Poker Shenanigans

Revising Expectations, A New Beginning

2012-01-29T03:07:00.000-08:00

An Admission
I have been operating under the false belief that I was a winning poker player, but I am not. Over the first large block of hands that I played I was fortunate enough to benefit from some positive variance and this pushed up my expectations. More recently I have broke even in the games over quite a significant sample now. I believe that this in itself is an achievement since it means that I'd be beating a rake free game for about 10bb/100, but I had believed that I was better than this - that I had been beating the rake too.

After my last post (that I have now removed) I did some soul searching with regards to poker. What do I really want out of the game? I had once harboured half dreams that some day it could become a meaningful source of extra income per month. I don't think that this is the best way to frame poker in my life any more because it detracts from the enjoyment I get from purely playing cards.

I have come to the realisation that I don't want to stop playing poker. But from now on I'm going to treat the game as a hobby; something to work on and improve just so that I can challenge my competitors better. I'm back at the 10NL 6 max games and I'm just going to attempt to improve my understanding of the game and my ability to hand read. I will remove all indicators of win rate from my database windows because this has certainly affected my decision making in the past. I will periodically still check these numbers as a measure of my current skill level, but only after I've completed a significant sample of hands - 100k seems reasonable.

As for blogging, I've put up some real garbage over my time on here. I think that I'll start posting again but create some rules which will limit my output to fewer but hopefully higher quality blogs.

So this is a new beginning for me as a recreational poker player, and hopefully my blogs will positively reflect my new outlook on the game.

Stars Rake Changes
It's a good time to start playing again. Poker Stars are about to reduce the ring game rake in the games, which is a great move. Hopefully they'll benefit from increased traffic as a result.

Good luck at the tables
Simon

Sessions Improving + Research

2011-12-21T12:31:00.000-08:00

So over the last few sessions I've tightened up somewhat. Basically, I think that the run bad has affected my game and so many of the marginal hands probably became losers. I also noticed that I was leaking money when raising utg and utg+1. At the micros everyone loves to 3-bet bluff and I wasn't willing to stack off with anything less than JJ or AK, plus I didn't feel happy with a large bluffing range in those spots in case my opponents were just getting good hands. This meant that I was super exploitable to 3-bets when I was raising in those positions. I don't believe my opponents were consciously exploiting me, but the aggressive fish that propagate this limit were definitely making money when they re-raised. So I have adapted my ranges so that my CO through SB ranges are just a little tighter but my UTG and UTG+1 ranges would be described as pretty nitty by any regulars. I'll see how it goes!

Results have picked up, although I expected they would eventually. There's no way (even as a losing player) that I should have dropped so many buy-ins in so few hands so a correction was due.

I have just bought my Fiancees old laptop off of her and after a day of ram clogging program deletions and msconfig/service adjustments I've got it running reasonably again. After a further frustrating couple of hours struggling to install hold'em manager I can now play poker on it!. This may or may not help with volume...

Anyway, mindless update over. Will blog again with something more interesting at some point perhaps. But if not, Merry Christmas!!!

EDIT: In order to get a better understanding of the games and a knowledge of what the winning players are doing I've paid for some premium content on poker table ratings. I will use the information I glean to further fine tune my strategy.
I have already noticed some interesting things; the most intriguing being that there is a wide variety of styles that can do really well, from tight to loose and all between.

The most useful thing that I've learned is that - at least preflop - I don't think I'm doing too much wrong. If I can cut out the post flop mistakes that characterise my play I think that I can make some decent money still. But of course I need volume.

Volume

In an effort to try and get more volume in I'm going to (try to) learn to stack tables. I definitely think it will take me time to adjust to this new method, and I've come across a potential problem so far too; without investing in table ninja if I time out during a decision there's no Stars' function to sit back in automatically. There's also no way to bring those tables where I'm sat out back to the top so that I can sit back in manually, so I have to either move the tables aside (obviously an atrocious solution) or click through the table names at the foot of the desktop (only a slightly less atrocious solution). Perhaps cascading is a better way of doing things, maybe I'll try that as this would allow me to bring up the offending tables more easily.

Which ever method I decide to begin to use, I think that it's essential for my volume to increase. Even if I cannot manage more than 6-8 tables at a time I'm currently doing about 10-15k hands a month which isn't nearly as much as I want to be putting in. The last three weeks I have played around 150 hours on skyrim. Using this time for poker could have allowed me to play about 75k hands - this is how often I would like to be playing the game in the next few months.

I played a session today and made two or three big river mistakes - calls with bluff catchers. I've blogged about this before, sometimes I have something like trips or two pair. Good hands, but in terms of the board texture they are at the very bottom of the strong hand range. In instances like this, and facing a bet I tend to think like: "I can't fold trips because... it's a good hand!" which is horrible thinking. Unless I can curb this fishy way of thinking then I'll not improve. So I'll be looking for spots like this and trying to smother the calling station in me from now on.

The Final Effort

2011-12-12T08:56:00.000-08:00

This year's poker has been pretty average to say the least. Most of the money that I won (around $1500 I suppose) was taken when Full Tilt went insolvent. In other words I have finished the year break even which is really disappointing.

It has really been a story of two large down swings. I'm at the bottom of one currently (and God only knows when it will end) and I went through another during my play on Full Tilt itself in the Rush games. This tells me a lot about my game really, that I'm not as competent as I once thought; that despite a pretty good knowledge of expected value and maths I make too many mistakes during play. I don't believe that I'm beyond hope and that I can continue to improve and remove these errors from my game and that is how I'm going to approach the next year.

The games seem to be increasingly full of competent players but I do still think that money can be made. I don't believe that poker will always be profitable in it's current format (rake must eventually be revised for the good of the game in my opinion).

This coming year is going to be my final effort to make money from the game. If I come out at the end break even again then I'll likely end my poker playing days and pursue other hobbies and income sources.

So, wish me luck. Once more to the breach! GL

Quads over Quads, Big Down Swing

2011-11-10T10:55:00.000-08:00

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#70323306587

sc0uzer ($8.75)
zodimar ($25.55)
Hero ($32.29)
SofiStar87 ($11.25)
abra1985 ($25.75)
Guti2010 ($49.87)

sc0uzer posts (SB) $0.10
zodimar posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to Hero Qs Qd
Hero raises to $0.75
fold, fold,
Guti2010 calls $0.75
fold,
zodimar calls $0.50
FLOP ($2.35) 6h 6c Qh
zodimar checks
Hero bets $1.45
Guti2010 folds
zodimar calls $1.45
TURN ($5.25) 6h 6c Qh Qc
zodimar checks
Hero checks

Cross my fingers and hope for a river bluff.

RIVER ($5.25) 6h 6c Qh Qc 2c
zodimar bets $6.25
Hero raises to $30.09 (AI)

At the time I didn't think any 6x hand would likely over bet the river like this and just assumed he had 99% bluffs and a very very rare second nuts. Perhaps if he puts me on some hand that's trying to see a showdown (KK+, JJ, TT) and he thinks I'm a calling station (true) then the over bet makes more sense. In that case I could have extracted a little more value with a small raise that a 6x hand would call with.

zodimar calls $17.10 (AI)
zodimar shows 6d 6s
(Pre 19%, Flop 95.6%, Turn 0.0%)

Hero shows Qs Qd
(Pre 81%, Flop 4.4%, Turn 100.0%)

Hero wins $49.95

Anyway, apart from this small ray of light things are going terribly. I'm about 18 buy-ins down over 14k hands at the 6-max games. This is 6 buy-ins below all-in EV so my net expected won is actually negative 12 buy-ins.

It would be very hard for me to sell myself as even a break even player now that I've divulged this information, so I shall not. I played very poorly over the first 2/3 of this sample and made a number of equity mistakes. More recently I've been table selecting better and really slowed down my decision making and managed to improve in this regard.

I can only continue to look for good tables, and try not to fuck up too much. I've made moves in the right direction but I absolutely must continue to play in this vein.

I ran a few simulations over at evplusplus.com and it made me realise how large the down swings can be in 6-max with a small win rate. So I have to try and play my A-game 90% of the time if I can, and continue to table select well. I'll blog again with further updates at some point, but Skyrim is released tomorrow and that will likely get some of my poker time unfortunately. But until I blog again, GL.

Short Update

2011-10-30T10:50:00.001-07:00

Hi, so I've played a few more hands this week and I'm sure now that I'm not going to be a long term winner in this format if I continue to make as many mistakes as I am currently. These aren't tilt induced mistakes, they are a consequence of not having sufficient knowledge of the flop and turn equities in different spots. This is good and bad.

Bad because I'm no longer beating the games (in all likelihood). How can it be good? Well it confirms my suspicion that if I merely continue to play full ring then I'm auto-piloting and not improving my game at a sufficient rate. Making all of these mistakes in the 6-max games will - over time - almost certainly improve my play in every department because I'll have a much greater knowledge of the necessary equities. Most of the mistakes are flop and turn all-in calls where I should probably be folding instead.

I think so far my mistakes might well have cost 2-3 buy-ins over around 8k hands, which is a significant amount. So I will continue to play and work hard to improve my knowledge. Eventually the losing/break even curve should begin to turn back into a nice upward line.

I don't think I'll be blogging as much from now onwards, but that doesn't mean I'm not still playing. Just that instead of blogging, I'll be using that valuable time to study instead. GL

Edit: Have just bought Ed Miller's new e-book on hand reading and will put up a review at some point.

Hmmmmmmmmm......

2011-10-22T09:26:00.000-07:00

Well I'm beginning to settle in a bit better into this format but I'm still making too many mistakes. My non - showdown curve has improved to around half a buy-in loss per 1000 hands which is more in line with what I achieve in full ring. Unfortunately I have also lost money at showdown over the sample so the sum is a total 4.5 buy-ins of loss. I'd expect that if I improve my play and start running better that I could probably beat these games. It depends on how much money can typically be made at showdown; in full ring I was earning about a buy-in per 1k hands (giving me $12.5 'profit' per 1k hands). I'm going to need a much bigger sample (and to run better) before I know for sure though so I'll keep plugging away.

The games are very aggressive, and in many instances recklessly aggressive. For someone who relies on showdown winnings for profit, it's quite difficult to play against these fish sometimes because they just blindly bet away. But with each session I'm seeing tons more interesting spots than I was at full ring so I'm definitely enjoying the change. I think that I'll need to work hard to eradicate leaks from my game to make it work.

I'll try and play a long session tomorrow and perhaps dig out some hand histories where I messed up (there'll be several I imagine). Until then, GL

I think I suck at 6-max!

2011-10-20T09:32:00.000-07:00

Yeah made a few more mistakes yesterday, and I plan to put in another session later. The question is whether to go back to full ring where my strategy is clearly profitable or to try and develop a winning one for this format. There are advantages and disadvantages of both: I can grow my bankroll taking one path and yet I won't be growing my game; the other path could potentially make me a much better player.

The problem I see at the moment is that I'm losing much more money to the red line (albeit small sample size) than at full ring. Whether this is typical or not I'm yet to find out for sure, but at full ring I lose about half a buy-in every thousand hands which makes it ludicrously easy to make a profit - going to showdown and winning a buy-in per thousand hands or more is pretty easy at full ring cash.

Well my current desire is to continue with 6-max. I may end up banging my head against a brick wall and just giving up and going back to FR but I think I need to try and make the correct adjustments to win. So I need a proper sample size really. Over the weekend I'll get my second monitor set back up and set the other up for a ten table layout (that should get me back to 1k hands per hour). Then I should quickly clock up a reasonable sample size. I somehow think that this isn't going to be easy :S!

I had a huge suck out yesterday. A loose aggressive cut off opens and I 3-bet with AKs. We are both 150bb deep and he 4-bets to about $6. I expected to get almost his whole range to fold to a shove so that's what I did. However he snap calls with AA. The flop gives me just a back door flush draw which miraculously comes in by the river. Thinking about my play in the hand in general, it seems quite a risky strategy to 5-bet shove AKs for 150bb. But if he's only calling with {KK+} - probably a reasonable assumption then there are only 6 combos of those hands in total. I probably need about half of his range to fold to make a profit (a pure bluff would need 80% folds but when I'm called by KK+ I win 23% of the time) which means I need a further 6 combinations of hands to fold. This definitely seems reasonable. But perhaps flat calling preflop is better when we're this deep.

Oh well, for the time being I'll continue to donate to the 6-max games and blog some more about the experience at some point over the weekend. GL

More 6-Max

2011-10-18T11:10:00.001-07:00

Haven't had much time to play over the last few days but just put in a quick session. I definitely feel that I'm not as good at this format as full ring, but there is also tons more post flop play so in the long run I think that I'll be able to improve more by sticking to 6-max over full ring.

There were two spots where I think that I made big mistakes. One hand I floated a CO c-bet on the button with A6dd on a JJ3r (back door flush draw) but didn't realise that the pot was multi way (two over callers). It's possible that I can win the pot later in the hand some of the time being that I'm in position on all of the other players but I'm sure it's a -EV call. The bigger mistake came on the turn when villain double barrelled a Kd. Sure I have the flush draw, but many of his big hands don't care about the flush or indeed many of the flush cards that may come out. Plus, I doubt my ace outs are any good against a double barrel range on that board texture. My equity (unless villain was a total spewtard) was probably around 10-15% and I needed 28% or better.

The second hand was a bit more tricky, and could possibly be chalked down as a cooler. I turned trips with AT on a AJxA after check calling a loose CO range on the flop (from the big blind). So I donk led for quite a small bet, thinking that weaker could call or I might get bluff raised. Villain raises so I call (I def think calling one street here is fine as my opponent was quite aggressive and may think I'm FOS). On the river (a king - and there are no flushes out there) I checked and villain bet just under pot. I just felt that folding would be a bit weak. However it seems a stretch that any player at these stakes would bluff 30% of the time on that board. I think that I should have folded.

So I need to make sure I continue to do plenty of hand reviews after each session, and perhaps eventually I'll become a winner - because frankly, I don't think I'm playing well enough to be one currently. GL

$25NL 6-Max

2011-10-14T13:03:00.000-07:00

So the last couple of nights I haven't felt sharp enough to play the higher limit so I played some 6-max $25NL. This is a fairly new experience for me, I haven't played six-max games for a couple of years. But I think that it would be really good for my game to play more of the format in general as I'm playing more hands and more flops. I haven't had a very good start, ran 3 buy-ins below EV tonight but I think that I largely played decently (except for one spaz call in an all-in pot where my odds weren't as good as I thought they were, meh).

I'll likely play a few thousand six max hands now, and as ever I'll post a few interesting ones here. I'm reasonably confident I can beat the 6-max games as I'll be playing so much post flop poker, but until I've played more volume I'll not know for sure.

I played 6 tables at a time, and there were instances where I found it difficult to keep up. God knows how Nanonoko does 24 at once for hours a day (and still annihilates the games). On the other hand though, I was playing more hands per hour compared to Full Ring so if I can make it work, I'll likely have a better hourly rate.

Anyway, GL.

First $50NL Full Ring Session, plus Hands

2011-10-13T10:21:00.000-07:00

So I played the first session this afternoon. I'm going to stick to playing at those stakes when I'm not feeling tired and when other outside influences are not involved (alcohol, noisy house, bad mood e.t.c). The rest of the time I'll still be at 25NL so this will be a gradual move which I think should enable it to go more smoothly. There were plenty of fish that I found at my tables, so with a little selection I'm really confident that I can make it work there.

I'm going to try very hard to ignore my results. I have enough 'roll that I should never need to reload so I just plan to play a bunch and just look at individual hands and try and find mistakes and improve my play including bet sizing and overall hand reading ability. I will keep half an eye on my overall bankroll balance because I plan to move up if I reach $5k. I don't imagine that will happen until the spring at the very best though (if it even happens at all). So consequently I'll do a lot of hand discussion on this blog but there won't be any results until I have a meaningful sample.

Some Hands

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.50(BB) Replayer Game#68911228241

uneedwater ($50)
petka000 ($40)
tenyente ($50.25)
Sh1ft0r ($54.30)
Hero ($51)
Argon81 ($39.25)
B__hnemaker ($50)

uneedwater posts (SB) $0.25
petka000 posts (BB) $0.50

Dealt to Hero Jh Jd
fold, fold,
Hero raises to $1.50
Argon81 calls $1.50
fold, fold, fold,
FLOP ($3.75) Ah Th As
Hero bets $2.50

Villain was not playing fully stacked and although I didn't have any stats in the HUD I assumed he'd be a weaker player as a result. When out of position on the flop I prefer to bet a merged range, even though this bet doesn't fit the typical value betting axiom. There are still Tx hands plus draws that could call though.

Argon81 calls $2.50
TURN ($8.75) Ah Th As 6d
Hero checks

I think betting has now become too thin, and check calling would likely be a better play which is what I had planned.

Argon81 checks
RIVER ($8.75) Ah Th As 6d 8d
Hero checks
Argon81 bets $8.50

Now I think I make a mistake. I'd expect most players to bet trips on the turn, but some would 'trap'. The bet sizing indicates a big hand, although there are plenty of aggro villains that would bet big to try and make me fold. Given that I knew nothing of villain (who later turned out to be loose passive) and that he'd checked back the turn I don't hate my call, but I think I prefer a fold.

Hero calls $8.50
Hero shows Jh Jd
(Pre 71%, Flop 12.5%, Turn 0.0%)

Argon81 shows Ac 6s
(Pre 29%, Flop 87.5%, Turn 100.0%)

Argon81 wins $24.50

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.50(BB) Replayer Game#68914382385

Guliver1983 ($20.25)
funex700 ($50)
Kuzya85 ($55.15)
dosases ($40.85)
mecha0117 ($50)
Katochek88 ($19.25)
Sappuku ($92.05)
Hero ($123)

Guliver1983 posts (SB) $0.25
funex700 posts (BB) $0.50

Dealt to Hero Ad Ts
fold,
dosases calls $0.50
fold, fold, fold,
Hero raises to $2

villain is loose passive, so this is pretty standard isolation raise in my opinion.

fold, fold,
dosases calls $1.50
FLOP ($4.75) 4d 6c 3d
dosases checks
Hero bets $3

At this stage villain had folded to bets on the flop every time he'd seen one so far, so I thought that betting was going to be immediately profitable.

dosases calls $3
TURN ($10.75) 4d 6c 3d Kc
dosases checks
Hero bets $7

A good scare card to double barrel, even against a loose passive player.

dosases calls $7
RIVER ($24.75) 4d 6c 3d Kc Kh
dosases checks
Hero checks

I think that I should bet this river again. Against a player who knows combinations theory (in other words a good reg) this would not be a great third barrel card as they'd consider it unlikely that I actually had a king in my hand now that the second one has appeared on the board. However against a loose passive player who is likely to have plenty of random draws in his range I think that it would have made an excellent card to bet again. I'm certain that it's profitable, and I'm also certain that it would have worked in this hand too.

dosases shows 2s 2d
(Pre 51%, Flop 71.8%, Turn 86.4%)

Hero shows Ad Ts
(Pre 49%, Flop 28.2%, Turn 13.6%)

dosases wins $23.55

Final interesting hand, I'm very pleased with the way I played it. I extracted every last ounce of value. Again, villain is loose passive.

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.50(BB) Replayer Game#68913143058

sven1969 ($65.80)
Hero ($75.65)
RigaStyle ($52.55)
Kanycmo4ka ($15.85)
KotSk8er ($19.25)
witka10 ($52.80)
Kobern ($24.95)
Japaneko ($34.75)
89rhino89 ($50.80)

sven1969 posts (SB) $0.25
Hero posts (BB) $0.50

Dealt to Hero 7d 7h
fold,
Kanycmo4ka raises to $1.50
fold, fold, fold, fold, fold,
sven1969 calls $1.25
Hero calls $1

Calling seemed correct given the weaker player in the hand. If he had not called in the small blind, I'd have folded 77 here.

FLOP ($4.50) 7s 8c 8h
sven1969 checks
Hero checks

BAAAAAM! That's the way to smash a flop. I think checking is OK, I'm targeting the times that the pre flop raiser has an over pair and will likely call a check raise. If I lead, I might induce a raise from the pre flop raiser if he has a good over pair (QQ+) but otherwise he might call with 99-JJ, and fold all else. I think that getting 99+ and air to bet first (plus the small blind calling with a wide range) gets me more money in the long run.

Kanycmo4ka checks
TURN ($4.50) 7s 8c 8h Kd
sven1969 bets $3

Unfortunately the flop gets checked through, but a great result when the loose passive player bets. There are plenty of 8x and Kx combinations that I'd expect him to have so raising is mandatory. The pre flop raiser has so little money behind that I don't expect a raise here to scare away any hand he might have with a King in it so I don't think calling has any merit at all in this situation.

Hero raises to $11.50

I think that I should perhaps bet a little more here, maybe $13 - $14. It makes it easier to extract value on the river.

Kanycmo4ka folds
sven1969 calls $8.50
RIVER ($27.50) 7s 8c 8h Kd 3s
sven1969 checks
Hero bets $62.65 (AI)

My best play of the night. Villain's stats are 40/10 pre flop, so he likes calling to see flops. On the flop he only folds to c-bets 30% of the time, and he never folds to 3-bets after raising pre. In other words, he loves calling. So I maximise expected value on this river by betting all-in, even though it's a huge over bet.

sven1969 calls $52.80 (AI)
sven1969 shows 4s 8s
(Pre 33%, Flop 23.0%, Turn 15.9%)

Hero shows 7d 7h
(Pre 67%, Flop 77.0%, Turn 84.1%)

Hero wins $130

I think this hand shows how important bet sizing can be. If I'd have taken a standard 3/4 pot bet size, I'd have missed out on half a buy-in. This makes a huge difference in the grand scheme of things and it's the area that I'm working on improving the most at the moment.

Right, so a good start so far and my play is improving steadily. I think that I'll end up beating this limit, but to be sure I need volume. Will post some more hand histories once I've played another session or two. GL

Back! Ready for some Poker

2011-10-09T07:59:00.001-07:00

Had a pretty awesome couple of weeks, Sis back from Canada and a short holiday to the South coast. So now it's back to the life grind (crappy job) and the struggle to make a second income with poker.

On the first subject, I've decided to invest in training of some form in an effort to get a better job. I'll probably look at some Microsoft certification or perhaps doing some lower level accounts course. In the current climate I don't think it will be easy, but it makes sense to me to invest my money in something since it is just losing value sat in a bank account making nominal interest. And since the stock markets and banks are currently a shitty investment I can't think of any better alternative than this.

On the second subject I'll play a few thousand hands of 25nl to get back into the swing of it and then try playing some hands at the next limit. I'm really beginning to wonder if this game continues to be worth this time and effort. Sure if I can improve to a level where I can make $5k or more per year as additional income I think that it is. But currently scratching around at 25NL is not where I'd hoped to be by now. Well, I'll give it another year. If I can honestly say (come summer '12) that I'm not beating the games for a sufficient second income then I'll gracefully retire and focus instead on self improvement and career development. Wish me luck!

Interesting Full Tilt Poker News

2011-10-01T02:46:00.000-07:00

www.pokerstrategy.com
So there's some promising news on FTP. We know who the investors are - a successful and serious group. They are now in talks with the US DOJ in an attempt to reach a fair settlement. For the first time in many months it seems that perhaps FTP can be redeemed.

50NL Work
So shortly I will be making the next limit my new home. I'm away for a week but when I get back I intend to deposit some funds and move up. I've looked at a few players recently who have displayed a pretty large drop in win rate after moving up from 25NL. I've also heard that it's a more difficult limit to beat (while intuitively this makes sense, I wouldn't expect a great difference in the decent player/bad player ratio - and the rake is better).
So as well as the work I continue to do on ranges and expected value I'm going to re-evaluate my ranges from each position, putting my overall style a little tighter than it is currently. The reason for this is that I expect to face more aggressive 3-betting at the next limit and at the moment I only 4-bet around 12% of the time on average. I'd prefer this to be more like 20% and tightening my early and mid position opening ranges a little will help with this.
I also intend to try to spaz out a little less with the thin bluffs (a couple of which I described last post) and stick to the very obvious ones and to continue to improve the value part of my game. I think there are areas where I can play more aggressively for value (check raising top pair good kicker versus short stackers for example). And as I've repeatedly said before, my bet sizing leaves a lot to be desired.
You'll be glad to know then, that this will be my last post for a while (unless there are serious Full Tilt Poker developments I guess). So, GL!

Frustration

2011-09-29T06:50:00.000-07:00

I forgot how frustrating a down swing could be, had another bad session today that was compounded by a couple of iffy decisions on my part. One hand I check raised a paired turn on a dry board versus a passive pre/aggressive post kind of player expecting to get enough folds to make it worthwhile (plus two over cards as outs if not) and ran into an over pair; I also got check min - raised by a passive player and I have top pair top kicker on a dry board. If he had more money behind then I could have found a fold but he only had a small amount left so I stuck him in and was drawing almost dead to a set. I think that a better player than me could have found a fold there.

Well, I don't think I'm playing my A-game and things are going poorly too. I have a week away from Monday and a busy weekend coming up so I expect that after today I'll not play at all until a week Friday. Perhaps I can come back refreshed and resolve to play well until the run bad is over. Until then, GL.

EDIT:

Just played another session, it was a winning one but only because I won a couple of flips. I think that perhaps I'm trying to be too aggressive in my approach to this limit, and I also think that I need to improve my play against loose aggressive opponents. Lots to think about but here's a couple of hand histories.

