New Years Resolutions - A Plan for the Coming Year

New Pokerstars VIP system
I like the improvements, it gives better rakeback value to microstakes players. However I've done a few calculations based on game parameters that are relevant to me and the games I play. Based on achieving and mantaining silver star VIP status and taking into account the new Stellar Rewards I think the equivalent rakeback I can earn this year is roughly around 20-22%. This is assuming we use the fpps wisely when purchasing from the site shop. This is much better than the sub 15% that micros players used to have to put up with but still meagre compared to the 27% I'm getting from Absolute. So to confirm an earlier post, I shall stay with Absolute until I can equalise the rakeback value. This will likely take some time since I'd have to either play super volume (by multitabling) or up stakes, neither of which I'm ready for yet. I'd quite like to play at Stars given the lovely software, security and such but for now I need the added value so that I can continue bankroll growth. This leads me on to next subject.
I Must Not Withdraw, I Must Not Withdraw, I...
This year I have made a decent bit of money from the game but when I moved over to Absolute I cashed out a few hundred dollars accross the various sites and only uploaded $50. It was nice to have a couple hundred quid to spend but my goal from here onwards is to grow a small sum into a (hopefully) large sum of money. In order to maximise this growth this means from now on... I cannot withdraw any money from the bankroll. It currently sits around $200 and I'm not going to handicap my chance to make a decent sum by taking money from it. If, some day, I can look up at a few K and know that I've reached a ceiling in poker ability at some given stake, then maybe I'll cash out and invest elsewhere. But for the immediate future, I will never withdraw money from my poker bankroll again until I'm done with the game.
Monthly Investment Target
I intend to try and play a minimum number of tournaments/hands every month this coming year but I haven't decided on any figures yet. It's still early days in my HUSNG learning curve so I don't want to set anything unrealistic. Remember I'm still only one tabling currently to try and maximise my learning potential while I'm a member of HUSNG.com until March. Afterwards I'll prob start multitabling to up my game volume which is quite important.
Bankroll Structure
The first part of the year at least will be in heads up sngs. But I can certainly invisage me playing other games, cash or tournaments or both. My golden rule for the next year will be "up to 5%". What I mean is that I'll invest up to a maximum of 5% of the bankroll at any one time. At the moment this means I'm at the threshold of moving up to $10 HUSNGs since $10 is 5% of $200.
Conclusion
Right, so that was a lot of talk and not many resolutions to be honest. My plan can essentially be summarised as a desire to play as many games as possible within strict bankroll growth guidelines while withdrawing no money from the bankroll itself. Simpleshk.

Played a few more games at last...

Played fairly well tonight I think, I was working on the stuff I've learned recently from the HUSNG videos; basically playing abc and occasionally running multi - street bluffs on boards I thought were good for it. Most of it worked out but made one loose shove over a very aggressive player who called with AKo - it was very early in the game and although villain had been super aggro so far I think the AJs all - in four bet shove might have been a little loose. Another hand getting 3/2 to call I had top pair on a dodgy 822 board. Villain had been pretty passive and only betting with made hands as far as I'd made out. So putting him on any 8 or 2 I think I should have folded my 98o getting those odds. Still, otherwise, I think my game and thinking is definitely improved to a solid enough level to crush these games so hopefully it won't be too long until I reach my weird 21 buy in threshold and move up to the 10 buck games. My game feels good, I'm still learning loads, and I shall try and get through a ton of games this coming year. I'll stay with Absolute for now, and see how we get on. If you're interested in tracking the sharkscope graph look for Battered_Sod @ absolute. I'm hoping (very much) that my general intuition that I'm good enough to beat these games is correct but sharky will "out me" either way. Good luck :)
note taking
just thought I'd add this... Have been advised to develop good note taking in heads up games early on so that once we regularly play the same players our skills are good enough for it to be of benefit. The gist is that if we wait until we grind the 50s or higher and regularly come across certain players it's better if our note taking skills are well refined. The reason is because: bad notes < no notes < good notes. So tonight I practised this skill and it does feel a little alien, I need to develop a good shorthand to make it easier.

