Wired Aces

Table Conduct

2008-01-22T13:44:00.000-05:00

In a small attempt to periodically update this space with something other than infrequent (and probably rather boring) bankroll or tournament updates -- and maybe more importantly to move beyond the plateau to some sort of growth -- I'm going to attempt to throw up a few things on more general strategy and thinking. Below is the first of these posts.

Somewhere along the line I picked up a little quote that should be every players guide to conducting themselves appropriately at the table:

Win with grace, lose with dignity, and never ever tell a sucker what he's doing wrong.

Let's examine the three parts of this.

Win with grace

Winning with grace is probably the easiest to achieve of the three parts for most players. We win a hand or a tournament or a race situation... We're pleased... We're in a good mood. Typically people with such a mood are naturally gracious to those around them. We may shrug our shoulders to our losing opponent, or offer some condolence if we won via a bad beat or even-money situation. The hand-shake is frequently seen as a way to soothe egos and establish that we, the winner, aren't somehow gloating over our (perceived) dominance of the other player.

Being a gracious winner is really the only way to be a respected winner, and achieving that status in other player's minds is simply put, good business for future encounters at the table. (And often just as importantly, away from the table.)

Personally, I think I do pretty well with this. By nature, I am an empathetic person, and tend to be quite cordial when I'm in a good mood - when hands are holding up - when I'm making good decisions - when the game is running as it is "supposed" to run.

But there are still paths available to slipping from being a gracious winner. Perhaps a (losing) opponent will insult your play. Sometimes, prior history with an opponent may incline you to gloat or insult. The "there, moron, take that" sentiment can be quite strong. This kind of gloating behavior belies an attitude that is completely counter-productive in poker: it's as if you are seeking out confrontation to prove your mastery, when the more appropriate approach often is to avoid confrontation... to tip-toe around it... to stop when your opponent "goes"... to zig when they zag. Simply put: It reveals that your ego is involved.

Poker is definitely not the game for someone who derives pleasure in adding insult to injury.

Lose with dignity

Yeah, this is the tough one. The second-bests keep coming in an unbroken chain. The 9 and 4 and 2 outers cripple us. Every raise we make is hijacked from behind with a re-raise. 80/20 situations feel like races, and races feel like domination.

I don't need to say much about why players struggle with losing in a dignified manner - every player knows these emotions all too well. Some will whine and complain - some will hurl insults and passive-aggressive remarks.

Personally, I can be horrible in this arena. I'm a naturally animated person (which is obviously a formidable handicap as a poker player). A coolly-intended statement can take on the feel of an exclamation when you're inclined to be so animated. Often there is a disconnect between how I actually feel about a beat or a loss, and how what happens after is displayed or perceived by others. I may be "okay" with the result, but something said intended as a tension-relieving joke may be seen as bitterness. An innocently-begun postmortem may end up looking like whining or anything else other players don't want to hear.

Perhaps the best I've ever done was leaving the room entirely after a particularly bad beat. While this may not be necessary, and may in itself be somewhat of a surrender of your dignity (the little baby can't take it so he runs off to cry), it's far superior to a lot of other things that can happen after a loss. Ideally, and most appropriately for players who share my problems detailed above, silence may be the best option.

So why be dignified when losing? Simply put: people like watching train wrecks. We all secretly love seeing others in distressed situations. We take delight in seeing a player lose his cool, if for no other reason than he might rebuy and fuel the game with tilt. He's not thinking clearly and coolly, he's putting blood in the water and chips in the pot. In a game where skill can take a painfully long time to dominate luck, perhaps the only real domination we can accomplish in the short-term is to get another player frustrated and off his game.

And here's the point: the more a player tends to become an undignified loser, the more others at the table want to see him lose. Your ego is on your sleeve and good players will recognize this as the sign of a target. You will be seen as a likely source of profit. They'll take shots against you they might not take if you were more respected, seek out your weaknesses, and then pick them apart, while they likely leave other, quieter, players alone.

(Side note: don't even think that you can get more action by acting like an ass. I've yet to see a player who can pull this off to the desired effect.)

Never ever tell a sucker what he's doing wrong

As a long-time player, I've "been around the block" I think. I've seen and played in a lot of different games, and one of the worst things that can happen to a game (and it always does if the game goes on long enough) is that the dead-money players which fuel the game and give us a profit will inevitably leave. Hopefully they leave broke, but for one reason or another, they always leave.

Why would you encourage them to do so? Telling someone what they are doing wrong is not only the sure sign of someone with an ego that needs propping up, it's a sure way to discourage a poor player from continuing to be a poor player. He might leave, or he might correct his errors, but either way, the driving force of the game has left the table. Poor players not only directly fuel the game, but they indirectly often run good players that you might normally struggle to beat, right into your monster hands. Simply, they encourage and drive action.

The most common form of this error occurs when a poor player plays poorly and is rewarded for his efforts. The loser's superiority has not manifested itself in the end result of the hand, and he will feel the need to exert this superiority in some other way. Thus, he tells the sucker what he's doing wrong.

Perhaps the most glaring form of this error is missing the fact that different people play poker for widely-varying reasons, and for some of them, it is purely for fun. Now, if you are ultimately going to profit from their fun, and they are going to have a good time, what does pointing out their poor play accomplish? Likely feeling insulted... perhaps even beginning to feel like an "outsider" at the table, they are not likely to be enjoying the experience, and when they leave or alter their play, you're no longer profiting: everyone has lost exactly what they came to the game for.

In conclusion

Analogous to "Win with grace, lose with dignity, and never ever tell a sucker what he's doing wrong", is the similarly-minded quote "Never complain, never explain." By never complaining and never explaining at the table, you're likely to be a gracious winner and a dignified loser. I have to assume that these things will aid your game, if the majority of other technical aspects of play are in place and you feel that you are at a plateau.

Nice Multi Win

2008-01-08T02:36:00.000-05:00

Still alive, still grinding away...

After a few bankroll decimations -- the good kind I suppose -- to pay for various things in my life since my last long-ago update here, I'm back hitting the online tables with regularity. Micro limits... bankroll building...

Despite a growing FTP balance which I should be using to take more shots at satellites, I generally avoid tournaments most of the time. As a poker player, you work hard (and often to little effect) to maintain some kind of sanity and emotional balance... and well, I probably don't have to tell you how a string of time-sucking tournaments that end in bad beats or coolers can upset that balance. But still, I don't think I've ever been in a MTT online where I wasn't in awe of the amount of dead money. (I did satellite into the Sunday Million once a few months ago with FTPs and didn't cash.)

So Full Tilt has added these new "Knockout" tourneys, where most of the buy-in goes into a traditional prize pool, with some reserved for each player: Knock someone out, and you win their bounty. Tonight I finished in first place in a 90 player, $3+.30, winning $72, and KOing 10 players for an extra $5 (.50 a-piece).

My play was good, and I ran good. I busted 5 of the 9 players at the final table, all desperate short stacks, and overcame a 2:1 deficit heads-up in a several level battle. Now, I can't really comment on the effect of the bounties on how people play... I didn't observe any situations where .50 is going to influence your decisions, but perhaps less-rational players might. What those little bonuses do accomplish is to help offset the buy-in of the tournament, even if you don't cash. At the above noted structure, busting as few as 3 other players is going to get you nearly half of the total buy-in back. In effect, the bounties "flatten" out the prize structure- typically in a 90 player tourney, 9 players will cash (10%), where in a knockout tournament I'd guess somewhere around 25-40% will get at least something back for their efforts. Take a horrible beat on the bubble, and chances are you may still have made money or broken even.

Of course, if you bust out early yourself, you probably still are down the whole buy-in, but in general playing knockout tournaments vs traditional tournaments should lower your bankroll fluctuations, and help offset some amount of variance.

Good luck out there.

Poor Play In NLHE

2007-05-18T22:30:00.000-04:00

Having not posted here since February... a minor poker update might be called for before I get to the actual subject, a companion post to Smart Play In NLHE.

I'm still playing quarter/half short-handed NLHE online working on that $2k bankroll I'm forcing myself to have before moving up to .5/1. I'm showing an earn rate of ~$3.50/hour, and although I still think this can (and should) be more, hey, it's positive. (Quitting sessions when things sour would probably boost my earn by a dollar or more.) Live results in tournaments have been mediocre, as those things tend to be, with typically strong positive showings in cash games.

Once you've been thinking about poker and seriously playing poker for a few years, there usually isn't a whole lot that can happen in a given session, or month, or maybe even year that seems all that exceptional (hence the relative lack of post around here... I assure you I've been playing). In the beginning, you're learning new concepts with every session... later those concepts become solidified and redefined and there's still a new thing here or there to pick up. At some level of poker maturity and development, new ideas plateau out and are few and far between. This is the "learning curve" poker players talk about.

With that said, most of my own gains (in both experience and profit) in the last few months are due less to technical progress, and more to personal progress like improved concentration, discipline, etc. I've talked many times about the players who you will see playing smart, tight, solid poker for 2 hours, and who blow their whole stack on one poorly timed and poorly played bluff or similar play. They have the technical skills to win, just not the self-control. Playing optimally, means playing optimally on every hand.

So, that brings me to the hand I'd like to examine in depth... balancing recent posts out by showing a hand that I lost money on and that I misplayed, that really touches on some key aspects of playing optimal NLHE, and some common leaks and traps.

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I'm sitting on ~$150 after a set of fours held up against a nut flush draw. (Beware good results in a session like this... it can seem consciously or subconsciously like "hey I'm going to book a positive session here, I can gamble some". This can be a serious leak.)

I'm under the gun with JJ, and make a 4xBB raise to $2. The player behind, who I've seen long enough to know plays tight and very solid values (and almost never raises or re-raises preflop, re-raises to $6.75 of his ~$50. Everyone else folds. This is the critical point in this hand for me: I can be at least 80% certain that I'm against AA, KK, QQ, or a mild possibility of AK.

Checking the odds will reveal that it would cost me $4.75 to call, into the $9.50 pot, or 2:1 pot odds. Now here's the problem, and this did cross my mind at the time: There's really only one flop that I can feel good about, and that's one that contains a Jack. If I would hit it, my opponent has ~$44 left that I may well get. For $4.75 more, I have a 7.5:1 chance of getting $44, or just over 9:1 implied. Calling is viable here but... The real problem (if you're still following me), is the danger of the flop containing cards all Ten or lower. I'd have flopped an overpair (hard to let go, even for experienced players), and would likely still be very far behind in the hand, to my opponents presumably bigger pair. On the whole, taking the flop here isn't bad, so long as you are completely committed to laying the hand down unless a Jack flops.

In reality, I called, saw a Seven-high flop, and checked my overpair. My opponent bet $11.50. In some breakdown of discipline, fueled partly by the well-ingrained pattern of picking off continuation bets (even out of position), I called. Of course at this point going to the turn, I know I can't bet out (as I might normally here to complete the pick off), because habit has thankfully been replaced by conscious thought, and that thought is still saying I'm way behind to a bigger pair.

He moves in on the turn (a Ten), and I quickly and wisely fold. This wasn't a huge mistake from a financial standpoint (I lost $11.50 more than I should have), but:

1. Losing $11.50 seems insignificant, but when your earn rate is $3.50/hour, it represents 3+ hours of play.

2. It was a blatantly stupid error. I knew what I was against. I knew what I had to do. I didn't do it. At few points in NLHE are you this certain of your opponents hand, so by all means, listen to the certainty, and make your errors on the tough decisions, not the easy ones.

This hand is also particularly interesting, because it's precisely the type of hand that many players will lose large on, and will take comfort and consolation in saying "What could I do? I had an overpair. It was just bad luck/timing to run into a bigger pair." ---when you can see from the analysis above that the player not only had every opportunity to back away from the hand, but had nearly every reason to as well.

Hopefully the analysis above drives home three old poker adages:

1. "Bad players pick their hands, good players pick their spots". This was a bad spot, even if an overpair is usually a profitable hand.

2. "Don't throw in good money after bad". I realized instantly that I had made an error, and corrected it by folding as soon as possible. Being stubborn is a good way to be broke.

3. "Stop small errors while they're still small". In poker, one seemingly-insignificant or loose call early in a hand can lead down a path to disaster. Many times once you're in a hand, it basically plays itself (i.e. a hand you're not going to get away from), but there are subtleties in knowing what hands and what spots may lead to possible trouble. You can't fear demons at every turn in a poker game and expect to do well, but with the relatively small implied-odds equity in the hand above, not to mention the possibility of set-over-set (or my opponent getting away from his hand at some point, drying up my implied odds), perhaps the best play was a pre-flop fold.

Smart Play In NLHE

2007-02-18T15:15:00.000-05:00

I've been working the short-handed quarter/half no limit tables again, and recently with encouraging success, making a respectable hourly rate. Part of this success, I'm certain, can be attributed to putting a lot of skills together well. As a player, at one time or another I have most of the "pieces" and skills needed to win... such as hand-reading, odds, starting selection, table texture and adjustments, and so forth. But to win, and consistently, these things all have to work together simultaneously, or at least most of them. Not a revolutionary idea, but difficult to apply.

So here are two hands that hopefully show what I mean that I'd like to go through and actually post some real poker content:

Example #1

I'm on the button, 6-handed, with A6o [Ac 6s]

The SB is a rabbit, who can be counted on to fold without a strongly-flopped hand, and let you know if she has it. The BB seems to be a tight/solid player who plays with some measure of craftiness.

Now, A6o is good enough to play here short-handed on the Button. My gut is that I should probably raise here, but my hand isn't very strong, and I know I can easily outplay one of my opponents, and I'll have position. I elect to call and we go three to the flop:

8s 2h Th

Checked to me. I usually adore firing at a pot like this, but there's some compelling reasons not to. I still have a weak hand, and no strong outs (save maybe the 3 other Aces), and although that suggests trying a bluff (it may be my only way to win), there's just a tiny pot out there, and there's not much chance of me forcing out a better hand or a draw. This is a mistake that's easy to make: you take a stab at a pot you may well be winning, get a caller or callers, and now you're playing a bigger pot with a (still) weak hand. I still have position, it's a small pot, and I may have the best hand: I check.

4h

Checked to me again. Now the flush became possible, not to mention somebody likely has a flush draw, and that's not me. Though I've been checked to twice (usually a good spot to fire at), again, there's no pot (thanks to my earlier refusal to stab), and no compelling reason to bet. Managing pot size like this, even when certain situational factors are telling you to do otherwise, is one of the keys to playing effective NLHE.

I'm sure some may feel this is elementary, and others will criticize my completely passive play here, but keeping pots small is perhaps one of the most overlooked elements of what people term under the larger heading "discipline"... if only because it's far easier for discipline to collapse in larger pots. I've seen others (and myself) play good solid poker for hours, and then a pot plays out (characterized by early round pot-building) where either because of straight pot odds, implied odds, or just plain poor play, your stack is deleted. Never underestimate the possible negative effect of what seems like, at-worst, a small error early.

Ad

SB checks and BB bets the pot. Now here is where being able to judge an opponent's skill level is paramount. I've made a pair of Aces on the river, usually good enough to win this small and previously uncontested pot, but I have to consider my opponent. He's been crafty and solid so far, and I question why he would make a pot bet here. It's entirely possible he's sensing weakness via all the checking going on and just trying to take it down. He may also assume that I wouldn't just limp an Ace on the button.

But I sense there's more here... if he had a hand that might justify a bet on the river, that I could beat, it would have to be one pair, or some sort of really weak Ace... neither very likely for him to pot bet. Based on the player, there's a good chance he made a flush, straight, or possibly two pair.

I'm getting 2:1 if I call, so I'd only have to pick off a bluff 1/3 of the time here to break even, but again, knowing the player reasonably well, I fold.

The last important point of this hand is applying relative values... all this discussion about a $3 pot? This is a concept that amazes me that people who should (and DO) know better fail to apply. Making a good decision in poker has nothing to do with the absolute amounts of money involved, only the relative amounts. 2:1 is 2:1 whether it's $1000:$500 or $3/$1.50.

Example #2

Here's a classic situation that you'll see over and over...

I'm in middle position this time with AJs [Ah Jh]. Still .25/.50. I open for a raise to $2. The SB and the BB call. The SB has been loose with his calls, especially pre-flop, but otherwise avoids trouble. The BB has been generally solid, but predictable and "by the book".

3s Ks Kc

The SB checks. The BB bet's $5 into the $6 pot.

Let's examine this briefly. The SB is known to call loosely pre-flop, so it is conceivable that he holds a K or a flush draw (the only two hands I really fear), but his check makes either of these a little less likely, and of course, it's most likely he has nothing. The BB was getting 3:1 to call preflop, so his call doesn't necessarily signify anything powerful. Furthermore, one of the possible holdings that I could fear, AK, he has shown a tendency to re-raise with pre-flop. Also, the BB's tendency to be predictable and "standard" (whatever that means) has been strong, and would not likely lead to such a strong bet if he in fact held a King. I would actually expect a check from this player.

The paired flop like this is a classic situation for a re-raise steal, especially here, as the already presumed weak SB would have to have a very real, very strong hand to call my reraise with the original bettor still to act behind. Furthermore, I'm assigning a near-zero probability that the BB has a King, so the only hand that *might* even get a call from him is a flush draw.

I reraise to $10 and both players fold.

You'll see this time and again, where on a flop of something like QQ8, some dolt will bet pot or near it, usually holding an 8. Most people reason that if they get action after making such a bet, they are done with the hand, so don't disappoint them by folding. Of course, be sensible in situations like this and consider your opponents and the number of them, but these can be prime opportunities to win nice pots with no hand at all.

8k FT Sunday Night Guarantee

2007-02-11T23:57:00.000-05:00

I'm trying the 8k Guarantee ($10+1) on FullTilt again as I posted about recently, and figured in the absence of real content here, I'd live blog it.

988 players
153 places paid
1,888.07 = first place

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Whew. Level one, I limp K5s (I know, I know) from the cut off in an unopened pot and flop top pair, calling pot and turn bets from the BB, hit two pair on the river, and reraise his third pot bet, which he folds after pot committing himself. Up to T2500. Ranked 95/900.

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Level two, a poorly flopped AKs and some blinds play has me back down to T1850.

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Fold Fold Fold. Level 5, double through ATs with AJs on a Jack high flop and dodge his flush draw. T3120, ranked 195/471.

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First Break, nothing significant... T2620, 238/395. Work to do.

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Level 7: double through KQs with A9s after I boated on the turn and let him catch the nut flush on the river. T5240, ranked 96/356.

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Level 9 (100/200), knock out A4o with AKs, up to T8015, then KK gets some limpers to fold, then QJ turns trip Queens against middle pair taking me to ~12k, then TT vs 77 all-in flops A77 ONCE AGAIN proving that 80/20's are like coin flips whether the 20% can make quads against me*, putting me at about 8k though still. Then I get A8o in the BB, SB opens for a raise which I call: flop AJ8, he bets, I raise, he goes all in (has me covered) I call and he shows KT for the gutshot, WHICH HITS. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, OVER.

Seriously. out 236.

* Recently in tournaments, I've had 99 make quads on my AA, TT make quads on my QQ, and now 77 make quads on TT. All were all in preflop, and two of those cases I still made a boat. I've made the statement that I'd gladly lose 80% of races if I could just win every 80/20, or hell, 80% of them.

I might as well play bingo.

Multi-Table Tournaments

2007-01-21T23:19:00.000-05:00

At another web place last July, I chimed in an answer to a question like "where will you be 1 year from now", and on that short list of goals, I remember throwing in something about taking more shots at multi-table tournaments (MTTs) online.

If you've been following along, and I don't know who this might even apply to, I started poker online hitting the single-table sit-and-gos pretty hard, eventually migrating to short-handed cash games. But along the way, I've hit a few freerolls and other big MTTs, and really seem to do well in such a format.

Last night, needing a break from some work and rather on a whim (perhaps with last July's goal in mind) I jumped into a 90-player deep-stack $1.25 entry-fee MTT on FullTilt, and won. (netting a life-changing $21.25) Probably the most amazing part of the tournament was sitting three-handed with ~25k in chips, with an 18k stack and a (lucky) but huge 200k+ stack. I busted Mr. 18k, and buckled down to drill into this huge lead that my heads-up (and loose) opponent had. I eventually worked up to a 1:2 deficit, then we did the 2:1 flip and I was in front. Next hand after the flip, my tilting opponent shoved with 98o and I called with AJo to finish the deal.

In around a half hour at midnight, I'm enrolled in a $10+1 $8k Guarantee, currently with ~180 players registered (and growing). My goal is simply to cash, but $1536 sure isn't bad for first, with some bankroll boosting numbers for any mid-to-top final-table seat. I'll post updates in the comments so check there for how this all turned out.

Backgammon and Poker, Part 2

2007-01-12T02:15:00.000-05:00

Backgammon is easily as aggravating as poker can sometimes be, and it seems perhaps more so. I don't know if they call it a suckout when a player who is very far behind lucks into a win, or if backgammon players tell "bad beat stories", but whatever the terminology is, the nature of the game is the same.

The backgammon equivalent of "rivering" someone is coming from behind in bearing off (when all the checkers are "free" of one another and each player begins removing them from the board according to dice rolls, with the winner getting his/her's off first.) I won't go into detail but let's just say that rolling doubles (6-6, 5-5, etc) is generally very advantageous.

Now with 36 possible ways to roll a pair of dice, and 6 of those ways being doubles, we can say the odds of rolling doubles are 5:1 against. Pretty long, but with the average bear-off requiring something like 6-9 casts of the dice, well, you should roll doubles at least once. Yet I have seen game and again where I was comfortably ahead, and my opponent rolled 3 sets of doubles, sometimes consecutively, to win. Odds of 3 consecutive doubles? 125:1 ...you don't commonly see odds like that in poker, I can tell you that.

But maybe... Let's say player one holds 99 and player two has AA and the flop is 994. Player two needs running Aces, which is 22.5:1 to hit one on the turn and then 45:1 to hit one on the river. Unless I'm a moron and can't do odds anymore, that's a combined probability of over 1000:1 or something like 0.1%. I'm sure it's happened to some poor guy at one time or another.

Another common scenario involves your opponent needing exactly one number to do very bad things to you, like for instance he must roll a six, or you will likely win. Again, with 36 ways to cast two dice, 11 of them will include at least one 6, so the odds are about 2.3:1 against. Consider it a common A6 vs 88 70/30 matchup in poker.

Thinking (and rambling) about these kinds of probabilities -- and perhaps this is the point -- shows how the two games are similar yet different. NLHE allows a player to deny the other(s) the odds they will need by varying bet and raise sizes accordingly, but there is a problem: he doesn't have complete information. In other words, though you can control the pot odds, you must infer and guess at what those odds should be to make your opponent be in error to call, and that's if you are ahead with the best hand, which you also are often uncertain of. (Incomplete information is why bluffing is possible.)

On the other side, backgammon is a game of complete information. You know your position and your opponent's at all times. But (excluding the doubling cube, which is going into too much detail for a poker blog) you don't really "bet" to deny your opponent odds, and you often cannot force him to resign (like folding): he gets his turns and consequently, often gets his chance to suck out, no matter how far behind he may be. You must use the odds much more subtly, using probabilities of certain occurrences to guide your strategy and moves in a more indirect way.

Putting this all together, poker becomes more psychological because of incomplete information, and a good deal of the time involves looking backward in a hand to infer information and guide decision-making. Backgammon on the other hand relies heavily on examining countless future scenarios and balancing these rather complex possibilities with the current position.

Backgammon and Poker

2007-01-01T15:50:00.000-05:00

So my wife bought me a backgammon set for xmas, which was a great gift considering it's a game I've been curious about for a while now, but had literally no clue how to play. We've all probably heard of the famous poker players who also were/are apparently accomplished backgammon players; Harrington, Magriel (who wrote the backgammon "bible"), etc... so I knew there must be something to backgammon.

I'm still getting up to speed with the game, but the seemingly confusing rules at first are easily mastered, and then the real strategy starts to develop. The similarities to poker, most specifically NL Hold'em, are many:

- the above noted "minute to learn, lifetime to master"
- a rather optimal balance of luck and skill (short-term variance, long-term positive results for good play)
- places within the game where moves are automatic, others that involve tough decisions and gambles
- always having outs: either game allows you to be very far behind, yet arise to victory
- starting position has a powerful effect on outcome and subsequent strategy: in backgammon, this deals with "opening moves"; in Hold'em, starting hand selection
- the ability to escalate the stakes and put your opponent to tough decisions (as well as the reverse)
- those awful moments when your opponent can simply do no wrong, either always rolling exactly what you fear, or catching exactly the card he needs

As you can see (or already know if you play both), the two games are a good match. Backgammon's complexity may be best demonstrated in the fact that programmers were able to simulate and write effective chess playing programs, before they could do so with backgammon. Interesting as well, are the other variations of "tables" games played similarly on a backgammon board.

I've been playing at play65.com, and although my rating there took a big hit getting up to speed with the game, I've been winning more, and scored my first "backgammon" (and it was doubled!). I'm not sure how seriously I'll end up pursuing backgammon, and poker is still the focus, but backgammon may be a welcome break from poker for those times where you just need to put your mind somewhere else for a few days.

Cap NL Examined

2006-12-27T16:26:00.000-05:00

I've been playing generally less online poker lately (but a good deal of live, and have been busy with Keystone Poker Tables), but when I play I've been hitting the Cap NL tables on FullTilt.

With a good sample of hands at Cap NL, I've come to a few conclusions... mostly that for unknown reasons, I struggle to beat this game, and I'm more profitable at regular 100BB NL. I've looked hard for leaks and problems here, but the answer is elusive.

One key +EV situation is completely removed at Cap NL: the small/mid pair call of a preflop raise. Under normal circumstances, you're playing these hands really for one reason, and that is to flop a set... if you don't, you're likely very done with the hand very fast. The odds of flopping a set with a pocket pair are roughly 8:1, so when playing .25/.50 blinds, and faced with a standard early position raise to $2 (bringing the pot to $2.75, and laying you terrible pot odds), you're not getting the 8:1 you need to play your pair and try for the set.

Under normal deep-stacked conditions, you can rely on implied odds to overcome this odds deficit and show a profit on the play, but this only makes sense if the raiser has at least roughly 8x the bet amount in his stack. In other words, when you do hit your set, you need to win enough to cover all the times you called and didn't hit it. At Cap NL, there is rarely enough money left to bet to make this play at all profitable, let alone even money.

Another problem with Cap NL, completely related to the small pair problem above, is the suited connector, which is severely devalued here due to the need for implied odds which just aren't there. The real strength of suited connectors in NL cash games is their ability to make hands that you feel comfortable backing with your entire stack, namely, straights and flushes. With less profitable opportunities to play hands like suited connectors or medium suited aces, you're going to be playing a lot more top pair/two pair hands, which can be quite volatile as these are very rarely hands you want to invest a lot on.

Compounding all of this, is that the play at Cap NL seems to be generally tough to beat. I suspect most of the real donks aren't sitting at the Cap NL tables. For starters, stacking someone doesn't mean all that much, where in a normal 100BB game, I'm beginning to suspect that this is a large component of my profit--- playing large pots better than the competition. At Cap NL, the mistakes of your opponents don't pay you all that well, and these micro-stackings are pretty easily negated by the opposing mistakes you may make and the bad beats you will take.

So all this and I've stepped down a level and hit the 100BB tables again... immediately showing multiple buy-in profits in short sessions, and generally seeing errors in others to capitalize on right, left, and center. Warmer waters indeed.

Cap NL is an interesting concept and variation, but in practice I find it limits the tools and plays that I can use to show a profit.

Cap NL And The Hammer Set-Up

2006-11-13T01:01:00.000-05:00

Time for an update to be sure, but this'll just be about one night and one hand in particular. Everything else is chugging right along with a healthy bankroll in tow.

So, I've been toying a bit with the shorthanded CAP NL tables on Full Tilt... not terribly sure why or what the point really is yet. Basically, there's a cap set on how much any player can contribute to a pot, and once that limit is reached, they are treated as all-in. So, at quarter/half, which is normally a $50 max buy in (and I always do the max), there is a $15 cap. So, your losses on any one hand are limited to $15, as well as winnings limited to $15 from each player (so you can still see bigger pots if things end up multi-way).

This cap does several things... notably, reducing the sting of bad beats (and reducing the scope of your bankroll fluctuations in general), as well as making some interesting pot odds problems that I'm not sure I have a handle on yet. One theory is that because of the cap, players will play worse, knowing that they are protected from big losses, and along with this idea, may be more likely to feel pot-committed on the end if there has been decent action. (For example if two players are heads up and have each invested $9 so far, the losing hand may feel obligated to put in the remaining $6 on the end. Not always good play, but that's the point.) All advice I've read online suggests playing perhaps tighter than you normally would (because everyone else will tend loose) as well as massaging pots to get people committed when you have reasonably durable hands.

At any rate, I think I can really crack these games, mostly because I seem to excel at chipping away and making many small gains on small mistakes of others, but I often seem to see all those gains wiped out in one or two bad beats. Here, I'm protected somewhat from this, while still earning consistently in small pots.

To get to the point though, I had a guy to my right who could literally do no wrong. You know the guy: calling your preflop pot raises with 42s and ATo, and somehow beating you completely illogically in every pot. This guy crushed me. I have QQ and jack the pot preflop, he calls with A3o and nails a T33 flop (where I obviously think I'm good...). I make top set and he calls me down with middle pair and rivers a backdoor flush. AK vs JT on a AK8 flop, and he nails his gutshot. You get the point. Amazingly I kept my head just above water stealing and winning pots elsewhere. But I had a target in my sights.

So now it's becoming personal. Every time I raise, he calls. Every time. And I notice of course, but can do nothing against the deck clubbing him in the face. I start pushing hard, anytime it's me and him and I figure to have the best of it. Mostly, he folds to this aggression.

Then I pick up the hammer (72o) UTG. This is fate. Reasonably tight table all just taking turns at this guy. I raise pot. NewGuy to my left thinks a bit, but folds. My nemesis calls, of course. I quickly head to the options and un-check "auto muck". This is going to be good. The flop is irrelevant. He bets the minimum, and I come over the top with a pot raise. He folds, and I show it.

Then the magic happened. Two red aces appeared in front of me in the BB. NewGuy min raises UTG. Folded to Mr. Nemesis on the button, and he min re-raises. I stick in the third raise to just over half of the cap, set up perfectly by the previous hand. NewGuy caps it with TT and Nemesis calls with JTo, and I hold the lead to rake the pot and move positive for the night. Sure, I'd have been a lot better off if some of my other hands vs this guy had held up, but there's not much that's sweeter than finally getting the best of a luckbox.

The Long Road

2006-10-02T15:23:00.000-04:00

So, it's time for a little check in.

Live play has been completely tuned in as of late for me. Recent results include three straight cashes (a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd) in one of the leagues I play in, and two satisfying wins in two straight days last week. Granted, I feel as if the cards have been running good for me... and perhaps this is one of those things that every poker player feels, but by "running good" I really just mean having the best hand hold up and occasionally winning a race or a 60/40.

Tournaments are one of those things... when you're winning, you love them and can't play enough... and when things are going bad... you hate them and swear them off forever. But there's more going on here than simple fate and luck... there really is a fine line that you can walk as a player... things you can actually control, even when it seems like just a matter of cards and luck.

Some points:

I believe the ipod has been a big aid in my case. It doesn't matter what I'm listening to... but having music in my ears at a low enough volume to still hear table talk, seems to dramatically increase my confidence and focus. It puts me in just enough of my own little world (some guys feel this way about hats and glasses) to stay on top of situations, make good reads, and carefully consider every single point of action.

Taking time on every action, even when your play is predetermined and clear (to you) has been something I've overlooked in the past. It throws off opponents and gives them a chance to make an incorrect read or overthink a situation (or talk themselves into or out of something). Maybe more importantly, I catch myself finding other angles or reasons for doing something else than what I might have done if I was forced to act immediately. It gives you a chance to catch a mistake before you make one. I was actually accused of slowrolling Kings against a guy two weeks ago, because I was contemplating the other players actions and what they might mean. UTG had limped, prompting two more limps, and in middle position with the Kings I raise of course... folded back around to UTG, who moved all in (very suspect) and folded to me. I hadn't played with this player before... and the limp re-raise all in could indeed have been aces. Fortunately, I had him covered nearly 2:1, so I could call with little fear, and his mid pair didn't improve. Bringing me to my next point:

I tread a lot more carefully (think "alligator blood") without adequate chips. Now this may seem like an obvious strategy... I mean, ok you don't have that many chips... of course you have to play carefully and have limited options compared to deep stack poker, but it has greater impications than that. For starters, although some of my circle of games have started taking on better and better structures (longer levels, etc), there's still pressure... and it becomes paramount to not dick around post flop in the early going.