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#68230261939

exdaboo ($9.75)
Hero ($25)
AceDiva ($23.34)
@Sub555Zero# ($26.93)
saneksanek86 ($11.45)
QuanBabe ($27.03)
longbreath ($26.25)
changsheng ($10.05)
bentiann ($14.91)

exdaboo posts (SB) $0.10
Hero posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to Hero Js Ks
AceDiva raises to $0.70
fold, fold, fold, fold, fold,
fold, fold,
Hero calls $0.45

AceDiva is playing 30% of hands and raising first in about 20% of the time (and he's not positionally aware; raising the same numbers despite his seat), which makes calling with KJs here fine in my opinion.

FLOP ($1.50) 9d 3s Ts
Hero bets $0.75
AceDiva raises to $2.20
Hero calls $1.45

It's the sort of flop that will get checked back a fair bit; villain's post flop tendencies were on the passive calling station side. I expected a bet to get some folds though, and I have equity if he calls. When he raises I don't think I have any fold equity left (i.e he's never bluff raising) but I'm getting plenty good enough odds to draw to a flush or straight on the turn.

TURN ($5.90) 9d 3s Ts 7d
Hero checks
AceDiva bets $4.40
Hero calls $4.40

Well, now I have three extra outs to go with my others so I think check calling is correct (my equity is probably around 30% which is more or less what I'm getting from the pot and given that I'd expect to get paid on the river when a draw comes in this becomes a profitable call). Again I don't think I'll ever get enough folds if I bet or raise, I need a draw to come in on the river.

RIVER ($14.70) 9d 3s Ts 7d Qs
Hero bets $17.70 (AI)

I open shoved the river because I think he's calling with his whole range (given his tendencies) which makes it a mandatory value bet. Unfortunately for me...

AceDiva calls $16.04 (AI)
Hero shows Js Ks
(Pre 42%, Flop 29.2%, Turn 27.3%)

AceDiva shows As 6s
(Pre 58%, Flop 70.8%, Turn 72.7%)

AceDiva wins $44.78

This is the sort of hand that makes me look like an idiot, but I don't think that I messed it up too much. I had no idea a hand as weak as A6s was in his UTG raising range, I only put one or two combos of flushes (AQs or A9s at a stretch) in his range and tons more over pair/set combos can call me on that river. Just seems like a cooler to me, but if I'm wrong then perhaps I'm the fish?

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#68231158949

Hero ($39.12)
hhlle ($10.10)

hhlle posts (SB) $0.10
Hero posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to Hero Qs Jc
hhlle raises to $0.75
Hero calls $0.50
FLOP ($1.50) 6d Tc 2h
Hero checks
hhlle bets $1
Hero raises to $3
hhlle calls $2

So far I think this is fine, he raises half of buttons and c-bets like 90% of the time or something ridiculous so I have to defend very wide. Two over cards and back door straight draws on a dry board is plenty good enough to check raise in my opinion.

TURN ($7.50) 6d Tc 2h 9c
Hero bets $6.50

I think this is a mistake. I should get enough folds on the flop to make that raise profitable, but when he calls his range is probably top pair + and my equity against that range is probably around 25% or so when the 9 comes off. I only need a tiny number of folds to make this bet profitable (I only need 31% equity to make it a mandatory bet), but if he's calling with his whole range then it's a bad bet (albeit a small mistake).

hhlle calls $6.35 (AI)
RIVER ($20.20) 6d Tc 2h 9c 7d
hhlle shows Ts Jh
(Pre 26%, Flop 82.7%, Turn 75.0%)

Hero shows Qs Jc
(Pre 74%, Flop 17.3%, Turn 25.0%)

hhlle wins $19.70

The story of the last 2-3k hands is a little like this; a handful of quite close decisions where I think I've erred on the wrong side.

Ah well, that's run bad for you. I shall not get another chance to play poker in all likelihood before the end of next week now. Most of my problems recently have come against opponents who play very passively pre flop but very aggressively post flop. Those who's figures look like 50/10/2.0 or similar. So they see tons of flops and always go crazy. I find it really hard to decide what to do. When I flop a good hand it's easy, but most of the time I struggle to get to showdown with a suitable range so I think I need to spend some time looking through hand histories versus this type of villain. GL

Run Bad

2011-09-28T05:15:00.000-07:00

Long overdue, I'm sure. Dropped three buy-ins today alone, but I felt that I controlled tilt pretty well and didn't lose much more than I should have. My win rate for the last 50k hands or so is higher than the typical winning reg at this limit so I had been waiting for some run bad to bring it in line. At least it has happened right now, just on the verge of my leap to the next limit so that I can have more realistic expectations once I win back enough money to move up.

I feel that I'm having to table select pretty hard at the moment, I'm a big believer that in full ring games having fish at the table is essential for profit. But there seems to be less than there was in the past. Perhaps the bad press poker has received recently is scaring the bad players away? I may have to begin mixing some 6 max tables in so that I'm giving myself the best opportunity to find good tables.

There are quite a few regs who 3-bet relentlessly in position. I think I'm going to have to adjust my 4-betting ranges. Perhaps to go to showdown with {JJ+, AK} and having a handful of bluff 4-bet hands to balance with. Any player who is 3-betting more often than they should (and I'd guess 5% average to be somewhat optimal) is forced to showdown AK. So JJ has 36% equity against {AK, QQ+}, and I should probably be 4-betting it instead of folding against these aggressive opponents.

Anyway, I'll continue to crunch some volume and try hard to control my emotions until the down swing is over.

A Realisation

2011-09-24T13:53:00.000-07:00

Among the many blog posts that I have written, I have often spoke of the 'red line' and the 'blue line'. The red line is money won or lost without going to showdown. The blue line is money won or lost when going to showdown.

There is an important link between the two lines and the profit we make; it is that to be profitable, it is necessary for opponents to fold more often than they should and call more often than they should. Profit is merely a result of making the best play at the time and opponents making a mistake. I think I spend too much time worrying about what my red line is doing when in reality it is irrelevant. The only relevancy is making the best possible play. Profit should be the only indicator of a strategy's value.

For a long time now I've strived to improve the red line. But improving the red line has an impact on the blue line and vice versa. It is perfectly correct to allow a red line loss if on average it results in a larger blue line gain. And this is what I'm trying to get at: I should merely be concerned with profit. Trying to be more aggressive where it is not necessary might improve the red line, but in the big picture it is costing money because there was a better option that benefited the blue line.

I feel that I'm kind of rambling now, but I hope that I got my message across. In future I shall not study the red/blue graph because I think it has a negative impact on my approach to the game. GL

Full Tilt Developments

2011-09-22T07:16:00.000-07:00

So it turns out that FTP was insolvent before Black Friday. {For all of the updates please click on the Subject Poker link at the top right of the blog} Despite this they continued to pay the owners of the company vast sums of money using funds that should have been secured to pay out player withdrawals. As I've said before I have great sympathy for all of the players who have likely lost significant sums of money as a result of this criminal behaviour.

News has just surfaced of further investors that are interested in buying FTP (and in the process paying back all of the money that is owed). That seems like a gamble considering that the reputation of the business has been destroyed, but it's understandable. FTP assets are clearly worth something in the long run, and if everyone was paid back and the new investors demonstrated future responsibility (such as segregating player funds) then I see no reason why they could not potentially make the money back within a few years as the site returned to health.

Personally I have written my money off as gone for good, and it wasn't a large amount (~$1300). However if I was ever able to see that money again, it would be a very nice surprise. I'd withdraw the funds immediately and wait to see if FTP had a future before ever considering playing there again, especially as I heard a rumour that Poker Stars are developing a form of fast full ring poker [disclaimer: read this at the back of a dying thread on 2+2... Might be a complete fabrication]. For the immediate future I feel that my money is safest on Poker Stars and that's where I'll continue to play.

So I'll continue to wait and see, and I hope that everyone gets their money back and that the future of FTP is secured.

As for my play, after I've cashed in my VIP points I will have 40 buy-ins for $50NL. With the money I have saved up lately and my playing bankroll, I easily have enough money to make that limit my new home and that's what I'll do (although 25NL will be my let off steam/too tired/playing badly/beating on the fish limit). GL

Almost There...

2011-09-19T12:02:00.000-07:00

Another good session tonight, another two buy-ins won over 1k hands. Games are really really fishy, but obviously I'm still running great. I did butcher a couple of hands and I'll post them at the end just for interest's sake.

So I'm very close to moving up now. I've been wondering how I should settle in at the new limit. I think that I'll begin by playing four tables at a time and looking for the best possible opponents (table selecting). I'm not averse to playing against regulars, but while I'm bedding in at the new limit I will settle much more comfortably if I'm giving myself a definite 2 or 3 bb/100 edge per table or more for the first 20 - 30k hands or so. I will also continue to play 25NL if I'm at all tired and not thinking clearly (and if I have a rough session at the higher limit).

Eventually if I manage to win a few buy-ins I will make 50NL my new home. As I've said before, I expect to have to work hard on my game to continue to make money. But that's all I've ever done and all I will continue to do while I still have the capacity to learn. I think that I will likely be a small winner at my current standard, but I'd like to be a solid winner if I can achieve it.

Right, the two hands.

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#67746404031

Zwidawurzn ($7.95)
Joke160 ($20)
nubson ($10.62)
laiaaba ($10.75)
Hero ($43.02)
McloverC ($10.35)
kriis2489 ($19.93)
exeterjackal ($13.55)

Zwidawurzn posts (SB) $0.10
Joke160 posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to Hero Ah Ks
fold, fold,
Hero raises to $0.75
fold, fold,
exeterjackal calls $0.75
fold, fold,
FLOP ($1.85) Td Jc Ad
Hero bets $1.14
exeterjackal calls $1.14
TURN ($4.13) Td Jc Ad Ts
Hero checks

This should be a bet every single time. Villain is a nitty reg, so his pre-flop calling range might typically include AQ, AJs, JJ and TT. Even supposing he slow plays his good hands (and he'd probably raise them some of the time) there are eight combinations of AQ left in his range, one two pair combo (with AsJs) and four set combos. It's a clear value bet.

exeterjackal bets $2.50
Hero calls $2.50
RIVER ($9.13) Td Jc Ad Ts 5h
Hero checks
exeterjackal checks
Hero shows Ah Ks
(Pre 71%, Flop 85.2%, Turn 89.8%)

exeterjackal shows As Qs
(Pre 29%, Flop 14.8%, Turn 10.2%)

Hero wins $8.69

So whereas I could have got three streets of value from his hand, I only got two by checking the turn. It's only a small mistake, and it seems a little lame to put this hand up to be honest. But I believe the players that make the most money are those that are never happy with even the smallest mistake. I'm a perfectionist and I like to play as well as I can, and in this hand I did not.

The next hand I well and truly annihilated. Villain was a maniac, but over the sample that I saw he was not a good one.

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#67744195432

hero ($36.99)
miener ($18.57)
onlyelf ($20.45)
RUS)Timur ($27.11)
andriuspok3r ($26.53)
anh.nv ($35.39)
Schnuffler ($27.99)

hero posts (SB) $0.10
miener posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to hero 5c 5s
fold, fold, fold,
anh.nv calls $0.25
fold,
hero calls $0.15
miener checks
FLOP ($0.75) 2c 4c 5h
hero bets $0.50
miener folds
anh.nv calls $0.50
TURN ($1.75) 2c 4c 5h 8s
hero bets $1.08
anh.nv raises to $2.16
hero calls $1.08

WTF am I doing? I should always raise here against a player who is playing half of the hands in the deck and constantly bluffing and raising post flop. There are so many combos of hands that he'd likely call with that I'd have to write a fucking essay to include them here. If he has a straight or 88, that's life.

RIVER ($6.07) 2c 4c 5h 8s Tc
hero checks

I'm not sure about this, I think it's OK to check and induce because he'd probably bluff a very very wide range at this river. Check raising might be OK too, even with the flush out there.

anh.nv bets $0.25
hero raises to $4.50
anh.nv raises to $8.75

I don't like this min bet - min 3-bet line, it looks exactly like a flush; but against a player like this I can't fold for 4.25 more so I look him up.

hero calls $4.25
hero shows 5c 5s
(Pre 53%, Flop 73.7%, Turn 81.8%)

anh.nv shows 8c Kc
(Pre 47%, Flop 26.3%, Turn 18.2%)

anh.nv wins $22.41

While in some respects I can count myself lucky because there's every chance I'd have lost my stack by 3-betting big on the turn (and possibly getting the money in), it was the best play from an EV perspective. Very disappointed with the way I played this one.

Right, well I'll play some more 25NL this week, and unless I drop a few buy-ins I'll likely play some 50NL too. GL

Decent Session Today

2011-09-18T12:44:00.000-07:00

Played about 2.5k hands and won a couple of buy-ins overall. It was strange though, I lost tons of money on bluffs that didn't work out, but got paid off loads when I had made hands.

I filtered my database for times that I have four-bet bluffed, and was surprised to see that I've lost a couple of buy-ins overall across the database. Perhaps I need to be more careful when I look for spots to attack 3-bets, or perhaps it's just variance as it's only a handful of pots? I'll look into this further in the future.

A sign of my improvement is that my blind losses now total around 51bb/100. This is still higher than I'd like; ideally I'd like my losses from the blinds to be under 45bb/100. I think that this is achievable and I continue to work on my out of position play in order to make this possible. I'd really start making good money then I think.

Well, I'll play some this week and likely blog again towards the weekend. I'm getting close to moving up now, so that's an exciting development. If I don't have a major down swing then perhaps I'll be playing there in a couple of weeks. GL

49k Hands Update

2011-09-15T09:27:00.000-07:00

OK, so I haven't quite got there yet (50k hands) but will likely complete it later on tonight. In truth I got caught up in other things this afternoon when I had planned to play the hands. I thought I'd make this post now as I have 20-30 minutes spare.

Well it's gone really well over this small sample of hands. I certainly think that I've run above expectation so my win rate is higher than it should realistically be. I'm not sure how much higher though, as I'm also pretty sure that I'm beating the games. The reason for this is that I'm getting loads of value from my made hands, and I'm also controlling my losses when I don't go to showdown. Both of these things are indicators of a winning player. First up, the graph. You can see the insane heater that lasted between hands 20k and 37k.

So I'm really pleased with this, although obviously that must be tempered by the fact that my boom switch has been permanently pressed. There will be meagre times at some point in the future for sure. As for moving up to 50NL, I decided to put it off until I'd played more hands (see previous post) but I will reach my threshold for moving up with another 7 buy-ins of winnings.

I've read a couple of posts lately that suggest that it's a pretty big step up to 50NL from the fishy 25NL limit. If this is true then I expect that I'll have to work pretty hard to improve my game when I'm there. However with a little bit of table selection I don't expect to have too much trouble bedding in. All I expect is that I won't get my way so easily and that fewer hands will get paid off - a diminished return but not a negative one.

General Thoughts on Beating 25NL Full Ring

I'd say that the key points for beating 25NL would be to learn how to value bet and value bet size properly. The open raise and c-betting set up alone should win enough dead money to compensate for a good chunk of blind losses, so profit comes from value at this limit.

According to poker table ratings I'm playing a little more aggressively at every point in the hand (preflop, flop, turn and river) than the biggest winners are at this limit. All I'm doing extra is bluffing a little when I've got equity. The people who are making money here are using value to make their profits; no more, no less.

I'd also encourage players to try and learn to play the correct ranges from each position. For example, there are some fairly decent regulars who are folding a vast number of hands from the big blind when I open raise from the small blind. It's a situation where they could play any two cards given their odds, position and my range - but they're just letting me steal the dead money.

Finally, other than the most obvious spots (c-betting) players generally only bet or raise with big hands. So it's possible to make some pretty sick lay downs. If you have a bluff catching hand alone and are facing heat, there's nearly never enough bluff combinations in most players' ranges to call. I learned this lesson the hard way. If you can maximise value from your best hands and fold good but not great hands when facing heat, you'll make a shed load of money when you go to showdown.

Some Other Stats

I've opened up since my Rush days, 18/15 is quite a loose style for full ring. Again, according to poker table ratings it's a little looser than the bigger winners at this limit (by around 10% or so). My 3-bet stat is quite low at 3.7 and I'd prefer it to be higher than this and while I look for good spots, there are a lot of players who just will not fold preflop and so I usually concentrate on 3-betting for value. I also think that players are prone to turning hands into bluffs preflop where they are better served by calling with them (TT vs UTG, for example). I think that I go to showdown a little more than I should too, and I'm yet to decipher why this is. Perhaps the fact that I don't c-bet as much as most players has an effect.

Well, 50k hands since June is not enough to make me an expert so take my advice as you will. But given the information that I have and what I've seen, I think it's pretty sound. I will continue to try and play my best over the next 50k hands, for better or for worse and do another update at the end. I'd expect - barring some serious run bad - that some of them will be played at 50NL. GL

Bet Sizing

2011-09-15T04:47:00.000-07:00

An area where I feel I need to improve is when sizing bets. My intuition is getting better for sure but I think I need to set aside some study time where I can investigate some situations to improve my feel. I played two hands today where I think that an over bet was in order (villains were loose passive). On both occasions the bets worked but I get the feeling that they'd have called a 2.5 x pot or 3 x pot bet too (and my bets were both approx 1.5x pot).

I'll run some sims in the near future. I really feel like bet sizing is one area where most regs tend to just auto pilot, but that's kind of missing out on a really interesting game dynamic imo. I'm always trying to push myself so I'll be trying stuff out in the games, and if anything interesting comes up I'll post it here.

Later today I should reach 50k hands since moving to Stars at the end of June. Kind of disappointed with the volume I've played so that's something I'll have to rectify. But I'll post results and some general thoughts on how I can improve and about the games in general.

Hand Analysis plus Thinking about Bluffing

2011-09-10T02:22:00.000-07:00

Hand Analysis
Played a hand yesterday, and the river decision interested me. Here's the hand history, first:

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#67215616617

Hero ($27.40)
pacs9 ($24.75)
Zhelya ($9.65)
carpfish ($8.16)
Swings_LOL ($63.21)
Helgutsa ($19.84)
FlowerQ ($11.86)
WuFm ($14.50)
B1GF1SH_1 ($15.26)

Hero posts (SB) $0.10
pacs9 posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to Hero Js Qc
fold, fold, fold, fold,
FlowerQ calls $0.25
WuFm calls $0.25
fold,
Hero raises to $1.25
pacs9 calls $1
FlowerQ calls $1
WuFm calls $1
FLOP ($5) Ac Jc 8c
Hero bets $3
pacs9 raises to $6
FlowerQ folds
WuFm folds
Hero calls $3

I decided to call this small raise with second pair plus second nut draw. With all of the broad way flush cards I can see, made opponent flush hands are rare so I thought I had enough equity to make the call.

TURN ($17) Ac Jc 8c Jh
Hero checks
pacs9 checks
RIVER ($17) Ac Jc 8c Jh 4s
Hero bets $9.50
pacs9 raises to $17.50 (AI)

Basically on the river I bet believing that he would have hands weaker than trips that would call a river bet. His style is pretty loose passive so I can discount many bluffs. Let's create a range of hands that he might play this way. I've gone for {JJ, 88, AJ, A8s, AdKc, AhKc, AsKc, KcJd, KcJh, KcJs, KcTc, Kc9c, Tc9c}. The outcome of this analysis is so critical on that range given, and I'm pretty sure that it's reasonable. Without more reads on the opponent (I only had a few dozen hands on him) this seems fair. I'll assume he shoves on the river with flushes or better in this spot, and calls with all of the one pair and trips hands.

If he shoves over my bet and I feel pot stuck and decide to call the approx EV for betting is ~ -$0.70. So bet/calling is bad, but not a huge spew. If I can find a fold on the river despite getting 5-1 my EV improves to ~ $3.9. I think this is reasonable because I wouldn't expect any passive player at these stakes to ever bluff on that river.

If I decide to check instead and fold to a large bet (again assuming he'll check back his whole range except flushes or better) my EV is ~ $6.4. So in this instance it looks like I was better off check folding on this river (because he'll check back hands weaker than mine and allow me to win at showdown some of the time). This is known as checking equity.

In the actual hand I bet expecting to get called by worse but when villain shoved I felt completely pot committed and called to see Kc9c. Of the three options I could have chosen, my equity from checking was the best followed by bet/folding. I picked the worst choice and therefore I suck!

But this has taught me a valuable lesson on the merits of checking in this kind of situation.

To Float or To Bluff?

Just recently I've made one or two flop bluff raises in situations where I think my hand had enough equity to just call instead. The prime example I can think of is when an opponent c-bet into a three way pot on a 456r and I had Ac7c with backdoor flush draw. Any trey, eight, club or ace improves my hand which is 11 outs and 8 half outs. At the time I saw all of the excellent turn cards and decided to raise the c-bet. Perhaps, though, it is more technically correct to just call instead.

Then again, there are many advantages to raising on the flop. We have a good semi bluffing hand - and my previous work on bluffing with equity shows it doesn't have to work very often to be profitable. If an out does not come in, we're better off in this situation because of the extra fold equity.

But yet at higher stakes, continually raising in these situations is going to allow opponents to 3-bet a high % of flop raises where we're then pot committed to felting ace high.

It's a dilemma to be sure, and fortunately for me I doubt I'll ever have to truly find an answer as the mid stakes games are a million worlds away from my current ones. Raising is likely best at the micros, so I'll persevere with that approach.

Table Selection FTW

2011-09-08T11:52:00.000-07:00

Table selection is frowned upon by many players. In some respects I can sympathise, I actually enjoy playing against good players too. But in full ring games if you are relentlessly getting 3-bet, or if your blinds are consistently getting stolen it really eats into profit. This is why I tilt when it happens.

As part of my pre flop development I have built ranges that should be well defended against 3-betting. But unfortunately this is a defensive strategy and it just allows you to keep your share of the pre flop money. The real money is made from playing post flop, so I absolutely 100% believe that if you are forever getting 3-bet from the two positions to your left, you need a very big reason not to move tables. Similarly if there are aggressive stealers to your right.

A key component of playing poker well is avoiding tilt. I don't mind my blinds being stolen so much, but getting 3-bet a lot winds me up. From now on, my key table selection criteria is avoiding aggressive 3-bettors to my left.

Pretty happy with my play tonight despite having another losing session. I managed to get some sleep after work so played refreshed and at no point felt like I was tilting. I put my chat comment from yesterday entirely down to tiredness. When I'm tired I can still play reasonably well, but I tilt much more easily than normal. It also helped with the added table selection. Sitting at a bunch of tables with nits to my left who never 3-bet adds up to easy money tbh.

So far, then, during this down swing I've managed it pretty well. I've made technical mistakes in difficult spots, but I don't believe that I could have done much better to minimise losses so far. Each and every session that I come out of feeling that I played well is adding to my confidence. Long may it continue. GL

Down Swing Begins

2011-09-07T10:47:00.001-07:00

Two and a half buy-in losses for the session today; the last week and a half it's not been going so well. However I don't think I have played poorly, and so far I think I've restricted my losses to what I would have lost had I been playing well. In other words, I haven't gone on major tilt (yet).

I did tilt earlier just after losing two pots against whales where I'd got half of the money in good and they'd sucked out, at this point I typed 'fish' in the chat box and knew I had to sit out - which I did. I'm furious whenever anyone berates the bad players, and for a brief instant I lost my emotional control and did it myself. Disappointed with that but pleased that I sat out because I was calm when I began to play again.

So, the most important thing when going through a bad stretch is to keep control and make sure that all of the losses are as small as you can possibly make them. So to this end I'm going to table select very very carefully for the next few sessions until it comes around again. One thing that tilts me immensely is getting frequently 3-bet from the two or three positions to my immediate left. It just robs me of my profit and winds me up. So not only am I going to look for good tables, I'm also going to make sure that the 3 positions to my left are not aggressive players. I'm also going to watch my tilt very carefully and try not to play if I'm tired.

I'll let you know how I get on and if and when it begins to go well again. GL

Recent Sessions

2011-09-05T13:48:00.000-07:00

Just quickly, I blogged that I was going to really try and play more carefully post flop; that is, bluff catch less often and bluff less often (except in obvious spots where we have good equity). The last five results I average going to showdown around 22% of the time, which is a step in the right direction in my opinion. 28% average over my sample leads me to believe that I was spewing by calling on rivers too often.

I will continue in this vain for the forseeable future and hopefully it will contribute to a healthy win rate! GL

Mistake Hand (but got lucky)

2011-09-05T01:05:00.001-07:00

A few posts ago I put a little equation up for pot sized all-in bluffs with equity. Well I went back to the original EV equations and rearranged for a more general result. When risking r to win a reward w (the pot)and estimating your equity against his calling range to be q, then shoving is a profitable play if opponent folds x% of the time such that
x > (r*(1-2*q) - q*w)/(r*(1-2*q) + w*(1-q))
My maths isn't that great, so hopefully I haven't made errors in rearranging the sums but I've put some results in (including the pot sized bet numbers I had) and it seems to work so far.

What usually happens after I work things out and see how little villain's need to fold to make bluffs with equity work is that I play a session and try it out. And often until I get a proper feel for these things I make mistakes, and I think I made one yesterday.

Firstly villain was 18/17 and had raised 3/4 times from the small blind so far. He didn't seem completely retarded, but was over the top aggressive post flop imo.