The Value of Playing HU Poker

Once upon a time there was a program on some obscure sky back channel called poker night live. One of the pros that used to commentate there once said that he did not truly learn to master poker until he'd played heads up. Three years later and I finally agree with him. If only I'd taken that initial advice and started playing HU sooner... Ah well, better late than never I guess. The point is - If you truly want to master this game you need to become an EXPERT post flop player. If you don't, you may be able to table select well and follow the typical raise preflop c-bet any flop strategy but sit at a table with players better than your "weak passives" and you'll get crushed. So, if you want to get better at poker play heads up games. I am astonished at how much I screw up when playing HU but every time I seem to learn something. And since I've been playing these games, I've been able to sit at 6max/full ring and really feel like I can compete postflop. On some tables, it feels like easy money. Just thought I'd post this on the off chance that I can help someone to take a big step to profitability quicker than I did.

Stars 30k/11k

Played these tonight, busted in both well short of the money. Felt I played really well though, I play these super aggressively as most of the villains are Harrington clones and play really passively. A semi lag style is great for building a stack. However, it requires you to run well because people get it in light against you. For example:



My strategy for mtts in general is - I want chips and I want them quickly. I'll never fold my way into the bubble, I'd rather go out on a two street bluff trying to build enough chips to get to the f table. As I said in a previous post, we cannot concentrate on finishing position; only on winning chips.
Next hand, we have a shorty in the small blind but we cannot tighten up our raising range based on the fear of a shove. Getting 2/1+ it was easy call:



I play these tournaments for fun really, they have so many runners our chances to make decent money are small. For that reason I take the buy - ins out of my bank rather than use bankroll moneyz.

Life Bad Beat #1

Got in from work today to find the dog had decided to shit himself. Out of all the space in the house though, unfortunately he did it in the square foot that was also occupied by various christmas presents for relatives. Sigh.

Big Pot Mistakes

big pot mistakes
Still making too many of these, this one being an example. Villain was very aggressive and I decided to rep a very strong hand. I hadn't - again - considered if I even had any fold equity and now I'm not sure. He'd called several large reraises already so I actually think I made a gross error in this hand. I aggressively finished off the game after this. I see some players start to play passively after a big suckout like this, out of some sort of guilt maybe? We cannot let this affect our play and I'm glad I played ruthlessly afterwards. The hand:

It's important I try and cut these mistakes out of my game. On the plus side, I feel I'm learning loads currently from the new set of videos I am watching (husng.com) in particular multi street planning. I'll post about that in future but for now, I'm loving these games despite only breaking even over the last 30 or so. Any time I get thin value from a hand or make a well planned bluff it's like awesome. I wish I'd started playing heads up sooner to be honest. Obv there's so much money to be made in the fuller games, but I've missed out on so much post flop play. That's where I get the most enjoyment. Anyway enough said, good luck on your play over Christmas. Hope you win f*loads

Improving My Perception of Poker

When I was young I was a big chess fan - almost obsessively so at times. But I hated losing, and always set myself the unrealistic goal of winning every game. One handicap chess has given me since I've moved over to poker is that when I play tournaments and in particular heads up matches I am overly concerned with whether we win or lose these matches. This is the wrong way to think about poker. The very best HUSNG players don't tend to win more than 60% of their games, even against much weaker opposition. So they actually lose quite often. You'll notice that in previous posts I have talked about game results regularly. Well, husng profit is entirely based on how many chips you win compared to how many you lose. The best players know how to use all the possible stack sizes and situations to make sure they win more chips than they lose. It's this simple. The bigger the difference, the more husngs they win. So we should stop thinking about winning and losing games altogether - it is irrelevant. We just need to think about making the best possible decision at the time; the one that makes the most chips. We could lose twenty games in a row but as long as our decision making is correct it shouldn't bloody matter. So the challenge for me is to set aside this obsession with winning games; it's simpler than that. Win more chips than we lose.

