I remember correctly, he called on the flop with a pair of tens, hit his set on the turn and folded when facing a bet and a call. If anyone can find it online, let me know-- it was from the Circuit Event that Lisandro beat Ivey heads up in.

3) Kanter Doubles Barch Drawing Dead
Don't recall exactly, but I remember listening to the Cardplayer broadcast when this hand took place. I'd already concluded (justifiably or not) that Kanter was an over-aggressive donk after the hand that crippled Greg Raymer. So I, along with Phil Hellmuth from the broadcast, was waiting for Kanter to blow up.

On this hand, Joe Hachem limped in, Kanter limped in the small blind and Tex Barch checked in the big blind.

The flop came KT7 and it was checked to Hachem who bet with QJ I believe. I think his bet was somewhere in the 350k range. Kanter, with K5, then checkraised to 1 million. Tex Barch, with K7 then raised it again to two million. Hachem sighs and folds (he would've sucked out to win the hand, but it worked out for him anyway). Now it gets back to Kanter who thinks for like five minutes and then jams.

I'm not really a believer in most adages, but this is definitely a spot where "not going broke in a limped pot" should obviously apply. More importantly, putting in the fourth raise against a solid player who's put in the third raise with one pair and no kicker is just a god-awful play. I think Kanter probably just talked himself into thinking that Barch had either 89 or QJ. I doubt he does this very often, if ever, with either of those hands at that point in the tournament (I think it was five handed). In my opinion, Barch almost always has one of only four hands there: K7, T7, KT and the occasional 77.

In non-poker news, I put in my two weeks notice at my job. That's about all for now.

Min-raiseaments and getting that monkey off my back

A couple nights ago, I was posting on +1 and a few of us decided to donk around in a 1c/2c game. I think I open-shoved the first hand I got, and then whalehunter/scott/brokedonkey, Nik Santi, jmill and I got into a minraise war:

We ended up doing this a few times, and invariably the guy on jmill's right would call a few times and then finally give up. On this particular hand, I got in with the best of it to lose to Santi's Q3s that backdoored a flush. The next time he, jmill and I got all in (which took about 5 minutes because our stacks were deeper and we were raising in 2c increments) Nik-- the angleshooter-- had aces and managed to fade our horribly dominated hands.

In those game, I also talked shit to ferg before open-shoving with kings, only to get called by his aces. Stars is rigged.

Last night, I took down my first MTT. I think I'm gonna start playing some of these a little more often. I got pretty lucky for the most part after having my all-ins called, but I also think that I was unlucky to have run into the hands I was up against. I also didn't really have to make any really difficult decisions the entire tournament. Even at the final table, the table was pretty loose/passive, with a lot of open-limping or min-raising.

My way to the final table had me short most of the time, and I build up mostly by shoving and getting a couple key suckouts (straighting a QTs vs. a KQ, tripling through QQ and 99 when I shoved late with A2o-- I was very short at this point).

At the final table, I got lucky to bust a shortstacks A7 with my QT, and then had AK hold up vs. a lower ace.

When we finally got down to 3 handed, I was down to about 10BB and not catching many cards. Fortunately, the guy on my right doubled me up once on a pretty marginal call...



And then I got beat down a little, and he managed to get in a coinflip, but he made a really god-awful call



that was basically tilt induced. He typed into the chatbox after this hand "I'm through calling him, toddbrinwall." A couple hands later, he shoved into todd with only a wheel draw and I was down to HU with about a 4-3 chip disadvantage.

I thought that todd had played pretty well earlier in the game-- he was playing very aggressively and generally picking his spots pretty well. Heads up though, he just had no clue. He folded his BB to me way too often and never raised in the SB. I ran him over for a while and got to almost even and then he fought back a couple times and I had to let a couple raises preflop go. Then I got into a coinflip with him and got there:




And at this point I think he was starting to tilt, because he was open-shoving a lot more. At first, given the blind to stack sizes, this wasn't bad but once he built up I think he just wanted to get in, get lucky and get his chip lead back.

Once he'd build back up to about 60 thousand (the stacks were the opposite of where they started) he'd calmed down a bit with his play. Then he limped the button, and I checked with 78o. The flop came 665 and I checked, planning to checkraise (he'd checked behind with top two earlier, but was betting the flop often so I was expecting a bet from a weak hand). He checked, and I got my free card-- a 9, completing my straight. Putting him on some kind of hand because he checked, I potted it to him on the turn. He insta-potted it back and I jammed. He called with his aces and I held



and finally won my first MTT. It was a small one and the field seemed particularly weak, but it was nice to finally get a MTT under my belt, especially considering how rarely I play them.

22

Haven’t updated in a week, but not too much has happened of interest, poker-wise at least, lately. I’ve got a couple new toys to play with-- one is a program that shows how often you flop sets and compares it to how often you should be flopping sets, how much money you make with sets vs. overpairs and vice versa, and AA vs. KK and vice versa. I actually run pretty good when it comes to hitting sets, but go broke with overpairs too often.

Another program calculates your expected EV and compares it to how well you’re actually running-- essentially, it’s calculating your Sklansky win rate and graphing it alongside your actual winrate.

My actual winrate is pretty shockingly bad compared to my EV in the games as of late.

That’s okay though. Here is a graph of Absolute the past couple weeks…



Very up and down, but most of that is due to just running bad. Here’s my EV for those games.



The light blue line is my expected WR and the green line is my actual WR.

My expected winrate is actually pretty decent actually-- nearly twice what I’m actually winning. Luckily, I feel like I’ve been playing well enough (and had good enough opponents/table selection) to be able to endure running bad while actually staying in the black.

In other news, it’s my birthday today. 22 years old. Pretty much the most unimportant birthday of your life, but it’s okay. I got a Wii, some DVDs, new shoes and my girlfriend made me a shirt with Calvin and Hobbes on it which is pretty badass. She’s gone for another four weeks-ish, by the way, working in a national park in Utah.

I just got The Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition so I’ll no doubt have tons to talk about once I dig a little deeper into it. I also promised my friend Justin that if I win a big tourney soon, I’d visit him in Dresden, where he’s studying for the summer.

Our Spring Is Sweet Not Fleeting

A much anticipated and much needed non-poker tangent: I just got a call today telling me I got accepted into NEOUCOM! I am so fucking excited. I could barely stop smiling all day. My mom cried when I told her. Ahhh, I feel vindicated (vindication baby!)

Anyways, tonight Arielle and I went to see !!! at the Grog Shop. Fun show, I haven't seen them in 3 years or so.

Okay, on to poker. I finally got some money into Absolute and started playing there last night. I just messed around with it a little to get my HUD set up correctly, and 3-tabled a bit today.

