Hmmm Hold 'em Manager?

I'm thinking of changing my database/HUD option to HEM and starting the new database immediately. When I purchased poker tracker 3 last year it was the solution that offered the most stability and accuracy over the Rush format and it has served me very well (certainly well worth the $). However, now that HEM is it's equal in Rush games and considering all of it's extra functionality (not to mention the other apps that can be used with it) I definitely think that it will be worth buying.

So the first 90k hands didn't go great. If you see the updated graph to the right, I ran over ten buy-ins under expected value in all-in pots. It's often argued that this EV curve is misleading - and this is probably true. But in full ring play a big part of profitability is found in the money made from big pots. So if we're often getting all-in as favourite but not winning (as has happened to me so far this year) it can have a large negative effect on win-rate. Still, as one of my poker playing friends keeps telling me - at least I've still made money.

One more advantage to using HEM is the ability to put rake-back as a line in the graph - one thing missing from the pt3 curve I have displayed. Over the last ten weeks I've probably earned $250-300 on top of the profit displayed there. This obv makes a huge difference to the money I've earned. And another reason why I should stop grumbling.

In an earlier post (when things were going well) I spoke about a desire to move up to $0.50/$1.00 by Christmas. I now believe this to be too lofty a goal and so my new objective is to turn a profit over the next 100k hands and if I can I'll move to $0.25/$0.50 and spend the rest of the year learning to do well at that limit. Anything higher I can look forward to next spring and beyond, there is very good money to be made at the next level. Between $15 and $30 per hour for a decent winner there.

OK, so I'm going to treat this as a new start and look positively ahead from now on. GL all.

Update and Stuff

So, the last three sessions I've made decent money but I had a 16 buy-in downswing before this small recovery - my worst yet across limits. I'm being far too results oriented at the moment and I think it's time that I started a new database. Running under EV has made me feel like I deserve to run good, and that's a terrible mindset to have. For all I know before I started using databases I ran several buy-ins above expectation and now it's just balancing out! What I will do is see out the 100k hands and then I'll update the pic at the side with a screen shot and start the next 100k hands in a new pic above it. This will be a good way to track my progress and see if I'm improving or not. I'm around 90k hands at the moment so I'll start the new db next weekend.

The downside to doing this is that I'll lose the player info I've acquired. Still, it will force me to play very straight forwardly and this might actually help. Anyway, GL!

Thinking About Improvement

So I have inevitably started thinking about trying to correct some of the mistakes I'm making during play. An example of a spot where I get stuck is calling with weak but often best hands and then face further aggression. Something like facing a second barrel from a button raiser (who is stealing 50%) on a K773 (two flush) and I have JJ without a card of the flush suit. I cannot usually decide whether to just give up which seems weak, call again which invites further aggression especially on the tons of river cards that I hate or raise which is turning the hand into a bluff (since he's not likely to call with anything weaker bar flush draws).

I know for sure that I'm a little too passive on turns so I'm going to have to begin turning some hands into bluffs on this kind of board. I think JJ is going to be best a little too often to make raising better than calling but a hand like 88 or 99 can get better hands to fold, hands with equity (overcards etc.) to fold and also gain value from draws enough of the time to probably make it a profitable play. This sort of spot is something that I should pick out of my database and spend some time studying. The unfortunate thing is that the little time I have for poker I feel that I should use for play. I have time off in April so I'll try and use that week to work extensively on turn play - it's easily my weakest street and if I can improve there I can see my winrate improving greatly.

Frustrations Mount Up

Terrible run continues, and also struggling to control tilt. This is the problem from having a stretch of a few tens of thousands of hands running so far under EV, it's much more difficult to cope with the downswings since I have nothing to fall back on. At 10NL when things went more smoothly, I was at least able to say... Well, I've already won 25 buy-ins, should easily ride this out. Well, since I've only won 15 buy-ins (and should be 30) I could easily go on a downswing and wipe all of that profit out - my biggest downswing across limits being 15 BIs so far. So my decisions are currently being driven by fear and frustration which is bringing the quality of my play down.

Today I started the session in good spirits and feeling and playing pretty well. But as the onslaught of negative equity situations continued I just lost control. One pot I massively overplayed 99 on a low board against a terrible opponent and another I hero called a river line that made no sense when I should have held my discipline and folded (since villain was very straight forward). At this point emotion completely took over. Luckily for me I understood what was happening and I decided to stop playing and vent on here. I think that I prob tilt spewed two buy-ins in total including those hands just discussed so I guess I should be happy that I was able to stop it so soon.

The question becomes, how can I keep up the volume and my control while the poor run continues?
- I'll play shorter sessions and have more breaks
- At the mere hint of tilt I'll need to sit out for 20 mins or so
- Play some sessions back at $10NL
It really is a horrible feeling, I'm so glad I don't play professionally right now as it would be having a massive effect on me away from the tables. I hope that my blogs over the next few weeks will give some idea about what it's like to go through a poker recession the way I am.

Of course it could be that I'm just not a winning player. The evidence I have though - my success at 10NL and the positive upwards EV line in my database - is that I should be beating this limit comfortably. After another 100K hands (or ten weeks play) I will know one way or the other.

One more thing, earlier today the software froze again. All week it had been playing fine so I decided to try Meteoric's suggestion about switching router channels. Well I did, and it seemed to improve the FT response - so thank you sir. I would never have thought of that other wise. GL

Welcome Back Mr. Debanks

Let us remind you what the DOOMSWITCH does.


:( Need I say more?

Quick shout out to Meteoric for helping with internetz, check out his blog by following the link.

GL

Everything seems to be working again.

So I uninstalled Full Tilt and then downloaded it again because I had performed a disk defrag when I bought the new router. Doing this seems to have got things working again; I just played a 1k hand session without a hitch. So thankfully after a couple of weeks of very short frustrating sessions I finally seem to have Rush poker back. So I will restart my 10k hands per week target as of Sunday and until then get back into the groove. It's amazing how a little time off can make you feel very rusty.

The session didn't go great, two big set under set pots where to be fair I could prob have got away from one of the hands saving myself a $14 river bet and I lost a race blind versus blind AKs vs. QQ. Never mind, I don't really care because at least the software problem seems to have been solved. So hopefully more frequent updates and I'd really like to up the quality of my posts as well. More frequent hand analysis and stuff like that. Anyway, GL

Full Tilt problems and other distractions

... mean that I have not put in hardly any volume over the past week. The Full Tilt client is lagging really badly during play to the point that it's unplayable. Not just because I keep timing out of hands but also that I'm rushing my decisions while I am actually connected. So I need to quickly find a solution to this and get my volume going again - this will be critical in my desire to have reached $0.50/$1.00 by the turn of the year. I believe the problems lie with the modem/router upgrade I have recently acquired and the need to set some firewall rules. So far any that I have tried have not worked so I may end up using my PC as a DMZ during poker play only. This is a far from ideal and potentially risky work around though, and for that reason I have moved $2k from FTP into a bank account and will only keep a maximum ~$1k in the client for now until (or if) I get to higher limits.
So a distinct lack of posts for a long time, and I have hardly played either. But the ability to earn money at poker, even small amounts is a huge bonus for someone who is low paid like I am in the difficult financial climate we are in so I owe it to myself to put in that volume. This week will see my return to the v-felt. GL