2009-07-19

You're So Last Summer

November 9 is set with Phil Ivey and Jeff Shulman being the bigest names at the final table. Should be interesting to see if there is more media hype this year than last year.

I am in the process of clearing a bonus that will get me free Omaha Manager. The problem is that I've been trying to install the trial version and it won't let me set up the postgresSQL. I have no idea how to make it work and it's frustrating me. hopefully i can resolve it.

The site im playing on for this bonus is LuckyAcesPoker The site is ok and the lay out is fine for what im doing. The game selection is non-existent as there have never been more than 4 tables running of my game at one time. Often the 3rd or 4th game get started because i sit alone and wait for some action. I'm doing decently on the site other than blasting away 20 bets at 3/6 Stud Hi last night. I was in a really good spot but didn't quit when the fist left and proceeded to get crushed by someone who appeared to play pretty well.

My Full Tilt has also been acting up lately, which is causing me some grief. I have partially resolved the problem, and am hoping that it goes away on its own or that FTP support will email me back with some more solutions.

The actual game of Pot Limit Omaha is going well for me I think. I like it.

LQ

Currently Reading: David Sklansky - The Theory of Poker
Currently Listening: Julian Plenti - Is... Skyscraper

2009-07-15

A Box Full of Sharp Objects

Lack of Updates due to spending 5 days on a farm in Manitoba.

I haven't played poker in a week, and I didnt get to follow any of the WSOP until about an hour ago - where there are 14 players left and Ivey is still alive and well. He's so sick.

Anyways, the Farm was really cool, we were there to visit Melissa's family as one of her cousins was recently married and they did a reception for family and friends there.

I won't go into a lot of details, but although I haven't played poker in a week, I've played more cards in a one week span that I think I ever have. Therefore, I had a good time. I also ate too much food, and I felt really sick a lot of the time.

On the poker front - I'm interested in investing into some coaching time. I'm considering a couple different coaches. I'm hoping to see a couple more videos and play a few more thousand hands before I do so though, so that I have more questions and more ideas.

I'm also looking into getting Omaha Manager. I don't like Poker Tracker Omaha very much - I'm struggling with the HUD, and thats annoying. I'm looking into signing up for a site to get OM for free. I think this is going to work nicely.

Anyways, thats all for now.

LQ

Currently Reading: David Sklansky - The Theory of Poker
Currently Listening: The Used - The Used

2009-07-02

Spitting Venom

Whoa. total 360 on my plans for poker this month. This could change again in an instant, but I decided to pick up PLO and give the 6max version a try.

I've played about 1200 hands so far to pretty satisfying results. I'm obviously running hot, but at PLO50, which is the limit I'm playing, the players are very straight forward for the most part and its pretty easy to be profitable.

I'm not ready yet to make any real observations about the game or some of the things I think about it... but for the most part being aggressive preflop by open raising a lot... especially from the steal positions, is really profitable.

It's a lot of winning small pots and then waiting for someone willing to over play their overpair. Having a decent rundown hand is so awesome in this spots. For example, If i raise T976 with a suit on the button and the BB 3bets, his most likely hand is AAxx, which is pretty much what most people 3bet with... its interesting to watch what people 3bet with... but anyways, the flop comes anything that connects with my hand J96, T85, or any combo of these middling type flops, some players will just stick their money in the middle as a pretty significant dog.

Main event starts tomorrow - let the mayhem begin.

LQ

Currently Listening - Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank

2009-06-30

June Results and July Goals

June was a month in poker that I will be happy to leave behind me. I had 3 of the biggest losing days of my life and my 3 largest winning days as well.

It was a very frustrating experience, as I ran like god at 3/6 and won 10BB/100 hands and got crushed at 5/10 at -4BB/100 hands.

All this amounted to me having a win rate of 1BB/100 hands over 9500 hands and only winning 60 dollars (plus 450 in rakeback, 25 in ironman bonus, and a free $30 subscription to Stoxpoker). To put this into perspective for those not familiar with BB/100, if i had won at 1BB/100 at 5/10 for 9500 hands I would have won $950 this month. But instead I won like 2k at 3/6 and lost 2k at all the other games i played.
awesome.

I stopped playing 5/10 for the end of the month and this lead me to some small winning days where I didn't swing large sums, which was a lot easier to handle. This made poker more enjoyable for me.

at 5/10, I lost because I made 3 bad choices in terms of game selection that I estimate cost me $2000. Had I taken a breath an seen that these 3 villains were decent aggro I would have quit them right away and gotten away down 3-400 instead of 2300. It didn't help that they won 65% of the showdowns, but I still didn't help my cause any by calling down light etc.

Anyways. Our computer crashed and died the other day, so I just bought a new one. It is really quiet compared to our old one which sounded like a banshee always.