A few observations on Absolute:

• The software is really atrocious looking. I'm used to much sleeker looking tables (think FT and Stars)
• There's no bet pot button which will force me to be a little less lazy regarding my preflop raise sizing.
• The tables are fucking huge. They really need to get on some resizable tables. One table takes up a pretty significantly large portion of my laptop screen, so when I was 3-tabling there was a ton of overlap. I might need to invest in another monitor (I was going to try to earn one on FT by getting 61k player points, but I think by the time I get there I might, in fact, be dead).
• Having 200BB stacks is pretty sweet.
• The play that I've seen so far has been atrocious. Just laughably bad. From an equity POV, I should be running over 40BB/100 there. Granted, it's a tiny sample, but regardless... I took a couple sick beats (someone played a 150+BB pot with me with K3 on a K high board and got there, and someone else called my re-reraise all in with second pair top kicker and got there) but still managed to turn a small little profit. I love this site already-- plus, I'm getting decent rakeback and got a $500 bonus.

Okay, I should get to bed soon. Taking Arielle to breakfast in the morning...

Intervention

A recent thread on CP caused me to look up an old post of mine regarding optimal flop betting, which in turn inspired me to re-read some of Chen and Ankenman's book. Reading the section on the river play made me think: am I playing optimally enough?

A couple made up situations:

1) Say I raise in the CO and the button calls. Flop comes KdQc6d. I bet and get called. I bet the 4h turn and get called. The river comes the 2d. I bet 1/3 the pot.

2) Same preflop action. Flop is JT5 rainbow. I bet pot and get called. Turn is a 6 and it goes check/check. River is a 4 and I check. Opponent bets 4x the pot.

Hand 1: In this situation, I am almost always going to show up with something like KQ, AK, KJ or maybe a set.

Hand 2: My range is fairly wide here, but almost never will I show up with the nuts.

The problem here is that if my opponents have a good idea of how I play, they can take advantage of me far too often.

These are two very specific problems that I have with optimizing my play. Specifically, I will block the river often with a hand that was made much weaker by a dangerous river card (as seen in hand 1) and I almost never check-raise the river with a monster.

What I need to change in my game is to vary my play in spots like these. I need to occasionally make a small bet on the river with a nut flush that hits if I'm going to bet my marginal hands. I also need to occasionally go for a check-raise when I miracle my way into a monster. In both of these situations, it is apparent to an intelligent opponent that I won't be showing up with a great hand given the action in both of these hands. This allows him to raise or overbet the pot with impunity, fearless of me showing up with the joint.

It's disgusting how hard you have to work at this game to even play it at a decent level.

Bottle Up And Explode!

I've been playing a lot the past few days. I've played almost 5,000 hands this week, and am stuck a decent amount. I took some brutal beats, so while trying to shrug those off (two of them basically put me on fucking life tilt) I've been playing lower on Full Tilt and trying to hone my multi-tabling technique. I've played about 3,000 or so hands so far while playing six tables at a time, and so far it seems like adding the 3rd and 4th tables were a hell of a lot harder than adding the 5th and 6th. I doubt I could ever add more than this, though; the alarm sound of the game waiting for me is really grating to me. Also, this is definitely skewed because I've been playing lower, against worse opponents, and playing late at night a lot (where the table averages are pretty much all 38/7).

I played a couple MTTs this week, and final tabled one yesterday.



I came in 8th out of 245, which was really disappointing because I was chip-leader three hands prior to my bustout. Lost a race, ran into a set and was bounced. I felt like I played about as good as I could though and until the last orbit, the cards definitely fell the right way for me. One thing I was proud of was that until the last hand, I was only all-in for my tournament life once, where I jammed with 66 on a 344 board and had some goof-ball with AJ call me. I think I only played 2 other all in pots for a significant amount of my stack up until the final table. For the most part, I just picked spots pretty well, stole the blinds a lot and got the occasional gift.

This was the only big "move" I made the entire tournament.

Full Tilt Poker
No Limit Holdem Tournament
Blinds: t500/t1000
(Ante: t125)
7 players
Converter


Stack sizes:
UTG: t7530
UTG+1: t38629
Hero: t40009
CO: t34341
Button: t13310
SB: t17134
BB: t43870


Pre-flop: (7 players) Hero is MP1 with Jh Ac
2 folds, Hero raises to t2900, 3 folds, BB calls t1900 (pot was t5275).


Flop: 2h 8c 7s (t7175, 2 players)
BB bets t2000, Hero raises to t7500, BB calls t5500 (pot was t16675).


Turn: 6s (t22175, 2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets t13000, BB folds.
Uncalled bets: t13000 returned to Hero.


Results:
Final pot: t22175

Not THAT huge a move, but it was for a lot of chips and propelled me to a pretty sizable chip lead at the time. (By the way, the BB in this hand ended up busting me, and honestly he was IMO by far the weakest player at the final table.) At this point in the tournament, the BB and I had played a decent amount against each other and I'd stolen a lot of his limps earlier (he limped and flat-called a lot pre). His lead out seemed pretty weak and hesitant to me, so I raised him fully expecting to take it down. His call of the raise seemed really odd to me-- I'd seen him stack someone with a set and he'd played it much differently and I think with a set he'd have check-called the flop.

Anyways, at this point, I'm thinking he has something like 89, A8, or maybe 9T or A7. The six rolls off on the turn and hits a couple of those hands in scary ways (I'm pretty sure he stacks off here with TP with an OESD if he has 89). He checks and I took a pretty small stab. Truax was watching me play and commented that he thought it was too small, but I liked it for three reasons:

1) It sort of sells a "big hand" to the opponent. Not necessarily always true, and this is definitely the weakest of the three reasons.
2) I don't think the bet size really made a difference to this opponent. I honestly had very little respect for how he was playing and I think a bet of only a little over half the pot accomplishes the same as a 3/4 of pot-sized bet vs. this guy.
3) If he happened to have a hand he wanted to play (I think he'd fold the A8/A7 but probably check-raise all in with the straight or 89) I wouldn't be losing THAT much and I'd still be in okay shape relative to the blinds (with an M of ~7). I'd definitely be hurting, but I think the difference between having 12k and 16k if he jammed wasn't worth risking bluffing an extra 4k at the pot to sell the bluff more.

It's so fun to go deep in a tournament, but I don't think I've ever felt content after busting out of a MTT. I might need to start playing them more so that I can win one.

In poker news, my friend Josh/Mag has an article featured on PocketFives right now, which is awesome. Josh and Zai are also both in the top 20 of this month's leaderboard. It's really gross what these guys are doing to people online right now.

All for now, later.

Ugh.

Ran like shit today. I feel like I played pretty well in SNGs, but haven't gone over my hands too thoroughly yet. I managed to bubble way too often and ran into big hands when short.

Cash was just stupid today. I didn't hold aces one single time, nor did I flop a set. I only played two big pots, where I got all in (or almost all in) on the turn way ahead, and then got sucked out on.

