The last post spoke a little about changing sites.  It's been a good move, and I was showing a positive result (about 4bb/100) at the 25nl tables.  But as I've said before I get discouraged thinking about moving up the limits in no limit.  After .50/1 there doesn't seem to be very many tables with flop percentages beyond the low 20s.  This essentially means that most of the time the hands aren't seeing a flop.  I could probably beat that sort of table set-mining with an 11%vpip, but that's not my idea of poker, and there's a very good chance that I'd get outplayed.  So I finally decided to heck with it all.  I recovered my bankroll quite nicely at Stars and the moment I did I made the decision I was supposed to have made a month ago.  That is, to learn to play and win at limit poker.  There are some pretty substantial differences between limit and no limit play.  One of the primary differences is that limit is much more a game of immutable odds and probabilities.  No Limit is more about gut feelings and player reads.  No Limit players often analogize the difference when playing limit poker as though they were tackle football players playing touch football with handcuffs on.

In the past this has been my biggest problem playing limit.  I could never handle the amount of waiting.  This was partly due to the fact that I'd never mastered limit, and wouldn't allow myself to multitable.  I went from 200+ hands per hour at no limit to 50 at limit.  But the appeal of limit is this:  If you can beat .50/1 limit, then chances are good that you'll be able to beat 3/6 limit at the same win rate.  In no limit it's almost impossible to find a game with stakes that high, and if you can find one, it can be very expensive if you're not up to it.  There are always plenty of tables going at virtually any stakes in limit hold em.  So long story short, I'm playing limit, and I'm beating the game for a little better than 2bb/100.  So far I've only played about 4000 hands which is far too early to pass judgement, but if I can even maintain this win rate I'll have a positive future in poker.  If I can't then I guess poker may not be for me after all.

 

For me the purpose of posting is pretty simple.  I like to improve my play.  Posting my results regularly gives me a point of reference when things are going wrong and helps to identify losing patterns.  However it's only helpful when I'm actually posting losing results and analyzing those losses.  Currently I'm running pretty bad.  I'm on a 6k hand losing streak out of 20k hands.  That sounds a lot worse than it is.  Essentially I'm down $100 bucks in cash games for the month.  With the run I had upon first returning to the game this was expected.  Expecting it doesn't make it a whole lot easier though.  I try to make a habit of checking my play for mistakes regularly, but it's more of a scan and conscience check when things are going well.  It takes an extended run like this for me to really take a close look at things. 

I found that about 90% of my biggest losses were losses incurred while chasing flushes and straights.  There are profitable chases and there are unprofitable chases.  Generally when chasing a flush or straight I want to see odds of 2-1 on the flop or 4-1 on the turn to continue.  In almost all of the cases, accounting for about 80% of my losses, I had the odds I needed to continue.  Unfortunately they were expensive chases, and I've had a long stream of them missing, but that's irrelevant.  Poker is a game of numbers.  In the long term, playing my draws the way that I have been, I can expect to show a profit.  One can even use the old salesman's adage of every miss takes you one step closer to a success.  It's purely mathematical and only a matter of time before the numbers shake out.  That being said, there is another 20% or so of my recent losses that can't be accounted for by mathematical anomalies.  My largest loss was suffered when I chased a flush even after a pair had appeared on the turn.  This is a terrible situation to be in with a flush, and unfortunately I hit mine, only to lose to the obvious full house.  There are little rules of thumb in no limit hold 'em, and one of the first you learn is to drop your draws when there is a pair on board.  That was a clear cut mistake.  My other losses were lousy beats.  Set vs set, full house vs bigger full house, sets vs straight or flush draw and the opponent sucks out.

I felt I needed to take a look at my losses though.  J2 have a belief that long losing streaks are pretty common, but when they creep up to the 8k hands streak, it's time so see where you're going wrong. 

I also tried moving up limits as I've said, and the losses I took up there were higher as a percentage of my bankroll than the wins I've made playing lower limits to claw my way back up.  But to put things in perspective, I'm still showing a beautiful 8bb/100 win rate at my $25 pl game.  I'm negative EV at the higher limits, but I've only logged about 2k hands there, and I'm only about -3bb/100.  I'm going to wait until I have my bankroll rebuilt to move back up though.

Some good news to report.  I beat out 200 others to take second in a freeroll and win $240 today.  I was busted out with the better hand against my opponent too, so I'm very happy with my play.  Basically the tourney win brings me positive ev for the month, but I don't like to count those wins as part of my play.  Freeroll Tourneys I view more like a lottery win. 

That about says it all.  The last entry mentioned moving up limits, and that didn't go so well.  I lost about 6 buy ins which is never fun when you're trying to move up.  I've logged about 7 losing sessions in a row now, which was bound to happen as I ran about 2 weeks with nothing but wins.  I would love to think that I'm above this, and I would love to be above this but I'm not.  When I start losing I lose all desire to play.  I'm not a gambling man.  I find parting with money very difficult, and I tend to step back when I'm losing and take a few days off.  Taking a few days off turned into taking a week off this time though.  My kids were off school on Friday, so I didn't play at all then, and throughout the earlier part of last week I might have put in about 1000 hands.  In all I finished November about 5000 hands short of my goal, or at 75% of my target.  Part of the problem is also that I'm finding poker to be a lot more boring than I remembered it.  I'm actually looking for a job, and pursuing poker more as a past time than a career for now I think.   