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#67004399592

joshil3 ($23.70)
Hero ($29.10)
hfly0313 ($10)
Ragham87 ($52.97)
capa_audaz ($25.65)
CrisDark19 ($25)
RCAMDESSUS ($25)

joshil3 posts (SB) $0.10
Hero posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to Hero Ac 2c
fold, fold, fold, fold, fold,
joshil3 raises to $0.75
Hero calls $0.50
FLOP ($1.50) 7h 3d 5c
joshil3 bets $1
Hero raises to $3.75
joshil3 raises to $8

Firstly I like the flop raise initially, I have a gut shot and back door flush draw plus in all probability any ace for outs giving me probably around 28% equity versus his calling range. When he re raises I just thought he'd be bluffing some of the time. The question is how often. Putting the numbers into my little equation (we risk $19 to win $13 with equity of ~28% against a calling range) and it comes out that he needs to fold a quarter of the time to make a shove profitable. At the time I estimated that I needed less folds, maybe 15-20% so I think I was being optimistic. I certainly believe he's bluffing some of the time here intending to fold, but perhaps not as often as 26%.

Hero raises to $28.35 (AI)
joshil3 calls $14.95 (AI)
TURN ($47.40) 7h 3d 5c 9h
RIVER ($47.40) 7h 3d 5c 9h 4s
joshil3 shows Qs Qh
(Pre 68%, Flop 68.6%, Turn 84.1%)

Hero shows Ac 2c
(Pre 32%, Flop 31.4%, Turn 15.9%)

Hero wins $45.40

I get lucky and run above EV.

The important thing is that I'm still improving, and every time I start to try out new things it takes me a while (and a few mistakes) to get it right. But this work is part of a general strategy to become a little less passive and a little more aggressive so that when I reach the higher limits I'm a more difficult opponent.

What this also goes to show is that in general, if you're only betting/raising or barrelling post flop with hands that have some sort of equity against a calling range it's never likely to be a big mistake. Doing so without equity is a lot more difficult to get right. Consider the hand from last time where opponent barrels off with JJ on an AQ3Q. He had two outs on that turn so needed me to fold nearly half of the time to make it work. Perhaps this is true, but it's generally a big ask on that sort of board at this limit.

EDIT: Just ran a simulation of this hand and the fold % requirement seems a little higher at about 30%, perhaps there's an error in the equation. It's not far out though, I will re work the next time I have some time off (next weekend) and check it.

Interesting (if brutal) Session

2011-09-02T12:49:00.000-07:00

Right, got a couple of hand histories to fit in here. I thought I played reasonably well, and somehow managed to come out break even. I guess that's how soft the games are on Stars. I'll exclude one hand where I sucked out on the turn with AQ; opponent was very aggressive so I 3-bet his flop raise (on an Axx rainbow) expecting to see weaker aces a lot and then I turned a Q when he actually had AK - oops!

Hand 1:

Villain is a 15/13 reg, with the quirks of playing passively post flop and also rarely folding to 3-bets.

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#66911735168

Hero ($43.16)
The Draytone ($25)
lokhed ($11.01)
aldor500 ($26.96)
edupoker13 ($11)
EggMayo ($35.54)

Hero posts (SB) $0.10
The Draytone posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to Hero Kc Kh
fold, fold,
edupoker13 calls $0.25
EggMayo raises to $1
Hero raises to $2.75

I think I should have raised to $3 or $3.25, villain only folds to c-bets a fraction of the time so I certainly get more value by betting bigger preflop.

fold, fold,
EggMayo calls $1.75
FLOP ($6) Jh Kd 3s
Hero bets $2.85

I flop the utter nuts but forget that we are slightly deep and that half pot bets will no longer get us all in by the river. Additionally, given villain's post flop passiveness I think that I could easily have got more value here. I bet too little, and by some distance imo.

EggMayo calls $2.85
TURN ($11.70) Jh Kd 3s 6h
Hero checks

I think I made a mistake here; against a more aggressive villain then a turn check on this blank is pretty good against a positional float. I assumed he'd bet his whole range here and I'd be able to check raise, but he doesn't.

EggMayo checks
RIVER ($11.70) Jh Kd 3s 6h As
Hero bets $6.50
EggMayo raises to $29.94 (AI)

Puke splatters the keyboard, monitor and walls. Firstly, I immediately rule out JJ, 33 and 66 - I think he plays these hands much more aggressively before the river. At the time I called pretty quickly assuming that two pair hands would be in his range. If that is true (including AJ and AK in his preflop flatting range) then we easily have enough equity to call. However, given his overall passiveness I'm beginning to wonder if - stupid though this may sound - I should have folded. If he's just calling with AJ and only shipping AK then we no longer have enough equity to call (and I'm assuming 0% bluffs). The one thing going for me is that I don't thing any single player would fold this hand at this limit in this spot. But I honestly think that perhaps it's correct to do so... Meh.

Hero calls $23.44
EggMayo shows Ts Qh
(Pre 14%, Flop 25.9%, Turn 18.2%)

Hero shows Kc Kh
(Pre 86%, Flop 74.1%, Turn 81.8%)

EggMayo wins $69.58

Hand 2:

Villain is a reg playing 17/12, and he is pretty aggressive post flop.

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#66914620922

mrpoka112 ($33.03)
fps_fabio ($12.38)
world153 ($25)
pityesz901 ($23.50)
GiovannyTH ($4.33)
Hero ($30.94)
SPIRITNOBODY ($27.15)
karimhk ($28.54)

mrpoka112 posts (SB) $0.10
fps_fabio posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to Hero 3h 3d
fold, fold,
GiovannyTH calls $0.25
Hero raises to $1
fold, fold,
mrpoka112 calls $0.90
fold,
GiovannyTH calls $0.75
FLOP ($3.25) Ah 3s Qs
mrpoka112 checks
GiovannyTH checks
Hero bets $1.54
mrpoka112 calls $1.54
GiovannyTH folds
TURN ($6.33) Ah 3s Qs Qc
mrpoka112 checks
Hero bets $3.01
mrpoka112 raises to $8.75

I'm sure he's 3-betting aces and queens preflop. But something about the speed at which he called my bet on the flop and the lack of obvious bluffing hands on the turn really made me fear AQ. If he check raises another trip queen hand it's hard to see me bluff catching with many Ax hands, but I can't completely rule that sort of play out. At the time something was screaming AQ at me.

Hero calls $5.74
RIVER ($23.83) Ah 3s Qs Qc 7h
mrpoka112 bets $21.74 (AI)

At this point I very nearly folded (such a monsters under the bed nit). I quickly checked his post flop play and noticed that he'd been playing very aggressively on turns and rivers; as if he seemed to understand the concept of diminishing equity and turning hands into bluffs on later streets. Given this insight I made a crying call expecting to see the hand I feared. What he showed up with surprised me a lot. The fact that I was considering folding a set here would probably make a lot of players laugh. Meh, again.

Hero calls $19.65 (AI)
Hero shows 3h 3d
(Pre 19%, Flop 85.7%, Turn 90.9%)

mrpoka112 shows Jd Js
(Pre 81%, Flop 14.3%, Turn 9.1%)

Hero wins $61.13

GL all.

Accidental Slow Roll with Quads

2011-09-02T10:14:00.000-07:00

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#66862721359

TaiJiang ($24.75)
JtotheBnr1 ($31.15)
MadMoses13 ($24.80)
knappebelg ($24.27)
~NK-228~ ($13.72)
Leonn_by ($10.13)
AcelessVoid ($29.04)
Me ($25)

TaiJiang posts (SB) $0.10
JtotheBnr1 posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to Me Ac Ad
fold, fold,
~NK-228~ raises to $0.75
fold, fold,
Me raises to $2.50
fold, fold,
~NK-228~ calls $1.75
FLOP ($5.35) As Ah Qs
~NK-228~ bets $2.25
Me calls $2.25
TURN ($9.85) As Ah Qs Td
~NK-228~ bets $8.97 (AI)

At this point another couple of tables popped up and the decisions took me probably around 20 seconds or so; when I returned to this table the time bank had activated. I laughed at the time, but it's pretty rough when someone tank calls with quads. NK-288, I apologise for the unintentional slow roll.

Me calls $8.97
RIVER ($27.79) As Ah Qs Td 5c
~NK-228~ shows 6h 6d
(Pre 20%, Flop 0.0%, Turn 0.0%)

Me shows Ac Ad
(Pre 80%, Flop 100.0%, Turn 100.0%)

Me wins $26.43

Vid Check Up; Increasing Tables; Stars' Deal Times etc

2011-09-01T08:43:00.001-07:00

I hadn't watched any pro videos for a while; I like watching good players play as it often refocusses my strategy so today I watched the D_Smith 50NL series at Cardrunners (or at least the episodes so far).

One thing that I consistently do is go to showdown too often. I don't think it's a serious leak (prob around 3% higher than optimal) but it's a leak none the less. One thing that struck me about the video is that Duncan (EDIT: I should at least get the first name right!) was very careful post flop, and I did not see many attempts to bluff catch. If he makes a mistake it's usually only when deciding whether to bet or not (and therefore often only a small mistake if that). So I took extra care in my session this afternoon and really only put money in when I was quite sure. As a result there were no 'Oh God I could have saved myself a bet on that river' spots. I think that I can do better by making a potential small mistake by folding rather than a potential large mistake by calling in these spots and this is what I'll endeavour to do from now on.

The session this afternoon was played on 8 tables as opposed to my usual 6. I want to try and increase playing volume so this is a step I thought was going to be necessary eventually. I don't think it will effect my strategy as much as I'll gain from the increased volume although I'm getting close now. I think 10-12 would currently be my limit without there being serious degradation in my play. So eventually 12 tables is what I'll strive to play at once but for now I'll play 8.

This kind of links in with the Stars' changes to deal times. This is a great change in my opinion, it really felt like we were getting through more hands as a result, and my database confirms that over 2hrs I played 1100 hands and this is certainly more than I would have before. Nice work Poker Stars! I should easily be able to play 15-20k hands per week now.

I'll finish with a hand history. Villain is fairly loose aggressive, but the difference with this player is that I believe he is a reasonable hand reader (rare at this limit imo). He c-bets an insane amount of the time over my sample but I guess he believes he'll play turns better than his opponents. His under the gun range is pretty wide at 15% PFR.

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#66854740387

ikspert 34ru ($24.71)
Kobern ($10)
anaclaraaren ($25)
EduardoR9' ($27.50)
vladts ($14.15)
Moi ($40.07)
manyee ($10)
isaveflu ($9.91)

ikspert 34ru posts (SB) $0.10
Kobern posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to Moi Js Ad
anaclaraaren raises to $0.88
fold, fold,
Moi calls $0.88
fold, fold, fold, fold,
FLOP ($2.11) Ks Qh 4c
anaclaraaren bets $1.40

I have no reason to believe he's c-betting any less than 100% of his range on this board. That's a range that has every pocket pair and most broadways. I'm representing a pretty narrow range by raising this flop, and at the time I almost folded. But I guessed that if I were to raise and if he were to 3-bet me, it would be a bluff pretty often. I figured he'd call with the top of his range in all likeliness at least some of the time.

Moi raises to $4.25
anaclaraaren raises to $8

So he does 3-bet, and as you can probably tell I'd already planned to shove over one. Basically my equity is probably around 15% (assuming he calls with one pair type hands - and he might not). So I need him to fold just 35% of the time or more for this to be profitable. It's probably pretty close but I'm fairly certain that this is true. It might be a thin bluff, but I think it's a profitable one.

Moi raises to $39.19 (AI)
anaclaraaren folds
Moi shows Js Ad

Moi wins $17.21

He folded rather quickly so in this instance, I think all of my thinking was correct. I wouldn't bluff for stacks like this very often.

Cash Plan

2011-08-29T11:29:00.000-07:00

I almost jumped into some 50Nl today, but it still feels like I'm taking too big of a risk. There are a couple of things holding me back. 1/ I'm due a decent downswing. The last 10+ buy in depression seems some time ago now. 2/ My hand sample at 25Nl is still small on this site. I did mediocre at best in the Rush games at this limit, which is evidence that I'm just running well despite improving my game somewhat.

So what I'm going to do is wait until I've won enough to bring the bankroll to $2k and then I'll spend my whole time at the next limit. 40 buy ins is not enough to remove my risk of ruin, but I could endure a 20 BI downswing and only have lost half of the 'roll. This might sound a little nitty, but I'm not quite convinced by the numbers so far. I only need to win 16 buy-ins more. Meanwhile I'll continue to work on my game in preparation.

EDIT:
Just played a session that kind of vindicates this decision, made some horrible plays and also didn't notice an obvious bet sizing tell in one particular villain which meant I called with second pair on two seperate occasions on the river where the bet was nearly pot sized (a size he only ever used with a good hand during the session). I think overall I left about $15 on the table through mistakes, and I CANNOT afford to keep doing this. I'd been playing some really disciplined poker lately, but this session reminds me that I can still play really poorly sometimes.

If I hadn't made those obvious mistakes I'd have come out break even. Anyway I'll review the hands again tomorrow to double check that I'm not being too critical and try and remember similar spots so that I don't make the same mistakes again. GL

Analysing Bluffs with Equity

2011-08-28T10:20:00.000-07:00

I did some analysis today looking at bluffing at pots on the flop or turn with a pot sized bet left behind and with a variety of hands which will win some % of the time at showdown. I thought I'd share some of it with you, because it really shows how powerful bluffs with equity (also known as semi-bluffs) really are.

When bluffing with no chance of winning at showdown (a pure bluff) we risk a pot sized bet to win the pot so to break even on our bet our opponent must fold 50% of the time.
[risk/(risk + reward) => 1/(1+1) = 0.5] If he folds more often than that we obviously profit.

When bluffing with equity our break even point comes at x = -1/(3Eq - 2) {Eq = the equity of our hand versus villain's calling range}. To get this I just created the EV equation, set it equal to zero and rearranged for x which is the indifference point. If our hand has 25% equity then x = -1/(3*0.25 - 2) so we break even when our opponent folds just 20% of the time. This is a huge difference considering our hand only wins at showdown a quarter of the time villain calls. If our hand has 33% equity against villain's calling range (think flush or straight draws on the flop) then we should bet all-in every time because any time villain folds we profit, and when he doesn't we own too big of a share of that pot to fold.

To demonstrate with a graph, the following shows our indifference points for a given equity between 0 and 50%.

Any time our indifference point is greater than 1 betting all-in is mandatory.

In conclusion, I hope it's easy to see that in a situation where your opponent will fold some of the time and you have a pot sized bet left semi - bluffs are usually very profitable.

Hand Analysis, River Mistake

2011-08-28T02:08:00.000-07:00

I sometimes tend to look too much at mistakes I make in hands that I lose, but in this instance I made a mistake in a hand that I ended up winning.

A little history on the villain; he'd been playing like a maniac. Like a 50% vp$ip and PFR of 30%. On two occasions I'd called preflop with a middle pair and been blown off of my hand by the river by his aggressive bet sizing on boards with over cards.

{Moi is not my screen name :P}

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#66620504943

Vinni9711 ($28.65)
lccxjcxj ($33.26)
dominicmn ($16.80)
Kusker ($5.15)
pipiop ($44.62)
Moi ($25)
Rockstarhobb ($12.88)
SK717 ($26.96)
slscoelho ($10.99)

Vinni9711 posts (SB) $0.10
lccxjcxj posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to Moi Kc Qc
fold, fold,
pipiop raises to $1
Moi raises to $3

There are hardly ever any instances where I'd 3-bet KQs for value against an early position raiser (especially from middle position), but this is definitely one of them. He wasn't folding preflop once he'd put money in so I can get called by tons of weaker stuff, plus it allows me to create a more favourable stack to pot ratio in case I flop something worthwhile.

fold, fold, fold, fold, fold,
pipiop calls $2
FLOP ($6.35) 4s Ks 3h
pipiop checks
Moi bets $3.50
pipiop calls $3.50
TURN ($13.35) 4s Ks 3h 4c
pipiop bets $3.25

This is where my thinking got a little screwed. I'd so rarely raise top pair good kicker on a board like this and I think I just auto pilot called using the usual logic (don't want to fold out his bluffs, not called by weaker often enough). But the truth is I think I get called by plenty of stuff that's weaker. I think I need to raise this turn and then jam/call a jam on any river.

Moi calls $3.25
RIVER ($19.85) 4s Ks 3h 4c 6s
pipiop bets $4.25
Moi calls $4.25

So if the turn was a mistake, not shoving this river was too. Yes there are certainly flushes, trips and weird two pairs and straights in his range. But there are more combos of random king pair weaker kickers I think. Not shoving this river probably cost me about $7 (~60% * $11).

pipiop shows Kd 7c
(Pre 25%, Flop 15.6%, Turn 14.8%)

Moi shows Kc Qc
(Pre 75%, Flop 84.4%, Turn 85.2%)

Moi wins $26.99

This is the sort of situation I've found myself in a couple of times lately. Spots where opponents' range is very wide and I've not been sure if there's enough weaker combinations of hands that would call a raise for it to be worthwhile. I'm leaving money on the table and that doesn't make me happy :).

Recent Play

2011-08-25T12:52:00.000-07:00

I haven't started playing the $15s yet, I need to improve my daily schedule so that I don't waste so much playing time. I've played some cash the last couple of days which has gone so so, made some mistakes as per usual.

Tonight though, I played some $7 9-man turbos to sound the games out. Initial thoughts are that they are definitely soft enough to be beatable for a decent clip. Unfortunately my ICM knowledge needs to improve a lot I think.

So I face a decision, whether to go back to cash and concentrate on improving enough to beat the small stakes games OR I take my decent cash game into the SNGs and spend a lot of time crunching ICM situations so that I play short stacks very well. I'm kind of torn. I love cash, post flop poker is more interesting than pre flop poker; but part of me has this urge to try and crush the 9 man SNGs as they were my first game. I think that hourly will likely be better in the 9 mans so that is another thing they have going for them. Or I could just continue to play a mix of both, constantly reviewing my overall play in cash games and learning ICM well for the SNGs. Yeah, perhaps that is the way to go?

At the end of the day, playing volume is key. I might well end up just returning to cash since it's the one format that I can just get on and play within what ever time constraints I find myself under. Plus there's no extra knowledge needed to play reasonably well. But if I challenged myself to get to a decent standard at the 9-mans then perhaps this would help my overall game if I should ever decide to enter tournaments. Anyway, I'm totally rambling tonight. That's four 4am alarms in a row for you. GL

EDIT:
Just played some more cash today, felt really good. Made a couple of folds on the river that I might not if I was playing my b-game... So was pleased with that. I'm going to play a session at 50NL tomorrow so I'll post the results of that here, hopefully it goes OK and I don't immediately drop a buy-in and have to move back down. Either way, from now on I'll be playing a mix of both limits and hopefully make 50 my permanent home before too long.

Just Research So Far

2011-08-23T09:51:00.001-07:00

So I spent this afternoon finding out the excellent book 'kill everyone'. It has a very unfortunate name for a poker book, but I really believe it is the absolute best NLHE tournament book that has ever been written, period. All of the mathematics is covered and there's plenty of charts and data to demonstrate the theory.

So the first part of my foray into 9 man SNG was to get the book out and remind myself of a few of the risk/reward considerations when playing. I think I have to slightly adjust my previous assertion about strategy. I still believe that playing a semi loose strategy is the best way to go, but actually when starting a SNG we have slightly more risk than an absolute cash model but only somewhere around 1.23 (or 23% more risk in stacking off). {This number, known as 'bubble factor' is a ratio that represents the increased risk of losing your tournament life at that stage in the tournament. In a tournament doubling up does NOT double your equity in the game, so we have to be more careful in all-in pots}. Basically there's no reason why we cannot use our skill advantage post flop but we must be a little more cautious when putting chips in the middle. This will likely equate to betting less often on each street and being careful to call less often (in other words adjusting the pot odds using the bubble factor).

The next step is to begin to play games and study some of those situations. A long time ago I invested in the tool 'the SitnGo Wizard' which I have used in my tournament forays recently (remember the great run I had in the 90-man tournaments on Full Tilt that made me a few hundred quid? - SNGWiz played a big part in that). I feel pretty tired today so I don't think I'll play any games but I'll begin to put a few situations into the hand quiz on the tool and begin to attempt to get a feel for the push fold situations. Then all that's left is to play and learn, then play again.

I think at the micro stakes buy-ins (likely full of fish I'd guess) 10% should be a realistic goal for ROI. If I 6 table these games with an average running time of 30 mins that's 12 per hour so an hourly return of $12-$18 is possible if I play well. That's a better return than the cash games I was playing in, so if I can make it work it could be a better situation. Time will tell. GL

100 $15 9-Man SNGs

2011-08-22T13:08:00.000-07:00

I just opened a couple of these tournaments up and the first couple of rounds everyone folded! I remember these games being nit fests back in the day, now they appear to be even tighter. Jesus, I know we have to be more careful about stacking off due to ICM but not THAT much more careful. I'm pretty sure that anyone going in with a semi loose aggressive strategy - as long as they play well post flop - could do really well in these games. Simply because they'd win so much preflop dead money before the bubble kicks in.

It really looks like too many players have adopted the 'play like a nit early on then play like a maniac on the bubble' strategy. This was sound back in the day when the games were full of fish that would never fold, but now that the games are full of nitty regulars I think ideal strategy should focus on getting a chip advantage early on through stealing blind money. I'd bet quite a large sum that the biggest winners in these games are playing a solid semi loose (or perhaps completely loose) aggressive cash strategy early game and winning a lot of dead money then playing good ICM on the bubble. This is what I intend to do.

So to the title of the post. I'm going to try out these tournaments the next few days. In fact I'm going to play 100 of them. IF they go OK (and it could well be a big if since I haven't played them for so long) then I may extend this stretch but we'll see.

I'll need to do two things:
1/ Dig out 'Kill Everyone' again, I can't find that book anywhere but I'll need to remind myself about some of the risk reward maths for these games
2/ Use SNGWiz to quiz myself on different situations.

My strategy is going to revolve around exploiting the players who are just waiting for the bubble by stealing a lot of blind money and then playing good ICM when I get to the bubble itself. As always, I'll post the results right here.

The Mistake Hand

2011-08-22T01:41:00.000-07:00

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#66348451013

Im MrCharles ($35.63)
Djapko ($15.78)
raudtee(EST) ($26.73)
Hero ($33.30)
zkskogi3 ($10.35)
woodrow004 ($41.78)
unicornfarts ($25)
tom41k ($10)
ddrruugg ($25.25)

Im MrCharles posts (SB) $0.10
Djapko posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to Hero 3s 3h
fold,
Hero raises to $0.75
fold, fold, fold, fold,
ddrruugg calls $0.75
fold, fold,
FLOP ($1.85) Js 7h 3d
Hero bets $1.14
ddrruugg calls $1.14
TURN ($4.13) Js 7h 3d 5c
Hero bets $3
ddrruugg raises to $8.50

I have to value bet the turn, but then things get nasty. My opponent is pretty aggressive, but I wouldn't say 'bad' aggressive. I'd expect him to bluff with hands that it makes sense to bluff with rather than turn AJ into a bluff here (as some players would). The problem is, what hands call the flop with equity and then turn into a bluff on a 5c turn? If it was me, I might have floated the flop with a gut shot straight draw plus back door flush draw intending to raise on any flush card or if a card paired me up and made the board dangerous or if my straight came in. In this instance something like 5s6s. But I can't assume my opponents would play any hands in this way at this limit. Much more likely is he'll call the flop with all jacks and sets, perhaps 88-TT and 78s, 67s. None of these hands raises the turn except sets. He'd have to be turning some of those pairs into bluffs and I just don't see it.

Hero calls $5.50
RIVER ($21.13) Js 7h 3d 5c 9d
Hero checks
ddrruugg bets $14.86 (AI)
Hero calls $14.86
ddrruugg shows Jh Jd
(Pre 81%, Flop 95.7%, Turn 97.7%)

Hero shows 3s 3h
(Pre 19%, Flop 4.3%, Turn 2.3%)

ddrruugg wins $48.85

All I have is a bluff catcher on that river. My hand has the same value as AA despite being a set. To call or not depends upon how often he is bluffing. Is he bluffing more than 29% of the time? - I'm almost certain that he is not. He might not be betting any bluffs on that river for all I know.

There's a concept that I've heard in the forums called something like reciprocity. Every poker player is faced with exactly the same situations. But by playing them better than your opponents you make more money than them. In this situation, at this limit, I doubt there are many players who would fold a set in this spot. Normally, I would but on this occasion I did not. I can kind of forgive myself knowing that I'm getting villain's stack every time I have the better set but I strive to be better than my competitors and so I'm very disappointed here.

Learning Something About KO Tournaments
I don't know if you remember me blogging earlier in the year when I played a bunch of KO tournaments using my default tournament strategy but didn't get on very well. Thanks to Collin Moshmann and his excellent article I now realise why. Like a proper school boy I had not figured the bounty equity into the ICM calculations. I was likely folding in tons of spots where I should have called with the extra bounty equity. I'll stay away from these tourneys in future.

9-Man SNG
Occasionally I stray from the cash format if I feel I'm getting stale. When I first started playing I used to play the 9-man single table tourneys. But I was terribad in them days; sure I did the ICM stuff pretty well but I was so scared at playing post flop poker I used to fold pretty much every hand until the bubble. Now that I've played so much cash and my post flop equity knowledge has improved a great deal, I think that I could do pretty well at these. I might give them a try for a few hundred games or so. I'm 'rolled for the $15 turbos and if I can achieve $1.5 profit per game then perhaps I can make a quick $1500 by tearing through 1000 games as quickly as possible. I'll play a few this week to sound them out. GL

So So Poker

2011-08-21T14:20:00.000-07:00

Just played a couple of hours, really felt I played well except for two pots. One where I stacked off with AKs in a situation where I could possibly have found a fold but ran into AA and another where I couldn't let go of my bottom set on a dryish board against a semi aggressive opponent. I think I should have found a fold on the turn because there wasn't really many hands that could float the flop with equity and then turn into a bluff on the turn (which is where the raise came).