In a couple days I'll have a means of moving money around more freely online. I can't wait because I really need a fucking change of pace.

...............

I haven't been playing much lately. It's not that I don't feel like playing though, just haven't seemed to have the free time. I've managed to play a few SNGs the past week and have done decently in them, but haven't run into any profoundly exciting situations. Hopefully this week I'll manage to get in some more play time.

I have done one thing different (for me) this past week, and that's play a few PLO8 SNGs. The play in these is really, really, atrociously bad. I think I obviously need to tinker my bubble strategy in them a bit because hand values are much closer in that than in hold'em so it's probably almost never correct to call all in while on the bubble. If I actually do the work, I'll of course post what I find out.

I think I'm starting to get sick. I visited Arielle this weekend and she's getting sick as well.

Congrats to Mag and ZaiGezunt/ThatsTheGame, who finished 1st and 2nd in the FTP $75. Very, very sick stuff by both of them. Zai has just been crushing lately-- every time I look up the guy is final tabling something

Indy and Politics

Before I go into my past weekend at the +1 meet in Indiana, I wanna bring up what Massachusetts Senator Barney Frank is doing in Washington. He has announced that he's proposing a bill that would lift the ban on online poker. If you sign up here, there is an automated message that you can send to your Senators, along with any personal comments you'd like to add. It only takes a couple minutes to sign up for the page, so this isn't something that should be put off.

Anyways, on to Indy.

I drove from Akron to Eminence in a little over five hours-- cutting the trip time by a half hour, even including the one rest stop I allowed myself. I walked into the basement and the game had already started. I sat down and we played some shorthanded HOSE, and I ran like god and managed to win about $100 in a .25/.50 game.

The rest of that night mainly consisted of drinking, eating, and playing a ton of poker. I lost a decent amount of my profit from the HOSE game back when I kept trying to bluff a very inebriated sucko. I switched gears a little and cut out any continuation bets when I was in heads up pots against him, and managed to take down a couple big pots before crashing on the floor.

The next couple days are a bit of a blur. A few highlights from the trip, though:

• Mark(Flipfish), Ty(Drome) and Sucko laid me 2-1 on a bounty in a tourney we played Friday night. Sucko was also propping against Drome for $20 on whether the flop would bring a majority of red or black cards. Because of this, on one hand he limped the button with 9s5s just to ensure that he could see the flop and hopefully hit 2 red cards to beat Ty. I checked the BB with T9 and flopped T97. I lead out and sucko called. A 9 rolled off on the turn, I bet again, he jammed and I busted him, earning the bounty from him and knocking him out of contention from the tourney (10+10) and two or three last longers. He still managed to profit in that tourney because of his prop bets with Drome. It's sick how good he runs.
• I got roped into playing Screw Your Neighbor again, but only played twice this year. The second time I was let in for a 40% discount (while at the same time playing stud hilo at another table) and managed to still lose. Live multitabling is really hard, by the way.
• I lost a $400 pot playing a .25/.25 pot limit game of hold'em with draws. The game works like this: preflop is like regular hold'em. The flop comes, you bet, and then you have the option of trading a card or staying pat. This happens again on the turn. There's no trade on the river. Anyways, very first hand I limp-- as does everyone else-- with JTo. The flop comes AK8 and someone bets a dollar. Everyone calls, as do I. Most people trade, but I and another person (cbal, I think) stay pat. The turn miraculously comes with a Q. Someone leads out and there is a caller or two in between. I raise the pot and sucko comes over the top. At this point, there probably wasn't enough to get all in, but we just shove all the chips in anyway. I was assuming that he'd made the same hand as me, but then he asked "do you have JT?" I thought it was pretty obvious. He traded the flop to draw QQ. Meanwhile, Chris says he folded a Q and Mark folded A8. The river comes an 8 and I managed to have a -80,000bb/100 hand "win" rate. What an awesome game.
• Ty has the worst pants ever made.

I'm sure I'll think of lots more to add later.

+1 Indy Meet Tomorrow

Driving out to Indiana tomorrow to go to the +1 Indy meet. I had an awesome time last year and in AC last Fall, so it should prove to be an awesome time.

Everyone thinks they're going to be the one to bust me on this trip. Hopefully karma will be an awesomely cruel bitch and I'll end up a big winner.

Tales of degeneracy to come in the next week.

Hypothetical Poker

It's important to keep in mind that no single hand should dramatically affect your poker results over your lifetime. Going one step further (or backwards, or sideways, as the case may be), it's also important to remember that once the money is all in, the actual outcome is effectively only negligibly significant. What is important is whether or not the correct (most profitable) play was made.

You can use this knowledge to console yourself in light of a bad beat. Remember, when your aces get all in preflop versus someone's sixes and they river a straight, you're still rich in Sklansky dollars. Go ahead and console yourself with this. It's okay. Just remmeber that whenyour hand holds up against those same sixes, you now owe the metaphorical Sklansky a moderate sum.

Sklansky dollars is a term (derived from the 2+2 forums, I believe) with a meaning synonymous to EV. But much like Sklansky's Fundamental Theorem of Poker which has been shown to be slightly too results oriented by certain game theory models*, simply looking at your EV in a single hand doesn't quite go far enough. This article which was linked to on +1 gives an awesome overview of a lot of concepts that a lot of people (including myself) overlook far too often. The article is a little heavy, but it's definitely worth the read.

*Most notably (at least in my opinion), the Jam or Fold game. Ex: jamming 10BB with T8o from the SB and then folding the T9o in the BB are both optimal plays, although FTOP makes folding look atrocious, even though it isn't

As a side note, because the link is on ESPN's website, I kind of assumed before reading it that the author of it was some Michael Craig or Steve Rosenbloomtype; the kind of guy who knows a little bit about poker and writes well, but isn't necessarily someone reliable in regards to poker theory. After reading it and still not recognizing the author's name, I was frustrated that some ESPN journalist can think about the game in such a complex yet lucid way while I barely even attempt to put this kind of work into my game.

I felt a little better when I checked the article again and learned that Phil Galfond is high stakes no limit cash player OMGClayAiken (which also has to be one of the best online handles).

And briefly, I wanna mention to all Cardrunners members that this weekend, the Brians Hastings and Townsend (I went to HS with a kid named Brian Hastings, but I doubt it's the same guy) played each other heads up at 5/10 pot limit omaha. I watched Townsend's first, and then watched Hastings' while streaming Townsend's so I could see both players' hole cards. These are two amazing videos, so definitely check them out, even if you don't play omaha.

Clearly an exaggeration, but...

...I can't help but laugh at this and wonder if this is the road we're going down. Like Prohibition and drug laws, the restrictions on online poker are bound to fail in the face of those who are truly dedicated to continue indulging (even if it does result in a big pain in the ass).

