NFulton's Blog

Child's Play

2008-03-08T15:27:00.002-05:00

So here's a pretty funny article I came across.

Apparently they have Elmo dolls that can learn kids' names and talk to them. Personally, I think that's pretty creepy.

Anyways, this one particular doll owned by a 2-year old named James was working perfectly. It's batteries died, and upon resurrection (didn't this kid's mom fucking read Mary Shelley?) the doll became evil and started saying "Kill James". There's a video of it on the link above, and this isn't some paranoid mother hearing things like she's playing Lucy In The Sky backwards. Elmo is actually fucking saying "Kill James".

This is either an awesome prank by someone at Mattel (or whoever) or a lesson that the dead should not be fucked with.

Fucked Up Animals

2008-03-04T03:51:00.006-05:00

I hate having to get my news from yahoo, but since I don't have time to watch TV (well, the news at least) or read the paper, I'm stuck with that.

Anyways, I was looking up some cardiovascular nonsense on yahoo and ran into this article and had to look it up.

Hexapus? Six-armed octopus?

Sounds awesome. Apparently the scientists who discovered it are toting "Henry" as a result of a congenital defect and not a result of (de?)evolution of the octopus lineage or the bastard product of a wood-chipper accident.

Speaking of fucked up animals, let's take a trip halfway around the world to our old acquaintances, Hamas.

No moron, not the chickpea dip you eat with pita, the militant Palestinian organization.

Apparently has come out with a children's program that touts a bunny that is vaguely reminiscent of a live-action Bugs, claiming that-- Allah willing-- he will eat the Jews. Here's a clip.

This is weird for a couple reasons:
1) I didn't think rabbits were carnivores.
2) I feel like of all the various demographics, the Jews would not be one of the more tasty. Just my opinion.

Does this remind anyone else of the killer rabbit from The Holy Grail?

Gruesome!

Alright, that's all for now. Later bitches.
--Nick

Daniel Plainview Announces Presidential Bid

2008-03-02T15:07:00.002-05:00

I thought this was pretty funny, if you've seen the movie. Good impersonation.

It's about goddamn time

2008-02-18T03:05:00.000-05:00

This is the change America has needed

Revival

2008-02-10T20:40:00.001-05:00

I'm gonna ~revive this, but it'll be less poker content and more "life" content, because I play so little now.

I did play in a $2 rebuy +1 tournament. With $2 rebuys, I managed to blow about $80 on the tourney. Nice work, me.

Anyways, I stumbled across this website the other day. It's pretty interesting.

I was (re)watching an old WPT and saw Paul Phillips, and decided to check out his blog which I haven't look at in a while, and he'd also put up a link to this. A couple comments on his site pointed out a few interesting facts regarding this webpage:

Compare the differences between "The Holy Bible" and "I don't read".
Those who read "The Bible," as opposed to it's Holy counterpart, score roughly 150 points higher on their SATs.

I think it's also important to note that Russian authors dominate this list, and that apparently Mormon's are much smarter than Christians. I'm curious as to where the Koran would fit on here, as my Muslim friends all seem to be smart as fuck.

This Is Your Brain Exploding

2007-11-05T19:31:00.000-05:00

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

2007-08-16T01:09:00.001-04:00

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

2007-08-12T05:11:00.000-04:00

Vacation Part II

2007-08-04T13:23:00.000-04:00

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?"

2007-08-01T21:04:00.000-04:00

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

2007-07-23T03:17:00.001-04:00

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

2007-07-11T02:50:00.000-04:00

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

2007-07-09T22:18:00.000-04:00

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

2007-06-28T05:36:00.000-04:00

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)

2007-06-24T04:43:00.000-04:00

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

2007-06-13T04:49:00.000-04:00

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

2007-05-30T17:20:00.000-04:00

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

2007-05-29T21:12:00.000-04:00

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

2007-05-22T03:21:00.000-04:00

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

2007-05-13T23:14:00.000-04:00

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!

2007-05-12T06:32:00.000-04:00

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.

2007-05-09T02:45:00.000-04:00

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.

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

2007-05-08T03:45:00.000-04:00

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

2007-04-26T17:57:00.000-04:00

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

2007-04-18T19:10:00.000-04:00

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

2007-04-11T14:08:00.000-04:00

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...

2007-04-08T09:36:00.001-04:00

...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

2007-04-06T06:45:00.000-04:00

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.

2007-04-01T07:09:00.000-04:00

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

2007-03-30T06:31:00.000-04:00

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

2007-03-28T05:11:00.000-04:00

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

2007-03-24T16:00:00.000-04:00

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

2007-03-20T04:06:00.000-04:00

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

2007-03-18T04:53:00.000-04:00

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

2007-03-10T15:02:00.000-05:00

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

2007-03-07T20:24:00.000-05:00

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'

2007-03-07T03:24:00.001-05:00

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

2007-03-06T04:09:00.000-05:00

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...

2007-03-05T03:57:00.000-05:00

...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...

2007-02-25T23:20:00.000-05:00

Don't use the Beta Version of Full Tilt.

Didn't quite make it

2007-02-25T20:34:00.000-05:00

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

2007-02-21T17:18:00.000-05:00

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.

Heads Up vs. Random Hand

2007-02-17T05:06:00.000-05:00

Running bad, playing worse. Gotta re-grind out a bit before taking more shots at higher limits. Click on some of my adds to give me some insurance against going busto...

I was bored at work and went through PokerStove and calculated the equity of every hand heads up versus a random hand. Here are a few of the notable groups that these hands divide into.

Over 66.7% Equity
AA = 85.204%
KK = 82.396%
QQ= 79.925%
JJ = 77.469%
TT = 75.012%
99 = 72.057%
88 =69.163%
AKs = 67.045%

Between 60% and 66.7% Equity
77= 66.236%
66 = 63.285%
55= 60.325%
AQs = 66.209%
AJs = 65.393%
ATs = 64.602%
A9s= 62.781%
A8s= 61.944%
A7s = 60.984%
AKo = 65.320%
AQo = 64.432%
AJo = 63.563%
ATo = 62.722%
A9o =60.773%
KQs = 63.400%
Kjs =62.567%
KTs = 61.789%
KQo= 61.456%
KJo=60.569%
QJs= 60.259%

Between 55% and 60% Equity
44 = 57.023%
A6s = 59.906%
A5s = 59.923%
A4s = 59.034%
A3s = 58.220%
A2s = 57.379%
A8o=59.873%
A7o=58.841%
A6o=57.682%
A5o= 57.697%
A4o = 56.730%
A3o = 55.845%
K9s=59.988%
K8s= 58.312%
K7s=57.538%
K6s= 56.641%
K5s = 55.793%
KTo=59.739%
K9o=57.812%
K8o=56.020%
K7o=55.187%
QTs = 59.468%
Q9s = 57.664%
Q8s =56.018%
QJo = 58.135%
QTo = 57.291%
Q9o=55.360%
JTs = 57.528%
J9s=55.662%
JTo= 55.248%

Below 40%
84o=39.447%
83o=37.484%
82o=36.828%
72s=38.156%
74o=38.550%
73o=36.602%
72o=34.584%
63s=39.534%
62s=37.669%
65o=39.944%
64o=38.010%
63o=36.078%
62o=34.075%
53s=39.693%
52s=37.849%
54o=38.155%
53o=36.265%
52o=34.285%
43s=38.642%
42s=36.829%
43o=35.146%
42o=33.200%
32s=35.984%
32o=32.303%

Over 50%
22+,A2+,K2+,Q2s+, Q5o+,J6s+,J8o+,T7s+,T9o,98s

Below 50%
J5s-J2s,T6s-T2s,97s-92s,32s,Q4o-Q2o,J7o-J2o,T8o-T2o,92o+,32o

Defending Your Raise

2007-02-14T03:09:00.000-05:00

This is something I've had (and still have) tons of trouble with-- you raise it up before the flop and somebody comes over the top of you for a decent amount. Defend? Give up? Jam?