So I'm really disappointed. I could have played a perfect session but ruined it with two pretty large mistakes. Sigh. This is why I'll never be a poker great. I still (and probably always will) make too many mistakes! GL

Update

2011-08-17T14:01:00.000-07:00

Things continue to go reasonably well, although they've slowed a little the last 5k hands or so. However, I'm still making tons of mistakes and I'm certain that I'm running well over my true win rate so I'm expecting a large down swing any time now. But before that happens I thought I'd post my graph before it's ruined (lol). In fact, after a few sessions that haven't gone so well lately I've braced myself for the inevitable but then next session it's gone great again.

What this has led to is a sustained period of bankroll growth and as I touched upon last time, I'm at my threshold for moving up to $50NL. This is pretty good timing. If I can continue to run well for the next month of play at that limit I'll get great value from the platinum star status that I recently earned during the VIP club promo. If I don't, well at least the added rake back will help to soften the blow!

I'll play a full day tomorrow. If it goes well I'll have a sample of hands for $50NL. If not, I'll have a ton of tilt influenced garbage that I can post on here for amusement purposes. The thing I love about this game is that I have absolutely no idea what will happen. I just believe that in the long run my strategy is better than break even at this limit (but I could be wrong). GL

Hero Calls on the River

2011-08-16T07:35:00.000-07:00

Well I've created some filters for this specific situation in my database so that I can monitor how I'm getting on. I've felt just lately that I might have been spewing a little in these spots, especially when I hero call with weak pairs and ace high.

I think it's very important to stress that in situations where you're hero calling on the river, you should be losing money in these hands on average. [ Edit: I need to emphasise that this is for the hand overall, not the street we're playing. In a vacuum our river calls should be making us money. ] This might appear to be a really dumb thing to say but let me explain.

When we face a river bet it's almost always less than a pot sized bet. That means that in general we only need to be correct around a third of the time (and often less if villain bets small). In these instances if we were playing perfectly and calling exactly the correct % of the time given our pot odds then we'd actually be losing money overall because we'd be winning at showdown only around a third of the time. That doesn't mean that the river call was unprofitable, the effect of playing the river well in this situation is to minimise the losses from the hand. Folding too much or calling too much would lead to even bigger losses.

If anyone is reading this and thinks I'm mad, let me know in the comments and I'll do an example that demonstrates this concept.

Hero Calls with Top Pair or an Over Pair

In situations where I have top pair or better and hero call on the river, I'm winning at showdown a little over half of the time at the moment. This could mean that I'm folding a little too often on the river with a good hand, but I don't in general fold hands like this facing a river bet. I think it's more likely that my opponents are betting too much junk into this range come the river. Perhaps I'm not raising the river enough with these hands too?

Hero Calls with Weak Pairs

This is where things get a little more interesting. I'm winning at showdown in these spots around a third of the time so it looks like I'm doing a mixture of calling and folding and (so far) winning at around the right sort of %. If this number was to move sharply in one direction or the other I think I'd have a clear leak, but it looks like I'm doing OK.

Hero Calls with High Cards

Here it looks like I may have a problem. I'm only winning at showdown around 20% of the time when I call on the river with high cards. For this to be OK our opponent needs to be betting a third of a pot sized bet or less on average. Looking through my database this is actually generally true, so perhaps I'm not spewing here as much as I thought.

So far I've been doing OK in the hero calls stakes but I need to be very careful in these situations that I don't start giving money away. My sample sizes are very small at the moment but now that I'm more aware of what numbers I should be looking for, I should be able to spot a leak should one develop.

Still Running Well

2011-08-14T11:50:00.000-07:00

I'm closing in on my target for 50NL. Just two buy-ins away now, although I've had such a strong heater lately that I expect to have a pretty big down swing at some stage soon. The positive thing is that I'm winning so much when I see the flop. This means that the more common down swings should hopefully be less pronounced than I was used to at the 'other' site (perhaps 8-9 buy-ins rather than 12-14). I'm prepared for it when it happens.

Today went well, I made some mistakes for sure but I don't think any of them were huge ones. A couple of thin ace high calls versus loose aggressive players that didn't work out; I always find those spots difficult because I will usually always assign them enough 'junk' that the calls should be profitable but perhaps I'm being too optimistic. Overall though, my opponents are making many more mistakes than me. But I won't rest on my laurels, I'm actively reviewing every session now using poker stove and HEM and it's helping me to estimate equity better.

If there's one area that I worry about a little, it's that my 3-bet % has converged on around 3.8% and I think I must be missing out on some profitable spots. I'd expect closer to 5% to be more optimal so I'll look to improve my strategy in this regard. It could be that I'm just flatting some hands that opponents are 3-betting where the equity between both decisions is close. For example I expect most of my opponents to be 3-betting AK and QQ versus EP and MP opens, whereas I will usually flat with those hands. Perhaps I'm better served by 3-betting them?

The reason I flat them is because against an early position show down range of {QQ+, AK} then the only hands that can be felted for value (that is taken to showdown with more than 50% equity) are KK+. However, if an opponent is capable of 4-bet bluffing some of the time then 3-betting and calling the 4-bet with AK and QQ becomes fine. It's also fine if villain doesn't like folding. I'll keep an open mind about this and blog again in future.

So it could be that in the coming week I begin to take my first bow at 50NL full ring. I think it would be naive to 6 table (as I do currently at this limit) so I'll begin by four tabling and will keep a very close eye on my balance and make sure I move down if I drop below the threshold. So I expect I'll be playing a mix of the two limits for a while if and when I get there. GL

Coming Back Strongly

2011-08-11T12:43:00.000-07:00

So Sunday I played pretty awfully, but I took a break for a day or so and since then I think I've played very very well. There was a single instance tonight where I foolishly auto bet 2/3 pot in a spot where villain's calling range was totally inelastic (I should have ridiculously over bet shoved for sure) but that's about all I can think of. I made a couple of pretty big lay downs and got great value from my made hands.

The last 25k hands or so I've been on a huge heater. I don't want to put too big of a negative slant on my results because I think I'm certainly beating this limit for a decent clip, but I don't honestly think my current win rate is sustainable (for me at least). Still, I'm thoroughly enjoying going to showdown and winning some nice pots. I've said it before and I'll reiterate - at 25NL the Stars' games are as juicy as a pint on a Saturday night. I'm looking forward to moving up because I wouldn't expect a massive difference at the next limit. Some more good players for sure, but not a big improvement in the playing skill.

If (and it's obviously a big if) I see the same indicators at the next limit that the games are very beatable then I may take a risk and go straight to 100NL. I have disposable income at the moment, and also a little money saved away. If I combined all of this I definitely have enough bankroll to play that limit without a large risk of ruin, and if I don't move up then I'm potentially hurting my earnings in the long run. But plenty more hands to play before I need to make that sort of decision so I'll post again about that in the future.

Tonight, I Was Crap.

2011-08-07T14:31:00.000-07:00

Played really really poorly tonight. I made a few mistakes but somehow came out break even. I should really have won another buy-in or more if I'd found the folds/calls/bets where I believe I should have. Pretty tilting to be fair, and I'll do a more thorough analysis in the morning. I'm just lucky that these Stars' games are so forgiving because I still won plenty of pots despite my mistakes.

So yeah, tomorrow I'll write some more and possibly post some of my terrible play. I think I need to continue to do a lot of post flop equity work because while I think that I pick value spots fairly well I'm still a pretty awful bluffer.

Quick Update

2011-08-06T09:47:00.000-07:00

Experiencing a good little heater at the moment. It appears that my showdown winnings are correcting a little towards numbers that I'd expect to be more realistic for this limit. If this good stretch continues then I'll soon reach my 50NL threshold for moving up which is pretty cool. I'm not going to rest on my laurels though as I still have tons of room for improvement.

I'm not quite ready to post my results so far since moving to Stars, I'll do so once I get to 50k hands or so.

Hand versus Regular

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#65614413988

getnavi ($39.66)
Hero ($25)
Big_Jayyy10 ($29.01)
NomaNesca ($33.46)
loslokosP ($9.65)
reyjeff ($49.40)
jayc24062406 ($25)
iDdQd88 ($11.25)
GoldAngel77 ($23.72)

getnavi posts (SB) $0.10
Hero posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to Hero Qs Kc
fold, fold, fold, fold, fold,
fold, fold,
getnavi raises to $0.75
Hero calls $0.50
FLOP ($1.50) 2h 3h 8c
getnavi bets $1.07
Hero calls $1.07

This might seem like a pretty thin call, but getnavi steals half of the time in the small blind so there's likely to be plenty of junk in his range that I beat. If he's betting his entire range on the flop (not an unreasonable assumption to assign an aggressive player in a heads-up pot) then my equity according to pokerstove is 40%.

TURN ($3.64) 2h 3h 8c Qd
getnavi checks
Hero bets $2.50
getnavi raises to $8.01

Ouch. The turn card is obviously awesome for my hand so it's a clear value bet. When he check raises I'm not liking my hand so much. But there were a couple of things on my side. First, he's played very aggressively over the small sample of hands that I have so I certainly believe he can bluff this spot. Secondly this seems like a very strange way to play any value hand. Taking a turn check raise line on a dry board where I'm often checking back hands with good showdown value (99-JJ, 98, T8, A8 etc) looks designed to push out my random floats. I'm pretty sure he'd just keep betting if he had the top of his range. Lastly was the bet timing. Everything was super fast; he didn't seem to be considering his options but was following a premeditated plan. All of these things combined made this a snap call.

Hero calls $5.51
RIVER ($19.66) 2h 3h 8c Qd Ts
getnavi bets $29.83 (AI)
Hero calls $15.17 (AI)

I actually tanked and took a little longer with this decision than I should have really. I just wanted to make sure my reasoning was sound. On the river he bet all-in very quickly, following my earlier read about premeditation. At this point I think he's got the nuts or nothing. Let's assume first that he really is doing this with his value hands too so a range like {QQ+, 88, 33-22}; he needs at least 12 combos of bluffs for me to be able to call profitably and I think this is 100% true. Plus I don't actually believe he'd play all (if any) of his value hands this way either. I made a meal of an easy decision really didn't I?

getnavi shows 5c As
(Pre 58%, Flop 79.1%, Turn 15.9%)

Hero shows Qs Kc
(Pre 42%, Flop 20.9%, Turn 84.1%)

Hero wins $48

Confirming my earlier assertion that I felt there were enough combinations of bluffs in villain's range to call, there are exactly 12 combos of A5o. Against getnavi I will be stacking off super light from now on.

Four Betting Parameters

The Rush games were super nitty for getting all-in preflop. I think over 200k hands or so the vast majority of the time I saw the money going in was with {KK+}. These Stars' games are a different story completely. I'm now totally happy stacking with AK and QQ facing a 3-bet which is great because it means that I don't have to create bluff heavy 4-bet ranges. I can just get the money in with the top 20% of my range, no problem and this makes things much easier. One villain 5-bet bluffed me with KJo yesterday. I don't have a problem with him using that hand as a bluff but it means I can felt {99+, AQ} all day and all week long.

Right, I will probably play some cash later and maybe some tournaments too. Perhaps I can bink a couple hundred $ or something. Mind you, I've won the last 5 sessions so I'm expecting to drop a buy-in or two pretty soon. GL

NLHE Blind vs. Blind: A Unique Situation

2011-08-05T09:16:00.000-07:00

A good deal of my time at the moment is being spent working on this situation. It should be a battle that I look forward to, as I can utilise my skill advantage over the majority of my opponents and look to claw some valuable blind money back. Unfortunately so far in my poker career, I've tended to continue to use the 'play less in the blinds' philosophy even in this unique spot. When it is folded to me in the small blind I'm only opening 39% of the time. I think that this should be more like half of the time. Similarly in the big blind I'm playing only 38% of hands facing a raise and I should be playing a lot more than this given my positional advantage.

I'm hoping that by playing more hands in this situation I can improve my losses from the blinds which at the moment continues to be a concern.

Small Blind Opening Range

Given that the big blind has a random hand, I think it is reasonable that I should open any hand that has greater than 50% equity versus a random hand. Using HoldemViewer gives me the following range that has better than 50% equity versus a random hand.

It turns out that this works out at 49.3% which seems a very reasonable standard stealing range when it's folded to me in the small blind. In order to defend against liberal 3-bettors I need to be comfortable felting 18% of this range (and of course bluffing a further 12% so we're 4-betting 30% of the time in total). The top 18% of my opening range looks something like {AT+, 66+} which again seems fine. I could alter this strategy by mixing in a calling range too, but according to Matthew Janda at Cardrunners in situations where we're out of position it's likely to be optimal (or close to it) to 4-bet or fold and this feels intuitively correct. Incidentally I must credit some of the maths in this post to the quoted instructor, in my opinion anything he ever posts/produces is gold.

Big Blind Playing Range

When facing a pot sized small blind open, the pot odds we are getting works out at 35%. We are in position which likely gives us a little extra equity. That means that facing the above opening range (rarely likely to be this loose) I can probably call with almost any two cards. Since we are playing heads-up in position then even against a very tight 10% open I can likely play somewhere around half of the hands in the deck. I've settled on the following (60.5%) as a standard range for playing in the big blind facing a small blind steal.

Against a very tight raiser (<15%) I can fold a few of the marginals and against a liberal stealer I can widen this range considerably. As far as 3-betting is concerned I'm pretty sure I can felt something like {TT+, AK} and use some of the lower off suit kings and queens as my bluffing balance hands.

Trial

I will trial the new strategy over the next couple of hundred thousand hands. As a big disclaimer, I don't intend this post to be instructional. If anyone get's something out of it, fine. But it's primarily just a post describing how I'm trying to improve my own play in blind versus blind situations. I expect much of my reasoning to be sound but I could be way off; take anything from this post with a big pinch of salt. GL

Multi-tabling vs Improvement

2011-08-04T09:53:00.000-07:00

Just played a session 9 tabling and did OK but there were a few spots where the rush of decisions caused me to make a small mistake. I have decided for a while to reign in and concentrate on 6 at a time. This seems to be the ideal number for me where I have plenty of time to think things through and where I'd likely be playing as well as if I were only playing one table at a time.

The reason I'm doing this is that I feel that I'm still developing my preflop game and until I'm settled on a strategy that is pretty well memorised then it's better if I play less tables. For example one area that I'm currently developing is my play in the big blind facing a small blind steal. This is a situation where we're getting great pot odds and we have position post flop so even facing a tight range we can play a huge % of hands profitably. At the moment I only play around 38% of hands and I should be playing around 60% on average in my opinion.

The down side to this is that I play less hands per hour. However until I have a good sample of hands (100k+) with a win rate that I feel is large enough to manage the few extra mistakes I'm likely to make, it feels like this the right approach.

So how long do I think this preflop strategy work will take? Well I feel like I've covered most situations in my equity + pot odds work now so I think I'm nearly there. As soon as I feel that I have a good intuitive 'feel' for what the ranges look like in different situations and my win rate is looking healthy then I'll begin to increase the number of tables. But I doubt that will happen before Christmas at least.

Won a really nice pot this afternoon, I'll put it up. Not much to say other than the limper was really passive so I felt that I could call the flop all-in raise from the big blind player plus the over-call and easily see two cards to draw to my flush when the turn was checked through 99% of the time. When I hit my ace - also due to the limper's calling station tendencies - I felt it was a really easy value shove.

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#65514426573

Hero ($29.19)
Fosca1 ($9.87)
pito4ka ($9.65)
QQcik ($25.22)
GaryHolmec ($30.71)
ps9bobo ($25.35)
lizf001 ($14.21)
pitti7 ($25)
URRICANE4219 ($27.57)

Hero posts (SB) $0.10
Fosca1 posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to Hero 3c Ac
fold, fold, fold, fold, fold,
fold,
URRICANE4219 calls $0.25
Hero raises to $1
Fosca1 calls $0.75
URRICANE4219 calls $0.75
FLOP ($3) 6s 9c Tc
Hero bets $1.85
Fosca1 raises to $8.87 (AI)
URRICANE4219 calls $8.87
Hero calls $7.02
TURN ($29.61) 6s 9c Tc As
Hero bets $19.32 (AI)
URRICANE4219 calls $17.70 (AI)
RIVER ($65.01) 6s 9c Tc As Jh
URRICANE4219 shows Kd Td
(Pre 38%, Flop 51.8%, Turn 9.5%)

Hero shows 3c Ac
(Pre 46%, Flop 40.0%, Turn 85.7%)

Fosca1 shows 6c Kc
(Pre 17%, Flop 8.3%, Turn 4.8%)

Hero wins $63.01

Game of Skill? + Other Stuff

2011-08-04T02:46:00.000-07:00

French Tribunal Ruling

In my opinion it is essential for the long term future of NLHE that it is recognised as a game of skill rather than chance. This is only a single court ruling that may well be overturned by the Supreme Court. But this article gives me optimism that given the correct presentation of evidence, the message can get through to the people that matter. UK Gov, I hope you are listening.

So the cash games on Stars are even juicier at the moment; the VIP club promotion seems to be drawing in the recreational players trying to earn their 'Platinum Star' badge. For this month at least, I expect it to get a little easier to go to showdown with the best hand.

As far as my results go, I had a short down swing which has now corrected; the long and short of it is that I've made no more money over the last 6k hands or so. My red line, or the money I win without seeing a show down remains break even after 21k hands. This has surprised me to be honest but it kind of makes sense now that I've had chance to digest it. I'm raising more hands and therefore stand to win more dead money on average, both preflop when I win the blinds and post flop when I win the loose passive limp money by c-betting. The flip side is that I go to showdown with a weaker range than before which should hurt my showdown winnings a little. So my profitability is going to come down to getting the showdown winnings rising as steeply as possible.

Yesterday I made two mistakes that affected my showdown curve. It's critical that I make as few as possible and this is what I'll be focussing on for the foreseeable future. Here are the hands:

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#65475513084

Hero ($25.60)
mudzin85 ($25)
2_Twink_2 ($25.35)
Strannik rus ($9.95)
kalmuka ($40.93)

Hero posts (SB) $0.10
mudzin85 posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to Hero 5d Ad
fold,
Strannik rus raises to $0.50
fold,
Hero calls $0.40

Good pot odds with a playable hand versus an erratic player.

fold,
FLOP ($1.25) 2c Td As
Hero checks
Strannik rus bets $0.25
Hero raises to $0.75
Strannik rus calls $0.50

I decided to raise small to get his tens to call. If I raise much more his tens will begin to fold some of the time and I'd be value cutting myself versus better aces.

TURN ($2.75) 2c Td As Ah
Hero checks

Now that my fold equity has sky rocketed (unless he has another ace) I think I have to let him bluff with what ever his range is. If I check raise this causes problems because I don't think I'd get called by worse. So I have to check call.

Strannik rus bets $0.50
Hero calls $0.50
RIVER ($3.75) 2c Td As Ah 9s
Hero checks
Strannik rus bets $3.57

At this stage I neglected to notice that my opponent only had around $4 left. Convinced that I was facing either a complete bluff (that would fold to any raise) or a hand better than my own I quickly called. However, with so little money left behind I'm certain that he'd have called some % of the time with his Tx and 9x hands. For this reason I'm pretty sure I missed out on clear value by not raising all in in this spot.

Hero calls $3.57
Strannik rus shows Kh 9h
(Pre 42%, Flop 2.9%, Turn 0.0%)

Hero shows 5d Ad
(Pre 58%, Flop 97.1%, Turn 100.0%)

Hero wins $10.36

OK that was likely a pretty small mistake in the grand scheme of things, the next hand was a bigger error.

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#65475102488

Hero ($25)
patiq12 ($19.14)
Maladou_89 ($22.74)
dipolis ($21.82)
zickzack73 ($23.25)
cuba7676 ($16.11)
registr24 ($22.40)

Hero posts (SB) $0.10
patiq12 posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to Hero Th Qd
fold, fold, fold, fold, fold,
Hero raises to $0.75
patiq12 calls $0.50
FLOP ($1.50) 8s Td 9d
Hero bets $0.92
patiq12 calls $0.92
TURN ($3.34) 8s Td 9d 6c
Hero bets $2
patiq12 calls $2
RIVER ($7.34) 8s Td 9d 6c Qs

This river brings up the concept of relative hand strength. All play so far in the hand is standard in my opinion, betting my hand for value against ranges that include draws. The river card gives me two pair. It also completes the vast bulk of my opponent's draws. So while my absolute hand strength has improved, all I have on this river is a bluff catcher: My river two pair is weaker than my turn top pair good kicker. So I'm definitely 100% checking this river. The question is whether to call a bet or not.

Hero checks
patiq12 bets $5.75

There are 16 combinations of KJ and 16 combinations of AJ my opponent could have. Given the pot odds my hand must be good 30.5% of the time. So I need to put at least 14 combinations of bluffs in villain's river betting range to call. My opponent was pretty passive, and I can't think of enough missed flush draws that might bet here. In my opinion this is a clear fold. In reality though, I called.

Hero calls $5.75
Hero shows Th Qd
(Pre 39%, Flop 65.7%, Turn 77.3%)

patiq12 shows Js Ah
(Pre 61%, Flop 34.3%, Turn 22.7%)

patiq12 wins $17.92

Going to play a mix of cash and tournaments this afternoon. Hopefully I can play well and win some $.

Poker Stars' VIP Club Promotion

2011-08-01T14:35:00.000-07:00

Wow, there were TONS of games going on tonight; the reason must surely be the August VIP club promotion that they've just announced. I will very probably be a Platinum Star by the end of the month as a result of it and this should offer me a great opportunity to earn good rake back for a few weeks. I'm going to have to grind as much as I can for a while, but this is not a problem since I'm really enjoying the game at the moment and feel like I'm playing well despite some mediocre results.

I was looking through the VIP store, and I think the best use for my FPPs is the Amazon UK £50 gift certificates. Using the current exchange rate it is much better value than the cash bonuses. I buy tons of stuff off of Amazon so it would be a really good way to cash in my FPPs IMO. Every time I purchase one I could deposit £50 in my account so that it is equivalent to rake back.

I mentioned last night that I found it hard to calculate stack size ratios sometimes when playing tournaments, well I just realised that there's a HUD stat in Hold'em Manager that will calculate it for me so that will help me out tons on those nights where I decide to play MTTs instead of cash games. Awesome!

Right so I'm going to be playing tons of hands the next few weeks so expect a LOT of posts in here. GL

Big Weekend and Tournaments

2011-07-31T13:47:00.000-07:00

Just come back from a Newquay stag do, pretty hectic but good people and had a great time. Trouble is I feel that I'm getting too old to crash in crappy bed in a small dorm with 3 other blokes and a communal bathroom serving 20+ people. Also spending a good part of the day on the beach without sun cream has given me burns that are causing me a lot of pain. I suppose these things must be tolerated for such a 'good' cause :P

Quick word on the cricket, I thought it was a very honourable decision by Captain MS Dhoni and the Indian cricket team to withdraw their appeal for the wicket of Ian Bell in the Trent Bridge test match. At the time I remember being pissed off that he was out but after seeing what had happened felt that despite the confusion the decision was correct. But doing what they did in the interest of the game was pretty classy. It was just a shame that the batsmen were not sent out first or that there was not even an announcement about what had happened and that the umpires and Indian cricket team had to endure the jeering when they came out after tea.

I just played a few tournaments tonight, no cashes but now I'm on Stars and there are so many running I'll probably mix in a few with my cash game bursts. The reason being that sometimes I just don't feel like grinding cash. Tournaments still feel like fun; I'm not a very good tourney player and I find the preflop equity decisions pretty interesting. There is also so many bad players in the micro tournaments that I'm sure that I could still make money in them regardless of my skill.

Again, making money is about getting in as many hands as possible. In tournaments unfortunately because my mental arithmetic is not that good, I find it pretty hard to do any more than 6 at a time because of the constant calculating that's required every time the blinds change. For anyone who is not an experienced player, strategy is heavily dependent on the size of the preflop pot with respect to the size of your stack. Simply put, the larger the preflop pot compared to your stack then the more looser and the more aggressive you should play.

Tonight there was three close preflop decisions. I checked them all with SNGWiz (a tool which helps to assess strategic tournament decisions) and the only error was a preflop shove where a late position raiser was called by the small blind and I shoved with QJs to try and win the pot without showdown. I knew that the first raiser would be folding a lot due to his wide preflop range and that the small blind caller's range likely didn't have {QQ+, AK} in it so my equity would not be terrible even if I was called. In the hand itself my opponent called with AJ and I was crippled. But SNGWiz made it a very small mistake after I'd adjusted the parameters for the players in the actual hand. The reason why is because I had almost 15x the preflop pot (just blind money) which is a little too much to risk with this hand. QKs would likely have been a certain shove though so it wasn't a large mistake.

Now that I'm back at work I'm sure that I won't be able to play quite as much but I really think that I'm good enough that playing a mix of tourneys and cash will get my bankroll growing in the right direction. GL

Meh, Variance. Plus a Couple of Hand Histories

2011-07-28T06:32:00.000-07:00

Things seem very swingy at the moment (perhaps a consequence of playing more hands?). I'm finding it a little harder to manage my tilt too for some reason. I'm a bit more stressed away from the tables so perhaps that is why. Anyway I'll have to keep a close eye that I don't donate too much $ if and when I do tilt.

Anyway one thing that I'd like to begin to do is post some hand histories to make the blog a little more interesting.