It has sound, if you happen to be watching this at work...

Didn't play much today. I get off of the night schedule after 7am on Monday, so then I should start to readjust, and hopefully stop feeling so lethargic day in and day out. Indy is in a week and a half, so I'll probably try to get in 5k hands or so by then. I know I'm going to get roped into some sick games with some tough players, so I want to make some money before I go and plug as many leaks as possible. If I can run like I did last year, the trip should be moderately profitable.

What Is And What Should Never Be

When I started playing poker online, even before I played no-limit, my general MO would be something like this-- have a good session, have a good session, decent session, great session, and then blow almost all of it at once.

It's good to see things haven't changed.

I shudder to think how much bigger my bankroll would be if I could just purge a few days from existence.

I think I've been playing really well the past couple weeks for the most part. I've been employing a much more consistent raise-or-fold strategy (for the most part, at least) which I think has picked up a ton of small pots that I probably didn't deserve to win. Specifically, I've been taking a lot more pots away from people who donk bet into my preflop raises on the flop. I've been fighting back against that move much more aggressively and liberally as of late and it seems to be paying off pretty well.

Still, though, I keep making stupid mistakes that aren't even necessarily strategy related. Like working a 10-hour night shift, getting home at 8 in the morning, and then deciding that now would probably be the best time to attempt 6-tabling for the first time.

I know. I'm a moron. I've since made up for that slightly costly debacle, but it never should've happened.

I've been watching a ton of Cardrunners videos the past few days. I've watched all of Brain's videos twice, and I've gone through about a dozen of Taylor's videos. It's disgusting how smart these guys are. This, like Poker Tracker, PAHUD, and playing poker in general (both live & online) is something I wish I would've gotten into earlier, because I feel like I've robbed myself of a lot of potential knowledge.

Indy is in less than two weeks. Should be fun, especially if I don't lose/play SYN.

random thoughts at 7:30 a.m.

It's unclear if this is particularly good news, but it certainly can't be bad news that the WTO ruled against the U.S. regarding the online poker ban. I doubt it means much of anything, but hopes are high.

I've been on the night-shift schedule since Tuesday. I'm working Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday night, and then again next Sunday. I hate admitting it, but it's definitely having some effect on me. Timewise, it's roughly early evening for me right now, but I'm exhausted right now. I've also had little to no social interaction the past few nights. It's a little sad.

Anyways, tomorrow night I'm working for 12 hours, but from about 11 til 6, everyone will be asleep, so I plan on spending that time watching copious amounts of cardrunners videos.

I haven't played any long sessions the past week or so, which is atypical for me. I've also only played SNG's the last two nights. I've actually done very well in them, although I've run really well, too. I played four tonight, taking down three of them. Not too shabby.

I feel like I'm playing much better in SNGs after having watched a couple Green Plastic videos. I've slowed down a lot short-handed, not trying to steal so often. That's something that I think has cost me a lot in the past. Clearly, it still has to be in the arsenal, but I've slowed down a lot. In the past, I had a tendency to either build up really high, or bust out relatively early in the SNG. These past few days, though, I've played much more solid (which is the direction that my game's been evolving towards, strangely, when you compare to how LAGgy I used to play) and chipping away at the smaller pots when possible.

Of course, the biggest factor was just running lucky, or more specifically, not getting UNlucky. Almost all of my all-in confrontations held up today, and even if I'm getting it in as a dominating favorite, it feels good to see the chips pushed in my direction instead of my opponent's after the river hits the board.

Okay, that's all for now.

HU SNG

I downloaded Camtasia's free trial and messed around with it a bit yesterday morning. I recorded myself play a $6 heads up turbo on Full Tilt.

I feel like I played pretty well in it. The hand where I made 2nd pair with the Q5o was a little strangely played, and I don't think I really described it well in the audio (when I recorded it, it was about 10 a.m. and hadn't yet gone to bed).

Anyways, my opponent was playing really aggressively. If I bet out with the hand on the flop, it's very unlikely for him to call me without a hand. He does, however, bet here with air a decent amount of the time I would think.

At first I thought the turn check was a little more borderline, but the more I think about it, the less I think it is. I'm almost positive my hand is good here. He probably raises with a king preflop, and it's even more likely he bets it on the flop. I'm also pretty sure he bets any pair here on the flop, so unless that six hit his hand, he probably has absolutely nothing.

So my immediate options are as follows:
1) Bet out. By doing this, I gain some value from a six, but that's about it. I don't give him credit for a K, Q or 4, and I think a flush draw bets the flop. Of course, this six puts a couple draws out there: the spade draw and the straight draw. Even though I don't want to give a free card to a draw, my opponent's aggro tendencies make me think that he'll bet a draw. This leads me to the 2nd option
2) Check. A check loses value those times that he has either a six or a draw and opts not to bet it. However, I feel like that's incredibly rare. And since I feel that he's very likely to bet a draw here, especially since he's seen me show weakness preflop and then again on the flop and turn, he's going to bet a draw a ton. Checking also obviously allows him to bluff at the pot with air, where betting out would result in him just folding. Like I said, I've shown a lot of weakness in the hand and he's played very aggressively.

This line of reasoning is similar to the reasoning I had when I played the A2o against him, calling on the turn with just ace high. I think I maybe should've just raised him on the turn in that spot, since I was relatively sure I had the best hand and since he'd seen me try to induce bluffs out of him on multiple streets within a hand before. I think that if I think he'll fire again a large % of the time on the river, the flat-call isn't terrible. In retrospect, I think I should've raised though.

Basically, my intentions playing against this guy, once I figured out that he was going to be playing very aggressively, was to trap him when I could and picking up a few other little pots when I could while waiting for a hand big enough for me to be willing to put in my whole stack.

I'm definitely still working on my heads up game, and I think that I probably go too far with fancy plays sometimes heads up, and the A2 and Q5 hands might be functions of that (although I do still like my line with the Q5).

Part 1:


Part 2:

The Degenerate Corner

This is a sick game.

From Jerrod's livejournal:

Received this hilarious email today from someone else who knows Matt Hawrilenko (who has just arrived in Paris):

Matt: paris is AMAZING
i thought it could be nothing but a disappointment
but it's gorgeous
so many old buildings. so many creperies.
(he just got in today)
[...]
10 minutes later....
[...]
Hoss_TBF: posts small blind $100

I can imagine the dialogue between the poker addict and the girlfriend they're traveling with...

GF: Hey, let's go see the Eiffel Tower!
PA: In a little bit, there's a juicy game on Stars.

[two hours later]

GF: Ready to go?
PA: Not now, I'm stuck. We'll go tomorrow.

From aba's blog on CR:
I am on the biggest downswing of my life that reached 1.2 million dollars today. Most of the losses have come at PLO and just in the past week.

