Losing some buy-ins at Zoom, switched back to HUSNG to regain some post-flop confidence

Morning all,

Long time, no update. 

I've played a few thousand hands over recent weeks, just trying to have fun in the games; not really worried too much about winning. During that time I have lost a few buy-ins at Zoom. I think it's largely negative variance; however, the games seem to have a high % of regular players so I'm beginning to question possible return rates. I'm aggressive and selective enough in pots that I believe I'm winning enough non-showdown cash but it's the big pots which seem few and far between. It used to be quite straight-forward to limit non-showdown losses (i.e. the blinds tax) and then profit on the difference between making good folds and making the most of value positions. Entirely possible that this is still true but that negative variance is obscuring the truth.

In an effort to regain some trust in my post-flop play I've returned to the games where I began it all: Heads-up Sit n' Go (HUSNG). Still seem to be plenty of regulars but at least when you get a fish, you get them all to yourself! For example, this morning first hand I snapped up an open 25bb shove with AK facing ATo. 

Enjoying these games again right now, and going to try to move up fairly aggressively if I can make a profit i.e. as soon as I reach 10 buy-ins at the next level I'll move up, but strictly move back down levels as soon as I no longer meet that threshold. I suspect it will take a long time to reach any kind of meaningful judgement on profitability of the games but it's good to be playing some post-flop pots again. 

Suspect I'll post again in a few weeks and will update on my view on the state of the HUSNG games then.

A few hours of play

Good morning, I’ve managed to play a few hours in the last two to three weeks, currently up about $200. Sense that ‘Stars are spending a little more on playing bonuses, so might be worth your time.

Serious play has continued to centre around Zoom poker. Latest 10k hands are break-even (recent returns corrected a small downswing earlier this year). I’ve returned to $50NL Zoom because it’s the lowest stakes without an ante. I’m not disputing that the ante games are beatable, but without a major adjustment to my style it feels like a drag on win rate. The 50 games don’t feel much tougher so that will be my new home for now. 

I’ve also indulged in some degenerate Spin n Go play. Just for fun. Although sensible chip-EV decisions have got me a 37-38% ITM rate so far, I’m not sure that’s sustainable. Will let you know. You can get through tons of these very quickly, so maybe I’ll bink one of the higher payoffs at some point.

Will post the 10k graph and stats soon as that might be interesting.

Hi internet

It's been a long time.

I'm really not sure why I don't play as much poker as I used to. Of course, there's the "poker dream". I wanted to play professionally as much as anyone back then. But life happened; fortunately, I do quite well from an ordinary 9-5 nowadays. More than "the dream" though, I think I just burned myself out; I stopped enjoying playing every day.

To the present; I fancied a game on Sunday afternoon and have grinded a few hours since. Not winning, as you'd expect after a long break, but I've been very happy with my play in general. It's really surprising (to me at least) how quickly I settle back into the routine: * Pre-flop discipline; * Post-flop assessment and decision making. Also all the things I learned from experience and videos soon come back when I get going. Usually my memory works differently; I'll often forget what's learned if I don't practice/practise something regularly. That's never been true for poker, even though it's been nearly ten years since I played regularly enough to consider myself a serious player.

One other note, I've been playing a lot of chess and that's distracted me from poker for the last year or two. I'm not a strong chess player but do enjoy the game. At slow time controls I might be class A or B standard. Drop me a comment if you'd like a game.

Back to poker, then; I've really enjoyed playing. No pressure, calmly playing the hands as well as I remember to. I have made mistakes, no question. I snap-called a river over-bet from a loose aggressive in a spot where it just screamed bluff - but the player had top two. I didn't maximise value on a different river where I had the near-nuts on a very wet board. But in general, I think my ROI is more a function of variance than my play.

So what next? Well, I've really enjoyed these hands. Looking back at "recent" blog posts, all promises of a return to regular play have proven false - apologies (as if anyone still reads these mindless posts). I'd like to think that I'll play more often, and if I do, I'll share my results and a few hands.

Until then, good luck.

Please let me know if you do still read this shit. It might encourage me to post better content. I think I used to at one point.

GL!

Graph (2009 - 2013) Zoom and Rush NL Hold'em 750k hands

As promised, my playing history from the lucrative period to 2013. It just shows that even through some downswings that felt quite terrible at the time, it seems that I was a small winner in those games at that time.

How that translates to the present day I'm not so sure. Recent results in Zoom have been break-even at best and it could be that those tables are no longer "soft" enough for my small win rate and I'd be better off back in the standard games with table selection.

A quick note about the player alias, it's given as B4nko - my Full Tilt username - but this graph also includes hands played in Zoom poker.

 

 

A note on playing style, tight aggressive was key. 3-betting was so prolific that I was ditching small pairs UTG (up to 55), along with other marginals e.g. KJs. Post-flop understanding of fold-equity and value betting were key. Understanding ideas such as hands on the river with showdown value should usually be checked back if villains are not calling with worse. This combination of pre-flop discipline and post-flop understanding is what yielded those results.