I feel like because my opening standards are relatively loose, this happens more than it does to a more solid player and I have been laying down too much.

Let's look at some numbers.

Say I raise UTG (assume 6 max for the ranges I'll give; full ring < watching paint dry). The game is .5/1 and I make it 3 to go. Now suppose the button reraises me the size of the pot. He is raising me another $7.5, and is risking $10.5 immediately to win $4.5 immediately.

So, for our button reraises, he has to win 4.5x for every 10.5 he risks, where x is how many more pots he has to win immediately (this, of course, is assuming that if he is called, he loses exactly what he raised. We'll go into more detail in a minute).

So 10.5/4.5 = 2.33. So the button needs to win only 2.33 pots preflop for every time he is called, or (1/2.33) 30% of the time.

What this means is that even if when you call you automatically win the pot, he is still profiting if you fold over 30% of the time.

Now let's make this example a little more realistic. Suppose that when he reraises and is called, he wins 50% of the time and you win the other 50% of the time. How often do you have to call preflop in order to prevent him from exploiting your tightness?

In order to find the breakeven point, set the function to 0 and use x to be the % that we call preflop

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

-3(1-x) = when we fold preflop = we lose 3 dollars
+22.5(x/2) = half of the time we call, we win the pot, netting 12 dollars
-10.5(x/2) = half the time we call, we lose the pot, losing 10.5 dollars.

Solving for x, we get .8 or 80%. That means in a more realistic situation, we have to be called a very high percentage of our preflop raises. Of course, this is overly simplified because you have to take into account many factors (how your opponent plays, your hand, if the raise is from the button or the blinds, etc.) but these results are nonetheless pretty eye-opening.

The following range is a standard LAG opening-raise requirement from UTG in a six-max game (22+,A2s+,K8s+,Q9s+,J9s+,T9s,ATo+,KJo+,QJo). [by the way, I got this range from Chipp who in turn had based it off of something Andy Bloch had written a while back].

This is 19.2% of the hands. 80% of 19.2 is 15.36% of the hands, or 77+,A7s+,K9s+,Q9s+,JTs,ATo+,KTo+,QJo.

Of course, this can be skewed a bit in order to include hands that are easier to play PoF, 22+,A8s+,KTs+,QTs+,JTs,ATo+,KJo+.

Still, I can't imagine KJo being something you can call a reraise preflop with. Even if you are only calling iwth 1/2 of the hands, your range [88+,A9s+,KTs+,QTs+,AJo+,KQo] still includes a lot of hands that seem like the easiest mucks in the world. I think what accounts for this (aside from the ex-showdown value of the hands is that your opponents AREN'T raising so often in order to take advantage of your weakness in calling reraises. I suppose if they were, calling with QTs would be automatic.

Regardless though, I think that I am both raising preflop too often and not defending enough of these raises. Hopefully this work'll get me a little closer to playing PF more optimally.

If I have time/remember/can figure it out, I will in the future do similar examples involving defending against these raises but try to make them more realistic.

I Trap With Queen High

2007-02-13T06:45:00.000-05:00

keepmlow is at seat 0 with $87.15.
themffulton is at seat 1 with $194.15.
jp9999 is at seat 2 with $51.70.
serbmaster is at seat 3 with $100.
KcKoether is at seat 4 with $98.50.
BeauNercozi is at seat 5 with $85.90.
The button is at seat 0.

themffulton posts the small blind of $.50.
jp9999 posts the big blind of $1.

keepmlow: -- --
themffulton: Qc 2s
jp9999: -- --
KcKoether: -- --
BeauNercozi: -- --

Pre-flop:

KcKoether folds. BeauNercozi folds. keepmlow folds.
themffulton calls. jp9999 checks.

Flop (board: Kc 8s 9d):

themffulton checks. jp9999 checks.

Turn (board: Kc 8s 9d 8h):

themffulton checks. jp9999 bets $2. themffulton
calls.

River (board: Kc 8s 9d 8h 3c):

themffulton checks. jp9999 bets $6. themffulton
calls.

Showdown:

jp9999 shows 6h Jh.
jp9999 has Jh Kc 8s 9d 8h: a pair of eights.
themffulton shows Qc 2s.
themffulton has Qc Kc 8s 9d 8h: a pair of eights, king/queen kickers.

Hand #37041585-102218 Summary:

$.90 is raked from a pot of $18.
themffulton wins $17.10 with a pair of eights.

A few hands prior, the guy (who was still new to the table at the time this hand took place) had bet two streets in a row with absolute air when I had enough of a hand to call him down.

So in this hand, I limp the SB and he checks. Normal looking so far. I check the flop intending to give it up, but he checks too. Given how he'd played the few hands in between the last one and this one, I assumed that he had missed it completely.

Turn pairs the board-- besides a Q, one of the best cards that could come. If he had nothing, he still has nothing. I check in order to induce a bluff from him and he obliges. I could've check-raised here pretty easily without having to worry about the river, but I got greedy. I wanted a river bet as well. Of course, I risk him sucking out, but I figured I'm gonna take the risk of a 6 outer in order to win another river bet. Not sure if that's the right play or not.

River comes a 3. Another pretty good card. If he caught up and hit a three, I think he probably checks behind on the river. So his bet means either 1) my read was terribly wrong or 2) my read was awesomely right.

It was and I won a nice little pot with a hand that only beats 30% of all random hands.

Percent
Hands beaten 31.52%
Hands tied 5.76%
Hands lost to 62.73%

SHIP IT!

More soon about defending against preflop reraises.

Never Ending Math Equation

2007-01-28T19:41:00.000-05:00

I've been quite the nerd lately.

First, I fooled around on excel for the first time since we did rat surgery analysis in Animal Phys. I wrote a program to calculate win rate, variance, standard deviation and ROI for SNGs, but have had trouble with figuring out how to calculate risk of ruin. Either way, if anyone wants it just lemme know (IM me, email, PM on +1/CP) and I can send it to you.

Today, I used the ProPokerTools tournalyzer to attempt to find an optimal solution (or rather, as close as I know how to get) to the following problem: On the bubble in a SNG, with all equal stack sizes of 10BB, what should the player in each position be moving in with?

I started by assuming that the first player jams ATC and that the other 3 players only call with aces.

Then maximized the equity for the second player. Then used these values and maximized equity for the third player, then the fourth. Then I changed the first players jamming range to be maximized, given the other players different calling ranges. I kept doing this over and over until the ranges didn't seem to change.

I think that's probably close.

For the record,

12% = 77+,A9s+,KTs+,QTs+,JTs,ATo+,KJo+
10% = 88+,A9s+,KTs+,QTs+,AJo+,KQo
8% = 88+,ATs+,KTs+,QJs,AJo+

The non-UTG ranges are actually much looser than I expected.

Of course, I had to run into a problem.

In equity terms, let's say UTG jams and it's to the SB to call.

Needed to Call Risk Reward
64.65% $25.00 $13.67

He's risking 25 in equity to win only another 13.67 extra. So he needs almost 2-1 on the call.

Given the propokertools analysis from before, this means that the 8% range should be a ~2-1 favorite over the 12% jamming range from UTG.

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 45.260% 42.72% 02.54% 10978562908 654077116.00 { 77+, A9s+, KTs+, QTs+, JTs, ATo+, KJo+ }
Hand 1: 54.740% 52.19% 02.54% 13414965900 654077116.00 { 88+, ATs+, KTs+, QJs, AJo+ }

Clearly, this isn't so. So now I'm troubled. I'm feeling like I did something wrong in my pro poker tools analysis. I'm ponder it some more later...

(Not) OK Computer

2007-01-26T23:28:00.001-05:00

Signed onto Full Tilt and started three SNGs up. I played for a few minutes, treading water. I got kicked off. No big deal, loaded it up again and continued to play. Built up some chips in each of the SNGs over the next five or so minutes. Full Tilt then froze up. I closed it again and couldn't log back in. Fortunately, I'm not the only one this happened to, so hopefully I'll get a little refund. It was still frustrating though because I felt like I was playing well.