The key here is to absolutely *not* lose any significant amount of chips early on (which simply means not putting much in without the nuts or near nuts), and nearly as important, gain some. For me, what this "gain some" means is actually doing a lot of observation which will help both immediately and later, but also getting involved in good spots with anything which can flop well, and doing so for raises when opening the pot. I pressure, and set a tone that I think may benefit me: "I'm not going to do anything stupid, and you're not going to outplay me... I'm not profitable for you to tangle with... move on."

Then later, in the determining middle stages of the tournament, with chips to burn, you can play your game with little fear. Example from last Monday: I'm the chip leader or close to it, although there are other similar stacks, final table, maybe 8 players left. UTG limps, and there's another limp when it gets to me, and holding A9s, I elect to call, some more folds and the SB limps, BB checks. The flop came 942, and it's checked to me. Clearly, with top pair, top kicker and this many players involved, I need to bet solid and see where I'm at. UTG concerns me with his limp (although less since his flop check) and the SB had made a strange look when looking at his cards before calling preflop. SB goes into the tank and I'm on him: no movement or action is going to go unnoticed by me. After a protracted think, he moves all in, everyone folds around to me.

He's a good player... smart, tricky... and very rarely out of line. I mull over the bottom set or two pair possibilities, and still feel like flipping a coin to decide whether to call or not. Eventually I do call, and he holds 43. (From him, this was essentially a bluff, and he must have believed either I held nothing, or more likely, that I would ultimately fold to that much pressure from him.) The point of this long long story is, without the chips to burn, I could not have made that call or put myself in the situation to knock him out and gain significant chips. With a smaller stack, I couldn't have called the bet from this player... and with an even smaller short stack, I would have been all in and he would have folded.

Really though, all of these things above come back to focus, concentration, and confidence. I've been guilty before of many of the silly little sins poker players have: marrying excellent starting cards that have probably been outflopped... and not being patient enough or thinking through a lot of situations where the action seems automatic, but there may be overlooked angles (both bad and good ones).

With the amount of time I've spent thinking about, watching, and indeed playing the game... I know I have more experience than most of the people I play against. Using that experience is the difficult part... it's far to easy to think that simply having it, or being more knowledgeable means you will win. And far more devastating when you don't, and you know you didn't play well.

I've definitely hit my zone lately, and even without the great results, I'd have to say this is the best I've ever played.

Blogger Poker Tour, Season 2

2006-09-15T20:57:00.000-04:00

Anyone with a blog should sign up for the second season of the Blogger Poker Tour, powered by Poker.com. Similar to the last season, it will be a series of $500 freerolls, in which players can qualify for the Grand Final, with prizes as follows:

1st: A $10k seat in the 2007 Aussie Millions tournament held in Melbourne, Australia + $2,500 travel and spending money.
2nd-3rd: A deluxe 8' BPT poker table(2nd) and a 6' BPT poker table(3rd) built by Keystone Poker Tables and yours truly.
4th-10th: Poker.com 4GB black ipod nano.
11th-15th: Poker.com chipset.
16th-20th: Poker.com Grand Final Ticket (good for entry into your choice of grand final tournament at Poker.com - Aussie Millions, WSOP, WPT.)

...All free and open to anyone with a blog (any topic).

Climbing Back On

2006-09-01T00:47:00.000-04:00

My previously noted disasters seem to be healthily behind. I say healthily, because I'm about 90% of the way to believing recent disasters moved my game forward in surprising ways. Really, as a poker player, if you're not using failure as well as success to learn, I just don't think you're going to make it very far.

I've had little mini bad runs before... and when I say "bad run" I'm talking of bad beats coupled with bad play. It should be noted, and not lightly, that the two come together quite often, and that's probably no accident. The recent events for me (at least online), however were the real thing: not the little mini bad runs that I thought were horrible... but the real deal.

I can too vividly recall at least half-a-dozen stackings, where I was a commanding favorite to win. That happens, as hard as it may seem. But I also am coming around to realize there were a lot of points where I was way off my game... I hit on "pushing" edges in one of my recent posts about my run, asking that getting your money in as a favorite can't be a bad thing... but also noting that it increases variance. Most importantly, I realize now that, no, in theory it's not bad... just one problem: that's not my game, to be risking so much on hands, even one's that are the favorite. Often, I wasn't making bets "outside the box". I wasn't zigging when opponents zagged. I was testing fate and luck and saying "let's see you suck out on this". And then they did. Or worse, already had me beat.

When I'm on my game, I play aggressive, don't get me wrong, but there's a well-noted fine line between aggression and stupidity... between making bets that give your opponents poor odds (that they will call) and making bets that will only get called if your already beat... between playing smart to win, and trying too hard to win.

This is old stuff, really. Nothing new here. As probably all serious (and good) poker players know, poker learning is cyclic. I've noted many times how you learn someting and something clicks and you say "hey, ok, I know that, I get it"... and then a few months later you really learn it, internalizing it in some new way or with greater significance. And then sometime later you learn it again. This is like that.

A big help with these things, are Larry Phillips' books (which I know I've mentioned many times and quoted at length recently) Zen and the Art of Poker, and The Tao of Poker. Scoff at the titles if you will, but there's gold here if you're looking for it. The books have that rare quality of being the kinds of things you can pick up now and again and pick a page at random to read... and come away with a little perspective shift... a little hint at maybe what your problem is... something you need to learn again.

Poker players have a lot of little sayings and truisms, like "top pair is a good hand to win a small pot and to lose a big one" or if you're looking for something more humorous "you can lead a horse to water but a donkey will follow you all the way to the river" or the ever popular "AK: Anna Kournikova: looks good but doesn't win shit".

One of the favorites I often use in my home game is "A fold is a win"... in two contexts: it's always a win for you when opponents fold (hey, 80/20 still ain't a lock, you know? rake the chips- you're a winner), and more importantly often folding yourself is the only way to "win". Phillips says "Learn to use inaction as a weapon." Brilliant. I mean, how defeating is it to an opponent if every time he's strong you withdraw? Putting this in action in a game is really one of the most beautiful things you can do at the table to defeat your opponents.

Anyway, the big kind of overall mantra/focus/truism recently for me, has been a return to the idea that the cards are going to determine if you win or lose a hand, but you are going to determine how much. What separates the long-term winners from the losers is simple: good players lose less than bad players on the hands they lose, and win more than bad players when they win. Simple. Makes sense. A lot like life, try and control what you actually can control. The real game-application of this concept can get pretty subtle, or be as blatant as using good starting card selection.

I think I know this, now, but 6 months from now, I'll learn it again in a new way. Probably so will you.

Winning Notes On The Losing Streak

2006-08-03T17:35:00.000-04:00

Sometimes (often), others say it better than you ever could. Larry Phillips:

There is no level of experience at which it ceases to be amazing that you can play poker all day long and not go on a hot streak for fifteen minutes, while across the table another player has been on one for six or seven straight hours. There is just no amount of expertise where this stops being an awe-inspiring sight-- but it it something we have to deal with, and learn to integrate into our game. Probability tells us that such a thing is simply going to happen once in a while. Still it is always just as wondrous to behold the first time you see it as the 500th...

All real gamblers know the Inner Scream. It's like the face in that one painting, The Scream, the oval-headed guy with his mouth open and his hands on his cheeks. It's exactly like that, only it's on the inside. It's a scream for just average luck, not even for good luck anymore. For the wondrous state of affairs where, every time you get annihilated, there is some kind of offsetting win of some kind, somewhere. It's just pleading to break even.

Even the most calm, serene, and composed among us has a limit. It might be 7 losing hands in a row. It might be 7 bad beats in a row; it might be 7 hours or 7 weeks or 7 months. However long it is, there is a limit beyond which our sense of humor begins to leave us.

A true cold spell is a thing of wonder. It is almost breathtaking in its scope and depth... It's a feeling caused by a combination of events so unlikely, so statistically improbable, that it's really hard to believe. And yet we see it happen right before our eyes, often over and over again.

Statistical occurances that are 20-1 against, 50-1 against, 100-1 against happen routinely, in an unbroken string. And as a player you know these odds. And you know they are even longer when combined.

But the annoying part, really, is not the losing. And it's not the money either. Because you can always get more money. It's a feeling of betrayal almost, the appearance of a suddenly topsy-turvy world where logic no longer seems to function, where bad players win effortlessly, and good play is penalized. It's a funhouse-mirror world where logic-- and the familiar laws of long experience-- no longer apply. It's as if you accidentally dropped something, some object, and now the object falls up, not down. It's the dismissal of a world you knew-- or thought you knew.

Some who read this will know exactly what I'm feeling and trying to convey, and others, like I once similarly did, will scoff and think things like "yeah quit whining everyone takes beats" or "sure blame bad luck for your bad play". Truly, nobody knows you when you're down and out. You really can't recieve objective responses from people when you try and relate the magnitude and consistancy of horrible luck: everyone, even those few who truly know the game and have had the experience, reserve a little corner of their brain for doubt and distrust in your ability to objectively see the situation and accurately judge your own play. Poker players, by nature, know to believe nothing someone tells them, if only because they know too well the nature of their own fish-stories.

Mentally at least, I feel as if this run is behind me. It's there, still looming and within sight, but slowly fading. Heavy losses, yes... broke, no. Stakes have been reduced. Hatches have long been battened down, and will remain so. A little average luck please?

Running AWFUL

2006-07-31T12:49:00.000-04:00

Not much to say... and I don't want to bore too much and commit the sin of ragging on with bad beat stories, but I can safely say that I've hit the most awful streak I've yet to encounter in my life, and that should probably be noted and talked about a little. I'm not one of those guys that always claims to win, or be always "up", or only talks about good things that he's done.

I'm really just about at the end of my patience. I don't want to hear "that's poker" or "that's variance". I know the goddamn theory. I know what expected value is. I know that 3:1 is not a lock, but it sure as hell means you should win 75% of the time. I need someone to look over my shoulder and say "yeah dude, you're fine, I'm seeing this shit too, hang in there." But I don't have that.

FOUR TIMES in the last two days I've flopped sets. Not "trips" with a pair on the board: SETS, with a pair in my hand. FOUR TIMES the flop has been two-suited. FOUR TIMES I have bet the pot on the flop and turn, and FOUR TIMES the board has gone runner runner putting a fourflush on the board so some donkey's top-pair that he just couldn't lay down can make a single-card flush. Don't get me wrong, I want the bad calls, but look at the math:

A buy in here is $50. Let's just assume the opponent has $50 too. Let's also assume (generously) that he's a 3:1 dog on average. So in this mythical "long run", there's $100 in each pot, $75 of which by the odds, is mine. 4x$75 = $300 expected value (a net profit of $100). In reality, it was a $200 loss, which is a $300 swing down from the expected value. Good poker. Horrible result.

If I flop an overpair, someone flops a set. If I flop a set, someone calls with an overpair and hits. If I'm drawing, well... you know. Yes Chau, poker is nice.

In the beginning of this horrible run, I can't put a value on tilt, but I acknowledge the subtle effects. Still, I think the real effect most of the time is simply overplaying some situations where you're likely ahead (either defending against the draws that you almost *know* are coming, or attempting to double and cut into the previous losses)... and that really doesn't seem like a problem, does it? Getting more money in when you figure to have the best hand can't be bad, can it? ...Except the swings are more brutal... which would be fine if a 3:1 held up once in a while so you could swing positive too. By karma, I have one hell of an upswing coming.

The real point here is that I've checked even the faintest semi-tilt. I play super tight/agressive mechanical poker trying to pull out of this, content to just chip away and make small gains, and over and over the beats still come. Poker is a cruel game... and I know this... I know that that's part of the attraction... I know runs like these seperate the good players from those that can't handle it and can't control their emotion... overcoming the injustice of situation after situation, blah blah long run.

How fucking long is long though?

$1k In 1Year

2006-07-17T17:41:00.000-04:00

Goal = ATTAINED. Utilizing conservative bankroll strategy, and finally setting about poker with a solid plan, I turned $50 into $1k in just a week shy of a year, starting at .01/.02 shorthanded NLHE, and now finally bankrolled to tackle quarter/half. It can be done.

Just for fun, the hand that won me the final $16.90 and pushed me over 1k with the nut boat (he mucked QQ after calling my river overbet):

Analysis

Before I dive into the gritty stats and too much self-analysis, yes, it's an achievement, and I'm proud of it. Was it easy? No. Was it profitable? That depends on whether you think averaging $1.25 per hour is profitable. My main point here is to acknowledge (and caution) that playing poker seriously and coming up from nothing the hard way is far from a get rich quick scheme. Sure, I think if I was to start again today with $50... I could greatly increase my earn rate and make it to $1k a good deal faster, but it would still take a significant amount of time. If you scoff at the length of time it took me, you're either a better player now than I was then, or you don't understand (or don't care about) bankroll management. In poker and life, the lucky few among us may seem to stumble into success, but there really is no shortcut. Easy come, easy go.

Ok, some stats. I predominantly played single tables at three stakes of shorthanded NLHE. (Figured into the 1k total are also some low-level SNG's[net -] and a small amount of bonus money[+], which coupled together almost exactly zeros out.)

Stakes	Sessions	Hours	Profit	Earn Rate
.01/.02 ($5)	25	40.58	$24.75	$0.61/hr
.05/.10($10)	171	396.25	$411.55	$1.04/hr
.10/.25 ($25)	162	322.08	$513.98	$1.60/hr
Totals	358	758.92	$950.28	$1.25/hr

Nothing staggering here, other than how you'd think the earn rates would be higher... at least I know I think they should be. In big bet poker, the swings (and the rake, but that's a different subject) can and will devastate your earn rate. The simplest explanation is that the absolute value of a "good" decision you might make, doesn't tend to be as big as the absolute value of a "bad" decision. Interpretation: a mistake often costs more than a good choice earns. Putting it yet another way, you can play good poker and make many correct decisions and earn small solid gains, but you can blow those gains with just one mistake. Opportunities to make a single huge gain with one decision are few and far between, and often difficult and risky.

Of course, I also freely admit that the low earn rates are in part due to a whole slew of tilt and more often the deadly and deceptive "semi-tilt", not to mention outright inexperience. The whole point was to learn the game and master myself (or master the game and learn myself, depending on how you look at it), and that probably takes a good chunk of loss to do.

With all of the above said, it is significant to note that by looking at the graph above, you can see how low my roll was at about 2/3 of the way across. This low point represents yeah, some bad play/beats, but also means that in the last 137 sessions since that point, I made a profit of $736.60 in 244 hours, for a "recent" earn rate of just over $3. Knowing my play, I also know that this was no accident... I simply played better recently.

$3/hour doesn't seem like much, but it is relative: it's IMHO a respectable 12 big blinds per hour. Translate that into playing $.5/1, and you're making $12/hour. Sure the competition on average gets better as you move up through these stakes, and it becomes more difficult to maintain such a relative earn rate, but the absolute earn rate can, will, and should continue to increase.

The goal for me is to keep building my bankroll and eventually move up stakes to the point where I'm paying myself not only a respectable rate relative to the stakes, but one that is also respectable in real-world terms on its own. In hindsight, the $1k itself isn't nearly as significant as what it represents... as termed above, "coming up the hard way"... Putting in the hours, taking the beats, making and re-making and re-making mistake after mistake, realizing just how hard (and easy) it can be, stripping poker down to its essence and slowly layering tendencies, human nature, knowledge, and personal experience on top. It takes balance and instincts to play winning poker, and there has been no better teacher for me than the roughly 75,000 hands it took to build myself $1,000 in a year.

Next up, $2k.

Latest Table

2006-07-13T20:31:00.000-04:00

Really like the way this one turned out... great little cash game table (click for more pics/info):

BPT: 6 Heads

2006-07-03T13:47:00.000-04:00

I managed to qualify for Poker.com's Blogger Poker Tour's Grand Final on July 1st. With a max of 42 players (39 sat), and a $12.5k WSOP package up for grabs, I managed a 7th place finish, and won a 4GB iPod Nano for my efforts. It's kind of sick to think I was 6 heads from the WSOP, but I am quite happy with my performance and result.

I've rarely seen a better example of bubble play: all players got prizes for making the final tournament, but the difference between 11th place and 10th was Poker.com gear vs. the start of the iPods. So around 15 players left I found myself ranked 7th in chips, where I stayed despite losing increasing blinds to my make-the-money, tight-weak strategy. The big stacks were just taking everyone else's money, everyone knew it, and nobody cared. I didn't fold everything here, but it was gonna take a pair higher than tens or AK to get involved.

Noteable hands (briefly):

- Early levels, doubled through KK with my AA (all in preflop after multiple re-raises). Maintained the chip lead for about an hour.

- Made two bad moves, both essentially stone-cold bluffs where I felt a lone opponent was weak. Managed to get away with minimal yet significant enough damage.

- Short stacked my AQo ended up all-in pre-flop against AKo, and I spiked a Q on the turn and the river. Didn't misplay the hand, but got lucky.

- Again short-stacked ended up all-in pre-flop with AKo against a big stacks QQ and a very small stack's 22. Ugly Q on the flop, leaving me needing runner-runner (either two running spades, or two running cards to make a straight, namely J and T) to survive and more than double up. Amazingly, the gorgeous two spades came without pairing the board. Didn't misplay the hand, but got really lucky.

- Final hand for me, and by far the most interesting of the tournament from a strategy perspective... I held ATo on the button 7-handed in an unopened pot, and with an effective "m" of about 5 (see Dan Harrington's books). Two options, raise a normal 3-4x the BB, or push all-in. Seeing two biggish stacks in the blinds who are unlikely to have monster auto-call hands, and who just might take a chance on a mid pair or other hands that I would at least be racing with: I opt for the push. The SB wakes up with QQ and of course calls, and I don't improve to finish 7th. My play here is debate-able perhaps, but not really a bad one.

As someone who I can objectively say has gotten rather unlucky in tournaments lately, I feel vindicated with the two big bits of luck noted above. Me and variance are square for the time being.

Congrats to the big winners:

1st: "EgonOlson", who'll be representing Poker.com, the Blogger Poker Tour, and Denmark at this year's WSOP. Good Luck!

2nd: "OhioMike", who played a great and bittersweet tournament (I sat with him to my left for at least the first hour and a half) and earned a sweet 30" LCD Monitor.

3rd: "Kdollar00", who survived a pressured 4-handed battle to make 3rd place, and earn a custom Keystone Poker Table.

Thanks go out again to Poker.com and the Blogger Poker Tour for putting on a great series of qualifiers and a really well-paced final event. The 5k starting stacks combined with starting blinds of 5/10 made for a great tournament.

Season 2 of the BPT starts in early September, with the final 1st prize being a package in the Aussie Millions Tournament to be held in Melbourne, Australia January 2007. All you need is a blog (any topic) to play.

WBCOOP

2006-06-18T23:09:00.000-04:00

^what an acronym. "World Blogger Championship of Online Poker" as hosted by PokerStars.

One of these days I'm going to crush one of these freerolls.

The result: 90th of 2247. 54 received prizes. 3.5 hours of play that I can be happy with I suppose... gave no bad beats, and for the last hour or two played great short stack poker... just on this side of tight, but plenty pushy in the right spots. Lost with 33 in the SB, two limps to me, and I pushed. Got one caller with QJs, who flopped a Q on the all club flop... I had the only club for the flush draw, but couldn't draw out.

Also got plopped down two seats to the right of Stan of local PA poker fame for a bit. I even got to steal his BB from the button (w Q5o) when it was folded around to me, and witnessed his Aces getting cracked by a three-club flop and a flush draw that hit and helped propel some tard to an ipod nano. Ugly.

I really should make it a point to hit a few of these big multi's every month for a chance at a nice score... I always seem to finish what would be usually in the money... something like top 8-10% of the field.

Dime/Quarter: 3 Months In

2006-06-07T00:10:00.000-04:00

I keep saying it, just to bring anyone up to speed who stumbles in here: I've been working since last July to crack the shorthanded NLHE tables on PokerStars. I started with a pathetic $50 and .01/.02 (partly as a learning experience/challenge).

So after swinging wildly around dime/quarter (aka 25NL) for the last three months, my bankroll finally broke $750... halfway to the $1k mark and quarter/half. Some observations:

I previously clung tightly to the notion that moving up through these micro limits... the play just wasn't that different or better as you go. It's the same game, right? After observation and a good deal of thought on the subject, I have to say that there is certainly some truth to this, but not as much as perhaps you'd like to believe.

Here's the thing... overall, it seems to me that the player base is still quite capable of making donkey plays and small errors. I can't tell you how many times I've watched a player play solid tight/aggressive poker for two hours without any noticeable missteps or questionable plays, then blow half a stack or more on a surprisingly awful play. The key here is that it took him two hours to do it. At lesser limits/levels, more players definitely make more mistakes more often. ...yet another of those concepts that sound so blatantly obvious, but you don't really internalize and learn until you discover it for yourself.

So what this has meant for me, is a lot of growth as a player... really starting to hone in on small leaks, that previously didn't matter so much at lesser levels, because my opponents had even bigger leaks and more of them. At nickel/dime I could spend a lot of chips seeing flops with any reasonable hand (way down to "cute" hands like 45o), or chasing technically bad draws relying on implied odds: more often than not you could get paid off big, even when it was obvious that you hit. At dime/quarter... sure you can still get paid off, and stack a donk now and again who's just playing terrible, but overall, the play of opponents is markedly better. The leaks that previously were overshadowed by bleeding opponents, now represent a significant chunk out of my earn rate.

The more I learn, the more I realize that winning poker is simply a matter of making fewer errors than your opponents, and when they're making less errors, you really need to start finding and fixing yours.

So I play better cards, from better positions. I don't call preflop raises without a fighting chance of having the best hand. I really don't give free cards anymore. I still hammer the hell out of weak limps with decent holdings, and follow through with half-pot continuation bets (a play that is way more effective at dime/quarter). I really think I make less "bad" bluffs, especially those "second barrel" turn bluffs that can be so costly.

Recently (realizing my earn rate at dime/quarter was hovering around my earn at nickel/dime), I started to really focus on getting the hourly rate up. I realized that those few dollars here and there pissed away was what was killing me... not the bad beats (although I did have a horrible couple of weeks here and there). So I tend to play shorter, more intensely focused sessions... even if that means taking half hour breaks. I find myself sitting down and saying "ok, one hour... let the cards come... wait for it." and quite often in these short sessions it's remarkably easy to net $10 or more without a single "big" hand or pot, which does wonders for the earn rate.

Understanding

2006-05-31T16:45:00.000-04:00

A friend posed a question yesterday regarding how well you think you understand other people, which really got me thinking. In the end, the one thing that appears relevant to me, is that someone who truly understands themself, is generally good at beginning to understand others.

Now you can probably see where this is heading... yet another angle on the "poker as life" metaphor. If you put the effort into understanding (or at least attempting to understand) your own thought processes, reactions, bet sizes, ego, posture, movements, etc... generally speaking, you're going to be on your way to understanding your opponents.

Sure poker players are just like any group of humans: diverse and in many ways unique. But the flip side of that coin is that really, though we may have different priorities and personalities, we're probably a lot more similar than we are different.

The key here is this understanding of one's self... I'm sure you know people who appear to float (or more often, struggle) through life without the slightest evidence of introspection. They wear their ego... their insecurities... right out on their sleeve. They never seem to learn. In poker, it is much the same... we all know the guys who do certain negative expectation plays over and over, like never backing down when they encounter resistance, or always chasing bad draws for bad odds, or slowplaying tenuous hands... it's a long list.

The tricky thing about poker (and life) is that it takes an astute and honest mind to accurately assess cause and effect and truly "understand", because poor behaviours or poor plays, can often be rewarding. In life, a certain ineffectual coping mechanism, can often appear to be quite effective in the short term, thus reinforcing it as "correct". In poker, well... we all know how on occasion you can get your money in bad, over and over, and come out on top.

Unrelated, mostly uninteresting, and quite admittedly whiny tournament story:

Hero: 77
Villian: AK

Flop A74

Hero check raises all in, villian calls.

Turn: K
River: A

In all fairness (and somewhat of a salve), the "villian" really did nothing questionable here at any point in the hand... but I really struggle with not whining about this long-odds crap. I mean, 98% (according to card player's calculator), seriously. A guy said, "that happens to everyone, though", and my legitimate response in my head is "no, it really doesn't this often, does it? I don't see you leaving tournament after tournament on the winning side of 80/20's or worse".

Furthermore, I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that I truly can't even remember the last time I put something like an 80/20 beat on someone let alone 98/2 (that's worse than a one-outer). 60/40, sure... whatever... I'm not crying about losing or winning coinflips or marginal leads... I take my AJ's against KK's and win now and again, too. Hell I remember losing back to back big hands with QQ both times, which fell to KJ and AK, to end a tournament for me... sure that stings a lot, but in reality, one was a coin flip, and the other was a 70/30... these things can/do/and should happen sometimes.

I guess I'm just venting frustration, and like any bad beat story, looking for consolation that I really don't need. I know the odds. I know that way more often than not I'm the one taking, rather than giving the truly bad beats. I know I tend to play winning poker and the bankroll supports that.

Chau Giang said it best, on taking a memorable beat at the 2004 WSOP: "Poker is nice...I love play poker".

---------

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 8426635

Zero Sum Minus Some

2006-05-13T00:24:00.000-04:00

I just discovered Tommy Angelo's poker article archive (via Iggy). Now maybe I should know who Tommy Angelo is, but I have no idea. What I do know after spending some time at the link above, is that he's written some damn fine articles on poker.

Folding is a brilliant echo of a mantra I've long held: "Fold to win." Eerily familiar, Kay Knows Poker explores the subject of poker wives. But so far in my reading, perhaps the most striking article has been Zero Sum Minus Some.

In theory, poker is a zero sum game: "a situation in which a participant's gain or loss is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the other participant(s)." Sitting around your kitchen table (or one of these beauties), it still is. But as everyone knows, playing poker online or at a B&M card room, means a house rake or seat fee of some kind. Angelo has this to say:

Then one day while playing I was watching the money swirl around and down and it occurred to me that the poker table is like a huge punch bowl. Each of us pours liquid (money) into the bowl (onto the table). Then we each get a straw, and we sit around the bowl, and we suck. Meanwhile, at the bottom of the bowl, is a hole.

And the effect of the hole looks like this.

The chart linked above is very telling... but mainly it shows how in a true zero-sum poker game, roughly 50% of the players will be long-term winners and 50% will be long-term losers (the left-hand distribution). (Of course it's also possible for a few of the players to win most of the money, with the majority being losers... but in the long run, generally speaking, it's probably much closer to 50/50.)

Now looking at the right-hand distribution, the "zero sum minus some" part... it looks like about 70% of the players are long-term losers (a figure which I've heard quoted many times as being widely accepted to be true, especially online). The implication is obvious: to be in the 30%, and a long-term winner in raked games, you not only need to make moves that are profitable enough to beat the other players, but also the big drain at the bottom of the punch bowl. Indeed, that's what Angelo's article is all about.

Beating raked poker is tough. Seasoned players know this of course, but even they, as well as beginners, need reminded of how tough it can be to outsuck the rake drain. The real problem here is that the rake drain is a deceptive device; it has a habit of looking more like an inconsequential pin-hole rather than the 10" profit-negating conduit that it really is. Ten cents here, a buck there, does in fact add up quickly and eat into your earn rate.

Anyway, I've been beating the players and the rake at PokerStars for a while now... but I'm moving 1/3 of my bankroll over to the much talked about World Poker Exchange, offering weekly rebates of 100% of your contributed rake... essentially rake free poker. We shall see how a few weeks there pans out.

EuroRounders

2006-05-11T00:27:00.000-04:00

Maybe this has been around for a while and you've seen it... but hell, go check out Excerpts from EuroRounders... hilarious:

Michel: "Look...Croissant, I never told you this, but about a year ago, I was playing poker at the Casino des Atlantes, and Marcel Luske walks in. He sits down at the 50/100 pot limit game. And, I mean, the whole place stops, right? Just watching this guy play. After a while there isn't a retarded European gambling game going, because everybody's just, you know, watching this guy."

- Joey Croissant nods -

Michel: "So you know what I did? I sat down."

Joey Croissant: "No way, you need at least 300,000 euros to sit down at a game like that. Such bad financial management is typical of a boorish American!"

- Joey Croissant and Michel laugh for twenty-six minutes -

Michel: "Right, okay, but seriously, I played for an hour, doing nothing but folding. Then I won a huge pot."

Joey Croissant: "Aces? Kings? Ace-King doublesuited? Suited aces? High connectors? Middle doublesuited connectors? Two big pair?"

Michel: "Rags."

Joey Croissant: "That's probably fine too, you're only like a 48/52 dog."

Two More Good Ones

2006-05-02T16:42:00.000-04:00

More poker/life metaphor quality from Pauly:

Poker is a way to figure out your limitations and how you react in certain situations or during pressure points as DoubleAs has often discussed. But being honest with yourself is something that is very hard to do. No matter if it's poker or in your normal everyday life, the more you lie to yourself, the more it's going to hurt you and your loved ones in the future. If you are blinded with fame and glory at the poker tables and you're not 100% honest with yourself that you need several more years of training before you take the shot, then you're going to fall hard. And you might be indirectly taking people in your life down with you.

The first step is being honest with yourself. Then and only then can you begin the journey to figure out who you really are. Despite all your faults, it doesn't make you a horrible person. Nobody is perfect (well except Phil Hellmuth). And being able to identify your weaknesses allows you to point out your strengths. And that's what you need to focus most of your energy on... what you do best. Then you can take the time to improve those aspects of your life that are liabilities. The two pronged approach is a way to flourish and improve at the same time.

...and some back-to-basics insight from DoubleAs:

It takes a lot of time to master the subtleties of fancy plays so that they're profitable. You have to know the right situations to use them: the right position, opponents, stack sizes, table image, etc. .

I think most players often just go back to solid play after a FPS tangent. The player is now knowledgeable in the more advanced techniques and can actually use them correctly now. The big realization is that the fancy plays need the right circumstances and that those circumstances rarely present themselves.

SCP Spring Freeroll

2006-04-26T14:17:00.000-04:00

Ok, so almost the promised domination: 2nd place, again. Now I shouldn't really complain about a $61 second place the day after a $300 first place (and both technically freerolls!), but I might. I wanted the sweep dammit.

These leagues (one some friends and I started, and the other was patterned after ours) can be a good way to establish a regular tourney game... and I've seen and heard about a lot of different systems that can be used. We use a 10% "league fee", which goes into the league pot for the end-of-season freeroll, and makes a player eligible to earn points based on tournament finish. Then, for the freeroll (open to anyone who has earned points), players' stacks are based on points earned. It's a very fair system in the end, as even players who have earned few points (perhaps because they missed some tourneys) have a shot at the pot. Granted, they have a weaker stack to start, but they've also contributed less to the pot, and have less at stake.

We've had a lot of talk about using an optional add-on (buying more chips, in this case at the start of the tourney) to boost the freeroll pot higher. The problem with a flat add on however, is that it reduces the advantage that the higher points earners would have. For instance, the point leader is to start with T1000, and someone who came out to play once is to start with T200... if you do a flat $x buys you 500 more chips, the leader is getting a 50% add on, while the other player is getting a 250% add on! Worse yet, is that the leader's advantage is now chopped down to 53% instead of 80%.

Yesterday I came up with the "50/50 add on", which we used last night: for 50% of the $ contributed to the league pot, a player can buy 50% more chips than he/she would have started with. The main idea here is that the relative stack sizes and advantages are maintained, while boosting the pot by 50% (if everyone buys the add on ). Another positive, is that the people who earned more points per dollar contributed during the season (i.e. finished well), do have some financial advantage, as they end up paying relatively less per added chip.

At any rate, I'm very content with my play again last night... I was very patient through the deeper than usual stacks and slower structure, accumulating a minor amount of chips for the first hour or two, but most importantly giving very few away. The table was playing generally very tight preflop as far as I could tell, and in certain spots I was looking for any excuse to make some pressure plays, and overall this worked well: reraising with tens, reraising with Ace-x, and reraising once or twice with small pairs and suited connectors, all with immediate success. I did suffer somewhat by the seating, as I had some selectively aggressive players to my right (often raising before me on hands where I would have raised) and some players who like to call to my left, one in particular who you can never tell if he's slowplaying or chasing as he will rarely raise except on the river (and even then it's almost always all-in).

With heavy blinds and an increasingly tight table, I got stuck in a hand when we were 6-7 handed and I raised KQs under the gun... and was reraised nearly all-in by the BB (someone who is certainly capable of making pressure plays with less than premium hands). I thought this one out for a long time, assuming that I was a dog, but guessing (correctly) that I just wasn't that bad off. Putting the BB on a middle pair, I called, and found myself essentially racing 55%/45% against AJo, and nearly doubled up with a river Q.