The literary website that I've been talking about building is up.  (I think I might even have finished it ahead of schedule, whaddaya think of that?)  You can check it out here http://www.freewebs.com/redlightlit/index.htm

The day has finally come.  I've moved up limits and have been playing $50 no limit and pot limit poker for the past few days.  I've logged 5 sessions, and all of them have been winning sessions, with a bb/100 rate of 11 or so after about 2000 hands.  Far too early to tell, but these initial results have been pretty encouraging.  It's ironic that as I write this post on my impressive win rate I'm playing a session and losing quite badly.  I've been getting a lot of small and middle pairs, and as it goes with set farming aggressive tables, it's pretty costly to see a flop.  Different people play these kinds of pairs under different circumstances.  Some people use a maximum raise amount that they'll call, such as 6 bb or 8bb.  I use an approach based a little more on game theory.  Provided that my call has implied odds of about 7.5-1 if I hit my set I'll call.  Long term it's a profitable play, but it can get expensive when the stacks are deep.  And right now the stacks are deep and I haven't been catching the sets.  I'm also playing at the only 3 tables going with any real action.  This is less than half of my usual 7 tables, and consequently the 'long run' is going to take a little longer tonight.

I  love poker.  Part of the reason is hands like the following.  I spent a lot of time micro-anaylzing a losing hand not so long ago.  Here's a winning hand with a lot more to it than there would seem to be at first.  Here's the hand history.

 

Texas Hold'em $0.25-$0.50 PL (real money), hand #P4-54309598-113
Table Moroni, 20 Nov 2007 11:02 PM ET

Seat 1: herberthump ($9.45 in chips)
Seat 2: AncusMarcius ($36.50 in chips)
Seat 3: YellowManJJ ($24.75 in chips)
Seat 4: Maria 26 ($23.80 in chips)
Seat 5: Arale. ($24.25 in chips)
Seat 6: MrTon57 ($20.80 in chips)
Seat 7: L3st3rMurphy [ 9D,9C ] ($23.00 in chips)
Seat 8: jonna92 ($10.10 in chips)
Seat 10: tranquillozh ($28.65 in chips)
ANTES/BLINDS
L3st3rMurphy posts blind ($0.25), jonna92 posts blind ($0.25).

PRE-FLOP
tranquillozh calls $0.25, herberthump bets $1.25, AncusMarcius folds, YellowManJJ calls $1.25, Maria 26 calls $1.25, Arale. calls $1.25, MrTon57 folds, L3st3rMurphy calls $1, jonna92 calls $1, tranquillozh folds.

FLOP [board cards 10C,8C,JH ]
L3st3rMurphy checks, jonna92 bets $3, herberthump bets $8.20 and is all-in, YellowManJJ folds, Maria 26 folds, Arale. folds, L3st3rMurphy calls $8.20, jonna92 calls $5.20.

TURN [board cards 10C,8C,JH,3H ]
L3st3rMurphy bets $1, jonna92 calls $0.65 and is all-in.

RIVER [board cards 10C,8C,JH,3H,9S ]

SHOWDOWN
herberthump shows [ AC,AS ]
L3st3rMurphy shows [ 9D,9C ]
jonna92 shows [ JS,10D ]
L3st3rMurphy wins $32.50.

SUMMARY
Dealer: MrTon57
Pot: $34, (including rake: $1.50)
herberthump loses $9.45
AncusMarcius loses $0
YellowManJJ loses $1.25
Maria 26 loses $1.25
Arale. loses $1.25
MrTon57 loses $0
L3st3rMurphy bets $10.45, collects $32.50, net $22.05

 

After winning this hand I typed in the chat window "Know your outs :)"

Here's why.  This is one of those poker hands where the margin of error could be huge.  With all of the action against my lowly 99 here my little voice was sending up red warning balloons like crazy. (Yet another brilliantly creative title!)

First of all, on the flop I put Jonna92 on at least a premium pocket pair.  I didn't have very many hands on him, and in the absence of information to the contrary I always give my opponents credit for a strong hand.   I had him holding anything from aa-jj or ak.  His bet was for half the pot, essentially offering 2-1 odds for a call, and I was intending to call his bet.  The next player, herberthump (nice name bub) was a little looser, and I put him on any pair and hands down to aj.  When he moved all in for his 8.20 I put him on top 1 or 2 pair or a flush draw.  With a straight I felt it was more likely that he would have flat called hoping to suck me in too.  That he bet so big said to me that he was afraid of the draws hitting, or was trying to build a pot in anticipation of the flush.