I bit the bullet

and joined HUSNG.com for three months. Going to put in some hours with their videos now and really try and improve my understanding of post flop poker. At the end of it all I am hoping that I'll have a good understanding of where we are in a hand and what our equity is likely to be on a huge variety of flops. I've also found a few e-books that look really interesting but are rather expensive. I'll prob buy 1 or 2 of the cheapest ones after my membership to HUSNG expires around March time and see what I can learn. These books are for 6 max and have juicy chapters on continuation betting and equities that I just want to read, like, now. Oh well, patience Simon... Let's learn as much as we can from the current resource first. One e-book in particular written for NLHE players who want to move to PLO looks really interesting. It looks extremely thorough (from the chapter titles + segments). I'd prefer to stick to NL since I've learned so much about it already but edges between the better players and fish are bigger in that game which adds up to two/three ptbb/100. This can add up to a lot of extra hourly earn. But that's for next summer or beyond. For now, I'm learning to play HUSNGs. I'll try not to waffle too much for a bit, and post some results + hand histories along with my (developing, hopefully) thought processes.
Where should I play?
Not sure I posted this but my full tilt rakeback request was rejected. I think I signed up through pocket fives so they have my 27% every month. MEH - shan't play there any more then! LOL unless they do a great deal like that take 2 promotion I guess. Anyway, I'll continue to take advantage of my 30% deal from Absolute until I move up in stakes. Apparently pokerstars rakeback equivalent is not really worth it unless you move above $50 buy - in games and I'm not bankrolled or skilled enough for them yet. So for now, Absolute is my game. Hopefully move over to stars next year at some point and grind out some profit. GL

Standard Deviation in HUSNGs

Well I decided to spend an hour looking back at some basic maths probability (it's been a few years since I looked at any) and decided to create a spreadsheet where I could calculate variance, standard deviation and some confidence intervals for HUSNGs. Here are some numbers and conclusions that will help me in the future.
Playing without knowing our ROI
Truly, noone really knows what their exact ROI is, but those professional players who play tens of thousands of games per year are fairly close to realising their expectation. This is obvious due to the somewhat linear curves that are displayed on sharkscope. So how do we go about ascertaining whether we can beat the games or not? Well, we can use elimination. If we have a winrate of 60% then after roughly 300 games it is 99.7% likely that we will not have lost any money. This means that if we HAVE lost money, we cannot reasonably consider that figure as our winrate. If we think our winrate is 55% then after about 2000 games we should not have lost money 99.7% of the time. Once again, if we have then we are likely a break even player at best. Ok, so we should just play and forget about it then? Well, this is where we must start making assumptions. In the games I've played so far (albeit small stakes) the players have been BAD. Few of them will know the maths like I do or will have the determination to improve to the level of play that I want to reach. So I will estimate that I should be able to beat the games at a winrate of about 55%.
Numbers assuming a 55% winrate
Let's say we play the $20 HUSNGs for a year on Absolute poker. We'll need to play over 2000 to guarantee some plus ROI 99.7% of the time. If we play ten a day for 300 days, then in those 3000 games we can expect our earn to be $3900+or-$3270 99.7% of the time. This is $630 < average < $7170. As you can see, there is alot of 'variance' in that range. Still, next year this should be the minimum that I should try to achieve since this a guaranteed profit of at least $630 providing our initial winrate assumption is reasonable. If we run good that's a few thousand quid - nothing to be sneered at.
Turning professional
Could we make a living playing $20 HUSNGs? Yes. Once again assuming a 55% winrate, if we played 100 games a day for 300 days of the year then we have 30000 games. Our earn would be $39000+or-$10340 so we would win (99.7% of the time) at least $29000.
Conclusions
It was about time that I did this work and got some idea about our expectations for these games. My first goal should be to learn as much as I can to beat the games, my second to play enough games such that I ride out the standard deviations from the average. If anyone thinks I'm about to jump ship and turn pro... Well tbh I'd love to give it a try. Maybe some day I will. But unfortunately it's a very big risk - too big a risk currently. My plan for the next year is just to learn, learn again, play some and then learn some more. I still enjoy playing and working stuff out - and being right some of the time - and I love the game theory and maths side to poker. It will probably just remain a firm hobby that might make me a bit on the side. But you never know, maybe some day.
If there's any maths that I fucked up - I'd give that a 99.7% chance of being true - please point it out. I deliberately typed in the equations in the spreadsheet instead of using the predefined functions so that I was using old skills almost forgotten. GL.