Two later raises in unopened pots from late position or the SB were met with all-in reraises from the player to my left, and both times I made good laydowns (he showed 99 and AK), but with standard raises being 1/5 to 1/4 of my stack, and some horrible cards for a few more rounds, I found myself crippled down to something like T1100 with blinds of 150/300, ugh. I tripled up with AJo, and then several hands later caught AA and KK back to back, reraising with the AA and taking a nice pot right there, and losing with KK: player to my left went all-in after my raise, I called, and the A9x flop had me crushed.

At any rate, I got to heads up with something like a 3:2 lead, and we traded large amounts of chips back and forth for a while... I had my opponent all-in at one point A9 vs A5, and the ugly 5 came. We sat with even stacks for a little while, and faced with his frequent all-ins, I never had the cards to fight with at the right time... any pair, any ace, two broadway cards... just a bunch of J6 and the like. Final hand, he just calls from the SB, and fearing that this is possibly a sign of strength, I check my K8... I'll gladly see a flop. The flop comes 875, I lead out with a decent bet, and he goes all in and has me covered. I call, he shows 67 for middle pair and the straight draw, and makes the straight on the turn.

You can't win 'em all.

Finally!

2006-04-25T14:53:00.000-04:00

...Took home a nice win and ~$300 in the spring championship freeroll of one of my leagues last night. Of the live tourneys I play, this was probably one of the deepest stacked and slowest structure tourneys I've played... and that played no small role in my being able to manage the win.

I won't bore you with more than the minimum details... but the slower structure and deep stacks allowed me to wait out a long run of horrible starting hands and several big aces that managed to completely miss the flop. I made the final table with an average stack, and lost an interesting pot:

Player to my right has an Ace exposed on the deal... normally an exposed card results in a misdeal or replacement, but for whatever reason this player was allowed to opt to keep the card, which was fine by me as I now have some key information about his hand. He raises. I look down to find AKo, and I reraise enough to set him just about all in. I know he has an Ace, and it's likely I have him dominated. He reraises all in, I auto-call, and he flips AA. Pretty big hit, and very unlikely outcome.

The rest of the final table was rather fortunate for me, as I won two key races with small/middle pairs, once to knock out a smallish stack, and once to cripple a big stack doubling me up to become the chip leader. I find aces after another smallish but alive stack pushes with KQo and they hold up. I call from the SB with 98o, and flop a house, eliminating another smallish stack with a check-call on the flop and calling his straight-draw all-in on the turn. I then hesitantly called a raise with ATo out of position against another big stack... keeping in mind the whole time that I really want to avoid a big confrontation here... flop comes ten high, and for whatever reason at the time I check top pair, mostly fearing that I'm against an unlikely-but-potentially-devastating overpair. When he pushes all in, I immediately call almost certain that with an overpair I would have recieved a large value bet, and not an all in. Top pair holds up against pocket sixes, and I'm sitting on a dominating stack.

I even snuck in a blind steal from the button with The Hammer! (and showed)

Finally, we get to heads up, and both trade some chips swinging from 2:1, to 1:2, and back to 2:1 actually on two big stone-cold bluffs, one from each of us. In the end, ATo vs A9o all in preflop finished off the tourney.

Things definitely need to swing in your favor a few times to win a tourney like this, and as someone who used to feel like I could never win a race, doing so a few times was refreshing. It's also nice to have the stack to actually gamble with a few coin flips. Everyone looks brilliant when they win, but I'm also pretty comfortable and content with my live tourney play lately... I do what I have to do to survive early, and get more agressive/willing to gamble in decent spots as the tourney progresses.

There's a saying I used to prescribe to when I was hammering the SNG's, that I think I lost focus on for a period perhaps playing too tight too late into tourneys, but have recently been applying again:

Start a tournament like a rock, and end it like a kamikaze.

Properly applied, that's about right.

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SCP championship freeroll tonight, expect tales of my domination tomorrow.

44:1

2006-04-23T15:03:00.000-04:00

What the &^%* have I done to deserve this crap ALL WEEK LONG:

me: TT
villian: 22

Flop T82
villian goes all in for ~$20

Turn: 8

River: 2

New motto: You never get sucked out on if you always get your money in with the worst hand.

Granted, I'm well aware how rare set over set should be, as well as how he could not have known he was drawing to ONE OUT, but this stuff is just killing me.

The Win-Loss Cycle Of Mediocrity

2006-04-22T16:33:00.000-04:00

Still chugging along at dime/quarter... and trying hard to keep my little "1k by the end of July" goal out of my mind, but it's there. Poker isn't well suited for such things.

With nearing a year of data (and what ...half a million hands?), I'm starting to notice some patterns. I've got this little spreadsheet with stats and a graph, and the graph in particular has been a helpful thing to have. It's affirming to look at all the peaks and valleys and note the general upward trend. Two steps forward, one step back.

Also apparent is the way a run of negative sessions somehow always gets followed by a strong run up, and maybe more importantly, how a run of positive sessions gets followed often by a mini-disaster.

It doesn't take a genius to see what's going on here: bad luck, bad play, and bad beats, if they continue long enough, force me to tighten up and play solid no frills poker. Some of this is doubt... when things go wrong you begin to doubt your reads, doubt your ability to catch cards just like everyone else, and end up playing a conservative (and winning) style. Similarly, a burst of good luck, good play, and good reads, will have you feeling ten feet tall and bulletproof... reigning in this (over) confidence and riding out the rush to it's natural end just isn't that easy. What ends up happening is that your calls are looser, your bets are more agressive, and you start seeing implied odds around every gutshot. You've been hitting hard lately, and what you think is reality is dangerously far from it. Eleven to one is still eleven to one, no matter how big of a stack the LAG across from you has.

Larry Phillips in The Tao Of Poker (emphasis mine):

The feeling of a winning streak-- that wonderful heady feeling when it is happening, of being in that zone where you can do no wrong-- is familiar to most poker players. Things become almost laughably easy. The game becomes an exercise in giddy ease, frictionless euphoria, joyful light-headedness ... You can almost announce the cards before they appear ... The cards keep falling into your hands right out of heaven. Such sessions need to be maximized, and the profits protected by continued solid play.

The point here... is that I've been worried lately about hitting some plateau as far as growth goes... I just feel it coming. But I've also been looking hard for leaks, because man, there surely are some big ones lurking around here... Otherwise I wouldn't be playing break-even poker lately. Not paying close enough attention to the cycle of play described above, is surely an easy one to locate. For starters, if playing a conservative style can net some strong bankroll growth after a bad run... it can surely do it during a good one... arguably, most of the time when I'm winning and not just being plain smacked in the face with the deck, this is what's going on. A key area here revolves around the nature of big bet poker: you grind out a nice hourly rate winning smallish pots for the first hour, and then bam, in one misplayed hand it gets obliterated or worse. I don't even want to tell you how many river curiousity calls I've made in the last week, when I knew I was beat. The old "surely he didn't call the turn with that", even though his big bet is screaming "oh yes I did and now you're going to pay me off", and then I do.

Another leak associated with this cycle business, is calling with speculative hands pre flop. There's a fine line here that I know I have to walk... it just fits my style at shorthanded NL... but I know I have a tendency to see implied odds behind every pre flop raise. You know what I'm talking about... you just think you know that your 75o is going to get paid off if you flop a joint. Nevermind that the odds are less than 1% (or about 8% for flopping an open-ender). When you're hitting good, these situations blur from long odds to something like coin flips in your mind.

Anyway, sometimes I can be such a donkey, but admitting is the first step. Good luck out there!

Awful tournament beat of the week:
T900
Blinds 15/30
AA UTG
min raise to 60
player behind with T1150 re-raises to 160
fold around to me
reraise to 900 all in
insta-call
AA vs JJ
Flop, J

Motto of the week:
"I can outplay a player but I can't outluck a donkey."

Good Stuff Elsewhere

2006-04-13T23:39:00.000-04:00

I've never done a lot of typical link-blogging here, for whatever reason... but there's been some good stuff out there in the poker blog world lately. A couple of noteables:

Iggy writes about a slump:

It's not fun to write this post. I've always been good about losing in poker. It's a must if you wanna be successful.

I've always taken Steve Badger's words to heart:

"The problem is: you just can't will yourself to win -- be it a tournament, a single day's play, or even an individual hand. And then, unfortunately for some, not winning is something many players simply can't handle. And being able to not win well is a fundamental, key ingredient of being a winning player."

Heavy sigh. I haven't been truly Tilty in a long time, damnit.
Poker learning is cyclical. Pithy Truism.

Poker is such a fine line kind of thing. It's important for me to realize how easy is it to cross the line attempting to push thin edges, and begin to play in what are losing situations.

This "cyclical learning" in poker is a theme I've been focused on for a long time, and mentioned here recently... and I think every serious poker player who's been at it for a while knows all too well how hard finding that fine line, and then dancing on it consistently can be, especially when the anomalies of probability have you questioning reality.

Doubleas lays down the theory: Reverse Implied Odds compared to the value of inducing bluffs.:

Many players confuse inducing bluffs and reverse implied odds. The confusing issue is that inducing a bluff can quickly turn into a case of reverse implied odds. The best place to induce a bluff is on the river. The pot is often bigger than earlier betting rounds and players may have already missed their draw and need to bet to take a shot at the pot but they would not be willing to call a bet. Inducing bluffs on the flop with weak leads (small bets into big pots) or checking may win you some money, but bluffs on the flop are relatively small compared to the pots on the river. Besides, if you have a reputation of checking strong hands, smart players will tend to take more free cards when given the option no matter how aggressive they are. On the river, there are no more free cards.

There's more to his post than that (you might want to read through it a couple of times), but this issue of inducing bluffs on the river is one that hit home for me. Poker is so situational with a lot of variables, but inducing bluffs when out of position on the river is something I need to incorporate more into my arsenal. It's a trick that can certainly be overused, and against a solid player, literally worthless, as a check by you is probably only going to get bet at if you're beat.

I tend to lead out on the river with a smallish bet (sometimes even the minimum), hoping to make a little on a good hand, which combined with some other weird betting things I do has the advantage of making bluffs cheaper in later hands, sometimes. Other times, when you have a good read, for instance when your opponent obviously hit top pair on the flop and the turn was a scary overcard, and at the river you know you have him beat and he'll fold to any scary bet (anything over the minimum), and just check behind you and see if his pair is good... well there you've got to bet the minimum I think. Overall though, this little bet stuff on the river is probably poor play.

Also related to some other strategy in doubleas's post: I've built an overall style out of "keep the pots small without the nuts" and it works for me (especially at donk-infested micro limits), so I certainly don't want to be making any wholesale changes to my game, but I think overall I do far too much calling. I'm not talking "way behind and chasing draws with bad odds" calling, but calling and check-calling early in hands where I figure to be ahead. This *can* work, and often does, but I'm going to be paying closer attention to situations where more aggressive play will serve the dual purposes of earning more when I'm ahead, and helping me figure out better when I'm behind.

Dime/Quarter: 3 Weeks In

2006-03-27T12:14:00.000-05:00

Sometime soon, I suspect there's gonna be some strategy posts around here, but in the meantime we'll have to just be content with general updates.

After blowing off more money than I care to admit through bad beats and bad play, I'm pretty sure things are getting back to normal. I'm not sure really if you should label it "fortitude" or "stupidity", but faced with the previously noted bankroll disaster, I made it a deliberate point to ride it out: give dime/quarter NL a serious go, damn the losses. Part of (perhaps nearly all of) being a winning poker player lies in being able to accurately assess your play and what's going on around you. I looked around, knew the game was beatable, knew I had been playing poorly and trying too hard, made the adjustment, and with a little help from luck I netted five winning sessions (all more than double-ups). Still down from three weeks ago, but nearing breaking even.

Part of my so-termed fortitude was realizing how much more quickly a little tight play at dime/quarter (as opposed to nickel/dime) would regain the losses... making $10 profit at nickel/dime is a double up and can take a while to put together... while $10 profit at dime/quarter is just winning a few small pots, where I really excel.

Most of this is a simple matter of mindset. There's such a fine line you have to walk between pushing every edge with minimal risk to yourself, and flat out overplaying and trying too hard. If you're looking for those big, quite addicting "I have the nuts and two people just went all-in in front of me" hands, you're just going to flat out lose. If you're looking for little wins and stack-protecting play, things will likely come out much better.

A couple of noteable runs/hands to speak of:

Worst three hands in a row EVER (for me): Losing a $55 stack with KK vs AA. Next hand, flopping a Q-high flush, and losing $25 to a flopped K-high flush (same guy again). Next hand, flopping a set, overplaying it HARD (thinking table will think I am on tilt), getting called by an up-and-down straight draw, and losing.
Peace. Out. -$105.

A "what was he thinking" hand: Q5o in the BB, limps, I check. Flop KQQ. I check, button bets reasonable. I call. Turn 5 (sweet.) I check. Button bets half pot. I call. River: x. I check. Button bets $2. I go all in for like $33 more. Button calls $33 into a ~$7 pot with AQ. Granted, this is a little risky on my part, but the only hands to fear are KK and KQ, and reads and style obviously made me pretty confident I had the best hand. Calling $33 into a $7 pot with a paired flop and no boat has got to be a -EV play.

A "haha, don't slowplay" hand: 34o again in the BB, SB only limps, I check. Flop: AQ7. SB checks, as do I. Turn: 5. SB bets minimum... I call. River: 2. SB bets $1. I check the board again, no pair, no flush, no higher straight than my wheel. I raise to $2. SB goes all in for $12. I call. SB shows AA.

Other news: finsihed 10th, just inside the money and 6 places outside a finals spot in the first Blogger Poker Tour event. I was actually the chip leader with 12 players left, but lost 1/3 of my stack when my AK fell to a short stack's J7 or somesuch, and it was all downhill from there.

Aside from a little pre-tourney play-money trial to get used to things, this was the first time I played at Poker.com and I was reasonably impressed. At first the interface seemed way unfamiliar and entirely too busy, but I soon settled down and enjoyed a lot of the features, such as the ability to "muck and show" where appropriate (they even allow you to only show one card!), and they actually show the hole cards when players are all in with no side pot, along with each player's percentage through the flop turn and river. (Never understood why Stars and others don't show until the hand is over.) Another great feature is the way that they show pot size and bet size during a hand... like: Pot Size + (total bets so far this street), making odds calculations very clear and easy. The ability to "rabbit" a hand in certain spots is less useful, but I'm sure a lot of players find it entertaining, and to the site's credit, they do it very quickly and it doesn't interfere with play. Anything which gets my opponents to show their cards when they otherwise wouldn't is worth two seconds delay.

Blogger Poker Tour

2006-03-14T22:27:00.000-05:00

I'm sure you all will be hearing about this from other sources soon enough, but if you run a blog, get on over and sign up for the Blogger Poker Tour. Eight $500 freerolls in which to qualify for the BPT Grand Final, where first place is a $12,500 2006 WSOP package, and third place is a custom poker table built personally by yours truly and Keystone Poker Tables. Other great prizes totalling over $20k. Get all the details at BloggerPokerTour.com.

Growing A Bankroll

2006-03-13T15:33:00.000-05:00

So I've been trying pretty hard to crack into the short-handed NL tables online, since about July of last year. My poker history up to this point (especially online) had been up, down, and sideways, like I imagine a lot of players start out doing. I played single-table sit-and-gos exclusively for a while... I bonus whored like mad... I played way beyond my bankroll at times... I dabbled here and there and could never settle down and find a home, or show much of a profit for that matter. I withdrew all my funds early last summer from the various sites, and went outside.

So as I said, in July I got the itch again, and decided to set about this thing with a plan: Take a $50 buy in to PokerStars (known somewhat as one of the "tougher" places to play online), and hit the .01/.02 NLHE tables.

As an aside, for-what-it's-worth, I'm going to detail a little basic bankroll strategy here for a second. Feel free to skip ahead.

I think everyone understands that even the biggest donk can sometimes win big pots against a disciplined experienced player, just like how 20% of the time pocket deuces can suck out on Aces. This is generally called "variance"... essentially when the expected outcome of a hand or situation doesn't pair up with what actually ends up happening. In poker, you play your edge knowing full well that there's a chance you'll lose. If you're good, you'll be getting your money in when there's a greater chance that you'll win. But you can still lose. Even as a favorite to win. Over and Over.

To withstand the possibility of this variance, you have to have enough money. In NLHE, you can drop a buy-in (the amount you're allowed to sit down at a table with, usually 100 times the big blind), with just one suckout, or one good hand that doesn't hold up to a miracle river card. What this means, is that to seriously set about maintaining and growing a bankroll, you have to start with enough money for the stakes you plan to play at. Take $50 and try and tackle the quarter/half NL tables, and you might find yourself at zero pretty quick, through no bad play of your own. It happens. Worse yet, now you're probably angry and frustrated and half-depressed that poker has again proven that the world is against you. Some may deposit another $50 and tilt it away overplaying hands trying to make up for the first $50, or worse: up the stakes.

The generally accepted rule, is to put no more than 5% of your bankroll at stake in a day, or something close to this. So you want to play quarter/half? That's a $50 buy in, so really, you should have $1000 in your bankroll. Twenty buy-ins.

On the other side of this, is the "I only have x to play with", which is much more common among the (financially) poor players I know. You have $100? Great. Play .01/.02 where you're properly bankrolled, and grow it until you can play where you want to. Far, far too many people feel that micro stakes games are beneath them (I was one for a long time), and wonder why they can't make it work at higher stakes. I also found a lot of leaks and *a ton* of growth down here, and really can't say enough positive things about the experience.

With a little discipline and growth as a player, you should gradually over time see your overall bankroll increasing, with virtually no chance of ever going broke and losing it all.

If you play well enough and long enough to reach a point where you're properly bankrolled for the next higher stakes, move up and see what happens. If it goes bad, move back down for a bit. There are no shortcuts. Just grind it out.

I've been working hard to turn my original $50 (only half of what you really should have for .01/.02) into $500. There's been a lot of bumps along the way, but I got there. You don't really believe or understand that the system works... until you prove it to yourself.

Then I moved up to dime/quarter and proceeded to blow about $100 in one admittedly tilt-fueled exercise in futility. First, I was playing at a time when I had other things to be doing... when I felt that my time was limited... and I was in a hurry. Bad move #1. Then things got ugly. Kings cracked by A2o (all in preflop). Aces cracked by KJs. Flopping flushes and losing to higher flushes, flopping straights and losing to flushes, flopping sets and folding when the board put up a higher two pair (and thus a boat, for sure). Wonderful hands that couldn't finish. Yet I kept playing. Bad move #2. On top of all of this, I was coming off of a brilliant run of luck and cards, which after two hard falls immediately proceeding, I now realize I need to be very careful with success. Sudden runs of good luck for a few days or a week can shift your perception of reality in a very dangerous way.

Ok. Take a few day break due to other things going on. And I try again, even though I really should just move back down to nickel/dime for a while. Things again go horribly wrong, although this time at least, it's just bad beats. Most of the tilt is in check. I say most, because I still can't seem to just walk away. I tend to think "ok bad beat big deal" but the subconscious "OMGWTF DIE DONKEY" emotion is perhaps more influential than I realize. I really need to start walking away (even if it's just for a half-hour to do something else) when I drop a buy in or at most two.

Then thankfully PartyPoker came to the rescue with one of those free $50 that they drop into your inactive account from time to time. I had to clear 500 raked hands. No problem. Party's lowest stakes is dime/quarter, so off I went, playing "bonus clearing" tight... only to watch $50 whittled into around $20 through hands I don't even remember. Great. $20. I can't even cash that out. I'm also struck by how tight Party seemed compared to PokerStars, and especially compared with the last time I played there.

Eventually, Party's play returned to what I remembered, and $20 is now a healthy $140, still putting me down since the move to dime/quarter, but feeling much better about it. It's also a good feeling to know that I'm certainly good enough to be beating these stakes (something I was confident about before) and that if somehow I can avoid the variance monster for a few good sessions, I'll be in the clear for working towards $1000.

6+ Buy-Ins

2006-02-24T13:57:00.000-05:00

Nothing too spectacular really, but these kind of sessions don't just come around every day:

.05/.10 NLHE (6 max)
$10 max buy in
Left table with $74.65
Time: 4 hours
Profit: $64.65
BB/hour: 161

Actually, looking through my records, that's the single biggest session out of 165 total that I've played thus far at nickel/dime. I do recall one other that was in the $60+ profit range at one point, but ended with a couple big losing hands.

Perhaps the most important poker truism: Winning is rarely the effect of your own brilliance, and almost always the effect of your opponenents errors.

Running Okay

2006-02-11T22:15:00.000-05:00

I'm sure you know how poker players like to talk about "running bad" and "running good"... a general description of how cards are falling combined with how they've been playing. I've been more along the lines of "running okay" in the past month or two, I suppose, not so much because I've been seeing some lackluster distribution of cards and fate, or even because I've been somehow playing mediocre poker. It's more of a feeling you get when you have literally seen it all, and have a firm grasp of how to play just about every situation that arises... nothing is very exciting (as it really shouldn't be), and it's just the grind, day after day. You don't really run good or bad or hot or cold, you just run.

More colorful persons than I, I'm sure, would find noteable strategy and moments here to write about, but I'm left just looking more at the bigger picture of discipline and emotional control. Don't get me wrong, I still have my buy-in depleting moments here and there, in situations that I know *way* better than to be in. But overall, I've been playing much more relaxed and opportunistic poker, in both cash games and tournaments of late. The online bank is back to steadily growing at the NL nickel/dime shorthanded tables... getting much closer to that elusive $500 mark, where I can play with the big boys of dime/quarter. I did sneak in a half a dozen sessions a few weeks ago, netting a couple of buyins. People tell me I could be killing the limit games, but for now, that's just an animal I don't have the time to start tackling.

Mostly, online, I've just been hammering away with the big hands, and lying in wait with all those top-pairs, four-flushes, and OESDs. A couple of online NL cash game strategy points here to note:

1. For whatever reason, 90% of players will immediately call almost any reraise of their pre-flop raise. You limp with KK under the gun, someone raises behind... they will almost always call a reraise from you, even when it's a ridiculous amount and it's clear that they are beat. I don't know if this is a "balls" or ego thing, or if their raise is just an indicator that they like their hand and will marry to it, but it makes limping in early position with big pairs on an agressive table, well worth it.

2. Playing AK, AQ, AJ, etc for a raise pre-flop, probably isn't the best strategy, at least for me. "Leading" a hand, just isn't a position I think you want to be in in these donkey infested micro limits, at least without the nuts or a well disguised hand. People will argue with me, I'm sure, and some of those people's style might lend itself well to playing big paint cards hard, but it dosen't work for me. If you hit, mostly, and I'm talking top-pair-top-kicker and the like, even the donks will be thinking what you might have. They know what they are likely to be up against. You however, have about zero clue what you're being called down with. If you check on later streets to a scary card or whatever, your opponents are often going to try and buy the pot right there (if they don't already have you beat), and I'm not in the business of calling down pot bets with top pair.

However, limping, and calling raises with AK, AQ, and the like can work quite well. In fact, for a limp, I'll even play just about any Ace-rag. Checking top pair on the flop, and either making or calling small bets on later streets with reasonable action and few scare cards, is usually a very +EV play, at least in my experience. The donks know they'd bet top pair, and when you don't, they think that turn that hit them is gold. There's more here, but I'll leave it at that: you get the idea.

3. Nevermind what I said above, at the right table, you can make decent chunks of coin raising good hands and betting the flop hard, hit or miss. Some players (a lot), will pay almost any reasonable 3x 4x 5x BB raise to see that flop, and will fold to any bet if it misses them. You've got to pick your players, and pick your spots, but I bet a full quarter of my recent profit has come from outright dogging on these "have to see the flop" guys. And don't forget that sometimes you'll actually hit and can play the hand out for maximum value.

4. Build the stack and the reputation, find the solid guys, and bluffs are dramatically easy. When you're sitting there with three buy-ins, having played with a few other solid players for a while (maybe burning them with a great hand, or letting them watch you clean a hump or two), they're probably not going to tangle with you for much investment without the near nuts. Use it sparingly and wisely, and well timed bluffs can keep you breaking even through those cold spells. You only need to steal a few small pots in a whole session to pay for your blinds and failed limps.

And check out Keystone Poker Tables sometime. I hear they make sweet tables. ;)

Never Mind Maneuvers...

2005-12-23T22:54:00.000-05:00

...always go straight at 'em.

- Lord Nelson

I've been reading and re-reading the brilliant historical fiction Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian (the basis for the movie, "Master and Commander") for the last year or two now. In the series, in nearly every book, Jack Aubrey regales his table guests with the two occasions on which Lord Nelson is alleged to have spoken to him directly, once asking him to pass the salt, and once uttering "Never mind maneuvers, always go straight at 'em", something which Lord Nelson has long been credited with actually having said.

Why it's taken so long for this concept to bridge the gap from the quarterdeck of a frigate to the micro-limit tables on PokerStars in my mind, I do not know. This is why I'm down here in the .05/.10 shorthanded trenches: to plug the leaks. And lately, man the pumps, and gain back some ground, which I'm successfully doing.

I long ago realized that you just can't be cute with the rookies, drunks, and outright donkeys, but until a week or two ago, I think I was still missing the point:

THEY WILL CALL.

It doesn't matter if you hold a Jack on a JJ3 flop. They will call.
It doesn't matter if you smooth call through, chasing a flush, and it obviously hits you on the river. They will call. Often their entire stack. They may even raise.

The caveat here is taking the 10-20 hands it usually takes to generally assess each player's mood/style/etc at the table. I've started getting a lot better at locating the chumps, and identifying the tighties just waiting on the nuts to bet. I've also started seeing a lot of repeat opponents, and here you can really get a line on them. There are quite a few players out there who fall somewhere in the middle though too... they're not idiots, but they're just not savvy enough to notice in a single session that when your money goes in big on the river, you have it.

Sure there are times when you need to be tricky, you need to slowplay, and often those tricks and checks work well against the morons too, but quite often I'm finding that this micro-limit arena is about putting the money in when you have the likely best hand. So blatantly obvious, until it hits home with a new-found significance.

A good friend of mine exposed me to the phrase and concept of a "recurring epiphany" a while back, and lately, poker (and life) has been filled with a lot of these "ah-ha" moments for me: re-realizing something I've known all along. Sometimes you learn it the first time... sometimes you learn it again and again.

So jam it, jammer... all the maneuvers and tactics mean little if you don't get your money in with the best hand. Have a nice holiday!

Just Awful

2005-12-16T18:35:00.000-05:00

It's been that kind of month. UGH. Not a true "bad beat" really, but luck certainly doesn't get any worse than that. And I thought my recent run of sets under sets was bad.

SCP Fall League Championship Freeroll

2005-12-14T19:46:00.000-05:00

So last night my league held it's final tourney of the season, for a winner take all prize and the "Grand Champion" title. We play cheapy 3 hour tournaments, with usually less than 10 players... informal, but fun.

Ok so I'm coming into this second in points, which means that the point leader starts with T1000, and myself with T755, and the rest of the league behind me. Not good, but not bad either considering I really got unlucky and played pretty bad for most of the season. Still, I'm liking my chances, considering that probably only 8 or less people are going to show up to play: 6 did. I can beat 6 people.

The early going I played well, sticking hard to my strategy of not losing chips rather than trying to win them. One big key to me feeling at home in tournaments lately is the old adage: raise or fold. As someone who's been seeing a lot of low-stakes cash game action lately, where my style is to rarely have the lead in a hand, it's taken me a while to realize I need to change gears in a tournament format. Pressure = win. So I raise a lot pre-flop with hands that I normally talk myself into devaluing: A9, KJ, etc. You get reraised, you evaluate the situation and probably fold. You get called, you play the hand out however you deem best after the flop.

I scoop a bunch of chips with AJs: I raise 3x preflop, get one caller. Flop AAx. He checks, I check. Turn: x. He bets, I raise to gain information. Does he have a boat? Does he have me outkicked with the case ace? Do I have him outkicked? He calls. River: x. He checks, and with all the info I have, I push. He folds, showing an Ace.

We get down to 4 handed, with 3 of us about even and one short stack, who really isn't desperately short yet. A long time passes here with no big hands for anyone, meaning blind stealing becomes critical as the blinds are creeping way up. I either break even on blinds, or manage to gain slightly.

Then probably the hand of the night:

I hold KJo in the BB, with 2 calls in front. I check and see an AKJ rainbow flop. The small blind to my right (short stack) moves all in. I think for a bit, considering that he probably wouldn't move all in here with the straight, although a higher two pair is possible. Then again, this guy loves to raise pre flop, so if he had AK or AJ, I'd say there would be about a 90% chance or higher he would have raised, especially with so much to gain from the limp in front, and my BB behind. He doesn't have the straight, he doesn't have a better two pair, and it's very unlikely as well that he's got a set here. I have a clear call, and do so, hoping that the action behind me will be a call or fold only and we can check it down if a call. He calls.

Turn is a blank, and I'm first to act. The all-in player is acting very worried, with not the least hint of confidence in his hand. I'm almost positive I have him beat at this point, and with a monster main pot, and a dry side pot, I decide to move all in to protect my hand. The guy behind me has got to be on the broadway draw. I have him covered, and he calls. The all in player flips A5, and the other flips (I believe) KQ or AQ, either way, one pair and the draw. Now it turns out there's a ton of cards I need to dodge on the river, 4 tens, 3 fives, 2 queens, 1 or 2 aces, and the other 3 matching cards to whatever the turn was which would pair the board. River is a J, and I knock out two players, having a better than 2 to 1 chip lead on, of all people, my wife.

I'll leave out the commentary about playing heads-up poker with the human you know better than any other, but I like my position. We spar it out for a while, trading chips and rarely seeing a flop, let alone a turn, river, or showdown. My strategy here is to keep the chip lead, and try and outplay her on or after the flop where I think my reads will have the best effect. I absolutely don't want to end up all-in preflop and see who gets lucky.

I end up taking a stab though when I have almost a 3 to 1 lead on her and she pushes from the SB. I hold 33, and debate it for a while, 90% certain that she doesn't have a pair from her actions. She wants me to fold. I call knowing full well that I'm only a slight favorite to win the hand, and her JTo hits a Jack on the flop. Damn.

I end up making a great laydown on a flop with Q6 when I read strength feigned as weakness. The flop was Q53 or somesuch and she made a weak bet after I noticed one of those split second looks on her face... just a stare at the flop for a little too long. I min raise for information, and I get it when she moves all in. I fold showing top pair and telling her I know she has something good, and she shows the two pair, and I'm feeling really good now, but unhappy with her now having the about 3 to 1 lead. I'm playing good poker and making good reads.

Unfortunately, the blinds are up and I'm in critical need of a double up, and I have to abandon all hope of outplaying her on the flop. My chips are moving in preflop or not at all. I steal a couple of blinds with heads-up monsters like AK and QQ, then lose them back when she raises against garbage like 42 and 63.

The final hand I hold A2, push, get confidently called by AQ, and I'm done.

The exact situation I didn't want to be in happened, and I'm disappointed. I haven't felt this disappointed after a tournament, since I hit 3rd place in a live three-tabler walking away with barely my buy-in back and watching 1st place walk away 2 hands later with over $500, due to a stupid prize structure and ridiculously short levels.

Still, I don't think I can really play much better than I played, but feeling like you played very well and made good reads and decisions and lost, has a bittersweet effect: you can walk away knowing you succeeded in playing your best poker, but it makes the loss a lot more dissapointing than simply playing poorly and losing.

I Wanna Tell You About Texas Hold 'em and the Bad Beat

2005-12-05T18:59:00.000-05:00

So I have this pretty little graph in my spreadsheet showing my online bankroll over time... it's fun to watch go up and down, yet trend upwards: a visual aid to prove to myself that I can in fact, play this game.

Recently, I've been on a major slide that I fear will take months to regain. Not the "screw it I'm gonna go zero out my roll on the highest buy-in sit and go that I can find" kind of slide, but when you see over 1/3 of your roll get raped in a week, that's a little unsettling.

Perhaps this is all some form of punishment for breaking my bankroll/stakes rules (20 buyins min per level) and toying with .10/.25 before I had built myself to the $500 I wanted to have. Still, it's the same game, and I'm long past the days where I'm going to blow up and burn the whole bank on some double or nothing bid to get back to even if a session goes bad. The following hands should prove that there are still donks at every level, as well as illustrated the capping off of one awful week of play.

AA. Of course a bad beat story starts with "I had rockets". I play it the way I always do, meaning HARD, juicing the bet preflop to 6x the BB with all the limpers. One caller. Flop: KQJ, a little scary, but not against this opponent who's been a complete calling station. I bet the pot. He calls. Turn: what should be a harmless 5, ends up making him two pair with, yes, king f^#$ing five offsuit. I go broke. Who plays K5o against a big raise? Who calls my bets even when they make kings and fives here? I could be jamming the pot preflop just as much, if not more with KK or QQ, and maybe even with JJ which would have all flopped sets. Anyway.