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#65181485236

pancoor90 ($9.75)
joricho ($25)
pinkneli ($15)
cocker1409 ($10)
Hero ($25.77)
Mossalenko ($29.82)
Aldron30 ($24.40)
POMA3AH123 ($28.70)

pancoor90 posts (SB) $0.10
joricho posts (BB) $0.25
cocker1409 posts $0.25
Mossalenko posts $0.25
Mossalenko posts $0.10

Dealt to Hero Js Qs
fold,
cocker1409 checks
Hero raises to $1.25
Mossalenko calls $1
fold,
POMA3AH123 raises to $3
fold, fold, fold,
Hero raises to $6.75

Yeah, this decision looks questionable. The thing is villain was playing most hands and had 3-bet over a third of the time facing a raise. A very aggro player basically. I figured that with the dead money the preflop caller had put in the pot, plus my equity against a gigantic 3-betting range (and a hand that will flop pretty well generally), plus fold equity from 4-betting and the fact that I had blockers to QQ and JJ made it OK. Even given all of this though, I wonder if I should perhaps have folded instead and tightened my opening range from early position. I was certainly expecting tons of folds preflop though.

fold,
POMA3AH123 calls $3.75
FLOP ($15.45) 5c 6d 4s

OK so I have no fold equity against middle pairs, but perhaps I should just have jammed anyway. If he's called with broad-ways hoping to hit then I can still make them fold. Plus I have six outs versus the middle pairs and also a back door flush draw. The jam only needs to work half of the time. At the time I just decided that my preflop bluff hadn't worked so I'd just check fold.

Hero checks
POMA3AH123 checks
TURN ($15.45) 5c 6d 4s As
Hero bets $19.02 (AI)

I felt that this was a pretty damn good bluffing card so I fired. At the time I still figured most of his preflop calling range was likely to be middle pairs and broadways and only needed to fold out half his range, but perhaps the flop check gives up his range as being more like Ax? I'm sure that he'd have folded some of the time. This coupled with my flush draw equity probably makes my play OK (in that it's not a complete spew) but perhaps I should have checked again.

POMA3AH123 calls $19.02
RIVER ($53.49) 5c 6d 4s As Ah
Hero shows Js Qs
(Pre 45%, Flop 30.2%, Turn 20.5%)

POMA3AH123 shows Ac Td
(Pre 55%, Flop 69.8%, Turn 79.5%)

POMA3AH123 wins $51.49

Given what he shows down with perhaps my turn shove is too thin. Sure, the fact that he's called with ATo preflop means he would probably also have called with tons of other broad-ways and middle pairs and folded to the shove but I think there are perhaps too many Ax combinations in his range for it to be OK.

I'm not that happy with this hand, I think the preflop 4-bet bluff was too thin and also the turn shove. I don't think either play was a big mistake though.

------------------------

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#65181301722

Tomjibk ($29)
Bornbu ($10.85)
Hero ($25)
vasyaman00 ($27.05)
V-TWIN1340 ($22.39)
ALVIPO ($39.39)

Tomjibk posts (SB) $0.10
Bornbu posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to Hero Kd Qs
Hero raises to $0.75
fold, fold, fold,
Tomjibk calls $0.65
fold,
FLOP ($1.75) Jc Td 3d
Tomjibk checks
Hero bets $1.08
Tomjibk raises to $3

Villain is a regular in the games. For him to check raise an UTG c-bet on this board I figured him for a set basically. I thought there's an outside chance he could be doing this with a flush draw, but what combos could he have given that I have the Kd? Maybe two combinations out of the lot. Anyway I am getting enough direct odds to draw another card so I do.

Hero calls $1.92
TURN ($7.75) Jc Td 3d 4d
Tomjibk bets $4.75

Anything but a diamond and I fold, but now I just think I have enough equity to call again. Any 9, Ace or diamond and I'd figure to be good. Note I have no fold equity so raising again would be horrible. It's one of those situations where I can call if I think I have enough direct or implied odds but I have to fold otherwise.

Hero calls $4.75
RIVER ($17.25) Jc Td 3d 4d 9s
Tomjibk bets $20.50 (AI)
Hero calls $16.50 (AI)
Tomjibk shows Jd Qd
(Pre 29%, Flop 69.7%, Turn 84.1%)

Hero shows Kd Qs
(Pre 71%, Flop 30.3%, Turn 15.9%)

Tomjibk wins $48.25

So he really did have one of the two flush combinations. I remember being very suprised when I saw his hand, given there were so little flush combos that I'd assigned him. Seriously probably AdQd and QdJd were the two combinations of flush draws he could have. The questions arise when considering if he'd perhaps have checked the turn with all of his sets when the third diamond came out. I wouldn't have if it was me, I'd have continued to fire my sets to get value from over-pairs plus diamond draw. I think this stack off is forgiveable.

---------------------

Before I show the next hand, I had some history with villain in question. He'd called a button 4-bet in the small blind and donked on the flop - a bet that committed his stack so I had no fold equity. I had AK and on a dry board I'd have shoved all day but it was Q98 with a flush draw so I mucked.

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#65183961506

TorinsBane ($50.44)
88_berkut ($12.25)
Schnurzpiep ($23.07)
tibi_c87 ($25.35)
ChumaV ($11.67)
KrazyBeer ($11.11)
KyzyaMastak ($9.75)
Hero ($25)

TorinsBane posts (SB) $0.10
88_berkut posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to Hero Qs 9s
fold, fold, fold, fold, fold,
Hero raises to $0.75
TorinsBane raises to $2.25
fold,
Hero calls $1.50

So he's 3-betting me a TON from the blinds. At some point I have to start calling. If he'd bet to 2.5 or 2.75 I'd probably have folded but QTs and J9s are mandatory calls against an aggressive 3-bettor and I have the button so Q9s is playable IMO.

FLOP ($4.75) Kd 6c Tc
TorinsBane bets $3
Hero raises to $6.75

I flop the gut-shot straight draw and an over-card to the ten so I bluff raised expecting a lot of folds. But again, he floats my raise out of position and donks the turn...

TorinsBane calls $3.75
TURN ($18.25) Kd 6c Tc 9h
TorinsBane bets $6.75

At the time I expected this to be a bluff some % of the time given the previous hand where I'd folded. He was leading out of position often, not just against me and not always for value. So not only do I have outs to the best hand (I really did think that any Q or 9 would be good enough) but I also have showdown value now too.

Hero calls $6.75
RIVER ($31.75) Kd 6c Tc 9h Qd
TorinsBane bets $30.21
Hero calls $9.25 (AI)
Hero shows Qs 9s
(Pre 44%, Flop 36.1%, Turn 93.2%)

TorinsBane shows 4d Ad
(Pre 56%, Flop 63.9%, Turn 6.8%)

Hero wins $48.25

At this point if he's got a jack then good for him. I don't think I'd ever have played a hand this way against any one else. I had to use specific player traits to get to this showdown. I think that perhaps raising all - in on the turn may have been a better play. I found this hand really interesting. I'm not thrilled at the way I played it but I don't hate it either.

Update

2011-07-27T09:11:00.001-07:00

So played a few more thousand hands this week and it looks like the heater has ended now. I haven't gone on some tough down-swing (at least not yet anyway), but things have got decidedly less juicy of late. Still, that's how the game is and after all of the bad variance I've encountered before I know that my only friend is volume.

Having adopted a looser strategy, it seems to me that I've sacrificed some showdown equity. Over my entire sample I have won less money on average at showdown than I did in my previous databases where I played a tighter style. On the flip side I have lost less money without going to showdown. So essentially I'm bluffing at more blind money and coming out better off but losing a little more at showdown because my ranges are weaker on average.

The important thing is that I try and keep the gap between the two positive. I'm really trying hard to play as accurately as possible based upon equity and villain's tendencies and over the most recent couple of thousand hands I'm very happy. I managed to avoid tilt and made just a few small mistakes.

A small worry is that I'm going to showdown quite often again, nearly 30% of the time. I don't feel that I'm hero calling too much, but I think a large reason for this is that I'm often checking back flops for pot control which is a style that tends to lead to more showdowns. Also playing against very loose passive players can have this result too. I'll keep a careful eye on this as it could potentially contribute to low showdown winnings.

I am away this weekend and will play my last couple of sessions tomorrow. Then it will likely be Tuesday before I get to play again unfortunately.

3-Betting at the Stars' Micros

2011-07-26T14:13:00.000-07:00

In the Stars' micro stakes games, opponents share a tendency to call 3-bets. In particular when raising from the button villains are only folding around 65% of the time when facing a 3-bet which means that I'm not making immediate money from my bluffs. Not only this, but my continuation bets are working only about 25% of the time.

I seem to have a habit of almost always c-betting in a 3-bet pot. I'm not sure where this comes from, I'd not noticed it before. For some reason in this situation I have this urge that I must win the pot and therefore bet nearly every single time. Clearly given the evidence in my database, this has to be a spew.

In any situation where there isn't enough fold equity we need to be raising a value heavy range. In this particular situation we are often raising a value heavy range preflop which is fine but then bluffing too often on the flop. Flop c-bets in 3-bet pots don't get any credit for what ever reason. So perhaps this calls for a complete change in approach? Perhaps when we play 3-bet pots out of position we should check raise our entire continuing range? I'm pretty sure when our villains call with whatever junk preflop they will nearly always bet with the entire range when we check. So if we decide to check raise around 60% of flops with the hands we want to felt and also those with good bluff potential (that is plenty of good turns to shove on should he call) then this looks to me like a much better approach.

Hmmm, I'm going to mull this over tonight and perhaps trial this method for a few thousand hands. GL

Edit: Well I ran some tighter filters this morning in the database to have a really close look at the board textures I was c-betting on; with the exception of a couple of pretty weak looking folds facing a raise which looked pretty close from an EV point of view I totally agree with my play in pretty much every spot. It looks like over this small sample size I've either flopped good enough equity to c-bet, I've been dealt a dream flop from a fold equity point of view (ace high, king high, paired board etc) or had a dead easy value bet. So as far as my high c-bet numbers are concerned it's just variance.

This doesn't change the fact that my opponents are not folding that often when facing a 3-bet, but it's some comfort that I still seem to be playing OK in that spot. This is something that I'll re-examine once I have a bigger sample of hands.

3 Month Plan, 100k Hands.

2011-07-25T11:02:00.000-07:00

Hi, well I have decided to become a little more conservative with moving up and wait until I've got to $1500. The reason is that I'm expecting my heater to end at some point soon so if I manage to reach that figure then I can really feel that I earned the right to move up.

I've been playing around with the bankroll tool over at www.evplusplus.com and I've given myself the target of playing ~100k hands during the next three months. That is, by October 31st I'd like to have played 115k hands, which is approx 8k per week. I don't think that I'll find this challenge easy as sometimes I struggle to motivate myself to grind. Perhaps I can treat myself to something at the end, although goodness knows what. Maybe a new wardrobe, bling myself up a little...

The one thing that I've learned from using that bankroll growth simulator is that volume is key. That is the primary reason that I've set myself this challenge, to try and finally get some real growth going in these games where I think I have a decent edge. I went through a quite significant EV downswing (25 buy-ins) earlier in the year as I blogged at the time. Hopefully this will be the last one I see for a decent stretch of time and I can have some steady returns for the rest of the year. Anyhow, I'll try and post an update once per week and continue to publish my progress, good or bad.

Edit:
Ouch, just played a meh session and made a couple of mistakes. I definitely still bluff catch way too often, and until I can learn to fold a little more my showdown winnings will get eaten away. I still think that I'll make money but I could be making even more... Still, I'll keep reviewing my sessions after play and hopefully begin to cut out more of the mistakes. This evening is a useful reminder that I'm still some way away from where I want to be with poker.

Stars results so far, signs of improvement

2011-07-24T10:17:00.000-07:00

I must begin this post with a large disclaimer: I'm enjoying a heater and these results will be positively skewed. Never the less, I think I'm playing well and certainly profitably.

I've begun playing more loosely just recently in an effort to make a little more money from the raise/c-bet set up. It's only a small change but seems to have added to my win rate. I have also been trying to plan my hands better and I've an example coming later on. I think this is something that comes with practise; the more hands I put in the stronger I feel that I'm getting. By planning I mean that once I see a flop with my given hand I'll be deciding exactly how I'm going to continue based on what cards turn. As a simple example if I choose to check raise a hand on the flop, I will only do so if I can credibly barrel a ton of cards on the turn. I like to choose at least 20 cards usually unless my opponent folds to a lot of check raises.

Here is a hand I played recently:

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#64914430683

Gryko13 ($22.04)
HenriMorgan ($10)
PbI6AKPS ($9)
FELIPSON ($19.65)
Gselweckle ($46.39)
OSELDONKEY ($25)
hfly0313 ($14.71)
abrar08 ($25.65)
Hero ($28.40)

Gryko13 posts (SB) $0.10
HenriMorgan posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to Hero 7d Ad
fold, fold, fold, fold, fold,
abrar08 raises to $0.75
Hero calls $0.75
fold, fold,

Well my opponent was a regular who played on the tighter more passive side. He was stealing a decent amount of the time from the cut off so calling with Ad7d was pretty clear in my opinion, we have tons of equity with our hand against his range. 3-betting and bagging the preflop equity would still have been profitable though.

FLOP ($1.85) 9s 5d Th

abrar08 bets $1.25
Hero calls $1.25

The flop misses us completely but I think that often we have enough equity to call a flop bet against a wide cut off range. There are also tons of scare cards on the turn that we can bluff with against a double barrel. I decided that facing that second bet I would raise a 6, 7, 8 or heart for 21/47 possible turns to bluff raise and I've also got three ace outs that will very often give me the best hand. I definitely think that I would be flatting a set on this flop to a c-bet against a cut off range so I can certainly credibly represent a set or straight if any of those cards come in. This is the planning that I was talking about earlier. I'll never run a bluff any more without using it unless villain has shown a clear tendency to fold facing aggression.

TURN ($4.35) 9s 5d Th 8s
abrar08 bets $2.25
Hero raises to $6.75
abrar08 calls $4.50

One of our planned bluff outs comes in so I pull the trigger. I expected a decent amount of folds but when he calls - as a tight passive type of opponent - I'd narrow him down to over-pairs or draws. I think on this draw heavy board his sets and straights would almost always instantly ship so I've managed to narrow his range quite a bit. A hand like JJ would make tons of sense in this spot, but I expect this player would call with QQ+ too.

RIVER ($17.85) 9s 5d Th 8s Kh
abrar08 checks

Now, whether we bet the river is a simple case of whether we can get enough combinations of hands to fold. If his calling range is just over-pairs - as we believe - this river is a good card to fire again on because as well as the fear of being up against a set or straight some of those hands now have to face an over card. I figured we could fold out JJ-QQ and he'd call with KK+. So we can make 12/21 hands fold, and if we bet $10-$11 then our bet has to work less than half of the time. Clearly a bet.

Hero bets $10.50
abrar08 folds
Hero shows 7d Ad (I didn't actually show, Hold 'em Manager bug?)

Hero wins $16.97

Everything works out as I planned. Sometimes we'll run into hands in that spot, but the fact that we constructed a logical plan that was backed up by expected value maths makes a huge difference. In the past I'd just play strong draws and pairs and fold everything else. Good players play hands like this, and while I'm not saying I'm a good player, I'm certainly becoming better. GL

Confirmed Heater

2011-07-21T12:35:00.000-07:00

Despite running an over-pair into the nut flush in a 4-bet pot and another over-pair into quads in a 3-bet pot I still finished the day up. I love it when this happens, it's been a long time since my last heater to be fair.

I also felt that I played my absolute A game today. It was a day off so I had plenty of sleep last night, and I was fresh and made every single decision logically using an estimate of my opponent's hand range. For example I hero folded top pair top kicker facing a min raise in a 3-way pot despite getting tons of odds and was right when he showed a set of tens; I also hero called fourth pair versus an absolute whale and was also correct. Of course on other days they'd have shown up with different hands but both decisions were vindicated by the hands that they actually showed down.

One thing that I think has helped with this patch of run good is that I think my edge is a good bit greater in these games than it was in Rush. These Stars' full ring games are pretty damn soft, I shan't bore you with the inner details only that big hands are getting more value, and weak hands are getting more folds. So it should be expected that a winning strategy would experience more upswings and I think my current run is evidence of this. And yes, while I felt that towards the end my edge had shrunk quite a bit in the Rush games (perhaps due to all of the regs migrating there for better hands per hour ratio?) I definitely 100% feel that I will beat these Stars' games over the long haul.

Well, I have reached my threshold for moving up to 50NL. Tomorrow I will load up four tables and play a session. Because it's my first 'shot', I will use a single buy-in stop loss before moving down. This is pretty nitty, but as I only have 20 buy-ins for that limit if I don't move back down after losing ~$50 then I could set myself back quite a long way. I will also table select like an utter Ninja. Right now, the games seem easy as pie with no table selection. If I'm careful at 50NL I will lessen my risk even more.

So right now, poker is going great. If you explore my posts from the past, you'll know that it all swings in roundabouts. There will be another downswing. But until then, SHIP IT!

Weird Graph, Analysis of a Leak

2011-07-20T13:11:00.000-07:00

Things at 25NL have gone well so far. The games are pretty weak, but I'm pretty sure I'm experiencing a patch of long overdue run good too. I honestly can't remember the last time I had a heater, so hopefully it continues for a little while just yet.

Anyway I've included the graph so far, but as the blog title suggests - it's a little weird. There has been no great change in my approach but yet suddenly my red line (won money without showing our hand down) has rocketed through the break even barrier. This is very unusual and highly likely to be a result of good variance. The unfortunate aspect of this is that at some point I'm going to have a stretch of hands where NO bluff works at all and the graph will correct.

Anyway, the important thing is that I've had a good patch of cards and won enough money that I'm very close to my 50NL switch over threshold. This is quite exciting. If I can play a good volume of hands at that limit I should be able to clear a decent percentage of my milestone bonuses by the end of the year. I don't expect the games to get radically tougher, but I will likely have to table select a little more often than I do currently.

Game Improvement
I have been spending time studying equities - both preflop and postflop; I think my preflop ranges are converging to a pretty solid strategy that any opponent should struggle to exploit. This was a big goal from early in the year and I feel I'm pretty close now. Post flop I am still pretty weak, but I definitely think that I'm improving pretty quickly and session by session I'm getting tougher to outplay.

My biggest leak at the moment is river curiosity I think. Hence the second portion of the blog title. The following is a sample transcript:

me: "Oh shit, he's f*n triple barreled me. WTF? I was so sure my hand was good; I don't think he's got enough bluff combos here for me to call profitably"
devil: "He could be bluffing."
angel: "Trust your instincts Simon, you're probably right"
me: "Shit, but if I don't call, I'll never know and that will tilt me."
devil: "Like I said, he could be bluffing."
angel: "Seriously man, he's got a gazillion more value hands than bluff combos, fold."
me: "... but he could be bluffing, I CALL"

This sort of thinking is going on far too much lately. Twice this session in fact; I think that part of me is justifying the call due to absolute monetary value. Just because it's only a few bb does not make it insignificant. In fact if I stopped calling with pure bluff catchers completely I think I'd do far far better than I am currently from a pure EV point of view so once again, I have to try and temper my calling station tendencies.

Anyway, I continue to strive for improvement. On my A-game, I think I play pretty well. On my B-game, I'm a calling station and likely break even at best. I should try and bring the former to the table more often. GL

Quick Update

2011-07-17T05:40:00.000-07:00

Played 3.5k hands at 25NL now, the games are mega juicy and I think that my strategy should do very well at this limit. There seems to be a high overhead between the money we can win without seeing a showdown (I'm losing about half a buy-in per 1000 hands) and the money we can win at showdown (seems to be converging on about a buy-in per 1000 hands). If this is true over a larger sample then big win rates are very viable in these games which is obviously awesome.

I'm about $70 away from my threshold for moving to 50NL so that's quite exciting, a new limit that I've not played before.

I'll blog in more detail at some point. But things are going well.

Just a Quickie...

2011-07-11T12:51:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the second post in a day. Just played a few hundred hands of 25NL Full Ring on Stars and I conclude that these games are just as bad as the lower limit. Yes, I don't know if I've just been ridiculously lucky in the last few sessions to pick ludicrous tables, or if full ring games on Stars were always this good. Well, I'm not complaining.

Just for the statisticians out there, I had hardly any c-bet bluffs work (<30%) and only won 42% of flops. But yet I still made most of my blind money back on the red line! I'm astonished by how weak these games are at the moment, truly. They are also populated by huge loose passive fish who will just call you down and let you know as soon as they have the nuts. Even if Rush comes back, after what I've seen over the last 10k hands I may not go back.

One other thing I'd like to mention is that when the tables break I've been able to dust off my old heads-up tricks and get into some pots with players who clearly have never played the format. I'm certainly very rusty, but a lot of these players seem completely out of depth in those situations. This must contribute to my winnings so far I guess.

Anyway, pretty pointless post. The 25NL full ring games on stars are a lot weaker than the 25NL Rush games. That's all I really wanted to say!

Game Plan

2011-07-11T09:18:00.000-07:00

Hey, well I'm just about to upload some more funds to make use of the reload bonus. This will enable me to move up to 25NL full ring. My threshold for moving back down to 10NL will be $500 and moving up to 50NL will be $1000.

So I will be using a '20 buy-in for the next limit' bankroll risk structure. Considering that I have 50 buy-ins for the lowest limit (and that I've seen how soft that limit is) my actual risk of ruin is very likely close to 0%. I've verified this using the bankroll tool at evplusplus.com.

While I do think that my risk of ruin is small enough, I'll have to be very careful and look for indicators in the games that I play that might tell me that my strategy isn't profitable. I'm almost certain that it is at the 10NL limit and I wouldn't expect a huge change for 25NL but I'll keep a careful eye on it. I will also need to switch tables if I ever find a situation where I think there is questionable profit.

My experiences in Rush poker and more recently at the Stars' tables is going to make me look for the following attributes in an ideal table:
* Tight players or fish to my right
-- In Rush poker there was always regs sat in the CO or BTN that would consistently steal my blinds. In these games it seems to happen less often which is good for my profit (I won't go into detail). If I can find tables where players are not stealing very often it will help with my win rate from the blinds themselves.
* Weak players to my left
-- If we have good players to our left then they'll be playing pots in position and 3-betting with a decent strategy. While I think I can largely hold my own against micro regs these days, I'd rather be in pots with fish and messing with regs will not allow this to happen.

So why the change in approach? Well I heard on a forum that the UK government is looking into existing licensing rules for online gambling companies. It's possible that this will be a positive change that gives us extra security and ensures that we are not at as much risk as we are currently (as evidenced by the Full Tilt saga). On the other end of the spectrum they could bring in a taxed and regulated system like France where the high rake makes the games unbeatable. My hope is that they will not move to tax gambling again (since it nearly killed the industry before - and gambling is a big industry in the UK) but merely regulate the market more thoroughly. However, given how the world's governing bodies are currently waging war with online poker I cannot rule out a negative result. In other words I need to try and make as much as I can from the game while I can.

I know that my recent results have not been great, but I'm sure that I can beat the Stars' games at 10NL and providing there is not a significant increase in skill over the next couple of limits hopefully I can make a few hundred bucks.

I guess now would be a good opportunity to use my: ONE TIMEEEEEE!!!!
UK government, please don't kill online poker.

Button Improvement

2011-07-09T12:25:00.000-07:00

Well one area where I haven't been that strong over the most recent couple of hundred thousand hands is my button play. Despite opening more hands than anywhere else on the table I'm winning a similar amount of money to what I normally do from the cut off.

So there are two spots I am going to begin to study: playing as the pre flop raiser and also calling a single raise. Being as I am playing the largest frequency of hands from this position it stands to reason that if I can improve my win rate here it will have a big effect on my overall strategy.

As the pre flop raiser (PFR)
I have recently made an adjustment to my c-betting strategy; that is, if my opponent does not show a tendency to fold too much to c-bets (fold to c-bet < 45%) I'm focussing on playing my hands with showdown value passively and betting a polarised range of hands for value and those without showdown value but which still have equity in the pot.

Example
On a Qh7d6d I would be c-betting AQ for value, 9dTd as a bluff (no showdown value but has pot equity) and checking back something like 99 or TT to get to showdown. I'd also be checking back J9o with the intention of giving up and folding to any bet on later streets unless the turn changes things and gives me an open ended straight draw or something like that.

This philosophy is similar to what I was using before but I tended to bluff with a good deal of my hands that had no showdown value or equity, even when villain showed that he wouldn't fold to too many c-bets. I'd also sometimes be betting 99 or TT for 'protection' and I'm not convinced that this is mathematically correct given the fact that we are value owning ourselves if opponent has a better hand. I have to give Matthew Janda (Cardrunners pro) the credit for this improvement in my philosophy. As I said, I still tended to bet a polarised range but also probably spewed a little occasionally with some hands.

Calling a preflop raise on the button
My current strategy is heavily dependent on being the player with initiative in the pot. I'm currently pretty bad when I have position but not the betting lead and I'm certain that I'm folding far too often on the button when facing a single raise. A few posts ago I demonstrated how widely we could realistically call when facing a single raise on the button.

Using 25NL as my example if we face a raise that we estimate is the top 10% of hands and the bet is $0.75 then we risk $0.75 to win $1.10. So our equity must be 0.75/(0.75 + 1.10) = 40% to call. Being in position grants us additional equity, but the frequency we face a squeeze from the blinds takes some away (but in my opinion not as much). So if we grant ourselves 38% to play with my friend HoldemViewer gives us the following range is good enough to call:

{ 44+,A8s+,K9s+,Q9s+,J9s+,T9s,ATo+,KJo+,QJo }

That's significantly wider than I currently call on the button facing a 10% raiser.