When it came back to me the pot was 18.95 and I had to call 8.20.  My outs were anywhere from 6 (the 7s and the Qs, without the clubs to complete a flush draw if there was one and my 2 remaining 9s being counterfeited by a higher set), or 10 outs if there were no flush draw and no higher set.  I was confident that there were no higher straights out there.  So averaging my outs to 8 I decided I only needed 2.2-1 on the call, and with only $5 more for Jonna92 to call into a $27 pot I was sure that he'd call too.  The pot odds alone made it a worthwhile call, and the implied odds with Jonna's predicted call made it a no brainer.  I flat called not wanting to scare jonna out and we had a 3 way pot, which I rivered out on.  I showed this hand to a friend of mine and his initial reaction was that it seemed like a loose play.  So we crunched the numbers with pokertracker and with pokerstove. 

Here is a rough idea of what we got:

My probability of completing my hand by the river was 31.45%.

This translated to needing pot odds of 2.18-1, so my guesstimate of 2.2-1 was almost bang on.  To call a bet of $8.20 I needed to have a pot of at least of $17.87.

I was being offered a pot of $18.95 or odds of 2.32-1, better than I needed.  If the implied odds of Jonna92's remaining $5.85 are added to the pot, we then have a pot of $24.80, or implied pot odds of 3.02-1. 

As it turned out I did have 10 live outs which gave me terrific expectation.  In fact, even if I'd had only 7 outs in this hand, it would have been a profitable call.  It's only in the event that I had 6 outs or less that this call would show a loss.

What I love about this hand is that it shows the importance of a) playing by the math, and 2) not always being afraid of the worst case scenario.  At best one can only put their opponents on a range of hands.  You can never know for certain what an opponent is holding.  And when you're counting outs in a hand like this, you need to apply that same technique of ascribing a range of possibilities to your opponents.  While it may be possible that you're drawing dead, it's equally possible that all of your outs are live, even remotely possible that both your opponents are drawing.  With that in mind, the best method for calculating pot odds in a situation like this is to take the average of your range of outs and go with that.  I love this hand.  I was bouncing around my house for a while after this one, not because of the amount of money won, but because of the complexity of the call and the fact that I played it well. 

Incidentally, had I lost this hand, I think it still would have been the subject of a post.  This kind of thing intrigues me to no end!

 

 

 

There are a lot of skeptics in this world.  You tell them that the poker site you play at gives you money to play there and they are disbelieving.  For example, this month I stand to get about 400 or 500 in bonuses from my poker site.  The skeptics say things like 'that doesn't make sense, why would they pay you to play?"

Here is how an online poker room makes money.  Just like in a brick and mortar poker room, the site takes a small percentage of every pot, called 'the rake".  The rake varies from site to site.  The rake can be a contentious issue depending on who you talk to.  Some players view it as though the rake comes out of the loser's share of a pot.  Others view it as a piece of their winnings being taken.  The site I play it has a rake of about 5% of every pot.  I share the view that the loser is paying the rake, and I'm being compensated for my share by the pot I win.  Whether it's right or wrong I don't care, it helps me ignore the fact that the site is taking a small share.   

So back to the question, how can a site afford to pay players to play.

Consider this.  Most players are long term losers.   Most bonuses involve a 'raked hand requirement' or collected points system of sorts.  You have to play x amount of hands in x amount of time to collect the bonus.  A lot of players never actually clear the bonus.  The site has drawn their business, collected a good amount of rake off of them, and not had to pay out a penny. 

Then there are players like my friends and I, bonus whores as we tend to be known as.  We're winning players that carefully calculate which bonuses are best and we adhere to strict playing schedules so that we are guaranteed to clear the bonuses.  Often times this works out to an extra $3-$5 per hour.  Does the site still make money off of us?  Yes, just not as much.

I just cleared a $200 bonus today, that required me to clear about 10k hands or so.  Looking at my stats I can see that in that time frame I paid approx. $300 in rake.  So the site made $100 off of my play instead of $300.  But there are other benefits for the site.  Brick and mortar rooms will often hire 'prop players' to fill their tables, thus insuring that new players always have a poker table to sit at and play.  Online sites are no different.  Without traffic a site is dead.  The network that I play on has always offered some of the best bonuses, and has consistently held a strong market share because of it, which has kept them alive and growing while other sites faltered. 

Anyway, that's how a poker site can pay players to play.  It's more like returning a portion of rake than an actual bonus.  In fact 'rakeback' programs are another way that players are paid to play. 

What can I say, my play is awesome.  First off, the stats; Vpip 16.28, pfr 8.12, AF 3.42 bb/100 9.04 

I'm really happy with these results.

Things I'm doing well. 

I'm playing a little looser than the 14/4 rocks that seem to make up more than half of the players these days, and I think that's making me a little harder to read.  I'm bumping up my pfr with a lot more position raising than I used to do.  For example, if I have a small pair, or a couple of Broadway cards I'm making a small raise.  I'm pretty sure that most of the opponents that I need to worry about are using PAHUD.  They're not actually watching the size of my raises, just looking at the pfr stat on their PAHUD.  That extra 4% of what I used to consider junk raises increases the range of possible hands that my opponents have to consider me capable of playing immensely.  In the event that 1 or 2 are watching my raises, about 10% of the time I'm making the small raises (or no raise at all) with the monsters too. 