Sit out 2 hands. Game still beatable. Tilt check. OK. Rebuy.

66. Cute little set making hand. A couple limps followed by mine. Small min raise preflop to my left. I call. Flop: K64 rainbow: LOVELY!. I check. Raiser bets pot. I call. Turn: 4, giving me a damn nice boat. I check. Raiser bets pot, and I call. River: Ace. Now I'm thinking this guy may have AK, because that would fit with his betting pattern and style that I've been watching for over an hour, which means he might be really ripe for the picking thinking that he just made the best two pair, and I've just been calling with... who knows. He bets big, I raise, he reraises, and I have so little left I don't even need to think about the call. He, much out of character, min raised KK preflop. Set over set, turning into boat over boat.

Stoned. Immaculate.

It's time for a manditory one week break from the online poker realm. Not so much because I'm playing bad, but more because I'm going to start playing bad if this continues. Man would that $300 first place freeroll prize tonight compensate though...

Recently Heard

2005-12-03T01:03:00.000-05:00

I really need to learn how to start writing about poker again. Down here in grindsville, there just doesn't seem to be much to say.

Live play has been good lately, and I finally am starting to feel like I'm coming out of my tournament funk of the last few months. I'd definitely say that there's a strong relationship between the amount of daily cash game play, and my lack of tournament success. On the whole, I think I differentiate between the two well enough, but it's only those few hands that you misplay that will kill your tournament results... you've got to be in tournament mode on every hand. I also think that all the live play lately has really started to sink in... I'm making a lot of good reads, and finding it easier to be able to socialize and have a good time, while secretly still paying more attention than it might appear.

A couple recently overheard gems:

* With quads on the board, kickers don't matter, it's a split pot!

* I'd rather have unsuited cards, that way I have a chance at two flushes!

Gaining

2005-11-07T03:02:00.000-05:00

Building $50 into over $300, playing no higher than .05/.10 shorthanded NL, in a little over 3 months, feels good. Solid.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the way a poker player progresses... how all those wins and losses and hands pile up, and over and over the player is faced with epiphanies and realizations. Every time I get a strong feeling that I'm moving forward, that I've taken another step as a player... when I have one of those lightbulb moments... behind it is a deeper understanding of just how damn tough the task is.

There's a story floating around about someone giving Chris Ferguson $1, and him turning that into over $20k within a few months online, largely as a challenge/experiment. Maybe it's true. It could be. If it is, even for as experienced and skilled a player as he is, I'm sure that was no easy nut to crack. Poker is long, tedious, tiring work. To paraphrase The Tao of Poker, if you find poker exhilarating and exciting, you're probably doing it wrong.

Sure it's just a game with some cards. Sure there are bigger things in my life... in every self-proclaimed poker player's life. Poker has social aspects... effects on the ego... sometimes it's just a time filler or an excuse to drink and smoke or bully around someone you'd never bully around away from the table. Sometimes it's serious. Sometimes it's entertainment, of a sort. But I think the true magnet for most of us is the challenge... the realization that for every step forward we take, we get to glimpse five more beyond. It's a moving target.

Kinda like, life?

Patience. Discipline. $200 more. And then .10/.25.

Monday

2005-10-25T14:33:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I was finally diagnosed with something, and unfortunately that something is going to be requiring a new kidney in what I hope is the distant future. But this isn't a post about that, this is about poker.

Last night I made it out to JK's weekly tournament, which for whatever reason I absolutely love to play in: usually at least 20 players, a comfortable buy in (for me), and a reasonable structure. As anywhere, it seems half of the regulars there are most often dead money, but there's an overall level of skill and unfamiliarity with each other that seems to lead to mostly good play. Read: you can actually get people to fold. Another big plus for me is that I can just relax and play: I spend half the time in my own league worrying about who just got knocked out or made a string bet... and I know these (perhaps unnecessary) distractions hurt my focus. JK runs a good show.

So I had an uneventful tournament, placing well outside the money... but the lure of quarter/half dealer's choice kept me around, and I'm glad it did. I'm not sure I've ever had a hotter 2 hour session in my life.

It began with a $20 buy in, that I rather quickly tripled with a string of boats on PLO8 hands, the overall game of choice for this group. I didn't have much experience with Omaha period until recently, and I still catch myself invested in hands here and there that I've misread, but I love the game. I've tried, oh how I've tried to play PLO8 online, but when every hand takes 12 minutes...

So, I'll cut to the chase, and just say that I had been on fire. Then the undisputed hand of the night happened:

I'm on the button with KK7Q, maybe suited one way. There's a smallish pre-flop raise on, and I call, after most of the table.

Flop: 6d Kd 7s

I nail top set, and immediately start thinking about how I should play this, while I watch a $3 bet get called in multiple places in front of me. Now I know I've got the best hand at this point, but I also know how Omaha can go, and if that third diamond hits without pairing the board, I'm going to be shakey. I want to see what's up, and make someone pay to draw out, but for whatever reason I just double the bet, and get all callers.

Turn: 7d

You sweet, beautiful card! Let's recap: I have the nut full house. Three diamonds on board means someone may have hit the flush. The only hand that I can fear at this point is someone holding pocket 7's for quads, but I have one in my hand making that impossible. If the river is higher than an 8, I'll take down the whole monster.

Then I see the action in front of me: big bet, call, some folds. I don't want to raise here and I totally start feigning weakness, out loud bemoaning the fact that with all that money out there now I'm getting the odds and have to call. To my credit, I acted this one out perfectly. I dejectedly toss more chips into the mountain.

River: Kh

The guy opposite me, again fires out a large bet, anyone else left in the hand folds (presumably working on low hands), and I raise the pot (putting him all-in), and about shit myself when he immediately calls, flipping over a flush. I mutter, "you're not going to like this" and toss out my kings. The guy is a really nice guy, and loses with perfect dignity. I'll leave the value of his play up to you.

I almost felt bad after that hand, but I've rarely raked that many chips at one time. Nobody really counted down the pot, but after I got it all stacked, I had about $190. Not bad for a $20 buy-in. I did lose a little of that back later when I again nailed top set, and faced with a pot bet from a lone opponent, I re-raised the pot setting him all in... (a move I think is 100% correct to make here), and got beat river-style when he made a flush. But what a night.

OPBC: 77th

2005-10-23T21:58:00.000-04:00

I won't bore anyone with any drawn-out details, but I had a great time finishing 77 out of 1473 in the Inaugural OPBC. Really, how can you complain about a freeroll with great prizes? PokerStars++ on this one.

Tournament play has been way brutal for me lately, so it was nice to play for 3.5 hours without giving or receiving any bad beats: just solid play; the best hand wins. I had a few lucky/notable moments along the way, like flopping a straight for free in the BB against someone slowplaying aces, making a set, and even stole some blinds with the hammer when I needed it most. Tournament poker can be one ugly bitch... and that's one of those lessons that sinks in deeper every time you're taught it. So for me, doing well for a change is a giant confidence boost, and that can't be a bad thing.

This was probably my best large tournament result yet, with the only other high finish being 28/250.

OPBC

2005-10-21T23:48:00.000-04:00

Okay, trying to get in under the wire here for the Online Poker Blogger Championship.

I have registered to play in the
Online Poker Blogger Championship!

This event is powered by PokerStars.

Registration code: 2833810

Hopefully I make it in, in the next 12 minutes :)

Otherwise on the poker front, there's not much new to report down here in the grind. I've just been working though the long sessions at short-handed .05/.10 NL on PokerStars, and doing a slow, but certainly steady job of building the roll back up.

I've also been dealing with some semi-serious health issues, which have kinda put a lid on blogging here, or agressively forwarding Keystone Poker Tables like I had hoped I could this fall. The good part is, having two weeks off work with explicit instructions for limited physical activity, frees up a big chunk of time for playing poker online.

Hope to see some of you fine people in the Championship.

General Update

2005-09-20T03:00:00.000-04:00

Nothing at all topical, but a few things to note...

If you get a chance, you should definitely pick up a copy of The Tao of Poker, for only 10 bucks. You might know of those little "our daily bread" books that Christians like to read... well this book is kinda like that: 285 little "rules" that seriously, if a player could master any 5 of, he or she would a pretty good player. It's a great little thing to have handy when you're feeling stuck and to get some inspiration from and think about things differently.

On the live game front, the league that I've become the unofficial director of wrapped up it's inaugural 4 month "season" at the end of August... and the Fall season is underway. Thankfully we've so far been able to dodge the "too many players" bullet, keeping our players on two tables, with a good group of regulars. It's definitely interesting playing with a regular group on a consistent basis, as the observant player can and does surely begin to get some good reads/tendencies down. This is certainly an area that I've been doing well in... sometimes splashing around more chips than is prudent, or making calls when I know I'm beat just to gain information when I notice a behavior that I find interesting in another player. At some point I'm sure this information will come in handy.

As well, a lot of contacts for other games have popped up. I managed to take second place tonight in a 20 player tourney in a league patterned after ours, and have met some interesting local players as well. Having games available to attend is always good, as well as meeting local players who just might want a nice table.

I'm finally getting rolling on the custom table-making business/hobby/excuse to buy more tools, and though somewhat measured in a realistic sense, I think there are definitely buyers out there for one-of-a-kind tables. We shall see how my marketing ideas pan out.

On the online play front, I've been doing very well at the micro-limits that my bankroll will support right now, and as I have said before, growing a lot as a player in the process. I've more than tripled my paltry stake, finding a *very* comfortable home at the shorthanded .05/.10 tables on PokerStars... with my biggest downticks coming from hitting the $5 SNGs. Something that I used to feel was my specialty (though with arguably measured success) rarely seems to feel comfortable anymore. I do well as a live tournament player, and surely the growth I've encountered in NL cash game play carries over to an extent, but I find myself rarely finishing ITM, and it can be quite trying to play for an hour and lose the amount you know you may have likely won if you had spent that hour playing cash games. Finishing 2 out of 3 sessions "up", and sometimes way holy-multiple-buy-ins "up" is much more enticing.

I'll leave you with a quote from The Tao of Poker, which is easily the thing that I've improved the most on in the last 3 months:

Rule 14: Don't pick the best hands to play--pick your spots.
Look for the right combination of probability, weakness, hesitation (by opponents), body language, position, past tendencies, who is "short-stacked", and your hand's value in the overall scheme of things. Look for all of these things and then play. This is called "picking your spots." Less skilled players simple "wait for a good hand." This is something quite different. The picking-your-spots approach considers all things before making a play. It is the one used by successful top players.

I think it's pretty easy to understand concepts like position, or stack sizes, or the relative value of starting hands. Any one or two of these things, for most serious players, can easily be considered and put into practice on a regular basis, but the real success as a poker player comes when you can start to (almost subconsciously) consider everything, weed out the inessential or negligible factors, prioritize the rest, and make truly good decisions.

Micro Limit NL

2005-07-30T22:38:00.000-04:00

So with most of my previous bankroll tied up elsewhere at the moment, I've been filling my limited online poker time with some shorthanded .01/.02 NL at Poker Stars. Yeah, I know, eww. It might be more profitable to go pick up aluminum cans along the highway, right?

At first I thought "eh, what the hell", as these micro limit tables were really all I could muster up the bank to play at for the time being. Quite surprisingly, I've been having a blast though, and learning a lot... not so much about *the* game, but about *my* game.

I think a lot of my previous poker time spent at much higher stakes tables (with decidedly mixed results), was more a result of me having the bank for it, and not so much the skills and fundamentals needed for consistent profit. Playing at these ridiculously low stakes amongst a player pool dominated by inexperienced players and outright donkeys, is, with apologies for the pun/cliche, like shooting fish in a barrel. And that can be one hell of a confidence booster.

Out of 13 sessions, 12 have been positive, and I've nearly doubled the measly $50 I started with. Sure, I'm taking this with a grain of salt... I mean, if I can't win here, where exactly do I expect to? But that's also becoming exactly the point for me... I'm playing where I can expect to win, and within my means. Having so little money available for play is forcing me to really adopt a disciplined bankroll strategy: play where you know you can win, grind it out and build the roll until you can safely move up. If you move up, set a stop loss limit where you'll move back down if things go bad. Such basic stuff... but things that I've not always been disciplined enough to follow.

Having 12 of 13 winning sessions is screaming for me to jump up to .05/.10, but I'm determined to do this thing right, grind it out, play the "nothing cute, thanks for the good pot odds, here have some bad ones" showdown poker. And really, playing at these levels, and focusing on just making good decision after good decision, is exactly what my game needs. It's a humbling experience as a poker player to admit that you lack discipline, and that's exactly what I'm saying here. I chase too much relying on implied odds in situations where there are no implied odds... I get too cute against players who aren't paying attention... I make stellar bluffs that no decent player would call, but I make them against less than decent players. I push and drive and try to steam right over the game at times. I sometimes think just because I know more about the game than an opponent, that I will automatically beat him. At least I did these things until recently.

Sometime soon I should have the 15-20 buy-ins needed to play .05/.10, and hopefully I can work my way up the stakes from there to the quarter/half tables that I used to call home.

Inflection Points

2005-06-11T22:22:00.000-04:00

I've definitely scaled back on the online play significantly after withdrawing the majority of my online funds, but I left a little in there to satisfy the cravings and such. Perhaps too little, as what was there is now gone thanks to a couple of legitimately bad beats and a few legitimately bad plays at Party's 25NL tables. Largely typical hands... I won't bore you with details. On a nice note, I did nab my first ever royal flush for good profit last week.

It's weird coming home from work or whenever and not sitting down and killing two or more hours at the tables, but largely I'm getting used to the idea. For about a year now, I've been consumed by the game... who can say how much time they think about a particular subject during a given time period? All I know is that I've spent a lot of time at work, in the car, in the shower... thinking about the game, and now that I'm playing very little, I think that the time I spend contemplating things might surprisingly take on new emphasis and bear significant results.

I've been thinking *a lot* about the latest buzz of "inflection points" which I first recently read about thanks to DoubleAs, PokerNerd, and others. There was a mild epiphany of sorts when I dug into the idea. Mostly, I realized that a lot of the mechanical moves that players make (myself certainly included), are made because a player read a book, or read something on the Internet that told them to do so. You read about a concept, like raising pre-flop with good starting hands like AQ, it makes sense to you, and you go out and try to apply it and expect to use it to rake some pots... and you very well may, but blindly following what seems like good advice can also lead to serious leaks.

The symptom that I've noticed in myself recently, lies in taking this seemingly good advice from various sources (like the extremely generic example above of pre-flop raising with AQ) and using it to justify plays that are made with no clear purpose other than to do what almost everyone says you should. You've got to raise that AQ pre-flop to get a handle on your opponents' strength... push out the J8o's that can flop two pair and lucky straights... and hope to play it right from there. That sounds good on paper, at least, and a lot of the time that may actually be the correct play, depending on the situation.

The other angle I'm taking a long time to get at, is that you really need to think about pressure/inflection points to better understand why you're betting and raising and when. The best example I can come up with is the AQ... if you raise it pre-flop, and your image isn't that of a loose cannon, then it's certainly going to be one of the hands that your opponent(s) may put you on. Then you see a seemingly good flop of AT2 rainbow... if you bet here, against reasonable opponents, the most likely outcomes are either 1) you win a small pot right here when your opponents fold, or 2) you get called/raised and may very well be beat right here by AK, AT, TT, 22 or get beat by a lot of other hands on the turn or the river that make two-pair, broadway straights, who knows what... against your top-pair-strong-kicker. And we didn't even talk about flush possibilities.

But if we back up to the pre-flop and flop action... depending on the number of players in the hand (and if this is tournament play, the stack sizes and blinds), perhaps limping/checking/calling is a better way to prolong the inflection point of the hand until you have more information, and may net a safer and larger pot. So you limp/call from the SB and you and the BB see the AT2 flop... you check, and your opponent checks behind you. The turn brings a harmless 9, and now you decide to bet out. Odds are, that your opponent is unlikely to put you on what you actually have. He or she is likely to think you're trying to pick up the pot based on their flop check, or that you may have paired the Ten or 9, or even that you're betting on a straight or flush draw. What's more, by seeing the turn card so cheaply, you've prolonged the inflection point until you have obtained more information, namely, the turn card. At this point, you may get a call/raise out of your opponent if they paired, if they have a draw, or even if they suspect a bluff. If you get called, then the inflection point has likely been postponed until the river (where you gain more information). Depending on what the river card may be (wouldn't an Ace be nice?) you can either back down or hit the gas. Sometimes you'll get beat, and you'll think you should have raised pre-flop or bet the flop... but by playing the hand the way I described above in the right situation against the right opponent you're giving yourself as much information as possible by seeing all 5 board cards, as well as your opponent's actions on every street. And more information equals easier/better/more profitable decisions.

Conventional thinking has always told me to play a hand like that for a raise pre-flop, and then bet out on a flop like the one above... but what happens when you are called or raised? Pretty soon you're caught investing 20% of your stack on top-pair-strong-kicker on the turn, and who knows how much more on the river. Can you fold a hand like that? Against a lot of specific opponents that I play or have played against, my answer tends to be "no", and that can be costly. Outplaying opponents is about gaining information street after street and playing your hand based on that information, especially early in a tournament where you're usually less concerned about winning chips as you are about not losing them. Save the risky plays for later.

By seeing all streets and prolonging the pressure/inflection point of a hand, you're giving your opponent more opportunities to make mistakes. Against opponents who are paying attention, playing just one hand this way to showdown can lead to a wonderful cautiousness later when they get involved with you. Your check does not mean it's okay to go ahead and bet, and your bet may very well mean that they should fold.

I know there's probably a lot I'm missing about this inflection point theory, and I also realize that I'm probably lumping a few other concepts under the same heading above which really aren't specifically about inflection points (like keeping pots small early in tournaments, managing table image, and being deceptive). Dan Harrington's new book is said to have some good in-depth coverage of the subject, which I look forward to reading later this summer.

In short, I think I've found a key area to really work on, and that is having a reason for every move I make, as well as thinking ahead in a hand at least one street. It sounds so terribly novice to admit that I've realized that up until recently my game was largely a matter of reaction: see your cards, do something... see the flop, do something. And far too often that "something" was a mechanical move devoid of much thought or true purpose.

Summer Break

2005-06-02T23:45:00.000-04:00

For a variety of reasons, I'm going to be taking (at least) June off from poker, at least of the online variety. I'll still be playing in the local league games and possibly a few other places offline.

Partly, I'm stepping away for a while because I just need a break. Poker is one hell of a hard way to make easy money, and recent waves of bad beats and a fair share of bad plays on my part have taken a modest toll. It's getting tiring spending all this energy and time and not achieving the level of results that I think *should* be there, but isn't. Coming up on a year, and I feel like 10 times the poker player I used to be, yet 1/10 of the player I need to be.

I've got a few big certification tests coming up that I need to devote time towards, as well as a few tables to build, and the online poker time was the obvious thing to cut. Then there's always gardens to tend and vacations to take and beer to drink. It's summer, that's what you do... not sit inside in the glow of the monitor cursing some "but they were suited" moron.

Hopefully I can work in a few good posts based off the league play in the next month or two. Good luck out there!

Poorly Played On All Streets

2005-05-16T17:36:00.000-04:00

Before we begin, this felt good. Moving right along:

Okay, so waaay more often than not people post about hands that were played well... maybe they played it well and won, or played it well and got a bad beat. But really you don't tend to see a lot of "holy crap did I $#!@ this hand up" posts on poker blogs: it's naturally, embarrassing to an extent. But in the interest of fairness, I've been looking for a bad hand to post about for a while now, and last weekend I found it (or it found me, however you look at it).

So I'm working off my 1000 raked hands for a bonus at Empire, and though I keep reminding myself that I'm just here to clear raked hands, that little voice in the back of my head keeps nagging at me: "Look how soft this game is!" ..."Come on man, you're in late position, play that draw!" ..."Jesus, did you just see those two guys both raising with nothing?!". And so I'd been getting involved a little more than I really should have, but had only lost money on one hand: when I dropped the entire $25 buy-in when my pocket kings were beaten by a flopped set of fours. I raised to $1 pre-flop, and had 5 callers = UGH. I rebought, and about 10 minutes later the kings struck again...

***** Hand History for Game 2046366236 *****
$25 NL Hold'em - Saturday, May 14, 02:22:47 EDT 2005
Table Table 37470 (Real Money)
Seat 7 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 4: myster_e ( $24.92 )
Seat 8: canoenorth ( $21.65 )
Seat 9: DannyBoy3331 ( $35.15 )
Seat 1: Opobi33 ( $27.25 )
Seat 5: travis8787 ( $7.4 )
Seat 3: alpo824 ( $5 )
Seat 7: jybsie ( $42.05 )
Seat 10: RPMPRGUY ( $7.3 )
Seat 6: dual567 ( $24 )
Seat 2: dw97vegas ( $27.15 )
canoenorth posts small blind [$0.1].
DannyBoy3331 posts big blind [$0.25].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to canoenorth [ Kh Ks ]

Oh here we go again. Pocket Kings in the SB.

RPMPRGUY folds.
Opobi33 folds.
dw97vegas folds.
alpo824 folds.
myster_e folds.
travis8787 calls [$0.25].
dual567 folds.
jybsie folds.

Okay, so I've got a middle position limper, and the BB yet to act. I figure raising to $1 is reasonable here.

canoenorth raises [$0.9].
DannyBoy3331 calls [$0.75].
travis8787 calls [$0.75].
** Dealing Flop ** [ Kd, Td, 6h ]

Two callers to the flop, and I nail top set. And here is where things really go bad... I decide to slowplay and check. But let's back up to the pre-flop action for a second.

It could have been worse, and technically speaking I did quadruple the big blind with my raise... but it could be said (especially in hindsight) that I should have raised more. My knowledge of the table texture should have been screaming at me to raise to something like $2 or more... these guys were calling a lot of pre-flop action with marginal hands, presumably relying on implied odds. Still, I don't think the $1 raise was nearly as bad a move as checking the flop.

I was the pre-flop raiser, so people would be expecting me to bet on the flop, even if it had missed me. But more importantly, there's two diamonds laying out there, and two broadway straight cards: I needed to defend my hand, and I didn't.

canoenorth checks.
DannyBoy3331 checks.
travis8787 bets [$1].

Well, good... somebody bet at least. Then, fearing that a check-raise will scare everyone away here, I just call. This hand is going downhill, and fast.

canoenorth calls [$1].
DannyBoy3331 calls [$1].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 2s ]

All three of us to the turn, which is a blank, thank you very much. There's a decent pot laying out there now, and I certainly have the best possible hand at the moment... these guys either have made hands that they really like (two pair?, a lower set?, the other king?), or draws (diamond flush or a straight). Either scenario should mean an automatic big bet by me here... something on the order of half-pot to pot-sized. I should be trying to get lesser made hands to commit more money to the pot, and betting enough to give the possible draws bad pot odds to call. With an open ended straight draw being close to 5 to 1, and a flush draw close to 4 to 1, a half- or 2/3-pot bet would easily give my opponents bad odds. So what do I do?

canoenorth checks.
DannyBoy3331 checks.
travis8787 bets [$2].

So like an idiot I check, and the flop bettor bets again, and instead of pounding him with a pot-sized raise...

canoenorth calls [$2].
DannyBoy3331 calls [$2].
** Dealing River ** [ 9c ]

So here we are, three to the river, which I am grateful is not a diamond. The only cards that can beat me at this point is someone holding QJ or 87 for the straight, so I go ahead and bet out, thinking that my very risky, pot-building, slowplaying strategy has paid off.

canoenorth bets [$3].
DannyBoy3331 raises [$6].
travis8787 folds.

I'm sure you see where this is going. At any rate, I figure that since I only displayed strength pre-flop, and have check-called since then, that my raiser is possibly on a failed-draw bluff. A draw is very likely, since he check-called the flop and the turn. I ignore the straight possibilities and guess that he missed his flush, and now he figures it is worth $3 to try and win this growing pot. I think my read here was just close enough to being correct to get me into trouble, but I should have just called and been content to win what was already in the pot, or lose only what was already in the pot.

canoenorth raises [$9].
DannyBoy3331 raises [$12].

Might as well just move all-in now.

canoenorth is all-In [$5.65]
DannyBoy3331 shows [ Qc, Js ] a straight, nine to king.
canoenorth doesn't show [ Kh, Ks ] three of a kind, kings.

---

And that is how not to play. I had opportunity after opportunity to take charge of the hand and at the least give my opponents an awful price to continue playing, but I just passively sat there waiting way too long to spring my trap... in fact, I was sitting right in someone else's trap when I finally sprang my own. And then, instead of realizing that something funny was going on around me, and just calling down the river, I jammed the pot.

Another important idea here, is that had things gone differently, I might be tempted to call my play here "good"... for instance, let's assume one of my opponents was on the diamond draw (perhaps the guy who folded on the river actually was), and the river had been the two of diamonds, giving someone a big flush, and me the big full house: I'd have likely walked away a pretty big winner from the hand. I think playing this hand the way I did was mostly a mistake no matter what the outcome might have been.

Mostly, it was a mistake because I was simply trying to clear raked hands and avoid big confrontations: it may sound counter-intuitive, but a big flop bet by me in this hand would have helped to avoid such a large confrontation. And if I had been called, and had lost to a straight on the river as I did, at least I would have put my opponent in a situation where he was getting the worst of it, and making a mistake, instead of giving him good pot odds street after street to hit his draw.

Truly Nice Hand

2005-05-09T17:49:00.000-04:00

Every now and again, these dream hands actually do happen:

***** Hand History for Game 2023850028 *****
$25 NL Hold'em - Monday, May 09, 17:47:41 EDT 2005
Table Table 36605 (6 max) (Real Money)
Seat 1 is the button
Total number of players : 4
Seat 1: cantbluffme4 ( $22.9 )
Seat 2: SpearsAgain ( $74.48 )
Seat 6: Duo_Maxwell ( $95.5 )
Seat 5: canoeguide ( $22.55 )
SpearsAgain posts small blind [$0.1].
canoeguide posts big blind [$0.25].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to canoeguide [ 4d 5d ]

Not a bad holding for the big blind at a short-handed NL table...

Duo_Maxwell folds.
cantbluffme4 folds.
SpearsAgain calls [$0.15].
canoeguide checks.
** Dealing Flop ** [ 8d, 6d, 7d ]

I may or may not be exaggerating for comedic effect, but at this point I think I had an erection, not to mention a monster straight flush.

SpearsAgain checks.

Well, I want this hand to get to showdown, but I've got to hope to build the pot a little, so I'll bet the minimum. My table image at this point I would say wasn't very well defined, but I'd done some minimum betting on heads-up bluffs recently, both with success and getting caught.

canoeguide bets [$0.25].
SpearsAgain calls [$0.25].
** Dealing Turn ** [ As ]
SpearsAgain checks.

Oh boy, I can only hope that Ace paired him. At this point I clicked off the auto-muck so I could show if I won, and bet the minimum again praying for a call.

canoeguide bets [$0.25].
SpearsAgain raises [$1].

Any raise here, let alone a check-raise is exactly what I'm looking for. He has a hand of some sort. I take my time, but not too much time, and just call, because I think a raise here would be very foolish... there's virtually no scare cards that can come on the river, and he may get further help and like his hand even more. I'm hoping to represent a drawing hand, or a failed semi-bluff... something weak.

canoeguide calls [$0.75].
** Dealing River ** [ Kd ]
SpearsAgain bets [$4].

OH YES. There's a few things he could be holding here, but it doesn't take an expert to see what's most likely... he probably had a pair of Aces on the turn... and now with 4 diamonds on the board, and his big bet, it seems that he's holding the Ace of diamonds and the nut flush. If he isn't holding that (or another high diamond), he may have flopped a straight, or caught two pair... a set seems unlikely based on his actions, and really I doubt someone would lead out with such a big river bet with only two pair or a straight with a four-flush on the board: he must have a high flush. I pause just for a second or two before raising...

canoeguide raises [$8].
SpearsAgain raises [$12].

Bingo. This hand is why we play poker.

canoeguide is all-In [$13.05]
SpearsAgain calls [$5.05].
SpearsAgain shows [ Ad, Tc ] a flush, ace high.
canoeguide shows [ 4d, 5d ] a straight flush, eight high.
canoeguide wins $43.1 from the main pot with a straight flush, eight high.

Bonus Whoring

2005-05-08T16:52:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been racking up the bonuses from Party and Empire, and they just keep making it easier. I just heard about the following reload bonus at EmpirePoker:

50% Reload BONUS!

All you need to do is use deposit code
Tuesday100 on your next real money deposit
and get 50% up to $100* bonus.
This promotion will be valid only during May 10th,
from 00:01am EST until 11:59pm EST.

Just a few days ago I conveniently moved a bunch of cash over to Party, to take advantage of this month's 15% reload bonus there, which I should be able to clear in time to pull at least $200 back to Empire to get the full $100 in bonus. They're giving you 10 days to clear the usual 10 times the bonus amount in raked hands.

Big Hand First Hand, Rushes, and Big Stack Play

2005-05-05T15:28:00.000-04:00

I was contemplating blogging some early tournament strategy, and how to exploit some weaknesses I've been taking note of in the local league games, but thankfully something else came along... besides, I don't really want to help the other guys in the league who read this blog.

So I suppose this would apply to tournaments as well, but primarily I'm going to be talking about the online NL cash games. I've seen this play time after time, and it nearly always works well: you sit down and are graced with a big pocket pair on the first hand... what should you do?

Of course you're probably going to raise, but I advocate overplaying the hand. More often than not, someone at the table will make the mistake of assuming you're a pot-jamming idiot and overplay right back at you... it's your first hand, and few people will believe your aggressive play is actually backed with a big hand. There is a point where you can probably overplay it too much, but I think a big raise pre-flop will give you the information you'll need to decide how to play the flop.

Similarly, is when you're getting a rush of big hands... people don't believe you... they just tend to believe that you can't have a big hand again, or that you're trying to capitalize on your table image to buy pots.

These situations don't come up that often, and when they do, you want to do everything you can to maximize the profit of them. Today, I ran into both of the above scenarios at the same time!

I sat down to pocket kings, and nearly doubled on the hand right off the bat. Then AQo hit me with top two pair. Then I raped some guy when I held pocket aces! Then 54s flopped a straight. In 4 hands I'd more than tripled my $25 buy in... and every hand I had overplayed, and every hand I got callers or even raisers.

Then it became a me vs. the table battle... it was apparent from the play and the chat that the table wanted a piece of me. I appropriately tightened right up, being careful not to assume that hands were being overplayed against me... respecting their raises, and getting in good limps with my big stack when I could.

This final point is one that I've been working to incorporate more into my game, both cash and tournaments... when you're a big stack, and against opponents who have stacks large enough to pay you well if you hit, but small enough not to be a major threat to you, many hands are worth limping. I'm talking medium off-suit two-gappers... suited kings and queens... sometimes even baby aces. You've got to play them very smart post flop... but when your opponent has about 1/3 to 1/2 your chips, and a limp costs you less than 5% (there's that 5-10 rule again) of your stack, calling the blind is a no-brainer.

I think a lot of people start out playing poker focusing on how to play the big hands... how to play when things are going good. Then the natural progression tends to push people toward how to play when they're in the grind... when they're losing... when little is working. A big early lesson for everyone is the "got to fold to win" epiphany... learning to endure the long hours of boredom accompanied by moments of sheer terror. There's a lifetime of strategy to study and implement here down in the trenches. But at some point I think you've got to come back to those big moments and big hands and big rushes, and think about how to better maximize profit.

April Wrap-Up

2005-05-01T23:31:00.000-04:00

Whew... it's been another crazy month on all streets.

We'll start with the bad first. April just never got off the ground for me on the SNG front. The numbers are pretty terrifying:

ITM: 17.14%
ROI: -41.92%
SNGs Played: 35
Profit: -$166.00
---
1st Place: 3
2nd Place: 2
3rd Place: 1

I'm not going to even try and dissect this too much... it was a bad run, that's for sure. I know my game still has leaks, and in a lot of ways I feel that I should have settled more into a groove by now. March was so solid, and I felt that I played largely the same for a good portion of April, but with opposite results. I think a big key that I'm not putting into practice well enough, is adapting to table conditions... and often playing too tight, too late into the game... or playing too loose in the wrong spots. ...And I fell quite short of my 50 SNG/month goal... it's tough to want to put in the hours when things are going bad.

However, despite my horrible SNG results, I still logged a positive month, cashing in on two Empire bonuses, and scoring some good NL wins in the bonus-clearing process. This is a theory that I've long felt strongly about, but until recently haven't put into practice very well:

Just like any investment, when playing poker it pays to diversify your investments and have an overall strategy.