My goals for July are:
to put in 8k hands (going to miss some days b/c of a vacation)
Move up to 5/10 when bankroll will support it
be nitty and QUIT decent players when they sit with me, regardless of whether I'm down 50-100 or not.
take a coaching session with SweetJazz to prepare for 5/10 better.

In life things are going really well. My job is good and I'm enjoying what I'm doing. It's not exciting, but I don't feel overwhelmed, and I can handle any challenges that come up.

I haven't been playing tennis or disc golf, but I would like to play both of them a couple times at least in July.
I took a golf lesson last week, and it paid huge dividends, seeing as I shot an 83 at Cottonwood, which is a great round for me. That score included a blow up on the 10th hole, which is a 288yd par 4, where, with the wind strongly blowing with us, I drove a monster drive pin high 4 yards off the green. My ball landed in a divot and i proceeded to hin my chip thin, through the green and into the sand trap, which for whatever reason took me 3 shots to get out of and 2 more puts to hit a triple! good times. Other than that I played absolutely stellar and I was thoroughly pleased with how i was hitting the ball.

Anyways, that's all for now. I'm going to play volley ball.

Happy Birthday Canada.

LQ

Currently Reading: F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Beautiful and Damned
Currently Listening: Goo Goo Dolls - Name (acoustic)

2009-06-22

Midnight Regulations

Lack of updates = downswing, ducy?

I've been struggling a lot the last week, and booked my first (small) win in 7 days. I have moved down from 5/10 to concentrate on 2/4 and 3/6 again. I put in some hands at 3/6 6max, but found the overpair vs set game hard to deal with. I don't want to complain, so I won't talk about bad beats. I understand that these hands come up and I will certainly be on the winning side of those hands often. That said, it is hard to put together a winning session when you get overpair vs set 3 times... I tend to lose about 6 bets with an overpair type hand when it is behind, maybe thats a leak =)


Anyways, I felt a tiny bit better about my game today, as I was able to navigate a couple players to take their gold.

A fairly common player type in the lower stakes HUHU games are the "i dont ever check raise the flop" guys. These fellas come in a couple varieties, one is the c/c c/r with my strong hands otherwise i just call down - a lot. or there is the c/c, c/r 50%+. These guys are actually fairly difficult to play against.

Some adjustments I try to make are checking back a lot of turns with marginal showdownable hands that can't deal with a check raise. I'm not sure if this is a good plan or if making marginal bet/folds is better to get value...

Another adjustment is to check back some hands on the flop, but this would only be against villains who are calling on the flop 80%+... and I probably would cbet 100% against these guys unless their fold to cbet is less than 10%. This is because our bet on the flop is breakeven if they fold 25% (a standard pot at 2/4 will be $1sb,$2bb, I, as small blind, will raise to 4, BB calls, so the pot is 8. If i bet on the flop (2), and he folds 25%, my flop bet has a positive expectation... since im betting 2 to win 8), but that we still get an advantage from the balance of betting more hands and from potentially picking up cards that help us on the turn or river (seeing as we can bet the flop for a smallbet and then get to see the turn and river for free and make a choice then)

Something that is villain specific is whether you can put in a 3rd bet on the turn a little bit light or not. This will depend on how likely they are to 4bet and on how often they are c/r on the turn... someone c/r 50%+ will have a lot of marginal hands in their range when they do raise. It also matters if they are peeling the flop most of the time or if they are folding a lot... for example, if they fold 50% on the flop and c/r the turn 50%, that means that they are raising the top 25% of their range on the turn... (they folded 50% of it on the flop and they folding 50% of the last 50% (2/4 on the flop, 1/4 on the turn). If they peel 100% (unlikely, but go with me for the example) and then c/'r the turn 50%, they have a heck of a lot more junk in their range, since they are now raising the top 50% of their hands (and probably not actually the 'top' 50%, as this range will be somewhat polarized to their best hands and some pure bluffs)
So, obviously, this range changes as those stats get closer together.

Deciding to call on the river is another choice that can be difficult and is something that you will have to feel out as you get to know the villain. if they bet mindlessly 100% you can easily call down with a lot of hands that you checked back the turn with, and to try to make the more honest you can check a couple hands with middle pair in them or even top pair and go for a river raise.

Interesting stuff.

I think there is a lot more to say on this topic, but thats all for now about playing c/r the turn villains.

I made a post on DeucesCracked in response to a player asking about hand ranges. It's worth checking out if you are getting started in HUHU

Also, I finally posted my cribbage video It ended up just being a live play video, but I'm happy with how it turned out. I made a powerpoint, which I may post at some point, but I'm not sure yet. I would love people to watch it and tell me what they think about it.
If anyone wants to play crib on yahoo sometime, i'm interested.

I'm going to see The Tragically Hip tomorrow, and I'm REALLY excited. I saw them a couple years ago, and this is going to be awesome.