The problem comes when sometimes our data is wrong and our opponent doesn't actually raise that frequently. Because against a 5% raiser the hands with enough equity shrinks rapidly to:

{ TT+,AQs+,AKo }

That's much closer to the sort of range I'd be playing facing a single raise on the button. This is obviously too tight against most players who open wider, so I'm certainly folding in some +EV spots. This is something that I need to address, especially since against a 15% open we can suddenly call with 25% of hands and I'm not playing nearly enough in that situation.

I have a couple of days off coming up and I intend to create some standard button playing ranges for tight players, semi-tight players and loose players when facing a single raise. 3 ranges that I can learn and utilise during play. I can create a Hold'em Manager filter that isolates these situations after each session and see what my best play was at the time and what I actually did. I can use Flopzilla (Google it) to help in this regard.

Hopefully after all of this work the button will suddenly become a place where I'm a deadly opponent. I seriously need to improve my win rate in this one spot, and if I do then the only way is up! GL

Results so far.

2011-07-08T12:47:00.000-07:00

So more break even play, but I'm really optimistic. I have altered my strategy only slightly since Rush, but I strongly believe it is working much better in these games than it was in the tight aggressive player infested Rush ones.

I often talk about the 'red line' and I've displayed it here. If you don't know what it is, think of my poker strategy like a business. Businesses make profit by maximising revenue and minimising cost. My strategy revolves around showdown 'revenue' - that is making money with my poker hands when I get to showdown (the blue line in the graph). My 'costs' are having to pay a big and small blind per round with mostly garbage hands and also paying to see a flop.

The fact that my red line descent is so shallow means that my opponents are letting me win a ton of flops with shitty hands basically. This is allowing me to minimise my poker playing 'cost'. In every database I have of my play I won around 70 - 80% of a buy-in per 1000 hands on average at showdown. I see no reason why this will change at Poker Stars (over a bigger sample obv) since my strategy is the same as it was in the tougher Rush games. But the fact that my bluffs are working so effectively has convinced me that I will utterly destroy this limit over a larger sample.

So what, right? It's only 10NL, I know. Expect me to be back in 25NL games very soon. GL

Day of Poker

2011-07-07T13:00:00.000-07:00

Well I got up this morning and watched a very instructive video by Mr Matthew Janda over at Cardrunners and I think it has corrected my c-betting philosophy slightly. Just a few decisions per 100 or so flops so only a small adjustment. I hope the US players get a decent internet poker environment back, there is so much expertise there that would go to serious waste otherwise.

On the other side of the coin, that's no one to teach the truly horrible players I seem to be coming across on Poker Stars lately. I played for about four hours today and there's only one player that I considered reasonable (given sample size). I almost feel that it's unnecessary continuing at 10NL; as soon as I get a reasonable sample confirming that I'm crushing - whether that's 20k hands or 30k or more - I'll just move straight up.

More thoughts on the games in general, after today's hands I somehow halved the money I lost without showdown so I've now only lost half a buy-in over 6k hands in this respect. That's pretty crazy as all I'm doing is raising and then c-betting. It's almost like subtracting 5 years of poker evolution from the games. I also played several nice pots where players decided to donate to me, including one hand where someone called my 4-bet with 9 high and shipped on an ace high flop with zero equity. So the showdown curve is increasing nicely again. Before long I'll have a pretty decent win rate imo.

Anyway, check out the ring games at Poker Stars. They are super soft since Black Friday. I imagine the UK gov could shut it down for me too one day, so I intend to really push my volume and try and squeeze the last drops of profit from online poker before it fades away. Because sadly that's the trajectory upon which it now finds itself.

Speculation

2011-07-06T09:50:00.000-07:00

It has been speculated recently that it won't be long before Full Tilt reopens after having the license reissued by Alderney, and also that there will be new owners in place when indeed this happens.

If it does I've decided that I will continue to play some hours per week on Poker Stars as well as returning to play Rush as well. I would imagine that the site are expecting a 'run on the bank' but I assume the new investors have sufficient capital that they can ride the storm and eventually entice the player base back by showing that they are going to do things differently from now on. This is my great hope anyway; a return to normality where everyone gets paid and can just enjoy the games again.

EDIT: Looks like the 'imminent resumption of play' speculation was just that; there is information leaking that the investors are currently performing due diligence and that licensing and play will NOT continue until that is completed. So it could be a couple more weeks or so before there's the possibility that FTP could begin to operate again.

Back to the Stars' games, they are very soft at the 10NL limit in my opinion. While I haven't won anything so far over 4k hands I haven't altered my strategy at all really but am performing much better on several statistics (than at Rush) and would expect my results to converge upon a very nice win rate given a larger sample which is what I intend to achieve. In particular I have lost less than a buy-in to non showdown winnings over 4k hands. I haven't tried to do much differently to Rush, in fact I'd say I have probably toned down the aggression somewhat but despite that I'm controlling the 'loss' side of my strategy very comfortably. All I need is for my showdown curve to begin to slope upwards again and life will be good.

The reason I've moved down from 25NL is that I didn't want to upload a great amount of money when I redeposited there so I'm just going to move up at 20 buy-ins for the next limit which means I'll need to win around $150 before I get to my move up/move down threshold of $500. But this is fine, I don't think that it will take too long.

Mixed Session. Calling Elasticity

2011-07-04T12:50:00.000-07:00

Just played a meh session. To begin with I was being too aggressive I think, I spewed in a couple of spots where I probably had inadequate fold equity. I also played a pot where my opponent clearly had a strong hand on the river and I didn't make the most of an opportunity to over-bet, but more on that in a second.

The more I play the more I think that playing a very value heavy strategy is key in these games. There seems to be a lot less fold equity than I used to have in Rush. Sure, there are still the loose passive 'see a flop and fold if I don't hit de nutz' fish but in most situations, bluffing just doesn't seem to work often enough. I'm thinking of deliberately adopting a strategy where I raise and c-bet on the usual flop textures but then completely shutting down unless I have a clear value betting opportunity. There doesn't seem to be enough regs that would exploit me to be honest. Anyway as I continue to adapt I'll add further comment in this regard.

Calling Elasticity
As I mentioned, there was a spot where I rivered a full house and the flush also came in. I bet, my opponent raised and I made a 3x reraise over the top. I believe that I should have instead jammed all-in, a significant overbet. The reason being that all of his bluffs are going to fold to any bet size, but if he has a flush I think he'll still be calling very often.

This got me thinking about how I could begin to focus on improving my bet sizing which is an area where I still think I am pretty weak.

In an ideal world, as we bet larger and larger our opponents should be folding out an increasing % of their hands in a linear pattern. But often they do not do this. There are two extremes:
1/ Villain has a totally inelastic calling range.
- When we value bet we should bet as large as possible (go all - in)
2/ Villain has a totally elastic calling range.
- When we value bet we should bet as much as we can without making him fold.

The second situation comes up very often. We have a good hand on the river and suspect villain has a second best hand but will not call a significant bet, so we bet like 1/3 pot which is a bet he'd likely call almost always. Villain's calling range is very elastic in this case. A small bet will almost always be called, a big bet will almost never be called.

The first situation comes up rarely, but usually when you and your opponent both have very strong hands and you are at the top end of the scale - as in my example. As far as bet sizing was concerned, I made a very fundamental bet sizing error - typical of my play. In a situation where my opponent had a very inelastic calling range I did not maximise my expectation because I didn't shove all-in.

For the foreseeable future I'm going to really think about range elasticity when I get to similar situations and try and get some extra value from my opponents.

Quick Thoughts on Rake

2011-07-03T08:23:00.000-07:00

Well I've spent the day shopping for a new poker site to call home. After playing on Poker Stars for the last couple of days I thought I'd double check that there's not a better option available in terms of rake, rake-back and traffic.

I began by looking into BetRaiser, a unique poker site that charges no rake on games but just takes 10% of any withdrawal less the initial deposit. This means that overall players pay a significantly smaller amount of money to the site than in a traditional online poker room. If BetRaiser ever had any traffic, it would be the ultimate room and I'd play nowhere else. As it is though, at peak times they average ten cash game players all playing 10NL. So despite the brilliant online poker model, it does not currently serve my needs. I will however be keeping a close eye on it in case one day people realise how good this concept is and migrate.

I also looked into signing up for another site and network and claiming rake-back. However when I studied the rake chart over at pokertableratings I realised that I'd likely be paying more in rake than I do at Poker Stars even with the rake-back deal.

Studying those numbers more closely, it's clear that in the full ring cash games Poker Stars provides excellent value in terms of rake. The best in the industry. They also have an excellent VIP scheme. I have come to the conclusion that even without rake-back Poker Stars is likely at the very least an equal to it's competitors in terms of value for money. For this reason I will continue to focus my time and effort on the full ring games there.

First Couple of Sessions

2011-07-02T01:44:00.000-07:00

Made a break even start over the first 1.5k hands or so. This is my fault really for running a couple of bluffs where it was possibly a little bit spewey and also stacking versus a button reg with TT vs AA. I'm sure it's going to take me a little time to adjust.

I do however believe that the games will be profitable for me. I have performed no table selection so far but it's been very easy to control my money won without showdown line. In other words, players are folding more to c-bets than in Rush; they are stealing my blinds less often than in Rush; and there are just as many loose passive players who call to see a flop and then fold to most c-bets. So I think that I will cut out all of the marginal bluffs altogether and just press hard for value. This should maximise my win rate.

I have been playing eight tables. I'm not sure how much I'd be affected by playing more; with an AHK program like tableNinja I'm sure I could play 12 at a time but I would rather not invest in that software until I know what's happening with Full Tilt. I don't want to pay out and then never ever use it. So for now I'll stick to 8 tabling and this allows me to play around 500 hands per hour which I think is an acceptable rate. That means that with a little work I'll be getting through 20-30k hands per month. If my hunch is true and the potential win rates as big as I suspect then with any luck I'll be moving up in no time.

FTP not finished just yet?

2011-07-01T08:03:00.000-07:00

In a credible news report from the LA Times it looks like European investors are set to pay back US players (who are collectively owed around US $150m) in return for a majority stake in Pocket Kings, the Irish parent company of Full Tilt poker.

If this all goes through, and somehow they are able to settle the various legal issues that still surround the company and get the site back up again it would be an amazing result for a business that many thought had come to it's end.

The future of online poker is uncertain and in recent months the news has been mostly bad. For once, perhaps a story that will buck that trend. Perhaps I was too hasty to write off my money and perhaps I will be playing Rush again sooner than I thought. GL

So, to a new dawn and a new day.

2011-06-30T10:07:00.000-07:00

God I'm going to miss Rush poker. Regular play seems soooo slow now. Plus the Rush interface was so easy and intuitive... Well according to some reports no matter what happens with Full Tilt, the Rush format is a valuable asset that's likely to be sold to a competitor. Who? I just hope it's a good firm. Stars ideally.

Anyway, enough of that. So I've decided to put a small deposit (£200) on PokerStars and I will attempt to grow a decent bankroll again from scratch. I think that if I table select well then I can definitely achieve a positive win rate. I played 400k hands of micro rush as a winner (although most recent 200k was break even) and I was unable to practise table selection at all.

Now that volume is a concern I'm going to have to think about maximising the growth of my investment. I've heard that people have tried using a Kelly system before with differing results. I feel that I have many of the attributes that could make such a system work - I have no trouble moving up or down in stakes as and when it will be required. I also have reasonable tilt control. I wouldn't say I was a champ in this regard, but certainly towards the top end of the spectrum. I'm usually happy to sit out when I feel that emotions are taking over. I'll use a half Kelly system and simply move up and down as and when I move across the stake thresholds.

This should be an interesting experiment for me. I'll probably play a mixture of full ring and 6 max games and really look for the soft spots (tight 3-bettors behind, fish to my right etc).

I think it will take me time to adjust so there's no time to waste. Stars here I come!

Farewell Rush, you made me better for sure.

2011-06-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

The DOJ struck a fatal blow, AGC put the dying creature out of it's misery.

I will really miss the Rush games, the largest reason being the amount of volume I was able to play. Rush cuts out all the unnecessary waiting time that occurs in online poker. I will need to manage around 12 tables to come close to my hands/hour now.

However, life goes on. My bankroll at Black Friday stood at $900, but I'm not overly angry that the money has gone. While reading an article about the economic melt down back in March it suddenly occurred to me that the poker sites could easily be subject to a similar run on the bank and so I withdrew 2/3 of my bankroll. I don't mean that to sound like a brag, I just got lucky.

I must consider where to play next. Stars? Will Alderney revoke their license too? EDIT: PokerStars are licensed on the Isle of Man who have confirmed that the license is safe. They are an option because of player fund segregation. I might just play pennies on Sky poker until things have settled.

Final word, I hope a new site takes up Rush. It's a great way to play poker. Even if they do not, I played 400 k hands in a year. Probably 4x the experience I'd have gained otherwise. I feel for anyone who has lost a job, money or income from the disastrous Black Friday indictment.

Week Off Almost Over

2011-06-27T11:37:00.000-07:00

... and back to work in the morning. It's pretty obvious I've spent most of my time this week learning about poker and looking at spots that were causing me problems. I feel that I've internalised a lot of concepts and really made some improvement. I don't necessarily think it will make a huge difference to my game, but perhaps a small one. Perhaps enough that I will begin to realise some sort of edge in the games again. This is my graph for the last week. I've undoubtedly run well during that period, I have to admit. My stats for the period:

Improvements over that period:
1/ Playing more hands. The raise - c-bet set up has always been a key component of profit. Since Black Friday there is a lot of loose passives in the games and I don't think that I have been quite taking enough advantage of people who regularly put dead money in the pot preflop then fold to 60%+ c-bets.
2/ 3-betting a little more often. Another key component that can really make more bluff money if we choose the right spots.
3/ Greater general aggression.
4/ Floating a little less widely and looking to raise rather than call in situations where it is likely a close EV decision between the two.

Well, I doubt that I will post quite so often now that work will once again take up my time. To be fair, a gazillion posts a day was probably a bit ott anyway. Well, until I post again good luck at the tables. I shall leave you with a song that I cannot get out of my head at the moment.

The Edge

2011-06-26T14:27:00.000-07:00

Just a short post really, I think I'm coming to understand the delicacy in NLHE win rates. For a good while I have been a break even player. I've discussed some of the reasons previously; my poor win rate from the button and big blind are good examples.
But if we look at the macro picture, I believe that the overall game conditions have changed and I haven't adjusted.

As far as I see it, poker profit is the difference between money won at showdown and money won without showdown. Micro stakes games are usually beaten by making money from showing down with the best hand. However, if a player does not control his non showdown winnings sufficiently then each will cancel each other out. I think that just lately the Rush games have got a little nittier, and so there hasn't quite been as much showdown money to be made. To compensate, I should have upped my aggression a good while back to ensure that I maintained an edge. I didn't do that and so I reached a situation where my showdown winnings were cancelled out by no showdown losses. I think that I have now made the correct adjustment: my red line (no showdown losses) is now shallower than before and I feel that I have rediscovered a small edge in the games.

I think it's so important to game select if you truly want to remain profitable. Of course that's not possible in Rush poker, and if I ever felt that the edge had dried up I'd go back to normal games. But if you're ever in a game where you don't feel that you can create a clear edge between your showdown winnings and no showdown winnings then you're just gifting money to the poker site.

Big Blind, I Suck. #4

2011-06-25T04:27:00.000-07:00

Just been browsing the knowledgeable Cardrunners' forums about blind defence. It's a members only forum I believe so I'll quote a post by pro player Pokey put up a few months back (i.e. relevant)

" I have a non-traditional approach to blind defense, and I'm sure that other pros on the site will disagree with me, but here's how I handle it:

1. I rarely cold-call from the blinds. My approach is to either 3-bet or fold. I will overcall if circumstances warrant and I'm holding a good speculative hand, but even there I'll get quite frisky and frequently donkbet the flop to put significant pressure on the preflop raiser.

2. Against a person who steals too often, I 3-bet liberally with the intention of folding to a 4-bet fairly frequently and punishing with a huge 5-bet (ideally all-in) when I have the goods. When I 3-bet it is large -- usually 4x their raise -- with the intention of preventing light floats. Knowing that I'll be out of position the whole hand through, I want to either end the hand very quickly or at least chop down their implied odds (and therefore their maneuvering room) postflop. "

Pokey - Cardrunners' forum

Elsewhere on the site I've seen pros advocate flatting with some of your range and 3-betting a polarised one. The different views from some excellent players lead me to believe that the expected value of each strategy is somewhat close and that either option is OK. I like Pokey's logic and reasoning, and the other player to advocate this style of blind defence is Cole South who has played in some of the toughest games online.

Personally I feel much more comfortable playing with the betting lead, but I do want to test myself and my ability to play out of position post flop.

In theory I like the sound of Pokey's approach, but I need to figure out some ranges to play against a variety of different opening frequencies. In my #3 post on this subject I learned some sound advice regarding not 3-betting at all versus UTG through Hijack ranges. I could flat a range like {88+, AQ+, AJs, KQs, QJs, JTs} against a standard 10% open, knowing that the big pairs defend against an opponent that likes to barrel multiple streets. I can maximise the value of those hands while providing some protection against my mid pair hands (that I currently have to fold frequently to turn double barrels).

When things get to the CO and Button I can begin to reverse this approach and 3-bet a merged range versus both players that like to call (then my range becomes top heavy against a capped range which should cancel the positional disadvantage somewhat) and those that like to fold (we probably gain as much equity from the dead money preflop than we would in a pot out of position without the betting lead). If we are going to try and play back around 12-15% of the time then we should probably be raising about 6% of hands for value : {99+, AJ+} and a bunch of semi bluff raises (hands that have around 40-45% equity or more versus a typical calling range). The following graphic shows what I consider to be a reasonable resteal range that works out at around 16%.

Graphic is a screenshot of free poker tool Hold'em Viewer

I'm currently folding a ton of those hands to button and cut off raises, and they all have more than 45% equity against a loose raise. This seems wrong to me, even out of position.

I quite like the idea of playing the range in the graphic by 3-betting but occasionally randomising and calling with the top x%. This really would give opponents a hard time hand reading as my range would be typically much stronger than a normal blind defence range when this happened.

In conclusion, I have found a ton of information this week regarding this difficult poker situation. I think it's time I put some of the ideas in these posts into practise in my games and see how it works out over 100k hands or so. As a break even player, I've nothing to lose! GL

Update

2011-06-24T13:54:00.000-07:00

This week I've been playing as well as studying in order to try and clear my (virtual) Rush week bonus from FTP. Here's the graph for the last couple of weeks. I think that the improvement to the red line portion of the graph is good. In my previous databases there's been a steeper downward trend.

In case anyone is unfamiliar with graphs like this, the red line is 'non-showdown winnings' and for the vast majority of players it is negative, the primary reason for this loss being the blinds. I shan't try and explain it thoroughly, just take my word that most winning players have a shallow descending red line and make their profit through the blue line - that is going to showdown with the best hand more often than their opponents.

To me that seems like a very manageable red line, although of course I could just be getting some good bluffing opportunities. If my increased knowledge is helping me to find better bluff spots and I have indeed improved the red line part of my strategy then hopefully that will get me back to winning ways because suddenly I don't have to make quite so much money with my made hands before I start making a profit. As always I will post again when the sample size gets bigger.

I won't pretend that my game has suddenly come round, I'm pretty sure I'm a break even player; my positional stats are still horrible for the button and the big blind but at least - despite that - I've made profit over the most recent stretch of hands which has to be a good thing. GL

A Little More on Planning (from last post)

2011-06-24T09:56:00.000-07:00

So it's one thing to say "yeah we'll check raise and barrel on these 20 cards on the turn" - but if we hardly ever get the sorts of flops where this is possible then we'll still be just check folding most of the time after the flop. So I just powered up pokerazor to Monte Carlo some flops for KJs and this is what I found:

1 KJs flops good straight OR flush draws around 14% in total
2 KJs flops the above plus {a back door flush draw AND overcards} 30% of the time in total
3 KJs flops the above plus {a gutshot AND overcards} 31.75% of the time
4 KJs flops the above plus {a back door flush draw AND gutshot} 35.65% of the time

Now this doesn't tell us anything about the flop texture but we'll have top pair or better a further 25% of the time meaning we can check raise about 60% of flops. This seems like quite a lot and is obviously bluff biased. But, if we barrel nearly half of our bluffs on the turn then this would be around 40% - 45% of the time and then on the river about 30% - 35%. I don't know what the exact numbers would be to be optimally balanced here with this line, but it seems to me that we're using the principle of letting some bluffs drop out on each street and ending up with a balanced river value/bluff range.

Of course this strategy could also be utilised for flop c-betting. Use this information how you will, I just think that using a combination of major draws plus added together minor draws gives us a pretty decent flop bluffing range with a hand like KJs and is likely the reason many good players use a similar approach. GL

Big Blind, I Suck. #3

2011-06-24T03:35:00.000-07:00

I have been studying some statistics from winning players and I'm really losing tons and tons more money from the bb than I should compared to them. Some players are losing around half of what I am. Considering that I play around 10% of hands the only logical conclusion is that I'm not getting into enough pots versus wide ranges in the CO, BTN and SB - even out of position.

I found a thread on DeucesCracked about 6-max win rates and although the figures cannot be the same for full ring one of the posts by a coach gave the following blind leaks:
1/ Calling too much in sb
2/ Not squeezing enough when sb calls
3/ 3-betting our best hands versus UTG through HJ
4/ Set mining in the blinds
5/ Not stealing enough from the sb
6/ Learning to play a suitable range from the bb versus the co/button
I have highlighted the spots where I need the most improvement.

I'm going to begin to flat my best hands versus UTG ranges and play them post flop unless I have a strong read that villain calls too much when facing 3-bets. In this case I'll 3-bet perhaps a range like {QQ+, AK}. Currently there are many regs who open around 10% of hands, and knowing that I can only realistically 3-bet AA, KK for value versus that kind of range I've been 3-betting those hands and folding everything else except for an occasional bluff. By calling I can get more value post flop when villain double barrels with little to no equity, and I protect the more marginal hands that I call with in this situation like 99-QQ, AK etc. This should make a small difference.

I will look for more spots to squeeze small blind callers, even with any two cards if the initial raiser has a wide enough range and at least some ability to fold when facing a 3-bet. Again, this should make a small positive difference to my win rate.

Finally I need to build a range to defend my big blind facing a raise from the CO or Button. Filtering the last 20k hands for this situation there has been 338 hands and I've lost at almost 100bb/100. That is, if I'd folded every single hand I'd have lost the same amount of money. God, I really am coming to realise how much work is needed on my game to improve from d-grade to even c-grade. In this situation I must strive to win some of this money back.

Forward Planning
A big weapon in blind defence is the flop check raise. I will not donk at all for now and just focus on creating a profitable check raise strategy. Often in the past I've seen a flop and thought it made a good one for a check raise but when suddenly called I've had no idea how to proceed on the turn. We need to fire again (as a bluff) when either our actual equity improves, or our fold equity improves. So that I'm not playing exploitable 'one and done' poker I need at least 20 cards (on average) in the deck that I can barrel that give me one or both of these results. [The reason I pick 20 is that we then guarantee that we're continuing with our bluffs a little more than 43% of the time which seems reasonable from a theoretical view]

I played a hand last night that fit this plan. A reg (who is decent) raised in mid position. I called in the big blind with KJo and the flop came TT9 with two diamonds (giving me back door diamond draw with the king). I decided to check raise planning to barrel when any diamond comes out along with any ace, king or queen. That gives me 20 cards out of 47 that I can barrel on, and each generally increases my equity or my fold equity. He did call and the turn was an ace - one of my planned barrel cards. I bet and got a pretty quick fold.

There will be no more play from me that does not fit this principal of planning. As a result I will become a more difficult opponent. Whether it improves my blind win rate of course remains to be seen.

A Learning Experience : Implied Odds

2011-06-23T03:21:00.001-07:00

Well, this week off has been really useful in terms of learning about poker. One of the leaks that Leak Buster picked up on was playing flush draws passively on the turn. I'm pretty sure I did the implied odds calculations a long time ago, but for some reason over the two or three years since I've picked up the habit of playing flush draws passively on the turn "hoping to hit and WIN" - a very fishy mentality. So I went back over the maths on a piece of paper and it really has hit home how much implied odds are needed to play a flush draw passively on the turn just in the hope of hitting it on the river.

Implied Odds on The Turn

I shan't go over too many calculations (indeed I may have got some of this wrong, please correct if so) but the EV of your call is:
EV = P(x)*(current pot + future profit) - (1 - P(x))*(bet to call)
[P(x) is the probability we win on the river or in other words the equity of our draw in this case]
If we set EV = 0 and rearrange for future profit we get:
future profit = {(1 - P(x))*(bet to call) - P(x)*(current pot)}/P(x)
This equation tells us what the break even future profit should be in order to justify a call.

Right you don't need to know that formula I just wanted to demonstrate where I'm getting my results from. I have used a couple of examples in pokerazor and I think my calculations are pretty close but again, my maths isn't that good so correct me if you find any errors.

If we must call a half pot sized bet on the turn and assuming we have 20% equity with our flush draw then:
future profit = {0.8*(0.5) - 0.2}/0.2 = 1
That is, we need to win - on average - the current pot size in future profit to justify calling using the immediate odds.

Example
We have AhKd on Qh7h4h2d and we know for certain (somehow) that villain has a set from the flop. Our equity according to stove is 0.18 but let's assume it's 0.2 which is close enough. Villain bets $7.5 into a pot of $15 and has $7.5 remaining. This is a situation where I've called in the past but calling is not correct because we can only win $7.5 on the river. Villain would need $15 behind and always call it off when our draw comes in to make this a break even turn call. I can think of some situations where we might call in this instance (assuming villain has $15+ behind on the river) but we'd need to be sure he is calling almost all of the time when our draw gets there.