Another thing that I'm doing is making a lot more position raises than I used to.  If I don't take the pot preflop, I take it often enough with a sensible continuation bet that it's profitable.  This is one of the areas that I'm really leaning on PAHUD for.  I'm really watching the stats of 'fold to continuation bet" and 'raise continuation bet'.  I also discovered a little trick with PAHUD that I never realized I could do before.  There's a window that allows you to 'configure pop-up stats" in the edit menu of the layout manager screen.  It allows you to customize the info in the pop up stats window.  I've added a lot of info to the flop stats section of my pop up that I'm finding to be quite profitable.    I've mentioned a few of them here, but the info that I have my pop up window displaying for the flop is

Aggression Frequency Flop

Flop Aggression

Check Raise Flop

Fold to Flop Bet

Fold to Flop Raise

Continuation Bet

Raise Continuation Bet

Folds Continuation Bet

I'm not going to go on at length defining these terms, instead I'll direct you here; http://pokeracesoftware.com/hud/tutorial.php?page=stats

 

Ironically the other thing that I'm doing well is ignoring PAHUD and going with my gut on later streets. 

 

Things that I'm doing poorly, or have been doing poorly and recently stopped.

I still sometimes overvalue tptk.

I was playing under less than ideal conditions.  For example, I was taking my laptop to a couple of coffee shops that had shitty internet connections.  I did this twice, and rather than stop playing when I saw the connection was likely to give me trouble, I played through.  I grew increasing frustrated and in both sessions began to play too aggressively out of fear that I would lose my connection and be folded out of the hand.  Subsequently both sessions were losing sessions.  This could also have been due to the level of distractions in the coffee shops. or even to some additional edginess and irritability brought on by the caffeine.

At home I still sometimes fail to wait until there are no distractions. 

I want to play more tables so that I can earn more per hour, and I'm pushing the envelope a little too hard at times.  I need to pace myself better.

I'm not putting in the hours as well as I should.  This week I'm currently 8 hours behind my goal.  This means that tomorrow I'll be playing for about 8 hours to catch up.  And that's not much fun.  Believe it or not poker is work. 

I still pursue vendettas against maniacs at times.  Poker shouldn't be personal, but when some 80/40/12 assholed sucks out on me for a backdoor flush I get pissed.  I need to work on a more zen outlook.

And that's my 10k checkup.

:)

 

 

 

 

I had a boss back in the day who was all action and no bullshit.  He hated people that used a ten dollar word where a one dollar word would do.  He also loathed indecision, he believed it was a sign of weakness.  And he also hated micro-analysis of anything, particularly micro-analysis that had no immediately apparent point.  People that engaged in any such verbosity, indecision and analysis he referred to as mental masturbators.  So he would be absolutely disgusted with me right now.  Because I'm still going on about the same hand I've been talking about for several posts now.  I'm talking about the jqo that I flopped 2 pair with and then found myself facing 2 reraises.  The first point, that I've hammered to death, is that I really should have gone with my gut on that hand.  I've since come across a lot of other information in the form of vital concepts of no limit play from Sklansky's NLHETAP.  I'm going to list the concepts that I feel had the most bearing on this hand in particular, because listening to my gut and adhering to these simple concepts has really helped my play a lot. 

 

DON'T PLAY BIG POTS AGAINST TIGHT OR TRAPPING PLAYERS 

If the player is an absolute rock, don't play a big pot without the nuts or VERY close to it, for example a set or better.  Your opponent won't be in with anything less.  In the hand that I keep referring to a 6.4% vpip reraised a reraiser all in.  I should have folded holding only 2 pair. 

 

A BIG BET IS THE MOST RELEVANT INFORMATION AVAILABLE.

When reasonable players make extremely large bets, all information from past action takes a backseat to the big bet.  Sklansky notes that if the only possible way he could have you beat is if he held 7 4 offsuit and it's not in his range, disregard the range.  The big bet says he's got 7 4 if he's a reasonable player.  I chose to use the (false) information from the past action in the hand when I called the all in with my 2 pair, and failed to assign the big post flop bet enough importance.

 

BE WARY OF OVERCALLERS

When there has been a lot of action and there's a call and an overcall, the overcaller almost always has to have an extremely powerful hand.  In my case, the action demonstrated power even more clearly than an overcall.

 

This hand has fascinated me because it's absolutely riddled with mistakes on my part.  Those mistakes are a tremendous learning opportunity.  A lot of poker players refer to their losses as their tuition, the dues they pay in order to better their play.  I paid a lot of tuition on this hand, and I'm not going to let it go until I've taken my money's worth of education about it. 

 

In somewhat related news I recently took an IQ test on Facebook and I did a little better on it than I have traditionally done on these types of exams.  After the test it gave me some analysis, my results and some tips on how to improve my IQ score.  One tip in particular might explain why my results were a little better than usual on this test.  The tip was "Play games (chess, cards, etc.) which require you to work out your opponent's strategy".  Well I've put in more than my share of time doing that!