Signed up for 3 SNGs on Stars with the mindset to right all the preflop wrongs I've been making. I played really aggressive, and kicked my preflop aggression up a ton. I avoided some people and cold decks, cold decked one guy and managed to pull off two seconds and a first.

Confidence, as well as the bankroll, are beginning to increase steadily.
I have a med school interview in a week at West Virginia University. Should be interesting. I hope they don't quiz me on bio though, 'cause I'm a little rusty (to put it gently).

After that, I gotta drive home as fast as possible in order to make it to the Girl Talk show in time at the Grog Shop in Cleveland. Should definitely be a good one.

Finish Your Collapse and Stay For Breakfast

2007-01-25T00:35:00.000-05:00

Life is hard. Poker isn't.

Hand #1

Full Tilt Poker Game #1669128727: $6 + $0.25 Heads Up Sit & Go (12235206), Table 1 - 15/30 - No Limit Hold'em - 23:52:14 ET - 2007/01/24
The button is in seat #2
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to theMFfulton [As Ac]
theMFfulton raises to 90
2s2e2a2n2 raises to 1,500, and is all in
theMFfulton calls 1,410, and is all in
2s2e2a2n2 shows [Ah 5s]
theMFfulton shows [As Ac]
*** FLOP *** [Th 2c 6h]
*** TURN *** [Th 2c 6h] [6s]
*** RIVER *** [Th 2c 6h 6s] [6d]
2s2e2a2n2 shows three of a kind, Sixes
theMFfulton shows a full house, Sixes full of Aces
theMFfulton wins the pot (3,000) with a full house, Sixes full of Aces
2s2e2a2n2 stands up
theMFfulton stands up
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 3,000 Rake 0
Board: [Th 2c 6h 6s 6d]
Seat 1: 2s2e2a2n2 (big blind) showed [Ah 5s] and lost with three of a kind, Sixes
Seat 2: theMFfulton (small blind) showed [As Ac] and won (3,000) with a full house, Sixes full of Aces

+1 PXF Tourney, 24 Songs and some Blog Changes

2007-01-24T20:18:00.000-05:00

Last night there was a +1 tourney on Stars in which everyone gave lucko their hand histories and he loaded them into a Poker X Factor replayer so that we can see everyone's hands as they play.

I thought I played awful last night, but seeing everyone's hands (R.O.T.!) I don't think I played as bad as I thought.

One thing that stuck out immediately was that all of the good players stole and restole a LOT. Stoner pushed me around real bad. It gives me some things to work on, I suppose.

A few days ago on +1 I made a challenge to make a soundtrack to your lives that lasts 24 hours long. Pretty much everyone thought this was too much and that 24 songs was better. So I did this... eventually I'm sure I'll do the 24 hours long one; I have the songs in a list but not in order.

Anyways, here's 24 songs in the life of Nick Fulton

I've made song blog changes. I updated to the beta version and now it's being a huge fucking problem to log-in. Not sure why. I also figured out how to post videos on here, if I ever have the desire to do that.

A SNG Problem

2007-01-24T02:20:00.001-05:00

Lucko in a recent post showed a series of hands he played at the end of a SNG. There was a hand where he jammed into a bunch of shorter stacks with 63o. He said he thought it was close, but +$EV. Stoner thinks that it was a bad move.

So I tried to figure it out. Take the following for granted, because a lot of it is probably wrong.

Here's the hand:

Seat 1: jbreuker (3,850)
Seat 2: lucko21 (4,950)
Seat 4: thomas a (920)
Seat 6: vengven (1,855)
Seat 8: NYpokerguy (1,925)
vengven posts the small blind of 200
NYpokerguy posts the big blind of 400
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to lucko21 [6d 3d]
jbreuker folds
lucko21 raises to 4,950, and is all in
thomas a folds
vengven folds
NYpokerguy folds
lucko21 wins the pot (1,000)

I typed everything into the ProPokerTools Tournalyzer calculator.

From the short stacks POV, lucko could be jamming any two. So if he calls with AA-22, AK-A2, KQ-K2, QJ-Q2, JT-J2, T9-T8, T7s-T3s, 98s, 97s, he maximizes his $EV, increasing his value from $81.40 if he folds to $90.40 if he calls.

If the SB knows the shortie is calling with this, he suffers the least (no matter what, he is always losing a little EV but this is the range he performs best at) calling (or overcalling, I suppose. Part of the reason this isn't exact is because going through overcalls would've taken forever) with AA-22, AK-A2, KQ.

If the BB knows the shortie and SB's ranges, he suffers the least with this range: AA-55, AK-A4.

Stack/blind posted/range/Post-hand value/Pre-hand value.
3850 0 $27.29 $26.30
4950 0 ** $30.03 $30.25
920 0 AA-22, AK-A2, KQ-K2, QJ-Q2, JT-J2, T9-T8, T7s-T3s, 98s, 97s $9.04 $8.14
1855 200 AA-22, AK-A2, KQ $16.42 $16.77
1925 400 AA-55, AK-A4 $17.22 $18.55

Okay, so if he knows this and is playing (close to, I suppose) optimally, lucko should reduce his range from ATC to 81% of the hands.

Stack Blind Hands Post-hand Value Pre-hand Value
3850 0 $27.34 $26.30
4950 0 81% $30.27 $30.25
920 0 AA-22, AK-A2, KQ-K2, QJ-Q2, JT-J2, T9-T8, T7s-T3s, 98s, 97s $8.78 $8.14
1855 200 AA-22, AK-A2, KQ $16.37 $16.77
1925 400 AA-55, AK-A4 $17.24 $18.55

This range of 81% of the hands does NOT include 63o, but it's really damn close: 22+, A2s+,K2s+,Q2s+, J2s+,T2s+,92s+,82s+,73s+,62s+,52s+,42s+, A2o+,K2o+,Q2o+, J3o+,T4o+, 95o+,85o+, 75o+,65o,54o

So you can keep going with this. The shortstack can now call with T2s, 96s and 87s to gain a little value (about 20 cents worth).

The SB can't add anything profitably but the BB can add A3s and A2s, KQ and KJ-KTs.

Of course now lucko has to tighten up a bit. Once he tightens his range to 76% of the hands(22+,A2s+,K2s+, Q2s+,J2s+,T2s+,92s+,83s+, 73s+,63s+,52s+,43s,A2o+,K2o+, Q2o+,J4o+, T6o+,96o+,85o+, 75o+,65o) he can start jamming profitably, although he performs better as his range tightens (although to what extent I'm not sure, because I'm tired and going to bed).

I hope I wake up in the morning, look over this and have it all make sense, because if not I'm gonna be pissed I spent so much goddamn time on it.

On a brief sidenote, I've been rollercoastering in the FTP games, in SNGs, HU SNGs and cash games, but played really well in the UB cash games today for a decent profit in a pretty short amount of time.

VP$IP and Table Talk: The Matusow/Smith Quandary

2007-01-20T03:07:00.000-05:00

Enough about math; let's talk some psychology.

Those who have listened to The Circuit since its inception know that its first host, Mike Matusow, and it second group of hosts, Joe Sebok and Gavin Smith, professed very different styles of play.

Matusow preached (although I have no idea if he practiced this) a pretty tight style. He'd continually say you don't have to play a super-loose, super-aggressive style because most players were bad enough that you can just play solid, wait around for a good hand and trap.

Smith and Sebok (although Smith moreso) play a much looser style of poker. In internet poker terms, you could say that they play a LAG style.

So what is this a function of?

Let's look at some other players who play each style.

Tight (or perhaps even supertight):
Hellmuth

LAG:
Negreanu

So besides playing style, what do Matusow and Hellmuth share that Negreanu and Smith do not?

I think a large part of it is their table talk. Smith and Negreanu are both known for being jokers at the table. They both talk a lot, but they're pretty friendly. Their game plan, essentially, is to be everybody's buddy.