 

 

I will update soon if I get around to playing some hands.

 

 

GL!

News

I still play from time to time, but not often enough that I have much to post about.

The story since the last update is one of flatlining results (including Poker Stars bonuses), so slightly losing overall. That’s in Zoom games.

The reason for this post is that I rebooted my old gaming machine for the first time in years today. It has all of my databases 2009 to 2013 so I’m going to aggregate the results if I can and post the full history so that the blog is fully up to date. It may also serve as an incentive to play some more: If I can correlate my recent stats to those winning ones, perhaps I’ll play a bit more.

To follow, then. Probably be a week or two before I get around to it.

Updates

Going to try something a little different, and instead of spouting over a number of individual blog posts, I'll collate my small uninteresting updates into a single blog between the more detailed ones.

Early Zoom Thoughts 18/05/2017

It feels like the games have changed in some ways since my days as a regular a few years back, but there is definitely enough poor play on show to feel that I can win with a little practise.

I have encountered a lot of pre-flop aggression and fewer loose passive players which is a shame, as this cuts down on available post flop value. I can't really comment on the standard of the regulars at this stage as I have too few hands, but one or two players look competent. It also seems that there are fewer short stackers - which is good news for someone who likes to play 100bb.

Early results? I'm two buy-ins down, KK v AA in one pot and then variance.

It looks like I'm controlling the 'red line' or non-showdown winnings well, so it remains to be seen if I can still craft enough value in the big pots to make up the difference and earn some profit.

Another point to note is the card match feature, which adds a nice little side game while you play.

Overall I've been enjoying playing some post flop poker again. GL!

07/06/2017

Played a short session tonight, there seemed to be a lot of casual players; maybe the games get good from 10:00pm or something, I wouldn't usually play this late. Picked up a quick 2.5x buy ins.

Overall though, I've been running fairly poorly so haven't much felt like blogging, though run bad doesn't affect me as much as it once did.

I have some hands I'd like to share, but will save for a later blog post when I'll do several at once.

50 Tournament Update

If you have not been following my blog recently, I have been playing 6 man Sit n’ Go tournaments at Poker Stars because I had some tournament currency on the site that I wanted to convert to actual $ that I could take to cash games, which are historically my strongest area. To anyone unfamiliar with Poker Stars, tournament currency is earned by qualifying through satellites but then unregistering from the tournament in question (a way of ensuring that the value is returned to Poker Stars).  

As mentioned, SNGs are not my strongest area because they require knowledge of the Independent Chip Model to play short stacked poker well and my ICM is limited. There are plenty of resources out there for those that wish to get to grips with ICM and tournament poker maths but I’d recommend beginning with the excellent book ‘Kill Everyone’ by Nelson, Streib and Lee. So my objective wasn’t really to beat the games, but to break even.

Happily, I can report that I have more or less achieved that goal; that my T$ are all converted and that I didn’t lose a great deal in the process, and I have a bankroll of a few hundred $ to play cash games. I intend to continue to play these tournaments now and again as I have learned a little ICM through the process and it would be foolish to waste an opportunity to gain an additional string to the poker bow.

 

The Results

 

First, sample size. This is a woefully inadequate number of tournaments to glean a meaningful insight into if I’m doing anything right or wrong. Still, I feel that I play better than the average player in the early stages of these games and I probably do well enough at short stacked play, though I believe I could have done better.

 

One of the main reasons why the graph doesn’t look positive is that I’ve lost most of the heads-up battles I’ve played, so this is definitely an area where I need to improve. Having said that, variance is very likely to be playing a part and I’ve only felt out of depth against a single opponent – who happens also to be on a certain SNG leader board!

 

I had planned to go into more detail with specific stats, but to be honest I have such a small sample size that it seems like a waste of time at this stage. Perhaps I’ll do so once I have more games to look at. My basic numbers are:
VPIP  28%
PFR   28% (I seem to be calling a very low % of the time which looks like a leak, though it could reflect in part the lower average pre-flop implied odds, will talk more if this trend continues).
Total AF 3.30 (Nice and high, influenced by the second stat above)

 BB/100 -0.5 (All-in Adjusted 1.2, primarily down to my poor record when heads-up though I'm probably not beating the games in reality)

Bad Beat Corner

Finally a bit of fun, everyone loves a bad beat story so from time to time I’ll divulge the sickest hand from my recent database history. Here I’m a huge favourite on flop and turn but villain catches a minor miracle on the river. Enjoy my misery!

http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/8278524 

Future Plans

So now it’s back to cash / Zoom poker. I intend to play a few thousand hands at Full Ring Zoom 25NL in the near future so I’ll see how that goes. It’s easy to forget how quickly the hands accumulate and patterns begin to emerge, so perhaps I can reassess if I’m still in front of the field. I have databases that suggest I beat Zoom at 10NL/25NL at a low rate over several hundred thousand hands but the hands were played a number of years ago when the games were probably juicier.

 

Good luck at the tables!