Implied Odds

In the last post I played a gutshot aggressively over two streets against a calling station - the lowest EV play IMO. At the time I thought that just check folding may have been best but I decided to put some hands into pokerazor to find a threshold for implied odds. I simplified the given hand and found that providing we could reliably make better than approx (20 x bet to call) on later streets then we could reasonably call to hit our gutshot. In other words if it costs less than 5% of the effective stacks. It's a long time since I studied any implied odds maths because in full ring it's generally best just to muck gutshot straight draws. But they are a hand we will get quite often and are seriously worth playing in heads up. So the little rule of thumb I'll use from now on is this 5% figure. Easy to stick to and shouldn't get us into much trouble. Of course for any additional outs we can increase this and use our intuition about how much it might be safe to call. We could also double this figure for flush draws and open ended straight draws ie if it costs less than 10% of effective stack size we call, otherwise fold. Really useful rules of thumb I think.

The Road to Improvement

I clearly have much to learn. HUSNG.com is the next step I believe. I'll join for three months and devote much of that time to study. I'll try and play a minimum of two games per day and really work hard on watching as many videos as I can and create an organised folder full of notes and hands that I feel are important. One thing that's just occurred to me is that the best players seem to specialize in certain games and this is the approach I should take. I'm a decent all round poker player but not a very good one in any field. Well, it's my goal to become a very good heads - up player which should make me a very good poker player since my post flop play should excel as a result. Long term goal? To be able to beat games up to $100 and hold my own in $100+. If I can do this then there'll be a load of profit to be made. Beyond the HUSNG.com study, I may have to consider employing a coach. They cost a fair bit of money but it's basically an investment. Once I can prove that I can beat games at small/mid stakes I can then think about enrolling students of my own and getting that money back.

Brutal hour or so...

4 games, four losses. Despite being a 2/1 chip leader twice and getting it in with the best hand. Going to stop play since in the last game I got it in with JJ and ran into TT who insta outed a set. Ok, every single one of these players was calling like 80% out of the big blind. I felt I had a huge edge on all of them and played reasonably well but just didn't get the cards. Obv I don't expect to be a winner at HU yet - I am determined that I will beat these games - but I am sure that this was just bad variance. Every flip I seemed to lose and I made the mistake of getting the money in light with weak aces twice which didn't help tonight. Trouble is, with shortish blinds ATs is a clear call getting better than 2/1. I don't want to turn this into a bad beat post though so let's focus on the hands I played badly. I'll pick a couple and post below:



Ok this was immediately after the hand where we lost with JJ vs. TT. Basically I put villains range for donking as any part of the board but not a monster. I figured I could get second or bottom pair to fold and figured I had ten outs to the best hand meaning I'm only a 38% dog to be good by the river if we are called. Unfortunately he had one of my outs reducing my equity to 27%. And obv top pair which is prob never folding.

I think a problem I'm running into is that all these players have been very loose passive at various times throughout the match and I've made the mistake of giving myself too much fold equity in a pot. Here's another example:



My problem here is that by checking my blind preflop I'm representing a very small range by check raising the flop. Plus, villain is rarely folding to any flop aggression. Check folding is probably way better here. EDIT: What about check calling? If we hit we should have a really good hidden hand. And as we've seen, villain doesn't like folding top pair. It's a much less expensive line against this type of player. The problem is I've been so used to playing aggressively but against this type of player passive play is necessary with draws because we obv have NO fold equity. Become a station to beat a station. I'll continue to analyse my play over the coming weeks. These players are all big losers on sharkscope so I'm clearly 1/ either card dead or 2/ I am not exploiting these players in the best way. I think it's probably a mix of the two.

A Better Way to Play a LPAS

The previous hand I posted I played a hand too aggressively with little fold equity. This situation was similar as villain had never folded to a raise after showing strength himself. We're a favourite over top pair with 15 or so outs but I decided to take a check call line and then value town if we hit one of our hands. It came on the river and we got our value. I wonder if we could check raise the flop as favourite and then check call the turn? This could lead to us winning his stack rather than a few hundred. Hmmm, not sure about that. If we'd bricked I suppose we're pretty crippled. Don't think it was a bad way to play our hand.