Then there's Matusow and Hellmuth. They whine, cry, talk shit. Basically, they make themselves targets. I would imagine that players like Tony G and Shawn Sheikan are also pretty solid players.

So the Matusow/Smith Quandary is this: the nicer you are to your opponents, the more hands you'll be able to play because they will let you steal more often and will gun for you less. The more of a prick you are, the more action you will get.

Of course, this effect is probably close to negligible against most players and for most people; I would imagine you'd have to pull this (whichever style you are attempting and are more comfortable with) on a pretty rank amateur and even then, you would have to be pretty excessive whichever route you opt to take.

SNGs

2007-01-19T20:06:00.000-05:00

I hate playing SNGs for some reason. They just don't do it for me. That being said, I nearly busted my FTP account a couple weeks ago and planned to transfer from funds back there from UB. When Neteller shut down, this couldn't be done, so I've been playing $5 SNGs on there to replenish it the old-fashioned way.

There's one thing about SNGs that I absolutely love (besides the fact that they're fairly mechanical-- which generally I hate but it allows me to four or five table them and the variance is low) is the end game when the blinds are ridiculously high. You can open-jam every hand and people will still lay down to you. Yesterday, I was even getting comments from people like "you got somewhere to be?" but they'd still fold way too often. It looks like a stupid, maniacal play, but if they keep mucking and playing way too weakly, there's almost no risk at all in doing it.

Not much else exciting going on. I have been focusing on not being so lazy with my open-raise sizing (i.e., making smaller raises from the front and bigger raises on the button and in the cutoff) instead of just hitting 'bet pot' but it's a real minor difference.

I won't get into the open-raising thing too much because it's been done before by a million people, but here's a good link:

Chris Ferguson

Phil Gordon's Little Green Book also covers this concept a fair amount.

Chipp has also broken it down for me pretty well in an old thread called "varying opening raise sizes".

That's all for now, hopefully something exciting'll happen soon.

Hey Neteller....

2007-01-18T02:24:00.000-05:00

...fuck you.

Poker is goooot

2007-01-12T16:18:00.000-05:00

For the first time in a few weeks I feel like I played well today. Of course I made mistakes, but I've felt pretty unconfident lately. I don't think I've been reading people's hands well and paying off way too much. It's been pretty frustrating considering how much work I've been putting into studying the game.

In the car today, I was thinking about the book Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis.

Very interesting read about the world of competitive Scrabble players. There's a part of the book where Stefan is talking with Joe Edley, a three time National Scrabble Champ. After leaving Edley's, Stefan is encouraging himself as he's struggling with becoming more experienced in the game. He keeps telling himself "Make the best play. Winning is a byproduct."

Poker's no different.

Here was a fun hand I played today:

Ultimate Bet
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.50./$1.
5 players
Converter

Stack sizes:
Hero: $96.70
CO: $99.90
Button: $132.30
SB: $119.10
BB: $146

Pre-flop: (5 players) Hero is UTG with
Hero raises to $3, 2 folds, SB calls, BB folds.

Flop: ($7, 2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $9, SB raises to $34, Hero raises all-in $93.7, SB calls.

Turn: ($194.4, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $194.4)

River: ($194.4, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $194.4)

Results:
Final pot: $194.4
Hero shows Kc Ts

The HH won't show it for some reason, but my OPP ended up having AJ.

Anyways, I raised in the hijack with KTo. This seems standard, as does the raise amount.

The flop comes down VERY coordinated. Any time there are two broadway cards, there's a good shot someone has a hand. Three broadway cards makes this even more dynamic, and the two hearts just adds to that fact.

From what Chen/Ankenman have been saying, since the board is so dynamic, I can get away with making a bigger bet. In retrospect, due to my stack size being ~13x the pot-size, I should probably be betting closer to the pot-size here ($7) due to the three-street geometric growth considerations. In other words, I bet 7 here, he calls, pot is $21 and I have 84 left. Next street I bet 21, he calls, pot is 63 and I have exactly enough for a pot-sized bet left.

Oh well. Live and learn. Plus, going through this work afterwords means that I can gain from my mistakes without having to pay for them.

Anyway, my thought process was to overbet the pot. It looks a skosh weak and it's likely that he has some kind of hand that he may either try to value-raise with (like a set, two pair hand like he had, AK) or may try to make a big semi-bluff with a KQ type hand or pair + flush draw.

He raises and there's enough in the pot that it can be argued I could take one off here and jam a blank turn in order to punish flush draws that miss on the turn. But I opted to jam. Honestly, given 2-1, even if the K or T of hearts comes and counterfeits my straight, I'm likely gonna pay off even if he hits. So if I always pay off, I'm losing some money from my opponent when I jam a blank turn and the flush draw is forced to lay down.

Additionally, if a K or T comes, it might kill some action from other made hands (like the type of hand he had). Given the hand that he had, a Q is also a pretty shitty card that most players are going to muck to.

So I jam, he ponders for a while and makes the crying call. SHIP IT!

Chapter 21, Part 2

2007-01-11T16:24:00.000-05:00

Okay, more about The Mathematics of Poker.

After mentioning the situations I mentioned in my last post, Chen/Ankenman mention check-raising. Because of their fold equity, weak draws gain from check-raising and can even go from -EV (if the CR wasn't available) to +EV. Now if you just CRed with weak draws, you'd be incredibly exploitable. Fortunately, there are two other types of hands you'll want to (occasionally) CR with. One is big hands; the reason for this is simple-- pot building. As players like Gavin Smith are famous for saying, you want to play big pots with big hands and although is statement encourages very exploitable play, the point here is that when you have a strong hand and you can build a big pot by check-raising, do it. The next type of hand in this range is the strong draw (i.e., open-ended straight flush draw). The reason for this is if you get reraised, you can just jam, as drawing hands always benefit from getting the money in early anyway (and very often you'll be a favorite in the hand).

So, according to the authors, check-raising with some weak draws, some strong hands and strong draws gives one a balanced strategy in this situation.

This leaves some medium strength hands, some strong hands and some weak draws to check-call with. This group of hands is also balanced because due to the strong hands in the mix, your opponent can't exploit you by increasing or decreasing his betting frequency.

Now it's time to look at bet-sizing and how it correlates with the board texture (my favorite concept in NLHE).

First, consider when there are two cards of one suit on the flop. Obviously, the threat of a flush draw is possible, so that should be added to the possible distribution of hands. (They also make note that this draw is "open" or, as Paul Phillips says, it is transparent information.)

Similarly, when the board is very static (the example they give is KK4r) you should bet geometrically such that the pot will grow in a predictable way on each street (specifically, in a way that a certain percentage of the pot is bet on each street such that the bet on the river gets all of the chips in)-- this bet can range anywhere from 1/3 the pot to roughly pot-sized. On this type of board, small bets are small enough to discourage any underdogs to try to draw out (because the hands will have only 2-5 outs).

They note that specifically "[o]n static boards, we never overbet the pot, preferring to take advantage of the static nature of the board to provide value to our distribution" (p. 275).

On a dynamic board, however, this is not true. In instances where we have a made hand and our opponent is drawing on a dynamic board, by the river he can play somewhat clairvoyantly because when he misses his draw, he will never pay off a river bet, whereas the reverse isn't necessarily true. Because of this, we benefit more from betting large in early streets in order to offset the disadvantage we have later (again, due to the partial clairvoyance the drawing hand obtains).

So on a semi-dynamic board (i.e., Kx7h2h) where we'd geometrically bet 1/2 the pot, they suggeste we bet slightly (maybe 50%) more, so roughly 3/4 the pot.

On incredibly dynamic boards (987 with a flush draw possible) we should bet even more. In fact, as opposed to situations where we attempt to bet geometrically so our stack is all in on the river bet (a three-street geometric growth) we may attempt to bet such that we're all in by the turn (or two-street geometric growth).

Of course, due to betting larger amounts, that means we should also be betting a smaller frequency of hands. As such, we should be checking a decent amount of strong hands in these situations. Of course, checking to give free cards can be pretty dangerous on dynamics boards such as this one. Therefore, the authors suggest that you check with strong hands that won't be hurt by free cards (i.e., on a Kc7c8c board, checking with AcKx). Doing so can also gain value when your opponents (semi-)bluff.