If we must call a pot sized bet on the turn:
future profit = {0.8 - 0.2}/0.2 = 3
So now, we need to win 3 times the current pot size on average to make calling correct. I can't ever see a situation where this is going to be close to being true. Thinking of our example before, when villain bets $15 into the $15 turn pot we need him to pay us off on average $45 on the river which would be a pot sized river bet. We'd have to be damn sure he has a strong hand and also that he never folds on scary boards to even merely break even in this spot, and to profit we'd need to over bet and always get called. Sounds pretty thin, huh?

So I'm going to try really hard from now on to make these hands semi bluffs rather than passive draws. If I have the betting initiative then I can at least double barrel with these hands; if I meet aggression at any point after the flop then the best play is most often going to be to fold.

Most unmade hands on the turn are going to have pretty shitty equity so it's probably very sensible at the micro limits to be turn barreling in just a few good situations and folding the rest of the time. I currently c-bet around 65% of the time and turn barrel 45%. These numbers actually seem pretty reasonable to me so I don't think I'm far off. Hopefully my improved play with draws will get me an extra buy-in or two per 100k hands. GL

Leak Buster FTW!

2011-06-22T08:31:00.001-07:00

I shan't go into too much about the software (other than recommending it) but it provides a bunch of useful filters for use within the HEM database. One of these filters is
"Had top pair good kicker or worse on the turn in a single raised pot and saw a showdown."
I have lost a huge amount of money in this spot, 21.5 buy-ins.

21.5 GIGABUYINS!

According to the video (leak buster, not Back to the Future) this should be an area where we're making money and I've absolutely butchered this situation for the last 100k plus hands.

If I had been just break even in this spot (my obvious goal for the next stretch of hands) then I'd be $500 richer. I think that this significant leak should now become my main focus for improvement because that would instantly catapult my win rate skywards.

I think some of the main problems are these:
1/ Calling flop c-bets too often; I should fold more and switch some of the calling hands into bluff hands and have a clear plan for barrelling the turn when I do this.
2/ Playing draws too passively on the flop and calling turn bets with draws where the immediate odds nor the implied odds are good enough
3/ Going to showdown with pairs worse than top pair too often (calling more than one street of betting)
4/ Attempting to bluff calling stations across multiple streets
5/ Attempting to bluff catch straight forward villains (who likely have value heavy ranges by the river)
So, just a couple of things wrong then lol. Wow, if I can fix this significant leak and prove it over a good sample of hands then this software will have paid for itself within 15k hands. GL

Big Blind, I Suck #2

2011-06-21T01:56:00.000-07:00

So I was browsing the 2+2 forums (still the best place for poker research) and came upon this old thread about playing in the blinds. In particular I noticed a quote from member 'CTS' - Cole South - who said:

"For the next week, if the (CO or) BTN opens and everyone else folds to you in the BB(/SB), never call. Fold or reraise.

This should help you get a hang of it (and is basically how I play anyways)."

This thread is old by five years but I have heard others say more recently that taking the initiative in button vs blind battles is good and that it's easier to play oop in 3-bet pots. I currently call in the big blind nearly twice as often as I raise, and I think that this is a leak.

Another good thread I just found.

I currently share a lot of similarities with the creator of the thread, and fold very often versus a steal.

TwoPlusTwo coach DayCareInferno has this fine post to offer on playing the blinds.

Right, I think that's enough information for now. Time to look at my database. GL

Edit: I've looked through a couple of thousand hands in my database and definitely found a few spots where I made mistakes. The biggest flaws in my game are:
1/ Not value 3-betting widely enough against players who steal very wide and also hardly ever fold to 3-bets. Playing a fixed 3-bet range (or close to one) is just terrible; great things happen by taking the initiative with hands that are favourite over bad opponents.
2/ Not 3-betting lightly enough against players who do fold a lot of the time versus 3-bets. Specifically I found several examples of situations where I had good bluffing hands like low pocket pairs or suited aces and just folded despite the stealer's fold to 3-bet statistic being very high. A re-steal needs to work 70% of the time to be immediately profitable. There are plenty of players (like me) who fold more than that when facing re-steal 3-bets. In other words I need to specifically tailor my strategy based upon villain in this situation (durrr, u don't say?).

I have also made the decision to purchase and use the application Leak Buster. I used a trial a couple of years ago and didn't feel at the time it really justified the outlay but wow has it moved on! I think if I really make as much use as I can of this software along with the knowledge I have already I can turn the corner and get back to winning ways. Recommended!

Attempting more Exploitation

2011-06-20T13:34:00.000-07:00

So I've learned a lot over the last 6 months about balancing play and how ranges need protection against exploitation. This is true, and I've begun to attempt to fix my largest preflop leak that is the gap between hands that I raise and hands that I four bet with. However I think that I've begun to deviate too much from exploitative strategy which is where most of our money comes from.

Example hand

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#31159316078

bysnake ($25.35)
foleq ($25)
ParalyzerBS ($25)
Katherine1992 ($25.15)
Biarum ($25.10)
Predator2211 ($26.13)
Zplan ($24.64)
Skogen2513 ($24.64)
Hero ($33.30)

bysnake posts (SB) $0.10
foleq posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to Hero Kd Kc
ParalyzerBS raises to $1
fold, fold, fold, fold, fold,
Hero calls $1
fold, fold,
FLOP ($2.35) 3c 9d 2h
ParalyzerBS bets $1.50
Hero calls $1.50
TURN ($5.35) 3c 9d 2h 4d
ParalyzerBS bets $2
Hero calls $2
RIVER ($9.35) 3c 9d 2h 4d 3h
ParalyzerBS bets $3
Hero raises to $7.25
ParalyzerBS calls $4.25
Hero shows Kd Kc
(Pre 81%, Flop 91.6%, Turn 95.5%)

ParalyzerBS shows Ts Td
(Pre 19%, Flop 8.4%, Turn 4.5%)

Hero wins $22.66

Now for a good while I've just been auto 3-betting big hands here because I don't want my 3-bet ranges to become imbalanced. But in this case my opponent was folding to the vast majority of 3-bets but also barrelling pretty lightly post flop over multiple streets. So from an EV perspective (and forgetting playing optimally) it is a far superior play against this opponent to flat preflop and let him bet three streets with a wide range. Occasionally we'll lose where villain makes a better hand. But far more often we'll keep a ton of his bluffs in and make much more than we would had we got him to fold out 90% of his range. We need a bluff heavy 3-bet range and a value heavy calling range.

While I'm pleased with the things I've learned recently about game theory and optimal play, I have deviated too far from the way I used to play before I moved to 25NL. I used to treat each situation and each villain based upon my perception of his range and his situational tendencies. Trying to play more optimally has taken my exploitative profit away. I'm certainly a more knowledgeable player now that I've learned the new theory, but to return to winning ways I am going to stop trying to play in a certain way unless it's to prevent a good opponent exploiting me. Currently that means I just need to four bet back enough against liberal 3-bettors.

One last point about this is that the games are super weak since Black Friday. There isn't a single regular that I can currently think of that isn't weak in some way and there are tons of loose passive fish. So I've really been emphasising value lately and it's beginning to pay off imo. I have been going to showdown a lot less often and winning at showdown a lot more often while only sacrificing a little of my no showdown winnings. In the long run, I'm pretty sure that I'll converge upon a decent win rate again. GL

Button, I Suck. #2

2011-06-18T12:47:00.000-07:00

Hey, well I continued some work on preflop equities today after I watched a leak finder video. There were situations where the button called a 3-bet from the blinds. Now, I've always been led to believe that this situation is good for the button providing the blind has a big enough range; however it's also a situation where I've never really begun calling either. I'd play 4-bet or fold much too often.

As far as the maths goes, most of the time we face a 3-bet it's a pot sized bet and so our hand needs at least 33% equity to continue. Given the advantage of playing in position and implied odds I'm going to lower this to 30% for these calculations. If villain is 3-betting a tight range from the blinds, say {QQ+, AK} then we can profitably call with the following range:

{ 22+,AKs,A5s,87s,76s,65s,54s,AKo }

(I've included the hands we'd 4-bet for value with too as I just want to make a point). So any pocket pair and some suited connectors. Even against a very tight range! This is probably really obvious to many players but it's only just hit home now as I've worked through the calculations.

OK, how about a looser blind 3-bet range, say {99+, AQ+}? We can profitably call with:

{ 22+,ATs+,A8s-A2s,K4s+,QTs+,J8s+,T8s+,87s,76s,65s,54s,AQo+,KJo,JTo }

There are players who have been 3-betting me nearly ten percent from the blinds and the reason why is because I've been mucking almost all of the hands above. Instead of making a profitable call I've been giving money away.

A quick word of warning : I think it would be easy to begin to spew with these ranges post flop so care must be taken but I think players would certainly be more careful with their 3-bets if I continued using my current four bet range (which is pretty balanced imo) and also begun calling with some of these profitable hands.

With this new information I'm going to draw up some new preflop ranges tomorrow. My early and middle position strategy will not change as almost all 3-bets I face will have position on me thus a 4-bet or fold strategy is likely to be optimal. But for the cut off and button I will create ranges with polarised 4-b sets and a calling set for playing against the blinds. As always I'll let you know how the new strategy fares over the next few thousand hands. GL

Button, I Suck. #1

2011-06-14T11:11:00.000-07:00

Similar to the process I'm using for improving my blind play I will also post about my efforts to improve my button play. A trend that I've noticed is that my button steal c-bets don't seem to get much respect. This is probably due to two reasons:
1/ Villains in the blinds tend to flat with a reasonably strong range on average
2/ Villains in the blinds know that I have a huge range when c-betting (if they have any sort of brain function)

So where does button stealing gain it's profitability? Just recently I've really been trying to win those pots before showdown and playing very aggressively in this particular spot, but I just feel like I'm spewing now and it's shown in my recent results where I'm making good money in all positions but the button.

Perhaps I've got it wrong, and the most significant portion of profit comes from preflop fold equity and we should only play aggressively on the flop when we have equity - perhaps better than 35% or so versus a typical villain's blind calling range.

I think it's really time that I put in a lot of hours trying to memorise the equity different hands have on different board textures. If I can learn tons and tons of them, flop play should become much easier because I can target hands that fall in certain equity 'bands' for different plays.

Anyway, the learning curve continues and it's awesome having some things to focus on improving instead of the endless 'woe is me' cycle I was stuck in during the first few months of the year. GL

EDIT:
Quick update, I filtered my previous HEM database for hands that I opened first in from the button, didn't face a 3-bet and saw a flop. I'm basically making a small amount of money given the preflop actions being true - and I'm totally happy with this. I'm going to the flop with a much weaker range than my opponents typically but coming out on top. I need to look elsewhere for my leaks I feel.

I also found that my button c-bets actually have a higher success rate than anywhere else on the table (despite what I said earlier in the post)! Again, I think my leaks must lie elsewhere, and I wonder if it might be folding to 3-bets too much...

In this situation I've only called 4% of the time, and four bet 12.5% of the time. Either this means that I'm facing a value 3-bet the vast majority of the time - which could be true - or I'm folding too much in this situation, and this could also be true. I'll need to delve deeper into this I think.

Unfortunately this leak finding will have to wait until tomorrow (or maybe later). I'll post any further conclusions at a future time.

A quick look at the last 4k hands

2011-06-13T04:08:00.001-07:00

A few posts ago I identified some of the areas where I believe I have been making the bigger mistakes. I have been going to showdown too much, and often been playing too passively in common situations. Well this graph shows how things have been going since I made a few adjustments to strategy.

My style numbers haven't changed a great deal, I'm playing around 14% of hands and raising 12% (common nitty tag stats for full ring). However there has been a marked increase in my aggression factor up to exactly 3 and I believe this is a very good change. Notice in the graph that the redline is looking much better. Less than a buy-in over 4k hands is a great result in this area and is entirely down to following Meteoric's example and not being afraid of turning hands into bluffs where the situation warrants it.

I have been going to showdown a fraction under 20%, and while I would actually prefer it to be a little higher there is a good chance that over a bigger sample it will head towards 21 - 22 % which is just where I'd currently like it to be. The figure closely related to this statistic is W$SD and that is only 50.9% which is a sign IMO that I haven't flopped that well.And yet I have still been a good winner over that sample.

It is my gut feeling that if I continue in this vain this style will make me money again. I'll be sure to update on things once I begin to converge upon a more meaningful sample. GL

Big Blind Play, I Suck. #1

2011-06-12T03:40:00.000-07:00

When faced with a button steal, I am currently folding a significant amount of the time in the big blind. If I face a standard raise at my limit of 0.75, I risk 0.5 to call. As a pure pot odds decision I need (0.5/(0.5 + 1.1)) = 0.3125 or 31% equity to call. Against a button stealer who is raising half of their hands this means from a pure pot odds perspective I could call with any two cards profitably (if there was no post flop play). Of course doing this in play would be pretty ridiculous right? Because playing out of position is bad. I wonder how much of an equity advantage playing in position gives a poker player.

Against a 50% button stealing range the following hands have better than 50% equity.
{ 44+,A2s+,K8s+,QTs+,JTs,A5o+,KTo+ }
Surely then, this is the bare minimum range of hands we should be playing in this spot? Surely being out of position cannot make up for us having hands that are favourite added to the excellent preflop pot odds we are getting?

-------------------------------------------------

Position, Equity and Risk of the Squeeze
So it's clear that playing in position grants some amount of non trivial equity but until NLHE is solved I don't think we'll know how much. While playing with some ranges I digressed onto playing a decent range on the button versus a 15% opening raise.

Our preflop pot odds facing a standard single raise are around 45%. Assuming the raiser is indeed raising 15% of hands the following hands have better than 45% equity:
{ 55+,ATs+,KQs,AJo+,KQo }
However since we have position then we should be able to play a wider range than this. 22 should be a call on the button I think, and their equity is 38%. Interestingly middle suited connectors do pretty poorly but many good players advocate playing them in this situation. So if we widen our calling range to hands with better than 38% equity to include 22 then we have a flatting range of:
{ 22+,A2s+,K6s+,QTs+,JTs,T9s,A3o+,KTo+ }
The most surprising hands here for me are the low rag aces. I have never seen anyone advocate flatting them in this situation. Of course they suffer from reverse implied odds so perhaps (since A3o - A8o are all very close at 38-40% equity) we can fold them. Perhaps the lower suited connectors have enough implied odds that they can be included but bear in mind that 76s has 36.6% equity preflop and this seems like a lot to make back up to me.

We must also bear in mind the risk of the squeeze. I deliberately chose the button for this analysis because it minimizes this risk. A squeeze devalues our calling range somewhat but providing it isn't happening too often we can merely exclude the most marginal hands from our button flatting range and sometimes flat with KK+ to defend the rest of our range.

So in summary, a decent button flatting range versus a 15% open will probably look something like:
{ QQ-22,A2s+,K8s+,QTs+,JTs,T9s,98s,87s,76s,ATo+,KTo+ }

Note that the 3-betting portion of this range (KK+) is just what I would be 3-betting for value against a 15% opener who is playing a 4-bet or fold style. Against someone who calls out of position we can 3-bet more hands for value.

This range definitely looks like the sort of range I've seen good players call with on the button and seems reasonable to me. In this situation that would lead me to believe that position grants an equity gain of around 7% in the current games against suboptimal opponents. Do you agree? Does this flatting range seem good to you?

EDIT: The very marginal hands in this button flatting range (suited connectors, rag suited aces, weak suited kings and weak pairs) can be difficult to play post flop and also suffer from domination. For these reasons they are probably at least as profitable when used as 3-bet bluffs. I don't think calling with them is bad however as long as we are aggressive enough post flop.

I think that doing work like this is really helping me to get a better grasp of overall strategy so I highly recommend mucking about with the excellent application HoldemViewer which is the tool I used for the analysis above. GL

2-Tabling FTW?

2011-06-10T11:03:00.000-07:00

I was feeling tired today and so when I fired up tonight I decided to play only two tables of rush at a time. I felt that I was really able to focus on ranges, I was never rushed - no pun intended - and I thought I played my A-game the whole time. It's clear to me that I'm not good enough yet to play four tables and win at this limit, so I think it's a very good idea that unless I'm clearing bonus I should stick to this new set up until I have played another 100k hands. If I can do OK - and I see no reason why not since I should have a lower variance and more profitable style - then maybe I can think about adding in a third and fourth table again as my confidence returns. Because sometimes I forget that doubling the amount of tables (unless you're some kind of sicko) should definitely not double win rate. More simultaneous decisions mean more mistakes, so I think that it's definitely the right thing to do.

I actually think I can achieve a high return from my bluffs with this new set up and the extra time to think through the best spots (instead of just auto check folding or other automatic plays). Enough even to cancel most of the redline losses maybe (I won an insane amount of pots through aggression today). Added to this the inevitable value I will get means there is great potential there for a great win rate. I'll only be able to tell you of course if and when I have played the 100k hands. So I better get to work!

Looking For Improvement

2011-06-09T06:58:00.000-07:00

This morning I spent some time looking through some hands from Meteoric which was really informative. I'm really grateful, so please go check out his blog!

Afterwards I ran a few filters on my own database on the last 90k hand stretch where I actually broke even after rake back. If you observe the chart I have included the red boxes highlight my biggest fundamental leaks.

1/ I lose too much from the big blind. If I was to fold every single time there was a raise I'd lose -33BB/100. EV adjusted it's better but over that sample I did no better by playing hands than I did by just folding everything. This is very very poor, and every minute of my time should now be taken up by trying to improve my big blind play. If I can fix this I'll become profitable again, it's as simple as that.

2/ I should be looking to get my button profit up over 10BB/100 and somewhere towards 15. I think the big blind leak is more significant but if I can increase my aggression here and try to go to showdown less often I think it will help turn things around.

3/ A further leak that isn't demonstrated in that chart is that I'm going to showdown too often. All of the winning databases I've seen have had that player going to showdown under 25% of the time with a nice healthy Won $ at Showdown (W$SD) number around 53-55%. The last 90k hands I ran at 27%/51%.

The whole basis of that kind of style (the one I'm trying to emulate) is that we bluff often enough to correct our no showdown line somewhat and then deliberately have a biased positive showdown % and the profit is the difference between the two. That probably sounds really obvious, but at the moment I'm clawing back enough redline money (I lose around half a buy-in every 1000 hands) and then spewing it back by going to showdown too often. All I need is to win $25 more per 1000 hands at showdown and I'd be a decent winner again.

So in summary the three focuses for my next period of play are
1/ Improve my play in the big blind
2/ Play more aggressively as the button
3/ Go to showdown less often and with a stronger average range. GL

EDIT:
I have also decided to readjust my ranges. Unfortunately this may make me even tighter, but let me explain. The last 50k hands or so, I've had an early position range that looks like {22+, AJs+, AQo+, KQs, T9s-76s}. I raised the suited connectors as a subset of hands that I intended to use as 4-bet bluff hands as and when I was 3-bet (or reraised) by an aggressive player. However, looking at my database these hands are losing me money because most of the time I'm playing in pots out of position with a hand that flops very little most of the time. In fact these hands have lost me an entire buy-in during that time. Many of the flops that help my hand also help my opponent, so even when I do flop something my fold equity is generally pretty low.

As a side note, suited connectors have pretty poor equity versus a standard calling range. Against {22-JJ, KQs-76s, AQs-ATs, AQo} 76s has only 36.8% equity, and that's a lot of equity we have to make back through villain's post flop mistakes - too much IMO. This is a good reason why I believe they are better hands to semi bluff raise with preflop than to call with, but only when you have positional advantage.

So as a result of this realisation I'm going to play much tighter in the EP 3 positions, going back to raising {22+, AQ+}. I'm actually beginning to believe that the smaller pocket pairs are pretty marginal too, but I'll keep them in. Now, as for four betting, I'm going to need to turn hands into bluffs to avoid exploitation so I'll choose from the ace highs and low pocket pairs.

The downside of this is obviously that my already nitty style is going to converge to an even tighter range. Probably around 13%. So what I'll do is begin to raise a few more hands from the hijack seat to compensate a little. On the flip side, the playing field has become so weak since Black Friday that preflop strategy should probably be mainly value hands anyway.

Thinking about preflop 3-betting

2011-06-05T07:56:00.000-07:00

For a while now I have been very focussed on 3-betting (or preflop re-raising) with a polarised range. What I mean is I will find out how many hands an opponent should rationally be getting all-in with preflop - given their initial opening frequency - and 3-betting hands that have greater than 50% equity against that felting range along with a group of hands to balance my range with as a bluff. I usually choose suited connectors for this. As a simple example my standard preflop play versus a 5% raise frequency would be to 3-bet {AA, T9s, 98s} and flat with {JJ-KK, AKs}. I think that versus a 5% raise frequency this is sound strategy, and we can obviously call with more hands if our opponent is bad and therefore offers implied equity.

However looser opening ranges usually have a non trivial calling frequency both in and out of position and so things become less simple. Take a villain in late position with a wide opening range and assume this player will get all-in preflop with {AK, JJ+} but call with a bunch of broadways, suited connectors and middle pocket pairs. Suddenly we can 3-bet a ton of extra hands for value, a range like {88+, ATs+, AJo+, KQ}. These hands have greater than 50% equity against villain's calling range. But what concerns me is how we balance this play with bluffs. If villain is getting all-in with the range I mentioned before we can only felt {KK+} preflop for value. So do we just add in a few bluffs to balance this felting range or do we also need a bluff range to balance the rest of our value hands? Because including one would give us a very high 3-bet % in this situation. It would also create a significant gap between the hands we're 3-betting and the hands we're felting and this will allow our opponents to 4-bet bluff back extremely profitably.

Our opponent risks around 27bb to win 16bb when he 4-bets so he needs us to fold (27/(27+16))= 63% of the time to make money on his bluffs. Therefore we need to 5-bet all-in around 40% of the time to defend against a 4-bet. This means we would need to be turning a lot of hands into bluffs if our opponent was liberally 4-betting back and that doesn't seem quite right to me somehow. I guess I have more research to do. GL

New Database

2011-06-04T08:46:00.000-07:00

Just created my new database. I feel rough today (self inflicted) so I'll begin to play tomorrow. I have no plans so I will probably put in a few hours.
Getting Better
-At least until I begin to build up statistics on people again I intend to play two tables at a time with a focus on colour coding and taking notes on people. I should still get through 600 or so hands per hour which is plenty for now.
-I'm really going to start thinking about value again, and will begin to call less often on every street (barring preflop where I'm a nit anyway). For example on dry flops I've been prone to float with the very best of my unpaired hands - e.g. AKo when someone c-bets on a Q72r. But I'm going to start playing this sort of hand a little more aggressively I think; there's no harm in having a bluff heavy flop raising range since most players c-bet too often. Plus this is just the sort of hand we should be bluffing with for balance (generally hands with between 4 and 8 outs are good candidates for bluffs). I'll become especially careful when I bluff catch on the river. I definitely think that this has become a significant leak.
-Playing the big blind has been a problem for me, although I have run horribly there for probably 200k hands. Playing such a tight range in largely 3-bet pots should be getting me tons of money at showdown but I've only been winning 47% of the time. This has been the biggest cause of my break even (or slightly losing) stretch of hands. Of course I probably have not played particularly well in some spots and this is something that I will try and address. I will begin to 3-bet larger versus players who like to play implied odds (preflop calling stations in other words) and really crucify loose small blind raisers. I'll also really focus on never 'flicking it in' with marginal hands. Really, the amount of times you flop a strong hand or draw is minuscule and absolutely not worth the extra investment. It's fine to flat a loose button opener with good suited broadways and play a heads-up pot. But when an early position player opens and gets two callers, even getting great odds as you are I just don't believe that it is possible to win enough back on average to make calling here worthwhile unless you have mid pocket pairs. These are the only hands I will speculate with - probably 77-QQ.

I found a thread on 2+2 which has somehow disappeared in the last two hours - I expect the mods moved it - about someone running below EV. There were some interesting responses and graphs posted. This has made me feel much better about my bad run - these are good players who have been through much tougher swings and come back. But there was also some good advice there, recommending that you forget about all-in EV and just focus on getting better. This will be my philosophy from now on : Just play within my bankroll and try to improve. GL all

Update

2011-06-02T13:48:00.000-07:00

I have taken the last few days off from poker. After the session where I completely irrationally lost my temper I thought it best to step back for a bit. Fortunately this coincided with the excellent game The Witcher 2 being released for PC which has absorbed me ever since. After this period of time off, I'm starting to feel like playing again! When I do it will be a new database. I've looked at some leaks and hopefully the next 100k hands will go a little better than the last. If I can win 20-25 buy-ins then I'll be very happy, but I'll let you know how it goes.

So Phil Ivey has filed a lawsuit versus Full Tilt poker. And just when I thought that they looked to be pulling things around after having one of their seized accounts released by the DOJ. Not sure what to make of this. He has cited the US player fund issue as his reason for doing it. While this action will not make Full Tilt go bust on it's own, it could be an indicator that the company is in more trouble than it's letting on. There seems to be a lot of scaremongering going on, but I continue to have faith that the legal teams that FT have employed are doing the right thing. Purely because I think that in any democratic court, the DOJ action will not stand up.

However as a contingency plan, it looks like pokerstars would be my next port of call should the very worst happen. I'd be gutted to lose Rush and hope that another site would take the concept on board, but I would at least be able to 12 - 16 table regular poker and hopefully see a similar number of hands.