EDIT: Been thinking more about this hand, I think the check raise line is best after more thought. Surely any time you're favourite and can build the pot it's good, even if we brick the turn. If he's never folding the flop to our raise then we've added value while best. If the turn bricks we can check and call getting odds that are bound to be good (unless villain shoves...) and then either shove if we hit the river or check fold if we miss. This way I think we get the very most value from our big draw on the flop.

hand replayer

just updated the last post now using an online hand replayer. Unfortunately it means that my poor play is now there for the world to see on a public server. Serves me right ;) Basically I'll continue to out my mistakes and use the replayer. It's much easier on the eye than wading through hand history text. Going to try and play more HUSNGs in the next few weeks - more than I've been playing recently I mean.
Preflop play
So far I've been very aggressive from the button and big blind, and I'm pretty sure this is less than optimal against the weak loose passive opponents I've been facing. We raise to build a pot with a good hand and to sometimes win the blinds. If villain is never folding the BB to a raise, this kind of negates the need to raise with our weaker hands since we have no steal equity. So against this kind of opponent I'll start limping more of my range and only raising those hands that play well versus villain's range. The same applies to BB play, there's little point in 3 betting (weak hands) if villain is never folding. We are just building a big pot with a weak hand. Against a loose passive, we also need to realise that they are level one thinkers. They just play the cards in front of them so they will not adjust well to our raises/limps. So in other words we can quite comfortably play our hand face up and this is how we extract the most money from this opponent.

God I suck sometimes...

but I should try and be positive. Other than this one big mistake I played pretty well in this game. Here's the hand and I'll go through it at the end:



Ok, villain wasn't too bad but pretty loose passive preflop and a little passive on the flop. I raise k9 suited standard but decide to call the small 3-bet. This is the first mistake. Villain had only 3-bet like 5 percent of the time so far so we are pretty crushed all the time. But I decided to take a board in position for the small extra investment. On the flop I plan to give up knowing that villain could easily be checking his entire range here. On the turn I pick up the double gutter so my options are obv 1. fold, 2. call, 3. ship. Folding is ok I think but I think there's enough implied odds to fish for one of the eight outs. I don't really have time at the moment but I think I'm getting villains stack every time when one of those cards hits. I'll do the maths at some point and update this post. Shoving though, while some opponents might muck second pair or such here I don't think such a tight 3-bet range will ever fold out so I made a huge mistake getting the money in 18% to improve with little fold equity. Shite. Had played pretty well until that point.

Played pretty well tonight I think...

I really tried to play solidly tonight after my shocker yesterday. I think, overall, I played well. I was reading villain's play quite well and adjusting to their adjustments. My hand reading was reasonably good and I managed to extract some extra value by using a couple of reverse tells on appropriate boards and bet sizing correctly - in one pot in particular. Happy today. Still tons of leaks in my game though so hopefully the study I put in when I join HUSNG will help with that. Not sure I'll ever be able to go back to full ring any more, I won't be seeing enough flops lol. It's amazing how different I'm beginning to see the game now I am seeing so much 'later street' play. It's so much fun... and for the first time - against certain opponents - you really do feel like you are a good player. I've never felt that before in any poker game. Right to finish up here's a hand I played tonight. I'd labelled villain as semi tight passive. I'm not honestly sure if I played the hand optimally but I certainly won a big pot. The river danger card was a good one for me to check raise since it's obv a good card to bluff and it's also difficult for villain to put those draws in my range. It looks bluffy in other words. But when someone I've labelled as passive four bets I was shit scared. But I just couldn't see any hand that would play this way so decided to call. Was right but not sure if I was correct to call. So Decide for yourselves:
Stage #2036446262 Tourney ID 4974977 Holdem Single Tournament No Limit 40 - 2009-12-04 23:16:29 (ET)
Table: 33011080 (Real Money) Seat #4 is the dealer
Seat 4 - WANWEST (1,435 in chips)
Seat 6 - BATTERED_SOD (1,565 in chips)
WANWEST - Posts small blind 20
BATTERED_SOD - Posts big blind 40
*** POCKET CARDS ***
Dealt to BATTERED_SOD [9c Ks]
WANWEST - Raises 60 to 80
BATTERED_SOD - Calls 40
*** FLOP *** [8h Kd Kh]
BATTERED_SOD - Checks
WANWEST - Bets 40
BATTERED_SOD - Raises 120 to 120
WANWEST - Calls 80
*** TURN *** [8h Kd Kh] [Jd]
BATTERED_SOD - Checks
WANWEST - Checks
*** RIVER *** [8h Kd Kh Jd] [10d]
BATTERED_SOD - Checks
WANWEST - Bets 40
BATTERED_SOD - Raises 200 to 200
WANWEST - Raises 960 to 1,000
BATTERED_SOD - Calls 800
*** SHOW DOWN ***
WANWEST - Shows [5c 5s] (Two Pair, kings and fives)
BATTERED_SOD - Shows [9c Ks] (Three of a kind, kings)
BATTERED_SOD Collects 2,400 from main pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total Pot(2,400)
Board [8h Kd Kh Jd 10d]
Seat 4: WANWEST (dealer) (small blind) HI:lost with Two Pair, kings and fives [5c 5s - B:Kh,B:Kd,P:5s,P:5c,B:Jd]
Seat 6: BATTERED_SOD (big blind) won Total (2,400) HI:(2,400) with Three of a kind, kings [9c Ks - P:Ks,B:Kh,B:Kd,B:Jd,B:10d]