 

 

 

As you know I've been reading a book on rapid cognition (intuiion) in the hope of improving my decisions at the poker table.  Most recently I've had some bad results using PAHUD's stats even when they conflicted with my gut instinct, and a lot of the time this has cost me money.  There are times when I can really rely on pahud, for instance when I'm deciding whether or not to make a continuation bet, or deciding whether or not to go for a check raise.  For those small and frequent decisions, pahud gives me pretty close to the exact odds of my chances of success, and it pays for itself quickly.  However I've been using it to justify calling some pretty big raises on the river.  I've decided that from now on those river calls are going to be the result of my first gut instinct.  It's generally correct, and I've found that the research in Blink backs this up. 

First, a brief summary of the findings in Blink.  The researchers found that in small and unimportant decisions, rational analysis using a traditional pros vs cons method had a higher success rate than 'going with your gut."  However, they also discovered that as more and more information became available, and the decisions became a little more complex, with few exceptions, subjects had better results when they made their decisions intuitively.  This isn't to say that data shouldn't be considered.  It's just to say that when there is a wealth of information to analyze the subconscious seems to do a better job of parsing through to the best conclusion than the rational but drawn out processes of the conscious mind.  Freud realized this when he was studying the subconscious, and here's a quote from him.

"When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons.  In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves.  In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep needs of our inner nature."

That being said, my inner nature is currently feeling a deep need to go fishing for donkeys online :)

 

So in the last post I was talking about an excess of information often complicating and clouding otherwise simple decisions.  Often times, this excess of information results in it's possessor developing a false sense of confidence in a judgement call due to the sheer volume of the knowledge.  "I have so much data indicating that 'x' is true that it's virtually impossible for 'y' to have any degree of truth."  This idea really resonated with my poker experience, particularly when it comes to using tracking software.  You may recall a post I made on Hudbots, and the indispenability of playing with PAHUD.  I'm revisiting that idea somewhat these days.  PAHUD is certainly a useful tool, and it produces a staggering amount of data.  But there are some cases where using and relying on PAHUD can be even more harmful than playing without it.  I played a hand yesterday that will illustrate this point beautifully.  First of all, it's imperative to identify that there were several factors that went into the gross misinterpretation of this hand.  I generally play about 6 tables at a time.  In this hand I was playing 8 tables, which was a bit of a stretch for me.  I wasn't paying quite as much attention as I should have been, but I was counting on PAHUD to help me make decisions that would otherwise be based on a combination of observation and intuition.  It's also important to realize that I would have made a perfect read on my opponents had I been paying attention and using accurate info.  However my information was inaccurate, a fact that I didn't realize until the hand was over.  I was in the big blind for this hand.  But I was distracted, and I didn't notice that I was.  I was dealt jqo, a hand that I will usually muck to a raise.  However when it came time to act in this hand I was distracted by some activity in the house.  I'd called a raise with jqo, and what's worse, I didn't realize I had.  When the flop came down jq6 I was operating under the impression that it was an unraised pot.  This assumption was to be the basis of a series of information based mistakes that cost me a lot of money. I raised my top pair and was immediately reraised by the guy behind me (Lars).  Looking at his hudstats I concluded that he wouldn't be in an unraised pot with a decent hand.  I put him on a flush draw based on his aggression numbers and i reraised.  The guy behind him  (Dejection) rereraised all in.  Instantly my gut instinct screamed "He has a set". However I took a moment to think about it and I looked at his stats.  This player was playing in only 6% of pots, and he was raising almost 5% of those.  In order for him to have a set he would have to have either jj, qq, or 66.  66 was outside of his hand range.  It's a hand that he just wouldn't play period and I easily eliminated the possibility of a set of 6s.  I quickly ruled out jj or qq.  This player was certainly playing those hands, but with a pfr almost equal to his vpip, he would be guaranteed to raise them.  He had to have one of the 1% or so of hands that he wasn't raising.  I put him on aq, or possibly kq with a flush draw, with the very unlikely prospect that he might have the same hand.  An all in raise with a flush draw and 2 callers isn't a bad play at all, especially if he had equity from catching top pair as well.  I recall thinking that "If there'd been a raise preflop this would be an easy fold."  I was 8 tabling, and shouting back and forth with a family member upstairs.  I took the few seconds I had to consider this hand to look at stats, sticking with my assumptions about preflop action.  After Dejection's all in raise I called and so did Lars for his remaining few chips.  This fit with my initial assessment that Lars was on a flush draw.  He was a fairly solid player, and getting 2-1 on the flop for his draw, the all in move was a good play.   Well needless to say 6% had pocket jack for a set, leaving me just the 2 remaining queens for outs.  I missed them, Lars missed his draw and Dejection stacked us both.  Without HUDbot this hand would have been an easy fold.  I had to consciously over ride my intuition on this hand with a barrage of data and even then it just 'felt' wrong.  My goal for the next few weeks is going to be to count on my instincts more than my software.  I don't plan to abandon the software altogether, but I need to integrate it in a more cooperative fashion with my gut.  Here's the hand history, and for those of you that concern yourself with such things, the stats on my opponents.