The authors then go into turn play and river play which I won't go into now. I may in the future. Again, I would definitely recommend picking up this book to any serious poker player. I feel like it has definitely already helped my game immensely and I'm not even finished with the book yet.

Chapter 21, Part 1

2007-01-06T15:19:00.000-05:00

I've found what I believe to be the most important chapter written about NLHE for a player who has a decent amount of experience. Chapter 21 of Mathematics of Poker-- A Case Study: Using Game Theory. I won't go into the first half, which is regarding PF play and open-jamming. It's really interesting, but the second half of the chapter talks a lot about what I've easily spent the most time focusing on in my own game; PoF play when taking into account various board textures.

I've spent hours thinking and analyzing these types of situations just because there is such little info on it in most poker literature. Now it's out there for everyone to read (which helps me, but hurts my edge against those who read it; luckily for me, the math approach isn't a popular one so it's unlikely to become highly used).

For those who don't see me in person often, I like to highlight any book I read. My copy of MOP is easily the second-most marked up book I've ever owned, including textbooks (#1 being Catcher in the Rye). This whole chapter is almost entirely underlined and bracketed off.

The Flop Play section begins with mentioning the differenc ebetween static boards (few/no draws, i.e., K72r or AAA) and dynamic (draw heavy boards, like 9d8d7s).

They then mention that in situations where there is a PF raise from EP and a call out of the blind, the blind is more likely to have a weaker hand due to the fact that he's getting a discount on entering the pot. Because his range is so much weaker, he can basically autocheck to the PFR who will in turn usually have an autobet. However, the autocheck can be exploited by the raiser checking behind, but in general autobetting has a higher EV than attempting to exploit the check because his raising distrubution is strong enough that he's gaining value from calls (with his strong hands) and winning the pot immediately when the blind folds.

From the blind's POV, most hands-- weak and strong-- we can check and then have the option of folding (our weak hands) and calling/raising with the rest of our distribution. The authors then breakdown the different possibilities as a result of a checkraise from our blind.

1) If the opponent is calling with his strong hands (as opposed to reraising), our strong hands and our medium-strength hands are losing value. However, our draws gain in value because we're not forced to pay more money or fold.

2) If our opponent is calling with weak hands, the opposite is true. Our strong/medium hands are getting good value, but our draws lose value.

3) If our opponent is reraising here, our strong hands get a ton of value (potentially maximum value) whereas our draws are losing maximum value (when we're either forced to call off or forced to fold).

The task then is to balance our actions over the entire range of potential hands. I'll go into this in the next update.

some more poker, MOP

2007-01-05T07:44:00.000-05:00

Haven't been playing a hell of a lot recently. Ran bad/played bad tonight but only ended up stuck like half a buy-in.

I noticed something strange on UB today. I've spent most of my poker playing the past month or so on FTP because of UB's stupid upgrade that stopped letting you save hand histories (or rather, more than four at a time; they fixed it but at the end of my session a few hours ago it seemed like the problem was back. Fucking ridiculous.) Anyway, I played on UB for the first time in a while. The play was SO fucking horrible.

Take for instance this hand:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?716101

Hand #37040068-96710 at Downey (No Limit Hold'em)
Started at 05/Jan/07 06:30:32

themffulton is at seat 0 with $173.40.
BigBruin007 is at seat 1 with $201.65 (sitting out).
eje63 is at seat 2 with $278.50.
Matthe is at seat 3 with $25.85.
laxlax is at seat 4 with $124.95.
conjenrick is at seat 5 with $91.60.
The button is at seat 0.

eje63 posts the small blind of $.50.
Matthe posts the big blind of $1.

themffulton: Jd Kc
eje63: -- --
Matthe: -- --
laxlax: -- --
conjenrick: -- --

Pre-flop:

laxlax folds. conjenrick folds. themffulton raises
to $3.50. eje63 calls. Matthe folds.

Flop (board: 4d 6h 3c):

eje63 checks. themffulton bets $4. eje63 calls.

Turn (board: 4d 6h 3c Kh):

eje63 checks. themffulton checks.

River (board: 4d 6h 3c Kh 6c):

eje63 bets $16. themffulton raises to $32. eje63
calls.

Showdown:

themffulton shows Jd Kc.
themffulton has Jd Kc 6h Kh 6c: two pair, kings and sixes.
eje63 mucks cards.
(eje63 has Ah 3h.)

Hand #37040068-96710 Summary:

$2 is raked from a pot of $80.
themffulton wins $78 with two pair, kings and sixes.

The value-raise on the river looks thin as hell, right? Well, it was a misclick. I meant to just flat-call. Maybe not making raises like this against these kinds of players has been costing me a little. You're really, really unlikely to be up against a bluff here, because so few hands are putting in another bet here for value you're going to see even fewer people trying to push you out.

But again, I digress. This wasn't even atypical for the dozen or so people I was playing against (3 tabling). It was all sick, maniacal play. People were betting pot-sized on every street, raising and reraising so many hands preflop and calling down with shit like ace high on a regular basis. Granted, people who play in the .5/1 game aren't usually the greatest players. In fact, most of them are idiots. But this was above and beyond some of the things I had seen and couldn't figure out why it was so prevalent.

Then I read the name of a guy up 7 buy ins at my table: PrtyPokersGay. Oh yeah. All the fish there had to migrate, and they've found me at UB. Good.

Getting further in Mathematics of Poker and am reaching a point where I understand it less and less. I've started to actually ignore decent amount of the math because it's way too over my head and instead just try to glean some information from the results that they find. It makes me feel like I'm cheating on a test or something, but even without understanding a lot of what Chen/Ankennman are talking about, it is still easily one of the best poker books ever written.

Since Christmas, I've had this fancy new laptop that works so hopefully I'll be able to play a lot more in the future. Work lately has put me on a really fucked up schedule (it's 8 a.m. and am planning on being awake for another 12 hours; and I didn't go to bed last night) so it makes it hard because I've been trying to avoid playing while tired, because I think that's when I'm the most likely to play with a "fuck it, let's gamble" mindset. I also started playing guitar again with some friends which has taken up a lot of my post-midnight time which is when I was previously playing the bulk of my poker.

Lots of Poker that I Didn't Play

2006-12-17T17:14:00.000-05:00

Let's see what's happened in the past couple weeks.

Mag has come in 3rd in the UBOC, wins the Stars $100, the next day wins the Stars $55 rebuy, then the next day wins the $100 rebuy. Hate to see the guy leave the cash game arena to be a tourney donk, but you can't argue with all of that money. Sick stuff.

A few days after all this, lucko21 wins the very next $100 rebuy for $25k! Mag went pretty deep, coming in about twentieth.

Then, the very NEXT $100 rebuy, sprstoner makes the final table.

AND on UB, mag and tdizz made the very same final table in the $30 rebuy, finishing fourth and second, respectively. Sick, sick stuff. It makes me want to start playing tourneys again. Maybe once I get a new laptop (soon... soon...)

Also congrats to gleeful for winning the TPOAPC main event, and vman and aces (julio the fat mexican queer) for being the player of the year point leaders. I went a long way down from where I was after the first two tourneys (first) but I think I played well in most of the tourneys. I missed HORSE and the main event (I thought it was tonight, not this afternoon), and got pretty unlucky in razz. But I played fucking god-awful in the stud high and in the second no limit event.

Mathematics of Poker continues to be an incredible book. I'd recommend it (or an attempt at it) to anyone who plays this game even remotely seriously.

No real non-poker news. Arielle comes home soon, that's about it.

TPOAPC

2006-12-07T17:48:00.000-05:00

Three tourneys in the plus one annual poker championships.

First one I skilled my way into an early chip lead when my AKo beat Troys AKo. Lost some of it back to him when my JJ lost the coinflip to his JTo (pokerstars...).