I guess the hand he's representing is a set. But I think 88 would rereaise the flop often since it looks like I might have a king. 88 or JJ would surely try and get some money in on the turn given that I might have a king. That leaves only one possible hand with three combinations in TT. AQ or any other draw can reasonably be discounted because there was no betting on the turn. I've also used those reverse tells and so there's a good chance he might put me on a busted flush draw and try to bluff raise me. So given that his range is so polarized I believe the call to be correct. One last point - could we not have shipped the stack in? Would he not feel obliged to call for a hundred chips more with any two? Maybe not.

Looking at a big online winner

skilled_sox
If you get a minute, go to sharkscope and look up this player. His curve shows a pretty perfect model of how to build a bankroll. With profit currently hovering somewhere near a million dollars over 25000 games you can see how it grew exponentially over time. It also demonstrates how variance increases at higher stakes games. I picked out this player as I know this was achieved mainly in heads up sit n goes. From reading his posts and thoughts on hand histories it is clear that he is an exceptional hand reader with a thorough knowledge of equities and metagame strategy. Reading forums and such, it seems to be general consensus that anybody can beat the games up to $110 for a healthy ROI and obv profit. Only the exceptional players move beyond these levels and remain winners. I can honestly say I don't think I'll ever have the ability to challenge in the $500+ games. Still, I don't think I'm so bad that I cannot make some money playing beneath this level. To this end, I'm seriously considering joining HUSNG.com and getting a load of their videos and doing some hard study over the coming months. It has been really good being a member of cardrunners and I've learned alot from them. But they do not do many HUSNG videos which is a shame - therefore I'll likely finish my full membership there until such time as I return to the 6 - max, full ring cash games.

just played awfully

played a match and just wanted to berate myself on here...
Started well, I built a 5/1 chip lead and then instead of being PATIENT, I gambled after I'd let the lead slip back to 2/1. Basically I turned a second pair hand into a bluff. Now villain had been folding alot to reraises so I figured the best options were to fold or make the hand a bluff. Any passive play on my part was meeting alot of aggression from villain. So I really didn't think I could get to showdown cheaply enough. So I shipped in with second pair and got insta called by top pair decent kicker. After that I was a little tilted and ended up losing a little too easily. this is something I'll really have to learn how to control better in future. Just play each hand on it's merits and in an isolated manner and forget about previous mistakes. In this game I just gave away equity towards the end because my head wasn't in the right place. Slap on wrist. I think the fact that I'm tired is not helping me tonight. I know we shouldn't play when we are suffering from fatigue but I must if I want to play since my job demands crappy hours. Sigh. Ok, deep breath, next game.
the final bankroll strategy
Recently I've talked about a host of different approaches for bankrolling. Right now my bank is about $200 after the last game. I think I'm going to approach the problem like this. Until I reach $210 I'll keep playing $5 buy - ins. Once (if, lol) I reach $210 I'll play a $10 game and use that benchmark as my cross over point. In other words 20 + 1 buy ins for any stake. This means that I have 40 buy-ins for the 5 dollar games which I should never feasibly lose at these stakes unless I play like I did in the last game... Lol. There shouldn't be a need to ever increase this leverage since if we were to get to $420 at some point that would give us 42 buy - ins at the $5 stakes plus 22 buy - ins at $10 which is 64 and this would increase with every level we play. We just need to ensure that we move up and down at the correct time which I've always been disciplined enough to do. That is my strategy and every now and then I'll post a little summary of my recent results and current bankroll. The bankroll begins at $200...
On second thoughts I don't think I'll play any more tonight I'm really not thinking very clearly due to being awake for 16 hours. GOD, 5/1 chiplead to loser...