When one game is going bad, or doesn't interest you, you'll have another to fall back on. Having an overall strategy for managing your bankroll can only benefit you. For myself, I want to really become a small tournament specialist, so I set the goal of trying to play 50 SNGs per month, but I also watch for the bonuses and move my money around to take advantage of that, which allows me to play a very tight/aggressive style in NL cash games to clear the raked hands. I also do generally well in the local home tourneys, and am planning on further padding my bankroll with any profit I can manage making and selling custom poker tables. I think having something on the side like this (poker related or not), which will allow you to toss a little money at your bankroll now and again, is a really underrated and not-often-talked about strategy for the serious intermediate poker player. Having many opportunities for profit just makes good business sense, allows you to stay interested, and should significantly dampen or even offset potential overall losses.

In other news, the local league I've started with a few others in my town is set to kick off on Tuesday night, and we held a little pre-season warm-up/ new table inauguration on Saturday at my place. We ended up with a good group of 12 players, and even a new face or two. I ran into pocket Queens in each of the two tournaments that we played, but managed to rake a few monster pots in the side cash NL game to put me "up" on the evening.

The table was a hit, and fared well through 7 hours of play. I was excited and surprised at how easily we sat 10 players around the 7'x4' table... I had figured it would be a little tighter than it actually was, and we even had a few big guys. My new Copags remained as good as new after a whole night of play, as opposed to the traditional paper decks used on the second table, of which one deck had to be tossed at the end of the evening, and the other has few hours left.

The league excitement is growing and our message boards are seeing good daily activity... and I just have a feeling that eventually our small one-or-two table affairs are going to grow beyond the scope of what someone's basement or apartment can handle. I have mixed feelings about this possibility... I'm excited to finally have a regular local game, and the bigger the group of people that can attend = the more that will attend, which is good. But I also am hearing stories from poker friends of mine who started leagues with 6 people and have grown to 40 or so attending every event... one guy brings his friend... and that friend becomes a regular, and then he invites someone... and pretty soon it's like the classic college party that starts small and ends with people you don't even know having an orgy on your bed.

Well see what happens!

New Table / New League

2005-04-18T13:06:00.000-04:00

So I finished up my first table last week sometime. The woodworking part of this was a breeze for me, but I was a little apprehensive about the upholstery... which turned out to be relatively simple really. The pictures aren't the best (I was working with fluorescent shop lighting), but hopefully they show how good even a simple table like this can look.

For the curious, the table is 7'x4', with a 4" rail. Total materials cost: ~$250 USD.

---------

Some co-workers and friends and I finally decided to get a regular local game going, and are going to be holding low-buy-in tournaments twice a month, at least until the end of the summer. We're also doing a points system and TOC for "league" players, which should be fun and hopefully encourage people to attend regularly. If you're curious: statecollegepoker.com.

The Five And Ten Rule

2005-04-10T15:25:00.000-04:00

Thanks to EmpirePoker offering two nice reload bonuses recently (15% and 25%), I've again been hitting the NL cash games with good results. In addition to working off the required raked hands, I've been winning a pile of money, and this thankfully more than offsets my abysmal results in the SNGs so far this month: 3 for 18 ITM: W.T.F? Even more aggravating is that I feel I'm playing the same game I played last month with such good results, so it's not like there's something obvious to fix... I really don't know. Variance and suckouts have been harsh in the tourneys, but still, 3 for 18 is a little hard to simply blame on bad luck. Right?

Anyway, back to the point of this post, my bankroll overall this month has become much healthier, and I've been reading Pot-Limit & No-Limit Poker. It's a rather scattered read, but there are quite a few thinking points and little ideas crammed into it to make it worthwhile. One of which is described as "The Five and Ten Rule":

You hold 9c8c on the button. Three other players call a quarter, and so do you. The big blind, a solid player, raises $150 more, and two of the three players in front of you call. What should you do?

It depends on how deep the money is. Your position is the best possible, but you don't have much of a hand. A good rule to follow is the "Five and ten rule." When contemplating calling a raise because your position is good, you have a clear call if the amount is less than five percent of your stack, and a clear fold if it is more than ten percent. In between those numbers, use your judgment.

Okay, that sounds cool, but why? The book never explains this any further (that I've seen), and I'm wondering where those numbers come from. Surely someone out there who might stumble upon this post can answer this for me.

March SNG Stats

2005-04-01T22:46:00.000-05:00

March has been easily my most solid month yet. Here's the details:

ITM: 40.00%
ROI: 23.48%
SNGs Played: 60
Profit: $155.00
---
1st Place: 9
2nd Place: 8
3rd Place: 7

Now for a little analysis... I can't help noticing and pointing out that although ROI is ultimately the number that matters, and that mine has been all over the place in the past months, on the other hand, my ITM numbers have seen an increase for each of the past 4 months. And with a sample size of about 200 tournaments in the last 4 months, I'd say that something is definitely working and starting to "click" for me.

As well, ROI is ultimately the number that defines profit, but I think that ITM is probably far and away more important (at least for me). My reasoning is this: A good portion of the time when you are fortunate to make it down to the top three, skill often takes a backseat to luck, and the cards do their thing to determine who gets what place... and the difference between a few 1st place finishes and a few 3rd place finishes can swing a healthy positive ROI down to nothing (or even negative). If you're consistently putting up way more 3rd place finishes than 1sts and 2nds, then yeah, you need to work on your three-handed and heads-up play. I think I play well enough when I'm ITM, and my 9-8-7 distribution this month confirms that. But the point remains: luck will do its thing when you're ITM... so the key is getting in the position for luck to do its thing more often, by increasing ITM%.

As I've talked about before, I've been working towards a tight-aggressive style, and March seems to have confirmed that good results can come from that playing style. One of the things which has become very apparent to me, is the general lack of bad beats... they still happen of course, but perhaps not with the frequency or severity that my previous playing styles have generated.

Another recurring theme which I find myself facing over and over are the people who think suited cards are a gold mine, and who will chase (or even jam the pot) on a flush draw. I tend to get a little irritated by these folks, and yeah, a few times I've been guilty of putting on the "table coach" hat and throwing out some odds with an insult or two, but lately I've seen so many of these flush people, that I'm becoming quite used to their presence, and really, once you can identify a flush lover, they're easy to play.

Lastly, I've been trying to identify my biggest leak in March, and I'm pretty confident that it's my sometime tendency to get married to a nice hand pre-flop. On a few occasions I made my standard raise with hands like AQs or AKs or 99, and just couldn't get away from them even when the flop missed me. I'd say in general, I tend to always fire out something like a half-pot bet against one opponent when I was the raiser pre-flop, and I'm thinking that at best this is about a zero EV move for me. Mostly because when the opponent calls on the flop, I get sucked into betting on the turn and continuing the bluff, which is a really negative EV move. I mean, he called on the flop... it's check-fold territory from here. Other than these situations though, I think my play has been rather good lately... with me rarely leaving a table disappointed in my play.

In general, I've been a lot more disciplined in March, treating every single SNG seriously, and working to maximize every possible chance of surviving to make the money. A little luck can obviously swing things one way or the other, but I'm shooting for 42% ITM (and again at least 50 SNGs) in April.

WPBT Tournament Report

2005-03-30T22:25:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to participate in one of the WPBT tournaments for a while now, and after a good month, I finally got on PokerStars and threw down $22 for tonight's tourney.

It was fun, and I'll definitely be participating again, though the outcome (for me) was a little disappointing... but most of all I'm disappointed that I didn't get to sit with very many of the folks who literally have taught me everything I know. 109 players, $2180 divided amongst the top 18, T1500 to start.

The cards were pretty lackluster as well. Early on, I was getting nothing even remotely playable, which is a double-edged sword: it keeps you out of trouble, but even the small blinds in the early going start whittling away your stack pretty fast.

On the first hand which I voluntarily put money in the pot I held AJo, which I was hesitant to play, and when the flop came 234 rainbow, I bet half the pot and Chris folded. (I drop his name here, just because he was one of a very few opponents I recognized and who's site I read.)

Not long after I called down a short stack all-in with 99 on a K84 flop, while he held AK. I made a bad read and didn't believe his push when another player and I had checked to him. That put me down to about T750 or so.

Then just before the first break, I hit the wrong button and called an all-in raise to my right. I held KQo, against 55, and was ready to leave really pissed off until the river brought a King. I felt that I had just used up all my luck on that hand, and said so in the chat (though I guess KQ vs 55 wasn't the worst place to hit the wrong button in hindsight). At the break I was up to T1580, with the average stack being T2477... still a lot of work to do.

Glancing at the leaderboard during the break, I noticed that nearly all the familiar names were already out, which was kind of disappointing, but a little encouraging: I had at least outlasted some of the people I look up to. In a single tournament that's not worth much, and really means nothing, but it was encouraging none-the-less.

After the break, the blinds were hurting my dwindling stack pretty good, and the only really memorable hand was the one that knocked me out:

I found AQo with about T1250, and a middle-position raiser made it T600, and it was folded around to me. Now, there are better hands in better spots, but the blinds are 100/200 and doubling up here would really help the cause... and if I don't make a move soon, I'll be out anyway. So I push. "pumpkin1974" calls. He holds KJ of spades, and I feel good about my push at least. The flop is ragged, and helps neither of us, with just one spade. Turn: spade. River: spade. As I write this "pumpkin1974" is in second place with about 10k in chips. Good luck to whomever that may be.

I finished in 50th place of 109, at least outlasting over half the field, which was the general goal I had in the back of my mind at the start.

A General Update

2005-03-24T19:49:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted much this month, and mostly that is due to my working hard to really hammer the SNGs and spend my time there, and the other half of that coin is that after hundreds of tourneys, not much that can happen seems new or post-worthy. As well, I'm saving my SNG insights and thoughts for my end-of-the-month stats post. Overall though, it's been a good month on that front: I think I'm falling into a tight/aggressive groove.

I've been avoiding the NL cash games in an effort to stabilize my bankroll, and this seems like a good idea at this time. I played a few quick sessions here and there... sometimes after a non-ITM finish in a SNG I'll decide to go sit at a $25NL table and make a quick score of $11 to make up for the SNG loss. You'd think this would be a bad idea, or some tilt-fueled, results-oriented, -EV proposition, but it works for me more often than not. Mentally, there's no pressure... I just sit and play conservative, and usually within a few orbits I either leave because I'm up the $11, or I leave because I just haven't got any cards and am becoming bored.

In other news, I ordered my first set of Copags after reading and hearing about them for a while now. The consensus seems to be that they're on par with or even better than Kems, and the Copags are selling on eBay for about $15 for 2 decks. We'll see when they get here.

I'm also still hashing out the details and getting ready to start seriously making poker tables. I've got a few interested buyers, a bunch of fabric, vinyl, and foam samples, and a basement full of tools. I don't want to get too excited about any of this, but if it all goes well, I should at least be able to pad my bankroll with a little profit from the venture, which was 75% of the point in the first place.

Worst Beat Ever

2005-03-09T22:56:00.000-05:00

Just felt I needed to blog this. This was easily the worst beat I've ever taken.

Middle rounds of a SNG... I find AA and give it a 3x BB raise, with two callers. The flop hits me in the face: 55A. With a monster full house, and two diamonds on the board... I'm thinking I can probably double through someone on this hand. It's checked to me, and I check... and the guy behind me checks. Not a problem really.

The turn card is the king of diamonds, putting 3 diamonds on the board, a pair of fives, and AK. This hand surely has to have hit someone at least a little. It's checked to me again, and I bet about half the pot, and get one caller. Perfect. I'll get the rest of his chips on the river.

The river card is another King! Great! I now hold Aces full of Kings, and put my lone opponent all in. He calls and wins holding:

KK.

The Polaris Open

2005-03-08T16:34:00.000-05:00

Last weekend I had the opportunity to be invited to what was to be a rather large tournament (compared the one-table affairs I normally find myself in), held in the shop of a Polaris dealership (you know, quads and sleds and the like). I drug along a few regulars from my home game, and found myself amidst a field of ~20 players, half of which I had played against before. Whether or not this will become a recurring tournament remains to be seen, but the mood seemed like a "yes" for a semi-monthly or quarterly.

Now, as I was worried about before hand, the people running the tourney weren't really completely on the ball about things. The buy in was to be $50, with $10 being taken for food (pizza and snacks) and beer, which was pretty reasonable... there was a lot of food, and an ample amount of Busch Light, which was indeed both 1) wet and 2) semi-alcoholic. $40 per person into a prize pool makes for a decent tourney.

The blinds and starting chips, were determined from someone's pamphlet that came with the "Howard Lederer's Secrets of No Limit Hold 'Em" video. T1000 to start, blinds at 25/25, then 25/50, and climbing rather exponentially from there. That's cool, but what I'm not such a fan of was the 12 minute blind levels... the entire tournament, including breaks was about 2 hours. I would have preferred at least 15 minute levels, considering we were dealing our own hands, there was frequent conversation which interrupted or otherwise slowed play, and we were at short-handed tables to start. The tables could only really accommodate 8 players comfortably, and large portions of the tourney saw 5-6 players at a table.

I did a lot of prep for this tourney, hitting the SNGs all week hard, reviewing the odds of all drawing hands on the drive to Pittsburgh, and really thinking about tells and playing styles a lot. Weak = strong and strong = weak and slow calls vs fast calls and the like. I was ready.

I got lucky early with JTo in the BB against a well-known maniac. He bet the flop the minimum, which had missed me pretty wide, but I felt strongly he was simply trying to pick it up, and I called. The turn brought 3 spades on board (I was holding the J), and an OESD for me. He bet the minimum again, and now I felt really strongly that he was either drawing, or held nothing. I pushed, praying for a fold, and he called. One of us was about to be the dreaded "first out". He held the Ace of spades, and a rag. My flush outs disappeared, and I realized I needed to hit a Jack, a Ten, or a Queen or Seven to complete my straight. 14 outs (Edit: minus the possible spade outs).

The river completed my straight, and I was now the big stack. The rest of the tournament was rather mundane, though I did make a few good laydowns, and a few good reads... pushing with nothing when I was certain an opponent was weak and would fold. I made an error when I pushed on a short stack (T350) really thinking he would fold and was on a draw, and lost, doubling him up. This would come back to haunt me.

Final table... I got hot. Real hot. AKs. KK. The blinds reaching half of everyone's stack... I push from the button stealing a huge pile of chips that were the blinds. Finally, I make the top three, which was all this tourney was to pay. And here's what really chaps my ass: a 70%/20%/10% prize distribution. I hate front-loaded prize structures, especially when the blinds are so ridiculous that you just know this thing will be over in 2 orbits or less. Welcome to luckfest 2005!

One thing's for sure, I'm not going to sit around and get blinded out. Any Ace = go time. Heck, damn near anything higher than a ten = go time. I find A9s on the button (also first to act at this point), and push all-in. SB, folds. BB (who almost has to call considering half his stack is already in the middle), or course, calls. QTo! I breathe a sigh of relief and take a long swig of Busch (come to the mountains baby!) knowing I at least got my money in as the favorite. Until the board throws up two Queens. Out in 3rd. BB (who was once on the respirator with T350 until I doubled him) goes on to win it all.

I've never been so disappointed with an ITM finish. I think a lot of my disappointment comes from the amount of prep I felt like I put into this tournament... I was ready to destroy it... and mostly, that's what I did. The other half of my disappointment comes from the front-loaded prize structure... 2 hands later, someone walked away with over $500. And that's all I really have to say about that.

...another multi-table tourney tonight at a co-workers (but this time using my own comfortable, familiar home game blind/payout structure).

Party Changes $25NL Blinds?

2005-03-01T23:55:00.000-05:00

So I'm doing my level best to avoid the NL cash games on Party for a bit... but I've also got a 20% reload bonus to work off. Bonus whoring has definitley been an under-used tool for me. I've worked off a few initial deposit bonuses, and made sure to get accounts on both Party and Empire so I can flop money back and forth when they decide to offer reload bonuses, but I've really not done much of this.

So to my point, 25NL is a decent place for me to clear my raked hands. It's perhaps the only place, considering my aversion to the low limit tables at this time. Today, it seems Party decided to change the blinds from .25/.50 to .10/.25, which seems to definitely change the texture of the game a bit.

For starters, less pots are raked, although this isn't terribly significant. It's also a lot cheaper to clear a bonus... assuming you're not getting premium hands that you want to play, you're looking at a 35 cent investment per orbit, as opposed to the previous 75. You can see twice as many raked pots (in theory) for the same assumed loss per orbit. Of course, you'll win a hand now and again too.

I'm still on the fence about this change... it's nice to be able to see flops for as little as 25 cents... but often that means that opponents will be seeing a lot more flops as well. I think this demands a little more care, for instance when you're in the BB with something half-decent (but not raise-worthy) and you catch a small piece of the flop: god only knows what your opponents might be holding.

Anyone know why they decided to drop the stakes?

February SNG Stats

2005-03-01T01:00:00.000-05:00

February saw a change in strategy for me on the SNG front. Previously, I had been playing what I'll term "smart" in the early levels... not loose pre-flop, but taking a chance on almost any 2 paints that I could limp with. When I was raised or saw raises, I played tight. When the flop missed or caught me only slightly, I folded. My theory was this: People finishing in 7-10 place in levels 1-3 are often dead money fools who think that aggression will make someone lay down their full house. Following that logic... if you're sitting out waiting on premium starting hands, most of the time you're going to be heading into level 4 as a medium stack at best, and against the opponents who are probably the better players at the table. You want to be scooping some pots from the fish to give you a nice stack heading into the high blinds.

In February, I tried to play with essentially the opposite strategy: In early and middle position in levels 1-3, only play pocket pairs and AKs or AKo. Low pairs, hoping for sets... big pairs, hoping for undercards... and AK, hoping to out-kick the dopes playing any ace in small pots. I like this strategy a lot. (We'll get to its effect in a minute.) Obviously, playing this way early should have some positive angles:

1. You're hardly ever going to finish in 7-10 place.

The obvious point here is that essentially when you start you have a 3 in 10 chance of finishing in the money... if you can make it to 6th place with any fair stack, you're looking at a 1 in 2 chance of making the money. Survival is key, and playing only premium hands should help you survive.

2. When you enter a hand, you're probably going to win a lot, or only lose a little.

A story from a multi-table tournament held at my bachelor party last summer is appropriate here. I was doing well... down to just several players, and my cousin was sweating me. Of family members, he's easily the best player of the group. I don't recall the exact hand I held... but I think it was something like T5o in the SB. For whatever reason (let's blame alcohol), I just called the BB and an early position caller. My cousin silently expressed dismay at my call. I caught a ten on the flop, but there was an overcard, and early action to my right, so I folded.

My cousin later asked, "Without decent cards, what were you hoping for?" His point hit home: even though I caught a card I wanted, I couldn't continue the hand. There were very few flops against multiple opponents where I could have felt at all confident about a trash hand like T5o.

Back to the point: if you're only playing pairs and AK, you're giving yourself a major advantage going into the flop. Sometimes, you'll flop the nuts or near-nuts, hidden sets, and the like. Other times, when you're facing a tough call or decision, your tight play pre-flop will come to your aid. Sometimes you'll feel you're beat and fold. But when you make a crying call on the river, you'll be surprised how your hands may hold up. To use a war analogy: Your marksmanship might not always be on target, but at least you're using the best ammunition.

3. You may benefit from a tight table image later on.

Assuming your opponents are paying attention, and at least the best of them probably are, you're going to gain the image of a rock which will likely aid your later steal attempts and late-level bluffs.

---

So in February I put this new plan into action, and the results weren't stellar:

SNG's Played: 37
ITM: 37.84%
ROI: -3.63%
Profit: -$16.00

I've still yet to crack 40% ITM for a month, and that's a goal that's important to me. I'm happy with the new early-level strategy I'm employing, and I'm sure it helped me to post as decent an ITM% as I did, but of 37 tournaments, and 14 ITM, I only landed two 1sts, and that killed my chances at a positive ROI.

One final observation: I need to start dedicating a little more of my poker time to SNGs, and try to play at least 50 every month. Given the decidedly undesirable and gut-wrenching swings of short-handed $25 NL variance, this is the smart option for my bankroll at this point in time.

We'll see how this tight SNG play works out in March with a hopefully larger sample size.

Back On Track

2005-02-21T00:01:00.000-05:00

So after crying about last weekend's several-hundred-dollar slide, and (at least partly correctly) blaming bad beats and variance, I took a short break from poker. I think what's important about "taking a break" like this, isn't so much a length of time away from the game, as it is a chance for a mental shift and a gaining of perspective and focus. An effective break in some cases for some people may be a week or even a month, or as little as a few hours. I was at a point where I was losing, not having fun, and finally realized that things could really only get worse. Time to stop the loss, and figure out what to do from here.

And that's what I did. My break wasn't long... but so far I have to think it has been effective. I essentially just stood back and looked at where I was and tried to honestly assess my play in the past few weeks, swallowed hard, and jumped right back in the next day. Since though, I've been thinking a lot about how to improve my bankroll and my performance, and for future reference I'd like to get my mental list out of my head:

1. I need to set better stop-loss limits and have the discipline to stick to them. One of the main reasons why SNGs have been a largely good expenditure of my poker time (though not really that profitable), is that any loss is limited to the amount of the buy-in. But with my recent obsession with 25NL, losses can (and have) spiraled out of control at times. I'm learning to sit down at a table, and if somehow I end up dropping my $25, force myself to sit out a few hands and think about why/how I lost that $25: if it's for any mental reasons (tired, pissed, drunk, whatever), I'm done. If it truly was a bad beat, and I can honestly shrug it off, I'll find another table and maybe keep playing. The point here is I need to walk away more often, at the first sign of trouble. So obvious, but so difficult.

2. I need to pay more attention to table selection. Here's an example that demonstrates my point. Last night I was sitting at a 25NL table, and up to about $85 in just under and hour. Some guy sat down with $16 two seats to my left, and just went NUTS. He was playing super-mega agressive, and as usual, I geared down and kept praying for sets to bust him with. Mostly, I folded a lot. He was pushing the entire table around... raising and scooping pot after pot... then craftily pushing and antagonizing people when he had the nuts. Finally I catch a piece of a flop, and get myself involved with this guy. He throws out $20 on the river, and I have to fold (overcards on the board, etc), and as he did several times, he shows he had nothing. I didn't lose much but some pride luckily. When I left he was up to $195 and going strong, busting anyone who was foolish enough to think that he was just an idiot. I need to hit the passive tables, and leave when conditions change. And avoid "LED_ZEP" on Party. This guy's either the luckiest dope online, or he's a fine agressive player.

3. I need to hit the fundamentals. This one has been self-evident for a while, but reading a timely post by April gave me a little kick in the head. I think I'm decent. I've certainly logged a lot of hours and hands in the past 6 months. But there's a lot of aspects of the game that I really haven't spent much time working on or thinking about. Most noteably, calculating pot odds, hand odds, and outs. Now as an almost strictly NL player, I tend to rely on generalizations and (perhaps too often) on implied odds. But hell, I even botched the odds (and had to later edit to keep from looking like a total fool) in my last post dealing with someone having a four-flush on the flop with 2 cards to come (1.9:1). What the freak? I can't even spit out the odds of such a common situation as that?

With that said, I have to save myself a little here by saying that I think I have a decent feel for the odds... I mean, I can tell you generally where things fall. But I've somewhat been missing the angle that NL (and limit... or poker in general for that matter) is about maneuvering to put your opponents on the wrong side of the odds, and always being aware of your own. I should really start looking at NL as Limit, but with the freedom to score much more than a 4 bet cap with the nuts.

4. In general: play tighter. I still don't think I've really mastered the act of gearing down when things aren't going so good. This last week I've been playing much tighter both in 25NL, and in levels 1-3 of SNGs, and it appears to be paying. I still don't think I've scored a 1st place this month in a SNG, but I've been reaching the money more often. Mostly though, playing tighter has really helped my 25NL game. The fact is, I've realized that I'm not good enough to be playing those borderline hands which require a lot of skill to play effectively. By taking less hands to the flop, I'm giving myself the edge I need to show consistent gains during most sessions. Plus, at the shorthanded tables that I play, you get a chance to play crap and mediocre starting cards in the BB once every orbit of 6 hands. Assuming there's a pre-flop raise and you fold your BB every other orbit, that's still something like every 12 hands.

---

It feels good to feel like I'm in a period of growth again. There's a few things that seem to have clicked in the past week, and that, coupled with luck going my way a few times, has managed to help me post a nice uptick in my bankroll that I can feel good about and hopefully build upon.

Bad Beats And Bad Beats

2005-02-16T01:52:00.000-05:00

This is probably the post you can just skip and move along to somewhere more interesting on the Internet, but I need an outlet. I need to vent a little.

You hold QQ. You raise. You see a flop of J42. You bet the pot and get raised the min raise. You push. Your opponent has AJ. Turn: 2. River: J.

In a SNG, first hand dealt ITM, you hold QQ. You raise 3x BB. You get a lone caller. Flop: Q92. You bet the pot. Your opponent pushes all-in. You call. He holds: KJ. Turn: A. River. T. 3rd place. Yay.

You hold 65 of diamonds in the BB. You see a flop of 874, two spades. Someone bets $3. You raise to $9 to protect your hand. Behind you someone pushes for $28. You call. He holds T3 of spades. Turn: Spade. River: Spade.

Let's analyze this one a little, shall we? T3 guy had $.50 invested in the pot, saw a $3 bet, then a $9 raise, and shoved in $16 more on a 1 in 3 chance at a flush, of which his kicker would be a fucking TEN. I'm baffled at why in the world a T3 sooooted would even be worth 50 damn cents to begin with.

And the beats go on. I'll spare you the details.

I find myself at a point where I'm questioning making bets with the nuts, for fear of some ridiculous runner-runner suckout. No, that's not logical. And yes, I keep right on betting to protect my hand and betting for value. And the bankroll dwindles to levels I don't even want to discuss.

I know playing in NL cash games can be a high variance situation. I know that playing against morons who play T3s, and go all in on four-flushes is supposed to swing that variance my way and equate to +EV. I play tight. I avoid big confrontations (to a fault I think sometimes) unless I have the nuts or a solid read. I fold and fold waiting for flopped sets and BB-special straights, and hit the gas. And I get callers chasing crap or dominated hands. And they spike.

In NL cash games, I make mistakes, too. But it's usually a $3 bluff. Or betting into a full house with trips and not throwing on the brakes quick enough. Is it just the bad side of variance, or are there leaks I'm just not seeing? Is $25NL the wrong place for my dwindling roll?

I have no answers. In life in general, I tend to be an "ok, now what?" sort of person most of the time. I deal with the facts, fix what I can, ignore what I can't, and move on.

It's time for a break. Good luck out there.

Two $25NL Stories

2005-02-10T15:07:00.000-05:00

1. This Cannot Happen

So there I was, sitting at 3AM at a table with a few other dudes, one admitting that he was drunk, but playing pretty solid... another who had donated $25 twice and reloaded after each time... and a guy across the table from me, who I'll simply call "lucy" (loose-y, get it?). Now, a few minutes prior to the story I'm about to tell you, the reload guy had called my $3 pre-flop raise when I held the lovely-yet-dangerous Hilton sisters, and when the flop came something like J73 rainbow, I took a stab and put the guy all-in.

(Now as an aside here, this maybe wasn't the best play, but it's one you'll see quite a bit in $25NL... people seem to love to make these kind of $18 bets into a $7 pot when they have what is probably the best hand, and when it's hidden well... like overpairs, or sets, or improbable straights. I'm kind of on the fence about a play like this really... sometimes I'll do it... and sometimes I'll just bet enough for value and to defend my hand against draws. But back to the story...)

So the guy calls himself all-in, I win the hand, and he doesn't show 97o. "Really? Calling a $3 pre-flop raise with 97o?", I type into the chat. Lucy chimes in saying, "I like the call." We discuss it a little more... calling raises with medium suited connectors I'll do sometimes against the right player... but 97o, no way. We then openly taunt reload guy as he reloads again, by saying that we're adding him to our buddy lists.

Then the hand happened. On the button I find the hammer (72o), and raise to $3 for fun and what I hope will be profit. Lucy calls, everyone else folds. Flop: K92 rainbow. Hmm... Lucy checks, I bet $3, and am slowly called. Turn: 7. Now I hold bottom two pair, but two pair none-the-less... Lucy checks, I bet $3, and Lucy calls, adding "you guy's might be adding me to your buddy lists after this hand". Then the river card, the hammer-of-the-gods, holy-fuck-I-am-going-to-nail-this-guy, this-will-be-hilarious card: another 7. Full house, sevens full of deuces: the hammer's raison d'être.

I bet $10, and get raised $8 more (Lucy is all-in), I call and he shows: 97o. Sevens full of nines. OMFG. The table erupts at both me and Lucy.

2. This Cannot Happen Either

Now I know all the stories about how online poker is rigged... the classic line you'll often read in the chat window after someone suffers a beat is: "only on partypoker" or "that's partypoker for you", as if nobody ever hit a runner runner with real felt and cards before. I've never seen anything to make me feel even the slightest bit skeptical. And though I know cheating must exist, I've never really felt cheated online. The classic and most likely scheme you're to encounter would be two (or more, but just 2 is most likely) persons who are on the phone or on IM while they are both sitting at the same table.

I don't have much history with collusion, other than thinking about the theory of it, and participating in implicit varieties... like when you and a friend go to a game with other strangers, and avoid playing in pots together, always respecting each other's moves. Or, like in tournament poker, when one person is all in and gets two callers: the two callers may often want to check (unless they have an unbeatable hand) through the turn and river, implicitly colluding to knock the other player out: two hands have a better chance of beating him than one. The point is, implicit collusion isn't exactly cheating... you don't even talk about it... it just happens.

Now the only thing I watch for really online, is two players from the same town, or who are chatting as if they know each other. Usually, this doesn't mean a thing... most of the time they end up trying to outdo each other and I can be waiting to scoop some $ with a monster. But the other night, I encountered two players from the same town, acting suspiciously: always dumping pots to one another... often taking a tell-tale 5-10 seconds to act when they were both in the hand, yet acting quickly when just one of them was. (Phone or IM?) They were from the same town. Then a railbird (presumably from the same town) came in... I suspect waiting for a seat at the full table.

Now here's the thing for future reference... I had no concrete proof they were cheating, but I was pretty damn sure about it (other players would voice the same opinion independently later, so that's a pretty strong argument)... so why did I continue to play? Why not sit out and watch for a bit?

Eventually, this nasty hand happened. I held JJ, raised pre-flop, and got called by one of the suspected cheaters. The flop came K94, which isn't too bad for the Jacks, and I bet. At this point, my opponent is chatting openly about the hand with the railbird, asking "what should I do?" She hasn't yet said what she holds. She calls. The turn is an ugly ace. For better or worse I bet again... she says "what should I do ? I have AK." He says, "re-raise", and she does.

Now at this point, I'm pissed already. It's obviously against the rules to talk about a hand in progress or even what someone might hold. It's certainly not acceptable to say what you hold. But in the few times I've seen someone either say thier hole cards directly, or allude to holding a particular had, they've never had it. It's a classic intimidation technique. And why would you say what you have here? She has damn-near the nuts with top two pair, if she indeed does have AK.

I end up calling, to see another Ace on the river, luckily she only has a few bucks on hand... I call, and she has AK. Me and a few other's immediately jump on her and her buddies about talking about the hand... and we get met with the usual censored replies and wonderful statements like "what a bunch of homos".

I reported all the details and apparently the three of them have had their chat disabled, were sent warning emails, and had thier accounts flagged for periodic review. I know after the flop and on 4th street (in hindsight) I played the hand poorly, but at the time, it felt very right. How would you have played a situation like that?

January Wrap-Up

2005-02-03T01:54:00.000-05:00

January was an interesting month for me... perhaps the most interesting since I started playing online regularly back in July or so of last year. I started the month hoping to nail the $10 sit and gos and make smart decisions with my bankroll. However, I got caught up in $25NL and even some limit (UGH.) games and managed to piss away any good that I had been doing at the SNGs. Then, in a move of stupidity or genius (I'm voting for stupidity), I managed to enter and win a $50+5 SNG, bringing my account back into sorta-okay-healthy status.

Then $25NL 6 Max started calling my name, then it started screaming it, and then I managed to hit the mark I've been striving for since I started playing online: showing a profit, meager as it was. Yes, was. $25NL is a harsh mistress, and lately it's been unkind out there. I still see a major potential for profit playing NL cash games, and indeed, I've certainly shown significant overall gains since I started.

In the end though, I'm happy to report some welcome SNG numbers for January:

ITM: 35.42%
ROI: 37.22%

Now these numbers are obviously skewed by that $50+5 win, so here they are without that, just for reference:

ITM: 34.04%
ROI: 4.17%

Not so great, but a positive ROI is a positive ROI.

Now overall, after touching the profit stage for all of about a day, I'm back down to -$146.25 from what I had originally said was my 2005 goal (showing an all-time profit). I'm suprisingly cool with this, actually. I'll get there.