Came into the FT with a great stack, with cbal in second. I was playing pretty fast, but chris had recently reraised a couple raises of mine. So I went to steal with 69o and he flat called,w hich really confused me. I put him on something like KQ or AT. The flop came 762 and we both checked. The turn paired the deuce and he led out for 1K. I jammed for somethin like 5 or 6k more and he called with his T7s. He made an awesome call there and I had no idea where he was in the hand. He took those chips and ended up winning the tourney, leaving me in a weak sixth.

Next day we played omaha hilo. I had to be one of the worst omaha split players in the field. So naturally I came in third after semi-cold decking lucko for a huge pot and scooping a couple big pots early on. I really played like shit in the middle rounds though.

After this tourney, i was the +1 POTY points leader with 13, one more than drome (who wont he O8 tourney) and chris.

Last night was stud high, easily my worst game. I was lost the entire night and finished 13th for no more points. I'm still in second to drome who picked up another four points. Lucko finally got some points by winning the fucker.

Tonight is razz, a game I think I play decently. Hopefully I can finish this one off and get myself a win.

random poker shit

2006-12-04T15:35:00.000-05:00

First, congrats to Kevin (lucko21) who took down the $50 rebuy on Stars for just shy of nine dimes. Jesus.

I didn't play too much online this week, but am showing a decent profit considering all of the mistakes I think I've been making (overplaying big pairs, playing too often OOP).

Live has gone well, although it's been for smaller stakes. Turned t120 (down from t200) into about ten times that within an hour and a half in a 7-man rebuy. We ended up chopping when heads up because I had to work the next morning, which sucked because I'd have crushed him.

Only one semi-interesting hand happened. We were playing NL Omaha High, 3 handed with 1/2 blinds. I was the button and open-limped. The SB (Justin) called with ~250 behind and the BB checked with ~450 behind. I have them both covered. I had 77xx (AsTs if I remember right). Flop comes 7h9h3c. Justin leads for 10, BB flat calls and I raise to 45 total. They both call. Turn is a 2s (I think) and they check to me. I bet out 100 and Justin thinks for about three minutes and jams for ~100 more. BB mucks and I call. Justin shows 6hThxx and bricks off, busting out.

I think that given his hand (gutshot straight flush draw), Justin shoulda reraised all in on the flop. A few reasons for this:
1) He knows I don't want to play against him as much as I do the BB, who was far more live.
2) If he bricks off on turn, he's gonna be put in a tough spot to either jam right away or be forced to call if I give him a good price.
3) Even if he knows I very likely have a set, he's not a big dog.
4) None of his outs are nut outs.

Of course, given my hand, I'd have called him anyway so in a results oriented way of thinking it didn't make a difference.

We played Friday at a frat house. .25/.50 game with a $10 buy in (I bought in for $20, which got me weird looks) but when we got there, most people had busted enough times that stacks were deep enough for a little bit of play.

One of the worst games I've ever seen. I could play in that game for a living, but the people there annoyed the fuck out of me, including 1) ugly, trashy drunk girls and 2) dudes trying to fight me for telling them 311 sucked.

I played like a rock, making only one bluff in about 3 hours, and it was versus Justin. No one else was even remotely bluffable. Playing tight (ugh, I hate it so much) resulted in very few hands that were even the slighest bit interesting. It was mostly one person overplaying top pair, but being fortunate that their opponents would be overplaying bottom pair or second pair or some shit like that. Boring, but easy money.

TPOAPC starts tonight. Probably gonna play, but may not if the laptop fucks up on me.

Nanowrimo done, I river quads

2006-11-25T04:06:00.000-05:00

Ding! Took me only 23 days. 50,070 words long (I found a word I needed to add right after I posted on +1 taht I'd finished, so my count of 50,069 was wrong), or 85 pages in Times New Roman, size 12, single spaced. I also won another $18 from Nate Kellogg by doing this unless he manages to write 50K words within the next five days.

Been playing a decent amount of live poker lately, but not for huge money. The past half-week has been bigger in comparison-- ten or twenty dollar buy-in cash games as opposed to two dollar tournaments to kill time. I was up a pathetic 15 on the week until today, when Truax played an overpair in omaha like a huge donkey and somehow managed to get there.

Came home and played online. Found myself stuck prety early after taking a couple beats and then paying off a couple made draws like an idiot. Most of the hands weren't that interesting, but I really like this hand, if for no other reason that I won it:

Full Tilt Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.25/$0.50
6 players
Converter

Stack sizes:
UTG: $21
UTG+1: $58.25
CO: $61.60
Button: $22.80
SB: $13.20
Hero: $49.25

Pre-flop: (6 players) Hero is BB with
UTG calls, UTG+1 calls, CO folds, Button calls, SB calls, Hero checks.

Flop: ($2.5, 5 players)
SB checks, Hero checks, UTG checks, UTG+1 bets $1, Button calls, SB folds, Hero raises to $4, UTG folds, UTG+1 calls, Button folds.

Turn: ($11.5, 2 players)
Hero bets $5, UTG+1 calls.

River: ($21.5, 2 players)
Hero is all-in $39.75, UTG+1 calls.

Results:
Final pot: $101
Hero showed 5d Qh
UTG+1 mucks 9s Ts

Not bad. I dunno how I feel about the flop play. I think maybe in the long run, I might be better served to lead out. That way, if the 9's decide to raise (to gain information) I can just call, and hopefully check-raise the turn. Plus, check-raising the flop puts me in a funny spot if a K or 8 comes on the turn. Since I'm not worried about a 9 and want to avoid JT, I think I might've been better served to raise a little bit more, if I decide to take that line at all.

Anyways, the turn play I think is pretty standard.

The river is the part of the hand I really like. I know I have the best hand, and that my opponent has one of the following hands: 1) a nine 2) JT. I didn't even consider the possibility of him having other hands. So what do I do?

If he has a nine:
-It's gonna be hard for him to get away from this hand. Even though I was representing the queen with my play, it's way harder for me to have it now. Since I didn't raise PF, he's gonna be hard-pressed to put me on TT/JJ/KK/AA. So he might put me on either a nine or a missed draw. If he puts me on those two hands, by jamming-- even for twice the pot size, he's always gonna call. The only hand he can really fear here is quads, and since it's so rare, he's unlikely to give me credit.

If he has JT:
-No bet will get him to call. I only have two options for him to put more money in the pot.
1) Bet a tiny amount, and hope he senses weakness and raises.
2) Check, hoping to induce a bluff.
But I think I'd showed enough strength in the hand that he'd be unlikely to make a move. Additionally, since there was trips on the board, most people are unlikely to make a move since there are so many hands that people are going to pay-off with (basically any pair, at least if your opp. is a bad player, and I was new to the table and have a cowgirl avatar on FT, so people might assume I'm a total donkey).

So out of those possibilities, I figured I should jam, and he called almost isntantly. NH me.

I don't have work for another week, so I'll have a lot more time to play, hopefully. The laptops been acting like a bitch lately, so I may be getting a new one soon.

Okay, that's all for tonight.

Short Session

2006-11-09T21:10:00.000-05:00

This Nanowrimo thing has taken up almost all of my time, so I've only had time to play twice this month. A week ago I played an awful, awful session to drop a buy-in and a half (I actually took a pretty sick beat with AK when a guy called my reraise PF and then big flop bet with his 69s that flopped a gutshot and hit).

I think today I played a little better. I got a set paid off v. kings, which was basically my entire profit for the session, so it wasn't like I played brilliantly.

I think I misplayed a set of queens in one hand, leading out in a non-descript board instead of letting him catch up, because there was no way the guy had any semblance of a hand in that spot.

I played another hand terribly, where I checked behind the two blinds with TPWK, and let them catch up. I didn't pay it off, but if I bet the flop I'm pretty sure I win the pot uncontentested. At the time, I was thinking I was checking the flop because I didn't want to play a big pot with a marginal hand, but it was a dumb, dumb move.

Almost halfway done with nanowrimo. Might be going up to Connecticut this weekend to see Arielle.