Lol at last post...

I did quite well considering I'd had a few pints lol. Still, the approach I was thinking about has some merit. Of course those decisions are not discrete as I was suggesting, but generally we can consider hands with low equity as if we have none and those where we have a bit more as if we have some etc. Deciding exactly whether we have any showdown value is a critical skill and one I hope to master.
Flop equities
are something I intend to study in equal measure with my games in order to figure out when I should be mucking about on flops etc. One thing I didn't realise was that in heads up pots equity drops massively if you don't have an ace in your hand against a tightish range. For example, on a J75 rainbow board, AQ has 38% equity against a top 10% villain range compared to only 25% with KQ. I have been looking at things like this quite alot recently - in particular boards where we don't pair. I intend to write a study on the subject at some point for my own benefit and reference. Once this knowledge is second nature it should help my hand reading skills immensely. I already feel more comfortable playing flops from the short time I've been working to this end.
Just played a match
against a very loose player, who was playing 80% of hands but then fairly ABC other than that. I don't think I quite adjusted well enough to a tendency he had to fold to continuation bets too often. He also played too many pots imo out of position. Never the less he should actually have won the game other than when I hit a two outer with QQ against his flopped trips on an x88 board. Funniest thing he turned a boat but I sucked out on the river lol. The most interesting hand was this one (analysis at end):
Stage #2032451801 Tourney ID 4819729 Holdem Single Tournament No Limit 10 - 2009-12-02 18:20:15 (ET)
Table: 32970839 (Real Money) Seat #4 is the dealer
Seat 4 - LEESA41 (1,395 in chips)
Seat 6 - BATTERED_SOD (1,605 in chips)
LEESA41 - Posts small blind 5
BATTERED_SOD - Posts big blind 10
*** POCKET CARDS ***
Dealt to BATTERED_SOD [8s 7c]
LEESA41 - Calls 5
BATTERED_SOD - Checks
*** FLOP *** [4c 9h 6s]
BATTERED_SOD - Checks
LEESA41 - Bets 20
BATTERED_SOD - Raises 60 to 60
LEESA41 - Raises 180 to 200
BATTERED_SOD - All-In(Raise) 1,535 to 1,595
LEESA41 - All-In 1,185
BATTERED_SOD - returned (210) : not called
*** TURN *** [4c 9h 6s] [6h]
*** RIVER *** [4c 9h 6s 6h] [Kc]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
LEESA41 - Shows [6c 5s] (Three of a kind, sixes)
BATTERED_SOD - Shows [8s 7c] (One pair, sixes)
LEESA41 Collects 2,790 from main pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total Pot(2,790)
Board [4c 9h 6s 6h Kc]
Seat 4: LEESA41 (dealer) (small blind) won Total (2,790) All-In HI:(2,790) with Three of a kind, sixes [6c 5s - B:6s,B:6h,P:6c,B:Kc,B:9h]
Seat 6: BATTERED_SOD (big blind) HI:lost with One pair, sixes [8s 7c - B:6s,B:6h,B:Kc,B:9h,P:8s]

Ok, not sure this was the best play for me. Thing is, I discounted anything other than top pair or two pair in which case I don't have alot of fold equity. At the time I thought he may have some weak top pair hand that would have a difficult time calling my shove. I'm basically repping two pair. Anyway let's put those hands into stove and decide how I played it. Let's include the hands he's calling with based on the above decision so second pair +. My equity is forty percent if we are called by any of those hands. I guess this counts the 87 as overcards those times he calls with second pair. I cannot justify his call though thinking about it. If I'm only doing this with this hand and two pair I think we crush his range. So thinking like that we probably get enough folds to make this +ev against most players. Another thing to note was a timing tell I picked up. Most of the time he/she (just noticed the name) was betting quickly and consistently. But sometimes (s)he'd think for a bit then check. I was betting every time after seeing this tell and getting a fold every time. That research I did paid off a little at last :)