Phase 3: Profit

2005-01-31T03:59:00.000-05:00

Thanks to my recent discovery of (and un-ignorable success at) $25NL, I'm ecstatic to report that I've finally managed to claw my way into all-time positive territory, to the tune of 10 cents profit, for now so far. To some I'm sure this seems silly to celebrate, but I also know a lot of people who, like myself, went a ways in the hole before they finally started showing a profit playing poker. "Showing a profit", for me, also means that I'm now sitting on a comfortable bankroll of the better part of $1000. The few unavoidable valleys of variance on the graph aside, it's upwards from here.

Wired Aces

2005-01-27T03:23:00.000-05:00

...and a whole lotta freakin cash for a $25NL table.

Yes, that's me with the rockets. Someone should have told me NL was this profitable earlier. In less than a week I went from hundreds down from my year end goal, to a mere $60 to go after tonight's blazing session. I don't even know what to say about this kind of success.

Maybe January Is The Month

2005-01-26T23:17:00.000-05:00

After the $25NL success I reported on earlier today, and feeling good about the state of my bankroll for a change, I decided to tally everything up. I went back through my records of online deposits, and counted all the cash and coin in my man purse bank bag I use for poker. I hadn't counted it in months, though I know it has grown. Then I got a multi-table itch, and took 1st in a 2-table $10+1 for a very welcome $80.

Now as previously reported, I was close to breaking even last year before I went on a terrible run, and ever since I've been somewhat lacking in motivation to perform well: it's difficult to do so when the hole you're in is so deep. I've been learning... I've had a great time... I'm 3x the all-around poker player I was before last year... and it's not like I've been losing the mortgage payment. But still when you're hundreds down, then work hard to climb back to almost even, and then make poor choices which put you even further in the hole... there's not much immediate hope to play for. I know I can win long term. I'll eventually prove that.

But it turns out, after adding it all up (and a very positive last week), I'm only $184 down total since I made my first online buy-in last February. The goal for 2005 was simply to finish in all-time positive territory, and with less than $200 to go and 11 months to earn it in, this one's a slam dunk. SNGs are still my bread and butter game and I'll be sticking with the $10 ones until I'm well into the positive territory later this year, but with recent success, I'm going to keep carefully dabbling in $25NL a little here and there... there's some easy money out there.

And so, energized, having added it all up, I've started posting stats again over in the sidebar.

$25 NL 6 Max

2005-01-26T11:32:00.000-05:00

Yeah, you heard me right, $25 No Limit... you know, the game I'm supposed to be avoiding. More on that in a bit, but first, a hand history:

Table Table 25413 (6 max) (Real Money) -- Seat 2 is the button
Total number of players : 5
Seat 2: GantosHolla ( $62.4)
Seat 3: ALIEBERMAN ( $27.25)
Seat 4: coolhandvade ( $17.5)
Seat 5: ME ( $58.06)
Seat 6: sling6575 ( $32.5)
ALIEBERMAN posts small blind (0.25)
coolhandvade posts big blind (0.5)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to ME [ 5h, 5s ]

Now this is the kind of hand that I feel very safe playing... I'm looking ideally for a 3rd five on the flop, and if I get it, I'm likely to win. If I don't get it, then there are only a few situations really where it will feel right to continue (like if every flop card is under a 5, giving me an overpair and wheel draws, or maybe if the board pairs and the other players actions feel right). Really though, the benefit of a hand like this, is that you're either going to make a lot of money, or be able to get away from it easily.

ME calls (0.5)
sling6575 folds.
GantosHolla raises (2) to 2
ALIEBERMAN folds.
coolhandvade folds.

So I got raised to $2, and if I call, we'll be heads up. At this point, I can honestly say that I have been watching my raiser for a while, and he does a lot of pre-flop raising. I've seen him raise it to higher than $2 with decent pocket pairs, and as far as I can tell with the few hands I've seen his cards, a $2 raise usually means just about any ace, though I distinctly remember AQo and ATs. I know where I'm at, and exactly what I'm looking for here. Let's see the flop.

ME calls (1.5)
** Dealing Flop ** : [ Ad, 5c, Jc ]

I can't even imagine a much better flop than that. I've nailed a very deceptive set of fives, and I'm almost 100% positive that my opponent paired his ace, and maybe even his ace and a jack. The two clubs are a little scary, but at this point, I still feel safe checking to my opponent. If he checks behind me here, that'll give me an idea that maybe he totally missed his hand, has a jack and fears the ace, or is looking for a club or a broadway. If he has the ace, he'll likely bet.

ME checks.
GantosHolla bets (1)

A reasonable bet... he has what I know he has. Now, I can just call, and see what the turn brings, hopefully stringing this guy along for a beat at the end... or with top pair decent kicker (or even two pair), my opponent is probably going to call any reasonable raise here. Plus, on the (what I think is a) minor chance he is betting on a flush or straight draw, I need to push him out.

ME raises (3) to 3
GantosHolla raises (4) to 5

Well now my adrenaline is pumping. The first thing to go through my head (and rightly so) is "Could he have trip aces or trip jacks?". In a few seconds I run through the hand again, remembering his pre-flop raise, and that my instinct was an ace, maybe AJ for two pair, or maybe AK for TPTK. I know I'd probably raise with top two pair. Whatever he has, he raised pre-flop, got check raised on the flop, and STILL re-raised. My instincts are telling me two things: 1) I probably have him beat. and 2) This guy is in love with this hand. That led me to do this:

ME raises (53.06) to 56.06
ME is all-In.
GantosHolla calls (51.06)

Oh the humanity. Why doesn't Party show your cards when 2 people are all in again? I'd really like to know what he has ASAP.

** Dealing Turn ** : [ 5d ]

Nevermind! Whatever he had, it wasn't quads. I still think I had him beat from the start, so that case five is probably just some extra piss in his pudding.

** Dealing River ** : [ 3h ]
Creating Main Pot with $114.87 with ME
** Summary **
Main Pot: $114.87 | | Rake: $2
Board: [ Ad 5c Jc 5d 3h ]
GantosHolla balance $4.34, lost $58.06 [ Ah Kc ] [ two pairs, aces and fives -- Ah,Ad,Kc,5c,5d ]

Sometimes, I feel like I'm starting to understand this game.

ME balance $114.87, bet $58.06, collected $114.87, net +$56.81 [ 5h 5s ] [ four of a kind, fives -- Ad,5h,5s,5c,5d ]

*************

So I've been playing $25NL 6 Max, recently, despite my promise to just stick with the safe SNGs and avoid the high variance. Up until this last week January had been a wild month for me... doing very well in the $10 SNGs, but losing those modest winnings back at both Limit and NL cash games. I also recieved a $50 tell-a-friend bonus, and pretty much lost that as well. But in the last week, I really feel like something has clicked in regards to $25NL, and not just because I've been winning at it. Just for the record, in my last 4 sessions, I profited $75, $85, $15, and $70. That's +$245 in about 5 hours: $49/hour, 98 BB/hour... almost doubling my Empire account in 4 days and taking January into the positive.

I think my current protective strategy for $25NL is the key to this. I tend to limp with anything playable (and a lot of hands are playable 6-handed, right?), occasionally raise pre-flop (to defend a big pocket pair), and play very tight on the flop, which I think is what really seperates the winners from the losers. Almost every table I sit at I can find at least one or two people who will chase just about any draw, and at almost any price.

As usual, the name of the game is patience. You just have to fold and fold and limp and fold until you flop something decent... and if you flop a monster, tend the pot and maximize it any way you can... if you don't have the nuts or near nuts, avoid any serious confrontations and keep pots small. Simple strategy, but very effective I should think.

There are definitely fish in the NL pool. Although I've had a wild ride playing $25NL, I think that experience has been very good, and a lot of the wildness of the ride was due to my wild play earlier this month. Experimenting... raising with draws... maximizing pots when I should have been minimizing or folding altogether... results being more important than performance... lots of mistakes. I'm don't plan on abandoning my SNG roots anytime soon (and with the success I had there this month, doing so would be stupid), but I'll be playing $25NL again soon, for sure, because I can't ignore the success I've had there either.

Any NL strategy posts, links, thoughts, opinions, or tips are more than welcome.

So Stupid

2005-01-15T23:56:00.000-05:00

January was supposed to be the month. The month where I buckled down, played a straight game, and worked the $10 SNGs where I've had success before, and that my bankroll can support. And don't get me wrong, I've done that to an extent, with a reasonable amount of ITM finishes, and a barely positive ROI.

But I've also been hitting the $25 No Limit tables, and to the tune of a net loss. Surely, my somewhat apathetic attitude of late to the SNG grind, and the excitement of $50 pots is largely the reason. I've done decent at $25 NL, but no surprise, the variance can be quite high I've found. I won't bore you and commit the poker blogger sin of elaborating on how two flopped nut straights were run down by two full houses for bad beats in large pots.

So tonight, after dropping an unhealthy sum of money at $25 NL, reducing the online portion of my total bankroll to "holy shit" proportions, and half on a tilt, I did perhaps the stupidest poker thing I've ever done. The worst sin. The big one.

I took the dwindling remnants of my account, and found the highest buy-in SNG I could afford: I went for broke. All (or most of) your eggs in one poker basket = bad.

Now, "broke" for me, ended up not being enough for a $100+9 SNG, so I settled on a $50+5. And for someone who's only ever played $5, $10, and $20's (and had a horrible run at the $20's), $50 land was an intimidating and stupid place to be.

I'll try and spare you most of the gory details of the tournament, because I know how disinteresting that can be to read sometimes.

***

So I sat down, and realized what I was doing and the error I was making. I was considering standing back up and hitting a $20 table, but unfortunately the table filled, and I was greeted with T1000 in chips. "Here we go, you dumbass" I thought, immediately trying to compose myself. "The damage is done. Try and play smart."

I limped and chased a few promising hands right off the bat, cursing my loose play so early, and found myself the short stack with just over T800 midway through level 1. Then in the BB, I found KT of spades, and called a small pre-flop raise. The flop came QQT, with just one spade, giving me queens and tens, with decent kicker, and a small chance at a backdoor flush. At this point the pre-flop raiser threw out a few hundred chips, any other stragglers folded, and I didn't like it one bit, but made the call. The turn was another spade, and my lone opponent pushed all-in, with exactly the same amount of chips that I had.

Now, perhaps I should have considered the call a little longer, but with such a small pre-flop raise, I wasn't putting this guy on a high pocket pair. The other options were: he could have a Q, he could have AT outkicking me, or he could have crap and be speeding and trying to bully. In hindsight, I should have obviously folded. I called the all-in, spiked the 5th spade on the river, and felt DAMN lucky to have not lost to his pocket Jacks.

The chip leader far and away now with T1940, I made some notes to myself to play slow and smart, never chase unless pot odds were well in favor, and to consider that I had 1/5 of the chips, and not to blow that.

At this point somewhere, a loose fool pushed all-in twice with garbage and managed to double up both times, rivaling me for the chip lead, then losing some of that back to other players, then giving me all the rest when I flopped TPTK with AJo, and Mr. Loose Fool couldn't get away from his pocket Sevens. Up to T3190 now, and beginning to feel pretty confident of making the money, though still fearing what must surely eventually be a tournament ending bad beat.

At the end of level 3, I flopped an open-ended straight draw, in which I only held the bottom card, and did well I think by getting away from it, even though the bets facing me were small. The turn hit the upper end of the straight for me, and I was glad that I was no longer in the hand actually. It didn't make it to showdown, but the chances of me being beat were quite good, and with a clear chip lead at this point, I think it was a smart play to get away from a hand like this.

Then, on the last hand of level 4 (down to just 5 players now), I got VERY lucky with KQo. The flop came Q82 rainbow, and my T150 bet was called slowly by a lone opponent. The turn was another 2, and feeling confident that my opponent didn't have a deuce, I made a strong T250 bet, liking my chances, and hoping to take the pot right here. I was raised another T250, I called, and the river was a beautiful Queen, giving me queens full of twos. I value bet T400 into the T1600 pot, was called and shown my opponent's pocket Eights which had had me beaten all the way until the river. Up to T4400 now, with closest stack at T2000.

Eventually, I moved up and down a bit, but ended up knocking out both the 4th and 3rd place finishers, taking me up to T7200 in level 7.

In the T400 big blind, I get just called, and I check with K9o to see a decent 876 flop. Having the dominating stack, and having outs with two overcards and an open-ended straight draw, I bet T400, get raised to T800, and I cautiously decide to call. The turn card is a King, giving me top pair, and I push all-in and am called. The river comes a blank, and my Kings beat my opponent's Eights for a glorious and stupid $250 win.

Several Short Posts In One

2005-01-06T01:00:00.000-05:00

December Stats

Not much to say about December really... I essentially didn't lose or gain anything. Hey, it was an improvement from November though!

Month	ITM	ROI
August	33.82%	-01.72%
September	38.38%	10.91%
October	34.92%	9.09%
November	21.31%	-38.61%
December	30.56%	-0.83%

There's something logically meaningless, yet cathartic about the start of a new year. I'm hoping to regain that mental ingredient that I obviously had a few months ago, and put it to work. At this point I'm just hoping to string a few positive ROI months together. I feel as if I should set a goal for 2005, as it seemed to motivate me well back in Sept and Oct when I was doing so well. Considering I started this year in a decent-sized hole (meaning that I'm still down since I started playing online last year), I'm just going to stick with the modest goal of climbing out and finishing 2005 in the black. Seems easy enough.

New Years Eve Late Game

I'm happy to report that the New Years Eve gathering that I hosted went off about as well as I could have hoped. As you may know, I've got a decent short-handed group of regulars (5 or 6) that can usually be counted on to play at least 4-5 times a year at my place. (It's been more often than that recently though... let's hope that continues.) I had been hesitant to invite new players into our game for a variety of reasons, but finally broke down and invited some interested guys from work. 3 out of the 4 I asked came, and a regular couldn't come... which gave us a chance to get in two nice 7-player NLHE tourneys between 11:30 and about 4am.

The guys from work played impressively well... while I fared not so good, busting out when an opponent flopped a set to my TPTK in the first game, and getting beaten by the nut flush when I made the king-high. As I've said before, the wife plays solid NLHE, and she won the second tourney.

A Chip And A Chair

You know it happens. I know it happens. People do sometimes come back from being down to their final chips to win tournaments. And it's always fun to watch. Tonight in a SNG I got to witness a guy get crippled down to T15 by the player on his right, who was kinda being an asshole the whole tournament. You know the guy: the one who sucks out on someone and says "THANK YOU THANK YOU"... the one who gloats by typing "LATER" (all caps is cool, right?) everytime he knocks someone out... that was this guy. The poetry of this story is when Mr. T15 somehow manages to end up heads up with Mr. CAPSLOCK, beats him to win the tourney, and says: "LATER". Beautiful.

Not beautiful however was when the blinds were rising up around my ears, and I pushed with 77, only to lose to Mr. T15's pocket jacks. At least he put my chips to good use.

The Poker Table Project

I've been hard at work dreaming and putting together some plans for the custom poker table top which I mentioned in my last entry. After several sketches, a lot of measuring, and some CAD drawings, I think I've finally nailed the overall shape that I'm looking for. I'm looking to make something that fits well over my existing dining room table, can comfortably seat 8 (and accomodate up to 10 without feeling too crowded), and is unique/well-made enough to be impressive. A regular oval idea kind-of bores me, and a round/octagon design won't fit my room too well... so I'm planning more of a swollen rectangle approach. (Just think of a rectangle with each of its sides bulging out... which lengthens each side for a little more elbow room, and provides more subtle corners which someone could sit at if they had to.)

I won't bore you any more with the details, but when I finish getting my shop set up (finally) and get started on this monster, I may have to throw up a few pics and such.

Another Live Play Update

2004-12-28T17:19:00.000-05:00

I again had the opportunity to sit in a few home tournaments recently, and fared pretty well, winning 2 of the 3 tournaments played during the evening. This was with essentially the same group that I talked about in my last post (the make-up-the-blinds as you go heave-'em-and-pray group). I can't say that I've really come up with a strategy for playing in this type of game, but something was obviously working quite well, and I'm pretty confident that it wasn't just luck.

This group made a lot of amateur mistakes, and in general showed me that they had little discipline or patience. We were playing short-handed (6 or so players, plus or minus 1), and they seem to like paying to 1st and 2nd, with 2nd just simply getting their buy-in back, and 1st getting the rest. Now this is okay I suppose... I always do something like a 70/30 between 1st and 2nd, or else winner take all with 5-7 players... but man do these guys have no clue how to play heads-up. First of all, I'm not playing to get my money back, I'm playing to win... and no, I will not chop. Stop asking.

I was amazed at how eager several people were to simply "get the game over with", when they had a good shot to win it all. During both games that I won, when heads up, my opponent kept pushing all-in, something like every other hand. This is so easy: I simply kept folding and giving up my blinds (which angered my opponent!?), waiting for when I knew I had him. Then he made the mistake of letting me see flops cheap, thinking that that was the only way he could get me to play. Eventually I flopped two pair, he pushed, and I won.

I'm also hosting a NLHE late tourney on New Years Eve, finally taking the risk of inviting some guys from work who at least have a basic handle on the game. We could end up with as many as 9 or 10 players, but 6-7 seems more likely. Following on the success of the last game I hosted, we'll be using the same structure, chip color-ups and etc. As well, I've been working on some plans to build a nice top to fit my dining room table, but also with detachable legs so it could be used alone... probably something like Chris Norrick's poker table with a wooden outer ring. A few matching drink/ashtray/etc side tables might also be a good winter project. We'll see!

November Stats, Live Play Update

2004-12-12T23:20:00.000-05:00

November was a devastating month for me as you may already know, but for the sake of full disclosure and completeness, here's the stats:

Month	ITM	ROI
August	33.82%	-01.72%
September	38.38%	10.91%
October	34.92%	9.09%
November	21.31%	-38.61%

It's quite significant that things going wrong away from the table, translated into things going horrribly wrong at the table. After the devastating run at $20 SNGs, in the middle of the month I took a step back, dropped back down to $10 games, and started the long hopeful grind back up.

There's something mildly cathartic in sharing such horrible numbers with the world. Yes, I sucked this month. Hard. I'm okay with that. If I were a franchise in a major pro sport, I'd be calling November a "rebuilding month": Hopefully getting shit back on track for good things to come.

Growing as a poker player probably requires at least a few runs like November was for me, and it's not just because of the obvious direct lessons like avoiding playing when you're not mentally capable of performing well, or planning well your attempts at moving up in levels. Just having had the experience... getting it under your belt... knowing that you've "been there", I would suggest can translate into a relaxed confidence that can aid your game.

It's as if you're sitting down at the table (real or virtual) and saying to your opponents: "Hey man, I've seen some beats. I've seen some solid wins. I've been on hot streaks... I've dropped two months' winnings in two weeks before. I've been around. I'm just going to sit here all calm and collected like and play a good game. You're either going to need to get real lucky, or straight up outplay me, because I sure as hell ain't going to make costly mistakes and beat myself for you."

***

Recent Live Action

Over the Thanksgiving holiday I had the chance to play in a couple of informal, short-handed (5-8 players in each) $20 buy-in tournaments. It was enjoyable, but I quite disappointingly didn't place in either tourney (paid a 60/40 split between 1st and 2nd, I think...both were chopped). One thing that really struck me, was how little thought went into the blind structure in these games... really putting the emphasis on luck over skill. We each were given T500 to start, blinds at 5/10 and going up every orbit. Ridiculous. On top of that it was as if the blinds were just being made up every time they were increased: "Oh let's go 60/120 this time, ok?" Talk about "heave 'em and pray" poker. Other than simply avoiding this kind of crap-shoot altogether, I'm somewhat at a loss as to what the best strategy to employ might be.

I hosted a game at my house a week ago with the regulars, and after my disgust with Thanksgiving's luck fest, I decided to get pretty serious about tournament structure. As usual, the main highlight of the evening was a NLHE tournament, with some social dealer's choice to follow.

Now, we've always had some measure of sanity to our tournament structure, but it's still been rather loose. In the past, we've just kind of sat down and decided level length, blind increments, and starting chip amounts, and started playing. On occasion, especially with a new player or two, we've just made every chip, regardless of color worth T1 and given everyone T50 or so to start. This is a good way to play and help keep new players from being intimidated... sometimes they have enough to think about, let alone remembering that a green chip is worth T50.

So back to last week's tournament... I spent a while thinking things over, and printed up some nice little tournament cards which can be easily placed around the table. I included the chip denominations that we would be using, as well as a breakdown of the starting amount, and of course a well thought out blind schedule. I decided to keep the blind increases rather shallow for the first hour and a half, hopefully allowing everyone a good chance at playing for a while, and minimizing luck. On the back of these tourney cards, I included a payout chart, broken down by the number of people playing, percentages, etc, and even filled some space with the rank of hands and rank of suits (for when highcarding for the button, table moves, chip races, etc.).

I'm pleased to report that the tourney cards were a wonderful idea. Everything ran very smoothly, and I might suggest that having even this small measure of "offical-ness" seemed to make everyone a little more excited... as if they were part of something bigger than a small low-buy-in home game. Maybe.

Lastly, I worked two chip color-ups into the blind schedule at appropriate points, and this was a huge success. If you're not doing color-ups in your own tournaments, and you've seen how having two hundred $5 chips in play when the blinds are 100/200 can really slow a game down, you should definitely start. (info on chip color-ups) Some people who had never been exposed to "races" before (used to determine how odd chips are distributed when coloring up), even found them exciting and a welcome little break. Where coloring-up really showed it's advantages though, was after the final color up (to only $50 and $100 chips), when everyone could rather quickly discern how deep everyone else was, and the inevitable all-ins and side pots were a breeze to manage.

In the end I tied for second with my wife: the house always wins.

The Long Road Back

2004-11-13T02:00:00.000-05:00

Three days ago I zeroed out my Empire (where I primarily play) account, and certainly not on purpose. More on this below.

Two days ago I drew a line in my spreadsheet, and reloaded with a comfortable amount for grinding at the $10 SNGs.

Today I'm feeling confident again.

There's a lot you can say about going on a devastating run, and I'm not even sure where to begin. I can make excuses, and indeed some of them are valid: busting out an abnormal amount of times with made set over made set, KK or QQ vs AA... we've all been there. Most serious poker players have attempted to move up in limits unsuccessfully at some point, and a good portion of those probably met with varying degrees of disaster at one time or another. Show me a successful player who hasn't. I'm guessing there aren't many, if any.

But still, bad beats aside, I did this. I'm left trying to find conclusions. Obviously it was a combination of factors. I played recklessly at points... watching the roll shrink and thinking "ok, just one first place and I'm back sitting good"... then pushing way too hard, bluffing way too often, and tilting apparently far enough to think that playing more games, more often was the answer, when really I should have been limiting myself to one game per day or taking a few days off altogether.

I didn't set a reasonable stop-loss limit... a point where I should step back down to the $10 level from the $20 if things weren't going so good. Tilt and related factors aside, I'm inclined to tell you that anyone who says Party's $20 SNGs are no more difficult than the $10 ones is badly mistaken. I'm not suggesting that there's tables full of sharks playing $20 SNGs, but I am definitively saying that on average, the players are markedly better, tighter, and more solid. I saw plenty of fish, but I also saw a significant number of tables that were still very full well into level 4 and 5. That rarely happens at the $10 level. Less idiots = less dead money = less ROI for average-decent players like me.

I still think at some point I can crack the $20 games, but if and when I move there again I'll be armed with the knowledge I paid dearly for: that solid play is required, and most importantly to be at your emotional-disciplined-absolute best when moving up. I wasn't. Blame George Bush and other unrelated depression.

I've been playing around with Poker Tracker, and I've noticed a few things which are pretty apparent:

1. I don't value bet effectively when I have a big made hand (straight, or higher). I'm not some idiot who pushes all-in every time I've made a hand, but the stats don't lie: I'm not seeing big made hands to showdown very often. The advice is simple: if my opponent has been playing reckless, check maybe if I really think he'll push or overplay a small hand, and if he's been decent (or unknown), make bets he'll have to call. Betting T50 and getting the call is better than betting T200 and not. That T50 is a BB I can use later, and the gained table image of someone who makes small value bets with huge hands just might make it easier for me to steal pots for less.

2. Bluff better. This concept is tougher to nail down... how do you bluff better, exactly? The most obvious advice for me to take is bluff less, period. Not often, but too often I end up in a scenario where I make a stab at a loose pot, get called, and then am faced with backing down, or hitting the gas. I think too often I get into the mentality of "when you're in a pot, do everything in your power to win it", and hit the gas. In tournament poker (especially in the early stages) this is most often a really stupid play. Another idea is that I should be exploiting the semi-bluff more, instead of the stone-cold bluff. Big drawing hands, betting on the come, are a far better proposition than betting with nothing or bottom pair.

3. Play the position. Everyone who's any kind of player at all knows you need to play tight in front (and loose in the rear, when appropriate), but I think a lot of people think they're playing position well enough. My stats say otherwise, though the trend isn't terrible. I lose T$ in early position, and win in late. The advice here is simply: up the starting hand requirements for early position.

***

In some ways I'm proud to have taken myself from so high (for me) to so low. It's a story. And probably a neccessary one. A lesson that you just have to learn from. I had wanted to just take a week off and reflect, but it felt right for me to reload and begin again a few days ago. Simply put, I had mentally put the devastation behind me: I was ready to start playing the game I know I can play at a familiar level. I probably won't break even this year. I'm happy with that. I've let go of the fact that I could have easily celebrated New Years Eve in the black. I'm focused on playing well... seeing how well I can make the rest of this month put a dent in the horrible stats from the beginning. I want to climb my ITM% and ROI higher than I've previously been able to.

Result = Performance ± Luck

Here's to Performance.

17 Straight Tournaments

2004-11-08T22:49:00.000-05:00

Zero money finishes. Zero clue what to blame. Zero clue what to fix. It's been a pretty shitty month on the table and off.

Taking a week off to put the almost complete bankroll devastation behind me.

Good luck out there.

October Results, "Moving Up" Followup

2004-11-01T01:53:00.000-05:00

October's results are in, and it's been a wild month for me on the poker front. I'm somewhat surprised to report the following:

Month	ITM	ROI
August	33.82%	-01.72%
September	38.38%	10.91%
October	34.92%	9.09%

I'm surprised, because I thought it would be worse. Two percentages hardly tell the whole story.

October definitely saw another few steps forward in my performance. For the majority of the month, my ROI was over 20% and my ITM was less than September's... revealing that I was placing less, but placing higher for more money when I did.

12 Firsts
2 Seconds
8 Thirds

As I've said before, I'm feeling very confident in my ITM play, and the high number of first place finishes confirm that confidence. I would have likely finished the month at or above my year-end goal, had I not moved up to the $20 SNGs in the last few days.

It's been a rough ride in $20+2 land: 10 tournaments, 2 ITM, and an embarassing number of 7+ finishes. There's no easy all-encompassing reason for this poor performance so far. I know I played at least a few games recklessly... pushing for big pots when I should have been trying to minimize pot size. I know I hit a few bad beats. I know I tried bluffing too much and in bad spots. I think overall I've been guilty of a mentality of trying to win the whole tournament on one hand, instead of chipping away (pun intended) at the opponents' stacks.

I still hold to my earlier assumption that the competition is only slightly better on average than the type to be encountered at the $10 level, if at all. It does seem that there are more patient players on the whole... but it should be noted that I'm only basing this on 10 tables so far, which is hardly enough to make a very confident analysis.

I did end the month on a nice positive note: my first first-place at the $20 level. I had been starting to really feel the $22 bankroll hits, and nothing felt better than collecting $100. That confidence boost may have been just what I needed to get my play back on track, and start nailing this level. November will tell.

Moving Up

2004-10-29T13:48:00.000-04:00

I have spoken before about being a little wary of moving from the $10 SNGs to the $20 ones, even though the level of play is generally thought to be not that much better, and in theory, double the profit is likely. The $20 SNGs are something that I've had my eyes set on for a long time, for the above reasons. I'm not looking to become a millionare playing poker, but I'd like to be able to pay myself a respectable hourly rate, and a big part of that is advancing a notch or two in levels. (To date I haven't been calculating rate/hour, but I plan to start in the month of November.)

So I have been telling myself that I'm not ready to make that jump from $10 to $20... planning on waiting for the "right" time. I've tried a few $20 SNGs here and there just for fun, but never placed in any, though that really signifies nothing when the sample size is only 2 or 3. I realize this. I also realize that I once said that in order to be properly bankrolled for long term SNG success, you should have a minimum of 10x the buy-in + entry fee, and to be even more secure, 20x.

To play the $20+$2 Party SNGs I should have at least $440 in my bankroll. I do. I also know that I've been absolutely *hammering* the $10 SNGs in October... (not a great ITM this month, but my ROI has been over 25% several times, all time highs for me). I got down within $30 of my year end goal recently and should have no problems making it in the next 2 months.

Yesterday I made the jump to the $20 SNGs.

So far I've made three 6th places, and one encouraging 2nd that could have just as easily been a first had luck been on my side. You'll hear poker players, and poker bloggers, often give standard excuses for poor results, and sometimes they are accurate... I took a few bad beats in those three 6th places. Once I flopped TPTK on a Q22 board, and lost at showdown when my opponent revealed Td2d for trip deuces. The pot had been raised pre-flop. I said "T2?" in the chat box and he replied, "You wouldn't play suited cards for 100 chips?". No. No I wouldn't. Not when they are a ten and a two.

Later, trying to climb back into things, I caught wired aces, pushed my small stack in, got one caller who held T9o, and lost on the river when he made two pair. The good news is, generally speaking, the play at the $20 level appears to indeed be not that much better than at $10. There is however a feeling I get... perhaps some of it is apprehension at the thought of losing back parts of my roll twice as fast as I gained it, but I do sense some better play over all at this level. Less rookie mistakes. More patience. Trickier play. But I don't think it's really that significant. I can win here long term. I am 99% certain. Those are good odds, considering I play a game where the best starting hand is only a 75% favorite and can quite easily lose to a T9o.

We'll see how this goes. I just hope I have the patience to ride out the 7 or 8 game out-of-the-money streak that I suspect is coming to teach me a lesson. I know I can win here, but having the courage to keep dropping $22 a pop when things aren't going so great will be the test.

The Hammer

2004-10-27T16:43:00.000-04:00

For months now, I've been wanting to play a hand with 72o, also known as the best damn hand in poker, and The Hammer.

I see the humor in playing it. (Who wouldn't love beating a superior hand with a 72o?)

I see the psychological and strategic reasons for doing it. (What people think you have, should not always be what you have. Bluffing with 72o is in many ways less risky than bluffing with something like QTo. If you win a showdown with 72o, nobody at the table will be able to put you on a hand for the rest of the session or tourney. Your opponent(s) may go on tilt.)

But since I mainly am sticking to Party's $10+1 SNG's at this time, it's a tough hand to bring myself to play. Usually the risk is too great, because I'm desperately fighting the rapidly increasing blinds and trying to survive. Still, I've used The Hammer as a mental cue... when it pops up in front of me, it reminds me that in a lot of cases winning a SNG or tournament is not so much about how you play good starting hands, it's about how you play the awful ones. You're rarely going to take 1st place based on cards alone, unless the deck is pummelling you in the face with monster hands (which does happen too sometimes). When that 72o is dealt, it says to me "psst: you may not want to do it here or just yet, but you're going to have to get some chips with nothing at some point. be aware of that, k?"

Now the experienced among my readers will obviously know a) what I'm talking about, and more importantly b) what are the situations conducive to making a move with nothing. I bring this up, because I don't want to mislead someone into making a horrible play for a loss. Making something out of nothing is one of those intermediate skills that you just have to get a feel for... it's not recommended for novice or beginning players.

So I've stolen some blinds before with 72o... it's not a horrible hand to do so with actually. Usually if I try it, I've got to have decent position (on the button with only the SB and BB still to act is best), a pretty solid table image (having made standard large raises before and showing AA, KK, QQ, AKs, etc a few times is a big advantage), and I have to be aware of the still to act players' stack sizes. If they're way low, they could go all in with almost anything and beat my pitiful hand.

The point of this post however isn't about how to play smart, it's about playing really really really stupid... and gaining a lot of laughs and a ton of advantage:

***** Hand History for Game 1107714035 *****
100/200 TourneyTexasHTGameTable (NL) (Tournament 6774612) - Wed Oct 27 13:22:07 EDT 2004
Table Table 11474 (Real Money) -- Seat 1 is the button
Total number of players : 7
Seat 1: UFHoss33 (760)
Seat 2: AdamL (870)
Seat 5: TheDuker (645)
Seat 7: ME (2950)
Seat 8: cas56 (1350)
Seat 9: Vich21 (845)
Seat 10: cheburashka2 (580)

I'm sitting very nice with T2950 after grabbing some dead money with pocket Queens and busting 2 people out on one hand.