Lucko's Question

2006-11-06T20:02:00.000-05:00

Lucko asked me an interesting question about the ATo hand where I flopped the gutshot, bet a dollar and got smooth-called, and turned the straight.

He asked: The $1 bet is def interesting. What % of times do you think you get a call\fold\raise?

Hmm. Well if I assume his range is 88+,ATs+,AJo+ and that he'll only raise with AA, KK or AQ (which is overly simplified, but close enough, I think), then on the flop he can have:

AA (3 ways)
KK (6 ways)
QQ (3 ways)
JJ (3 ways)
TT (6 ways)
99 (6 ways)
88 (6 ways)
AK (12 ways)
AQ (9 ways)
AJ (9 ways)
ATs (2 ways)

So if my assumptions on him are correct, then I get raised 18 times, and called 47 times. So I think 28% of the time, I'm gonna end up losing a dollar, which is actually more than I was expecting. However, with his stack size being deep enough at this point, I think that the 72% of the time he does call and I hit the turn (about 10%-- making it about 7% of the time I bet a dollar) I get win a big pot, given his likely holdings. I need something like 13.5-1 implied odds (if I did the math right, I'm rushing throuhg this) in order to make the times he raises me or the times I miss make up for all the dollar's I've bet. Actually, since enough of the time he'll have re-draw potential (when he has a set) I might need considerable more implied odds... but there are already $13 in the pot, plus his 14th dollar, and I think unless he has 99 or 88, I can be able to squeeze another bet out of him to make up for this, especially if I take the line that I took (check w/ intent of CR-ing the turn, because if he bets, I usually already make up for it, and if he doesn't he's much more likely to call a decent sized bet on the river if he assumes that I missed a flush draw or just decides to make a fuck-you call.

Nanowrimo Word Counter

2006-11-06T18:45:00.000-05:00

Nanowrimo Begins

2006-11-02T01:12:00.000-05:00

I have a little over 2.6K words done, or a little over 5%. Not bad, given that you need to average about a thousand less than that per day, but I wanted to get a big headstart on it.

I've played less poker this week, but there's a hand I wanted to write about, because I love the way I played it. In fact, I think that I played the hand so badly that (given my opponent) it was genius.

Hand #35086003-3538 at Virginia Beach (No Limit Hold'em)
Started at 27/Oct/06 17:50:15

AAPONYAA is at seat 0 with $21.
themffulton is at seat 1 with $126.80.
CobberABC is at seat 2 with $97.75.
Harpoon is at seat 3 with $53.95.
aar0nh is at seat 4 with $62.80.
jiff1014 is at seat 5 with $43.15.
The button is at seat 4.

jiff1014 posts the small blind of $.50.
AAPONYAA posts the big blind of $1.

AAPONYAA: -- --
themffulton: Ac Th
CobberABC: -- --
Harpoon: -- --
aar0nh: -- --
jiff1014: -- --

Pre-flop:

themffulton raises to $3.50. CobberABC folds.
Harpoon folds. aar0nh re-raises to $6. jiff1014
folds. AAPONYAA folds. themffulton calls.

Flop (board: 4s Qs Jh):

themffulton bets $1. aar0nh calls.

Turn (board: 4s Qs Jh Kh):

themffulton checks. aar0nh bets $5. themffulton
raises to $15. aar0nh calls.

River (board: 4s Qs Jh Kh 2h):

themffulton bets $45.50. aar0nh goes all-in for
$40.80. themffulton is returned $4.70 (uncalled).

Showdown:

themffulton shows Ac Th.
themffulton has Ac Th Qs Jh Kh: straight, ace high.
aar0nh shows As Kc.
aar0nh has As Kc Qs Jh Kh: a pair of kings.

Hand #35086003-3538 Summary:

$3 is raked from a pot of $127.10.
themffulton wins $124.10 with straight, ace high.
----------------------------------------------------------------

The PF raise is standard. After his reraise, I'm aware that I most likely don't have the best hand, but his raise was so small (the minimum) I feel bad just letting him have it.

The flop is the most interesting part of the hand. I flop a gutshot. If I check it to him, I know for a fact that he's gonna bet something like ten dollars at the pot as a continuation bet. I'm out of position, and don't feel like guessing if that's a bet with 99, AK, AQ, or a set. So I lead out the minimum, what would normally be a terrible play, because if I had a big hand like a set, I'd want to build a big pot and protect my hand because the board has a lot of straight draws available, as well as the flush draw.

I also figure that unless he's got AQ, KK or AA, he's probably gonna smooth call here. AK will call because of the price he's being given, and it's unlikely for him to assume he has the best hand at the moment, so he's not likely going to raise here. A hand like QQ or JJ is likely to play it slow, because... well, I think that's clearly the wrong move, but I see it all the time. And AJ is probably going to want to play a small pot.

The turn is my gin card. I planned on him betting pretty large when I checked to him. Besides an underpair, any hand that reraised me preflop is going to have hit that flop pretty decently. I was hoping that he'd bet big, and I could check-raise him all-in and that he'd feel committed and call. So I really didn't like his small bet. I raised him to 15, so that when the river came, there would be more in the pot than in his stack, which increases the chance I get a call.

The river comes, and I move in. Something not shown in the HH is the chat box. He thought for a pretty long time about this. I thought it was actually pretty likely he'd fold, and I also thought that a lot of the time he was spending was trying to put me on a hand, which would be difficult given the weird way I played it. So I gave him a hand to put me on. In the chatbox, I typed "missed spades?" as if I were asking him what he was thinking about, but in reality, I think that my saying this made him think "THAT'S what he's got" because as soon as I said that, he called almost right away.

Alright, that's all for now. More updates on poker and the novel soon.

oh yea

2006-10-24T01:15:00.000-04:00

Forgot to write that since the last update, +1 has welcomed its newest member Truax, aka Truschool, to the group.

Erie, PA

2006-10-24T01:09:00.000-04:00

I've been running pretty shitty lately. Phelps and I drove out to Erie, PA yesterday to play in a home tournament. Even on the way there, I was pretty angry about the way I've been playing. The phrase "I fucking hate this game" was spoken numerous times.

The tournament was $35: $25 for the prize pool, a $5 bounty chip you got from any poor sap you bust out, and $5 for food and drinks. We got there at about 2 and cards were in the air by 2:30. The structure was really good, considering 1) I hate tournaments and 2) it was a homegame. You started with T600 with blinds at 2/4. I told Phelps on the way that if I could double my chip stack, I'd win the tournament. However, by the end of the first break, I'd won only three pots (JJ, TT, and 27o) which were all small and was down to T295.

A couple hands in after the break, I open raised with A7s. The guy on my left, a loose-aggressive player, min-raised me and I called. The flop came 478 and I checked to him. He bet small and I jammed. He insta-called me which had me pretty worried, but when he flipped over his AJ (yes, AJ) I felt better. Now I had like 600, which dwindled down to somewhere in the 500 range.

The key hand in this tournament was the following: at 5/10 blinds, a player in EP raises to 40 and I call with 7d8d. The blinds also call and the flop comes Ac4d5d. Not bad. The blinds check and the PF raiser bets out 35. I immediately make it 135 to go. Blinds fold and he calls. Turn is an offsuit 9. He checks and I jam for about 300. He thinks for a while, and says "I think you flopped the straight [huh?!] or a set [eh]... it's obvious I'm on a draw [oh fuck]." He thinks for another minute and then mucks AdQd face up. I told him I had a set of fives.

From there, I put on a clinic and ended the hour with 1800. By the next break, I had built up to 4000 and had the CL by the time we made the final table. Of course, I ended up doubled up an Ac6c with my AK right off the bat, and then doubled up AQ with QT when I was priced in to call his jam because I limped under the gun, thinking that the chips I put out were the BB I thought I had to post. I managed to bust that guy later, and two others to get three handed. A guy named Kyle who was playing pretty solid busted the guy in third place, and we were heads up, with me having a slight CL.

