Cash Plan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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