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