This is gross for a few reasons.
1) In a 300/600 PLO game, this is a 20 buy-in downswing. And it's unlikely this was limited to a game that high.
2) This is coming from what is possibly, and very likely, the best online player in the wold.
3) It's 1.2 million fucking dollars. To put that into perspective, that's the same amount of money that Sam Farha won in the 2003 World Series.

Gross.

Speaking of the 2003 WSOP Main Event, I think it's funny how often you'll hear people refer to it and say that Farha deserved the Main Event win, that Chris Moneymaker was lucky/an idiot and that Farha was such a superior player. Watch it again. I'll give you a clue: Farha didn't play as well as most people remember, and honestly Moneymaker played much better than he's given credit for.

And speaking of Sam Farha and degeneracy, I remember a story lucko told sometime last summer about the 2005 WSOP (sorry if I butcher the details). Farha and another player he didn't recognize (lucko said he's pretty sure it was Sean Sheikhan) were betting on something, probably playing props during the tournament. Farha was down $12.5K to Sean. When they were quitting the bets, they decided to flip a coin for the difference. Sammy called it, lost, and flipped a 25k chip to Sean.

I just realized how strangely I went off on various tangents here. Sorry if that was distracting. It's 8 a.m., and I'm about to go to bed.

Oh, a couple other things:

Full Tilt finally updated to have re-sizable tables. I'll probably be doing some more cash play on there in the near future. PAHUD was giving me some problems since the update, but apparently using the beta version circumvents this problem if you turn on Flicker Free Drawing. I have no idea what this means, but it sounds simple enough. I'm about to DL the beta version now.

I finally broke 500 in a non-computer Scrabble game. I ended up getting 515 against Justin, but had to draw sickly good (all 4 power letters, both blanks, and THEN bingoing twice) to pull it off.

Okay, that's all for now.

Cardrunners, goals

Finally signed up for cardrunners a couple days ago. Doylefish commented on an old post that he wouldn't recommend it, but by that time it was too late. Anyway, I think I've heard enough good feedback about it (from lucko, mag and urbluffingme) to want to check it out anyway.

So far I've watched a couple SNG videos by actionjeff and stinger which were both decent. I was surprised at how tight actionjeff was playing in it early on. I always thought I played tight in them, but his play made mine look LAGtardesque. I'm definitely gonna check out a few more of these videos. I think that my early round play is decent and my bubble play is solid enough (at least, compared to my competition) but I definitely have to put some more work into situations where it's 5-6 handed with pretty high blinds.

I played a few a couple days ago and didn't run too well. I took a couple sick beats, but overall I definitely could've made some better decisions. I have to do some more $-equity analysis for the marginal situations when there are still 5 or 6 players left but my effective stack dictates I jam or fold. It can be difficult, though, because it's hard to give players accurate ranges when they keep shifting their opening ranges (correctly or not) as the blinds increase and players drop out. This is accentuated because I have been playing the turbos on FT a lot which have really fast levels, so the readjustments at a certain point in the tournaments are occurring very often. I should probably switch back to the regular SNGs, but the sick action junky in me wants to play turbos for some reason.

Back to cardrunners, I've watched 3 of sbrugbys 4 videos so far. This guy is a genius. One thing he's mentioned a lot so far is that if you keep continuing to fire (on flop, sometimes on turn) with your hands like AK/AQ/etc. that whiff on the flop, it protects your big pairs from opponents who are trying to set mine against them. It's a really great concept and something I definitely need to put more thought into. I think that's basically the idea behind an old cbal post that in turn referenced an old 2+2 post. I'm not entirely sure it's the same thing, because the 2+2 thread was pretty damn confusing. If it is saying the same thing, Townsend dumbed it down enough for a dolt like me to understand.

His PLO video was really interesting too. It made me feel like I need to pick up that game again. I know that I've played a little bit of HA games (half PLHE, half PLO) on Full Tilt, and they've been really juicy.

So, goals for the near future:
1) Improve my NL cash game. This has been a constant goal of mine for a while. I have a few leaks I definitely have to work on, but easily my biggest is playing too long when losing and too short when winning.
2) Work out all of the kinks in my SNG game. This is gonna take a while and a lot of work. I was thinking about this last night, and I believe that the top tier of SNG players have put in more hard, solid analysis into their games than any other form of specialist, particularly mathematical analysis.
3) Start playing PLO a little more regularly again. People in the lowest limits (maybe higher, but I'm not really qualified to be the judge of that) seem to play the game pretty atrociously, so as long as I can tackle the variance of the game and put in a little more study, I'm not too worried about beating the low limits.

On a non-poker related note, my friend Justin, an English major at Kent, got a typewriter the other day. Every time someone has come over to his place to hang out, he's coerced them into writing a haiku on it. His blog so far has been dedicated to writing acrostics using a word of the day calendar, but we just started a new one to throw haikus on. I'm sure this is painfully interesting for anyone reading my blog for poker content.

Alright, that's about all for now. Arielle is going back to school tomorrow night, so I will probably be playing about 10x more hands per week soon than I have the past two weeks.

Food For Thought

A couple snippets from sbrugby/aba20's well post:

I love when players switch from limit to NL at high stakes because they are usually huge calling stations. I think in NL you dont' need a hand as much as in limit. In limit you are constantly going to showdown where in NL you are hardly ever making it to showdown. I always tell my self I either need zero hands in NL or one hand to bust an opponent. If opponets don't call enough then I keep bluffing and widdling them down, and if they call to much I just need to make one hand against them to stack them. I wasn't very good at NL at first and I had to learn the game.

I see comments all the time from respected posters like "don't go broke with one pair". Usually blanket statments like these are wrong and each hand needs to be analysed individually.

Good stuff.

If you haven't seen this and aren't convinced that an internet player you may not have heard of is a worthy source, maybe this will change you mind:



More to come later.

Variance Is A Harsh Mistress

Wow. Today was... well... fun. I messed around in some .05/.10 with fishstickkittie and urbluffingme. I basically sat down just to talk mad shit to some guy at the table basically out of boredom.

Early in the session, fish doubled me up when I flopped a set vs. his straight draw and turned pair. A little bit later, UrBluffingMe/xxisleroxx and I played a pretty big (stake-wise) hand:

Blinds: $0.05./$0.10.
UTG: $18.80
UTG+1: $5.23
MP1: $10.29
MP2: $3.78
CO: $4.81
Button: $1.88
SB: $21.71
Hero: $17.06

Pre-flop: Hero is BB with Qh Ah
UTG raises to $0.4, 4 folds, Button calls, SB folds, Hero calls.


Flop: 8h 7h Tc ($1.25, 3 players)
Hero checks, UTG bets $1.25, Button folds, Hero raises to $5, UTG raises all-in $18.4, Hero calls all-in $16.66.

