Fun Day

Vacation Part II

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

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

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

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

See you in a week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So why haven't I moved up?

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

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

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

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

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

Grrr

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

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

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

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

Say the following occurs:

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

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

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

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

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

So, we work downwards.

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

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

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

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

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

MOTHERFUCKER!?!>#^RF 4QOWRIEGDNV AWESD

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

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

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

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

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

WSOP

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

My Aim Is True

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

Best/Worst Hands from TV

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

The Best:

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

The Worst:

1) Jennifer Tilly Fears Quads

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Min-raiseaments and getting that monkey off my back

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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



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

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




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

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



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

22

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

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

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

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



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



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

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

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

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

Our Spring Is Sweet Not Fleeting

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

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

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

A few observations on Absolute:

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

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

Intervention

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

A couple made up situations:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bottle Up And Explode!

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

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



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

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

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


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


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


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


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


Results:
Final pot: t22175

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

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

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

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

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

All for now, later.

Ugh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indy and Politics

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

Anyways, on to Indy.

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

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

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

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

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

+1 Indy Meet Tomorrow

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

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

Tales of degeneracy to come in the next week.

Hypothetical Poker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clearly an exaggeration, but...

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

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

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