AdamL posts small blind (50)
TheDuker posts big blind (100)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to ME [ 7s, 2d ]

The Hammer has arrived. I contemplate for just a second, and decide to run with it under the gun.

ME raises (300) to 300
cas56 raises (1350) to 1350
cas56 is all-In.
Vich21 folds.
cheburashka2 folds.
UFHoss33 folds.
AdamL folds.
TheDuker folds.

So I am raised for about half my stack. Call or Fold are the only options against a lone opponent. In theory, my 72o will win what? 30-some percent of the time? Let's have some fun.

ME calls (1050)
** Dealing Flop ** : [ 6d, 2s, Tc ]
** Dealing Turn ** : [ Qc ]
** Dealing River ** : [ 4d ]
Creating Main Pot with $2850 with cas56
** Summary **
Main Pot: 2850 |
Board: [ 6d 2s Tc Qc 4d ]
ME balance 4450, bet 1350, collected 2850, net +1500 [ 7s 2d ] [ a pair of twos -- Qc,Tc,7s,2d,2s ]
cas56 balance 0, lost 1350 [ Kd Ad ] [ high card ace -- Ad,Kd,Qc,Tc,6d ]
cas56 finished in seventh place.

Oh the humanity!

ME: THE HAMMER
UFHoss33: YOU GOTTA BE SHITTIN ME
UFHoss33: LOL THAT WAS AWESOME!
ME: hahahah
Vich21: holy shit
UFHoss33: thats havin a set of nuts there
UFHoss33: all in with 72

The truly amazing thing was the way the rest of the tournament played out: I got action on every big hand I made, and nobody even dared to raise my blinds, probably for fear of my dominating stack, and because they knew a steal attempt was risky against a tricky loose cannon. It seems conflicting, but I really felt as if when I wanted action, I was able to easily get it, and when I didn't, I was able to easily push and get opponents to fold. Part of that is having a dominating stack I am sure, but I milked my table image for all it was worth and took an easy 1st place. (just one 1st place away from my year end goal)

Three Poker Stories

2004-10-18T15:26:00.000-04:00

1. Juvenile table humor at it's finest/worst:

PosEV: is anyone else having problems connecting?
PosEV: i go in and out every few minutes
ME: I do that with the ladies
UnforgivenII: lol
ME: drives em wild
PosEV: ha

2. Recently I discussed limping in level 1 of a SNG with a pocket pair of deuces, and today I hit the kind of hand that demonstrates the implied value of seeing a cheap flop with any low pair.

Table Table 11101 (Real Money) -- Seat 8 is the button
Total number of players : 8
Seat 3: pakeboy (848)
Seat 4: tunchum (1379)
Seat 5: ostrich1enr (1025)
Seat 6: ME (940)
Seat 7: Sjiraff (1345)
Seat 8: wesolis (628)
Seat 9: LordofRings (1050)
Seat 10: WeaselB (785)
LordofRings posts small blind (10)
WeaselB posts big blind (15)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to ME [ 2c, 2h ]

Okay, here we go... wanna see this one cheap.

pakeboy calls (15)
tunchum folds.
ostrich1enr folds.
ME calls (15)
Sjiraff folds.
wesolis folds.
LordofRings calls (5)
WeaselB checks.
** Dealing Flop ** : [ 7s, Ad, 2s ]

I flopped a set of Two's, and I know somebody paired their Ace. Perfect! The two spades are a little scary, so I'll need to pay attention to that.

LordofRings checks.
WeaselB checks.
pakeboy bets (75)
ME raises (150) to 150
LordofRings calls (150)
WeaselB folds.
pakeboy folds.
** Dealing Turn ** : [ Ac ]

There's no better turn card I could have seen here. Now I'm putting my opponent on three Aces, but I have a VERY deceptive full house. He'll probably call anything I put out there if he has the Ace, and the flush is no longer a worry.

LordofRings checks.
ME bets (775)
ME is all-In.
LordofRings calls (775)
** Dealing River ** : [ 4s ]
Creating Main Pot with $1985 with ME
** Summary **
Main Pot: 1985 |
Board: [ 7s Ad 2s Ac 4s ]
ME balance 1985, bet 940, collected 1985, net +1045 [ 2c 2h ] [ a full house, Twos full of aces -- Ad,Ac,2c,2h,2s ]
LordofRings balance 110, lost 940 [ Tc As ] [ three of a kind, aces -- As,Ad,Ac,Tc,7s ]

3. Same tourney as the hand above and it's level 7 and heads up. I'm sitting with T4123, almost dead even against T3877. Let's call him "Tighty", because mostly he's only been playing good hands in good spots all tournament, though I have seen him start loosening up recently. I can't think of a better name, okay?

First hand heads up, I'm in the BB with QTo. Tighty pushes all in, and I agonize for a bit... I'm holding okay cards, nothing to feel real good about calling with, but I'm a little skeptical of Tighty pushing all in on the first hand heads up, especially since I've seen him playing loose in the last dozen hands or so. I probably should have folded and waited for a better spot, but for better or worse, I call. He has A6s, and wins with a flush. Damn.

At T246, I can't even cover the BB and push all in with AQo, catch an AQ3 flop and double up to T492. Long way to go.

Next hand, the blinds jump to level 8 (250/500), and I'm automatically all in on the BB with Q4o, and a pair of fours wins me the hand. Up to T984 and still looking at my opponents 7 to 1 chip lead.

Next hand, realizing that I still am going to have to get damn lucky to have a shot at this, as well as the fact that I have less than 2 BB's, I push all-in hoping that Tighty is an idiot who will let me steal his BB, and if not, I'll let the deck tell me if my 75o is worth anything or not. Tighty calls of course, I pair my 5 and miraculously double up for the third hand in a row. T1968, Tighty's lead is down to 3 to 1, and most importantly, I have some room now to play correctly.

We go back and forth stealing blinds, occasionaly showing down hands in small pots, and I am encouraged by the fact that Tighty keeps calling my BB instead of raising. Bad move Tighty. I pull back even with T3936.

I really should have just kept on the pressure and played smart, but for whatever reason decide to raise all-in with a suited A2, mainly hoping for a chance to vary my play. I had been making minimum raises and I figure Tighty might put me on something big if it looks like I'm taking a stab at the tourney here. I get called, and Tighty's K5o loses as I pair my Ace.

Sitting at T128, Tighty is put all-in when the board makes a high flush and we split the pot. Tighty gets put all-in again, doubles up, then get's busted on the next hand. It was kind of fun just watching the hands play themselves for 3 hands, knowing that I'd eventually get him.

I'm not proud of my play here, but it was easily my biggest comeback ever, going from T246 and getting the win. As they say, "a chip and a chair". Tighty was not amused and said so in the chat box.

Split Boards

2004-10-17T16:50:00.000-04:00

I was planning to talk a bit about how I encountered a brutal series of solid SNG tables this weekend (one nearly made it to level 4 with all 10 players still alive), but I just witnessed perhaps the most ridiculous hand I've seen yet. So I'll talk about that instead.

It's early in a SNG and I get a pair of deuces near the button and limp in for the 15 chips, hoping to catch a set on the flop. The flop comes AAA, giving me the weakest full house possible, and it's entirely also possible that one of my two opponents has the case Ace. It's checked to me, suprise-suprise. So now I'm doubting the possibility that either of my opponents have a pocket pair, but one could easily be slowplaying quad Aces (as would nearly always be the correct play here). I contemplate for just a second, and fire out a 2/3-pot bet (which wasn't much at this point)... if neither has the remaining Ace, hey, I might get them to fold. Consider also that both opponents were SB and BB respectively, which means they're more likely to be playing junk or connectors, etc. If I get called, I'm almost certain to ditch the hand unless the turn is another 2, because any other card can possibly give my opponents a better full. I get called by both opponents. Bad. Looking back, this is a low percentage play with little expected value. I should have probably checked.

The turn is the case Ace, and I now hold a pair of the weakest possible kickers. SB bets, BB calls, and I fold faster than a newspaper in a tornado. The river card is a King, giving the board the nuts. SB checks, BB goes all-in, and then the SB folds. After several others and I offer exclamations, SB reveals that he had QQ (who know's if he did or not... it's a mute point) and admitted that he had "no guts". More like no brains, which we also pointed out, and I doubt that he makes this rookie mistake again anytime soon.

Going all-in, or betting big when the board has the nuts is a play that I have often made myself, for this very reason. Most of the time your opponent will call and the split will be made, but it's a zero risk play that sometimes pays off.

Possible Nut/Split Boards:

1. Any Royal Flush, duh. (AKQJT suited)
2. Any 4-of-a-kind where the fifth card is the best kicker possible. (AAAAK, KKKKA, 3333A...)
3. Any broadway straight, with no more than 2 cards of any suit. (AKQJT)

Another similar point, is against the typical low buy-in SNG players, when you have the absolute nuts on a board that a novice might mistake for a split, go all-in. Let's say the board makes 4 Tens, and a Queen, and you're holding an Ace. If you push all-in, there's the possibility that you'll get called by someone who also has an Ace kicker (again, zero risk), but you might get a novice who has paired the Queen to call thinking he has the best hand. It does happen, and I've seen it several times. You'd also be suprised how many times your all-in will get called when you have a high flush, but the board shows a broadway straight, although I'd argue that a value bet, or a check-raise if your opponent has been betting recklessly, is the best play. (And don't forget that even if your flush is Ace-high, you could be up against a straight flush, but I doubt you're going to ever lay down your flush anyway, and neither am I.)

Also, when the flop comes 3-of-a-kind, and you hold a low pair, proceed with caution. In the above example I only dumped 45 chips on the hand (15 to see the flop, and then 30 on the flop), so I can't say it was a horrible play, but under the circumstances I should have let it go. Betting the flop would make a lot more sense shorthanded, or heads-up. If you limp with a low pocket pair, you're looking for trips.

Encouraging SNG Stats

2004-10-14T01:37:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to dig into my SNG spreadsheet for some time now, and in particular take a look at how I'm doing now, relative to when I started playing seriously a few months ago. Now, before I started looking at this tonight, I had no real hard evidence on my progress either way, except for recently starting to see my overall ITM and ROI grinding slowly upwards. For the record, I'm sporting a modest 36.04% ITM and 6.14% ROI (based on 197 SNGs). Nothing to get excited about there, but hey, at least it's not zero, or worse.

Now to my calculations I did tonight... I decided to take a monthly look at my stats. Here's the results:

Month	ITM	ROI
August	33.82%	-01.72%
September	38.38%	10.91%
October	40.00%	11.89%

Now that's pretty encouraging stuff, and certainly reason to believe that my year-end goal is easily obtainable, provided I can quit giving back my SNG winnings in the ring games. A few other points:

1. The stats above only take into account half of this month so far, so it's possible that the October ITM and ROI may end up higher or lower than reported above. Ideally the numbers will be higher than September (as they are now) indicating progress. We'll see.

2. I can't and don't expect forward progress to be linear. It's one of those things where improvement is vast in the beginning, but quickly tapers off to small or negligible gains eventually. I'm just hoping to taper off somewhere in the 45-55% ITM range, and whatever ROI that might bring about. If other player's blogs are any indication, this is possible, but I don't expect it to be easy.

3. Thinking a bit about point #2 above, I think improvement is largely a factor of discipline at this point. I'm well on my way to learing what the right moves in the right spots are, and what the wrong moves in the wrong spots are... but having the discipline and focus to follow this knowledge is where the money is.

Weekend Update

2004-10-11T00:05:00.000-04:00

First, a little overall status report. It seems that after playing regularly (daily) for a few months now, and keeping some basic spreadsheets, all the things I've heard about playing winning poker are being confirmed. I mean, someone says "it's all one big session", and you nod and think to yourself, "yeah that's obvious", but when you see this statement come alive through your own experiences, it takes on a whole new emphasis. I've been watching my bankroll shrink and grow over and over, and although I'm not going to become a rich man playing home games and Party's $10 SNGs, the peaks keep getting higher (as well as the valleys). It is all one big session. $106.49 from my year end goal now, which'll leave me with a nice $500 bankroll if I get there. Then what happens? The logical step is to move up to the $20 SNGs and maintain my modest ROI, but double the profit... but that's a move I'm wary of making for reasons which will likely be discussed here in due time. Plus, I have to get there first.

As for this past weekend's home game:

Most home games I've encountered are a social affair, where profit or loss is second to having a good time, and mine are no exception. Still, everyone was playing to win obviously, and it's interesting to see how people's goals for the evening play out with the hands... some people can lose a stack and still be having fun and making jokes, and other's amaze me with thier lack of class when losing or winning. Yeah, go ahead and bitch about not catching your Royal Flush as you rake the chips for the 6th hand in a row. Really.

With that said, we managed to get in one NLHE tourney, during which as fate would have it, I managed to bust out first and spent the next hour dealing. If I had to diagnose what happened, I'd have to say that I just plain pissed away a lot of my chips early, perhaps seeing too many flops or watching someone bluff often and wanting to nail them on it. I really don't know... but I also had a lot of decent starting hands (especially short handed as we were) and just couldn't hit a flop to save my life. We've made it an unofficial house rule that the last person who has been knocked out must deal until someone else goes broke and takes over... and it's also become the unofficial right of the dealer to look at (but in no way divulge) what people were holding during the hand. As dealer I watched an amazing amount of semi-bluffs and stone-colds, perhaps proving that my instinct to nail someone on a bluff was correct, but never getting the right cards on the right flops to do it.

As for the rest of the night, we played our old college dealer's choice games. I held my own in this wild card festival, but any winnings I might have been lucky enough to rake in were quickly taken back by the wild card whore on my right. Nearly every time I made a big hand, he somehow managed a bigger one, and it truly got old after a while. I've been trying to make some meaningful comparison between my online play and these crazy dealer's choice games, but I haven't come up with anything insightful, other than purpose which is rather obvious. You just don't play "Queen and What Follows, match the pot or drop on a Queen, best hand on 6th street decides whether to play out the hand or re-ante and reset" with any measure of seriousness. Yes we actually played that, and even managed a few games *ahem* without wild cards.

Overall, and as usual, I neither made nor lost any significant amount of money on the evening, quite in keeping with the purpose of simply having fun.

Etcetera

2004-10-03T23:06:00.000-04:00

Excuse me for what I anticipate will be a ramble. I have a bunch of little things I want to cover.

First off, my personal longest SNG win streak finally came to an end after my 8th consecutive ITM finish. It was obviously bound to happen, and I'm just as prepared to hit the possible 8 finishes out-of-the-money streak if the poker gods deem it necessary. However, I did learn and confirm something which I really already knew: when I've been winning, I play better. It's the obvious opposite of tilt, but there's more to it than that. When I've hit a good run of online play, or am sitting "up" for the night in a home game, I'm mentally confident in my moves, yet cautious to protect recent winnings. And that is perhaps just about the perfect way to play profitable poker. Confident and protective.

As a side note, I'm 12 ITM for the last 20 $10 SNGs with 5 first place finishes, for a total of +$180. Jinx be damned, I'm feeling very confident about finishing the year in the black... only ~$130 to go. On top of that, I've scored a (yet to be delivered) "hamper" bonus, consisting of 2 shirts and a hat, from Partypoker for playing 1000 raked hands in a week back in August. I've also scored a 500 piece set of the typical ABS/"clay" chips for making a deposit on Pacificpoker... also yet to be delivered, but supposedly arriving this week. More on this later.

Another interesting thing happened to me the other night on Party, when I actually was up against a guy from my town. We chatted a bit during the game, and it appears that poker is alive and doing very well with the college kids at nearby PSU. Just last week I learned of a nightly! game on campus, and this guy tipped me off to a few possible weeklies elsewhere and we traded email addresses for future invites or whatever.

I'm looking forward to hosting a homegame this coming weekend, although I fear we'll be shorthanded as usual, and I'm not particularly interested in inviting strangers or people from work. It's tough bringing new people into an established core of 5 or so players. This group typically plays quarter/half dealer's choice, and part of me really wants to play that kind of poker again, not only because it's just a fun/friendly game, but also to test myself and see how all my recent online hold em improvements transfer over to those waters. Then again, we're all pretty into NLHE SNG style tournaments, and I feel very confident against the group right now. Truthfully, my wife worries me the most, not only because she's listened to 3 months of strategy and hand analysis from me, but also because she knows how to use that all against me. Ideally we'll have enough people to do a winner-take-all tourney or two, with the losers playing some shorthanded dealer's choice on the side.

As I said earlier, I've been playing some on Pacificpoker, and although there are a few things I don't like about the interface (the way bets are shown, lack of a 4 color deck, etc), there are some interesting game choices available. Firstly, they offer some lower stakes limit games as low as .05/.10, which would be better for a beginner or someone on a limited roll, as opposed to Party's .50/1 tables. On top of that, they have SNGs with a standard 10% rake/entry fee (i.e. $5+.50, $2.50+.25, as opposed to Party's awful $5+1), and some enticing 5-player SNGs where the top 3 get money.

These 5-player SNGs are appealing to me somewhat, because the odds of winning are essentially twice as good as in a 10 player tourney, and the odds of making the money are 3 in 5. Now, in a $10 5-player SNG like this, the third place finisher only get's back $10, thus actually losing $1 to the rake/entry, but that sure beats getting a 4th on Party and losing the whole $11. The blind structure seems a little slower as well, which typically means that luck has less of a chance of beating good play. Overall, the reward is less, but so is the variance... it seems to me that you could become a very consistent winner at these 5 player tourneys, but I'm still sticking with Party's $10 10-player affairs for the time being.

Which brings me to what I think is my last thought, which is that I've been thinking about a formula to calculate "profitability" of SNGs, based on buy-in, entry fee, number of players, prize distribution, and possibly blind structure. I'm obviously making this way more complex than necessary, but it would be kinda neat (and quite ubergeek) to have a formula to plug the particulars into, and calculate some kind of "score" which would theoretically indicate how good or bad a given tourney is to play. I guess the score would end up being a way to express risk vs reward basically: a higher score indicates less risk for better rewards, and vice versa. I'm still playing with possible formulas. Anyone have any thoughts or ideas on this?

Streaking Positive

2004-09-27T23:44:00.000-04:00

Damn, I just have to brag a little. Something is working.

Since having my 11th-SNG-Don't epiphany, I've played in 7 $10+1 SNGs, and have been ITM all 7 times: 3 firsts, 1 second, and 3 thirds for a cool +$163 in profit.

My overal ITM% (based on 168 SNGs) is climbing slowly above the 33% plateau which I had been stuck on, and perhaps more importantly my ROI is moving quickly into the range where I can financially justify my time.

Most important however, is that I am playing well... truly achieving a mental state where even short stacked I feel confident I can pull through and make the money. On one of my recent third place finishes, another player even complimented my short stack play after busting me out as a dog. I had battled to make the money, even folding down a hand that left me crippled, in a situation where a lot of people would say "I'm pot committed now." I'd argue that in a NL tourney, you're never truly pot committed... there is no such thing. Putting that logic into practice when a fold will leave you with a BB and change, however, takes some discipline.

Streaking positive in itself has also sharpened my play: I'm making sure to give myself every possible chance to make the money, continue the streak, grow my bankroll, and prove that it's not just luck that is putting me here. (ITM 3 in-a-row = easily just luck, ITM 13 in-a-row = probably doing something right + some luck)

Included in all this is an area of my game that has probably seen dramatic improvement, even though I haven't really been specifically focusing on it: 3-handed and heads-up play. It's easy to just think of ITM play as being a crap shoot and gamble it up... you're already assured some profit. I've been very guilty of this in the past. One factor of ITM play that makes sense to think about is the level of the blinds: if it's only level 5 and you have a comfortable stack, slow down and play smart. Make reasonable raises, fold garbage, and almost never call. Watch your opponents, take your time, and try and see some flops. Agression is needed, yes, but there's no reason to turn things into an all-in pre-flop fest. 3-handed and heads-up play is so situational. This is why you'll often hear people say things like "the cards don't even matter". That's an overstatement of course, expecially online where reads and tells are limited to the size of someone's bets and the speed in which they act, but there is still an element of truth to it.

I'm also feeling very positive about Party/Empire, and the kinds of players out there playing right now. Within the first 2 levels of a SNG I can usually identify most of my opponents into two basic categories: "suckers" and "have-a-clues". And like Amarillo Slim famously said (paraphrasing here), "If you don't see a sucker at the table, you're it." So it's always good to notice a few suckers. More on suckers vs have-a-clues in a future post.

The 11th SNG Don't

2004-09-25T23:19:00.000-04:00

I'm fairly proud of my earlier post titled 10 SNG Don'ts, and I have a feeling that if I can continue my measured success, I'd like to put together some kind of free pdf/txt booklet on SNG strategy eventually. In order for me to feel confident about leading others down a path however, I'd like to actually have gone down that path myself... and that's what I'm trying to do: become a long-term winning online SNG player.

The 10 "don'ts" I've linked to above are pretty basic, but I'd like to think there's some good advice there. I've been working hard to avoid those things, and diagnose the obvious leaks in my game that must be present: I've found it difficult to climb above 33% ITM, and long-term, my ROI is hovering near 0%. Other's are claiming upwards of 50% ITM and respectable ROI's, so what's wrong with my play?

The answer to that question has been difficult to ascertain, but it's possible I've found one key, and short-term results suggest that, for me, it is indeed key. So here's the 11th SNG Don't:

11. Don't play too much.

You would think that the best way to become a winning player is to play, play, and then play some more, and this is fundamentally correct; nothing is a better teacher than experience. But there can be costs to playing too much... perhaps you're not allowing ample time to think about how you're playing, and perhaps results and beats in one game can steer a whole session off course (amplifying your initial loss). And even if things are going well, you can just plain get burnt out and bored, and anytime your mental state is less than optimal, you're probably playing less than optimal poker.

I had been playing a lot: sometimes upwards of 6 SNG's per day, and at least 2-3 nearly every day, with the above results. Starting to feel burnt out with just breaking even and struggling to improve my play, I decided to scale back a little. 1 SNG a day, or maybe 2 if I felt up to it... and so far, the results have been as good as I had hoped for: in the past 3 days in 4 SNG's I've logged 4 ITM finishes (two 1sts, and two 3rds). I'm sure some of this success is indeed luck, but overall I feel more into the game... more focused, and appear to be choosing my battles much more effectively.

Umm, No, You Had 2 Pair

2004-09-22T13:56:00.000-04:00

After grinding it out at the SNGs yesterday, and taking a couple of disappointing finishes, I decided to try out a NLHE 6-player-max $25 table. I've said it before, but I really need to watch this kind of behaviour where I see a few disappointing finishes and then think "oh I'll go try something new now for a change." A change was probably called for, but it should have been "go take a walk" or even "go play some PS2", not something which could have exposed me to more loss.

But I'm also a smart guy, who figured that out pretty fast and had a firm grip on my emotions. I'd sit for a little bit, gauge how the table was, play a few pots and see what happened. I ended up there for over 2 hours. There were at least 6 memorable hands that I won, including when I took down over $50, when my pocket Kings held up against two all-ins. Another time, a guy who had been chatty and friendly the whole time I was playing took a beat and went on explosive tilt, going all-in 4 hands in a row, 3 of which were suprisingly folded to him, and the last of which I called with AKs, flopped a broadway straight, and made a flush on the river.

But the most memorable hand was probably the one below... be sure to read the chat that followed the hand. (And yeah, I know my play is somewhat debateable here... it felt right at the time to semi-bluff with the flush draw, that's all I can say.)

***** Hand History for Game 974430238 *****
$25 NL Hold'em - Wednesday, September 22, 01:50:21 EDT 2004
Table Table 14078 (6 max) (Real Money)
Seat 3 is the button
Total number of players : 5
Seat 6: ME ( $60.8 )
Seat 5: iluvpickles ( $27.02 )
Seat 8: farhaman ( $31.8 )
Seat 10: looseplayer2 ( $35.85 )
Seat 1: otc126 ( $26.6 )
ME posts small blind [$0.25].
farhaman posts big blind [$0.5].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to ME [ Ac 2c ]
looseplayer2 folds.
otc126 raises [$1.5].
iluvpickles folds.
ME calls [$1.25].

I'm not sure this was a good call really, but against this guy who I have been watching and suspect is really a chump, my implied odds are good. If he's holding AK or a good pocket pair, and I hit my nut flush, I know he'll pay me off.

farhaman calls [$1].
** Dealing Flop ** [ 3c, 5s, 8c ]
ME bets [$2].

With 4 clubs now, and an inside straight draw, I fire out a significant bet thinking I might take the pot right here, and if not, I'll have plenty of options on the turn. Out of position here, I'd rather be the agressor.

farhaman folds.

Yes!

otc126 calls [$2].

Hmmm.

** Dealing Turn ** [ 6s ]

I don't think my lone opponent is cagey enough to be pre-flop raising with any of the cards that would make him a straight, or trips, and with the obvious straight possibilities which he has to see, I figure I'll see how he really feels about his hand:

ME bets [$5].
otc126 calls [$5].

Again, hmmm. At this point I'm thinking he might have trips or an overpair. Then the magic happens:

** Dealing River ** [ 5c ]
ME bets [$10].
otc126 calls [$10].
ME shows [ Ac, 2c ] a flush, ace high.
otc126 doesn't show [ Td, Ts ] two pairs, tens and fives.
ME wins $36.60 from the main pot with a flush, ace high.

So he had an overpair, which he couldn't get away from even with a possible straight and a possible flush on the board.

otc126: damnit, i knew it
otc126: that was stupid
ME: you should have figured me for at least a straight
otc126: i couldnt put you on a straight
otc126: you called the raise

Okay, he's not totally stupid. He's using the same logic that I was to rule out the straight possibility, but when that third club fell and I bet out and he called?

otc126: i had a set
ME: umm, no, you had 2 pair
iluvpickles: haha
otc126: no i didnt
ME: check the hand history sucker?
iluvpickles: u know we can see what u had dont you?
looseplayer2: otc, you would have had a full house if you flopped a set
iluvpickles: lol
ME: haha
iluvpickles: nice lie

He eventually took some of that money back from me with some big hands, but he was over-respecting my bets and raises, and I just kept on raising him. I ended the session at about +$30... dissappointing considering how far ahead I was at one point. If all the NL games are as easy to crack as this, perhaps I'll have to play some more. I think the key is the no-limit... you can loose everything you have at the table in one click, and mistakes can be so much more costly. As long as you're not the one making them though, there seems to be some good opportunity for profit.

Yet Another SNG Strategy Post

2004-09-19T20:27:00.000-04:00

As you may know, I've been focusing my attention primarily on the $10 Party/Empire Sit-And-Go's... it's the only level my means or bankroll can really support at this time, and I've all but given up on the limit tables due to the high variance I've encountered at the limits I can afford. Perhaps someday I'll return to that particular piece of cyber felt, but for now I'm working on my single-table tournament game for two reasons: I'm confident I can win long term at it, and it's bound to make an enormous difference in the 1-2 table live home tournaments I'm most likely to find myself in. When you've played a couple hundred SNG's online, and you can make obvious adjustments between online and live play, you're bound to tear apart the WPT-watching fish on the home game circuit. (more on me vs live action coming soon)

The good news is, I've been playing on the same money/roll for weeks now, and overall am in the positive territory. The bad news perhaps is that I was way farther ahead at one point than I currently am. Thankfully, I'm working hard at being a "performance oriented" player, so the results part of things really isn't my focus. Sure, I'm setting a "result oriented" goal for myself (see the sidebar), because in the long run, results do provide a metric for performance. The important distinction is, you just can't use short term results as a barometer for how you are performing. (Sure you hit your two-outer on the river and won a pile of chips, which is a good result, but was it good performance... long term?) You probably get my point.

So in my quest to improve performance, I've been printing out just about every piece of SNG advice I can google up, and trying to pull it all together into a winning strategy. It really isn't as simple as, "okay, this advice sounds good, I'll stick to this and I'll win", which in some minor ways, I have to admit was my thinking. Don't get me wrong, there is some good advice out there, but I'm beginning to see that some of it might do more harm than good.

Some of it might not fit your personal style. Some of it might use superlative terms like "always" and "never" in places where "often" or "hardly ever" would be more appropriate. Some of it is only relevant to big buy-in SNG's, and some just plain sucks.

To get to the point of this post, there are two factors which I'd like to discuss, which are relevant to my SNG progress.

Table Selection

Yep, you heard me right, table selection. It would seem that you have no clue what kinds of players you're going to end up against in a SNG, or what the texture of the table is going to be like, until you're actually sitting at the table watching some hands. For the most part, this is obviously correct, but I'm beginning to notice a trend... a weak one so far, but a trend none-the-less, in how well I do at certain times of the day, on certain days of the week, and a few other factors.

I guess my somewhat weakly formed theory is this: there are times when the type of opponents you're likely to encounter will be more favorable than others. Generally, playing on the weekend, in the evening, or right after a WPT or WSOP episode on TV ends, I have found myself more often at those loose-passive tables that I can do well at. I love being able to get paid off by some level one, all-in idiot who bluffs into my flopped full house, don't you? The other side of this theory, is that on a Monday morning at 11 AM, who's likely to be playing online poker? Probably more often than not, you're going to find yourself up against a table dominated by people who have a clue what they are doing.

Obviously this varies, and you can find yourself at a "good" or "bad" table anytime, but there almost certainly has to be a trend that you could use to your advantage. I'd love to hear any thoughts on this... have you seen/observed the same thing as I have? Any particular times to avoid? Times to definitely want to play? (Of course, being able to adjust play for different table textures holds much more value than this form of "table selection".)

Starting Hand Selection in Levels 1-3

Now this is a big deal. It has probably been the biggest overall struggle I've faced in nailing down a solid SNG strategy, partly because I've read a lot of conflicting advice.

I really, really like a bit of tournament theory I read somewhere: "Start out like the rock of Gibraltar, and end like a kamikaze." That is, to put in more words, you should start a tourney very tight and or solid, taking few risks, and make gradual adjustments as things progress, until the end when you should be loose and taking many risks. Sounds good, no? There's plenty of advice out there that agrees with this concept, but interpreting this overall strategy into hand-to-hand decisions is where things get tricky. And nothing is perhaps as tricky as pre-flop play in online SNGs... what hands to play, and what hands to sit out.

Perhaps in a tournament structure where blinds increase at a moderate rate, it's probably a good strategy to sit back, watch, and wait for giant pre-flop hands to play in the early going... but I'm talking about Party/Empire SNG's here, where quickly increasing blinds make the time from start to finish, 10 players to 1, often under 45 minutes. The rules are different.

I've read SNG advice that proposed only playing AA-JJ and AKs in the first two rounds... and I've read SNG advice that said to limp with almost anything playable... suited connectors... suited one-gaps and two-gaps... Axs, Kxs, Qxs. It's difficult to say whether the former, latter, or a combination of the two is best, but I'm starting to get an idea of what works and what doesn't, and what hands to play early on.

Especially with the many poor players out there, limping with anything that can flop a monster in the early rounds is probably a good idea. I think the key is to watch your position, and make the distinction between what to play when someone has raised, and when it's been just called or folded around to you. Raised pots pre-flop in early levels (1-3) pretty much demand AA-JJ or AK for you to make a safe call. Someone raising pre-flop with AA looks a lot like an idiot raising with Q6s in the early rounds. Figure out who the fish are before attempting to reel them in.

It's mostly about implied odds in the early going. If you flop trips or better with no scare cards, or a ton of outs to the nuts (like an open-ended straight flush draw), you're likely to get paid off by the suckers holding a pair or chasing something stupid like an inside straight. I'm beginning to think that the cost of limping often in rounds 1-2, and sometimes 3, is far outweighed by the pot you'll take down if you can hit a hand or two.

The key really is knowing when to let your pre-flop limp become a post-flop fold, especially when you've caught a piece of it. You've got to read the board perfectly, know what you could be up against, and act accordingly. Flop play is where SNGs are won and lost.

The reason I'm putting so much emphasis on levels 1-3, is that there's generally a lot of chips up for grabs at this point, and if you're just sitting there waiting on huge starting hands, you're going to more often than not watch someone else take all the dead money at the table. And then you're running the risk of being a short stack, against rapidly increasing blinds and the big stacks who did take all the dead money. I'd rather take a few limping gambles early on, possibly gaining enough chips to coast into the money. If I don't get lucky with all my early limps, but get away from them cleanly, I'll probably still be left with at least 500 chips by the time I need to start worrying and looking for a hand to go all-in pre-flop with.

So it appears as if "starting like the rock of Gibraltar" might not really apply to online SNGs, at least with respect to what hands to play. A better analogy perhaps would be to start like one of those people who buy things at flea markets and thrift stores and sell them on eBay for a living: buy it for cheap, but when you find out it's worth something, sell it for a lot.