Turn: 8s ($24.65, 0 player + 2 all-in - Main pot: $38.05)

River: Jc ($24.65, 0 player + 2 all-in - Main pot: $38.05)


Results:
Final pot: $24.65
UTG shows Kh 9h
Hero shows Qh Ah


We talked briefly about it and I came to the conclusion that the preflop play was a little off (loose raise by him UTG, I should have reraised him) but postflop, I don't see it playing any other way.

So I find some juicy .5/1 tables and sit down at a few of them. I got lucky to avoid a chop in a $200 pot by making my 6 high straight into an 8 high straight vs. my opponents 6 high straight.

Then from there, things went awful. In the next 400 hands, I didn't pick up aces or kings once. Every time I reraised preflop (AK/AQ hands) I would get called, miss the flop entirely, and either lay down the worst hand or get outplayed severely.

Another guy had repeatedly check-raised me in any hand I played with him. I finally trapped him... only to run into his top set. I went from being up a buy in to down one and a half very quickly.

Then something happened. I think a player at one of my tables must have gone on reverse tilt, because he went from being a very loose, moderately aggro player to someone who was literally (for a small time) playing every single pot, and betting the pot every single time it was checked to him. By this time, he was sitting with 4 buy ins behind.

The beginning of his super-maniacal play began with a hand in which I got all in with a gutshot and a flush draw from the blind with J3 of clubs on a KT9 board. He put in the fourth bet with K6. After this was when he began to really gamble.

At this point, another thing he also did was he almost never raised preflop. I had position on him often, so it was usually him limping to me, so I limped behind him with a large percentage of my hands. Pretty much any connected cards, suited aces, and obviously any baby pair were easy limps behind. Fortunately, the rest of the table seemed to understand that if you could get to the flop, you could trap him for a lot of money, so most pots went unraised. At this point, the poker game went from 4 people playing against one another to 3 players racing to outflop one maniac.

I got the first big crack at him.

Stack sizes:
UTG: $464.50
Button: $120
Hero: $114.20
BB: $261.55

Pre-flop: (4 players) Hero is SB with T♠ 8♣

UTG calls, Button folds, Hero calls, BB checks

Flop: 3♣ 4♠ 8♥ ($3, 3 players)

Hero checks, BB checks, UTG bets $7.5, Hero raises to $25.5, BB folds, UTG calls.

Turn: 2d ($54, 2 players)Hero bets $54, UTG raises to $216, Hero calls all-in $87.7.

Uncalled bets: $74.3 returned to UTG.

River: 6♠ ($337.4, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $337.4)Results:Final pot: $337.4

UTG shows Q♣J♣.

Hero destroys him with a meager pair of 8's.

That hand felt awesome. My confidence came back with that. I've been having a rough streak the past couple months, but the last time I played I felt like I was playing really, really well despite having only a marginally profitable session. Being stuck earlier was frustrating as hell, but I don't think I was making many atrocious mistakes. Obviously I could've played better, but I definitely feel like I was playing better than my opposition. This hand was one of those situations that vindicated my play and all the hard work I've put into this game. It's really rare that I get my entire stack in without a monster. It feels good to know that I'm not just all brains and no balls.

I got unstuck (and busted this guy) when my pocket queens held up against his 98 on a 975 board. He went from 5 buy ins to broke in less than a half hour.

I ended the day a very small winner. In a week I'll have time to play more. In the meantime, I'll be studying HH's (mine and those on +1/CP), maybe a few SNGs and maybe (finally) sign up for cardrunners.

Defending Your Raise: Redux

In this post, I talked about why you can't lay down too often when someone re-pops you preflop.

Evidently, a couple of my calcs were wrong. These are snippets of a PM between Chipp and I regarding the comments he left on that page.

C (blog comment):"What this means is that even if when you call you automatically win the pot, [button] is still profiting [immediately] if you fold over 30% of the time." (edited for clarity)

...is off- c y?

N: Is this right?

Fold: -$3f
Call: +$12(1-f)
0 = -3f + 12 - 12f
15f = 12
f = .8 = 80% folding is breakeven....
...And if we only win half of the pot...

0 = -3f + 12((1-f)/2) - 10.5 ((1-f/2)

f =
.2 = 20% folding is breakeven? Is that right?

C: Yeah, that works.... I think we need to be looking at the bigger picture here. This guy is raising us with some distribution- if he's raising atc we clearly have > 1/2 the pot when we take a flop [blogger's note: this is re the assumption made that we're entitled to 50% of the pot when calling]. If he's folding some hands, we "buy the button" and face two random blinds w/ our (here) 3otb distribution. There's lots of possibilities, but my point is that if he's not raising atc, we need to consider the value gained from these other poss in determining whether we're being exploited. And again, if he is raising atc we should def have more than half the pot, despite being oop.

So like the more hands he raises, the more our showdown equity increases when we call, and conversely the fewer hands he raises the more often we "profit immediately" (in this case the "profit" being a shot at the blinds otb w/ your 3otb distribution). In theory we want to construct some distribution balanced such that he can't increase his equity by shifting his strategy towards either of these extremes.... Anyway, to my point w/ the c y- opp doesn't necessarily profit immediately there cuz there's still two opps behind that can wake up and pick him off.

Obviously, the last part I left off for simplicity sake, but it's definitely something that still needs to be taken into account. Additionally, another way your preflop raises can be exploited is if someone is smooth-calling often behind you so that they have position on you PoF (Gavin Smith has mentioned this a lot in old Circuit episodes).

I might try to do more with this in the future, but Christ, I make enough minor mistakes with my math (no formal math training in +3 years, nor past Calc I, plus I usually do this shit really late at night) that I don't know if I'll be able to approach any real solution, but hopefully something worthwhile can be intuited from it. If/when I do this, I'll keep you posted (awful pun intended).

Also, congrats to Roddy who cashed onto UB again like two days ago and has already made like... twelve-thousand final tables. He might have all the money, but I can drink legally and he can't.

Look At Your Game Girl

So far (granted, it's early) today has been much better.

The good news: I'm running +20PTBB/100 hands over 750 hands. Not a bad day.

The bad news: I forced myself to play lower until I think I have a semblance of an idea of what the fuck to do while playing poker. Not astronomically lower, mostly .25/.50, but obviously it's frustrating when I can play well at these levels but play like shit when I move up to 1/2. Granted, this is also a function of 1) better opponents and 2) me playing differently, but honestly, I think the biggest difference was just me playing terribly and impatiently.

This morning, for the first time in a long time, my first thought upon waking was "Christ, I played so abysmally last night." That's not a good feeling, trust me. This morning I FINALLY registered Poker Ace HUD. I'm a moron for having waited so long. Granted, I said the same thing about downloading PT and getting rakeback.