At this point the blinds were pretty high. I won the first three hands uncontested heads up, and figured it was time to rip him to shreds. Then he started betting into me on flops that I had raised and I had to fold my 7 highs. Then the blinds increased again, and I raised with Ks7s and he jammed. I was getting a little less than 2-1, and nearly called, but decided to muck after about three minutes of thinking. The next hand we got all in with KQ (him) and KT (me)... as I said, the blinds were really high. His KQ held and he won. I walked away with $170, but I was really mad about folding that K7 (he had A5, so the call would've been right). I thought that tournament was mine once I built up to 1800, but couldn't finish it off.

On a side note, I'm probably (hopefully) participating in the National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org) with my friend Justin Cantoni. It should be pretty stressful and a pain in the ass, but I'm excited as hell for it anyway.

I've been running pretty shitty lately. Phelps and I drove out to Erie, PA yesterday to play in a home tournament. Even on the way there, I was pretty angry about the way I've been playing. The phrase "I fucking hate this game" was spoken numerous times.

The tournament was $35: $25 for the prize pool, a $5 bounty chip you got from any poor sap you bust out, and $5 for food and drinks. We got there at about 2 and cards were in the air by 2:30. The structure was really good, considering 1) I hate tournaments and 2) it was a homegame. You started with T600 with blinds at 2/4. I told Phelps on the way that if I could double my chip stack, I'd win the tournament. However, by the end of the first break, I'd won only three pots (JJ, TT, and 27o) which were all small and was down to T295.

A couple hands in after the break, I open raised with A7s. The guy on my left, a loose-aggressive player, min-raised me and I called. The flop came 478 and I checked to him. He bet small and I jammed. He insta-called me which had me pretty worried, but when he flipped over his AJ (yes, AJ) I felt better. Now I had like 600, which dwindled down to somewhere in the 500 range.

The key hand in this tournament was the following: at 5/10 blinds, a player in EP raises to 40 and I call with 7d8d. The blinds also call and the flop comes Ac4d5d. Not bad. The blinds check and the PF raiser bets out 35. I immediately make it 135 to go. Blinds fold and he calls. Turn is an offsuit 9. He checks and I jam for about 300. He thinks for a while, and says "I think you flopped the straight [huh?!] or a set [eh]... it's obvious I'm on a draw [oh fuck]." He thinks for another minute and then mucks AdQd face up. I told him I had a set of fives.

From there, I put on a clinic and ended the hour with 1800. By the next break, I had built up to 4000 and had the CL by the time we made the final table. Of course, I ended up doubled up an Ac6c with my AK right off the bat, and then doubled up AQ with QT when I was priced in to call his jam because I limped under the gun, thinking that the chips I put out were the BB I thought I had to post. I managed to bust that guy later, and two others to get three handed. A guy named Kyle who was playing pretty solid busted the guy in third place, and we were heads up, with me having a slight CL.

At this point the blinds were pretty high. I won the first three hands uncontested heads up, and figured it was time to rip him to shreds. Then he started betting into me on flops that I had raised and I had to fold my 7 highs. Then the blinds increased again, and I raised with Ks7s and he jammed. I was getting a little less than 2-1, and nearly called, but decided to muck after about three minutes of thinking. The next hand we got all in with KQ (him) and KT (me)... as I said, the blinds were really high. His KQ held and he won. I walked away with $170, but I was really mad about folding that K7 (he had A5, so the call would've been right). I thought that tournament was mine once I built up to 1800, but couldn't finish it off.

On a side note, I'm probably (hopefully) participating in the National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org) with my friend Justin Cantoni. It should be pretty stressful and a pain in the ass, but I'm excited as hell for it anyway.

AC Trip

2006-10-11T02:21:00.000-04:00

I just got back yesterday from the +1 AC meet. I lost, but had a fucking blast. I also feel like I learned a lot, especially watching people like Kevin (lucko) and Josh (mag) play no limit. It’s scary how much better they are than me and it’s a good reminder that I have a ton to learn.

One thing that struck me immediately playing in the casino was that the average 1/ 2 NL player in the casino would be absolutely destroyed by the average .25/.5 or even .1/.25 player online. I guess the fact that they’re leaving their homes to go all the way to a casino to gamble makes them play every hand- and every hand like shit- but it was (for the most part) atrocious. Granted, there were a couple very, very good players there, but the average player… not so much.

I feel like I played awesome all trip, but made one huge mistake, slightly misplayed top set which I let get cracked, and got ridiculously outplayed by Kevin in heads up pot-limit Omaha. The set I got cracked, along with a big pot I lost to pocket aces (against a truly awful player) when I had TPTK was another reminder of how sometimes his game, there’s just nothing you can do. I heard Josh and Kevin mentioning this a lot, and Josh even sweated my cards in both of those cold decks and said that given the hands and the caliber of play in the game, I was basically destined to lose big pots there. Hearing that from him made me feel better about my play, because he’d let me know if I fucked up.

The best play I saw on the trip: in a big pot, Kevin check-raised me on the river with quads. I paid him off, because I figured there was no way in hell he’d check a hand like that on the river. He did, and it won him a lot more money.

I’ll probably think of a ton more I want to talk about later, but it’s late and I’m tired.

First Entry

2006-10-04T23:55:00.000-04:00

Alright, I had a really bad session a few days ago, so in an effort to help my game out, I figured writing out everything a blog would be helpful. Since that session, I’ve really rethought my entire game and stripped it down to the bare bones. I spent an entire day at work ignoring psychiatric patients and instead going over how to play different hands from different positions. Specifically, I spent a ton of time thinking about playing out of position (and decided I really need to knock that off) and playing hands with very bad reverse implied odds. Since that session, I’ve been playing well again and have been winning decently.

In poker news, it’s possible that pretty soon we’re all fucked. Great.

In my own personal news, I’m going to AC with a bunch of the +1 guys on Friday for Ryan’s bachelor party/excuse to drink and gamble. I’ll no doubt be giving a lot of stories from that, hopefully about big scores I made.

Personal news: congrats to one of my best friends Cir L’Bert and Jackie Masters on the birth of their baby, Eva Grace. Thank God she came out cute.

Hand of the day:
This was one of the worst calls I think I have ever seen in my poker life. Normally, I never go for a check-raise on the flop as the preflop raiser, but this guy was so damn aggressive that it was worth waiting him out forever waiting for this spot.

Hand #35084999-45276 at Schenectady (No Limit Hold'em)
Started at 04/Oct/06 21:32:28

Blaznfosho is at seat 0 with $40.50.
themffulton is at seat 1 with $122.05.
EBESTER is at seat 3 with $123.70.
RumbleSalvage is at seat 4 with $39.50.
notim4luvdrjn is at seat 5 with $46.55.
The button is at seat 0.

themffulton posts the small blind of $.25.
EBESTER posts the big blind of $.50.

Blaznfosho: -- --
themffulton: Kc Ks
EBESTER: -- --
RumbleSalvage: -- --
notim4luvdrjn: -- --

Pre-flop:

RumbleSalvage folds. notim4luvdrjn raises to $1.75.
Blaznfosho folds. themffulton re-raises to $5.75.
EBESTER folds. notim4luvdrjn calls.

Flop (board: 2h 6s Th):

themffulton checks. notim4luvdrjn bets $12.
themffulton raises to $114. notim4luvdrjn goes all-in
for $40.80. themffulton is returned $73.20
(uncalled).

Turn (board: 2h 6s Th 8c):

(no action in this round)

River (board: 2h 6s Th 8c 2d):

(no action in this round)

Showdown:

themffulton shows Kc Ks.
themffulton has Kc Ks 2h Th 2d: two pair, kings and deuces.
notim4luvdrjn shows 8d 7d.
notim4luvdrjn has 8d 2h Th 8c 2d: two pair, eights and deuces.

Hand #35084999-45276 Summary:

$2 is raked from a pot of $93.60.
themffulton wins $91.60 with two pair, kings and deuces.
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Okay, that’s all for now. Updates from AC coming soon.