 

007Lars

Vpip 21.88 (Voluntarily put in pot)

Pfr 6.25 (Pre-Flop Raise)

Af 2.00 (Aggression Factor)

 

Dejection

Vpip 10.29

Pfr 6.01

Af 14.00 (absolutely huge aggression factor)

 

Seat 1: dejection ($24.50 in chips)
Seat 2: tmobjerg ($12.65 in chips)
Seat 3: martind02 ($28.50 in chips)
Seat 4: Stingray3x ($28.75 in chips)
Seat 6: happy yorik ($31.35 in chips)
Seat 7: L3st3rMurphy [ QH,JS ] ($35.65 in chips)
Seat 8: Cantrim ($23.00 in chips)
Seat 9: 007Lars ($21.05 in chips)
Seat 10: Wormie911 ($13.20 in chips)
ANTES/BLINDS
L3st3rMurphy posts blind ($0.25), Cantrim posts blind ($0.25).

PRE-FLOP
007Lars bets $1, Wormie911 folds, dejection calls $1, tmobjerg folds, martind02 folds, Stingray3x folds, happy yorik folds, L3st3rMurphy calls $0.75, Cantrim folds.

FLOP [board cards JD,QD,6S ]
L3st3rMurphy bets $3, 007Lars bets $12.25, dejection bets $23.50 and is all-in, L3st3rMurphy calls $20.50, 007Lars calls $7.80 and is all-in.

TURN [board cards JD,QD,6S,9C ]

RIVER [board cards JD,QD,6S,9C,KH ]

SHOWDOWN
dejection shows [ JC,JH ]
L3st3rMurphy shows [ QH,JS ]
007Lars shows [ AD,KD ]
dejection wins $68.80.

SUMMARY
Dealer: happy yorik
Pot: $70.30, (including rake: $1.50)
dejection bets $24.50, collects $68.80, net $44.30
tmobjerg loses $0
martind02 loses $0
Stingray3x loses $0
happy yorik loses $0
L3st3rMurphy loses $24.50
Cantrim loses $0.25
007Lars loses $21.05
Wormie911 loses $0

I'm still working on that book 'Blink', and I'm really enjoying it.  As I suspected I'm finding a lot of insights that translate well to poker.  Last night I read a section about the Cook County Hospital in Chicago.  A few decades back this hospital was a nightmare.  They were overwhelmed with patients on a daily basis.  By far one of the most resource intensive groups of such patients were suspected heart patients.  When someone came in complaining of chest pain, the hospital took it quite seriously, as well they should.  In order to diagnose with any certainty that a patient was having a bona fide heart attack, the hospital would subject them to test after test, often keeping the patient in one of the precious few hospital beds for 3 days or more.  Then a new administrator came into the chaos, and desperate to somehow free up beds he took it upon himself to streamline the procedure for heart attacks.  He created a questionnaire that isolated a number of risk factors, and gave the attending physicians a wealth of information to go on.  Things like diet, lifestyle, history, etc.  It turned out however that having more information actually produced more misdiagnoses.  The administrator then recalled a physician who had met with some controversy over a system of quickly diagnosing heart attacks using an algorithm, a basic mathematic equation based on a very narrow set of factors.  No one had been willing to test the system in a live environment however.  The administrator took the chance.  Ther results were amazing.  The algorithm separated real cardiac events from false alarms a staggering 95% of the time.  Doctors gathering volumes of information such as ecgs, histories, lifestyle etc were able to produce at best a 70% success rate.  But there was an interesting side effect to all of this.  Even though the Doctors had results that were increasingly inaccurate in relation to the volume of info gained, their confidence in their decisions increased proportionately.  The more they thought they knew, the more positive they were in their assessments.  With the algorithm they had a sick and doubtful feeling because of it's utter simplicity.  They felt that they needed to know more.  The algorithm in essence sliced through all the potential misinformation to produce a result based on the only genuine factors worth considering.  The author believes that our sense of intuition works in much the same way,  thin-slicing the data at a rapid pace and calculating only the factors that matter.  So why is this a poker write up?  I was telling my friend J2 this story and at about this point he jumped in and said just like PAHUD.  And that is exactly why this is a poker write up, but it's going to have to be a 2 part entry, because I'm getting damn tired.   More on this tomorrow, with a humiliating hand example to help iillustrate.

I've read an awful lot of books on poker.  I would say that all of them have been worth the read.  Currently I'm reading a book however that has very little to do with the subject of poker.  Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it wasn't written with poker in mind.  The book in question is Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.  The focus of this work is the subject of intuition, which the authour at times refers to as rapid cognition or thin slicing.  I've read books on the sense of intuition before, and I enjoy reading them because it increases my trust in the often irrational gut instincts I feel in moments of snap decision making.  Unfortunately I'm prone to over-analyze my gut instincts quite frequently, and using logic and reason I direct myself in a direction counter to my intuition, usually with negative results.  So one task that I've set myself is to develop this sense of intuition or rapid cognition, or rather develop an increased level of trust in the decisions I make at the gut level.  I like the term rapid cognition better than intuition.  It seems to be a more accurate descriptor of what's really happening; a sub-conscious decision making process based on prior experience and knowledge then stripped of any pros/cons weighting system.  Here is why I find it so important.  I play approximately 240 hands of poker per hour (conservative estimate).  That boils down to 4 hands of poker per minute.  With 4 rounds of betting per hand, that means that I'm seeing 16 rounds of betting per minute, or one win/lose decision every 4 seconds.  Most of the time there's quite a bit of math involved, but I've gotten to the point where the clear cut decisions require almost no thought.  I've experienced the majority of easy decisions so many times that there is no longer any decision making required, the action is clear and automatic.  However there are moments where a hand requires a great deal more thought, the odds and probabilities need to be weighed, the skill level of the opponent, what he thinks I think he thinks I think he has and that sort of thing.  That's a lot of thinking when you'll be making another decision in 4 seconds and there's a timer running down on you.  Most of the time my gut tells me what to do and I do it.  Like Magnum P.I.'s 'little voice'.  The problem is that I don't completely trust my gut yet.  Even after all the times my rational analysis has fucked me when my gut was right all along.  Hence the book.  To believe my gut, I need to believe that it's believable, and that means teaching my rational analytical self that there is a higher form of analysis at work on the subconscious level.  But I'm rambling again.  Remind me not to post after midnight, I get goofy. 