I'm also conflicted right now: my recent run means I need to work on my game. One thing I want to try costs a little bit of money. That thing is Cardrunners. So do I make the small investment, hoping to get it back, while simultaneously trying to endure a shitty downswing?

Probably.

Will I put it off for another two months until I finally get it, and chastise myself for not having had it all this time?

Oh, no doubt. Their site has gotten a lot of good feedback from at least three people I know (mag, lucko and UrBluffingMe) [I p1mp their blogs so much]. Plus, they have Sbrugby and Green Plastic doing tutorials. And they're both sickos.

I'll get it eventually.

Arielle will be home on Friday for two weeks! Can't wait. Seriously, I barely can.

(for bonus points, the title of this post is an allusion to which "musical artist"?)

The Times They Are A-Changin'

Today went awful. No matter what I did, I just couldn't win. I even managed to get one-outed for the first time in I don't know how long. I also got taught some pretty brutal lessons for trying to slowplay big hands.

Tomorrow will be better. It has to be.

Ups and Downs

March isn't starting off very well. I'm up, but just a tad, and I feel like I'm making beginner mistakes. I attempted way too many bluffs today, especially in spots where I knew for a fact that I was going to be called. I watched myself doing this, chastisizing my hand as I clicked "bet $20" but I was hopeless to stop it.

I played 1/2 for a little bit today, but then found myself playing this hand...

Hand #39412689-61884 at Fountain (No Limit Hold'em)
Started at 05/Mar/07 19:03:28

themffulton is at seat 0 with $199.20.
Red Moondog is at seat 1 with $227.
Chvbngnzreal is at seat 2 with $628.15.
iamadrunkard is at seat 4 with $129.95.
RUPokerGal is at seat 5 with $266.35.
The button is at seat 2.

iamadrunkard posts the small blind of $1.
RUPokerGal posts the big blind of $2.

themffulton: Ks Ad
Red Moondog: -- --
Chvbngnzreal: -- --
iamadrunkard: -- --
RUPokerGal: -- --

Pre-flop:

themffulton raises to $7. Red Moondog folds.
Chvbngnzreal re-raises to $24. iamadrunkard folds.
RUPokerGal folds. themffulton re-raises to $75.
Chvbngnzreal goes all-in for $628.15. themffulton
goes all-in for $199.20. Chvbngnzreal is returned
$428.95 (uncalled).

Flop (board: Jc 3h Tc):

(no action in this round)


Turn (board: Jc 3h Tc Ah):

(no action in this round)


River (board: Jc 3h Tc Ah 7s):

(no action in this round)




Showdown:

Chvbngnzreal shows As Ac.
Chvbngnzreal has As Ac Jc Tc Ah: three aces.
themffulton shows Ks Ad.
themffulton has Ks Ad Jc Tc Ah: a pair of aces.


Hand #39412689-61884 Summary:

$2 is raked from a pot of $401.40.
Chvbngnzreal wins $399.40 with three aces.
----------------------------------------------------------------

...and moved back to .5/1 for the evening. I was worried that I'd overplayed this a bit, but the guy was playing 47/26/2 (albeit over a mere 18 hands), but lucko and mag both told me that, although having to call $125 more is a little sick, there's really no getting away from it in this spot.

After this hand and a series of a few (previously mentioned) detestable plays at .5/1, I took a short break, gathered my thoughts, and told myself that I was going to play well.

At this point, I was stuck about $200 or $250 for the month, having been up a bit from yesterday.

I played for about an hour laying in bed and won a little. Feeling cool, calm, and way too fucking confident for a guy who had previously been playing about as awful poker as possible, I drove down to the Aroma (coffee shop downtown I frequent way too often, for those who don't know) and logged on again.

I played hard and focused as hard as I could. I trapped, got max value (while dodging my opponents outs), played aggressively against the right idiots, and bluffed at the right times. And obviously, I got a little lucky.

I lost about 20 on the day. Not bad, all things considered. I wish that I had played well earlier in the day, but I learned some things from my mistakes. Mostly, I just have to consciously remember to always bring my A game or not even bother sitting down. This game is hard enough when you take into account variance and having to compete against good, aggressive opponents; I've gotta be fucking nuts if I think I can be lazy while playing and hope to end up a winner.

In non-poker news, I watched Vertigo for the first time tonight. Fucking incredible film. Definitely see it if you haven't.

Let's see...

...what have I been up to lately?

Updated the blog a bit. Added some new links. Let me know if there's some way to make it more aesthetically pleasing.

I didn't play much poker the past few days. I was stuck working the night shift, then went out of town to OU to see Girl Talk again.

I woke up this morning about ready to die, barely able to breathe because of the sea of mucus in my esophagus and two dozen or so pumas clawing at the back of my throat. I managed to clear my throat, grabbed my laptop, went back to bed and played cards for the first time in four days.

I sat down at a .25/.5 heads up table against a guy with 75 in front of him. 21 hands later, he was down to 15 and sat up. Fun times.

Here was a pretty interesting hand towards the end of that "session". At this point I'd been running him over, playing really aggressively and on the one hand I played passively, I cracked his TPTK with a straight.

themffulton is at seat 0 with $93.
GqBury is at seat 1 with $29.35.
themffulton posts the small blind of $.25.
GqBury posts the big blind of $.50.
themffulton: Kc Qs
GqBury: -- --

Pre-flop:
themffulton raises to $1.50. GqBury calls.

Standard so far.


Flop (board: Ah Ks 9c):
GqBury checks. themffulton checks.

Usually I'm going to value bet a hand like this, especially in a heads up game. But in this spot, I decided not to. I felt like he was too likely to check-raise with a worse king or a nine, as well as with an ace, and I didn't want to be forced off of my hand. Plus, this gives him a chance to catch up a little, because in all likelihood I am pretty far ahead here.


Turn (board: Ah Ks 9c 6c):

GqBury bets $3. themffulton calls.

I decided to just flat-call here. I figure this bet can be one of the following:

Hands beating me:
1) A set: possible, but unlikely. I think he's going to reraise preflop with a pair, especially how fast I'd played him.
2) Two pair: possible. It's not AK here for sure. It could be A9/A6/K9/K6/96. He was folding often enough preflop that I don't think K6/96 are in his range. Flat-calling against this is an obvious mistake.
3) Pair of aces: pretty possible. Again, flat-calling against this hand would be a mistake.

Something lucko has been trying to get through my thick skull lately is that when you have a decent hand (and 2nd pair TK is definitely decent) and you show weakness, do NOT let people take advantage of this weakness.

That, and I'm still ahead of the following:
1) A worse king: against this, he's got 3 outs to win, and 6 to chop. I'm more than willing to play this street slow in order to extract more from him on the river. Re-popping here will make a lot of the weaker kings to lay down.
2) A nine: same thing.
3) A six: probably going to be tough to extract value from this on the river, so letting a naked six draw for free is probably a much bigger mistake than the nine.
4) A draw that was picked up on the turn: should definitely raise these hands.
5) Air: might as well let him bluff off again on the river if he wants.