LQ

Currently Listening: Alexisonfire - Old Crows/Young Cardinals
Currently Reading: F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Beautiful and Damned

2009-06-14

The Space Between

Poker is such a funny game sometimes.

You hear a lot about the term 'variance' when discussing poker and winning and losing. People talk about winning and losing above or below expectation, which is their variance. When someone like Brock Parker or Phil Ivey win two bracelets in a single WSOP, that is running above expectation. Hell, winning a single poker tournament is always going to be 'above expectation'.

In my own game I have had 3 runs where the variance has been huge and the swings even more so.

Two times I have been on the losing end of winning 30% of the hands I showdown, and then today i was on the winning end of it.
the expectation of showdowns is that you will win approximately 50% of them. If you play pretty tight and dont fight for a lot of pots where you don't have a strong hand, this might be a little higher in the long run, something like 53-55%, and transversely, if you are very aggressive and trying to win a lot of pots when you are pretty sure you're hand is not best, you're won money at showdown might be 45-47%. You can still be profitable in this way because of the money you pick up in the little pots that noone contends with you on.

However, when you play HULHE and the difference between the won at showdown stat is 40% (70-30) this will be astronomical in the way the match turns out.
Lets look at a hypothetical: Lets say that we play 100 hands and we are playing 5/10. Lets say the average pot size is $50 when it goes to showdown (both players put in 25). Now, this is probably about right, we could make it a little smaller, more like 45, or a little bigger, like 55, but 50 is a nice round number. Now if we play 200 hands, an average match will have 40% go to showdown. so 80 of the 200 hands (40%*200=80) is the number of pots we see showdown.

Lets look at what happens when they both win 50%...
its a wash! haha.

now lets look at something more typical, which will have a decided impact on the match: one person wins 55% and the other wins 45%
the difference is 10%, so player A, who won 55%, will win 4 more pots in total in this match, 44-36. if we remember that the average pot was $50, this difference is going to be $400 ($200 of which was Player B's money). So this means that by only winning 45% of showdowns, player B needs to make up $200 somewhere else in the match. This is definitely possible, but certainly not easy.

Now, how about 70-30.
the difference is 40%, so player A will now win 56 pots to Player B's 24. But now instead of player B needing to make up a $200 difference, he is now going to have to make up an $800 difference, which, imo, is impossible to do in the nonshowdown pots unless Player A puts in some action during the hand but only showsdown top pair or better.

That was actually a longer winded intro to what i wanted to mention coupled with that:

When this starts to happen, not only do we have to make up this 800 that we lost due to variance, we also have to battle the weaktight shell we might go into by missing value bets when we assume our opponent always has it, or the opposite, when we spew because we think 'he cant ALWAYS have it' and we bloat pots with marginal hands.

There really isnt a lesson here, just something to think about.

LQ

Currently Reading: Michio Kaku - The Physics of the Impossible
Currently Listening: Dave Matthews Band - Busted Stuff

2009-06-10

Special Death

Have you been following the WSOP?

I have. it's always interesting to see how everyone is doing and what big name pros are going to make deep runs in minefields of amateurs.
I don't follow a lot of specific players, but one that I've followed for a while now is Shannon Shorr. His blog is really interesting and is one of the donkament players that I really take interest in.
Other than that, I just like to see winners and final tablists, which is pretty easy info to come by.

Its hard for me being a HULHE player primarily, since most of the discussion is on the no limit tournaments, which i don't play very well and don't really understand some of the theory behind different plays.

I followed the 10k o8 tournament a little bit more closely because its a game that I have put my time in with and feel like i'm reasonably competent at. I would like to play more o8, but im currlently restricted to FTP, and the games don't really run at my limits. I just havent gotten around to putting a bankroll on Stars, which i will, but probably not for a bit. Once I do, I can take some time and put in some o8 hands. It's a pretty solid game and you can play very tight and make money at it. (I'm talking specifically about full ring). I took up 6-9 tabling when I was playing the game last.

I'm going to have to make some choices about my poker game soon, since I am now basically rolled for 5/10. Now that I'm into this realm of poker, the time between getting action gets larger and larger. I'm still happy to play 3/6. But 2/4 isn't a game that I want to be playing anymore.
One option is to expand my site selection and get money on Stars or some other site that offers HU tables. I'm not comfortable playing on UB or AP because of the scandals, so i will stay away from them.
Another option is to start putting in some hands of 6max or expanding into no limit holdem.

I'm not sure i'm super comfortable with either option at this point. The 6max is a good idea, but the games are not as easy as they used to be, so the edge is probably smaller, especially since its not my primary game and i will almost certainly be making some mistakes.

I don't know, haha, something for me to think about.

LQ

Currently Listening: Mirah - Advisory Committee
Currently Reading: Chuck Palahniuk - Pygmy