The Poker Equation

2004-09-14T00:07:00.000-04:00

As you may have noticed, I've added links to a few other well-known poker weblogs in the sidebar... and as I find more that are worth reading I'll be adding to the list. One of those weblogs, titled The Cards Speak, is not only well worth checking a few times a week (the quotes at the start of each entry are just plain awesome), but recently featured a great post titled "The Play's The Thing" which you should read.

It's a "big picture" post, in which the author questions the nature of bad beats and streaks, and ends up describing what's going on when you play poker day after day, and more importantly presents a case for how you should think about playing poker day after day. The author references a post made to rec.gambling.poker titled Sgt Rock's Poker Philosophy Part 1, which makes the following statements:

Result = Performance ± Luck

...Some of you who read this may scoff that everything said here is quite obvious... ...Even though *everyone* who is not blatantly stupid (this may even include a few of the players in your game) already knows these things, don't the vast majority of players behave in a manner quite oblivious to the logic or reason given above?

Sometimes to just a small degree, but more often to a large extent, MOST players I observe are more Results or Luck than Performance oriented.

...If you are "Performance Oriented," and focus your attention on your performance, then you've got the feline by the coccyx. Performance is the one thing that you CAN control. It's the one thing that CAN be rock steady, no flux, no variance, day after day. It's up too you. As you play on towards that dim, distant and barely visible light at the end of the tunnel (the long run) remember this: Performance can and should become Result, without regard for Luck.

...normal swings of good and bad Luck can destroy your bankroll if you react inappropriately to those fluctuations. Avoiding that- maintaining mental discipline and maybe exploiting luck but never being its victim- is part of Performance. If you perform well in this area, then the net effect of Luck IS zero. Then, the equation becomes simply:

Result = Performance

I'd like to think that as a poker player, I'm more performance oriented than I've ever been. But man, I have a lot to learn.

Running Bad

2004-09-10T13:56:00.000-04:00

You can take the elation of my last post, and flip that about 180 degrees. I went from ~$250 from my year-end goal to ~$130 from it, and now back to about ~$250. Bleh. Variance aside, I'm still struggling to plug a few holes in my SNG game.

Most notably, 4th place finishes. I have more 4ths than any other finish: turn those 4ths into 3rds and I'd be at my goal already. There seems to be three basic scenarios that I run into when down to 4 players:

Scenario 1. I make it into the money either due to a large stack, solid play, and/or good cards.

Scenario 2. I have a stack that would basically let me coast into the money, but I end up committed in a pot, or bluff at the wrong pot, and either get busted out completely, or crippled so badly that I get blinded out a few hands later.

Scenario 3. I have a small/medium stack and wait for the short stack to bust out, only to watch him double up and end up short myself, or fearing the blinds and being pushed by the large stacks, I play back and end up either crippled or out completely.

The absolute worst and biggest leak is obviously Scenario 2 above. I don't want to waste the opportunity of being chip leader on the bubble (a powerful position to be in), but if I have enough chips to coast in the money, I should do just that. My ITM% could use some help for sure.

Scenario 3 is a lot tougher, and I end up in that position quite a bit. I played a solid game until down to 4, but didn't get the right cards in the right pots, and have a small/medium stack that is going to probably force me to have to play in order to make the money. It's possible that I should be sitting back a little more than I do in this position... you always want to allow other people ample opportunity to make mistakes before you risk making one yourself. But the cost of waiting and waiting and watching the blinds climb into the 200/400 range and higher can be great as well; when people notice that you are now the short stack, they're probably going to start waiting to see if you bust out.

As I said, it's tough, but also pretty depressing. 4th through 10th pays the same, but you only waste a few minutes of your life finishing 10th, whereas a 4th place finish might take you 45 minutes or more. String 3 of those together and say hello to tilt. This is definitely my biggest challenge and area I need to work on. Assuming this is getting read by anyone, I'd appreciate any links, thoughts, or ideas.

Multi-Table Fun (Jinx Be Damned)

2004-09-08T16:39:00.000-04:00

Rolling along now. Whew.

I finally managed to get some time to register for the Empire Poker $500 Daily FreeRoll, and was looking forward to my first multi-table effort. It was fun, though short lived. I ended up finishing 191 out of 250 when I flopped a pair of Aces (with King kicker), and my only opponent check-called the flop and turn, and then busted me out on the river when he showed his pocket Aces to make a set. Fitting, perhaps. Boo.

Then, excited about the multi-table action, I found my way to the mulit-table SNG tab, and figured I'd give a 2-table $10+1 a try. I played solid, avoided big confrontations, and managed to still be alive at the 1-hour point, with 2240 in chips and 8 players total remaining. Then I entered a hand with Axs, to see a flop of AA6. I quickly called someone's all-in bet... he showed a 6... and I caught the unneccessary yet always welcome case Ace on the river to take me to over 4k in chips. Best Empire/Party hand yet.

Now, with 5 players left (this tourney paid to top 4), I'm beginning to feel a little nervous. I have plenty of chips to probably sit back and at least make 4th place ($20), but I seem to have bad luck on the bubble. Then, holding ATo, the short stack pushes all in and it gets folded around to me. Here we go... he doesn't have that many chips, and 99% of the people I know would tell me that I should call, but I fear the possible beat that could take me from ~3800 chips down to ~3000, and double up the short-stack putting me at a much greater risk of not placing in the money. I call. He shows a glorious 53o, and I win like ATo is supposed to in that situation, putting me in the money and ~4600 in chips.

I end up busting the 4th place finisher, steal a bunch of blinds, and rack up the chip lead with 9000+ chips (about double what the others have). Down to 2 players, with about even stacks and increasing blinds, I get suckered into calling what I think is a "post-oak bluff" on a flop that gave me an open-ended straight draw... the turn is no help and I call another small bet... the river is no help, and my opponent goes all in. I can't call, and quickly realize that heads-up I should have raised his flop bet or folded. Now I'm facing a call in which I am easily beat for all my chips, or a fold which will leave me crippled.

I opt for crippled and alive, and fold it down. I'm not sure of the particulars, but I ended up waiting a few hands and pushing all in with a decent heads-up hand in the necessary effort to double up, but it was not to be. 2nd place, a $60 prize, $49 profit, and look at that goal get closer. Nice.

Setting A Goal

2004-09-07T22:46:00.000-04:00

As I've said before, I'm prepared to lose at least a few hundered dollars in an effort to become a better player, and get to that point where you begin to win more than you lose. After another SNG 1st, several recent low limit sessions that ended in the black, and a slowly growing bankroll, I'm really starting to want to say that I am at that point, even though I fear the jinx.

To that end, I thought it would be beneficial to set a goal for myself... a target to work towards. After a little research, I've come up with where I stand so far this year: a dissapointing -$246.00. (I dropped a good bit at low limit earlier this summer.) So my goal, which I think is quite reasonable, is simply to earn enough to finish the year in the black.

And so, you may notice in the right-hand column I have added a stats section to keep track of my progress, and a few other things that might be worth noting.

Switching Things Up

2004-09-02T01:59:00.000-04:00

I've been hammering away at the Party/Empire $10 single-table SNGs lately: averaging at least 4-5 a day in an effort to prove that I can crack these things in the long run. Yesterday I had one of those moments where everything that I've been soaking up... the thousands of hands, the books, the articles... finally seemed to be paying off. Things were clicking. I was winning nice pots when I was the favorite, and losing minimally when I got outdrawn. In 4 tourneys, I took 2 3rd place finishes, a bad beat for 4th, and rounded out the set with a 1st.

The 1st place finish was the most satisfying game I've seen yet. I came into the money with the shortest stack, and then, like magic, my opponents revealed that I was the best player of the 3. They were folding the blinds to me right and left. I stole thier blinds when I was on the button something like 4 times in a row at one point. If they did choose to play, it was call or minimum bet every time with a big ace, and a raise with AK or a pair. One player even made the comment "damn, cold cards", after folding about 8 hands in a row. I just ground the tightness right out of them. Beautiful.

But then just like that things dried up for me. Today I was playing just about as good as I ever have, and only managed a dissapointing couple of 3rds out of about 10 tournaments, giving back all of the previous night's winnings. Just when I feel I start to build the roll, this kind of thing happens. So I went back to my old enemy: the low-limit ring games.

I did need a change of pace perhaps, but I quickly realized that it was somewhat of a tilt that was responsible for me being here again, and reigned those emotions in right away. Play solid. Limp with all the hands that can flop monsters. Play your position. I half expected to drop a quick $20 and split, but instead ended up a satisfying $30+ after a little over an hour. And that would be more like $50 without 2 big pots that I ended up splitting with identical straights. I did get hit with the deck a few times (like flopping top 2 pair with a Q5o in the BB), but I also felt confident; like I was in control, and could really only win because I was minimizing loss so well.

Two key points:

It might be a nice change to switch games or limits when you end up burnt-out or frustrated with what you've been playing... just watch the tilt factor.
Improved play in one game can and will translate into improved play in another game. (Assuming you can make the necessary adjustments between limits/games/etc.)

Norman Chad And Poker One-Liners

2004-09-01T00:37:00.000-04:00

Norman Chad, one of this year's WSOP commentators on ESPN, appears to be a "love him or hate him" kind of guy. I think a lot of people are confusing the televised WSOP with something "educational" or a real sporting event, where they actually show the whole contest and viewers expect some insightful and analytical commentary. The WSOP on TV is pretty much entertainment, and entertainment only... you're only seeing the choice hands where players make big moves or bad moves... not the 5000 folded hands in-between. So, with that in mind, I expect to be entertained, and half of that for me is Norman Chad's array of one-liners, even the 200 he uses that are about his ex-wife.

Tonight's big one for me was when someone flopped some overcards holding JJ, his opponent bet big, and the player holding JJ yelled in disgust, "Oh, F*#k!" Then Chad responds with a sarcastic tone, "...Is that a tell?"

Another one I liked a few weeks back was when someone folded a medium pocket pair to a smallish bet where most people would have gladly called or re-raised. Chad responded, "I bet this guy still has the first dollar he ever made too" in disgust at the person's tight play.

Perhaps best of all are the times where Chad is unrelenting in his heckling of the heckle-deserving Phil Helmuth. It's entertainment, and I mostly enjoy Chad's one-liners, if for no other reason that he gives me some new material to use at the neighborhood game.

10 SNG Don'ts

2004-08-30T23:46:00.000-04:00

Poker strategy is mostly a matter of situations and "feels" and gut instincts based on observations, but there are some points that are generally agreed upon... strategy that is widely-held as "basic" or "fundamental". Everyone has an opinion, but sometimes things are pretty much black and white. As a goal for analyzing my own play, I set out to nail down 10 things that I should never do when playing the Empire/Party SNGs (some of them carry over into other games, or are universal). The following is that list. I know I love to read strategy, even basic strategy and thought I'd contribute something for people to read. Feel free to leave a comment and tell me something important that I've missed, or why I might be wrong. Here we go (no real order here, they're all important):

1. Don't play $5 tournaments.

This is one of those things that I learned the hard way before I became fully convinced it was good advice. The basic problem is this: the buy-in is $5, and the entry fee (rake) is $1, which equals 20% of the buy-in. Now, if you move up to the $10 tournaments, the buy-in is $10 and the entry fee/rake is still $1, which equals 10% of the buy-in. So in the $5 tourneys you're paying more, to win less, when you do win.

An example of what I am talking about can be seen when we compare two 3rd place finishes:

In a $5+1 you'd win $10 (10 players x $5 x 20%)
So you paid $6, won $10, netted $4
ROI: 67%

In a $10+1 you'd win $20 (10 players x $10 x 20%)
So you paid $11, won $20, netted $9
ROI: 82%

Here's a table that spells it out:

buy-in + entry 1st ROI 2nd ROI 3rd ROI
$5 + $1 317% 150% 67%
$10 + $1 354% 173% 82%
$20 + $2 354% 173% 82%
$30 + $3 354% 173% 82%

...and so on, as long as the entry fee is 10% of the buy-in.

The differences in ROI might not seem that large, but over the course of time and many games, the 20% entry fees will really eat into any possible winnings you might have at the $5 level. Perhaps more importantly, there is a negligible increase in the skill of the players between the $5 to $20 SNGs, and certainly not between the $5 and the $10 ones. If you can win at the $5 level, you can just as easily win at the $10 level.

The ONLY exception I would make to this rule is if you are a player who is new to online sit-and-go play. You have to play real money games to get a feel for things, but you're probably going to lose some money in the beginning, so it probably makes some sense to play the $5 games to minimize the loss. Be honest with yourself about your skill level... if you basically just know "what hand beats what" and how the game is played, you shouldn't be playing for real money yet. If you've read some strategy, and can consistently at least break even at the $5 level, it's definitely time to move up to $10, or higher, depending on your means. The point is, not many people fall into the category of "those who should be playing $5 SNGs".

2. Don't try and play with too small of a bankroll.

If you want to win long-term at the SNGs, you've got to start with enough money to outlast the variance and beats you are going to encounter through the normal course of play. I would say that a good high figure to start with would be 20x the buy-in/entry. So if you're going to play $10+1 tournaments, you might want to start with $220. The absolute lowest that I would start with is 10x the buy-in/entry (for $10+1 that would be $110). Much less than that and you run the risk of hitting a run of bad luck and bad cards and those inevitable poor plays that we all make sometimes, which could bust you out of money completely, even if it takes a while.

With that said, if you find yourself not finishing "in the money" at least 33% of the time, there's probably some parts of your game you're going to need to work on. Everyone has bad streaks. I had a terrible run of 13 games without a money finish not too long ago. I'd say that 13 games is pretty extreme though (and due to a few of the other points on this list no doubt). But overall, with good play and a proper bankroll, you can overcome bad luck and your own mistakes.

3. Don't play drunk.

This might seem like a no-brainer, and it is, but I would bet that anyone who drinks and plays poker has mixed the two with negative results at least once. Sure, you can have a drink or two and still play well, but there is a threshold where you're going to end up playing a little looser, gambling a little more, pushing a little harder because of alcohol. Obviously you don't want to play ripped-up, fall-down drunk, but you need to watch that "hey so I have a little buzz, I'm having fun" attitude just as much. It can cost you, and will. Go find yourself a quarter/half neighborhood game where everyone is drinking and set a limit. Have fun. Don't blow it online against sober solid players.

4. Don't play depressed, angry, or upset.

This one will really bite into your roll. You end up bored, lonely, depressed about something in your non-poker life, and decide to play anyway. Pretty soon you're frustrated, impatient, and trying plays that you would never play if you were in a good mood: ridiculous steal attempts, overbetting, and most disastrously, the "let's gamble, I'm all-in" play. Sure any two cards can win, but not when you're sitting at a full table under the gun and three guys call your J4o bluff. Playing while depressed, angry, or upset is like being on tilt as soon as you sit down, before you even play a hand. It's worse than playing drunk: at least if you play drunk and lose some money, you'll probably have fun doing it. Pissed off and broke is never fun.

5. Don't switch between $5, $10, $20, and $30 levels.

There's nothing fundamentally bad about switching between the lower levels; as I've already mentioned, the skill at these tables is basically the same. But that's also the reason why you shouldn't switch often: if the skill of the other players is basically the same, you should have about the same chance of winning a $10 SNG as you do a $20 SNG. So who's to say fate won't bite you in the ass and let you money in the cheaper ones and get knocked out in 4th place in the more expensive ones? Switching levels is a good way to have a good ITM% (in the money %) and still be just barely breaking even, or worse.

There's nothing wrong with trying a more expensive level now and again when your bankroll is far enough into positive territory to allow it, but in general you should pick a level you can afford, and stick with it. Grind it out.

6. Don't get busted out when you started a hand with more than 8x the BB.

I stole this one from pokernerd's SNG strategy post, and it's worth repeating. The logic behind this is mainly that you should NEVER make bad enough calls to get busted when you started a hand with a stack that was far from desperate. Never go all-in, unless you are 99% certain that you will win the hand unless: 1) you have less than 8x the BB, or 2) you're already in-the-money. I even usually extend this logic a little further and set my limit at 6x the BB. Also, 99% certain, doesn't necessarily mean that the hand you hold is a 99% favorite... but it should be damn near uncrackable. Sure, your opponent could have quads and beat your full house, but that isn't going to happen often enough to worry about. However, with you holding trips, 4 spades showing on the board and none in your hand, you don't want to bust out. Fold it down if your opponent bets you all in, and conversely don't try anything fancy that can cost you chips. Live to play another day. If you want to "gamble", go play the lottery. Tournament poker is all about survival.

7. Don't play for second place.

When it's down to three, and you're already in the money, play to win. Play for first. The prize is a good bit better than the second place one, whereas a second finish is only worth a little more than a third. There's a lot of slightly different strategies you can take when it's down to three players, but they all share one quality: aggression. You don't want to just outlast someone so you can slide into second place, you want to attack. Too much aggression is stupid, but too much is ALWAYS better than not enough when down to 3 players.

8. Don't do other things while you're playing.

This one might have a few exceptions, and we'll get to those, but it certainly can't hurt to follow this advice. It seems to me, that if you're playing several games at once, or watching television, or instant messaging a friend while you're playing, you're missing information and cues from other players that might be useful later on. As well, if you're busy doing something else, your mind is not really on poker... you're not sitting there evaluating every hand, watching how people play, reminding yourself what your strategy should be at every moment. If you're a winning player long-term, and you think you can do something else while you're playing, or play multiple tables, try it sometime. Just don't ignore your stat book or journal when they start telling you that you should focus on one game at a time.

The possible exception to this rule is during levels 1 and 2. You're going to be folding often, which can become boring. I wrote most of this list while in the early levels of tournaments, but once level 3 came around, it was definitely time to start paying attention to things. Do something else if you must, but know when to start watching. Ideally, you give yourself the most advantage by paying attention the whole game, but that also takes discipline to not get bored and frustrated with the pace and end up making foolish plays.

9. Don't think you are better than you really are.

We call those people "suckers" or "fish". Everyone has leaks in thier game which cause them to either lose money, or not make as much as they should be making. Winning at poker long-term takes a lot of patience, and a lot of self-observation and analysis. You should always be improving your game, no matter how good you think you are. Every single time you do not make the money, figure out one thing that you did wrong, or one thing that you could have done better. Keep a journal of these things and work on them. Remind yourself of them as you're playing. Turn weaknesses into strengths. You're not that good, and neither am I.

10. Don't be a dick.

This one I might get some argument with from a few people I know. It's my thinking, that anytime you antagonize or annoy the other players, you just paint a big red bulls eye on your chip stack.

Online play is often criticized because you cannot see a face or notice body language. (as you probably know however, there are other "tells" and patterns you can observe online) You're basically playing against faceless, emotionless computer avatars most of the time. When you start complaining about your hands, or crying about a beat, people will notice. It's not enough for them to read your hand or anything, but now they are paying attention to you, which I would argue is generally a bad thing.

Worse than drawing attention to yourself, is screaming for it. Taking the full amount of time to act every time is one example. Saying things to other players that involve censored words is another. It's more than bad etiquette, it's probably making you a target. People are going to take delight in busting you now, and mostly, you don't want that.

People may say, "but if other players are gunning for me, that just makes them more likely to make a bad call, or overbet against me", and that might be true, and yes, you could probably use that to your advantage. My theory is: most of us would probably do better plugging our own leaks rather than attempting to create them in other people.

So say "n1" (nice one) or "nh" (nice hand) when someone shows a full house or makes a nice play. Say "gg" (good game) when you bust someone out, or when you get busted out. If the table is chatty and friendly, participate a little. Just don't be a dick or draw unnecessary attention to yourself.

-------------------------------
That's it for now... I'm sure most of this is pretty straight forward, but I'd appreciate any feedback or other ideas.

2004-08-26T13:37:00.000-04:00

I'm considering re-naming this weblog "Wired Kings", because I always seem to have them cracked in some ridiculous chip-depleting fashion. This time I was in the early rounds of a SNG, with 9 players left, dispite the seemingly loose play I was seeing. I see my KK and decide to throw out a ridiculous bet, hoping to get some action from the fools who are playing any two suited cards. If not, I'll get a few arguably small blinds. Whatever.

One person calls my 250 chip bet, and another raises me all-in behind him. Now I'm a little worried about pocket aces, but mostly about these chumps holding Ax and the board putting up an ace. I call all-in, and the guy who called my original 250 folds. My competitor shows 99 vs my KK, and the board flops a 9.

Why would this guy re-raise all-in with a 99 when there was a raise and a call in front? At BEST he had to know he was going to be looking at two overcards from at least one opponent. That puts him at about 50% chance to win the hand, and he just risked almost his entire stack. There are better spots to push. Why would I raise to 250 with garbage to steal 25 chips in blinds?

So assuming anyone is actually reading this, is/was there anything wrong with my 250 chip bet? Could I have played this better somehow? Perhaps more interesting is my opponent: is his play here as stupid (yet lucky) as I have pointed out, or is there some strange wisdom in what he did that I'm not seeing?

2004-08-24T00:24:00.000-04:00

I've been busy playing the Empire/Party SNGs for the past few days with moderate success. I say "moderate" because although I have been winning more as time goes on (no doubt due to improved play), I'm still disappointed with a lot of my finishes. There have been a disheartening number of 4ths, and a good many 3rds where I had hoped for higher. After playing 34 SNGs total so far, and having a good day today, I thought a little reflection was in order.

I play well against 2 opponents and heads-up (at least I think I do). Most people seem to agree that once you're in the money, you play for first and generally play loose, fast, and all out (especially against weak/tight opponents). With 5 1sts, 8 3rds, and only 1 2nd place finish, I'd say I'm doing something right when I make it to the money. I'd like to see a few more firsts in that distribution, but I accept that luck plays a HUGE part when the blinds are 400/800. The point is, I don't puss out and hope for 2nd place: I push hard.

While we're talking in-the-money play, it should be noted that a lot of times that I took a 3rd, I came into the money on a short stack. Against high blinds and other powerful players, that's admittedly a tough spot to be in, but there's a leak in my game here somewhere that I'd like to work on. Either I've got to work on making it to the money with more chips, or perhaps gamble a little less when short stacked and try and pick my spots to push in better. There's always that little euphoric sigh of relief once I'm in the money (especially when I was a few blinds from elimination), that is so easily followed by an all-in "hey let's gamble" bet from me. It's not horrible strategy, but I might do better to relax and wait for a medium-decent hand if I can, instead of ATC.

The bigger problem for me (and this is related to coming into the money short) is the number of 4th-6th place finishes I've had: 14 in all (which is equal to the number of 1st-3rd place finishes). I recall a few times I got booted in 5th or 6th on bad beats or plays that upon reflection I couldn't have played much differently, but there were definitely some times where I gambled and lost here. I know I've bluffed at some bad pots where a simple check would have been the better play. Overall, I think a few things I need to watch myself doing are:

Limping with cards that aren't "bad", but are bad in early or middle position. Playing easily-dominated hands like KJo from early position in the early levels is a sure way to flop something you can't get away from, but are almost certainly beat with.
Not limping enough in late position with medium strength hands. Especially with few callers in front, I should probably play more on the button. I know position is important, but in some ways and situations I fail to apply it fully.
Bluffing on the flop, especially out of position. Sometimes it works, but most often someone will raise behind me, or I end up betting into some fancy dandy that flopped a full house and is gonna check raise all in.
Start taking note of bubble play situations, especially those where I ended up in 4th. I end up here on the short stack more than I would prefer, which is undoubtedly half of the problem (see above 3 points). Even then, I tend to play the "steal a blind here and there and wait for someone to get beat" strategy, which I should probably stick with unless I am the chip leader or near the chip leader. I don't know what the leaks are, but if I start paying attention I should be able to stop them and move into the money more often.

I'm also discovering just how truly awesome the poker blogging world really is. There is a TON of information and strategy out there. Two excellent posts on SNG strategy are Poker Nerd's SNG Strategy and this useful response to it. (both are excellent poker blogs)

Lastly, I should reveal that although my overal SNG return on investment is hovering somewhere in the single digit percentages, in my last 6 games it's been above 50%, and I'd like to think that's not just a lucky streak.

2004-08-19T11:27:00.000-04:00

Bad beat. It's probably up there as one of the most common phrases you'll hear out of a poker player's mouth. There's some debate it seems as to exactly what a "bad beat" really is. Some people (most likely those who have been chasing Party Poker's "Bad Beat Jackpot") seem to think that a "bad beat" is when you hold aces full of kings and get beat by a royal straigh flush. There's no doubt that that would indeed be a truly bad beat, but the hands need not be that ridiculously good to use the term.

Then there are the people who seem to throw the term around every time they lose a pot at showdown. I even heard someone (probably a result of watching WPT, where they always include a key set of about 50 buzzwords per episode) use the term "bad beat" when he had been bluffed out of a pot and his opponent showed the garbage he was bluffing with.

Brunson's definition is probably what most people mean when they say "bad beat":

When you get a big hand cracked (beaten) by someone who was a big dog against you and made his longshot draw... you're said to have had a bad beat.

Still, there remains some silly semantic argument as to what constitutes a "big hand" or someone being a "big dog" (as in underdog). Whatever.

I've taken a couple of what I consider to be bad beats recently in some SNGs, both involving me holding pocket kings. First, some guy went all in pre-flop on a medium-to-short stack... everyone folded to me, and with KK, I felt pretty obligated to call with my own medium-to-short stack which just happened to be a little smaller than his. He shows a pair of fours, and I'm thinking I'm about to double up. The flop comes... 3 hearts... then the turn is a heart... then the river is a heart: the board makes a heart flush. Neither of my kings are hearts. One of his fours is. There is a 2 of hearts on the board and he wins with his flush with 4 kicker. Bad. Beat. I'm out in 6th place.

Then there is this kind of thing that I seem to run into with more regularity than I would obviously prefer:

***** Hand History for Game 859255882 *****
300/600 TourneyTexasHTGameTable (NL) (Tournament 5327805) - Thu Aug 19 10:51:41 EDT 2004
Table Table 11044 (Real Money) -- Seat 5 is the button
Total number of players : 4
Seat 3: SloppyFloppr (2637)
Seat 4: Elkerud (3946)
Seat 5: BigZ6 (880)
Seat 8: ME (537)
ME posts small blind (150)
SloppyFloppr posts big blind (300)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to ME [ Kh, Ks ]
Elkerud folds.
BigZ6 folds.
ME raises (387) to 537
ME is all-In.
SloppyFloppr calls (237)
** Dealing Flop ** : [ Ah, 4d, 8s ]
** Dealing Turn ** : [ 2d ]
** Dealing River ** : [ 7h ]
Creating Main Pot with $1074 with ME
** Summary **
Main Pot: 1074 |
Board: [ Ah 4d 8s 2d 7h ]
SloppyFloppr balance 3174, bet 537, collected 1074, net +537 [ 8d 2s ] [ two pairs, eights and twos -- Ah,8d,8s,2s,2d ]
Elkerud balance 3946, didn't bet (folded)
BigZ6 balance 880, didn't bet (folded)
ME balance 0, lost 537 [ Kh Ks ] [ a pair of kings -- Ah,Kh,Ks,8s,7h ]

Most insulting of all is playing for an hour for fourth place. These things are going to happen.

2004-08-18T00:01:00.000-04:00

Arriving back in town from my vacation and honeymoon today, I was itching to try my hand at a $10+1 NL SNG (NL = no limit, SNG = sit-and-go... for those of you late to the party). I've lost a pretty pile of cash online at the $0.5/$1 low-limit tables so far, and conversely have done fairly well at the SNG tourneys. I've committed myself to sticking with the SNGs until I can build up a respectable roll, and repay my low-limit losses.

So I deposited a quick $50 with Empire Poker, which I had been meaning to try out for some time. Check out the Empire Poker Review and FAQ, which explains how Party Poker and Empire Poker play on the same tables... and having an account with both sites allows you to take advantages of 2 sets of promotions, bonuses, and comps. FYI, you can play on both sites from the same computer. I already had an account with Party Poker, and while I was away my ISP was kind enough to change my dynamic IP, allowing me to register with Empire. (You can just sign up using a different computer at a friends house or computer lab, etc... it appears that only the IP address and username must be different.)

At any rate, I played fairly solid in the SNG... perhaps even more aggressive than I have in the past. (That might be due to a little lazy time on my vacation I spent studying Super System). I bluffed at a lot of pots when I was in good position, and backed away from a few good ones when I knew I was beat. I took a rather easy 1st place, although I ended up playing heads-up a lot longer than I should have with the chip lead I had. I kept feeling like I didn't have the cards to pull the trigger. Finally I flopped a high flush, checked, and my opponent caught a straight on 4th street (a very easy read at that point).

$50 prize - $11 buy-in/entry fee = $39 profit. Not bad for an hour's worth of fun.

2004-08-06T01:46:00.000-04:00

As a few people that I know have expressed interest in creating an account and depositing some real money to play with at partypoker, I went ahead and set up an affiliate account so everyone can benefit. It works like this:

Partypoker always has "bonus codes" that you can use when depositing money into your account, which typically are either an extra $25 or 20% of your deposit. It's definitely smart to take advantage of these promotions, however... you can get the same deal through an "affiliate", except they also get a bonus. So, it would be stupid for me to be referring friends to partypoker and not taking advantage of the bonuses I could be recieving as an affiliate too.

So if you're considering signing up, please feel free to do so via this link which will earn you the $25 deposit bonus, and earn me a few extra bucks for the bankroll as well. (I figured the kinds of people I would be likely to refer wouldn't be depositing more than $125 at first, so offering the flat $25 bonus made more sense than the 20% bonus. If someone cares enough to ask, I'll gladly offer that bonus too.)

I'm off to get married and honeymoon for a week or two. Wish me luck, and keep some for yourself too.

2004-08-05T09:59:00.000-04:00

My eventual goal with playing poker online, is to get to the point where I can maintain a bankroll and add to it occasionally with a good session. In learning how to best accomplish this, I'm prepared to drop a few hundred... you just can't learn without real money at stake.

Although for unknown reasons I am drawn towards the low-limit tables (perhaps it's just the idea of winning back my money the same way that I lost it), my record at the "sit and go" single-table NL tournaments would suggest that I should spend my money and time in that direction.

So far I've sat in 5 of these sit-and-go tournaments with the following results:

$10+1 (that's $10 per person into the prize pool, and a $1 entry fee. prizes: 1st = 50%, 2nd = 30%, and 3rd = 20%): I finished above 5th place somewhere... I don't remember.
$10+1: Again I don't remember, but I know I didn't win anything.
$5+1: 1st place ($25 prize).
$5+1: 1st place ($25 prize).
$10+1: 3rd place ($20 prize).

If you're keeping score that's $45 in buy-ins and entry fees, $70 in prizes, and I'm confident I could have done a lot better. Those first two $10 games, I was pretty naive about what pots to get involved in, and simply got run over by better play and better cards. Since then, I've realized just how easy it is to wait out your opponents, playing only premium hands in early or middle position, and stealing some blinds when you can. It just isn't that difficult to make it into the final 3, and the money.

The last tournament listed above ended with a somewhat interesting hand (and certainly one that I thought I had won until the river). Here's the history:

***** Hand History for Game 815347887 *****
400/800 TourneyTexasHTGameTable (NL) (Tournament 5071514) - Thu Aug 05 02:33:21 EDT 2004
Table Table 11060 (Real Money) -- Seat 7 is the button
Total number of players : 3
Seat 6: acegetter85 (3665)
Seat 7: ME (1600)
Seat 10: DonnysGerbil (2735)
DonnysGerbil posts small blind (200)
acegetter85 posts big blind (400)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to ME [ Tc, Kd ]
ME calls (400)
DonnysGerbil calls (200)
acegetter85 raises (1200) to 1600
ME calls (1200)
ME is all-In.
DonnysGerbil folds.
** Dealing Flop ** : [ 5s, Js, Th ]
** Dealing Turn ** : [ Kc ]
** Dealing River ** : [ 8h ]
Creating Main Pot with $3600 with ME
** Summary **
Main Pot: 3600 |
Board: [ 5s Js Th Kc 8h ]
acegetter85 balance 5665, bet 1600, collected 3600, net +2000 [ 8c 8s ] [ three of a kind, eights -- Kc,Js,8c,8s,8h ]
ME balance 0, lost 1600 [ Tc Kd ] [ two pairs, kings and tens -- Kd,Kc,Js,Tc,Th ]
DonnysGerbil balance 2335, lost 400 (folded)

I'm not at all certain that I should have played this any differently. When "acegetter85" raised me all-in, I could have folded. However, he had been playing loosely and buying a lot of blinds pre-flop (or so it seemed... I suppose he could have just been on an amazing run of cards). This is one of those hands that I would much rather have not had to play for my entire stack (which was the shortest at the table at the time).

buy-in + entry	1st ROI	2nd ROI	3rd ROI
$5 + $1	317%	150%	67%
$10 + $1	354%	173%	82%
$20 + $2	354%	173%	82%
$30 + $3	354%	173%	82%