Here's the straight vs. set hand that I wanted to post.  This hand illustrates a lot of basic principles for winning poker.  I have AKo in middle position and it's folded around to me so I open with a standard 4xbb raise and get one caller.  PRE-FLOP

funkyjazz1 folds, zariluka folds, MazMatt folds, L3st3rMurphy bets $1, kakkapussi folds, spitalnap folds, happy yorik folds, Schmeltis folds, agassi781 calls $0.75.

 

FLOP [board cards 7D,3S,JH ]
agassi781 checks, L3st3rMurphy bets $2, agassi781 calls $2.

 

TURN [board cards 7D,3S,JH,10H ]
agassi781 checks, L3st3rMurphy checks.

 

 

RIVER [board cards 7D,3S,JH,10H,QH ]
agassi781 bets $6.25, L3st3rMurphy calls $6.25.

 

The river brings out a third heart completing a flush if my opponent was on such a draw. It also makes me the top straight.   He makes a pot size bet into me, giving me 2-1 on my call.  This sets me to thinking.  It's possible that he has the flush but not likely.  His smooth call on the flop and subsequent check on the turn were more indicative of a straight draw or pocket pair.  I also consider the possibility that he made a smaller straight on the turn and was going for the check raise.  The bet seems too large for the nut flush.  Generally poker players abide by the weak when strong, strong when weak rule.  Having run through this thought process I put him on a semi-bluff...he has something, but it's not the flush and I'm pretty sure I'm ahead.  I'm not sure enough however to make a reraise and get stacked on the outside chance that he does have the flush, so I just call.

 

SHOWDOWN
agassi781 shows [ 10S,10D ]
L3st3rMurphy shows [ KD,AS ]
L3st3rMurphy wins $17.85.

 

In closing, my opponent hit his set on the turn.  His play is riddled with mistakes.  His call on the flop was weak.  He had 2 choices there if he wanted to make it work, either raise or fold, and I personally would be inclined to fold in his position.  The overcard is not good, and the possibility of more overcards coming is just to much of a threat to continue.  If he suspected me of having nothing, the better play would have been to raise and drive me out on the flop rather than let me draw on him.  On the turn he hits his set and FPS (fancy play syndrome) gets a hold of him.  He decides to go for the slowplay on a board showing straight draws, flush draws, and the slim possibility that I might have top pair and hit a set.  Any size bet here would have won him the pot.  When the river hits all his nightmares come true.  The straight is made, the flush is made, he knows the chances are very good that he's behind.  His max bet here had for me the smell of desperation, of a defensive bet.  If he was as strong as he was representing, he would certainly have made a more enticing bet so as not to scare me out of the pot.  It seemed instead that he was trying to push me out, and my intuition said call.  These are the exact sort of opponents that you want to be up against.  They play their monsters slow and weak allowing you to draw out on them time and time again, and when they are weak they throw money at you.  Fun hand.

SUMMARY
Dealer: happy yorik
Pot: $18.75, (including rake: $0.90)
Schmeltis loses $0.25
agassi781 loses $9.25
funkyjazz1 loses $0
zariluka loses $0
MazMatt loses $0
L3st3rMurphy bets $9.25, collects $17.85, net $8.60
kakkapussi loses $0
spitalnap loses $0
happy yorik loses $0

First off, I don't intend to make a blog entry for every session, but I felt that today's session was significant as it's my first day back at the 25pl game at Ongame.  I'd set a goal for myself to play at least 250 hands and play them well for this session. I wound up playing 321 hands, and I did play them well, so I'm quite satisfied.  My time at the tables was 1:38 and I had an earn for the session of approx. $40, so I'm content with that.  I've started playing with about half the required bankroll for these limits, so all initial gains are highly welcomed.  I played 4 tables to hit my 300+ hands which is really encouraging.  My target for the month is a minimum of 20,000 hands, and with a plan of 4x1.5 hour sessions, 5 days a week, I should be able to exceed that number quite well.  By my initial calculations it appeared that I'd be struggling to make 1000 hands per day, but if I can maintain this pace at 5 tables, I should be able to hit 1500 hands per day, or 30000 hands per month.  Depending on traffic I may even be able to push 6 tables.  This is great news not only for my bottom line, but for bonus whoring as well.  My current site has a loyalty program that should allow me to clear an additional $700-1000 every month on top of my earn rate.  All in all, I'm quite happy to be back at the tables.  I'll post some interesting hand histories as they come up.  Today's big wins were the usual aa vs kk and straight vs set variety.  Actually, I may post the straight vs set hand in a future post to illustrate a point in a future post. 