Anyway, I'm keeping the faith Full Tilt. I sincerely hope you do not disappoint. And I also think that everyone should remember that this is the US DOJ's doing. They are the people in the wrong, and I thoroughly hope that justice is done. GL

New Beginnings, Aggression Factor vs. Aggression Frequency

2011-05-29T10:01:00.000-07:00

Aggression Factor is defined as (% bet + % raise)/% call. This statistic can be a useful measure of how aggressive a player is. However, it can be misleading as it does not account for any other actions (checking or folding).
Consider a player who is tight and aggressive and who bets or raises on the flop an average of 2 in 5 hands and calls with 1 in 5 for an aggression factor of 2 - a common value.
Now consider a much looser player who bets or raises on average 2 in 10 hands and calls with 1 in 10 - pretty unrealistic but you get the point. He would have an identical aggression factor, but his continuing range for the flop is just as strong as the tight aggressive. A consistent mistake that I've made lately is to have no respect for a loose player with high aggression factor. Even though they might only be continuing post flop with a super strong range!
Aggression Frequency is defined as (bet + raise)/(streets) and as such includes all actions. It basically describes how often (when faced with a decision) a player chooses to take the aggressive action. Going back to the previous example, the tag would now have an aggression frequency of 40% for his flop play and the loose player would have 20%. This new number now indicates that he is folding most of the time on the flop.

Returning to the hand I described last post, while my opponent's aggression factor was 2.1, his aggression frequency was 33%. This is very passive, and I think I should have either called and made a decision on the turn or folded.

Basically I intend to alter my HUD so that it only shows aggression frequency in future and hopefully this will allow my flop decision making when facing aggression to be better.

The next time I play, I will begin the new database. I intend to do a lot of hand reviews concentrating on looking at aggression frequency and hand ranges on the flop so that I can begin to hand read better in this critical situation.

Finally, it may be a couple of days before I play again. I think I need a little break from poker - not for too long - and I'm currently enjoying The Witcher 2. GL

Bad Mistake, 25NL Forever?

2011-05-27T10:46:00.000-07:00

Just messed up big time. I 3-b an UTG raiser with 130bb stack and I have AA. Semi loose passive villain calls and flop runs TT6 with two hearts. I c-bet and he raises. His aggression factor over a decent sample is 2. Which means that he bluffs sometimes, but more often than not he's got a hand when he bets or raises. The fact that he's semi loose means that 66, TT and probably T9s/JTs are in his range, but at the time I just spazzed out and stuck it in expecting flush draws and KK to be there too (which would actually make this fine - if that were true). But his aggression factor is 2! So Kings would have called more than likely, and probably flush draws too. His raise was for value against my face up hand. Even if he does sometimes bluff raise there, calling makes much more sense because there's more than a pot sized bet left. Even then though, folding is probably best despite the fact that there are only a few big hand combinations in his range. I think at the time I just tilt shoved, and that is just horrible poker.
And then I called him a nasty name in chat, to make me feel even worse - there's no need for that. I'm sure we all feel like it sometimes, but he wasn't responsible for FT dealing that hand, the random gen software was.

Unless I can begin to make logical decisions again and until I can keep it together and the emotion under control; until I can learn to live with the rough end of poker variance; unless I can return to the calm calculating poker player that earned money last year I'll be stuck at this limit.

I'm now back to the bankroll that I began 25NL with. 200k hands of work and even with rake back I have nothing to show for it. It has all become very stagnant, but at least my bankroll is still intact. All I need to do is work out how to win again.

It's time to start again. I will play another 1-2k hands tonight now I've vented a little and then close this database. I will provide a summary blog post of the last two hundred thousand hands with some stats and goals and then take a deep breath and start this limit again. I'll take down the graph pictures for now as they just remind me how badly it's going. And then it's time to learn how to play poker again. Let's go back to the start. GL

EDIT: The last session didn't go too grossly thankfully. I'm going to start my renaissance with post flop aggression factor and aggression frequency. I've become reasonably good at estimating regular villain ranges by looking at vp$ip and pfr (for those who don't understand that's how many hands someone plays and how aggressive they play them). But post flop I've merely been looking at board texture compared to that assigned range and basing my play upon those factors but I've been ignoring the aggression factor. If a tight player raises me on a dry board knowing how to interpret aggression factors properly will allow me to make a much better decision with my over-pair etc. So not only am I going to post my 200k analysis, but also a short article about how I might begin to interpret an opponent's aggression post flop. I'm certain that becoming good at this will allow me to return to winning ways, because recently I've just played a default line based upon how often a player has a hand on a certain board texture. But the equation must have aggression frequencies included. GL

Leak Fixing 101

2011-05-26T05:47:00.000-07:00

At the bottom of this post I have included a video by poker player 'citizenwind' where he reviews a session in Hold'em manager. Alvin is a player who has beaten Rush poker comfortably at all limits up to 200NL over a significant sample, so it will do my game the world of good to compare statistics. My leaks probably lie within the biggest differences.

Conclusion: I am a gigantic CALLING STATION.
I think that I'm putting in too much money on average post flop. Alvin explains in the video that people generally have a value heavy range when they bet so we should generally be folding to bets more often than we probably should in an optimal game. My poker understanding has reached a level where I feel that I have to prevent myself from being exploited in all situations, but of course this is only necessary if we are being exploited in these situations. In the vast majority of cases, it's likely that I'm NOT being exploited, and therefore I should be folding more often. The key statistics where we differ are:
1/ Showdown : Alvin - 22%, Me - 27.5%.
Solution : Fold MORE
2/ C-bet % : Alvin - 60%, Me - 70%.
Solution : C-bet in the most obvious spots only
3/ Fold to Flop C-bet % : Alvin - 55%, Me - 40%
Solution : Bluff catch a little less on the flop, especially against more aggressive players. Let these players bluff off to you when your range is strong.

Basically, over the next few weeks I'm going to doing a lot of work like this to return my game to winning ways. I'll probably find it hard to kick some of the habits I've picked up but to reach the next level it's work that needs to be done.GL

EDIT: This game is fucking ridiculous. I'm now ten buy-ins under EV for the latest 100k hands and that takes my grand total up to around 25 for the last 200k. Enough to drive someone insane, it really is. $600 bucks that should be mine lost to the variance curve. I'm due, poker owes me. Back to Volume, my only friend. Maybe things will turn around for the next 100k? Or maybe poker is rigged after all. On the previous subject I was much better this session I think. I made one suspect call but looking on pokerstove it wasn't a huge mistake.

Struggling.

2011-05-24T09:59:00.000-07:00

Another horrible session, where I lost a large pot to a one - outer; four-bet against a fish with KK and after he called, I check called the psb on Axx and he's binked the ace (check folding too weak there??).

I've noticed a trend in my play - since this bad stretch began I have been slowly going to showdown a little more and more (nearly 28% of the time now). I think the problem is that I'm attempting to bluff catch too often. Sometimes I'm right, but more often than not I'm wrong. This in itself isn't a mathematical mistake since we need to be right on average around 30% of the time or more to make calling correct - but I think I'm actually catching a bluff on the river a lot less than 30% of the time. I think I'm beginning to understand why. Well, at these stakes I think that villains don't value bet or bluff thinly enough which leads to them having a stronger than average range when they river bet. I also think that I'm often forgetting that many of the ranges I'm facing literally do not have enough junk in them by the river for them to be bluffing with! Optimal play would require them to be turning hands into bluffs that players at this limit just never do. They'll check back their third pair; they'll check back king high on double paired boards; they'll never fire a third barrel when their flush draw missed. I believe that this bluff catching leak is singularly the biggest drain on my win rate currently. I think that ideally I would be seeing showdown around 25% of the time. In order to begin to get down to that number I'm going to have to begin to play more weakly. I have already begun to c-bet less often. I only need to think twice before calling river bets now and I will hopefully see an improvement.

I'm nearly at 100k hands in my latest database and I'm more or less break - even (a small winner through rake back). I'll start a new one when I get there and really try and focus on this leak for the next 100k hands or so, I really wouldn't care if I started going to showdown as little as 20% of the time. Wish me luck!

The Most Beautiful Song Ever Written?

2011-05-22T14:42:00.000-07:00

God Only Knows

I guess I never really post things about my life and tastes etc. Maybe I should start, talking exclusively about poker is pretty boring I suppose.

To the link, I saw Brian Wilson perform this at Glastonbury a few years back. It took my breath away then and still does to this day. Has there ever been a more beautiful song written? Brings me to tears every time.

----------------

To poker, I played a good long session today and created a protected button raising range that worked out at around 48% of hands. By protected I mean that it's not easily exploitable. A player's range is easily exploitable if an opponent can make a positive expected value (or profitable) bluff with any hand e.g. When someone opens 50% of buttons and folds 90% of the time he is 3-bet.

So I now have a protected range for every position. Of course I don't always use the four bet or call ranges, they're just there as a default play against an unknown player or someone who foolishly thinks they can get away with 3-betting me tons. Against someone who is only value 3-betting a tight range, they are already folding enough that I do not need to protect.

The one last range to sort out is my big blind defence range versus a small blind open. This one will be a little more difficult because most of the hands that I use as bluffs for my other preflop ranges will now be good enough to call a loose sb steal. So I'll need to work out a seperate call, 3-bet, felt strategy for this unique situation. However to start with I'll just try and memorise the stuff I've done so far. When it's all remembered then I'll sort something out. Until then, I'm still making it up and still likely easily exploitable in that spot. Come and find me! :) GL

Re-evaluating my Game

2011-05-22T04:21:00.000-07:00

For a significant while and over an increasingly significant sample of hands I have only made money through rake-back. I may have run under EV but it's looking increasingly likely that I have a close to break even strategy in these games. I think it's very important that I realise this and accept it, because otherwise I get quickly frustrated if a session does not go my way. I'm fortunate in that I don't become a crazy spew monkey when I tilt, but my game does deteriorate somewhat.

OK, so I'm a break even player. What steps can I now take to bring in an extra buy-in or two per thousand hands and become a winner again?
1/ Continue to actively challenge my strategy and look to fix leaks where possible.
* I believe my blind play has improved lately now that I'm being very careful with what I'm doing, but there have been several large pots where I've got most of the money in as favourite but not ended up winning. I'll review my blinds again after a couple hundred thousand hands to see if my win rate there has improved.
* I'm happy with the ranges I play from each position but there are two shady areas where I can work out a better playing strategy
- the button: This is where I still kind of make it up as I go along. I don't like this approach because it leads to inconsistencies and leaks of it's own. I think it's better to use fixed preflop ranges where possible as a default strategy and then deviate if you spot a clear leak in a villain's play.
- the big blind versus a small blind steal: This is another spot where I make it up as I go along. I think that I currently call too much where I should be 3-betting more often. Theoretically I think that we should be playing around 2/3 of hands versus the small blind (unless they have a very small playing range, maybe less than 10%).
2/ Analyse my post flop decisions critically. I do this sometimes for these blog posts but it's not something that I do after every session. I think I should be looking at every big pot that I play and find out what I did right/wrong. The more that I do this the better my decision making will get during play.

A hand that I butchered earlier (bye bye decent bb stats for the session, sigh.)
http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#30634649332

evgeniy1741 ($9.55)
Hero ($27.80)
Hoppel1980 ($26.30)
survan ($35.93)
CarminNegra ($74.04)
mclaud85 ($40.16)
Stannerz ($35.16)
The Mentalist 7 ($16.62)
affs80 ($32.23)

evgeniy1741 posts (SB) $0.10
Hero posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to Hero Ac As
fold, fold,
CarminNegra raises to $0.90
fold, fold, fold, fold, fold,
Hero raises to $3
CarminNegra calls $2.10
FLOP ($6.10) 9h Qs 8s
Hero bets $3.75
CarminNegra calls $3.75
TURN ($13.60) 9h Qs 8s Jc
Hero bets $6.75
CarminNegra calls $6.75
RIVER ($27.10) 9h Qs 8s Jc Qh
Hero checks
CarminNegra bets $10
Hero calls $10
Hero shows Ac As
(Pre 88%, Flop 80.1%, Turn 79.5%)

CarminNegra shows Qc Ks
(Pre 12%, Flop 19.9%, Turn 20.5%)

CarminNegra wins $44.75

Ok so it was another example of doing everything right for most of the hand but I'm almost certain I should have folded on the river. Villain was a total fish, playing a huge range of hands from each position. The flop bet is standard (perhaps I should have over-bet/felted since so many turn cards are horrible for me?). On the turn I was going to bet fold. When he calls again I'm sure he has a pair but the river card kills me completely. I should be check folding to that card now IMO. I guess at the time I called due to the insane pot odds I was getting. I only needed to catch a bluff more than a quarter of the time but that's probably a bit thin given the four straight board. So I played it pretty well until villain sucked out, sigh. GL

Crazy Session and Crazy Life

2011-05-21T05:36:00.001-07:00

Had a pretty crazy session yesterday, chips flying about everywhere; I intend to do a hand history diary post at some point with some analysis. Firstly because I played tons of hands terribly and secondly because it will demonstrate the crazy up/down nature of NLHE. I tilted a little after running under EV some more - totally irrational but I don't think I let it affect too many of my decisions thankfully. I won a few buy-ins too which has dampened the damage some what. Which leads me on to my conclusion - the Rush games are very much weaker since Black Friday. I'm going to have to continue to adjust to maximise my win rate in these games. Hint: VALUE TOWN.

The fiancée was rushed to accident and emergency last night with abdominal pain. Nothing to worry about according to the Docs but she is still there now. Friday night A&E - I don't recommend it as a choice of spending an evening's time. Crazy, I have so much respect for people in that job. Don't know how they cope with it tbh, they are better people than me for sure. Naturally poker will be on the sidelines until life returns to normal.

Quick Vent...

2011-05-19T10:36:00.000-07:00

aa;lka;lkanbklnglakfdv8c87vazhganehkg!!!!
Brutal session, total FAIL. Two large pots lost from the bb, one was my fault and the second a suck-out by a complete fish (which is why I need to let off steam).
First the mistake : I check raised a nut flush draw on the turn against a late middle position open who had double barrelled on a queen turn. On retrospect I'm unsure of my play but I felt at the time that it would make a good hand to semi - bluff and rep a slow played set. I figured I'd get tons of folds from his bluffs (which I assumed on that card would be a non trivial number) and would have equity versus any hand in his range that called. When he shoved I should have folded, since I needed about 32% equity given the pot odds but I think versus a reasonable range I was mid twenties at best. So OK, this was a mistake on my part but given that I had reasonable equity and I was taking an aggressive line that balances my range in that spot - I'm not too pissed off.
The second hand I had found a dream spot. A villain who had raised (and 3-bet) almost all of his hands over a sample of 30 raised UTG and it folds to me in the bb with JJ. So I decide I'm not messing and I'm felting this hand. So the money goes in and he's got A4 and binks the ace in the turn. Ouch. Right, vent over back to the tables.

Early Days but... (plus analysis of a hand)

2011-05-18T10:16:00.000-07:00

The big blind has been better the last couple of sessions. I'm just being very very careful when I'm voluntarily calling out of position in pots. In multi-way pots I'm pretty much sticking to pocket pairs (which can obv flop nut type hands). The very best broad-ways also make my calling range in these spots since they will get value from dominated hands, but that's it. When I get a meaningful sample I'll say more about this. Another thing I'm doing is 3-betting loose sb openers a ton more. I'd often call IP and see flops in the past but I think 3-betting is just as good. Give them this much hell and they'll start giving you the walk - which is a beautiful situation. Much more on big blind play to come.

A hand I played (and messed up IMO):
http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#30550196940

AGOULOU ($46.63)
JohnDoe42 ($25.70)
63Viktor ($8.79)
thazar ($34.72)
pagezoso ($46.81)
Hero ($25.22)
zyclop ($61.94)
SPBbob ($20.55)
faxe93 ($23.32)

AGOULOU posts (SB) $0.10
JohnDoe42 posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to Hero Jd Qd
fold, fold, fold,
Hero raises to $0.75
zyclop calls $0.75
fold, fold, fold, fold,
FLOP ($1.85) Tc Kc 9d
Hero bets $1.25
zyclop raises to $3.25
Hero raises to $7.50
zyclop calls $4.25
TURN ($16.85) Tc Kc 9d 3c
Hero bets $7.75
zyclop raises to $53.69 (AI)
Hero calls $9.22 (AI)
RIVER ($50.79) Tc Kc 9d 3c 5d
Hero shows Jd Qd
(Pre 63%, Flop 63.4%, Turn 0.0%)

zyclop shows 6c 7c
(Pre 37%, Flop 36.6%, Turn 100.0%)

zyclop wins $48.26

Not much to talk about until the turn when the flush comes in. At the time I felt that I should bet for value since I thought that there were more combos of sets in his range than flushes (and I was calling an all-in since I'd put so much money in and I have seen people just do that with hands they'd call with i.e sets). Seeing what hand he has though makes me wonder about this hand. Thoughts anyone?
Basically I'm in a situation where if he's got a flush I have zero equity and if he has a set I'm a favourite but not a certainty. So should I play it more passively? Give him a chance to bluff? I have to pop out right now but I'm going to run this through pokerazor EV software when I get a free hour and try and find out the best line in this situation as I think it will be very instructional.

EDIT: OK I just loaded the information into pokerazor and quickly ran a couple of scenarios. If my initial assumption was that his range includes sets then bet calling (an equivalent action to shoving since I have a pot sized bet left) is slightly +EV. It is only slightly positive expectation due to the nature of the hands I'm up against, as I discussed earlier. If he has more combinations of flush draws in his range then it becomes close to indifferent. How many combos? Well with six combos of TT and 99 we actually need him to have ten combos of flush draw in his range for the effective all-in bet to become a loser - and this is a stretch. However, what if my feeling at the time was wrong and he always shoves 99 and TT on the flop? Well - obv now shoving is very -EV and check folding is the best line unless he will bluff random garbage with a decent frequency (unlikely after calling a flop 3-bet IMO). In my experience in these nitty games while players don't generally fold sets they can play the weaker ones quite passively versus aggression (the fear of the over-set). Without further experience with this opponent I'm only speculating but I think that my shove is OK. At least most of the money went in with the nuts.
GL

Shitty Session. Fixing Leaks.

2011-05-15T12:57:00.000-07:00

Just finished a pretty poor session and dropped a few buy-ins. One pot I got stacked when someone hit a back door flush after I'd got the money in with a set vs overpair. I stacked off with KK versus AA against an unknown (standard). Finally I stuck in a large portion of my stack with the nut flush and folded when the board paired on the river. Villain had telegraphed his hand as a set with his HUD range and bet timing and sizing. So I had raised large for value on the turn when my nut hand came in - and he called which is predictable for this type of player when they are holding a set. Then he pot donks the paired river, so I saved myself the rest of my stack.

I began to tilt a little tonight which surprised me since I'd treated the recent large down-swing so calmly. Maybe I'm tired?

I've been looking through my database and have identified a pretty large leak - my big blind play. My win rate from every position is pretty sound over a decent sample now, but my big blind loss is about 30BB/100 or 60bb/100. This is - IMO - way way too high. I need to spend a lot of time learning how to improve my play in this position. Ideally I'd like it to come down under 50bb/100 and I definitely think that this is realistic, I just need to do some work.

What can I do better?

Well, I filtered my DB earlier and realised that I've been cold calling in the bb after a raise and callers with hands that do poorly out of position in multi way pots. The truth is that suited broadways only flop strong hands and draws a fraction of the time and any time they flop pairs in multi-way pots out of position they are hard to play. I have also been calling with weak pocket pairs in the same scenario. Of course with enough players in the pot and getting good odds set mining in this spot is going to be OK. But I think I was often calling in spots where there were not enough players in the pot (or when the villains' ranges were loose) thus rendering inadequate implied odds. So the first thing I'm going to do is to tighten up with the hands that I cold call with.

I have also noticed that 3-bets are being called a ton of the time. I'm sure this is a result of black Friday taking some of the better players (who can fold) away from the games. So I have begun cutting out most of my light 3-bets from the blinds. Hopefully this will lead to me spewing less in 3-bet pots out of position.

OK so I think it's critical that I fix this problem in my game so I'm going to suspend my post flop work until I've at least got a manageable loss from the bb. This will likely take time but hopefully I'll get there. GL

Hmmmmm. I'm a Nit again.

2011-05-13T11:18:00.000-07:00

OK I swear I posted something last night and it's not here... I think I'll call the Ghostbusters. (as a side note, that was my favourite film growing up. Awesome. So glad they're making no 3 with original cast members!!)

Just played a good session, 3k hands or so. But just looking at my database I only played around 12% of hands. This is very tight, close to what I used to play at 10NL after I first started out. Whether this is a consequence of variance or whether my hand ranges will converge on this number over a large sample I'm not sure. If I do find that I'm this tight after a few more thousand hands then I'll have to revise my late position ranges somewhat because - while I'm convinced that this is loose enough to make money - I think a more ideal number is 14%. However one thing I have noticed by playing this tight is how much stronger my ranges are on average.

Rush poker is a battle between trying to get your strong hands as much as possible versus not allowing the blinds to eat up your win rate. I have heard the argument again and again that nits will not win at Rush. But I have to disagree. The format of Rush means that folding has positive expected value - whereas normally it would have zero EV. What I mean is that because you instantly see another hand, there is little incentive to play the most marginal hands in your range - unlike normal ring games where it's great to play loose for deception.

Never the less, I think playing just 12% of hands is a little too tight. So I'll be keeping a close eye to see what I'm playing after another 20-30k hands and then I may have to adjust a couple of my ranges. This would be a shame - they are pretty easy to play at the moment.

I'm really enjoying the volume right now, I just got a rakeback payment of $50 which is easily my biggest ever - and all a consequence of the 8k hand session from Sunday. So expect a LOT of hands in the next few weeks. I'm loving the game at the moment. GL

The Long Road Begins... (again, kind of)

2011-05-12T11:31:00.000-07:00

Well I didn't smash through another 8k hands as I intended, what I did instead though was begin to study ranges and equity on the flop by generating some random flops using the excellent iPhone app PkrCruncher. I then used some typical ranges and started working out which hands were best to c-bet, which hands were best to call/raise in response to a c-bet range etc.

At the moment I guess it will not help my game at all. But as I generate more and more of these situations I'll begin to get an intuitive feel about how certain hands do on certain flop textures and I think my play will get more accurate. I'm going to treat it like a drill (like doing scales on the piano) and set aside 30 minutes a day. Eventually I'm hoping that I will be confident and knowledgeable enough that I can then begin to study turns in the same manner. The long term goal being - obviously - to become a bloody tough player to be in pots with. The benefit of this is that my opponents will have to felt bluff catching hands and thus enable me to get full value from my made hands.

It's going to be a long and hard road IMO until this stuff becomes second nature but the result will be very very definitely worth it, as I'll be thinking like a mid stakes player then.

I just realised I've let my free ring game tickets expire (that I earned as part of the last bonus) and I'm pretty pissed off with myself. That's half a buy-in I've just chucked away. Not a lot I suppose but if I'd made that sort of mistake in a hand I'd have been rather annoyed and that's what it equates to. I'll not make this mistake again! Right, I do want to play some hands today so back to the grind. GL

Didn't quite make it, but 8800 hands in a day is quite a lot for me!

2011-05-08T15:03:00.000-07:00

So I FAILED in my challenge. In truth I could probably get there playing another hour but I'm mentally tired out and think it would def be -EV. Mind you, it seems that most things I do these days are -EV anyway (or at least even if they're not, the result I don't want to see is coming in). It's hard to be positive about my game at the moment.

IF I had won the money that I should have this year, I'd prob have earned around $1000 including rake back. As it is, I've won $500 - and I shouldn't complain of course. But over the sample of hands that I have it's a pretty low win rate. But I guess that even though I've been absolutely destroyed in all-in pots for 200k hands or so I've still come out a winner so that bodes well for the future.

I've nearly internalised most of the new ranges now, so pretty soon I'll be able to start putting in a lot of time and work on what to do post flop. But this is another story and I'll write a lot more about this in the coming weeks.

One last thing I thought I'd write about was the state of the games after I've played nearly 30k hands since black Friday. Well, it seems that nearly all of the good regs have gone. I've labelled a few players as regs but they seem to have tons of leaks. One thing I've noticed is that preflop aggression gets very little respect. So while I've been using bluff heavy 3-bet ranges lately I think I need to be very careful that I only bluff players who know how to fold. It's a great situation when someone raises 30% of hands on the button and never folds to 3-bets and I have a pure value 3-bet range. So I think that I should be concentrating on value more and more. All of that work I've put in lately in learning to play in a more aggressive way has probably harmed my win rate because the simultaneous weakening of the games has made a value strategy even more profitable than before. So in order to return to winning ways I'm going to be even more selective with my aggression.

Overall despite the run bad continuing I really enjoyed the grind today. There were tons of interesting spots, I made a few mistakes but that's the game. I'll probably try and do another 8k hand day on Thursday when I have a day off. Well I hope that you are running better than I am. GL

Have now reached 21 buy-ins below EV for the year.

2011-05-08T08:01:00.001-07:00

I guess this is a useful learning experience, when nothing, absolutely nothing goes right for 200k hands. I'm sure there are players who have had worse down swings before, but being there myself makes me realise how frustrating it really is. Last 30k hands won at showdown 45%, pah. I have certainly made mistakes, and I must continue to work to eradicate these from my game so that the damage is limited. I have no fear for my bankroll, as I will move back down to 10NL if I lose another 20 buy-ins or so and then work my way up from the bottom again. Truly the only thing I can keep doing is playing on. A kind of sadistic pastime where the endless beats just make me laugh because I want to endure some MORE filfth. Oh come on, surely your underset can turn quads can it not - again? MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA! OK I need to take a break and I'll play my second session later on once the pain has subsided a little.