I'm pretty sure he's betting $3 with all of these hands.

Against the non-air range, I'm a slight dog.

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 48.272% 46.27% 02.00% 4927 213.00 { KcQs }
Hand 1: 51.728% 49.73% 02.00% 5295 213.00 { ATs-A2s, K6s+, QcJc, QcTc, Qc9c, Qc8c, JcTc, J9s, Jc8c, T9s, Tc8c, Tc7c, 98s, 9c7c, 87s, 8c6c, 76s, 7c5c, 65s, AJo-A2o, K8o+, Q9o, J9o, T9o, 98o, 87o, 76o, 65o }

I think that's a decent estimate of his range, but tough to tell after less than two dozen hands. Throw in some air, and I'm a slight favorite.

It's close, and while I don't want to let a draw get there for free (especially because if he hits a straight, I'm going to pay him off way too often, and probably a flush occasionally, especially for a small bet) I don't want to raise and/or build a huge pot with a decent but marginal holding.

So calling here has a few benefits:
1) Let's him bluff the river again. That's always fun.
2) Costs me less money if I'm already behind.
3) Dodges a reraise, whether it's for value or a bluff.
4) I have position on him on the next street. If he bets again, I can make a decision based on how much and what card. If he checks, I can go for a value bet or just knuckle behind, depending on the card.

The drawbacks to calling are pretty obvious:
1) Let's them draw for free(-ish)
2) Keeps me from getting full value on this street

The second part is a little interesting because as I mentioned earlier, I'm not necessarily losing value on the hand in its entirety because I can get another bet in from him on the river, whereas a raise might not be called.

River (board: Ah Ks 9c 6c 3h):
GqBury bets $9. themffulton calls.

Total blank hits. Assuming he always bluffs, getting 2-1 I have to call:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 50.209% 48.95% 01.26% 117 3.00 { KcQs }
Hand 1: 49.791% 48.54% 01.26% 116 3.00 { ATs-A2s, K6s+, QcJc, QcTc, Qc9c, Qc8c, JcTc, J9s, Jc8c, T9s, Tc8c, Tc7c, 98s, 9c7c, 87s, 8c6c, 76s, 7c5c, 65s, AJo-A2o, K8o+, Q9o, J9o, T9o, 98o, 87o, 76o, 65o }


Of course, I don't think he's bluffing all of the time. But then again, he's probably not going to bet rag aces that hard either.

In any case, because the draws all missed, in addition to the fact that I could tell even in this short period of time, I had to have gotten under this guys skin, I opted to pay him off; if I had the best hand on the turn, I was definitely still good here.

So was he bluffing? Or more specifically, was he bluffing at least 1/3 of the time? I thought so.


GqBury shows 8c Tc.
GqBury has 8c Tc Ah Ks 9c: ace high.
themffulton shows Kc Qs.
themffulton has Kc Qs Ah Ks 9c: a pair of kings.

He sat up after this hand. I wonder how differently this hand should play out on both sides if it was towards the beginning of the session or if he wasn't stuck. I'm much more often betting the flop and ending the hand right there, but for the times that I happen to check the flop, I think his turn bets are still very similar. I think vs. these bets I have to raise more often because there will be less tilt-induced semi-bluff reraises I'll have to fold to. On the river, I am pretty sure his bet is a fold. I think he's probably bluffing a lot less than 33% of the time there. Whatever thoughts you all have in a spot like this (vs. an unknown opp) would be appreciated.

After this, I played some .5/1 with UrBluffingMe/xxIsleroxx and won a few more bucks, as I managed to win more than I would make in an entire day at work, before I got out of bed.

Almost forgot...

Don't use the Beta Version of Full Tilt.

Didn't quite make it

Didn't manage to play the 5.5K hands I wanted to this week. Part of this is because I actually had to go into work twice this week. I also found myself moderately (Friday) and inexplicably (Saturday) drunk this weekend.

All in all, I feel like I played pretty well this week. As I already mentioned, I got to work on my heads up game a bit while playing with Mag. I played another guy heads up on UB for about 300 hands. I managed to break him three times, but he bought in short every time. And since the match went on for so long, the big winner of the game was Ultimate Bet, not me. I had a chance earlier to finish him off when I turned 2 pair and jammed on him, but he called with his TP + flush draw and caught up, and went on a pretty sick run for a while until I managed to wear him down to a point where he was open-jamming 20BB on me.

Not much else happening. There have been some awesome threads going on at +1. It's nice to see that the poker sections there have started to pick up again. On the other side of the coin, however, there has been some atrocious discussion going on over at CP. I do my best to give solid, well-thought out advice while simultaneously kicking people in the teeth.

Interviewing at NEOUCOM in the morning. Not really nervous, but I hate waking up early. If all does not go well, I might have to start playing a hell of a lot more than five thousand hands a week...

...yes, I was joking.

My next post will be more interesting, I promise.

A few scattered thoughts

I'm trying to play ~5.5k hands this week. I've played about 3.3k so far I think. I figured out that in an hour I play about 137 hands (playing shorthanded), so if I were playing 40 hours a week it'd equal about five and a half thousand hands. Of course, since I multi-table, 40 hours a week is gonna be a lot more than that. But as of right now, this is my goal.

By the way, 5.5k hands is considerably more than any live player is gonna get. Even if a person plays for a week straight, and they have a fast dealer at a short-handed table and is getting about 40 hands an hour (yeah, right) they're playing 40*24*7 = about 6,700 hands. More realistically, I think 25 hands/hour * 60 hours = 1,500 hands per week. I'm double that already.

I played Mag heads up a few nights ago. It did not go well, but he gave me some solid advice to help my heads up game. Luckbox also won the $30 flip we did. Good times. Definitely worth the lessons.

I'm actually playing okay in SNGs lately. I've cashed in 9 of my last 10 SNGs, but I've had way too many thirds, not enough firsts.

I finally downloaded PAHud. I have to buy it soon. Very sweet program, and found a template to use for UBs mini-screen. If only it worked for the resizable FTP screens.

I'm very tired right now.

I've been watching High Stakes Poker. I can't imagine how a lot of these players (Farha, Elezra) can manage to play these games. Maybe they play limit games (and for Farha, apparently PLO) well, but they need to stay away from NLHE. The people who've played the best are the ones who aren't known for playing in the big game (with the obvious exceptions of Greenstein and Brunson). I used to think people like Mag were crazy for saying that if you took five of the players from the big game and five of the best online NLHE cash players, put them at a NLHE table and the internet players are going to crush, but my mind has changed drastically.

I think I'm going to sign up for Cardrunners. Maybe.

I wish I had this shirt.


Okay, more later.