My money is on it's way.  Should be online by tomorrow or the day after.  What an incredible pain in the ass it's been.  And it's apparently going to get worse.  My bank handed me a little flyer detailing how they are going to be collecting more info for wire transfers in the interests of preventing terrorism.  This is the same ruse that the government used to take down Neteller and most of the online poker world with the Internet Gambling Act last year.  Here's the text of the flyer:

 

"DOING OUR PART TO PREVENT MONEY LAUNDERING AND TERRORIST FINANCING.

When you send a wire payment outside Canada, we need to collect additional information from you to address anti-money-laundering and anti-terrorist financing regulations subject to all Canadian Financial Institutions.  The reqested information will aslo assist us in ensuring that your payment is processed efficiently and accurately.

 

When you ask us to send a wire payment, we will ask you for the full named, address and account number (if applicable) of both you and the recipient of the wire payment.  The information you provide will be shared with the recipient's bank, any intermediary financial institutions involved in processing the payment and the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) where required by law.  The infromation may also be subject to the laws of any jurisdictions the wire payment passes through in order to be processed. 

 

For more information about FINTRAC and the regulatory requirements visit www.fintrac.gc.ca or call 1-866-346-8722.

For more information about the RBC Royal Bank Privacy Policy, visit www. rbc.com/privacy. "

Translation; there is now a government agency tracking my win rate.

 

I guess I should probably explain why I'm considering 6max NLHE.  I've always played full ring pot limit and no limit games and done pretty well at them.  However these games all but disappear beyond the 2/4 stakes.  In order for one to increase profits, it seems that switching to the 6max games is the best option.  Originally I wanted to switch to 6max limit because of the quantity of games and because at 2bb/100 (a standard win rate) I would be able to make a pretty decent living off of relatively small bankroll playing 2/4 stakes (multitabling of course).  6max limit seemed safer to me than 6max no limit, because almost all of the decisions are math based.  Having a system of mathematics guiding your play relieves you of a lot of emotional investment in the hand, thus making it much less likely that one will tilt.  However, something happened over the course of the last week that has me reconsidering no limit.  I was watching a thread at 2+2 on delays in payments from the site I was thinking of joining.  A poster had stated that his moneybookers withdrawals kept getting cancelled for no discernible reason.  A few others had complained of similar troubles, and I didn't want to put any money on to the site in question until I saw that these guys were able to get their money off safely.  Well a few days ago the poster posted the resolution.  The problem was that he'd made a withdrawal request of $10,000.00, and then made another withdrawal of $10,000 the week after, before the first withdrawal had cleared.  This was forcing the Moneybooker's computer system to identify a withdrawal request greater than the weekly 10k max they permit, and automatically the transactions were cancelled. 

Ten fucking thousand dollars a week!!!!!????  Jeeeeeeezus what the hell game is this mofo playing? I asked myself.  I looked up other posts he'd made, and he's a 6maxNLHE player.  He plays $200nl and $400 nl mainly.  So I've decided that I'm going to study 6max nlhe the way some very studious person would pursue their studies.  That's all for now.

Would you believe that I still haven't put any money online?  I estimate it's still going to be another week or so.  Tomorrow I'm going to suck it up and send a bank wire to moneybookers so I can get started.  In the meantime I've opened an account with Citizen's Bank, an online bank.  Moneybookers uses bank wires to move funds  back and forth, and all of the big Canadian banks charge anywhere from $10 up to about $50 to receive them.  I've heard that Citizen's Bank is either free or a small $5 charge, and they apparently have better service than most banks too.  

Perhaps I should have read my last post before writing here since I can't remember what I've mentioned already and what I haven't.  Anyway, here's the deal.  I was going to give 6max limit a shot again, but J2 has been pretty convincing in his arguments for staying with no limit and pot limit games.  I'm going to be joining tower gaming and playing $25 pot limit until I've built a nice bankroll.  They have $400 in bonuses at 5x, followed by a bottomless 7x bonus.  Once I have a substantial bankroll, I'm going to meet j2 halfway.  Instead of 6max limit, I'm going to give 6max nl a shot.  There has been almost nothing published on the strategy for this game, and consequently the number of fish at the tables is reputed to be huge.  In order to keep my tuition fees (ie losses) low while I'm learning, I've been putting in all the research I can in preparation.  I found what may be one of the most comprehensive gatherings of information for 6max SSNLHE on the net here http://www.pr0crast.com/2+2.NL.Anthology.v1.htm and here, http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=3239210&an=0&page=0#Post3239210 The first link deals almost exclusively with 6max SSNLHE, and the second one is concerned more with nlhe in general.  Between the 2 of them I'm sure anyone could becom a winning player.